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• What DX level does my graphics card support? Does it go to 11?

  - by Daniel Moth

  Recently I run into a situation that I have run into quite a few times. Someone encounters a machine and the question arises: "Is there a DirectX 11 card in this machine?". Typically the reason you are interested in that is because cards with DirectX 11 drivers fully support DirectCompute (and by extension C++ AMP) for GPGPU programming. The driver specifically is WDDM (1.1 on Windows 7 and Windows 8 introduces WDDM 1.2 with cool new capabilities). There are many ways for figuring out if you have a DirectX11 card, so here are the approaches that you can use, with a bonus right at the end of the post. Run DxDiag WindowsKey + R, type DxDiag and hit Enter. That is the DirectX diagnostic tool, which unfortunately, only tells you on the "System" tab what is the highest version of DirectX installed on your machine. So if it reports DirectX 11, that doesn't mean you have a DX11 driver! The "Display" tab has a promising "DDI version" label, but unfortunately that doesn't seem to be accurate on the machines I've tested it with (or I may be misinterpreting its use). Either way, this tool is not the one you want for this purpose, although it is good for telling you the WDDM version among other things. Use the Microsoft hardware page There is a Microsoft Windows 7 compatibility center, that lists all hardware (tip: use the advanced search) and you could try and locate your device there… good luck. Use Wikipedia or the hardware vendor's website Use the Wikipedia page for the vendor cards, for both nvidia and amd. Often this information will also be in the specifications for the cards on the IHV site, but is is nice that wikipedia has a single page per vendor that you can search etc. There is a column in the tables for API support where you can see the DirectX version. Check if it is one of these recommended DX11 cards You may not have a DirectX 11 card and are interested in purchasing one. While I am in no position to make recommendations, I will list here some cards from two big IHVs that we know are DirectX 11 capable. Some AMD (aka ATI) cards Low end, inexpensive DX11 hardware: Radeon 5450, 5550, 6450, 6570 Mid range (decent perf, single precision): Radeon 5750, 5770, 6770, 6790 High end (capable of double precision): Radeon 5850, 5870, 6950, 6970 Single precision APUs: AMD E-Series APUs AMD A-Series APUs Some NVIDIA cards Low end, inexpensive DX11 hardware: GeForce GT430, GT 440, GT520, GTS 450 Quadro 400, 600 Mid-range (decent perf, single precision): GeForce GTX 460, GTX 550 Ti, GTX 560, GTX 560 Ti Quadro 2000 High end (capable of double precision): GeForce GTX 480, GTX 570, GTX 580, GTX 590, GTX 595 Quadro 4000, 5000, 6000 Tesla C2050, C2070, C2075 Get the DirectX SDK and run DirectX Caps Viewer Download and install the June 2010 DirectX SDK. As part of that you now have the DirectX Capabilities Viewer utility (find it in your start menu by searching for "DirectX Caps Viewer", the filename is DXCapsViewer.exe). It will list all your devices (emulated, and real hardware ones) under the first node. Expand the hardware entries and then expand again the Direct3D 11 folder. If you see D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL_11_ under that, then your card supports feature level 11 which means it supports DirectCompute and C++ AMP. In the following screenshot of one of my old laptops, the card only goes to feature level 10. Run a utility from the web that just tells you! Of course, writing some C++ AMP code that enumerates accelerators and lists the ones that are capable is trivial. However that requires that you have redistributed the runtime, so a more broadly applicable approach is to use the DX APIs directly to enumerate the DX11 capable cards. That is exactly what the development lead for C++ AMP has done and he describes and shares that utility at this post. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• Question on the implementation of my Entity System

  - by miguel.martin

  I am currently creating an Entity System, in C++, it is almost completed (I have all the code there, I just have to add a few things and test it). The only thing is, I can't figure out how to implement some features. This Entity System is based off a bit from the Artemis framework, however it is different. I'm not sure if I'll be able to type this out the way my head processing it. I'm going to basically ask whether I should do something over something else. Okay, now I'll give a little detail on my Entity System itself. Here are the basic classes that my Entity System uses to actually work: Entity - An Id (and some methods to add/remove/get/etc Components) Component - An empty abstract class ComponentManager - Manages ALL components for ALL entities within a Scene EntitySystem - Processes entities with specific components Aspect - The class that is used to help determine what Components an Entity must contain so a specific EntitySystem can process it EntitySystemManager - Manages all EntitySystems within a Scene EntityManager - Manages entities (i.e. holds all Entities, used to determine whether an Entity has been changed, enables/disables them, etc.) EntityFactory - Creates (and destroys) entities and assigns an ID to them Scene - Contains an EntityManager, EntityFactory, EntitySystemManager and ComponentManager. Has functions to update and initialise the scene. Now in order for an EntitySystem to efficiently know when to check if an Entity is valid for processing (so I can add it to a specific EntitySystem), it must recieve a message from the EntityManager (after a call of activate(Entity& e)). Similarly the EntityManager must know when an Entity is destroyed from the EntityFactory in the Scene, and also the ComponentManager must know when an Entity is created AND destroyed. I do have a Listener/Observer pattern implemented at the moment, but with this pattern I may remove a Listener (which is this case is dependent on the method being called). I mainly have this implemented for specific things related to a game, i.e. Teams, Tagging of entities, etc. So... I was thinking maybe I should call a private method (using friend classes) to send out when an Entity has been activated, deleted, etc. i.e. taken from my EntityFactory void EntityFactory::killEntity(Entity& e) { // if the entity doesn't exsist in the entity manager within the scene if(!getScene()->getEntityManager().doesExsist(e)) { return; // go back to the caller! (should throw an exception or something..) } // tell the ComponentManager and the EntityManager that we killed an Entity getScene()->getComponentManager().doOnEntityWillDie(e); getScene()->getEntityManager().doOnEntityWillDie(e); // notify the listners for(Mouth::iterator i = getMouth().begin(); i != getMouth().end(); ++i) { (*i)->onEntityWillDie(*this, e); } _idPool.addId(e.getId()); // add the ID to the pool delete &e; // delete the entity } As you can see on the lines where I am telling the ComponentManager and the EntityManager that an Entity will die, I am calling a method to make sure it handles it appropriately. Now I realise I could do this without calling it explicitly, with the help of that for loop notifying all listener objects connected to the EntityFactory's Mouth (an object used to tell listeners that there's an event), however is this a good idea (good design, or what)? I've gone over the PROS and CONS, I just can't decide what I want to do. Calling Explicitly: PROS Faster? Since these functions are explicitly called, they can't be "removed" CONS Not flexible Bad design? (friend functions) Calling through Listener objects (i.e. ComponentManager/EntityManager inherits from a EntityFactoryListener) PROS More Flexible? Better Design? CONS Slower? (virtual functions) Listeners can be removed, i.e. may be removed and not get called again during the program, which could cause in a crash. P.S. If you wish to view my current source code, I am hosting it on BitBucket.

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• Design pattern for logging changes in parent/child objects saved to database

  - by andrew

  I’ve got a 2 database tables in parent/child relationship as one-many. I’ve got three classes representing the data in these two tables: Parent Class { Public int ID {get; set;} .. other properties } Child Class { Public int ID {get;set;} Public int ParentID {get; set;} .. other properties } TogetherClass { Public Parent Parent; Public List<Child> ChildList; } Lastly I’ve got a client and server application – I’m in control of both ends so can make changes to both programs as I need to. Client makes a request for ParentID and receives a Together Class for the matching parent, and all of the child records. The client app may make changes to the children – add new children, remove or modify existing ones. Client app then sends the Together Class back to the server app. Server app needs to update the parent and child records in the database. In addition I would like to be able to log the changes – I’m doing this by having 2 separate tables one for Parent, one for child; each containing the same columns as the original plus date time modified, by whom and a list of the changes. I’m unsure as to the best approach to detect the changes in records – new records, records to be deleted, records with no fields changed, records with some fields changed. I figure I need to read the parent & children records and compare those to the ones in the Together Class. Strategy A: If Together class’s child record has an ID of say 0, that indicates a new record; insert. Any deleted child records are no longer in the Together Class; see if any of the comparison child records are not found in the Together class and delete if not found (Compare using ID). Check each child record for changes and if changed log. Strategy B: Make a new Updated TogetherClass UpdatedClass { Public Parent Parent {get; set} Public List<Child> ListNewChild {get;set;} Public List<Child> DeletedChild {get;set;} Public List<Child> ExistingChild {get;set;} // used for no changes and modified rows } And then process as per the list. The reason why I’m asking for ideas is that both of these solutions don’t seem optimal to me and I suspect this problem has been solved already – some kind of design pattern ? I am aware of one potential problem in this general approach – that where Client App A requests a record; App B requests same record; A then saves changes; B then saves changes which may overwrite changes A made. This is a separate locking issue which I’ll raise a separate question for if I’ve got trouble implementing. The actual implementation is c#, SQL Server and WCF between client and server - sharing a library containing the class implementations. Apologies if this is a duplicate post – I tried searching various terms without finding a match though.

