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  • Wisdom Lies in Collaborative Power and Intelligence

    - by kellsey.ruppel
    By Alakh Verma, Director, Platform Technology Solutions   In my recent blog posts, I shared insights on Predictive Analytics (Will Predictive Analytics at 'Speed of Thoughts' Help Businesses?), Real Time Decisions (How critical are Real Time decisions in business today?) and their significance in our lives in general and in businesses today. In the current business paradigm shift- with evolutionary social business, it is paramount that businesses look for wisdom in collaborative power and intelligence and equip their employees with the tools to engage with one another. There is an old time saying that 5 sticks tied together are stronger and unable to break as opposed to an individual stick. We have recently witnessed the power of ordinary people uniting together and fought collaboratively using Facebook and Twitter to topple down dictators in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya—and are threatening absolute rule in Syria. And an India one man’s (Anna Hazare) campaign against corruption went viral, bringing thousands to the streets in support. As anyone who has worked in a sizeable organization knows, there is no guarantee that the organization as a whole will perform efficiently and achieve its goals, even if each employee is individually efficient and every team has a high level of productivity. To achieve enterprise productivity, it is necessary not only for individuals and groups to “do things right” by working productively but also for the enterprise as a whole to “do the right things” - form the right teams, make the right decisions, allocate resources correctly, and effectively coordinate activities across the entire organization. Most organizations fall short of the optimal level of enterprise productivity because of one or more of these reasons, all at a great cost to the business.  They are disconnected from themselves with various parts of the organization unintentionally working at cross-purposes with each other.  Information that exists is not getting shared or reused.  Human talent is not being applied where it is most needed.  The same problems are being solved repeatedly by multiple groups. Intelligent collaboration through automated business processes has the ability to alter the course of any important business activity, with a potentially dramatic impact on the financial performance of the business. Whether it is a simple email exchange, a physical or virtual meeting, a task force, or a large-scale project, the activity is inherently collaborative.  In fact, collaboration can be defined as the work that takes place among people when a business process is not pre-determining how the work should take place. Collaboration is many things: information sharing, brainstorming, problem solving, best practice negotiation, innovation, coordination of activity, alignment of purpose, and so forth.  Collaboration is the “white space” between the business processes; it is the glue that holds an organization together, and the lubricant that allows the machinery to keep running.  Real time search and collaborative capabilities of the right people with the right content supported by defined processes will provide unparallel wisdom in the organization in the most competitive business environment today. Interestingly, technologies such as Oracle WebCenter offer these capabilities in our Web based business transactions and compliment in the overall collaborative intelligence and power to truly transform organizations to social businesses. Looking to learn more about engaging your employees to collaborate together and providing a complete user experience for your customers? You won't want to miss our webcast today! Drive Online Engagement with Intuitive Portals and Websites

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  • Sunshine after the iCloud release?

    - by Laila
    "Why should I believe them? They're the ones that brought us MobileMe? It was not our finest hour, but we learned a lot." Steve Jobs June 6th 2011 Apple's new cloud service has been met with uncritical excitement by industry commentators.  It is wonderful what a rename can do.  Apple has had a 'cloud' offering for three years called MobileMe, successor to .MAC and  iTools, so iCloud is now the fourth internet service Apple have attempted. If this had been Microsoft, there would have been catcalls all around the blogosphere.  I'll admit that there is a lot more functionality announced for iCloud than MobileMe has ever managed to achieve, but then almost anything has more functionality than MobileMe.  It's an expensive service (£120 a year in the UK, $90 in the states), launched as far back as  June 9, 2008, that has delivered very little and suffered a string of technical problems; the documentation was mainly  a community effort, built up gradually by the frustrated and angry users. It was supposed to synchronise PC Outlook calendars but couldn't manage Microsoft Exchange (Google could, of course). It used WebDAV to allow Windows users to attach to the filestore, but didn't document how to do it. The method for downloading and uploading files to the cloud-based filestore was ridiculously clunky. It allowed you to post photos on a public site, but forgot to include a way of deleting photos. I could go on with the list, but you can explore the many sites that have flourished to inhabit the support-vacuum left by Apple. MobileMe should have had all the bright new clever things announced for iCloud. Apple dropped the ball, and allowed services such as Flickr to fill the void. However, their PR skills are such that, a name-change later (the .ME.com email address remains), it has turned a rout into a victory, and hundreds of earnest bloggers have been extolling Apple's expertise in cloud matters. This must be frustrating for the other cloud providers who have quietly got the technology working right. I wish iCloud well, even though I resent the expensive mess they made of MobileMe. Apple promise that iCloud will sync files, apps, app data, and media across all the different iOS5 devices, Macs, and PCs. It also hopes to sync music across devices, but not video content. They've offered existing MobileMe users free use of the MobileMe service for a year as the product is morphed, and they will be able to transfer to iCloud when it is launched in the autumn.  On June 30, 2012, MobileMe will die, and Apple's iWeb is also soon to join iTools and .MAC in the hereafter. So why get excited about iCloud? That all depends on the level of PC integration. Whereas iOS5 machines will be full participants in the new world of data-sharing (Sorry iPod Touch users) what about .NET libraries? There is talk of synchronising 'My Pictures' libraries with iOS5 and iMac machines, but little more detail as yet. Apple has a lot to prove with iCloud and anyone with actual experience of their past attempts to get into cloud services will be wary.

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  • SQL Community – stronger than ever

    - by Rob Farley
    I posted a few hours ago about a reflection of the Summit, but I wanted to write another one for this month’s T-SQL Tuesday, hosted by Chris Yates. In January of this year, Adam Jorgensen and I joked around in a video that was used for the SQL Server 2012 launch. We were asked about SQLFamily, and we said how we were like brothers – how we could drive each other crazy (the look he gave me as I patted his stomach was priceless), but that we’d still look out for each other, just like in a real family. And this is really true. Last week at the PASS Summit, there was a lot going on. I was busy as always, as were many others. People told me their good news, their awful news, and some whinged to me about other people who were driving them crazy. But throughout this, people in the SQL Server community genuinely want the best for each other. I’m sure there are exceptions, but I don’t see much of this. Australians aren’t big on cheering for each other. Neither are the English. I think we see it as an American thing. It could be easy for me to consider that the SQL Community that I see at the PASS Summit is mainly there because it’s a primarily American organisation. But when you speak to people like sponsors, or people involved in several types of communities, you quickly hear that it’s not just about that – that PASS has something special. It goes beyond cheering, it’s a strong desire to see each other succeed. I see MVPs feel disappointed for those people who don’t get awarded. I see Summit speakers concerned for those who missed out on the chance to speak. I see chapter leaders excited about the opportunity to help other chapters. And throughout, I see a gentleness and love for people that you rarely see outside the church (and sadly, many churches don’t have it either). Chris points out that the M-W dictionary defined community as “a unified body of individuals”, and I feel like this is true of the SQL Server community. It goes deeper though. It’s not just unity – and we’re most definitely different to each other – it’s more than that. We all want to see each other grow. We all want to pull ourselves up, to serve each other, and to grow PASS into something more than it is today. In that other post of mine I wrote a bit about Paul White’s experience at his first Summit. His missus wrote to me on Facebook saying that she welled up over it. But that emotion was nothing about what I wrote – it was about the reaction that the SQL Community had had to Paul. Be proud of it, my SQL brothers and sisters, and never lose it.

