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  • How Do I Pick the Keywords For My Website?

    When I'm working with clients to help them grow their business through internet marketing I frequently hear my customers say "I already have a website, and we rank high on Google." This always leads to an interesting discussion.

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  • How to Get Your Site Noticed

    If you have a business website then you probably wonder how you can increase the viewership of the site. This article explains how you can make the site more interesting and fun.

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  • SuperMicro BMC on OpenSuSE Linux --cannot access from LAN

    - by Kendall
    Hi, I have an (old) SMC-001 IPMI device on an (old) X6DVL-EG2 motherboard. My problem is that I cannot access the BMC from LAN. I'm also getting some interesting output from ipmitool. First, the setup. I enable Console Redirection in the BIOS, turn BIOS Redirection after POSt to "disabled". I then modprobe'ed for ipmi_msghandler, ipmi_devintf and ipmi_si. I then found ipmi0 under /dev. So far so good. Since I want console redirection over serial, I modified /boot/grub/menu.lst: http://pastebin.com/YYJmhusQ I then modified "/etc/inittab" as follows: S1:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -L 19200 ttyS1 ansi Networking I set as following, using "ipmitool" ipaddr: 192.168.3.164 netmask: 255.255.255.0 defgw: 192.168.3.1 The above are correct for my environment. To test it I do: ipmitool -I open chassis power off which responds by powering off the machine. When I to access from another computer on the network, however, I get an error message: host# ipmitool -I lanplus -H 192.168.10.164 -U Admin -a chassis power status Error: Unable to establish LAN session Unable to get Chassis Power Status "Admin" seems to be a valid user name: host# ipmitool -I open user list 1 2 Admin true false true USER The interesting output from ipmitool I initially mentioned: host # ipmitool -I open lan set 1 access on Set Channel Access for channel 1 failed: Request data field length limit exceeded Also, newload4:/home/gjones # ipmitool channel info 1 Channel 0x1 info: Channel Medium Type : 802.3 LAN Channel Protocol Type : IPMB-1.0 Session Support : session-less Active Session Count : 0 Protocol Vendor ID : 7154 Get Channel Access (volatile) failed: Request data field length limit exceeded The output of "ipmitool -I open lan print 1" is here: http://pastebin.com/UZyL6yyE Any help/suggestions is greatly appreciated; I've been working with this thing for a few hours now with no success.

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  • Router gets disconnected once I terminate my SIP application

    - by TacB0sS
    Hey, Here is an interesting one, I have a SIP VoIP application which is able to register to the PBX server, and I can invite and see the user call on the callee end receiving an Invite, and on the caller end I see the Ringing response... now here is interesting part, if I close my application with out any notification to the server my router disconnects and restart, after a short while (30 - 150 sec). I could fix that if I would complete the ACK BYE process, but I'm just wondering why does my router hangs up? any ideas? My Router is TNN-Siemens SL2-141, thought this might matter Update: this is what I found: SIP ALG allows two or more simultaneous VoIP phone calls made by VoIP clients through this router. which means that if I disable it I would not be able to do the testing I'm trying so badly to do, and since I don't have access to another router, I must handle it with the bug then... I can say that this never happened to me with one user connecting, but then again I didn't have anyone to invite then, I received from the SIP UAS 503 when I tried to invite an imaginary user. This bug only occur after I connected the second SIP UAC and invited it and closed the application. Adam.

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  • Resolving a BSOD/CPU/GPU issue...

    - by Christian Sciberras
    Hello all, I'm getting a BSOD / system crash (sometimes the PC just quits without a BSOD). Hardware Specifications cpu: i7 920 2666MHz / 8 cores (not OCed afaik) mobo: Asus P6T SE ram: 2x Corsair CM3X2G1333C9 (64bit DDR3 667MHz) gfx: ATI Radeon HD 5970 1GB (XFX HD5970 BE) os: Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit (legit) All bios, firmware and drivers are all up to date (as of today). Symptoms Sometimes the PC runs smoothly, sometimes I get this BSOD. The BSOD always happens when I'm doing something related to graphics, such as viewing a video or playing a game. I get to know about the imminent BSOD ~10 seconds earlier; the PC starts freezing occasionally but increasing in frequency and length of lag (I noticed processor usage in creased from Process Monitor). I've tweaked BIOS settings occasionally but afaik, it was in vain. A day or so ago, I reset it to factory settings. BSOD contents The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x00000101 (0x0000000000000019, 0x0000000000000000, 0xfffff88001f35180, 0x0000000000000004). 15-12-2010 A fatal hardware error has occurred. Reported by component: Processor Core Error Source: Machine Check Exception Error Type: Internal Timer Error Processor ID: 4 23-12-2010 A fatal hardware error has occurred. Reported by component: Processor Core Error Source: Machine Check Exception Error Type: Internal Timer Error Processor ID: 2 Important The interesting thing is that although the event log (and BSOD screen) blame a "secondary processor", Windows Action Center sometimes blamed the GFX driver (for the same error). Also It is interesting to note that after hibernating my PC, I always get the BSOD.

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  • ubuntu - Best way of repartitioning a (running) production server

    - by egarcia
    I've got an (externally hosted) production server running Ubuntu LTS. It serves webpages (rails) and has an svn repository accesible through Apache, and a PostgreSQL db. I've got ssh access to the server and root privileges. Most of the "interesting" stuff is located in /var/ : svn repositories are inside /var/svn, web pages under /var/www, etc. Yesterday I was curious about how much disk space had it left, so I did the following: $ df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/md1 950M 402M 500M 45% / varrun 990M 64K 990M 1% /var/run varlock 990M 0 990M 0% /var/lock udev 990M 76K 989M 1% /dev devshm 990M 0 990M 0% /dev/shm /dev/md5 4.7G 668M 4.1G 15% /usr /dev/md6 4.7G 1.4G 3.4G 29% /var /dev/md7 221G 28M 221G 1% /home none 990M 4.0K 990M 1% /tmp My 'var' partition, which holds most of the interesting part, is only 4.7G big. The /home/ partition, on the other hand, is 221G, but it is mostly unused. I should have checked the disk layout before starting installing stuff. Ideally I would need /var/ and /home/ to be "switched" - /home/ should be the one with 4.7G, and /var/ the one with 221G. Is there a way to solve this without having to reinstall the whole thing?

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  • Host couldn't be reached by domain name, only by IP: Apache's fault?

    - by MaxArt
    I have this Windows Server 2003 R2 32 bit machine running Apache 2.4.2 with OpenSSL 1.0.1c and PHP 5.4.5 via mod_fcgid 2.3.7. This config worked just fine for some hours, but then the site couldn't be reached with its domain name, say www.example.com, but it could be still reached by its IP address. In particular, while https://www.example.com/ yielded a connection error, http://123.1.2.3/ worked just fine. Yes, first https then http. Error and access logs were clean, i.e. they showed no signs of problems. Just the usual messages, that were interrupted while the site couldn't be reached. After some investigation, a simple restart of Apache solved the problem. Unfortunately, I didn't have the chance to test if https://123.1.2.3/ worked as well, or if http://www.example.com/ was still redirected to https as usual. So, has anyone have any idea of what happened? Before I get tired of Apache and ditch it in favor of Nginx? Edit: Some log informations. The last line of sslerror.log is from 90 minutes before the problem occurred, so I guess it's not important. ssl_request.log shows nothing interesting, too: these are the last two lines before the problem: [28/Aug/2012:17:47:54 +0200] x.x.x.x TLSv1.1 ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA "GET /login HTTP/1.1" 1183 [28/Aug/2012:17:47:45 +0200] y.y.y.y TLSv1 ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA "POST /upf HTTP/1.1" 73 The previous lines are all the same and don't seem interesting, except 4 lines like these 30-40 seconds before the problem: [28/Aug/2012:17:47:14 +0200] z.z.z.z TLSv1 ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA "-" - These are the corrisponding lines from sslaccess.log: z.z.z.z - - [28/Aug/2012:17:47:14 +0200] "-" 408 - ... x.x.x.x - - [28/Aug/2012:17:47:54 +0200] "GET /login HTTP/1.1" 200 1183 y.y.y.y - - [28/Aug/2012:17:47:45 +0200] "POST /upf HTTP/1.1" 200 73

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  • Using R to Analyze G1GC Log Files

