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• New hidden parameters in Oracle 11.2

  - by Mike Dietrich

  We really welcome every external review of our slides. And also recommendations from customers visiting our workshops. So it happened to me more than a week ago that Marco Patzwahl, the owner of MuniqSoft GmbH, had a very lengthy train ride in Germany (as the engine drivers go on strike this week it could have become even worse) and nothing better to do then reviewing our slide set. And he had plenty of recommendations. Besides that he pointed us to something at least I was not aware of and added it to the slides: In patch set 11.2.0.2 a new behaviour for datafile write errors has been implemented. With this release ANY write error to a datafile will cause the instance to abort. Before 11.2.0.2 those errors usually led to an offline datafile if the database operates in archivelog mode (your production database do, don’t they?!) and the datafile does not belong to the SYSTEM tablespace. Internal discussion found this behaviour not up-to-date and alligned with RAC systems and modern storages. Therefore it has been changed and a new underscore parameter got introduced. _DATAFILE_WRITE_ERRORS_CRASH_INSTANCE=TRUE This is the default setting´and the new behaviour beginning with Oracle 11.2.0.2 If you would like to revert to the pre-11.2.0.2 behaviour you’ll have to set in your init.ora/spfile this parameter to false. But keep in mind that there’s a reason why this has been changed. You’ll find more info in MOS Note: 7691270.8 and this topic in the current version of the slides on slide 255. Thanks to Marco for the review!!   And then I received an email from Kurt Van Meerbeeck today. Kurt is pretty well known in the Oracle community. And he’s the owner of jDUL/DUDE, a database unloading tool which bypasses the Oracle database engine and access data direclty from the blocks. Kurt visited the upgrade workshop two weeks ago in Belgium and did highlight to me that since Oracle 11.2.0.1 even though you haven’t set neither SGA_TARGET nor MEMORY_TARGET the database might still do resize operations. Reason why this behaviour has been changed: Prevention of ORA-4031 errors. But on databases with extremly high loads this can cause trouble. Further information can be found in MOS Note:1269139.1 . And the parameter set to TRUE by default is called _MEMORY_IMM_MODE_WITHOUT_AUTOSGA=TRUE This can be found now in the slide set as well on slide number 240. And thanks to Kurt for this information!!

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• Looking for tips on managing complexity with SCM repositories

  - by Philip Regan

  I am a solo developer in my department and I have a lot of individual projects, all created and managed by me. I started using SVN at ProjectLocker via Versions on the Mac a couple years ago when the variety of projects started getting unwieldy. Scenario 1: Now I have a process that is of reasonable complexity it can be broken up into multiple smaller applications and they all share files. In one phase, there is a single shared file—a constants file—that is shared between a Cocoa app and an iPhone app framework. In the second phase, the iPhone app framework will be used to create individual apps of the same ilk—controller classes and what not will all be the same—but with different content in each. The problem that I am running across is that the file in the first phase is in one repository with the application that started it, and the app framework is in a second, separate repository. Scenario 2: I have another application framework that partially relies on code from an open source project. This is all internal, non-commerical work, but again, the application framework is going to be used to create a variety of unique products and processes. So, now I have an internally managed repository and an externally managed one out of my control. I make little changes to the open source code to meet the needs of my framework when there is an update I download, but I never commit back into the external repository (though, now that I think about it, I don't think I'm committing it to mine either. Oops). The Problem I have all of this set up on my production Mac quite nicely, but duplicating and subsequently maintaining that environment on my laptop has been challenging. For Scenario 1, I've thought of merging these two projects together into the same repository because they are, for all intents and purposes inextricably linked. But, Scenario 2, I think I'm stuck just managing files as best I can. The Question I'm wondering if anyone has any tips on how to manage either of these situations, as well as other complex SCM scenarios when it comes to linking various files from various repositories together. My familiarity with SVN only comes from my work with Versions. It's been great, but I'm a little out of my depth here.

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

  - by Phil

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

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• User connection management in Reporting Services configuration

  - by Testas

  IT professionals will use Reporting Services Configuration Manager to perform post installation tasks for SQL Server Reporting Services. Introduced in SQL Server 2005, Reporting Services Configuration Manager provides an intuitive interface to perform tasks including specifying the report server database, report manager url, and indeed one of the first post installation tasks that should be performed is backing up the encryption keys that are used to protect the sensitive information within the rdl files.  Many of the options that are selected within Reporting Services Configuration Manager are written to a number of configuration files including the rsreportserver.config file located in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\Report Server InstanceName\Reporting Services\ReportServer folder.When opening this file you will notice that there are more configuration settings within the rsreportserver.config file than is available through the Reporting Services Configuration Manager Interface. As a result there are additional configuration options that can be defined within this file.  A customer was having a problem performing stress tests against a new Report Server that would be going live for an enterprise reporting system. One aspect of the stress test was to fire 50 connections from a single user account. When performing the stress test an error described that the maximum active request had been exceeded. Within the rsreportserver.config, there is a key that is added to the file:  <Add Key=”MaxActiveReqForOneUser” Value=”20”/>  Changing the value from 20 to 50 accommodated the needs of the stress test, however, a wider question should be asked pertaining to this setting when implementing Reporting Services to a production environment. Within an intranet environment, the default setting is appropriate when network bandwidth is high, users are known and demand for reports is particularly high from a group of users.  However, when deploying a Reporting Server solution to an extranet, or the internet, you may want to consider reducing this setting to reduce to scope of connections that can be acquired by a single user and placing unnecessary pressure on the report server. I do hope that Reporting Services Configuration Manager evolves to include an advanced page that includes an intuitive interface to change configuration settings such as the MaxActiveReqForOneUser, and also configure rendering and data extensions and define secure connection levels to the report server. All these options can be configured within the rsreportserver.config file, and these are setting that customers would like to see in Reporting Services Configuration Manager in the future.   If you think that the SQL community would benefit from this addition, you can vote on it at Microsoft Connect  https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/565575/extending-reporting-services-configuration-manager-rscm    

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• How important is knowing functionality before coding?

