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• Improve Playback Using Enhancements in Windows Media Player 12

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Are you looking for ways to improve the playback of your media in Windows Media Player 12? We’ll show you how to do that by using the enhancements in WMP 12. If you are in Library mode, you’ll need to click the icon at the lower right to switch to Now Playing mode. Right-click anywhere in Media Player while in Now Playing mode, select Enhancements, and select any of the available options.   You can switch between the individual enhancements by clicking the right and left buttons at the top left.   Crossfading and Auto Volume Leveling The Auto Volume Leveling setting is just a simple toggle on and off. If your MP3 or WMA files have volume leveling information values.   You can automatically add volume leveling information values to all files you add to your library by switching to Library view, going to Tools > Options, and selecting Add volume leveling information values for new files on the Library tab. Click OK when finished.   Crossfading will gradually decrease the volume of the song that is ending (fade out) and increase volume of the song that is beginning. Click Turn on Crossfading and then click and drag the slider left or right change the amount of overlap between tracks. Graphic Equalizer The graphic equalizer is toggled on and off by clicking Turn on / Turn off at the top left. You can select pre-defined equalizer settings by music genre by clicking the Default list. The radio buttons on the left allow you to move the sliders individually, in a loose group or a tight group. You can always return to the default settings by clicking Reset. Play Speed Settings Choose a pre-defined settings by clicking Slow, Normal, or Fast. Uncheck the Snap slider to common speeds the move the slider right and left to your desired speed. If nothing else, these settings provide a little fun and amusement. Quiet Mode Quiet mode will level out any sharp volume highs and lows within a single track. Simply toggle the setting on or off and select whether you prefer Medium difference or Little difference by selecting one of the radio buttons. SRS WOW effects SRS WOW effects enhance low-frequency and stereo sound performance. Click Turn on to enable the TruBass and WOW Effect sliders. You can also optimize for your speaker type. Click to switch between Regular, Large, and Headphones. Video Settings Video Settings allow you to adjust the Hue, Brightness, Saturation, and Contrast.   You can also adjust the zoom settings by clicking Select video zoom settings.   Dolby Digital Settings Choose between Normal, Night, and Theater settings to adjust the audio for Dolby Digital content. This setting will only effect media with Dolby Digital sound. Looking for more ways to improve your media experience in WMP 12? Check out how to update metadata and cover art and how to share media with other Windows 7 computers on your home network. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Fixing When Windows Media Player Library Won’t Let You Add FilesInstall and Use the VLC Media Player on Ubuntu LinuxHow To Rip a Music CD in Windows 7 Media CenterStream Media from Windows 7 to XP with VLC Media PlayerInstalling Windows Media Player Plugin for Firefox TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows Check these Awesome Chrome Add-ons iFixit Offers Gadget Repair Manuals Online Vista style sidebar for Windows 7 Create Nice Charts With These Web Based Tools Track Daily Goals With 42Goals Video Toolbox is a Superb Online Video Editor

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• Tap Into Tier 1 ERP

  - by Christine Randle

  By: Larry Simcox, Senior Director, Accelerate Corporate Programs     Your customers aren’t satisfied with so-so customer service. Your employees aren’t happy with below average salaries.   So why would you settle for second-rate or tier 2 ERP?   A recent report from Nucleus Research found that usability improvements and rapid implementation tools are simplifying deployments, putting tier 1 enterprise applications well within reach for midsize companies. So how can your business tap into the power of tier 1 ERP? And what are the best ways to manage a deployment?   The Reputation of ERP Implementations Overhauling internal operations and implementing ERP can be a challenging endeavor for organizations of all sizes. Midsize companies often shy away from enterprise-class ERP, fearing complexity, limited resources and perceived challenging deployments. Many forward thinking executives experienced ERP implementations in the late 90s and early 2000s and embrace a strategy to grow their business by investing in a foundation for innovation and growth via ERP modernization projects.   In recent years there has been a strong consumerization of IT with enterprise applications and their delivery methods evolving to become more user-friendly.  Today, usability improvements and modern implementation tools have made top-tier ERP solutions more accessible for growing companies. Nucleus found that because enterprise-class software can now be rapidly deployed, the payback is quicker, the risks are lower, the software is less disruptive and overall, companies can differentiate themselves from their competitors and achieve more success with the advantages these types of systems deliver.   Tapping into the power of tier 1 ERP can be made much easier with Oracle Accelerate solutions. Created by Oracle's expert partners and reviewed by Oracle, Oracle Accelerate solutions are simple to deploy, industry-specific, packaged solutions that provide a fast time to benefit, which means getting the right solution in place quickly, inexpensively with a controlled scope and predictable returns.   How are growing midsize companies successfully deploying tier 1 ERP? According to Nucleus Research, companies can increase success in their tier 1 ERP deployments by limiting customization, planning a rapid go-live, bettering communication across departments, and considering different delivery options. Oracle Accelerate solutions incorporate industry best practices and encourage rapid deployments. And even more, Nucleus found customers deploying tier 1 ERP with Oracle that had used Oracle Business Accelerators, Oracle’s rapid implementation tools, reduced the time to deploy Oracle E-Business Suite by at least 50 percent.   Industrial manufacturer L.H. Dottie is one company that needed ERP with enhanced capabilities to support its growth and streamline business processes. Using out-of-the-box configuration of Oracle E-Business Suite modules (provided by Oracle Business Accelerators and delivered by Oracle Partner C3 Business Solutions), L.H. Dottie was able to speed its implementation and went live in just six and a half months. With tier 1 ERP, the company was able to grow and do its business better, automating a variety of processes, accelerating product delivery and gaining powerful data analysis capabilities that helped drive its business into further regions. See more details about their ERP implementation here.   Tier 1 enterprise-class applications have proven to boost the success of Oracle’s midsize customers. As Nucleus Research iterates, companies poised for growth or seeking to compete against larger competitors absolutely can tap into the power of tier 1 ERP and position themselves as enterprise-class through leveraging Oracle Accelerate solutions.   You can learn more here about The Evolving Business Case for Tier - 1 ERP in Midsize Companies in our exclusive webcast with Nucleus.   ###  

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• Internships at Oracle &ndash; a truly multicultural experience!

