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• Dallas First Regionals 2012&ndash; For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology

  - by T

  Wow!  That is all I have to say after the last 3 days. Three full fun filled days in a world that fed the geek, sparked the competitor, inspired the humanitarian, encouraged the inventor, and continuously warmed my heart.  As part of the Dallas First Regionals, I was awed by incredible students who teach as much as they learn, inventive and truly caring mentors that make mentoring look easy, and completely passionate and dedicated volunteers that bring meaning to giving all that you have and making events fun and safe for all.  If you have any interest in innovation, robotics, or highly motivated students, I can’t recommend anything any higher than visiting a First Robotics event. This is my third year with First and I was honored enough to serve the Dallas First Regionals as both a Web Site evaluator and as the East Field Volunteer Coordinator.  This was also the first year my daughter volunteered with me.  My daughter and I both recognize how different the First program is from other team events.  The difference with First is that everyone is a first class citizen.   It is a difference we can feel through experiencing and observing interactions between executives, respected engineers, students, and event staff.  Even with a veracious competition, you still find a lot of cooperation and we never witnessed any belittling between teams or individuals. First Robotics coined the term “Gracious Professionalism”.   It's a way of doing things that encourages high-quality work, emphasizes the value of others, and respects individuals and the community.1 I was introduced to this term as the Volunteer Coordinator when I was preparing the volunteer instructional speech.  Through the next few days, I discovered it is truly core to everything that First does.  One of the ways First accomplishes Gracious Professionalism is by utilizing another term they came up with which is “CoopertitionTM”. At FIRST, CoopertitionTM is displaying unqualified kindness and respect in the face of fierce competition.1   One of the things I never liked about sports was the need to “destroy” the other team.  First has really found a way to integrate CoopertitionTM  into the rules so teams can be competitive and part of that competition rewards cooperation. Oh and did I mention it has ROBOTS!!!  This year it had basket ball playing Kinect connected, remote controlled, robots!  There are not words for how exciting these games are.  You HAVE to check out this years game, Rebound Rumble, on youtube or you can view live action on Dallas First Video (as of this posting, the recording haven’t posted yet but should be there soon).  There are also some images below. Whatever it is, these students get it and exemplify it and these mentors ooze with it.  I am glad that First supports these events so we can all learn and be inspired by these exceptional students and mentors.  I know that no matter how much I give, it will never compare to what I gain volunteering at First.  Even if you don’t have time to volunteer, you owe it to yourself to go check out one of these events.  See what the future holds, be inspired, be encouraged, take some knowledge, leave some knowledge and most of all, have FUN.  That is what First is all about and thanks to First, I get it.   First Dallas Regionals 2012 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL 1.  USFirst http://www.usfirst.org/aboutus/gracious-professionalism

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• MPI Cluster Debugger launch integration in VS2010

  Let's assume that you have all the HPC bits installed and that you have existing MPI code (or you created a "Hello World" project using the MPI project template). Of course, you create a single MPI application and at runtime it will correspond to multiple processes (of the same app) launched on multiple nodes (i.e. machines) on the cluster. So how do you debug such a situation by simply hitting the familiar "F5" keystroke (i.e. Debug - Start Debugging)?WATCH IT INSTEAD OF READING ABOUT ITIf you can't bear to read through all the details below, just watch this 19-minute screencast explaining this VS2010 feature. Alternatively, or even additionally, keep on reading.REQUIREMENTWhen you debug an MPI application, you would want the copying of resources from your client machine (where Visual Studio is installed) to each compute node (where Windows HPC Server is installed) to take place automatically for you. 'Resources' in the previous sentence includes your application binary, plus any binary or data dependencies it may have, plus PDBs if needed, plus the debug CRT of the correct bitness, plus msvsmon for remote debugging to work. You would also want, after copying is complete, to have your app and msvsmon launched and attached so that you can hit breakpoints back in Visual Studio on your client machine. All these thing that you would want are delivered in VS2010.STEPS TO F51. In your MPI project where you have placed a breakpoint go to Project Properties - Configuration Properties - Debugging. Ensure the "Debugger to launch" combo box value is set to MPI Cluster Debugger.2. There are a whole bunch of properties here and typically you can ignore all of them except one: Run Environment. By default it is set to run 1 process on your local machine and if you change the number after that to, for example, 4 it will launch 4 processes of your app on your local machine.You want this to run on your cluster though, so go to the dropdown arrow at the end of the Run Environment cell and open it to expose the "Edit Hpc node" menu which opens the Node Selector dialog:In this dialog you can enter (or pick from a list) the cluster head node name and then the number of processes you want to execute on the cluster and then hit OK and… you are done.3. Press F5 and watch your breakpoint get hit (after giving it some time for copying, remote execution, attachment and symbol resolution to take place).GOING DEEPERIn the MPI Cluster Debugger project properties above, you can see many additional properties to the Run Environment. They are all optional, but you may want to understand them in order to fine tune your cluster debugging. Read all about each one of these on the MSDN page Configuration Properties for the MPI Cluster Debugger.In the Node Selector dialog above you can see more options than just the Head Node name and Number of Process to run. They should be self-explanatory but I also cover them in depth in my screencast showing you an example of why you would choose to schedule processes per core versus per node. You can also read about these options on MSDN as part of the page How to: Configure and Launch the MPI Cluster Debugger.To read through an example that touches on MPI project creation, project properties, node selector, and also usage of MPI with OpenMP plus MPI with PPL, read the MSDN page Walkthrough: Launching the MPI Cluster Debugger in Visual Studio 2010.Happy MPI debugging! Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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• Is it bad practice to make an iterator that is aware of its own end

  - by aaronman

  For some background of why I am asking this question here is an example. In python the method chain chains an arbitrary number of ranges together and makes them into one without making copies. Here is a link in case you don't understand it. I decided I would implement chain in c++ using variadic templates. As far as I can tell the only way to make an iterator for chain that will successfully go to the next container is for each iterator to to know about the end of the container (I thought of a sort of hack in where when != is called against the end it will know to go to the next container, but the first way seemed easier and safer and more versatile). My question is if there is anything inherently wrong with an iterator knowing about its own end, my code is in c++ but this can be language agnostic since many languages have iterators. #ifndef CHAIN_HPP #define CHAIN_HPP #include "iterator_range.hpp" namespace iter { template <typename ... Containers> struct chain_iter; template <typename Container> struct chain_iter<Container> { private: using Iterator = decltype(((Container*)nullptr)->begin()); Iterator begin; const Iterator end;//never really used but kept it for consistency public: chain_iter(Container & container, bool is_end=false) : begin(container.begin()),end(container.end()) { if(is_end) begin = container.end(); } chain_iter & operator++() { ++begin; return *this; } auto operator*()->decltype(*begin) { return *begin; } bool operator!=(const chain_iter & rhs) const{ return this->begin != rhs.begin; } }; template <typename Container, typename ... Containers> struct chain_iter<Container,Containers...> { private: using Iterator = decltype(((Container*)nullptr)->begin()); Iterator begin; const Iterator end; bool end_reached = false; chain_iter<Containers...> next_iter; public: chain_iter(Container & container, Containers& ... rest, bool is_end=false) : begin(container.begin()), end(container.end()), next_iter(rest...,is_end) { if(is_end) begin = container.end(); } chain_iter & operator++() { if (begin == end) { ++next_iter; } else { ++begin; } return *this; } auto operator*()->decltype(*begin) { if (begin == end) { return *next_iter; } else { return *begin; } } bool operator !=(const chain_iter & rhs) const { if (begin == end) { return this->next_iter != rhs.next_iter; } else return this->begin != rhs.begin; } }; template <typename ... Containers> iterator_range<chain_iter<Containers...>> chain(Containers& ... containers) { auto begin = chain_iter<Containers...>(containers...); auto end = chain_iter<Containers...>(containers...,true); return iterator_range<chain_iter<Containers...>>(begin,end); } } #endif //CHAIN_HPP

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• Dont Throw Duplicate Exceptions

