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  • What’s New for Oracle Commerce? Executive QA with John Andrews, VP Product Management, Oracle Commerce

    - by Katrina Gosek
    Oracle Commerce was for the fifth time positioned as a leader by Gartner in the Magic Quadrant for E-Commerce. This inspired me to sit down with Oracle Commerce VP of Product Management, John Andrews to get his perspective on what continues to make Oracle a leader in the industry and what’s new for Oracle Commerce in 2013. Q: Why do you believe Oracle Commerce continues to be a leader in the industry? John: Oracle has a great acquisition strategy – it brings best-of-breed technologies into the product fold and then continues to grow and innovate them. This is particularly true with products unified into the Oracle Commerce brand. Oracle acquired ATG in late 2010 – and then Endeca in late 2011. This means that under the hood of Oracle Commerce you have market-leading technologies for cross-channel commerce and customer experience, both designed and developed in direct response to the unique challenges online businesses face. And we continue to innovate on capabilities core to what our customers need to be successful – contextual and personalized experience delivery, merchant-inspired tools, and architecture for performance and scalability. Q: It’s not a slow moving industry. What are you doing to keep the pace of innovation at Oracle Commerce? John: Oracle owes our customers the most innovative commerce capabilities. By unifying the core components of ATG and Endeca we are delivering on this promise. Oracle Commerce is continuing to innovate and redefine how commerce is done and in a way that drive business results and keeps customers coming back for experiences tailored just for them. Our January and May 2013 releases not only marked the seventh significant releases for the solution since the acquisitions of ATG and Endeca, we also continue to demonstrate rapid and significant progress on the unification of commerce and customer experience capabilities of the two commerce technologies. Q: Can you tell us what was notable about these latest releases under the Oracle Commerce umbrella? John: Specifically, our latest product innovations give businesses selling online the ability to get to market faster with more personalized commerce experiences in the following ways: Mobile: the latest Commerce Reference Application in this release offers a wider range of examples for online businesses to leverage for iOS development and specifically new iPad reference capabilities. This release marks the first release of the iOS Universal application that serves both the iPhone and iPad devices from a single download or binary. Business users can now drive page content management and layout of search results and category pages, as well as create additional storefront elements such as categories, facets / dimensions, and breadcrumbs through Experience Manager tools. Cross-Channel Commerce: key commerce platform capabilities have been added to support cross-channel commerce, including an expanded inventory model to maintain inventory for stores, pickup in stores and Web-based returns. Online businesses with in-store operations can now offer advanced shipping options on the web and make returns and exchange logic easily available on the web. Multi-Site Capabilities: significant enhancements to the Commerce Platform multi-site architecture that allows business users to quickly launch and manage multiple sites on the same cluster and share data, carts, and other components. First introduced in 2010, with this latest release business users can now partition or share customer profiles, control users’ site-based access, and manage personalization assets using site groups. Internationalization: continued language support and enhancements for business user tools as well and search and navigation. Guided Search now supports 35 total languages with 11 new languages (including Danish, Arabic, Norwegian, Serbian Cyrillic) added in this release. Commerce Platform tools now include localized support for 17 locales with 4 new languages (Danish, Portuguese (European), Finnish, and Thai). No development or customization is required in order for business users to use the applications in any of these supported languages. Business Tool Experience: valuable new Commerce Merchandising features include a new workflow for making emergency changes quickly and increased visibility into promotions rules and qualifications in preview mode. Oracle Commerce business tools continue to become more and more feature rich to provide intuitive, easy- to-use (yet powerful) capabilities to allow business users to manage content and the shopping experience. Commerce & Experience Unification: demonstrable unification of commerce and customer experience capabilities include – productized cartridges that provide supported integration between the Commerce Platform and Experience Management tools, cross-channel returns, Oracle Service Cloud integration, and integrated iPad application. The mission guiding our product development is to deliver differentiated, personalized user experiences across any device in a contextual manner – and to give the business the best tools to tune and optimize those user experiences to meet their business objectives. We also need to do this in a way that makes it operationally efficient for the business, keeping the overall total cost of ownership low – yet also allows the business to expand, whether it be to new business models, geographies or brands. To learn more about the latest Oracle Commerce releases and mission, visit the links below: • Hear more from John about the Oracle Commerce mission • Hear from Oracle Commerce customers • Documentation on the new releases • Listen to the Oracle ATG Commerce 10.2 Webcast • Listen to the Oracle Endeca Commerce 3.1.2 Webcast

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  • Understanding the value of Customer Experience & Loyalty for the Telecommunications Industry

