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• Is the Subversion 'stack' a realistic alternative to Team Foundation Server?

  - by Robert S.

  I'm evaluating Microsoft Team Foundation Server for my customer, who currently uses Visual SourceSafe and nothing else. They have explicitly expressed a desire to implement a more rigid and process-driven environment as their application is in production and they have future releases to consider. The particular areas I'm trying to cover are: Configuration management (e.g., source control) Change management (workflow and doco for change requests, tasks) Release management (builds and deployments) Incident and problem management (issues and bugs) Document management (similar to source control, but available via web) Code analysis constraints on check-ins A testing framework Reporting Visual Studio 2008 integration TFS does all of these things quite well, but it's expensive and complex to maintain, and the inexpensive Workgroup edition doesn't scale. We don't get TFS as part of our MSDN subscription. Those problems can be overcome, but before I tell my customer to go the TFS route, which in itself isn't a terrible thing, I wanted to evaluate the alternatives. I know Subversion is often suggested for its configuration management/source control, but what about the other areas? Would a combination of Subversion/NUnit/Wiki/CruiseControl/NAnt/something else satisfy all of these requirements? What tools do I need to include in my evaluation? Or should I just bite the bullet and go with TFS since we're already invested in the Microsoft stack?

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• Ways to access a 32bit DLL from a 64bit exe

  - by bufferz

  I have a project that must be compiled and run in 64 bit mode. Unfortunately, I am required to call upon a DLL that is only available in 32 bit mode, so there's no way I can house everything in a 1 Visual Studio project. I am working to find the best way to wrap the 32 bit DLL in its own exe/service and issue remote (although on the same machine) calls to that exe/service from my 64 bit app. My OS is Win7 Pro 64 bit. The required calls to this 32 bit process are several dozen per second, but low data volume. This is a realtime image analysis application so response time is critical despite low volume. Lots of sending/receiving single primitives. Ideally, I would host a WCF service to house this DLL, but in a 64 bit OS one cannot force the service to run as x86! Source. That is really unfortunate since I timed function calls to the WCF service to be only 4ms on my machine. I have experimented with named pipes is .net. I found them to be 40-50 times slower than WCF (unusable for me). Any other options or suggestions for the best way to approach my puzzle?

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• short-cutting equality checking in F#?

  - by John Clements

  In F#, the equality operator (=) is generally extensional, rather than intensional. That's great! Unfortunately, it appears to me that F# does not use pointer equality to short-cut these extensional comparisons. For instance, this code: type Z = MT | NMT of Z ref // create a Z: let a = ref MT // make it point to itself: a := NMT a // check to see whether it's equal to itself: printf "a = a: %A\n" (a = a) ... gives me a big fat segmentation fault[*], despite the fact that 'a' and 'a' both evaluate to the same reference. That's not so great. Other functional languages (e.g. PLT Scheme) get this right, using pointer comparisons conservatively, to return 'true' when it can be determined using a pointer comparison. So: I'll accept the fact that F#'s equality operator doesn't use short-cutting; is there some way to perform an intensional (pointer-based) equality check? The (==) operator is not defined on my types, and I'd love it if someone could tell me that it's available somehow. Or tell me that I'm wrong in my analysis of the situation: I'd love that, too... [*] That would probably be a stack overflow on Windows; there are things about Mono that I'm not that fond of...

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• JSF getter methods called BEFORE beforePhase fires

  - by Bill Leeper

  I got a recommendation to put all data lookups in the beforePhase for a given page, however, now that I am doing some deeper analysis it appears that some getter methods are being called before the beforePhase is fired. It became very obvious when I added support for a url parameter and I was getting NPEs on objects that are initialized in the beforePhase call. Any thoughts? Something I have set wrong. I have this in my JSP page: <f:view beforePhase="#{someController.beforePhaseSummary}"> That is only the 5th line in the JSP file and is right after the taglibs. Here is the code that is in the beforePhaseSummary method: public void beforePhaseSummary(PhaseEvent event) { logger.debug("Fired Before Phase Summary: " + event.getPhaseId()); if (event.getPhaseId() == PhaseId.RENDER_RESPONSE) { HttpServletRequest request = (HttpServletRequest)FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getExternalContext().getRequest(); if (request.getParameter("application_id") != null) { loadApplication(Long.parseLong(request.getParameter("application_id"))); } /* Do data fetches here */ } } The logging output above indicates that an event is fired. The servlet request is used to capture the url parameters. The data fetches gather data. However, the logging output is below: 2010-04-23 13:44:46,968 [http-8080-4] DEBUG ...SomeController 61 - Get Permit 2010-04-23 13:44:46,968 [http-8080-4] DEBUG ...SomeController 107 - Getting UnsubmittedCount 2010-04-23 13:44:46,984 [http-8080-4] DEBUG ...SomeController 61 - Get Permit 2010-04-23 13:44:47,031 [http-8080-4] DEBUG ...SomeController 133 - Fired Before Phase Summary: RENDER_RESPONSE(6) The logs indicate 2 calls to the getPermit method and one to getUnsubmittedCount before the beforePhase is fired.

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• Faster or more memory-efficient solution in Python for this Codejam problem.

  - by jeroen.vangoey

  I tried my hand at this Google Codejam Africa problem (the contest is already finished, I just did it to improve my programming skills). The Problem: You are hosting a party with G guests and notice that there is an odd number of guests! When planning the party you deliberately invited only couples and gave each couple a unique number C on their invitation. You would like to single out whoever came alone by asking all of the guests for their invitation numbers. The Input: The first line of input gives the number of cases, N. N test cases follow. For each test case there will be: One line containing the value G the number of guests. One line containing a space-separated list of G integers. Each integer C indicates the invitation code of a guest. Output For each test case, output one line containing "Case #x: " followed by the number C of the guest who is alone. The Limits: 1 = N = 50 0 < C = 2147483647 Small dataset 3 = G < 100 Large dataset 3 = G < 1000 Sample Input: 3 3 1 2147483647 2147483647 5 3 4 7 4 3 5 2 10 2 10 5 Sample Output: Case #1: 1 Case #2: 7 Case #3: 5 This is the solution that I came up with: with open('A-large-practice.in') as f: lines = f.readlines() with open('A-large-practice.out', 'w') as output: N = int(lines[0]) for testcase, i in enumerate(range(1,2*N,2)): G = int(lines[i]) for guest in range(G): codes = map(int, lines[i+1].split(' ')) alone = (c for c in codes if codes.count(c)==1) output.write("Case #%d: %d\n" % (testcase+1, alone.next())) It runs in 12 seconds on my machine with the large input. Now, my question is, can this solution be improved in Python to run in a shorter time or use less memory? The analysis of the problem gives some pointers on how to do this in Java and C++ but I can't translate those solutions back to Python.

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• Should core application configuration be stored in the database, and if so what should be done to se

  - by Rl

  I'm writing an application around a lot of hierarchical data. Currently the hierarchy is fixed, but it's likely that new items will be added to the hierarchy in the future. (please let them be leaves) My current application and database design is fairly generic and nothing dealing with specific nodes in the hierarchy is hardcoded, with the exception of validation and lookup functions written to retrieve external data from each node's particular database. This pleases me from a design point of view, but I'm nervous at the realization that the entire application rests on a handful of records in the database. I'm also frustrated that I have to enforce certain aspects of data integrity with database triggers rather than by foreign key constraints (an example is where several different nodes in the hierarchy have their own proprietary IDs and I store them in a single column which, when coupled with the node ID can be used to locate the foreign data). I'm starting to wonder whether it may have been appropriate to simply hardcoded these known nodes into the system so that it would be more "type safe" and less generic. How does one know when something should be hardcoded, and when it should be a configuration item? Is it just a cost-benefit analysis of clarity/safety now vs less work later, or am I missing some metric I should be using to determine whether or not this is appropriate. The steps I'm taking to protect these valuable configurations are to add triggers that prevent updates/deletes. The database user that this application uses will only have the ability to manipulate data through stored procedures. What else can I do?

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• Retain numerical precision in an R data frame?

  - by David

  When I create a dataframe from numeric vectors, R seems to truncate the value below the precision that I require in my analysis: data.frame(x=0.99999996) returns 1 (see update 1) I am stuck when fitting spline(x,y) and two of the x values are set to 1 due to rounding while y changes. I could hack around this but I would prefer to use a standard solution if available. example Here is an example data set d <- data.frame(x = c(0.668732936336141, 0.95351462456867, 0.994620622127435, 0.999602102672081, 0.999987126195509, 0.999999955814133, 0.999999999999966), y = c(38.3026509783688, 11.5895099585560, 10.0443344234229, 9.86152339768516, 9.84461434575695, 9.81648333804257, 9.83306725758297)) The following solution works, but I would prefer something that is less subjective: plot(d$x, d$y, ylim=c(0,50)) lines(spline(d$x, d$y),col='grey') #bad fit lines(spline(d[-c(4:6),]$x, d[-c(4:6),]$y),col='red') #reasonable fit Update 1 Since posting this question, I realize that this will return 1 even though the data frame still contains the original value, e.g. > dput(data.frame(x=0.99999999996)) returns structure(list(x = 0.99999999996), .Names = "x", row.names = c(NA, -1L), class = "data.frame") Update 2 After using dput to post this example data set, and some pointers from Dirk, I can see that the problem is not in the truncation of the x values but the limits of the numerical errors in the model that I have used to calculate y. This justifies dropping a few of the equivalent data points (as in the example red line).

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• Parsing Windows Event Logs, is it possible?

