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• The Three-Legged Milk Stool - Why Oracle Fusion Incentive Compensation makes the difference!

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  During the London Olympics, we were exposed to dozens of athletes who worked with sports psychologists to maximize their performance. Executives often hire business psychologists to coach their teams to excellence. In the same vein, Fusion Incentive Compensation can be used to get people to change their sales behavior so we can make our numbers. But what about using incentive compensation solutions in a non-sales scenario to drive change? Recently, I was working an opportunity where a company was having a low user adoption rate for Salesforce.com, which was causing problems for them. I suggested they use Fusion Incentive Comp to change the reps' behavior. We tossed around the idea of tracking user adoption by creating a variable bonus for reps based on how well they forecasted revenues in the new system. Another thought was to reward the reps for how often they logged into the system or for the percentage of leads that became opportunities and turned into revenue. A new twist on a great product. Fusion CRM's Sweet Spot I'm excited about the sales performance management (SPM) tools in Fusion CRM. This trio of Incentive Compensation, Territory Management, and Quota Management sets us apart from the competition because Oracle is the only vendor that provides all three of these capabilities on a single tech stack, in a single application, and with a single look and feel. The niche vendors offer standalone territory or incentive compensation solutions, but then the customer has to custom build the other tools and can end up with a Frankenstein-type environment. On average, companies overpay sales commissions by three to eight percent. You calculate that number for a company the size of Oracle for one quarter and it makes a pretty air-tight financial case for using SPM tools to figure accurate commissions. Plus when sales reps get the right compensation, they can be out selling rather than spending precious time figuring out what they didn't get paid or looking for another job. And one more thing ... Oracle knows incentive comp. We have been a Gartner Market Scope leader in this space for the last five years. Our solution gets high marks because of its scalability and because of its interoperability with other technologies. And now that we're leading with Fusion, our incentive compensation offering includes the innovations that the Fusion team built, plus enhancements from the E-Business Suite Incentive Comp team. It's a case of making a good thing even better. (See product video.) The "Wedge" Apps In a number of accounts that I'm working on, there is a non-Oracle CRM system of record. That gives me the perfect opportunity to introduce the benefits of our SPM tools and to get the customer using Fusion. Then the door is wide open for the company to uptake more of Fusion CRM, especially since all the integrations they need are out of the box. I really believe that implementing this wedge of SPM tools is the ticket to taking market share away from other vendors. It allows us to insert ourselves in an environment where no other CRM solution in the market has the extending capabilities of Fusion. Not Just Your Usual Suspects Usually the stakeholders that I talk to for Territory Management are tightly aligned with the sales management team. When I sell the quota planning tool, I'm talking to finance people on the ERP side of the house who are measuring quotas and forecasting revenue. And then Incentive Comp is of most interest to the sales operations people, and generally these people roll up to either HR or the payroll department. I think of our Fusion SPM tools as a three-legged stool straddling an organization's Sales, Finance, and HR departments. So when you're prospecting for opportunities -- yes, people with a CRM perspective will be very interested -- but don't limit yourselves to that constituency. You might find stakeholders in accounting, revenue planning, or HR compensation teams. You just might discover, as I did at United Airlines, that the HR organization is spearheading the CRM project because incentive compensation is what they need ... and they're the ones with the budget. Jason Loh Global Solutions Manager, Fusion CRM Sales Planning Oracle Corporation

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• Controlling soft errors and false alarms in SSIS

  - by Jim Giercyk

  If you are like me, you dread the 3AM wake-up call.  I would say that the majority of the pages I get are false alarms.  The alerts that require action often require me to open an SSIS package, see where the trouble is and try to identify the offending data.  That can be very time-consuming and can take quite a chunk out of my beauty sleep.  For those reasons, I have developed a simple error handling scenario for SSIS which allows me to rest a little easier.  Let me first say, this is a high level discussion; getting into the nuts and bolts of creating each shape is outside the scope of this document, but if you have an average understanding of SSIS, you should have no problem following along. In the Data Flow above you can see that there is a caution triangle.  For the purpose of this discussion I am creating a truncation error to demonstrate the process, so this is to be expected.  The first thing we need to do is to redirect the error output.  Double-clicking on the Query shape presents us with the properties window for the input.  Simply set the columns that you want to redirect to Redirect Row in the dropdown box and hit Apply. Without going into a dissertation on error handling, I will just note that you can decide which errors you want to redirect on Error and on Truncation.  Therefore, to override this process for a column or condition, simply do not redirect that column or condition. The next thing we want to do is to add some information about the error; specifically, the name of the package which encountered the error and which step in the package wrote the record to the error table.  REMEMBER: If you redirect the error output, your package will not fail, so you will not know where the error record was created without some additional information.    I added 3 columns to my error record; Severity, Package Name and Step Name.  Severity is just a free-form column that you can use to note whether an error is fatal, whether the package is part of a test job and should be ignored, etc.  Package Name and Step Name are system variables. In my package I have created a truncation situation, where the firstname column is 50 characters in the input, but only 4 characters in the output.  Some records will pass without truncation, others will be sent to the error output.  However, the package will not fail. We can see that of the 14 input rows, 8 were redirected to the error table. This information can be used by another step or another scheduled process or triggered to determine whether an error should be sent.  It can also be used as a historical record of the errors that are encountered over time.  There are other system variables that might make more sense in your infrastructure, so try different things.  Date and time seem like something you would want in your output for example.  In summary, we have redirected the error output from an input, added derived columns with information about the errors, and inserted the information and the offending data into an error table.  The error table information can be used by another step or process to determine, based on the error information, what level alert must be sent.  This will eliminate false alarms, and give you a head start when a genuine error occurs.

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• Why can't a blendShader sample anything but the current coordinate of the background image?

  - by Triynko

  In Flash, you can set a DisplayObject's blendShader property to a pixel shader (flash.shaders.Shader class). The mechanism is nice, because Flash automatically provides your Shader with two input images, including the background surface and the foreground display object's bitmap. The problem is that at runtime, the shader doesn't allow you to sample the background anywhere but under the current output coordinate. If you try to sample other coordinates, it just returns the color of the current coordinate instead, ignoring the coordinates you specified. This seems to occur only at runtime, because it works properly in the Pixel Bender toolkit. This limitation makes it impossible to simulate, for example, the Aero Glass effect in Windows Vista/7, because you cannot sample the background properly for blurring. I must mention that it is possible to create the effect in Flash through manual composition techniques, but it's hard to determine when it actually needs updated, because Flash does not provide information about when a particular area of the screen or a particular display object needs re-rendered. For example, you may have a fixed glass surface with objects moving underneath it that don't dispatch events when they move. The only alternative is to re-render the glass bar every frame, which is inefficient, which is why I am trying to do it through a blendShader so Flash determines when it needs rendered automatically. Is there a technical reason for this limitation, or is it an oversight of some sort? Does anyone know of a workaround, or a way I could provide my manual composition implementation with information about when it needs re-rendered? The limitation is mentioned with no explanation in the last note in this page: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/as3/dev/WSB19E965E-CCD2-4174-8077-8E5D0141A4A8.html It says: "Note: When a Pixel Bender shader program is run as a blend in Flash Player or AIR, the sampling and outCoord() functions behave differently than in other contexts.In a blend, a sampling function will always return the current pixel being evaluated by the shader. You cannot, for example, use add an offset to outCoord() in order to sample a neighboring pixel. Likewise, if you use the outCoord() function outside a sampling function, its coordinates always evaluate to 0. You cannot, for example, use the position of a pixel to influence how the blended images are combined."

