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• Silverlight Cream for March 10, 2010 - 2 -- #811

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: AfricanGeek, Phil Middlemiss, Damon Payne, David Anson, Jesse Liberty, Jeremy Likness, Jobi Joy(-2-), Fredrik Normén, Bobby Diaz, and Mike Taulty(-2-). Shoutouts: Shawn Wildermuth blogged that they posted My "What's New in Silverlight 3" Video from 0reDev Last Fall Shawn Wildermuth also has a post up for his loyal followers: Where to See Me At MIX10 Jonas Follesø has presentation materials up as well: MVVM presentation from NDC2009 on Vimeo Adam Kinney updated his Favorite Tool and Library Downloads for Silverlight From SilverlightCream.com: Styling Silverlight ListBox with Blend 3 In his latest Video Tutorial, AfricanGeek is animating the ListBox control by way of Expression Blend 3. Animating the Silverlight Opacity Mask Phil Middlemiss has written a Behavior that lets you turn a FrameworkElement into an opacity mask for it's parent container... check out his tutorial and grab the code. AddRange for ObservableCollection in Silverlight 3 Damon Payne has a post up discussing the problem with large amounts of data in an ObservableCollection, and how using AddRange is a performance booster. Easily rotate the axis labels of a Silverlight/WPF Toolkit chart David Anson blogged a solution to rotating the axis labels of a Silverlight and WPF chart. Persisting the Configuration (Updated) Jesse Liberty has a good discussion on the continuation of his HyperVideo Platform talking about what all he is needing from the database in the form of configuration information... including the relationships. Animations and View Models: IAnimationDelegate Check out Jeremy Likness' IAnimationDelegate that lets your ViewModel fire and respond to animations without having to know all about them. Button Style - Silverlight Jobi Joy converted a WPF control template into Silverlight... and you'll want to download the XAML he's got for this :) A Simple Accordion banner using ListBox Jobi Joy also has an Image Accordian created in Expression Blend... and it's a 'drop this XAML in your User Control' kinda thing... again, go grab the XAML :) WCF RIA Services Silverlight Business Application – Using ASP.NET SiteMap for Navigation Fredrik Normén has a code-laden post up on RIA Services and the ASP.NET SiteMap. He is using the Silverlight Business app template that comes with WCF RIA Services. A Simple, Selectable Silverlight TextBlock (sort of)... Bobby Diaz shares with us his solution for a Text control that can be copied from in the same manner 'normal' web controls can be. He also includes a link to another post on the same topic. Silverlight 4 Beta Networking. Part 11 - WCF and TCP Mike Taulty has another pair of video tutorials up in his Networking series. This one is on WCF over TCP Silverlight 4 Beta Networking. Part 12 - WCF and Polling HTTP Mike Taulty's 12th networking video tutorial is on WCF with HTTP polling duplex. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    MIX10

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• Oracle WebCenter: The Best of the Best

  - by kellsey.ruppel(at)oracle.com

  You may remember that the key goals of the new release of WebCenter are providing a Modern User Experience, unparalleled Application Integration, converging all the best of the existing portal platforms into WebCenter and delivering a Common User Experience Architecture.  Last week, we provided an overview of Oracle WebCenter, and this week, we'll focus on Convergence and how the new release of Oracle WebCenter is the Best of the Best..Our development team has been working very hard to bring all the best capabilities from each of the existing portal products into one modern user experience platform that provides a robust foundation for moving customers into the future.  Each of the development teams still maintain their existing products to support the current customers,  but they've been tasked with converging their unique best of breed features into the new WebCenter release so that it will meet the broadest set of use cases possible. For example, we've taken the fastest and most scalable portlet engine in the industry with Oracle WebLogic Portal, integrated it within WebCenter, and improved performance further, to deliver even more performance for our customers.  In addition, we've focused on extending the reach of all the different user experience resources so that customers can deliver robust capabilities into their existing portals, applications, composite applications, dashboards, mobile applications, really any channel that requires information.  And finally, we've combined a whole set of community and multi-site capabilities leveraging the pioneering capabilities of Plumtree portal directly into the new WebCenter release.  While at the same time we've built and delivered the new WebCenter release, we've also provided new feature releases of all the existing products.  In this way, customers can continue to gain value out of their existing investments while at the same time have the smoothest path to upgrading to the new WebCenter release. With the new WebCenter release, we are delivering a converged platform to address all portal requirements that have been delivered by different point products in our portal portfolio in the past. Additionally, this release delivers the most modern user experience that goes well beyond the experience the other portal products provided. This is because the new WebCenter release has been built from the ground up with modern technologies around rich clients, SOA, and customizations compared with other portal products whose architecture has been adapted to add capabilities like AJAX, personalization, and social computing.The new WebCenter release addresses the broadest set of use cases using single product set and single architecture spanning extranet sites to social communities. It helps customers manage, maintain and develop one technology set, but leverage it throughout their organization whether it's embedded in an application or a new destination for improved customer and employee productivity. Additionally, the new release of WebCenter leverages the best and most performant features of all the existing portfolio products to deliver the fastest and most scalable portal platform.  Most importantly, it supports the broadest development models spanning from J2EE/Java to HTML/REST to .NET.Keep checking back this week as we provide additional resources and information on how the new release of Oracle WebCenter is the Best of the Best - converging all the best capabilities from each of the existing portal products into one modern user experience platform.

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• Big Data – Buzz Words: What is NoSQL – Day 5 of 21

  - by Pinal Dave

  In yesterday’s blog post we explored the basic architecture of Big Data . In this article we will take a quick look at one of the four most important buzz words which goes around Big Data – NoSQL. What is NoSQL? NoSQL stands for Not Relational SQL or Not Only SQL. Lots of people think that NoSQL means there is No SQL, which is not true – they both sound same but the meaning is totally different. NoSQL does use SQL but it uses more than SQL to achieve its goal. As per Wikipedia’s NoSQL Database Definition – “A NoSQL database provides a mechanism for storage and retrieval of data that uses looser consistency models than traditional relational databases.“ Why use NoSQL? A traditional relation database usually deals with predictable structured data. Whereas as the world has moved forward with unstructured data we often see the limitations of the traditional relational database in dealing with them. For example, nowadays we have data in format of SMS, wave files, photos and video format. It is a bit difficult to manage them by using a traditional relational database. I often see people using BLOB filed to store such a data. BLOB can store the data but when we have to retrieve them or even process them the same BLOB is extremely slow in processing the unstructured data. A NoSQL database is the type of database that can handle unstructured, unorganized and unpredictable data that our business needs it. Along with the support to unstructured data, the other advantage of NoSQL Database is high performance and high availability. Eventual Consistency Additionally to note that NoSQL Database may not provided 100% ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) compliance.  Though, NoSQL Database does not support ACID they provide eventual consistency. That means over the long period of time all updates can be expected to propagate eventually through the system and data will be consistent. Taxonomy Taxonomy is the practice of classification of things or concepts and the principles. The NoSQL taxonomy supports column store, document store, key-value stores, and graph databases. We will discuss the taxonomy in detail in later blog posts. Here are few of the examples of the each of the No SQL Category. Column: Hbase, Cassandra, Accumulo Document: MongoDB, Couchbase, Raven Key-value : Dynamo, Riak, Azure, Redis, Cache, GT.m Graph: Neo4J, Allegro, Virtuoso, Bigdata As of now there are over 150 NoSQL Database and you can read everything about them in this single link. Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss Buzz Word – Hadoop. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• Oracle AutoVue Key Highlights from Oracle OpenWorld 2012