    - by user12620111
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  Using R to Analyze G1GC Log Files   Using R to Analyze G1GC Log Files Introduction Working in Oracle Platform Integration gives an engineer opportunities to work on a wide array of technologies. My team’s goal is to make Oracle applications run best on the Solaris/SPARC platform. When looking for bottlenecks in a modern applications, one needs to be aware of not only how the CPUs and operating system are executing, but also network, storage, and in some cases, the Java Virtual Machine. I was recently presented with about 1.5 GB of Java Garbage First Garbage Collector log file data. If you’re not familiar with the subject, you might want to review Garbage First Garbage Collector Tuning by Monica Beckwith. The customer had been running Java HotSpot 1.6.0_31 to host a web application server. I was told that the Solaris/SPARC server was running a Java process launched using a commmand line that included the following flags: -d64 -Xms9g -Xmx9g -XX:+UseG1GC -XX:MaxGCPauseMillis=200 -XX:InitiatingHeapOccupancyPercent=80 -XX:PermSize=256m -XX:MaxPermSize=256m -XX:+PrintGC -XX:+PrintGCTimeStamps -XX:+PrintHeapAtGC -XX:+PrintGCDateStamps -XX:+PrintFlagsFinal -XX:+DisableExplicitGC -XX:+UnlockExperimentalVMOptions -XX:ParallelGCThreads=8 Several sources on the internet indicate that if I were to print out the 1.5 GB of log files, it would require enough paper to fill the bed of a pick up truck. Of course, it would be fruitless to try to scan the log files by hand. Tools will be required to summarize the contents of the log files. Others have encountered large Java garbage collection log files. There are existing tools to analyze the log files: IBM’s GC toolkit The chewiebug GCViewer gchisto HPjmeter Instead of using one of the other tools listed, I decide to parse the log files with standard Unix tools, and analyze the data with R. Data Cleansing The log files arrived in two different formats. I guess that the difference is that one set of log files was generated using a more verbose option, maybe -XX:+PrintHeapAtGC, and the other set of log files was generated without that option. Format 1 In some of the log files, the log files with the less verbose format, a single trace, i.e. the report of a singe garbage collection event, looks like this: {Heap before GC invocations=12280 (full 61): garbage-first heap total 9437184K, used 7499918K [0xfffffffd00000000, 0xffffffff40000000, 0xffffffff40000000) region size 4096K, 1 young (4096K), 0 survivors (0K) compacting perm gen total 262144K, used 144077K [0xffffffff40000000, 0xffffffff50000000, 0xffffffff50000000) the space 262144K, 54% used [0xffffffff40000000, 0xffffffff48cb3758, 0xffffffff48cb3800, 0xffffffff50000000) No shared spaces configured. 2014-05-14T07:24:00.988-0700: 60586.353: [GC pause (young) 7324M->7320M(9216M), 0.1567265 secs] Heap after GC invocations=12281 (full 61): garbage-first heap total 9437184K, used 7496533K [0xfffffffd00000000, 0xffffffff40000000, 0xffffffff40000000) region size 4096K, 0 young (0K), 0 survivors (0K) compacting perm gen total 262144K, used 144077K [0xffffffff40000000, 0xffffffff50000000, 0xffffffff50000000) the space 262144K, 54% used [0xffffffff40000000, 0xffffffff48cb3758, 0xffffffff48cb3800, 0xffffffff50000000) No shared spaces configured. } A simple grep can be used to extract a summary: $ grep "\[ GC pause (young" g1gc.log 2014-05-13T13:24:35.091-0700: 3.109: [GC pause (young) 20M->5029K(9216M), 0.0146328 secs] 2014-05-13T13:24:35.440-0700: 3.459: [GC pause (young) 9125K->6077K(9216M), 0.0086723 secs] 2014-05-13T13:24:37.581-0700: 5.599: [GC pause (young) 25M->8470K(9216M), 0.0203820 secs] 2014-05-13T13:24:42.686-0700: 10.704: [GC pause (young) 44M->15M(9216M), 0.0288848 secs] 2014-05-13T13:24:48.941-0700: 16.958: [GC pause (young) 51M->20M(9216M), 0.0491244 secs] 2014-05-13T13:24:56.049-0700: 24.066: [GC pause (young) 92M->26M(9216M), 0.0525368 secs] 2014-05-13T13:25:34.368-0700: 62.383: [GC pause (young) 602M->68M(9216M), 0.1721173 secs] But that format wasn't easily read into R, so I needed to be a bit more tricky. I used the following Unix command to create a summary file that was easy for R to read. $ echo "SecondsSinceLaunch BeforeSize AfterSize TotalSize RealTime" $ grep "\[GC pause (young" g1gc.log | grep -v mark | sed -e 's/[A-SU-z\(\),]/ /g' -e 's/->/ /' -e 's/: / /g' | more SecondsSinceLaunch BeforeSize AfterSize TotalSize RealTime 2014-05-13T13:24:35.091-0700 3.109 20 5029 9216 0.0146328 2014-05-13T13:24:35.440-0700 3.459 9125 6077 9216 0.0086723 2014-05-13T13:24:37.581-0700 5.599 25 8470 9216 0.0203820 2014-05-13T13:24:42.686-0700 10.704 44 15 9216 0.0288848 2014-05-13T13:24:48.941-0700 16.958 51 20 9216 0.0491244 2014-05-13T13:24:56.049-0700 24.066 92 26 9216 0.0525368 2014-05-13T13:25:34.368-0700 62.383 602 68 9216 0.1721173 Format 2 In some of the log files, the log files with the more verbose format, a single trace, i.e. the report of a singe garbage collection event, was more complicated than Format 1. Here is a text file with an example of a single G1GC trace in the second format. As you can see, it is quite complicated. It is nice that there is so much information available, but the level of detail can be overwhelming. I wrote this awk script (download) to summarize each trace on a single line. #!/usr/bin/env awk -f BEGIN { printf("SecondsSinceLaunch IncrementalCount FullCount UserTime SysTime RealTime BeforeSize AfterSize TotalSize\n") } ###################### # Save count data from lines that are at the start of each G1GC trace. # Each trace starts out like this: # {Heap before GC invocations=14 (full 0): # garbage-first heap total 9437184K, used 325496K [0xfffffffd00000000, 0xffffffff40000000, 0xffffffff40000000) ###################### /{Heap.*full/{ gsub ( "\\)" , "" ); nf=split($0,a,"="); split(a[2],b," "); getline; if ( match($0, "first") ) { G1GC=1; IncrementalCount=b[1]; FullCount=substr( b[3], 1, length(b[3])-1 ); } else { G1GC=0; } } ###################### # Pull out time stamps that are in lines with this format: # 2014-05-12T14:02:06.025-0700: 94.312: [GC pause (young), 0.08870154 secs] ###################### /GC pause/ { DateTime=$1; SecondsSinceLaunch=substr($2, 1, length($2)-1); } ###################### # Heap sizes are in lines that look like this: # [ 4842M->4838M(9216M)] ###################### /\[ .*]$/ { gsub ( "\\[" , "" ); gsub ( "\ \]" , "" ); gsub ( "->" , " " ); gsub ( "\\( " , " " ); gsub ( "\ \)" , " " ); split($0,a," "); if ( split(a[1],b,"M") > 1 ) {BeforeSize=b[1]*1024;} if ( split(a[1],b,"K") > 1 ) {BeforeSize=b[1];} if ( split(a[2],b,"M") > 1 ) {AfterSize=b[1]*1024;} if ( split(a[2],b,"K") > 1 ) {AfterSize=b[1];} if ( split(a[3],b,"M") > 1 ) {TotalSize=b[1]*1024;} if ( split(a[3],b,"K") > 1 ) {TotalSize=b[1];} } ###################### # Emit an output line when you find input that looks like this: # [Times: user=1.41 sys=0.08, real=0.24 secs] ###################### /\[Times/ { if (G1GC==1) { gsub ( "," , "" ); split($2,a,"="); UserTime=a[2]; split($3,a,"="); SysTime=a[2]; split($4,a,"="); RealTime=a[2]; print DateTime,SecondsSinceLaunch,IncrementalCount,FullCount,UserTime,SysTime,RealTime,BeforeSize,AfterSize,TotalSize; G1GC=0; } } The resulting summary is about 25X smaller that the original file, but still difficult for a human to digest. SecondsSinceLaunch IncrementalCount FullCount UserTime SysTime RealTime BeforeSize AfterSize TotalSize ... 2014-05-12T18:36:34.669-0700: 3985.744 561 0 0.57 0.06 0.16 1724416 1720320 9437184 2014-05-12T18:36:34.839-0700: 3985.914 562 0 0.51 0.06 0.19 1724416 1720320 9437184 2014-05-12T18:36:35.069-0700: 3986.144 563 0 0.60 0.04 0.27 1724416 1721344 9437184 2014-05-12T18:36:35.354-0700: 3986.429 564 0 0.33 0.04 0.09 1725440 1722368 9437184 2014-05-12T18:36:35.545-0700: 3986.620 565 0 0.58 0.04 0.17 1726464 1722368 9437184 2014-05-12T18:36:35.726-0700: 3986.801 566 0 0.43 0.05 0.12 1726464 1722368 9437184 2014-05-12T18:36:35.856-0700: 3986.930 567 0 0.30 0.04 0.07 1726464 1723392 9437184 2014-05-12T18:36:35.947-0700: 3987.023 568 0 0.61 0.04 0.26 1727488 1723392 9437184 2014-05-12T18:36:36.228-0700: 3987.302 569 0 0.46 0.04 0.16 1731584 1724416 9437184 Reading the Data into R Once the GC log data had been cleansed, either by processing the first format with the shell script, or by processing the second format with the awk script, it was easy to read the data into R. g1gc.df = read.csv("summary.txt", row.names = NULL, stringsAsFactors=FALSE,sep="") str(g1gc.df) ## 'data.frame': 8307 obs. of 10 variables: ## $ row.names : chr "2014-05-12T14:00:32.868-0700:" "2014-05-12T14:00:33.179-0700:" "2014-05-12T14:00:33.677-0700:" "2014-05-12T14:00:35.538-0700:" ... ## $ SecondsSinceLaunch: num 1.16 1.47 1.97 3.83 6.1 ... ## $ IncrementalCount : int 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ... ## $ FullCount : int 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ... ## $ UserTime : num 0.11 0.05 0.04 0.21 0.08 0.26 0.31 0.33 0.34 0.56 ... ## $ SysTime : num 0.04 0.01 0.01 0.05 0.01 0.06 0.07 0.06 0.07 0.09 ... ## $ RealTime : num 0.02 0.02 0.01 0.04 0.02 0.04 0.05 0.04 0.04 0.06 ... ## $ BeforeSize : int 8192 5496 5768 22528 24576 43008 34816 53248 55296 93184 ... ## $ AfterSize : int 1400 1672 2557 4907 7072 14336 16384 18432 19456 21504 ... ## $ TotalSize : int 9437184 9437184 9437184 9437184 9437184 9437184 9437184 9437184 9437184 9437184 ... head(g1gc.df) ## row.names SecondsSinceLaunch IncrementalCount ## 1 2014-05-12T14:00:32.868-0700: 1.161 0 ## 2 2014-05-12T14:00:33.179-0700: 1.472 1 ## 3 2014-05-12T14:00:33.677-0700: 1.969 2 ## 4 2014-05-12T14:00:35.538-0700: 3.830 3 ## 5 2014-05-12T14:00:37.811-0700: 6.103 4 ## 6 2014-05-12T14:00:41.428-0700: 9.720 5 ## FullCount UserTime SysTime RealTime BeforeSize AfterSize TotalSize ## 1 0 0.11 0.04 0.02 8192 1400 9437184 ## 2 0 0.05 0.01 0.02 5496 1672 9437184 ## 3 0 0.04 0.01 0.01 5768 2557 9437184 ## 4 0 0.21 0.05 0.04 22528 4907 9437184 ## 5 0 0.08 0.01 0.02 24576 7072 9437184 ## 6 0 0.26 0.06 0.04 43008 14336 9437184 Basic Statistics Once the data has been read into R, simple statistics are very easy to generate. All of the numbers from high school statistics are available via simple commands. For example, generate a summary of every column: summary(g1gc.df) ## row.names SecondsSinceLaunch IncrementalCount FullCount ## Length:8307 Min. : 1 Min. : 0 Min. : 0.0 ## Class :character 1st Qu.: 9977 1st Qu.:2048 1st Qu.: 0.0 ## Mode :character Median :12855 Median :4136 Median : 12.0 ## Mean :12527 Mean :4156 Mean : 31.6 ## 3rd Qu.:15758 3rd Qu.:6262 3rd Qu.: 61.0 ## Max. :55484 Max. :8391 Max. :113.0 ## UserTime SysTime RealTime BeforeSize ## Min. :0.040 Min. :0.0000 Min. : 0.0 Min. : 5476 ## 1st Qu.:0.470 1st Qu.:0.0300 1st Qu.: 0.1 1st Qu.:5137920 ## Median :0.620 Median :0.0300 Median : 0.1 Median :6574080 ## Mean :0.751 Mean :0.0355 Mean : 0.3 Mean :5841855 ## 3rd Qu.:0.920 3rd Qu.:0.0400 3rd Qu.: 0.2 3rd Qu.:7084032 ## Max. :3.370 Max. :1.5600 Max. :488.1 Max. :8696832 ## AfterSize TotalSize ## Min. : 1380 Min. :9437184 ## 1st Qu.:5002752 1st Qu.:9437184 ## Median :6559744 Median :9437184 ## Mean :5785454 Mean :9437184 ## 3rd Qu.:7054336 3rd Qu.:9437184 ## Max. :8482816 Max. :9437184 Q: What is the total amount of User CPU time spent in garbage collection? sum(g1gc.df$UserTime) ## [1] 6236 As you can see, less than two hours of CPU time was spent in garbage collection. Is that too much? To find the percentage of time spent in garbage collection, divide the number above by total_elapsed_time*CPU_count. In this case, there are a lot of CPU’s and it turns out the the overall amount of CPU time spent in garbage collection isn’t a problem when viewed in isolation. When calculating rates, i.e. events per unit time, you need to ask yourself if the rate is homogenous across the time period in the log file. Does the log file include spikes of high activity that should be separately analyzed? Averaging in data from nights and weekends with data from business hours may alias problems. If you have a reason to suspect that the garbage collection rates include peaks and valleys that need independent analysis, see the “Time Series” section, below. Q: How much garbage is collected on each pass? The amount of heap space that is recovered per GC pass is surprisingly low: At least one collection didn’t recover any data. (“Min.=0”) 25% of the passes recovered 3MB or less. (“1st Qu.=3072”) Half of the GC passes recovered 4MB or less. (“Median=4096”) The average amount recovered was 56MB. (“Mean=56390”) 75% of the passes recovered 36MB or less. (“3rd Qu.=36860”) At least one pass recovered 2GB. (“Max.=2121000”) g1gc.df$Delta = g1gc.df$BeforeSize - g1gc.df$AfterSize summary(g1gc.df$Delta) ## Min. 1st Qu. Median Mean 3rd Qu. Max. ## 0 3070 4100 56400 36900 2120000 Q: What is the maximum User CPU time for a single collection? The worst garbage collection (“Max.”) is many standard deviations away from the mean. The data appears to be right skewed. summary(g1gc.df$UserTime) ## Min. 1st Qu. Median Mean 3rd Qu. Max. ## 0.040 0.470 0.620 0.751 0.920 3.370 sd(g1gc.df$UserTime) ## [1] 0.3966 Basic Graphics Once the data is in R, it is trivial to plot the data with formats including dot plots, line charts, bar charts (simple, stacked, grouped), pie charts, boxplots, scatter plots histograms, and kernel density plots. Histogram of User CPU Time per Collection I don't think that this graph requires any explanation. hist(g1gc.df$UserTime, main="User CPU Time per Collection", xlab="Seconds", ylab="Frequency") Box plot to identify outliers When the initial data is viewed with a box plot, you can see the one crazy outlier in the real time per GC. Save this data point for future analysis and drop the outlier so that it’s not throwing off our statistics. Now the box plot shows many outliers, which will be examined later, using times series analysis. Notice that the scale of the x-axis changes drastically once the crazy outlier is removed. par(mfrow=c(2,1)) boxplot(g1gc.df$UserTime,g1gc.df$SysTime,g1gc.df$RealTime, main="Box Plot of Time per GC\n(dominated by a crazy outlier)", names=c("usr","sys","elapsed"), xlab="Seconds per GC", ylab="Time (Seconds)", horizontal = TRUE, outcol="red") crazy.outlier.df=g1gc.df[g1gc.df$RealTime > 400,] g1gc.df=g1gc.df[g1gc.df$RealTime < 400,] boxplot(g1gc.df$UserTime,g1gc.df$SysTime,g1gc.df$RealTime, main="Box Plot of Time per GC\n(crazy outlier excluded)", names=c("usr","sys","elapsed"), xlab="Seconds per GC", ylab="Time (Seconds)", horizontal = TRUE, outcol="red") box(which = "outer", lty = "solid") Here is the crazy outlier for future analysis: crazy.outlier.df ## row.names SecondsSinceLaunch IncrementalCount ## 8233 2014-05-12T23:15:43.903-0700: 20741 8316 ## FullCount UserTime SysTime RealTime BeforeSize AfterSize TotalSize ## 8233 112 0.55 0.42 488.1 8381440 8235008 9437184 ## Delta ## 8233 146432 R Time Series Data To analyze the garbage collection as a time series, I’ll use Z’s Ordered Observations (zoo). “zoo is the creator for an S3 class of indexed totally ordered observations which includes irregular time series.” require(zoo) ## Loading required package: zoo ## ## Attaching package: 'zoo' ## ## The following objects are masked from 'package:base': ## ## as.Date, as.Date.numeric head(g1gc.df[,1]) ## [1] "2014-05-12T14:00:32.868-0700:" "2014-05-12T14:00:33.179-0700:" ## [3] "2014-05-12T14:00:33.677-0700:" "2014-05-12T14:00:35.538-0700:" ## [5] "2014-05-12T14:00:37.811-0700:" "2014-05-12T14:00:41.428-0700:" options("digits.secs"=3) times=as.POSIXct( g1gc.df[,1], format="%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%OS%z:") g1gc.z = zoo(g1gc.df[,-c(1)], order.by=times) head(g1gc.z) ## SecondsSinceLaunch IncrementalCount FullCount ## 2014-05-12 17:00:32.868 1.161 0 0 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:33.178 1.472 1 0 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:33.677 1.969 2 0 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:35.538 3.830 3 0 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:37.811 6.103 4 0 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:41.427 9.720 5 0 ## UserTime SysTime RealTime BeforeSize AfterSize ## 2014-05-12 17:00:32.868 0.11 0.04 0.02 8192 1400 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:33.178 0.05 0.01 0.02 5496 1672 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:33.677 0.04 0.01 0.01 5768 2557 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:35.538 0.21 0.05 0.04 22528 4907 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:37.811 0.08 0.01 0.02 24576 7072 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:41.427 0.26 0.06 0.04 43008 14336 ## TotalSize Delta ## 2014-05-12 17:00:32.868 9437184 6792 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:33.178 9437184 3824 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:33.677 9437184 3211 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:35.538 9437184 17621 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:37.811 9437184 17504 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:41.427 9437184 28672 Example of Two Benchmark Runs in One Log File The data in the following graph is from a different log file, not the one of primary interest to this article. I’m including this image because it is an example of idle periods followed by busy periods. It would be uninteresting to average the rate of garbage collection over the entire log file period. More interesting would be the rate of garbage collect in the two busy periods. Are they the same or different? Your production data may be similar, for example, bursts when employees return from lunch and idle times on weekend evenings, etc. Once the data is in an R Time Series, you can analyze isolated time windows. Clipping the Time Series data Flashing back to our test case… Viewing the data as a time series is interesting. You can see that the work intensive time period is between 9:00 PM and 3:00 AM. Lets clip the data to the interesting period:     par(mfrow=c(2,1)) plot(g1gc.z$UserTime, type="h", main="User Time per GC\nTime: Complete Log File", xlab="Time of Day", ylab="CPU Seconds per GC", col="#1b9e77") clipped.g1gc.z=window(g1gc.z, start=as.POSIXct("2014-05-12 21:00:00"), end=as.POSIXct("2014-05-13 03:00:00")) plot(clipped.g1gc.z$UserTime, type="h", main="User Time per GC\nTime: Limited to Benchmark Execution", xlab="Time of Day", ylab="CPU Seconds per GC", col="#1b9e77") box(which = "outer", lty = "solid") Cumulative Incremental and Full GC count Here is the cumulative incremental and full GC count. When the line is very steep, it indicates that the GCs are repeating very quickly. Notice that the scale on the Y axis is different for full vs. incremental. plot(clipped.g1gc.z[,c(2:3)], main="Cumulative Incremental and Full GC count", xlab="Time of Day", col="#1b9e77") GC Analysis of Benchmark Execution using Time Series data In the following series of 3 graphs: The “After Size” show the amount of heap space in use after each garbage collection. Many Java objects are still referenced, i.e. alive, during each garbage collection. This may indicate that the application has a memory leak, or may indicate that the application has a very large memory footprint. Typically, an application's memory footprint plateau's in the early stage of execution. One would expect this graph to have a flat top. The steep decline in the heap space may indicate that the application crashed after 2:00. The second graph shows that the outliers in real execution time, discussed above, occur near 2:00. when the Java heap seems to be quite full. The third graph shows that Full GCs are infrequent during the first few hours of execution. The rate of Full GC's, (the slope of the cummulative Full GC line), changes near midnight.   plot(clipped.g1gc.z[,c("AfterSize","RealTime","FullCount")], xlab="Time of Day", col=c("#1b9e77","red","#1b9e77")) GC Analysis of heap recovered Each GC trace includes the amount of heap space in use before and after the individual GC event. During garbage coolection, unreferenced objects are identified, the space holding the unreferenced objects is freed, and thus, the difference in before and after usage indicates how much space has been freed. The following box plot and bar chart both demonstrate the same point - the amount of heap space freed per garbage colloection is surprisingly low. par(mfrow=c(2,1)) boxplot(as.vector(clipped.g1gc.z$Delta), main="Amount of Heap Recovered per GC Pass", xlab="Size in KB", horizontal = TRUE, col="red") hist(as.vector(clipped.g1gc.z$Delta), main="Amount of Heap Recovered per GC Pass", xlab="Size in KB", breaks=100, col="red") box(which = "outer", lty = "solid") This graph is the most interesting. The dark blue area shows how much heap is occupied by referenced Java objects. This represents memory that holds live data. The red fringe at the top shows how much data was recovered after each garbage collection. barplot(clipped.g1gc.z[,c("AfterSize","Delta")], col=c("#7570b3","#e7298a"), xlab="Time of Day", border=NA) legend("topleft", c("Live Objects","Heap Recovered on GC"), fill=c("#7570b3","#e7298a")) box(which = "outer", lty = "solid") When I discuss the data in the log files with the customer, I will ask for an explaination for the large amount of referenced data resident in the Java heap. There are two are posibilities: There is a memory leak and the amount of space required to hold referenced objects will continue to grow, limited only by the maximum heap size. After the maximum heap size is reached, the JVM will throw an “Out of Memory” exception every time that the application tries to allocate a new object. If this is the case, the aplication needs to be debugged to identify why old objects are referenced when they are no longer needed. The application has a legitimate requirement to keep a large amount of data in memory. The customer may want to further increase the maximum heap size. Another possible solution would be to partition the application across multiple cluster nodes, where each node has responsibility for managing a unique subset of the data. Conclusion In conclusion, R is a very powerful tool for the analysis of Java garbage collection log files. The primary difficulty is data cleansing so that information can be read into an R data frame. Once the data has been read into R, a rich set of tools may be used for thorough evaluation.

