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• Implications of Java 6 End of Public Updates for EBS Users

  - by Steven Chan (Oracle Development)

  The Support Roadmap for Oracle Java is published here: Oracle Java SE Support Roadmap The latest updates to that page (as of Sept. 19, 2012) state (emphasis added): Java SE 6 End of Public Updates Notice After February 2013, Oracle will no longer post updates of Java SE 6 to its public download sites. Existing Java SE 6 downloads already posted as of February 2013 will remain accessible in the Java Archive on Oracle Technology Network. Developers and end-users are encouraged to update to more recent Java SE versions that remain available for public download. For enterprise customers, who need continued access to critical bug fixes and security fixes as well as general maintenance for Java SE 6 or older versions, long term support is available through Oracle Java SE Support . What does this mean for Oracle E-Business Suite users? EBS users fall under the category of "enterprise users" above.  Java is an integral part of the Oracle E-Business Suite technology stack, so EBS users will continue to receive Java SE 6 updates after February 2013. In other words, nothing will change for EBS users after February 2013.  EBS users will continue to receive critical bug fixes and security fixes as well as general maintenance for Java SE 6. These Java SE 6 updates will be made available to EBS users for the Extended Support periods documented in the Oracle Lifetime Support policy document for Oracle Applications (PDF): EBS 11i Extended Support ends November 2013 EBS 12.0 Extended Support ends January 2015 EBS 12.1 Extended Support ends December 2018 Will EBS users be forced to upgrade to JRE 7 for Windows desktop clients? No. This upgrade will be highly recommended but currently remains optional. JRE 6 will be available to Windows users to run with EBS for the duration of your respective EBS Extended Support period.  Updates will be delivered via My Oracle Support, where you can continue to receive critical bug fixes and security fixes as well as general maintenance for JRE 6 desktop clients.  The certification of Oracle E-Business Suite with JRE 7 (for desktop clients accessing EBS Forms-based content) is in its final stages.  If you plan to upgrade your EBS desktop clients to JRE 7 when that certification is released, you can get a head-start on that today. Coexistence of JRE 6 and JRE 7 on Windows desktops The upgrade to JRE 7 will be highly recommended for EBS users, but some users may need to run both JRE 6 and 7 on their Windows desktops for reasons unrelated to the E-Business Suite. Most EBS configurations with IE and Firefox use non-static versioning by default. JRE 7 will be invoked instead of JRE 6 if both are installed on a Windows desktop. For more details, see "Appendix B: Static vs. Non-static Versioning and Set Up Options" in Notes 290801.1 and 393931.1. Applying Updates to JRE 6 and JRE 7 to Windows desktops Auto-update will keep JRE 7 up-to-date for Windows users with JRE 7 installed. Auto-update will only keep JRE 7 up-to-date for Windows users with both JRE 6 and 7 installed.  JRE 6 users are strongly encouraged to apply the latest Critical Patch Updates as soon as possible after each release. The Jave SE CPUs will be available via My Oracle Support.  EBS users can find more information about JRE 6 and 7 updates here: Information Center: Installation & Configuration for Oracle Java SE (Note 1412103.2) The dates for future Java SE CPUs can be found on the Critical Patch Updates, Security Alerts and Third Party Bulletin.  An RSS feed is available on that site for those who would like to be kept up-to-date. What will Mac users need? Oracle will provide updates to JRE 7 for Mac OS X users. EBS users running Macs will need to upgrade to JRE 7 to receive JRE updates. The certification of Oracle E-Business Suite with JRE 7 for Mac-based desktop clients accessing EBS Forms-based content is underway. Mac users waiting for that certification may find this article useful: How to Reenable Apple Java 6 Plug-in for Mac EBS Users Will EBS users be forced to upgrade to JDK 7 for EBS application tier servers? No. This upgrade will be highly recommended but will be optional for EBS application tier servers running on Windows, Linux, and Solaris.  You can choose to remain on JDK 6 for the duration of your respective EBS Extended Support period.  If you remain on JDK 6, you will continue to receive critical bug fixes and security fixes as well as general maintenance for JDK 6. The certification of Oracle E-Business Suite with JDK 7 for EBS application tier servers on Windows, Linux, and Solaris as well as other platforms such as IBM AIX and HP-UX is planned.  Customers running platforms other than Windows, Linux, and Solaris should refer to their Java vendors's sites for more information about their support policies. Related Articles Planning Bulletin for JRE 7: What EBS Customers Can Do Today EBS 11i and 12.1 Support Timeline Changes Frequently Asked Questions about Latest EBS Support Changes Critical Patch Updates During EBS 11i Exception to Sustaining Support Period

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• Mobile Apps for Oracle E-Business Suite

  - by Steven Chan (Oracle Development)

  Many things have changed in the mobile space over the last few years. Here's an update on our strategy for mobile apps for the E-Business Suite. Mobile app strategy We're building our family of mobile apps for the E-Business Suite using Oracle Mobile Application Framework.  This framework allows us to write a single application that can be run on Apple iOS and Google Android platforms. Mobile apps for the E-Business Suite will share a common look-and-feel. The E-Business Suite is a suite of over 200 product modules spanning Financials, Supply Chain, Human Resources, and many other areas. Our mobile app strategy is to release standalone apps for specific product modules.  Our Oracle Timecards app, which allows users to create and submit timecards, is an example of a standalone app. Some common functions that span multiple product areas will have dedicated apps, too. An example of this is our Oracle Approvals app, which allows users to review and approve requests for expenses, requisitions, purchase orders, recruitment vacancies and offers, and more. You can read more about our Oracle Mobile Approvals app here: Now Available: Oracle Mobile Approvals for iOS Our goal is to support smaller screen (e.g. smartphones) as well as larger screens (e.g. tablets), with the smaller screen versions generally delivered first.  Where possible, we will deliver these as universal apps.  An example is our Oracle Mobile Field Service app, which allows field service technicians to remotely access customer, product, service request, and task-related information.  This app can run on a smartphone, while providing a richer experience for tablets. Deploying EBS mobile apps The mobile apps, themselves (i.e. client-side components) can be downloaded by end-users from the Apple iTunes today.  Android versions will be available from Google play. You can monitor this blog for Android-related updates. Where possible, our mobile apps should be deployable with a minimum of server-side changes.  These changes will generally involve a consolidated server-side patch for technology-stack components, and possibly a server-side patch for the functional product module. Updates to existing mobile apps may require new server-side components to enable all of the latest mobile functionality. All EBS product modules are certified for internal intranet deployments (i.e. used by employees within an organization's firewall).  Only a subset of EBS products such as iRecruitment are certified to be deployed externally (i.e. used by non-employees outside of an organization's firewall).  Today, many organizations running the E-Business Suite do not expose their EBS environment externally and all of the mobile apps that we're building are intended for internal employee use.  Recognizing this, our mobile apps are currently designed for users who are connected to the organization's intranet via VPN.  We expect that this may change in future updates to our mobile apps. Mobile apps and internationalization The initial releases of our mobile apps will be in English.  Later updates will include translations for all left-to-right languages supported by the E-Business Suite.  Right-to-left languages will not be translated. Customizing apps for enterprise deployments The current generation of mobile apps for Oracle E-Business Suite cannot be customized. We are evaluating options for limited customizations, including corporate branding with logos, corporate color schemes, and others. This is a potentially-complex area with many tricky implications for deployment and maintenance.  We would be interested in hearing your requirements for customizations in enterprise deployments.Prerequisites Apple iOS 7 and higher Android 4.1 (API level 16) and higher, with minimum CPU/memory configurations listed here EBS 12.1: EBS 12.1.3 Family Packs for the related product module EBS 12.2.3 References Oracle E-Business Suite Mobile Apps, Release 12.1 and 12.2 Documentation (Note 1641772.1) Oracle E-Business Suite Mobile Apps Administrator's Guide, Release 12.1 and 12.2 (Note 1642431.1) Related Articles Using Mobile Devices with Oracle E-Business Suite Apple iPads Certified with Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 Now Available: Oracle Mobile Approvals for iOS The preceding is intended to outline our general product direction.  It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract.   It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decision.  The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for Oracle’s products remains at the sole discretion of Oracle.

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• Working with packed dates in SSIS

  - by Jim Giercyk

  One of the challenges recently thrown my way was to read an EBCDIC flat file, decode packed dates, and insert the dates into a SQL table.  For those unfamiliar with packed data, it is a way to store data at the nibble level (half a byte), and was often used by mainframe programmers to conserve storage space.  In the case of my input file, the dates were 2 bytes long and  represented the number of days that have past since 01/01/1950.  My first thought was, in the words of Scooby, Hmmmmph?  But, I love a good challenge, so I dove in. Reading in the flat file was rather simple.  The only difference between reading an EBCDIC and an ASCII file is the Code Page option in the connection manager.  In my case, I needed to use Code Page 1140 for EBCDIC (I could have also used Code Page 37).       Once the code page is set correctly, SSIS can understand what it is reading and it will convert the output to the default code page, 1252.  However, packed data is either unreadable or produces non-alphabetic characters, as we can see in the preview window.   Column 1 is actually the packed date, columns 0 and 2 are the values in the rest of the file.  We are only interested in Column 1, which is a 2 byte field representing a packed date.  We know that 2 bytes of packed data can be stored in 1 byte of character data, so we are working with 4 packed digits in 2 character bytes.  If you are confused, stay tuned….this will make sense in a minute.   Right-click on your Flat File Source shape and select “Show Advanced Editor”. Here is where the magic begins. By changing the properties of the output columns, we can access the packed digits from each byte. By default, the Output Column data type is DT_STR. Since we want to look at the bytes individually and not the entire string, change the data type to DT_BYTES. Next, and most important, set UseBinaryFormat to TRUE. This will write the HEX VALUES of the output string instead of writing the character values.  Now we are getting somewhere! Next, you will need to use a Data Conversion shape in your Data Flow to transform the 2 position byte stream to a 4 position Unicode string containing the packed data.  You need the string to be 4 bytes long because it will contain the 4 packed digits.  Here is what that should look like in the Data Conversion shape: Direct the output of your data flow to a test table or file to see the results.  In my case, I created a test table.  The results looked like this:     Hold on a second!  That doesn't look like a date at all.  No, of course not.  It is a hex number which represents the days which have passed between 01/01/1950 and the date.  We have to convert the Hex value to a decimal value, and use the DATEADD function to get a date value.  Luckily, I have created a function to convert Hex to Decimal:   -- ============================================= -- Author:        Jim Giercyk -- Create date: March, 2012 -- Description:    Converts a Hex string to a decimal value -- ============================================= CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[ftn_HexToDec] (     @hexValue NVARCHAR(6) ) RETURNS DECIMAL AS BEGIN     -- Declare the return variable here DECLARE @decValue DECIMAL IF @hexValue LIKE '0x%' SET @hexValue = SUBSTRING(@hexValue,3,4) DECLARE @decTab TABLE ( decPos1 VARCHAR(2), decPos2 VARCHAR(2), decPos3 VARCHAR(2), decPos4 VARCHAR(2) ) DECLARE @pos1 VARCHAR(1) = SUBSTRING(@hexValue,1,1) DECLARE @pos2 VARCHAR(1) = SUBSTRING(@hexValue,2,1) DECLARE @pos3 VARCHAR(1) = SUBSTRING(@hexValue,3,1) DECLARE @pos4 VARCHAR(1) = SUBSTRING(@hexValue,4,1) INSERT @decTab VALUES (CASE               WHEN @pos1 = 'A' THEN '10'                 WHEN @pos1 = 'B' THEN '11'               WHEN @pos1 = 'C' THEN '12'               WHEN @pos1 = 'D' THEN '13'               WHEN @pos1 = 'E' THEN '14'               WHEN @pos1 = 'F' THEN '15'               ELSE @pos1              END, CASE               WHEN @pos2 = 'A' THEN '10'                 WHEN @pos2 = 'B' THEN '11'               WHEN @pos2 = 'C' THEN '12'               WHEN @pos2 = 'D' THEN '13'               WHEN @pos2 = 'E' THEN '14'               WHEN @pos2 = 'F' THEN '15'               ELSE @pos2              END, CASE               WHEN @pos3 = 'A' THEN '10'                 WHEN @pos3 = 'B' THEN '11'               WHEN @pos3 = 'C' THEN '12'               WHEN @pos3 = 'D' THEN '13'               WHEN @pos3 = 'E' THEN '14'               WHEN @pos3 = 'F' THEN '15'               ELSE @pos3              END, CASE               WHEN @pos4 = 'A' THEN '10'                 WHEN @pos4 = 'B' THEN '11'               WHEN @pos4 = 'C' THEN '12'               WHEN @pos4 = 'D' THEN '13'               WHEN @pos4 = 'E' THEN '14'               WHEN @pos4 = 'F' THEN '15'               ELSE @pos4              END) SET @decValue = (CONVERT(INT,(SELECT decPos4 FROM @decTab)))         +                 (CONVERT(INT,(SELECT decPos3 FROM @decTab))*16)      +                 (CONVERT(INT,(SELECT decPos2 FROM @decTab))*(16*16)) +                 (CONVERT(INT,(SELECT decPos1 FROM @decTab))*(16*16*16))     RETURN @decValue END GO     Making use of the function, I found the decimal conversion, added that number of days to 01/01/1950 and FINALLY arrived at my “unpacked relative date”.  Here is the query I used to retrieve the formatted date, and the result set which was returned: SELECT [packedDate] AS 'Hex Value',        dbo.ftn_HexToDec([packedDate]) AS 'Decimal Value',        CONVERT(DATE,DATEADD(day,dbo.ftn_HexToDec([packedDate]),'01/01/1950'),101) AS 'Relative String Date'   FROM [dbo].[Output Table]         This technique can be used any time you need to retrieve the hex value of a character string in SSIS.  The date example may be a bit difficult to understand at first, but with SSIS becoming the preferred tool for enterprise level integration for many companies, there is no doubt that developers will encounter these types of requirements with regularity in the future. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

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• Build 2012, some thoughts..

