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  • AWS .NET SDK v2: setting up queues and topics

    - by Elton Stoneman
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/EltonStoneman/archive/2013/10/13/aws-.net-sdk-v2-setting-up-queues-and-topics.aspxFollowing on from my last post, reading from SQS queues with the new SDK is easy stuff, but linking a Simple Notification Service topic to an SQS queue is a bit more involved. The AWS model for topics and subscriptions is a bit more advanced than in Azure Service Bus. SNS lets you have subscribers on multiple different channels, so you can send a message which gets relayed to email address, mobile apps and SQS queues all in one go. As the topic owner, when you request a subscription on any channel, the owner needs to confirm they’re happy for you to send them messages. With email subscriptions, the user gets a confirmation request from Amazon which they need to reply to before they start getting messages. With SQS, you need to grant the topic permission to write to the queue. If you own both the topic and the queue, you can do it all in code with the .NET SDK. Let’s say you want to create a new topic, a new queue as a topic subscriber, and link the two together. Creating the topic is easy with the SNS client (which has an expanded name, AmazonSimpleNotificationServiceClient, compare to the SQS class which is just called QueueClient): var request = new CreateTopicRequest(); request.Name = TopicName; var response = _snsClient.CreateTopic(request); TopicArn = response.TopicArn; In the response from AWS (which I’m assuming is successful), you get an ARN – Amazon Resource Name – which is the unique identifier for the topic. We create the queue using the same code from my last post, AWS .NET SDK v2: the message-pump pattern, and then we need to subscribe the queue to the topic. The topic creates the subscription request: var response = _snsClient.Subscribe(new SubscribeRequest { TopicArn = TopicArn, Protocol = "sqs", Endpoint = _queueClient.QueueArn }); That response will give you an ARN for the subscription, which you’ll need if you want to set attributes like RawMessageDelivery. Then the SQS client needs to confirm the subscription by allowing the topic to send messages to it. The SDK doesn’t give you a nice mechanism for doing that, so I’ve extended my AWS wrapper with a method that encapsulates it: internal void AllowSnsToSendMessages(TopicClient topicClient) { var policy = Policies.AllowSendFormat.Replace("%QueueArn%", QueueArn).Replace("%TopicArn%", topicClient.TopicArn); var request = new SetQueueAttributesRequest(); request.Attributes.Add("Policy", policy); request.QueueUrl = QueueUrl; var response = _sqsClient.SetQueueAttributes(request); } That builds up a policy statement, which gets added to the queue as an attribute, and specifies that the topic is allowed to send messages to the queue. The statement itself is a JSON block which contains the ARN of the queue, the ARN of the topic, and an Allow effect for the sqs:SendMessage action: public const string AllowSendFormat= @"{ ""Statement"": [ { ""Sid"": ""MySQSPolicy001"", ""Effect"": ""Allow"", ""Principal"": { ""AWS"": ""*"" }, ""Action"": ""sqs:SendMessage"", ""Resource"": ""%QueueArn%"", ""Condition"": { ""ArnEquals"": { ""aws:SourceArn"": ""%TopicArn%"" } } } ] }"; There’s a new gist with an updated QueueClient and a new TopicClient here: Wrappers for the SQS and SNS clients in the AWS SDK for .NET v2. Both clients have an Ensure() method which creates the resource, so if you want to create a topic and a subscription you can use:  var topicClient = new TopicClient(“BigNews”, “ImListening”); And the topic client has a Subscribe() method, which calls into the message pump on the queue client: topicClient.Subscribe(x=>Log.Debug(x.Body)); var message = {}; //etc. topicClient.Publish(message); So you can isolate all the fiddly bits and use SQS and SNS with a similar interface to the Azure SDK.

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  • Analytics in an Omni-Channel World

    - by David Dorf
    Retail has been around ever since mankind started bartering.  The earliest transactions were very specific to the individuals buying and selling, then someone had the bright idea to open a store.  Those transactions were a little more generic, but the store owner still knew his customers and what they wanted.  As the chains rolled out, customer intimacy was sacrificed for scale, and retailers began to rely on segments and clusters.  But thanks to the widespread availability of data and the technology to convert said data into information, retailers are getting back to details. The retail industry is following a maturity model for analytics that is has progressed through five stages, each delivering more value than the previous. Store Analytics Brick-and-mortar retailers (and pure-play catalogers as well) that collect anonymous basket-level data are able to get some sense of demand to help with allocation decisions.  Promotions and foot-traffic can be measured to understand marketing effectiveness and perhaps focus groups can help test ideas.  But decisions are influenced by the majority, using faceless customer segments and aggregated industry data points.  Loyalty programs help a little, but in many cases the cost outweighs the benefits. Web Analytics The Web made it much easier to collect data on specific, yet still anonymous consumers using cookies to track visits. Clickstreams and product searches are analyzed to understand the purchase journey, gauge demand, and better understand up-selling opportunities.  Personalization begins to allow retailers target market consumers with recommendations. Cross-Channel Analytics This phase is a minor one, but where most retailers probably sit today.  They are able to use information from one channel to bolster activities in another. However, there are technical challenges combining data silos so its not an easy task.  But for those retailers that are able to perform analytics on both sources of data, the pay-off is pretty nice.  Revenue per customer begins to go up as customers have a better brand experience. Mobile & Social Analytics Big data technologies are enabling a 360-degree view of the customer by incorporating psychographic data from social sites alongside traditional demographic data.  Retailers can track individual preferences, opinions, hobbies, etc. in order to understand a consumer's motivations.  Using mobile devices, consumers can interact with brands anywhere, anytime, accessing deep product information and reviews.  Mobile, combined with a loyalty program, presents an opportunity to put shopping into geographic context, understanding paths to the store, patterns within the store, and be an always-on advertising conduit. Omni-Channel Analytics All this data along with the proper technology represents a new paradigm in which the clock is turned back and retail becomes very personal once again.  Rich, individualized data better illuminates demand, allows for highly localized assortments, and helps tailor up-selling.  Interactions with all channels help build an accurate profile of each consumer, and allows retailers to tailor the retail experience to meet the heightened expectations of today's sophisticated shopper.  And of course this culminates in greater customer satisfaction and business profitability.

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  • Stir Trek 2: Iron Man Edition

    Next month (7 May 2010) Ill be presenting at the second annual Stir Trek event in Columbus, Ohio. Stir Trek (so named because last year its themes mixed MIX and the opening of the Star Trek movie) is a very cool local event.  Its a lot of fun to present at and to attend, because of its unique venue: a movie theater.  And whats more, the cost of admission includes a private showing of a new movie (this year: Iron Man 2).  The sessions cover a variety of topics (not just Microsoft), similar to CodeMash.  The event recently sold out, so Im not telling you all of this so that you can go and sign up (though I believe you can get on the waitlist still).  Rather, this is pretty much just an excuse for me to talk about my session as a way to organize my thoughts. Im actually speaking on the same topic as I did last year, but the key difference is that last year the subject of my session was nowhere close to being released, and this year, its RTM (as of last week).  Thats right, the topic is Whats New in ASP.NET 4 how did you guess? Whats New in ASP.NET 4 So, just what *is* new in ASP.NET 4?  Hasnt Microsoft been spending all of their time on Silverlight and MVC the last few years?  Well, actually, no.  There are some pretty cool things that are now available out of the box in ASP.NET 4.  Theres a nice summary of the new features on MSDN.  Here is my super-brief summary: Extensible Output Caching use providers like distributed cache or file system cache Preload Web Applications IIS 7.5 only; avoid the startup tax for your site by preloading it. Permanent (301) Redirects are finally supported by the framework in one line of code, not two. Session State Compression Can speed up session access in a web farm environment.  Test it to see. Web Forms Features several of which mirror ASP.NET MVC advantages (viewstate, control ids) Set Meta Keywords and Description easily Granular and inheritable control over ViewState Support for more recent browsers and devices Routing (introduced in 3.5 SP1) some new features and zero web.config changes required Client ID control makes client manipulation of DOM elements much simpler. Row Selection in Data Controls fixed (id based, not row index based) FormView and ListView enhancements (less markup, more CSS compliant) New QueryExtender control makes filtering data from other Data Source Controls easy More CSS and Accessibility support Reduction of Tables and more control over output for other template controls Dynamic Data enhancements More control templates Support for inheritance in the Data Model New Attributes ASP.NET Chart Control (learn more) Lots of IDE enhancements Web Deploy tool My session will cover many but not all of these features.  Theres only an hour (3pm-4pm), and its right before the prize giveaway and movie showing, so Ill be moving quickly and most likely answering questions off-line via email after the talk. Hope to see you there! 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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  • SQL 2012 Licensing Thoughts