  - by cristian.condurache(at)oracle.com

  Hello everybody!!! Our names are Lena and Laura, we both study in the same Grande Ecole in France, IPAG and we are about to complete our 16 week-internship in Oracle in the UK. Below a summary of our experience! My name is Lena. I am 20 years old and joined Oracle UK in September 2010 – more specifically, I joined the EMEA Graduate's Recruitment Team (EMEA stands for Europe, Middle East and Africa), and I have learned a lot about working life. It was a really good experience, which made me realize that I soon will be looking for a fulltime employee in a company in less than 3 years. I am glad to have had this first experience in Oracle. First of all because it's a very welcoming company which treats interns as employees and gives them the opportunity to show their potential. I also discovered that it is nice to work in a company where everybody knows everybody, and where the atmosphere is really good. The multicultural aspect is one of the most important and beautiful elements of Oracle. It gives you the opportunity to have contacts in many parts of the world and discover a lot of nice people. During my internship I learned a lot about Recruitment. I discovered I want to work in a Human Resources role after I graduate. I like the contact I will have with candidates and the fact that I have to be in touch with managers and understand their needs. I would be glad to work for the company in the near future. I would like to thank all my team members for welcoming me like they did. It was a real pleasure to share this experience in Oracle and in this team and I hope to return after I graduate.   Hi all! I am Laura. My wish for this internship was to focus on training of personal skills for employees and, by the same time of course, for the company’s development.... and I did it in the OTD team (EMEA Organization Talent Development Team). I could not have done something better than this! It was truly instructive. I learnt how to work in such a big international company, the values and the rules to follow and to interact and be part of the organisation. In Oracle, there are so different aspects of every department, so many possibilities in HR as well as in Finance or Sales... The jobs are very various and the employees’ cultures are also really different thanks to this international and multicultural company. I am working with OTD for the entire EMEA region, having many of my colleagues in other countries, with other cultures, other ways to work, and other ways to think... this is so inspiring! Oracle offers the best environment to learn about a job, as well as to learn about work life in such large companies. This company is about new technologies, it always goes fast, and everything changes quickly! You have to be aware of these changes and keep track of the wishes of customers. For OTD of course, these customers are the employees. Looking back I have learnt more then I would have ever thought and I know that it is what I want to do... And now I hope to come back again! I want to thank all my team for welcoming me and integrating me with such happiness. I will truly miss them!! If you have any questions related to this article feel free to contact [email protected]. You can find our job opportunities via http://campus.oracle.com. Technorati Tags: Oracle,EMEA,Recruitment,internship,ODT,team

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• Adding custom interfaces to your mock instance.

  - by mehfuzh

  Previously, i made a post  showing how you can leverage the dependent interfaces that is implemented by JustMock during the creation of mock instance. It could be a informative post that let you understand how JustMock behaves internally for class or interfaces implement other interfaces into it. But the question remains, how you can add your own custom interface to your target mock. In this post, i am going to show you just that. Today, i will not start with a dummy class as usual rather i will use two most common interfaces in the .NET framework  and create a mock combining those. Before, i start i would like to point out that in the recent release of JustMock we have extended the Mock.Create<T>(..) with support for additional settings though closure. You can add your own custom interfaces , specify directly the real constructor that should be called or even set the behavior of your target. Doing a fast forward directly to the point,  here goes the test code for create a creating a mock that contains the mix for ICloneable and IDisposable using the above mentioned changeset. var myMock = Mock.Create<IDisposable>(x => x.Implements<ICloneable>()); var myMockAsClonable = myMock as ICloneable; bool isCloned = false;   Mock.Arrange(() => myMockAsClonable.Clone()).DoInstead(() => isCloned = true);   myMockAsClonable.Clone();   Assert.True(isCloned);   Here, we are creating the target mock for IDisposable and also implementing ICloneable. Finally, using the “as” for getting the ICloneable reference accordingly arranging it, acting on it and asserting if the expectation is met properly. This is a very rudimentary example, you can do the same for a given class: var realItem = Mock.Create<RealItem>(x => {     x.Implements<IDisposable>();     x.CallConstructor(() => new RealItem(0)); }); var iDispose = realItem as IDisposable;     iDispose.Dispose(); Here, i am also calling the real constructor for RealItem class.  This is to mention that you can implement custom interfaces only for non-sealed classes or less it will end up with a proper exception. Also, this feature don’t require any profiler, if you are agile or running it inside silverlight runtime feel free to try it turning off the JM add-in :-). TIP :  Ability to  specify real constructor could be a useful productivity boost in cases for code change and you can re-factor the usage just by one click with your favorite re-factor tool.   That’s it for now and hope that helps Enjoy!!

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• Dark Sun Dispatch 001

  - by Chris Williams

  If you aren't into tabletop (aka pen & paper) RPGs, you might as well click to the next post now... Still here? Awesome. I've recently started running a new D&D 4.0 Dark Sun campaign. If you don't know anything about Dark Sun, here's a quick intro: The campaign take place on the world of Athas, formerly a lush green world that is now a desert wasteland. Forests are rare in the extreme, as is water and metal. Coins are made of ceramic and weapons are often made of hardened wood, bone or obsidian. The green age of Athas was centuries ago and the current state was brought about through the reckless use of sorcerous magic. (In this world, you can augment spells by drawing on the life force of the world & people around you. This is called defiling. Preserving magic draws upon the casters life force and does not damage the surrounding world, but it isn't as powerful.) Humans are pretty much unchanged, but the traditional fantasy races have changed quite a bit. Elves don't live in the forest, they are shifty and untrustworthy desert traders known for their ability to run long distances through the wastes. Halflings are not short, fat, pleasant little riverside people. Instead they are bloodthirsty feral cannibals that roam the few remaining forests and ride reptilians beasts akin to raptors. Gnomes are extinct, as are orcs. Dwarves are mostly farmers and gladiators, and live out in the sun instead of staying under the mountains. Goliaths are half-giants, not known for their intellect. Muls are a Dwarf & Human crossbreed that displays the best traits of both races (human height and dwarven stoutness.) Thri-Kreen are sentient mantis people that are extremely fast. Most of the same character classes are available, with a few new twists. There are no divine characters (such as Priests, Paladins, etc) because the gods are gone. Nobody alive today can remember a time when they were still around. Instead, some folks worship the elemental forces (although they don't give out spells.) The cities are all ruled by Sorcerer King tyrants (except one city: Tyr) who are hundreds of years old and still practice defiling magic whenever they please. Serving the Sorcerer Kings are the Templars, who are also defilers and psionicists. Crossing them is as bad, in many cases, as crossing the Kings themselves. Between the cities you have small towns and trading outposts, and mostly barren desert with sometimes 4-5 days on foot between towns and the nearest oasis. Being caught out in the desert without adequate supplies and protection from the elements is pretty much a death sentence for even the toughest heroes. When you add in the natural (and unnatural) predators that roam the wastes, often in packs, most people don't last long alone. In this campaign, the adventure begins in the (small) trading fortress of Altaruk, a couple weeks walking distance from the newly freed city of Tyr. A caravan carrying trade goods from Altaruk has not made it to Tyr and the local merchant house has dispatched the heroes to find out what happened and to retrieve the goods (and drivers) if possible. The unlikely heroes consist of a human shaman, a thri-kreen monk, a human wizard, a kenku assassin and a (void aspect) genasi swordmage. Gathering up supplies and a little liquid courage, they set out into the desert and manage to find the northbound tracks of the wagon. Shortly after finding the tracks, they are ambushed by a pack of silt-runners (small lizard people with very large teeth and poisoned pointy spears.) The party makes short work of the creatures, taking a few minor wounds in the process. Proceeding onward without resting, they find the remains of the wagon and manage to sneak up on a pack of Kruthiks picking through the rubble and spilled goods. Unfortunately, they failed to take advantage of the opportunity and had a hard fight ahead of them. The party defeated the kruthiks, but took heavy damage (and almost lost a couple of their own) in the process. Once the kruthiks were dispatched, they followed a set of tracks further north to a ruined tower...

