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• Partition Wise Joins II

  - by jean-pierre.dijcks

  One of the things that I did not talk about in the initial partition wise join post was the effect it has on resource allocation on the database server. When Oracle applies a different join method - e.g. not PWJ - what you will see in SQL Monitor (in Enterprise Manager) or in an Explain Plan is a set of producers and a set of consumers. The producers scan the tables in the the join. If there are two tables the producers first scan one table, then the other. The producers thus provide data to the consumers, and when the consumers have the data from both scans they do the join and give the data to the query coordinator. Now that behavior means that if you choose a degree of parallelism of 4 to run such query with, Oracle will allocate 8 parallel processes. Of these 8 processes 4 are producers and 4 are consumers. The consumers only actually do work once the producers are fully done with scanning both sides of the join. In the plan above you can see that the producers access table SALES [line 11] and then do a PX SEND [line 9]. That is the producer set of processes working. The consumers receive that data [line 8] and twiddle their thumbs while the producers go on and scan CUSTOMERS. The producers send that data to the consumer indicated by PX SEND [line 5]. After receiving that data [line 4] the consumers do the actual join [line 3] and give the data to the QC [line 2]. BTW, the myth that you see twice the number of processes due to the setting PARALLEL_THREADS_PER_CPU=2 is obviously not true. The above is why you will see 2 times the processes of the DOP. In a PWJ plan the consumers are not present. Instead of producing rows and giving those to different processes, a PWJ only uses a single set of processes. Each process reads its piece of the join across the two tables and performs the join. The plan here is notably different from the initial plan. First of all the hash join is done right on top of both table scans [line 8]. This query is a little more complex than the previous so there is a bit of noise above that bit of info, but for this post, lets ignore that (sort stuff). The important piece here is that the PWJ plan typically will be faster and from a PX process number / resources typically cheaper. You may want to look out for those plans and try to get those to appear a lot... CREDITS: credits for the plans and some of the info on the plans go to Maria, as she actually produced these plans and is the expert on plans in general... You can see her talk about explaining the explain plan and other optimizer stuff over here: ODTUG in Washington DC, June 27 - July 1 On the Optimizer blog At OpenWorld in San Francisco, September 19 - 23 Happy joining and hope to see you all at ODTUG and OOW...

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• Stir Trek: Iron Man Edition Recap and Photos

  - by Brian Jackett

  If you’ve noticed my blogging activity has reduced in frequency and technical content lately it’s primarily due to all of the conferences I’ve been attending, speaking at, or planning in the past few months.  This past Friday myself and six other dedicated individuals put on Stir Trek: Iron Man Edition as the culmination of a few months of hard work.  For those unfamiliar, Stir Trek is a web developer conference that was founded last year as an event to showcase content from Microsoft’s MIX conference and end the day with a private showing of the then just-released Star Trek movie.  This year’s conference expanded from 2 to 4 content tracks and upped the number of tickets from 350 to 600.  Even more amazing was the fact that we had 592 people show up day of the event for the lowest drop-off percentage of any conference I’ve been to before.   Nerd Dinner and Swag Bags     The night before Stir Trek: Iron Man Edition we hosted a nerd dinner at the Polaris Shopping mall food court with about 30 in attendance.  Nerd dinners are a great time to meet others passionate about technology and socialize before the whirlwind of the conference hits.  After the nerd dinner 20+ volunteers headed to the conference location and helped us stuff swag bags.  This in and of itself was a monumental task of putting together 600 swag bags with numerous leaflets, sponsor items, and t-shirts.  A big thanks goes out to all who assisted us that night so that we could finish in just under 2 hours instead of taking all night.  My sleep schedule also thanks you. Morning of Stir Trek     After getting a decent amount of sleep I arrived at Marcus Crosswoods theater at 6am to begin setting up for the day.  Myself and Jody Morgan were in charge of registration so we got tables set up, laid out swag bags, and organized our volunteer crew to assist with checking-in attendees.  Despite having 600+ people registration went fairly smoothly and got the day off to a great start.  I especially appreciated the 3+ cups of coffee from Crimson Cup, a local coffee shop.  For any of you that know me you’ll know that I rarely drink coffee except a few times a year when I really need the energy, so that says a lot about how good their coffee is.   Conference Starts     Once registration was completed the day kicked off with Molly Holzschlag keynoting.  Unfortunately Molly suffered from an ear infection and wasn’t able to fly so she had a virtual keynote and a session later in the day.  I was working behind the scenes on various tasks so I was only able to drop in very briefly on the keynote and rest of the morning sessions.  Throughout the day I tried to grab at least 1 or 2 pics of each presenter.  See my album below for the full set of pics.      For lunch we ordered around 150 pizzas from Mellow Mushroom, a local pizza place (notice the theme of supporting local businesses.)  Early on we were concerned about Mellow Mushroom being able to supply that many pizzas and get them delivered (still hot) to the theater, but they did an excellent job day of the event.  I wish I had gotten some pictures of the old school VW van they delivered the pizza in, but I was just a bit busy running around trying to get theaters ready for lunch.  We had attendees from last year who specifically requested that we have Mellow Mushroom supply lunch this year and I’m glad everything worked out being able to use them again.     During the afternoon I was able to attend a few sessions and hear some great content from various speakers.  It was also nice to just sit down and get off my feet for a bit.  After the last sessions the day concluded with a raffle.  There were a few logistical and technical issues that hampered our ability to smoothly conduct the raffle.  To those of you that agree the raffle wasn’t the smoothest experience I would like to say that the Stir Trek planning committee has already begun meeting to discuss ways of improving the conference for next year.  We are also accepting feedback (both positive and negative) at the following link: click here.  If you don’t wish to use the Joind In site you can also email me directly and I’ll be sure to pass along the feedback.   Iron Man 2 Movie     Last but not least, what Stir Trek event would be complete without the feature movie.  This year’s movie was Iron Man 2.  The theater had some really cool props and promotions (see pic below) for the movie.  I really enjoyed Iron Man 2, but I would recommend brushing up on the Iron Man comics and Marvel’s plans for future movies to understand some of the plot elements that come up.  Also make sure you stay through to the end of the movie credits to see a sneak peak of something special, that’s all I’ll say. Conclusion     Again a big thanks goes out to all of the speakers, sponsors, attendees, movie theater staff, volunteers, and everyone else involved in making this event great.  Also big thanks to my fellow Stir Trek planning committee members: Jeff Blankenburg, Matt Casto, Carey Payette, Jody Morgan, Rick Kierner, and Sarah Dutkiewitcz.  I am grateful for everything I learned while helping plan this event and look forward to being involved again next year.  For those interested we are currently targeting Thor as our movie theme for 2011 and then The Avengers for 2012.  These are tentative based on release dates that could shift as we get closer, but for now look solid.   Photos Pics on Facebook (includes tagging)     Stir Trek: Iron Man Edition photos on Facebook Pics on Live site (higher res)      View Full Album         -Frog Out

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• Implementing set operations in TSQL

