Search Results

Search found 18151 results on 727 pages for 'upside down'.

Page 288/727 | < Previous Page | 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295  | Next Page >

• Forum software advice needed

  - by David Thompson

  Hello All ... we want to migrate our sites current forum (proprietary built) to a newer, more modern (feature rich) platform. I've been looking around at the available options and have narrowed it down to vBulletin, Vanilla or Phorum (unless you have another suggestion ?). I hope someone here can give me some feedback on their experiences either migrating to a new forum or working deeply with one. The current forum we have has approx 2.2 million threads in it and is contained in a MySQL database. Data Migration is obviously the first issue, is one of the major Forum vendors better or worse in this regard ? The software needs to be able to be clustered and cached to ensure availability and performance. We want it to be PHP based and store it's data in MySQL. The code needs to be open to allow us to highly customise the software both to strip out a lot of stuff and be able to integrate our sites features. A lot of the forums I've looked at have a lot of duplicate features to our main site, in particular member management, profiles etc. I realise we'll have to do a good bit of development in removing these and tieing it all back to the main site so we want to find a platform that makes this kind of integration as easy as possible. Finally I guess if 'future proofing' the forum (as best as possible) given the above. Which platform will allow us to customise it but also allow us to keep instep with upgrades. Which forum software has the best track record for bringing online new features in a timely manner ? etc. etc. I know it's a big question but if anyone here has any experience in some or all of the above I'd be very grateful.

  Read the article

• AJI Report #19 | Scott K Davis and his son Tommy on Gamification and Programming for Kids

  - by Jeff Julian

  We are very excited about this show. John and Jeff sat down with Scott Davis and his son Tommy to talk about Gamification and Programming for Kids. Tommy is nine years old and the Iowa Code Camp was his second time presenting. Scott and Tommy introduce a package called Scratch that was developed by MIT to teach kids about logic and interacting with programming using sprites. Tommy's favorite experience with programming right now is Lego Mindstorms because of the interaction with the Legos and the development. Most adults when they get started with development also got started with interacting more with the physical machines. The next generation is given amazing tools, but the tools tend to be sealed and the physical interaction is not there. With some of these alternative hobby platforms like Legos, Arduino, and .NET Micro Framework, kids can write some amazing application and see their code work with physical movement and interaction with devices and sensors. In the second half of this podcast, Scott talks about how companies can us Gamification to prompt employees to interact with software and processes in the organization. We see gamification throughout the consumer space and you need to do is open up the majority of the apps on our phones or tablets and there is some interaction point to give the user a reward for using the tool. Scott gets into his product Qonqr which is described as the board game Risk and Foursquare together. Scott gets into the different mindsets of gamers (Bartle Index) and how you can use these mindsets to get the most out of your team through gamification techniques. Listen to the Show Site: http://scottkdavis.com/ Twitter: @ScottKDavis LinkedIn: ScottKDavis Scratch: http://scratch.mit.edu/ Lego Mindstorms: http://mindstorms.lego.com/ Bartle Test: Wikipedia Gamification: Wikipedia

  Read the article

• Beware: Upgrade to ASP.NET MVC 2.0 with care if you use AntiForgeryToken

  - by James Crowley

  If you're thinking of upgrading to MVC 2.0, and you take advantage of the AntiForgeryToken support then be careful - you can easily kick out all active visitors after the upgrade until they restart their browser. Why's this?For the anti forgery validation to take place, ASP.NET MVC uses a session cookie called "__RequestVerificationToken_Lw__". This gets checked for and de-serialized on any page where there is an AntiForgeryToken() call. However, the format of this validation cookie has apparently changed between MVC 1.0 and MVC 2.0. What this means is that when you make to switch on your production server to MVC 2.0, suddenly all your visitors session cookies are invalid, resulting in calls to AntiForgeryToken() throwing exceptions (even on a standard GET request) when de-serializing it: [InvalidCastException: Unable to cast object of type 'System.Web.UI.Triplet' to type 'System.Object[]'.]   System.Web.Mvc.AntiForgeryDataSerializer.Deserialize(String serializedToken) +104[HttpAntiForgeryException (0x80004005): A required anti-forgery token was not supplied or was invalid.]   System.Web.Mvc.AntiForgeryDataSerializer.Deserialize(String serializedToken) +368   System.Web.Mvc.HtmlHelper.GetAntiForgeryTokenAndSetCookie(String salt, String domain, String path) +209   System.Web.Mvc.HtmlHelper.AntiForgeryToken(String salt, String domain, String path) +16   System.Web.Mvc.HtmlHelper.AntiForgeryToken() +10  <snip> So you've just kicked all your active users out of your site with exceptions until they think to restart their browser (to clear the session cookies). The only work around for now is to either write some code that wipes this cookie - or disable use of AntiForgeryToken() in your MVC 2.0 site until you're confident all session cookies will have expired. That in itself isn't very straightforward, given how frequently people tend to hibernate/standby their machines - the session cookie will only clear once the browser has been shut down and re-opened. Hope this helps someone out there!

  Read the article

• Flash in browsers does not play sound accurately using Pulse network audio

  - by Dave M G

  I use PulseAudio to send sound over the LAN to an audio server. When playing any Flash media in Firefox or Chrome, the sound flutters, as if the volume were going up and down every second. The problem does not exhibit with any other software, and I think it's specific to how Flash interacts with my sound set up. How do I get Flash to play nice with the PulseAudio network sound server? Update I have discovered that I can stop the sound fluttering if I follow these steps: Start a Flash video Run pulseaudio --kill on the server Wait about 7 seconds After this, the PulseAudio server automatically respawns, and the sound in the Flash video is perfect. The problem now, though, is that I have to do this every time I start a Flash video. This is obviously not desireable. So, the question is, how do I make whatever it is that makes the sound work when I go through these steps stick so that I don't have to do them? Also, I've uploaded some PulseAudio log output to Pastebin, taken while attempting to play a Flash video, if that helps. I've tried to get logging details from Flash, but despite installing and enabling Flash for debugging, it has not generated any ouput at all. Details I have uploaded an example video of the problem onto Youtube. In the video you can see the opening of a Ted Talk video, and the sound flutters as it plays. The video also stutters while playing back. Here are my sound device output settings:

  Read the article

• Oracle VM and JRockit Virtual Edition: Oracle Introduces Java Virtualization Solution for Oracle(R)

