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• Have a server, need to figure out a method of backup

  - by PolishHurricane

  My company has an older Dell 2650 server running ArchLinux x64: http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pedge/en/2650_specs.pdf (2 x 2.4GHz Intel Xeon w/around 3287 RAM according to "free -m") We use it to host our internal company site and to post some information from our orders to and we'd like the ability to keep it up as much as possible. What we require: - It needs to always be functional from 8am to 4pm for our data entry person to use it and others to do other things required on it. - If it goes down, we need a quick way to get the machine running again. - If it goes down, we would like to have the data backed up. Some of the major problems include: - The servers old and it may have memory issues - We don't know when one of the hard drives could fail - Our power goes out here once in a while We have a battery backup, but that's pretty much it and it's not for long term. If the server does go down, we have another system in place to store order information that comes in while it's down and repost it when it's back, but we need it up during the day. So we're wondering, what should we get for options? These are the things we thought of, sort of: Setup RAID 1, but that would involve wiping everything right? If we do that, how would we transfer the data over without messing up the server? We could buy an extra server or 2 off eBay for $100, the same model, is that practical or should we get something else? Should we buy a PC or another better server and host off that because it is if anything easier to exchange parts? Should we keep extra parts handy incase it implodes? Should we buy/use backup software? We hear drobo's are cool, but suck. Perhaps there is a software solution to this problem that backs up to another machine or gets us up and running again quickly. Also, if we are to purchase hardware, what is decent? Does anybody know of one for ArchLinux/Linux? We both know a ton about computers but we're kind of unsure what step to take with this, especially with this type of server. Thanks

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• How to open a server port outside of an OpenVPN tunnel with a pf firewall on OSX (BSD)

  - by Timbo

  I have a Mac mini that I use as a media server running XBMC and serves media from my NAS to my stereo and TV (which has been color calibrated with a Spyder3Express, happy). The Mac runs OSX 10.8.2 and the internet connection is tunneled for general privacy over OpenVPN through Tunnelblick. I believe my anonymous VPN provider pushes "redirect_gateway" to OpenVPN/Tunnelblick because when on it effectively tunnels all non-LAN traffic in- and outbound. As an unwanted side effect that also opens the boxes server ports unprotected to the outside world and bypasses my firewall-router (Netgear SRX5308). I have run nmap from outside the LAN on the VPN IP and the server ports on the mini are clearly visible and connectable. The mini has the following ports open: ssh/22, ARD/5900 and 8080+9090 for the XBMC iOS client Constellation. I also have Synology NAS which apart from LAN file serving over AFP and WebDAV only serves up an OpenVPN/1194 and a PPTP/1732 server. When outside of the LAN I connect to this from my laptop over OpenVPN and over PPTP from my iPhone. I only want to connect through AFP/548 from the mini to the NAS. The border firewall (SRX5308) just works excellently, stable and with a very high throughput when streaming from various VOD services. My connection is a 100/10 with a close to theoretical max throughput. The ruleset is as follows Inbound: PPTP/1723 Allow always to 10.0.0.40 (NAS/VPN server) from a restricted IP range >corresponding to possible cell provider range OpenVPN/1194 Allow always to 10.0.0.40 (NAS/VPN server) from any Outbound: Default outbound policy: Allow Always OpenVPN/1194 TCP Allow always from 10.0.0.40 (NAS) to a.b.8.1-a.b.8.254 (VPN provider) OpenVPN/1194 UDP Allow always to 10.0.0.40 (NAS) to a.b.8.1-a.b.8.254 (VPN provider) Block always from NAS to any On the Mini I have disabled the OSX Application Level Firewall because it throws popups which don't remember my choices from one time to another and that's annoying on a media server. Instead I run Little Snitch which controls outgoing connections nicely on an application level. I have configured the excellent OSX builtin firewall pf (from BSD) as follows pf.conf (Apple App firewall tie-ins removed) (# replaced with % to avoid formatting errors) ### macro name for external interface. eth_if = "en0" vpn_if = "tap0" ### wifi_if = "en1" ### %usb_if = "en3" ext_if = $eth_if LAN="{10.0.0.0/24}" ### General housekeeping rules ### ### Drop all blocked packets silently set block-policy drop ### all incoming traffic on external interface is normalized and fragmented ### packets are reassembled. scrub in on $ext_if all fragment reassemble scrub in on $vpn_if all fragment reassemble scrub out all ### exercise antispoofing on the external interface, but add the local ### loopback interface as an exception, to prevent services utilizing the ### local loop from being blocked accidentally. ### set skip on lo0 antispoof for $ext_if inet antispoof for $vpn_if inet ### spoofing protection for all interfaces block in quick from urpf-failed ############################# block all ### Access to the mini server over ssh/22 and remote desktop/5900 from LAN/en0 only pass in on $eth_if proto tcp from $LAN to any port {22, 5900, 8080, 9090} ### Allow all udp and icmp also, necessary for Constellation. Could be tightened. pass on $eth_if proto {udp, icmp} from $LAN to any ### Allow AFP to 10.0.0.40 (NAS) pass out on $eth_if proto tcp from any to 10.0.0.40 port 548 ### Allow OpenVPN tunnel setup over unprotected link (en0) only to VPN provider IPs ### and port ranges pass on $eth_if proto tcp from any to a.b.8.0/24 port 1194:1201 ### OpenVPN Tunnel rules. All traffic allowed out, only in to ports 4100-4110 ### Outgoing pings ok pass in on $vpn_if proto {tcp, udp} from any to any port 4100:4110 pass out on $vpn_if proto {tcp, udp, icmp} from any to any So what are my goals and what does the above setup achieve? (until you tell me otherwise :) 1) Full LAN access to the above ports on the mini/media server (including through my own VPN server) 2) All internet traffic from the mini/media server is anonymized and tunneled over VPN 3) If OpenVPN/Tunnelblick on the mini drops the connection, nothing is leaked both because of pf and the router outgoing ruleset. It can't even do a DNS lookup through the router. So what do I have to hide with all this? Nothing much really, I just got carried away trying to stop port scans through the VPN tunnel :) In any case this setup works perfectly and it is very stable. The Problem at last! I want to run a minecraft server and I installed that on a separate user account on the mini server (user=mc) to keep things partitioned. I don't want this server accessible through the anonymized VPN tunnel because there are lots more port scans and hacking attempts through that than over my regular IP and I don't trust java in general. So I added the following pf rule on the mini: ### Allow Minecraft public through user mc pass in on $eth_if proto {tcp,udp} from any to any port 24983 user mc pass out on $eth_if proto {tcp, udp} from any to any user mc And these additions on the border firewall: Inbound: Allow always TCP/UDP from any to 10.0.0.40 (NAS) Outbound: Allow always TCP port 80 from 10.0.0.40 to any (needed for online account checkups) This works fine but only when the OpenVPN/Tunnelblick tunnel is down. When up no connection is possbile to the minecraft server from outside of LAN. inside LAN is always OK. Everything else functions as intended. I believe the redirect_gateway push is close to the root of the problem, but I want to keep that specific VPN provider because of the fantastic throughput, price and service. The Solution? How can I open up the minecraft server port outside of the tunnel so it's only available over en0 not the VPN tunnel? Should I a static route? But I don't know which IPs will be connecting...stumbles How secure would to estimate this setup to be and do you have other improvements to share? I've searched extensively in the last few days to no avail...If you've read this far I bet you know the answer :)

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• Mysterious visitor to hidden PHP page

  - by B. VB.

  On my website, I have a "hidden" page that displays a list of the most recent visitors. There exist no links at all to this single PHP page, and, theoretically, only I know of its existence. I check it many times per day to see what new hits I have. However, about once a week, I get a hit from a 208.80.194.* address on this supposedly hidden page (it records hits to itself). The strange thing is this: this mysterious person/bot does not visit any other page on my site. Not the public PHP pages, but only this hidden page that prints the visitors. It's always a single hit, and the HTTP_REFERER is blank. The other data is always some variation of Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; YPC 3.2.0; FunWebProducts; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; SpamBlockerUtility 4.8.4; yplus 5.1.04b) ... but sometimes MSIE 6.0 instead of 7, and various other plug ins. The browser is different every time, as with the lowest-order bits of the address. And it's just that. One hit per week or so, to that one page. Absolutely no other pages are touched by this mysterious vistor. Doing a whois on that IP address showed it's from the new york area, and from the "Websense" ISP. The lowest order 8 bits of their address are always different, but always from 208.80.194.*/8. From most of the computers that I access my website, doing a tracerout to my server does not contain a router anywhere along the way with the IP 208.80.*. So that rules out any kind of HTTP sniffing, I might think. I have NO idea how, why this is happening. Does anyone have any clue, or have seen something as strange as this before? It seems completely benign, but unexplainable and a little creepy. Thanks in advance!

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• Issue using a "used" SSD as a Windows 8.1 Boot Drive

  - by EpiGrad

  So, I'm something of a Mac person, but decided to take a stab at this whole "build yourself a PC" thing - right now, the thing is assembled, posts just fine, and can get to the BIOS. The problem is the drive I want to use - I intended to use a 80 GB Corsair SSD I've had sitting around as the boot drive, and a new Samsung SSD for games and the like. So I boot using a Windows 8.1 install USB stick, and if the Samsung drive is plugged in, it happily offers to install Windows on it. The Corsair drive though, it's flipped out - I reformatted it as a blank NTFS drive (it was HFS for Mac purposes) and the BIOS can't see it, nor can the Windows installer. What's wrong, and how do I fix it? The tools at my disposal are: The current ASUS BIOS that came with my motherboard (a Z87I-Deluxe), a Mac running the latest OS X which can also boot to Windows 7 if needed via either Parallels or Bootcamp. Update 1: Update: Based on a friend's suggestion to switch SATA ports, Windows 8.1's installer can now see the drive as Drive 0, Partition 1, a 83.8 GB "Primary" partition. But when I click it and hit "Next", I get the following error: "We couldn't create a new partition or locate an existing one. For more information, see the Setup log files" - not that it gives any clue how to access those. Update 2: Following a trail of Google suggestions, I ended up going into advanced tools and just reformatting the drive as follows: Start DISKPART. Type LIST DISK and identify your SSD disk number (from 0 to n disks). Type SELECT DISK <n> where <n> is your SSD disk number. Type CLEAN Type CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY Type ACTIVE Type FORMAT FS=NTFS QUICK Type ASSIGN Type EXIT twice (one to get out of DiskPart, the other to exit the command line tool) Per these instructions. This goes well enough, but now I can select the disk for installation, and I get a new error: "Windows 8 cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk has an MBR partition table. On EFI systems, Windows can only be installed to GP disks." So, Googling that, I do the following: select disk 0 clean convert gpt exit ...and we might have fixed it. Windows is at least trying to install now.

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• How do i route TCP connections via TOR? [on hold]

  - by acidzombie24

  I was reading about torchat which is essentially an anonymous chat program. It sounded cool so i wanted to experiment with making my own. First i wrote a test to grab a webpage using Http. Sicne .NET doesnt support SOCKS4A/SOCKS5 i used privoxy and my app worked. Then i switch to a TCP echo test and privoxy doesnt support TCP so i searched and installed 6+ proxy apps (freecap, socat, freeproxy, delegate are the ones i can remember from the top of my head, i also played with putty bc i know it supports tunnels and SOCK5) but i couldnt successfully get any of them to work let alone get it running with my http test that privoxy easily and painlessly did. What may i use to get TCP connections going through TOR? I spent more then 2 hours without success. I don't know if i am looking for a relay, tunnel, forwarder, proxy or a proxychain which all came up in my search. I use the config below for .NET. I need TCP working but i am first testing with http since i know i had it working using privoxy. What apps and configs do i use to get TCP going through tor? <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <configuration> <system.net> <defaultProxy enabled="true"> <proxy bypassonlocal="True" proxyaddress="http://127.0.0.1:8118"/> </defaultProxy> <settings> <httpWebRequest useUnsafeHeaderParsing="true"/> </settings> </system.net> </configuration> -edit- Thanks to Bernd i have a solution. Here is the code i ended up writing. It isn't amazing but its fair. static NetworkStream ConnectSocksProxy(string proxyDomain, short proxyPort, string host, short hostPort, TcpClient tc) { tc.Connect(proxyDomain, proxyPort); if (System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.IsMatch(host, @"[\:/\\]")) throw new Exception("Invalid Host name. Use FQDN such as www.google.com. Do not have http, a port or / in it"); NetworkStream ns = tc.GetStream(); var HostNameBuf = new ASCIIEncoding().GetBytes(host); var HostPortBuf = BitConverter.GetBytes(IPAddress.HostToNetworkOrder(hostPort)); if (true) //5 { var bufout = new byte[128]; var buflen = 0; ns.Write(new byte[] { 5, 1, 0 }, 0, 3); buflen = ns.Read(bufout, 0, bufout.Length); if (buflen != 2 || bufout[0] != 5 || bufout[1] != 0) throw new Exception(); var buf = new byte[] { 5, 1, 0, 3, (byte)HostNameBuf.Length }; var mem = new MemoryStream(); mem.Write(buf, 0, buf.Length); mem.Write(HostNameBuf, 0, HostNameBuf.Length); mem.Write(new byte[] { HostPortBuf[0], HostPortBuf[1] }, 0, 2); var memarr = mem.ToArray(); ns.Write(memarr, 0, memarr.Length); buflen = ns.Read(bufout, 0, bufout.Length); if (bufout[0] != 5 || bufout[1] != 0) throw new Exception(); } else //4a { var bufout = new byte[128]; var buflen = 0; var mem = new MemoryStream(); mem.WriteByte(4); mem.WriteByte(1); mem.Write(HostPortBuf, 0, 2); mem.Write(BitConverter.GetBytes(IPAddress.HostToNetworkOrder(1)), 0, 4); mem.WriteByte(0); mem.Write(HostNameBuf, 0, HostNameBuf.Length); mem.WriteByte(0); var memarr = mem.ToArray(); ns.Write(memarr, 0, memarr.Length); buflen = ns.Read(bufout, 0, bufout.Length); if (buflen != 8 || bufout[0] != 0 || bufout[1] != 90) throw new Exception(); } return ns; } Usage using (TcpClient client = new TcpClient()) using (var ns = ConnectSocksProxy("127.0.0.1", 9050, "website.com", 80, client)) {...}

