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• Comparing the Performance of Visual Studio's Web Reference to a Custom Class

  As developers, we all make assumptions when programming. Perhaps the biggest assumption we make is that those libraries and tools that ship with the .NET Framework are the best way to accomplish a given task. For example, most developers assume that using ASP.NET's Membership system is the best way to manage user accounts in a website (rather than rolling your own user account store). Similarly, creating a Web Reference to communicate with a web service generates markup that auto-creates a proxy class, which handles the low-level details of invoking the web service, serializing parameters, and so on. Recently a client made us question one of our fundamental assumptions about the .NET Framework and Web Services by asking, "Why should we use proxy class created by Visual Studio to connect to a web service?" In this particular project we were calling a web service to retrieve data, which was then sorted, formatted slightly and displayed in a web page. The client hypothesized that it would be more efficient to invoke the web service directly via the HttpWebRequest class, retrieve the XML output, populate an XmlDocument object, then use XSLT to output the result to HTML. Surely that would be faster than using Visual Studio's auto-generated proxy class, right? Prior to this request, we had never considered rolling our own proxy class; we had always taken advantage of the proxy classes Visual Studio auto-generated for us. Could these auto-generated proxy classes be inefficient? Would retrieving and parsing the web service's XML directly be more efficient? The only way to know for sure was to test my client's hypothesis. Read More >

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• Comparing the Performance of Visual Studio's Web Reference to a Custom Class

  As developers, we all make assumptions when programming. Perhaps the biggest assumption we make is that those libraries and tools that ship with the .NET Framework are the best way to accomplish a given task. For example, most developers assume that using ASP.NET's Membership system is the best way to manage user accounts in a website (rather than rolling your own user account store). Similarly, creating a Web Reference to communicate with a web service generates markup that auto-creates a proxy class, which handles the low-level details of invoking the web service, serializing parameters, and so on. Recently a client made us question one of our fundamental assumptions about the .NET Framework and Web Services by asking, "Why should we use proxy class created by Visual Studio to connect to a web service?" In this particular project we were calling a web service to retrieve data, which was then sorted, formatted slightly and displayed in a web page. The client hypothesized that it would be more efficient to invoke the web service directly via the HttpWebRequest class, retrieve the XML output, populate an XmlDocument object, then use XSLT to output the result to HTML. Surely that would be faster than using Visual Studio's auto-generated proxy class, right? Prior to this request, we had never considered rolling our own proxy class; we had always taken advantage of the proxy classes Visual Studio auto-generated for us. Could these auto-generated proxy classes be inefficient? Would retrieving and parsing the web service's XML directly be more efficient? The only way to know for sure was to test my client's hypothesis. Read More >

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• KeyRef &ndash; A Keyboard Shortcut Reference Site

  - by Liam McLennan

  The mouse is like computer training wheels. It makes using a computer easier – but it slows you down. Like many of my peers I am making a effort to learn keyboard shortcuts to reduce my dependence on the mouse. So I have started accumulating browser bookmarks to websites listing keyboard shortcuts for vim and resharper etc. Based on the assumption that I am not the only person who finds this untenable I am considering building the ultimate keyboard shortcut reference site. This is an opportunity for me to improve my rails skills and hopefully contribute something useful to the anti-mouse community. Mockups Shortcuts will be grouped by application, so the first thing a user needs to do is find their application. They do this by typing the application name into a textbox and then selecting from a reducing list of applications. This interface will work like the stackoverflow tags page. Selecting an application will take the user to a page that lists the shortcuts for that application. This page will have a permalink for bookmarking. Shortcuts can be searched by keyword or by using the shortcut.

