Search Results

Search found 13842 results on 554 pages for 'reference identity'.

Page 271/554 | < Previous Page | 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278  | Next Page >

• Using Apache FOP from .NET level

  - by Lukasz Kurylo

  In one of my previous posts I was talking about FO.NET which I was using to generate a pdf documents from XSL-FO. FO.NET is one of the .NET ports of Apache FOP. Unfortunatelly it is no longer maintained. I known it when I decidec to use it, because there is a lack of available (free) choices for .NET to render a pdf form XSL-FO. I hoped in this implementation I will find all I need to create a pdf file with my really simple requirements. FO.NET is a port from some old version of Apache FOP and I found really quickly that there is a lack of some features that I needed, like dotted borders, double borders or support for margins. So I started to looking for some alternatives. I didn’t try the NFOP, another port of Apache FOP, because I found something I think much more better, the IKVM.NET project.   IKVM.NET it is not a pdf renderer. So what it is? From the project site:   IKVM.NET is an implementation of Java for Mono and the Microsoft .NET Framework. It includes the following components: a Java Virtual Machine implemented in .NET a .NET implementation of the Java class libraries tools that enable Java and .NET interoperability   In the simplest form IKVM.NET allows to use a Java code library in the C# code and vice versa.   I tried to use an Apache FOP, the best I think open source pdf –> XSL-FO renderer written in Java from my project written in C# using an IKVM.NET and it work like a charm. In the rest of the post I want to show, how to prepare a .NET *.dll class library from Apache FOP *.jar’s with IKVM.NET and generate a simple Hello world pdf document.   To start playing with IKVM.NET and Apache FOP we need to download their packages: IKVM.NET Apache FOP and then unpack them.   From the FOP directory copy all the *.jar’s files from lib and build catalogs to some location, e.g. d:\fop. Second step is to build the *.dll library from these files. On the console execute the following comand:   ikvmc –target:library –out:d:\fop\fop.dll –recurse:d:\fop   The ikvmc is located in the bin subdirectory where you unpacked the IKVM.NET. You must execute this command from this catalog, add this path to the global variable PATH or specify the full path to the bin subdirectory.   In no error occurred during this process, the fop.dll library should be created. Right now we can create a simple project to test if we can create a pdf file.   So let’s create a simple console project application and add reference to the fop.dll and the IKVM dll’s: IKVM.OpenJDK.Core and IKVM.OpenJDK.XML.API.   Full code to generate a pdf file from XSL-FO template:   static void Main(string[] args)         {             //initialize the Apache FOP             FopFactory fopFactory = FopFactory.newInstance();               //in this stream we will get the generated pdf file             OutputStream o = new DotNetOutputMemoryStream();             try             {                 Fop fop = fopFactory.newFop("application/pdf", o);                 TransformerFactory factory = TransformerFactory.newInstance();                 Transformer transformer = factory.newTransformer();                   //read the template from disc                 Source src = new StreamSource(new File("HelloWorld.fo"));                 Result res = new SAXResult(fop.getDefaultHandler());                 transformer.transform(src, res);             }             finally             {                 o.close();             }             using (System.IO.FileStream fs = System.IO.File.Create("HelloWorld.pdf"))             {                 //write from the .NET MemoryStream stream to disc the generated pdf file                 var data = ((DotNetOutputMemoryStream)o).Stream.GetBuffer();                 fs.Write(data, 0, data.Length);             }             Process.Start("HelloWorld.pdf");             System.Console.ReadLine();         }   Apache FOP be default using a Java’s Xalan to work with XML files. I didn’t find a way to replace this piece of code with equivalent from .NET standard library. If any error or warning will occure during generating the pdf file, on the console will ge shown, that’s why I inserted the last line in the sample above. The DotNetOutputMemoryStream this is my wrapper for the Java OutputStream. I have created it to have the possibility to exchange data between the .NET <-> Java objects. It’s implementation:   class DotNetOutputMemoryStream : OutputStream     {         private System.IO.MemoryStream ms = new System.IO.MemoryStream();         public System.IO.MemoryStream Stream         {             get             {                 return ms;             }         }         public override void write(int i)         {             ms.WriteByte((byte)i);         }         public override void write(byte[] b, int off, int len)         {             ms.Write(b, off, len);         }         public override void write(byte[] b)         {             ms.Write(b, 0, b.Length);         }         public override void close()         {             ms.Close();         }         public override void flush()         {             ms.Flush();         }     } The last thing we need, this is the HelloWorld.fo template.   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <fo:root xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"          xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">   <fo:layout-master-set>     <fo:simple-page-master master-name="simple"                   page-height="29.7cm"                   page-width="21cm"                   margin-top="1.8cm"                   margin-bottom="0.8cm"                   margin-left="1.6cm"                   margin-right="1.2cm">       <fo:region-body margin-top="3cm"/>       <fo:region-before extent="3cm"/>       <fo:region-after extent="1.5cm"/>     </fo:simple-page-master>   </fo:layout-master-set>   <fo:page-sequence master-reference="simple">     <fo:flow flow-name="xsl-region-body">       <fo:block font-size="18pt" color="black" text-align="center">         Hello, World!       </fo:block>     </fo:flow>   </fo:page-sequence> </fo:root>   I’m not going to explain how how this template is created, because this will be covered in the near future posts.   Generated pdf file should look that:

  Read the article

• It's called College.

  - by jeffreyabecker

  Today I saw yet another 'GUID vs int as your primary key' article. Like most of the ones I've read this was filled with technical misrepresentations and out-right fallices. Chef's famous line that "There's a time and a place for everything children" applies here. GUIDs have distinct advantages and disadvantages which should be considered when choosing a data type for the primary key. Fallacy 1: "Its easier" An integer data type(tinyint, smallint, int, bigint) is a better artifical key than a GUID because its easier to remember. I'm a firm believer that your artifical primary keys should be opaque gibberish. PK's are an implementation detail which should never be exposed to the user or relied on for business logic. If you want things to come back in an order, add and ORDER BY clause and SortOrder fields. If you want a human-usable look-up add a business key with a unique constraint. If you want to know what order things were inserted into a table add a timestamp. Fallacy 2: "Size Matters" For many applications, the size of the artifical primary key is going to be irrelevant. The particular article which kicked this post off stated repeatedly that joining against an int has better performance than joining against a GUID. In computer science the performance of your algorithm is always a function of the number of data points. This still holds true for databases. Unless your table is very large, the performance difference between an int and a guid probably isnt going to be mesurable let alone noticeable. My personal experience is that the performance becomes an issue when you start having billions of rows in the table. At this point, you should probably start looking to move from int to bigint so the effective space/performance gain isnt as much as you'd think. GUID Advantages: Insert-ability / Mergeability: You can reliably insert guids into tables without key collisions. Database Independence: Saving entities to the database often requires knowing ids. With identity based ids the id must be selected back after every insert. GUIDs can be generated application-side allowing much faster inserts. GUID Disadvantages: Generatability: You can calculate the next id for an integer pk pretty easily in your head but will need a program to generate GUIDs. Solution: "Select top 100 newid() from sysobjects" Fragmentation: most GUID generation algorithms generate pseudo random GUIDs. This can cause inserts into the middle of your clustered index. Solutions: add a default of newsequentialid() or use GuidComb in NHibernate.

  Read the article

• How to load stacking chunks on the fly?

  - by Brettetete

  I'm currently working on an infinite world, mostly inspired by minecraft. A Chunk consists of 16x16x16 blocks. A block(cube) is 1x1x1. This runs very smoothly with a ViewRange of 12 Chunks (12x16) on my computer. Fine. When I change the Chunk height to 256 this becomes - obviously - incredible laggy. So what I basically want to do is stacking chunks. That means my world could be [8,16,8] Chunks large. The question is now how to generate chunks on the fly? At the moment I generate not existing chunks circular around my position (near to far). Since I don't stack chunks yet, this is not very complex. As important side note here: I also want to have biomes, with different min/max height. So in Biome Flatlands the highest layer with blocks would be 8 (8x16) - in Biome Mountains the highest layer with blocks would be 14 (14x16). Just as example. What I could do would be loading 1 Chunk above and below me for example. But here the problem would be, that transitions between different bioms could be larger than one chunk on y. My current chunk loading in action For the completeness here my current chunk loading "algorithm" private IEnumerator UpdateChunks(){ for (int i = 1; i < VIEW_RANGE; i += ChunkWidth) { float vr = i; for (float x = transform.position.x - vr; x < transform.position.x + vr; x += ChunkWidth) { for (float z = transform.position.z - vr; z < transform.position.z + vr; z += ChunkWidth) { _pos.Set(x, 0, z); // no y, yet _pos.x = Mathf.Floor(_pos.x/ChunkWidth)*ChunkWidth; _pos.z = Mathf.Floor(_pos.z/ChunkWidth)*ChunkWidth; Chunk chunk = Chunk.FindChunk(_pos); // If Chunk is already created, continue if (chunk != null) continue; // Create a new Chunk.. chunk = (Chunk) Instantiate(ChunkFab, _pos, Quaternion.identity); } } // Skip to next frame yield return 0; } }

  Read the article

• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for July 3, 2013

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Industrial SOA Chapter 5: Enterprise Service Bus Enterprise Service Bus, the fifth and latest addition to the Industrial SOA article series, answers some of the most important questions surrounding the use of an ESB. Industrial SOA Chapter 4: SOA Maturity The fourth article in the Industrial SOA series, SOA Maturity offers "an exploration of the fundamentals of applying a factory approach to modern service-oriented software development." Using the Exalytics Summary Advisor and Oracle BI Apps 7.9.6.4 | Mark Rittman Oracle ACE Director Mark Rittman's post revisits "the use of the Summary Advisor, with my BI Apps installation bumped-up to version 7.9.6.4, and the Exalytics environment patched up to 11.1.1.6.9, the latest patch release we’ve applied to that environment." Part 1 - 12c Database and WLS - Overview | Steve Felts Steve Felts shares a handy table that "maps the Oracle 12c Database features supported with various combinations of currently available WLS releases, 11g and 12c Drivers, and 11g and 12c Databases." Developers WebCast: Deploy Highly-Available Custom Services on Your Data Grid Products - July 11 Oracle Coherence Sr. Architect Brian Oliver hosts this free July 11 webcast for developers to show you how to "create and deploy customized, highly-available services for your data grid, and how real-time data processing will allow you to provide unmatched end-user experiences." A checklist for OIM go live | Daniel Gralewski FMW A-Team solution architect Daniel Gralewski's list is intended to complement Oracle Identity Manager. His post "provides tips on a few topics that are not part of the documentation." How Many ODI Master Repositories Should We Have? | Christophe Dupupet FMW solution architect Christophe Dupupet provides a simple along with best practices for the architecture of ODI repositories in a corporate environment. Distinguish EA from enterprise wide solution architecture | John Wu My buddy Tony Meyer, who did a great presentation recently at the Cleveland-area Enterprise Architect / Solution Architect Meet-up, recommends this Toolbox article by John Wu. YouTube: Oracle Fusion Applications Developer Tips If you work with Fusion Applications you'll want to check out the tips and tricks for building extensions, customizations, and integrations now available on the new Oracle Fusion Middleware Developer Relations YouTube channel. The CX Factor: Wooing and wowing customers in the digital age "There was a time when 'customer experience' was limited to what happened to you when you walked into a store, restaurant, or other place of business or when you called a business on the telephone. But that was back when you could still smoke on airplanes." Thought for the Day "If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be 'meetings.' " — Dave Barry (Born July 3, 1947) Source: brainyquote.com

