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How does the Trash Can work, and where can I find official documentation, reference, or specification for it?

- by MestreLion

When trying to manage trash can from mounted NTFS volumes, I ended up reading FreeDesktop.org's reference on it. Poking around and doing some tests, I realized Ubuntu/Gnome does not follow the specs 100%. Here's why: For non-/ partitions, it always uses <driveroot>/.Trash-<uid>, It never used <driveroot>/.Trash/<uid>, even when i created it in advance. While this works, it's annoying: if I have 15 users, I end up with 15 /.Trash-xxx folders in my drive, while the other approach would still give a single folder (with 15 sub-folders). That "pollution" in my drives is very unpleasant. And specs say "If an $topdir/.Trash directory is absent, an $topdir/.Trash-$uid directory is to be used". Well, it IS present, so why does it never use it? root trash does not work, at least not out of the box. Open nautilus as root and click on trash; it gives an error. Try to delete any file, it says "it can't move to trash". Ok, I know this can be fixed by creating /root/.local/share. But specs says "A “home trash” directory SHOULD be automatically created for any new user. If this directory is needed for a trashing operation but does not exist, the implementation SHOULD automatically create it, without any warnings or delays.". Why the error then? Bug? Why must I change /etc/fstab entries for mounted volumes, adding options like uid and guid, if the volumes are already mounted as RW for everyone? These are just some examples of deviation from the standard. So, the question is: "If Ubuntu does not adhere 100% to the spec, HOW exactly does the trash work? WHERE can i find a technical reference for Ubuntu's implementation of the trash?" By the way: if Ubuntu does happen to follow specs, please tell me what I am doing wrong, especially regarding the /.Trash-<uid> vs /.Trash/<uid> issue. Thanks! EDIT: Some more info: If a given fs has no support for the sticky bit (VFAT, NTFS), it probably doesn't have for permissions either (at least VFAT surely doesn't). So what prevents one user from purging / restoring other users' ./Trash-xxx ? If one can read/write his own Trash, one can do the same for the whole drive, including other's trashes, correct? Or does Gnome have some kind of "extra" protection on ./Trash-xxx folders on VFAT/NTFS fs? If Linux can "emulate" file permissions on NTFS mounting by editing /fstab uid and gid options, can it also "emulate" the sticky bit? I would really prefer to use /.Trash/xxx format... For the root issue: for the / partition, I can use trash as root, and it goes to /root/.local/shate/Trash. But if I click on Nautilus "Trash" (as root), I get an error. Don't you? So files are correctly trashed, but I can't access it. All I can do is manually "purge" them (by deleting files on /root/.local/shate/Trash), but restoring would be very tricky (opening info files and manually moving, etc.). For non-/ partitions (or at least for VFAT/NTFS), I can not even use trash as root: it does not create a ./Trash-0 folder, it simply says "Cannot trash, want to permanently delete?" Why? About fstab: i use it for a permanent mount for my NTFS partitions. I have several, and if not "pre-mounted" they really clutter the desktop and/or Nautilus. I'd rather have it pre-mounted, integrated in my fs, in mounts like /data , /windows/xp , /windows/vista , and so on, and leave /media and its "mount/unmount" flexibility just for truly removable drives. So, if Ubuntu/Gnome truly follows the spec, is there any way to fix the root issues and to "emulate" the sticky bit for (at least) my fstab'ed NTFS fixed partitions?

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New features in TFS Demo Setup 1.0.0.2

- by Tarun Arora

Release Notes – http://tfsdemosetup.codeplex.com/ | Download | Source Code | Report a Bug | Ideas Just pushed out the 2nd release of the TFS Demo setup on CodePlex, below a quick look at some of the new features/improvements in the tool… Details of the existing features can be found here. Feature 1 – Set up Work Items Queries as Team Favorites The task board looks cooler when the team favourite work item queries show up on the task board. The demo setup console application now has the ability to set up the work item queries as team favorites for you. If you want to see how you can add Team Favorites programmatically, refer to this blogpost here. Image 1 – Task board without Team Favorites Let’s see how the TFS Demo Setup application sets-up team favorites as part of the run… Open up the DemoDictionary.xml and you should be able to see the new node <TeamFavorites> this accepts multiple <TeamFavorite>. You simply need to specify the <Type> as Query and in the <Name> specify the name of the work item query that you would like added as a favorite. Image 2 – Highlighting the TeamFavorites block in DemoDictionary.xml So, when the demo set up application is run with the above config, work item queries “Blocked Tasks” and “Open Impediments” are added as team favorites. They then show up on the task board, as highlighted in the screen shot below. Image 3 – Team Favorites setup during the TFS demo setup app execution Feature 2 – Choose what you want to setup and exclude the rest I had a great feature request come in requesting the ability to exclude parts of the setup at the sole discretion of the executioner. To accommodate this, I have added an attribute with each block, the attribute “Run” accepts “true” or “false”. If you set the flag to true then at the time of execution that block would be considered for setup and if you set the flag to false, the block will be ignored during the setup. So, lets look at an example below… The attribute "Run” is set to true for TeamSettings, Team Favorites, TeamMembers and WorkItems. So, all of these would be setup as part of the demo setup application execution. Image 4 – New Attribute Run added to all blocks in DemoDictionary.xml If I did not want to recreate the team and did not want to add new work items but only wanted to add favorites and team members to the existing team “AgileChamps1” then I could simple run the application with below DemoDictionary.xml. Note – TeamSettings Run=”false” and WorkItems Run=”false”. Image 5 – TeamFavorites and TeamMembers set as true and others set to false Feature 3 – Usability Improvement If you try and assign a work item to a team member that does not exist then the application throws a nasty exception. This behaviour has now been changed, upon adding such a work item, the work items will be created and not assigned to any user. The work item id will be printed to the console making it simple for you to assign the work item manually. As you can see in the screen shot below, I am trying to assign the work item to a user “Tarun” and a user “v2” both are *not valid users in my team project collection* so the tool creates the work items and provides me the work item id and lets me know that since the user is invalid the work item could not be assigned to the user. Better user experience ae Image 6 – Behaviour if work item assigned to users are in valid users in team project That’s about it for the current release. I have some new features planned for the next release. Mean while if you have any ideas/comments please feel free to leave a comment. Stay tuned for more… Enjoy! Other posts on TFS Demo Setup can be found here.

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Oracle RightNow CX for Good Customer Experiences

- by Andreea Vaduva

Oracle RightNow CX is all about the customer experience, it’s about understanding what drives a good interaction and it’s about delivering a solution which works for our customers and by extension, their customers. One of the early guiding principles of Oracle RightNow was an 8-point strategy to providing good customer experiences. Establish a knowledge foundation Empowering the customer Empower employees Offer multi-channel choice Listen to the customer Design seamless experiences Engage proactively Measure and improve continuously The application suite provides all of the tools necessary to deliver a rewarding, repeatable and measurable relationship between business and customer. The Knowledge Authoring tool provides gap analysis, WYSIWIG editing (and includes HTML rich content for non-developers), multi-level categorisation, permission based publishing and Web self-service publishing. Oracle RightNow Customer Portal, is a complete web application framework that enables businesses to control their own end-user page branding experience, which in turn will allow customers to self-serve. The Contact Centre Experience Designer builds a combination of workspaces, agent scripting and guided assistances into a Desktop Workflow. These present an agent with the tools they need, at the time they need them, providing even the newest and least experienced advisors with consistently accurate and efficient information, whilst guiding them through the complexities of internal business processes. Oracle RightNow provides access points for customers to feedback about specific knowledge articles or about the support site in general. The system will generate ‘incidents’ based on the scoring of the comments submitted. This makes it easy to view and respond to customer feedback. It is vital, more now than ever, not to under-estimate the power of the social web – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube – they have the ability to cause untold amounts of damage to businesses with a single post – witness musician Dave Carroll and his protest song on YouTube, posted in response to poor customer services from an American airline. The first day saw 150,000 views and is currently at 12,011,375. The Times reported that within 4 days of the post, the airline’s stock price fell by 10 percent, which represented a cost to shareholders of $180 million dollars. It is a universally acknowledged fact, that when customers are unhappy, they will not come back, and, generally speaking, it only takes one bad experience to lose a customer. The idea that customer loyalty can be regained by using social media channels was the subject of a 2011 Survey commissioned by RightNow and conducted by Harris Interactive. The survey discovered that 68% of customers who posted a negative review about a holiday on a social networking site received a response from the business. It further found that 33% subsequently posted a positive review and 34% removed the original negative review. Cloud Monitor provides the perfect mechanism for seeing what is being said about a business on public Facebook pages, Twitter or YouTube posts; it allows agents to respond proactively – either by creating an Oracle RightNow incident or by using the same channel as the original post. This leaves step 8 – Measuring and Improving: How does a business know whether it’s doing the right thing? How does it know if its customers are happy? How does it know if its staff are being productive? How does it know if its staff are being effective? Cue Oracle RightNow Analytics – fully integrated across the entire platform – Service, Marketing and Sales – there are in excess of 800 standard reports. If this were not enough, a large proportion of the database has been made available via the administration console, allowing users without any prior database experience to write their own reports, format them and schedule them for e-mail delivery to a distribution list. It handles the complexities of table joins, and allows for the manipulation of data with ease. Oracle RightNow believes strongly in the customer owning their solution, and to provide the best foundation for success, Oracle University can give you the RightNow knowledge and skills you need. This is a selection of the courses offered: RightNow Customer Service Administration Rel 12.02 (3 days) Available as In Class and Live Virtual Class (Release 11.11 is available as In Class, Live Virtual Class and Training On Demand) This course familiarises users with the tasks and concepts needed to configure and maintain their system. RightNow Customer Portal Designer and Contact Center Experience Designer Administration Rel 12.02 (2 days) Available as In Class and Live Virtual Class (Release 11.11 is available as In Class, Live Virtual Class and Training On Demand) This course introduces basic CP structure and how to make changes to the look, feel and behaviour of their self-service pages RightNow Analytics Rel 12.02 (2 days) Available as In Class, Live Virtual Class and Training On Demand (Release 11.11 is available as In Class and Live Virtual Class) This course equips users with the skills necessary to understand data supplied by standard reports and to create custom reports RightNow Integration and Customization For Developers Rel 12.02 (5-days) Available as In Class and Live Virtual Class (Release 11.11 is available as In Class, Live Virtual Class and Training On Demand) This course is for experienced web developers and offers an introduction to Add-In development using the Desktop Add-In Framework and introduces the core knowledge that developers need to begin integrating Oracle RightNow CX with other systems A full list of courses offered can be found on the Oracle University website. For more information and course dates please get in contact with your local Oracle University team. On top of the Service components, the suite also provides marketing tools, complex survey creation and tracking and sales functionality. I’m a fan of the application, and I think I’ve made that clear: It’s completely geared up to providing customers with support at point of need. It can be configured to meet even the most stringent of business requirements. Oracle RightNow is passionate about, and committed to, providing the best customer experience possible. Oracle RightNow CX is the application that makes it possible. About the Author: Sarah Anderson worked for RightNow for 4 years in both in both a consulting and training delivery capacity. She is now a Senior Instructor with Oracle University, delivering the following Oracle RightNow courses: RightNow Customer Service Administration RightNow Analytics RightNow Customer Portal Designer and Contact Center Experience Designer Administration RightNow Marketing and Feedback

