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• Migrating SQL Server Databases – The DBA’s Checklist (Part 1)

  - by Sadequl Hussain

  It is a fact of life: SQL Server databases change homes. They move from one instance to another, from one version to the next, from old servers to new ones.  They move around as an organisation’s data grows, applications are enhanced or new versions of the database software are released. If not anything else, servers become old and unreliable and databases eventually need to find a new home. Consider the following scenarios: 1.     A new  database application is rolled out in a production server from the development or test environment 2.     A copy of the production database needs to be installed in a test server for troubleshooting purposes 3.     A copy of the development database is regularly refreshed in a test server during the system development life cycle 4.     A SQL Server is upgraded to a newer version. This can be an in-place upgrade or a side-by-side migration 5.     One or more databases need to be moved between different instances as part of a consolidation strategy. The instances can be running the same or different version of SQL Server 6.     A database has to be restored from a backup file provided by a third party application vendor 7.     A backup of the database is restored in the same or different instance for disaster recovery 8.     A database needs to be migrated within the same instance: a.     Files are moved from direct attached storage to storage area network b.    The same database is copied under a different name for another application Migrating SQL Server database applications is a complex topic in itself. There are a number of components that can be involved: jobs, DTS or SSIS packages, logins or linked servers are only few pieces of the puzzle. However, in this article we will focus only on the central part of migration: the installation of the database itself. Unless it is an in-place upgrade, typically the database is taken from a source server and installed in a destination instance.  Most of the time, a full backup file is used for the rollout. The backup file is either provided to the DBA or the DBA takes the backup and restores it in the target server. Sometimes the database is detached from the source and the files are copied to and attached in the destination. Regardless of the method of copying, moving, refreshing, restoring or upgrading the physical database, there are a number of steps the DBA should follow before and after it has been installed in the destination. It is these post database installation steps we are going to discuss below. Some of these steps apply in almost every scenario described above while some will depend on the type of objects contained within the database.  Also, the principles hold regardless of the number of databases involved. Step 1:  Make a copy of data and log files when attaching and detaching When detaching and attaching databases, ensure you have made copies of the data and log files if the destination is running a newer version of SQL Server. This is because once attached to a newer version, the database cannot be detached and attached back to an older version. Trying to do so will give you a message like the following: Server: Msg 602, Level 21, State 50, Line 1 Could not find row in sysindexes for database ID 6, object ID 1, index ID 1. Run DBCC CHECKTABLE on sysindexes. Connection Broken If you try to backup the attached database and restore it in the source, it will still fail. Similarly, if you are restoring the database in a newer version, it cannot be backed up or detached and put back in an older version of SQL. Unlike detach and attach method though, you do not lose the backup file or the original database here. When detaching and attaching a database, it is important you keep all the log files available along with the data files. It is possible to attach a database without a log file and SQL Server can be instructed to create a new log file, however this does not work if the database was detached when the primary file group was read-only. You will need all the log files in such cases. Step 2: Change database compatibility level Once the database has been restored or attached to a newer version of SQL Server, change the database compatibility level to reflect the newer version unless there is a compelling reason not to do so. When attaching or restoring from a previous version of SQL, the database retains the older version’s compatibility level.  The only time you would want to keep a database with an older compatibility level is when the code within your database is no longer supported by SQL Server. For example, outer joins with *= or the =* operators were still possible in SQL 2000 (with a warning message), but not in SQL 2005 anymore. If your stored procedures or triggers are using this form of join, you would want to keep the database with an older compatibility level.  For a list of compatibility issues between older and newer versions of SQL Server databases, refer to the Books Online under the sp_dbcmptlevel topic. Application developers and architects can help you in deciding whether you should change the compatibility level or not. You can always change the compatibility mode from the newest to an older version if necessary. To change the compatibility level, you can either use the database’s property from the SQL Server Management Studio or use the sp_dbcmptlevel stored procedure.   Bear in mind that you cannot run the built-in reports for databases from SQL Server Management Studio if you keep the database with an older compatibility level. The following figure shows the error message I received when trying to run the “Disk Usage by Top Tables” report against a database. This database was hosted in a SQL Server 2005 system and still had a compatibility mode 80 (SQL 2000).     Continues…

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• JMaghreb 2012 Trip Report

  - by arungupta

  JMaghreb is the inaugural Java conference organized by Morocco JUG. It is the biggest Java conference in Maghreb (5 countries in North West Africa). Oracle was the exclusive platinum sponsor with several others. The registrations had to be closed at 1412 for the free conference and several folks were already on the waiting list. Rabat with 531 registrations and Casablanca with 426 were the top cities. Some statistics ... 850+ attendees over 2 days, 500+ every day 30 sessions were delivered by 18 speakers from 10 different countries 10 sessions in French and 20 in English 6 of the speakers spoke at JavaOne 2012 8 will be at Devoxx Attendees from 5 different countries and 57 cities in Morocco 40.9% qualified them as professional and rest as students Topics ranged from HTML5, Java EE 7, ADF, JavaFX, MySQL, JCP, Vaadin, Android, Community, JCP Java EE 6 hands-on lab was sold out within 7 minutes and JavaFX in 12 minutes I gave the keynote along with Simon Ritter which was basically a recap of the Strategy and Technical keynotes presented at JavaOne 2012. An informal survey during the keynote showed the following numbers: 25% using NetBeans, 90% on Eclipse, 3 on JDeveloper, 1 on IntelliJ About 10 subscribers to free online Java magazine. This digital magazine is a comprehensive source of information for everything Java - subscribe for free!! About 10-15% using Java SE 7. Download JDK 7 and get started today! Even JDK 8 builds have been available for a while now. My second talk explained the core concepts of WebSocket and how JSR 356 is providing a standard API to build WebSocket-driven applications in Java EE 7. TOTD #183 explains how you can easily get started with WebSocket in GlassFish 4. The complete slide deck is available: Next day started with a community keynote by Sonya Barry. Some of us live the life of JCP, JSR, EG, EC, RI, etc every day, but not every body is. To address that, Sonya prepared an excellent introductory presentation providing an explanation of these terms and how java.net infrastructure supports Java development. The registration for the lab showed there is a definite demand for these technologies in this part of the world. I delivered the Java EE 6 hands-on lab to a packed room of about 120 attendees. Most of the attendees were able to progress and follow the lab instructions. Some of the attendees did not have a laptop but were taking extensive notes on paper notepads. Several attendees were already using Java EE 6 in their projects and typically they are the ones asking deep dive questions. Also gave out three copies of my recently released Java EE 6 Pocket Guide and new GlassFish t-shirts. Definitely feels happy to coach ~120 more Java developers learn standards-based enterprise Java programming. I also participated in a JCP BoF along with Werner, Sonya, and Badr. Adotp-a-JSR, java.net infrastructure, how to file a JSR, what is an RI, and other similar topics were discussed in a candid manner. You can follow @JMaghrebConf or check out their facebook page. java.net published a timely conversation with Badr El Houari - the fearless leader of the Morocco JUG team. Did you know that Morocco JUG stood for JCP EC elections (ADD LINK) ? Even though they did not get elected but did fairly well. Now some sample tweets from #JMaghreb ... #JMaghreb is over. Impressive for a first edition! Thanks @badrelhouari and all the @MoroccoJUG team ! Since you @speakjava : System.out.println("Thank you so much dear Tech Evangelist ! The JavaFX was pretty amazing !!! "); #JMaghreb @YounesVendetta @arungupta @JMaghrebConf Right ! hope he will be back to morocco again and again .. :) @Alji_ @arungupta @JMaghrebConf That dude is a genius ;) Put it on your wall :p @arungupta rocking Java EE 6 at @JMaghrebConf #Java #JavaEE #JMaghreb http://t.co/isl0Iq5p @sonyabarry you are an awesome speaker ;-) #JMaghreb rich more than 550 attendees in day one. Expecting more tomorrow! ongratulations @badrelhouari the organisation was great! The talks were pretty interesting, and the turnout was surprising at #JMaghreb! #JMaghreb is truly awesome... The speakers are unbelievable ! #JavaFX... Just amazing #JMaghreb Charmed by the talk about #javaFX ( nodes architecture, MVC, Lazy loading, binding... ) gotta start using it intead of SWT. #JMaghreb JavaFX is killing JFreeChart. It supports Charts a lot of kind of them ... #JMaghreb The british man is back #JMaghreb I do like him!! #JMaghreb @arungupta rocking @JMaghrebConf. pic.twitter.com/CNohA3PE @arungupta Great talk about the future of Java EE (JEE 7 & JEE 8) Thank you. #JMaghreb JEE7 more mooore power , leeess less code !! #JMaghreb They are simplifying the existing API for Java Message Service 2.0 #JMaghreb good to know , the more the code is simplified the better ! The Glassdoor guy #arungupta is doing it RIGHT ! #JMaghreb Great presentation of The Future of the Java Platform: Java EE 7, Java SE 8 & Beyond #jMaghreb @arungupta is a great Guy apparently #JMaghreb On a personal front, the hotel (Soiftel Jardin des Roses) was pretty nice and the location was perfect. There was a 1.8 mile loop dirt trail right next to it so I managed to squeeze some runs before my upcoming marathon. Also enjoyed some great Moroccan cuisine - Couscous, Tajine, mint tea, and moroccan salad. Visit to Kasbah of the Udayas, Hassan II (one of the tallest mosque in the world), and eating in a restaurant in a kasbah are some of the exciting local experiences. Now some pictures from the event (and around the city) ... And the complete album: Many thanks to Badr, Faisal, and rest of the team for organizing a great conference. They are already thinking about how to improve the content, logisitics, and flow for the next year. I'm certainly looking forward to JMaghreb 2.0 :-)

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• Silverlight for Windows Embedded Tutorial (step 5 and a bit of Windows Phone 7)

  - by Valter Minute

  If you haven’t spent the last week in the middle of the Sahara desert or traveling on a sled in the north pole area you should have heard something about the launch of Windows Phone 7 Series (or Windows Phone Series 7, or Windows Series Phone 7 or something like that). Even if you are in the middle of the desert or somewhere around the north pole you may have been reached by the news, since it seems that WP7S (using the full name will kill my available bandwidth!) is generating a lot of buzz in the development and IT communities. One of the most important aspects of this new platform is that it will be programmed using a new set of tools and frameworks, completely different from the ones used on older releases of Windows Mobile (or SmartPhone, or PocketPC or whatever…). WP7S applications can be developed using Silverlight or XNA. If you want to learn something more about WP7S development you can download the preview of Charles Petzold’s book about it: http://www.charlespetzold.com/phone/index.html Charles Petzold is also the author of “Programming Windows”, the first book I ever read about programming on Windows (it was Windows 3.0 at that time!). The fact that even I was able to learn how to develop Windows application is a proof of the quality of Petzold’s work. This book is up to his standards and the 150pages preview is already rich in technical contents without being boring or complicated to understand. I may be able to become a Windows Phone developer thanks to mr. Petzold. Mr. Petzold uses some nice samples to introduce the basic concepts of Silverlight development on WP7S. On this new platform you’ll use managed code to develop your application, so those samples can’t be ported on Windows CE R3 as they are, but I would like to take one of the first samples (called “SilverlightTapHello1”) and adapt it to Silverlight for Windows Embedded to show that even plain old native code can be used to develop “cool” user interfaces! The sample shows the standard WP7S title header and a textbox with an hello world message inside it. When the user touches the textbox, it will change its color. When the user touches the background (Grid) behind it, its default color (plain old White) will be restored. Let’s see how we can implement the same features on our embedded device! I took the XAML code of the sample (you can download the book samples here: http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/D/B/1DB49641-3956-41F1-BAFA-A021673C709E/CodeSamples_DRAFTPreview_ProgrammingWindowsPhone7Series.zip) and changed it a little bit to remove references to WP7S or managed runtime. If you compare the resulting files you will see that I was able to keep all the resources inside the App.xaml files and the structure of  MainPage.XAML almost intact. This is the Silverlight for Windows Embedded version of MainPage.XAML: <UserControl x:Class="SilverlightTapHello1.MainPage" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:phoneNavigation="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Phone.Controls;assembly=Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Navigation" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" mc:Ignorable="d" d:DesignWidth="480" d:DesignHeight="800" FontFamily="{StaticResource PhoneFontFamilyNormal}" FontSize="{StaticResource PhoneFontSizeNormal}" Foreground="{StaticResource PhoneForegroundBrush}" Width="640" Height="480">   <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="{StaticResource PhoneBackgroundBrush}"> <Grid.RowDefinitions> <RowDefinition Height="Auto"/> <RowDefinition Height="*"/> </Grid.RowDefinitions>   <!--TitleGrid is the name of the application and page title--> <Grid x:Name="TitleGrid" Grid.Row="0"> <TextBlock Text="SILVERLIGHT TAP HELLO #1" x:Name="textBlockPageTitle" Style="{StaticResource PhoneTextPageTitle1Style}"/> <TextBlock Text="main page" x:Name="textBlockListTitle" Style="{StaticResource PhoneTextPageTitle2Style}"/> </Grid>   <!--ContentGrid is empty. Place new content here--> <Grid x:Name="ContentGrid" Grid.Row="1" MouseLeftButtonDown="ContentGrid_MouseButtonDown" Background="{StaticResource PhoneBackgroundBrush}"> <TextBlock x:Name="TextBlock" Text="Hello, Silverlight for Windows Embedded!" HorizontalAlignment="Center" VerticalAlignment="Center" /> </Grid> </Grid> </UserControl> If you compare it to the WP7S sample (not reported here to avoid any copyright issue) you’ll notice that I had to replace the original phoneNavigation:PhoneApplicationPage with UserControl as the root node. This make sense because there is not support for phone applications on CE 6. I also had to specify width and height of my main page (on the WP7S device this will be adjusted by the OS) and I had to replace the multi-touch event handler with the MouseLeftButtonDown event (no multitouch support for Windows CE R3, still). I also changed the hello message, of course. I used XAML2CPP to generate the boring part of our application and then added the initialization code to WinMain: int WINAPI WinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance, HINSTANCE hPrevInstance, LPTSTR lpCmdLine, int nCmdShow) { if (!XamlRuntimeInitialize()) return -1;   HRESULT retcode;   IXRApplicationPtr app; if (FAILED(retcode=GetXRApplicationInstance(&app))) return -1; XRXamlSource dictsrc;   dictsrc.SetResource(hInstance,TEXT("XAML"),IDR_XAML_App);   if (FAILED(retcode=app->LoadResourceDictionary(&dictsrc,NULL))) return -1;   MainPage page;   if (FAILED(page.Init(hInstance,app))) return -1;   UINT exitcode;   if (FAILED(page.GetVisualHost()->StartDialog(&exitcode))) return -1;   return exitcode; }   You may have noticed that there is something different from the previous samples. I added the code to load a resource dictionary. Resources are an important feature of XAML that allows you to define some values that could be replaced inside any XAML file loaded by the runtime. You can use resources to define custom styles for your fonts, backgrounds, controls etc. and to support internationalization, by providing different strings for different languages. The rest of our WinMain isn’t that different. It creates an instances of our MainPage object and displays it. The MainPage class implements an event handler for the MouseLeftButtonDown event of the ContentGrid: class MainPage : public TMainPage<MainPage> { public:   HRESULT ContentGrid_MouseButtonDown(IXRDependencyObject* source,XRMouseButtonEventArgs* args) { HRESULT retcode; IXRSolidColorBrushPtr brush; IXRApplicationPtr app;   if (FAILED(retcode=GetXRApplicationInstance(&app))) return retcode;   if (FAILED(retcode=app->CreateObject(IID_IXRSolidColorBrush,&brush))) return retcode;   COLORREF color=RGBA(0xff,0xff,0xff,0xff);   if (args->pOriginalSource==TextBlock) color=RGBA(rand()&0xFF,rand()&0xFF,rand()&0xFF,0xFF);   if (FAILED(retcode=brush->SetColor(color))) return retcode;   if (FAILED(retcode=TextBlock->SetForeground(brush))) return retcode; return S_OK; } }; As you can see this event is generated when a used clicks inside the grid or inside one of the objects it contains. Since our TextBlock is inside the grid, we don’t need to provide an event handler for its MouseLeftButtonDown event. We can just use the pOriginalSource member of the event arguments to check if the event was generated inside the textblock. If the event was generated inside the grid we create a white brush,if it’s inside the textblock we create some randomly colored brush. Notice that we need to use the RGBA macro to create colors, specifying also a transparency value for them. If we use the RGB macro the resulting color will have its Alpha channel set to zero and will be transparent. Using the SetForeground method we can change the color of our control. You can compare this to the managed code that you can find at page 40-41 of Petzold’s preview book and you’ll see that the native version isn’t much more complex than the managed one. As usual you can download the full code of the sample here: http://cid-9b7b0aefe3514dc5.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/SilverlightTapHello1.zip And remember to pre-order Charles Petzold’s “Programming Windows Phone 7 series”, I bet it will be a best-seller! Technorati Tags: Silverlight for Windows Embedded,Windows CE

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• How to deal with a poor team leader and a tester manager from hell? [closed]