  Read the article

• How-to delete a tree node using the context menu

  - by frank.nimphius

  Hierarchical trees in Oracle ADF make use of View Accessors, which means that only the top level node needs to be exposed as a View Object instance on the ADF Business Components Data Model. This also means that only the top level node has a representation in the PageDef file as a tree binding and iterator binding reference. Detail nodes are accessed through tree rule definitions that use the accessor mentioned above (or nested collections in the case of POJO or EJB business services). The tree component is configured for single node selection, which however can be declaratively changed for users to press the ctrl key and selecting multiple nodes. In the following, I explain how to create a context menu on the tree for users to delete the selected tree nodes. For this, the context menu item will access a managed bean, which then determines the selected node(s), the internal ADF node bindings and the rows they represent. As mentioned, the ADF Business Components Data Model only needs to expose the top level node data sources, which in this example is an instance of the Locations View Object. For the tree to work, you need to have associations defined between entities, which usually is done for you by Oracle JDeveloper if the database tables have foreign keys defined Note: As a general hint of best practices and to simplify your life: Make sure your database schema is well defined and designed before starting your development project. Don't treat the database as something organic that grows and changes with the requirements as you proceed in your project. Business service refactoring in response to database changes is possible, but should be treated as an exception, not the rule. Good database design is a necessity – even for application developers – and nothing evil. To create the tree component, expand the Data Controls panel and drag the View Object collection to the view. From the context menu, select the tree component entry and continue with defining the tree rules that make up the hierarchical structure. As you see, when pressing the green plus icon  in the Edit Tree Binding  dialog, the data structure, Locations -  Departments – Employees in my sample, shows without you having created a View Object instance for each of the nodes in the ADF Business Components Data Model. After you configured the tree structure in the Edit Tree Binding dialog, you press OK and the tree is created. Select the tree in the page editor and open the Structure Window (ctrl+shift+S). In the Structure window, expand the tree node to access the conextMenu facet. Use the right mouse button to insert a Popup  into the facet. Repeat the same steps to insert a Menu and a Menu Item into the Popup you created. The Menu item text should be changed to something meaningful like "Delete". Note that the custom menu item later is added to the context menu together with the default context menu options like expand and expand all. To define the action that is executed when the menu item is clicked on, you select the Action Listener property in the Property Inspector and click the arrow icon followed by the Edit menu option. Create or select a managed bean and define a method name for the action handler. Next, select the tree component and browse to its binding property in the Property Inspector. Again, use the arrow icon | Edit option to create a component binding in the same managed bean that has the action listener defined. The tree handle is used in the action listener code, which is shown below: public void onTreeNodeDelete(ActionEvent actionEvent) {   //access the tree from the JSF component reference created   //using the af:tree "binding" property. The "binding" property   //creates a pair of set/get methods to access the RichTree instance   RichTree tree = this.getTreeHandler();   //get the list of selected row keys   RowKeySet rks = tree.getSelectedRowKeys();   //access the iterator to loop over selected nodes   Iterator rksIterator = rks.iterator();          //The CollectionModel represents the tree model and is   //accessed from the tree "value" property   CollectionModel model = (CollectionModel) tree.getValue();   //The CollectionModel is a wrapper for the ADF tree binding   //class, which is JUCtrlHierBinding   JUCtrlHierBinding treeBinding =                  (JUCtrlHierBinding) model.getWrappedData();          //loop over the selected nodes and delete the rows they   //represent   while(rksIterator.hasNext()){     List nodeKey = (List) rksIterator.next();     //find the ADF node binding using the node key     JUCtrlHierNodeBinding node =                       treeBinding.findNodeByKeyPath(nodeKey);     //delete the row.     Row rw = node.getRow();       rw.remove();   }          //only refresh the tree if tree nodes have been selected   if(rks.size() > 0){     AdfFacesContext adfFacesContext =                          AdfFacesContext.getCurrentInstance();     adfFacesContext.addPartialTarget(tree);   } } Note: To enable multi node selection for a tree, select the tree and change the row selection setting from "single" to "multiple". Note: a fully pictured version of this post will become available at the end of the month in a PDF summary on ADF Code Corner : http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/adf/learnmore/index-101235.html 

  Read the article

• Answers to Your Common Oracle Database Lifecycle Management Questions

  - by Scott McNeil

  We recently ran a live webcast on Strategies for Managing Oracle Database's Lifecycle. There were tons of questions from our audience that we simply could not get to during the hour long presentation. Below are some of those questions along with their answers. Enjoy! Question: In the webcast the presenter talked about “gold” configuration standards, for those who want to use this technique, could you recommend a best practice to consider or follow? How do I get started? Answer:Gold configuration standardization is a quick and easy way to improve availability through consistency. Start by choosing a reference database and saving the configuration to the Oracle Enterprise Manager repository using the Save Configuration feature. Next create a comparison template using the Oracle provided template as a starting point and modify the ignored properties to eliminate expected differences in your environment. Finally create a comparison specification using the comparison template you created plus your saved gold configuration and schedule it to run on a regular basis. Don’t forget to fill in the email addresses of those you want to notify upon drift detection. Watch the database configuration management demo to learn more. Question: Can Oracle Lifecycle Management Pack for Database help with patching an Oracle Real Application Cluster (RAC) environment? Answer: Yes, Oracle Enterprise Manager supports both parallel and rolling patch application of Oracle Real Application Clusters. The use of rolling patching is recommended as there is no downtime involved. For more details watch this demo. Question: What are some of the things administrators can do to control configuration drift? Why is it important? Answer:Configuration drift is one of the main causes of instability and downtime of applications. Oracle Enterprise Manager makes it easy to manage and control drift using scheduled configuration comparisons combined with comparison templates. Question: Does Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Release 2 offer an incremental update feature for "gold" images? For instance, if the source binary has a higher PSU level, what is the best approach to update the existing "gold" image in the software library? Do you have to create a new image or can you just update the original one? Answer:Provisioning Profiles (Gold images) can contain the installation files and database configuration templates. Although it is possible to make some changes to the profile after creation (mainly to configuration), it is normally recommended to simply create a new profile after applying a patch to your reference database. Question: The webcast talked about enforcing in-house standards, does Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c offer verification of your databases and systems to those standards? For example, the initial "gold" image has been massively deployed over time, and there may be some changes to it. How can you do regular checks from Enterprise Manager to ensure the in-house standards are being enforced? Answer:There are really two methods to validate conformity to standards. The first method is to use gold standards which you compare other databases to report unwanted differences. This method uses a new comparison template technology which allows users to ignore known differences (i.e. SID, Start time, etc) which results in a report only showing important or non-conformant differences. This method is quick to setup and configure and recommended for those who want to get started validating compliance quickly. The second method leverages the new compliance framework which allows the creation of specific and robust validations. These compliance rules are grouped into standards which can be assigned to databases quickly and easily. Compliance rules allow for targeted and more sophisticated validation beyond the basic equals operation available in the comparison method. The compliance framework can be used to implement just about any internal or industry standard. The compliance results will track current and historic compliance scores at the overall and individual database targets. When the issue is resolved, the score is automatically affected. Compliance framework is the recommended long term solution for validating compliance using Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c. Check out this demo on database compliance to learn more. Question: If you are using the integration between Oracle Enterprise Manager and My Oracle Support in an "offline" mode, how do you know if you have the latest My Oracle Support metadata? Answer:In Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Release 2, you now only need to download one zip file containing all of the metadata xmls files. There is no indication that the metadata has changed but you could run a checksum on the file and compare it to the previously downloaded version to see if it has changed. Question: What happens if a patch fails while administrators are applying it to a database or system? Answer:A large portion of Oracle Enterprise Manager's patch automation is the pre-requisite checks that happen to ensure the highest level of confidence the patch will successfully apply. It is recommended you test the patch in a non-production environment and save the patch plan as a template once successful so you can create new plans using the saved template. If you are using the recommended ‘out of place’ patching methodology, there is no urgency because the database is still running as the cloned Oracle home is being patched. Users can address the issue and restart the patch procedure at the point it left off. If you are using 'in place' method, you can address the issue and continue where the procedure left off. Question: Can Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c R2 compare configurations between more than one target at the same time? Answer:Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c can compare any number of target configurations at one time. This is the basis of many important use cases including Configuration Drift Management. These comparisons can also be scheduled on a regular basis and emails notification sent should any differences appear. To learn more about configuration search and compare watch this demo. Question: How is data comparison done since changes are taking place in a live production system? Answer:There are many things to keep in mind when using the data comparison feature (as part of the Change Management ability to compare table data). It was primarily intended to be used for maintaining consistency of important but relatively static data. For example, application seed data and application setup configuration. This data does not change often but is critical when testing an application to ensure results are consistent with production. It is not recommended to use data comparison on highly dynamic data like transactional tables or very large tables. Question: Which versions of Oracle Database can be monitored through Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c? Answer:Oracle Database versions: 9.2.0.8, 10.1.0.5, 10.2.0.4, 10.2.0.5, 11.1.0.7, 11.2.0.1, 11.2.0.2, 11.2.0.3. Watch the On-Demand Webcast Stay Connected: Twitter | Facebook | YouTube | Linkedin | NewsletterDownload the Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control12c Mobile app

