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• SQLAuthority News – SQL Server 2012 – Microsoft Learning Training and Certification

  - by pinaldave

  Here is the conversion I had right after I had posted my earlier blog post about Download Microsoft SQL Server 2012 RTM Now. Rajesh: So SQL Server is available for me to download? Pinal: Yes, sure check the link here. Rajesh: It is trial do you know when it will be available for everybody? Pinal: I think you mean General Availability (GA) which is on April 1st, 2012. Rajesh: I want to have head start with SQL Server 2012 examination and I want to know every single Exam 70-461: Querying Microsoft SQL Server 2012 This exam is intended for SQL Server database administrators, implementers, system engineers, and developers with two or more years of experience who are seeking to prove their skills and knowledge in writing queries. Exam 70-462: Administering Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Databases This exam is intended for Database Professionals who perform installation, maintenance, and configuration tasks as their primary areas of responsibility. They will often set up database systems and are responsible for making sure those systems operate efficiently. Exam 70-463: Implementing a Data Warehouse with Microsoft SQL Server 2012 The primary audience for this exam is Extract Transform Load (ETL) and Data Warehouse Developers.  They are most likely to focus on hands-on work creating business intelligence (BI) solutions including data cleansing, ETL, and Data Warehouse implementation. Exam 70-464: Developing Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Databases This exam is intended for database professionals who build and implement databases across an organization while ensuring high levels of data availability. They perform tasks including creating database files, creating data types and tables,  planning, creating, and optimizing indexes, implementing data integrity, implementing views, stored procedures, and functions, and managing transactions and locks. Exam 70-465: Designing Database Solutions for Microsoft SQL Server 2012 This exam is intended for database professionals who design and build database solutions in an organization.  They are responsible for the creation of plans and designs for database structure, storage, objects, and servers. Exam 70-466: Implementing Data Models and Reports with Microsoft SQL Server 2012 The primary audience for this exam is BI Developers.  They are most likely to focus on hands-on work creating the BI solution including implementing multi-dimensional data models, implementing and maintaining OLAP cubes, and creating information displays used in business decision making Exam 70-467: Designing Business Intelligence Solutions with Microsoft SQL Server 2012 The primary audience for this exam is the BI Architect.  BI Architects are responsible for the overall design of the BI infrastructure, including how it relates to other data systems in use. Looking at Rajesh’s passion, I am motivated too! I may want to start attempting the exams in near future. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Download, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Partition Wise Joins II

  - by jean-pierre.dijcks

  One of the things that I did not talk about in the initial partition wise join post was the effect it has on resource allocation on the database server. When Oracle applies a different join method - e.g. not PWJ - what you will see in SQL Monitor (in Enterprise Manager) or in an Explain Plan is a set of producers and a set of consumers. The producers scan the tables in the the join. If there are two tables the producers first scan one table, then the other. The producers thus provide data to the consumers, and when the consumers have the data from both scans they do the join and give the data to the query coordinator. Now that behavior means that if you choose a degree of parallelism of 4 to run such query with, Oracle will allocate 8 parallel processes. Of these 8 processes 4 are producers and 4 are consumers. The consumers only actually do work once the producers are fully done with scanning both sides of the join. In the plan above you can see that the producers access table SALES [line 11] and then do a PX SEND [line 9]. That is the producer set of processes working. The consumers receive that data [line 8] and twiddle their thumbs while the producers go on and scan CUSTOMERS. The producers send that data to the consumer indicated by PX SEND [line 5]. After receiving that data [line 4] the consumers do the actual join [line 3] and give the data to the QC [line 2]. BTW, the myth that you see twice the number of processes due to the setting PARALLEL_THREADS_PER_CPU=2 is obviously not true. The above is why you will see 2 times the processes of the DOP. In a PWJ plan the consumers are not present. Instead of producing rows and giving those to different processes, a PWJ only uses a single set of processes. Each process reads its piece of the join across the two tables and performs the join. The plan here is notably different from the initial plan. First of all the hash join is done right on top of both table scans [line 8]. This query is a little more complex than the previous so there is a bit of noise above that bit of info, but for this post, lets ignore that (sort stuff). The important piece here is that the PWJ plan typically will be faster and from a PX process number / resources typically cheaper. You may want to look out for those plans and try to get those to appear a lot... CREDITS: credits for the plans and some of the info on the plans go to Maria, as she actually produced these plans and is the expert on plans in general... You can see her talk about explaining the explain plan and other optimizer stuff over here: ODTUG in Washington DC, June 27 - July 1 On the Optimizer blog At OpenWorld in San Francisco, September 19 - 23 Happy joining and hope to see you all at ODTUG and OOW...

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• User Group Meeting Summary - April 2010

  - by Michael Stephenson

  Thanks to everyone who could make it to what turned out to be an excellent SBUG event.  First some thanks to:  Speakers: Anthony Ross and Elton Stoneman Host: The various people at Hitachi who helped to organise and arrange the venue.   Session 1 - Getting up and running with Windows Mobile and the Windows Azure Service Bus In this session Anthony discussed some considerations for using Windows Mobile and the Windows Azure Service Bus from a real-world project which Hitachi have been working on with EasyJet.  Anthony also walked through a simplified demo of the concepts which applied on the project.   In addition to the slides and demo it was also very interesting to discuss with the guys involved on this project to hear about their real experiences developing with the Azure Service Bus and some of the limitations they have had to work around in Windows Mobiles ability to interact with the service bus.   On the back of this session we will look to do some further activities around this topic and the guys offered to share their wish list of features for both Windows Mobile and Windows Azure which we will look to share for user group discussion.   Another interesting point was the cost aspects of using the ISB which were very low.   Session 2 - The Enterprise Cache In the second session Elton used a few slides which are based around one of his customer scenario's where they are looking into the concept of an Enterprise Cache within the organisation.  Elton discusses this concept and also a codeplex project he is putting together which allows you to take advantage of a cache with various providers such as Memcached, AppFabric Caching and Ncache.   Following the presentation it was interesting to hear peoples thoughts on various aspects such as the enterprise cache versus an out of process application cache.  Also there was interesting discussion around how people would like to search the cache in the future.   We will again look to put together some follow-up activity on this   Meeting Summary Following the meeting all slide decks are saved in the skydrive location where we keep content from all meetings: http://cid-40015ea59a1307c8.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/.Public/SBUG/SBUG%20Meetings/2010%20April   Remember that the details of all previous events are on the following page. http://uksoabpm.org/Events.aspx   Competition We had three copies of the Windows Identity Foundation Patterns and Practices book that were raffles on the night, it would be great to hear any feedback on the book from those who won it.   Recording The user group meeting was recorded and we will look to make this available online sometime soon.   UG Business The following things were discussed as general UG topics:   We will change the name of the user group to the UK Connected Systems User Group to we are more inline with other user groups who cover similar topics and we believe this will help us to attract more members.  The content or focus of the user group is not expected to change.   The next meeting is 26th May and can be registered at the following link: http://sbugmay2010.eventbrite.com/

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• Giving a Bomberman AI intelligent bomb placement