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  I think you probably read my rant about the logistics at Build 2012, as posted here, so I am not going into that anymore. Instead, let’s look at the content. (BTW If you did read that post and want some more info then read Nia Angelina’s post about Build. I have nothing to add to that.) As usual, there were good speakers and some speakers who could benefit from some speaker training. I find it hard to understand why Microsoft allows certain people on stage, people who speak English with such strong accents it’s hard for people, especially from abroad, to understand. Some basic training might be useful for some of them. However, it is nice to see that most speakers are project managers, program managers or even devs on the teams that build the stuff they talk about: there was a lot of knowledge on stage! And that means when you ask questions you get very relevant information. I realize I am not the average audience member here, I am regular speaker myself so I tend to look for other things when I am in a room than most audience members so my opinion might differ from others. All in all the knowledge of the speakers was above average but the presentation skills were most of the times below what I would describe as adequate. But let us look at the contents. Since the official name of the conference is Build Windows 2012 it is not surprising most of the talks were focused on building Windows 8 apps. Next to that, there was a lot of focus on Azure and of course Windows Phone 8 that launched the day before Build started. Most sessions dealt with C# and JavaScript although I did see a tendency to use C++ more. Touch. Well, that was the focus on a lot of sessions, that goes without saying. Microsoft is really betting on Touch these days and being a Touch oriented developer I can only applaud this. The term NUI is getting a bit outdated but the principles behind it certainly aren’t. The sessions did cover quite a lot on how to make your applications easy to use and easy to understand. However, not all is touch nowadays; still the majority of people use keyboard and mouse to interact with their machines (or, as I do, use keyboard, mouse AND touch at the same time). Microsoft understands this and has spend some serious thoughts on this as well. It was all about making your apps run everywhere on all sorts of devices and in all sorts of scenarios. I have seen a couple of sessions focusing on the portable class library and on sharing code between Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. You get the feeling Microsoft is enabling us devs to write software that will be ubiquitous. They want your stuff to be all over the place and they do anything they can to help. To achieve that goal they provide us with brilliant SDK’s, great tooling, a very, very good backend in the form of Windows Azure (I was particularly impressed by the Mobility part of Azure) and some fantastic hardware. And speaking of hardware: the partners such as Acer, Lenovo and Dell are making hardware that puts Apple to a shame nowadays. To illustrate: in Bellevue (very close to Redmond where Microsoft HQ is) they have the Microsoft Store located very close to the Apple Store, so it’s easy to compare devices. And I have to say: the Microsoft offerings are much, much more appealing that what the Cupertino guys have to offer. That was very visible by the number of people visiting the stores: even on the day that Apple launched the iPad Mini there were more people in the Microsoft store than in the Apple store. So, the future looks like it’s going to be fun. Great hardware (did I mention the Nokia Lumia 920? No? It’s brilliant), great software (Windows 8 is in a league of its own), the best dev tools (Visual Studio 2012 is still the champion here) and a fantastic backend (Azure.. need I say more?). It’s up to us devs to fill up the stores with applications that matches this. To summarize: it is great to be a Windows developer. PS. Did I mention Surface RT? Man….. People were drooling all over it wherever I went. It is fantastic :-) Technorati Tags: Build,Windows 8,Windows Phone,Lumia,Surface,Microsoft

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• Updated Agenda for OTN Architect Day Los Angeles (Oct 25)

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Here's the latest information on the session schedule and content for Oracle Technology Network Architect Day in Los Angeles on October 25, 2012. Registration is open, but seating is limited. When: Thursday October 25 12, 2012 8:30am – 5:00pm Where: Sofitel Los Angeles 8555 Beverly Boulevard Los Angeles, CA 90048 Agenda Time Session Title Room 8:30 am - 9:00 am Registration and Continental Breakfast 9:00 am - 9:15 am Welcome and Opening Comments | Bob Rhubart Beverly Ballroom 9:15 am - 10:00 am Engineered Systems: Oracle's Vision for the Future | Ralf Dossmann Oracle's Exadata and Exalogic are impressive products in their own right. But working in combination they deliver unparalleled transaction processing performance with up to a 30x increase over existing legacy systems, with the lowest cost of ownership over a 3 or 5 year basis than any other hardware. In this session you'll learn how to leverage Oracle's Engineered Systems within your enterprise to deliver record-breaking performance at the lowest TCO. Beverly Ballroom 10:00 am - 10:30 am Monitoring and Managing Applications in the Cloud | Basheer Khan Oracle offers a broad portfolio of software and hardware products and services to enable public, private and hybrid clouds to power the enterprise. However, enterprise cloud computing presents new management challenges, that need to be addressed to realize the economic benefits of cloud computing. In this session you will learn about the methods and tools you can use to proactively monitor your end-to-end Oracle Applications environment in the cloud, define service-level objectives, gain insight into your end users, and troubleshoot performance problems from a single console. Beverly Ballroom 10:30 am - 10:45 am Break 10:45 am - 11:30 am Breakout Sessions (pick one) Cloud Computing - Making IT Simple | Dr. James Baty The road to Cloud Computing is not without a few bumps. This session will help to smooth out your journey by tackling some of the potential complications. We'll examine whether standardization is a prerequisite for the Cloud. We'll look at why refactoring isn't just for application code. We'll check out deployable entities and their simplification via higher levels of abstraction. And we'll close out the session with a look at engineered systems and modular clouds. Beverly Ballroom Innovations in Grid Computing with Oracle Coherence | Ashok Aletty Learn how Oracle Coherence can increase the availability, scalability and performance of your existing applications with its advanced low-latency data-grid technologies. Also hear some interesting industry-specific use cases that customers had implemented and how Oracle is integrating Coherence into its Enterprise Java stack. Hollywood Room 11:30 am - 12:15 pm Breakout Sessions (pick one) Enterprise Strategy for Cloud Security | Dave Chappelle Security is high on the list of concerns for many organizations as they evaluate their cloud computing options. This session will examine security in the context of the various forms of cloud computing. We'll consider technical and non-technical aspects of security, and discuss several strategies for cloud computing, from both the consumer and producer perspectives. Beverly Ballroom Oracle Enterprise Manager | Perren Walker This session examines new Oracle Enterprise Manager monitoring, administration, and management features for Oracle Exalogic. It focuses on two management themes: cloud management related to virtualization and applications-to-disk management. For private cloud management, it discusses virtualization management features providing an enhanced set of application deployment capabilities enabling IaaS as well as PaaS interactions. Then from an end-to-end perspective, it covers the specific capabilities and—where applicable—best practices for machine, cloud, middleware, and application administration. Hollywood Room 12:15 pm - 1:15 pm Lunch Beverly Ballroom Lounge 1:15 pm - 2:00 pm Panel Discussion - Q&A with session speakers Beverly Ballroom 2:00 pm - 2:45 pm Breakout Sessions (pick one) Oracle Cloud Reference Architecture | Anbu Krishnaswamy Cloud initiatives are beginning to dominate enterprise IT roadmaps. Successful adoption of Cloud and the subsequent governance challenges warrant a Cloud reference architecture that is applied consistently across the enterprise. This presentation will answer the important questions: What exactly is a Cloud, why you need it, what changes it will bring to the enterprise, and what are the key capabilities of a Cloud infrastructure are - using Oracle's Cloud Reference Architecture, which is part of the IT Strategies from Oracle (ITSO) Cloud Enterprise Technology Strategy ETS). Beverly Ballroom 21st Century SOA | Jeff Davies Service Oriented Architecture has evolved from concept to reality in the last decade. The right methodology coupled with mature SOA technologies has helped customers demonstrate success in both innovation and ROI. In this session you will learn how Oracle SOA Suite's orchestration, virtualization, and governance capabilities provide the infrastructure to run mission critical business and system applications. We'll also take a special look at the convergence of SOA & BPM using Oracle's Unified technology stack. Hollywood Room 2:45 pm - 3:00 pm Break 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm Roundtable Discussion Beverly Ballroom 4:00 pm - 4:15 pm Closing Comments & Readouts from Roundtables Beverly Ballroom 4:15 pm - 5:00 pm Networking / Reception Beverly Ballroom Lounge Note: Session schedule and content subject to change.

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• How Estimates Became Quotes

  - by Lee Brandt

  It’s our fault. Well, not completely, but we haven’t helped the situation any. All of what follows comes from my own experiences which, from talking to lots of other developers about it, seems to be pretty much par for the course. Where We Started When we first started estimating, we estimated pretty clearly. We would try to imagine something we’d done that was similar to the project being estimated and we’d toss it about in our heads a bit and see how much bigger or smaller we thought this new thing was, and add or subtract accordingly. We wouldn’t spend too much time on it, because we wanted to get to writing the software. Eventually, we’d come across some huge problem that there was now way we could’ve known about ahead of time. Either we didn’t see this thing or, we didn’t realize that this particular version of a problem would be so… problematic. We usually call this “not knowing what we don’t know”. It’s unavoidable. We just can’t know. Until we wade in and start putting some code together, there are just some things we won’t know… and some things we don’t even know that we don’t know. Y’know? So what happens? We go over budget. Project managers scream and dance the dance of the stressed-out project manager, and there is nothing we can do (or could’ve done) about it. We didn’t know. We thought about it for a bit and we didn’t see this herculean task sitting in the middle of our nice quiet project, and it has bitten us in the rear end. We now know how to handle this in the future, though. We will take some more time to pick around the requirements and discover all those things we don’t know. We’ll do some prototyping, we’ll read some blogs about similar projects, we’ll really grill the customer with questions during the requirements gathering phase. We’ll keeping asking “what else?” until the shove us down the stairs. We’ll take our time and uncover it all. We Learned, But Good The next time comes, and you know what happens? We do it. We grill the customer for weeks and prototype and read and research and we estimate everything down to the last button on the last form. Know what that gets us? It gets us three months of wasted time, and our estimate will still be off. Possibly off by a factor of four. WTF, mate? No way we could be surprised by something! We uncovered every particle. We turned every stone. How is it we still came across unknowns? Because we STILL didn’t know what we didn’t know. How could we? We didn’t know to ask. The worst part is, we’ve now convinced the product that this is NOT an estimate. It is a solid number based on massive research and an endless number of questions that they answered. There is absolutely now way you don’t know everything there is to know about this project now. No way there is anything you haven’t uncovered. And their faith in that “Esti-Quote” goes through the roof. When the project goes over this time, they might even begin to question whether or not you know what you’re doing. Who could blame them? You drilled them for weeks about every little thing, and when they complained about all the questions, you told them you wanted to uncover everything so there would be no surprises. SO we set them up to faile Guess, Then Plan We had a chance. At the beginning we could have just said, “That’s just a gut-feeling estimate, based on my past experience with similar projects. There could still be surprises.” If we spend SOME time doing SOME discovery and then bounce that against our own past experiences, we can come up with a fairly healthy estimate. We can then help the product owner understand that an estimate is a guess. Sure, it’s an educated guess, but it is still a guess. If we get it right it will be almost completely luck. Then, we help them to plan the development by taking that guess (yes, they still need the guess for planning purposes) and start measuring early and often to see if we still think we are right. We should adjust the estimate and alert the product owner as soon as we see problems (bad news does not age well) and we should be able to see any problems immediately if we are constantly measuring our pace. In lean software, we start with that guess and begin measuring cycle times immediately. Then we can make projections based on those cycle times and compare them to our estimate. This constant feedback is the best way to ensure that there are no surprises at the END of the project. There sill still be surprises, but we’ll see them sooner and have a better understanding of how they will affect our overall timeline. What do you think?

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• Summit reflections

  - by Rob Farley

  So far, my three PASS Summit experiences have been notably different to each other. My first, I wasn’t on the board and I gave two regular sessions and a Lightning Talk in which I told jokes. My second, I was a board advisor, and I delivered a precon, a spotlight and a Lightning Talk in which I sang. My third (last week), I was a full board director, and I didn’t present at all. Let’s not talk about next year. I’m not sure there are many options left. This year, I noticed that a lot more people recognised me and said hello. I guess that’s potentially because of the singing last year, but could also be because board elections can bring a fair bit of attention, and because of the effort I’ve put in through things like 24HOP... Yeah, ok. It’d be the singing. My approach was very different though. I was watching things through different eyes. I looked for the things that seemed to be working and the things that didn’t. I had staff there again, and was curious to know how their things were working out. I knew a lot more about what was going on behind the scenes to make various things happen, and although very little about the Summit was actually my responsibility (based on not having that portfolio), my perspective had moved considerably. Before the Summit started, Board Members had been given notebooks – an idea Tom (who heads up PASS’ marketing) had come up with after being inspired by seeing Bill walk around with a notebook. The plan was to take notes about feedback we got from people. It was a good thing, and the notebook forms a nice pair with the SQLBits one I got a couple of years ago when I last spoke there. I think one of the biggest impacts of this was that during the first keynote, Bill told everyone present about the notebooks. This set a tone of “we’re listening”, and a number of people were definitely keen to tell us things that would cause us to pull out our notebooks. PASSTV was a new thing this year. Justin, the host, featured on the couch and talked a lot of people about a lot of things, including me (he talked to me about a lot of things, I don’t think he talked to a lot people about me). Reaching people through online methods is something which interests me a lot – it has huge potential, and I love the idea of being able to broadcast to people who are unable to attend in person. I’m keen to see how this medium can be developed over time. People who know me will know that I’m a keen advocate of certification – I've been SQL certified since version 6.5, and have even been involved in creating exams. However, I don’t believe in studying for exams. I think training is worthwhile for learning new skills, but the goal should be on learning those skills, not on passing an exam. Exams should be for proving that the skills are there, not a goal in themselves. The PASS Summit is an excellent place to take exams though, and with an attitude of professional development throughout the event, why not? So I did. I wasn’t expecting to take one, but I was persuaded and took the MCM Knowledge Exam. I hadn’t even looked at the syllabus, but tried it anyway. I was very tired, and even fell asleep at one point during it. I’ll find out my result at some point in the future – the Prometric site just says “Tested” at the moment. As I said, it wasn’t something I was expecting to do, but it was good to have something unexpected during the week. Of course it was good to catch up with old friends and make new ones. I feel like every time I’m in the US I see things develop a bit more, with more and more people knowing who I am, who my staff are, and recognising the LobsterPot brand. I missed being a presenter, but I definitely enjoyed seeing many friends on the list of presenters. I won’t try to list them, because there are so many these days that people might feel sad if I don’t mention them. For those that I managed to see, I was pleased to see that the majority of them have lifted their presentation skills since I last saw them, and I happily told them as much. One person who I will mention was Paul White, who travelled from New Zealand to his first PASS Summit. He gave two sessions (a regular session and a half-day), packed large rooms of people, and had everyone buzzing with enthusiasm. I spoke to him after the event, and he told me that his expectations were blown away. Paul isn’t normally a fan of crowds, and the thought of 4000 people would have been scary. But he told me he had no idea that people would welcome him so well, be so friendly and so down to earth. He’s seen the significance of the SQL Server community, and says he’ll be back. It’ll be good to see him there. Will you be there too?