    - by Geoff N. Hiten
    The only thing more controversial than new Federal Tax plans is new Licensing plans from Microsoft.  In both cases, everyone calculates several numbers.  First, will I pay more or less under this plan?  Second, will my competition pay more or less than now?  Third, will <insert interesting person/company here> pay more or less?  Not that items 2 and 3 are meaningful, that is just how people think. Much like tax plans, the devil is in the details, so lets see how this looks.  Microsoft shows it here: http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/future-editions/sql2012-licensing.aspx First up is a switch from per-socket to per-core licensing.  Anyone who didn’t see something like this coming should rapidly search for a new line of work because you are not paying attention.  The explosion of multi-core processors has made SQL Server a bargain.  Microsoft is in business to make money and the old per-socket model was not going to do that going forward. Per-core licensing also simplifies virtualization licensing.  Physical Core = Virtual Core, at least for licensing.  Oversubscribe your processors, that’s your lookout.  You still pay for  what is exposed to the VM.  The cool part is you can seamlessly move physical and virtual workloads around and the licenses follow.  The catch is you have to have Software Assurance to make the licenses mobile.  Nice touch there. Let’s have a moment of silence for the late, unlamented, largely ignored Workgroup Edition.  To quote the Microsoft  FAQ:  “Standard becomes our sole edition for basic database needs”.  Considering I haven’t encountered a singe instance of SQL Server Workgroup Edition in the wild, I don’t think this will be all that controversial. As for pricing, it looks like a wash with current per-socket pricing based on four core sockets.  Interestingly, that is the minimum core count Microsoft proposes to swap to transition per-socket to per-core if you are on Software Assurance.  Reading the fine print shows that if you are using more, you will get more core licenses: From the licensing FAQ. 15. How do I migrate from processor licenses to core licenses?  What is the migration path? Licenses purchased with Software Assurance (SA) will upgrade to SQL Server 2012 at no additional cost. EA/EAP customers can continue buying processor licenses until your next renewal after June 30, 2012. At that time, processor licenses will be exchanged for core-based licenses sufficient to cover the cores in use by processor-licensed databases (minimum of 4 cores per processor for Standard and Enterprise, and minimum of 8 EE cores per processor for Datacenter). Looks like the folks who invested in the AMD 12-core chips will make out like bandits. Now, on to something new: SQL Server Business Intelligence Edition. Yep, finally a BI-specific SKU licensed for server+CAL configurations only.  Note that Enterprise Edition still supports the complete feature set; the BI Edition is intended for smaller shops who want to use the full BI feature set but without needing Enterprise Edition scale (or costs).  No, you don’t get ColumnStore, Compression, or Partitioning in the BI Edition.  Those are Enterprise scale features, ThankYouVeryMuch.  Then again, your starting licensing costs are about one sixth of an Enterprise Edition system (based on an 8 core server). The only part of the message I am missing is if the current Failover Licensing Policy will change.  Do we need to fully or partially license failover servers?  That is a detail I definitely want to know.

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  • What DX level does my graphics card support? Does it go to 11?

    - by Daniel Moth
    Recently I run into a situation that I have run into quite a few times. Someone encounters a machine and the question arises: "Is there a DirectX 11 card in this machine?". Typically the reason you are interested in that is because cards with DirectX 11 drivers fully support DirectCompute (and by extension C++ AMP) for GPGPU programming. The driver specifically is WDDM (1.1 on Windows 7 and Windows 8 introduces WDDM 1.2 with cool new capabilities). There are many ways for figuring out if you have a DirectX11 card, so here are the approaches that you can use, with a bonus right at the end of the post. Run DxDiag WindowsKey + R, type DxDiag and hit Enter. That is the DirectX diagnostic tool, which unfortunately, only tells you on the "System" tab what is the highest version of DirectX installed on your machine. So if it reports DirectX 11, that doesn't mean you have a DX11 driver! The "Display" tab has a promising "DDI version" label, but unfortunately that doesn't seem to be accurate on the machines I've tested it with (or I may be misinterpreting its use). Either way, this tool is not the one you want for this purpose, although it is good for telling you the WDDM version among other things. Use the Microsoft hardware page There is a Microsoft Windows 7 compatibility center, that lists all hardware (tip: use the advanced search) and you could try and locate your device there… good luck. Use Wikipedia or the hardware vendor's website Use the Wikipedia page for the vendor cards, for both nvidia and amd. Often this information will also be in the specifications for the cards on the IHV site, but is is nice that wikipedia has a single page per vendor that you can search etc. There is a column in the tables for API support where you can see the DirectX version. Check if it is one of these recommended DX11 cards You may not have a DirectX 11 card and are interested in purchasing one. While I am in no position to make recommendations, I will list here some cards from two big IHVs that we know are DirectX 11 capable. Some AMD (aka ATI) cards Low end, inexpensive DX11 hardware: Radeon 5450, 5550, 6450, 6570 Mid range (decent perf, single precision): Radeon 5750, 5770, 6770, 6790 High end (capable of double precision): Radeon 5850, 5870, 6950, 6970 Single precision APUs: AMD E-Series APUs AMD A-Series APUs Some NVIDIA cards Low end, inexpensive DX11 hardware: GeForce GT430, GT 440, GT520, GTS 450 Quadro 400, 600 Mid-range (decent perf, single precision): GeForce GTX 460, GTX 550 Ti, GTX 560, GTX 560 Ti Quadro 2000 High end (capable of double precision): GeForce GTX 480, GTX 570, GTX 580, GTX 590, GTX 595 Quadro 4000, 5000, 6000 Tesla C2050, C2070, C2075 Get the DirectX SDK and run DirectX Caps Viewer Download and install the June 2010 DirectX SDK. As part of that you now have the DirectX Capabilities Viewer utility (find it in your start menu by searching for "DirectX Caps Viewer", the filename is DXCapsViewer.exe). It will list all your devices (emulated, and real hardware ones) under the first node. Expand the hardware entries and then expand again the Direct3D 11 folder. If you see D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL_11_ under that, then your card supports feature level 11 which means it supports DirectCompute and C++ AMP. In the following screenshot of one of my old laptops, the card only goes to feature level 10. Run a utility from the web that just tells you! Of course, writing some C++ AMP code that enumerates accelerators and lists the ones that are capable is trivial. However that requires that you have redistributed the runtime, so a more broadly applicable approach is to use the DX APIs directly to enumerate the DX11 capable cards. That is exactly what the development lead for C++ AMP has done and he describes and shares that utility at this post. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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  • Two Candidates + One Job = Two Different Outcomes

    - by david.talamelli
    Recruiters have always headhunted (sidenote: I do not like this word, in general I think the type of people who use the phrase “headhunting” are the ones who are trying to sound more important than what they likely are). Any serious Recruiter engages in direct recruiting activity, it is part and parcel of the business it is not something unique. With the uptake in Social Media the past 4-5 years, we have seen an increase in the number of Recruiters proactively reaching out to people about job opportunities. We have also seen this activity increase across all levels of hire, from help desk roles to C-Level Executives. While getting approached about a role can be a nice boost to a person’s ego, do not let it give you an inflated sense of entitlement. It is The way that people handle themselves during these calls and subsequent interviews will have a large impact on their potential to land that job. Last week I spoke to two very different candidates, both about the same position and both with very different outcomes. On paper, Candidate #1 looked fantastic; they ticked many of the boxes that we were looking for. The person is working at global IT company and working in a similar role as the one we were hiring for but not in as senior as the role we had. This role would have been the perfect step to getting involved in more complex work for the person. Candidate #2 had less polished IT experience, ticked some of the boxes we were looking for and on paper in comparison to Candidate #1 was not as close a fit as Candidate #1 was. It seemed like I was comparing apples and oranges. After speaking to both candidates it turns out I was comparing apples and oranges except the person better suited for our role was not the one I was expecting it would be. The first candidate on paper looked great – they had the experience we were looking for and appeared to be just right for the role, but after talking to them, they gave me the impression that they thought the world owed them. The impression I was left with was that they did not equate success with hard work, they seemed more interested in “what is in it for me”. Rather than having a proper conversation with me, I was often cut off and asked to hurry it up when explaining our business, what we are doing, etc... . This person seemed more interested in the job title and money than how rather than think about ways to make the role successful. Candidate #2 who had limited experience, made up for any perceived lack of experience and them some with a demonstrated motivation to succeed and do the things needed to make that happen. Candidate #2 made a great first impression, they did not seem afraid of hard work and demonstrated a “team player” attitude. In talking to them they kept me engaged, listened and asked thoughtful questions that made me think this is the type of person who creates their own luck and who would thrive in a place like Oracle. Skills, capabilities, experience and a good resume can certainly get your foot in the door, but the wrong attitude or approach to work can close those opportunities just as easily. On the other hand, hard work, effort and a genuine work ethic may help open those doors that would otherwise closed for you. A resume with all the credentials gets you in the front door but that is just the beginning of the process. It is not how we start the race that is important, it’s how things end that matter most.

