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• Flash CS4 [AS3]: Playing Card Deck Array

  - by Ben

  I am looking to make a card game in Flash CS4 using AS3 and I am stuck on the very first step. I have created graphics for a standard 52 card deck of playing cards and imported them into the library in Flash and then proceeded to convert them all to Movie Clips. I have also used the linkage to make them available in the code. The movie clips and the linkage are named in sequence, as in the Ace of Clubs would be C1, two of Diamonds is called D2, Jack of Spades is S11. (C = Clubs, D = Diamonds, S = Spades, H = Hearts and numbers 1 through 13 are the card values. 1 being Ace, 11 being Jack, 12 being Queen, 13 being King). As far as I know my next step would be to arrange the cards into an array. This is the part that I am having problems with. Can someone please point me in the right direction, what would be the best way to do this. Could you provide me with a bit of sample code as well? I have had a look at few tutorials online but they are all telling me different things, some are incomplete and the rest...well...they're just cr*ppy. Thanks in advance! Ben

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• Requirements for connecting to Oracle with JDBC?

  - by Lord Torgamus

  I'm a newbie to Java-related web development, and I can't seem to get a simple program with JDBC working. I'm using off-the-shelf Oracle 10g XE and the Eclipse EE IDE. From the books and web pages I've checked so far, I've narrowed the problem down to either an incorrectly written database URL or a missing JAR file. I'm getting the following error: java.sql.SQLException: No suitable driver found for jdbc:oracle://127.0.0.1:8080 with the following code: import java.sql.*; public class DatabaseTestOne { public static void main(String[] args) { String url = "jdbc:oracle://127.0.0.1:8080"; String username = "HR"; String password = "samplepass"; String sql = "SELECT EMPLOYEE_ID FROM EMPLOYEES WHERE LAST_NAME='King'"; Connection connection; try { connection = DriverManager.getConnection(url, username, password); Statement statement = connection.createStatement(); System.out.println(statement.execute(sql)); connection.close(); } catch (SQLException e) { System.err.println(e); } } } What is the proper format for a database URL, anyways? They're mentioned a lot but I haven't been able to find a description. Thanks! EDIT (the answer): Based on duffymo's answer, I got ojdbc14.jar from http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/tech/java/sqlj_jdbc/htdocs/jdbc_10201.html and dropped it in the Eclipse project's Referenced Libraries. Then I changed the start of the code to ... try { Class.forName("oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver"); } catch (ClassNotFoundException e) { System.err.println(e); } // jdbc:oracle:thin:@<hostname>:<port>:<sid> String url = "jdbc:oracle:thin:@GalacticAC:1521:xe"; ... and it worked.

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• Unusual "static" method declaration

  - by Jason

  public class Card { public enum Rank { DEUCE, THREE, FOUR, FIVE, SIX, SEVEN, EIGHT, NINE, TEN, JACK, QUEEN, KING, ACE } public enum Suit { CLUBS, DIAMONDS, HEARTS, SPADES } private final Rank rank; private final Suit suit; private Card(Rank rank, Suit suit) { this.rank = rank; this.suit = suit; } public Rank rank() { return rank; } public Suit suit() { return suit; } public String toString() { return rank + " of " + suit; } private static final List<Card> protoDeck = new ArrayList<Card>(); // Initialize prototype deck **static** { for (Suit suit : Suit.values()) for (Rank rank : Rank.values()) protoDeck.add(new Card(rank, suit)); } public static ArrayList<Card> newDeck() { return new ArrayList<Card>(protoDeck); // Return copy of prototype deck } } I have a quick question. The code block that starts right after the static keyword declaration, what type of method is that ? I haven't ever seen that before. If anyone could enlighten me, that would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

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• Perl coding to PHP coding conversion

  - by Haskella

  Hi, I am trying to convert some Perl into PHP using this guideline: http://www.cs.wcupa.edu/~rkline/perl2php/#basedir Basically I know next to nothing about these two languages. Please give me some simple English explanation of what each line does, I'll be more than happy. Thanks for reading :D Perl CGI program: #!/usr/bin/perl -T use strict; use warnings; use CGI (); my %fruit_codes = ( apple => '2321.html', banana => '1234.html', coconut => '8889.html', ); my $c = CGI->new; my $fruit_parameter = $c->param('fruit_name'); my $iframe_document; if (defined $fruit_parameter and exists $fruit_codes{$fruit_parameter}) { $iframe_document = $fruit_codes{$fruit_parameter}; } else { $iframe_document = 'sorry-no-such-fruit.html'; } $c->header('application/xhtml+xml'); print <<"END_OF_HTML"; <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Fruits</title> </head> <body> <form action="fruits.cgi"> <fieldset> <label for="fruit">Name of the fruit:</label> <input id="fruit" name="fruit_name" type="text" /> <input type="submit" /> </fieldset> </form> <iframe src="$iframe_document"> <a href="$iframe_document">resulting fruit</a> </iframe> </body> </html> END_OF_HTML 1;

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• Return pre-UPDATE column values in PostgreSQL without using triggers, functions or other "magic"

  - by Python Larry

  I have a related question, but this is another part of MY puzzle. I would like to get the OLD VALUE of a Column from a Row that was UPDATEd... WITHOUT using Triggers (nor Stored Procedures, nor any other extra, non-SQL/-query entities). The query I have is like this: UPDATE my_table SET processing_by = our_id_info -- unique to this instance WHERE trans_nbr IN ( SELECT trans_nbr FROM my_table GROUP BY trans_nbr HAVING COUNT(trans_nbr) > 1 LIMIT our_limit_to_have_single_process_grab ) RETURNING row_id If I could do "FOR UPDATE ON my_table" at the end of the subquery, that'd be devine (and fix my other question/problem). But, that won't work: can't have this AND a "GROUP BY" (which is necessary for figuring out the COUNT of trans_nbr's). Then I could just take those trans_nbr's and do a query first to get the (soon-to-be-) former processing_by values. I've tried doing like: UPDATE my_table SET processing_by = our_id_info -- unique to this instance FROM my_table old_my_table JOIN ( SELECT trans_nbr FROM my_table GROUP BY trans_nbr HAVING COUNT(trans_nbr) > 1 LIMIT our_limit_to_have_single_process_grab ) sub_my_table ON old_my_table.trans_nbr = sub_my_table.trans_nbr WHERE my_table.trans_nbr = sub_my_table.trans_nbr AND my_table.processing_by = old_my_table.processing_by RETURNING my_table.row_id, my_table.processing_by, old_my_table.processing_by But that can't work; "old_my_table" is not viewable outside of the join; the RETURNING clause is blind to it. I've long since lost count of all the attempts I've made; I have been researching this for literally hours. If I could just find a bullet-proof way to lock the rows in my subquery - and ONLY those rows, and WHEN the subquery happens - all the concurrency issues I'm trying to avoid disappear... UPDATE: [WIPES EGG OFF FACE] Okay, so I had a typo in the non-generic code of the above that I wrote "doesn't work"; it does... thanks to Erwin Brandstetter, below, who stated it would, I re-did it (after a night's sleep, refreshed eyes, and a banana for bfast). Since it took me so long/hard to find this sort of solution, perhaps my embarrassment is worth it? At least this is on SO for posterity now... : What I now have (that works) is like this: UPDATE my_table SET processing_by = our_id_info -- unique to this instance FROM my_table AS old_my_table WHERE trans_nbr IN ( SELECT trans_nbr FROM my_table GROUP BY trans_nbr HAVING COUNT(*) > 1 LIMIT our_limit_to_have_single_process_grab ) AND my_table.row_id = old_my_table.row_id RETURNING my_table.row_id, my_table.processing_by, old_my_table.processing_by AS old_processing_by The COUNT(*) is per a suggestion from Flimzy in a comment on my other (linked above) question. (I was more specific than necessary. [In this instance.])

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• Display the form again ?

  - by noralain

  Hi all, I want to ask about the form in javascript .. I want to do a game that the user enter the correct word, then alert message will apeared for correct word.. When the user do the first word correctly, the program will display another word (to be corrected) .. but the problem which i faced that i can't make the form display again to continue play the game .. i used : var d = document.getElementById("form1"); d.style.visibility = "visible"; but it doesn't work !! This is my code: <title>Word Decoder</title> <script type="text/javascript"> function checkWord(word, score){ var ok = words[score].valueOf(); var ok1 = document.getElementById("wordid"); if(ok1.value == ok){ score ++; alert("Correct, your score is: " + score); var d = document.getElementById("form1"); d.style.visibility = "visible"; return false; } else { alert("Wrong Spelling"); return false; } } </script> </head> <body> <script type="text/javascript"> var words = new Array ("apple", "orange", "banana", "manago", "table"); var reWords = new Array ("alpep", "ergano", "aaabnn", "goamna", "lbeat"); var count = 0; var score = 0; "</br>"; </script> <form id="form1"> <br> <dir id="displayForm" style="position: relative; visibility: visible; display: block"> <h3><b> <script> document.write(reWords[score]);</script> </b></h3> <br> Enter the correct word: <input type="text" value="" id="wordid"/> <input type="submit" value="Check Answer ??" onclick="return checkWord(wordid, score);" /> </dir> </form> </body> Can help me to solve the problem? Again: I want the game will display a scrambled word and the user must unscrambled the word to move to the other word. The problem is i can't display the form again to make the user unscrambled the second, third ..etc words..

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• How to add Listview in tab activity?

  - by sandip armal

  I have one "SubjectTabActivity" and i need to show listview on this activity. But when i want to implement ListActivity it doesn't show listActivity. I have two(addchapter,addsubject) xml file with "SubjectTabActivity". and i need to show my database item il list view in respective xml file. but i don't understand how to do that? How to add Listactivity in TabActivity?. Please give me any reference or code. Thanks in advance.. Here is my reference code. public class MasterMainActivity extends TabActivity { LayoutInflater layoutInflater = null; @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.master); Intent intent=getIntent(); setResult(RESULT_OK, intent); layoutInflater = (LayoutInflater) getSystemService(Context.LAYOUT_INFLATER_SERVICE); TabHost tabHost = getTabHost(); TabHost.TabSpec tab1spec = tabHost.newTabSpec("tabOneSpec"); ImageView imgView = new ImageView(this); imgView.setBackgroundResource(R.drawable.subject); tab1spec.setIndicator("Subject", imgView.getBackground()); tab1spec.setContent(new TabContentLayout()); TabHost.TabSpec tab2spec = tabHost.newTabSpec("tabTwoSpec"); tab2spec.setContent(new TabContentLayout()); ImageView imgView1 = new ImageView(this); imgView1.setBackgroundResource(R.drawable.chapter); tab2spec.setIndicator("Chapter", imgView1.getBackground()); tabHost.addTab(tab1spec); tabHost.addTab(tab2spec); } private class TabContentLayout implements TabHost.TabContentFactory { @Override public View createTabContent(String tag) { View view = null; if(tag.equals("tabOneSpec")) { try { //static final String[] FRUITS = new String[] { "Apple", "Avocado", "Banana", // "Blueberry", "Coconut", "Durian", "Guava", "Kiwifruit", //"Jackfruit", "Mango", "Olive", "Pear", "Sugar-apple" }; view = (LinearLayout) layoutInflater.inflate(R.layout.subjecttabview, null); //setListAdapter(new ArrayAdapter<String>(this, R.layout.subjecttabview,FRUITS)); } catch(Exception e) { e.printStackTrace(); } } if(tag.equals("tabTwoSpec")) { try { view = (LinearLayout) layoutInflater.inflate(R.layout.chaptertabview, null); } catch(Exception e) { e.printStackTrace(); } } return view; } } How to add ListActivity in this TabActivity

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• Design Technique: How to design a complex system for processing orders, products and units.

  - by Shyam

  Hi, Programming is fun: I learned that by trying out simple challenges, reading up some books and following some tutorials. I am able to grasp the concepts of writing with OO (I do so in Ruby), and write a bit of code myself. What bugs me though is that I feel re-inventing the wheel: I haven't followed an education or found a book (a free one that is) that explains me the why's instead of the how's, and I've learned from the A-team that it is the plan that makes it come together. So, armed with my nuby Ruby skills, I decided I wanted to program a virtual store. I figured out the following: My virtual Store will have: Products and Services Inventories Orders and Shipping Customers Now this isn't complex at all. With the help of some cool tools (CMapTools), I drew out some concepts, but quickly enough (thanks to my inferior experience in designing), my design started to bite me. My very first product-line were virtual "laptops". So, I created a class (Ruby): class Product attr_accessor :name, :price def initialize(name, price) @name = name @price = price end end which can be instantiated by doing (IRb) x = Product.new("Banana Pro", 250) Since I want my virtual customers to be able to purchase more than one product, or various types, I figured out I needed some kind of "Order" mechanism. class Order def initialize(order_no) @order_no = order_no @line_items = [] end def add_product(myproduct) @line_items << myproduct end def show_order() puts @order_no @line_items.each do |x| puts x.name.to_s + "\t" + x.price.to_s end end end that can be instantiated by doing (IRb) z = Order.new(1234) z.add_product(x) z.show_order Splendid, I have now a very simple ordering system that allows me to add products to an order. But, here comes my real question. What if I have three models of my product (economy, business, showoff)? Or have my products be composed out of separate units (bigger screen, nicer keyboard, different OS)? Surely I could make them three separate products, or add complexity to my product class, but I am looking for are best practices to design a flexible product object that can be used in the real world, to facilitate a complex system. My apologies if my grammar and my spelling are with error, as english is not my first language and I took the time to check as far I could understand and translate properly! Thank you for your answers, comments and feedback!

