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  • Project Time Tracker

    - by Geertjan
    Based on yesterday's blog entry, let's do something semi useful and display, in the project popup, which is available when you right-click a project in the Projects window, the time since the last change was made anywhere in the project, i.e., we can listen recursively to any changes done within a project and then update the popup with the newly acquired information, dynamically: import java.awt.event.ActionEvent; import java.text.DateFormat; import java.text.SimpleDateFormat; import java.util.ArrayList; import java.util.Collection; import java.util.List; import javax.swing.AbstractAction; import org.netbeans.api.project.Project; import org.netbeans.api.project.ProjectUtils; import org.openide.awt.ActionID; import org.openide.awt.ActionReference; import org.openide.awt.ActionRegistration; import org.openide.awt.StatusDisplayer; import org.openide.filesystems.FileAttributeEvent; import org.openide.filesystems.FileChangeListener; import org.openide.filesystems.FileEvent; import org.openide.filesystems.FileRenameEvent; import org.openide.util.Lookup; import org.openide.util.LookupEvent; import org.openide.util.LookupListener; import org.openide.util.Utilities; import org.openide.util.WeakListeners; @ActionID( category = "Demo", id = "org.ptt.TrackProjectSelectionAction") @ActionRegistration( lazy = false, displayName = "NOT-USED") @ActionReference( path = "Projects/Actions", position = 0) public final class TrackProjectSelectionAction extends AbstractAction implements LookupListener, FileChangeListener { private Lookup.Result<Project> projects; private Project context; private Long startTime; private Long changedTime; private DateFormat formatter; private List<Project> timedProjects; public TrackProjectSelectionAction() { putValue("popupText", "Timer"); formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("HH:mm:ss"); timedProjects = new ArrayList<Project>(); projects = Utilities.actionsGlobalContext().lookupResult(Project.class); projects.addLookupListener( WeakListeners.create(LookupListener.class, this, projects)); resultChanged(new LookupEvent(projects)); } @Override public void resultChanged(LookupEvent le) { Collection<? extends Project> allProjects = projects.allInstances(); if (allProjects.size() == 1) { Project currentProject = allProjects.iterator().next(); if (!timedProjects.contains(currentProject)) { String currentProjectName = ProjectUtils.getInformation(currentProject).getDisplayName(); putValue("popupText", "Start Timer for Project: " + currentProjectName); StatusDisplayer.getDefault().setStatusText( "Current Project: " + currentProjectName); timedProjects.add(currentProject); context = currentProject; } } } @Override public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) { refresh(); } protected void refresh() { startTime = System.currentTimeMillis(); String formattedStartTime = formatter.format(startTime); putValue("popupText", "Timer started: " + formattedStartTime + " (" + ProjectUtils.getInformation(context).getDisplayName() + ")"); } @Override public void fileChanged(FileEvent fe) { changedTime = System.currentTimeMillis(); formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("mm:ss"); String formattedLapse = formatter.format(changedTime - startTime); putValue("popupText", "Time since last change: " + formattedLapse + " (" + ProjectUtils.getInformation(context).getDisplayName() + ")"); startTime = changedTime; } @Override public void fileFolderCreated(FileEvent fe) {} @Override public void fileDataCreated(FileEvent fe) {} @Override public void fileDeleted(FileEvent fe) {} @Override public void fileRenamed(FileRenameEvent fre) {} @Override public void fileAttributeChanged(FileAttributeEvent fae) {} } Some more work needs to be done to complete the above, i.e., for each project you somehow need to maintain the start time and last change and redisplay that whenever the user right-clicks the project.

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  • Oracle Enterprise Computing Summit??!??????/EM????????

    - by Oracle Japan Marketing
    .NewsType1107 img{border:none; vertical-align:bottom;} .NewsType1107 p{margin:0; padding:0;} .NewsType1107 td{color:#333333; line-height:1.5; font-family:"MS P????", Osaka, Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro; font-size:12px;} .NewsType1107 table.t10 td, .small{font-size:10px;} .NewsType1107 a:link, a:visited{color:#ff0000;} .NewsType1107 a:hover, a:active{color:#ff0000; text-decoration:none;} .NewsType1107 a.l01:link, a.l01:visited, a.l01:hover, a.l01:active{color:#333333;} .NewsType1107 span.r, td.r{color:#ff0000;} .NewsType1107 table.tbl-semi td{padding:5px;} ?????BCP????????????????????????! ??????????????????????????????Oracle Enterprise Computing? ??????????????????????????????????Oracle Enterprise Computing?????????????????????? ??·?????????? >> ????????????????IT???????????????????? ???????????????????????ID??·??????????·?????3??????????????????????????????? ????????? >> ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????? Oracle EPM & BI Summit???????·?????????????????????????????????????·???????????????????????? ??·?????????? >> ???????????????????????????? ???5??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ??·?????????? >> -- ?????????????????????? ????????????????????????! ???????????????????????????????????????? ????????? >> ?????????????!??????????????? ? Sun????&?????·?????????????????????IT????????? ? ???????????·???????????????????IT???????????? ????????????? ? ?????????·????????????????????BI?? more solutions ? LIXIL ?????ERP?????????????????????????????????????????????? ? ?????????? Oracle EBS???·?????????????????????????????????????????? ? ????? Oracle EBS???/??????????????????????????????????????????????????????? more success stories IT?????????????????????????????????????·???·?????? >> ???????????????????????? ?? ???? ?? 7/6(?)10:30~18:00 ?????????? 2011 ?????????(??) 7/7(?)14:00~19:00 Java SE 7 ?????? ?????? ??????????(??) 7/13(?)13:30~16:45 ?????????????????????????? ??????????(??) 7/15(?)13:00~18:00 ?????!??????????????????????? ??????????(??) 7/20(?)9:30~17:50 ????·????????&????????2011 ?????????????(??) 7/20(?)13:30~17:00 ???????????????????????????? ??????????(??) 7/25(?)14:00~17:00 MySQL?????????????? ??????????(??) 7/26(?)13:30~17:45 Oracle Enterprise Computing Summit ???????????(??) Copyright © 2011, Oracle.All Rights Reserved. ???????????? | ???????????? | ??????????/????????

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  • Home and Small to Medium Enterprise network manufacturer choice, Netgear, Linksys or D-Link ?

    - by Kedare
    (Please don't close this post, it's a serious post so... Be cool, no trolls please, I need an answer ;p) Hello, I am looking for an alternative to Cisco (too expensive for me !) for semi-pro utilization (at home but with advanced feature (I'm studying in IT)) and in small/medium enterprises. I think I will choose between LinkSys (Including Cisco Small Business), Netgear and D-Link, but I've never really used these products, that what I need is a manufacturer that make "almost" all type of networking equipment (Like Cisco but cheaper..), here are my needs : I need almost all my products to be rackable I need a good warranty (Netgear lifetime waranty rulez!) I need an "unified" network environment I made a little comparison of the characteristics that interest me after hours of search on Internet (based on result found on many websites): (Prices are based on the ldlc-pro.com french website) Hotline/Support Quality: Netgear : Not so bad Linksys : Not so bad D-Link : Poor! Most common Warranty: Netgear : Unlimited Lifetime Warranty! Linksys : Limited 3 years warranty D-Link : Limited 5 years warranty (Unlimited in US but I'm on France :(...) VPN protocols compatibles with routers on endpoint mode: Netgear : Only IPSEC :( Linksys : IPSEC, PPTP, L2TP D-Link : IPSEC, PPTP, L2TP Cheaper 8 ports Gb switch : Netgear : 30€ Linksys : 47€ D-Link : 30€ Cheaper 48 ports + 1Gb uplink(s) administrable switch : Netgear : 263€ Linksys : 630€ D-Link : 600€ Cheaper VPN router : Netgear : 100€ Linksys : 80€ D-Link : 60€ Cheaper rackable switch : Netgear : 50€ Linksys : 87€ D-Link : 50€ Cheaper rackable and administrable switch : Netgear : 120€ Linksys : 370€ D-Link : 171€ Netgear and D-Link are in the same range of price, where Linksys is more expensives. I've searched for some other criteria ( the full comparison is here, in french with shop/source links: http://forums.jeuxonline.info/showthread.php?t=1072280 ) and made a final score for each manufacturer : SCORE including IP camera sub-score: Netgear : 6.2/10 Linksys : 7.3/10 D-Link : 7.0/10 SCORE excluding IP camera sub-score: Netgear : 6.9/10 Linksys : 7.0/10 D-Link : 6.7/10 On both case, Linksys wins. So here is my little comparison, but because I've never really used these stuffs, I need your help to make a decision on witch manufacturer choose for both my personnal and corporate use. So here are the questions : What manufacturer do you recommend me (Not cisco (except Small business)) ? Why ? Have you called the call center of the customer support of one of these manufacturer ? How it was ? Did you had problems or bad experiences with these equipments ? Any other advices ? ;) Thank you !

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  • installing windows XP in Samsung SENS 145 plus notebook (no CD drive)

    - by user13267
    Hi I was trying to install Windows XP in a Samsung SENS 145 plus Notebook. It does not have a cd drive and I already managed to format it and semi install Windows XP, so now it does not even boot up either. This is what I did: Since it supports USB booting, I first made a bootable USB of Windows XP (Korean version; SP2 I think, may be SP 3) using Novicorp WinToFlash enter link description here. It managed to boot up at first and I was able to format the C driveand get Windows install to start up. It took forever to copy all the files from the USB and after the first reboot, before installation started, I cancelled the reboot from windows install, went to BIOS and changed the boot device priority from USB to internal hard drive. But now on bootup it showed me a list with two options for booting windows XP (much like in the case of a multi OS system) so I assumed that I had formatted drive D by mistake and installed XP there, instead of on C drive. Anyway, I chose one of them and it continued my Windows installation. I got the blue installation screen that shows ads about Windows XP on the right frame and estimated remaining time on the left. However, after completing the process, after the first reboot, instead of showing the Windows XP logo, it says \system32\hall.dll is missing (or corrupted I'm not sure, I needed to install the Korean version of windows and I could not exactly read the error message, however it was one that I have already seen in an English version installation, and I am sure it says either missing or corrupted). The problem is, now it shows the same error again when I try to reboot it from the USB drive as well. I tried to boot a portable version of Linux I made in another USB, but the computer does not boot up from that USB, and it shows hal.dll error when I try to boot it using the WIN XP installation USB I made, as well as when I try to boot it from the hard drive, where I suppose Win XP is now semiinstalled. So now I can't get the computer to start up at all, except going to the BIOS. What else can I try to solve this? Also, would it be possible to install XP on this computer by connecting it to another one running Windows 7 ultimate, through the ethernet card? That is, network just the two computers together, then install windows XP on the notebook from the desktop running windows 7? Please help, I'm running out of ideas on this one. If Korean version of windows XP is the problem then I am willing to install English version as well. (but I need to make sure if that is the real cause of the problem)

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  • what can cause a folder to become indestructible?

