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  • Most underestimated programming tool [closed]

    - by Anto
    We have many great tools which helps a lot when programming, such as good programmers text editors, IDEs, debuggers, version control systems etc. Some of the tools are more or less "must have" tools for getting the job done (e.g. compilers). There are still always tools which do help a lot, but still don't get so much attention, for various reasons, for instance, when they were released, they were ahead of their time and now are more or less forgotten. What type of programming tool do you think is the most underestimated one? Motivate your answer.

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  • Replication Services as ETL extraction tool

    - by jorg
    In my last blog post I explained the principles of Replication Services and the possibilities it offers in a BI environment. One of the possibilities I described was the use of snapshot replication as an ETL extraction tool: “Snapshot Replication can also be useful in BI environments, if you don’t need a near real-time copy of the database, you can choose to use this form of replication. Next to an alternative for Transactional Replication it can be used to stage data so it can be transformed and moved into the data warehousing environment afterwards. In many solutions I have seen developers create multiple SSIS packages that simply copies data from one or more source systems to a staging database that figures as source for the ETL process. The creation of these packages takes a lot of (boring) time, while Replication Services can do the same in minutes. It is possible to filter out columns and/or records and it can even apply schema changes automatically so I think it offers enough features here. I don’t know how the performance will be and if it really works as good for this purpose as I expect, but I want to try this out soon!” Well I have tried it out and I must say it worked well. I was able to let replication services do work in a fraction of the time it would cost me to do the same in SSIS. What I did was the following: Configure snapshot replication for some Adventure Works tables, this was quite simple and straightforward. Create an SSIS package that executes the snapshot replication on demand and waits for its completion. This is something that you can’t do with out of the box functionality. While configuring the snapshot replication two SQL Agent Jobs are created, one for the creation of the snapshot and one for the distribution of the snapshot. Unfortunately these jobs are  asynchronous which means that if you execute them they immediately report back if the job started successfully or not, they do not wait for completion and report its result afterwards. So I had to create an SSIS package that executes the jobs and waits for their completion before the rest of the ETL process continues. Fortunately I was able to create the SSIS package with the desired functionality. I have made a step-by-step guide that will help you configure the snapshot replication and I have uploaded the SSIS package you need to execute it. Configure snapshot replication   The first step is to create a publication on the database you want to replicate. Connect to SQL Server Management Studio and right-click Replication, choose for New.. Publication…   The New Publication Wizard appears, click Next Choose your “source” database and click Next Choose Snapshot publication and click Next   You can now select tables and other objects that you want to publish Expand Tables and select the tables that are needed in your ETL process In the next screen you can add filters on the selected tables which can be very useful. Think about selecting only the last x days of data for example. Its possible to filter out rows and/or columns. In this example I did not apply any filters. Schedule the Snapshot Agent to run at a desired time, by doing this a SQL Agent Job is created which we need to execute from a SSIS package later on. Next you need to set the Security Settings for the Snapshot Agent. Click on the Security Settings button.   In this example I ran the Agent under the SQL Server Agent service account. This is not recommended as a security best practice. Fortunately there is an excellent article on TechNet which tells you exactly how to set up the security for replication services. Read it here and make sure you follow the guidelines!   On the next screen choose to create the publication at the end of the wizard Give the publication a name (SnapshotTest) and complete the wizard   The publication is created and the articles (tables in this case) are added Now the publication is created successfully its time to create a new subscription for this publication.   Expand the Replication folder in SSMS and right click Local Subscriptions, choose New Subscriptions   The New Subscription Wizard appears   Select the publisher on which you just created your publication and select the database and publication (SnapshotTest)   You can now choose where the Distribution Agent should run. If it runs at the distributor (push subscriptions) it causes extra processing overhead. If you use a separate server for your ETL process and databases choose to run each agent at its subscriber (pull subscriptions) to reduce the processing overhead at the distributor. Of course we need a database for the subscription and fortunately the Wizard can create it for you. Choose for New database   Give the database the desired name, set the desired options and click OK You can now add multiple SQL Server Subscribers which is not necessary in this case but can be very useful.   You now need to set the security settings for the Distribution Agent. Click on the …. button Again, in this example I ran the Agent under the SQL Server Agent service account. Read the security best practices here   Click Next   Make sure you create a synchronization job schedule again. This job is also necessary in the SSIS package later on. Initialize the subscription at first synchronization Select the first box to create the subscription when finishing this wizard Complete the wizard by clicking Finish The subscription will be created In SSMS you see a new database is created, the subscriber. There are no tables or other objects in the database available yet because the replication jobs did not ran yet. Now expand the SQL Server Agent, go to Jobs and search for the job that creates the snapshot:   Rename this job to “CreateSnapshot” Now search for the job that distributes the snapshot:   Rename this job to “DistributeSnapshot” Create an SSIS package that executes the snapshot replication We now need an SSIS package that will take care of the execution of both jobs. The CreateSnapshot job needs to execute and finish before the DistributeSnapshot job runs. After the DistributeSnapshot job has started the package needs to wait until its finished before the package execution finishes. The Execute SQL Server Agent Job Task is designed to execute SQL Agent Jobs from SSIS. Unfortunately this SSIS task only executes the job and reports back if the job started succesfully or not, it does not report if the job actually completed with success or failure. This is because these jobs are asynchronous. The SSIS package I’ve created does the following: It runs the CreateSnapshot job It checks every 5 seconds if the job is completed with a for loop When the CreateSnapshot job is completed it starts the DistributeSnapshot job And again it waits until the snapshot is delivered before the package will finish successfully Quite simple and the package is ready to use as standalone extract mechanism. After executing the package the replicated tables are added to the subscriber database and are filled with data:   Download the SSIS package here (SSIS 2008) Conclusion In this example I only replicated 5 tables, I could create a SSIS package that does the same in approximately the same amount of time. But if I replicated all the 70+ AdventureWorks tables I would save a lot of time and boring work! With replication services you also benefit from the feature that schema changes are applied automatically which means your entire extract phase wont break. Because a snapshot is created using the bcp utility (bulk copy) it’s also quite fast, so the performance will be quite good. Disadvantages of using snapshot replication as extraction tool is the limitation on source systems. You can only choose SQL Server or Oracle databases to act as a publisher. So if you plan to build an extract phase for your ETL process that will invoke a lot of tables think about replication services, it would save you a lot of time and thanks to the Extract SSIS package I’ve created you can perfectly fit it in your usual SSIS ETL process.

