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  • For Oracle's JD Edwards Customers--IT's Getting Better All The Time

    - by Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies
    By Jim Lein, Programs Management Sr. Principal, Oracle Midsize Programs. The annual JD Edwards Oracle Profit Magazine Special Edition was released this week. Look for the print copy in your mailbox or access the online version here. I entered the software industry when I joined JD Edwards in 1999. The next six years were a wild roller coaster ride for employees, partners, and--most unfortunately--for many of our customers. (Not entirely my fault BTW). In this Special Edition, I immediately gravitated to Aaron Lazenby's interview with Lyle Ekdahl, Group VP and General Manager of Oracle JD Edwards, "Better All The Time".  I met Lyle in 2003 when he joined PeopleSoft to guide JD Edwards' CRM development. He dropped by my cube (it was a double-wide cube, mind you) to explain his strategy. It was an intense first impression. Passionate, competent, personable. From my discussions with partners and customers, it is clear that for Oracle's JD Edwards customers it is getting better all the time. Now I've got that darn Beatle's song stuck in my head...

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  • SQL Cruise Alaska 2011

    - by Grant Fritchey
    I had the extreme good fortune to get sent on the last SQL Cruise to Alaska. I love my job. In case you don't what this is, SQL Cruise is a trip on a cruise ship during which you get to attend classes while on the boat, learning all about SQL Server and related topics as well as network with the instructors and the other Cruisers. Frankly, it's amazing. Classes ran from Monday, 5/30, to Saturday, 6/4. The networking was constant, between classes, at night on cruise ship, out on excursions in Alaskan rainforests and while snorkeling in ocean waters. Here's a run down of the experience from my point of view. Because I couldn't travel out 2 days early, I missed the BBQ that occurred the day before the cruise when many of the Cruisers received their swag bags. Some of that swag came from Red Gate. I researched what was useful on a cruise like this and purchased small flashlights and binoculars for all the Cruisers. The flashlights were because, depending on your cabin, ships can be very dark. The binoculars were so that the cruisers could watch all the beautiful landscape as it flowed by. I would have liked to have been there when the bags were opened, but I heard from several people that they appreciated the gifts. Cruisers "In" the hot tub. Pictured: Marjory Woody, Michele Grondin, Kyle Brandt, Grant Fritchey, John Halunen Sunday I went to board the ship with my wife. We had a bit of an adventure because I messed up our documents. It all worked out and we got on board to meet up at the back of the boat at one of the outdoor bars with the other Cruisers, thanks to tweets letting everyone know where to go. That was the end of electronic coordination on the trip (connectivity in Alaska was horrible for everyone except AT&T). The Cruisers were a great bunch of people and it was a real honor to meet them and get to spend time with them. After everyone settled into their cabins, our very first activity was a contest, sponsored by Red Gate. The Cruisers, in an effort to get to know each other and the ship, were required to go all over taking various photographs, some of them hilarious. The winning team of three would all win prizes. Some of the significant others helped out and I tagged along with a team that tied for first but lost the coin toss. The winning team consisted of Christina Leo (blog|twitter), Ryan Malcom (twitter), Neil Hambly (blog|twitter). They then had to do math and identify the cabin with the lowest prime number, oh, and get a picture of it and be the first to get back up to the bar where we were waiting. Christina came in first and very happily carried home an Ipad2. Ryan won a 1TB portable hard drive and Neil won a wireless mouse (picture below, note my special SQL Server Central Friday Shirt. Thanks Steve (blog|twitter)). Winners: Christina Leo, Neil Hambly, Ryan Malcolm. Just Lucky: Grant Fritchey Monday morning classes started. Buck Woody (blog|twitter) was a special guest speaker on this cruise. His theme was "Three C's on the High Seas: Career, Communication and Cloud." The first session was all on Career. I'm not going to type out all my notes from the session, but let's just say, if you get the chance to hear Buck talk about how to manage your career, I suggest you attend. I have a ton of blog posts that I'll be putting together over the next several months (yes, months) both here and over on ScaryDBA. I also have a bunch of work I'm going to be doing to get my career performance bumped up a notch or two (and let's face it, that won't be easy). Later on Monday, Tim Ford (blog|twitter) did a session on DMOs. Specifically the session was on Tim's Period Table of DMOs that he has put together, and how to use some of the more interesting DMOs in your day to day job. It was a great session, packed with good information. Next, Brent Ozar (blog|twitter) did a session on how to monitor and guide SAN configuration for the DBA that doesn't have access to the SAN. That was some seriously useful information. Tuesday morning we only had a single class. Kendra Little (blog|twitter) taught us all about "No Lock for Yes Fun".  It was all about the different transaction isolation levels and how they work. There is so often confusion in this area and Kendra does a great job in clarifying the information. Also, she tosses in her excellent drawings to liven up the presentation. Then it was excursion time in Juneau. My wife and I, along with several other Cruisers, took a hike up around the Mendenhall Glacier. It was absolutely beautiful weather and walking through the Alaskan rain forest was a treat. Our guide, Jason, was a great guy and it was a good day of hiking. Wednesday was an all day excursion in Skagway. My wife and I took the "Ghost and Good Time Girls" walking tour that ended up at a bar that used to be a brothel, the Red Onion. It was a great history of the town. We went back out and hit a few museums and exhibits. We also hiked up the side of the mountain to see the Dewey Lake and some great views of the town. Finally we hiked out to the far side of town to see the Gold Rush cemetery. Hiking done we went back to the boat and had a quiet dinner on our own. Thursday we cruised through Glacier Bay and saw at least four different glaciers including sitting next to the Marjory Glacier for  about an hour. It was amazing. Then it got better. We went into class with Buck again, this time to talk about Communication. Again, I've got pages of notes that I'm going to be referring back to for some time to come. This was an excellent opportunity to learn. Snorkelers: Nicole Bertrand, Aaron Bertrand, Grant Fritchey, Neil Hambly, Christina Leo, John Robel, Yanni Robel, Tim Ford Friday we pulled into Ketchikan. A bunch of us went snorkeling. Yes, snorkeling. Yes, in Alaska. Yes, snorkeling in the ocean in Alaska. It was fantastic. They had us put on 7mm thick wet suits (an adventure all by itself) so it was basically warm the entire time we were in the water (except for the occasional squirt of cold water down my back). Before we got in the water a bald eagle flew up and landed about 15 feet in front of us, which was just an incredible event. Then our guide pointed out about 14 other eagles in the area, hanging out in the trees. Wow! The water was pretty clear and there was a ton of things to see. That was absolutely a blast. Back on the boat I presented a session called Execution Plans: The Deep Dive (note the nautical theme). It seemed to go over well and I had several good questions come out of the session that will lead to new blog posts. After I presented, it was Aaron Bertrand's (blog|twitter) turn. He did a session on "What's New in Denali" that provided a lot of great information. He was able to incorporate new things straight out of Tech-Ed, so this was expanded beyond his usual presentation. The man really knows what he's talking about and communicates it well. Saturday we were travelling so there was time for a bunch of classes. Jeremiah Peschka (blog|twitter) did a great overview of some of the NoSQL databases and what they should be used for. The session was called "The Database is Dead" but it was really about how there are specific uses for these databases that SQL Server doesn't fill, but also that these databases can't replace SQL Server in other areas. Again, good material. Brent Ozar presented again with a session on Defensive Indexing. It was an overview of how indexes work and a deep dive into how to apply them appropriately in your databases to better support access. A good session, as you would expect. Then we pulled into Victoria, BC, in Canada and had a nice dinner with several of the Cruisers, including Denny Cherry (blog|twitter). After that it was back to Seattle on Sunday. By the way, the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle isn't a Science Fiction Museum any more. I was very disappointed to discover this. Overall, it was a great experience. I'm extremely appreciative of Red Gate for sending me and for Tim, Brent, Kendra and Jeremiah for having me. The other Cruisers were all amazing people and it was an honor & privilege to meet them and spend time with them. While this was a seriously fun time, it was also a very serious training opportunity with solid information coming from seasoned industry pros.