    - by JustJeff
    I have a directory that I want to delete, but windows (xp sp3) is giving me the run-around and the folder is now effectively indestructible. Attempts to open the folder, either via explorer or cmd.exe are met with 'd:/temp/foo Is Not Accessible. Access is denied'. Attempts to delete the folder result in 'Cannot delete foo: The directory is not empty' So I can't delete it because supposedly it's not empty, but windows won't let me in it for some reason, so I can't clean it out first. There's nothing in it of consequence, and basically I just want to delete it at this point. Thinking that some other process must have a lock on it, I used the SysInternals 'handles' and Process Explorer to look for open handles with the directory name. These turned up no matches. (The directory name is not actually 'foo', it is something more unique but 'foo' is easier to type here). I put the machine through a restart, and the problem persists. I did a search for the folder name with regedit, to see what other apps might be aware of it. No match. The properties dialog was mildly interesting. The Read-Only attribute is 'semi-checked', i.e., the grayish check mark you get when some parts are and some parts aren't. Naturally I immediately unchecked this, and tried to delete the folder. No go. Opening properties again reveals the gray check mark next to Read-Only has returned. All the stats, size, size on disk, files, folders, all these are zero. There do not appear to be any shares on the folder, so that's not it either. Finally, I tried opening the partition's properties, and running the Tools/Error Checking utility. This didn't turn up any problems either. Fwiw, this directory was created by [a popular gui zip tool] when I tried to unpack a tar-and-zipped archive created on another system with command line utils. The archive was definitely corrupt, but I've never seen such a file do anything worse than crash the zip app, and certainly never leave permanent glitches in the file system. So what else can possibly be going on to make this folder behave this way?

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  • What's the best way to do user profile/folder redirect/home directory archiving?

    - by tpederson
    My company is in dire need of a redesign around how we handle user account administration. I've been tasked with automating the process. The end goal is to have the whole works triggered by the business, and IT only looking in when there's an error reported. The interim phase is going to be semi-manual. That is a level 2 tech inputs the user's info and supervises the process. The current hurdle I'm facing is user profile archiving. Our security team requires us to archive the profile directories for any terminated user for 60 days in case the legal team requires access to their files. Our AD is as much a mess as everything else, so there are some users with home directories and some with profiles. Anyone who has a profile dir in AD also has a good deal of their profile redirected to our file servers over DFS. In order to complete the process manually you find the user in AD, disable them, find their home/profile dir, go there and take ownership, create an archive folder, move all their files over, then delete the old dir. Some users have many many gigs of nonsense and this can take quite some time. Even automated the process would not be a quick one. I'm thinking that I need to have a client side C# GUI for the quick stuff and some server side batch script or console app to offload this long running process. I have a batch script that works decently using takeown and robocopy, but I wonder if a C# console app would do a better job. So, my question at long last is, what do you think is the best way to handle this? I can't imagine this is a unique problem, how do other admins get this done? The last place I worked was easily 10x larger than the place I'm in now. If we would have been doing this manual crap there, they'd have needed a team of at least 30 full time workers to keep up. I have decent skills in C#.net and batch scripting, but am a quick study and I have used most every language once or twice. Thank you for reading this and I look forward to seeing what imaginative solutions you all can come up with.

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  • How to create NTFS partition in Linux to install Windows 7 from USB?

    - by Michal Stefanow
    I messed up with my computer and need help. Generally: install Windows 7 from USB. Problem: "setup was unable to create a new system partition" When first attempt to install Windows 7 failed I tried Linux live USB, installed distro to HDD, and erased all the existing partitions. Current state (fdisk -l): [writing from other computer so no copy and paste] /dev/sda1 305GB Linux /dev/sda2 7GB Extended /dev/sda5 7GB Linux Swam / Solaris To create a new, NTFS partition: fdisk /dev/sda n (for new) p (for primary) 3 (for partintion number) "No free sectors available" All the HDD was formatted couple of minutes before so there is a lot of free space but how to resize a parition? I cannot find an option for resizing in man fdisk. Some people say I should use gparted but my distro doesn't not contain this package. And my distro doesn't support wireless drivers so I have serious problems with downloading stuff. I tried also using cfdisk but any command results in: "cfdisk bad primary partition 1 partition ends in the final partial cylinder" I tried also removing partition 1 and then creating a new one (so there is no "no free sectors"). I'm receiving a warning: "Re-reading the partition table failed with error 16: Device or resource busy. The kernel still uses the old table. The new table will be used at the next reboot." After restating: "grub rescue, no known filesystem" It may indicate that some changes have been made BUT when running Windows 7 installed some another error: "Windows cannot be installed to Disk 0 Partition 1" More detailed: "Windows cannot be installed to this hard disk space. Windows must be installed to a partition formatted as NTFS." So formatting drive using Windows 7 installer BUT this time yet another error: "Setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an existing system partition. See the setup log files for more information" Apparently I cannot access logs (how?) and I am back to drawing board with my live USB (this time showing partition as HPFS/NTFS). Any suggestions how to install Windows 7? Should I reinstall Linux to HDD, erase existing partitions once again, and use Parted rather than gparted (parted is included in the distro). Or maybe should I create another bootable USB such as PartedMagic to painlessly create partitions? I just want to install Windows 7 from USB, my laptop is semi-operational and I am ready to receive some help regarding fdisk and creating NTFS partitions. UPDATE: I did as suggested (removed all the partitions) and tried to install in unallocated space. Tried to create a new partition and format it. Same error: "setup was unable to create a new system partition" Came to the conclusion it may have something to do with TrueCrypt I have recently installed. Right now trying to FIX MBR (as I haven't got possibility to create rescue disc without optical drive)

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  • Form, function and complexity in rule processing

    - by Charles Young
    Tim Bass posted on ‘Orwellian Event Processing’. I was involved in a heated exchange in the comments, and he has more recently published a post entitled ‘Disadvantages of Rule-Based Systems (Part 1)’. Whatever the rights and wrongs of our exchange, it clearly failed to generate any agreement or understanding of our different positions. I don't particularly want to promote further argument of that kind, but I do want to take the opportunity of offering a different perspective on rule-processing and an explanation of my comments. For me, the ‘red rag’ lay in Tim’s claim that “...rules alone are highly inefficient for most classes of (not simple) problems” and a later paragraph that appears to equate the simplicity of form (‘IF-THEN-ELSE’) with simplicity of function.   It is not the first time Tim has expressed these views and not the first time I have responded to his assertions.   Indeed, Tim has a long history of commenting on the subject of complex event processing (CEP) and, less often, rule processing in ‘robust’ terms, often asserting that very many other people’s opinions on this subject are mistaken.   In turn, I am of the opinion that, certainly in terms of rule processing, which is an area in which I have a specific interest and knowledge, he is often mistaken. There is no simple answer to the fundamental question ‘what is a rule?’ We use the word in a very fluid fashion in English. Likewise, the term ‘rule processing’, as used widely in IT, is equally difficult to define simplistically. The best way to envisage the term is as a ‘centre of gravity’ within a wider domain. That domain contains many other ‘centres of gravity’, including CEP, statistical analytics, neural networks, natural language processing and so much more. Whole communities tend to gravitate towards and build themselves around some of these centres. The term 'rule processing' is associated with many different technology types, various software products, different architectural patterns, the functional capability of many applications and services, etc. There is considerable variation amongst these different technologies, techniques and products. Very broadly, a common theme is their ability to manage certain types of processing and problem solving through declarative, or semi-declarative, statements of propositional logic bound to action-based consequences. It is generally important to be able to decouple these statements from other parts of an overall system or architecture so that they can be managed and deployed independently.  As a centre of gravity, ‘rule processing’ is no island. It exists in the context of a domain of discourse that is, itself, highly interconnected and continuous.   Rule processing does not, for example, exist in splendid isolation to natural language processing.   On the contrary, an on-going theme of rule processing is to find better ways to express rules in natural language and map these to executable forms.   Rule processing does not exist in splendid isolation to CEP.   On the contrary, an event processing agent can reasonably be considered as a rule engine (a theme in ‘Power of Events’ by David Luckham).   Rule processing does not live in splendid isolation to statistical approaches such as Bayesian analytics. On the contrary, rule processing and statistical analytics are highly synergistic.   Rule processing does not even live in splendid isolation to neural networks. For example, significant research has centred on finding ways to translate trained nets into explicit rule sets in order to support forms of validation and facilitate insight into the knowledge stored in those nets. What about simplicity of form?   Many rule processing technologies do indeed use a very simple form (‘If...Then’, ‘When...Do’, etc.)   However, it is a fundamental mistake to equate simplicity of form with simplicity of function.   It is absolutely mistaken to suggest that simplicity of form is a barrier to the efficient handling of complexity.   There are countless real-world examples which serve to disprove that notion.   Indeed, simplicity of form is often the key to handling complexity. Does rule processing offer a ‘one size fits all’. No, of course not.   No serious commentator suggests it does.   Does the design and management of large knowledge bases, expressed as rules, become difficult?   Yes, it can do, but that is true of any large knowledge base, regardless of the form in which knowledge is expressed.   The measure of complexity is not a function of rule set size or rule form.  It tends to be correlated more strongly with the size of the ‘problem space’ (‘search space’) which is something quite different.   Analysis of the problem space and the algorithms we use to search through that space are, of course, the very things we use to derive objective measures of the complexity of a given problem. This is basic computer science and common practice. Sailing a Dreadnaught through the sea of information technology and lobbing shells at some of the islands we encounter along the way does no one any good.   Building bridges and causeways between islands so that the inhabitants can collaborate in open discourse offers hope of real progress.