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Undefined fireball movement behavior

- by optimisez

Demonstration video I try to do after the player shoot 10 times of fireball, then delete all the fireball objects and recreate a 10 new set of fireball objects. I did it but there is a weird bug happens that sometimes the fireball will come out from top and move to the right after shooting a few times. All the 10 fireballs should follow the player all the time and all the fireball should come out from player even after a new set of fireballs is recreated. Any ideas to fix it? Variables typedef struct gameObject{ float X; float Y; int length; int height; bool action; }; // Fireball #define FIREBALL_NUM 10 LPDIRECT3DTEXTURE9 fireball = NULL; RECT fireballRect; gameObject *fireballDest = new gameObject[FIREBALL_NUM]; int iFireBallAnimation; int fireballCount = 0; Set up Fireball void setUpFireBall() { // Initialize destination rectangle, rectangle height and length for (int i = 0; i < FIREBALL_NUM; i++) { fireballDest[i].X = 0; fireballDest[i].Y = 0; fireballDest[i].length = fireballRect.right - fireballRect.left; fireballDest[i].height = fireballRect.bottom - fireballRect.top; } iFireBallAnimation = fireballRect.right - fireballRect.left; // Initialize boolean for (int i = 0; i < FIREBALL_NUM; i++) { fireballDest[i].action = false; } } Initialize fireball void initFireball() { hr = D3DXCreateTextureFromFileEx(d3dDevice, "fireball.png", 512, 512, D3DX_DEFAULT, NULL, D3DFMT_A8R8G8B8, D3DPOOL_MANAGED, D3DX_DEFAULT, D3DX_DEFAULT, D3DCOLOR_XRGB(255, 255, 0), NULL, NULL, &fireball); // Initialize source rectangle fireballRect.left = 0; fireballRect.top = 256; fireballRect.right = 64; fireballRect.bottom = 320; setUpFireBall(); } Update fireball void update() { updateAnimation(); updateAI(); updatePhysics(); updateGameState(); } void updatePhysics() { motion(); collison(); } void motion() { playerMove(); playerJump(); playerGravity(); shootFireball(); fireballFollowPlayer(); } void shootFireball() { if (keyArr['Z']) fireballDest[fireballCount].action = true; if (fireballDest[fireballCount].action) { fireballDest[fireballCount].X += 10; if (fireballDest[fireballCount].X > 800) fireballCount++; } } void fireballFollowPlayer() { for (int i = 0; i < FIREBALL_NUM; i++) { if (fireballDest[i].action == false) { fireballDest[i].X = playerDest.X - 30; fireballDest[i].Y = playerDest.Y - 14; } } } void updateGameState() { // When no more fireball left, rearm fireball if (fireballCount == FIREBALL_NUM) { delete[] fireballDest; fireballDest = new gameObject[10]; fireballCount = 0; setUpFireBall(); } } Render fireball void renderFireball() { for (int i = 0; i < FIREBALL_NUM; i++) { if (fireballDest[i].action) sprite->Draw(fireball, &fireballRect, NULL, &D3DXVECTOR3(fireballDest[i].X, fireballDest[i].Y, 0), D3DCOLOR_XRGB(255,255, 255)); } }

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Oracle CRM On Demand Release 24 is Generally Available

- by Richard Lefebvre

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 We are pleased to announce that Oracle CRM On Demand Release 24 is Generally Available as of October 25, 2013 Get smarter, more productive and the best value with Oracle CRM On Demand Release 24. Oracle CRM On Demand continues to be the most complete Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) CRM solution available. Now, with Release 24, organizations of all types and sizes benefit from actionable insight anywhere, anytime, as well as key enhancements in mobility, embedded social, analytics, integration and extensibility, and ease of use.Next Generation Mobile and Desktop Solutions : Oracle CRM On Demand Release 24 offers a complete set of mobile and desktop solutions that improve productivity by enabling reps to access and update information anywhere, anytime. Capabilities include: Oracle CRM On Demand Disconnected Mobile Sales (DMS) – A disconnected native iPad solution, DMS has been further streamlined mobile sales process by adding Structured Product Messaging to record brand specific call objectives, enhancements in HTML5 eDetailing including message response tracking and improvements in administration and configuration such as more field management options for read only fields, role management and enhanced logging. Oracle CRM On Demand Connected Mobile Sales. This add-on mobile service provides a configurable mobile solution on iOS, BlackBerry and now Android devices. You can access data from CRM On Demand in real time with a rich, native user experience, that is comfortable and familiar to current iOS, BlackBerry and Android users. New features also include Single Sign On to enhance security for mobile users. Oracle CRM On Demand Desktop: This application centralizes essential CRM information in the familiar Microsoft Outlook environment,increasing user adoption and decreasing training costs. Users can manage CRM data while disconnected, then synchronize bi-directionally when they are back on the network. New in Oracle CRM On Demand Desktop Version 3 is the ability to synchronize by Books of Business, and improved Online Lookup. Mobile Browser Support: The following mobile device browsers are now supported: Apple iPhone, Apple iPad, Windows 8 Tablets, and Google Android. Leverage the Social Enterprise Engaging customers via social channels is rapidly becoming a significant key to enhanced customer experience as it provides proactive customer service, targeted messaging and greater intimacy throughout the entire customer lifecycle. Listening to customers on the social channels can identify a customers’ sphere of influence and the real value they bring to their organization, or the impact they can have on the opportunity. Servicing the customer’s need is the first step towards loyalty to a brand, integrating with social channels allows us to maximize brand affinity and virally expand customer engagements thus increasing revenue. Oracle CRM On Demand is leveraging the Social Enterprise through its integration with Oracle’s Social Relationship Management (SRM) product suite by providing out-of-the-box integration with Social Engagement and Monitoring (SEM), Social Marketing (SM) and Oracle Social Network (OSN). With Oracle CRM On Demand Release 24, users are able to create a service request from a social post via SEM and have leads entered on a SM lead form automatically entered into Oracle CRM On Demand along with the campaign, streamlining the lead qualification process. Get Smarter with Actionable Insight The difference between making good decisions and great decisions depends heavily upon the quality, structure, and availability of information at hand. Oracle CRM On Demand Release 24 expands upon its industry-leading analytics capabilities to provide greater business insight than ever before. New capabilities include flexible permissions on analytics reports folders, allowing for read only access to reports, and additional field and object coverage. Get More Productive with Powerful Tools Oracle CRM On Demand Release 24 introduces a new set of powerful capabilities designed to maximize productivity. A significant new feature for customizing Oracle CRM On Demand is a JavaScript API. The JS API allows customers to add new buttons, suppress existing buttons and even change what happens when a user clicks an existing button. Other usability enhancements, such as personalized related information applets, extended case insensitive search provide users with better, more intuitive, experience. Additional privileges for viewing private activities and notes allow administrators to reassign records as needed, and Custom Object management. Workflow has been added to the Order Item object; and now tasks can be assigned to a relative user, such as an Account Owner, allowing more complex business processes to be automated and adhered to. Get the Best Value Oracle CRM On Demand delivers unprecedented value with the broadest set of capabilities from a single-provider solution, the industry’s lowest total cost of ownership, the most on-demand deployment options, the deepest CRM expertise and experience of any CRM provider, and the most secure CRM in the cloud. With Release 24, Oracle CRM On Demand now includes even more enterprise-grade security, integration, and extensibility features, along with enhanced industry editions to save you time and money. New features include: Business Process Administration: A new privilege has been added that allows administrators to override a Business Process Administration rule.This privilege permits users to edit a locked record, or unlock a record, in the event of a material change that needs to be reflected per corporatepolicy. Additionally, the Products Detailed object has been added to Business Process Administration, enabling record locking and logic to be applied. Expanded Integration: Oracle continues to improve Web Services each release, by adding more object coverage enabling customers and partners to easily integrate with CRM On Demand. Bottom Line Oracle CRM On Demand Release 24 enables organizations to get smarter, get more productive, and get the best value, period. For more information on Oracle CRM On Demand Release 24, please visit oracle.com/crmondemand

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Oracle Fusion Middleware gives you Choice and Portability for Public and Private Cloud