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• Android RatingBar weirdness: Whenever I add a RatingBar to my layout, a bunch of the generated tags,

  - by Rben

  Whenever I use a RatingBar view in my layout, I suddenly get all kinds of compile errors. I'm using Android 2.0, but I've also tried 2.0.1, and 2.1, without joy. I also get a message: Shader 'android.graphics.BitmapShader' is not supported in Layout Editor, and an odd warning which may or maynot be related: warning: Ignoring InnerClasses attribute for an anonymous inner class that doesn't come with an associated EnclosingMethod attribute. I've tried using the RatingBar both within a tablelayout and outside it, but it behaves the same way. This is very puzzling and frustrating. Please help if you can. Sincerely, Ray Here's the XML: <!-- Created By --> <TableRow android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_width="fill_parent" > <TextView android:text="Created by: " android:id="@+id/gi_created_label" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:gravity="right" /> <TextView android:text="Slartibartfast" android:id="@+id/gi_created" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" /> </TableRow> <!-- Verification --> <TableRow android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_width="fill_parent" > <TextView android:id="@+id/gi_verification_label" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:gravity="right" android:text="@string/GameInfoVerificationLabelText" /> <TextView android:id="@+id/gi_verification" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="HonorSystem" /> </TableRow> <!-- Player Rating Label --> <TableRow android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_width="fill_parent" > <TextView android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:gravity="right" android:text="@string/GameInfoPlayerRatingLabel" /> <TextView android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text=" " /> </TableRow> -- <!-- Times played --> <TableRow android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_width="fill_parent" > <TextView android:id="@+id/gi_times_played_label" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:gravity="right" android:text="@string/GameInfoTimesPlayedLabel" /> <TextView android:id="@+id/gi_times_played" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="999" /> </TableRow> <!-- Total Players --> <TableRow android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_width="fill_parent" > <TextView android:id="@+id/gi_total_players_label" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:gravity="right" android:text="@string/GameInfoTotalPlayerCountLabel" /> <TextView android:id="@+id/gi_total_players" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="999" /> </TableRow> <!-- Total Cancelations --> <TableRow android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_width="fill_parent" > <TextView android:id="@+id/gi_total_cancelations_label" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:gravity="right" android:text="@string/GameInfoTotalCancelsLabel" /> <TextView android:id="@+id/gi_total_cancels" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="999" /> </TableRow> <RatingBar android:id="@+/gi_player_rating" style="?android:attr/ratingBarStyleSmall" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_span="2" android:isIndicator="true" android:numStars="5" android:rating="3" android:stepSize="1" android:layout_gravity="center_vertical" /> </TableRow>

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• Associating File Types with AutoVue Desktop Deployment

  - by [email protected]

  Windows users take for granted that when they double click on a document or design, that it will open up in its application automatically. One of the questions I'm commonly asked is "How can I get the same behavior with AutoVue Desktop Deployment?". It's pretty easy, but there are a few tricks to doing it. Step 1: Download new jvue_direct.bat and icon The first thing you'll need to do is download a slightly modified version of jvue_direct.bat. You can find it here (Document 1075784.1) on Oracle's Support Portal. You also want to download the AV.ico file. This is the icon that will be used for all file types associated with AutoVue. Place both of these files in your <AutoVueInstallDirectory>\bin directory. Step 2: Associate File Types With AutoVue There are two ways to do this. You can do this through the Windows user interface, or you can set up a batch file to do this. Associating File Types Through Windows The way most people associate file types to an application is using the Windows user interface. You've probably tried to open a file type that Windows doesn't recognize and seen this window pop up: Although you can use this dialog to associate that file type with AutoVue, I don't recommend it. I much prefer using a batch file to associate file types with AutoVue. Associating File Types Using A Batch File There are a few good reasons to associate file types using a batch file instead of using the pop-up dialog method: If you have several file types to associate with AutoVue, it's much easier to use a batch file to do them all at once. Doing it through the Windows user interface requires having files of each type available. Using a batch file doesn't require having the files you're associating. Associating file types through the dialog may work well for one person, but what if you're an administrator doing an enterprise wide deployment of AutoVue Desktop Deployment for several hundred users? You don't want to do this manually for each user. You can have one simple batch file that's run on each user's PC to set up all the file types. You can easily associate an icon with the file types you're opening with AutoVue. To use the batch file method follow these steps: Create a file called filetype.bat using a text editor and copy and paste the following into it: @assoc .dwg=AVFile @assoc .jpg=AVFile @assoc .doc=AVFile @ftype AVFile="%~dp0jvue_direct.bat" "%%1" @reg add HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AVFile\DefaultIcon /v "" /f /d "%~dp0AV.ico" Change the lines starting with @assoc. Each of these lines associates a file extension with AutoVue. You can have as many @assoc lines as you want. Save this file in your <AutoVueInstallDirectory>\bin directory. Double click this file, or run it from a command prompt. Restart Windows to get the icons to show up. How Does This Work? The first three lines are creating a file type called AVFile. We are associating the extensions .dwg, .jpg, and .doc with this file type. You will want to change these lines when creating your own batch file. For example, to associate Microstation designs, which have extension .dgn, you should delete the @assoc lines above and add the line: @assoc .dgn=AVfile The line beginning with @ftype tells Windows that all AVFile type files should be opened using AutoVue Desktop Deployment. The final line associates the AutoVue icon with these file types. You may need to restart Windows to see the new icons. Warning: One Size Doesn't Fit All When deciding which file types should be associated with AutoVue, remember that there are different types of users using it. Your engineers may be pretty surprised to find that after installing AutoVue, double clicking their .dwg file opens up AutoVue instead of AutoCAD. If you have more than one type of AutoVue user, make sure you've considered what file types each user group will and will not want to be associated with AutoVue. If necessary, create a separate file association batch file for each user type. So that's it. In two simple steps you can double click your favorite designs and have them open automatically in AutoVue Desktop Deployment. I'd love to hear how are you using AutoVue Desktop Deployment. What other deployment tips would you be interested in learning about?

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• Creating Descriptive Flex Field (DFF) Bean in OAF

  - by Manoj Madhusoodanan

  In this blog I will explain how to add a custom DFF in a custom OAF page.I am using XXCUST_DFF_DEMO table to store the DFF values.Also I am using custom DFF named XXCUST_PERSON_DFF.  Following steps needs to be performed to create this solution. 1) Register the custom table in Oracle Application2) Register the DFF3) Define the segments of DFF4) Create BC4J components for OAF and OA Page which holds the DFF I will explain the steps in detail below. Register the custom table in Oracle Application I am using custom DFF here so I have to register the custom table which I am going to capture the values.Please click here to see the table script. I am using the AD_DD package to register the custom table.Please click here to see the table registration script. Please verify the table has registered successfully. Navigation: Application Developer > Application > Database > Table Table has registered successfully. Register the DFF Next step is to register the DFF. Navigate to Application Developer > Flex Field > Descriptive > Register. Give details as below. Click on Reference Fields and set the Reference Field as ATTRIBUTE_CATEGORY. Click on the Columns button to verify that the columns ATTRIBUTE_CATEGORY,ATTRIBUTE1 .... ATTRIBUTE30 are enabled. DFF has registered successfully. Define the segments of DFF Here I am going to define the segments of the DFF.Navigate to Application Developer > Flex Field > Descriptive > Segments.Query for "XXCUST - Person DFF". Uncheck "Freeze Flexfield Definition". In my DFF the reference field I want to display a value set which has values "Permanent" and "Contractor". So define a value set  XXCUST_EMPLOYMENT_TYPE. Navigation: Application Developer > Flex Field > Descriptive > Validation > Sets After that assign the values to above created value sets. Navigation: Application Developer > Flex Field > Descriptive > Validation > Values Assign XXCUST_EMPLOYMENT_TYPE to Context Field Valueset. Setup the Context Field Values based on below table. Context Code Segments Global Data Elements Phone Number Email Fax Contractor Manager Extension Number CSP Name Permanent Extension Number Access Card Number Phone Number,Email and Fax displays always.When user choose Context Value as "Contractor" Manager Extension Number and CSP Name will show.In case of "Permanent" Extension Number and Access Card Number will show.  Assign value set also as follows. For Global Data Elements following are the segments. For "Contractor" following are the segments. For "Permanent" following are the segments. Check the "Freeze Flexfield Definition" check box and save.Standard concurrent program "Flexfield View Generator" will generate XXCUST_DFF_DEMO_DFV view which we mentioned in the DFF registration step.  Now the DFF has created successfully and ready to use. Create BC4J components for OAF and OA Page which holds the DFF Create the BC4J components ( EO,VO and AM) appropriately.Create the page based on the created VO.For DFF create an item of type "flex" with following property.  Note: You cannot create a flex item directly under a messageComponentLayout region, but you can create a messageLayout region under the messageComponentLayout region and add the flex item under the messageLayout region. In the Segment List property give the segment names which you want to display.The syntax of this is Global Data Elements|SEGMENT 1|...|SEGMENT N||[Context Code1]|SEGMENT 1|...|SEGMENT N||[Context Code2]|SEGMENT 1|...|SEGMENT N||... Eg: Global Data Elements|Phone Number|Email|Fax||Contractor|Manager Extension Number|CSP Name||Permanent|Extension Number|Access Card Number When you change the Context Value corresponding segments will display automatically by PPR in the page. You can attach partial action to the DFF bean programmatically so that you can identify the action related to DFF. pageContext.getParameter(EVENT_PARAM) will return "FLEX_CONTEXT_CHANGEDPersonDFF" when you change the DFF Context. Page is ready and you can test. When you choose "Contract" following output you can see. When you choose "Permanent" following output you can see.  Give proper values and press Apply.You can see values populated in the table.

