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• LaTeX printing only first two pages of a document

  - by Peter Flom

  I am working in LaTeX, and when I create a pdf file (using LaTeX button or pdfLaTeX button or using yap) the pdf has only the first two pages. No errors. It just stops. If I make the first page longer by adding text, it still stops at end of 2nd page. Any ideas? OK, responding to first comment, here is the code \documentclass{article} \title{Outline of Book} \author{Peter L. Flom} \begin{document} \maketitle \section*{Preface} \subsection*{Audience} \subsection*{What makes this book different?} \subsection*{Necessary background} \subsection*{How to read this book} \section{Introduction} \subsection{The purpose of logistic regression} \subsection{The need for logistic regression} \subsection{Types of logistic regression} \section{General issues in logistic regression} \subsection{Transforming independent and dependent variables} \subsection{Interactions} \subsection{Model selection} \subsection{Parameter estimates, confidence intervals, p values} \subsection{Summary and further reading} \section{Dichotomous logistic regression} \subsection{Introduction, theory, examples} \subsection{Exploratory plots and analysis} \subsection{Basic model fitting} \subsection{Advanced and special issues in model fitting} \subsection{Diagnostic and descriptive plots and analysis} \subsection{Traps and gotchas} \subsection{Power analysis} \subsection{Summary and further reading} \subsection{Exercises} \section{Ordinal logistic regression} \subsection{Introduction, theory, examples} \subsubsection{Introduction - what are ordinal variables?} \subsubsection{Theory of the model} \subsubsection{Examples for this chapter} \subsection{Exploratory plots and analysis} \subsection{Basic model fitting} \subsection{Advanced and special issues in model fitting} \subsection{Diagnostic and descriptive plots and analysis} \subsection{Traps and gotchas} \subsection{Power analysis} \subsection{Summary and further reading} \subsection{Exercises} \section{Multinomial logistic regression} \subsection{Introduction, theory, examples} \subsection{Exploratory plots and analysis} \subsection{Basic model fitting} \subsection{Advanced and special issues in model fitting} \subsection{Diagnostic and descriptive plots and analysis} \subsection{Traps and gotchas} \subsection{Power analysis} \subsection{Summary and further reading} \subsection{Exercises} \section{Choosing a model} \subsection{NOIR and its problems} \subsection{Linear vs. ordinal} \subsection{Ordinal vs. multinomial} \subsection{Summary and further reading} \subsection{Exercises} \section{Extensions and related models} \subsection{Other logistic models} \subsection{Multilevel models - PROC NLMIXED and GLIMMIX} \subsection{Loglinear models - PROC CATMOD} \section{Summary} \end{document} thanks Peter

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• implementing a download manager that supports resuming

  - by Idan K

  hi, I intend on writing a small download manager in C++ that supports resuming (and multiple connections per download). From the info I gathered so far, when sending the http request I need to add a header field with a key of "Range" and the value "bytes=startoff-endoff". Then the server returns a http response with the data between those offsets. So roughly what I have in mind is to split the file to the number of allowed connections per file and send a http request per splitted part with the appropriate "Range". So if I have a 4mb file and 4 allowed connections, I'd split the file to 4 and have 4 http requests going, each with the appropriate "Range" field. Implementing the resume feature would involve remembering which offsets are already downloaded and simply not request those. Is this the right way to do this? What if the web server doesn't support resuming? (my guess is it will ignore the "Range" and just send the entire file) When sending the http requests, should I specify in the range the entire splitted size? Or maybe ask smaller pieces, say 1024k per request? When reading the data, should I write it immediately to the file or do some kind of buffering? I guess it could be wasteful to write small chunks. Should I use a memory mapped file? If I remember correctly, it's recommended for frequent reads rather than writes (I could be wrong). Is it memory wise? What if I have several downloads simultaneously? If I'm not using a memory mapped file, should I open the file per allowed connection? Or when needing to write to the file simply seek? (if I did use a memory mapped file this would be really easy, since I could simply have several pointers). Note: I'll probably be using Qt, but this is a general question so I left code out of it.

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• How does PHP PDO work internally ?

  - by Rachel

  I want to use pdo in my application, but before that I want to understand how internally PDOStatement->fetch and PDOStatement->fetchAll. For my application, I want to do something like "SELECT * FROM myTable" and insert into csv file and it has around 90000 rows of data. My question is, if I use PDOStatement->fetch as I am using it here: // First, prepare the statement, using placeholders $query = "SELECT * FROM tableName"; $stmt = $this->connection->prepare($query); // Execute the statement $stmt->execute(); var_dump($stmt->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)); while ($row = $stmt->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)) { echo "Hi"; // Export every row to a file fputcsv($data, $row); } Will after every fetch from database, result for that fetch would be store in memory ? Meaning when I do second fetch, memory would have data of first fetch as well as data for second fetch. And so if I have 90000 rows of data and if am doing fetch every time than memory is being updated to take new fetch result without removing results from previous fetch and so for the last fetch memory would already have 89999 rows of data. Is this how PDOStatement::fetch works ? Performance wise how does this stack up against PDOStatement::fetchAll ?

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• what exactly is the danger of an uninitialized pointer in C

  - by akh2103

  I am trying get a handle on C as I work my way thru Jim Trevor's "Cyclone: A safe dialect of C" for a PL class. Trevor and his co-authors are trying to make a safe version of C, so they eliminate uninitialized pointers in their language. Googling around a bit on uninitialized pointers, it seems like un-initialized pointers point to random locations in memory. It seems like this alone makes them unsafe. If you reference an un-itilialized pointer, you jump to an unsafe part of memory. Period. But the way Trevor talks about them seems to imply that it is more complex. He cites the following code, and explains that when the function FrmGetObjectIndex dereferences f, it isn’t accessing a valid pointer, but rather an unpredictable address — whatever was on the stack when the space for f was allocated. What does Trevor mean by "whatever was on the stack when the space for f was allocated"? Are "un-initialized" pointers initialized to random locations in memory by default? Or does their "random" behavior have to do with the memory allocated for these pointers getting filled with strange values (that are then referenced) because of unexpected behavior on the stack. Form *f; switch (event->eType) { case frmOpenEvent: f = FrmGetActiveForm(); ... case ctlSelectEvent: i = FrmGetObjectIndex(f, field); ... }

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• Mysql Database Question about Large Columns

  - by murat

  Hi, I have a table that has 100.000 rows, and soon it will be doubled. The size of the database is currently 5 gb and most of them goes to one particular column, which is a text column for PDF files. We expect to have 20-30 GB or maybe 50 gb database after couple of month and this system will be used frequently. I have couple of questions regarding with this setup 1-) We are using innodb on every table, including users table etc. Is it better to use myisam on this table, where we store text version of the PDF files? (from memory usage /performance perspective) 2-) We use Sphinx for searching, however the data must be retrieved for highlighting. Highlighting is done via sphinx API but still we need to retrieve 10 rows in order to send it to Sphinx again. This 10 rows may allocate 50 mb memory, which is quite large. So I am planning to split these PDF files into chunks of 5 pages in the database, so these 100.000 rows will be around 3-4 million rows and couple of month later, instead of having 300.000-350.000 rows, we'll have 10 million rows to store text version of these PDF files. However, we will retrieve less pages, so again instead of retrieving 400 pages to send Sphinx for highlighting, we can retrieve 5 pages and it will have a big impact on the performance. Currently, when we search a term and retrieve PDF files that have more than 100 pages, the execution time is 0.3-0.35 seconds, however if we retrieve PDF files that have less than 5 pages, the execution time reduces to 0.06 seconds, and it also uses less memory. Do you think, this is a good trade-off? We will have million of rows instead of having 100k-200k rows but it will save memory and improve the performance. Is it a good approach to solve this problem and do you have any ideas how to overcome this problem? The text version of the data is used only for indexing and highlighting. So, we are very flexible. Thanks,

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• what are all the Optimize tricks that you know for asp.net code ?

