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• What kind of position matches my skills, experience and interests? [closed]

  - by Ryan

  I work in a large firm and my current job covers a variety of different duties. Due to several factors I am seriously considering finding a new job (hours, pay-cut, limited career growth). I have worked for the company nearly 4 years and almost 2 years ago I transitioned into more of a business analyst role (previously I was working in a client facing role for our audit group). In this role I have overseen all aspects of the development of a large scale re-platforming of our firm's key tool in analyzing investment portfolios. I gathered requirements, wrote specs, designed the UI and functionality, worked closely with developers (onshore and offshore) to see to it the implementation was correct, managed schedules and was the lead tester. This is a large scale system used by thousands of people around the world. I've also written Excel macros, reports in SQL, given trainings, written technical manuals, interfaced with senior managers and partners, etc. I've been on a couple interviews sporadically, most of which were for positions aimed at higher management consulting type positions, dealing with strategy, overall process management, project management, etc. What really interests me is the technical stuff and overseeing a project from beginning to end (although I would rather not have to do so many of the tasks on my own). I genuinely like a lot of what I do, but the company culture and attitude towards overworking people combined with my recent pay-cut (my overtime was cut due to a promotion to a higher level) has lead me to want to seek work elsewhere. The problem is - what type of work could I realistically do? I feel like traditional business analysis is too much business and not enough tech stuff, and I've really taken a shine lately to beefing up my programming abilities and creating small programs to automate things around work. I also feel that because my actual years of experience as a business analyst (figure 1.5 years realistically) puts me at a junior level doing a lot of grunt requirements gathering, when the work that I have been doing with my current company is more in line with what a Program Manager does (depending on your definition I guess). So in reality, when I'm job hunting I get a bit perplexed because I feel like the traditional BA stuff wouldn't really suit me, and even if it did it's usually something along the lines of 5-10 years experience for the type of work that is similar to what I've done (and I've also found most BA jobs to be contract only which at the moment I'm not too keen on). Program Manager is something that interests me, but again I feel like the experience is lacking because that's a much more senior position. Am I in some kind of career no-man's land? Any idea what would best suit me given my experience and abilities, as well as my interests? I plan to keep learning programming on the side, but don't expect to get a job being a straight programmer given my relative inexperience with programming.

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• WebCenter Customer Spotlight: Regency Centers Corporation

  - by me

  Author: Peter Reiser - Social Business Evangelist, Oracle WebCenter  Solution SummaryRegency Centers Corporation, based in Jacksonville, FL, is a leading national owner, operator, and developer of grocery-anchored and community shopping centers. Regency grew rapidly over much of the last decade. To keep up with the monthly and yearly administrative processes required to manage thousands of tenants, including reconciling yearly pass-through expenses, the customer upgraded to Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Version 9.0 and deployed Oracle WebCenter Imaging, Process Management and Oracle BI Publisher, to streamline invoice processing and reporting. Using Oracle WebCenter Imaging - Regency accelerated and improved vendor invoice accuracy  which increases process integrity by identifying potential duplicate bills while enabling rapid approval of electronic invoice documents. Company Overview Regency Centers Corporation, based in Jacksonville, FL,  is a leading national owner, operator, and developer of grocery-anchored and community shopping centers. The company owns 367 centers, totaling nearly 50 million square feet, located in top markets throughout the United States. Founded in 1963 and operating as a fully integrated real estate company, Regency is a qualified real estate investment trust that is self-administered and self-managed, operating from 17 regional offices around the country.  Business Challenges Ensure continued support of vital business applications that drive the real estate developer’s key business processes, including property management and tenant payment processing Streamline year-end expense recognition and calculation, enabling faster tenant billing Move to a Web-based platform to deliver greater mobility and convenience to employees Minimize system customizations to reduce IT management costs and burden moving forward Solution DeployedRecency Centers Corporation worked with the  Oracle Partner ICS to upgrade to Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Version 9.0, migrating to a more user-friendly, Web-based platform and realizing numerous new efficiencies in property management and tenant payment processing. They accelerated and improved vendor invoice accuracy with Oracle WebCenter Imaging, which increases process integrity by identifying potential duplicate bills while enabling rapid approval of electronic invoice documents. Business Results Enabled faster and more accurate tenant billing for year-end expenses, accelerating collections of millions of dollars in revenue Gained full audit and drill-down capabilities that facilitate understanding various aspects of calculations for expense participation generation Increases process integrity by identifying potential duplicate bills while enabling rapid approval of electronic invoice documents Helped to ensure on-time payments to hundreds of vendors, including contractors and utilities "We have realized numerous efficiencies with Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.0, particularly around tenant billings. It accelerates our year-end expense reconciliation process and enables us to create and process billings more quickly.” James Chiang, Vice President of Real Estate Accounting Regency Centers Corporation Additional Information Regency Centers Corporation Customer Snapshot Oracle WebCenter Imaging JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Financials 9.0 JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Project Costing JD Edwards EnterpiseOne Real Estate Management Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Oracle Essbase

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• Am I deluding myself? Business analyst transition to programmer