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  • Silverlight Cream for January 15, 2011 -- #1028

    - by Dave Campbell
    Note to #1024 Swag Winners: I'm sending emails to the vendors Sunday night, thanks for your patience (a few of you have not contacted me yet) In this Issue: Ezequiel Jadib, Daniel Egan(-2-), Page Brooks, Jason Zander, Andrej Tozon, Marlon Grech, Jonathan van de Veen, Walt Ritscher, Jesse Liberty, Jeremy Likness, Sacha Barber, William E. Burrows, and WindowsPhoneGeek. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Building a Radar Control in Silverlight - Part 1" Page Brooks WP7: "Tutorial: Dynamic Tile Push Notification for Windows Phone 7" Jason Zander Training: "WP7 Unleashed Session I–Hands on Labs" Daniel Egan From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight Rough Cut Editor SP1 Released Ezequiel Jadib has an announcement about the Rough Cut Editor SP1 release, and he walks you through the content, installation and a bit of the initial use. WP7 Unleashed Session I–Hands on Labs Daniel Egan posted Part 1 of 3 of a new WP7 HOL ... video online and material to download... get 'em while they're hot! WP7 Saving to Media Library Daniel Egan has another post up as well on saving an image to the media library... not the update from Tim Heuer... all good info Building a Radar Control in Silverlight - Part 1 This freakin' cool post from Page Brooks is the first one of a series on building a 'Radar Control' in Silverlight ... seriously, go to the bottom and run the demo... I pretty much guarantee you'll take the next link which is download the code... don't forget to read the article too! Tutorial: Dynamic Tile Push Notification for Windows Phone 7 Jason Zander has a nice-looking tutorial up on dynamic tile notifications... good diagrams and discussion and plenty of code. Reactive.buffering.from event. Andrej Tozon is continuing his Reactive Extensions posts with this one on buffering: BufferWithTime and BufferWIthCount ... good stuff, good write-up, and the start of a WP7 game? MEFedMVVM with PRISM 4 Marlon Grech combines his MEFedMVVM with Prism 4, and says it was easy... check out the post and the code. Adventures while building a Silverlight Enterprise application part #40 Jonathan van de Veen has a discussion up about things you need to pay attention to as your project gets close to first deployment... lots of good information to think about Silverlight or not. Customize Windows 7 Preview pane for XAML files Walt Ritscher has a (very easy) XAML extension for Windows 7 that allows previewing of XAML files in an explorer window... as our UK friends say "Brilliant!" Entity Framework Code-First, oData & Windows Phone Client From the never-ending stream of posts that is Jesse Liberty comes this one on EF Code-First... so Jesse's describing Code-First and OData all wrapped up about a WP7 app Sterling Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 Database Triggers and Auto-Identity Sterling and Database Triggers sitting in a tree... woot for WP7 from Jeremy Likness... provides database solutions including Validation, Data-specific concerns such as 'last modified', and post-save processing ... all good, Jeremy! A Look At Fluent APIs Sacha Barber has a great post up that isn't necessarily Silverlight, but is it? ... we've been hearing a lot about Fluent APIs... read on to see what the buzz is. Windows Phone 7 - Part 3 - Final Application William E. Burrows has Part 3 of his WP7 tutorial series up... this one completing the Golf Handicap app by giving the user the ability to manage scores. User Control vs Custom Control in Silverlight for WP7 WindowsPhoneGeek has a great diagram and description-filled post up on User Controls and Custom Controls in WP7... good external links too. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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  • Review&ndash;Build Android and iOS apps in Visual Studio with Nomad

    - by Bill Osuch
    Nomad is a Visual Studio extension that allows you build apps for both Android and iOS platforms in Visual Studio using HTML5. There is no need to switch between .Net, Java and Objective-C to target different platforms - write your code once in HTML5 and build for all common mobile platforms and tablets. You have access to the native hardware functions (such as camera and GPS) through the PhoneGap library, UI libraries such as jQuery mobile allow you to create an impressive UI with minimal work. Nomad is still in an early access beta stage, so the documentation is a bit sparse. In fact, the only documentation is a simple series of steps on how to install the plug-in, set up a project, build and deploy it. You're going to want to be a least a little familiar with the PhoneGap library and jQuery mobile to really tap into the power of this. The sample project included with the download shows you just how simple it is to create projects in Visual Studio. The sample solution comes with an index.html file containing the HTML5 code, the Cordova (PhoneGap) library, jQuery libraries, and a JQuery style sheet: The html file is pretty straightforward. If you haven't experimented with JQuery mobile before, some of the attributes (such as data-role) might be new to you, but some quick Googling will fill in everything you need to know. The first part of the file builds a simple (but attractive) list with some links in it: The second part of the file is where things get interesting and it taps into the PhoneGap library. For instance, it gets the geolocation position by calling position.coords.latitude and position.coords.longitude: ...and then displays it in a simple span: Building is pretty simple, at least for Android (I'm not an iOS developer so I didn't look at that feature) - just configure the display name, version number, and package ID. There's no need to specify Android version; Nomad supports 2.2 and later. Enter these bits of information, click the new "Build for Android" button (not the regular Visual Studio Build link...) and you get a dialog box saying that your code is being built by their cloud build service (so no building while away from a WiFi signal apparently). After a couple minutes you wind up with a .apk file that can be copied over to your device. Applications built with Nomad for Android currently use a temporary certificate, so you can test the app on your devices but you cannot publish them in the Google Play Store (yet). And I love the "success" dialog box: Since Nomad is still in Beta, no pricing plans have been announced yet, so I'll be curious to see if this becomes a cost-effective solution to mobile app development. If it is, I may even be tempted to spring for the $99 iOS membership fee! In the meantime, I plan to work on porting some of my apps over to it and seeing how they work. My only quibble at this time is the lack of a centralized documentation location - I'd like to at least see which (if any) features of JQuery and PhoneGap are limited or not supported. Also, some notes on targeting different Android screen sizes would be nice, but it's relatively easy to find jQuery examples out on the InterWebs. Oh well, trial and error! You can download the Nomad extension for Visual Studio by going to their web site: www.vsnomad.com. Technorati Tags: Android, Nomad

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  • Mind Reading with the Raspberry Pi

    - by speakjava
    Mind Reading With The Raspberry Pi At JavaOne in San Francisco I did a session entitled "Do You Like Coffee with Your Dessert? Java and the Raspberry Pi".  As part of this I showed some demonstrations of things I'd done using Java on the Raspberry Pi.  This is the first part of a series of blog entries that will cover all the different aspects of these demonstrations. A while ago I had bought a MindWave headset from Neurosky.  I was particularly interested to see how this worked as I had had the opportunity to visit Neurosky several years ago when they were still developing this technology.  At that time the 'headset' consisted of a headband (very much in the Bjorn Borg style) with a sensor attached and some wiring that clearly wasn't quite production ready.  The commercial version is very simple and easy to use: there are two sensors, one which rests on the skin of your forehead, the other is a small clip that attaches to your earlobe. Typical EEG sensors used in hospitals require lots of sensors and they all need copious amounts of conductive gel to ensure the electrical signals are picked up.  Part of Neurosky's innovation is the development of this simple dry-sensor technology.  Having put on the sensor and turned it on (it powers off a single AAA size battery) it collects data and transmits it to a USB dongle plugged into a PC, or in my case a Raspberry Pi. From a hacking perspective the USB dongle is ideal because it does not require any special drivers for any complex, low level USB communication.  Instead it appears as a simple serial device, which on the Raspberry Pi is accessed as /dev/ttyUSB0.  Neurosky have published details of the command protocol.  In addition, the MindSet protocol document, including sample code for parsing the data from the headset, can be found here. To get everything working on the Raspberry Pi using Java the first thing was to get serial communications going.  Back in the dim distant past there was the Java Comm API.  Sadly this has grown a bit dusty over the years, but there is a more modern open source project that provides compatible and enhanced functionality, RXTXComm.  This can be installed easily on the Pi using sudo apt-get install librxtx-java.  Next I wrote a library that would send commands to the MindWave headset via the serial port dongle and read back data being sent from the headset.  The design is pretty simple, I used an event based system so that code using the library could register listeners for different types of events from the headset.  You can download a complete NetBeans project for this here.  This includes javadoc API documentation that should make it obvious how to use it (incidentally, this will work on platforms other than Linux.  I've tested it on Windows without any issues, just by changing the device name to something like COM4). To test this I wrote a simple application that would connect to the headset and then print the attention and meditation values as they were received from the headset.  Again, you can download the NetBeans project for that here. Oracle recently released a developer preview of JavaFX on ARM which will run on the Raspberry Pi.  I thought it would be cool to write a graphical front end for the MindWave data that could take advantage of the built in charts of JavaFX.  Yet another NetBeans project is available here.  Screen shots of the app, which uses a very nice dial from the JFxtras project, are shown below. I probably should add labels for the EEG data so the user knows which is the low alpha, mid gamma waves and so on.  Given that I'm not a neurologist I suspect that it won't increase my understanding of what the (rather random looking) traces mean. In the next blog I'll explain how I connected a LEGO motor to the GPIO pins on the Raspberry Pi and then used my mind to control the motor!

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  • Why I Love the Social Management Platform I Use