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  • Communication between state machines with hidden transitions

    - by slartibartfast
    The question emerged for me in embedded programming but I think it can be applied to quite a number of general networking situations e.g. when a communication partner fails. Assume we have an application logic (a program) running on a computer and a gadget connected to that computer via e.g. a serial interface like RS232. The gadget has a red/green/blue LED and a button which disables the LED. The LEDs color can be driven by software commands over the serial interface and the state (red/green/blue/off) is read back and causes a reaction in the application logic. Asynchronous behaviour of the application logic with regard to the LED color down to a certain delay (depending on the execution cycle of the application) is tolerated. What we essentially have is a resource (the LED) which can not be reserved and handled atomically by software because the (organic) user can at any time press the button to interfere/break the software attempt to switch the LED color. Stripping this example from its physical outfit I dare to say that we have two communicating state machines A (application logic) and G (gadget) where G executes state changes unbeknownst to A (and also the other way round, but this is not significant in our example) and only A can be modified at a reasonable price. A needs to see the reaction and state of G in one piece of information which may be (slightly) outdated but not inconsistent with respect to the short time window when this information was generated on the side of G. What I am looking for is a concise method to handle such a situation in embedded software (i.e. no layer/framework like CORBA etc. available). A programming technique which is able to map the complete behaviour of both participants on classical interfaces of a classical programming language (C in this case). To complicate matters (or rather, to generalize), a simple high frequency communication cycle of A to G and back (IOW: A is rapidly polling G) is out of focus because of technical restrictions (delay of serial com, A not always active, etc.). What I currently see as a general solution is: the application logic A as one thread of execution an adapter object (proxy) PG (presenting G inside the computer), together with the serial driver as another thread a communication object between the two (A and PG) which is transactionally safe to exchange The two execution contexts (threads) on the computer may be multi-core or just interrupt driven or tasks in an RTOS. The com object contains the following data: suspected state (written by A): effectively a member of the power set of states in G (in our case: red, green, blue, off, red_or_green, red_or_blue, red_or_off...etc.) command data (written by A): test_if_off, switch_to_red, switch_to_green, switch_to_blue operation status (written by PG): operation_pending, success, wrong_state, link_broken new state (written by PG): red, green, blue, off The idea of the com object is that A writes whichever (set of) state it thinks G is in, together with a command. (Example: suspected state="red_or_green", command: "switch_to_blue") Notice that the commands issued by A will not work if the user has switched off the LED and A needs to know this. PG will pick up such a com object and try to send the command to G, receive its answer (or a timeout) and set the operation status and new state accordingly. A will take back the oject once it is no longer at operation_pending and can react to the outcome. The com object could be separated of course (into two objects, one for each direction) but I think it is convenient in nearly all instances to have the command close to the result. I would like to have major flaws pointed out or hear an entirely different view on such a situation.

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  • Newsletter sent with drupal goes to Spam Folder [closed]

    - by HerrSerker
    Possible Duplicate: How could I prevent my mail from being recognized as spam? I'm sending a newsletter with drupals simplenews module The website is hosted on an 1und1 server in germany (as seen in in header domains online.de and kundenserver.de) When I send it, it goes to Spam folder in Yahoo & GMail Mailbox, but not in Spam Folder in web.de, hotmail and GMX Mailboxes Here is, what I have in the Mail Header (for yahoo in this example) Received: from 12.345.678.90 (EHLO sXXXXXXXXX.online.de) (12.345.678.90) by mtaXXX.mail.kks.yahoo.co.jp with SMTP; Fri, 15 Jun 2012 18:45:24 +0900 Received: from [127.0.0.1] (helo=infongdXXXXX.rtr.kundenserver.de) by sXXXXXXXXX.online.de with esmtp (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from <[email protected]>) id 1SfT5k-00068r-Q8 for [email protected]; Fri, 15 Jun 2012 11:45:20 +0200 Received: from 83.136.130.41 (IP may be forged by CGI script) by infongdXXXXX.rtr.kundenserver.de with HTTP id 0Z04SW-1SQTKp3LPr-00YxYk; Fri, 15 Jun 2012 11:45:20 +0200 From: SENDER <[email protected]> To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2012 11:45:20 +0200 Subject: This is the subject of the newsletter Thread-Topic: This is the subject of the newsletter Thread-Index: Ac1K3nT42juzo7uCSkq5dTlby1ZvpQ== List-Unsubscribe: <http://www.example.com/newsletter/confirm/remove/XXXXXXXXX> X-MS-Has-Attach: X-Auto-Response-Suppress: All X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: x-originating-ip: [12.345.678.90] authentication-results: mtaXXX.mail.kks.yahoo.co.jp from=example.com; domainkeys=neutral (no sig); dkim=neutral (no sig) [email protected] errors-to: "SENDER" <[email protected]> received-spf: none (sXXXXXXXXX.online.de: domain of [email protected] does not designate permitted sender hosts) x-apparently-to: [email protected] via 123.45.67.890; Fri, 15 Jun 2012 18:45:25 +0900 x-sender-info: <[email protected]> content-length: 13762 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="_000_7471797868716571796675707173696675806577726778666766687_" MIME-Version: 1.0 I cannot see any direct spam filter message in this. But I'm kind of stunned by the Received: from 83.136.130.41 (IP may be forged by CGI script) part. After I searched a bit, it seems, that this is a special 'feature' of 1und1 Mail servers. Here are my questions: Is it possible that, if I get rid of the 'Ip maybe forged' part, that the Mail is not regarded as spam anymore? If so, Does anyone know, how I can get rid of it in drupal?

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  • Sharing one static ip for both ftp and www service

    - by user11496
    Trying to figure out how to update the Zone record and configure webserver so that one application on the webserver is accessible by public. I'm completely not good at NS/DNS/NAT/firewall/routing/port forwarding/networking etc. "faraday" is the intranet name. Everyone within local network can access all applications hosted on "faraday". Hostname for webserver is "www", FTP server is "ftpserver". Both servers running RHEL4 OS. The goal is to allow anyone outside the company network (public) to access only one of the many applications on "faraday". Hope somebody can help me with some of the questions below, if not all. From zoneedit record, the static IP is used by FTP now. Can I use the same existing static IP - 219.95.10.100, for web service? Currently anyone who enter "http://www.abc.com.my" will be directed to "http://www.abc.com". I don't want this to change. Currently, no one else, except employee on local network, can access "faraday" web pages. How to configure so that when anyone type "http://thisapp.abc.com.my" on their web browser, the url will lead them to "http://faraday/thisapp" (application folder is /var/www/html/thisapp on RHEL4 web server). If possible, how to set the URL will continue to show "http://thisapp.abc.com.my" instead of "http://faraday/thisapp" How to limit/restrict user (those who are not from local network) so they only have access to "http://thisapp.abc.com.my", but not "http://faraday" or "http://faraday/anotherapp", etc. What's the configuration changes needed in /etc/httpd.conf on web server? Company domain name is "abc.com.my". Following is the zone records on www.zoneedit.com. Subdomain Type IP sdsl A 219.95.10.100 ftp CNAME sdsl.abc.com.my @ NS ns3.zoneedit.com @ NS ns7.zoneedit.com WebForward record: New Domain Destination Cloaked www.abc.com.my http://www.abc.com N On my local DNS server, there are 2 zone files: abc.com.my and pnmy.abc.com. > cat abc.com.my.zone ftp CNAME ftp.pnmy.abc.com. sdsl A 219.95.10.100 > cat pnmy.abc.com.zone ftp CNAME ftpserver ftpserver A 172.16.5.1 faraday CNAME www www A 172.16.5.2

