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Session Report - Modern Software Development Anti-Patterns

- by Janice J. Heiss

In this standing-room-only session, building upon his 2011 JavaOne Rock Star “Diabolical Developer” session, Martijn Verburg, this time along with Ben Evans, identified and explored common “anti-patterns” – ways of doing things that keep developers from doing their best work. They emphasized the importance of social interaction and team communication, along with identifying certain psychological pitfalls that lead developers astray. Their emphasis was less on technical coding errors and more how to function well and to keep one’s focus on what really matters. They are the authors of the highly regarded The Well-Grounded Java Developer and are both movers and shakers in the London JUG community and on the Java Community Process. The large room was packed as they gave a fast-moving, witty presentation with lots of laughs and personal anecdotes. Below are a few of the anti-patterns they discussed.Anti-Pattern One: Conference-Driven DeliveryThe theme here is the belief that “Real pros hack code and write their slides minutes before their talks.” Their response to this anti-pattern is an expression popular in the military – PPPPPP, which stands for, “Proper preparation prevents piss-poor performance.”“Communication is very important – probably more important than the code you write,” claimed Verburg. “The more you speak in front of large groups of people the easier it gets, but it’s always important to do dry runs, to present to smaller groups. And important to be members of user groups where you can give presentations. It’s a great place to practice speaking skills; to gain new skills; get new contacts, to network.”They encouraged attendees to record themselves and listen to themselves giving a presentation. They advised them to start with a spouse or friends if need be. Learning to communicate to a group, they argued, is essential to being a successful developer. The emphasis here is that software development is a team activity and good, clear, accessible communication is essential to the functioning of software teams. Anti-Pattern Two: Mortgage-Driven Development The main theme here was that, in a period of worldwide recession and economic stagnation, people are concerned about keeping their jobs. So there is a tendency for developers to treat knowledge as power and not share what they know about their systems with their colleagues, so when it comes time to fix a problem in production, they will be the only one who knows how to fix it – and will have made themselves an indispensable cog in a machine so you cannot be fired. So developers avoid documentation at all costs, or if documentation is required, put it on a USB chip and lock it in a lock box. As in the first anti-pattern, the idea here is that communicating well with your colleagues is essential and documentation is a key part of this. Social interactions are essential. Both Verburg and Evans insisted that increasingly, year by year, successful software development is more about communication than the technical aspects of the craft. Developers who understand this are the ones who will have the most success. Anti-Pattern Three: Distracted by Shiny – Always Use the Latest Technology to Stay AheadThe temptation here is to pick out some obscure framework, try a bit of Scala, HTML5, and Clojure, and always use the latest technology and upgrade to the latest point release of everything. Don’t worry if something works poorly because you are ahead of the curve. Verburg and Evans insisted that there need to be sound reasons for everything a developer does. Developers should not bring in something simply because for some reason they just feel like it or because it’s new. They recommended a site run by a developer named Matt Raible with excellent comparison spread sheets regarding Web frameworks and other apps. They praised it as a useful tool to help developers in their decision-making processes. They pointed out that good developers sometimes make bad choices out of boredom, to add shiny things to their CV, out of frustration with existing processes, or just from a lack of understanding. They pointed out that some code may stay in a business system for 15 or 20 years, but not all code is created equal and some may change after 3 or 6 months. Developers need to know where the code they are contributing fits in. What is its likely lifespan? Anti-Pattern Four: Design-Driven Design The anti-pattern: If you want to impress your colleagues and bosses, use design patents left, right, and center – MVC, Session Facades, SOA, etc. Or the UML modeling suite from IBM, back in the day… Generate super fast code. And the more jargon you can talk when in the vicinity of the manager the better.Verburg shared a true story about a time when he was interviewing a guy for a job and asked him what his previous work was. The interviewee said that he essentially took patterns and uses an approved book of Enterprise Architecture Patterns and applied them. Verburg was dumbstruck that someone could have a job in which they took patterns from a book and applied them. He pointed out that the idea that design is a separate activity is simply wrong. He repeated a saying that he uses, “You should pay your junior developers for the lines of code they write and the things they add; you should pay your senior developers for what they take away.”He explained that by encouraging people to take things away, the code base gets simpler and reflects the actual business use cases developers are trying to solve, as opposed to the framework that is being imposed. He told another true story about a project to decommission a very long system. 98% of the code was decommissioned and people got a nice bonus. But the 2% remained on the mainframe so the 98% reduction in code resulted in zero reduction in costs, because the entire mainframe was needed to run the 2% that was left. There is an incentive to get rid of source code and subsystems when they are no longer needed. The session continued with several more anti-patterns that were equally insightful.

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XBRL - Moving from Production to Consumption

- by jmorourke

Here's an update on what’s new with XBRL and how it can actually benefit your organization versus adding extra time and costs to financial reporting. On February 29th (leap day) of 2012 I attended the XBRL and Financial Analysis Technology Conference at Baruch College in NYC. The event, which attracted over 300 XBRL gurus and fans was presented by XBRL US, The New York Society of Security Analysts’ Improved Corporate Reporting Committee, and Baruch College’s Robert Zicklin Center for Corporate Integrity. The event featured keynotes from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the CFA Institute as well as panels covering alternative research tools and data, corporate reporting to stakeholders and a demonstration of XBRL analysis tools. The program culminated in a presentation of the finalists and the winner of the $20,000 XBRL Challenge. Some of the key points made in the sessions included: The focus of XBRL tools is moving from production to consumption. As of February 2012, over 9000 companies are reporting in XBRL, with over 10 million facts filed to date XBRL taxonomy extensions have dropped from 27% to 11% making comparisons easier The SEC reports that XBRL makes it easier to analyze disclosures, focus on accounting issues XBRL is helping standards-setters like the FASB speed their analysis of impacts of proposed accounting rule changes Companies like Thomson Reuters report that XBRL is helping speed the delivery of data to clients The most interesting part of the program though, was the session highlighting the 5 finalists in the XBRL Challenge competition and the winning solution. The XBRL Challenge was launched in 2011 as a means of spurring the development of more end-user tools to help with the consumption of XBRL-based financial information. Over an 8-month process handled by 5 judges, there were 84 registrants, 15 completed submissions, 5 finalists and one winner of the challenge. All of the solutions are open-sourced tools and most of them focus on consuming XBRL-based data. The 5 finalists included: Advanced XBRL Processing from Oxide solutions – XBRL viewer for taxonomies, filings and company data with peer comparison capabilities. Arrelle – API for XBRL processes, supports SEC Validations, RSS Feeds to access filings etc. Calcbench – XBRL data analysis tool that can be embedded in other web applications. This tool can combine XBRL filings with real-time market data. XBRL to XL – allows the importing of XBRL data into Microsoft Excel for analysis, comparisons. Users start on the web and populate Excel with XBRL data. XBurble – allows users to search and view XBRL filings, export to Excel, merge for comparison, and includes a workflow interface. The winner of the $20,000 XBRL Challenge prize was CalcBench. More information about the XBRL Challenge and the finalists can be found at www.XBRLUS.org/challenge XBRL for Sustainability Reporting – other recent news on the XBRL front was the announcement by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) of an XBRL taxonomy for Sustainability Reporting. This taxonomy was co-developed by the GRI and Deloitte and is designed to make the consumption of data found in Sustainability Reports much easier. Although there is no government mandate to file Sustainability Reports in XBRL format, organizations that do use the GRI guidelines for Sustainability Reporting are encouraged to tag and submit their data voluntarily to the GRI – who will populate a database with Sustainability Reporting data and make this available to the public. For more information about this initiative, you can go to the GRI web site: www.globalreporting.org. So how does all of this benefit corporate filers and investors? Since its introduction, the consensus in the market is that XBRL has mainly benefited the regulators and investment analysts who need to consume and analyze large volumes of financial data. But with the emergence of more end-user tools for consuming and analyzing XBRL-based data, and the ability to perform quick comparisons of one company versus its peers and competitors in an industry group, will soon accelerate the benefits to corporate finance staff, as well as individual investors. This could apply to financial results tagged in XBRL, as well as non-financial information such as Sustainability Reporting – which over the long-term will likely be integrated with financial reporting. And as multiple regulators and agencies in a country adopt the XBRL standard for corporate filings, more benefits will accrue as companies will be able to leverage one set of XBRL-based financial data for multiple regulatory filings. For more information about the latest developments in XBRL, check out the XBRL US or XBRL International web sites: www.xbrl.org, www.xbrlus.org. For more information about what Oracle is doing to support XBRL, here are some links: http://www.oracle.com/us/solutions/ent-performance-bi/disclosure-management-065892.html http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/features/xmldb/index-087631.html Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or need more information: [email protected]

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Not getting desired results with SSAO implementation

- by user1294203

After having implemented deferred rendering, I tried my luck with a SSAO implementation using this Tutorial. Unfortunately, I'm not getting anything that looks like SSAO, you can see my result below. You can see there is some weird pattern forming and there is no occlusion shading where there needs to be (i.e. in between the objects and on the ground). The shaders I implemented follow: #VS #version 330 core uniform mat4 invProjMatrix; layout(location = 0) in vec3 in_Position; layout(location = 2) in vec2 in_TexCoord; noperspective out vec2 pass_TexCoord; smooth out vec3 viewRay; void main(void){ pass_TexCoord = in_TexCoord; viewRay = (invProjMatrix * vec4(in_Position, 1.0)).xyz; gl_Position = vec4(in_Position, 1.0); } #FS #version 330 core uniform sampler2D DepthMap; uniform sampler2D NormalMap; uniform sampler2D noise; uniform vec2 projAB; uniform ivec3 noiseScale_kernelSize; uniform vec3 kernel[16]; uniform float RADIUS; uniform mat4 projectionMatrix; noperspective in vec2 pass_TexCoord; smooth in vec3 viewRay; layout(location = 0) out float out_AO; vec3 CalcPosition(void){ float depth = texture(DepthMap, pass_TexCoord).r; float linearDepth = projAB.y / (depth - projAB.x); vec3 ray = normalize(viewRay); ray = ray / ray.z; return linearDepth * ray; } mat3 CalcRMatrix(vec3 normal, vec2 texcoord){ ivec2 noiseScale = noiseScale_kernelSize.xy; vec3 rvec = texture(noise, texcoord * noiseScale).xyz; vec3 tangent = normalize(rvec - normal * dot(rvec, normal)); vec3 bitangent = cross(normal, tangent); return mat3(tangent, bitangent, normal); } void main(void){ vec2 TexCoord = pass_TexCoord; vec3 Position = CalcPosition(); vec3 Normal = normalize(texture(NormalMap, TexCoord).xyz); mat3 RotationMatrix = CalcRMatrix(Normal, TexCoord); int kernelSize = noiseScale_kernelSize.z; float occlusion = 0.0; for(int i = 0; i < kernelSize; i++){ // Get sample position vec3 sample = RotationMatrix * kernel[i]; sample = sample * RADIUS + Position; // Project and bias sample position to get its texture coordinates vec4 offset = projectionMatrix * vec4(sample, 1.0); offset.xy /= offset.w; offset.xy = offset.xy * 0.5 + 0.5; // Get sample depth float sample_depth = texture(DepthMap, offset.xy).r; float linearDepth = projAB.y / (sample_depth - projAB.x); if(abs(Position.z - linearDepth ) < RADIUS){ occlusion += (linearDepth <= sample.z) ? 1.0 : 0.0; } } out_AO = 1.0 - (occlusion / kernelSize); } I draw a full screen quad and pass Depth and Normal textures. Normals are in RGBA16F with the alpha channel reserved for the AO factor in the blur pass. I store depth in a non linear Depth buffer (32F) and recover the linear depth using: float linearDepth = projAB.y / (depth - projAB.x); where projAB.y is calculated as: and projAB.x as: These are derived from the glm::perspective(gluperspective) matrix. z_n and z_f are the near and far clip distance. As described in the link I posted on the top, the method creates samples in a hemisphere with higher distribution close to the center. It then uses random vectors from a texture to rotate the hemisphere randomly around the Z direction and finally orients it along the normal at the given pixel. Since the result is noisy, a blur pass follows the SSAO pass. Anyway, my position reconstruction doesn't seem to be wrong since I also tried doing the same but with the position passed from a texture instead of being reconstructed. I also tried playing with the Radius, noise texture size and number of samples and with different kinds of texture formats, with no luck. For some reason when changing the Radius, nothing changes. Does anyone have any suggestions? What could be going wrong?

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Is Data Science “Science”?