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• Firefox can not layout nested tables properly?

  - by ooplidi

  I want to implement a collapsible menu. I plan to use table component to simulate a menu, and nest a sub table into a table cell to simulate a sub menu. Below is my code, it works as expected in IE, Chrome and Safari, but it doesn't work well in Firefox: <html> <body> <div id="menu" style="position:absolute; left:150px; top:100px; z-index:1"> <table width="200px" height="90" border=1 cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <td colspan=2>Money</td> </tr> <tr> <td colspan=2>Tool</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Food <table style="position:absolute; left:200px; top:60px; z-index:1" width="200px" height="60px" border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <td>Cookie</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Fruit <table style="position:absolute; left:200px; top:30px; z-index:1" width="200px" height="60px" border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <td>Apple</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Banana</td> </tr> </table> </td> </tr> </table> </td> </tr> </table> </div> </body> </html> It seems that Firefox think the "left" and "top" attribute for the level 3 menu is relative to the level 1 menu, so it layout the level 3 menu incorrectly. Other browsers will calculate the offset base on the level 2 menu, that works as expected. Is it a bug in Firefox? If so how can I work around it? I want my code to have the same behavior in all major browsers.

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• Looking For iPhone 4S Alternatives? Here Are 3 Smartphones You Should Consider

  - by Gopinath

  If you going to buy iPhone 4S on a two year contract in USA, Europe or Australia you may not find it expensive. But if you are planning to buy it in any other parts of the world, you will definitely feel the heat of ridiculous iPhone 4S price. In India iPhone 4S costs approximately costs $1000 which is 30% more than the price tag of an unlocked iPhone sold in USA. Personally I love iPhones as there is no match for the user experience provided by Apple as well as the wide range of really meaning applications available for iPhone. But it breaks heart to spend $1000 for a phone and I’m forced to look at alternates available in the market. Here are the four iPhone 4S alternates available in almost all the countries where we can buy iPhone 4S Google Galaxy Nexus The Galaxy Nexus is Google’s own Android smartphone manufactured by Samsung and sold under the brand name of Google Nexus. Galaxy Nexus is the pure Android phone available in the market without any bloat software or custom user interfaces like other Androids available in the market. Galaxy Nexus is also the first Android phone to be shipped with the latest version of Android OS, Ice Cream Sandwich. This phone is the benchmark for the rest of Android phones that are going to enter the market soon. In the words of Google this smartphone is called as “Galaxy Nexus: Simple. Beautiful. Beyond Smart.”.  BGR review summarizes the phone as This is almost comical at this point, but the Samsung Galaxy Nexus is my favourite Android device in the world. Easily replacing the HTC Rezound, the Motorola DROID RAZR, and Samsung Galaxy S II, the Galaxy Nexus champions in a brand new version of Android that pushes itself further than almost any other mobile OS in the industry. Samsung Galaxy S II The one single company that is able to sell more smartphones than Apple is Samsung. Samsung recently displaced Apple from the top smartphone seller spot and occupied it with loads of pride. Samsung’s Galaxy S II fits as one the best alternatives to Apple’s iPhone 4S with it’s beautiful design and remarkable performance. Engadget summarizes Samsung Galaxy S2 review as It’s the best Android smartphone yet, but more importantly, it might well be the best smartphone, period. Of course, a 4.3-inch screen size won’t suit everyone, no matter how stupendously thin the device that carries it may be, and we also can’t say for sure that the Galaxy S II would justify a long-term iOS user foresaking his investment into one ecosystem and making the leap to another. Nonetheless, if you’re asking us what smartphone to buy today, unconstrained by such externalities, the Galaxy S II would be the clear choice. Sometimes it’s just as simple as that. Nokia Lumia 800 Here comes unexpected Windows Phone in to the boxing ring. May be they are not as great as Androids available in the market today, but they are picking up very quickly. Especially the Nokia Lumia 800 seems to be first ever Windows Phone 7 aimed at competing serious with Androids and iPhones available in the market. There are reports that Nokia Lumia 800 is outselling all Androids in UK and few high profile tech blogs are calling it as the king of Windows Phone. Considering this phone while evaluating the alternative of iPhone 4S will not disappoint you. We assure. Droid RAZR Remember the Motorola Driod that swept entire Android market share couple of years ago? The first two version of Motorola Droids were the best in the market and they out performed almost every other Android phone those days. The invasion of Samsung Androids, Motorola lost it charm. With the recent release of Droid RAZR, Motorola seems to be in the right direction to reclaiming the prestige. Droid RAZR is the thinnest smartphone available in the market and it’s beauty is not just skin deep. Here is a review of the phone from Engadget blog the RAZR’s beauty is not only skin deep. The LTE radio, 1.2GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM make sure this sleek number is ready to run with the big boys. It kept pace with, and in some cases clearly outclassed its high-end competition. Despite its deficiencies in the display department and underwhelming battery life, the RAZR looks to be a perfectly viable alternative when considering the similarly-pricey Rezound and Galaxy Nexus Further Reading So we have seen the four alternates of iPhone 4S available in the market and I personally love to buy a Samsung smartphone if I’m don’t have money to afford an iPhone 4S. If you are interested in deep diving into the alternates, here few links that help you do more research Apple iPhone 4S vs. Samsung Galaxy Nexus vs. Motorola Droid RAZR: How Their Specs Compare by Huffington Post Nokia Lumia 800 vs. iPhone 4S vs. Nexus Galaxy: Spec Smackdown by PC World Browser Speed Test: Nokia Lumia 800 vs. iPhone 4S vs. Samsung Galaxy S II – by Gizmodo iPhone 4S vs Samsung Galaxy S II by pocket lint Apple iPhone 4S vs. Samsung Galaxy S II by techie buzz This article titled,Looking For iPhone 4S Alternatives? Here Are 3 Smartphones You Should Consider, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• Three Steps to Becoming an Expert Oracle Linux System Administrator

  - by Antoinette O'Sullivan

  Oracle provides a complete system administration curriculum to take you from your initial experience of Unix to being an expert Oracle Linux system administrator. You can take these live instructor-led courses from your own desk through live-virtual events or by traveling to an education center through in-class events. Step 1: Unix and Linux Essentials This 3-day course is designed for users and administrators who are new to Oracle Linux. It will help you develop the basic UNIX skills needed to interact comfortably and confidently with the operating system. Below is a sample of the in-class events already on the schedule.  Location  Date  Delivery Language  Vivoorde, Belgium  28 October 2013  English  Berlin, Germany  15 July 2013  German  Utrecht, Netherlands  19 August 2013  Dutch  Bucarest, Romania  12 August 2013  Romanian  Ankara, Turkey  6 January 2013  Turkish  Nairobi, Kenya  5 August 2013  English  Kaduna, Nigeria  15 July 2013  English   Woodmead, South Africa  15 July 2013  English   Jakarta, Indonesia  23 September 2013  English  Petaling Jaya, Malaysia  22 July 2013  English  Makati City, Philippines  3 July 2013  English  Bangkok, Thailand  20 November 2013  English  Auckland, New Zealand  5 August 2013  English  Melbourne, Australia  12 August 2013  English  Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, Canada  3 September 2013  English  San Francisco and San Jose, CA, United States  15 July 2013  English  Reston, VA, United States  7 August 2013  English  Edison, NJ, and King of Prussia, PA, United States  3 September 2013  English  Denver, CO, United States  25 September 2013  English  Cambridge, MA, and Roseville MN, United States  6 November 2013  English  Phoenix, AZ, and Sacramento, CA, United States  25 November 2013  English Step 2: Oracle Linux System Administration Through this 5-day course, become a knowledgeable Oracle Linux system administrator, learning how to install Oracle Linux and the benefits of Oracle's Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel and Ksplice. Below is a sample of in-class events already on the schedule.  Location  Date  Delivery Language  Vienna, Austria  1 July 2013  German  Vivoorde, Belgium  18 November 2013  English  Zagreb, Croatia  16 September 2013  Croatian  London, England  3 September 2013  English  Manchester, England  9 September 2013  English  Paris, France  29 July 2013  French  Budapest, Hungary  8 July 2013  Hungarian  Utrecht, Netherland  2 September 2013  Dutch  Warsaw, Poland  15 July 2013  Polish  Bucharest, Romania  2 December 2013  Romanian  Ankara, Turkey  7 October 2013  Turkish  Istanbul, Turkey  9 September 2013  Turkish  Nairobi, Kenya  12 August 2013  English  Petaling Jaya, Malaysia  29 July 2013  English  Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia  21 October 2013  English  Makati City, Philippines  8 July 2013  English  Singapore  24 July 2013  English  Bangkok, Thailand  26 July 2013  English  Canberra, Australia  19 August 2013  English  Melbourne, Australia  16 September 2013  English   Sydney, Australia 19 August 2013   English   Mississauga, Canada  26 August 2013  English  Ottawa, Canada  4 November 2013  English  Phoenix, AZ, United States  7 October 2013  English  Belmont, CA, United States  23 September 2013  English  Irvine, CA, United States  18 November 2013  English  Sacramento, CA, United States  19 August 2013  English  San Francisco, CA, United States  15 July 2013  English  Denver, CO, United States  19 August 2013  English  Schaumburg, IL, United States  26 August 2013  English  Indianapolis, IN, United States  14 October 2013  English  Columbia, MD, United States  30 September 2013  English  Roseville, MN, United States  19 August 2013  English  St Louis, MO, United States  7 October 2013  English  Edison, NJ, United States  28 October 2013  English  Beaverton, OR, United States  12 August 2013  English  Pittsburg, PA, United States 9 December 2013   English  Reston, VA, United States 12 August 2013   English  Brookfield, WI, United States 30 September 2013   English  Sao Paolo, Brazil 15 July 2013   Brazilian Portugese Step 3: Oracle Linux Advanced System Administration This new 3-day course is ideal for administrators who want to learn about managing resources and file systems while developing troubleshooting and advanced storage administration skills. You will learn about Linux Containers, Cgroups, btrfs, DTrace and more. Below is a sample of in-class events already on the schedule.  Location  Date  Delivery Language  Melbourne, Australia  9 October 2013  English  Roseville, MN, United States  3 September 2013  English To register for or learn more about these courses, go to http://oracle.com/education/linux. Watch this video to learn more about Oracle's operating system training.

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• Gene Hunt Says:

  - by BizTalk Visionary

  "She's as nervous as a very small nun at a penguin shoot"   "He's got fingers in more pies than a leper on a cookery course" "You so much as belch out of line and I'll have your scrotum on a barbed wire plate" "Let's go play slappyface" "your surrounded by armed barstewards" “Right, get out and find this murdering scum right now!” [pause] “Scratch that, we start 9am sharp tomorrow, it's beer-o-clock.” "So then Cartwright, you're such a good Detective.... Go and Detect me a packet of Garibaldies" "You're not the one who is going to have to knit himself a new arsehole after 25 years of aggressive male love in prison" “A dream for me is Diana Dors and a bottle of chip fat." “A dream for me is Diana Dors and a bottle of chip fat." “They reckon you've got concussion - but personally, I couldn't give a tart's furry cup if half your brains are falling out. Don't ever waltz into my kingdom playing king of the jungle.” “You great... soft... sissy... girlie... nancy... french... bender... Man-United supporting POOF!!” “Drugs eh? What's the point. They make you forget, make you talk funny, make you see things that aren't there. My old grandma got all of that for free when she had a stroke.” “He's Dead! It's quite serious!” “Fanny in the flat...Nice Work” “SoopaDoopa” “Tits in a Jumper!” “Drop your weapons! You are surrounded by armed bastards!” “It's 1973, almost dinnertime. I'm 'avin 'oops!” “Trust the Gene Genie!” “I wanna hump Britt Ekland...What're we gonna do...!” “Was that 'E' and you don't know the rest?! or you going 'Eeee, I Dunno'” “Good Girl! Prostate probe and no jelly. “ “Give over, it's nothing like Spain!” “I'll come over your houses and stamp on all your toys!” “The Wizard will sort it out. It's cos of the wonderful things he does” “Cartwright can jump up and down on his knackers!” “It's not a windup love, he really thinks like this!” “Women! You can't say two words to them” “I was thinking, maybe, a Berni Inn!” “If I wanted a bollocking for drinking too much...!” “Shhhh...hear that...that's the sound of this case being closed! “Chicken!? In a basket!?” “Seems a large quantity of cocaine...” “You probably thought he kept his cock in his keks!” “The tail-end of Rays demotion speech!” “Stephen Warren is gay!?” “You're a smart boy, use your initiative!” “Don't be such a Jessie!” “I find the idea of a bird brushing her teeth...!” “Never been tempted to the Magic talcum powder?” “Make sure she's got nice tits!” “You're more likely to find an ostrich with a plum up it's arse!” “Drink this lot under the table and have a pint on the way home!” “Never be a female Prime Minister!” “Pub? Pub! pub!.....Pub!” “Thou shalt not suck off rent boys!” “The number for the special clinic is on the notice board!” “If me uncle had tits, would he be me auntie!” “Got your vicars in a twist!” “We Done?!” “Your mates got balls...If they were any bigger he'd need a wheelbarrow!” “The Ending - from 'I want to go home' to the end music.”