  Read the article

• MS Tech Ed 2011 Coming Soon

  - by sonam

  Microsoft Tech ed 2010 was a great success. Infact  Most of such conferences always provide a great place to meet other  technology enthusiasts and ofcourse,whats in the pipeline for future products of a company or field.. And yet again,MS Tech ed India is coming on 23-25 march  in Banglore,India.Well,the place is  ofcourse right suited for any IT/Computing conference.After all,Its Silicon Valley of India.. From Last year.I remember  a session by Harish about  “Building pure client side apps with  Jquery and Microsoft Ajax .” Here’s the video: http://live.viasilverlight.com/TechEdOnDemand/Breakouts/TheWebSimplified1/Session4/AjaxClientSideApps.wmv At that time only,I got to know that jquery is so easy to use for  ajax or client side templating.Though I prefer jquery over  Microsoft Ajax many folds.UpdatePanel  is Dead for sure in my view. I believe,Web forms will be dead sooner or later with ASP.Net  MVC  gaining share many folds.(TODO:Learn MVC). The new standard is surely:JQUERY . Between,Last years videos and ppt’s  are available to browse and download: http://microsoftteched.in/2010/downloads.aspx After going through Tech Ad 2011 session agendas : http://www.microsoft.com/india/teched2011/agenda.aspx Few of my personal choices to watch would be: Day 1: a) Identity And Access Control in the Cloud        b)Windows 7 at  Home:Digitizing your Home.(Sounds cool.)        c) And ofcourse,Jquery and MS ajax(Lets see if MS can do something that’s not already happening with their version Of Ajax).. Day 2:  a) Lap Around Silverlight 5 and Html 5 as I have heard some hot talks that html5 will kill Silverlight,(I don’t see it in near future though).        b) Html 5 more than “Html 5”…Google will be seeing this one. Day3: a) Cross Browser applications in Azure       b)VS 2010 sessions of automated testing azure apps etc. Windows Phone 7 sessions will surely be of more interest now after MS-Nokia Deal. Though,Personally,I would want atleast some worth of  sessions on MS  future in Robotics,AI.Perhaps  I am looking at wrong place..(When is PDC?) And Since,Bill Gates  consider Robotics as the next big thing, Refer  this one : http://www.cs.virginia.edu/robins/A_Robot_in_Every_Home.pdf  I am sure,they wont loose this new hot spot to competitors,  like how google rules in Online  Search now.Robotics and AI will surely provide a big battlefield  for future.See,What IBM is doing with IBM Watson. OR see this, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110218083711.htm this is cool only if you can control your mind.Atleast,I’ll prefer regular driving (I would devote my mind seeing  people,places which we see on road).thats what jouney makes “cool”.:P.

  Read the article

• Using Oracle BPM to Extend Oracle Applications

  - by Michelle Kimihira

  Author: Srikant Subramaniam, Senior Principal Product Manager, Oracle Fusion Middleware Customers often modify applications to meet their specific business needs - varying regulatory requirements, unique business processes, product mix transition, etc. Traditional implementation practices for such modifications are typically invasive in nature and introduce risk into projects, affect time-to-market and ease of use, and ultimately increase the costs of running and maintaining the applications. Another downside of these traditional implementation practices is that they literally cast the application in stone, making it difficult for end-users to tailor their individual work environments to meet specific needs, without getting IT involved. For many businesses, however, IT lacks the capacity to support such rapid business changes. As a result, adopting innovative solutions to change the economics of customization becomes an imperative rather than a choice. Let's look at a banking process in Siebel Financial Services and Oracle Policy Automation (OPA) using Oracle Business Process Management. This approach makes modifications simple, quick to implement and easy to maintain/upgrade. The process model is based on the Loan Origination Process Accelerator, i.e., a set of ready to deploy business solutions developed by Oracle using Business Process Management (BPM) 11g, containing customizable and extensible pre-built processes to fit specific customer requirements. This use case is a branch-based loan origination process. Origination includes a number of steps ranging from accepting a loan application, applicant identity and background verification (Know Your Customer), credit assessment, risk evaluation and the eventual disbursal of funds (or rejection of the application). We use BPM to model all of these individual tasks and integrate (via web services) with: Siebel Financial Services and (simulated) backend applications: FLEXCUBE for loan management, Background Verification and Credit Rating. The process flow starts in Siebel when a customer applies for loan, switches to OPA for eligibility verification and product recommendations, before handing it off to BPM for approvals. OPA Connector for Siebel simplifies integration with Siebel’s web services framework by saving directly into Siebel the results from the self-service interview. This combination of user input and product recommendation invokes the BPM process for loan origination. At the end of the approval process, we update Siebel and the financial app to complete the loop. We use BPM Process Spaces to display role-specific data via dashboards, including the ability to track the status of a given process (flow trace). Loan Underwriters have visibility into the product mix (loan categories), status of loan applications (count of approved/rejected/pending), volume and values of loans approved per processing center, processing times, requested vs. approved amount and other relevant business metrics. Summary Oracle recommends the use of Fusion Middleware as an extensions platform for applications. This approach makes modifications simple, quick to implement and easy to maintain/upgrade applications (by moving customizations away from applications to the process layer). It is also easier to manage processes that span multiple applications by using Oracle BPM. Additional Information Product Information on Oracle.com: Oracle Fusion Middleware Follow us on Twitter and Facebook Subscribe to our regular Fusion Middleware Newsletter

  Read the article

• SQL SERVER – Storing 64-bit Unsigned Integer Value in Database

  - by Pinal Dave

  Here is a very interesting question I received in an email just another day. Some questions just are so good that it makes me wonder how come I have not faced it first hand. Anyway here is the question - “Pinal, I am migrating my database from MySQL to SQL Server and I have faced unique situation. I have been using Unsigned 64-bit integer in MySQL but when I try to migrate that column to SQL Server, I am facing an issue as there is no datatype which I find appropriate for my column. It is now too late to change the datatype and I need immediate solution. One chain of thought was to change the data type of the column from Unsigned 64-bit (BIGINT) to VARCHAR(n) but that will just change the data type for me such that I will face quite a lot of performance related issues in future. In SQL Server we also have the BIGINT data type but that is Signed 64-bit datatype. BIGINT datatype in SQL Server have range of -2^63 (-9,223,372,036,854,775,808) to 2^63-1 (9,223,372,036,854,775,807). However, my digit is much larger than this number. Is there anyway, I can store my big 64-bit Unsigned Integer without loosing much of the performance of by converting it to VARCHAR.” Very interesting question, for the sake of the argument, we can ask user that there should be no need of such a big number or if you are taking about identity column I really doubt that if your table will grow beyond this table. Here the real question which I found interesting was how to store 64-bit unsigned integer value in SQL Server without converting it to String data type. After thinking a bit, I found a fairly simple answer. I can use NUMERIC data type. I can use NUMERIC(20) datatype for 64-bit unsigned integer value, NUMERIC(10) datatype for 32-bit unsigned integer value and NUMERIC(5) datatype for 16-bit unsigned integer value. Numeric datatype supports 38 maximum of 38 precision. Now here is another thing to keep in mind. Using NUMERIC datatype will indeed accept the 64-bit unsigned integer but in future if you try to enter negative value, it will also allow the same. Hence, you will need to put any additional constraint over column to only accept positive integer there. Here is another big concern, SQL Server will store the number as numeric and will treat that as a positive integer for all the practical purpose. You will have to write in your application logic to interpret that as a 64-bit Unsigned Integer. On another side if you are using unsigned integers in your application, there are good chance that you already have logic taking care of the same. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: SQL Datatype

  Read the article

• 6 Facts About GlassFish Announcement

  - by Bruno.Borges

  Since Oracle announced the end of commercial support for future Oracle GlassFish Server versions, the Java EE world has started wondering what will happen to GlassFish Server Open Source Edition. Unfortunately, there's a lot of misleading information going around. So let me clarify some things with facts, not FUD. Fact #1 - GlassFish Open Source Edition is not dead GlassFish Server Open Source Edition will remain the reference implementation of Java EE. The current trunk is where an implementation for Java EE 8 will flourish, and this will become the future GlassFish 5.0. Calling "GlassFish is dead" does no good to the Java EE ecosystem. The GlassFish Community will remain strong towards the future of Java EE. Without revenue-focused mind, this might actually help the GlassFish community to shape the next version, and set free from any ties with commercial decisions. Fact #2 - OGS support is not over As I said before, GlassFish Server Open Source Edition will continue. Main change is that there will be no more future commercial releases of Oracle GlassFish Server. New and existing OGS 2.1.x and 3.1.x commercial customers will continue to be supported according to the Oracle Lifetime Support Policy. In parallel, I believe there's no other company in the Java EE business that offers commercial support to more than one build of a Java EE application server. This new direction can actually help customers and partners, simplifying decision through commercial negotiations. Fact #3 - WebLogic is not always more expensive than OGS Oracle GlassFish Server ("OGS") is a build of GlassFish Server Open Source Edition bundled with a set of commercial features called GlassFish Server Control and license bundles such as Java SE Support. OGS has at the moment of this writing the pricelist of U$ 5,000 / processor. One information that some bloggers are mentioning is that WebLogic is more expensive than this. Fact 3.1: it is not necessarily the case. The initial edition of WebLogic is called "Standard Edition" and falls into a policy where some “Standard Edition” products are licensed on a per socket basis. As of current pricelist, US$ 10,000 / socket. If you do the math, you will realize that WebLogic SE can actually be significantly more cost effective than OGS, and a customer can save money if running on a CPU with 4 cores or more for example. Quote from the price list: “When licensing Oracle programs with Standard Edition One or Standard Edition in the product name (with the exception of Java SE Support, Java SE Advanced, and Java SE Suite), a processor is counted equivalent to an occupied socket; however, in the case of multi-chip modules, each chip in the multi-chip module is counted as one occupied socket.” For more details speak to your Oracle sales representative - this is clearly at list price and every customer typically has a relationship with Oracle (like they do with other vendors) and different contractual details may apply. And although OGS has always been production-ready for Java EE applications, it is no secret that WebLogic has always been more enterprise, mission critical application server than OGS since BEA. Different editions of WLS provide features and upgrade irons like the WebLogic Diagnostic Framework, Work Managers, Side by Side Deployment, ADF and TopLink bundled license, Web Tier (Oracle HTTP Server) bundled licensed, Fusion Middleware stack support, Oracle DB integration features, Oracle RAC features (such as GridLink), Coherence Management capabilities, Advanced HA (Whole Service Migration and Server Migration), Java Mission Control, Flight Recorder, Oracle JDK support, etc. Fact #4 - There’s no major vendor supporting community builds of Java EE app servers There are no major vendors providing support for community builds of any Open Source application server. For example, IBM used to provide community support for builds of Apache Geronimo, not anymore. Red Hat does not commercially support builds of WildFly and if I remember correctly, never supported community builds of former JBoss AS. Oracle has never commercially supported GlassFish Server Open Source Edition builds. Tomitribe appears to be the exception to the rule, offering commercial support for Apache TomEE. Fact #5 - WebLogic and GlassFish share several Java EE implementations It has been no secret that although GlassFish and WebLogic share some JSR implementations (as stated in the The Aquarium announcement: JPA, JSF, WebSockets, CDI, Bean Validation, JAX-WS, JAXB, and WS-AT) and WebLogic understands GlassFish deployment descriptors, they are not from the same codebase. Fact #6 - WebLogic is not for GlassFish what JBoss EAP is for WildFly WebLogic is closed-source offering. It is commercialized through a license-based plus support fee model. OGS although from an Open Source code, has had the same commercial model as WebLogic. Still, one cannot compare GlassFish/WebLogic to WildFly/JBoss EAP. It is simply not the same case, since Oracle has had two different products from different codebases. The comparison should be limited to GlassFish Open Source / Oracle GlassFish Server versus WildFly / JBoss EAP. But the message now is much clear: Oracle will commercially support only the proprietary product WebLogic, and invest on GlassFish Server Open Source Edition as the reference implementation for the Java EE platform and future Java EE 8, as a developer-friendly community distribution, and encourages community participation through Adopt a JSR and contributions to GlassFish. In comparison Oracle's decision has pretty much the same goal as to when IBM killed support for Websphere Community Edition; and to when Red Hat decided to change the name of JBoss Community Edition to WildFly, simplifying and clarifying marketing message and leaving the commercial field wide open to JBoss EAP only. Oracle can now, as any other vendor has already been doing, focus on only one commercial offer. Some users are saying they will now move to WildFly, but it is important to note that Red Hat does not offer commercial support for WildFly builds. Although the future JBoss EAP versions will come from the same codebase as WildFly, the builds will definitely not be the same, nor sharing 100% of their functionalities and bug fixes. This means there will be no company running a WildFly build in production with support from Red Hat. This discussion has also raised an important and interesting information: Oracle offers a free for developers OTN License for WebLogic. For other environments this is different, but please note this is the same policy Red Hat applies to JBoss EAP, as stated in their download page and terms. Oracle had the same policy for OGS. TL;DR; GlassFish Server Open Source Edition isn’t dead. Current and new OGS 2.x/3.x customers will continue to have support (respecting LSP). WebLogic is not necessarily more expensive than OGS. Oracle will focus on one commercially supported Java EE application server, like other vendors also limit themselves to support one build/product only. Community builds are hardly supported. Commercially supported builds of Open Source products are not exactly from the same codebase as community builds. What's next for GlassFish and the Java EE community? There are conversations in place to tackle some of the community desires, most of them stated by Markus Eisele in his blog post. We will keep you posted.