- by BuckWoody

I hold the term “science” in very high esteem. I grew up on the Space Coast in Florida, and eventually worked at the Kennedy Space Center, surrounded by very intelligent people who worked in various scientific fields. Recently a new term has entered the computing dialog – “Data Scientist”. Since it’s not a standard term, it has a lot of definitions, and in fact has been disputed as a correct term. After all, the reasoning goes, if there’s no such thing as “Data Science” then how can there be a Data Scientist? This argument has been made before, albeit with a different term – “Computer Science”. In Peter Denning’s excellent article “Is Computer Science Science” (April 2005/Vol. 48, No. 4 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM) there are many points that separate “science” from “engineering” and even “art”. I won’t repeat the content of that article here (I recommend you read it on your own) but will leverage the points he makes there. Definition of Science To ask the question “is data science ‘science’” then we need to start with a definition of terms. Various references put the definition into the same basic areas: Study of the physical world Systematic and/or disciplined study of a subject area ...and then they include the things studied, the bodies of knowledge and so on. The word itself comes from Latin, and means merely “to know” or “to study to know”. Greek divides knowledge further into “truth” (episteme), and practical use or effects (tekhne). Normally computing falls into the second realm. Definition of Data Science And now a more controversial definition: Data Science. This term is so new and perhaps so niche that the major dictionaries haven’t yet picked it up (my OED reference is older – can’t afford to pop for the online registration at present). Researching the term's general use I created an amalgam of the definitions this way: “Studying and applying mathematical and other techniques to derive information from complex data sets.” Using this definition, data science certainly seems to be science - it's learning about and studying some object or area using systematic methods. But implicit within the definition is the word “application”, which makes the process more akin to engineering or even technology than science. In fact, I find that using these techniques – and data itself – part of science, not science itself. I leave out the concept of studying data patterns or algorithms as part of this discipline. That is actually a domain I see within research, mathematics or computer science. That of course is a type of science, but does not seek for practical applications. As part of the argument against calling it “Data Science”, some point to the scientific method of creating a hypothesis, testing with controls, testing results against the hypothesis, and documenting for repeatability. These are not steps that we often take in working with data. We normally start with a question, and fit patterns and algorithms to predict outcomes and find correlations. In this way Data Science is more akin to statistics (and in fact makes heavy use of them) in the process rather than starting with an assumption and following on with it. So, is Data Science “Science”? I’m uncertain – and I’m uncertain it matters. Even if we are facing rampant “title inflation” these days (does anyone introduce themselves as a secretary or supervisor anymore?) I can tolerate the term at least from the intent that we use data to study problems across a wide spectrum, rather than restricting it to a single domain. And I also understand those who have worked hard to achieve the very honorable title of “scientist” who have issues with those who borrow the term without asking. What do you think? Science, or not? Does it matter?

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Airline mess - what a journey

- by Mike Dietrich

What a day, what a journey ... Flew this noon from Munich to Zuerich for catch my ongoing flight to San Francisco with Swiss. And that day did start very well as Lufthansa messed up the connection flight by 42 minutes for a 35 minute flight. And as I was obviously the only passenger connection to San Francisco nobody picked me up at the airplane to bring me directly to my connection as Swiss did for the 8 passengers connection to Miami. So I missed my flight. What a start - and many thanks to Lufthansa. I was not the only one missing a connection as Lufthansa/Swiss had canceled the flight before due to "technical problems". In Zuerich Swiss did rebook me via Frankfurt with Lufthansa to board a United Airlines flight to San Francisco. "Ouch" I thought. I had my share of experience with United already as they've messed up my luggage on the way to San Francisco some years ago and it took them five (!!!) days to fly my bag over and deliver it. But actually it was the only option today. So I said "Yes". A big mistake as I've learned later on. The Frankfurt flight was delayed as well "due to a late incoming aircraft". But there was plenty of time. And I went to the Swiss counter at the gate and let them check if my baggage is on that flight to Frankfurt. They've said "Yes". Boarding the plane with a delay of 45 minutes (the typical Lufthansa delay these days) I spotted my Rimowa trolley right next to the plane on the airfield. So I was sure that it will be send to Frankfurt. In Frankfurt I went to the United counter once it did open - had to go through the passport check they do for US flights as well - and they've said "Yes, your luggage is with us". Well ... Arriving in San Francisco with just a bit of a some minutes delay and a very fast immigration procedure I saw the first bags with Priority tags getting pushed to the baggage claim - but mine was not there. I did wait ... and wait ... and wait. Well, thanks United, you did it again!!! I flew twice in the past years United Airlines - and in both cases they've messed up my luggage on the way to San Francisco. How lovely is that ... Now the real fun started again as the lady at the "Lost and Found" counter for luggage spotted my luggage in her system in Zuerich - and told me it's supposed to be sent with LH1191 to Frankfurt on Sept 27. But this was yesterday in Europe - it's already Sept 28 - and I saw my luggage in front of the airplane. So I'd suppose it's in Frankfurt already. But what could she do? Nothing but doing the awful paperwork. And "No Mr Dietrich, we don't call international numbers". Thank you, United. Next time I'll try to get a contract for a US land line in advance. They can't even tell you which plane will bring your luggage. It may be tomorrow with UA flight arriving around 4pm in SFO. I'm looking forward to some hours in the wonderful United Airlines call center waiting line. Last time I did spend 60-90 minutes every day until I got my luggage. If it takes again that long then OOW will be over by then. I love airline travel - and especially with United Airlines. And by the way ... they gave us these nice fancy packages during the flight: That looks good - what's in that box??? Yes, really ... a bag of potato chips. Pure fat - very healthy. I doubt that I'll ever fly United Airlines again!!!

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Black Screen: How to set Projection/View Matrix

- by Lisa

I have a Windows Phone 8 C#/XAML with DirectX component project. I'm rendering some particles, but each particle is a rectangle versus a square (as I've set the vertices to be positions equally offset from each other). I used an Identity matrix in the view and projection matrix. I decided to add the windows aspect ratio to prevent the rectangles. But now I get a black screen. None of the particles are rendered now. I don't know what's wrong with my matrices. Can anyone see the problem? These are the default matrices in Microsoft's project example. View Matrix: XMVECTOR eye = XMVectorSet(0.0f, 0.7f, 1.5f, 0.0f); XMVECTOR at = XMVectorSet(0.0f, -0.1f, 0.0f, 0.0f); XMVECTOR up = XMVectorSet(0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f); XMStoreFloat4x4(&m_constantBufferData.view, XMMatrixTranspose(XMMatrixLookAtRH(eye, at, up))); Projection Matrix: void CubeRenderer::CreateWindowSizeDependentResources() { Direct3DBase::CreateWindowSizeDependentResources(); float aspectRatio = m_windowBounds.Width / m_windowBounds.Height; float fovAngleY = 70.0f * XM_PI / 180.0f; if (aspectRatio < 1.0f) { fovAngleY /= aspectRatio; } XMStoreFloat4x4(&m_constantBufferData.projection, XMMatrixTranspose(XMMatrixPerspectiveFovRH(fovAngleY, aspectRatio, 0.01f, 100.0f))); } I've tried modifying them to use cocos2dx's WP8 example. XMMATRIX identityMatrix = XMMatrixIdentity(); float fovy = 60.0f; float aspect = m_windowBounds.Width / m_windowBounds.Height; float zNear = 0.1f; float zFar = 100.0f; float xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax; ymax = zNear * tanf(fovy * XM_PI / 360); ymin = -ymax; xmin = ymin * aspect; xmax = ymax * aspect; XMMATRIX tmpMatrix = XMMatrixPerspectiveOffCenterRH(xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax, zNear, zFar); XMMATRIX projectionMatrix = XMMatrixMultiply(tmpMatrix, identityMatrix); // View Matrix float fEyeX = m_windowBounds.Width * 0.5f; float fEyeY = m_windowBounds.Height * 0.5f; float fEyeZ = m_windowBounds.Height / 1.1566f; float fLookAtX = m_windowBounds.Width * 0.5f; float fLookAtY = m_windowBounds.Height * 0.5f; float fLookAtZ = 0.0f; float fUpX = 0.0f; float fUpY = 1.0f; float fUpZ = 0.0f; XMMATRIX tmpMatrix2 = XMMatrixLookAtRH(XMVectorSet(fEyeX,fEyeY,fEyeZ,0.f), XMVectorSet(fLookAtX,fLookAtY,fLookAtZ,0.f), XMVectorSet(fUpX,fUpY,fUpZ,0.f)); XMMATRIX viewMatrix = XMMatrixMultiply(tmpMatrix2, identityMatrix); XMStoreFloat4x4(&m_constantBufferData.view, viewMatrix); Vertex Shader cbuffer ModelViewProjectionConstantBuffer : register(b0) { //matrix model; matrix view; matrix projection; }; struct VertexInputType { float4 position : POSITION; float2 tex : TEXCOORD0; float4 color : COLOR; }; struct PixelInputType { float4 position : SV_POSITION; float2 tex : TEXCOORD0; float4 color : COLOR; }; PixelInputType main(VertexInputType input) { PixelInputType output; // Change the position vector to be 4 units for proper matrix calculations. input.position.w = 1.0f; //===================================== // TODO: ADDED for testing input.position.z = 0.0f; //===================================== // Calculate the position of the vertex against the world, view, and projection matrices. //output.position = mul(input.position, model); output.position = mul(input.position, view); output.position = mul(output.position, projection); // Store the texture coordinates for the pixel shader. output.tex = input.tex; // Store the particle color for the pixel shader. output.color = input.color; return output; } Before I render the shader, I set the view/projection matrices into the constant buffer void ParticleRenderer::SetShaderParameters() { ViewProjectionConstantBuffer* dataPtr; D3D11_MAPPED_SUBRESOURCE mappedResource; DX::ThrowIfFailed(m_d3dContext->Map(m_constantBuffer.Get(), 0, D3D11_MAP_WRITE_DISCARD, 0, &mappedResource)); dataPtr = (ViewProjectionConstantBuffer*)mappedResource.pData; dataPtr->view = m_constantBufferData.view; dataPtr->projection = m_constantBufferData.projection; m_d3dContext->Unmap(m_constantBuffer.Get(), 0); // Now set the constant buffer in the vertex shader with the updated values. m_d3dContext->VSSetConstantBuffers(0, 1, m_constantBuffer.GetAddressOf() ); // Set shader texture resource in the pixel shader. m_d3dContext->PSSetShaderResources(0, 1, &m_textureView); } Nothing, black screen... I tried so many different look at, eye, and up vectors. I tried transposing the matrices. I've set the particle center position to always be (0, 0, 0), I tried different positions too, just to make sure they're not being rendered offscreen.

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ADF version of "Modern" dialog windows

- by Martin Deh

It is no surprise with the popularity of the i-devices (iphone, ipad), that many of the iOS UI based LnF (look and feel) would start to inspire web designers to incorporate the same LnF into their web sites. Take for example, a normal dialog popup. In the iOS world, the LnF becomes a bit more elegant by add just a simple element as a "floating" close button: In this blog post, I will describe how this can be accomplished using OOTB ADF components and CSS3 style elements. There are two ways that this can be achieved. The easiest way is to simply replace the default image, which looks like this, and adjust the af|panelWindow:close-icon-style skin selector. Using this simple technique, you can come up with this: The CSS code to produce this effect is pretty straight forward: af|panelWindow.test::close-icon-style{ background-image: url("../popClose.gif"); line-height: 10px; position: absolute; right: -10px; top: -10px; height:38px; width:38px; outline:none; } You can see from the CSS, the position of the region, which holds the image, is relocated based on the position based attributes. Also, the addition of the "outline" attribute removes the border that is visible in Chrome and IE. The second example, is based on not having an image to produce the close button. Like the previous sample, I will use the OOTB panelWindow. However, this time I will use a OOTB commandButton to replace the image. The construct of the components looks like this: The commandButton is positioned first in the hierarchy making the re-positioning easier. The commandButton will also need a style class assigned to it (i.e. closeButton), which will allow for the positioning and the over-riding of the default skin attributes of a default button. In addition, the closeIconVisible property is set to false, since the default icon is no longer needed. Once this is done, the rest is in the CSS. Here is the sample that I created that was used for an actual customer POC: The CSS code for the button: af|commandButton.closeButton, af|commandButton.closeButton af|commandButton:text-only{ line-height: 10px; position: absolute; right: -10px; top: -10px; -webkit-border-radius: 70px; -moz-border-radius: 70px; -ms-border-radius: 70px; border-radius: 70px; background-image:none; border:#828c95 1px solid; background-color:black; font-weight: bold; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; color:white; height:30px; width:30px; outline:none; } The CSS uses the border radius to create the round effect on the button (in IE 8, since border-radius is not supported, this will only work with some added code). Also, I add the box-shadow attribute to the panelWindow style class to give it a nice shadowing effect.

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Finding it Hard to Deliver Right Customer Experience: Think BPM!