  - by Celine Beck

  We closed another successful Oracle Open World for AutoVue. Thanks to everyone who joined us this year. As usual, from customer presentations to evening networking activities, there was enough to keep us busy during the entire event. Here is a summary of some of the key highlights of the conference: Sessions:We had two AutoVue-specific sessions during Oracle Open World this year. The first session was part of the Product Lifecycle Management track and covered how AutoVue can be used to help drive effective decision making and streamline design for manufacturing processes. Attendees had the opportunity to learn from customer speaker GLOBALFOUNDRIES how they have been leveraging Oracle AutoVue within Agile PLM to enable high degree of collaboration during the exceptionally creative phases of their product development processes, securely, without risking valuable intellectual property. If you are interested, you can actually download the presentation by visiting launch.oracle.com/?plmopenworld2012.AutoVue was also featured as part of the Utilities track. This session focused on how visualization solutions play a critical role in effective plant optimization and configuration strategies defined by owners and operators of power generation facilities. Attendees learnt how integrated with document management systems, and enterprise applications like Oracle Primavera and Asset Lifecycle Management, AutoVue improves change management processes; minimizes risks by providing access to accurate engineering drawings which capture and reflect the as-maintained status of assets; and allows customers to drive complex maintenance projects to successful completion.Augmented Business Visualization for Agile PLMDuring Oracle Open World, we also showcased an Augmented Business Visualization-based solution for Oracle Agile PLM. An Augmented Business Visualization (ABV) solution is one where your structured data (from Oracle Agile PLM for instance) and your unstructured data (documents, designs, 3D models, etc) come together to allow you to make better decisions (check out our blog posts on the topic: Augment the Value of Your Data (or Time to replace the “attach” button) and Context is Everything ). As part of the Agile PLM, the idea is to support more effective decision-making by turning 3D assemblies into color-coded reports, and streamlining business processes like Engineering Change Management by enabling the automatic creation of engineering change requests in Agile PLM directly from documents being viewed in AutoVue. More on this coming soon...probably during the Oracle Value Chain Summit to be held in San Francisco, from Feb. 4-6, 2013 in San Francisco! Mark your calendars and stay tuned for more information! And thanks again for joining us at Oracle OpenWorld!

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• Microsoft Technical Computing

  - by Daniel Moth

  In the past I have described the team I belong to here at Microsoft (Parallel Computing Platform) in terms of contributing to Visual Studio and related products, e.g. .NET Framework. To be more precise, our team is part of the Technical Computing group, which is still part of the Developer Division. This was officially announced externally earlier this month in an exec email (from Bob Muglia, the president of STB, to which DevDiv belongs). Here is an extract: "… As we build the Technical Computing initiative, we will invest in three core areas: 1. Technical computing to the cloud: Microsoft will play a leading role in bringing technical computing power to scientists, engineers and analysts through the cloud. Existing high- performance computing users will benefit from the ability to augment their on-premises systems with cloud resources that enable ‘just-in-time’ processing. This platform will help ensure processing resources are available whenever they are needed—reliably, consistently and quickly. 2. Simplify parallel development: Today, computers are shipping with more processing power than ever, including multiple cores, but most modern software only uses a small amount of the available processing power. Parallel programs are extremely difficult to write, test and trouble shoot. However, a consistent model for parallel programming can help more developers unlock the tremendous power in today’s modern computers and enable a new generation of technical computing. We are delivering new tools to automate and simplify writing software through parallel processing from the desktop… to the cluster… to the cloud. 3. Develop powerful new technical computing tools and applications: We know scientists, engineers and analysts are pushing common tools (i.e., spreadsheets and databases) to the limits with complex, data-intensive models. They need easy access to more computing power and simplified tools to increase the speed of their work. We are building a platform to do this. Our development efforts will yield new, easy-to-use tools and applications that automate data acquisition, modeling, simulation, visualization, workflow and collaboration. This will allow them to spend more time on their work and less time wrestling with complicated technology. …" Our Parallel Computing Platform team is directly responsible for item #2, and we work very closely with the teams delivering items #1 and #3. At the same time as the exec email, our marketing team unveiled a website with interviews that I invite you to check out: Modeling the World. Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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• formula for replicating glTexGen in opengl es 2.0 glsl

  - by visualjc

  I also posted this on the main StackExchange, but this seems like a better place, but for give me for the double post if it shows up twice. I have been trying for several hours to implement a GLSL replacement for glTexGen with GL_OBJECT_LINEAR. For OpenGL ES 2.0. In Ogl GLSL there is the gl_TextureMatrix that makes this easier, but thats not available on OpenGL ES 2.0 / OpenGL ES Shader Language 1.0 Several sites have mentioned that this should be "easy" to do in a GLSL vert shader. But I just can not get it to work. My hunch is that I'm not setting the planes up correctly, or I'm missing something in my understanding. I've pored over the web. But most sites are talking about projected textures, I'm just looking to create UV's based on planar projection. The models are being built in Maya, have 50k polygons and the modeler is using planer mapping, but Maya will not export the UV's. So I'm trying to figure this out. I've looked at the glTexGen manpage information: g = p1xo + p2yo + p3zo + p4wo What is g? Is g the value of s in the texture2d call? I've looked at the site: http://www.opengl.org/wiki/Mathematics_of_glTexGen Another size explains the same function: coord = P1*X + P2*Y + P3*Z + P4*W I don't get how coord (an UV vec2 in my mind) is equal to the dot product (a scalar value)? Same problem I had before with "g". What do I set the plane to be? In my opengl c++ 3.0 code, I set it to [0, 0, 1, 0] (basically unit z) and glTexGen works great. I'm still missing something. My vert shader looks basically like this: WVPMatrix = World View Project Matrix. POSITION is the model vertex position. varying vec4 kOutBaseTCoord; void main() { gl_Position = WVPMatrix * vec4(POSITION, 1.0); vec4 sPlane = vec4(1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0); vec4 tPlane = vec4(0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0); vec4 rPlane = vec4(0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0); vec4 qPlane = vec4(0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0); kOutBaseTCoord.s = dot(vec4(POSITION, 1.0), sPlane); kOutBaseTCoord.t = dot(vec4(POSITION, 1.0), tPlane); //kOutBaseTCoord.r = dot(vec4(POSITION, 1.0), rPlane); //kOutBaseTCoord.q = dot(vec4(POSITION, 1.0), qPlane); } The frag shader precision mediump float; uniform sampler2D BaseSampler; varying mediump vec4 kOutBaseTCoord; void main() { //gl_FragColor = vec4(kOutBaseTCoord.st, 0.0, 1.0); gl_FragColor = texture2D(BaseSampler, kOutBaseTCoord.st); } I've tried texture2DProj in frag shader Here are some of the other links I've looked up http://www.gamedev.net/topic/407961-texgen-not-working-with-glsl-with-fixed-pipeline-is-ok/ Thank you in advance.