  - by Google

  Let me begin by explaining my situation and give a little context to the situation. My company has around 15 developers but we're split up on two different areas. We have a fresh product team and the old product team. The old product team does mostly bug fixes/maintenance and a feature here and there. The fresh product had never been released and was new from the ground up. I am on the fresh product team. The team consists of three developers (myself, another developer and a senior developer). The senior is also our team leader. Our roles are as follows: Myself: building the administration client as well as build/release stuff Other dev: building the primary client Team lead: building the server In addition to the dev team, we interact with the test manager often. By "we" I mean me since I do the build stuff and give him the builds to test. Trial 1: The other developer on my team and I have both tried to talk to our manager about our team leader. About two weeks before release we went in his office and had a closed door meeting before our team lead got to work. We expressed our concerns about the product, its release date and our team leader. We expressed our team leader had a "rosey" image of the product's state. Our manager seemed to listen to what we said and thanked us for taking the initiative to speak with him about it. He got us an extra two weeks before release. The situation with the leader didn't change. In fact, it got a little worse. While we were using the two weeks to fix issues he was slacking off quite a bit. Just to name a few things, he installed Windows 8 on his dev machine during this time (claimed him machine was broke), he wrote a plugin for our office messenger that turned turned messages into speech, and one time when I went in his office he was making a 3D model in Blender (for "fun"). He felt the product was "pretty good" and ready for release. During this time I dealt with the test manager on a daily basis. Every bug or issue that popped up he would pretty much attack me personally (regardless of which component the bug was in). The test manager would often push his "views" of what needed to be done with the product. He virtually ordered me to change text on our installer and to add features to the installer and administration client. I tried to express how his suggestions were "valid ideas" but it was too close to release to do those kinds of things and to make matters worse, our technical writer had already finished documentation and such a change would not only affect the dev team but would affect the technical writer and marketing as well. I expressed I wasn't going to make those changes without marketing's consent as well as the technical writer and my manager's. He pretty much said I don't care about the product and said I don't do my job. I would like to take a moment to say I take my job seriously and I do my best. I am the kind of person that goes to work 30-40 mins early and usually leaves 30 minutes later than everyone else. Saying I don't care or do my job is just insulting. His "attacks" on me grew from day to day. Every bug that popped up he would usually comment on in some manner that jabbed me and the other developer. "Oh that bug! Yeah that should have been fixed by now, figures! If someone would do their job!" and other similar kinds of comments. Keep in mind 8 out of 10 bugs were in the server and had nothing to do with me and the other developer. That didn't seem to matter.. On one occasion they got pretty bad and we almost got into a yelling match so I decided to stop talking to him all together. I carried all communication through office email (with my manager cc'd). He never attacked me via email. He still attempted to get aggressive with me in person but I completely ignore him and my only response to any question is, "Ask my team leader." or "Ask a product manager." The product launched after our two week extension. Trial 2: The day after the product launch our team leader went on vacation (thanks....). At this time we got a lot of questions from the tech support... major issues with the product. All of these issues were bugs marked "resolved" by our lovely team leader (a typical situation that often popped up). This is where we currently are. The other developer has been with the company for about three years (I've been there only five months) and told me he was going to speak with our manager alone and hoped it would help get our concerns across a little better in a one-on-one. He spoke with the manager and directly addressed all of our concerns regarding our team leader and the test manager giving us (mostly me) hell. Our manager basically said he understood how hard we work and said he noticed it and there's no doubt about it. He said he spoke with the test manager about his temper. Regarding the team leader, he didn't say a whole lot. He suggested we sit down with the team leader and address our concerns (isn't that the manager's job?). We're still waiting to see if anything has changed but we doubt it. What can we do next? 1) Talk to the team leader (may stress relationship and make work awkward) I admit the team leader is generally a nice guy. He is just a horrible leader and working closely with him is painful. I still don't believe bringing this directly to the team leader would help at all and may negatively impact the situation. 2) I could quit. Other than this situation the job is pretty fantastic. I really like my other coworkers and we have quite a bit of freedom. 3) I could take the situation with the team leader to one of the owners. I would then be throwing my manager under the bus. 4) I could take the situation with the test manager to HR. Any suggestions? Comments?

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• Windows Azure VMs - New "Stopped" VM Options Provide Cost-effective Flexibility for On-Demand Workloads

  - by KeithMayer

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/KeithMayer/archive/2013/06/22/windows-azure-vms---new-stopped-vm-options-provide-cost-effective.aspxDidn’t make it to TechEd this year? Don’t worry!  This month, we’ll be releasing a new article series that highlights the Best of TechEd announcements and technical information for IT Pros.  Today’s article focuses on a new, much-heralded enhancement to Windows Azure Infrastructure Services to make it more cost-effective for spinning VMs up and down on-demand on the Windows Azure cloud platform. NEW! VMs that are shutdown from the Windows Azure Management Portal will no longer continue to accumulate compute charges while stopped! Previous to this enhancement being available, the Azure platform maintained fabric resource reservations for VMs, even in a shutdown state, to ensure consistent resource availability when starting those VMs in the future.  And, this meant that VMs had to be exported and completely deprovisioned when not in use to avoid compute charges. In this article, I'll provide more details on the scenarios that this enhancement best fits, and I'll also review the new options and considerations that we now have for performing safe shutdowns of Windows Azure VMs. Which scenarios does the new enhancement best fit? Being able to easily shutdown VMs from the Windows Azure Management Portal without continued compute charges is a great enhancement for certain cloud use cases, such as: On-demand dev/test/lab environments - Freely start and stop lab VMs so that they are only accumulating compute charges when being actively used.  "Bursting" load-balanced web applications - Provision a number of load-balanced VMs, but keep the minimum number of VMs running to support "normal" loads. Easily start-up the remaining VMs only when needed to support peak loads. Disaster Recovery - Start-up "cold" VMs when needed to recover from disaster scenarios. BUT ... there is a consideration to keep in mind when using the Windows Azure Management Portal to shutdown VMs: although performing a VM shutdown via the Windows Azure Management Portal causes that VM to no longer accumulate compute charges, it also deallocates the VM from fabric resources to which it was previously assigned.  These fabric resources include compute resources such as virtual CPU cores and memory, as well as network resources, such as IP addresses.  This means that when the VM is later started after being shutdown from the portal, the VM could be assigned a different IP address or placed on a different compute node within the fabric. In some cases, you may want to shutdown VMs using the old approach, where fabric resource assignments are maintained while the VM is in a shutdown state.  Specifically, you may wish to do this when temporarily shutting down or restarting a "7x24" VM as part of a maintenance activity.  Good news - you can still revert back to the old VM shutdown behavior when necessary by using the alternate VM shutdown approaches listed below.  Let's walk through each approach for performing a VM Shutdown action on Windows Azure so that we can understand the benefits and considerations of each... How many ways can I shutdown a VM? In Windows Azure Infrastructure Services, there's three general ways that can be used to safely shutdown VMs: Shutdown VM via Windows Azure Management Portal Shutdown Guest Operating System inside the VM Stop VM via Windows PowerShell using Windows Azure PowerShell Module Although each of these options performs a safe shutdown of the guest operation system and the VM itself, each option handles the VM shutdown end state differently. Shutdown VM via Windows Azure Management Portal When clicking the Shutdown button at the bottom of the Virtual Machines page in the Windows Azure Management Portal, the VM is safely shutdown and "deallocated" from fabric resources.  Shutdown button on Virtual Machines page in Windows Azure Management Portal  When the shutdown process completes, the VM will be shown on the Virtual Machines page with a "Stopped ( Deallocated )" status as shown in the figure below. Virtual Machine in a "Stopped (Deallocated)" Status "Deallocated" means that the VM configuration is no longer being actively associated with fabric resources, such as virtual CPUs, memory and networks. In this state, the VM will not continue to allocate compute charges, but since fabric resources are deallocated, the VM could receive a different internal IP address ( called "Dynamic IPs" or "DIPs" in Windows Azure ) the next time it is started.  TIP: If you are leveraging this shutdown option and consistency of DIPs is important to applications running inside your VMs, you should consider using virtual networks with your VMs.  Virtual networks permit you to assign a specific IP Address Space for use with VMs that are assigned to that virtual network.  As long as you start VMs in the same order in which they were originally provisioned, each VM should be reassigned the same DIP that it was previously using. What about consistency of External IP Addresses? Great question! External IP addresses ( called "Virtual IPs" or "VIPs" in Windows Azure ) are associated with the cloud service in which one or more Windows Azure VMs are running.  As long as at least 1 VM inside a cloud service remains in a "Running" state, the VIP assigned to a cloud service will be preserved.  If all VMs inside a cloud service are in a "Stopped ( Deallocated )" status, then the cloud service may receive a different VIP when VMs are next restarted. TIP: If consistency of VIPs is important for the cloud services in which you are running VMs, consider keeping one VM inside each cloud service in the alternate VM shutdown state listed below to preserve the VIP associated with the cloud service. Shutdown Guest Operating System inside the VM When performing a Guest OS shutdown or restart ( ie., a shutdown or restart operation initiated from the Guest OS running inside the VM ), the VM configuration will not be deallocated from fabric resources. In the figure below, the VM has been shutdown from within the Guest OS and is shown with a "Stopped" VM status rather than the "Stopped ( Deallocated )" VM status that was shown in the previous figure. Note that it may require a few minutes for the Windows Azure Management Portal to reflect that the VM is in a "Stopped" state in this scenario, because we are performing an OS shutdown inside the VM rather than through an Azure management endpoint. Virtual Machine in a "Stopped" Status VMs shown in a "Stopped" status will continue to accumulate compute charges, because fabric resources are still being reserved for these VMs.  However, this also means that DIPs and VIPs are preserved for VMs in this state, so you don't have to worry about VMs and cloud services getting different IP addresses when they are started in the future. Stop VM via Windows PowerShell In the latest version of the Windows Azure PowerShell Module, a new -StayProvisioned parameter has been added to the Stop-AzureVM cmdlet. This new parameter provides the flexibility to choose the VM configuration end result when stopping VMs using PowerShell: When running the Stop-AzureVM cmdlet without the -StayProvisioned parameter specified, the VM will be safely stopped and deallocated; that is, the VM will be left in a "Stopped ( Deallocated )" status just like the end result when a VM Shutdown operation is performed via the Windows Azure Management Portal.  When running the Stop-AzureVM cmdlet with the -StayProvisioned parameter specified, the VM will be safely stopped but fabric resource reservations will be preserved; that is the VM will be left in a "Stopped" status just like the end result when performing a Guest OS shutdown operation. So, with PowerShell, you can choose how Windows Azure should handle VM configuration and fabric resource reservations when stopping VMs on a case-by-case basis. TIP: It's important to note that the -StayProvisioned parameter is only available in the latest version of the Windows Azure PowerShell Module.  So, if you've previously downloaded this module, be sure to download and install the latest version to get this new functionality. Want to Learn More about Windows Azure Infrastructure Services? To learn more about Windows Azure Infrastructure Services, be sure to check-out these additional FREE resources: Become our next "Early Expert"! Complete the Early Experts "Cloud Quest" and build a multi-VM lab network in the cloud for FREE!  Build some cool scenarios! Check out our list of over 20+ Step-by-Step Lab Guides based on key scenarios that IT Pros are implementing on Windows Azure Infrastructure Services TODAY!  Looking forward to seeing you in the Cloud! - Keith Build Your Lab! Download Windows Server 2012 Don’t Have a Lab? Build Your Lab in the Cloud with Windows Azure Virtual Machines Want to Get Certified? Join our Windows Server 2012 "Early Experts" Study Group

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• Visiting the Emtel Data Centre

  Back in February at the first event of the Emtel Knowledge Series (EKS) I spoke to various people at Emtel about their data centre here on the island. I was trying to see whether it would be possible to arrange a meeting over there for a selected group of our community members. Well, let's say it like this... My first approach wasn't that promising and far from successful but during the following months there were more and more occasions to get in touch with the "right" contact persons at Emtel to make it happen... Setting up an appointment and pre-requisites The major improvement came during a Boot Camp for Windows Phone 8.1 App development organised by Microsoft Indian Ocean Islands in cooperation with Emtel at the Emtel World, Ebene. Apart from learning bits and pieces regarding Universal Apps I took the opportunity to get in touch with Arvin Lockee, Sales Executive - Data, during our lunch break. And this really kicked off the whole procedure. Prior to get access to the Emtel data centre it is requested that you provide full name and National ID of anyone going to visit. Also, it should be noted that there was only a limited amount of seats available. Anyways, packed with this information I posted through the usual social media channels. Responses came in very quickly and based on First-come, first-serve (FCFS) principle I noted down the details and forwarded them to Emtel in order to fix a date and time for the visit. In preparation on our side, all attendees exchanged contact details and we organised transport options to go to the data centre in Arsenal. The day before and on the day of our meeting, Arvin send me a reminder to check whether everything is still confirmed and ready to go... Of course, it was! Arriving at the Emtel Data Centre As I'm coming from Flic En Flac towards the North, we agreed that I'm going to pick up a couple of young fellows near the old post office in Port Louis. All went well, except that Sean eventually might be living in another time zone compared to the rest of us. Anyway, after some extended stop we were complete and arrived just in time in Arsenal to meet and greet with Ish and Veer. Again, Emtel is taking access procedures to their data centre very serious and the gate stayed close until all our IDs had been noted and compared to the list of registered attendees. Despite having a good laugh at the mixture of old and new ID cards it was a straight-forward processing. The ward was very helpful and guided us to the waiting area at the entrance section of the building. Shortly after we were welcomed by Kamlesh Bokhoree, the Data Centre Officer. He gave us brief introduction into the rules and regulations during our visit, like no photography allowed, not touching the buttons, and following his instructions through the whole visit. Of course! Inside the data centre Next, he explained us the multi-factor authentication system using a combination of bio-metric data, like finger print reader, and "classic" pin panel. The Emtel data centre provides multiple services and next to co-location for your own hardware they also offer storage options for your backup and archive data in their massive, fire-resistant vault. Very impressive to get to know about the considerations that have been done in choosing the right location and how to set up the whole premises. It should also be noted that there is 24/7 CCTV surveillance inside and outside the buildings. Strengths of the Emtel TIER 3 Data Centre, Mauritius Finally, we were guided into the first server room. And wow, the whole setup is cleverly planned and outlined in the architecture. From the false floor and ceilings in order to provide optimum air flow, over to the separation of cold and hot aisles between the full-size server racks, and of course the monitored air conditions in order to analyse and watch changes in temperature, smoke detection and other parameters. And not surprisingly everything has been implemented in two independent circuits. There is a standardised classification for the construction and operation of data centres world-wide, and the Emtel's one has been designed to be a TIER 4 building but due to the lack of an alternative power supplier on the island it is officially registered as a TIER 3 compliant data centre. Maybe in the long run there might be a second supplier of energy next to CEB... time will tell. Luckily, the data centre is integrated into the National Fibre Optic Gigabit Ring and Emtel already connects internationally through diverse undersea cable routes like SAFE & LION/LION2 out of Mauritius and through several other providers for onwards connectivity. The data centre is part of the National Fibre Optic Gigabit Ring and has redundant internet connectivity onwards. Meanwhile, Arvin managed to join our little group of geeks and he supported Kamlesh in answering our technical questions regarding the capacities and general operation of the data centre. Visiting the NOC and its dedicated team of IT professionals was surely one of the visual highlights. Seeing their wall of screens to monitor any kind of activities on the data lines, the managed servers and the activity in and around the building was great. Even though I'm using a multi-head setup since years I cannot keep it up with that setup... ;-) But I got a couple of ideas on how to improve my work spaces here at the office. Clear advantages of hosting your e-commerce and mobile backends locally After the completely isolated NOC area we continued our Q&A session with Kamlesh and Arvin in the second server room which is dedictated to shared environments. On first thought it should be well-noted that there is lots of space for full-sized racks and therefore co-location of your own hardware. Actually, given the feedback that there will be upcoming changes in prices the facilities at the Emtel data centre are getting more and more competitive and interesting for local companies, especially small and medium enterprises. After seeing this world-class infrastructure available on the island, I'm already considering of moving one of my root servers abroad to be co-located here on the island. This would provide an improved user experience in terms of site performance and latency. This would be a good improvement, especially for upcoming e-commerce solutions for two of my local clients. Later on, we actually started the conversation of additional services that could be a catalyst for the local market in order to attract more small and medium companies to take the data centre into their evaluations regarding online activities. Until today Emtel does not provide virtualised server environments but there might be ongoing plans in the future to cover this field as well. Emtel is a mobile operator and internet connectivity provider in the first place, entering a market of managed and virtualised server infrastructures including capacities in terms of cloud storage and computing are rather new and there is a continuous learning curve at Emtel, too. You cannot just jump into a new market and see how it works out... And I appreciate Emtel's approach towards a solid fundament and then building new services on top of that. Emtel as a future one-stop-shop service provider for all your internet and telecommunications needs. Emtel's promotional video about their TIER 3 data centre in Arsenal, Mauritius More details are thoroughly described in Emtel's brochure of their data centre. Check out their PDF document here. Thanks for this opportunity Visiting and walking through the Emtel data centre for more than 2 hours was a great experience. As representative of the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community (MSCC) I would like to thank anyone at Emtel involved in the process of making it happen, and especially to Arvin Lockee and Kamlesh Bokhoree for their time and patience in explaining the infrastructure and answering all the endless questions from our members. Thank You!