  - by Aristos

  After some time of many code programming on asp.net, I discover the very big speed different between string and StringBuilder. I know that is very common and known but I just mention it for start. The second think that I have found to speed up the code, is to use the const, and not the static, for declare my configuration constants value (especial the strings). With the const, the compiler not create new object, but just place the value, on the point that you have ask it, but with the static declaration, is create a new memory object and keep its on the memory. My third trick, is when I search for string, I use hash values, and not the string itself. For example, if I need a List<string SomeValues, and place inside strings that I need to search them, I prefer to use List<int SomeHashValue, and I use the hash value to locate the strings. My forth thought that I was wandering, is if is better to place big strings in one line, or separate them in different lines with the + symbol to be more easy to read out. I make some tests and see that the compiler make a good job is some split the string, in many lines, using the + symbol. What other tricks/tips do you know and use on your programming to make it run faster, and maybe use less memory. Well I know, that some times, to make something run faster, you need more memory, more cache. My priority is on speed. Because Speed Counts.

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• Is a call to the following method considered late binding?

  - by AspOnMyNet

  1) Assume: • B1 defines methods virtualM() and nonvirtualM(), where former method is virtual while the latter is non-virtual • B2 derives from B1 • B2 overrides virtualM() • B2 is defined inside assembly A • Application app doesn’t have a reference to assembly A In the following code application app dynamically loads an assembly A, creates an instance of a type B2 and calls methods virtualM() and nonvirtualM(): Assembly a=Assembly.Load(“A”); Type t= a.GetType(“B2”); B1 a = ( B1 ) Activator.CreateInstance ( “t” ); a.virtualM(); a.nonvirtualM(); a) Is call to a.virtualM() considered early binding or late binding? b) I assume a call to a.nonvirtualM() is resolved during compilation time? 2) Does the term late binding refer only to looking up the target method at run time or does it also refer to creating an instance of given type at runtime? thanx EDIT: 1) A a=new A(); a.M(); As far as I know, it is not known at compile time where on the heap (thus at which memory address ) will instance a be created during runtime. Now, with early binding the function calls are replaced with memory addresses during compilation process. But how can compiler replace function call with memory address, if it doesn’t know where on the heap will object a be created during runtime ( here I’m assuming the address of method a.M will also be at same memory location as a )? 2) The method slot is determined at compile time I assume that by method slot you’re referring to the entry point in V-table?

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• c# string interning

  - by CodingThunder

  I am trying to understand string interning and why is doesn't seem to work in my example. The point of the example is to show Example 1 uses less (a lot less memory) as it should only have 10 strings in memory. However, in the code below both example use roughly the same amount of memory (virtual size and working set). Please advice why example 1 isn't using a lot less memory? Thanks Example 1: IList<string> list = new List<string>(10000); for (int i = 0; i < 10000; i++) { for (int k = 0; k < 10; k++) { list.Add(string.Intern(k.ToString())); } } Console.WriteLine("intern Done"); Console.ReadLine(); Example 2: IList<string> list = new List<string>(10000); for (int i = 0; i < 10000; i++) { for (int k = 0; k < 10; k++) { list.Add(k.ToString()); } } Console.WriteLine("intern Done"); Console.ReadLine();

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• How do I patch a Windows API at runtime so that it to returns 0 in x64?

  - by Jorge Vasquez

  In x86, I get the function address using GetProcAddress() and write a simple XOR EAX,EAX; RET; in it. Simple and effective. How do I do the same in x64? bool DisableSetUnhandledExceptionFilter() { const BYTE PatchBytes[5] = { 0x33, 0xC0, 0xC2, 0x04, 0x00 }; // XOR EAX,EAX; RET; // Obtain the address of SetUnhandledExceptionFilter HMODULE hLib = GetModuleHandle( _T("kernel32.dll") ); if( hLib == NULL ) return false; BYTE* pTarget = (BYTE*)GetProcAddress( hLib, "SetUnhandledExceptionFilter" ); if( pTarget == 0 ) return false; // Patch SetUnhandledExceptionFilter if( !WriteMemory( pTarget, PatchBytes, sizeof(PatchBytes) ) ) return false; // Ensures out of cache FlushInstructionCache(GetCurrentProcess(), pTarget, sizeof(PatchBytes)); // Success return true; } static bool WriteMemory( BYTE* pTarget, const BYTE* pSource, DWORD Size ) { // Check parameters if( pTarget == 0 ) return false; if( pSource == 0 ) return false; if( Size == 0 ) return false; if( IsBadReadPtr( pSource, Size ) ) return false; // Modify protection attributes of the target memory page DWORD OldProtect = 0; if( !VirtualProtect( pTarget, Size, PAGE_EXECUTE_READWRITE, &OldProtect ) ) return false; // Write memory memcpy( pTarget, pSource, Size ); // Restore memory protection attributes of the target memory page DWORD Temp = 0; if( !VirtualProtect( pTarget, Size, OldProtect, &Temp ) ) return false; // Success return true; } This example is adapted from code found here: http://www.debuginfo.com/articles/debugfilters.html#overwrite .

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• How Can I Compress Texture in OpenGL on iPhone/iPad?

  - by nonamelive

  Hi, I'm making an iPad app which needs OpenGL to do a flip animation. I have a front image texture and a back image texture. Both the two textures are screenshots. // Capture an image of the screen UIGraphicsBeginImageContext(view.bounds.size); [view.layer renderInContext:UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext()]; image = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext(); UIGraphicsEndImageContext(); // Allocate some memory for the texture GLubyte *textureData = (GLubyte*)calloc(maxTextureSize*4, maxTextureSize); // Create a drawing context to draw image into texture memory CGContextRef textureContext = CGBitmapContextCreate(textureData, maxTextureSize, maxTextureSize, 8, maxTextureSize*4, CGImageGetColorSpace(image.CGImage), kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedLast); CGContextDrawImage(textureContext, CGRectMake(0, maxTextureSize-size.height, size.width, size.height), image.CGImage); CGContextRelease(textureContext); // ...done creating the texture data [EAGLContext setCurrentContext:context]; glGenTextures(1, &textureToView); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, textureToView); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_LINEAR); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_LINEAR); glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL_RGBA, maxTextureSize, maxTextureSize, 0, GL_RGBA, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, textureData); // free texture data which is by now copied into the GL context free(textureData); Each of the texture takes up about 8MB memory, which is unacceptable for an iPhone/iPad app. Could anyone tell me how can I compress the texture to reduce the memory. I'm a complete newbie to OpenGL. Any help would be appreciated!