  In your code, youll sometimes have write code that validates input using a variety of checks.  Assuming you havent embraced AOP and done everything with attributes, its likely that your defensive coding is going to look something like this: public void Foo(SomeClass someArgument) { if(someArgument == null) { throw new InvalidArgumentException("someArgument"); } if(!someArgument.IsValid()) { throw new InvalidArgumentException("someArgument"); }   // Do Real Work } Do you see a problem here?  Heres the deal Exceptions should be meaningful.  They have value at a number of levels: In the code, throwing an exception lets the develop know that there is an unsupported condition here In calling code, different types of exceptions may be handled differently At runtime, logging of exceptions provides a valuable diagnostic tool Its this last reason I want to focus on.  If you find yourself literally throwing the exact exception in more than one location within a given method, stop.  The stack trace for such an exception is likely going to be identical regardless of which path of execution led to the exception being thrown.  When that happens, you or whomever is debugging the problem will have to guess which exception was thrown.  Guessing is a great way to introduce additional problems and/or greatly increase the amount of time require to properly diagnose and correct any bugs related to this behavior. Dont Guess Be Specific When throwing an exception from multiple code paths within the code, be specific.  Virtually ever exception allows a custom message use it and ensure each case is unique.  If the exception might be handled differently by the caller, than consider implementing a new custom exception type.  Also, dont automatically think that you can improve the code by collapsing the if-then logic into a single call with short-circuiting (e.g. if(x == null || !x.IsValid()) ) that will guarantee that you cant easily throw different information into the message as easily as constructing the exception separately in each case. The code above might be refactored like so:   public void Foo(SomeClass someArgument) { if(someArgument == null) { throw new ArgumentNullException("someArgument"); } if(!someArgument.IsValid()) { throw new InvalidArgumentException("someArgument"); }   // Do Real Work } In this case its taking advantage of the fact that there is already an ArgumentNullException in the framework, but if you didnt have an IsValid() method and were doing validation on your own, it might look like this: public void Foo(SomeClass someArgument) { if(someArgument.Quantity < 0) { throw new InvalidArgumentException("someArgument", "Quantity cannot be less than 0. Quantity: " + someArgument.Quantity); } if(someArgument.Quantity > 100) { throw new InvalidArgumentException("someArgument", "SomeArgument.Quantity cannot exceed 100. Quantity: " + someArgument.Quantity); }   // Do Real Work }   Note that in this last example, Im throwing the same exception type in each case, but with different Message values.  Im also making sure to include the value that resulted in the exception, as this can be extremely useful for debugging.  (How many times have you wished NullReferenceException would tell you the name of the variable it was trying to reference?) Dont add work to those who will follow after you to maintain your application (especially since its likely to be you).  Be specific with your exception messages follow DRY when throwing exceptions within a given method by throwing unique exceptions for each interesting case of invalid state. Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• T-SQL (SCD) Slowly Changing Dimension Type 2 using a merge statement

  - by AtulThakor

  Working on stored procedure recently which loads records into a data warehouse I found that the existing record was being expired using an update statement followed by an insert to add the new active record. Playing around with the merge statement you can actually expire the current record and insert a new record within one clean statement. This is how the statement works, we do the normal merge statement to insert a record when there is no match, if we match the record we update the existing record by expiring it and deactivating. At the end of the merge statement we use the output statement to output the staging values for the update,  we wrap the whole merge statement within an insert statement and add new rows for the records which we inserted. I’ve added the full script at the bottom so you can paste it and play around.   1: INSERT INTO ExampleFactUpdate 2: (PolicyID, 3: Status) 4: SELECT -- these columns are returned from the output statement 5: PolicyID, 6: Status 7: FROM 8: ( 9: -- merge statement on unique id in this case Policy_ID 10: MERGE dbo.ExampleFactUpdate dp 11: USING dbo.ExampleStag s 12: ON dp.PolicyID = s.PolicyID 13: WHEN NOT MATCHED THEN -- when we cant match the record we insert a new record record and this is all that happens 14: INSERT (PolicyID,Status) 15: VALUES (s.PolicyID, s.Status) 16: WHEN MATCHED --if it already exists 17: AND ExpiryDate IS NULL -- and the Expiry Date is null 18: THEN 19: UPDATE 20: SET 21: dp.ExpiryDate = getdate(), --we set the expiry on the existing record 22: dp.Active = 0 -- and deactivate the existing record 23: OUTPUT $Action MergeAction, s.PolicyID, s.Status -- the output statement returns a merge action which can 24: ) MergeOutput -- be insert/update/delete, on our example where a record has been updated (or expired in our case 25: WHERE -- we'll filter using a where clause 26: MergeAction = 'Update'; -- here   Complete source for example 1: if OBJECT_ID('ExampleFactUpdate') > 0 2: drop table ExampleFactUpdate 3:  4: Create Table ExampleFactUpdate( 5: ID int identity(1,1), 3: go 6: PolicyID varchar(100), 7: Status varchar(100), 8: EffectiveDate datetime default getdate(), 9: ExpiryDate datetime, 10: Active bit default 1 11: ) 12:  13:  14: insert into ExampleFactUpdate( 15: PolicyID, 16: Status) 17: select 18: 1, 19: 'Live' 20:  21: /*Create Staging Table*/ 22: if OBJECT_ID('ExampleStag') > 0 23: drop table ExampleStag 24: go 25:  26: /*Create example fact table */ 27: Create Table ExampleStag( 28: PolicyID varchar(100), 29: Status varchar(100)) 30:  31: --add some data 32: insert into ExampleStag( 33: PolicyID, 34: Status) 35: select 36: 1, 37: 'Lapsed' 38: union all 39: select 40: 2, 41: 'Quote' 42:  43: select * 44: from ExampleFactUpdate 45:  46: select * 47: from ExampleStag 48:  49:  50: INSERT INTO ExampleFactUpdate 51: (PolicyID, 52: Status) 53: SELECT -- these columns are returned from the output statement 54: PolicyID, 55: Status 56: FROM 57: ( 58: -- merge statement on unique id in this case Policy_ID 59: MERGE dbo.ExampleFactUpdate dp 60: USING dbo.ExampleStag s 61: ON dp.PolicyID = s.PolicyID 62: WHEN NOT MATCHED THEN -- when we cant match the record we insert a new record record and this is all that happens 63: INSERT (PolicyID,Status) 64: VALUES (s.PolicyID, s.Status) 65: WHEN MATCHED --if it already exists 66: AND ExpiryDate IS NULL -- and the Expiry Date is null 67: THEN 68: UPDATE 69: SET 70: dp.ExpiryDate = getdate(), --we set the expiry on the existing record 71: dp.Active = 0 -- and deactivate the existing record 72: OUTPUT $Action MergeAction, s.PolicyID, s.Status -- the output statement returns a merge action which can 73: ) MergeOutput -- be insert/update/delete, on our example where a record has been updated (or expired in our case 74: WHERE -- we'll filter using a where clause 75: MergeAction = 'Update'; -- here 76:  77:  78: select * 79: from ExampleFactUpdate 80: 

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• Notes - Part II - Play with JavaFX

  - by Silviu Turuga

  Open the project from last lesson Double click on NotesUI.fmxl, this will open the JavaFX Scene Builder On the left side you have a area called Hierarchy, from there press Del or Shift+Backspace on Mac to delete the Button and the Label. You'll receive a warning, that some components have been assigned an fx:id, click Delete as we don't need them anymore. Resize the AnchorPane to have enough room for our design, eg. 820x550px From the top left pick the Container called Accordion and drag over the AnchorPane design Chose then from Controls a List View and drag inside the Accordion. You'll notice that by default the Accordion has 2 TitledPane, and you can switch between them by clicking on their name. I'll let you the pleasure to do the rest in order to get the following result  Here is the list of objects used Save it and then return to NetBeans Run the application and it should be run without any issue. If you click on buttons they all are functional, but nothing happens as we didn't link them with any action. We'll see this in the next episode. Now, let's play a little bit with the application and try to resize it… Have you notice the behavior? If the form is too small, some objects aren't visible, if it is too large there is too much space . That's for sure something that your users won't like and you as a programmer have to care about this. From NetBeans double click NotesUI.fmxl so to return back to JavaFX Scene Builder Select the TextField from bottom left of Notes, the one where I put the text Category and then from the right part of JavaFX Scene Builder you'll notice a panel called Inspector. Chose Layout and then click on the dotted lines from left and bottom of the square, like you see in the below image This will make the textfield to have always the same distance from left and bottom no matter the size of the form. Save and run the application. Note that whenever the form is changing the Height, the Category TextField has the same distance from the bottom. Select Accordion and do the same steps but also check the top dotted line, because we want the Accordion to have the same height as the main form has. I'll let you the pleasure to do the same for the rest of components. It's very important to design an application that can be resize by user and in the same time, all the buttons are on place. Last step is to make sure our application is not getting smaller then a certain size, as this will hide parts of our layout. So select the AnchorPane and from Inspector go to Layout and note down the Width and Height. Go back to NetBeans and open the file Main.java and add the following code just after stage.setScene(scene); (around line 26) stage.setMinWidth(820); stage.setMinHeight(550); Use your own width and height. This will prevent user to reduce the width or height of your application to a value that will hide parts of your layout. So now you should have done most of the design part and next time we'll see how can we enter some data into our newly created application… Note: in case you miss something, here are the source files of the project till this point. 