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• Why It Is So Important to Know Your Customer

  - by Christie Flanagan

  Over the years, I endured enough delayed flights, air turbulence and misadventures in airport security clearance to watch my expectations for the air travel experience fall to abysmally low levels. The extent of my loyalty to any one carrier had more to do with the proximity of the airport parking garage to their particular gate than to any effort on the airline’s part to actually earn and retain my business. That all changed one day when I found myself at the airport hoping to catch a return flight home a few hours earlier than expected, using an airline I had flown with for the first time just that week.  When you travel regularly for business, being able to catch a return flight home that’s even an hour or two earlier than originally scheduled is a big deal. It can mean the difference between having a normal evening with your family and having to sneak in like a cat burglar after everyone is fast asleep. And so I found myself on this particular day hoping to catch an earlier flight home. I approached the gate agent and was told that I could go on standby for their next flight out. Then I asked how much it was going to cost to change the flight, knowing full well that I wouldn’t get reimbursed by my company for any change fees. “Oh, there’s no charge to fly on standby,” the gate agent told me. I made a funny look. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. This airline was going to let my fly on standby, at no additional charge, even though I was a new customer with no status or points. It had been years since I’d seen an airline pass up a short term revenue generating opportunity in favor of a long term loyalty generating one.  At that moment, this particular airline gained my loyal business. Since then, this airline has had the opportunity to learn a lot about me. They know where I live, where I fly from, where I usually fly to, and where I like to sit on the plane. In general, I’ve found their customer service to be quite good whether at the airport, via call center and even through social channels. They email me occasionally, and when they do, they demonstrate that they know me by promoting deals for flights from where I live to places that I’d be interested in visiting. And that’s part of why I’m always so puzzled when I visit their website.Does this company with the great service, customer friendly policies, and clean planes demonstrate that they know me at all when I visit their website? The answer is no. Even when I log in using my loyalty program credentials, it’s pretty obvious that they’re presenting the same old home page and same old offers to every single one of their site visitors. I mean, those promotional offers that they’re featuring so prominently  -- they’re for flights that originate thousands of miles from where I live! There’s no way I’d ever book one of those flights and I’m sure I’m not the only one of their customers to feel that way.My reason for recounting this story is not to pick on the one customer experience flaw I've noticed with this particular airline, in fact, they do so many things right that I’ll continue to fly with them. But I did want to illustrate just how glaringly obvious it is to customers today when a touch point they have with a brand is impersonal, unconnected and out of sync. As someone who’s spent a number of years in the web experience management and online marketing space, it particularly peeves me when that out of sync touch point is a brand’s website, perhaps because I know how important it is to make a customer’s online experience relevant and how many powerful tools are available for making a relevant experience a reality. The fact is, delivering a one-size-fits-all online customer experience is no longer acceptable or particularly effective in today’s world. Today’s savvy customers expect you to know who they are and to understand their preferences, behavior and relationship with your brand. Not only do they expect you to know about them, but they also expect you to demonstrate this knowledge across all of their touch points with your brand in a consistent and compelling fashion, whether it be on your traditional website, your mobile web presence or through various social channels.Delivering the kind of personalized online experiences that customers want can have tremendous business benefits. This is not just about generating feelings of goodwill and higher customer satisfaction ratings either. More relevant and personalized online experiences boost the effectiveness of online marketing initiatives and the statistics prove this out. Personalized web experiences can help increase online conversion rates by 70% -- that’s a huge number.1  And more than three quarters of consumers indicate that they’ve made additional online purchases based on personalized product recommendations.2Now if only this airline would get on board with delivering a more personalized online customer experience. I’d certainly be happier and more likely to spring for one of their promotional offers. And by targeting relevant offers on their home page to appropriate segments of their site visitors, I bet they’d be happier and generating additional revenue too. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}  ***** If you're interested in hearing more perspectives on the benefits of demonstrating that you know your customers by delivering a more personalized experience, check out this white paper on creating a successful and meaningful customer experience on the web.  Also catch the video below on the business value of CX in attracting new customers featuring Oracle's VP of Customer Experience Strategy, Brian Curran. 1 Search Engine Watch 2 Marketing Charts

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• How to Achieve OC4J RMI Load Balancing

  - by fip

  This is an old, Oracle SOA and OC4J 10G topic. In fact this is not even a SOA topic per se. Questions of RMI load balancing arise when you developed custom web applications accessing human tasks running off a remote SOA 10G cluster. Having returned from a customer who faced challenges with OC4J RMI load balancing, I felt there is still some confusions in the field how OC4J RMI load balancing work. Hence I decide to dust off an old tech note that I wrote a few years back and share it with the general public. Here is the tech note: Overview A typical use case in Oracle SOA is that you are building web based, custom human tasks UI that will interact with the task services housed in a remote BPEL 10G cluster. Or, in a more generic way, you are just building a web based application in Java that needs to interact with the EJBs in a remote OC4J cluster. In either case, you are talking to an OC4J cluster as RMI client. Then immediately you must ask yourself the following questions: 1. How do I make sure that the web application, as an RMI client, even distribute its load against all the nodes in the remote OC4J cluster? 2. How do I make sure that the web application, as an RMI client, is resilient to the node failures in the remote OC4J cluster, so that in the unlikely case when one of the remote OC4J nodes fail, my web application will continue to function? That is the topic of how to achieve load balancing with OC4J RMI client. Solutions You need to configure and code RMI load balancing in two places: 1. Provider URL can be specified with a comma separated list of URLs, so that the initial lookup will land to one of the available URLs. 2. Choose a proper value for the oracle.j2ee.rmi.loadBalance property, which, along side with the PROVIDER_URL property, is one of the JNDI properties passed to the JNDI lookup.(http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B31017_01/web.1013/b28958/rmi.htm#BABDGFBI) More details below: About the PROVIDER_URL The JNDI property java.name.provider.url's job is, when the client looks up for a new context at the very first time in the client session, to provide a list of RMI context The value of the JNDI property java.name.provider.url goes by the format of a single URL, or a comma separate list of URLs. A single URL. For example: opmn:ormi://host1:6003:oc4j_instance1/appName1 A comma separated list of multiple URLs. For examples:  opmn:ormi://host1:6003:oc4j_instanc1/appName, opmn:ormi://host2:6003:oc4j_instance1/appName, opmn:ormi://host3:6003:oc4j_instance1/appName When the client looks up for a new Context the very first time in the client session, it sends a query against the OPMN referenced by the provider URL. The OPMN host and port specifies the destination of such query, and the OC4J instance name and appName are actually the “where clause” of the query. When the PROVIDER URL reference a single OPMN server Let's consider the case when the provider url only reference a single OPMN server of the destination cluster. In this case, that single OPMN server receives the query and returns a list of the qualified Contexts from all OC4Js within the cluster, even though there is a single OPMN server in the provider URL. A context represent a particular starting point at a particular server for subsequent object lookup. For example, if the URL is opmn:ormi://host1:6003:oc4j_instance1/appName, then, OPMN will return the following contexts: appName on oc4j_instance1 on host1 appName on oc4j_instance1 on host2, appName on oc4j_instance1 on host3,  (provided that host1, host2, host3 are all in the same cluster) Please note that One OPMN will be sufficient to find the list of all contexts from the entire cluster that satisfy the JNDI lookup query. You can do an experiment by shutting down appName on host1, and observe that OPMN on host1 will still be able to return you appname on host2 and appName on host3. When the PROVIDER URL reference a comma separated list of multiple OPMN servers When the JNDI propery java.naming.provider.url references a comma separated list of multiple URLs, the lookup will return the exact same things as with the single OPMN server: a list of qualified Contexts from the cluster. The purpose of having multiple OPMN servers is to provide high availability in the initial context creation, such that if OPMN at host1 is unavailable, client will try the lookup via OPMN on host2, and so on. After the initial lookup returns and cache a list of contexts, the JNDI URL(s) are no longer used in the same client session. That explains why removing the 3rd URL from the list of JNDI URLs will not stop the client from getting the EJB on the 3rd server. About the oracle.j2ee.rmi.loadBalance Property After the client acquires the list of contexts, it will cache it at the client side as “list of available RMI contexts”.  This list includes all the servers in the destination cluster. This list will stay in the cache until the client session (JVM) ends. The RMI load balancing against the destination cluster is happening at the client side, as the client is switching between the members of the list. Whether and how often the client will fresh the Context from the list of Context is based on the value of the  oracle.j2ee.rmi.loadBalance. The documentation at http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B31017_01/web.1013/b28958/rmi.htm#BABDGFBI list all the available values for the oracle.j2ee.rmi.loadBalance. Value Description client If specified, the client interacts with the OC4J process that was initially chosen at the first lookup for the entire conversation. context Used for a Web client (servlet or JSP) that will access EJBs in a clustered OC4J environment. If specified, a new Context object for a randomly-selected OC4J instance will be returned each time InitialContext() is invoked. lookup Used for a standalone client that will access EJBs in a clustered OC4J environment. If specified, a new Context object for a randomly-selected OC4J instance will be created each time the client calls Context.lookup(). Please note the regardless of the setting of oracle.j2ee.rmi.loadBalance property, the “refresh” only occurs at the client. The client can only choose from the "list of available context" that was returned and cached from the very first lookup. That is, the client will merely get a new Context object from the “list of available RMI contexts” from the cache at the client side. The client will NOT go to the OPMN server again to get the list. That also implies that if you are adding a node to the server cluster AFTER the client’s initial lookup, the client would not know it because neither the server nor the client will initiate a refresh of the “list of available servers” to reflect the new node. About High Availability (i.e. Resilience Against Node Failure of Remote OC4J Cluster) What we have discussed above is about load balancing. Let's also discuss high availability. This is how the High Availability works in RMI: when the client use the context but get an exception such as socket is closed, it knows that the server referenced by that Context is problematic and will try to get another unused Context from the “list of available contexts”. Again, this list is the list that was returned and cached at the very first lookup in the entire client session.

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• SQL SERVER – Thinking about Deprecated, Discontinued Features and Breaking Changes while Upgrading to SQL Server 2012 – Guest Post by Nakul Vachhrajani

  - by pinaldave

  Nakul Vachhrajani is a Technical Specialist and systems development professional with iGATE having a total IT experience of more than 7 years. Nakul is an active blogger with BeyondRelational.com (150+ blogs), and can also be found on forums at SQLServerCentral and BeyondRelational.com. Nakul has also been a guest columnist for SQLAuthority.com and SQLServerCentral.com. Nakul presented a webcast on the “Underappreciated Features of Microsoft SQL Server” at the Microsoft Virtual Tech Days Exclusive Webcast series (May 02-06, 2011) on May 06, 2011. He is also the author of a research paper on Database upgrade methodologies, which was published in a CSI journal, published nationwide. In addition to his passion about SQL Server, Nakul also contributes to the academia out of personal interest. He visits various colleges and universities as an external faculty to judge project activities being carried out by the students. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are his own personal opinions and do not represent his employer’s view in anyway. Blog | LinkedIn | Twitter | Google+ Let us hear the thoughts of Nakul in first person - Those who have been following my blogs would be aware that I am recently running a series on the database engine features that have been deprecated in Microsoft SQL Server 2012. Based on the response that I have received, I was quite surprised to know that most of the audience found these to be breaking changes, when in fact, they were not! It was then that I decided to write a little piece on how to plan your database upgrade such that it works with the next version of Microsoft SQL Server. Please note that the recommendations made in this article are high-level markers and are intended to help you think over the specific steps that you would need to take to upgrade your database. Refer the documentation – Understand the terms Change is the only constant in this world. Therefore, whenever customer requirements, newer architectures and designs require software vendors to make a change to the keywords, functions, etc; they ensure that they provide their end users sufficient time to migrate over to the new standards before dropping off the old ones. Microsoft does that too with it’s Microsoft SQL Server product. Whenever a new SQL Server release is announced, it comes with a list of the following features: Breaking changes These are changes that would break your currently running applications, scripts or functionalities that are based on earlier version of Microsoft SQL Server These are mostly features whose behavior has been changed keeping in mind the newer architectures and designs Lesson: These are the changes that you need to be most worried about! Discontinued features These features are no longer available in the associated version of Microsoft SQL Server These features used to be “deprecated” in the prior release Lesson: Without these changes, your database would not be compliant/may not work with the version of Microsoft SQL Server under consideration Deprecated features These features are those that are still available in the current version of Microsoft SQL Server, but are scheduled for removal in a future version. These may be removed in either the next version or any other future version of Microsoft SQL Server The features listed for deprecation will compose the list of discontinued features in the next version of SQL Server Lesson: Plan to make necessary changes required to remove/replace usage of the deprecated features with the latest recommended replacements Once a feature appears on the list, it moves from bottom to the top, i.e. it is first marked as “Deprecated” and then “Discontinued”. We know of “Breaking change” comes later on in the product life cycle. What this means is that if you want to know what features would not work with SQL Server 2012 (and you are currently using SQL Server 2008 R2), you need to refer the list of breaking changes and discontinued features in SQL Server 2012. Use the tools! There are a lot of tools and technologies around us, but it is rarely that I find teams using these tools religiously and to the best of their potential. Below are the top two tools, from Microsoft, that I use every time I plan a database upgrade. The SQL Server Upgrade Advisor Ever since SQL Server 2005 was announced, Microsoft provides a small, very light-weight tool called the “SQL Server upgrade advisor”. The upgrade advisor analyzes installed components from earlier versions of SQL Server, and then generates a report that identifies issues to fix either before or after you upgrade. The analysis examines objects that can be accessed, such as scripts, stored procedures, triggers, and trace files. Upgrade Advisor cannot analyze desktop applications or encrypted stored procedures. Refer the links towards the end of the post to know how to get the Upgrade Advisor. The SQL Server Profiler Another great tool that you can use is the one most SQL Server developers & administrators use often – the SQL Server profiler. SQL Server Profiler provides functionality to monitor the “Deprecation” event, which contains: Deprecation announcement – equivalent to features to be deprecated in a future release of SQL Server Deprecation final support – equivalent to features to be deprecated in the next release of SQL Server You can learn more using the links towards the end of the post. A basic checklist There are a lot of finer points that need to be taken care of when upgrading your database. But, it would be worth-while to identify a few basic steps in order to make your database compliant with the next version of SQL Server: Monitor the current application workload (on a test bed) via the Profiler in order to identify usage of features marked as Deprecated If none appear, you are all set! (This almost never happens) Note down all the offending queries and feature usages Run analysis sessions using the SQL Server upgrade advisor on your database Based on the inputs from the analysis report and Profiler trace sessions, Incorporate solutions for the breaking changes first Next, incorporate solutions for the discontinued features Revisit and document the upgrade strategy for your deployment scenarios Revisit the fall-back, i.e. rollback strategies in case the upgrades fail Because some programming changes are dependent upon the SQL server version, this may need to be done in consultation with the development teams Before any other enhancements are incorporated by the development team, send out the database changes into QA QA strategy should involve a comparison between an environment running the old version of SQL Server against the new one Because minimal application changes have gone in (essential changes for SQL Server version compliance only), this would be possible As an ongoing activity, keep incorporating changes recommended as per the deprecated features list As a DBA, update your coding standards to ensure that the developers are using ANSI compliant code – this code will require a change only if the ANSI standard changes Remember this: Change management is a continuous process. Keep revisiting the product release notes and incorporate recommended changes to stay prepared for the next release of SQL Server. May the power of SQL Server be with you! Links Referenced in this post Breaking changes in SQL Server 2012: Link Discontinued features in SQL Server 2012: Link Get the upgrade advisor from the Microsoft Download Center at: Link Upgrade Advisor page on MSDN: Link Profiler: Review T-SQL code to identify objects no longer supported by Microsoft: Link Upgrading to SQL Server 2012 by Vinod Kumar: Link Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Upgrade

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• You Say You Want a (Customer Experience) Revolution

  - by Christie Flanagan

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} rev-o-lu-tion [rev-uh-loo-shuhn] noun 1. a sudden, radical or complete change 2. fundamental change in the way of thinking about or visualizing something; a change of paradigm 3. a changeover in use or preference especially in technology <the computer revolution> Lately, I've been hearing an awful lot about the customer experience revolution.  Tonight Oracle will be hosting The Experience Revolution, an evening of exploration and networking with customer experience executives in New York City where Oracle President Mark Hurd will introduce Oracle Customer Experience, a cross-stack suite of customer experience products that includes Oracle WebCenter and a number of other Oracle technologies. Then on Tuesday and Wednesday, the Forrester Customer Experience Forum East also kicks off in New York City where they'll examine how businesses can "reap the full business benefits of the customer experience revolution." So, are we in the midst of a customer experience revolution? As a consumer, I can answer that question with a definitive “yes.” When I bought my very first car, I had a lot of questions. How do I know if I’m paying a fair price? How do I know if this dealer is honest? Why do I have to sit through these good cop, bad cop shenanigans between sales and sales management at the dealership? Why do I feel like I’m doing these people a favor by giving them my business? In the end the whole experience left me feeling deeply unsatisfied. I didn’t feel that I held all that much power over the experience and the only real negotiating trick I had was to walk out, which I did, many times before actually making a purchase. Fast forward to a year ago and I found myself back in the market for a new car. The very first car that I bought had finally kicked the bucket after many years, many repair bills, and much wear and tear. Man, I had loved that car. It was time to move on, but I had a knot in my stomach when I reflected back on my last car purchase experience and dreaded the thought of going through that again. Could that have been the reason why I drove my old car for so long? But as I started the process of researching new cars, I started to feel really confident. I had a wealth of online information that helped me in my search. I went to Edmunds and plugged in some information on my preferences and left with a short list of vehicles. After an afternoon spent test driving the cars my short list, I had determined my favorite – it was a model I didn’t even know about until my research on Edmunds! But I didn’t want to go back to the dealership where I test drove it. They were clearly old school and wanted me to buy the way that they wanted to sell. No thanks! After that I went back online. I figured out exactly what people had paid for this car in my area. I found out what kind of discount others were able to negotiate from an online community forum dedicated to the make and model. I found out how the sales people were being incentivized by the manufacturer that month. I learned which dealers had the best ratings and reviews. This was actually getting exciting. I was feeling really empowered. My next step was to request online quotes from the some of the highest rated dealers but I already knew exactly how much I was going to pay. This was really a test for the dealers. My new mantra was “let he who delivers the best customer experience win.” An inside sales rep from one dealer responded to my quote request within a couple of hours. I told him I had already decided on the make and model and it was just a matter of figuring out who I would buy it from. I also told them that I was really busy and wouldn’t set foot in the dealership unless we had come to terms beforehand. Lastly, I let him know that I’d prefer to work out the details via email. He promised to get back to me shortly with a detailed quote. Over the next few days I received calls from other dealers. One asked me a host of questions that I had already answered in their lengthy online form. Another blamed their website performance issues for their delay in responding to my request. But by then it didn’t really matter because I’d already bought the car days before from the dealer who responded to me first and who was willing to adjust their sales process to accommodate my buying one. So, yes, I really do believe we are in the midst of a customer experience revolution. And every revolution leaves some victorious and other vanquished. Which side do you want to be on when it comes to the customer experience revolution?