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• Using SQL Source Control with Fortress or Vault &ndash; Part 1

  - by AjarnMark

  I am fanatical when it comes to managing the source code for my company.  Everything that we build (in source form) gets put into our source control management system.  And I’m not just talking about the UI and middle-tier code written in C# and ASP.NET, but also the back-end database stuff, which at times has been a pain.  We even script out our Scheduled Jobs and keep a copy of those under source control. The UI and middle-tier stuff has long been easy to manage as we mostly use Visual Studio which has integration with source control systems built in.  But the SQL code has been a little harder to deal with.  I have been doing this for many years, well before Microsoft came up with Data Dude, so I had already established a methodology that, while not as smooth as VS, nonetheless let me keep things well controlled, and allowed doing my database development in my tool of choice, Query Analyzer in days gone by, and now SQL Server Management Studio.  It just makes sense to me that if I’m going to do database development, let’s use the database tool set.  (Although, I have to admit I was pretty impressed with the demo of Juneau that Don Box did at the PASS Summit this year.)  So as I was saying, I had developed a methodology that worked well for us (and I’ll probably outline in a future post) but it could use some improvement. When Solutions and Projects were first introduced in SQL Management Studio, I thought we were finally going to get our same experience that we have in Visual Studio.  Well, let’s say I was underwhelmed by Version 1 in SQL 2005, and apparently so were enough other people that by the time SQL 2008 came out, Microsoft decided that Solutions and Projects would be deprecated and completely removed from a future version.  So much for that idea. Then I came across SQL Source Control from Red-Gate.  I have used several tools from Red-Gate in the past, including my favorites SQL Compare, SQL Prompt, and SQL Refactor.  SQL Prompt is worth its weight in gold, and the others are great, too.  Earlier this year, we upgraded from our earlier product bundles to the new Developer Bundle, and in the process added SQL Source Control to our collection.  I thought this might really be the golden ticket I was looking for.  But my hopes were quickly dashed when I discovered that it only integrated with Microsoft Team Foundation Server and Subversion as the source code repositories.  We have been using SourceGear’s Vault and Fortress products for years, and I wholeheartedly endorse them.  So I was out of luck for the time being, although there were a number of people voting for Vault/Fortress support on their feedback forum (as did I) so I had hope that maybe next year I could look at it again. But just a couple of weeks ago, I was pleasantly surprised to receive notice in my email that Red-Gate had an Early Access version of SQL Source Control that worked with Vault and Fortress, so I quickly downloaded it and have been putting it through its paces.  So far, I really like what I see, and I have been quite impressed with Red-Gate’s responsiveness when I have contacted them with any issues or concerns that I have had.  I have had several communications with Gyorgy Pocsi at Red-Gate and he has been immensely helpful and responsive. I must say that development with SQL Source Control is very different from what I have been used to.  This post is getting long enough, so I’ll save some of the details for a separate write-up, but the short story is that in my regular mode, it’s all about the script files.  Script files are King and you dare not make a change to the database other than by way of a script file, or you are in deep trouble.  With SQL Source Control, you make your changes to your development database however you like.  I still prefer writing most of my changes in T-SQL, but you can also use any of the GUI functionality of SSMS to make your changes, and SQL Source Control “manages” the script for you.  Basically, when you first link your database to source control, the tool generates scripts for every primary object (tables and their indexes are together in one script, not broken out into separate scripts like DB Projects do) and those scripts are checked into your source control.  So, if you needed to, you could still do a GET from your source control repository and build the database from scratch.  But for the day-to-day work, SQL Source Control uses the same technique as SQL Compare to determine what changes have been made to your development database and how to represent those in your repository scripts.  I think that once I retrain myself to just work in the database and quit worrying about having to find and open the right script file, that this will actually make us more efficient. And for deployment purposes, SQL Source Control integrates with the full SQL Compare utility to produce a synchronization script (or do a live sync).  This is similar in concept to Microsoft’s DACPAC, if you’re familiar with that. If you are not currently keeping your database development efforts under source control, definitely examine this tool.  If you already have a methodology that is working for you, then I still think this is worth a review and comparison to your current approach.  You may find it more efficient.  But remember that the version which integrates with Vault/Fortress is still in pre-release mode, so treat it with a little caution.  I have found it to be fairly stable, but there was one bug that I found which had inconvenient side-effects and could have really been frustrating if I had been running this on my normal active development machine.  However, I can verify that that bug has been fixed in a more recent build version (did I mention Red-Gate’s responsiveness?).

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• What Counts For A DBA: Foresight

  - by drsql

  Of all the valuable attributes of a DBA covered so far in this series, ranging from passion to humility to practicality, perhaps one of the most important attributes may turn out to be the most seemingly-nebulous: foresight. According to Free Dictionary foresight is the "perception of the significance and nature of events before they have occurred". Foresight does not come naturally to most people, as the parent of any teenager will attest. No matter how clearly you see their problems coming they won't listen, and have to fail before eventually (hopefully) learning for themselves. Having graduated from the school of hard knocks, the DBA, the naive teenager no longer, acquires the ability to foretell how events will unfold in response to certain actions or attitudes with the unerring accuracy of a doom-laden prophet. Like Simba in the Lion King, after a few blows to the head, we foretell that a sore head that will be the inevitable consequence of a swing of Rafiki's stick, and we take evasive action. However, foresight is about more than simply learning when to duck. It's about taking the time to understand and prevent the habits that caused the stick to swing in the first place. And based on this definition, I often think there is a lot less foresight on display in my industry than there ought to be. Most DBAs reading this blog will spot a line such as the following in a piece of "working" code, understand immediately why it is less than optimimum, and take evasive action. …WHERE CAST (columnName as int) = 1 However, the programmers who regularly write this sort of code clearly lack that foresight, and this and numerous other examples of similarly-malodorous code prevail throughout our industry (and provide premium-grade fertilizer for the healthy growth of many a consultant's bank account). Sometimes, perhaps harried by impatient managers and painfully tight deadlines, everyone makes mistakes. Yes, I too occasionally write code that "works", but basically stinks. When the problems manifest, it is sometimes accompanied by a sense of grim recognition that somewhere in me existed the foresight to know that that approach would lead to this problem. However, in the headlong rush, warning signs got overlooked, lessons learned previously, which could supply the foresight to the current project, were lost and not applied.   Of course, the problem often is a simple lack of skills, training and knowledge in the relevant technology and/or business space; programmers and DBAs forced to do their best in the face of inadequate training, or to apply their skills in areas where they lack experience. However, often the problem goes deeper than this; I detect in some DBAs and programmers a certain laziness of attitude.   They veer from one project to the next, going with "whatever works", unwilling or unable to take the time to understand where their actions are leading them. Of course, the whole "Agile" mindset is often interpreted to favor flexibility and rapid production over aiming to get things right the first time. The faster you try to travel in the dark, frequently changing direction, the more important it is to have someone who has the foresight to know at least roughly where you are heading. This is doubly true for the data tier which, no matter how you try to deny it, simply cannot be "redone" every month as you learn aspects of the world you are trying to model that, with a little bit of foresight, you would have seen coming.   Sometimes, when as a DBA you can glance briefly at 200 lines of working SQL code and know instinctively why it will cause problems, foresight can feel like magic, but it isn't; it's more like muscle memory. It is acquired as the consequence of good experience, useful communication with those around you, and a willingness to learn continually, through continued education as well as from failure. Foresight can be deployed only by finding time to understand how the lessons learned from other DBAs, and other projects, can help steer the current project in the right direction.   C.S. Lewis once said "The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is." It cannot be avoided; the quality of what you build now is going to affect you, and others, at some point in the future. Take the time to acquire foresight; it is a love letter to your future self, to say you cared.

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• How do I resolve this exercise on C++? [closed]

  - by user40630

  (Card Shuffling and Dealing) Create a program to shuffle and deal a deck of cards. The program should consist of class Card, class DeckOfCards and a driver program. Class Card should provide: a) Data members face and suit of type int. b) A constructor that receives two ints representing the face and suit and uses them to initialize the data members. c) Two static arrays of strings representing the faces and suits. d) A toString function that returns the Card as a string in the form “face of suit.” You can use the + operator to concatenate strings. Class DeckOfCards should contain: a) A vector of Cards named deck to store the Cards. b) An integer currentCard representing the next card to deal. c) A default constructor that initializes the Cards in the deck. The constructor should use vector function push_back to add each Card to the end of the vector after the Card is created and initialized. This should be done for each of the 52 Cards in the deck. d) A shuffle function that shuffles the Cards in the deck. The shuffle algorithm should iterate through the vector of Cards. For each Card, randomly select another Card in the deck and swap the two Cards. e) A dealCard function that returns the next Card object from the deck. f) A moreCards function that returns a bool value indicating whether there are more Cards to deal. The driver program should create a DeckOfCards object, shuffle the cards, then deal the 52 cards. This above is the exercise I'm trying to solve. I'd be very much appreciated if someone could solve it and explain it to me. The main idea of the program is quite simple. What I don't get is how to build the constructor for the class DeckOfCards and how to generate the 52 cards of the deck with different suits and faces. Untill now I've managed to do this: #include <iostream> #include <vector> using namespace std; /* * */ /* a) Data members face and suit of type int. b) A constructor that receives two ints representing the face and suit and uses them to initialize the data members. c) Two static arrays of strings representing the faces and suits. d) A toString function that returns the Card as a string in the form “face of suit.” You can use the + operator to concatenate strings. */ class Card { public: Card(int, int); string toString(); private: int suit, face; static string faceNames[13]; static string suitNames[4]; }; string Card::faceNames[13] = {"Ace","Two","Three","Four","Five","Six","Seven","Eight","Nine","Ten","Queen","Jack","King"}; string Card::suitNames[4] = {"Diamonds","Clubs","Hearts","Spades"}; string Card::toString() { return faceNames[face]+" of "+suitNames[suit]; } Card::Card(int f, int s) :face(f), suit(s) { } /* Class DeckOfCards should contain: a) A vector of Cards named deck to store the Cards. b) An integer currentCard representing the next card to deal. c) A default constructor that initializes the Cards in the deck. The constructor should use vector function push_back to add each Card to the end of the vector after the Card is created and initialized. This should be done for each of the 52 Cards in the deck. d) A shuffle function that shuffles the Cards in the deck. The shuffle algorithm should iterate through the vector of Cards. For each Card, randomly select another Card in the deck and swap the two Cards. e) A dealCard function that returns the next Card object from the deck. f) A moreCards function that returns a bool value indicating whether there are more Cards to deal. */ class DeckOfCards { public: DeckOfCards(); void shuffleCards(); Card dealCard(); bool moreCards(); private: vector<Card> deck(52); int currentCard; }; int main(int argc, char** argv) { return 0; } DeckOfCards::DeckOfCards() { //I'm stuck here I have no idea of what to take out of here. //I still don't fully get the idea of class inside class and that's turning out as a problem. I try to find a way to set the suits and faces members of the class Card but I can't figure out how. for(int i=0; i<deck.size(); i++) { deck[i]//....There is no function to set them. They must be set when initialized. But how?? } } For easier reading: http://pastebin.com/pJeXMH0f

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• Mark Hurd on the Customer Revolution: Oracle's Top 10 Insights