  - by xceph

  Hello, I am doing a little research into the feasibility of a project I have in mind. It involves doing a little forensic work on images of hard drives, and I have been looking for information on how to analyze saved windows event log files. I do not require the ability to monitor current events, I simply want to be able to view events which have been created, and record the time and application/process which created those events. However I do not have much experience in the inner workings of the windows system specifics, and am wondering if this is possible? The plan is to create images of a hard drive, and then do the analysis on a second machine. Ideally this would be done in either Java or Python, as they are my most proficient languages. The main concerns I have are as follows: Is this information encrypted in anyway? Are there any existing API for parsing this data directly? Is there information available regarding the format in which these logs are stored, and how does it differ from windows versions? This must be possible from analyzing the drive itself, as ideally the installation of windows on the drive would not be running, (as it would be a mounted image on another system) The closest thing I could find in my searches is http://www.j-interop.org/ but that seems to be aimed at remote clients. Ideally nothing would have to be installed on the imaged drive. The other solution which seemed to also pop up is the JNI library, but that also seems to be more so in the area of monitoring a running system. Any help at all is greatly appreciated. :)

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• parsing python to csv

  - by user185955

  I'm trying to download some game stats to do some analysis, only problem is each season the data their isn't 100% consistent. I grab the json file from the site, then wish to save it to a csv with the first line in the csv containing the heading for that column, so the heading would be essentially the key from the python data type. #!/usr/bin/env python import requests import json import csv base_url = 'http://www.afl.com.au/api/cfs/afl/' token_url = base_url + 'WMCTok' player_url = base_url + 'matchItems/round' def printPretty(data): print(json.dumps(data, sort_keys=True, indent=2, separators=(',', ': '))) session = requests.Session() # session makes it simple to use the token across the requests token = session.post(token_url).json()['token'] # get the token session.headers.update({'X-media-mis-token': token}) # set the token Season = 2014 Roundno = 4 if Roundno<10: strRoundno = '0'+str(Roundno) else: strRoundno = str(Roundno) # get some data (could easily be a for loop, might want to put in a delay using Sleep so that you don't get IP blocked) data = session.get(player_url + '/CD_R'+str(Season)+'014'+strRoundno) # print everything printPretty(data.json()) with open('stats_game_test.csv', 'w', newline='') as csvfile: spamwriter = csv.writer(csvfile, delimiter="'",quotechar='|', quoting=csv.QUOTE_ALL) for profile in data.json()['items']: spamwriter.writerow(['%s' %(profile)]) #for key in data.json().keys(): # print("key: %s , value: %s" % (key, data.json()[key])) The above code grabs the json and writes it to a csv, but it puts the key in each individual cell next to the value (eg 'venueId': 'CD_V190'), the key needs to be just across the first row as a heading. It gives me a csv file with data in the cells like this Column A B 'tempInCelsius': 17.0 'totalScore': 32 'tempInCelsius': 16.0 'totalScore': 28 What I want is the data like this tempInCelsius totalScore 17 32 16 28 As I mentioned up the top, the data isn't always consistent so if I define what fields to grab with spamwriter.writerow([profile['tempInCelsius'], profile['totalScore']]) then it will error out on certain data grabs. This is why I'm now trying the above method so it just grabs everything regardless of what data is there.

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• What's the steps for SQL optimization and changes without reflect live system ?

  - by Space Cracker

  we have a big portal that build using SharePoint 2007 , asp.net 3.5 , SQL Server 2005 .. many developers work in it since 01/2008 and we are now doing huge analysis for current SQL Databases [not share-point DB ] to optimize and enhance it. The main db have about 330 table and 1720 stored procedure (SP) created from 01/2008 till now Many table names / Columns is very long and we want to short it we found SP names is written in 25 format :( , some of them are very complex and also we want to rename many SP parameters need to be renamed one of the biggest table is Registered user table, that will be spitted in more than one table for some optimization, many columns name will be changed I searched for the way that i can rename table names ,columns and i found SQL refactor tool but i still trying it .. my questions : Is SQl Refactor is the best tool for renaming ? or is there any other one ? if i want to make it manually, is there any references or best practice for that ? How can i do such changes in fast and stable way .. i search for recommendations and case studies if exist ?

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• Utility to indexing a directory?

  - by achacha

  Here is what I am trying to do: I have a directory (with sub-directories) with source files, I need to index them so I can find files fast (find as I type) so I can open them for compare/analysis. I don't want it to scan the content, just filename index for quick lookup. I do this when trying to determine if a class exists in a given tree (we maintain directory trees for each release which has a lot of files) and sometimes I want to quickly check files to see how something was implemented, etc. Most of these directories are on remote servers (sometimes on the other side of the world) or on a VM (which is on a server far away), so I only want to read the directory trees once, which is why running find every time is way too slow and doing 'find . foo.txt' and then searching that is a bit tedious. It's kind of like how "Find Resource" works in eclipse after it indexes all files, but it's a bit of a chore to import/remove directories into eclipse every time. Eclipse is also very slow when dealing with remote volumes. Any suggestions are appreciated :)

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• Python : How do you find the CPU consumption for a piece of code?

  - by Yugal Jindle

  Background: I have a django application, it works and responds pretty well on low load, but on high load like 100 users/sec, it consumes 100% CPU and then due to lack of CPU slows down. Problem : Profiling the application gives me time taken by functions. This time increases on high load. Time consumed may be due to complex calculation or for waiting for CPU. so, how to find the CPU cycles consumed by a piece of code ? Since, reducing the CPU consumption will increase the response time. I might have written extremely efficient code and need to add more CPU power OR I might have some stupid code taking the CPU and causing the slow down ? Any help is appreciated ! Update: I am using Jmeter to profile my webapp, it gives me a throughput of 2 requests/sec. [ 100 users] I get a average time of 36 seconds on 100 request vs 1.25 sec time on 1 request. More Info Configuration Nginx + Uwsgi with 4 workers No database used, using a responses from a REST API On 1st hit the response of REST API gets cached, therefore doesn't makes a difference. Using ujson for json parsing. Curious to Know: Python-Django is used by so many orgs for so many big sites, then there must be some high end Debug / Memory-CPU analysis tools. All those I found were casual snippets of code that perform profiling.

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• What is a good solution to log the deletion of a row in MySQL?

  - by hobodave

  Background I am currently logging deletion of rows from my tickets table at the application level. When a user deletes a ticket the following SQL is executed: INSERT INTO alert_log (user_id, priority, priorityName, timestamp, message) VALUES (9, 4, 'WARN', NOW(), "TICKET: David A. deleted ticket #6 from Foo"); Please do not offer schema suggestions for the alert_log table. Fields: user_id - User id of the logged in user performing the deletion priority - Always 4 priorityName - Always 'WARN' timestamp - Always NOW() message - Format: "[NAMESPACE]: [FullName] deleted ticket #[TicketId] from [CompanyName]" NAMESPACE - Always TICKET FullName - Full name of user identified by user_id above TicketId - Primary key ID of the ticket being deleted CompanyName - Ticket has a Company via tickets.company_id Situation/Questions Obviously this solution does not work if a ticket is deleted manually from the mysql command line client. However, now I need to. The issues I'm having are as follows: Should I use a PROCEDURE, FUNCTION, or TRIGGER? -- Analysis: TRIGGER - I don't think this will work because I can't pass parameters to it, and it would trigger when my application deleted the row too. PROCEDURE or FUNCTION - Not sure. Should I return the number of deleted rows? If so, that would require a FUNCTION right? How should I account for the absence of a logged in user? -- Possibilities: Using either a PROC or FUNC, require the invoker to pass in a valid user_id Require the user to pass in a string with the name Use the CURRENT_USER - meh Hard code the FullName to just be "Database Administrator" Could the name be an optional parameter? I'm rather green when it comes to sprocs. Assuming I went with the PROC/FUNC approach, is it possible to outright restrict regular DELETE calls to this table, yet still allow users to call this PROC/FUNC to do the deletion for them? Ideally the solution is usable by my application as well, so that my code is DRY.

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• Embedded Development Board

  - by ALF3130

  I'm new to the embedded development world and am looking to get my very first board. After some research, I realize that there aren't many choices with FPUs. This is important in my project as I'm going to be doing quite a bit of floating point computations. I found the Mini2440 which seems to run on the ARM920T core. This particular unit is perfect for my needs (decent price, all the right I/O ports, and a touch screen to boot) but it seems that it doesn't have an FPU. I don't know how big of a penalty I'd be paying for FP emulation, so I'm unsure of whether to pull the trigger on this one. That said: Can someone please confirm whether this product (Mini2440) has an FPU or not? My project will do image capture and analysis. Does anyone have any experience with running things like OpenMP on such platforms? Please suggest any other similar boards in the = $200 price range that have an FPU. This world is new to me. Any other advice or things I should be aware of is much appreciated.

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• Application crash

  - by Ovi

  I have an application that, as any other app, crashes once in a while for various reasons. When it crashes, it does it gracefully and the users get a nice message of the crash. At the same time the crash is reported on the server for analysis so it can be fixed in future versions. However, I would like that the app keeps working through the crash. What that means is that I would like to run the forms in an 'atomic' way. If it goes down, it doesn't take down the entire app. The users should just need to start over the work done with the particular form. Is this something that can be done through architecture? Or maybe the new framework versions has something to aid this? The application is build mostly in C# over the 3.5 framework, but it also uses some external references, some COMs and web service references. I am not interested in an answer: 'well fix the crashes'. Me and my team and the testing team are working round the clock for this.

