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• Few events I&rsquo;m speaking at in early 2013

  - by Mladen Prajdic

  2013 has started great and the SQL community is already brimming with events. At some of these events you can come say hi. I’ll be glad you do! These are the events with dates and locations that I know I’ll be speaking at so far.   February 16th: SQL Saturday #198 - Vancouver, Canada The session I’ll present in Vancouver is SQL Impossible: Restoring/Undeleting a table Yes, you read the title right. No, it's not about the usual "one table per partition" and "restore full backup then copy the data over" methods. No, there are no 3rd party tools involved. Just you and your SQL Server. Yes, it's crazy. No, it's not for production purposes. And yes, that's why it's so much fun. Prepare to dive into the world of data pages, log records, deletes, truncates and backups and how it all works together to get your table back from the endless void. Want to know more? Come and see! This is an advanced level session where we’ll dive into the internals of data pages, transaction log records and page restores.   March 8th-9th: SQL Saturday #194 - Exeter, UK In Exeter I’ll be presenting twice. On the first day I’ll have a full day precon titled: From SQL Traces to Extended Events - The next big switch This pre-con will give you insight into both of the current tracing technologies in SQL Server. The old SQL Trace which has served us well over the past 10 or so years is on its way out because the overhead and details it produces are no longer enough to deal with today's loads. The new Extended Events are a new lightweight tracing mechanism built directly into the SQLOS thus giving us information SQL Trace just couldn't. They were designed and built with performance in mind and it shows. The new Extended Events are a new lightweight tracing mechanism built directly into the SQLOS thus giving us information SQL Trace just couldn't. They were designed and built with performance in mind and it shows. Mastering Extended Events requires learning at least one new skill: XML querying. The second session I’ll have on Saturday titled: SQL Injection from website to SQL Server SQL Injection is still one of the biggest reasons various websites and applications get hacked. The solution as everyone tells us is simple. Use SQL parameters. But is that enough? In this session we'll look at how would an attacker go about using SQL Injection to gain access to your database, see its schema and data, take over the server, upload files and do various other mischief on your domain. This is a fun session that always brings out a few laughs in the audience because they didn’t realize what can be done.   April 23rd-25th: NTK conference - Bled, Slovenia (Slovenian website only) This is a conference with history. This year marks its 18th year running. It’s a relatively large IT conference that focuses on various Microsoft technologies like .Net, Azure, SQL Server, Exchange, Security, etc… The main session’s language is Slovenian but this is slowly changing so it’s becoming more interesting for foreign attendees. This year it’s happening in the beautiful town of Bled in the Alps. The scenery alone is worth the visit, wouldn’t you agree? And this year there are quite a few well known speakers present! Session title isn’t known yet.       May 2nd-4th: SQL Bits XI – Nottingham, UK SQL Bits is the largest SQL Server conference in Europe. It’s a 3 day conference with top speakers and content all dedicated to SQL Server. The session I’ll present here is an hour long version of the precon I’ll give in Exeter. From SQL Traces to Extended Events - The next big switch The session description is the same as for the Exeter precon but we'll focus more on how the Extended Events work with only a brief overview of old SQL Trace architecture.

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• Functional programming constructs in non-functional programming languages

  - by Giorgio

  This question has been going through my mind quite a lot lately and since I haven't found a convincing answer to it I would like to know if other users of this site have thought about it as well. In the recent years, even though OOP is still the most popular programming paradigm, functional programming is getting a lot of attention. I have only used OOP languages for my work (C++ and Java) but I am trying to learn some FP in my free time because I find it very interesting. So, I started learning Haskell three years ago and Scala last summer. I plan to learn some SML and Caml as well, and to brush up my (little) knowledge of Scheme. Well, a lot of plans (too ambitious?) but I hope I will find the time to learn at least the basics of FP during the next few years. What is important for me is how functional programming works and how / whether I can use it for some real projects. I have already developed small tools in Haskell. In spite of my strong interest for FP, I find it difficult to understand why functional programming constructs are being added to languages like C#, Java, C++, and so on. As a developer interested in FP, I find it more natural to use, say, Scala or Haskell, instead of waiting for the next FP feature to be added to my favourite non-FP language. In other words, why would I want to have only some FP in my originally non-FP language instead of looking for a language that has a better support for FP? For example, why should I be interested to have lambdas in Java if I can switch to Scala where I have much more FP concepts and access all the Java libraries anyway? Similarly: why do some FP in C# instead of using F# (to my knowledge, C# and F# can work together)? Java was designed to be OO. Fine. I can do OOP in Java (and I would like to keep using Java in that way). Scala was designed to support OOP + FP. Fine: I can use a mix of OOP and FP in Scala. Haskell was designed for FP: I can do FP in Haskell. If I need to tune the performance of a particular module, I can interface Haskell with some external routines in C. But why would I want to do OOP with just some basic FP in Java? So, my main point is: why are non-functional programming languages being extended with some functional concept? Shouldn't it be more comfortable (interesting, exciting, productive) to program in a language that has been designed from the very beginning to be functional or multi-paradigm? Don't different programming paradigms integrate better in a language that was designed for it than in a language in which one paradigm was only added later? The first explanation I could think of is that, since FP is a new concept (it isn't new at all, but it is new for many developers), it needs to be introduced gradually. However, I remember my switch from imperative to OOP: when I started to program in C++ (coming from Pascal and C) I really had to rethink the way in which I was coding, and to do it pretty fast. It was not gradual. So, this does not seem to be a good explanation to me. Also, I asked myself if my impression is just plainly wrong due to lack of knowledge. E.g., do C# and C++11 support FP as extensively as, say, Scala or Caml do? In this case, my question would be simply non-existent. Or can it be that many non-FP programmers are not really interested in using functional programming, but they find it practically convenient to adopt certain FP-idioms in their non-FP language? IMPORTANT NOTE Just in case (because I have seen several language wars on this site): I mentioned the languages I know better, this question is in no way meant to start comparisons between different programming languages to decide which is better / worse. Also, I am not interested in a comparison of OOP versus FP (pros and cons). The point I am interested in is to understand why FP is being introduced one bit at a time into existing languages that were not designed for it even though there exist languages that were / are specifically designed to support FP.

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• P90X or How I Stopped Worrying and Love Exercise

  - by Matt Christian

  Last Wednesday, after many UPS delivery failures, I received P90X in the mail.  P90X is a series of DVD's and a nutrition guide you use to shed pounds and gain muscle.  Odds are you've seen the infomercial on TV at some point if you watch a little tube now and again.  I started last Thursday and am still standing to tell this tale. At it's core, P90X is a 12 DVD set of exercise videos.  Each video is comprised of a different workout routine that typically last around an hour (some up to 1 1/2 hours).  Every day you are supposed to do one of the workouts which are different every day (sometimes you may repeat a shorter 6 min workout dedicated to abs twice a week).  There are different 'programs' focused on different areas, for weight loss you do the Lean Program, standard weight loss and muscle gain do the Regular Program, and for those hardcore health-nuts, the Insane Program (which consists of 2 - 1 hour long exercises per day).  Each Program has a different set of workouts per week which you repeat for 3 weeks, followed by a 'Relaxation Week' which is essentially a slightly different order.  After the month of workouts is over, you've finished 1 phase out of 3.  P90X takes 90 days, split into 3 Phases (1 phase per month).  Every phase has a different workout order which is also focused on different areas (Weight Loss, Muscle Gain, etc...)  With the DVD's you also get a small glossy book of about 100 pages detailing the different workouts and the different programs as well as a sample workout to see if you're even ready to start P90X. The second part of P90X, which can also be considered the 'core' (actually the other half of the core) is the nutrition guide that is included.  The Nutrition Guide is a book similar to the one that defines the exercises (about 100 glossy pages) though it details foods you should eat, the amounts, and a number of healthy (and tasty!) recipes.  The guide is split up into 3 phases as well, promoting high protein and low carb/dairy at during Phase 1, and levelling off through to Phase 3 where you have a relatively balanced amount of every food group. So after 1 week where am I?  I've stuck quite close to the nutrition guide (there isn't 'diet food' in here people, it's ACTUALLY food) and done my exercise every day.  I think a lot of the first week is getting into the whole idea and learning the moves performed on the DVD.  Have I lost weight?  No.  Do I feel some definition already starting to poke out?  Absolutely (no pun intended). Tony Horton (the 51-year old hulk that runs the whole thing) is very fun to listen and work along with and the 'diet' really isn't too hard to follow unless all you eat is carbs.  I've tried the gym thing and could not get motivated enough to continue going.  P90X is the first time I've ached from a workout, BEFORE starting my next workout.  For anyone interested, Google 'P90X' or 'BeachBody' to find out more information about this awesome program!

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• Unreal Tournament 3 vs UDK: What Should I Choose?