  - by adam.hawley

  Since the beginning, we've been talking to customers about how our approach to virtualization is different and more powerful than any other company because Oracle has the "full-stack" of software (and even hardware these days!) to work with to create more comprehensive, more powerful solutions. Having the virtualization layer, two enterprise class operating systems in Solaris and Enterprise Linux, and the leading enterprise software in nearly every layer of the data center stack, allows us to not just do virtualization for virtualization's sake but rather to provide complete virtualization solutions focused on making enterprise software easier to deploy, easier to manage, and easier to support through integration up and down the stack. Today, we announced the availability of a significant demonstration of that capability by announcing a WebLogic Suite option that permits the Oracle WebLogic Server 11g to run on a Java JVM (JRockit Virtual Edition) that itself runs directly on the Oracle VM Server for x86 / x64 without needing any operating system. Why would you want that? Better performance and better consolidation density, not to mention great security due to a lower "attack surface area". Oracle also announced the Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder product. Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder provides a framework for automatically capturing the configuration of existing software components and packaging them as self-contained building blocks known as appliances. So you know that complex application you've tweaked on your physical servers (or on other virtual environments for that matter)?  Virtual Assembly Builder will allow the automated collection of all the configuration data for the various application components that make up that multi-tier application and then use the information to create and package each component as a virtual machine so that the application can be deployed in your Oracle VM virtualization environment quickly and easily and just as it was configured it in your original environment. A slick, drag-and-drop GUI also serves as a powerful, intuitive interface for viewing and editing your assembly as needed.No one else can do complete virtualization solutions the way Oracle can and I think these offerings show what's possible when you have the right resources for elegantly solving the larger problems in the data center rather than just having to make-do with tools that are only operating at one layer of the stack. For more information, read the press release including the links to more information on various Oracle websites.

  Read the article

• A Look at the GridView's New Sorting Styles in ASP.NET 4.0

  Like every Web control in the ASP.NET toolbox, the GridView includes a variety of style-related properties, including CssClass, Font, ForeColor, BackColor, Width, Height, and so on. The GridView also includes style properties that apply to certain classes of rows in the grid, such as RowStyle, AlternatingRowStyle, HeaderStyle, and PagerStyle. Each of these meta-style properties offer the standard style properties (CssClass, Font, etc.) as subproperties. In ASP.NET 4.0, Microsoft added four new style properties to the GridView control: SortedAscendingHeaderStyle, SortedAscendingCellStyle, SortedDescendingHeaderStyle, and SortedDescendingCellStyle. These four properties are meta-style properties like RowStyle and HeaderStyle, but apply to column of cells rather than a row. These properties only apply when the GridView is sorted - if the grid's data is sorted in ascending order then the SortedAscendingHeaderStyle and SortedAscendingCellStyle properties define the styles for the column the data is sorted by. The SortedDescendingHeaderStyle and SortedDescendingCellStyle properties apply to the sorted column when the results are sorted in descending order. These four new properties make it easier to customize the appearance of the column by which the data is sorted. Using these properties along with a touch of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) it is possible to add up and down arrows to the sorted column's header to indicate whether the data is sorted in ascending or descending order. Likewise, these properties can be used to shade the sorted column or make its text bold. This article shows how to use these four new properties to style the sorted column. Read on to learn more! Read More >

  Read the article

• Supermicro IPMI SSL

  - by churnd

  I have a Supermicro X9SCA-F serverboard and I'm trying to secure Super Doctor III IPMI by using SSL. I generated my own certs (done this many times before), uploaded via the web interface, then it said it needed to restart & I clicked OK, but it never came back up. Right now it's not listening on port 80 or 443 it seems. I also power cycled the box a few times (shutting down & physically removing power for 5 mins), but that didn't seem to help either. Before I did this, it was working fine, so I'm not sure what may have happened?

  Read the article

• No Preview Images in File Open Dialogs on Windows 7

  - by Rick Strahl

  I’ve been updating some file uploader code in my photoalbum today and while I was working with the uploader I noticed that the File Open dialog using Silverlight that handles the file selections didn’t allow me to ever see an image preview for image files. It sure would be nice if I could preview the images I’m about to upload before selecting them from a list. Here’s what my list looked like: This is the Medium Icon view, but regardless of the views available including Content view only icons are showing up. Silverlight uses the standard Windows File Open Dialog so it uses all the same settings that apply to Explorer when displaying content. It turns out that the Customization options in particular are the problem here. Specifically the Always show icons, never thumbnails option: I had this option checked initially, because it’s one of the defenses against runaway random Explorer views that never stay set at my preferences. Alas, while this setting affects Explorer views apparently it also affects all dialog based views in the same way. Unchecking the option above brings back full thumbnailing for all content and icon views. Here’s the same Medium Icon view after turning the option off: which obviously works a whole lot better for selection of images. The bummer of this is that it’s not controllable at the dialog level – at least not in Silverlight. Dialogs obviously have different requirements than what you see in Explorer so the global configuration is a bit extreme especially when there are no overrides on the dialog interface. Certainly for Silverlight the ability to have previews is a key feature for many applications since it will be dealing with lots of media content most likely. Hope this helps somebody out. Thanks to Tim Heuer who helped me track this down on Twitter.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in Silverlight  Windows  

  Read the article

• IIS 7.5 Windows Authentication Not Working in Chrome

  - by Sam

  On a new installation of IIS 7.5 I have setup Windows Authentication on my Intranet. The providers I have used are 'NTLM' and negotiate in that order. This works fine in IE and Firefox but in chrome I get the following This web page is not available The web page at http://mysite.com/myintranet.php might be temporarily down or it may have moved permanently to a new web address. Error 338 (net::ERR_INVALID_AUTH_CREDENTIALS): Unknown error. I've tried looking online for a solution without any success. I'm running the latest version of Chrome 21.0.1180.60

  Read the article

• Web application development over C++ development..

  - by learnerforever

  Hi, I am CS undergrad and CS grad. In college I used to program in C/C++/java and have pretty much stuck to the same skill set in industry with 3 years experience. I like thinking,reading,applying logic etc, designing data structures, but I have little patience with debugging large C++ code. And having to deal with low level stuff like memory fault,memory corruption,compilation/linking issues. My confidence in programming is getting down due to this, but I like being in technical field. Does web application development like LAMP suit (Linux,apache,mysql,php),CSS,scripting (AMONG OTHER WEB DEVELOPMENT RELATED SKILLS) etc need lesser patience with debugging,and understanding of low level stuff, but your analysis/logical skills also get used? Also opportunities in web application development look more. Things like scalability, most of the stuff that Google does fascinates me, but for patience needed for dealing with C++ debugging. I make blunders while coding. How does the field look like outside C++? I am beginning to wonder if as a female, by moving to web application development, I can better manage work life balance. I have seen relatively lesser females in C++ than in Java/.net. Not very sure about web related stuff though. Also, what are the other hot technologies being used in web application development? lamp,css is something I know vaguely. Not in touch with keywords going on in this area. Please help!!.

  Read the article

• How to implement RLE into a tilemap?

  - by Smallbro

  Currently I've been using a 3D array for my tiles in a 2D world but the 3D side comes in when moving down into caves and whatnot. Now this is not memory efficient and I switched over to a 2D array and can now have much larger maps. The only issue I'm having now is that it seems that my tiles cannot occupy the same space as a tile on the same z level. My current structure means that each block has its own z variable. This is what it used to look like: map.blockData[x][y][z] = new Block(); however now it works like this map.blockData[x][y] = new Block(z); I'm not sure why but if I decide to use the same space on say the floor below it wont allow me to. Does anyone have any ideas on how I can add a z-axis to my 2D array? I'm using java but I reckon the concept carries across different languages. Edit: As Will posted, RLE sounds like the best method for achieving a fast 3D array. However I'm struggling to understand how I would even start to implement it? Would I create a 4D array the 4th being something which controls how many to skip? Or would the x-axis simply change altogether and have large gaps in between - for example [5][y][z] would skip 5 tiles? Is there something really obvious here which I am missing? The number of z levels I'm trying to have is around 66, it would be preferably that I can have up to or more than 1000 in x and y.