  - by Ryan

  Current job: Working as the lead business analyst for a Big 4 firm, leading a team of developers and testers working on a large scale re-platforming project (4 onshore dev, 4 offshore devs, several onshore/offshore testers). Also work in a similar capacity on other smaller scale projects. Extent of my role: Gathering/writing out requirements, creating functional specifications, designing the UI (basically mapping out all front-end aspects of the system), working closely with devs to communicate/clarify requirements and come up with solutions when we hit roadblocks, writing test cases (and doing much of the testing), working with senior management and key stakeholders, managing beta testers, creating user guides and leading training sessions, providing key technical support. I also write quite a few macros in Excel using VBA (several of my macros are now used across the entire firm, so there are maybe around 1000 people using them) and use SQL on a daily basis, both on the SQL compact files the program relies on, our SQL Server data and any Access databases I create. The developers feel that I am quite good in this role because I understand a lot about programming, inherent system limitations, structure of the databases, etc so it's easier for me to communicate ideas and come up with suggestions when we face problems. What really interests me is developing software. I do a fair amount of programming in VBA and have been wanting to learn C# for awhile (the dev team uses C# - I review code occasionally for my own sake but have not had any practical experience using it). I'm interested in not just the business process but also the technical side of things, so the traditional BA role doesn't really whet my appetite for the kind of stuff I want to do. Right now I have a few small projects that managers have given me and I'm finding new ways to do them (like building custom Access applications), so there's a bit here and there to keep me interested. My question is this: what I would like to do is create custom Excel or Access applications for small businesses as a freelance business (working as a one-man shop; maybe having an occasional contractor depending on a project's complexity). This would obviously start out as a part-time venture while I have a day job, but eventually become a full-time job. Am I deluding myself to thinking I can go from BA/part-time VBA programmer to making a full-time go of a freelance business (where I would be starting out just writing custom Excel/Access apps in VBA)? Or is this type of thing not usually attempted until someone gains years of full-time programming experience? And is there even a market for these types of applications amongst small businesses (and maybe medium-sized) businesses?

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• Data Model Dissonance

  - by Tony Davis

  So often at the start of the development of database applications, there is a premature rush to the keyboard. Unless, before we get there, we’ve mapped out and agreed the three data models, the Conceptual, the Logical and the Physical, then the inevitable refactoring will dog development work. It pays to get the data models sorted out up-front, however ‘agile’ you profess to be. The hardest model to get right, the most misunderstood, and the one most neglected by the various modeling tools, is the conceptual data model, and yet it is critical to all that follows. The conceptual model distils what the business understands about itself, and the way it operates. It represents the business rules that govern the required data, its constraints and its properties. The conceptual model uses the terminology of the business and defines the most important entities and their inter-relationships. Don’t assume that the organization’s understanding of these business rules is consistent or accurate. Too often, one department has a subtly different understanding of what an entity means and what it stores, from another. If our conceptual data model fails to resolve such inconsistencies, it will reduce data quality. If we don’t collect and measure the raw data in a consistent way across the whole business, how can we hope to perform meaningful aggregation? The conceptual data model has more to do with business than technology, and as such, developers often regard it as a worthy but rather arcane ceremony like saluting the flag or only eating fish on Friday. However, the consequences of getting it wrong have a direct and painful impact on many aspects of the project. If you adopt a silo-based (a.k.a. Domain driven) approach to development), you are still likely to suffer by starting with an incomplete knowledge of the domain. Even when you have surmounted these problems so that the data entities accurately reflect the business domain that the application represents, there are likely to be dire consequences from abandoning the goal of a shared, enterprise-wide understanding of the business. In reading this, you may recall experiences of the consequence of getting the conceptual data model wrong. I believe that Phil Factor, for example, witnessed the abandonment of a multi-million dollar banking project due to an inadequate conceptual analysis of how the bank defined a ‘customer’. We’d love to hear of any examples you know of development projects poleaxed by errors in the conceptual data model. Cheers, Tony

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• How to explain bad software to non-technical people?

  - by mtutty

  In discussing software development with non-technical people (customers, business owners, project sponsors, etc.), I often resort to analogies and metaphors. It's relatively easy and effective to use a "house" or other metaphor for describing the size and complexity of new development. However, we often inherit someone else's code or data, and this approach doesn't seem to hold up as well when trying to explain why we're gutting something that already seems to work. Of course we can point to cycle time and cost to be saved in the future but this generally means nothing to business folks. I know doctors can say "just take this pill," but I'm not sure that software devs have the same authority. Ideas? EDIT: Let me add a bit to the discussion. The specific project I'm talking about has customers that don't realize (or care) about specific aspects of the system we're retiring (i.e., they think it was just fine): The system would save a NEW RECORD every time someone updated a field The system contained tables for reference data. These tables had new records added every day, even though they were duplicates of previous records. And there was no way to tie the reference data used for a particular case at the time it was closed. This is like 99% of the data in the old system. The field NAMES also have spaces, apostrophes and other inappropriate characters in them, making everything harder to work with. In addition to the incredible amount of duplicate data, they have around 1000 XLS files with data they want added to the system. Previously, they would do a spreadsheet for each case in the database, IN ADDITION TO what they typed into the database. Getting rid of this old, unneeded information and piping in the XLS data comprises about 80% of the total project effort, and was not something we could accurately predict. I'm trying to find a concrete way to describe how bad this thing was, mostly so that the customer will understand why the migration process has been so time-consuming. The actual coding was done pretty quickly and the new system works fine, but without the old data they won't be happy. Sorry to get into the weeds, but most of the answers I've seen so far are pretty basic scope/schedule/cost things. I've been doing this for 15 years, so this really is more of a reflective, philosophical question - but without some of the details it can be difficult to really appreciate the awful beauty of this problem.

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• need some concrete examples on user stories, tasks and how they relate to functional and technical specifications