  - by Matt Christian

  Many people in the mod community were very excited to see the release of the Unreal Developer Kit (UDK) a few months ago.  Along with generating excitement into a very dedicated community, it also introduced many new modders into a flourishing area of indie-development.  However, since UDK is free, most beginners jump right into UDK, which is OK though you might just benefit more from purchasing a shelf-copy of Unreal Tournament 3. UDK UDK is a free full version of UnrealEd (the editor environment used to create games like Gears of War 1/2, Bioshock 1/2, and of course Unreal Tournament 3).  The editor gives you all the features of the editor from the shelf-copy of the game plus some refinements in many of the tools.  (One of the first things you'll find about UnrealEd is that it's a collection of tools grouped into the same editor so it really isn't a single 'tool') Interestingly enough, Epic is allowing you to sell any game made in UDK with a few catches.  First off, you must purchase a liscense for your game (which, I THINK is aproximately $99 starting).  Secondly, you must pay 25% of all profits for the first $5,000 of your game revenue to them (about $1250).  Finally, you cannot use any of the 'media' provided in UDK for your game.  UDK provides sample meshes, textures, materials, sounds, and other sample pieces of media pulled (mostly) from Unreal Tournament 3. The final point here will really determine whether you should use UDK.  There is a very small amount of media provided in UDK for someone to go in and begin creating levels without first developing your own meshes, textures, and other media.  Sure, you can slap together a few unique levels, though you will end up finding yourself restriced to the same items over and over and over.  This is absolutely how professional game development is; you are 'given' (typically liscensed or built in-house) an engine/editor and you begin creating all the content for the game and placing it.  UDK is aimed toward those who really want to build their game content from scratch with a currently existing engine.  It is not suited for someone who would like to simply build levels and quick mods without learning external 3D programs and image editing software. Unreal Tournament 3 Unless you have a serious grudge against FPS's, Epic, or your computer sucks, there really is no reason not to own this game for PC.  You can pick it up on Steam or Amazon for around $20 brand new.  Not only are you provided with a full single-player and multiplayer game, but you are given the entire UnrealEd 3.0 including all of the content used to build UT3.  If you want to start building levels and mods quickly for UT3, you should absolutely pick up a shelf-copy. However, as off-the-shelf UT3 is a few years old now, the tools have not been updated for quite a while.  Compared to UDK, the menus are more difficult to navigate through and take more time getting used to.  Since UDK is updated almost every month, there are new inclusions to the editor that may not be in UT3 (including the future addition of 3D!).  I haven't worked enough with shelf UT3 to see if there are more features in UDK or if they both feature the same stuff in different forms, however you should remember that the Unreal Engine 3.0 has undergone numerous upgrades between it's launch and Gears of War 2 (in fact, Epic had a conference to show off what changed just between the Gears of Wars games). Since UT3 has much more core content, someone who wants to focus on level editing or modding the core UT3 game may find their needs better suited with an off-the-shelf copy of UT3.  If that level designer has a team that is generating custom assets, they may be better off with UDK. The choice is now yours...

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• SQL SERVER – A Puzzle – Swap Value of Column Without Case Statement

  - by pinaldave

  For the last few weeks, I have been doing Friday Puzzles and I am really loving it. Yesterday I received a very interesting question by Navneet Chaurasia on Facebook Page. He was asked this question in one of the interview questions for job. Please read the original thread for a complete idea of the conversation. I am presenting the same question here. Puzzle Let us assume there is a single column in the table called Gender. The challenge is to write a single update statement which will flip or swap the value in the column. For example if the value in the gender column is ‘male’ swap it with ‘female’ and if the value is ‘female’ swap it with ‘male’. Here is the quick setup script for the puzzle. USE tempdb GO CREATE TABLE SimpleTable (ID INT, Gender VARCHAR(10)) GO INSERT INTO SimpleTable (ID, Gender) SELECT 1, 'female' UNION ALL SELECT 2, 'male' UNION ALL SELECT 3, 'male' GO SELECT * FROM SimpleTable GO The above query will return following result set. The puzzle was to write a single update column which will generate following result set. There are multiple answers to this simple puzzle. Let me show you three different ways. I am assuming that the column will have either value ‘male’ or ‘female’ only. Method 1: Using CASE Statement I believe this is going to be the most popular solution as we are all familiar with CASE Statement. UPDATE SimpleTable SET Gender = CASE Gender WHEN 'male' THEN 'female' ELSE 'male' END GO SELECT * FROM SimpleTable GO Method 2: Using REPLACE  Function I totally understand it is the not cleanest solution but it will for sure work in giving situation. UPDATE SimpleTable SET Gender = REPLACE(('fe'+Gender),'fefe','') GO SELECT * FROM SimpleTable GO Method 3: Using IIF in SQL Server 2012 If you are using SQL Server 2012 you can use IIF and get the same effect as CASE statement. UPDATE SimpleTable SET Gender = IIF(Gender = 'male', 'female', 'male') GO SELECT * FROM SimpleTable GO You can read my article series on SQL Server 2012 various functions over here. SQL SERVER – Denali – Logical Function – IIF() – A Quick Introduction SQL SERVER – Detecting Leap Year in T-SQL using SQL Server 2012 – IIF, EOMONTH and CONCAT Function Let us clean up. DROP TABLE SimpleTable GO Question to you: I came up with three simple tricks where there is a single UPDATE statement which swaps the values in the column. Do you know any other simple trick? If yes, please post here in the comments. I will pick two random winners from all the valid answers. Winners will get 1) Print Copy of SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers 2) Free Learning Code for Online Video Courses I will announce the winners on coming Monday. Reference:  Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: CodeProject, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Interview Questions and Answers, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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• Java Spotlight Episode 103: 2012 Duke Choice Award Winners

  - by Roger Brinkley

  Our annual interview with the 2012 Duke Choice Award Winners recorded live at the JavaOne 2012. Right-click or Control-click to download this MP3 file. You can also subscribe to the Java Spotlight Podcast Feed to get the latest podcast automatically. If you use iTunes you can open iTunes and subscribe with this link:  Java Spotlight Podcast in iTunes. Show Notes Events Oct 13, Devoxx 4 Kids Nederlands Oct 15-17, JAX London Oct 20, Devoxx 4 Kids Français Oct 22-23, Freescale Technology Forum - Japan, Tokyo Oct 30-Nov 1, Arm TechCon, Santa Clara Oct 31, JFall, Netherlands Nov 2-3, JMagreb, Morocco Nov 13-17, Devoxx, Belgium Feature Interview Duke Choice Award Winners 2012 - Show Presentation London Java CommunityThe second user group receiving a Duke’s Choice Award this year, the London Java Community (LJC) and its users have been active in the OpenJDK, the Java Community Process (JCP) and other efforts within the global Java community. Student Nokia Developer GroupThis year’s student winner, Ram Kashyap, is the founder and president of the Nokia Student Network, and was profiled in the “The New Java Developers” feature in the March/April 2012 issue of Java Magazine. Since then, Ram has maintained a hectic pace, graduating from the People’s Education Society Institute of Technology in Bangalore, India, while working on a Java mobile startup and training students on Java ME. Jelastic, Inc.Moving existing Java applications to the cloud can be a daunting task, but startup Jelastic, Inc. offers the first all-Java platform-as-a-service (PaaS) that enables existing Java applications to be deployed in the cloud without code changes or lock-in. NATOThe first-ever Community Choice Award goes to the MASE Integrated Console Environment (MICE) in use at NATO. Built in Java on the NetBeans platform, MICE provides a high-performance visualization environment for conducting air defense and battle-space operations. DuchessRather than focus on a specific geographic area like most Java User Groups (JUGs), Duchess fosters the participation of women in the Java community worldwide. The group has more than 500 members in 60 countries, and provides a platform through which women can connect with each other and get involved in all aspects of the Java community. AgroSense ProjectImproving farming methods to feed a hungry world is the goal of AgroSense, an open source farm information management system built in Java and the NetBeans platform. AgroSense enables farmers, agribusinesses, suppliers and others to develop modular applications that will easily exchange information through a common underlying NetBeans framework. Apache Software Foundation Hadoop ProjectThe Apache Software Foundation’s Hadoop project, written in Java, provides a framework for distributed processing of big data sets across clusters of computers, ranging from a few servers to thousands of machines. This harnessing of large data pools allows organizations to better understand and improve their business. Parleys.comE-learning specialist Parleys.com, based in Brussels, Belgium, uses Java technologies to bring online classes and full IT conferences to desktops, laptops, tablets and mobile devices. Parleys.com has hosted more than 1,700 conferences—including Devoxx and JavaOne—for more than 800,000 unique visitors. Winners not presenting at JavaOne 2012 Duke Choice Awards BOF Liquid RoboticsRobotics – Liquid Robotics is an ocean data services provider whose Wave Glider technology collects information from the world’s oceans for application in government, science and commercial applications. The organization features the “father of Java” James Gosling as its chief software architect.United Nations High Commissioner for RefugeesThe United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is on the front lines of crises around the world, from civil wars to natural disasters. To help facilitate its mission of humanitarian relief, the UNHCR has developed a light-client Java application on the NetBeans platform. The Level One registration tool enables the UNHCR to collect information on the number of refugees and their water, food, housing, health, and other needs in the field, and combines that with geocoding information from various sources. This enables the UNHCR to deliver the appropriate kind and amount of assistance where it is needed.