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  • Talking JavaOne with Rock Star Raghavan Srinivas

    - by Janice J. Heiss
    Raghavan Srinivas, affectionately known as “Rags,” is a two-time JavaOne Rock Star (from 2005 and 2011) who, as a Developer Advocate at Couchbase, gets his hands dirty with emerging technology directions and trends. His general focus is on distributed systems, with a specialization in cloud computing. He worked on Hadoop and HBase during its early stages, has spoken at conferences world-wide on a variety of technical topics, conducted and organized Hands-on Labs and taught graduate classes.He has 20 years of hands-on software development and over 10 years of architecture and technology evangelism experience and has worked for Digital Equipment Corporation, Sun Microsystems, Intuit and Accenture. He has evangelized and influenced the architecture of numerous technologies including the early releases of JavaFX, Java, Java EE, Java and XML, Java ME, AJAX and Web 2.0, and Java Security.Rags will be giving these sessions at JavaOne 2012: CON3570 -- Autosharding Enterprise to Social Gaming Applications with NoSQL and Couchbase CON3257 -- Script Bowl 2012: The Battle of the JVM-Based Languages (with Guillaume Laforge, Aaron Bedra, Dick Wall, and Dr Nic Williams) Rags emphasized the importance of the Cloud: “The Cloud and the Big Data are popular technologies not merely because they are trendy, but, largely due to the fact that it's possible to do massive data mining and use that information for business advantage,” he explained. I asked him what we should know about Hadoop. “Hadoop,” he remarked, “is mainly about using commodity hardware and achieving unprecedented scalability. At the heart of all this is the Java Virtual Machine which is running on each of these nodes. The vision of taking the processing to where the data resides is made possible by Java and Hadoop.” And the most exciting thing happening in the world of Java today? “I read recently that Java projects on github.com are just off the charts when compared to other projects. It's exciting to realize the robust growth of Java and the degree of collaboration amongst Java programmers.” He encourages Java developers to take advantage of Java 7 for Mac OS X which is now available for download. At the same time, he also encourages us to read the caveats. Originally published on blogs.oracle.com/javaone.

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  • Talking JavaOne with Rock Star Raghavan Srinivas

    - by Janice J. Heiss
    Raghavan Srinivas, affectionately known as “Rags,” is a two-time JavaOne Rock Star (from 2005 and 2011) who, as a Developer Advocate at Couchbase, gets his hands dirty with emerging technology directions and trends. His general focus is on distributed systems, with a specialization in cloud computing. He worked on Hadoop and HBase during its early stages, has spoken at conferences world-wide on a variety of technical topics, conducted and organized Hands-on Labs and taught graduate classes.He has 20 years of hands-on software development and over 10 years of architecture and technology evangelism experience and has worked for Digital Equipment Corporation, Sun Microsystems, Intuit and Accenture. He has evangelized and influenced the architecture of numerous technologies including the early releases of JavaFX, Java, Java EE, Java and XML, Java ME, AJAX and Web 2.0, and Java Security.Rags will be giving these sessions at JavaOne 2012: CON3570 -- Autosharding Enterprise to Social Gaming Applications with NoSQL and Couchbase CON3257 -- Script Bowl 2012: The Battle of the JVM-Based Languages (with Guillaume Laforge, Aaron Bedra, Dick Wall, and Dr Nic Williams) Rags emphasized the importance of the Cloud: “The Cloud and the Big Data are popular technologies not merely because they are trendy, but, largely due to the fact that it's possible to do massive data mining and use that information for business advantage,” he explained. I asked him what we should know about Hadoop. “Hadoop,” he remarked, “is mainly about using commodity hardware and achieving unprecedented scalability. At the heart of all this is the Java Virtual Machine which is running on each of these nodes. The vision of taking the processing to where the data resides is made possible by Java and Hadoop.” And the most exciting thing happening in the world of Java today? “I read recently that Java projects on github.com are just off the charts when compared to other projects. It's exciting to realize the robust growth of Java and the degree of collaboration amongst Java programmers.” He encourages Java developers to take advantage of Java 7 for Mac OS X which is now available for download. At the same time, he also encourages us to read the caveats.

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  • I spoke at SQL Saturday #77 and all I got was this really awesome speaker's shirt!

    - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)
    Yeah, it was 2 weeks ago, but I'm finally blogging about something! I presented Revenge: The SQL! at SQL Saturday #77 in Pensacola on June 4.  The session abstract is here, and you can download the slides from that page too.  You can see how I look in the speaker's shirt here. Overall it went pretty well.  I discovered a new bit of evil just that morning and in a carefully considered, agonizing decision-making process that was full documented, tested, and approved…nah, I just went ahead and added it at the last minute.  Which worked out even better than (not) planned, since it screwed me up a bit and made my point perfectly.  I had a few fans in the audience, and one of them recorded it for blackmail material posterity. I'd like to thank Karla Landrum (blog | twitter) and all the volunteers for putting together such a great event, and for being kind enough to let me present. (Note to Karla: I'll get the next $100 to you as soon as I can.  Might need a few extra days on the next $100.) Thanks to Audrey (blog | twitter), Peg, and Dorothy for attending and keeping the heckling down.  Thanks also to Aaron (blog | twitter) for providing room and board and also not heckling.  Thanks to Julie (blog | twitter) for coming up with the title for the presentation.  (boo to Julie for getting sick and bailing out on us)  And thanks to all of them for listening to a preview and offering their suggestions and advice! Cross your fingers that I get accepted at SQL Saturday 81 in Birmingham, SQL Saturday 85 in Orlando, or SQL Saturday 89 in Atlanta, or just attend them anyway!

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  • Scrum with Team Foundation Server 2010 Done

    - by Martin Hinshelwood
    Since I have joined SSW as a Solution Architect its Chief Architect, Adam Cogan, has been mentoring me and pushing me to do better. One of the things that I have been wanting to do since the first DDD Scotland was to present a session. For DDD Scotland 2010 Adam suggested that I submit he double session on “Better project Management with Team Foundation Server 2010”. So, with some apprehension I submitted two session as Part A and Part B. Download DDD Scotland -  Scrum with Team Foundation Server 2010 How surprised was I that after the attendees had finished casting their votes that both sessions would be in the top 20 one in the top 5. I an effort to promote diversity in sessions the DDD committee try to make sure that each presenter only have one session. I would have to compress SSW’s presentation into 1 hour. Around this time SSW embarked on it continuing adventures with scrum an Microsoft started heavily investing in Scrum for its internal use. I decided to do a slightly different session, but one that would still meet the agenda and goal of the billed session to provide “Better project management with Team Foundation Server 2010”. And so Scrum with Team Foundation Server 2010 was born. At this stage I really have to thank Aaron Bjork who provided me with many of the slides and animations as I really can’t work Power Point. On the 27th of April I presented the session for the Aberdeen Partner Group and then on 8th May I presented at DDD Scotland. Figure: Some of the presenters and organisers of DDD Scotland I mentioned quite a few of SSW’s Rules to better Scrum Using TFS and I have uploaded my presentation to Skydrive.   Download DDD Scotland -  Scrum with Team Foundation Server 2010 Technorati Tags: DDD Scot,Scrum,TFS 2010,SSW

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  • PowerShell to fetch a SQL Execution Plan

    - by Rob Farley
    With PowerShell becoming the scripting language of choice for many people, I’ve occasionally wondered about using it to analyse execution plans. After all, an execution plan is just XML, and PowerShell is just one tool which will very easily handle xml. The thing is – there’s no Get-SqlPlan cmdlet available, which has frustrated me in the past. Today I figured I’d make one. I know that I can write T-SQL to get an execution plan using SET SHOWPLAN_XML ON, but the problem is that this must be the only statement in a batch. So I used go, and a couple of newlines, and whipped up the following one-liner: function Get-SqlPlan([string] $query, [string] $server, [string] $db) { return ([xml] (invoke-sqlcmd -Server $server -Database $db -Query "set showplan_xml on;`ngo`n$query").Item( 0)) } (but please bear in mind that I have the SQL Snapins installed, which provides invoke-sqlcmd) To use this, I just do something like: $plan = get-sqlplan "select name from Production.Product" "." "AdventureWorks" And then find myself with an easy way to navigate through an execution plan! At some point I should make the function more robust, but this should be a good starter for any SQL PowerShell enthusiasts (like Aaron Nelson) out there.

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  • SQLRally Nordic gets underway

    - by Rob Farley
    PASS is becoming more international, which is great. The SQL Community has always been international – it’s not as if data is only generated in North America. And while it’s easy for organisations to have a North American focus, PASS is taking steps to become international. Regular readers will be aware that I’m one of three advisors to the PASS Board of Directors, with a focus on developing PASS as a more global organisation. With this in mind, it’s great that today is Day 1 of SQLRally Nordic, being hosted in in Sweden – not only a non-American country, but one that doesn’t have English as its major language. The event has been hosted by the amazing Johan Åhlén and Raoul Illyés, two guys who I met earlier this year, but the thing that amazes me is the incredible support that this event has from the SQL Community. It’s been sold out for a long time, and when you see the list of speakers, it’s not surprising. Some of the industry’s biggest names from Microsoft have turned up, including Mark Souza (who is also a PASS Director), Thomas Kejser and Tobias Thernström. Business Intelligence experts such as Jen Stirrup, Chris Webb, Peter Myers, Marco Russo and Alberto Ferrari are there, as are some of the most awarded SQL MVPs such as Itzik Ben-Gan, Aaron Bertrand and Kevin Kline. The sponsor list is also brilliant, with names such as HP, FusionIO, SQL Sentry, Quest and SolidQ complimented by Swedish companies like Cornerstone, Informator, B3IT and Addskills. As someone who is interested in PASS becoming global, I’m really excited to see this event happening, and I hope it’s a launch-pad into many other international events hosted by the SQL community. If you have the opportunity, thank Johan and Raoul for putting this event on, and the speakers and sponsors for helping support it. The noise from Twitter is that everything is going fantastically well, and everyone involved should be thoroughly congratulated! @rob_farley

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  • Profit at Oracle OpenWorld 2012

    - by user462779
    It's only a week away: Oracle OpenWorld descends on San Francisco from September 30 to October 4. It's always a frantic week for the Profit editorial staff, but here's a few thing we've got going in San Francisco that you'll want to watch out for: Profit on Oracle OpenWorld Live: The Oracle video team will be broadcasting live from the event all week. I have a few interesting on-air interviews booked, including a conversation with business/technology researcher Andrew Mcafee (Monday Oct 1 @ 11:45am), Acorn Paper CEO David Weissberg (Tuesday, Oct 2 @ 12:15pm) and Abhay Parasnis, Oracle Senior Vice President, Oracle Public Cloud (Wednesday, Oct 3, @ 10:45am). Profit in the Oracle Partner Network Lounge: This summer, I worked with the amazing Oracle Partner Network (OPN) team to create the Profit Oracle Specialized Partner Edition 2012. It's a great catalog of Oracle partner success stories and insight into the OPN strategy from its leadership. Look for the special issue of Profit in the Oracle PartnerNetwork Lounge: the place where partners can meet formally or informally with colleagues, customers, prospects, and other industry professionals. Moscone South, Exhibit Hall, Room 100 Oracle Customer Experience Summit @ OpenWorld: There's been a lot of discussion within my editorial team (and content published, as well)about Customer Experience. To keep pace with this evolving subject, I'll be attending this special embedded conference on Wednesday and Thursday (Oct. 3-4). Especially looking forward to Seth Godin's presentation: he was one of the first experts we interviewed forProfit Online five years ago. The Executive Edge @ OpenWorld: Of course, my Oracle OpenWorld is mostly filled with meetings/interviews with Oracle customers about completed Oracle projects and the strategic impact of enterprise IT on business. The ideal place for these conversations is The Executive Edge @ OpenWorld embedded conference. Samovar Tea Lounge at Moscone Center: I spend my down time on the roof of Moscone North, preparing for meetings or having impromptu conversations with attendees at this little oasis overlooking Yerba Buena Gardens. Fee free to drop my for a chat! See you in San Francisco! -Aaron Lazenby

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  • Positioning a sprite in XNA: Use ClientBounds or BackBuffer?