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• JDK bug migration: components and subcomponents

  - by darcy

  One subtask of the JDK migration from the legacy bug tracking system to JIRA was reclassifying bugs from a three-level taxonomy in the legacy system, (product, category, subcategory), to a fundamentally two-level scheme in our customized JIRA instance, (component, subcomponent). In the JDK JIRA system, there is technically a third project-level classification, but by design a large majority of JDK-related bugs were migrated into a single "JDK" project. In the end, over 450 legacy subcategories were simplified into about 120 subcomponents in JIRA. The 120 subcomponents are distributed among 17 components. A rule of thumb used was that a subcategory had to have at least 50 bugs in it for it to be retained. Below is a listing the component / subcomponent classification of the JDK JIRA project along with some notes and guidance on which OpenJDK email addresses cover different areas. Eventually, a separate incidents project to host new issues filed at bugs.sun.com will use a slightly simplified version of this scheme. The preponderance of bugs and subcomponents for the JDK are in library-related areas, with components named foo-libs and subcomponents primarily named after packages. While there was an overall condensation of subcomponents in the migration, in some cases long-standing informal divisions in core libraries based on naming conventions in the description were promoted to formal subcomponents. For example, hundreds of bugs in the java.util subcomponent whose descriptions started with "(coll)" were moved into java.util:collections. Likewise, java.lang bugs starting with "(reflect)" and "(proxy)" were moved into java.lang:reflect. client-libs (Predominantly discussed on 2d-dev and awt-dev and swing-dev.) 2d demo java.awt java.awt:i18n java.beans (See beans-dev.) javax.accessibility javax.imageio javax.sound (See sound-dev.) javax.swing core-libs (See core-libs-dev.) java.io java.io:serialization java.lang java.lang.invoke java.lang:class_loading java.lang:reflect java.math java.net java.nio (Discussed on nio-dev.) java.nio.charsets java.rmi java.sql java.sql:bridge java.text java.util java.util.concurrent java.util.jar java.util.logging java.util.regex java.util:collections java.util:i18n javax.annotation.processing javax.lang.model javax.naming (JNDI) javax.script javax.script:javascript javax.sql org.openjdk.jigsaw (See jigsaw-dev.) security-libs (See security-dev.) java.security javax.crypto (JCE: includes SunJCE/MSCAPI/UCRYPTO/ECC) javax.crypto:pkcs11 (JCE: PKCS11 only) javax.net.ssl (JSSE, includes javax.security.cert) javax.security javax.smartcardio javax.xml.crypto org.ietf.jgss org.ietf.jgss:krb5 other-libs corba corba:idl corba:orb corba:rmi-iiop javadb other (When no other subcomponent is more appropriate; use judiciously.) Most of the subcomponents in the xml component are related to jaxp. xml jax-ws jaxb javax.xml.parsers (JAXP) javax.xml.stream (JAXP) javax.xml.transform (JAXP) javax.xml.validation (JAXP) javax.xml.xpath (JAXP) jaxp (JAXP) org.w3c.dom (JAXP) org.xml.sax (JAXP) For OpenJDK, most JVM-related bugs are connected to the HotSpot Java virtual machine. hotspot (See hotspot-dev.) build compiler (See hotspot-compiler-dev.) gc (garbage collection, see hotspot-gc-dev.) jfr (Java Flight Recorder) jni (Java Native Interface) jvmti (JVM Tool Interface) mvm (Multi-Tasking Virtual Machine) runtime (See hotspot-runtime-dev.) svc (Servicability) test core-svc (See serviceability-dev.) debugger java.lang.instrument java.lang.management javax.management tools The full JDK bug database contains entries related to legacy virtual machines that predate HotSpot as well as retired APIs. vm-legacy jit (Sun Exact VM) jit_symantec (Symantec VM, before Exact VM) jvmdi (JVM Debug Interface ) jvmpi (JVM Profiler Interface ) runtime (Exact VM Runtime) Notable command line tools in the $JDK/bin directory have corresponding subcomponents. tools appletviewer apt (See compiler-dev.) hprof jar javac (See compiler-dev.) javadoc(tool) (See compiler-dev.) javah (See compiler-dev.) javap (See compiler-dev.) jconsole launcher updaters (Timezone updaters, etc.) visualvm Some aspects of JDK infrastructure directly affect JDK Hg repositories, but other do not. infrastructure build (See build-dev and build-infra-dev.) licensing (Covers updates to the third party readme, licenses, and similar files.) release_eng (Release engineering) staging (Staging of web pages related to JDK releases.) The specification subcomponent encompasses the formal language and virtual machine specifications. specification language (The Java Language Specification) vm (The Java Virtual Machine Specification) The code for the deploy and install areas is not currently included in OpenJDK. deploy deployment_toolkit plugin webstart install auto_update install servicetags In the JDK, there are a number of cross-cutting concerns whose organization is essentially orthogonal to other areas. Since these areas generally have dedicated teams working on them, it is easier to find bugs of interest if these bugs are grouped first by their cross-cutting component rather than by the affected technology. docs doclet guides hotspot release_notes tools tutorial embedded build hotspot libraries globalization locale-data translation performance hotspot libraries The list of subcomponents will no doubt grow over time, but my inclination is to resist that growth since the addition of each subcomponent makes the system as a whole more complicated and harder to use. When the system gets closer to being externalized, I plan to post more blog entries describing recommended use of various custom fields in the JDK project.

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• Xsigo and Oracle's Storage

  - by Philippe Deverchère

  Xsigo, a virtual network infrastructure provider, has recently been acquired by Oracle. Following this acquisition, one might ask ourselves why it is important to Oracle and how Oracle's storage is going to benefit on the long term from this virtualized infrastructure layer. Well, the first thing to understand is that Virtual Networking addresses both network and storage connectivity. Oracle Virtual Networking, as the Xsigo technology is now called, connects any server to any network and storage, so this is not just about connecting servers to the Internet or Intranet. It is also for a large part connecting servers to NAS and SAN storage. Connecting servers to storage has become increasingly complex in the past few years because of the strong emergence of virtualization at the Operating System level. 50% of enterprise workloads are now virtualized, up from 18% in 2009, resulting in a strong consolidation of various applications in a high density server footprint. At the same time, server I/O capability increased 8x in the last 8 years. All this has pushed IT administrators to multiply the number of I/O connections in the back-end of their physical servers, resulting in a messy and very hard to manage networking infrastructure. Here is a typical view of a rack back-end when no virtual networking is used. We consider that today: - 75% of users have ten or more Ethernet ports per server - 85% of users have two or more SAN ports per server - 58% have had to add connectivity to a server specifically for VMs - 65% consider cable reduction a priority The average is 12 or more ports per server, resulting in an extremely complex infrastructure to manage. What Oracle wants to achieve with its Oracle Virtual Networking offering is pretty simple. The objective is to eliminate the complexity through a dramatic reduction of cabling between servers and storage/networks. It is also to provide a software based management system so that any server can be connected to any network or any storage, on demand, and without physical intervention on the infrastructure. At the end of the day, the picture on the left shows what one wants to get for the back-end of customer's racks: just a couple of connections on each physical server to provide a simple, agile and fast network infrastructure for both storage and networking access. This is exactly what the Oracle Virtual Networking solution does. It transforms a complex, error-prone, difficult to manage and expensive networking infrastructure into a simple, high performance and agile solution for the data center. Practically speaking, and for the sake of simplicity, imagine that each server just hosts a minimal number of physical InfiniBand HCAs (Host Channel Adapter) with two links (for redundancy) onto the Oracle Fabric Interconnect director. Using the Oracle Fabric Manager software, you'll then be able to create virtual NICs and HBAs (called vNIC and vHBA) that will be seen by the servers as standard NICs and HBAs and associate them to networks and storage systems which are physically connected to the back-end of the director through standard Fibre Channel and Ethernet GbE/10GbE ports. In addition to this incredibly simple "at-a-click" connectivity capability, the Oracle Virtual Networking solution offers powerful features such as network isolation, Quality of Service, advanced performance monitoring and non-disruptive reconfiguration, migration and scalability of networking infrastructure. So let's go back now to our initial question: why is Oracle Virtual Networking especially important to Oracle's storage solutions? After all, one could connect any storage in the back-end of the Oracle Fabric Interconnect directors, right? The answer is pretty simple: since Oracle owns both the virtualized networking infrastructure and the storage (ZFS-SA, Pillar Axiom and tape), it is possible to imagine several ways in the future to add value when it comes to connect storage to a virtualized storage network: enhanced storage capabilities, converged management between storage and network, improved diagnostic capabilities and optimized integration resulting in higher performance and unique features/functions. Of course, all this is not going to be done overnight, and future will tell us is which evolutions come first. But there is little doubt that the integration of Xsigo within Oracle is going to create opportunities for Oracle's storage!