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• Observing flow control idle time in TCP

  - by user12820842

  Previously I described how to observe congestion control strategies during transmission, and here I talked about TCP's sliding window approach for handling flow control on the receive side. A neat trick would now be to put the pieces together and ask the following question - how often is TCP transmission blocked by congestion control (send-side flow control) versus a zero-sized send window (which is the receiver saying it cannot process any more data)? So in effect we are asking whether the size of the receive window of the peer or the congestion control strategy may be sub-optimal. The result of such a problem would be that we have TCP data that we could be transmitting but we are not, potentially effecting throughput. So flow control is in effect: when the congestion window is less than or equal to the amount of bytes outstanding on the connection. We can derive this from args[3]-tcps_snxt - args[3]-tcps_suna, i.e. the difference between the next sequence number to send and the lowest unacknowledged sequence number; and when the window in the TCP segment received is advertised as 0 We time from these events until we send new data (i.e. args[4]-tcp_seq = snxt value when window closes. Here's the script: #!/usr/sbin/dtrace -s #pragma D option quiet tcp:::send / (args[3]-tcps_snxt - args[3]-tcps_suna) = args[3]-tcps_cwnd / { cwndclosed[args[1]-cs_cid] = timestamp; cwndsnxt[args[1]-cs_cid] = args[3]-tcps_snxt; @numclosed["cwnd", args[2]-ip_daddr, args[4]-tcp_dport] = count(); } tcp:::send / cwndclosed[args[1]-cs_cid] && args[4]-tcp_seq = cwndsnxt[args[1]-cs_cid] / { @meantimeclosed["cwnd", args[2]-ip_daddr, args[4]-tcp_dport] = avg(timestamp - cwndclosed[args[1]-cs_cid]); @stddevtimeclosed["cwnd", args[2]-ip_daddr, args[4]-tcp_dport] = stddev(timestamp - cwndclosed[args[1]-cs_cid]); @numclosed["cwnd", args[2]-ip_daddr, args[4]-tcp_dport] = count(); cwndclosed[args[1]-cs_cid] = 0; cwndsnxt[args[1]-cs_cid] = 0; } tcp:::receive / args[4]-tcp_window == 0 && (args[4]-tcp_flags & (TH_SYN|TH_RST|TH_FIN)) == 0 / { swndclosed[args[1]-cs_cid] = timestamp; swndsnxt[args[1]-cs_cid] = args[3]-tcps_snxt; @numclosed["swnd", args[2]-ip_saddr, args[4]-tcp_dport] = count(); } tcp:::send / swndclosed[args[1]-cs_cid] && args[4]-tcp_seq = swndsnxt[args[1]-cs_cid] / { @meantimeclosed["swnd", args[2]-ip_daddr, args[4]-tcp_sport] = avg(timestamp - swndclosed[args[1]-cs_cid]); @stddevtimeclosed["swnd", args[2]-ip_daddr, args[4]-tcp_sport] = stddev(timestamp - swndclosed[args[1]-cs_cid]); swndclosed[args[1]-cs_cid] = 0; swndsnxt[args[1]-cs_cid] = 0; } END { printf("%-6s %-20s %-8s %-25s %-8s %-8s\n", "Window", "Remote host", "Port", "TCP Avg WndClosed(ns)", "StdDev", "Num"); printa("%-6s %-20s %-8d %@-25d %@-8d %@-8d\n", @meantimeclosed, @stddevtimeclosed, @numclosed); } So this script will show us whether the peer's receive window size is preventing flow ("swnd" events) or whether congestion control is limiting flow ("cwnd" events). As an example I traced on a server with a large file transfer in progress via a webserver and with an active ssh connection running "find / -depth -print". Here is the output: ^C Window Remote host Port TCP Avg WndClosed(ns) StdDev Num cwnd 10.175.96.92 80 86064329 77311705 125 cwnd 10.175.96.92 22 122068522 151039669 81 So we see in this case, the congestion window closes 125 times for port 80 connections and 81 times for ssh. The average time the window is closed is 0.086sec for port 80 and 0.12sec for port 22. So if you wish to change congestion control algorithm in Oracle Solaris 11, a useful step may be to see if congestion really is an issue on your network. Scripts like the one posted above can help assess this, but it's worth reiterating that if congestion control is occuring, that's not necessarily a problem that needs fixing. Recall that congestion control is about controlling flow to prevent large-scale drops, so looking at congestion events in isolation doesn't tell us the whole story. For example, are we seeing more congestion events with one control algorithm, but more drops/retransmission with another? As always, it's best to start with measures of throughput and latency before arriving at a specific hypothesis such as "my congestion control algorithm is sub-optimal".

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• How to suggest using an ORM instead of stored procedures?

  - by Wayne M

  I work at a company that only uses stored procedures for all data access, which makes it very annoying to keep our local databases in sync as every commit we have to run new procs. I have used some basic ORMs in the past and I find the experience much better and cleaner. I'd like to suggest to the development manager and rest of the team that we look into using an ORM Of some kind for future development (the rest of the team are only familiar with stored procedures and have never used anything else). The current architecture is .NET 3.5 written like .NET 1.1, with "god classes" that use a strange implementation of ActiveRecord and return untyped DataSets which are looped over in code-behind files - the classes work something like this: class Foo { public bool LoadFoo() { bool blnResult = false; if (this.FooID == 0) { throw new Exception("FooID must be set before calling this method."); } DataSet ds = // ... call to Sproc if (ds.Tables[0].Rows.Count > 0) { foo.FooName = ds.Tables[0].Rows[0]["FooName"].ToString(); // other properties set blnResult = true; } return blnResult; } } // Consumer Foo foo = new Foo(); foo.FooID = 1234; foo.LoadFoo(); // do stuff with foo... There is pretty much no application of any design patterns. There are no tests whatsoever (nobody else knows how to write unit tests, and testing is done through manually loading up the website and poking around). Looking through our database we have: 199 tables, 13 views, a whopping 926 stored procedures and 93 functions. About 30 or so tables are used for batch jobs or external things, the remainder are used in our core application. Is it even worth pursuing a different approach in this scenario? I'm talking about moving forward only since we aren't allowed to refactor the existing code since "it works" so we cannot change the existing classes to use an ORM, but I don't know how often we add brand new modules instead of adding to/fixing current modules so I'm not sure if an ORM is the right approach (too much invested in stored procedures and DataSets). If it is the right choice, how should I present the case for using one? Off the top of my head the only benefits I can think of is having cleaner code (although it might not be, since the current architecture isn't built with ORMs in mind so we would basically be jury-rigging ORMs on to future modules but the old ones would still be using the DataSets) and less hassle to have to remember what procedure scripts have been run and which need to be run, etc. but that's it, and I don't know how compelling an argument that would be. Maintainability is another concern but one that nobody except me seems to be concerned about.