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• Minimum team development sizes

  - by MarkPearl

  Disclaimer - these are observations that I have had, I am not sure if this follows the philosophy of scrum, agile or whatever, but most of these insights were gained while implementing a scrum scenario. Two is a partnership, three starts a team For a while I thought that a team was anything more than one and that scrum could be effective methodology with even two people. I have recently adjusted my thinking to a scrum team being a minimum of three, so what happened to two and what do you call it? For me I consider a group of two people working together a partnership - there is value in having a partnership, but some of the dynamics and value that you get from having a team is lost with a partnership. Avoidance of a one on one confrontation The first dynamic I see missing in a partnership is the team motivation to do better and how this is delivered to individuals that are not performing. Take two highly motivated individuals and put them together and you will typically see them continue to perform. Now take a situation where you have two individuals, one performing and one not and the behaviour is totally different compared to a team of three or more individuals. With two people, if one feels the other is not performing it becomes a one on one confrontation. Most people avoid confrontations and so nothing changes. Compare this to a situation where you have three people in a team, 2 performing and 1 not the dynamic is totally different, it is no longer a personal one on one confrontation but a team concern and people seem more willing to encourage the individual not performing and express their dissatisfaction as a team if they do not improve. Avoiding the effects of Tuckman’s Group Development Theory If you are not familiar with Tuckman’s group development theory give it a read (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuckman's_stages_of_group_development) In a nutshell with Tuckman’s theory teams go through these stages of Forming, Storming, Norming & Performing. You want your team to reach and remain in the Performing stage for as long as possible - this is where you get the most value. When you have a partnership of two and you change the individuals in the partnership you basically do a hard reset on the partnership and go back to the beginning of Tuckman’s model each time. This has a major effect on the performance of a team and what they can deliver. What I have seen is that you reduce the effects of Tuckman's theory the more individuals you have in the team (until you hit the maximum team size in which other problems kick in). While you will still experience Tuckman's theory with a team of three, the impact will be greatly reduced compared to two where it is guaranteed every time a change occurs. It's not just in the numbers, it's in the people One final comment - while the actual numbers of a team do play a role, the individuals in the team are even more important - ideally you want to keep individuals working together for an extended period. That doesn't mean that you never change the individuals in a team, or that once someone joins a team they are stuck there - there is value in an individual moving from team to team and getting cross pollination, but the period of time that an individual moves should be in month's or years, not days or weeks. Why? So why is it important to know this? Why is it important to know how a team works and what motivates them? I have been asking myself this question for a while and where I am at right now is this… the aim is to achieve the stage where the sum of the total (team) is greater than the sum of the parts (team members). This is why we form teams and why understanding how they work is a challenge and also extremely stimulating.

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• Brazil is Hot for Social Media

  - by Mike Stiles

  Today’s guest blog is from Oracle SVP Product Development Reggie Bradford, fresh off a visit to Sao Paulo, Brazil where he spoke at the Dachis Social Business Summit and spent some time getting a personal taste for the astonishing growth of social in Brazil, both in terms of usage and engagement. I knew it was big, but I now have an all-new appreciation for why the Wall Street Journal branded Brazil the “social media capital of the universe.” Brazil has the world’s 5th largest economy, an expanding middle class, an active younger demo market, a connected & outgoing culture, and an ongoing embrace of the social media platforms. According to comScore's 2012 Brazil Digital Future in Focus report, 97% are using social media, and that’s not even taking mobile-only users into account. There were 65 million Facebook users in 2012, spending an average 535 minutes there, up 208%. It’s one of Twitter’s fastest growing markets and the 2nd biggest market for YouTube. Instagram usage has grown over 300% since last year. That by itself is exciting, but look at the opportunity for social marketing brands. 74% of Brazilian social users follow brands on Facebook, and 59% have praised a company on either Twitter or Facebook. A 2011 Oh! Panel study found 81% of social networkers there used social to research new products and 75% went there looking for discounts. B2C eCommerce sales in Brazil is projected to hit $26.9 billion by 2015. I bet I’m not the only one who sees great things ahead, and I was fortunate enough give a keynote ABRADI, an association of leading digital agencies in Brazil with 53 execs from 35 agencies attending. I was also afforded the opportunity to give my impressions of what’s going on in Brazil to Jornal Propoganda & Marketing, one of the most popular publications in Latin America for marketers. I conveyed that especially in an environment like Brazil, where social users are so willing to connect and engage brands, marketers need to back away from the heavy-handed, one-way messaging of old school advertising and move toward genuine relationships and trust-building. To aide in this, organizational and operation changes must be embraced inside the enterprise. We've talked often about the new, tighter partnership forming between the CIO and CMO. If this partnership is not encouraged, fostered and resourced, the increasing amount of time consumers spend on mobile and digital, and the efficiencies and integrations offered by cloud-based software cannot be exploited. These are the kinds of changes that can yield social data that, when combined with enterprise data, helps you come to know your social audiences intimately and predict their needs. Consumers are always connected and need your brand to be accessible at any time, be it for information or customer service. And, of course, all of this is happening quite publicly. The holistic, socially-enable enterprise connects social to customer service systems and all other customer touch points, facilitating the kind of immediate, real-time, gratifying response customers are coming to expect. Social users in Brazil are highly active and clearly willing to meet us as brands more than halfway. Empowering yourself with a social management technology platform will have you set up to maximize this booming social market…from listening & monitoring to engagement to analytics to workflow & automation to globalization & language support. Brands, it’s time to be as social as the great people of Brazil are. Obrigado! @reggiebradfordPhoto: Gualberto107, freedigitalphotos.net

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• Learn Many Languages

  - by Jeff Foster

  My previous blog, Deliberate Practice, discussed the need for developers to “sharpen their pencil” continually, by setting aside time to learn how to tackle problems in different ways. However, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, a contested and somewhat-controversial concept from language theory, seems to hold reasonably true when applied to programming languages. It states that: “The structure of a language affects the ways in which its speakers conceptualize their world.” If you’re constrained by a single programming language, the one that dominates your day job, then you only have the tools of that language at your disposal to think about and solve a problem. For example, if you’ve only ever worked with Java, you would never think of passing a function to a method. A good developer needs to learn many languages. You may never deploy them in production, you may never ship code with them, but by learning a new language, you’ll have new ideas that will transfer to your current “day-job” language. With the abundant choices in programming languages, how does one choose which to learn? Alan Perlis sums it up best. “A language that doesn‘t affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing“ With that in mind, here’s a selection of languages that I think are worth learning and that have certainly changed the way I think about tackling programming problems. Clojure Clojure is a Lisp-based language running on the Java Virtual Machine. The unique property of Lisp is homoiconicity, which means that a Lisp program is a Lisp data structure, and vice-versa. Since we can treat Lisp programs as Lisp data structures, we can write our code generation in the same style as our code. This gives Lisp a uniquely powerful macro system, and makes it ideal for implementing domain specific languages. Clojure also makes software transactional memory a first-class citizen, giving us a new approach to concurrency and dealing with the problems of shared state. Haskell Haskell is a strongly typed, functional programming language. Haskell’s type system is far richer than C# or Java, and allows us to push more of our application logic to compile-time safety. If it compiles, it usually works! Haskell is also a lazy language – we can work with infinite data structures. For example, in a board game we can generate the complete game tree, even if there are billions of possibilities, because the values are computed only as they are needed. Erlang Erlang is a functional language with a strong emphasis on reliability. Erlang’s approach to concurrency uses message passing instead of shared variables, with strong support from both the language itself and the virtual machine. Processes are extremely lightweight, and garbage collection doesn’t require all processes to be paused at the same time, making it feasible for a single program to use millions of processes at once, all without the mental overhead of managing shared state. The Benefits of Multilingualism By studying new languages, even if you won’t ever get the chance to use them in production, you will find yourself open to new ideas and ways of coding in your main language. For example, studying Haskell has taught me that you can do so much more with types and has changed my programming style in C#. A type represents some state a program should have, and a type should not be able to represent an invalid state. I often find myself refactoring methods like this… void SomeMethod(bool doThis, bool doThat) { if (!(doThis ^ doThat)) throw new ArgumentException(“At least one arg should be true”); if (doThis) DoThis(); if (doThat) DoThat(); } …into a type-based solution, like this: enum Action { DoThis, DoThat, Both }; void SomeMethod(Action action) { if (action == Action.DoThis || action == Action.Both) DoThis(); if (action == Action.DoThat || action == Action.Both) DoThat(); } At this point, I’ve removed the runtime exception in favor of a compile-time check. This is a trivial example, but is just one of many ideas that I’ve taken from one language and implemented in another.