    - by raul.goycoolea
    Worried by economic woes and market forces, especially in mature markets, communications service providers (CSPs) increasingly focus on improving customer experience. In fact, it seems difficult to find a major message by a C-level executive in the developed world that does not include something on "meeting and exceeding customers' needs". Frequently in customer satisfaction studies by prominent firms, CSPs fall short of the leadership demonstrated by other industries that take customer-centric approaches to their bottom-line strategies. Consider the following:Despite the continued impact of global economic crisis, in July 2010, Apple Computer posted record revenue and net quarterly profit. Those who attribute the results primarily to the iPhone 4 launch should note that Apple also shipped around 30% more Macintosh computers than the same period the previous year. Even sales of the iPod line increased by 8% in a highly commoditized, shrinking media player market. Finally, Apple began selling iPads during the quarter, with total sales of more than 3 million units. What does Apple have that the others lack? Well, some great products (and services) to be sure, but it also excels at customer service and support, marketing, and distribution, and has one of the strongest brands globally. Its products are useful, simple to use, easy to acquire and augment, high quality, and considered very cool. They also evoke such an emotional response from many of Apple's customers, which they turn up their noses at competitive products.In other words, Apple appears to have mastered virtually every aspect of customer experience and the resultant loyalty of its customer base - even in difficult financial times. Through that unwavering customer focus, Apple continues to drive its revenues and profits to new heights. Other customer loyalty leaders like Wal-Mart, Google, Toyota and Honda are also doing well by focusing on customer experience as an essential driver of profitability. Service providers should note this performance and ask themselves how they might leverage the same principles to increase their own profitability. After all, that is what customer experience and loyalty are all about: profitability.To successfully manage all the critical touch points of customer experience, CSPs must shun the one-size-fits-all approach. They can no longer afford to view customer service fundamentally as an act of altruism - which mentality dates back to the industry's civil service days, when CSPs were typically government organizations that were critical to economic development and public safety.As regulators and public officials have pushed, and continue to push, service providers to new heights of reliability - using incentives and punishments - most CSPs already have some of the fundamental building blocks of customer service in place. Yet despite that history and experience, service providers still lag other industries in providing what is seen as good customer service.As we observed in the TMF's 2009 Insights Research report, Customer Experience Management: Driving Loyalty & Profitability there has been resurgence in interest by CSPs. More and more of them have stated ambitions to catch up other industries, and they are realizing that good customer service is a powerful strategy for increasing business performance and profitability, not an act of good will.CSPs are recognizing the connection between customer experience and profitability, as demonstrated in many studies. For example, according to research by Bain & Company, a 5 percent improvement in customer retention rates can yield as much as a 75 percent increase in profits for companies across a range of industries.After decades of customer experience strategy formulation, Bain partner and business author, Frederick Reichheld, considers "would you recommend us to a friend?" as the ultimate question for a customer. How many times have you or your friends recommended an iPod, iPhone or a Mac? What do your children recommend to their peers? Their peers to them?There are certain steps service providers have to take to create more personalized relationships with their customers, as well as reduce churn and increase profitability, all while becoming leaner and more agile. First, they have to define customer experience, we define it as the result of the sum of observations, perceptions, thoughts and feelings arising from interactions and relationships between customers and their service provider(s). Virtually every customer touch point - whether directly or indirectly linked to service providers and their partners - contributes to customer perception, satisfaction, loyalty, and ultimately profitability. Gaining leadership in customer experience and satisfaction will not be a simple task, as it is affected by virtually every customer-facing aspect of the service provider, and in turn impacts the service provider deeply - especially on the all-important bottom line. The scope of issues affecting customer experience is complex and dynamic.With new services, devices and applications extending the basis of customer experience to domains beyond the direct control of the service provider, it is likely to increase in complexity and dynamism.Customer loyalty = increased profitsAs stated earlier, customer experience programs are not fundamentally altruistic exercises, but a strategic means of improving competitiveness and profitability in the short and long term. Loyalty is essential to deriving long term profits from customers.Some of the earliest loyalty programs date back to the 1930s, when packaged goods companies offered embedded coupons for rewards to buyers, and eventually retail chains began offering reward programs to frequent shoppers. These programs continued for decades but were leapfrogged in the 1980s by more aggressive programs from the airlines.This movement was led by American Airlines, which launched the first full-scale loyalty marketing program of the modern era with the AAdvantage frequent flyer scheme. It was the first to reward frequent fliers with notional air miles that could be accumulated and later redeemed for free travel. Figure 1: Opportunities example of Customer loyalty driven profitOther airlines and travel providers were quick to grasp the incredible value of providing customers with an incentive to use their company exclusively. Within a few years, dozens of travel industry companies launched similar initiatives and now loyalty programs are achieving near-ubiquity in many service industries, especially those in which it is difficult to differentiate offerings by product attributes.The belief is that increased profitability will result from customer retention efforts because:•    The cost of acquisition occurs only at the beginning of a relationship: the longer the relationship, the lower the amortized cost;•    Account maintenance costs decline as a percentage of total costs, or as a percentage of revenue, over the lifetime of the relationship;•    Long term customers tend to be less inclined to switch and less price sensitive which can result in stable unit sales volume and increases in dollar-sales volume;•    Long term customers may initiate word-of-mouth promotions and referrals, which cost the company nothing and arguably are the most effective form of advertising;•    Long-term customers are more likely to buy ancillary products and higher margin supplemental products;•    Long term customers tend to be satisfied with their relationship with the company and are less likely to switch to competitors, making market entry or competitors gaining market share difficult;•    Regular customers tend to be less expensive to service, as they are familiar with the processes involved, require less 'education', and are consistent in their order placement;•    Increased customer retention and loyalty makes the employees' jobs easier and more satisfying. In turn, happy employees feed back into higher customer satisfaction in a virtuous circle. Figure 2: The virtuous circle of customer loyaltyFigure 2 represents a high-level example of a virtuous cycle driven by customer satisfaction and loyalty, depicting how superiority in product and service offerings, as well as strong customer support by competent employees, lead to higher sales and ultimately profitability. As stated above, this is not a new concept, but succeeding with it is difficult. It has eluded many a company driven to achieve profitability goals. Of course, for this circle to be virtuous, the customer relationship(s) must be profitable.Trying to maintain the loyalty of unprofitable customers is not a viable business strategy. It is, therefore, important that marketers can assess the profitability of each customer (or customer segment), and either improve or terminate relationships that are not profitable. This means each customer's 'relationship costs' must be understood and compared to their 'relationship revenue'. Customer lifetime value (CLV) is the most commonly used metric here, as it is generally accepted as a representation of exactly how much each customer is worth in monetary terms, and therefore a determinant of exactly how much a service provider should be willing to spend to acquire or retain that customer.CLV models make several simplifying assumptions and often involve the following inputs:•    Churn rate represents the percentage of customers who end their relationship with a company in a given period;•    Retention rate is calculated by subtracting the churn rate percentage from 100;•    Period/horizon equates to the units of time into which a customer relationship can be divided for analysis. A year is the most commonly used period for this purpose. Customer lifetime value is a multi-period calculation, often projecting three to seven years into the future. In practice, analysis beyond this point is viewed as too speculative to be reliable. The model horizon is the number of periods used in the calculation;•    Periodic revenue is the amount of revenue collected from a customer in a given period (though this is often extended across multiple periods into the future to understand lifetime value), such as usage revenue, revenues anticipated from cross and upselling, and often some weighting for referrals by a loyal customer to others; •    Retention cost describes the amount of money the service provider must spend, in a given period, to retain an existing customer. Again, this is often forecast across multiple periods. Retention costs include customer support, billing, promotional incentives and so on;•    Discount rate means the cost of capital used to discount future revenue from a customer. Discounting is an advanced method used in more sophisticated CLV calculations;•    Profit margin is the projected profit as a percentage of revenue for the period. This may be reflected as a percentage of gross or net profit. Again, this is generally projected across the model horizon to understand lifetime value.A strong focus on managing these inputs can help service providers realize stronger customer relationships and profits, but there are some obstacles to overcome in achieving accurate calculations of CLV, such as the complexity of allocating costs across the customer base. There are many costs that serve all customers which must be properly allocated across the base, and often a simple proportional allocation across the whole base or a segment may not accurately reflect the true cost of serving that customer;  This is made worse by the fragmentation of customer information, which is likely to be across a variety of product or operations groups, and may be difficult to aggregate due to different representations.In addition, there is the complexity of account relationships and structures to take into consideration. Complex account structures may not be understood or properly represented. For example, a profitable customer may have a separate account for a second home or another family member, which may appear to be unprofitable. If the service provider cannot relate the two accounts, CLV is not properly represented and any resultant cancellation of the apparently unprofitable account may result in the customer churning from the profitable one.In summary, if service providers are to realize strong customer relationships and their attendant profits, there must be a very strong focus on data management. This needs to be coupled with analytics that help business managers and those who work in customer-facing functions offer highly personalized solutions to customers, while maintaining profitability for the service provider. It's clear that acquiring new customers is expensive. Advertising costs, campaign management expenses, promotional service pricing and discounting, and equipment subsidies make a serious dent in a new customer's profitability. That is especially true given the rising subsidies for Smartphone users, which service providers hope will result in greater profits from profits from data services profitability in future.  The situation is made worse by falling prices and greater competition in mature markets.Customer acquisition through industry consolidation isn't cheap either. A North American service provider spent about $2,000 per subscriber in its acquisition of a smaller company earlier this year. While this has allowed it to leapfrog to become the largest mobile service provider in the country, it required a total investment of more than $28 billion (including assumption of the acquiree's debt).While many operating cost synergies clearly made this deal more attractive to the acquiring company, this is certainly an expensive way to acquire customers: the cost per subscriber in this case is not out of line with the prices others have paid for acquisitions.While growth by acquisition certainly increases overall revenues, it often creates tremendous challenges for profitability. Organic growth through increased customer loyalty and retention is a more effective driver of profit, as well as a stronger predictor of future profitability. Service providers, especially those in mature markets, are increasingly recognizing this and taking steps toward a creating a more personalized, flexible and satisfying experience for their customers.In summary, the clearest path to profitability for companies in virtually all industries is through customer retention and maximization of lifetime value. Service providers would do well to recognize this and focus attention on profitable customer relationships.