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• Innovation and the Role of Social Media

  - by Brian Dirking

  A very interesting post by Andy Mulholland of CAP Gemini this week – “The CIO is trapped between the CEO wanting innovation and the CFO needing compliance” – had many interesting points: “A successful move in one area won’t be recognized and rapidly implemented in other areas to multiply the benefits, or worse unsuccessful ideas will get repeated adding to the cost and time wasted. That’s where the need to really address the combination of social networking, collaboration, knowledge management and business information is required.” Without communicating what works and what doesn’t, the innovations of our organization may be lost, and the failures repeated. That makes sense. If you liked Andy Mulholland’s blog post, you need to hear Howard Beader’s presentation at Enterprise 2.0 Conference on innovation and the role of social media. (Howard will be speaking in the Market Leaders Session at 1 PM on Wednesday June 22nd). Some of the thoughts Howard will share include: • Innovation is more than just ideas, it’s getting ideas to market, and removing the obstacles that stand in the way • Innovation is about parallel processing – you can’t remove the obstacles one by one because you will get to market too late • Innovation can be about product innovation, but it can also be about process innovation This brings us to Andy’s second issue he raises: "..the need for integration with, and visibility of, processes to understand exactly how the enterprise functions and delivers on its policies…" Andy goes on to talk about this from the perspective of compliance and the CFO’s concerns. And it’s true: innovation can come both in product innovation, but also internal process innovation. And process innovation can have as much impact as product innovation.  New supply chain models can disrupt an industry overnight. Many people ignore process innovation as a benefit of social business, because it is perceived as a bottom line rather than top line impact. But it can actually impact your top line by changing your entire business model. Oracle WebCenter sits at this crossroads between product innovation and process innovation, enabling you to drive go-to-market innovations through internal social media tools, removing obstacles in parallel, and also providing you deep insight into your processes so you can identify bottlenecks and realize whole new ways of doing business. Learn more about how at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference, where Oracle will be in booth #213 showing Oracle WebCenter and Oracle Fusion Applications.

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• Angry Bird Makers: Developers Love iOS Over Android To Make Money

  - by Gopinath

  These days web is buzzing with Apple iOS vs Google Android debates. Recently Fortune predicted that Android is going to explode in 2011 and it will surpass Apple’s iOS market share. Yes Android is set to spread its wings across all the devices – smartphones, TVs, set top boxes, in car entertainment devices, what not. Think of any device that requires operating system, Android can be used. On the other than iOS is only available on very selective Apple devices – iPods, iPhones and iPads. When it comes to the count of devices running on a specific OS, Android will be far ahead of iOS but when you consider a quality of devices and providing an eco system for business to make money iOS seems to be the winner. That is what experts and analysts are saysing. Here is an excerpt from Peter Vesterbacka, maker of the popular Angry Birds game, interview to Tech N Marketing site.  He says Apple will be the number one platform for a long time from a developer perspective, they have gotten so many things right. And they know what they are doing and they call the shots. Android is growing, but it’s also growing complexity at the same time. Device fragmentation not the issue, but rather the fragmentation of the ecosystem. So many different shops, so many different models. The carriers messing with the experience again. Open but not really open, a very Google centric ecosystem. And paid content just doesn’t work on Android. Peter says developer prefer iOS over Android as it’s not very easy to make money on Android market. That’s why they released a free version of Angry Birds game with ads support for Android devices. Free is the way to go with Android. Nobody has been successful selling content on Android. We will offer a way to remove the ads by paying for the app, but we don’t expect that to be a huge revenue stream. You can read full interview here. cc image credit: flickr/johanl This article titled,Angry Bird Makers: Developers Love iOS Over Android To Make Money, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• Can a Printer Print White?

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  The vast majority of the time we all print on white media: white paper, white cardstock, and other neutral white surfaces. But what about printing white? Can modern printers print white and if not, why not? Read on as we explore color theory, printer design choices, and why white is the foundation of the printing process. Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. Image by Coiote O.; available as wallpaper here. The Question SuperUser reader Curious_Kid is well, curious, about printers. He writes: I was reading about different color models, when this question hit my mind. Can the CMYK color model generate white color? Printers use CMYK color mode. What will happen if I try to print a white colored image (rabbit) on a black paper with my printer? Will I get any image on the paper? Does the CMYK color model have room for white? The Answer SuperUser contributor Darth Android offers some insight into the CMYK process: You will not get anything on the paper with a basic CMYK inkjet or laser printer. The CMYK color mixing is subtractive, meaning that it requires the base that is being colored to have all colors (i.e., White) So that it can create color variation through subtraction: White - Cyan - Yellow = Green White - Yellow - Magenta = Red White - Cyan - Magenta = Blue White is represented as 0 cyan, 0 yellow, 0 magenta, and 0 black – effectively, 0 ink for a printer that simply has those four cartridges. This works great when you have white media, as “printing no ink” simply leaves the white exposed, but as you can imagine, this doesn’t work for non-white media. If you don’t have a base color to subtract from (i.e., Black), then it doesn’t matter what you subtract from it, you still have the color Black. [But], as others are pointing out, there are special printers which can operate in the CMYW color space, or otherwise have a white ink or toner. These can be used to print light colors on top of dark or otherwise non-white media. You might also find my answer to a different question about color spaces helpful or informative. Given that the majority of printer media in the world is white and printing pure white on non-white colors is a specialty process, it’s no surprise that home and (most) commercial printers alike have no provision for it. Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.     

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• Should I choose Doctrine 2 or Propel 1.5/1.6, and why?