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• Ninject/DI: How to correctly pass initialisation data to injected type at runtime

  - by MrLane

  I have the following two classes: public class StoreService : IStoreService { private IEmailService _emailService; public StoreService(IEmailService emailService) { _emailService = emailService; } } public class EmailService : IEmailService { } Using Ninject I can set up bindings no problem to get it to inject a concrete implementation of IEmailService into the StoreService constructor. StoreService is actually injected into the code behind of an ASP.NET WebForm as so: [Ninject.Inject] public IStoreService StoreService { get; set; } But now I need to change EmailService to accept an object that contains SMTP related settings (that are pulled from the ApplicationSettings of the Web.config). So I changed EmailService to now look like this: public class EmailService : IEmailService { private SMTPSettings _smtpSettings; public void SetSMTPSettings(SMTPSettings smtpSettings) { _smtpSettings = smtpSettings; } } Setting SMTPSettings in this way also requires it to be passed into StoreService (via another public method). This has to be done in the Page_Load method in the WebForms code behind (I only have access to the Settings class in the UI layer). With manual/poor mans DI I could pass SMTPSettings directly into the constructor of EmailService and then inject EmailService into the StoreService constructor. With Ninject I don't have access to the instances of injected types outside of the objects they are injected to, so I have to set their data AFTER Ninject has already injected them via a separate public setter method. This to me seems wrong. How should I really be solving this scenario?

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• PASS: Total Registrations

  - by Bill Graziano

  At the Summit you’ll see PASS announce the total attendance and the “total registrations”.  The total registrations is the sum of the conference attendees and the pre-conference registrations.  A single person can be counted three times (conference plus two pre-cons) in the total registration count. When I was doing marketing for the Summit this drove me nuts.  I couldn’t figure out why anyone would use total registrations.  However, when I tried to stop reporting this number I got lots of pushback.  Apparently this is how conferences compare themselves to each other.  Vendors, sponsors and Microsoft all wanted to know our total registration number.  I was even asked why we weren’t doing more “things” that people could register for so that our number would be even larger.  This drove me nuts. I understand that many of you are very detail oriented.  I just want to make sure you understand what numbers you’re seeing when we include them in the keynote at the Summit.

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• Should you always pass the bare minimum data needed into a function

  - by Anders Holmström

  Let's say I have a function IsAdmin that checks whether a user is an admin. Let's also say that the admin checking is done by matching user id, name and password against some sort of rule (not important). In my head there are then two possible function signatures for this: public bool IsAdmin(User user); public bool IsAdmin(int id, string name, string password); I most often go for the second type of signature, thinking that: The function signature gives the reader a lot more info The logic contained inside the function doesn't have to know about the User class It usually results in slightly less code inside the function However I sometimes question this approach, and also realize that at some point it would become unwieldy. If for example a function would map between ten different object fields into a resulting bool I would obviously send in the entire object. But apart from a stark example like that I can't see a reason to pass in the actual object. I would appreciate any arguments for either style, as well as any general observations you might offer. I program in both object oriented and functional styles, so the question should be seen as regarding any and all idioms.

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• Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies Customer Reference Booklet

  - by LanaProut

  1024x768 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:"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;} 137 global customer stories featuring midsize companies that have achieved success by deploying Oracle Applications and leveraging Oracle partner expertise, to enable their business to grow.  Click here to view the reference booklet.

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• iOS - pass UIImage to shader as texture