  - by minusSeven

  I work for a software development company where the development work have been off shored to us. The on shore team handle the support and talk directly to the clients. We never talk to the clients directly we just talk people from the on shore team who talk directly to the clients. When requirements come, on shore team talk to the clients and make requirement documents and informs us. We make design documents after studying the requirements (we follow traditional waterfall model ). But there is one problem in the whole process: nobody in the either off-shore or on-shore understand the functionality of the application completely. We just know its a big complex web app handling complex order processing, catalog management, campaign management and other activities. We struggle with the design document as the requirements would not be clear. It then goes into a series of questions/answers back and forth between the on shore team,off shore team and clients. We would often be told to understand functionality from the code. But that's usually not feasible as the code base is huge and even understanding a simple menu item take days if not weeks. We tried telling the clients to give us knowledge transfer about the application but to no avail. Our manager would often tell us to start coding even if the design document is not complete or requirements not clear. We would start by coding part of the requirement that seems clear and wait for the rest. This usually would delay the deployment by a month. In extreme cases we would have very low errors in the development and production but the clients would say that's not what they asked. That would start a blame game and a series of change requests and we would end up developing something very different. My question is how would you do development work if you don't know the functionality of the app fully? UPDATE About development methodology it isn't really my choice and I am not my team's lead It is the way it began. I tried to tell people about the advantages of agile but to no avail. Besides I don't think my team has the necessary mindset to work in AGILE environment.

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• Happy New Year! Upcoming Events in January 2011

  - by mandy.ho

  Oracle Database kicks off the New Year at the following events during the month of January. Hope to see you there and please send in your pictures and feedback! Jan 20, 2011 - San Francisco, CA LinkShare Symposium West 2011 Oracle is a proud Gold Sponsor at the LinkShare Symposium West 2011 January 20 in San Francisco, California. Year after year LinkShare has been bringing their network the opportunity to come to life. At the LinkShare Symposium online performance marketing leaders meet to optimize face-to-face during a full day of networking. Learn more by attending Oracle Breakout Session, "Omni - Channel Retailing, What is possible now?" on Thursday, January 20, 11:15 a.m. - 12:00 noon, Grand Ballroom. http://eventreg.oracle.com/webapps/events/ns/EventsDetail.jsp?p_eventId=128306&src=6954634&src=6954634&Act=397 Jan 24, 2011 - Cincinnati, OH Greater Cincinnati Oracle User Group Meeting "Tom Kyte Day" - Featuring a day of sessions presented by Senior Technical Architect, Tom Kyte. Sessions include "Top 10, no 11, new features of Oracle Database 11g Release 2" and "What do I really need to know when upgrading", plus more. http://www.gcoug.org/ Jan 25, 2011 - Vancouver, British Columbia Oracle Security Solutions Forum Featuring a Special Keynote Presentation from Tom Kyte - Complete Database Security Join us at this half-day event; Oracle Database Security Solutions: Complete Information Security. Learn how Oracle Database Security solutions help you: • Prevent external threats like SQL injection attacks from reaching your databases • Transparently encrypt application data without application changes • Prevent privileged database users and administrators from accessing data • Use native database auditing to monitor and report on database activity • Mask production data for safe use in nonproduction environments http://eventreg.oracle.com/webapps/events/ns/EventsDetail.jsp?p_eventId=126974&src=6958351&src=6958351&Act=97 Jan 26, 2011 - Halifax, Nova Scotia Oracle Database Security Technology Day Exclusive Seminar on Complete Information Security with Oracle Database 11g The amount of digital data within organizations is growing at unprecedented rates, as is the value of that data and the challenges of safeguarding it. Yet most IT security programs fail to address database security--specifically, insecure applications and privileged users. So how can you protect your mission-critical information? Avoid risky third-party solutions? Defend against security breaches and compliance violations? And resist costly new infrastructure investments? Join us at this half-day seminar, Oracle Database Security Solutions: Complete Information Security, to find out http://eventreg.oracle.com/webapps/events/ns/EventsDetail.jsp?p_eventId=126269&src=6958351&src=6958351&Act=93

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• Should CSS be listed on your resume under Languages?

  - by Sandeepan Nath

  I have some doubts like Whether CSS should be put under Languages or not? Although Wikipedia says Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language ... But do they write CSS under the languages section of the resume, along with PHP, etc? Similarly what about HTML? I have some doubt and I don't want to sound like someone who is not aware of the trends. Just to give an example, currently I have the following languages,frameworks, technologies, etc. listed under the "Technical Expertise" section of my resume - Technical Expertise * Languages - Proficient - PHP 5, Javascript, HTML ?*,CSS ?*,Sass ?*. Beginner - Linux Bash. * Databases - MySQL 5. * Technologies - AJAX. * Frameworks/Libraries - Symfony, jQuery. * CMSes - Wordpress. Although my domain is Web-development/design, I welcome domain-agnostic answers which can provide some generic ideas/reasoning. I have seen, a lot of people messing up these sections (even more serious than my doubts :) ), putting things under wrong sub-headings and thus putting a big question mark on their understanding of those things. I don't know much about XML, Comet Technology etc. Considering those are included too, What things should be put under Languages? E.g. Should CSS be put under Languages? Please give some reasoning to support your views. Where should the others (XML, Comet, cURL etc. ) be put? I welcome some examples of how you put it. Or do you have an additional Keywords section where you write all the unsortables ? Considering a set of standards like W3C standards, etc. do you have a standards sub-heading? I guess I have put the contents of other sections Okay. But do let me know about your ideas and reasoning. After all, I understand there may not be a single answer to this, but let's see what is the trend. Thanks Updates Further, do you mention design patters you have used? Web Services etc.? Where do you mention SOAP, XML etc...

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• Why learn Flash Builder 4 (Flex) when I can just use Flash Professional?

