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  • Can I spread out a long running stored proc accross multiple CPU's?

    - by Russ
    [Also on SuperUser - http://superuser.com/questions/116600/can-i-spead-out-a-long-running-stored-proc-accross-multiple-cpus] I have a stored procedure in SQL server the gets, and decrypts a block of data. ( Credit cards in this case. ) Most of the time, the performance is tolerable, but there are a couple customers where the process is painfully slow, taking literally 1 minute to complete. ( Well, 59377ms to return from SQL Server to be exact, but it can vary by a few hundred ms based on load ) When I watch the process, I see that SQL is only using a single proc to perform the whole process, and typically only proc 0. Is there a way I can change my stored proc so that SQL can multi-thread the process? Is it even feasible to cheat and to break the calls in half, ( top 50%, bottom 50% ), and spread the load, as a gross hack? ( just spit-balling here ) My stored proc: USE [Commerce] GO /****** Object: StoredProcedure [dbo].[GetAllCreditCardsByCustomerId] Script Date: 03/05/2010 11:50:14 ******/ SET ANSI_NULLS ON GO SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON GO ALTER PROCEDURE [dbo].[GetAllCreditCardsByCustomerId] @companyId UNIQUEIDENTIFIER, @DecryptionKey NVARCHAR (MAX) AS SET NoCount ON DECLARE @cardId uniqueidentifier DECLARE @tmpdecryptedCardData VarChar(MAX); DECLARE @decryptedCardData VarChar(MAX); DECLARE @tmpTable as Table ( CardId uniqueidentifier, DecryptedCard NVarChar(Max) ) DECLARE creditCards CURSOR FAST_FORWARD READ_ONLY FOR Select cardId from CreditCards where companyId = @companyId and Active=1 order by addedBy desc --2 OPEN creditCards --3 FETCH creditCards INTO @cardId -- prime the cursor WHILE @@Fetch_Status = 0 BEGIN --OPEN creditCards DECLARE creditCardData CURSOR FAST_FORWARD READ_ONLY FOR select convert(nvarchar(max), DecryptByCert(Cert_Id('Oh-Nay-Nay'), EncryptedCard, @DecryptionKey)) FROM CreditCardData where cardid = @cardId order by valueOrder OPEN creditCardData FETCH creditCardData INTO @tmpdecryptedCardData -- prime the cursor WHILE @@Fetch_Status = 0 BEGIN print 'CreditCardData' print @tmpdecryptedCardData set @decryptedCardData = ISNULL(@decryptedCardData, '') + @tmpdecryptedCardData print '@decryptedCardData' print @decryptedCardData; FETCH NEXT FROM creditCardData INTO @tmpdecryptedCardData -- fetch next END CLOSE creditCardData DEALLOCATE creditCardData insert into @tmpTable (CardId, DecryptedCard) values ( @cardId, @decryptedCardData ) set @decryptedCardData = '' FETCH NEXT FROM creditCards INTO @cardId -- fetch next END select CardId, DecryptedCard FROM @tmpTable CLOSE creditCards DEALLOCATE creditCards

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  • Standardizing a Release/Tools group on a specific language

    - by grahzny
    I'm part of a six-member build and release team for an embedded software company. We also support a lot of developer tools, such as Atlassian's Fisheye, Jira, etc., Perforce, Bugzilla, AnthillPro, and a couple of homebrew tools (like my Django release notes generator). Most of the time, our team just writes little plugins for larger apps (ex: customize workflows in Anthill), long-term utility scripts (package up a release for QA), or things like Perforce triggers (don't let people check into a specific branch unless their change description includes a bug number; authenticate against Active Directory instead of Perforce's internal passwords). That's about the scale of our problems, although we sometimes tackle something slightly more sizable. My boss, who is reasonably technical, has asked us to standardize on one or two languages so we can more easily substitute for each other. He's advocating bash scripts and Perl, due to their universality and simplicity. I can see his point--we mostly do "glue", so why not use "glue" languages rather than saddle ourselves with something designed for much larger projects? Since some of the tools we work with are Java-based, we do need to use something that speaks JVM sometimes. (The path of least resistance for these projects is BeanShell and Groovy.) I feel a tremendous itch toward language advocacy, but I'm trying to avoid saying "We should use Python 'cause I like it and Perl is gross." Instead, I'm trying to come up with a good approach to defining our problem set: what problems do we solve with scripts? Would we benefit from a library of common functions by our team, or are most of our projects more isolated? What is it reasonable to expect my co-workers to learn? What languages give us the most ease of development and ease of modification? Can you folks suggest some useful ways to approach this problem, both for my own thinking process and to help me facilitate some brainstorming among my coworkers?

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  • Windows Messages Bizarreness

    - by jameszhao00
    Probably just a gross oversight of some sort, but I'm not receiving any WM_SIZE messages in the message loop. However, I do receive them in the WndProc. I thought the windows loop gave messages out to WndProc? LRESULT CALLBACK WndProc( HWND hWnd, UINT message, WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam ) { switch(message) { // this message is read when the window is closed case WM_DESTROY: { // close the application entirely PostQuitMessage(0); return 0; } break; case WM_SIZE: return 0; break; } printf("wndproc - %i\n", message); // Handle any messages the switch statement didn't return DefWindowProc (hWnd, message, wParam, lParam); } ... and now the message loop... while(TRUE) { // Check to see if any messages are waiting in the queue if(PeekMessage(&msg, NULL, 0, 0, PM_REMOVE)) { // translate keystroke messages into the right format TranslateMessage(&msg); // send the message to the WindowProc function DispatchMessage(&msg); // check to see if it's time to quit if(msg.message == WM_QUIT) { break; } if(msg.message == WM_SIZING) { printf("loop - resizing...\n"); } } else { //do other stuff } }

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  • Retrieve Records from paypal csv file