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• How to free up space on /boot? [closed]

  - by Phrogz

  Possible Duplicate: Free up more space on /boot I logged onto my server today to find the message: => /boot is using 98.9% of 91MB When I look at /boot I see that it is indeed very low on space, and has old-kernel files in it: phrogz@planar:~$ df -h /boot Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda1 92M 54M 33M 63% /boot phrogz@planar:~$ la /boot total 81880 drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 3072 2011-12-02 06:26 ./ drwxr-xr-x 22 root root 4096 2011-09-29 06:37 ../ -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 646419 2011-03-01 19:02 abi-2.6.32-30-server -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 646419 2011-04-08 17:07 abi-2.6.32-31-server -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 646454 2011-04-20 16:53 abi-2.6.32-32-server -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 646454 2011-07-29 16:07 abi-2.6.32-33-server -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 646710 2011-09-13 18:00 abi-2.6.32-34-server -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 646820 2011-10-11 11:10 abi-2.6.32-35-server -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 110687 2011-03-01 19:02 config-2.6.32-30-server -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 110676 2011-04-08 17:07 config-2.6.32-31-server -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 110687 2011-04-20 16:53 config-2.6.32-32-server -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 110687 2011-07-29 16:07 config-2.6.32-33-server -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 110687 2011-09-13 18:00 config-2.6.32-34-server -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 110687 2011-10-11 11:10 config-2.6.32-35-server drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 6144 2011-12-02 06:26 grub/ -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8258196 2011-05-18 11:58 initrd.img-2.6.32-30-server -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8259568 2011-05-23 20:24 initrd.img-2.6.32-31-server -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8257374 2011-05-30 07:47 initrd.img-2.6.32-32-server -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8287489 2011-08-10 06:37 initrd.img-2.6.32-33-server -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8288075 2011-09-29 06:37 initrd.img-2.6.32-34-server drwx------ 2 root root 12288 2011-05-18 11:46 lost+found/ -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 160280 2010-03-23 03:40 memtest86+.bin -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2179117 2011-03-01 19:02 System.map-2.6.32-30-server -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2179628 2011-04-08 17:07 System.map-2.6.32-31-server -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2178240 2011-04-20 16:53 System.map-2.6.32-32-server -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2178382 2011-07-29 16:07 System.map-2.6.32-33-server -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2178952 2011-09-13 18:00 System.map-2.6.32-34-server -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2179333 2011-10-11 11:10 System.map-2.6.32-35-server -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1336 2011-03-01 19:08 vmcoreinfo-2.6.32-30-server -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1336 2011-04-08 17:13 vmcoreinfo-2.6.32-31-server -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1336 2011-04-20 16:54 vmcoreinfo-2.6.32-32-server -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1336 2011-07-29 16:08 vmcoreinfo-2.6.32-33-server -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1336 2011-09-13 18:03 vmcoreinfo-2.6.32-34-server -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1336 2011-10-11 11:11 vmcoreinfo-2.6.32-35-server -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4111552 2011-03-01 19:02 vmlinuz-2.6.32-30-server -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4113344 2011-04-08 17:07 vmlinuz-2.6.32-31-server -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4106528 2011-04-20 16:53 vmlinuz-2.6.32-32-server -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4107648 2011-07-29 16:07 vmlinuz-2.6.32-33-server -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4108960 2011-09-13 18:00 vmlinuz-2.6.32-34-server -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4111040 2011-10-11 11:10 vmlinuz-2.6.32-35-server I was able to find the old kernel packages like so: phrogz@planar:/boot$ dpkg -l | grep linux-image ii linux-image-2.6.32-30-server 2.6.32-30.59 Linux kernel image for version 2.6.32 on x86 ii linux-image-2.6.32-31-server 2.6.32-31.61 Linux kernel image for version 2.6.32 on x86 ii linux-image-2.6.32-32-server 2.6.32-32.62 Linux kernel image for version 2.6.32 on x86 ii linux-image-2.6.32-33-server 2.6.32-33.72 Linux kernel image for version 2.6.32 on x86 ii linux-image-2.6.32-34-server 2.6.32-34.77 Linux kernel image for version 2.6.32 on x86 iF linux-image-2.6.32-35-server 2.6.32-35.78 Linux kernel image for version 2.6.32 on x86 iU linux-image-server 2.6.32.36.42 Linux kernel image on Server Equipment. …and I can see that many of them are older than my current image: phrogz@planar:/boot$ uname -a Linux planar 2.6.32-34-server #77-Ubuntu SMP Tue Sep 13 20:54:38 UTC 2011 x86_64 GNU/Linux However, I can't actually remove them due to an unmet dependency: phrogz@planar:/boot$ sudo apt-get --purge remove linux-image-2.6.32-30-server Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done You might want to run `apt-get -f install' to correct these: The following packages have unmet dependencies: linux-image-server: Depends: linux-image-2.6.32-36-server but it is not going to be installed E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or specify a solution). But I can't fix the dependency (presumably due to low disk space): phrogz@planar:/boot$ sudo apt-get -f install Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Correcting dependencies... Done The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required: liblcms1 linux-headers-2.6.32-32-server libnspr4-0d linux-headers-2.6.32-33-server linux-headers-2.6.32-32 linux-headers-2.6.32-33 linux-headers-2.6.32-34 libcups2 tzdata-java libjpeg62 linux-headers-2.6.32-34-server libavahi-client3 ca-certificates-java libnss3-1d Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them. The following extra packages will be installed: linux-image-2.6.32-36-server Suggested packages: fdutils linux-doc-2.6.32 linux-source-2.6.32 linux-tools The following NEW packages will be installed: linux-image-2.6.32-36-server 0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 8 not upgraded. 3 not fully installed or removed. Need to get 0B/31.8MB of archives. After this operation, 128MB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? (Reading database ... 145200 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking linux-image-2.6.32-36-server (from .../linux-image-2.6.32-36-server_2.6.32-36.79_amd64.deb) ... Done. dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/linux-image-2.6.32-36-server_2.6.32-36.79_amd64.deb (--unpack): failed in buffer_write(fd) (10, ret=-1): backend dpkg-deb during `./boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-36-server': No space left on device dpkg-deb: subprocess paste killed by signal (Broken pipe) Running postrm hook script /usr/sbin/update-grub. Generating grub.cfg ... Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-35-server Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-34-server Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-34-server Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-33-server Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-33-server Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-32-server Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-32-server Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-31-server Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-31-server Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-30-server Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-30-server Found memtest86+ image: /memtest86+.bin done Errors were encountered while processing: /var/cache/apt/archives/linux-image-2.6.32-36-server_2.6.32-36.79_amd64.deb E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) How do I free up space on /boot so that I can fix my dependencies? Should I just delete the files manually? And then, should I resize my /boot to be larger, so this doesn't happen again? If so, how? If not, what maintenance should I be running regularly to prevent the accumulation of this cruft?

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• Adding proper THEAD sections to a GridView

  - by Rick Strahl

  I’m working on some legacy code for a customer today and dealing with a page that has my favorite ‘friend’ on it: A GridView control. The ASP.NET GridView control (and also the older DataGrid control) creates some pretty messed up HTML. One of the more annoying things it does is to generate all rows including the header into the page in the <tbody> section of the document rather than in a properly separated <thead> section. Here’s is typical GridView generated HTML output: <table class="tablesorter blackborder" cellspacing="0" rules="all" border="1" id="Table1" style="border-collapse:collapse;"> <tr> <th scope="col">Name</th> <th scope="col">Company</th> <th scope="col">Entered</th><th scope="col">Balance</th> </tr> <tr> <td>Frank Hobson</td><td>Hobson Inc.</td> <td>10/20/2010 12:00:00 AM</td><td>240.00</td> </tr> ... </table> Notice that all content – both the headers and the body of the table – are generated directly under the <table> tag and there’s no explicit use of <tbody> or <thead> (or <tfooter> for that matter). When the browser renders this the document some default settings kick in and the DOM tree turns into something like this: <table> <tbody> <tr> <-- header <tr> <—detail row <tr> <—detail row </tbody> </table> Now if you’re just rendering the Grid server side and you’re applying all your styles through CssClass assignments this isn’t much of a problem. However, if you want to style your grid more generically using hierarchical CSS selectors it gets a lot more tricky to format tables that don’t properly delineate headers and body content. Also many plug-ins and other JavaScript utilities that work on tables require a properly formed table layout, and many of these simple won’t work out of the box with a GridView. For example, one of the things I wanted to do for this app is use the jQuery TableSorter plug-in which – not surprisingly – requires to work of table headers in the DOM document. Out of the box, the TableSorter plug-in doesn’t work with GridView controls, because the lack of a <thead> section to work on. Luckily with a little help of some jQuery scripting there’s a real easy fix to this problem. Basically, if we know the GridView generated table has a header in it, code like the following will move the headers from <tbody> to <thead>: <script type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function () { // Fix up GridView to support THEAD tags $("#gvCustomers tbody").before("<thead><tr></tr></thead>"); $("#gvCustomers thead tr").append($("#gvCustomers th")); $("#gvCustomers tbody tr:first").remove(); $("#gvCustomers").tablesorter({ sortList: [[1, 0]] }); }); </script> And voila you have a table that now works with the TableSorter plug-in. If you use GridView’s a lot you might want something a little more generic so the following does the same thing but should work more generically on any GridView/DataGrid missing its <thead> tag: function fixGridView(tableEl) {            var jTbl = $(tableEl);         if(jTbl.find("tbody>tr>th").length > 0) {         jTbl.find("tbody").before("<thead><tr></tr></thead>");         jTbl.find("thead tr").append(jTbl.find("th"));         jTbl.find("tbody tr:first").remove();     } } which you can call like this: $(document).ready(function () { fixGridView( $("#gvCustomers") ); $("#gvCustomers").tablesorter({ sortList: [[1, 0]] }); }); Server Side THEAD Rendering [updated from comments 11/21/2010] Several commenters pointed out that you can also do this on the server side by using the GridView.HeaderRow.TableSection property to force rendering with a proper table header. I was unaware of this option actually – not exactly an easy one to discover. One issue here is that timing of this needs to happen during the databinding process so you need to use an event handler: this.gvCustomers.DataBound += (object o, EventArgs ev) => { gvCustomers.HeaderRow.TableSection = TableRowSection.TableHeader; }; this.gvCustomers.DataSource = custList; this.gvCustomers.DataBind(); You can apply the same logic for the FooterRow. It’s beyond me why this rendering mode isn’t the default for a GridView – why would you ever want to have a table that doesn’t use a THEAD section??? But I disgress :-) I don’t use GridViews much anymore – opting for more flexible approaches using ListViews or even plain code based views or other custom displays that allow more control over layout, but I still see a lot of old code that does use them old clunkers including my own :) (gulp) and this does make life a little bit easier especially if you’re working with any of the jQuery table related plug-ins that expect a proper table structure.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET  jQuery  

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• Can Microsoft Build Appliances?

  - by andrewbrust

  Billy Hollis, my Visual Studio Live! colleague and fellow Microsoft Regional Director said recently, and I am paraphrasing, that the computing world, especially on the consumer side, has shifted from one of building hardware and software that makes things possible to do, to building products and technologies that make things easy to do.  Billy crystalized things perfectly, as he often does. In this new world of “easy to do,” Apple has done very well and Microsoft has struggled.  In the old world, customers wanted a Swiss Army Knife, with the most gimmicks and gadgets possible.  In the new world, people want elegantly cutlery.  They may want cake cutters and utility knives too, but they don’t want one device that works for all three tasks.  People don’t want tools, they want utensils.  People don’t want machines.  They want appliances. Microsoft Appliances: They Do Exist Microsoft has built a few appliance-like devices.  I would say XBox 360 is an appliance,  It’s versatile, mind you, but it’s the kind of thing you plug in, turn on and use, as opposed to set-up, tune, and open up to upgrade the internals.  Windows Phone 7 is an appliance too.  It’s a true smartphone, unlike Windows Mobile which was a handheld computer with a radio stack.  Zune is an appliance too, and a nice one.  It hasn’t attained much traction in the market, but that’s probably because the seminal consumer computing appliance -- the iPod – got there so much more quickly. In the embedded world, Mediaroom, Microsoft’s set-top product for the cable industry (used by AT&T U-Verse and others) is an appliance.  So is Microsoft’s Sync technology, used in Ford automobiles.  Even on the enterprise side, Microsoft has an appliance: SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse Edition (PDW) combines Microsoft software with select OEMs’ server, networking and storage hardware.  You buy the appliance units from the OEMs, plug them in, connect them and go. I would even say that Bing is an appliance.  Not in the hardware sense, mind you.  But from the software perspective, it’s a single-purpose product that you visit or run, use and then move on.  You don’t have to install it (except the iOS and Android native apps where it’s pretty straightforward), you don’t have to customize it, you don’t have to program it.  Basically, you just use it. Microsoft Appliances that Should Exist But Microsoft builds a bunch of things that are not appliances.  Media Center is not an appliance, and it most certainly should be.  Instead, it’s an app that runs on Windows 7.  It runs full-screen and you can use this configuration to conceal the fact that Windows is under it, but eventually something will cause you to abandon that masquerade (like Patch Tuesday). The next version of Windows Home Server won’t, in my opinion, be an appliance either.  Now that the Drive Extender technology is gone, and users can’t just add and remove drives into and from a single storage pool, the product is much more like a IT server and less like an appliance-premised one.  Much has been written about this decision by Microsoft.  I’ll just sum it up in one word: pity. Microsoft doesn’t have anything remotely appliance-like in the tablet category, either.  Until it does, it likely won’t have much market share in that space either.  And of course, the bulk of Microsoft’s product catalog on the business side is geared to enterprise machines and not personal appliances. Appliance DNA: They Gotta Have It. The consumerization of IT is real, because businesspeople are consumers too.  They appreciate the fit and finish of appliances at home, and they increasingly feel entitled to have it at work too.  Secure and reliable push email in a smartphone is necessary, but it isn’t enough.  People want great apps and a pleasurable user experience too.  The full Microsoft Office product is needed at work, but a PC with a keyboard and mouse, or maybe a touch screen that uses a stylus (or requires really small fingers), to run Office isn’t enough either.  People want a flawless touch experience available for the times they want to read and take quick notes.  Until Microsoft realizes this fully and internalizes it, it will suffer defeats in the consumer market and even setbacks in the business market.  Think about how slow the Office upgrade cycle is…now imagine if the next version of Office had a first-class alternate touch UI and consider the possible acceleration in adoption rates. Can Microsoft make the appliance switch?  Can the appliance mentality become pervasive at the company?  Can Microsoft hasten its release cycles dramatically and shed the “some assembly required” paradigm upon which many of its products are based?  Let’s face it, the chances that Microsoft won’t make this transition are significant. But there are also encouraging signs, and they should not be ignored.  The appliances we have already discussed, especially Xbox, Zune and Windows Phone 7, are the most obvious in this regard.  The fact that SQL Server has an appliance SKU now is a more subtle but perhaps also more significant outcome, because that product sits so smack in the middle of Microsoft’s enterprise stack.  Bing is encouraging too, especially given its integrated travel, maps and augmented reality capabilities.  As Bing gains market share, Microsoft has tangible proof that it can transform and win, even when everyone outside the company, and many within it, would bet otherwise. That Great Big Appliance in the Sky Perhaps the most promising (and evolving) proof points toward the appliance mentality, though, are Microsoft’s cloud offerings -- Azure and BPOS/Office 365.  While the cloud does not represent a physical appliance (quite the opposite in fact) its ability to make acquisition, deployment and use of technology simple for the user is absolutely an embodiment of the appliance mentality and spirit.  Azure is primarily a platform as a service offering; it doesn’t just provide infrastructure.  SQL Azure does likewise for databases.  And Office 365 does likewise for SharePoint, Exchange and Lync. You don’t administer, tune and manage servers; instead, you create databases or site collections or mailboxes and start using them. Upgrades come automatically, and it seems like releases will come more frequently.  Fault tolerance and content distribution is just there.  No muss.  No fuss.  You use these services; you don’t have to set them up and think about them.  That’s how appliances work.  To me, these signs point out that Microsoft has the full capability of transforming itself.  But there’s a lot of work ahead.  Microsoft may say they’re “all in” on the cloud, but the majority of the company is still oriented around its old products and models.  There needs to be a wholesale cultural transformation in Redmond.  It can happen, but product management, program management, the field and executive ranks must unify in the effort. So must partners, and even customers.  New leaders must rise up and Microsoft must be able to see itself as a winner.  If Microsoft does this, it could lock-in decades of new success, and be a standard business school case study for doing so.  If not, the company will have missed an opportunity, and may see its undoing.