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• glsl shader to allow color change of skydome ogre3d

  - by Tim

  I'm still very new to all this but learning a lot. I'm putting together an application using Ogre3d as the rendering engine. So far I've got it running, with a simple scene, a day/night cycle system which is working okay. I'm now moving on to looking at changing the color of the skydome material based on the time of day. What I've done so far is to create a struct to hold the ColourValues for the different aspects of the scene. struct todColors { Ogre::ColourValue sky; Ogre::ColourValue ambient; Ogre::ColourValue sun; }; I created an array to store all the colours todColors sceneColours [4]; I populated the array with the colours I want to use for the various times of the day. For instance DayTime (when the sun is high in the sky) sceneColours[2].sky = Ogre::ColourValue(135/255, 206/255, 235/255, 255); sceneColours[2].ambient = Ogre::ColourValue(135/255, 206/255, 235/255, 255); sceneColours[2].sun = Ogre::ColourValue(135/255, 206/255, 235/255, 255); I've got code to work out the time of the day using a float currentHours to store the current hour of the day 10.5 = 10:30 am. This updates constantly and updates the sun as required. I am then calculating the appropriate colours for the time of day when relevant using else if( currentHour >= 4 && currentHour < 7) { // Lerp from night to morning Ogre::ColourValue lerp = Ogre::Math::lerp<Ogre::ColourValue, float>(sceneColours[GT_TOD_NIGHT].sky , sceneColours[GT_TOD_MORNING].sky, (currentHour - 4) / (7 - 4)); } My original attempt to get this to work was to dynamically generate a material with the new colour and apply that material to the skydome. This, as you can probably guess... didn't go well. I know it's possible to use shaders where you can pass information such as colour to the shader from the code but I am unsure if there is an existing simple shader to change a colour like this or if I need to create one. What is involved in creating a shader and material definition that would allow me to change the colour of a material without the overheads of dynamically generating materials all the time? EDIT : I've created a glsl vertex and fragment shaders as follows. Vertex uniform vec4 newColor; void main() { gl_FrontColor = newColor; gl_Position = ftransform(); } Fragment void main() { gl_FragColor = gl_Color; } I can pass a colour to it using ShaderDesigner and it seems to work. I now need to investigate how to use it within Ogre as a material. EDIT : I created a material file like this : vertex_program colour_vs_test glsl { source test.vert default_params { param_named newColor float4 0.0 0.0 0.0 1 } } fragment_program colour_fs_glsl glsl { source test.frag } material Test/SkyColor { technique { pass { lighting off fragment_program_ref colour_fs_glsl { } vertex_program_ref colour_vs_test { } } } } In the code I have tried : Ogre::MaterialPtr material = Ogre::MaterialManager::getSingleton().getByName("Test/SkyColor"); Ogre::GpuProgramParametersSharedPtr params = material->getTechnique(0)->getPass(0)->getVertexProgramParameters(); params->setNamedConstant("newcolor", Ogre::Vector4(0.7, 0.5, 0.3, 1)); I've set that as the Skydome material which seems to work initially. I am doing the same with the code that is attempting to lerp between colours, but when I include it there, it all goes black. Seems like there is now a problem with my colour lerping.

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• Failure Sucks, But Does It Have To?

  - by steve.diamond

  Hey Folks--It's "elephant in the room" time. Imagine a representative from a CRM VENDOR discussing CRM FAILURES. Well. I recently saw this blog post from Michael Krigsman on "six ways CRM projects go wrong." Now, I know this may come off defensive, but my comments apply to ALL CRM vendors, not just Oracle. As I perused the list, I couldn't find any failures related to technology. They all seemed related to people or process. Now, this isn't about finger pointing, or impugning customers. I love customers! And when they fail, WE fail. Although I sit in the cheap seats, i.e., I haven't funded any multi-million dollar CRM initiatives lately, I kept wondering how to convert the perception of failure as something that ends and is never to be mentioned again (see Michael's reason #4), to something that one learns from and builds upon. So to continue my tradition of speaking in platitudes, let me propose the following three tenets: 1) Try and get ahead of your failures while they're very very small. 2) Immediately assess what you can learn from those failures. 3) With more than 15 years of CRM deployments, seek out those vendors that have a track record both in learning from "misses" and in supporting MANY THOUSANDS of CRM successes at companies of all types and sizes. Now let me digress briefly with an unpleasant (for me, anyway) analogy. I really don't like flying. Call it 'fear of dying' or 'fear of no control.' Whatever! I've spoken with quite a few commercial pilots over the years, and they reassure me that there are multiple failures on most every flight. We as passengers just don't know about them. Most of them are too miniscule to make a difference, and most of them are "caught" before they become LARGER failures. It's typically the mid-sized to colossal failures we hear about, and a significant percentage of those are due to human error. What's the point? I'd propose that organizations consider the topic of FAILURE in five grades. On one end, FAILURE Grade 1 is a minor/miniscule failure. On the other end, FAILURE Grade 5 is a colossal failure A Grade 1 CRM FAILURE could be that a particular interim milestone was missed. Why? What can we learn from that? How can we prevent that from happening as we proceed through the project? Individual organizations will need to define their own Grade 2 and Grade 3 failures. The opportunity is to keep those Grade 3 failures from escalating any further. Because honestly, a GRADE 5 failure may not be recoverable. It could result in a project being pulled, countless amounts of hours and dollars lost, and jobs lost. We don't want to go there. In closing, I want to thank Michael for opening my eyes up to the world of "color," versus thinking of failure as both "black and white" and a dead end road that organizations can't learn from and avoid discussing like the plague.

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• All for one and one for all…the power of partnership in higher education

  - by Student Solutions Team-Oracle

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Recently, several of our Oracle student solutions team members were in Latin America at a user group conference. Not an Oracle user group—although the conference was about and for higher education customers using Oracle software—but a Higher Education User Group (HEUG) conference. So what’s the difference? First of all, the HEUG is an entirely independent organization from Oracle, incorporated as a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation governed by a Board of Directors. As a self-governing organization, the more than 23,000 higher education members (and growing!) actively participate in a multitude of initiatives, communications and shared-learning opportunities that benefit each of them and their institutions. For example, one of these programs includes 16 active and effective Product Advisor Groups (PAGs) that interact directly with Oracle management, developers and business partners to provide input into product strategies and improvements. The HEUG also provides a variety of online tools to help its members navigate the world of Oracle applications software. There’s a lot more that this organization does, but you can go to www.heug.org yourself to learn more. We want to get back to our story! Anyway, as we were leaving the HEUG conference in Latin America, one of the guests invited to attend commented: “Do these users realize and appreciate how many people from Oracle come to support them? You have a much larger representation at these types of conferences than any other vendor. It shows the tremendous support you have for your higher education customers.” So that’s it! This is why the partnership between the HEUG and Oracle is so powerful and unique in the software industry. Two distinct, independent organizations come together focused entirely on providing the highest value and mutual benefit to each member, each organization and the larger higher education community. Through open communications and active engagement since the HEUG was formed in 1998, our partnership today is stronger than it has ever been and membership growing globally. Result? Everyone benefits. All for one and one for all—we are in this together. We’ve got a lot going on in the student solutions team and are working closely with customers and the HEUG to move ahead on continued development for PeopleSoft Campus Solutions 9.2 and a new Oracle Student Cloud. Come back here for more stories, news and information! --Oracle Student Solutions Team  

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• Gamify your Web

  - by Isabel F. Peñuelas

  Yesterday Valencia welcomed the Gamification World Congress that I follow virtually through #GWC2012. BBVA, Iberia, Ligeresa, Axe, Wayra, ESADE, GlaxoSmithKline, Macmillan, Gamisfaction, Nomaders, Blaffin were among the companies presenting success stories on gaming. It has been proved that people remember things easily when an emotion is created. The marketing expectations around Gamification techniques have a lot to do with Neuromarketing theories. There are a lot of expectations on internal enterprise Gamification. In the public Web some sectors are taking the lead on following the trend. The Gartner Analyst Brian Burke opened another Gamification recent event in Madrid remembering that “Gamification is mostly about Engagement”, and this can be applied both to customers or employees. Gamification and Banking The experience of the Spanish Financial Group BBVA that just launched BBVA Game was also presented a week ago at the BBVA Innovation Centre during the event “Gamification & Banking: a fad or a serious business?” . One of the objectives of the BBVA Game was to double the name of registered users. “People like the efficiency of the online channel want to keep a one-to-one contact with the brand”-explained Bernardo Crespo. Another interested data coming out the BBVA presentation was that “only 20% of Spanish users –out of the total holders of Bank Accounts in the country- is familiar with the use of a Web Site to consult their bank accounts”, the project aims also to reverse this situation helping people to learn making a heavy use of the Video in the gaming context. In general Banking presenters seem to agree that Gamification techniques are helping to increase the time spent on the Web. Gamification and Health Using Gamification techniques for chronic illness rehabilitation was another topic of the World Congress. Here you can find some ideas and experiences What can games do for the health (In Spanish) I have personally started my own mental-health gaming project at http://www.lumosity.com/ Gamification in the Enterprise I really recommend Reading this excellent post of Ultan ÓBroin my Introduction to Gamification and Applications. Employee´s motivation and learning are experiencing a 360º turn and it looks than some of us will become soon the Dragon of the year instead of the Employee of the Year. Using Web 2.0 Tools for Gamification Projects  What type of tools do we need for a quick-win Gamification project? To certain extend Gamification can be considered an evolution of the participative Web. Badging, avatars, points and awards, leader boards, progress charts, virtual currencies, gifting and giving challenges and quests are common components and elements. The Web is offering new development frameworks to that purpose as this Avatar Framework from Paypal or Badgeville to include in web applications. Besides, tools to create communities around a game are required to comment, share and vote players as well as for an efficient multimedia management. Due to its entirely open architecture, its community features, and its multimedia and imaging solutions is were I see WebCenter as a tool helping brands to success. Link to Sources & Recommended Readings YouTube Video of BBVAGame presentation Where To Apply Gamification In Your Incentive Jim Calhoun Cancer Challenge Ride and Walkh For my Spanish Readers El aburrimiento es el enemigo número uno del éxito

