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• Windows Azure Mobile Services Updates Keep Coming

  - by Clint Edmonson

  Some exciting new Windows Azure Mobile Services features were delivered to production this week. The highlights include: iPhone and iPad connectivity support via a new iOS SDK Integrated Authentication so developers can configure user authentication via Microsoft Account, Facebook, Twitter, and Google. New server-side Mobile Service script modules Access to Structured Storage, Windows Azure Blob, Table, Queues, and ServiceBus Email services through partnership with SendGrid SMS & voice services through partnership with Twilio Mobile Services hosting expanded to west coast US The iOS SDK I’m excited to share that we've announced the release of an under-development iOS client SDK for Windows Azure Mobile Services. The iOS SDK joins the Windows 8 SDK launched with Windows Azure Mobile Services as well as client SDKs released by Xamarin for MonoTouch and MonoDroid.  The native iOS SDK is for developers programming in Objective-C on the iPhone and iPad platforms. The SDK gives developers the same level of access to data storage using dynamic schematization that is available for Windows 8. Also, iOS applications can use the same authentication options available in Mobile Services. While full iOS support is still in development, the libraries are currently available on GitHub. There’s a great getting started tutorial to walk you through building a simple iOS “Todo List” app that stores data in Windows Azure.  These additional tutorials explore how to use the iOS client libraries to store data and authenticate users: Get Started with data in Mobile Services for iOS Get Started with authentication in Mobile Services for iOS What’s New in Authentication Available to both iOS and Windows 8 developers, Mobile Services has expanded its authentication options.  Developers can now use Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, and Google authentication. Similar to using Microsoft accounts for authentication, developers must sign up and through Facebook, Twitter, or Google's developer portal in order to authenticate through them.  These tutorials walk through how to register your Mobile Service with an identity provider: How to register your app with Microsoft Account How to register your app with Facebook How to register your app with Twitter How to register your app with Google And these tutorials walk through authenticating against Mobile Services: Get started with authentication in Mobile Services for Windows Store (C#) Get started with authentication in Mobile Services for Windows Store (JavaScript) Get started with authentication in Mobile Services for iOS What’s New in Mobile Service Scripts Some great new functionality is now available in the Mobile Service script layer.  These server side scripts are triggered off of any CRUD operation on a Mobile Service's table and can already handle doing data and query validation, filtering, web requests and more.  Today, the Azure SDK module is now available to these scripts giving them access to blob storage, service bus, table storage.  Check out the new tutorials on the Windows Azure Node.js developer center to learn more about working with Blob, Tables, Queues and Service Bus using the azure module. In addition, SendGrid and Twilio are now available via modules that can be called from the scripts as well.  This gives developers the ability to send emails (SendGrid) or SMS text messages (Twilio) whenever a script is fired.  Windows Azure customers receive a special offer of 25,000 free emails per month from SendGrid and 1000 free text messages from Twilio. Expanded Data Center Availability In addition to Mobile Services being available in our US East data center, they can now be spun up in US West. The above features are all now live in production and are available to use immediately.  If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using Mobile Services today. The Windows Azure Mobile Developer Center has been updated with new tutorials that cover these new features in detail. And don’t forget - Windows Azure Mobile Services are still free for your first ten applications running on shared compute instances. Stay tuned to my twitter feed for Windows Azure announcements, updates, and links: @clinted

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• Integrating JavaFX Scene Builder in the IDEs

  - by Jerome Cambon

  I experienced recently using Scene Builder from Netbeans, Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEA. As you may know, Scene Builder is a standalone tool, that can be used independently of any IDE. But it can be very convenient to use it with your favorite IDE, for instance start it by double-clicking on an FXML file, or run samples delivered with Scene Builder.  I'm sharing here with you few tweaks that I had to do for a better integration. Scene Builder 1.1 Developer Preview should be installed before doing the tweaks. The steps below have been done on Windows 7. It should be very similar on both Mac OS and Linux. Please tell me if you find any issue on one of these 2 platforms. Netbeans 7.3 Netbeans 7.3 can be downloaded from here. Creating a New FXML project Part of the JavaFx projects, Netbeans allows to create a 'JavaFX FXML Application', that creates a JavaFx project based on FXML description. The FXML file will be editable with Scene Builder. Starting Scene Builder from Netbeans If SceneBuilder 1.1 is installed, Netbeans will discover it automatically.In case of issue, one can open the Options panel, Java section, JavaFx tab. Scene Builder home should appear here. You can then either Open the FXML file with Scene Builder, or edit it with the Netbeans FXML editor : When 'Open' is selected, Scene Builder appears on top of the Netbeans window : When 'Edit' is selected, the FXML is opened in the Netbeans FXML editor, which support syntax highlighting and completion : Using Scene Builder Samples Scene Builder provides Netbeans projects, that can be opened/run directly : Eclipse 4.2.1 + e(fx)clipse 0.1.1 JavaFX integration in Eclipse has been done with the e(fx)clipse plugin. A distribution bundle containing Eclipse and e(fx)clipse is provided here. Creating New FXML project All the JavaFX-related projects can be found in 'Other' section : First create a new JavaFX project: Enter the project name (Test here). JavaFX delivery will be found in the JRE. Then, create a 'New FXML Document': Enter the FXML file name (Sample here). You may also want to choose the FXML document root element (AnchorPane by default). Dynamic root is for advanced users which want to manage custom types. Starting Scene Builder from Eclipse Once created, you can then either Open the FXML file with Scene Builder, or Open it in the Eclipse FXML editor : Using Scene Builder Samples from Eclipse To use Scene Builder samples, first create a new JavaFX Project (from 'Other' section): Then, on the next panel, 'Link additionnal source': … and select the source directory of a Scene Builder example : HelloWorld here (the parent directory of the java package should be selected).Then, choose a 'Folder name' for your sample: You can now run the Scene Builder example by right-clicking the Main.java source file: IntelliJ IDEA 11.1.3 IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition can be downloaded from here. IntelliJ IDEA has no specific JavaFX integration. Creating New IntelliJ project from existing source Since IntelliJ has no JavaFX project knowledge, we are using the Scene Builder samples as a starting point. We are going to create a new Java project from the HelloWorld sample: Then, click twice on 'Next' (nothing to change), then 'Finish'. The 'HelloWorld' project is created. Starting Scene Builder from IntelliJ We need to tell the IDE that FXML files are opened with an external application. Then, the OS file association will be used. To do this, open the File->Settings panel. Then, select 'File Types' and 'Files opened in associated applications'. And add a new wildcard : '*.fxml' : Now, from the HelloWorld project, you can double-click on HelloWorld.fxml : Scene Builder window appears on top of the IntelliJ window : Using Scene Builder Samples from IntelliJ We need to tell IntelliJ that the fxml files must be copied in the build directory.To do that, from the HelloWorld directory, open the 'idea' section, and edit the 'compiler.xml' file. We need to add an '*.fxml' entry: Then, you can run the sample from HelloWorld project, by right-clicking the Main class:

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• Employee Info Starter Kit: Project Mission

  - by Mohammad Ashraful Alam

  Employee Info Starter Kit is an open source ASP.NET project template that is intended to address different types of real world challenges faced by web application developers when performing common CRUD operations. Using a single database table ‘Employee’, it illustrates how to utilize Microsoft ASP.NET 4.0, Entity Framework 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 effectively in that context. Employee Info Starter Kit is highly influenced by the concept ‘Pareto Principle’ or 80-20 rule. where it is targeted to enable a web developer to gain 80% productivity with 20% of effort with respect to learning curve and production. User Stories The user end functionalities of this starter kit are pretty simple and straight forward that are focused in to perform CRUD operation on employee records as described below. Creating a new employee record Read existing employee record Update an existing employee record Delete existing employee records Key Technology Areas ASP.NET 4.0 Entity Framework 4.0 T-4 Template Visual Studio 2010 Architectural Objective There is no universal architecture which can be considered as the best for all sorts of applications around the world. Based on requirements, constraints, environment, application architecture can differ from one to another. Trade-off factors are one of the important considerations while deciding a particular architectural solution. Employee Info Starter Kit is highly influenced by the concept ‘Pareto Principle’ or 80-20 rule, where it is targeted to enable a web developer to gain 80% productivity with 20% of effort with respect to learning curve and production. “Productivity” as the architectural objective typically also includes other trade-off factors as well as, such as testability, flexibility, performance etc. Fortunately Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 includes lots of great features that have been implemented cleverly in this project to reduce these trade-off factors in the minimum level. Why Employee Info Starter Kit is Not a Framework? Application frameworks are really great for productivity, some of which are really unavoidable in this modern age. However relying too many frameworks may overkill a project, as frameworks are typically designed to serve wide range of different usage and are less customizable or editable. On the other hand having implementation patterns can be useful for developers, as it enables them to adjust application on demand. Employee Info Starter Kit provides hundreds of “connected” snippets and implementation patterns to demonstrate problem solutions in actual production environment. It also includes Visual Studio T-4 templates that generate thousands lines of data access and business logic layer repetitive codes in literally few seconds on the fly, which are fully mock testable due to language support for partial methods and latest support for mock testing in Entity Framework. Why Employee Info Starter Kit is Different than Other Open-source Web Applications? Software development is one of the rapid growing industries around the globe, where the technology is being updated very frequently to adapt greater challenges over time. There are literally thousands of community web sites, blogs and forums that are dedicated to provide support to adapt new technologies. While some are really great to enable learning new technologies quickly, in most cases they are either too “simple and brief” to be used in real world scenarios or too “complex and detailed” which are typically focused to achieve a product goal (such as CMS, e-Commerce etc) from "end user" perspective and have a long duration learning curve with respect to the corresponding technology. Employee Info Starter Kit, as a web project, is basically "developer" oriented which actually considers a hybrid approach as “simple and detailed”, where a simple domain has been considered to intentionally illustrate most of the architectural and implementation challenges faced by web application developers so that anyone can dive into deep into the corresponding new technology or concept quickly. Roadmap Since its first release by 2008 in MSDN Code Gallery, Employee Info Starter Kit gained a huge popularity in ASP.NET community and had 1, 50,000+ downloads afterwards. Being encouraged with this great response, we have a strong commitment for the community to provide support for it with respect to latest technologies continuously. Currently hosted in Codeplex, this community driven project is planned to have a wide range of individual editions, each of which will be focused on a selected application architecture, framework or platform, such as ASP.NET Webform, ASP.NET Dynamic Data, ASP.NET MVC, jQuery Ajax (RIA), Silverlight (RIA), Azure Service Platform (Cloud), Visual Studio Automated Test etc. See here for full list of current and future editions.

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• Cross-language Extension Method Calling

  - by Tom Hines

  Extension methods are a concise way of binding functions to particular types. In my last post, I showed how Extension methods can be created in the .NET 2.0 environment. In this post, I discuss calling the extensions from other languages. Most of the differences I find between the Dot Net languages are mainly syntax.  The declaration of Extensions is no exception.  There is, however, a distinct difference with the framework accepting excensions made with C++ that differs from C# and VB.  When calling the C++ extension from C#, the compiler will SOMETIMES say there is no definition for DoCPP with the error: 'string' does not contain a definition for 'DoCPP' and no extension method 'DoCPP' accepting a first argument of type 'string' could be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?) If I recompile, the error goes away. The strangest problem with calling the C++ extension from C# is that I first must make SOME type of reference to the class BEFORE using the extension or it will not be recognized at all.  So, if I first call the DoCPP() as a static method, the extension works fine later.  If I make a dummy instantiation of the class, it works.  If I have no forward reference of the class, I get the same error as before and recompiling does not fix it.  It seems as if this none of this is supposed to work across the languages. I have made a few work-arounds to get the examples to compile and run. Note the following examples: Extension in C# using System; namespace Extension_CS {    public static class CExtension_CS    {  //in C#, the "this" keyword is the key.       public static void DoCS(this string str)       {          Console.WriteLine("CS\t{0:G}\tCS", str);       }    } } Extension in C++ /****************************************************************************\  * Here is the C++ implementation.  It is the least elegant and most quirky,  * but it works. \****************************************************************************/ #pragma once using namespace System; using namespace System::Runtime::CompilerServices;     //<-Essential // Reference: System.Core.dll //<- Essential namespace Extension_CPP {        public ref class CExtension_CPP        {        public:               [Extension] // or [ExtensionAttribute] /* either works */               static void DoCPP(String^ str)               {                      Console::WriteLine("C++\t{0:G}\tC++", str);               }        }; } Extension in VB ' Here is the VB implementation.  This is not as elegant as the C#, but it's ' functional. Imports System.Runtime.CompilerServices ' Public Module modExtension_VB 'Extension methods can be defined only in modules.    <Extension()> _       Public Sub DoVB(ByVal str As String)       Console.WriteLine("VB" & Chr(9) & "{0:G}" & Chr(9) & "VB", str)    End Sub End Module   Calling program in C# /******************************************************************************\  * Main calling program  * Intellisense and VS2008 complain about the CPP implementation, but with a  * little duct-tape, it works just fine. \******************************************************************************/ using System; using Extension_CPP; using Extension_CS; using Extension_VB; // vitual namespace namespace TestExtensions {    public static class CTestExtensions    {       /**********************************************************************\        * For some reason, this needs a direct reference into the C++ version        * even though it does nothing than add a null reference.        * The constructor provides the fake usage to please the compiler.       \**********************************************************************/       private static CExtension_CPP x = null;   // <-DUCT_TAPE!       static CTestExtensions()       {          // Fake usage to stop compiler from complaining          if (null != x) {} // <-DUCT_TAPE       }       static void Main(string[] args)       {          string strData = "from C#";          strData.DoCPP();          strData.DoCS();          strData.DoVB();       }    } }   Calling program in VB  Imports Extension_CPP Imports Extension_CS Imports Extension_VB Imports System.Runtime.CompilerServices Module TestExtensions_VB    <Extension()> _       Public Sub DoCPP(ByVal str As String)       'Framework does not treat this as an extension, so use the static       CExtension_CPP.DoCPP(str)    End Sub    Sub Main()       Dim strData As String = "from VB"       strData.DoCS()       strData.DoVB()       strData.DoCPP() 'fake    End Sub End Module  Calling program in C++ // TestExtensions_CPP.cpp : main project file. #include "stdafx.h" using namespace System; using namespace Extension_CPP; using namespace Extension_CS; using namespace Extension_VB; void main(void) {        /*******************************************************\         * Extension methods are called like static methods         * when called from C++.  There may be a difference in         * syntax when calling the VB extension as VB Extensions         * are embedded in Modules instead of classes        \*******************************************************/     String^ strData = "from C++";     CExtension_CPP::DoCPP(strData);     CExtension_CS::DoCS(strData);     modExtension_VB::DoVB(strData); //since Extensions go in Modules }