  - by Billy ONeal

  I'd like to hear from those who have used Doctrine 2 (or later) and Propel 1.5 (or later). Most comparisons between these two object relational mappers are based on old versions -- Doctrine 1 versus Propel 1.3/1.4, and both ORMs went through significant redesigns in their recent revisions. For example, most of the criticism of Propel seems to center around the "ModelName Peer" classes, which are deprecated in 1.5 in any case. Here's what I've accumulated so far (And I've tried to make this list as balanced as possible...): Propel Pros Extremely IDE friendly, because actual code is generated, instead of relying on PHP magic methods. This means IDE features like code completion are actually helpful. Fast (In terms of database usage -- no runtime introspection is done on the database) Clean migration between schema versions (at least in the 1.6 beta) Can generate PHP 5.3 models (i.e. namespaces) Easy to chain a lot of things into a single database query with things like useXxx methods. (See the "code completion" video above) Cons Requires an extra build step, namely building the model classes. Generated code needs rebuilt whenever Propel version is changed, a setting is changed, or the schema changes. This might be unintuitive to some and custom methods applied to the model are lost. (I think?) Some useful features (i.e. version behavior, schema migrations) are in beta status. Doctrine Pros More popular Doctrine Query Language can express potentially more complicated relationships between data than easily possible with Propel's ActiveRecord strategy. Easier to add reusable behaviors when compared with Propel. DocBlock based commenting for building the schema is embedded in the actual PHP instead of a separate XML file. Uses PHP 5.3 Namespaces everywhere Cons Requires learning an entirely new programming language (Doctrine Query Language) Implemented in terms of "magic methods" in several places, making IDE autocomplete worthless. Requires database introspection and thus is slightly slower than Propel by default; caching can remove this but the caching adds considerable complexity. Fewer behaviors are included in the core codebase. Several features Propel provides out of the box (such as Nested Set) are available only through extensions. Freakin' HUGE :) This I have gleaned though only through reading the documentation available for both tools -- I've not actually built anything yet. I'd like to hear from those who have used both tools though, to share their experience on pros/cons of each library, and what their recommendation is at this point :)

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• Post Crosstalk 2012

  - by David Dorf

  This year the Oracle Retail users conference, Crosstalk, had a 20% increase in attendees, which was driven by both new customers and those acquired via Endeca.  As the product assets of Oracle have grown, so has the completeness of the solution set.  This year was marked by the breadth of omni-channel stories. Rose Spicer and her marketing team (see photo on left) always strive for an equal balance of retailer presentations, networking opportunities, and unique experiences -- this year was no exception.  We had 41 different retailers from China, Russia, South Africa, Brazil, Chile, US, Canada and the UK sharing their insights with one another. In all there were 251 executives from 120 iconic brands such as Daphne, Kohl's, Morrisons, Abercrombie & Fitch, Hot Topic, Talbots, Petco, Deckers, Sportmaster, Mr. Price, Falabella, and Disney to name a few. From a product perspective, there were a few new developments from Oracle Retail: Endeca's search engine has been integrated into the ATG commerce platform. The latest Retail Analytics application, Oracle Retail Customer Analytics, is generally available. Oracle Retail previewed a new fully-integrated mobile POS. But the real benefit of attending Crosstalk was hearing about the experiences of retailers and partners.  Here are are a few interesting facts I picked up: At Kohl's, the most popular website accessed by customers within their stores is Facebook.  With all the buzz about showrooming, I was really expecting it to be Amazon. Daphne, a Chinese shoe retailer, is opening 3 new stores per day.  Being located near the factories allows them to have a very agile supply chain as well. Disney Stores have increased sales by 25% at stores upgraded to include Mobile POS.  They continue to lead the pack with excellent customer experiences. Quicksilver reported that 1 in 5 visits to their website comes from a tablet.  More evidence that tablets are replacing traditional PCs in households. By tagging shoes with RFID, Saks is able to ensure all shoe models are on display.  If a model is not being displayed, it has no chance of being sold. Additionally, there were awards, store tours on Michigan Avenue, fireworks at Navy Pier, and the Oracle Retail house band, Bolo313, performing at Solider Field.  Speaking of which, a few retailers got on stage and jammed with band -- possible rival to Rock & Roll Retail? You can always find the latest info from us at the Retail Rack. The next events on tap are the Partner Summit followed by OpenWorld.

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• BigData and Customer Experience: Happy Together

  - by Isabel F. Peñuelas

  The two big buzzes of the year may lay closer than it appears. Both concepts intersect at various points: BigData and Return of Investment of Marketing Campaigns On a recent post Big Data Is The Future Of Marketing Jeff Dachis explains very clearly how “Big data analytics finally allows marketers to identify, measure, and manage what is positively impacting their Brand”. Regression analysis applied to big data volumes coming from social media will substitute the failed attempts to justify marketing investments on social media in terms of followers and likes, he continues, “the measurement models applied by marketers on TV Campaigns don´t work on social”, we need to study the data with fresh eyes and maybe then we will start understanding and measuring brand engagemet. Social CRM and BigData The real value of Social CRM start by analyzing mass of big data from social media in order of applying social intelligence techniques that allow us to classify new customer niches and communities and define appropriated strategies to contact potential customers. Gartner Says that the Market for Social CRM is on pace to surpass $1 Billion in Revenue by Year-End 2012 but in words of Zach Hofer-Shall, Analyst at Forrester Research “Social customer relationship management is hard” (The Social CRM Arms Race Heats ). To succeed brands need three things: Investing in new social tools, investing in consultancy and investing in infrastructure for massive data storage and analysis. Neither CeX or BigData are easy and cheap wins. But what are the customer benefits of such investments? Big Data and Brand Engagement Time is the most valuable asset of todays consumers: tired of information overload, exhausted by the terabytes of offering, anxious because of not having the same fast multichannel experience with their services’ marketers or preferred goods providers than the one they found on their social media. Yes, I know you have read this before- me too. But is real. The motto of the Customer Experience philosophy of providing a consistent experience through multiple touchpoints that makes the relationship customer/brand easier and valuable finds it basis on understanding customer/s preferences and context for which BigData analysis is another imperative. In summary, I believe that using BigData Analysis in combination with appropriated CeX strategies and technologies is a promising direction for achieving: efficiency and marketing cost-savings; growing the customer base; and increasing customer conversion and retention. In a world: The Direction of Future Marketing.