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  • Put a link on the nav bar in Wordpress

    - by Rafe Kettler
    I have a Wordpress blog. On the same domain, I have some other stuff hosted that isn't part of my WP install. I want to link to those other places on my domain from the top menu bar (nav bar) on my blog. How can I do that? The theme is Lightword, relevant header.php code follows: <body <?php body_class(); ?>> <div id="wrapper"> <?php lightword_header_image(); ?> <div id="header"> <?php lightword_rss_feed(); ?> <div id="top_bar"> <div class="center_menu"> <ul id="front_menu" <?php global $lw_remove_searchbox, $lw_use_wp_menus; $lw_menu_width = ""; if($lw_remove_searchbox == "true") $lw_menu_width = " class=\"expand\" "; echo $lw_menu_width; ?>> <?php echo lightword_homebtn(__('Home','lightword')); ?> <?php if ( function_exists('wp_nav_menu') && $lw_use_wp_menus != "true") { $lightword_menu = wp_nav_menu( array( 'menu' => 'lightword_top_menu', 'echo' => false, 'menu_id' => 'front_menu', 'container' => '', 'theme_location' => 'lightword_top_menu', 'link_before' => '<span>', 'link_after' => '</span>' ) ); $lightword_menu = preg_replace( array( '/^<ul id="front_menu" class="menu">/', '/\n<\/ul>$/' ), '', $lightword_menu); echo $lightword_menu; }else{ echo lightword_wp_list_pages(); } ?> </ul> </div> <?php echo lightword_searchbox(); ?> </div> </div> <div id="content">

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  • What layer to introduce human readable error messages?

    - by MrLane
    One of the things that I have never been happy with on any project I have worked on over the years and have really not been able to resolve myself is exactly at what tier in an application should human readable error information be retrieved for display to a user. A common approach that has worked well has been to return strongly typed/concrete "result objects" from the methods on the public surface of the business tier/API. A method on the interface may be: public ClearUserAccountsResult ClearUserAccounts(ClearUserAccountsParam param); And the result class implementation: public class ClearUserAccountsResult : IResult { public readonly List<Account> ClearedAccounts{get; set;} public readonly bool Success {get; set;} // Implements IResult public readonly string Message{get; set;} // Implements IResult, human readable // Constructor implemented here to set readonly properties... } This works great when the API needs to be exposed over WCF as the result object can be serialized. Again this is only done on the public surface of the API/business tier. The error message can also be looked up from the database, which means it can be changed and localized. However, it has always been suspect to me, this idea of returning human readable information from the business tier like this, partly because what constitutes the public surface of the API may change over time...and it may be the case that the API will need to be reused by other API components in the future that do not need the human readable string messages (and looking them up from a database would be an expensive waste). I am thinking a better approach is to keep the business objects free from such result objects and keep them simple and then retrieve human readable error strings somewhere closer to the UI layer or only in the UI itself, but I have two problems here: 1) The UI may be a remote client (Winforms/WPF/Silverlight) or an ASP.NET web application hosted on another server. In these cases the UI will have to fetch the error strings from the server. 2) Often there are multiple legitimate modes of failure. If the business tier becomes so vague and generic in the way it returns errors there may not be enough information exposed publicly to tell what the error actually was: i.e: if a method has 3 modes of legitimate failure but returns a boolean to indicate failure, you cannot work out what the appropriate message to display to the user should be. I have thought about using failure enums as a substitute, they can indicate a specific error that can be tested for and coded against. This is sometimes useful within the business tier itself as a way of passing via method returns the specifics of a failure rather than just a boolean, but it is not so good for serialization scenarios. Is there a well worn pattern for this? What do people think? Thanks.

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  • Hijax == sneaky Javascript redirects? Will I get banned from Google?

    - by Chris Jacob
    Question Will I get penalised as "sneaky Javascript redirects" by Google if I have the following Hijax setup (which requires a JavaScript redirect on the page indexed by google). Goal I want to implement Hijax to enable AJAX content to be accessibile to non-JavaScript users and search engine crawlers. Background I'm working on a static file server (GitHub Pages). No server side tricks allowed (so Google's #! "hash bang" solution is not an option). I'm trying to keep my files DRY. I don't want to repeat the common OUTER template in all my files i.e. header, navigation menu, footer, etc They will live in the main index.html Setup the Hijax index.html page contains all OUTER html/css/js... the site's template. index.html has a <div id="content"> which defaults to containing the "homepage" html. index.html has a navigation menu, with a Hijax link to an "about" page. With JavaScript disabled (e.g. crawler) it follows link to /about.html. With JavaScript enabled (e.g. most people) the link updates the url hash fragment to /#about and jQuery replaces the <div id="content"> innerHTML with $("#content").load("about.html #inner-container");. AJAX content about.html does not contain anything extra to try an cloak content for crawlers. about.html file contains enough HTML / CSS / JavaScript to display /about.html as a standalone page with it's own META data... e.g. <html><head><title>About</title>...</head><body></body></html>. about.html has NO OUTER HTML template (i.e. header, navigation menu, footer, etc). about.html <body> contains a <div id="inner-container"> which holds the content that is injected into index.html. about.html has a <noscript> tag as the first child of <body> which explains to non-JavaScript users that they are viewing the about page "inner content" - with a link to navigate to the index.html page to get the full page layout with menu. The (Sneaky?) Redirect Google indexes the /about.html page. However when a person with JavaScript enabled visits that page there is no OUTER html template (e.g. header, navigation menu, footer, etc). So I need to do a JavaScript redirect to get the person over the /#about page (deeplinking to the "about" page "state" in index.html). I'm thinking of doing a "redirect on click or after 10 seconds". The end results is that user ends up on an "enhanced" page back on index.html with all it's OUTER template - but the core "page" content is practically identical. Known issue with inbound links e.g. Share / Bookmarking It seems that if a user shares the URL /#about on their blog, when allocating inbound links to my site Google ignores everything after the # ... it allocates value to the / page - See: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5028405/hashbang-vs-hijax/5166665#5166665. I can only try an minimise this issue offering "share" buttons on the page with the appropriate urls i.e. /about.html. Duplicate Sorry. I posted this same question over on http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5561686/hijax-sneaky-javascript-redirects-will-i-get-banned-from-google ... then realised it probably belongs more on this Stack Exchange site... Not sure if I should delete the Stack Overflow question? Or just leave it on both sites? Please leave comment.