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  • Ignoring Robots - Or Better Yet, Counting Them Separately

    - by [email protected]
    It is quite common to have web sessions that are undesirable from the point of view of analytics. For example, when there are either internal or external robots that check the site's health, index it or just extract information from it. These robotic session do not behave like humans and if their volume is high enough they can sway the statistics and models.One easy way to deal with these sessions is to define a partitioning variable for all the models that is a flag indicating whether the session is "Normal" or "Robot". Then all the reports and the predictions can use the "Normal" partition, while the counts and statistics for Robots are still available.In order for this to work, though, it is necessary to have two conditions:1. It is possible to identify the Robotic sessions.2. No learning happens before the identification of the session as a robot.The first point is obvious, but the second may require some explanation. While the default in RTD is to learn at the end of the session, it is possible to learn in any entry point. This is a setting for each model. There are various reasons to learn in a specific entry point, for example if there is a desire to capture exactly and precisely the data in the session at the time the event happened as opposed to including changes to the end of the session.In any case, if RTD has already learned on the session before the identification of a robot was done there is no way to retract this learning.Identifying the robotic sessions can be done through the use of rules and heuristics. For example we may use some of the following:Maintain a list of known robotic IPs or domainsDetect very long sessions, lasting more than a few hours or visiting more than 500 pagesDetect "robotic" behaviors like a methodic click on all the link of every pageDetect a session with 10 pages clicked at exactly 20 second intervalsDetect extensive non-linear navigationNow, an interesting experiment would be to use the flag above as an output of a model to see if there are more subtle characteristics of robots such that a model can be used to detect robots, even if they fall through the cracks of rules and heuristics.In any case, the basic and simple technique of partitioning the models by the type of session is simple to implement and provides a lot of advantages.