- by Ajay Khanna

Our relationship with our customers is not a just a single interaction and we should not treat it like one. A customer’s relationship with a vendor is like a journey which starts way before customer makes a purchase and lasts long after that. The journey may start with customer researching a product that may lead to the eventual purchase and may continue with support or service needs for the product. A typical customer journey can be represented as shown below: As you may notice, customers tend to use multiple channels to interact with a company throughout their journey. They also expect that they should get consistent experience, no matter what interaction channel they may choose. Customers do not like to repeat the information they have already provided and expect companies to remember their preferences, and offer them relevant products and services. If the company fails to meet this expectation, customers not only will abandon the purchase and go to the competitor but may also influence others’ purchase decision. Gone are the days when word of mouth was the only medium, and the customer could influence “Six” others. This is the age of social media and customer’s good or bad experience, especially bad get highly amplified and may influence hundreds of others. Challenges that face B2C companies today include: Delivering consistent experience: The reason that delivering consistent experience is challenging is due to fragmented data, disjointed systems and siloed multichannel interactions. Customers tend to get different service quality if they use web vs. phone vs. store. They get different responses from different service agents or get inconsistent answers if they call sales vs. service group in the company. Such inconsistent experiences result in lower customer satisfaction or NPS (net promoter score) numbers. Increasing Revenue: To stay competitive companies frequently introduce new products and services. Delay in launching such offerings has a significant impact on revenue realization. In addition to new product revenue, there are multiple opportunities to up-sell and cross-sell that impact bottom line. If companies are not able to identify such opportunities, bring a product to market quickly, or not offer the right product to the right customer at the right time, significant loss of revenue may occur. Ensuring Compliance: Companies must be compliant to ever changing regulations, these could be about Know Your Customer (KYC), Export/Import regulations, or taxation policies. In addition to government agencies, companies also need to comply with the SLA that they have committed to their customers. Lapse in meeting any of these requirements may lead to serious fines, penalties and loss in business. Companies have to make sure that they are in compliance will all such regulations and SLA commitments, at any given time. With the advent of social networks and mobile technology, companies not only need to focus on process efficiency but also on customer engagement. Improving engagement means delivering the customer experience as the customer is expecting and interacting with the customer at right time using right channel. Customers expect to be able to contact you via any channel of their choice (web, email, chat, mobile, social media), purchase via any viable channel (web, phone, store, mobile). Customers expect companies to understand their particular needs and remember their preferences on repeated visits. To deliver such an integrated, consistent, and contextual experience, power of BPM in must. Your company may be organized in departments like Marketing, Sales, Service. You may hold prospect data in SFA, order information in ERP, customer issues in CRM. However, the experience delivered to the customer must not be constrained by your system legacy. BPM helps in designing the right experience for the right customer and integrates all the underlining channels, systems, applications to make sure right information will be delivered to the right knowledge worker or to the customer every single time. Orchestrating information across all systems (MDM, CRM, ERP), departments (commerce, merchandising, marketing service) and channels (Email, phone, web, social) is the key, and that’s what BPM delivers. In addition to orchestrating systems and channels for consistency, BPM also provides an ability for analysis and decision management. By using data from historical transactions, social media and from other systems, users can determine the customer preferences, customer value, and churn propensity. This information, in the context, is then used while making a decision at a process step. Working with real-time decision management system can also suggest right up-sell or cross-sell offers, discounts or next-best-action steps for a particular customer. Timely action on customer issues or request is also a key tenet of a good customer experience. BPM’s complex event processing capabilities help companies to take proactive actions before issues get escalated. BPM system can be designed to listen to a certain event patters then deduce from those customer situations (credit card stolen, baggage lost, change of address) and do a triage before situation goes out of control. If such a situation arises you can send alerts to right people or immediately invoke corrective actions. Last but not least one of BPM’s key values is to drive continuous improvement. Learning about customers past experiences, interactions and social conversations, provide valuable insight. Such insight can be used to improve products, customer facing processes, and customer experience. You may take these insights as an input to design better more efficient and customer friendly sales, contact center or self-service processes. If customer experience is important for your business, make sure you have incorporated BPM as a part of your strategy to design, orchestrate and improve your customer facing processes.

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JavaDay Taipei 2014 Trip Report

- by reza_rahman

JavaDay Taipei 2014 was held at the Taipei International Convention Center on August 1st. Organized by Oracle University, it is one of the largest Java developer events in Taiwan. This was another successful year for JavaDay Taipei with a fully sold out venue packed with youthful, energetic developers (this was my second time at the event and I have already been invited to speak again next year!). In addition to Oracle speakers like me, Steve Chin and Naveen Asrani, the event also featured a bevy of local speakers including Taipei Java community leaders. Topics included Java SE, Java EE, JavaFX, cloud and Big Data. It was my pleasure and privilege to present one of the opening keynotes for the event. I presented my session on Java EE titled "JavaEE.Next(): Java EE 7, 8, and Beyond". I covered the changes in Java EE 7 as well as what's coming in Java EE 8. I demoed the Cargo Tracker Java EE BluePrints. I also briefly talked about Adopt-a-JSR for Java EE 8. The slides for the keynote are below (click here to download and view the actual PDF): It appears your Web browser is not configured to display PDF files. No worries, just click here to download the PDF file. In the afternoon I did my JavaScript + Java EE 7 talk titled "Using JavaScript/HTML5 Rich Clients with Java EE 7". This talk is basically about aligning EE 7 with the emerging JavaScript ecosystem (specifically AngularJS). The talk was completely packed. The slide deck for the talk is here: JavaScript/HTML5 Rich Clients Using Java EE 7 from Reza Rahman The demo application code is posted on GitHub. The code should be a helpful resource if this development model is something that interests you. Do let me know if you need help with it but the instructions should be fairly self-explanatory. I am delivering this material at JavaOne 2014 as a two-hour tutorial. This should give me a little more bandwidth to dig a little deeper, especially on the JavaScript end. I finished off Java Day Taipei with my talk titled "Using NoSQL with ~JPA, EclipseLink and Java EE" (this was the last session of the conference). The talk covers an interesting gap that there is surprisingly little material on out there. The talk has three parts -- a birds-eye view of the NoSQL landscape, how to use NoSQL via a JPA centric facade using EclipseLink NoSQL, Hibernate OGM, DataNucleus, Kundera, Easy-Cassandra, etc and how to use NoSQL native APIs in Java EE via CDI. The slides for the talk are here: Using NoSQL with ~JPA, EclipseLink and Java EE from Reza Rahman The JPA based demo is available here, while the CDI based demo is available here. Both demos use MongoDB as the data store. Do let me know if you need help getting the demos up and running. After the event the Oracle University folks hosted a reception in the evening which was very well attended by organizers, speakers and local Java community leaders. I am extremely saddened by the fact that this otherwise excellent trip was scarred by terrible tragedy. After the conference I joined a few folks for a hike on the Maokong Mountain on Saturday. The group included friends in the Taiwanese Java community including Ian and Robbie Cheng. Without warning, fatal tragedy struck on a remote part of the trail. Despite best efforts by us, the excellent Taiwanese Emergency Rescue Team and World class Taiwanese physicians we were unable to save our friend Robbie Cheng's life. Robbie was just thirty-four years old and is survived by his younger brother, mother and father. Being the father of a young child myself, I can only imagine the deep sorrow that this senseless loss unleashes. Robbie was a key member of the Taiwanese Java community and a Java Evangelist at Sun at one point. Ironically the only picture I was able to take of the trail was mere moments before tragedy. I thought I should place him in that picture in profoundly respectful memoriam: Perhaps there is some solace in the fact that there is something inherently honorable in living a bright life, dying young and meeting one's end on a beautiful remote mountain trail few venture to behold let alone attempt to ascend in a long and tired lifetime. Perhaps I'd even say it's a fate I would not entirely regret facing if it were my own. With that thought in mind it seems appropriate to me to quote some lyrics from the song "Runes to My Memory" by legendary Swedish heavy metal band Amon Amarth idealizing a fallen Viking warrior cut down in his prime: "Here I lie on wet sand I will not make it home I clench my sword in my hand Say farewell to those I love When I am dead Lay me in a mound Place my weapons by my side For the journey to Hall up high When I am dead Lay me in a mound Raise a stone for all to see Runes carved to my memory" I submit my deepest condolences to Robbie's family and hope my next trip to Taiwan ends in a less somber note.

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What's My Problem? What's Your Problem?

- by Jacek Ziabicki

Software installers are not made for building demo environments. I can say this much after 12 years (on and off) of supporting my fellow sales consultants with environments for software demonstrations. When we release software, we include installation programs and procedures that are designed for use by our clients – to build a production environment and a limited number of testing, training and development environments. Different Objectives Your priorities when building an environment for client use vs. building a demo environment are very different. In a production environment, security, stability, and performance concerns are paramount. These environments are built on a specific server and rarely, if ever, moved to a different server or different network address. There is typically just one application running on a particular server (physical or virtual). Once built, the environment will be used for months or years at a time. Because of security considerations, the installation program wants to make these environments very specific to the organization using the software and the use case, encoding a fully qualified name of the server, or even the IP address on the network, in the configuration. So you either go through the installation procedure for each environment, or learn how to clone and reconfigure the software as a separate instance to build all your non-production environments. This may not matter much if the installation is as simple as clicking on the Setup program. But for enterprise applications, you have a number of configuration settings that you need to get just right – so whether you are installing from scratch or reconfiguring an existing installation, this requires both time and expertise in the particular piece of software. If you need a setup of several applications that are integrated to talk to one another, it is a whole new level of complexity. Now you need the expertise in all of the applications involved (plus the supporting technology products), and in addition to making each application work, you also have to configure the integration endpoints. Each application needs the URLs and credentials to call the integration layer, and the integration must be able to call each application. Then you have to make sure that each app has the right data so a business process initiated in one application can continue in the next. And, you will need to check that each application has the correct version and patch level for the integration to work. When building demo environments, your #1 concern is agility. If you can get away with a small number of long-running environments, you are lucky. More likely, you may get a request for a dedicated environment for a demonstration that is two weeks away: how quickly can you make this available so we still have the time to build the client-specific data? We are running a hands-on workshop next month, and we’ll need 15 instances of application X environment so each student can have a separate server for the exercises. We cannot connect to our data center from the client site, the client’s security policy won’t allow our VPN to go through – so we need a portable environment that we can bring with us. Our consultants need to be able to work at the hotel, airport, and the airplane, so we really want an environment that can run on a laptop. The client will need two playpen environments running in the cloud, accessible from their network, for a series of workshops that start two weeks from now. We have seen all of these scenarios and more. Here you would be much better served by a generic installation that would be easy to clone. Welcome to the Wonder Machine The reason I started this blog is to share a particular design of a demo environment, a special way to install software, that can address the above requirements, even for integrated setups. This design was created by a team at Oracle Utilities Global Business Unit, and we are using this setup for most of our demo environments. In a bout of modesty we called it the Wonder Machine. Over the next few posts – think of it as a novel in parts – I will tell you about the big idea, how it was implemented and what you can do with it. After we have laid down the groundwork, I would like to share some tips and tricks for users of our Wonder Machine implementation, as well as things I am learning about building portable, cloneable environments. The Wonder Machine is by no means a closed specification, it is under active development! I am hoping this blog will be of interest to two groups of readers – the users of the Wonder Machine we have built at Oracle Utilities, who want to get the most out of their demo environments and be able to reconfigure it to their needs – and to people who need to build environments for demonstration, testing, training, development and would like to make them cloneable and portable to maximize the reuse of their effort. Surely we are not the only ones facing this problem? If you can think of a better way to solve it, or if you can help us improve on our concept, I will appreciate your comments!

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Taking the Plunge - or Dipping Your Toe - into the Fluffy IAM Cloud by Paul Dhanjal (Simeio Solutions)

- by Greg Jensen

In our last three posts, we’ve examined the revolution that’s occurring today in identity and access management (IAM). We looked at the business drivers behind the growth of cloud-based IAM, the shortcomings of the old, last-century IAM models, and the new opportunities that federation, identity hubs and other new cloud capabilities can provide by changing the way you interact with everyone who does business with you. In this, our final post in the series, we’ll cover the key things you, the enterprise architect, should keep in mind when considering moving IAM to the cloud. Invariably, what starts the consideration process is a burning business need: a compliance requirement, security vulnerability or belt-tightening edict. Many on the business side view IAM as the “silver bullet” – and for good reason. You can almost always devise a solution using some aspect of IAM. The most critical question to ask first when using IAM to address the business need is, simply: is my solution complete? Typically, “business” is not focused on the big picture. Understandably, they’re focused instead on the need at hand: Can we be HIPAA compliant in 6 months? Can we tighten our new hire, employee transfer and termination processes? What can we do to prevent another password breach? Can we reduce our service center costs by the end of next quarter? The business may not be focused on the complete set of services offered by IAM but rather a single aspect or two. But it is the job – indeed the duty – of the enterprise architect to ensure that all aspects are being met. It’s like remodeling a house but failing to consider the impact on the foundation, the furnace or the zoning or setback requirements. While the homeowners may not be thinking of such things, the architect, of course, must. At Simeio Solutions, the way we ensure that all aspects are being taken into account – to expose any gaps or weaknesses – is to assess our client’s IAM capabilities against a five-step maturity model ranging from “ad hoc” to “optimized.” The model we use is similar to Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) developed by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University. It’s based upon some simple criteria, which can provide a visual representation of how well our clients fair when evaluated against four core categories: · Program Governance · Access Management (e.g., Single Sign-On) · Identity and Access Governance (e.g., Identity Intelligence) · Enterprise Security (e.g., DLP and SIEM) Often our clients believe they have a solution with all the bases covered, but the model exposes the gaps or weaknesses. The gaps are ideal opportunities for the cloud to enter into the conversation. The complete process is straightforward: 1. Look at the big picture, not just the immediate need – what is our roadmap and how does this solution fit? 2. Determine where you stand with respect to the four core areas – what are the gaps? 3. Decide how to cover the gaps – what role can the cloud play? Returning to our home remodeling analogy, at some point, if gaps or weaknesses are discovered when evaluating the complete impact of the proposed remodel – if the existing foundation wouldn’t support the new addition, for example – the owners need to decide if it’s time to move to a new house instead of trying to remodel the old one. However, with IAM it’s not an either-or proposition – i.e., either move to the cloud or fix the existing infrastructure. It’s possible to use new cloud technologies just to cover the gaps. Many of our clients start their migration to the cloud this way, dipping in their toe instead of taking the plunge all at once. Because our cloud services offering is based on the Oracle Identity and Access Management Suite, we can offer a tremendous amount of flexibility in this regard. The Oracle platform is not a collection of point solutions, but rather a complete, integrated, best-of-breed suite. Yet it’s not an all-or-nothing proposition. You can choose just the features and capabilities you need using a pay-as-you-go model, incrementally turning on and off services as needed. Better still, all the other capabilities are there, at the ready, whenever you need them. Spooling up these cloud-only services takes just a fraction of the time it would take a typical organization to deploy internally. SLAs in the cloud may be higher than on premise, too. And by using a suite of software that’s complete and integrated, you can dramatically lower cost and complexity. If your in-house solution cannot be migrated to the cloud, you might consider using hardware appliances such as Simeio’s Cloud Interceptor to extend your enterprise out into the network. You might also consider using Expert Managed Services. Cost is usually the key factor – not just development costs but also operational sustainment costs. Talent or resourcing issues often come into play when thinking about sustaining a program. Expert Managed Services such as those we offer at Simeio can address those concerns head on. In a cloud offering, identity and access services lend to the new paradigms described in my previous posts. Most importantly, it allows us all to focus on what we're meant to do – provide value, lower costs and increase security to our respective organizations. It’s that magic “silver bullet” that business knew you had all along. If you’d like to talk more, you can find us at simeiosolutions.com.