  - by gideon

  Little heads up, Im the only lonely dev building/planning/mocking my project as I go. Ive come up with a preview release that does only the core aspects of the system, with good business value and I've coded most of the UI as dirty throw-able mockups over nicely abstracted and very minimal base code. In the end I know quite well what my clients want on the whole. I can't take agile-ish cowboying anymore because Im completely dis-organized and have no paper plan and since my clients are happy, things are getting more complex with more features and ideas. So I started using and learning Agile & Scrum Here are my problems: I know what a functional spec is.(sample): Do all user stories and/or scenarios become part of the functional spec? I know what user stories and tasks are. Are these kinda user stories? I dont see any Business Value reason added to them. I made a mind map using freemind, I had problems like this: Actor : Finance Manager Can Add a Financial Plan into the system because well thats the point of it? What Business Value reason do I add for things like this? Example : A user needs to be able to add a blog article (in the blogger app) because..?? Its the point of a blogger app, it centers around that feature? How do I go into the finer details and system definitions: Actor: Finance Manager Action: Adds a finance plan. This adding is a complicated process with lots of steps. What User Story will describe what a finance plan in the system is ?? I can add it into the functional spec under definitions explaining what a finance plan is and how one needs to add it into the system, but how do I get to the backlog planning from there? Example: A Blog Article is mostly a textual document that can be written in rich text in the system. To add a blog article one must...... But how do you create backlog list/features out of this? Where are the user stories for what a blog article is and how one adds/removes it? Finally, I'm a little confused about the relations between functional specs and user stories. Will my spec contain user stories in them with UI mockups? Now will these user stories then branch out tasks which will make up something like a technical specification? Example : EditorUser Can add a blog article. Use XML to store blog article. Add a form to add blog. Add Windows Live Writer Support. That would be agile tasks but would that also be part of/or form the technical specs? Some concrete examples/answers of my questions would be nice!!

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• Creating Corporate Windows Phone Applications

  - by Tim Murphy

  Most developers write Windows Phone applications for their own gratification and their own wallets.  While most of the time I would put myself in the same camp, I am also a consultant.  This means that I have corporate clients who want corporate solutions.  I recently got a request for a system rebuild that includes a Windows Phone component.  This brought up the questions of what are the important aspects to consider when building for this situation. Let’s break it down in to the points that are important to a company using a mobile application.  The company want to make sure that their proprietary software is safe from use by unauthorized users.  They also want to make sure that the data is secure on the device. The first point is a challenge.  There is no such thing as true private distribution in the Windows Phone ecosystem at this time.  What is available is the ability to specify you application for targeted distribution.  Even with targeted distribution you can’t ensure that only individuals within your organization will be able to load you application.  Because of this I am taking two additional steps.  The first is to register the phone’s DeviceUniqueId within your system.  Add a system sign-in and that should cover access to your application. The second half of the problem is securing the data on the phone.  This is where the ProtectedData API within the System.Security.Cryptography namespace comes in.  It allows you to encrypt your data before pushing it to isolated storage on the device. With the announcement of Windows Phone 8 coming this fall, many of these points will have different solutions.  Private signing and distribution of applications will be available.  We will also have native access to BitLocker.  When you combine these capabilities enterprise application development for Windows Phone will be much simpler.  Until then work with the above suggestions to develop your enterprise solutions. del.icio.us Tags: Windows Phone 7,Windows Phone,Corporate Deployment,Software Design,Mango,Targeted Applications,ProtectedData API,Windows Phone 8

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• Oracle BPM and Open Data integration development

  - by drrwebber

  Rapidly developing Oracle BPM application solutions with data source integration previously required significant Java and JDeveloper skills. Now using open source tools for open data development significantly reduces the coding needed.  Key tasks can be performed with visual drag and drop designing combined with menu selections entry and automatic form generation directly from XSD schema definitions. The architecture used is extremely lightweight, portable, open platform and scalable allowing integration with a variety of Oracle and non-Oracle data sources and systems. Two videos available on YouTube walk through the process at both an introductory conceptual level and then a deep dive into the programming needed using JDeveloper, Oracle BPM composer and Oracle WLS (WebLogic Server) along with the CAM editor and Open-XDX open source tools. Also available are coding samples and resources from the GitHub project page, along with working online demonstration resources on the VerifyXML site. Combining Oracle BPM with these open source tools provides a comprehensive simple and elegant solution set. Development times are slashed and rapid prototyping is enabled. Also existing data sources can be integrated using open data formats with either XML or JSON along with CRUD accessing via the Open-XDX Java component. The Open-XDX tool is a code-free approach where data mapping is configured as templates using visual drag and drop in the CAM Editor open source tool.  XML or JSON is then automatically generated or processed (output or input) and appropriate SQL statements created to support the data accessing.   Also included is the ability to integrate with fillable PDF forms via the XML templates and the Java PDF form filling library.  Again minimal Java coding is needed to associate the XML source content with the PDF named fields.  The Oracle BPM forms can be automatically generated from XSD schema definitions that are built from the data mapping templates.  This dramatically simplifies development work as all the integration artifacts needed are created by the open source editor toolset. The developer level video is designed as a tutorial with segments, hands-on demonstrations and reviews.  This allows developers to learn the techniques and approaches used in incremental steps. The intended audience ranges from data analysts to developers and assumes only entry level Java skills and knowledge.  Most actions are menu driven while Java coding is limited to simply configuring values and parameters along with performing builds and deployments from JDeveloper and Oracle WLS.   Additional existing Oracle online training resources can be referenced on Oracle BPM and WLS that cover other normal delivery aspects such as user management and application deployment.

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• Oracle ENDECA Discovery 3.1 Partner Training 3-Day Workshop

  - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM

  Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 To find out more about the ENDECA training, and to Register for this, click here. June 24-26, 2014: Oracle Reading, UK – Free to partners in EMEA. FREE of charge to OPN member Partners, this Oracle Endeca Information Discovery (OEID) 3-day bootcamp is designed to give partners an understanding of OEID’s features, and how it complements the existing Oracle Business Intelligence suite. This workshop will provide hands-on experience with Oracle Endeca Information Discovery. Topics covered will include Data Exploration with Endeca Information Discovery, Data Ingest, Project Lifecycle, Building an Endeca Server data model and advanced modeling techniques, and Working with Studio. You will also learn about working with ETL components for content acquisitions and other aspects of the project such as security. After taking this course, you will be well prepared to architect, build, demo, and implement an end-to-end Endeca Information Discovery solution. If you are a Bigdata Analytics Architect or Developer, BI or Data Warehouse Architect, developer or consultant, you don’t want to miss this 3-day workshop. Click here to Register for this. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• Is there a usage count for packages or programs?