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  • Multiple country-specific domains or one global domain [closed]

    - by CJM
    Possible Duplicate: How should I structure my urls for both SEO and localization? My company currently has its main (English) site on a .com domain with a .co.uk alias. In addition, we have separate sites for certain other countries - these are also hosted in the UK but are distinct sites with a country-specific domain names (.de, .fr, .se, .es), and the sites have differing amounts of distinct but overlapping content, For example, the .es site is entirely in Spanish and has a page for every section of the UK site but little else. Whereas the .de site has much more content (but still less than the UK site), in German, and geared towards our business focus in that country. The main point is that the content in the additional sites is a subset of the UK, is translated into the local language, and although sometimes is simply only a translated version of UK content, it is usually 'tweaked' for the local market, and in certain areas, contains unique content. The other sites get a fraction of the traffic of the UK site. This is perfectly understandable since the biggest chunk of work comes from the UK, and we've been established here for over 30 years. However, we are wanting to build up our overseas business and part of that is building up our websites to support this. The Question: I posed a suggestion to the business that we might consider consolidating all our websites onto the .com domain but with /en/de/fr/se/etc sections, as plenty of other companies seem to do. The theory was that the non-english sites would benefit from the greater reputation of the parent .com domain, and that all the content would be mutually supporting - my fear is that the child domains on their own are too small to compete on their own compared to competitors who are established in these countries. Speaking to an SEO consultant from my hosting company, he feels that this move would have some benefit (for the reasons mentioned), but they would likely be significantly outweighed by the loss of the benefits of localised domains. Specifically, he said that since the Panda update, and particularly the two sets of changes this year, that we would lose more than we would gain. Having done some Panda research since, I've had my eyes opened on many issues, but curiously I haven't come across much that mentions localised domain names, though I do question whether Google would see it as duplicated content. It's not that I disagree with the consultant, I just want to know more before I make recommendations to my company. What is the prevailing opinion in this case? Would I gain anything from consolidating country-specific content onto one domain? Would Google see this as duplicate content? Would there be an even greater penalty from the loss of country-specific domains? And is there anything else I can do to help support the smaller, country-specific domains?

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  • Why would you dual-run an app on Azure and AWS?

    - by Elton Stoneman
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/EltonStoneman/archive/2013/11/10/why-would-you-dual-run-an-app-on-azure-and-aws.aspxI had this question from a viewer of my Pluralsight course, Implementing the Reactive Manifesto with Azure and AWS, and thought I’d publish the response. So why would you dual-run your cloud app by hosting it on Azure and AWS? Sounds like a lot of extra development and management overhead. Well the most compelling reasons are reliability and portability. In 2012 I was working for a client who was making a big investment in the cloud, and at the end of the year we published their first external API for business partners. It was hosted in Azure and used some really nice features to route back into existing on-premise services. We were able to publish a clean, simple API to partners, and hide away the underlying complexity of the internal services while still leveraging them to do all the work. Two days after we went live, we were hit by the Azure SSL certificate expiry outage, and our API was unavailable for the best part of 3 days. Fortunately we had planned a gradual roll-out to partners, so the impact was minimal, but we’d been intending to ramp up quickly, and if the outage had happened a week or two later we would have been in a very bad place. Not least because our app could only run on Azure, we couldn’t package it up for another service without going back and reworking the code. More recently AWS had an issue with a networking device in one of their data centres which caused an outage that took the best part of a day to resolve. In both scenarios the SLAs are worthless, as you’ll get back a small percentage of your cloud expenditure, which is going to be negligible compared to your costs in dealing with the outage. And if your app is built specifically for AWS or Azure then if there’s an extended outage you can’t just deploy it onto a new set of kit from a different supplier. And the chances are pretty good there will be another extended outage, both for Microsoft and for Amazon. But the chances are small that it will happen to both at the same time. So my basic guidance has been: ignore the SLAs, go for better uptime by using two clouds. As soon as you need to scale beyond a single instance, start by scaling out to another cloud. Then scale out to different data centres in both clouds. Then you’ve got dual-cloud, quadruple-datacentre redundancy, so any more scaling you need can be left to the clouds to auto-scale themselves. By running in both clouds, you’ve made your app portable, so in the highly unlikely event that both AWS and Azure go down in multiple regions, you’ll have a deployment package which will let you spin up a new stack on yet another cloud, without having to rework your solution.

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  • When a problem is resolved

    - by Rob Farley
    This month’s T-SQL Tuesday is hosted by Jen McCown, and she’s picked the topic of Resolutions. It’s a new year, and she’s thinking about what people have resolved to do this year. Unfortunately, I’ve never really done resolutions like that. I see too many people resolve to quit smoking, or lose weight, or whatever, and fail miserably. I’m not saying I don’t set goals, but it’s not a thing for New Year. The obvious joke is “1920x1080” as a resolution, but I’m not going there. I think Resolving is a strange word. It makes it sound like I’m having to solve a problem a second time, when actually, it’s more along the lines of solving a problem well enough for it to count as finished. If something has been resolved, a solution has been provided. There is a resolution, through the provision of a solution. It’s a strangeness of English. When I look up the word resolution at dictionary.com, it has 12 options, including “settling of a problem”. There’s a finality about resolution. If you resolve to do something, you’re saying “Yes. This is a done thing. I’m resolving to do it, which means that it may as well be complete already.” I like to think I resolve problems, rather than just solving them. I want my solving to be final and complete. If I tune a query, I don’t want to find that I’m back in there, re-tuning it at some point. Strangely, if I re-solve a problem, that implies that I didn’t resolve it in the first place. I only solved it. Temporarily. We “data-folk” live in a world where the most common answer is “It depends.” Frustratingly, the thing an answer depends on may still be changing in the system in question. That probably means that any solution that is put in place may need reinvestigating at some point later. So do I resolve things? Yes. Am I Chuck Norris, and solve things so well the world would break first? No. Do these two claims happily sit beside each other? No, unfortunately not. But I happily take responsibility for things, and let my clients depend on me to see it through. As far as they are concerned, it is resolved. And so I resolve to keep resolving, right through 2011.

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  • How to move a website and domain name without experiencing downtime for emails or site?