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• 2D game - Missile shooting problem on Android

  - by Niksa

  Hello, I have to make a tank that sits still but moves his turret and shoots missiles. As this is my first Android application ever and I haven't done any game development either, I've come across a few problems... Now, I did the tank and the moving turret once I read the Android tutorial for the LunarLander sample code. So this code is based on the LunarLander code. But I'm having trouble doing the missile firing then SPACE button is being pressed. private void doDraw(Canvas canvas) { canvas.drawBitmap(backgroundImage, 0, 0, null); // draws the tank canvas.drawBitmap(tank, x_tank, y_tank, new Paint()); // draws and rotates the tank turret canvas.rotate((float) mHeading, (float) x_turret + mTurretWidth, y_turret); canvas.drawBitmap(turret, x_turret, y_turret, new Paint()); // draws the grenade that is a regular circle from ShapeDrawable class bullet.setBounds(x_bullet, y_bullet, x_bullet + width, y_bullet + height); bullet.draw(canvas); } UPDATE GAME method private void updateGame() throws InterruptedException { long now = System.currentTimeMillis(); if (mLastTime > now) return; double elapsed = (now - mLastTime) / 1000.0; mLastTime = now; // dUP and dDown, rotates the turret from 0 to 75 degrees. if (dUp) mHeading += 1 * (PHYS_SLEW_SEC * elapsed); if (mHeading >= 75) mHeading = 75; if (dDown) mHeading += (-1) * (PHYS_SLEW_SEC * elapsed); if (mHeading < 0) mHeading = 0; if (dSpace){ // missile Logic, a straight trajectorie for now x_bullet -= 1; y_bullet -= 1; //doesn't work, has to be updated every pixel or what? } boolean doKeyDown(int keyCode, KeyEvent msg) { boolean handled = false; synchronized (mSurfaceHolder) { if (keyCode == KeyEvent.KEYCODE_SPACE){ dSpace = true; handled = true; } if (keyCode == KeyEvent.KEYCODE_DPAD_UP){ dUp = true; handled = true; } if (keyCode == KeyEvent.KEYCODE_DPAD_DOWN){ dDown = true; handled = true; } return handled; } } } a method run that runs the game... public void run() { while (mRun) { Canvas c = null; try { c = mSurfaceHolder.lockCanvas(null); synchronized (mSurfaceHolder) { if (mMode == STATE_RUNNING) updateGame(); doDraw(c); } } catch (InterruptedException e) { // TODO Auto-generated catch block e.printStackTrace(); } finally { // do this in a finally so that if an exception is thrown // during the above, we don't leave the Surface in an // inconsistent state if (c != null) { mSurfaceHolder.unlockCanvasAndPost(c); } } } } So the question would be, how do I make that the bullet is fired on a single SPACE key press from the turret to the end of the screen? Could you help me out here, I seem to be in the dark here... Thanks, Niksa

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• Too much delay while sending object over UDP to server

  - by RomZes

  I'm getting 4 sec delay when sending objects over UDP. Working on small game and trying to implement multiplayer. For now just trying to synchronize movements of 2 balls on the screen. StartingPoint.java is my server(first player), that receiving serialized objects (coordinates). SecondPlayer.java is client that sending serialized objects to server. When I'm moving my first object it appears 4 seconds later on different screen. StartingPoint.java @Override public void run() { byte[] receiveData = new byte[256]; byte[] sendData = new byte[256]; // DatagramSocket socketS; try { socket = new DatagramSocket(5000); System.out.println("Socket created on "+ port + " port"); } catch (SocketException e1) { // TODO Auto-generated catch block e1.printStackTrace(); } while(true){ b1.update(this); b3.update(); System.out.println("Starting server..."); //// Receiving and deserializing object try { //socket.setSoTimeout(1000); DatagramPacket packet = new DatagramPacket(buf, buf.length); socket.receive(packet); byte[] data = packet.getData(); ByteArrayInputStream in = new ByteArrayInputStream(data); ObjectInputStream is = new ObjectInputStream(in); // socket.setSoTimeout(300); b1 = (Ball) is.readObject(); } catch (IOException | ClassNotFoundException e) { // TODO Auto-generated catch block e.printStackTrace(); } repaint(); try { Thread.sleep(17); } catch (InterruptedException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } SecondPlayer.java @Override public void run() { while(true){ b.update(); networkSend(); repaint(); try { Thread.sleep(17); } catch (InterruptedException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } } public void networkSend(){ // Serialize to a byte array try { ByteArrayOutputStream bStream = new ByteArrayOutputStream(); ObjectOutputStream oo; oo = new ObjectOutputStream(bStream); oo.writeObject(b); oo.flush(); oo.close(); byte[] bufCar = bStream.toByteArray(); //socket = new DatagramSocket(); //socket.setSoTimeout(1000); InetAddress address = InetAddress.getByName("localhost"); DatagramPacket packet = new DatagramPacket(bufCar, bufCar.length, address, port); socket.send(packet); } catch (IOException e) { // TODO Auto-generated catch block e.printStackTrace(); }

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• WebCenter Customer Spotlight: Regency Centers Corporation

  - by me

  Author: Peter Reiser - Social Business Evangelist, Oracle WebCenter  Solution SummaryRegency Centers Corporation, based in Jacksonville, FL, is a leading national owner, operator, and developer of grocery-anchored and community shopping centers. Regency grew rapidly over much of the last decade. To keep up with the monthly and yearly administrative processes required to manage thousands of tenants, including reconciling yearly pass-through expenses, the customer upgraded to Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Version 9.0 and deployed Oracle WebCenter Imaging, Process Management and Oracle BI Publisher, to streamline invoice processing and reporting. Using Oracle WebCenter Imaging - Regency accelerated and improved vendor invoice accuracy  which increases process integrity by identifying potential duplicate bills while enabling rapid approval of electronic invoice documents. Company Overview Regency Centers Corporation, based in Jacksonville, FL,  is a leading national owner, operator, and developer of grocery-anchored and community shopping centers. The company owns 367 centers, totaling nearly 50 million square feet, located in top markets throughout the United States. Founded in 1963 and operating as a fully integrated real estate company, Regency is a qualified real estate investment trust that is self-administered and self-managed, operating from 17 regional offices around the country.  Business Challenges Ensure continued support of vital business applications that drive the real estate developer’s key business processes, including property management and tenant payment processing Streamline year-end expense recognition and calculation, enabling faster tenant billing Move to a Web-based platform to deliver greater mobility and convenience to employees Minimize system customizations to reduce IT management costs and burden moving forward Solution DeployedRecency Centers Corporation worked with the  Oracle Partner ICS to upgrade to Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Version 9.0, migrating to a more user-friendly, Web-based platform and realizing numerous new efficiencies in property management and tenant payment processing. They accelerated and improved vendor invoice accuracy with Oracle WebCenter Imaging, which increases process integrity by identifying potential duplicate bills while enabling rapid approval of electronic invoice documents. Business Results Enabled faster and more accurate tenant billing for year-end expenses, accelerating collections of millions of dollars in revenue Gained full audit and drill-down capabilities that facilitate understanding various aspects of calculations for expense participation generation Increases process integrity by identifying potential duplicate bills while enabling rapid approval of electronic invoice documents Helped to ensure on-time payments to hundreds of vendors, including contractors and utilities "We have realized numerous efficiencies with Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.0, particularly around tenant billings. It accelerates our year-end expense reconciliation process and enables us to create and process billings more quickly.” James Chiang, Vice President of Real Estate Accounting Regency Centers Corporation Additional Information Regency Centers Corporation Customer Snapshot Oracle WebCenter Imaging JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Financials 9.0 JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Project Costing JD Edwards EnterpiseOne Real Estate Management Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Oracle Essbase

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• Was I wrong about JavaScript?