  - by math

  Motivation: I want to remove applications I do not use to speed up my package processing tasks like dist upgrades, regular updates, but also for saving disk space and other reasons. I know this is a complex topic so first I will ask my question and second I will give some answers I already found out. Question: How do I find out which package I did not used at all? For example I always use the VLC so I could remove totem package. (Which I could have been used some day, yes.) Of course package dependencies could force me to have programs installed which I will never use. Notes: Find the packages which consume much space via synaptic: Select "Status" in lower left, select "Installed" in upper left, sort column on "size" in upper right. Then you can decide which big packages you really need. Use aptitude autoremove Use ubuntu-tweak's Janitor for removing old kernel packages, old configs, apt-cache entries, etc. Manually search for applications for a given task that you usually solve with your standard app. E.g. Movie player, Music player, Office program, Browser etc. (BTW: this is what I want to be helped with my question) When removing packages I always favour "apt-get purge" over "aptitude remove --purge" as aptitude often will also remove essential packages due to package dependencies. E.g. when removing "evolution" (as I use thunderbird) aptitude wants to remove also "ubuntu-desktop" and 756 other packages as well, while apt-get just removes evolution and its helping pacakges like evolution-common. Ubuntu lense gives me most recent used applications which are candidates for keeping :) Employ deborphan as I read in this related answer: How do I clean up my harddrive? I should certainly keep essential packages: Keep only essential packages This question is pretty much a duplicate of How to see what installed packages I have never used for cleaning purposes but covering only few aspects. However one answer suggests to use a program called unusedpkg but the link seems down. There is also a program called Kleen http://code.google.com/p/kleen/ but it won't compile in 11.10. However I hacked it to compile but the results are unusable, as for example the g++ package was marked as not used for 203, but actually I used it seconds ago for compiling Kleen itself ;) So don't use this tool. On http://wiki.debian.org/DebianPackageInformation I read the the package popularity-contest will produce log files with usage statistics. Unfortunately I didn't enabled the popularity contest so I can't find this log file.

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• Reasons to Use a VM For Development

  - by George Stocker

  Background: I work at a start-up company, where one team uses Virtual Machines to connect to a remote server to do their development, and another team (the team I'm on) uses local IIS/SQL Server 2005/Visual Studio installations to conduct work. Team VM is located about 1000 miles from Team Non-VM, and the servers the VMs run off of are located near Team VM (Latency, for those that are wondering, is about 50ms). A person high in the company is pushing for Team Non-VM to use virtual machines for programming, development, and testing. The latter point we agree on -- we want Virtual Machines to test configurations and various aspects of the web application in a 'clean' state. The Problem: What we don't agree on is having developers using RDP to connect to a desktop remotely that contains Visual Studio, SQL Server, and IIS to do the same development we could do locally on our laptops. I've tried the VM set-up, and besides the color issue, there is a latency issue that is rather noticeable, not to mention that since we're a start-up, a good number of employees work from home on occasion with our work laptops, and this move would cut off the laptops. They'd be turned in. Reasons to Use Remote VMs for Development (Not Testing!): Here are the stated reasons that this person wants us to use VMs: They work for TeamVM. They keep the source code "safe". If we want to work from home, we could just use our home PCs. Licenses (I don't know what the argument is, only that it's been used). Reasons not to use Remote VMs for Development: Here are the stated reasons why we don't want to use VMs: We like working from home. We get a lot done on our own time. We're not going to use our Home PCs to do work related stuff. The Latency is noticeable. Support for the VMs (if they go down, or if we need a new VM) takes a while. We don't have administrative privileges on the VM, and are unable to change settings as needed. What I'm looking for from the community is this: What reasons would you give for not using VMs for development? Keep in mind these are remote VMs -- this isn't a VM running on a local desktop. It's using the laptop (or a desktop) as a thin client for a remote VM. Also, on the other side of the coin: Is there something we're missing that makes VMs more palatable for development? Edit: I think 'safe' is used in term of corporate espionage, or more correctly if the Laptop gets stolen, the person who stole would have access to our source code. The former (as we've pointed out, is always going to be a possibility -- companies stop that with litigation, there isn't a technical solution (so far as I can see)). The latter point is ( though I don't know its usefulness in a corporate scenario) mitigated by Truecrypt'ing the entire volume.

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• TransportWithMessageCredential & Service Bus – Introduction

  - by Michael Stephenson

  Recently we have been working on a project using the Windows Azure Service Bus to expose line of business applications. One of the topics we discussed a lot was around the security aspects of the solution. Most of the samples you see for Windows Azure Service Bus often use the shared secret with the Access Control Service to protect the service bus endpoint but one of the problems we found was that with this scenario any claims resulting from credentials supplied by the client are not passed through to the service listening to the service bus endpoint. As an example of this we originally were hoping that we could give two different clients their own shared secret key and the issuer for each would indicate which client it was. If the claims had flown to the listening service then we could check that the message sent by client one was a type they are allowed to send. Unfortunately this claim isn't flown to the listening service so we were unable to implement this scenario. We had also seen samples that talk about changing the relayClientAuthenticationType attribute would allow you to authenticate the client within the service itself rather than with ACS. While this was interesting it wasn't exactly what we wanted. By removing the step where access to the Relay endpoint is protected by authentication against ACS it means that anyone could send messages via the service bus to the on-premise listening service which would then authenticate clients. In our scenario we certainly didn't want to allow clients to skip the ACS authentication step because this could open up two attack opportunities for an attacker. The first of these would allow an attacker to send messages through to our on-premise servers and potentially cause a denial of service situation. The second case would be with the same kind of attack by running lots of messages through service bus which were then rejected the attacker would be causing us to incur charges per message on our Windows Azure account. The correct way to implement our desired scenario is to combine one of the common options for authenticating against ACS so the service bus endpoint cannot be accessed by an unauthenticated caller with the normal WCF security features using the TransportWithMessageCredential security option. Looking around I could not find any guidance on how to implement this correctly so on the back of setting this up I decided to write a couple of articles to walk through a couple of the common scenarios you may be interested in. These are available on the following links: Walkthrough - Combining shared secret and username token Walkthrough – Combining shared secret and certificates

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• What does path finding in internet routing do and how is it different from A*?