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  • Apache/PHP serving file multiple times

    - by easement
    I have a system with a download.php page. The page takes and id and loads a file based on from the DB Record and then serves it up. I've noticed a couple instances where files are requested multiple times in short time spans (20ms). Times that are too quick for human input. There are plenty of instances where the downloader functions fine. However, in taking a closer look at the downloader’s usage, I did see some interesting behavior. For instance, the IP address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (which is one in a range owned by xxxxxx.de in Germany) came to the site through Google. They browsed around and then came to the page http://site.com/xxxx/press+125.php There they issued a request for /download.php?id=/ZZ/n+aH55Y= (a PDF) at 9:04:23AM. That alone is not a big deal. However, what is interesting is that the server seems to have been quite preoccupied with serving that request. In the logs the request first completes between 9:09:48 and 9:10:00. It looks like the user must have gotten tired of waiting during that time and requested the document two more times. Between 09:14:47 and 09:15:00 the same request appears again, except it is from 9:04:43AM, 20ms later than the first request. Then it pops up a third time, with a request that started at 09:05:06 completing between 09:19:55 and 09:19:58! I’m suspicious of that document. In looking through the logs I see other instances where it takes the server a little while to handle that specific file. Check out this list of requests from zzz.zzz.zzz.zzz[different than above] for the file /download.php?id=/ZZ/n+aH55Y= (the same docuemnt as before): Request time Complete Time 04:32:43 04:33:36 04:32:50 04:33:36 04:32:51 04:33:38 04:33:05 04:33:38 04:33:34 04:33:42 04:33:05 04:33:42 So something is definitely going on. Whether it has to do with this specific document tripping up the server, the download.php page’s code, or if we’re just seeing the evidence of some server level overload as it plays out in real time I’m not yet sure. In fairness, there are other instances of people downloading /download.php?id=/ZZ/n+aH55Y= (the same PDF) without error. However, it is interesting that the multiple processes only seem to happen with this one file, and then only when it is accessed through the page http://site.com/press+125.php . It bears further investigation if there’s something amiss inside the code that causes the system to fire off multiple download requests that occupy the server. I don't know if this press+125.php is a rabbit hole, but there is weird consicence. Any ideas? I'm totally out of ideas. Apache maxed out? Things like that. ///DOWNLOAD.php $file = new files(); $file->comparison_filter("id", "=", $id); //sql to load if ($file->load()) { $file->serve(); } //FILES function serve() { if ($this->is_loaded) { if (file_exists($this->get_value("filename"))) { if ($this->get_value("content_type") != "") { header("Content-Type: " . $this->get_value("content_type")); } header("Content-Length: " . filesize($this->get_value("filename"))); if ($this->get_value("flag_image") == 0 || $this->get_value("flag_image") == false) { header("Cache-Control: private"); header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=" . urlencode($this->get_value("original_filename"))); } set_time_limit(0); @readfile($this->get_value("filename")); exit; } } }

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  • Netflix, jQuery, JSONP, and OData

    - by Stephen Walther
    At the last MIX conference, Netflix announced that they are exposing their catalog of movie information using the OData protocol. This is great news! This means that you can take advantage of all of the advanced OData querying features against a live database of Netflix movies. In this blog entry, I’ll demonstrate how you can use Netflix, jQuery, JSONP, and OData to create a simple movie lookup form. The form enables you to enter a movie title, or part of a movie title, and display a list of matching movies. For example, Figure 1 illustrates the movies displayed when you enter the value robot into the lookup form.   Using the Netflix OData Catalog API You can learn about the Netflix OData Catalog API at the following website: http://developer.netflix.com/docs/oData_Catalog The nice thing about this website is that it provides plenty of samples. It also has a good general reference for OData. For example, the website includes a list of OData filter operators and functions. The Netflix Catalog API exposes 4 top-level resources: Titles – A database of Movie information including interesting movie properties such as synopsis, BoxArt, and Cast. People – A database of people information including interesting information such as Awards, TitlesDirected, and TitlesActedIn. Languages – Enables you to get title information in different languages. Genres – Enables you to get title information for specific movie genres. OData is REST based. This means that you can perform queries by putting together the right URL. For example, if you want to get a list of the movies that were released after 2010 and that had an average rating greater than 4 then you can enter the following URL in the address bar of your browser: http://odata.netflix.com/Catalog/Titles?$filter=ReleaseYear gt 2010&AverageRating gt 4 Entering this URL returns the movies in Figure 2. Creating the Movie Lookup Form The complete code for the Movie Lookup form is contained in Listing 1. Listing 1 – MovieLookup.htm <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Netflix with jQuery</title> <style type="text/css"> #movieTemplateContainer div { width:400px; padding: 10px; margin: 10px; border: black solid 1px; } </style> <script src="http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/jquery/jquery-1.4.2.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="App_Scripts/Microtemplates.js" type="text/javascript"></script> </head> <body> <label>Search Movies:</label> <input id="movieName" size="50" /> <button id="btnLookup">Lookup</button> <div id="movieTemplateContainer"></div> <script id="movieTemplate" type="text/html"> <div> <img src="<%=BoxArtSmallUrl %>" /> <strong><%=Name%></strong> <p> <%=Synopsis %> </p> </div> </script> <script type="text/javascript"> $("#btnLookup").click(function () { // Build OData query var movieName = $("#movieName").val(); var query = "http://odata.netflix.com/Catalog" // netflix base url + "/Titles" // top-level resource + "?$filter=substringof('" + escape(movieName) + "',Name)" // filter by movie name + "&$callback=callback" // jsonp request + "&$format=json"; // json request // Make JSONP call to Netflix $.ajax({ dataType: "jsonp", url: query, jsonpCallback: "callback", success: callback }); }); function callback(result) { // unwrap result var movies = result["d"]["results"]; // show movies in template var showMovie = tmpl("movieTemplate"); var html = ""; for (var i = 0; i < movies.length; i++) { // flatten movie movies[i].BoxArtSmallUrl = movies[i].BoxArt.SmallUrl; // render with template html += showMovie(movies[i]); } $("#movieTemplateContainer").html(html); } </script> </body> </html> The HTML page in Listing 1 includes two JavaScript libraries: <script src="http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/jquery/jquery-1.4.2.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="App_Scripts/Microtemplates.js" type="text/javascript"></script> The first script tag retrieves jQuery from the Microsoft Ajax CDN. You can learn more about the Microsoft Ajax CDN by visiting the following website: http://www.asp.net/ajaxLibrary/cdn.ashx The second script tag is used to reference Resig’s micro-templating library. Because I want to use a template to display each movie, I need this library: http://ejohn.org/blog/javascript-micro-templating/ When you enter a value into the Search Movies input field and click the button, the following JavaScript code is executed: // Build OData query var movieName = $("#movieName").val(); var query = "http://odata.netflix.com/Catalog" // netflix base url + "/Titles" // top-level resource + "?$filter=substringof('" + escape(movieName) + "',Name)" // filter by movie name + "&$callback=callback" // jsonp request + "&$format=json"; // json request // Make JSONP call to Netflix $.ajax({ dataType: "jsonp", url: query, jsonpCallback: "callback", success: callback }); This code Is used to build a query that will be executed against the Netflix Catalog API. For example, if you enter the search phrase King Kong then the following URL is created: http://odata.netflix.com/Catalog/Titles?$filter=substringof(‘King%20Kong’,Name)&$callback=callback&$format=json This query includes the following parameters: $filter – You assign a filter expression to this parameter to filter the movie results. $callback – You assign the name of a JavaScript callback method to this parameter. OData calls this method to return the movie results. $format – you assign either the value json or xml to this parameter to specify how the format of the movie results. Notice that all of the OData parameters -- $filter, $callback, $format -- start with a dollar sign $. The Movie Lookup form uses JSONP to retrieve data across the Internet. Because WCF Data Services supports JSONP, and Netflix uses WCF Data Services to expose movies using the OData protocol, you can use JSONP when interacting with the Netflix Catalog API. To learn more about using JSONP with OData, see Pablo Castro’s blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/pablo/archive/2009/02/25/adding-support-for-jsonp-and-url-controlled-format-to-ado-net-data-services.aspx The actual JSONP call is performed by calling the $.ajax() method. When this call successfully completes, the JavaScript callback() method is called. The callback() method looks like this: function callback(result) { // unwrap result var movies = result["d"]["results"]; // show movies in template var showMovie = tmpl("movieTemplate"); var html = ""; for (var i = 0; i < movies.length; i++) { // flatten movie movies[i].BoxArtSmallUrl = movies[i].BoxArt.SmallUrl; // render with template html += showMovie(movies[i]); } $("#movieTemplateContainer").html(html); } The movie results from Netflix are passed to the callback method. The callback method takes advantage of Resig’s micro-templating library to display each of the movie results. A template used to display each movie is passed to the tmpl() method. The movie template looks like this: <script id="movieTemplate" type="text/html"> <div> <img src="<%=BoxArtSmallUrl %>" /> <strong><%=Name%></strong> <p> <%=Synopsis %> </p> </div> </script>   This template looks like a server-side ASP.NET template. However, the template is rendered in the client (browser) instead of the server. Summary The goal of this blog entry was to demonstrate how well jQuery works with OData. We managed to use a number of interesting open-source libraries and open protocols while building the Movie Lookup form including jQuery, JSONP, JSON, and OData.

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  • NINE Questions with Michelle Juett

    - by NINEQuestions
    Michelle Juett is one of the more interesting people I know, even though we’ve never met face to face. She’s part artist, part techie and all cool. We “met” via my good buddy George Clingerman and have plotting to take over the world, errr… I mean “collaborating” ever since. If you happen to live in the Seattle area, you can catch her and her work at Sakura Con on April 2-4, 2010 and various other gamer and art cons throughout the year. You can also find her on Twitter as @Shelldragon. Now that you know a little bit, I’ll let her tell you the rest of the story in these NINE Questions: 1. Where are you from? I was born in Clearwater, Florida. I like to tell people I'm from the Bermuda Triangle, it just makes explaining myself so much easier. My family moved to Washington when I was 5 and I've been in the Pacific Northwest ever since. We like to QQ about the rain but we really love the green trees and clean water. 2. What do you do? I fight evil by moonlight and win love by daylight.. or something like that.  I’ve been in quality assurance for games during the day since January 2008 and an artist for life. I currently work in QA for a really awesome game company in Bellevue.  At home, I work on personal digital art, making game assets as well as other random freelance projects as they pop up. 3. How did you get to where you are now? I'm still not where I want to be but I'm getting closer. The biggest piece of advice I can give is to work hard and never settle for the minimum required. I tend to overwork myself but I've never regretted it. You can want something really bad but if you aren't willing to work for it, then you can't expect it to just happen. I've always drawn and had an unhealthy love for video games that I was told I’d grow out of.  I knew I would not ‘grow out’ of games and that real adults make them and I could too. After I graduated, in searching for jobs, I discovered game testing. I figured this would be a good way to get my foot in the door and start networking. I’ve worked with consoles, websites and now, PC games.  I stuck with my journey, although it has been a rocky one, daylighting as a tester and moonlighting as an artist. I'm still on that journey but I wouldn't have it any other way. Test has given me a perspective that is difficult, if not impossible, to obtain any other way. It gives an unconditional respect for other hard working testers and an insight into creative problem solving. 4. So video game testing probably sounds WAY cooler than the reality. What's it like? What's a given day for you? Game testers don't get a lot of respect because of their stigmas and the fact most people don't actually know what we do.  People hear about the opening and closing disc trays all day. Many places do treat their testers like numbers. It all depends on where you work and how awesome your company is. I've had to deal with a lot of bad work situations to get to a really good one. QA exists to ensure the game is as flawless and enjoyable as it can be by the time it has to leave the nest and go out into the world. This includes everything obvious: “can I beat the level and save the princess?” to the more obscure: ‘What happens when I lose internet connection while trying to save right before falling into a pit to my death while holding the jump key then my cat pulls out my memory card and hides it in her litter box?” On the dev side, for developers, testers can be very scary people. Especially when the test team is not in house and you can’t see each other’s faces.  I've seen both sides. We don't mean to hurt your feelings. We really DO love you and want your game to be the best it can be! It can be some serious tough love. 5. You are also an accomplished artist. Got any major projects right now you'd like to talk about? LOL, I don't know if I’d say I'm an accomplished artist just yet. I’m still a long way from where I want to be. I figure that’s what makes you grow though: the desire to never stop improving. I like QA but I want to be a full time artist. I was lucky enough to register for a table at Sakura Con in the 11 second window that the tables sold out. As such, I’ll be selling my wares in the Artist Alley April 2-4th. Part of preparing for this is actually making the art to be sold there. Anime is a fun pass time but I don’t draw a whole lot of it so I’m making up for lost time. As I seem to enjoy burying myself in work, I’m an art lead for a secret project that’s so secret I might be killed tonight for even mentioning it. I also take on various freelance projects and do what I can to help out indie games. I discovered the XNA community a year and a half ago and developed a love for Indies when I was writing a weekly newsletter on XBLA news. I’m a little late to the party but I find myself in a unique position where I am an artist and also have technical skills in games. While not programmer myself, I have a lot of game sense and experience. I hope to make some awesome happen. Lastly, I have an ongoing web comic Shell’s Angels) that tends to get neglected when I get busy. I still love drawing comics and keep a little book with me to sketch down ideas as they pop into my head. I may pick it back up again as a larger project sometime in the future. 6. Can you talk about any of the other freelance projects you're doing or are you sworn to secrecy on those too? We wouldn't want a team of game developer ninjas to take you out or anything. All my projects are currently 2d. I have personal projects such as the ongoing comic as well as a graphic novel I've been picking at here and there. My main focus until April is Sakura Con, Sakura Con, Sakura Con.  I see it as a great way to get exposure and convention experience. I found out I love conventions a couple years ago and I want to get more involved in them. 7. As an artist, what is your weapon of choice? What do you use to get most of your stuff done? I am a Photoshop Hero and I have the hoodie to prove it. (http://www.pennyarcademerch.com/pah090011.html) I've dabbled in other paint programs but I always gravitate back to Photoshop. She is my one true love. I'd like to learn programs like Flash or Anime Studio when I get a bit more time because of their animation abilities. I've worked on frame by frame animation forever but I would love to learn 2d rigging. Still, nothing can compare to a simple sketchpad and a pencil. I always have one on me in case I come across or think of something interesting and can't get to a computer. If the Courier ever comes to exist it will be an ideal weapon for me. 8. You did some videos too, depicting the art creation process. What was the motivation behind those? The creative process is just as important as the final product, if not more so.  I've always loved watching speed paint videos and wanted to try it out myself. Turns out it's a lot of work and time but it's definitely fun to go back and rewatch them. Art isn't always the end result and is more often the process itself. 9. Got any interesting tattoos? Designed any for yourself or other people? Not yet, but not for lack of desire. I've toiled over what and where for years. Last year, I finally decided the back of my shoulders would be the place. Like anything permanent, I want it to have meaning. I thought of somehow incorporating games but I couldn't find something I felt would stand the test of time even with all the classic sprite games. I'm very picky so we'll see if I can get something solid decided. Come see me at Sakura Con April 2 -4!!!

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  • T-SQL Tuesday #33: Trick Shots: Undocumented, Underdocumented, and Unknown Conspiracies!

    - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)
    Mike Fal (b | t) is hosting this month's T-SQL Tuesday on Trick Shots.  I love this choice because I've been preoccupied with sneaky/tricky/evil SQL Server stuff for a long time and have been presenting on it for the past year.  Mike's directives were "Show us a cool trick or process you developed…It doesn’t have to be useful", which most of my blogging definitely fits, and "Tell us what you learned from this trick…tell us how it gave you insight in to how SQL Server works", which is definitely a new concept.  I've done a lot of reading and watching on SQL Server Internals and even attended training, but sometimes I need to go explore on my own, using my own tools and techniques.  It's an itch I get every few months, and, well, it sure beats workin'. I've found some people to be intimidated by SQL Server's internals, and I'll admit there are A LOT of internals to keep track of, but there are tons of excellent resources that clearly document most of them, and show how knowing even the basics of internals can dramatically improve your database's performance.  It may seem like rocket science, or even brain surgery, but you don't have to be a genius to understand it. Although being an "evil genius" can help you learn some things they haven't told you about. ;) This blog post isn't a traditional "deep dive" into internals, it's more of an approach to find out how a program works.  It utilizes an extremely handy tool from an even more extremely handy suite of tools, Sysinternals.  I'm not the only one who finds Sysinternals useful for SQL Server: Argenis Fernandez (b | t), Microsoft employee and former T-SQL Tuesday host, has an excellent presentation on how to troubleshoot SQL Server using Sysinternals, and I highly recommend it.  Argenis didn't cover the Strings.exe utility, but I'll be using it to "hack" the SQL Server executable (DLL and EXE) files. Please note that I'm not promoting software piracy or applying these techniques to attack SQL Server via internal knowledge. This is strictly educational and doesn't reveal any proprietary Microsoft information.  And since Argenis works for Microsoft and demonstrated Sysinternals with SQL Server, I'll just let him take the blame for it. :P (The truth is I've used Strings.exe on SQL Server before I ever met Argenis.) Once you download and install Strings.exe you can run it from the command line.  For our purposes we'll want to run this in the Binn folder of your SQL Server instance (I'm referencing SQL Server 2012 RTM): cd "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL11\MSSQL\Binn" C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL11\MSSQL\Binn> strings *sql*.dll > sqldll.txt C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL11\MSSQL\Binn> strings *sql*.exe > sqlexe.txt   I've limited myself to DLLs and EXEs that have "sql" in their names.  There are quite a few more but I haven't examined them in any detail. (Homework assignment for you!) If you run this yourself you'll get 2 text files, one with all the extracted strings from every SQL DLL file, and the other with the SQL EXE strings.  You can open these in Notepad, but you're better off using Notepad++, EditPad, Emacs, Vim or another more powerful text editor, as these will be several megabytes in size. And when you do open it…you'll find…a TON of gibberish.  (If you think that's bad, just try opening the raw DLL or EXE file in Notepad.  And by the way, don't do this in production, or even on a running instance of SQL Server.)  Even if you don't clean up the file, you can still use your editor's search function to find a keyword like "SELECT" or some other item you expect to be there.  As dumb as this sounds, I sometimes spend my lunch break just scanning the raw text for anything interesting.  I'm boring like that. Sometimes though, having these files available can lead to some incredible learning experiences.  For me the most recent time was after reading Joe Sack's post on non-parallel plan reasons.  He mentions a new SQL Server 2012 execution plan element called NonParallelPlanReason, and demonstrates a query that generates "MaxDOPSetToOne".  Joe (formerly on the Microsoft SQL Server product team, so he knows this stuff) mentioned that this new element was not currently documented and tried a few more examples to see what other reasons could be generated. Since I'd already run Strings.exe on the SQL Server DLLs and EXE files, it was easy to run grep/find/findstr for MaxDOPSetToOne on those extracts.  Once I found which files it belonged to (sqlmin.dll) I opened the text to see if the other reasons were listed.  As you can see in my comment on Joe's blog, there were about 20 additional non-parallel reasons.  And while it's not "documentation" of this underdocumented feature, the names are pretty self-explanatory about what can prevent parallel processing. I especially like the ones about cursors – more ammo! - and am curious about the PDW compilation and Cloud DB replication reasons. One reason completely stumped me: NoParallelHekatonPlan.  What the heck is a hekaton?  Google and Wikipedia were vague, and the top results were not in English.  I found one reference to Greek, stating "hekaton" can be translated as "hundredfold"; with a little more Wikipedia-ing this leads to hecto, the prefix for "one hundred" as a unit of measure.  I'm not sure why Microsoft chose hekaton for such a plan name, but having already learned some Greek I figured I might as well dig some more in the DLL text for hekaton.  Here's what I found: hekaton_slow_param_passing Occurs when a Hekaton procedure call dispatch goes to slow parameter passing code path The reason why Hekaton parameter passing code took the slow code path hekaton_slow_param_pass_reason sp_deploy_hekaton_database sp_undeploy_hekaton_database sp_drop_hekaton_database sp_checkpoint_hekaton_database sp_restore_hekaton_database e:\sql11_main_t\sql\ntdbms\hekaton\sqlhost\sqllang\hkproc.cpp e:\sql11_main_t\sql\ntdbms\hekaton\sqlhost\sqllang\matgen.cpp e:\sql11_main_t\sql\ntdbms\hekaton\sqlhost\sqllang\matquery.cpp e:\sql11_main_t\sql\ntdbms\hekaton\sqlhost\sqllang\sqlmeta.cpp e:\sql11_main_t\sql\ntdbms\hekaton\sqlhost\sqllang\resultset.cpp Interesting!  The first 4 entries (in red) mention parameters and "slow code".  Could this be the foundation of the mythical DBCC RUNFASTER command?  Have I been passing my parameters the slow way all this time? And what about those sp_xxxx_hekaton_database procedures (in blue)? Could THEY be the secret to a faster SQL Server? Could they promise a "hundredfold" improvement in performance?  Are these special, super-undocumented DIB (databases in black)? I decided to look in the SQL Server system views for any objects with hekaton in the name, or references to them, in hopes of discovering some new code that would answer all my questions: SELECT name FROM sys.all_objects WHERE name LIKE '%hekaton%' SELECT name FROM sys.all_objects WHERE object_definition(OBJECT_ID) LIKE '%hekaton%' Which revealed: name ------------------------ (0 row(s) affected) name ------------------------ sp_createstats sp_recompile sp_updatestats (3 row(s) affected)   Hmm.  Well that didn't find much.  Looks like these procedures are seriously undocumented, unknown, perhaps forbidden knowledge. Maybe a part of some unspeakable evil? (No, I'm not paranoid, I just like mysteries and thought that punching this up with that kind of thing might keep you reading.  I know I'd fall asleep without it.) OK, so let's check out those 3 procedures and see what they reveal when I search for "Hekaton": sp_createstats: -- filter out local temp tables, Hekaton tables, and tables for which current user has no permissions -- Note that OBJECTPROPERTY returns NULL on type="IT" tables, thus we only call it on type='U' tables   OK, that's interesting, let's go looking down a little further: ((@table_type<>'U') or (0 = OBJECTPROPERTY(@table_id, 'TableIsInMemory'))) and -- Hekaton table   Wellllll, that tells us a few new things: There's such a thing as Hekaton tables (UPDATE: I'm not the only one to have found them!) They are not standard user tables and probably not in memory UPDATE: I misinterpreted this because I didn't read all the code when I wrote this blog post. The OBJECTPROPERTY function has an undocumented TableIsInMemory option Let's check out sp_recompile: -- (3) Must not be a Hekaton procedure.   And once again go a little further: if (ObjectProperty(@objid, 'IsExecuted') <> 0 AND ObjectProperty(@objid, 'IsInlineFunction') = 0 AND ObjectProperty(@objid, 'IsView') = 0 AND -- Hekaton procedure cannot be recompiled -- Make them go through schema version bumping branch, which will fail ObjectProperty(@objid, 'ExecIsCompiledProc') = 0)   And now we learn that hekaton procedures also exist, they can't be recompiled, there's a "schema version bumping branch" somewhere, and OBJECTPROPERTY has another undocumented option, ExecIsCompiledProc.  (If you experiment with this you'll find this option returns null, I think it only works when called from a system object.) This is neat! Sadly sp_updatestats doesn't reveal anything new, the comments about hekaton are the same as sp_createstats.  But we've ALSO discovered undocumented features for the OBJECTPROPERTY function, which we can now search for: SELECT name, object_definition(OBJECT_ID) FROM sys.all_objects WHERE object_definition(OBJECT_ID) LIKE '%OBJECTPROPERTY(%'   I'll leave that to you as more homework.  I should add that searching the system procedures was recommended long ago by the late, great Ken Henderson, in his Guru's Guide books, as a great way to find undocumented features.  That seems to be really good advice! Now if you're a programmer/hacker, you've probably been drooling over the last 5 entries for hekaton (in green), because these are the names of source code files for SQL Server!  Does this mean we can access the source code for SQL Server?  As The Oracle suggested to Neo, can we return to The Source??? Actually, no. Well, maybe a little bit.  While you won't get the actual source code from the compiled DLL and EXE files, you'll get references to source files, debugging symbols, variables and module names, error messages, and even the startup flags for SQL Server.  And if you search for "DBCC" or "CHECKDB" you'll find a really nice section listing all the DBCC commands, including the undocumented ones.  Granted those are pretty easy to find online, but you may be surprised what those web sites DIDN'T tell you! (And neither will I, go look for yourself!)  And as we saw earlier, you'll also find execution plan elements, query processing rules, and who knows what else.  It's also instructive to see how Microsoft organizes their source directories, how various components (storage engine, query processor, Full Text, AlwaysOn/HADR) are split into smaller modules. There are over 2000 source file references, go do some exploring! So what did we learn?  We can pull strings out of executable files, search them for known items, browse them for unknown items, and use the results to examine internal code to learn even more things about SQL Server.  We've even learned how to use command-line utilities!  We are now 1337 h4X0rz!  (Not really.  I hate that leetspeak crap.) Although, I must confess I might've gone too far with the "conspiracy" part of this post.  I apologize for that, it's just my overactive imagination.  There's really no hidden agenda or conspiracy regarding SQL Server internals.  It's not The Matrix.  It's not like you'd find anything like that in there: Attach Matrix Database DM_MATRIX_COMM_PIPELINES MATRIXXACTPARTICIPANTS dm_matrix_agents   Alright, enough of this paranoid ranting!  Microsoft are not really evil!  It's not like they're The Borg from Star Trek: ALTER FEDERATION DROP ALTER FEDERATION SPLIT DROP FEDERATION   #tsql2sday

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  • Imperative vs. LINQ Performance on WP7

    - by Bil Simser
    Jesse Liberty had a nice post presenting the concepts around imperative, LINQ and fluent programming to populate a listbox. Check out the post as it’s a great example of some foundational things every .NET programmer should know. I was more interested in what the IL code that would be generated from imperative vs. LINQ was like and what the performance numbers are and how they differ. The code at the instruction level is interesting but not surprising. The imperative example with it’s creating lists and loops weighs in at about 60 instructions. .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } 1: .method private hidebysig instance void ImperativeMethod() cil managed 2: { 3: .maxstack 3 4: .locals init ( 5: [0] class [mscorlib]System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable`1<int32> someData, 6: [1] class [mscorlib]System.Collections.Generic.List`1<int32> inLoop, 7: [2] int32 n, 8: [3] class [mscorlib]System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerator`1<int32> CS$5$0000, 9: [4] bool CS$4$0001) 10: L_0000: nop 11: L_0001: ldc.i4.1 12: L_0002: ldc.i4.s 50 13: L_0004: call class [mscorlib]System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable`1<int32> [System.Core]System.Linq.Enumerable::Range(int32, int32) 14: L_0009: stloc.0 15: L_000a: newobj instance void [mscorlib]System.Collections.Generic.List`1<int32>::.ctor() 16: L_000f: stloc.1 17: L_0010: nop 18: L_0011: ldloc.0 19: L_0012: callvirt instance class [mscorlib]System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerator`1<!0> [mscorlib]System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable`1<int32>::GetEnumerator() 20: L_0017: stloc.3 21: L_0018: br.s L_003a 22: L_001a: ldloc.3 23: L_001b: callvirt instance !0 [mscorlib]System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerator`1<int32>::get_Current() 24: L_0020: stloc.2 25: L_0021: nop 26: L_0022: ldloc.2 27: L_0023: ldc.i4.5 28: L_0024: cgt 29: L_0026: ldc.i4.0 30: L_0027: ceq 31: L_0029: stloc.s CS$4$0001 32: L_002b: ldloc.s CS$4$0001 33: L_002d: brtrue.s L_0039 34: L_002f: ldloc.1 35: L_0030: ldloc.2 36: L_0031: ldloc.2 37: L_0032: mul 38: L_0033: callvirt instance void [mscorlib]System.Collections.Generic.List`1<int32>::Add(!0) 39: L_0038: nop 40: L_0039: nop 41: L_003a: ldloc.3 42: L_003b: callvirt instance bool [mscorlib]System.Collections.IEnumerator::MoveNext() 43: L_0040: stloc.s CS$4$0001 44: L_0042: ldloc.s CS$4$0001 45: L_0044: brtrue.s L_001a 46: L_0046: leave.s L_005a 47: L_0048: ldloc.3 48: L_0049: ldnull 49: L_004a: ceq 50: L_004c: stloc.s CS$4$0001 51: L_004e: ldloc.s CS$4$0001 52: L_0050: brtrue.s L_0059 53: L_0052: ldloc.3 54: L_0053: callvirt instance void [mscorlib]System.IDisposable::Dispose() 55: L_0058: nop 56: L_0059: endfinally 57: L_005a: nop 58: L_005b: ldarg.0 59: L_005c: ldfld class [System.Windows]System.Windows.Controls.ListBox PerfTest.MainPage::LB1 60: L_0061: ldloc.1 61: L_0062: callvirt instance void [System.Windows]System.Windows.Controls.ItemsControl::set_ItemsSource(class [mscorlib]System.Collections.IEnumerable) 62: L_0067: nop 63: L_0068: ret 64: .try L_0018 to L_0048 finally handler L_0048 to L_005a 65: } 66:   67: Compare that to the IL generated for the LINQ version which has about half of the instructions and just gets the job done, no fluff. .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } 1: .method private hidebysig instance void LINQMethod() cil managed 2: { 3: .maxstack 4 4: .locals init ( 5: [0] class [mscorlib]System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable`1<int32> someData, 6: [1] class [mscorlib]System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable`1<int32> queryResult) 7: L_0000: nop 8: L_0001: ldc.i4.1 9: L_0002: ldc.i4.s 50 10: L_0004: call class [mscorlib]System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable`1<int32> [System.Core]System.Linq.Enumerable::Range(int32, int32) 11: L_0009: stloc.0 12: L_000a: ldloc.0 13: L_000b: ldsfld class [System.Core]System.Func`2<int32, bool> PerfTest.MainPage::CS$<>9__CachedAnonymousMethodDelegate6 14: L_0010: brtrue.s L_0025 15: L_0012: ldnull 16: L_0013: ldftn bool PerfTest.MainPage::<LINQProgramming>b__4(int32) 17: L_0019: newobj instance void [System.Core]System.Func`2<int32, bool>::.ctor(object, native int) 18: L_001e: stsfld class [System.Core]System.Func`2<int32, bool> PerfTest.MainPage::CS$<>9__CachedAnonymousMethodDelegate6 19: L_0023: br.s L_0025 20: L_0025: ldsfld class [System.Core]System.Func`2<int32, bool> PerfTest.MainPage::CS$<>9__CachedAnonymousMethodDelegate6 21: L_002a: call class [mscorlib]System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable`1<!!0> [System.Core]System.Linq.Enumerable::Where<int32>(class [mscorlib]System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable`1<!!0>, class [System.Core]System.Func`2<!!0, bool>) 22: L_002f: ldsfld class [System.Core]System.Func`2<int32, int32> PerfTest.MainPage::CS$<>9__CachedAnonymousMethodDelegate7 23: L_0034: brtrue.s L_0049 24: L_0036: ldnull 25: L_0037: ldftn int32 PerfTest.MainPage::<LINQProgramming>b__5(int32) 26: L_003d: newobj instance void [System.Core]System.Func`2<int32, int32>::.ctor(object, native int) 27: L_0042: stsfld class [System.Core]System.Func`2<int32, int32> PerfTest.MainPage::CS$<>9__CachedAnonymousMethodDelegate7 28: L_0047: br.s L_0049 29: L_0049: ldsfld class [System.Core]System.Func`2<int32, int32> PerfTest.MainPage::CS$<>9__CachedAnonymousMethodDelegate7 30: L_004e: call class [mscorlib]System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable`1<!!1> [System.Core]System.Linq.Enumerable::Select<int32, int32>(class [mscorlib]System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable`1<!!0>, class [System.Core]System.Func`2<!!0, !!1>) 31: L_0053: stloc.1 32: L_0054: ldarg.0 33: L_0055: ldfld class [System.Windows]System.Windows.Controls.ListBox PerfTest.MainPage::LB2 34: L_005a: ldloc.1 35: L_005b: callvirt instance void [System.Windows]System.Windows.Controls.ItemsControl::set_ItemsSource(class [mscorlib]System.Collections.IEnumerable) 36: L_0060: nop 37: L_0061: ret 38: } Again, not surprising here but a good indicator that you should consider using LINQ where possible. In fact if you have ReSharper installed you’ll see a squiggly (technical term) in the imperative code that says “Hey Dude, I can convert this to LINQ if you want to be c00L!” (or something like that, it’s the 2010 geek version of Clippy). What about the fluent version? As Jon correctly pointed out in the comments, when you compare the IL for the LINQ code and the IL for the fluent code it’s the same. LINQ and the fluent interface are just syntactical sugar so you decide what you’re most comfortable with. At the end of the day they’re both the same. Now onto the numbers. Again I expected the imperative version to be better performing than the LINQ version (before I saw the IL that was generated). Call it womanly instinct. A gut feel. Whatever. Some of the numbers are interesting though. For Jesse’s example of 50 items, the numbers were interesting. The imperative sample clocked in at 7ms while the LINQ version completed in 4. As the number of items went up, the elapsed time didn’t necessarily climb exponentially. At 500 items they were pretty much the same and the results were similar up to about 50,000 items. After that I tried 500,000 items where the gap widened but not by much (2.2 seconds for imperative, 2.3 for LINQ). It wasn’t until I tried 5,000,000 items where things were noticeable. Imperative filled the list in 20 seconds while LINQ took 8 seconds longer (although personally I wouldn’t suggest you put 5 million items in a list unless you want your users showing up at your door with torches and pitchforks). Here’s the table with the full results. Method/Items 50 500 5,000 50,000 500,000 5,000,000 Imperative 7ms 7ms 38ms 223ms 2230ms 20974ms LINQ/Fluent 4ms 6ms 41ms 240ms 2310ms 28731ms Like I said, at the end of the day it’s not a huge difference and you really don’t want your users waiting around for 30 seconds on a mobile device filling lists. In fact if Windows Phone 7 detects you’re taking more than 10 seconds to do any one thing, it considers the app hung and shuts it down. The results here are for Windows Phone 7 but frankly they're the same for desktop and web apps so feel free to apply it generally. From a programming perspective, choose what you like. Some LINQ statements can get pretty hairy so I usually fall back with my simple mind and write it imperatively. If you really want to impress your friends, write it old school then let ReSharper do the hard work for! Happy programming!