  - by jboyer

  Yes, I was. Recently, I’ve taken a good hard look at JavaScript. I’ve used it before but mostly in the capacity of web design. Using JQuery to make your web page do cool stuff is different than really creating a JavaScript application using all of the language constructs. What I’m finding as I use it more is that I may have been wrong about my assumptions about it. Let me explain.   I enjoyed doing cool stuff with JQuery but the limited experience with JavaScript as a language coupled with the bad things that I heard about it led me to not have any real interest in it. However, JavaScript is ubiquitous on the web and if I want to do any web development, which I do, I need to learn it. So here I am, diving deep into the language with the help of the JavaScript Fundamentals training course at Pluralsight (great training for a low price) and the JavaScript: The Good Parts book by Douglas Crockford.   Now, there are certainly parts of JavaScript that are bad. I think these are well known by any developer that uses it. The parts that I feel are especially egregious are the following: The global object null vs. undefined truthy and falsy limited (nearly nonexistent) scoping ‘==’ and ‘===’ (I just don’t get the reason for coercion)   However, what I am finding hiding under the covers of the bad things is a good language. I am finding that I am legitimately enjoying JavaScript. This I was not expecting. I’m not going to go into a huge dissertation on what I like about it, but some things include: Object literal notation dynamic typing functional style (JavaScript: The Good Parts describes it as LISP in C clothing) JSON (better than XML) There are parts of JavaScript that seem strange to OOP developers like myself. However, just because it is different or seems strange does not mean it is bad. Some differences are quite interesting and useful.   I feel that it is important for developers to challenge their assumptions and also to be able to admit when they are wrong on a topic. Many different situations can arise that lead to this, such as choosing the wrong technology for a problem’s solution, misunderstanding the requirements, etc. I decided to challenge my assumptions about JavaScript instead of moving straight into CoffeeScript or Dart. After exploring it, I find that I am beginning to enjoy it the more I use it. As long as there are those like Crockford to help guide me in the right way to code in JavaScript, I can create elegant and efficient solutions to problems and add another ‘arrow’ to the ‘quiver’, so to speak. I do still intend to learn CoffeeScript to see what the hub-bub is about, but now I no longer have to be afraid of JavaScript as a legitimate programming language.   Has something similar ever happened to you? Tell me about it in the comments below.

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• Pathfinding for fleeing

  - by Philipp

  As you know there are plenty of solutions when you wand to find the best path in a 2-dimensional environment which leads from point A to point B. But how do I calculate a path when an object is at point A, and wants to get away from point B, as fast and far as possible? A bit of background information: My game uses a 2d environment which isn't tile-based but has floating point accuracy. The movement is vector-based. The pathfinding is done by partitioning the game world into rectangles which are walkable or non-walkable and building a graph out of their corners. I already have pathfinding between points working by using Dijkstras algorithm. The use-case for the fleeing algorithm is that in certain situations, actors in my game should perceive another actor as a danger and flee from it. The trivial solution would be to just move the actor in a vector in the direction which is opposite from the threat until a "safe" distance was reached or the actor reaches a wall where it then covers in fear. The problem with this approach is that actors will be blocked by small obstacles they could easily get around. As long as moving along the wall wouldn't bring them closer to the threat they could do that, but it would look smarter when they would avoid obstacles in the first place: Another problem I see is with dead ends in the map geometry. In some situations a being must choose between a path which gets it faster away now but ends in a dead end where it would be trapped, or another path which would mean that it wouldn't get that far away from the danger at first (or even a bit closer) but on the other hand would have a much greater long-term reward in that it would eventually get them much further away. So the short-term reward of getting away fast must be somehow valued against the long-term reward of getting away far. There is also another rating problem for situations where an actor should accept to move closer to a minor threat to get away from a much larger threat. But completely ignoring all minor threats would be foolish, too (that's why the actor in this graphic goes out of its way to avoid the minor threat in the upper right area): Are there any standard solutions for this problem?

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• Current State EA: Focus on the Integration!!!

  - by Eric A. Stephens

  A recent project has me at the front end of a large implementation effort covering multiple software components. In addition to the challenges of integrating 15-20 separate and new software components there is the challenge of integrating the portfolio into an existing environment. Like other clients I've worked with and other environments I've worked in for many years, this is typical. The applications are undocumented and under patched leading to a mystery for any architect leading change.  We can boil down most architecture development methodologies (ADM) into first understanding the current/baseline state and then envisioning one or more future states. Many pundits emphasize the need to focus on the future/target states. I agree since enterprise architecture (EA) is about where you are going and not so much where you have been. But to be effective in the future, I contend some focused time needs to be spent on the current state. And specifically on the integration. Integration is always the difficult part of a project (I might put it more coarsely at a cocktail party). While I don't have a case study, my anecdotal experience suggests poorly integrated application portfolios tend to cost more to operate and create entropy when trying to respond to new changes and opportunities. In the aforementioned project, I was able to get one of our EAs assigned to focus on just integration almost immediately. While we're still early in the process, this EA is uncovering all sorts of information that will greatly assist our future state planning for this solution. This information is driving early decision making that we anticipate will accelerate our efforts moving forward. #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; } #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; } #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; } #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }

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• algorithm for project euler problem no 18

  - by Valentino Ru

  Problem number 18 from Project Euler's site is as follows: By starting at the top of the triangle below and moving to adjacent numbers on the row below, the maximum total from top to bottom is 23. 3 7 4 2 4 6 8 5 9 3 That is, 3 + 7 + 4 + 9 = 23. Find the maximum total from top to bottom of the triangle below: 75 95 64 17 47 82 18 35 87 10 20 04 82 47 65 19 01 23 75 03 34 88 02 77 73 07 63 67 99 65 04 28 06 16 70 92 41 41 26 56 83 40 80 70 33 41 48 72 33 47 32 37 16 94 29 53 71 44 65 25 43 91 52 97 51 14 70 11 33 28 77 73 17 78 39 68 17 57 91 71 52 38 17 14 91 43 58 50 27 29 48 63 66 04 68 89 53 67 30 73 16 69 87 40 31 04 62 98 27 23 09 70 98 73 93 38 53 60 04 23 NOTE: As there are only 16384 routes, it is possible to solve this problem by trying every route. However, Problem 67, is the same challenge with a triangle containing one-hundred rows; it cannot be solved by brute force, and requires a clever method! ;o) The formulation of this problems does not make clear if the "Traversor" is greedy, meaning that he always choosed the child with be higher value the maximum of every single walkthrough is asked The NOTE says, that it is possible to solve this problem by trying every route. This means to me, that is is also possible without! This leads to my actual question: Assumed that not the greedy one is the max, is there any algorithm that finds the max walkthrough value without trying every route and that doesn't act like the greedy algorithm? I implemented an algorithm in Java, putting the values first in a node structure, then applying the greedy algorithm. The result, however, is cosidered as wrong by Project Euler. sum = 0; void findWay(Node node){ sum += node.value; if(node.nodeLeft != null && node.nodeRight != null){ if(node.nodeLeft.value > node.nodeRight.value){ findWay(node.nodeLeft); }else{ findWay(node.nodeRight); } } }

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• Jitter during wall collisions with Bullet Physics: contact/penetration tolerance?

  - by Niriel

  I use the bullet physics engine through Panda3d. My scene is still very simple, think 'Wolfenstein3d': tile-based, walls are solid cubes. I expect walls to block the player, and I expect the player to slide along the walls in case of non-normal incidence. What I get is what I expect, with one difference: there is some jitter. If I try to force myself into the wall, then I see the frames blinking quickly between two positions. These differ by about 0.04 units of distance, which corresponds to 4 cm in my game. I noticed a 4 cm elsewhere: the bottom of my player capsule is 4 cm below ground, when at rest. Does that mean that there is somewhere in the Bullet engine a default 0.04-units-long tolerance to differentiate contact from collision? If so, what should I do ? Should I change the scale of my game so that these 0.04 units correspond to 0.4 cm, making the jitter ten times smaller? Or can I ask bullet to change its tolerance to a smaller value? Edit This is the jitter I get: 6.155 - 6.118 = 0.036 LPoint3f(0, 6.11694, 0.835) LPoint3f(0, 6.15499, 0.835) LPoint3f(0, 6.11802, 0.835) LPoint3f(0, 6.15545, 0.835) LPoint3f(0, 6.11817, 0.835) LPoint3f(0, 6.15726, 0.835) LPoint3f(0, 6.11876, 0.835) LPoint3f(0, 6.15911, 0.835) LPoint3f(0, 6.11937, 0.835) I found a setMargin method. I set it to 5 mm both on the BoxShape for the walls and on the Capsule shape for the player. It still jitters by about 35 mm as illustrated by this log (11.117 - 11.082 = 0.035): LPoint3f(0, 11.0821, 0.905) LPoint3f(0, 11.1169, 0.905) LPoint3f(0, 11.082, 0.905) LPoint3f(0, 11.117, 0.905) LPoint3f(0, 11.082, 0.905) LPoint3f(0, 11.117, 0.905) LPoint3f(0, 11.0821, 0.905) LPoint3f(0, 11.1175, 0.905) LPoint3f(0, 11.0822, 0.905) LPoint3f(0, 11.1178, 0.905) LPoint3f(0, 11.0823, 0.905) LPoint3f(0, 11.1183, 0.905) The margin on the capsule did change my penetration with the floor though, I'm a bit higher (0.905 instead of 0.835). However, it did not change anything when colliding with the walls. How can I make the collisions against the walls less jittery? Edit, the day after: After more investigation, it appears that dynamic objects behave well. My problem comes from the btKinematicCharacterController that I use for moving my character; that stuff is totally bugged, according to the whole Internet :/.