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  • E-Business Suite Sessions at Sangam 2013 in Hyderabad

    - by Sara Woodhull
    The Sangam 2013 conference, sponsored jointly by the All-India Oracle Users' Group (AIOUG) and India Oracle Applucations Users Group (IOAUG), will be in Hyderabad, India on November 8-9, 2013.  This year, the E-Business Suite Applications Technology Group (ATG) will offer two speaker sessions and a walk-in usability test of upcoming EBS user interface features.  It's only about two weeks away, so make your plans to attend if you are in India. Sessions Oracle E-Business Suite Technology: Latest Features and Roadmap Veshaal Singh, Senior Director, ATG Development Friday, Nov. 9, 11:00-12:00 This Oracle development session provides an overview of Oracle's product strategy for Oracle E-Business Suite technology, the capabilities and associated business benefits of recent releases, and a review of capabilities on the product roadmap. This is the cornerstone session for Oracle E-Business Suite technology. Come hear about the latest new usability enhancements of the user interface; systems administration and configuration management tools; security-related updates; and tools and options for extending, customizing, and integrating Oracle E-Business Suite with other applications. Integration Options for Oracle E-Business Suite Rekha Ayothi, Lead Product Manager, ATG Friday, Nov. 9, 2:00-3:00 In this Oracle development session, you will get an understanding of how, when and where you can leverage Oracle's integration technologies to connect end-to-end business processes across your enterprise, including your Oracle Applications portfolio. This session offers a technical look at Oracle E-Business Suite Integrated SOA Gateway, Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle Application Adapters for Data Integration for Oracle E-Business Suite, and other options for integrating Oracle E-Business Suite with other applications. Usability Testing There will be multiple opportunities to participate in usability testing at Sangam '13.  The User Experience team is running a one-on-one usability study that requires advance registration.  In addition, we will be hosting a special walk-in usability lab to get feedback for new Oracle E-Business Suite OA Framework features.  The walk-in lab is a shorter usability experience that does not require any pre-registration.  In both cases, Oracle wants your feedback!  Even if you only have a few minutes, come by the User Experience Lab, meet the team, and try the walk-in lab.

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  • The Internet of Things & Commerce: Part 3 -- Interview with Kristen J. Flanagan, Commerce Product Management