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• Android Webkit Input elements buggy with CSS3 translate3D

  - by Dansl

  I'm having a couple issues with the Input element in a Webkit Android App i'm developing. Testing on 2.X, but 3.x doesn't seem to have these issues... The app works by having separate Div's for each "page", and I'm using CSS3 translate3D to animate between the pages. Some of those pages include Input elements. When I tap on the input to gain focus, any of my "position:fixed" Div's will shift about 5px from the top, and 5px left. Now the kicker... it will eventually fix itself, and then never happen again when you tap on an input, its only that first time... My other problem, the Input elements are screwy with keyboards, for instance, spell corrections/autocomplete will not input text, and when using Swype Keyboard, you can't "swipe" the word, ONLY individual taps for each letter will input text into the Input element. I've read that a lot of these might be caused by CSS3 Translate3D. But, I've tried just about everything to fix these issues, and I've searched just about every site for a solution, but havent been able to find a fix, or find anyone else with this issue... Does anyone else have these issues, or know of a fix? (Possible solution??) Anyone know of a way to override the default behavior of Input elements in the webkit? I wonder if I can generate my own TextView and position it over these input fields...? Any help is greatly appreciated :)

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• C# performance methods of receiving data from a socket?

  - by Daniel

  Lets assume we have a simple internet socket, and its going to send 10 megabytes (because i want to ignore memory issues) of random data through. Is there any performance difference or a best practice method that one should use for receiving data? The final output data should be represented by a byte[]. Yes i know writing an arbitrary amount of data to memory is bad, and if I was downloading a large file i wouldn't be doing it like this. But for argument sake lets ignore that and assume its a smallish amount of data. I also realise that the bottleneck here is probably not the memory management but rather the socket receiving. I just want to know what would be the most efficient method of receiving data. A few dodgy ways can think of is: Have a List and a buffer, after the buffer is full, add it to the list and at the end list.ToArray() to get the byte[] Write the buffer to a memory stream, after its complete construct a byte[] of the stream.Length and read it all into it in order to get the byte[] output. Is there a more efficient/better way of doing this?

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• Do entity collections and object sets implement IQueryable<T>?

  - by Chevex

  I am using Entity Framework for the first time and noticed that the entities object returns entity collections. DBEntities db = new DBEntities(); db.Users; //Users is an ObjectSet<User> User user = db.Users.Where(x => x.Username == "test").First(); //Is this getting executed in the SQL or in memory? user.Posts; //Posts is an EntityCollection<Post> Post post = user.Posts.Where(x => x.PostID == "123").First(); //Is this getting executed in the SQL or in memory? Do both ObjectSet and EntityCollection implement IQueryable? I am hoping they do so that I know the queries are getting executed at the data source and not in memory. EDIT: So apparently EntityCollection does not while ObjectSet does. Does that mean I would be better off using this code? DBEntities db = new DBEntities(); User user = db.Users.Where(x => x.Username == "test").First(); //Is this getting executed in the SQL or in memory? Post post = db.Posts.Where(x => (x.PostID == "123")&&(x.Username == user.Username)).First(); // Querying the object set instead of the entity collection. Also, what is the difference between ObjectSet and EntityCollection? Shouldn't they be the same? Thanks in advance!

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• Unusual heap size limitations in VS2003 C++

  - by Shane MacLaughlin

  I have a C++ app that uses large arrays of data, and have noticed while testing that it is running out of memory, while there is still plenty of memory available. I have reduced the code to a sample test case as follows; void MemTest() { size_t Size = 500*1024*1024; // 512mb if (Size > _HEAP_MAXREQ) TRACE("Invalid Size"); void * mem = malloc(Size); if (mem == NULL) TRACE("allocation failed"); } If I create a new MFC project, include this function, and run it from InitInstance, it works fine in debug mode (memory allocated as expected), yet fails in release mode (malloc returns NULL). Single stepping through release into the C run times, my function gets inlined I get the following // malloc.c void * __cdecl _malloc_base (size_t size) { void *res = _nh_malloc_base(size, _newmode); RTCCALLBACK(_RTC_Allocate_hook, (res, size, 0)); return res; } Calling _nh_malloc_base void * __cdecl _nh_malloc_base (size_t size, int nhFlag) { void * pvReturn; // validate size if (size > _HEAP_MAXREQ) return NULL; ' ' And (size _HEAP_MAXREQ) returns true and hence my memory doesn't get allocated. Putting a watch on size comes back with the exptected 512MB, which suggests the program is linking into a different run-time library with a much smaller _HEAP_MAXREQ. Grepping the VC++ folders for _HEAP_MAXREQ shows the expected 0xFFFFFFE0, so I can't figure out what is happening here. Anyone know of any CRT changes or versions that would cause this problem, or am I missing something way more obvious?

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• Efficient (basic) regular expression implementation for streaming data

  - by Brendan Dolan-Gavitt

  I'm looking for an implementation of regular expression matching that operates on a stream of data -- i.e., it has an API that allows a user to pass in one character at a time and report when a match is found on the stream of characters seen so far. Only very basic (classic) regular expressions are needed, so a DFA/NFA based implementation seems like it would be well-suited to the problem. Based on the fact that it's possible to do regular expression matching using a DFA/NFA in a single linear sweep, it seems like a streaming implementation should be possible. Requirements: The library should try to wait until the full string has been read before performing the match. The data I have really is streaming; there is no way to know how much data will arrive, it's not possible to seek forward or backward. Implementing specific stream matching for a couple special cases is not an option, as I don't know in advance what patterns a user might want to look for. For the curious, my use case is the following: I have a system which intercepts memory writes inside a full system emulator, and I would like to have a way to identify memory writes that match a regular expression (e.g., one could use this to find the point in the system where a URL is written to memory). I have found (links de-linkified because I don't have enough reputation): stackoverflow.com/questions/1962220/apply-a-regex-on-stream stackoverflow.com/questions/716927/applying-a-regular-expression-to-a-java-i-o-stream www.codeguru.com/csharp/csharp/cs_data/searching/article.php/c14689/Building-a-Regular-Expression-Stream-Search-with-the-NET-Framework.htm But all of these attempt to convert the stream to a string first and then use a stock regular expression library. Another thought I had was to modify the RE2 library, but according to the author it is architected around the assumption that the entire string is in memory at the same time. If nothing's available, then I can start down the unhappy path of reinventing this wheel to fit my own needs, but I'd really rather not if I can avoid it. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

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• How to lazy process an xml documentwith hexpat?