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  • Multitask Like a Pro with AquaSnap

    - by Matthew Guay
    Are you tired of shuffling back and forth between windows?  Here’s a handy app that can help you keep all of your windows organized and accessible. AquaSnap is a great free utility that helps you use multiple windows at the same time easily and efficiently.  One of Windows 7’s greatest new features is Aero Snap, which lets you easily view windows side by side by simply dragging windows to side of your screen.  After using Windows 7 for the past year, Aero Snap is one of the features we really miss when using older versions of Windows. With AquaSnap, you now have all of the features of Aero Snap and more in Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and of course Windows 7.  Not only does it give you Aero Snap features, but AquaSnap also gives you more control over your windows to make you more productive. Getting Started AquaSnap is a a free download for Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and 7.  Download the small installer (link below) and install it with the default settings. AquaSnap automatically runs as soon as it is installed, and you will notice a new icon in your system tray. Now you can go ahead and put it to use.  Drag a window to any edge or corner of your desktop, and you will see an icon showing what part of the screen the window will cover. Dragging it to the side of the screen expanded the window to fill the right half of the screen, just like the default Aero Snap in Windows 7.  You can drag the window away to restore it to its former size. AquaSnap works on any corner of the screen too, so you can have 4 windows side-by-side.  We already have 3 windows snapped to the corners, and notice that we’re dragging a fourth window to the bottom right corner. You can also snap windows to the bottom and top of the screen.  Here we have Word snapped to the bottom half of the screen, and we’re dragging Chrome to the top. You can even snap internal windows in Multiple Document Interface (MDI) programs such as Excel.  Here we are snapping a workbook in Excel to the left to view 2 workbooks side-by-side.   Additionally, AquaSnap lets you keep any window always on top.  Simply shake any window, and it will turn semi-transparent and stay on top of all other windows.  Notice the transparent calculator here on top of Excel. All of AquaSnap’s features work great in Windows 2000, XP, and Vista too.  Here we are snapping IE6 to the left of the screen in XP. Here are 3 windows snapped to the sides in XP.  You can mix the snap modes, and have, for instance, two windows on the right side and one window on the left.  This is a great way to maximize productivity if you need more space in one of the windows. Even AquaShake works to keep a window transparent and on top in XP. Settings AquaSnap has a detailed settings dialog where you can tweak it to work exactly like you want.  Simply right-click on its icon in the taskbar, and select Settings. From the first screen, you can choose if you want AquaSnap to start with Windows, and if you want it to show an icon in the system tray.  If you turn off the system tray icon, you can access the AquaSnap settings from Start > All Programs > AquaSnap > Configuration (or simply search for Configuration in Vista or Windows 7). The second tab in settings lets you choose what you want each snapping region to do.  You can also choose two other presets, including AeroSnap (which works just like the default Aero Snap in Windows 7) and AquaSnap simple (which only snaps at the edges of the screen, not the corners). The third tab lets you increase or decrease the opacity of pinned windows when using AquaShake, and also lets you increase or decrease the shaking sensitivity.  Additionally, if you prefer the standard AeroShake functionality, which minimizes all other open windows when you shake a window, you can choose that too. The fourth tab lets you activate an optional feature, AquaGlass.  If you activate this, it will make windows turn transparent when you drag them across the screen.   Finally, the last tab lets you change the color and opacity of the preview rectangle, or simply turn it off. Or, if you want to temporarily turn AquaSnap off, simply right-click on its icon and select Off.  In Windows 7, turning off AquaSnap will restore your standard Windows Aero Snap functionality, and in other version of Windows it will stop letting you snap windows at all.  You can then repeat the steps and select On when you want to use AquaSnap again. Conclusion AquaSnap is a handy tool to make you more productive at your computer.  With a wide variety of useful features, there’s something here for everyone.  Download AquaSnap Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How to Get Virtual Desktops on Windows XP TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Out of band Security Update for Internet Explorer 7 Cool Looking Screensavers for Windows SyncToy syncs Files and Folders across Computers on a Network (or partitions on the same drive) If it were only this easy Classic Cinema Online offers 100’s of OnDemand Movies OutSync will Sync Photos of your Friends on Facebook and Outlook

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  • Using CMS for App Configuration - Part 1, Deploying Umbraco

    - by Elton Stoneman
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/EltonStoneman/archive/2014/06/04/using-cms-for-app-configurationndashpart-1-deploy-umbraco.aspxSince my last post on using CMS for semi-static API content, How about a new platform for your next API… a CMS?, I’ve been using the idea for centralized app configuration, and this post is the first in a series that will walk through how to do that, step-by-step. The approach gives you a platform-independent, easily configurable way to specify your application configuration for different environments, with a built-in approval workflow, change auditing and the ability to easily rollback to previous settings. It’s like Azure Web and Worker Roles where you can specify settings that change at runtime, but it's not specific to Azure - you can use it for any app that needs changeable config, provided it can access the Internet. The series breaks down into four posts: Deploying Umbraco – the CMS that will store your configurable settings and the current values; Publishing your config – create a document type that encapsulates your settings and a template to expose them as JSON; Consuming your config – in .NET, a simple client that uses dynamic objects to access settings; Config lifecycle management – how to publish, audit, and rollback settings. Let’s get started. Deploying Umbraco There’s an Umbraco package on Azure Websites, so deploying your own instance is easy – but there are a couple of things to watch out for, so this step-by-step will put you in a good place. Create From Gallery The easiest way to get started is with an Azure subscription, navigate to add a new Website and then Create From Gallery. Under CMS, you’ll see an Umbraco package (currently at version 7.1.3): Configure Your App For high availability and scale, you’ll want your CMS on separate kit from anything else you have in Azure, so in the configuration of Umbraco I’d create a new SQL Azure database – which Umbraco will use to store all its content: You can use the free 20mb database option if you don’t have demanding NFRs, or if you’re just experimenting. You’ll need to specify a password for a SQL Server account which the Umbraco service will use, and changing from the default username umbracouser is probably wise. Specify Database Settings You can create a new database on an existing server if you have one, or create new. If you create a new server *do not* use the same username for the database server login as you used for the Umbraco account. If you do, the deployment will fail later. Think of this as the SQL Admin account that you can use for managing the db, the previous account was the service account Umbraco uses to connect. Make Tea If you have a fast kettle. It takes about two minutes for Azure to create and provision the website and the database. Install Umbraco So far we’ve deployed an empty instance of Umbraco using the Azure package, and now we need to browse to the site and complete installation. My Website was called my-app-config, so to complete installation I browse to http://my-app-config.azurewebsites.net:   Enter the credentials you want to use to login – this account will have full admin rights to the Umbraco instance. Note that between deploying your new Umbraco instance and completing installation in this step, anyone can browse to your website and complete the installation themselves with their own credentials, if they know the URL. Remote possibility, but it’s there. From this page *do not* click the big green Install button. If you do, Umbraco will configure itself with a local SQL Server CE database (.sdf file on the Web server), and ignore the SQL Azure database you’ve carefully provisioned and may be paying for. Instead, click on the Customize link and: Configure Your Database You need to enter your SQL Azure database details here, so you’ll have to get the server name from the Azure Management Console. You don’t need to explicitly grant access to your Umbraco website for the database though. Click Continue and you’ll be offered a “starter” website to install: If you don’t know Umbraco at all (but you are familiar with ASP.NET MVC) then a starter website is worthwhile to see how it all hangs together. But after a while you’ll have a bunch of artifacts in your CMS that you don’t want and you’ll have to work out which you can safely delete. So I’d click “No thanks, I do not want to install a starter website” and give yourself a clean Umbraco install. When it completes, the installation will log you in to the welcome screen for managing Umbraco – which you can access from http://my-app-config.azurewebsites.net/umbraco: That’s It Easy. Umbraco is installed, using a dedicated SQL Azure instance that you can separately scale, sync and backup, and ready for your content. In the next post, we’ll define what our app config looks like, and publish some settings for the dev environment.

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  • Configure Oracle SOA JMSAdatper to Work with WLS JMS Topics