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• Help with java threads or executors: Executing several MySQL selects, inserts and updates simmultane

  - by Martin

  Hi. I'm writing an application to analyse a MySQL database, and I need to execute several DMLs simmultaneously; for example: // In ResultSet rsA: Select * from A; rsA.beforeFirst(); while (rsA.next()) { id = rsA.getInt("id"); // Retrieve data from table B: Select * from B where B.Id=" + id; // Crunch some numbers using the data from B // Close resultset B } I'm declaring an array of data objects, each with its own Connection to the database, which in turn calls several methods for the data analysis. The problem is all threads use the same connection, thus all tasks throw exceptios: "Lock wait timeout exceeded; try restarting transaction" I believe there is a way to write the code in such a way that any given object has its own connection and executes the required tasks independent from any other object. For example: DataObject dataObject[0] = new DataObject(id[0]); DataObject dataObject[1] = new DataObject(id[1]); DataObject dataObject[2] = new DataObject(id[2]); ... DataObject dataObject[N] = new DataObject(id[N]); // The 'DataObject' class has its own connection to the database, // so each instance of the object should use its own connection. // It also has a "run" method, which contains all the tasks required. Executor ex = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(10); for(i=0;i<=N;i++) { ex.execute(dataObject[i]); } // Here where the problem is: Each instance creates a new connection, // but every DML from any of the objects is cluttered in just one connection // (in MySQL command line, "SHOW PROCESSLIST;" throws every connection, and all but // one are idle). Can you point me in the right direction? Thanks

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• How to optimize this MYSQL table?

  - by Lost_in_code

  This is for an upcoming project. I have two tables - first one keeps tracks of photos, and the second one keeps track of the photo's rank Photos: +-------+-----------+------------------+ | id | photo | current_rank | +-------+-----------+------------------+ | 1 | apple | 5 | | 2 | orange | 9 | +-------+-----------+------------------+ The photo rank keeps changing on a regular basis and this is the table that tracks it: Ranks: +-------+-----------+----------+-------------+ | id | photo_id | ranks | timestamp | +-------+-----------+----------+-------------+ | 1 | 1 | 8 | * | | 2 | 2 | 2 | * | | 3 | 1 | 3 | * | | 4 | 1 | 7 | * | | 5 | 1 | 5 | * | | 6 | 2 | 9 | * | +-------+-----------+----------+-------------+ * = current timestamp Every rank is tracked for reporting/analysis purpose. I talked to someone who has experience in this field and he told me that storing ranks like above is the way to go. But I'm not so sure yet. The problem here is data redundancy. There are going to be tens of thousands of photos. The photo rank changes on a hourly basis (many time within minutes) for recent photos but less frequently for older photos. At this rate the table will have millions of records within months. And since I do not have experience in working with large databases, this makes me a little nervous. I thought of this: Ranks: +-------+-----------+--------------------+ | id | photo_id | ranks | +-------+-----------+--------------------+ | 1 | 1 | 8:*,3:*,7:*,5:* | | 2 | 2 | 2:*,9:* | +-------+-----------+--------------------+ * = current timestamp That means some extra code in PHP to split the rank/time (and sorting) but that looks OK to me. Is this a correct way to optimize the table for performance? What would you recommend? Any suggestions would be great.

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• SQLAuthority News – TechEd India – April 12-14, 2010 Bangalore – An Unforgettable Experience – An Op