    - by Martin Andersson
    I'm reading a book called "Learning XNA 4.0" written by Aaron Reed. Throughout most of the chapters, whenever he calculates the position of a sprite to use in his call to SpriteBatch.Draw, he uses Window.ClientBounds.Width and Window.ClientBounds.Height. But then all of a sudden, on page 108, he uses PresentationParameters.BackBufferWidth and PresentationParameters.BackBufferHeight instead. I think I understand what the Back Buffer and the Client Bounds are and the difference between those two (or perhaps not?). But I'm mighty confused about when I should use one or the other when it comes to positioning sprites. The author uses for the most part Client Bounds both for checking whenever a moving sprite is of the screen and to find a spawn point for new sprites. However, he seems to make two exceptions from this pattern in his book. The first time is when he wants some animated sprites to "move in" and cross the screen from one side to another (page 108 as mentioned). The second and last time is when he positions a texture to work as a button in the lower right corner of a Windows Phone 7 screen (page 379). Anyone got an idea? I shall provide some context if it is of any help. Here's how he usually calls SpriteBatch.Draw (code example from where he positions a sprite in the middle of the screen [page 35]): spriteBatch.Draw(texture, new Vector2( (Window.ClientBounds.Width / 2) - (texture.Width / 2), (Window.ClientBounds.Height / 2) - (texture.Height / 2)), null, Color.White, 0, Vector2.Zero, 1, SpriteEffects.None, 0); And here is the first case of four possible in a switch statement that will set the position of soon to be spawned moving sprites, this position will later be used in the SpriteBatch.Draw call (page 108): // Randomly choose which side of the screen to place enemy, // then randomly create a position along that side of the screen // and randomly choose a speed for the enemy switch (((Game1)Game).rnd.Next(4)) { case 0: // LEFT to RIGHT position = new Vector2( -frameSize.X, ((Game1)Game).rnd.Next(0, Game.GraphicsDevice.PresentationParameters.BackBufferHeight - frameSize.Y)); speed = new Vector2(((Game1)Game).rnd.Next( enemyMinSpeed, enemyMaxSpeed), 0); break;

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  • LiveMeeting VC PowerShell PASS – Troubleshooting SQL Server with PowerShell

    - by Laerte Junior
    Guys, join me on Wednesday July 18th 12 noon EDT (GMT -4) for a presentation called Troubleshooting SQL Server With PowerShell. It will be in English, so please make allowances for this. I’m sure that you’re aware that my English is not perfect, but it is not so bad. I will do my best, you can be sure. The registration link will be available soon from PowerShell.sqlpass.org, so I hope to see you there. It will be a session without slides. Just code; pure PowerShell code. Trust me, We will see a lot of COOL stuff.Big thanks to Aaron Nelson (@sqlvariant) for the opportunity! Here are some more details about the presentation: “Troubleshooting SQL Server with PowerShell – The Next Level’ It is normal for us to have to face poorly performing queries or even complete failure in our SQL server environments. This can happen for a variety of reasons including poor Database Designs, hardware failure, improperly-configured systems and OS Updates applied without testing. As Database Administrators, we need to take precaution to minimize the impact of these problems when they occur, and so we need the tools and methodology required to identify and solve issues quickly. In this Session we will use PowerShell to explore some common troubleshooting techniques used in our day-to-day work as s DBA. This will include a variety of such activities including Gathering Performance Counters in several servers at the same time using background jobs, identifying Blocked Sessions and Reading & filtering the SQL Error Log even if the Instance is offline The approach will be using some advanced PowerShell techniques that allow us to scale the code for multiple servers and run the data collection in asynchronous mode.

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  • Aliasing a route causes rails to expect paths that don't exist

    - by DJTripleThreat
    ok here's some code: prompt>rails my_app prompt>cd my_app prompt>script/generate scaffold service_type title:string time_allotment:integer prompt>rake db:migrate then edit these files to look like this: #routes.rb: ActionController::Routing::Routes.draw do |map| map.resources :services, :controller => :service_types map.connect ':controller/:action/:id' map.connect ':controller/:action/:id.:format' end which produces these routes: prompt>rake routes services GET /services(.:format) {:controller=>"service_types", :action=>"index"} POST /services(.:format) {:controller=>"service_types", :action=>"create"} new_service GET /services/new(.:format) {:controller=>"service_types", :action=>"new"} edit_service GET /services/:id/edit(.:format) {:controller=>"service_types", :action=>"edit"} service GET /services/:id(.:format) {:controller=>"service_types", :action=>"show"} PUT /services/:id(.:format) {:controller=>"service_types", :action=>"update"} DELETE /services/:id(.:format) {:controller=>"service_types", :action=>"destroy"} /:controller/:action/:id /:controller/:action/:id(.:format) _ #my_app/app/views/service_types/index.html.erb <h1>Listing service_types</h1> <table> <tr> <th>Title</th> <th>Time allotment</th> </tr> <% @service_types.each do |service_type| %> <tr> <td><%=h service_type.title %></td> <td><%=h service_type.time_allotment %></td> <td><%= link_to 'Show', service_type %></td> <td><%= link_to 'Edit', edit_service_path(service_type) %></td> <td><%= link_to 'Destroy', service_type, :confirm => 'Are you sure?', :method => :delete %></td> </tr> <% end %> </table> <br /> <%= link_to 'New service_type', new_service_path %> - #my_app/app/views/service_types/new.html.erb <h1>New service_type</h1> <% form_for(@service_type) do |f| %> <%= f.error_messages %> <p> <%= f.label :title %><br /> <%= f.text_field :title %> </p> <p> <%= f.label :time_allotment %><br /> <%= f.text_field :time_allotment %> </p> <p> <%= f.submit 'Create' %> </p> <% end %> <%= link_to 'Back', services_path %> when you try to access http://localhost:3000/services/new you get the following error: undefined method `service_types_path' for #<ActionView::Base:0xb7199a80> Extracted source (around line #3): 1: <h1>New service_type</h1> 2: 3: <% form_for(@service_type) do |f| %> 4: <%= f.error_messages %> 5: 6: <p> Application Trace: /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.3.5/lib/action_controller/polymorphic_routes.rb:107:in `__send__' /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.3.5/lib/action_controller/polymorphic_routes.rb:107:in `polymorphic_url' /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.3.5/lib/action_controller/polymorphic_routes.rb:114:in `polymorphic_path' /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.3.5/lib/action_view/helpers/form_helper.rb:298:in `apply_form_for_options!' /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.3.5/lib/action_view/helpers/form_helper.rb:277:in `form_for' /home/aaron/NetBeansProjects/my_app/app/views/service_types/new.html.erb:3:in `_run_erb_app47views47service_types47new46html46erb' /home/aaron/NetBeansProjects/my_app/app/controllers/service_types_controller.rb:29:in `new' Anyone have any idea why it believes that service_types_path is in my code when it's not?