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  Reprint of an article from Forbes Businesses that fail to focus on customer experience will hear a giant sucking sound from their vanishing profitability. Because in today’s dynamic global marketplace, consumers now hold the power in the buyer-seller equation, and sellers need to revamp their strategy for this new world order. The ability to relentlessly deliver connected, personalized and rewarding customer experiences is rapidly becoming one of the primary sources of competitive advantage in today’s dynamic global marketplace. And the inability or unwillingness to realize that the customer is a company’s most important asset will lead, inevitably, to decline and failure. Welcome to the lifecycle of customer experience, in which consumers explore, engage, shop, buy, ask, compare, complain, socialize, exchange, and more across multiple channels with the unconditional expectation that each of those interactions will be completed in an efficient and personalized manner however, wherever, and whenever the customer wants. While many niche companies are offering point solutions within that sprawling and complex spectrum of needs and requirements, businesses looking to deliver superb customer experiences are still left having to do multiple product evaluations, multiple contract negotiations, multiple test projects, multiple deployments, and–perhaps most annoying of all–multiple and never-ending integration projects to string together all those niche products from all those niche vendors. With its new suite of customer-experience solutions, Oracle believes it can help companies unravel these challenges and move at the speed of their customers, anticipating their needs and desires and creating enduring and profitable relationships. Those solutions span the full range of marketing, selling, commerce, service, listening/insights, and social and collaboration tools for employees. When Oracle launched its suite of Customer Experience solutions at a recent event in New York City, president Mark Hurd analyzed the customer experience revolution taking place and presented Oracle’s strategy for empowering companies to capitalize on this important market shift. From Hurd’s presentation and related materials, I’ve extracted a list of Hurd’s Top 10 Insights into the Customer Revolution. 1. Please Don’t Feed the Competitor’s Pipeline!After enduring a poor experience, 89% of consumers say they would immediately take their business to your competitor. (Except where noted, the source for these findings is the 2011 Customer Experience Impact (CEI) Report including a survey commissioned by RightNow (acquired by Oracle in March 2012) and conducted by Harris Interactive.) 2. The Addressable Market Is Massive. Only 1% of consumers say their expectations were always met by their actual experiences. 3. They’re Willing to Pay More! In return for a great experience, 86% of consumers say they’ll pay up to 25% more. 4. The Social Media Microphone Is Always Live. After suffering through a poor experience, more than 25% of consumers said they posted a negative comment on Twitter or Facebook or other social media sites. Conversely, of those consumers who got a response after complaining, 22% posted positive comments about the company. 5.  The New Deal Is Never Done: Embrace the Entire Customer Lifecycle. An appropriately active and engaged relationship, says Hurd, extends across every step of the entire processs: need, research, select, purchase, receive, use, maintain, and recommend. 6. The 360-Degree Commitment. Customers want to do business with companies that actively and openly demonstrate the desire to establish strong and seamless connections across employees, the company, and the customer, says research firm Temkin Group in its report called “The CX Competencies.” 7. Understand the Emotional Drivers Behind Brand Love. What makes consumers fall in love with a brand? Among the top factors are friendly employees and customer reps (73%), easy access to information and support (55%), and personalized experiences, such as when companies know precisely what products or services customers have purchased in the past and what issues those customers have raised (36%). 8.  The Importance of Immediate Action. You’ve got one week to respond–and then the opportunity’s lost. If your company needs more than a week to answer a prospect’s question or request, most of those prospects will terminate the relationship. 9.  Want More Revenue, Less Churn, and More Referrals? Then improve the overall customer experience: Forrester’s research says that approach put an extra $900 million in the pockets of wireless service providers, $800 million for hotels, and $400 million for airlines. 10. The Formula for CX Success.  Hurd says it includes three elegantly interlaced factors: Connected Engagement, to personalize the experience; Actionable Insight, to maximize the engagement; and Optimized Execution, to deliver on the promise of value. RECOMMENDED READING: The Top 10 Strategic CIO Issues For 2013 Wal-Mart, Amazon, eBay: Who’s the Speed King of Retail? Career Suicide and the CIO: 4 Deadly New Threats Memo to Marc Benioff: Social Is a Tool, Not an App

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• Agile Testing Days 2012 – My First Conference!

  - by Chris George

  I’d like to give you a bit of background first… so please bear with me! In 1996, whilst studying for my final year of my degree, I applied for a job as a C++ Developer at a small software house in Hertfordshire  After bodging up the technical part of the interview I didn’t get the job, but was offered a position as a QA Engineer instead. The role sounded intriguing and the pay was pretty good so in the absence of anything else I took it. Here began my career in the world of software testing! Back then, testing/QA was often an afterthought, something that was bolted on to the development process and very much a second class citizen. Test automation was rare, and tools were basic or non-existent! The internet was just starting to take off, and whilst there might have been testing communities and resources, we were certainly not exposed to any of them. After 8 years I moved to another small company, and again didn’t find myself exposed to any of the changes that were happening in the industry. It wasn’t until I joined Red Gate in 2008 that my view of testing and software development as a whole started to expand. But it took a further 4 years for my view of testing to be totally blown open, and so the story really begins… In May 2012 I was fortunate to land the role of Head of Test Engineering. Soon after, I received an email with details for the “Agile Testi However, in my new role, I decided that it was time to bite the bullet and at least go to one conference. Perhaps I could get some new ideas to supplement and support some of the ideas I already had.ng Days” conference in Potsdam, Germany. I looked over the suggested programme and some of the talks peeked my interest. For numerous reasons I’d shied away from attending conferences in the past, one of the main ones being that I didn’t see much benefit in attending loads of talks when I could just read about stuff like that on the internet. So, on the 18th November 2012, myself and three other Red Gaters boarded a plane at Heathrow bound for Potsdam, Germany to attend Agile Testing Days 2012. Tutorial Day – “Software Testing Reloaded” We chose to do the tutorials on the 19th, I chose the one titled “Software Testing Reloaded – So you wanna actually DO something? We’ve got just the workshop for you. Now with even less powerpoint!”. With such a concise and serious title I just had to see what it was about! I nervously entered the room to be greeted by tables, chairs etc all over the place, not set out and frankly in one hell of a mess! There were a few people in there playing a game with dice. Okaaaay… this is going to be a long day! Actually the dice game was an exercise in deduction and simplification… I found it very interesting and is certainly something I’ll be using at work as a training exercise! (I won’t explain the game here cause I don’t want to let the cat out of the bag…) The tutorial consisted of several games, exploring different aspects of testing. They were all practical yet required a fair amount of thin king. Matt Heusser and Pete Walen were running the tutorial, and presented it in a very relaxed and light-hearted manner. It was really my first experience of working in small teams with testers from very different backgrounds, and it was really enjoyable. Matt & Pete were very approachable and offered advice where required whilst still making you work for the answers! One of the tasks was to devise several strategies for testing some electronic dice. The premise was that a Vegas casino wanted to use the dice to appeal to the twenty-somethings interested in tech, but needed assurance that they were as reliable and random as traditional dice. This was a very interesting and challenging exercise that forced us to challenge various assumptions, determine/clarify requirements but most of all it was frustrating because the dice made a very very irritating beeping noise. Multiple that by at least 12 dice and I was dreaming about them all that night!! Some of the main takeaways that were brilliantly demonstrated through the games were not to make assumptions, challenge requirements, and have fun testing! The tutorial lasted the whole day, but to be honest the day went very quickly! My introduction into the conference experience started very well indeed, and I would talk to both Matt and Pete several times during the 4 days. Days 1,2 & 3 will be coming soon…  

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• How to Hashtag (Without Being #Annoying)

  - by Mike Stiles

  The right tool in the wrong hands can be a dangerous thing. Giving a chimpanzee a chain saw would not be a pretty picture. And putting Twitter hashtags in the hands of social marketers who were never really sure how to use them can be equally unattractive. Boiled down, hashtags are for search and organization of tweets. A notch up from that, they can also be used as part of a marketing strategy. In terms of search, if you’re in the organic apple business, you want anyone who searches “organic” on Twitter to see your posts about your apples. It’s keyword tactics not unlike web site keyword search tactics. So get a clear idea of what keywords are relevant for your tweet. It’s reasonable to include #organic in your tweet. Is it fatal if you don’t hashtag the word? It depends on the person searching. If they search “organic,” your tweet’s going to come up even if you didn’t put the hashtag in front of it. If the searcher enters “#organic,” your tweet needs the hashtag. Err on the side of caution and hashtag it so it comes up no matter how the searcher enters it. You’ll also want to hashtag it for the second big reason people hashtag, organization. You can follow a hashtag. So can the rest of the Twitterverse. If you’re that into organic munchies, you can set up a stream populated only with tweets hashtagged #organic. If you’ve established a hashtag for your brand, like #nobugsprayapples, you (and everyone else) can watch what people are tweeting about your company. So what kind of hashtags should you include? They should be directly related to the core message of your tweet. Ancillary or very loosely-related hashtags = annoying. Hashtagging your brand makes sense. Hashtagging your core area of interest makes sense. Creating a specific event or campaign hashtag you want others to include and spread makes sense (the burden is on you to promote it and get it going). Hashtagging nearly every word in the tweet is highly annoying. Far and away, the majority of hashtagged words in such tweets have no relevance, are not terms that would be searched, and are not terms needed for categorization. It looks desperate and spammy. Two is fine. One is better. And it is possible to tweet with --gasp-- no hashtags! Make your hashtags as short as you can. In fact, if your brand’s name really is #nobugsprayapples, you’re burning up valuable, limited characters and risking the inability of others to retweet with added comments. Also try to narrow your topic hashtag down. You’ll find a lot of relevant users with #organic, but a lot of totally uninterested users with #food. Just as you can join online forums and gain credibility and a reputation by contributing regularly to that forum, you can follow hashtagged topics and gain the same kind of credibility in your area of expertise. Don’t just parachute in for the occasional marketing message. And if you’re constantly retweeting one particular person, stop it. It’s kissing up and it’s obvious. Which brings us to the king of hashtag annoyances, “hashjacking.” This is when you see what terms are hot and include them in your marketing tweet as a hashtag, even though it’s unrelated to your content. Justify it all you want, but #justinbieber has nothing to do with your organic apples. Equally annoying, piggybacking on a popular event’s hashtag to tweet something not connected to the event. You’re only fostering ill will and mistrust toward your account from the people you’ve tricked into seeing your tweet. Lastly, don’t @ mention people just to make sure they see your tweet. If the tweet’s not for them or about them, it’s spammy. What I haven’t covered is use of the hashtag for comedy’s sake. You’ll see this a lot and is a matter of personal taste. No one will search these hashtagged terms or need to categorize then, they’re just there for self-expression and laughs. Twitter is, after all, supposed to be fun.  What are some of your biggest Twitter pet peeves? #blogsovernow

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• C#/.NET Little Wonders: Using &lsquo;default&rsquo; to Get Default Values