  - by Paul Manta

  I'm trying to implement an AI algorithm for Bomberman. Currently I have a working but not very smart rudimentary implementation (the current AI is overzealous in placing bombs). This is the first AI I've ever tried implementing and I'm a bit stuck. The more sophisticated algorithms I have in mind (the ones that I expect to make better decisions) are too convoluted to be good solutions. What general tips do you have for implementing a Bomberman AI? Are there radically different approaches for making the bot either more defensive or offensive? Edit: Current algorithm My current algorithm goes something like this (pseudo-code): 1) Try to place a bomb and then find a cell that is safe from all the bombs, including the one that you just placed. To find that cell, iterate over the four directions; if you can find any safe divergent cell and reach it in time (eg. if the direction is up or down, look for a cell that is found to the left or right of this path), then it's safe to place a bomb and move in that direction. 2) If you can't find and safe divergent cells, try NOT placing a bomb and look again. This time you'll only need to look for a safe cell in only one direction (you don't have to diverge from it). 3) If you still can't find a safe cell, don't do anything. for $(direction) in (up, down, left, right): place bomb at current location if (can find and reach divergent safe cell in current $(direction)): bomb = true move = $(direction) return for $(direction) in (up, down, left, right): do not place bomb at current location if (any safe cell in the current $(direction)): bomb = false move = $(direction) return else: bomb = false move = stay_put This algorithm makes the bot very trigger-happy (it'll place bombs very frequently). It doesn't kill itself, but it does have a habit of making itself vulnerable by going into dead ends where it can be blocked and killed by the other players. Do you have any suggestions on how I might improve this algorithm? Or maybe I should try something completely different? One of the problems with this algorithm is that it tends to leave the bot with very few (frequently just one) safe cells on which it can stand. This is because the bot leaves a trail of bombs behind it, as long as it doesn't kill itself. However, leaving a trail of bombs behind leaves few places where you can hide. If one of the other players or bots decide to place a bomb somewhere near you, it often happens that you have no place to hide and you die. I need a better way to decide when to place bombs.

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• Setting up Visual Studio 2010 to step into Microsoft .NET Source Code

  - by rajbk

  Using the Microsoft Symbol Server to obtain symbol debugging information is now much easier in VS 2010. Microsoft gives you access to their internet symbol server that contains symbol files for most of the .NET framework including the recently announced availability of MVC 2 Symbols.  SETUP In VS 2010 RTM, go to Tools –> Options –> Debugging –> General. Check “Enable .NET Framework source stepping” We get the following dialog box   This automatically disables “Enable My Code”   Go to Debugging –> Symbols and Check “Microsoft Symbol Servers”. You can selectively exclude modules if you want to.   You will get a warning dialog like so: Hitting OK will start the download process   The setup is complete. You are now ready to start debugging! DEBUGGING Add a break point to your application and run the application in debug mode (F5 shortcut for me). Go to your call stack when you hit the break point. Right click on a frame that is grayed out. Select “Load Symbols from” “Microsoft Symbol Servers”. VS will begin a one time download of that assembly. This assembly will be cached locally so you don’t have to wait for the download the next time you debug the app.   We get a one time license agreement dialog box You might see an error like the one below regarding different encoding (hopefully will be fixed).    Assemblies for which the symbols have been loaded are no longer grayed out. Double clicking on any entry in the call stack should now directly take you to the source code for that assembly. AFAIK, not all symbols are available on the MS symbol server. In cases like that you will see a tab like the one below and be given the option to “Show Disassembly”. Enjoy! Newsreel Announcer: Humiliated, Muntz vows a return to Paradise Falls and promises to capture the beast alive! Charles Muntz: [speaking to a large audience outside in the newsreel] I promise to capture the beast alive, and I will not come back until I do!

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• Is your test method self-validating ?

  - by mehfuzh

  Writing state of art unit tests that can validate your every part of the framework is challenging and interesting at the same time, its like becoming a samurai. One of the key concept in this is to keep our test synced all the time as underlying code changes and thus breaking them to the furthest unit as possible.  This also means, we should avoid  multiple conditions embedded in a single test. Let’s consider the following example of transfer funds. [Fact] public void ShouldAssertTranserFunds() {     var currencyService = Mock.Create<ICurrencyService>();     //// current rate     Mock.Arrange(() => currencyService.GetConversionRate("AUS", "CAD")).Returns(0.88f);       Account to = new Account { Currency = "AUS", Balance = 120 };     Account from = new Account { Currency = "CAD" };       AccountService accService = new AccountService(currencyService);       Assert.Throws<InvalidOperationException>(() => accService.TranferFunds(to, from, 200f));       accService.TranferFunds(to, from, 100f);       Assert.Equal(from.Balance, 88);     Assert.Equal(20, to.Balance); } At first look,  it seems ok but as you look more closely , it is actually doing two tasks in one test. At line# 10 it is trying to validate the exception for invalid fund transfer and finally it is asserting if the currency conversion is successfully made. Here, the name of the test itself is pretty vague. The first rule for writing unit test should always reflect to inner working of the target code, where just by looking at their names it is self explanatory. Having a obscure name for a test method not only increase the chances of cluttering the test code, but it also gives the opportunity to add multiple paths into it and eventually makes things messy as possible. I would rater have two test methods that explicitly describes its intent and are more self-validating. ShouldThrowExceptionForInvalidTransferOperation ShouldAssertTransferForExpectedConversionRate Having, this type of breakdown also helps us pin-point reported bugs easily rather wasting any time on debugging for something more general and can minimize confusion among team members. Finally, we should always make our test F.I.R.S.T ( Fast.Independent.Repeatable.Self-validating.Timely) [ Bob martin – Clean Code]. Only this will be enough to ensure, our test is as simple and clean as possible.   Hope that helps

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• World Record Performance on PeopleSoft Enterprise Financials Benchmark on SPARC T4-2

  - by Brian

  Oracle's SPARC T4-2 server achieved World Record performance on Oracle's PeopleSoft Enterprise Financials 9.1 executing 20 Million Journals lines in 8.92 minutes on Oracle Database 11g Release 2 running on Oracle Solaris 11. This is the first result published on this version of the benchmark. The SPARC T4-2 server was able to process 20 million general ledger journal edit and post batch jobs in 8.92 minutes on this benchmark that reflects a large customer environment that utilizes a back-end database of nearly 500 GB. This benchmark demonstrates that the SPARC T4-2 server with PeopleSoft Financials 9.1 can easily process 100 million journal lines in less than 1 hour. The SPARC T4-2 server delivered more than 146 MB/sec of IO throughput with Oracle Database 11g running on Oracle Solaris 11. Performance Landscape Results are presented for PeopleSoft Financials Benchmark 9.1. Results obtained with PeopleSoft Financials Benchmark 9.1 are not comparable to the the previous version of the benchmark, PeopleSoft Financials Benchmark 9.0, due to significant change in data model and supports only batch. PeopleSoft Financials Benchmark, Version 9.1 Solution Under Test Batch (min) SPARC T4-2 (2 x SPARC T4, 2.85 GHz) 8.92 Results from PeopleSoft Financials Benchmark 9.0. PeopleSoft Financials Benchmark, Version 9.0 Solution Under Test Batch (min) Batch with Online (min) SPARC Enterprise M4000 (Web/App) SPARC Enterprise M5000 (DB) 33.09 34.72 SPARC T3-1 (Web/App) SPARC Enterprise M5000 (DB) 35.82 37.01 Configuration Summary Hardware Configuration: 1 x SPARC T4-2 server 2 x SPARC T4 processors, 2.85 GHz 128 GB memory Storage Configuration: 1 x Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array (for database and redo logs) 2 x Sun Storage 2540-M2 arrays and 2 x Sun Storage 2501-M2 arrays (for backup) Software Configuration: Oracle Solaris 11 11/11 SRU 7.5 Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2.0.3) PeopleSoft Financials 9.1 Feature Pack 2 PeopleSoft Supply Chain Management 9.1 Feature Pack 2 PeopleSoft PeopleTools 8.52 latest patch - 8.52.03 Oracle WebLogic Server 10.3.5 Java Platform, Standard Edition Development Kit 6 Update 32 Benchmark Description The PeopleSoft Enterprise Financials 9.1 benchmark emulates a large enterprise that processes and validates a large number of financial journal transactions before posting the journal entry to the ledger. The validation process certifies that the journal entries are accurate, ensuring that ChartFields values are valid, debits and credits equal out, and inter/intra-units are balanced. Once validated, the entries are processed, ensuring that each journal line posts to the correct target ledger, and then changes the journal status to posted. In this benchmark, the Journal Edit & Post is set up to edit and post both Inter-Unit and Regular multi-currency journals. The benchmark processes 20 million journal lines using AppEngine for edits and Cobol for post processes. See Also Oracle PeopleSoft Benchmark White Papers oracle.com SPARC T4-2 Server oracle.com OTN PeopleSoft Financial Management oracle.com OTN Oracle Solaris oracle.com OTN Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition oracle.com OTN Disclosure Statement Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Results as of 1 October 2012.