  - by martin pilch

  I am trying to pass UIImage to GLSL shader. The fragment shader is: varying highp vec2 textureCoordinate; uniform sampler2D inputImageTexture; uniform sampler2D inputImageTexture2; void main() { highp vec4 color = texture2D(inputImageTexture, textureCoordinate); highp vec4 color2 = texture2D(inputImageTexture2, textureCoordinate); gl_FragColor = color * color2; } What I want to do is send images from camera and do multiply blend with texture. When I just send data from camera, everything is fine. So problem should be with sending another texture to shader. I am doing it this way: - (void)setTexture:(UIImage*)image forUniform:(NSString*)uniform { CGSize sizeOfImage = [image size]; CGFloat scaleOfImage = [image scale]; CGSize pixelSizeOfImage = CGSizeMake(scaleOfImage * sizeOfImage.width, scaleOfImage * sizeOfImage.height); //create context GLubyte * spriteData = (GLubyte *)malloc(pixelSizeOfImage.width * pixelSizeOfImage.height * 4 * sizeof(GLubyte)); CGContextRef spriteContext = CGBitmapContextCreate(spriteData, pixelSizeOfImage.width, pixelSizeOfImage.height, 8, pixelSizeOfImage.width * 4, CGImageGetColorSpace(image.CGImage), kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedLast); //draw image into context CGContextDrawImage(spriteContext, CGRectMake(0.0, 0.0, pixelSizeOfImage.width, pixelSizeOfImage.height), image.CGImage); //get uniform of texture GLuint uniformIndex = glGetUniformLocation(__programPointer, [uniform UTF8String]); //generate texture GLuint textureIndex; glGenTextures(1, &textureIndex); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, textureIndex); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_LINEAR); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_LINEAR); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE); //create texture glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL_RGBA, pixelSizeOfImage.width, pixelSizeOfImage.height, 0, GL_RGBA, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, spriteData); glActiveTexture(GL_TEXTURE1); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, textureIndex); //"send" to shader glUniform1i(uniformIndex, 1); free(spriteData); CGContextRelease(spriteContext); } Uniform for texture is fine, glGetUniformLocation function do not returns -1. The texture is PNG file of resolution 2000x2000 pixels. PROBLEM: When the texture is passed to shader, I have got "black screen". Maybe problem are parameters of the CGContext or parameters of the function glTexImage2D Thank you

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• How to store a reference to an integer in C#?

  - by Jonathon Reinhart

  Hello everyone - tell me how to make this work? Basically, I need an integer reference type (int* would work in C++) class Bar { private ref int m_ref; // This doesn't exist public A(ref int val) { m_ref = val; } public void AddOne() { m_ref++; } } class Program { static void main() { int foo = 7; Bar b = new Bar(ref foo); b.AddOne(); Console.WriteLine(foo); // This should print '8' } } Do I have to use boxing?

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• Objective-C : Member variable is losing reference between method calls.

  - by Winston

  Hello, I've been having with an objective-c class which appears to be losing its pointer reference between methods of the same class. In the MyTableViewController.h file, I declare: @interface SettingsTableViewController : UITableViewController <UITextFieldDelegate>{ OCRAppDelegate *delegate; } MyTableViewController.m file - (id) init { self = [ super initWithStyle: UITableViewStyleGrouped ]; delegate = [(OCRAppDelegate *)[[UIApplication sharedApplication] delegate] retain]; } The problem is when the "MyTableViewController" view appears again and a different method is executed within that same class, the delegate pointer (which was assigned during the init method) is no longer there. I tried to retain, but to no avail. Would anyone know why this is, it seems like perhaps it is a fundamental Objective-C issue which I am missing. Appreciate your help. Thanks, Winston

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• How to retrieve stored reference to an NSManagedObject subclass?

  - by DavidDev

  Hi! I have a NSManagedObject subclass named Tour. I stored the reference to it using this code: prefs = [NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults]; NSURL *myURL = [[myTour objectID] URIRepresentation]; NSData *uriData = [NSKeyedArchiver archivedDataWithRootObject:myURL]; [prefs setObject:uriData forKey:@"tour"]; Now I want to retrieve it. I tried using: NSData *myData = [prefs objectForKey:@"tour"]; NSURL *myURL = [NSKeyedUnarchiver unarchiveObjectWithData:myData]; TourAppDelegate *appDelegate = (TourAppDelegate *)[[UIApplication sharedApplication] delegate]; NSManagedObjectID *myID = [appDelegate.persistentStoreCoordinator managedObjectIDForURIRepresentation:myURL]; if (myID) { Tour *tempObject = [appDelegate.managedObjectContext objectWithID:myID]; //WARNING tour = tempObject; } if (tour) //instruction... But it's giving me this warning "Incompatible Objective-c types. Initializing 'struct NSManagedObject *', expected 'struct Tour *' Plus, when executing, it's giving me this: Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSObjectInaccessibleException', reason: 'CoreData could not fulfill a fault for '0x5001eb0 How can I solve this?

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• What is the best way to organize Java code since you can't pass by reference?