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• Write your Tests in RSpec with IronRuby

  - by kazimanzurrashid

  [Note: This is not a continuation of my previous post, treat it as an experiment out in the wild. ] Lets consider the following class, a fictitious Fund Transfer Service: public class FundTransferService : IFundTransferService { private readonly ICurrencyConvertionService currencyConvertionService; public FundTransferService(ICurrencyConvertionService currencyConvertionService) { this.currencyConvertionService = currencyConvertionService; } public void Transfer(Account fromAccount, Account toAccount, decimal amount) { decimal convertionRate = currencyConvertionService.GetConvertionRate(fromAccount.Currency, toAccount.Currency); decimal convertedAmount = convertionRate * amount; fromAccount.Withdraw(amount); toAccount.Deposit(convertedAmount); } } public class Account { public Account(string currency, decimal balance) { Currency = currency; Balance = balance; } public string Currency { get; private set; } public decimal Balance { get; private set; } public void Deposit(decimal amount) { Balance += amount; } public void Withdraw(decimal amount) { Balance -= amount; } } We can write the spec with MSpec + Moq like the following: public class When_fund_is_transferred { const decimal ConvertionRate = 1.029m; const decimal TransferAmount = 10.0m; const decimal InitialBalance = 100.0m; static Account fromAccount; static Account toAccount; static FundTransferService fundTransferService; Establish context = () => { fromAccount = new Account("USD", InitialBalance); toAccount = new Account("CAD", InitialBalance); var currencyConvertionService = new Moq.Mock<ICurrencyConvertionService>(); currencyConvertionService.Setup(ccv => ccv.GetConvertionRate(Moq.It.IsAny<string>(), Moq.It.IsAny<string>())).Returns(ConvertionRate); fundTransferService = new FundTransferService(currencyConvertionService.Object); }; Because of = () => { fundTransferService.Transfer(fromAccount, toAccount, TransferAmount); }; It should_decrease_from_account_balance = () => { fromAccount.Balance.ShouldBeLessThan(InitialBalance); }; It should_increase_to_account_balance = () => { toAccount.Balance.ShouldBeGreaterThan(InitialBalance); }; } and if you run the spec it will give you a nice little output like the following: When fund is transferred » should decrease from account balance » should increase to account balance 2 passed, 0 failed, 0 skipped, took 1.14 seconds (MSpec). Now, lets see how we can write exact spec in RSpec. require File.dirname(__FILE__) + "/../FundTransfer/bin/Debug/FundTransfer" require "spec" require "caricature" describe "When fund is transferred" do Convertion_Rate = 1.029 Transfer_Amount = 10.0 Initial_Balance = 100.0 before(:all) do @from_account = FundTransfer::Account.new("USD", Initial_Balance) @to_account = FundTransfer::Account.new("CAD", Initial_Balance) currency_convertion_service = Caricature::Isolation.for(FundTransfer::ICurrencyConvertionService) currency_convertion_service.when_receiving(:get_convertion_rate).with(:any, :any).return(Convertion_Rate) fund_transfer_service = FundTransfer::FundTransferService.new(currency_convertion_service) fund_transfer_service.transfer(@from_account, @to_account, Transfer_Amount) end it "should decrease from account balance" do @from_account.balance.should be < Initial_Balance end it "should increase to account balance" do @to_account.balance.should be > Initial_Balance end end I think the above code is self explanatory, treat the require(line 1- 4) statements as the add reference of our visual studio projects, we are adding all the required libraries with this statement. Next, the describe which is a RSpec keyword. The before does exactly the same as NUnit's Setup or MsTest’s TestInitialize attribute, but in the above we are using before(:all) which acts as ClassInitialize of MsTest, that means it will be executed only once before all the test methods. In the before(:all) we are first instantiating the from and to accounts, it is same as creating with the full name (including namespace)  like fromAccount = new FundTransfer.Account(.., ..), next, we are creating a mock object of ICurrencyConvertionService, check that for creating the mock we are not using the Moq like the MSpec version. This is somewhat an interesting issue of IronRuby or maybe the DLR, it seems that it is not possible to use the lambda expression that most of the mocking tools uses in arrange phase in Iron Ruby, like: currencyConvertionService.Setup(ccv => ccv.GetConvertionRate(Moq.It.IsAny<string>(), Moq.It.IsAny<string>())).Returns(ConvertionRate); But the good news is, there is already an excellent mocking tool called Caricature written completely in IronRuby which we can use to mock the .NET classes. May be all the mocking tool providers should give some thought to add the support for the DLR, so that we can use the tool that we are already familiar with. I think the rest of the code is too simple, so I am skipping the explanation. Now, the last thing, how we are going to run it with RSpec, lets first install the required gems. Open you command prompt and type the following: igem sources -a http://gems.github.com This will add the GitHub as gem source. Next type: igem install uuidtools caricature rspec and at last we have to create a batch file so that we can execute it in the Notepad++, create a batch like in the IronRuby bin directory like my previous post and put the following in that batch file: @echo off cls call spec %1 --format specdoc pause Next, add a run menu and shortcut in the Notepad++ like my previous post. Now when we run it it will show the following output: When fund is transferred - should decrease from account balance - should increase to account balance Finished in 0.332042 seconds 2 examples, 0 failures Press any key to continue . . . You will complete code of this post in the bottom. That's it for today. Download: RSpecIntegration.zip

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• Silverlight Cream for February 07, 2011 -- #1043

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Roy Dallal, Kevin Dockx, Gill Cleeren, Oren Gal, Colin Eberhardt, Rudi Grobler, Jesse Liberty, Shawn Wildermuth, Kirupa Chinnathambi, Jeremy Likness, Martin Krüger(-2-), Beth Massi, and Michael Crump. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "A Circular ProgressBar Style using an Attached ViewModel" Colin Eberhardt WP7: "Isolated Storage" Jesse Liberty Lightswitch: "How To Create Outlook Appointments from a LightSwitch Application" Beth Massi Shoutouts: Gergely Orosz has a summary of his 4-part series on Styles in Silverlight: Everything a Developer Needs To Know From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight Memory Leak, Part 2 Roy Dallal has part 2 of his memory leak posts up... and discusses the results of runnin VMMap and some hints on how to make best use of it. Using a Channel Factory in Silverlight (instead of adding a Service Reference). With cows. Kevin Dockx has a post up for those of you that don't like the generated code that comes about when adding a service reference, and the answer is a Channel Factory... and he has an example app in the post that populates a list of cows... honest ... check it out. Getting ready for Microsoft Silverlight Exam 70-506 (Part 4) Gill Cleeren has Part 4 of his deep-dive into studying for the Silverlight Certification exam. This time out he's got probably half a gazillion links for working with data... seriously! Sync unlimited instances of one Silverlight application How about a cross-browser sync of an unlimited number of instances of the same Silverlight app... Oren Gal has just that going on, and discusses his first two attempts and how he finally honed in on the solution. A Circular ProgressBar Style using an Attached ViewModel Wow... check out what Colin Eberhardt's done with the "Progress Bar" ... using an Attached View Model which he discussed in a post a while back... these are awesome! WP7 - Professional Audio Recorder Rudi Grobler discusses an audio recorder for WP7 that uses the NAudio audio library for not only the recording but visualization. Isolated Storage Jesse Liberty's got his 30th 'From Scratch' post up and this time he's talking about Isolated Storage. Learning OData? MSDN and Shawn Wildermuth has the videos for you! Shawn Wildermuth produced a couple series of videos for MSDN on OData: Getting Started and Consuming OData... get the link on Shawn's post. Creating Sample Data from a Class - Page 1 Kirupa Chinnathambi shows us how to use a schema of your own design in Blend... yet still have Blend produce sample data A Pivot-Style Data Grid without the DataGrid Jeremy Likness discusses the lack of an open-source grid with dynamic columns ... let him know if you've done one! ... and then he continues on to demonstrate his build-out of the same. Synchronize a freeform drawing and a real path creation Martin Krüger has a few new samples up in the Expression Gallery. This first is taking mouse movement in an InkPresenter and creating path statements from it in a canvas and playing them back. How to: use Storyboard completed behaviors Martin Krüger's next post is about Storyboards and firing one off the end of another, in Blend... so he ended up producing a behavior for doing that... and it's in the Expression Gallery How To Create Outlook Appointments from a LightSwitch Application Beth Massi has a new Lightswitch post up... her previous was email from Lightswitch... this is Outlook appointments... pretty darn cool. Quick run through of the WP7 Developer Tools January 2011 Michael Crump has a really good Quick look at the new WP7 Dev Tools that were released last week posted on his blog Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• St. Louis ALT.NET

  - by Brian Schroer

  I’m a huge fan of the St. Louis .NET User Group and a regular attendee of their meetings, but always wished there was a local group that discussed more advanced .NET topics. (That’s not a criticism of the group - I appreciate that they want to server developers with a broad range of skill levels). That’s why I was thrilled when Nicholas Cloud started a St. Louis ALT.NET group in 2010. Here’s the “about us” statement from the group’s web site: The ALT.NET community is a loosely coupled, highly cohesive group of like-minded individuals who believe that the best developers do not align themselves with platforms and languages, but with principles and ideas. In 2007, David Laribee created the term "ALT.NET" to explain this "alternative" view of the Microsoft development universe--a view that challenged the "Microsoft-only" approach to software development. He distilled his thoughts into four key developer characteristics which form the basis of the ALT.NET philosophy: You're the type of developer who uses what works while keeping an eye out for a better way. You reach outside the mainstream to adopt the best of any community: Open Source, Agile, Java, Ruby, etc. You're not content with the status quo. Things can always be better expressed, more elegant and simple, more mutable, higher quality, etc. You know tools are great, but they only take you so far. It's the principles and knowledge that really matter. The best tools are those that embed the knowledge and encourage the principles (e.g. Resharper.) The St. Louis ALT.NET meetup group is a place where .NET developers can learn, share, and critique approaches to software development on the .NET stack. We cater to the highest common denominator, not the lowest, and want to help all St. Louis .NET developers achieve a superior level of software craftsmanship. I don’t see a lot of ALT.NET talk in blogs these days. The movement was harmed early on by the negative attitudes of some of its early leaders, including jerk moves like the Entity Framework “vote of no confidence”, but I do see occasional mentions of local groups like the St. Louis one. I think ALT.NET has been successful at bringing some of its ideas into the .NET world, including heavily influencing ASP.NET MVC and raising the general level of software craftsmanship for developers working on the Microsoft stack. The ideas and ideals live on, they’re just not branded as “this is ALT.NET!” In the past 18 months, St. Louis ALT.NET meetups have discussed topics like: NHibernate F# and other functional languages AOP CoffeeScript “How Ruby Is Making Me a Stronger C# Developer” Using rake for builds CQRS .NET dynamic programming micro web frameworks – Nancy & Jessica Git ALT.NET doesn’t mean (to me, anyway) “alternatives to .NET”, but “alternatives for .NET”. We look at how things are done in Ruby and other languages/platforms, but always with the idea “What can I learn from this to take back to my “day job” with .NET?”. Meetings are held at 7PM on the fourth Wednesday of each month at the offices of Professional Employment Group. PEG is located at 999 Executive Parkway (Suite 100 – lower level) in Creve Coeur (South of Olive off of Mason Road - Here's a map). Food is not supplied (sorry if you’re a big fan of the Papa John’s Crust-Lovers’ Pizza that’s a staple of user group meetings), but attendees are encouraged to come early and bring/share beer, so that’s cool. Thanks to Nick for organizing, and to Professional Employment Group for lending their offices. Please visit the meetup site for more information.