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• To SYNC or not to SYNC – Part 4

  - by AshishRay

  This is Part 4 of a multi-part blog article where we are discussing various aspects of setting up Data Guard synchronous redo transport (SYNC). In Part 1 of this article, I debunked the myth that Data Guard SYNC is similar to a two-phase commit operation. In Part 2, I discussed the various ways that network latency may or may not impact a Data Guard SYNC configuration. In Part 3, I talked in details regarding why Data Guard SYNC is a good thing, and the distance implications you have to keep in mind. In this final article of the series, I will talk about how you can nicely complement Data Guard SYNC with the ability to failover in seconds. Wait - Did I Say “Seconds”? Did I just say that some customers do Data Guard failover in seconds? Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. Data Guard has an automatic failover capability, aptly called Fast-Start Failover. Initially available with Oracle Database 10g Release 2 for Data Guard SYNC transport mode (and enhanced in Oracle Database 11g to support Data Guard ASYNC transport mode), this capability, managed by Data Guard Broker, lets your Data Guard configuration automatically failover to a designated standby database. Yes, this means no human intervention is required to do the failover. This process is controlled by a low footprint Data Guard Broker client called Observer, which makes sure that the primary database and the designated standby database are behaving like good kids. If something bad were to happen to the primary database, the Observer, after a configurable threshold period, tells that standby, “Your time has come, you are the chosen one!” The standby dutifully follows the Observer directives by assuming the role of the new primary database. The DBA or the Sys Admin doesn’t need to be involved. And - in case you are following this discussion very closely, and are wondering … “Hmmm … what if the old primary is not really dead, but just network isolated from the Observer or the standby - won’t this lead to a split-brain situation?” The answer is No - It Doesn’t. With respect to why-it-doesn’t, I am sure there are some smart DBAs in the audience who can explain the technical reasons. Otherwise - that will be the material for a future blog post. So - this combination of SYNC and Fast-Start Failover is the nirvana of lights-out, integrated HA and DR, as practiced by some of our advanced customers. They have observed failover times (with no data loss) ranging from single-digit seconds to tens of seconds. With this, they support operations in industry verticals such as manufacturing, retail, telecom, Internet, etc. that have the most demanding availability requirements. One of our leading customers with massive cloud deployment initiatives tells us that they know about server failures only after Data Guard has automatically completed the failover process and the app is back up and running! Needless to mention, Data Guard Broker has the integration hooks for interfaces such as JDBC and OCI, or even for custom apps, to ensure the application gets automatically rerouted to the new primary database after the database level failover completes. Net Net? To sum up this multi-part blog article, Data Guard with SYNC redo transport mode, plus Fast-Start Failover, gives you the ideal triple-combo - that is, it gives you the assurance that for critical outages, you can failover your Oracle databases: very fast without human intervention, and without losing any data. In short, it takes the element of risk out of critical IT operations. It does require you to be more careful with your network and systems planning, but as far as HA is concerned, the benefits outweigh the investment costs. So, this is what we in the MAA Development Team believe in. What do you think? How has your deployment experience been? We look forward to hearing from you!

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• Handling "related" work within a single agile work item

  - by Tesserex

  I'm on a project team of 4 devs, myself included. We've been having a long discussion on how to handle extra work that comes up in the course of a single work item. This extra work is usually things that are slightly related to the task, but not always necessary to accomplish the goal of the item (that may be an opinion). Examples include but are not limited to: refactoring of the code changed by the work item refactoring code neighboring the code changed by the item re-architecting the larger code area around the ticket. For example if an item has you changing a single function, you realize the entire class now could be redone to better accommodate this change. improving the UI on a form you just modified When this extra work is small we don't mind. The problem is when this extra work causes a substantial extension of the item beyond the original feature point estimation. Sometimes a 5 point item will actually take 13 points of time. In one case we had a 13 point item that in retrospect could have been 80 points or more. There are two options going around in our discussion for how to handle this. We can accept the extra work in the same work item, and write it off as a mis-estimation. Arguments for this have included: We plan for "padding" at the end of the sprint to account for this sort of thing. Always leave the code in better shape than you found it. Don't check in half-assed work. If we leave refactoring for later, it's hard to schedule and may never get done. You are in the best mental "context" to handle this work now, since you're waist deep in the code already. Better to get it out of the way now and be more efficient than to lose that context when you come back later. We draw a line for the current work item, and say that the extra work goes into a separate ticket. Arguments include: Having a separate ticket allows for a new estimation, so we aren't lying to ourselves about how many points things really are, or having to admit that all of our estimations are terrible. The sprint "padding" is meant for unexpected technical challenges that are direct barriers to completing the ticket requirements. It is not intended for side items that are just "nice-to-haves". If you want to schedule refactoring, just put it at the top of the backlog. There is no way for us to properly account for this stuff in an estimation, since it seems somewhat arbitrary when it comes up. A code reviewer might say "those UI controls (which you actually didn't modify in this work item) are a bit confusing, can you fix that too?" which is like an hour, but they might say "Well if this control now inherits from the same base class as the others, why don't you move all of this (hundreds of lines of) code into the base and rewire all this stuff, the cascading changes, etc.?" And that takes a week. It "contaminates the crime scene" by adding unrelated work into the ticket, making our original feature point estimates meaningless. In some cases, the extra work postpones a check-in, causing blocking between devs. Some of us are now saying that we should decide some cut off, like if the additional stuff is less than 2 FP, it goes in the same ticket, if it's more, make it a new ticket. Since we're only a few months into using Agile, what's the opinion of all the more seasoned Agile veterans around here on how to handle this?

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• SQL Authority News – FalafelCON 2014: 2 days with the Best Developers in the World

  - by Pinal Dave

  I love presenting at various forums on various technologies. I am extremely excited that I got invited to speak at Falafel Conference 2014 in San Francisco. I will present two technology sessions on SQL Server. If you are into web development or if you just want to attend a conference with the best of the industry speakers, this may be the right conference for you. What set apart this conference from other conference is technology presented as well as speakers. Usually one has to attend very expensive and high scale event when they have to hear good speakers. At this conference, you will find quite a many industry legends are available to present on the bleeding edge technology. Here are few of the reasons why I believe you should attend this conference: Choose from four tracks covering Web, Mobile development and testing, Sitefinity, and Automated Testing, or attend sessions from all four! Learn from the best developers and testers in the business in an intimate setting. Surround yourself with your peers and the opportunity to network Learn about the latest platforms and technologies including Kendo UI, AngularJS, ASP.NET MVC, WebAPI, and more! Here are the details for the sessions which I am going to present at Falafel Conference. Secrets of SQL Server: Database Worst Practices Abstract: Chances are you have heard, or even uttered, this expression. This demo-oriented session will show many examples where database professionals were dumbfounded by their own mistakes, and could even bring back memories of your own early DBA days. The goal of this session is to expose the small details that can be dangerous to the production environment and SQL Server as a whole, as well as talk about worst practices and how to avoid them. Shedding light on some of these perils and the tricks to avoid them may even save your current job. After attending this session, Developers will only need 60 seconds to improve performance of their database server in their SharePoint implementation. We will have a quiz during the session to keep the conversation alive. Developers will walk out with scripts and knowledge that can be applied to their servers, immediately post the session. Additionally, all attendees of the session will have access to learning material presented in the session. The Unsung Hero Abstract: Slow Running Queries are the most common problem that developers face while working with SQL Server. While it is easy to blame the SQL Server for unsatisfactory performance, however the issue often persists with the way queries have been written, and how Indexes has been set up. The session will focus on the ways of identifying problems that slow down SQL Server, and Indexing tricks to fix them. Developers will walk out with scripts and knowledge that can be applied to their servers, immediately post the session. Register Now! I have learned from the Falafel Team that they are running out of tickets and soon they will close the registration.  For next 10 days the price for the registration is only USD 149. Trust me, you can’t get such a world class training and networking opportunity at such a low price. Click to Register Here! Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL

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• WebLogic Server Performance and Tuning: Part II - Thread Management

  - by Gokhan Gungor

  WebLogic Server, like any other java application server, provides resources so that your applications use them to provide services. Unfortunately none of these resources are unlimited and they must be managed carefully. One of these resources is threads which are pooled to provide better throughput and performance along with the fast response time and to avoid deadlocks. Threads are execution points that WebLogic Server delivers its power and execute work. Managing threads is very important because it may affect the overall performance of the entire system. In previous releases of WebLogic Server 9.0 we had multiple execute queues and user defined thread pools. There were different queues for different type of work which had fixed number of execute threads.  Tuning of this thread pools and finding the proper number of threads was time consuming which required many trials. WebLogic Server 9.0 and the following releases use a single thread pool and a single priority-based execute queue. All type of work is executed in this single thread pool. Its size (thread count) is automatically decreased or increased (self-tuned). The new “self-tuning” system simplifies getting the proper number of threads and utilizing them.Work manager allows your applications to run concurrently in multiple threads. Work manager is a mechanism that allows you to manage and utilize threads and create rules/guidelines to follow when assigning requests to threads. We can set a scheduling guideline or priority a request with a work manager and then associate this work manager with one or more applications. At run-time, WebLogic Server uses these guidelines to assign pending work/requests to execution threads. The position of a request in the execute queue is determined by its priority. There is a default work manager that is provided. The default work manager should be sufficient for most applications. However there can be cases you want to change this default configuration. Your application(s) may be providing services that need mixture of fast response time and long running processes like batch updates. However wrong configuration of work managers can lead a performance penalty while expecting improvement.We can define/configure work managers at;•    Domain Level: config.xml•    Application Level: weblogic-application.xml •    Component Level: weblogic-ejb-jar.xml or weblogic.xml(For a specific web application use weblogic.xml)We can use the following predefined rules/constraints to manage the work;•    Fair Share Request Class: Specifies the average thread-use time required to process requests. The default is 50.•    Response Time Request Class: Specifies a response time goal in milliseconds.•    Context Request Class: Assigns request classes to requests based on context information.•    Min Threads Constraint: Limits the number of concurrent threads executing requests.•    Max Threads Constraint: Guarantees the number of threads the server will allocate to requests.•    Capacity Constraint: Causes the server to reject requests only when it has reached its capacity. Let’s create a work manager for our application for a long running work.Go to WebLogic console and select Environment | Work Managers from the domain structure tree. Click New button and select Work manager and click next. Enter the name for the work manager and click next. Then select the managed server instances(s) or clusters from available targets (the one that your long running application is deployed) and finish. Click on MyWorkManager, and open the Configuration tab and check Ignore Stuck Threads and save. This will prevent WebLogic to tread long running processes (that is taking more than a specified time) as stuck and enable to finish the process.

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• What is the difference between Workcenters, Dashboards, and the Interaction Hub?

  - by Matthew Haavisto

  Oracle Open World has just concluded.  Over the course of the conference, we presented several sessions covering different aspects of the PeopleSoft user experience, including Workcenters, Dashboards, and the PeopleSoft Interaction Hub (formerly known as the PeopleSoft Applications Portal).  Although we've produced collateral on these features and covered them in sessions, it became apparent at the conference that customers still have many questions about the these products, including how they are licensed, how they are installed, what their various purposes are, and how they can be used together synergistically. Let's Start with Licensing and Installation As you may know, we've extended the restricted use license (RUL) for the Interaction Hub.  This grants customers with PeopleTools 8.52 licenses the right to install the Interaction Hub for free for use as specified in the Tools license notes.  Note that this means customers receive a restricted use license for the Interaction Hub that doesn't cost them an additional license fee, but it is a separate product, not part of PeopleTools or PeopleSoft applications, and is a separate installation.  This means customers must provide the infrastructure to install and run the Hub, just like any other application.  The benefits of using the Hub to unify your PeopleSoft user experience can be great.  PeopleSoft applications have not yet delivered instances of the Hub with their products, though they may in the future. Workcenters and Dashboards, on the other hand, are frameworks provided by PeopleTools.  No other license is required, and no additional installation of a separate product is needed (apart from PeopleTools and PeopleSoft applications).  PeopleSoft applications are delivering instances of the workcenters and dashboards with their products.  Some are available now, and more are coming in future releases.  These delivered workcenter and dashboard instances require no additional licenses, and no additional installations beyond Tools and the applications that provide them.  In addition, the workcenter and dashboard frameworks provided by PeopleTools can be used by customers to build their own workcenters and dashboards, and it's quite easy and simple to do so. What are Their Differences?  What Purposes do they Serve? Workcenters, Dashboards and the Interaction Hub appear somewhat similar.  They all contain pagelets, and have some visual characteristics in common.  However, their strengths and purposes are very different, and they were designed to provide different benefits to your PeopleSoft ecosystem. Workcenters and Dashboards have the following characteristics: Designed for specific roles Focus on the daily tasks of those roles Help to streamline the work performed most often Personal view of my work world Makes navigation and search easier and quicker, particularly for transactions and decision support Reports and data needed for day-to-day work Personalizable, but minimal Delivered by PS Apps, but can be altered by customer for their requirements Customers can create their own Workcenters can be used for guided processes  The Interaction Hub is designed to aggregate content from multiple applications, and is is used to unify the user experience of those applications.  It offers a rich, web site-based user experience, and is often used to provide access to infrequently performed activities like benefits enrollment, payroll inquiries, life event changes, onboarding, and so on. Full-featured and robust Centrally administered Pushed to large audience Broad info like Company News Infrequent activities like benefits, not day-to-day tasks Self-service, access to employer info Central launch point for other activities and can navigate to workcenters and dashboards Deployed by customers or consultants, instances not delivered by PeopleSoft (at this time) Content management Unified PS application navigation Although these products are quite different and serve different purposes in your PeopleSoft environment, they can be used together to provide a richer, more efficient and engaging user experience for your all your user communities.

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• Find Rules and Defaults using the PowerShell for SQL Server 2008 Provider

  - by BuckWoody

  I ran into an issue the other day where I couldn't set up some features in SQL Server 2008 because they ddon't support the use of Rules or Defaults. Let me explain a little more about that. In older versions of SQL Server, you could decalre a "Rule" or "Default" just like you do with a Table Constraint today. You would then "bind" these rules or defaults to the tables you wanted them to apply to. Sure, there are advantages and disadvantages to this approach, but it certainly isn't standard Data Definition Language (DDL), so they are deprecated and many features don't work with them any more. Honestly, it's been so long since I've seen them in use I had forgotten to even check for them. My suspicion is that this was a new database created with an older script. Nevertheless, the feature failed when it ran into one. Immediately I thought that I had better build some logic into my process to try and catch those - but how? Lots of choices here, but since I was using PowerShell to do the rest of the work, I thought I would investigate how easy it would be just to do it there. And using the SQL Server 2008 provider, this could not be simpler. I won't show all of the scrupt here, because I was testing for these as a condition and then bailing out of the script and sending a notification, but all it is using is the DIR command! Here's an example on my "UNIVAC" computer for the "pubs" database: Find Rules using PowerShell: dir SQLSERVER:\SQL\UNIVAC\DEFAULT\Databases\pubs\Rulesdir SQLSERVER:\SQL\UNIVAC\DEFAULT\Databases\pubs\Defaults And this one will look in all databases:  #All Databases:dir SQLSERVER:\SQL\UNIVAC\DEFAULT\Databases | select-object -property Name, Rules, Defaults Awesome. Love me some PowerShell. Script Disclaimer, for people who need to be told this sort of thing: Never trust any script, including those that you find here, until you understand exactly what it does and how it will act on your systems. Always check the script on a test system or Virtual Machine, not a production system. Yes, there are always multiple ways to do things, and this script may not work in every situation, for everything. It’s just a script, people. All scripts on this site are performed by a professional stunt driver on a closed course. Your mileage may vary. Void where prohibited. Offer good for a limited time only. Keep out of reach of small children. Do not operate heavy machinery while using this script. If you experience blurry vision, indigestion or diarrhea during the operation of this script, see a physician immediately.       Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live 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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• October 2013 FMW Proactive Patches Released