    - by Pankaj Khurana
    Hi, I want to retrieve all the records from paypal csv file where type='Payment Processed' and store it in a database table.It should be available in the following format: 'Heading':'Value' The format of the csv is: "Transaction ID","Reference Transaction ID","Date","Type","Subject","Item Number","Item Name","Invoice ID","Name","Email","Shipping Name","Shipping Address Line 1","Shipping Address Line 2","Shipping Address City","Shipping State/Province","Shipping Zip/Postal Code","Shipping Address Country","Shipping Method","Address Status","Contact Phone Number","Gross Amount","Receipt ID","Custom Field","Option 1 Name","Option 1 Value","Option 2 Name","Option 2 Value","Note","Auction Site","Auction User ID","Item URL","Auction Closing Date","Insurance Amount","Currency","Fees","Net Amount","Shipping & Handling Amount","Sales Tax Amount","To Email","Time","Time Zone" "1T","",5/5/2010 2:10:44 PM,"Payment Processed","CFP Self Study Kit","1","CFP Self Study Kit","","User1","[email protected]","","","","","","","","","N","","68.18","R1","","","","","","","","","",,"","USD","-2.62","65.56","0","0","[email protected]","01:40","Asia/Calcutta" "2T","",5/19/2010 4:04:08 PM,"Payment Processed","CFP Self Study Kit","1","CFP Self Study Kit","","User2","[email protected]","","","","","","","","","N","","68.18","R2","","","","","","","","","",,"","USD","-2.62","65.56","0","0","[email protected]","03:34","Asia/Calcutta" "3T","1RT",5/19/2010 5:28:45 PM,"Currency Conversion Completed","","","",""," ","","","","","","","","","","N","","17492.6","","","","","","","","","","",,"","INR","0","17492.6","0","0","","04:58","Asia/Calcutta" "4T","2RT",5/19/2010 5:28:45 PM,"Currency Conversion Completed","","","",""," ","","","","","","","","","","N","","-393.36","","","","","","","","","","",,"","USD","0","-393.36","0","0","","04:58","Asia/Calcutta" "5T","",5/19/2010 5:28:45 PM,"Transfer to Bank Initiated","P1006","","P1006",""," ","","","","","","","","","","N","","-17492.6","","","","","","","","","","",,"","INR","0","-17492.6","0","0","","04:58","Asia/Calcutta" "6T","",5/20/2010 5:38:02 PM,"Transfer to Bank Completed","P1006","","P1006",""," ","","","","","","","","","","N","","-17492.6","","","","","","","","","","",,"","INR","0","-17492.6","0","0","","05:08","Asia/Calcutta" "7T","",5/21/2010 12:32:37 PM,"Payment Processed","FP - LVC Plus","","FP - LVC Plus","","User3","[email protected]","User3","NEW DELHI","BEHIND KARNATAKA BANK LD","SOUTH","NEW DELHI","110023","IN","","N","","283.96","","","","","","","","","","",,"","USD","-9.95","274.01","0","0","[email protected]","00:02","Asia/Calcutta" "8T","",5/25/2010 4:40:48 PM,"Transfer to Bank Initiated","P1006","","P1006",""," ","","","","","","","","","","N","","-12569.85","","","","","","","","","","",,"","INR","0","-12569.85","0","0","","04:10","Asia/Calcutta" "9T","3RT",5/25/2010 4:40:48 PM,"Currency Conversion Completed","","","",""," ","","","","","","","","","","N","","-274.01","","","","","","","","","","",,"","USD","0","-274.01","0","0","","04:10","Asia/Calcutta" "10T","4RT",5/25/2010 4:40:48 PM,"Currency Conversion Completed","","","",""," ","","","","","","","","","","N","","12569.85","","","","","","","","","","",,"","INR","0","12569.85","0","0","","04:10","Asia/Calcutta" "11T","",5/26/2010 4:57:39 PM,"Transfer to Bank Completed","P1006","","P1006",""," ","","","","","","","","","","N","","-12569.85","","","","","","","","","","",,"","INR","0","-12569.85","0","0","","04:27","Asia/Calcutta" "Total","-247.05 USD","-15.19","-262.24" "Total","0.00 INR","0.00","0.00" Please help me on this Thanks

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  • Javascript Rich Display Component/Methodology

    - by Laramie
    quick back story-- I am working on ASP.Net based template editor that lets authors create text templates using Javascript inserted placeholder tags that will be filled in with dynamic text when the templates are used to display the final results. For example the author might create a template like The word [%12#add] was generated dynamically. The application would eventually replace the tag with a dynamic word down the road (though it's not specifically relevant to this post) The word foo was generated dynmamically. Depending on the circumstances, the template may be created in a text input, textarea or a modified version of the Ajax Control Toolkit HTML Editor. There might be 40 or more of these editable elements on the page, so using lots of stripped down or modified HTML editors would probably bog the page down too much. The problem is that the tags such as [%12#add] are displayed inline with the user text and the result is confusing and aesthetically gross. The goal is parse the contens of the source element and when a tags such as [%12#add] are encountered, display something prettier and less cryptic to the user such as a stylable element or image wherever tags such as [%12#add] occur. The application still needs the template text with the tags on postback. So the user might see The word tag placeholder was generated dynamically. but the original template would still be the value of the text input box The word [%12#add] was generated dynamically. It seems HTML editors like the ACT version and FckEditor accomplish this by rendering their output in an IFrame, but rather than kill myself trying to roll a lighter specialized version myself, I thought I'd ask if anyone knows of an existing free component or approach that has already tackled this. With good reason, I don't think S.O. allows HTML formatting, but the bold "tag placeholder" above would ideally be something like tag placeholder.

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  • Is it legal to extend the Class class?

    - by spiralganglion
    I've been writing a system that generates some templates, and then generates some objects based on those templates. I had the idea that the templates could be extensions of the Class class, but that resulted in some magnificent errors: VerifyError: Error #1107: The ABC data is corrupt, attempt to read out of bounds. What I'm wondering is if subclassing Class is even possible, if there is perhaps some case where doing this would be appropriate, and not just a gross misuse of OOP. I believe it should be possible, as ActionScript allows you to create variables of the Class type. This use is described in the LiveDocs entry for Class, yet I've seen no mentions of subclassing Class. Here's a pseudocode example: class Foo extends Class var a:Foo = new Foo(); trace(a is Class) // true, right? var b = new a(); I have no idea what the type of b would be. In summary: can you subclass the Class class? If so, how can you do it without errors, and what type are the instances of the instances of the Class subclass?

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  • MySQL Gurus: How to pull a complex grid of data from MySQL database with one query?

    - by iopener
    Hopefully this is less complex than I think. I have one table of companies, and another table of jobs, and a third table with that contains a single entry for each employee in each job from each company. NOTE: Some companies won't have employees in some jobs, and some companies will have more than one employee in some jobs. The company table has a companyid and companyname field, the job table has a jobid and jobtitle field, and the employee table has employeeid, companyid, jobid and employeename fields. I want to build a table like this: +-----------+-----------+-----------+ | Company A | Company B | Company C | ------+-----------+-----------+-----------+ Job A | Emp 1 | Emp 2 | | ------+-----------+-----------+-----------+ Job B | Emp 3 | | Emp 4 | | | | Emp 5 | ------+-----------+-----------+-----------+ Job C | | Emp 6 | | | | Emp 7 | | | | Emp 8 | | ------+-----------+-----------+-----------+ I had previously been looping through a result set of jobs, and for each job, looping through a result set of each company, and for each company, looping through each employee and printing it in a table (gross, but performance was not supposed to be a consideration). The app has grown in popularity, and now we have 100 companies and hundreds of jobs, and the server is crapping out (all the id fields are indexed). Any suggestions on how to write a single query to get this data? I don't need the company names or job titles (obviously), but I do need some way to identify where each row from the result should be printed. I'm imagining a result set that just contained a long list of joined employees, and I could write a loop to use the companyid and employeeid values to tell me when to create a new cell or table row. This works as long as there aren't ZERO employees; I would need a NULL employee name for that I think? Am I completely on the wrong track? Thanks in advance for any ideas!