- by Michelle Kimihira

Author: Margaret Lee, Senior Director, Product Management, Oracle Fusion Middleware Cloud Computing allows customers to quickly develop and deploy applications in a shared environment. The environment can span across hardward (IaaS), foundation layer software (PaaS), and end-user software (SaaS). Cloud Computing provides compelling benefits in terms of business agility and IT cost savings. However, with complex, existing heterogeneous architectures, and concerns for security and manageability, enterprises are challenged to define their Cloud strategy. For most enterprises, the solution is a hybrid of private and public cloud. Fusion Middleware supports customers’ Cloud requirements through choice and portability. Fusion Middleware supports a variety of cloud development and deployment models: Oracle [Public] Cloud; customer private cloud; hybrid of these two, and traditional dedicated, on-premise model Customers can develop applications in any of these models and deployed in another, providing the flexibility and portability they need Oracle Cloud is a public cloud offering. Within Oracle Cloud, Fusion Middleware provides two key offerings include the Developer cloud service and Java cloud deployment service. Developer Cloud Service Simplify Development: Automated provisioned environment; pre-configured and integrated; web-based administration Deploy Automatically: Fully integrated with Oracle Cloud for Java deployment; workflow ensures build & test Collaborate & Manage: Fits any size team; integrated team source repository; continuous integration; task/defect tracking Integrated with all major IDEs: Oracle JDeveloper; NetBeans; Eclipse Java Cloud Service Java Cloud service provides flexible Java deployment environment for departmental applications and development, staging, QA, training, and demo environments. It also supports customizations deployments for SaaS-based Fusion Applications customers. Some key features of Java Cloud Service include: WebLogic Server on Exalogic, secure, highly available infrastructure Database Service & IDE Integration Open, Standard-based Deploy Web Apps, Web Services, REST Services Fully managed and supported by Oracle For more information, please visit Oracle Cloud, Oracle Cloud Java Service and Oracle Cloud Developer Service. If your enterprise prefers a private cloud, for reasons such as security, control, manageability, and complex integration that prevent your applications from being deployed on a public cloud, Fusion Middleware also provide you with the products and tools you need. Sometimes called Private PaaS, private clouds have their predecessors in shared-services arrangements many large companies have been building in the past decade. The difference, however, are in the scope of the services, and depth of their capabilities. In terms of vertical stack depth, private clouds not only provide hardware and software infrastructure to run your applications, they also provide services such as integration and security, that your applications need. Horizontally, private clouds provide monitoring, management, lifecycle, and charge back capabilities out-of-box that shared-services platforms did not have before. Oracle Fusion Middleware includes the complete stack of hardware and software for you to build private clouds: SOA suite and BPM suite to support systems integration and process flow between applications deployed on your private cloud and the rest of your organization Identity and Access Management suite to provide security, provisioning, and access services for applications deployed on your private cloud WebLogic Server to run your applications Enterprise Manager's Cloud Management pack to monitor, manage, upgrade applications running on your private cloud Exalogic or optimized Oracle-Sun hardware to build out your private cloud The most important key differentiator for Oracle's cloud solutions is portability, between private and public clouds. This is unique to Oracle because portability requires the vendor to have product depth and breadth in both public cloud services and private cloud product offerings. Most public cloud vendors cannot provide the infrastructure and tools customers need to build their own private clouds. In reverse, traditional software tools vendors typically do not have the product and expertise breadth to build out and offer a public cloud. Oracle can. It is important for customers that the products and technologies Oracle uses to build its public is the same set that it sells to customers for them to build private clouds. Fundamentally, that enables skills reuse, as well as application portability. For more information on Oracle PaaS offerings, please visit Oracle's product information page. Resources Follow us on Twitter and Facebook Subscribe to our regular Fusion Middleware Newsletter

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What information must never appear in logs?

- by MainMa

I'm about to write the company guidelines about what must never appear in logs (trace of an application). In fact, some developers try to include as many information as possible in trace, making it risky to store those logs, and extremely dangerous to submit them, especially when the customer doesn't know this information is stored, because she never cared about this and never read documentation and/or warning messages. For example, when dealing with files, some developers are tempted to trace the names of the files. For example before appending file name to a directory, if we trace everything on error, it will be easy to notice for example that the appended name is too long, and that the bug in the code was to forget to check for the length of the concatenated string. It is helpful, but this is sensitive data, and must never appear in logs. In the same way: Passwords, IP addresses and network information (MAC address, host name, etc.)¹, Database accesses, Direct input from user and stored business data must never appear in trace. So what other types of information must be banished from the logs? Are there any guidelines already written which I can use? ¹ Obviously, I'm not talking about things as IIS or Apache logs. What I'm talking about is the sort of information which is collected with the only intent to debug the application itself, not to trace the activity of untrusted entities. Edit: Thank you for your answers and your comments. Since my question is not too precise, I'll try to answer the questions asked in the comments: What I'm doing with the logs? The logs of the application may be stored in memory, which means either in plain on hard disk on localhost, in a database, again in plain, or in Windows Events. In every case, the concern is that those sources may not be safe enough. For example, when a customer runs an application and this application stores logs in plain text file in temp directory, anybody who has a physical access to the PC can read those logs. The logs of the application may also be sent through internet. For example, if a customer has an issue with an application, we can ask her to run this application in full-trace mode and to send us the log file. Also, some application may sent automatically the crash report to us (and even if there are warnings about sensitive data, in most cases customers don't read them). Am I talking about specific fields? No. I'm working on general business applications only, so the only sensitive data is business data. There is nothing related to health or other fields covered by specific regulations. But thank you to talk about that, I probably should take a look about those fields for some clues about what I can include in guidelines. Isn't it easier to encrypt the data? No. It would make every application much more difficult, especially if we want to use C# diagnostics and TraceSource. It would also require to manage authorizations, which is not the easiest think to do. Finally, if we are talking about the logs submitted to us from a customer, we must be able to read the logs, but without having access to sensitive data. So technically, it's easier to never include sensitive information in logs at all and to never care about how and where those logs are stored.

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How to Mentor a Junior Developer

- by Josh Johnson

This title is a little broad but I may need to give a little background before I can ask my question properly. I know that similar questions have been asked here already. But in my case I'm not asking if I should be mentoring someone or if the person is a good fit for being a software developer. That is not my place to judge. I have not been asked outright, but it is apparent that myself and other fellow senior developers are to mentor the new developers that start here. I have no problem with this whatsoever and, in many cases, it lends me a fresh perspective on things and I end up learning in the process. Also, I remember how beneficial it was in the beginning of my career when someone would take some time to teach me something. When I say "new developer" they could be anywhere from fresh out of college to having a year or two of experience. Recently and in the past we've had people start here who seem to have an attitude toward development/programming which is different from mine and hard for me to reconcile; they seem to extract just enough information to get the task done but not really learn from it. I find myself going over and over the same issues with them. I understand that part of this could be a personality thing, but I feel it's my job to do my best and sort of push them out of the nest while they're under my wing, so to speak. How can I impart just enough information so that they will learn but not give so much as to solve the problem for them? Or perhaps: What's the proper response to questions that are designed to take the path of least resistance and, in essence, force them to learn instead of take the easy way out? These questions are probably more general teaching questions and don't have that much to do specifically with software development. Note: I do not get a say in what tasks they are working on. Management doles the task out and it could be anything from a very simple bug fix to starting an entire application by themselves. While this is not ideal by any means and obviously presents its own gauntlet of challenges, I feel it's a topic best left for another question. So the best I can do is help them with the problem at hand and try to help them break it down into simpler problems and also check their commit logs and point out mistakes that they made. My main objectives are to: Help them out and give them the tools they need to start becoming more self-reliant. Steer them in the right direction and break bad development habits early on. Lessen the amount of time I spend with them (the personality type described above seems to need much more one-on-one time and does not do well over IM or email. While that's generally fine, I can't always stop what I'm working on, break my stride, and help them debug an error on a moments notice; I have my own projects that need to get done).

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links for 2010-12-23

- by Bob Rhubart

Oracle VM Virtualbox 4.0 extension packs (Wim Coekaerts Blog) Wim Coekaerts describes the the new extension pack in Oracle VM Virtualbox 4.0 and how it's different from 3.2 and earlier releases. (tags: oracle otn virtualization virtualbox) Oracle Fusion Middleware Security: Creating OES SM instances on 64 bit systems "I've already opened a bug on this against OES 10gR3 CP5, but in case anyone else runs into it before it gets fixed I wanted to blog it too. (NOTE: CP5 is when official support was introduced for running OES on a 64 bit system with a 64 bit JVM)" - Chris Johnson (tags: oracle otn fusionmiddleware security) Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control: Shared loader directory, RAC and WebLogic Clustering "RAC is optional. Even the load balancer is optional. The feed from the agents also goes to the load balancer on a different port and it is routed to the available management server. In normal case, this is ok." - Porus Homi Havewala (tags: WebLogic oracle otn grid clustering) Magic Web Doctor: Thought Process on Upgrading WebLogic Server to 11g "Upgrading to new versions can be challenging task, but it's done for linear scalability, continuous enhanced availability, efficient manageability and automatic/dynamic infrastructure provisioning at a low cost." - Chintan Patel (tags: oracle otn weblogic upgrading) InfoQ: Using a Service Bus to Connect the Supply Chain Peter Paul van de Beek presents a case study of using a service bus in a supply channel connecting a wholesale supplier with hundreds of retailers, the overall context and challenges faced – including the integration of POS software coming from different software providers-, the solution chosen and its implementation, how it worked out and the lessons learned along the way. (tags: ping.fm) Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.0 is released! - The Fat Bloke Sings The Fat Bloke spreads the news and shares some screenshots. (tags: oracle otn virtualization virtualbox) Leaks on Wikis: "Corporations...You're Next!" Oracle Desktop Virtualization Can Help. (Oracle's Virtualization Blog) "So what can you do to guard against these types of breaches where there is no outsider (or even insider) intrusion to detect per se, but rather someone with malicious intent is physically walking out the door with data that they are otherwise allowed to access in their daily work?" - Adam Hawley (tags: oracle otn virtualization security) OTN ArchBeat Podcast Guest Roster As the OTN ArchBeat Podcast enters its third year, it's time to acknowledge the invaluable contributions of the guests who have participated in ArchBeat programs. Check out this who's who of ArchBeat podcast panelists, with links to their respective interviews and more. (tags: oracle otn oracleace podcast archbeat) Show Notes: Architects in the Cloud (ArchBeat) Now available! Part 2 (of 4) of the ArchBeat interview with Stephen G. Bennett and Archie Reed, the authors of "Silver Clouds, Dark Linings: A Concise Guide to Cloud Computing." (tags: oracle otn podcast cloud) A Cautionary Tale About Multi-Source JNDI Configuration (Scott Nelson's Portal Productivity Ponderings) "I ran into this issue after reading that p13nDataSource and cgDataSource-NonXA should not be configured as multi-source. There were some issues changing them to use the basic JDBC connection string and when rolling back to the bad configuration the server went 'Boom.'" - Scott Nelson (tags: weblogic jdbc oracle jndi)