    - by fip
    The WebLogic JMS Topic are typically running in a WLS cluster. So as your SOA composites that receive these Topic messages. In some situation, the two clusters are the same while in others they are sepearate. The composites in SOA cluster are subscribers to the JMS Topic in WebLogic cluster. As nature of JMS Topic is meant to distribute the same copy of messages to all its subscribers, two questions arise immediately when it comes to load balancing the JMS Topic messages against the SOA composites: How to assure all of the SOA cluster members receive different messages instead of the same (duplicate) messages, even though the SOA cluster members are all subscribers to the Topic? How to make sure the messages are evenly distributed (load balanced) to SOA cluster members? Here we will walk through how to configure the JMS Topic, the JmsAdapter connection factory, as well as the composite so that the JMS Topic messages will be evenly distributed to same composite running off different SOA cluster nodes without causing duplication. 2. The typical configuration In this typical configuration, we achieve the load balancing of JMS Topic messages to JmsAdapters by configuring a partitioned distributed topic along with sharable subscriptions. You can reference the documentation for explanation of PDT. And this blog posting does a very good job to visually explain how this combination of configurations would message load balancing among clients of JMS Topics. Our job is to apply this configuration in the context of SOA JMS Adapters. To do so would involve the following steps: Step A. Configure JMS Topic to be UDD and PDT, at the WebLogic cluster that house the JMS Topic Step B. Configure JCA Connection Factory with proper ServerProperties at the SOA cluster Step C. Reference the JCA Connection Factory and define a durable subscriber name, at composite's JmsAdapter (or the *.jca file) Here are more details of each step: Step A. Configure JMS Topic to be UDD and PDT, You do this at the WebLogic cluster that house the JMS Topic. You can follow the instructions at Administration Console Online Help to create a Uniform Distributed Topic. If you use WebLogic Console, then at the same administration screen you can specify "Distribution Type" to be "Uniform", and the Forwarding policy to "Partitioned", which would make the JMS Topic Uniform Distributed Destination and a Partitioned Distributed Topic, respectively Step B: Configure ServerProperties of JCA Connection Factory You do this step at the SOA cluster. This step is to make the JmsAdapter that connect to the JMS Topic through this JCA Connection Factory as a certain type of "client". When you configure the JCA Connection Factory for the JmsAdapter, you define the list of properties in FactoryProperties field, in a semi colon separated list: ClientID=myClient;ClientIDPolicy=UNRESTRICTED;SubscriptionSharingPolicy=SHARABLE;TopicMessageDistributionAll=false You can refer to Chapter 8.4.10 Accessing Distributed Destinations (Queues and Topics) on the WebLogic Server JMS of the Adapter User Guide for the meaning of these properties. Please note: Except for ClientID, other properties such as the ClientIDPolicy=UNRESTRICTED, SubscriptionSharingPolicy=SHARABLE and TopicMessageDistributionAll=false are all default settings for the JmsAdapter's connection factory. Therefore you do NOT have to explicitly specify them explicitly. All you need to do is the specify the ClientID. The ClientID is different from the subscriber ID that we are to discuss in the later steps. To make it simple, you just need to remember you need to specify the client ID and make it unique per connection factory. Here is the example setting: Step C. Reference the JCA Connection Factory and define a durable subscriber name, at composite's JmsAdapter (or the *.jca file) In the following example, the value 'MySubscriberID-1' was given as the value of property 'DurableSubscriber': <adapter-config name="subscribe" adapter="JMS Adapter" wsdlLocation="subscribe.wsdl" xmlns="http://platform.integration.oracle/blocks/adapter/fw/metadata"> <connection-factory location="eis/wls/MyTestUDDTopic" UIJmsProvider="WLSJMS" UIConnectionName="ateam-hq24b"/> <endpoint-activation portType="Consume_Message_ptt" operation="Consume_Message"> <activation-spec className="oracle.tip.adapter.jms.inbound.JmsConsumeActivationSpec"> <property name="DurableSubscriber" value="MySubscriberID-1"/> <property name="PayloadType" value="TextMessage"/> <property name="UseMessageListener" value="false"/> <property name="DestinationName" value="jms/MyTestUDDTopic"/> </activation-spec> </endpoint-activation> </adapter-config> You can set the durable subscriber name either at composite's JmsAdapter wizard,or by directly editing the JmsAdapter's *.jca file within the Composite project. 2.The "atypical" configurations: For some systems, there may be restrictions that do not allow the afore mentioned "typical" configurations be applied. For examples, some deployments may be required to configure the JMS Topic to be Replicated Distributed Topic rather than Partition Distributed Topic. We would like to discuss those scenarios here: Configuration A: The JMS Topic is NOT PDT In this case, you need to define the message selector 'NOT JMS_WL_DDForwarded' in the adapter's *.jca file, to filter out those "replicated" messages. Configuration B. The ClientIDPolicy=RESTRICTED In this case, you need separate factories for different composites. More accurately, you need separate factories for different *.jca file of JmsAdapter. References: Managing Durable Subscription WebLogic JMS Partitioned Distributed Topics and Shared Subscriptions JMS Troubleshooting: Configuring JMS Message Logging: Advanced Programming with Distributed Destinations Using the JMS Destination Availability Helper API

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  • Record and Play your WebLogic Console Tasks Like a DVR

    - by james.bayer
    Automation using WebLogic Scripting Tool Today on the Oracle internal mailing list for WebLogic Server questions someone asked how to automate the configuration of the thread model for WebLogic Server and they were having trouble with the jython scripting syntax.  I’ve previously written about this feature called Work Managers and the associated constraints.  However, I did not show how to automate the process of configuring this without the console using WebLogic Scripting Tool – the jython scripting automation environment abbreviated as WLST.  I’ve written some very basic introductions to WLST before and there is also an Oracle By Example on the subject, but this is a bit more advanced.  Fear not because there is a really easy-to-use feature of the WLS console that lets you “Record” user actions just like a DVR.  Using these recordings of the web-based console, you can easily create a script even if you are unfamiliar with the WLST syntax and API.  I’m a big fan of both DVR’s and automation as can be evidenced with this old Halloween picture taken during simpler times.  Obviously the Cast Away and The Big Labowski references show some age.  I was a big Tivo fan-boy back in the day and I still think it’s the best DVR. I strongly believe that WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) is an absolutely essential tool for automating administration tasks in anything beyond a development environment.  Even in development environments you can make a case that it makes sense to start the automation for environments downstream.  I promise you that once you start using it for any tasks that you do even semi-regularly, you won’t go back to clicking through the console.  It’s simply so much more efficient and less error-prone to run a script. Let’s say you need to create a Work Manager and MaxThreadsConstraint – the easy way to do it is configure it in the WLS console first while capturing the commands with a recording.  See the images for the simple steps – click to enlarge. Record Console Configurations to a File Review the Recordings and Make Slight Modifications In order to make the recorded .py file directly callable as a stand-alone script I added calls to the connect() and edit() functions at the beginning and calls to disconnect() and exit() at the end – otherwise the main section of the script was provided by the console recording.  Below is the resulting file I saved as d:/temp/wm.py connect('weblogic','welcome1', 't3://localhost:7001') edit() startEdit()   cd('/SelfTuning/wl_server') cmo.createMaxThreadsConstraint('MaxThreadsConstraint-0')   cd('/SelfTuning/wl_server/MaxThreadsConstraints/MaxThreadsConstraint-0') set('Targets',jarray.array([ObjectName('com.bea:Name=examplesServer,Type=Server')], ObjectName)) cmo.setCount(5) cmo.unSet('ConnectionPoolName')   cd('/SelfTuning/wl_server') cmo.createWorkManager('WorkManager-0') cd('/SelfTuning/wl_server/WorkManagers/WorkManager-0') set('Targets',jarray.array([ObjectName('com.bea:Name=examplesServer,Type=Server')], ObjectName))   cmo.setMaxThreadsConstraint(getMBean('/SelfTuning/wl_server/MaxThreadsConstraints/MaxThreadsConstraint-0')) cmo.setIgnoreStuckThreads(false)   activate() disconnect() exit() Run the Script If you want to test it be sure to delete the Work Manager and MaxThreadConstraint that you had previously created in the console.  Do something like the following - set up the environment and tell WLST to execute the script which happens in the first 2 lines, the rest doesn’t require any user input: D:\Oracle\wls11g\wlserver_10.3\samples\domains\wl_server\bin>setDomainEnv.cmd D:\Oracle\wls11g\wlserver_10.3\samples\domains\wl_server>java weblogic.WLST d:\temp\wm.py   Initializing WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) ...   Welcome to WebLogic Server Administration Scripting Shell   Type help() for help on available commands   Connecting to t3://localhost:7001 with userid weblogic ... Successfully connected to Admin Server 'examplesServer' that belongs to domain 'wl_server'.   Warning: An insecure protocol was used to connect to the server. To ensure on-the-wire security, the SSL port or Admin port should be used instead.   Location changed to edit tree. This is a writable tree with DomainMBean as the root. To make changes you will need to start an edit session via startEdit().   For more help, use help(edit)   Starting an edit session ... Started edit session, please be sure to save and activate your changes once you are done. Activating all your changes, this may take a while ... The edit lock associated with this edit session is released once the activation is completed. Activation completed Disconnected from weblogic server: examplesServer     Exiting WebLogic Scripting Tool.   Now if you go back and look in the console the changes have been made and we now have a compete script.  Of course there is a full MBean reference and you can learn the nuances of jython and WLST, but why not the WLS console do most of the work for you!  Happy scripting.

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  • My History with Agile

    - by Robert May
    I’m going to write my history with Agile here.  That way, in future posts, I can refer back to it, instead of typing it out in the post that contains information you may actually want to read.  Note that I’m actually a pretty senior developer, and do lots of technical interviews.  I’m an Agile fan because of the difference it makes in peoples lives and the improvement in quality it brings, and I’ll sacrifice my technological advance to help teams. Management History I started management pretty early in my career, starting with the first job that I ever had.  I actually do NOT have a CS or similar degree.  I have a Bachelor’s of Business Administration with an emphasis in Computer Information Systems. My first management gigs were around call center work and were very schedule oriented.  I didn’t understand the true value of teams, and I’m ashamed to admit, I actually installed a fingerprint scanner as a time clock in this job.  I shudder to think of the impact that I had on the team spirit.  I didn’t even trust them enough to fill out their time cards correctly.  How sad. I was managing nearly 100 people in this position, with the help of a great set of subordinates. I did try to come up with reward programs for the team, but again, didn’t understand the concept of team, so instead of letting the team determine how the rewards should work, I mandated from on high, which isn’t a good thing. I was told that I wasn’t the type that would be a good manager by people whom I respected a lot.  They said it because I was a computer geek, since they don’t understand good management either, but in retrospect, they were right about me then.  I was too green. After my first job, I went on to other jobs and with the exception of one job, I’ve managed people at them all.  The rest of the management story is important for understanding agile, so I’ll save it for my next post. Technical History I’ve been in software development for many, many years.  I technically started programming on a commodore 64 in basic.  I didn’t know that I was programming, but I was sure having fun.  That was followed by batch files, Gorilla hacking (I always had to win), WordPerfect Macro programming and other things that taught me the basics. My first “real” job was with a telephone company, and that’s where I made my first database application in DataEase, wrote my first VBA app and started using real programming tools, like turbo pascal, vb3-vb5, and semi-real tools like RPG and VisualRPG.  I wrote my first web page in 1994, and built my first data driven web page in 1995 using perlDB.  You really can do anything with Perl.  At this time, I also started a Linux based internet service provider that is still in operation today.  One of the people I worked with is now a Microsoft employee building and designing frameworks you probably know well.  Smart guy.  I also built my first ASP applications connecting to Sql Server 6.5, setup Exchange 5.5 for the company, and many other system administration stuff.  I’m a programmer by choice, mostly because I don’t really like PC support. From there, I went on to a large state agency.  I got to see and maintain true waterfall projects.  5 years of maintaining the 200 VB COM+ (MTS, actually) dlls that were used to calculate a single number is a long time.  That was all Microsoft DNS technologies.  SQL Server and VB6 were the tools of choice, although .net started to be a factor near the end of employment.  I did some heavy XML work at this job and even wrote an XSD parser and validator in VB6 that was a shim until MSXML 3.0 came out.  Prior to 3.0, XSD’s weren’t supported, and I didn’t want to write DTDs. Ironically, jobs after this were more generic.  I pretty much settled in on the .net framework and revisions of it.  Lots of WPF, some silverlight, lots of ASP.NET, some SQL Azure, lots of SQL Server, some Oracle, but I don’t think that I was as passionate about development and technologies.  I was more into the management of development.  I like people. Technorati Tags: Agile,history