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  • How did I get here? My route to Android, iPhone, Windows Phone 7, and interest in Mobile Devices

    - by Wallym
    I get asked all the time how/why I got interested in mobile and jumped on this fairly early.  I tend to give half answers because it wasn't just one thing that took me to mobile, but a whole host of separate ivents culminating in a specific event where I wasdoing market research in May/June 2008.  Let me throw out the events and the facts about me: I tend to like new, different, cool stuff.  I jumped on .NET early on.  I jumped on Ajax early on.  I don't jump on every new technology that comes down the road, I'm probably the only person on the planet that doesn't "get" MVC, though I acknowledge that a lot of people do and it solves a number of problems in the default settings of ASP.NET WebForms. I remember buying an early Windows CE device. It was interesting, but dang, this stylus thing sucks. After I lost my third stylus, i just gave up.  I got my first mobile phone in early 1999.  Reception was crappy, but I could see the value in being mobile. In 1999, I worked on a manufacturing systems project.  One piece of the projects was a set of handheld devices on the shop floor.  While the UI was a crappy DOS based, yes I said DOS as in Disk Operating System Version 6.22, I could see that the wireless world was a direction I wanted to be in. In 2000, Microsoft released the first public alpha of .NET.  Very cool stuff indeed.  One piece of the puzzle was a set of mobile controls for ASP.NET.  I build numerous test apps as well as mobile version using these mobile controls.  Now, the mobile UIs of the time were based on WML, which was crap. I could real all the analysis of mobile and read all about growth rates.  Now, you have to realize that growth rates can be impressive when dealing with small numbers, but I knew it was a comer. In our first book, I got talked out of mobile because of the line from the publisher "Wally, mobile doesn't sell." Blackberry was the dominant device of the mid 2000s.  Its users were referred to as "Crackberry addicts."  Unfortunately, the mobile development experience for native apps was crap and the web experience was fairly rough as well, but if they could get the ecosystem started, other phones and better blackberryies would come out.  I finally jumped into using a blackberry. Sometime around 2006, I heard "Wally, mobile doesn't sell" again.  Now, anyone that knows me knows that someone saying something like this to me means I'll keep trying it. The phones of the mid 2000s were moving to be more graphical, but there were too many that had this idea that they had to use a stylus.  Stylus suck.  They get lost too easily. I worked on a project in 2007 and 2008 for a startup trying to answer the question of "What is there to do where I am at?"  For some reason, they wanted to be tied to PCs.  As it became obvious that they were having problems, their investor asked us to do some market research and to figure out what the marketplace did want.  One of the important things that I figured out was the we lived in a mobile world and if you had a mobile app, it need to be on a mobile device, not tied to a desktop/laptop/netbook device.  If there was any single event, this was it - I was doing some market research and sat and talked to people in a bar/restaurant in Atlanta called "The Grove" on Lavista.  The consensus of the people that I talked to was that they wanted their data where ever they were at, laptop, pc, mobile, whereever. In 2007, Apple released the iPhone.  Wow, what an impressive device, even with all the problems of a 1st generation device.  I bought an iPod Touch 1st generation to understand touch better, one of the best decisions I ever made. I decided in late 2008, to make a move into cloud, for a number of reasons.  I was working on an example app.  In April, 2009, one of my friends at Microsoft said "don't mention my name with this, but you need an iPhone front end for this app."  How do you get on the iPhone.  Well, there are a number of ways including: ObjectiveC.  Its hard to teach an old dog new tricks, and this dog knows .NET, not ObjectiveC. HTML, web, javascript optimized interface.  yeah, this is possible. PhoneGap.  Now, this is interesting, take an html interface and get it to run on the iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and other platforms.  I thought that this way made the most sense for me until......... MonoTouch.  In May/June 2009, Novell announced a way for .NET/c# developers to write apps for the iPhone.  This is the way that made the most sense to me. Titanium by Appcelerator.  This is similar in concept to PhoneGap.  I haven't played with this much but do want to learn more about it. In July, 2009, I emailed one of my contacts at Wrox to see if they would be interested in a short MonoTouch ebook in their Wrox Blox format.  I fully expected another  response along the lines of "Wally, mobile doesn't sell."  The response I got was "Wally, iPhone is H O T, get started immediately, can you have this to me before Labor Day."  Not quite the response I expected.  Thankfully, we didn't make the Labor Day, first draft date. I kept pushing back because I had a feeling that things were not going to be quite as polished and feature rich as necessary.  After all, Novell doesn't have the resouces of Microsoft's developer division. The ebook shipped on November 30, 2009. On about December, 15, 2009, my editor emailed and said "Your ebook is selling really well, lets do a full book and it by March 1 so get started."  Thankfully, guys like Craig Dunn and Chris Hardy were interested along with Martin and Ror joinged us later on. I bought my wife an iPhone 3Gs in early 2010 to go along with all my iPod Touch devices. I tried to pretend in 2010 that I wasn't that interested in mobile and still had interest in the desktop technologies.  I love the technologies and continue to use them today, but that isn't where my interest is right now.  I'm just about all mobile all the time with my energies.  Our book shipped in the beginning of July, 2010 right in the middle of the Apple FUD.I've been looking at Mobile Web as a way around the AppStores and Apple FUD problems of 2010. With all the Apple self FUD, we became interested in Android.I went up to Dino Esposito at DevConnections in Las Vegas at introduced myself. I've always tried to keep up with what Dino has been doing. I was shocked, he wanted to meet me.  We must have talked for 1.5 hours. It was way more time than I deserved. If you get a chance, go and introduce yourself to Dino. He's a great guy. Microsoft released Windows Phone 7 in the Fall of 2010.  I'm not doing development on that platform at this time.  I think they have a very interesting user interface.  The devices are being positively reviewed.  For my purposes, the devices are limited at this point in time.  We'll see what 2011 brings as far as updates to the operating system.  I need multitasking/background processing and html5 in the browser. Add that as well as acceptance in the marketplace and I'll be more interested in the device. Obviosuly, I'm now working on a MonoDroid book . I own Android and iPhone/iOS devices.  I am currently working on some startup ideas and am exploring as much in that area as I can. For 2011, I'm planning on speaking at Android Developer's Conference (AnDevCon) and Mobile Connections.  I'm really excited about this. I have a couple of magazine articles coming out in 2011 on Android and iPhone development with the Mono technologies.is Mono "The Answer"? What's "The Question?" I think it will work for me.  It might work for you, it might not.  it depends on your situation.  Its the current horse that I am riding. I might find a better horse tomorrow. So, that's how I got here.  I'm in love with mobile.  Mobile native apps on the device as well as mobile web.  I'm into all this cool stuff.  Where are you at?

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  • How I understood monads, part 1/2: sleepless and self-loathing in Seattle

    - by Bertrand Le Roy
    For some time now, I had been noticing some interest for monads, mostly in the form of unintelligible (to me) blog posts and comments saying “oh, yeah, that’s a monad” about random stuff as if it were absolutely obvious and if I didn’t know what they were talking about, I was probably an uneducated idiot, ignorant about the simplest and most fundamental concepts of functional programming. Fair enough, I am pretty much exactly that. Being the kind of guy who can spend eight years in college just to understand a few interesting concepts about the universe, I had to check it out and try to understand monads so that I too can say “oh, yeah, that’s a monad”. Man, was I hit hard in the face with the limitations of my own abstract thinking abilities. All the articles I could find about the subject seemed to be vaguely understandable at first but very quickly overloaded the very few concept slots I have available in my brain. They also seemed to be consistently using arcane notation that I was entirely unfamiliar with. It finally all clicked together one Friday afternoon during the team’s beer symposium when Louis was patient enough to break it down for me in a language I could understand (C#). I don’t know if being intoxicated helped. Feel free to read this with or without a drink in hand. So here it is in a nutshell: a monad allows you to manipulate stuff in interesting ways. Oh, OK, you might say. Yeah. Exactly. Let’s start with a trivial case: public static class Trivial { public static TResult Execute<T, TResult>( this T argument, Func<T, TResult> operation) { return operation(argument); } } This is not a monad. I removed most concepts here to start with something very simple. There is only one concept here: the idea of executing an operation on an object. This is of course trivial and it would actually be simpler to just apply that operation directly on the object. But please bear with me, this is our first baby step. Here’s how you use that thing: "some string" .Execute(s => s + " processed by trivial proto-monad.") .Execute(s => s + " And it's chainable!"); What we’re doing here is analogous to having an assembly chain in a factory: you can feed it raw material (the string here) and a number of machines that each implement a step in the manufacturing process and you can start building stuff. The Trivial class here represents the empty assembly chain, the conveyor belt if you will, but it doesn’t care what kind of raw material gets in, what gets out or what each machine is doing. It is pure process. A real monad will need a couple of additional concepts. Let’s say the conveyor belt needs the material to be processed to be contained in standardized boxes, just so that it can safely and efficiently be transported from machine to machine or so that tracking information can be attached to it. Each machine knows how to treat raw material or partly processed material, but it doesn’t know how to treat the boxes so the conveyor belt will have to extract the material from the box before feeding it into each machine, and it will have to box it back afterwards. This conveyor belt with boxes is essentially what a monad is. It has one method to box stuff, one to extract stuff from its box and one to feed stuff into a machine. So let’s reformulate the previous example but this time with the boxes, which will do nothing for the moment except containing stuff. public class Identity<T> { public Identity(T value) { Value = value; } public T Value { get; private set;} public static Identity<T> Unit(T value) { return new Identity<T>(value); } public static Identity<U> Bind<U>( Identity<T> argument, Func<T, Identity<U>> operation) { return operation(argument.Value); } } Now this is a true to the definition Monad, including the weird naming of the methods. It is the simplest monad, called the identity monad and of course it does nothing useful. Here’s how you use it: Identity<string>.Bind( Identity<string>.Unit("some string"), s => Identity<string>.Unit( s + " was processed by identity monad.")).Value That of course is seriously ugly. Note that the operation is responsible for re-boxing its result. That is a part of strict monads that I don’t quite get and I’ll take the liberty to lift that strange constraint in the next examples. To make this more readable and easier to use, let’s build a few extension methods: public static class IdentityExtensions { public static Identity<T> ToIdentity<T>(this T value) { return new Identity<T>(value); } public static Identity<U> Bind<T, U>( this Identity<T> argument, Func<T, U> operation) { return operation(argument.Value).ToIdentity(); } } With those, we can rewrite our code as follows: "some string".ToIdentity() .Bind(s => s + " was processed by monad extensions.") .Bind(s => s + " And it's chainable...") .Value; This is considerably simpler but still retains the qualities of a monad. But it is still pointless. Let’s look at a more useful example, the state monad, which is basically a monad where the boxes have a label. It’s useful to perform operations on arbitrary objects that have been enriched with an attached state object. public class Stateful<TValue, TState> { public Stateful(TValue value, TState state) { Value = value; State = state; } public TValue Value { get; private set; } public TState State { get; set; } } public static class StateExtensions { public static Stateful<TValue, TState> ToStateful<TValue, TState>( this TValue value, TState state) { return new Stateful<TValue, TState>(value, state); } public static Stateful<TResult, TState> Execute<TValue, TState, TResult>( this Stateful<TValue, TState> argument, Func<TValue, TResult> operation) { return operation(argument.Value) .ToStateful(argument.State); } } You can get a stateful version of any object by calling the ToStateful extension method, passing the state object in. You can then execute ordinary operations on the values while retaining the state: var statefulInt = 3.ToStateful("This is the state"); var processedStatefulInt = statefulInt .Execute(i => ++i) .Execute(i => i * 10) .Execute(i => i + 2); Console.WriteLine("Value: {0}; state: {1}", processedStatefulInt.Value, processedStatefulInt.State); This monad differs from the identity by enriching the boxes. There is another way to give value to the monad, which is to enrich the processing. An example of that is the writer monad, which can be typically used to log the operations that are being performed by the monad. Of course, the richest monads enrich both the boxes and the processing. That’s all for today. I hope with this you won’t have to go through the same process that I did to understand monads and that you haven’t gone into concept overload like I did. Next time, we’ll examine some examples that you already know but we will shine the monadic light, hopefully illuminating them in a whole new way. Realizing that this pattern is actually in many places but mostly unnoticed is what will enable the truly casual “oh, yes, that’s a monad” comments. Here’s the code for this article: http://weblogs.asp.net/blogs/bleroy/Samples/Monads.zip The Wikipedia article on monads: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monads_in_functional_programming This article was invaluable for me in understanding how to express the canonical monads in C# (interesting Linq stuff in there): http://blogs.msdn.com/b/wesdyer/archive/2008/01/11/the-marvels-of-monads.aspx