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Workflow versioning

- by Nitra

I believe I have a fundamental misunderstanding when it comes to workflow engines which I would appreciate if you could help me sort out. I'm not sure if my misunderstanding is specific to the workflow engine I'm using, or if it's a general misunderstanding. I happen to use Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF). TLDR-version WWF allows you to implement business processes in long-running workflows (think months or even years). When started, the workflows can't be changed. But what business process can't change at any time? And if a business process changes, wouldn't you want your software to reflect this change for already started 'instances' of the business process? What am I missing? Background In WWF you define a workflow by combining a set of activites. There are different types of activities - some of them are for flow control, such as the IfElseActivity and the WhileActivty while others allows you to perform actual tasks, such as the CodeActivity wich allows you to run .NET code and the InvokeWebServiceActivity which allows you to call web services. The activites are combined to a workflow using a visual designer. You pretty much drag-and-drop activities from a toolbox to a designer area and connect the activites to each other. The workflow and activities have input paramters, output parameters and variables. We have a single workflow which sometimes runs in a matter of a few days, but it may run for 5-6 months. WWF takes care of persisting the workflow state (what activity are we currently executing, what are the variable values and so on). So far I think WWF makes sense. Some people will prefer to implement a software representation of a business process using a visual designer over writing all of it in code. So what's the issue then? What I don't really get is the following: WWF is designed to take care of long-running workflows. But at the same time, WWF has no built-in functionality which allows you to modify the running workflows. So if you model a business process using a workflow and run that for 6 months, you better hope that the business process does not change. Because if it do, you'll have to have multiple versions of the workflow executing at the same time. This seems like a fundamental design mistake to me, but at the same time it seems more likely that I've misunderstood something. For us, this has had some real-world effects: We release new versions every month, but some workflows may run for a year. This means that we have several versions of the workflow running in parallell, in other words several versions of the business logics. This is the same as having many differnt versions of your code running in production in the same system at the same time, which becomes a bit hard to understand for users. (depending on on whether they clicked a 'Start' button 9 or 10 months ago, the software will behave differently) Our workflow refers to different types of entities and since WWF now has persisted and serialized these we can't really refactor the entities since then existing workflows can't be resumed (deserialization will fail We've received some suggestions on how to handle this When we create a new version of the workflow, cancel all running workflows and create new ones. But in our workflows there's a lot of manual work involved and if we start from scratch a lot of people has to re-do their work. Track what has been done in the workflow and when you create a new one skip activites which have already been executed. I feel that this alternative may work for simple workflows, but it becomes hairy to automatically figure out what activities to skip if there's major refactoring done to a workflow. When we create a new version of the workflow, upgrade old versions using the new WWF 4.5 functionality for upgrading workflows. But then we would have to skip using the visual designer and write code to inject activities in the right places in the workflow. According to MSDN, this upgrade functionality is only intended for minor bug fixes and not larger changes. What am I missing?

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Computer Networks UNISA - Chap 15 – Network Management

- by MarkPearl

After reading this section you should be able to Understand network management and the importance of documentation, baseline measurements, policies, and regulations to assess and maintain a network’s health. Manage a network’s performance using SNMP-based network management software, system and event logs, and traffic-shaping techniques Identify the reasons for and elements of an asset managements system Plan and follow regular hardware and software maintenance routines Fundamentals of Network Management Network management refers to the assessment, monitoring, and maintenance of all aspects of a network including checking for hardware faults, ensuring high QoS, maintaining records of network assets, etc. Scope of network management differs depending on the size and requirements of the network. All sub topics of network management share the goals of enhancing the efficiency and performance while preventing costly downtime or loss. Documentation The way documentation is stored may vary, but to adequately manage a network one should at least record the following… Physical topology (types of LAN and WAN topologies – ring, star, hybrid) Access method (does it use Ethernet 802.3, token ring, etc.) Protocols Devices (Switches, routers, etc) Operating Systems Applications Configurations (What version of operating system and config files for serve / client software) Baseline Measurements A baseline is a report of the network’s current state of operation. Baseline measurements might include the utilization rate for your network backbone, number of users logged on per day, etc. Baseline measurements allow you to compare future performance increases or decreases caused by network changes or events with past network performance. Obtaining baseline measurements is the only way to know for certain whether a pattern of usage has changed, or whether a network upgrade has made a difference. There are various tools available for measuring baseline performance on a network. Policies, Procedures, and Regulations Following rules helps limit chaos, confusion, and possibly downtime. The following policies and procedures and regulations make for sound network management. Media installations and management (includes designing physical layout of cable, etc.) Network addressing policies (includes choosing and applying a an addressing scheme) Resource sharing and naming conventions (includes rules for logon ID’s) Security related policies Troubleshooting procedures Backup and disaster recovery procedures In addition to internal policies, a network manager must consider external regulatory rules. Fault and Performance Management After documenting every aspect of your network and following policies and best practices, you are ready to asses you networks status on an on going basis. This process includes both performance management and fault management. Network Management Software To accomplish both fault and performance management, organizations often use enterprise-wide network management software. There various software packages that do this, each collect data from multiple networked devices at regular intervals, in a process called polling. Each managed device runs a network management agent. So as not to affect the performance of a device while collecting information, agents do not demand significant processing resources. The definition of a managed devices and their data are collected in a MIB (Management Information Base). Agents communicate information about managed devices via any of several application layer protocols. On modern networks most agents use SNMP which is part of the TCP/IP suite and typically runs over UDP on port 161. Because of the flexibility and sophisticated network management applications are a challenge to configure and fine-tune. One needs to be careful to only collect relevant information and not cause performance issues (i.e. pinging a device every 5 seconds can be a problem with thousands of devices). MRTG (Multi Router Traffic Grapher) is a simple command line utility that uses SNMP to poll devices and collects data in a log file. MRTG can be used with Windows, UNIX and Linux. System and Event Logs Virtually every condition recognized by an operating system can be recorded. This is typically done using event logs. In Windows there is a GUI event log viewer. Similar information is recorded in UNIX and Linux in a system log. Much of the information collected in event logs and syslog files does not point to a problem, even if it is marked with a warning so it is important to filter your logs appropriately to reduce the noise. Traffic Shaping When a network must handle high volumes of network traffic, users benefit from performance management technique called traffic shaping. Traffic shaping involves manipulating certain characteristics of packets, data streams, or connections to manage the type and amount of traffic traversing a network or interface at any moment. Its goals are to assure timely delivery of the most important traffic while offering the best possible performance for all users. Several types of traffic prioritization exist including prioritizing traffic according to any of the following characteristics… Protocol IP address User group DiffServr VLAN tag in a Data Link layer frame Service or application Caching In addition to traffic shaping, a network or host might use caching to improve performance. Caching is the local storage of frequently needed files that would otherwise be obtained from an external source. By keeping files close to the requester, caching allows the user to access those files quickly. The most common type of caching is Web caching, in which Web pages are stored locally. To an ISP, caching is much more than just convenience. It prevents a significant volume of WAN traffic, thus improving performance and saving money. Asset Management Another key component in managing networks is identifying and tracking its hardware. This is called asset management. The first step to asset management is to take an inventory of each node on the network. You will also want to keep records of every piece of software purchased by your organization. Asset management simplifies maintaining and upgrading the network chiefly because you know what the system includes. In addition, asset management provides network administrators with information about the costs and benefits of certain types of hardware or software. Change Management Networks are always in a stage of flux with various aspects including… Software changes and patches Client Upgrades Shared Application Upgrades NOS Upgrades Hardware and Physical Plant Changes Cabling Upgrades Backbone Upgrades For a detailed explanation on each of these read the textbook (Page 750 – 761)

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jtreg update, December 2012

- by jjg

There is a new version of jtreg available. The primary new feature is support for tests that have been written for use with TestNG, the popular open source testing framework. TestNG is supported by a variety of tools and plugins, which means that it is now possible to develop tests for OpenJDK using those tools, while still retaining the ability to have the tests be part of the OpenJDK test suite, and run with a single test harness, jtreg. jtreg can be downloaded from the OpenJDK jtreg page: http://openjdk.java.net/jtreg. TestNG support jtreg supports both single TestNG tests, which can be freely intermixed with other types of jtreg tests, and groups of TestNG tests. A single TestNG test class can be compiled and run by providing a test description using the new action tag: @run testng classname The test will be executed by using org.testng.TestNG. No main method is required. A group of TestNG tests organized in a standard package hierarchy can also be compiled and run by jtreg. Any such group must be identified by specifying the root directory of the package hierarchy. You can either do this in the top level TEST.ROOT file, or in a TEST.properties file in any subdirectory enclosing the group of tests. In either case, add a line to the file of the form: TestNG.dirs = dir ... Directories beginning with '/' are evaluated relative to the root directory of the test suite; otherwise they are evaluated relative to the directory containing the declaring file. In particular, note that you can simply use "TestNG.dirs = ." in a TEST.properties file in the root directory of the test group's package hierarchy. No additional test descriptions are necessary, but test descriptions containing information tags, such as @bug, @summary, etc are permitted. All the Java source files in the group will be compiled if necessary, before any of the tests in the group are run. The selected tests within the group will be run, one at a time, using org.testng.TestNG. Library classes The specification for the @library tag has been extended so that any paths beginning with '/' will be evaluated relative to the root directory of the test suite. In addition, some bugs have been fixed that prevented sharing the compiled versions of library classes between tests in different directories. Note: This has uncovered some issues in tests that use a combination of @build and @library tags, such that some tests may fail unexpectedly with ClassNotFoundException. The workaround for now is to ensure that library classes are listed before the test classes in any @build tags. To specify one or more library directories for a group of TestNG tests, add a line of the following form to the TEST.properties file in the root directory of the group's package hierarchy: lib.dirs = dir ... As before, directories beginning with '/' are evaluated relative to the root directory of the test suite; otherwise they are evaluated relative to the directory containing the declaring file. The libraries will be available to all classes in the group; you cannot specify different libraries for different tests within the group. Coming soon ... From this point on, jtreg development will be using the new jtreg repository in the OpenJDK code-tools project. There is a new email alias jtreg-dev at openjdk.java.net for discussions about jtreg development. The existing alias jtreg-use at openjdk.java.net will continue to be available for questions about using jtreg. For more information ... An updated version of the jtreg Tag Language Specification is being prepared, and will be made available when it is ready. In the meantime, you can find more information about the support for TestNG by executing the following command: $ jtreg -onlinehelp TestNG For more information on TestNG itself, visit testng.org.

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How do I revert updates/tweaks to get to a usable GUI?