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  • Javascript Rich Display WYSIWYG Component/Methodology

    - by Laramie
    quick back story-- I am working on ASP.Net based template editor that lets authors create text templates using Javascript inserted placeholder tags that will be filled in with dynamic text when the templates are used to display the final results. For example the author might create a template like The word [%12#add] was generated dynamically. The application would eventually replace the tag with a dynamic word down the road (though it's not specifically relevant to this post) The word foo was generated dynmamically. Depending on the circumstances, the template may be created in a text input, textarea or a modified version of the Ajax Control Toolkit HTML Editor. There might be 40 or more of these editable elements on the page, so using lots of stripped down or modified HTML editors would probably bog the page down too much. The problem is that the tags such as [%12#add] are displayed inline with the user text and the result is confusing and aesthetically gross. The goal is parse the contens of the source element and when a tags such as [%12#add] are encountered, display something prettier and less cryptic to the user such as a stylable element or image wherever tags such as [%12#add] occur. The application still needs the template text with the tags on postback. So the user might see The word tag placeholder was generated dynamically. but the original template would still be the value of the text input box The word [%12#add] was generated dynamically. It seems HTML editors like the ACT version and FckEditor accomplish this by rendering their output in an IFrame, but rather than kill myself trying to roll a lighter specialized version myself, I thought I'd ask if anyone knows of an existing free component or approach that has already tackled this. With good reason, I don't think S.O. allows HTML formatting, but the bold "tag placeholder" above would ideally be something like tag placeholder.

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  • Tablet interface for the physically disabled?

    - by Glenn
    My sister has Cerebral Palsy, which in her case means she has only gross motor control and her speech is slurred. Implications should be obvious: traditional computer/phone/tablet interfaces won't work for her and she can't speak clearly enough for speech recognition software to help her at all. She enjoys reading but has difficulty holding the book and/or turning a page. There are a few options for helping her use a computer, but nothing for tablets or eReaders. That's where you come in. I would like to make (or buy, if such a thing exists) a better interface to an Android tablet that would work for someone with little to no physical dexterity or speech ability. I'd also be interested in work on the Kindle or iPad, but I'm most familiar with Android so I'm starting there. I know Android has Bluetooth capability. Is it possible to interface a joystick to control the Android device? By "control", I mean the entire operating system - selecting an app, launching it, controlling the menus, etc. I want to give her control over the whole thing, not just a specific app. On a PC this can be accomplished by creating a generic USB HID interface and an arcade joystick to move the mouse over the screen and click on thigns. Is it possible to do something like that in Android? Any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

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  • Pre-populate iPhone Safari SQLite DB

    - by Matt Rogish
    I'm working with a PhoneGap app that uses Safari local storage (SQlite DB) via Javascript: http://developer.apple.com/safari/library/documentation/iPhone/Conceptual/SafariJSDatabaseGuide/UsingtheJavascriptDatabase/UsingtheJavascriptDatabase.html On first load, the app creates the database, tables, and populates the data via a series of INSERT statements. If the user closes the app while this processing is happening, then my app database is left in an inconsistent state. What I prefer to do is deploy the SQLite DB as part of my iTunes App packaging so nothing must be populated at app cold start. However, I'm not sure if that is possible -- all of the google hits for this topic that I can find are referring to the core-data provided SQLite which is not what we're using... If it's not possible, could I wrap the entire thing in a transaction and keep re-trying it when the app is restarted? Failing that, I guess I can create a simple table with one boolean column "is_app_db_loaded?" and set it to true after I've processed all my inserts. But that's really gross... Ideas? Thanks!!

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  • JS/CSS include section replacement, Debug vs Release

    - by Bayard Randel
    I'd be interested to hear how people handle conditional markup, specifically in their masterpages between release and debug builds. The particular scenario this is applicable to is handling concatenated js and css files. I'm currently using the .Net port of YUI compress to produce a single site.css and site.js from a large collection of separate files. One thought that occurred to me was to place the js and css include section in a user control or collection of panels and conditionally display the <link> and <script> markup based on the Debug or Release state of the assembly. Something along the lines of: #if DEBUG pnlDebugIncludes.visible = true #else pnlReleaseIncludes.visible = true #endif The panel is really not very nice semantically - wrapping <script> tags in a <div> is a bit gross; there must be a better approach. I would also think that a block level element like a <div> within <head> would be invalid html. Another idea was this could possibly be handled using web.config section replacements, but I'm not sure how I would go about doing that.

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  • Avoiding mass propagation of properties and events for exposure to ViewModels.

    - by firoso
    I have an MVVM application I am developing that is to the point where I'm ready to start putting together a user interface (my client code is largely functional) I'm now running into the issue that I'm trying to get my application data to where I need it so that it can be consumed by the view model and then bound to the view. Unfortunately, it seems that I've either got a few structural oversights, or I'm just going to have to face the reality that I need to be propogating events and raising excessive amounts of errors to notify view models that thier properties have changed. Let me go into some examples of my issue: I have a class "Unit" contained in a class "Test", contained in a class "Session" contained in a class "TestManager" which is contained in "TestDataModel" which is utilized by "TestViewModel" which is databound to by my "TestView" .... WHOA. Now, consider that Unit (the bottom of the heiarchy) has a property called "Results" that is updated periodically, I want to expose that to my viewmodel and then databind it to my view, trouble is, the only way I can really think to do this is to perpetuate events WAY up a chain that say "I've been updated!" and then request the new value... This seems like an aweful way to do this. Alternatively, I could register a static event and raise it, and have the appropriate "Unit view model" grab the event and request the update. This SEEMS better... but... static events? Is that a taboo idea? Also, having an expression like: TestDataModel.TestManager.Session.Test.Unit.Results[i] Seems REALLY gross to have on a View Model. I know this all reeks of a bad design issue, but I can't figure out what I did wrong? Should I be using more singleton/container controlled lifetimes type objects? Register object instances with static helper containers? Obviously these are hard questions to answer without being intimate with the existing structure, but if you've run into situations like this, what did you do to refactor? Should I just live with this, add mass events, and propogate them?