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• Customer owes me half my payment. Should I take ownership of his AWS account for charging? How?

  - by Cawas

  Background They paid me my first half (back in April 15th) before even we could get into an agreement. Very nice of him! Then I've finished the 2 weeks job of setting up the servers, using his AWS credentials he had just bought. I waited for another 2 weeks for everything settling up, and it was all running fine. He did what he needed with his sftp account, everyone were happy. Now, it has been almost 2 months since I've finished the job and I still didn't get the 2nd half. I must assume, it's not much money (about U$400, converted), but it would help me pay the bills at least. Heck, the Amazon bills they are paying are little less than that (for now). Measures I'm wondering how I can go to charge him now. First thought, of course, would be taking everything down and say "pay now, or be doomed". If that's not good enough, then I lost it. I have no contracts and I doubt I could get a law suit in this country for such a low value based only on emails. And I don't really want to get too agressive here - there might be a business chance in the future and I don't want to ruin it. Second though would be just changing the password. But then he probably could gain access again by some recovery means. That's where my question may mainly relay. How can I do it and not leaving any room for recovery from his side? I even got the first AWS "your account was created" mail from himself, showing me I could begin my job, back then. Lastly, do you have any other idea on what I can and what I should do in this case? Responding to Answers Please, consider reading the current answers and comments. This is not a very simple case. I've considered many, many options (including all lawful ones) before considering this ones I've listed here, and I am willing to take the loss and all that. That's not the point. The point is being practical here. I will call him again and talk about it. I will do terrorism on getting lawyers and getting contract. I am ready to go all forth while I have time and energy for it. But, in practice, there is this extra thing I can do to assure myself of the work I've done. I can basically take it back and delete everything! I'd only take his password because I can find no other way to do it within Amazon. Maybe, contacting Amazon and explaining the situation? I don't know. Give me ideas on this technical side! And thank everyone for the attention and helping me clarifying the issue so far! :)

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• Meet Matthijs, Dutch Inside Sales Representative for Oracle Direct

  - by Maria Sandu

  Today we would like to share some information around the Dutch Core Technology team in Malaga. Matthijs is one of the team members who decided to relocate from the Netherlands to Malaga to join Oracle Direct two years ago. Matthijs: “For the past two years I have been working as an Oracle Direct Core Technology Inside Sales representative for Named Accounts in the Netherlands, based in Malaga, Spain. In my case, working for the Dutch OD Core Technology team means that I am responsible for the Account Management of Larger companies in the Travel & Transportation and the Manufacturing, Retail & Distribution sector. I work together with the Oracle Field Account Managers and our Field Sales Management in the Netherlands where I am often the main point of contact for customers. This means that I deal with their requests and I manage their various issues, provide solutions and suggestions based on the Oracle Core Technology portfolio. I work on interesting projects with end-customers, making financial proposals and building business cases. It is a very interesting sales environment and for the last two years I improved my skills substantially. This month I will finish my Inside Sales career in Malaga to move to a position within Field Sales in the Netherlands. Oracle Direct has proven to be a great stepping stone for my career. Boost your personal development One of the reasons for joining Oracle was to boost my personal & career development. You can choose from various different trainings to follow all over Europe which enable you to reach both your personal and professional goals. Furthermore, you can decide your own career path and plan the steps necessary to achieve your goal. Many people aim to grow into Field Sales in their native countries, Business Development or Sales Management, but there are many possibilities once you decide to join Oracle. Overall, working at Oracle means working for an international company and one of the worldwide leaders in Enterprise Hardware & Software. Here you get all the tools necessary to develop yourself personally & professionally. Another great advantage of working for Oracle Direct is working from our office in Malaga, Southern Spain where we have over 400 employees from many countries across EMEA. It is a truly international environment! Working and living in Spain gives you an excellent opportunity to learn Spanish and of course enjoy the Spanish lifestyle, cuisine, beaches and much, much more!” Interview day Utrecht If you are inspired by the story of Matthijs and would like to explore the opportunity to join the Technology Sales team for the Dutch market in Malaga, let us know! We will organise an Interview day in the Oracle office in Utrecht on the 18th and 19th of September. We currently have multiple openings in the Core Technology team that focus on selling our Database portfolio in the Dutch market. We are looking for native Dutch speakers with a Bachelors degree, 2-5 years sales experience (ideally in IT) who are willing to relocate to Malaga for at least 2 years! For more information please contact [email protected] or [email protected].

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• I am trying to figure out the best way to understand how to cache domain objects

  - by Brett Ryan

  I've always done this wrong, I'm sure a lot of others have too, hold a reference via a map and write through to DB etc.. I need to do this right, and I just don't know how to go about it. I know how I want my objects to be cached but not sure on how to achieve it. What complicates things is that I need to do this for a legacy system where the DB can change without notice to my application. So in the context of a web application, let's say I have a WidgetService which has several methods: Widget getWidget(); Collection<Widget> getAllWidgets(); Collection<Widget> getWidgetsByCategory(String categoryCode); Collection<Widget> getWidgetsByContainer(Integer parentContainer); Collection<Widget> getWidgetsByStatus(String status); Given this, I could decide to cache by method signature, i.e. getWidgetsByCategory("AA") would have a single cache entry, or I could cache widgets individually, which would be difficult I believe; OR, a call to any method would then first cache ALL widgets with a call to getAllWidgets() but getAllWidgets() would produce caches that match all the keys for the other method invocations. For example, take the following untested theoretical code. Collection<Widget> getAllWidgets() { Entity entity = cache.get("ALL_WIDGETS"); Collection<Widget> res; if (entity == null) { res = loadCache(); } else { res = (Collection<Widget>) entity.getValue(); } return res } Collection<Widget> loadCache() { // Get widgets from underlying DB Collection<Widget> res = db.getAllWidgets(); cache.put("ALL_WIDGETS", res); Map<String, List<Widget>> byCat = new HashMap<>(); for (Widget w : res) { // cache by different types of method calls, i.e. by category if (!byCat.containsKey(widget.getCategory()) { byCat.put(widget.getCategory(), new ArrayList<Widget>); } byCat.get(widget.getCatgory(), widget); } cacheCategories(byCat); return res; } Collection<Widget> getWidgetsByCategory(String categoryCode) { CategoryCacheKey key = new CategoryCacheKey(categoryCode); Entity ent = cache.get(key); if (entity == null) { loadCache(); } ent = cache.get(key); return ent == null ? Collections.emptyList() : (Collection<Widget>)ent.getValue(); } NOTE: I have not worked with a cache manager, the above code illustrates cache as some object that may hold caches by key/value pairs, though it's not modelled on any specific implementation. Using this I have the benefit of being able to cache all objects in the different ways they will be called with only single objects on the heap, whereas if I were to cache the method call invocation via say Spring It would (I believe) cache multiple copies of the objects. I really wish to try and understand the best ways to cache domain objects before I go down the wrong path and make it harder for myself later. I have read the documentation on the Ehcache website and found various articles of interest, but nothing to give a good solid technique. Since I'm working with an ERP system, some DB calls are very complicated, not that the DB is slow, but the business representation of the domain objects makes it very clumsy, coupled with the fact that there are actually 11 different DB's where information can be contained that this application is consolidating in a single view, this makes caching quite important.