  - by alan2here

  Note: If you don't understand this question then feel free to ask clarification in the comments instead of voting down, it might be that this question needs some more work at the moment. I've been directed here from the Stack Excange chat room Root Access because my question didn't fit on Super User. In many aspects path finding algorithms like A star are very similar to internet routing. For example: A node in an A* path finding system can search for a path though edges between other nodes. A router that's part of the internet can search for a route though cables between other routers. In the case of A*, open and closed lists are kept by the system as a whole, sepratly from any individual node as well as each node being able to temporarily store a state involving several numbers. Routers on the internet seem to have remarkable properties, as I understand it: They are very performant. New nodes can be added at any time that use a free address from a finite (not tree like) address space. It's real routing, like A*, there's never any doubling back for example. Similar IP addresses don't have to be geographically nearby. The network reacts quickly to changes to the networks shape, for example if a line is down. Routers share information and it takes time for new IP's to be registered everywhere, but presumably every router doesn't have to store a list of all the addresses each of it's directions leads most directly to. I'm looking for a basic, general, high level description of the algorithms workings from the point of view of an individual router. Does anyone have one? I presume public internet routers don't use A* as the overheads would be to large, and scale to poorly. I also presume there is a single method worldwide because it seems as if must involve a lot of transferring data to update and communicate a reasonable amount of state between neighboring routers. For example, perhaps the amount of data that needs to be stored in each router scales logarithmically with the number of routers that exist worldwide, the detail and reliability of the routing is reduced over increasing distances, there is increasing backtracking involved in parts of the network that are less geographically uniform or maybe each router really does perform an A* style search, temporarily maintaining open and closed lists when a packet arrives.

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• SMTP POP3 & PST. Acronyms from Hades.

  - by mikef

  A busy SysAdmin will occasionally have reason to curse SMTP. It is, certainly, one of the strangest events in the history of IT that such a deeply flawed system, designed originally purely for campus use, should have reached its current dominant position. The explanation was that it was the first open-standard email system, so SMTP/POP3 became the internet standard. We are, in consequence, dogged with a system with security weaknesses so extreme that messages are sent in plain text and you have no real assurance as to who the message came from anyway (SMTP-AUTH hasn't really caught on). Even without the security issues, the use of SMTP in an office environment provides a management nightmare to all commercial users responsible for complying with all regulations that control the conduct of business: such as tracking, retaining, and recording company documents. SMTP mail developed from various Unix-based systems designed for campus use that took the mail analogy so literally that mail messages were actually delivered to the users, using a 'store and forward' mechanism. This meant that, from the start, the end user had to store, manage and delete messages. This is a problem that has passed through all the releases of MS Outlook: It has to be able to manage mail locally in the dreaded PST file. As a stand-alone system, Outlook is flawed by its neglect of any means of automatic backup. Previous Outlook PST files actually blew up without warning when they reached the 2 Gig limit and became corrupted and inaccessible, leading to a thriving industry of 3rd party tools to clear up the mess. Microsoft Exchange is, of course, a server-based system. Emails are less likely to be lost in such a system if it is properly run. However, there is nothing to stop users from using local PSTs as well. There is the additional temptation to load emails into mobile devices, or USB keys for off-line working. The result is that the System Administrator is faced by a complex hybrid system where backups have to be taken from Servers, and PCs scattered around the network, where duplication of emails causes storage issues, and document retention policies become impossible to manage. If one adds to that the complexity of mobile phone email readers and mail synchronization, the problem is daunting. It is hardly surprising that the mood darkens when SysAdmins meet and discuss PST Hell. If you were promoted to the task of tormenting the souls of the damned in Hades, what aspects of the management of Outlook would you find most useful for your task? I'd love to hear from you. Cheers, Michael

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• Is is possible to get a patch included in the current release? If so, how?

  - by Oli

  So a while back I reported a bug in Compiz's Place Window plugin. It's a fairly major regression for people affected by it: mainly those using Gnome-Fallback, judging by the reports. A patch surfaced a short time later. I created a PPA for testing and everybody involved so far is reporting the issues are fixed. It even fixes another bug. I've done testing with a standard Unity desktop and can say (for my testing) no adverse effects were visible. I want to get this pushed to Ubuntu right now for two main reasons: I'm selfish. I don't want to need to update my PPA every time a new version of Compiz is pushed to 12.04. I don't want Ubuntu users seeing their windows flying around because of a silly little bug. I want this patch pushed to Ubuntu's version of Compiz as soon as possible, so we can mark these bugs fixed and move on with our lives. Whose leg do I have to hump to get this pulled into Ubuntu right now? I don't maintain this project and it's an upstream thing but it's fairly integral to Ubuntu. I could go to Compiz but I imagine that if they accept the patch, it'll be months (at least a release) before it's anywhere near Ubuntu. And when I do find the right person, how can I make the process as slick as possible for them? I want them to see my request, go "Yup, that all looks great, done" and that be it. I don't want seventeen rounds of emails addressing aspects of the patch. More importantly, I don't want to waste their time either. And what do I have to provide them? My packaging skills are... lamentable. This was my first attempt at patching a package for redistribution so I've probably made every single packaging error known to man. Will they be happy with the original patch (so they can apply it themselves) or should I repackage things so the diff/changelog is a little cleaner (it took me a few goes and the versioning is all over the place). Note: This question is about Compiz but I'd prefer if answers could address other styles of package too so we have an authoritative and comprehensive thread of how to get things fixed.