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• Centralized Project Management Brings Needed Cost Controls to Growing Brazilian Firm

  - by Melissa Centurio Lopes

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Fast growth and a significant increase in business activities were creating project management challenges for CPqD, a developer of innovative information and communication technologies for large Brazilian organizations. To bring greater efficiency and centralized project management capabilities to its operations, CPqD chose Oracle’s Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management. “Oracle Primavera is an essential tool for our day-to-day business, and I notice the effort Oracle makes to constantly innovate and to add more functionality in an increasingly shorter period of time,” says Márcio Alexandre da Silva, IT department project coordinator, CPqD. He explains that before CPqD implemented the Oracle solution, the company did not have a corporate view of projects. “Our project monitoring was decentralized and restricted to each coordinator,” the project coordinator says. “With the Oracle solution, we achieved actual shared management, more control, and budgets that stay within projections.” Among the benefits that CPqD now enjoys are The ability to more effectively identify how employees are allocated, enabling managers to increase or reduce resources based on project scope, as well as secure the resources required for unexpected projects and demands A 75 percent reduction in the time it takes to collect project data and indicators—automated and centralized collection means project coordinators no longer have to manually compile information that was spread among various systems Read the complete CPqD company snapshot Read more in the October Edition of the quarterly Information InDepth EPPM Newsletter Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• Nec USB 3.0 controller drops connection - Ubuntu 12.04.1

  - by Tom

  I have some serious problems with Technaxx pci-e 302p card. It has uPD720200a NEC chip with 4020 firmware. BIOS recognises it. Sometimes it recognises devices and system mounts them and are functional for few minutes, other times they can't be mount and error occours. After fresh install card worked fine, but after kernel and firmware update it behaves as mentioned. Outputs: uname -a Linux asd-GA-MA770-UD3 3.2.0-30-generic #48-Ubuntu SMP Fri Aug 24 16:52:48 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux lspci -vvv USB controller: NEC Corporation uPD720200 USB 3.0 Host Controller (rev 04) (prog-if 30 [XHCI]) Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx+ Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx- Latency: 0, Cache Line Size: 64 bytes Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 17 Region 0: Memory at fd8fe000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K] Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: xhci_hcd lsusb Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 008 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 009 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 003: ID 07d1:3c0a D-Link System DWA-140 RangeBooster N Adapter(rev.B2) [Ralink RT3072] Bus 005 Device 004: ID 1997:1221 Bus 005 Device 003: ID 15c2:003c SoundGraph Inc. lsmod Module Size Used by nls_iso8859_1 12713 0 nls_cp437 16991 0 vfat 17585 0 fat 61512 1 vfat vesafb 13844 1 saa7134_alsa 18602 1 rfcomm 47604 0 bnep 18281 2 bluetooth 180104 10 rfcomm,bnep tda827x 18182 1 snd_hda_codec_hdmi 32474 1 ir_lirc_codec 12859 0 lirc_dev 19204 1 ir_lirc_codec tda8290 22616 1 arc4 12529 2 snd_hda_codec_realtek 224173 1 ir_mce_kbd_decoder 12777 0 ir_sony_decoder 12510 0 ir_jvc_decoder 12507 0 tuner 27428 1 ir_rc6_decoder 12507 0 snd_hda_intel 33773 5 rt2800usb 22684 0 rt2800lib 58925 1 rt2800usb crc_ccitt 12667 1 rt2800lib rt2x00usb 20762 1 rt2800usb rt2x00lib 51144 3 rt2800usb,rt2800lib,rt2x00usb mac80211 506816 3 rt2800lib,rt2x00usb,rt2x00lib ir_rc5_decoder 12507 0 rc_avermedia_m135a 12526 0 rc_imon_pad 12505 0 ir_nec_decoder 12507 0 cfg80211 205544 2 rt2x00lib,mac80211 snd_hda_codec 127706 3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_intel snd_ctxfi 111202 2 snd_hwdep 13668 1 snd_hda_codec imon 32839 0 snd_pcm 97188 5 saa7134_alsa,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_ctxfi snd_seq_midi 13324 0 saa7134 181851 1 saa7134_alsa videobuf_dma_sg 19354 2 saa7134_alsa,saa7134 snd_rawmidi 30748 1 snd_seq_midi snd_seq_midi_event 14899 1 snd_seq_midi joydev 17693 0 rc_core 26412 13 ir_lirc_codec,ir_mce_kbd_decoder,ir_sony_decoder,ir_jvc_decoder,ir_rc6_decoder,ir_rc5_decoder,rc_avermedia_m135a,rc_imon_pad,ir_nec_decoder,imon,saa7134 snd_seq 61896 2 snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event fglrx 3263886 101 videobuf_core 26390 2 saa7134,videobuf_dma_sg v4l2_common 16454 2 tuner,saa7134 videodev 98259 3 tuner,saa7134,v4l2_common sp5100_tco 13791 0 snd_timer 29990 2 snd_pcm,snd_seq snd_seq_device 14540 3 snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq snd 78855 28 saa7134_alsa,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_ctxfi,snd_hwdep,snd_pcm,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device v4l2_compat_ioctl32 17128 1 videodev tveeprom 21249 1 saa7134 i2c_piix4 13301 0 soundcore 15091 1 snd edac_core 53746 0 serio_raw 13211 0 snd_page_alloc 18529 3 snd_hda_intel,snd_ctxfi,snd_pcm edac_mce_amd 23709 0 wmi 19256 0 mac_hid 13253 0 ppdev 17113 0 parport_pc 32866 1 k10temp 13166 0 lp 17799 0 parport 46562 3 ppdev,parport_pc,lp usb_storage 49198 0 uas 18180 0 usbhid 47199 0 hid 99559 1 usbhid firewire_ohci 41000 0 firewire_core 63558 1 firewire_ohci crc_itu_t 12707 1 firewire_core floppy 70365 0 pata_atiixp 13204 2 r8169 62099 0 dmesg | tail after plugging to usb 3.0 port [ 834.871296] sd 9:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device [ 834.871308] sd 9:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device [ 834.871319] sd 9:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device [ 834.871330] sd 9:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device [ 834.871530] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdd] Unhandled error code [ 834.871536] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdd] Result: hostbyte=DID_NO_CONNECT driverbyte=DRIVER_OK [ 834.871545] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdd] CDB: Read(10): 28 00 0e 8e 48 0a 00 00 3e 00 [ 834.871564] end_request: I/O error, dev sdd, sector 244205578 [ 834.875497] sd 8:0:0:1: Device offlined - not ready after error recovery [ 834.885339] usb 9-2: USB disconnect, device number 2 Are there any other outputs need for answering? I'll post them ASAP. I could of course reject updating the system but I think it's halfway solution. Any help appreciated. BTW USB 2.0 and 1.1 ports run well, card itself runs under win7 as charm. Tom