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• SQL SERVER – Identify Numbers of Non Clustered Index on Tables for Entire Database

  - by pinaldave

  Here is the script which will give you numbers of non clustered indexes on any table in entire database. SELECT COUNT(i.TYPE) NoOfIndex, [schema_name] = s.name, table_name = o.name FROM sys.indexes i INNER JOIN sys.objects o ON i.[object_id] = o.[object_id] INNER JOIN sys.schemas s ON o.[schema_id] = s.[schema_id] WHERE o.TYPE IN ('U') AND i.TYPE = 2 GROUP BY s.name, o.name ORDER BY schema_name, table_name Here is the small story behind why this script was needed. I recently went to meet my friend in his office and he introduced me to his colleague in office as someone who is an expert in SQL Server Indexing. I politely said I am yet learning about Indexing and have a long way to go. My friend’s colleague right away said – he had a suggestion for me with related to Index. According to him he was looking for a script which will count all the non clustered on all the tables in the database and he was not able to find that on SQLAuthority.com. I was a bit surprised as I really do not remember all the details about what I have written so far. I quickly pull up my phone and tried to look for the script on my custom search engine and he was correct. I never wrote a script which will count all the non clustered indexes on tables in the whole database. Excessive indexing is not recommended in general. If you have too many indexes it will definitely negatively affect your performance. The above query will quickly give you details of numbers of indexes on tables on your entire database. You can quickly glance and use the numbers as reference. Please note that the number of the index is not a indication of bad indexes. There is a lot of wisdom I can write here but that is not the scope of this blog post. There are many different rules with Indexes and many different scenarios. For example – a table which is heap (no clustered index) is often not recommended on OLTP workload (here is the blog post to identify them), drop unused indexes with careful observation (here is the script for it), identify missing indexes and after careful testing add them (here is the script for it). Even though I have given few links here it is just the tip of the iceberg. If you follow only above four advices your ship may still sink. Those who wants to learn the subject in depth can watch the videos here after logging in. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Index, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Oracle Announces Availability of Oracle Exaskeleton with Extreme Scale

  - by J Swaroop

  Re-posting Bruce Tierney's original post - albeit a day late: I reckon this is Oracle's most interesting launch this year. Enjoy! The World’s First Human Scale Body Surface (HSBS) Designed to Toughen Spineless Wimps April 1, 2012 Building on the success of Oracle Exalogic, Oracle Exadata, and Oracle Exalytics, Oracle today announced the general availability of Oracle Exaskeleton, toughening up spineless wimps across the globe through the introduction of extreme scalability over the human body leveraging a revolutionary new technology called Human Scale Body Surface (HSBS). First Customer Ship (FCS) was received by the little known and mostly unsuccessful superhero Awkwardman. After applying Oracle Exaskeleton with extreme scale, he has since rebranded himself as Aquaman. Said Aquaman, “I used to feel so helpless in my skin…now I feel like…well…a highly scaled Engineered System thanks to Oracle!” Thousand of meek and mild individuals eagerly lined up outside Oracle Corporation’s Redwood Shores office to purchase the new Oracle Exaskeleton, with the hope of finally gaining the spine they never had. Unfortunately for the individuals, a bully was spotted allegedly kicking the sand covering the beaches of Redwood Shores into the still spineless Exaskeleton hopefuls. Supporting Quotes “Industry analysts are inquiring if Oracle Exaskeleton is a radical departure from Oracle’s traditional enterprise focus into new markets”, said Oracle representative Sabrina Twich, “Oracle has extensive expertise in unified backbone solutions for application infrastructures…this is simply a new port to the human body combining our Business Intelligence (BI) and RDBC (Remote Direct Brain Cell) technologies.” “With this release of Oracle Exaskeleton, Oracle has redefined scalability. Software and hardware vendors had it all wrong” said the Director of Oracle Exaskeleton, “Scalability for hardware is like…um…you know…so scale-ful. No, wait…can I say that again? I didn’t get that right…Scalability is hardware-on-demand with public and private…hybrid clouds, no…<long pause>…Scalability for… nevermind, I don’t want to be in this stupid press release anyway” Releases An upcoming Oracle Exaskeleton service pack release will include a new datasheet with an extensive library of three-letter acronyms (TLAs) as well as the introduction of more four-letter acronyms (FLAs) since technologies vendors have used up almost all of the 17,576 TLA permutations (TLAPs). About Oracle Oracle engineers hardware and software to work together in the cloud and in your data center. It would be an amazing coincidence if any of this is true in some secret Oracle lab, but I doubt it. Trademarks Really…you’re still reading this? Cool! Aquaman - First Customer Ship (FCS) - Oracle Exaskeleton

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• SQL SERVER – Sharing your ETL Resources Across Applications with Ease

  - by pinaldave

  Frequently an organization will find that the same resources are used in multiple ETL applications, for example, the same database, general purpose processing logic, or file system locations.  Creating an easy way to reuse these resources across multiple applications would increase efficiency and reduce errors.  Moreover, not every ETL developer has the same skill set, and it is likely that one developer will be more adept at writing code while another is more comfortable configuring database connections.  Real productivity gains will come when these developers are able to work independently while still making their work available to others assigned to the same project.  These are the benefits of a centralized version control system. Of course, most version control systems could be used to store and serve files, but the real need is to store and serve entire ETL applications so that each developer’s ongoing work can immediately benefit from another developer’s completed work.  In other words, the version control system needs to be tightly integrated with the tools used to develop the ETL application. The following screen shot shows such a tool. Desktop ETL tool that tightly integrates with a central version control system Developers can checkout or commit entire projects or just a single artifact.  Each artifact may be managed independently so if you need to go back to an earlier version of one artifact, changes you may have made to other artifacts are not lost.  By being tightly integrated into the graphical environment used to create and edit the project artifacts, it is extremely easy and straight-forward to move your files to and from the version control system and there is no dependency on another vendor’s version control system.  The built in version control system is optimized for managing the artifacts of ETL applications. It is equally important that the version control system supports all of the actions one typically performs such as rollbacks, locking and unlocking of files, and the ability to resolve conflicts.  Note that this particular ETL tool also has the capability to switch back and forth between multiple version control systems. It also needs to be easy to determine the status of an artifact.  Not just that it has been committed or modified, but when and by whom.  Generally you must query the version control system for this information, but having it displayed within the development environment is more desirable. Who’s ETL tool works in this fashion?  Last month I mentioned the data integration solution offered by expressor software.  The version control features I described in this post are all available in their just released expressor 3.1 Standard Edition through the integration of their expressor Studio development environment with a centralized metadata repository and version control system. You can download their Studio application, which is free, or evaluate the full Standard Edition on your own hardware.  It may be worth your time. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Silverlight Cream for February 14, 2011 -- #1047