  Read the article

• How do I calculate the boundary of the game window after transforming the view?

  - by Cypher

  My Camera class handles zoom, rotation, and of course panning. It's invoked through SpriteBatch.Begin, like so many other XNA 2D camera classes. It calculates the view Matrix like so: public Matrix GetViewMatrix() { return Matrix.Identity * Matrix.CreateTranslation(new Vector3(-this.Spatial.Position, 0.0f)) * Matrix.CreateTranslation(-( this.viewport.Width / 2 ), -( this.viewport.Height / 2 ), 0.0f) * Matrix.CreateRotationZ(this.Rotation) * Matrix.CreateScale(this.Scale, this.Scale, 1.0f) * Matrix.CreateTranslation(this.viewport.Width * 0.5f, this.viewport.Height * 0.5f, 0.0f); } I was having a minor issue with performance, which after doing some profiling, led me to apply a culling feature to my rendering system. It used to, before I implemented the camera's zoom feature, simply grab the camera's boundaries and cull any game objects that did not intersect with the camera. However, after giving the camera the ability to zoom, that no longer works. The reason why is visible in the screenshot below. The navy blue rectangle represents the camera's boundaries when zoomed out all the way (Camera.Scale = 0.5f). So, when zoomed out, game objects are culled before they reach the boundaries of the window. The camera's width and height are determined by the Viewport properties of the same name (maybe this is my mistake? I wasn't expecting the camera to "resize" like this). What I'm trying to calculate is a Rectangle that defines the boundaries of the screen, as indicated by my awesome blue arrows, even after the camera is rotated, scaled, or panned. Here is how I've more recently found out how not to do it: public Rectangle CullingRegion { get { Rectangle region = Rectangle.Empty; Vector2 size = this.Spatial.Size; size *= 1 / this.Scale; Vector2 position = this.Spatial.Position; position = Vector2.Transform(position, this.Inverse); region.X = (int)position.X; region.Y = (int)position.Y; region.Width = (int)size.X; region.Height = (int)size.Y; return region; } } It seems to calculate the right size, but when I render this region, it moves around which will obviously cause problems. It needs to be "static", so to speak. It's also obscenely slow, which causes more of a problem than it solves. What am I missing?

  Read the article

• Control-Break Style ADF Table - Comparing Values with Previous Row

  - by Steven Davelaar

  Sometimes you need to display data in an ADF Faces table in a control-break layout style, where rows should be "indented" when the break column has the same value as in the previous row. In the screen shot below, you see how the table breaks on both the RegionId column as well as the CountryId column. To implement this I didn't use fancy SQL statements. The table is based on a straightforward Locations ViewObject that is based on the Locations entity object and the Countries reference entity object, and the join query was automatically created by adding the reference EO. To get the indentation in the ADF Faces table, we simple use two rendered properties on the RegionId and CountryId outputText items:  <af:column sortProperty="RegionId" sortable="false"            headerText="#{bindings.LocationsView1.hints.RegionId.label}"            id="c5">   <af:outputText value="#{row.RegionId}" id="ot2"                  rendered="#{!CompareWithPreviousRowBean['RegionId']}">     <af:convertNumber groupingUsed="false"                       pattern="#{bindings.LocationsView1.hints.RegionId.format}"/>   </af:outputText> </af:column> <af:column sortProperty="CountryId" sortable="false"            headerText="#{bindings.LocationsView1.hints.CountryId.label}"            id="c1">   <af:outputText value="#{row.CountryId}" id="ot5"                  rendered="#{!CompareWithPreviousRowBean['CountryId']}"/> </af:column> The CompareWithPreviousRowBean managed bean is defined in request scope and is a generic bean that can be used for all the tables in your application that needs this layout style. As you can see the bean is a Map-style bean where we pass in the name of the attribute that should be compared with the previous row. The get method in the bean that is called returns boolean false when the attribute has the same value in the same row. Here is the code of the get method:  public Object get(Object key) {   String attrName = (String) key;   boolean isSame = false;   // get the currently processed row, using row expression #{row}   JUCtrlHierNodeBinding row = (JUCtrlHierNodeBinding) resolveExpression(getRowExpression());   JUCtrlHierBinding tableBinding = row.getHierBinding();   int rowRangeIndex = row.getViewObject().getRangeIndexOf(row.getRow());   Object currentAttrValue = row.getRow().getAttribute(attrName);   if (rowRangeIndex > 0)   {     Object previousAttrValue = tableBinding.getAttributeFromRow(rowRangeIndex - 1, attrName);     isSame = currentAttrValue != null && currentAttrValue.equals(previousAttrValue);   }   else if (tableBinding.getRangeStart() > 0)   {     // previous row is in previous range, we create separate rowset iterator,     // so we can change the range start without messing up the table rendering which uses     // the default rowset iterator     int absoluteIndexPreviousRow = tableBinding.getRangeStart() - 1;     RowSetIterator rsi = null;     try     {       rsi = tableBinding.getViewObject().getRowSet().createRowSetIterator(null);       rsi.setRangeStart(absoluteIndexPreviousRow);       Row previousRow = rsi.getRowAtRangeIndex(0);       Object previousAttrValue = previousRow.getAttribute(attrName);       isSame = currentAttrValue != null && currentAttrValue.equals(previousAttrValue);     }     finally     {       rsi.closeRowSetIterator();     }   }   return isSame; } The row expression defaults to #{row} but this can be changed through the rowExpression  managed property of the bean.  You can download the sample application here.

  Read the article

• Applying Quotas Across all My Sites

  - by Bil Simser

  Just a quick snippet this morning. If you need to apply a new quota template to all users My Sites here's a quick script to do it. Changing an existing quota is fine but if you're migrating users from another system or you just want to up everyone's storage a bit here's what you do. Create a new quota template. This is found in Central Admin under Application Management | Site Collections | Specify quota templates. There's already a default "Individual Quota" created you might want to create your own or have a special one for your users Open up the PowerShell Management Console and enter "Get-SPWebApplication". This will list all your web applications on the farm.  To apply it to all My Sites (each site is a site collection of its own) run this script below. .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: $webapps = Get-SPWebApplication; 2:   3: $webapp = $webapps[4]; 4:   5: foreach ($site in $webapp.Sites) { 6: Set-SPSite -Identity $site.url -QuotaTemplate "Your Quota Template" 7: } The first line gets all the web applications on the server. In our case, the forth one is the mysite web app (yours will probably be a different number). Just run Get-SPWebApplication from the console to figure out which one to use. You could get fancy and pipe the name to find it but I'm too lazy for that.Then we loop through all the sites on the list using the $site.url property and pass it to the Set-SPSite cmdlet and specify the name of the our custom QuotaTemplate.Easy. Now all users are updated with the new quota template.