    - by user4842
    Okay, I have a pretty complex problem, so I'll get right to it. I'm a designer who built a new website for my client. Their old site is hosted at GoDaddy, as well as their email. Problem is, the guy who built the original site decided to put the original domain name and hosting under HIS personal GoDaddy account. Well, that turned out to be a bad move for several reasons. Here's how it's all tied together. The original domain name, www.domainoriginal.com, was actually purchased at Network Solutions. The original web designer pointed the nameservers from Network Solutions to his GoDaddy account, where the email and hosting is setup. The new domain name, www.domainnew.com, was purchased under a new and separate GoDaddy account belonging to the company, and the new website was built under a 3rd party platform (Big Commerce). So, the www.domainnew.com is already pointed to the new website using A records at new GoDaddy account. All is fine there. However, they still need www.domainoriginal.com to point to the NEW website as well. (The old one can simply be deleted, it is NOT important). AND, they want to keep their old email addresses intact and working as well, but under the NEW GoDaddy account. Obviously, I have no DNS control at Network Solutions, and I have no idea what kind of control I have at GoDaddy under the old account because the web designer will not let me see inside his account. But, he and GoDaddy both tell me nothing can be done other than to repoint the nameservers to Network Solutions, and then repoint the A record to my new website, www.domainnew.com, and point the MX Records to GoDaddy. I'm told the downtime would be 24-48 hours if I do this. Ideally, we'd like to do a domain name transfer and get www.domainoriginal.com in the new GoDaddy account created by the company. But, I'm told this could take up to 7 days. Does this mean the site and email will be down for 7 days? And any emails sent during this time, would they be lost forever? If I do this, how long could I expect the site and email to go down? And, will the emails be permanently lost? I've gotten different answers from everybody at GoDaddy so I kind of don't trust them anymore... Any help would be greatly appreciated Thanks, Tyson

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  • Get Fanatical About Your Followers

    - by Mike Stiles
    In the fourth of our series of discussions with Aberdeen’s Trip Kucera, we touch on what fans of your brand have come to expect in exchange for their fandom. Spotlight: Around the Oracle Social office, we live for football. So when we think of a true “fan” of a brand, something on the level of a football fan is what comes to mind. But are brands trying to invest fans on that same level? Trip: Yeah, if you’re a football fan, this is definitely your time of year. And if you’ve been to any NFL games recently, especially if you hadn’t been for a few years previously, you may have noticed that from the cup holders to in-stadium Wi-Fi, there’s an increasing emphasis being placed on “fan-focused” accommodations. That’s what they’re known as in the stadium business. Spotlight: How are brands doing in that fan-focused arena? Trip: Remember fan is short for “fanatical.” Brands can definitely learn from the way teams have become fanatical about their fans, or in the social media world, their followers. Many companies consider a segment of their addressable social audience as true fans; I’ve even heard the term “super-fans” used. So just as fans know and can tell you nearly everything about their favorite team, our research shows that there’s a lot value from getting to know your social audience—your followers—at a deeper level. Spotlight: So did your research show there’s a lot to be gained by making fandom a two-way street? Trip: Aberdeen’s new social relationship management research suggests that companies should develop capabilities to better analyze their social audience at a more granular level. Countless “ripped from the headlines” examples, from “United Breaks Guitars” to the most recent British Airways social fiasco we talked about a few weeks ago show how social can magnify the impact of a single customer voice. Spotlight: So how do the companies who are executing social most successfully do that? Trip: Leaders, which are the top-performing companies in Aberdeen’s study, are showing the value of identifying and categorizing your social audience. You should certainly treat every customer as if they have 10,000 followers, because they just might, but you can also proactively engage with high-value customer and high-value influencers. Getting back to the football analogy, it’s like how teams strive to give every guest a great experience, but they really roll out the red carpet for those season ticket and luxury box holders. Spotlight: I’m not allowed in luxury boxes, so you’ll have to tell me what that’s like. But what is the brand equivalent of rolling out the red carpet? Trip: Leaders are nearly three times more likely than Followers to have a process in place that identifies key social influencers for engagement, and more than twice as likely to identify customer advocates for social outreach. This is the kind of knowledge that gives companies the ability to better target social messaging and promotions like we talked about in our last discussion, as well as a basis for understanding how to measure the impact of their social media programs. I’ll give you an example. I hosted an event at one of my favorite restaurants recently. I had mentioned them in a Tweet several weeks before the event, and on the day of the event, they Tweeted out that they were looking forward to seeing me that evening for the event. It’s a small thing, but it had a big impact and I’d certainly go back as a result. Spotlight: So what specifically can brands use and look at to determine where their potential super-fans are? Trip: Social graph analysis, which looks at both the demographic/psychographic trends as well as the behavioral connections, can surface important brand value. Aberdeen’s PR and Brand Management research indicated that top-performing companies are more than three times more likely than Followers to both determine demographic trends through social listening (44% vs. 13%), and to identify meaningful customer segments through social (44% vs. 12%). This kind of brand-level insight can complement and enrich traditional market research. But perhaps even more importantly, it can serve as an early warning system for customer experience failures. @mikestilesPhoto: freedigitalphotos.net

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  • SQL Saturday and Exploring Data Privacy

    - by Johnm
    I have been highly impressed with the growth of the SQL Saturday phenomenon. It seems that an announcement for a new wonderful event finds its way to my inbox on a daily basis. I have had the opportunity to attend the first of the SQL Saturday's for Tampa, Chicago, Louisville and recently my home town of Indianapolis. It is my hope that there will be many more in my future. This past weekend I had the honor of being selected to speak amid a great line up of speakers at SQL Saturday #82 in Indianapolis. My session topic/title was "Exploring Data Privacy". Below is a brief synopsis of my session: Data Privacy in a Nutshell        - Definition of data privacy        - Examples of personally identifiable data        - Examples of Sensitive data Laws and Stuff        - Various examples of laws, regulations and policies that influence the definition of data privacy        - General rules of thumb that encompasses most laws Your Data Footprint        - Who has personal information about you?        - What are you exchanging data privacy for?        - The amazing resilience of data        - The cost of data loss Weapons of Mass Protection       - Data classification       - Extended properties       - Database Object Schemas       - An extraordinarily brief introduction of encryption       - The amazing data professional  <-the most important point of the entire session! The subject of data privacy is one that is quickly making its way to the forefront of the mind of many data professionals. Somewhere out there someone is storing personally identifiable and other sensitive data about you. In some cases it is kept reasonably secure. In other cases it is kept in total exposure without the consideration of its potential of damage to you. Who has access to it and how is it being used? Are we being unnecessarily required to supply sensitive data in exchange for products and services? These are just a few questions on everyone's mind. As data loss events of grand scale hit the headlines in a more frequent succession, the level of frustration and urgency for a solution increases. I assembled this session with the intent to raise awareness of sensitive data and remind us all that we, data professionals, are the ones who have the greatest impact and influence on how sensitive data is regarded and protected. Mahatma Gandhi once said "Be the change you want to see in the world." This is guidance that I keep near to my heart as I approached this topic of data privacy.