  - by mustafakaya

  The following Fusion Middleware (FMW) Proactive  patches were released on October 15, 2013. Bundle Patches : Bundle patches are collections of controlled, well tested critical bug fixes for a specific product  which may include security contents and occasionally minor enhancements. These are cumulative in nature meaning the latest bundle patch in a particular series includes the contents of the previous bundle patches released.  A suite bundle patch is an aggregation of multiple product  bundle patches that are part of a product suite. Oracle Identity Management Suite Bundle Patch 11.1.1.5.5 consisting of Oracle Identity Manager (OIM) 11.1.1.5.9 bundle patch Oracle Access Manager (OAM) 11.1.1.5.6 bundle patch. Oracle Adaptive Access Manager (OAAM) 11.1.1.5.2 bundle patch. Oracle Entitlement Server (OES) 11.1.1.5.4 bundle patch. Oracle Identity Management Suite Bundle Patch 11.1.2.0.4 consisting of Oracle Access Manager (OAM) 11.1.2.0.4 bundle patch. Oracle Adaptive Access Manager (OAAM) 11.1.2.0.2 bundle patch. Oracle Entitlement Server (OES) 11.1.2.0.2 bundle patch. Oracle Identity Analytics (OIA ) 11.1.1.5.6  bundle patch. Oracle GlassFish Server (OGFS) 2.1.1.22, 3.0.1.8 and 3.1.2.7 bundle patches. Oracle iPlanet Web Server (OiWS) 7.0.18 bundle patch Oracle SOA Suite (SOA) 11.1.1.7.1 bundle patch Oracle WebCenter Portal (WCP) 11.1.1.8.1 bundle patch Sun Role Manager (SRM) 4.1.7 and 5.0.3.2 bundle patches. Patch Set Updates (PSU) Patch Set Updates (PSU)  are collections of well controlled, well tested critical bug fixes for a specific product  that have been proven in customer environments. PSUs  may include security contents but no  enhancements are included. These are cumulative in nature meaning the latest PSU  in a particular series includes the contents of the previous PSUs  released.  Oracle Exalogic 2.0.3.0.4 Physical Linux x86-64 and 2.0.4.0.4 Physical Solaris x86-64 PSUs. Oracle WebLogic Server 10.3.6.0.6 and 12.1.1.0.6 PSUs. Critical Patch Update (CPU) : The Critical Patch Update program is Oracle's quarterly release of security fixes. The following additional patches were released as part of Oracle's Critical Patch Update program: Oracle JDeveloper 11.1.2.3.0, 11.1.2.4.0 and 12.1.2.0.0 Oracle Outside In Technology 8.4.0 and  8.4.1 Oracle Portal 11.1.1.6.0 Oracle Security Service  11.1.1.6.0, 11.1.1.7.0 and 12.1.2.0.0 Oracle WebCache 11.1.1.6.0 and 11.1.1.7.0 Oracle WebCenter Content 10.1.3.5.1, 11.1.1.6.0, 11.1.1.7.0 and 11.1.1.8.0 Oracle WebServices 10.1.3.5.0 and 11.1.1.6.0 For more information; Master Notes on Fusion Middleware Proactive Patching. PSU and CPU October 2013  Availability Document Critical Patch Update Advisory -  October 2013 

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• Asynchrony in C# 5 (Part I)

  - by javarg

  I’ve been playing around with the new Async CTP preview available for download from Microsoft. It’s amazing how language trends are influencing the evolution of Microsoft’s developing platform. Much effort is being done at language level today than previous versions of .NET. In these post series I’ll review some major features contained in this release: Asynchronous functions TPL Dataflow Task based asynchronous Pattern Part I: Asynchronous Functions This is a mean of expressing asynchronous operations. This kind of functions must return void or Task/Task<> (functions returning void let us implement Fire & Forget asynchronous operations). The two new keywords introduced are async and await. async: marks a function as asynchronous, indicating that some part of its execution may take place some time later (after the method call has returned). Thus, all async functions must include some kind of asynchronous operations. This keyword on its own does not make a function asynchronous thought, its nature depends on its implementation. await: allows us to define operations inside a function that will be awaited for continuation (more on this later). Async function sample: Async/Await Sample async void ShowDateTimeAsync() {     while (true)     {         var client = new ServiceReference1.Service1Client();         var dt = await client.GetDateTimeTaskAsync();         Console.WriteLine("Current DateTime is: {0}", dt);         await TaskEx.Delay(1000);     } } The previous sample is a typical usage scenario for these new features. Suppose we query some external Web Service to get data (in this case the current DateTime) and we do so at regular intervals in order to refresh user’s UI. Note the async and await functions working together. The ShowDateTimeAsync method indicate its asynchronous nature to the caller using the keyword async (that it may complete after returning control to its caller). The await keyword indicates the flow control of the method will continue executing asynchronously after client.GetDateTimeTaskAsync returns. The latter is the most important thing to understand about the behavior of this method and how this actually works. The flow control of the method will be reconstructed after any asynchronous operation completes (specified with the keyword await). This reconstruction of flow control is the real magic behind the scene and it is done by C#/VB compilers. Note how we didn’t use any of the regular existing async patterns and we’ve defined the method very much like a synchronous one. Now, compare the following code snippet  in contrast to the previuous async/await: Traditional UI Async void ComplicatedShowDateTime() {     var client = new ServiceReference1.Service1Client();     client.GetDateTimeCompleted += (s, e) =>     {         Console.WriteLine("Current DateTime is: {0}", e.Result);         client.GetDateTimeAsync();     };     client.GetDateTimeAsync(); } The previous implementation is somehow similar to the first shown, but more complicated. Note how the while loop is implemented as a chained callback to the same method (client.GetDateTimeAsync) inside the event handler (please, do not do this in your own application, this is just an example).  How it works? Using an state workflow (or jump table actually), the compiler expands our code and create the necessary steps to execute it, resuming pending operations after any asynchronous one. The intention of the new Async/Await pattern is to let us think and code as we normally do when designing and algorithm. It also allows us to preserve the logical flow control of the program (without using any tricky coding patterns to accomplish this). The compiler will then create the necessary workflow to execute operations as the happen in time.

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• Where Have All the Ugly Forms Gone? Users and ADF Took Care Of It

  - by ultan o'broin

  Sometimes I hear that our application demos are a bit too "cutsey" and that we never talk about with any user roles that have lots of data entry as a requirement. Some (no names) consider those old clunker forms, with the myriad rows of fields, to be super-productive for data clerks. We do have such roles covered in Oracle Fusion Applications for sure. But consider what is really the issue here: productivity. Check out how the Oracle Fusion Financials Applications User Experience team went about designing for productivity when receiving and entering invoice data, for example. See how Fusion Financials caters so well for input and control of data? Central to all this is knowing the users and how they work: what tasks do they need to perform, and when. Read more about Fusion Financials productivity in the white paper, Get It Done Fast, Get It Done Right: The Oracle Fusion Financials User Experience. Now and then, I see forms that weren't designed for end user activity at all. Instead, they were designed by developers or by the IT department around the database schema. Forms with literally dozens of fields on the same page, sometimes. Forms that give the impression there was only task involved, when there may have been several. At times, completing one of these huge forms accurately became so tedious that, under pressure, it made more sense for the user to complete it quickly as possible and then let somebody else check it for accuracy and fill in the gaps from data emailed along in spreadsheet form. Data accuracy is critical in our business. Not good. Not efficient. Not productive. So here are a few basics on forms design for data entry-type user roles. A great place for developers to start exploring what is possible with forms layout is the Rich Client User Experience (RCUX) guidance on Form Layout, using ADF components. User-Centered Forms Design Considerations The starting point--something you must always keep in mind with your own design--is design for the end user. Find a representative end user, and keep that user engaged throughout the design, deployment, and test process. Consider these points in user testing those forms: Are there automated or technical solutions to entering the data that avoid manual input in the first place? For example, imports, uploads, OCR, whatever. Some day we will be able to tell Siri to do it, but leave that for now. Design your form to reflect the task involved (i.e., the business process) and not the database schema. On the form, group like fields together, logically. Eliminate duplicate data entry or prepopulate from previous data entry. Allow users to complete fields in the order they wish (i.e., no interdependency). Allow for tabbing between fields (keyboard is faster than mouse), so know how the browser supports this (see that RCUX guideline). Allow for final validation at the page level not at field-level entry. Way better for heads-down users. For example, ADF messages allow you to see a list of all validation errors on a page on a final submit or navigation action and to easily navigate to the point of error. Better still, be error tolerant. Allow users to enter data in formats they comfortable with. Bind any relevant user preference setting to the input format allowed (for example, the locale date format). Explore what data entry conversion can do for you automatically too (see the ADF converter demos, convenience patterns can also be written). Only ask for data input when it's needed. Get rid of, or hide optional fields. Cut down on the number of mandatory fields, and mark them clearly (use a *). Clearly label the fields in plain language. I am sure you may have a few more tips on forms design for data entry users. Remember the user before finding the comments.