  - by pinaldave

  TechEd India was one of the largest Technology events in India led by Microsoft. This event was attended by more than 3,000 technology enthusiasts, making it one of the most well-organized events of the year. Though I attempted to attend almost all the technology events here, I have not seen any bigger or better event in Indian subcontinents other than this. There are 21 Technical Tracks at Tech·Ed India 2010 that span more than 745 learning opportunities. I was fortunate enough to be a part of this whole event as a speaker and a delegate, as well. TechEd India Speaker Badge and A Token of Lifetime Hotel Selection I presented three different sessions at TechEd India and was also a part of panel discussion. (The details of the sessions are given at the end of this blog post.) Due to extensive traveling, I stay away from my family occasionally. For this reason, I took my wife – Nupur and daughter Shaivi (8 months old) to the event along with me. We stayed at the same hotel where the event was organized so as to maximize my time bonding with my family and to have more time in networking with technology community, at the same time. The hotel Lalit Ashok is the largest and most luxurious venue one can find in Bangalore, located in the middle of the city. The cost of the hotel was a bit pricey, but looking at all the advantages, I had decided to ask for a booking there. Hotel Lalit Ashok Nupur Dave and Shaivi Dave Arrival Day – DAY 0 – April 11, 2010 I reached the event a day earlier, and that was one wise decision for I was able to relax a bit and go over my presentation for the next day’s course. I am a kind of person who likes to get everything ready ahead of time. I was also able to enjoy a pleasant evening with several Microsoft employees and my family friends. I even checked out the location where I would be doing presentations the next day. I was fortunate enough to meet Bijoy Singhal from Microsoft who helped me out with a few of the logistics issues that occured the day before. I was not aware of the fact that the very next day he was going to be “The Man” of the TechEd 2010 event. Vinod Kumar from Microsoft was really very kind as he talked to me regarding my subsequent session. He gave me some suggestions which were really helpful that I was able to incorporate them during my presentation. Finally, I was able to meet Abhishek Kant from Microsoft; his valuable suggestions and unlimited passion have inspired many people like me to work with the Community. Pradipta from Microsoft was also around, being extremely busy with logistics; however, in those busy times, he did find some good spare time to have a chat with me and the other Community leaders. I also met Harish Ranganathan and Sachin Rathi, both from Microsoft. It was so interesting to listen to both of them talking about SharePoint. I just have no words to express my overwhelmed spirit because of all these passionate young guys - Pradipta,Vinod, Bijoy, Harish, Sachin and Ahishek (of course!). Map of TechEd India 2010 Event Day 1 – April 12, 2010 From morning until night time, today was truly a very busy day for me. I had two presentations and one panel discussion for the day. Needless to say, I had a few meetings to attend as well. The day started with a keynote from S. Somaseger where he announced the launch of Visual Studio 2010. The keynote area was really eye-catching because of the very large, bigger-than- life uniform screen. This was truly one to show. The title music of the keynote was very interesting and it featured Bijoy Singhal as the model. It was interesting to talk to him afterwards, when we laughed at jokes together about his modeling assignment. TechEd India Keynote Opening Featuring Bijoy TechEd India 2010 Keynote – S. Somasegar Time: 11:15pm – 11:45pm Session 1: True Lies of SQL Server – SQL Myth Buster Following the excellent keynote, I had my very first session on the subject of SQL Server Myth Buster. At first, I was a bit nervous as right after the keynote, for this was my very first session and during my presentation I saw lots of Microsoft Product Team members. Well, it really went well and I had a really good discussion with attendees of the session. I felt that a well begin was half-done and my confidence was regained. Right after the session, I met a few of my Community friends and had meaningful discussions with them on many subjects. The abstract of the session is as follows: In this 30-minute demo session, I am going to briefly demonstrate few SQL Server Myths and their resolutions as I back them up with some demo. This demo presentation is a must-attend for all developers and administrators who would come to the event. This is going to be a very quick yet fun session. Pinal Presenting session at TechEd India 2010 Time: 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM Lunch with Somasegar After the session I went to see my daughter, and then I headed right away to the lunch with S. Somasegar – the keynote speaker and senior vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft. I really thank to Abhishek who made it possible for us. Because of his efforts, all the MVPs had the opportunity to meet such a legendary person and had to talk with them on Microsoft Technology. Though Somasegar is currently holding such a high position in Microsoft, he is very polite and a real gentleman, and how I wish that everybody in industry is like him. Believe me, if you spread love and kindness, then that is what you will receive back. As soon as lunch time was over, I ran to the session hall as my second presentation was about to start. Time: 2:30pm – 3:30pm Session 2: Master Data Services in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Business Intelligence is a subject which was widely talked about at TechEd. Everybody was interested in this subject, and I did not excuse myself from this great concept as well. I consider myself fortunate as I was presenting on the subject of Master Data Services at TechEd. When I had initially learned this subject, I had a bit of confusion about the usage of this tool. Later on, I decided that I would tackle about how we all developers and DBAs are not able to understand something so simple such as this, and even worst, creating confusion about the technology. During system designing, it is very important to have a reference material or master lookup tables. Well, I talked about the same subject and presented the session keeping that as my center talk. The session went very well and I received lots of interesting questions. I got many compliments for talking about this subject on the real-life scenario. I really thank Rushabh Mehta (CEO, Solid Quality Mentors India) for his supportive suggestions that helped me prepare the slide deck, as well as the subject. Pinal Presenting session at TechEd India 2010 The abstract of the session is as follows: SQL Server Master Data Services will ship with SQL Server 2008 R2 and will improve Microsoft’s platform appeal. This session provides an in-depth demonstration of MDS features and highlights important usage scenarios. Master Data Services enables consistent decision-making process by allowing you to create, manage and propagate changes from a single master view of your business entities. Also, MDS – Master Data-hub which is a vital component, helps ensure the consistency of reporting across systems and deliver faster and more accurate results across the enterprise. We will talk about establishing the basis for a centralized approach to defining, deploying, and managing master data in the enterprise. Pinal Presenting session at TechEd India 2010 The day was still not over for me. I had ran into several friends but we were not able keep our enthusiasm under control about all the rumors saying that SQL Server 2008 R2 was about to be launched tomorrow in the keynote. I then ran to my third and final technical event for the day- a panel discussion with the top technologies of India. Time: 5:00pm – 6:00pm Panel Discussion: Harness the power of Web – SEO and Technical Blogging As I have delivered two technical sessions by this time, I was a bit tired but  not less enthusiastic when I had to talk about Blog and Technology. We discussed many different topics there. I told them that the most important aspect for any blog is its content. We discussed in depth the issues with plagiarism and how to avoid it. Another topic of discussion was how we technology bloggers can create awareness in the Community about what the right kind of blogging is and what morally and technically wrong acts are. A couple of questions were raised about what type of liberty a person can have in terms of writing blogs. Well, it was generically agreed that a blog is mainly a representation of our ideas and thoughts; it should not be governed by external entities. As long as one is writing what they really want to say, but not providing incorrect information or not practicing plagiarism, a blogger should be allowed to express himself. This panel discussion was supposed to be over in an hour, but the interest of the participants was remarkable and so it was extended for 30 minutes more. Finally, we decided to bring to a close the discussion and agreed that we will continue the topic next year. TechEd India Panel Discussion on Web, Technology and SEO Surprisingly, the day was just beginning after doing all of these. By this time, I have almost met all the MVP who arrived at the event, as well as many Microsoft employees. There were lots of Community folks present, too. I decided that I would go to meet several friends from the Community and continue to communicate with me on SQLAuthority.com. I also met Abhishek Baxi and had a good talk with him regarding Win Mobile and Twitter. He also took a very quick video of me wherein I spoke in my mother’s tongue, Gujarati. It was funny that I talked in Gujarati almost all the day, but when I was talking in the interview I could not find the right Gujarati words to speak. I think we all think in English when we think about Technology, so as to address universality. After meeting them, I headed towards the Speakers’ Dinner. Time: 8:00 PM – onwards Speakers Dinner The Speakers’ dinner was indeed a wonderful opportunity for all the speakers to get together and relax. We talked so many different things, from XBOX to Hindi Movies, and from SQL to Samosas. I just could not express how much fun I had. After a long evening, when I returned tmy room and met Shaivi, I just felt instantly relaxed. Kids are really gifts from God. Today was a really long but exciting day. So many things happened in just one day: Visual Studio Lanch, lunch with Somasegar, 2 technical sessions, 1 panel discussion, community leaders meeting, speakers dinner and, last but not leas,t playing with my child! A perfect day! Day 2 – April 13, 2010 Today started with a bang with the excellent keynote by Kamal Hathi who launched SQL Server 2008 R2 in India and demonstrated the power of PowerPivot to all of us. 101 Million Rows in Excel brought lots of applause from the audience. Kamal Hathi Presenting Keynote at TechEd India 2010 The day was a bit easier one for me. I had no sessions today and no events planned. I had a few meetings planned for the second day of the event. I sat in the speaker’s lounge for half a day and met many people there. I attended nearly 9 different meetings today. The subjects of the meetings were very different. Here is a list of the topics of the Community-related meetings: SQL PASS and its involvement in India and subcontinents How to start community blogging Forums and developing aptitude towards technology Ahmedabad/Gandhinagar User Groups and their developments SharePoint and SQL Business Meeting – a client meeting Business Meeting – a potential performance tuning project Business Meeting – Solid Quality Mentors (SolidQ) And family friends Pinal Dave at TechEd India The day passed by so quickly during this meeting. In the evening, I headed to Partners Expo with friends and checked out few of the booths. I really wanted to talk about some of the products, but due to the freebies there was so much crowd that I finally decided to just take the contact details of the partner. I will now start sending them with my queries and, hopefully, I will have my questions answered. Nupur and Shaivi had also one meeting to attend; it was with our family friend Vijay Raj. Vijay is also a person who loves Technology and loves it more than anybody. I see him growing and learning every day, but still remaining as a ‘human’. I believe that if someone acquires as much knowledge as him, that person will become either a computer or cyborg. Here, Vijay is still a kind gentleman and is able to stay as our close family friend. Shaivi was really happy to play with Uncle Vijay. Pinal Dave and Vijay Raj Renuka Prasad, a Microsoft MVP, impressed me with his passion and knowledge of SQL. Every time he gives me credit for his success, I believe that he is very humble. He has way more certifications than me and has worked many more years with SQL compared to me. He is an excellent photographer as well. Most of the photos in this blog post have been taken by him. I told him if ever he wants to do a part time job, he can do the photography very well. Pinal Dave and Renuka Prasad I also met L Srividya from Microsoft, whom I was looking forward to meet. She is a bundle of knowledge that everyone would surely learn a lot from her. I was able to get a few minutes from her and well, I felt confident. She enlightened me with SQL Server BI concepts, domain management and SQL Server security and few other interesting details. I also had a wonderful time talking about SharePoint with fellow Solid Quality Mentor Joy Rathnayake. He is very passionate about SharePoint but when you talk .NET and SQL with him, he is still overwhelmingly knowledgeable. In fact, while talking to him, I figured out that the recent training he delivered was on SQL Server 2008 R2. I told him a joke that it hurts my ego as he is more popular now in SQL training and consulting than me. I am sure all of you agree that working with good people is a gift from God. I am fortunate enough to work with the best of the best Industry experts. It was a great pleasure to hang out with my Community friends – Ahswin Kini, HimaBindu Vejella, Vasudev G, Suprotim Agrawal, Dhananjay, Vikram Pendse, Mahesh Dhola, Mahesh Mitkari,  Manu Zacharia, Shobhan, Hardik Shah, Ashish Mohta, Manan, Subodh Sohani and Sanjay Shetty (of course!) .  (Please let me know if I have met you at the event and forgot your name to list here). Time: 8:00 PM – onwards Community Leaders Dinner After lots of meetings, I headed towards the Community Leaders dinner meeting and met almost all the folks I met in morning. The discussion was almost the same but the real good thing was that we were enjoying it. The food was really good. Nupur was invited in the event, but Shaivi could not come. When Nupur tried to enter the event, she was stopped as Shaivi did not have the pass to enter the dinner. Nupur expressed that Shaivi is only 8 months old and does not eat outside food as well and could not stay by herself at this age, but the door keeper did not agree and asked that without the entry details Shaivi could not go in, but Nupur could. Nupur called me on phone and asked me to help her out. By the time, I was outside; the organizer of the event reached to the door and happily approved Shaivi to join the party. Once in the party, Shaivi had lots of fun meeting so many people. Shaivi Dave and Abhishek Kant Dean Guida (Infragistics President and CEO) and Pinal Dave (SQLAuthority.com) Day 3 – April 14, 2010 Though, it was last day, I was very much excited today as I was about to present my very favorite session. Query Optimization and Performance Tuning is my domain expertise and I make my leaving by consulting and training the same. Today’s session was on the same subject and as an additional twist, another subject about Spatial Database was presented. I was always intrigued with Spatial Database and I have enjoyed learning about it; however, I have never thought about Spatial Indexing before it was decided that I will do this session. I really thank Solid Quality Mentor Dr. Greg Low for his assistance in helping me prepare the slide deck and also review the content. Furthermore, today was really what I call my ‘learning day’ . So far I had not attended any session in TechEd and I felt a bit down for that. Everybody spends their valuable time & money to learn something new and exciting in TechEd and I had not attended a single session at the moment thinking that it was already last day of the event. I did have a plan for the day and I attended two technical sessions before my session of spatial database. I attended 2 sessions of Vinod Kumar. Vinod is a natural storyteller and there was no doubt that his sessions would be jam-packed. People attended his sessions simply because Vinod is syhe speaker. He did not have a single time disappointed audience; he is truly a good speaker. He knows his stuff very well. I personally do not think that in India he can be compared to anyone for SQL. Time: 12:30pm-1:30pm SQL Server Query Optimization, Execution and Debugging Query Performance I really had a fun time attending this session. Vinod made this session very interactive. The entire audience really got into the presentation and started participating in the event. Vinod was presenting a small problem with Query Tuning, which any developer would have encountered and solved with their help in such a fashion that a developer feels he or she have already resolved it. In one question, I was the only one who was ready to answer and Vinod told me in a light tone that I am now allowed to answer it! The audience really found it very amusing. There was a huge crowd around Vinod after the session. Vinod – A master storyteller! Time: 3:45pm-4:45pm Data Recovery / consistency with CheckDB This session was much heavier than the earlier one, and I must say this is my most favorite session I EVER attended in India. In this TechEd I have only attended two sessions, but in my career, I have attended numerous technical sessions not only in India, but all over the world. This session had taken my breath away. One by one, Vinod took the different databases, and started to corrupt them in different ways. Each database has some unique ways to get corrupted. Once that was done, Vinod started to show the DBCC CEHCKDB and demonstrated how it can solve your problem. He finally fixed all the databases with this single tool. I do have a good knowledge of this subject, but let me honestly admit that I have learned a lot from this session. I enjoyed and cheered during this session along with other attendees. I had total satisfaction that, just like everyone, I took advantage of the event and learned something. I am now TECHnically EDucated. Pinal Dave and Vinod Kumar After two very interactive and informative SQL Sessions from Vinod Kumar, the next turn me presenting on Spatial Database and Indexing. I got once again nervous but Vinod told me to stay natural and do my presentation. Well, once I got a huge stage with a total of four projectors and a large crowd, I felt better. Time: 5:00pm-6:00pm Session 3: Developing with SQL Server Spatial and Deep Dive into Spatial Indexing Pinal Presenting session at TechEd India 2010 Pinal Presenting session at TechEd India 2010 I kicked off this session with Michael J Swart‘s beautiful spatial image. This session was the last one for the day but, to my surprise, I had more than 200+ attendees. Slowly, the rain was starting outside and I was worried that the hall would not be full; despite this, there was not a single seat available in the first five minutes of the session. Thanks to all of you for attending my presentation. I had demonstrated the map of world (and India) and quickly explained what  Geographic and Geometry data types in Spatial Database are. This session had interesting story of Indexing and Comparison, as well as how different traditional indexes are from spatial indexing. Pinal Presenting session at TechEd India 2010 Due to the heavy rain during this event, the power went off for about 22 minutes (just an accident – nobodies fault). During these minutes, there were no audio, no video and no light. I continued to address the mass of 200+ people without any audio device and PowerPoint. I must thank the audience because not a single person left from the session. They all stayed in their place, some moved closure to listen to me properly. I noticed that the curiosity and eagerness to learn new things was at the peak even though it was the very last session of the TechEd. Everybody wanted get the maximum knowledge out of this whole event. I was touched by the support from audience. They listened and participated in my session even without any kinds of technology (no ppt, no mike, no AC, nothing). During these 22 minutes, I had completed my theory verbally. Pinal Presenting session at TechEd India 2010 After a while, we got the projector back online and we continued with some exciting demos. Many thanks to Microsoft people who worked energetically in background to get the backup power for project up. I had a very interesting demo wherein I overlaid Bangalore and Hyderabad on the India Map and find their aerial distance between them. After finding the aerial distance, we browsed online and found that SQL Server estimates the exact aerial distance between these two cities, as compared to the factual distance. There was a huge applause from the crowd on the subject that SQL Server takes into the count of the curvature of the earth and finds the precise distances based on details. During the process of finding the distance, I demonstrated a few examples of the indexes where I expressed how one can use those indexes to find these distances and how they can improve the performance of similar query. I also demonstrated few examples wherein we were able to see in which data type the Index is most useful. We finished the demos with a few more internal stuff. Pinal Presenting session at TechEd India 2010 Despite all issues, I was mostly satisfied with my presentation. I think it was the best session I have ever presented at any conference. There was no help from Technology for a while, but I still got lots of appreciation at the end. When we ended the session, the applause from the audience was so loud that for a moment, the rain was not audible. I was truly moved by the dedication of the Technology enthusiasts. Pinal Dave After Presenting session at TechEd India 2010 The abstract of the session is as follows: The Microsoft SQL Server 2008 delivers new spatial data types that enable you to consume, use, and extend location-based data through spatial-enabled applications. Attend this session to learn how to use spatial functionality in next version of SQL Server to build and optimize spatial queries. This session outlines the new geography data type to store geodetic spatial data and perform operations on it, use the new geometry data type to store planar spatial data and perform operations on it, take advantage of new spatial indexes for high performance queries, use the new spatial results tab to quickly and easily view spatial query results directly from within Management Studio, extend spatial data capabilities by building or integrating location-enabled applications through support for spatial standards and specifications and much more. Time: 8:00 PM – onwards Dinner by Sponsors After the lively session during the day, there was another dinner party courtesy of one of the sponsors of TechEd. All the MVPs and several Community leaders were present at the dinner. I would like to express my gratitude to Abhishek Kant for organizing this wonderful event for us. It was a blast and really relaxing in all angles. We all stayed there for a long time and talked about our sweet and unforgettable memories of the event. Pinal Dave and Bijoy Singhal It was really one wonderful event. After writing this much, I say that I have no words to express about how much I enjoyed TechEd. However, it is true that I shared with you only 1% of the total activities I have done at the event. There were so many people I have met, yet were not mentioned here although I wanted to write their names here, too . Anyway, I have learned so many things and up until now, I am not able to get over all the fun I had in this event. Pinal Dave at TechEd India 2010 The Next Days – April 15, 2010 – till today I am still not able to get my mind out of the whole experience I had at TechEd India 2010. It was like a whole Microsoft Family working together to celebrate a happy occasion. TechEd India – Truly An Unforgettable Experience! Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: About Me, MVP, Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, SQLAuthority News, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology Tagged: TechEd, TechEdIn