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Speakers, Please Check Your Time

- by AjarnMark

Woodrow Wilson was once asked how long it would take him to prepare for a 10 minute speech. He replied "Two weeks". He was then asked how long it would take for a 1 hour speech. "One week", he replied. 2 hour speech? "I'm ready right now," he replied. Whether that is a true story or an urban legend, I don’t really know, but either way, it is a poignant reminder for all speakers, and particularly apropos this week leading up to the PASS Community Summit. (Cross-posted to the PASS Professional Development Virtual Chapter blog #PASSProfDev.) What’s the point of that story? Simply this…if you have plenty of time to do your presentation, you don’t need to prepare much because it is easy to throw in more and more material to stretch out to your allotted time. But if you are on a tight time constraint, then it will take significant preparation to distill your talk down to only the essential points. I have attended seven of the last eight North American Summit events, and every one of them has been fantastic. The speakers are great, the material is timely and relevant, and the networking opportunities are awesome. And every year, there is one little thing that just bugs me…speakers going over their allotted time. Why does it bother me so? Well, if you look at a typical schedule for a Summit, you’ll see that there are six or more sessions going on at the same time, and only 15 minutes to move from one to another. If you’re trying to maximize your training dollar by attending something during every session time slot, and you don’t want to be the last guy trying to squeeze into the middle of the row, then those 15 minutes can be critical. All the more so if you need to stop and use the bathroom or if you have to hike to the opposite end of the convention center. It is really a bad position to find yourself having to choose between learning the last key points of Speaker A who is going over time, and getting over to Speaker B on time so you don’t miss her key opening remarks. And frankly, I think it is just rude. Yes, the speakers are the function, after all they are bringing the content that the rest of us are paying to learn. But it is also an honor to be given the opportunity to speak at a conference like this, and no one speaker is so important that the conference would be a disaster without him. Speakers know when they submit their abstract, long before the conference, how much time they will have. It has been the same pattern at the Summit for at least the last eight years. Program Sessions are 75 minutes long. Some speakers who have a good track record, and meet other qualifying criteria, are extended an invitation to present a Spotlight Session which is 90 minutes (a 20% increase). So there really is no excuse. It’s not like you were promised a 2-hour segment and then discovered when you got here that it was only 75 minutes. In fact, it’s not like PASS advertised 90-minute sessions for everyone and then a select few were cut back to only 75. As a speaker, you know well before you get here which type of session you are doing and how long it is, so as a professional, you should plan accordingly. Now you might think that this only happens to rookies, but I’ll tell you that some of the worst offenders are big-name veterans who draw huge attendance numbers for their sessions. Some attendees blow this off as, “Hey, it’s so-and-so, and I’d stay here for hours and listen to him/her talk.” To which I would reply, “Then they should have submitted for a pre- or post-conference day-long seminar instead, but don’t try to squeeze your day-long talk into a 90-minute session.” Now I don’t really believe that these speakers are being malicious or just selfishly trying to extend their time in the spotlight. I think that most of them are merely being undisciplined and did not trim their presentation sufficiently, or allowed themselves to get off-track (often in a generous attempt to help someone in the audience with a question or problem that really should have been noted for further discussion after the session). So here is my recommendation…my plea, even. TRIM THE FAT! Now. Before it’s too late. Before you even get on the airplane, take a long, hard look at your presentation and eliminate some of the points that you originally thought you had to make, but in reality are not truly crucial to your main topic. Delete a few slides. Test your demos and have them already scripted rather than typing them during your talk. It is better to cut out too much and end up with plenty of time at the end for Questions & Answers. And you can always keep some notes on the stuff that you cut out so that you could fill it back in at the end as bonus material if you really do end up with a whole bunch of time on your hands. But I don’t think you will. And if you do, that will look even better to the audience as it will look like you’re giving them something extra that not every audience gets. And they will thank you for that.

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What to "CRM" in San Francisco? CRM Highlights for OpenWorld '12

- by Richard Lefebvre

There is plenty to SEE for CRM during OpenWorld in San Francisco, September 30 - October 4! Here are some of the sessions in the CRM Track that you might want to consider attending for products you currently own or might consider for the future. I think you'll agree, there is quite a bit of investment going on across Oracle CRM. Please use OpenWorld Schedule Builder or check the OpenWorld Content Catalog for all of the session details and any time or location changes. Tip: Pre-enrolled session registrants via Schedule Builder are allowed into the session rooms before anyone else, so Schedule Builder will guarantee you a seat. Many of the sessions below will likely be at capacity. General Session: Oracle Fusion CRM—Improving Sales Effectiveness, Efficiency, and Ease of Use (Session ID: GEN9674) - Oct 2, 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM. Anthony Lye, Senior VP, Oracle leads this general session focused on Oracle Fusion CRM. Oracle Fusion CRM optimizes territories, combines quota management and incentive compensation, integrates sales and marketing, and cleanses and enriches data—all within a single application platform. Oracle Fusion can be configured, changed, and extended at runtime by end users, business managers, IT, and developers. Oracle Fusion CRM can be used from the Web, from a smartphone, from Microsoft Outlook, or from an iPad. Deloitte, sponsor of the CRM Track, will also present key concepts on CRM implementations. Oracle Fusion Customer Relationship Management: Overview/Strategy/Customer Experiences/Roadmap (CON9407) - Oct 1, 3:15PM - 4:15PM. In this session, learn how Oracle Fusion CRM enables companies to create better sales plans, generate more quality leads, and achieve higher win rates and find out why customers are adopting Oracle Fusion CRM. Gain a deeper understanding of the unique capabilities only Oracle Fusion CRM provides, and learn how Oracle’s commitment to CRM innovation is driving a wide range of future enhancements. Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service Vision and Roadmap (CON9764) - Oct 1, 10:45 AM - 11:45 AM. Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service combines Web, social, and contact center experiences for a unified, cross-channel service solution in the cloud, enabling organizations to increase sales and adoption, build trust, strengthen relationships, and reduce costs and effort. Come to this session to hear from Oracle experts about where the product is going and how Oracle is committed to accelerating the pace of innovation and value to its customers. Siebel CRM Overview, Strategy, and Roadmap (CON9700) - Oct 1, 12:15PM - 1:15PM. The world’s most complete CRM solution, Oracle’s Siebel CRM helps organizations differentiate their businesses. Come to this session to learn about the Siebel product roadmap and how Oracle is committed to accelerating the pace of innovation and value for its customers on this platform. Additionally, the session covers how Siebel customers can leverage many Oracle assets such as Oracle WebCenter Sites; InQuira, RightNow, and ATG/Endeca applications, and Oracle Policy Automation in conjunction with their current Siebel investments. Oracle Fusion Social CRM Strategy and Roadmap: Future of Collaboration and Social Engagement (CON9750) - Oct 4, 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM. Social is changing the customer experience! Come find out how Oracle can help you know your customers better, encourage brand affinity, and improve collaboration within your ecosystem. This session reviews Oracle’s social media solution and shows how you can discover hidden insights buried in your enterprise and social data. Also learn how Oracle Social Network revolutionizes how enterprise users work, collaborate, and share to achieve successful outcomes. Oracle CRM On Demand Strategy and Roadmap (CON9727) - Oct 1, 10:45AM - 11:45AM. Oracle CRM On Demand is a powerful cloud-based customer relationship management solution. Come to this session to learn directly from Oracle experts about future product plans and hear how Oracle is committed to accelerating the pace of innovation and value to its customers. Knowledge Management Roadmap and Strategy (CON9776) - Oct 1, 12:15PM - 1:15PM. Learn how to harness the knowledge created as a natural byproduct of day-to-day interactions to lower costs and improve customer experience by delivering the right answer at the right time across channels. This session includes an overview of Oracle’s product roadmap and vision for knowledge management for both the Oracle RightNow and Oracle Knowledge (formerly InQuira) product families. Oracle Policy Automation Roadmap: Supercharging the Customer Experience (CON9655) - Oct 1, 12:15PM - 1:15PM. Oracle Policy Automation delivers rapid customer value by streamlining the capture, analysis, and deployment of policies across every facet of the customer experience. This session discusses recent Oracle Policy Automation enhancements for policy analytics; the latest Oracle Policy Automation Connector for Siebel; and planned new capabilities, including availability with the Oracle RightNow product line. There is much more, so stay tuned for more highlights or check out the Content Catalog and search for your areas of interest.

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iOS Support with Windows Azure Mobile Services – now with Push Notifications

- by ScottGu

A few weeks ago I posted about a number of improvements to Windows Azure Mobile Services. One of these was the addition of an Objective-C client SDK that allows iOS developers to easily use Mobile Services for data and authentication. Today I'm excited to announce a number of improvement to our iOS SDK and, most significantly, our new support for Push Notifications via APNS (Apple Push Notification Services). This makes it incredibly easy to fire push notifications to your iOS users from Windows Azure Mobile Service scripts. Push Notifications via APNS We've provided two complete tutorials that take you step-by-step through the provisioning and setup process to enable your Windows Azure Mobile Service application with APNS (Apple Push Notification Services), including all of the steps required to configure your application for push in the Apple iOS provisioning portal: Getting started with Push Notifications - iOS Push notifications to users by using Mobile Services - iOS Once you've configured your application in the Apple iOS provisioning portal and uploaded the APNS push certificate to the Apple provisioning portal, it's just a matter of uploading your APNS push certificate to Mobile Services using the Windows Azure admin portal: Clicking the “upload” within the “Push” tab of your Mobile Service allows you to browse your local file-system and locate/upload your exported certificate. As part of this you can also select whether you want to use the sandbox (dev) or production (prod) Apple service: Now, the code to send a push notification to your clients from within a Windows Azure Mobile Service is as easy as the code below: push.apns.send(deviceToken, { alert: 'Toast: A new Mobile Services task.', sound: 'default' }); This will cause Windows Azure Mobile Services to connect to APNS (Apple Push Notification Service) and send a notification to the iOS device you specified via the deviceToken: Check out our reference documentation for full details on how to use the new Windows Azure Mobile Services apns object to send your push notifications. Feedback Scripts An important part of working with any PNS (Push Notification Service) is handling feedback for expired device tokens and channels. This typically happens when your application is uninstalled from a particular device and can no longer receive your notifications. With Windows Notification Services you get an instant response from the HTTP server. Apple’s Notification Services works in a slightly different way and provides an additional endpoint you can connect to poll for a list of expired tokens. As with all of the capabilities we integrate with Mobile Services, our goal is to allow developers to focus more on building their app and less on building infrastructure to support their ideas. Therefore we knew we had to provide a simple way for developers to integrate feedback from APNS on a regular basis. This week’s update now includes a new screen in the portal that allows you to optionally provide a script to process your APNS feedback – and it will be executed by Mobile Services on an ongoing basis: This script is invoked periodically while your service is active. To poll the feedback endpoint you can simply call the apns object's getFeedback method from within this script: push.apns.getFeedback({ success: function(results) { // results is an array of objects with a deviceToken and time properties } }); This returns you a list of invalid tokens that can now be removed from your database. iOS Client SDK improvements Over the last month we've continued to work with a number of iOS advisors to make improvements to our Objective-C SDK. The SDK is being developed under an open source license (Apache 2.0) and is available on github. Many of the improvements are behind the scenes to improve performance and memory usage. However, one of the biggest improvements to our iOS Client API is the addition of an even easier login method. Below is the Objective-C code you can now write to invoke it: [client loginWithProvider:@"twitter" onController:self animated:YES completion:^(MSUser *user, NSError *error) { // if no error, you are now logged in via twitter }]; This code will automatically present and dismiss our login view controller as a modal dialog on the specified controller. This does all the hard work for you and makes login via Twitter, Google, Facebook and Microsoft Account identities just a single line of code. My colleague Josh just posted a short video demonstrating these new features which I'd recommend checking out: Summary The above features are all now live in production and are available to use immediately. If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using Mobile Services today. Visit the Windows Azure Mobile Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with Mobile Services. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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Efficient way to render tile-based map in Java