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• How do I turn on wireless adapter on HP Envy dv6 7200 under Ubuntu (any version)?

  - by Dave B.

  I have a new HP Envy dv6 7200 with dual boot Windows 8 / Ubuntu 12.04. In windows, the F12 key in Windows activates the "airplane mode" switch which enables/disables both on-board (mini PCIe) and USB wireless adapters. In Ubuntu, however, the wireless adapter is turned off by default and cannot be turned back on via the F12 key (or any other combination of F12 and Ctrl, Fn, Shift, etc.). Let me explain the "fixes" I've seen in various forums and explain what did or did not happen. These are listed in no particular order. (Spoiler alert: wireless is still broke). Solution 1? Use HP's "Wireless Assistant" utility to permanently activate the wireless card in Windows, then boot into Ubuntu to happily find it working. Unfortunately, this utility works in Windows 7 but not Windows 8. On the other hand, hardware drivers from HP are only available for Windows 8 for this model. Catch 22 (I could not find a comparable utility for Windows 8). Solution 2? Use a USB wireless adapter to sidestep the on-board device. I purchased such a device from thinkpenguin.com to be sure that it would be Linux-friendly. However, the wireless switch enables / disables all wireless devices including USB. So, there's my $50 donation to the nice folks at thinkpenguin.com, but still no solution. Solution 3? Following the Think Penguin folk's suggestion, modify the mini PCI express adapter following instructions here: http://www.notebookforums.com/t/225429/broken-wireless-hardware-switch-fix Tempting, but I then violate the terms of my warranty mere days after opening the box. This might be a good solution for an older machine that you want to get your geek on with, but not for a new box. Solution 4? rfkill unblock all No effect whatsoever. ubuntu@ubuntu-hp-evny:~$ rfkill unblock all ubuntu@ubuntu-hp-evny:~$ rfkill list all 0: hp-wifi: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: yes Solution 5? Re-install drivers. Done and done. Ubuntu recognizes the device - perhaps even without re-installing the drivers? - but cannot turn it on. How do I know this? In the Network Manager drop-down menu, the wireless option is blacked out and a message reads something like: "wireless network is disabled by a hardware switch". Solution 6? Identify a physical switch on the laptop and flip it. There is no such switch on this machine. In fact, walking through Best Buy yesterday, I checked and not a single new laptop PC had a physical switch on it. All of the wireless switches are either the F2 or F12 key ... I wonder if askubuntu will not be plagued by this exact issue in the near future? Additional info - lspci ubuntu@ubuntu-hp-evny:~$ lspci 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Ivy Bridge DRAM Controller (rev 09) 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Ivy Bridge PCI Express Root Port (rev 09) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Ivy Bridge Graphics Controller (rev 09) 00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point USB xHCI Host Controller (rev 04) 00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point MEI Controller #1 (rev 04) 00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 04) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Panther Point High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev c4) 00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 3 (rev c4) 00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 4 (rev c4) 00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 6 (rev c4) 00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 04) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point LPC Controller (rev 04) 00:1f.2 RAID bus controller: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile SATA Controller [RAID mode] (rev 04) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation Panther Point SMBus Controller (rev 04) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation Device 0de9 (rev a1) 08:00.0 Unassigned class [ff00]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Device 5229 (rev 01) 0a:00.0 Network controller: Ralink corp. Device 539b 0b:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 07) Any suggestions would be much appreciated!

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• Database Owner Conundrum

  - by Johnm

  Have you ever restored a database from a production environment on Server A into a development environment on Server B and had some items, such as Service Broker, mysteriously cease functioning? You might want to consider reviewing the database owner property of the database. The Scenario Recently, I was developing some messaging functionality that utilized the Service Broker feature of SQL Server in a development environment. Within the instance of the development environment resided two databases: One was a restored version of a production database that we will call "RestoreDB". The second database was a brand new database that has yet to exist in the production environment that we will call "DevDB". The goal is to setup a communication path between RestoreDB and DevDB that will later be implemented into the production database. After implementing all of the Service Broker objects that are required to communicate within a database as well as between two databases on the same instance I found myself a bit confounded. My testing was showing that the communication was successful when it was occurring internally within DevDB; but the communication between RestoreDB and DevDB did not appear to be working. Profiler to the rescue After carefully reviewing my code for any misspellings, missing commas or any other minor items that might be a syntactical cause of failure, I decided to launch Profiler to aid in the troubleshooting. After simulating the cross database messaging, I noticed the following error appearing in Profiler: An exception occurred while enqueueing a message in the target queue. Error: 33009, State: 2. The database owner SID recorded in the master database differs from the database owner SID recorded in database '[Database Name Here]'. You should correct this situation by resetting the owner of database '[Database Name Here]' using the ALTER AUTHORIZATION statement. Now, this error message is a helpful one. Not only does it identify the issue in plain language, it also provides a potential solution. An execution of the following query that utilizes the catalog view sys.transmission_queue revealed the same error message for each communication attempt: SELECT     * FROM        sys.transmission_queue; Seeing the situation as a learning opportunity I dove a bit deeper. Reviewing the database properties  The owner of a specific database can be easily viewed by right-clicking the database in SQL Server Management Studio and selecting the "properties" option. The owner is listed on the "General" page of the properties screen. In my scenario, the database in the production server was created by Frank the DBA; therefore his server login appeared as the owner: "ServerName\Frank". While this is interesting information, it certainly doesn't tell me much in regard to the SID (security identifier) and its existence, or lack thereof, in the master database as the error suggested. I pulled together the following query to gather more interesting information: SELECT     a.name     , a.owner_sid     , b.sid     , b.name     , b.type_desc FROM        master.sys.databases a     LEFT OUTER JOIN master.sys.server_principals b         ON a.owner_sid = b.sid WHERE     a.name not in ('master','tempdb','model','msdb'); This query also helped identify how many other user databases in the instance were experiencing the same issue. In this scenario, I saw that there were no matching SIDs in server_principals to the owner SID for my database. What login should be used as the database owner instead of Frank's? The system stored procedure sp_helplogins will provide a list of the valid logins that can be used. Here is an example of its use, revealing all available logins: EXEC sp_helplogins;  Fixing a hole The error message stated that the recommended solution was to execute the ALTER AUTHORIZATION statement. The full statement for this scenario would appear as follows: ALTER AUTHORIZATION ON DATABASE:: [Database Name Here] TO [Login Name]; Another option is to execute the following statement using the sp_changedbowner system stored procedure; but please keep in mind that this stored procedure has been deprecated and will likely disappear in future versions of SQL Server: EXEC dbo.sp_changedbowner @loginname = [Login Name]; .And They Lived Happily Ever After Upon changing the database owner to an existing login and simulating the inner and cross database messaging the errors have ceased. More importantly, all messages sent through this feature now successfully complete their journey. I have added the ownership change to my restoration script for the development environment.

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• Telerik Releases a new Visual Entity Designer

  Love LINQ to SQL but are concerned that it is a second class citizen? Need to connect to more databases other than SQL Server? Think that the Entity Framework is too complex? Want a domain model designer for data access that is easy, yet powerful? Then the Telerik Visual Entity Designer is for you. Built on top of Telerik OpenAccess ORM, a very mature and robust product, Teleriks Visual Entity Designer is a new way to build your domain model that is very powerful and also real easy to use. How easy? Ill show you here. First Look: Using the Telerik Visual Entity Designer To get started, you need to install the Telerik OpenAccess ORM Q1 release for Visual Studio 2008 or 2010. You dont need to use any of the Telerik OpenAccess wizards, designers, or using statements. Just right click on your project and select Add|New Item from the context menu. Choose Telerik OpenAccess Domain Model from the Visual Studio project templates. (Note to existing OpenAccess users, dont run the Enable ORM wizard or any other OpenAccess menu unless you are building OpenAccess Entities.) You will then have to specify the database backend (SQL Server, SQL Azure, Oracle, MySQL, etc) and connection. After you establish your connection, select the database objects you want to add to your domain model. You can also name your model, by default it will be NameofyourdatabaseEntityDiagrams. You can click finish here if you are comfortable, or tweak some advanced settings. Many users of domain models like to add prefixes and suffixes to classes, fields, and properties as well as handle pluralization. I personally accept the defaults, however, I hate how DBAs force underscores on me, so I click on the option to remove them. You can also tweak your namespace, mapping options, and define your own code generation template to gain further control over the outputted code. This is a very powerful feature, but for now, I will just accept the defaults.   When we click finish, you can see your domain model as a file with the .rlinq extension in the Solution Explorer. You can also bring up the visual designer to view or further tweak your model by double clicking on the model in the Solution Explorer.  Time to use the model! Writing a LINQ Query Programming against the domain model is very simple using LINQ. Just set a reference to the model (line 12 of the code below) and write a standard LINQ statement (lines 14-16).  (OpenAccess users: notice the you dont need any using statements for OpenAccess or an IObjectScope, just raw LINQ against your model.) 1: using System; 2: using System.Linq; 3: //no need for anOpenAccess using statement 4:   5: namespace ConsoleApplication3 6: { 7: class Program 8: { 9: static void Main(string[] args) 10: { 11: //a reference tothe data context 12: NorthwindEntityDiagrams dat = new NorthwindEntityDiagrams(); 13: //LINQ Statement 14: var result = from c in dat.Customers 15: where c.Country == "Germany" 16: select c; 17:   18: //Print out the company name 19: foreach (var cust in result) 20: { 21: Console.WriteLine("CompanyName: " + cust.CompanyName); 22: } 23: //keep the consolewindow open 24: Console.Read(); 25: } 26: } 27: } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Lines 19-24 loop through the result of our LINQ query and displays the results. Thats it! All of the super powerful features of OpenAccess are available to you to further enhance your experience, however, in most cases this is all you need. In future posts I will show how to use the Visual Designer with some other scenarios. Stay tuned. Enjoy! Technorati Tags: Telerik,OpenAccess,LINQ Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• RightNow CX @ OpenWorld: What to Experience

  - by Tony Berk

  We want to welcome our RightNow CX customers to Oracle OpenWorld next week. Get ready for a great week and a whole new experience! For a high level overview of what is going on during the week, please review these previous posts: Is There a Cloud Over OpenWorld? and What to "CRM" in San Francisco? CRM Highlights for OpenWorld '12. Also, don't forget you can add on the Customer Experience Summit @ OpenWorld to make your week even more complete and get involved with the Experience Revolution! Below is a highlight of only some of the RightNow related sessions at OpenWorld. Please use OpenWorld Schedule Builder or check the OpenWorld Content Catalog for all of the session details and any time or location changes. Tip: Pre-enrolled session registrants via Schedule Builder are allowed into the session rooms before anyone else, so Schedule Builder will guarantee you a seat. Many of the sessions below will likely be at capacity. No better way to start off than hearing where Oracle RightNow is going! Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service Vision and Roadmap (CON9764) - Oct 1, 10:45 AM. Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service combines Web, social, and contact center experiences for a unified, cross-channel service solution in the cloud, enabling organizations to increase sales and adoption, build trust, strengthen relationships, and reduce costs and effort. Come to this session to hear from David Vap and his team of Oracle experts about where the product is going and how Oracle is committed to accelerating the pace of innovation and value to its customers. Interested in the Cloud and want to know why some leading CIOs are moving to the cloud? You can hear first hand from CIOs from Emerson, Intuit and Overstock.com: CIOs and Governance in the Cloud (CON9767) - Oct 3, 11:45 AM.   And of course there are a number of sessions that drill down into more specific areas. Here are just a few: Deliver Outstanding Customer Experiences: Oracle RightNow Dynamic Agent Desktop Cloud Service (CON9771) - Oct 1, 4:45 PM. This session covers how companies have delivered exceptional customer experiences and how the Oracle RightNow Dynamic Agent Desktop Cloud Service roadmap will evolve in the future. The Oracle RightNow Contact Center Experience suite includes incident management, knowledge, guided processes, and other service capabilities to unify the customer experience across channels. Come learn about the powerful tools that enable even your junior agents to consistently provide outstanding service across all customer interaction channels. Self-Service in the Age of Data Intimacy (CON11516) - Oct 1, 3:15. Even though businesses are generating more and more data around their relationships and interactions with customers, very little of the information a business generates ends up available to the contact center and even less is made available to the online service experience. The generic one-size-fits-all approach that typifies most online service experiences ultimately fails to address all user needs, and that failure ultimately leads to the continued use of high-cost agent-assisted channels for low-value interactions. This session introduces Oracle RightNow Web Experience’s Virtual Assistant and discusses how you can deliver rich, engaging, highly personalized experiences with the quality of agent-assisted service at a much lower cost. Improve Chat Experiences: Best Practices for Chat Pilots and Deployments (CON11517) - Oct 1, 4:45 PM. Today’s organizations are challenged to grow revenue and retain customers with fewer resources, and many have turned to chat as an approach to improving the customer experience, increasing sales conversions, and reducing costs at the same time. From setting goals and metrics and training staff to customizing and tuning the solution, this session provides best practices and lessons learned from a broad set of implementations to help you get the most out of your chat solution. Differentiated Experience with Web Service (CON9770) - Oct 2, 1:15 PM. A reputation for excellent customer service can differentiate your brand and drive revenue. In this session, learn how to develop that reputation by transforming your online self-service into a highly interactive, branded customer experience. See live examples of how Oracle RightNow Web Experience has helped customers deliver on their Web service strategies. Unifying the Agent’s Engagement Console (CON11518) - Oct 2, 1:15 PM. Does your customer experience suffer because your agents are toggling between multiple tools? Do your agent productivity and morale suffer as well? Come to this session to learn how Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service seamlessly unifies these disparate systems into a single engagement console. Regardless of channel, powerful adaptive tools consistently guide agents across contextually aware personalized workflows. Great agent experiences drive great customer experiences. Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service and the Oracle Customer Experience Portfolio (CON9775) - Oct 3, 10:15 AM. This session covers how Oracle’s integrated suite of customer experience (CX) products fits with the Oracle CX portfolio of products (Oracle Fusion Customer Relationship Management; the Oracle ATG, Oracle Endeca, and Oracle Knowledge product families; and Oracle Business Intelligence) to increase revenues, strengthen customer relationships, and reduce costs across the entire end-to-end customer lifecycle for companies that sell to consumers and those that sell to businesses. Greater Insights from Customer Engagements (CON9773) Oct 4, 12:45 PM. In this session, hear how to leverage service interaction insights, customer feedback, and segmented service engagements to improve the customer experience. Discover how customers, such as J&P Cycles, learn and take action based on business insights gained through their customer engagements. Again, these are just some of the sessions, so check out the Content Catalog for details on Knowledge Management, Customization, Integration and more in the Oracle Develop stream for Customer Experience. Be sure to visit the Oracle DEMOgrounds in the Moscone West Exhibit Hall. If this is your first OpenWorld, welcome! If you are returning, hi again and enjoy!