  - by Florian

  In my search for a haskell library that can process large (300-1000mb) xml files i came across hexpat. There is an example in the Haskell Wiki that claims to -- Process document before handling error, so we get lazy processing. For testing purposes i have redirected the output to /dev/null and throw a 300mb file at it. Memory consumption kept rising until i had to kill the process. Now i removed the error handling from the process function: process :: String -> IO () process filename = do inputText <- L.readFile filename let (xml, mErr) = parse defaultParseOptions inputText :: (UNode String, Maybe XMLParseError) hFile <- openFile "/dev/null" WriteMode L.hPutStr hFile $ format xml hClose hFile return () As a result the function now uses constant memory. Why does the error handling result in massive memory consumption? As far as i understand xml and mErr are two seperate unevaluated thunks after the call to parse. Does format xml evaluate xml and build the evaluation tree of 'mErr'? If yes is there a way to handle the error while using constant memory? http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Hexpat/

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• Whether to put method code in a VB.Net data storage class, or put it in a separate class?

  - by Alan K

  TLDR summary: (a) Should I include (lengthy) method code in classes which may spawn multiple objects at runtime, (b) does doing so cause memory usage bloat, (c) if so should I "outsource" the code to a class that is loaded only once and have the class methods call that, or alternatively (d) does the code get loaded only once with the object definition anyway and I'm worrying about nothing? ........ I don't know whether there's a good answer to this but if there is I haven't found it yet by searching in the usual places. In my VB.Net (2010 if it matters) WinForms project I have about a dozen or so class objects in an object model. Some of these are pretty simple and do little more than act as data storage repositories. The ones further up the object model, however, have an increasing number of methods. There can be a significant number of higher level objects in use though the exact number will be runtime dependent so I can't be more precise than that. As I was writing the method code for one of the top level ones I noticed that it was starting to get quite lengthy. Memory optimisation is something of a lost art given how much memory the average PC has these days but I don't want to make my application a resource hog. So my questions for anyone who knows .Net way better than I do (of which there will be many) are: Is the code loaded into memory with each instance of the class that's created? Alternatively is it loaded only once with the definition of the class, and all derived objects just refer to that definition? (I'm not really sure how that could be possible given that, for example, event handlers can be assigned dynamically, but no harm asking.) If the answer to the first one is yes, would it be more efficient to write the code in a "utility" object which is loaded only once and called from the real class' methods? Any thoughts appreciated.

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• How to debug properly and find causes for crashes?

  - by Newbie

  I dont know what to do anymore... its hopeless. I'm getting tired of guessing whats causing the crashes. Recently i noticed some opengl calls crashes programs randomly on some gfx cards. so i am getting really paranoid what can cause crashes now. The bad thing on this crash is that it crashes only after a long time of using the program, so i can only guess what is the problem. I cant remember what changes i made to the program that may cause the crashes, its been so long time. But luckily the previous version doesnt crash, so i could just copypaste some code and waste 10 hours to see at which point it starts crashing... i dont think i want to do that yet. The program crashes after i make it to process the same files about 5 times in a row, each time it uses about 200 megabytes of memory in the process. It crashes at random times while and after the reading process. I have createn a "safe" free() function, it checks the pointer if its not NULL, and then frees the memory, and then sets the pointer to NULL. Isn't this how it should be done? I watched the task manager memory usage, and just before it crashed it started to eat 2 times more memory than usual. Also the program loading became exponentially slower every time i loaded the files; first few loads didnt seem much slower from each other, but then it started rapidly doubling the load speeds. What should this tell me about the crash? Also, do i have to manually free the c++ vectors by using clear() ? Or are they freed after usage automatically, for example if i allocate vector inside a function, will it be freed every time the function has ended ? I am not storing pointers in the vector. -- Shortly: i want to learn to catch the damn bugs as fast as possible, how do i do that? Using Visual Studio 2008.

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• Why is the operation address incremented by two?

  - by Gavin Jones

  I am looking at a Javascript emulator of a NES to try and understand how it works. On this line: addr = this.load(opaddr+2); The opcode is incremented by two. However, the documentation (see appendix E) I'm reading says: Zero page addressing uses a single operand which serves as a pointer to an address in zero page ($0000-$00FF) where the data to be operated on can be found. By using zero page addressing, only one byte is needed for the operand, so the instruction is shorter and, therefore, faster to execute than with addressing modes which take two operands. An example of a zero page instruction is AND $12. So if the operand's argument is only one byte, shouldn't it appear directly after it, and be + 1 instead of + 2? Why +2? This is how I think it works, which may be incorrect. Suppose our memory looks like: ------------------------- | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | <- index ------------------------- | a | b | c | d | e | f | <- memory ------------------------- ^ \ PC and our PC is 0, pointing to a. For this cycle, we say that the opcode: var pc= 0; //for example's sake var opcode= memory[pc]; //a So shouldn't the first operand be the next slot, i.e. b? var first_operand = memory[pc + 1]; //b

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• SSIS Lookup component tuning tips