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  • SQL SERVER – SSMS: Top Object and Batch Execution Statistics Reports

    - by Pinal Dave
    The month of June till mid of July has been the fever of sports. First, it was Wimbledon Tennis and then the Soccer fever was all over. There is a huge number of fan followers and it is great to see the level at which people sometimes worship these sports. Being an Indian, I cannot forget to mention the India tour of England later part of July. Following these sports and as the events unfold to the finals, there are a number of ways the statisticians can slice and dice the numbers. Cue from soccer I can surely say there is a team performance against another team and then there is individual member fairs against a particular opponent. Such statistics give us a fair idea to how a team in the past or in the recent past has fared against each other, head-to-head stats during World cup and during other neutral venue games. All these statistics are just pointers. In reality, they don’t reflect the calibre of the current team because the individuals who performed in each of these games are totally different (Typical example being the Brazil Vs Germany semi-final match in FIFA 2014). So at times these numbers are misleading. It is worth investigating and get the next level information. Similar to these statistics, SQL Server Management studio is also equipped with a number of reports like a) Object Execution Statistics report and b) Batch Execution Statistics reports. As discussed in the example, the team scorecard is like the Batch Execution statistics and individual stats is like Object Level statistics. The analogy can be taken only this far, trust me there is no correlation between SQL Server functioning and playing sports – It is like I think about diet all the time except while I am eating. Performance – Batch Execution Statistics Let us view the first report which can be invoked from Server Node -> Reports -> Standard Reports -> Performance – Batch Execution Statistics. Most of the values that are displayed in this report come from the DMVs sys.dm_exec_query_stats and sys.dm_exec_sql_text(sql_handle). This report contains 3 distinctive sections as outline below.   Section 1: This is a graphical bar graph representation of Average CPU Time, Average Logical reads and Average Logical Writes for individual batches. The Batch numbers are indicative and the details of individual batch is available in section 3 (detailed below). Section 2: This represents a Pie chart of all the batches by Total CPU Time (%) and Total Logical IO (%) by batches. This graphical representation tells us which batch consumed the highest CPU and IO since the server started, provided plan is available in the cache. Section 3: This is the section where we can find the SQL statements associated with each of the batch Numbers. This also gives us the details of Average CPU / Average Logical Reads and Average Logical Writes in the system for the given batch with object details. Expanding the rows, I will also get the # Executions and # Plans Generated for each of the queries. Performance – Object Execution Statistics The second report worth a look is Object Execution statistics. This is a similar report as the previous but turned on its head by SQL Server Objects. The report has 3 areas to look as above. Section 1 gives the Average CPU, Average IO bar charts for specific objects. The section 2 is a graphical representation of Total CPU by objects and Total Logical IO by objects. The final section details the various objects in detail with the Avg. CPU, IO and other details which are self-explanatory. At a high-level both the reports are based on queries on two DMVs (sys.dm_exec_query_stats and sys.dm_exec_sql_text) and it builds values based on calculations using columns in them: SELECT * FROM    sys.dm_exec_query_stats s1 CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_sql_text(sql_handle) AS s2 WHERE   s2.objectid IS NOT NULL AND DB_NAME(s2.dbid) IS NOT NULL ORDER BY  s1.sql_handle; This is one of the simplest form of reports and in future blogs we will look at more complex reports. I truly hope that these reports can give DBAs and developers a hint about what is the possible performance tuning area. As a closing point I must emphasize that all above reports pick up data from the plan cache. If a particular query has consumed a lot of resources earlier, but plan is not available in the cache, none of the above reports would show that bad query. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Server Management Studio, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: SQL Reports

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  • Selling Visual Studio ALM

    - by Tarun Arora
    Introduction As a consultant I have been selling Application Lifecycle Management services using Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server. I’ve been contacted various times by friends working in organization telling me that ALM processes in their company were benchmarked when dinosaurs walked the earth. Most of these individuals already know the great features Microsoft ALM tools offer and are keen to start a conversation with the CIO but don’t exactly know where to start. It is very important how you engage in your first conversation, if you start the conversation with ‘There is this great tooling from Microsoft which offers amazing features to boost developer productivity, … ‘ from experience I can tell you the reply from your CIO would be ‘I already know! Our existing landscape has a combination of bleeding edge open source and cutting edge licensed tools which already cover these features quite well, more over Microsoft products have a high licensing cost associated to them.’ You will always find it harder to sell by feature, the trick is to highlight the gap in the existing processes & tools and then highlight the impact of these gaps to the overall development processes, by now you would have captured enough attention to show off how the ALM tooling offered by Microsoft not only fills those gaps but offers great value adds to take their development practices to the next level. Rangers ALM Assessment Guide Image 1 – Welcome! First look at the Rangers ALM assessment guide Most organization already have some processes in place to cover aspects of ALM. How do you go about proving that there isn’t enough cover in place? This is where Visual Studio ALM Rangers ALM Assessment guide can help. The ALM assessment guide is really a tool that helps you gather information about Development practices and processes within a customer's environment. Several questionnaires are used to identify the current state of individual development lifecycle areas and decide on a desired state for those processes. It also presents guidance and roll-up summaries to help with recommendations moving forward. The ALM Rangers assessment guide can be downloaded from here. Image 2 – ALM Assessment guide divided into different functions of SDLC The assessment guide is divided into different functions of Software Development Lifecycle (listed below), this gives you the ability to access how mature the company is in different areas of SDLC. Architecture & Design Requirement Engineering & UX Development Software Configuration Management Governance Deployment & Operations Testing & Quality Assurance Project Planning & Management Each section has a set of questions, fill in the assessment by selecting “Never/Sometimes/Always” from the Answer column in the question sheets.  Each answer has weightage to the overall score. Each question has a link next to it, clicking the link takes you to the Reference sheet which gives you more details about the question along with a reason for “why you need to ask this question?”, “other ways to phrase the question” and “what to expect as an answer from the customer”. The trick is to engage the customer in a discussion. You need to probe a lot, listen to the customer and have a discussion with several team members, preferably without management to ensure that you receive candid feedback. This reminds me of a funny incident when during an ALM review a customer told me that they have a sophisticated semi-automated application deployment process, further discussions revealed that deployment actually involved 72 manual configuration steps per production node. Such observations can be recorded in the Issue Brainstorming worksheet for further consideration later. It is also worth mentioning the different levels of ALM maturity to the customer. By default the desired state of ALM maturity is set to Standard, it is possible to set a desired state by area, you should strive for Advanced or Dynamic, it always helps by explaining the classification and advantages. Image 3 – ALM levels by description The ALM assessment guide helps you arrive at a quantitative measure of the company’s ALM maturity. The resultant graph plotted on a spider’s web shows you the company’s current state of ALM maturity and the desired state of ALM maturity. Further since the results are classified by area you can immediately spot the areas where the customer needs immediate help. Image 4 – The spiders web! The red cross icons are areas shouting out for immediate attention, the yellow exclamation icons are areas that need improvement. These icons are calculated on the difference between the Current State of ALM maturity VS the Desired state of ALM maturity. Image 5 – Results by area Conclusion To conclude the Rangers ALM assessment guide gives you the ability to, Measure the customer’s current ALM maturity level Understand the ALM maturity level the customer desires to achieve Capture a healthy list of issues the customer wants to brainstorm further Now What’s next…? Download and get started with the Rangers ALM Assessment Guide. If you have successfully captured the above listed three pieces of information you are in a great state to make recommendations on the identified areas highlighting the benefits that Visual Studio ALM tools would offer. In the next post I will be covering how to take the ALM assessment results as the base to actually convert your recommendation into a sell.  Remember to subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TarunArora. I would love to hear your feedback! If you have any recommendations on things that I should consider or any questions or feedback, feel free to leave a comment. *** A special thanks goes out to fellow ranges Willy, Ethem and Philip for reviewing the blog post and providing valuable feedback. ***

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  • Backpacks and Booth Paint: TechEd 2012