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• Proven Approach to Financial Progress Using Modern Best Practice

  - by Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE by Larry Simcox, Sr. Director, Oracle Midsize Programs Top performing organizations generate 25 percent higher profit margins and grow at twice the rate of their competitors. How do they do it? Recently, Dr. Stephen G. Timme, President of FinListics Solutions and Adjunct Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, joined me on a webcast to answer that question. I've know Dr. Timme since my days at G-log when we worked together to help customers determine the ROI of transportation management solutions. We were also joined by Steve Cox, Vice President of Oracle Midsize Programs, who recently published an Oracle E-book, "Modern Best Practice Explained". In this webcast, Cox provides his perspective on how best performing companies are moving from best practice to modern best practice.  Watch the webcast replay and you'll learn about the easy to follow, top down approach to: Identify processes that should be targeted for improvement Leverage a modern best practice maturity model to start a path to progress Link financial performance gaps to operational KPIs Improve cash flow by benchmarking key financial metrics Develop intelligent estimates of achievable cash flow benefits Click HERE to watch a replay of the webcast. You might also be interested in the following: Video: Modern Best Practices Defined  AppCast: Modern Best Practices for Growing Companies Looking for more news and information about Oracle Solutions for Midsize Companies? Read the latest Oracle for Midsize Companies Newsletter Sign-up to receive the latest communications from Oracle’s industry leaders and experts Larry Simcox Senior Director, Oracle Midsize Programs responsible for supporting and creating marketing content ,communications, sales and partner program support for Oracle's go to market activities for midsize companies. I have over 17 years experience helping customers identify the value and ROI from their IT investment. I live in Charlotte NC with my family and my dog Dingo. The views expressed here are my own, and not necessarily those of Oracle. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}

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• Looking for a real-world example illustrating that composition can be superior to inheritance

  - by Job

  I watched a bunch of lectures on Clojure and functional programming by Rich Hickey as well as some of the SICP lectures, and I am sold on many concepts of functional programming. I incorporated some of them into my C# code at a previous job, and luckily it was easy to write C# code in a more functional style. At my new job we use Python and multiple inheritance is all the rage. My co-workers are very smart but they have to produce code fast given the nature of the company. I am learning both the tools and the codebase, but the architecture itself slows me down as well. I have not written the existing class hierarchy (neither would I be able to remember everything about it), and so, when I started adding a fairly small feature, I realized that I had to read a lot of code in the process. At the surface the code is neatly organized and split into small functions/methods and not copy-paste-repetitive, but the flip side of being not repetitive is that there is some magic functionality hidden somewhere in the hierarchy chain that magically glues things together and does work on my behalf, but it is very hard to find and follow. I had to fire up a profiler and run it through several examples and plot the execution graph as well as step through a debugger a few times, search the code for some substring and just read pages at the time. I am pretty sure that once I am done, my resulting code will be short and neatly organized, and yet not very readable. What I write feels declarative, as if I was writing an XML file that drives some other magic engine, except that there is no clear documentation on what the XML should look like and what the engine does except for the existing examples that I can read as well as the source code for the 'engine'. There has got to be a better way. IMO using composition over inheritance can help quite a bit. That way the computation will be linear rather than jumping all over the hierarchy tree. Whenever the functionality does not quite fit into an inheritance model, it will need to be mangled to fit in, or the entire inheritance hierarchy will need to be refactored/rebalanced, sort of like an unbalanced binary tree needs reshuffling from time to time in order to improve the average seek time. As I mentioned before, my co-workers are very smart; they just have been doing things a certain way and probably have an ability to hold a lot of unrelated crap in their head at once. I want to convince them to give composition and functional as opposed to OOP approach a try. To do that, I need to find some very good material. I do not think that a SCIP lecture or one by Rich Hickey will do - I am afraid it will be flagged down as too academic. Then, simple examples of Dog and Frog and AddressBook classes do not really connivence one way or the other - they show how inheritance can be converted to composition but not why it is truly and objectively better. What I am looking for is some real-world example of code that has been written with a lot of inheritance, then hit a wall and re-written in a different style that uses composition. Perhaps there is a blog or a chapter. I am looking for something that can summarize and illustrate the sort of pain that I am going through. I already have been throwing the phrase "composition over inheritance" around, but it was not received as enthusiastically as I had hoped. I do not want to be perceived as a new guy who likes to complain and bash existing code while looking for a perfect approach while not contributing fast enough. At the same time, my gut is convinced that inheritance is often the instrument of evil and I want to show a better way in a near future. Have you stumbled upon any great resources that can help me?

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• JSR 355 Final Release, and moves JCP to version 2.9

  - by heathervc

  JSR 355, JCP EC Merge, passed the JCP EC Final Approval Ballot on 13 August 2012, with 14 Yes votes, 1 abstain (1 member did not vote) on the SE/EE EC, and 12 yes votes (2 members were not eligible to vote) on the ME EC.  JSR 355 posted a Final Release this week, moving the JCP program version to JCP 2.9.  The transition to a merged EC will happen after the 2012 EC Elections, as defined in the Appendix B of the JCP (pasted below), and the EC will operate under the new EC Standing Rules. In the previous version (2.8) of this Process Document there were two separate Executive Committees, one for Java ME and one for Java SE and Java EE combined. The single Executive Committee described in this version of the Process Document will be implemented through the following process: The 2012 annual elections will be held as defined in JCP 2.8, but candidates will be informed that if they are elected their term will be for only a single year, since all candidates must stand for re-election in 2013. Immediately after the 2012 election the two ECs will be merged. Oracle and IBM's second seats will be eliminated, resulting in a single EC with 30 members. All subsequent JSR ballots (even for in-progress JSRs) will then be voted on by the merged EC. For the 2013 annual elections three Ratified and two Elected Seats will be eliminated, thereby reducing the EC to 25 members. All 25 seats will be up for re-election in 2013. Members elected in 2013 will be ranked to determine whether their initial term will be one or two years. The 50% of Ratified and 50% of Elected members who receive the most votes will serve an initial two-year term, while all others will serve an initial one year term. All members elected in 2014 and subsequently will serve a two-year term. For clarity, note that the provisions specified in this version of the Process Document regarding a merged EC will apply to subsequent ballots on all existing JSRs, whether or not the Spec Leads of those JSRs chose to adopt this version of the Process Document in its entirety. <end of Appendix> Also of note:  the materials and minutes from the July EC meeting and the June EC Meeting are now available--following the July EC Meeting, Samsung and SK Telecom lost their EC seats. The June EC meeting also had a public portion--the audio from the public portion of the EC meeting are now posted online.  For Spec Leads there is also the recording of the EG Nominations call.