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• Emit Knowledge - social network for knowledge sharing

  - by hajan

  Emit Knowledge, as the words refer - it's a social network for emitting / sharing knowledge from users by users. Those who can benefit the most out of this network is perhaps all of YOU who have something to share with others and contribute to the knowledge world. I've been closely communicating with the core team of this very, very interesting, brand new social network (with specific purpose!) about the concept, idea and the vision they have for their product and I can say with a lot of confidence that this network has real potential to become something from which we will all benefit. I won't speak much about that and would prefer to give you link and try it yourself - http://www.emitknowledge.com Mainly, through the past few months I've been testing this network and it is getting improved all the time. The user experience is great, you can easily find out what you need and it follows some known patterns that are common for all social networks. They have some real good ideas and plans that are already under development for the next updates of their product. You can do micro blogging or you can do regular normal blogging… it’s up to you, and the way it works, it is seamless. Here is a short Question and Answers (QA) interview I made with the lead of the team, Marijan Nikolovski: 1. Can you please explain us briefly, what is Emit Knowledge? Emit Knowledge is a brand new knowledge based social network, delivering quality content from users to users. We believe that people’s knowledge, experience and professional thoughts compose quality content, worth sharing among millions around the world. Therefore, we created the platform that matches people’s need to share and gain knowledge in the most suitable and comfortable way. Easy to work with, Emit Knowledge lets you to smoothly craft and emit knowledge around the globe. 2. How 'old' is Emit Knowledge? In hamster’s years we are almost five years old start-up :). Just kidding. We’ve released our public beta about three months ago. Our official release date is 27 of June 2012. 3. How did you come up with this idea? Everything started from a simple idea to solve a complex problem. We’ve seen that the social web has become polluted with data and is on the right track to lose its base principles – socialization and common cause. That was our start point. We’ve gathered the team, drew some sketches and started to mind map the idea. After several idea refactoring’s Emit Knowledge was born. 4. Is there any competition out there in the market? Currently we don't have any competitors that share the same cause. What makes our platform different is the ideology that our product promotes and the functionalities that our platform offers for easy socialization based on interests and knowledge sharing. 5. What are the main technologies used to build Emit Knowledge? Emit Knowledge was built on a heterogeneous pallet of technologies. Currently, we have four of separation: UI – Built on ASP.NET MVC3 and Knockout.js; Messaging infrastructure – Build on top of RabbitMQ; Background services – Our in-house solution for job distribution, orchestration and processing; Data storage – Build on top of MongoDB; What are the main reasons you've chosen ASP.NET MVC? Since all of our team members are .NET engineers, the decision was very natural. ASP.NET MVC is the only Microsoft web stack that sticks to the HTTP behavioral standards. It is easy to work with, have a tiny learning curve and everyone who is familiar with the HTTP will understand its architecture and convention without any difficulties. 6. What are the main reasons for choosing ASP.NET MVC? Since all of our team members are .NET engineers, the decision was very natural. ASP.NET MVC is the only Microsoft web stack that sticks to the HTTP behavioral standards. It is easy to work with, have a tiny learning curve and everyone who is familiar with the HTTP will understand its architecture and convention without any difficulties. 7. Did you use some of the latest Microsoft technologies? If yes, which ones? Yes, we like to rock the cutting edge tech house. Currently we are using Microsoft’s latest technologies like ASP.NET MVC, Web API (work in progress) and the best for the last; we are utilizing Windows Azure IaaS to the bone. 8. Can you please tell us shortly, what would be the benefit of regular bloggers in other blogging platforms to join Emit Knowledge? Well, unless you are some of the smoking ace gurus whose blogs are followed by a large number of users, our platform offers knowledge based segregated community equipped with tools that will enable both current and future users to expand their relations and to self-promote in the community based on their activity and knowledge sharing. 10. I see you are working very intensively and there is already integration with some third-party services to make the process of sharing and emitting knowledge easier, which services did you integrate until now and what do you plan do to next? We have “reemit” functionality for internal sharing and we also support external services like: Twitter; LinkedIn; Facebook; For the regular bloggers we have an extra cream, Windows Live Writer support for easy blog posts emitting. 11. What should we expect next? Currently, we are working on a new fancy community feature. This means that we are going to support user groups to be formed. So for all existing communities and user groups out there, wait us a little bit, we are coming for rescue :). One of the top next features they are developing is the Community Feature. It means, if you have your own User Group, Community Group or any other Group on which you and your users are mostly blogging or sharing (emitting) knowledge in various ways, Emit Knowledge as a platform will help you have everything you need to promote your group, make new followers and host all the necessary stuff that you have had need of. I would invite you to try the network and start sharing knowledge in a way that will help you gather new followers and spread your knowledge faster, easier and in a more efficient way! Let’s Emit Knowledge!

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• Oracle Flashback Technologies - Overview

  - by Sridhar_R-Oracle

  Oracle Flashback Technologies - IntroductionIn his May 29th 2014 blog, my colleague Joe Meeks introduced Oracle Maximum Availability Architecture (MAA) and discussed both planned and unplanned outages. Let’s take a closer look at unplanned outages. These can be caused by physical failures (e.g., server, storage, network, file deletion, physical corruption, site failures) or by logical failures – cases where all components and files are physically available, but data is incorrect or corrupt. These logical failures are usually caused by human errors or application logic errors. This blog series focuses on these logical errors – what causes them and how to address and recover from them using Oracle Database Flashback. In this introductory blog post, I’ll provide an overview of the Oracle Database Flashback technologies and will discuss the features in detail in future blog posts. Let’s get started. We are all human beings (unless a machine is reading this), and making mistakes is a part of what we do…often what we do best!  We “fat finger”, we spill drinks on keyboards, unplug the wrong cables, etc.  In addition, many of us, in our lives as DBAs or developers, must have observed, caused, or corrected one or more of the following unpleasant events: Accidentally updated a table with wrong values !! Performed a batch update that went wrong - due to logical errors in the code !! Dropped a table !! How do DBAs typically recover from these types of errors? First, data needs to be restored and recovered to the point-in-time when the error occurred (incomplete or point-in-time recovery).  Moreover, depending on the type of fault, it’s possible that some services – or even the entire database – would have to be taken down during the recovery process.Apart from error conditions, there are other questions that need to be addressed as part of the investigation. For example, what did the data look like in the morning, prior to the error? What were the various changes to the row(s) between two timestamps? Who performed the transaction and how can it be reversed?  Oracle Database includes built-in Flashback technologies, with features that address these challenges and questions, and enable you to perform faster, easier, and convenient recovery from logical corruptions. HistoryFlashback Query, the first Flashback Technology, was introduced in Oracle 9i. It provides a simple, powerful and completely non-disruptive mechanism for data verification and recovery from logical errors, and enables users to view the state of data at a previous point in time.Flashback Technologies were further enhanced in Oracle 10g, to provide fast, easy recovery at the database, table, row, and even at a transaction level.Oracle Database 11g introduced an innovative method to manage and query long-term historical data with Flashback Data Archive. The 11g release also introduced Flashback Transaction, which provides an easy, one-step operation to back out a transaction. Oracle Database versions 11.2.0.2 and beyond further enhanced the performance of these features. Note that all the features listed here work without requiring any kind of restore operation.In addition, Flashback features are fully supported with the new multi-tenant capabilities introduced with Oracle Database 12c, Flashback Features Oracle Flashback Database enables point-in-time-recovery of the entire database without requiring a traditional restore and recovery operation. It rewinds the entire database to a specified point in time in the past by undoing all the changes that were made since that time.Oracle Flashback Table enables an entire table or a set of tables to be recovered to a point in time in the past.Oracle Flashback Drop enables accidentally dropped tables and all dependent objects to be restored.Oracle Flashback Query enables data to be viewed at a point-in-time in the past. This feature can be used to view and reconstruct data that was lost due to unintentional change(s) or deletion(s). This feature can also be used to build self-service error correction into applications, empowering end-users to undo and correct their errors.Oracle Flashback Version Query offers the ability to query the historical changes to data between two points in time or system change numbers (SCN) Oracle Flashback Transaction Query enables changes to be examined at the transaction level. This capability can be used to diagnose problems, perform analysis, audit transactions, and even revert the transaction by undoing SQLOracle Flashback Transaction is a procedure used to back-out a transaction and its dependent transactions.Flashback technologies eliminate the need for a traditional restore and recovery process to fix logical corruptions or make enquiries. Using these technologies, you can recover from the error in the same amount of time it took to generate the error. All the Flashback features can be accessed either via SQL command line (or) via Enterprise Manager.  Most of the Flashback technologies depend on the available UNDO to retrieve older data. The following table describes the various Flashback technologies: their purpose, dependencies and situations where each individual technology can be used.   Example Syntax Error investigation related:The purpose is to investigate what went wrong and what the values were at certain points in timeFlashback Queries  ( select .. as of SCN | Timestamp )   - Helps to see the value of a row/set of rows at a point in timeFlashback Version Queries  ( select .. versions between SCN | Timestamp and SCN | Timestamp)  - Helps determine how the value evolved between certain SCNs or between timestamps Flashback Transaction Queries (select .. XID=)   - Helps to understand how the transaction caused the changes.Error correction related:The purpose is to fix the error and correct the problems,Flashback Table  (flashback table .. to SCN | Timestamp)  - To rewind the table to a particular timestamp or SCN to reverse unwanted updates Flashback Drop (flashback table ..  to before drop )  - To undrop or undelete a table Flashback Database (flashback database to SCN  | Restore Point )  - This is the rewind button for Oracle databases. You can revert the entire database to a particular point in time. It is a fast way to perform a PITR (point-in-time recovery). Flashback Transaction (DBMS_FLASHBACK.TRANSACTION_BACKOUT(XID..))  - To reverse a transaction and its related transactions Advanced use cases Flashback technology is integrated into Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN) and Oracle Data Guard. So, apart from the basic use cases mentioned above, the following use cases are addressed using Oracle Flashback. Block Media recovery by RMAN - to perform block level recovery Snapshot Standby - where the standby is temporarily converted to a read/write environment for testing, backup, or migration purposes Re-instate old primary in a Data Guard environment – this avoids the need to restore an old backup and perform a recovery to make it a new standby. Guaranteed Restore Points - to bring back the entire database to an older point-in-time in a guaranteed way. and so on..I hope this introductory overview helps you understand how Flashback features can be used to investigate and recover from logical errors.  As mentioned earlier, I will take a deeper-dive into to some of the critical Flashback features in my upcoming blogs and address common use cases.

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• Unable to boot Ubuntu 13.10 (nVidia GTX 770m and Intel HD 4600)