  - by jamiet

  Yesterday evening I attended a London meeting of the UK SQL Server User Group at Microsoft’s offices in London Victoria. As usual it was both a fun and informative evening and in particular there seemed to be a few questions arising about tuning the SSIS Lookup component; I rattled off some comments and figured it would be prudent to drop some of them into a dedicated blog post, hence the one you are reading right now. Scene setting A popular pattern in SSIS is to use a Lookup component to determine whether a record in the pipeline already exists in the intended destination table or not and I cover this pattern in my 2006 blog post Checking if a row exists and if it does, has it changed? (note to self: must rewrite that blog post for SSIS2008). Fundamentally the SSIS lookup component (when using FullCache option) sucks some data out of a database and holds it in memory so that it can be compared to data in the pipeline. One of the big benefits of using SSIS dataflows is that they process data one buffer at a time; that means that not all of the data from your source exists in the dataflow at the same time and is why a SSIS dataflow can process data volumes that far exceed the available memory. However, that only applies to data in the pipeline; for reasons that are hopefully obvious ALL of the data in the lookup set must exist in the memory cache for the duration of the dataflow’s execution which means that any memory used by the lookup cache will not be available to be used as a pipeline buffer. Moreover, there’s an obvious correlation between the amount of data in the lookup cache and the time it takes to charge that cache; the more data you have then the longer it will take to charge and the longer you have to wait until the dataflow actually starts to do anything. For these reasons your goal is simple: ensure that the lookup cache contains as little data as possible. General tips Here is a simple tick list you can follow in order to tune your lookups: Use a SQL statement to charge your cache, don’t just pick a table from the dropdown list made available to you. (Read why in SELECT *... or select from a dropdown in an OLE DB Source component?) Only pick the columns that you need, ignore everything else Make the database columns that your cache is populated from as narrow as possible. If a column is defined as VARCHAR(20) then SSIS will allocate 20 bytes for every value in that column – that is a big waste if the actual values are significantly less than 20 characters in length. Do you need DT_WSTR typed columns or will DT_STR suffice? DT_WSTR uses twice the amount of space to hold values that can be stored using a DT_STR so if you can use DT_STR, consider doing so. Same principle goes for the numerical datatypes DT_I2/DT_I4/DT_I8. Only populate the cache with data that you KNOW you will need. In other words, think about your WHERE clause! Thinking outside the box It is tempting to build a large monolithic dataflow that does many things, one of which is a Lookup. Often though you can make better use of your available resources by, well, mixing things up a little and here are a few ideas to get your creative juices flowing: There is no rule that says everything has to happen in a single dataflow. If you have some particularly resource intensive lookups then consider putting that lookup into a dataflow all of its own and using raw files to pass the pipeline data in and out of that dataflow. Know your data. If you think, for example, that the majority of your incoming rows will match with only a small subset of your lookup data then consider chaining multiple lookup components together; the first would use a FullCache containing that data subset and the remaining data that doesn’t find a match could be passed to a second lookup that perhaps uses a NoCache lookup thus negating the need to pull all of that least-used lookup data into memory. Do you need to process all of your incoming data all at once? If you can process different partitions of your data separately then you can partition your lookup cache as well. For example, if you are using a lookup to convert a location into a [LocationId] then why not process your data one region at a time? This will mean your lookup cache only has to contain data for the location that you are currently processing and with the ability of the Lookup in SSIS2008 and beyond to charge the cache using a dynamically built SQL statement you’ll be able to achieve it using the same dataflow and simply loop over it using a ForEach loop. Taking the previous data partitioning idea further … a dataflow can contain more than one data path so why not split your data using a conditional split component and, again, charge your lookup caches with only the data that they need for that partition. Lookups have two uses: to (1) find a matching row from the lookup set and (2) put attributes from that matching row into the pipeline. Ask yourself, do you need to do these two things at the same time? After all once you have the key column(s) from your lookup set then you can use that key to get the rest of attributes further downstream, perhaps even in another dataflow. Are you using the same lookup data set multiple times? If so, consider the file caching option in SSIS 2008 and beyond. Above all, experiment and be creative with different combinations. You may be surprised at what works. Final  thoughts If you want to know more about how the Lookup component differs in SSIS2008 from SSIS2005 then I have a dedicated blog post about that at Lookup component gets a makeover. I am on a mini-crusade at the moment to get a BULK MERGE feature into the database engine, the thinking being that if the database engine can quickly merge massive amounts of data in a similar manner to how it can insert massive amounts using BULK INSERT then that’s a lot of work that wouldn’t have to be done in the SSIS pipeline. If you think that is a good idea then go and vote for BULK MERGE on Connect. If you have any other tips to share then please stick them in the comments. Hope this helps! @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Windows Azure Evolution &ndash; Welcome to VS2012

  - by Shaun

  When the Microsoft released the first preview version of Windows 8 and Visual Studio, many people in the community were asking if the windows azure tool is available to it. The answer was “NO”. Microsoft promised that the windows azure tool will only support the Visual Studio 2010 but when the 2012 was final released, windows azure tool should be work. But now alone with the new windows azure platform was published we got the latest Windows Azure SDK 1.7, which is compatible to the Visual Studio 2012 RC.   You can retrieve the latest version of the Windows Azure SDK through Web Platform Installer, which I think it’s the easiest and simplest way to download and install, since besides the SDK itself it also needs some other components. To download the latest windows azure SDK from Web Platform Installer, just go to the windows azure website and clicked the Develop, .NET and click the blue “install” button. Then you need to select which version of Visual Studio you want to use, Visual Studio 2010 or Visual Studio 2012 RC. After selected the current version you will download an EXE file. This file will lead you to install the Web Platform Installer 4.0 (if you haven’t installed) and the latest windows azure SDK. You can see the version name is June 2012, 1.7. Finally the WebPI will detect the dependent components you need to download and begin to install. But if you want to challenge yourself you can download the components and install them manually. The standalone installations are listed in this page with the instruction on how to install them with necessary pre-requirements.   Once you finished the installation you can open the Visual Studio 2012 RC and as usual, it need to be run as administrator. If you clicked the New Project link from the start page, navigated to Cloud category you will find that there no project template available. Is there anything wrong? So, if you changed the target framework from the default .NET 4.5 to .NET 4 you will see the azure project template. This is because, currently the windows azure instance does not support .NET 4.5. After clicked OK you will see the role creation window, which is similar as what you have seen before. But there are some new role templates in this SDK. Firstly you will have ASP.NET MVC 4 web role available, which means you can create ASP.NET MVC 4 applications for internet, intranet, mobile and WebAPI on the cloud. Then there are two new worker role templates, “Cache Worker Role” and “Worker Role with Service Bus Queue”. “Worker Role with Service Bus Queue” is a worker role which had added necessary references to access the Windows Azure Service Bus Queue. It also have some basic sample code in the worker role class which could read messages from the queue when started. The “Cache Worker Role” is a worker role which has the in-memory distributed cache feature enabled by default. This feature is different than the Windows Azure Caching. It allows the role instance to use its memory as a in-memory distributed cache clusters. By using this feature you can have one or more worker roles as some dedicate cache clusters. Alternatively, you can make part of your web role and worker role’s memory as the cache clusters as well. Let’s just create an ASP.NET MVC 4 Web Role, and click F5 to run it under the local emulator. If you have been working with azure for a while you should know that I need to setup the local storage emulator before running locally if it’s a fresh azure SDK installation. But in this version when we started our azure project the Visual Studio will check if the storage emulator had been initialized. If not, it will run the initializer automatically. And as you can see, in this version the storage emulator relies on the SQL Server 2012 Local DB feature. It will create the emulator database and tables in the default local database. You can set the storage emulator to use a standard SQL Server default instance by using the command “dsinit /instance:.”. The “dsinit” tool now is located at %PROGRAM FILES%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Azure\Emulator\devstore After the Visual Studio complied and deployed the package our website should be shown in the browser. This is the MVC 4 Web Role home page on my Windows 8 machine in IE10. Another thing you might notice is that, in this version the compute emulator utilizes IIS Express to host the web roles instead of the full IIS. You can add breakpoint in the code and debug, and you can use the local storage emulator to test your code for accessing the storage service. All of them are same as what your are doing now on SDK 1.6. You can switch to use IIS to run your web role in local emulator. Just open the windows azure porject property windows, in the Web page select “Use IIS Web Server”. For more information about this please have a look on Nuno’s blog post. In the role property page in Visual Studio there’s no massive changes. You can configure your role settings such as the endpoints, certificates and local storage, etc.. One thing was added is the Caching tab. Here you can specify enable the caching feature or not, and how much memory you want to use as the cache cluster. I will introduce more details about it in the future posts. The publish and package feature are also no change. You can publish your project to azure directly through Visual Studio 2012, while you can create the package and upload manually. Below is the SDK version of my deployment which is 1.7.30602.1703 in the developer portal.   Summary In this post I introduced about the new Windows Azure SDK 1.7 especially on how it works on the latest Visual Studio 2012 RC. There’s no significant changes in the visual studio tool in this version but some small enhancement such as ASP.NET MVC 4, Cache Worker Role, using SQL 2012 Local DB and IIS Express, etc..   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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• Software Architecture: Quality Attributes