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Mohamed Mosallem, Tony Champion, Gill Cleeren, Laurent Bugnion, Deborah Kurata, Jesse Liberty(-2-), Tim Heuer, Mike Taulty, John Papa, Martin Krüger, and Jeremy Likness. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Binding to a ComboBox in Silverlight : A Gotcha" Tony Champion WP7: "An Ultra Light Windows Phone 7 MVVM Framework" Jeremy Likness Shoutouts: Steve Wortham has a post up discussing Silverlight 5, HTML5, and what the future may bring From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight 4.0 Tutorial (12 of N): Collecting Attendees Feedback using Windows Phone 7 Mohamed Mosallem is up to number 12 in his Silverlight tutorial series. He's continuing his RegistrationBooth app, but this time, he's building a WP7 app to give attendee feedback. Binding to a ComboBox in Silverlight : A Gotcha If you've tried to bind to a combobox in Silverlight, you've probably either accomplished this as I have (with help) by having it right once, and continuing, but Tony Champion takes the voodoo out of getting it all working. Getting ready for Microsoft Silverlight Exam 70-506 (Part 5) Gill Cleeren has Part 5 of his exam preparation post up on SilverlightShow. As with the others, he provides many external links to good information. Referencing a picture in another DLL in Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 Laurent Bugnion explains the pitfalls and correct way to reference an image from a dll... good info for loading images such as icons for Silverlight in general and WP7 also. Silverlight MVVM Commanding II Deborah Kurata has a part 2 up on MVVM Commanding. The first part covered the built-in commanding for controls that inherit from ButtonBase... this post goes beyond that into other Silverlight controls. Reactive Drag and Drop Part 1 This Drag and Drop with Rx post by Jesse Liberty is the 4th in his Rx series. He begins with a video from the Rx team and applies reactive programming to mouse movements. Yet Another Podcast #24–Reactive Extensions On the heels of his previous post on Rx, in his latest 'Yet Another Podcast', Jesse Liberty chats with Matthew Podwysocki and Bart De Smet about Reactive Extensions. Silverlight 4 February 2011 Update Released Today Tim Heuer announced the release of the February 2011 Silverlight 4 release. Check out Tim's post for information about what's contained in this release. Blend Bits 25–Templating Part 3 In his 3rd Templating tutorial in BlendBits, Mike Taulty demonstrates the 'Make into Control' option rather than the other way around. Silverlight TV 61: Expert Chat on Deep Zoom, Touch, and Windows Phone John Papa interviews David Kelley in the latest Silverlight TV... David is discussing touch in Silverlight and for WP7 and his WP7 apps in the marketplace. Simple Hyperlinkbutton style Martin Krüger has a cool Hyperlink style available at the Expression Gallery. Interesting visual for entertaining your users. An Ultra Light Windows Phone 7 MVVM Framework Jeremy Likness takes his knowledge of MVVM (Jounce), and WP7 and takes a better look at what he'd really like to have for a WP7 framework. 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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• O the Agony - Merging Scrum and Waterfall

  - by John K. Hines

  If there's nothing else to know about Scrum (and Agile in general), it's this: You can't force a team to adopt Agile methods.  In all cases, the team must want to change. Well, sure, you could force a team.  But it's going to be a horrible, painful process with a huge learning curve made even steeper by the lack of training and motivation on behalf of the team.  On a completely unrelated note, I've spent the past three months working on a team that was formed by merging three separate teams.  One of these teams has been adopting and using Agile practices like Scrum since 2007, the other was in continuous bug fix mode, releasing on average one new piece of software per year using semi-Waterfall methods.  In particular, one senior developer on the Waterfall team didn't see anything in Agile but overhead. Fast forward through three months of tension, passive resistance, process pushback, and you have seven people who want to change and one who explicitly doesn't.  It took two things to make Scrum happen: The team manager took a class called "Agile Software Development using Scrum". The team lead explained the point of Agile was to reduce the workload of the senior developer, with another senior developer and the manager present. It's incredible to me how a single person can strongly influence the direction of an entire team.  Let alone if Scrum comes down as some managerial decree onto a functioning team who have no idea what it is.  Pity the fool. On the bright side, I am now an expert at drawing Visio process flows.  And I have some gentle advice for any first-level managers: If you preside over a team process change, it's beneficial to start the discussion on how the team will work as early as possible.  You should have a vision for this and guide the discussion, even if decisions are weeks away.  Don't always root for the underdog.  It's been my experience that managers who see themselves as compassionate and caring spend a great deal of time understanding and advocating for the one person on the team who feels left out.  Remember that by focusing on this one person you risk alienating the rest of the team, allow tension to build, and delay the resolution of the problem. My way would have been to decree Scrum, force all of my processes on everyone else, and use the past three months ironing out the kinks.  Which takes us all the way back to point number one. Technorati tags: Scrum Scrum Process Scrum and Waterfall

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• ASP.Net or WPF(C#)?

  - by Rachel

  Our team is divided on this and I wanted to get some third-party opinions. We are building an application and cannot decide if we want to use .Net WPF Desktop Application with a WCF server, or ASP.Net web app using jQuery. I thought I'd ask the question here, with some specs, and see what the pros/cons of using either side would be. I have my own favorite and feel I am biased. Ideally we want to build the initial release of the software as fast as we can, then slow down and take time to build in the additional features/components we want later on. Above all we want the software to be fast. Users go through records all day long and delays in loading records or refreshing screens kills their productivity. Application Details: I'm estimating around 100 different screens for initial version, with plans for a lot of additional screens being added on later after the initial release. We are looking to use two-way communication for reminder and event systems Currently has to support around 100 users, although we've been told to allow for growth up to 500 users We have multiple locations Items to consider (maybe not initially in some cases but in future releases): Room for additional components to be added after initial release (there are a lot of of these... perhaps work here than the initial application) Keyboard navigation Performance is a must Production Speed to initial version Low maintenance overhead Future support Softphone/Scanner integration Our Developers: We have 1 programmer who has been learning WPF the past few months and was the one who suggested we use WPF for this. We have a 2nd programmer who is familiar with ASP.Net and who may help with the project in the future, although he will not be working on it much up until the initial release since his time is spent maintaining our current software. There is me, who has worked with both and am comfortable in either We have an outside company doing the project management, and they are an ASP.Net company. We plan on hiring 1-2 others, however we need to know what direction we are going in first Environment: General users are on Windows 2003 server with Terminal Services. They connect using WYSE thin-clients over an RDP connection. Admin staff has their own PCs with XP or higher. Users are allowed to specify their own resolution although they are limited to using IE as the web browser. Other locations connects to our network over a MPLS connection Based on that, what would you choose and why? I am asking here instead of SO because I am looking for opinions and not answers

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• When should complexity be removed?

  - by ElGringoGrande

  Prematurely introducing complexity by implementing design patterns before they are needed is not good practice. But if you follow all (or even most of) the SOLID principles and use common design patterns you will introduce some complexity as features and requirements are added or changed to keep your design as maintainable and flexible as needed. However once that complexity is introduced and working like a champ when do you removed it? Example. I have an application written for a client. When originally created there where several ways to give raises to employees. I used the strategy pattern and factory to keep the whole process nice and clean. Over time certain raise methods where added or removed by the application owner. Time passes and new owner takes over. This new owner is hard nosed, keeps everything simple and only has one single way to give a raise. The complexity needed by the strategy pattern is no longer needed. If I where to code this from the requirements as they are now I would not introduce this extra complexity (but make sure I could introduce it with little or no work should the need arise). So do I remove the strategy implementation now? I don't think this new owner will ever change how raises are given. But the application itself has demonstrated that this could happen. Of course this is just one example in an application where a new owner takes over and has simplified many processes. I could remove dozens of classes, interfaces and factories and make the whole application much more simple. Note that the current implementation does works just fine and the owner is happy with it (and surprised and even happier that I was able to implement her changes so quickly because of the discussed complexity). I admit that a small part of this doubt is because it is highly likely the new owner isn't going to use me any longer. I don't really care that somebody else will take this over since it has not been a big income generator. But I do care about 2 (related) things I care a bit that the new maintainer will have to think a bit harder when trying to understand the code. Complexity is complexity and I don't want to anger the psycho maniac coming after me. But even more I worry about a competitor seeing this complexity and thinking I just implement design patterns to pad my hours on jobs. Then spreading this rumor to hurt my other business. (I have heard this mentioned.) So... In general should previously needed complexity be removed even though it works and there has been a historically demonstrated need for the complexity but you have no indication that it will be needed in the future? Even if the question above is generally answered "no" is it wise to remove this "un-needed" complexity if handing off the project to a competitor (or stranger)?