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• Go Big or Go Special

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

  Watching Shark Tank tonight and the first presentation was by Mango Mango Preserves and it highlighted an interesting contrast in business trends today and how to capitalize on opportunities.  <Spoiler Alert> Even though every one of the sharks was raving about the product samples they tried, with two of them going for second and third servings, none of them made a deal to invest in the company.</Spoiler>  In fact, one of the sharks, Kevin O’Leary, kept ripping into the owners with statements to the effect that he thinks they are headed over a financial cliff because he felt their costs were way out of line and would be their downfall if they didn’t take action to radically cut costs. He said that he had previously owned a jams and jellies business and knew the cost ratios that you had to have to make it work.  I don’t doubt he knows exactly what he’s talking about and is 100% accurate…for doing business his way, which I’ll call “Go Big”.  But there’s a whole other way to do business today that would be ideal for these ladies to pursue. As I understand it, based on his level of success in various businesses and the fact that he is even in a position to be investing in other companies, Kevin’s approach is to go mass market (Go Big) and make hundreds of millions of dollars in sales (or something along that scale) while squeezing out every ounce of cost that you can to produce an acceptable margin.  But there is a very different way of making a very successful business these days, which is all about building a passionate and loyal community of customers that are rooting for your success and even actively trying to help you succeed by promoting your product or company (Go Special).  This capitalizes on the power of social media, niche marketing, and The Long Tail.  One of the most prolific writers about capitalizing on this trend is Seth Godin, and I hope that the founders of Mango Mango pick up a couple of his books (probably Purple Cow and Tribes would be good starts) or at least read his blog.  I think the adoration expressed by all of the sharks for the product is the biggest hint that they have a remarkable product and that they are perfect for this type of business approach. Both are completely valid business models, and it may certainly be that the scale at which Kevin O’Leary wants to conduct business where he invests his money is well beyond the long tail, but that doesn’t mean that there is not still a lot of money to be made there.  I wish them the best of luck with their endeavors!

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• Oracle Tutor: Create Accessible Content for the Disabled Community

  - by emily.chorba(at)oracle.com

  For many reasons--legal, business, and ethical--Oracle recognizes the need for its applications, and our customers' and partners' products built with our tools, to be usable by the disabled community. The following features of Tutor Author and Publisher software facilitate the creation of accessible HTML content for the disabled community.TablesThe following formatting guidelines will ensure that Tutor documents containing tables will be accessible once they are converted to HTML.• Determine whether a table is a "data table" or whether you are using a table simply for formatting. If it's a data table, you must use a heading for each column, and you should format this heading row as "table heading" style and select Table > Heading Rows Repeat.• For non data tables, it is not necessary to include a heading row.GraphicsTo create accessible graphics, add a caption to the graphic. In Microsoft Office 2000 and greater, right-click on the graphic and select Format Picture > Web (tab) > Alternative Text or select the graphic then Format > Picture > Web (tab) Alternative Text. Enter the appropriate information in the dialog box.When a document containing a graphic with alternative text is converted to HTML by Tutor, the HTML document will contain the appropriate accessibility information.Javascript elementsThe tabbed format and other javascript elements in the HTML version of the Tutor documents may not be accessible to all users. A link to an accessible/printable version of the document is available in the upper right corner of all Tutor documents.Repetitive dataIf repetitive data such as the distribution section and the ownership section are causing accessibility issues with your Tutor documents, you can insert a bookmark in the appropriate location of the document, and, when the document is converted to HTML, the bookmark will be converted to an A NAME reference (also known as an internal link). With this reference, you can create a link in Header.txt that can be prepended to each Tutor document that allows the user to bypass repetitive sections. Tutor and Oracle ApplicationsRegarding accessibility, please check Oracle's website on accessibility http://www.oracle.com/accessibility/ to find out what version of E-Business Suite is certified to work with screen readers. Oracle Tutor 11.5.6A and greater works with screen readers such as JAWS.There is no certification between Oracle Tutor and Oracle Applications because there are no related dependencies. It doesn't matter which version of the Oracle Applications you are running. Therefore, it is possible to use Oracle Tutor with earlier versions of Oracle Applications.Oracle Business Process Converter and Oracle ApplicationsOracle Business Process Converter (OBPC) converts Visio, XPDL, and Tutor models to Oracle Business Process Architect and Oracle Business Process Management. The OBPC is one of a collection of plugins to Oracle JDeveloper. Please see the VPAT as the same considerations apply.Learn MoreFor more information about Tutor, visit Oracle.Com or the Tutor Blog. Post your questions at the Tutor Forum. Emily ChorbaPrinciple Product Manager Oracle Tutor & BPM

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• Adding Attributes to Generated Classes

  ASP.NET MVC 2 adds support for data annotations, implemented via attributes on your model classes.  Depending on your design, you may be using an OR/M tool like Entity Framework or LINQ-to-SQL to generate your entity classes, and you may further be using these entities directly as your Model.  This is fairly common, and alleviates the need to do mapping between POCO domain objects and such entities (though there are certainly pros and cons to using such entities directly). As an example, the current version of the NerdDinner application (available on CodePlex at nerddinner.codeplex.com) uses Entity Framework for its model.  Thus, there is a NerdDinner.edmx file in the project, and a generated NerdDinner.Models.Dinner class.  Fortunately, these generated classes are marked as partial, so you can extend their behavior via your own partial class in a separate file.  However, if for instance the generated Dinner class has a property Title of type string, you cant then add your own Title of type string for the purpose of adding data annotations to it, like this: public partial class Dinner { [Required] public string Title { get;set; } } This will result in a compilation error, because the generated Dinner class already contains a definition of Title.  How then can we add attributes to this generated code?  Do we need to go into the T4 template and add a special case that says if were generated a Dinner class and it has a Title property, add this attribute?  Ick. MetadataType to the Rescue The MetadataType attribute can be used to define a type which contains attributes (metadata) for a given class.  It is applied to the class you want to add metadata to (Dinner), and it refers to a totally separate class to which youre free to add whatever methods and properties you like.  Using this attribute, our partial Dinner class might look like this: [MetadataType(typeof(Dinner_Validation))] public partial class Dinner {}   public class Dinner_Validation { [Required] public string Title { get; set; } } In this case the Dinner_Validation class is public, but if you were concerned about muddying your API with such classes, it could instead have been created as a private class within Dinner.  Having the validation attributes specified in their own class (with no other responsibilities) complies with the Single Responsibility Principle and makes it easy for you to test that the validation rules you expect are in place via these annotations/attributes. Thanks to Julie Lerman for her help with this.  Right after she showed me how to do this, I realized it was also already being done in the project I was working on. 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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• Interviews: Going Beyond the Technical Quiz