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  • Join and sum not compatible matrices through data.table

    - by leodido
    My goal is to "sum" two not compatible matrices (matrices with different dimensions) using (and preserving) row and column names. I've figured this approach: convert the matrices to data.table objects, join them and then sum columns vectors. An example: > M1 1 3 4 5 7 8 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 1 0 0 0 0 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 7 0 0 0 0 1 0 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 > M2 1 3 4 5 8 1 0 0 1 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 0 4 1 0 0 0 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 8 0 0 0 0 0 > M1 %ms% M2 1 3 4 5 7 8 1 0 0 2 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 2 0 0 0 0 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 7 0 0 0 0 1 0 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 This is my code: M1 <- matrix(c(0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0), byrow = TRUE, ncol = 6) colnames(M1) <- c(1,3,4,5,7,8) M2 <- matrix(c(0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0), byrow = TRUE, ncol = 5) colnames(M2) <- c(1,3,4,5,8) # to data.table objects DT1 <- data.table(M1, keep.rownames = TRUE, key = "rn") DT2 <- data.table(M2, keep.rownames = TRUE, key = "rn") # join and sum of common columns if (nrow(DT1) > nrow(DT2)) { A <- DT2[DT1, roll = TRUE] A[, list(X1 = X1 + X1.1, X3 = X3 + X3.1, X4 = X4 + X4.1, X5 = X5 + X5.1, X7, X8 = X8 + X8.1), by = rn] } That outputs: rn X1 X3 X4 X5 X7 X8 1: 1 0 0 2 0 0 0 2: 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 3: 4 2 0 0 0 0 0 4: 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 5: 7 0 0 0 0 1 0 6: 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 Then I can convert back this data.table to a matrix and fix row and column names. The questions are: how to generalize this procedure? I need a way to automatically create list(X1 = X1 + X1.1, X3 = X3 + X3.1, X4 = X4 + X4.1, X5 = X5 + X5.1, X7, X8 = X8 + X8.1) because i want to apply this function to matrices which dimensions (and row/columns names) are not known in advance. In summary I need a merge procedure that behaves as described. there are other strategies/implementations that achieve the same goal that are, at the same time, faster and generalized? (hoping that some data.table monster help me) to what kind of join (inner, outer, etc. etc.) is assimilable this procedure? Thanks in advance. p.s.: I'm using data.table version 1.8.2 EDIT - SOLUTIONS @Aaron solution. No external libraries, only base R. It works also on list of matrices. add_matrices_1 <- function(...) { a <- list(...) cols <- sort(unique(unlist(lapply(a, colnames)))) rows <- sort(unique(unlist(lapply(a, rownames)))) out <- array(0, dim = c(length(rows), length(cols)), dimnames = list(rows,cols)) for (m in a) out[rownames(m), colnames(m)] <- out[rownames(m), colnames(m)] + m out } @MadScone solution. Used reshape2 package. It works only on two matrices per call. add_matrices_2 <- function(m1, m2) { m <- acast(rbind(melt(M1), melt(M2)), Var1~Var2, fun.aggregate = sum) mn <- unique(colnames(m1), colnames(m2)) rownames(m) <- mn colnames(m) <- mn m } BENCHMARK (100 runs with microbenchmark package) Unit: microseconds expr min lq median uq max 1 add_matrices_1 196.009 257.5865 282.027 291.2735 549.397 2 add_matrices_2 13737.851 14697.9790 14864.778 16285.7650 25567.448 No need to comment the benchmark: @Aaron solution wins. I'll continue to investigate a similar solution for data.table objects. I'll add other solutions eventually reported or discovered.

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  • The Politics of Junk Filtering

    - by mikef
    If the national postal service, such as the Royal Mail in the UK, were to go through your letters and throw away all the stuff it considered to be junk instead of delivering it to you, you might be rather pleased until you discovered that it took a too liberal decision about what was junk. Catalogs you'd asked for? Junk! Requests from charities? Who needs them! Parcels from competing carriers? Toss them away! The possibility for abuse for an agency that was in a monopolistic position is just too scary to tolerate. After all, the postal service could charge 'consultancy fees' to any sender who wanted to guarantee that his stuff got delivered, or they could even farm this out to other companies. Because Microsoft Outlook is just about the only email client used by the international business community in the west, its' SPAM filter is the final arbiter as to what gets read. My Outlook 2007, set to the default settings, junks all the perfectly innocent email newsletters that I subscribe to. Whereas Google Mail, Yahoo, and LIVE are all pretty accurate in detecting spam, Outlook makes all sorts of silly mistakes. The documentation speaks techno-babble about 'advanced heuristics', but the result boils down to an inaccurate mess. The more that Microsoft fiddles with it, the stickier the mess. To make matters worse, it still lets through obvious spam. The filter is occasionally updated along with other automatic 'security' updates you opt for automatic updates. As an editor for a popular online publication that provides a newsletter service, this is an obvious source of frustration. We follow all the best-practices we know about. We ensure that it is a trivial task to opt out of receiving it. We format the newsletter to the requirements of the Service Providers. We follow up, and resolve, every complaint. As a result, it gets delivered. It is galling to discover that, after all that effort, Outlook then often judges the contents to be junk on a whim, so you don't get to see it. A few days ago, Microsoft published the PST file format specification, under pressure from a European Union interoperability investigation by ECIS (the European Committee for Interoperable Systems). The objective was that other applications could then access existing PST files so as to migrate from existing Outlook installations to other solutions. Joaquín Almunia, the current competition commissioner, should now turn his attention to the more subtle problems of Microsoft Outlook. The Junk problem seems to have come from clumsy implementation of client-side spam filtering rather than from deliberate exploitation of a monopoly on the desktop email client for businesses, but it is a growing problem nonetheless. Cheers, Michael Francis