    - by Katrina Gosek, Director | Commerce Product Strategy-Oracle
    Internet of Things & Commerce Series: Part 3 (of 3) And now for the final installment my three part series on the Internet of Things & Commerce. Post one, “The Next 7,000 Days”, introduced the idea of the Internet of Things, followed by a second post interviewing one of our chief commerce innovation strategists, Brian Celenza.  This final post in the series is an interview with Kristen J. Flanagan, lead product manager for Oracle Commerce omnichannel strategy. She takes us through the past, present, and future of how our Commerce Solution is re-imagining the way physical and digital shopping come together. ------- QUESTION: It’s your job to stay on top of what our customers’ need to not only run their online businesses effectively, but also to make sure they have product capabilities they can innovate and grow on. What key trend has been top-of-mind for you and our customers around this collision of physical and digital shopping? Kristen: I’ll agree with Brian Celenza that hands down mobile has forced a major disruption in shopping and selling behavior. A few years ago, mobile exploded at a pace I don't think anyone was expecting. Early on, we saw our customers scrambling to establish a mobile presence---mostly through "screen scraping" technologies. As smartphones continued to advance (at lightening speed!), our customers started to investigate ways to truly tap in to their eCommerce capabilities to deliver the mobile experience. They started looking to us for a means of using the eCommerce services and capabilities to deliver a mobile experience that is tailored for mobile rather than the desktop experience on a smaller screen. In the future, I think we'll see customers starting to really understand what their shoppers need and expect from a mobile offering and how they can adapt their content and delivery of that content to meet those needs. And, mobile shopping doesn’t stop at the consumer / buyer. Because the in-store experience is compelling and has advantages that digital just can't offer, we're also starting to see the eCommerce services being leveraged for mobile for in-store sales associates. Brick-and-mortar retailers are interested in putting the omnichannel product catalog, promotions, and cart into the hands of knowledgeable associates. Retailers are now looking to connect and harness the eCommerce data in-store so that shoppers have a reason to walk-in. I think we'll be seeing a lot more customers thinking about melding the in-store and digital experiences to present a richer offering for shoppers.    QUESTION: What are some examples of what our customers are doing currently to bring these concepts to reality? Kristen: Well, without question, connecting digital and brick-and-mortar worlds is becoming tablestakes for selling experiences. If a brand has a foot in both worlds (i.e., isn’t a pureplay online retailer), they have to connect the dots because shoppers – whether consumers or B2B buyers –don't think in clearly defined channels anymore. The expectation is connectedness – for on- and offline experiences, promotions, products, and customer data. What does this mean practically for businesses selling goods on- and offline? It touches a lot of systems: inventory info on the eCommerce site, fulfillment options across channels (buy online/pickup in store), order information (representing various channels for a cohesive view of shopper order history), promotions across digital and store, etc.  A few years ago, the main link between store and digital was the smartphone. We all remember when “apps” became a thing and many of our customers were scrambling to get a native app out there. Now we're seeing more strategic thinking around the benefits of mobile web vs. native and how that ties in to the purpose and role of mobile within the digital channel. Put it more broadly, how these pieces fit together in the overall brand puzzle.  The same could be said for “showrooming.” Where it was a major concern (i.e., shoppers using stores to look at merchandise and then order online from Amazon), in recent months, it’s emerged that the inverse is now becoming a a reality as well. "Webrooming" (using digital sites to do research before making a purchase in the store) is a new behavior pure play retailers are challenged with. There are many technologies, behaviors, and information that need to tie together to offer a holistic omnichannel shopping experience. As a result, brands are looking for ways to connect the digital and in-store experiences to bridge the gaps: shared assortments across channels, assisted selling apps that arm associates with information about shoppers, shared promotions, inventory, etc. QUESTION: How has Oracle Commerce been built to help brands make the link between in-store and digital over the last few years? Kristen: Over the last seven years, the product has been in step with the changes in industry needs. Here is a brief history of the evolution: Prior to Oracle’s acquisition of ATG and Endeca, key investments were made to cross-channel functionality that we are still building on today. Commerce Service Center (v2007.1) ATG introduced the Commerce Service Center in 2007.1 and marked the first entry into what was then called “cross-channel.” The Commerce Service Center is a call-center-agent-facing application that enables agents to see shopper orders, online catalog, promotions, and pricing. It is tightly integrated with the eCommerce capabilities of the platform and commerce engine and provided a means of connecting data from the call center and online channels.  REST services framework (v9.1)  In v9.1 we introduced the REST services framework and interface in the Platform that enabled customers to use ATG web services in other applications. This framework has become the basis for our subsequent omni-channel features and functionality. Multisite Architecture (v10) With the v10 release, we introduced the Multisite Architecture, which enabled customers to manage multiple sites (and channels) within a single instance of the BCC. Customers could create site- and channel-specific catalogs, promotions, targeters, and scenarios. Endeca Page Builder (2.x) / Experience Manager (3.x) With the introduction of Endeca for Mobile (now part of the core platform, available through the reference store – see blow) on top of Page Builder (and then eventually Experience Manager), Endeca gave business users the tools to create and manage native and mobile web applications. And since the acquisition of both ATG (2011) and Endeca (2012), Oracle Commerce has leveraged the best of each leading technology’s capabilities for omnichannel commerce to continue to drive innovation for our customers. Service enablement of core Oracle Commerce capabilities (v10.1.1, 10.2, & 11) After the establishment of the REST services framework and interface, we followed up in subsequent releases with service enablement of core Oracle Commerce capabilities throughout the iOS native app and the enablement of the core Commerce Service Center features. The result is that customers can leverage these services for their integrations with other systems, as well as their omnichannel initiatives.  Mobile web reference application (v10.1) In 10.1 we introduced the shopper-facing mobile reference application that showed how to use Oracle Commerce to deliver a mobile web experience for shoppers. This included the use of Experience Manager and cartridges to drive those experiences on select pages.  Native (iOS) reference application (v10.1.1)  We came out with the 10.1.1 shopper-facing native iOS ref app that illustrated how to use the Commerce REST services to deliver an iOS app. Also included Experience Manager-driven pages.   Assisted Selling reference application (v10.2.1)  The Assisted Selling reference application is our first reference application designed for the in-store associate. This iOS app shows customers how they can use Oracle Commerce data and information to provide a high-touch, consultative sales environment as well as to put the endless aisle into hands of their associates. Shoppers can start a cart online, and in-store associates can access that cart via the application to provide more information or add products and then transact using the ATG engine. Support for Retail promotions (v11) As part of the v11 release, we worked with teams in the Oracle Retail Global Business Unit (RGBU) to assess which promotion types and capabilities are supported across our products. Those products included Oracle Commerce, Oracle Point of Service (ORPOS), and Oracle Retail Price Management (RPM). The result is that customers can now more easily support omnichannel use cases between the store and digital.  Making sure Oracle Commerce can help support the omnichannel needs of our customers is core to our product strategy. With 89% of consumers now use two or more channels to make a single purchase, ensuring that cross-channel interactions are linked is critical to a great customer experience – and to sales. As Oracle Commerce evolves, we want to make it simple for organizations to create, deliver, and scale experiences across touchpoints with our create once, deploy commerce anywhere framework. We have a flexible, services-oriented architecture that allows data, content, catalogs, cart, experiences, personalization, and merchandising to be shared across touchpoints and easily extended in to new environments like mobile, social, in-store, Call Center, and new Websites. [For the latest downloads and Oracle Commerce documentation, please visit the Oracle Technical Network.] ------ Thank you to both Brian and Kristen for their contributions and to this blog series and their continued thought leadership for Oracle Commerce. We are all looking forward to the coming years of months of new shopping behaviors and opportunities to innovate. Because – if the digital fabric of our everyday lives continues to change at the same pace – the next five years (that just under 2,000 days), will be dramatic. ---------- THIS DOCUMENT IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY AND MAY NOT BE INCORPORATED INTO A CONTRACT OR AGREEMENT

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  • What Counts for a DBA: Skill

    - by drsql
    “Practice makes perfect:” right? Well, not exactly. The reality of it all is that this saying is an untrustworthy aphorism. I discovered this in my “younger” days when I was a passionate tennis player, practicing and playing 20+ hours a week. No matter what my passion level was, without some serious coaching (and perhaps a change in dietary habits), my skill level was never going to rise to a level where I could make any money at the sport that involved something other than selling tennis balls at a sporting goods store. My game may have improved with all that practice but I had too many bad practices to overcome. Practice by itself merely reinforces what we know and what we can figure out naturally. The truth is actually closer to the expression used by Vince Lombardi: “Perfect practice makes perfect.” So how do you get to become skilled as a DBA if practice alone isn’t sufficient? Hit the Internet and start searching for SQL training and you can find 100 different sites. There are also hundreds of blogs, magazines, books, conferences both onsite and virtual. But then how do you know who is good? Unfortunately often the worst guide can be to find out the experience level of the writer. Some of the best DBAs are frighteningly young, and some got their start back when databases were stored on stacks of paper with little holes in it. As a programmer, is it really so hard to understand normalization? Set based theory? Query optimization? Indexing and performance tuning? The biggest barrier often is previous knowledge, particularly programming skills cultivated before you get started with SQL. In the world of technology, it is pretty rare that a fresh programmer will gravitate to database programming. Database programming is very unsexy work, because without a UI all you have are a bunch of text strings that you could never impress anyone with. Newbies spend most of their time building UIs or apps with procedural code in C# or VB scoring obvious interesting wins. Making matters worse is that SQL programming requires mastery of a much different toolset than most any mainstream programming skill. Instead of controlling everything yourself, most of the really difficult work is done by the internals of the engine (written by other non-relational programmers…we just can’t get away from them.) So is there a golden road to achieving a high skill level? Sadly, with tennis, I am pretty sure I’ll never discover it. However, with programming it seems to boil down to practice in applying the appropriate techniques for whatever type of programming you are doing. Can a C# programmer build a great database? As long as they don’t treat SQL like C#, absolutely. Same goes for a DBA writing C# code. None of this stuff is rocket science, as long as you learn to understand that different types of programming require different skill sets and you as a programmer must recognize the difference between one of the procedural languages and SQL and treat them differently. Skill comes from practicing doing things the right way and making “right” a habit.

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  • You Can Deliver an Engaging Online Experience Across All Phases of the Customer Journey

    - by Christie Flanagan
    Engage. Empower. Optimize. Today’s customers have higher expectations and more choices than ever before.  To succeed in this environment, organizations must deliver an engaging online experience that is personalized, interactive and consistent across all phases of the customer journey. This requires a new approach that connects and optimizes all customer touch points as they research, select and transact with your brand.  Oracle WebCenter Sites combines with other customer experience applications such as Oracle ATG Commerce, Oracle Endeca, Oracle Real-Time Decisions and Siebel CRM to deliver a connected customer experience across your websites and campaigns. Attend this Webcast to learn how Oracle WebCenter: Works with Oracle ATG Commerce and Oracle Endeca to deliver consistent and engaging browsing, shopping and search experiences across all of your customer facing websites Enables you to optimize the performance of your online initiatives through integration with Oracle Real-Time Decisions for automated targeting and segmentation Connects with Siebel CRM to maintain a single view of the customer and integrate campaigns across channels Register now for the Webcast.