    - by Mike Stiles
    Not long ago, I asked the product heads for the various components of the Oracle Social Cloud’s SRM to say what they thought was coolest about their component. And while they did a fine job, it was recently pointed out to me that no one around here uses the platform in a real-world setting more than I do, as I not only blog and podcast my brains out, I also run Oracle Social’s own social properties. Of course I’m pro-Oracle Social’s product. Duh. But if you can get around immediately writing this off as a puff piece, there are real reasons beyond my employment that the Oracle SRM works for me as a community manager. If it didn’t, I could have simply written about something else, like how people love smartphones or something genius like that. Post Grid I like seeing what I want to see. I’m difficult that way. Post grid lets me see all posts for all channels, with custom columns showing me how posts are doing. I can filter the grid by social channel, published, scheduled, draft, suggested, etc. Then there’s a pullout side panel that shows me post details, including engagement analytics. From the pullout, I can preview the post, do a quick edit, a full edit, or (my favorite) copy a post so I can edit it and schedule it for other times so I don’t have to repeat from scratch. I’m not lazy, just time conscious. The Post Creation Environment Given our post volume, I need this to be as easy as it can be. I can highlight which streams I want the post to go out on, edit for the individual streams, maintain a media library that’s easy to upload to and attach from, tag posts, insert links that auto-shorten to an orac.le shortlink, schedule with a nice calendar visual, geo-target, drop photos inline into Twitter, and review each post. Watching My Channels The Engage component of the Oracle SRM brings in and drops into a grid the activity that’s happening on all my channels. I keep this open round-the-clock. Again, I get to see only what I want; social network, stream, unread messages, engagement by how I labeled them, and date range. I can bring up a post with a click, reply, label it, retweet it, assign it, delete it, archive it, etc. So don’t bother trying to be a troll on my channels. Analytics Social publishing and engaging 24/7 would be pretty unrewarding if I couldn’t see how our audience was responding. Frankly, I get more analytics than I know what to do with (I’m a content creator, not a data analyst). But I do know what numbers I care about, and they’re available by channel, date range, and campaigns. I’m seeing fan count, sources and demographics. I’m seeing engagement, what kinds of posts are getting engagement, and top engagers. I’m seeing my reach, both organic and paid. I’m seeing how individual posts performed in terms of engagement and virality, and posting time/date insight. Have I covered all the value propositions? I’ve covered pathetically few of them. It would be impossible in blog length to give shout-outs to the vast number of features and functionalities. From organizing teams and managing permissions with Workflow to the powerful ability to monitor topics (and your competition) across the web in Listen, it’s a major, and increasingly necessary, weapon in your social marketing arsenal. The life of a Community Manager is not for everybody. So if the Oracle SRM can actually make a Community Manager’s life easier, what’s not to love? I invite you to take a look at and participate in our Oracle Social Cloud social channels! Facebook Twitter YouTube Google Plus LinkedIn Daily Podcast on iHeartRadio @mikestiles @oraclesocial Photo: freeimages.com

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  • Apprentice Boot Camp in South Africa (Part 2)

    - by Tim Koekkoek
    By Maximilian Michel (DE), Jorge Garnacho (ES), Daniel Maull (UK), Adam Griffiths (UK), Guillermo De Las Nieves (ES), Catriona McGill (UK), Ed Dunlop (UK) Today we have the second part of the adventures of seven apprentices from all over Europe in South-Africa!  Kruger National Park & other experiences Going to the Kruger National Park was definitely an experience we will all remember for the rest of our lives. This trip,organised by Patrick Fitzgerald, owner of the Travellers Nest (where we all stayed), took us from the hustle and bustle of Joburg to experience what Africa is all about, the wild! Although the first week’s training we had prior to this trip to the Kruger was going very well, we all knew this was to be a very nice break before we started the second week of training. And we were right, the animals, scenery and sights we saw were just simply incredible and like I said something we will remember for the rest of our lives. To see lions, elephants, cheetahs and rhinos and many more in a zoo is one thing, but to see them in the wild, in their natural habitat is very special and I personally only realised this from the early 5 am start on the first morning in the Kruger, which was definitely worth it. Not only was it all about the safari, we ate some wonderful food, in particular on the Saturday night, Patrick made us a traditional South African Braai which was one of my favourite meals of the whole two weeks. After the Kruger National Park we had a whole day of traveling back to Johannesburg but even this was made to be a good day by our hosts. Despite the early start on the road it was all worth it by the time we reached God's Window. The walk to the top was made a lot harder by all the steaks we had eaten in the first week but the hard walk was worth it at the top, with views that stretched for miles. The Food The food in South Africa is typically meat and in big amounts, while there we ate a lot of big beef steaks, ribs and kudu sausage. All of the meat we ate was usually cooked with a sauce such as a Barbeque glaze. The restaurants we visited were: Upperdeck Restaurant, with live music and a great terrace to eat, the atmosphere was good for enjoying the music and eating our food. Most of us ate  Spare ribs that weighed 600 kg, with barbecue sauce that was delicious. Die Bosvelder Pub & Restaurant is a restaurant with a very surprising decor, this is because the walls had many of south Africa’s famous animals on them. The food was maybe the best we ate in South Africa. Our orders were: Springbokvlakte Lambs' Neck Stew, beef in gravy and steaks topped with cheese and then more meat on top! All meals were accompanied by a selection of white sauce cauliflower, spinach and zanhorias. Pepper Chair Restaurant, where the specialty is T-Bone steaks of 1.4 kg, but most of us were happy to attempt the 1 kg. Cooked with barbecue sauce over the meat, it was very good!  The only problem was their size causing the  the meat to get cold if you did not eat it very fast! We’re all waiting for our 1.0 kg t-bone steak including our Senior Director EMEA Systems Support Germany & Switzerland: Werner Hoellrigl The Godfather Restaurant, the food here was more meat in abundance. We ate: great ribs, hamburgers, steaks and all accompanied with a small plates of carrot and sauteed spinach, very good. We had two great weeks in South-Africa! If you want to join Oracle, then check http://campus.oracle.com 

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  • What DX level does my graphics card support? Does it go to 11?

    - by Daniel Moth
    Recently I run into a situation that I have run into quite a few times. Someone encounters a machine and the question arises: "Is there a DirectX 11 card in this machine?". Typically the reason you are interested in that is because cards with DirectX 11 drivers fully support DirectCompute (and by extension C++ AMP) for GPGPU programming. The driver specifically is WDDM (1.1 on Windows 7 and Windows 8 introduces WDDM 1.2 with cool new capabilities). There are many ways for figuring out if you have a DirectX11 card, so here are the approaches that you can use, with a bonus right at the end of the post. Run DxDiag WindowsKey + R, type DxDiag and hit Enter. That is the DirectX diagnostic tool, which unfortunately, only tells you on the "System" tab what is the highest version of DirectX installed on your machine. So if it reports DirectX 11, that doesn't mean you have a DX11 driver! The "Display" tab has a promising "DDI version" label, but unfortunately that doesn't seem to be accurate on the machines I've tested it with (or I may be misinterpreting its use). Either way, this tool is not the one you want for this purpose, although it is good for telling you the WDDM version among other things. Use the Microsoft hardware page There is a Microsoft Windows 7 compatibility center, that lists all hardware (tip: use the advanced search) and you could try and locate your device there… good luck. Use Wikipedia or the hardware vendor's website Use the Wikipedia page for the vendor cards, for both nvidia and amd. Often this information will also be in the specifications for the cards on the IHV site, but is is nice that wikipedia has a single page per vendor that you can search etc. There is a column in the tables for API support where you can see the DirectX version. Check if it is one of these recommended DX11 cards You may not have a DirectX 11 card and are interested in purchasing one. While I am in no position to make recommendations, I will list here some cards from two big IHVs that we know are DirectX 11 capable. Some AMD (aka ATI) cards Low end, inexpensive DX11 hardware: Radeon 5450, 5550, 6450, 6570 Mid range (decent perf, single precision): Radeon 5750, 5770, 6770, 6790 High end (capable of double precision): Radeon 5850, 5870, 6950, 6970 Single precision APUs: AMD E-Series APUs AMD A-Series APUs Some NVIDIA cards Low end, inexpensive DX11 hardware: GeForce GT430, GT 440, GT520, GTS 450 Quadro 400, 600 Mid-range (decent perf, single precision): GeForce GTX 460, GTX 550 Ti, GTX 560, GTX 560 Ti Quadro 2000 High end (capable of double precision): GeForce GTX 480, GTX 570, GTX 580, GTX 590, GTX 595 Quadro 4000, 5000, 6000 Tesla C2050, C2070, C2075 Get the DirectX SDK and run DirectX Caps Viewer Download and install the June 2010 DirectX SDK. As part of that you now have the DirectX Capabilities Viewer utility (find it in your start menu by searching for "DirectX Caps Viewer", the filename is DXCapsViewer.exe). It will list all your devices (emulated, and real hardware ones) under the first node. Expand the hardware entries and then expand again the Direct3D 11 folder. If you see D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL_11_ under that, then your card supports feature level 11 which means it supports DirectCompute and C++ AMP. In the following screenshot of one of my old laptops, the card only goes to feature level 10. Run a utility from the web that just tells you! Of course, writing some C++ AMP code that enumerates accelerators and lists the ones that are capable is trivial. However that requires that you have redistributed the runtime, so a more broadly applicable approach is to use the DX APIs directly to enumerate the DX11 capable cards. That is exactly what the development lead for C++ AMP has done and he describes and shares that utility at this post. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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  • dynamic? I'll never use that ... or then again, maybe it could ...