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• Forced to be trained [closed]

  - by steeb

  is it OK to force employees to take a training in order to make them sign a contract to stay in the job for X years? Here I'm the only developer in the company and before this job I've developed in VB6, VB.Net and others. There are others technicians here but they query the database server to make reports and make little programs but do not spend all day in programming. I was hired here to manage some legacy data to be migrated to a new system and I used my experience to accomplish the task. I also have made some utilities and other developments. Since we went live with the new system I've been developing a lot of side programs, add-ons and changed the source code of it and basically I've been learning from it since then and became some sort of jack of all trades when some feature needs to be changed or corrected. I have one and a half year in this company but during the last 8 months I've been entirely programming in the system. There have been times when even the implementers ask me how I accomplish certain things. The issue here is that the company has come and told me and other co-workers (which do not program in the system but know basic programming and databases) to have a basic training to program for the new system's platform and when we finish it we will sign a contract to stay in the company for an unspecified time. They have offered also an unspecified better salary. I'm feeling very suspicious cause I know the basics of system and I don't understand why I have to take it, being known by everybody all developments I've made. I gathered with my boss and told him that I should not take that course because I feel that I can learn more with all the daily requirements I've been asked and they should save that money. But he responded me that I have to take it and sign after that. I think they want me to be with them for a long time, and I'd like to, but my opinion is that I would like to stay in the company because I feel comfortable in all laboral aspects (including salary) but not because I signed a contract forced to do more tasks and forced to say no if I have others and better job offers. What advice can you give me in this kind of situation?

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• Simulate 'Shock absorbtion' with tire rubber in PhysX (2.8.x)

  - by Mungoid

  This is a kinda tricky question and I fear there is no easy enough solution, but I figured I'd hit SE up before giving up on it and just doing what I can. A machine I am working on has no suspension or shocks or springs of any sort in the real machine, so you would think that when it drives over bumps, it would shake like crazy but because its tires (6 of them) are quite large they seem to absorb a lot of shock from the bumps. Part of this is because the machine is around 30k lbs and it just smashes/compresses any bumps in the ground down (This is another issue im still working on) and the other part is that the tires seem to have a lot of flex to them with a lot of air as well. So my current task is to simulate shock absorption in physx without visibly separating the tires from the spindle/axle.. I have been messing with all kinds of NxMaterial, NxSpring, Joints, etc. and have had no luck getting this to work. The main problem is that the spindle attached to the tire is directly in the center and the axle is basically solidly attached to the chassis, so if i give it any spring or suspension travel, that spindle on the tires will move upwards or downwards, looking very odd because now its not any longer in the center of the tire. I tried giving it a higher restitution but that just makes it bouncy without any shock absorption. Another avenue I am messing with is to actively smooth the terrain in front of the tires so that before it hits a bumpy patch, that patch is smoothed and it doesn't bounce. The only issue with this is that it is pretty expensive to do with 6 tires, high tesselation of the terrain and other complex things going on at the same time in this simulation. I am still working on this but I am hoping to mix and match a few different aspects to get the best possible outcome. This is a bit of a complex issue so I'm not expecting anyone to have a definitive answer, just hoping someone may think of something I haven't =-) -Side note: Yes i know PhysX 2.8.x is quite outdated but we have to stick with it for this implementation. We are in the process of going to another physics engine but it is out of scope to apply that engine to this project.

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• The type of programmer I want to be [closed]

  - by Aventinus_

  I'm an undergraduate Software Engineer student, although I've decided that pure programming is what I want to do for the rest of my life. The thing is that programming is a vast field and although most of its aspects are extremely interesting, soon or later I'll have to choose one (?) to focus on. I have several ideas on small projects I'd like to develop this summer, having in mind that this will gain me some experience and, in the best scenario, some cash. But the most important reason I'd like to develop something close to “professional” is to give myself direction on what I want to do as a programmer. One path is that of the Web Programmer. I enjoy PHP and MySQL, as well as HTML and CSS, although I don't really like ASP.NET. I can see myself writing web apps, using the above technologies, as well as XML and Javascript. I also have a neat idea on a Facebook app. The other path is that of the Desktop Programmer. This is a little more complicated cause I really-really enjoy high level languages such as Java and Python but not the low level ones, such as C. I use both Linux and Windows for the last 6 years and I like their latest DEs (meaning Gnome Shell and Metro). I can see myself writing desktop applications for both OSs as long as it means high level programming. Ideally I'd like being able to help the development of GNOME. The last path that interests me is the path of the Smartphone Programmer. I have created some sample applications on Android and due to Java I found it a quite interesting experience. I can also see myself as an independent smartphone developer. These 3 paths seem equally interesting at the moment due to the shallowness of my experience, I guess. I know that I should spend time with all of them and then choose the right one for me but I'd like to know what are the pros and cons in terms of learning curve, fun, job finding and of course financial rewards with each of these paths. I have fair or basic understanding of the languages/technologies I described earlier and this question will help me choose where to focus, at least for now.

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• Why is Java the lingua franca at so many institutions?