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• The ASP.NET Daily Community Spotlight - How posts get there, and how to make it your Visual Studio Start Page

  - by Jon Galloway

  One really cool part of my job is selecting the articles for the Daily Community Spotlight, on the home page of the ASP.NET website. The spotlight highlights a new post about ASP.NET development every day from a member of the ASP.NET community. You can find it on the home page of the ASP.NET site, at http://asp.net These posts aren't automatically drawn from a pool of RSS feeds or anything - I pick a new post for each day of the year. How I pick the posts I have a few important selection criteria: Interesting to well rounded ASP.NET developers The ASP.NET website has a lot of material for all skill and experience levels, from download / get started to advanced. I try to select community spotlight posts to round that out with fresh and timely information that working ASP.NET developers can really use. Posts highlight solutions to common problems, clever projects and code that helps you leverage ASP.NET, and important announcements about things you can use today. As part of that, I try to mix between ASP.NET MVC, Web Forms, and Web Pages (a.k.a. WebMatrix). As a professional developer, I want to keep on top of all of my options for ASP.NET development, and the common platform base they all share generally means that good ASP.NET code is good ASP.NET code. Exposing new and non-Microsoft community members as much as possible The exercise of selecting good ASP.NET community posts every day of the year has made me think about what the community is. Given the choice, I'll always favor non-Microsoft employees, but since Microsoft often hires ASP.NET community members and MVP's (myself included), I really think that the ASP.NET community includes developers who are using and writing about ASP.NET, both inside and outside of Microsoft. I'm especially excited about the opportunity to highlight new and lesser known bloggers. Usually being featured on the ASP.NET Community Spotlight gives a pretty good traffic bump, and I love being able to both provide great content to the community and encourage lesser known community members by giving them some (much deserved) attention. Announcements only when they're useful to working developers - not marketing Some of the posts are announcements about new releases, such as Scott Hanselman's post on ASP.NET Universal Providers for Session, Memebership, and Roles. I include those when I think they're interesting and of immediate use to you on projects. I occasionally get asked to link to new content from a team at Microsoft; if it's useful and timely content I'll ask them to point me to a blog post by an actual person rather than a faceless team. How the posts are managed This feed used to be managed by an internal spreadsheet on a Sharepoint site, which was painful for a lot of reasons. I took a cue from Jon Udell, who uses of a public Delicious feed feed for his Elm City project, and we moved the management of these posts over to a Delicious feed as well. You can hear more about Jon's use of Delicious in Elm City in our Herding Code interview - still one of my favorite interviews. We ended up with a simpler scenario, but Note: I watched the Yahoo/Delicious news over the past year and was happy to see that Delicious was recently acquired by the founders of YouTube. I investigated several other Delicious competitors, but am happy with Delicious for now. My Delicious feed here: http://www.delicious.com/jon_galloway You can also browse through this past year's ASP.NET Community Spotlight posts using the (pretty cool) Delicious Browse Bar Submitting articles I'm always on the lookout for new articles to feature. The best way to get them to me is to share them via Delicious. It's pretty easy - sign up for an account, then you can add a post and share it to me. Alternatively, you can send them to me via Twitter (@jongalloway) or e-mail (). If you do e-mail me, it helps to include a short description and your full name so I can credit you. Way too many developer blogs don't include names and pictures; if I can't find them I can't feature the post. Subscribing to the Community Spotlight feed The Community Spotlight is available as an RSS feed, so you might want to subscribe to it: http://www.asp.net/rss/spotlight Setting the ASP.NET Community Spotlight feed as your Visual Studio start page If you're an ASP.NET developer, you might consider setting the ASP.NET Community Spotlight as the content for your Visual Studio Start Page. It's really easy - here's how to do it in Visual Studio 2010: Display the Visual Studio Start Page if it's not already showing (View / Start Page) Click on the Latest News tab and enter the following RSS URL: http://www.asp.net/rss/spotlight If you didn't previously have RSS feeds enabled for your start page, click the Enable RSS Feed button Now, every time you start up Visual Studio you'll see great content from members of the ASP.NET community: You can also configure - and disable, if you'd like - the Visual Studio start page in the Tools / Options / Environment / Startup dialog. Credits I'll do a follow-up highlighting some places I commonly find great content for the feed, but I'd like to specifically point out two of them: Elijah Manor posts a lot of great content, which is available in his Twitter feed at @elijahmanor, on his Delicious feed, and on a dedicated website - Web Dev Tweets Chris Alcock's The Morning Brew is a must-read blog which highlights each day's best blog posts across the .NET community. He's an absolute machine, and no matter how obscure the post I find, I can guarantee he'll find it as well if he hasn't already. Did I say must read?

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• If You Could Cut Your Meeting Times in ½ Would You?

  - by Brian Dayton

                  I know it sounds like a big promise. And what I'm thinking about may not cut a :60 minute meeting into :30 minutes, but it could make meetings and interactions up to 2X more productive. How? Social Media for the Enterprise, Not Social Media In the Enterprise Bear with me. I'm not talking about whether or not workers should or shouldn't have access to Facebook on corporate networks. That topic has been discussed @ length. I'm also not talking about the direct benefits of Social Networking tools like Presence (the ability to see someone online and ask a question in real-time), blogs, RSS feeds or external tools like Twitter. The Un-Measurable Benefits Would you do something that you believe will have a positive effect--but can't be measured? It's impossible to quantify the effectiveness of a meeting. However, what I am talking about would be more of a byproduct of all of the social networking tools above. Here's the hypothesis: As I've gotten more and more busy with work, family, travel and kids--and the same has happened to my friends and family--I'm less and less connected. But by introducing Facebook to my life I've not only made connections with longtime friends whom I haven't spoken to in years--but I've increased the pace and quality of interactions, on and offline, with close friends who I see and speak to every week. In some cases it even enhances the connections and interactions with those I see or speak to every day. The same holds true in an organization. Especially a larger one with highly matrixed organizational structures. You work with people on a project, new people come in with each different project and a disproportionate amount of time is spent getting oriented and staying current. Going back to the initial value proposition--making meetings shorter/more effective--a large amount of time is spent: -          At Project Kick-off: Meeting and understanding team member's histories, goals & roles -          Ongoing: Summarizing events since the last meeting or update email In my personal, Facebook life today I know that: -          My best friend from college - has been stranded in India for 5 days because of the volcano in Iceland and is now only 250 miles from home -          One of my co-workers started conference calls at 6:30 this morning -          My wife wasn't terribly pleased with my painting skills in our new bathroom (disclosure: she told me this face to face too) Strengthening Weak Links A recent article in CIO Magazine, Three Dangerous Social Media Misconceptions (Kristen Burnham, March 12, 2010) calls out the #1 misconception as follows: 1. "Face-to-face relationships are far more valuable than virtual ones." While some level of physical interaction will always add value to relationships, Gartner says that come 2020, most relationships and teams will be based on "weak links"--that is, you may not have personally met a contact, but you'll know of or may have interacted with him via social sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. The sooner your enterprise adopts these tools, the sooner your employees will learn them, and the sooner you'll begin to cultivate these relationships-of-the-future.   I personally believe that it's not an either/or choice between face-to-face and virtual interactions. In fact, I'll be as bold as saying it doesn't matter. I can point to two extremely valuable work relationships that I've had over the past 5 years: -          I shared an office with one of them -          I met the other person, face-to-face, only once Both relationships were very productive. The dynamics were similar. The communication tactics differed immensely. What does matter is the quality, frequency and relevance of interactions. Still sound like too much? An over-promise? Stay tuned for my next post The Gap Between Facebook and LinkedIn. I'll also connect some of the dots with where Oracle Applications and technologies are headed.        

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• Java Logger API

  - by Koppar

  This is a more like a tip rather than technical write up and serves as a quick intro for newbies. The logger API helps to diagnose application level or JDK level issues at runtime. There are 7 levels which decide the detailing in logging (SEVERE, WARNING, INFO, CONFIG, FINE, FINER, FINEST). Its best to start with highest level and as we narrow down, use more detailed logging for a specific area. SEVERE is the highest and FINEST is the lowest. This may not make sense until we understand some jargon. The Logger class provides the ability to stream messages to an output stream in a format that can be controlled by the user. What this translates to is, I can create a logger with this simple invocation and use it add debug messages in my class: import java.util.logging.*; private static final Logger focusLog = Logger.getLogger("java.awt.focus.KeyboardFocusManager"); if (focusLog.isLoggable(Level.FINEST)) { focusLog.log(Level.FINEST, "Calling peer setCurrentFocusOwner}); LogManager acts like a book keeper and all the getLogger calls are forwarded to LogManager. The LogManager itself is a singleton class object which gets statically initialized on JVM start up. More on this later. If there is no existing logger with the given name, a new one is created. If there is one (and not yet GC’ed), then the existing Logger object is returned. By default, a root logger is created on JVM start up. All anonymous loggers are made as the children of the root logger. Named loggers have the hierarchy as per their name resolutions. Eg: java.awt.focus is the parent logger for java.awt.focus.KeyboardFocusManager etc. Before logging any message, the logger checks for the log level specified. If null is specified, the log level of the parent logger will be set. However, if the log level is off, no log messages would be written, irrespective of the parent’s log level. All the messages that are posted to the Logger are handled as a LogRecord object.i.e. FocusLog.log would create a new LogRecord object with the log level and message as its data members). The level of logging and thread number are also tracked. LogRecord is passed on to all the registered Handlers. Handler is basically a means to output the messages. The output may be redirected to either a log file or console or a network logging service. The Handler classes use the LogManager properties to set filters and formatters. During initialization or JVM start up, LogManager looks for logging.properties file in jre/lib and sets the properties if the file is provided. An alternate location for properties file can also be specified by setting java.util.logging.config.file system property. This can be set in Java Control Panel ? Java ? Runtime parameters as -Djava.util.logging.config.file = <mylogfile> or passed as a command line parameter java -Djava.util.logging.config.file = C:/Sunita/myLog The redirection of logging depends on what is specified rather registered as a handler with JVM in the properties file. java.util.logging.ConsoleHandler sends the output to system.err and java.util.logging.FileHandler sends the output to file. File name of the log file can also be specified. If you prefer XML format output, in the configuration file, set java.util.logging.FileHandler.formatter = java.util.logging.XMLFormatter and if you prefer simple text, set set java.util.logging.FileHandler.formatter =java.util.logging.SimpleFormatter Below is the default logging Configuration file: ############################################################ # Default Logging Configuration File # You can use a different file by specifying a filename # with the java.util.logging.config.file system property. # For example java -Djava.util.logging.config.file=myfile ############################################################ ############################################################ # Global properties ############################################################ # "handlers" specifies a comma separated list of log Handler # classes. These handlers will be installed during VM startup. # Note that these classes must be on the system classpath. # By default we only configure a ConsoleHandler, which will only # show messages at the INFO and above levels. handlers= java.util.logging.ConsoleHandler # To also add the FileHandler, use the following line instead. #handlers= java.util.logging.FileHandler, java.util.logging.ConsoleHandler # Default global logging level. # This specifies which kinds of events are logged across # all loggers. For any given facility this global level # can be overriden by a facility specific level # Note that the ConsoleHandler also has a separate level # setting to limit messages printed to the console. .level= INFO ############################################################ # Handler specific properties. # Describes specific configuration info for Handlers. ############################################################ # default file output is in user's home directory. java.util.logging.FileHandler.pattern = %h/java%u.log java.util.logging.FileHandler.limit = 50000 java.util.logging.FileHandler.count = 1 java.util.logging.FileHandler.formatter = java.util.logging.XMLFormatter # Limit the message that are printed on the console to INFO and above. java.util.logging.ConsoleHandler.level = INFO java.util.logging.ConsoleHandler.formatter = java.util.logging.SimpleFormatter ############################################################ # Facility specific properties. # Provides extra control for each logger. ############################################################ # For example, set the com.xyz.foo logger to only log SEVERE # messages: com.xyz.foo.level = SEVERE Since I primarily use this method to track focus issues, here is how I get detailed awt focus related logging. Just set the logger name to java.awt.focus.level=FINEST and change the default log level to FINEST. Below is a basic sample program. The sample programs are from http://www2.cs.uic.edu/~sloan/CLASSES/java/ and have been modified to illustrate the logging API. By changing the .level property in the logging.properties file, one can control the output written to the logs. To play around with the example, try changing the levels in the logging.properties file and notice the difference in messages going to the log file. Example --------KeyboardReader.java------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- import java.io.*; import java.util.*; import java.util.logging.*; public class KeyboardReader { private static final Logger mylog = Logger.getLogger("samples.input"); public static void main (String[] args) throws java.io.IOException { String s1; String s2; double num1, num2, product; // set up the buffered reader to read from the keyboard BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader (new InputStreamReader (System.in)); System.out.println ("Enter a line of input"); s1 = br.readLine(); if (mylog.isLoggable(Level.SEVERE)) { mylog.log (Level.SEVERE,"The line entered is " + s1); } if (mylog.isLoggable(Level.INFO)) { mylog.log (Level.INFO,"The line has " + s1.length() + " characters"); } if (mylog.isLoggable(Level.FINE)) { mylog.log (Level.FINE,"Breaking the line into tokens we get:"); } int numTokens = 0; StringTokenizer st = new StringTokenizer (s1); while (st.hasMoreTokens()) { s2 = st.nextToken(); numTokens++; if (mylog.isLoggable(Level.FINEST)) { mylog.log (Level.FINEST, " Token " + numTokens + " is: " + s2); } } } } ----------MyFileReader.java---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- import java.io.*; import java.util.*; import java.util.logging.*; public class MyFileReader extends KeyboardReader { private static final Logger mylog = Logger.getLogger("samples.input.file"); public static void main (String[] args) throws java.io.IOException { String s1; String s2; // set up the buffered reader to read from the keyboard BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader (new FileReader ("MyFileReader.txt")); s1 = br.readLine(); if (mylog.isLoggable(Level.SEVERE)) { mylog.log (Level.SEVERE,"ATTN The line is " + s1); } if (mylog.isLoggable(Level.INFO)) { mylog.log (Level.INFO, "The line has " + s1.length() + " characters"); } if (mylog.isLoggable(Level.FINE)) { mylog.log (Level.FINE,"Breaking the line into tokens we get:"); } int numTokens = 0; StringTokenizer st = new StringTokenizer (s1); while (st.hasMoreTokens()) { s2 = st.nextToken(); numTokens++; if (mylog.isLoggable(Level.FINEST)) { mylog.log (Level.FINEST,"Breaking the line into tokens we get:"); mylog.log (Level.FINEST," Token " + numTokens + " is: " + s2); } } //end of while } // end of main } // end of class ----------MyFileReader.txt------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ My first logging example -------logging.properties------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- handlers= java.util.logging.ConsoleHandler, java.util.logging.FileHandler .level= FINEST java.util.logging.FileHandler.pattern = java%u.log java.util.logging.FileHandler.limit = 50000 java.util.logging.FileHandler.count = 1 java.util.logging.FileHandler.formatter = java.util.logging.SimpleFormatter java.util.logging.ConsoleHandler.level = FINEST java.util.logging.ConsoleHandler.formatter = java.util.logging.SimpleFormatter java.awt.focus.level=ALL ------Output log------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- May 21, 2012 11:44:55 AM MyFileReader main SEVERE: ATTN The line is My first logging example May 21, 2012 11:44:55 AM MyFileReader main INFO: The line has 24 characters May 21, 2012 11:44:55 AM MyFileReader main FINE: Breaking the line into tokens we get: May 21, 2012 11:44:55 AM MyFileReader main FINEST: Breaking the line into tokens we get: May 21, 2012 11:44:55 AM MyFileReader main FINEST: Token 1 is: My May 21, 2012 11:44:55 AM MyFileReader main FINEST: Breaking the line into tokens we get: May 21, 2012 11:44:55 AM MyFileReader main FINEST: Token 2 is: first May 21, 2012 11:44:55 AM MyFileReader main FINEST: Breaking the line into tokens we get: May 21, 2012 11:44:55 AM MyFileReader main FINEST: Token 3 is: logging May 21, 2012 11:44:55 AM MyFileReader main FINEST: Breaking the line into tokens we get: May 21, 2012 11:44:55 AM MyFileReader main FINEST: Token 4 is: example Invocation command: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jdk1.6.0_29\bin\java.exe" -Djava.util.logging.config.file=logging.properties MyFileReader References Further technical details are available here: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/1.4.2/docs/guide/util/logging/overview.html#1.0 http://docs.oracle.com/javase/1.4.2/docs/api/java/util/logging/package-summary.html http://www2.cs.uic.edu/~sloan/CLASSES/java/