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• Session Sharing with another User on *NIX and Windows

  - by Giri Mandalika

  Oracle Solaris Since Solaris is not widely known for its graphical interface, let's just focus on sharing a terminal session in read-only mode with another user on the same system. Here is an example. eg., % finger Login Name TTY Idle When Where root Super-User pts/1 Sat 16:57 dhcp-amer-vpn-rmdc-a sunperf ??? pts/2 4 Sat 16:41 pitcher.sfbay.sun.com In this example, two users root and sunperf are connected to the same system from two different terminals pts/1 and pts/2 respectively. If the root user wants to show something to sunperf user -- what s/he is doing in her/his terminal, for example, it can be accomplished with the following command. script -a /dev/null | tee -a <target_terminal eg., # script -a /dev/null | tee -a /dev/pts/2 Script started, file is /dev/null # # uptime 5:04pm up 1 day(s), 2:56, 2 users, load average: 0.81, 0.81, 0.81 # # isainfo -v 64-bit sparcv9 applications crc32c cbcond pause mont mpmul sha512 sha256 sha1 md5 camellia kasumi des aes ima hpc vis3 fmaf asi_blk_init vis2 vis popc 32-bit sparc applications crc32c cbcond pause mont mpmul sha512 sha256 sha1 md5 camellia kasumi des aes ima hpc vis3 fmaf asi_blk_init vis2 vis popc v8plus div32 mul32 # # exit Script done, file is /dev/null After the script .. | tee .. command, sunperf user should be able to see the root user's stdin and stdout contents in her/his own terminal until the script session exits in root user's terminal. Since this kind of sharing is based on capturing and redirecting the contents to the target terminal, the users on the receiving end won't be able to see whatever is being edited on initiators' terminal [using editors such as vi]. Also it is not possible to share the session with any connected user on the system unless the initiator has the necessary permissions and privileges. The script utility records everything printed in a terminal session, while the tee utility replicates the contents of the screen capture on to the standard output of the target terimal. The tee utility does not buffer the output - so, the screen capture from the initiators' terminal appears almost right away in the target terminal. Though I never tested, this technique may work on all *NIX and Linux flavors with little or no changes. Also there might be other ways to accomplish this. [Thanks to Sujeet for sharing this tip] Microsoft Windows Most of the Windows users may rely on VNC services to share a desktop session. Another way to share the desktop session is to use the Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) client. Here are the steps. Connect to the target Windows system using Remote Desktop Connection client Launch Windows Task Manager Navigate to the "Users" tab Find the user session that you want to connect to and have full control over as the other user who is currently holding that session Select the user name in Windows Task Manager, right click and choose the option "Remote Control" A window pops up on the other user's session with the message "<USER is requesting to control your session remotely. Do you accept the request?" Once the other user says "Yes", you will be granted access to that session. Since then both users should be able to see the same screen and even control the session from their respective workstations.

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• Enabling Google Webmaster Tools With Your GWB Blog

  - by ToStringTheory

  I’ll be honest and save you some time, if you don’t have your own domain for your GWB blog, this won’t help, you may just want to move on…  I don’t want to waste your time……… Still here?  Good.  How great are Google’s website tools?  I don’t just mean Analytics which rocks, but also their Webmaster Tools (https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/) which gives you a glimpse into the queries that provide you your website traffic, search engine behavior on your site, and important keywords, just to name a few.   Pictured Above: Cool statistics. Problem Thanks to svickn over at wtfnext.com (another GeeksWithBlogs blog), we already have the knowledge on how to setup Google Analytics (wtfnext.com - How to: Set up Google Analytics on your GeeksWithBlogs blog).  However, one of the questions raised in the post, and even semi-answered in the questions, was how to setup Google Webmaster Tools with your blog as well. At first glance, it seems like it can’t be done.  Google graciously gives you several different options on how to authorize that you own a site.  The authentication options are: 1. (Recommended) – Upload an HTML file to your server 2. Add a meta tag to your site’s home page 3. Use your Google Analytics account 4. Add a DNS record to your domain’s configuration Since you don’t have access to the base path, you can’t do #1.  Same goes for #2 since you can’t edit the master/index page.  As for #3, they REQUIRE the Analytics code to be in the <head> section of your page, so even though we can use the workaround of hosting it in the news section, it won’t allow it since it isn’t in the correct place. Solution Last I checked, I didn’t see the DNS record option for Webmaster Tools.  Maybe this was recently added, or maybe I don’t remember it since I was always able to use some other method to authorize it.  In this case though, this is the option that we need.  My registrar wasn’t in their list, but they provide detailed enough instructions for the ‘Other’ option: Simply create a TXT record with your domain hoster (mine is DynDns), fill in the tag information, and then click verify.  My entry was able to be resolved immediately, but since you are working with DNS, it may take longer.  If after 24 hours you still aren’t able to verify, you can use a site such as mxtoolbox.com, and in the searchbox type “txt: {domain-name-here}”, to see if your TXT record was entered successfully. It is pretty simple to setup the TXT entry in DynDns, but if you have questions/comments, feel free to post them. Conclusion With this simple workaround (not really a workaround, but feature since they offer it..), you are now able to see loads of information regarding your standings in the world of the Google Search Engine.  No critical issues?  Did I do something wrong?! As an aside, you can do the same thing with the Bing Webmaster Tools by adding a CNAME record to bing.verify.com…  Instructions can be found on the ‘Add Site’ popup when adding your site. If you don’t have your own domain, but continued, to read to this point – thank you!

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• An Actionable Common Approach to Federal Enterprise Architecture

  - by TedMcLaughlan

  The recent “Common Approach to Federal Enterprise Architecture” (US Executive Office of the President, May 2 2012) is extremely timely and well-organized guidance for the Federal IT investment and deployment community, as useful for Federal Departments and Agencies as it is for their stakeholders and integration partners. The guidance not only helps IT Program Planners and Managers, but also informs and prepares constituents who may be the beneficiaries or otherwise impacted by the investment. The FEA Common Approach extends from and builds on the rapidly-maturing Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework (FEAF) and its associated artifacts and standards, already included to a large degree in the annual Federal Portfolio and Investment Management processes – for example the OMB’s Exhibit 300 (i.e. Business Case justification for IT investments).A very interesting element of this Approach includes the very necessary guidance for actually using an Enterprise Architecture (EA) and/or its collateral – good guidance for any organization charged with maintaining a broad portfolio of IT investments. The associated FEA Reference Models (i.e. the BRM, DRM, TRM, etc.) are very helpful frameworks for organizing, understanding, communicating and standardizing across agencies with respect to vocabularies, architecture patterns and technology standards. Determining when, how and to what level of detail to include these reference models in the typically long-running Federal IT acquisition cycles wasn’t always clear, however, particularly during the first interactions of a Program’s technical and functional leadership with the Mission owners and investment planners. This typically occurs as an agency begins the process of describing its strategy and business case for allocation of new Federal funding, reacting to things like new legislation or policy, real or anticipated mission challenges, or straightforward ROI opportunities (for example the introduction of new technologies that deliver significant cost-savings).The early artifacts (i.e. Resource Allocation Plans, Acquisition Plans, Exhibit 300’s or other Business Case materials, etc.) of the intersection between Mission owners, IT and Program Managers are far easier to understand and discuss, when the overlay of an evolved, actionable Enterprise Architecture (such as the FEA) is applied.  “Actionable” is the key word – too many Public Service entity EA’s (including the FEA) have for too long been used simply as a very highly-abstracted standards reference, duly maintained and nominally-enforced by an Enterprise or System Architect’s office. Refreshing elements of this recent FEA Common Approach include one of the first Federally-documented acknowledgements of the “Solution Architect” (the “Problem-Solving” role). This role collaborates with the Enterprise, System and Business Architecture communities primarily on completing actual “EA Roadmap” documents. These are roadmaps grounded in real cost, technical and functional details that are fully aligned with both contextual expectations (for example the new “Digital Government Strategy” and its required roadmap deliverables - and the rapidly increasing complexities of today’s more portable and transparent IT solutions.  We also expect some very critical synergies to develop in early IT investment cycles between this new breed of “Federal Enterprise Solution Architect” and the first waves of the newly-formal “Federal IT Program Manager” roles operating under more standardized “critical competency” expectations (including EA), likely already to be seriously influencing the quality annual CPIC (Capital Planning and Investment Control) processes.  Our Oracle Enterprise Strategy Team (EST) and associated Oracle Enterprise Architecture (OEA) practices are already engaged in promoting and leveraging the visibility of Enterprise Architecture as a key contributor to early IT investment validation, and we look forward in particular to seeing the real, citizen-centric benefits of this FEA Common Approach in particular surface across the entire Public Service CPIC domain - Federal, State, Local, Tribal and otherwise. Read more Enterprise Architecture blog posts for additional EA insight!