  - by Billy ONeal

  EDIT: This question at first seems to be bashing Java, and I guess at this point it is a bit. However, the bigger point I am trying to make is why any one single language is chosen as the one end all be all solution to all problems. Java happens to be the one that's used so that's the one I had to beat on here, but I'm not intentionality ripping Java a new one :) I don't like Java in most academic settings. I'm not saying the language itself is bad -- it has several extremely desirable aspects, most importantly the ability to run without recompilation on most any platform. Nothing wrong with using the language for Your Next App ^TM. (Not something I would personally do, but that's more because I have less experience with it, rather than it's design being poor) I think it is a waste that high level CS courses are taught using Java as a language. Too many of my co-students cannot program worth a damn, because they don't know how to work in a non-garbage-collected world. They don't fundamentally understand the machines they are programming for. When someone can work outside of a garbage collected world, they can work inside of one, but not vice versa. GC is a tool, not a crutch. But the way it is used to teach computer science students is a as a crutch. Computer science should not teach an entire suite of courses tailored to a single language. Students leave with the idea that all good design is idiomatic Java design, and that Object Oriented Design is the ONE TRUE WAY THAT IS THE ONLY WAY THINGS CAN BE DONE. Other languages, at least one of them not being a garbage collected language, should be used in teaching, in order to give the graduate a better understanding of the machines. It is an embarrassment that somebody with a PHD in CS from a respected institution cannot program their way out of a paper bag. What's worse, is that when I talk to those CS professors who actually do understand how things operate, they share feelings like this, that we're doing a disservice to our students by doing everything in Java. (Note that the above would be the same if I replaced it with any other language, generally using a single language is the problem, not Java itself) In total, I feel I can no longer respect any kind of degree at all -- when I can't see those around me able to program their way out of fizzbuzz problems. Why/how did it get to be this way?

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• Are there any good Java/JVM libraries for my Expression Tree architecture?

  - by Snuggy

  My team and I are developing an enterprise-level application and I have devised an architecture for it that's best described as an "Expression Tree". The basic idea is that the leaf nodes of the tree are very simple expressions (perhaps simple values or strings). Nodes closer to the trunk will get more and more complex, taking the simpler nodes as their inputs and returning more complex results for their parents. Looking at it the other way, the application performs some task, and for this it creates a root expression. The root expression divides its input into smaller units and creates child expressions, which when evaluated it can use to build it's own result. The subdividing process continues until the simplest leaf nodes. There are two very important aspects of this architecture: It must be possible to manipulate nodes of the tree after it is built. The nodes may be given new input values to work with and any change in result for that node needs to be propagated back up the tree to the root node. The application must make best use of available processors and ultimately be scalable to other computers in a grid or in the cloud. Nodes in the tree will often be updating concurrently and notifying other interested nodes in the tree when they get a new value. Unfortunately, I'm not at liberty to discuss my actual application, but to aid understanding a little bit, you might imagine a kind of spreadsheet application being implemented with a similar architecture, where changes to cells in the table are propagated all over the place to other cells that need the result. The spreadsheet could get so massive that applying multi-core multi-computer distributed system to solve it would be of benefit. I've got my prototype "Expression Engine" working nicely on a single multi-core PC but I've started to run into a few concurrency issues (as expected because I haven't been taking too much care so far) so it's now time to start thinking about migrating the Engine to a more robust library, and that leads to a number of related questions: Is there any precedent for my "Expression Tree" architecture that I could research? What programming concepts should I consider. I realise this approach has many similarities to a functional programming style, and I'm already aware of the concepts of using futures and actors. Are there any others? Are there any languages or libraries that I should study? This question is inspired by my accidental discovery of Scala and the Akka library (which has good support for Actors, Futures, Distributed workloads etc.) and I'm wondering if there is anything else I should be looking at as well?

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• Imperative vs. component based programming [closed]

  - by AlexW

  I've been thinking about how programming and more specifically the teaching of programming is advocated amongst the community (online). Often I've heard that Ruby and RoR is an ideal platform for learning to program. I completely disagree... RoR and Ruby are based on the application of the component based paradigm, which means they are ideal for rapid application development. This is much like the MVC model in PHP and ASP.NET But, learning a proper imperative language like Java or C/C++ (or even Perl and PHP) is the only way for a new programmer to explore logic itself, and not get too bogged down in architectural concerns like the need for separation of concerns, and the preference for components. Maybe it's a personal preference thing. I rather think that the most interesting aspects to programming are the procedural bits of code I write that actually do stuff rather than the project planning, and modelling that comes about from fully object oriented engineering or simply using the MVC model. I know this may sound confused to some of you. I feel strongly though that the best way for programming to be taught is through imperative and procedural methods. Architectural (component) methods come later, if at all. After all, none of the amazing algorithms that exist were based on OOP practice! It's all procedural code when it comes to the 'magic'. OOP is useful in creating products and utilities. Algorithms are what makes things happen, and move data around, and so imperative (and/or procedural) code are what matters most. When I see programmers recommending Ruby on Rails to newbie developers, I think it's just so wrong. Just because you write less code with Ruby does not make it easier to do! It's the opposite... you have to know loads more to appreciate its succinct nature. New coders who really want to understand the nuts and bolts of coding need to go away and figure out writing methods/functions (i.e. imperative programming) and working in procedural style, in order to grasp the fundamentals, first, before looking into architectural ways of working. So, my question is: should Ruby ever be recommended as a first language? I think no (obviously)... what arguments are there for it?

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• Programming tourism

  - by Andrew_B

  I'm going on vacation to Paris, France for 10 days. Actually, it's my girlfriend's wish to go there but I'm not very interested in visiting, sightseeing, etc. Recently, I came up with an idea of trying to do something like programming tourism. :) I'd like to do something related to programming in a startup-like company. I do not want a salary or any kind of compensation. I want to overview process, social aspects, environment and "what it feels like" to development software in another country. I'm from Russia. I've been a software developer since 2003. I prefer C#4 but I'm ready to use anything Turing-complete. I have some MS certifications and am familiar with all .NETs since 1.1. Currently I'm finishing PhD in CS. I'm interested in multidimensional indexing and I can turn any piece of data and code to OLAP system. :) But it'd take too much time. What can I do? I have no more than one week. I want a totally complete project in a short amount of time. Implement some features in well-tested project Do a code review Debug memory, performance and concurrency issues Do unit testing So, about the questions: Is it legal? I'm ready to sign NDA if it's necessary. I'll have tourist visa. Is it possible? I'm really sure that bureaucratic companies with lots of HRs and PMs will not allow such experiments. But small companies can afford it. I'm ready to guarantee support on my code after leaving home :) P.S. I still havn't started learning French :) I hope it will not take too much time :) P.P.S. Yes, it's girlfriend-approved. What's in it for me? It's fun. It's fun to see new systems and people who created them. It's fun to complete meaningful things. Quickly. What's in it for them? Feature, debug, review or test. If my short-term colleagues will like this style of working I can invite them to make same trip into my company :) I think in Russia it's even more exciting :)