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  • Is it OK to write code after [super dealloc]? (Objective-C)

    - by Richard J. Ross III
    I have a situation in my code, where I cannot clean up my classes objects without first calling [super dealloc]. It is something like this: // Baseclass.m @implmentation Baseclass ... -(void) dealloc { [self _removeAllData]; [aVariableThatBelongsToMe release]; [anotherVariableThatBelongsToMe release]; [super dealloc]; } ... @end This works great. My problem is, when I went to subclass this huge and nasty class (over 2000 lines of gross code), I ran into a problem: when I released my objects before calling [super dealloc] I had zombies running through the code that were activated when I called the [self _removeAllData] method. // Subclass.m @implementation Subclass ... -(void) deallloc { [super dealloc]; [someObjectUsedInTheRemoveAllDataMethod release]; } ... @end This works great, and It didn't require me to refactor any code. My question Is this: Is it safe for me to do this, or should I refactor my code? Or maybe autorelease the objects? I am programming for iPhone if that matters any.

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  • SQL Query to separate data into two fields

    - by Phillip
    I have data in one column that I want to separate into two columns. The data is separated by a comma if present. This field can have no data, only one set of data or two sets of data saperated by the comma. Currently I pull the data and save as a comma delimited file then use an FoxPro to load the data into a table then process the data as needed then I re-insert the data back into a different SQL table for my use. I would like to drop the FoxPro portion and have the SQL query saperate the data for me. Below is a sample of what the data looks like. Store Amount Discount 1 5.95 1 5.95 PO^-479^2 1 5.95 PO^-479^2 2 5.95 2 5.95 PO^-479^2 2 5.95 +CA8A09^-240^4,CORDRC^-239^7 3 5.95 3 5.95 +CA8A09^-240^4,CORDRC^-239^7 3 5.95 +CA8A09^-240^4,CORDRC^-239^7 In the data above I want to sum the data in the amount field to get a gross amount. Then pull out the specific discount amount which is located between the carat characters and sum it to get the total discount amount. Then add the two together and get the total net amount. The query I want to write will separate the discount field as needed, see store 2 line 3 for two discounts being applied, then pull out the value between carat characters.

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  • Birt on Tomcat unable to find JARs

    - by LostInTheWoods
    First, my setup: BiRT Runtime: 3.7.2. Ubuntu 10.04 Tomcat 6 Sun Java 1.6.0 I have a jar file I want to deploy onto the Tomcat server so it is usable by the runtime, so I placed the jar file in /var/lib/tomcat6/webapps/birt/WEB-INF/lib. As I understand it this is the default location for JAR files that are going to be used by a BiRT report. But the jar file is not accessible by the report that is trying to call it. In the BiRT logs I see: Error evaluating Javascript expression. Script engine error: ReferenceError: "DynDSinfo" is not defined. (/report/data-sources/oda-data-source[@id="54"]/method[@name="beforeOpen"]#20) Script source: /report/data-sources/oda-data-source[@id="54"]/method[@name="beforeOpen"], line: 0, text: __bm_beforeOpen() org.eclipse.birt.data.engine.core.DataException: Fail to execute script in function __bm_beforeOpen(). Source: "DynDSinfo" is the class I am trying to reference.. and now for the kicker... this works fine on Tomcat6 on Windows 7. The same files in the same places. So is there some additional configuration or some environmental variable that needs to be set, or something different on the Linux (Ubuntu) platform? All help or ideas gratefully received, Stephen

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  • Can Remote Desktop Services be deployed and administered by PowerShell alone, without a Domain in WIndows Server 2012 and 2012 R2?

    - by Warren P
    Windows Server 2008 R2 allowed deployment of Terminal Server (Remote Desktop Services) without a domain, and without any insistence on domains. This was very useful, especially for standalone virtual or cloud deployments of a server that is managed remotely for a remote client who has no need or desire for any ActiveDirectory or Domain features. This has become steadily more and more difficult as Microsoft restricts its technologies further and further in each Windows release. With Windows Server 2012, configuring licensing for Remote Desktop Services, is more difficult when not on a domain, but possible still. With Windows Server 2012 R2 (at least in the preview) the barriers are now severe: The Add/Remove Roles and Features wizard in Windows Server 2012 R2 has a special RDS deployment mode that has a rule that says if you aren't on a domain you can't deploy. It tells you to create or join a domain first. This of course comes in direct conflict with the fact that an Active Directory domain controller should not be the same machine as a terminal server machine. So Microsoft's technology is not such much a Cloud Operating System as a Cluster of Unwanted Nodes, needed to support the one machine I actually WANT to deploy. This is gross, and so I am trying to find a workaround. However if you skip that wizard and just go check the checkboxes in the main Roles/Features wizard, you can deploy the features, but the UI is not there to configure them, and when you go back to the RDS configuration page on the roles wizard, you get a message saying you can not administer your Remote Desktop Services system when you are logged in as a Local-Computer Administrator, because although you have all admin priveleges you could have (in your workgroup based system), the RDS configuration UI will not accept those credentials and let you continue. My question in brief is, can I still somehow, obtain the following end result: I need to allow 10-20 users per system to have an RDS (TS) session. I do not need any of the fancy pants RDS options, unless Microsoft somehow depends on those features being present. I believe I need the "RDS Session Host" as this is the guts of "Terminal Server". Microsoft says it is "full Windows desktop for Remote Desktop Services client. I need to configure licensing so that the Grace Period does not expire leaving my RDS non functional, so this probably means I need a way to configure TS CALs. If all of the above could technically be done with the judicious use of the PowerShell, I am prepared to even consider developing all the PowerShell scripts I would need to do the above. I'm not asking someone to write that for me. What I'm asking is, does anyone know if there is a technical impediment to what I want to do above, other than the deliberate crippling of the 2012 R2 UI for Workgroup users? Would the underlying technologies all still work if I manipulate and control them from a PowerShell script? Obviously a 1 word Yes or No answer isn't that useful to anyone, so the question is really, yes or no, and why? In the case the answer is Yes, then how.

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  • On ESXi, guest machines hang for significant intervals compared to real machines. How can I fix this?