  - by Adam

  I'm learning how to code in Java after after coming from C. In C I always separated everything into individual functions to make the code easier to follow and edit. I was trying to do this in java but now since I realized that you can't use pointers, I am a bit confused as to what the best way to do this is. So for example I want to have a method that creates four alerts for me. So I pass it an alert builder that can then create the alerts. I can return them in an array, but in my code I already have the alerts individually named, and I would like to keep it that way so I wouldn't need to refer to them as alert[1], alert[2]... etc. So that means I would have to rename them, which would add additional code which would probably be longer than the code in the actual method! Am I thinking about this the right way? Is there anything I can do?

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• Is it possible to reinterpret pointer as dimensioned array reference?

  - by aaa

  hi. Suppose I have some pointer, which I want to reinterpret as static dimension array reference: double *p; double (&r)[4] = ?(p); // some construct? // clarify template< size_t N> void function(double (&a)[N]); ... double *p; function(p); // this will not work. // I would like to cast p as to make it appear as double[N] Is it possible to do so? how do I do it?

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• This code appears to achieve the return of a null reference in C++

  - by Chuck

  Hi folks, My C++ knowledge is somewhat piecemeal. I was reworking some code at work. I changed a function to return a reference to a type. Inside, I look up an object based on an identifier passed in, then return a reference to the object if found. Of course I ran into the issue of what to return if I don't find the object, and in looking around the web, many people claim that returning a "null reference" in C++ is impossible. Based on this advice, I tried the trick of returning a success/fail boolean, and making the object reference an out parameter. However, I ran into the roadblock of needing to initialize the references I would pass as actual parameters, and of course there is no way to do this. I retreated to the usual approach of just returning a pointer. I asked a colleague about it. He uses the following trick quite often, which is accepted by both a recent version of the Sun compiler and by gcc: MyType& someFunc(int id) { // successful case here: // ... // fail case: return *static_cast<MyType*>(0); } // Use: ... MyType& mt = somefunc(myIdNum); if (&mt) // test for "null reference" { // whatever } ... I have been maintaining this code base for a while, but I find that I don't have as much time to look up the small details about the language as I would like. I've been digging through my reference book but the answer to this one eludes me. Now, I had a C++ course a few years ago, and therein we emphasized that in C++ everything is types, so I try to keep that in mind when thinking things through. Deconstructing the expression: "*static_cast(0);", it indeed seems to me that we take a literal zero, cast it to a pointer to MyType (which makes it a null pointer), and then apply the dereferencing operator in the context of assigning to a reference type (the return type), which should give me a reference to the same object pointed to by the pointer. This sure looks like returning a null reference to me. Any advice in explaining why this works (or why it shouldn't) would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Chuck

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• Squid+iptables: how do i allow https to pass-through and bypassing Squid?

  - by logansama

  Hello, Basically started with Squid and iptables today (google is your friend). This stuff is going to be the death of me. I have Squid3 setup on Ubuntu 9.04 server as Transparent Proxy. It works sweetly when i use the proxy-box as my default gateway etc. The iptable rules for this setup was part of the tutorial. :P I can unfortunately not access https sites (such as Gmail or anything on port 443 basically). This is because Squid dont like what it cannot cache, which in this case is the https traffic. I would like to add an iptable rule so that i can basically access https sites and use Skype. Basically allow these types of traffic to pass through without going through Squid proxy? (bypassing it so to speak) Would anyone perhaps know how to do this or have a link to any sources that would assist me in figuring it out? Thank you.

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• replacing values in formated file with python

  - by froggy

  I have a string see attached file like that and i would like to modify it using a function Giving section name parameter name and value to set Also in case i want to modify several parameters for a same section how can i have position in file to avoid scanning x time for a same section and other to pass my question and other to pass my question and other to pass my question and other to pass my question and other to pass my question and other to pass my question and other to pass my question and other to pass my question and other to pass my question and other to pass my question and other to pass my question an and other to pass my question d other to pass my question and other to pass my question and other to pass my question and other to pass my questionand other to pass my question and other to pass my question

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• Return cell reference as result of if statement with vlookups.