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  • Visual Studio reference x64 GAC

    - by icelava
    How can one get Visual Studio 2005/2008 to reference assemblies in the 64-bit GAC instead of the 32-bit GAC? We are settin the target platfom to x64 and the compiler is throwing the error of Error 2 Warning as Error: Assembly generation -- Referenced assembly 'System.Data.dll' targets a different processor Common Error 3 Warning as Error: Assembly generation -- Referenced assembly 'mscorlib.dll' targets a different processor Common Error 4 Assembly signing failed; output may not be signed -- The system cannot find the file specified. Common Update 29 Dec 08 Been trying out Aaron Stebner's suggestions to place 64-bit assemblies onto an isolated location (e.g. C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727\GAC_64) and creating additional entries in the registry like HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft.NETFramework\AssemblyFolders\GAC_64 or HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft.NETFramework\v2.0.50727\AssemblyFoldersEx\GAC_64 but Visual Studio 2005 is still not picking it up....

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  • Actionscrips/Flex4: Display cut-off datapoints differently in LineChart

    - by Limited Atonement
    Dear Sirs, The issue arises when the user selects a range on the linechart that cuts off datapoints. When this happens, I would like the chart to tell the user somehow that there are data points three, just outside the range, perhaps by drawing a straight line across the top or bottom of the graph. How can I get Flex to do this for met? Let me know if you understand the question, or if you need more information, and of course, let me know the answer! Thanks! Sincerely, Aaron

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  • What ports does Advantage Database Server need?

    - by asherber
    I have an application which uses ADS and I am attempting to deploy it in a Windows network environment with a rather restrictive firewall. I am having a problem configuring firewall ports appropriately. ADS lives on \server, and it's listening on port 1234. When \client tries to connect to \server\tables, I get Error 6420 (Discovery process failed). When \client tries to connect to \server:1234\tables, I get error 6097, bad IP address specified in the connection path. \server is pingable from \client, and I can telnet to \server:1234. If I try to connect from a client machine inside the firewall, either connection path works fine. It seems there must be something else I need to open in the firewall. Any ideas? Thanks, Aaron.

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  • Remove Registry Keys for Windows Phone 7 Emulator

    - by Jake Pearson
    I am trying to get the updated Windows Phone 7 tools installed, but can't get rid of the old ones. The uninstaller wouldn't run, so I had to try more extreme means. I got everything removed except for "Microsoft Windows Phone Emulator x64". Does anyone know what vm_web.exe (the tool installer) is checking for (registry, file, etc.) that prevents the installer from running. I tried Aaron Stebner's clean up tool, and it helped a lot, but couldn't get rid of the emulator.

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  • Difference between mutableArrayValueForKey and calling insertObject:inEmployeesAtIndex: directly

    - by jasonbogd
    I have a question regarding using KVO-compliant methods to insert/remove objects from an array. I'm working through Aaron Hillegass' Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X and I saw the following line of code (in the insertObject:inEmployeesAtIndex: method: [[undoManager prepareWithInvocationTarget:self] removeObjectFromEmployeesAtIndex:index]; Correct me if I'm wrong, but I always thought it was better to call mutableArrayValueForKey: and then removeObjectAtIndex:...so I tried changing the above line to this: [[undoManager prepareWithInvocationTarget:[self mutableArrayValueForKey:@"employees"]] removeObjectAtIndex:index]; And it didn't work. Can someone explain the difference and why the first line works but the second line doesn't?

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  • How to use Code Igniter to show Dynamic images via javascript(jQuery).

    - by aaroninfidel
    You can use the URL helper in Code Igniter to load CSS and Javascript with the base_url() method, but what if you have images dynamically being placed into your HTML via javascript? for example in my javascript file I've got var arrowimages={down:['downarrowclass', 'images/down.png', 23], right:['rightarrowclass', 'images/right.png']} and those images will be placed into whatever menu item I've specified has a drop down menu. but that file is a .js file so obviously the server won't load php inside of it. so, how can I set the base url for the JS? Thanks! -Aaron

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  • Scrum for Team Foundation Server 2010

    - by Martin Hinshelwood
    I will be presenting a session on “Scrum for TFS2010” not once, but twice! If you are going to be at the Aberdeen Partner Group meeting on 27th April, or DDD Scotland on 8th May then you may be able to catch my session. Credit: I want to give special thanks to Aaron Bjork from Microsoft who provided me with most of my material He is a Scrum and Power Point genius. Scrum for Team Foundation Server 2010 Synopsis Visual Studio ALM (formerly Visual Studio Team System (VSTS)) and Team Foundation Server (TFS) are the cornerstones of development on the Microsoft .NET platform. These are the best tools for a team to have successful projects and for the developers to have a focused and smooth software development process. For TFS 2010 Microsoft is heavily investing in Scrum and has already started moving some teams across to using it. Martin will not be going in depth with Scrum but you can find out more about Scrum by reading the Scrum Guide and you can even asses your Scrum knowledge by having a go at the Scrum Open Assessment. Come and see Martin Hinshelwood, Visual Studio ALM MVP and Solution Architect from SSW show you: How to successfully gather requirements with User stories How to plan a project using TFS 2010 and Scrum How to work with a product backlog in TFS 2010 The right way to plan a sprint with TFS 2010 Tracking your progress The right way to use work items What you can use from the built in reporting as well as the Project portals available on from the SharePoint dashboard The important reports to give your Product Owner / Project Manager Walk away knowing how to see the project health and progress. Visual Studio ALM is designed to help address many of these traditional problems faced by teams. It does so by providing a set of integrated tools to help teams improve their software development activities and to help managers better support the software development processes. During this session we will cover the lifecycle of creating work items and how this fits into Scrum using Visual Studio ALM and Team Foundation Server. If you want to know more about how to do Scrum with TFS then there is a new course that has been created in collaboration with Microsoft and Scrum.org that is going to be the official course for working with TFS 2010. SSW has Professional Scrum Developer Trainers who specialise in training your developers in implementing Scrum with Microsoft's Visual Studio ALM tools. Ken Schwaber and and Sam Guckenheimer: Professional Scrum Development Technorati Tags: Scrum,VS ALM,VS 2010,TFS 2010