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• Application Development: Python or Java (or PHP)

  - by luckysmack

  I'm looking to get into application development, such as Facebook or Android apps and games. I am doing this for fun and to learn. Once my skills are to par I would like to have some side income from the apps, but I'm not banking on living off that (just so you know where I'm coming from and know what my end goals are). Currently I know and am familiar with PHP and frameworks such as cakephp and yii. However, I have been wanting to learn another language to broaden my horizons and to become a better developer. So I have narrowed it down to 2 languages. Python, and Java (I can already hear people cringing at the difference in the languages I have chosen, but I have some reasons). Python: closer to PHP that Java. Cross platformability. Also great as a general scripting language and has many file system level benefits that PHP does not. Cleaner syntax, readability, blah blah and the list goed on. Python will work great for cross platform apps and can be run on many OS's and is supported by Facebook for app development. But there is no support on Android (for full fledged apps). Java: a much stronger typed language, very robust community and corporate backing. Knowing Java is also good for personal marketability for enterprises, if you're into that. The main benefit here is that Java can write apps natively for Android and the apps can be ported for web versions to play on Facebook. So while I have seen many developers prefer Java over the two, Java has this significant advantage, where I can market my apps in both markets and in the future build more potential income. But like I said it is for fun. While money isn't the goal, it would still be nice. PHP: I'm putting this here because I know it already, and I'm sure a case could be made for it. It obviously works great for Facebook but like Python does not do so well on android. While it's mostly the realm of 'application development' that appeals to me, I do find Android apps fairly interesting and something that has a ton of potential to. But then again Facebook has a ton more users and the apps can also potentially be more immersive (desktop vs. mobile). So this is why I'm kinda stuck on what route to choose. Python for Facebook and web apps, with likely faster development to production times, or Java which can be developed for any of the platforms to make apps. Side note: I'm not really trying to get into 3D development, mostly 2D. And I also want to make an app with real-time play (websockets, etc). Someone mentioned node, js to me for that but Python seems to be more globally versatile for my goals. So, to anyone that does Facebook or Android development in either language: what do you suggest? Any input is valuable and I do appreciate it. And sorry for being long winded. EDIT: as mentioned in one of the answers, my primary goal is gaming. Although I do have some plans for non gaming apps such as general web based and desktop based ones. But gaming is my main goal with the possibility of income. EDIT: Another consideration could be Jython. Writing Python code which is converted into Java bytecode. This would allow the ability to do Android apps using Python. I could be wrong though, I'm still looking into it. Update 1-26-11: I recently acquired a new job which required I learn .NET using C#. Im sure some of you are cringing already but I really like the whole system and how it all works together between desktop and web development. But, as I am still interested in Python very much, and after some research I have decided I will learn Python as well as the IronPython implementation for .NET. But (again: I know...) since .NET is mostly a Windows thing and not as cross-compatible as I like, I will be learning Mono which is a cross platform implementation of .NET where I can use what I learn at work using C# and what I want to learn, Python/IronPython. So while learning and writing C#/.NET @ work I will be learning Python - Mono - Iron Python for what I want to do personally. And the benefit of them all being very closely related will help me out a lot, I think. What do you guys think? I almost feel like that should be another question, but there's not much of a question. Either way, you guys gave very helpful input.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, December 01, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, December 01, 2012Popular ReleasesCleverBobCat: CleverBobCat 1.1.1: Fix for 1.1.1.0 - Energy usage on back drive -> fixed - Breaking energy recharge -> fixed - Not stopped when energy disabled -> fixed - Area transfer range -> fixeddcview: DCView 1.4.2: 1.4.0?? ??/??? ??11/29 ??? ??? ??? ?? ??? ??? ?? ???? ???? ?? ???? ?? ?? ?? ??? ?? ?? ??DirectQ: DirectQ II 2012-11-29: A (slightly) modernized port of Quake II to D3D9. You need SM3 or better hardware to run this - if you don't have it, then don't even bother. It should work on Windows Vista, 7 or 8; it may also work on XP but I haven't tested. Known bugs include: Some mods may not work. This is unfortunately due to the nature of Quake II's game DLLs; sometimes a recompile of the game DLL is all that's needed. In any event, ensure that the game DLL is compatible with the last release of Quake II first (...Magelia WebStore Open-source Ecommerce software: Magelia WebStore 2.2: new UI for the Administration console Bugs fixes and improvement version 2.2.215.3JayData - The cross-platform HTML5 data-management library for JavaScript: JayData 1.2.5: What's new in JayData 1.2.5For detailed release notes check the release notes. Handlebars template engine supportImplement data manager applications with JayData using Handlebars.js for templating. Include JayDataModules/handlebars.js and begin typing the mustaches :) Blogpost: Handlebars templates in JayData Handlebars helpers and model driven commanding in JayData Easy JayStorm cloud data managementManage cloud data using the same syntax and data management concept just like any other data ...nopCommerce. Open source shopping cart (ASP.NET MVC): nopcommerce 2.70: Highlight features & improvements: • Performance optimization. • Search engine optimization. ID-less URLs for products, categories, and manufacturers. • Added ACL support (access control list) on products and categories. • Minify and bundle JavaScript files. • Allow a store owner to decide which billing/shipping address fields are enabled/disabled/required (like it's already done for the registration page). • Moved to MVC 4 (.NET 4.5 is required). • Now Visual Studio 2012 is required to work ...SQL Server Partition Management: Partition Management Release 3.0: Release 3.0 adds support for SQL Server 2012 and is backward compatible with SQL Server 2008 and 2005. The release consists of: • A Readme file • The Executable • The source code (Visual Studio project) Enhancements include: -- Support for Columnstore indexes in SQL Server 2012 -- Ability to create TSQL scripts for staging table and index creation operations -- Full support for global date and time formats, locale independent -- Support for binary partitioning column types -- Fixes to is...Command Line Parser Library: 1.9.3.23 beta: Fixes an issue notified by github user sbambrick about parsing negative numbers.MCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.3.10: Critical Update to 2.3.9: Changelog for 2.3.10 (32bit and 64bit) 1. AsfBin executable missing from build 2. Removed extra references from build to avoid conflict 3. Showanalyzer installation now checked on remote engine machine Changelog for 2.3.9 (32bit and 64bit) 1. Added support for WTV output profile 2. Added support for minimizing MCEBuddy to the system tray 3. Added support for custom archive folder 4. Added support to disable subdirectory monitoring 5. Added support for better TS fil...DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 07.00.00: Major Highlights Fixed issue that caused profiles of deleted users to be available Removed the postback after checkboxes are selected in Page Settings > Taxonomy Implemented the functionality required to edit security role names and social group names Fixed JavaScript error when using a ";" semicolon as a profile property Fixed issue when using DateTime properties in profiles Fixed viewstate error when using Facebook authentication in conjunction with "require valid profile fo...CODE Framework: 4.0.21128.0: See change notes in the documentation section for details on what's new.Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.76: Fixed a typo in ObjectLiteralProperty.IsConstant that caused all object literals to be treated like they were constants, and possibly moved around in the code when they shouldn't be.Kooboo CMS: Kooboo CMS 3.3.0: New features: Dropdown/Radio/Checkbox Lists no longer references the userkey. Instead they refer to the UUID field for input value. You can now delete, export, import content from database in the site settings. Labels can now be imported and exported. You can now set the required password strength and maximum number of incorrect login attempts. Child sites can inherit plugins from its parent sites. The view parameter can be changed through the page_context.current value. Addition of c...Distributed Publish/Subscribe (Pub/Sub) Event System: Distributed Pub Sub Event System Version 3.0: Important Wsp 3.0 is NOT backward compatible with Wsp 2.1. Prerequisites You need to install the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package. You can find it at: x64 http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=14632x86 http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=5555 Wsp now uses Rx (Reactive Extensions) and .Net 4.0 3.0 Enhancements I changed the topology from a hierarchy to peer-to-peer groups. This should provide much greater scalability and more fault-resi...datajs - JavaScript Library for data-centric web applications: datajs version 1.1.0: datajs is a cross-browser and UI agnostic JavaScript library that enables data-centric web applications with the following features: OData client that enables CRUD operations including batching and metadata support using both ATOM and JSON payloads. Single store abstraction that provides a common API on top of HTML5 local storage technologies. Data cache component that allows reading data ranges from a collection and storing them locally to reduce the number of network requests. Changes...Team Foundation Server Administration Tool: 2.2: TFS Administration Tool 2.2 supports the Team Foundation Server 2012 Object Model. Visual Studio 2012 or Team Explorer 2012 must be installed before you can install this tool. You can download and install Team Explorer 2012 from http://aka.ms/TeamExplorer2012. There are no functional changes between the previous release (2.1) and this release.Coding Guidelines for C# 3.0, C# 4.0 and C# 5.0: Coding Guidelines for CSharp 3.0, 4.0 and 5.0: See Change History for a detailed list of modifications.Math.NET Numerics: Math.NET Numerics v2.3.0: Portable Library Build: Adds support for WP8 (.Net 4.0 and higher, SL5, WP8 and .NET for Windows Store apps) New: portable build also for F# extensions (.Net 4.5, SL5 and .NET for Windows Store apps) NuGet: portable builds are now included in the main packages, no more need for special portable packages Linear Algebra: Continued major storage rework, in this release focusing on vectors (previous release was on matrices) Thin QR decomposition (in addition to existing full QR) Static Cr...ExtJS based ASP.NET 2.0 Controls: FineUI v3.2.1: +2012-11-25 v3.2.1 +????????。 -MenuCheckBox?CheckedChanged??????，??????????。 -???????window.IDS??????????????。 -?????（??TabCollection，ControlBaseCollection）???，????????????????。 +Grid??。 -??SelectAllRows??。 -??PageItems??，?????????????，?????、??、?????。 -????grid/gridpageitems.aspx、grid/gridpageitemsrowexpander.aspx、grid/gridpageitems_pagesize.aspx。 -???????????????????。 -??ExpandAllRowExpanders??，?????????????????（grid/gridrowexpanderexpandall2.aspx）。 -??????ExpandRowExpande...VidCoder: 1.4.9 Beta: Updated HandBrake core to SVN 5079. Fixed crashes when encoding DVDs with title gaps.New Projects4SQH: FourSQHackathon project repositoryASP4 Portscan: A online portscan deployed with ASP and PerlscriptAviSynth language service for Visual Studio: This project provides a Visual Studio language extension for the AviSynth scripting language. AviSynth is a scripted frameserver for video post-production and can be found at http://avisynth.orgBuildSlip: GUI interface application for creating slipsteam files (service pack and/or cumulative update) for SQL2008 installationC#apture the Flag AI: C#apture the Flag AI is a project designed to enable C# support for the excellent AI competition being held at http://aisandbox.com.Channel Performing (Windows Azure Media Service Example): Windows Azure Media Service solution example and portal + Tag + Comment + Search + Membership + Progress List + and other featuresCivilinsation: C# DLL C++ Wrapper Swig Civilization INSA de RENNES Département Informatique 4INFOClickOnceSxquer: awesome Combinator CoffeeScript Preprocessor: CoffeeScript preprocessor for the Combinator Orchard module (https://combinator.codeplex.com/).DineshTest: aDirectoryEnumeratorAsync: Proof of concept for using .NET 4.5 async/await for improving performance enumeration of of file system entries.Grahpic_Salon: It's a test web project.jQuery.gMenu: test projectLIve For Speed Statistics: UskoroMIDI.NET: MIDI.NET allows any .NET developer to access the power of MIDI without doing P/Invokes.Olympia Open College: AACS4134Peto: A college project for a claims submission application.QueuedSmtpClient: A C# library that provides an smtp client built on top of the standard SmtpClient class which is able to serialize email messages if no network connection is available. Serialized emails are sent later if a network connection is available.Simple Merge Sort: This is a simple implementation of Merge-Sort, using to sort an Array of Integers.Simple.Json: Easy to use framework for serializing to and from json. Supports typed dto objects, dynamic dto objects and immutable dto types like F# record types.Sosyal: Sosyal as.teamgujju: This Project is now in planing phase. It will be released shortlyTFS Branch Permission Removal Event Subscriber: When you create a branch in TFS, the explicit TFS source control permissions from the source branch are copied to the target branch. Let's change that...Wild Template: Simple template engine for .NETXNA in WPF: WPF Canvas component that allows hosting and presentation of an XNA window from within WPF applications. ZombieSurvival: Yo-ho-ho and the buttle og rum