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• Oracle Open World 2012: SQL Developer Recap

  - by thatjeffsmith

  Last week was the ‘big show’ in San Francisco. I was very happy to meet many of you in person. And many of you had questions – lots of questions! We had full or overflowing rooms for our sessions and hands-on-labs. The SQL Developer ‘booths’ were also slammed several times. So exciting to see so many of YOU excited about SQL Developer. It’s very cool to hear the stories of our tools saving you and your organizations so much time (and money!) Instead of doing a Day 0 – Day 9 recap, I thought I’d share with you the questions that I heard more than once. And just for giggles, I’ll throw in some answers as well So in no particular order… What’s the difference between Oracle SQL Developer & Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler? Mathematically speaking – two words. But as far as the actual modeling features go, there’s no difference between the two applications. The same ‘code’ or features as it pertains to data modeling and design are in both tools. However, in SQL Developer you have all of the OTHER features fighting for real estate in the UI. So I have a general rule of thumb – if you spend MOST of your time in the database, use SQL Developer. And if you spend most of your time in the data model, run the separate and dedicated program, Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler. Here’s a couple of screenshots to drive home the UI point: Oracle SQL Developer Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler running INSIDE of SQL Developer. Notice how the Modeler menu items fold under the file menu? Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler Easier to navigate and manipulate your models with the stand alone modeler. Just no worksheet to run your ad-hoc queries, etc. Don’t forget you can disable the Data Modeler inside of SQL Developer via the Extensions preference page. How can I model my table partitions? Partitioning is defined via the Physical model. So after you have finished your relational model, you need to generate a physical model. Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler Physical Model and Partitioning Open the properties for your physical model table. Enable the ‘partitioned’ property. Once you do so, the ‘Partitioning’ page will activate. Lots and lots of partitioning support and options here But what about Interval Partitioning? An extension of range partitioning in 11gR2, we don’t currently support this partitioning scheme in SQL Developer. But we’re working on it! Can SQL Developer ignore column order when comparing models? Yes! After you start a model compare, one of your options is to disregard the order of an attribute or column definition. Tell SQL Developer you don’t care when your column shows up, just as long as it DOES show up. Wow, you got a lot of questions around modeling! Is that normal? Yes! While we appreciate that many folks inherit their applications and associated designs, new applications are being ‘born’ every day. Since both of our tools are free for anyone to design their new Oracle applications with, we attract a fair amount of attention I want to do a Hands On Lab. How do I get your software and instructional guides? Go here. Download VirtualBox. Then download the VB image. Import the appliance. Start it. Connect oracle/oracle on the OEL VM. Click on ‘Start Here’ in the desktop. Follow the instructions. If you need help, ask away! You went too fast in your Tips & Tricks session. Do you have cliff notes? Yes! And you’re SO close to finding them! Just go to my SQL Developer resources page. All of my tips are documented on this blog somewhere. I’ve indexed the most popular ones on the resource page. You can use the Search dialog on the right to find the rest. Or just send me a comment or question, and I’ll do my best to answer them as they come in.

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• Book Review Charlene Li's New Book: Open Leadership

  - by david.talamelli

  A few weeks ago, I was surprised when I looked in our mail box. I had received an Advance Copy of Charlene Li's new book titled "Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead". Charlene sent a tweet a while back asking anyone interested in receiving the book to submit their details. I sent off my details and didn't think I would hear anything back, so it was a pleasant surprise. With that I almost feel bad that it has taken me 3 weeks to read her book. It took this long mainly because it has been hard to fit in some quality reading time for myself with work, the kids, volunteering, etc..... I am happy to report I have finished her book and wanted to run through my initial thoughts with you. I first came across Charlene Li after reading her book "Groundswell" a few years ago, her latest book "Open Leadership" is a follow on from Groundswell and to me it seems like a natural progression from the question "Ok the business landscape is changing, what do we do now?" For me these two books have a different writing style to them. Groundswell from memory spoke about broad social media concepts and adoption and alerted us to some of the changes taking place in the SM landscape. Open Leadership seems to be focussed on taking those broad concepts and finding ways to implement them into your environment. That is breaking broad concepts down into individual action items that can be measured and analysed. As the business world changes Leaders must change their approach and let go of control to more control. One of the things I love reading about is seeing real life examples of how people and organisations are making these things happen. In this book Charlene has collected some great collateral and case studies from companies such as Cisco, Best Buy, The Red Cross and The State Bank of India (as a side-note, I wish now that I submitted my input for the Leaders I work with here at Oracle - there are some great examples here of people who empower their staff). As society becomes more adept at using social media it is inevitable that Leaders must become open with their employees, clients and partners. From the book some of the key points I took away are (I actually took away a lot more from this book, this is just an overview) : 1) Organisations should encourage risk taking. Without being a "hacker", how can we improve ourselves, our processes, our business, etc... The old saying you only fail by not trying applies here. If Leaders create a culture where people are afraid to stick their neck out - how will you innovate? 2) Leaders need to lead by example - if you want to promote an open and transparent business, a Leader needs to exemplify the traits they would like to see out of their employees. 3) The definition of a Leader is changing, open leadership is about being a catalyst to change that uses networks to spread a vision as opposed to traditional leadership that is viewed as a role. 4) There is a cultural and business shift taking place. Information is more wide-spread and is being disseminated faster than any other time in the past. Leaders who are open and transparent will thrive in this new business environment. 5) Leadership is not defined by a title - it is defined by a person's actions. Also anyone can be a Leader or has Leadership potential in them- it is a matter of drawing that out of people. I found this book useful and I also found myself looking at my own actions and the actions of others around me (including my management) to see how open and transparent I am in my work. For me I am glad I read this book as it validated my own thoughts of the changes we are seeing take place. This book has certainly given me some new ideas and helped me push my own boundaries of what I can do. The book has a number of action plans at the end of some of the chapters such as "Conducting you Openness Audit" that I think have helped me take thoughts and ideas and turn them into concrete action items. I have included a link to the introduction of the book here if anyone wants to have a read of it. If anyone else has read this book, it would be great to hear your thoughts/comments/review. Leave your comments below. This article was originally posted on David Talamelli's Blog - David's Journal on Tap

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• SQL SERVER – Advanced Data Quality Services with Melissa Data – Azure Data Market

  - by pinaldave

  There has been much fanfare over the new SQL Server 2012, and especially around its new companion product Data Quality Services (DQS). Among the many new features is the addition of this integrated knowledge-driven product that enables data stewards everywhere to profile, match, and cleanse data. In addition to the homegrown rules that data stewards can design and implement, there are also connectors to third party providers that are hosted in the Azure Datamarket marketplace.  In this review, I leverage SQL Server 2012 Data Quality Services, and proceed to subscribe to a third party data cleansing product through the Datamarket to showcase this unique capability. Crucial Questions For the purposes of the review, I used a database I had in an Excel spreadsheet with name and address information. Upon a cursory inspection, there are miscellaneous problems with these records; some addresses are missing ZIP codes, others missing a city, and some records are slightly misspelled or have unparsed suites. With DQS, I can easily add a knowledge base to help standardize my values, such as for state abbreviations. But how do I know that my address is correct? And if my address is not correct, what should it be corrected to? The answer lies in a third party knowledge base by the acknowledged USPS certified address accuracy experts at Melissa Data. Reference Data Services Within DQS there is a handy feature to actually add reference data from many different third-party Reference Data Services (RDS) vendors. DQS simplifies the processes of cleansing, standardizing, and enriching data through custom rules and through service providers from the Azure Datamarket. A quick jump over to the Datamarket site shows me that there are a handful of providers that offer data directly through Data Quality Services. Upon subscribing to these services, one can attach a DQS domain or composite domain (fields in a record) to a reference data service provider, and begin using it to cleanse, standardize, and enrich that data. Besides what I am looking for (address correction and enrichment), it is possible to subscribe to a host of other services including geocoding, IP address reference, phone checking and enrichment, as well as name parsing, standardization, and genderization.  These capabilities extend the data quality that DQS has natively by quite a bit. For my current address correction review, I needed to first sign up to a reference data provider on the Azure Data Market site. For this example, I used Melissa Data’s Address Check Service. They offer free one-month trials, so if you wish to follow along, or need to add address quality to your own data, I encourage you to sign up with them. Once I subscribed to the desired Reference Data Provider, I navigated my browser to the Account Keys within My Account to view the generated account key, which I then inserted into the DQS Client – Configuration under the Administration area. Step by Step to Guide That was all it took to hook in the subscribed provider -Melissa Data- directly to my DQS Client. The next step was for me to attach and map in my Reference Data from the newly acquired reference data provider, to a domain in my knowledge base. On the DQS Client home screen, I selected “New Knowledge Base” under Knowledge Base Management on the left-hand side of the home screen. Under New Knowledge Base, I typed a Name and description of my new knowledge base, then proceeded to the Domain Management screen. Here I established a series of domains (fields) and then linked them all together as a composite domain (record set). Using the Create Domain button, I created the following domains according to the fields in my incoming data: Name Address Suite City State Zip I added a Suite column in my domain because Melissa Data has the ability to return missing Suites based on last name or company. And that’s a great benefit of using these third party providers, as they have data that the data steward would not normally have access to. The bottom line is, with these third party data providers, I can actually improve my data. Next, I created a composite domain (fulladdress) and added the (field) domains into the composite domain. This essentially groups our address fields together in a record to facilitate the full address cleansing they perform. I then selected my newly created composite domain and under the Reference Data tab, added my third party reference data provider –Melissa Data’s Address Check- and mapped in each domain that I had to the provider’s Schema. Now that my composite domain has been married to the Reference Data service, I can take the newly published knowledge base and create a project to cleanse and enrich my data. My next task was to create a new Data Quality project, mapping in my data source and matching it to the appropriate domain column, and then kick off the verification process. It took just a few minutes with some progress indicators indicating that it was working. When the process concluded, there was a helpful set of tabs that place the response records into categories: suggested; new; invalid; corrected (automatically); and correct. Accepting the suggestions provided by  Melissa Data allowed me to clean up all the records and flag the invalid ones. It is very apparent that DQS makes address data quality simplistic for any IT professional. Final Note As I have shown, DQS makes data quality very easy. Within minutes I was able to set up a data cleansing and enrichment routine within my data quality project, and ensure that my address data was clean, verified, and standardized against real reference data. As reviewed here, it’s easy to see how both SQL Server 2012 and DQS work to take what used to require a highly skilled developer, and empower an average business or database person to consume external services and clean data. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Utility, T SQL, Technology Tagged: DQS