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• SQLAuthority News – TechEd India – April 12-14, 2010 Bangalore – An Unforgettable Experience – An Op

  - by pinaldave

  TechEd India was one of the largest Technology events in India led by Microsoft. This event was attended by more than 3,000 technology enthusiasts, making it one of the most well-organized events of the year. Though I attempted to attend almost all the technology events here, I have not seen any bigger or better event in Indian subcontinents other than this. There are 21 Technical Tracks at Tech·Ed India 2010 that span more than 745 learning opportunities. I was fortunate enough to be a part of this whole event as a speaker and a delegate, as well. TechEd India Speaker Badge and A Token of Lifetime Hotel Selection I presented three different sessions at TechEd India and was also a part of panel discussion. (The details of the sessions are given at the end of this blog post.) Due to extensive traveling, I stay away from my family occasionally. For this reason, I took my wife – Nupur and daughter Shaivi (8 months old) to the event along with me. We stayed at the same hotel where the event was organized so as to maximize my time bonding with my family and to have more time in networking with technology community, at the same time. The hotel Lalit Ashok is the largest and most luxurious venue one can find in Bangalore, located in the middle of the city. The cost of the hotel was a bit pricey, but looking at all the advantages, I had decided to ask for a booking there. Hotel Lalit Ashok Nupur Dave and Shaivi Dave Arrival Day – DAY 0 – April 11, 2010 I reached the event a day earlier, and that was one wise decision for I was able to relax a bit and go over my presentation for the next day’s course. I am a kind of person who likes to get everything ready ahead of time. I was also able to enjoy a pleasant evening with several Microsoft employees and my family friends. I even checked out the location where I would be doing presentations the next day. I was fortunate enough to meet Bijoy Singhal from Microsoft who helped me out with a few of the logistics issues that occured the day before. I was not aware of the fact that the very next day he was going to be “The Man” of the TechEd 2010 event. Vinod Kumar from Microsoft was really very kind as he talked to me regarding my subsequent session. He gave me some suggestions which were really helpful that I was able to incorporate them during my presentation. Finally, I was able to meet Abhishek Kant from Microsoft; his valuable suggestions and unlimited passion have inspired many people like me to work with the Community. Pradipta from Microsoft was also around, being extremely busy with logistics; however, in those busy times, he did find some good spare time to have a chat with me and the other Community leaders. I also met Harish Ranganathan and Sachin Rathi, both from Microsoft. It was so interesting to listen to both of them talking about SharePoint. I just have no words to express my overwhelmed spirit because of all these passionate young guys - Pradipta,Vinod, Bijoy, Harish, Sachin and Ahishek (of course!). Map of TechEd India 2010 Event Day 1 – April 12, 2010 From morning until night time, today was truly a very busy day for me. I had two presentations and one panel discussion for the day. Needless to say, I had a few meetings to attend as well. The day started with a keynote from S. Somaseger where he announced the launch of Visual Studio 2010. The keynote area was really eye-catching because of the very large, bigger-than- life uniform screen. This was truly one to show. The title music of the keynote was very interesting and it featured Bijoy Singhal as the model. It was interesting to talk to him afterwards, when we laughed at jokes together about his modeling assignment. TechEd India Keynote Opening Featuring Bijoy TechEd India 2010 Keynote – S. Somasegar Time: 11:15pm – 11:45pm Session 1: True Lies of SQL Server – SQL Myth Buster Following the excellent keynote, I had my very first session on the subject of SQL Server Myth Buster. At first, I was a bit nervous as right after the keynote, for this was my very first session and during my presentation I saw lots of Microsoft Product Team members. Well, it really went well and I had a really good discussion with attendees of the session. I felt that a well begin was half-done and my confidence was regained. Right after the session, I met a few of my Community friends and had meaningful discussions with them on many subjects. The abstract of the session is as follows: In this 30-minute demo session, I am going to briefly demonstrate few SQL Server Myths and their resolutions as I back them up with some demo. This demo presentation is a must-attend for all developers and administrators who would come to the event. This is going to be a very quick yet fun session. Pinal Presenting session at TechEd India 2010 Time: 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM Lunch with Somasegar After the session I went to see my daughter, and then I headed right away to the lunch with S. Somasegar – the keynote speaker and senior vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft. I really thank to Abhishek who made it possible for us. Because of his efforts, all the MVPs had the opportunity to meet such a legendary person and had to talk with them on Microsoft Technology. Though Somasegar is currently holding such a high position in Microsoft, he is very polite and a real gentleman, and how I wish that everybody in industry is like him. Believe me, if you spread love and kindness, then that is what you will receive back. As soon as lunch time was over, I ran to the session hall as my second presentation was about to start. Time: 2:30pm – 3:30pm Session 2: Master Data Services in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Business Intelligence is a subject which was widely talked about at TechEd. Everybody was interested in this subject, and I did not excuse myself from this great concept as well. I consider myself fortunate as I was presenting on the subject of Master Data Services at TechEd. When I had initially learned this subject, I had a bit of confusion about the usage of this tool. Later on, I decided that I would tackle about how we all developers and DBAs are not able to understand something so simple such as this, and even worst, creating confusion about the technology. During system designing, it is very important to have a reference material or master lookup tables. Well, I talked about the same subject and presented the session keeping that as my center talk. The session went very well and I received lots of interesting questions. I got many compliments for talking about this subject on the real-life scenario. I really thank Rushabh Mehta (CEO, Solid Quality Mentors India) for his supportive suggestions that helped me prepare the slide deck, as well as the subject. Pinal Presenting session at TechEd India 2010 The abstract of the session is as follows: SQL Server Master Data Services will ship with SQL Server 2008 R2 and will improve Microsoft’s platform appeal. This session provides an in-depth demonstration of MDS features and highlights important usage scenarios. Master Data Services enables consistent decision-making process by allowing you to create, manage and propagate changes from a single master view of your business entities. Also, MDS – Master Data-hub which is a vital component, helps ensure the consistency of reporting across systems and deliver faster and more accurate results across the enterprise. We will talk about establishing the basis for a centralized approach to defining, deploying, and managing master data in the enterprise. Pinal Presenting session at TechEd India 2010 The day was still not over for me. I had ran into several friends but we were not able keep our enthusiasm under control about all the rumors saying that SQL Server 2008 R2 was about to be launched tomorrow in the keynote. I then ran to my third and final technical event for the day- a panel discussion with the top technologies of India. Time: 5:00pm – 6:00pm Panel Discussion: Harness the power of Web – SEO and Technical Blogging As I have delivered two technical sessions by this time, I was a bit tired but  not less enthusiastic when I had to talk about Blog and Technology. We discussed many different topics there. I told them that the most important aspect for any blog is its content. We discussed in depth the issues with plagiarism and how to avoid it. Another topic of discussion was how we technology bloggers can create awareness in the Community about what the right kind of blogging is and what morally and technically wrong acts are. A couple of questions were raised about what type of liberty a person can have in terms of writing blogs. Well, it was generically agreed that a blog is mainly a representation of our ideas and thoughts; it should not be governed by external entities. As long as one is writing what they really want to say, but not providing incorrect information or not practicing plagiarism, a blogger should be allowed to express himself. This panel discussion was supposed to be over in an hour, but the interest of the participants was remarkable and so it was extended for 30 minutes more. Finally, we decided to bring to a close the discussion and agreed that we will continue the topic next year. TechEd India Panel Discussion on Web, Technology and SEO Surprisingly, the day was just beginning after doing all of these. By this time, I have almost met all the MVP who arrived at the event, as well as many Microsoft employees. There were lots of Community folks present, too. I decided that I would go to meet several friends from the Community and continue to communicate with me on SQLAuthority.com. I also met Abhishek Baxi and had a good talk with him regarding Win Mobile and Twitter. He also took a very quick video of me wherein I spoke in my mother’s tongue, Gujarati. It was funny that I talked in Gujarati almost all the day, but when I was talking in the interview I could not find the right Gujarati words to speak. I think we all think in English when we think about Technology, so as to address universality. After meeting them, I headed towards the Speakers’ Dinner. Time: 8:00 PM – onwards Speakers Dinner The Speakers’ dinner was indeed a wonderful opportunity for all the speakers to get together and relax. We talked so many different things, from XBOX to Hindi Movies, and from SQL to Samosas. I just could not express how much fun I had. After a long evening, when I returned tmy room and met Shaivi, I just felt instantly relaxed. Kids are really gifts from God. Today was a really long but exciting day. So many things happened in just one day: Visual Studio Lanch, lunch with Somasegar, 2 technical sessions, 1 panel discussion, community leaders meeting, speakers dinner and, last but not leas,t playing with my child! A perfect day! Day 2 – April 13, 2010 Today started with a bang with the excellent keynote by Kamal Hathi who launched SQL Server 2008 R2 in India and demonstrated the power of PowerPivot to all of us. 101 Million Rows in Excel brought lots of applause from the audience. Kamal Hathi Presenting Keynote at TechEd India 2010 The day was a bit easier one for me. I had no sessions today and no events planned. I had a few meetings planned for the second day of the event. I sat in the speaker’s lounge for half a day and met many people there. I attended nearly 9 different meetings today. The subjects of the meetings were very different. Here is a list of the topics of the Community-related meetings: SQL PASS and its involvement in India and subcontinents How to start community blogging Forums and developing aptitude towards technology Ahmedabad/Gandhinagar User Groups and their developments SharePoint and SQL Business Meeting – a client meeting Business Meeting – a potential performance tuning project Business Meeting – Solid Quality Mentors (SolidQ) And family friends Pinal Dave at TechEd India The day passed by so quickly during this meeting. In the evening, I headed to Partners Expo with friends and checked out few of the booths. I really wanted to talk about some of the products, but due to the freebies there was so much crowd that I finally decided to just take the contact details of the partner. I will now start sending them with my queries and, hopefully, I will have my questions answered. Nupur and Shaivi had also one meeting to attend; it was with our family friend Vijay Raj. Vijay is also a person who