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• PASS Summit 2011 &ndash; Part IV

  - by Tara Kizer

  This is the final blog for my PASS Summit 2011 series.  Well okay, a mini-series, I guess. On the last day of the conference, I attended Keith Elmore’ and Boris Baryshnikov’s (both from Microsoft) “Introducing the Microsoft SQL Server Code Named “Denali” Performance Dashboard Reports, Jeremiah Peschka’s (blog|twitter) “Rewrite your T-SQL for Great Good!”, and Kimberly Tripp’s (blog|twitter) “Isolated Disasters in VLDBs”. Keith and Boris talked about the lifecycle of a session, figuring out the running time and the waiting time.  They pointed out the transient nature of the reports.  You could be drilling into it to uncover a problem, but the session may have ended by the time you’ve drilled all of the way down.  Also, the reports are for troubleshooting live problems and not historical ones.  You can use Management Data Warehouse for historical troubleshooting.  The reports provide similar benefits to the Activity Monitor, however Activity Monitor doesn’t provide context sensitive drill through. One thing I learned in Keith’s and Boris’ session was that the buffer cache hit ratio should really never be below 87% due to the read-ahead mechanism in SQL Server.  When a page is read, it will read the entire extent.  So for every page read, you get 7 more read.  If you need any of those 7 extra pages, well they are already in cache.  I had a lot of fun in Jeremiah’s session about refactoring code plus I learned a lot.  His slides were visually presented in a fun way, which just made for a more upbeat presentation.  Jeremiah says that before you start refactoring, you should look at your system.  Investigate missing or too many indexes, out-of-date statistics, and other areas that could be leading to your code running slow.  He talked about code standards.  He suggested using common abbreviations for aliases instead of one-letter aliases.  I’m a big offender of one-letter aliases, but he makes a good point.  He said that join order does not matter to the optimizer, but it does matter to those who have to read your code.  Now let’s get into refactoring! Eliminate useless things – useless/unneeded joins and columns.  If you don’t need it, get rid of it! Instead of using DISTINCT/JOIN, replace with EXISTS Simplify your conditions; use UNION or better yet UNION ALL instead of OR to avoid a scan and use indexes for each union query Branching logic – instead of IF this, IF that, and on and on…use dynamic SQL (sp_executesql, please!) or use a parameterized query in the application Correlated subqueries – YUCK! Replace with a join Eliminate repeated patterns Last, but certainly not least, was Kimberly’s session.  Kimberly is my favorite speaker.  I attended her two-day pre-conference seminar at PASS Summit 2005 as well as a SQL Immersion Event last December.  Did I mention she’s my favorite speaker?  Okay, enough of that. Kimberly’s session was packed with demos.  I had seen some of it in the SQL Immersion Event, but it was very nice to get a refresher on these, especially since I’ve got a VLDB with some growing pains.  One key takeaway from her session is the idea to use a log shipping solution with a load delay, such as 6, 8, or 24 hours behind the primary.  In the case of say an accidentally dropped table in a VLDB, we could retrieve it from the secondary database rather than waiting an eternity for a restore to complete.  Kimberly let us know that in SQL Server 2012 (it finally has a name!), online rebuilds are supported even if there are LOB columns in your table.  This will simplify custom code that intelligently figures out if an online rebuild is possible. There was actually one last time slot for sessions that day, but I had an airplane to catch and my kids to see!

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• Oracle Products Reflect Key Trends Shaping Enterprise 2.0

  - by kellsey.ruppel(at)oracle.com

  Following up on his predictions for 2011, we asked Enterprise 2.0 veteran Andy MacMillan to map out the ways Oracle solutions are at the forefront of industry trends--and how Oracle customers can benefit in the coming year. 1. Increase organizational awareness | Oracle WebCenter Suite Oracle WebCenter Suite provides a unique set of capabilities to drive organizational awareness. In particular, the expansive activity graph connects users directly to key enterprise applications, activities, and interests. In this way, applicable and critical business information is automatically and immediately visible--in the context of key tasks--via real-time dashboards and comprehensive reporting. Oracle WebCenter Suite also integrates key E2.0 services, such as blogs, wikis, and RSS feeds, into critical business processes, including back-office systems of records such as ERP and CRM systems. 2. Drive online customer engagement | Oracle Real-Time Decisions With more and more business being conducted on the Web, driving increased online customer engagement becomes a critical key to success. This effort is usually spearheaded by an increasingly important executive role, the Head of Online, who usually reports directly to the CMO. To help manage the Web experience online, Oracle solutions are driving a new kind of intelligent social commerce by combining Oracle Universal Content Management, Oracle WebCenter Services, and Oracle Real-Time Decisions with leading e-commerce and product recommendations. Oracle Real-Time Decisions provides multichannel recommendations for content, products, and services--including seamless integration across Web, mobile, and social channels. The result: happier customers, increased customer acquisition and retention, and improved critical success metrics such as shopping cart abandonment. 3. Easily build composite applications | Oracle Application Development Framework Thanks to the shared user experience strategy across Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle Fusion Applications and many other Oracle Applications, customers can easily create real, customer-specific composite applications using Oracle WebCenter Suite and Oracle Application Development Framework. Oracle Application Development Framework components provide modular user interface components that can build rich, social composite applications. In addition, a broad set of components spanning BPM, SOA, ECM, and beyond can be quickly and easily incorporated into composite applications. 4. Integrate records management into a global content platform | Oracle Enterprise Content Management 11g Oracle Enterprise Content Management 11g provides leading records management capabilities as part of a unified ECM platform for managing records, documents, Web content, digital assets, enterprise imaging, and application imaging. This unique strategy provides comprehensive records management in a consistent, cost-effective way, and enables organizations to consolidate ECM repositories and connect ECM to critical business applications. 5. Achieve ECM at extreme scale | Oracle WebLogic Server and Oracle Exadata To support the high-performance demands of a unified and rationalized content platform, Oracle has pioneered highly scalable and high-performing ECM infrastructures. Two innovations in particular helped make this happen. The core ECM platform itself moved to an Enterprise Java architecture, so organizations can now use Oracle WebLogic Server for enhanced scalability and manageability. Oracle Enterprise Content Management 11g can leverage Oracle Exadata for extreme performance and scale. Likewise, Oracle Exalogic--Oracle's foundation for cloud computing--enables extreme performance for processor-intensive capabilities such as content conversion or dynamic Web page delivery. Learn more about Oracle's Enterprise 2.0 solutions.

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• MacGyver Moments

  - by Geoff N. Hiten

  Denny Cherry tagged me to write about my best MacGyver Moment.  Usually I ignore blogosphere fluff and just use this space to write what I think is important.  However, #MVP10 just ended and I have a stronger sense of community.  Besides, where else would I mention my second best Macgyver moment was making a BIOS jumper out of a soda can.  Aluminum is conductive and I didn't have any real jumpers lying around. My best moment is probably my entire home computer network.  Every system but one is hand-built, usually cobbled together out of spare parts and 'adapted' from its original purpose. My Primary Domain Controller is a Dell 2300.   The Service Tag indicates it was shipped to the original owner in 1999.  Box has a PERC/1 RAID controller.  I acquired this from a previous employer for $50.  It runs Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition.  Does DNS, DHCP, and RADIUS services as a bonus.  RADIUS authentication is used for VPN and Wireless access.  It is nice to sign in once and be done with it. The Secondary Domain Controller is an old desktop.  Dual P-III 933 with some extra drives. My VPN box is a P-II 250 with 384MB of RAM and a 21 GB hard drive.  I did a P-to-V to my Hyper-V box a year or so ago and retired the hardware again.  Dynamic DNS lets me connect no matter how often Comcast shuffles my IP. The Hyper-V box is a desktop system with 8GB RAM and an AMD Athlon 5000+ processor.  Cost me less than $500 to put together nearly two years ago.  I reasoned that if Vista and Windows 2008 were the same code then Vista 64-bit certified meant the drivers for Vista would load into Windows 2008.  Turns out I was right. Later I added three 1TB drives but wasn't too happy with how that turned out.  I recovered two of the drives yesterday and am building an iSCSI storage unit. (Much thanks to Starwind.  Great product).  I am using an old AMD 1.1GhZ box with 1.5 GB RAM (cobbled together from three old PCs) as my storave server.  The Hyper-V box is slated for an OS rebuild to 2008 R2 once I get the storage system worked out.  maybe in a week or two. A couple of DLink Gigabit switches ties everything together. Add in the Vonage box, the three PCs, the Wireless-N Access Point, the two notebooks and the XBox and you have gone from MacGyver to darn near Rube Goldberg. The only thing I really spend money on is power supplies and fans.  I buy top-of-the-line for both. I even pull and crimp my own cables. Oh, and if my kids hose up a PC, I have all of their data on a server elsewhere.  Every PC and laptop is pretty much interchangable for email and basic workstation tasks.  That helps a lot too. Of course I will tag SQLVariant.

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• Getting started with Oracle Database In-Memory Part III - Querying The IM Column Store

  - by Maria Colgan

  In my previous blog posts, I described how to install, enable, and populate the In-Memory column store (IM column store). This weeks post focuses on how data is accessed within the IM column store. Let’s take a simple query “What is the most expensive air-mail order we have received to date?” SELECT Max(lo_ordtotalprice) most_expensive_order FROM lineorderWHERE  lo_shipmode = 5; The LINEORDER table has been populated into the IM column store and since we have no alternative access paths (indexes or views) the execution plan for this query is a full table scan of the LINEORDER table. You will notice that the execution plan has a new set of keywords “IN MEMORY" in the access method description in the Operation column. These keywords indicate that the LINEORDER table has been marked for INMEMORY and we may use the IM column store in this query. What do I mean by “may use”? There are a small number of cases were we won’t use the IM column store even though the object has been marked INMEMORY. This is similar to how the keyword STORAGE is used on Exadata environments. You can confirm that the IM column store was actually used by examining the session level statistics, but more on that later. For now let's focus on how the data is accessed in the IM column store and why it’s faster to access the data in the new column format, for analytical queries, rather than the buffer cache. There are four main reasons why accessing the data in the IM column store is more efficient. 1. Access only the column data needed The IM column store only has to scan two columns – lo_shipmode and lo_ordtotalprice – to execute this query while the traditional row store or buffer cache has to scan all of the columns in each row of the LINEORDER table until it reaches both the lo_shipmode and the lo_ordtotalprice column. 2. Scan and filter data in it's compressed format When data is populated into the IM column it is automatically compressed using a new set of compression algorithms that allow WHERE clause predicates to be applied against the compressed formats. This means the volume of data scanned in the IM column store for our query will be far less than the same query in the buffer cache where it will scan the data in its uncompressed form, which could be 20X larger. 3. Prune out any unnecessary data within each column The fastest read you can execute is the read you don’t do. In the IM column store a further reduction in the amount of data accessed is possible due to the In-Memory Storage Indexes(IM storage indexes) that are automatically created and maintained on each of the columns in the IM column store. IM storage indexes allow data pruning to occur based on the filter predicates supplied in a SQL statement. An IM storage index keeps track of minimum and maximum values for each column in each of the In-Memory Compression Unit (IMCU). In our query the WHERE clause predicate is on the lo_shipmode column. The IM storage index on the lo_shipdate column is examined to determine if our specified column value 5 exist in any IMCU by comparing the value 5 to the minimum and maximum values maintained in the Storage Index. If the value 5 is outside the minimum and maximum range for an IMCU, the scan of that IMCU is avoided. For the IMCUs where the value 5 does fall within the min, max range, an additional level of data pruning is possible via the metadata dictionary created when dictionary-based compression is used on IMCU. The dictionary contains a list of the unique column values within the IMCU. Since we have an equality predicate we can easily determine if 5 is one of the distinct column values or not. The combination of the IM storage index and dictionary based pruning, enables us to only scan the necessary IMCUs. 4. Use SIMD to apply filter predicates For the IMCU that need to be scanned Oracle takes advantage of SIMD vector processing (Single Instruction processing Multiple Data values). Instead of evaluating each entry in the column one at a time, SIMD vector processing allows a set of column values to be evaluated together in a single CPU instruction. The column format used in the IM column store has been specifically designed to maximize the number of column entries that can be loaded into the vector registers on the CPU and evaluated in a single CPU instruction. SIMD vector processing enables the Oracle Database In-Memory to scan billion of rows per second per core versus the millions of rows per second per core scan rate that can be achieved in the buffer cache. I mentioned earlier in this post that in order to confirm the IM column store was used; we need to examine the session level statistics. You can monitor the session level statistics by querying the performance views v$mystat and v$statname. All of the statistics related to the In-Memory Column Store begin with IM. You can see the full list of these statistics by typing: display_name format a30 SELECT display_name FROM v$statname WHERE  display_name LIKE 'IM%'; If we check the session statistics after we execute our query the results would be as follow; SELECT Max(lo_ordtotalprice) most_expensive_order FROM lineorderWHERE lo_shipmode = 5; SELECT display_name FROM v$statname WHERE  display_name IN ('IM scan CUs columns accessed',                        'IM scan segments minmax eligible',                        'IM scan CUs pruned'); As you can see, only 2 IMCUs were accessed during the scan as the majority of the IMCUs (44) in the LINEORDER table were pruned out thanks to the storage index on the lo_shipmode column. In next weeks post I will describe how you can control which queries use the IM column store and which don't. +Maria Colgan