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• Creating a Corporate Data Hub

  - by BuckWoody

  The Windows Azure Marketplace has a rich assortment of data and software offerings for you to use – a type of Software as a Service (SaaS) for IT workers, not necessarily for end-users. Among those offerings is the “Data Hub” – a  codename for a project that ironically actually does what the codename says. In many of our organizations, we have multiple data quality issues. Finding data is one problem, but finding it just once is often a bigger problem. Lots of departments and even individuals have stored the same data more than once, and in some cases, made changes to one of the copies. It’s difficult to know which location or version of the data is authoritative. Then there’s the problem of accessing the data. It’s fairly straightforward to publish a database, share or other location internally to store the data. But then you have to figure out who owns it, how it is controlled, and pass out the various connection strings to those who want to use it. And then you need to figure out how to let folks access the internal data externally – bringing up all kinds of security issues. Finally, in many cases our user community wants us to combine data from the internally sources with external data, bringing up the security, strings, and exploration features up all over again. Enter the Data Hub. This is an online offering, where you assign an administrator and data stewards. You import the data into the service, and it’s available to you - and only you and your organization if you wish. The basic steps for this service are to set up the portal for your company, assign administrators and permissions, and then you assign data areas and import data into them. From there you make them discoverable, and then you have multiple options that you or your users can access that data. You’re then able, if you wish, to combine that data with other data in one location. So how does all that work? What about security? Is it really that easy? And can you really move the data definition off to the Subject Matter Experts (SME’s) that know the particular data stack better than the IT team does? Well, nothing good is easy – but using the Data Hub is actually pretty simple. I’ll give you a link in a moment where you can sign up and try this yourself. Once you sign up, you assign an administrator. From there you’ll create data areas, and then use a simple interface to bring the data in. All of this is done in a portal interface – nothing to install, configure, update or manage. After the data is entered in, and you’ve assigned meta-data to describe it, your users have multiple options to access it. They can simply use the portal – which actually has powerful visualizations you can use on any platform, even mobile phones or tablets.     Your users can also hit the data with Excel – which gives them ultimate flexibility for display, all while using an authoritative, single reference for the data. Since the service is online, they can do this wherever they are – given the proper authentication and permissions. You can also hit the service with simple API calls, like this one from C#: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh921924  You can make HTTP calls instead of code, and the data can even be exposed as an OData Feed. As you can see, there are a lot of options. You can check out the offering here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlazurelabs/labs/data-hub.aspx and you can read the documentation here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh921938

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• Olympics data available for all on Windows Azure SQL Database and Power View

  - by jamiet

  Are you looking around for some decent test data for your BI demos? Well, if so, Microsoft have provided some data about all medals won at the Olympics Games (1900 to 2008) at OlympicsData workbook - Excel, SSIS, Azure sample; it provides analysis over athletes, countries, medal type, sport, discipline and various other dimensions. The data has been provided in an Excel workbook along with instructions on how to load the data into a Windows Azure SQL Database using SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS). Frankly though, the rigmarole of standing up your own Windows Azure SQL Database ok, SQL Azure database, is both costly (SQL Azure isn’t free) and time consuming (the provided instructions aren’t exactly an idiot’s guide and getting SSIS to work properly with Excel isn’t a barrel of laughs either). To ease the pain for all you BI folks out there that simply want to party on the data I have loaded it all into the SQL Azure database that I use for hosting AdventureWorks on Azure. You can read more about AdventureWorks on Azure below however I’ll summarise here by saying it is a SQL Azure database provided for the use of the SQL Server community and which is supported by voluntary donations. To view the data the credentials you need are: Server mhknbn2kdz.database.windows.net  Database AdventureWorks2012 User sqlfamily Password sqlf@m1ly Type those into SSMS and away you go, the data is provided in four tables [olympics].[Sport], [olympics].[Discipline], [olympics].[Event] & [olympics].[Medalist]: I figured this would be a good candidate for a Power View report so I fired up Excel 2013 and built such a report to slice’n’dice through the data – here are some screenshots that should give you a flavour of what is available: A view of all the available data Where do all the gymastics medals go? Which countries do top ten all-time medal winners come from? You get the idea. There is masses of information here and if you have Excel 2013 handy Power View provides a quick and easy way of surfing through it. To save you the bother of setting up the Power View report yourself you can have the one that I took these screenshots from, it is available on my SkyDrive at OlympicsAnalysis.xlsx so just hit the link and download to play to your heart’s content. Party on, people! As I said above the data is hosted on a SQL Azure database that I use for hosting “AdventureWorks on Azure” which I first announced in March 2013 at AdventureWorks2012 now available for all on SQL Azure. I’ll repeat the pertinent parts of that blog post here: I am pleased to announce that as of today … [AdventureWorks2012] now resides on SQL Azure and is available for anyone, absolutely anyone, to connect to and use for their own means. This database is free for you to use but SQL Azure is of course not free so before I give you the credentials please lend me your ears eyes for a short while longer. AdventureWorks on Azure is being provided for the SQL Server community to use and so I am hoping that that same community will rally around to support this effort by making a voluntary donation to support the upkeep which, going on current pricing, is going to be $119.88 per year. If you would like to contribute to keep AdventureWorks on Azure up and running for that full year please donate via PayPal to [email protected] Any amount, no matter how small, will help. If those 50+ people that retweeted me beforehand all contributed $2 then that would just about be enough to keep this up for a year. If the community contributes more than we need then there are a number of additional things that could be done: Host additional databases (Northwind anyone??) Host in more datacentres (this first one is in Western Europe) Make a charitable donation That last one, a charitable donation, is something I would really like to do. The SQL Community have proved before that they can make a significant contribution to charitable orgnisations through purchasing the SQL Server MVP Deep Dives book and I harbour hopes that AdventureWorks on Azure can continue in that vein. So please, if you think AdventureWorks on Azure is something that is worth supporting please make a contribution. I’d like to emphasize that last point. If my hosting this Olympics data is useful to you please support this initiative by donating. Thanks in advance. @Jamiet

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• Perfect End to a Bad Day

  - by TehGrumpyCoder

  Yesterday's post about A Bad Day at Work actually had an addendum to it. There were apparently a bunch of guys on ice skates last night competing in some sport way the hell and gone over on the other side of the valley, and enough people couldn't live without seeing them that they had all major arteries heading west honked. I mean honked... the traffic guy reported the 101 had 16 miles of backup... yikes. Since I worked downtown for a number of years, my fallback is to cut across the city on surface streets to get to one of my old 'haunts' and just drive it home from there. Of course with the 101 backed up, then I17 would logically be as well, so I kept the news on rather than my Zune and heard where the bad stuff was going North. I popped out on the freeway about 7 miles south of my exit. Got to the exit which is about a mile from the house without killing or maiming me or anyone else. Waited patiently at the light in the inside lane to make a left and go under the freeway proceeding West. The light changed, I had full green, I started through and whoa... I've got someone in a little rat car crossing my bow! A little explanation... I drive a 3/4 ton pickup with a V-10, extended cab and shell on the back. It's not jacked up, but it sits up pretty good and is longer than any parking place I've ever tried to put it into. I consider this truck to be the consolation prize for paying uninsured motorist coverage for 45 years and having Pilar Martinez totally destroy a 3/4 ton Silverado on March 1, 2007 by plowing into me at traffic speed while I was stopped at a light. If you pay for uninsured motorist coverage, ask your insurance agent *exactly* what that means... I bet it's different than what you think it means. But I digress, sorry... So here I am with a car that is shorter from top to road than the hood on my truck, and the driver thought it would be safe to run a red light and see if they could get past me before I got into the lane. The right side of my front bumper was almost into the driver's window when I hit the brakes and wheeled it left. Fortunately for all involved, I saw it soon enough, and pulled into the 2nd lane for making a left to go back South. I looked in my mirror, signalled a move, then moved over behind the yuck in the rat car. I then punched it, and the future hood ornament and I both made it through the next light. I pulled alongside to let her know that she was DEFINITELY Number 1 in my book, and it's a middle-age woman looking at me with a "sorry, it was an accident" show of pouty face and arms held up. Tough $hit lady... that may have worked when you were 18, but it's not working anymore, and it wasn't an accident... you ran a freakin' red light and almost got yourself killed. That just about put a bow on the day... I was home later than usual, pissed off about work stuff, pissed off at traffic, and now that. I ate dinner, watched a little TV, and was asleep about 9:30 exhausted. Hope today is better.