  - by James Michael Hare

  Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders posts can be found here. Today’s little wonder is another of those small items that can help a lot in certain situations, especially when writing generics.  In particular, it is useful in determining what the default value of a given type would be. The Problem: what’s the default value for a generic type? There comes a time when you’re writing generic code where you may want to set an item of a given generic type.  Seems simple enough, right?  We’ll let’s see! Let’s say we want to query a Dictionary<TKey, TValue> for a given key and get back the value, but if the key doesn’t exist, we’d like a default value instead of throwing an exception. So, for example, we might have a the following dictionary defined: 1: var lookup = new Dictionary<int, string> 2: { 3: { 1, "Apple" }, 4: { 2, "Orange" }, 5: { 3, "Banana" }, 6: { 4, "Pear" }, 7: { 9, "Peach" } 8: }; And using those definitions, perhaps we want to do something like this: 1: // assume a default 2: string value = "Unknown"; 3:  4: // if the item exists in dictionary, get its value 5: if (lookup.ContainsKey(5)) 6: { 7: value = lookup[5]; 8: } But that’s inefficient, because then we’re double-hashing (once for ContainsKey() and once for the indexer).  Well, to avoid the double-hashing, we could use TryGetValue() instead: 1: string value; 2:  3: // if key exists, value will be put in value, if not default it 4: if (!lookup.TryGetValue(5, out value)) 5: { 6: value = "Unknown"; 7: } But the “flow” of using of TryGetValue() can get clunky at times when you just want to assign either the value or a default to a variable.  Essentially it’s 3-ish lines (depending on formatting) for 1 assignment.  So perhaps instead we’d like to write an extension method to support a cleaner interface that will return a default if the item isn’t found: 1: public static class DictionaryExtensions 2: { 3: public static TValue GetValueOrDefault<TKey, TValue>(this Dictionary<TKey, TValue> dict, 4: TKey key, TValue defaultIfNotFound) 5: { 6: TValue value; 7:  8: // value will be the result or the default for TValue 9: if (!dict.TryGetValue(key, out value)) 10: { 11: value = defaultIfNotFound; 12: } 13:  14: return value; 15: } 16: } 17:  So this creates an extension method on Dictionary<TKey, TValue> that will attempt to get a value using the given key, and will return the defaultIfNotFound as a stand-in if the key does not exist. This code compiles, fine, but what if we would like to go one step further and allow them to specify a default if not found, or accept the default for the type?  Obviously, we could overload the method to take the default or not, but that would be duplicated code and a bit heavy for just specifying a default.  It seems reasonable that we could set the not found value to be either the default for the type, or the specified value. So what if we defaulted the type to null? 1: public static TValue GetValueOrDefault<TKey, TValue>(this Dictionary<TKey, TValue> dict, 2: TKey key, TValue defaultIfNotFound = null) // ... No, this won’t work, because only reference types (and Nullable<T> wrapped types due to syntactical sugar) can be assigned to null.  So what about a calling parameterless constructor? 1: public static TValue GetValueOrDefault<TKey, TValue>(this Dictionary<TKey, TValue> dict, 2: TKey key, TValue defaultIfNotFound = new TValue()) // ... No, this won’t work either for several reasons.  First, we’d expect a reference type to return null, not an “empty” instance.  Secondly, not all reference types have a parameter-less constructor (string for example does not).  And finally, a constructor cannot be determined at compile-time, while default values can. The Solution: default(T) – returns the default value for type T Many of us know the default keyword for its uses in switch statements as the default case.  But it has another use as well: it can return us the default value for a given type.  And since it generates the same defaults that default field initialization uses, it can be determined at compile-time as well. For example: 1: var x = default(int); // x is 0 2:  3: var y = default(bool); // y is false 4:  5: var z = default(string); // z is null 6:  7: var t = default(TimeSpan); // t is a TimeSpan with Ticks == 0 8:  9: var n = default(int?); // n is a Nullable<int> with HasValue == false Notice that for numeric types the default is 0, and for reference types the default is null.  In addition, for struct types, the value is a default-constructed struct – which simply means a struct where every field has their default value (hence 0 Ticks for TimeSpan, etc.). So using this, we could modify our code to this: 1: public static class DictionaryExtensions 2: { 3: public static TValue GetValueOrDefault<TKey, TValue>(this Dictionary<TKey, TValue> dict, 4: TKey key, TValue defaultIfNotFound = default(TValue)) 5: { 6: TValue value; 7:  8: // value will be the result or the default for TValue 9: if (!dict.TryGetValue(key, out value)) 10: { 11: value = defaultIfNotFound; 12: } 13:  14: return value; 15: } 16: } Now, if defaultIfNotFound is unspecified, it will use default(TValue) which will be the default value for whatever value type the dictionary holds.  So let’s consider how we could use this: 1: lookup.GetValueOrDefault(1); // returns “Apple” 2:  3: lookup.GetValueOrDefault(5); // returns null 4:  5: lookup.GetValueOrDefault(5, “Unknown”); // returns “Unknown” 6:  Again, do not confuse a parameter-less constructor with the default value for a type.  Remember that the default value for any type is the compile-time default for any instance of that type (0 for numeric, false for bool, null for reference types, and struct will all default fields for struct).  Consider the difference: 1: // both zero 2: int i1 = default(int); 3: int i2 = new int(); 4:  5: // both “zeroed” structs 6: var dt1 = default(DateTime); 7: var dt2 = new DateTime(); 8:  9: // sb1 is null, sb2 is an “empty” string builder 10: var sb1 = default(StringBuilder()); 11: var sb2 = new StringBuilder(); So in the above code, notice that the value types all resolve the same whether using default or parameter-less construction.  This is because a value type is never null (even Nullable<T> wrapped types are never “null” in a reference sense), they will just by default contain fields with all default values. However, for reference types, the default is null and not a constructed instance.  Also it should be noted that not all classes have parameter-less constructors (string, for instance, doesn’t have one – and doesn’t need one). Summary Whenever you need to get the default value for a type, especially a generic type, consider using the default keyword.  This handy word will give you the default value for the given type at compile-time, which can then be used for initialization, optional parameters, etc. Technorati Tags: C#,CSharp,.NET,Little Wonders,default

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• Can someone help me with this Java Chess game please?

  - by Chris Edwards

  Hey guys, Please can someone have a look at this code and let me know whether I am on the right track with the "check_somefigure_move"s and the "check_black/white_promotion"s please? And also any other help you can give would be greatly appreciated! Thanks! P.S. I know the code is not the best implementation, but its a template I have to follow :( Code: class Moves { private final Board B; private boolean regular; public Moves(final Board b) { B = b; regular = regular_position(); } public boolean get_regular_position() { return regular; } public void set_regular_position(final boolean new_reg) { regular = new_reg; } // checking whether B represents a "normal" position or not; // if not, then only simple checks regarding move-correctness should // be performed, only checking the direct characteristics of the figure // moved; // checks whether there is exactly one king of each colour, there are // no more figures than promotions allow, and there are no pawns on the // first or last rank; public boolean regular_position() { int[] counts = new int[256]; for (char file = 'a'; file <= 'h'; ++file) for (char rank = '1'; rank <= '8'; ++rank) ++counts[(int) B.get(file,rank)]; if (counts[Board.white_king] != 1 || counts[Board.black_king] != 1) return false; if (counts[Board.white_pawn] > 8 || counts[Board.black_pawn] > 8) return false; int count_w_promotions = 0; count_w_promotions += Math.max(counts[Board.white_queen]-1,0); count_w_promotions += Math.max(counts[Board.white_rook]-2,0); count_w_promotions += Math.max(counts[Board.white_bishop]-2,0); count_w_promotions += Math.max(counts[Board.white_knight]-2,0); if (count_w_promotions > 8 - counts[Board.white_pawn]) return false; int count_b_promotions = 0; count_b_promotions += Math.max(counts[Board.black_queen]-1,0); count_b_promotions += Math.max(counts[Board.black_rook]-2,0); count_b_promotions += Math.max(counts[Board.black_bishop]-2,0); count_b_promotions += Math.max(counts[Board.black_knight]-2,0); if (count_b_promotions > 8 - counts[Board.black_pawn]) return false; for (char file = 'a'; file <= 'h'; ++file) { final char fig1 = B.get(file,'1'); if (fig1 == Board.white_pawn || fig1 == Board.black_pawn) return false; final char fig8 = B.get(file,'8'); if (fig8 == Board.white_pawn || fig8 == Board.black_pawn) return false; } return true; } public boolean check_normal_white_move(final char file0, final char rank0, final char file1, final char rank1) { if (! Board.is_valid_white_figure(B.get(file0,rank0))) return false; if (! B.is_empty(file1,rank1) && ! Board.is_valid_black_figure(B.get(file1,rank1))) return false; if (B.get_active_colour() != 'w') return false; if (! check_move_simple(file0,rank0,file1,rank1)) return false; if (! regular) return true; final Board test_board = new Board(B); test_board.normal_white_move_0(file0,rank0,file1,rank1); final Moves test_move = new Moves(test_board); final char[] king_pos = test_move.white_king_position(); assert(king_pos.length == 2); return test_move.black_not_attacking(king_pos[0],king_pos[1]); } public boolean check_normal_black_move(final char file0, final char rank0, final char file1, final char rank1) { // ADDED THE CHECK NORMAL BLACK MOVE BASED ON THE CHECK NORMAL WHITE MOVE if (! Board.is_valid_black_figure(B.get(file0,rank0))) return false; if (! B.is_empty(file1,rank1) && ! Board.is_valid_white_figure(B.get(file1,rank1))) return false; if (B.get_active_colour() != 'b') return false; if (! check_move_simple(file0,rank0,file1,rank1)) return false; if (! regular) return true; final Board test_board = new Board(B); test_board.normal_black_move_0(file0,rank0,file1,rank1); final Moves test_move = new Moves(test_board); final char[] king_pos = test_move.black_king_position(); assert(king_pos.length == 2); return test_move.white_not_attacking(king_pos[0],king_pos[1]); } // for checking a normal move by just applying the move-rules private boolean check_move_simple(final char file0, final char rank0, final char file1, final char rank1) { final char fig = B.get(file0,rank0); if (fig == Board.white_king || fig == Board.black_king) return check_king_move(file0,rank0,file1,rank1); if (fig == Board.white_queen || fig == Board.black_queen) return check_queen_move(file0,rank0,file1,rank1); if (fig == Board.white_rook || fig == Board.black_rook) return check_rook_move(file0,rank0,file1,rank1); if (fig == Board.white_bishop || fig == Board.black_bishop) return check_bishop_move(file0,rank0,file1,rank1); if (fig == Board.white_knight || fig == Board.black_knight) return check_knight_move(file0,rank0,file1,rank1); if (fig == Board.white_pawn) return check_white_pawn_move(file0,rank0,file1,rank1); else return check_black_pawn_move(file0,rank0,file1,rank1); } private boolean check_king_move(final char file0, final char rank0, final char file1, final char rank1) { // ADDED KING MOVE int fileChange = file0 - file1; int rankChange = rank0 - rank1; return fileChange <= 1 && fileChange >= -1 && rankChange <= 1 && rankChange >= -1; } private boolean check_queen_move(final char file0, final char rank0, final char file1, final char rank1) { // ADDED QUEEN MOVE int fileChange = file0 - file1; int rankChange = rank0 - rank1; return fileChange <=8 && fileChange >= -8 && rankChange <= 8 && rankChange >= -8; } private boolean check_rook_move(final char file0, final char rank0, final char file1, final char rank1) { // ADDED ROOK MOVE int fileChange = file0 - file1; int rankChange = rank0 - rank1; return fileChange <=8 || fileChange >= -8 || rankChange <= 8 || rankChange >= -8; } private boolean check_bishop_move(final char file0, final char rank0, final char file1, final char rank1) { // ADDED BISHOP MOVE int fileChange = file0 - file1; int rankChange = rank0 - rank1; return fileChange <= 8 && rankChange <= 8 || fileChange <= 8 && rankChange >= -8 || fileChange >= -8 && rankChange >= -8 || fileChange >= -8 && rankChange <= 8; } private boolean check_knight_move(final char file0, final char rank0, final char file1, final char rank1) { // ADDED KNIGHT MOVE int fileChange = file0 - file1; int rankChange = rank0 - rank1; /* IS THIS THE CORRECT WAY? * return fileChange <= 1 && rankChange <= 2 || fileChange <= 1 && rankChange >= -2 || fileChange <= 2 && rankChange <= 1 || fileChange <= 2 && rankChange >= -1 || fileChange >= -1 && rankChange <= 2 || fileChange >= -1 && rankChange >= -2 || fileChange >= -2 && rankChange <= 1 || fileChange >= -2 && rankChange >= -1;*/ // OR IS THIS? return fileChange <= 1 || fileChange >= -1 || fileChange <= 2 || fileChange >= -2 && rankChange <= 1 || rankChange >= - 1 || rankChange <= 2 || rankChange >= -2; } private boolean check_white_pawn_move(final char file0, final char rank0, final char file1, final char rank1) { // ADDED PAWN MOVE int fileChange = file0 - file1; int rankChange = rank0 - rank1; return fileChange == 0 && rankChange <= 1; } private boolean check_black_pawn_move(final char file0, final char rank0, final char file1, final char rank1) { // ADDED PAWN MOVE int fileChange = file0 - file1; int rankChange = rank0 - rank1; return fileChange == 0 && rankChange >= -1; } public boolean check_white_kingside_castling() { // only demonstration code: final char c = B.get_white_castling(); if (c == '-' || c == 'q') return false; if (B.get_active_colour() == 'b') return false; if (B.get('e','1') != 'K') return false; if (! black_not_attacking('e','1')) return false; if (! free_white('f','1')) return false; // XXX return true; } public boolean check_white_queenside_castling() { // only demonstration code: final char c = B.get_white_castling(); if (c == '-' || c == 'k') return false; if (B.get_active_colour() == 'b') return false; // ADDED BASED ON KINGSIDE CASTLING if (B.get('e','1') != 'Q') return false; if (! black_not_attacking('e','1')) return false; if (! free_white('f','1')) return false; // XXX return true; } public boolean check_black_kingside_castling() { // only demonstration code: final char c = B.get_black_castling(); if (c == '-' || c == 'q') return false; if (B.get_active_colour() == 'w') return false; // ADDED BASED ON CHECK WHITE if (B.get('e','8') != 'K') return false; if (! black_not_attacking('e','8')) return false; if (! free_white('f','8')) return false; // XXX return true; } public boolean check_black_queenside_castling() { // only demonstration code: final char c = B.get_black_castling(); if (c == '-' || c == 'k') return false; if (B.get_active_colour() == 'w') return false; // ADDED BASED ON KINGSIDE CASTLING if (B.get('e','8') != 'Q') return false; if (! black_not_attacking('e','8')) return false; if (! free_white('f','8')) return false; // XXX return true; } public boolean check_white_promotion(final char pawn_file, final char figure) { // XXX // ADDED CHECKING FOR CORRECT FIGURE AND POSITION - ALTHOUGH IT SEEMS AS THOUGH // PAWN_FILE SHOULD BE PAWN_RANK, AS IT IS THE REACHING OF THE END RANK THAT // CAUSES PROMOTION OF A PAWN, NOT FILE if (figure == P && pawn_file == 8) { return true; } else return false; } public boolean check_black_promotion(final char pawn_file, final char figure) { // XXX // ADDED CHECKING FOR CORRECT FIGURE AND POSITION if (figure == p && pawn_file == 1) { return true; } else return false; } // checks whether black doesn't attack the field: public boolean black_not_attacking(final char file, final char rank) { // XXX return true; } public boolean free_white(final char file, final char rank) { // XXX return black_not_attacking(file,rank) && B.is_empty(file,rank); } // checks whether white doesn't attack the field: public boolean white_not_attacking(final char file, final char rank) { // XXX return true; } public boolean free_black(final char file, final char rank) { // XXX return white_not_attacking(file,rank) && B.is_empty(file,rank); } public char[] white_king_position() { for (char file = 'a'; file <= 'h'; ++file) for (char rank = '1'; rank <= '8'; ++rank) if (B.get(file,rank) == Board.white_king) { char[] result = new char[2]; result[0] = file; result[1] = rank; return result; } return new char[0]; } public char[] black_king_position() { for (char file = 'a'; file <= 'h'; ++file) for (char rank = '1'; rank <= '8'; ++rank) if (B.get(file,rank) == Board.black_king) { char[] result = new char[2]; result[0] = file; result[1] = rank; return result; } return new char[0]; } public static void main(final String[] args) { // checking regular_position { Moves m = new Moves(new Board()); assert(m.regular_position()); m = new Moves(new Board("8/8/8/8/8/8/8/8 w - - 0 1")); assert(!m.regular_position()); m = new Moves(new Board("KK6/8/8/8/8/8/8/8 w - - 0 1")); assert(!m.regular_position()); m = new Moves(new Board("kk6/8/8/8/8/8/8/8 w - - 0 1")); assert(!m.regular_position()); m = new Moves(new Board("Kk6/8/8/8/8/8/8/8 w - - 0 1")); assert(m.regular_position()); m = new Moves(new Board("Kk6/qqqqqqqq/QQQQQQQQ/Q7/q7/rrbbnn2/RRBBNN2/8 w - - 0 1")); assert(m.regular_position()); m = new Moves(new Board("Kk6/qqqqqqqq/QQQQQQQQ/Q7/q7/rrbbnn2/RRBBNN2/n7 w - - 0 1")); assert(!m.regular_position()); m = new Moves(new Board("Kk6/qqqqqqqq/QQQQQQQQ/Q7/q7/rrbbnn2/RRBBNN2/N7 w - - 0 1")); m = new Moves(new Board("Kk6/qqqqqqqq/QQQQQQQQ/Q7/q7/rrbbnn2/RRBBNN2/b7 w - - 0 1")); assert(!m.regular_position()); m = new Moves(new Board("Kk6/qqqqqqqq/QQQQQQQQ/Q7/q7/rrbbnn2/RRBBNN2/B7 w - - 0 1")); m = new Moves(new Board("Kk6/qqqqqqqq/QQQQQQQQ/Q7/q7/rrbbnn2/RRBBNN2/r7 w - - 0 1")); assert(!m.regular_position()); m = new Moves(new Board("Kk6/qqqqqqqq/QQQQQQQQ/Q7/q7/rrbbnn2/RRBBNN2/R7 w - - 0 1")); m = new Moves(new Board("Kk6/qqqqqqqq/QQQQQQQQ/Q7/q7/rrbbnn2/RRBBNN2/q7 w - - 0 1")); assert(!m.regular_position()); m = new Moves(new Board("Kk6/qqqqqqqq/QQQQQQQQ/Q7/q7/rrbbnn2/RRBBNN2/Q7 w - - 0 1")); assert(!m.regular_position()); m = new Moves(new Board("Kkp5/8/8/8/8/8/8/8 w - - 0 1")); assert(!m.regular_position()); m = new Moves(new Board("KkP5/8/8/8/8/8/8/8 w - - 0 1")); assert(!m.regular_position()); m = new Moves(new Board("Kk6/8/8/8/8/8/8/7p w - - 0 1")); assert(!m.regular_position()); m = new Moves(new Board("Kk6/8/8/8/8/8/8/7P w - - 0 1")); assert(!m.regular_position()); } // checking check_white/black_king/queenside_castling { Moves m = new Moves(new Board("4k2r/8/8/8/8/8/8/4K2R w Kk - 0 1")); assert(!m.check_white_kingside_castling()); assert(!m.check_black_kingside_castling()); assert(!m.check_white_queenside_castling()); assert(!m.check_black_queenside_castling()); m = new Moves(new Board("4k2r/8/8/8/8/8/8/4K2R b Kk - 0 1")); assert(!m.check_white_kingside_castling()); assert(!m.check_black_kingside_castling()); assert(!m.check_white_queenside_castling()); assert(!m.check_black_queenside_castling()); m = new Moves(new Board("4k2r/4pppp/8/8/8/8/4PPPP/4K2R w KQkq - 0 1")); assert(m.check_white_kingside_castling()); assert(!m.check_black_kingside_castling()); assert(!m.check_white_queenside_castling()); assert(!m.check_black_queenside_castling()); m = new Moves(new Board("4k2r/4pppp/8/8/8/8/4PPPP/4K2R b KQkq - 0 1")); assert(!m.check_white_kingside_castling()); assert(m.check_black_kingside_castling()); assert(!m.check_white_queenside_castling()); assert(!m.check_black_queenside_castling()); m = new Moves(new Board("r3k3/8/8/8/8/8/8/R3K3 w Qq - 0 1")); assert(!m.check_white_kingside_castling()); assert(!m.check_black_kingside_castling()); assert(!m.check_white_queenside_castling()); assert(!m.check_black_queenside_castling()); m = new Moves(new Board("r3k3/8/8/8/8/8/8/R3K3 b Qq - 0 1")); assert(!m.check_white_kingside_castling()); assert(!m.check_black_kingside_castling()); assert(!m.check_white_queenside_castling()); assert(!m.check_black_queenside_castling()); m = new Moves(new Board("r3k3/p7/8/8/8/8/8/R3K3 w Qq - 0 1")); assert(!m.check_white_kingside_castling()); assert(!m.check_black_kingside_castling()); assert(m.check_white_queenside_castling()); assert(!m.check_black_queenside_castling()); m = new Moves(new Board("r3k3/p7/8/8/8/8/8/R3K3 b Qq - 0 1")); assert(!m.check_white_kingside_castling()); assert(!m.check_black_kingside_castling()); assert(!m.check_white_queenside_castling()); assert(m.check_black_queenside_castling()); m = new Moves(new Board("r3k3/p7/8/8/8/n7/8/R3K3 w Qq - 0 1")); assert(!m.check_white_kingside_castling()); assert(!m.check_black_kingside_castling()); assert(!m.check_white_queenside_castling()); assert(!m.check_black_queenside_castling()); m = new Moves(new Board("r3k3/p7/B7/8/8/8/8/R3K3 b Qq - 0 1")); assert(!m.check_white_kingside_castling()); assert(!m.check_black_kingside_castling()); assert(!m.check_white_queenside_castling()); assert(!m.check_black_queenside_castling()); // XXX } } }