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• It was worth the wait… Welcome Oracle GoldenGate 11g Release 2

  - by Irem Radzik

  v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";} v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";} It certainly was worth the wait to meet Oracle GoldenGate 11gR2, because it is full of new features on multiple fronts. In fact, this release has the longest and strongest list of new features in Oracle GoldenGate’s history. The new release brings GoldenGate closer to the Oracle Database while expanding the support for global implementations and heterogeneous systems. It is more secure, more flexible, and faster. We announced the availability of Oracle GoldenGate 11gR2 via a press release. If you haven’t seen it yet, please check it out. As covered in this announcement, there are a variety of improvements in the product: Integrated Capture for Oracle Database: brings Oracle GoldenGate’s Capture process closer to the Oracle Database engine and enables support for Advanced Compression among other benefits. Enhanced Conflict Detection & Resolution, speeds and simplifies the conflict detection and resolution process for Active-Active deployments. Globalization, meaning Oracle GoldenGate can be deployed for databases that use multi-byte/Unicode character sets. Security and Performance Improvements, includes support Federal Information Protection Standard (FIPS). Increased Extensibility by kicking off actions based on an event record in the transaction log or in the Trail file. Integration with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c , in addition to the Oracle GoldenGate Monitor product. Expanded Heterogeneity, including capture from IBM DB2 for i on iSeries (AS/400) and delivery to Postgres We will explain these new features in more detail at our upcoming launch webcast: Harness the Power of the New Release of Oracle GoldenGate 11g- (Sept 12 8am/10am PT) In addition to learning more about these new features, the webcast will allow you to ask your questions to product management via live Q&A section. So, I hope you will not miss this opportunity to explore the new release of Oracle GoldenGate 11g and see how it can deliver enterprise-class real-time data integration solutions.. I look forward to a great webcast to unveil GoldenGate’s new capabilities.

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• Windows Azure Use Case: New Development

  - by BuckWoody

  This is one in a series of posts on when and where to use a distributed architecture design in your organization's computing needs. You can find the main post here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/buckwoody/archive/2011/01/18/windows-azure-and-sql-azure-use-cases.aspx Description: Computing platforms evolve over time. Originally computers were directed by hardware wiring - that, the “code” was the path of the wiring that directed an electrical signal from one component to another, or in some cases a physical switch controlled the path. From there software was developed, first in a very low machine language, then when compilers were created, computer languages could more closely mimic written statements. These language statements can be compiled into the lower-level machine language still used by computers today. Microprocessors replaced logic circuits, sometimes with fewer instructions (Reduced Instruction Set Computing, RISC) and sometimes with more instructions (Complex Instruction Set Computing, CISC). The reason this history is important is that along each technology advancement, computer code has adapted. Writing software for a RISC architecture is significantly different than developing for a CISC architecture. And moving to a Distributed Architecture like Windows Azure also has specific implementation details that our code must follow. But why make a change? As I’ve described, we need to make the change to our code to follow advances in technology. There’s no point in change for its own sake, but as a new paradigm offers benefits to our users, it’s important for us to leverage those benefits where it makes sense. That’s most often done in new development projects. It’s a far simpler task to take a new project and adapt it to Windows Azure than to try and retrofit older code designed in a previous computing environment. We can still use the same coding languages (.NET, Java, C++) to write code for Windows Azure, but we need to think about the architecture of that code on a new project so that it runs in the most efficient, cost-effective way in a Distributed Architecture. As we receive new requests from the organization for new projects, a distributed architecture paradigm belongs in the decision matrix for the platform target. Implementation: When you are designing new applications for Windows Azure (or any distributed architecture) there are many important details to consider. But at the risk of over-simplification, there are three main concepts to learn and architect within the new code: Stateless Programming - Stateless program is a prime concept within distributed architectures. Rather than each server owning the complete processing cycle, the information from an operation that needs to be retained (the “state”) should be persisted to another location c(like storage) common to all machines involved in the process.  An interesting learning process for Stateless Programming (although not unique to this language type) is to learn Functional Programming. Server-Side Processing - Along with developing using a Stateless Design, the closer you can locate the code processing to the data, the less expensive and faster the code will run. When you control the network layer, this is less important, since you can send vast amounts of data between the server and client, allowing the client to perform processing. In a distributed architecture, you don’t always own the network, so it’s performance is unpredictable. Also, you may not be able to control the platform the user is on (such as a smartphone, PC or tablet), so it’s imperative to deliver only results and graphical elements where possible.  Token-Based Authentication - Also called “Claims-Based Authorization”, this code practice means instead of allowing a user to log on once and then running code in that context, a more granular level of security is used. A “token” or “claim”, often represented as a Certificate, is sent along for a series or even one request. In other words, every call to the code is authenticated against the token, rather than allowing a user free reign within the code call. While this is more work initially, it can bring a greater level of security, and it is far more resilient to disconnections. Resources: See the references of “Nondistributed Deployment” and “Distributed Deployment” at the top of this article for more information with graphics:  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee658120.aspx  Stack Overflow has a good thread on functional programming: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/844536/advantages-of-stateless-programming  Another good discussion on Stack Overflow on server-side processing is here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3064018/client-side-or-server-side-processing Claims Based Authorization is described here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ee335707.aspx

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• MySQL – Video Course – MySQL Backup and Recovery Fundamentals

  - by Pinal Dave

  Data is the one of the most crucial things for any organization and keeping data safe is the biggest challenge for any DBA. This is true for any organizations. Think about the scenario that you have a database which is extremely important and suddenly you accidently delete the most important table from that database. I am sure this is a very difficult time. In times like this people often get stressed or just make even second mistake. In my career of 10 years I have done often this mistake and often got stressed out due to un-availability of the database backup. In the SQL Server field, we have plenty of the help on this subject, but in MySQL domain there is not enough help. For the same reason I have build this MySQL course on Backup and Recovery. Course Outline Data is very important to any application and business. It is very important that every business plan for data safety. Database backup strategies are often discussed after the disaster has already happened. In this introductory course we will explore a few of the basic backup strategies every business should implement for data safely. We will explore how we can recover our server quickly after any unfriendly incident to our MySQL database. Click to View Course Here are various important aspects which we have discussed in this course. How to take backup of single database? How to take backup of multiple database? How to backup various database objects? How to restore a single database? How to restore multiple databases? How to use MySQL Workbench for Backup and Restore? How to restore Point in Time for any database? What is the best time to backup? How to copy database from one server to another server? All of the above concepts and many more subjects are covered in the MySQL Backup and Recovery Fundamentals course. It is available on Pluralsight. Scenarios As learning about Backup and Recovery can be very much boring, I decided to create two fictitious characters and demonstrate the entire course based on their conversation. The story is about Mike and Rahul. Mike is Sr. Database administrator in USA and Rahul is an intern in India. Rahul aspires to become a senior database administrator and this is a story about his challenges and how he overcomes those challenges. I had a great time to build this course and I have got very good feedback on this course. I encourage all of you to attempt to learn MySQL Backup and Recovery Fundamental course with this innovative effort. It will be very valuable to know your feedback. You will need a valid Pluralsight subscription to watch this course. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: MySQL, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Backup and Restore, SQL Query, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• Personal Technology – Excel Tip: Comparing Excel Files