  - by Tony Davis

  All developers will be familiar with the basic format of a technical interview. After a bout of CV-trawling to gauge basic experience, strengths and weaknesses, the interview turns technical. The whiteboard takes center stage and the challenge is set to design a function or query, or solve what on the face of it might seem a disarmingly simple programming puzzle. Most developers will have experienced those few panic-stricken moments, when one’s mind goes as blank as the whiteboard, before un-popping the marker pen, and hopefully one’s mental functions, to work through the problem. It is a way to probe the candidate’s knowledge of basic programming structures and techniques and to challenge their critical thinking. However, these challenges or puzzles, often devised by some of the smartest brains in the development team, have a tendency to become unnecessarily ‘tricksy’. They often seem somewhat academic in nature. While the candidate straight out of IT school might breeze through the construction of a Markov chain, a candidate with bags of practical experience but less in the way of formal training could become nonplussed. Also, a whiteboard and a marker pen make up only a very small part of the toolkit that a programmer will use in everyday work. I remember vividly my first job interview, for a position as technical editor. It went well, but after the usual CV grilling and technical questions, I was only halfway there. Later, they sat me alongside a team of editors, in front of a computer loaded with MS Word and copy of SQL Server Query Analyzer, and my task was to edit a real chapter for a real SQL Server book that they planned to publish, including validating and testing all the code. It was a tough challenge but I came away with a sound knowledge of the sort of work I’d do, and its context. It makes perfect sense, yet my impression is that many organizations don’t do this. Indeed, it is only relatively recently that Red Gate started to move over to this model for developer interviews. Now, instead of, or perhaps in addition to, the whiteboard challenges, the candidate can expect to sit with their prospective team, in front of Visual Studio, loaded with all the useful tools in the developer’s kit (ReSharper and so on) and asked to, for example, analyze and improve a real piece of software. The same principles should apply when interviewing for a database positon. In addition to the usual questions challenging the candidate’s knowledge of such things as b-trees, object permissions, database recovery models, and so on, sit the candidate down with the other database developers or DBAs. Arm them with a copy of Management Studio, and a few other tools, then challenge them to discover the flaws in a stored procedure, and improve its performance. Or present them with a corrupt database and ask them to get the database back online, and discover the cause of the corruption.

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• Agile PLM 9.3 Service Pack 2 (SP2 or 9.3.0.2) is released along with AUT 1.6.2.0 and AutoVue 20 for

  - by Shane Goodwin

  Oracle released Agile PLM 9.3 SP2 on June 14 and the Agile installer for AutoVue 20 for Agile PLM on April 30. Also available are the new versions of AUT and Averify - 1.6.3 for both tools. 9.3 SP2 is a combined English and NLS release for use on any version of 9.3.0. SP2 contains many bug fixes and rolls up several Hot Fixes - please review the Readme for all the details. In addition, this release also addresses some scalability issues when working with very large Exports and Reports. When exporting very large BOMs, the export module will now release objects more efficiently to reduce the amount of memory consumed on the Application Server. Adminstrators can also control the maximum row limits for Users verses system processes, like ACS. Several out of the box BOM reports have also been changed to use a new row limit option. The combination of all these changes will provide more stability on the application server for customers managing very large datasets. 9.3 SP2 also adds support for Oracle Database 11gR2 for Windows, Oracle Internet Directory (OID) and Oracle Access Manager (OAM). Please note that currently the Variant Patch is not intended to be released for SP2. Customers running the Variant Patch should remain on 9.3.0.0 or 9.3.0.1. Back in April, we also released the AutoVue 20 for Agile PLM installer. AutoVue 20 has many new features which will help Agile PLM customers. Large multi-page Word documents and 2D CAD documents will open more quickly to the first page or first rendition. Memory usage is less when working with 3D Models. There are many new formats supported for MCAD, 2D Cad, and EDA. AutoVue 20 is immediately available for Windows and Linux platforms. The new software can be found in Edelivery or Metalink / Oracle Support: - AutoVue 20 for Agile PLM is on E-Delivery with part number B58963-01 - Oracle Agile PLM 9.3 Service Pack 2 (9.3.0.2) My Oracle Support Patch ID 9782736 - AVERIFY 1.6.3 My Oracle Support Patch ID 9791892 - AUT 1.6.3 My Oracle Support Patch ID 9791908 - Agile PLM 9.3 SP2 Documentation is available on the OTN Agile Documentation Page

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• Mexico leading in Business Transformation Strategies:

  - by [email protected]

  By John Burke Group Vice President Oracle Applications Business Unit     I recently completed a business tour in Mexico, and was surprised by both the economic vibrancy of the country and the thought leadership expressed by many of the customers I met.  An example of the economic vibrancy of the country: across the street from my hotel was the local Bentley dealership, Coach Store, Yves Saint Laurent and of course a Starbucks.  I only made it to Starbucks.  Both the Coach Store and YSL had a line of folks waiting to get in... As for thought leadership, there were several illustrations only on the first day. I had the opportunity to meet with a branch of the Mexican Federal Government. Their questions were not about clerical task automation, far from it! We discussed citizen on-line access to fees and services - for example looking up the duty on an international goods shipment, or tracking that my taxes have been received, or the status of my request for a certain service.  Eligibility, policies and status.  Having an integrated rules or policy automation system that would allow businesses and citizens to access accurate information and ensure the proper collection of fees and payment for 3rd party provided services.    Then in the afternoon, I met with the owner of a roofing company (note: most roofs in Mexico are flat and made of cement).  This CEO started discussing how he wanted to transform his business from a cement products company to a service company and market 5-10-15 year service contracts which would guarantee the structural integrity of the roof and of course that the roof would remain waterproof.  Although his products were guaranteed, they required an annual inspection and most home owners never schedule that inspection until it is too late and water damage has occurred.  These emergency calls reduce his margin and reduce customer satisfaction.  This lead to a discussion of business models in general and why long term differentiation can only come from service, not just for the music or news industries, but also for roofing companies!    I completely agreed with the transformational concepts described in both meetings and quickly understood why there is a Bentley dealership near my hotel.    

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• Python Coding standards vs. productivity

  - by Shroatmeister

  I work for a large humanitarian organisation, on a project building software that could help save lives in emergencies by speeding up the distribution of food. Many NGOs desperately need our software and we are weeks behind schedule. One thing that worries me in this project is what I think is an excessive focus on coding standards. We write in python/django and use a version of PEP0008, with various modifications e.g. line lengths can go up to 160 chars and all lines should go that long if possible, no blank lines between imports, line wrapping rules that apply only to certain kinds of classes, lots of templates that we must use, even if they aren't the best way to solve a problem etc. etc. One core dev spent a week rewriting a major part of the system to meet the then new coding standards, throwing away several suites of tests in the process, as the rewrite meant they were 'invalid'. We spent two weeks rewriting all the functionality that was lost, and fixing bugs. He is the lead dev and his word carries weight, so he has convinced the project manager that these standards are necessary. The junior devs do as they are told. I sense that the project manager has a strong feeling of cognitive dissonance about all this but nevertheless agrees with it vehemently as he feels unsure what else to do. Today I got in serious trouble because I had forgotten to put some spaces after commas in a keyword argument. I was literally shouted at by two other devs and the project manager during a Skype call. Personally I think coding standards are important but also think that we are wasting a lot of time obsessing with them, and when I verbalized this it provoked rage. I'm seen as a troublemaker in the team, a team that is looking for scapegoats for its failings. Since the introduction of the coding standards, the team's productivity has measurably plummeted, however this only reinforces the obsession, i.e. the lead dev simply blames our non-adherence to standards for the lack of progress. He believes that we can't read each other's code if we don't adhere to the conventions. This is starting to turn sticky. Now I am trying to modify various scripts, autopep8, pep8ify and PythonTidy to try to match the conventions. We also run pep8 against source code but there are so many implicit amendments to our standard that it's hard to track them all. The lead dev simple picks faults that the pep8 script doesn't pick up and shouts at us in the next stand-up meeting. Every week there are new additions to the coding standards that force us to rewrite existing, working, tested code. Thank heavens we still have tests, (I reverted some commits and fixed a bunch of the ones he removed). All the while there is increasing pressure to meet the deadline. I believe a fundamental issue is that the lead dev and another core dev refuse to trust other developers to do their job. But how to deal with that? We can't do our job because we are too busy rewriting everything. I've never encountered this dynamic in a software engineering team. Am I wrong to question their adherence to coding standards? Has anyone else experienced a similar situation and how have they dealt with it successfully? (I'm not looking for a discussion just actual solutions people have found)