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• SQLAuthority News – Community Tech Days – A SQL Legends in Ahmedabad – December 11, 2010

  - by pinaldave

  Ahmedabad is going to be fortunate city again on December 11. We are going to have SQL Server Legends present at the prestigious event of Community Tech Days in Ahmedabad. The venue details are as following: H K Hall, H K College Campus, Near Handloom House, Opp. Natraj Cinema, Ashram Road, Ahmedabad – 380009 Click here to Registration for the event. Agenda of the event is as following. 10:15am – 10:30am     Welcome – Pinal Dave 10:30am – 11:15am     SQL Tips and Tricks for .NET Developers by Jacob Sebastian 11:15am – 11:30am     Tea Break 11:30am – 12:15pm     Best Database Practice for SharePoint Server by Pinal Dave 12:15pm – 01:00pm     Self Service Business Intelligence by Rushabh Mehta 01:00pm – 02:00pm     Lunch 02:00pm – 02:45pm     Managing your future, Managing your time by Vinod Kumar 02:45pm – 03:30pm     Windows Azure News and Introducing Storage Services by Mahesh Devjibhai Dhola 03:30pm – 03:45pm     Tea Break 03:45pm – 04:30pm     Improve Silverlight application with Threads and MEF by Prabhjot Singh Bakshi 04:30pm – 04:45pm     Thank you – Mahesh Devjibhai Dhola Ahmedabad considers itself extremely fortunate when there are SQL Legends presenting on various subjects in front of community. Here is brief introduction about them in my own words. (Their names are in order of the agenda). 1) Jacob Sebastian (SQL Server MVP) – This person needs no introduction. Every developer and programmer in Ahmedabad and India knows him. He is the one man who is founder of various community-related ideas like SQL Challenges, SQL Quiz and BeyondRelational. He works with me on all the community-related activities; we are extremely good friends. 2) Rushabh Mehta (SQL Server MVP) – If you use SQL Server – you know this man. He is the President of SQL Server of Professional Association (PASS) and one of the leading Business Intelligence (BI) Experts renowned in the world. He has blessed Ahmedabad once before and now doing once again this year. 3) Vinod Kumar (Microsoft Evangelist – SQL Server & BI) – Ahmedabad remembers him very well. During his last visit to Ahmedabad, a fight had almost broke outside the hall amidst the rush to listen him. There were more people standing and listening to him than those who were seated. This is one man Ahmedabad will never forget. 4) and Myself. I will not rate myself in the league of abovementioned experts, but I must say that I am fortunate to have friends like those above. We also have two strong .NET presenters – Mahesh and Prabhjot. During this event, there will be plenty of giveaways, lots of fun, demos and pure technical talk, specifically no marketing and promotion – just pure technical talk. The most interesting part is that all the SQL Legends – Jacob, Rushabh and Vinod are for sure presenting on SQL Server but with a twist. Jacob – He is going to talk about .NET and SQL – Optimization Techniques Rushabh – He is going to talk about SQL and BI – Self Service BI Vinod – He is going to talk about professional development of developers – Managing Time Pinal – Best Practices for SharePoint Database Administrators – SharePoint DBA – I have presented this session earlier. I promise this event is going to be one of the best events held ever. You can read about the earlier event over here. ?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 News, T SQL, Technology

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• Look Inside WebLogic Server Embedded LDAP with an LDAP Explorer

  - by james.bayer

  Today a question came up on our internal WebLogic Server mailing lists about an issue deleting a Group from WebLogic Server.  The group had a special character in the name. The WLS console refused to delete the group with the message a java.net.MalformedURLException and another message saying “Errors must be corrected before proceeding.” as shown below. The group aa:bb is the one with the issue.  Click to enlarge. WebLogic Server includes an embedded LDAP server that can be used for managing users and groups for “reasonably small environments (10,000 or fewer users)”.  For organizations scaling larger or using more high-end features, I recommend looking at one of Oracle’s very popular enterprise directory services products like Oracle Internet Directory or Oracle Directory Server Enterprise Edition.  You can configure multiple authenicators in WebLogic Server so that you can use multiple directories at the same time. I am not sure WebLogic Server supports special characters in group names for the Embedded LDAP server, but in this case both the console and WLST reported the same issue deleting the group with the special character in the name.  Here’s the WLST output: wls:/hotspot_domain/serverConfig/SecurityConfiguration/hotspot_domain/Realms/myrealm/AuthenticationProviders/DefaultAuthenticator> cmo.removeGroup('aa:bb') Traceback (innermost last): File "<console>", line 1, in ? weblogic.security.providers.authentication.LDAPAtnDelegateException: [Security:090296]invalid URL ldap:///ou=people,ou=myrealm,dc=hotspot_domain??sub?(&(objectclass=person)(wlsMemberOf=cn=aa:bb,ou=groups,ou=myrealm,dc=hotspot_domain)) at weblogic.security.providers.authentication.LDAPAtnGroupMembersNameList.advance(LDAPAtnGroupMembersNameList.java:254) at weblogic.security.providers.authentication.LDAPAtnGroupMembersNameList.<init>(LDAPAtnGroupMembersNameList.java:119) at weblogic.security.providers.authentication.LDAPAtnDelegate.listGroupMembers(LDAPAtnDelegate.java:1392) at weblogic.security.providers.authentication.LDAPAtnDelegate.removeGroup(LDAPAtnDelegate.java:1989) at weblogic.security.providers.authentication.DefaultAuthenticatorImpl.removeGroup(DefaultAuthenticatorImpl.java:242) at weblogic.security.providers.authentication.DefaultAuthenticatorMBeanImpl.removeGroup(DefaultAuthenticatorMBeanImpl.java:407) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39) at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597) at weblogic.management.jmx.modelmbean.WLSModelMBean.invoke(WLSModelMBean.java:437) at com.sun.jmx.interceptor.DefaultMBeanServerInterceptor.invoke(DefaultMBeanServerInterceptor.java:836) at com.sun.jmx.mbeanserver.JmxMBeanServer.invoke(JmxMBeanServer.java:761) at weblogic.management.jmx.mbeanserver.WLSMBeanServerInterceptorBase$16.run(WLSMBeanServerInterceptorBase.java:449) at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method) at weblogic.management.jmx.mbeanserver.WLSMBeanServerInterceptorBase.invoke(WLSMBeanServerInterceptorBase.java:447) at weblogic.management.mbeanservers.internal.JMXContextInterceptor.invoke(JMXContextInterceptor.java:263) at weblogic.management.jmx.mbeanserver.WLSMBeanServerInterceptorBase$16.run(WLSMBeanServerInterceptorBase.java:449) at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method) at weblogic.management.jmx.mbeanserver.WLSMBeanServerInterceptorBase.invoke(WLSMBeanServerInterceptorBase.java:447) at weblogic.management.mbeanservers.internal.SecurityInterceptor.invoke(SecurityInterceptor.java:444) at weblogic.management.jmx.mbeanserver.WLSMBeanServer.invoke(WLSMBeanServer.java:323) at weblogic.management.mbeanservers.internal.JMXConnectorSubjectForwarder$11$1.run(JMXConnectorSubjectForwarder.java:663) at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method) at weblogic.management.mbeanservers.internal.JMXConnectorSubjectForwarder$11.run(JMXConnectorSubjectForwarder.java:661) at weblogic.security.acl.internal.AuthenticatedSubject.doAs(AuthenticatedSubject.java:363) at weblogic.management.mbeanservers.internal.JMXConnectorSubjectForwarder.invoke(JMXConnectorSubjectForwarder.java:654) at javax.management.remote.rmi.RMIConnectionImpl.doOperation(RMIConnectionImpl.java:1427) at javax.management.remote.rmi.RMIConnectionImpl.access$200(RMIConnectionImpl.java:72) at javax.management.remote.rmi.RMIConnectionImpl$PrivilegedOperation.run(RMIConnectionImpl.java:1265) at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method) at javax.management.remote.rmi.RMIConnectionImpl.doPrivilegedOperation(RMIConnectionImpl.java:1367) at javax.management.remote.rmi.RMIConnectionImpl.invoke(RMIConnectionImpl.java:788) at javax.management.remote.rmi.RMIConnectionImpl_WLSkel.invoke(Unknown Source) at weblogic.rmi.internal.BasicServerRef.invoke(BasicServerRef.java:667) at weblogic.rmi.internal.BasicServerRef$1.run(BasicServerRef.java:522) at weblogic.security.acl.internal.AuthenticatedSubject.doAs(AuthenticatedSubject.java:363) at weblogic.security.service.SecurityManager.runAs(SecurityManager.java:146) at weblogic.rmi.internal.BasicServerRef.handleRequest(BasicServerRef.java:518) at weblogic.rmi.internal.wls.WLSExecuteRequest.run(WLSExecuteRequest.java:118) at weblogic.work.ExecuteThread.execute(ExecuteThread.java:207) at weblogic.work.ExecuteThread.run(ExecuteThread.java:176) Caused by: java.net.MalformedURLException at netscape.ldap.LDAPUrl.readNextConstruct(LDAPUrl.java:651) at netscape.ldap.LDAPUrl.parseUrl(LDAPUrl.java:277) at netscape.ldap.LDAPUrl.<init>(LDAPUrl.java:114) at weblogic.security.providers.authentication.LDAPAtnGroupMembersNameList.advance(LDAPAtnGroupMembersNameList.java:224) ... 41 more It’s fairly clear that in order to work that the : character needs to be URL encoded to %3A or similar.  But all is not lost, there is another way.  You can configure an LDAP Explorer like JXplorer to WebLogic Server Embedded LDAP and browse/edit the entries. Follow the instructions here, being sure to change the authentication credentials to the Embedded LDAP server to some value you know, as by default they are some unknown value.  You’ll need to reboot the WebLogic Server Admin Server after making this change. Now configure JXplorer to connect as described in the documentation.  I’ve circled the important inputs.  In this example, my domain name is “hotspot_domain” which listens on the localhost listen address and port 7001.  The cn=Admin user name is a constant identifier for the Administrator of the embedded LDAP and that does not change, but you need to know what it is so you can enter it into the tool you use. Once you connect successfully, you can explore the entries and in this case delete the group that is no longer desired.

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• 2010 Collaboration Summit Impressions

  - by Elena Zannoni

  It's a bit late, but there you have it anyway. April 14 to 16 I attended the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit in SFO. I was running two tracks, one on tracing and one on tools. You can see the tracks and the slides here: http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/collaboration-summit/slides I was pretty busy both days, Thursday with a whole day tracing track, Friday with a half day toolchain track. The sessions were well attended, the rooms were full, with people spilling in the hallways. Some new things were presented, like Kernelshark, by Steve Rostedt, a GUI (yes, believe it or not, a GUI) written in GTK. It is very nice, showing a timeline for traced kernel events, and you can zoom in and filter at will. It works on the latest kernels, and it requires some new things/fixes in GTK. I don't recall exactly what version of GTK though. Dominique Toupin from Ericsson presented something about user requirements for tracing. Mostly though about who's who in the embedded world, and eclipse. Masami and Mathieu presented an update on their work. See their slides. The interesting thing to me was of course the new version of uprobes w/o underlying utrace presented by Jim Keniston. At the end of the session we had a discussion about the future of utrace. Roland wasn't there, butTom Tromey (also from RedHat) collected the feedback. Basically we are at a standstill now that utrace has been rejected yet again. There wasn't much advise that anybody could give, except jokingly, we decided that the only way in is to make it a part of perf events. There needs to be another refactoring, but most of all, this "killer app" that would be enabled because of utrace hasn't materialized yet. We think that having a good debugging story on Linux is enough of a killer app, for instance allowing multiple tracers, and not relying on SIGCHLD etc. I think this wasn't completely clear to the kernel community. Trying to achieve debugging via a gdb stub inside the kernel interfacing to utrace and that is controlled via the gdb remote protocol also lost its appeal (thankfully, since the gdb remote protocol is archaic). Somebody would have to be creative in how to submit utrace. It doesn't have to be called utrace (it was really a random choice, for lack of a letter that was not already used in front of the word "trace"). So basically, I think the ideas behind utrace are sound, and the necessity of a new interface is acknowledged. But I believe the integration/submission process with the kernel folks has to restart from scratch, clean slate. We'll see. There are many conferences and meetings coming up in the near future where things can be discussed further. On the second day, Friday, we had the tools talks. It was interesting to observe the more "kernel" oriented people's behavior towards the gcc etc community. The first talk was by Mark Mitchell, about Gcc and its new plugin architecture. After that, Paolo talked about the new C++1x standard, which will be finalized in 2011. Many features are already implemented in the libstdc++ library and gcc and usable today. We had a few minutes (really, the half day track was quite short) where Bradley Kuhn from the Software Freedom Law Center explained the GPLv3 exception for gcc (due to the new gcc plugin architecture and the availability of the intermediate results from the compilation, which is a new thing). I will not try to explain, but basically you cannot take the result of the preprocessing and then use that in your own proprietary compiler. After, we had a talk by Ian Taylor about the new Gold linker. One good thing in that area is that they are trying to make gold the new default linker (for instance Fedora will use gold as the distro linker). However gold is very different from binutils' old linker. It doesn't use a linker script, for instance. The kernel has been linked with gold many times as an exercise (the ground work was done by Kris Van Hees), but this needs to be constantly tested/monitored because the kernel linker script is very complex, and uses esoteric features (Wenji is now monitoring that each kernel RC can be built with gold). It was positive that people are now aware of gold and the need for it to be ported to more architectures. It seems that the porting is very easy, with little arch dependent code. Finally Tom Tromey presented about gdb and the archer project. Archer is a development branch of gdb mostly done by RedHat, where they are focusing on better c++ printing, c++ expression parsing, and plugins. The archer work is merged regularly in the gdb mainline. In general it was a good conference. I did miss most of the first day, because that's when I flew in. But I caught a couple of talks. Nothing earth shattering, except for Google giving each person registered a free Android phone. Yey.