  Quality is what all software engineers should strive for when building a new system or adding new functionality. Dictonary.com ambiguously defines quality as a grade of excellence. Unfortunately, quality must be defined within the context of a situation in that each engineer must extract quality attributes from a project’s requirements. Because quality is defined by project requirements the meaning of quality is constantly changing base on the project. Software architecture factors that indicate the relevance and effectiveness The relevance and effectiveness of architecture can vary based on the context in which it was conceived and the quality attributes that are required to meet. Typically when evaluating architecture for a specific system regarding relevance and effectiveness the following questions should be asked.   Architectural relevance and effectiveness questions: Does the architectural concept meet the needs of the system for which it was designed? Out of the competing architectures for a system, which one is the most suitable? If we look at the first question regarding meeting the needs of a system for which it was designed. A system that answers yes to this question must meet all of its quality goals. This means that it consistently meets or exceeds performance goals for the system. In addition, the system meets all the other required system attributers based on the systems requirements. The suitability of a system is based on several factors. In order for a project to be suitable the necessary resources must be available to complete the task. Standard Project Resources: Money Trained Staff Time Life cycle factors that affect the system and design The development life cycle used on a project can drastically affect how a system’s architecture is created as well as influence its design. In the case of using the software development life cycle (SDLC) each phase must be completed before the next can begin.  This waterfall approach does not allow for changes in a system’s architecture after that phase is completed. This can lead to major system issues when the architecture for the system is not as optimal because of missed quality attributes. This can occur when a project has poor requirements and makes misguided architectural decisions to name a few examples. Once the architectural phase is complete the concepts established in this phase must move on to the design phase that is bound to use the concepts and guidelines defined in the previous phase regardless of any missing quality attributes needed for the project. If any issues arise during this phase regarding the selected architectural concepts they cannot be corrected during the current project. This directly has an effect on the design of a system because the proper qualities required for the project where not used when the architectural concepts were approved. When this is identified nothing can be done to fix the architectural issues and system design must use the existing architectural concepts regardless of its missing quality properties because the architectural concepts for the project cannot be altered. The decisions made in the design phase then preceded to fall down to the implementation phase where the actual system is coded based on the approved architectural concepts established in the architecture phase regardless of its architectural quality. Conversely projects using more of an iterative or agile methodology to implement a system has more flexibility to correct architectural decisions based on missing quality attributes. This is due to each phase of the SDLC is executed more than once so any issues identified in architecture of a system can be corrected in the next architectural phase. Subsequently the corresponding changes will then be adjusted in the following design phase so that when the project is completed the optimal architectural and design decision are applied to the solution. Architecture factors that indicate functional suitability Systems that have function shortcomings do not have the proper functionality based on the project’s driving quality attributes. What this means in English is that the system does not live up to what is required of it by the stakeholders as identified by the missing quality attributes and requirements. One way to prevent functional shortcomings is to test the project’s architecture, design, and implementation against the project’s driving quality attributes to ensure that none of the attributes were missed in any of the phases. Another way to ensure a system has functional suitability is to certify that all its requirements are fully articulated so that there is no chance for misconceptions or misinterpretations by all stakeholders. This will help prevent any issues regarding interpreting the system requirements during the initial architectural concept phase, design phase and implementation phase. Consider the applicability of other architectural models When considering an architectural model for a project is also important to consider other alternative architectural models to ensure that the model that is selected will meet the systems required functionality and high quality attributes. Recently I can remember talking about a project that I was working on and a coworker suggested a different architectural approach that I had never considered. This new model will allow for the same functionally that is offered by the existing model but will allow for a higher quality project because it fulfills more quality attributes. It is always important to seek alternatives prior to committing to an architectural model. Factors used to identify high-risk components A high risk component can be defined as a component that fulfills 2 or more quality attributes for a system. An example of this can be seen in a web application that utilizes a remote database. One high-risk component in this system is the TCIP component because it allows for HTTP connections to handle by a web server and as well as allows for the server to also connect to a remote database server so that it can import data into the system. This component allows for the assurance of data quality attribute and the accessibility quality attribute because the system is available on the network. If for some reason the TCIP component was to fail the web application would fail on two quality attributes accessibility and data assurance in that the web site is not accessible and data cannot be update as needed. Summary As stated previously, quality is what all software engineers should strive for when building a new system or adding new functionality. The quality of a system can be directly determined by how closely it is implemented when compared to its desired quality attributes. One way to insure a higher quality system is to enforce that all project requirements are fully articulated so that no assumptions or misunderstandings can be made by any of the stakeholders. By doing this a system has a better chance of becoming a high quality system based on its quality attributes

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• SQL SERVER – SSMS: Disk Usage Report