  Read the article

• Kill your temp tables using keyboard shortcuts : SSMS

  - by jamiet

  Here’s a nifty little SSMS trick that my colleague Tom Hunter educated me on the other day and I thought it was worth sharing. If you’re a keyboard shortcut junkie then you’ll love it. How often when working with code in SSMS that contains temp tables do you see the following message: Msg 2714, Level 16, State 6, Line 78 There is already an object named '#table' in the database. Quite often I would imagine, it happens to me all the time! Usually I write a bit of code at the top of the query window that goes and drops the table if it exists but there’s a much easier way of dealing with it. Remember that temp tables disappear as soon as your sessions ends hence wouldn’t it be nice if there were a quick way of recycling (i.e. stopping and restarting) your session? Well turns out there is and all it takes is a sequence of 4 keystrokes: Bring up the context menu using that mythically-named button that usually sits 3 to the right of the space bar ‘C’ for “Connection” ‘H’ for “Change Connection…” ‘Enter’ to select the same connection you had open last time (screenshots below) Once you’ve done it a few times you’ll probably have the whole sequence down to less than a second. Such a simple little trick, I’m annoyed with myself for it not occurring to me before! The only caveat is that you’ll need a “USE <database>” directive at the top of your query window but I don’t think that’s much of a bind! That is all other than to say if you like little SSMS titbits like this then Lee Everest’s blog is a good one to keep an eye on! @jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

  Read the article

• OBIEE 11.1.1 - Disable Wrap Data Types in WebLogic Server 10.3.x

  - by Ahmed Awan

  By default, JDBC data type’s objects are wrapped with a WebLogic wrapper. This allows for features like debugging output and track connection usage to be done by the server. The wrapping can be turned off by setting this value to false. This improves performance, in some cases significantly, and allows for the application to use the native driver objects directly. Tip: How to Disable Wrapping in WLS Administration Console You can use the Administration Console to disable data type wrapping for following JDBC data sources in bifoundation_domain domain: Data Source Name bip_datasource mds-owsm EPMSystemRegistry   To disable wrapping for each JDBC data source (as stated in above table): 1.     If you have not already done so, in the Change Center of the Administration Console, click Lock & Edit. 2.     In the Domain Structure tree, expand Services, then select Data Sources. 3.     On the Summary of Data Sources page, click the data source name for example “mds-owsm”. 4.     Select the Configuration: Connection Pool tab. 5.     Scroll down and click Advanced to show the advanced connection pool options. 6.     In Wrap Data Types, deselect the checkbox to disable wrapping. 7.     Click Save. 8.     To activate these changes, in the Change Center of the Administration Console, click Activate Changes. Important Note: This change does not take effect immediately—it requires the server be restarted.

  Read the article

• Un-failing over a Cisco PIX 515e

  - by ABrown

  We had a power outage at our data center last week and when our dual PIX 515E running IOS 7.0(8) (configured with a failover cable) came back, they were in a failed over state where the Secondary unit is active and the Primary unit is standby I have tried 'failover reset', 'failover active', and 'failover reload-standby' as well as executing reloads on both units in a variety of orders, and they don't come back Primary/Active Secondary/Standby. The only thing in my arsenal that I haven't tried is driving to the data center and performing a hard reboot, which I hate to do. I have read How Failover Works on the Cisco Secure Firewall and it seems like this should be wicked straight forward. output of show failover on Primary: Failover On Cable status: Normal Failover unit Primary Failover LAN Interface: N/A - Serial-based failover enabled Unit Poll frequency 15 seconds, holdtime 45 seconds Interface Poll frequency 15 seconds Interface Policy 1 Monitored Interfaces 2 of 250 maximum Version: Ours 7.0(8), Mate 7.0(8) Last Failover at: 02:52:05 UTC Mar 10 2010 This host: Primary - Standby Ready Active time: 0 (sec) Interface outside (x.x.x.165): Normal Interface inside (y.y.y.3): Normal Other host: Secondary - Active Active time: 897045 (sec) Interface outside (x.x.x.164): Normal Interface inside (y.y.y.4): Normal Stateful Failover Logical Update Statistics Link : Unconfigured. output of show failover on Secondary: Failover On Cable status: Normal Failover unit Secondary Failover LAN Interface: N/A - Serial-based failover enabled Unit Poll frequency 15 seconds, holdtime 45 seconds Interface Poll frequency 15 seconds Interface Policy 1 Monitored Interfaces 2 of 250 maximum Version: Ours 7.0(8), Mate 7.0(8) Last Failover at: 02:03:04 UTC Feb 28 2010 This host: Secondary - Active Active time: 896925 (sec) Interface outside (x.x.x.164): Normal Interface inside (y.y.y.4): Normal Other host: Primary - Standby Ready Active time: 0 (sec) Interface outside (x.x.x.165): Normal Interface inside (y.y.y.3): Normal Stateful Failover Logical Update Statistics Link : Unconfigured. I'm seeing the following in my syslog: Mar 10 03:05:00 fw1 %PIX-5-111008: User 'enable_15' executed the 'failover reset' command. Mar 10 03:05:09 fw1 %PIX-5-111008: User 'enable_15' executed the 'failover reload-standby' command. Mar 10 03:05:12 fw1 %PIX-6-720032: (VPN-Secondary) HA status callback: id=3,seq=200,grp=0,event=406,op=20,my=Active,peer=Failed. Mar 10 03:05:12 fw1 %PIX-6-720028: (VPN-Secondary) HA status callback: Peer state Failed. Mar 10 03:06:09 fw1 %PIX-6-720032: (VPN-Secondary) HA status callback: id=3,seq=200,grp=0,event=401,op=0,my=Active,peer=Failed. Mar 10 03:06:09 fw1 %PIX-6-720024: (VPN-Secondary) HA status callback: Control channel is down. Mar 10 03:06:09 fw1 %PIX-6-720032: (VPN-Secondary) HA status callback: id=3,seq=200,grp=0,event=401,op=1,my=Active,peer=Failed. Mar 10 03:06:10 fw1 %PIX-6-720024: (VPN-Secondary) HA status callback: Control channel is up. Mar 10 03:06:10 fw1 %PIX-6-720032: (VPN-Secondary) HA status callback: id=3,seq=200,grp=0,event=411,op=2,my=Active,peer=Failed. Mar 10 03:06:23 fw1 %PIX-6-720032: (VPN-Secondary) HA status callback: id=3,seq=200,grp=0,event=406,op=80,my=Active,peer=Standby Ready. Mar 10 03:06:23 fw1 %PIX-6-720028: (VPN-Secondary) HA status callback: Peer state Standby Ready. Mar 10 03:06:24 fw2 %PIX-6-720027: (VPN-Primary) HA status callback: My state Standby Ready. Mar 10 03:07:05 fw1 %PIX-5-111008: User 'enable_15' executed the 'failover reset' command. Mar 10 03:07:31 fw1 %PIX-5-111008: User 'enable_15' executed the 'failover active' command. Mar 10 03:08:04 fw1 %PIX-5-611103: User logged out: Uname: enable_1 Mar 10 03:08:04 fw1 %PIX-6-315011: SSH session from admin1_int on interface inside for user "pix" terminated normally Mar 10 03:08:39 fw1 %PIX-6-720032: (VPN-Secondary) HA status callback: id=3,seq=200,grp=0,event=406,op=20,my=Active,peer=Failed. Mar 10 03:08:39 fw1 %PIX-6-720028: (VPN-Secondary) HA status callback: Peer state Failed. Mar 10 03:09:10 fw1 %PIX-6-605005: Login permitted from admin1_int/36891 to inside:192.168.4.4/ssh for user "pix" Mar 10 03:09:23 fw1 %PIX-5-111008: User 'enable_15' executed the 'failover reset' command. Mar 10 03:09:38 fw1 %PIX-6-720032: (VPN-Secondary) HA status callback: id=3,seq=200,grp=0,event=401,op=0,my=Active,peer=Failed. Mar 10 03:09:39 fw1 %PIX-6-720024: (VPN-Secondary) HA status callback: Control channel is down. Mar 10 03:09:39 fw1 %PIX-6-720032: (VPN-Secondary) HA status callback: id=3,seq=200,grp=0,event=401,op=1,my=Active,peer=Failed. Mar 10 03:09:39 fw1 %PIX-6-720024: (VPN-Secondary) HA status callback: Control channel is up. Mar 10 03:09:39 fw1 %PIX-6-720032: (VPN-Secondary) HA status callback: id=3,seq=200,grp=0,event=411,op=2,my=Active,peer=Failed. Mar 10 03:09:52 fw1 %PIX-6-720032: (VPN-Secondary) HA status callback: id=3,seq=200,grp=0,event=406,op=80,my=Active,peer=Standby Ready. Mar 10 03:09:52 fw1 %PIX-6-720028: (VPN-Secondary) HA status callback: Peer state Standby Ready. Mar 10 03:09:53 fw2 %PIX-6-720027: (VPN-Primary) HA status callback: My state Standby Ready. I'm not exactly sure how to interpret that syslog data. Primary doesn't seem to even try to become Active. When I reload the individual units separately, my connections are retained, so it doesn't seem like I have a real hardware failure. Is there something I can query (IOS or SNMP) to check for hardware issues? Any thoughts? My IOS-fu is weak. Thanks for any help you might provide, Aaron