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• Fastest pathfinding for static node matrix

  - by Sean Martin

  I'm programming a route finding routine in VB.NET for an online game I play, and I'm searching for the fastest route finding algorithm for my map type. The game takes place in space, with thousands of solar systems connected by jump gates. The game devs have provided a DB dump containing a list of every system and the systems it can jump to. The map isn't quite a node tree, since some branches can jump to other branches - more of a matrix. What I need is a fast pathfinding algorithm. I have already implemented an A* routine and a Dijkstra's, both find the best path but are too slow for my purposes - a search that considers about 5000 nodes takes over 20 seconds to compute. A similar program on a website can do the same search in less than a second. This website claims to use D*, which I have looked into. That algorithm seems more appropriate for dynamic maps rather than one that does not change - unless I misunderstand it's premise. So is there something faster I can use for a map that is not your typical tile/polygon base? GBFS? Perhaps a DFS? Or have I likely got some problem with my A* - maybe poorly chosen heuristics or movement cost? Currently my movement cost is the length of the jump (the DB dump has solar system coordinates as well), and the heuristic is a quick euclidean calculation from the node to the goal. In case anyone has some optimizations for my A*, here is the routine that consumes about 60% of my processing time, according to my profiler. The coordinateData table contains a list of every system's coordinates, and neighborNode.distance is the distance of the jump. Private Function findDistance(ByVal startSystem As Integer, ByVal endSystem As Integer) As Integer 'hCount += 1 'If hCount Mod 0 = 0 Then 'Return hCache 'End If 'Initialize variables to be filled Dim x1, x2, y1, y2, z1, z2 As Integer 'LINQ queries for solar system data Dim systemFromData = From result In jumpDataDB.coordinateDatas Where result.systemId = startSystem Select result.x, result.y, result.z Dim systemToData = From result In jumpDataDB.coordinateDatas Where result.systemId = endSystem Select result.x, result.y, result.z 'LINQ execute 'Fill variables with solar system data for from and to system For Each solarSystem In systemFromData x1 = (solarSystem.x) y1 = (solarSystem.y) z1 = (solarSystem.z) Next For Each solarSystem In systemToData x2 = (solarSystem.x) y2 = (solarSystem.y) z2 = (solarSystem.z) Next Dim x3 = Math.Abs(x1 - x2) Dim y3 = Math.Abs(y1 - y2) Dim z3 = Math.Abs(z1 - z2) 'Calculate distance and round 'Dim distance = Math.Round(Math.Sqrt(Math.Abs((x1 - x2) ^ 2) + Math.Abs((y1 - y2) ^ 2) + Math.Abs((z1 - z2) ^ 2))) Dim distance = firstConstant * Math.Min(secondConstant * (x3 + y3 + z3), Math.Max(x3, Math.Max(y3, z3))) 'Dim distance = Math.Abs(x1 - x2) + Math.Abs(z1 - z2) + Math.Abs(y1 - y2) 'hCache = distance Return distance End Function And the main loop, the other 30% 'Begin search While openList.Count() != 0 'Set current system and move node to closed currentNode = lowestF() move(currentNode.id) For Each neighborNode In neighborNodes If Not onList(neighborNode.toSystem, 0) Then If Not onList(neighborNode.toSystem, 1) Then Dim newNode As New nodeData() newNode.id = neighborNode.toSystem newNode.parent = currentNode.id newNode.g = currentNode.g + neighborNode.distance newNode.h = findDistance(newNode.id, endSystem) newNode.f = newNode.g + newNode.h newNode.security = neighborNode.security openList.Add(newNode) shortOpenList(OLindex) = newNode.id OLindex += 1 Else Dim proposedG As Integer = currentNode.g + neighborNode.distance If proposedG < gValue(neighborNode.toSystem) Then changeParent(neighborNode.toSystem, currentNode.id, proposedG) End If End If End If Next 'Check to see if done If currentNode.id = endSystem Then Exit While End If End While If clarification is needed on my spaghetti code, I'll try to explain.

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• Implementing features in an Entity System

  - by Bane

  After asking two questions on Entity Systems (1, 2), and reading some articles on them, I think that I understand them much better than before. But, I still have some uncertainties, and mainly they are about building a Particle Emitter, an Input system, and a Camera. I obviously still have some problems understanding Entity Systems, and they might apply to a whole other range of objects, but I chose these three because they are very different concepts and should cover a pretty big ground, and help me understand Entity Systems and how to handle problems like these myself, as they come along. I am building an engine in Javascript, and I've implemented most of the core features, which include: input handling, flexible animation system, particle emitter, math classes and functions, scene handling, a camera and a render, and a whole bunch of other things that engines usually support. Then, I read Byte56's answer that got me interested into making the engine into an Entity System one. It would still remain an HTML5 game engine with the basic Scene philosophy, but it should support dynamic creation of entities from components. These are some of the definitions from the previous questions, updated: An Entity is an identifier. It doesn't have any data, it's not an object, it's a simple id that represents an index in the Scene's list of all entities (which I actually plan to implement as a component matrix). A Component is a data holder, but with methods that can operate on that data. The best example is a Vector2D, or a "Position" component. It has data: x and y, but also some methods that make operating on the data a bit easier: add(), normalize(), and so on. A System is something that can operate on a set of entities that meet the certain requirements, usually they (the entities) need to have a specified (by the system itself) set of components to be operated upon. The system is the "logic" part, the "algorithm" part, all the functionality supplied by components is purely for easier data management. The problem that I have now is fitting my old engine concept into this new programming paradigm. Lets start with the simplest one, a Camera. The camera has a position property (Vector2D), a rotation property and some methods for centering it around a point. Each frame, it is fed to a renderer, along with a scene, and all the objects are translated according to it's position. Then the scene is rendered. How could I represent this kind of an object in an Entity System? Would the camera be an entity or simply a component? A combination (see my answer)? Another issues that is bothering me is implementing a Particle Emitter. For what exactly I mean by that, you can check out my video of it: http://youtu.be/BObargIMQsE. The problem I have with this is, again, what should be what. I'm pretty sure that particles themselves shouldn't be entities, as I want to support 10k+ of them, and creating that much entities would be a heavy blow on my performance, I believe. Or maybe not? Depends on the implementation, but anyone with experience: please, do answer. The last bit I wan't to talk about, which is also bugging me the most, is how input should be handled. In my current version of the engine, there is a class called Input. It's a handler that subscribes to browser's events, such as keypresses, and mouse position changes, and also it maintains an internal state. Then, the player class has a react() method, which accepts an input object as an argument. The advantage of this is that the input object could be serialized into JSON and then shared over the network, allowing for smooth multiplayer simulations. But how does this translate into an Entity System?

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• IPsec tunnel to Android device not created even though there is an IKE SA