  - by Jason McKenna

  I want to learn Flash Builder 4 (Flex) because I see so many jobs requesting experience with it. I also just like knowing stuff. I am also very interested in focusing on RIA development now. BUT... can anyone tell me CLEARLY why the heck I would ever use FLEX over Flash Pro? It is a time investment, so is it worth it? All I read are misguided posts about how Flash Pro is for games and banner ads, and Flex is for programmers and RIAs blah blah... this simply isn't so from my 9 years of contracting experience. I'm 99.9% certain that I can build anything a flex developer can build, but using Flash Pro. I can build powerful AS3-driven apps for the desktop, mobile device, or browser, and I can link to databases with XML and I can import text files and communicate with ColdFusion and everything. The advantage with Flash Pro is that I can also easily and clearly animate transitions and build custom elements that look the way I want/need them to look for my specific client. Why would I want to use a bunch of pre-built components that drive my file sizes to the moon? Who is happy with a drag-n-drop button? Is Flex just a thing made for programmer people with no artistic inclination? What is the advantage of using it? It takes me back to Visual Basic class. Seems like a pain to have to use multiple tools to import crap from Flash Pro into Flex and yada yada... why when I can do it all nicely in Flash Pro to begin with. Am I clueless, or missing some major piece of the puzzle? Thanks for any clarity. PS, I couldn't care less about the code editors. It ain't that bad people. They make it out like the thing doesn't even respond to keyboard input or something. Does everything I need it do anyways. Please help out here. If I just don't need to learn it, I don't want to waste the time.

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• Using lookahead assertions in regular expressions

  - by Greg Jackson

  I use regular expressions on a daily basis, as my daily work is 90% in Perl (legacy codebase, but that's a different issue). Despite this, I still find lookahead and lookbehind to be terribly confusing and often unreadable. Right now, if I were to get a code review with a lookahead or lookbehind, I would immediately send it back to see if the problem can be solved by using multiple regular expressions or a different approach. The following are the main reasons I tend not to like them: They can be terribly unreadable. Lookahead assertions, for example, start from the beginning of the string no matter where they are placed. That, among other things, can cause some very "interesting" and non-obvious behaviors. It used to be the case that many languages didn't support lookahead/lookbehind (or supported them as "experimental features"). This isn't the case quite as much, but there's still always the question as to how well it's supported. Quite frankly, they feel like a dirty hack. Regexps often already are, but they can also be quite elegant, and have gained widespread acceptance. I've gotten by without any need for them at all... sometimes I think that they're extraneous. Now, I'll freely admit that especially the last two reasons aren't really good ones, but I felt that I should enumerate what goes through my mind when I see one. I'm more than willing to change my mind about them, but I feel that they violate some of my core tenets of programming, including: Code should be as readable as possible without sacrificing functionality -- this may include doing something in a less efficient, but clearer was as long as the difference is negligible or unimportant to the application as a whole. Code should be maintainable -- if another programmer comes along to fix my code, non-obvious behavior can hide bugs or make functional code appear buggy (see readability) "The right tool for the right job" -- I'm sure you can come up with contrived examples that could use lookahead, but I've never come across something that really needs them in my real-world development work. Is there anything that they're really the best tool for, as opposed to, say, multiple regexps (or, alternatively, are they the best tool for most cases they're used for today). My question is this: Is it good practice to use lookahead/lookbehind in regular expressions, or are they simply a hack that have found their way into modern production code? I'd be perfectly happy to be convinced that I'm wrong about this, and simple examples are useful for examples or illustration, but by themselves, won't be enough to convince me.

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• Bay Area Coherence Special Interest Group Next Meeting July 21, 2011

  - by csoto

  Date: Thursday, July 21, 2011 Time: 4:30pm - 8:15pm ET (note that Parking at 475 Sansome Closes at 8:30pm) Where: Oracle Office, 475 Sansome Street, San Francisco, CA Google Map We will be providing snacks and beverages. Register! - Registration is required for building security. Presentation Line Up:? 5:10pm - Batch Processing Using Coherence in Oracle Group Policy Administration - Paul Cleary, Oracle Oracle Insurance Policy Administration (OIPA) is a flexible, rules-based policy administration solution that provides full record keeping for all policy lifecycle transactions. One component of OIPA is Cycle processing, which is the batch processing of pending insurance transactions. This presentation introduces OIPA and Cycle processing, describing the unique challenges of processing a high volume of transactions within strict time windows. It then reviews how OIPA uses Oracle Coherence and the Processing Pattern to meet these challenges, describing implementation specifics that highlight the simplicity and robustness of the Processing Pattern. 6:10pm - Secure, Optimize, and Load Balance Coherence with F5 - Chris Akker, F5 F5 Networks, Inc., the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, helps the world’s largest enterprises and service providers realize the full value of virtualization, cloud computing, and on-demand IT. Recently, F5 and Oracle partnered to deliver a novel solution that integrates Oracle Coherence 3.7 with F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM). This session will introduce F5 and how you can leverage BIG-IP LTM to secure, optimize, and load balance application traffic generated from Coherence*Extend clients across any number of servers in a cluster and to hardware-accelerate CPU-intensive SSL encryption. 7:10pm - Using Oracle Coherence to Enable Database Partitioning and DC Level Fault Tolerance - Alexei Ragozin, Independent Consultant and Brian Oliver, Oracle Partitioning is a very powerful technique for scaling database centric applications. One tricky part of partitioned architecture is routing of requests to the right database. The routing layer (routing table) should know the right database instance for each attribute which may be used for routing (e.g. account id, login, email, etc): it should be fast, it should fault tolerant and it should scale. All the above makes Oracle Coherence a natural choice for implementing such routing tables in partitioned architectures. This presentation will cover synchronization of the grid with multiple databases, conflict resolution, cross cluster replication and other aspects related to implementing robust partitioned architecture. Additional Info:?? - Download Past Presentations: The presentations from the previous meetings of the BACSIG are available for download here. Click on the presentation titles to download the PDF files. - Join the Coherence online community on our Oracle Coherence Users Group on LinkedIn. - Contact BACSIG with any comments, questions, presentation proposals and content suggestions.