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  • Is hidden content (display: none;) -indexed- by search engines? [closed]

    - by user568458
    Possible Duplicate: How bad is it to use display: none in CSS? We've established on this site before (in this question) that, since there are so many legitimate uses for hiding content with display: none; when creating interactive features, that sites aren't automatically penalised for content that is hidden this way (so long as it doesn't look algorithmically spammy). Google's Webmaster guidelines also make clear that a good practice when using content that is initially legitimately hidden for interactivity purposes is to also include the same content in a <noscript> tag, and Google recommend that if you design and code for users including users with screen readers or javascript disabled, then 9 times out of 10 good relevant search rankings will follow (though their specific advice seems more written for cases where javascript writes new content to the page). JavaScript: Place the same content from the JavaScript in a tag. If you use this method, ensure the contents are exactly the same as what’s contained in the JavaScript, and that this content is shown to visitors who do not have JavaScript enabled in their browser. So, best practice seems pretty clear. What I can't find out is, however, the simple factual matter of whether hidden content is indexed by search engines (but with potential penalties if it looks 'spammy'), or, whether it is ignored, or, whether it is indexed but with a lower weighting (like <noscript> content is, apparently). (for bonus points it would be great to know if this varies or is consistent between display: none;, visibility: hidden;, etc, but that isn't crucial). This is different to the other questions on display:none; and SEO - those are about good and bad practice and the answers are discussions of good and bad practice, I'm interested simply in the factual 'Yes or no' question of whether search engines index, or ignore, content that is in display: none; - something those other questions' answers aren't totally clear on. One other question has an answer, "Yes", supported by a link to an article that doesn't really clear things up: it establishes that search engines can spot that text is hidden, it discusses (again) whether hidden text causes sites to be marked as spam, and ultimately concludes that in mid 2011, Google's policy on hidden text was evolving, and that they hadn't at that time started automatically penalising display:none; or marking it as spam. It's clear that display: none; isn't always spam and isn't always treated as spam (many Google sites use it...): but this doesn't clear up how, or if, it is indexed. What I will do will be to follow the guidelines and make sure that all the content that is initially hidden which regular users can explore using javascript-driven interactivity is also structured in way that noscript/screenreader users can use. So I'm not interested in best practice, opinions etc because best practice seems to be really clear: accessibility best practices boosts SEO. But I'd like to know what exactly will happen: whether any display: none; content I have alongside <noscript> or otherwise accessibility-optimised content will be be ignored, or indexed again, or picked up to compare against the <noscript> content but not indexed... etc.

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  • How do I remove the time from printpreview dialog?