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• CSM DX11 issues

  - by KaiserJohaan

  I got CSM to work in OpenGL, and now Im trying to do the same in directx. I'm using the same math library and all and I'm pretty much using the alghorithm straight off. I am using right-handed, column major matrices from GLM. The light is looking (-1, -1, -1). The problem I have is twofolds; For some reason, the ground floor is causing alot of (false) shadow artifacts, like the vast shadowed area you see. I confirmed this when I disabled the ground for the depth pass, but thats a hack more than anything else The shadows are inverted compared to the shadowmap. If you squint you can see the chairs shadows should be mirrored instead. This is the first cascade shadow map, in range of the alien and the chair: I can't figure out why this is. This is the depth pass: for (uint32_t cascadeIndex = 0; cascadeIndex < NUM_SHADOWMAP_CASCADES; cascadeIndex++) { mShadowmap.BindDepthView(context, cascadeIndex); CameraFrustrum cameraFrustrum = CalculateCameraFrustrum(degreesFOV, aspectRatio, nearDistArr[cascadeIndex], farDistArr[cascadeIndex], cameraViewMatrix); lightVPMatrices[cascadeIndex] = CreateDirLightVPMatrix(cameraFrustrum, lightDir); mVertexTransformPass.RenderMeshes(context, renderQueue, meshes, lightVPMatrices[cascadeIndex]); lightVPMatrices[cascadeIndex] = gBiasMatrix * lightVPMatrices[cascadeIndex]; farDistArr[cascadeIndex] = -farDistArr[cascadeIndex]; } CameraFrustrum CalculateCameraFrustrum(const float fovDegrees, const float aspectRatio, const float minDist, const float maxDist, const Mat4& cameraViewMatrix) { CameraFrustrum ret = { Vec4(1.0f, 1.0f, -1.0f, 1.0f), Vec4(1.0f, -1.0f, -1.0f, 1.0f), Vec4(-1.0f, -1.0f, -1.0f, 1.0f), Vec4(-1.0f, 1.0f, -1.0f, 1.0f), Vec4(1.0f, -1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f), Vec4(1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f), Vec4(-1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f), Vec4(-1.0f, -1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f), }; const Mat4 perspectiveMatrix = PerspectiveMatrixFov(fovDegrees, aspectRatio, minDist, maxDist); const Mat4 invMVP = glm::inverse(perspectiveMatrix * cameraViewMatrix); for (Vec4& corner : ret) { corner = invMVP * corner; corner /= corner.w; } return ret; } Mat4 CreateDirLightVPMatrix(const CameraFrustrum& cameraFrustrum, const Vec3& lightDir) { Mat4 lightViewMatrix = glm::lookAt(Vec3(0.0f), -glm::normalize(lightDir), Vec3(0.0f, -1.0f, 0.0f)); Vec4 transf = lightViewMatrix * cameraFrustrum[0]; float maxZ = transf.z, minZ = transf.z; float maxX = transf.x, minX = transf.x; float maxY = transf.y, minY = transf.y; for (uint32_t i = 1; i < 8; i++) { transf = lightViewMatrix * cameraFrustrum[i]; if (transf.z > maxZ) maxZ = transf.z; if (transf.z < minZ) minZ = transf.z; if (transf.x > maxX) maxX = transf.x; if (transf.x < minX) minX = transf.x; if (transf.y > maxY) maxY = transf.y; if (transf.y < minY) minY = transf.y; } Mat4 viewMatrix(lightViewMatrix); viewMatrix[3][0] = -(minX + maxX) * 0.5f; viewMatrix[3][1] = -(minY + maxY) * 0.5f; viewMatrix[3][2] = -(minZ + maxZ) * 0.5f; viewMatrix[0][3] = 0.0f; viewMatrix[1][3] = 0.0f; viewMatrix[2][3] = 0.0f; viewMatrix[3][3] = 1.0f; Vec3 halfExtents((maxX - minX) * 0.5, (maxY - minY) * 0.5, (maxZ - minZ) * 0.5); return OrthographicMatrix(-halfExtents.x, halfExtents.x, -halfExtents.y, halfExtents.y, halfExtents.z, -halfExtents.z) * viewMatrix; } And this is the pixel shader used for the lighting stage: #define DEPTH_BIAS 0.0005 #define NUM_CASCADES 4 cbuffer DirectionalLightConstants : register(CBUFFER_REGISTER_PIXEL) { float4x4 gSplitVPMatrices[NUM_CASCADES]; float4x4 gCameraViewMatrix; float4 gSplitDistances; float4 gLightColor; float4 gLightDirection; }; Texture2D gPositionTexture : register(TEXTURE_REGISTER_POSITION); Texture2D gDiffuseTexture : register(TEXTURE_REGISTER_DIFFUSE); Texture2D gNormalTexture : register(TEXTURE_REGISTER_NORMAL); Texture2DArray gShadowmap : register(TEXTURE_REGISTER_DEPTH); SamplerComparisonState gShadowmapSampler : register(SAMPLER_REGISTER_DEPTH); float4 ps_main(float4 position : SV_Position) : SV_Target0 { float4 worldPos = gPositionTexture[uint2(position.xy)]; float4 diffuse = gDiffuseTexture[uint2(position.xy)]; float4 normal = gNormalTexture[uint2(position.xy)]; float4 camPos = mul(gCameraViewMatrix, worldPos); uint index = 3; if (camPos.z > gSplitDistances.x) index = 0; else if (camPos.z > gSplitDistances.y) index = 1; else if (camPos.z > gSplitDistances.z) index = 2; float3 projCoords = (float3)mul(gSplitVPMatrices[index], worldPos); float viewDepth = projCoords.z - DEPTH_BIAS; projCoords.z = float(index); float visibilty = gShadowmap.SampleCmpLevelZero(gShadowmapSampler, projCoords, viewDepth); float angleNormal = clamp(dot(normal, gLightDirection), 0, 1); return visibilty * diffuse * angleNormal * gLightColor; } As you can see I am using depth bias and a bias matrix. Any hints on why this behaves so wierdly?

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• PASS Summit 2011 &ndash; Part II