loves Technology and loves it more than anybody. I see him growing and learning every day, but still remaining as a ‘human’. I believe that if someone acquires as much knowledge as him, that person will become either a computer or cyborg. Here, Vijay is still a kind gentleman and is able to stay as our close family friend. Shaivi was really happy to play with Uncle Vijay. Pinal Dave and Vijay Raj Renuka Prasad, a Microsoft MVP, impressed me with his passion and knowledge of SQL. Every time he gives me credit for his success, I believe that he is very humble. He has way more certifications than me and has worked many more years with SQL compared to me. He is an excellent photographer as well. Most of the photos in this blog post have been taken by him. I told him if ever he wants to do a part time job, he can do the photography very well. Pinal Dave and Renuka Prasad I also met L Srividya from Microsoft, whom I was looking forward to meet. She is a bundle of knowledge that everyone would surely learn a lot from her. I was able to get a few minutes from her and well, I felt confident. She enlightened me with SQL Server BI concepts, domain management and SQL Server security and few other interesting details. I also had a wonderful time talking about SharePoint with fellow Solid Quality Mentor Joy Rathnayake. He is very passionate about SharePoint but when you talk .NET and SQL with him, he is still overwhelmingly knowledgeable. In fact, while talking to him, I figured out that the recent training he delivered was on SQL Server 2008 R2. I told him a joke that it hurts my ego as he is more popular now in SQL training and consulting than me. I am sure all of you agree that working with good people is a gift from God. I am fortunate enough to work with the best of the best Industry experts. It was a great pleasure to hang out with my Community friends – Ahswin Kini, HimaBindu Vejella, Vasudev G, Suprotim Agrawal, Dhananjay, Vikram Pendse, Mahesh Dhola, Mahesh Mitkari,  Manu Zacharia, Shobhan, Hardik Shah, Ashish Mohta, Manan, Subodh Sohani and Sanjay Shetty (of course!) .  (Please let me know if I have met you at the event and forgot your name to list here). Time: 8:00 PM – onwards Community Leaders Dinner After lots of meetings, I headed towards the Community Leaders dinner meeting and met almost all the folks I met in morning. The discussion was almost the same but the real good thing was that we were enjoying it. The food was really good. Nupur was invited in the event, but Shaivi could not come. When Nupur tried to enter the event, she was stopped as Shaivi did not have the pass to enter the dinner. Nupur expressed that Shaivi is only 8 months old and does not eat outside food as well and could not stay by herself at this age, but the door keeper did not agree and asked that without the entry details Shaivi could not go in, but Nupur could. Nupur called me on phone and asked me to help her out. By the time, I was outside; the organizer of the event reached to the door and happily approved Shaivi to join the party. Once in the party, Shaivi had lots of fun meeting so many people. Shaivi Dave and Abhishek Kant Dean Guida (Infragistics President and CEO) and Pinal Dave (SQLAuthority.com) Day 3 – April 14, 2010 Though, it was last day, I was very much excited today as I was about to present my very favorite session. Query Optimization and Performance Tuning is my domain expertise and I make my leaving by consulting and training the same. Today’s session was on the same subject and as an additional twist, another subject about Spatial Database was presented. I was always intrigued with Spatial Database and I have enjoyed learning about it; however, I have never thought about Spatial Indexing before it was decided that I will do this session. I really thank Solid Quality Mentor Dr. Greg Low for his assistance in helping me prepare the slide deck and also review the content. Furthermore, today was really what I call my ‘learning day’ . So far I had not attended any session in TechEd and I felt a bit down for that. Everybody spends their valuable time & money to learn something new and exciting in TechEd and I had not attended a single session at the moment thinking that it was already last day of the event. I did have a plan for the day and I attended two technical sessions before my session of spatial database. I attended 2 sessions of Vinod Kumar. Vinod is a natural storyteller and there was no doubt that his sessions would be jam-packed. People attended his sessions simply because Vinod is syhe speaker. He did not have a single time disappointed audience; he is truly a good speaker. He knows his stuff very well. I personally do not think that in India he can be compared to anyone for SQL. Time: 12:30pm-1:30pm SQL Server Query Optimization, Execution and Debugging Query Performance I really had a fun time attending this session. Vinod made this session very interactive. The entire audience really got into the presentation and started participating in the event. Vinod was presenting a small problem with Query Tuning, which any developer would have encountered and solved with their help in such a fashion that a developer feels he or she have already resolved it. In one question, I was the only one who was ready to answer and Vinod told me in a light tone that I am now allowed to answer it! The audience really found it very amusing. There was a huge crowd around Vinod after the session. Vinod – A master storyteller! Time: 3:45pm-4:45pm Data Recovery / consistency with CheckDB This session was much heavier than the earlier one, and I must say this is my most favorite session I EVER attended in India. In this TechEd I have only attended two sessions, but in my career, I have attended numerous technical sessions not only in India, but all over the world. This session had taken my breath away. One by one, Vinod took the different databases, and started to corrupt them in different ways. Each database has some unique ways to get corrupted. Once that was done, Vinod started to show the DBCC CEHCKDB and demonstrated how it can solve your problem. He finally fixed all the databases with this single tool. I do have a good knowledge of this subject, but let me honestly admit that I have learned a lot from this session. I enjoyed and cheered during this session along with other attendees. I had total satisfaction that, just like everyone, I took advantage of the event and learned something. I am now TECHnically EDucated. Pinal Dave and Vinod Kumar After two very interactive and informative SQL Sessions from Vinod Kumar, the next turn me presenting on Spatial Database and Indexing. I got once again nervous but Vinod told me to stay natural and do my presentation. Well, once I got a huge stage with a total of four projectors and a large crowd, I felt better. Time: 5:00pm-6:00pm Session 3: Developing with SQL Server Spatial and Deep Dive into Spatial Indexing Pinal Presenting session at TechEd India 2010 Pinal Presenting session at TechEd India 2010 I kicked off this session with Michael J Swart‘s beautiful spatial image. This session was the last one for the day but, to my surprise, I had more than 200+ attendees. Slowly, the rain was starting outside and I was worried that the hall would not be full; despite this, there was not a single seat available in the first five minutes of the session. Thanks to all of you for attending my presentation. I had demonstrated the map of world (and India) and quickly explained what  Geographic and Geometry data types in Spatial Database are. This session had interesting story of Indexing and Comparison, as well as how different traditional indexes are from spatial indexing. Pinal Presenting session at TechEd India 2010 Due to the heavy rain during this event, the power went off for about 22 minutes (just an accident – nobodies fault). During these minutes, there were no audio, no video and no light. I continued to address the mass of 200+ people without any audio device and PowerPoint. I must thank the audience because not a single person left from the session. They all stayed in their place, some moved closure to listen to me properly. I noticed that the curiosity and eagerness to learn new things was at the peak even though it was the very last session of the TechEd. Everybody wanted get the maximum knowledge out of this whole event. I was touched by the support from audience. They listened and participated in my session even without any kinds of technology (no ppt, no mike, no AC, nothing). During these 22 minutes, I had completed my theory verbally. Pinal Presenting session at TechEd India 2010 After a while, we got the projector back online and we continued with some exciting demos. Many thanks to Microsoft people who worked energetically in background to get the backup power for project up. I had a very interesting demo wherein I overlaid Bangalore and Hyderabad on the India Map and find their aerial distance between them. After finding the aerial distance, we browsed online and found that SQL Server estimates the exact aerial distance between these two cities, as compared to the factual distance. There was a huge applause from the crowd on the subject that SQL Server takes into the count of the curvature of the earth and finds the precise distances based on details. During the process of finding the distance, I demonstrated a few examples of the indexes where I expressed how one can use those indexes to find these distances and how they can improve the performance of similar query. I also demonstrated few examples wherein we were able to see in which data type the Index is most useful. We finished the demos with a few more internal stuff. Pinal Presenting session at TechEd India 2010 Despite all issues, I was mostly satisfied with my presentation. I think it was the best session I have ever presented at any conference. There was no help from Technology for a while, but I still got lots of appreciation at the end. When we ended the session, the applause from the audience was so loud that for a moment, the rain was not audible. I was truly moved by the dedication of the Technology enthusiasts. Pinal Dave After Presenting session at TechEd India 2010 The abstract of the session is as follows: The Microsoft SQL Server 2008 delivers new spatial data types that enable you to consume, use, and extend location-based data through spatial-enabled applications. Attend this session to learn how to use spatial functionality in next version of SQL Server to build and optimize spatial queries. This session outlines the new geography data type to store geodetic spatial data and perform operations on it, use the new geometry data type to store planar spatial data and perform operations on it, take advantage of new spatial indexes for high performance queries, use the new spatial results tab to quickly and easily view spatial query results directly from within Management Studio, extend spatial data capabilities by building or integrating location-enabled applications through support for spatial standards and specifications and much more. Time: 8:00 PM – onwards Dinner by Sponsors After the lively session during the day, there was another dinner party courtesy of one of the sponsors of TechEd. All the MVPs and several Community leaders were present at the dinner. I would like to express my gratitude to Abhishek Kant for organizing this wonderful event for us. It was a blast and really relaxing in all angles. We all stayed there for a long time and talked about our sweet and unforgettable memories of the event. Pinal Dave and Bijoy Singhal It was really one wonderful event. After writing this much, I say that I have no words to express about how much I enjoyed TechEd. However, it is true that I shared with you only 1% of the total activities I have done at the event. There were so many people I have met, yet were not mentioned here although I wanted to write their names here, too . Anyway, I have learned so many things and up until now, I am not able to get over all the fun I had in this event. Pinal Dave at TechEd India 2010 The Next Days – April 15, 2010 – till today I am still not able to get my mind out of the whole experience I had at TechEd India 2010. It was like a whole Microsoft Family working together to celebrate a happy occasion. TechEd India – Truly An Unforgettable Experience! Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: About Me, MVP, Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, SQLAuthority News, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology Tagged: TechEd, TechEdIn