- by Lucius

Some time ago I posted here because I was having some memory issues with a game I'm working on. That has been pretty much solved thanks to some suggestions here, so I decided to come back with another problem I'm having. Basically, I feel that too much of the CPU is being used when rendering the map. I have a Core i5-2500 processor and when running the game, the CPU usage is about 35% - and I can't accept that that's just how it has to be. This is how I'm going about rendering the map: I have the X and Y coordinates of the player, so I'm not drawing the whole map, just the visible portion of it; The number of visible tiles on screen varies according to the resolution chosen by the player (the CPU usage is 35% here when playing at a resolution of 1440x900); If the tile is "empty", I just skip drawing it (this didn't visibly lower the CPU usage, but reduced the drawing time in about 20ms); The map is composed of 5 layers - for more details; The tiles are 32x32 pixels; And just to be on the safe side, I'll post the code for drawing the game here, although it's as messy and unreadable as it can be T_T (I'll try to make it a little readable) private void drawGame(Graphics2D g2d){ //Width and Height of the visible portion of the map (not of the screen) int visionWidht = visibleCols * TILE_SIZE; int visionHeight = visibleRows * TILE_SIZE; //Since the map can be smaller than the screen, I center it just to be sure int xAdjust = (getWidth() - visionWidht) / 2; int yAdjust = (getHeight() - visionHeight) / 2; //This "deducedX" thing is to move the map a few pixels horizontally, since the player moves by pixels and not full tiles int playerDrawX = listOfCharacters.get(0).getX(); int deducedX = 0; if (listOfCharacters.get(0).currentCol() - visibleCols / 2 >= 0) { playerDrawX = visibleCols / 2 * TILE_SIZE; map_draw_col = listOfCharacters.get(0).currentCol() - visibleCols / 2; deducedX = listOfCharacters.get(0).getXCol(); } //"deducedY" is the same deal as "deducedX", but vertically int playerDrawY = listOfCharacters.get(0).getY(); int deducedY = 0; if (listOfCharacters.get(0).currentRow() - visibleRows / 2 >= 0) { playerDrawY = visibleRows / 2 * TILE_SIZE; map_draw_row = listOfCharacters.get(0).currentRow() - visibleRows / 2; deducedY = listOfCharacters.get(0).getYRow(); } int max_cols = visibleCols + map_draw_col; if (max_cols >= map.getCols()) { max_cols = map.getCols() - 1; deducedX = 0; map_draw_col = max_cols - visibleCols + 1; playerDrawX = listOfCharacters.get(0).getX() - map_draw_col * TILE_SIZE; } int max_rows = visibleRows + map_draw_row; if (max_rows >= map.getRows()) { max_rows = map.getRows() - 1; deducedY = 0; map_draw_row = max_rows - visibleRows + 1; playerDrawY = listOfCharacters.get(0).getY() - map_draw_row * TILE_SIZE; } //map_draw_row and map_draw_col representes the coordinate of the upper left tile on the screen //iterate through all the tiles on screen and draw them - this is what consumes most of the CPU for (int col = map_draw_col; col <= max_cols; col++) { for (int row = map_draw_row; row <= max_rows; row++) { Tile[] tiles = map.getTiles(col, row); for(int layer = 0; layer < tiles.length; layer++){ Tile currentTile = tiles[layer]; boolean shouldDraw = true; //I only draw the tile if it exists and is not empty (id=-1) if(currentTile != null && currentTile.getId() >= 0){ //The layers above 1 can be draw behing or infront of the player according to where it's standing if(layer > 1 && currentTile.getId() >= 0){ if(playerBehind(col, row, layer, listOfCharacters.get(0))){ behinds.get(0).add(new int[]{col, row}); //the tiles that are infront of the player wont be draw right now shouldDraw = false; } } if(shouldDraw){ g2d.drawImage( tiles[layer].getImage(), (col-map_draw_col)*TILE_SIZE - deducedX + xAdjust, (row-map_draw_row)*TILE_SIZE - deducedY + yAdjust, null); } } } } } } There's some more code in this method but nothing relevant to this question. Basically, the biggest problem is that I iterate over around 5000 tiles (in this specific resolution) 60 times each second. I thought about rendering the visible portion of the map once and storing it into a BufferedImage and when the player moved move the whole image the same amount but to the opposite side and then drawn the tiles that appeared on the screen, but if I do it like that, I wont be able to have animated tiles (at least I think). That being said, any suggestions?

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Clouds, Clouds, Clouds Everywhere, Not a Drop of Rain!

- by sxkumar

At the recently concluded Oracle OpenWorld 2012, the center of discussion was clearly Cloud. Over the five action packed days, I got to meet a large number of customers and most of them had serious interest in all things cloud. Public Cloud - particularly the Oracle Cloud - clearly got a lot of attention and interest. I think the use cases and the value proposition for public cloud is pretty straight forward. However, when it comes to private cloud, there were some interesting revelations. Well, I shouldn’t really call them revelations since they are pretty consistent with what I have heard from customers at other conferences as well as during 1:1 interactions. While the interest in enterprise private cloud remains to be very high, only a handful of enterprises have truly embarked on a journey to create what the purists would call true private cloud - with capabilities such as self-service and chargeback/show back. For a large majority, today's reality is simply consolidation and virtualization - and they are quite far off from creating an agile, self-service and transparent IT infrastructure which is what the enterprise cloud is all about. Even a handful of those who have actually implemented a close-to-real enterprise private cloud have taken an infrastructure centric approach and are seeing only limited business upside. Quite a few were frank enough to admit that chargeback and self-service isn’t something that they see an immediate need for. This is in quite contrast to the picture being painted by all those surveys out there that show a large number of enterprises having already implemented an enterprise private cloud. On the face of it, this seems quite contrary to the observations outlined above. So what exactly is the reality? Well, the reality is that there is undoubtedly a huge amount of interest among enterprises about transforming their legacy IT environment - which is often seen as too rigid, too fragmented, and ultimately too expensive - to something more agile, transparent and business-focused. At the same time however, there is a great deal of confusion among CIOs and architects about how to get there. This isn't very surprising given all the buzz and hype surrounding cloud computing. Every IT vendor claims to have the most unique solution and there isn't a single IT product out there that does not have a cloud angle to it. Add to this the chatter on the blogosphere, it will get even a sane mind spinning. Consequently, most enterprises are still struggling to fully understand the concept and value of enterprise private cloud. Even among those who have chosen to move forward relatively early, quite a few have made their decisions more based on vendor influence/preferences rather than what their businesses actually need. Clearly, there is a disconnect between the promise of the enterprise private cloud and the current adoption trends. So what is the way forward? I certainly do not claim to have all the answers. But here is a perspective that many cloud practitioners have found useful and thus worth sharing. To take a step back, the fundamental premise of the enterprise private cloud is IT transformation. It is the quest to create a more agile, transparent and efficient IT infrastructure that is driven more by business needs rather than constrained by operational and procedural inefficiencies. It is the new way of delivering and consuming IT services - where the IT organizations operate more like enablers of strategic services rather than just being the gatekeepers of IT resources. In an enterprise private cloud environment, IT organizations are expected to empower the end users via self-service access/control and provide the business stakeholders a transparent view of how the resources are being used, what’s the cost of delivering a given service, how well are the customers being served, etc. But the most important thing to note here is the enterprise private cloud is not just an IT project, rather it is a business initiative to create an IT setup that is more aligned with the needs of today's dynamic and highly competitive business environment. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. Just remember how the business users have been at the forefront of public cloud adoption within enterprises and private cloud is no exception. Such a broad-based transformation makes cloud more than a technology initiative. It requires people (organizational) and process changes as well, and these changes are as critical as is the choice of right tools and technology. In my next blog, I will share how essential it is for enterprise cloud technology to go hand-in hand with process re-engineering and organization changes to unlock true value of enterprise cloud. I am sharing a short video from my session "Managing your private Cloud" at Oracle OpenWorld 2012. More videos from this session will be posted at the recently introduced Zero to Cloud resource page. Many other experts of Oracle enterprise private cloud solution will join me on this blog "Zero to Cloud" and share best practices , deployment tips and information on how to plan, build, deploy, monitor, manage , meter and optimize the enterprise private cloud. We look forward to your feedback, suggestions and having an engaging conversion with you on this blog.

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CSS hover behavior inconsistent on desktop/mobile devices [migrated]

- by tbart

I have a strange problem: This page looks good on desktop browsers, but the hovering effect does not seem to work correctly on at least my CM7 Android 2.3.7 device. I know hovering is not supposed to work on touch displays as it does with a mouse, but I'd like to have touch feedback, i.e. the highlight color should show once the user has tapped a menu item. This does work when the link is just a href="#" but it does not when it is a real link. I tried all sorts of stuff as you can see, to no avail. If you go back in the browser history after having tapped a real link, the item is highlighted, so the browser understands the CSS I am throwing at it. However, the javascript alert makes it clear that it only seems to interpret the link opening action and does not care about the color changing stuff. Weird that is. Workarounds welcome, preferable without javascript, but if it has to be JS, then go ahead! either go here: http://orpheus.co.at/hoverprob and Use the source, Luke! or see it here in all its glory: <html> <head> <meta name="viewport" content="width=320"> <style> #nav, #nav ul { width: 100%; float: left; list-style: none; line-height: 1; background: #fff; font-weight: bold; padding: 0; margin: 0 0 5px 0; } #nav a { display: block; color: #001834; text-decoration: none; padding: 5px 7px; } #nav li { float: left; padding: 0; width: 33%; } #nav li ul { position: absolute; left: -9999px; height: auto; margin: 0; opacity: .95; width: 100%; } #nav li a { text-align: center; height: 20px; line-height: 20px; } #nav li ul li a { text-align: left; } #nav li ul li { float: none; /* width: 316px; */ width: 100%; } #nav li:hover ul ul, #nav li:hover ul ul ul, #nav li.sfhover ul ul, #nav li.sfhover ul ul ul { left: -9999px; } #nav li:hover ul, #nav li li:hover ul, #nav li li li:hover ul, #nav li.sfhover ul, #nav li li.sfhover ul, #nav li li li.sfhover ul { left: 0; } #nav li.educate { background: #FFF0B8; /* background: #FF0000; */ /* border-radius: 5px; */ border: 5px; } #nav li.educate:hover { background: #FFCE00; /* border-radius: 5px; */ } </style> </head> <body> <div id="mobMenu"> <ul id="nav" class="nav"> <li class="educate"><a href="#">menu</a> <ul class="educate"> <li class="educate"><a href="#">href=&quot#", works</a></li>  <li class="educate"><a onmouseover="" href="index.html">does not work, real link</a></li> <li class="educate" id="bla"><a onmousedown="document.getElementById('bla').style.backgroundColor='Blue'; alert('Done');document.location='index.html';" href="#">JS, not interpreted in corr order</a></li> </ul> </li> </div> </body>

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StreamInsight 2.1 Released

- by Roman Schindlauer

The wait is over—we are pleased to announce the release of StreamInsight 2.1. Since the release of version 1.2, we have heard your feedbacks and suggestions and based on that we have come up with a whole new set of features. Here are some of the highlights: A New Programming Model – A more clear and consistent object model, eliminating the need for complex input and output adapters (though they are still completely supported). This new model allows you to provision, name, and manage data sources and sinks in the StreamInsight server. Tight integration with Reactive Framework (Rx) – You can write reactive queries hosted inside StreamInsight as well as compose temporal queries on reactive objects. High Availability – Check-pointing over temporal streams and multiple processes with shared computation. Here is how simple coding can be with the 2.1 Programming Model: class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { using (Server server = Server.Create("Default")) { // Create an app Application app = server.CreateApplication("app"); // Define a simple observable which generates an integer every second var source = app.DefineObservable(() => Observable.Interval(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1))); // Define a sink. var sink = app.DefineObserver(() => Observer.Create<long>(x => Console.WriteLine(x))); // Define a query to filter the events var query = from e in source where e % 2 == 0 select e; // Bind the query to the sink and create a runnable process using (IDisposable proc = query.Bind(sink).Run("MyProcess")) { Console.WriteLine("Press a key to dispose the process..."); Console.ReadKey(); } } } } That’s how easily you can define a source, sink and compose a query and run it. Note that we did not replace the existing APIs, they co-exist with the new surface. Stay tuned, you will see a series of articles coming out over the next few weeks about the new features and how to use them. Come and grab it from our download center page and let us know what you think! You can find the updated MSDN documentation here, and we would appreciate if you could provide feedback to the docs as well—best via email to [email protected]. Moreover, we updated our samples to demonstrate the new programming surface. Regards, The StreamInsight Team

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Multi Monitor Setup Problems