  - by Tara Kizer

  I arrived in Seattle last Monday afternoon to attend PASS Summit 2011.  I had really wanted to attend Gail Shaw’s (blog|twitter) and Grant Fritchey’s (blog|twitter) pre-conference seminar “All About Execution Plans” on Monday, but that would have meant flying out on Sunday which I couldn’t do.  On Tuesday, I attended Allan Hirt’s (blog|twitter) pre-conference seminar entitled “A Deep Dive into AlwaysOn: Failover Clustering and Availability Groups”.  Allan is a great speaker, and his seminar was packed with demos and information about AlwaysOn in SQL Server 2012.  Unfortunately, I have lost my notes from this seminar and the presentation materials are only available on the pre-con DVD.  Hmpf! On Wednesday, I attended Gail Shaw’s “Bad Plan! Sit!”, Andrew Kelly’s (blog|twitter) “SQL 2008 Query Statistics”, Dan Jones’ (blog|twitter) “Improving your PowerShell Productivity”, and Brent Ozar’s (blog|twitter) “BLITZ! The SQL – More One Hour SQL Server Takeovers”.  In Gail’s session, she went over how to fix bad plans and bad query patterns.  Update your stale statistics! How to fix bad plans Use local variables – optimizer can’t sniff it, so it’ll optimize for “average” value Use RECOMPILE (at the query or stored procedure level) – CPU hit OPTIMIZE FOR hint – most common value you’ll pass How to fix bad query patterns Don’t use them – ha! Catch-all queries Use dynamic SQL OPTION (RECOMPILE) Multiple execution paths Split into multiple stored procedures OPTION (RECOMPILE) Modifying parameter values Use local variables Split into outer and inner procedure OPTION (RECOMPILE) She also went into “last resort” and “very last resort” options, but those are risky unless you know what you are doing.  For the average Joe, she wouldn’t recommend these.  Examples are query hints and plan guides. While I enjoyed Andrew’s session, I didn’t take any notes as it was familiar material.  Andrew is a great speaker though, and I’d highly recommend attending his sessions in the future. Next up was Dan’s PowerShell session.  I need to look into profiles, manifests, function modules, and function import scripts more as I just didn’t quite grasp these concepts.  I am attending a PowerShell training class at the end of November, so maybe that’ll help clear it up.  I really enjoyed the Excel integration demo.  It was very cool watching PowerShell build the spreadsheet in real-time.  I must look into this more!  On a side note, I am jealous of Dan’s hair.  Fabulous hair! Brent’s session showed us how to quickly gather information about a server that you will be taking over database administration duties for.  He wrote a script to do a fast health check and then later wrapped it into a stored procedure, sp_Blitz.  I can’t wait to use this at my work even on systems where I’ve been the primary DBA for years, maybe there’s something I’ve overlooked.  We are using EPM to help standardize our environment and uncover problems, but sp_Blitz will definitely still help us out.  He even provides a cloud-based update feature, sp_BlitzUpdate, for sp_Blitz so you don’t have to constantly update it when he makes a change.  I think I’ll utilize his update code for some other challenges that we face at my work.

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• Using Teleriks new LINQ implementation to connect to MySQL

  Last week Telerik released a new LINQ implementation that is simple to use and produces domain models very fast. Built on top of the enterprise grade OpenAccess ORM, you can connect to any database that OpenAccess can connect to such as: SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, SQL Azure, VistaDB, etc. Today I will show you how to build a domain model using MySQL as your back end. To get started, you have to download MySQL 5.x and the MySQL Workbench and also, as my colleague Alexander Filipov at Telerik reminded me, make sure you install the MySQL .NET Connector, which is available here.  I like to use Northwind, ok it gives me the warm and fuzzies, so I ran a script to produce Northwind on my MySQL server. There are many ways you can get Northwind on your MySQL database, here is a helpful blog to get your started. I also manipulated the first record to indicate that I am in MySQL and gave a look via the MySQL Workbench. Ok, time to build our model! Start up the Domain Model wizard by right clicking on the project in Visual Studio (I have a Web project) and select Add|New Item and choose Telerik OpenAccess Domain Model from the new item list. When the wizard comes up, choose MySQL as your back end and enter in the name of your saved MySQL connection. If you dont have a saved MySQL connection set up in Visual Studio, click on New Connection and enter in the proper connection information. *Note, this is where you need to have the MySQL .NET connector installed. After you set your connection to the MySQL database server, you have to choose which tables to include in your model. Just for fun, I will choose all of them. Give your model a name, like NorthwindEntities and click finish. That is it. Now lets consume the model with ASP .net. I created a simple page that also has a GridView on it. On my page load I wrote this code, by now it should look very familiar, a simple LINQ query filtering customers by country (Germany) and binding the results to the grid.  1: protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) 2: { 3: if (!IsPostBack) 4: { 5: //a reference to the data context 6: NorthwindEntities dat = new NorthwindEntities(); 7: //LINQ Statement 8: var result = from c in dat.Customers 9: where c.Country == "Germany" 10: select c; 11: //Databinding to the Gridview 12: GridView1.DataSource = result; 13: GridView1.DataBind(); 14: } 15: } .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; } F5 produces the following. Tomorrow Ill show how to take the same model and create an Astoria/OData data feed. Technorati Tags: MySQL Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• 45 minutes to talk about C# [closed]

  - by Philip

  I have the opportunity to give a 45 minute talk on C# in the theory of programming languages class I'm taking. The college teaches Java almost exclusively, so that's what all the students are most familiar with. (There's a little C, assembly, Prolog and LISP as well.) I decide what to talk about. It seems to me the best approach is to focus on a few of the big, obvious differences between C# and Java. I don't intend it to be a recommendation to use C# -- there are reasons to use each, mostly because of their ecosystems. So I want to focus on C# as a language. I don't want to go too fast and end up listing a whole bunch of features without showing their usefulness. My current plan is this: Functions as first class objects. This is, in my opinion, one of the biggest differences between C# and Java. The professor briefly mentioned this notion and showed a LISP example, but many of the students have probably never used it. I can show real world examples where it's made my code more readable. Lambda expressions as concise syntax for anonymous functions. Obviously with examples to show how this is useful. The real hit-home examples will be at the end when it's combined with the rest. I don't see an advantage to first showing the old delegate syntax and then replacing it with lambdas -- most of us won't have ever seen delegates anyway so it would just be confusing. The yield keyword and how it's different from returning an array. I have the impression that a lot of C# developers aren't familiar with how to use this. It will likely be very foreign to Java developers. I have some examples from my own work where it was really useful, such as iterating over a tree traversal, or iterating over neighbors in a graph where the neighbors aren't stored in memory. In both cases, doing it in Java would likely mean returning a complete list -- with yield I can stop iterating if I find what I want early on, without using memory for superfluous lists or arrays. Extension methods as a way to write implementation on interfaces. We'll all be familiar with how interfaces don't allow method implementation, and how this leads to code duplication. I'll show a specific example of this and how the extension method can solve the problem. Demonstrate how the above can be combined by implementing some simple Linq methods and using them. Where, Select, First, maybe more depending on how much time is left. Ideas on which ones might 'hit home' the best? There are other things I could talk about such as generics, value types, properties and more. I haven't yet though of good ways to incorporate these. In the case of generics and value types, the advantages might not be obvious or as relevant. Properties are obviously useful, particularly since we're taught strict JavaBeans here, but I don't know if I could integrate it with the "path to Linq" discussion above without it feeling tacked on. So I'm looking for thoughts on how to talk about C#, and what to talk about. Even minor details. I'm sure there are more experienced C# developers than me here who have good insight about what's really important in the language, and what would miss the point.