    - by adweigert
    So, I don't know about you, but I was highly skeptical of the dynamic keywork when it was announced. I thought to myself, oh great, just another move towards VB compliance. Well after seeing it being used in things like DynamicXml (which I use for this example) I then was working with a MVC controller and wanted to move some things like operation timeout of an action to a configuration file. Thinking big picture, it'd be really nice to have configuration for all my controllers like that. Ugh, I don't want to have to create all those ConfigurationElement objects... So, I started thinking self, use what you know and do something cool ... Well after a bit of zoning out, self came up with use a dynamic object duh! I was thinking of a config like this ...<controllers> <add type="MyApp.Web.Areas.ComputerManagement.Controllers.MyController, MyApp.Web"> <detail timeout="00:00:30" /> </add> </controllers> So, I ended up with a couple configuration classes like this ...blic abstract class DynamicConfigurationElement : ConfigurationElement { protected DynamicConfigurationElement() { this.DynamicObject = new DynamicConfiguration(); } public DynamicConfiguration DynamicObject { get; private set; } protected override bool OnDeserializeUnrecognizedAttribute(string name, string value) { this.DynamicObject.Add(name, value); return true; } protected override bool OnDeserializeUnrecognizedElement(string elementName, XmlReader reader) { this.DynamicObject.Add(elementName, new DynamicXml((XElement)XElement.ReadFrom(reader))); return true; } } public class ControllerConfigurationElement : DynamicConfigurationElement { [ConfigurationProperty("type", Options = ConfigurationPropertyOptions.IsRequired | ConfigurationPropertyOptions.IsKey)] public string TypeName { get { return (string)this["type"]; } } public Type Type { get { return Type.GetType(this.TypeName, true); } } } public class ControllerConfigurationElementCollection : ConfigurationElementCollection { protected override ConfigurationElement CreateNewElement() { return new ControllerConfigurationElement(); } protected override object GetElementKey(ConfigurationElement element) { return ((ControllerConfigurationElement)element).Type; } } And then had to create the meat of the DynamicConfiguration class which looks like this ...public class DynamicConfiguration : DynamicObject { private Dictionary<string, object> properties = new Dictionary<string, object>(StringComparer.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase); internal void Add<T>(string name, T value) { this.properties.Add(name, value); } public override bool TryGetMember(GetMemberBinder binder, out object result) { var propertyName = binder.Name; result = null; if (this.properties.ContainsKey(propertyName)) { result = this.properties[propertyName]; } return true; } } So all being said, I made a base controller class like a good little MVC-itizen ...public abstract class BaseController : Controller { protected BaseController() : base() { var configuration = ManagementConfigurationSection.GetInstance(); var controllerConfiguration = configuration.Controllers.ForType(this.GetType()); if (controllerConfiguration != null) { this.Configuration = controllerConfiguration.DynamicObject; } } public dynamic Configuration { get; private set; } } And used it like this ...public class MyController : BaseController { static readonly string DefaultDetailTimeout = TimeSpan.MaxValue.ToString(); public MyController() { this.DetailTimeout = TimeSpan.Parse(this.Configuration.Detail.Timeout ?? DefaultDetailTimeout); } public TimeSpan DetailTimeout { get; private set; } } And there I have an actual use for the dynamic keyword ... never thoguht I'd see the day when I first heard of it as I don't do much COM work ... oh dont' forget this little helper extension methods to find the controller configuration by the controller type.public static ControllerConfigurationElement ForType<T>(this ControllerConfigurationElementCollection collection) { Contract.Requires(collection != null); return ForType(collection, typeof(T)); } public static ControllerConfigurationElement ForType(this ControllerConfigurationElementCollection collection, Type type) { Contract.Requires(collection != null); Contract.Requires(type != null); return collection.Cast<ControllerConfigurationElement>().Where(element => element.Type == type).SingleOrDefault(); } Sure, it isn't perfect and I'm sure I can tweak it over time, but I thought it was a pretty cool way to take advantage of the dynamic keyword functionality. Just remember, it only validates you did it right at runtime, which isn't that bad ... is it? And yes, I did make it case-insensitive so my code didn't have to look like my XML objects, tweak it to your liking if you dare to use this creation.

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  • On The Road with the HR Community

    - by Kathryn Perry
    A guest post by Steve Boese, Director, Talent Strategy, Oracle One of the best ways to connect with and to get a feel for what is on the minds of Human Resources leaders is to get out of the office and hit the road. I’ve had the great honor to attend and/or present at a number of events recently, including the massive SHRM Annual Conference, the HR Florida Conference, and Taleo World in Chicago. These events, and many others, offer solution providers, talent management professionals, business leaders, and even more casual observers of the Human Resources field with tremendous opportunities to connect, to share information, and to learn from each other. Attending the conferences also give people a sense of how they can improve and enhance their skills and knowledge, learn about the latest workforce technologies, and bring new and innovative ideas back to their organizations. And sure, the parties and conference swag can be pretty nice as well! If you attend a few of these industry events, one of the most beneficial by-products that you can emerge with -- whether you are on the front lines in HR at your organization, or as we are at Oracle, in the business of developing and delivering innovative and impactful technology solutions to our customers -- is to get a larger sense of the big ideas and major trends, concerns, and challenges facing organizations all across the landscape, and to be able to better understand how your strategies and solutions can be improved with this greater perspective. So what are HR folks discussing and debating? What questions and problems keep them up at night? What are the bloggers and large community of HR social media enthusiasts buzzing about? From my perspective some of the common themes you see over and again across the HR community break down (broadly), into three main areas: Talent attraction - How can we locate, attract, recruit, and hire the best talent possible? What new strategies, approaches, and technologies can help us in this critically important area? What role do external social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter play in the increasingly competitive search for talent? Talent Retention - How can we make sure to keep that talent on our team? What engagement, development, recognition, and compensation tools can help us in this regard? How can we continue, (or become), an employer of choice? What is our unique and compelling employer value proposition? Talent Empowerment - How can we put our employees in the best position to succeed? What can we do to better align our talent with the organization’s mission and goals, while simultaneously providing the best and most driven to succeed individuals a clear path to achieve their career goals and aspirations? How can new technologies, particularly social and collaboration tools help in this area? While these are the ‘big themes’ that I know I have seen this year, certainly they are not really new, nor are they likely to fundamentally change in the next year or two. I think the reason is that at the core of any successful enterprise is a collection of smart, interested, engaged, challenged, and empowered group of people. And that was likely the case 10 or 20 years ago, and will probably be the case 10 or 20 years into the future. But what has changed, and what you can see -- evidenced by simply following the Twitter backchannel for an event and by reading some of the many fantastic HR blogs out there -- is that the HR professional's ability, along with technology solution providers like Oracle, to connect, to more openly share information with each other, and to make each other better in the process, (and to create new, improved, and more innovative solutions), has never been greater. And I think it is with this heretofore unprecedented level of opportunity to connect with other members of the community that HR professionals will be better equipped to help their organizations attract, retain, and empower their teams. We at Oracle HCM look forward to continuing to meet, engage, and connect with the HR community in the coming months. Until then -- follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

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  • Antenna Aligner Part 4: Role'ing in the deep

    - by Chris George
    Since last time I've been trying to sort out the general workflow of the app. It's fundamentally not hard, there is a list of transmitters, you select a transmitter and it shows the compass view. Having done quite a bit of ajax/asp.net/html in the past, I immediately started off by creating two divs within my 'page', one for the list, one for the compass. Then using the onClick event in the list, this will switch the display attribute on the divs. This seemed to work, but did lead to some dodgy transitional redrawing artefacts which I was not happy with. So after some Googling I realised I was doing it all wrong! JQuery mobile has the concept of giving an object in html a data-role. By giving a div the attribute data-role="page" it is then treated as a separate page on the mobile device. Within the code, this is referenced like a html anchor in the form #mypage. Using this system, page transitions such as fade or slide are automatically applied which adds to the whole authenticity of the app! Here is a simple example: . <a href="#'compasspage">compass</a> . <div data-role="page" id="compasspage" data-add-back-btn="true"> But I don't want just a static link, I want to dynamically create my list, and get each list elements to switch to the compass page with the right information. So here is the jquery that I used to dynamically inject new <li> rows into the <ul> block. $('ul').append($('<li/>', {    //here appendin `<li>`     'data-role': "list-divider" }).append($('<a/>', {    //here appending `<a>` into `<li>`     'href': '#compasspage',     'data-transition': 'none',     'onclick': 'selectTx(' + i + ')',     'html': buttonHtml }))); $('ul').listview('refresh'); This is called within a for loop so the first 5 appropriate transmitters are used. There are several things of interest to note here. Firstly, I could not find a more elegant way to tell the target page which transmitter I've clicked on, so I have used the onclick event as well as the href attribute. The onclick event fires 'selectTx' which simply sets a global member variable to the specific index number I've clicked on. Yes it's not nice, but it works. Secondly, the data-transition attribute is set to 'none'. I wanted the transition between the pages to be a whooshy slidey effect. However this worked going to the compass page, but returning to the list page gave some undesirable visual artefacts (flickering, redrawing etc.). So I decided to remove the transitions all together, which was a shame. Thirdly, rather than embedding loads of html into the append command, I removed this out into a variable 'buttonHtml'. Doing this really tidied up my code. Until next time!