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• Nerdstock 2012: A photo review of Microsoft TechEd North America 2012

  - by The Un-T Guy

  Not only could I not fathom that I would ever be attending a tech event of the magnitude of TechEd, neither could any of my co-workers.  As the least technical person in the history of Information Technology ever, I felt as though I were walking into the belly of the beast, fearing I’d not be allowed out until I could write SSIS packages, program in Visual Basic, or at least arm wrestle a DBA.  Most of my fears were unrealized.   But I made it.  I was here.  I even got to wear the Mark of the Geek neck package with schedule, eyeglass cleaners, name badge (company name obfuscated so they don’t fire me), and a pen.  The name  badge was seemingly the key element, as every vendor in the place wanted to scan it to capture name, email address, and numbers to show their bosses back home.  It also let me eat the food and drink the coffee so that’s a fair trade.   A recurring theme throughout the presentations and vendor demos was “the Cloud” and BYOD (bring your own device).  The below was a common site throughout the week, as attendees from all over the world brought their own devices and were able to (seemingly) seamlessly connect to the Worldwide Innerwebs.  Apparently proof that Microsoft and the event organizers were practicing what they were preaching.   “Cavernous” is one way to describe the downstairs facility itself.  “Freaking cavernous” might be more accurate.  Work sessions were held in classrooms on the second and third floors but the real action was happening downstairs.  Microsoft bookstore, blogger hub (shoutout to Geekswithblogs.net), The Wall (sans Pink Floyd, sadly), couches, recharging stations…   …a game zone with pool and air hockey tables, pinball machines, foosball…   …vintage video games…           …and a even giant chess board.  Looked like this guy was opening with the Kaspersky parry.   The blend of technology and fantasy even went so far as to bring childhood favorites to life.  Assuming, of course, your childhood was pre-video games (like mine) and you were stuck with electric football and Rock ‘em Sock ‘em robots:   And, lest the “combatants” become unruly or – God forbid – afternoon snacks were late, Orange County’s finest was on the scene to keep the peace.  On a high-tech mode of transport, of course.   She wasn’t the only one to think this was a swell way to transition from one concourse to the next.  Given the level of support provided by the entire Orange County Convention Center staff, I knew they had to have some secret.   Here’s one entrance to the vendor zone/”Technical Learning Center.”  Couldn’t help but think of them as the remora attached to the Whale Shark that is Microsoft…   …or perhaps planets orbiting the sun. Microsoft is just that huge and it seemed like every vendor in the industry looks forward to partnering with the tech behemoth.   Aside from the free stuff from the vendors, probably the most popular place in the house was the dining area.  Amazing spreads every day, multiple times a day.  While no attendance numbers were available at press time, literally thousands of attendees were fed, and fed well, every day.  And lest you think my post from earlier in the week exaggerated about the backpacks…   …or that I’m exaggerating about the lunch crowds.  This represents only about between 25-30% of the lunch crowd – it was all my camera could capture at once.  No one went away hungry.   The only thing missing was a a vat of Red Bull but apparently organizers went old school, with probably 100 urns of the original energy drink – coffee – all around the venue.   Of course, following lunch and afternoon sessions, some preferred the even older school method of re-energizing.  There were rumors that Microsoft was serving graham crackers and milk in this area.  But they were only rumors.   Cannot overstate the wonderful service provided by the Orange County Convention Center staff.  Coffee, soft drinks, juice, and water were available always.  Buffet meals were delicious with a wide range of healthy options available, in addition to hundreds (at least) special meal requests supported every day.  Ever tried to keep up with an estimated 9,000 hungry and thirsty IT-ers?  These folks did.  Kudos to all of the staff and many thanks!   And while I occasionally poke fun at the Whale Shark, if nothing else this experience convinced me of one thing:  Microsoft knows how to put on a professional event.  Hundreds of informative, professionally delivered sessions, covering a wide range of topics set at varying levels of expertise (some that even I was able to follow), social activities, vendor partnerships…they brought everything you could ask for to inform, educate, and inspire an entire IT industry.   So as I depart the belly of the beast, I can both take pride in the fact that I survived the week and marvel at the brilliance surrounding me.  The IT industry – or at least the segment associated with Microsoft – is in good, professional hands.  And what won’t fit in their hands can be toted in the Microsoft provided backpacks.  Win-win.   Until New Orleans…

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• Leaks on Wikis: "Corporations...You're Next!" Oracle Desktop Virtualization Can Help.

  - by adam.hawley

  Between all the press coverage on the unauthorized release of 251,287 diplomatic documents and on previous extensive releases of classified documents on the events in Iraq and Afghanistan, one could be forgiven for thinking massive leaks are really an issue for governments, but it is not: It is an issue for corporations as well. In fact, corporations are apparently set to be the next big target for things like Wikileaks. Just the threat of such a release against one corporation recently caused the price of their stock to drop 3% after the leak organization claimed to have 5GB of information from inside the company, with the implication that it might be damaging or embarrassing information. At the moment of this blog anyway, we don't know yet if that is true or how they got the information but how did the diplomatic cable leak happen? For the diplomatic cables, according to press reports, a private in the military, with some appropriate level of security clearance (that is, he apparently had the correct level of security clearance to be accessing the information...he reportedly didn't "hack" his way through anything to get to the documents which might have raised some red flags...), is accused of accessing the material and copying it onto a writeable CD labeled "Lady Gaga" and walking out the door with it. Upload and... Done. In the same article, the accused is quoted as saying "Information should be free. It belongs in the public domain." Now think about all the confidential information in your company or non-profit... from credit card information, to phone records, to customer or donor lists, to corporate strategy documents, product cost information, etc, etc.... And then think about that last quote above from what was a very junior level person in the organization...still feeling comfortable with your ability to control all your information? So what can you do to guard against these types of breaches where there is no outsider (or even insider) intrusion to detect per se, but rather someone with malicious intent is physically walking out the door with data that they are otherwise allowed to access in their daily work? A major first step it to make it physically, logistically much harder to walk away with the information. If the user with malicious intent has no way to copy to removable or moble media (USB sticks, thumb drives, CDs, DVDs, memory cards, or even laptop disk drives) then, as a practical matter it is much more difficult to physically move the information outside the firewall. But how can you control access tightly and reliably and still keep your hundreds or even thousands of users productive in their daily job? Oracle Desktop Virtualization products can help.Oracle's comprehensive suite of desktop virtualization and access products allow your applications and, most importantly, the related data, to stay in the (highly secured) data center while still allowing secure access from just about anywhere your users need to be to be productive.  Users can securely access all the data they need to do their job, whether from work, from home, or on the road and in the field, but fully configurable policies set up centrally by privileged administrators allow you to control whether, for instance, they are allowed to print documents or use USB devices or other removable media.  Centrally set policies can also control not only whether they can download to removable devices, but also whether they can upload information (see StuxNet for why that is important...)In fact, by using Sun Ray Client desktop hardware, which does not contain any disk drives, or removable media drives, even theft of the desktop device itself would not make you vulnerable to data loss, unlike a laptop that can be stolen with hundreds of gigabytes of information on its disk drive.  And for extreme security situations, Sun Ray Clients even come standard with the ability to use fibre optic ethernet networking to each client to prevent the possibility of unauthorized monitoring of network traffic.But even without Sun Ray Client hardware, users can leverage Oracle's Secure Global Desktop software or the Oracle Virtual Desktop Client to securely access server-resident applications, desktop sessions, or full desktop virtual machines without persisting any application data on the desktop or laptop being used to access the information.  And, again, even in this context, the Oracle products allow you to control what gets uploaded, downloaded, or printed for example.Another benefit of Oracle's Desktop Virtualization and access products is the ability to rapidly and easily shut off user access centrally through administrative polices if, for example, an employee changes roles or leaves the company and should no longer have access to the information.Oracle's Desktop Virtualization suite of products can help reduce operating expense and increase user productivity, and those are good reasons alone to consider their use.  But the dynamics of today's world dictate that security is one of the top reasons for implementing a virtual desktop architecture in enterprises.For more information on these products, view the webpages on www.oracle.com and the Oracle Technology Network website.

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• Big Data – Buzz Words: Importance of Relational Database in Big Data World – Day 9 of 21

  - by Pinal Dave

  In yesterday’s blog post we learned what is HDFS. In this article we will take a quick look at the importance of the Relational Database in Big Data world. A Big Question? Here are a few questions I often received since the beginning of the Big Data Series - Does the relational database have no space in the story of the Big Data? Does relational database is no longer relevant as Big Data is evolving? Is relational database not capable to handle Big Data? Is it true that one no longer has to learn about relational data if Big Data is the final destination? Well, every single time when I hear that one person wants to learn about Big Data and is no longer interested in learning about relational database, I find it as a bit far stretched. I am not here to give ambiguous answers of It Depends. I am personally very clear that one who is aspiring to become Big Data Scientist or Big Data Expert they should learn about relational database. NoSQL Movement The reason for the NoSQL Movement in recent time was because of the two important advantages of the NoSQL databases. Performance Flexible Schema In personal experience I have found that when I use NoSQL I have found both of the above listed advantages when I use NoSQL database. There are instances when I found relational database too much restrictive when my data is unstructured as well as they have in the datatype which my Relational Database does not support. It is the same case when I have found that NoSQL solution performing much better than relational databases. I must say that I am a big fan of NoSQL solutions in the recent times but I have also seen occasions and situations where relational database is still perfect fit even though the database is growing increasingly as well have all the symptoms of the big data. Situations in Relational Database Outperforms Adhoc reporting is the one of the most common scenarios where NoSQL is does not have optimal solution. For example reporting queries often needs to aggregate based on the columns which are not indexed as well are built while the report is running, in this kind of scenario NoSQL databases (document database stores, distributed key value stores) database often does not perform well. In the case of the ad-hoc reporting I have often found it is much easier to work with relational databases. SQL is the most popular computer language of all the time. I have been using it for almost over 10 years and I feel that I will be using it for a long time in future. There are plenty of the tools, connectors and awareness of the SQL language in the industry. Pretty much every programming language has a written drivers for the SQL language and most of the developers have learned this language during their school/college time. In many cases, writing query based on SQL is much easier than writing queries in NoSQL supported languages. I believe this is the current situation but in the future this situation can reverse when No SQL query languages are equally popular. ACID (Atomicity Consistency Isolation Durability) – Not all the NoSQL solutions offers ACID compliant language. There are always situations (for example banking transactions, eCommerce shopping carts etc.) where if there is no ACID the operations can be invalid as well database integrity can be at risk. Even though the data volume indeed qualify as a Big Data there are always operations in the application which absolutely needs ACID compliance matured language. The Mixed Bag I have often heard argument that all the big social media sites now a days have moved away from Relational Database. Actually this is not entirely true. While researching about Big Data and Relational Database, I have found that many of the popular social media sites uses Big Data solutions along with Relational Database. Many are using relational databases to deliver the results to end user on the run time and many still uses a relational database as their major backbone. Here are a few examples: Facebook uses MySQL to display the timeline. (Reference Link) Twitter uses MySQL. (Reference Link) Tumblr uses Sharded MySQL (Reference Link) Wikipedia uses MySQL for data storage. (Reference Link) There are many for prominent organizations which are running large scale applications uses relational database along with various Big Data frameworks to satisfy their various business needs. Summary I believe that RDBMS is like a vanilla ice cream. Everybody loves it and everybody has it. NoSQL and other solutions are like chocolate ice cream or custom ice cream – there is a huge base which loves them and wants them but not every ice cream maker can make it just right  for everyone’s taste. No matter how fancy an ice cream store is there is always plain vanilla ice cream available there. Just like the same, there are always cases and situations in the Big Data’s story where traditional relational database is the part of the whole story. In the real world scenarios there will be always the case when there will be need of the relational database concepts and its ideology. It is extremely important to accept relational database as one of the key components of the Big Data instead of treating it as a substandard technology. Ray of Hope – NewSQL In this module we discussed that there are places where we need ACID compliance from our Big Data application and NoSQL will not support that out of box. There is a new termed coined for the application/tool which supports most of the properties of the traditional RDBMS and supports Big Data infrastructure – NewSQL. Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss about NewSQL. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• CQRS &ndash; Questions and Concerns