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• Computer Networks UNISA - Chap 15 &ndash; Network Management

  - by MarkPearl

  After reading this section you should be able to Understand network management and the importance of documentation, baseline measurements, policies, and regulations to assess and maintain a network’s health. Manage a network’s performance using SNMP-based network management software, system and event logs, and traffic-shaping techniques Identify the reasons for and elements of an asset managements system Plan and follow regular hardware and software maintenance routines Fundamentals of Network Management Network management refers to the assessment, monitoring, and maintenance of all aspects of a network including checking for hardware faults, ensuring high QoS, maintaining records of network assets, etc. Scope of network management differs depending on the size and requirements of the network. All sub topics of network management share the goals of enhancing the efficiency and performance while preventing costly downtime or loss. Documentation The way documentation is stored may vary, but to adequately manage a network one should at least record the following… Physical topology (types of LAN and WAN topologies – ring, star, hybrid) Access method (does it use Ethernet 802.3, token ring, etc.) Protocols Devices (Switches, routers, etc) Operating Systems Applications Configurations (What version of operating system and config files for serve / client software) Baseline Measurements A baseline is a report of the network’s current state of operation. Baseline measurements might include the utilization rate for your network backbone, number of users logged on per day, etc. Baseline measurements allow you to compare future performance increases or decreases caused by network changes or events with past network performance. Obtaining baseline measurements is the only way to know for certain whether a pattern of usage has changed, or whether a network upgrade has made a difference. There are various tools available for measuring baseline performance on a network. Policies, Procedures, and Regulations Following rules helps limit chaos, confusion, and possibly downtime. The following policies and procedures and regulations make for sound network management. Media installations and management (includes designing physical layout of cable, etc.) Network addressing policies (includes choosing and applying a an addressing scheme) Resource sharing and naming conventions (includes rules for logon ID’s) Security related policies Troubleshooting procedures Backup and disaster recovery procedures In addition to internal policies, a network manager must consider external regulatory rules. Fault and Performance Management After documenting every aspect of your network and following policies and best practices, you are ready to asses you networks status on an on going basis. This process includes both performance management and fault management. Network Management Software To accomplish both fault and performance management, organizations often use enterprise-wide network management software. There various software packages that do this, each collect data from multiple networked devices at regular intervals, in a process called polling. Each managed device runs a network management agent. So as not to affect the performance of a device while collecting information, agents do not demand significant processing resources. The definition of a managed devices and their data are collected in a MIB (Management Information Base). Agents communicate information about managed devices via any of several application layer protocols. On modern networks most agents use SNMP which is part of the TCP/IP suite and typically runs over UDP on port 161. Because of the flexibility and sophisticated network management applications are a challenge to configure and fine-tune. One needs to be careful to only collect relevant information and not cause performance issues (i.e. pinging a device every 5 seconds can be a problem with thousands of devices). MRTG (Multi Router Traffic Grapher) is a simple command line utility that uses SNMP to poll devices and collects data in a log file. MRTG can be used with Windows, UNIX and Linux. System and Event Logs Virtually every condition recognized by an operating system can be recorded. This is typically done using event logs. In Windows there is a GUI event log viewer. Similar information is recorded in UNIX and Linux in a system log. Much of the information collected in event logs and syslog files does not point to a problem, even if it is marked with a warning so it is important to filter your logs appropriately to reduce the noise. Traffic Shaping When a network must handle high volumes of network traffic, users benefit from performance management technique called traffic shaping. Traffic shaping involves manipulating certain characteristics of packets, data streams, or connections to manage the type and amount of traffic traversing a network or interface at any moment. Its goals are to assure timely delivery of the most important traffic while offering the best possible performance for all users. Several types of traffic prioritization exist including prioritizing traffic according to any of the following characteristics… Protocol IP address User group DiffServr VLAN tag in a Data Link layer frame Service or application Caching In addition to traffic shaping, a network or host might use caching to improve performance. Caching is the local storage of frequently needed files that would otherwise be obtained from an external source. By keeping files close to the requester, caching allows the user to access those files quickly. The most common type of caching is Web caching, in which Web pages are stored locally. To an ISP, caching is much more than just convenience. It prevents a significant volume of WAN traffic, thus improving performance and saving money. Asset Management Another key component in managing networks is identifying and tracking its hardware. This is called asset management. The first step to asset management is to take an inventory of each node on the network. You will also want to keep records of every piece of software purchased by your organization. Asset management simplifies maintaining and upgrading the network chiefly because you know what the system includes. In addition, asset management provides network administrators with information about the costs and benefits of certain types of hardware or software. Change Management Networks are always in a stage of flux with various aspects including… Software changes and patches Client Upgrades Shared Application Upgrades NOS Upgrades Hardware and Physical Plant Changes Cabling Upgrades Backbone Upgrades For a detailed explanation on each of these read the textbook (Page 750 – 761)

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• Converting LINQ to Twitter to Twitter API v1.1

  - by Joe Mayo

  Twitter recently updated their API to v1.1 (Current status: API v1.1). Naturally, LINQ to Twitter  needed to be updated too. This blog post outlines the changes made to LINQ to Twitter during this conversion and highlights important features that LINQ to Twitter developers will want to know. Overall Impact Generally speaking, Twitter API v1.1 is semantically very much the same as it’s predecessor. The base URL changed and so did a few resource segments, but the resources themselves are still intact. The good news is that LINQ to Twitter has always shielded the developer from this plumbing, so the entities, types, and filters didn’t change much at all.  The following sections describe what did  change. Authentication In Twitter API v1.0 authentication was not required for some resources, such as user timelines and search. However, that’s all changed because *all* queries must be authenticated in Twitter API v1.1. LINQ to Twitter has various types of authorizers you can use, supporting whatever OAuth options are available via Twitter.  You can see the LINQ to Twitter documentation, Securing Your Applications, for more info on OAuth support. The New Search One of the larger changes to the API was Search. To be more specific, the Search entity now contains a List<Status>, named Statuses, to hold results.  Additionally, any meta-data associated with the search is now in a property named SearchMetaData. The change to the Search entity and responses is the big change, but the good news is that your Search query syntax doesn’t change. Different Rate Limits The issue of rate limits itself is contentious, but this discussion is focused on the coding experience and I’ll leave the politics to those who prefer to engage in that activity. What’s important here is that both headers and resources have changed. You should review Twitter’s Rate Limit documentation to understand what the changes mean.  A quick explanation is that rate limits are applied individually to each resource in 15 minute time intervals. In LINQ to Twitter these changes surface on the Help entity, via HelpType.RateLimits. The RateLimits query has a Resources filter where you can specify a comma-separated list of categories to return rate limit info for.  The results materialize in the RateLimits dictionary, keyed on category. The Help entity also has a RateLimitsAuthorizationContext, holding the Access Token for the user performing queries – and to whom the rate limits apply. In addition to the new RateLimits query, there are new RateLimit headers that appear in the query response, whose HTTP header name is of the form X-Rate-Limit… which is different from the previous header name. LINQ to Twitter surfaces these headers via the existing properties of the TwitterContext instance. For anyone who retrieved rate limit information via the Headers property of TwitterContext, you should be aware of the new header names.  I haven’t done anything with Feature rate limit properties yet, but they appear to no longer be available – this will require more follow-up. Error Handling Twitter API v1.1 has a new format for Error Codes & Responses. LINQ to Twitter wraps these messages in the TwitterQueryException, which has been updated appropriately. The Message property of TwitterQueryException now reflects the Twitter error message, when available. There’s also a new ErrorCode that’s populated with the message error code. Parameters Most parameters stayed the same, but one of interest is Include Entities (different from LINQ to Twitter data object entities). Entities are metadata hanging off tweets, that provide start/end position in the tweet and other information for mentions, urls, hash tags, and media. Entities used to not be included unless you specified you wanted them. Now, in v1.1, entities are included by default for all APIs that return a Status.  If you were always setting IncludeEntities to true, then you won’t see a change. However, be aware that you’ll now be receiving additional data in your response from Twitter, which will explain a sudden increase in bandwidth utilization. This might or might not  matter to you  depending on the requirements of your application, but you should be aware of it. Everything Else There might be small changes here and there that I haven’t mentioned, but these were the ones you should be most aware of.  Streams didn’t change, but Twitter will be deprecating username/password authentication on public streams, in favor of OAuth, so you’ll be seeing me make that change some time in the future.  Also, Twitter will continue to evolve the API and you can expect that LINQ to Twitter will change accordingly. Summary The big changes to Twitter API were Authentication, Search, Rate Limits, and Error Handling. All API calls must be authenticated. You’ll need to change your code to read Search results differently, but the query is much the same as you use now. There’s a new RateLimits API, one of the Help queries.  Also, the new error messages are integrated into TwitterQueryException. Besides these changes, I expect  most others to be small or affect a smaller percentage of developers.  You can get the latest version of LINQ to Twitter from NuGet or visit the LINQ to Twitter download page at CodePlex.com.   @JoeMayo