    - by Tarbox
    This is ESXi version 5.0.0. We plan on upgrading to 5.5 eventually. I have four code profiles, two taken on a real, unvirtualized machine, two taken on a virtual machine. Ordering the list of subroutines by time spent in each one, the two real profiles are practically identical. The two virtual profiles are different from each other and from the real profiles: a subset of subroutines are taking a lot more time on the virtual machines, and the subset is different for each run. The two virtual profiles take a similar amount of time, which is 3 times the amount of time the real profiles take. This gross "how long does it take?" result is consistent after hundreds of tests across three different virtual machines on two different host machines -- the virtual machine is just slower. I've only the code profiling on the four, however. Here's the most guilty set of lines: This is the real machine: 8µs $text = '' unless defined $text; 1.48ms foreach ( split( "\n", $text ) ) { This is the first run on the virtual machine: 20.1ms $text = '' unless defined $text; 1.49ms foreach ( split( "\n", $text ) ) { This is the second run on the virtual machine: 6µs $text = '' unless defined $text; 21.9ms foreach ( split( "\n", $text ) ) { My WAG is that the VM is swapping out the thread and then swapping it back in, destroying some level of cache in the process, but these code profiles were taken when the vm in question was the only active vm on the host, so... what? What does that mean? The guest itself is under light load, this is a latency problem for my users rather than throughput. The host is also under a light load, if I knew what resources to assign where, I could do it without worrying about the cost. I've attempted to lock memory, reserve cpu, assign a restrictive affinity, and disable hyperthread sharing. They don't help, it still takes the VM 2-4x the amount of time to do the same thing as the real machine. The host the tests were run on is 6x2.50GHz, Intel Xeon E5-26400 w/ 16gigs of ram. The guest exhibits the same performance under a wide combination of settings. The real machine is 4x2.13GHz, Xeon E5506 w/ 2 gigs of ram. Thank you for all advice.

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  • Kaiden and the Arachnoid Cyst

    - by Martin Hinshelwood
    Some of you may remember when my son Kaiden was born I posted pictures of him and his sister. Kaiden is now 15 months old and is progressing perfectly in every area except that and we had been worried that he was not walking yet. We were only really concerned as his sister was walking at 8 months. Figure: Kai as his usual self   Jadie and I were concerned over that and that he had a rather large head (noggin) so we talked to various GP’s and our health visitor who immediately dismissed our concerns every time. That was until about two months ago when we happened to get a GP whose daughter had Hyper Mobility and she recognised the symptoms immediately. We were referred to the Southbank clinic who were lovely and the paediatrician confirmed that he had Hyper Mobility after testing all of his faculties. This just means that his joints are overly mobile and would need a little physiotherapy to help him out. At the end the paediatrician remarked offhand that he has a rather large head and wanted to measure it. Sure enough he was a good margin above the highest percentile mark for his height and weight. The paediatrician showed the measurements to a paediatric consultant who, as a precautionary measure, referred us for an MRI at Yorkhill Children's hospital. Now, Yorkhill has always been fantastic to us, and this was no exception. You know we have NEVER had a correct diagnosis for the kids (with the exception of the above) from a GP and indeed twice have been proscribed incorrect medication that made the kids sicker! We now always go strait to Yorkhill to save them having to fix GP mistakes as well. Monday 24th May, 7pm The scan went fantastically, with Kaiden sleeping in the MRI machine for all but 5 minutes at the end where he waited patiently for it to finish. We were not expecting anything to be wrong as this was just a precautionary scan to make sure that nothing in his head was affecting his gross motor skills. After the scan we were told to expect a call towards the end of the week… Tuesday 25th May, 12pm The very next day we got a call from Southbank who said that they has found an Arachnoid Cyst and could we come in the next day to see a Consultant and that Kai would need an operation. Wednesday 26th May, 12:30pm We went into the Southbank clinic and spoke to the paediatric consultant who assured us that it was operable but that it was taking up considerable space in Kai’s head. Cerebrospinal fluid is building up as a cyst is blocking the channels it uses to drain. Thankfully they told us that prospects were good and that Kai would expect to make a full recovery before showing us the MRI pictures. Figure: Normal brain MRI cross section. This normal scan shows the spaces in the middle of the brain that contain and produce the Cerebrospinal fluid. Figure: Normal Cerebrospinal Flow This fluid is needed by the brain but is drained in the middle down the spinal column. Figure: Kai’s cyst blocking the four channels. I do not think that I need to explain the difference between the healthy picture and Kai’s picture. However you can see in this first picture the faint outline of the cyst in the middle that is blocking the four channels from draining. After seeing the scans a Neurosurgeon has decided that he is not acute, but needs an operation to unblock the flow. Figure: OMFG! You can see in the second picture the effect of the build up of fluid. If I was not horrified by the first picture I was seriously horrified by this one. What next? Kai is not presenting the symptoms of vomiting or listlessness that would show an immediate problem and as such we will get an appointment to see the Paediatric Neurosurgeon at the Southern General hospital in about 4 weeks. This timescale is based on the Neurosurgeon seeing the scans. After that Kai will need an operation to release the pressure and either remove the cyst completely or put in a permanent shunt (tube from brain to stomach) to bypass the blockage. We have updated his notes for the referral with additional recent information on top of the scan that the consultant things will help improve the timescales, but that is just a guess.   All we can do now is wait and see, and be watchful for tell tail signs of listlessness, eye problems and vomiting that would signify a worsening of his condition.   Technorati Tags: Personal

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  • Real-world SignalR example, ditching ghetto long polling