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  • Goodbye, Spreadsheets and Hello Modern ERP

    - by Christine Randle
    By: Steve Cox, Vice President, Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies     Signs of the resurging economy continue to sprout, with green shoots rising across different sectors and industries. With the economy on the rebound, businesses are increasing their investment in technology to keep up with growth and evolving demands; as proof, Gartner recently increased its worldwide IT spending forecast for 2012 to $3.6 trillion, anticipating a 3 percent increase from 2011 spending.   One of the segments most reliant on technology to catapult growth is midsize companies – established businesses leveraging every competitive efficiency and advantage to compete with much larger enterprises. We find that to compete against the big guys, they need to create an internal technology infrastructure to fuel that growth. Goodbye, spreadsheets and hello modern ERP.   While many businesses postponed upgrading or replacing financial and HR management systems during the recession, now some have started dusting off RFPs and revisiting technology options. Years ago, midsize organizations used spreadsheet-based systems and processes to manage employees, customers, partners, products and revenue. We’ve found that as companies scale up, they are apt to avoid heavily customizing their existing systems, and instead are more prone to standardize on a modern, enterprise-class ERP system.   Modern ERP platforms enable growing companies to immediately address the most pressing challenges – accounting, talent management, customer retention, et. al. Midsize companies implement these systems and processes to help them earn more, go public or expand globally.   And today, choice is a primary factor when selecting an ERP solution. Businesses have more deployment options now than ever before, depending on their unique structures and needs. Whether the preference is on demand, cloud, hosted or on premise, a modular, scalable deployment is available to meet the need.   With modern ERP systems, business that once struggled to do more with fewer resources have access to the same quality tools as larger competitors. By adopting top tier ERP systems tailored to individual business needs, midsize companies can support business operations while creating an enterprise system that seamlessly scales up to fuel future growth. Meaning that the ERP decision that your company makes today, will have legs to serve your business for years to come.

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  • ARTS Reference Model for Retail

    - by Sanjeev Sharma
    Consider a hypothetical scenario where you have been tasked to set up retail operations for a electronic goods or daily consumables or a luxury brand etc. It is very likely you will be faced with the following questions: What are the essential business capabilities that you must have in place?  What are the essential business activities under-pinning each of the business capabilities, identified in Step 1? What are the set of steps that you need to perform to execute each of the business activities, identified in Step 2? Answers to the above will drive your investments in software and hardware to enable the core retail operations. More importantly, the choices you make in responding to the above questions will several implications in the short-run and in the long-run. In the short-term, you will incur the time and cost of defining your technology requirements, procuring the software/hardware components and getting them up and running. In the long-term, as you grow in operations organically or through M&A, partnerships and franchiser business models  you will invariably need to make more technology investments to manage the greater complexity (scale and scope) of business operations.  "As new software applications, such as time & attendance, labor scheduling, and POS transactions, just to mention a few, are introduced into the store environment, it takes a disproportionate amount of time and effort to integrate them with existing store applications. These integration projects can add up to 50 percent to the time needed to implement a new software application and contribute significantly to the cost of the overall project, particularly if a systems integrator is called in. This has been the reality that all retailers have had to live with over the last two decades. The effect of the environment has not only been to increase costs, but also to limit retailers' ability to implement change and the speed with which they can do so." (excerpt taken from here) Now, one would think a lot of retailers would have already gone through the pain of finding answers to these questions, so why re-invent the wheel? Precisely so, a major effort began almost 17 years ago in the retail industry to make it less expensive and less difficult to deploy new technology in stores and at the retail enterprise level. This effort is called the Association for Retail Technology Standards (ARTS). Without standards such as those defined by ARTS, you would very likely end up experiencing the following: Increased Time and Cost due to resource wastage arising from re-inventing the wheel i.e. re-creating vanilla processes from scratch, and incurring, otherwise avoidable, mistakes and errors by ignoring experience of others Sub-optimal Process Efficiency due to narrow, isolated view of processes thereby ignoring process inter-dependencies i.e. optimizing parts but not the whole, and resulting in lack of transparency and inter-departmental finger-pointing Embracing ARTS standards as a blue-print for establishing or managing or streamlining your retail operations can benefit you in the following ways: Improved Time-to-Market from parity with industry best-practice processes e.g. ARTS, thus avoiding “reinventing the wheel” for common retail processes and focusing more on customizing processes for differentiations, and lowering integration complexity and risk with a standardized vocabulary for exchange between internal and external i.e. partner systems Lower Operating Costs by embracing the ARTS enterprise-wide process reference model for developing and streamlining retail operations holistically instead of a narrow, silo-ed view, and  procuring IT systems in compliance with ARTS thus avoiding IT budget marginalization While parity with industry standards such as ARTS business process model by itself does not create a differentiation, it does however provide a higher starting point for bridging the strategy-execution gap in setting up and improving retail operations.

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  • How can a developer realize the full value of his work [closed]

    - by Jubbat
    I, honestly, don't want to work as a developer in a company anymore after all I have seen. I want to continue developing software, yes, but not in the way I see it all around me. And I'm in London, a city that congregates lots of great developers from the whole world, so it shouldn't be a problem of location. So, what are my concerns? First of all, best case scenario: you are paying managers salary out of yours. You are consistently underpaid by making up for the average manager negative net return plus his whole salary. Typical scenario. I am a reasonably good developer with common sense who cares for readable code with attention to basic principles. I have found way too often, overconfident and arrogant developers with a severe lack of common sense. Personally, I don't want to follow TDD or Agile practices like all the cool kids nowadays. I would read about them, form my own opinion and take what I feel is useful, but don't follow it sheepishly. I want to work with people who understand that you have to design good interfaces, you absolutely have to document your code, that readability is at the top of your priorities. Also people who don't have a cargo cult mentality too. For instance, the same person who asked me about design patterns in a job interview, later told me that something like a List of Map of Vector of Map of Set (in Java) is very readable. Why would someone ask me about design patterns if they can't even grasp encapsulation? These kind of things are the norm. I've seen many examples. I've seen worse than that too, from very well paid senior devs, by the way. Every second that you spend working with people with such lack of common sense and clear thinking, you are effectively losing money by being terribly inefficient with your time. Yet, with all these inefficiencies, the average developer earns a high salary. So I tried working on my own then, although I don't like the idea. I prefer healthy exchange of opinions and ideas and task division. I then did a bit of online freelancing for a while but I think working in a sweatshop might be more enjoyable. Also, I studied computer engineering and you are in an environment in which your client will presume you don't have any formal education because there is no way to prove it. Again, you are undervalued. You could try building a product, yes. But, of course, luck is a big factor. I wonder if there is a way to work in something you can do well, software development, and be valued for the quality of your work and be paid accordingly, and where you and only you get fairly paid for the value you generate. I know that what I have written seems somehow unlikely but I strongly feel this way. Hopefully someone will understand me and has already figured this out. I don't think I'm alone in this kind of feeling.

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  • How much is a subscriber worth?