  Read the article

• Upstart scripts

  - by The Journeyman geek

  I'm planning on setting up a server using ubuntu lucid lynx, which uses upstart.I'm not finding the docs too intuitive, so i'd like to ask a solution for my specific problem. I'm currently using a script to start up my IPV6 tunnel with free6/gogo6 - right now its a simple script invoking a single command, and its configuration file #! /bin/sh /usr/local/gw6c/bin/gw6c -f /usr/local/gw6c/bin/gw6c.conf Of course, when this goes down, it tends to be silent, and so i'd need to get in and restart it I'd like to set up an upstart script which will start this app on startup, functionally identical to the script i have restart this script as 'root' should the app fail enable me to restart the tunnel should anything go wrong.

  Read the article

• How to copy path on a mac?

  - by AngryHacker

  Windows refugee here. On Windows you can easily copy the path and paste it elsewhere to get to the directory. Here is the situation on the Mac. I am in the Finder 20 folders down and I see the file I want. I go to my application and want to open it, so I pick Open Document from the File menu. However, it is exceedingly difficult and time-consuming to get to the place I want. Is there a way to copy the path in the finder and paste it in the File Open dialog of my application?

  Read the article

• E-Business Suite Technology Sessions at OAUG Collaborate 12

  - by Max Arderius

  Members of our E-Business Suite Applications Technology Group will be at the OAUG Collaborate 12 conference at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada on April 22 to 26, 2012.  Please drop by any of our sessions to hear the latest news and meet up with us. Speaker Sessions Session 9675Planning Your Oracle E-Business Suite Upgrade from Release 11i to 12.1 and BeyondAnne Carlson, Senior Director, Applications Technology Group, OracleSunday, April 22, 2:00 pm - 3:00 pmLocation: Jasmine B Attend this session to hear the latest Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 upgrade planning tips gleaned from customers who have already performed the upgrade. Youll get specific, cross-product advice on how to decide your project's scope, understand the factors that affect your project's duration, develop a robust testing strategy, leverage Oracle Support resources, and more. In a nutshell, this session tells you things you need to know before embarking upon your Release 12.1 upgrade project. Session 9401Minimizing Oracle E-Business Suite Maintenance DowntimesElke Phelps, Principal Product Manager, Applications Technology Group, OracleKevin Hudson, Sr. Director, Applications Technology Group, OracleSunday, April 22, 2:10 pm - 3:10 pmLocation: South Seas EThis session starts with an architecture review of Oracle E-Business Suite fundamentals and then moves to a practical view of the different tools and approaches for downtimes. Topics include patching shortcuts, merging patches, distributing worker processes across multiple servers, running ADPatch in no-interactive mode, staged APPL_TOPs, shared file systems, deferring system-wide database tasks, avoiding resource bottlenecks etc... This session also describes the online patching capabilities coming in Release 12.2. Session 9368Oracle E-Business Suite Technology: Latest Features and RoadmapLisa Parekh, Vice President, Applications Technology Group, Oracle Sunday, April 22, 4:30 pm - 5:30 pmLocation: South Seas EThis session provides an overview of Oracle E-Business Suite technology strategy, the capabilities and associated business benefits of recent releases, as well as a review of the product roadmap. As a cornerstone session for Oracle E-Business Suite technology, come hear about the latest usability enhancements, systems administration and configuration management tools, security-related updates, and tools and options for extending, customizing, and integrating the Oracle E-Business Suite with other applications. Session 10709Oracle E-Business Suite Applications Strategy and General Manager UpdateCliff Godwin, Sr. VP, Application Development, OracleMonday, April 23, 2:30 pm - 3:30 pmLocation: Mandalay Bay DIn this session, hear from Oracle E-Business Suite General Manager Cliff Godwin as he delivers an update on the Oracle E-Business Suite product line. The session covers the value delivered by the current release of Oracle E-Business Suite applications, the momentum, and how Oracle E-Business Suite applications integrate into Oracle’s overall applications strategy. You will come away with an understanding of the value Oracle E-Business Suite applications deliver now and in the future. Session 9398How to Reduce TCO Using Oracle Application Management Suite for Oracle E-Business SuiteAngelo Rosado, Principal Product Manager, Applications Technology Group, OracleKenneth Baxter, Principal Product Strategy Manager, Management Pack Fusion Middleware Management, OracleTuesday, April 24, 8:00 am - 9:00 amLocation: Breakers GThis session covers the methods and tools you can use to gain insights into your end users, troubleshoot performance problems, define service-level objectives, and proactively monitor your end-to-end Oracle E-Business Suite environment to meet your availability and performance targets. Come hear how you can manage, diagnose, and monitor the Oracle E-Business Suite environment from a single console by using Oracle Enterprise Manager together with the Oracle Application Management Suite for Oracle E-Business Suite. Session 9370 Coexistence of Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle Fusion Applications: Platform Perspective Nadia Bendjedou, Senior Director, Product Strategy, Oracle Tuesday, April 24, 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm Location: South Seas E Join us at this session if you are wondering which tools to integrate your data, your processes and your User Interface. Or what tools to customize and extend your screens and reports (OAF, Forms, ADF, Oracle Reports, BI etc....), what tools to secure, protect and manage your Oracle E-Business Suite etc... Or simply if you are looking for a technical roadmap for your Oracle E-Business Suite infrastructure to CO-EXIST with the rest of your enterprise applications including Oracle Fusion Applications. Session 9375 Oracle E-Business Suite Directions: Deployment and System AdministrationMax Arderius, Manager, Applications Development Group, OracleTuesday, April 24, 4:30 pm - 5:30 pmLocation: Breakers GWhat's coming in the next major version of Oracle E-Business Suite 12? This session covers the latest technology stack, including the use of Oracle WebLogic Server and Oracle Database 11g Release 2. Topics include an architectural overview, installation and upgrade options, new configuration options, and new tools for hot-cloning and automated "lights out" cloning. Learn about how online patching will reduce your database patching downtimes to the time it takes to bounce your database server.Session 9369Oracle E-Business Suite Technology Certification Primer and RoadmapSteven Chan, Sr. Director, Applications Technology Group, Oracle