  - by Quentin Swain

  I'm trying to configure a VPN tunnel between an Android device running 4.1 and a Fedora 17 Linux box running strongSwan 5.0. The device reports that it is connected and strongSwan statusall returns that there is an IKE SA, but doesn't display a tunnel. I used the instructions for iOS in the wiki to generate certificates and configure strongSwan. Since Android uses a modified version of racoon this should work and since the connection is partly established I think I am on the right track. I don't see any errors about not being able to create the tunnel. This is the configuration for the strongSwan connection conn android2 keyexchange=ikev1 authby=xauthrsasig xauth=server left=96.244.142.28 leftsubnet=0.0.0.0/0 leftfirewall=yes leftcert=serverCert.pem right=%any rightsubnet=10.0.0.0/24 rightsourceip=10.0.0.2 rightcert=clientCert.pem ike=aes256-sha1-modp1024 auto=add This is the output of strongswan statusall Status of IKE charon daemon (strongSwan 5.0.0, Linux 3.3.4-5.fc17.x86_64, x86_64): uptime: 20 minutes, since Oct 31 10:27:31 2012 malloc: sbrk 270336, mmap 0, used 198144, free 72192 worker threads: 8 of 16 idle, 7/1/0/0 working, job queue: 0/0/0/0, scheduled: 7 loaded plugins: charon aes des sha1 sha2 md5 random nonce x509 revocation constraints pubkey pkcs1 pkcs8 pgp dnskey pem openssl fips-prf gmp xcbc cmac hmac attr kernel-netlink resolve socket-default stroke updown xauth-generic Virtual IP pools (size/online/offline): android-hybrid: 1/0/0 android2: 1/1/0 Listening IP addresses: 96.244.142.28 Connections: android-hybrid: %any...%any IKEv1 android-hybrid: local: [C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=vpn.strongswan.org] uses public key authentication android-hybrid: cert: "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=vpn.strongswan.org" android-hybrid: remote: [%any] uses XAuth authentication: any android-hybrid: child: dynamic === dynamic TUNNEL android2: 96.244.142.28...%any IKEv1 android2: local: [C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=vpn.strongswan.org] uses public key authentication android2: cert: "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=vpn.strongswan.org" android2: remote: [C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=client] uses public key authentication android2: cert: "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=client" android2: remote: [%any] uses XAuth authentication: any android2: child: 0.0.0.0/0 === 10.0.0.0/24 TUNNEL Security Associations (1 up, 0 connecting): android2[3]: ESTABLISHED 10 seconds ago, 96.244.142.28[C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=vpn.strongswan.org]...208.54.35.241[C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=client] android2[3]: Remote XAuth identity: android android2[3]: IKEv1 SPIs: 4151e371ad46b20d_i 59a56390d74792d2_r*, public key reauthentication in 56 minutes android2[3]: IKE proposal: AES_CBC_256/HMAC_SHA1_96/PRF_HMAC_SHA1/MODP_1024 The output of ip -s xfrm policy src ::/0 dst ::/0 uid 0 socket in action allow index 3851 priority 0 ptype main share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft 0(bytes), hard 0(bytes) limit: soft 0(packets), hard 0(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:29:08 use - src ::/0 dst ::/0 uid 0 socket out action allow index 3844 priority 0 ptype main share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft 0(bytes), hard 0(bytes) limit: soft 0(packets), hard 0(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:29:08 use - src ::/0 dst ::/0 uid 0 socket in action allow index 3835 priority 0 ptype main share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft 0(bytes), hard 0(bytes) limit: soft 0(packets), hard 0(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:29:08 use - src ::/0 dst ::/0 uid 0 socket out action allow index 3828 priority 0 ptype main share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft 0(bytes), hard 0(bytes) limit: soft 0(packets), hard 0(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:29:08 use - src 0.0.0.0/0 dst 0.0.0.0/0 uid 0 socket in action allow index 3819 priority 0 ptype main share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft 0(bytes), hard 0(bytes) limit: soft 0(packets), hard 0(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:29:08 use 2012-10-31 13:29:39 src 0.0.0.0/0 dst 0.0.0.0/0 uid 0 socket out action allow index 3812 priority 0 ptype main share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft 0(bytes), hard 0(bytes) limit: soft 0(packets), hard 0(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:29:08 use 2012-10-31 13:29:22 src 0.0.0.0/0 dst 0.0.0.0/0 uid 0 socket in action allow index 3803 priority 0 ptype main share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft 0(bytes), hard 0(bytes) limit: soft 0(packets), hard 0(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:29:08 use 2012-10-31 13:29:20 src 0.0.0.0/0 dst 0.0.0.0/0 uid 0 socket out action allow index 3796 priority 0 ptype main share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft 0(bytes), hard 0(bytes) limit: soft 0(packets), hard 0(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:29:08 use 2012-10-31 13:29:20 So a xfrm policy isn't being created for the connection, even though there is an SA between device and strongswan. Executing ip -s xfrm policy on the android device results in the following output: src 0.0.0.0/0 dst 10.0.0.2/32 uid 0 dir in action allow index 40 priority 2147483648 share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft (INF)(bytes), hard (INF)(bytes) limit: soft (INF)(packets), hard (INF)(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:42:08 use - tmpl src 96.244.142.28 dst 25.239.33.30 proto esp spi 0x00000000(0) reqid 0(0x00000000) mode tunnel level required share any enc-mask 00000000 auth-mask 00000000 comp-mask 00000000 src 10.0.0.2/32 dst 0.0.0.0/0 uid 0 dir out action allow index 33 priority 2147483648 share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft (INF)(bytes), hard (INF)(bytes) limit: soft (INF)(packets), hard (INF)(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:42:08 use - tmpl src 25.239.33.30 dst 96.244.142.28 proto esp spi 0x00000000(0) reqid 0(0x00000000) mode tunnel level required share any enc-mask 00000000 auth-mask 00000000 comp-mask 00000000 src 0.0.0.0/0 dst 0.0.0.0/0 uid 0 dir 4 action allow index 28 priority 0 share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft (INF)(bytes), hard (INF)(bytes) limit: soft (INF)(packets), hard (INF)(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:42:04 use 2012-10-31 13:42:08 src 0.0.0.0/0 dst 0.0.0.0/0 uid 0 dir 3 action allow index 19 priority 0 share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft (INF)(bytes), hard (INF)(bytes) limit: soft (INF)(packets), hard (INF)(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:42:04 use 2012-10-31 13:42:08 src 0.0.0.0/0 dst 0.0.0.0/0 uid 0 dir 4 action allow index 12 priority 0 share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft (INF)(bytes), hard (INF)(bytes) limit: soft (INF)(packets), hard (INF)(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:42:04 use 2012-10-31 13:42:06 src 0.0.0.0/0 dst 0.0.0.0/0 uid 0 dir 3 action allow index 3 priority 0 share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft (INF)(bytes), hard (INF)(bytes) limit: soft (INF)(packets), hard (INF)(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:42:04 use 2012-10-31 13:42:07 Logs from charon: 00[DMN] Starting IKE charon daemon (strongSwan 5.0.0, Linux 3.3.4-5.fc17.x86_64, x86_64) 00[KNL] listening on interfaces: 00[KNL] em1 00[KNL] 96.244.142.28 00[KNL] fe80::224:e8ff:fed2:18b2 00[CFG] loading ca certificates from '/etc/strongswan/ipsec.d/cacerts' 00[CFG] loaded ca certificate "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=strongSwan CA" from '/etc/strongswan/ipsec.d/cacerts/caCert.pem' 00[CFG] loading aa certificates from '/etc/strongswan/ipsec.d/aacerts' 00[CFG] loading ocsp signer certificates from '/etc/strongswan/ipsec.d/ocspcerts' 00[CFG] loading attribute certificates from '/etc/strongswan/ipsec.d/acerts' 00[CFG] loading crls from '/etc/strongswan/ipsec.d/crls' 00[CFG] loading secrets from '/etc/strongswan/ipsec.secrets' 00[CFG] loaded RSA private key from '/etc/strongswan/ipsec.d/private/clientKey.pem' 00[CFG] loaded IKE secret for %any 00[CFG] loaded EAP secret for android 00[CFG] loaded EAP secret for android 00[DMN] loaded plugins: charon aes des sha1 sha2 md5 random nonce x509 revocation constraints pubkey pkcs1 pkcs8 pgp dnskey pem openssl fips-prf gmp xcbc cmac hmac attr kernel-netlink resolve socket-default stroke updown xauth-generic 08[NET] waiting for data on sockets 16[LIB] created thread 16 [15338] 16[JOB] started worker thread 16 11[CFG] received stroke: add connection 'android-hybrid' 11[CFG] conn android-hybrid 11[CFG] left=%any 11[CFG] leftsubnet=(null) 11[CFG] leftsourceip=(null) 11[CFG] leftauth=pubkey 11[CFG] leftauth2=(null) 11[CFG] leftid=(null) 11[CFG] leftid2=(null) 11[CFG] leftrsakey=(null) 11[CFG] leftcert=serverCert.pem 11[CFG] leftcert2=(null) 11[CFG] leftca=(null) 11[CFG] leftca2=(null) 11[CFG] leftgroups=(null) 11[CFG] leftupdown=ipsec _updown iptables 11[CFG] right=%any 11[CFG] rightsubnet=(null) 11[CFG] rightsourceip=96.244.142.3 11[CFG] rightauth=xauth 11[CFG] rightauth2=(null) 11[CFG] rightid=%any 11[CFG] rightid2=(null) 11[CFG] rightrsakey=(null) 11[CFG] rightcert=(null) 11[CFG] rightcert2=(null) 11[CFG] rightca=(null) 11[CFG] rightca2=(null) 11[CFG] rightgroups=(null) 11[CFG] rightupdown=(null) 11[CFG] eap_identity=(null) 11[CFG] aaa_identity=(null) 11[CFG] xauth_identity=(null) 11[CFG] ike=aes256-sha1-modp1024 11[CFG] esp=aes128-sha1-modp2048,3des-sha1-modp1536 11[CFG] dpddelay=30 11[CFG] dpdtimeout=150 11[CFG] dpdaction=0 11[CFG] closeaction=0 11[CFG] mediation=no 11[CFG] mediated_by=(null) 11[CFG] me_peerid=(null) 11[CFG] keyexchange=ikev1 11[KNL] getting interface name for %any 11[KNL] %any is not a local address 11[KNL] getting interface name for %any 11[KNL] %any is not a local address 11[CFG] left nor right host is our side, assuming left=local 11[CFG] loaded certificate "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=vpn.strongswan.org" from 'serverCert.pem' 11[CFG] id '%any' not confirmed by certificate, defaulting to 'C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=vpn.strongswan.org' 11[CFG] added configuration 'android-hybrid' 11[CFG] adding virtual IP address pool 'android-hybrid': 96.244.142.3/32 13[CFG] received stroke: add connection 'android2' 13[CFG] conn android2 13[CFG] left=96.244.142.28 13[CFG] leftsubnet=0.0.0.0/0 13[CFG] leftsourceip=(null) 13[CFG] leftauth=pubkey 13[CFG] leftauth2=(null) 13[CFG] leftid=(null) 13[CFG] leftid2=(null) 13[CFG] leftrsakey=(null) 13[CFG] leftcert=serverCert.pem 13[CFG] leftcert2=(null) 13[CFG] leftca=(null) 13[CFG] leftca2=(null) 13[CFG] leftgroups=(null) 13[CFG] leftupdown=ipsec _updown iptables 13[CFG] right=%any 13[CFG] rightsubnet=10.0.0.0/24 13[CFG] rightsourceip=10.0.0.2 13[CFG] rightauth=pubkey 13[CFG] rightauth2=xauth 13[CFG] rightid=(null) 13[CFG] rightid2=(null) 13[CFG] rightrsakey=(null) 13[CFG] rightcert=clientCert.pem 13[CFG] rightcert2=(null) 13[CFG] rightca=(null) 13[CFG] rightca2=(null) 13[CFG] rightgroups=(null) 13[CFG] rightupdown=(null) 13[CFG] eap_identity=(null) 13[CFG] aaa_identity=(null) 13[CFG] xauth_identity=(null) 13[CFG] ike=aes256-sha1-modp1024 13[CFG] esp=aes128-sha1-modp2048,3des-sha1-modp1536 13[CFG] dpddelay=30 13[CFG] dpdtimeout=150 13[CFG] dpdaction=0 13[CFG] closeaction=0 13[CFG] mediation=no 13[CFG] mediated_by=(null) 13[CFG] me_peerid=(null) 13[CFG] keyexchange=ikev0 13[KNL] getting interface name for %any 13[KNL] %any is not a local address 13[KNL] getting interface name for 96.244.142.28 13[KNL] 96.244.142.28 is on interface em1 13[CFG] loaded certificate "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=vpn.strongswan.org" from 'serverCert.pem' 13[CFG] id '96.244.142.28' not confirmed by certificate, defaulting to 'C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=vpn.strongswan.org' 13[CFG] loaded certificate "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=client" from 'clientCert.pem' 13[CFG] id '%any' not confirmed by certificate, defaulting to 'C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=client' 13[CFG] added configuration 'android2' 13[CFG] adding virtual IP address pool 'android2': 10.0.0.2/32 08[NET] received packet: from 208.54.35.241[32235] to 96.244.142.28[500] 15[CFG] looking for an ike config for 96.244.142.28...208.54.35.241 15[CFG] candidate: %any...%any, prio 2 15[CFG] candidate: 96.244.142.28...%any, prio 5 15[CFG] found matching ike config: 96.244.142.28...%any with prio 5 01[JOB] next event in 29s 999ms, waiting 15[IKE] received NAT-T (RFC 3947) vendor ID 15[IKE] received draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike-02 vendor ID 15[IKE] received draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike-02\n vendor ID 15[IKE] received draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike-00 vendor ID 15[IKE] received XAuth vendor ID 15[IKE] received Cisco Unity vendor ID 15[IKE] received DPD vendor ID 15[IKE] 208.54.35.241 is initiating a Main Mode IKE_SA 15[IKE] IKE_SA (unnamed)[1] state change: CREATED => CONNECTING 15[CFG] selecting proposal: 15[CFG] proposal matches 15[CFG] received proposals: IKE:AES_CBC_256/HMAC_SHA1_96/PRF_HMAC_SHA1/MODP_1024, IKE:AES_CBC_256/HMAC_MD5_96/PRF_HMAC_MD5/MODP_1024, IKE:AES_CBC_128/HMAC_SHA1_96/PRF_HMAC_SHA1/MODP_1024, IKE:AES_CBC_128/HMAC_MD5_96/PRF_HMAC_MD5/MODP_1024, IKE:3DES_CBC/HMAC_SHA1_96/PRF_HMAC_SHA1/MODP_1024, IKE:3DES_CBC/HMAC_MD5_96/PRF_HMAC_MD5/MODP_1024, IKE:DES_CBC/HMAC_SHA1_96/PRF_HMAC_SHA1/MODP_1024, IKE:DES_CBC/HMAC_MD5_96/PRF_HMAC_MD5/MODP_1024 15[CFG] configured proposals: IKE:AES_CBC_256/HMAC_SHA1_96/PRF_HMAC_SHA1/MODP_1024, IKE:AES_CBC_128/AES_CBC_192/AES_CBC_256/3DES_CBC/CAMELLIA_CBC_128/CAMELLIA_CBC_192/CAMELLIA_CBC_256/HMAC_MD5_96/HMAC_SHA1_96/HMAC_SHA2_256_128/HMAC_SHA2_384_192/HMAC_SHA2_512_256/AES_XCBC_96/AES_CMAC_96/PRF_HMAC_MD5/PRF_HMAC_SHA1/PRF_HMAC_SHA2_256/PRF_HMAC_SHA2_384/PRF_HMAC_SHA2_512/PRF_AES128_XCBC/PRF_AES128_CMAC/MODP_2048/MODP_2048_224/MODP_2048_256/MODP_1536/MODP_4096/MODP_8192/MODP_1024/MODP_1024_160 15[CFG] selected proposal: IKE:AES_CBC_256/HMAC_SHA1_96/PRF_HMAC_SHA1/MODP_1024 15[NET] sending packet: from 96.244.142.28[500] to 208.54.35.241[32235] 04[NET] sending packet: from 96.244.142.28[500] to 208.54.35.241[32235] 15[MGR] checkin IKE_SA (unnamed)[1] 15[MGR] check-in of IKE_SA successful. 08[NET] received packet: from 208.54.35.241[32235] to 96.244.142.28[500] 08[NET] waiting for data on sockets 07[MGR] checkout IKE_SA by message 07[MGR] IKE_SA (unnamed)[1] successfully checked out 07[NET] received packet: from 208.54.35.241[32235] to 96.244.142.28[500] 07[LIB] size of DH secret exponent: 1023 bits 07[IKE] remote host is behind NAT 07[IKE] sending cert request for "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=strongSwan CA" 07[ENC] generating NAT_D_V1 payload finished 07[NET] sending packet: from 96.244.142.28[500] to 208.54.35.241[32235] 07[MGR] checkin IKE_SA (unnamed)[1] 07[MGR] check-in of IKE_SA successful. 04[NET] sending packet: from 96.244.142.28[500] to 208.54.35.241[32235] 08[NET] received packet: from 208.54.35.241[35595] to 96.244.142.28[4500] 10[IKE] ignoring certificate request without data 10[IKE] received end entity cert "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=client" 10[CFG] looking for XAuthInitRSA peer configs matching 96.244.142.28...208.54.35.241[C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=client] 10[CFG] candidate "android-hybrid", match: 1/1/2/2 (me/other/ike/version) 10[CFG] candidate "android2", match: 1/20/5/1 (me/other/ike/version) 10[CFG] selected peer config "android2" 10[CFG] certificate "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=client" key: 2048 bit RSA 10[CFG] using trusted ca certificate "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=strongSwan CA" 10[CFG] checking certificate status of "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=client" 10[CFG] ocsp check skipped, no ocsp found 10[CFG] certificate status is not available 10[CFG] certificate "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=strongSwan CA" key: 2048 bit RSA 10[CFG] reached self-signed root ca with a path length of 0 10[CFG] using trusted certificate "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=client" 10[IKE] authentication of 'C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=client' with RSA successful 10[ENC] added payload of type ID_V1 to message 10[ENC] added payload of type SIGNATURE_V1 to message 10[IKE] authentication of 'C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=vpn.strongswan.org' (myself) successful 10[IKE] queueing XAUTH task 10[IKE] sending end entity cert "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=vpn.strongswan.org" 10[NET] sending packet: from 96.244.142.28[4500] to 208.54.35.241[35595] 04[NET] sending packet: from 96.244.142.28[4500] to 208.54.35.241[35595] 10[IKE] activating new tasks 10[IKE] activating XAUTH task 10[NET] sending packet: from 96.244.142.28[4500] to 208.54.35.241[35595] 04[NET] sending packet: from 96.244.142.28[4500] to 208.54.35.241[35595] 01[JOB] next event in 3s 999ms, waiting 10[MGR] checkin IKE_SA android2[1] 10[MGR] check-in of IKE_SA successful. 08[NET] received packet: from 208.54.35.241[35595] to 96.244.142.28[4500] 08[NET] waiting for data on sockets 12[MGR] checkout IKE_SA by message 12[MGR] IKE_SA android2[1] successfully checked out 12[NET] received packet: from 208.54.35.241[35595] to 96.244.142.28[4500] 12[MGR] checkin IKE_SA android2[1] 12[MGR] check-in of IKE_SA successful. 08[NET] received packet: from 208.54.35.241[35595] to 96.244.142.28[4500] 16[MGR] checkout IKE_SA by message 16[MGR] IKE_SA android2[1] successfully checked out 16[NET] received packet: from 208.54.35.241[35595] to 96.244.142.28[4500] 08[NET] waiting for data on sockets 16[IKE] XAuth authentication of 'android' successful 16[IKE] reinitiating already active tasks 16[IKE] XAUTH task 16[NET] sending packet: from 96.244.142.28[4500] to 208.54.35.241[35595] 04[NET] sending packet: from 96.244.142.28[4500] to 208.54.35.241[35595] 16[MGR] checkin IKE_SA android2[1] 01[JOB] next event in 3s 907ms, waiting 16[MGR] check-in of IKE_SA successful. 08[NET] received packet: from 208.54.35.241[35595] to 96.244.142.28[4500] 09[MGR] checkout IKE_SA by message 09[MGR] IKE_SA android2[1] successfully checked out 09[NET] received packet: from 208.54.35.241[35595] to 96.244.142.28[4500] .8rS 09[IKE] IKE_SA android2[1] established between 96.244.142.28[C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=vpn.strongswan.org]...208.54.35.241[C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=client] 09[IKE] IKE_SA android2[1] state change: CONNECTING => ESTABLISHED 09[IKE] scheduling reauthentication in 3409s 09[IKE] maximum IKE_SA lifetime 3589s 09[IKE] activating new tasks 09[IKE] nothing to initiate 09[MGR] checkin IKE_SA android2[1] 09[MGR] check-in of IKE_SA successful. 09[MGR] checkout IKE_SA 09[MGR] IKE_SA android2[1] successfully checked out 09[MGR] checkin IKE_SA android2[1] 09[MGR] check-in of IKE_SA successful. 01[JOB] next event in 3s 854ms, waiting 08[NET] waiting for data on sockets 08[NET] received packet: from 208.54.35.241[35595] to 96.244.142.28[4500] 14[MGR] checkout IKE_SA by message 14[MGR] IKE_SA android2[1] successfully checked out 14[NET] received packet: from 208.54.35.241[35595] to 96.244.142.28[4500] 14[IKE] processing INTERNAL_IP4_ADDRESS attribute 14[IKE] processing INTERNAL_IP4_NETMASK attribute 14[IKE] processing INTERNAL_IP4_DNS attribute 14[IKE] processing INTERNAL_IP4_NBNS attribute 14[IKE] processing UNITY_BANNER attribute 14[IKE] processing UNITY_DEF_DOMAIN attribute 14[IKE] processing UNITY_SPLITDNS_NAME attribute 14[IKE] processing UNITY_SPLIT_INCLUDE attribute 14[IKE] processing UNITY_LOCAL_LAN attribute 14[IKE] processing APPLICATION_VERSION attribute 14[IKE] peer requested virtual IP %any 14[CFG] assigning new lease to 'android' 14[IKE] assigning virtual IP 10.0.0.2 to peer 'android' 14[NET] sending packet: from 96.244.142.28[4500] to 208.54.35.241[35595] 14[MGR] checkin IKE_SA android2[1] 14[MGR] check-in of IKE_SA successful. 04[NET] sending packet: from 96.244.142.28[4500] to 208.54.35.241[35595] 08[NET] waiting for data on sockets 01[JOB] got event, queuing job for execution 01[JOB] next event in 91ms, waiting 13[MGR] checkout IKE_SA 13[MGR] IKE_SA android2[1] successfully checked out 13[MGR] checkin IKE_SA android2[1] 13[MGR] check-in of IKE_SA successful. 01[JOB] got event, queuing job for execution 01[JOB] next event in 24s 136ms, waiting 15[MGR] checkout IKE_SA 15[MGR] IKE_SA android2[1] successfully checked out 15[MGR] checkin IKE_SA android2[1] 15[MGR] check-in of IKE_SA successful.