  - by dotneteer

  SQL excels at operating on dataset. In this post, I will discuss how to implement basic set operations in transact SQL (TSQL). The operations that I am going to discuss are union, intersection and complement (subtraction).   Union Intersection Complement (subtraction) Implementing set operations using union, intersect and except We can use TSQL keywords union, intersect and except to implement set operations. Since we are in an election year, I will use voter records of propositions as an example. We create the following table and insert 6 records into the table. declare @votes table (VoterId int, PropId int) insert into @votes values (1, 30) insert into @votes values (2, 30) insert into @votes values (3, 30) insert into @votes values (4, 30) insert into @votes values (4, 31) insert into @votes values (5, 31) Voters 1, 2, 3 and 4 voted for proposition 30 and voters 4 and 5 voted for proposition 31. The following TSQL statement implements union using the union keyword. The union returns voters who voted for either proposition 30 or 31. select VoterId from @votes where PropId = 30 union select VoterId from @votes where PropId = 31 The following TSQL statement implements intersection using the intersect keyword. The intersection will return voters who voted only for both proposition 30 and 31. select VoterId from @votes where PropId = 30 intersect select VoterId from @votes where PropId = 31 The following TSQL statement implements complement using the except keyword. The complement will return voters who voted for proposition 30 but not 31. select VoterId from @votes where PropId = 30 except select VoterId from @votes where PropId = 31 Implementing set operations using join An alternative way to implement set operation in TSQL is to use full outer join, inner join and left outer join. The following TSQL statement implements union using full outer join. select Coalesce(A.VoterId, B.VoterId) from (select VoterId from @votes where PropId = 30) A full outer join (select VoterId from @votes where PropId = 31) B on A.VoterId = B.VoterId The following TSQL statement implements intersection using inner join. select Coalesce(A.VoterId, B.VoterId) from (select VoterId from @votes where PropId = 30) A inner join (select VoterId from @votes where PropId = 31) B on A.VoterId = B.VoterId The following TSQL statement implements complement using left outer join. select Coalesce(A.VoterId, B.VoterId) from (select VoterId from @votes where PropId = 30) A left outer join (select VoterId from @votes where PropId = 31) B on A.VoterId = B.VoterId where B.VoterId is null Which one to choose? To choose which technique to use, just keep two things in mind: The union, intersect and except technique treats an entire record as a member. The join technique allows the member to be specified in the “on” clause. However, it is necessary to use Coalesce function to project sets on the two sides of the join into a single set.

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• Executable Resumes

  - by Liam McLennan

  Over the past twelve months I have been thinking a lot about executable specifications. Long considered the holy grail of agile software development, executable specifications means expressing a program’s functionality in a way that is both readable by the customer and computer verifiable in an automatic, repeatable way. With the current generation of BDD and ATDD tools executable specifications seem finally within the reach of a significant percentage of the development community. Lately, and partly as a result of my craftsmanship tour, I have decided that soon I am going to have to get a job (gasp!). As Dave Hoover describes in Apprenticeship Patters, “you … have mentors and kindred spirits that you meet with periodically, [but] when it comes to developing software, you work alone.” The time may have come where the only way for me to feel satisfied and enriched by my work is to seek out a work environment where I can work with people smarter and more knowledgeable than myself. Having been on both sides of the interview desk many times I know how difficult and unreliable the process can be. Therefore, I am proposing the idea of executable resumes. As a journeyman programmer looking for a fruitful work environment I plan to write an application that demonstrates my understanding of the state of the art. Potential employers can download, view and execute my executable resume and judge wether my aesthetic sensibility matches their own. The concept of the executable resume is based upon the following assertion: A line of code answers a thousand interview questions Asking people about their experiences and skills is not a direct way of assessing their value to your organisation. Often it simple assesses their ability to mislead an interviewer. An executable resume demonstrates: The highest quality code that the person is able to produce. That the person is sufficiently motivated to produce something of value in their own time. That the person loves their craft. The idea of publishing a program to demonstrate a developer’s skills comes from Rob Conery, who suggested that each developer should build their own blog engine since it is the public representation of their level of mastery. Rob said: Luke had to build his own lightsaber – geeks should have to build their own blogs. And that should be their resume. In honour of Rob’s inspiration I plan to build a blog engine as my executable resume. While it is true that the world does not need another blog engine it is as good a project as any, it is a well understood domain, and I have not found an existing blog engine that I like. Executable resumes fit well with the software craftsmanship metaphor. It is not difficult to imagine that under the guild system master craftsmen may have accepted journeymen based on the quality of the work they had produced in the past. We now understand that when it comes to the functionality of an application that code is the final arbiter. Why not apply the same rule to hiring?

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• C# XNA Normals Question

  - by Wade

  Hello all! I have been working on some simple XNA proof of concept for a game idea I have as well as just to further my learning in XNA. However, i seem to be stuck on these dreaded normals, and using the BasicEffect with default lighting i can't seem to tell if my normals are being calculated correctly, hence the question. I'm mainly drawing cubes at the moment, I'm using a triangle list and a VertexBuffer to get the job done. The north face of my cube has two polygons and 6 vectors: Vector3 startPosition = new Vector3(0,0,0); corners[0] = startPosition; // This is the start position. Block size is 5. corners[1] = new Vector3(startPosition.X, startPosition.Y + BLOCK_SIZE, startPosition.Z); corners[2] = new Vector3(startPosition.X + BLOCK_SIZE, startPosition.Y, startPosition.Z); corners[3] = new Vector3(startPosition.X + BLOCK_SIZE, startPosition.Y + BLOCK_SIZE, startPosition.Z); verts[0] = new VertexPositionNormalTexture(corners[0], normals[0], textCoordBR); verts[1] = new VertexPositionNormalTexture(corners[1], normals[0], textCoordTR); verts[2] = new VertexPositionNormalTexture(corners[2], normals[0], textCoordBL); verts[3] = new VertexPositionNormalTexture(corners[3], normals[0], textCoordTL); verts[4] = new VertexPositionNormalTexture(corners[2], normals[0], textCoordBL); verts[5] = new VertexPositionNormalTexture(corners[1], normals[0], textCoordTR); Using those coordinates I want to generate the normal for the north face, I have no clue how to get the average of all those vectors and create a normal for the two polygons that it makes. Here is what i tried: normals[0] = Vector3.Cross(corners[1], corners[2]); normals[0].Normalize(); It seems like its correct, but then using the same thing for other sides of the cube the lighting effect seems weird, and not cohesive with where i think the light source is coming from, not really sure with the BasicEffect. Am I doing this right? Can anyone explain in lay mans terms how normals are calculated. Any help is much appreciated. Note: I tried going through Riemers and such to figure it out with no luck, it seems no one really goes over the math well enough. Thanks!

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• What Am I doing for my 5 months 1 week old baby for his first cold?