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• Schema to support dynamic properties

  - by Johan Fredrik Varen

  Hi people. I'm working on an editor that enables its users to create "object" definitions in real-time. A definition can contain zero or more properties. A property has a name a type. Once a definition is created, a user can create an object of that definition and set the property values of that object. So by the click of a mouse-button, the user should ie. be able to create a new definition called "Bicycle", and add the property "Size" of type "Numeric". Then another property called "Name" of type "Text", and then another property called "Price" of type "Numeric". Once that is done, the user should be able to create a couple of "Bicycle" objects and fill in the "Name" and "Price" property values of each bike. Now, I've seen this feature in several software products, so it must be a well-known concept. My problem started when I sat down and tried to come up with a DB schema to support this data structure, because I want the property values to be stored using the appropriate column types. Ie. a numeric property value is stored as, say, an INT in the database, and a textual property value is stored as VARCHAR. First, I need a table that will hold all my object definitions: Table obj_defs id | name | ---------------- 1 | "Bicycle" | 2 | "Book" | Then I need a table for holding what sort of properties each object definition should have: Table prop_defs id | obj_def_id | name | type | ------------------------------------ 1 | 1 | "Size" | ? | 2 | 1 | "Name" | ? | 3 | 1 | "Price" | ? | 4 | 2 | "Title" | ? | 5 | 2 | "Author" | ? | 6 | 2 | "ISBN" | ? | I would also need a table that holds each object: Table objects id | created | updated | ------------------------------ 1 | 2011-05-14 | 2011-06-15 | 2 | 2011-05-14 | 2011-06-15 | 3 | 2011-05-14 | 2011-06-15 | Finally, I need a table that will hold the actual property values of each object, and one solution is for this table to have one column for each possible value type, such as this: Table prop_vals id | prop_def_id | object_id | numeric | textual | boolean | ------------------------------------------------------------ 1 | 1 | 1 | 27 | | | 2 | 2 | 1 | | "Trek" | | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1249 | | | 4 | 1 | 2 | 26 | | | 5 | 2 | 2 | | "GT" | | 6 | 3 | 2 | 159 | | | 7 | 4 | 3 | | "It" | | 8 | 5 | 3 | | "King" | | 9 | 6 | 4 | 9 | | | If I implemented this schema, what would the "type" column of the prop_defs table hold? Integers that each map to a column name, varchars that simply hold the column name? Any other possibilities? Would a stored procedure help me out here in some way? And what would the SQL for fetching the "name" property of object 2 look like?

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• Solaris 11 Launch Blog Carnival Roundup

  - by constant

  Solaris 11 is here! And together with the official launch activities, a lot of Oracle and non-Oracle bloggers contributed helpful and informative blog articles to help your datacenter go to eleven. Here are some notable blog postings, sorted by category for your Solaris 11 blog-reading pleasure: Getting Started/Overview A lot of people speculated that the official launch of Solaris 11 would be on 11/11 (whatever way you want to turn it), but it actually happened two days earlier. Larry Wake himself offers 11 Reasons Why Oracle Solaris 11 11/11 Isn't Being Released on 11/11/11. Then, Larry goes on with a summary: Oracle Solaris 11: The First Cloud OS gives you a short and sweet rundown of what the major new features of Solaris 11 are. Jeff Victor has his own list of What's New in Oracle Solaris 11. A popular Solaris 11 meme is to write a blog post about 11 favourite features: Jim Laurent's 11 Reasons to Love Solaris 11, Darren Moffat's 11 Favourite Solaris 11 Features, Mike Gerdt's 11 of My Favourite Things! are just three examples of "11 Favourite Things..." type blog posts, I'm sure many more will follow... More official overview content for Solaris 11 is available from the Oracle Tech Network Solaris 11 Portal. Also, check out Rick Ramsey's blog post Solaris 11 Resources for System Administrators on the OTN Blog and his secret 5 Commands That Make Solaris Administration Easier post from the OTN Garage. (Automatic) Installation and the Image Packaging System (IPS) The brand new Image Packaging System (IPS) and the Automatic Installer (IPS), together with numerous other install/packaging/boot/patching features are among the most significant improvements in Solaris 11. But before installing, you may wonder whether Solaris 11 will support your particular set of hardware devices. Again, the OTN Garage comes to the rescue with Rick Ramsey's post How to Find Out Which Devices Are Supported By Solaris 11. Included is a useful guide to all the first steps to get your Solaris 11 system up and running. Tim Foster had a whole handful of blog posts lined up for the launch, teaching you everything you need to know about IPS but didn't dare to ask: The IPS System Repository, IPS Self-assembly - Part 1: Overlays and Part 2: Multiple Packages Delivering Configuration. Watch out for more IPS posts from Tim! If installing packages or upgrading your system from the net makes you uneasy, then you're not alone: Jim Laurent will tech you how Building a Solaris 11 Repository Without Network Connection will make your life easier. Many of you have already peeked into the future by installing Solaris 11 Express. If you're now wondering whether you can upgrade or whether a fresh install is necessary, then check out Alan Hargreaves's post Upgrading Solaris 11 Express b151a with support to Solaris 11. The trick is in upgrading your pkg(1M) first. Networking One of the first things to do after installing Solaris 11 (or any operating system for that matter), is to set it up for networking. Solaris 11 comes with the brand new "Network Auto-Magic" feature which can figure out everything by itself. For those cases where you want to exercise a little more control, Solaris 11 left a few people scratching their heads. Fortunately, Tschokko wrote up this cool blog post: Solaris 11 manual IPv4 & IPv6 configuration right after the launch ceremony. Thanks, Tschokko! And Milek points out a long awaited networking feature in Solaris 11 called Solaris 11 - hostmodel, which I know for a fact that many customers have looked forward to: How to "bind" a Solaris 11 system to a specific gateway for specific IP address it is using. Steffen Weiberle teaches us how to tune the Solaris 11 networking stack the proper way: ipadm(1M). No more fiddling with ndd(1M)! Check out his tutorial on Solaris 11 Network Tunables. And if you want to get even deeper into the networking stack, there's nothing better than DTrace. Alan Maguire teaches you in: DTracing TCP Congestion Control how to probe deeply into the Solaris 11 TCP/IP stack, the TCP congestion control part in particular. Don't miss his other DTrace and TCP related blog posts! DTrace And there we are: DTrace, the king of all observability tools. Long time DTrace veteran and co-author of The DTrace book*, Brendan Gregg blogged about Solaris 11 DTrace syscall provider changes. BTW, after you install Solaris 11, check out the DTrace toolkit which is installed by default in /usr/dtrace/DTT. It is chock full of handy DTrace scripts, many of which contributed by Brendan himself! Security Another big theme in Solaris 11, and one that is crucial for the success of any operating system in the Cloud is Security. Here are some notable posts in this category: Darren Moffat starts by showing us how to completely get rid of root: Completely Disabling Root Logins on Solaris 11. With no root user, there's one major entry point less to worry about. But that's only the start. In Immutable Zones on Encrypted ZFS, Darren shows us how to double the security of your services: First by locking them into the new Immutable Zones feature, then by encrypting their data using the new ZFS encryption feature. And if you're still missing sudo from your Linux days, Darren again has a solution: Password (PAM) caching for Solaris su - "a la sudo". If you're wondering how much compute power all this encryption will cost you, you're in luck: The Solaris X86 AESNI OpenSSL Engine will make sure you'll use your Intel's embedded crypto support to its fullest. And if you own a brand new SPARC T4 machine you're even luckier: It comes with its own SPARC T4 OpenSSL Engine. Dan Anderson's posts show how there really is now excuse not to encrypt any more... Developers Solaris 11 has a lot to offer to developers as well. Ali Bahrami has a series of blog posts that cover diverse developer topics: elffile: ELF Specific File Identification Utility, Using Stub Objects and The Stub Proto: Not Just For Stub Objects Anymore to name a few. BTW, if you're a developer and want to shape the future of Solaris 11, then Vijay Tatkar has a hint for you: Oracle (Sun Systems Group) is hiring! Desktop and Graphics Yes, Solaris 11 is a 100% server OS, but it can also offer a decent desktop environment, especially if you are a developer. Alan Coopersmith starts by discussing S11 X11: ye olde window system in today's new operating system, then Calum Benson shows us around What's new on the Solaris 11 Desktop. Even accessibility is a first-class citizen in the Solaris 11 user interface. Peter Korn celebrates: Accessible Oracle Solaris 11 - released! Performance Gone are the days of "Slowaris", when Solaris was among the few OSes that "did the right thing" while others cut corners just to win benchmarks. Today, Solaris continues doing the right thing, and it delivers the right performance at the same time. Need proof? Check out Brian's BestPerf blog with continuous updates from the benchmarking lab, including Recent Benchmarks Using Oracle Solaris 11! Send Me More Solaris 11 Launch Articles! These are just a few of the more interesting blog articles that came out around the Solaris 11 launch, I'm sure there are many more! Feel free to post a comment below if you find a particularly interesting blog post that hasn't been listed so far and share your enthusiasm for Solaris 11! *Affiliate link: Buy cool stuff and support this blog at no extra cost. We both win! var flattr_uid = '26528'; var flattr_tle = 'Solaris 11 Launch Blog Carnival Roundup'; var flattr_dsc = '<strong>Solaris 11 is here!</strong>And together with the official launch activities, a lot of Oracle and non-Oracle bloggers contributed helpful and informative blog articles to help your datacenter <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_to_eleven">go to eleven</a>.Here are some notable blog postings, sorted by category for your Solaris 11 blog-reading pleasure:'; var flattr_tag = 'blogging,digest,Oracle,Solaris,solaris,solaris 11'; var flattr_cat = 'text'; var flattr_url = 'http://constantin.glez.de/blog/2011/11/solaris-11-launch-blog-carnival-roundup'; var flattr_lng = 'en_GB'