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• How to display a JSON error message?

  - by Tiny Giant Studios

  I'm currently developing a tumblr theme and have built a jQuery JSON thingamabob that uses the Tumblr API to do the following: The user would click on the "post type" link (e.g. Video Posts), at which stage jQuery would use JSON to grab all the posts that's related to that type and then dynamically display them in a designated area. Now everything works absolutely peachy, except that with Tumblr being Tumblr and their servers taking a knock every now and then, the Tumblr API thingy is sometimes offline. Now I can't foresee when this function will be down, which is why I want to display some generic error message if JSON (for whatever reason) was unable to load the post. You'll see I've already written some code to show an error message when jQuery can't find any posts related to that post type BUT it doesn't cover any server errors. Note: I sometimes get this error: Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 503 (Service Temporarily Unavailable) It is for this 503 Error message that I need to write some code, but I'm slightly clueless :) Here's the jQuery JSON code: $('ul.right li').find('a').click(function() { var postType = this.className; var count = 0; byCategory(postType); return false; function byCategory(postType, callback) { $.getJSON('{URL}/api/read/json?type=' + postType + '&callback=?', function(data) { var article = []; $.each(data.posts, function(i, item) { // i = index // item = data for a particular post switch(item.type) { case 'photo': article[i] = '<div class="post_wrap"><div class="photo" style="padding-bottom:5px;">' + '<a href="' + item.url + '" title="{Title}" class="type_icon"><img src="http://static.tumblr.com/ewjv7ap/XSTldh6ds/photo_icon.png" alt="type_icon"/></a>' + '<a href="' + item.url + '" title="{Title}"><img src="' + item['photo-url-500'] + '"alt="image" /></a></div></div>'; count = 1; break; case 'video': article[i] = '<div class="post_wrap"><div class="video" style="padding-bottom:5px;">' + '<a href="' + item.url + '" title="{Title}" class="type_icon">' + '<img src="http://static.tumblr.com/ewjv7ap/nuSldhclv/video_icon.png" alt="type_icon"/></a>' + '<span style="margin: auto;">' + item['video-player'] + '</span>' + '</div></div>'; count = 1; break; case 'audio': if (use_IE == true) { article[i] = '<div class="post_wrap"><div class="regular">' + '<a href="' + item.url + '" title="{Title}" class="type_icon"><img src="http://static.tumblr.com/ewjv7ap/R50ldh5uj/audio_icon.png" alt="type_icon"/></a>' + '<h3><a href="' + item.url + '">' + item['id3-artist'] +' - ' + item['id3-title'] + '</a></h3>' + '</div></div>'; } else { article[i] = '<div class="post_wrap"><div class="regular">' + '<a href="' + item.url + '" title="{Title}" class="type_icon"><img src="http://static.tumblr.com/ewjv7ap/R50ldh5uj/audio_icon.png" alt="type_icon"/></a>' + '<h3><a href="' + item.url + '">' + item['id3-artist'] +' - ' + item['id3-title'] + '</a></h3><div class="player">' + item['audio-player'] + '</div>' + '</div></div>'; }; count = 1; break; case 'regular': article[i] = '<div class="post_wrap"><div class="regular">' + '<a href="' + item.url + '" title="{Title}" class="type_icon"><img src="http://static.tumblr.com/ewjv7ap/dwxldhck1/regular_icon.png" alt="type_icon"/></a><h3><a href="' + item.url + '">' + item['regular-title'] + '</a></h3><div class="description_container">' + item['regular-body'] + '</div></div></div>'; count = 1; break; case 'quote': article[i] = '<div class="post_wrap"><div class="quote">' + '<a href="' + item.url + '" title="{Title}" class="type_icon"><img src="http://static.tumblr.com/ewjv7ap/loEldhcpr/quote_icon.png" alt="type_icon"/></a><blockquote><h3><a href="' + item.url + '" title="{Title}">' + item['quote-text'] + '</a></h3></blockquote><cite>- ' + item['quote-source'] + '</cite></div></div>'; count = 1; break; case 'conversation': article[i] = '<div class="post_wrap"><div class="chat">' + '<a href="' + item.url + '" title="{Title}" class="type_icon"><img src="http://static.tumblr.com/ewjv7ap/MVuldhcth/conversation_icon.png" alt="type_icon"/></a><h3><a href="' + item.url + '">' + item['conversation-title'] + '</a></h3></div></div>'; count = 1; break; case 'link': article[i] = '<div class="post_wrap"><div class="link">' + '<a href="' + item.url + '" title="{Title}" class="type_icon"><img src="http://static.tumblr.com/ewjv7ap/EQGldhc30/link_icon.png" alt="type_icon"/></a><h3><a href="' + item['link-url'] + '" target="_blank">' + item['link-text'] + '</a></h3></div></div>'; count = 1; break; default: alert('No Entries Found.'); }; }) // end each if (!(count == 0)) { $('#content_right') .hide('fast') .html('<div class="first_div"><span class="left_corner"></span><span class="right_corner"></span><h2>Displaying ' + postType + ' Posts Only</h2></div>' + article.join('')) .slideDown('fast') } else { $('#content_right') .hide('fast') .html('<div class="first_div"><span class="left_corner"></span><span class="right_corner"></span><h2>Hmmm, currently there are no ' + postType + ' posts to display</h2></div>') .slideDown('fast') } // end getJSON }); // end byCategory } }); If you'd like to see the demo in action, check out Elegantem but do note that everything might work absolutely fine for you (or not), depending on Tumblr's temperament.

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• Mac OS X Lion 10.7.2 update breaks SSL

  - by mcandre

  Summary After updating from 10.7.1 to 10.7.2, neither Safari nor Google Chrome can load GMail. Spinning Beachballs all around. The problem isn't GMail; Firefox loads GMail just fine. The problem isn't limited to Safari or Google Chrome; Other applications also have trouble with SSL: Gilgamesh and Safari. Any program that uses WebKit (Google Chrome, Safari) or a Cocoa library (Gilgamesh) to access the Internet has trouble loading secure sites. The various forums online suggest a handful of fixes, none of which work. Analysis Fix #1: Open Keychain Access.app and delete the Unknown certificate. The 10.7.2 update also prevents Keychain Access from loading. The Keychain program itself Spinning Beachballs. Fix #2: Delete ~/Library/Keychains/login.keychain and /Library/Keychains/System.keychain. This temporarily resolves the issue, and lets you load secure sites, but a minute or two after rebooting or hibernating somehow magically undoes the fix, so you have to delete these files over and over. Fix #3: Delete ~/Library/Application\ Support/Mob* and /Library/Application\ Support/Mob*. There is a rumor that the new MobileMe/iCloud service ubd is causing the issue. This fix does not resolve the issue. Fix #4: Open Keychain Access, open the Preferences, and disable OCSP and CRL. This fix does not resolve the issue. Fix #5: Use the 10.7.0 - 10.7.2 combo installer, rather than the 10.7.1 - 10.7.2 installer. When I run the combo installer, it stays forever at the "Validating Packages..." screen. The combo installer itself is bugged to He||. I force-quit the installer, ran "sudo killall installd" to force-quit the background installer process, and reran the combo installer. Same problem: it stalls at "Validing Packages..." Recap The only fix that works is deleting the keychains, but you have to do this every time you reboot or wake from hibernate. There is some evidence that ubd continually corrupts the keychain files, but the suggested ubd fix of deleting ~/Library/Application\ Support/Mob* and /Library/Application\ Support/Mob* does not resolve this issue. Evidently, something is corrupting the keychain over and over and over. Also posted on the Apple Support Communities.