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• Mixed Emotions: Humans React to Natural Language Computer

  - by Applications User Experience

  There was a big event in Silicon Valley on Tuesday, November 15. Watson, the natural language computer developed at IBM Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York, and its inventor and principal research investigator, David Ferrucci, were guests at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California for another round of the television game Jeopardy. You may have read about or watched on YouTube how Watson beat Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, two top Jeopardy competitors, last February. This time, Watson swept the floor with two Silicon Valley high-achievers, one a venture capitalist with a background  in math, computer engineering, and physics, and the other a technology and finance writer well-versed in all aspects of culture and humanities. Watson is the product of the DeepQA research project, which attempts to create an artificially intelligent computing system through advances in natural language processing (NLP), among other technologies. NLP is a computing strategy that seeks to provide answers by processing large amounts of unstructured data contained in multiple large domains of human knowledge. There are several ways to perform NLP, but one way to start is by recognizing key words, then processing  contextual  cues associated with the keyword concepts so that you get many more “smart” (that is, human-like) deductions,  rather than a series of “dumb” matches.  Jeopardy questions often require more than key word matching to get the correct answer; typically several pieces of information put together, often from vastly different categories, to come up with a satisfactory word string solution that can be rephrased as a question.  Smarter than your average search engine, but is it as smart as a human? Watson was especially fast at descrambling mixed-up state capital names, and recalling and pairing movie titles where one started and the other ended in the same word (e.g., Billion Dollar Baby Boom, where both titles used the word Baby). David said they had basically removed the variable of how fast Watson hit the buzzer compared to human contestants, but frustration frequently appeared on the faces of the contestants beaten to the punch by Watson. David explained that top Jeopardy winners like Jennings achieved their success with a similar strategy, timing their buzz to the end of the reading of the clue,  and “running the board”, being first to respond on about 60% of the clues.  Similar results for Watson. It made sense that Watson would be good at the technical and scientific stuff, so I figured the venture capitalist was toast. But I thought for sure Watson would lose to the writer in categories such as pop culture, wines and foods, and other humanities. Surprisingly, it held its own. I was amazed it could recognize a word definition of a syllogism in the category of philosophy. So what was the audience reaction to all of this? We started out expecting our formidable human contestants to easily run some of their categories; however, they started off on the wrong foot with the state capitals which Watson could unscramble so efficiently. By the end of the first round, contestants and the audience were feeling a little bit, well, …. deflated. Watson was winning by about $13,000, and the humans had gone into negative dollars. The IBM host said he was going to “slow Watson down a bit,” and the humans came back with respectable scores in Double Jeopardy. This was partially thanks to a very sympathetic audience (and host, also a human) providing “group-think” on many questions, especially baseball ‘s most valuable players, which by the way, couldn’t have been hard because even I knew them.  Yes, that’s right, the humans cheated. Since Watson could speak but not hear us (it didn’t have speech recognition capability), it was probably unaware of this. In Final Jeopardy, the single question had to do with law. I was sure Watson would blow this one, but all contestants were able to answer correctly about a copyright law. In a career devoted to making computers more helpful to people, I think I may have seen how a computer can do too much. I’m not sure I’d want to work side-by-side with a Watson doing my job. Certainly listening and empathy are important traits we humans still have over Watson.  While there was great enthusiasm in the packed room of computer scientists and their friends for this standing-room-only show, I think it made several of us uneasy (especially the poor human contestants whose egos were soundly bashed in the first round). This computer system, by the way , only took 4 years to program. David Ferrucci mentioned several practical uses for Watson, including medical diagnoses and legal strategies. Are you “the expert” in your job? Imagine NLP computing on an Oracle database.   This may be the user interface of the future to enable users to better process big data. How do you think you’d like it? Postscript: There were three little boys sitting in front of me in the very first row. They looked, how shall I say it, … unimpressed!

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• Big Data – Operational Databases Supporting Big Data – Key-Value Pair Databases and Document Databases – Day 13 of 21

  - by Pinal Dave

  In yesterday’s blog post we learned the importance of the Relational Database and NoSQL database in the Big Data Story. In this article we will understand the role of Key-Value Pair Databases and Document Databases Supporting Big Data Story. Now we will see a few of the examples of the operational databases. Relational Databases (Yesterday’s post) NoSQL Databases (Yesterday’s post) Key-Value Pair Databases (This post) Document Databases (This post) Columnar Databases (Tomorrow’s post) Graph Databases (Tomorrow’s post) Spatial Databases (Tomorrow’s post) Key Value Pair Databases Key Value Pair Databases are also known as KVP databases. A key is a field name and attribute, an identifier. The content of that field is its value, the data that is being identified and stored. They have a very simple implementation of NoSQL database concepts. They do not have schema hence they are very flexible as well as scalable. The disadvantages of Key Value Pair (KVP) database are that they do not follow ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) properties. Additionally, it will require data architects to plan for data placement, replication as well as high availability. In KVP databases the data is stored as strings. Here is a simple example of how Key Value Database will look like: Key Value Name Pinal Dave Color Blue Twitter @pinaldave Name Nupur Dave Movie The Hero As the number of users grow in Key Value Pair databases it starts getting difficult to manage the entire database. As there is no specific schema or rules associated with the database, there are chances that database grows exponentially as well. It is very crucial to select the right Key Value Pair Database which offers an additional set of tools to manage the data and provides finer control over various business aspects of the same. Riak Rick is one of the most popular Key Value Database. It is known for its scalability and performance in high volume and velocity database. Additionally, it implements a mechanism for collection key and values which further helps to build manageable system. We will further discuss Riak in future blog posts. Key Value Databases are a good choice for social media, communities, caching layers for connecting other databases. In simpler words, whenever we required flexibility of the data storage keeping scalability in mind – KVP databases are good options to consider. Document Database There are two different kinds of document databases. 1) Full document Content (web pages, word docs etc) and 2) Storing Document Components for storage. The second types of the document database we are talking about over here. They use Javascript Object Notation (JSON) and Binary JSON for the structure of the documents. JSON is very easy to understand language and it is very easy to write for applications. There are two major structures of JSON used for Document Database – 1) Name Value Pairs and 2) Ordered List. MongoDB and CouchDB are two of the most popular Open Source NonRelational Document Database. MongoDB MongoDB databases are called collections. Each collection is build of documents and each document is composed of fields. MongoDB collections can be indexed for optimal performance. MongoDB ecosystem is highly available, supports query services as well as MapReduce. It is often used in high volume content management system. CouchDB CouchDB databases are composed of documents which consists fields and attachments (known as description). It supports ACID properties. The main attraction points of CouchDB are that it will continue to operate even though network connectivity is sketchy. Due to this nature CouchDB prefers local data storage. Document Database is a good choice of the database when users have to generate dynamic reports from elements which are changing very frequently. A good example of document usages is in real time analytics in social networking or content management system. Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss about various other Operational Databases supporting Big Data. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• Creating shapes on the fly

  - by Bertrand Le Roy

  Most Orchard shapes get created from part drivers, but they are a lot more versatile than that. They can actually be created from pretty much anywhere, including from templates. One example can be found in the Layout.cshtml file of the ThemeMachine theme: WorkContext.Layout.Footer .Add(New.BadgeOfHonor(), "5"); .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } What this is really doing is create a new shape called BadgeOfHonor and injecting it into the Footer global zone (that has not yet been defined, which in itself is quite awesome) with an ordering rank of "5". We can actually come up with something simpler, if we want to render the shape inline instead of sending it into a zone: @Display(New.BadgeOfHonor()) Now let's try something a little more elaborate and create a new shape for displaying a date and time: @Display(New.DateTime(date: DateTime.Now, format: "d/M/yyyy")) For the moment, this throws a "Shape type DateTime not found" exception because the system has no clue how to render a shape called "DateTime" yet. The BadgeOfHonor shape above was rendering something because there is a template for it in the theme: Themes/ThethemeMachine/Views/BadgeOfHonor.cshtml. We need to provide a template for our new shape to get rendered. Let's add a DateTime.cshtml file into our theme's Views folder in order to make the exception go away: Hi, I'm a date time shape. Now we're just missing one thing. Instead of displaying some static text, which is not very interesting, we can display the actual time that got passed into the shape's dynamic constructor. Those parameters will get added to the template's Model, so they are easy to retrieve: @(((DateTime)Model.date).ToString(Model.format)) Now that may remind you a little of WebForm's user controls. That's a fair comparison, except that these shapes are much more flexible (you can add properties on the fly as necessary), and that the actual rendering is decoupled from the "control". For example, any theme can override the template for a shape, you can use alternates, wrappers, etc. Most importantly, there is no lifecycle and protocol abstraction like there was in WebForms. I think this is a real improvement over previous attempts at similar things.