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• Microsoft TechEd 2010 - Day 3 @ Bangalore

  - by sathya

  Microsoft TechEd 2010 - Day 3 @ Bangalore Sorry for my delayed post on day 3 because I had to travel from Blore to Chennai So I couldnt write for the past two days. On day 3 as usual we had lot of simultaneous tracks on various sessions. This day I choose the Your Data, Our Platform Track. It had sessions on the following 5 topics :   Developing Data-tier Applications in Visual Studio 2010 - by Sanjay Nagamangalam SQL Server Query Optimization, Execution and Debugging Query Performance - by Vinod Kumar M SQL Server Utility - Its about more than 1 SQL Server - by Vinod Kumar Jagannathan Data Recovery / Consistency with CheckDB - by Vinod Kumar M Developing with SQL Server Spatial and Deep dive into Spatial Indexing - by Pinal Dave Developing Data-tier Applications in Visual Studio 2010 - by Sanjay Nagamangalam This was one of the superb sessions i have attended. He explained all the concepts in detail with a demo. The important thing in this is there is something called Data-Tier application project which is newly introduced in this VS2010 with which we can manage all our data along with our application inside our VS itself. We can create DB,Tables,Procs,Views etc. here itself and once we deploy it creates a compressed file called .dacpac which stores all the changes in Table Schema,Created procs, etc. on to that single file which reduces our (developer's) effort in preparing the deployment scripts and giving it to the DBA. It also has some policy configurations which can be managed easily by checking some rules like in outlook. For Ex : IF the SQL Server Version > 10 then deploy else dont. This rule specifies that even if we try to deploy on SQL Server DB with version less than 10 It will not do it. And if we deploy some .dacpac to SQL server production db with the option upgrade DB with this dacpac once everything completes successfully it will say success else it rollsback to the prior version. Even if it gets deployed successfully and later @ a point of time you wish to revert it back to the prior version, you can go ahead and delete the existing dacpac version so that it reverts to the older version of the db changes. And for the good questions that were asked in the session T-Shirts were given. SQL Server Query Optimization, Execution and Debugging Query Performance - by Vinod Kumar M This one too was the best session. The speaker Vinod explained everything very much clearly. This was really useful session and you dont believe, as per my knowledge, in the total 3 days in the TechEd except the Keynote, for this session seats were full (House FULL)  People were even standing out to attend this session. Such a great one it was. The speaker did a deep dive in to the Query Plan section and showed which actually causes the problem. Its all about the thing that we need to understand about the execution of SQL server Queries. We think in a way and SQL Server never executes in that way. We need to understand that first. He also told about there might be two plans generated for a single query at a point of time because of parallel processors in the system. The Key is here in every query. There is something called Estimated Row Count and Actual Row Count in the query plan. If the estimated row count by SQL server tallies with the actual row count your performance will be awesome. He said some tweaks to achieve the same. After this as usual we had lunch SQL Server Utility - Its about more than 1 SQL Server - by Vinod Kumar Jagannathan This was more of a DBA's session. Am really sorry I was totally blank and I was not interested to attend this session and walked out to attend Migrating to the cloud by Harish Ranganathan (My favorite Speaker) but unfortunately that was some other persons session. There the speaker was telling about how to configure the connection strings in such a way that we can connect to the SQL Azure platform from our VS and also showed us how to deploy the same in to Windows Azure. In between there were lot of technical problems like laptop hang, user locked and he was switching between systems, also i came in the half so i wasnt able to listen that fully. In between, Since I got an MCTS certification they gave me T-Shirt with the lines 'Iam Certified. Are you?' and they asked me to wear that. If we wear that we might get spotted and they would give us some goodies  So on the 3rd day I was wearing that T-Shirt. I got spotted by the person Tarun who was coordinating things about the certification, and he was accompanied with a cameraman and they interviewed me about the certification and I was shown live in the Teched and was seen by 60000 live viewers of the TechEd. I was really happy on that. Data Recovery / Consistency with CheckDB - by Vinod Kumar M This was one of the best sessions too in the TechEd. This guy is really amazing. In front of us he crashed a DB and showed how to recover the same in 6 different ways for different no of failures. Showed about Different types of error msgs like : 823,824,825 msdb..suspect_pages DBCC CheckDB (different parameters to it) I am really waiting for his session to get uploaded live in the Teched Website. Here is his contact info If you wish to connect to him : Twitter : @vinodk_sql Website : www.ExtremeExperts.com Blog : http://blogs.sqlxml.org/vinodkumar Developing with SQL Server Spatial and Deep dive into Spatial Indexing - by Pinal Dave Pinal Dave is a King in SQL and he is a SQL MVP and he is the owner of SQLAuthority.com He took the session on Spatial Databases from the start. Showed about the different types of Spatial : Geometric and Geographic Geometric : x and y axis its a planar surface Geographic : Spherical surface with 3600  as the maximum which is used to represent the geographic points on the earth and easy to draw maps of different kinds. He had a lot of obstacles during his session like rain coming inside the hall, mic wires got bursted due to rain, Videos off on the display screens. In spite of that he asked the audience to come in the front rows and managed to take a good session without ppts and finally we got the displays on and he was showing demos on the same what he explained orally. That was really a fun filled informative session. He gave some books for the persons who asked good questions and answered well for his questions and I got one too  (It was a book on Data Mining - Wrox Publishers) And finally after all these things there was Keynote session for close of the TechEd. and we all assembled in a big hall where Mr.Ashok Soota, a man of age around 70  co-founder of Mindtree was called to give some lecture on his successes. He was explaining about his past and what all companies he switched and for what reasons and what are all his successes and what are all his failures and the learnings of him from his past failures. and his success and failures on his partnerships with the other concern. And there were some questions for him like What is your suggestion on young entrepreneur? How did you learn from past failures? What is reiterating your success? What is your suggestion on partnerships? How to choose partnerships? etc. And they said @ 7.30 Pm there would be a party night, but unfortunately i was not able to attend that because I had to catch my train and before that i had to pack things, so I started @ 7 itself. Thats it about the TechED!!! Stay tuned for further Technology updates.

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• Ingredient Substitutes while Baking