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• Proving What You are Worth

  - by Ted Henson

  Here is a challenge for everyone. Just about everyone has been asked to provide or calculate the Return on Investment (ROI), so I will assume everyone has a method they use. The problem with stopping once you have an ROI is that those in the C-Suite probably do not care about the ROI as much as Return on Equity (ROE). Shareholders are mostly concerned with their return on the money the invested. Warren Buffett looks at ROE when deciding whether to make a deal or not. This article will outline how you can add more meaning to your ROI and show how you can potentially enhance the ROE of the company.   First I want to start with a base definition I am using for ROI and ROE. Return on investment (ROI) and return on equity (ROE) are ways to measure management effectiveness, parts of a system of measures that also includes profit margins for profitability, price-to-earnings ratio for valuation, and various debt-to-equity ratios for financial strength. Without a set of evaluation metrics, a company's financial performance cannot be fully examined by investors. ROI and ROE calculate the rate of return on a specific investment and the equity capital respectively, assessing how efficient financial resources have been used. Typically, the best way to improve financial efficiency is to reduce production cost, so that will be the focus. Now that the challenge has been made and items have been defined, let’s go deeper. Most research about implementation stops short at system start-up and seldom addresses post-implementation issues. However, we know implementation is a continuous improvement effort, and continued efforts after system start-up will influence the ultimate success of a system.   Most UPK ROI’s I have seen only include the cost savings in developing the training material. Some will also include savings based on reduced Help Desk calls. Using just those values you get a good ROI. To get an ROE you need to go a little deeper. Typically, the best way to improve financial efficiency is to reduce production cost, which is the purpose of implementing/upgrading an enterprise application. Let’s assume the new system is up and running and all users have been properly trained and are comfortable using the system. You provide senior management with your ROI that justifies the original cost. What you want to do now is develop a good base value to a measure the current efficiency. Using usage tracking you can look for various patterns. For example, you may find that users that are accessing UPK assistance are processing a procedure, such as entering an order, 5 minutes faster than those that don’t.  You do some research and discover each minute saved in processing a claim saves the company one dollar. That translates to the company saving five dollars on every transaction. Assuming 100,000 transactions are performed a year, and all users improve their performance, the company will be saving $500,000 a year. That $500,000 can be re-invested, used to reduce debt or paid to the shareholders.   With continued refinement during the life cycle, you should be able to find ways to reduce cost. These are the type of numbers and productivity gains that senior management and shareholders want to see. Being able to quantify savings and increase productivity may also help when seeking a raise or promotion.

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• Creating a Corporate Data Hub

  - by BuckWoody

  The Windows Azure Marketplace has a rich assortment of data and software offerings for you to use – a type of Software as a Service (SaaS) for IT workers, not necessarily for end-users. Among those offerings is the “Data Hub” – a  codename for a project that ironically actually does what the codename says. In many of our organizations, we have multiple data quality issues. Finding data is one problem, but finding it just once is often a bigger problem. Lots of departments and even individuals have stored the same data more than once, and in some cases, made changes to one of the copies. It’s difficult to know which location or version of the data is authoritative. Then there’s the problem of accessing the data. It’s fairly straightforward to publish a database, share or other location internally to store the data. But then you have to figure out who owns it, how it is controlled, and pass out the various connection strings to those who want to use it. And then you need to figure out how to let folks access the internal data externally – bringing up all kinds of security issues. Finally, in many cases our user community wants us to combine data from the internally sources with external data, bringing up the security, strings, and exploration features up all over again. Enter the Data Hub. This is an online offering, where you assign an administrator and data stewards. You import the data into the service, and it’s available to you - and only you and your organization if you wish. The basic steps for this service are to set up the portal for your company, assign administrators and permissions, and then you assign data areas and import data into them. From there you make them discoverable, and then you have multiple options that you or your users can access that data. You’re then able, if you wish, to combine that data with other data in one location. So how does all that work? What about security? Is it really that easy? And can you really move the data definition off to the Subject Matter Experts (SME’s) that know the particular data stack better than the IT team does? Well, nothing good is easy – but using the Data Hub is actually pretty simple. I’ll give you a link in a moment where you can sign up and try this yourself. Once you sign up, you assign an administrator. From there you’ll create data areas, and then use a simple interface to bring the data in. All of this is done in a portal interface – nothing to install, configure, update or manage. After the data is entered in, and you’ve assigned meta-data to describe it, your users have multiple options to access it. They can simply use the portal – which actually has powerful visualizations you can use on any platform, even mobile phones or tablets.     Your users can also hit the data with Excel – which gives them ultimate flexibility for display, all while using an authoritative, single reference for the data. Since the service is online, they can do this wherever they are – given the proper authentication and permissions. You can also hit the service with simple API calls, like this one from C#: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh921924  You can make HTTP calls instead of code, and the data can even be exposed as an OData Feed. As you can see, there are a lot of options. You can check out the offering here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlazurelabs/labs/data-hub.aspx and you can read the documentation here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh921938

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• Cream of the Crop

  - by KemButller

  JD Edwards has been working hard to ensure that you shouldn't have to work so hard! Yet there are still JD Edwards customers that may not be up to speed on all the new and or improved tools and utilities we have delivered, all designed to make your life easier. So today, I want to share what I consider to be the cream of the crop….those items that every customer should know about and leverage to make ERP life just a little bit (or A LOT) easier! These are my top picks, the cream of a very good crop! Explore and enjoy, and gain some of your time back to do with as you please. · www.runjde.com It’s where to go when you need to know! The Resource Kits available on www.runjde.com provide comprehensive Resource Kits (guides) by user type. The guides provide brief descriptions of the wide array of resources that are available to JD Edwards’s eco system and links to each of those resources. · My Oracle Support (MOS) Information Centers This link will take you to an index that is designed to provide you with simple and quick navigation to the available EnterpriseOne Information Centers. This index provides links to: · EnterpriseOne Application specific Information Centers · EnterpriseOne Tools and Technology Information Centers · EnterpriseOne Performance Information Center · EnterpriseOne 9.1 and 9.0 Information Centers Information Centers give Oracle the ability to aggregate content for a given focus area and present this content in categories for easy browsing by our customers. Information Centers offer a variety of focused dynamic content organized around one or more of the following tasks. · Overview · Use · Troubleshooting · Patching and Maintenance · Install and Configure · Upgrade · Optimize Performance · Security · Certify JD Edwards Newsletters Be in the know by reading the Global Customer Support Product Newsletters. They are PACKED with news and information covering a wide range of topics and news. It is a must read if you want to know what’s happening in the JD Edwards universe! Read the latest EntepriseOne newsletter Read the latest World newsletter Learn How to receive notification when a new newsletter edition is published Oracle Learning Library – (OLL) Oracle Learn Library is the place to go for easy access to JD Edwards Application and Tools training. For a comprehensive view of the training available for a specific product/functional area, explore the Knowledge Paths For Net Change (new feature) training, explore the TOI sessions (TOI stands for Transfer Of Information). Tip: Be sure to experiment with the search filters! · www.upgradejde.com The site designed to help customers and partners with the process of upgrading JD Edwards. The site is a wealth of information, tools and resources designed to assist in the evaluation, planning and execution steps required when upgrading. Of note is the wildly successful upgrade strategy known as “The Art of the Possible” wherein JD Edwards and many of our partners hold free workshops to teach customers how to conduct upgrades in 100 days or less. Equally important is the fact that on www.upgradejde.com, customers can gain visibility into planned enhancements using the Product and Technology Feature Catalogs. The catalogs are great for creating customer specific reports about the net change between older releases and current or planned releases. Examples of other key resources on www.upgradejde.com are the product data base changes between releases, extensibility guides, (formerly known as programmer’s guides), whitepapers, ROI calculators and much more!