    - by The Un-T Guy
    Arriving in the parking lot of the Orange County Convention Center, I immediately knew I was in the right place. As far as the eye could see, the acres of asphalt were awash in backpacks, quirky (to be kind) outfits, and bad haircuts. This was the place. This was Microsoft Mecca v2012 for geeks and nerds, the Central Florida event of the year, a gathering of high tech professionals whose skills I both greatly respect and, frankly, fear a little. I was wholly and completely out of element, a dork in a vast sea of geek jumbo. It like was wearing dockers and a golf shirt walking into a RenFaire, but one with really crappy costumes and no turkey legs...save those attached to some of the attendees. Of course the corporate whores...errrr, vendors were in place, ready to parlay the convention's fre-nerd-ic energy into millions of dollars by convincing the big-brained and under-sexed in the crowd (i.e., virtually all of them...present company excluded, of course) that their product or service was the only thing standing between them and professional success, industry fame, and clear skin. "With KramTech 2012," they seemed to scream, "you will be THE ROCK STAR of your company's IT department!" As car shows and tattoo parlors learned long ago, Tech companies seem to believe that the best way to attract the attention of this crowd is through the hint of the promise of sex. They recruit and deploy an army of "sales reps" whose primary qualifications appear to be long hair, short skirts, high heels, and a vagina. Unlike their distant cousins in the car and body art industries, however, this sub-species of booth paint (semi-gloss decoration that adds nothing to the substance of the product) seems torn between committing to being all-out sex objects and recognition that they are in the presence of intelligent, discerning people. People who are smart enough to know exactly what these vendors are doing. Also unlike their distant car show and tattoo shop cousins, these young women (what…are there no gay tech professionals who could use some eye candy?) seem to realize that while IT remains a male-dominated field, there are ever-increasing numbers of intelligent, capable, strong professional women – women who’ve battled to make it in this field through hard work and work performance rather than a hard body and performing after work. This is not to say that all of the young female sales reps are there only because of their physical attributes. Many are competent, intelligent, and driven -- not to mention attractive. They're working hard on the front lines of delivering the next generation of technology. The distinction is pretty clear, however, between these young professionals and the booth paint. The former enthusiastically deliver credible information about the products they’re hawking. The latter are positioned in the aisles, uncomfortably avoiding eye contact as they struggle to operate the badge readers. Surprisingly, not all of the women in attendance seemed to object to the objectification of their younger sisters. One IT professional woman who came of age in the industry (mostly in IT marketing) said, “I have no problem with it. I was a ‘booth babe’ for years and it doesn’t bother me at all.” Others, however, weren’t quite so gracious. One woman I spoke with, an IT manager from Cheyenne, Wyoming, said it was demeaning and frankly, as more and more women grow into IT management positions, not a great marketing idea. “Using these young women is, to me, no different than vendors giving out t-shirts to attract attention. It’s sad because it’s still hard for a woman to be respected in the IT field and this just perpetuates the outdated notion that IT is a male-dominated field.” She went on to say that decisions by vendors to employ these young women in this “inappropriate way” could impact her purchasing decisions. “I might be swayed toward a vendor who has women on staff who are intelligent and dynamic rather than the vendors who use the ‘decoration’ girls.” So in many ways, the IT industry is no different than most other industries as it struggles to maximize performance by finding and developing talent – all of the talent, not just the 50% with a penis. Women in IT, like their brethren, struggle to find their niche in the field, to grow professionally, and reach for the brass ring, struggling to overcome obstacles as they climb the mountain of professional success in a never-ending cycle of economic uncertainty. But as (generally) well-educated and highly-trained professionals, they are probably better positioned than those in many other industries. Beside, they’ve got one other advantage over their non-IT counterparts as they attempt their ascent to the summit: They’ve already got the backpacks.

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  • Windows Azure Recipe: Enterprise LOBs

    - by Clint Edmonson
    Enterprises are more and more dependent on their specialized internal Line of Business (LOB) applications than ever before. Naturally, the more software they leverage on-premises, the more infrastructure they need manage. It’s frequently the case that our customers simply can’t scale up their hardware purchases and operational staff as fast as internal demand for software requires. The result is that getting new or enhanced applications in the hands of business users becomes slower and more expensive every day. Being able to quickly deliver applications in a rapidly changing business environment while maintaining high standards of corporate security is a challenge that can be met right now by moving enterprise LOBs out into the cloud and leveraging Azure’s Access Control services. In fact, we’re seeing many of our customers (both large and small) see huge benefits from moving their web based business applications such as corporate help desks, expense tracking, travel portals, timesheets, and more to Windows Azure. Drivers Cost Reduction Time to market Security Solution Here’s a sketch of how many Windows Azure Enterprise LOBs are being architected and deployed: Ingredients Web Role – this will host the core of the application. Each web role is a virtual machine hosting an application written in ASP.NET (or optionally php, or node.js). The number of web roles can be scaled up or down as needed to handle peak and non-peak traffic loads. Many Java based applications are also being deployed to Windows Azure with a little more effort. Database – every modern web application needs to store data. SQL Azure databases look and act exactly like their on-premise siblings but are fault tolerant and have data redundancy built in. Access Control – this service is necessary to establish federated identity between the cloud hosted application and an enterprise’s corporate network. It works in conjunction with a secure token service (STS) that is hosted on-premises to establish the corporate user’s identity and credentials. The source code for an on-premises STS is provided in the Windows Azure training kit and merely needs to be customized for the corporate environment and published on a publicly accessible corporate web site. Once set up, corporate users see a near seamless single sign-on experience. Reporting – businesses live and die by their reports and SQL Azure Reporting, based on SQL Server Reporting 2008 R2, can serve up reports with tables, charts, maps, gauges, and more. These reports can be accessed from the Windows Azure Portal, through a web browser, or directly from applications. Service Bus (optional) – if deep integration with other applications and systems is needed, the service bus is the answer. It enables secure service layer communication between applications hosted behind firewalls in on-premises or partner datacenters and applications hosted inside Windows Azure. The Service Bus provides the ability to securely expose just the information and services that are necessary to create a simpler, more secure architecture than opening up a full blown VPN. Data Sync (optional) – in cases where the data stored in the cloud needs to be shared internally, establishing a secure one-way or two-way data-sync connection between the on-premises and off-premises databases is a perfect option. It can be very granular, allowing us to specify exactly what tables and columns to synchronize, setup filters to sync only a subset of rows, set the conflict resolution policy for two-way sync, and specify how frequently data should be synchronized Training Labs These links point to online Windows Azure training labs where you can learn more about the individual ingredients described above. (Note: The entire Windows Azure Training Kit can also be downloaded for offline use.) Windows Azure (16 labs) Windows Azure is an internet-scale cloud computing and services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers, which provides an operating system and a set of developer services which can be used individually or together. It gives developers the choice to build web applications; applications running on connected devices, PCs, or servers; or hybrid solutions offering the best of both worlds. New or enhanced applications can be built using existing skills with the Visual Studio development environment and the .NET Framework. With its standards-based and interoperable approach, the services platform supports multiple internet protocols, including HTTP, REST, SOAP, and plain XML SQL Azure (7 labs) Microsoft SQL Azure delivers on the Microsoft Data Platform vision of extending the SQL Server capabilities to the cloud as web-based services, enabling you to store structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. Windows Azure Services (9 labs) As applications collaborate across organizational boundaries, ensuring secure transactions across disparate security domains is crucial but difficult to implement. Windows Azure Services provides hosted authentication and access control using powerful, secure, standards-based infrastructure. See my Windows Azure Resource Guide for more guidance on how to get started, including links web portals, training kits, samples, and blogs related to Windows Azure.

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  • Windows Azure Recipe: Software as a Service (SaaS)

    - by Clint Edmonson
    The cloud was tailor built for aspiring companies to create innovative internet based applications and solutions. Whether you’re a garage startup with very little capital or a Fortune 1000 company, the ability to quickly setup, deliver, and iterate on new products is key to capturing market and mind share. And if you can capture that share and go viral, having resiliency and infinite scale at your finger tips is great peace of mind. Drivers Cost avoidance Time to market Scalability Solution Here’s a sketch of how a basic Software as a Service solution might be built out: Ingredients Web Role – this hosts the core web application. Each web role will host an instance of the software and as the user base grows, additional roles can be spun up to meet demand. Access Control – this service is essential to managing user identity. It’s backed by a full blown implementation of Active Directory and allows the definition and management of users, groups, and roles. A pre-built ASP.NET membership provider is included in the training kit to leverage this capability but it’s also flexible enough to be combined with external Identity providers including Windows LiveID, Google, Yahoo!, and Facebook. The provider model provides extensibility to hook into other industry specific identity providers as well. Databases – nearly every modern SaaS application is backed by a relational database for its core operational data. If the solution is sold to organizations, there’s a good chance multi-tenancy will be needed. An emerging best practice for SaaS applications is to stand up separate SQL Azure database instances for each tenant’s proprietary data to ensure isolation from other tenants. Worker Role – this is the best place to handle autonomous background processing such as data aggregation, billing through external services, and other specialized tasks that can be performed asynchronously. Placing these tasks in a worker role frees the web roles to focus completely on user interaction and data input and provides finer grained control over the system’s scalability and throughput. Caching (optional) – as a web site traffic grows caching can be leveraged to keep frequently used read-only, user specific, and application resource data in a high-speed distributed in-memory for faster response times and ultimately higher scalability without spinning up more web and worker roles. It includes a token based security model that works alongside the Access Control service. Blobs (optional) – depending on the nature of the software, users may be creating or uploading large volumes of heterogeneous data such as documents or rich media. Blob storage provides a scalable, resilient way to store terabytes of user data. The storage facilities can also integrate with the Access Control service to ensure users’ data is delivered securely. Training & Examples These links point to online Windows Azure training labs and examples where you can learn more about the individual ingredients described above. (Note: The entire Windows Azure Training Kit can also be downloaded for offline use.) Windows Azure (16 labs) Windows Azure is an internet-scale cloud computing and services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers, which provides an operating system and a set of developer services which can be used individually or together. It gives developers the choice to build web applications; applications running on connected devices, PCs, or servers; or hybrid solutions offering the best of both worlds. New or enhanced applications can be built using existing skills with the Visual Studio development environment and the .NET Framework. With its standards-based and interoperable approach, the services platform supports multiple internet protocols, including HTTP, REST, SOAP, and plain XML SQL Azure (7 labs) Microsoft SQL Azure delivers on the Microsoft Data Platform vision of extending the SQL Server capabilities to the cloud as web-based services, enabling you to store structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. Windows Azure Services (9 labs) As applications collaborate across organizational boundaries, ensuring secure transactions across disparate security domains is crucial but difficult to implement. Windows Azure Services provides hosted authentication and access control using powerful, secure, standards-based infrastructure. Developing Applications for the Cloud, 2nd Edition (eBook) This book demonstrates how you can create from scratch a multi-tenant, Software as a Service (SaaS) application to run in the cloud using the latest versions of the Windows Azure Platform and tools. The book is intended for any architect, developer, or information technology (IT) professional who designs, builds, or operates applications and services that run on or interact with the cloud. Fabrikam Shipping (SaaS reference application) This is a full end to end sample scenario which demonstrates how to use the Windows Azure platform for exposing an application as a service. We developed this demo just as you would: we had an existing on-premises sample, Fabrikam Shipping, and we wanted to see what it would take to transform it in a full subscription based solution. The demo you find here is the result of that investigation See my Windows Azure Resource Guide for more guidance on how to get started, including more links web portals, training kits, samples, and blogs related to Windows Azure.