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• October 2013 Fusion Middleware (FMW) Proactive Patches released

  - by PCat

  We are glad to announce that the following Fusion Middleware (FMW) Proactive  patches were released on October 15, 2013.Bundle PatchesBundle patches are collections of controlled, well tested critical bug fixes for a specific product  which may include security contents and occasionally minor enhancements. These are cumulative in nature meaning the latest bundle patch in a particular series includes the contents of the previous bundle patches released.  A suite bundle patch is an aggregation of multiple product  bundle patches that are part of a product suite. Oracle Identity Management Suite Bundle Patch 11.1.1.5.5 consisting of Oracle Identity Manager (OIM) 11.1.1.5.9 bundle patch Oracle Access Manager (OAM) 11.1.1.5.6 bundle patch. Oracle Adaptive Access Manager (OAAM) 11.1.1.5.2 bundle patch. Oracle Entitlement Server (OES) 11.1.1.5.4 bundle patch. Oracle Identity Management Suite Bundle Patch 11.1.2.0.4 consisting of Oracle Access Manager (OAM) 11.1.2.0.4 bundle patch. Oracle Adaptive Access Manager (OAAM) 11.1.2.0.2 bundle patch. Oracle Entitlement Server (OES) 11.1.2.0.2 bundle patch. Oracle Identity Analytics (OIA ) 11.1.1.5.6  bundle patch. Oracle GlassFish Server (OGFS) 2.1.1.22, 3.0.1.8 and 3.1.2.7 bundle patches. Oracle iPlanet Web Server (OiWS) 7.0.18 bundle patch Oracle SOA Suite (SOA) 11.1.1.7.1 bundle patch Oracle WebCenter Portal (WCP) 11.1.1.8.1 bundle patch Sun Role Manager (SRM) 4.1.7 and 5.0.3.2 bundle patches. Patch Set Updates (PSU)Patch Set Updates (PSU)  are collections of well controlled, well tested critical bug fixes for a specific product  that have been proven in customer environments. PSUs  may include security contents but no  enhancements are included. These are cumulative in nature meaning the latest PSU  in a particular series includes the contents of the previous PSUs  released. Oracle Exalogic 2.0.3.0.4 Physical Linux x86-64 and 2.0.4.0.4 Physical Solaris x86-64 PSUs. Oracle WebLogic Server 10.3.6.0.6 and 12.1.1.0.6 PSUs. Critical Patch Update (CPU)The Critical Patch Update program is Oracle's quarterly release of security fixes.The following additional patches were released as part of Oracle's Critical Patch Update program: Oracle JDeveloper 11.1.2.3.0, 11.1.2.4.0 and 12.1.2.0.0 Oracle Outside In Technology 8.4.0 and  8.4.1 Oracle Portal 11.1.1.6.0 Oracle Security Service  11.1.1.6.0, 11.1.1.7.0 and 12.1.2.0.0 Oracle WebCache 11.1.1.6.0 and 11.1.1.7.0 Oracle WebCenter Content 10.1.3.5.1, 11.1.1.6.0, 11.1.1.7.0 and 11.1.1.8.0 Oracle WebServices 10.1.3.5.0 and 11.1.1.6.0 For more information: Master Notes on Fusion Middleware Proactive Patching PSU and CPU October 2013  Availability Document Critical Patch Update Advisory -  October 2013

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• Merging Social Accounts: What We Learned This Weekend

  - by Mike Stiles

  Guest Post by Erika BrookesWe learned that it’s not always as easy as you think it’s going to be. While it’s widely accepted that merging multiple owned Facebook Pages that are duplicating communities and putting out the same type of content is a best practice, actually pulling it off without rattling fans is a trickier proposition. Facebook is nice and clear about how to merge Facebook Pages. Although content is not carried over, Likes from the pages you’re merging are. So you can imagine the surprise when such fans start seeing posts in their News Feed from a page they don’t believe they ever Liked. One community member accurately likened it to having your bank come under another bank’s brand name. The Facebook Page changes to the new brand, just like your debit card, emails, signs and other communication. This weekend we did our merge. The Facebook communities of Vitrue, Involver and Collective Intellect were pulled into one community, Oracle Social. Could we have handled it better? Oh yeah. Our intent was to make sure, to the fullest extent possible, that the fans of the Vitrue, Involver, and Collective Intellect brand pages were well-informed about the pending page merges in ADVANCE of the merge. While many were aware that Oracle acquired the three companies, many were not. We learned from fan feedback that we should have sent notifications MUCH earlier to make the brand Page merge crystal clear and to answer any questions. That was our bad, our responsibility and we apologize for Oracle Social showing up in your News Feed if you were not aware that it was a result of your fandom of Vitrue, Involver or Collective Intellect. It was our job to make you aware well in advance. Some felt they had never Liked the fan Pages of Vitrue, Involver or Collective Intellect, so they were understandably upset (some cultures may call it “fit to be tied”) when they found themselves fans of Oracle Social. One thing to consider is that since 2009, brands and developers have used and enjoyed free Involver tab apps like Twitter, RSS and YouTube (1.2 million of which are currently active), which included an opt-in Liking the Involver Page. Often, when Liking happens in a manner outside of the traditional clicking of a Like button on a brand Page, it’s easy to forget a Page was indeed Liked. Lastly, a few felt that their Like of the Page had been “bought.” It was not. No fans or Likes were separately purchased. Yes, the companies and the social properties of Vitrue, Involver and Collective Intellect were acquired by Oracle. Those brands are now being coordinated into the larger Oracle brand. In social media, that means those brands are being integrated into the Oracle Social community. So what now? We apologize and apply lessons learned. We learned that you not only have to communicate thoroughly and clearly, but you have to communicate well in advance of any actionable items that will affect fans. We’re more than willing to walk straight to the woodshed when we deserve it. Going forward, the social team here is dedicated to facilitating content, discussion and sharing around social for marketers, agencies, IT stakeholders and social staffs, including community managers. We anticipate Oracle Social being the premier gathering place for true social innovators as we move into social’s exciting next phase of development. Inevitably, some will still feel they are fans of the Page in error. While we hate to see you go, you may unlike the Page if it’s not relevant or useful to you. Let’s continue to contribute, participate, foster our desire to learn, and move forward together positively and constructively - both for current fans of the community and the many fans to come.