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• Trying to find resources to learn how to test software [closed]

  - by Davek804

  First off, yes this is a general question, and I'd be perfectly happy to move this to another portion of SE, but I didn't see a more fitting sub. Basically, I am hoping a more experienced QA tester can come along and really fill in some basics for me. So far, websites seem to be sparse in terms of explaining languages involved, basic practices, etc. So, I'm sorry in advance if this is too general, but towards the end of this post I ask some specific questions if it's just absolutely unacceptable to speak in general terms. I just landed a position as Junior Systems and QA Engineer with a social media startup. Their QA and testing is almost nonexistent, so if I do a good job, I imagine I'll find a lot of bugs and have a secure role in the business. I'm pretty good with the systems aspect of my role, but I need to learn more about the QA and testing aspects. We run hardware that's touchscreen based - the user can use and interact with the devices. So, in terms of my QA role, in the short term, I need to build scripts to test the hardware/software as a 'user' to try to uncover bugs. First off, what language should these scripts be written in? Does anyone have some examples? What about the longer term 'automated testing'? I'm familiar with regression testing as the developer adds in new features, sure, but the 50,000 other types of testing, not so much. Most of our hardware runs dotnet/C# code, with some of the servers running Java - but I don't expect to need to run tests on the Java side at this point. I hope to meet with one developer today and try to get a good idea of the output from the hardware so that I can 'mock' this data that gets sent to servers, to try to bugtest. Eventually, we will be moving the hardware to be closer to where I live and work, so that I can test virtually and on real hardware. So a lot of the bugs we're dealing with now are like this: the Local Server, which kiosks report their data to gets updated from the kiosks, but the remote server does not. Or, vis versa when the user registers on a kiosk, the remote server updates but the local server does not. But yeah, without much more detail, I imagine a lot of this info isn't helpful. I've bought a book "How Google Tests Software", but it's really a book more about 'how their software testing is different from Microsoft'. It doesn't teach how to test so much as why their methods are better. Does anyone have a good book that I can buy? An ebook maybe? My local Barnes and Noble kinda had a terrible selection. I also figure a book from 2005 is not necessarily that good either.

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• Oracle Data Protection: How Do You Measure Up? - Part 1

  - by tichien

  This is the first installment in a blog series, which examines the results of a recent database protection survey conducted by Database Trends and Applications (DBTA) Magazine. All Oracle IT professionals know that a sound, well-tested backup and recovery strategy plays a foundational role in protecting their Oracle database investments, which in many cases, represent the lifeblood of business operations. But just how common are the data protection strategies used and the challenges faced across various enterprises? In January 2014, Database Trends and Applications Magazine (DBTA), in partnership with Oracle, released the results of its “Oracle Database Management and Data Protection Survey”. Two hundred Oracle IT professionals were interviewed on various aspects of their database backup and recovery strategies, in order to identify the top organizational and operational challenges for protecting Oracle assets. Here are some of the key findings from the survey: The majority of respondents manage backups for tens to hundreds of databases, representing total data volume of 5 to 50TB (14% manage 50 to 200 TB and some up to 5 PB or more). About half of the respondents (48%) use HA technologies such as RAC, Data Guard, or storage mirroring, however these technologies are deployed on only 25% of their databases (or less). This indicates that backups are still the predominant method for database protection among enterprises. Weekly full and daily incremental backups to disk were the most popular strategy, used by 27% of respondents, followed by daily full backups, which are used by 17%. Interestingly, over half of the respondents reported that 10% or less of their databases undergo regular backup testing.  A few key backup and recovery challenges resonated across many of the respondents: Poor performance and impact on productivity (see Figure 1) 38% of respondents indicated that backups are too slow, resulting in prolonged backup windows. In a similar vein, 23% complained that backups degrade the performance of production systems. Lack of continuous protection (see Figure 2) 35% revealed that less than 5% of Oracle data is protected in real-time.  Management complexity 25% stated that recovery operations are too complex. (see Figure 1)  31% reported that backups need constant management. (see Figure 1) 45% changed their backup tools as a result of growing data volumes, while 29% changed tools due to the complexity of the tools themselves. Figure 1: Current Challenges with Database Backup and Recovery Figure 2: Percentage of Organization’s Data Backed Up in Real-Time or Near Real-Time In future blogs, we will discuss each of these challenges in more detail and bring insight into how the backup technology industry has attempted to resolve them.

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• Desktop SATA drives in SATA <-> FC array

  - by chris

  Let's assume you've got a box like one of these with space for 24 SATA disks. What are the best bits of advice for deploying this? For instance, should you be greedy and go for the 1.5 or 2tb disks or are they just not reliable enough to be used in an array like this and you should stick with 640gb or 750gb disks instead? Also, I know that FC (or generically, "enterprise class") disks have a different error recovery strategy than desktop disks. An enterprise disk will fail a read quickly and report to the controller that it wasn't able to read that block, and the RAID controller will quickly regenerate the info from the parity disk and mark the block as bad. A desktop disk, on the other hand, will try and try and try again to get the data, and in pathological cases this may cause a raid controller to fail the whole disk because the read operation times out. So there are a couple aspects to this question: What's the best sort of disk to get today? (ie specific disks on the market in Feb 2010) Generically, what should someone look for when trying to buy something like this that kinda walks the line between enterprise and consumer? Lastly -- is there anything that can be done with current "consumer" disks to make them more suitable for array use? IE can you use a SMART configuration to change the error recovery strategy used by the disk? Thanks!

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