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• Why do I always think I know much less than others? [closed]

  - by John Kenedy

  I have been in programming since primary 6. Since the time DOS comes, I have been doing programming in quickbasic 4.5, then to VB 6, then to C#. In between I also do programming in C++. But every time I open Stack Overflow and trying to help others answering their problems, it seems that I know nothing. I feel that I am so stupid even I have been in programming for so long. I would shock reading all the questions and unable to find any clue. Is technology moving too fast that left out me? I feel that technology changes too fast and I can't keep up, when I know ASP.NET web form, MVC is out, when I know MVC, android/iphone/HTML5 app is popular. It seems that I am chasing something and never reach 'it'. I don't know whether this is correct place for me to talk about this. I just wish to listen to opinion like you, how do you think technology should grow instead of recreating language, adding bug here and there to let programmer figure it out, while big company share the solution among themselves. This is exactly how I feel. The simple example is how do you think why doesn't Dictionary<> in .NET provide iterating the object using index? Why must we use Key or GetEnumerator(). Developer has to google and read wasted hour of hour of time to find pieces of hack code to use reflection to achieve reading from index. Where developer will keep it as collection and valuable code. HOwever when times come, everything changes again, developer has to find answer for new silly problems again! Yes, I really hate it! I hate how many big companies are playing with the developer by cutting a big picture into small puzzle and messing it up and asking developer to place it together themselves. As if they are creating problems for us to solve it, so we are unable to grow upfront, we are being manipulated by those silly problems they have created. Another sample would how difficult to collect Cookies from CookieContainer without passing the URL, yes without the URL and I WANT to get all cookie in the cookiecontainer without knowing the URL, I want to iterate all. Why does micros0ft have to limit me from doing that?

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• Self-Executing Anonymous Function vs Prototype

  - by Robotsushi

  In Javascript there are a few clearly prominent techniques for create and manage classes/namespaces in javascript. I am curious what situations warrant using one technique vs. the other. I want to pick one and stick with it moving forward. I write enterprise code that is maintained and shared across multiple teams, and I want to know what is the best practice when writing maintainable javascript ? I tend to prefer Self-Executing Anonymous Functions however I am curious what the community vote is on these techniques. Prototype : function obj() { } obj.prototype.test = function() { alert('Hello?'); }; var obj2 = new obj(); obj2.test(); Self-Closing Anonymous Function : //Self-Executing Anonymous Function (function( skillet, $, undefined ) { //Private Property var isHot = true; //Public Property skillet.ingredient = "Bacon Strips"; //Public Method skillet.fry = function() { var oliveOil; addItem( "\t\n Butter \n\t" ); addItem( oliveOil ); console.log( "Frying " + skillet.ingredient ); }; //Private Method function addItem( item ) { if ( item !== undefined ) { console.log( "Adding " + $.trim(item) ); } } }( window.skillet = window.skillet || {}, jQuery )); //Public Properties console.log( skillet.ingredient ); //Bacon Strips //Public Methods skillet.fry(); //Adding Butter & Fraying Bacon Strips //Adding a Public Property skillet.quantity = "12"; console.log( skillet.quantity ); //12 //Adding New Functionality to the Skillet (function( skillet, $, undefined ) { //Private Property var amountOfGrease = "1 Cup"; //Public Method skillet.toString = function() { console.log( skillet.quantity + " " + skillet.ingredient + " & " + amountOfGrease + " of Grease" ); console.log( isHot ? "Hot" : "Cold" ); }; }( window.skillet = window.skillet || {}, jQuery )); //end of skillet definition try { //12 Bacon Strips & 1 Cup of Grease skillet.toString(); //Throws Exception } catch( e ) { console.log( e.message ); //isHot is not defined } I feel that I should mention that the Self-Executing Anonymous Function is the pattern used by the jQuery team. Update When I asked this question I didn't truly see the importance of what I was trying to understand. The real issue at hand is whether or not to use new to create instances of your objects or to use patterns which do not require constructors of the use of the new keyword. I added my own answer, because in my opinion we should make use of patterns which don't use the new keyword. For more information please see my answer.

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• Fast Data - Big Data's achilles heel

  - by thegreeneman

  At OOW 2013 in Mark Hurd and Thomas Kurian's keynote, they discussed Oracle's Fast Data software solution stack and discussed a number of customers deploying Oracle's Big Data / Fast Data solutions and in particular Oracle's NoSQL Database.  Since that time, there have been a large number of request seeking clarification on how the Fast Data software stack works together to deliver on the promise of real-time Big Data solutions.   Fast Data is a software solution stack that deals with one aspect of Big Data, high velocity.   The software in the Fast Data solution stack involves 3 key pieces and their integration:  Oracle Event Processing, Oracle Coherence, Oracle NoSQL Database.   All three of these technologies address a high throughput, low latency data management requirement.   Oracle Event Processing enables continuous query to filter the Big Data fire hose, enable intelligent chained events to real-time service invocation and augments the data stream to provide Big Data enrichment. Extended SQL syntax allows the definition of sliding windows of time to allow SQL statements to look for triggers on events like breach of weighted moving average on a real-time data stream.    Oracle Coherence is a distributed, grid caching solution which is used to provide very low latency access to cached data when the data is too big to fit into a single process, so it is spread around in a grid architecture to provide memory latency speed access.  It also has some special capabilities to deploy remote behavioral execution for "near data" processing.   The Oracle NoSQL Database is designed to ingest simple key-value data at a controlled throughput rate while providing data redundancy in a cluster to facilitate highly concurrent low latency reads.  For example, when large sensor networks are generating data that need to be captured while analysts are simultaneously extracting the data using range based queries for upstream analytics.  Another example might be storing cookies from user web sessions for ultra low latency user profile management, also leveraging that data using holistic MapReduce operations with your Hadoop cluster to do segmented site analysis.  Understand how NoSQL plays a critical role in Big Data capture and enrichment while simultaneously providing a low latency and scalable data management infrastructure thru clustered, always on, parallel processing in a shared nothing architecture. Learn how easily a NoSQL cluster can be deployed to provide essential services in industry specific Fast Data solutions. See these technologies work together in a demonstration highlighting the salient features of these Fast Data enabling technologies in a location based personalization service. The question then becomes how do these things work together to deliver an end to end Fast Data solution.  The answer is that while different applications will exhibit unique requirements that may drive the need for one or the other of these technologies, often when it comes to Big Data you may need to use them together.   You may have the need for the memory latencies of the Coherence cache, but just have too much data to cache, so you use a combination of Coherence and Oracle NoSQL to handle extreme speed cache overflow and retrieval.   Here is a great reference to how these two technologies are integrated and work together.  Coherence & Oracle NoSQL Database.   On the stream processing side, it is similar as with the Coherence case.  As your sliding windows get larger, holding all the data in the stream can become difficult and out of band data may need to be offloaded into persistent storage.  OEP needs an extreme speed database like Oracle NoSQL Database to help it continue to perform for the real time loop while dealing with persistent spill in the data stream.  Here is a great resource to learn more about how OEP and Oracle NoSQL Database are integrated and work together.  OEP & Oracle NoSQL Database.