- by Frankenmartin

I just installed 12.04 the other day and then ran into trouble upon restarting after installing updates. What I did before the problem occurred: I did not make many changes before this problem occurred. Changes I did make included: Downloading and installing Adobe Flash Player (off topic but: I am under the impression that Java, "C&C" and Shockwave can not be run in Ubuntu. Could anybody verify this?) I also installed gnome-tweak-tool and used it to install several themes. These themes worked well until restarting after the update. Is it possible that one of these themes caused the problem (in combination with the update or because of the restart)? Installed 215 updates from update manager and restarted my system. Current Situation: Unity 3D is unusable since restarting after running updates. When I log in after entering my password the following things happen: the overhead panel disappears and the screen goes black for a minute my wallpaper flashes for a couple seconds but then the screen goes black again after another minute the wallpaper reappears but nothing else does and I am not able to open anything or even right click. after 5 minutes I can finally get a right click menu eventually a box comes up warning about a Compiz failure and asking to let it quit--which I did. Using the right click functionality I was able to create a new folder on the desktop and use this to open a file browser. In doing so I noticed that the downloads I had made were missing (music, image files, etc., even after unpacking several .zip and .rar files) even though I believe that everything should still be there. Any new windows that I create are un-closable/minimizable/movable/etc, because the window bars are missing. I have tried rebooting several times but the results are the same. I was able to browse some off the System Settings windows by clicking on the wallpaper link in the right click menu. In doing so I navigated into the update manager and noticed that updates were selected to be accepted from some "unsupported sources". I do not recall setting these options myself and wonder why these--potentially dangerous--options would be selected by default. Unity 2D is usable but not free of bugs--I stumbled across the ability to log into a Unity 2D session while trying to log into Unity 3D. So far I have only noticed one bug in Unity 2D: the close, minimize and maximize buttons are invisible--however they are still usable despite being invisible. What I need: I'm very new to Linux and Ubuntu and still am in the feeling out stages. As such I will have some trouble answering clarifying questions. I haven't used the terminal yet and would probably not be comfortable using it without very clear instructions. What I do need is to know how I can roll back/remove all those updates so I can use my computer regularly again. I do believe that I could follow step-by-step instructions as long as they are clear and concise if someone knows what my problem is.

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Hardware wireless switch has no effect after suspend and 13.10 upgrade

- by blaineh

This seems to be a fairly chronic problem, as shown by the following questions: How do I fix a "Wireless is disabled by hardware switch" error? Wireless disabled by hardware switch "Wireless disabled by hardware switch" after suspend and other hardware buttons ineffective - how can I solve this? but no good solutions have been found! Wireless works fine after a reboot, but after a suspend the hardware switch (for my laptop this is f12) has no effect on the wireless, it is just permanently off, and shows that it is with a red LED. All My rfkill list all reads: 0: phy0: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: yes 1: hp-wifi: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: yes Any combination with rfkill <un>block wifi doesn't work, although one time first blocking then unblocking actually turned it on again. sudo lshw -C network reads: *-network DISABLED description: Wireless interface product: AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) vendor: Qualcomm Atheros physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0 logical name: wlan0 version: 01 serial: 78:e4:00:65:2e:3f width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless configuration: broadcast=yes driver=ath9k driverversion=3.11.0-12-generic firmware=N/A ip=155.99.215.79 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bgn resources: irq:17 memory:90100000-9010ffff *-network DISABLED description: Ethernet interface product: RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0 logical name: eth0 version: 02 serial: c8:0a:a9:89:b4:30 size: 10Mbit/s capacity: 100Mbit/s width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix vpd bus_master cap_list rom ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd autonegotiation configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=r8169 driverversion=2.3LK-NAPI duplex=half latency=0 link=no multicast=yes port=MII speed=10Mbit/s resources: irq:42 ioport:2000(size=256) memory:90010000-90010fff memory:90000000-9000ffff memory:90020000-9002ffff Also, adding a /etc/pm/sleep.d/brcm.sh file as recommended here simply prevents the laptop from suspending at all, which of course is no good. This question has an answer urging to install the original driver, but it wasn't an "accepted answer" so I'd rather not take a chance on it. Also I'll admit I'm a bit lost on that and would like help doing so with the specific information I've given. xev shows that no internal event is triggered for my wireless switch (f12), but other function keys also acting as hardware switches work fine. I would be happy to provide more information, so long as you're willing to help me find it for you! This is a very annoying bug. I have a Compaq Presario CQ62. Edit. I just tried to reload bios defaults (or something) as shown by this video. Didn't work. Edit. I tried the contents of this answer, and it didn't work. Edit. I made a pastebin of dmesg. I couldn't even begin to understand the contents. Edit. Output of lspci | grep Network: 02:00.0 Network controller: Qualcomm Atheros AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)

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BizTalk: Sample: Context routing and Throttling with orchestration

- by Leonid Ganeline

The sample demonstrates using orchestration for throttling and using context routing. Usually throttling is implemented on the host level (in BizTalk 2010 we can also using the host instance level throttling). Here is demonstrated the throttling with orchestration convoy that slows down message flow from some customers. Sample implements sort of quality service agreement layer for different kind of customers. The sample demonstrates the context routing between orchestrations. It has several advantages over the content routing. For example, we don’t have to create the property schema and promote properties on the schemas; we don’t have to change the message content to change routing. Use case: The BizTalk application has a main processing orchestration that process all input messages. The application usually works as an OLTP application. Input messages came in random order without peaks, typical scenario for the on-line users. But sometimes the big data batch payloads come. These batches overload processing orchestrations. All processes, activated by on-line users after the payload, come to the same queue and are processed only after the payload. Result is on-line users can see significant delay in processing. It can be minutes or hours, depending of the batch size. Requirements: On-line user’s processing should work without delays. Big batches cannot disturb on-line users. There should be higher priority for the on-line users and the lower priority for the batches. Design: Decision is to divide the message flow in two branches, one for on-line users and second for batches. Branch with batches provides messages to the processing line with low priority, and the on-line user’s branch – with high priority. All messages are provided by hi-speed receive port. BTS.ReceivePortName context property is used for routing. The Router orchestration separates messages sent from on-line users and from the batch messages. But the Router does not use the BizTalk provided value of this property, the Router set up this value by itself. Router uses the content of the messages to decide if it is from on-line users or from batches. The message context property the BTS.ReceivePortName is changed respectively, its value works as a recipient address, as the “To” address for the next recipient orchestrations. Those next orchestrations are the BatchBottleneck and the MainProcess orchestrations. Messages with context equal “ToBatch” are filtered up by the BatchBottleneck orchestration. It is a unified convoy orchestration and it throttles the message flow, delaying the message delivery to the MainProcess orchestration. The BatchBottleneck orchestration changes the message context to the “ToProcess” and sends messages one after another with small delay in between. Delay can be configured in the BizTalk config file as: <appSettings> <add key="GLD_Tests_TwoWayRouting_BatchBottleneck_DelayMillisec" value="100"/> </appSettings> Of course, messages with context equal “ToProcess” are filtered up by the MainProcess orchestration. NOTES: Filters with string values: In Orchestrations (the first Receive shape in orchestration) use string values WITH quotes; in Send Ports use string values WITHOUT quotes. Filters on the Send Ports are dynamic; we can change them in run-time. Filters on the Orchestrations are static; we can change them only in design-time. To check the existence of the promoted property inside orchestration use the Expression shape with construction like this: if (BTS.ReceivePortName exists myMessage) { …; } It is not possible in the Message Assignment shape because using the “if” statement inside Message Assignment is prohibited. Several predefined context properties can behave in specific way. Say MessageTracking.OriginatingMessage or XMLNORM.DocumentSpecName, they are required some internal rules should be applied to the format or usage of this properties. MessageTracking.* parameters require you have to use tracking and you can get unexpected run-time errors in some cases. My recommendation is - use very limited set of the predefined context properties. To “attach” the new promoted property to the message, we have to use correlation. The correlation type should include this property. [Here is a good explanation by Saravana ] The sample code is here [sorry, temporary trubles with CodePlex].

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Project of Projects with team Foundation Server 2010

- by Martin Hinshelwood

It is pretty much accepted that you should use Areas instead of having many small Team Projects when you are using Team Foundation Server 2010. I have implemented this scenario many times and this is the current iteration of layout and considerations. If like me you work with many customers you will find that you get into a grove for how to set these things up to make them as easily understandable for everyone, while giving the best functionality. The trick is in making it as intuitive as possible for both you and the developers that need to work with it. There are five main places where you need to have the Product or Project name in prominence of any other value. Area Iteration Source Code Work Item Queries Build Once you decide how you are doing this in each of these places you need to keep to it religiously. Evan if you have one source code file to keep, make sure it is in the right place. This makes your developers and others working with the format familiar with where everything should go, as well as building up mussel memory. This prevents the neat system degenerating into a nasty mess. Areas Areas are traditionally used to separate out parts of your product / project so that you can see how much effort has gone into each. Figure: The top level areas are for reporting and work item separation There are massive advantages of using this method. You can: move work from one project to another rename a project / product It is far more likely that a project or product gets renamed than a department. Tip: If you have many projects, over 100, you should consider categorising them here, but make sure that the actual project name always sits at the same level so you know which is which. Figure: Always keep things that are the same at the same level Note: You may use these categories only at the Area/Iteration level to make it easier to select on drop down lists. You may not want to use them everywhere. On the other hand, for consistency it would be better to. Iterations Iterations are usually used to some sort of time based consideration. Here I am splitting into Iterations with periodic releases. Figure: Each product needs to be able to have its own cadence The ability to have each project run at its own pace and to enable them to have their own release schedule is often of paramount importance and you don’t want to fix your 100+ projects to all be released on the same date. Source Code Having a good structure for your source even if you are not branching or having multiple products under the same structure is always a good idea. Figure: Separate out your products source You need to think about both your branches as well as the structure of your source. All your code should be under “Source” and everything you need to build your solution including Build Scripts and 3rd party tools should be under your “Main” (branch) folder. This should them be branched by “Quality”, “Release” or both to get the most out of your branching structure. The important thing is to make sure you branch (or be able to branch) everything you need to build, test and deploy your application to an environment. That environment may be development, test or even production, but I can’t stress the importance of having everything your need. Note: You usually will not be able to install custom software on your build server. Store any *.dll’s or *.exe’s that you need under the “Tools\Tool1” folder. Note: Consult the Branching Guidance for Team Foundation Server 2010 for more on branching Figure: Adding category may be a necessary evil Even if you have to have a couple of categories called “Default”, it is better than not knowing the difference between a folder, Product and Branch. Work Item Queries Queries are used to load lists of Work Items out of TFS so you can see what work you have. This means that you want to also separate queries out by Product / project to make it easier to Figure: Again you have the same first level structure Having Folders also in Work Item Tracking we do the same thing. We put all the queries under a folder named for the Product / Project and change each query to have “AreaPath=[TeamProject]\[ProductX]” in the query instead of the standard “Project=@Project”. Tip: Don’t have a folder with new queries for each iteration. Instead have a single “Current” folder that has queries that point to the current iteration. Just change the queries as you move from one iteration to another. Tip: You can ctrl+drag the “Product1” folder to create your “Product2” folder. Builds You may have many builds both for individual products but also for different quality's. This can be further complicated by having some builds that action “Gated Check-In” and others that are specifically for “Release”, “Test” or another purpose. Figure: There are no folders, yet, for the builds so you need a good naming convention Its a pity that there are no folders under builds, some way to categorise would be nice. In lue of that at the moment you can use a functional naming convention that at least allows you to find what you want. Conclusion It is really easy to both achieve and to stick to this format if you take the time to do it. Unless you have 1000+ builds or 100+ Products you are unlikely run into any issues. Even then there are things you can do to mitigate the issues and I have describes some of them above. Let me know if you can think of any other things to make this easier.