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• Talking JavaOne with Rock Star Kirk Pepperdine

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  Kirk Pepperdine is not only a JavaOne Rock Star but a Java Champion and a highly regarded expert in Java performance tuning who works as a consultant, educator, and author. He is the principal consultant at Kodewerk Ltd. He speaks frequently at conferences and co-authored the Ant Developer's Handbook. In the rapidly shifting world of information technology, Pepperdine, as much as anyone, keeps up with what's happening with Java performance tuning. Pepperdine will participate in the following sessions: CON5405 - Are Your Garbage Collection Logs Speaking to You? BOF6540 - Java Champions and JUG Leaders Meet Oracle Executives (with Jeff Genender, Mattias Karlsson, Henrik Stahl, Georges Saab) HOL6500 - Finding and Solving Java Deadlocks (with Heinz Kabutz, Ellen Kraffmiller Martijn Verburg, Jeff Genender, and Henri Tremblay) I asked him what technological changes need to be taken into account in performance tuning. “The volume of data we're dealing with just seems to be getting bigger and bigger all the time,” observed Pepperdine. “A couple of years ago you'd never think of needing a heap that was 64g, but today there are deployments where the heap has grown to 256g and tomorrow there are plans for heaps that are even larger. Dealing with all that data simply requires more horse power and some very specialized techniques. In some cases, teams are trying to push hardware to the breaking point. Under those conditions, you need to be very clever just to get things to work -- let alone to get them to be fast. We are very quickly moving from a world where everything happens in a transaction to one where if you were to even consider using a transaction, you've lost." When asked about the greatest misconceptions about performance tuning that he currently encounters, he said, “If you have a performance problem, you should start looking at code at the very least and for that extra step, whip out an execution profiler. I'm not going to say that I never use execution profilers or look at code. What I will say is that execution profilers are effective for a small subset of performance problems and code is literally the last thing you should look at.And what is the most exciting thing happening in the world of Java today? “Interesting question because so many people would say that nothing exciting is happening in Java. Some might be disappointed that a few features have slipped in terms of scheduling. But I'd disagree with the first group and I'm not so concerned about the slippage because I still see a lot of exciting things happening. First, lambda will finally be with us and with lambda will come better ways.” For JavaOne, he is proctoring for Heinz Kabutz's lab. “I'm actually looking forward to that more than I am to my own talk,” he remarked. “Heinz will be the third non-Sun/Oracle employee to present a lab and the first since Oracle began hosting JavaOne. He's got a great message. He's spent a ton of time making sure things are going to work, and we've got a great team of proctors to help out. After that, getting my talk done, the Java Champion's panel session and then kicking back and just meeting up and talking to some Java heads."Finally, what should Java developers know that they currently do not know? “’Write Once, Run Everywhere’ is a great slogan and Java has come closer to that dream than any other technology stack that I've used. That said, different hardware bits work differently and as hard as we try, the JVM can't hide all the differences. Plus, if we are to get good performance we need to work with our hardware and not against it. All this implies that Java developers need to know more about the hardware they are deploying to.” Originally published on blogs.oracle.com/javaone.

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• SOA Community Newsletter May 2014

  - by JuergenKress

  Registration for the Fusion Middleware Summer Camps 2014 is open – Register asap for one of our bootcamps August 4th – 8th 2014 in Lisbon. Please read details and pre-requisitions careful before you register. We expect that like in the past, the conference will be booked out soon! If you can’t make it to Lisbon attend our SOA Suite 11c free on-demand Bootcamp or  Managing the Complexity of IoT online trainings. With more than 5000 customers, SOA Suite Achieves Significant Customer Adoption and Industry Recognition.Thanks to all our SOA Specialized partners for making our joins SOA customers successful! As a summary of the Industrial SOA series we published the Podcast Show Notes: SOA and Cloud - Where's This Relationship Going? Make sure you use the Oracle Demo Systems for your customer presentations. The demo systems are hosted by Oracle and include complete scenarios based on the latest Middleware version like the new B2B SOA Suite Demo System! For local presentations without fast internet use the SOA/BPM 11.1.1.7.1 Virtual Machine and Case Management Sample. At our SOA Community Workspace (SOA Community membership required) you can get new IoT presentations for Location Based Offers for Banking & Whitepaper and online Webcast & Utility presentation. In this newsletter you will find many articles about OSB: OSB 11g – A Hands-on Tutorial & Using Split-Joins in OSB Services for parallel processing of messages & OSB, Service Callouts and OQL & Working with Oracle Security Token Service. Thanks for sharing all the additional SOA articles within the community: How to configure Oracle SOA/BPM task auto release & Controlling BPEL process flow at runtime & Upgrading to Oracle SOA Suite 11g PS6 (11.1.1.7)? Do this. & BPEL and BPM's performance monitoring using DMS & SOA 11g - Create RESTful Service In Oracle SOA & Wrong timezone causes TopLink warning in SOA suite. Highlight of the BPM and ACM section is the IDC BPM vendor report. The new bundle Patch including the ACM UI is now available. If you want to learn more about ACM, get the ACM training material at our SOA Community Workspace (SOA Community membership required). A great demo for your next BPM presentation is the BPM iPad app. It’s simpleMobile BPM is Not An Option. It’s a Necessity. Thanks for sharing all the additional BPM articles within the community: BPM update adds Case Management Web Interface and REST APIs & Implementing deadline functionality with Oracle Adaptive Case Management & BPM 11g Timeout Heuristics & Humantask Assignment: Names and Expressions Assignment via Rules. In our last section Architecture, it is all about design. Usability is a key factor for customer satisfaction, worth to spend some time and read the Simplified User Experience Design Patterns eBook. Great blueprint for your project! See you in Lisbon! To read the newsletter please visit www.tinyurl.com/soaNewsMay2014 (OPN Account required) To become a member of the SOA Partner Community please register at http://www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Wiki Mix Forum Technorati Tags: newsletter,SOA Community newsletter,SOA Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• When to use Aspect Oriented Architecture (AOA/AOD)

  When is it appropriate to use aspect oriented architecture? I think the only honest answer to this question is that it depends on the context for which the question is being asked. There really are no hard and fast rules regarding the selection of an architectural model(s) for a project because each model provides good and bad benefits. Every system is built with a unique requirements and constraints. This context will dictate when to use one type of architecture over another or in conjunction with others. To me aspect oriented architecture models should be a sub-phase in the architectural modeling and design process especially when creating enterprise level models. Personally, I like to use this approach to create a base architectural model that is defined by non-functional requirements and system quality attributes.   This general model can then be used as a starting point for additional models because it is targets all of the business key quality attributes required by the system.Aspect oriented architecture is a method for modeling non-functional requirements and quality attributes of a system known as aspects. These models do not deal directly with specific functionality. They do categorize functionality of the system. This approach allows a system to be created with a strong emphasis on separating system concerns into individual components. These cross cutting components enables a systems to create with compartmentalization in regards to non-functional requirements or quality attributes.  This allows for the reduction in code because an each component maintains an aspect of a system that can be called by other aspects. This approach also allows for a much cleaner and smaller code base during the implementation and support of a system. Additionally, enabling developers to develop systems based on aspect-oriented design projects will be completed faster and will be more reliable because existing components can be shared across a system; thus, the time needed to create and test the functionality is reduced.   Example of an effective use of Aspect Oriented ArchitectureIn my experiences, aspect oriented architecture can be very effective with large or more complex systems. Typically, these types of systems have a large number of concerns so the act of defining them is very beneficial for reducing the system’s complexity because components can be developed to address each concern while exposing functionality to the other system components. The benefits to using the aspect oriented approach as the starting point for a system is that it promotes communication between IT and the business due to the fact that the aspect oriented models are quality attributes focused so not much technical understanding is needed to understand the model.An example of this can be in developing a new intranet website. Common Intranet Concerns: Error Handling Security Logging Notifications Database connectivity Example of a not as effective use of Aspect Oriented ArchitectureAgain in my experiences, aspect oriented architecture is not as effective with small or less complex systems in comparison.  There is no need to model concerns for a system that has a limited amount of them because the added overhead would not be justified for the actual benefits of creating the aspect oriented architecture model.  Furthermore, these types of projects typically have a reduced time schedule and a limited budget.  The creation of the Aspect oriented models would increase the overhead of a project and thus increase the time needed to implement the system. An example of this is seen by creating a small application to poll a network share for new files and then FTP them to a new location.  The two primary concerns for this project is to monitor a network drive and FTP files to a new location.  There is no need to create an aspect model for this system because there will never be a need to share functionality amongst either of these concerns.  To add to my point, this system is so small that it could be created with just a few classes so the added layer of componentizing the concerns would be complete overkill for this situation. References:Brichau, Johan; D'Hondt, Theo. (2006) Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD) - An Introduction. Retreived from: http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~jbrichau/courses/introductionToAOSD.pdf

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• June is going to be a busy month!