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• Is there a better term than "smoothness" or "granularity" to describe this language feature?

  - by Chris Stevens

  One of the best things about programming is the abundance of different languages. There are general purpose languages like C++ and Java, as well as little languages like XSLT and AWK. When comparing languages, people often use things like speed, power, expressiveness, and portability as the important distinguishing features. There is one characteristic of languages I consider to be important that, so far, I haven't heard [or been able to come up with] a good term for: how well a language scales from writing tiny programs to writing huge programs. Some languages make it easy and painless to write programs that only require a few lines of code, e.g. task automation. But those languages often don't have enough power to solve large problems, e.g. GUI programming. Conversely, languages that are powerful enough for big problems often require far too much overhead for small problems. This characteristic is important because problems that look small at first frequently grow in scope in unexpected ways. If a programmer chooses a language appropriate only for small tasks, scope changes can require rewriting code from scratch in a new language. And if the programmer chooses a language with lots of overhead and friction to solve a problem that stays small, it will be harder for other people to use and understand than necessary. Rewriting code that works fine is the single most wasteful thing a programmer can do with their time, but using a bazooka to kill a mosquito instead of a flyswatter isn't good either. Here are some of the ways this characteristic presents itself. Can be used interactively - there is some environment where programmers can enter commands one by one Requires no more than one file - neither project files nor makefiles are required for running in batch mode Can easily split code across multiple files - files can refeence each other, or there is some support for modules Has good support for data structures - supports structures like arrays, lists, and especially classes Supports a wide variety of features - features like networking, serialization, XML, and database connectivity are supported by standard libraries Here's my take on how C#, Python, and shell scripting measure up. Python scores highest. Feature C# Python shell scripting --------------- --------- --------- --------------- Interactive poor strong strong One file poor strong strong Multiple files strong strong moderate Data structures strong strong poor Features strong strong strong Is there a term that captures this idea? If not, what term should I use? Here are some candidates. Scalability - already used to decribe language performance, so it's not a good idea to overload it in the context of language syntax Granularity - expresses the idea of being good just for big tasks versus being good for big and small tasks, but doesn't express anything about data structures Smoothness - expresses the idea of low friction, but doesn't express anything about strength of data structures or features Note: Some of these properties are more correctly described as belonging to a compiler or IDE than the language itself. Please consider these tools collectively as the language environment. My question is about how easy or difficult languages are to use, which depends on the environment as well as the language.

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• BAM Data Control in multiple ADF Faces Components

  - by [email protected]

  As we know Oracle BAM data control instance sharing is not supported.When two or more ADF Faces components must display the same data, and are bound to the same Oracle BAM data control definition, we have to make sure that we wrap each ADF Faces component in an ADF task flow, and set the Data Control Scope to isolated. This blog will show a small sample to demonstrate this. In this sample we will create a Pie and Bar using same BAM DC, such that both components use same Data control but have isolated scope.This sample can be downloaded  fromSample1.zip Set-up: Create a BAM data control using employees DO (sample) Steps: Right click on View Controller project and select "New->ADF Task Flow" Check "Create Bounded Task Flow" and give some meaningful name (ex:EmpPieTF.xml ) to the TaskFlow(TF) and click on "OK"CreateTF.bmpFrom the "Components Palette", drag and drop "View" into the task flow diagram. Give a meaningful name to the view. Double Click and Click "Ok" for  "Create New JSF Page Fragment" From "Data Controls" drag and drop "Employees->Query"  into this jsff page as "Graph->Pie" (Pie: Sales_Number and Slices: Salesperson) Repeat step 1 through 4 for another Task Flow (ex: EmpBarTF). From "Data Controls" drag and drop "Employees->Query"  into this jsff page as "Graph->Bar" (Bars :Sales_Number and X-axis : Salesperson). Open the Taskflow created in step 2. In the Structure Pane, right click on "Task Flow Definition -EmpPieTF" Click "Insert inside Task Flow Definition - EmpPieTF -> ADF Task Flow -> Data Control Scope". Click "OK"TFDCScope.bmpFor the "Data Control Scope", In the Property Inspector ->General section, change data control scope from Shared to Isolated. Repeat step 8 through 11 for the 2nd Task flow created. Now create a new jspx page example: Main.jspxDrag and drop both the Task flows (ex: "EmpPieTF" and "EmpBarTF") as regions. Surround with panel components as needed.Run the page Main.jspxMainPage.bmpNow when the page runs although both components are created using same Data control the bindings are not shared and each component will have a separate instance of the data control.

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• Sqlite &amp; Entity Framework 4

  - by Dane Morgridge

  I have been working on a few client app projects in my spare time that need to persist small amounts of data and have been looking for an easy to use embedded database.  I really like db4o but I'm not wanting to open source this particular project so it was not an option.  Then I remembered that there was an ADO.NET provider for sqlite.  Being a fan of sqlite in general, I downloaded it and gave it an install.  The installer added tooling support for both Visual Studio 2008 & 2010 which is nice because I am working almost exclusively in 2010 at the moment.  I noticed that the provider also had support for Entity Framework, but not specifically v4.  I created a database using the tools that get installed with Visual Studio and all seemed to work fine.  I went on to create an Entity Framework context and selected the sqlite database and to my surprise it worked with out any problems.  The model showed up just like it would for any database and so I started to write a little code to test and then.. BAM!.. Exception. "Mixed mode assembly is built against version 'v2.0.50727' of the runtime and cannot be loaded in the 4.0 runtime without additional configuration information." A quick bit of searching on Bing found the answer.  To get it working, you need to include the following code in your web.config file: 1: <startup useLegacyV2RuntimeActivationPolicy="true"> 2: <supportedRuntime version="v4.0" /> 3: </startup> And then everything magically works.  Entity Framework 4 features worked, like lazy loading and even the POCO templates worked.  The only thing that didn't work was the model first development.  The SQL generated was for SQL Server and of course wouldn't run on sqlite without some modifications. The only other oddity I found was that in order to have an auto incrementing id, you have to use the full integer data type for sqlite; a regular int won't do the trick.  This translates to an Int64, or a long when working with it in Entity Framework.  Not a big deal, but something you need to be aware of. All in all, I am quite impressed with the Entity Framework support I found with sqlite.  I wasn't really expecting much at all, and I was pleasantly surprised. I downloaded the ADO.NET sqlite provider from http://sqlite.phxsoftware.com/.  If you want to use an embedded database with Entity Framework, give it a look.  It will be well worth your time.

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• How do you structure computer science University notes?