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• Doubts about several best practices for rest api + service layer

  - by TheBeefMightBeTough

  I'm going to be starting a project soon that exposes a restful api for business intelligence. It may not be limited to a restful api, so I plan to delegate requests to a service layer that then coordinates multiple domain objects (each of which have business logic local to the object). The api will likely have many calls as it is a long-term project. While thinking about the design, I recalled a few best practices. 1) Use command objects at the controller layer (I'm using Spring MVC). 2) Use DTOs at the service layer. 3) Validate in both the controller and service layer, though for different reasons. I have my doubts about these recommendations. 1) Using command objects adds a lot of extra single-purpose classes (potentially one per request). What exactly is the benefit? Annotation based validation can be done using this approach, sure. What if I have two requests that take the same parameters, but have different validation requirements? I would have to have two different classes with exactly the same members but different annotations? Bleh. 2) I have heard that using DTOs is preferable to parameters because it makes for more maintainable code down the road (say, e.g., requirements change and the service parameters need to be altered). I don't quite understand this. Shouldn't an api be more-or-less set in stone? I would understand that in the early phases of a project (or, especially, an entire company) the domain itself will not be well understood, and thus core domain objects may change along with the apis that manipulate these objects. At this point however the number of api methods should be small and their dependents few, so changes to the methods could easily be tolerated from a maintainability standpoint. In a large api with many methods and a substantial domain model, I would think having a DTO for potentially each domain object would become unwieldy. Am I misunderstanding something here? 3) I see validation in the controller and service layer as redundant in most cases. Why would I validate that parameters are not null and are in general well formed in the controller if the service is going to do exactly the same (and more). Couldn't I just do all the validation in the service and throw a runtime exception with a list of bad parameters then catch that in the controller to make the error messages more presentable? Better yet, couldn't I just make the error messages user-friendly in the service and let the exception trickle up to a global handler (ControllerAdvice in spring, for example)? Is there something wrong with either of these approaches? (I do see a use case for controller validation if the input does not map one-to-one with the service input, but since the controllers are for a rest api and not forms, the api parameters will probably map directly to service parameters.) I do also have a question about unchecked vs checked exceptions. Namely, I'm not really sure why I'd ever want to use a checked exception. Every time I have seen them used they just get wrapped into general exceptions (DomainException, SystemException, ApplicationException, w/e) to reduce the signature length of methods, or devs catch Exception rather than dealing with the App1Exception, App2Exception, Sys1Exception, Sys2Exception. I don't see how either of these practices is very useful. Why not just use unchecked exceptions always and catch the ones you actually do care about? You could just document what unchecked exceptions the method throws.

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• The Connected Company: WebCenter Portal - Feedback - Analytics and Polls

  - by Michael Snow

  Evernote Export body, td { }Guest Post by: Mitchell Palski, Staff Sales Consultant The importance of connecting peers has been widely recognized and socialized as a critical component of employee intranets. Organizations are striving to provide mediums for sharing knowledge and improving awareness across their enterprise. Indirectly, the socialization of your enterprise should lead to cost savings and improved product/service quality. However, many times the direct effects of connecting an organization’s leadership with its employees are overlooked. Oracle WebCenter Portal can help you bridge that gap by gathering implicit and explicit feedback. Implicit Feedback Through Usage Analytics Analytics allows administrators to track and analyze WebCenter Portal traffic and usage. Analytics provides the following basic functionality: Usage Tracking Metrics: Analytics collects and reports metrics of common WebCenter Portal functions, including community and portlet traffic. Behavior Tracking: Analytics can be used to analyze WebCenter Portal metrics to determine usage patterns, such as page visit duration and usage over time. User Profile Correlation: Analytics can be used to correlate metric information with user profile information. Usage tracking reports can be viewed and filtered by user profile data such as country, company or title. Usage analytics help measure how users interact with website content – allowing your IT staff and business analysts to make informed decisions when planning development for your next intranet enhancement. For example: If users are not accessing your Announcements page and missing critical information that they need to be aware of, you may elect to use graphical links on the home page to direct more users to that page. As a result, the number of employee help-requests to HR decreases. If users are not accessing your News page to read recent articles, you may elect to stop spending as much time updating the page with new stories and cut costs in your communications department. You notice that there is a high volume of users accessing the Employee Dashboard page so your organization decides to continue making personalization enhancements to the page and investing in the Portal tool that most users are accessing. Usage analytics aren’t necessarily a new concept in the IT industry. What sets WebCenter Portal Analytics apart is: Reports are tailored for WebCenter specific tools Report can be easily added to a page as simple as a drag-and-drop Explicit Feedback Through Polls WebCenter Portal users can create, edit, take, and analyze online polls. With polls, you can survey your audience (such as their opinions and their experience level), check whether they can recall important information, and gather feedback and metrics. How many times have you been involved in a requirements discussion and someone has asked a question similar to “Well how do you know that no one likes our home page?” and the response is “Everyone says they hate it! That’s all anyone complains about.” No one has any measurable, quantifiable metric to gauge user satisfaction. Analytics measure usage, but your organization also needs to measure the quality of your portal as defined by the actual people that use it. With that information, your leadership can make informed decisions that will not only match usage patterns but also relate to employees on a personal level. The end result is a connection between employees and leadership that gives everyone in the organization a sense of ownership of their Portal rather than the feeling of development decisions being segregated to leadership only. Polls can be created and edited through the Poll Manager: Polls and View Poll Results can easily be added to a page through drag-and-drop. What did we learn? Being a “connected” company doesn’t just mean helping employees connect with each other horizontally across your enterprise. It also means connecting those employees to the decisions that affect their everyday activities. Through WebCenter Portal Usage Analytics and Polls, any decision that is made to remove a Portal page, update a Portal page, or develop new Portal functionality, can be justified by quantifiable metrics. Instead of fielding complaints and hearing that your employees don’t have a voice, give those employees a voice and listen!

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• MPI Cluster Debugger launch integration in VS2010

  Let's assume that you have all the HPC bits installed and that you have existing MPI code (or you created a "Hello World" project using the MPI project template). Of course, you create a single MPI application and at runtime it will correspond to multiple processes (of the same app) launched on multiple nodes (i.e. machines) on the cluster. So how do you debug such a situation by simply hitting the familiar "F5" keystroke (i.e. Debug - Start Debugging)?WATCH IT INSTEAD OF READING ABOUT ITIf you can't bear to read through all the details below, just watch this 19-minute screencast explaining this VS2010 feature. Alternatively, or even additionally, keep on reading.REQUIREMENTWhen you debug an MPI application, you would want the copying of resources from your client machine (where Visual Studio is installed) to each compute node (where Windows HPC Server is installed) to take place automatically for you. 'Resources' in the previous sentence includes your application binary, plus any binary or data dependencies it may have, plus PDBs if needed, plus the debug CRT of the correct bitness, plus msvsmon for remote debugging to work. You would also want, after copying is complete, to have your app and msvsmon launched and attached so that you can hit breakpoints back in Visual Studio on your client machine. All these thing that you would want are delivered in VS2010.STEPS TO F51. In your MPI project where you have placed a breakpoint go to Project Properties - Configuration Properties - Debugging. Ensure the "Debugger to launch" combo box value is set to MPI Cluster Debugger.2. There are a whole bunch of properties here and typically you can ignore all of them except one: Run Environment. By default it is set to run 1 process on your local machine and if you change the number after that to, for example, 4 it will launch 4 processes of your app on your local machine.You want this to run on your cluster though, so go to the dropdown arrow at the end of the Run Environment cell and open it to expose the "Edit Hpc node" menu which opens the Node Selector dialog:In this dialog you can enter (or pick from a list) the cluster head node name and then the number of processes you want to execute on the cluster and then hit OK and… you are done.3. Press F5 and watch your breakpoint get hit (after giving it some time for copying, remote execution, attachment and symbol resolution to take place).GOING DEEPERIn the MPI Cluster Debugger project properties above, you can see many additional properties to the Run Environment. They are all optional, but you may want to understand them in order to fine tune your cluster debugging. Read all about each one of these on the MSDN page Configuration Properties for the MPI Cluster Debugger.In the Node Selector dialog above you can see more options than just the Head Node name and Number of Process to run. They should be self-explanatory but I also cover them in depth in my screencast showing you an example of why you would choose to schedule processes per core versus per node. You can also read about these options on MSDN as part of the page How to: Configure and Launch the MPI Cluster Debugger.To read through an example that touches on MPI project creation, project properties, node selector, and also usage of MPI with OpenMP plus MPI with PPL, read the MSDN page Walkthrough: Launching the MPI Cluster Debugger in Visual Studio 2010.Happy MPI debugging! Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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• Replicating between Cloud and On-Premises using Oracle GoldenGate