  Read the article

• How To: Using spatial data with Entity Framework and Connector/Net

  - by GABMARTINEZ

  One of the new features introduced in Entity Framework 5.0 is the incorporation of some new types of data within an Entity Data Model: the spatial data types. These types allow us to perform operations on coordinates values in an easier way. There's no need to add stored routines or functions for every operation among these geometry types, now the user can have the alternative to put this logic on his application or keep it in the database. In the new 6.7.4 version there's also this new feature incorporated to Connector/Net library so our users can start exploring it and could provide us some feedback or comments about this new functionality. Through this tutorial on how to create a Code First Entity Model with a geometry column, we'll show an example on using Geometry types and some common operations when using geometry types inside an application. Requirements: - Connector/Net 6.7.4 - Entity Framework 5.0 version - .NET Framework 4.5 version - Basic understanding on Entity Framework and C# language. - An installed and running instance of MySQL Server 5.5.x or 5.6.10 version- Visual Studio 2012. Step One: Create a new Console Application  Inside Visual Studio select File->New Project menu option and select the Console Application template. Also make sure the .Net 4.5 version is selected so the new features for EF 5.0 will work with the application. Step Two: Add the Entity Framework Package For adding the Entity Framework Package there is more than one option: the package manager console or the Manage Nuget Packages option dialog. If you want to open the Package Manager Console, go to the Tools Menu -> Library Package Manager -> Package Manager Console. On the Package Manager Console Type:Install-Package EntityFrameworkThis will add the reference to the project of the latest released No alpha version of Entity Framework. Step Three: Adding Entity class and DBContext We'll add a simple class that represents a table entity to save some places and its location using a DBGeometry column that will be mapped to a Geometry type in MySQL. After that some operations can be performed using this data. public class MyPlace { [Key] public int Id { get; set; } public string name { get; set; } public DbGeometry location { get; set; } } public class JourneyDb : DbContext { public DbSet<MyPlace> MyPlaces { get; set; } }  Also make sure to add the connection string to the App.Config file as in the example: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <configuration>   <configSections>     <!-- For more information on Entity Framework configuration, visit http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=237468 -->     <section name="entityFramework" type="System.Data.Entity.Internal.ConfigFile.EntityFrameworkSection, EntityFramework, Version=5.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" requirePermission="false" />   </configSections>   <startup>     <supportedRuntime version="v4.0" sku=".NETFramework,Version=v4.5" />   </startup>   <connectionStrings>     <add name="JourneyDb" connectionString="server=localhost;userid=root;pwd=;database=journeydb" providerName="MySql.Data.MySqlClient"/>   </connectionStrings>   <entityFramework>     </entityFramework> </configuration> Note also that the <entityFramework> section is empty.Step Four: Adding some new records.On the Program.cs file add the following code for the Main method so the Database gets created and also some new data can be added to the new table. This code adds some records containing some determinate locations. After being added a distance function will be used to know how much distance has each location in reference to the Queens Village Station in New York. static void Main(string[] args)    {     using (JourneyDb cxt = new JourneyDb())      {        cxt.Database.Delete();        cxt.Database.Create();         cxt.MyPlaces.Add(new MyPlace()        {          name = "JFK INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT OF NEW YORK",          location = DbGeometry.FromText("POINT(40.644047 -73.782291)"),        });         cxt.MyPlaces.Add(new MyPlace()        {          name = "ALLEY POND PARK",          location = DbGeometry.FromText("POINT(40.745696 -73.742638)"),        });       cxt.MyPlaces.Add(new MyPlace()        {          name = "CUNNINGHAM PARK",          location = DbGeometry.FromText("POINT(40.735031 -73.768387)"),        });         cxt.MyPlaces.Add(new MyPlace()        {          name = "QUEENS VILLAGE STATION",          location = DbGeometry.FromText("POINT(40.717957 -73.736501)"),        });         cxt.SaveChanges();         var points = (from p in cxt.MyPlaces                      select new { p.name, p.location });        foreach (var item in points)       {         Console.WriteLine("Location " + item.name + " has a distance in Km from Queens Village Station " + DbGeometry.FromText("POINT(40.717957 -73.736501)").Distance(item.location) * 100);       }       Console.ReadKey();      }  }}Output : Location JFK INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT OF NEW YORK has a distance from Queens Village Station 8.69448802402959 Km. Location ALLEY POND PARK has a distance from Queens Village Station 2.84097675104912 Km. Location CUNNINGHAM PARK has a distance from Queens Village Station 3.61695793727275 Km. Location QUEENS VILLAGE STATION has a distance from Queens Village Station 0 Km. Conclusion:Adding spatial data to a table is easier than before when having Entity Framework 5.0. This new Entity Framework feature that handles spatial data columns within the Data layer has a lot of integrated functions and methods toease this type of tasks.Notes:This version of Connector/Net is just released as GA so is preatty much stable to be used on a ProductionEnvironment. Please send us your comments or questions using this blog or at the Forums where we keep answering any questions you have about Connector/Net and MySQL Server.A copy of this sample project can be downloaded here. This application does not include any library so you will haveto add them before running it. Happly MySQL/.Net Coding.

  Read the article

• Adding Column to a SQL Server Table

  - by Dinesh Asanka

  Adding a column to a table is  common task for  DBAs. You can add a column to a table which is a nullable column or which has default values. But are these two operations are similar internally and which method is optimal? Let us start this with an example. I created a database and a table using following script: USE master Go --Drop Database if exists IF EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM SYS.databases WHERE name = 'AddColumn') DROP DATABASE AddColumn --Create the database CREATE DATABASE AddColumn GO USE AddColumn GO --Drop the table if exists IF EXISTS ( SELECT 1 FROM sys.tables WHERE Name = 'ExistingTable') DROP TABLE ExistingTable GO --Create the table CREATE TABLE ExistingTable (ID BIGINT IDENTITY(1,1) PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED, DateTime1 DATETIME DEFAULT GETDATE(), DateTime2 DATETIME DEFAULT GETDATE(), DateTime3 DATETIME DEFAULT GETDATE(), DateTime4 DATETIME DEFAULT GETDATE(), Gendar CHAR(1) DEFAULT 'M', STATUS1 CHAR(1) DEFAULT 'Y' ) GO -- Insert 100,000 records with defaults records INSERT INTO ExistingTable DEFAULT VALUES GO 100000 Before adding a Column Before adding a column let us look at some of the details of the database. DBCC IND (AddColumn,ExistingTable,1) By running the above query, you will see 637 pages for the created table. Adding a Column You can add a column to the table with following statement. ALTER TABLE ExistingTable Add NewColumn INT NULL Above will add a column with a null value for the existing records. Alternatively you could add a column with default values. ALTER TABLE ExistingTable Add NewColumn INT NOT NULL DEFAULT 1 The above statement will add a column with a 1 value to the existing records. In the below table I measured the performance difference between above two statements. Parameter Nullable Column Default Value CPU 31 702 Duration 129 ms 6653 ms Reads 38 116,397 Writes 6 1329 Row Count 0 100000 If you look at the RowCount parameter, you can clearly see the difference. Though column is added in the first case, none of the rows are affected while in the second case all the rows are updated. That is the reason, why it has taken more duration and CPU to add column with Default value. We can verify this by several methods. Number of Pages The number of data pages can be obtained by using DBCC IND command. Though, this an undocumented dbcc command, many experts are ok to use this command in production. However, since there is no official word from Microsoft, use this “at your own risk”. DBCC IND (AddColumn,ExistingTable,1) Before Adding the Columns 637 Adding a Column with NULL 637 Adding a column with DEFAULT value 1270 This clearly shows that pages are physically modified. Please note, a high value indicated in the Adding a column with DEFAULT value  column is also a result of page splits. Continues…

  Read the article

• Book Review: Brownfield Application Development in .NET

  - by DotNetBlues

  I recently finished reading the book Brownfield Application Development in .NET by Kyle Baley and Donald Belcham.  The book is available from Manning.  First off, let me say that I'm a huge fan of Manning as a publisher.  I've found their books to be top-quality, over all.  As a Kindle owner, I also appreciate getting an ebook copy along with the dead tree copy.  I find ebooks to be much more convenient to read, but hard-copies are easier to reference. The book covers, surprisingly enough, working with brownfield applications.  Which is well and good, if that term has meaning to you.  It didn't for me.  Without retreading a chunk of the first chapter, the authors break code bases into three broad categories: greenfield, brownfield, and legacy.  Greenfield is, essentially, new development that hasn't had time to rust and is (hopefully) being approached with some discipline.  Legacy applications are those that are more or less stable and functional, that do not expect to see a lot of work done to them, and are more likely to be replaced than reworked. Brownfield code is the gray (brown?) area between the two and the authors argue, quite effectively, that it is the most likely state for an application to be in.  Brownfield code has, in some way, been allowed to tarnish around the edges and can be difficult to work with.  Although I hadn't realized it, most of the code I've worked on has been brownfield.  Sometimes, there's talk of scrapping and starting over.  Sometimes, the team dismisses increased discipline as ivory tower nonsense.  And, sometimes, I've been the ignorant culprit vexing my future self. The book is broken into two major sections, plus an introduction chapter and an appendix.  The first section covers what the authors refer to as "The Ecosystem" which consists of version control, build and integration, testing, metrics, and defect management.  The second section is on actually writing code for brownfield applications and discusses object-oriented principles, architecture, external dependencies, and, of course, how to deal with these when coming into an existing code base. The ecosystem section is just shy of 140 pages long and brings some real meat to the matter.  The focus on "pain points" immediately sets the tone as problem-solution, rather than academic.  The authors also approach some of the topics from a different angle than some essays I've read on similar topics.  For example, the chapter on automated testing is on just that -- automated testing.  It's all well and good to criticize a project as conflating integration tests with unit tests, but it really doesn't make anyone's life better.  The discussion on testing is more focused on the "right" level of testing for existing projects.  Sometimes, an integration test is the best you can do without gutting a section of functional code.  Even if you can sell other developers and/or management on doing so, it doesn't actually provide benefit to your customers to rewrite code that works.  This isn't to say the authors encourage sloppy coding.  Far from it.  Just that they point out the wisdom of ignoring the sleeping bear until after you deal with the snarling wolf. The other sections take a similarly real-world, workable approach to the pain points they address.  As the section moves from technical solutions like version control and continuous integration (CI) to the softer, process issues of metrics and defect tracking, the authors begin to gently suggest moving toward a zero defect count.  While that really sounds like an unreasonable goal for a lot of ongoing projects, it's quite apparent that the authors have first-hand experience with taming some gruesome projects.  The suggestions are grounded and workable, and the difficulty of some situations is explicitly acknowledged. I have to admit that I started getting bored by the end of the ecosystem section.  No matter how valuable I think a good project manager or business analyst is to a successful ALM, at the end of the day, I'm a gear-head.  Also, while I agreed with a lot of the ecosystem ideas, in theory, I didn't necessarily feel that a lot of the single-developer projects that I'm often involved in really needed that level of rigor.  It's only after reading the sidebars and commentary in the coding section that I had the context for the arguments made in favor of a strong ecosystem supporting the development process.  That isn't to say that I didn't support good product management -- indeed, I've probably pushed too hard, on occasion, for a strong ALM outside of just development.  This book gave me deeper insight into why some corners shouldn't be cut and how damaging certain sins of omission can be. The code section, though, kept me engaged for its entirety.  Many technical books can be used as reference material from day one.  The authors were clear, however, that this book is not one of these.  The first chapter of the section (chapter seven, over all) addresses object oriented (OO) practices.  I've read any number of definitions, discussions, and treatises on OO.  None of the chapter was new to me, but it was a good review, and I'm of the opinion that it's good to review the foundations of what you do, from time to time, so I didn't mind. The remainder of the book is really just about how to apply OOP to existing code -- and, just because all your code exists in classes does not mean that it's object oriented.  That topic has the potential to be extremely condescending, but the authors miraculously managed to never once make me feel like a dolt or that they were wagging their finger at me for my prior sins.  Instead, they continue the "pain points" and problem-solution presentation to give concrete examples of how to apply some pretty academic-sounding ideas.  That's a point worth emphasizing, as my experience with most OO discussions is that they stay in the academic realm.  This book gives some very, very good explanations of why things like the Liskov Substitution Principle exist and why a corporate programmer should even care.  Even if you know, with absolute certainty, that you'll never have to work on an existing code-base, I would recommend this book just for the clarity it provides on OOP. This book goes beyond just theory, or even real-world application.  It presents some methods for fixing problems that any developer can, and probably will, encounter in the wild.  First, the authors address refactoring application layers and internal dependencies.  Then, they take you through those layers from the UI to the data access layer and external dependencies.  Finally, they come full circle to tie it all back to the overall process.  By the time the book is done, you're left with a lot of ideas, but also a reasonable plan to begin to improve an existing project structure. Throughout the book, it's apparent that the authors have their own preferred methodology (TDD and domain-driven design), as well as some preferred tools.  The "Our .NET Toolbox" is something of a neon sign pointing to that latter point.  They do not beat the reader over the head with anything resembling a "One True Way" mentality.  Even for the most emphatic points, the tone is quite congenial and helpful.  With some of the near-theological divides that exist within the tech community, I found this to be one of the more remarkable characteristics of the book.  Although the authors favor tools that might be considered Alt.NET, there is no reason the advice and techniques given couldn't be quite successful in a pure Microsoft shop with Team Foundation Server.  For that matter, even though the book specifically addresses .NET, it could be applied to a Java and Oracle shop, as well.