  - by Sai Perchard

  I am completing a year of postgraduate study in CS next semester. I am finishing a law degree this year, and I will use this to briefly explain what I mean when I refer to the 'structure' of University notes. My preferred structure for authoring law notes: Word Two columns 0.5cm margins (top, right, bottom, middle, left) Body text (10pt, regular), 3 levels of headings (14/12/10pt, bold), 3 levels of bulleted lists Color A background for cases Color B background for legislation I find that it's crucial to have a good structure from the outset. My key advice to a law student would be to ensure styles allows cases and legislation to be easily identified from supporting text, and not to include too much detail regarding the facts of cases. More than 3 levels of headings is too deep. More than 3 levels of a bulleted list is too deep. In terms of CS, I am interested in similar advice; for example, any strategies that have been successfully employed regarding structure, and general advice regarding note taking. Has latex proved better than Word? Code would presumably need to be stylistically differentiated, and use a monospaced font - perhaps code could be written in TextMate so that it could be copied to retain syntax highlighting? (Are notes even that useful in a CS degree? I am tempted to simply use a textbook. They are crucial in law.) I understand that different people may employ varying techniques and that people will have personal preferences, however I am interested in what these different techniques are. Update Thank you for the responses so far. To clarify, I am not suggesting that the approach should be comparable to that I employ for law. I could have been clearer. The consensus so far seems to be - just learn it. Structure of notes/notes themselves are not generally relevant. This is what I was alluding to when I said I was just tempted to use a textbook. Re the comment that said textbooks are generally useless - I strongly disagree. Sure, perhaps the recommended textbook is useless. But if I'm going to learn a programming language, I will (1) identify what I believe to be the best textbook, and (2) read it. I was unsure if the combination of theory with code meant that lecture notes may be a more efficient way to study for an exam. I imagine that would depend on the subject. A subject specifically on a programming language, reading a textbook and coding would be my preferred approach. But I was unsure if, given a subject containing substantive theory that may not be covered in a single textbook, people may have preferences regarding note taking and structure.

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• Create Image Maps with GIMP

  - by SGWellens

  Having a clickable image in a web page is not a big deal. Having an image in a web page with clickable hotspots is a big deal. The powerful GIMP editor has a tool to make creating clickable hotspots much easier. GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. Its home page and download links are here: http://www.gimp.org/ (it is completely free). Beware: GIMP is an extraordinarily advanced and powerful image editor. If you wish to use it for general image editing tasks, you have a steep learning curve to climb. FYI: I used it to create the shadows you see on the images below. Fortunately, the tool to make Image Maps is separate from the main program. To start, open an image with GIMP or, drag and drop an image onto the GIMP main window. I'm using the image of a bar graph. Next, we have to find the Image Map tool and launch it (Filters->Web->Image Map…): Why is the Image Map tool under Filters and not Tools? I don't know. It's mystery—much like the Loch Ness Monster, the Bermuda Triangle, or why my socks keep disappearing when I do laundry. I swear I've got twenty single unmatched socks. But I digress… Here is what the Image Map tool looks like: If we click the blue 'I' button, we can add information to the Image Map: Now we'll use the rectangle tool to create some clickable hotspots. Select the Blue Rectangle tool, drag a rectangle, click when done and you'll get something like this: You can also make circle/oval and polygon areas. You can edit all the parameters of an image map area after drawing it. Rectangle settings (for fine tweaking): JavaScript functions (it's up to you to write them): Here is a setup with two rectangles and one polygon area: When you hit save a map file is generated that looks something like this: Paste the contents into a web page and you are almost there. I made some tweaks before it became usable: Replaced &apos; with apostrophes in the javascript functions. Changed the image path so it would find the image in my images directory Tweaked the href urls. Added Title="Some Text" to get tool tips. Cleaned out the comments. Result: The final markup (with JavaScript function): function ImageMapMouseHover(Msg) { $("#Label1").html(Msg); } It may seem like a lot of bother but, the tool does the heavy lifting: i.e. the coordinates. Getting the regions positioned and sized is easy using a visual tool…much better than doing it by hand. This, of course, isn't a full treatise on the tool but it should give you enough information to decide if it's helpful. I hope someone finds this useful Steve Wellens

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• PHP install sqlite3 extension

  - by Kevin

  We are using PHP 5.3.6 here, but we used the --without-sqlite3 command when compiling PHP. (It stands in the 'Configure Command' column). But, it is very risky to recompile PHP on that server; there are many visitors. How can we install/use sqlite3? Regards, Kevin [EDIT] yum repolist gives: Loaded plugins: fastestmirror Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile * base: mirror.nl.leaseweb.net * extras: mirror.nl.leaseweb.net * updates: mirror.nl.leaseweb.net repo id repo name status base CentOS-5 - Base 3,566 extras CentOS-5 - Extras 237 updates CentOS-5 - Updates 376 repolist: 4,179 rpm -qa | grep php gives: php-pdo-5.3.6-1.w5 php-mysql-5.3.6-1.w5 psa-php5-configurator-1.5.3-cos5.build95101022.10 php-mbstring-5.3.6-1.w5 php-imap-5.3.6-1.w5 php-cli-5.3.6-1.w5 php-gd-5.3.6-1.w5 php-5.3.6-1.w5 php-common-5.3.6-1.w5 php-xml-5.3.6-1.w5 php -i | grep sqlite gives: PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/lib64/php/modules/sqlite3.so' - /usr/lib64/php/modules/sqlite3.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory in Unknown on line 0 Configure Command => './configure' '--build=x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu' '--host=x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu' '--target=x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu' '--program-prefix=' '--prefix=/usr' '--exec-prefix=/usr' '--bindir=/usr/bin' '--sbindir=/usr/sbin' '--sysconfdir=/etc' '--datadir=/usr/share' '--includedir=/usr/include' '--libdir=/usr/lib64' '--libexecdir=/usr/libexec' '--localstatedir=/var' '--sharedstatedir=/usr/com' '--mandir=/usr/share/man' '--infodir=/usr/share/info' '--cache-file=../config.cache' '--with-libdir=lib64' '--with-config-file-path=/etc' '--with-config-file-scan-dir=/etc/php.d' '--disable-debug' '--with-pic' '--disable-rpath' '--without-pear' '--with-bz2' '--with-exec-dir=/usr/bin' '--with-freetype-dir=/usr' '--with-png-dir=/usr' '--with-xpm-dir=/usr' '--enable-gd-native-ttf' '--without-gdbm' '--with-gettext' '--with-gmp' '--with-iconv' '--with-jpeg-dir=/usr' '--with-openssl' '--with-pcre-regex=/usr' '--with-zlib' '--with-layout=GNU' '--enable-exif' '--enable-ftp' '--enable-magic-quotes' '--enable-sockets' '--enable-sysvsem' '--enable-sysvshm' '--enable-sysvmsg' '--with-kerberos' '--enable-ucd-snmp-hack' '--enable-shmop' '--enable-calendar' '--without-mime-magic' '--without-sqlite' '--without-sqlite3' '--with-libxml-dir=/usr' '--enable-xml' '--with-system-tzdata' '--enable-force-cgi-redirect' '--enable-pcntl' '--with-imap=shared' '--with-imap-ssl' '--enable-mbstring=shared' '--enable-mbregex' '--with-gd=shared' '--enable-bcmath=shared' '--enable-dba=shared' '--with-db4=/usr' '--with-xmlrpc=shared' '--with-ldap=shared' '--with-ldap-sasl' '--with-mysql=shared,/usr' '--with-mysqli=shared,/usr/bin/mysql_config' '--enable-dom=shared' '--with-pgsql=shared' '--enable-wddx=shared' '--with-snmp=shared,/usr' '--enable-soap=shared' '--with-xsl=shared,/usr' '--enable-xmlreader=shared' '--enable-xmlwriter=shared' '--with-curl=shared,/usr' '--enable-fastcgi' '--enable-pdo=shared' '--with-pdo-odbc=shared,unixODBC,/usr' '--with-pdo-mysql=shared,/usr' '--with-pdo-pgsql=shared,/usr' '--with-pdo-sqlite=shared,/usr' '--with-pdo-dblib=shared,/usr' '--enable-json=shared' '--enable-zip=shared' '--with-readline' '--with-pspell=shared' '--enable-phar=shared' '--with-mcrypt=shared,/usr' '--with-tidy=shared,/usr' '--with-mssql=shared,/usr' '--enable-sysvmsg=shared' '--enable-sysvshm=shared' '--enable-sysvsem=shared' '--enable-posix=shared' '--with-unixODBC=shared,/usr' '--enable-fileinfo=shared' '--enable-intl=shared' '--with-icu-dir=/usr' '--with-recode=shared,/usr' /etc/php.d/pdo_sqlite.ini, /etc/php.d/sqlite3.ini, PHP Warning: Unknown: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'Europe/Berlin' for 'CET/1.0/no DST' instead in Unknown on line 0 PDO drivers => mysql, sqlite pdo_sqlite PWD => /root/sqlite _SERVER["PWD"] => /root/sqlite _ENV["PWD"] => /root/sqlite