    - by Jeff
    One of the highlights of BUILD last week was the announcement that SignalR, a framework for real-time client to server (or cloud, if you will) communication, would be a real supported thing now with the weight of Microsoft behind it. Love the open source flava! If you aren’t familiar with SignalR, watch this BUILD session with PM Damian Edwards and dev David Fowler. Go ahead, I’ll wait. You’ll be in a happy place within the first ten minutes. If you skip to the end, you’ll see that they plan to ship this as a real first version by the end of the year. Insert slow clap here. Writing a few lines of code to move around a box from one browser to the next is a way cool demo, but how about something real-world? When learning new things, I find it difficult to be abstract, and I like real stuff. So I thought about what was in my tool box and the decided to port my crappy long-polling “there are new posts” feature of POP Forums to use SignalR. A few versions back, I added a feature where a button would light up while you were pecking out a reply if someone else made a post in the interim. It kind of saves you from that awkward moment where someone else posts some snark before you. While I was proud of the feature, I hated the implementation. When you clicked the reply button, it started polling an MVC URL asking if the last post you had matched the last one the server, and it did it every second and a half until you either replied or the server told you there was a new post, at which point it would display that button. The code was not glam: // in the reply setup PopForums.replyInterval = setInterval("PopForums.pollForNewPosts(" + topicID + ")", 1500); // called from the reply setup and the handler that fetches more posts PopForums.pollForNewPosts = function (topicID) { $.ajax({ url: PopForums.areaPath + "/Forum/IsLastPostInTopic/" + topicID, type: "GET", dataType: "text", data: "lastPostID=" + PopForums.currentTopicState.lastVisiblePost, success: function (result) { var lastPostLoaded = result.toLowerCase() == "true"; if (lastPostLoaded) { $("#MorePostsBeforeReplyButton").css("visibility", "hidden"); } else { $("#MorePostsBeforeReplyButton").css("visibility", "visible"); clearInterval(PopForums.replyInterval); } }, error: function () { } }); }; What’s going on here is the creation of an interval timer to keep calling the server and bugging it about new posts, and setting the visibility of a button appropriately. It looks like this if you’re monitoring requests in FireBug: Gross. The SignalR approach was to call a message broker when a reply was made, and have that broker call back to the listening clients, via a SingalR hub, to let them know about the new post. It seemed weird at first, but the server-side hub’s only method is to add the caller to a group, so new post notifications only go to callers viewing the topic where a new post was made. Beyond that, it’s important to remember that the hub is also the means to calling methods at the client end. Starting at the server side, here’s the hub: using Microsoft.AspNet.SignalR.Hubs; namespace PopForums.Messaging { public class Topics : Hub { public void ListenTo(int topicID) { Groups.Add(Context.ConnectionId, topicID.ToString()); } } } Have I mentioned how awesomely not complicated this is? The hub acts as the channel between the server and the client, and you’ll see how JavaScript calls the above method in a moment. Next, the broker class and its associated interface: using Microsoft.AspNet.SignalR; using Topic = PopForums.Models.Topic; namespace PopForums.Messaging { public interface IBroker { void NotifyNewPosts(Topic topic, int lasPostID); } public class Broker : IBroker { public void NotifyNewPosts(Topic topic, int lasPostID) { var context = GlobalHost.ConnectionManager.GetHubContext<Topics>(); context.Clients.Group(topic.TopicID.ToString()).notifyNewPosts(lasPostID); } } } The NotifyNewPosts method uses the static GlobalHost.ConnectionManager.GetHubContext<Topics>() method to get a reference to the hub, and then makes a call to clients in the group matched by the topic ID. It’s calling the notifyNewPosts method on the client. The TopicService class, which handles the reply data from the MVC controller, has an instance of the broker new’d up by dependency injection, so it took literally one line of code in the reply action method to get things moving. _broker.NotifyNewPosts(topic, post.PostID); The JavaScript side of things wasn’t much harder. When you click the reply button (or quote button), the reply window opens up and fires up a connection to the hub: var hub = $.connection.topics; hub.client.notifyNewPosts = function (lastPostID) { PopForums.setReplyMorePosts(lastPostID); }; $.connection.hub.start().done(function () { hub.server.listenTo(topicID); }); The important part to look at here is the creation of the notifyNewPosts function. That’s the method that is called from the server in the Broker class above. Conversely, once the connection is done, the script calls the listenTo method on the server, letting it know that this particular connection is listening for new posts on this specific topic ID. This whole experiment enables a lot of ideas that would make the forum more Facebook-like, letting you know when stuff is going on around you.

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  • April 14th Links: ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Web API and Visual Studio

    - by ScottGu
    Here is the latest in my link-listing blog series: ASP.NET Easily overlooked features in VS 11 Express for Web: Good post by Scott Hanselman that highlights a bunch of easily overlooked improvements that are coming to VS 11 (and specifically the free express editions) for web development: unit testing, browser chooser/launcher, IIS Express, CSS Color Picker, Image Preview in Solution Explorer and more. Get Started with ASP.NET 4.5 Web Forms: Good 5-part tutorial that walks-through building an application using ASP.NET Web Forms and highlights some of the nice improvements coming with ASP.NET 4.5. What is New in Razor V2 and What Else is New in Razor V2: Great posts by Andrew Nurse, a dev on the ASP.NET team, about some of the new improvements coming with ASP.NET Razor v2. ASP.NET MVC 4 AllowAnonymous Attribute: Nice post from David Hayden that talks about the new [AllowAnonymous] filter introduced with ASP.NET MVC 4. Introduction to the ASP.NET Web API: Great tutorial by Stephen Walher that covers how to use the new ASP.NET Web API support built-into ASP.NET 4.5 and ASP.NET MVC 4. Comprehensive List of ASP.NET Web API Tutorials and Articles: Tugberk Ugurlu links to a huge collection of articles, tutorials, and samples about the new ASP.NET Web API capability. Async Mashups using ASP.NET Web API: Nice post by Henrik on how you can use the new async language support coming with .NET 4.5 to easily and efficiently make asynchronous network requests that do not block threads within ASP.NET. ASP.NET and Front-End Web Development Visual Studio 11 and Front End Web Development - JavaScript/HTML5/CSS3: Nice post by Scott Hanselman that highlights some of the great improvements coming with VS 11 (including the free express edition) for front-end web development. HTML5 Drag/Drop and Async Multi-file Upload with ASP.NET Web API: Great post by Filip W. that demonstrates how to implement an async file drag/drop uploader using HTML5 and ASP.NET Web API. Device Emulator Guide for Mobile Development with ASP.NET: Good post from Rachel Appel that covers how to use various device emulators with ASP.NET and VS to develop cross platform mobile sites. Fixing these jQuery: A Guide to Debugging: Great presentation by Adam Sontag on debugging with JavaScript and jQuery.  Some really good tips, tricks and gotchas that can save a lot of time. ASP.NET and Open Source Getting Started with ASP.NET Web Stack Source on CodePlex: Fantastic post by Henrik (an architect on the ASP.NET team) that provides step by step instructions on how to work with the ASP.NET source code we recently open sourced. Contributing to ASP.NET Web Stack Source on CodePlex: Follow-on to the post above (also by Henrik) that walks-through how you can submit a code contribution to the ASP.NET MVC, Web API and Razor projects. Overview of the WebApiContrib project: Nice post by Pedro Reys on the new open source WebApiContrib project that has been started to deliver cool extensions and libraries for use with ASP.NET Web API. Entity Framework Entity Framework 5 Performance Improvements and Performance Considerations for EF5:  Good articles that describes some of the big performance wins coming with EF5 (which will ship with both .NET 4.5 and ASP.NET MVC 4). Automatic compilation of LINQ queries will yield some significant performance wins (up to 600% faster). ASP.NET MVC 4 and EF Database Migrations: Good post by David Hayden that covers the new database migrations support within EF 4.3 which allows you to easily update your database schema during development - without losing any of the data within it. Visual Studio What's New in Visual Studio 11 Unit Testing: Nice post by Peter Provost (from the VS team) that talks about some of the great improvements coming to VS11 for unit testing - including built-in VS tooling support for a broad set of unit test frameworks (including NUnit, XUnit, Jasmine, QUnit and more) Hope this helps, Scott