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• .NET Security Part 4

  - by Simon Cooper

  Finally, in this series, I am going to cover some of the security issues that can trip you up when using sandboxed appdomains. DISCLAIMER: I am not a security expert, and this is by no means an exhaustive list. If you actually are writing security-critical code, then get a proper security audit of your code by a professional. The examples below are just illustrations of the sort of things that can go wrong. 1. AppDomainSetup.ApplicationBase The most obvious one is the issue covered in the MSDN documentation on creating a sandbox, in step 3 – the sandboxed appdomain has the same ApplicationBase as the controlling appdomain. So let’s explore what happens when they are the same, and an exception is thrown. In the sandboxed assembly, Sandboxed.dll (IPlugin is an interface in a partially-trusted assembly, with a single MethodToDoThings on it): public class UntrustedPlugin : MarshalByRefObject, IPlugin { // implements IPlugin.MethodToDoThings() public void MethodToDoThings() { throw new EvilException(); } } [Serializable] internal class EvilException : Exception { public override string ToString() { // show we have read access to C:\Windows // read the first 5 directories Console.WriteLine("Pwned! Mwuahahah!"); foreach (var d in Directory.EnumerateDirectories(@"C:\Windows").Take(5)) { Console.WriteLine(d.FullName); } return base.ToString(); } } And in the controlling assembly: // what can possibly go wrong? AppDomainSetup appDomainSetup = new AppDomainSetup { ApplicationBase = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.SetupInformation.ApplicationBase } // only grant permissions to execute // and to read the application base, nothing else PermissionSet restrictedPerms = new PermissionSet(PermissionState.None); restrictedPerms.AddPermission( new SecurityPermission(SecurityPermissionFlag.Execution)); restrictedPerms.AddPermission( new FileIOPermission(FileIOPermissionAccess.Read, appDomainSetup.ApplicationBase); restrictedPerms.AddPermission( new FileIOPermission(FileIOPermissionAccess.pathDiscovery, appDomainSetup.ApplicationBase); // create the sandbox AppDomain sandbox = AppDomain.CreateDomain("Sandbox", null, appDomainSetup, restrictedPerms); // execute UntrustedPlugin in the sandbox // don't crash the application if the sandbox throws an exception IPlugin o = (IPlugin)sandbox.CreateInstanceFromAndUnwrap("Sandboxed.dll", "UntrustedPlugin"); try { o.MethodToDoThings() } catch (Exception e) { Console.WriteLine(e.ToString()); } And the result? Oops. We’ve allowed a class that should be sandboxed to execute code with fully-trusted permissions! How did this happen? Well, the key is the exact meaning of the ApplicationBase property: The application base directory is where the assembly manager begins probing for assemblies. When EvilException is thrown, it propagates from the sandboxed appdomain into the controlling assembly’s appdomain (as it’s marked as Serializable). When the exception is deserialized, the CLR finds and loads the sandboxed dll into the fully-trusted appdomain. Since the controlling appdomain’s ApplicationBase directory contains the sandboxed assembly, the CLR finds and loads the assembly into a full-trust appdomain, and the evil code is executed. So the problem isn’t exactly that the sandboxed appdomain’s ApplicationBase is the same as the controlling appdomain’s, it’s that the sandboxed dll was in such a place that the controlling appdomain could find it as part of the standard assembly resolution mechanism. The sandbox then forced the assembly to load in the controlling appdomain by throwing a serializable exception that propagated outside the sandbox. The easiest fix for this is to keep the sandbox ApplicationBase well away from the ApplicationBase of the controlling appdomain, and don’t allow the sandbox permissions to access the controlling appdomain’s ApplicationBase directory. If you do this, then the sandboxed assembly can’t be accidentally loaded into the fully-trusted appdomain, and the code can’t be executed. If the plugin does try to induce the controlling appdomain to load an assembly it shouldn’t, a SerializationException will be thrown when it tries to load the assembly to deserialize the exception, and no damage will be done. 2. Loading the sandboxed dll into the application appdomain As an extension of the previous point, you shouldn’t directly reference types or methods in the sandboxed dll from your application code. That loads the assembly into the fully-trusted appdomain, and from there code in the assembly could be executed. Instead, pull out methods you want the sandboxed dll to have into an interface or class in a partially-trusted assembly you control, and execute methods via that instead (similar to the example above with the IPlugin interface). If you need to have a look at the assembly before executing it in the sandbox, either examine the assembly using reflection from within the sandbox, or load the assembly into the Reflection-only context in the application’s appdomain. The code in assemblies in the reflection-only context can’t be executed, it can only be reflected upon, thus protecting your appdomain from malicious code. 3. Incorrectly asserting permissions You should only assert permissions when you are absolutely sure they’re safe. For example, this method allows a caller read-access to any file they call this method with, including your documents, any network shares, the C:\Windows directory, etc: [SecuritySafeCritical] public static string GetFileText(string filePath) { new FileIOPermission(FileIOPermissionAccess.Read, filePath).Assert(); return File.ReadAllText(filePath); } Be careful when asserting permissions, and ensure you’re not providing a loophole sandboxed dlls can use to gain access to things they shouldn’t be able to. Conclusion Hopefully, that’s given you an idea of some of the ways it’s possible to get past the .NET security system. As I said before, this post is not exhaustive, and you certainly shouldn’t base any security-critical applications on the contents of this blog post. What this series should help with is understanding the possibilities of the security system, and what all the security attributes and classes mean and what they are used for, if you were to use the security system in the future.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, January 30, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, January 30, 2011Popular ReleasesWPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.0.0.3: Version: 2.0.0.3 (Milestone 3): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Remark The sample applications are using Microsoft’s IoC container MEF. However, the WPF Application Framework (WAF) doesn’t force you to use the same IoC container in your application. You can use ...Rawr: Rawr 4.0.17 Beta: Rawr is now web-based. The link to use Rawr4 is: http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.phpThis is the Cataclysm Beta Release. More details can be found at the following link http://rawr.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=237262 and on the Version Notes page: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes As of the 4.0.16 release, you can now also begin using the new Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!This is a pre-alpha release of the WPF version, there are likely to be a lot of issues. If you...VivoSocial: VivoSocial 7.4.2: Version 7.4.2 of VivoSocial has been released. If you experienced any issues with the previous version, please update your modules to the 7.4.2 release and see if they persist. If you have any questions about this release, please post them in our Support forums. If you are experiencing a bug or would like to request a new feature, please submit it to our issue tracker. Web Controls * Updated Business Objects and added a new SQL Data Provider File. Groups * Fixed a security issue whe...PHP Manager for IIS: PHP Manager 1.1.1 for IIS 7: This is a minor release of PHP Manager for IIS 7. It contains all the functionality available in 56962 plus several bug fixes (see change list for more details). Also, this release includes Russian language support. SHA1 codes for the downloads are: PHPManagerForIIS-1.1.0-x86.msi - 6570B4A8AC8B5B776171C2BA0572C190F0900DE2 PHPManagerForIIS-1.1.0-x64.msi - 12EDE004EFEE57282EF11A8BAD1DC1ADFD66A654VFPX: VFP2C32 2.0.0.8 Release Candidate: This release includes several bugfixes, new functions and finally a CHM help file for the complete library.EnhSim: EnhSim 2.3.3 ALPHA: 2.3.3 ALPHAThis release supports WoW patch 4.06 at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Added back in a p...DB>doc for Microsoft SQL Server: 1.0.0.0: Initial release Supported output HTML WikiPlex markup Raw XML Supported objects Tables Primary Keys Foreign Keys ViewsmojoPortal: 2.3.6.1: see release notes on mojoportal.com http://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2361-released.aspx Note that we have separate deployment packages for .NET 3.5 and .NET 4.0 The deployment package downloads on this page are pre-compiled and ready for production deployment, they contain no C# source code. To download the source code see the Source Code Tab I recommend getting the latest source code using TortoiseHG, you can get the source code corresponding to this release here.Office Web.UI: Alpha preview: This is the first alpha release. Very exciting moment... This download is just the demo application : "Contoso backoffice Web App". No source included for the moment, just the app, for testing purposes and for feedbacks !! This package includes a set of official MS Office icons (143 png 16x16 and 132 png 32x32) to really make a great app ! Please rate and give feedback ThanksParallel Programming with Microsoft Visual C++: Drop 6 - Chapters 4 and 5: This is Drop 6. It includes: Drafts of the Preface, Introduction, Chapters 2-7, Appendix B & C and the glossary Sample code for chapters 2-7 and Appendix A & B. The new material we'd like feedback on is: Chapter 4 - Parallel Aggregation Chapter 5 - Futures The source code requires Visual Studio 2010 in order to run. There is a known bug in the A-Dash sample when the user attempts to cancel a parallel calculation. We are working to fix this.Catel - WPF and Silverlight MVVM library: 1.1: (+) Styles can now be changed dynamically, see Examples application for a how-to (+) ViewModelBase class now have a constructor that allows services injection (+) ViewModelBase services can now be configured by IoC (via Microsoft.Unity) (+) All ViewModelBase services now have a unit test implementation (+) Added IProcessService to run processes from a viewmodel with directly using the process class (which makes it easier to unit test view models) (*) If the HasErrors property of DataObjec...NodeXL: Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel: NodeXL Excel Template, version 1.0.1.160: The NodeXL Excel template displays a network graph using edge and vertex lists stored in an Excel 2007 or Excel 2010 workbook. What's NewThis release improves NodeXL's Twitter and Pajek features. See the Complete NodeXL Release History for details. Installation StepsFollow these steps to install and use the template: Download the Zip file. Unzip it into any folder. Use WinZip or a similar program, or just right-click the Zip file in Windows Explorer and select "Extract All." Close Ex...Kooboo CMS: Kooboo CMS 3.0 CTP: Files in this downloadkooboo_CMS.zip: The kooboo application files Content_DBProvider.zip: Additional content database implementation of MSSQL, RavenDB and SQLCE. Default is XML based database. To use them, copy the related dlls into web root bin folder and remove old content provider dlls. Content provider has the name like "Kooboo.CMS.Content.Persistence.SQLServer.dll" View_Engines.zip: Supports of Razor, webform and NVelocity view engine. Copy the dlls into web root bin folder to enable...UOB & ME: UOB ME 2.6: UOB ME 2.6????: ???? V1.0: ???? V1.0 ??Password Generator: 2.2: Parallel password generation Password strength calculation ( Same method used by Microsoft here : https://www.microsoft.com/protect/fraud/passwords/checker.aspx ) Minor code refactoringVisual Studio 2010 Architecture Tooling Guidance: Spanish - Architecture Guidance: Francisco Fagas http://geeks.ms/blogs/ffagas, Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP), localized the Visual Studio 2010 Quick Reference Guidance for the Spanish communities, based on http://vsarchitectureguide.codeplex.com/releases/view/47828. Release Notes The guidance is available in a xps-only (default) or complete package. The complete package contains the files in xps, pdf and Office 2007 formats. 2011-01-24 Publish version 1.0 of the Spanish localized bits.ASP.NET MVC Project Awesome, jQuery Ajax helpers (controls): 1.6.2: A rich set of helpers (controls) that you can use to build highly responsive and interactive Ajax-enabled Web applications. These helpers include Autocomplete, AjaxDropdown, Lookup, Confirm Dialog, Popup Form, Popup and Pager the html generation has been optimized, the html page size is much smaller nowFacebook Graph Toolkit: Facebook Graph Toolkit 0.6: new Facebook Graph objects: Application, Page, Post, Comment Improved Intellisense documentation new Graph Api connections: albums, photos, posts, feed, home, friends JSON Toolkit upgraded to version 0.9 (beta release) with bug fixes and new features bug fixed: error when handling empty JSON arrays bug fixed: error when handling JSON array with square or large brackets in the message bug fixed: error when handling JSON obejcts with double quotation in the message bug fixed: erro...Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework: Visual Studio 2008 Code Samples 2011-01-23: Code samples for Visual Studio 2008New ProjectsAnaida - WebSocket Client/Adapter: Anaida is a WebSocket Client Library/Adapter. With 3 versions for Java, Silverlight and C#CutPasteAssign: Visual Studio extension to assist in the common refactoring of assigning parameters to local variables.Drori Photos: Photos of Drori the photographerD-Solution: App de D-SolutionEnigma Home Inventory: Most consumers do not have an itemized list of proof of ownership. Enigma Home Inventory may take the hassle out of arguing with the insurance companies. This project is aimed to be for a simple inventory program for end users who are not computer savvy.FastKnow: is a CMS & wikiFileSignatures: FileSignatures aims to create a class library that can identify the file format based on file contents. The project is written in C# 3.0, and can be used in .NET 3.5 and 4.0 projects.Genrsis: The aim of the Genrsis project is to be a suite of products that you can use to build things, starting with a workflow-based project management tool. Built in C#, it should be a one-stop place to get well-integrated products to get you up and running.MVC Demos: MVC 2 and MVC 3 examples with ajax and json.MVC Templates for DevExpress: Scaffolding templates for use in ASP.NET MVC 2 with DevExpress MVC Extensions for ASP.NET MVCPixel Replacer: The Pixel Replacer is a simple library for replacing pixel colors with a new color, by setting a filter rule.ReviewPal - The Code Review Companion for .Net.: ReviewPal, the Code Review Companion for .Net. This is an Add-In / Extension for Visual Studio 2008 & Visual Studio 2010. The aim of the Add-In / Extension is to do a source code review within the Visual Studio IDE where code makes more sense and most readable.SMVector3: Vector3 class implemented as float array or with SIMD instructions with the same interface so it is transparant whether you decide to use one version or another. You can also chance version during the life cycle of the projects.uRibbon - Office 2007 Ribbon control for VB.NET: Office 2007 ribbon control, with Orb and graphic transitions. After searching for many day looking for an Office 2007-like ribbon bar, I finally gave up and decided to write my own. It's in decent shape as-is. But anyone interested in helping me to continue the devlopment??vtcheck: This will read a target binary and check to see if it is detected by VirusTotal.Web Scheduled Task Framework: A simple set of classes intended to allow the standalone scheduling of tasks (arbitrary code to execute) on a .net website without requiring access to the operating system.WP7 codeproject app: A Windows Phone 7 app for browsing codeproject.com.zhongjh: ?????????，???????。???????????: ???????????

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• Disaster Recovery Discovery

  - by Rodney Landrum

  Last weekend I joined several of my IT staff on a mission to perform a DR test in our remote CoLo center in a large South East city of the US. Can I be more obtuse? The goal was simple for me as the sole DBA in a throng of Windows, Storage, Network and SAN admins – restore the databases and make them work. There were 4 applications that back ended to 7 SQL Server databases on 4 different SQL Server instances. We would maintain the original server names, but beyond that it was fair game. We had time to prepare so I was able to script out or otherwise automate the recovery process. I used sp_help_revlogin for three of the servers, a bit of a cheat actually because restoring the Master database on the target DR servers was the specified course of action according to the DR procedures ( the caveat “IF REQUIRED” left it open to interpretation. I really wanted to avoid the step of restoring Master for a number of reasons but mainly because I did not want to deal with issues starting SQL Services afterward. Having to account for the location of TempDB and the version conflicts of the resource DBs were just two of the battles I chose not to fight. Not to mention other system database location problems that might arise and prevent SQL from starting.  I was going to have to restore all of the user databases anyway, so I would not really gain any benefit, outside of logins, for taking the time to restore the source Master database over the newly installed one on the fresh server. What I wanted was the ability to restore the Master database as a user database, call it Master_Mine, from a backup on the source system and then use that restored database to script the SQL Logins and passwords on the DR systems. While I did not attempt this on the trip, the thought stuck in my mind and this past week I succeeded at scripting user accounts and passwords using only a restored copy of the Master database. Granted there were several challenges to overcome.  Also, as is usual for any work like this the usual disclaimers apply:  This is not something that I would imagine Microsoft would condone or support and this was really only an experiment for me to learn if it was even possible. While I have tested the process with success, I do not know that I would use this technique in a documented procedure because future updates for SQL Server will render this technique non-functional. I thought at first, incorrectly of course, that I could use sp_help_revlogin on a restored copy of the master database I named Master_Mine.   Since sp_help_revlogin uses system schema objects, sys.syslogins and sys.server_principals, this was not going to work because all results would come from the main Master database. To test this I added a SQL login via SSMS, backed up Master, restored  it as Master_Mine, and then deleted the login.  Even though the test account I created should presumably still be in the Master_Mine database, I should be able to get to it and script out its creation with its password hash so that I would not need to know the password, but any applications that stored that password would not have to be altered in the DR scenario. They would just work as expected. Once I realized that would not work I began looking deeper.  Knowing that sys.syslogins and sys.server_principals are system views, their underlying code should be available with sp_helptext, right? They were. And this led me to discover the two tables sys.sysxlgns and sys.sysprivs, where the data I needed was stored. These tables existed in both the real Master and the restored copy, Master_Mine.  I used this information to tweak the sp_help_revlogin stored procedure to use these tables instead to create the logins cursor used in sp_help_revlogin. For the password hash,  sp_help_revlogin uses the function LoginProperty() which takes a user name and option ‘passwordhash’ to return the hash for the user. Unfortunately, it requires the login to exist in the Master database. This would not work. So another slight modification I had to make was to pull the password hash itself (pwdhash from sys.sysxlgns) into the logins cursor and comment out the section of sp_help_revlogin that uses LoginProperty. Instead, I pass the pwdhash value as the variable @PWD_varbinary to the sp_hexadecimal stored procedure which is also created by and used within the code provided by Microsoft in the link above for sp_help_revlogin. The final challenge: sys.sysxlgns and sys.server_principals are visible only within a Dedicated Administrator Connection (DAC) query window in SSMS or within SQLCDMD.  To open a DAC connection you have to be logged in on the SQL Server itself, via RDP in my case,  and you preface the server name in the query connection with ADMIN:, so that the server connection looks like ADMIN:ServerName. From there you can create the modified stored procedure in the restored copy of a Master database from a source system as whatever name you like, and then run the modified stored procedure. I named my new stored procedure usp_help_revlogin_MyMaster. Upon execution I was happy to see the logins and password hashes that I needed to apply from the source Master database without having to restore over the new Master system database and without the need to access the original server (assuming it was down due to whatever disaster put it in that state). You will note that I am not providing full code samples here of the modifications. I will say that it was a slight bit of work and anyone who needed to do this for whatever reason, could fairly easily roll their own solution with the information provided herein.  My goal, as I said was to prove that this could be done and provide another option if required to ease the burden of getting SQL Servers up and available in an emergency situation where alternatives may be more challenging or otherwise unavailable.  