    - by Albo Best
    Here is my code: Imports System.Data.OleDb Imports System.Drawing.Printing Namespace Print Public Class Form1 Inherits System.Windows.Forms.Form Dim PrintC As PrinterClass Dim conn As OleDb.OleDbConnection Dim connectionString As String = "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=..\\db1.mdb" Dim sql As String = String.Empty Dim ds As DataSet Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load FillDataGrid() '//create printerclass object PrintC = New PrinterClass(PrintDocument1, dataGrid) End Sub Private Sub FillDataGrid() Try Dim dt As New DataTable Dim ds As New DataSet ds.Tables.Add(dt) Dim da As New OleDbDataAdapter con.Open() da = New OleDbDataAdapter("SELECT * from klient ", con) da.Fill(dt) con.Close() dataGrid.DataSource = dt.DefaultView Dim dTable As DataTable For Each dTable In ds.Tables Dim dgStyle As DataGridTableStyle = New DataGridTableStyle dgStyle.MappingName = dTable.TableName dataGrid.TableStyles.Add(dgStyle) Next ' DataGrid settings dataGrid.CaptionText = "TE GJITHE KLIENTET" dataGrid.HeaderFont = New Font("Verdana", 12) dataGrid.TableStyles(0).GridColumnStyles(0).Width = 60 dataGrid.TableStyles(0).GridColumnStyles(1).Width = 140 dataGrid.TableStyles(0).GridColumnStyles(2).Width = 140 dataGrid.TableStyles(0).GridColumnStyles(3).Width = 140 dataGrid.TableStyles(0).GridColumnStyles(4).Width = 140 dataGrid.TableStyles(0).GridColumnStyles(5).HeaderText = "" dataGrid.TableStyles(0).GridColumnStyles(5).Width = -1 Catch ex As Exception MessageBox.Show(ex.Message) End Try End Sub Private Sub btnPrint_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles btnPrint.Click 'create printerclass object PrintC = New PrinterClass(PrintDocument1, dataGrid) PrintDocument1.Print() End Sub Private Sub btnPreview_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles btnPreview.Click 'create printerclass object PrintC = New PrinterClass(PrintDocument1, dataGrid) ''preview Dim ps As New PaperSize("A4", 840, 1150) ps.PaperName = PaperKind.A4 PrintDocument1.DefaultPageSettings.PaperSize = ps PrintPreviewDialog1.WindowState = FormWindowState.Normal PrintPreviewDialog1.StartPosition = FormStartPosition.CenterScreen PrintPreviewDialog1.ClientSize = New Size(600, 600) PrintPreviewDialog1.ShowDialog() End Sub Private Sub PrintDocument1_PrintPage(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.Drawing.Printing.PrintPageEventArgs) Handles PrintDocument1.PrintPage 'print grid Dim morepages As Boolean = PrintC.Print(e.Graphics) If (morepages) Then e.HasMorePages = True End If End Sub End Class End Namespace This is how data looks in DataGrid (that's perfect)... and here is how it looks when I click PrintPreview. (I don't want the time to appear there, the "12:00:00" part. in database the date is stored as Short Date (10-Dec-12) Can somebody suggest a way around that? Imports System Imports System.Windows.Forms Imports System.Drawing Imports System.Drawing.Printing Imports System.Collections Imports System.Data Namespace Print Public Class PrinterClass '//clone of Datagrid Dim PrintGrid As Grid '//printdocument for initial printer settings Private PrintDoc As PrintDocument '//defines whether the grid is ordered right to left Private bRightToLeft As Boolean '//Current Top Private CurrentY As Single = 0 '//Current Left Private CurrentX As Single = 0 '//CurrentRow to print Private CurrentRow As Integer = 0 '//Page Counter Public PageCounter As Integer = 0 '/// <summary> '/// Constructor Class '/// </summary> '/// <param name="pdocument"></param> '/// <param name="dgrid"></param> Public Sub New(ByVal pdocument As PrintDocument, ByVal dgrid As DataGrid) 'MyBase.new() PrintGrid = New Grid(dgrid) PrintDoc = pdocument '//The grid columns are right to left bRightToLeft = dgrid.RightToLeft = RightToLeft.Yes '//init CurrentX and CurrentY CurrentY = pdocument.DefaultPageSettings.Margins.Top CurrentX = pdocument.DefaultPageSettings.Margins.Left End Sub Public Function Print(ByVal g As Graphics, ByRef currentX As Single, ByRef currentY As Single) As Boolean '//use predefined area currentX = currentX currentY = currentY PrintHeaders(g) Dim Morepages As Boolean = PrintDataGrid(g) currentY = currentY currentX = currentX Return Morepages End Function Public Function Print(ByVal g As Graphics) As Boolean CurrentX = PrintDoc.DefaultPageSettings.Margins.Left CurrentY = PrintDoc.DefaultPageSettings.Margins.Top PrintHeaders(g) Return PrintDataGrid(g) End Function '/// <summary> '/// Print the Grid Headers '/// </summary> '/// <param name="g"></param> Private Sub PrintHeaders(ByVal g As Graphics) Dim sf As StringFormat = New StringFormat '//if we want to print the grid right to left If (bRightToLeft) Then CurrentX = PrintDoc.DefaultPageSettings.PaperSize.Width - PrintDoc.DefaultPageSettings.Margins.Right sf.FormatFlags = StringFormatFlags.DirectionRightToLeft Else CurrentX = PrintDoc.DefaultPageSettings.Margins.Left End If Dim i As Integer For i = 0 To PrintGrid.Columns - 1 '//set header alignment Select Case (CType(PrintGrid.Headers.GetValue(i), Header).Alignment) Case HorizontalAlignment.Left 'left sf.Alignment = StringAlignment.Near Case HorizontalAlignment.Center sf.Alignment = StringAlignment.Center Case HorizontalAlignment.Right sf.Alignment = StringAlignment.Far End Select '//advance X according to order If (bRightToLeft) Then '//draw the cell bounds (lines) and back color g.FillRectangle(New SolidBrush(PrintGrid.HeaderBackColor), CurrentX - PrintGrid.Headers(i).Width, CurrentY, PrintGrid.Headers(i).Width, PrintGrid.Headers(i).Height) g.DrawRectangle(New Pen(PrintGrid.LineColor), CurrentX - PrintGrid.Headers(i).Width, CurrentY, PrintGrid.Headers(i).Width, PrintGrid.Headers(i).Height) '//draw the cell text g.DrawString(PrintGrid.Headers(i).CText, PrintGrid.Headers(i).Font, New SolidBrush(PrintGrid.HeaderForeColor), New RectangleF(CurrentX - PrintGrid.Headers(i).Width, CurrentY, PrintGrid.Headers(i).Width, PrintGrid.Headers(i).Height), sf) '//next cell CurrentX -= PrintGrid.Headers(i).Width Else '//draw the cell bounds (lines) and back color g.FillRectangle(New SolidBrush(PrintGrid.HeaderBackColor), CurrentX, CurrentY, PrintGrid.Headers(i).Width, PrintGrid.Headers(i).Height) g.DrawRectangle(New Pen(PrintGrid.LineColor), CurrentX, CurrentY, PrintGrid.Headers(i).Width, PrintGrid.Headers(i).Height) '//draw the cell text g.DrawString(PrintGrid.Headers(i).CText, PrintGrid.Headers(i).Font, New SolidBrush(PrintGrid.HeaderForeColor), New RectangleF(CurrentX, CurrentY, PrintGrid.Headers(i).Width, PrintGrid.Headers(i).Height), sf) '//next cell CurrentX += PrintGrid.Headers(i).Width End If Next '//reset to beginning If (bRightToLeft) Then '//right align CurrentX = PrintDoc.DefaultPageSettings.PaperSize.Width - PrintDoc.DefaultPageSettings.Margins.Right Else '//left align CurrentX = PrintDoc.DefaultPageSettings.Margins.Left End If '//advance to next row CurrentY = CurrentY + CType(PrintGrid.Headers.GetValue(0), Header).Height End Sub Private Function PrintDataGrid(ByVal g As Graphics) As Boolean Dim sf As StringFormat = New StringFormat PageCounter = PageCounter + 1 '//if we want to print the grid right to left If (bRightToLeft) Then CurrentX = PrintDoc.DefaultPageSettings.PaperSize.Width - PrintDoc.DefaultPageSettings.Margins.Right sf.FormatFlags = StringFormatFlags.DirectionRightToLeft Else CurrentX = PrintDoc.DefaultPageSettings.Margins.Left End If Dim i As Integer For i = CurrentRow To PrintGrid.Rows - 1 Dim j As Integer For j = 0 To PrintGrid.Columns - 1 '//set cell alignment Select Case (PrintGrid.Cell(i, j).Alignment) '//left Case HorizontalAlignment.Left sf.Alignment = StringAlignment.Near Case HorizontalAlignment.Center sf.Alignment = StringAlignment.Center '//right Case HorizontalAlignment.Right sf.Alignment = StringAlignment.Far End Select '//advance X according to order If (bRightToLeft) Then '//draw the cell bounds (lines) and back color g.FillRectangle(New SolidBrush(PrintGrid.BackColor), CurrentX - PrintGrid.Cell(i, j).Width, CurrentY, PrintGrid.Cell(i, j).Width, PrintGrid.Cell(i, j).Height) g.DrawRectangle(New Pen(PrintGrid.LineColor), CurrentX - PrintGrid.Cell(i, j).Width, CurrentY, PrintGrid.Cell(i, j).Width, PrintGrid.Cell(i, j).Height) '//draw the cell text g.DrawString(PrintGrid.Cell(i, j).CText, PrintGrid.Cell(i, j).Font, New SolidBrush(PrintGrid.ForeColor), New RectangleF(CurrentX - PrintGrid.Cell(i, j).Width, CurrentY, PrintGrid.Cell(i, j).Width, PrintGrid.Cell(i, j).Height), sf) '//next cell CurrentX -= PrintGrid.Cell(i, j).Width Else '//draw the cell bounds (lines) and back color g.FillRectangle(New SolidBrush(PrintGrid.BackColor), CurrentX, CurrentY, PrintGrid.Cell(i, j).Width, PrintGrid.Cell(i, j).Height) g.DrawRectangle(New Pen(PrintGrid.LineColor), CurrentX, CurrentY, PrintGrid.Cell(i, j).Width, PrintGrid.Cell(i, j).Height) '//draw the cell text '//Draw text by alignment g.DrawString(PrintGrid.Cell(i, j).CText, PrintGrid.Cell(i, j).Font, New SolidBrush(PrintGrid.ForeColor), New RectangleF(CurrentX, CurrentY, PrintGrid.Cell(i, j).Width, PrintGrid.Cell(i, j).Height), sf) '//next cell CurrentX += PrintGrid.Cell(i, j).Width End If Next '//reset to beginning If (bRightToLeft) Then '//right align CurrentX = PrintDoc.DefaultPageSettings.PaperSize.Width - PrintDoc.DefaultPageSettings.Margins.Right Else '//left align CurrentX = PrintDoc.DefaultPageSettings.Margins.Left End If '//advance to next row CurrentY += PrintGrid.Cell(i, 0).Height CurrentRow += 1 '//if we are beyond the page margin (bottom) then we need another page, '//return true If (CurrentY > PrintDoc.DefaultPageSettings.PaperSize.Height - PrintDoc.DefaultPageSettings.Margins.Bottom) Then Return True End If Next Return False End Function End Class End Namespace

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  • What is the best way to deal with 404s that are all trying to point to the same page that are from an external site?