  - by EMJ

  I have two sets of data in excel. One contains a set of data which represents the initial step of a process. The other set of data represents the additional steps which take place after the first step is completed. Each of the data records in the "additional step data" has an id in a column. I need to find the identifying codes of the "additional step data" which correspond with the initial step data records. The problem is that I have to match the data in 4 columns between the two data sets and return the id of the "additional step data". I started by doing a combination of an if and vlookup functions, but I got stuck when I tried to figure out how to get the if statement to reference the id of the matching "additional step data". Basically I am trying to avoid having to search by manually filtering between two sets of data and finding corresponding records. Does anyone have any idea about how to do this?

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• C++ standard: dereferencing NULL pointer to get a reference?

  - by shoosh

  I'm wondering about what the C++ standard says about code like this: int* ptr = NULL; int& ref = *ptr; int* ptr2 = &ref; In practice the result is that ptr2 is NULL but I'm wondering, is this just an implementation detail or is this well defined in the standard? Under different circumstances a dereferencing of a NULL pointer should result in a crash but here I'm dereferencing it to get a reference which is implemented by the compiler as a pointer so there's really no actual dereferencing of NULL.

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• SQLAuthority News – Story of Seattle – SQLPASS 2011 Event Log

  - by pinaldave

  Just like every year I attended SQL PASS in Seattle earlier this month. The event was scheduled from Oct 11-14, 2011 in the convention center of the Seattle. I have been to Seattle more than 6 times so far so it is not a new city for me anymore. The city has always impressed me with its vibrant life and pleasant weather. Just like every other time, I had excellent experience once again in the city. Though I just arrived on the day of the event and left right after the event was over – I hardly visited Seattle – still some good experience to share. Here are few quick photographs from my quick trip of Seattle city. Skyline of Seattle Seattle Convention Center A Shop Tenzing Momo and Co at Pike St Market The Seattle Gum Wall Shoreline in Seattle Nigel and Paras First Starbucks (Relocated) People on Street of Seattle Food at Sandy’s – All Veg Well, this is a short summary of my extremely quick city tour of Seattle. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL PASS, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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• SQLAuthority News – #SQLPASS 2012 Schedule – Where can You Find Me

  - by pinaldave

  Yesterday I wrote about my memory lane with SQLPASS. It has been a fantastic experience and I am very confident that this year the same excellent experience is going to be repeated. Before I start for #SQLPASS every year, I plan where I want to be and what I will be doing. As I travel from India to attend this event (22+ hours flying time and door to door travel time around 36 hours), it is very crucial that I plan things in advance. This year here is my quick note where I will be during the SQLPASS event. If you can stop with me, I would like to meet you, shake your hand and will archive memories as a photograph. Tuesday, November 6, 2012 6:30pm-8:00pm PASS Summit 2012 Welcome Reception Wednesday, November 7, 2012 12pm-1pm – Book Signing at Exhibit Hall Joes Pros booth#117 (FREE BOOK) 5:30pm-6:30pm – Idera Reception at Fox Sports Grill 7pm-8pm - Embarcadero Booth Book Signing (FREE BOOK) 8pm onwards – Exhibitor Reception Thursday, November 8, 2012 12pm-1pm - Embarcadero Booth Book Signing (FREE BOOK) 7pm-10pm - Community Appreciation Party Friday, November 9, 2012 12pm-1pm - Joes 2 Pros Book Signing at Exhibit Hall Joes Pros booth#117 11:30pm-1pm - Birds of a Feather Luncheon Rest of the Time! Exhibition Hall Joes 2 Pros Booth #117. Stop by for the goodies! Lots of people have already sent me email asking if we can meet for a cup of coffee to discuss SQL. Absolutely! I like cafe mocha with skim milk and whip cream and I do not get tired of it. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL PASS, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Oracle Customer Reference Forum – Apex IT – Oracle Sales Cloud