  - by Rekha

  With my limited friends circle with babies, I heard that babies in their fifth month usually gets affected by cold all of a sudden. This is unavoidable and I feel it is good for the babies as they start developing their immune system right on. We usually take our son for a small walk so that he is able to explore the world out there. We have been taking him for a stroll almost everyday since we was 3 months old. But only now he is getting his first cold. So things happen only now I think. Till that day I had somehow brought some routine for him for his feed and naps during day time. Night time is still sleepless ones anyway. So when he first got his cold, that night it went on as usual getting up every few hours. From the next day on, he stopped feeding at the usual time. In the night he goes for 8-10 hours between feeds but still wakes up every two hours and cries for about 10 minutes and when we lift him for sometime, he goes back to sleep. Now to the point what all to expect: * Babies starts feeding frequently * Babies spit up increases * They dislike the food they liked before (we have just started solid foods as per our pediatricians advice) * Since they cannot breathe properly, they cannot sleep for a long time *Pees and poops less frequently. What all we did for our baby to make him comfortable during this time: * Feed the baby less quantity and more frequently whenever they expect to feed (Do not follow the schedule) * When the quantity is less, spit ups is also less * If the baby does not like the food (vegetable or fruit), avoid them till they get back to normal * Try to elevate their head while sleeping ( we used the cradle – sitting position, bouncer, car seat and finally all four sides we placed firm pillows so that he does not roll and kept a pillow for his head till his hip – this one is recommended usually but we have an eye on him always) * No need for any medicines – it will take a week for them to get back to normal whether or not we gives medicines * We applied home made Cold Reliever (heat 2 teaspoons of coconut oil with a small camphor piece till the camphor disappears – then cool the mixture) on his chest, back, neck and feet and covered the feet with socks in the nights * Bathe him everyday – hot (that your baby can withstand) *  Whenever possible give him a steam bath (open the hot showers for sometime in the bathroom and close the doors. When the steam is bearable, close the shower and take the baby inside the bathroom for sometime) * Also use a bulb syringe provided in the hospital to clear the nose (use some saline water drops for ease) * Cuddle him when he cries But please do take him to his doctor if he has fever and other symptoms other than cold or the cold persists for more than 5 – 7 days. Image Credit : MiriamBJDolls

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• Get to Know a Candidate (12 of 25): Andre Barnett&ndash;Reform Party

  - by Brian Lanham

  DISCLAIMER: This is not a post about “Romney” or “Obama”. This is not a post for whom I am voting. Information sourced for Wikipedia. Barnett is an American politician and entrepreneur. He is the founder of the information technology (IT) company WiseDome Inc.  Barnett was born in Zanesville, Ohio in 1976. He attended Austin Peay State University and Western Governors University.  A former member of the United States Armed Forces, Barnett served in Sarajevo before being wounded in a helicopter accident.  Following his military service, Barnett became a fitness model in New York. In 2001, he founded WiseDome Incorporated, an IT company that provides information technology and data recovery services. Reform Party of the United States of America (RPUSA), generally known as the Reform Party USA or the Reform Party, is a political party in the United States, founded in 1995 by Ross Perot. Perot said Americans were disillusioned with the state of politics—as being corrupt and unable to deal with vital issues—and desired a viable alternative to the Republican and Democratic Parties. The party has nominated different candidates over the years, such as founder Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan, and Ralph Nader. The party's most significant victory came when Jesse Ventura was elected governor of Minnesota in 1998. Since then, the party has been torn by infighting and disagreements, which it seeks to overcome. The Reform Party platform includes the following: * Maintaining a balanced budget, ensured by passing a Balanced Budget Amendment and changing budgeting practices, and paying down the federal debt * Campaign finance reform, including strict limits on campaign contributions and the outlawing of the Political action committee * Enforcement of existing immigration laws and opposition to illegal immigration * Opposition to free trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement and Central America Free Trade Agreement, and a call for withdrawal from the World Trade Organization * Term limits on U.S. Representatives and Senators * Direct election of the United States President by popular vote * Federal elections held on weekends A noticeable absence from the Reform Party platform has been social issues, including abortion and gay rights. Reform Party representatives had long stated beliefs that their party could bring together people from both sides of these issues, which they consider divisive, to address what they considered to be more vital concerns as expressed in their platform. The idea was to form a large coalition of moderates; that intention was overridden in 2001 by the Buchanan takeover which rewrote the RPUSA Constitution to specifically include platform planks opposed to any form of abortion. The Buchananists, in turn, were overridden by the 2002 Convention which specifically reverted the Constitution to its 1996 version and the party's original stated goals. Barnett has Ballot Access in: FL Learn more about Andre Barnett and Reform Party on Wikipedia.

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• What are the software design essentials? [closed]

  - by Craig Schwarze

  I've decided to create a 1 page "cheat sheet" of essential software design principles for my programmers. It doesn't explain the principles in any great depth, but is simply there as a reference and a reminder. Here's what I've come up with - I would welcome your comments. What have I left out? What have I explained poorly? What is there that shouldn't be? Basic Design Principles The Principle of Least Surprise – your solution should be obvious, predictable and consistent. Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS) - the simplest solution is usually the best one. You Ain’t Gonna Need It (YAGNI) - create a solution for the current problem rather than what might happen in the future. Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY) - rigorously remove duplication from your design and code. Advanced Design Principles Program to an interface, not an implementation – Don’t declare variables to be of a particular concrete class. Rather, declare them to an interface, and instantiate them using a creational pattern. Favour composition over inheritance – Don’t overuse inheritance. In most cases, rich behaviour is best added by instantiating objects, rather than inheriting from classes. Strive for loosely coupled designs – Minimise the interdependencies between objects. They should be able to interact with minimal knowledge of each other via small, tightly defined interfaces. Principle of Least Knowledge – Also called the “Law of Demeter”, and is colloquially summarised as “Only talk to your friends”. Specifically, a method in an object should only invoke methods on the object itself, objects passed as a parameter to the method, any object the method creates, any components of the object. SOLID Design Principles Single Responsibility Principle – Each class should have one well defined purpose, and only one reason to change. This reduces the fragility of your code, and makes it much more maintainable. Open/Close Principle – A class should be open to extension, but closed to modification. In practice, this means extracting the code that is most likely to change to another class, and then injecting it as required via an appropriate pattern. Liskov Substitution Principle – Subtypes must be substitutable for their base types. Essentially, get your inheritance right. In the classic example, type square should not inherit from type rectangle, as they have different properties (you can independently set the sides of a rectangle). Instead, both should inherit from type shape. Interface Segregation Principle – Clients should not be forced to depend upon methods they do not use. Don’t have fat interfaces, rather split them up into smaller, behaviour centric interfaces. Dependency Inversion Principle – There are two parts to this principle: High-level modules should not depend on low-level modules. Both should depend on abstractions. Abstractions should not depend on details. Details should depend on abstractions. In modern development, this is often handled by an IoC (Inversion of Control) container.

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• Creating predefinied camera views - How do I move the camera to make sense while using Controller?