  Read the article

• SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #031

  - 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 Find Table without Clustered Index – Find Table with no Primary Key Clustered index is very important concept for any table. They impact the performance very heavily. Here is a quick script to find tables without a clustered index. Replace TEXT with VARCHAR(MAX) – Stop using TEXT, NTEXT, IMAGE Data Types Question: “Is VARCHAR (MAX) big enough to store the TEXT field?” Answer: “Yes, VARCHAR(MAX) is big enough to accommodate TEXT field. TEXT, NTEXT and IMAGE data types of SQL Server 2000 will be deprecated in a future version of SQL Server, SQL Server 2005 provides backward compatibility to data types but it is recommended to use new data types which are VARHCAR (MAX), NVARCHAR (MAX) and VARBINARY (MAX).” Limiting Result Sets by Using TABLESAMPLE – Examples Introduced in SQL Server 2005, TABLESAMPLE allows you to extract a sampling of rows from a table in the FROM clause. The rows retrieved are random and they are are not in any order. This sampling can be based on a percentage of number of rows. You can use TABLESAMPLE when only a sampling of rows is necessary for the application instead of a full result set. User Defined Functions (UDF) Limitations UDF have its own advantage and usage but in this article we will see the limitation of UDF. Things UDF can not do and why Stored Procedure are considered as more flexible then UDFs. Stored Procedure are more flexibility then User Defined Functions(UDF). However, this blog post is a good read to know what are the limitations of UDF. Change Database Compatible Level – Backward Compatibility For a long time SQL Server stayed on the compatibility level of 80 which is of SQL Server 2000. However, as soon as SQL Server 2005 introduced the issue of compatibility was quite a major issue. Since that time MS has been releasing the versions at every 2-3 years, changing compatibility is a ever popular topic. In this blog post, we learn how we can do the same using T-SQL. We can also do the same using SSMS and here is the blog post for the same: Change Database Compatible Level – Backward Compatibility – Part 2 – Management Studio. Constraint on VARCHAR(MAX) Field To Limit It Certain Length How can I limit the VARCHAR(MAX) field with maximum length of 12500 characters only. His Question was valid as our application was allowed 12500 characters. First of all – this requirement is bit strange but if someone wants to do the same, they can do it as described in this blog post. 2008 UNPIVOT Table Example Understanding UNPIVOT can be very complicated at times. In this blog post, I have attempted to explain the same concept in very simple words. Create Default Constraint Over Table Column A simple straight to script blog post – I still use this blog quite many times for my own reference. UDF – Get the Day of the Week Function It took me 4 iteration to find this very simple function which can immediately get the day of the week in a single line. 2009 Find Hostname and Current Logged In User Name There are two tricks listed in this blog post where users can find out the hostname and current logged user name immediately and very easily. Interesting Observation of Logon Trigger On All Servers When I was doing a project, I made an interesting observation of executing a logon trigger multiple times. It was absolutely unexpected for me! As I was logging only once, naturally, I was expecting the entry only once. However, it did it multiple times on different threads – indeed an eccentric phenomenon at first sight! Difference Between Candidate Keys and Primary Key One needs to be very careful in selecting the Primary Key as an incorrect selection can adversely impact the database architect and future normalization. For a Candidate Key to qualify as a Primary Key, it should be Non-NULL and unique in any domain. I have observed quite often that Primary Keys are seldom changed. I would like to have your feedback on not changing a Primary Key. Create Multiple Filegroup For Single Database Why should one create multiple file group for any database and what are the advantages of the same. In this blog post, I explain the same in detail. List All Objects Created on All Filegroups in Database In this blog post we discuss the essential question – “How can I find which object belongs to which filegroup. Is there any way to know this?” 2010 DATE and TIME in SQL Server 2008 When DATE is converted to DATETIME it adds the of midnight. When TIME is converted to DATETIME it adds the date of 1900 and it is something one wants to consider if you are going to run scripts from SQL Server 2008 to earlier version with CONVERT. Disabled Index and Update Statistics If you do not need a nonclustered index, I suggest you to drop it as keeping them disabled is an overhead on your system. This is because every time the statistics are updated for system all the statistics for disabled indexes are also updated. Precision of SMALLDATETIME – A 1 Minute Precision The precision of the datatype SMALLDATETIME is 1 minute. It discards the seconds by rounding up or rounding down any seconds greater than zero. 2011 Getting Columns Headers without Result Data – SET FMTONLY ON SET FMTONLY ON returns only metadata to the client. It can be used to test the format of the response without actually running the query. When this setting is ON the resultset only have headers of the results but no data. Copy Database from Instance to Another Instance – Copy Paste in SQL Server SQL Server has a feature which copy database from one database to another database and it can be automated as well using SSIS. Make sure you have SQL Server Agent Turned on as this feature will create a job. Puzzle – SELECT * vs SELECT COUNT(*) If you have ever wondered SELECT * gives error when executed alone but SELECT COUNT(*) does not. Why? in that case, you should read this blog post. Creating All New Database with Full Recovery Model This blog post is very based on very interesting story where the user wants to do something by default for every single new database created. Model database is a secret weapon which should be used very carefully and with proper evalution. If used carefully this can be a very much beneficiary when we need a newly created database behave in certain fashion. 2012 In year 2012 I had two interesting series ran on the blog. If there is no fun in learning, the learning becomes a burden. For the same reason, I had decided to build a three part quiz around SEQUENCE. The quiz was to identify the next value of the sequence. I encourage all of you to take part in this fun quiz. Guess the Next Value – Puzzle 1 Guess the Next Value – Puzzle 2 Guess the Next Value – Puzzle 3 Can anyone remember their final day of schooling?  This is probably a silly question because – of course you can!  Many people mark this as the most exciting, happiest day of their life.  It marks the end of testing, the end of following rules set by teachers, and the beginning of finally being able to earn money and work in your chosen field. Read five part series on developer training subject Developer Training - Importance and Significance - Part 1 Developer Training – Employee Morals and Ethics – Part 2 Developer Training – Difficult Questions and Alternative Perspective - Part 3 Developer Training – Various Options for Developer Training – Part 4 Developer Training – A Conclusive Summary- Part 5 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

  Read the article

• Data-driven animation states

  - by user8363

  I'm trying to handle animations in a 2D game engine hobby project, without hard-coding them. Hard coding animation states seems like a common but very strange phenomenon, to me. A little background: I'm working with an entity system where components are bags of data and subsystems act upon them. I chose to use a polling system to update animation states. With animation states I mean: "walking_left", "running_left", "walking_right", "shooting", ... My idea to handle animations was to design it as a data driven model. Data could be stored in an xml file, a rdbms, ... And could be loaded at the start of a game / level/ ... This way you can easily edit animations and transitions without having to go change the code everywhere in your game. As an example I made an xml draft of the data definitions I had in mind. One very important piece of data would simply be the description of an animation. An animation would have a unique id (a descriptive name). It would hold a reference id to an image (the sprite sheet it uses, because different animations may use different sprite sheets). The frames per second to run the animation on. The "replay" here defines if an animation should be run once or infinitely. Then I defined a list of rectangles as frames. <animation id='WIZARD_WALK_LEFT'> <image id='WIZARD_WALKING' /> <fps>50</fps> <replay>true</replay> <frames> <rectangle> <x>0</x> <y>0</y> <width>45</width> <height>45</height> </rectangle> <rectangle> <x>45</x> <y>0</y> <width>45</width> <height>45</height> </rectangle> </frames> </animation> Animation data would be loaded and held in an animation resource pool and referenced by game entities that are using it. It would be treated as a resource like an image, a sound, a texture, ... The second piece of data to define would be a state machine to handle animation states and transitions. This defines each state a game entity can be in, which states it can transition to and what triggers that state change. This state machine would differ from entity to entity. Because a bird might have states "walking" and "flying" while a human would only have the state "walking". However it could be shared by different entities because multiple humans will probably have the same states (especially when you define some common NPCs like monsters, etc). Additionally an orc might have the same states as a human. Just to demonstrate that this state definition might be shared but only by a select group of game entities. <state id='IDLE'> <event trigger='LEFT_DOWN' goto='MOVING_LEFT' /> <event trigger='RIGHT_DOWN' goto='MOVING_RIGHT' /> </state> <state id='MOVING_LEFT'> <event trigger='LEFT_UP' goto='IDLE' /> <event trigger='RIGHT_DOWN' goto='MOVING_RIGHT' /> </state> <state id='MOVING_RIGHT'> <event trigger='RIGHT_UP' goto='IDLE' /> <event trigger='LEFT_DOWN' goto='MOVING_LEFT' /> </state> These states can be handled by a polling system. Each game tick it grabs the current state of a game entity and checks all triggers. If a condition is met it changes the entity's state to the "goto" state. The last part I was struggling with was how to bind animation data and animation states to an entity. The most logical approach seemed to me to add a pointer to the state machine data an entity uses and to define for each state in that machine what animation it uses. Here is an xml example how I would define the animation behavior and graphical representation of some common entities in a game, by addressing animation state and animation data id. Note that both "wizard" and "orc" have the same animation states but a different animation. Also, a different animation could mean a different sprite sheet, or even a different sequence of animations (an animation could be longer or shorter). <entity name="wizard"> <state id="IDLE" animation="WIZARD_IDLE" /> <state id="MOVING_LEFT" animation="WIZARD_WALK_LEFT" /> </entity> <entity name="orc"> <state id="IDLE" animation="ORC_IDLE" /> <state id="MOVING_LEFT" animation="ORC_WALK_LEFT" /> </entity> When the entity is being created it would add a list of states with state machine data and an animation data reference. In the future I would use the entity system to build whole entities by defining components in a similar xml format. -- This is what I have come up with after some research. However I had some trouble getting my head around it, so I was hoping op some feedback. Is there something here what doesn't make sense, or is there a better way to handle these things? I grasped the idea of iterating through frames but I'm having trouble to take it a step further and this is my attempt to do that.