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Database Rebuild

- by Robert May

I promised I’d have a simpler mechanism for rebuilding the database. Below is a complete MSBuild targets file for rebuilding the database from scratch. I don’t know if I’ve explained the rational for this. The reason why you’d WANT to do this is so that each developer has a clean version of the database on their local machine. This also includes the continuous integration environment. Basically, you can do whatever you want to the database without fear, and in a minute or two, have a completely rebuilt database structure. DBDeploy (including the KTSC build task for dbdeploy) is used in this script to do change tracking on the database itself. The MSBuild ExtensionPack is used in this target file. You can get an MSBuild DBDeploy task here. There are two database scripts that you’ll see below. First is the task for creating an admin (dbo) user in the system. This script looks like the following: USE [master] GO If not Exists (select Name from sys.sql_logins where name = '$(User)') BEGIN CREATE LOGIN [$(User)] WITH PASSWORD=N'$(Password)', DEFAULT_DATABASE=[$(DatabaseName)], CHECK_EXPIRATION=OFF, CHECK_POLICY=OFF END GO EXEC master..sp_addsrvrolemember @loginame = N'$(User)', @rolename = N'sysadmin' GO USE [$(DatabaseName)] GO CREATE USER [$(User)] FOR LOGIN [$(User)] GO ALTER USER [$(User)] WITH DEFAULT_SCHEMA=[dbo] GO EXEC sp_addrolemember N'db_owner', N'$(User)' GO The second creates the changelog table. This script can also be found in the dbdeploy.net install\scripts directory. CREATE TABLE changelog ( change_number INTEGER NOT NULL, delta_set VARCHAR(10) NOT NULL, start_dt DATETIME NOT NULL, complete_dt DATETIME NULL, applied_by VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL, description VARCHAR(500) NOT NULL ) GO ALTER TABLE changelog ADD CONSTRAINT Pkchangelog PRIMARY KEY (change_number, delta_set) GO Finally, Here’s the targets file. <Projectxmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003" ToolsVersion="4.0" DefaultTargets="Update"> <PropertyGroup> <DatabaseName>TestDatabase</DatabaseName> <Server>localhost</Server> <ScriptDirectory>.\Scripts</ScriptDirectory> <RebuildDirectory>.\Rebuild</RebuildDirectory> <TestDataDirectory>.\TestData</TestDataDirectory> <DbDeploy>.\DBDeploy</DbDeploy> <User>TestUser</User> <Password>TestPassword</Password> <BCP>bcp</BCP> <BCPOptions>-S$(Server) -U$(User) -P$(Password) -N -E -k</BCPOptions> <OutputFileName>dbDeploy-output.sql</OutputFileName> <UndoFileName>dbDeploy-output-undo.sql</UndoFileName> <LastChangeToApply>99999</LastChangeToApply> </PropertyGroup> <ImportProject="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\ExtensionPack\4.0\MSBuild.ExtensionPack.tasks"/> <UsingTask TaskName="Ktsc.Build.DBDeploy" AssemblyFile="$(DbDeploy)\Ktsc.Build.dll"/> <ItemGroup> <VariableInclude="DatabaseName"> <Value>$(DatabaseName)</Value> </Variable> <VariableInclude="Server"> <Value>$(Server)</Value> </Variable> <VariableInclude="User"> <Value>$(User)</Value> </Variable> <VariableInclude="Password"> <Value>$(Password)</Value> </Variable> </ItemGroup> <TargetName="Rebuild">  <MSBuild.ExtensionPack.SqlServer.SqlCmd Variables="@(Variable)" Database="$(DatabaseName)" TaskAction="Execute" CommandLineQuery ="ALTER DATABASE $(DatabaseName) SET OFFLINE WITH ROLLBACK IMMEDIATE"/>  <MSBuild.ExtensionPack.Sql2008.DatabaseTaskAction="SetOnline" DatabaseItem="$(DatabaseName)"/>  <MSBuild.ExtensionPack.Sql2008.DatabaseTaskAction="Delete" DatabaseItem="$(DatabaseName)"/>  <MSBuild.ExtensionPack.Sql2008.DatabaseTaskAction="Create" DatabaseItem="$(DatabaseName)" Force="True"/>  <MSBuild.ExtensionPack.SqlServer.SqlCmd TaskAction="Execute" Server="(local)" Database="$(DatabaseName)" InputFiles="$(RebuildDirectory)\0002 Create Admin User.sql" Variables="@(Variable)" />  <MSBuild.ExtensionPack.SqlServer.SqlCmd TaskAction="Execute" Server="(local)" Database="$(DatabaseName)" LogOn="$(User)" Password="$(Password)" InputFiles="$(RebuildDirectory)\0003 Create Changelog.sql" Variables="@(Variable)" /> <CallTarget Targets="Update;ImportData"/> </Target> <TargetName="Update" DependsOnTargets="CreateUpdateScript"> <MSBuild.ExtensionPack.SqlServer.SqlCmd TaskAction="Execute" Server="(local)" Database="$(DatabaseName)" LogOn="$(User)" Password="$(Password)" InputFiles="$(OutputFileName)" Variables="@(Variable)" /> </Target> <TargetName="CreateUpdateScript"> <ktsc.Build.DBDeploy DbType="mssql" DbConnection="User=$(User);Password=$(Password);Data Source=$(Server);Initial Catalog=$(DatabaseName);" Dir="$(ScriptDirectory)" OutputFile="..\$(OutputFileName)" UndoOutputFile="..\$(UndoFileName)" LastChangeToApply="$(LastChangeToApply)"/> </Target> <TargetName="ImportData"> <ItemGroup> <TestData Include="$(TestDataDirectory)\*.dat"/> </ItemGroup> <ExecCommand="$(BCP) $(DatabaseName).dbo.%(TestData.Filename) in"%(TestData.Identity)"$(BCPOptions)"/> </Target> </Project> Technorati Tags: MSBuild

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Know Your Service Request Status

- by Get Proactive Customer Adoption Team

Untitled Document To monitor a Service Request or not to monitor a Service Request... That should never be the question Monitoring the Service Requests you create is an essential part of the process to resolve your issue when you work with a Support Engineer. If you monitor your Service Request, you know at all times where it is in the process, or to be more specific, you know at all times what action the Support Engineer has taken on your request and what the next step is. When you think about it, it is rather simple... Oracle Support is working the issue, Oracle Development is working the issue, or you are. When you check on the status, you may find that the Support Engineer has a question for you or the engineer is waiting for more information to resolve the issue. If you monitor the Service Request, and respond quickly, the process keeps moving, and you’ll get your answer more quickly. Monitoring a Service Request is easy. All you need to do is check the status codes that the Support Engineer or the system assigns to your Service Request. These status codes are not static. You will see that during the life of your Service request, it will go through a variety of status codes. The best advice I can offer you when you monitor your Service Request is to watch the codes. If the status is not changing, or if you are not getting responses back within the agreed timeframes, you should review the action plan the Support Engineer has outlined or talk about a new action plan. Here are the most common status codes: Work in Progress indicates that your Support Engineer is researching and working the issue. Development Working means that you have a code related issue and Oracle Support has submitted a bug to Development. Please pay a particular attention to the following statuses; they indicate that the Support Engineer is waiting for a response from you: Customer Working usually means that your Support Engineer needs you to collect additional information, needs you to try something or to apply a patch, or has more questions for you. Solution Offered indicates that the Support Engineer has identified the problem and has provided you with a solution. Auto-Close or Close Initiated are statuses you don’t want to see. Monitoring your Service Request helps prevent your issues from reaching these statuses. They usually indicate that the Support Engineer did not receive the requested information or action from you. This is important. If you fail to respond, the Support Engineer will attempt to contact you three times over a two-week period. If these attempts are unsuccessful, he or she will initiate the Auto-Close process. At the end of this additional two-week period, if you have not updated the Service Request, your Service Request is considered abandoned and the Support Engineer will assign a Customer Abandoned status. A Support Engineer doesn’t like to see this status, since he or she has been working to solve your issue, but we know our customers dislike it even more, since it means their issue is not moving forward. You can avoid delays in resolving your issue by monitoring your Service Request and acting quickly when you see the status change. Respond to the request from the engineer to answer questions, collect information, or to try the offered solution. Then the Support Engineer can continue working the issue and the Service Request keeps moving forward towards resolution. Keep in mind that if you take an extended period of time to respond to a request or to provide the information requested, the Support Engineer cannot take the next step. You may inadvertently send an implicit message about the problem’s urgency that may not match the Service Request priority, and your need for an answer. Help us help you. We want to get you the answer as quickly as possible so you can stay focused on your company’s objectives. Now, back to our initial question. To monitor Service Requests or not to monitor Service Requests? I think the answer is clear: yes, monitor your Service Request to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.