  - by Raziel Gonzalez

  Ever since I bought this laptop I've been trying to install Ubuntu on it. It came with W8 preinstalled. Up to this point, I've been able to boot in UEFI mode with a black screen. I can tell it's trying to use the nVidia card (there's a led on the computer, depending on the color you can tell which GPU is using) and if I press crtl+alt+F1 I can go to console mode. Taking this advantage I tried to install bumblebee and after a successful install the led that indicates which GPU is being used change, indicating that it switched to the Intel HD 4600 graphics. After the installation I tried to initiate the graphic interface (startx) with no success. Xorg.0.log shows the error: [ 3706.779] X.Org X Server 1.14.3 Release Date: 2013-09-12 [ 3706.782] X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0 [ 3706.783] Build Operating System: Linux 3.2.0-37-generic x86_64 Ubuntu [ 3706.783] Current Operating System: Linux ubuntu 3.11.0-12-generic #19-Ubuntu SMP Wed Oct 9 16:20:46 UTC 2013 x86_64 [ 3706.783] Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/casper/vmlinuz.efi file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper nomodeset -- [ 3706.785] Build Date: 15 October 2013 09:23:37AM [ 3706.786] xorg-server 2:1.14.3-3ubuntu2 (For technical support please see http://www.ubuntu.com/support) [ 3706.786] Current version of pixman: 0.30.2 [ 3706.788] Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org to make sure that you have the latest version. [ 3706.788] Markers: (--) probed, (**) from config file, (==) default setting, (++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) informational, (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown. [ 3706.791] (==) Log file: "/var/log/Xorg.0.log", Time: Sat Nov 2 12:28:52 2013 [ 3706.792] (==) Using system config directory "/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d" [ 3706.792] (==) No Layout section. Using the first Screen section. [ 3706.792] (==) No screen section available. Using defaults. [ 3706.792] (**) |-->Screen "Default Screen Section" (0) [ 3706.792] (**) | |-->Monitor "<default monitor>" [ 3706.792] (==) No monitor specified for screen "Default Screen Section". Using a default monitor configuration. [ 3706.792] (==) Automatically adding devices [ 3706.792] (==) Automatically enabling devices [ 3706.792] (==) Automatically adding GPU devices [ 3706.792] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/X11/cyrillic" does not exist. [ 3706.792] Entry deleted from font path. [ 3706.792] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/" does not exist. [ 3706.792] Entry deleted from font path. [ 3706.792] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/" does not exist. [ 3706.792] Entry deleted from font path. [ 3706.792] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi" does not exist. [ 3706.792] Entry deleted from font path. [ 3706.792] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi" does not exist. [ 3706.792] Entry deleted from font path. [ 3706.792] (==) FontPath set to: /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc, /usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1, built-ins [ 3706.792] (==) ModulePath set to "/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/xorg/extra-modules,/usr/lib/xorg/extra-modules,/usr/lib/xorg/modules" [ 3706.792] (II) The server relies on udev to provide the list of input devices. If no devices become available, reconfigure udev or disable AutoAddDevices. [ 3706.792] (II) Loader magic: 0x7ff680918d20 [ 3706.792] (II) Module ABI versions: [ 3706.792] X.Org ANSI C Emulation: 0.4 [ 3706.792] X.Org Video Driver: 14.1 [ 3706.792] X.Org XInput driver : 19.1 [ 3706.792] X.Org Server Extension : 7.0 [ 3706.793] (--) PCI:*(0:0:2:0) 8086:0416:1462:10e8 rev 6, Mem @ 0xf7400000/4194304, 0xb0000000/268435456, I/O @ 0x0000f000/64 [ 3706.793] (II) Open ACPI successful (/var/run/acpid.socket) [ 3706.794] Initializing built-in extension Generic Event Extension [ 3706.795] Initializing built-in extension SHAPE [ 3706.796] Initializing built-in extension MIT-SHM [ 3706.797] Initializing built-in extension XInputExtension [ 3706.797] Initializing built-in extension XTEST [ 3706.798] Initializing built-in extension BIG-REQUESTS [ 3706.799] Initializing built-in extension SYNC [ 3706.799] Initializing built-in extension XKEYBOARD [ 3706.800] Initializing built-in extension XC-MISC [ 3706.801] Initializing built-in extension SECURITY [ 3706.802] Initializing built-in extension XINERAMA [ 3706.802] Initializing built-in extension XFIXES [ 3706.803] Initializing built-in extension RENDER [ 3706.804] Initializing built-in extension RANDR [ 3706.804] Initializing built-in extension COMPOSITE [ 3706.805] Initializing built-in extension DAMAGE [ 3706.806] Initializing built-in extension MIT-SCREEN-SAVER [ 3706.806] Initializing built-in extension DOUBLE-BUFFER [ 3706.807] Initializing built-in extension RECORD [ 3706.807] Initializing built-in extension DPMS [ 3706.808] Initializing built-in extension X-Resource [ 3706.809] Initializing built-in extension XVideo [ 3706.809] Initializing built-in extension XVideo-MotionCompensation [ 3706.810] Initializing built-in extension SELinux [ 3706.811] Initializing built-in extension XFree86-VidModeExtension [ 3706.811] Initializing built-in extension XFree86-DGA [ 3706.812] Initializing built-in extension XFree86-DRI [ 3706.812] Initializing built-in extension DRI2 [ 3706.812] (II) "glx" will be loaded by default. [ 3706.812] (WW) "xmir" is not to be loaded by default. Skipping. [ 3706.812] (II) LoadModule: "dri2" [ 3706.812] (II) Module "dri2" already built-in [ 3706.812] (II) LoadModule: "glamoregl" [ 3706.813] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/libglamoregl.so [ 3706.813] (II) Module glamoregl: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 3706.813] compiled for 1.14.2.901, module version = 0.5.1 [ 3706.813] ABI class: X.Org ANSI C Emulation, version 0.4 [ 3706.813] (II) LoadModule: "glx" [ 3706.813] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/extensions/libglx.so [ 3706.813] (II) Module glx: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 3706.813] compiled for 1.14.3, module version = 1.0.0 [ 3706.813] ABI class: X.Org Server Extension, version 7.0 [ 3706.813] (==) AIGLX enabled [ 3706.814] Loading extension GLX [ 3706.814] (==) Matched intel as autoconfigured driver 0 [ 3706.814] (==) Matched vesa as autoconfigured driver 1 [ 3706.814] (==) Matched modesetting as autoconfigured driver 2 [ 3706.814] (==) Matched fbdev as autoconfigured driver 3 [ 3706.814] (==) Assigned the driver to the xf86ConfigLayout [ 3706.814] (II) LoadModule: "intel" [ 3706.814] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/intel_drv.so [ 3706.814] (II) Module intel: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 3706.814] compiled for 1.14.3, module version = 2.99.904 [ 3706.814] Module class: X.Org Video Driver [ 3706.814] ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 14.1 [ 3706.814] (II) LoadModule: "vesa" [ 3706.814] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/vesa_drv.so [ 3706.814] (II) Module vesa: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 3706.814] compiled for 1.14.1, module version = 2.3.2 [ 3706.814] Module class: X.Org Video Driver [ 3706.814] ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 14.1 [ 3706.814] (II) LoadModule: "modesetting" [ 3706.814] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/modesetting_drv.so [ 3706.814] (II) Module modesetting: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 3706.814] compiled for 1.14.1, module version = 0.8.0 [ 3706.814] Module class: X.Org Video Driver [ 3706.814] ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 14.1 [ 3706.814] (II) LoadModule: "fbdev" [ 3706.814] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/fbdev_drv.so [ 3706.815] (II) Module fbdev: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 3706.815] compiled for 1.14.1, module version = 0.4.3 [ 3706.815] Module class: X.Org Video Driver [ 3706.815] ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 14.1 [ 3706.815] (II) intel: Driver for Intel(R) Integrated Graphics Chipsets: i810, i810-dc100, i810e, i815, i830M, 845G, 854, 852GM/855GM, 865G, 915G, E7221 (i915), 915GM, 945G, 945GM, 945GME, Pineview GM, Pineview G, 965G, G35, 965Q, 946GZ, 965GM, 965GME/GLE, G33, Q35, Q33, GM45, 4 Series, G45/G43, Q45/Q43, G41, B43, HD Graphics, HD Graphics 2000, HD Graphics 3000, HD Graphics 2500, HD Graphics 4000, HD Graphics P4000, HD Graphics 4600, HD Graphics 5000, HD Graphics P4600/P4700, Iris(TM) Graphics 5100, HD Graphics 4400, HD Graphics 4200, Iris(TM) Pro Graphics 5200 [ 3706.815] (II) VESA: driver for VESA chipsets: vesa [ 3706.815] (II) modesetting: Driver for Modesetting Kernel Drivers: kms [ 3706.815] (II) FBDEV: driver for framebuffer: fbdev [ 3706.815] (--) using VT number 7 [ 3706.819] (WW) Falling back to old probe method for modesetting [ 3706.819] (EE) open /dev/dri/card0: No such file or directory [ 3706.819] (WW) Falling back to old probe method for fbdev [ 3706.819] (II) Loading sub module "fbdevhw" [ 3706.819] (II) LoadModule: "fbdevhw" [ 3706.819] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/libfbdevhw.so [ 3706.819] (II) Module fbdevhw: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 3706.819] compiled for 1.14.3, module version = 0.0.2 [ 3706.819] ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 14.1 [ 3706.819] (II) Loading sub module "vbe" [ 3706.819] (II) LoadModule: "vbe" [ 3706.819] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/libvbe.so [ 3706.819] (II) Module vbe: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 3706.819] compiled for 1.14.3, module version = 1.1.0 [ 3706.819] ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 14.1 [ 3706.819] (II) Loading sub module "int10" [ 3706.819] (II) LoadModule: "int10" [ 3706.819] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/libint10.so [ 3706.819] (II) Module int10: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 3706.819] compiled for 1.14.3, module version = 1.0.0 [ 3706.819] ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 14.1 [ 3706.819] (II) VESA(0): initializing int10 [ 3706.820] (EE) VESA(0): V_BIOS address 0x0 out of range [ 3706.820] (II) UnloadModule: "vesa" [ 3706.820] (II) UnloadSubModule: "int10" [ 3706.820] (II) Unloading int10 [ 3706.820] (II) UnloadSubModule: "vbe" [ 3706.820] (II) Unloading vbe [ 3706.820] (EE) Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration. [ 3706.820] (EE) Fatal server error: [ 3706.820] (EE) no screens found(EE) [ 3706.820] (EE) Please consult the The X.Org Foundation support at http://wiki.x.org for help. [ 3706.820] (EE) Please also check the log file at "/var/log/Xorg.0.log" for additional information. [ 3706.820] (EE) [ 3706.827] (EE) Server terminated with error (1). Closing log file. I also saved the dsmeg output to see if it can be of any help. In order to be able to get to this stage I had to boot with nomodeset option and removed quiet and splash. Anyone got this same error? Any guidance? I've tried other linux distros and so far the only one that is able to boot is Opensuse 12.3 without any issues (but only when I switch to legacy mode instead of UEFI).

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• first install for windows eight.....da beta

  - by raysmithequip

  The W8 preview is now installed and I am enjoying it.  I remember the learning curve of my first unix machine back in the eighties, this ain't that.It is normal for me to do the first os install with a keyboard and low end monitor...you never know what you'll encounter out in the field.  The OS took like a fish to water.  I used a low end INTEL motherboard dp55w I gathered on the cheap, an 1157 i5 from the used bin a pair of 6 gig ddr3 sticks, a rosewell 550 watt power supply a cheap used twenty buck sub 200g wd sata drive, a half working dvd burner and an asus fanless nvidia vid card, not a great one but Sub 50.00 on newey eggey...I did have to hunt the ms forums for a key and of course to activate the thing, if dos would of needed this outmoded ritual, we would still be on cpm and osborne would be a household name, of course little do people know that this ritual was common as far back as the seventies on att unix installs....not, but it was possible, I used to joke about when I ran a bbs, what hell would of been wrought had dos 3.2 machines been required to dial into my bbs to send fido mail to ms and wait for an acknowledgement.  All in all the thing was pushing a seven on the ms richter scale, not including the vid card, sadly it came in at just a tad over three....I wanted to evaluate it for a possible replacement on critical machines that in the past went down due to a vid card fan failure....you have no idea what a customer thinks when you show them a failed vid card fan..."you mean that little plastic piece of junk caused all this!!??!!!"...yea man.  Some production machines don't need any sort of vid, I will at least keep it on the maybe list for those, MTBF is a very important factor, some big box stores should put percentage of failure rate within 24 month estimates on the outside of the carton for sure.  And a warning that the power supplies are already at their limit.  Let's face it, today even 550w can be iffy.A few neat eye candy improvements over the earlier windows is nice, the metro screen is nice, anyone who has used a newer phone recently will intuitively drag their fingers across the screen....lot of good that was with no mouse or touch screen though.  Lucky me, I have been using windows since day one, I still have a copy of win 2.0 (and every other version) for no good reason.  Still the old ix collection of disks is much larger, recompiling any kernal is another silly ritual, same machine, different day, same recompile...argh. Rh is my all time fav, mandrake was always missing something, like it rewrote the init file or something, novell is ok as long as you stay on the beaten path and of course ubuntu normally recompiles with the same errors consistantly....makes life easy that way....no errors on windows eight, just a screen that did not match the installed hardware, natuarally I alt tabbed right out of it, then hit the flag key to find the start menu....no start button. I miss the start button already. Keyboard cowboy funnin and I was browsing the harddrive, nothing stunning there, I like that, means I can find stuff. Only I can't find what I want, the start button....the start menu is that first screen for touch tablets. No biggie for useruser, that is where they will want to be, I can see that. Admins won't want to be there, it is easy enough to get the control panel a bazzilion other ways though, just not the start button. (see a pattern here?). Personally, from the keyboard I find it fun to hit the carets along the location bar at the top of the explorer screen with tabs and arrows and choose SHOW ALL CONTROL PANEL ITEMS, or thereabouts. Bottom line, I love seven and I'll love eight even more!...very happy I did not have to follow the normal rule of thumb (a customer watching me build a system and asking questions said "oh I get it, so every piece you put in there is basically a hundred bucks, right?)...ok, sure, pretty much, more or less, well, ya dude.  It will be WAY past october till I get a real touch screen but I did pick up a pair of cheap tatungs so I can try the NEW main start screen, I parse a lot of folders and have a vision of how a pair of touch screens will be easier than landing a rover on mars.  Ok.  fine, they are way smallish, and I don't expect multitouch to work but we are talking a few percent of a new 21 inch viewsonic touch screen.  Will this OS be a game changer?  I don't know.  Bottom line with all the pads and droids in the world, it is more of a catch up move at first glance.  Not something ms is used to.  An app store?  I can see ms's motivation, the others have it.  I gather there will not be gadgets there, go ahead and see what ms did  to the once populated gadget page...go ahead, google gadgets and take a gander, used to hundreds of gadgets, they are already gone.  They replaced gadgets?  sort of, I'll drop that, it's a bit of a sore point for me.  More of interest was what happened when I downloaded stuff off codeplex and some other normal programs that I like, like orbitron, top o' my list!!...cardware it is...anyways, click on the exe, get a screen, normal for windows, this one indicated that I was not running a normal windows program and had a button for  exit the install, naw, I hit details, a hidden run program anyways came into view....great, my path to the normal windows has detected a program tha.....yea ok, acl is on, fine, moving along I got orbitron installed in record time and was tracking the iss on the newest Microsoft OS, beta of course, felt like the first time I setup bsd all those year ago...FUN!!...I suppose I gotta start to think about budgeting for the real os when it comes out in october, by then I should have a rasberry pi and be done with fedora remixed.  Of course that sounds like fun too!!  I would use this OS on a tablet or phone.  I don't like the idea of being hearded to an app store, don't like that on anything, we are americans and want real choices not marketed hype, lest you are younger with opm (other peoples money).   This os would be neat on a zune, but I suspect the zune is a gonner, I am rooting for microsoft, after all their default password is not admin anymore, nor alpine,  it's blank. Others force a password, my first fawn password was so long I could not even log into it with the password in front of me, who the heck uses %$# anyways, and if I was writing a brute force attack what the heck kinda impasse is that anyways at .00001 microseconds of a code execution cycle (just a non qualified number, not a real clock speed)....AI is where it will be before too long, MS is on that path, perhaps soon someone will sit down and write an app for the kinect that watches your eyes while you scan the new main start screen, clicking on the big E icon when you blink.....boy is that going to be fun!!!! sure. Blink,dammit,blink,dammit...... OPM no doubt.I like windows eight, we are moving forwards, better keep a close eye on ubuntu.  The real clinch comes when open source becomes paid source......don't blink, I already see plenty of very expensive 'ix apps, some even in app stores already.  more to come.......

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• Can grub handle same release (3.6) but new rc (rc5)?

  - by hhoyt

  can grub handle newer kerner rc ? I am running 3.6.0-rc4 ok, grub update definitely recognizes all required files for rc5, but edit of grub.cfg only shows rc4 after grub-update. D/N matter whether I generate kernel 3.6.0-rc5 or whether I install the .deb files. Generating grub.cfg ... using custom appearance settings Found background image: /usr/share/peppermint/wallpapers/Peppermint.jpg Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.6.0-030600rc5-generic Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.6.0-030600rc4-generic Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.6.0-030600rc4-generic Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.6.0-rc5 Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.6.0-rc5 Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.6.0-rc5.old Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.6.0-rc5 Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.5.3 Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.5.3 Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.5.3.old Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.5.3 Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.5.0-13-generic Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.5.0-13-generic Found Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS (10.04) on /dev/sda1 Found Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS (10.04) on /dev/sda10 Found Peppermint Two (2) on /dev/sda15 Found Ubuntu 10.10 (10.10) on /dev/sda16 Found Windows 7 (loader) on /dev/sda3 Found Ubuntu 11.04 (11.04) on /dev/sda5 Found Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (12.04) on /dev/sda6 Found Linux Mint 12 LXDE (12) on /dev/sda8 Found MS-DOS 5.x/6.x/Win3.1 on /dev/sdc1 If I press 'e' on boot startup of rc4 and manually change it to rc5 and ctrl-x, it comes up fine. I just cannot get grub.cfg to update such that rc4 is included. Thanks, Howard # DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE # It is automatically generated by grub-mkconfig using templates from /etc/grub.d and settings from /etc/default/grub # BEGIN /etc/grub.d/00_header if [ -s $prefix/grubenv ]; then set have_grubenv=true load_env fi set default="Windows 7 (loader) (on /dev/sda3)" if [ "${prev_saved_entry}" ]; then set saved_entry="${prev_saved_entry}" save_env saved_entry set prev_saved_entry= save_env prev_saved_entry set boot_once=true fi function savedefault { if [ -z "${boot_once}" ]; then saved_entry="${chosen}" save_env saved_entry fi } function recordfail { set recordfail=1 if [ -n "${have_grubenv}" ]; then if [ -z "${boot_once}" ]; then save_env recordfail; fi; fi } function load_video { insmod vbe insmod vga insmod video_bochs insmod video_cirrus } insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd1,msdos1)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 218e9f6f-c21e-4c50-90a5-5a40be639b66 if loadfont /usr/share/grub/unicode.pf2 ; then set gfxmode=640x480 load_video insmod gfxterm insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd1,msdos1)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 218e9f6f-c21e-4c50-90a5-5a40be639b66 set locale_dir=($root)/boot/grub/locale set lang=en_US insmod gettext fi terminal_output gfxterm if [ "${recordfail}" = 1 ]; then set timeout=-1 else set timeout=10 fi END /etc/grub.d/00_header BEGIN /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd1,msdos1)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 218e9f6f-c21e-4c50-90a5-5a40be639b66 insmod jpeg if background_image /usr/share/peppermint/wallpapers/Peppermint.jpg; then set color_normal=light-gray/black set color_highlight=magenta/black else set menu_color_normal=white/black set menu_color_highlight=black/light-gray fi END /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme BEGIN /etc/grub.d/10_linux_proxy menuentry "Peppermint, with Linux 3.6.0-030600rc4-generic" --class peppermint --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { recordfail insmod gzio insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd1,msdos1)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 218e9f6f-c21e-4c50-90a5-5a40be639b66 linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.6.0-030600rc4-generic root=UUID=218e9f6f-c21e-4c50-90a5-5a40be639b66 ro initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.6.0-030600rc4-generic } END /etc/grub.d/10_linux_proxy BEGIN /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober_proxy menuentry "Peppermint, with Linux 3.6.0-030600rc4-generic (on /dev/sda15)" --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos15)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 21a3d91a-ae43-4f51-b8d6-7f3dc80967d7 linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.6.0-030600rc4-generic root=UUID=21a3d91a-ae43-4f51-b8d6-7f3dc80967d7 ro splash quiet splash vt.handoff=7 initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.6.0-030600rc4-generic } menuentry "Ubuntu, with Linux 3.0.0-24-generic (on /dev/sda10)" --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos10)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 6c9a0149-3045-4335-83fa-a2513ca3a250 linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.0.0-24-generic root=UUID=6c9a0149-3045-4335-83fa-a2513ca3a250 ro crashkernel=384M-2G:64M,2G-:128M splash initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.0.0-24-generic } menuentry "Ubuntu, with Linux 3.5.0-030500rc7-generic (on /dev/sda10)" --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos10)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 6c9a0149-3045-4335-83fa-a2513ca3a250 linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.5.0-030500rc7-generic root=UUID=6c9a0149-3045-4335-83fa-a2513ca3a250 ro crashkernel=384M-2G:64M,2G-:128M splash initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.5.0-030500rc7-generic } menuentry "Peppermint, with Linux 3.3.0-030300rc2-generic (on /dev/sda15)" --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos15)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 21a3d91a-ae43-4f51-b8d6-7f3dc80967d7 linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.3.0-030300rc2-generic root=UUID=21a3d91a-ae43-4f51-b8d6-7f3dc80967d7 ro splash quiet splash vt.handoff=7 initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.3.0-030300rc2-generic } menuentry "Ubuntu, with Linux 2.6.39-rc5-candela (on /dev/sda16)" --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos16)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 48fcb5ec-b51b-4afd-b0e5-a2aace66f6e1 linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.39-rc5-candela root=/dev/sda7 ro splash initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.39-rc5-candela } menuentry "Windows 7 (loader) (on /dev/sda3)" --class windows --class os { insmod part_msdos insmod ntfs set root='(hd0,msdos3)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root EA3EFABB3EFA7FBD chainloader +1 } menuentry "Ubuntu, with Linux 2.6.38-13-generic (on /dev/sda5)" --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos5)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root bcfe855e-a449-429d-b204-c667e129a4bd linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.38-13-generic root=UUID=bcfe855e-a449-429d-b204-c667e129a4bd ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7 initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.38-13-generic } menuentry "Ubuntu, with Linux 3.2.0-29-generic-pae (on /dev/sda6)" --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos6)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 369605ad-1a92-4b7d-abb5-ce75cbdfc9c1 linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-29-generic-pae root=UUID=369605ad-1a92-4b7d-abb5-ce75cbdfc9c1 ro quiet splash $vt_handoff initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-29-generic-pae } menuentry "Ubuntu, with Linux 3.2.0-23-generic-pae (on /dev/sda6)" --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos6)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 369605ad-1a92-4b7d-abb5-ce75cbdfc9c1 linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-23-generic-pae root=UUID=369605ad-1a92-4b7d-abb5-ce75cbdfc9c1 ro quiet splash $vt_handoff initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-23-generic-pae } menuentry "Linux Mint 12 LXDE, 3.0.0-12-generic (/dev/sda8) (on /dev/sda8)" --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,msdos8)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root ccdc67ed-e81c-4f85-9b75-fe0c24c65bb8 linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.0.0-12-generic root=UUID=ccdc67ed-e81c-4f85-9b75-fe0c24c65bb8 ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7 initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.0.0-12-generic } menuentry "MS-DOS 5.x/6.x/Win3.1 (on /dev/sdc1)" --class windows --class os { insmod part_msdos insmod ntfs set root='(hd2,msdos1)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root A8F0DE02F0DDD6A2 drivemap -s (hd0) ${root} chainloader +1 } END /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober_proxy BEGIN /etc/grub.d/40_custom This file provides an easy way to add custom menu entries. Simply type the menu entries you want to add after this comment. Be careful not to change the 'exec tail' line above. END /etc/grub.d/40_custom BEGIN /etc/grub.d/41_custom if [ -f $prefix/custom.cfg ]; then source $prefix/custom.cfg; fi END /etc/grub.d/41_custom