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• Essbase 11.1.2 - AgtSvrConnections Essbase Configuration Setting

  - by Ann Donahue

  AgtSvrConnections is a documented Essbase configuration setting used in conjunction with the AgentThreads and ServerThreads settings. Basically, when a user logs into Essbase, the AgentThreads connects to the ESSBASE process then the AgtSvrConnections will connect the ESSBASE process to the ESSSVR application process which then the ServerThreads are used for end user activities. In Essbase 11.1.2, the default value of the AgtSvrConnections setting was changed to 5. In previous Essbase releases, the AgtSvrConnections setting default value is 1. It is recommended that tuning the AgtSvrConnections settings be done incrementally by 1 or 2 maximum and based on the number of concurrent Set Active/Clear Active calls. In the Essbase DBA Guide and Technical Reference, the maximum setting recommended is to not exceed what is set for AgentThreads, however, we have found that most customers do not need to exceed a setting of 10. In general, it is ok to set AgtSvrConnections close to the AgentThreads setting, however, there have been customers that needed an AgentThread setting greater than 10 and we have found that the AgtSvrConnections setting higher than 5-10 could have a negative impact on Essbase due to too many TCP ports used unnecessarily. As with all Essbase.cfg settings, it is best to set values to what is needed based on process load and not arbitrarily set to high values. In order to monitor and tune the AgtSvrConnections setting, monitor the application log for logins and Set Active/Clear Active messages. If there are a lot of logins and Set Active/Clear Active messages happening in a short period of time making it appear that the login is taking longer, incrementally increase the AgtSvrConnections setting by 1 or 2, which can then help with login speed. The login performance tolerance is different from one customer environment to another since there are other factors that can impact this performance i.e. network latency. What is happening in Essbase when a user logs in: ESSBASE issues a Set Active to the ESSSVR process. Each application has its own ESSSVR process. Set Active then calls MultipleAsyncLogout and waits on the pipe connection. MultipleAsyncLogout goes back to ESSBASE. ESSBASE then needs to send the logout back to the ESSSVR process. When the AgtSvrConnections setting needs to be increased from the default of 5, it is because Essbase cannot find a connection since the previous connections are used by ESSBASE-ESSSVR. In this example, we may want to increase AgtSvrConnections from 5 to 7 to improve the login performance. Again, it is best to set Essbase settings to what is needed based on process load and not arbitrarily set to high values. In general, stress or performance testing environments using automated tools may need higher than normal settings. This is because automated processes run at high speeds for logging in and logging out. Typically, in a real life production environment, the settings are much closer to default values.

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• VirtualBox image SOA Suite &amp; BPM Suite 11.1.1.6.0 & Your feedback?

  - by JuergenKress

  The integration PM team is very pleased to announce the release of a new version of our pre-configured SOA/BPM VirtualBox image for testing and evaluation. This VirtualBox appliance contains a fully configured, ready-to-use SOA/BPM/Webcenter 11.1.1.6.0 installation. All you need is to install Oracle VM VirtualBox on your desktop/laptop and import the SOA/BPM appliance and you are ready to try out SOA Suite and BPM Suite -- no installation and configuration required! The following software is installed in this VritualBox image: Oracle Enterprise Linux (64-bit) EL 5 Update 5 Oracle XE Database 11.2.0 Oracle SOA Suite 11.1.1.6.0 (includes Service Bus) Oracle BPM Suite 11.1.1.6.0 Oracle Webcenter Content (Enterprise Content Management) 11.1.1.6.0 Oracle Webcenter Suite 11.1.1.6.0 Oracle JDeveloper 11.1.1.6.0 JRockit R28.2.0-79-146777-1.6.0_29s Sun Java SDK 1.6.0_29-b11 If you want to try it out, please go to the Pre-built Virtual Machine for SOA Suite and BPM Suite 11g OTN page for detailed instructions on downloading and importing the VirtualBox image. Jon Petter Hjulstad published the first impression at his blog Twitter & LinkedIn We have been waiting for the new VirtualBox Image for a long time, and finally it is here. The appliance has improved in many ways since last release, so it has been worth waiting for. Both the appliance itself and the documentation is excellent. It is evident that Oracle has listened to feedback on the previous release, and I think the developer VMs are useful. Especially the adoption of new patchsets and versions (ex when 12c will be available) will gain a lot from quick getting hands-on experiences. This VirtualBox appliance is a multipurpose image which can be used in different domain configurations. The image has a number of pre-configured domains that you can use depending on your need. The image can be set up so that it requires use of as few resources as possible, you can for instance easily disable B2B if you do not need it, or you can shut down the desktop console and save 600MB. It is important to say that this image is not for production purposes. Read the full article SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit  www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix ForumTechnorati Tags: SOA Suite Image,VirtualBox,BPM suite Image,SOA Specialization award,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,BPM Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• Installing MOSS 2007 on Windows 2008 R2

  - by Manesh Karunakaran

  When you try to install MOSS 2007 on Windows 2008 R2, if you are using an installation media that is older than SP2, you would get the following error, saying that “This program is blocked due to compatibility issues”    All is not lost though, all you need to do is to slip stream the SP2 updates to the MOSS 2007 Setup. Here’s a nice how to on how to do that. http://blogs.technet.com/seanearp/archive/2009/05/20/slipstreaming-sp2-into-sharepoint-server-2007.aspx Once you slipstream the SP2 updates, you would be able to continue with the installation with out the above error. HTH.   You may already read from blogs about April Cumulative Update for separate components in SharePoint. Now, the server-packages (also known as “Uber” packages) of April Cumulative Update for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 are ready for download. Download Information Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 April cumulative update package http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=968850 Office SharePoint Server 2007 April cumulative update package http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=968851 Detail Description Description of the Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 April cumulative update package http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968850 Description of the Office SharePoint Server 2007 April cumulative update package http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968851 Installation Recommendation for a fresh SharePoint Server To keep all files in a SharePoint installation up-to-date, the following sequence is recommended. Service Pack 2 for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 2 for Office SharePoint Server 2007 April Cumulative Update package for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 April Cumulative Update package for Office SharePoint Server 2007 Please note: Start from April Cumulative Update, the packages will no longer install on a farm without a service pack installed. You must have installed either Service Pack 1 (SP1) or SP2 prior to the installation of the cumulative updates. After applying the preceding updates, run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard or “psconfig –cmd upgrade –inplace b2b -wait” in command line. This needs to be done on every server in the farm with SharePoint installed.  The version of content databases should be 12.0.6504.5000 after successfully applying these updates. For more in-depth guidance for the update process, we recommend that customers refer to the following articles. These articles provide a correct way to deploy updates, identify known issues (and resolutions), and provide information about creating slipstream builds. Deploy software updates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288269.aspx Deploy software updates for Office SharePoint Server 2007 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263467.aspx Create an installation source that includes software updates (Windows SharePoint Services 3.0) http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc287882.aspx Create an installation source that includes software updates (Office SharePoint Server 2007) http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc261890.aspx