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  • Goals for 2010 Retrospective

    - by Brian Jackett
    As we approach the end of 2010 I’d like to take a  few minutes to reflect back on this past year and revisit the goals that I set for myself at the beginning of the year (click here to see those goals).  I feel it is important to track your goals not only to see if you accomplished them but also to see what new directions in life you pursued.  Once we enter into 2011 I’ll follow up with a new post on goals for the new year. Professional Blog – This year I intended to write at least 2 posts a month.  Looking back I far surpassed that goal by writing 47 posts (this one being my 48th).  As with many things in life, quantity does not mean quality.  A good example is a number of my posts announcing upcoming speaking engagements and providing links to presentation slides and scripts.  That aside, I like to at least keep content relatively fresh on this blog  which I was able to accomplish.  At the same time I’ve gotten much more comfortable in my blogging style and it has become much easier to write. Speaking – I didn’t define a clear goal for speaking engagements, but had a rough idea of wanting to speak at 2-3 events.  Once again I far exceeded that number by speaking at 10 separate events and delivering 12+ presentations.  I’m very thankful for all of the opportunities that I was given and all of the wonderful people I have met as a result. Volunteering – This year I intended to help out with the COSPUG (now Buckeye SPUG) steering committee and Stir Trek conference.  I fulfilled both goals and as well as taking on lead organizer duties for the first ever SharePoint Saturday Columbus.  Each of these events and groups turned out to be successful and I was glad to be a part of them all.  I look forward to continuing to volunteer with each next year in some capacity. Android Development – My goal for getting into Android development was a late addition, but one I didn’t necessarily fulfill.  I spent a couple nights downloading the tools, configuring my environment, and going through some “simple” tutorials.  I say “simple” because in my opinion the tutorials were not laid out very well, took a long time to get running properly, and confused me more than helped.  After about a week I was frustrated with the process and didn’t think it was a good use of my time.  On a side note, I’ve dabbled in Windows Phone 7 development over the past few months and have been very excited by how easy and intuitive it was to get started and develop some proof of concepts. Personal Getting in Shape – I had intended to play on recreational sports leagues and work out on a semi-regular basis.  For the most part I fulfilled this goal by playing on various softball and volleyball leagues as well as using the gym.  At the same time I had some major setbacks.  In the spring I badly sprained my ankle and got hit in the knee with a softball which kept me inactive for almost 2 months.  More recently I broke my knuckle (click here to read about it) which I am still recovering from. Volunteering – On the volunteering front I kept my commitments at my parish’s high school youth group.  As for other volunteering opportunities I got involved with a great organization called Columbus Gives Back (website).  I’ve volunteered with them a few times and really enjoy their goal to provide opportunities to people with busy schedules.  They  offer a variety of events typically after work hours and spread out around Columbus with no set commitments on time you need to put in.  If you have the time or motivation I highly recommend them. House/Condo – I had been thinking of buying a house or condo this past summer, but decided to extend my apartment lease for another year instead.  I have begun the search for a place in the past few weeks and am excited begin the process of owning a home. Conclusion     This year I was able to set and achieve many of my goals.  For next year I’ll try to put more specific numbers to all of my goals.  If any of you readers set goals for 2011 feel free to send me a link as I’d love to see what you are aiming to accomplish.  Have a great end of 2010 and best wishes for the start of 2011!       -Frog Out

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  • Educause Top-Ten IT Issues - the most change in a decade or more

    - by user739873
    The Education IT Issue Panel has released the 2012 top-ten issues facing higher education IT leadership, and instead of the customary reshuffling of the same deck, the issues reflect much of the tumult and dynamism facing higher education generally.  I find it interesting (and encouraging) that at the top of this year's list is "Updating IT Professionals' Skills and Roles to Accommodate Emerging Technologies and Changing IT Management and Service Delivery Models."  This reflects, in my view, the realization that higher education IT must change in order to fully realize the potential for transforming the institution, and therefore it's people must learn new skills, understand and accept new ways of solving problems, and not be tied down by past practices or institutional inertia. What follows in the remaining 9 top issues all speak, in some form or fashion, to the need for dramatic change, but not just in the areas of "funding IT" (code for cost containment or reduction), but rather the need to increase effectiveness and efficiency of the institution through the use of technology—leveraging the wave of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) to the institution's advantage, rather than viewing it as a threat and a problem to be contained. Although it's #10 of 10, IT Governance (and establishment and implementation of the governance model throughout the institution) is key to effectively acting upon many of the preceding issues in this year's list.  In the majority of cases, technology exists to meet the needs and requirements to effectively address many of the challenges outlined in top-ten issues list. Which brings me to my next point. Although I try not to sound too much like an Oracle commercial in these (all too infrequent) blog posts, I can't help but point out how much confluence there is between several of the top issues this year and what my colleagues and I have been evangelizing for some time. Starting from the bottom of the list up: 1) I'm gratified that research and the IT challenges it presents has made the cut.  Big Data (or Large Data as it's phased in the report) is rapidly going to overwhelm much of what exists today even at our most prepared and well-equipped research universities.  Combine large data with the significantly more stringent requirements around data preservation, archiving, sharing, curation, etc. coming from granting agencies like NSF, and you have the brewing storm that could result in a lot of "one-off" solutions to a problem that could very well be addressed collectively and "at scale."   2) Transformative effects of IT – while I see more and more examples of this, there is still much more that can be achieved. My experience tells me that culture (as the report indicates or at least poses the question) gets in the way more than technology not being up to task.  We spend too much time on "context" and not "core," and get lost in the weeds on the journey to truly transforming the institution with technology. 3) Analytics as a key element in improving various institutional outcomes.  In our work around Student Success, we see predictive "academic" analytics as essential to getting in front of the Student Success issue, regardless of how an institution or collections of institutions defines success.  Analytics must be part of the fabric of the key academic enterprise applications, not a bolt-on.  We will spend a significant amount of time on this topic during our semi-annual Education Industry Strategy Council meeting in Washington, D.C. later this month. 4) Cloud strategy for the broad range of applications in the academic enterprise.  Some of the recent work by Casey Green at the Campus Computing Survey would seem to indicate that there is movement in this area but mostly in what has been termed "below the campus" application areas such as collaboration tools, recruiting, and alumni relations.  It's time to get serious about sourcing elements of mature applications like student information systems, HR, Finance, etc. leveraging a model other than traditional on-campus custom. I've only selected a few areas of the list to highlight, but the unifying theme here (and this is where I run the risk of sounding like an Oracle commercial) is that these lofty goals cry out for partners that can bring economies of scale to bear on the problems married with a deep understanding of the nuances unique to higher education.  In a recent piece in Educause Review on Student Information Systems, the author points out that "best of breed is back". Unfortunately I am compelled to point out that best of breed is a large part of the reason we have made as little progress as we have as an industry in advancing some of the causes outlined above.  Don't confuse "integrated" and "full stack" for vendor lock-in.  The best-of-breed market forces that Ron points to ensure that solutions have to be "integratable" or they don't survive in the marketplace. However, by leveraging the efficiencies afforded by adopting solutions that are pre-integrated (and possibly metered out as a service) allows us to shed unnecessary costs – as difficult as these decisions are to make and to drive throughout the organization. Cole

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  • Oracle BI Executive Forum 2011 ?? ???????????????! Oracle Technology Day 2012 in Osaka

    - by user765123
    .NewsType1111 img{border:none; vertical-align:bottom;} .NewsType1111 p{margin:0; padding:0;} .NewsType1111 td{color:#333333; line-height:1.5; font-family:"MS P????", Osaka, Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro; font-size:12px;} .NewsType1111 table.t10 td, .small{font-size:10px;} .NewsType1111 a:link, a:visited{color:#ff0000;} .NewsType1111 a:hover, a:active{color:#ff0000; text-decoration:none;} .NewsType1111 a.l01:link, a.l01:visited, a.l01:hover, a.l01:active{color:#333333;} .NewsType1111 span.r, td.r{color:#ff0000;} .NewsType1111 table.tbl-semi td{padding:5px;} ???????????????????????????/???????????????????????????????? ????????????????"????"?iPad 5,000?????????????????????LIXIL????????????????Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine??????????????????????????????????????? ??·?????????? >> ???Oracle Technology Day???????????? Oracle?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????DB????????????????DB?????·????????????????????????????????????????????????????????Oracle??????????????????????! ??·?????????? >> ¦???????????????????¦?????????????????????????¦????????????????????????? ????????????????/????????????????????????IT????????????????????????????????????????????????????IT????????????????????????? ????????????????????????IT????????????????????????????????????????6??Oracle Fusion Middleware??????????????????????????????? ????????? ??????????? ??UFJ???????????????? UCOM? ?????? ????????????? ??????????? ??·?????????? >> ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????M2M(Machine to Machine)?????IT?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ??·?????????? >> ?????????????!??????????????? ? CFO for Tomorrow IFRS??????????????·????????? ? Oracle Business Intelligence ????????????BI(????????????)?? ? ??????????????????????? ?????????????????? more solutions ? ANA ????????????????????Oracle® Coherence????????????????????????????????10???? ? ?? Oracle BIEE????????????????????????????????·?????????Oracle BIEE???? ? ?????? Oracle iLearning?????????????????????????????? more success stories ? OTN?????????? 100??????????????????????????????? ? ??&?????? ???????????????????????? ?? ???? ?? 11/15?(?)15:00~17:30 ?????·???????????????????????? ??????????(??) 11/16?(?)~17?(?)9:15~17:30(17??9:30??) ???????????2011 ???UDX 4F(??) 11/16?(?)15:30~17:30 ????????????????????/????????????? ?????????????????(??) 11/16?(?)18:30~20:30 ???????????? WebLogic Server??? ??????????(??) 11/17?(?)13:30~16:40 ?19? ?! Click?????????Oracle Database ???????&?????????????????? ???????????1F?????(??) 11/17?(?)14:00~17:00 ?????????????????? ??????????(??) 11/17?(?)17:30~19:00 ???????????Oracle&JAVA?????????????? ??????????????????(???) 11/18?(?)13:30~16:40 ?20? ?! Click??????? in ????Oracle Database ???????&?????????????????? ????? 2F?????(??) 11/19?(?)~20?(?)10:00~17:00 ?????????????? 2011 Tokyo/Fall ???? 28??(???4F???)(??) 11/21?(?)~23?(?·?)?20?(?)??????? ?31? ????????? ????????????? ??????????????????????????????????(???) 11/21?(?)15:00~17:30 ?????????????,?????????????? ??????????????????(??) 11/22?(?)10:00~15:10 ??IT???? FIT????? ??????·?????(??) 11/22?(?)13:00~18:00 ?????!??????????????????????? ??????????(??) 11/22?(?)13:30~16:30 ?????????? in ?? ?10???? ?????????? 5F51???(??) 11/22?(?)15:00~17:30 ?????????????,?????????????? ??????????(??) 11/29?(?)13:00~17:00 ??????? 2011 ????·??????? ??????????(??) -- Copyright © 2011, Oracle.All Rights Reserved. ???????????? | ???????????? | ??????????/????????