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• SQL Server Developer Tools &ndash; Codename Juneau vs. Red-Gate SQL Source Control

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

  So how do the new SQL Server Developer Tools (previously code-named Juneau) stack up against SQL Source Control?  Read on to find out. At the PASS Community Summit a couple of weeks ago, it was announced that the previously code-named Juneau software would be released under the name of SQL Server Developer Tools with the release of SQL Server 2012.  This replacement for Database Projects in Visual Studio (also known in a former life as Data Dude) has some great new features.  I won’t attempt to describe them all here, but I will applaud Microsoft for making major improvements.  One of my favorite changes is the way database elements are broken down.  Previously every little thing was in its own file.  For example, indexes were each in their own file.  I always hated that.  Now, SSDT uses a pattern similar to Red-Gate’s and puts the indexes and keys into the same file as the overall table definition. Of course there are really cool features to keep your database model in sync with the actual source scripts, and the rename refactoring feature is now touted as being more than just a search and replace, but rather a “semantic-aware” search and replace.  Funny, it reminds me of SQL Prompt’s Smart Rename feature.  But I’m not writing this just to criticize Microsoft and argue that they are late to the party with this feature set.  Instead, I do see it as a viable alternative for folks who want all of their source code to be version controlled, but there are a couple of key trade-offs that you need to know about when you choose which tool set to use. First, the basics Both tool sets integrate with a wide variety of source control systems including the most popular: Subversion, GIT, Vault, and Team Foundation Server.  Both tools have integrated functionality to produce objects to upgrade your target database when you are ready (DACPACs in SSDT, integration with SQL Compare for SQL Source Control).  If you regularly live in Visual Studio or the Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) then SSDT will likely be comfortable for you.  Like BIDS, SSDT is a Visual Studio Project Type that comes with SQL Server, and if you don’t already have Visual Studio installed, it will install the shell for you.  If you already have Visual Studio 2010 installed, then it will just add this as an available project type.  On the other hand, if you regularly live in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) then you will really enjoy the SQL Source Control integration from within SSMS.  Both tool sets store their database model in script files.  In SSDT, these are on your file system like other source files; in SQL Source Control, these are stored in the folder structure in your source control system, and you can always GET them to your file system if you want to browse them directly. For me, the key differentiating factors are 1) a single, unified check-in, and 2) migration scripts.  How you value those two features will likely make your decision for you. Unified Check-In If you do a continuous-integration (CI) style of development that triggers an automated build with unit testing on every check-in of source code, and you use Visual Studio for the rest of your development, then you will want to really consider SSDT.  Because it is just another project in Visual Studio, it can be added to your existing Solution, and you can then do a complete, or unified single check-in of all changes whether they are application or database changes.  This is simply not possible with SQL Source Control because it is in a different development tool (SSMS instead of Visual Studio) and there is no way to do one unified check-in between the two.  You CAN do really fast back-to-back check-ins, but there is the possibility that the automated build that is triggered from the first check-in will cause your unit tests to fail and the CI tool to report that you broke the build.  Of course, the automated build that is triggered from the second check-in which contains the “other half” of your changes should pass and so the amount of time that the build was broken may be very, very short, but if that is very, very important to you, then SQL Source Control just won’t work; you’ll have to use SSDT. Refactoring and Migrations If you work on a mature system, or on a not-so-mature but also not-so-well-designed system, where you want to refactor the database schema as you go along, but you can’t have data suddenly disappearing from your target system, then you’ll probably want to go with SQL Source Control.  As I wrote previously, there are a number of changes which you can make to your database that the comparison tools (both from Microsoft and Red Gate) simply cannot handle without the possibility (or probability) of data loss.  Currently, SSDT only offers you the ability to inject PRE and POST custom deployment scripts.  There is no way to insert your own script in the middle to override the default behavior of the tool.  In version 3.0 of SQL Source Control (Early Access version now available) you have that ability to create your own custom migration script to take the place of the commands that the tool would have done, and ensure the preservation of your data.  Or, even if the default tool behavior would have worked, but you simply know a better way then you can take control and do things your way instead of theirs. You Decide In the environment I work in, our automated builds are not triggered off of check-ins, but off of the clock (currently once per night) and so there is no point at which the automated build and unit tests will be triggered without having both sides of the development effort already checked-in.  Therefore having a unified check-in, while handy, is not critical for us.  As for migration scripts, these are critically important to us.  We do a lot of new development on systems that have already been in production for years, and it is not uncommon for us to need to do a refactoring of the database.  Because of the maturity of the existing system, that often involves data migrations or other additional SQL tasks that the comparison tools just can’t detect on their own.  Therefore, the ability to create a custom migration script to override the tool’s default behavior is very important to us.  And so, you can see why we will continue to use Red Gate SQL Source Control for the foreseeable future.

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• I Know What I Did This Summer: Put Down Trex Decking

  - by thatjeffsmith

  If you’re wondering why I would bore everyone with my pictures and frequent status updates/tweets from the past week – it’s so I could document the process of refurbishing my deck, or what some would call a porch. When we go to take a vacation, buy a car, do anything – we also read personal blogs to get the real story. So, if you’re curious about what it takes to tackle this sort of project, read on. Skills/Equipment/Manpower We Possessed I took the old decking out by myself. I’m about 230 lbs, more than 6′ tall, and I’m pretty healthy. This took about 8 hours over two afternoons. Three of us put the deck back together. My wife has two engineering degrees. Her father also has two engineering degrees. Lots of brainpower available here. Also, her dad ran the public works department for a country for more than 20 years – so lots and lots of practical experience on hand. We had a compound mitre saw, a skilsaw, 2-3 crowbars, a framing hammer, 3 cordless drills, a corded drill, lots of sawhorses, a power sander, an angle grinder, a 10×10 Coleman canopy tent, a Ford F-150 pickup truck, outdoor speakers and lots of iTunes playlists, plenty of water and cold beer. Why We Did This Our deck was relatively young – it was built in 2005. However, the pressure treated boards must not have been adequately maintained before we bought the house. I had powerwashed the deck every other year and had it stained a few times. The boards just rotted. We’re going to be in the house for a long time, and we wanted something that would look nice and require little maintenance. More bad deck boards The deck boards were in bad shape Things We Learned The two most important things: The hidden fasteners have to be put in JUST right. Wedge them into the grooved board, then bend down the bit that is screwed down. We didn’t do this on the first board and couldn’t get the second board to fit nearly close enough. Watching the official TREX YouTube video helped immensely, and we should have watched that first. When pre-drilling holes for the boards that need screwed down – DO NOT pre-drill through the underlying framing wood. ONLY pre-drill through the TREX itself. The screw won’t seat in the board properly. Instead of sitting down flush with the board, it will stop at the top of the board and just spin. I had to call the the place that sold me the screws to find this out. So about a third of our screws look like crap. If it doesn’t look or feel right – stop everything and pick up your computer or your phone. It’s not right, and it will be much easier to stop and find out why. We didn’t do this, and now I’m going to see every screw that’s not flush with the boards and get upset. Oh well. The Process How much time did it take? Well I spent about 8 hours taking the deck apart. And then the 3 of use spent 8 hours the first day, 10 hours the second day, 8 hours the third, and another 6 hours on the fourth day. That’s like 104 man-hours. We supposedly saved four or five thousand dollars in labor, but don’t do the math here or you might get a bit upset. The main thing is that we got what we wanted, and there won’t be any surprises later. Now for some pictures… This 6”+ pry bar made the destruction of the old deck much easier Most of the joists, once exposed, were OK. This joist wasn’t sitting on ANYTHING before. We think a lazy gas person cut the board to sneak a gas line in. Awesome… These monster lag bolts had to be accounted for when putting in the additional framing The border pattern Sheri wanted to put in required a lot more framing. These were the first boards to go down – we screwed them in as there was no way to attach clips I sat, kicked in the boards, and then drilled these clips in – but my wife was able to go MUCH faster by using her hands to lock the boards in and drill on her knees. I liked locking the board in with my feet when they needed to be ‘encouraged’ to go straight. The first board took FOREVER to go in, but then when we got rolling, we were able to put in a 20′ board in less than 10 minutes. This was end of construction day #2 – we got much further than we thought we would. Ah, the dreaded last 10% – what to do here? Remember those ‘floating’ stringers? Yeah, we fixed that up a bit, too. My wife used a website (and her brain) to calculate exactly how to cut the stringers to give us the rise/run we needed with the proper clearance and all that jazz. The stairs with stringers and toe kicks – this was worth the effort It started raining on us as I screwed down the steps – this we managed to get our shade tent up on the deck to protect us from the rain too The stairs, finished Finished, mostly Good corner shot The top of the stairs Stairs, looking down Celebratory beer In Summary There are a few things we’re not happy with. I think we can fix them up – but later. I have a few things left to finish, rewire the lighting, get the gas grille put back in, and rehang some screen doors. I was expecting this to be a lot worse than it was. If I didn’t have the help, I would have never done it myself. But I’m glad that I did have that help and did do that project. It’s not often you get to spend that kind of qualify time with family and building cool stuff.

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• Blogging locally and globally–my experience

  - by DigiMortal

  In Baltic MVP Summit 2011 there was discussion about having two blogs - one for local and another for global audience – and how to publish once written information in these blogs. There are many ways how to optimize your blogging activities if you have more than one audience and here you can find my experiences, best practices and advices about this topic. My two blogs I have to working blogs: this one here technology and programming blog for local market My local blog is almost five years old and it makes it one of the oldest company blogs in Estonia. It is still active and I write there as much as I have time for it. This blog here is active since September 2007, so it is about 3.5 years old right now. Both of these blogs are  my major hits in my MVP carrier and they have very good web statistics too. My local blog My local blog is about programming, web and technology. It has way wider target audience then this blog here has. By example, in my local blog I blog also about local events, cool new concept phones, different webs providing some interesting services etc. But local guys can find there also my postings about how to solve one or another programming problem and postings about Microsoft technologies I am playing with. This far my local blog has a lot of readers for such a small country that Estonia is. This blog has made me a lot of cool contacts and I have had there a lot of interesting discussions about different technical topics. Why I started this blog? Living in small country is different than living in big country. In small country you have less people and therefore smaller audience so you have to target more than one technical topic to find enough readers. In a same time you are still interested in your main topics and you want to reach to more people who are sharing same interests with you. Practically one day y will grow out from local market and you go global. This is how this blog was born. Was it worth to create, promote and mess with it? Every second I have put on my time to this blog has been worth of it. Thanks to this blog I have found new good friends and without them I think it is more boring to work on different problems and solutions. Defining target audiences One thing you should always do when having more than one blog is defining target audiences. If you are just technomaniac interested in sharing your stuff and make some new friends and have something to write to your MVP nomination form then you don’t have to go through complex targeting process. You can do it simple way and same effectively. Here is how I defined target audiences to my blogs: local blog – reader of my local blog is IT professional, software developer, technology innovator or just some guy who is interested in technology,   this blog – reader of this blog is experienced professional software developer who works on Microsoft technologies or software developer who is open minded and open to new technologies and interesting solutions to development problems. You can see how local blog – due to small market with less people – has wider definition for audience while this blog is heavily targeted to Microsoft technologies and specially to software development. On practical side these decisions are also made well I think because it is very hard to build up popular common IT blog. On global level it is better to target some specific niche and find readers who are professionals on your favorite topics. Thanks to this blog I have found new friends who are professional developers and I am very happy about all the discussions I have had with them. Publishing content to different blogs My local blog and this blog have some overlapping topics like .NET, databases and SEO. Due to this overlapping there is question: when I write posting to my local blog then should I have to publish same thing in my global blog? And if I write something to my global blog then should I publish same thing also in my local blog? Well, it really depends on the definition of your target audiences. If they match then of course it is good idea to translate you post and publish it also to another blog. But if you have different audiences then you may need to modify your posting before publishing it. The questions you have to answer are: is target audience interested in this topic? is target audience expecting more specific and deeper handling of this topic or are they expecting more general handling of topic? is the problem you are discussing actual for target audience or not? You have to answer these questions and after that make your decision. If you need to modify your original posting then take some time and do it. Provide quality to all your readers because they will respect you if you respect them. Cross-posting and referencing It is tempting to save time that preparing some blog post takes and if you have are done with posting in one blog it may seem like good idea to make short posting to another blog and add reference to first one where topic is discussed longer. Well, don’t do it – all your readers expect good quality content from you and jumping from one blog post to another is disturbing for them. Of course, there is problem with differences between target audiences. You may have wider target audience and some people may be interested in more specific handling of topic. In this case feel free to refer your blog you are writing in english. This is not working very well in opposite direction because almost all my global blog readers understand english but not estonian. By example, estonian language is complex one and online translating tools make very poor translations from estonian language. This is why I don’t even plan to publish postings here that refer to my local blog for more information. I am keeping these two blogs as two different worlds and if there is posting that fits well to both blogs I will write my posting to one blog and then answer previous three questions before posting same thing to another blog. Conclusion Growing out of your local market is not anything mysterious if you are living in small country. As it is harder to find people there who are interested in same topics with you then sooner or later you will start finding these new contacts from global audience. Global audience is bigger and to be visible there you must provide high quality content to your audience. It is something you will learn over time and you will learn every day something new when you are posting to your global blog. You may ask: if global blog is much more complex thing to do then is it worth to do at all? My answer is: yes, do it for sure. It is not easy thing to do when you start but if you work on your global blog and improve it over time you will get over all obstacles pretty soon. Just don’t forget one thing – content is king and your readers expect high quality from you.

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• OS8- AK8- The bad news...