- by Shamballa

I have Ubuntu 10.04 LTS - the Lucid Lynx. I have until recently been using a nVida Graphics card (NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT) with two monitors attached, this all worked fine and dandy. A couple of days ago I bought two new identical LCD monitors for a multi monitor setup and two ATI graphics cards (ATI Sapphire Radeon HD5450). NOTE *All monitors work fine in Windows XP, 2k, Vista and 7 After I had booted into Ubuntu only one display came on, that I kind of expected anyway, then I removed the driver for the nVidia card and downloaded the ATI version which gave me the ATI Catalyst Control Center - in that only two of the displays were showing the third was disabled and showing unknown driver. I enabled the third monitor that stated "Unkown Driver" and had to reboot, upon reboot none of the displays work. I restarted and booted up into recovery mode and from now that is only what I can get into using a failsafe driver. It seems according to the log that a server is already active for Display 0 and I have to remove /tmp/.X0-lock and start again. This is what the log file is saying: Fatal Server Error Server is already active for display 0 if this server is no longer running, remove /tmp/.X0-lock and start again. (WW) xf86 closeconsole: KDSETMODE failed: Bad file descriptor (WW) xf86 closeconsole: VT_GETMODE failed: Bad file descriptor (WW) xf86 closeconsole: VT_GETSTATE failed: Bad file descriptor ddxSigGiveUp: closing log I have tried looking at my xorg.config file but unfortunately I have not really got a clue as to how it "should" be - I have tried regenerating it using this command from a terminal: sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg but that had no effect so I am currently stuck in failsafe driver mode but two monitors are active but are mirroring each other. I hope that this is not to long - looking back I have been going on a bit! but I am just trying to explain as much as I can... I have asked this on Linuxquestions but nobody seems to know either or at least I have not had any responses. Could some kind soul please help explain what I can do from here? I would be eternally grateful. Chris * Update * Removing xorg.conf does nothing other than allowing me to use only two monitors - using the command: sudo aticonfig --initial generates the xorg.conf file below: but does not work either - I just get two monitors... Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "aticonfig Layout" Screen 0 "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0" 0 0 EndSection Section "Files" EndSection Section "Module" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0" Option "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver" Option "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor" Option "DPMS" "true" EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "aticonfig-Device[0]-0" Driver "fglrx" BusID "PCI:1:0:0" EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0" Device "aticonfig-Device[0]-0" Monitor "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0" DefaultDepth 24 SubSection "Display" Viewport 0 0 Depth 24 EndSubSection EndSection I have tried using this command from a thread on the Ubuntu Forums with a question similar to mine: sudo aticonfig --initial=dual-head --adapter=all Generated xorg.conf file Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "aticonfig Layout" Screen 0 "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0" 0 0 Screen "aticonfig-Screen[0]-1" RightOf "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0" Screen "aticonfig-Screen[1]-0" RightOf "aticonfig-Screen[0]-1" Screen "aticonfig-Screen[1]-1" RightOf "aticonfig-Screen[1]-0" EndSection Section "Files" EndSection Section "Module" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0" Option "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver" Option "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor" Option "DPMS" "true" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-1" Option "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver" Option "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor" Option "DPMS" "true" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "aticonfig-Monitor[1]-0" Option "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver" Option "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor" Option "DPMS" "true" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "aticonfig-Monitor[1]-1" Option "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver" Option "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor" Option "DPMS" "true" EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "aticonfig-Device[0]-0" Driver "fglrx" BusID "PCI:1:0:0" EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "aticonfig-Device[0]-1" Driver "fglrx" BusID "PCI:1:0:0" Screen 1 EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "aticonfig-Device[1]-0" Driver "fglrx" BusID "PCI:2:0:0" EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "aticonfig-Device[1]-1" Driver "fglrx" BusID "PCI:2:0:0" Screen 1 EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0" Device "aticonfig-Device[0]-0" Monitor "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0" DefaultDepth 24 SubSection "Display" Viewport 0 0 Depth 24 EndSubSection EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]-1" Device "aticonfig-Device[0]-1" Monitor "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-1" DefaultDepth 24 SubSection "Display" Viewport 0 0 Depth 24 EndSubSection EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[1]-0" Device "aticonfig-Device[1]-0" Monitor "aticonfig-Monitor[1]-0" DefaultDepth 24 SubSection "Display" Viewport 0 0 Depth 24 EndSubSection EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[1]-1" Device "aticonfig-Device[1]-1" Monitor "aticonfig-Monitor[1]-1" DefaultDepth 24 SubSection "Display" Viewport 0 0 Depth 24 EndSubSection EndSection This upon reboot renders ALL monitors blank and I have to go into recovery mode and use a failsafe driver. This is so much harder than I thought it would be, I don't think Ubuntu likes ATI for multi (3) monitors or maybe the other way around. Can anyone help still?

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StreamInsight 2.1 Released

- by Roman Schindlauer

The wait is over—we are pleased to announce the release of StreamInsight 2.1. Since the release of version 1.2, we have heard your feedbacks and suggestions and based on that we have come up with a whole new set of features. Here are some of the highlights: A New Programming Model – A more clear and consistent object model, eliminating the need for complex input and output adapters (though they are still completely supported). This new model allows you to provision, name, and manage data sources and sinks in the StreamInsight server. Tight integration with Reactive Framework (Rx) – You can write reactive queries hosted inside StreamInsight as well as compose temporal queries on reactive objects. High Availability – Check-pointing over temporal streams and multiple processes with shared computation. Here is how simple coding can be with the 2.1 Programming Model: class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { using (Server server = Server.Create("Default")) { // Create an app Application app = server.CreateApplication("app"); // Define a simple observable which generates an integer every second var source = app.DefineObservable(() => Observable.Interval(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1))); // Define a sink. var sink = app.DefineObserver(() => Observer.Create<long>(x => Console.WriteLine(x))); // Define a query to filter the events var query = from e in source where e % 2 == 0 select e; // Bind the query to the sink and create a runnable process using (IDisposable proc = query.Bind(sink).Run("MyProcess")) { Console.WriteLine("Press a key to dispose the process..."); Console.ReadKey(); } } } } That’s how easily you can define a source, sink and compose a query and run it. Note that we did not replace the existing APIs, they co-exist with the new surface. Stay tuned, you will see a series of articles coming out over the next few weeks about the new features and how to use them. Come and grab it from our download center page and let us know what you think! You can find the updated MSDN documentation here, and we would appreciate if you could provide feedback to the docs as well—best via email to [email protected]. Moreover, we updated our samples to demonstrate the new programming surface. Regards, The StreamInsight Team

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What's New in SGD 5.1?

- by Fat Bloke

Oracle announced the latest version of Secure Global Desktop (SGD) this week with 3 major themes: Support for Android devices; Support for Desktop Chrome clients; Support for Oracle Unified Directory. I'll talk about the new features in a moment, but a bit of context first: Oracle SGD - what, how and why? Oracle Secure Global Desktop is Oracle's secure remote access product which allows users on almost any device, to access almost any type application which is hosted in the data center, from almost any location. And it does this by sitting on the edge of the datacenter, between the user and the applications: This is actually a really smart environment for an increasing number of use cases where: Users need mobility of location AND device (i.e. work from anywhere); IT needs to ensure security of applications and data (of course!) The application requires an end-user environment which can't be guaranteed and IT may not own the client platform (e.g. BYOD, working from home, partners or contractors). Oracle has a a specific interest in this of course. As the leading supplier of enterprise applications, many of Oracle's customers, and indeed Oracle itself, fit these criteria. So, as an IT guy rolling out an application to your employees, if one of your apps absolutely needs, say, IE10 with Java 6 update 32, how can you be sure that the user population has this, especially when they're using their own devices? In the SGD model you, the IT guy, can set up, say, a Windows Server running the exact environment required, and then use SGD to publish this app, without needing to worry any further about the device the end user is using. What's new? So back to SGD 5.1 and what is new there: Android devices Since we introduced our support for iPad tablets in SGD 5.0 we've had a big demand from customers to extend this to Android tablets too, and so we're pleased to announce that 5.1 supports Android 4.x tablets such as Nexus 7 and 10, and the Galaxy Tab. Here's how it works, with screenshots from my Nexus 7: Simply point your browser to the SGD server URL and login; The workspace is the list of apps that the admin has deemed ok for you to run. You click on an application to run it (here's Excel and Oracle E-Business Suite): There's an extended on-screen keyboard (extended because desktop apps need keys that don't appear on a tablet keyboard such as ctrl, WIndow key, etc) and touch gestures can be mapped to desktop events (such as tap and hold to right click) All in all a pretty nice implementation for Android tablet users. Desktop Chrome Browsers SGD has always been designed around using a browser to access your applications. But traditionally, this has involved using Java to deliver the SGD client component. With HTML5 and Javascript engines becoming so powerful, we thought we'd see how well a pure web client could perform with desktop apps. And the answer was, surprisingly well. So with this release we now offer this additional way of working, which can be enabled by a simple bit of configuration. Here's a Linux desktop running in a tab in Chrome. And if you resize the browser window, the Linux desktop is resized by SGD too. Very cool! Oracle Unified Directory As I mentioned above, a lot of Oracle users already benefit from SGD. And a lot of Oracle customers use Oracle Unified Directory as their Enterprise and Carrier grade user directory. So it makes a lot of sense that SGD now supports this LDAP directory for both Authentication and as a means to determine which users get which applications, e.g. publish the engineering app to the guys in the Development group, but give everyone E-Business Suite to let them do their expenses. Summary With new devices, and faster 4G networking becoming more prevalent, the pressure for businesses to move to a increasingly mobile enterprise is stronger than ever. SGD is good for users, and even better for IT. By offering the user the ability to work from anywhere, and IT the control and security they need, everyone wins with SGD. To try this for yourself, download SGD 5.1 (look under Desktop Virtualization Products) from the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud or if you're an existing customer, get it from My Oracle Support. -FB

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How to manually patch Blogger template to use Disqus