  - by Dylan Smith

  I’ve been doing a lot of learning on CQRS and Event Sourcing over the last little while and I have a number of questions that I haven’t been able to answer. 1. What is the benefit of CQRS when compared to a typical DDD architecture that uses Event Sourcing and properly captures intent and behavior via verb-based commands? (other than Scalability) 2. When using CQRS what do you do with complex query-based logic? I’m going to elaborate on #1 in this blog post and I’ll do a follow-up post on #2. I watched through Greg Young’s video on the business benefits of CQRS + Event Sourcing and first let me say that I thought it was an excellent presentation that really drives home a lot of the benefits to this approach to architecture (I watched it twice in a row I enjoyed it so much!). But it didn’t answer some of my questions fully (I wish I had been there to ask these of Greg in person!). So let me pick apart some of the points he makes and how they relate to my first question above. I’m completely sold on the idea of event sourcing and have a clear understanding of the benefits that it brings to the table, so I’m not going to question that. But you can use event sourcing without going to a CQRS architecture, so my main question is around the benefits of CQRS + Event Sourcing vs Event Sourcing + Typical DDD architecture Architecture with Event Sourcing + Commands on Left, CQRS on Right Greg talks about how the stereotypical architecture doesn’t support DDD, but is that only because his diagram shows DTO’s coming up from the client. If we use the same diagram but allow the client to send commands doesn’t that remove a lot of the arguments that Greg makes against the stereotypical architecture? We can now introduce verbs into the system. We can capture intent now (storing it still requires event sourcing, but you can implement event sourcing without doing CQRS) We can create a rich domain model (as opposed to an anemic domain model) Scalability is obviously a benefit that CQRS brings to the table, but like Greg says, very few of the systems we create truly need significant scalability Greg talks about the ability to scale your development efforts. He says CQRS allows you to split the system into 3 parts (Client, Domain/Commands, Reads) and assign 3 teams of developers to work on them in parallel; letting you scale your development efforts by 3x with nearly linear gains. But in the stereotypical architecture don’t you already have 2 separate modules that you can split your dev efforts between: The client that sends commands/queries and receives DTO’s, and the Domain which accepts commands/queries, and generates events/DTO’s. If this is true it’s not really a 3x scaling you achieve with CQRS but merely a 1.5x scaling which while great doesn’t sound nearly as dramatic (“I can do it with 10 devs in 12 months – let me hire 5 more and we can have it done in 8 months”). Making the Query side “stupid simple” such that you can assign junior developers (or even outsource it) sounds like a valid benefit, but I have some concerns over what you do with complex query-based logic/behavior. I’m going to go into more detail on this in a follow-up blog post shortly. He also seemed to focus on how “stupid-simple” it is doing queries against the de-normalized data store, but I imagine there is still significant complexity in the event handlers that interpret the events and apply them to the de-normalized tables. It sounds like Greg suggests that because we’re doing CQRS that allows us to apply Event Sourcing when we otherwise wouldn’t be able to (~33:30 in the video). I don’t believe this is true. I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to apply Event Sourcing without separating out the Commands and Queries. The queries would just operate against the domain model instead of the database. But you’d still get the benefits of Event Sourcing. Without CQRS the queries would only be able to operate against the current state rather than the event history, but even in CQRS the domain behaviors can only operate against the current state and I don’t see that being a big limiting factor. If some query needs to operate against something that is not captured by the current state you would just have to update the domain model to capture that information (no different than if that statement were made about a Command under CQRS). Some of the benefits I do see being applicable are that your domain model might end up being simpler/smaller since it only needs to represent the state needed to process commands and not worry about the reads (like the Deactivate Inventory Item and associated comment example that Greg provides). And also commands that can be handled in a Transaction Script style manner by the command handler simply generating events and not touching the domain model. It also makes it easier for your senior developers to focus on the command behavior and ignore the queries, which is usually going to be a better use of their time. And of course scalability. If anybody out there has any thoughts on this and can help educate me further, please either leave a comment or feel free to get in touch with me via email:

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• On Contract Employment

  - by kerry

  I am going to post about something I don’t post about a lot, the business side of development.  Scott at the antipimp does a good job of explaining how contracts work from a business perspective.  I am going to give a view from the ground. First, a little background on myself.  I have recently taken a 6 month contract after about 8 years of fulltime employment.  I have 2 kids, and a stay at home wife.  I took this contract opportunity because I wanted to try it on for size.  I have always wondered whether I would like doing contracts over fulltime employment.  So, in keeping with the theme of this blog I will write this down now so that I may reference it later. ALL jobs are temporary! Right now you may not realize it, most people simply ignore it, but EVERY job is temporary.  Everyone should be planning for life after the money stops coming in.  Sadly, most people do not.  Contracting pushes this issue to the forefront, making you deal with it.  After a month on a contract, I am happy to say that I am saving more than I ever saved in a fulltime position.  Hopefully, I will be ready in case of an extended window of unemployment between contracts. Networking I find it extremely gratifying getting to know people.  It is especially beneficial when moving to a new city.  What better way to go out and meet people in your field than to work a few contracts?  6 months of working beside someone and you get to know them pretty well.  This is one of my favorite aspects. Technical Agility Moving between IS shops takes (or molds you into) a flexible person.  You have to be able to go in and hit the ground running.  This means you need to be able to sit down and start work on a large codebase working in a language that you may or may not have that much experience in.  It is also an excellent way to learn new languages and broaden your technical skill set.  I took my current position to learn Ruby.  A month ago, I had only used it in passing, but now I am using it every day.  It’s a tragedy in this field when people start coding for the joy and love of coding, then become deeply entrenched in their companies methods and technologies that it becomes a just a job. Less Stress I am not talking about the kind of stress you get from a jackass boss.  I am talking about the kind of stress I (or others) experience about planning and future proofing your code.  Not saying I stay up at night worrying whether we have done it right, if that code I wrote today is going to bite me later, but it still creeps around in the dark recesses of my mind.  Careful though, I am not suggesting you write sloppy code; just defer any large architectural or design decisions to the ‘code owners’. Flexible Scheduling It makes me very happy to be able to cut out a few hours early on a Friday (provided the work is done) and start the weekend off early by going to the pool, or taking the kids to the park.  Contracting provides you this opportunity (mileage may vary).  Most of your fulltime brethren will not care, they will be jealous that they’re corporate policy prevents them from doing the same.  However, you must be mindful of situations where this is not appropriate, and don’t over do it.  You are there to work after all. Affirmation of Need Have you ever been stuck in a job where you thought you were underpaid?  Have you ever been in a position where you felt like there was not enough workload for you?  This is not a problem for contractors.  When you start a contract it is understood that you are needed, and the employer knows that you are happy with the terms. Contracting may not be for everyone.  But, if you develop a relationship with a good consulting firm, keep their clients happy, then they will keep you happy.  They want you to work almost as much as you do.  Just be sure and plan financially for any windows of unemployment.

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• Entity Framework v1 &ndash; tips and Tricks Part 3