  - by Deukalion

  I'm trying to understand 3D but the one thing I can't seem to understand is the Camera. Right now I'm rendering four 3D Cubes with textures and I set the Project Matrix: public BasicCamera3D(float fieldOfView, float aspectRatio, float clipStart, float clipEnd, Vector3 cameraPosition, Vector3 cameraLookAt) { projection_fieldOfView = MathHelper.ToRadians(fieldOfView); projection_aspectRatio = aspectRatio; projection_clipstart = clipStart; projection_clipend = clipEnd; matrix_projection = Matrix.CreatePerspectiveFieldOfView(projection_fieldOfView, aspectRatio, clipStart, clipEnd); view_cameraposition = cameraPosition; view_cameralookat = cameraLookAt; matrix_view = Matrix.CreateLookAt(cameraPosition, cameraLookAt, Vector3.Up); } BasicCamera3D gameCamera = new BasicCamera3D(45f, GraphicsDevice.Viewport.AspectRatio, 1.0f, 1000f, new Vector3(0, 0, 8), new Vector3(0, 0, 0)); This creates a sort of "Top-Down" camera, with 8 (still don't get the unit type here - it's not pixels I guess?) But, if I try to position the camera at the side to make "Side-View" or "Reverse Side View" camera, the camera is rotating to much until it's turned around it a couple of times. I render the boxes at: new Vector3(-1, 0, 0) new Vector3(0, 0, 0) new Vector3(1, 0, 0) new Vector3(1, 0, 1) and with the Top-Down camera it shows good, but I don't get how I can make the camera show the side or 45 degrees from top (Like 3rd person action games) because the logic doesn't make sense. Also, since every object you render needs a new BasicEffect with a new projection/view/world - can you still use the "same" camera always so you don't have to create a new View/Matrix and such for each object. It's seems weird. If someone could help me get the camera to navigate around my objects "naturally" so I can be able to set a few predtermined views to choose from it would be really helpful. Are there some sort of algorithm to calculate the view for this and perhaps not simply one value? Examples: Top-Down-View: I have an object at 0, 0, 0 when I turn the right stick on the Xbox 360 Controller it should rotate around that object kind of, not flip and turn upside down, disappear and then magically appear as a tiny dot somewhere I have no clue where it is like it feels like it does now. Side-View: I have an object at 0, 0, 0 when I rotate to sides or up and down, the camera should be able to show a little more of the periphery to each side (depending on which you look at), and the same while moving up or down.

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• ray collision with rectangle and floating point accuracy

  - by phq

  I'm trying to solve a problem with a ray bouncing on a box. Actually it is a sphere but for simplicity the box dimensions are expanded by the sphere radius when doing the collision test making the sphere a single ray. It is done by projecting the ray onto all faces of the box and pick the one that is closest. However because I'm using floating point variables I fear that the projected point onto the surface might be interpreted as being below in the next iteration, also I will later allow the sphere to move which might make that scenario more likely. Also the bounce coefficient might be as low as zero, making the sphere continue along the surface. So my naive solution is to project not only forwards but backwards to catch those cases. That is where I got into problems shown in the figure: In the first iteration the first black arrow is calculated and we end up at a point on the surface of the box. In the second iteration the "back projection" hits the other surface making the second black arrow bounce on the wrong surface. If there are several boxes close to each other this has further consequences making the sphere fall through them all. So my main question is how to handle possible floating point accuracy when placing the sphere on the box surface so it does not fall through. In writing this question I got the idea to have a threshold to only accept back projections a certain amount much smaller than the box but larger than the possible accuracy limitation, this would only cause the "false" back projection when the sphere hit the box on an edge which would appear naturally. To clarify my original approach, the arrows shown in the image is not only the path the sphere travels but is also representing a single time step in the simulation. In reality the time step is much smaller about 0.05 of the box size. The path traveled is projected onto possible sides to avoid traveling past a thinner object at higher speeds. In normal situations the floating point accuracy is not an issue but there are two situations where I have the concern. When the new position at the end of the time step is located very close to the surface, very unlikely though. When using a bounce factor of 0, here it happens every time the sphere hit a box. To add some loss of accuracy, the motivation for my concern, is that the sphere and box are in different coordinate systems and thus the sphere location is transformed for every test. This last one is why I'm not willing to stand on luck that one floating point value lying on top of the box always will be interpreted the same. I did not know voronoi regions by name, but looking at it I'm not sure how it would be used in a projection scenario that I'm using here.

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• How can I solve this SAT edge case?

  - by ssb

  I have an SAT implementation that basically works, and the fact that it works is what's giving me a few headaches. Basically there are some situations where using the SAT doesn't quite give me my intended result. One of these involves movement across multiple collision objects. Or to put it another way, if I have several collision boxes lined up next to each other such as to create something like a wall or a floor, movement along that surface while constantly applying force into that surface sometimes causes hangups, i.e. the player stops moving. This illustration shows what I mean: The 2 boxes on the bottom represent a floor, and the box on top/in the middle represents what my player is doing. There are several squares lined up as world obstacles to create some kind of wall, and if I move to the left across this surface while holding the down key then the issue arises. It only happens at the exact dividing point between two blocks. It only happens when moving to the left. At any rate I think I know why it happens, but I don't know how to solve it. Basically when I update my player movement I consider which directions are pressed, naturally, so if down is pressed I will add the speed to the Y component, and so on. But due to the way my SAT is implemented, when the penetration into the shape is the same from both sides it just goes with the smallest axis that it finds first, and it checks collisions against objects in the order that they were created because it goes through a foreach loop on the list of collidable objects. So this all adds up to the effect of if I'm moving to the left over a series of boxes while holding down, it will resolve me back to the right out of the first box and then up out of the box to the right of it, and this continues as long as the penetration is the same. The odd part is that this doesn't happen every time, which I am going to attribute to some oddity regarding multiplying velocity by the game time and causing some minor discrepancies between the lengths. Ultimately what this boils down to is that it will keep resolving me to the right and up, but this is technically expected behavior. All the solutions I can think of only address the symptoms of this problem and not the actual cause, such as not using many blocks to create walls or shapes, which is an option I'd like to keep open. I could also change which axis my algorithm defaults to, but that would just cause problems when going up/down along the walls. What can I do to fix this?