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• WebSocket API 1.1 released!

  - by Pavel Bucek

  Its my please to announce that JSR 356 – Java API for WebSocket maintenance release ballot vote finished with majority of “yes” votes (actually, only one eligible voter did not vote, all other votes were “yeses”). New release is maintenance release and it addresses only one issue:  WEBSOCKET_SPEC-226. What changed in the 1.1? Version 1.1 is fully backwards compatible with version 1.0, there are only two methods added to javax.websocket.Session: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 /** * Register to handle to incoming messages in this conversation. A maximum of one message handler per * native websocket message type (text, binary, pong) may be added to each Session. I.e. a maximum * of one message handler to handle incoming text messages a maximum of one message handler for * handling incoming binary messages, and a maximum of one for handling incoming pong * messages. For further details of which message handlers handle which of the native websocket * message types please see {@link MessageHandler.Whole} and {@link MessageHandler.Partial}. * Adding more than one of any one type will result in a runtime exception. * * @param clazz   type of the message processed by message handler to be registered. * @param handler whole message handler to be added. * @throws IllegalStateException if there is already a MessageHandler registered for the same native *                               websocket message type as this handler. */ public void addMessageHandler(Class<T> clazz, MessageHandler.Whole<T> handler); /** * Register to handle to incoming messages in this conversation. A maximum of one message handler per * native websocket message type (text, binary, pong) may be added to each Session. I.e. a maximum * of one message handler to handle incoming text messages a maximum of one message handler for * handling incoming binary messages, and a maximum of one for handling incoming pong * messages. For further details of which message handlers handle which of the native websocket * message types please see {@link MessageHandler.Whole} and {@link MessageHandler.Partial}. * Adding more than one of any one type will result in a runtime exception. * * * @param clazz   type of the message processed by message handler to be registered. * @param handler partial message handler to be added. * @throws IllegalStateException if there is already a MessageHandler registered for the same native *                               websocket message type as this handler. */ public void addMessageHandler(Class<T> clazz, MessageHandler.Partial<T> handler); Why do we need to add those methods? Short and not precise version: to support Lambda expressions as MessageHandlers. Longer and slightly more precise explanation: old Session#addMessageHandler method (which is still there and works as it worked till now) does rely on getting the generic parameter during the runtime, which is not (always) possible. The unfortunate part is that it works for some common cases and the expert group did not catch this issue before 1.0 release because of that. The issue is really clearly visible when Lambdas are used as message handlers: 1 2 3 session.addMessageHandler(message -> { System.out.println("### Received: " + message); }); There is no way for the JSR 356 implementation to get the type of the used Lambda expression, thus this call will always result in an exception. Since all modern IDEs do recommend to use Lambda expressions when possible and MessageHandler interfaces are single method interfaces, it basically just scream “use Lambdas” all over the place but when you do that, the application will fail during runtime. Only solution we currently have is to explicitly provide the type of registered MessageHandler. (There might be another sometime in the future when generic type reification is introduced, but that is not going to happen soon enough). So the example above will then be: 1 2 3 session.addMessageHandler(String.class, message -> { System.out.println("### Received: " + message); }); and voila, it works. There are some limitations – you cannot do 1 List<String>.class , so you will need to encapsulate these types when you want to use them in MessageHandler implementation (something like “class MyType extends ArrayList<String>”). There is no better way how to solve this issue, because Java currently does not provide good way how to describe generic types. The api itself is available on maven central, look for javax.websocket:javax.websocket-api:1.1. The reference implementation is project Tyrus, which implements WebSocket API 1.1 from version 1.8.

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• In Social Relationship Management, the Spirit is Willing, but Execution is Weak

  - by Mike Stiles

  In our final talk in this series with Aberdeen’s Trip Kucera, we wanted to find out if enterprise organizations are actually doing anything about what they’re learning around the importance of communicating via social and using social listening for a deeper understanding of customers and prospects. We found out that if your brand is lagging behind, you’re not alone. Spotlight: How was Aberdeen able to find out if companies are putting their money where their mouth is when it comes to implementing social across the enterprise? Trip: One way to think about the relative challenges a business has in a given area is to look at the gap between “say” and “do.” The first of those words reveals the brand’s priorities, while the second reveals their ability to execute on those priorities. In Aberdeen’s research, we capture this by asking firms to rank the value of a set of activities from one on the low end to five on the high end. We then ask them to rank their ability to execute those same activities, again on a one to five, not effective to highly effective scale. Spotlight: And once you get their self-assessments, what is it you’re looking for? Trip: There are two things we’re looking for in this analysis. The first is we want to be able to identify the widest gaps between perception of value and execution. This suggests impediments to adoption or simply a high level of challenge, be it technical or otherwise. It may also suggest areas where we can expect future investment and innovation. Spotlight: So the biggest potential pain points surface, places where they know something is critical but also know they aren’t doing much about it. What’s the second thing you look for? Trip: The second thing we want to do is look at specific areas in which high-performing companies, the Leaders, are out-executing the Followers. This points to the business impact of these activities since Leaders are defined by a set of business performance metrics. Put another way, we’re correlating adoption of specific business competencies with performance, looking for what high-performers do differently. Spotlight: Ah ha, that tells us what steps the winners are taking that are making them winners. So what did you find out? Trip: Generally speaking, we see something of a glass curtain when it comes to the social relationship management execution gap. There isn’t a single social media activity in which more than 50% of respondents indicated effectiveness, which would be a 4 or 5 on that 1-5 scale. This despite the fact that 70% of firms indicate that generating positive social media mentions is valuable or very valuable, a 4 or 5 on our 1-5 scale. Spotlight: Well at least they get points for being honest. The verdict they’re giving themselves is that they just aren’t cutting it in these highly critical social development areas. Trip: And the widest gap is around directly engaging with customers and/or prospects on social networks, which 69% of firms rated as valuable but only 34% of companies say they are executing well. Perhaps even more interesting is that these two are interdependent since you’re most likely to generate goodwill on social through happy, engaged customers. This data also suggests that social is largely being used as a broadcast channel rather than for one-to-one engagement. As we’ve discussed previously, social is an inherently personal media. Spotlight: And if they’re still using it as a broadcast channel, that shows they still fail to understand the root of social and see it as just another outlet for their ads and push-messaging. That’s depressing. Trip: A second way to evaluate this data is by using Aberdeen’s performance benchmarking. The story is both a bit different, but consistent in its own way. The first thing we notice is that Leaders are more effective in their execution of several key social relationship management capabilities, namely generating positive mentions and engaging with “influencers” and customers. Based on the fact that Aberdeen uses a broad set of performance metrics to rank the respondents as either “Leaders” (top 35% in weighted performance) or “Followers” (bottom 65% in weighted performance), from website conversion to annual revenue growth, we can then correlated high social effectiveness with company performance. We can also connect the specific social capabilities used by Leaders with effectiveness. We spoke about a few of those key capabilities last time and also discuss them in a new report: Social Powers Activate: Engineering Social Engagement to Win the Hidden Sales Cycle. Spotlight: What all that tells me is there are rewards for making the effort and getting it right. That’s how you become a Leader. Trip: But there’s another part of the story, which is that overall effectiveness, even among Leaders, is muted. There’s just one activity in which more than a majority of Leaders cite high effectiveness, effectiveness being the generation of positive buzz. While 80% of Leaders indicate “directly engaging with customers” through social media channels is valuable, the highest rated activity among Leaders, only 42% say they’re effective. This gap even among Leaders shows the challenges still involved in effective social relationship management. @mikestilesPhoto: stock.xchng

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• SPARC T4-4 Delivers World Record Performance on Oracle OLAP Perf Version 2 Benchmark

  - by Brian

  Oracle's SPARC T4-4 server delivered world record performance with subsecond response time on the Oracle OLAP Perf Version 2 benchmark using Oracle Database 11g Release 2 running on Oracle Solaris 11. The SPARC T4-4 server achieved throughput of 430,000 cube-queries/hour with an average response time of 0.85 seconds and the median response time of 0.43 seconds. This was achieved by using only 60% of the available CPU resources leaving plenty of headroom for future growth. The SPARC T4-4 server operated on an Oracle OLAP cube with a 4 billion row fact table of sales data containing 4 dimensions. This represents as many as 90 quintillion aggregate rows (90 followed by 18 zeros). Performance Landscape Oracle OLAP Perf Version 2 Benchmark 4 Billion Fact Table Rows System Queries/hour Users* Response Time (sec) Average Median SPARC T4-4 430,000 7,300 0.85 0.43 * Users - the supported number of users with a given think time of 60 seconds Configuration Summary and Results Hardware Configuration: SPARC T4-4 server with 4 x SPARC T4 processors, 3.0 GHz 1 TB memory Data Storage 1 x Sun Fire X4275 (using COMSTAR) 2 x Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array (each with 80 FMODs) Redo Storage 1 x Sun Fire X4275 (using COMSTAR with 8 HDD) Software Configuration: Oracle Solaris 11 11/11 Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2.0.3) with Oracle OLAP option Benchmark Description The Oracle OLAP Perf Version 2 benchmark is a workload designed to demonstrate and stress the Oracle OLAP product's core features of fast query, fast update, and rich calculations on a multi-dimensional model to support enhanced Data Warehousing. The bulk of the benchmark entails running a number of concurrent users, each issuing typical multidimensional queries against an Oracle OLAP cube consisting of a number of years of sales data with fully pre-computed aggregations. The cube has four dimensions: time, product, customer, and channel. Each query user issues approximately 150 different queries. One query chain may ask for total sales in a particular region (e.g South America) for a particular time period (e.g. Q4 of 2010) followed by additional queries which drill down into sales for individual countries (e.g. Chile, Peru, etc.) with further queries drilling down into individual stores, etc. Another query chain may ask for yearly comparisons of total sales for some product category (e.g. major household appliances) and then issue further queries drilling down into particular products (e.g. refrigerators, stoves. etc.), particular regions, particular customers, etc. Results from version 2 of the benchmark are not comparable with version 1. The primary difference is the type of queries along with the query mix. Key Points and Best Practices Since typical BI users are often likely to issue similar queries, with different constants in the where clauses, setting the init.ora prameter "cursor_sharing" to "force" will provide for additional query throughput and a larger number of potential users. Except for this setting, together with making full use of available memory, out of the box performance for the OLAP Perf workload should provide results similar to what is reported here. For a given number of query users with zero think time, the main measured metrics are the average query response time, the median query response time, and the query throughput. A derived metric is the maximum number of users the system can support achieving the measured response time assuming some non-zero think time. The calculation of the maximum number of users follows from the well-known response-time law N = (rt + tt) * tp where rt is the average response time, tt is the think time and tp is the measured throughput. Setting tt to 60 seconds, rt to 0.85 seconds and tp to 119.44 queries/sec (430,000 queries/hour), the above formula shows that the T4-4 server will support 7,300 concurrent users with a think time of 60 seconds and an average response time of 0.85 seconds. For more information see chapter 3 from the book "Quantitative System Performance" cited below. -- See Also Quantitative System Performance Computer System Analysis Using Queueing Network Models Edward D. Lazowska, John Zahorjan, G. Scott Graham, Kenneth C. Sevcik external local Oracle Database 11g – Oracle OLAP oracle.com OTN SPARC T4-4 Server oracle.com OTN Oracle Solaris oracle.com OTN Oracle Database 11g Release 2 oracle.com OTN Disclosure Statement Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Results as of 11/2/2012.

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• About Solaris 11 and UltraSPARC II/III/IV/IV+

  - by nospam(at)example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp)

  I know that I will get the usual amount of comments like "Oh, Jörg ? you can't be negative about Oracle" for this article. However as usual I want to explain the logic behind my reasoning. Yes ? I know that there is a lot of UltraSPARC III, IV and IV+ gear out there. But there are some very basic questions: Does your application you are currently running on this gear stops running just because you can't run Solaris 11 on it? What is the need to upgrade a system already in production to Solaris 11? I have the impression, that some people think that the systems get useless in the moment Oracle releases Solaris 11. I know that Sun sold UltraSPARC IV+ systems until 2009. The Sun SF490 introduced 2004 for example, that was a Sun SF480 with UltraSPARC IV and later with UltraSPARC IV+. And yes, Sun made some speedbumps. At that time the systems of the UltraSPARC III to IV+ generations were supported on Solaris 8, on Solaris 9 and on Solaris 10. However from my perspective we sold them to customers, which weren't able to migrate to Solaris 10 because they used applications not supported on Solaris 9 or who just didn't wanted to migrate to Solaris 10. Believe it or not ? I personally know two customers that migrated core systems to Solaris 10 in ? well 2008/9. This was especially true when the M3000 was announced in 2008 when it closed the darned single socket gap. It may be different at you site, however that's what I remember about that time when talking with customers. At first: Just because there is no Solaris 11 for UltraSPARC III, IV and IV+, it doesn't mean that Solaris 10 will go away anytime soon. I just want to point you to "Expect Lifetime Support - Hardware and Operating Systems". It states about Premier Support:Maintenance and software upgrades are included for Oracle operating systems and Oracle VM for a minimum of eight years from the general availability date.GA for Solaris 10 was in 2005. Plus 8 years ? 2013 ? at minimum. Then you can still opt for 3 years of "Extended Support" ? 2016 ? at minimum. 2016 your systems purchased in 2009 are 7 years old. Even on systems purchased at the very end of the lifetime of that system generation. That are the rules as written in the linked document. I said minimum The actual dates are even further in the future: Premier Support for Solaris 10 ends in 2015, Extended support ends 2018. Sustaining support ? indefinite. You will find this in the document "Oracle Lifetime Support Policy: Oracle Hardware and Operating Systems".So I don't understand when some people write, that Oracle is less protective about hardware investments than Sun. And for hardware it's the same as with Sun: Service 5 years after EOL as part of Premier Support. I would like to write about a different perspective as well: I have to be a little cautious here, because this is going in the roadmap area, so I will mention the public sources here: John Fowler told last year that we have to expect at at least 3x the single thread performance of T3 for T4. We have 8 cores in T4, as stated by Rick Hetherington. Let's assume for a moment that a T4 core will have the performance of a UltraSPARC core (just to simplify math and not to disclosing anything about the performance, all existing SPARC cores are considered equal). So given this pieces of information, you could consolidate 8 V215, 4 or 8 V245, 2 full blown V445,2 full blown 490, 2 full blown M3000 on a single T4 SPARC processor. The Fowler roadmap prezo talked about 4-socket systems with T4. So 32 V215, 16 to 8 V245, 8 fullblown V445, 8 full blown V490, 8 full blown M3000 in a system image. I think you get the idea. That said, most of the systems we are talking about have already amortized and perhaps it's just time to invest in new systems to yield other advantages like reduced space consumptions, like reduced power consumption, like some of the neat features sun4v gives you, and yes ? reduced number of processor licenses for Oracle and less money for Oracle HW/SW support. As much as I dislike it myself that my own UltraSPARC III and UltraSPARC II based systems won't run on Solaris 11 (and I have quite a few of them in my personal lab), I really think that the impact on production environments will be much less than most people think now. By the way: The reason for this move is a quite significant new feature. I will tell you that it was this feature, when it's out. I assume, telling just a word more could lead to much more time to blog.