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• Oracle Announces Availability of Oracle Exaskeleton with Extreme Scale

  - by Bruce Tierney

  The World’s First Human Scale Body Surface (HSBS) Designed to Toughen Spineless Wimps April 1, 2012 Building on the success of Oracle Exalogic, Oracle Exadata, and Oracle Exalytics, Oracle today announced the general availability of Oracle Exaskeleton, toughening up spineless wimps across the globe through the introduction of extreme scalability over the human body leveraging a revolutionary new technology called Human Scale Body Surface (HSBS). First Customer Ship (FCS) was received by the little known and mostly unsuccessful superhero Awkwardman. After applying Oracle Exaskeleton with extreme scale, he has since rebranded himself as Aquaman. Said Aquaman, “I used to feel so helpless in my skin…now I feel like…well…a highly scaled Engineered System thanks to Oracle!” Thousand of meek and mild individuals eagerly lined up outside Oracle Corporation’s Redwood Shores office to purchase the new Oracle Exaskeleton, with the hope of finally gaining the spine they never had. Unfortunately for the individuals, a bully was spotted allegedly kicking the sand covering the beaches of Redwood Shores into the still spineless Exaskeleton hopefuls. Supporting Quotes “Industry analysts are inquiring if Oracle Exaskeleton is a radical departure from Oracle’s traditional enterprise focus into new markets”, said Oracle representative Sabrina Twich, “Oracle has extensive expertise in unified backbone solutions for application infrastructures…this is simply a new port to the human body combining our Business Intelligence (BI) and RDBC (Remote Direct Brain Cell) technologies.” “With this release of Oracle Exaskeleton, Oracle has redefined scalability. Software and hardware vendors had it all wrong” said the Director of Oracle Exaskeleton, “Scalability for hardware is like…um…you know…so scale-ful. No, wait…can I say that again? I didn’t get that right…Scalability is hardware-on-demand with public and private…hybrid clouds, no…<long pause>…Scalability for… nevermind, I don’t want to be in this stupid press release anyway” Releases An upcoming Oracle Exaskeleton service pack release will include a new datasheet with an extensive library of three-letter acronyms (TLAs) as well as the introduction of more four-letter acronyms (FLAs) since technologies vendors have used up almost all of the 17,576 TLA permutations (TLAPs). About Oracle Oracle engineers hardware and software to work together in the cloud and in your data center. It would be an amazing coincidence if any of this is true in some secret Oracle lab, but I doubt it. Trademarks Really…you’re still reading this? Cool! Aquaman - First Customer Ship (FCS) - Oracle Exaskeleton

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• SharePoint 2010 Hosting - ASPHostPortal :: Installing SSRS 2008 R2 on SharePoint 2010

  - by mbridge

  What do you need first? Please download SQL Server® 2008 R2 November CTP Reporting Services Add-in for Microsoft SharePoint® Technologies 2010 and please follow this steps: 1. Install a SharePoint technology instance. (Already did this when installing PowerPivot with SharePoint) 2. Install SQL Server 2008 R2 November CTP Reporting Services and specify that the report server use SharePoint Integrated mode 3. Configure Reporting Services 4. Download the Reporting Services Add-in by clicking the rsSharePoint.msi link later on this page. To start the installation immediately, click Run After installing Reporting services and the add-in your reporting server is ready to be integrated with SharePoint, in SharePoint 2010 we have some new admin screens. To integrate go to central admin, general application settings: When you successfully installed the add-in a reporting services icon will be there. Click Reporting Services Integration: Add the report server web service url (To get the URL, open the Reporting Services Configuration tool, connect to the report server, and click Web Service URL. Click the URL to verify it works. Copy the URL and paste it into Report Server Web Service URL.), select your authentication mode (windows authentication is prefered). Add a username and password of your admin account. Click ok to configure and start the integration. After the installation you can set the reporting services default. What is changed in SP2010 is that there isn’t a report library available. You have to add content types to a default library. So go to a site collection, site actions, View all site content. Create a Asset library: Now we have to make sure we can add reports to the library. To do this we have to add content types: Open the library, click on library tools, library settings, Under Content Types, click Add from existing site content types. In the Select Content Types section, in Select site content types from, click the arrow to select Reporting Services. In the Available Site Content Types list, click Report Builder, Report Data Source and Report and then click Add to move the selected content type to the Content types to add list. Now we are ready to upload reports and execute them from within our webparts: Another interesting post: - Integrating SharePoint 2010 and SQL 2008 R2

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• Separating physics and game logic from UI code

  - by futlib

  I'm working on a simple block-based puzzle game. The game play consists pretty much of moving blocks around in the game area, so it's a trivial physics simulation. My implementation, however, is in my opinion far from ideal and I'm wondering if you can give me any pointers on how to do it better. I've split the code up into two areas: Game logic and UI, as I did with a lot of puzzle games: The game logic is responsible for the general rules of the game (e.g. the formal rule system in chess) The UI displays the game area and pieces (e.g. chess board and pieces) and is responsible for animations (e.g. animated movement of chess pieces) The game logic represents the game state as a logical grid, where each unit is one cell's width/height on the grid. So for a grid of width 6, you can move a block of width 2 four times until it collides with the boundary. The UI takes this grid, and draws it by converting logical sizes into pixel sizes (that is, multiplies it by a constant). However, since the game has hardly any game logic, my game logic layer [1] doesn't have much to do except collision detection. Here's how it works: Player starts to drag a piece UI asks game logic for the legal movement area of that piece and lets the player drag it within that area Player lets go of a piece UI snaps the piece to the grid (so that it is at a valid logical position) UI tells game logic the new logical position (via mutator methods, which I'd rather avoid) I'm not quite happy with that: I'm writing unit tests for my game logic layer, but not the UI, and it turned out all the tricky code is in the UI: Stopping the piece from colliding with others or the boundary and snapping it to the grid. I don't like the fact that the UI tells the game logic about the new state, I would rather have it call a movePieceLeft() method or something like that, as in my other games, but I didn't get far with that approach, because the game logic knows nothing about the dragging and snapping that's possible in the UI. I think the best thing to do would be to get rid of my game logic layer and implement a physics layer instead. I've got a few questions regarding that: Is such a physics layer common, or is it more typical to have the game logic layer do this? Would the snapping to grid and piece dragging code belong to the UI or the physics layer? Would such a physics layer typically work with pixel sizes or with some kind of logical unit, like my game logic layer? I've seen event-based collision detection in a game's code base once, that is, the player would just drag the piece, the UI would render that obediently and notify the physics system, and the physics system would call a onCollision() method on the piece once a collision is detected. What is more common? This approach or asking for the legal movement area first? [1] layer is probably not the right word for what I mean, but subsystem sounds overblown and class is misguiding, because each layer can consist of several classes.