  - by Pinal Dave

  Let us start with humor!  I think we the series on various reports, we come to a logical point. We covered all the reports at server level. This means the reports we saw were targeted towards activities that are related to instance level operations. These are mostly like how a doctor diagnoses a patient. At this point I am reminded of a dialog which I read somewhere: Patient: Doc, It hurts when I touch my head. Doc: Ok, go on. What else have you experienced? Patient: It hurts even when I touch my eye, it hurts when I touch my arms, it even hurts when I touch my feet, etc. Doc: Hmmm … Patient: I feel it hurts when I touch anywhere in my body. Doc: Ahh … now I get it. You need a plaster to your finger John. Sometimes the server level gives an indicator to what is happening in the system, but we need to get to the root cause for a specific database. So, this is the first blog in series where we would start discussing about database level reports. To launch database level reports, expand selected server in Object Explorer, expand the Databases folder, and then right-click any database for which we want to look at reports. From the menu, select Reports, then Standard Reports, and then any of database level reports. In this blog, we would talk about four “disk” reports because they are similar: Disk Usage Disk Usage by Top Tables Disk Usage by Table Disk Usage by Partition Disk Usage This report shows multiple information about the database. Let us discuss them one by one.  We have divided the output into 5 different sections. Section 1 shows the high level summary of the database. It shows the space used by database files (mdf and ldf). Under the hood, the report uses, various DMVs and DBCC Commands, it is using sys.data_spaces and DBCC SHOWFILESTATS. Section 2 and 3 are pie charts. One for data file allocation and another for the transaction log file. Pie chart for “Data Files Space Usage (%)” shows space consumed data, indexes, allocated to the SQL Server database, and unallocated space which is allocated to the SQL Server database but not yet filled with anything. “Transaction Log Space Usage (%)” used DBCC SQLPERF (LOGSPACE) and shows how much empty space we have in the physical transaction log file. Section 4 shows the data from Default Trace and looks at Event IDs 92, 93, 94, 95 which are for “Data File Auto Grow”, “Log File Auto Grow”, “Data File Auto Shrink” and “Log File Auto Shrink” respectively. Here is an expanded view for that section. If default trace is not enabled, then this section would be replaced by the message “Trace Log is disabled” as highlighted below. Section 5 of the report uses DBCC SHOWFILESTATS to get information. Here is the enhanced version of that section. This shows the physical layout of the file. In case you have In-Memory Objects in the database (from SQL Server 2014), then report would show information about those as well. Here is the screenshot taken for a different database, which has In-Memory table. I have highlighted new things which are only shown for in-memory database. The new sections which are highlighted above are using sys.dm_db_xtp_checkpoint_files, sys.database_files and sys.data_spaces. The new type for in-memory OLTP is ‘FX’ in sys.data_space. The next set of reports is targeted to get information about a table and its storage. These reports can answer questions like: Which is the biggest table in the database? How many rows we have in table? Is there any table which has a lot of reserved space but its unused? Which partition of the table is having more data? Disk Usage by Top Tables This report provides detailed data on the utilization of disk space by top 1000 tables within the Database. The report does not provide data for memory optimized tables. Disk Usage by Table This report is same as earlier report with few difference. First Report shows only 1000 rows First Report does order by values in DMV sys.dm_db_partition_stats whereas second one does it based on name of the table. Both of the reports have interactive sort facility. We can click on any column header and change the sorting order of data. Disk Usage by Partition This report shows the distribution of the data in table based on partition in the table. This is so similar to previous output with the partition details now. Here is the query taken from profiler. SELECT row_number() OVER (ORDER BY a1.used_page_count DESC, a1.index_id) AS row_number ,      (dense_rank() OVER (ORDER BY a5.name, a2.name))%2 AS l1 ,      a1.OBJECT_ID ,      a5.name AS [schema] ,       a2.name ,       a1.index_id ,       a3.name AS index_name ,       a3.type_desc ,       a1.partition_number ,       a1.used_page_count * 8 AS total_used_pages ,       a1.reserved_page_count * 8 AS total_reserved_pages ,       a1.row_count FROM sys.dm_db_partition_stats a1 INNER JOIN sys.all_objects a2  ON ( a1.OBJECT_ID = a2.OBJECT_ID) AND a1.OBJECT_ID NOT IN (SELECT OBJECT_ID FROM sys.tables WHERE is_memory_optimized = 1) INNER JOIN sys.schemas a5 ON (a5.schema_id = a2.schema_id) LEFT OUTER JOIN  sys.indexes a3  ON ( (a1.OBJECT_ID = a3.OBJECT_ID) AND (a1.index_id = a3.index_id) ) WHERE (SELECT MAX(DISTINCT partition_number) FROM sys.dm_db_partition_stats a4 WHERE (a4.OBJECT_ID = a1.OBJECT_ID)) >= 1 AND a2.TYPE <> N'S' AND  a2.TYPE <> N'IT' ORDER BY a5.name ASC, a2.name ASC, a1.index_id, a1.used_page_count DESC, a1.partition_number Using all of the above reports, you should be able to get the usage of database files and also space used by tables. I think this is too much disk information for a single blog and I hope you have used them in the past to get data. Do let me know if you found anything interesting using these reports in your environments. 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 Tagged: SQL Reports

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• SQL SERVER – Core Concepts – Elasticity, Scalability and ACID Properties – Exploring NuoDB an Elastically Scalable Database System

  - by pinaldave

  I have been recently exploring Elasticity and Scalability attributes of databases. You can see that in my earlier blog posts about NuoDB where I wanted to look at Elasticity and Scalability concepts. The concepts are very interesting, and intriguing as well. I have discussed these concepts with my friend Joyti M and together we have come up with this interesting read. The goal of this article is to answer following simple questions What is Elasticity? What is Scalability? How ACID properties vary from NOSQL Concepts? What are the prevailing problems in the current database system architectures? Why is NuoDB  an innovative and welcome change in database paradigm? Elasticity This word’s original form is used in many different ways and honestly it does do a decent job in holding things together over the years as a person grows and contracts. Within the tech world, and specifically related to software systems (database, application servers), it has come to mean a few things - allow stretching of resources without reaching the breaking point (on demand). What are resources in this context? Resources are the usual suspects – RAM/CPU/IO/Bandwidth in the form of a container (a process or bunch of processes combined as modules). When it is about increasing resources the simplest idea which comes to mind is the addition of another container. Another container means adding a brand new physical node. When it is about adding a new node there are two questions which comes to mind. 1) Can we add another node to our software system? 2) If yes, does adding new node cause downtime for the system? Let us assume we have added new node, let us see what the new needs of the system are when a new node is added. Balancing incoming requests to multiple nodes Synchronization of a shared state across multiple nodes Identification of “downstate” and resolution action to bring it to “upstate” Well, adding a new node has its advantages as well. Here are few of the positive points Throughput can increase nearly horizontally across the node throughout the system Response times of application will increase as in-between layer interactions will be improved Now, Let us put the above concepts in the perspective of a Database. When we mention the term “running out of resources” or “application is bound to resources” the resources can be CPU, Memory or Bandwidth. The regular approach to “gain scalability” in the database is to look around for bottlenecks and increase the bottlenecked resource. When we have memory as a bottleneck we look at the data buffers, locks, query plans or indexes. After a point even this is not enough as there needs to be an efficient way of managing such large workload on a “single machine” across memory and CPU bound (right kind of scheduling)  workload. We next move on to either read/write separation of the workload or functionality-based sharing so that we still have control of the individual. But this requires lots of planning and change in client systems in terms of knowing where to go/update/read and for reporting applications to “aggregate the data” in an intelligent way. What we ideally need is an intelligent layer which allows us to do these things without us getting into managing, monitoring and distributing the workload. Scalability In the context of database/applications, scalability means three main things Ability to handle normal loads without pressure E.g. X users at the Y utilization of resources (CPU, Memory, Bandwidth) on the Z kind of hardware (4 processor, 32 GB machine with 15000 RPM SATA drives and 1 GHz Network switch) with T throughput Ability to scale up to expected peak load which is greater than normal load with acceptable response times Ability to provide acceptable response times across the system E.g. Response time in S milliseconds (or agreed upon unit of measure) – 90% of the time The Issue – Need of Scale In normal cases one can plan for the load testing to test out normal, peak, and stress scenarios to ensure specific hardware meets the needs. With help from Hardware and Software partners and best practices, bottlenecks can be identified and requisite resources added to the system. Unfortunately this vertical scale is expensive and difficult to achieve and most of the operational people need the ability to scale horizontally. This helps in getting better throughput as there are physical limits in terms of adding resources (Memory, CPU, Bandwidth and Storage) indefinitely. Today we have different options to achieve scalability: Read & Write Separation The idea here is to do actual writes to one store and configure slaves receiving the latest data with acceptable delays. Slaves can be used for balancing out reads. We can also explore functional separation or sharing as well. We can separate data operations by a specific identifier (e.g. region, year, month) and consolidate it for reporting purposes. For functional separation the major disadvantage is when schema changes or workload pattern changes. As the requirement grows one still needs to deal with scale need in manual ways by providing an abstraction in the middle tier code. Using NOSQL solutions The idea is to flatten out the structures in general to keep all values which are retrieved together at the same store and provide flexible schema. The issue with the stores is that they are compromising on mostly consistency (no ACID guarantees) and one has to use NON-SQL dialect to work with the store. The other major issue is about education with NOSQL solutions. Would one really want to make these compromises on the ability to connect and retrieve in simple SQL manner and learn other skill sets? Or for that matter give up on ACID guarantee and start dealing with consistency issues? Hybrid Deployment – Mac, Linux, Cloud, and Windows One of the challenges today that we see across On-premise vs Cloud infrastructure is a difference in abilities. Take for example SQL Azure – it is wonderful in its concepts of throttling (as it is shared deployment) of resources and ability to scale using federation. However, the same abilities are not available on premise. This is not a mistake, mind you – but a compromise of the sweet spot of workloads, customer requirements and operational SLAs which can be supported by the team. In today’s world it is imperative that databases are available across operating systems – which are a commodity and used by developers of all hues. An Ideal Database Ability List A system which allows a linear scale of the system (increase in throughput with reasonable response time) with the addition of resources A system which does not compromise on the ACID guarantees and require developers to learn new paradigms A system which does not force fit a new way interacting with database by learning Non-SQL dialect A system which does not force fit its mechanisms for providing availability across its various modules. Well NuoDB is the first database which has all of the above abilities and much more. In future articles I will cover my hands-on experience with it. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: NuoDB