  - by Steve Tunstall

  Ok I told you I would give you the bad news of AK8 to go along with all the cool new stuff, so here it is. It's not that bad, really, just things you need to be aware of. First, the 2013.1 code is being called OS8, AK8 and 2013.1 by different people. I mean different people INSIDE Oracle!! It was supposed to be easy, but it never is. So for the rest of this blog entry, I'm calling it AK8. AK8 is not compatible with the 7x10 series. Ever. The 7x10 series is not supported with AK8, and if you try to upgrade one, it will fail at the healthcheck. All 7x20 series, all of them regardless of age, are supported with AK8. Drive trays. Let's talk about drive trays and SAS cards. The older drive trays for the 7x20 series were called the "Riverwalk 2" or "DS2" trays. They were technically the "J4410" series JBODs that Sun used to sell a la carte before we stopped selling JBODs. Don't get me started on that, it still makes me mad. We used these for many years, and you can still buy them right now until December 15th, 2013, when they will no longer be sold. The DS2 tray only came as a 4u, 24 drive shelf. It held 3.5" drives, and you had a choice of 2TB, 3TB, 300GB or 600GB drives. The SAS HBA in the 7x20 series was called a "Thebe" card, with a part # of 7105394. The 7420, for example, came standard with two of these "Thebe" cards for connecting to the disk trays. Two Thebe cards could handle up to 12 trays, so one would add two more cards to go to 24 trays, or have up to six Thebe cards to handle 36 trays. This card was for external SAS only. It did not connect to the internal OS drives or the Readzillas, both of which used the internal SCSI controller of the server. These Riverwalk 2 trays ARE supported with AK8. You can upgrade your older 7420 or 7320, no problem, as-is. The much older Riverwalk 1 trays or J4400 trays are NOT supported by AK8. However, they were only used by the 7x10 series, and we already said that the 7x10 series was not supported. Here's where it gets tricky. Since last January, we have been selling the new style disk trays. We call them the "DE2-24P" and the "DE2-24C" trays. The "C" tray is for capacity drives, which are 3.5" 3TB or 4TB drives. The "P" trays are for performance drives, which are 2.5" 300GB and 900GB drives. These trays are NOT Riverwalk 2 trays, even though the "C" series may kind of look like it. Different manufacturer and different firmware. They are not new. Like I said, we've been selling them with the 7x20 series since last January. They are the only disk trays we will be selling going forward. Of course, AK8 supports them. So what's the problem? The problem is going to be for people who have to mix drive trays. Remember, your older 7x20 series has Thebe SAS2 HBAs. These have 2 SAS ports per card.  The new ZS3-2 and ZS3-4 systems, however, have the new "Thebe2" SAS2 HBAs. These Thebe2 cards have 4 ports per card. This is very cool, as we can now do more SAS channels with less cards. Instead of needing 4 SAS cards to grow to 24 trays like we did with the old Thebe cards, I can now do 24 trays with only 2 Thebe2 cards. This means more IO slots for fun things like Infiniband and 10G. So far, so good, right? These Thebe2 cards work with any disk tray. You can even mix older DS2 trays with the newer DE2 trays in the same system, as long as you have Thebe2 cards. Ah, there's your problem. You don't have Thebe2 cards in your old 7420, do you? Well, I told you the bad news wasn't that bad, right? We can take out your Thebe cards and replace them with Thebe2. You can then plug your older DS2 trays right back in, and also now get newer DE2 trays going forward. However, it's important that the trays are on different SAS channels. You can mix them in the same system, but not on the same channel. Ask your local SC if you need help with the new cable layout. By the way, the new ZS3-2 and ZS3-4 systems also include a new IO card called "Erie" cards. These are for INTERNAL SAS to the OS drives and the Readzillas. So those are now SAS2 instead of SATA like the older models. Yes, the Erie card uses an IO slot, but that's OK, because the Thebe2 cards allow us to use less SAS HBAs to grow the system, right? That's it. Not too much bad news and really not that bad. AK8 does not support the 7x10 series, and you may need new Thebe2 cards in your older systems if you want to add on newer DE2 trays. I think we can all agree that there are worse things out there. Like our Congress.   Next up.... More good news and cool AK8 tricks. Such as virtual NICS. 

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• Webcast Q&A: ING on How to Scale Role Management and Compliance

  - by Tanu Sood

  Thanks to all who attended the live webcast we hosted on ING: Scaling Role Management and Access Certifications to Thousands of Applications on Wed, April 11th. Those of you who couldn’t join us, the webcast replay is now available. Many thanks to our guest speaker, Mark Robison, Enterprise Architect at ING for walking us through ING’s drivers and rationale for the platform approach, the phased implementation strategy, results & metrics, roadmap and recommendations. We greatly appreciate the insight he shared with us all on the deployment synergies between Oracle Identity Manager (OIM) and Oracle Identity Analytics (OIA) to enforce streamlined user and role management and scalable compliance. Mark was also kind enough to walk us through specific solutions features that helped ING manage the problem of role explosion and implement closed loop remediation. Our host speaker, Neil Gandhi, Principal Product Manager, Oracle rounded off the presentation by discussing common use cases and deployment scenarios we see organizations implement to automate user/identity administration and enforce closed-loop scalable compliance. Neil also called out the specific features in Oracle Identity Analytics 11gR1 that cater to expediting and streamlining compliance processes such as access certifications. While we tackled a few questions during the webcast, we have captured the responses to those that we weren’t able to get to here; our sincere thanks to Mark Robison for taking the time to respond to questions specific to ING’s implementation and strategy. Q. Did you include business friendly entitlment descriptions, or is the business seeing application descriptors A. We include very business friendly descriptions.  The OIA tool has the facility to allow this. Q. When doing attestation on job change, who is in the workflow to review and confirm that the employee should continue to have access? Is that a best practice?   A. The new and old manager  are in the workflow.  The tool can check for any Separation of Duties (SOD) violations with both having similiar accesses.  It may not be a best practice, but it is a reality of doing your old and new job for a transition period on a transfer. Q. What versions of OIM and OIA are being used at ING?   A. OIM 11gR1 and OIA 11gR1; the very latest versions available. Q. Are you using an entitlements / role catalog?   A. Yes. We use both roles and entitlements. Q. What specific unexpected benefits did the Identity Warehouse provide ING?   A. The most unanticipated was to help Legal Hold identify user ID's in the various applications.   Other benefits included providing a one stop shop for all aggregated ID information. Q. How fine grained are your application and entitlements? Did OIA, OIM support that level of granularity?   A. We have some very fine grained entitlements, but we role this up into approved Roles to allow for easier management.   For managing very fine grained entitlements, Oracle offers the Oracle Entitlement Server.  We currently do not own this software but are considering it. Q. Do you allow any individual access or is everything truly role based?   A. We are a hybrid environment with roles and individual positive and negative entitlements Q. Did you use an Agile methodology like scrum to deliver functionality during your project? A. We started with waterfall, but used an agile approach to provide benefits after the initial implementation Q. How did you handle rolling out the standard ID format to existing users? A. We just used the standard IDs for new users.  We have not taken on a project to address the existing nonstandard IDs. Q. To avoid role explosion, how do you deal with apps that require more than a couple of entitlement TYPES? For example, an app may have different levels of access and it may need to know the user's country/state to associate them with particular customers.   A. We focus on the functional user and craft the role around their daily job requirements.  The role captures the required application entitlements.  To keep role explosion down, we use role mining in OIA and also meet and interview the business.  It is an iterative process to get role consensus. Q. Great presentation! How many rounds of Certifications has ING performed so far?  A. Around 7 quarters and constant certifications on transfer. Q. Did you have executive support from the top down   A. Yes  The executive support was key to our success. Q. For your cloud instance are you using OIA or OIM as SaaS?  A. No.  We are just provisioning and deprovisioning to various Cloud providers.  (Service Now is an example) Q. How do you ensure a role owner does not get more priviliges as are intended and thus violates another role, e,g, a DBA Roles should not get tor rigt to run somethings as root, as this would affect the root role? A. We have SOD  checks.  Also all Roles are initially approved by external audit and the role owners have to certify the roles and any changes Q. What is your ratio of employees to roles?   A. We are still in process going through our various lines of business, so I do not have a final ratio.  From what we have seen, the ratio varies greatly depending on the Line of Business and the diversity of Job Functions.  For standardized lines of business such as call centers, the ratio is very good where we can have a single role that covers many employees.  For specialized lines of business like treasury, it can be one or two people per role. Q. Is ING using Oracle On Demand service ?   A. No Q. Do you have to implement or migrate to OIM in order to get the Identity Warehouse, or can OIA provide the identity warehouse as well if you haven't reached OIM yet? A. No, OIM deployment is not required to implement OIA’s Identity Warehouse but as you heard during the webcast, there are tremendous deployment synergies in deploying both OIA and OIM together. Q. When is the Security Governor product coming out? A. Oracle Security Governor for Healthcare is available today. Hope you enjoyed the webcast and we look forward to having you join us for the next webcast in the Customers Talk: Identity as a Platform webcast series: Toyota: Putting Customers First – Identity Platform as a Business Enabler Wednesday, May 16th at 10 am PST/ 1 pm EST Register Today You can also register for a live event at a city near you where Aberdeen’s Derek Brink will discuss the survey results from the recently published report “Analyzing Platform vs. Point Solution Approach in Identity”. And, you can do a quick (& free)  online assessment of your identity programs by benchmarking it against the 160 organizations surveyed  in the Aberdeen report, compliments of Oracle. Here’s the slide deck from our ING webcast: ING webcast platform View more presentations from OracleIDM

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• At times, you need to hire a professional.

  - by Phil Factor

  After months of increasingly demanding toil, the development team I belonged to was told that the project was to be canned and the whole team would be fired.  I’d been brought into the team as an expert in the data implications of a business re-engineering of a major financial institution. Nowadays, you’d call me a data architect, I suppose.  I’d spent a happy year being paid consultancy fees solving a succession of interesting problems until the point when the company lost is nerve, and closed the entire initiative. The IT industry was in one of its characteristic mood-swings downwards.  After the announcement, we met in the canteen. A few developers had scented the smell of death around the project already hand had been applying unsuccessfully for jobs. There was a sense of doom in the mass of dishevelled and bleary-eyed developers. After giving vent to anger and despair, talk turned to getting new employment. It was then that I perked up. I’m not an obvious choice to give advice on getting, or passing,  IT interviews. I reckon I’ve failed most of the job interviews I’ve ever attended. I once even failed an interview for a job I’d already been doing perfectly well for a year. The jobs I’ve got have mostly been from personal recommendation. Paradoxically though, from years as a manager trying to recruit good staff, I know a lot about what IT managers are looking for.  I gave an impassioned speech outlining the important factors in getting to an interview.  The most important thing, certainly in my time at work is the quality of the résumé or CV. I can’t even guess the huge number of CVs (résumés) I’ve read through, scanning for candidates worth interviewing.  Many IT Developers find it impossible to describe their  career succinctly on two sides of paper.  They leave chunks of their life out (were they in prison?), get immersed in detail, put in irrelevancies, describe what was going on at work rather than what they themselves did, exaggerate their importance, criticize their previous employers, aren’t  aware of the important aspects of a role to a potential employer, suffer from shyness and modesty,  and lack any sort of organized perspective of their work. There are many ways of failing to write a decent CV. Many developers suffer from the delusion that their worth can be recognized purely from the code that they write, and shy away from anything that seems like self-aggrandizement. No.  A resume must make a good impression, which means presenting the facts about yourself in a clear and positive way. You can’t do it yourself. Why not have your resume professionally written? A good professional CV Writer will know the qualities being looked for in a CV and interrogate you to winkle them out. Their job is to make order and sense out of a confused career, to summarize in one page a mass of detail that presents to any recruiter the information that’s wanted. To stand back and describe an accurate summary of your skills, and work-experiences dispassionately, without rancor, pity or modesty. You are no more capable of producing an objective documentation of your career than you are of taking your own appendix out.  My next recommendation was more controversial. This is to have a professional image overhaul, or makeover, followed by a professionally-taken photo portrait. I discovered this by accident. It is normal for IT professionals to face impossible deadlines and long working hours by looking more and more like something that had recently blocked a sink. Whilst working in IT, and in a state of personal dishevelment, I’d been offered the role in a high-powered amateur production of an old ex- Broadway show, purely for my singing voice. I was supposed to be the presentable star. When the production team saw me, the air was thick with tension and despair. I was dragged kicking and protesting through a succession of desperate grooming, scrubbing, dressing, dieting. I emerged feeling like “That jewelled mass of millinery, That oiled and curled Assyrian bull, Smelling of musk and of insolence.” (Tennyson Maud; A Monodrama (1855) Section v1 stanza 6) I was then photographed by a professional stage photographer.  When the photographs were delivered, I was amazed. It wasn’t me, but it looked somehow respectable, confident, trustworthy.   A while later, when the show had ended, I took the photos, and used them for work. They went with the CV to job applications. It did the trick better than I could ever imagine.  My views went down big with the developers. Old rivalries were put immediately to one side. We voted, with a show of hands, to devote our energies for the entire notice period to getting employable. We had a team sourcing the CV Writer,  a team organising the make-overs and photographer, and a third team arranging  mock interviews. A fourth team determined the best websites and agencies for recruitment, with the help of friends in the trade.  Because there were around thirty developers, we were in a good negotiating position.  Of the three CV Writers we found who lived locally, one proved exceptional. She was an ex-journalist with an eye to detail, and years of experience in manipulating language. We tried her skills out on a developer who seemed a hopeless case, and he was called to interview within a week.  I was surprised, too, how many companies were experts at image makeovers. Within the month, we all looked like those weird slick  people in the ‘Office-tagged’ stock photographs who stare keenly and interestedly at PowerPoint slides in sleek chromium-plated high-rise offices. The portraits we used still adorn the entries of many of my ex-colleagues in LinkedIn. After a months’ worth of mock interviews, and technical Q&A, our stutters, hesitations, evasions and periphrastic circumlocutions were all gone.  There is little more to relate. With the résumés or CVs, mugshots, and schooling in how to pass interviews, we’d all got new and better-paid jobs well  before our month’s notice was ended. Whilst normally, an IT team under the axe is a sad and depressed place to belong to, this wonderful group of people had proved the power of organized group action in turning the experience to advantage. It left us feeling slightly guilty that we were somehow cheating, but I guess we were merely leveling the playing-field.

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• Maintenance plans love story

  - by Maria Zakourdaev

  There are about 200 QA and DEV SQL Servers out there.  There is a maintenance plan on many of them that performs a backup of all databases and removes the backup history files. First of all, I must admit that I’m no big fan of maintenance plans in particular or the SSIS packages in general.  In this specific case, if I ever need to change anything in the way backup is performed, such as the compression feature or perform some other change, I have to open each plan one by one. This is quite a pain. Therefore, I have decided to replace the maintenance plans with a stored procedure that will perform exactly the same thing.  Having such a procedure will allow me to open multiple server connections and just execute an ALTER PROCEDURE whenever I need to change anything in it. There is nothing like good ole T-SQL. The first challenge was to remove the unneeded maintenance plans. Of course, I didn’t want to do it server by server.  I found the procedure msdb.dbo.sp_maintplan_delete_plan, but it only has a parameter for the maintenance plan id and it has no other parameters, like plan name, which would have been much more useful. Now I needed to find the table that holds all maintenance plans on the server. You would think that it would be msdb.dbo.sysdbmaintplans but, unfortunately, regardless of the number of maintenance plans on the instance, it contains just one row.    After a while I found another table: msdb.dbo.sysmaintplan_subplans. It contains the plan id that I was looking for, in the plan_id column and well as the agent’s job id which is executing the plan’s package: That was all I needed and the rest turned out to be quite easy.  Here is a script that can be executed against hundreds of servers from a multi-server query window to drop the specific maintenance plans. DECLARE @PlanID uniqueidentifier   SELECT @PlanID = plan_id FROM msdb.dbo.sysmaintplan_subplans Where name like ‘BackupPlan%’   EXECUTE msdb.dbo.sp_maintplan_delete_plan @plan_id=@PlanID   The second step was to create a procedure that will perform  all of the old maintenance plan tasks: create a folder for each database, backup all databases on the server and clean up the old files. The script is below. Enjoy.   ALTER PROCEDURE BackupAllDatabases                                   @PrintMode BIT = 1 AS BEGIN          DECLARE @BackupLocation VARCHAR(500)        DECLARE @PurgeAferDays INT        DECLARE @PurgingDate VARCHAR(30)        DECLARE @SQLCmd  VARCHAR(MAX)        DECLARE @FileName  VARCHAR(100)               SET @PurgeAferDays = -14        SET @BackupLocation = '\\central_storage_servername\BACKUPS\'+@@servername               SET @PurgingDate = CONVERT(VARCHAR(19), DATEADD (dd,@PurgeAferDays,GETDATE()),126)               SET @FileName = '?_full_'+                      + REPLACE(CONVERT(VARCHAR(19), GETDATE(),126),':','-')                      +'.bak';          SET @SQLCmd = '               IF ''?'' <> ''tempdb'' BEGIN                      EXECUTE master.dbo.xp_create_subdir N'''+@BackupLocation+'\?\'' ;                        BACKUP DATABASE ? TO  DISK = N'''+@BackupLocation+'\?\'+@FileName+'''                      WITH NOFORMAT, NOINIT,  SKIP, REWIND, NOUNLOAD, COMPRESSION,  STATS = 10 ;                        EXECUTE master.dbo.xp_delete_file 0,N'''+@BackupLocation+'\?\'',N''bak'',N'''+@PurgingDate+''',1;               END'          IF @PrintMode = 1 BEGIN               PRINT @SQLCmd        END               EXEC sp_MSforeachdb @SQLCmd        END

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