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  • PHP invalid image's and error handling

    - by Emdiesse
    Using PHP's Image and GD functions you can use the following method to finally output the php image imagepng($image); Sometimes, for whatever reason the image may not be displayed typically the error is not with the image but with the actual php functions not executing successfully. However this causes a blank image to be returned which doesn't help me. What I want to know is, is there a way to detect a blank or an invalid image and create a new image, write the errors to the new image using imagestring() and then display this new (debug) image instead. for example, a successfully displayed image with no errors: $image = imagecreate(256, 256); //create image imagecolortransparent($image, $BLUE); //set transparent imagefilledrectangle($image, 0, 0, 256, 256, $BLUE); //fill with 'transparent colour' //Draw a border round the image imageline($image, 0, 0, 0, 255, $Black); imageline($image, 0, 0, 255, 0, $Black); imageline($image, 255, 0, 255, 255, $Black); imageline($image, 0, 255, 255, 255, $Black); imagestring($image, 1, 10, 10, "I am an image!", $Black); imagepng($image); imagedestroy($image); but if I then introduce some errors in the php script that may or may not be to do with the actual image creation then the php script fails and the image will not be visible... $image = imagecreate(256, 256); //create image imagecolortransparent($image, $BLUE); //set transparent imagefilledrectangle($image, 0, 0, 256, 256, $BLUE); //fill with 'transparent colour' //Draw a border round the image imageline($image, 0, 0, 0, 255, $Black); imageline($image, 0, 0, 255, 0, $Black); imageline($image, 255, 0, 255, 255, $Black); imageline($image, 0, 255, 255, 255, $Black); imagestring($image, 1, 10, 10, "I am an image!", $Black); /* I am here to cause problems with the php script ** and cause the execution to fail, I am a function ** that does't exist... ** ** and I am missing a semi colon! ;)*/ non_existant_function() imagepng($image); imagedestroy($image); At this point I want to create a new image like above but in replacement of the I am an image! text I would put the actual error that has occured.

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  • C# Monte Carlo Incremental Risk Calculation optimisation, random numbers, parallel execution

    - by m3ntat
    My current task is to optimise a Monte Carlo Simulation that calculates Capital Adequacy figures by region for a set of Obligors. It is running about 10 x too slow for where it will need to be in production and number or daily runs required. Additionally the granularity of the result figures will need to be improved down to desk possibly book level at some stage, the code I've been given is basically a prototype which is used by business units in a semi production capacity. The application is currently single threaded so I'll need to make it multi-threaded, may look at System.Threading.ThreadPool or the Microsoft Parallel Extensions library but I'm constrained to .NET 2 on the server at this bank so I may have to consider this guy's port, http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/aforge_parallel.aspx. I am trying my best to get them to upgrade to .NET 3.5 SP1 but it's a major exercise in an organisation of this size and might not be possible in my contract time frames. I've profiled the application using the trial of dotTrace (http://www.jetbrains.com/profiler). What other good profilers exist? Free ones? A lot of the execution time is spent generating uniform random numbers and then translating this to a normally distributed random number. They are using a C# Mersenne twister implementation. I am not sure where they got it or if it's the best way to go about this (or best implementation) to generate the uniform random numbers. Then this is translated to a normally distributed version for use in the calculation (I haven't delved into the translation code yet). Also what is the experience using the following? http://quantlib.org http://www.qlnet.org (C# port of quantlib) or http://www.boost.org Any alternatives you know of? I'm a C# developer so would prefer C#, but a wrapper to C++ shouldn't be a problem, should it? Maybe even faster leveraging the C++ implementations. I am thinking some of these libraries will have the fastest method to directly generate normally distributed random numbers, without the translation step. Also they may have some other functions that will be helpful in the subsequent calculations. Also the computer this is on is a quad core Opteron 275, 8 GB memory but Windows Server 2003 Enterprise 32 bit. Should I advise them to upgrade to a 64 bit OS? Any links to articles supporting this decision would really be appreciated. Anyway, any advice and help you may have is really appreciated.

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  • Tiling rectangles seamlessly in WPF

    - by Joe White
    I want to seamlessly tile a bunch of different-colored Rectangles in WPF. That is, I want to put a bunch of rectangles edge-to-edge, and not have gaps between them. If everything is aligned to pixels, this works fine. But I also want to support arbitrary zoom, and ideally, I don't want to use SnapsToDevicePixels (because it would compromise quality when the image is zoomed way out). But that means my Rectangles sometimes render with gaps. For example: <Page xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" Background="Black"> <Canvas SnapsToDevicePixels="False"> <Canvas.RenderTransform> <ScaleTransform ScaleX="0.5" ScaleY="0.5"/> </Canvas.RenderTransform> <Rectangle Canvas.Left="25" Width="100" Height="100" Fill="#CFC"/> <Rectangle Canvas.Left="125" Width="100" Height="100" Fill="#CCF"/> </Canvas> </Page> If the ScaleTransform's ScaleX is 1, then the Rectangles fit together seamlessly. When it's 0.5, there's a dark gray streak between them. I understand why -- the combined semi-transparent edge pixels don't combine to be 100% opaque. But I would like a way to fix it. I could always just make the Rectangles overlap, but I won't always know in advance what patterns they'll be in (this is for a game that will eventually support a map editor). Besides, this would cause artifacts around the overlap area when things were zoomed way in (unless I did bevel-cut angles on the underlapping portion, which is an awful lot of work, and still causes problems at corners). Is there some way I can combine these Rectangles into a single combined "shape" that does render without internal gaps? I've played around with GeometryDrawing, which does exactly that, but then I don't see a way to paint each RectangleGeometry with a different-colored brush. Are there any other ways to get shapes to tile seamlessly under an arbitrary transform, without resorting to SnapsToDevicePixels?

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  • PyGTK: dynamic label wrapping

    - by detly
    It's a known bug/issue that a label in GTK will not dynamically resize when the parent changes. It's one of those really annoying small details, and I want to hack around it if possible. I followed the approach at 16 software, but as per the disclaimer you cannot then resize it smaller. So I attempted a trick mentioned in one of the comments (the set_size_request call in the signal callback), but this results in some sort of infinite loop (try it and see). Does anyone have any other ideas? (You can't block the signal just for the duration of the call, since as the print statements seem to indicate, the problem starts after the function is left.) The code is below. You can see what I mean if you run it and try to resize the window larger and then smaller. (If you want to see the original problem, comment out the line after "Connect to the size-allocate signal", run it, and resize the window bigger.) The Glade file ("example.glade"): <?xml version="1.0"?> <glade-interface> <!-- interface-requires gtk+ 2.16 --> <!-- interface-naming-policy project-wide --> <widget class="GtkWindow" id="window1"> <property name="visible">True</property> <signal name="destroy" handler="on_destroy"/> <child> <widget class="GtkLabel" id="label1"> <property name="visible">True</property> <property name="label" translatable="yes">In publishing and graphic design, lorem ipsum[p][1][2] is the name given to commonly used placeholder text (filler text) to demonstrate the graphic elements of a document or visual presentation, such as font, typography, and layout. The lorem ipsum text, which is typically a nonsensical list of semi-Latin words, is a hacked version of a Latin text by Cicero, with words/letters omitted and others inserted, but not proper Latin[1][2] (see below: History and discovery). The closest English translation would be "pain itself" (dolorem = pain, grief, misery, suffering; ipsum = itself).</property> <property name="wrap">True</property> </widget> </child> </widget> </glade-interface> The Python code: #!/usr/bin/python import pygtk import gobject import gtk.glade def wrapped_label_hack(gtklabel, allocation): print "In wrapped_label_hack" gtklabel.set_size_request(allocation.width, -1) # If you uncomment this, we get INFINITE LOOPING! # gtklabel.set_size_request(-1, -1) print "Leaving wrapped_label_hack" class ExampleGTK: def __init__(self, filename): self.tree = gtk.glade.XML(filename, "window1", "Example") self.id = "window1" self.tree.signal_autoconnect(self) # Connect to the size-allocate signal self.get_widget("label1").connect("size-allocate", wrapped_label_hack) def on_destroy(self, widget): self.close() def get_widget(self, id): return self.tree.get_widget(id) def close(self): window = self.get_widget(self.id) if window is not None: window.destroy() gtk.main_quit() if __name__ == "__main__": window = ExampleGTK("example.glade") gtk.main()

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