- by user317944

I'm trying to add disqus to my blog and I tried following this guide to do so: http://disqus.com/docs/patch-blogger/ However their instructions are completely off with what I have on my custom template. Here is the template: <b:skin><![CDATA[/*----------------------------------------------- Blogger Template Style Name: Picture Window Designer: Josh Peterson URL: www.noaesthetic.com ----------------------------------------------- */ /* Variable definitions ==================== */ /* Content ----------------------------------------------- */ body { font: $(body.font); color: $(body.text.color); } html body .region-inner { min-width: 0; max-width: 100%; width: auto; } .content-outer { font-size: 90%; } a:link { text-decoration:none; color: $(link.color); } a:visited { text-decoration:none; color: $(link.visited.color); } a:hover { text-decoration:underline; color: $(link.hover.color); } .body-fauxcolumn-outer { background: $(body.background); } .content-outer { background: $(content.background); -moz-border-radius: $(content.border.radius); -webkit-border-radius: $(content.border.radius); -goog-ms-border-radius: $(content.border.radius); border-radius: $(content.border.radius); -moz-box-shadow: 0 0 $(content.shadow.spread) rgba(0, 0, 0, .15); -webkit-box-shadow: 0 0 $(content.shadow.spread) rgba(0, 0, 0, .15); -goog-ms-box-shadow: 0 0 $(content.shadow.spread) rgba(0, 0, 0, .15); box-shadow: 0 0 $(content.shadow.spread) rgba(0, 0, 0, .15); margin: $(content.margin) auto; } .content-inner { padding: $(content.padding); } /* Header ----------------------------------------------- */ .header-outer { background: $(header.background.color) $(header.background.gradient) repeat-x scroll top left; _background-image: none; color: $(header.text.color); -moz-border-radius: $(header.border.radius); -webkit-border-radius: $(header.border.radius); -goog-ms-border-radius: $(header.border.radius); border-radius: $(header.border.radius); } .Header img, .Header #header-inner { -moz-border-radius: $(header.border.radius); -webkit-border-radius: $(header.border.radius); -goog-ms-border-radius: $(header.border.radius); border-radius: $(header.border.radius); } .header-inner .Header .titlewrapper, .header-inner .Header .descriptionwrapper { padding-left: $(header.padding); padding-right: $(header.padding); } .Header h1 { font: $(header.font); text-shadow: 1px 1px 3px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.3); } .Header h1 a { color: $(header.text.color); } .Header .description { font-size: 130%; } /* Tabs ----------------------------------------------- */ .tabs-inner { margin: .5em $(tabs.margin.sides) $(tabs.margin.bottom); padding: 0; } .tabs-inner .section { margin: 0; } .tabs-inner .widget ul { padding: 0; background: $(tabs.background.color) $(tabs.background.gradient) repeat scroll bottom; -moz-border-radius: $(tabs.border.radius); -webkit-border-radius: $(tabs.border.radius); -goog-ms-border-radius: $(tabs.border.radius); border-radius: $(tabs.border.radius); } .tabs-inner .widget li { border: none; } .tabs-inner .widget li a { display: block; padding: .5em 1em; margin-$endSide: $(tabs.spacing); color: $(tabs.text.color); font: $(tabs.font); -moz-border-radius: $(tab.border.radius) $(tab.border.radius) 0 0; -webkit-border-top-left-radius: $(tab.border.radius); -webkit-border-top-right-radius: $(tab.border.radius); -goog-ms-border-radius: $(tab.border.radius) $(tab.border.radius) 0 0; border-radius: $(tab.border.radius) $(tab.border.radius) 0 0; background: $(tab.background); border-$endSide: 1px solid $(tabs.separator.color); } .tabs-inner .widget li:first-child a { padding-$startSide: 1.25em; -moz-border-radius-top$startSide: $(tab.first.border.radius); -moz-border-radius-bottom$startSide: $(tabs.border.radius); -webkit-border-top-$startSide-radius: $(tab.first.border.radius); -webkit-border-bottom-$startSide-radius: $(tabs.border.radius); -goog-ms-border-top-$startSide-radius: $(tab.first.border.radius); -goog-ms-border-bottom-$startSide-radius: $(tabs.border.radius); border-top-$startSide-radius: $(tab.first.border.radius); border-bottom-$startSide-radius: $(tabs.border.radius); } .tabs-inner .widget li.selected a, .tabs-inner .widget li a:hover { position: relative; z-index: 1; background: $(tabs.selected.background.color) $(tab.selected.background.gradient) repeat scroll bottom; color: $(tabs.selected.text.color); -moz-box-shadow: 0 0 $(region.shadow.spread) rgba(0, 0, 0, .15); -webkit-box-shadow: 0 0 $(region.shadow.spread) rgba(0, 0, 0, .15); -goog-ms-box-shadow: 0 0 $(region.shadow.spread) rgba(0, 0, 0, .15); box-shadow: 0 0 $(region.shadow.spread) rgba(0, 0, 0, .15); } /* Headings ----------------------------------------------- */ h2 { font: $(widget.title.font); text-transform: $(widget.title.text.transform); color: $(widget.title.text.color); margin: .5em 0; } /* Main ----------------------------------------------- */ .main-outer { background: $(main.background); -moz-border-radius: $(main.border.radius.top) $(main.border.radius.top) 0 0; -webkit-border-top-left-radius: $(main.border.radius.top); -webkit-border-top-right-radius: $(main.border.radius.top); -webkit-border-bottom-left-radius: 0; -webkit-border-bottom-right-radius: 0; -goog-ms-border-radius: $(main.border.radius.top) $(main.border.radius.top) 0 0; border-radius: $(main.border.radius.top) $(main.border.radius.top) 0 0; -moz-box-shadow: 0 $(region.shadow.offset) $(region.shadow.spread) rgba(0, 0, 0, .15); -webkit-box-shadow: 0 $(region.shadow.offset) $(region.shadow.spread) rgba(0, 0, 0, .15); -goog-ms-box-shadow: 0 $(region.shadow.offset) $(region.shadow.spread) rgba(0, 0, 0, .15); box-shadow: 0 $(region.shadow.offset) $(region.shadow.spread) rgba(0, 0, 0, .15); } .main-inner { padding: 15px $(main.padding.sides) 20px; } .main-inner .column-center-inner { padding: 0 0; } .main-inner .column-left-inner { padding-left: 0; } .main-inner .column-right-inner { padding-right: 0; } /* Posts ----------------------------------------------- */ h3.post-title { margin: 0; font: $(post.title.font); } .comments h4 { margin: 1em 0 0; font: $(post.title.font); } .post-outer { background-color: $(post.background.color); border: solid 1px $(post.border.color); -moz-border-radius: $(post.border.radius); -webkit-border-radius: $(post.border.radius); border-radius: $(post.border.radius); -goog-ms-border-radius: $(post.border.radius); padding: 15px 20px; margin: 0 $(post.margin.sides) 20px; } .post-body { line-height: 1.4; font-size: 110%; } .post-header { margin: 0 0 1.5em; color: $(post.footer.text.color); line-height: 1.6; } .post-footer { margin: .5em 0 0; color: $(post.footer.text.color); line-height: 1.6; } blog-pager { font-size: 140% } comments .comment-author { padding-top: 1.5em; border-top: dashed 1px #ccc; border-top: dashed 1px rgba(128, 128, 128, .5); background-position: 0 1.5em; } comments .comment-author:first-child { padding-top: 0; border-top: none; } .avatar-image-container { margin: .2em 0 0; } /* Widgets ----------------------------------------------- */ .widget ul, .widget #ArchiveList ul.flat { padding: 0; list-style: none; } .widget ul li, .widget #ArchiveList ul.flat li { border-top: dashed 1px #ccc; border-top: dashed 1px rgba(128, 128, 128, .5); } .widget ul li:first-child, .widget #ArchiveList ul.flat li:first-child { border-top: none; } .widget .post-body ul { list-style: disc; } .widget .post-body ul li { border: none; } /* Footer ----------------------------------------------- */ .footer-outer { color:$(footer.text.color); background: $(footer.background); -moz-border-radius: $(footer.border.radius.top) $(footer.border.radius.top) $(footer.border.radius.bottom) $(footer.border.radius.bottom); -webkit-border-top-left-radius: $(footer.border.radius.top); -webkit-border-top-right-radius: $(footer.border.radius.top); -webkit-border-bottom-left-radius: $(footer.border.radius.bottom); -webkit-border-bottom-right-radius: $(footer.border.radius.bottom); -goog-ms-border-radius: $(footer.border.radius.top) $(footer.border.radius.top) $(footer.border.radius.bottom) $(footer.border.radius.bottom); border-radius: $(footer.border.radius.top) $(footer.border.radius.top) $(footer.border.radius.bottom) $(footer.border.radius.bottom); -moz-box-shadow: 0 $(region.shadow.offset) $(region.shadow.spread) rgba(0, 0, 0, .15); -webkit-box-shadow: 0 $(region.shadow.offset) $(region.shadow.spread) rgba(0, 0, 0, .15); -goog-ms-box-shadow: 0 $(region.shadow.offset) $(region.shadow.spread) rgba(0, 0, 0, .15); box-shadow: 0 $(region.shadow.offset) $(region.shadow.spread) rgba(0, 0, 0, .15); } .footer-inner { padding: 10px $(main.padding.sides) 20px; } .footer-outer a { color: $(footer.link.color); } .footer-outer a:visited { color: $(footer.link.visited.color); } .footer-outer a:hover { color: $(footer.link.hover.color); } .footer-outer .widget h2 { color: $(footer.widget.title.text.color); } ]] <b:template-skin> <b:variable default='930px' name='content.width' type='length' value='930px'/> <b:variable default='0' name='main.column.left.width' type='length' value='180px'/> <b:variable default='360px' name='main.column.right.width' type='length' value='180px'/> <![CDATA[ body { min-width: $(content.width); } .content-outer, .region-inner { min-width: $(content.width); max-width: $(content.width); _width: $(content.width); } .main-inner .columns { padding-left: $(main.column.left.width); padding-right: $(main.column.right.width); } .main-inner .fauxcolumn-center-outer { left: $(main.column.left.width); right: $(main.column.right.width); /* IE6 does not respect left and right together */ _width: expression(this.parentNode.offsetWidth - parseInt("$(main.column.left.width)") - parseInt("$(main.column.right.width)") + 'px'); } .main-inner .fauxcolumn-left-outer { width: $(main.column.left.width); } .main-inner .fauxcolumn-right-outer { width: $(main.column.right.width); } .main-inner .column-left-outer { width: $(main.column.left.width); right: $(main.column.left.width); margin-right: -$(main.column.left.width); } .main-inner .column-right-outer { width: $(main.column.right.width); margin-right: -$(main.column.right.width); } #layout { min-width: 0; } #layout .content-outer { min-width: 0; width: 800px; } #layout .region-inner { min-width: 0; width: auto; } ]]> </b:template-skin> <div class='main-cap-bottom cap-bottom'> <div class='cap-left'/> <div class='cap-right'/> </div> </div> <footer> <div class='footer-outer'> <div class='footer-cap-top cap-top'> <div class='cap-left'/> <div class='cap-right'/> </div> <div class='fauxborder-left footer-fauxborder-left'> <div class='fauxborder-right footer-fauxborder-right'/> <div class='region-inner footer-inner'> <macro:include id='footer-sections' name='sections'> <macro:param default='2' name='num' value='3'/> <macro:param default='footer' name='idPrefix'/> <macro:param default='foot' name='class'/> <macro:param default='false' name='includeBottom'/> </macro:include>  <b:section class='foot' id='footer-3' showaddelement='no'> document.body.className = document.body.className.replace('loading', ''); <macro:if cond='data:col.num >= 2'> <table border='0' cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' mexpr:class='"section-columns columns-" + data:col.num'> <tbody> <tr> <td class='first columns-cell'> <b:section mexpr:class='data:col.class' mexpr:id='data:col.idPrefix + "-2-1"'/> </td> <td class='columns-cell'> <b:section mexpr:class='data:col.class' mexpr:id='data:col.idPrefix + "-2-2"'/> </td> <macro:if cond='data:col.num >= 3'> <td class='columns-cell'> <b:section mexpr:class='data:col.class' mexpr:id='data:col.idPrefix + "-2-3"'/> </td> </macro:if> <macro:if cond='data:col.num >= 4'> <td class='columns-cell'> <b:section mexpr:class='data:col.class' mexpr:id='data:col.idPrefix + "-2-4"'/> </td> </macro:if> </tr> </tbody> </table> <macro:if cond='data:col.includeBottom'> <b:section mexpr:class='data:col.class' mexpr:id='data:col.idPrefix + "-3"' showaddelement='no'/> </macro:if> </macro

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Can this PHP version of SPICE be improved?

- by Noctis Skytower

I do not know much about PHP's standard library of functions and was wondering if the following code can be improved in any way. The implementation should yield the same results, the API should remain as it is, but ways to make is more PHP-ish would be greatly appreciated. This is a custom encryption library. Code <?php /*************************************** Create random major and minor SPICE key. ***************************************/ function crypt_major() { $all = range("\x00", "\xFF"); shuffle($all); $major_key = implode("", $all); return $major_key; } function crypt_minor() { $sample = array(); do { array_push($sample, 0, 1, 2, 3); } while (count($sample) != 256); shuffle($sample); $list = array(); for ($index = 0; $index < 64; $index++) { $b12 = $sample[$index * 4] << 6; $b34 = $sample[$index * 4 + 1] << 4; $b56 = $sample[$index * 4 + 2] << 2; $b78 = $sample[$index * 4 + 3]; array_push($list, $b12 + $b34 + $b56 + $b78); } $minor_key = implode("", array_map("chr", $list)); return $minor_key; } /*************************************** Create the SPICE key via the given name. ***************************************/ function named_major($name) { srand(crc32($name)); return crypt_major(); } function named_minor($name) { srand(crc32($name)); return crypt_minor(); } /*************************************** Check validity for major and minor keys. ***************************************/ function _check_major($key) { if (is_string($key) && strlen($key) == 256) { foreach (range("\x00", "\xFF") as $char) { if (substr_count($key, $char) == 0) { return FALSE; } } return TRUE; } return FALSE; } function _check_minor($key) { if (is_string($key) && strlen($key) == 64) { $indexs = array(); foreach (array_map("ord", str_split($key)) as $byte) { foreach (range(6, 0, 2) as $shift) { array_push($indexs, ($byte >> $shift) & 3); } } $dict = array_count_values($indexs); foreach (range(0, 3) as $index) { if ($dict[$index] != 64) { return FALSE; } } return TRUE; } return FALSE; } /*************************************** Create encode maps for encode functions. ***************************************/ function _encode_map_1($major) { return array_map("ord", str_split($major)); } function _encode_map_2($minor) { $map_2 = array(array(), array(), array(), array()); $list = array(); foreach (array_map("ord", str_split($minor)) as $byte) { foreach (range(6, 0, 2) as $shift) { array_push($list, ($byte >> $shift) & 3); } } for ($byte = 0; $byte < 256; $byte++) { array_push($map_2[$list[$byte]], chr($byte)); } return $map_2; } /*************************************** Create decode maps for decode functions. ***************************************/ function _decode_map_1($minor) { $map_1 = array(); foreach (array_map("ord", str_split($minor)) as $byte) { foreach (range(6, 0, 2) as $shift) { array_push($map_1, ($byte >> $shift) & 3); } } return $map_1; }function _decode_map_2($major) { $map_2 = array(); $temp = array_map("ord", str_split($major)); for ($byte = 0; $byte < 256; $byte++) { $map_2[$temp[$byte]] = chr($byte); } return $map_2; } /*************************************** Encrypt or decrypt the string with maps. ***************************************/ function _encode($string, $map_1, $map_2) { $cache = ""; foreach (str_split($string) as $char) { $byte = $map_1[ord($char)]; foreach (range(6, 0, 2) as $shift) { $cache .= $map_2[($byte >> $shift) & 3][mt_rand(0, 63)]; } } return $cache; } function _decode($string, $map_1, $map_2) { $cache = ""; $temp = str_split($string); for ($iter = 0; $iter < strlen($string) / 4; $iter++) { $b12 = $map_1[ord($temp[$iter * 4])] << 6; $b34 = $map_1[ord($temp[$iter * 4 + 1])] << 4; $b56 = $map_1[ord($temp[$iter * 4 + 2])] << 2; $b78 = $map_1[ord($temp[$iter * 4 + 3])]; $cache .= $map_2[$b12 + $b34 + $b56 + $b78]; } return $cache; } /*************************************** This is the public interface for coding. ***************************************/ function encode_string($string, $major, $minor) { if (is_string($string)) { if (_check_major($major) && _check_minor($minor)) { $map_1 = _encode_map_1($major); $map_2 = _encode_map_2($minor); return _encode($string, $map_1, $map_2); } } return FALSE; } function decode_string($string, $major, $minor) { if (is_string($string) && strlen($string) % 4 == 0) { if (_check_major($major) && _check_minor($minor)) { $map_1 = _decode_map_1($minor); $map_2 = _decode_map_2($major); return _decode($string, $map_1, $map_2); } } return FALSE; } ?> This is a sample showing how the code is being used. Hex editors may be of help with the input / output. Example <?php # get and process all of the form data @ $input = htmlspecialchars($_POST["input"]); @ $majorname = htmlspecialchars($_POST["majorname"]); @ $minorname = htmlspecialchars($_POST["minorname"]); @ $majorkey = htmlspecialchars($_POST["majorkey"]); @ $minorkey = htmlspecialchars($_POST["minorkey"]); @ $output = htmlspecialchars($_POST["output"]); # process the submissions by operation # CREATE @ $operation = $_POST["operation"]; if ($operation == "Create") { if (strlen($_POST["majorname"]) == 0) { $majorkey = bin2hex(crypt_major()); } if (strlen($_POST["minorname"]) == 0) { $minorkey = bin2hex(crypt_minor()); } if (strlen($_POST["majorname"]) != 0) { $majorkey = bin2hex(named_major($_POST["majorname"])); } if (strlen($_POST["minorname"]) != 0) { $minorkey = bin2hex(named_minor($_POST["minorname"])); } } # ENCRYPT or DECRYPT function is_hex($char) { if ($char == "0"): return TRUE; elseif ($char == "1"): return TRUE; elseif ($char == "2"): return TRUE; elseif ($char == "3"): return TRUE; elseif ($char == "4"): return TRUE; elseif ($char == "5"): return TRUE; elseif ($char == "6"): return TRUE; elseif ($char == "7"): return TRUE; elseif ($char == "8"): return TRUE; elseif ($char == "9"): return TRUE; elseif ($char == "a"): return TRUE; elseif ($char == "b"): return TRUE; elseif ($char == "c"): return TRUE; elseif ($char == "d"): return TRUE; elseif ($char == "e"): return TRUE; elseif ($char == "f"): return TRUE; else: return FALSE; endif; } function hex2bin($str) { if (strlen($str) % 2 == 0): $string = strtolower($str); else: $string = strtolower("0" . $str); endif; $cache = ""; $temp = str_split($str); for ($index = 0; $index < count($temp) / 2; $index++) { $h1 = $temp[$index * 2]; if (is_hex($h1)) { $h2 = $temp[$index * 2 + 1]; if (is_hex($h2)) { $cache .= chr(hexdec($h1 . $h2)); } else { return FALSE; } } else { return FALSE; } } return $cache; } if ($operation == "Encrypt" || $operation == "Decrypt") { # CHECK FOR ANY ERROR $errors = array(); if (strlen($_POST["input"]) == 0) { $output = ""; } $binmajor = hex2bin($_POST["majorkey"]); if (strlen($_POST["majorkey"]) == 0) { array_push($errors, "There must be a major key."); } elseif ($binmajor == FALSE) { array_push($errors, "The major key must be in hex."); } elseif (_check_major($binmajor) == FALSE) { array_push($errors, "The major key is corrupt."); } $binminor = hex2bin($_POST["minorkey"]); if (strlen($_POST["minorkey"]) == 0) { array_push($errors, "There must be a minor key."); } elseif ($binminor == FALSE) { array_push($errors, "The minor key must be in hex."); } elseif (_check_minor($binminor) == FALSE) { array_push($errors, "The minor key is corrupt."); } if ($_POST["operation"] == "Decrypt") { $bininput = hex2bin(str_replace("\r", "", str_replace("\n", "", $_POST["input"]))); if ($bininput == FALSE) { if (strlen($_POST["input"]) != 0) { array_push($errors, "The input data must be in hex."); } } elseif (strlen($bininput) % 4 != 0) { array_push($errors, "The input data is corrupt."); } } if (count($errors) != 0) { # ERRORS ARE FOUND $output = "ERROR:"; foreach ($errors as $error) { $output .= "\n" . $error; } } elseif (strlen($_POST["input"]) != 0) { # CONTINUE WORKING if ($_POST["operation"] == "Encrypt") { # ENCRYPT $output = substr(chunk_split(bin2hex(encode_string($_POST["input"], $binmajor, $binminor)), 58), 0, -2); } else { # DECRYPT $output = htmlspecialchars(decode_string($bininput, $binmajor, $binminor)); } } } # echo the form with the values filled echo "<P><TEXTAREA class=maintextarea name=input rows=25 cols=25>" . $input . "</TEXTAREA></P>\n"; echo "<P>Major Name:</P>\n"; echo "<P><INPUT id=textbox1 name=majorname value=\"" . $majorname . "\"></P>\n"; echo "<P>Minor Name:</P>\n"; echo "<P><INPUT id=textbox1 name=minorname value=\"" . $minorname . "\"></P>\n"; echo "<DIV style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><INPUT class=submit type=submit value=Create name=operation>\n"; echo "</DIV>\n"; echo "<P>Major Key:</P>\n"; echo "<P><INPUT id=textbox1 name=majorkey value=\"" . $majorkey . "\"></P>\n"; echo "<P>Minor Key:</P>\n"; echo "<P><INPUT id=textbox1 name=minorkey value=\"" . $minorkey . "\"></P>\n"; echo "<DIV style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><INPUT class=submit type=submit value=Encrypt name=operation> \n"; echo "<INPUT class=submit type=submit value=Decrypt name=operation> </DIV>\n"; echo "<P>Result:</P>\n"; echo "<P><TEXTAREA class=maintextarea name=output rows=25 readOnly cols=25>" . $output . "</TEXTAREA></P></DIV></FORM>\n"; ?>