  - by Rekha

  In our normal cooking, we substitute the vegetables for the gravies we prepare. When we start baking, we look for a good recipe. At least one or two ingredient will be missing. We do not know where to substitute what to bring same output. So we finally drop the plan of baking. Again after a month, we get the interest in baking. Again one or two lack of ingredient and that’s it. We keep on doing this for months. When I was going through the cooking blogs, I came across a site with the Ingredient Substitutes for Baking: (*) is to indicate that this substitution is ideal from personal experience. Flour Substitutes ( For 1 cup of Flour) All Purpose Flour 1/2 cup white cake flour plus 1/2 cup whole wheat flour 1 cup self-rising flour (omit using salt and baking powder if the recipe calls for it since self raising flour has it already) 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons cake flour 1/2 cup (75 grams) whole wheat flour 7/8 cup (130 grams) rice flour (starch) (do not replace all of the flour with the rice flour) 7/8 cup whole wheat Bread Flour 1 cup all purpose flour 1 cup all purpose flour plus 1 teaspoon wheat gluten (*) Cake Flour Place 2 tbsp cornstarch in 1 cup and fill the rest up with All Purpose flour (*) 1 cup all purpose flour minus 2 tablespoons Pastry flour Place 2 tbsp cornstarch in 1 cup and fill the rest up with All Purpose flour Equal parts of All purpose flour plus cake flour (*) Self-rising Flour 1½ teaspoons of baking powder plus ½ teaspoon of salt plus 1 cup of all-purpose flour. Cornstarch (1 tbsp) 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour 1 tablespoon arrowroot 4 teaspoons quick-cooking tapioca 1 tablespoon potato starch or rice starch or flour Tapioca (1 tbsp) 1 – 1/2 tablespoons all-purpose flour Cornmeal (stone ground) polenta OR corn flour (gives baked goods a lighter texture) if using cornmeal for breading,crush corn chips in a blender until they have the consistency of cornmeal. maize meal Corn grits Sweeteners ( for Every 1 cup ) * * (HV) denotes Healthy Version for low fat or fat free substitution in Baking Light Brown Sugar 2 tablespoons molasses plus 1 cup of white sugar Dark Brown Sugar 3 tablespoons molasses plus 1 cup of white sugar Confectioner’s/Powdered Sugar Process 1 cup sugar plus 1 tablespoon cornstarch Corn Syrup 1 cup sugar plus 1/4 cup water 1 cup Golden Syrup 1 cup honey (may be little sweeter) 1 cup molasses Golden Syrup Combine two parts light corn syrup plus one part molasses 1/2 cup honey plus 1/2 cup corn syrup 1 cup maple syrup 1 cup corn syrup Honey 1- 1/4 cups sugar plus 1/4 cup water 3/4 cup maple syrup plus 1/2 cup granulated sugar 3/4 cup corn syrup plus 1/2 cup granulated sugar 3/4 cup light molasses plus 1/2 cup granulated white sugar 1 1/4 cups granulated white or brown sugar plus 1/4 cup additional liquid in recipe plus 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar Maple Syrup 1 cup honey,thinned with water or fruit juice like apple 3/4 cup corn syrup plus 1/4 cup butter 1 cup Brown Rice Syrup 1 cup Brown sugar (in case of cereals) 1 cup light molasses (on pancakes, cereals etc) 1 cup granulated sugar for every 3/4 cup of maple syrup and increase liquid in the recipe by 3 tbsp for every cup of sugar.If baking soda is used, decrease the amount by 1/4 teaspoon per cup of sugar substituted, since sugar is less acidic than maple syrup Molasses 1 cup honey 1 cup dark corn syrup 1 cup maple syrup 3/4 cup brown sugar warmed and dissolved in 1/4 cup of liquid ( use this if taste of molasses is important in the baked good) Cocoa Powder (Natural, Unsweetened) 3 tablespoons (20 grams) Dutch-processed cocoa plus 1/8 teaspoon cream of tartar, lemon juice or white vinegar 1 ounce (30 grams) unsweetened chocolate (reduce fat in recipe by 1 tablespoon) 3 tablespoons (20 grams) carob powder Semisweet baking chocolate (1 oz) 1 oz unsweetened baking chocolate plus 1 Tbsp sugar Unsweetened baking chocolate (1 oz ) 3 Tbsp baking cocoa plus 1 Tbsp vegetable oil or melted shortening or margarine Semisweet chocolate chips (1 cup) 6 oz semisweet baking chocolate, chopped (Alternatively) For 1 cup of Semi sweet chocolate chips you can use : 6 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder, 7 tablespoons sugar ,1/4 cup fat (butter or oil) Leaveners and Diary * * (HV) denotes Healthy Version for low fat or fat free substitution in Baking Compressed Yeast (1 cake) 1 envelope or 2 teaspoons active dry yeast 1 packet (1/4 ounce) Active Dry yeast 1 cake fresh compressed yeast 1 tablespoon fast-rising active yeast Baking Powder (1 tsp) 1/3 teaspoon baking soda plus 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar 1/2 teaspoon baking soda plus 1/2 cup buttermilk or plain yogurt 1/4 teaspoon baking soda plus 1/3 cup molasses. When using the substitutions that include liquid, reduce other liquid in recipe accordingly Baking Soda(1 tsp) 3 tsp Baking Powder ( and reduce the acidic ingredients in the recipe. Ex Instead of buttermilk add milk) 1 tsp potassium bicarbonate Ideal substitution – 2 tsp Baking powder and omit salt in recipe Cream of tartar (1 tsp) 1 teaspoon white vinegar 1 tsp lemon juice Notes from What’s Cooking America – If cream of tartar is used along with baking soda in a cake or cookie recipe, omit both and use baking powder instead. If it calls for baking soda and cream of tarter, just use baking powder.Normally, when cream of tartar is used in a cookie, it is used together with baking soda. The two of them combined work like double-acting baking powder. When substituting for cream of tartar, you must also substitute for the baking soda. If your recipe calls for baking soda and cream of tarter, just use baking powder. One teaspoon baking powder is equivalent to 1/4 teaspoon baking soda plus 5/8 teaspoon cream of tartar. If there is additional baking soda that does not fit into the equation, simply add it to the batter. Buttermilk (1 cup) 1 tablespoon lemon juice or vinegar (white or cider) plus enough milk to make 1 cup (let stand 5-10 minutes) 1 cup plain or low fat yogurt 1 cup sour cream 1 cup water plus 1/4 cup buttermilk powder 1 cup milk plus 1 1/2 – 1 3/4 teaspoons cream of tartar Plain Yogurt (1 cup) 1 cup sour cream 1 cup buttermilk 1 cup crème fraiche 1 cup heavy whipping cream (35% butterfat) plus 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice Whole Milk (1 cup) 1 cup fat free milk plus 1 tbsp unsaturated Oil like canola (HV) 1 cup low fat milk (HV) Heavy Cream (1 cup) 3/4 cup milk plus 1/3 cup melted butter.(whipping wont work) Sour Cream (1 cup) (pls refer also Substitutes for Fats in Baking below) 7/8 cup buttermilk or sour milk plus 3 tablespoons butter. 1 cup thickened yogurt plus 1 teaspoon baking soda. 3/4 cup sour milk plus 1/3 cup butter. 3/4 cup buttermilk plus 1/3 cup butter. Cooked sauces: 1 cup yogurt plus 1 tablespoon flour plus 2 teaspoons water. Cooked sauces: 1 cup evaporated milk plus 1 tablespoon vinegar or lemon juice. Let stand 5 minutes to thicken. Dips: 1 cup yogurt (drain through a cheesecloth-lined sieve for 30 minutes in the refrigerator for a thicker texture). Dips: 1 cup cottage cheese plus 1/4 cup yogurt or buttermilk, briefly whirled in a blender. Dips: 6 ounces cream cheese plus 3 tablespoons milk,briefly whirled in a blender. Lower fat: 1 cup low-fat cottage cheese plus 1 tablespoon lemon juice plus 2 tablespoons skim milk, whipped until smooth in a blender. Lower fat: 1 can chilled evaporated milk whipped with 1 teaspoon lemon juice. 1 cup plain yogurt plus 1 tablespoon cornstarch 1 cup plain nonfat yogurt Substitutes for Fats in Baking * * (HV) denoted Healthy Version for low fat or fat free substitution in Baking Butter (1 cup) 1 cup trans-free vegetable shortening 3/4 cups of vegetable oil (example. Canola oil) Fruit purees (example- applesauce, pureed prunes, baby-food fruits). Add it along with some vegetable oil and reduce any other sweeteners needed in the recipe since fruit purees are already sweet. 1 cup polyunsaturated margarine (HV) 3/4 cup polyunsaturated oil like safflower oil (HV) 1 cup mild olive oil (not extra virgin)(HV) Note: Butter creates the flakiness and the richness which an oil/purees cant provide. If you don’t want to compromise that much to taste, replace half the butter with the substitutions. Shortening(1 cup) 1 cup polyunsaturated margarine like Earth Balance or Smart Balance(HV) 1 cup + 2tbsp Butter ( better tasting than shortening but more expensive and has cholesterol and a higher level of saturated fat; makes cookies less crunchy, bread crusts more crispy) 1 cup + 2 tbsp Margarine (better tasting than shortening but more expensive; makes cookies less crunchy, bread crusts tougher) 1 Cup – 2tbsp Lard (Has cholesterol and a higher level of saturated fat) Oil equal amount of apple sauce stiffly beaten egg whites into batter equal parts mashed banana equal parts yogurt prune puree grated raw zucchini or seeds removed if cooked. Works well in quick breads/muffins/coffee cakes and does not alter taste pumpkin puree (if the recipe can handle the taste change) Low fat cottage cheese (use only half of the required fat in the recipe). Can give rubbery texture to the end result Silken Tofu – (use only half of the required fat in the recipe). Can give rubbery texture to the end result Equal parts of fruit juice Note: Fruit purees can alter the taste of the final product is used in large quantities. Cream Cheese (1 cup) 4 tbsps. margarine plus 1 cup low-fat cottage cheese – blended. Add few teaspoons of fat-free milk if needed (HV) Heavy Cream (1 cup) 1 cup evaporated skim milk (or full fat milk) 1/2 cup low fat Yogurt plus 1/2 low fat Cottage Cheese (HV) 1/2 cup Yogurt plus 1/2 Cottage Cheese Sour Cream (1 cup) 1 cup plain yogurt (HV) 3/4 cup buttermilk or plain yogurt plus 1/3 cup melted butter 1 cup crème fraiche 1 tablespoon lemon juice or vinegar plus enough whole milk to fill 1 cup (let stand 5-10 minutes) 1/2 cup low-fat cottage cheese plus 1/2 cup low-fat or nonfat yogurt (HV) 1 cup fat-free sour cream (HV) Note: How to Make Maple Syrup Substitute at home For 1 Cup Maple Syrup 1/2 cup granulated sugar 1 cup brown sugar, firmly packed 1 cup boiling water 1 teaspoon butter 1 teaspoon maple extract or vanilla extract Method In a heavy saucepan, place the granulated sugar and keep stirring until it melts and turns slightly brown. Alternatively in another pan, place brown sugar and water and bring to a boil without stirring. Now mix both the sugars and simmer in low heat until they come together as one thick syrup. Remove from heat, add butter and the extract. Use this in place of maple syrup. Store it in a fridge in an air tight container. Even though this was posted in their site long back, I found it helpful. So posting it for you. via chefinyou . cc image credit: flickr/zetrules

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• Brighton Rocks: UA Europe 2011

  - by ultan o'broin

  User Assistance Europe 2011 was held in Brighton, UK. Having seen Quadrophenia a dozen times, I just had to go along (OK, I wanted to talk about messages in enterprise applications). Sadly, it rained a lot, though that was still eminently more tolerable than being stuck home in Dublin during Bloomsday. So, here are my somewhat selective highlights and observations from the conference, massively skewed towards my own interests, as usual. Enjoyed Leah Guren's (Cow TC) great start ‘keynote’ on the Cultural Dimensions of Software Help Usage. Starting out by revisiting Hofstede's and Hall's work on culture (how many times I have done this for Multilingual magazine?) and then Neilsen’s findings on age as an indicator of performance, Leah showed how it is the expertise of the user that user assistance (UA) needs to be designed for (especially for high-end users), with some considerations made for age, while the gender and culture of users are not major factors. Help also needs to be contextual and concise, embedded close to the action. That users are saying things like “If I want help on Office, I go to Google ” isn't all that profound at this stage, but it is always worth reiterating how search can be optimized to return better results for users. Interestingly, regardless of user education level, the issue of information quality--hinging on the lynchpin of terminology reflecting that of the user--is critical. Major takeaway for me there. Matthew Ellison’s sessions on embedded help and demos were also impressive. Embedded help that is concise and contextual is definitely a powerful UX enabler, and I’m pleased to say that in Oracle Fusion Applications we have embraced the concept fully. Matthew also mentioned in his session about successful software demos that the principle of modality with demos is a must. Look no further than Oracle User Productivity Kit demos See It!, Try It!, Know It, and Do It! modes, for example. I also found some key takeaways in the presentation by Marie-Louise Flacke on notes and warnings. Here, legal considerations seemed to take precedence over providing any real information to users. I was delighted when Marie-Louise called out the Oracle JDeveloper documentation as an exemplar of how to use notes and instructions instead of trying to scare the bejaysus out of people and not providing them with any real information they’d find useful instead. My own session on designing messages for enterprise applications was well attended. Knowing your user profiles (remember user expertise is the king maker for UA so write for each audience involved), how users really work, the required application business and UI rules, what your application technology supports, and how messages integrate with the enterprise help desk and support policies and you will go much further than relying solely on the guideline of "writing messages in plain language". And, remember the value in warnings and confirmation messages too, and how you can use them smartly. I hope y’all got something from my presentation and from my answers to questions afterwards. Ellis Pratt stole the show with his presentation on applying game theory to software UA, using plenty of colorful, relevant examples (check out the Atlassian and DropBox approaches, for example), and striking just the right balance between theory and practice. Completely agree that the approach to take here is not to make UA itself a game, but to invoke UA as part of a bigger game dynamic (time-to-task completion, personal and communal goals, personal achievement and status, and so on). Sure there are gotchas and limitations to gamification, and we need to do more research. However, we'll hear a lot more about this subject in coming years, particularly in the enterprise space. I hope. I also heard good things about the different sessions about DITA usage (including one by Sonja Fuga that clearly opens the door for major innovation in the community content space using WordPress), the progressive disclosure of information (Cerys Willoughby), an overview of controlled language (or "information quality", as I like to position it) solutions and rationale by Dave Gash, and others. I also spent time chatting with Mike Hamilton of MadCap Software, who showed me a cool demo of their Flare product, and the Lingo translation solution. I liked the idea of their licensing model for workers-on-the-go; that’s smart UX-awareness in itself. Also chatted with Julian Murfitt of Mekon about uptake of DITA in the enterprise space. In all, it's worth attending UA Europe. I was surprised, however, not to see conference topics about mobile UA, community conversation and content, and search in its own right. These are unstoppable forces now, and the latter is pretty central to providing assistance now to all but the most irredentist of hard-copy fetishists or advanced technical or functional users working away on the back end of applications and systems. Only saw one iPad too (says the guy who carries three laptops). Tweeting during the conference was pretty much nonexistent during the event, so no community energy there. Perhaps all this can be addressed next year. I would love to see the next UA Europe event come to Dublin (despite Bloomsday, it's not a bad place place, really) now that hotels are so cheap and all. So, what is my overall impression of the state of user assistance in Europe? Clearly, there are still many people in the industry who feel there is something broken with the traditional forms of user assistance (particularly printed doc) and something needs to be done about it. I would suggest they move on and try and embrace change, instead. Many others see new possibilities, offered by UX and technology, as well as the reality of online user behavior in an increasingly connected world and that is encouraging. Such thought leaders need to be listened to. As Ellis Pratt says in his great book, Trends in Technical Communication - Rethinking Help: “To stay relevant means taking a new perspective on the role (of technical writer), and delivering “products” over and above the traditional manual and online Help file... there are a number of new trends in this field - some complementary, some conflicting. Whatever trends emerge as the norm, it’s likely the status quo will change.” It already has, IMO. I hear similar debates in the professional translation world about the onset of translation crowd sourcing (the Facebook model) and machine translation (trust me, that battle is over). Neither of these initiatives has put anyone out of a job and probably won't, though the nature of the work might change. If anything, such innovations have increased the overall need for professional translators as user expectations rise, new audiences emerge, and organizations need to collate and curate user-generated content, combining it with their own. Perhaps user assistance professionals can learn from other professions and grow accordingly.

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