Wednesday, April 25, 8:15 am - 9:15 amLocation: South Seas FThis Oracle Development session summarizes the latest certifications and roadmap for the Oracle E-Business Suite technology stack, including database releases/options, Java, Oracle Forms, Oracle Containers for J2EE, desktop OS, browsers, JRE releases, Office/OpenOffice, development and Web authoring tools, user authentication and management, BI, security options, clouds, Oracle VM etc.... It also covers the most-commonly-asked questions about technology stack component support dates and upgrade implications. Session 9407The Latest Oracle E-Business Suite Release User Interface and Usability EnhancementsGustavo Jimenez, Sr. Manager, Applications Technology Group, Oracle Wednesday, April 25, 1:00 pm - 2:00 pmLocation: South Seas GIn this session, developers will get a detailed look at new features designed to enhance usability, offer more capabilities for personalization and extensions, and support the development and use of dashboards and Web services. Topics include rich new UI capabilities such as new home page features, Navigator and Favorites pull-down menus, Oracle ADF task flows etc.... In addition, we will cover the personalization/extensibility enhancements, business layer extensions, Oracle ADF integration and much more. Session 9374Best Practices for Oracle E-Business Suite Performance Tuning and Upgrade OptimizationIsam Alyousfi, Senior Director, Applications Performance, OracleUdayan Parvate, Director, Release Engineering, Quality and Release Management, Oracle Thursday, April 26, 8:30 am - 9:30 amLocation: South Seas FThis presentation will offer tips and techniques on tuning all the layers of the Oracle E-Business Suite stack including the various tiers of the Oracle E-Business Suite environment. You will learn about tuning Oracle Forms, Concurrent Manager, Apache, and Oracle Discoverer. Track down memory leaks and other issues on the Java and Java Virtual Machine layers. The session also covers Oracle E-Business Suite product-level tuning, including Oracle Workflow, Oracle Order Management, Oracle Payroll, and other modules.Session 9412 Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 Desktop Integration: Beyond Oracle Applications Desktop IntegratorGustavo Jimenez, Sr. Manager, Applications Technology Group, OracleThursday, April 26, 8:30 am - 9:30 amLocation: Breakers GThis session describes the new expanded functionality in Oracle Web Applications Desktop Integrator, Oracle Report Manager, and dedicated integrators. You have more options for desktop integration now, not fewer. Topics include an overview of prepackaged solutions for integrating Oracle E-Business Suite with desktop applications such as Microsoft Excel, Word, and Projects. The session also discusses how you can use the Desktop Integration Framework feature to create your own integrators quickly and easily.Session 9533 Upgrading your Customizations to Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1Sara Woodhull, Principal Product Manager, Applications Technology Group, Oracle Thursday, April 26, 11:00 am - 12:00 pmLocation: South Seas FHave you personalized Forms or OA Framework screens? Have you used mod_plsql or Applications Express to tailor your Release 11i functionality? Have you extended or customized your Release 11i environment using other tools? This session will help you understand customization scenarios, use cases, tools, and technologies for ensuring that your Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 environment fits your users' needs closely and that any future customizations will be easy to upgrade. Special Interest Groups (SIG) Session 10535OAUG Database SIG- Part IMichael Brown, Colibri Limited Company Sunday, April 22, 3:20 pm - 4:20 pmLocation: South Seas FThis is the annual meeting of the Database SIG at Collaborate. The call for candidates for the chair will be closed at the meeting. Plans include a speaker from Oracle and a presentation on applications performance. The details of the meeting will be posted on http://www.dbsig.com. Guest Presentation: Oracle E-Business Suite Database PerformanceIsam Alyousfi, Senior Director, Applications Performance, Oracle Session 10720OAUG EBS Applications Technology SIG- Part ISrini Chaval, Cummins Monday, April 23, 2:30 pm - 3:30 pmLocation: South Seas F Guest Presentation:Oracle E-Business Suite Technology Certification RoadmapSteven Chan, Sr. Director, Applications Technology Group, Oracle Session 10510OAUG EBS Applications Technology SIG- Part IISrini Chaval, CumminsMonday, April 23, 3:45 pm - 4:45 pmLocation: South Seas F Guest Presentation:Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2 Online Patching Kevin Hudson, Sr. Director, Applications Technology Group, Oracle Session 10522 OAUG Upgrade SIG- Part IISandra Vucinic, VLAD Group, Inc. Wednesday, April 25, 3:00 pm - 4:00 pmLocation: South Seas FUpgrade SIG will host a business meeting followed by panel (Q&A) related to EBS Upgrade topics and Oracle presentation. Guest Presentation:Upgrading E-Business Suite Amrita Mehrok, Director, Financials Product Strategy, Oracle Nadia Bendjedou, Senior Director, Product Strategy, Oracle Session 10722OAUG Upgrade SIG- Part IISandra Vucinic, VLAD Group, Inc. Wednesday, April 25, 4:15 pm - 5:15 pmLocation: South Seas FUpgrade SIG will host a business meeting followed by panel (Q&A) related to EBS Upgrade topics and Oracle presentation. Guest Presentation:Tuning the Oracle E-Business Suite Upgrade Isam Alyousfi, Senior Director, Applications Performance, Oracle Panels Session 9360Oracle E-Business Suite Cloning PanelSandra Vucinic, VLAD Group, Inc. Guest Speaker: Max Arderius, Manager, Applications Technology Group, OracleWednesday, April 25, 9:30 am - 10:30 amLocation: South Seas FThis panel will discuss differences between available release 11i, R12 and R12.1 cloning methods. Advantages and disadvantages of each cloning method will be discussed in depth. This panel of experienced database administrators will lead a discussion focusing on the questions such as “which cloning method is best to use in your particular environment”. Attendees will gain practical knowledge, tips and tricks to assist with cloning of Oracle E-Business Suite release 11i, R12 and R12.1 environments. Session 10022Oracle Applications Tuning PanelMark Farnham, Rightsizing, Inc.Guest Speaker: Isam Alyousfi, Senior Director, Applications Performance, OracleThursday, April 26, 09:45 am - 10:45 amLocation: South Seas FThis applications performance panel session, sponsored by the OAUG Database SIG, provides a Q&A forum focused on helping you address your Oracle Applications (Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle's PeopleSoft Enterprise and Siebel applications) performance- and scalability-related issues. The panel comprises several well-known Oracle Applications performance experts. Topic areas include Oracle Database; the network; and the applications tier, including patching and upgrade performance. For complete listing of all speaker sessions and other activities, please visit the OAUG Collaborate Web Site.