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  • How broad should a computer science/engineering student go?

    - by AskQuestions
    I have less than 2 years of college left and I still don't know what to focus on. But this is not about me, this is about being a future developer. I realize that questions like "Which language should I learn next?" are not really popular, but I think my question is broader than that. I often see people write things like "You have to learn many different things. Being a developer is not about learning one programming language / technology and then doing that for the rest of your life". Well, sure, but it's impossible to really learn everything thoroughly. Does that mean that one should just learn the basics of everything and then learn some things more thoroughly AFTER getting a particular job? I mean, the best way to learn programming is by actually programming stuff... But projects take time. Does an average developer really switch between (for example) being a web developer, doing artificial intelligence and machine learning related stuff and programming close to the hardware? I mean, I know a lot of different things, but I don't feel proficient in any of those things. If I want to find a job as a web developer (that's just an example) after I finish college, shouldn't I do some web related project (maybe using something I still don't know) rather than try to learn functional programming? So, the question is: How broad should a computer science student's field of focus be? One programming language is surely far too narrow, but what is too broad?

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  • Looking for suggestions: becoming a hireable, young programmer [closed]

    - by Dan
    I am a 17 year old Java programmer that has filled the last year with learning all of the ins and outs of Java - Using Eclipse, and the help of a friend of the family (a Java programming architect for some company), I have learned everything from serializing objects, basic networking, generics, reflection, multi-threading, code optimization and efficiency & some concurrency safety - built my own proxy class, and nowadays, I answer questions on Project Euler. I am seeking some suggestions though on where I go next, or where I go from here to get a job in programming. I dedicate at least an hour every day to coding, sometimes literally, the entire day, and I really have come to love the process. I just started reading Effective Java (v2), and learning Scala (as I see often, possibly the Java replacement) I will be going to college for Computer Science next year - and taking AP computer science this year (however, I took a practice exam and got an 87, only need a 60to70 to pass, so no need to study for it too much) -- I was wondering if getting the SE 7 OCA and OCP would help me in trying to get a programming job. I looked around and most people have said online that an OCA/OCP are practically useless, but, at my age do they make me any more credible? More or less, what would you recommend to get a job in programming these days - or distinguish yourself from the crowd? I have enough time and dedication to learn another language, or anything really. Thank you very much.

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  • XNA: How to make the Vaus Spacecraft move left and right on directional keys pressed?

    - by Will Marcouiller
    I'm currently learning XNA per suggestion from this question's accepted answer: Where to start writing games, any tutorials or the like? I have then installed everything to get ready to work with XNA Game Studio 4.0. General Objective Writing an Arkanoid-like game. I want to make my ship move when I press either left or right keys. Code Sample protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { // Allows the game to exit if (GamePad.GetState(PlayerIndex.One).Buttons.Back == ButtonState.Pressed) this.Exit(); // TODO: Add your update logic here #if WINDOWS if (Keyboard.GetState().IsKeyDown(Keys.Escape)) this.Exit(); else { if (Keyboard.GetState().IsKeyDown(Keys.Left)) MoveLeft(gameTime); } #endif // Move the sprite around. BounceEnergyBall(gameTime); base.Update(gameTime); } void MoveLeft(GameTime gameTime) { // I'm not sure how to play with the Vector2 object and its position here!... _vausSpacecraftPos /= _vausSpacecraftSpeed.X; // This line makes the spacecraft move diagnol-top-left. } Question What formula shall I use, or what algorithm shall I consider to make my spaceship move as expected left and right properly? Thanks for your thoughts! Any clue will be appreciated. I am on my learning curve though I have years of development behind me (already)!