  Read the article

• Power Your Cloud with Oracle Fusion Middleware

  - by user753488

  Introducing the biggest and most strategic event for Fusion Middleware this year: Power your Cloud with Oracle Fusion Middleware. Running in over 50 cities across the globe, this event is aimed at Architects, IT Managers, and technical leaders like you who are using Fusion Middleware or trying to learn more about middleware in the context of Cloud computing. Join us for a special kickoff on Wednesday, June 29th in Chicago for the first event in North America. This event features an exclusive keynote from Rick Schultz, VP of Technology Product Marketing. Cloud is certainly all the rage. But what can we make of it? According to Alex Andrianopoulos, Vice President Product Marketing for Fusion Middleware states, “Not since Java was unveiled have we seen something so transformative hit the industry. The promised benefits of Cloud are many, significant, and deliver value to both IT organizations as well as the Line of Business. The benefits range from lower data center costs, to significantly reduced environmental impact, to the ability to capture more of the opportunities that market present through increased agility in resource deployment and dramatically reduced time to market.” With an ROI so promising, why isn’t everyone on Cloud already? It’s a question a lot of IT managers are struggling with. While the promised benefits of Cloud computing can be immense, achieving them requires much more than the adoption of a new architecture, or the virtualization of servers, or the outsourcing of some or all of the IT resources. These may be useful steps towards moving to a Cloud computing blueprint, but on their own do not deliver Cloud computing and its associated benefits to the enterprise. This is exactly what we’ll be addressing in the event series, ways you can leverage Complete, Open and Integrated capabilities of Oracle Fusion Middleware today to get one step closer to Cloud. Whether you’re: Leveraging Exalogic Elastic Cloud to consolidate your applications Improving agility with Oracle SOA to generate a foundation for shared data services Securing and managing your Cloud using Oracle Identity Management and Oracle Enterprise Manager Migrating from mainframe to Cloud using Oracle Tuxedo, Coherence and GoldenGate Building applications in the Cloud swiftly and easier with Oracle’s WebCenter Suite Join us for the first of its kind event in Chicago this week by registering now, or find an event near you. Learn more about Oracle Fusion Middleware and Cloud computing today on the Oracle.com website by going to http://www.Oracle.com/goto/Middleware4Cloud

  Read the article

• Sweden Azure Group with Michele Laroux Bustamente &amp; Maartin Balliauw Thursday 22nd May

  - by Alan Smith

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/asmith/archive/2014/05/19/156418.aspxSweden Azure Group (SWAG) has the privilege of welcoming Michele Laroux Bustamente and Maartin Balliauw to present sessions at our meeting this Thursday. Michele and Maartin are two of the world’s leading experts in Cloud Computing and Azure, and will be taking time out from their busy schedules to share their ideas with us, and answer any questions. Knowit Stockholm are kindly hosting the event at their offices, and providing food and refreshments. It should be a great evening. You can register for the event here. Azure Q & A - Michele Leroux Bustamante In this interactive Q & A session Michele Leroux Bustamante will be on hand to share her wealth of experience on Azure related issues. If you are new to Azure and wanting some tips to get started, or an experienced developer needing to negotiate the legal and political protocols related to Cloud Computing Michele will have been there, done that, and be willing to share her experiences. This session will be entirely driven by that attendees, so please come prepared with questions. Reducing latency on the web with the Windows Azure CDN – Maarten Balliauw Serving up content on the Internet is something our web sites do daily. But are we doing this in the fastest way possible? How are users in faraway countries experiencing our apps? Why do we have three webservers serving the same content over and over again? In this session, we’ll explore the Windows Azure Content Delivery Network or CDN, a service which makes it easy to serve up blobs, videos and other content from servers close to our users. We’ll explore simple file serving as well as some more advanced, dynamic edge caching scenarios. Michele Leroux Bustamante Michele Leroux Bustamante is CIO at Solliance (solliance.net), cofounder of Snapboard (snapboard.com), and is recognized as a Microsoft Regional Director and MVP. Michele is a thought leader with over 20 years specializing in building scalable and secure end-to-end system design, identity and access management, and cloud computing technologies – for companies of all sizes. In recent years Michele has also helped launch several startup business ventures and has been a mentor to startups in several accelerator programs – providing both technical and business guidance. Michele shares her experiences through presentations and keynotes all over the world, and has been publishing regularly in technology journals. Maarten Balliauw Maarten Balliauw is a Technical Evangelist at JetBrains. His interests are all web: ASP.NET MVC, PHP and Windows Azure. He’s a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for Azure and an ASPInsider. He has published many articles in both PHP and .NET literature such as MSDN magazine and PHP architect. Maarten is a frequent speaker at various national and international events such as MIX (Las Vegas), TechDays, DPC, …

  Read the article

• ArchBeat Facebook Friday: Top 10 Shared Links - May 23-29, 2014

  - by OTN ArchBeat

  Among the 5,144 fans of the OTN ArchBeat Facebook Page the following Top 10 items were the most popular over the last seven days, May 23-29, 2014. GlassFish/Java EE Community Open Forum Today! | Reza Rahman Have questions about Glassfish? Java EE/GlassFish evangelist Reza Rahman has answers, and you can pick his brain tomorrow during an online forum organized by the London Glassfish User Group and C2B2. The event is free, but you must register in order to participate. Click the link for more information. Twitter Tuesday - Top 10 @ArchBeat Tweets - May 20-26, 2014 The top 10 @OTNArchBeat tweets for the week of May 20-26, 2014. Topics covered include ADF, Cloud, GoldenGate, KScope14, OBIEE, ODI, WebLogic, WebCenter, and more. FrameworkFolders Support has come to Oracle WebCenter Portal | JayJay Zheng Interested in working with Framework Folders in Oracle WebCenter Portal? Oracle ACE JayJay Zheng reviews the essentials. Video: Programming Best Practices - ADF Business Components | Frank Nimphius Frank Nimphius discusses best practices and recommendations for ADF Business Components in the latest video from ADF Architecture TV. Video: Kscope 2014 Preview: Data Modeling and Moving Meditation with Kent Graziano For your mind and your body! Oracle ACE Director Kent Graziano previews his Kscope 2014 data modeling presentations and the early morning Chi Gung sessions he will once again lead for Kscope attendees. OAG and OES Integration for Web API Security: skin and guts | Andre Correa A-Team architect Andre Correa's post examines a strategy for web API security that uses OAG (Oracle API Gateway) and OES (Oracle Entitlements Server). Getting Started with Coherence*Web in WebLogic Server 12.1.2 | Tim Middleton Solution architect Tim Middleton shows you how to configure Coherence*Web in WebLogic Server 12.1.2 and deploy a basic web application. SOA and Business Processes: You are the Process! Part of the 13-part "Industrial SOA" article series, this article looks at best practices for modeling and managing effective business processes. Authentication in Oracle Identity Federation/ IdP | Damien Carru Damien Carru discuss authentication when OIF acts as an IdP and how the server can be configured to use specific OAM Authentication Schemes to challenge the user. Caveats on Using WebLogic Server with JDK7 | JayJay Zheng Quick tech tips from Oracle ACE JayJay Zheng.

  Read the article

• parallel_for_each from amp.h – part 1

  - by Daniel Moth

  This posts assumes that you've read my other C++ AMP posts on index<N> and extent<N>, as well as about the restrict modifier. It also assumes you are familiar with C++ lambdas (if not, follow my links to C++ documentation). Basic structure and parameters Now we are ready for part 1 of the description of the new overload for the concurrency::parallel_for_each function. The basic new parallel_for_each method signature returns void and accepts two parameters: a grid<N> (think of it as an alias to extent) a restrict(direct3d) lambda, whose signature is such that it returns void and accepts an index of the same rank as the grid So it looks something like this (with generous returns for more palatable formatting) assuming we are dealing with a 2-dimensional space: // some_code_A parallel_for_each( g, // g is of type grid<2> [ ](index<2> idx) restrict(direct3d) { // kernel code } ); // some_code_B The parallel_for_each will execute the body of the lambda (which must have the restrict modifier), on the GPU. We also call the lambda body the "kernel". The kernel will be executed multiple times, once per scheduled GPU thread. The only difference in each execution is the value of the index object (aka as the GPU thread ID in this context) that gets passed to your kernel code. The number of GPU threads (and the values of each index) is determined by the grid object you pass, as described next. You know that grid is simply a wrapper on extent. In this context, one way to think about it is that the extent generates a number of index objects. So for the example above, if your grid was setup by some_code_A as follows: extent<2> e(2,3); grid<2> g(e); ...then given that: e.size()==6, e[0]==2, and e[1]=3 ...the six index<2> objects it generates (and hence the values that your lambda would receive) are:    (0,0) (1,0) (0,1) (1,1) (0,2) (1,2) So what the above means is that the lambda body with the algorithm that you wrote will get executed 6 times and the index<2> object you receive each time will have one of the values just listed above (of course, each one will only appear once, the order is indeterminate, and they are likely to call your code at the same exact time). Obviously, in real GPU programming, you'd typically be scheduling thousands if not millions of threads, not just 6. If you've been following along you should be thinking: "that is all fine and makes sense, but what can I do in the kernel since I passed nothing else meaningful to it, and it is not returning any values out to me?" Passing data in and out It is a good question, and in data parallel algorithms indeed you typically want to pass some data in, perform some operation, and then typically return some results out. The way you pass data into the kernel, is by capturing variables in the lambda (again, if you are not familiar with them, follow the links about C++ lambdas), and the way you use data after the kernel is done executing is simply by using those same variables. In the example above, the lambda was written in a fairly useless way with an empty capture list: [ ](index<2> idx) restrict(direct3d), where the empty square brackets means that no variables were captured. If instead I write it like this [&](index<2> idx) restrict(direct3d), then all variables in the some_code_A region are made available to the lambda by reference, but as soon as I try to use any of those variables in the lambda, I will receive a compiler error. This has to do with one of the direct3d restrictions, where only one type can be capture by reference: objects of the new concurrency::array class that I'll introduce in the next post (suffice for now to think of it as a container of data). If I write the lambda line like this [=](index<2> idx) restrict(direct3d), all variables in the some_code_A region are made available to the lambda by value. This works for some types (e.g. an integer), but not for all, as per the restrictions for direct3d. In particular, no useful data classes work except for one new type we introduce with C++ AMP: objects of the new concurrency::array_view class, that I'll introduce in the post after next. Also note that if you capture some variable by value, you could use it as input to your algorithm, but you wouldn’t be able to observe changes to it after the parallel_for_each call (e.g. in some_code_B region since it was passed by value) – the exception to this rule is the array_view since (as we'll see in a future post) it is a wrapper for data, not a container. Finally, for completeness, you can write your lambda, e.g. like this [av, &ar](index<2> idx) restrict(direct3d) where av is a variable of type array_view and ar is a variable of type array - the point being you can be very specific about what variables you capture and how. So it looks like from a large data perspective you can only capture array and array_view objects in the lambda (that is how you pass data to your kernel) and then use the many threads that call your code (each with a unique index) to perform some operation. You can also capture some limited types by value, as input only. When the last thread completes execution of your lambda, the data in the array_view or array are ready to be used in the some_code_B region. We'll talk more about all this in future posts… (a)synchronous Please note that the parallel_for_each executes as if synchronous to the calling code, but in reality, it is asynchronous. I.e. once the parallel_for_each call is made and the kernel has been passed to the runtime, the some_code_B region continues to execute immediately by the CPU thread, while in parallel the kernel is executed by the GPU threads. However, if you try to access the (array or array_view) data that you captured in the lambda in the some_code_B region, your code will block until the results become available. Hence the correct statement: the parallel_for_each is as-if synchronous in terms of visible side-effects, but asynchronous in reality.   That's all for now, we'll revisit the parallel_for_each description, once we introduce properly array and array_view – coming next. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