  - by Ananth R. Tiru

  Do you have applications running on the cloud that you need to connect with the on premises systems. The most likely answer to this question is an astounding YES!  If so, then you understand the importance of keep the data fresh at all times across the cloud and on-premises environments. This is also one of the key focus areas for the new GoldenGate 12c release which we announced couple of week ago via a press release. Most enterprises have spent years avoiding the data “silos” that inhibit productivity. For example, an enterprise which has adopted a CRM strategy could be relying on an on-premises based marketing application used for developing and nurturing leads. At the same time it could be using a SaaS based Sales application to create opportunities and quotes. The sales and the marketing teams which use these systems need to be able to access and share the data in a reliable and cohesive way. This example can be extended to other applications areas such as HR, Supply Chain, and Finance and the demands the users place on getting a consistent view of the data. When it comes to moving data in hybrid environments some of the key requirements include minimal latency, reliability and security: Data must remain fresh. As data ages it becomes less relevant and less valuable—day-old data is often insufficient in today’s competitive landscape. Reliability must be guaranteed despite system or connectivity issues that can occur between the cloud and on-premises instances. Security is a key concern when replicating between cloud and on-premises instances. There are several options to consider when replicating between the cloud and on-premises instances. Option 1 – Secured network established between the cloud and on-premises A secured network is established between the cloud and on-premises which enables the applications (including replication software) running on the cloud and on-premises to have seamless connectivity to other applications irrespective of where they are physically located. Option 2 – Restricted network established between the cloud and on-premises A restricted network is established between the cloud and on-premises instances which enable certain ports (required by replication) be opened on both the cloud and on the on-premises instances and white lists the IP addresses of the cloud and on-premises instances. Option 3 – Restricted network access from on-premises and cloud through HTTP proxy This option can be considered when the ports required by the applications (including replication software) are not open and the cloud instance is not white listed on the on-premises instance. This option of tunneling through HTTP proxy may be only considered when proper security exceptions are obtained. Oracle GoldenGate Oracle GoldenGate is used for major Fortune 500 companies and other industry leaders worldwide to support mission-critical systems for data availability and integration. Oracle GoldenGate addresses the requirements for ensuring data consistency between cloud and on-premises instances, thus facilitating the business process to run effectively and reliably. The architecture diagram below illustrates the scenario where the cloud and the on-premises instance are connected using GoldenGate through a secured network In the above scenario, Oracle GoldenGate is installed and configured on both the cloud and the on-premises instances. On the cloud instance Oracle GoldenGate is installed and configured on the machine where the database instance can be accessed. Oracle GoldenGate can be configured for unidirectional or bi-directional replication between the cloud and on premises instances. The specific configuration details of Oracle GoldenGate processes will depend upon the option selected for establishing connectivity between the cloud and on-premises instances. The knowledge article (ID - 1588484.1) titled ' Replicating between Cloud and On-Premises using Oracle GoldenGate' discusses in detail the options for replicating between the cloud and on-premises instances. The article can be found on My Oracle Support. To learn more about Oracle GoldenGate 12c register for our launch webcast where we will go into these new features in more detail.   You may also want to download our white paper "Oracle GoldenGate 12c Release 1 New Features Overview" I would love to hear your requirements for replicating between on-premises and cloud instances, as well as your comments about the strategy discussed in the knowledge article to address your needs. Please post your comments in this blog or in the Oracle GoldenGate public forum - https://forums.oracle.com/community/developer/english/business_intelligence/system_management_and_integration/goldengate

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• Package management system corrupted. Cannot install or remove packages. U12.04LTS

  - by user271490

  Having read other posts, I believe that this may be less about samba than about update system. Below is the log file of the failed installation of Samba. I have been trying without success to install/outstall samba so that I could install anything else ... I cannot either install or remove samba using either update-manager or apt-get (nor indeed Software Centre). One of the errors that I have had to correct is the presence after "removal" (failed) of /usr/share/system-config-samba directory which finally allowed itself to be deleted. That, however was then ... I have U12.04LTS. running on release 63 because I allowed the upgrade to 64 this morning which fell over - no output to monitor - obviously even less support for my graphic chip than I am suffering already (see other posts in this forum). According to my interpretation of the dpkg returned errors there may be some problem with the package files, but if this is the case then it is on servers 'main', 'nantes uni fr' and 'best fr' at the very least if not everywhere. The suggestions offered at Package operation failed and elsewhere have not worked for me. This linked post suggests that a similar error is present in other packages, or that the error is in the 'update system' I have tried ... sudo apt-get remove samba ... autoremove ... install samba ... clean ... update -f all of the above In update-manager I have tried the "reload packages list" which fails to terminate because of the error. I have tried to install and remove samba from the software centre ... :( I am at a loss ... I need help, please! Firstly to recover my apt-get/update-manager/Software Centre so that I can at least carry on with my continuing installation - up to communicating with home network hence need for samba - which brings me to my second requirement ... samba. PS is the issue about "MaxReports" associated or apart? UPDATE! Being heartily sick of restarting FF every 5 seconds I thought I'd try again with Chromium ... and got the same errors from dpkg about corrupt compressed package - coincidence? Of course this was no longer in clipboard when I got here because apport has just errored ... AAARRRGGGH!!! Why does every error clear the clipboard? Thanks for any and all help!! installArchives() failed: Preconfiguring packages ... ... snip (Reading database ... ... snip (Reading database ... 184858 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking samba (from .../samba_2%3a3.6.3-2ubuntu2.10_i386.deb) ... dpkg-deb (subprocess): data: internal gzip read error: ': data error' dpkg-deb: error: subprocess returned error exit status 2 dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/samba_2%3a3.6.3-2ubuntu2.10_i386.deb (--unpack): subprocess dpkg-deb --fsys-tarfile returned error exit status 2 No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already Selecting previously unselected package system-config-samba. Unpacking system-config-samba (from .../system-config-samba_1.2.63-0ubuntu5_all.deb) ... Processing triggers for ureadahead ... ureadahead will be reprofiled on next reboot Processing triggers for ufw ... Processing triggers for man-db ... Processing triggers for bamfdaemon ... Rebuilding /usr/share/applications/bamf.index... Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils ... Processing triggers for gnome-menus ... Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme ... Errors were encountered while processing: /var/cache/apt/archives/samba_2%3a3.6.3-2ubuntu2.10_i386.deb Error in function: dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of system-config-samba: system-config-samba depends on samba; however: Package samba is not installed. dpkg: error processing system-config-samba (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured

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• Getting the number of fragments which passed the depth test

  - by Etan

  In "modern" environments, the "NV Occlusion Query" extension provides a method to get the number of fragments which passed the depth test. However, on the iPad / iPhone using OpenGL ES, the extension is not available. What is the most performant approach to implement a similar behaviour in the fragment shader? Some of my ideas: Render the object completely in white, then count all the colors together using a two-pass shader where first a vertical line is rendered and for each fragment the shader computes the sum over the whole row. Then, a single vertex is rendered whose fragment sums all the partial sums of the first pass. Doesn't seem to be very efficient. Render the object completely in white over a black background. Downsample recursively, abusing the hardware linear interpolation between textures until being at a reasonably small resolution. This leads to fragments which have a greyscale level depending on the number of white pixels where in their corresponding region. Is this even accurate enough? Use mipmaps and simply read the pixel on the 1x1 level. Again the question of accuracy and if it is even possible using non-power-of-two textures. The problem wit these approaches is, that the pipeline gets stalled which results in major performance issues. Therefore, I'm looking for a more performant way to accomplish my goal. Using the EXT_OCCLUSION_QUERY_BOOLEAN extension Apple introduced EXT_OCCLUSION_QUERY_BOOLEAN in iOS 5.0 for iPad 2. "4.1.6 Occlusion Queries Occlusion queries use query objects to track the number of fragments or samples that pass the depth test. An occlusion query can be started and finished by calling BeginQueryEXT and EndQueryEXT, respectively, with a target of ANY_SAMPLES_PASSED_EXT or ANY_SAMPLES_PASSED_CONSERVATIVE_EXT. When an occlusion query is started with the target ANY_SAMPLES_PASSED_EXT, the samples-boolean state maintained by the GL is set to FALSE. While that occlusion query is active, the samples-boolean state is set to TRUE if any fragment or sample passes the depth test. When the occlusion query finishes, the samples-boolean state of FALSE or TRUE is written to the corresponding query object as the query result value, and the query result for that object is marked as available. If the target of the query is ANY_SAMPLES_PASSED_CONSERVATIVE_EXT, an implementation may choose to use a less precise version of the test which can additionally set the samples-boolean state to TRUE in some other implementation dependent cases." The first sentence hints on a behavior which is exactly what I'm looking for: getting the number of pixels which passed the depth test in an asynchronous manner without much performance loss. However, the rest of the document describes only how to get boolean results. Is it possible to exploit this extension to get the pixel count? Does the hardware support it so that there may be hidden API to get access to the pixel count? Other extensions which could be exploitable would be debugging features like the number of times the fragment shader was invoked (PSInvocations in DirectX - not sure if something simila is available in OpenGL ES). However, this would also result in a pipeline stall.

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• Observing flow control idle time in TCP

  - by user12820842

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

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