  Read the article

• Troubleshooting PC

  - by srand

  After playing PC games after a few hours I decided to take a break. When I opened up My Computer in Windows 7 I noticed I one of my drives had disappeared. Thinking it was just a glitch, I tried to restart. Upon restart, the BIOS took forever to get through (I didn't notice my disappeared hard drive in the listed drives) and the computer seemed stuck at the "Starting Windows" screen. I hard shut down everything. Opened up the case, used canned air to clear the dust out and made sure all devices were snugly in place. I hooked everything up and powered on. This time, after a few seconds the computer restarted (nothing showed up on screen either). After its restart, the computer didn't do anything. The hard drive indicator light was on the whole time. What happened? :( PC Specs: Windows 7, 3GB RAM, Core 2 Duo, 3 Hard drives

  Read the article

• Troubleshooting PC

  - by srand

  After playing PC games after a few hours I decided to take a break. When I opened up My Computer in Windows 7 I noticed I one of my drives had disappeared. Thinking it was just a glitch, I tried to restart. Upon restart, the BIOS took forever to get through (I didn't notice my disappeared hard drive in the listed drives) and the computer seemed stuck at the "Start Windows" screen. I hard shut down everything. Opened up the case, used canned air to clear the dust out and made sure all devices were snugly in place. I hooked everything up and powered on. This time, after a few seconds the computer restarted (nothing showed up on screen either). After its restart, the computer didn't do anything. The hard drive indicator light was on the whole time. What happened? :( PC Specs: Windows 7, 3GB RAM, Core 2 Duo, 3 Hard drives

  Read the article

• SQL SERVER – Difference Between DATETIME and DATETIME2 – WITH GETDATE

  - by pinaldave

  Earlier I wrote blog post SQL SERVER – Difference Between GETDATE and SYSDATETIME which inspired me to write SQL SERVER – Difference Between DATETIME and DATETIME2. Now earlier two blog post inspired me to write this blog post (and 4 emails and 3 reads from readers). I previously populated DATETIME and DATETIME2 field with SYSDATETIME, which gave me very different behavior as SYSDATETIME was rounded up/down for the DATETIME datatype. I just ran the same experiment but instead of populating SYSDATETIME in this script I will be using GETDATE function. DECLARE @Intveral INT SET @Intveral = 10000 CREATE TABLE #TimeTable (FirstDate DATETIME, LastDate DATETIME2) WHILE (@Intveral > 0) BEGIN INSERT #TimeTable (FirstDate, LastDate) VALUES (GETDATE(), GETDATE()) SET @Intveral = @Intveral - 1 END GO SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT FirstDate) D_FirstDate, COUNT(DISTINCT LastDate) D_LastDate FROM #TimeTable GO SELECT DISTINCT a.FirstDate, b.LastDate FROM #TimeTable a INNER JOIN #TimeTable b ON a.FirstDate = b.LastDate GO SELECT * FROM #TimeTable GO DROP TABLE #TimeTable GO Let us run above script and observe the results. You will find that the values of GETDATE which is populated in both the columns FirstDate and LastDate are very much same. This is because GETDATE is of datatype DATETIME and the precision of the GETDATE is smaller than DATETIME2 there is no rounding happening. In other word, this experiment is pointless. I have included this as I got 4 emails and 3 twitter questions on this subject. If your datatype of variable is smaller than column datatype there is no manipulation of data, if data type of variable is larger than column datatype the data is rounded. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://www.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL DateTime, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

  Read the article

• SSO Configuration MMC Snap-in

  - by Christopher House

  This may be old news to most people but I've been away from BizTalk for about a year, so this was a welcome development for me.  The other day, I was discussing with my client the various options for storing configuration data required by our project.  I brought up SSO as it's something I've used with success on previous projects.  The client hadn't previously used SSO and was concerned about the maintainability of configuration stored in SSO.  I offered to do a quick POC to demonstrate storing/retrieving/maintaining configuration via SSO.  As I set about creating the POC, I needed to download Richard Seroter's SSO configuration tool, since that's what I've used previously for managing SSO data.  I went to google to track it down and was pleasantly surprised to discover that Microsoft has finally released an MMC snap-in for maintaining SSO applications. The download contains three components.  The first is the MMC snap-in which allows you to create/delete applications as well as name/value pairs within an application.  Next is a C# class file, SSOConfigHelper.cs, which can be used to retrieve values from an SSO application.  Finally, there's an MSBuild task that allows you to deploy SSO application data with your builds. I didn't see any information as to which versions are supported, I'm using it in a BizTalk 2009 environment and it seems to work quite nicely.  The download package is available here.

  Read the article

• Remove a Digital Camera’s IR Filter for IR Photography on the Cheap

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  Whether you have a DSLR or a point-and-shoot, this simple hack allows you to shoot awesome IR photographs without the expense of a high-quality IR filter (or the accompanying loss of light that comes with using it). How does it work? You’ll need to take apart your camera and remove a single fragile layer of IR blocking glass from the CCD inside the camera body. After doing so, you’ll have a camera that sees infrared light by default, no special add-on filters necessary. Because it sees the IR light without the filters you’ll also skip out on the light loss that occurs with the addition of the add-on IR filter. The downside? You’re altering the camera in permanent and warranty-voiding way. This is most definitely not a hack for your brand new $2,000 DSLR, but it is a really fun hack to try out on an old point and shoot camera or your circa-2004 depreciated DSLR. Hit up the link below to see the process performed on an old Canon point and shoot–we’d strongly recommend searching for a break down guide for your specific camera model before attempting the trick on your own gear. Are You Brave Enough to IR-ize Your Camera [DIY Photography] HTG Explains: How Windows Uses The Task Scheduler for System Tasks HTG Explains: Why Do Hard Drives Show the Wrong Capacity in Windows? Java is Insecure and Awful, It’s Time to Disable It, and Here’s How

  Read the article

• Should Development / Testing / QA / Staging environments be similar?