  Read the article

• Using IIS Logs for Performance Testing with Visual Studio

  - by Tarun Arora

  In this blog post I’ll show you how you can play back the IIS Logs in Visual Studio to automatically generate the web performance tests. You can also download the sample solution I am demo-ing in the blog post. Introduction Performance testing is as important for new websites as it is for evolving websites. If you already have your website running in production you could mine the information available in IIS logs to analyse the dense zones (most used pages) and performance test those pages rather than wasting time testing & tuning the least used pages in your application. What are IIS Logs To help with server use and analysis, IIS is integrated with several types of log files. These log file formats provide information on a range of websites and specific statistics, including Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, user information and site visits as well as dates, times and queries. If you are using IIS 7 and above you will find the log files in the following directory C:\Interpub\Logs\ Walkthrough 1. Download and Install Log Parser from the Microsoft download Centre. You should see the LogParser.dll in the install folder, the default install location is C:\Program Files (x86)\Log Parser 2.2. LogParser.dll gives us a library to query the iis log files programmatically. By the way if you haven’t used Log Parser in the past, it is a is a powerful, versatile tool that provides universal query access to text-based data such as log files, XML files and CSV files, as well as key data sources on the Windows operating system such as the Event Log, the Registry, the file system, and Active Directory. More details… 2. Create a new test project in Visual Studio. Let’s call it IISLogsToWebPerfTestDemo.   3.  Delete the UnitTest1.cs class that gets created by default. Right click the solution and add a project of type class library, name it, IISLogsToWebPerfTestEngine. Delete the default class Program.cs that gets created with the project. 4. Under the IISLogsToWebPerfTestEngine project add a reference to Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.WebTestFramework – c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\PublicAssemblies\Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.WebTestFramework.dll LogParser also called MSUtil - c:\users\tarora\documents\visual studio 2010\Projects\IisLogsToWebPerfTest\IisLogsToWebPerfTestEngine\obj\Debug\Interop.MSUtil.dll 5. Right click IISLogsToWebPerfTestEngine project and add a new classes – IISLogReader.cs The IISLogReader class queries the iis logs using the log parser. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Text; using MSUtil; using LogQuery = MSUtil.LogQueryClassClass; using IISLogInputFormat = MSUtil.COMIISW3CInputContextClassClass; using LogRecordSet = MSUtil.ILogRecordset; using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.WebTesting; using System.Diagnostics; namespace IisLogsToWebPerfTestEngine { // By making use of log parser it is possible to query the iis log using select queries public class IISLogReader { private string _iisLogPath; public IISLogReader(string iisLogPath) { _iisLogPath = iisLogPath; } public IEnumerable<WebTestRequest> GetRequests() { LogQuery logQuery = new LogQuery(); IISLogInputFormat iisInputFormat = new IISLogInputFormat(); // currently these columns give us suffient information to construct the web test requests string query = @"SELECT s-ip, s-port, cs-method, cs-uri-stem, cs-uri-query FROM " + _iisLogPath; LogRecordSet recordSet = logQuery.Execute(query, iisInputFormat); // Apply a bit of transformation while (!recordSet.atEnd()) { ILogRecord record = recordSet.getRecord(); if (record.getValueEx("cs-method").ToString() == "GET") { string server = record.getValueEx("s-ip").ToString(); string path = record.getValueEx("cs-uri-stem").ToString(); string querystring = record.getValueEx("cs-uri-query").ToString(); StringBuilder urlBuilder = new StringBuilder(); urlBuilder.Append("http://"); urlBuilder.Append(server); urlBuilder.Append(path); if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(querystring)) { urlBuilder.Append("?"); urlBuilder.Append(querystring); } // You could make substitutions by introducing parameterized web tests. WebTestRequest request = new WebTestRequest(urlBuilder.ToString()); Debug.WriteLine(request.UrlWithQueryString); yield return request; } recordSet.moveNext(); } Console.WriteLine(" That's it! Closing the reader"); recordSet.close(); } } }   6. Connect the dots by adding the project reference ‘IisLogsToWebPerfTestEngine’ to ‘IisLogsToWebPerfTest’. Right click the ‘IisLogsToWebPerfTest’ project and add a new class ‘WebTest1Coded.cs’ The WebTest1Coded.cs inherits from the WebTest class. By overriding the GetRequestMethod we can inject the log files to the IISLogReader class which uses Log parser to query the log file and extract the web requests to generate the web test request which is yielded back for play back when the test is run. namespace IisLogsToWebPerfTest { using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Text; using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.WebTesting; using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.WebTesting.Rules; using IisLogsToWebPerfTestEngine; // This class is a coded web performance test implementation, that simply passes // the path of the iis logs to the IisLogReader class which does the heavy // lifting of reading the contents of the log file and converting them to tests. // You could have multiple such classes that inherit from WebTest and implement // GetRequestEnumerator Method and pass differnt log files for different tests. public class WebTest1Coded : WebTest { public WebTest1Coded() { this.PreAuthenticate = true; } public override IEnumerator<WebTestRequest> GetRequestEnumerator() { // substitute the highlighted path with the path of the iis log file IISLogReader reader = new IISLogReader(@"C:\Demo\iisLog1.log"); foreach (WebTestRequest request in reader.GetRequests()) { yield return request; } } } }   7. Its time to fire the test off and see the iis log playback as a web performance test. From the Test menu choose Test View Window you should be able to see the WebTest1Coded test show up. Highlight the test and press Run selection (you can also debug the test in case you face any failures during test execution). 8. Optionally you can create a Load Test by keeping ‘WebTest1Coded’ as the base test. Conclusion You have just helped your testing team, you now have become the coolest developer in your organization! Jokes apart, log parser and web performance test together allow you to save a lot of time by not having to worry about what to test or even worrying about how to record the test. If you haven’t already, download the solution from here. You can take this to the next level by using LogParser to extract the log files as part of an end of day batch to a database. See the usage trends by user this solution over a longer term and have your tests consume the web requests now stored in the database to generate the web performance tests. If you like the post, don’t forget to share … Keep RocKiNg!

  Read the article

• Managing accounts on a private website for a real-life community

  - by Smudge

  Hey Pro Webmasters, I'm looking at setting-up a walled-in website for a real-life community of people, and I was wondering if anyone has any experience with managing member accounts for this kind of thing. Some conditions that must be met: This community has a set list of real-life members, each of whom would be eligible for one account on the website. We don't expect or require that they all sign-up. It is purely opt-in, but we anticipate that many of them would be interested in the services we are setting up. Some of the community members emails are known, but some of them have fallen off the grid over the years, so ideally there would be a way for them to get back in touch with us through the public-facing side of the site. (And we'd want to manually verify the identity of anyone who does so). Their names are known, and for similar projects in the past we have assigned usernames derived from their real-life names. This time, however, we are open to other approaches, such as letting them specify their own username or getting rid of usernames entirely. The specific web technology we will use (e.g. Drupal, Joomla, etc) is not really our concern right now -- I am more interested in how this can be approached in the abstract. Our database already includes the full member roster, so we can email many of them generated links to a page where they can create an account. (And internally we can require that these accounts be paired with a known member). Should we have them specify their own usernames, or are we fine letting them use their registered email address to log-in? Are there any paradigms for walled-in community portals that help address security issues if, for example, one of their email accounts is compromised? We don't anticipate attempted break-ins being much of a threat, because nothing about this community is high-profile, but we do want to address security concerns. In addition, we want to make the sign-up process as painless for the members as possible, especially given the fact that we can't just make sign-ups open to anyone. I'm interested to hear your thoughts and suggestions! Thanks!

  Read the article

• Sql Table Refactoring Challenge

  Ive been working a bit on cleaning up a large table to make it more efficient.  I pretty much know what I need to do at this point, but I figured Id offer up a challenge for my readers, to see if they can catch everything I have as well as to see if Ive missed anything.  So to that end, I give you my table: CREATE TABLE [dbo].[lq_ActivityLog]( [ID] [bigint] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL, [PlacementID] [int] NOT NULL, [CreativeID] [int] NOT NULL, [PublisherID] [int] NOT NULL, [CountryCode] [nvarchar](10) NOT NULL, [RequestedZoneID] [int] NOT NULL, [AboveFold] [int] NOT NULL, [Period] [datetime] NOT NULL, [Clicks] [int] NOT NULL, [Impressions] [int] NOT NULL, CONSTRAINT [PK_lq_ActivityLog2] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED ( [Period] ASC, [PlacementID] ASC, [CreativeID] ASC, [PublisherID] ASC, [RequestedZoneID] ASC, [AboveFold] ASC, [CountryCode] ASC)WITH (PAD_INDEX = OFF, STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE = OFF, IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF, ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS = ON, ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = ON) ON [PRIMARY]) ON [PRIMARY] And now some assumptions and additional information: The table has 200,000,000 rows currently PlacementID ranges from 1 to 5000 and should support at least 50,000 CreativeID ranges from 1 to 5000 and should support at least 50,000 PublisherID ranges from 1 to 500 and should support at least 50,000 CountryCode is a 2-character ISO standard (e.g. US) and there is a country table with an integer ID already.  There are < 300 rows. RequestedZoneID ranges from 1 to 100 and should support at least 50,000 AboveFold has values of 1, 0, or 1 only. Period is a date (no time). Clicks range from 0 to 5000. Impressions range from 0 to 5000000. The table is currently write-mostly.  Its primary purpose is to log advertising activity as quickly as possible.  Nothing in the rest of the system reads from it except for batch jobs that pull the data into summary tables. Heres the current information on the database tables size: Design Goals This table has been in use for about 5 years and has performed very well during that time.  The only complaints we have are that it is quite large and also there are occasionally timeouts for queries that reference it, particularly when batch jobs are pulling data from it.  Any changes should be made with an eye toward keeping write performance optimal  while trying to reduce space and improve read performance / eliminate timeouts during read operations. Refactor There are, I suggest to you, some glaringly obvious optimizations that can be made to this table.  And Im sure there are some ninja tweaks known to SQL gurus that would be a big help as well.  Ill post my own suggested changes in a follow-up post for now feel free to comment with your suggestions. Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278  | Next Page >