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• Brazil is Hot for Social Media

  - by Mike Stiles

  Today’s guest blog is from Oracle SVP Product Development Reggie Bradford, fresh off a visit to Sao Paulo, Brazil where he spoke at the Dachis Social Business Summit and spent some time getting a personal taste for the astonishing growth of social in Brazil, both in terms of usage and engagement. I knew it was big, but I now have an all-new appreciation for why the Wall Street Journal branded Brazil the “social media capital of the universe.” Brazil has the world’s 5th largest economy, an expanding middle class, an active younger demo market, a connected & outgoing culture, and an ongoing embrace of the social media platforms. According to comScore's 2012 Brazil Digital Future in Focus report, 97% are using social media, and that’s not even taking mobile-only users into account. There were 65 million Facebook users in 2012, spending an average 535 minutes there, up 208%. It’s one of Twitter’s fastest growing markets and the 2nd biggest market for YouTube. Instagram usage has grown over 300% since last year. That by itself is exciting, but look at the opportunity for social marketing brands. 74% of Brazilian social users follow brands on Facebook, and 59% have praised a company on either Twitter or Facebook. A 2011 Oh! Panel study found 81% of social networkers there used social to research new products and 75% went there looking for discounts. B2C eCommerce sales in Brazil is projected to hit $26.9 billion by 2015. I bet I’m not the only one who sees great things ahead, and I was fortunate enough give a keynote ABRADI, an association of leading digital agencies in Brazil with 53 execs from 35 agencies attending. I was also afforded the opportunity to give my impressions of what’s going on in Brazil to Jornal Propoganda & Marketing, one of the most popular publications in Latin America for marketers. I conveyed that especially in an environment like Brazil, where social users are so willing to connect and engage brands, marketers need to back away from the heavy-handed, one-way messaging of old school advertising and move toward genuine relationships and trust-building. To aide in this, organizational and operation changes must be embraced inside the enterprise. We've talked often about the new, tighter partnership forming between the CIO and CMO. If this partnership is not encouraged, fostered and resourced, the increasing amount of time consumers spend on mobile and digital, and the efficiencies and integrations offered by cloud-based software cannot be exploited. These are the kinds of changes that can yield social data that, when combined with enterprise data, helps you come to know your social audiences intimately and predict their needs. Consumers are always connected and need your brand to be accessible at any time, be it for information or customer service. And, of course, all of this is happening quite publicly. The holistic, socially-enable enterprise connects social to customer service systems and all other customer touch points, facilitating the kind of immediate, real-time, gratifying response customers are coming to expect. Social users in Brazil are highly active and clearly willing to meet us as brands more than halfway. Empowering yourself with a social management technology platform will have you set up to maximize this booming social market…from listening & monitoring to engagement to analytics to workflow & automation to globalization & language support. Brands, it’s time to be as social as the great people of Brazil are. Obrigado! @reggiebradfordPhoto: Gualberto107, freedigitalphotos.net

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• Questions to ask to ensure someone understands programming? (and iOS)

  - by Stephen J

  So, I've been tutoring my friend for 2 years. Most people learn programming on their own in 3-6 months, (sans algorithms). It's confusing 'cause he'll run anywhere I tell him to, understands how to read C and C++ honestly better than the average college student, and he'll modify and repeat anything I do... but for the love of god he doesn't move on to new things and he still has test anxiety. I've recently realized he's copied and toyed with existing, but not once gained an understanding of why. I was under the impression he was learning fast because he could write it, but when you say "Make a function that takes an NSString" and he says "How?" and I say "The same way you make ANY function that takes any parameter, NSString is just a type like int" and all I hear is "No, it's an NSString, it's a special thing." and we get into an arguing match 'cause I'm like "It's just a class like any other class, you've used them for months now" and blah... I've subconsciously avoided comprehension questions because of this. Anyway, if you have him copy a program and say "Just initialize it" "Where?" "I don't care, didLoad or initWithCoder or Awake from nib, anywhere it gets initialized" and "No, it has to be exactly where you had it!" "No it doesn't!" I'm sick of this, but he won't give up. So I'm done avoiding these yelling matches and becoming a sadist from now on. I would like some help in finding questions to ask him that force him to understand what he's doing. I'd like some help and any resources I can find. CQuestions looked like a good site, but now I need some iPhone stuff. For example: *What do properties do? How are they changed? How do you change the name of the getter? *Why are Booleans inefficent? What advantage does int have over a boolean and how does the bit-shift operator help? *What does Copy do to a string? *What's the difference between a view controller and a uiview? *Write a program from memory that displays blah on screen, and flashes each view one by one. From beginner up to intermediate, hobbyist with some algebra at most. I'm just looking for resources to work with. I left in backstory so you know to "twist" the questions so he doesn't know he's supposed to init a variable here or there, but has to figure it out, and learn why it goes "here" or that "anywhere is fine as long as it's". Sample programs, anything. I'm relatively open about this because, being a programmer, I seriously doubt he's the only one who has this issue. I'd like to know how others have overcome similar. What made things "click"? for you? Did you have a hard time finding answers on Google, and how did you learn a better way to find what you were looking for? (He's so exact, he'll search for how to write a checkers program with color X and Y inside a uiview, as his search string, instead of breaking it up into components, I need help with that too, and believe it is related). This type of problem has to remind one of us of someone they know. So, Exercises to force them to think? Ways we overcame this thing in the past? I greatly appreciate any help.

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• Data-Driven SOA with Oracle Data Integrator

  - by Irem Radzik

  v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Cambria","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"MS Mincho";} By Mike Eisterer, Data integration is more than simply moving data in bulk or in real-time, it is also about unifying information for improved business agility and integrating it in today’s service-oriented architectures. SOA enables organizations to easily define services which may then be discovered and leveraged by varying consumers. These consumers may be applications, customer facing portals, or complex business rules which are assembling services to automate process. Data as a foundational service provider is a key component of today’s successful SOA implementations. Oracle offers the broadest and most integrated portfolio of products to help you define, organize, orchestrate and consume data services. If you are attending Oracle OpenWorld next week, you will have ample opportunity to see the latest Oracle Data Integrator live in action and work with it yourself in two offered Hands-on Labs. Visit the hands-on lab to gain experience firsthand: Oracle Data Integrator and Oracle SOA Suite: Hands-on- Lab (HOL10480) Wed Oct 3rd 11:45AM Marriott Marquis- Salon 1/2 To learn more about Oracle Data Integrator, please visit our Introduction Hands-on LAB: Introduction to Oracle Data Integrator (HOL10481) Mon Oct 1st 3:15PM, Marriott Marquis- Salon 1/2 If you are not able to attend OpenWorld, please check out our latest resources for Data Integration.

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• Experimenting with other search engines