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  • Cloud Apps News @#OOW12

    - by Natalia Rachelson
    All eyes were on Oracle this past week and the news cycle was in full swing. What better time to make some key announcements that were guaranteed to create buzz ... and so we did. The name of the game was Cloud! Here are the key Cloud announcements for Apps, which included Fusion Tap that enables mobility across all Cloud Apps, HCM customer momentum in the Cloud, and our very first ERP Cloud Services customer. Oracle Unveils Oracle Fusion Tap for the iPadOracle Fusion Tap - Productivity Amplified Anywhere, Anytime "Both the enterprise and technology providers must recognize the need to innovate and adapt for the increasing mobility of the workforce - not just for sales teams, but across the organization," said Carter Lusher, Research Fellow and Chief Analyst of Enterprise Applications Ecosystem, Ovum. "A mobile application that quickly and powerfully allows employees to make connections, analyze data, and complete activities at any time and wherever they may be located drives new levels of business value and enhances efficiency. Frankly, mobile access is no longer a 'nice to have' but a 'must have.'"  "The mobile workforce is a business reality, and Oracle Fusion Tap is an example of how Oracle delivers mobile and cloud innovations that fundamentally improve productivity and how we work," said Chris Leone, Senior Vice President of Application Development, Oracle. "With Oracle Fusion Tap users will have an all-in-one, easily extensible app that puts mission-critical data and colleague connection at their fingertips." The entire release is available here http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/1855392 Customers Live on Oracle Fusion Human Capital ManagementOracle HCM Cloud Service Helps Power HR's Contribution to the Business "More than 25 of the 100-plus customers who have selected Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management (HCM) are already live. Ardent Leisure, Peach Aviation, Toshiba Medical Systems and Zillow have deployed Oracle HCM Cloud Service and are using it to transform their HR operations. They join companies such as Principal Financial Group and Elizabeth Arden, who are already using Oracle HCM Cloud Service to help manage international growth and deliver pervasive, role-based, configurable solutions to their employees. With these recent go-lives, Oracle takes a leading position in successfully bringing live HCM customers in the cloud."  "As a technology company, Zillow looked to a partner who could scale with us. Zillow has gone live on Oracle HCM Cloud Service, which will give us the ability automate and streamline HR operations for our employees in the near future," said Sarah Bilton, Senior Director HR, Zillow. Read the entire release here http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/1859573 Lending Club Selects Oracle ERP Cloud Service to Help Increase Insight and EfficienciesOracle ERP Cloud Service Provides an Open Architecture, Best-of-Breed Decision-Making, and Scalability in the Cloud "Lending Club, the leading platform for investing in and obtaining personal loans, has selected Oracle ERP Cloud Service to help improve decision-making and workflow, implement robust reporting, and take advantage of the inherent scalability and cost savings provided by the cloud. With more than 76,000 borrowers and 90,000 investors Lending Club utilizes technology and innovation to reduce the cost of traditional banking and offer borrowers better rates and investors better returns.  After an extensive search, Lending Club selected Oracle ERP Cloud Service due to the breadth and depth of capabilities and ongoing innovation of Oracle ERP Cloud Service, as well as Oracle's open architecture, industry leadership and commitment to partners." "Lending Club is an innovative, data-intensive, high-growth company and we needed a solution and partner that could match us," said Carrie Dolan, CFO, Lending Club. "We conducted a thorough review of our options, and Oracle ERP Cloud Service was the clear winner in terms of capabilities and business value as well as commitment to us as a customer." Read the entire release here http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/1859020

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  • Expanding on requestaudit - Tracing who is doing what...and for how long

    - by Kyle Hatlestad
    One of the most helpful tracing sections in WebCenter Content (and one that is on by default) is the requestaudit tracing.  This tracing section summarizes the top service requests happening in the server along with how they are performing.  By default, it has 2 different rotations.  One happens every 2 minutes (listing up to 5 services) and another happens every 60 minutes (listing up to 20 services).  These traces provide the total time for all the requests against that service along with the number of requests and its average request time.  This information can provide a good start in possibly troubleshooting performance issues or tracking a particular issue.   >requestaudit/6 12.10 16:48:00.493 Audit Request Monitor !csMonitorTotalRequests,47,1,0.39009329676628113,0.21034042537212372,1>requestaudit/6 12.10 16:48:00.509 Audit Request Monitor Request Audit Report over the last 120 Seconds for server wcc-base_4444****requestaudit/6 12.10 16:48:00.509 Audit Request Monitor -Num Requests 47 Errors 1 Reqs/sec. 0.39009329676628113 Avg. Latency (secs) 0.21034042537212372 Max Thread Count 1requestaudit/6 12.10 16:48:00.509 Audit Request Monitor 1 Service FLD_BROWSE Total Elapsed Time (secs) 3.5320000648498535 Num requests 10 Num errors 0 Avg. Latency (secs) 0.3531999886035919 requestaudit/6 12.10 16:48:00.509 Audit Request Monitor 2 Service GET_SEARCH_RESULTS Total Elapsed Time (secs) 2.694999933242798 Num requests 6 Num errors 0 Avg. Latency (secs) 0.4491666555404663requestaudit/6 12.10 16:48:00.509 Audit Request Monitor 3 Service GET_DOC_PAGE Total Elapsed Time (secs) 1.8839999437332153 Num requests 5 Num errors 1 Avg. Latency (secs) 0.376800000667572requestaudit/6 12.10 16:48:00.509 Audit Request Monitor 4 Service DOC_INFO Total Elapsed Time (secs) 0.4620000123977661 Num requests 3 Num errors 0 Avg. Latency (secs) 0.15399999916553497requestaudit/6 12.10 16:48:00.509 Audit Request Monitor 5 Service GET_PERSONALIZED_JAVASCRIPT Total Elapsed Time (secs) 0.4099999964237213 Num requests 8 Num errors 0 Avg. Latency (secs) 0.051249999552965164requestaudit/6 12.10 16:48:00.509 Audit Request Monitor ****End Audit Report***** To change the default rotation or size of output, these can be set as configuration variables for the server: RequestAuditIntervalSeconds1 – Used for the shorter of the two summary intervals (default is 120 seconds)RequestAuditIntervalSeconds2 – Used for the longer of the two summary intervals (default is 3600 seconds)RequestAuditListDepth1 – Number of services listed for the first request audit summary interval (default is 5)RequestAuditListDepth2 – Number of services listed for the second request audit summary interval (default is 20) If you want to get more granular, you can enable 'Full Verbose Tracing' from the System Audit Information page and now you will get an audit entry for each and every service request.  >requestaudit/6 12.10 16:58:35.431 IdcServer-68 GET_USER_INFO [dUser=bob][StatusMessage=You are logged in as 'bob'.] 0.08765099942684174(secs) What's nice is it reports who executed the service and how long that particular request took.  In some cases, depending on the service, additional information will be added to the tracing relevant to that  service. >requestaudit/6 12.10 17:00:44.727 IdcServer-81 GET_SEARCH_RESULTS [dUser=bob][QueryText=%28+dDocType+%3cmatches%3e+%60Document%60+%29][StatusCode=0][StatusMessage=Success] 0.4696030020713806(secs) You can even go into more detail and insert any additional data into the tracing.  You simply need to add this configuration variable with a comma separated list of variables from local data to insert. RequestAuditAdditionalVerboseFieldsList=TotalRows,path In this case, for any search results, the number of items the user found is traced: >requestaudit/6 12.10 17:15:28.665 IdcServer-36 GET_SEARCH_RESULTS [TotalRows=224][dUser=bob][QueryText=%28+dDocType+%3cmatches%3e+%60Application%60+%29][Sta... I also recently ran into the case where services were being called from a client through RIDC.  All of the services were being executed as the same user, but they wanted to correlate the requests coming from the client to the ones being executed on the server.  So what we did was add a new field to the request audit list: RequestAuditAdditionalVerboseFieldsList=ClientToken And then in the RIDC client, ClientToken was added to the binder along with a unique value that could be traced for that request.  Now they had a way of tracing on both ends and identifying exactly which client request resulted in which request on the server.

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  • JFall 2012

    - by Geertjan
    JFall 2012 was over far too soon! Seven tracks going on simultaneously in a great location, with many artifacts reminding me of JavaOne, and nice snacks and drinks afterwards. The day started, as such things always do, with a keynote. Thanks to @royvanrijn for the photo below, I didn't take any myself and without a picture this report might have been too dry: What you see above is Steve Chin riding into the keynote hall on his NightHacking bike. The keynote was interesting, I can't be too complimentary about it, since I was part of it myself. Bert Ertman introduced the day and then Steve Chin took over, together with Sharat Chander, Tom Eugelink, Timon Veenstra, and myself. We had a strict choreography for the keynote, one that would ensure a lot of variation and some unexpected surprises, such as Steve being thrown off the stage a few times by Bert because of mentioning JavaOne too many times, rather than the clearly much cooler JFall. Steve talked about JavaOne and the direction Java is headed in, Sharat talked about JavaME and embedded devices, Steve and Tom did a demo involving JavaFX, I did a Project Easel demo, and Timon from Ordina talked about his Duke's Choice Award winning AgroSense project. I think the Project Easel demo (which I repeated later in a screencast for Parleys arranged by Eugene Boogaart) came across well and several people I spoke to especially like the roundtrip/bi-directional work that can be done, from browser to IDE and back again, very simply and intuitively. (In a long conversation on the drive back home afterwards, the scenario of a designer laying out the UI in HTML and then handing the HTML to a developer for back-end work, a developer who would then find it convenient to open the HTML in a browser and quickly navigate from the browser to the resources within the IDE, was discussed and considered to be extremely interesting and worth considering adopting NetBeans for, for no other reason than that.) Later I attended a session by David Delabassee on Java EE 7, Hans Dockter on Gradle, and Sander Mak on cross-build injection attacks. I was sorry to have missed Martijn Verburg's session, which sounded like it was really fantastic, among others, such as Gerrit Grunwald. I did a session too, entitled "Unlocking the Java EE 6 Platform", which was very well attended, pretty much a full room, and the demo went very smoothly. I talked to many people, e.g., a long time with Hans Dockter about how cool Gradle is and how great the Gradle/NetBeans plugin is turning out to be. I also had a long conversation (and did a demo) with Chris Chedgey, from Structure101, after his session, which was incredibly well attended; very interesting how popular modularity is. I met several people for the first time, as well as some colleagues from past places I've worked at. All in all, it was a great conference, unfortunately too short, which was very well attended (clearly over 1000) people, with several international speakers, as well as international attendees such as Mattias Karlsson, Sweden JUG leader. And, unsurprisingly, I came across NetBeans Platform applications again, none of which I had ever heard of before. In each case, "our fat client application" was mentioned in passing, never as a main application, and never in a context where there are plans for the application to be migrated to the web or mobile, simply because doing so makes no business sense at all. Great times at JFall, looking forward to meeting with some of the people I met again soon.