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• What is new in Oracle SOA Suite 11g R1 PS6? by Shanny Anoep

  - by JuergenKress

  Oracle has released a new version 11.1.1.7.0 for their Oracle Fusion Middleware product line. This version includes Patch Set #6 (PS6) for Oracle SOA Suite 11g R1, with a big list of improvements and fixes for each component in that suite. In this post we will highlight some of the interesting updates with regards to troubleshooting, performance, reliability and scalability. Infrastructure/Purging scripts Database growth is a common problem for large-scale Oracle SOA Suite deployments. Oracle already provides multiple purging strategies for the SOA Suite runtime database. This patch set includes two new scripts for purging most of the runtime data: Table Recreation Script (TRS): This script can be used to reclaim as much database space as possible, while still retaining the open instances. It can be used as a corrective action for databases that grew excessively, for example when purging was not performed at all. This should be used as a single corrective action only; the script does not replace the normal purging scripts. Truncate script: Remove all records from the SOA Suite runtime tables without dropping the tables. This script can be used for cloning SOA Suite environments without copying the instance data, or for recreating test scenarios by cleaning all the runtime data. The Oracle SOA Suite Administrator's guide contains a table with the available purging strategies. Diagnostic dumps Using WLST you could already dump diagnostic information about various components of the SOA Suite. This version adds support to retrieve more information on BPEL and Adapters from the command-line. Diagnostic dumps for BPEL New diagnostic dumps are available for BPEL to get information on thread pools, average processing time for BPEL components, and average waiting times for asynchronous instances. This information can be very useful for performance analysis or troubleshooting. With WLST this information can be retrieved from the command-line and included for monitoring or reporting. Read the full article here. SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Wiki Mix Forum Technorati Tags: SOA Suite PS6,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• Great opportunity to try Windows Azure over the next 7 days if you are a UK developer &ndash; act to

  - by Eric Nelson

  Are you a UK based developer who has been put off from trying out the Windows Azure Platform? Were you concerned that you needed to hand over credit card details even to use the introductory offer? Or concerned about how many charges you might run up as you played with “elastic computing”. Then we might have just what you need. 7 Days of access to the Windows Azure Platform – for FREE (expires June 6th 2010) If you are accepted, you will be given a Windows Azure Platfom subscription that will enable you to create Windows Azure hosted services and storage accounts, SQL Azure databases and AppFabric services without any fear of being charged between now and Sunday the 6th of June 2010. No credit card is required. Important: At the end of Sunday your subscription and all your code and data you have uploaded will be deleted. It is your responsibility to keep local copies of your code and data. Apply now To apply for this offer you need to: email ukdev AT microsoft.com with a subject line that starts “UKAZURETRAIL:” (This must  be present) In the email you need to demonstrate you are UK based (.uk email alias or address or… be creative) And you must include 30 to 100 words explaining What your interest is in the Windows Azure Platform and Cloud Computing What you would use the 7 days to explore Some notes (please read!): We have a limited number of these offers to give away on a first come, first served basis (subject to meeting the above criteria). We plan to process all request asap – but there is a UK bank holiday weekend looming. We will do our best to process all by Tues afternoon (which would still give you 5 days of access) There will be no specific support for this offer. We will not be processing any requests that arrive after Tuesday 1st. In case you were wondering, there is no equivalent offer for developer outside of the UK. This offer is a direct result of UK based training we are currently doing which has some spare Azure capacity which we wanted to make best use of. Sorry in advance if you based outside of the UK. Related Links: If you are UK based, you should also join the UK Windows Azure Platform community http://ukazure.ning.com Microsoft UK Windows Azure Platform page

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• Big Data – Buzz Words: What is NewSQL – Day 10 of 21

  - by Pinal Dave

  In yesterday’s blog post we learned the importance of the relational database. In this article we will take a quick look at the what is NewSQL. What is NewSQL? NewSQL stands for new scalable and high performance SQL Database vendors. The products sold by NewSQL vendors are horizontally scalable. NewSQL is not kind of databases but it is about vendors who supports emerging data products with relational database properties (like ACID, Transaction etc.) along with high performance. Products from NewSQL vendors usually follow in memory data for speedy access as well are available immediate scalability. NewSQL term was coined by 451 groups analyst Matthew Aslett in this particular blog post. On the definition of NewSQL, Aslett writes: “NewSQL” is our shorthand for the various new scalable/high performance SQL database vendors. We have previously referred to these products as ‘ScalableSQL‘ to differentiate them from the incumbent relational database products. Since this implies horizontal scalability, which is not necessarily a feature of all the products, we adopted the term ‘NewSQL’ in the new report. And to clarify, like NoSQL, NewSQL is not to be taken too literally: the new thing about the NewSQL vendors is the vendor, not the SQL. In other words - NewSQL incorporates the concepts and principles of Structured Query Language (SQL) and NoSQL languages. It combines reliability of SQL with the speed and performance of NoSQL. Categories of NewSQL There are three major categories of the NewSQL New Architecture – In this framework each node owns a subset of the data and queries are split into smaller query to sent to nodes to process the data. E.g. NuoDB, Clustrix, VoltDB MySQL Engines – Highly Optimized storage engine for SQL with the interface of MySQ Lare the example of such category. E.g. InnoDB, Akiban Transparent Sharding – This system automatically split database across multiple nodes. E.g. Scalearc  Summary In simple words – NewSQL is kind of database following relational database principals and provides scalability like NoSQL. Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss about the Role of Cloud Computing in Big Data. 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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• Database Mirroring – deprecated