  - by Pinal Dave

  This guest post is by Vinod Kumar. Vinod Kumar has worked with SQL Server extensively since joining the industry over a decade ago. Working on various versionsfrom SQL Server 7.0, Oracle 7.3 and other database technologies – he now works with the Microsoft Technology Center (MTC) as a Technology Architect. Let us read the blog post in Vinod’s own voice. I have been writing about Excel Tips over my blog and thought it would be great to share one interesting tips here as a guest blog here. Assume a situation where you want to compare multiple excel files. Here is a typical scenario I have encountered as a common activity. Assume you are sending an Excel file with tons of data, formulae and multiple sheets. Now you are requesting your colleague to validate the file and if required change content for correctness. After receiving the file from your colleague, now you want to know what changes were made by this person to your document. Now here is a cool new addition to Excel 2013 that can help you achieve this task. To get to this option, click the INQUIRE Tab. Incase you don’t have the INQUIRE Tab, check Options using INQUIRE blog. In that post, we discuss all the other options of INQUIRE tab. Once you are on the INQUIRE Tab, select “Compare Files” button as shown in the figure above. This brings a dialog as below. If you are on Windows 8 or Windows 7 OS, search for an application called “Spreadsheet Compare 2013”. Ultimately both the options lead us to the same application. If you are using the stand alone app, once the App initializes, click the “Compare files” options from the toolbar. Make sure to give two different Excel files as shown in the figure above. After selecting the Excel Sheets, you can see the Compare tool has a number of other options to play from. We will talk about some of them later in this post. Just below our toolbar is a colorful side-by-side comparison of both our excel sheets. We can also see the various Tab’s from each file. There is a meaning for each of our color coding which will be discussed next. As you saw above, the color coding has a meaning. For example the bottom pane lists each of the color coding and most importantly each of the changes as compared side-by-side. The detailed information shown below can be exported using the “Export Results” options from the toolbar as a separate Excel Workbook or can be copied to clipboard to be used later. The final piece of the puzzle is to show a graphical view of these differences results based on each category. We cannot drill down per se, but this is a great way to know that the maximum changes seem to be based on “Cell Formats” and then few “Calculated Values” have changed. The INQUIRE option and Spreadsheet Compare 2013 tool is part of Excel 2013. So as you explore using the new version of Excel, there are many such hidden features that are worth exploring. Do let us know if you enjoyed learning a new feature today and I hope you will play around with this feature in your day-today challenges when working with Excel files. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Excel, Personal Technology

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• Announcement: Employee Info Starter Kit (v5.0) is Released

  - by Mohammad Ashraful Alam

  Ever wanted to have a simple jQuery menu bound with ASP.NET web site map file? Ever wanted to have cool css design stuffs implemented on your ASP.NET data bound controls? Ever wanted to let Visual Studio generate logical layers for you, which can be easily tested, customized and bound with ASP.NET data controls? If your answers with respect to above questions are ‘yes’, then you will probably happy to try out latest release (v5.0) of Employee Starter Kit, which is intended to address different types of real world challenges faced by web application developers when performing common CRUD operations. Using a single database table ‘Employee’, the current release illustrates how to utilize Microsoft ASP.NET 4.0 Web Form Data Controls, Entity Framework 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 effectively in that context. Employee Info Starter Kit is an open source ASP.NET project template that is highly influenced by the concept ‘Pareto Principle’ or 80-20 rule, where it is targeted to enable a web developer to gain 80% productivity with 20% of effort with respect to learning curve and production. This project template is titled as “Employee Info Starter Kit”, which was initially hosted on Microsoft Code Gallery and been downloaded 1, 50,000+ of copies afterword.  The latest version of this starter kit is hosted in Codeplex. Release Highlights User End Functional Specification The user end functionalities of this starter kit are pretty simple and straight forward that are focused in to perform CRUD operation on employee records as described below. Creating a new employee record Read existing employee records Update an existing employee record Delete existing employee records Architectural Overview Simple 3 layer architecture (presentation, business logic and data access layer) ASP.NET web form based user interface Built-in code generators for logical layers, implemented in Visual Studio default template engine (T4) Built-in Entity Framework entities as business entities (aka: data containers) Data Mapper design pattern based Data Access Layer, implemented in C# and Entity Framework Domain Model design pattern based Business Logic Layer, implemented in C# Object Model for Cross Cutting Concerns (such as validation, logging, exception management) Minimum System Requirements Visual Studio 2010 (Web Developer Express Edition) or higher Sql Server 2005 (Express Edition) or higher Technology Utilized Programming Languages/Scripts Browser side: JavaScript Web server side: C# Code Generation Template: T-4 Template Frameworks .NET Framework 4.0 JavaScript Framework: jQuery 1.5.1 CSS Framework: 960 grid system .NET Framework Components .NET Entity Framework .NET Optional/Named Parameters (new in .net 4.0) .NET Tuple (new in .net 4.0) .NET Extension Method .NET Lambda Expressions .NET Anonymous Type .NET Query Expressions .NET Automatically Implemented Properties .NET LINQ .NET Partial Classes and Methods .NET Generic Type .NET Nullable Type ASP.NET Meta Description and Keyword Support (new in .net 4.0) ASP.NET Routing (new in .net 4.0) ASP.NET Grid View (CSS support for sorting - (new in .net 4.0)) ASP.NET Repeater ASP.NET Form View ASP.NET Login View ASP.NET Site Map Path ASP.NET Skin ASP.NET Theme ASP.NET Master Page ASP.NET Object Data Source ASP.NET Role Based Security Getting Started Guide To see Employee Info Starter Kit in action is pretty easy! Download the latest version. Extract the file. From the extracted folder click the C# project file (Eisk.Web.csproj) to open it in Visual Studio 2010 Hit Ctrl+F5! The current release (v5.0) of Employee Info Starter Kit is properly packaged, fully documented and well tested. If you want to learn more about it in details, just check the following links: Release Home Page Installation Walkthrough Hand on Coding Walkthrough Technical Reference Enjoy!

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• How to future-proof my touch-enabled web application?

  - by Rice Flour Cookies

  I recently went out and purchased a touch-screen monitor with the intention of learning how to program touch-enabled web applications. I had reviewed the MDN documentation about touch events, as well as the W3C specification. To get started, I wrote a very short test page with two event handlers: one for the mousedown event and one for the touchstart event. I fired up the web page in IE and touched the document and found that only the mousedown event fired. I saw the same behavior with Firefox, only to find out later that Firefox can be set to enable the touchstart event using about:config. When touch events are enabled, the touchstart event fires, but not mousedown. Chrome was even stranger: it fired both events when I touched the document: touchstart and mousedown, in that order. Only on my Android phone does it appear to be the case that only the touchstart event fires when I touch the document. I did a a Google search and ended up on two interesting pages. First, I found the page on CanIUse for touch events: http://caniuse.com/#feat=touch Can I Use clearly indicates that IE does not support touch events as of this writing, and Firefox only supports touch events if they are manually enabled. Furthermore, all four browsers I mentioned treat the touch in a completely different way. It boils down to this: IE: simulated mouse click Firefox with touch disabled: simulated mouse click Firefox with touch enabled: touch event Chrome: touch event and simulated mouse click Android: touch event What is more frustrating is that Google also found a Microsoft page called RethinkIE. RethinkIE brags about touch support in IE; as a matter of fact, one of their slogans is "Touch the Web". It links to a number of touch-based application. I followed some of these links, and as best I can tell, it's just like CanIUse described; no proper touch support; just simulated mouse clicks. The MDN (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Touch) and W3C (http://www.w3.org/TR/touch-events/) documentation describe a far richer interface; an interface that doesn't just simulate mouse clicks, but keeps track of multiple touches at once, the contact area, rotation, and force of each touch, and unique identifiers for each touch so that they can be tracked individually. I don't see how simulated mouse clicks can ever touch the above described functionality, which, once again, is part of the W3C specification, although it is listed as "non-normative", meaning that a browser can claim to be standards-compliant without implementing it. (Why bother making it part of the standard, then?) What motivated my research is that I've written an HTML5 application that doesn't work on Android because Android doesn't fire mouse events. I'm now afraid to try to implement touch for my application because the browsers all behave so differently. I imagine that at some time in the future, the browsers might start handling touch similarly, but how can I tell how they might be handled in the future short of writing code to handle the behavior of each individual browser? Is it possible to write code today that will work with touch-enabled browsers for years to come? If so, how?