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• The Social Enterprise: Gangnam Style

  - by Mike Stiles

  Are only small and medium businesses able to put social strategies in place, generate consistent, compelling content for customers, and be nimble enough to listen and respond to the social communities they build? Or are enterprise organizations eagerly and effectively adopting social as well? It depends on whom inside the organization you ask. A study from Attensity looked at who “gets” social inside enterprise organizations. The results were unsurprising. Mostly, Generation X and Y employees who came of age with social as part of their lives and as a key communications vehicle understand it. Imagine being a 25-year-old at a company that bans employees from accessing Facebook at work. You may as well tell them they can’t use phones and must do all calculations on an abacus. To them, such policy is absent of real-world logic and signals to them the organization is destined to be the victim of an up-and-comer. After that, it’s senior management that gets social. You don’t get to be in senior management without reading a few things and paying attention. Most senior managers are well aware of the impact social has had and will have, though they may be unsure of what to do about it. The better ones will utilize those on the inside who do inherently know how to communicate and build virtual relationships using social. The very best will get the past out of the way for these social innovators, so the new communications can be enacted minus counterproductive dictums, double-clutching, meeting-creep, and all the other fading internal practices that water down content and impede change. Organizationally, the Attensity study found 81% of enterprise companies believe failing to embrace social will result in their being left behind. Yet our old friend fear still has many captive in its clutches. 79% feel overwhelmed by the volume of social data available, something a social technology partner with goal-oriented analytics expertise could go a long way toward alleviating. Then there’s the fear of social having a negative impact. This comes from a lack of belief in the product, the customer service, or both. The public uses social not to go out and slay brands. They’re using it to be honest. If the fear is that honesty will reflect badly on the brand, the brand has much bigger, broader problems than what happens on Facebook. Sadly, most enterprise organizations still see social as a megaphone, a one-way channel with which to hit people with ads. They either don’t understand social relationships, or don’t want any. The truly unenlightened manager will always say, “We help them by selling them our stuff.” “Brand affinity” is a term, it’s just not one assigned much value in enterprise organizations. Which brings us to Psy, the Korean performer whose Internet video phenom “Gangnam Style,” as of this writing, has been viewed 438,550,238 times on YouTube. It’s bigger than anything a brand will probably ever publish. Most brands would never have seen the point of making or publishing it. But a funny thing happened on the way to Internet success. The video literally doubled the stock price of Psy’s father’s software firm. NH Investment and Securities said, "The positive sentiment has attracted investors just because of the fact the company is owned by Psy's father and uncle.” The company wasn’t mentioned or seen in the video in any way, yet reaped tangible rewards just for being tangentially associated with it. Imagine your brand being visibly and directly responsible for such a smash and tell me it’s worthless. When enterprise organizations embrace the value of igniting passions, making people happier, solving their problems, informing them, helping them have fun, etc., then they will have fully embraced social, and will reap the brand affinity rewards of heightened awareness, brand loyalty and yes, sales.

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• BEHIND THE SCENES AT A FLASH-MOB...

  - by OliviaOC

  Today, we interviewed Aarti, who recently organised a flash-mob for Oracle Campus, which you can see on our facebook page Hi Aarti, perhaps you could give us a quick introduction of yourself, and what you do at Oracle? I’ve been with Campus Recruitment for just over a year. I’ve been with Oracle for three years. I was keen to get into the campus role after having watched other colleagues working in campus and when the opportunity arrived I jumped at it. The journey has been fantastic thus far. I’m responsible for the GBU hiring at Oracle. Why did you record the flash-mob video - what were your goals? Flash-mobs were one thing that took off really big in India after the first one in Mumbai. It’s the hot thing in the student community at the moment. A better way to reach out and connect with students. I think that it is also a good way to demonstrate our openness and culture at Oracle – demonstrate that we are very flexible and that we have a cool culture. I knew the video could be shared on our social media pages and reach out to a wider student community What was the preparation and rehearsal for the video like? When I decided to do the video, I had to decide who I would like to do the flash-mob. The new campus hires to Oracle would be ideal for this. We were 2 teams at 2 different locations and Each team took 2-3 songs and choreographed it themselves. Every day at 5pm, each team would meet up and every other weekend the whole group met. Practicing went on for about a month like this. How was the video received by participants and by students on the University campus? The event was well received. We did it during the lunch break at the University so that there was a large presence of students around while the flash mob took place. We set up about an hour beforehand to get everything ready. The break-bell sounded and the students came out, that’s when the flash-mob started. The students were pleasantly surprised that a company was doing this. They also recognised some of the participants involved as former graduates. Since the flash-mob and the video of it that you recorded, have you had much response due to it? We have, especially in the past two weeks. We went back to the college to make some hires. The flash-mob was still fresh in their minds and they knew well who Oracle was as a result. Would you like to repeat this kind of creative initiative again with the recruitment team? Yes, absolutely! I’m over the moon with the flash-mob. My mind is working overtime now with ideas about the next things to do!

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• Life at Oracle Russia: Stanislav, Tech Sales Manager

  - by Maria Sandu

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Oracle is a place that brings together talented people from various countries and with a diversity of backgrounds. We often invite our employees to speak about their life at Oracle as we think It is important to share an insight into what working for our company looks like. This time we asked Stanislav to speak about his experience at Oracle. He is Technology Sales Manager at Oracle Russia. He joined the company in July 2011 as a Sales Representative for the Financial sector and had previously worked for another American IT company. He was promoted to a Management position in 2013. “I have been in this Industry for 15 years and I am now Technology Sales Manager, covering Database, BI and Fusion Middleware products. What I’ve learned in my role is that respect is one of the most important values a good professional should have. By respecting and embracing everyone’s opinions, we create a very good work environment that encourages innovation and change. It eventually leads to a stronger team where people listen to each other and value each other’s opinion. On the other hand, It is mandatory to have good knowledge about the area you work in and to continously seek to improve your expertise. Last but not least, working as a team is a top priority and It is something that I’ve learned at Oracle. There’s little you can achieve by yourself comparing to what you can do when you’re part of a team.” Stanislav shared the top three words that best describe his team and those were: professional, dynamic and smart. “The team I manage is a very professional, dynamic and smart one. I am really proud to work with such talented people! They are an asset to the Oracle business because they are the very best in the IT industry worldwide!” When asked why he would apply at Oracle if he was looking for a job, Stanislav responded “I would say because Oracle is a legend of the IT industry. It is a very dynamic company where you can fulfill your potential and gain extremely valuable knowledge. No doubt this is the number 1 IT company!” We invite you to explore our career opportunities on oracle.com/careers and to discover more stories about the life at Oracle on our blog. You can get the latest updates about careers within Oracle by following Oracle LinkedIn, CareersatOracle Facebook or joinOracleEMEA Twitter. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• Ops Center 12c - Update - Provisioning Solaris on x86 Using a Card-Based NIC

  - by scottdickson

  Last week, I posted a blog describing how to use Ops Center to provision Solaris over the network via a NIC on a card rather than the built-in NIC.  Really, that was all about how to install Solaris on a SPARC system.  This week, we'll look at how to do the same thing for an x86-based server. Really, the overall process is exactly the same, at least for Solaris 11, with only minor updates. We will focus on Solaris 11 for this blog.  Once I verify that the same approach works for Solaris 10, I will provide another update. Booting Solaris 11 on x86 Just as before, in order to configure the server for network boot across a card-based NIC, it is necessary to declare the asset to associate the additional MACs with the server.  You likely will need to access the server console via the ILOM to figure out the MAC and to get a good idea of the network instance number.  The simplest way to find both of these is to start a network boot using the desired NIC and see where it appears in the list of network interfaces and what MAC is used when it tries to boot.  Go to the ILOM for the server.  Reset the server and start the console.  When the BIOS loads, select the boot menu, usually with Ctrl-P.  This will give you a menu of devices to boot from, including all of the NICs.  Select the NIC you want to boot from.  Its position in the list is a good indication of what network number Solaris will give the device. In this case, we want to boot from the 5th interface (GB_4, net4).  Pick it and start the boot processes.  When it starts to boot, you will see the MAC address for the interface Once you have the network instance and the MAC, go through the same process of declaring the asset as in the SPARC case.  This associates the additional network interface with the server.. Creating an OS Provisioning Plan The simplest way to do the boot via an alternate interface on an x86 system is to do a manual boot.  Update the OS provisioning profile as in the SPARC case to reflect the fact that we are booting from a different interface.  Update, in this case, the network boot device to be GB_4/net4, or the device corresponding to your network instance number.  Configure the profile to support manual network boot by checking the box for manual boot in the OS Provisioning profile. Booting the System Once you have created a profile and plan to support booting from the additional NIC, we are ready to install the server. Again, from the ILOM, reset the system and start the console.  When the BIOS loads, select boot from the Boot Menu as above.  Select the network interface from the list as before and start the boot process.  When the grub bootloader loads, the default boot image is the Solaris Text Installer.  On the grub menu, select Automated Installer and Ops Center takes over from there. Lessons The key lesson from all of this is that Ops Center is a valuable tool for provisioning servers whether they are connected via built-in network interfaces or via high-speed NICs on cards.  This is great news for modern datacenters using converged network infrastructures.  The process works for both SPARC and x86 Solaris installations.  And it's easy and repeatable.