  - by fatherjack

  Do you use mirroring on any of your databases? Do you use mirroring on SQL Server Standard Edition? I do, as a way of having a stand-by server ready to take over if there is a problem with the live server so that business can continue despite whatever disaster may strike at our primary server location. In my experience it has been a great solution for us as it is simple to implement, reliable and predictable. Mirroring has been around since SQL Server 2005 sp1 but with the release of SQL Server 2012 mirroring has now been placed on the deprecation list. That’s right, Microsoft are removing this feature from SQL Server. SQL Server 2012 had lots of improvements and new features around this sort of technology – the High Availability, Disaster recovery and Always On features described in detail here by Brent Ozar and  Microsoft’s own Customer Service and Support SQL Server Engineers . Now the bad news, the HADRON features are pretty much all wrapped up in the Enterprise Edition of SQL Server 2012. This is going to be a big issue for people, like me, who are only on Standard Edition of earlier versions mostly due to our requirements and the budget (or lack thereof) required for Enterprise Edition licenses. No mirroring in Standard Edition means no upgrade. Don’t Panic. There are two stages of deprecation and they dont happen fast. The first stage – Deprecation Announcement- means that Microsoft have decided that there is a limited future for a particular feature and this is your cue that new projects and developments should not be implemented on this technology as it will cease to exist in the future. This is where mirroring currently stands. You have time to consider your options and start work on planning how you will move away from using this feature. This can be 2 or 3 versions of SQL Server, possibly more. The next stage is Deprecation Final Support - this is where you are on your last chance, When you see this then the next version of SQL Server will not have this feature in it so you need to implement your plans to move to an alternative solution. While these two phases are taking place Microsoft are open to feedback on how people use their products and if enough people make the case for mirroring (or an equivalent technology) to be in the Standard Edition then they may make changes rather than lose customers or have customers cease upgrading in order to keep the functionality they need. Denny Cherry (@MrDenny) has published an article on this same topic here with more detail than me so I wont go over old ground. All I will say is that you should read his article now and then follow the link to his own site where he is collecting peoples information on how they use mirroring in Standard Edition so that our voice can be put to Microsoft.  

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• Code review recommendations and Code Smells

  - by Michael Freidgeim

  Some time ago Twitter told that I am similar to Boris Lipschitz . Indeed he is also .Net programmer from Russia living in Australia. I‘ve read his list of Code Review points and found them quite comprehensive. A few points  were not clear for me, and it forced me for a further reading.In particular the statement “Exception should not be used to return a status or an error code.” wasn’t fully clear for me, because sometimes we store an exception as an object with all error details and I believe it’s a valid approach. However I agree that throwing exceptions should be avoided, if you expect to return error as a part of a normal flow. Related link: http://codeutopia.net/blog/2010/03/11/should-a-failed-function-return-a-value-or-throw-an-exception/ Another point slightly puzzled me“If Thread.Sleep() is used, can it be replaced with something else, ei Timer, AutoResetEvent, etc” . I believe, that there are very rare cases, when anyone using Thread.Sleep in any production code. Usually it is used in mocks and prototypes.I had to look further to clarify “Dependency injection is used instead of Service Location pattern”.Even most of articles has some preferences to Dependency injection, there are also advantages to use Service Location. E.g see http://geekswithblogs.net/KyleBurns/archive/2012/04/27/dependency-injection-vs.-service-locator.aspx. http://www.cookcomputing.com/blog/archives/000587.html  refers to Concluding Thoughts of Martin Fowler The choice between Service Locator and Dependency Injection is less important than the principle of separating service configuration from the use of services within an applicationThe post had a link to excellent article Code Smells of Jeff Atwood, but the statement, that “code should not pass a review if it violates any of the  code smells” sound too strict for my environment. In particular, I disagree with “Dead Code” recommendation “Ruthlessly delete code that isn't being used. That's why we have source control systems!”. If there is a chance that not used code will be required in a future, it is convenient to keep it as commented or #if/#endif blocks with appropriate explanation, why it could be required in the future. TFS is a good source control system, but context search in source code of current solution is much easier than finding something in the previous versions of the code.I also found a link to a good book “Clean Code.A.Handbook.of.Agile.Software”

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• Encrypting your SQL Server Passwords in Powershell

  - by laerte

  A couple of months ago, a friend of mine who is now bewitched by the seemingly supernatural abilities of Powershell (+1 for the team) asked me what, initially, appeared to be a trivial question: "Laerte, I do not have the luxury of being able to work with my SQL servers through Windows Authentication, and I need a way to automatically pass my username and password. How would you suggest I do this?" Given that I knew he, like me, was using the SQLPSX modules (an open source project created by Chad Miller; a fantastic library of reusable functions and PowerShell scripts), I merrily replied, "Simply pass the Username and Password in SQLPSX functions". He rather pointed responded: "My friend, I might as well pass: Username-'Me'-password 'NowEverybodyKnowsMyPassword'" As I do have the pleasure of working with Windows Authentication, I had not really thought this situation though yet (and thank goodness I only revealed my temporary ignorance to a friend, and the embarrassment was minimized). After discussing this puzzle with Chad Miller, he showed me some code for saving passwords on SQL Server Tables, which he had demo'd in his Powershell ETL session at Tampa SQL Saturday (and you can download the scripts from here). The solution seemed to be pretty much ready to go, so I showed it to my Authentication-impoverished friend, only to discover that we were only half-way there: "That's almost what I want, but the details need to be stored in my local txt file, together with the names of the servers that I'll actually use the Powershell scripts on. Something like: Server1,UserName,Password Server2,UserName,Password" I thought about it for just a few milliseconds (Ha! Of course I'm not telling you how long it actually took me, I have to do my own marketing, after all) and the solution was finally ready. First , we have to download Library-StringCripto (with many thanks to Steven Hystad), which is composed of two functions: One for encryption and other for decryption, both of which are used to manage the password. If you want to know more about the library, you can see more details in the help functions. Next, we have to create a txt file with your encrypted passwords:$ServerName = "Server1" $UserName = "Login1" $Password = "Senha1" $PasswordToEncrypt = "YourPassword" $UserNameEncrypt = Write-EncryptedString -inputstring $UserName -Password $PasswordToEncrypt $PasswordEncrypt = Write-EncryptedString -inputstring $Password -Password $PasswordToEncrypt "$($Servername),$($UserNameEncrypt),$($PasswordEncrypt)" | Out-File c:\temp\ServersSecurePassword.txt -Append $ServerName = "Server2" $UserName = "Login2" $Password = "senha2" $PasswordToEncrypt = "YourPassword" $UserNameEncrypt = Write-EncryptedString -inputstring $UserName -Password $PasswordToEncrypt $PasswordEncrypt = Write-EncryptedString -inputstring $Password -Password $PasswordToEncrypt "$($Servername),$($UserNameEncrypt),$($PasswordEncrypt)" | Out-File c:\temp\ ServersSecurePassword.txt -Append .And in the c:\temp\ServersSecurePassword.txt file which we've just created, you will find your Username and Password, all neatly encrypted. Let's take a look at what the txt looks like: .and in case you're wondering, Server names, Usernames and Passwords are all separated by commas. Decryption is actually much more simple:Read-EncryptedString -InputString $EncryptString -password "YourPassword" (Just remember that the Password you're trying to decrypt must be exactly the same as the encrypted phrase.) Finally, just to show you how smooth this solution is, let's say I want to use the Invoke-DBMaint function from SQLPSX to perform a checkdb on a system database: it's just a case of split, decrypt and be happy!Get-Content c:\temp\ServerSecurePassword.txt | foreach { [array] $Split = ($_).split(",") Invoke-DBMaint -server $($Split[0]) -UserName (Read-EncryptedString -InputString $Split[1] -password "YourPassword" ) -Password (Read-EncryptedString -InputString $Split[2] -password "YourPassword" ) -Databases "SYSTEM" -Action "CHECK_DB" -ReportOn c:\Temp } This is why I love Powershell.