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• SQL SERVER – What is Incremental Statistics? – Performance improvements in SQL Server 2014 – Part 1

  - by Pinal Dave

  This is the first part of the series Incremental Statistics. Here is the index of the complete series. What is Incremental Statistics? – Performance improvements in SQL Server 2014 – Part 1 Simple Example of Incremental Statistics – Performance improvements in SQL Server 2014 – Part 2 DMV to Identify Incremental Statistics – Performance improvements in SQL Server 2014 – Part 3 Statistics are considered one of the most important aspects of SQL Server Performance Tuning. You might have often heard the phrase, with related to performance tuning. “Update Statistics before you take any other steps to tune performance”. Honestly, I have said above statement many times and many times, I have personally updated statistics before I start to do any performance tuning exercise. You may agree or disagree to the point, but there is no denial that Statistics play an extremely vital role in the performance tuning. SQL Server 2014 has a new feature called Incremental Statistics. I have been playing with this feature for quite a while and I find that very interesting. After spending some time with this feature, I decided to write about this subject over here. New in SQL Server 2014 – Incremental Statistics Well, it seems like lots of people wants to start using SQL Server 2014′s new feature of Incremetnal Statistics. However, let us understand what actually this feature does and how it can help. I will try to simplify this feature first before I start working on the demo code. Code for all versions of SQL Server Here is the code which you can execute on all versions of SQL Server and it will update the statistics of your table. The keyword which you should pay attention is WITH FULLSCAN. It will scan the entire table and build brand new statistics for you which your SQL Server Performance Tuning engine can use for better estimation of your execution plan. UPDATE STATISTICS TableName(StatisticsName) WITH FULLSCAN Who should learn about this? Why? If you are using partitions in your database, you should consider about implementing this feature. Otherwise, this feature is pretty much not applicable to you. Well, if you are using single partition and your table data is in a single place, you still have to update your statistics the same way you have been doing. If you are using multiple partitions, this may be a very useful feature for you. In most cases, users have multiple partitions because they have lots of data in their table. Each partition will have data which belongs to itself. Now it is very common that each partition are populated separately in SQL Server. Real World Example For example, if your table contains data which is related to sales, you will have plenty of entries in your table. It will be a good idea to divide the partition into multiple filegroups for example, you can divide this table into 3 semesters or 4 quarters or even 12 months. Let us assume that we have divided our table into 12 different partitions. Now for the month of January, our first partition will be populated and for the month of February our second partition will be populated. Now assume, that you have plenty of the data in your first and second partition. Now the month of March has just started and your third partition has started to populate. Due to some reason, if you want to update your statistics, what will you do? In SQL Server 2012 and earlier version You will just use the code of WITH FULLSCAN and update the entire table. That means even though you have only data in third partition you will still update the entire table. This will be VERY resource intensive process as you will be updating the statistics of the partition 1 and 2 where data has not changed at all. In SQL Server 2014 You will just update the partition of Partition 3. There is a special syntax where you can now specify which partition you want to update now. The impact of this is that it is smartly merging the new data with old statistics and update the entire statistics without doing FULLSCAN of your entire table. This has a huge impact on performance. Remember that the new feature in SQL Server 2014 does not change anything besides the capability to update a single partition. However, there is one feature which is indeed attractive. Previously, when table data were changed 20% at that time, statistics update were triggered. However, now the same threshold is applicable to a single partition. That means if your partition faces 20% data, change it will also trigger partition level statistics update which, when merged to your final statistics will give you better performance. In summary If you are not using a partition, this feature is not applicable to you. If you are using a partition, this feature can be very helpful to you. Tomorrow: We will see working code of SQL Server 2014 Incremental Statistics. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: SQL Statistics, Statistics

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• Archbeat Link-O-Rama Top 10 Facebook Faves for October 20-26, 2013

  - by OTN ArchBeat

  Here's this week's list of the Top 10 items shared on the OTN ArchBeat Facebook Page from October 27 - November 2, 2013. Visualizing and Process (Twitter) Events in Real Time with Oracle Coherence | Noah Arliss This OTN Virtual Developer Day session explores in detail how to create a dynamic HTML5 Web application that interacts with Oracle Coherence as it’s processing events in real time, using the Avatar project and Oracle Coherence’s Live Events feature. Part of OTN Virtual Developer Day: Harnessing the Power of Oracle WebLogic and Oracle Coherence, November 5, 2013. 9am to 1pm PT / 12pm to 4pm ET / 1pm to 5pm BRT. Register now! HTML5 Application Development with Oracle WebLogic Server | Doug Clarke This free OTN Virtual Developer Day session covers the support for WebSockets, RESTful data services, and JSON infrastructure available in Oracle WebLogic Server. Part of OTN Virtual Developer Day: Harnessing the Power of Oracle WebLogic and Oracle Coherence, November 5, 2013. 9am to 1pm PT / 12pm to 4pm ET / 1pm to 5pm BRT. Register now! Video: ADF BC and REST services | Frederic Desbiens Spend a few minutes with Oracle ADF principal product manager Frederic Desbiens and learn how to publish ADF Business Components as RESTful web services. One Client Two Clusters | David Felcey "Sometimes its desirable to have a client connect to multiple clusters, either because the data is dispersed or for instance the clusters are in different locations for high availability," says David Felcey. David shows you how in this post, which includes a simple example. Exceptions Handling and Notifications in ODI | Christophe Dupupet Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team director Christophe Dupupet reviews the techniques that are available in Oracle Data Integrator to guarantee that the appropriate individuals are notified in the event that ODI processes are impacted by network outages or other mishaps. Securing WebSocket applications on Glassfish | Pavel Bucek WebSocket is a key capability standardized into Java EE 7. Many developers wonder how WebSockets can be secured. One very nice characteristic for WebSocket is that it in fact completely piggybacks on HTTP. In this post Pavel Bucek demonstrates how to secure WebSocket endpoints in GlassFish using TLS/SSL. Oracle Coherence, Split-Brain and Recovery Protocols In Detail | Ricardo Ferreira Ricardo Ferreira's article "provides a high level conceptual overview of Split-Brain scenarios in distributed systems," focusing on a "specific example of cluster communication failure and recovery in Oracle Coherence." Non-programmatic Authentication Using Login Form in JSF (For WebCenter & ADF) | JayJay Zheng Oracle ACE JayJay Zheng shares an approach that "avoids the programmatic authentication and works great for having a custom login page developed in WebCenter Portal integrated with OAM authentication." The latest article in the Industrial SOA series looks at mobile computing and how companies are developing SOA to go. http://pub.vitrue.com/PUxT Tech Article: SOA in Real Life: Mobile Solutions The ACE Director Thing | Dr. Frank Munz Frank Munz finally gets around to blogging about achieving Oracle ACE Director status and shares some interesting insight into what will change—and what won't—thanks to that new status. A good, short read for those interested in learning more about the Oracle ACE program. Thought for the Day "Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." — Will Rogers, American humorist (November 4, 1879 – August 15, 1935) Source: brainyquote.com

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• Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Release 2 (12.1.0.2) Now Available!

  - by Javier Puerta

  Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Release 2 (12.1.0.2) is now available on OTN on ALL platforms. This is the first major release since the launch of Enterprise Manager 12c in October of 2011 and the first ever Enterprise Manager release available on all platforms simultaneously. This is primarily a stability release which incorporates many of issues and feedback reported by early adopters. In addition, this release contains many new features and enhancements in areas across the board.   New Capabilities and Features   Enhanced management capabilities for enterprise private clouds: Introduces new capabilities to allow customers to build and manage a Java Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) cloud based on Oracle Weblogic Server. The new capabilities include guided set up of PaaS Cloud, self-service provisioning, automatic scale out and metering and chargeback. Enhanced lifecycle management capabilities for Oracle WebLogic Server environments: Combining in-context multiple domain, patching and configuration file synchronizations. Integrated Hardware-Software management for Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud through features such as rack schematics visualization and integrated monitoring of all hardware and software components. The latest management capabilities for business-critical applications include: Business Application Management: A new Business Application (BA) target type and dashboard with flexible definitions provides a logical view of an application’s business transactions, end-user experiences and the cloud infrastructure the monitored application is running on. Enhanced User Experience Reporting: Oracle Real User Experience Insight has been enhanced to provide reporting capabilities on client-side issues for applications running in the cloud and has been more tightly coupled with Oracle Business Transaction Management to help ensure that real-time user experience and transaction tracing data is provided to users in context. Several key improvements address ease of administration, reporting and extensibility for massively scalable cloud environments including dynamic groups, self-updateable monitoring templates, bulk operations against many events, etc. New and Revised Plug-Ins:   Several plug-Ins have been updated as a part of this release resulting in either new versions or revisions. Revised plug-ins contain only bug-fixes and while new plug-ins incorporate both bug fixes as well as new functionality.   Plug-In Name Version Enterprise Manager for Oracle Database 12.1.0.2 (revision) Enterprise Manager for Oracle Fusion Middleware 12.1.0.3 (new) Enterprise Manager for Chargeback and Capacity Planning 12.1.0.3 (new) Enterprise Manager for Oracle Fusion Applications 12.1.0.3 (new) Enterprise Manager for Oracle Virtualization 12.1.0.3 (new) Enterprise Manager for Oracle Exadata 12.1.0.3 (new) Enterprise Manager for Oracle Cloud 12.1.0.4 (new) Installation and Upgrade:   All major platforms have been released simultaneously (Linux 32 / 64 bit, Solaris (SPARC), Solaris x86-64, IBM AIX 64-bit, and Windows x86-64 (64-bit) ) Enterprise Manager 12.1.0.2 is a complete release that includes both the EM OMS and Agent versions of 12.1.0.2. Installation options available with EM 12.1.0.2: User can do fresh Install or an upgrade from versions EM 10.2.0.5, 11.1, or 12.1.0.2 ( Bundle Patch 1 not mandatory). Upgrading to EM 12.1.0.2 from EM 12.1.0.1 is not a patch application (similar to Bundle Patch 1) but is achieved through a 1-system upgrade. Documentation:   Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control Introduction Document provides a broad overview of capabilities and highlights"What's New" in EM 12.1.0.2.   All updated Oracle Enterprise Manager documentation can be found on OTN   Customer Webcast - EM 12c Installation and Upgrade: This webcast is for customers who are interested in learning how to successfully deploy or upgrade to EM 12.1.0.2.   Customer Webcast - Installation and Upgrade - September 21(registration and info on OTN starting September 12)   Enterprise Manager 12c R2 Resources:   OTN Download Page Upgrade Guide

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• Logging connection strings