  - by Walter White

  Hi all, After much time and effort, we're finally using maven to manage our application lifecycle for development. We still unfortunately use ANT to build an EAR before deploying to Test / QA / Staging. My question is, while we made that leap forward, developers are still free to do as they please for testing their code. One issue that we have is half our team is using Tomcat to test on and the other half is using Jetty. I prefer Jetty slightly over Tomcat, but regardless we using WAS for all the other environments. My question is, should we develop on the same application server we're deploying to? We've had numerous bugs come up from these differences in environments. Tomcat, Jetty, and WAS are different under the hood. My opinion is that we all should develop on what we're deploying to production with so we don't have the problem of well, it worked fine on my machine. While I prefer Jetty, I just assume we all work on the same environment even if it means deploying to WAS which is slow and cumbersome. What are your team dynamics like? Our lead developers stepped down from the team and development has been a free for all since then. Walter

  Read the article

• Agile PLM on Developing Agile PLM: Software Lifecycle Management

  - by Kerrie Foy

  Change is constant.  That saying couldn’t be truer when applied to software development.   And with all that change comes extensive product complexity.  How do you manage it all?  As software developers ourselves, we can certainly empathize with the challenge. On April 3, 2012 Stephen Van Lare, VP of PLM Product Development, hosted a webcast to share how Oracle uses Agile to develop Agile – a PLM solution for managing a PLM solution!   Stephen passionately shared his unique insight based on 10 years of using Agile PLM to manage the development process, as well as customer use cases.  He shared our time-proven view of the software’s relationship to the product record, while pointing out that PLM is not source control.  He began with the challenges of software development, which boiled down to the deduction that “despite many great tools in the software development industry, it takes a lot more than good source control, more than good bug tracking, to get to an on-time, on-budget and quality release in your marketplace.   It requires defining the right things you want to do, managing the scope, managing your schedule, and, most importantly, managing the change to all those things over the lifecycle of the process. And this is the definition of PLM.”   Stephen then defined the relationship of PLM to the software development process by detailing the two main use cases –  Product Lifecycle and Mechatronics – which can be used simultaneously and in fact are already used in most industries today.  The Product Lifecycle use case is used to manage artifacts and change throughout product development, while the Mechatronics use case involves the software, hardware and electrical design in the BOM.  In essence, PLM is just as relevant to software as the rest of the BOM when trying to maximize profits during any phase of the lifecycle. Please take the opportunity to watch Stephen Van Lare as he details how and why based on his own experience developing Agile with Agile, as well as a lively Q&A session, in the Software PLM Webcast Replay.

  Read the article

• Heaps of Trouble?