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• What tools exist for assessing an organisation's development capability?

  - by Eric Smith

  I have a bit of a challenge at work at the moment. Presently (and in fact, for some time now), we have been experiencing the following problems with some in-house maintained applications: Defects (sometimes quite serious) being released into production; The Customer (that is, the relevant business unit) perpetually changing their minds (or appearing to do so) about what issue to work on next; A situation where everyone seems to be in a "fire-fighting" mode a lot of the time; Development staff responding to operational requests from business users; ("operational" here means something that needs to be done in order to continue with business, or perhaps just to make a business user's life a little less painful, as opposed to fixing a bug in the application, or enhancing the application); Now I'm sure this doesn't sound particularly new or surprising to most of the participants on this Q&A site and no prizes for identifying the "usual suspects" when it comes to root causes. My challenge is that I have to persuade the higher-ups to do uncomfortable things in order to address all of this. The folk I need to persuade come from a mixture of the following two cultures: Accounting; IT Infrastructure. I have therefore opted for a strategy that draws from things with-which folk from such a culture would be most comfortable (at least, in my estimation), namely: numbers and tangibles. Of course modern development practitioners know all too well that this sort of thing isn't easily solved using an analytical mindset (some would argue that that mindset is, in fact, entirely inappropriate). Never-the-less, this is the dichotomy with-which I am faced, so that's the stake that I've put in the ground. I would like to be able to do research and use the outputs to present findings in the form of metrics and measures. I am finding it quite difficult, though, to find an agreed-upon methodology and set of templates for assessing an organisations development capability--the only thing that seems applicable is the Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model. The latter, however, seems dated and even then rather vague. So, the question is: Do any tools or methodologies (free or commercial) exist that would assist me in completing this assessment?

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• Create Outlook Appointments from PowerShell

  - by BuckWoody

  I've been toying around with a script to create a special set of calendar objects in Outlook that show when my SQL Server Agent Jobs are scheduled to run. I haven't finished yet, but I thought I would share the part that creates the Outlook Appointments.I have yet to fill a variable with the start and end times, and then loop through that to create the appointments. I'm thinking I'll make the script below into a function, and feed it those variables in a loop. The script below creates a whole new Calendar Folder in Outlook called "SQL Server Agent Jobs". I also use categories quite a bit, so you'll see that too. Caution: If you plan to play with this script, do it on an isolated workstation, not on your "regular" Outlook calendar. Otherwise, you'll have lots of appointments in there that you don't care about!  # Add a new calendar item to a new Outlook folder called "SQL Server Agent Jobs" $outlook = new-object -com Outlook.Application $calendar = $outlook.Session.folders.Item(1).Folders.Item("SQL Server Agent Jobs") $appt = $calendar.Items.Add(1) # == olAppointmentItem $appt.Start = [datetime]"03/11/2010 11:00" $appt.End = [datetime]"03/11/2009 12:00" $appt.Subject = "JobName" $appt.Location = "ServerName" $appt.Body = "Job Details" $appt.Categories = "SQL server Agent Job" $appt.Save()   Script Disclaimer, for people who need to be told this sort of thing: Never trust any script, including those that you find here, until you understand exactly what it does and how it will act on your systems. Always check the script on a test system or Virtual Machine, not a production system. All scripts on this site are performed by a professional stunt driver on a closed course. Your mileage may vary. Void where prohibited. Offer good for a limited time only. Keep out of reach of small children. Do not operate heavy machinery while using this script. If you experience blurry vision, indigestion or diarrhea during the operation of this script, see a physician immediately.   Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• New Slides - and a discussion about Dictionary Statistics

  - by Mike Dietrich

  First of all we have just upoaded a new version of the Upgrade and Migration Workshop slides with some added information. So please feel free to download them from here.The slides have one new interesting information which lead to a discussion I've had in the past days with a very large customer regarding their upgrades - and internally on the mailing list targeting an EBS database upgrade from Oracle 10.2 to Oracle 11.2. Why are we creating dictionary statistics during upgrade? I'd believe this forced dictionary statistics creation got introduced with the desupport of the Rule Based Optimizer in Oracle 10g. The goal: as RBO is not supported anymore we have to make sure that the data dictionary has fresh and non-stale statistics. Actually that would have led in Oracle 9i to strange behaviour in some databases - so in Oracle 9i this was strongly disrecommended. The upgrade scripts got hardcoded to create these stats. But during tests we had the following findings: It's important to create dictionary statistics the night before the upgrade. Not two weeks before, not 60 minutes before your downtime begins. But very close to the upgrade. From Oracle 10g onwards you'd just say: $ execute DBMS_STATS.GATHER_DICTIONARY_STATS; This is important to make sure you have fresh dictionary statistics during upgrade for performance reasons. Tests have shown that running an upgrade without valid dictionary statistics might slow down the whole upgrade by factors of 2x-3x. And it would be also a great idea post upgrade to create again fresh dictionary statistics when you've did suppress the stats creation during the upgrade process. Suppress? Yes, you could set this underscore parameter in the init.ora: _optim_dict_stats_at_db_cr_upg=FALSE to suppress the forced dictionary statistics collection during an upgrade. We believe strongly that (a) people using the default statistics creation process which will create dictionary statistics by default and (b) create fresh stats before upgrade on the dictionary. Therefore we find it save once you have followed our advice to use the underscore during upgrade. And we've taken out that forced statistics collection during upgrade in the next release of the database. Please note: If you are using the DBUA for the upgrade it will remove underscore parameters for the upgrade run to improve performance - which is generally a good idea. So you'll have to start the DBUA with that call: $ dbua -initParam "_optim_dict_stats_at_cb_cr_upg"=FALSE -Mike