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  • Scrum for Team Foundation Server 2010

    - by Martin Hinshelwood
    I will be presenting a session on “Scrum for TFS2010” not once, but twice! If you are going to be at the Aberdeen Partner Group meeting on 27th April, or DDD Scotland on 8th May then you may be able to catch my session. Credit: I want to give special thanks to Aaron Bjork from Microsoft who provided me with most of my material He is a Scrum and Power Point genius. Updated 9th May 2010 – I have now presented at both of these sessions  and posted about it. Scrum for Team Foundation Server 2010 Synopsis Visual Studio ALM (formerly Visual Studio Team System (VSTS)) and Team Foundation Server (TFS) are the cornerstones of development on the Microsoft .NET platform. These are the best tools for a team to have successful projects and for the developers to have a focused and smooth software development process. For TFS 2010 Microsoft is heavily investing in Scrum and has already started moving some teams across to using it. Martin will not be going in depth with Scrum but you can find out more about Scrum by reading the Scrum Guide and you can even asses your Scrum knowledge by having a go at the Scrum Open Assessment. You can also read SSW’s Rules to Better Scrum using TFS which have been developed during our own Scrum implementations. Come and see Martin Hinshelwood, Visual Studio ALM MVP and Solution Architect from SSW show you: How to successfully gather requirements with User stories How to plan a project using TFS 2010 and Scrum How to work with a product backlog in TFS 2010 The right way to plan a sprint with TFS 2010 Tracking your progress The right way to use work items What you can use from the built in reporting as well as the Project portals available on from the SharePoint dashboard The important reports to give your Product Owner / Project Manager Walk away knowing how to see the project health and progress. Visual Studio ALM is designed to help address many of these traditional problems faced by teams. It does so by providing a set of integrated tools to help teams improve their software development activities and to help managers better support the software development processes. During this session we will cover the lifecycle of creating work items and how this fits into Scrum using Visual Studio ALM and Team Foundation Server. If you want to know more about how to do Scrum with TFS then there is a new course that has been created in collaboration with Microsoft and Scrum.org that is going to be the official course for working with TFS 2010. SSW has Professional Scrum Developer Trainers who specialise in training your developers in implementing Scrum with Microsoft's Visual Studio ALM tools. Ken Schwaber and and Sam Guckenheimer: Professional Scrum Development Technorati Tags: Scrum,VS ALM,VS 2010,TFS 2010

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  • Exploding maps in Reporting Services 2008 R2

    - by Rob Farley
    Kaboom! Well, that was the imagery that secretly appeared in my mind when I saw “USA By State Exploded” in the list of installed maps in Report Builder 3.0 – part of the spatial offering of SQL Server Reporting Server 2008 R2. Alas, it just means that the borders are bigger. Clicking on it showed me. Unfortunately, I’m not interested in maps of the US. None of my clients are there (at least, not yet – feel free to get in touch if you want to change this ‘feature’ of my company). So instead, I’ve recently been getting hold of some data for Australian areas. I’ve just bought some PostCode shapes for South Australia, and will use this in demos for conferences and for showing clients how this kind of report can really impact their reporting. One of the companies I was talking about getting shape files sent me a sample. So I chose the “ESRI shapefile” option you see above, and browsed to my file. It appeared in the window like this: Australians will immediately recognise this as the area around Wollongong, just south of Sydney. Well, apart from me. I didn’t. I had to put a Bing Maps layer behind it to work that out, but that’s not for this post. The thing that I discovered was that if I selected the Exploded USA option (but without clicking Next), and then chose my shape file, then my area around Wollongong would be exploded too! Huh! I think this is actually a bug, but a potentially useful one! Some further investigation (involving creating two identical reports, one with this exploded view, one without), showed that the Exploded View is done by reducing the ScaleFactor property of the PolygonLayer in the map control. The Exploded version has it below 1. If you set to above one, your shapes overlap. I discovered this by accident… I guess I hadn’t looked through all the PolygonLayer options to work out what they all do. And because this post is about Reporting, it can qualify for this month’s T-SQL Tuesday, hosted by Aaron Nelson (@sqlvariant). Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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  • top Tweets SOA Partner Community &ndash; June 2012