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• Database – Beginning with Cloud Database As A Service

  - by Pinal Dave

  I love my weekend projects. Everybody does different activities in their weekend – like traveling, reading or just nothing. Every weekend I try to do something creative and different in the database world. The goal is I learn something new and if I enjoy my learning experience I share with the world. This weekend, I decided to explore Cloud Database As A Service – Morpheus. In my career I have managed many databases in the cloud and I have good experience in managing them. I should highlight that today’s applications use multiple databases from SQL for transactions and analytics, NoSQL for documents, In-Memory for caching to Indexing for search.  Provisioning and deploying these databases often require extensive expertise and time.  Often these databases are also not deployed on the same infrastructure and can create unnecessary latency between the application layer and the databases.  Not to mention the different quality of service based on the infrastructure and the service provider where they are deployed. Moreover, there are additional problems that I have experienced with traditional database setup when hosted in the cloud: Database provisioning & orchestration Slow speed due to hardware issues Poor Monitoring Tools High network latency Now if you have a great software and expert network engineer, you can continuously work on above problems and overcome them. However, not every organization have the luxury to have top notch experts in the field. Now above issues are related to infrastructure, but there are a few more problems which are related to software/application as well. Here are the top three things which can be problems if you do not have application expert: Replication and Clustering Simple provisioning of the hard drive space Automatic Sharding Well, Morpheus looks like a product build by experts who have faced similar situation in the past. The product pretty much addresses all the pain points of developers and database administrators. What is different about Morpheus is that it offers a variety of databases from MySQL, MongoDB, ElasticSearch to Reddis as a service.  Thus users can pick and chose any combination of these databases.  All of them can be provisioned in a matter of minutes with a simple and intuitive point and click user interface.  The Morpheus cloud is built on Solid State Drives (SSD) and is designed for high-speed database transactions.  In addition it offers a direct link to Amazon Web Services to minimize latency between the application layer and the databases. Here are the few steps on how one can get started with Morpheus. Follow along with me.  First go to http://www.gomorpheus.com and register for a new and free account. Step 1: Signup It is very simple to signup for Morpheus. Step 2: Select your database   I use MySQL for my daily routine, so I have selected MySQL. Upon clicking on the big red button to add Instance, it prompted a dialogue of creating a new instance.   Step 3: Create User Now we just have to create a user in our portal which we will use to connect to a database hosted at Morpheus. Click on your database instance and it will bring you to User Screen. Over here you will notice once again a big red button to create a new user. I created a user with my first name.   Step 4: Configure your MySQL client I used MySQL workbench and connected to MySQL instance, which I had created with an IP address and user.   That’s it! You are connecting to MySQL instance. Now you can create your objects just like you would create on your local box. You will have all the features of the Morpheus when you are working with your database. Dashboard While working with Morpheus, I was most impressed with its dashboard. In future blog posts, I will write more about this feature.  Also with Morpheus you use the same process for provisioning and connecting with other databases: MongoDB, ElasticSearch and Reddis. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: MySQL, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• Meet Thomas, the Most Innovational person in Oracle Direct EMEA of Q1

  - by Maria Sandu

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Thomas was voted, by his peers,  the most Innovational person in Oracle Direct EMEA of Q1, the first quarter of this fiscal! Thomas, a Business Development Consultant at Oracle Direct’s Applications Team, taught himself how to use and leverage the power of social engagement consistent with Oracle’s Social Media Policy.  From these learning's he provided both his and other applications teams in Dublin with huge amounts of training and has presented his findings to the teams on more than one occasion. It is important to recognise that this isn't just a great idea....it actually works! The results speak for themselves. Thomas is engaging with customers and prospects via their preferred channel of communication and creating a strong personal social brand. We congratulate Thomas for his efforts of raising Social Media to the next level within Business Development Group. He put a lot of work into Social Selling, as one of the first within the BDG and set the example for a new innovative approach on how to sell anno 2013. He deserves to be recognized for this. His contribution to social media has been a great inspiration for all Business Development Consultants or Business Relationship Consultants. He knows what he talks about and has great conversion rates out of his social media campaigns. And he doesn't mind sharing his knowledge with everybody. Great effort in searching for new ways of communication and social selling. Thomas has shown great initiative towards leveraging the social media and networks (twitter, linkedin) to find new business opportunities in a previously way. He has shown great out-of-the-box thinking while addressing new companies and prospects and has shared those experiences and ideas to help his colleagues use the same approach. This included a presentation, informational emails and a general helpful attitude from him. He also shared his success stories from his innovational approach.  Thomas is showing initiative with an innovative and fresh character, truly helping people to try something new  with a focus on selling across channels and working for the CRM team which is focused on selling social. We think the way Thomas positions social, by using social is innovative and inspirational. What better way to tell your clients do social, by engaging with them on a social platform? Going always the extra mile, we believe, that Thomas Brits, is an innovator from the day he walked into Oracle Direct. The way Thomas operates on the work floor by introducing new ideas to find the best opportunities as possible shows he runs the extra mile for coming up with new ideas around how to engage with customers more efficiently for instance via Social Media. Thomas also organises power hours/days for the team. He is the best! /* 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-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• SQL Developer Data Modeler v3.3 Early Adopter: Search

  - by thatjeffsmith

  photo: Stuck in Customs via photopin cc The next version of Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler is now available as an Early Adopter (read, beta) release. There are many new major feature enhancements to talk about, but today’s focus will be on the brand new Search mechanism. Data, data, data – SO MUCH data Google has made countless billions of dollars around a very efficient and intelligent search business. People have become accustomed to having their data accessible AND searchable. Data models can have thousands of entities or tables, each having dozens of attributes or columns. Imagine how hard it could be to find what you’re looking for here. This is the challenge we have tackled head-on in v3.3. Same location as the Search toolbar in Oracle SQL Developer (and most web browsers) Here’s how it works: Search as you type – wicked fast as the entire model is loaded into memory Supports regular expressions (regex) Results loaded to a new panel below Search across designs, models Search EVERYTHING, or filter by type Save your frequent searches Save your search results as a report Open common properties of object in search results and edit basic properties on-the-fly Want to just watch the video? We have a new Oracle Learning Library resource available now which introduces the new and improved Search mechanism in SQL Developer Data Modeler. Go watch the video and then come back. Some Screenshots This will be a pretty easy feature to pick up. Search is intuitive – we’ve already learned how to do search. Now we just have a better interface for it in SQL Developer Data Modeler. But just in case you need a couple of pointers… The SYS data dictionary in model form with Search Results If I type ‘translation’ in the search dialog, then the results will come up as hits are ‘resolved.’ By default, everything is searched, although I can filter the results after-the-fact. You can see where the search finds a match in the ‘Content’ column Save the Results as a Report If you limit the search results to a category and a model, then you can save the results as a report. All of the usual suspects You can optionally include the search string, which displays in the top of of the report as ‘PATTERN.’ You can save you common reporting setups as a template and reuse those as well. Here’s a sample HTML report: Yes, I like to search my search results report! Two More Ways to Search You can search ‘in context’ by opening the ‘Find’ dialog from an active design. You can do this using the ‘Search’ toolbar button or from a model context menu. Searching a specific model Instead of bringing up the old modal Find dialog, you now get to use the new and improved Search panel. Notice there’s no ‘Model’ drop-down to select and that the active Search form is now in the Search panel versus the search toolbar up top. What else is new in SQL Developer Data Modeler version 3.3? All kinds of goodies. You can send your model to Excel for quick edits/reviews and suck the changes back into your model, you can share objects between models, and much much more. You’ll find new videos and blog posts on the subject in the new few days and weeks. Enjoy! If you have any feedback or want to report bugs, please visit our forums.

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• Silverlight Cream for February 07, 2011 -- #1043

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Roy Dallal, Kevin Dockx, Gill Cleeren, Oren Gal, Colin Eberhardt, Rudi Grobler, Jesse Liberty, Shawn Wildermuth, Kirupa Chinnathambi, Jeremy Likness, Martin Krüger(-2-), Beth Massi, and Michael Crump. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "A Circular ProgressBar Style using an Attached ViewModel" Colin Eberhardt WP7: "Isolated Storage" Jesse Liberty Lightswitch: "How To Create Outlook Appointments from a LightSwitch Application" Beth Massi Shoutouts: Gergely Orosz has a summary of his 4-part series on Styles in Silverlight: Everything a Developer Needs To Know From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight Memory Leak, Part 2 Roy Dallal has part 2 of his memory leak posts up... and discusses the results of runnin VMMap and some hints on how to make best use of it. Using a Channel Factory in Silverlight (instead of adding a Service Reference). With cows. Kevin Dockx has a post up for those of you that don't like the generated code that comes about when adding a service reference, and the answer is a Channel Factory... and he has an example app in the post that populates a list of cows... honest ... check it out. Getting ready for Microsoft Silverlight Exam 70-506 (Part 4) Gill Cleeren has Part 4 of his deep-dive into studying for the Silverlight Certification exam. This time out he's got probably half a gazillion links for working with data... seriously! Sync unlimited instances of one Silverlight application How about a cross-browser sync of an unlimited number of instances of the same Silverlight app... Oren Gal has just that going on, and discusses his first two attempts and how he finally honed in on the solution. A Circular ProgressBar Style using an Attached ViewModel Wow... check out what Colin Eberhardt's done with the "Progress Bar" ... using an Attached View Model which he discussed in a post a while back... these are awesome! WP7 - Professional Audio Recorder Rudi Grobler discusses an audio recorder for WP7 that uses the NAudio audio library for not only the recording but visualization. Isolated Storage Jesse Liberty's got his 30th 'From Scratch' post up and this time he's talking about Isolated Storage. Learning OData? MSDN and Shawn Wildermuth has the videos for you! Shawn Wildermuth produced a couple series of videos for MSDN on OData: Getting Started and Consuming OData... get the link on Shawn's post. Creating Sample Data from a Class - Page 1 Kirupa Chinnathambi shows us how to use a schema of your own design in Blend... yet still have Blend produce sample data A Pivot-Style Data Grid without the DataGrid Jeremy Likness discusses the lack of an open-source grid with dynamic columns ... let him know if you've done one! ... and then he continues on to demonstrate his build-out of the same. Synchronize a freeform drawing and a real path creation Martin Krüger has a few new samples up in the Expression Gallery. This first is taking mouse movement in an InkPresenter and creating path statements from it in a canvas and playing them back. How to: use Storyboard completed behaviors Martin Krüger's next post is about Storyboards and firing one off the end of another, in Blend... so he ended up producing a behavior for doing that... and it's in the Expression Gallery How To Create Outlook Appointments from a LightSwitch Application Beth Massi has a new Lightswitch post up... her previous was email from Lightswitch... this is Outlook appointments... pretty darn cool. Quick run through of the WP7 Developer Tools January 2011 Michael Crump has a really good Quick look at the new WP7 Dev Tools that were released last week posted on his blog Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• C# Item system design approach, should I use abstract classes, interfaces or virutals?