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  • MSCC: Purpose and benefits of Version Control Systems (VCS)

    Unfortunately, there was no monthly meetup during May. Which means that it was even more important and interesting to go forward with a great topic for this month. Earlier this year I already spoke to Nayar Joolfoo about doing a presentation on version control systems (VCS), and he gladly agreed since then. It was just about finding the right date for the action. Furthermore, it was also a great coincidence that Avinash Meetoo announced on social media networks that Knowledge 7 is about to have a new training on "Effective git" - which correlates to a book title Avinash is currently working on - all the best with your approach on this and reach out to our MSCC craftsmen for recessions. Once again a big Thank you to Orange Ebene Accelerator on providing the venue for us, and the MSCC members involved on securing the time slot for our event. Unfortunately, it's kind of tough to get an early confirmation for our meetups these days. I'll keep you posted on that one as there are some interesting and exciting options coming up soon. Okay, let's talk about the meeting and version control systems again. As usual, I'm going to put my first impression of the meetup: "Absolutely great topic, questions and discussions on version control systems, like git or VSO. I was also highly pleased by the number of first timers and female IT geeks. Hopefully, we will be able to keep this trend for future get-togethers." And I really have to emphasise the amount of fresh blood coming to our gathering. Also, during the initial phase it was surprising to see that exactly those first-timers, most of them students at various campuses here on the island, had absolutely no idea about version control systems. More about further down... Reactions of other attendees If I counted correctly, we had a total of 17 attendees this month, and I'd like to give you feedback from some of them: "Inspiring. Helped me understand more about GIT." -- Sean on event comments "Joined the meetup today with literally no idea what is a version control system. I have several reasons why I should be starting to use VCS as from NOW in my projects. Thanks Nayar, Jochen and other participants :)" -- Yudish on event comments "Was present today and I'm very satisfied.I was not aware if there was a such tool like git available. Thanks to those who contributed for this meetup.It was great. Learned a lot from this meetup!!" -- Leonardo on event comments "Seriously, I can see how it’s going to ease my task and help me save time. Gone are the issues with files backups.  And since I’ll be doing my dissertation this year, using Git would help me a lot for my backups and I’m grateful to Nayar for the great explanation." -- Swan-Iyah on MSCC meetup : Version Controls Hopefully, I'll be able to get some other sources - personal blogs preferred - on our meeting. Geeks, thank you so much for those encouraging comments. It's really great to experience that we, all members of the MSCC, are doing the right thing to get more IT information out, and to help each other to improve and evolve in our professional careers. Our agenda of the day Honestly, we had a bumpy start... First, I was battling a little bit with the movable room divider in order to maximize the space. I mean, we had 24 RSVPs and usually there might additional people coming along. Then, for what ever reason, we were facing power outages - actually twice in short periods. Not too good for the projector after all, but hey it went smooth for the rest of the time being. And last but not least... our first speaker Nayar got stuck somewhere on the road. ;-) Anyway, not a real show-stopper and we used the time until Nayar's arrival to introduce ourselves a little bit. It is always important for me to get to know the "newbies" a little bit, and as a result we had lots of students of university - first year, second year and recent graduates - among them. Surprisingly, none of them was ever in contact with version control systems at all. I mean, this is a shocking discovery! Similar to the ability of touch-typing I'd say that being able to use (and master) any kind of version control system is compulsory in any job in the IT industry. Seriously, I'm wondering what is being taught during the classes on the campus. All of them have to work on semester assessments or final projects, even in small teams of 2-4 people. That's the perfect occasion to get started with VCS. Already in this phase, we had great input from more experienced VCS users, like Sean, Avinash and myself. git - a modern approach to VCS - Nayar What a tour! Nayar gave us the full round of git from start to finish, even touching some more advanced techniques. First, he started to explain about the importance of version control systems as an essential tool for software developers, even working alone on a project, and the ability to have a kind of "time machine" that allows you to inspect and revert to a previous version of source code at any time. Then he showed how easy it is to install git on an Ubuntu based system but also mentioned that git is literally available for any operating system, like Windows, Mac OS X and of course other Linux distributions. Next, he showed us how to set the initial configuration values of user name and email address which simplifies the daily usage of the git client while working with your repositories. Then he initialised and added a new repository for some local development of a blogging software. All commands were done using the command line interface (CLI) so that they can be repeated on any system as reference. The syntax and the procedure is always the same, and Nayar clearly mentioned this to the attendees. Now, having a git repository in place it was about time to work on some "important" changes on the blogging software - just for the sake of demonstrating the ease of use and power of git. One interesting question came very early: "How many commands do we have to learn? It looks quite difficult at the moment" - Well, rest assured that during daily development circles you will need less than 10 git commands on a regular base: git add, commit, push, pull, checkout, and merge And Nayar demo'd all of them. Much to the delight of everyone he also showed gitk which is the git repository browser. It's an UI tool to display changes in a repository or a selected set of commits. This includes visualizing the commit graph, showing information related to each commit, and the files in the trees of each revision. Using gitk to display and browse information of a local git repository And last but not least, we took advantage of the internet connectivity and reached out to various online portals offering git hosting for free. Nayar showed us how to push the local repository into a remote system on github. Showing the web-based git browser and history handling, and then also explained and demo'd on how to connect to existing online repositories in order to get access to either your own source code or other people's open source projects. Next to github, we also spoke about bitbucket and gitlab as potential online platforms for your projects. Have a look at the conditions and details about their free service packages and what you can get additionally as a paying customer. Usually, you already get a lot of services for up to five users for free but there might be other important aspects that might have an impact on your decision. Anyways, moving git-based repositories between systems is a piece of cake, and changing online platforms is possible at any stage of your development. Visual Studio Online (VSO) - Jochen Well, Nayar literally covered all elements of working with git during his session, including the use of external online platforms. So, what would be the advantage of talking about Visual Studio Online (VSO)? First of all, VSO is "just another" online platform for hosting and managing git repositories on remote systems, equivalent to github, bitbucket, or any other web site. At the moment (of writing), Microsoft also provides a free package of up to five users / developers on a git repository but there is more in that package. Of course, it is related to software development on the Windows systems and the bonds are tightened towards the use of Visual Studio but out of experience you are absolutely not restricted to that. Connecting a Linux or Mac OS X machine with a git client or an integrated development environment (IDE) like Eclipse or Xcode works as smooth as expected. So, why should one opt in for VSO? Well, one of the main aspects that I would like to mention here is that VSO integrates the Application Life Cycle Methodology (ALM) of Microsoft in their platform. Meaning that you get agile project management with Backlogs, Sprints, Burn-down charts as well as the ability to track tasks, bug reports and work items next to collaborative team chats. It's the whole package of agile development you'll get. And, something I mentioned briefly during the begin of our meeting, VSO gives you the possibility of an automated continuous integrated (CI) process which builds and can run tests of your source code after each commit of changes. Having a proper CI strategy is also part of the Clean Code Developer practices - on Level Green actually -, and not only simplifies your life as a software developer but also reduces the sources of potential errors. Seamless integration and automated deployment between Microsoft Azure Web Sites and git repository But my favourite feature is the seamless continuous deployment to Microsoft Azure. Especially, while working on web projects it's absolutely astounishing that as soon as you commit your chances it just takes a couple of seconds until your modifications are deployed and available on your Azure-hosted web sites. Upcoming Events and networking Due to the adjusted times, everybody was kind of hungry and we didn't follow up on networking or upcoming events - very unfortunate to my opinion and this will have an impact on future planning of our meetups. Because I rather would like to see more conversations during and at the end of our meetings than everyone just packing their laptops, bags and accessories and rush off to grab some food. I was hoping to get some information regarding this year's Code Challenge - supposedly to be organised during July? Maybe someone could leave a comment on that - but I couldn't get any updates. Well, I'll keep digging... In case that you would like to get more into git and how to use it effectively, please check out Knowledge 7's upcoming course on "Effective git". Thanks Avinash for your vital input into today's conversation and I'm looking forward to get a grip on your book title very soon. My resume of the day Do not work in IT without any kind of version control system! Seriously, without a VCS in place you're doing it wrong. It's like driving a car without seat belts attached or riding your bike without safety helmet. You don't do that! End of discussion. ;-) Nowadays, having access to free (as in cost) tools to install on your machine and numerous online platforms to host your source code for free for up to five users it's a no-brainer to get yourself familiar with VCS. Today's sessions gave a good overview on how to start using git and how to connect to various remote services like github or VSO.

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  • Caveats with the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests in IIS 7/8

    - by Rick Strahl
    One of the nice enhancements in IIS 7 (and now 8) is the ability to be able to intercept non-managed - ie. non ASP.NET served - requests from within ASP.NET managed modules. This opened up a ton of new functionality that could be applied across non-managed content using .NET code. I thought I had a pretty good handle on how IIS 7's Integrated mode pipeline works, but when I put together some samples last tonight I realized that the way that managed and unmanaged requests fire into the pipeline is downright confusing especially when it comes to the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests attribute. There are a number of settings that can affect whether a managed module receives non-ASP.NET content requests such as static files or requests from other frameworks like PHP or ASP classic, and this is topic of this blog post. Native and Managed Modules The integrated mode IIS pipeline for IIS 7 and later - as the name suggests - allows for integration of ASP.NET pipeline events in the IIS request pipeline. Natively IIS runs unmanaged code and there are a host of native mode modules that handle the core behavior of IIS. If you set up a new IIS site or application without managed code support only the native modules are supported and fired without any interaction between native and managed code. If you use the Integrated pipeline with managed code enabled however things get a little more confusing as there both native modules and .NET managed modules can fire against the same IIS request. If you open up the IIS Modules dialog you see both managed and unmanaged modules. Unmanaged modules point at physical files on disk, while unmanaged modules point at .NET types and files referenced from the GAC or the current project's BIN folder. Both native and managed modules can co-exist and execute side by side and on the same request. When running in IIS 7 the IIS pipeline actually instantiates a the ASP.NET  runtime (via the System.Web.PipelineRuntime class) which unlike the core HttpRuntime classes in ASP.NET receives notification callbacks when IIS integrated mode events fire. The IIS pipeline is smart enough to detect whether managed handlers are attached and if they're none these notifications don't fire, improving performance. The good news about all of this for .NET devs is that ASP.NET style modules can be used for just about every kind of IIS request. All you need to do is create a new Web Application and enable ASP.NET on it, and then attach managed handlers. Handlers can look at ASP.NET content (ie. ASPX pages, MVC, WebAPI etc. requests) as well as non-ASP.NET content including static content like HTML files, images, javascript and css resources etc. It's very cool that this capability has been surfaced. However, with that functionality comes a lot of responsibility. Because every request passes through the ASP.NET pipeline if managed modules (or handlers) are attached there are possible performance implications that come with it. Running through the ASP.NET pipeline does add some overhead. ASP.NET and Your Own Modules When you create a new ASP.NET project typically the Visual Studio templates create the modules section like this: <system.webServer> <validation validateIntegratedModeConfiguration="false" /> <modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true" > </modules> </system.webServer> Specifically the interesting thing about this is the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequest="true" flag, which seems to indicate that it controls whether any registered modules always run, even when the value is set to false. Realistically though this flag does not control whether managed code is fired for all requests or not. Rather it is an override for the preCondition flag on a particular handler. With the flag set to the default true setting, you can assume that pretty much every IIS request you receive ends up firing through your ASP.NET module pipeline and every module you have configured is accessed even by non-managed requests like static files. In other words, your module will have to handle all requests. Now so far so obvious. What's not quite so obvious is what happens when you set the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequest="false". You probably would expect that immediately the non-ASP.NET requests no longer get funnelled through the ASP.NET Module pipeline. But that's not what actually happens. For example, if I create a module like this:<add name="SharewareModule" type="HowAspNetWorks.SharewareMessageModule" /> by default it will fire against ALL requests regardless of the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests flag. Even if the value runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="false", the module is fired. Not quite expected. So what is the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests really good for? It's essentially an override for managedHandler preCondition. If I declare my handler in web.config like this:<add name="SharewareModule" type="HowAspNetWorks.SharewareMessageModule" preCondition="managedHandler" /> and the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="false" my module only fires against managed requests. If I switch the flag to true, now my module ends up handling all IIS requests that are passed through from IIS. The moral of the story here is that if you intend to only look at ASP.NET content, you should always set the preCondition="managedHandler" attribute to ensure that only managed requests are fired on this module. But even if you do this, realize that runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true" can override this setting. runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests and Http Application Events Another place the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequest attribute affects is the Global Http Application object (typically in global.asax) and the Application_XXXX events that you can hook up there. So while the events there are dynamically hooked up to the application class, they basically behave as if they were set with the preCodition="managedHandler" configuration switch. The end result is that if you have runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true" you'll see every Http request passed through the Application_XXXX events, and you only see ASP.NET requests with the flag set to "false". What's all that mean? Configuring an application to handle requests for both ASP.NET and other content requests can be tricky especially if you need to mix modules that might require both. Couple of things are important to remember. If your module doesn't need to look at every request, by all means set a preCondition="managedHandler" on it. This will at least allow it to respond to the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="false" flag and then only process ASP.NET requests. Look really carefully to see whether you actually need runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true" in your applications as set by the default new project templates in Visual Studio. Part of the reason, this is the default because it was required for the initial versions of IIS 7 and ASP.NET 2 in order to handle MVC extensionless URLs. However, if you are running IIS 7 or later and .NET 4.0 you can use the ExtensionlessUrlHandler instead to allow you MVC functionality without requiring runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true": <handlers> <remove name="ExtensionlessUrlHandler-Integrated-4.0" /> <add name="ExtensionlessUrlHandler-Integrated-4.0" path="*." verb="GET,HEAD,POST,DEBUG,PUT,DELETE,PATCH,OPTIONS" type="System.Web.Handlers.TransferRequestHandler" preCondition="integratedMode,runtimeVersionv4.0" /> </handlers> Oddly this is the default for Visual Studio 2012 MVC template apps, so I'm not sure why the default template still adds runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true" is - it should be enabled only if there's a specific need to access non ASP.NET requests. As a side note, it's interesting that when you access a static HTML resource, you can actually write into the Response object and get the output to show, which is trippy. I haven't looked closely to see how this works - whether ASP.NET just fires directly into the native output stream or whether the static requests are re-routed directly through the ASP.NET pipeline once a managed code module is detected. This doesn't work for all non ASP.NET resources - for example, I can't do the same with ASP classic requests, but it makes for an interesting demo when injecting HTML content into a static HTML page :-) Note that on the original Windows Server 2008 and Vista (IIS 7.0) you might need a HotFix in order for ExtensionLessUrlHandler to work properly for MVC projects. On my live server I needed it (about 6 months ago), but others have observed that the latest service updates have integrated this functionality and the hotfix is not required. On IIS 7.5 and later I've not needed any patches for things to just work. Plan for non-ASP.NET Requests It's important to remember that if you write a .NET Module to run on IIS 7, there's no way for you to prevent non-ASP.NET requests from hitting your module. So make sure you plan to support requests to extensionless URLs, to static resources like files. Luckily ASP.NET creates a full Request and full Response object for you for non ASP.NET content. So even for static files and even for ASP classic for example, you can look at Request.FilePath or Request.ContentType (in post handler pipeline events) to determine what content you are dealing with. As always with Module design make sure you check for the conditions in your code that make the module applicable and if a filter fails immediately exit - minimize the code that runs if your module doesn't need to process the request.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in IIS7   ASP.NET   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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  • Clusterware 11gR2 &ndash; Setting up an Active/Passive failover configuration