    - by Tom Lewin
    This year at Red Gate, we’ve started providing a way to back up SQL Azure databases and Azure storage. We decided to sell this as a service, instead of a product, which means customers only pay for what they use. Unfortunately for us, it makes figuring out revenue much trickier. With a product like SQL Compare, a customer pays for it, and it’s theirs for good. Sure, we offer support and upgrades, but, fundamentally, the sale is a simple, upfront transaction: we’ve made this product, you need this product, we swap product for money and everyone is happy. With software as a service, it isn’t that easy. The money and product don’t change hands up front. Instead, we provide a service in exchange for a recurring fee. We know someone buying SQL Compare will pay us $X, but we don’t know how long service customers will stay with us, or how much they will spend. How do we find this out? We use lifetime value analysis. What is lifetime value? Lifetime value, or LTV, is how much a customer is worth to the business. For Entrepreneurs has a brilliant write up that we followed to conduct our analysis. Basically, it all boils down to this equation: LTV = ARPU x ALC To make it a bit less of an alphabet-soup and a bit more understandable, we can write it out in full: The lifetime value of a customer equals the average revenue per customer per month, times the average time a customer spends with the service Simple, right? A customer is worth the average spend times the average stay. If customers pay on average $50/month, and stay on average for ten months, then a new customer will, on average, bring in $500 over the time they are a customer! Average spend is easy to work out; it’s revenue divided by customers. The problem comes when we realise that we don’t know exactly how long a customer will stay with us. How can we figure out the average lifetime of a customer, if we only have six months’ worth of data? The answer lies in the fact that: Average Lifetime of a Customer = 1 / Churn Rate The churn rate is the percentage of customers that cancel in a month. If half of your customers cancel each month, then your average customer lifetime is two months. The problem we faced was that we didn’t have enough data to make an estimate of one month’s cancellations reliable (because barely anybody cancels)! To deal with this data problem, we can take data from the last three months instead. This means we have more data to play with. We can still use the equation above, we just need to multiply the final result by three (as we worked out how many three month periods customers stay for, and we want our answer to be in months). Now these estimates are likely to be fairly unreliable; when there’s not a lot of data it pays to be cautious with inference. That said, the numbers we have look fairly consistent, and it’s super easy to revise our estimates when new data comes in. At the very least, these numbers give us a vague idea of whether a subscription business is viable. As far as Cloud Services goes, the business looks very viable indeed, and the low cancellation rates are much more than just data points in LTV equations; they show that the product is working out great for our customers, which is exactly what we’re looking for!

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  • SQL 2014 does data the way developers want

    - by Rob Farley
    A post I’ve been meaning to write for a while, good that it fits with this month’s T-SQL Tuesday, hosted by Joey D’Antoni (@jdanton) Ever since I got into databases, I’ve been a fan. I studied Pure Maths at university (as well as Computer Science), and am very comfortable with Set Theory, which undergirds relational database concepts. But I’ve also spent a long time as a developer, and appreciate that that databases don’t exactly fit within the stuff I learned in my first year of uni, particularly the “Algorithms and Data Structures” subject, in which we studied concepts like linked lists. Writing in languages like C, we used pointers to quickly move around data, without a database in sight. Of course, if we had a power failure all this data was lost, as it was only persisted in RAM. Perhaps it’s why I’m a fan of database internals, of indexes, latches, execution plans, and so on – the developer in me wants to be reassured that we’re getting to the data as efficiently as possible. Back when SQL Server 2005 was approaching, one of the big stories was around CLR. Many were saying that T-SQL stored procedures would be a thing of the past because we now had CLR, and that obviously going to be much faster than using the abstracted T-SQL. Around the same time, we were seeing technologies like Linq-to-SQL produce poor T-SQL equivalents, and developers had had a gutful. They wanted to move away from T-SQL, having lost trust in it. I was never one of those developers, because I’d looked under the covers and knew that despite being abstracted, T-SQL was still a good way of getting to data. It worked for me, appealing to both my Set Theory side and my Developer side. CLR hasn’t exactly become the default option for stored procedures, although there are plenty of situations where it can be useful for getting faster performance. SQL Server 2014 is different though, through Hekaton – its In-Memory OLTP environment. When you create a table using Hekaton (that is, a memory-optimized one), the table you create is the kind of thing you’d’ve made as a developer. It creates code in C leveraging structs and pointers and arrays, which it compiles into fast code. When you insert data into it, it creates a new instance of a struct in memory, and adds it to an array. When the insert is committed, a small write is made to the transaction to make sure it’s durable, but none of the locking and latching behaviour that typifies transactional systems is needed. Indexes are done using hashes and using bw-trees (which avoid locking through the use of pointers) and by handling each updates as a delete-and-insert. This is data the way that developers do it when they’re coding for performance – the way I was taught at university before I learned about databases. Being done in C, it compiles to very quick code, and although these tables don’t support every feature that regular SQL tables do, this is still an excellent direction that has been taken. @rob_farley

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  • How to enable and connect to RDP on a Windows Azure Web Role Instance?

    - by Enrique Lima
    We all know there have been some updates to Windows Azure, and one of the biggest I would say is the capability of being able to remote into the “OS level” of the image running a role.  And I am not talking about VM Role, I am talking about a Web Role for example. As developers we use Visual Studio, and when we are getting ready to deploy a project, we have the option of enabling this. Here is how: 1.  We publish our Project 2. On the Deployment dialog, provide all the details for your account, and before clicking OK, click on Configure Remote Desktop connections. 3.  Enable connections and the rest of the configuration.  Now, here is where there is an extra set of steps.  The first thing to know: The certificate used here is different from the other certs you have in place.  I created a new one, the went into certmgr.msc, then to Personal, then I selected the cert I just created.  Did a right-click, then All Tasks > Export.  Because what is needed is a pfx package, make sure when exporting you select to export the private key. 4. Click OK, on the Remote Desktop Configuration screen, now before you click OK on the Deployment, you will need to visit the Azure Portal. And perform the following: Go to your hosted services. Then with the service available, select the Certificates folder location. Then, select Add Certificate from the toolbar (more like Azure Portal Ribbon) Provide the details to upload the recently create pfx file. That will create the Certificate. Click OK on the deployment dialog, this kick off the deployment process. 5. Now, we need to go to the Windows Azure Portal.  Here we will select the Web Role deployed and Configure RDP. 6. Time to test.  Click on the Instance (not the role), this will make the Remote Access Connect Button available.  A file will start the process to be downloaded too 7. You will then be prompted for the credentials you configured. 8.  Validate connectivity … 9. Open IIS Manager … From here on, this is a way to manage and work with your Instance.

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  • Hyper-V for Developers Part 1 Internal Networks