  - by vexe

  I'm working on a Resident Evil 1/2/3/0/Remake type of game. Currently I've done a big part of the inventory system (here's a link if you wanna see my inventory, pretty outdated, added a lot of features and made a lot of enhancements) Now I'm thinking about how to approach the items system, If you've played any Resident Evil game or any of its likes you should be familiar with what I'm trying to achieve. Here's a very simple category I made for the items: So you have different items, with different operations you could perform on them, there are usable items that you could use, like for example herbs and first aid kits that 'using' them would affect your health, keys to unlock doors, and equipable items that you could 'equip' like weapons. Also, you can 'combine' two items together to get new one, like for example mixing a green and red herb would give you a new type of herb, or combining a lighter with a paper, would give you a burnt paper, or ammo with a gun, would reload the gun or something. etc. You know the usual RE drill. Not all items are 'transformable', in that, for example: lighter + paper = burnt paper (it's the paper that 'transforms' to burnt paper and not the lighter, the lighter is not transformable it will remain as it is) green herb + red herb = newHerb1 (both herbs will vanish and transform to this new type of herb) ammo + gun = reload gun (ammo state will remain as it is, it won't change but it will just decrease, nothing will happen to the gun it just gets reloaded) Also a key note to remember is that you can't just combine items randomly, each item has a 'mating' item(s). So to sum up, different items, and different operations on them. The question is, how to approach this, design-wise? I've been learning about interfaces, but it just doesn't quite get into my head, I mean, why not just use classes with the good old inheritance? I know the technical details of interfaces and that the cool thing about them is that they don't require an inheritance chain, but I just can't see how to use them properly, that is, if they were the right thing to use here. So should I go with just classes and inheritance? just like in the tree I showed you? or should I think more about how to use interfaces? (IUsable, IEquipable, ITransformable) - why not just use classes UsableItem, Equipable item, TransformableItem? I want something that won't give me headaches in the long run, something resilient/flexible to future changes. I'm OK using classes, but I smell something better here. The way I'm thinking is to possibly use both inheritance and interfaces, so that you have a branch like this: item - equipable - weapon. but then again, the weapon has methods like 'reload' 'examine' 'equip' some of them 'combine' so I'm thinking to make weapon implement ICombinable?... not all items get used the same way, using herbs will increase your health, using a key will open a door, so IUsable maybe? Should I use a big database (XML for example) for all the items, items names, mates, nRowsReq, nColsReq, etc? Thanks so much for your answers in advanced, note that demo 3 is coming after I'm done with items :D

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• Silverlight Cream for February 02, 2011 -- #1039

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Tony Champion, Gill Cleeren, Alex van Beek, Michael James, Ollie Riches, Peter Kuhn, Mike Ormond, WindowsPhoneGeek(-2-), Daniel N. Egan, Loek Van Den Ouweland, and Paul Thurott. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Using the AutoCompleteBox" Peter Kuhn WP7: "Windows Phone Image Button" Loek Van Den Ouweland Training: "New WP7 Virtual Labs" Daniel N. Egan Shoutouts: SilverlightShow has their top 5 most popular news articles up: SilverlightShow for Jan 24-30, 2011 Rudi Grobler posted answers he gives to questions about Silverlight - Where do I start? Brian Noyes starts a series of Webinars at SilverlightShow this morning at 10am PDT: Free Silverlight Show Webinar: Querying and Updating Data From Silverlight Clients with WCF RIA Services Join your fellow geeks at Gangplank in Chandler Arizona this Saturday as Scott Cate and AZGroups brings you Azure Boot Camp – Feb 5th 2011 From SilverlightCream.com: Deploying Silverlight with WCF Services Tony Champion takes a step out of his norm (Pivot) and has a post up about deploying WCF Services with your SL app, and how to take the pain out of that without pulling out your hair. Getting ready for Microsoft Silverlight Exam 70-506 (Part 3) Gill Cleeren's part 3 of getting ready for the Silverlight Exam is up at SilverlightShow... with links to the first two parts. There's so much good information linked off these... thanks Gill and 'The Show'! A guide through WCF RIA Services attributes Alex van Beek has a post up you will probably want to bookmark unless you're not using WCF RIA... do you know all the attributes by heart? ... how about an excellent explanation of 10 of them? Using DeferredLoadListBox in a Pivot Control Michael James discusses using the DeferredLoadListBox, and then also using it with the Pivot control... but not without some pain points which he defines and gives the workaround for. WP7: Know your data Ollie Riches' latest is about Data and WP7 ... specifically 'knowing' what data you're needing/using to avoid the 90MB memory limit... He gives a set of steps to follow to measure your data model to avoid getting in trouble. Using the AutoCompleteBox Peter Kuhn takes a great look at the AutoCompleteBox... the basics, and then well beyond with custom data, item templates, custom filters, asynchronous filtering, and a behavior for MVVM async filtering. OData and Windows Phone 7 Part 2 Mike Ormond has part 2 of his OData/WP7 post up... lashing up the images to go along with the code this time out... nice looking app. WP7 RoundToggleButton and RoundButton in depth WindowsPhoneGeek is checking out the RoundToggleButton and RoundButton controls from the Coding4fun Toolkit in detail... of course where to get them, and then the setup, demo project included. All about Dependency Properties in Silverlight for WP7 WindowsPhoneGeek's latest post is a good dependency-property discussion related to WP7 development, but if you're just learning, it's a good place to learn about the subject. New WP7 Virtual Labs Daniel N. Egan posted links to 6 new WP7 Virtual Labs released on 1/25. Windows Phone Image Button Loek Van Den Ouweland has a style up on his blog that gives you an imageButton for your WP7 apps, and a sweet little video showing how it's done in Expression Blend too. Yet another free Windows Phone book for developers Paul Thurott found a link to another Free eBook for WP7 development. This one is by Puja Pramudya and is an English translation of the original, and is an introductory text, but hey... it's free... give it a look! Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Speeding up procedural texture generation

  - by FalconNL

  Recently I've begun working on a game that takes place in a procedurally generated solar system. After a bit of a learning curve (having neither worked with Scala, OpenGL 2 ES or Libgdx before), I have a basic tech demo going where you spin around a single procedurally textured planet: The problem I'm running into is the performance of the texture generation. A quick overview of what I'm doing: a planet is a cube that has been deformed to a sphere. To each side, a n x n (e.g. 256 x 256) texture is applied, which are bundled in one 8n x n texture that is sent to the fragment shader. The last two spaces are not used, they're only there to make sure the width is a power of 2. The texture is currently generated on the CPU, using the updated 2012 version of the simplex noise algorithm linked to in the paper 'Simplex noise demystified'. The scene I'm using to test the algorithm contains two spheres: the planet and the background. Both use a greyscale texture consisting of six octaves of 3D simplex noise, so for example if we choose 128x128 as the texture size there are 128 x 128 x 6 x 2 x 6 = about 1.2 million calls to the noise function. The closest you will get to the planet is about what's shown in the screenshot and since the game's target resolution is 1280x720 that means I'd prefer to use 512x512 textures. Combine that with the fact the actual textures will of course be more complicated than basic noise (There will be a day and night texture, blended in the fragment shader based on sunlight, and a specular mask. I need noise for continents, terrain color variation, clouds, city lights, etc.) and we're looking at something like 512 x 512 x 6 x 3 x 15 = 70 million noise calls for the planet alone. In the final game, there will be activities when traveling between planets, so a wait of 5 or 10 seconds, possibly 20, would be acceptable since I can calculate the texture in the background while traveling, though obviously the faster the better. Getting back to our test scene, performance on my PC isn't too terrible, though still too slow considering the final result is going to be about 60 times worse: 128x128 : 0.1s 256x256 : 0.4s 512x512 : 1.7s This is after I moved all performance-critical code to Java, since trying to do so in Scala was a lot worse. Running this on my phone (a Samsung Galaxy S3), however, produces a more problematic result: 128x128 : 2s 256x256 : 7s 512x512 : 29s Already far too long, and that's not even factoring in the fact that it'll be minutes instead of seconds in the final version. Clearly something needs to be done. Personally, I see a few potential avenues, though I'm not particularly keen on any of them yet: Don't precalculate the textures, but let the fragment shader calculate everything. Probably not feasible, because at one point I had the background as a fullscreen quad with a pixel shader and I got about 1 fps on my phone. Use the GPU to render the texture once, store it and use the stored texture from then on. Upside: might be faster than doing it on the CPU since the GPU is supposed to be faster at floating point calculations. Downside: effects that cannot (easily) be expressed as functions of simplex noise (e.g. gas planet vortices, moon craters, etc.) are a lot more difficult to code in GLSL than in Scala/Java. Calculate a large amount of noise textures and ship them with the application. I'd like to avoid this if at all possible. Lower the resolution. Buys me a 4x performance gain, which isn't really enough plus I lose a lot of quality. Find a faster noise algorithm. If anyone has one I'm all ears, but simplex is already supposed to be faster than perlin. Adopt a pixel art style, allowing for lower resolution textures and fewer noise octaves. While I originally envisioned the game in this style, I've come to prefer the realistic approach. I'm doing something wrong and the performance should already be one or two orders of magnitude better. If this is the case, please let me know. If anyone has any suggestions, tips, workarounds, or other comments regarding this problem I'd love to hear them.