    - by Gilles Haro
    Oracle is providing a large range of interesting solutions to ensure High Availability of the database. Dataguard, RAC or even both configurations (as recommended by Oracle for a Maximum Available Architecture - MAA) are the most frequently found and used solutions. But, when it comes to protecting a system with an Active/Passive architecture with failover capabilities, people often thinks to other expensive third party cluster systems. Oracle Clusterware technology, which comes along at no extra-cost with Oracle Database or Oracle Unbreakable Linux, is - in the knowing of most people - often linked to Oracle RAC and therefore, is seldom used to implement failover solutions. Oracle Clusterware 11gR2  (a part of Oracle 11gR2 Grid Infrastructure)  provides a comprehensive framework to setup automatic failover configurations. It is actually possible to make "failover-able'", and then to protect, almost any kind of application (from the simple xclock to the most complex Application Server). Quoting Oracle: “Oracle Clusterware is a portable cluster software that allows clustering of single servers so that they cooperate as a single system. Oracle Clusterware also provides the required infrastructure for Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC). In addition Oracle Clusterware enables the protection of any Oracle application or any other kind of application within a cluster.” In the next couple of lines, I will try to present the different steps to achieve this goal : Have a fully operational 11gR2 database protected by automatic failover capabilities. I assume you are fluent in installing Oracle Database 11gR2, Oracle Grid Infrastructure 11gR2 on a Linux system and that ASM is not a problem for you (as I am using it as a shared storage). If not, please have a look at Oracle Documentation. As often, I made my tests using an Oracle VirtualBox environment. The scripts are tested and functional on my system. Unfortunately, there can always be a typo or a mistake. This blog entry does not replace a course around the Clusterware Framework. I just hope it will let you see how powerful it is and that it will give you the whilst to go further with it...  Note : This entry has been revised (rev.2) following comments from Philip Newlan. Prerequisite 2 Linux boxes (OELCluster01 and OELCluster02) at the same OS level. I used OEL 5 Update 5 with an Enterprise Kernel. Shared Storage (SAN). On my VirtualBox system, I used Openfiler to simulate the SAN Oracle 11gR2 Database (11.2.0.1) Oracle 11gR2 Grid Infrastructure (11.2.0.1)   Step 1 - Install the software Using asmlib, create 3 ASM disks (ASM_CRS, ASM_DTA and ASM_FRA) Install Grid Infrastructure for a cluster (OELCluster01 and OELCluster02 are the 2 nodes of the cluster) Use ASM_CRS to store Voting Disk and OCR. Use SCAN. Install Oracle Database Standalone binaries on both nodes. Use asmca to check/mount the disk groups on 2 nodes Use dbca to create and configure a database on the primary node Let's name it DB11G. Copy the pfile, password file to the second node. Create adump directoty on the second node.   Step 2 - Setup the resource to be protected After its creation with dbca, the database is automatically protected by the Oracle Restart technology available with Grid Infrastructure. Consequently, it restarts automatically (if possible) after a crash (ex: kill -9 smon). A database resource has been created for that in the Cluster Registry. We can observe this with the command : crsctl status resource that shows and ora.dba11g.db entry. Let's save the definition of this resource, for future use : mkdir -p /crs/11.2.0/HA_scripts chown oracle:oinstall /crs/11.2.0/HA_scripts crsctl status resource ora.db11g.db -p > /crs/11.2.0/HA_scripts/myResource.txt Although very interesting, Oracle Restart is not cluster aware and cannot restart the database on any other node of the cluster. So, let's remove it from the OCR definitions, we don't need it ! srvctl stop database -d DB11G srvctl remove database -d DB11G Instead of it, we need to create a new resource of a more general type : cluster_resource. Here are the steps to achieve this : Create an action script :  /crs/11.2.0/HA_scripts/my_ActivePassive_Cluster.sh #!/bin/bash export ORACLE_HOME=/oracle/product/11.2.0/dbhome_1 export ORACLE_SID=DB11G case $1 in 'start')   $ORACLE_HOME/bin/sqlplus /nolog <<EOF   connect / as sysdba   startup EOF   RET=0   ;; 'stop')   $ORACLE_HOME/bin/sqlplus /nolog <<EOF   connect / as sysdba   shutdown immediate EOF   RET=0   ;; 'clean')   $ORACLE_HOME/bin/sqlplus /nolog <<EOF   connect / as sysdba   shutdown abort    ##for i in `ps -ef | grep -i $ORACLE_SID | awk '{print $2}' ` ;do kill -9 $i; done EOF   RET=0   ;; 'check')    ok=`ps -ef | grep smon | grep $ORACLE_SID | wc -l`    if [ $ok = 0 ]; then      RET=1    else      RET=0    fi    ;; '*')      RET=0   ;; esac if [ $RET -eq 0 ]; then    exit 0 else    exit 1 fi   This script must provide, at least, methods to start, stop, clean and check the database. It is self-explaining and contains nothing special. Just be aware that it must be runnable (+x), it runs as Oracle user (because of the ACL property - see later) and needs to know about the environment. Also make sure it exists on every node of the cluster. Moreover, as of 11.2, the clean method is mandatory. It must provide the “last gasp clean up”, for example, a shutdown abort or a kill –9 of all the remaining processes. chmod +x /crs/11.2.0/HA_scripts/my_ActivePassive_Cluster.sh scp  /crs/11.2.0/HA_scripts/my_ActivePassive_Cluster.sh   oracle@OELCluster02:/crs/11.2.0/HA_scripts Create a new resource file, based on the information we got from previous  myResource.txt . Name it myNewResource.txt. myResource.txt  is shown below. As we can see, it defines an ora.database.type resource, named ora.db11g.db. A lot of properties are related to this type of resource and do not need to be used for a cluster_resource. NAME=ora.db11g.db TYPE=ora.database.type ACL=owner:oracle:rwx,pgrp:oinstall:rwx,other::r-- ACTION_FAILURE_TEMPLATE= ACTION_SCRIPT= ACTIVE_PLACEMENT=1 AGENT_FILENAME=%CRS_HOME%/bin/oraagent%CRS_EXE_SUFFIX% AUTO_START=restore CARDINALITY=1 CHECK_INTERVAL=1 CHECK_TIMEOUT=600 CLUSTER_DATABASE=false DB_UNIQUE_NAME=DB11G DEFAULT_TEMPLATE=PROPERTY(RESOURCE_CLASS=database) PROPERTY(DB_UNIQUE_NAME= CONCAT(PARSE(%NAME%, ., 2), %USR_ORA_DOMAIN%, .)) ELEMENT(INSTANCE_NAME= %GEN_USR_ORA_INST_NAME%) DEGREE=1 DESCRIPTION=Oracle Database resource ENABLED=1 FAILOVER_DELAY=0 FAILURE_INTERVAL=60 FAILURE_THRESHOLD=1 GEN_AUDIT_FILE_DEST=/oracle/admin/DB11G/adump GEN_USR_ORA_INST_NAME= GEN_USR_ORA_INST_NAME@SERVERNAME(oelcluster01)=DB11G HOSTING_MEMBERS= INSTANCE_FAILOVER=0 LOAD=1 LOGGING_LEVEL=1 MANAGEMENT_POLICY=AUTOMATIC NLS_LANG= NOT_RESTARTING_TEMPLATE= OFFLINE_CHECK_INTERVAL=0 ORACLE_HOME=/oracle/product/11.2.0/dbhome_1 PLACEMENT=restricted PROFILE_CHANGE_TEMPLATE= RESTART_ATTEMPTS=2 ROLE=PRIMARY SCRIPT_TIMEOUT=60 SERVER_POOLS=ora.DB11G SPFILE=+DTA/DB11G/spfileDB11G.ora START_DEPENDENCIES=hard(ora.DTA.dg,ora.FRA.dg) weak(type:ora.listener.type,uniform:ora.ons,uniform:ora.eons) pullup(ora.DTA.dg,ora.FRA.dg) START_TIMEOUT=600 STATE_CHANGE_TEMPLATE= STOP_DEPENDENCIES=hard(intermediate:ora.asm,shutdown:ora.DTA.dg,shutdown:ora.FRA.dg) STOP_TIMEOUT=600 UPTIME_THRESHOLD=1h USR_ORA_DB_NAME=DB11G USR_ORA_DOMAIN=haroland USR_ORA_ENV= USR_ORA_FLAGS= USR_ORA_INST_NAME=DB11G USR_ORA_OPEN_MODE=open USR_ORA_OPI=false USR_ORA_STOP_MODE=immediate VERSION=11.2.0.1.0 I removed database type related entries from myResource.txt and modified some other to produce the following myNewResource.txt. Notice the NAME property that should not have the ora. prefix Notice the TYPE property that is not ora.database.type but cluster_resource. Notice the definition of ACTION_SCRIPT. Notice the HOSTING_MEMBERS that enumerates the members of the cluster (as returned by the olsnodes command). NAME=DB11G.db TYPE=cluster_resource DESCRIPTION=Oracle Database resource ACL=owner:oracle:rwx,pgrp:oinstall:rwx,other::r-- ACTION_SCRIPT=/crs/11.2.0/HA_scripts/my_ActivePassive_Cluster.sh PLACEMENT=restricted ACTIVE_PLACEMENT=0 AUTO_START=restore CARDINALITY=1 CHECK_INTERVAL=10 DEGREE=1 ENABLED=1 HOSTING_MEMBERS=oelcluster01 oelcluster02 LOGGING_LEVEL=1 RESTART_ATTEMPTS=1 START_DEPENDENCIES=hard(ora.DTA.dg,ora.FRA.dg) weak(type:ora.listener.type,uniform:ora.ons,uniform:ora.eons) pullup(ora.DTA.dg,ora.FRA.dg) START_TIMEOUT=600 STOP_DEPENDENCIES=hard(intermediate:ora.asm,shutdown:ora.DTA.dg,shutdown:ora.FRA.dg) STOP_TIMEOUT=600 UPTIME_THRESHOLD=1h Register the resource. Take care of the resource type. It needs to be a cluster_resource and not a ora.database.type resource (Oracle recommendation) .   crsctl add resource DB11G.db  -type cluster_resource -file /crs/11.2.0/HA_scripts/myNewResource.txt Step 3 - Start the resource crsctl start resource DB11G.db This command launches the ACTION_SCRIPT with a start and a check parameter on the primary node of the cluster. Step 4 - Test this We will test the setup using 2 methods. crsctl relocate resource DB11G.db This command calls the ACTION_SCRIPT  (on the two nodes)  to stop the database on the active node and start it on the other node. Once done, we can revert back to the original node, but, this time we can use a more "MS$ like" method :Turn off the server on which the database is running. After short delay, you should observe that the database is relocated on node 1. Conclusion Once the software installed and the standalone database created (which is a rather common and usual task), the steps to reach the objective are quite easy : Create an executable action script on every node of the cluster. Create a resource file. Create/Register the resource with OCR using the resource file. Start the resource. This solution is a very interesting alternative to licensable third party solutions. References Clusterware 11gR2 documentation Oracle Clusterware Resource Reference Clusterware for Unbreakable Linux Using Oracle Clusterware to Protect A Single Instance Oracle Database 11gR1 (to have an idea of complexity) Oracle Clusterware on OTN   Gilles Haro Technical Expert - Core Technology, Oracle Consulting   

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  • Who writes the words? A rant with graphs.

    - by Roger Hart
    If you read my rant, you'll know that I'm getting a bit of a bee in my bonnet about user interface text. But rather than just yelling about the way the world should be (short version: no UI text would suck), it seemed prudent to actually gather some data. Rachel Potts has made an excellent first foray, by conducting a series of interviews across organizations about how they write user interface text. You can read Rachel's write up here. She presents the facts as she found them, and doesn't editorialise. The result is insightful, but impartial isn't really my style. So here's a rant with graphs. My method, and how it sucked I sent out a short survey. Survey design is one of my hobby-horses, and since some smartarse in the comments will mention it if I don't, I'll step up and confess: I did not design this one well. It was potentially ambiguous, implicitly excluded people, and since I only really advertised it on Twitter and a couple of mailing lists the sample will be chock full of biases. Regardless, these were the questions: What do you do? Select the option that best describes your role What kind of software does your organization make? (optional) In your organization, who writes the text on your software user interfaces? (for example: button names, static text, tooltips, and so on) Tick all that apply. In your organization who is responsible for user interface text? Who "owns" it? The most glaring issue (apart from question 3 being a bit broken) was that I didn't make it clear that I was asking about applications. Desktop, mobile, or web, I wouldn't have minded. In fact, it might have been interesting to categorize and compare. But a few respondents commented on the seeming lack of relevance, since they didn't really make software. There were some other issues too. It wasn't the best survey. So, you know, pinch of salt time with what follows. Despite this, there were 100 or so respondents. This post covers the overview, and you can look at the raw data in this spreadsheet What did people do? Boring graph number one: I wasn't expecting that. Given I pimped the survey on twitter and a couple of Tech Comms discussion lists, I was more banking on and even Content Strategy/Tech Comms split. What the "Others" specified: Three people chipped in with Technical Writer. Author, apparently, doesn't cut it. There's a "nobody reads the instructions" joke in there somewhere, I'm sure. There were a couple of hybrid roles, including Tech Comms and Testing, which sounds gruelling and thankless. There was also, an Intranet Manager, a Creative Director, a Consultant, a CTO, an Information Architect, and a Translator. That's a pretty healthy slice through the industry. Who wrote UI text? Boring graph number two: Annoyingly, I made this a "tick all that apply" question, so I can't make crude and inflammatory generalizations about percentages. This is more about who gets involved in user interface wording. So don't panic about the number of developers writing UI text. First off, it just means they're involved. Second, they might be good at it. What? It could happen. Ours are involved - they write a placeholder and flag it to me for changes. Sometimes I don't make any. It's also not surprising that there's so much UX in the mix. Some of that will be people taking care, and crafting an understandable interface. Some of it will be whatever text goes on the wireframe making it into production. I'm going to assume that's what happened at eBay, when their iPhone app purportedly shipped with the placeholder text "Some crappy content goes here". Ahem. Listing all 17 "other" responses would make this post lengthy indeed, but you can read them in the raw data spreadsheet. The award for the approach that sounds the most like a good idea yet carries the highest risk of ending badly goes to whoever offered up "External agencies using focus groups". If you're reading this, and that actually works, leave a comment. I'm fascinated. Who owned UI text Stop. Bar chart time: Wow. Let's cut to the chase, and by "chase", I mean those inflammatory generalizations I was talking about: In around 60% of cases the person responsible for user interface text probably lacks the relevant expertise. Even in the categories I count as being likely to have relevant skills (Marketing Copywriters, Content Strategists, Technical Authors, and User Experience Designers) there's a case for each role being unsuited, as you'll see in Rachel's blog post So it's not as simple as my headline. Does that mean that you personally, Mr Developer reading this, write bad button names? Of course not. I know nothing about you. It rather implies that as a category, the majority of people looking after UI text have neither communication nor user experience as their primary skill set, and as such will probably only be good at this by happy accident. I don't have a way of measuring those frequency of those accidents. What the Others specified: I don't know who owns it. I assume the project manager is responsible. "copywriters" when they wish to annoy me. the client's web maintenance person, often PR or MarComm That last one chills me to the bone. Still, at least nobody said "the work experience kid". You can see the rest in the spreadsheet. My overwhelming impression here is of user interface text as an unloved afterthought. There were fewer "nobody" responses than I expected, and a much broader split. But the relative predominance of developers owning and writing UI text suggests to me that organizations don't see it as something worth dedicating attention to. If true, that's bothersome. Because the words on the screen, particularly the names of things, are fundamental to the ability to understand an use software. It's also fascinating that Technical Authors and Content Strategists are neck and neck. For such a nascent discipline, Content Strategy appears to have made a mark on software development. Or my sample is skewed. But it feels like a bit of validation for my rant: Content Strategy is eating Tech Comms' lunch. That's not a bad thing. Well, not if the UI text is getting done well. And that's the caveat to this whole post. I couldn't care less who writes UI text, provided they consider the user and don't suck at it. I care that it may be falling by default to people poorly disposed to doing it right. And I care about that because so much user interface text sucks. The most interesting question Was one I forgot to ask. It's this: Does your organization have technical authors/writers? Like a lot of survey data, that doesn't tell you much on its own. But once we get a bit dimensional, it become more interesting. So taken with the other questions, this would have let me find out what I really want to know: What proportion of organizations have Tech Comms professionals but don't use them for UI text? Who writes UI text in their place? Why this happens? It's possible (feasible is another matter) that hundreds of companies have tech authors who don't work on user interfaces because they've empirically discovered that someone else, say the Marketing Copywriter, is better at it. And once we've all finished laughing, I'll point out that I've met plenty of tech authors who just aren't used to thinking about users at the point of need in the way UI text and embedded user assistance require. If you've got what I regard, perhaps unfairly, as the bad kind of tech author - the old-school kind with the thousand-page pdf and the grammar obsession - if you've got one of those then you probably are better off getting the UX folk or the copywriters to do your UI text. At the very least, they'll derive terminology from user research.