  If you some of the dynamic features of SSIS such as package configurations or property expressions then sometimes trying to work out were your connections are pointing can be a bit confusing. You will work out in the end but it can be useful to explicitly log this information so that when things go wrong you can just review the logs. You may wish to develop this idea further and encapsulate such logging into a custom task, but for now lets keep it simple and use the Script Task. The Script Task code below will raise an Information event showing the name and connection string for a connection. Imports System Imports Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime Public Class ScriptMain Public Sub Main() Dim fireAgain As Boolean ' Get the connection string, we need to know the name of the connection Dim connectionName As String = "My OLE-DB Connection" Dim connectionString As String = Dts.Connections(connectionName).ConnectionString ' Format the message and log it via an information event Dim message As String = String.Format("Connection ""{0}"" has a connection string of ""{1}"".", _ connectionName, connectionString) Dts.Events.FireInformation(0, "Information", message, Nothing, 0, fireAgain) Dts.TaskResult = Dts.Results.Success End Sub End Class Building on that example it is probably more flexible to log all connections in a package as shown in the next example. Imports System Imports Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime Public Class ScriptMain Public Sub Main() Dim fireAgain As Boolean ' Loop through all connections in the package For Each connection As ConnectionManager In Dts.Connections ' Get the connection string and log it via an information event Dim message As String = String.Format("Connection ""{0}"" has a connection string of ""{1}"".", _ connection.Name, connection.ConnectionString) Dts.Events.FireInformation(0, "Information", message, Nothing, 0, fireAgain) Next Dts.TaskResult = Dts.Results.Success End Sub End Class By using the Information event it makes it readily available in the designer, for example the Visual Studio Output window (Ctrl+Alt+O) or the package designer Execution Results tab, and also allows you to readily control the logging by choosing which events to log in the normal way. Now before somebody starts commenting that this is a security risk, I would like to highlight good practice for building connection managers. Firstly the Password property, or any other similar sensitive property is always defined as write-only, and secondly the connection string property only uses the public properties to assemble the connection string value when requested. In other words the connection string will never contain the password. I have seen a couple of cases where this is not true, but that was just bad development by third-parties, you won’t find anything like that in the box from Microsoft.   Whilst writing this code it made me wish that there was a custom log entry that you could just turn on that did this for you, but alas connection managers do not even seem to support custom events. It did however remind me of a very useful event that is often overlooked and fits rather well alongside connection string logging, the Execute SQL Task’s custom ExecuteSQLExecutingQuery event. To quote the help reference Custom Messages for Logging - Provides information about the execution phases of the SQL statement. Log entries are written when the task acquires connection to the database, when the task starts to prepare the SQL statement, and after the execution of the SQL statement is completed. The log entry for the prepare phase includes the SQL statement that the task uses. It is the last part that is so useful, how often have you used an expression to derive a SQL statement and you want to log that to make sure the correct SQL is being returned? You need to turn it one, by default no custom log events are captured, but I’ll refer you to a walkthrough on setting up the logging for ExecuteSQLExecutingQuery by Jamie.

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• Oracle OpenWorld 2012: The Best Just Gets Better

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  For almost 30 years, Oracle OpenWorld has been the world's premier learning event for Oracle customers, developers, and partners. With more than 2,000 sessions providing best practices; demos; tips and tricks; and product insight from Oracle, customers, partners, and industry experts, Oracle OpenWorld provides more educational and networking opportunities than any other event in the world. 2011 Facts Attendees from 117 Countries Used Filtered Tap Water to Eliminate 22 Tons of Plastic Bottles Diverted Enough Trash to Fill 37 Dump Trucks 45,000+ Total Registered Attendees Oracle OpenWorld 2012: The Best Just Gets Better What's New? What's Different?  This year Oracle OpenWorld will include the Executive Edge @ OpenWorld (replacing Leaders Circle), the Customer Experience Summit @ OpenWorld, JavaOne, MySQL Connect, and the expanded Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange @ OpenWorld. More than 50,000 customers and partners will attend OpenWorld to see Oracle's newest hardware and software products at work, and learn more about our server and storage, database, middleware, industry, and applications solutions.  New This Year: The Executive Edge @ Oracle OpenWorld (Oct 1 - 2) New at Oracle OpenWorld this year, the Executive Edge @ OpenWorld (replacing Leaders Circle) will bring together customer, partner and Oracle executives for two days of keynote presentations, summits targeted to customer industries and organizational roles, roundtable discussions, and great new networking opportunities. The Customer Experience Revolution Is Here!Customer Experience Summit @ Oracle OpenWorld (Oct 3 - 5) This dynamic new program offers more than 60 keynotes, roundtables and networking sessions exploring trends, innovations and best practices to help companies succeed with a customer experience-driven business strategy.  All Things Java -- JavaOne (Sep 30 - Oct 4) JavaOne is the world's most important event for the Java developer community. Technical sessions cover topics that span the breadth of the Java universe, with keynotes from the foremost Java visionaries and expert-led hands-on learning opportunities.  Are you innovating with Oracle Fusion Middleware?  If you are, then you need to know that the Call for Nominations for the 2012 Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards is open now through July 17, 2012. Jointly sponsored by Oracle, AUSOUG, IOUG, OAUG, ODTUG, QUEST, and UKOUG, the Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards honor organizations creatively using Oracle Fusion Middleware to deliver unique value to their enterprise.  Winning customers and partners will be hosted at Oracle OpenWorld 2012, where they can connect with Oracle executives, network with peers, and be featured in an upcoming edition of Oracle Magazine. Be sure to submit your WebCenter use case today! Oracle Music Festival his year, the first-ever Oracle Music Festival will debut, running from September 30 to October 4. In the tradition of great live music events like Coachella and SXSW, the streets of San Francisco—from 7:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. for five nights-into-days—will vibrate with the music of some of today’s hottest name acts, emerging and local bands, and scratching DJs. Outdoor venues and clubs near Moscone Center and the Zone (including 111 Minna, DNA, Mezzanine, Roe, Ruby Skye, Slim’s, the Taylor Street Café, Temple, Union Square, and Yerba Buena Gardens) will showcase acts that range from reggae to rock, punk to ska, R&B to country, indie to honky-tonk. After a full day of sessions and networking, you'll be primed for some late-night relaxation and rocking out at one or more of these sets.  Please note that with awesome acts, thousands of music devotees, and a limited number of venues each night, access to Festival events is on a first-come, first-served basis. Join us at the Oracle Music Festival--it's going to be epic! Save $500 on Registration with Early Bird Pricing Early Bird pricing ends July 13! Save up to $500 on registration fees by registering by Friday. Will you be attending Oracle OpenWorld 2012? We hope to see you there! Be sure to follow @oraclewebcenter on Twitter for more information and use hashtags #webcenter and #oow!

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• Unit Testing Framework for XQuery

  - by Knut Vatsendvik

  This posting provides a unit testing framework for XQuery using Oracle Service Bus. It allows you to write a test case to run your XQuery transformations in an automated fashion. When the test case is run, the framework returns any differences found in the response. The complete code sample with install instructions can be downloaded from here. Writing a Unit Test You start a new Test Case by creating a Proxy Service from Workshop that comes with Oracle Service Bus. In the General Configuration page select Service Type to be Messaging Service           In the Message Type Configuration page link both the Request & Response Message Type to the TestCase element of the UnitTest.xsd schema                 The TestCase element consists of the following child elements The ID and optional Name element is simply used for reference. The Transformation element is the XQuery resource to be executed. The Input elements represents the input to run the XQuery with. The Output element represents the expected output. These XML documents are “also” represented as an XQuery resource where the XQuery function takes no arguments and returns the XML document. Why not pass the test data with the TestCase? Passing an XML structure in another XML structure is not very easy or at least not very human readable. Therefore it was chosen to represent the test data as an loadable resource in the OSB. However you are free to go ahead with another approach on this if wanted. The XMLDiff elements represents any differences found. A sample on input is shown here. Modeling the Message Flow Then the next step is to model the message flow of the Proxy Service. In the Request Pipeline create a stage node that loads the test case input data.      For this, specify a dynamic XQuery expression that evaluates at runtime to the name of a pre-registered XQuery resource. The expression is of course set by the input data from the test case.           Add a Run stage node. Assign the result of the XQuery, that is to be run, to a context variable. Define a mapping for each of the input variables added in previous stage.     Add a Compare stage. Like with the input data, load the expected output data. Do a compare using XMLDiff XQuery provided where the first argument is the loaded output test data, and the second argument the result from the Run stage. Any differences found is replaced back into the test case XMLDiff element. In case of any unexpected failure while processing, add an Error Handler to the Pipeline to capture the fault. To pass back the result add the following Insert action In the Response Pipeline. A sample on output is shown here.

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• Inspiring a co-worker to adopt better coding practices?

  - by Aaronaught

  In the Handling my antiquated coworker question, various people discussed strategies for dealing with coworkers who are unwilling to integrate their workflow with the team's. I'd like, if possible, to learn some strategies for "teaching" a coworker who is merely ignorant of modern techniques and tools, and possibly a little apathetic. I've started working with a programmer who until recently has been working in relative isolation, in a different part of the company. He has extensive domain knowledge and most importantly he has demonstrated good problem-solving skills, something which many candidates seem to lack. However, the actual (C#) code I've seen is a throwback to the VB6 days. Procedural structure, Hungarian notation, global variables (abuse of static), no interfaces, no tests, non-use of Generics, throwing System.Exception... you get the idea. This programmer is a fair bit older than I am and, by first impressions at least, doesn't actively seek positive change. I'm not going to say resistant to change, because I think that is largely an issue of how the topic gets broached, and I want to be prepared. Programmers tend to be stubborn people, and going in with guns blazing and instituting rip-it-to-shreds code reviews and strictly-enforced policies is very likely not going to produce the end result that I want. If this were a new hire, a junior programmer, I wouldn't think twice about taking a "mentor" stance, but I'm extremely wary of treating an experienced employee as a clueless newbie (which he's not - he just hasn't kept pace with certain advancements in the field). How might I go about raising this developer's code quality standard the Dale Carnegie way, through gentle persuasion and non-material incentives? What would be the best strategy for effecting subtle, gradual changes, without creating an adversarial situation? Have other people - especially lead developers - been in this type of situation before? Which strategies were successful at stimulating interest and creating a positive group dynamic? Which strategies weren't successful and would be better to avoid? Clarifications: I really feel that several people are answering based on personal feelings without actually reading all of the details of the question. Please note the following, which should have been implied but I am now making explicit: This coworker is only my "senior" by virtue of age. I never said that his title, sphere of influence, or years at the organization exceed mine, and in fact, none of those things are true. He's a LOB programmer who's been absorbed into the main development shop. That's it. I am not a new hire, junior programmer, or other naïve idiot with grand plans to transform the company overnight. I am basically in charge of the software process, but as many who've worked as "leads" will know, responsibilities don't always correlate precisely with the org chart. I'm not asking people how to get my way, come hell or high water. I could do that if I wanted to, with the net result being that this person would become resentful and/or quit. Please try to understand that I am looking for a social, cooperative method of driving change. The mention of "...global variables... no tests... throwing System.Exception" was intended to demonstrate that the problems are not just superficial or aesthetic. Practices that may work for relatively small CRUD apps do not necessarily work for large enterprise apps, and in fact, none of the code so far has actually passed the integration tests. Please, try to take the question at face value, accept that I actually know what I'm talking about, and either answer the question that I actually asked or move on. P.S. My sincerest gratitude to those who -did- offer constructive advice rather than arguing with the premise. I'm going to leave this open for a while longer as I'm hoping to hear more in the way of real-world experiences.

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• Is there a good [and modern] reason to not have static HTML pages with AJAX content , rather than generate pages?

  - by user1725

  Assumptions: We don't care about IE6, and Noscript users. Lets pretend we have the following design concept: All your pages are HTML/CSS that create the ascetics, layout, colours, general design related things. Lets pretend this basic code below is that: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html> <head> <link href="/example.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/> <script src="example.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <head> <body> <div class="left"> </div> <div class="mid"> </div> <div class="right"> </div> </body> </html> Which in theory should produce, with the right CSS, three vertical columns on the web page. Now, here's the root of the question, what are the serious advantages and/or disadvantages of loading the content of these columns (lets assume they are all indeed dynamic content, not static) via AJAX requests, or have the content pre-set with a scripting language? So for instance, we would have, in the AJAX example, lets asume jquery is used on-load: //Multiple http requests $("body > div.left").load("./script.php?content=news"); $("body > div.right").load("./script.php?content=blogs"); $("body > div.mid").load("./script.php?content=links"); OR--- //Single http request $.ajax({ url: './script.php?content=news|blogs|links', method: 'json', type: 'text', success: function (data) { $("body > div.left").html(data.news); $("body > div.right").html(data.blogs); $("body > div.mid").html(data.links); } }) Verses doing this: <body> <div class="left"> <?php echo function_returning_news(); ?> </div> <div class="mid"> <?php echo function_returning_blogs(); ?> </div> <div class="right"> <?php echo function_returning_links(); ?> </div> </body> I'm personally thinking right now that doing static HTML pages is a better method, my reasoning is: I've separated my data, logic, and presentation (ie, "MVC") code. I can make changes to one without others. Browser caches mean I'm just getting server load mostly for the content, not the presentation wrapped around it. I could turn my "script.php" into a more robust API for the website. But I'm not certain or clear that these are legitimately good reasons, and I'm not confidently aware of other issues that could happen, so I would like to know the pros-and-cons, so to speak.

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