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  • Online email tracing tool

    - by Clint
    About 2 years ago I came across an online tool that would allow you to append something to the end of a destination email address. When the email was opened, the tool would email you their geographical location. Does anyone know anything about this tool? If it still exists?

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  • How to Use WinMerge as the Diff tool for Mercurial

    - by quanticle
    I'm using the Mercurial distributed version control system, and I'm wondering how I can configure it to use WinMerge instead of its own internal diff tool. I've already got WinMerge as the merge tool, but I want Mercurial to use WinMerge when I type: hg diff Is there any way of doing that, or am I stuck with Mercurial's internal diff tool?

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  • Media file segmenter like tool for linux

    - by Raja
    Hello everyone I'm looking for a tool for linux which can segment a video file into multiple small .ts files. I know one for Mac OS X called media file segmenter which is a simple command line tool. I really appreciate if anyone can point me to an equivalent linux tool. I don't know if these types of non-programming questions are allowed on this site. my apologies for that.

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  • Rsync like windows backup tool

    - by Halfgaar
    Hi, I need to backup some windows machines and have been unable to find the proper tool. What I need is a tool that does efficient copying of changed files to a windows network location, like Rsync does. In turn, the server will then back that up using rdiff-backup, a tool which does very clever incremental backups. Right now I'm using windows' 7 included backup feature, but I really don't get that. It's too much off-topic, but it doesn't suffice (seems buggy as well). I looked into Amanda, but as soon as it wanted to install MySQL, I aborted. I also tried Deltacopy, but unfortunately, I don't remember what the problem with that was... Any advice for an rsync like tool that just does daily syncs to a network location?

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  • Freeware (preferably open-source) tool for creating multi-file spanning archives as a self merging SFX

    - by Lockszmith
    I have a large file I want to transfer using either Internet storage hosting, DVD-Rs or USB storage, which sometimes is limited to FAT file-systems (for example: mobile phones) What I'm basically looking for is a tool that create multiple files/volumes (less than 2GB each - FAT's file size limit) which are packed with a self-extracting executable. Currently the only tool I found doing this is WinRAR, but that's shareware, and not free. Is there any Free, preferably Open-Source tool that does that? Thank in advance

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  • Online modelling tool for server desing / architecture

    - by 2ge
    I am looking for some online (the best is free) tool for designing our servers. We use almost 10 servers now, and it becoming mess, to remember, where, what service is running. So, I'd like to have some online modeling tool, where I can set up things like: - server host - server hw parameters - server os - server services with running programs I am looking for server designing tool like online SQL modeling on http://ondras.zarovi.cz/sql/demo/?keyword=default (WWW SQL designer) Any ideas ?

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  • Offline web font optimization tool

    - by avok00
    I have a few web fonts on my web site that I want to reduce in size. I tried http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fontface/generator with very good results, but I need an offline professional tool to rely on. Can somebody recommend such a tool? I am not a specialist font creator, so I need something like a wizard that can guide me through font optimization. Any suggestion is much appretiated! EDIT: To make myself more clear, I need a font subsetting tool

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  • I need a tool that can organize my time and manage my tasks

    - by wael34218
    Ok so I am really swamped at work, and need a tool that keep tracks of what I did and what I didn't. I need the tool to do the following: I need that tool to set priorities on my tasks. Some tasks do have subtasks inside of it, so I need to keep track of those as well. Pending status, some tasks may require that I need to wait for other parties to finish their work. Intuitive and easy to use. Run on Mac OS X

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  • Free tool to automatically deskew and crop PDF made up of scanned pages [closed]

    - by Pietro M.
    I have several PDFs made up of book pages' scans. The scans are made from two pages at a time and some of these scans are skewed, making text appear slightly tilted. I'm looking for a tool that could allow me to do an automatic optimization by deskewing the scans without losing readability. I've found the GPL software briss to crop the scans in order to have a 1:1 page ratio instead of 2:1, but I don't have any tool to deskew the pages. I stumbled upon unpaper, another open source tool that seems perfect for what I want to do, but that tool is Linux only and it doesn't work on PDF files directly. Any hint is appreciated. Thank you.