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  • SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #037

    - by Pinal Dave
    Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 Convert Text to Numbers (Integer) – CAST and CONVERT If table column is VARCHAR and has all the numeric values in it, it can be retrieved as Integer using CAST or CONVERT function. List All Stored Procedure Modified in Last N Days If SQL Server suddenly start behaving in un-expectable behavior and if stored procedure were changed recently, following script can be used to check recently modified stored procedure. If a stored procedure was created but never modified afterwards modified date and create a date for that stored procedure are same. Count Duplicate Records – Rows Validate Field For DATE datatype using function ISDATE() We always checked DATETIME field for incorrect data type. One of the user input date as 30/2/2007. The date was sucessfully inserted in the temp table but while inserting from temp table to final table it crashed with error. We had now task to validate incorrect date value before we insert in final table. Jr. Developer asked me how can he do that? We check for incorrect data type (varchar, int, NULL) but this is incorrect date value. Regular expression works fine with them because of mm/dd/yyyy format. 2008 Find Space Used For Any Particular Table It is very simple to find out the space used by any table in the database. Two Convenient Features Inline Assignment – Inline Operations Here is the script which does both – Inline Assignment and Inline Operation DECLARE @idx INT = 0 SET @idx+=1 SELECT @idx Introduction to SPARSE Columns SPARSE column are better at managing NULL and ZERO values in SQL Server. It does not take any space in database at all. If column is created with SPARSE clause with it and it contains ZERO or NULL it will be take lesser space then regular column (without SPARSE clause). SP_CONFIGURE – Displays or Changes Global Configuration Settings If advanced settings are not enabled at configuration level SQL Server will not let user change the advanced features on server. Authorized user can turn on or turn off advance settings. 2009 Standby Servers and Types of Standby Servers Standby Server is a type of server that can be brought online in a situation when Primary Server goes offline and application needs continuous (high) availability of the server. There is always a need to set up a mechanism where data and objects from primary server are moved to secondary (standby) server. BLOB – Pointer to Image, Image in Database, FILESTREAM Storage When it comes to storing images in database there are two common methods. I had previously blogged about the same subject on my visit to Toronto. With SQL Server 2008, we have a new method of FILESTREAM storage. However, the answer on when to use FILESTREAM and when to use other methods is still vague in community. 2010 Upper Case Shortcut SQL Server Management Studio I select the word and hit CTRL+SHIFT+U and it SSMS immediately changes the case of the selected word. Similar way if one want to convert cases to lower case, another short cut CTRL+SHIFT+L is also available. The Self Join – Inner Join and Outer Join Self Join has always been a noteworthy case. It is interesting to ask questions about self join in a room full of developers. I often ask – if there are three kinds of joins, i.e.- Inner Join, Outer Join and Cross Join; what type of join is Self Join? The usual answer is that it is an Inner Join. However, the reality is very different. Parallelism – Row per Processor – Row per Thread – Thread 0  If you look carefully in the Properties window or XML Plan, there is “Thread 0?. What does this “Thread 0” indicate? Well find out from the blog post. How do I Learn and How do I Teach The blog post has raised three very interesting questions. How do you learn? How do you teach? What are you learning or teaching? Let me try to answer the same. 2011 SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Day 7 of 31 What are Different Types of Locks? What are Pessimistic Lock and Optimistic Lock? When is the use of UPDATE_STATISTICS command? What is the Difference between a HAVING clause and a WHERE clause? What is Connection Pooling and why it is Used? What are the Properties and Different Types of Sub-Queries? What are the Authentication Modes in SQL Server? How can it be Changed? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Day 8 of 31 Which Command using Query Analyzer will give you the Version of SQL Server and Operating System? What is an SQL Server Agent? Can a Stored Procedure call itself or a Recursive Stored Procedure? How many levels of SP nesting is possible? What is Log Shipping? Name 3 ways to get an Accurate Count of the Number of Records in a Table? What does it mean to have QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON? What are the Implications of having it OFF? What is the Difference between a Local and a Global Temporary Table? What is the STUFF Function and How Does it Differ from the REPLACE Function? What is PRIMARY KEY? What is UNIQUE KEY Constraint? What is FOREIGN KEY? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Day 9 of 31 What is CHECK Constraint? What is NOT NULL Constraint? What is the difference between UNION and UNION ALL? What is B-Tree? How to get @@ERROR and @@ROWCOUNT at the Same Time? What is a Scheduled Job or What is a Scheduled Task? What are the Advantages of Using Stored Procedures? What is a Table Called, if it has neither Cluster nor Non-cluster Index? What is it Used for? Can SQL Servers Linked to other Servers like Oracle? What is BCP? When is it Used? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Day 10 of 31 What Command do we Use to Rename a db, a Table and a Column? What are sp_configure Commands and SET Commands? How to Implement One-to-One, One-to-Many and Many-to-Many Relationships while Designing Tables? What is Difference between Commit and Rollback when Used in Transactions? What is an Execution Plan? When would you Use it? How would you View the Execution Plan? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Day 11 of 31 What is Difference between Table Aliases and Column Aliases? Do they Affect Performance? What is the difference between CHAR and VARCHAR Datatypes? What is the Difference between VARCHAR and VARCHAR(MAX) Datatypes? What is the Difference between VARCHAR and NVARCHAR datatypes? Which are the Important Points to Note when Multilanguage Data is Stored in a Table? How to Optimize Stored Procedure Optimization? What is SQL Injection? How to Protect Against SQL Injection Attack? How to Find Out the List Schema Name and Table Name for the Database? What is CHECKPOINT Process in the SQL Server? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Day 12 of 31 How does Using a Separate Hard Drive for Several Database Objects Improves Performance Right Away? How to Find the List of Fixed Hard Drive and Free Space on Server? Why can there be only one Clustered Index and not more than one? What is Difference between Line Feed (\n) and Carriage Return (\r)? Is It Possible to have Clustered Index on Separate Drive From Original Table Location? What is a Hint? How to Delete Duplicate Rows? Why the Trigger Fires Multiple Times in Single Login? 2012 CTRL+SHIFT+] Shortcut to Select Code Between Two Parenthesis Shortcut key is CTRL+SHIFT+]. This key can be very useful when dealing with multiple subqueries, CTE or query with multiple parentheses. When exercised this shortcut key it selects T-SQL code between two parentheses. Monday Morning Puzzle – Query Returns Results Sometimes but Not Always I am beginner with SQL Server. I have one query, it sometime returns a result and sometime it does not return me the result. Where should I start looking for a solution and what kind of information I should send to you so you can help me with solving. I have no clue, please guide me. Remove Debug Button in SSMS – SQL in Sixty Seconds #020 – Video Effect of Case Sensitive Collation on Resultset Collation is a very interesting concept but I quite often see it is heavily neglected. I have seen developer and DBA looking for a workaround to fix collation error rather than understanding if the side effect of the workaround. Switch Between Two Parenthesis using Shortcut CTRL+] Earlier this week I wrote a blog post about CTRL+SHIFT+] Shortcut to Select Code Between Two Parenthesis, I received quite a lot of positive feedback from readers. If you are a regular reader of the blog post, you must be aware that I appreciate the learning shared by readers. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • Agile Testing Days 2012 – Day 2 – Learn through disagreement

    - by Chris George
    I think I was in the right place! During Day 1 I kept on reading tweets about Lean Coffee that has happened earlier that morning. It intrigued me and I figured in for a penny in for a pound, and set my alarm for 6:45am. Following the award night the night before, it was _really_ hard getting up when it went off, but I did and after a very early breakfast, set off for the 10 min walk to the Dorint. With Lean Coffee due to start at 07:30, I arrived at the hotel and made my way to one of the hotel bars. I soon realised I was in the right place as although the bar was empty, there was a table with post-it’s and pens! This MUST be the place! The premise of Lean Coffee is to have several small timeboxed discussions. Everyone writes down what they would like to discuss on post-its that are then briefly explained and submitted to the pile. Once everyone is done, the group dot-votes on the topics. The topics are then sorted by the dot vote counts and the discussions begin. Each discussion had 8 mins to start with, which meant it prevented the discussions getting off topic too much. After the time elapsed, the group had a vote whether to extend the discussion by a further 4 mins or move on. Several discussion were had around training, soft skills etc. The conversations were really interesting and there were quite a few good ideas. Overall it was a very enjoyable experience, certainly worth the early start! Make Melly Happy Following Lean Coffee was real coffee, and much needed that was! The first keynote of the day was “Let’s help Melly (Changing Work into Life)”by Jurgen Appelo. Draw lines to track happiness This was a very interesting presentation, and set the day nicely. The theme to the keynote was projects are about the people, more-so than the actual tasks. So he started by showing a photo of an employee ‘Melly’ who looked happy enough. He then stated that she looked happy but actually hated her job. In fact 50% of Americans hate their jobs. He went on to say that the world over 50% of people hate Americans their jobs. Jurgen talked about many ways to reduce the feedback cycle, not only of the project, but of the people management. Ideas such as Happiness doors, happiness tracking (drawing lines on a wall indicating your happiness for that day), kudo boxes (to compliment a colleague for good work). All of these (and more) ideas stimulate conversation amongst the team, lead to early detection of issues and investigation of solutions. I’ve massively simplified Jurgen’s keynote and have certainly not done it justice, so I will post a link to the video once it’s available. Following more coffee, the next talk was “How releasing faster changes testing” by Alexander Schwartz. This is a topic very close to our hearts at the moment, so I was eager to find out any juicy morsels that could help us achieve more frequent releases, and Alex did not disappoint. He started off by confirming something that I have been a firm believer in for a number of years now; adding more people can do more harm than good when trying to release. This is for a number of reasons, but just adding new people to a team at such a critical time can be more of a drain on resources than they add. The alternative is to have the whole team have shared responsibility for faster delivery. So the whole team is responsible for quality and testing. Obviously you will have the test engineers on the project who have the specialist skills, but there is no reason that the entire team cannot do exploratory testing on the product. This links nicely with the Developer Exploratory testing presented by Sigge on Day 1, and certainly something that my team are really striving towards. Focus on cycle time, so what can be done to reduce the time between dev cycles, release cycles. What’s stops a release, what delays a release? all good solid questions that can be answered. Alex suggested that perhaps the product doesn’t need to be fully tested. Doing less testing will reduce the cycle time therefore get the release out faster. He suggested a risk-based approach to planning what testing needs to happen. Reducing testing could have an impact on revenue if it causes harm to customers, so test the ‘right stuff’! Determine a set of tests that are ‘face saving’ or ‘smoke’ tests. These tests cover the core functionality of the product and aim to prevent major embarrassment if these areas were to fail! Amongst many other very good points, Alex suggested that a good approach would be to release after every new feature is added. So do a bit of work -> release, do some more work -> release. By releasing small increments of work, the impact on the customer of bugs being introduced is reduced. Red Pill, Blue Pill The second keynote of the day was “Adaptation and improvisation – but your weakness is not your technique” by Markus Gartner and proved to be another very good presentation. It started off quoting lines from the Matrix which relate to adapting, improvising, realisation and mastery. It has alot of nerds in the room smiling! Markus went on to explain how through deliberate practice ( and a lot of it!) you can achieve mastery, but then you never stop learning. Through methods such as code retreats, testing dojos, workshops you can continually improve and learn. The code retreat idea was one that interested me. It involved pairing to write an automated test for, say, 45 mins, they deleting all the code, finding a different partner and writing the same test again! This is another keynote where the video will speak louder than anything I can write here! Markus did elaborate on something that Lisa and Janet had touched on yesterday whilst busting the myth that “Testers Must Code”. Whilst it is true that to be a tester, you don’t need to code, it is becoming more common that there is this crossover happening where more testers are coding and more programmers are testing. Markus made a special distinction between programmers and developers as testers develop tests code so this helped to make that clear. “Extending Continuous Integration and TDD with Continuous Testing” by Jason Ayers was my next talk after lunch. We already do CI and a bit of TDD on my project team so I was interested to see what this continuous testing thing was all about and whether it would actually work for us. At the start of the presentation I was of the opinion that it just would not work for us because our tests are too slow, and that would be the case for many people. Jason started off by setting the scene and saying that those doing TDD spend between 10-15% of their time waiting for tests to run. This can be reduced by testing less often, reducing the test time but this then increases the risk of introduced bugs not being spotted quickly. Therefore, in comes Continuous Testing (CT). CT systems run your unit tests whenever you save some code and runs them in the background so you can continue working. This is a really nice idea, but to do this, your tests must be fast, independent and reliable. The latter two should be the case anyway, and the first is ideal, but hard! Jason makes several suggestions to make tests fast. Firstly keep the scope of the test small, secondly spin off any expensive tests into a suite which is run, perhaps, overnight or outside of the CT system at any rate. So this started to change my mind, perhaps we could re-engineer our tests, and continuously run the quick ones to give an element of coverage. This talk was very interesting and I’ve already tried a couple of the tools mentioned on our product (Mighty Moose and NCrunch). Sadly due to the way our solution is built, it currently doesn’t work, but we will look at whether we can make this work because this has the potential to be a mini-game-changer for us. Using the wrong data Gojko’s Hierarchy of Quality The final keynote of the day was “Reinventing software quality” by Gojko Adzic. He opened the talk with the statement “We’ve got quality wrong because we are using the wrong data”! Gojko then went on to explain that we should judge a bug by whether the customer cares about it, not by whether we think it’s important. Why spend time fixing issues that the customer just wouldn’t care about and releasing months later because of this? Surely it’s better to release now and get customer feedback? This was another reference to the idea of how it’s better to build the right thing wrong than the wrong thing right. Get feedback early to make sure you’re making the right thing. Gojko then showed something which was very analogous to Maslow’s heirachy of needs. Successful – does it contribute to the business? Useful – does it do what the user wants Usable – does it do what it’s supposed to without breaking Performant/Secure – is it secure/is the performance acceptable Deployable Functionally ok – can it be deployed without breaking? He then explained that User Stories should focus on change. In other words they should focus on the users needs, not the users process. Describe what the change will be, how that change will happen then measure it! Networking and Beer Following the day’s closing keynote, there were drinks and nibble for the ‘Networking’ evening. This was a great opportunity to talk to people. I find approaching strangers very uncomfortable but once again, when in Rome! Pete Walen and I had a long conversation about only fixing issues that the customer cares about versus fixing issues that make you proud of your software! Without saying much, and asking the right questions, Pete made me re-evaluate my thoughts on the matter. Clever, very clever!  Oh and he ‘bought’ me a beer! My Takeaway Triple from Day 2: release small and release often to minimize issues creeping in and get faster feedback from ‘the real world’ Focus on issues that the customers care about, not what we think is important It’s okay to disagree with someone, even if they are well respected agile testing gurus, that’s how discussion and learning happens!  

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