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• Windows in StreamInsight: Hopping vs. Snapshot

  - by Roman Schindlauer

  Three weeks ago, we explained the basic concept of windows in StreamInsight: defining sets of events that serve as arguments for set-based operations, like aggregations. Today, we want to discuss the so-called Hopping Windows and compare them with Snapshot Windows. We will compare these two, because they can serve similar purposes with different behaviors; we will discuss the remaining window type, Count Windows, another time. Hopping (and its syntactic-sugar-sister Tumbling) windows are probably the most straightforward windowing concept in StreamInsight. A hopping window is defined by its length, and the offset from one window to the next. They are aligned with some absolute point on the timeline (which can also be given as a parameter to the window) and create sets of events. The diagram below shows an example of a hopping window with length of 1h and hop size (the offset) of 15 minutes, hence creating overlapping windows:   Two aspects in this diagram are important: Since this window is overlapping, an event can fall into more than one windows. If an (interval) event spans a window boundary, its lifetime will be clipped to the window, before it is passed to the set-based operation. That’s the default and currently only available window input policy. (This should only concern you if you are using a time-sensitive user-defined aggregate or operator.) The set-based operation will be applied to each of these sets, yielding a result. This result is: A single scalar value in case of built-in or user-defined aggregates. A subset of the input payloads, in case of the TopK operator. Arbitrary events, when using a user-defined operator. The timestamps of the result are almost always the ones of the windows. Only the user-defined  operator can create new events with timestamps. (However, even these event lifetimes are subject to the window’s output policy, which is currently always to clip to the window end.) Let’s assume we were calculating the sum over some payload field: var result = from window in source.HoppingWindow( TimeSpan.FromHours(1), TimeSpan.FromMinutes(15), HoppingWindowOutputPolicy.ClipToWindowEnd) select new { avg = window.Avg(e => e.Value) }; Now each window is reflected by one result event:   As you can see, the window definition defines the output frequency. No matter how many or few events we got from the input, this hopping window will produce one result every 15 minutes – except for those windows that do not contain any events at all, because StreamInsight window operations are empty-preserving (more about that another time). The “forced” output for every window can become a performance issue if you have a real-time query with many events in a wide group & apply – let me explain: imagine you have a lot of events that you group by and then aggregate within each group – classical streaming pattern. The hopping window produces a result in each group at exactly the same point in time for all groups, since the window boundaries are aligned with the timeline, not with the event timestamps. This means that the query output will become very bursty, delivering the results of all the groups at the same point in time. This becomes especially obvious if the events are long-lasting, spanning multiple windows each, so that the produced result events do not change their value very often. In such a case, a snapshot window can remedy. Snapshot windows are more difficult to explain than hopping windows: they represent those periods in time, when no event changes occur. In other words, if you mark all event start and and times on your timeline, then you are looking at all snapshot window boundaries:   If your events are never overlapping, the snapshot window will not make much sense. It is commonly used together with timestamp modification, which make it a very powerful tool. Or as Allan Mitchell expressed in in a recent tweet: “I used to look at SnapshotWindow() with disdain. Now she is my mistress, the one I turn to in times of trouble and need”. Let’s look at a simple example: I want to compute the average of some value in my events over the last minute. I don’t want this output be produced at fixed intervals, but at soon as it changes (that’s the true event-driven spirit!). The snapshot window will include all currently active event at each point in time, hence we need to extend our original events’ lifetimes into the future: Applying the Snapshot window on these events, it will appear to be “looking back into the past”: If you look at the result produced in this diagram, you can easily prove that, at each point in time, the current event value represents the average of all original input event within the last minute. Here is the LINQ representation of that query, applying the lifetime extension before the snapshot window: var result = from window in source .AlterEventDuration(e => TimeSpan.FromMinutes(1)) .SnapshotWindow(SnapshotWindowOutputPolicy.Clip) select new { avg = window.Avg(e => e.Value) }; With more complex modifications of the event lifetimes you can achieve many more query patterns. For instance “running totals” by keeping the event start times, but snapping their end times to some fixed time, like the end of the day. Each snapshot then “sees” all events that have happened in the respective time period so far. Regards, The StreamInsight Team

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• Career guidance/advice for Junior-level Software Engineer [closed]

  - by John Do

  I have quite a few questions on my mind, so please bare with me. Please don't feel obligated to answer all of them, any as you choose will do. I'd appreciate if you could share some insight on any of these. Before I begin, some context: I currently have almost two years of professional experience as a Software Engineer, mainly developing software in Java. At this point, I feel that I have reached the peak in my career growth at the current company I am at and therefore I am looking for a new job, ideally again, as a Software Engineer. I have been interviewing for the past few months casually but have not had luck with companies I have a passion for. So, in no particular order - 1) In general, what are your thoughts on having graduate degrees in CS / Software Engineering. How much does it influence a salary increase, and do you think it's beneficial when working on real-world problems? I get the sense that a graduate degree in the field is trivial unless you really have a passion for research. 2) In general, in professional practice, how often had you have to write your own data structures and "complex" algorithms from scratch? In my own work, I have found myself relying mainly on third-party frameworks and the Java standard library to implement solutions as per business requirements. What are your thoughts on this? 3) In terms of resume, I feel the most ambivalent here. I want to be able to "blemish" my resume to a certain extent so that it stands out from others', but at the same time I do not want to over-exagerate my abilities. How do you strike a balance here? For example: I say that I am proficient in Java with data structures and algorithms. This is obviously a subjective and relative statement. I've taken the classes in my undergrad, and I've applied it in my work experience. What I feel as "prociency" can be seen as junior-level to others. How do you know what to say? Most of the time, recruiters (with no technical background) will be looking for keywords that stand out. This leads me to my next question (4). 4) Just from interviewing for the past few months (and getting plenty of rejections), I've come to realize that I may not be as proficient in data structures and algorithms as I thought I was. Do you think it's a good idea to remove the "proficient in java/data structure and algorithms"? I feel that being too hoenst on the resume will impede me from scoring opportunities to even have an interview with top-notch companies. What are your thoughts? 5) What is the absolute "must-have" knowledge going into a technical interview? I've been practicing several algorithmic and data sturcture problems now, and I feel that my abilities to solve arbitrary problems efficiently has not gotten significantly better. Do you think these abilities are something innate - it's either you have in you, or you don't? How can you teach yourself to learn, if you will? 6) How easy is it to go from industry/function to the next? I work mainly with backend technologies and I'm now interested in working with the frontend, i.e javascript,jquery,php or even mobile development. In your own experience, how did you not get pidgeon holed in your career? I feel that the choices you make now ultimately decide your future. As cliche as it sounds, I think it may be true. Here's what I mean: you've worked mainly as a backend engineer, people are interested in you doing the same thing since you've already accumulated experience in that function. How do get experience in a new function if people won't accept you because you don't already have it? It's a catch 22, you see... Are side projects the only real way to help you move from one function to another that you're truly interested in? For example: I could start writing my own mobile applications, even though I've worked mainly on the backend. Thanks so much for the long read. As a relatively new engineer to the real world, I am very humble and would like those who are experienced to shed some light. Thank you so much.

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• Session Report - Java on the Raspberry Pi

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  On mid-day Wednesday, the always colorful Oracle Evangelist Simon Ritter demonstrated Java on the Raspberry Pi at his session, “Do You Like Coffee with Your Dessert?”. The Raspberry Pi consists of a credit card-sized single-board computer developed in the UK with the intention of stimulating the teaching of basic computer science in schools. “I don't think there is a single feature that makes the Raspberry Pi significant,” observed Ritter, “but a combination of things really makes it stand out. First, it's $35 for what is effectively a completely usable computer. You do have to add a power supply, SD card for storage and maybe a screen, keyboard and mouse, but this is still way cheaper than a typical PC. The choice of an ARM (Advanced RISC Machine and Acorn RISC Machine) processor is noteworthy, because it avoids problems like cooling (no heat sink or fan) and can use a USB power brick. When you add in the enormous community support, it offers a great platform for teaching everyone about computing.”Some 200 enthusiastic attendees were present at the session which had the feel of Simon Ritter sharing a fun toy with friends. The main point of the session was to show what Oracle was doing to support Java on the Raspberry Pi in a way that is entertaining and fun. Ritter pointed out that, in addition to being great for teaching, it’s an excellent introduction to the ARM architecture, and runs well with Java and will get better once it has official hard float support. The possibilities are vast.Ritter explained that the Raspberry Pi Project started in 2006 with the goal of devising a computer to inspire children; it drew inspiration from the BBC Micro literacy project of 1981 that produced a series of microcomputers created by the Acorn Computer company. It was officially launched on February 29, 2012, with a first production of 10,000 boards. There were 100,000 pre-orders in one day; currently about 4,000 boards are produced a day. Ritter described the specification as follows:* CPU: ARM 11 core running at 700MHz Broadcom SoC package Can now be overclocked to 1GHz (without breaking the warranty!) * Memory: 256Mb* I/O: HDMI and composite video 2 x USB ports (Model B only) Ethernet (Model B only) Header pins for GPIO, UART, SPI and I2C He took attendees through a brief history of ARM Architecture:* Acorn BBC Micro (6502 based) Not powerful enough for Acorn’s plans for a business computer * Berkeley RISC Project UNIX kernel only used 30% of instruction set of Motorola 68000 More registers, less instructions (Register windows) One chip architecture to come from this was… SPARC * Acorn RISC Machine (ARM) 32-bit data, 26-bit address space, 27 registers First machine was Acorn Archimedes * Spin off from Acorn, Advanced RISC MachinesNext he presented its features:* 32-bit RISC Architecture–  ARM accounts for 75% of embedded 32-bit CPUs today– 6.1 Billion chips sold last year (zero manufactured by ARM)* Abstract architecture and microprocessor core designs– Raspberry Pi is ARM11 using ARMv6 instruction set* Low power consumption– Good for mobile devices– Raspberry Pi can be powered from 700mA 5V only PSU– Raspberry Pi does not require heatsink or fanHe described the current ARM Technology:* ARMv6– ARM 11, ARM Cortex-M* ARMv7– ARM Cortex-A, ARM Cortex-M, ARM Cortex-R* ARMv8 (Announced)– Will support 64-bit data and addressingHe next gave the Java Specifics for ARM: Floating point operations* Despite being an ARMv6 processor it does include an FPU– FPU only became standard as of ARMv7* FPU (Hard Float, or HF) is much faster than a software library* Linux distros and Oracle JVM for ARM assume no HF on ARMv6– Need special build of both– Raspbian distro build now available– Oracle JVM is in the works, release date TBDNot So RISCPerformance Improvements* DSP Enhancements* Jazelle* Thumb / Thumb2 / ThumbEE* Floating Point (VFP)* NEON* Security Enhancements (TrustZone)He spent a few minutes going over the challenges of using Java on the Raspberry Pi and covered:* Sound* Vision * Serial (TTL UART)* USB* GPIOTo implement sound with Java he pointed out:* Sound drivers are now included in new distros* Java Sound API– Remember to add audio to user’s groups– Some bits work, others not so much* Playing (the right format) WAV file works* Using MIDI hangs trying to open a synthesizer* FreeTTS text-to-speech– Should work once sound works properlyHe turned to JavaFX on the Raspberry Pi:* Currently internal builds only– Will be released as technology preview soon* Work involves optimal implementation of Prism graphics engine– X11?* Once the JavaFX implementation is completed there will be little of concern to developers-- It’s just Java (WORA). He explained the basis of the Serial Port:* UART provides TTL level signals (3.3V)* RS-232 uses 12V signals* Use MAX3232 chip to convert* Use this for access to serial consoleHe summarized his key points. The Raspberry Pi is a very cool (and cheap) computer that is great for teaching, a great introduction to ARM that works very well with Java and will work better in the future. The opportunities are limitless. For further info, check out, Raspberry Pi User Guide by Eben Upton and Gareth Halfacree. From there, Ritter tried out several fun demos, some of which worked better than others, but all of which were greeted with considerable enthusiasm and support and good humor (even when he ran into some glitches).  All in all, this was a fun and lively session.

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