    Over the last year, weve been working with Microsoft to build training and demo content for the next version of Office Communications Server code-named Microsoft Communications Server 14.  This involved building multi-server demo environments in Hyper-V, getting them running on demo servers which we took to TechEd, PDC, and other training events, and sometimes connecting the demo servers to the show networks at those events.  ITPro stuff that should scare the hell out of a developer! It can get ugly when I occasionally have to venture into ITPro land.  Lets leave it at that. Having gone through this process about 10 to 15 times in the last year, I finally have it down.  This blog series is my attempt to put all that knowledge in one place if anything, so I can find it somewhere when I need it again.  Ill start with the most simple scenario and then build on top of it in future blog posts. If youre an ITPro, please resist the urge to laugh at how trivial this is. Internal Hyper-V Networks Lets start simple.  An internal network is one that intended only for the virtual machines that are going to be on that network it enables them to communicate with each other. Create an Internal Network On your host machine, fire up the Hyper-V Manager and click the Virtual Network Manager in the Actions panel. Select Internal and leave all the other default values. Give the virtual network a name, and leave all the other default values. After the virtual network is created, open the Network and Sharing Center and click Change Adapter Settings to see the list of network connections. The only thing I recommend that you do is to give this connection a friendly label, e.g. Hyper-V Internal.  When you have multiple networks and virtual networks on the host machines, this helps group the networks so you can easily differentiate them from each other.  Otherwise, dont touch it, only bad things can happen. Connect the Virtual Machines to the Internal Network Im assuming that you have more than 1 virtual machine already configured in Hyper-V, for example a Domain Controller, and Exchange Server, and a SharePoint Server. What you need to do is basically plug in the network to the virtual machine.  In order to do this, the machine needs to have a virtual network adapter.  If the VM doesnt have a network adapter, open the VMs Settings and click Add Hardware in the left pane.  Choose the virtual network to which to bind the adapter to. If you already have a virtual network adapter on the VM, simply connect it to the virtual network. Assign IP Addresses to the Virtual Machines on the Internal Network Open the Network and Sharing Center on your VM, there should only be 1 network at this time.  Open the Properties of the connection, select Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) and hit Properties. In this environment, Im assigning IP addresses as 192.168.0.xxx.  This particular VM has an IP address of 192.168.0.40 with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0, and a DNS Server of 192.168.0.18.  DNS is running on the Domain Controller VM which has an IP address of 192.168.0.18. Repeat this process on every VM in your environment, obviously assigning a unique IP address to each.  In an environment with a domain controller, you should now be able to ping the machines from each other. What Next? After completing this process, heres what you still cannot do: Access the internet from any of the VMs Remote desktop to a VM from the host Remote desktop to a VM over the network In the next post, well take a look configuring an External network adapter on the virtual machines.  Well then build on top of that so that you can RDP into the VMs from the host machine and over the network.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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  • Make the Time

    - by WonderOfItAll
    Took the little one to the pool tonight for swim lessons. Okay, Okay. They're not really lessons so much as they are "Hey, here's a few bucks, let me rent out a small section of your pool to swim around with my little one" Saw a dad at the pool. Bluetooth on, iPad in hand, and two year old somewhere around there. Saw a mom at the pool. Arguing with her five year old to NOT take a shower after swimming. Bluetooth on, iPad in hand, work laptop open on stadium seats. Her reasoning for not wanting the child to shower "Look, I have to get this stuff to the office by 6:30, we don't have time for you to shower. Let's go" Wait, isn't the whole point of this little experience called Mommy and Me (or, as in my case, Daddy and Me). Wherein Mommy/Daddy is supposed to spend time with little one. Not with the Bluetooth. Not with the work laptop. Dad (yeah, the same dad from earlier), in the pool. Bluetooth off (it's not waterproof or I'm sure he would've had it on), two year old in hand and iPad somewhere put away. Getting frustrated with kid because he won't 'perform' on command. Here's a little exchange Kid: "I don't wanna get in the water" Dad: "Well, we're here for 30 minutes, get in the water" Kid: "No, don't wanna" Dad: "Fine, I'm getting in" and, true to his word, in he goes, off to swim. Kid: Crying Dad: "Well, c'mon" Kid: Walking to stands Dad: Ignoring kid Kid: At stands Dad: Out of pool, drying off. Frustrated. Grabs bag, grabs kid, leaves How sad. It really seems like I am living in a generation of parents who view their children as one big scheduled distraction to another. It's almost like the dad was saying "Look, little 2 year old boy, I have a busy scheduled. Right now my Outlook Calendar tells me that I have 30 mins to spend with you, so, let's go kid: PERFORM because I have the time" Really? Can someone please tell me when the hell this happened? When did spending time with your kid, spending time with your family, spending time with your spouse, etc... become a distraction? I've seen people at work all day Tweeting throughout the day, checked in with Four Square, IM up and running constantly so they can 'stay in touch' only to see these same folks come home and be irritated because their kids or their spouse wants to connect with the. I've seen these very same people leave the house, go to the corner bar/store/you-name-the-place to be 'alone' only to find them there, plugged in, tweeting away, etc, etc, etc I LOVE technology. I love working with technology. But I also know that I am a human being. A person who, by very definition, is a social being. I needed social interactions and contact--and, no, I'm not talking about the Social Graph kind of connections, I'm talking about those interactions which, *GASP* involve eye to eye contact and human contact. A recent study found that the number one complaint of kids is that they feel they have to compete with technology for their parents time and attention. The number one wish from high school kids? That there parents would turn off the computer/tv/cell phone at dinner. This, coming from high school kids. Shouldn't that tell you a whole helluva lot? So, do yourself a favor tomorrow. Plug into technology all day. Throw yourself into it. Be passionate about what you do. When you walk through the door to your family, turn it all off for 30 mins and be there with your loved ones. If you can manage to play Angry Birds, I'm sure you can handle being disconnected for 30 minutes. Make the time

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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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  • Should I manage authentication on my own if the alternative is very low in usability and I am already managing roles?

    - by rumtscho
    As a small in-house dev department, we only have experience with developing applications for our intranet. We use the existing Active Directory for user account management. It contains the accounts of all company employees and many (but not all) of the business partners we have a cooperation with. Now, the top management wants a technology exchange application, and I am the lead dev on the new project. Basically, it is a database containing our know-how, with a web frontend. Our employees, our cooperating business partners, and people who wish to become our cooperating business partners should have access to it and see what technologies we have, so they can trade for them with the department which owns them. The technologies are not patented, but very valuable to competitors, so the department bosses are paranoid about somebody unauthorized gaining access to their technology description. This constraint necessitates a nightmarishly complicated multi-dimensional RBAC-hybrid model. As the Active Directory doesn't even contain all the information needed to infer the roles I use, I will have to manage roles plus per-technology per-user granted access exceptions within my system. The current plan is to use Active Directory for authentication. This will result in a multi-hour registration process for our business partners where the database owner has to manually create logins in our Active Directory and send them credentials. If I manage the logins in my own system, we could improve the usability a lot, for example by letting people have an active (but unprivileged) account as soon as they register. It seems to me that, after I am having a users table in the DB anyway (and managing ugly details like storing historical user IDs so that recycled user IDs within the Active Directory don't unexpectedly get rights to view someone's technologies), the additional complexity from implementing authentication functionality will be minimal. Therefore, I am starting to lean towards doing my own user login management and forgetting the AD altogether. On the other hand, I see some reasons to stay with Active Directory. First, the conventional wisdom I have heard from experienced programmers is to not do your own user management if you can avoid it. Second, we have code I can reuse for connection to the active directory, while I would have to code the authentication if done in-system (and my boss has clearly stated that getting the project delivered on time has much higher priority than delivering a system with high usability). Third, I am not a very experienced developer (this is my first lead position) and have never done user management before, so I am afraid that I am overlooking some important reasons to use the AD, or that I am underestimating the amount of work left to do my own authentication. I would like to know if there are more reasons to go with the AD authentication mechanism. Specifically, if I want to do my own authentication, what would I have to implement besides a secure connection for the login screen (which I would need anyway even if I am only transporting the pw to the AD), lookup of a password hash and a mechanism for password recovery (which will probably include manual identity verification, so no need for complex mTAN-like solutions)? And, if you have experience with such security-critical systems, which one would you use and why?

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