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Apex IT, an Oracle Platinum Partner, wins Nucleus Research's ROI Award with a 724% return. Learn how you can improve your ROI with Oracle Sales and Marketing Cloud. We are pleased to invite you to a discussion with Apex IT on industry trends, why sales automation is important, the decision making process for choosing Oracle Sales Cloud, and benefits achieved since going live. Apex IT works with clients large and small, assisting them at all stages in the process: organizing ideas and developing strategies, selecting the most appropriate package, implementing it for best results, and keeping systems optimized with long-term support. Please plan to register at least three hours prior to the event taking place in order to participate and get the dial-in information associated in due time. Speakers: Bryan Hinz, Vice President of Business Development, Apex IT (Speaker) Chris Haven, Senior Director Product Management, Oracle (Moderator) Organization Profile: Since 1997, Apex IT has helped public sector, corporate and higher education clients use technology to streamline their processes and increase productivity and profitability. Based on products and best practices from Oracle our experts provide a full range of enterprise solutions including CX/CRM and related applications that support marketing, sales, and service; HR and HR Helpdesk; and Business Intelligence. Our project approach is results-driven and our attitude is people-focused. Industry: Professional Services Products/Services: Oracle Sales Cloud Organization Website: http://apexit.com/ Event Description: In this informal reference call, you will have the opportunity to hear Apex IT discuss industry trends, why sales automation is important, the decision making process for choosing Oracle Sales Cloud, and benefits achieved since going live. The call will open with a brief overview, followed by discussion, and an open question and answer session. Please allow one hour for the call. Why Oracle: Apex IT needed a mobile-enabled sales force automation tool that could promote account collaboration and integrate with Microsoft Outlook. Oracle Sales Cloud met these needs and Apex IT’s requirements for: Improved collaborative selling Improved quality of customer engagement and information Improved business development Improved pipeline management Please plan to register at least three hours prior to the event taking place in order to participate and get the dial-in information associated in due time. After you register your information will be forwarded through an Approval Process. Once your registration request has been validated against the invitation database, you will receive an email confirmation with your registration details as long as there is availability. Please be advised that Apex IT will revise the registrants list and may dismiss registrations as they see fit. Note: To access more information at the corporate site you would need an Oracle.com account. If you do not already have an account, getting one is easy and free. Click on the link and you will be prompted to create an account. After you have created your account, you will be automatically returned to the full page description of this event. Register Now! /* 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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; 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; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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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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• 24 Hours of PASS – first reflections