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  • Java Spotlight Episode 57: Live From #Devoxx - Ben Evans and Martijn Verburg of the London JUG with Yara Senger of SouJava

    - by Roger Brinkley
    Tweet Live from Devoxx 11,  an interview with Ben Evans and Martijn Verburg from the London JUG along with  Yara Senger from the SouJava JUG on the JCP Executive Committee Elections, JSR 248, and Adopt-a-JSR program. Both the London JUG and SouJava JUG are JCP Standard Edition Executive Committee Members. Joining us this week on the Java All Star Developer Panel are Geertjan Wielenga, Principal Product Manger in Oracle Developer Tools; Stephen Chin, Java Champion and Java FX expert; and Antonio Goncalves, Paris JUG leader. Right-click or Control-click to download this MP3 file. You can also subscribe to the Java Spotlight Podcast Feed to get the latest podcast automatically. If you use iTunes you can open iTunes and subscribe with this link: Java Spotlight Podcast in iTunes. Show Notes News Netbeans 7.1 JDK 7 upgrade tools Netbeans First Patch Program OpenJFX approved as an OpenJDK project Devoxx France April 18-20, 2012 Events Nov 22-25, OTN Developer Days in the Nordics Nov 22-23, Goto Conference, Prague Dec 6-8, Java One Brazil, Sao Paulo Feature interview Ben Evans has lived in "Interesting Times" in technology - he was the lead performance testing engineer for the Google IPO, worked on the initial UK trials of 3G networks with BT, built award-winning websites for some of Hollywood's biggest hits of the 90s, rearchitected and reimagined technology helping some of the most vulnerable people in the UK and has worked on everything from some of the UKs very first ecommerce sites, through to multi-billion dollar currency trading systems. He helps to run the London Java Community, and represents the JUG on the Java SE/EE Executive Committee. His first book "The Well-Grounded Java Developer" (with Martijn Verburg) has just been published by Manning. Martijn Verburg (aka 'the Diabolical Developer') herds Cats in the Java/open source communities and is constantly humbled by the creative power to be found there. Currently he resides in London where he co-leads the London JUG (a JCP EC member), runs a couple of open source projects & drinks too much beer at his local pub. You can find him online moderating at the Javaranch or discussing (ranting?) subjects on the Prgorammers Stack Exchange site. Most recently he's become a regular speaker at conferences on Java, open source and software development and has recently wrapped up his first Manning title - "The Well-Grounded Java Developer" with his co-author Ben Evans. Yara Senger is the partner and director of teacher education and Globalcode, graduated from the University of Sao Paulo, Sao Carlos, has significant experience in Brazil and abroad in developing solutions to critical Java. She is the co-creator of Java programs Academy and Academy of Web Developer, accumulating over 1000 hours in the classroom teaching Java. She currently serves as the President of Sou Java. In this interview Ben, Martijn, and Yara talk about the JCP Executive Committee Elections, JSR 348, and the Adopt-a-JSR program. Mail Bag What's Cool Show Transcripts Transcript for this show is available here when available.

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  • Travelling MVP #4: DevReach 2012

    - by DigiMortal
    Our next stop after Varna was Sofia where DevReach happens. DevReach is one of my favorite conferences in Europe because of sensible prices and strong speakers line-up. Also they have VIP-party after conference and this is good event to meet people you don’t see every day, have some discussion with speakers and find new friends. Our trip from Varna to Sofia took about 6.5 hours on bus. As I was tired from last evening it wasn’t problem for me as I slept half the trip. After smoking pause in Velike Tarnovo I watched movies from bus TV. We had supper later in city center Happy’s – place with good meat dishes and nice service. And next day it begun…. :) DevReach 2012 DevReach is held usually in Arena Mladost. It’s near airport and Telerik office. The event is organized by local MVP Martin Kulov together with Telerik. Two days of sessions with strong speakers is good reason enough for me to go to visit some event. Some topics covered by sessions: Windows 8 development web development SharePoint Windows Azure Windows Phone architecture Visual Studio Practically everybody can find some interesting session in every time slot. As the Arena is not huge it is very easy to go from one sessions to another if selected session for time slot is not what you expected. On the second floor of Arena there are many places where you can eat. There are simple chunk-food places like Burger King and also some restaurants. If you are hungry you will find something for your taste for sure. Also you can buy beer if it is too hot outside :) Weather was very good for October – practically Estonian summer – 25C and over. Sessions I visited Here is the list of sessions I visited at DevReach 2012: DevReach 2012 Opening & Welcome Messsage with Martin Kulov and Stephen Forte Principled N-Tier Solution Design with Steve Smith Data Patterns for the Cloud with Brian Randell .NET Garbage Collection Performance Tips with Sasha Goldshtein Building Secured, Scalable, Low-latency Web Applications with the Windows Azure Platform with Ido Flatow It’s a Knockout! MVVM Style Web Applications with Charles Nurse Web Application Architecture – Lessons Learned from Adobe Brackets with Brian Rinaldi Demystifying Visual Studio 2012 Performance Tools with Martin Kulov SPvNext – A Look At All the Exciting And New Features In SharePoint with Sahil Malik Portable Libraries – Why You Should Care with Lino Tadros I missed some sessions because of some death march projects that are going and that I have to coordinate but it was not big loss as I had time to walk around in session venue neighborhood and see Sofia Business Park. Next year again! I will be there again next year and hopefully more guys from Estonia will join me. I think it’s good idea to take short vacation for DevReach time and do things like we did this time – Bucharest, Varna, Sofia. It’s only good idea to plan some more free time so we are not very much in hurry and also we have no work stuff to do on the trip. This far this trip has been one of best trips I have organized and I will go and meet all those guys in this region again! :)

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  • The Hunger Games for Aspiring IT Professionals