    - by Lee
    I started getting 404s showing up in my Google Webmaster's Tools from a site linking to a specific category but with odd characters at the end of the url. So Something like this: http://example.com/category/puppies%EF%BC%9A.textwidget%E8%A6%81%E7%B4%A0%E7%B7%A8%E9%9B%86 Google Webmaster says that there are about 120 of these links and I can imagine there will be more to come. What is the best way to handle these links from an seo point-of-view? I have heard 301 redirecting too many links at one time can cause Google to ding the site but I don't want this site to continue posting broken links. Any help on this would be appreciated.

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  • My self-generated CA is nearing it's end-of-life; what are the best practices for CA-rollover?

    - by Alphager
    Some buddies and me banded together to rent a small server to use for email, web-hosting and jabber. Early on we decided to generate our own Certificate Authority(CA) and sign all our certificates with that CA. It worked great! However, the original CA-cert is nearing it's end-of-life (it expires in five months). Obviously, we will have to generate a new cert and install it on all our computers. Are there any best practices we should follow? We have to re-generate all certs and sign them with the new CA, right?

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  • How many BasicEffects do you have in a Game? What is the best way to render multiple objects/shapes at once?

    - by Deukalion
    I'm trying to understand 3D rendering and it seems that everytime you render a new object (A 3D Cube or something) you need to have a new BasicEffect for each Box you render unless you want the exact same texture? ...so if I have over a hundred boxes with each different textures, I need at least as many BasicEffects? Will that not be "too much" for the CPU/GPU in the end or result in lagging? Is there any good way to render multiple objects (cubes or other shapes) at the same time? I've tried changing the BasicEffect.Texture with each cube drawn, but it resulting in changing the first Cube's texture too. Any suggestions would be really appreciated, I'm really new to 3D in XNA so I'm trying to wrap my head around the best methods for example render a Map with objects (of shapes).

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  • What is the best freeware app for Windows to mount EXT4 partitions (from a GPT 4TB Disk) as RW, safely without corrupting the EXT4 partition?

    - by Bran
    My Computer is set up as Dualboot Windows and Ubuntu. I have 1 OS drive, and 1 hard drive with a /backup partition (which has all my family photos and data) and it is ext4. Also note... it is EXT4, and it is GPT, and it is 4TB size. Anyway, Windows can not mount the /backup ext4 partition. What software/freeware do you reccomend for Windows? Preferrably looking for someone with experiance using it for a long time and not have problems with EXT4 partition which is a 4TB, GPT Disk. Thank you for your advice and guidance! Always, appreciate everyones help at askubuntu, you guys are the best. Any ideas?

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  • is there a downside to putting N in front of strings in scripts? Is it considered a "best practice"?

    - by jcollum
    Let's say I have a table that has a varchar field. If I do an insert like this: INSERT MyTable SELECT N'the string goes here' Is there any fundamental difference between that and: INSERT MyTable SELECT 'the string goes here' My understanding was that you'd only have a problem if the string contained a Unicode character and the target column wasn't unicode. Other than that, SQL deals with it just fine and converts the string with the N'' into a varchar field (basically ignores the N). I was under the impression that N in front of strings was a good practice, but I'm unable to find any discussion of it that I'd consider definitive. Title may need improvement, feel free.

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  • What is the best way using multiple lines of <% %> Tag or <% %> Tag with multiple lines?

    - by Salil
    Sorry if the title is not enough to understand what i am asking about. I am rails developer and i used multiple lines of <% % in my views but now i realized that it's not best practice so i came here and like to you all excellent guys what is the correct way in ROR? For example if i required to something like following <% user =User.all %> <% name= [] %> <% count = 0 %> <% for user in users %> <% name << user.name %> <% count+=1%> <% end %> Can i do it as follows ? <% user =User.all name= [] count = 0 for user in users name << user.name count+=1 end %> I know better way of collecting element from array But above is just example. But my question is, is it possible and if yes which is the correct way?

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  • What is the best way to lay out elements in GWT?

    - by KutaBeach
    What is the best practice to specify the positions of elements in GWT widget? Imagine you have a task: place a set of widgets in page layout. What would you use to position all your buttons and inputs in some order? standart HTML markup with tables/divs + CSS styles for positioning GWT widgets: panels, grids, tables + CSS styles for positioning GWT widgets: panels, grids, tables + their native properties for positioning If 2 or 3 - what would you use to reproduce a standart HTML table with colspans, fixed width columns and paddings? ps UIBinder and XML markup. GWT 2.4 My opinion: one of the biggest advantages of GWT is the ability to prevent programmer from writing HTML markup and add cross-browser support for interfaces. We shouldn't drop these points so its better to choose p.3 and try to use CSS ONLY for decoration - i.e. colors, fonts etc. Another point of view: its a bad idea to place any styles inline. By specifying properties of the widgets in XML markup we are literally doing exactly this. Also, GWT doesn't have enough widgets to produce a normal layout. For example you need to create a simple table with collspans and fixed column width. How would you go about this? Looks like you have to embed several HorizontalPanels into VerticalPanels, specify width/height in everyone of them and produce a great paper of XML by this. So whats your opinion?

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  • What is the best way to add two strings together?

    - by Pim Jager
    I read somewehere (I thought on codinghorror) that it is bad practice to add strings together as if they are numbers, since like numbers, strings cannot be changed. Thus, adding them together creates a new string. So, I was wondering, what is the best way to add two strings together, when focusing on performance? Which of these four is better, or is there another way which is better? //Note that normally at least one of these two strings is variable $str1 = 'Hello '; $str2 = 'World!'; $output1 = $str1.$str2; //This is said to be bad $str1 = 'Hello '; $output2 = $str1.'World!'; //Also bad $str1 = 'Hello'; $str2 = 'World!'; $output3 = sprintf('%s %s', $str1, $str2); //Good? //This last one is probaply more common as: //$output = sprintf('%s %s', 'Hello', 'World!'); $str1 = 'Hello '; $str2 = '{a}World!'; $output4 = str_replace('{a}', $str1, $str2); Does it even matter?

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  • What is the best way to create a running integer id on the AppEngine data storage?