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• Oracle RightNow CX for Good Customer Experiences

  - by Andreea Vaduva

  Oracle RightNow CX is all about the customer experience, it’s about understanding what drives a good interaction and it’s about delivering a solution which works for our customers and by extension, their customers. One of the early guiding principles of Oracle RightNow was an 8-point strategy to providing good customer experiences. Establish a knowledge foundation Empowering the customer Empower employees Offer multi-channel choice Listen to the customer Design seamless experiences Engage proactively Measure and improve continuously The application suite provides all of the tools necessary to deliver a rewarding, repeatable and measurable relationship between business and customer. The Knowledge Authoring tool provides gap analysis, WYSIWIG editing (and includes HTML rich content for non-developers), multi-level categorisation, permission based publishing and Web self-service publishing. Oracle RightNow Customer Portal, is a complete web application framework that enables businesses to control their own end-user page branding experience, which in turn will allow customers to self-serve. The Contact Centre Experience Designer builds a combination of workspaces, agent scripting and guided assistances into a Desktop Workflow. These present an agent with the tools they need, at the time they need them, providing even the newest and least experienced advisors with consistently accurate and efficient information, whilst guiding them through the complexities of internal business processes. Oracle RightNow provides access points for customers to feedback about specific knowledge articles or about the support site in general. The system will generate ‘incidents’ based on the scoring of the comments submitted. This makes it easy to view and respond to customer feedback. It is vital, more now than ever, not to under-estimate the power of the social web – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube – they have the ability to cause untold amounts of damage to businesses with a single post – witness musician Dave Carroll and his protest song on YouTube, posted in response to poor customer services from an American airline. The first day saw 150,000 views and is currently at 12,011,375. The Times reported that within 4 days of the post, the airline’s stock price fell by 10 percent, which represented a cost to shareholders of $180 million dollars. It is a universally acknowledged fact, that when customers are unhappy, they will not come back, and, generally speaking, it only takes one bad experience to lose a customer. The idea that customer loyalty can be regained by using social media channels was the subject of a 2011 Survey commissioned by RightNow and conducted by Harris Interactive. The survey discovered that 68% of customers who posted a negative review about a holiday on a social networking site received a response from the business. It further found that 33% subsequently posted a positive review and 34% removed the original negative review. Cloud Monitor provides the perfect mechanism for seeing what is being said about a business on public Facebook pages, Twitter or YouTube posts; it allows agents to respond proactively – either by creating an Oracle RightNow incident or by using the same channel as the original post. This leaves step 8 – Measuring and Improving: How does a business know whether it’s doing the right thing? How does it know if its customers are happy? How does it know if its staff are being productive? How does it know if its staff are being effective? Cue Oracle RightNow Analytics – fully integrated across the entire platform – Service, Marketing and Sales – there are in excess of 800 standard reports. If this were not enough, a large proportion of the database has been made available via the administration console, allowing users without any prior database experience to write their own reports, format them and schedule them for e-mail delivery to a distribution list. It handles the complexities of table joins, and allows for the manipulation of data with ease. Oracle RightNow believes strongly in the customer owning their solution, and to provide the best foundation for success, Oracle University can give you the RightNow knowledge and skills you need. This is a selection of the courses offered: RightNow Customer Service Administration Rel 12.02 (3 days) Available as In Class and Live Virtual Class (Release 11.11 is available as In Class, Live Virtual Class and Training On Demand) This course familiarises users with the tasks and concepts needed to configure and maintain their system. RightNow Customer Portal Designer and Contact Center Experience Designer Administration Rel 12.02 (2 days) Available as In Class and Live Virtual Class (Release 11.11 is available as In Class, Live Virtual Class and Training On Demand) This course introduces basic CP structure and how to make changes to the look, feel and behaviour of their self-service pages RightNow Analytics Rel 12.02 (2 days) Available as In Class, Live Virtual Class and Training On Demand (Release 11.11 is available as In Class and Live Virtual Class) This course equips users with the skills necessary to understand data supplied by standard reports and to create custom reports RightNow Integration and Customization For Developers Rel 12.02 (5-days) Available as In Class and Live Virtual Class (Release 11.11 is available as In Class, Live Virtual Class and Training On Demand) This course is for experienced web developers and offers an introduction to Add-In development using the Desktop Add-In Framework and introduces the core knowledge that developers need to begin integrating Oracle RightNow CX with other systems A full list of courses offered can be found on the Oracle University website. For more information and course dates please get in contact with your local Oracle University team. On top of the Service components, the suite also provides marketing tools, complex survey creation and tracking and sales functionality. I’m a fan of the application, and I think I’ve made that clear: It’s completely geared up to providing customers with support at point of need. It can be configured to meet even the most stringent of business requirements. Oracle RightNow is passionate about, and committed to, providing the best customer experience possible. Oracle RightNow CX is the application that makes it possible. About the Author: Sarah Anderson worked for RightNow for 4 years in both in both a consulting and training delivery capacity. She is now a Senior Instructor with Oracle University, delivering the following Oracle RightNow courses: RightNow Customer Service Administration RightNow Analytics RightNow Customer Portal Designer and Contact Center Experience Designer Administration RightNow Marketing and Feedback

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• Alternatives for comparing data from different databases

  - by Alex

  I have two huge tables on separate databases. One of them has the information of all the SMS that passed through the company's servers while the other one has the information of the actual billing of those SMS. My job is to compare samples of both of these tables (for example, the records between 1 and 2 pm) to see if there are any differences: SMS that were sent but not charged to the user for whatever reason that may be happening. The columns I will be using to compare are the remitent's phone number and the exact date the SMS was sent. An issue here is that dates usually are the same on both sides, but in many cases differ by 1 or 2 seconds. I have, so far, two alternatives to do this: (PL/SQL) Create two tables where i'm going to temporarily store all the records of that 1hour sample. One for each of the main tables. Then, for each distinct phone number, select the time of every SMS sent from that phone from both my temporary tables and start comparing one by one using cursors. In this case, the procedure would be ran on the server where one of the sources is so the contents of the other one would be looked up using a dblink. (sqlplus + c++) Instead of storing the 1hour samples in new tables, output the query to a text file. I will have two text files, one for each source. Then, open the first file and load all of it's content on a hash_map (key-value) using c++, where the key will be the phone number and the value a list of times of SMS sent from that phone. Finally, open the second file, grab each line (in this format: numberX timeX), look for numberX's entry on the hash_map (wich will be a list of times) and then check if timeX is on that list. If it isn't, save it somewhere to finally store it on a "uncharged" table (this would also be the final step on case 1) My main concern is efficiency. These samples have about 2 million records on each source, so just grabbing one record on one side and looking it up on the other would not be possible. That's the reason I wanted to use hash_maps Which do you think is a better option?

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• Throwing exception from a property when my object state is invalid

  - by Rumi P.

  Microsoft guidelines say: "Avoid throwing exceptions from property getters", and I normally follow that. But my application uses Linq2SQL, and there is the case where my object can be in invalid state because somebody or something wrote nonsense into the database. Consider this toy example: [Table(Name="Rectangle")] public class Rectangle { [Column(Name="ID", IsPrimaryKey = true, IsDbGenerated = true)] public int ID {get; set;} [Column(Name="firstSide")] public double firstSide {get; set;} [Column(Name="secondSide")] public double secondSide {get; set;} public double sideRatio { get { return firstSide/secondSide; } } } Here, I could write code which ensures that my application never writes a Rectangle with a zero-length side into the database. But no matter how bulletproof I make my own code, somebody could open the database with a different application and create an invalid Rectangle, especially one with a 0 for secondSide. (For this example, please forget that it is possible to design the database in a way such that writing a side length of zero into the rectangle table is impossible; my domain model is very complex and there are constraints on model state which cannot be expressed in a relational database). So, the solution I am gravitating to is to change the getter to: get { if(firstSide > 0 && secondSide > 0) return firstSide/secondSide; else throw new System.InvalidOperationException("All rectangle sides should have a positive length"); } The reasoning behind not throwing exceptions from properties is that programmers should be able to use them without having to make precautions about catching and handling them them. But in this case, I think that it is OK to continue to use this property without such precautions: if the exception is thrown because my application wrote a non-zero rectangle side into the database, then this is a serious bug. It cannot and shouldn't be handled in the application, but there should be code which prevents it. It is good that the exception is visibly thrown, because that way the bug is caught. if the exception is thrown because a different application changed the data in the database, then handling it is outside of the scope of my application. So I can't do anything about it if I catch it. Is this a good enough reasoning to get over the "avoid" part of the guideline and throw the exception? Or should I turn it into a method after all? Note that in the real code, the properties which can have an invalid state feel less like the result of a calculation, so they are "natural" properties, not methods.