  - by Bill Graziano

  I’ve been a Google user so long I can hardly remember what I used before it.  Alta Vista maybe?  Or Yahoo.  I’ve tried Bing off and on but it never really stuck.  I probably care more about search engines than your average user because of their impact on SQLTeam.com.  Lately I’ve been trying two other search engines and actually switched to one of them. I’ve played with Blekko a little in the past.  They have some interesting ways to “slice up” your results.  For example, searching on “SQL Server /blogs /date” should just search all the recently updated blogs.  Those two extra words on the search are slashtags.  The full list of slashtags runs from /forums to just see forums to /twitter to /nikon to /reviews and on and on and on.  I laughed when I saw they had slashtags for both liberal and conservative.  I’d hate to find any search results that don’t match my existing worldview :)  You can also create your own slashtags.  I created a mini-search engine for the SQL Server blogs that I read.  You can search it for “backup” at http://blekko.com/ws/backup+/billgraziano/sql-sites.  I uploaded my OPML and it limited the search to just those sites.  It seems like the site is focusing more on curating results and less on algorithms.  This is an interesting site for those power searchers.  There are some great ways to curate results using slashtags.  For 99% of my searches (type words, click on one of the first few links) slashtags are overkill.  They do have some good information on page and site ranking though so I’ll probably send some time looking through that. Blekko recently got my attention again when they said they were banning “content farms” - and that includes eHow and experts-exchange.  I always feel used when I click on a link to EE and find myself scrolling all the way to the bottom to see if I can find the answer.  Sometimes it’s there but sometimes it tells me I need to pay first.  I’ve longed for a way to always exclude certain sites.  Blekko might be taking a hammer to a problem that needs a scalpel but it’s an interesting choice.  (And some of the comments in the TechCrunch link are interesting if you’re a search nerd.) DuckDuckGo is an odd name for a search engine.  Their big hook is that they don’t have search history.  If you wade through your Google account you can probably find the page where it stores your search history.  It was pretty enlightening to find mine.  It was easy to disable but that got me started looking at other search engines.  DDG (or DukGo) just feels like Google used to in the old days.  The results are good enough and the site is fast. Searches will return a snippet from WikiPedia or other site (like StackOverflow) at the top.  I think the idea is to answer the question without needing to visit the site.  I’m not sure that’s a good thing for SQLTeam.com. The only thing I really miss is image search.  You can add a “!i” at the end of any search and it will search the images on Bing.  Bing doesn’t have a great image search but it works for most of what I need.  They call these exclamation marks “!bangs” and they are kinda, sorta like slashtags.  I’ve been using DuckDuckGo now for a few weeks and I’m pretty happy with it.  I use Chrome for my browser and it was an easy switch to make.  It’s still a little surprising seeing my search results come up in a different format.  I’m starting to get used to it though.

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• Consumer Oriented Search In Oracle Endeca Information Discovery - Part 2

  - by Bob Zurek

  As discussed in my last blog posting on this topic, Information Discovery, a core capability of the Oracle Endeca Information Discovery solution enables businesses to search, discover and navigate through a wide variety of big data including structured, unstructured and semi-structured data. With search as a core advanced capabilities of our product it is important to understand some of the key differences and capabilities in the underlying data store of Oracle Endeca Information Discovery and that is our Endeca Server. In the last post on this subject, we talked about Exploratory Search capabilities along with support for cascading relevance. Additional search capabilities in the Endeca Server, which differentiate from simple keyword based "search boxes" in other Information Discovery products also include: The Endeca Server Supports Set Search.  The Endeca Server is organized around set retrieval, which means that it looks at groups of results (all the documents that match a search), as well as the relationship of each individual result to the set. Other approaches only compute the relevance of a document by comparing the document to the search query – not by comparing the document to all the others. For example, a search for “U.S.” in another approach might match to the title of a document and get a high ranking. But what if it were a collection of government documents in which “U.S.” appeared in many titles, making that clue less meaningful? A set analysis would reveal this and be used to adjust relevance accordingly. The Endeca Server Supports Second-Order Relvance. Unlike simple search interfaces in traditional BI tools, which provide limited relevance ranking, such as a list of results based on key word matching, Endeca enables users to determine the most salient terms to divide up the result. Determining this second-order relevance is the key to providing effective guidance. Support for Queries and Filters. Search is the most common query type, but hardly complete, and users need to express a wide range of queries. Oracle Endeca Information Discovery also includes navigation, interactive visualizations, analytics, range filters, geospatial filters, and other query types that are more commonly associated with BI tools. Unlike other approaches, these queries operate across structured, semi-structured and unstructured content stored in the Endeca Server. Furthermore, this set is easily extensible because the core engine allows for pluggable features to be added. Like a search engine, queries are answered with a results list, ranked to put the most likely matches first. Unlike “black box” relevance solutions, which generalize one strategy for everyone, we believe that optimal relevance strategies vary across domains. Therefore, it provides line-of-business owners with a set of relevance modules that let them tune the best results based on their content. The Endeca Server query result sets are summarized, which gives users guidance on how to refine and explore further. Summaries include Guided Navigation® (a form of faceted search), maps, charts, graphs, tag clouds, concept clusters, and clarification dialogs. Users don’t explicitly ask for these summaries; Oracle Endeca Information Discovery analytic applications provide the right ones, based on configurable controls and rules. For example, the analytic application might guide a procurement agent filtering for in-stock parts by visualizing the results on a map and calculating their average fulfillment time. Furthermore, the user can interact with summaries and filters without resorting to writing complex SQL queries. The user can simply just click to add filters. Within Oracle Endeca Information Discovery, all parts of the summaries are clickable and searchable. We are living in a search driven society where business users really seem to enjoy entering information into a search box. We do this everyday as consumers and therefore, we have gotten used to looking for that box. However, the key to getting the right results is to guide that user in a way that provides additional Discovery, beyond what they may have anticipated. This is why these important and advanced features of search inside the Endeca Server have been so important. They have helped to guide our great customers to success. 

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• With a little effort you can &ldquo;SEMI&rdquo;-protect your C# assemblies with obfuscation.

  - by mbcrump

  This method will not protect your assemblies from a experienced hacker. Everyday we see new keygens, cracks, serials being released that contain ways around copy protection from small companies. This is a simple process that will make a lot of hackers quit because so many others use nothing. If you were a thief would you pick the house that has security signs and an alarm or one that has nothing? To so begin: Obfuscation is the concealment of meaning in communication, making it confusing and harder to interpret. Lets begin by looking at the cartoon below:     You are probably familiar with the term and probably ignored this like most programmers ignore user security. Today, I’m going to show you reflection and a way to obfuscate it. Please understand that I am aware of ways around this, but I believe some security is better than no security.  In this sample program below, the code appears exactly as it does in Visual Studio. When the program runs, you get either a true or false in a console window. Sample Program. using System; using System.Diagnostics; using System.Linq;   namespace ObfuscateMe {     class Program     {                static void Main(string[] args)         {               Console.WriteLine(IsProcessOpen("notepad")); //Returns a True or False depending if you have notepad running.             Console.ReadLine();         }             public static bool IsProcessOpen(string name)         {             return Process.GetProcesses().Any(clsProcess => clsProcess.ProcessName.Contains(name));         }     } }   Pretend, that this is a commercial application. The hacker will only have the executable and maybe a few config files, etc. After reviewing the executable, he can determine if it was produced in .NET by examing the file in ILDASM or Redgate’s Reflector. We are going to examine the file using RedGate’s Reflector. Upon launch, we simply drag/drop the exe over to the application. We have the following for the Main method:   and for the IsProcessOpen method:     Without any other knowledge as to how this works, the hacker could export the exe and get vs project build or copy this code in and our application would run. Using Reflector output. using System; using System.Diagnostics; using System.Linq;   namespace ObfuscateMe {     class Program     {                static void Main(string[] args)         {               Console.WriteLine(IsProcessOpen("notepad"));             Console.ReadLine();         }             public static bool IsProcessOpen(string name)         {             return Process.GetProcesses().Any<Process>(delegate(Process clsProcess)             {                 return clsProcess.ProcessName.Contains(name);             });         }       } } The code is not identical, but returns the same value. At this point, with a little bit of effort you could prevent the hacker from reverse engineering your code so quickly by using Eazfuscator.NET. Eazfuscator.NET is just one of many programs built for this. Visual Studio ships with a community version of Dotfoscutor. So download and load Eazfuscator.NET and drag/drop your exectuable/project into the window. It will work for a few minutes depending if you have a quad-core or not. After it finishes, open the executable in RedGate Reflector and you will get the following: Main After Obfuscation IsProcessOpen Method after obfuscation: As you can see with the jumbled characters, it is not as easy as the first example. I am aware of methods around this, but it takes more effort and unless the hacker is up for the challenge, they will just pick another program. This is also helpful if you are a consultant and make clients pay a yearly license fee. This would prevent the average software developer from jumping into your security routine after you have left. I hope this article helped someone. If you have any feedback, please leave it in the comments below.

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