    - by Freed
    For various reasons, I need a unique running integer id for my entities stored on the Google AppEngine. The automatically generated key sort of has this behaviour, but it doesn't start from 1 (or 0) and doesn't guarantee that the generated integer part will come from a continuous sequence. What would be the best way to efficiently implement this on AppEngine? Is there any support from the storage system? To add to the complexity, I might need to do this over entities from different entity groups, meaning I can't just get the highest id right now and save an entity with the next id in a transaction. Might memcache be the way to go..? Edit: I havn't yet implemented this, but to clarify on the memcache idea. I know memcache is unreliable, but in practice it probably won't lose data "too often" to hurt performance. Basically, I would have a memcache entry for the last used id, update it (somehow atomically) whenever I create a new entity and use that id. In the case of memcache not having a value for this entry, I'd get the highest id so far by doing a query on my entities sorted by the id and update memcache (unless someone else had already done so). The only problem I can see with this right now would be atomicity of the operation as a whole if the save of my new entity was also part of a transaction. Thoughts..?

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  • Why is numpy's einsum faster than numpy's built in functions?

    - by Ophion
    Lets start with three arrays of dtype=np.double. Timings are performed on a intel CPU using numpy 1.7.1 compiled with icc and linked to intel's mkl. A AMD cpu with numpy 1.6.1 compiled with gcc without mkl was also used to verify the timings. Please note the timings scale nearly linearly with system size and are not due to the small overhead incurred in the numpy functions if statements these difference will show up in microseconds not milliseconds: arr_1D=np.arange(500,dtype=np.double) large_arr_1D=np.arange(100000,dtype=np.double) arr_2D=np.arange(500**2,dtype=np.double).reshape(500,500) arr_3D=np.arange(500**3,dtype=np.double).reshape(500,500,500) First lets look at the np.sum function: np.all(np.sum(arr_3D)==np.einsum('ijk->',arr_3D)) True %timeit np.sum(arr_3D) 10 loops, best of 3: 142 ms per loop %timeit np.einsum('ijk->', arr_3D) 10 loops, best of 3: 70.2 ms per loop Powers: np.allclose(arr_3D*arr_3D*arr_3D,np.einsum('ijk,ijk,ijk->ijk',arr_3D,arr_3D,arr_3D)) True %timeit arr_3D*arr_3D*arr_3D 1 loops, best of 3: 1.32 s per loop %timeit np.einsum('ijk,ijk,ijk->ijk', arr_3D, arr_3D, arr_3D) 1 loops, best of 3: 694 ms per loop Outer product: np.all(np.outer(arr_1D,arr_1D)==np.einsum('i,k->ik',arr_1D,arr_1D)) True %timeit np.outer(arr_1D, arr_1D) 1000 loops, best of 3: 411 us per loop %timeit np.einsum('i,k->ik', arr_1D, arr_1D) 1000 loops, best of 3: 245 us per loop All of the above are twice as fast with np.einsum. These should be apples to apples comparisons as everything is specifically of dtype=np.double. I would expect the speed up in an operation like this: np.allclose(np.sum(arr_2D*arr_3D),np.einsum('ij,oij->',arr_2D,arr_3D)) True %timeit np.sum(arr_2D*arr_3D) 1 loops, best of 3: 813 ms per loop %timeit np.einsum('ij,oij->', arr_2D, arr_3D) 10 loops, best of 3: 85.1 ms per loop Einsum seems to be at least twice as fast for np.inner, np.outer, np.kron, and np.sum regardless of axes selection. The primary exception being np.dot as it calls DGEMM from a BLAS library. So why is np.einsum faster that other numpy functions that are equivalent? The DGEMM case for completeness: np.allclose(np.dot(arr_2D,arr_2D),np.einsum('ij,jk',arr_2D,arr_2D)) True %timeit np.einsum('ij,jk',arr_2D,arr_2D) 10 loops, best of 3: 56.1 ms per loop %timeit np.dot(arr_2D,arr_2D) 100 loops, best of 3: 5.17 ms per loop The leading theory is from @sebergs comment that np.einsum can make use of SSE2, but numpy's ufuncs will not until numpy 1.8 (see the change log). I believe this is the correct answer, but have not been able to confirm it. Some limited proof can be found by changing the dtype of input array and observing speed difference and the fact that not everyone observes the same trends in timings.

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  • How to Learn Python

    - by Brett Veenstra
    For a beginner's perspective, can you answer the following: Best Tool(s) for Python development (e.g. NotePad, Vim) Best Book to get Started Best Website for Python beginner Best Problem Domain to do a sample project (what is Python-based solutions best suited for?)

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  • jstree select node

    - by niao
    Greetings, I am using jsTree to generatate my hierarchical data. JsTree is generated as follows: $(function() { $("#industries").tree({ data: { type: "json", opts: { url: "/Admin/GetIndustries/" } } }); }); it works find and the jsonresult is something like: [{"attributes":[],"data":{"title":"Adwokaci, Notariusze","id":"1a051101-c3fa-48f2-b2e1-c60d1b67ea22"},"children":[{"attributes":[],"data":{"title":"Kancelarie adwokackie","id":"26d6cff1-3c7f-4a2f-bf5a-422e08127b43" my question is: how can I save id of selected node in some hidden field? I do something like this: <script type="text/javascript"> $("#industries").click(function() { var tree = $.tree.reference("industries"); var t = $.tree.focused(); if (t.selected) t.selected; else alert("Select a node first"); alert(t.id); }); but it does not work. Can someone please help me?

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  • ASP.NET What's the best way to produce a trial version for customers to download?

    - by Craig Izard
    Hi all, I've written a ASP.NET app that I hope to sell to businesses, I could host the trial but it's designed to connect to the customers data so customers will certainly want to install it to do a successful evaluation. I've never produced anything commercial before so I'm looking for advice on how best to limit the trial, a 30 day trial seems most common, do you simply rely on the clock of the PC/Server they install it on? Any other suggestions welcome, please keep in mind this is ASP.NET app so will be installed on their web server. Thanks Craig

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  • In Django, what's the best way to handle optional url parameters from the template?

    - by Thierry Lam
    I have the following type of urls which are both valid: hello/ hello/1234/ My urls.py has the following: urlpatterns = patterns('hello.views', url(r'^$', 'index', name='index'), url(r'^(?P<user_id>\d+)/$', 'index', name='index'), ) In my views.py, when I pass user_id to the template, it defaults to 0 if not specified. My template looks like the following, I'm using namespace hello for my hello app: {% url hello:index user_id %} If user_id is not specified, the url defaults to hello/0/. The only way I can think of preventing the default 0 from showing in the url is by an if stmt: {% if user_id %} {% url hello:index user_id %} {% else %} {% url hello:index %} {% endif %} The above will give me hello/ if there are no user_id and hello/1234/ if it's present. Is the above solution the best way to solve this issue?

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  • Best way of implementing a batch like operation in a RESTful architecture?

    - by Nirav
    Hello, We have a predominantly RESTful architecture for our product. This enables us to nicely implement almost all of the required functionality, except this new requirement thats come in. I need to implement a page which lets the user to large scale DB operations synchronously. They can stop the operation in between, if they realized they made a mistake (rather than waiting for it to complete and doing an undo operation) I was wondering if some one could give some pointers as to what would be the best way to implement such a functionality? Cheers! Nirav

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