  - by Paul White NZ

  If you’re not already a regular reader of Brad Schulz’s blog, you’re missing out on some great material.  In his latest entry, he is tasked with optimizing a query run against tables that have no indexes at all.  The problem is, predictably, that performance is not very good.  The catch is that we are not allowed to create any indexes (or even new statistics) as part of our optimization efforts. In this post, I’m going to look at the problem from a slightly different angle, and present an alternative solution to the one Brad found.  Inevitably, there’s going to be some overlap between our entries, and while you don’t necessarily need to read Brad’s post before this one, I do strongly recommend that you read it at some stage; he covers some important points that I won’t cover again here. The Example We’ll use data from the AdventureWorks database, copied to temporary unindexed tables.  A script to create these structures is shown below: CREATE TABLE #Custs ( CustomerID INTEGER NOT NULL, TerritoryID INTEGER NULL, CustomerType NCHAR(1) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AI NOT NULL, ); GO CREATE TABLE #Prods ( ProductMainID INTEGER NOT NULL, ProductSubID INTEGER NOT NULL, ProductSubSubID INTEGER NOT NULL, Name NVARCHAR(50) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AI NOT NULL, ); GO CREATE TABLE #OrdHeader ( SalesOrderID INTEGER NOT NULL, OrderDate DATETIME NOT NULL, SalesOrderNumber NVARCHAR(25) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AI NOT NULL, CustomerID INTEGER NOT NULL, ); GO CREATE TABLE #OrdDetail ( SalesOrderID INTEGER NOT NULL, OrderQty SMALLINT NOT NULL, LineTotal NUMERIC(38,6) NOT NULL, ProductMainID INTEGER NOT NULL, ProductSubID INTEGER NOT NULL, ProductSubSubID INTEGER NOT NULL, ); GO INSERT #Custs ( CustomerID, TerritoryID, CustomerType ) SELECT C.CustomerID, C.TerritoryID, C.CustomerType FROM AdventureWorks.Sales.Customer C WITH (TABLOCK); GO INSERT #Prods ( ProductMainID, ProductSubID, ProductSubSubID, Name ) SELECT P.ProductID, P.ProductID, P.ProductID, P.Name FROM AdventureWorks.Production.Product P WITH (TABLOCK); GO INSERT #OrdHeader ( SalesOrderID, OrderDate, SalesOrderNumber, CustomerID ) SELECT H.SalesOrderID, H.OrderDate, H.SalesOrderNumber, H.CustomerID FROM AdventureWorks.Sales.SalesOrderHeader H WITH (TABLOCK); GO INSERT #OrdDetail ( SalesOrderID, OrderQty, LineTotal, ProductMainID, ProductSubID, ProductSubSubID ) SELECT D.SalesOrderID, D.OrderQty, D.LineTotal, D.ProductID, D.ProductID, D.ProductID FROM AdventureWorks.Sales.SalesOrderDetail D WITH (TABLOCK); The query itself is a simple join of the four tables: SELECT P.ProductMainID AS PID, P.Name, D.OrderQty, H.SalesOrderNumber, H.OrderDate, C.TerritoryID FROM #Prods P JOIN #OrdDetail D ON P.ProductMainID = D.ProductMainID AND P.ProductSubID = D.ProductSubID AND P.ProductSubSubID = D.ProductSubSubID JOIN #OrdHeader H ON D.SalesOrderID = H.SalesOrderID JOIN #Custs C ON H.CustomerID = C.CustomerID ORDER BY P.ProductMainID ASC OPTION (RECOMPILE, MAXDOP 1); Remember that these tables have no indexes at all, and only the single-column sampled statistics SQL Server automatically creates (assuming default settings).  The estimated query plan produced for the test query looks like this (click to enlarge): The Problem The problem here is one of cardinality estimation – the number of rows SQL Server expects to find at each step of the plan.  The lack of indexes and useful statistical information means that SQL Server does not have the information it needs to make a good estimate.  Every join in the plan shown above estimates that it will produce just a single row as output.  Brad covers the factors that lead to the low estimates in his post. In reality, the join between the #Prods and #OrdDetail tables will produce 121,317 rows.  It should not surprise you that this has rather dire consequences for the remainder of the query plan.  In particular, it makes a nonsense of the optimizer’s decision to use Nested Loops to join to the two remaining tables.  Instead of scanning the #OrdHeader and #Custs tables once (as it expected), it has to perform 121,317 full scans of each.  The query takes somewhere in the region of twenty minutes to run to completion on my development machine. A Solution At this point, you may be thinking the same thing I was: if we really are stuck with no indexes, the best we can do is to use hash joins everywhere. We can force the exclusive use of hash joins in several ways, the two most common being join and query hints.  A join hint means writing the query using the INNER HASH JOIN syntax; using a query hint involves adding OPTION (HASH JOIN) at the bottom of the query.  The difference is that using join hints also forces the order of the join, whereas the query hint gives the optimizer freedom to reorder the joins at its discretion. Adding the OPTION (HASH JOIN) hint results in this estimated plan: That produces the correct output in around seven seconds, which is quite an improvement!  As a purely practical matter, and given the rigid rules of the environment we find ourselves in, we might leave things there.  (We can improve the hashing solution a bit – I’ll come back to that later on). Faster Nested Loops It might surprise you to hear that we can beat the performance of the hash join solution shown above using nested loops joins exclusively, and without breaking the rules we have been set. The key to this part is to realize that a condition like (A = B) can be expressed as (A <= B) AND (A >= B).  Armed with this tremendous new insight, we can rewrite the join predicates like so: SELECT P.ProductMainID AS PID, P.Name, D.OrderQty, H.SalesOrderNumber, H.OrderDate, C.TerritoryID FROM #OrdDetail D JOIN #OrdHeader H ON D.SalesOrderID >= H.SalesOrderID AND D.SalesOrderID <= H.SalesOrderID JOIN #Custs C ON H.CustomerID >= C.CustomerID AND H.CustomerID <= C.CustomerID JOIN #Prods P ON P.ProductMainID >= D.ProductMainID AND P.ProductMainID <= D.ProductMainID AND P.ProductSubID = D.ProductSubID AND P.ProductSubSubID = D.ProductSubSubID ORDER BY D.ProductMainID OPTION (RECOMPILE, LOOP JOIN, MAXDOP 1, FORCE ORDER); I’ve also added LOOP JOIN and FORCE ORDER query hints to ensure that only nested loops joins are used, and that the tables are joined in the order they appear.  The new estimated execution plan is: This new query runs in under 2 seconds. Why Is It Faster? The main reason for the improvement is the appearance of the eager Index Spools, which are also known as index-on-the-fly spools.  If you read my Inside The Optimiser series you might be interested to know that the rule responsible is called JoinToIndexOnTheFly. An eager index spool consumes all rows from the table it sits above, and builds a index suitable for the join to seek on.  Taking the index spool above the #Custs table as an example, it reads all the CustomerID and TerritoryID values with a single scan of the table, and builds an index keyed on CustomerID.  The term ‘eager’ means that the spool consumes all of its input rows when it starts up.  The index is built in a work table in tempdb, has no associated statistics, and only exists until the query finishes executing. The result is that each unindexed table is only scanned once, and just for the columns necessary to build the temporary index.  From that point on, every execution of the inner side of the join is answered by a seek on the temporary index – not the base table. A second optimization is that the sort on ProductMainID (required by the ORDER BY clause) is performed early, on just the rows coming from the #OrdDetail table.  The optimizer has a good estimate for the number of rows it needs to sort at that stage – it is just the cardinality of the table itself.  The accuracy of the estimate there is important because it helps determine the memory grant given to the sort operation.  Nested loops join preserves the order of rows on its outer input, so sorting early is safe.  (Hash joins do not preserve order in this way, of course). The extra lazy spool on the #Prods branch is a further optimization that avoids executing the seek on the temporary index if the value being joined (the ‘outer reference’) hasn’t changed from the last row received on the outer input.  It takes advantage of the fact that rows are still sorted on ProductMainID, so if duplicates exist, they will arrive at the join operator one after the other. The optimizer is quite conservative about introducing index spools into a plan, because creating and dropping a temporary index is a relatively expensive operation.  It’s presence in a plan is often an indication that a useful index is missing. I want to stress that I rewrote the query in this way primarily as an educational exercise – I can’t imagine having to do something so horrible to a production system. Improving the Hash Join I promised I would return to the solution that uses hash joins.  You might be puzzled that SQL Server can create three new indexes (and perform all those nested loops iterations) faster than it can perform three hash joins.  The answer, again, is down to the poor information available to the optimizer.  Let’s look at the hash join plan again: Two of the hash joins have single-row estimates on their build inputs.  SQL Server fixes the amount of memory available for the hash table based on this cardinality estimate, so at run time the hash join very quickly runs out of memory. This results in the join spilling hash buckets to disk, and any rows from the probe input that hash to the spilled buckets also get written to disk.  The join process then continues, and may again run out of memory.  This is a recursive process, which may eventually result in SQL Server resorting to a bailout join algorithm, which is guaranteed to complete eventually, but may be very slow.  The data sizes in the example tables are not large enough to force a hash bailout, but it does result in multiple levels of hash recursion.  You can see this for yourself by tracing the Hash Warning event using the Profiler tool. The final sort in the plan also suffers from a similar problem: it receives very little memory and has to perform multiple sort passes, saving intermediate runs to disk (the Sort Warnings Profiler event can be used to confirm this).  Notice also that because hash joins don’t preserve sort order, the sort cannot be pushed down the plan toward the #OrdDetail table, as in the nested loops plan. Ok, so now we understand the problems, what can we do to fix it?  We can address the hash spilling by forcing a different order for the joins: SELECT P.ProductMainID AS PID, P.Name, D.OrderQty, H.SalesOrderNumber, H.OrderDate, C.TerritoryID FROM #Prods P JOIN #Custs C JOIN #OrdHeader H ON H.CustomerID = C.CustomerID JOIN #OrdDetail D ON D.SalesOrderID = H.SalesOrderID ON P.ProductMainID = D.ProductMainID AND P.ProductSubID = D.ProductSubID AND P.ProductSubSubID = D.ProductSubSubID ORDER BY D.ProductMainID OPTION (MAXDOP 1, HASH JOIN, FORCE ORDER); With this plan, each of the inputs to the hash joins has a good estimate, and no hash recursion occurs.  The final sort still suffers from the one-row estimate problem, and we get a single-pass sort warning as it writes rows to disk.  Even so, the query runs to completion in three or four seconds.  That’s around half the time of the previous hashing solution, but still not as fast as the nested loops trickery. Final Thoughts SQL Server’s optimizer makes cost-based decisions, so it is vital to provide it with accurate information.  We can’t really blame the performance problems highlighted here on anything other than the decision to use completely unindexed tables, and not to allow the creation of additional statistics. I should probably stress that the nested loops solution shown above is not one I would normally contemplate in the real world.  It’s there primarily for its educational and entertainment value.  I might perhaps use it to demonstrate to the sceptical that SQL Server itself is crying out for an index. Be sure to read Brad’s original post for more details.  My grateful thanks to him for granting permission to reuse some of his material. Paul White Email: [email protected] Twitter: @PaulWhiteNZ

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295  | Next Page >