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• Synchronizing ODSEE and OUD

  - by Etienne Remillon

  When it comes to synchronizing between ODSEE and OUD, what should be the best options ? Couple  options are available - Use one of OUD internal capability called Replication Gateway - Use our synchronization tool called Directory Integration Platform part of Oracle Directory Services Plus - Manuel export and import Let's check pro and cons on each method. Replication Gateway is the natural, out of the box solution to perform the task. We created this as a feature of OUD because it works at our replication protocol level. The gateway perform the required adaptation between the ODSEE's replication protocol and OUD's one. The benefits of doing this is that it provide strong consistency between the to type of directories. This fully leverage conflict management implemented in the replication protocols to ensure that changes are applied in a coherent and ordered manner. It does not require specific modification on existing ODSEE production instances such as turning on "retro changelog". Changes are propagated at near speed of replication in both directions. Replication Gateway can also synchronize information that are stored internally in the directory server such as "xxxxx" account locking managed at ODSEE server level and not via the nsyyyy attribute. OUD replication gateway does no require any specific tools or installation specific procedure. It is manged like other OUD component with monitoring and configuration via the standard console. OUD Replication Gateway does not perform adaptation between ODSEE and OUD. Using Directory Integration Protocol as external component to OUD, brings flexibility in remapping and transformations between ODSEE and OUD. There is a price to pay in using DIP to perform the synchronization task. You will have to turn on the retro change log to get access to changes on the ODSEE side (this will impact disk and CPU usage and performances which could be a serious challenge for your existing ODSEE environment (if you have not provisioned additional hardware and instances). You will not benefits of conflict resolution management and this might have to be addressed at application level, which is not always possible to implement. Using export and import seams very simple, but this methodology cannot ensure an highly available deployment with up to date entries on booth sides. This solution can be used if full HA with up-to-date data is not needed (during synchronization time). It often used  if data-cleaning need to take place to avoid polluting a new environment with old un-necessary data.

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• Cursor running wild, then crashes on an Asus G73sw

  - by Yarchmon

  The cursor sometimes goes wild, I get random clicks, the windows are resizing, the cursor disappears. In the worst case, clicks and keyboards are disabled. I've tried the solution given on doc.ubuntu-fr.org and add tu grub : i8042.nomux=1 i8042.reset=1 in GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT But it didn't work What can I do ? Graphic card : Geforce GTX460M. Ubuntu : 11.10 (64 bits). Laptop Asus G73sw Interface : Unity (since 11.10) - didn't get this problem with Gnome before. Complement: when a window is resizing, it gets drag-boxes at every corner, center of sides and center of the window. It looks like my touchpad sends random info, or like a "ghost" touchscreen. lspci result : 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family DRAM Controller (rev 09) 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200/2nd Generation Core Processor Family PCI Express Root Port (rev 09) 00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1 (rev 04) 00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 05) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 05) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev b5) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev b5) 00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 4 (rev b5) 00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 6 (rev b5) 00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 05) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation HM65 Express Chipset Family LPC Controller (rev 05) 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family 6 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 05) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller (rev 05) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GF106 [GeForce GTX 460M] (rev a1) 01:00.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation GF106 High Definition Audio Controller (rev a1) 03:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01) 04:00.0 USB Controller: Fresco Logic FL1000G USB 3.0 Host Controller (rev 04) 05:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 06) Edit 01-09-12: Tried on Ubuntu 2D: the behavior is different: it's like i'm randomly clicking on the workspace switcher icon. In the worst case, it can happen several times in a minute.

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• How to properly do weapon cool-down reload timer in multi-player laggy environment?

  - by John Murdoch

  I want to handle weapon cool-down timers in a fair and predictable way on both client on server. Situation: Multiple clients connected to server, which is doing hit detection / physics Clients have different latency for their connections to server ranging from 50ms to 500ms. They want to shoot weapons with fairly long reload/cool-down times (assume exactly 10 seconds) It is important that they get to shoot these weapons close to the cool-down time, as if some clients manage to shoot sooner than others (either because they are "early" or the others are "late") they gain a significant advantage. I need to show time remaining for reload on player's screen Clients can have clocks which are flat-out wrong (bad timezones, etc.) What I'm currently doing to deal with latency: Client collects server side state in a history, tagged with server timestamps Client assesses his time difference with server time: behindServerTimeNs = (behindServerTimeNs + (System.nanoTime() - receivedState.getServerTimeNs())) / 2 Client renders all state received from server 200 ms behind from his current time, adjusted by what he believes his time difference with server time is (whether due to wrong clocks, or lag). If he has server states on both sides of that calculated time, he (mostly LERP) interpolates between them, if not then he (LERP) extrapolates. No other client-side prediction of movement, e.g., to make his vehicle seem more responsive is done so far, but maybe will be added later So how do I properly add weapon reload timers? My first idea would be for the server to send each player the time when his reload will be done with each world state update, the client then adjusts it for the clock difference and thus can estimate when the reload will be finished in client-time (perhaps considering also for latency that the shoot message from client to server will take as well?), and if the user mashes the "shoot" button after (or perhaps even slightly before?) that time, send the shoot event. The server would get the shoot event and consider the time shot was made as the server time when it was received. It would then discard it if it is nowhere near reload time, execute it immediately if it is past reload time, and hold it for a few physics cycles until reload is done in case if it was received a bit early. It does all seem a bit convoluted, and I'm wondering whether it will work (e.g., whether it won't be the case that players with lower ping get better reload rates), and whether there are more elegant solutions to this problem.