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• Windows Azure Use Case: New Development

  - by BuckWoody

  This is one in a series of posts on when and where to use a distributed architecture design in your organization's computing needs. You can find the main post here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/buckwoody/archive/2011/01/18/windows-azure-and-sql-azure-use-cases.aspx Description: Computing platforms evolve over time. Originally computers were directed by hardware wiring - that, the “code” was the path of the wiring that directed an electrical signal from one component to another, or in some cases a physical switch controlled the path. From there software was developed, first in a very low machine language, then when compilers were created, computer languages could more closely mimic written statements. These language statements can be compiled into the lower-level machine language still used by computers today. Microprocessors replaced logic circuits, sometimes with fewer instructions (Reduced Instruction Set Computing, RISC) and sometimes with more instructions (Complex Instruction Set Computing, CISC). The reason this history is important is that along each technology advancement, computer code has adapted. Writing software for a RISC architecture is significantly different than developing for a CISC architecture. And moving to a Distributed Architecture like Windows Azure also has specific implementation details that our code must follow. But why make a change? As I’ve described, we need to make the change to our code to follow advances in technology. There’s no point in change for its own sake, but as a new paradigm offers benefits to our users, it’s important for us to leverage those benefits where it makes sense. That’s most often done in new development projects. It’s a far simpler task to take a new project and adapt it to Windows Azure than to try and retrofit older code designed in a previous computing environment. We can still use the same coding languages (.NET, Java, C++) to write code for Windows Azure, but we need to think about the architecture of that code on a new project so that it runs in the most efficient, cost-effective way in a Distributed Architecture. As we receive new requests from the organization for new projects, a distributed architecture paradigm belongs in the decision matrix for the platform target. Implementation: When you are designing new applications for Windows Azure (or any distributed architecture) there are many important details to consider. But at the risk of over-simplification, there are three main concepts to learn and architect within the new code: Stateless Programming - Stateless program is a prime concept within distributed architectures. Rather than each server owning the complete processing cycle, the information from an operation that needs to be retained (the “state”) should be persisted to another location c(like storage) common to all machines involved in the process.  An interesting learning process for Stateless Programming (although not unique to this language type) is to learn Functional Programming. Server-Side Processing - Along with developing using a Stateless Design, the closer you can locate the code processing to the data, the less expensive and faster the code will run. When you control the network layer, this is less important, since you can send vast amounts of data between the server and client, allowing the client to perform processing. In a distributed architecture, you don’t always own the network, so it’s performance is unpredictable. Also, you may not be able to control the platform the user is on (such as a smartphone, PC or tablet), so it’s imperative to deliver only results and graphical elements where possible.  Token-Based Authentication - Also called “Claims-Based Authorization”, this code practice means instead of allowing a user to log on once and then running code in that context, a more granular level of security is used. A “token” or “claim”, often represented as a Certificate, is sent along for a series or even one request. In other words, every call to the code is authenticated against the token, rather than allowing a user free reign within the code call. While this is more work initially, it can bring a greater level of security, and it is far more resilient to disconnections. Resources: See the references of “Nondistributed Deployment” and “Distributed Deployment” at the top of this article for more information with graphics:  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee658120.aspx  Stack Overflow has a good thread on functional programming: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/844536/advantages-of-stateless-programming  Another good discussion on Stack Overflow on server-side processing is here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3064018/client-side-or-server-side-processing Claims Based Authorization is described here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ee335707.aspx

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• Skewed: a rotating camera in a simple CPU-based voxel raycaster/raytracer

  - by voxelizr

  TL;DR -- in my first simple software voxel raycaster, I cannot get camera rotations to work, seemingly correct matrices notwithstanding. The result is skewed: like a flat rendering, correctly rotated, however distorted and without depth. (While axis-aligned ie. unrotated, depth and parallax are as expected.) I'm trying to write a simple voxel raycaster as a learning exercise. This is purely CPU based for now until I figure out how things work exactly -- fow now, OpenGL is just (ab)used to blit the generated bitmap to the screen as often as possible. Now I have gotten to the point where a perspective-projection camera can move through the world and I can render (mostly, minus some artifacts that need investigation) perspective-correct 3-dimensional views of the "world", which is basically empty but contains a voxel cube of the Stanford Bunny. So I have a camera that I can move up and down, strafe left and right and "walk forward/backward" -- all axis-aligned so far, no camera rotations. Herein lies my problem. Screenshot #1: correct depth when the camera is still strictly axis-aligned, ie. un-rotated. Now I have for a few days been trying to get rotation to work. The basic logic and theory behind matrices and 3D rotations, in theory, is very clear to me. Yet I have only ever achieved a "2.5 rendering" when the camera rotates... fish-eyey, bit like in Google Streetview: even though I have a volumetric world representation, it seems --no matter what I try-- like I would first create a rendering from the "front view", then rotate that flat rendering according to camera rotation. Needless to say, I'm by now aware that rotating rays is not particularly necessary and error-prone. Still, in my most recent setup, with the most simplified raycast ray-position-and-direction algorithm possible, my rotation still produces the same fish-eyey flat-render-rotated style looks: Screenshot #2: camera "rotated to the right by 39 degrees" -- note how the blue-shaded left-hand side of the cube from screen #2 is not visible in this rotation, yet by now "it really should"! Now of course I'm aware of this: in a simple axis-aligned-no-rotation-setup like I had in the beginning, the ray simply traverses in small steps the positive z-direction, diverging to the left or right and top or bottom only depending on pixel position and projection matrix. As I "rotate the camera to the right or left" -- ie I rotate it around the Y-axis -- those very steps should be simply transformed by the proper rotation matrix, right? So for forward-traversal the Z-step gets a bit smaller the more the cam rotates, offset by an "increase" in the X-step. Yet for the pixel-position-based horizontal+vertical-divergence, increasing fractions of the x-step need to be "added" to the z-step. Somehow, none of my many matrices that I experimented with, nor my experiments with matrix-less hardcoded verbose sin/cos calculations really get this part right. Here's my basic per-ray pre-traversal algorithm -- syntax in Go, but take it as pseudocode: fx and fy: pixel positions x and y rayPos: vec3 for the ray starting position in world-space (calculated as below) rayDir: vec3 for the xyz-steps to be added to rayPos in each step during ray traversal rayStep: a temporary vec3 camPos: vec3 for the camera position in world space camRad: vec3 for camera rotation in radians pmat: typical perspective projection matrix The algorithm / pseudocode: // 1: rayPos is for now "this pixel, as a vector on the view plane in 3d, at The Origin" rayPos.X, rayPos.Y, rayPos.Z = ((fx / width) - 0.5), ((fy / height) - 0.5), 0 // 2: rotate around Y axis depending on cam rotation. No prob since view plane still at Origin 0,0,0 rayPos.MultMat(num.NewDmat4RotationY(camRad.Y)) // 3: a temp vec3. planeDist is -0.15 or some such -- fov-based dist of view plane from eye and also the non-normalized, "in axis-aligned world" traversal step size "forward into the screen" rayStep.X, rayStep.Y, rayStep.Z = 0, 0, planeDist // 4: rotate this too -- 0,zstep should become some meaningful xzstep,xzstep rayStep.MultMat(num.NewDmat4RotationY(CamRad.Y)) // set up direction vector from still-origin-based-ray-position-off-rotated-view-plane plus rotated-zstep-vector rayDir.X, rayDir.Y, rayDir.Z = -rayPos.X - me.rayStep.X, -rayPos.Y, rayPos.Z + rayStep.Z // perspective projection rayDir.Normalize() rayDir.MultMat(pmat) // before traversal, the ray starting position has to be transformed from origin-relative to campos-relative rayPos.Add(camPos) I'm skipping the traversal and sampling parts -- as per screens #1 through #3, those are "basically mostly correct" (though not pretty) -- when axis-aligned / unrotated.

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