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How can this PHP code be improved? What should be changed?

- by Noctis Skytower

This is a custom encryption library. I do not know much about PHP's standard library of functions and was wondering if the following code can be improved in any way. The implementation should yield the same results, the API should remain as it is, but ways to make is more PHP-ish would be greatly appreciated. Code <?php /*************************************** Create random major and minor SPICE key. ***************************************/ function crypt_major() { $all = range("\x00", "\xFF"); shuffle($all); $major_key = implode("", $all); return $major_key; } function crypt_minor() { $sample = array(); do { array_push($sample, 0, 1, 2, 3); } while (count($sample) != 256); shuffle($sample); $list = array(); for ($index = 0; $index < 64; $index++) { $b12 = $sample[$index * 4] << 6; $b34 = $sample[$index * 4 + 1] << 4; $b56 = $sample[$index * 4 + 2] << 2; $b78 = $sample[$index * 4 + 3]; array_push($list, $b12 + $b34 + $b56 + $b78); } $minor_key = implode("", array_map("chr", $list)); return $minor_key; } /*************************************** Create the SPICE key via the given name. ***************************************/ function named_major($name) { srand(crc32($name)); return crypt_major(); } function named_minor($name) { srand(crc32($name)); return crypt_minor(); } /*************************************** Check validity for major and minor keys. ***************************************/ function _check_major($key) { if (is_string($key) && strlen($key) == 256) { foreach (range("\x00", "\xFF") as $char) { if (substr_count($key, $char) == 0) { return FALSE; } } return TRUE; } return FALSE; } function _check_minor($key) { if (is_string($key) && strlen($key) == 64) { $indexs = array(); foreach (array_map("ord", str_split($key)) as $byte) { foreach (range(6, 0, 2) as $shift) { array_push($indexs, ($byte >> $shift) & 3); } } $dict = array_count_values($indexs); foreach (range(0, 3) as $index) { if ($dict[$index] != 64) { return FALSE; } } return TRUE; } return FALSE; } /*************************************** Create encode maps for encode functions. ***************************************/ function _encode_map_1($major) { return array_map("ord", str_split($major)); } function _encode_map_2($minor) { $map_2 = array(array(), array(), array(), array()); $list = array(); foreach (array_map("ord", str_split($minor)) as $byte) { foreach (range(6, 0, 2) as $shift) { array_push($list, ($byte >> $shift) & 3); } } for ($byte = 0; $byte < 256; $byte++) { array_push($map_2[$list[$byte]], chr($byte)); } return $map_2; } /*************************************** Create decode maps for decode functions. ***************************************/ function _decode_map_1($minor) { $map_1 = array(); foreach (array_map("ord", str_split($minor)) as $byte) { foreach (range(6, 0, 2) as $shift) { array_push($map_1, ($byte >> $shift) & 3); } } return $map_1; }function _decode_map_2($major) { $map_2 = array(); $temp = array_map("ord", str_split($major)); for ($byte = 0; $byte < 256; $byte++) { $map_2[$temp[$byte]] = chr($byte); } return $map_2; } /*************************************** Encrypt or decrypt the string with maps. ***************************************/ function _encode($string, $map_1, $map_2) { $cache = ""; foreach (str_split($string) as $char) { $byte = $map_1[ord($char)]; foreach (range(6, 0, 2) as $shift) { $cache .= $map_2[($byte >> $shift) & 3][mt_rand(0, 63)]; } } return $cache; } function _decode($string, $map_1, $map_2) { $cache = ""; $temp = str_split($string); for ($iter = 0; $iter < strlen($string) / 4; $iter++) { $b12 = $map_1[ord($temp[$iter * 4])] << 6; $b34 = $map_1[ord($temp[$iter * 4 + 1])] << 4; $b56 = $map_1[ord($temp[$iter * 4 + 2])] << 2; $b78 = $map_1[ord($temp[$iter * 4 + 3])]; $cache .= $map_2[$b12 + $b34 + $b56 + $b78]; } return $cache; } /*************************************** This is the public interface for coding. ***************************************/ function encode_string($string, $major, $minor) { if (is_string($string)) { if (_check_major($major) && _check_minor($minor)) { $map_1 = _encode_map_1($major); $map_2 = _encode_map_2($minor); return _encode($string, $map_1, $map_2); } } return FALSE; } function decode_string($string, $major, $minor) { if (is_string($string) && strlen($string) % 4 == 0) { if (_check_major($major) && _check_minor($minor)) { $map_1 = _decode_map_1($minor); $map_2 = _decode_map_2($major); return _decode($string, $map_1, $map_2); } } return FALSE; } ?> This is a sample showing how the code is being used. Hex editors may be of help with the input / output. Example <?php # get and process all of the form data @ $input = htmlspecialchars($_POST["input"]); @ $majorname = htmlspecialchars($_POST["majorname"]); @ $minorname = htmlspecialchars($_POST["minorname"]); @ $majorkey = htmlspecialchars($_POST["majorkey"]); @ $minorkey = htmlspecialchars($_POST["minorkey"]); @ $output = htmlspecialchars($_POST["output"]); # process the submissions by operation # CREATE @ $operation = $_POST["operation"]; if ($operation == "Create") { if (strlen($_POST["majorname"]) == 0) { $majorkey = bin2hex(crypt_major()); } if (strlen($_POST["minorname"]) == 0) { $minorkey = bin2hex(crypt_minor()); } if (strlen($_POST["majorname"]) != 0) { $majorkey = bin2hex(named_major($_POST["majorname"])); } if (strlen($_POST["minorname"]) != 0) { $minorkey = bin2hex(named_minor($_POST["minorname"])); } } # ENCRYPT or DECRYPT function is_hex($char) { if ($char == "0"): return TRUE; elseif ($char == "1"): return TRUE; elseif ($char == "2"): return TRUE; elseif ($char == "3"): return TRUE; elseif ($char == "4"): return TRUE; elseif ($char == "5"): return TRUE; elseif ($char == "6"): return TRUE; elseif ($char == "7"): return TRUE; elseif ($char == "8"): return TRUE; elseif ($char == "9"): return TRUE; elseif ($char == "a"): return TRUE; elseif ($char == "b"): return TRUE; elseif ($char == "c"): return TRUE; elseif ($char == "d"): return TRUE; elseif ($char == "e"): return TRUE; elseif ($char == "f"): return TRUE; else: return FALSE; endif; } function hex2bin($str) { if (strlen($str) % 2 == 0): $string = strtolower($str); else: $string = strtolower("0" . $str); endif; $cache = ""; $temp = str_split($str); for ($index = 0; $index < count($temp) / 2; $index++) { $h1 = $temp[$index * 2]; if (is_hex($h1)) { $h2 = $temp[$index * 2 + 1]; if (is_hex($h2)) { $cache .= chr(hexdec($h1 . $h2)); } else { return FALSE; } } else { return FALSE; } } return $cache; } if ($operation == "Encrypt" || $operation == "Decrypt") { # CHECK FOR ANY ERROR $errors = array(); if (strlen($_POST["input"]) == 0) { $output = ""; } $binmajor = hex2bin($_POST["majorkey"]); if (strlen($_POST["majorkey"]) == 0) { array_push($errors, "There must be a major key."); } elseif ($binmajor == FALSE) { array_push($errors, "The major key must be in hex."); } elseif (_check_major($binmajor) == FALSE) { array_push($errors, "The major key is corrupt."); } $binminor = hex2bin($_POST["minorkey"]); if (strlen($_POST["minorkey"]) == 0) { array_push($errors, "There must be a minor key."); } elseif ($binminor == FALSE) { array_push($errors, "The minor key must be in hex."); } elseif (_check_minor($binminor) == FALSE) { array_push($errors, "The minor key is corrupt."); } if ($_POST["operation"] == "Decrypt") { $bininput = hex2bin(str_replace("\r", "", str_replace("\n", "", $_POST["input"]))); if ($bininput == FALSE) { if (strlen($_POST["input"]) != 0) { array_push($errors, "The input data must be in hex."); } } elseif (strlen($bininput) % 4 != 0) { array_push($errors, "The input data is corrupt."); } } if (count($errors) != 0) { # ERRORS ARE FOUND $output = "ERROR:"; foreach ($errors as $error) { $output .= "\n" . $error; } } elseif (strlen($_POST["input"]) != 0) { # CONTINUE WORKING if ($_POST["operation"] == "Encrypt") { # ENCRYPT $output = substr(chunk_split(bin2hex(encode_string($_POST["input"], $binmajor, $binminor)), 58), 0, -2); } else { # DECRYPT $output = htmlspecialchars(decode_string($bininput, $binmajor, $binminor)); } } } # echo the form with the values filled echo "<P><TEXTAREA class=maintextarea name=input rows=25 cols=25>" . $input . "</TEXTAREA></P>\n"; echo "<P>Major Name:</P>\n"; echo "<P><INPUT id=textbox1 name=majorname value=\"" . $majorname . "\"></P>\n"; echo "<P>Minor Name:</P>\n"; echo "<P><INPUT id=textbox1 name=minorname value=\"" . $minorname . "\"></P>\n"; echo "<DIV style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><INPUT class=submit type=submit value=Create name=operation>\n"; echo "</DIV>\n"; echo "<P>Major Key:</P>\n"; echo "<P><INPUT id=textbox1 name=majorkey value=\"" . $majorkey . "\"></P>\n"; echo "<P>Minor Key:</P>\n"; echo "<P><INPUT id=textbox1 name=minorkey value=\"" . $minorkey . "\"></P>\n"; echo "<DIV style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><INPUT class=submit type=submit value=Encrypt name=operation> \n"; echo "<INPUT class=submit type=submit value=Decrypt name=operation> </DIV>\n"; echo "<P>Result:</P>\n"; echo "<P><TEXTAREA class=maintextarea name=output rows=25 readOnly cols=25>" . $output . "</TEXTAREA></P></DIV></FORM>\n"; ?> What should be editted for better memory efficiency or faster execution?

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