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• problems programmatically creating UIView on iPad App

  - by user3871

  I have been struggling with this problem for a few days. My iPad app is designed to be a portrait game. To satisfy Apple's expection, I also support landscape mode. When it goes into landscape mode, the game goes into a letterbox format with back borders on the sides. My problem is I am creating the UIWindow and UIView programmatically. For some unkown reason, the touch controls are "locked" in to think I'm always in landscape mode. And even though visually in portrait mode everything looks correct, the top and bottom of the screen does not respond to touch. To summarize how I am setting this up, let me provide the skeletal framework of what I'm doing: in main.cpp: int retVal = UIApplicationMain(argc, argv, nil, @"derbyPoker_ipadAppDelegate"); In the delegate, I am doing this: - (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions { CGRect screenBounds = [[UIScreen mainScreen] bounds]; CGFloat scale = [[ UIScreen mainScreen] scale ]; m_device_width = screenBounds.size.width; m_device_height = screenBounds.size.height; m_device_scale = scale; // Everything is built assuming 640x960 window = [[ UIWindow alloc ] initWithFrame:[[UIScreen mainScreen] bounds]]; viewController = [ glView new ]; [self doStateChange:[blitz class]]; return YES; } The last bit of code sets up the UIView... - (void) doStateChange: (Class) state{ viewController.view = [[state alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, m_device_width, m_device_height) andManager:self]; viewController.view.contentMode = UIViewContentModeScaleAspectFit; viewController.view.autoresizesSubviews = YES; [window addSubview:viewController.view]; [window makeKeyAndVisible]; } The problem seems to related to the line viewController.view.contentMode = UIViewContentModeScaleAspectFit; If I remove that line, touch works correctly in portrait mode. But the negative is when I'm landscape mode, the game stretches incorrectly. So That's not a option. The frustrating thing is, when I originally had this set up with a NIB file, it worked fine. I have read through the docs about UIWindow, UIViewController and UIView and have tried about everything to no avail. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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• Turn-Based RPG Battle Instance Layout For Larger Groups

  - by SoulBeaver

  What a title, eh? I'm currently designing a videogame; a turn-based RPG like Final Fantasy (because everybody knows Final Fantasy). It's a 2D sprite game. These are my ideas for combat: -The player has a group of 15 members (main character included) -During battle, five of the group are designated as active, and appear in the battle. -These five may be switched out at leisure, or when one of the five die. -At any time, the Waiting members can cast buffs, be healed by the active members, or perform special attacks. -Battles should contain 10+ monsters at least. I'm aiming for 20, but I'm not sure if that's possible yet. -Battles should feel larger than normal due to the interaction of Waiting members, active members and the increased amount of monsters per battle. -The player has two rows in which to put the Active members: front and back. -Depending on the implementation, I might allow comboing of player attacks and skills. These are just design ideas, so beware! I have not been able to test this out yet- I have no idea yet if any of these ideas bunched together will make for a compelling game. What sounds good on paper doesn't necessarily have to be good in practice! What I'm asking now is how to create the layout for this. My starting point are the battles in Final Fantasy VI, with up to 5-6 monsters on the left and the characters on the right- monsters on both sides if it's a pincer attack. However, this view would not work feasible with my goal of 20 monsters and 5 characters. All the monsters on the left would appear cluttered unless I scale them far far back. If I create a pincer-like map, then there would be no real pincer-attack possible. If I space the monsters out I force the player to scroll the screen- a game mechanic I've come across and not enjoyed imho. My question is: does anybody have any layouts or guides for designing battle maps in turn-based RPGs, especially with a larger number of enemies taken into consideration? How should it look? I am not asking for specific combat mechanics, just the layout for the moment.

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• How do you make a bullet ricochet off a vertical wall?

  - by Bagofsheep

  First things first. I am using C# with XNA. My game is top-down and the player can shoot bullets. I've managed to get the bullets to ricochet correctly off horizontal walls. Yet, despite using similar methods (e.g. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3203952/mirroring-an-angle) and reading other answered questions about this subject I have not been able to get the bullets to ricochet off a vertical wall correctly. Any method I've tried has failed and sometimes made ricocheting off a horizontal wall buggy. Here is the collision code that calls the ricochet method: //Loop through returned tile rectangles from quad tree to test for wall collision. If a collision occurs perform collision logic. for (int r = 0; r < returnObjects.Count; r++) if (Bullets[i].BoundingRectangle.Intersects(returnObjects[r])) Bullets[i].doCollision(returnObjects[r]); Now here is the code for the doCollision method. public void doCollision(Rectangle surface) { if (Ricochet) doRicochet(surface); else Trash = true; } Finally, here is the code for the doRicochet method. public void doRicochet(Rectangle surface) { if (Position.X > surface.Left && Position.X < surface.Right) { //Mirror the bullet's angle. Rotation = -1 * Rotation; //Moves the bullet in the direction of its rotation by given amount. moveFaceDirection(Sprite.Width * BulletScale.X); } else if (Position.Y > surface.Top && Position.Y < surface.Bottom) { } } Since I am only dealing with vertical and horizontal walls at the moment, the if statements simply determine if the object is colliding from the right or left, or from the top or bottom. If the object's X position is within the boundaries of the tile's X boundaries (left and right sides), it must be colliding from the top, and vice verse. As you can see, the else if statement is empty and is where the correct code needs to go.

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• Are separate business objects needed when persistent data can be stored in a usable format?

  - by Kylotan

  I have a system where data is stored in a persistent store and read by a server application. Some of this data is only ever seen by the server, but some of it is passed through unaltered to clients. So, there is a big temptation to persist data - whether whole rows/documents or individual fields/sub-documents - in the exact form that the client can use (eg. JSON), as this removes various layers of boilerplate, whether in the form of procedural SQL, an ORM, or any proxy structure which exists just to hold the values before having to re-encode them into a client-suitable form. This form can usually be used on the server too, though business logic may have to live outside of the object, On the other hand, this approach ends up leaking implementation details everywhere. 9 times out of 10 I'm happy just to read a JSON structure out of the DB and send it to the client, but 1 in every 10 times I have to know the details of that implicit structure (and be able to refactor access to it if the stored data ever changes). And this makes me think that maybe I should be pulling this data into separate business objects, so that business logic doesn't have to change when the data schema does. (Though you could argue this just moves the problem rather than solves it.) There is a complicating factor in that our data schema is constantly changing rapidly, to the point where we dropped our previous ORM/RDBMS system in favour of MongoDB and an implicit schema which was much easier to work with. So far I've not decided whether the rapid schema changes make me wish for separate business objects (so that server-side calculations need less refactoring, since all changes are restricted to the persistence layer) or for no separate business objects (because every change to the schema requires the business objects to change to stay in sync, even if the new sub-object or field is never used on the server except to pass verbatim to a client). So my question is whether it is sensible to store objects in the form they are usually going to be used, or if it's better to copy them into intermediate business objects to insulate both sides from each other (even when that isn't strictly necessary)? And I'd like to hear from anybody else who has had experience of a similar situation, perhaps choosing to persist XML or JSON instead of having an explicit schema which has to be assembled into a client format each time.

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• How do I create weapon attachments?