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  • The Power to Control Power

    - by speakjava
    I'm currently working on a number of projects using embedded Java on the Raspberry Pi and Beagle Board.  These are nice and small, so don't take up much room on my desk as you can see in this picture. As you can also see I have power and network connections emerging from under my desk.  One of the (admittedly very minor) drawbacks of these systems is that they have no on/off switch.  Instead you insert or remove the power connector (USB for the RasPi, a barrel connector for the Beagle).  For the Beagle Board this can potentially be an issue; with the micro-SD card located right next to the connector it has been known for people to eject the card when trying to power off the board, which can be quite serious for the hardware. The alternative is obviously to leave the boards plugged in and then disconnect the power from the outlet.  Simple enough, but a picture of underneath my desk shows that this is not the ideal situation either. This made me think that it would be great if I could have some way of controlling a mains voltage outlet using a remote switch or, even better, from software via a USB connector.  A search revealed not much that fit my requirements, and anything that was close seemed very expensive.  Obviously the only way to solve this was to build my own.Here's my solution.  I decided my system would support both control mechanisms (remote physical switch and USB computer control) and be modular in its design for optimum flexibility.  I did a bit of searching and found a company in Hong Kong that were offering solid state relays for 99p plus shipping (£2.99, but still made the total price very reasonable).  These would handle up to 380V AC on the output side so more than capable of coping with the UK 240V supply.  The other great thing was that being solid state, the input would work with a range of 3-32V and required a very low current of 7.5mA at 12V.  For the USB control an Arduino board seemed the obvious low-cost and simple choice.  Given the current requirments of the relay, the Arduino would not require the additional power supply and could be powered just from the USB.Having secured the relays I popped down to Homebase for a couple of 13A sockets, RS for a box and an Arduino and Maplin for a toggle switch.  The circuit is pretty straightforward, as shown in the diagram (only one output is shown to make it as simple as possible).  Originally I used a 2 pole toggle switch to select the remote switch or USB control by switching the negative connections of the low voltage side.  Unfortunately, the resistance between the digital pins of the Arduino board was not high enough, so when using one of the remote switches it would turn on both of the outlets.  I changed to a 4 pole switch and isolated both positive and negative connections. IMPORTANT NOTE: If you want to follow my design, please be aware that it requires working with mains voltages.  If you are at all concerned with your ability to do this please consult a qualified electrician to help you.It was a tight fit, especially getting the Arduino in, but in the end it all worked.  The completed box is shown in the photos. The remote switch was pretty simple just requiring the squeezing of two rocker switches and a 9V battery into the small RS supplied box.  I repurposed a standard stereo cable with phono plugs to connect the switch box to the mains outlets.  I chopped off one set of plugs and wired it to the rocker switches.  The photo shows the RasPi and the Beagle board now controllable from the switch box on the desk. I've tested the Arduino side of things and this works fine.  Next I need to write some software to provide an interface for control of the outlets.  I'm thinking a JavaFX GUI would be in keeping with the total overkill style of this project.

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  • Handling "related" work within a single agile work item

    - by Tesserex
    I'm on a project team of 4 devs, myself included. We've been having a long discussion on how to handle extra work that comes up in the course of a single work item. This extra work is usually things that are slightly related to the task, but not always necessary to accomplish the goal of the item (that may be an opinion). Examples include but are not limited to: refactoring of the code changed by the work item refactoring code neighboring the code changed by the item re-architecting the larger code area around the ticket. For example if an item has you changing a single function, you realize the entire class now could be redone to better accommodate this change. improving the UI on a form you just modified When this extra work is small we don't mind. The problem is when this extra work causes a substantial extension of the item beyond the original feature point estimation. Sometimes a 5 point item will actually take 13 points of time. In one case we had a 13 point item that in retrospect could have been 80 points or more. There are two options going around in our discussion for how to handle this. We can accept the extra work in the same work item, and write it off as a mis-estimation. Arguments for this have included: We plan for "padding" at the end of the sprint to account for this sort of thing. Always leave the code in better shape than you found it. Don't check in half-assed work. If we leave refactoring for later, it's hard to schedule and may never get done. You are in the best mental "context" to handle this work now, since you're waist deep in the code already. Better to get it out of the way now and be more efficient than to lose that context when you come back later. We draw a line for the current work item, and say that the extra work goes into a separate ticket. Arguments include: Having a separate ticket allows for a new estimation, so we aren't lying to ourselves about how many points things really are, or having to admit that all of our estimations are terrible. The sprint "padding" is meant for unexpected technical challenges that are direct barriers to completing the ticket requirements. It is not intended for side items that are just "nice-to-haves". If you want to schedule refactoring, just put it at the top of the backlog. There is no way for us to properly account for this stuff in an estimation, since it seems somewhat arbitrary when it comes up. A code reviewer might say "those UI controls (which you actually didn't modify in this work item) are a bit confusing, can you fix that too?" which is like an hour, but they might say "Well if this control now inherits from the same base class as the others, why don't you move all of this (hundreds of lines of) code into the base and rewire all this stuff, the cascading changes, etc.?" And that takes a week. It "contaminates the crime scene" by adding unrelated work into the ticket, making our original feature point estimates meaningless. In some cases, the extra work postpones a check-in, causing blocking between devs. Some of us are now saying that we should decide some cut off, like if the additional stuff is less than 2 FP, it goes in the same ticket, if it's more, make it a new ticket. Since we're only a few months into using Agile, what's the opinion of all the more seasoned Agile veterans around here on how to handle this?

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  • Is there an easy way to type in common math symbols?

    - by srcspider
    Disclaimer: I'm sure someone is going to moan about easy-of-use, for the purpose of this question consider readability to be the only factor that matters So I found this site that converts to easting northing, it's not really important what that even means but here's how the piece of javascript looks. /** * Convert Ordnance Survey grid reference easting/northing coordinate to (OSGB36) latitude/longitude * * @param {OsGridRef} gridref - easting/northing to be converted to latitude/longitude * @returns {LatLonE} latitude/longitude (in OSGB36) of supplied grid reference */ OsGridRef.osGridToLatLong = function(gridref) { var E = gridref.easting; var N = gridref.northing; var a = 6377563.396, b = 6356256.909; // Airy 1830 major & minor semi-axes var F0 = 0.9996012717; // NatGrid scale factor on central meridian var f0 = 49*Math.PI/180, ?0 = -2*Math.PI/180; // NatGrid true origin var N0 = -100000, E0 = 400000; // northing & easting of true origin, metres var e2 = 1 - (b*b)/(a*a); // eccentricity squared var n = (a-b)/(a+b), n2 = n*n, n3 = n*n*n; // n, n², n³ var f=f0, M=0; do { f = (N-N0-M)/(a*F0) + f; var Ma = (1 + n + (5/4)*n2 + (5/4)*n3) * (f-f0); var Mb = (3*n + 3*n*n + (21/8)*n3) * Math.sin(f-f0) * Math.cos(f+f0); var Mc = ((15/8)*n2 + (15/8)*n3) * Math.sin(2*(f-f0)) * Math.cos(2*(f+f0)); var Md = (35/24)*n3 * Math.sin(3*(f-f0)) * Math.cos(3*(f+f0)); M = b * F0 * (Ma - Mb + Mc - Md); // meridional arc } while (N-N0-M >= 0.00001); // ie until < 0.01mm var cosf = Math.cos(f), sinf = Math.sin(f); var ? = a*F0/Math.sqrt(1-e2*sinf*sinf); // nu = transverse radius of curvature var ? = a*F0*(1-e2)/Math.pow(1-e2*sinf*sinf, 1.5); // rho = meridional radius of curvature var ?2 = ?/?-1; // eta = ? var tanf = Math.tan(f); var tan2f = tanf*tanf, tan4f = tan2f*tan2f, tan6f = tan4f*tan2f; var secf = 1/cosf; var ?3 = ?*?*?, ?5 = ?3*?*?, ?7 = ?5*?*?; var VII = tanf/(2*?*?); var VIII = tanf/(24*?*?3)*(5+3*tan2f+?2-9*tan2f*?2); var IX = tanf/(720*?*?5)*(61+90*tan2f+45*tan4f); var X = secf/?; var XI = secf/(6*?3)*(?/?+2*tan2f); var XII = secf/(120*?5)*(5+28*tan2f+24*tan4f); var XIIA = secf/(5040*?7)*(61+662*tan2f+1320*tan4f+720*tan6f); var dE = (E-E0), dE2 = dE*dE, dE3 = dE2*dE, dE4 = dE2*dE2, dE5 = dE3*dE2, dE6 = dE4*dE2, dE7 = dE5*dE2; f = f - VII*dE2 + VIII*dE4 - IX*dE6; var ? = ?0 + X*dE - XI*dE3 + XII*dE5 - XIIA*dE7; return new LatLonE(f.toDegrees(), ?.toDegrees(), GeoParams.datum.OSGB36); } I found that to be a really nice way of writing an algorythm, at least as far as redability is concerned. Is there any way to easily write the special symbols. And by easily write I mean NOT copy/paste them.