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• Extensible Metadata in Oracle IRM 11g

  - by martin.abrahams

  Another significant change in Oracle IRM 11g is that we now use XML to create the tamperproof header for each sealed document. This article explains what this means, and what benefit it offers. So, every sealed file has a metadata header that contains information about the document - its classification, its format, the user who sealed it, the name and URL of the IRM Server, and much more. The IRM Desktop and other IRM applications use this information to formulate the request for rights, as well as to enhance the user experience by exposing some of the metadata in the user interface. For example, in Windows explorer you can see some metadata exposed as properties of a sealed file and in the mouse-over tooltip. The following image shows 10g and 11g metadata side by side. As you can see, the 11g metadata is written as XML as opposed to the simple delimited text format used in 10g. So why does this matter? The key benefit of using XML is that it creates the opportunity for sealing applications to use custom metadata. This in turn creates the opportunity for custom classification models to be defined and enforced. Out of the box, the solution uses the context classification model, in which two particular pieces of metadata form the basis of rights evaluation - the context name and the document's item code. But a custom sealing application could use some other model entirely, enabling rights decisions to be evaluated on some other basis. The integration with Oracle Beehive is a great example of this. When a user adds a document to a Beehive workspace, that document can be automatically sealed with metadata that represents the Beehive security model rather than the context model. As a consequence, IRM can enforce the Beehive security model precisely and all rights configuration can actually be managed through the Beehive UI rather than the IRM UI. In this scenario, IRM simply supports the Beehive application, seamlessly extending Beehive security to all copies of workspace documents without any additional administration. Finally, I mentioned that the metadata header is tamperproof. This is obviously to stop a rogue user modifying the metadata with a view to gaining unauthorised access - reclassifying a board document to a less sensitive classifcation, for example. To prevent this, the header is digitally signed and can only be manipulated by a suitably authorised sealing application.

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• Understanding Data Science: Recent Studies

  - by Joe Lamantia

  If you need such a deeper understanding of data science than Drew Conway's popular venn diagram model, or Josh Wills' tongue in cheek characterization, "Data Scientist (n.): Person who is better at statistics than any software engineer and better at software engineering than any statistician." two relatively recent studies are worth reading.   'Analyzing the Analyzers,' an O'Reilly e-book by Harlan Harris, Sean Patrick Murphy, and Marck Vaisman, suggests four distinct types of data scientists -- effectively personas, in a design sense -- based on analysis of self-identified skills among practitioners.  The scenario format dramatizes the different personas, making what could be a dry statistical readout of survey data more engaging.  The survey-only nature of the data,  the restriction of scope to just skills, and the suggested models of skill-profiles makes this feel like the sort of exercise that data scientists undertake as an every day task; collecting data, analyzing it using a mix of statistical techniques, and sharing the model that emerges from the data mining exercise.  That's not an indictment, simply an observation about the consistent feel of the effort as a product of data scientists, about data science.  And the paper 'Enterprise Data Analysis and Visualization: An Interview Study' by researchers Sean Kandel, Andreas Paepcke, Joseph Hellerstein, and Jeffery Heer considers data science within the larger context of industrial data analysis, examining analytical workflows, skills, and the challenges common to enterprise analysis efforts, and identifying three archetypes of data scientist.  As an interview-based study, the data the researchers collected is richer, and there's correspondingly greater depth in the synthesis.  The scope of the study included a broader set of roles than data scientist (enterprise analysts) and involved questions of workflow and organizational context for analytical efforts in general.  I'd suggest this is useful as a primer on analytical work and workers in enterprise settings for those who need a baseline understanding; it also offers some genuinely interesting nuggets for those already familiar with discovery work. We've undertaken a considerable amount of research into discovery, analytical work/ers, and data science over the past three years -- part of our programmatic approach to laying a foundation for product strategy and highlighting innovation opportunities -- and both studies complement and confirm much of the direct research into data science that we conducted. There were a few important differences in our findings, which I'll share and discuss in upcoming posts.

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• Congratulations to the 2012 Oracle Spatial Award Winners!

  - by Mandy Ho

  I just returned from the 2012 Location Intelligence and Oracle Spatial User conference in Washington, DC, held by Directions Magazine. It was a great conference with presentations from across the country and globe, networking with Oracle Spatial users and meeting new customers and partners. As part of the yearly event, Oracle recognizes special customers and partners for their contributions to advancing mainstream solutions using geospatial technology. This was the 8th year that Oracle has recognized innovative, industry leaders.   The awards were given in three categories: Education/Research, Innovator and Partnership. Here's a little on each of the award winners. Education and Research Award Winner: Technical University of Berlin The Institute for Geodesy and Geoinformation Science of the Technical University of Berlin (TU Berlin) was selected for its leading research work in mapping of urban and regional space onto virtual 3D-city and landscape models, and use of Oracle Spatial, including 3D Vector and Georaster type support, as the data management platform. Innovator Award Winner:  Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Istanbul is the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe. One of their greatest challenges is organizing efficient public transportation for citizens and visitors. There are 15 types of transportations organized by 8 different agencies. To solve this problem, the Directorate of GIS of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality has created a multi-model itinerary system to help citizens in their decision process for using public transport or their private cars. They choose to use Oracle Spatial Network Model as the solution in our system together with Java and SOAP web services.  Partnership Award Winners: CSoft Group and OSCARS. The Partnership award is given to the ISV or integrator who have demonstrated outstanding achievements in partnering with Oracle on the development side, in taking solutions to market.  CSoft Group- the largest Russion integrator and consultancy provider in CAD and GIS. CSoft was selected by the Oracle Spatial product development organization for the key role in delivering geospatial solutions based on Oracle Database and Fusion Middleware to the Russian market. OSCARS - Provides consulting/training in France, Belgium and Luxembourg. With only 3 full time staff, they have achieved significant success with leading edge customer implementations leveraging the latest Oracle Spatial/MapViewer technologies, and delivering training throughout Europe.  Finally, we also awarded two Special Recognition awards for two partners that helped contribute to the Oracle Partner Network Spatial Specialization. These two partners provided insight and technical expertise from a partner perspective to help launch the new certification program for Oracle Spatial Technologies. Award Winners: ThinkHuddle and OSCARS  For more pictures on the conference and the awards, visit our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/OracleDatabase