  - by Rob Farley

  A few days after the end of 24HOP, I find myself reflecting on it. I’m still waiting on most of the information. I want to be able to discover things like where the countries represented on each of the sessions, and things like that. So far, I have the feedback scores and the numbers of attendees. The data was provided in a PDF, so while I wait for it to appear in a more flexible format, I’ve pushed the 24 attendee numbers into Excel. This chart shows the numbers by time. Remember that we started at midnight GMT, which was 10:30am in my part of the world and 8pm in New York. It’s probably no surprise that numbers drooped a bit at the start, stayed comparatively low, and then grew as the larger populations of the English-speaking world woke up. I remember last time 24HOP ran for 24 hours straight, there were quite a few sessions with less than 100 attendees. None this time though. We got close, but even when it was 4am in New York, 8am in London and 7pm in Sydney (which would have to be the worst slot for attracting people), we still had over 100 people tuning in. As expected numbers grew as the UK woke up, and even more so as the US did, with numbers peaking at 755 for the “3pm in New York” session on SQL Server Data Tools. Kendra Little almost reached those numbers too, and certainly contributed the biggest ‘spike’ on the chart with her session five hours earlier. Of all the sessions, Kendra had the highest proportion of ‘Excellent’s for the “Overall Evaluation of the session” question, and those of you who saw her probably won’t be surprised by that. Kendra had one of the best ranked sessions from the 24HOP event this time last year (narrowly missing out on being top 3), and she has produced a lot of good video content since then. The reports indicate that there were nearly 8.5 thousand attendees across the 24 sessions, averaging over 350 at each one. I’m looking forward to seeing how many different people that was, although I do know that Wil Sisney managed to attend every single one (if you did too, please let me know). Wil even moderated one of the sessions, which made his feat even greater. Thanks Wil. I also want to send massive thanks to Dave Dustin. Dave probably would have attended all of the sessions, if it weren’t for a power outage that forced him to take a break. He was also a moderator, and it was during this session that he earned special praise. Part way into the session he was moderating, the speaker lost connectivity and couldn’t get back for about fifteen minutes. That’s an incredibly long time when you’re in a live presentation. There were over 200 people tuned in at the time, and I’m sure Dave was as stressed as I was to have a speaker disappear. I started chasing down a phone number for the speaker, while Dave spoke to the audience. And he did brilliantly. He started answering questions, and kept doing that until the speaker came back. Bear in mind that Dave hadn’t expected to give a presentation on that topic (or any other), and was simply drawing on his SQL expertise to get him through. Also consider that this was between midnight at 1am in Dave’s part of the world (Auckland, NZ). I would’ve been expecting just to welcome people, monitor questions, probably read some out, and in general, help make things run smoothly. He went far beyond the call of duty, and if I had a medal to give him, he’d definitely be getting one. On the whole, I think this 24HOP was a success. We tried a different platform, and I think for the most part it was a popular move. We didn’t ask the question “Was this better than LiveMeeting?”, but we did get a number of people telling us that they thought the platform was very good. Some people have told me I get a chance to put my feet up now that this is over. As I’m also co-ordinating a tour of SQLSaturday events across the Australia/New Zealand region, I don’t quite get to take that much of a break (plus, there’s the little thing of squeezing in seven SQL 2012 exams over the next 2.5 weeks). But I am pleased to be reflecting on this event rather than anticipating it. There were a number of factors that could have gone badly, but on the whole I’m pleased about how it went. A massive thanks to everyone involved. If you’re reading this and thinking you wish you could’ve tuned in more, don’t worry – they were all recorded and you’ll be able to watch them on demand very soon. But as well as that, PASS has a stream of content produced by the Virtual Chapters, so you can keep learning from the comfort of your desk all year round. More info on them at sqlpass.org, of course.

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• How do I pass a const reference in C#?

  - by Maciek

  In C++, passing const references is a common practice - for instance : #include <iostream> using namespace std; class X { public : X() {m_x = 0; } X(const int & x) {m_x = x; } X(const X & other) { *this = other; } X & operator = (const X & other) { m_x = other.m_x; return *this; } void print() { cout << m_x << endl; } private : int m_x; }; void main() { X x1(5); X x2(4); X x3(x2); x2 = x1; x1.print(); x2.print(); x3.print(); } This very simple example illustrates how it's done - pretty much. However I've noticed that in C# this doesn't seem to be the case. Do I have to pass const references in C# ? what do I need the "ref" keyword for? Please note that I know and understand what C# reference and value types are.

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• Is it okay to implement reference counting through composition?

  - by Billy ONeal

  Most common re-usable reference counted objects use private inheritance to implement re-use. I'm not a huge fan of private inheritance, and I'm curious if this is an acceptable way of handling things: class ReferenceCounter { std::size_t * referenceCount; public: ReferenceCounter() : referenceCount(NULL) {}; ReferenceCounter(ReferenceCounter& other) : referenceCount(other.referenceCount) { if (!referenceCount) { referenceCount = new std::size_t(1); other.referenceCount = referenceCount; } else { ++(*referenceCount); } }; ReferenceCounter& operator=(const ReferenceCounter& other) { ReferenceCounter temp(other); swap(temp); return *this; }; void swap(ReferenceCounter& other) { std::swap(referenceCount, other.referenceCount); }; ~ReferenceCounter() { if (referenceCount) { --(*referenceCount); if (!*referenceCount) delete referenceCount; } }; operator bool() const { return referenceCount && (*referenceCount != 0); }; }; class SomeClientClass { HANDLE someHandleThingy; ReferenceCounter objectsStillActive; public: SomeClientClass() { //Construct handle thingy } ~SomeClientClass() { if (objectsStillActive) return; //Release resources }; }; or are there subtle problems with this I'm not seeing?

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