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  • Fixing some Visual Studio RC install issues

    - by terje
    The Visual Studio RC has shown some install issues in some cases, particularly for those who upgrades from VS 11 Beta.  I have listed the fixes known now below, and will update if there are more issues.  Note that a repair will not fix the issue, and a Windows restore and subsequent reinstall may not fix it either.  The system seems to remember too much. That was the case for me, at least.  The fixes below however, cures these issues. 1. The Team Explorer Build node doesn’t work You get an error saying System.TypeLoadException like this: To solve this do as follows: 1. Open a command prompt as administrator 2. Go to your program files directory for VS 2012 and down to  the extension folder like:   C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\TeamFoundation\Team Explorer 3. Run “gacutil –if Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Build.Controls.dll     2. The SQL Editor gives loading error When you start up VS 2012 RC you get a loading error message.  The same happens if you try to go from the menu to  SQL/Transact-SQL Editor/New Query.    To solve this do as follows: 1. Open Control Panel/Programs and Features 2. Locate the “Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Data-Tier App Framework     (Note , you might find up to 4 such instances) The ones with version numbers ending in 55 is from the SQL 2012 RC, the ones ending in 60 is from the SQL 2012 RTM.  There are two of each, one for x32 and one for x64.  Which is which no one knows. 3. Right click each of them, and select Repair. (It would be nice if someone with this issue tries only the latest RTM ones, and see if that clears the error, and comment back to this post. I am out of non-functioning VS’s )   3.  Errors referring to some extension You get errors referring to some extension that can’t be loaded, or can’t be found.  Check the activity log (see below), and verify there.  If you see yellow collision warnings there, the fix here should solve those too. To solve these:    1. Open a Visual Studio 2012 command prompt 2.  Run:   devenv /resetsettings     How to check for errors using the log Do as follows to get to the activity log for Visual studio 2012 RC 1. Open a Visual Studio 2012 command prompt 2. Run:   devenv /log This starts up Visual Studio.  3. Go to %appdata%/Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0 4. Double click the file named ActivityLog.xml.  It will start up in your browser, and be formatted using the xslt in the same directory. 5.  Look for items marked in red.  Example for Issue 1 :

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  • Why Is Hibernation Still Used?

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    With the increased prevalence of fast solid-state hard drives, why do we still have system hibernation? Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader Moses wants to know why he should use hibernate on a desktop machine: I’ve never quite understood the original purpose of the Hibernation power state in Windows. I understand how it works, what processes take place, and what happens when you boot back up from Hibernate, but I’ve never truly understood why it’s used. With today’s technology, most notably with SSDs, RAM and CPUs becoming faster and faster, a cold boot on a clean/efficient Windows installation can be pretty fast (for some people, mere seconds from pushing the power button). Standby is even faster, sometimes instantaneous. Even SATA drives from 5-6 years ago can accomplish these fast boot times. Hibernation seems pointless to me [on desktop computers] when modern technology is considered, but perhaps there are applications that I’m not considering. What was the original purpose behind hibernation, and why do people still use it? Quite a few people use hibernate, so what is Moses missing in the big picture? The Answer SuperUser contributor Vignesh4304 writes: Normally hibernate mode saves your computer’s memory, this includes for example open documents and running applications, to your hard disk and shuts down the computer, it uses zero power. Once the computer is powered back on, it will resume everything where you left off. You can use this mode if you won’t be using the laptop/desktop for an extended period of time, and you don’t want to close your documents. Simple Usage And Purpose: Save electric power and resuming of documents. In simple terms this comment serves nice e.g (i.e. you will sleep but your memories are still present). Why it’s used: Let me describe one sample scenario. Imagine your battery is low on power in your laptop, and you are working on important projects on your machine. You can switch to hibernate mode – it will result your documents being saved, and when you power on, the actual state of application gets restored. Its main usage is like an emergency shutdown with an auto-resume of your documents. MagicAndre1981 highlights the reason we use hibernate everyday: Because it saves the status of all running programs. I leave all my programs open and can resume working the next day very easily. Doing a real boot would require to start all programs again, load all the same files into those programs, get to the same place that I was at before, and put all my windows in exactly the same place. Hibernating saves a lot of work pulling these things back up again. It’s not unusual to find computers around the office here that have been hibernated day in and day out for months without an actual full system shutdown and restart. It’s enormously convenient to freeze your work space at the exact moment you stopped working and to turn right around and resume there the next morning. Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.     

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  • Need WIF Training?

    - by Your DisplayName here!
    I spend numerous hours every month answering questions about WIF and identity in general. This made me realize that this is still quite a complicated topic once you go beyond the standard fedutil stuff. My good friend Brock and I put together a two day training course about WIF that covers everything we think is important. The course includes extensive lab material where you take standard application and apply all kinds of claims and federation techniques and technologies like WS-Federation, WS-Trust, session management, delegation, home realm discovery, multiple identity providers, Access Control Service, REST, SWT and OAuth. The lab also includes the latest version of the thinktecture identityserver and you will learn how to use and customize it. If you are looking for an open enrollment style of training, have a look here. Or contact me directly! The course outline looks as follows: Day 1 Intro to Claims-based Identity & the Windows Identity Foundation WIF introduces important concepts like conversion of security tokens and credentials to claims, claims transformation and claims-based authorization. In this module you will learn the basics of the WIF programming model and how WIF integrates into existing .NET code. Externalizing Authentication for Web Applications WIF includes support for the WS-Federation protocol. This protocol allows separating business and authentication logic into separate (distributed) applications. The authentication part is called identity provider or in more general terms - a security token service. This module looks at this scenario both from an application and identity provider point of view and walks you through the necessary concepts to centralize application login logic both using a standard product like Active Directory Federation Services as well as a custom token service using WIF’s API support. Externalizing Authentication for SOAP Services One big benefit of WIF is that it unifies the security programming model for ASP.NET and WCF. In the spirit of the preceding modules, we will have a look at how WIF integrates into the (SOAP) web service world. You will learn how to separate authentication into a separate service using the WS-Trust protocol and how WIF can simplify the WCF security model and extensibility API. Day 2 Advanced Topics:  Security Token Service Architecture, Delegation and Federation The preceding modules covered the 80/20 cases of WIF in combination with ASP.NET and WCF. In many scenarios this is just the tip of the iceberg. Especially when two business partners decide to federate, you usually have to deal with multiple token services and their implications in application design. Identity delegation is a feature that allows transporting the client identity over a chain of service invocations to make authorization decisions over multiple hops. In addition you will learn about the principal architecture of a STS, how to customize the one that comes with this training course, as well as how to build your own. Outsourcing Authentication:  Windows Azure & the Azure AppFabric Access Control Service Microsoft provides a multi-tenant security token service as part of the Azure platform cloud offering. This is an interesting product because it allows to outsource vital infrastructure services to a managed environment that guarantees uptime and scalability. Another advantage of the Access Control Service is, that it allows easy integration of both the “enterprise” protocols like WS-* as well as “web identities” like LiveID, Google or Facebook into your applications. ACS acts as a protocol bridge in this case where the application developer doesn’t need to implement all these protocols, but simply uses a service to make it happen. Claims & Federation for the Web and Mobile World Also the web & mobile world moves to a token and claims-based model. While the mechanics are almost identical, other protocols and token types are used to achieve better HTTP (REST) and JavaScript integration for in-browser applications and small footprint devices. Also patterns like how to allow third party applications to work with your data without having to disclose your credentials are important concepts in these application types. The nice thing about WIF and its powerful base APIs and abstractions is that it can shield application logic from these details while you can focus on implementing the actual application. HTH

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  • Impressions of Pivotal Tracker

    Pivotal Tracker is a free, online agile project management system. Ive been using it recently to better communicate to customers about the current state of our project. In Pivotal Tracker, the unit of work is a story and stories are arranged into iterations or delivery cycles. Stories can be any level of granularity you want, but the idea is to use stories to communicate clearly to customers, so you dont want to write a novel. You especially dont want to write a list of detailed programming tasks. A good story for a point of sale system might be: Allow managers to override the price of an item while ringing up a customer. A less useful story: Script out the process of adding a manager flag to the user table and stage that script into the deploy directory. Stories are estimated using a point scale, by default 1, 2 or 3. Iterations are then automatically laid out by combining enough tasks to fill the point total for that period of time. You have to start with a guess on how many points your team can do in an iteration, then adjust with real data as you complete iterations. This is basic agile methodology, but where Pivotal Tracker adds value is that it automatically and graphically lays out iterations for you on your project site. This makes communication and planning easy. Compiling release notes is no longer painful as it has been clear from the outset what work is going on. While I much prefer Pivotal Trackers customer facing interface over what we used previously (TFS), I see a couple of gaps. First, I have not able to make much headway with the reporting tools. Despite my complaints about TFS, it can produce some nice reports. Second, its not clear where if at all, Id keep track of purely internal tasks. Im talking about server maintenance, cleaning up source control, checking back on some code which you never quite felt right about. Theres no purpose in cluttering up an iteration backlog with these items, but if you dont track them, you lose them. Im not sure what a good answer for that is. One gap I thought Id see, which I dont, is more granular dev tasks. If Im implementing a story, Ill write out the steps and track my progress, but really, those steps arent useful to anybody but me. The only time Ive found that level of detail really useful is when my tasks are defined at too high a level anyway or when Im working with someone who needs more coaching and might not be able to finish a story in time without some scaffolding to get them going. You can learn more about Pivotal Tracker at: http://www.pivotaltracker.com/learnmore.   --- Relevant Links --- A good intro to stories: http://www.agilemodeling.com/artifacts/userStory.htmDid 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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