  - by Rohit Gupta

  General Tips on Entity Framework v1 & Linq to Entities: ToTraceString() If you need to know the underlying SQL that the EF generates for a Linq To Entities query, then use the ToTraceString() method of the ObjectQuery class. (or use LINQPAD) Note that you need to cast the LINQToEntities query to ObjectQuery before calling TotraceString() as follows: 1: string efSQL = ((ObjectQuery)from c in ctx.Contact 2: where c.Address.Any(a => a.CountryRegion == "US") 3: select c.ContactID).ToTraceString(); ================================================================================ MARS or MultipleActiveResultSet When you create a EDM Model (EDMX file) from the database using Visual Studio, it generates a connection string with the same name as the name of the EntityContainer in CSDL. In the ConnectionString so generated it sets the MultipleActiveResultSet attribute to true by default. So if you are running the following query then it streams multiple readers over the same connection: 1: using (BAEntities context = new BAEntities()) 2: { 3: var cons = 4: from con in context.Contacts 5: where con.FirstName == "Jose" 6: select con; 7: foreach (var c in cons) 8: { 9: if (c.AddDate < new System.DateTime(2007, 1, 1)) 10: { 11: c.Addresses.Load(); 12: } 13: } 14: } ================================================================================= Explicitly opening and closing EntityConnection When you call ToList() or foreach on a LINQToEntities query the EF automatically closes the connection after all the records from the query have been consumed. Thus if you need to run many LINQToEntities queries over the same connection then explicitly open and close the connection as follows: 1: using (BAEntities context = new BAEntities()) 2: { 3: context.Connection.Open(); 4: var cons = from con in context.Contacts where con.FirstName == "Jose" 5: select con; 6: var conList = cons.ToList(); 7: var allCustomers = from con in context.Contacts.OfType<Customer>() 8: select con; 9: var allcustList = allCustomers.ToList(); 10: context.Connection.Close(); 11: } ====================================================================== Dispose ObjectContext only if required After you retrieve entities using the ObjectContext and you are not explicitly disposing the ObjectContext then insure that your code does consume all the records from the LinqToEntities query by calling .ToList() or foreach statement, otherwise the the database connection will remain open and will be closed by the garbage collector when it gets to dispose the ObjectContext. Secondly if you are making updates to the entities retrieved using LinqToEntities then insure that you dont inadverdently dispose of the ObjectContext after the entities are retrieved and before calling .SaveChanges() since you need the SAME ObjectContext to keep track of changes made to the Entities (by using ObjectStateEntry objects). So if you do need to explicitly dispose of the ObjectContext do so only after calling SaveChanges() and only if you dont need to change track the entities retrieved any further. ======================================================================= SQL InjectionAttacks under control with EFv1 LinqToEntities and LinqToSQL queries are parameterized before they are sent to the DB hence they are not vulnerable to SQL Injection attacks. EntitySQL may be slightly vulnerable to attacks since it does not use parameterized queries. However since the EntitySQL demands that the query be valid Entity SQL syntax and valid native SQL syntax at the same time. So the only way one can do a SQLInjection Attack is by knowing the SSDL of the EDM Model and be able to write the correct EntitySQL (note one cannot append regular SQL since then the query wont be a valid EntitySQL syntax) and append it to a parameter. ====================================================================== Improving Performance You can convert the EntitySets and AssociationSets in a EDM Model into precompiled Views using the edmgen utility. for e.g. the Customer Entity can be converted into a precompiled view using edmgen and all LinqToEntities query against the contaxt.Customer EntitySet will use the precompiled View instead of the EntitySet itself (the same being true for relationships (EntityReference & EntityCollections of a Entity)). The advantage being that when using precompiled views the performance will be much better. The syntax for generating precompiled views for a existing EF project is : edmgen /mode:ViewGeneration /inssdl:BAModel.ssdl /incsdl:BAModel.csdl /inmsl:BAModel.msl /p:Chap14.csproj Note that this will only generate precompiled views for EntitySets and Associations and not for existing LinqToEntities queries in the project.(for that use CompiledQuery.Compile<>) Secondly if you have a LinqToEntities query that you need to run multiple times, then one should precompile the query using CompiledQuery.Compile method. The CompiledQuery.Compile<> method accepts a lamda expression as a parameter, which denotes the LinqToEntities query  that you need to precompile. The following is a example of a lamda that we can pass into the CompiledQuery.Compile() method 1: Expression<Func<BAEntities, string, IQueryable<Customer>>> expr = (BAEntities ctx1, string loc) => 2: from c in ctx1.Contacts.OfType<Customer>() 3: where c.Reservations.Any(r => r.Trip.Destination.DestinationName == loc) 4: select c; Then we call the Compile Query as follows: 1: var query = CompiledQuery.Compile<BAEntities, string, IQueryable<Customer>>(expr); 2:  3: using (BAEntities ctx = new BAEntities()) 4: { 5: var loc = "Malta"; 6: IQueryable<Customer> custs = query.Invoke(ctx, loc); 7: var custlist = custs.ToList(); 8: foreach (var item in custlist) 9: { 10: Console.WriteLine(item.FullName); 11: } 12: } Note that if you created a ObjectQuery or a Enitity SQL query instead of the LINQToEntities query, you dont need precompilation for e.g. 1: An Example of EntitySQL query : 2: string esql = "SELECT VALUE c from Contacts AS c where c is of(BAGA.Customer) and c.LastName = 'Gupta'"; 3: ObjectQuery<Customer> custs = CreateQuery<Customer>(esql); 1: An Example of ObjectQuery built using ObjectBuilder methods: 2: from c in Contacts.OfType<Customer>().Where("it.LastName == 'Gupta'") 3: select c This is since the Query plan is cached and thus the performance improves a bit, however since the ObjectQuery or EntitySQL query still needs to materialize the results into Entities hence it will take the same amount of performance hit as with LinqToEntities. However note that not ALL EntitySQL based or QueryBuilder based ObjectQuery plans are cached. So if you are in doubt always create a LinqToEntities compiled query and use that instead ============================================================ GetObjectStateEntry Versus GetObjectByKey We can get to the Entity being referenced by the ObjectStateEntry via its Entity property and there are helper methods in the ObjectStateManager (osm.TryGetObjectStateEntry) to get the ObjectStateEntry for a entity (for which we know the EntityKey). Similarly The ObjectContext has helper methods to get an Entity i.e. TryGetObjectByKey(). TryGetObjectByKey() uses GetObjectStateEntry method under the covers to find the object, however One important difference between these 2 methods is that TryGetObjectByKey queries the database if it is unable to find the object in the context, whereas TryGetObjectStateEntry only looks in the context for existing entries. It will not make a trip to the database ============================================================= POCO objects with EFv1: To create POCO objects that can be used with EFv1. We need to implement 3 key interfaces: IEntityWithKey IEntityWithRelationships IEntityWithChangeTracker Implementing IEntityWithKey is not mandatory, but if you dont then we need to explicitly provide values for the EntityKey for various functions (for e.g. the functions needed to implement IEntityWithChangeTracker and IEntityWithRelationships). Implementation of IEntityWithKey involves exposing a property named EntityKey which returns a EntityKey object. Implementation of IEntityWithChangeTracker involves implementing a method named SetChangeTracker since there can be multiple changetrackers (Object Contexts) existing in memory at the same time. 1: public void SetChangeTracker(IEntityChangeTracker changeTracker) 2: { 3: _changeTracker = changeTracker; 4: } Additionally each property in the POCO object needs to notify the changetracker (objContext) that it is updating itself by calling the EntityMemberChanged and EntityMemberChanging methods on the changeTracker. for e.g.: 1: public EntityKey EntityKey 2: { 3: get { return _entityKey; } 4: set 5: { 6: if (_changeTracker != null) 7: { 8: _changeTracker.EntityMemberChanging("EntityKey"); 9: _entityKey = value; 10: _changeTracker.EntityMemberChanged("EntityKey"); 11: } 12: else 13: _entityKey = value; 14: } 15: } 16: ===================== Custom Property ==================================== 17:  18: [EdmScalarPropertyAttribute(IsNullable = false)] 19: public System.DateTime OrderDate 20: { 21: get { return _orderDate; } 22: set 23: { 24: if (_changeTracker != null) 25: { 26: _changeTracker.EntityMemberChanging("OrderDate"); 27: _orderDate = value; 28: _changeTracker.EntityMemberChanged("OrderDate"); 29: } 30: else 31: _orderDate = value; 32: } 33: } Finally you also need to create the EntityState property as follows: 1: public EntityState EntityState 2: { 3: get { return _changeTracker.EntityState; } 4: } The IEntityWithRelationships involves creating a property that returns RelationshipManager object: 1: public RelationshipManager RelationshipManager 2: { 3: get 4: { 5: if (_relManager == null) 6: _relManager = RelationshipManager.Create(this); 7: return _relManager; 8: } 9: } ============================================================ Tip : ProviderManifestToken – change EDMX File to use SQL 2008 instead of SQL 2005 To use with SQL Server 2008, edit the EDMX file (the raw XML) changing the ProviderManifestToken in the SSDL attributes from "2005" to "2008" ============================================================= With EFv1 we cannot use Structs to replace a anonymous Type while doing projections in a LINQ to Entities query. While the same is supported with LINQToSQL, it is not with LinqToEntities. For e.g. the following is not supported with LinqToEntities since only parameterless constructors and initializers are supported in LINQ to Entities. (the same works with LINQToSQL) 1: public struct CompanyInfo 2: { 3: public int ID { get; set; } 4: public string Name { get; set; } 5: } 6: var companies = (from c in dc.Companies 7: where c.CompanyIcon == null 8: select new CompanyInfo { Name = c.CompanyName, ID = c.CompanyId }).ToList(); ;

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• SQLAuthority News – Learning Trip – Traveling to Learn SQL Server

  - by pinaldave

  I am currently traveling to Delhi to learn SQL Server in person from my friend. You can read more details about why am I learning SQL Server.  I have signed up for the course End to End SQL Server Business Intelligence at Koenig Solutions. Yesterday I blogged about my registration experience and today I am going to write about my  experience once I arrived at Delhi. From Ahmedabad to Delhi I stay with my wife and daughter in Bangalore (IT Hub of India), my hometown is Ahmedabad. My parents stay in city nearby Ahmedabad. I decided to spend few days with my folks before I sign up for 3 days of solid learning. I had selected an early morning flight to Delhi. I landed at 8:30 AM in Delhi. As soon as I checked email in my mobile I was really glad that I had received details of my pick up vehicle from Koenig. I walked out of the airport and I noticed that a driver was waiting with a placard with my name and photo associated with it. He was in Koenig uniform so there was no chance to make mistakes. In minutes of landing in Delhi I was in my transport heading to the Koenig Training Center. After the quick introduction driver handed me a bag (to be precise Eco friendly bag). The bag contained following items: My registration form All necessary documents in print which I had received earlier A Printed Book of the course next day INR 1000 (What?) I was glad to receive the bag but I was very confused with the Rs 1000. I decided to figure this out once I reach to the training center. Arriving at Koenig Inn Deluxe Koenig registration fees include all the stay and meals. I had opted for Koenig Inn Deluxe as my stay as it was recommended by my friend as well it was the right economical choice for me. When I reached to my accommodation, they were well aware of my arrival and was immediately led to my spacious room. The room is well equipped with all the amenities (hot water, air condition, coffee table, munching snacks,  and free internet) and the staff is very friendly. I immediately got ready as I had to go to Koenig Training Center to meet Center Head for a quick introduction. Koenig Inn Delux Koenig Training Center The training center is within five minutes of distance from the accommodation. I was lead to center head right away and had a very meaningful conversation with Ms Hema regarding my learning goals. She gave me a quick tour of the training center. I was amazed with the numbers of lab rooms they have in the center. The labs are spacious and give the most needed hand’s on experience to the users. I was led to the lab where I was suppose to learn my class the very next day as well I was provided my trainer’s profile. Mystery of Rs 1000 Well, after all this I have still not forgotten why I was provided Rs 1000 when arrived at the airport. When I asked about that I was told that because many students comes from foreign places and they may not have Indian Currency when they land at airport. This was for their immediate consumption till they arrive at the training center. Later on they can get their currency converted to local currency at Koenig Travel Desk. My curiosity was satisfied but I had not expected this answer. I am amazed at the attention to the details. Koenig Travel Desk When I heard about Koenig Travel Desk, I remembered that I have few friends in Delhi and Gurgaon. I had completed all of the formalities so I had reset of the day on my hand. I requested the travel desk if they can arrange a day cab for me so I can visit my friends in Guragon. Within 10 minutes I was on my way to Gurgaon. Telerik India Office Visit What did I do in Guragaon? I met my friends Abhishek Kant, Dhananjay Kumar and Amit Chowdhary. I visited Telerik India office and we had an excellent conversation on various aspects of technology and community. The Telerik India office is very spacious and Abhishek Kant (Telerik India Country Manager) gave us a quick tour of the office. We had an excellent lunch and dinner. One thing is for sure – the day was well spent. Pinal Dave, Dhananjay Kumar and Abhishek Kant Later evening I returned to my accommodation and decided to read up a few of the topics which I was going to learn next day. In tomorrow’s blog post I will discuss about my learning experience. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Training, T SQL, Technology

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• Agile Testing Days 2012 – Day 1 – The birth of the #unicorn…

  - by Chris George

  Still riding the high from the tutorial day, I arrived at the conference venue eager to get cracking with the days talks. The opening Keynote was “Disciplined Agile Delivery: The Foundation for Scaling Agile” presented by Scott Ambler. The general ideas behind the methodology such as not re-inventing the wheel, and being goal driven, not prescriptive in how you work certainly struck chords with how we are trying to work in my team. Scott made some interesting observations about how scrum is quite prescriptive and is this really agile? I agreed with quite a few of his points on how what works for one team may not work for another. How a team works should be driven by context and reflection, not process and prescription. However was somewhat dubious about some of the statistics he rolled out towards the end. However, out of this keynote was born something that was to transcend this one presentation. During the talk, Scott mentioned on more than one occasion “In the real world”, and at one point made reference to people living in the land of unicorns and rainbows. The challenge was then laid down on twitter for all speakers to include a unicorn in their presentations… and for the most part this happened! It became an identity for this years conference, and I’m sure something that any attendee will always associate with Agile Testing Days 2012! Following this keynote, I attended “Going agile with Automated GUI Testing – Some personal insights” by Jan Zdunek from codecentric on the vendor track. My speciality is test automation, and in particular GUI testing, so this drew me to this talk more than the others. Thankfully, it was made clear from the very start that this was not peddling any particular product (even though it was on the vendor track), and Jan faithfully stuck to that. Most of the content was not new to me, but it was really comforting to hear someone else with very similar experiences to my own. In particular, things like how GUI testing is hard and is not a silver bullet; how record & replay is NOT a good thing to do (which drew a somewhat inflammatory tweet from an automation company when I tweeted that!). Something that I have started hearing around the place, and has certainly been murmuring at work is to push more of the automation coding onto the developers. After all they are the coding experts. I agree with this to a degree, but I personally enjoy coding and find it very rewarding doing so, therefore I’d be reluctant to give it up. I think there are some better alternatives such as pairing with a developer. Lastly, Jan mentioned, almost in passing, that we should consider virtualisation for gui testing for covering configuration combinations. On my project we’ve been running our win32/.NET GUI tests in cloud virtualisation for a couple of years now… I really should write about that! After lunch the second keynote of the day was by Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory,”Myths about Agile Testing, De-Bunked”. It started off well… with the two ladies donning Medusa style head bands whilst they disbanding several myths about agile testing! I got the impression that it was perhaps not as slick as they would have liked, but then Janet was suffering with a very sore throat so kept losing her voice. Nevertheless, the presentation was captivating, and they debunked several myths such as : “Testing is dead”, “Testers must write code”, “Agile teams always deliver faster”. I didn’t take many notes for this because it was being recorded, but unfortunately the recordings have not been posted yet so I’ll write more about this when they are. The TestLab was held during a somewhat free for all time during most of the afternoon. It looked intriguing and proved to be one of the surprising experiences of the conference for me. Run by James Lyndsay and Bart Knaack, it consisted of a number of ‘stations’ that offered different testing problems. I opted for testing a mathematical drawing app call Geogebra, the task being to pair up and exploratory test it. After an allotted time, we discussed issues we’d found and decided if we wanted to continue ‘playing’ to which we all agreed! It was fun! The last track talk of the day was “Developers Exploratory Testing – Raising the bar” by Sigge Birgisson. One of the teams at Red Gate have tried Dev or Team exploratory testing a couple of times, and I was really interested to go to the presentation that prompted that. I was not disappointed! Sigge gave a first class presentation, and not only explained what DET was all about, but also how to go about implementing it. Little tips like calling it a ‘workshop’ rather than ‘testing’ I can really see working! Monday evening saw the presentation of the award for the Most Influential Agile Testing Professional Person go to a much deserved Lisa Crispin. The evening was great, with acrobatics, magic and music. My Takeaway Triple from Day 1:  Some of the cool stuff that was suggested in the GUI Testing talk, we are already doing. I should write about that! Testing is not dead! Perhaps testing will become more of a skill than a specific role, but it is certainly not dead. Team/Developer exploratory testing… seems like a no-brainer assuming you have a team who is willing.  Day 2 – Coming soon…

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