    - by Dain C. Hansen
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} It seems that no one can escape the buzz around Hunger Games. And who could? Stephen King said it best in his review when he referred to the Collins’ novel as “a violent, jarring speed-rap of a novel that generates nearly constant suspense and may also generate a fair amount of controversy”. So what’s the tie in for IT? Let’s leave the dystopia of District 12 and come back to today’s reality. This is the world of radical IT paradigm shifts that haven’t been seen since Java was introduced in 1995. Everything you learned in school is probably outdated as of Friday. And everything you learned on Friday will probably change when you get to work on Monday. Nevertheless, we’re eager, we’re aspiring, we’re hungry to learn. While the challenges upon us may not rival the venomous bees (or ‘tracker jackers’) seen in this blockbuster, there are certainly obstacles to be found. In preparation, I leave you two pieces of advice - aside from avoiding werewolves… Learn the Cloud If you had asked me what to learn in 1995, I would have said, “Go learn Java”. But now my advice is “Go learn Java and then learn Cloud”. Cloud computing and Java go hand in hand. This is especially true for Oracle’s own Public Cloud which uses Java (via WebLogic 12c) as well as Oracle Database at its core foundation. Understanding the connotations of elasticity, scale, virtualization, and multi-tenancy, (to name just a few) requires a strong foundation in computer science and especially Java to get it right. Without Java, the Cloud is nothing more than a brittle application meagerly deployed on the internet. Get Social and Actively Participate And at all levels. Socializing your ideas internally is dreadfully important. And this means socializing and communicating your good ideas to lines of business, to architects, business analysts, developers, DBAs and Operations. But don’t forget to go external. Stay current by being on the lookout for blogs, tweets, webcasts, papers, podcasts and videos for your technology area. Be not just a subscriber but a participant in these channels as well. Attend industry and vendor sponsored events to learn from the experts – and seek out opportunities to stay connected with those that are smarter than you. You’ll gain more understanding if you participate actively. At the same time you’ll make friends (and allies) and you’ll be glad you did. Tell help you get social and actively participate [while learning the Cloud] here are a couple of pointers for you: See our website on Cloud and Fusion Middleware Subscribe to our regular Fusion Middleware Newsletter Follow us on Twitter and Facebook Find us at one of our key events Meanwhile, happy IT hunger games!

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  • The Oracle Retail Week Awards - most exciting awards yet?

    - by sarah.taylor(at)oracle.com
    Last night's annual Oracle Retail Week Awards saw the UK's top retailers come together to celebrate the very best of our industry over the last year.  The Grosvenor House Hotel on Park Lane in London was the setting for an exciting ceremony which this year marked several significant milestones in British - and global - retail.  Check out our videos about the event at our Oracle Retail YouTube channel, and see if you were snapped by our photographer on our Oracle Retail Facebook page. There were some extremely hot contests for many of this year's awards - and all very deserving winners.  The entries have demonstrated beyond doubt that retailers have striven to push their standards up yet again in all areas over the past year.  The judging panel includes some of the most prestigious names in the retail industry - to impress the panel enough to win an award is a substantial achievement.  This year the panel included the likes of Andy Clarke - Chief Executive of ASDA Group; Mark Newton Jones - CEO of Shop Direct Group; Richard Pennycook - the finance director at Morrisons; Rob Templeman - Chief Executive of Debenhams; and Stephen Sunnucks - the president of Gap Europe.  These are retail veterans  who have each helped to shape the British High Street over the last decade.  It was great to chat with many of them in the Oracle VIP area last night.  For me, last night's highlight was honouring both Sir Stuart Rose and Sir Terry Leahy for their contributions to the retail industry.  Both have set the standards in retailing over the last twenty years and taken their respective businesses from strength to strength, demonstrating that there is always a need for innovation even in larger businesses, and that a business has to adapt quickly to new technology in order to stay competitive.  Sir Terry Leahy's retirement this year marks the end of an era of global expansion for the Tesco group and a milestone in the progression of British retail.  Sir Terry has helped steer Tesco through nearly 20 years of change, with 14 years as Chief Executive.  During this time he led the drive for international expansion and an aggressive campaign to increase market share.  He has led the way for High Street retailers in adapting to the rise of internet retailing and nurtured a very successful home delivery service.  More recently he has pioneered the notion of cross-channel retailing with the introduction of Tesco apps for the iPhone and Android mobile phones allowing customers to scan barcodes of items to add to a shopping list which they can then either refer to in store or order for delivery.  John Lewis Partnership was a very deserving winner of The Oracle Retailer of the Year award for their overall dedication to excellent retailing practices.  The business was also named the American Express Marketing/Advertising Campaign of the Year award for their memorable 'Never Knowingly Undersold' advert series, which included a very successful viral video and radio campaign with Fyfe Dangerfield's cover of Billy Joel's 'She's Always a Woman' used for the adverts.  Store Design of the Year was another exciting category with Topshop taking the accolade for its flagship Oxford Street store in London, which combines boutique concession-style stalls with high fashion displays and exclusive collections from leading designers.  The store even has its own hairdressers and food hall, making it a truly all-inclusive fashion retail experience and a global landmark for any self-respecting international fashion shopper. Over the next few weeks we'll be exploring some of the winning entries in more detail here on the blog, so keep an eye out for some unique insights into how the winning retailers have made such remarkable achievements. 

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  • Thinktecture.IdentityModel: Comparing Strings without leaking Timinig Information

    - by Your DisplayName here!
    Paul Hill commented on a recent post where I was comparing HMACSHA256 signatures. In a nutshell his complaint was that I am leaking timing information while doing so – or in other words, my code returned faster with wrong (or partially wrong) signatures than with the correct signature. This can be potentially used for timing attacks like this one. I think he got a point here, especially in the era of cloud computing where you can potentially run attack code on the same physical machine as your target to do high resolution timing analysis (see here for an example). It turns out that it is not that easy to write a time-constant string comparer due to all sort of (unexpected) clever optimization mechanisms in the CLR. With the help and feedback of Paul and Shawn I came up with this: Structure the code in a way that the CLR will not try to optimize it In addition turn off optimization (just in case a future version will come up with new optimization methods) Add a random sleep when the comparison fails (using Shawn’s and Stephen’s nice Random wrapper for RNGCryptoServiceProvider). You can find the full code in the Thinktecture.IdentityModel download. [MethodImpl(MethodImplOptions.NoOptimization)] public static bool IsEqual(string s1, string s2) {     if (s1 == null && s2 == null)     {         return true;     }       if (s1 == null || s2 == null)     {         return false;     }       if (s1.Length != s2.Length)     {         return false;     }       var s1chars = s1.ToCharArray();     var s2chars = s2.ToCharArray();       int hits = 0;     for (int i = 0; i < s1.Length; i++)     {         if (s1chars[i].Equals(s2chars[i]))         {             hits += 2;         }         else         {             hits += 1;         }     }       bool same = (hits == s1.Length * 2);       if (!same)     {         var rnd = new CryptoRandom();         Thread.Sleep(rnd.Next(0, 10));     }       return same; }

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