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Gamification = -10#/3mo

- by erikanollwebb

One of the purposes of gamification of anything is to see if you can modify the behavior of the user. In the enterprise, that might mean getting sales people to enter more information into a CRM system, encouraging employees to update their HR records, motivating people to participate in forums and discussions, or process invoices more quickly. Wikipedia defines behavior modification as "the traditional term for the use of empirically demonstrated behavior change techniques to increase or decrease the frequency of behaviors, such as altering an individual's behaviors and reactions to stimuli through positive and negative reinforcement of adaptive behavior and/or the reduction of behavior through its extinction, punishment and/or satiation." Gamification is just a way to modify someone's behavior using game mechanics. And the magic question is always whether it works. So I thought I would present my own little experiment from the last few months. This spring, I upgraded to a Samsung Galaxy 4. It's a pretty sweet phone in many ways, but one of the little extras I discovered was a built in app called S Health. S Health is an app that you can use to track calories, weight, exercise and it has a built in pedometer. I looked at it when I got the phone, but assumed you had to turn it on to use it so I didn't look at it much. But sometime in July, I realized that in fact, it just ran in the background and was quietly tracking my steps, with a goal of 10,000 per day. 10,000 steps per day is this magic number recommended by the Surgeon General and the American Heart Association. Dr. Oz pushes it as the goal for daily exercise. It's about 5 miles of walking. I'm generally not the kind of person who always has my phone with me. I leave it in my purse and pull it out when I need it. But then I realized that meant I wasn't getting a good measure of my steps. I decided to do a little experiment, and carry it with me as much as possible for a week. That's when I discovered the gamification that changed my life over the last 3 months. When I hit 10,000 steps, the app jingled out a little "success!" tune and I got a badge. I was hooked. I started carrying my phone. I started making sure I had shoes I could walk in with me. I started walking at lunch time, because I realized how often I sat at my desk for 8-10 hours every day without moving. I started pestering my husband to walk with me after work because I hadn't hit my 10,000 yet, leading him at one point to say "I'm not as much a slave to that badge as you are!" I started looking at parking lots differently. Can't get a space up close? No worries, just that many steps toward my 10,000. I even tried to see if there was a second power user level at 15,000 or 20,000 (*sadly, no). If I was close at the end of the day, I have done laps around my house until I got my badge. I have walked around the block one more time to get my badge. I have mentally chastised myself when I forgot to put my phone in my pocket because I don't know how many steps I got. The badge below I got when my boss and I were in New York City and we walked around the block of our hotel just to watch the badge pop up. There are a bunch of tools out on the market now that have similar ideas for helping you to track your exercise, make it social. There are apps (my favorite is still Zombies, Run!). You could buy a FitBit or UP by Jawbone. Interactive fitness makes the Expresso stationary bike with built in video games. All designed to help you be more aware of your activity and keep you engaged and motivated. And the idea is to help you change your behavior. I know someone who would spend extra time and work hard on the Expresso because he had built up strategies for how to kill the most dragons while he was riding to get more points. When the machine broke down, he didn't ride a different bike because it just wasn't that interesting. But for me, just the simple jingle and badge have been all I needed. I admit, I still giggle gleefully when I hear the tune sing out from my pocket. After a few weeks, I noticed I had dropped a few pounds. Not a lot, just 2-3. But then I was really hooked. I started making a point both to eat a little less and hit 10,000 steps as much as I could. I bemoaned that during the floods in Boulder, I wasn't hitting my 10,000 steps. And now, a few months later, I'm almost 10 lbs lighter. All for 1 badge a day. So yes, simple gamification can increase motivation and engagement. And that can lead to changes in behavior. Now the job is to apply that to the enterprise space in a meaningful and engaging way.

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Using Appendbuffers in unity for terrain generation

- by Wardy

Like many others I figured I would try and make the most of the monster processing power of the GPU but I'm having trouble getting the basics in place. CPU code: using UnityEngine; using System.Collections; public class Test : MonoBehaviour { public ComputeShader Generator; public MeshTopology Topology; void OnEnable() { var computedMeshPoints = ComputeMesh(); CreateMeshFrom(computedMeshPoints); } private Vector3[] ComputeMesh() { var size = (32*32) * 4; // 4 points added for each x,z pos var buffer = new ComputeBuffer(size, 12, ComputeBufferType.Append); Generator.SetBuffer(0, "vertexBuffer", buffer); Generator.Dispatch(0, 1, 1, 1); var results = new Vector3[size]; buffer.GetData(results); buffer.Dispose(); return results; } private void CreateMeshFrom(Vector3[] generatedPoints) { var filter = GetComponent<MeshFilter>(); var renderer = GetComponent<MeshRenderer>(); if (generatedPoints.Length > 0) { var mesh = new Mesh { vertices = generatedPoints }; var colors = new Color[generatedPoints.Length]; var indices = new int[generatedPoints.Length]; //TODO: build this different based on topology of the mesh being generated for (int i = 0; i < indices.Length; i++) { indices[i] = i; colors[i] = Color.blue; } mesh.SetIndices(indices, Topology, 0); mesh.colors = colors; mesh.RecalculateNormals(); mesh.Optimize(); mesh.RecalculateBounds(); filter.sharedMesh = mesh; } else { filter.sharedMesh = null; } } } GPU code: #pragma kernel Generate AppendStructuredBuffer<float3> vertexBuffer : register(u0); void genVertsAt(uint2 xzPos) { //TODO: put some height generation code here. // could even run marching cubes / dual contouring code. float3 corner1 = float3( xzPos[0], 0, xzPos[1] ); float3 corner2 = float3( xzPos[0] + 1, 0, xzPos[1] ); float3 corner3 = float3( xzPos[0], 0, xzPos[1] + 1); float3 corner4 = float3( xzPos[0] + 1, 0, xzPos[1] + 1 ); vertexBuffer.Append(corner1); vertexBuffer.Append(corner2); vertexBuffer.Append(corner3); vertexBuffer.Append(corner4); } [numthreads(32, 1, 32)] void Generate (uint3 threadId : SV_GroupThreadID, uint3 groupId : SV_GroupID) { uint2 currentXZ = unint2( groupId.x * 32 + threadId.x, groupId.z * 32 + threadId.z); genVertsAt(currentXZ); } Can anyone explain why when I call "buffer.GetData(results);" on the CPU after the compute dispatch call my buffer is full of Vector3(0,0,0), I'm not expecting any y values yet but I would expect a bunch of thread indexes in the x,z values for the Vector3 array. I'm not getting any errors in any of this code which suggests it's correct syntax-wise but maybe the issue is a logical bug. Also: Yes, I know I'm generating 4,000 Vector3's and then basically round tripping them. However, the purpose of this code is purely to learn how round tripping works between CPU and GPU in Unity.

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When row estimation goes wrong

- by Dave Ballantyne

Whilst working at a client site, I hit upon one of those issues that you are not sure if that this is something entirely new or a bug or a gap in your knowledge. The client had a large query that needed optimizing. The query itself looked pretty good, no udfs, UNION ALL were used rather than UNION, most of the predicates were sargable other than one or two minor ones. There were a few extra joins that could be eradicated and having fixed up the query I then started to dive into the plan. I could see all manor of spills in the hash joins and the sort operations, these are caused when SQL Server has not reserved enough memory and has to write to tempdb. A VERY expensive operation that is generally avoidable. These, however, are a symptom of a bad row estimation somewhere else, and when that bad estimation is combined with other estimation errors, chaos can ensue. Working my way back down the plan, I found the cause, and the more I thought about it the more i came convinced that the optimizer could be making a much more intelligent choice. First step is to reproduce and I was able to simplify the query down a single join between two tables, Product and ProductStatus, from a business point of view, quite fundamental, find the status of particular products to show if ‘active’ ,’inactive’ or whatever. The query itself couldn’t be any simpler The estimated plan looked like this: Ignore the “!” warning which is a missing index, but notice that Products has 27,984 rows and the join outputs 14,000. The actual plan shows how bad that estimation of 14,000 is : So every row in Products has a corresponding row in ProductStatus. This is unsurprising, in fact it is guaranteed, there is a trusted FK relationship between the two columns. There is no way that the actual output of the join can be different from the input. The optimizer is already partly aware of the foreign key meta data, and that can be seen in the simplifiction stage. If we drop the Description column from the query: the join to ProductStatus is optimized out. It serves no purpose to the query, there is no data required from the table and the optimizer knows that the FK will guarantee that a matching row will exist so it has been removed. Surely the same should be applied to the row estimations in the initial example, right ? If you think so, please upvote this connect item. So what are our options in fixing this error ? Simply changing the join to a left join will cause the optimizer to think that we could allow the rows not to exist. or a subselect would also work However, this is a client site, Im not able to change each and every query where this join takes place but there is a more global switch that will fix this error, TraceFlag 2301. This is described as, perhaps loosely, “Enable advanced decision support optimizations”. We can test this on the original query in isolation by using the “QueryTraceOn” option and lo and behold our estimated plan now has the ‘correct’ estimation. Many thanks goes to Paul White (b|t) for his help and keeping me sane through this

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nvidia driver problems after upgrading to 3.2.0-26 on Ubuntu 12.04 64bit

- by Lev Levitsky

After installing latest updates I can't set screen resolution higher than 1024x768; every time after the boot I get a message Could not apply the stored configuration for the monitors (Note: removing ~/.config/monitors.xml stopped the message, but not the problem) I can boot with 3.2.0-25 and the graphics look normal. Here's what I have in /var/log/apt/term.log (excerpt): Setting up linux-image-3.2.0-26-generic (3.2.0-26.41) ... Running depmod. update-initramfs: deferring update (hook will be called later) Examining /etc/kernel/postinst.d. run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postinst.d/dkms 3.2.0-26-generic /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-26-generic Error! Problems with depmod detected. Automatically uninstalling this module. DKMS: Install Failed (depmod problems). Module rolled back to built state. run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postinst.d/initramfs-tools 3.2.0-26-generic /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-26-generic update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-26-generic run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postinst.d/pm-utils 3.2.0-26-generic /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-26-generic run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postinst.d/update-notifier 3.2.0-26-generic /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-26-generic run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postinst.d/zz-update-grub 3.2.0-26-generic /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-26-generic Generating grub.cfg ... Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-26-generic Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-26-generic Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-25-generic Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-25-generic Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-24-generic Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-24-generic Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-23-generic Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-23-generic Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.0.0-17-generic Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.0.0-17-generic Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.bin I went to "additional drivers" and saw some updates available there, but an attempt to install them failed, leaving the following in /var/log/jockey.log (long log, pasted here). The full log won't fit in the question, so I'm showing $ fgrep 'ERROR' /var/log/jockey.log 2012-06-30 17:29:57,897 WARNING: modinfo for module vmxnet failed: ERROR: modinfo: could not find module vmxnet 2012-06-30 17:29:57,937 WARNING: modinfo for module wl failed: ERROR: modinfo: could not find module wl 2012-06-30 17:29:58,072 WARNING: modinfo for module nvidia_96 failed: ERROR: modinfo: could not find module nvidia_96 2012-06-30 17:29:58,240 WARNING: modinfo for module nvidia_current failed: ERROR: modinfo: could not find module nvidia_current 2012-06-30 17:29:58,293 WARNING: modinfo for module nvidia_current_updates failed: ERROR: modinfo: could not find module nvidia_current_updates 2012-06-30 17:29:58,351 WARNING: modinfo for module nvidia_173_updates failed: ERROR: modinfo: could not find module nvidia_173_updates 2012-06-30 17:29:58,385 WARNING: modinfo for module nvidia_173 failed: ERROR: modinfo: could not find module nvidia_173 2012-06-30 17:29:58,420 WARNING: modinfo for module nvidia_96_updates failed: ERROR: modinfo: could not find module nvidia_96_updates 2012-06-30 17:29:58,455 WARNING: modinfo for module ath_pci failed: ERROR: modinfo: could not find module ath_pci 2012-06-30 17:29:58,478 WARNING: modinfo for module fglrx_updates failed: ERROR: modinfo: could not find module fglrx_updates 2012-06-30 17:29:58,531 WARNING: modinfo for module fglrx failed: ERROR: modinfo: could not find module fglrx 2012-06-30 17:29:58,588 WARNING: modinfo for module omapdrm_pvr failed: ERROR: modinfo: could not find module omapdrm_pvr 2012-06-30 17:29:59,537 WARNING: modinfo for module nvidia_current failed: ERROR: modinfo: could not find module nvidia_current 2012-06-30 17:29:59,613 WARNING: modinfo for module nvidia_173_updates failed: ERROR: modinfo: could not find module nvidia_173_updates 2012-06-30 17:29:59,686 WARNING: modinfo for module nvidia_173 failed: ERROR: modinfo: could not find module nvidia_173 2012-06-30 17:29:59,764 WARNING: modinfo for module nvidia_current_updates failed: ERROR: modinfo: could not find module nvidia_current_updates 2012-06-30 17:30:29,544 WARNING: modinfo for module nvidia_current_updates failed: ERROR: modinfo: could not find module nvidia_current_updates 2012-06-30 17:30:29,545 ERROR: XorgDriverHandler.enable(): package or module not installed, aborting I'm not sure if it's a bug, as the first log shows some errors. What can I try?