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• Backup Azure Tables with the Enzo Backup API

  - by Herve Roggero

  In case you missed it, you can now backup (and restore) Azure Tables and SQL Databases using an API directly. The features available through the API can be found here: http://www.bluesyntax.net/backup20api.aspx and the online help for the API is here: http://www.bluesyntax.net/EnzoCloudBackup20/APIIntro.aspx. Backing up Azure Tables can’t be any easier than with the Enzo Backup API. Here is a sample code that does the trick: // Create the backup helper class. The constructor automatically sets the SourceStorageAccount property StorageBackupHelper backup = new StorageBackupHelper("storageaccountname", "storageaccountkey", "sourceStorageaccountname", "sourceStorageaccountkey", true, "apilicensekey"); // Now set some properties… backup.UseCloudAgent = false;                                       // backup locally backup.DeviceURI = @"c:\TMP\azuretablebackup.bkp";    // to this file backup.Override = true; backup.Location = DeviceLocation.LocalFile; // Set optional performance options backup.PKTableStrategy.Mode = BSC.Backup.API.TableStrategyMode.GUID; // Set GUID strategy by default backup.MaxRESTPerSec = 200; // Attempt to stay below 200 REST calls per second // Start the backup now… string taskId = backup.Backup(); // Use the Environment class to get the final status of the operation EnvironmentHelper env = new EnvironmentHelper("storageaccountname", "storageaccountkey", "apilicensekey"); string status = env.GetOperationStatus(taskId);   As you can see above, the code is straightforward. You provide connection settings in the constructor, set a few options indicating where the backup device will be located, set optional performance parameters and start the backup. The performance options are designed to help you backup your Azure Tables quickly, while attempting to keep under a specific threshold to prevent Storage Account throttling. For example, the MaxRESTPerSec property will attempt to keep the overall backup operation under 200 rest calls per second. Another performance option if the Backup Strategy for Azure Tables. By default, all tables are simply scanned. While this works best for smaller Azure Tables, larger tables can use the GUID strategy, which will issue requests against an Azure Table in parallel assuming the PartitionKey stores GUID values. It doesn’t mean that your PartitionKey must have GUIDs however for this strategy to work; but the backup algorithm is tuned for this condition. Other options are available as well, such as filtering which columns, entities or tables are being backed up. Check out more on the Blue Syntax website at http://www.bluesyntax.net.

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• What can a Service do on Windows?

  - by Akemi Iwaya

  If you open up Task Manager or Process Explorer on your system, you will see many services running. But how much of an impact can a service have on your system, especially if it is ‘corrupted’ by malware? Today’s SuperUser Q&A post has the answers to a curious reader’s questions. Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader Forivin wants to know how much impact a service can have on a Windows system, especially if it is ‘corrupted’ by malware: What kind malware/spyware could someone put into a service that does not have its own process on Windows? I mean services that use svchost.exe for example, like this: Could a service spy on my keyboard input? Take screenshots? Send and/or receive data over the internet? Infect other processes or files? Delete files? Kill processes? How much impact could a service have on a Windows installation? Are there any limits to what a malware ‘corrupted’ service could do? The Answer SuperUser contributor Keltari has the answer for us: What is a service? A service is an application, no more, no less. The advantage is that a service can run without a user session. This allows things like databases, backups, the ability to login, etc. to run when needed and without a user logged in. What is svchost? According to Microsoft: “svchost.exe is a generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries”. Could we have that in English please? Some time ago, Microsoft started moving all of the functionality from internal Windows services into .dll files instead of .exe files. From a programming perspective, this makes more sense for reusability…but the problem is that you can not launch a .dll file directly from Windows, it has to be loaded up from a running executable (exe). Thus the svchost.exe process was born. So, essentially a service which uses svchost is just calling a .dll and can do pretty much anything with the right credentials and/or permissions. If I remember correctly, there are viruses and other malware that do hide behind the svchost process, or name the executable svchost.exe to avoid detection. Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.

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• SQL SERVER – Template Browser – A Very Important and Useful Feature of SSMS

  - by pinaldave

  Let me start today’s blog post with a direction question. How many of you have ever used Template Browser? Template Browser is a very important and useful feature of SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). Every time when I am talking about SQL Server there is always someone comes up with the question, why there is no step by step procedure included in SSMS for features. Honestly every time I get this question, the question I ask back is How many of you have ever used Template Browser? I think the answer to this question is most of the time either no or we have not heard of the feature. One of the people asked me back – have you ever written about it on your blog? I have not yet written about it. Basically there is nothing much to write about it. It is pretty straight forward feature, like any other feature and it is indeed difficult to elaborate. However, I will try to give a quick introduction to this feature. Templates are like a quick cheat sheet or quick reference. Templates are available to create objects like databases, tables, views, indexes, stored procedures, triggers, statistics, and functions. Templates are also available for Analysis Services as well. The template scripts contain parameters to help you customize the code. You can Replace Template Parameters dialog box to insert values into the script. Additionally users can create new custom templates as well with folder structure. To open a template from Template Explorer Go to View menu >> Template Explorer or type CTRL+ALT+L. You will find a list of categories click on any category and expand the folder structure. For our sample example let us expand Index Folder. In this folder you will notice the various T-SQL Scripts. These scripts can be opened by double click or can be dragged to editor area and modified as needed. Sample template is now available in the query editor area with all the necessary parameter place folder. You can replace the same parameter by typing either CTRL+SHIFT+M or by going to Query Menu >> Specify Values for Template Parameters. In this screen it will show  Specify Values for Template Parameters dialog box, accept the value or replace it with a new value. This will now get your script ready to go. Check it one more time and change the script to fit your requirement. I personally use template explorer for two things. First one is obviously for templates but the hidden one and an important one is for learning new features and T-SQL commands. There is so much to learn and so little time. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Server Management Studio, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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