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  • Rsync like windows backup tool

    - by Halfgaar
    I need to backup some windows machines and have been unable to find the proper tool. What I need is a tool that does efficient copying of changed files to a windows network location, like Rsync does. In turn, the server will then back that up using rdiff-backup, a tool which does very clever incremental backups. Right now I'm using windows' 7 included backup feature, but I really don't get that. It's too much off-topic, but it doesn't suffice (seems buggy as well). I looked into Amanda, but as soon as it wanted to install MySQL, I aborted. I also tried Deltacopy, but unfortunately, I don't remember what the problem with that was... Any advice for an rsync like tool that just does daily syncs to a network location?

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  • Tool to collect stacktraces in server logs

    - by hstoerr
    Is there a tool collect and count all different stacktraces in a bunch of server logfiles? Sometimes you have just too many stacktraces that repeat over and over. So it can be difficult to spot different problems between the stacktraces. So the idea would be to have a tool that looks for stacktraces, compares them and counts them. It would be nice if the tool could ignore minor differences (e.g. $Proxy150.dispatchCalls() versus $Proxy25.dispatchCalls() ).

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  • New SSIS tool on Codeplex – SSIS Log Analyzer

    I stumbled across a new SSIS tool on Codeplex today, the SSIS Log Analyzer which was only released a few days ago. Whilst it is a beta release and currently only supports 2005 (2008 is promised) it looks quite interesting. It seems to be a fancy log viewer, but with some clever features and a nice looking front-end. I’ve only read the documentation so far, but it has graphs and a debug view that shows your package with the colour animations similar to when debugging in BIDS, and everyone knows, the way the pretty colours and numbers change is the best bit! I’ll quote some of the features for you here and then let you make your own mind up, is it useful in the real world? Option to analyze the logs manually by applying row and column filters over the log data or by using queries to specify more complex criterions. Automated Performance Analysis which provides a quick graphical look on which tasks spent most time during package execution. Rerun (debug) the entire sequence of events which happened during package execution showing the flow of control in graphical form, changes in runtime values for each task like execution duration etc. Support for Auto Analyzers to automatically find out issues and provide suggestions for problems which can be figured out with the help of SSIS logs and/or package. Option to analyze just log file or log and package together. Provides a lightweight environment to have a quick look at the package. Opening it in BIDS takes some time as being an authoring environment it does all sorts of validations resulting in some delay. See http://ssisloganalyzer.codeplex.com/  for more details.

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  • New SSIS tool on Codeplex – SSIS Log Analyzer

    I stumbled across a new SSIS tool on Codeplex today, the SSIS Log Analyzer which was only released a few days ago. Whilst it is a beta release and currently only supports 2005 (2008 is promised) it looks quite interesting. It seems to be a fancy log viewer, but with some clever features and a nice looking front-end. I’ve only read the documentation so far, but it has graphs and a debug view that shows your package with the colour animations similar to when debugging in BIDS, and everyone knows, the way the pretty colours and numbers change is the best bit! I’ll quote some of the features for you here and then let you make your own mind up, is it useful in the real world? Option to analyze the logs manually by applying row and column filters over the log data or by using queries to specify more complex criterions. Automated Performance Analysis which provides a quick graphical look on which tasks spent most time during package execution. Rerun (debug) the entire sequence of events which happened during package execution showing the flow of control in graphical form, changes in runtime values for each task like execution duration etc. Support for Auto Analyzers to automatically find out issues and provide suggestions for problems which can be figured out with the help of SSIS logs and/or package. Option to analyze just log file or log and package together. Provides a lightweight environment to have a quick look at the package. Opening it in BIDS takes some time as being an authoring environment it does all sorts of validations resulting in some delay. See http://ssisloganalyzer.codeplex.com/  for more details.

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