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• Why people don't patch and upgrade?!?

  - by Mike Dietrich

  Discussing the topic "Why Upgrade" or "Why not Upgrade" is not always fun. Actually the arguments repeat from customer to customer. Typically we hear things such as: A PSU or Patch Set introduces new bugs A new PSU or Patch Set introduces new features which lead to risk and require application verification  Patching means risk Patching changes the execution plans Patching requires too much testing Patching is too much work for our DBAs Patching costs a lot of money and doesn't pay out And to be very honest sometimes it's hard for me to stay calm in such discussions. Let's discuss some of these points a bit more in detail. A PSU or Patch Set introduces new bugsWell, yes, that is true as no software containing more than some lines of code is bug free. This applies to Oracle's code as well as too any application or operating system code. But first of all, does that mean you never patch your OS because the patch may introduce new flaws? And second, what is the point of saying "it introduces new bugs"? Does that mean you will never get rid of the mean issues we know about and we fixed already? Scroll down from MOS Note:161818.1 to the patch release you are on, no matter if it's 10.2.0.4 or 11.2.0.3 and check for the Known Issues And Alerts.Will you take responsibility to know about all these issues and refuse to upgrade to 11.2.0.4? I won't. A new PSU or Patch Set introduces new featuresOk, we can discuss that. Offering new functionality within a database patch set is a dubious thing. It has advantages such as in 11.2.0.4 where we backported Database Redaction to. But this is something you will only use once you have an Advanced Security license. I interpret that statement I've heard quite often from customers in a different way: People don't want to get surprises such as new behaviour. This certainly gives everybody a hard time. And we've had many examples in the past (SESSION_CACHED_CURSROS in 10.2.0.4,  _DATAFILE_WRITE_ERRORS_CRASH_INSTANCE in 11.2.0.2 and others) where those things weren't documented, not even in the README. Thanks to many friends out there I learned about those as well. So new behaviour is the topic people consider as risky - not really new features. And just to point this out: A PSU never brings in new features or new behaviour by definition! Patching means riskDoes it really mean risk? Yes, there were issues in the past (and sometimes in the present as well) where a patch didn't get installed correctly. But personally I consider it way more risky to not patch. Keep that in mind: The day Oracle publishes an PSU (or CPU) containing security fixes all the great security experts out there go public with their findings as well. So from that day on even my grandma can find out about those issues and try to attack somebody. Now a lot of people say: "My database does not face the internet." And I will answer: "The enemy is sitting already behind your firewalls. And knows potentially about these things." My statement: Not patching introduces way more risk to your environment than patching. Seriously! Patching changes the execution plansDo they really? I agree - there's a very small risk for this happening with Patch Sets. But not with PSUs or CPUs as they contain no optimizer fixes changing behaviour (but they may contain fixes curing wrong-query-result-bugs). But what's the point of a changing execution plan? In Oracle Database 11g it is so simple to be prepared. SQL Plan Management is a free EE feature - so once that occurs you'll put the plan into the Plan Baseline. Basta! Yes, you wouldn't like to get such surprises? Than please use the SQL Performance Analyzer (SPA) from Real Application Testing and you'll detect that easily upfront in minutes. And not to forget this, a plan change can also be very positive!Yes, there's a little risk with a database patchset - and we have many possibilites to detect this before patching. Patching requires too much testingWell, does it really? I have seen in the past 12 years how people test. There are very different efforts and approaches on this. I have seen people spending a hell of money on licenses or on project team staffing. And I have seen people sailing blindly without any tests just going the John-Wayne-approach.Proper tools will allow you to test easily without too much efforts. See the paragraph above. We have used Real Application Testing in so many customer projects reducing the amount of work spend on testing by over 50%. But apart from that at some point you will have to stop testing. If you don't you'll get lost and you'll burn money. There's no 100% guaranty. You will have to deal with a little risk as reaching the final 5% of certainty will cost you the same as it did cost to reach 95%. And doing this will lead to abnormal long product cycles that you'll run behind forever. And this will cost even more money. Patching is too much work for our DBAsPatching is a lot of work. I agree. And it's no fun work. It's boring, annoying. You don't learn much from that. That's why you should try to automate this task. Use the Database's Lifecycle Management Pack. And don't cry about the fact that it costs money. Yes it does. But it will ease the process and you'll save a lot of costs as you don't waste your valuable time with patching. Or use Oracle Database 12c Oracle Multitenant and patch either by unplug/plug or patch an entire container database with all PDBs with one patch in one task. We have customer reference cases proofing it saved them 75% of time, effort and cost since they've used Lifecycle Management Pack. So why don't you use it? Patching costs a lot of money and doesn't pay outWell, see my statements in the paragraph above. And it pays out as flying with a database with 100 known critical flaws in it which are already fixed by Oracle (such as in the Oct 2013 PSU for Oracle Database 12c) will cost ways more in case of failure or even data loss. Bet with me? Let me finally ask you some questions. What cell phone are you using and which OS does it run? Do you have an iPhone 5 and did you upgrade already to iOS 7.0.3? I've just encountered on mine that the alarm (which I rely on when traveling) has gotten now a dependency on the physical switch "sound on/off". If it is switched to "off" physically the alarm rings "silently". What a wonderful example of a behaviour change coming in with a patch set. Will this push you to stay with iOS5 or iOS6? No, because those have security flaws which won't be fixed anymore. What browser are you surfing with? Do you use Mozilla 3.6? Well, congratulations to all the hackers. It will be easy for them to attack you and harm your system. I'd guess you have the auto updater on.  Same for Google Chrome, Safari, IE. Right? -Mike The T.htmtableborders, .htmtableborders td, .htmtableborders th {border : 1px dashed lightgrey ! important;} html, body { border: 0px; } body { background-color: #ffffff; } img, hr { cursor: default }

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