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• SQL SERVER – Thinking about Deprecated, Discontinued Features and Breaking Changes while Upgrading to SQL Server 2012 – Guest Post by Nakul Vachhrajani

  - by pinaldave

  Nakul Vachhrajani is a Technical Specialist and systems development professional with iGATE having a total IT experience of more than 7 years. Nakul is an active blogger with BeyondRelational.com (150+ blogs), and can also be found on forums at SQLServerCentral and BeyondRelational.com. Nakul has also been a guest columnist for SQLAuthority.com and SQLServerCentral.com. Nakul presented a webcast on the “Underappreciated Features of Microsoft SQL Server” at the Microsoft Virtual Tech Days Exclusive Webcast series (May 02-06, 2011) on May 06, 2011. He is also the author of a research paper on Database upgrade methodologies, which was published in a CSI journal, published nationwide. In addition to his passion about SQL Server, Nakul also contributes to the academia out of personal interest. He visits various colleges and universities as an external faculty to judge project activities being carried out by the students. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are his own personal opinions and do not represent his employer’s view in anyway. Blog | LinkedIn | Twitter | Google+ Let us hear the thoughts of Nakul in first person - Those who have been following my blogs would be aware that I am recently running a series on the database engine features that have been deprecated in Microsoft SQL Server 2012. Based on the response that I have received, I was quite surprised to know that most of the audience found these to be breaking changes, when in fact, they were not! It was then that I decided to write a little piece on how to plan your database upgrade such that it works with the next version of Microsoft SQL Server. Please note that the recommendations made in this article are high-level markers and are intended to help you think over the specific steps that you would need to take to upgrade your database. Refer the documentation – Understand the terms Change is the only constant in this world. Therefore, whenever customer requirements, newer architectures and designs require software vendors to make a change to the keywords, functions, etc; they ensure that they provide their end users sufficient time to migrate over to the new standards before dropping off the old ones. Microsoft does that too with it’s Microsoft SQL Server product. Whenever a new SQL Server release is announced, it comes with a list of the following features: Breaking changes These are changes that would break your currently running applications, scripts or functionalities that are based on earlier version of Microsoft SQL Server These are mostly features whose behavior has been changed keeping in mind the newer architectures and designs Lesson: These are the changes that you need to be most worried about! Discontinued features These features are no longer available in the associated version of Microsoft SQL Server These features used to be “deprecated” in the prior release Lesson: Without these changes, your database would not be compliant/may not work with the version of Microsoft SQL Server under consideration Deprecated features These features are those that are still available in the current version of Microsoft SQL Server, but are scheduled for removal in a future version. These may be removed in either the next version or any other future version of Microsoft SQL Server The features listed for deprecation will compose the list of discontinued features in the next version of SQL Server Lesson: Plan to make necessary changes required to remove/replace usage of the deprecated features with the latest recommended replacements Once a feature appears on the list, it moves from bottom to the top, i.e. it is first marked as “Deprecated” and then “Discontinued”. We know of “Breaking change” comes later on in the product life cycle. What this means is that if you want to know what features would not work with SQL Server 2012 (and you are currently using SQL Server 2008 R2), you need to refer the list of breaking changes and discontinued features in SQL Server 2012. Use the tools! There are a lot of tools and technologies around us, but it is rarely that I find teams using these tools religiously and to the best of their potential. Below are the top two tools, from Microsoft, that I use every time I plan a database upgrade. The SQL Server Upgrade Advisor Ever since SQL Server 2005 was announced, Microsoft provides a small, very light-weight tool called the “SQL Server upgrade advisor”. The upgrade advisor analyzes installed components from earlier versions of SQL Server, and then generates a report that identifies issues to fix either before or after you upgrade. The analysis examines objects that can be accessed, such as scripts, stored procedures, triggers, and trace files. Upgrade Advisor cannot analyze desktop applications or encrypted stored procedures. Refer the links towards the end of the post to know how to get the Upgrade Advisor. The SQL Server Profiler Another great tool that you can use is the one most SQL Server developers & administrators use often – the SQL Server profiler. SQL Server Profiler provides functionality to monitor the “Deprecation” event, which contains: Deprecation announcement – equivalent to features to be deprecated in a future release of SQL Server Deprecation final support – equivalent to features to be deprecated in the next release of SQL Server You can learn more using the links towards the end of the post. A basic checklist There are a lot of finer points that need to be taken care of when upgrading your database. But, it would be worth-while to identify a few basic steps in order to make your database compliant with the next version of SQL Server: Monitor the current application workload (on a test bed) via the Profiler in order to identify usage of features marked as Deprecated If none appear, you are all set! (This almost never happens) Note down all the offending queries and feature usages Run analysis sessions using the SQL Server upgrade advisor on your database Based on the inputs from the analysis report and Profiler trace sessions, Incorporate solutions for the breaking changes first Next, incorporate solutions for the discontinued features Revisit and document the upgrade strategy for your deployment scenarios Revisit the fall-back, i.e. rollback strategies in case the upgrades fail Because some programming changes are dependent upon the SQL server version, this may need to be done in consultation with the development teams Before any other enhancements are incorporated by the development team, send out the database changes into QA QA strategy should involve a comparison between an environment running the old version of SQL Server against the new one Because minimal application changes have gone in (essential changes for SQL Server version compliance only), this would be possible As an ongoing activity, keep incorporating changes recommended as per the deprecated features list As a DBA, update your coding standards to ensure that the developers are using ANSI compliant code – this code will require a change only if the ANSI standard changes Remember this: Change management is a continuous process. Keep revisiting the product release notes and incorporate recommended changes to stay prepared for the next release of SQL Server. May the power of SQL Server be with you! Links Referenced in this post Breaking changes in SQL Server 2012: Link Discontinued features in SQL Server 2012: Link Get the upgrade advisor from the Microsoft Download Center at: Link Upgrade Advisor page on MSDN: Link Profiler: Review T-SQL code to identify objects no longer supported by Microsoft: Link Upgrading to SQL Server 2012 by Vinod Kumar: Link Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Upgrade

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• Before the Summit of 2012

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

  Today, Monday, was the first day of the PASS Summit Preconference training events, but instead I spent the day at the free SQL in the City event put on by Red Gate. For me this was not a financial decision (pre-con sessions cost extra above the general Summit registration) but rather a matter of interest.  I had already included money for pre-cons in this year’s training budget, but none of them really stood out to me, so even if the Red-Gate event were not going on at the same time, I probably would not have gone to any pre-cons this year.  However, the topics being presented at the SQL in the City event were of great interest to me.  There promised to be good information on Continuous Integration and automated deployment of database changes, which lately has been a real hot topic at my work.  And indeed, Red-Gate announced the release of a new tool (still in Early Access Program…a.k.a. Beta) which is called the Deployment Manager.  Since we are in the middle of a TFS implementation project, it will be interesting to see how this plays out and compares to what we put together with the automated builds in TFS.  But, as I understand it, the primary focus of Deployment Manager is not to be the Build process (Red Gate uses JetBrains’ Team City for that in their shop) but rather to aid in the deployment of those build packages, as well as providing easy rollback and a good visualization of which versions of software are in which environments.  It looks promising and I’ve already downloaded the installer package to play with it later. Overall, I was quite impressed with the SQL in the City event.  Having heard many current and past members of the PASS Board of Directors describe the challenges of putting on a large conference, and the growing pains that the PASS Summit has gone through, I am even more impressed that the Red Gate event ran as smoothly as it did.  And it is quite impressive the amount of money that Red Gate must have spent given that this was a no-charge event to attend, they had a very nice hot lunch, and the after-event drinks celebration.  Well done, folks! Of course it was great to hear from a variety of speakers.  Today I listened to some folks from Red Gate like Grant Fritchey (blog | @GFritchey) and David Atkinson (Product Manager for SQL Source Control and now the Deployment Manager tool set); and also Brent Ozar (blog | @BrentO) and Buck Woody (blog | @BuckWoody).  By the way, if you have never seen either Brent or Buck speak, you really should.  Different styles, but both are very entertaining and educational at the same time.  I love Buck’s sense of humor (here’s a tip…don’t be late to Buck’s session or you’ll become part of the presentation) and I praise Brent’s slides.  Brent’s style very much reminds me of that espoused by Garr Reynolds on his Presentation Zen blog (and book) and I am impressed that he can make a technical presentation so engaging. It was a great day, a great way to kick off the week, and I am excited to get into the full Summit!

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