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• Review: Backbone.js Testing

  - by george_v_reilly

  Title: Backbone.js Testing Author: Ryan Roemer Rating: $stars(4.5) Publisher: Packt Copyright: 2013 ISBN: 178216524X Pages: 168 Keywords: programming, testing, javascript, backbone, mocha, chai, sinon Reading period: October 2013 Backbone.js Testing is a short, dense introduction to testing JavaScript applications with three testing libraries, Mocha, Chai, and Sinon.JS. Although the author uses a sample application of a personal note manager written with Backbone.js throughout the book, much of the material would apply to any JavaScript client or server framework. Mocha is a test framework that can be executed in the browser or by Node.js, which runs your tests. Chai is a framework-agnostic TDD/BDD assertion library. Sinon.JS provides standalone test spies, stubs and mocks for JavaScript. They complement each other and the author does a good job of explaining when and how to use each. I've written a lot of tests in Python (unittest and mock, primarily) and C# (NUnit), but my experience with JavaScript unit testing was both limited and years out of date. The JavaScript ecosystem continues to evolve rapidly, with new browser frameworks and Node packages springing up everywhere. JavaScript has some particular challenges in testing—notably, asynchrony and callbacks. Mocha, Chai, and Sinon meet those challenges, though they can't take away all the pain. The author describes how to test Backbone models, views, and collections; dealing with asynchrony; provides useful testing heuristics, including isolating components to reduce dependencies; when to use stubs and mocks and fake servers; and test automation with PhantomJS. He does not, however, teach you Backbone.js itself; for that, you'll need another book. There are a few areas which I thought were dealt with too lightly. There's no real discussion of Test-driven_development or Behavior-driven_development, which provide the intellectual foundations of much of the book. Nor does he have much to say about testability and how to make legacy code more testable. The sample Notes app has plenty of testing seams (much of this falls naturally out of the architecture of Backbone); other apps are not so lucky. The chapter on automation is extremely terse—it could be expanded into a very large book!—but it does provide useful indicators to many areas for exploration. I learned a lot from this book and I have no hesitation in recommending it. Disclosure: Thanks to Ryan Roemer and Packt for a review copy of this book.

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• Don Knuth and MMIXAL vs. Chuck Moore and Forth -- Algorithms and Ideal Machines -- was there cross-pollination / influence in their ideas / work?

  - by AKE

  Question: To what extent is it known (or believed) that Chuck Moore and Don Knuth had influence on each other's thoughts on ideal machines, or their work on algorithms? I'm interested in citations, interviews, articles, links, or any other sort of evidence. It could also be evidence of the form of A and B here suggest that Moore might have borrowed or influenced C and D from Knuth here, or vice versa. (Opinions are of course welcome, but references / links would be better!) Context: Until fairly recently, I have been primarily familiar with Knuth's work on algorithms and computing models, mostly through TAOCP but also through his interviews and other writings. However, the more I have been using Forth, the more I am struck by both the power of a stack-based machine model, and the way in which the spareness of the model makes fundamental algorithmic improvements more readily apparent. A lot of what Knuth has done in fundamental analysis of algorithms has, it seems to me, a very similar flavour, and I can easily imagine that in a parallel universe, Knuth might perhaps have chosen Forth as his computing model. That's the software / algorithms / programming side of things. When it comes to "ideal computing machines", Knuth in the 70s came up with the MIX computer model, and then, collaborating with designers of state-of-the-art RISC chips through the 90s, updated this with the modern MMIX model and its attendant assembly language MMIXAL. Meanwhile, Moore, having been using and refining Forth as a language, but using it on top of whatever processor happened to be in the computer he was programming, began to imagine a world in which the efficiency and value of stack-based programming were reflected in hardware. So he went on in the 80s to develop his own stack-based hardware chips, defining the term MISC (Minimal Instruction Set Computers) along the way, and ending up eventually with the first Forth chip, the MuP21. Both are brilliant men with keen insight into the art of programming and algorithms, and both work at the intersection between algorithms, programs, and bare metal hardware (i.e. hardware without the clutter of operating systems). Which leads me to the headlined question... Question:To what extent is it known (or believed) that Chuck Moore and Don Knuth had influence on each other's thoughts on ideal machines, or their work on algorithms?

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• Getting away from a customized Magento 1.4 installation - Magento 1.6, OpenCart, or others?

  - by Phil

  I'm dealing with a Magento 1.4.0.0 Community Edition installation with various undocumented changes to the core (mostly integration with an ERP system), an outdated Sweet Tooth Points & Rewards module and some custom payment providers. It also doubles as a mediocre blogging/CMS system. It has one store each for 3 different languages, with about 40 product categories for a few hundred products. [rant] With no prior experience with any PHP e-commerce systems, I find it very difficult to work with. I attempted to install Magento 1.4.0.0 on my local WAMP dev machine, it installs fine, but the main page or search do not show any products no matter what I do in the backend admin panel. I don't know what's wrong with it, and whatever information I googled is either too old or too new from Magento 1.4. Later I'm given FTP access to the testing server, which neither my manager or I have permission to install XDebug on, as apparantly it runs on the same server as the production server (yikes). Trying to learn how Magento works is torture. I spent a week trying to add some fields into the Onepage Checkout before giving up and went to work on something else. The template system, just like the rest of Magento, is a bloated mishmash of overcomplicated directory structures, weird config xml files and EAV databases. I went into 6 different models and several content blocks in the backend just to change what the front page looks like. With little-to-none helpful and clear documentation (unlike CodeIgniter) and various breaking changes between minor point revisions which makes it hard to find useful information, Magento 1.4 is a developer killer. [/rant] The client is planning to redesign the site and has decided it might as well as move on from this unsustainable, hacky, upgrade-unfriendly, developer-unfriendly mess. Magento 1.4 is starting to show its age, with Magento 1.7 coming soon, the client is considering upgrading to Magento 1.6 or 1.7 if it has improved from 1.4. The customizations done to the current Magento 1.4 installation will have to be redone, and a new license for the Sweet Tooth Points & Rewards module will have to be bought. The client is also open to other e-commerce systems. I've looked at OpenCart and it seems to be quite developer friendly with a fairly simple structure. I found some complaints regarding its performance when the shop has thousands of categories or products, but this is not an issue with the current number of products my client has. It seems to be solid ground for easy customization to bring the rewards system and ERP integration over. What should the client upgrade to in this case?

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