    - by JuergenKress
    Send your tweets @soacommunity #soacommunity and follow us at http://twitter.com/soacommunity Simone Geib Contact me directly for ideas how to improve http://bit.ly/advancedsoasuite and additional posts, presentations, white papers, #soasuite SOA CommunitySOA Community Newsletter May 2012 https://soacommunity.wordpress.com /2012/05/28/soa-community-newsletter-may-2012/ #soacommunity Simone Geib #soasuite advanced OTN page has become too cluttered. Broke it into separate pages to start with. http://bit.ly/advancedsoasuite SOA CommunitySOA Management with Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c and Business Transaction Management 12c Demo https://soacommunity.wordpress.com /2012/05/21/soa-management-with-enterprise-manager-cloud-control-12c-and-business-transaction-management-12c-demo/ #soacommunity OracleBlogs June Webcast: SOA Gateway Implementation and Troubleshooting (2 sessions) http://ow.ly/1kbRFA OTNArchBeatEvery cloud needs an SOA lining: analyst | @JoeMcKendrick http://zd.net/KTgMHk ServiceTechSymposium New session just posted to calendar: "NoSQL for Data Services, Data Virtualization & Big Data" by Guido Schmutz, Trivadis AG ://ow.ly/bjjOe OTNArchBeat?Every cloud needs an SOA lining: analyst | @JoeMcKendrick http://zd.net/KTgMHk Debra Lilley looks good - real proof people are using the apps ! RT @fteter:Very cool Fusion Applications Help site: http://bit.ly/L3nvOR #FusionApps OTNArchBeat How to Set JVM Parameters in Oracle SOA 11G | Francis Ip http://bit.ly/JBDYPj demed"rapid proliferation of cloud computing will drive convergence of SOA and cloud paradigms" http://ovum.com/2012/05/18/soa-paves-the-way-for-cloud/ SOA Community Sending out invitations to our advanced Fusion Middleware Summer Camps! Want to learn more register for the community http://www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa SOA Community Middleware Oracle Excellence Awards 2012 - HAPPY NEW YEAR! https://soacommunity.wordpress.com/ 2012/05/31/middleware-oracle-excellence-awards-2012 happy-new-year/ #soacommunity #opn #opnaward #specialization #oracle Simone Geib #oraclesoa performance tuning resources. All in one: docs, blogs, WPs, ppts: http://bit.ly/soa_resources OracleBlogs Middleware Oracle Excellence Awards 2012 - HAPPY NEW YEAR! http://ow.ly/1k9ri0 ServiceTechSymposiumNew session just posted to Symposium calendar: "Service Modeling & BPM Business Value Patterns" by Jürgen Kress, Oracle http://www.servicetechsymposium.com/ agenda2012.php #service_modeling_and_bpm _business_value_patterns SOA Community Happy New Year #soacommunity thanks for the business! Time for a drink ;-) http://pic.twitter.com/zkK08KWB Jan van ZoggelUsing execute-sql() function for Name-Value pair lookups in Oracle Service Bus http://wp.me/p1H430-jZ SOA Community Middleware Oracle Excellence Awards 2012&ndash;HAPPY NEW YEAR! http://wp.me/p10C8u-q4 orclateamsoa A-Team Blog #ateam: BPM 11g Deployment & Instance Migration - I have seen a number of request lately asking how to http://ow.ly/1jZ0h8 OTNArchBeat Who should ‘own’ the Enterprise Architecture? | Michael Glas http://bit.ly/K0ge0Q Oracle UPK & Tutor TOMORROW! (June 23rd) - UPK Professional Webinar at Noon ET: Discover why user adoption is a key factor for the http://bit.ly/LjZjdx Sabine Leitner Finance Event im Design-Hotel beim Barbeque: 21. Juni FRA mit Kunden SV Informatik, Schufa, LBBW http://bit.ly/JtwE3v #Oracle @itevent OracleEnterpriseMgr SOA Management with Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c and Business Transaction Management 12c Demo http://ow.ly/b3WP1 #em12c ServiceTechSymposium New session just posted to Symposium calendar: "Elastic SOA in the Cloud" by Steve Millidge, C2B2 Consulting http://www.servicetechsymposium.com /agenda2012.php #elastic_soa_in_the_cloud OTNArchBeat Securing Heterogeneous Systems Using Oracle Web Services Manager by @rluttikhuizen & Jens Peters http://bit.ly/KjShFi Oracleteamsoa A-Team Blog #ateam: How to Set JVM Parameters in Oracle SOA 11G http://ow.ly/1k2cnl SOA Community Oracle Service Registry in an automated (Maven) SOA/BPM build http://redstack.wordpress.com /2012/05/22/using-oracle-service-registry-in-an-automated-maven-soabpm-build/ #soacommunity #redstack #soa #osr #opn SOA CommunityHigh demand for advanced Fusion Middleware Summer Camps! Want to learn more register for the #soacommunity http://www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa OracleBlogs? How to Set JVM Parameters in Oracle SOA 11G http://ow.ly/1k1UTv SOA Community top Tweets SOA Partner Community &ndash; May 2012 http://wp.me/p10C8u-pP ServiceTechSymposium New session just posted to Symposium calendar: "SOA Governance at EDP: A Global Energy Company" by Manuel Rosa, Link http://www.servicetechsymposium.com/ agenda2012.php #soa_governance_at_edp For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA Partner Community for registration please visit  www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Technorati Tags: soacommunity,twitter,Oracle,SOA Community,Jürgen Kress,OPN,SOA,BPM

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  • F1 Pit Pragmatics

    - by mikef
    "I hate computers. No, really, I hate them. I love the communications they facilitate, I love the conveniences they provide to my life. but I actually hate the computers themselves." - Scott Merrill, 'I hate computers: confessions of a Sysadmin' If Scott's goal was to polarize opinion and trigger raging arguments over the 'real reasons why computers suck', then he certainly succeeded. Impassioned vitriol sits side-by-side with rational debate. Yet Scott's fundamental point is absolutely on the money - Computers are a means to an end. The IT industry is finally starting to put weight behind the notion that good User Experience is an absolutely crucial goal, a cause championed by the likes of Microsoft's Bill Buxton, and which Apple's increasingly ubiquitous touch screen interface exemplifies. However, that doesn't change the fact that, occasionally, you just have to man up and deal with complex systems. In fact, sometimes you just need to sacrifice everything else in the name of performance. You'll find a perfect example of this Faustian bargain in Trevor Clarke's fascinating look into the (diabolical) IT infrastructure of modern F1 racing - high performance, high availability. high everything. To paraphrase, each car has up to 100 sensors, transmitting around 30Gb of data over the course of a race (70% in real-time). This data is then processed by no less than 3 servers (per car) so that the engineers in the pit have access to telemetry, strategy information, timing feeds, a connection back to the operations room in the team's home base - the list goes on. All of this while the servers are exposed "to carbon dust, oil, vibration, rain, heat, [and] variable power". Now, this is admittedly an extreme context where there's no real choice but to use complex systems where ease-of-use is, at best, a secondary concern. The flip-side is seen in small-scale personal computing such as that seen in Apple's iDevices, which are incredibly intuitive but limited in their scope. In terms of what kinds of systems they prefer to use, I suspect that most SysAdmins find themselves somewhere along this axis of Power vs. Usability, and which end of this axis you resonate with also hints at where you think the IT industry should focus its energy. Do you see yourself in the F1 pit, making split-second decisions, wrestling with information flows and reticent hardware to bend them to your will? If so, I imagine you feel that computers are subtle tools which need to be tuned and honed, using the advanced knowledge possessed only by responsible SysAdmins (If you have an iPhone, I suspect it's jail-broken). If the machines throw enigmatic errors, it's the price of flexibility and raw power. Alternatively, would you prefer to have your role more accessible, with users empowered by knowledge, spreading the load of managing IT environments? In that case, then you want hardware and software to have User Experience as their primary focus, and are of the "means to an end" school of thought (you're probably also fed up with users not listening to you when you try and help). At its heart, the dichotomy is between raw power (which might be difficult to use) and ease-of-use (which might have some limitations, but you can be up and running immediately). Of course, the ultimate goal is a fusion of flexibility, power and usability all in one system. It's achievable in specific software environments, and Red Gate considers it a target worth aiming for, but in other cases it's a goal right up there with cold fusion. I think it'll be a long time before we see it become ubiquitous. In the meantime, are you Power-Hungry or a Champion of Usability? Cheers, Michael Francis Simple Talk SysAdmin Editor

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