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Running Powershell from within SharePoint

- by Norgean

Just because something is a daft idea, doesn't mean it can't be done. We sometimes need to do some housekeeping - like delete old files or list items or… yes, well, whatever you use Powershell for in a SharePoint world. Or it could be that your solution has "issues" for which you have Powershell solutions, but not the budget to transform into proper bug fixes. So you create a "how to" for the ITPro guys. Idea: What if we keep the scripts in a list, and have SharePoint execute the scripts on demand? An announcements list (because of the multiline body field). Warning! Let us be clear. This list needs to be locked down; if somebody creates a malicious script and you run it, I cannot help you. First; we need to figure out how to start Powershell scripts from C#. Hit teh interwebs and the Googlie, and you may find jpmik's post: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/18229/How-to-run-PowerShell-scripts-from-C. (Or MS' official answer at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee706563(v=vs.85).aspx) public string RunPowershell(string powershellText, SPWeb web, string param1, string param2) { // Powershell ~= RunspaceFactory - i.e. Create a powershell context var runspace = RunspaceFactory.CreateRunspace(); var resultString = new StringBuilder(); try { // load the SharePoint snapin - Note: you cannot do this in the script itself (i.e. add-pssnapin etc does not work) PSSnapInException snapInError; runspace.RunspaceConfiguration.AddPSSnapIn("Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell", out snapInError); runspace.Open(); // set a web variable. runspace.SessionStateProxy.SetVariable("webContext", web); // and some user defined parameters runspace.SessionStateProxy.SetVariable("param1", param1); runspace.SessionStateProxy.SetVariable("param2", param2); var pipeline = runspace.CreatePipeline(); pipeline.Commands.AddScript(powershellText); // add a "return" variable pipeline.Commands.Add("Out-String"); // execute! var results = pipeline.Invoke(); // convert the script result into a single string foreach (PSObject obj in results) { resultString.AppendLine(obj.ToString()); } } finally { // close the runspace runspace.Close(); } // consider logging the result. Or something. return resultString.ToString(); } Ok. We've written some code. Let us test it. var runner = new PowershellRunner(); runner.RunPowershellScript(@" $web = Get-SPWeb 'http://server/web' # or $webContext $web.Title = $param1 $web.Update() $web.Dispose() ", null, "New title", "not used"); Next step: Connect the code to the list, or more specifically, have the code execute on one (or several) list items. As there are more options than readers, I'll leave this as an exercise for the reader. Some alternatives: Create a ribbon button that calls RunPowershell with the body of the selected itemsAdd a layout pageSpecify list item from query string (possibly coupled with content editor webpart with html that links directly to this page with querystring)WebpartListing with an "execute" columnList with multiselect and an execute button Etc!Now that you have the code for executing powershell scripts, you can easily expand this into a timer job, which executes scripts at regular intervals. But if the previous solution was dangerous, this is even worse - the scripts will usually be run with one of the admin accounts, and can do pretty much anything...One more thing... Note that as this is running "consoleless" calls to Write-Host will fail. Two solutions; remove all output, or check if the script is run in a console-window or not. if ($host.Name -eq "ConsoleHost") { Write-Host 'If I agreed with you we'd both be wrong' }

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Comparing Apples and Pairs

- by Tony Davis

A recent study, High Costs and Negative Value of Pair Programming, by Capers Jones, pulls no punches in its assessment of the costs-to- benefits ratio of pair programming, two programmers working together, at a single computer, rather than separately. He implies that pair programming is a method rushed into production on a wave of enthusiasm for Agile or Extreme Programming, without any real regard for its effectiveness. Despite admitting that his data represented a far from complete study of the economics of pair programming, his conclusions were stark: it was 2.5 times more expensive, resulted in a 15% drop in productivity, and offered no significant quality benefits. The author provides a more scientific analysis than Jon Evans’ Pair Programming Considered Harmful, but the theme is the same. In terms of upfront-coding costs, pair programming is surely more expensive. The claim of productivity loss is dubious and contested by other studies. The third claim, though, did surprise me. The author’s data suggests that if both the pair and the individual programmers employ static code analysis and testing, then there is no measurable difference in the resulting code quality, in terms of defects per function point. In other words, pair programming incurs a massive extra cost for no tangible return in investment. There were, inevitably, many criticisms of his data and his conclusions, a few of which are persuasive. Firstly, that the driver/observer model of pair programming, on which the study bases its findings, is far from the most effective. For example, many find Ping-Pong pairing, based on use of test-driven development, far more productive. Secondly, that it doesn’t distinguish between “expert” and “novice” pair programmers– that is, independently of other programming skills, how skilled was an individual at pair programming. Thirdly, that his measure of quality is too narrow. This point rings true, certainly at Red Gate, where developers don’t pair program all the time, but use the method in short bursts, while tackling a tricky problem and needing a fresh perspective on the best approach, or more in-depth knowledge in a particular domain. All of them argue that pair programming, and collective code ownership, offers significant rewards, if not in terms of immediate “bug reduction”, then in removing the likelihood of single points of failure, and improving the overall quality and longer-term adaptability/maintainability of the design. There is also a massive learning benefit for both participants. One developer told me how he once worked in the same team over consecutive summers, the first time with no pair programming and the second time pair-programming two-thirds of the time, and described the increased rate of learning the second time as “phenomenal”. There are a great many theories on how we should develop software (Scrum, XP, Lean, etc.), but woefully little scientific research in their effectiveness. For a group that spends so much time crunching other people’s data, I wonder if developers spend enough time crunching data about themselves. Capers Jones’ data may be incomplete, but should cause a pause for thought, especially for any large IT departments, supporting commerce and industry, who are considering pair programming. It certainly shouldn’t discourage teams from exploring new ways of developing software, as long as they also think about how to gather hard data to gauge their effectiveness.

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Clone a VirtualBox Machine

I just installed VirtualBox, which I want to try out based on recommendations from peers for running a server from within my Windows 7 x64 OS. Ive never used VirtualBox, so Im certainly no expert at it, but I did want to share my experience with it thus far. Specifically, my intention is to create a couple of virtual machines. One I intend to use as a build server, for which a virtual machine makes sense because I can easily move it around as needed if there are hardware issues (its worth noting my need for setting up a build server at the moment is a result of a disk failure on the old build server). The other VM I want to set up will act as a proxy server for the issue tracking system were using at Code Project, Axosoft OnTime. They have a Remote Server application for this purpose, and since the OnTime install is 300 miles away from my location, the Remote Server should speed up my use of the OnTime client by limiting the chattiness with the database (at least, thats the hope). So, I need two VMs, and Im lazy. I dont want to have to install the OS and such twice. No problem, it should be simple to clone a virtualbox machine, or clone a virtualbox hard drive, right? Well unfortunately, if you look at the UI for VirtualBox, theres no such command. Youre left wondering How do I clone a VirtualBox machine? or the slightly related How do I clone a VirtualBox hard drive? If youve used VirtualPC, then you know that its actually pretty easy to copy and move around those VMs. Not quite so easy with VirtualBox. Finding the files is easy, theyre located in your user folder within the .VirtualBox folder (possibly within a HardDisks folder). The disks have a .vdi extension and will be pretty large if youve installed anything. The one shown here has just Windows Server 2008 R2 installed on it nothing else. If you copy the .vdi file and rename it, you can use the Virtual Media Manager to view it and you can create a new machine and choose the new drive to attach to. Unfortunately, if you simply make a copy of the drive, this wont work and youll get an error that says something to the effect of: Cannot register the hard disk PATH with UUID {id goes here} because a hard disk PATH2 with UUID {same id goes here} already exists in the media registry (PATH to XML file). There are command line tools you can use to do this in a way that avoids this error. Specifically, the c:\Program File\Sun\VirtualBox\VBoxManage.exe program is used for all command line access to VirtualBox, and to copy a virtual disk (.vdi file) you would call something like this: VBoxManage clonehd Disk1.vdi Disk1_Copy.vdi However, in my case this didnt work. I got basically the same error I showed above, along with some debug information for line 628 of VBoxManageDisk.cpp. As my main task was not to debug the C++ code used to write VirtualBox, I continued looking for a simple way to clone a virtual drive. I found it in this blog post. The Secret setvdiuuid Command VBoxManage has a whole bunch of commands you can use with it just pass it /? to see the list. However, it also has a special command called internalcommands that opens up access to even more commands. The one thats interesting for us here is the setvdiuuid command. By calling this command and passing in the file path to your vdi file, it will reset the UUID to a new (random, apparently) UUID. This then allows the virtual media manager to cope with the file, and lets you set up new machines that reference the newly UUIDd virtual drive. The full command line would be: VBoxManage internalcommands setvdiuuid MyCopy.vdi The following screenshot shows the error when trying clonehd as well as the successful use of setvdiuuid. Summary Now that I can clone machines easily, its a simple matter to set up base builds of any OS I might need, and then fork from there as needed. Hopefully the GUI for VirtualBox will be improved to include better support for copying machines/disks, as this is Im sure a very common scenario. Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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