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• Intermittent internet connectivity

  - by Rob Oplawar

  UPDATED: I recently built a new computer and set it up to dual-boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu 11.10. In Windows, using the same hardware, my LAN connectivity is solid. In Ubuntu, however, my network interface periodically dies and resets itself; I'll have a solid connection for 30 seconds, and then it will go out for 30 seconds. When I tail the log: tail -f /var/log/kern.log I see "eth0 link up" messages appear periodically, corresponding with the return of connectivity. I posted the original question months ago, and misinterpreted what was going on. With a working Internet connection in Windows, I ignored the problem for some months. See my answer below for the solution (drivers). ORIGINAL POST In Ubuntu, although I maintain a solid connection to my LAN (pinging the router IP address consistently returns a good result), my internet connectivity drops in and out. When I continuously ping 74.125.227.18 (a google.com server), I get responses for a while, then I start getting "Destination Host Unreachable" for a while, then I get responses again. This happens consistently, dropping the connection for about 30 seconds out of every minute or two. Whether I configure my network via the network manager or via /etc/network/interfaces seems to make no difference. I configure with the following settings: address 192.168.1.101 network 192.168.1.0 gateway 192.168.1.99 (my router's IP address) netmask 255.255.255.0 (confirmed as the right netmask for the router) broadcast 192.168.1.255 (also confirmed with the router). ifconfig confirms that these settings are working: eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 50:e5:49:40:da:a6 inet addr:192.168.1.101 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::52e5:49ff:fe40:daa6/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:11557 errors:0 dropped:11557 overruns:0 frame:11557 TX packets:13117 errors:0 dropped:211 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:9551488 (9.5 MB) TX bytes:1930952 (1.9 MB) Interrupt:41 Base address:0xa000 I get the same issue when I use automatic DHCP address settings, although I did confirm that there is no other machine on the network with the static IP address I want to use. As I said, the connection to the local network stays solid - I never have any trouble pinging 192.168.1.* - it's internet addresses that I intermittently cannot reach. It's not a DNS issue because pinging known IP addresses directly shows the same behavior. Also, I don't think it's a hardware issue, as I never have any internet connectivity problems on the same machine in Windows. The network hardware is built into the motherboard: Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3P. I managed to bring the OS fully up to date, according to the update manager, but it didn't fix the issue, and with my limited understanding of network architecture I'm at my wit's end. The only clue I can see is that ifconfig is reporting a lot of dropped packets, but I'm not sure what to do about it. UPDATE: It seems my problem is a little more generic than I described; now when I try pinging my router and google simultaneously, they both go unreachable at the same time. Running ifdown eth0 and then ifup eth0 brings it back temporarily; if I just wait it comes back after a couple of minutes. I'll broaden my search through intermittent network connectivity problems.

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• SharePoint Content and Site Editing Tips

  - by Bil Simser

  A few content management and site editing tips for power users on this bacon flavoured unicorn morning. The theme here is keep it clean!Write "friendly" email addressesRemember it's human beings reading your content. So seeing something like "If you have questions please send an email to [email protected]" breaks up the readiblity. Instead just do the simple steps of writing the content in plain English and going back, highlighting the name and insert a link (note: you might have to prefix the link with mailto:[email protected]). It makes for a friendlier looking page and hides the ugliness that are sometimes in email addresses.Use friendly column and list namesThis is a big pet peeve of mine. When you first create a column or list with spaces the internal name is changed. The display name might be "My Amazing List of Animals with Large Testicles" but the internal (and link) name becomes "My_x00x20_Amazing_x00x20_List_x00x20_of_x00x20_Animals_x00x20_with_x00x20_Large_x00x20_Testicles". What's worse is if you create a publishing page named "This Website is Fueled By a Dolphin's Spleen". Not only is it incorrect grammar, but the apostrophe wreaks havoc on both the internal name for the list (with lots of crazy hex codes) as well as the hyperlink (where everything is uuencoded). Instead create the list with a distinct and compact name then go back and change it to whatever you want. The end result is a better formed name that you can both script and access in code easier.Keep your Views CleanWhen you add a column to a list or create a new list the default is to add it to the default view. Do everyone a favour and don't check this box! The default view of a list should be something similar to the Title field and nothing else. Keep it clean. If you want to set a defalt view that's different, go back and create one with all the fields and filtering and sorting columns you want and set it as default. It's a good idea to keep the original AllItems.aspx (note the lack of space in the filename!) easy and unfiltered. It's also a good idea to keep your column count down in views. Don't let every column be added by default and don't add every column just because you can. Create separate views for distinct responsibilities and try to keep the number of columns down to a single screen to prevent horizontal scrolling.Simple NavigationThe Quick Launch is a great tool for navigating around your site but don't use the default of adding all lists to it. Uncheck that box and keep navigation simple. Create custom groupings that make sense so if you don't have a site with "Documents and Lists" but "Reports and Notices" makes more sense then do it. Also hide internal lists from the Quick Launch. For example, if most users don't need to see all the lookup tables you might have on a site don't show them. You can use audience filtering on the Quick Launch if you want to hide admin items from non-admin users so consider that as an option.Enjoy!

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• Creating a voxel world with 3D arrays using threads

  - by Sean M.

  I am making a voxel game (a bit like Minecraft) in C++(11), and I've come across an issue with creating a world efficiently. In my program, I have a World class, which holds a 3D array of Region class pointers. When I initialize the world, I give it a width, height, and depth so it knows how large of a world to create. Each Region is split up into a 32x32x32 area of blocks, so as you may guess, it takes a while to initialize the world once the world gets to be above 8x4x8 Regions. In order to alleviate this issue, I thought that using threads to generate different levels of the world concurrently would make it go faster. Having not used threads much before this, and being still relatively new to C++, I'm not entirely sure how to go about implementing one thread per level (level being a xz plane with a height of 1), when there is a variable number of levels. I tried this: for(int i = 0; i < height; i++) { std::thread th(std::bind(&World::load, this, width, height, depth)); th.join(); } Where load() just loads all Regions at height "height". But that executes the threads one at a time (which makes sense, looking back), and that of course takes as long as generating all Regions in one loop. I then tried: std::thread t1(std::bind(&World::load, this, w, h1, h2 - 1, d)); std::thread t2(std::bind(&World::load, this, w, h2, h3 - 1, d)); std::thread t3(std::bind(&World::load, this, w, h3, h4 - 1, d)); std::thread t4(std::bind(&World::load, this, w, h4, h - 1, d)); t1.join(); t2.join(); t3.join(); t4.join(); This works in that the world loads about 3-3.5 times faster, but this forces the height to be a multiple of 4, and it also gives the same exact VAO object to every single Region, which need individual VAOs in order to render properly. The VAO of each Region is set in the constructor, so I'm assuming that somehow the VAO number is not thread safe or something (again, unfamiliar with threads). So basically, my question is two one-part: How to I implement a variable number of threads that all execute at the same time, and force the main thread to wait for them using join() without stopping the other threads? How do I make the VAO objects thread safe, so when a bunch of Regions are being created at the same time across multiple threads, they don't all get the exact same VAO? Turns out it has to do with GL contexts not working across multiple threads. I moved the VAO/VBO creation back to the main thread. Fixed! Here is the code for block.h/.cpp, region.h/.cpp, and CVBObject.h/.cpp which controls VBOs and VAOs, in case you need it. If you need to see anything else just ask. EDIT: Also, I'd prefer not to have answers that are like "you should have used boost". I'm trying to do this without boost to get used to threads before moving onto other libraries.

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