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• nginx timeout albeit ridicolous configuration

  - by Joa Ebert

  The scenario is an API server that should handle uploads. Posting on my.host.com/api/upload should do something with the body the client sends. However the API server has been designed to block the whole request until it fully processed the file, including some analysis which can take up to approx. 5min (...!). This has to change of course. In the meantime I wanted to setup nginx as a load balancer in front of the API servers. I quickly ran into a timeout issue, consulted Google and came up with this ridiculous test configuration: user www-data; worker_processes 4; error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log; pid /var/run/nginx.pid; events { worker_connections 1024; } http { include /etc/nginx/mime.types; access_log off; sendfile on; send_timeout 3600; keepalive_timeout 3600 120; tcp_nopush on; tcp_nodelay on; gzip off; client_header_timeout 3600; client_body_timeout 3600; proxy_send_timeout 3600; proxy_read_timeout 3600; proxy_connect_timeout 1800; proxy_next_upstream error; include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf; include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*; } And upstream test { server host1; server host2; } server { listen 80; server_name my.host.com; client_max_body_size 10m; location /api/ { proxy_pass http://test; proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for; proxy_set_header Host $host; proxy_redirect off; } } Still, when an upload happens, I get the following result in the error.log: 2010/12/22 13:36:42 [error] 5256#0: *187359 upstream timed out (110: Connection timed out) while reading response header from upstream, client: xx.xx.xx.xx, server: my.host.com, request: "POST /api/upload HTTP/1.1", upstream: "http://apiserver:80/upload", host: "my.host.com" What else could I do? If I look at the log of the API server I still see that it is processing the request and analyzing the file. But I think 3600 seconds as a timeout should be more than enough. This happens even after a could of seconds. And I did a reload and force-reload of the configuration as well of course.

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• Switch flooding when bonding interfaces in Linux

  - by John Philips

  +--------+ | Host A | +----+---+ | eth0 (AA:AA:AA:AA:AA:AA) | | +----+-----+ | Switch 1 | (layer2/3) +----+-----+ | +----+-----+ | Switch 2 | +----+-----+ | +----------+----------+ +-------------------------+ Switch 3 +-------------------------+ | +----+-----------+----+ | | | | | | | | | | eth0 (B0:B0:B0:B0:B0:B0) | | eth4 (B4:B4:B4:B4:B4:B4) | | +----+-----------+----+ | | | Host B | | | +----+-----------+----+ | | eth1 (B1:B1:B1:B1:B1:B1) | | eth5 (B5:B5:B5:B5:B5:B5) | | | | | | | | | +------------------------------+ +------------------------------+ Topology overview Host A has a single NIC. Host B has four NICs which are bonded using the balance-alb mode. Both hosts run RHEL 6.0, and both are on the same IPv4 subnet. Traffic analysis Host A is sending data to Host B using some SQL database application. Traffic from Host A to Host B: The source int/MAC is eth0/AA:AA:AA:AA:AA:AA, the destination int/MAC is eth5/B5:B5:B5:B5:B5:B5. Traffic from Host B to Host A: The source int/MAC is eth0/B0:B0:B0:B0:B0:B0, the destination int/MAC is eth0/AA:AA:AA:AA:AA:AA. Once the TCP connection has been established, Host B sends no further frames out eth5. The MAC address of eth5 expires from the bridge tables of both Switch 1 & Switch 2. Switch 1 continues to receive frames from Host A which are destined for B5:B5:B5:B5:B5:B5. Because Switch 1 and Switch 2 no longer have bridge table entries for B5:B5:B5:B5:B5:B5, they flood the frames out all ports on the same VLAN (except for the one it came in on, of course). Reproduce If you ping Host B from a workstation which is connected to either Switch 1 or 2, B5:B5:B5:B5:B5:B5 re-enters the bridge tables and the flooding stops. After five minutes (the default bridge table timeout), flooding resumes. Question It is clear that on Host B, frames arrive on eth5 and exit out eth0. This seems ok as that's what the Linux bonding algorithm is designed to do - balance incoming and outgoing traffic. But since the switch stops receiving frames with the source MAC of eth5, it gets timed out of the bridge table, resulting in flooding. Is this normal? Why aren't any more frames originating from eth5? Is it because there is simply no other traffic going on (the only connection is a single large data transfer from Host A)? I've researched this for a long time and haven't found an answer. Documentation states that no switch changes are necessary when using mode 6 of the Linux interface bonding (balance-alb). Is this behavior occurring because Host B doesn't send any further packets out of eth5, whereas in normal circumstances it's expected that it would? One solution is to setup a cron job which pings Host B to keep the bridge table entries from timing out, but that seems like a dirty hack.

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• Apache VirtualHost Blockhole (Eats All Requests on All Ports on an IP)

  - by Synetech inc.

  I’m exhausted. I just spent the last two hours chasing a goose that I have been after on-and-off for the past year. Here is the goal, put as succinctly as possible. Step 1: HOSTS File: 127.0.0.5 NastyAdServer.com 127.0.0.5 xssServer.com 127.0.0.5 SQLInjector.com 127.0.0.5 PornAds.com 127.0.0.5 OtherBadSites.com … Step 2: Apache httpd.conf <VirtualHost 127.0.0.5:80> ServerName adkiller DocumentRoot adkiller RewriteEngine On RewriteRule (\.(gif|jpg|png|jpeg)$) /p.png [L] RewriteRule (.*) /ad.htm [L] </VirtualHost> So basically what happens is that the HOSTS file redirects designated domains to the localhost, but to a specific loopback IP address. Apache listens for any requests on this address and serves either a transparent pixel graphic, or else an empty HTML file. Thus, any page or graphic on any of the bad sites is replaced with nothing (in other words an ad/malware/porn/etc. blocker). This works great as is (and has been for me for years now). The problem is that these bad things are no longer limited to just HTTP traffic. For example: <script src="http://NastyAdServer.com:99"> or <iframe src="https://PornAds.com/ad.html"> or a Trojan using ftp://spammaster.com/[email protected];[email protected];[email protected] or an app “phoning home” with private info in a crafted ICMP packet by pinging CardStealer.ru:99 Handling HTTPS is a relatively minor bump. I can create a separate VirtualHost just like the one above, replacing port 80 with 443, and adding in SSL directives. This leaves the other ports to be dealt with. I tried using * for the port, but then I get overlap errors. I tried redirecting all request to the HTTPS server and visa-versa but neither worked; either the SSL requests wouldn’t redirect correctly or else the HTTP requests gave the You’re speaking plain HTTP to an SSL-enabled server port… error. Further, I cannot figure out a way to test if other ports are being successfully redirected (I could try using a browser, but what about FTP, ICMP, etc.?) I realize that I could just use a port-blocker (eg ProtoWall, PeerBlock, etc.), but there’s two issues with that. First, I am blocking domains with this method, not IP addresses, so to use a port-blocker, I would have to get each and every domain’s IP, and update theme frequently. Second, using this method, I can have Apache keep logs of all the ad/malware/spam/etc. requests for future analysis (my current AdKiller logs are already 466MB right now). I appreciate any help in successfully setting up an Apache VirtualHost blackhole. Thanks.

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• How should we serve files in a small bioinformatics cluster?

  - by cespinoza

  We have a small cluster of six ubuntu servers. We run bioinformatics analyses on these clusters. Each analysis takes about 24 hours to complete, each core i7 server can handle 2 at a time, takes as input about 5GB data and outputs about 10-25GB of data. We run dozens of these a week. The software is a hodgepodge of custom perl scripts and 3rd party sequence alignment software written in C/C++. Currently, files are served from two of the compute nodes (yes, we're using compute nodes as file servers)-- each node has 5 1TB sata drives mounted separately (no raid) and is pooled via glusterfs 2.0.1. They each have as 3 bonded intel ethernet pci gigabit ethernet cards, attached to a d-link DGS-1224T switch ($300 24 port consumer-level). We are not currently using jumbo frames (not sure why, actually). The two file-serving compute nodes are then mirrored via glusterfs. Each of the four other nodes mounts the files via glusterfs. The files are all large (4gb+), and are stored as bare files (no database/etc) if that matters. As you can imagine, this is a bit of a mess that grew organically without forethought and we want to improve it now that we're running out of space. Our analyses are I/O intensive and it is a bottle neck-- we're only getting 140mB/sec between the two fileservers, maybe 50mb/sec from the clients (which only have single NICs). We have a flexible budget which I can probably get up $5k or so. How should we spend our budget? We need at least 10TB of storage fast enough to serve all nodes. How fast/big does the cpu/memory of such a file server have to be? Should we use NFS, ATA over Ethernet, iSCSI, Glusterfs, or something else? Should we buy two or more servers and create some sort of storage cluster, or is 1 server enough for such a small number of nodes? Should we invest in faster NICs (say, PCI-express cards with multiple connectors)? The switch? Should we use raid, if so, hardware or software? and which raid (5, 6, 10, etc)? Any ideas appreciated. We're biologists, not IT gurus.

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