  - by Tron86

  My question is; I am developing a game for XNA and I am trying to create a weapon attachment for my player model. My player model loads the .md3 format and reads tags for attachment points. I am able to get the tag of my model's hand. And I am also able to get the tag of my weapon's handle. Each tag I am able to get the rotation and position of and this is how I am calculating it: Model.worldMatrix = Matrix.CreateScale(Model.scale) * Matrix.CreateRotationX(-MathHelper.PiOver2) * Matrix.CreateRotationY(MathHelper.PiOver2); Pretty simple, the player model has a scale and its orientation(it loads on its side so I just use a 90 degree X axis rotation, and a Y axis rotation to face away from the camera). I then calculate the torso tag on the lower body, which gives me a local coordinate at the waist. Then I take that matrix and calculate the tag_weapon in the upper body. This gives me the hand position in local space. I also get the rotation matrix from that tag that I store for later use. All this seems to work fine. Now I move onto my weapon: Matrix weaponWorld = Matrix.CreateScale(CurrentWeapon.scale) * Matrix.CreateRotationX(-MathHelper.PiOver2) * TagRotationMatrix * Matrix.CreateTranslation(HandTag.Position) * Matrix.CreateRotationY(PlayerRotation) * Matrix.CreateTranslation(CollisionBody.Position) * You may notice the weapon matrix gets rotated by 90 degress on the X axis as well. This is because they load in on their sides. Once again this seems pretty simple and follows the SRT order I keep reading about. My TagRotation matrix is the hand's rotation. HandTag.Position is its position in local space. CreateRotationY(PlayerRotation) is the player's rotation in world space, and the CollisionBody.Position is the player's world location. Everything seems to be in order, and almost works in game. However when the gun spawns and follows the player's hand it seems to be flipped on an axis every couple frames. Almost like the X or Y axis is being inversed then put right back. Its hard to explain and I am totally stumped. Even removing all my X axis fixes does nothing to solve the problem. Hopefully I explained everything enough as I am a bit new to this! Thanks!

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• PHP - Internal APIs/Libraries - What makes sense?

  - by Mark Locker

  I've been having a discussion lately with some colleagues about the best way to approach a new project, and thought it'd be interesting to get some external thoughts thrown into the mix. Basically, we're redeveloping a fairly large site (written in PHP) and have differing opinions on how the platform should be setup. Requirements: The platform will need to support multiple internal websites, as well as external (non-PHP) projects which at the moment consist of a mobile app and a toolbar. We have no plans/need in the foreseeable future to open up an API externally (for use in products other than our own). My opinion: We should have a library of well documented native model classes which can be shared between projects. These models will represent everything in our database and can take advantage of object orientated features such as inheritance, traits, magic methods, etc. etc. As well as employing ORM. We can then add an API layer on top of these models which can basically accept requests and route them to the appropriate methods, translating the response so that it can be used platform independently. This routing for each method can be setup as and when it's required. Their opinion: We should have a single HTTP API which is used by all projects (internal PHP ones or otherwise). My thoughts: To me, there are a number of issues with using the sole HTTP API approach: It will be very expensive performance wise. One page request will result in several additional http requests (which although local, are still ones that Apache will need to handle). You'll lose all of the best features PHP has for OO development. From simple inheritance, to employing the likes of ORM which can save you writing a lot of code. For internal projects, the actual process makes me cringe. To get a users name, for example, a request would go out of our box, over the LAN, back in, then run through a script which calls a method, JSON encodes the output and feeds that back. That would then need to be JSON decoded, and be presented as an array ready to use. Working with arrays, as appose to objects, makes me sad in a modern PHP framework. Their thoughts (and my responses): Having one method of doing thing keeps things simple. - You'd only do things differently if you were using a different language anyway. It will become robust. - Seeing as the API will run off the library of models, I think my option would be just as robust. What do you think? I'd be really interested to hear the thoughts of others on this, especially as opinions on both sides are not founded on any past experience.

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• Is this a pattern? Should it be?

  - by Arkadiy

  The following is more of a statement than a question - it describes something that may be a pattern. The question is: is this a known pattern? Or, if it's not, should it be? I've had a situation where I had to iterate over two dissimilar multi-layer data structures and copy information from one to the other. Depending on particular use case, I had around eight different kinds of layers, combined in about eight different combinations: A-B-C B-C A-C D-E A-D-E and so on After a few unsuccessful attempts to factor out the repetition of per-layer iteration code, I realized that the key difficulty in this refactoring was the fact that the bottom level needed access to data gathered at higher levels. To explicitly accommodate this requirement, I introduced IterationContext class with a number of get() and set() methods for accumulating the necessary information. In the end, I had the following class structure: class Iterator { virtual void iterateOver(const Structure &dataStructure1, IterationContext &ctx) const = 0; }; class RecursingIterator : public Iterator { RecursingIterator(const Iterator &below); }; class IterateOverA : public RecursingIterator { virtual void iterateOver(const Structure &dataStructure1, IterationContext &ctx) const { // Iterate over members in dataStructure1 // locate corresponding item in dataStructure2 (passed via context) // and set it in the context // invoke the sub-iterator }; class IterateOverB : public RecursingIterator { virtual void iterateOver(const Structure &dataStructure1, IterationContext &ctx) const { // iterate over members dataStructure2 (form context) // set dataStructure2's item in the context // locate corresponding item in dataStructure2 (passed via context) // invoke the sub-iterator }; void main() { class FinalCopy : public Iterator { virtual void iterateOver(const Structure &dataStructure1, IterationContext &ctx) const { // copy data from structure 1 to structure 2 in the context, // using some data from higher levels as needed } } IterationContext ctx(dateStructure2); IterateOverA(IterateOverB(FinalCopy())).iterate(dataStructure1, ctx); } It so happens that dataStructure1 is a uniform data structure, similar to XML DOM in that respect, while dataStructure2 is a legacy data structure made of various structs and arrays. This allows me to pass dataStructure1 outside of the context for convenience. In general, either side of the iteration or both sides may be passed via context, as convenient. The key situation points are: complicated code that needs to be invoked in "layers", with multiple combinations of layer types possible at the bottom layer, the information from top layers needs to be visible. The key implementation points are: use of context class to access the data from all levels of iteration complicated iteration code encapsulated in implementation of pure virtual function two interfaces - one aware of underlying iterator, one not aware of it. use of const & to simplify the usage syntax.

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• Server high memory usage at same time every day

  - by Sam Parmenter

  Right, we moved one of our main sites onto a new AWS box with plenty of grunt as it would allow us more control that we had before and future proof ourselves. About a month ago we started running into issues with high memory usage at the same time every day. In the morning an export is run to export data to a file which is the FTPed to a local machine for processing. The issues were co-inciding with the rough time of the export but when we didn't run the export one day, the server still ran into the same issues. The export has been run at other times in the day since to monitor memory usage to see if it spikes. The conclusion is that the export is fine and barely touches the sides memory wise. No noticeable change in memory usage. When the issue happens, its effect is to kill mysql and require us to restart the process. We think it might be a mysql memory issue, but might just be that mysql is just the first to feel it. Looking at the logs there is no particular query run before the memory usage hits 90%. When it strikes at about 9:20am, the memory usage spikes from a near constant 25% to 98% and very quickly kills mysql to save itself. It usually takes about 3-4 minutes to die. There are no cron jobs running at that time of the day and we haven't noticed a spike in traffic over the period of the issues. Any help would be massively appreciated! thanks.

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