  - by Monica Kumar

  Who says things slow down in summer? Well, maybe for school kids, but certainly not for Oracle's Virtualization team! June is turning out to be one of the busiest months for us. We are going to be participating in a number of industry events. If you happen to be at any of these, please stop by the Oracle booth and our session/s. Let's go through a run down of these events. 1. 13th Annual Call Center Week June 4-8 Ceasar's Palace, Las Vegas  Event website You're now wondering...why are we at this call center show. It's really simple, Oracle's Desktop Virtualization solutions offer the best way for call center to reliably and securely access enterprise apps using a variety of endpoint devices such as an iPad or a Sun Ray Client. Provisioning new employees becomes a breeze. We'll be jointly showcasing our solution with Oracle's CRM team. Come check us out.  2. Gartner Infrastructure & Management, Florida June 5-7 Orlando, FL  Event website Oracle is a Premier sponsor of the Gartner IOM Summit this June 5 – 7, 2012 in Orlando, FL.  Attendees will have the opportunity to meet with Oracle experts in a variety of sessions, including demonstrations during the showcase receptions. 3. Cloud Expo East Check out our website for details of our participation. Stop by at booth 511 to talk to our Cloud, Virtualization and Big Data experts. In addition, we're delivering a number of sessions at Cloud Expo. The one I want to highlight is the following: Session: Borderless Applications in the Cloud with Oracle VM and Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder Abstract: As virtualization adoption progresses beyond server consolidation, this is also transforming how enterprise applications are deployed and managed in an agile environment. The traditional method of business-critical application deployment where administrators have to contend with an array of unrelated tools, custom scripts to deploy and manage applications, OS and VM instances into a fast changing cloud computing environment can no longer scale effectively to achieve response time and desired efficiency. Oracle VM and Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder allow applications, associated components, deployment metadata, management policies and best practices to be encapsulated into ready-to-run VMs for rapid, repeatable deployment and ease of management. Join us in this Cloud Expo session to see how Oracle VM and Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder allow you to deploy complex multi-tier applications in minutes and enables you to easily onboard existing applications to cloud environments.  Get your free Cloud Expo pass now!  We're offering complimentary VIP Gold Passes. Go to https://www.blueskyz.com/v3/Login.aspx?ClientID=19&EventID=56&sg=177, click “Continue” if you are a New User or log-in if you have already created an account. Once there, you can view the Agenda or Register for Cloud Expo. To register - fill out the basic business card questions and then enter oracleVIPgold in the Priority Code field to change the price from $2,000 to $0. 4. CiscoLive 2012  June 10-14 San Diego, CA Event website Our Oracle VM and Oracle Linux experts will talk about joint collaboration with Cisco on UCS. We'll also highlight customer use cases. 5. Gartner Infrastructure & Operations Management Summit, EMEA Dates: June 11-12 Frankfurt, Germany Event website Meet experts from our Virtualization and Linux team in EMEA. Stop by our booth and find out what's new in Oracle VM Server for x86 and Oracle Linux. June is going to be busy.

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• Launching Ops Center 12c

  - by user12601629

  Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c is most ambitious version of the Ops Center tooling that we've ever released. I think that make it appropriate that we launched it in grand style! When it became clear we were going to be complete with the 12c final release about this time of year, the marketing team proposed that we roll the launch of 12c into Oracle OpenWorld Tokyo.  I thought that sounded like a fine idea!  You see, I have always loved Japan.  I even studied a bit of Japanese language back in school. OpenWorld Tokyo was an outstanding even this year.  It was held in Roppongi, one of the most stylish districts in Tokyo. And, to make things even better, the Sakura (cherry blossoms) were blooming.  If you've never been in Japan for cherry blossom season, it's a must see!  Here are a couple of pics for you. Here is a picture from Roppongi, near the conference.  Here's a picture near the Imperial Palace.  A couple of friends from the local sales team took me here before my flight out. So, now back to the product launch! We choose to launch the product in John Fowler's "Engineered Systems" keynote address.  It made perfect sense because of the close ties of Ops Center to the Systems portfolio of products.  It was a packed house for the keynote.  Here's a picture I took just before we started -- there were also hundreds more people in "overflow" rooms in other parts of the venue. Here's a picture of me on stage during the launch. While there are countless new features in Ops Center 12c that customers will love, I had to limit myself to discussing just three. Mission Critical Clouds Solaris 11 Engineered Systems So, what does Mission Critical Cloud mean?  It means we've expanded EM's cloud capabilities in a couple of key areas. First, we've expanded the "self service provisioning" capabilities we have to include SPARC -- not just x86.  Now you can build clouds of Solaris Zones with ease!  Second, we've much more deeply integrated high-end storage and network management into the cloud layers.  These may our IaaS story is now much more powerful! For Solaris 11, we didn't simply port our monitoring agent to S11.  That would have been easy, but also boring! We support S11 deeply.  Full access to the power of the IPS packaging system, the new virtualized networking stack, new Zones features, the Auto Install framework.  If you're ready to try Solaris 11 then Ops Center is ready for you. Last is on the area of Engineered Systems.  These combinations of hardware and software are fast and powerful. However, we're also on a mission to make them ever easier to manage.  We've made major strides with Ops Center 12c. Manage these systems as racks, not individual components.  The new capabilities for the new engineered systems like Exalogic and SPARC SuperCluster and striking. You can read more here: Oracle Unveils Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c So, I'll wrap this up with one final bit of fun. One of my friends from the Oracle marketing department found a super cool place to get dinner.  It's a restaurant called Gonpachi. It turns out this is the place that inspired the scene in the Quentin Taratino movie Kill Bill where Uma Thurman fights 88 Ninjas.  Here is a picture I snapped while we were there. It was surely a good time. Check it out next time you're in Tokyo.

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• obj-c classes and sub classes (Cocos2d) conversion

  - by Lewis

  Hi I'm using this version of cocos2d: https://github.com/krzysztofzablocki/CCNode-SFGestureRecognizers Which supports the UIGestureRecognizer within a CCLayer in a cocos2d scene like so: @interface HelloWorldLayer : CCLayer <UIGestureRecognizerDelegate> { } Now I want to make this custom gesture work within the scene, attaching it to a sprite in cocos2d: #import <Foundation/Foundation.h> #import <UIKit/UIGestureRecognizerSubclass.h> @protocol OneFingerRotationGestureRecognizerDelegate <NSObject> @optional - (void) rotation: (CGFloat) angle; - (void) finalAngle: (CGFloat) angle; @end @interface OneFingerRotationGestureRecognizer : UIGestureRecognizer { CGPoint midPoint; CGFloat innerRadius; CGFloat outerRadius; CGFloat cumulatedAngle; id <OneFingerRotationGestureRecognizerDelegate> target; } - (id) initWithMidPoint: (CGPoint) midPoint innerRadius: (CGFloat) innerRadius outerRadius: (CGFloat) outerRadius target: (id) target; - (void)reset; - (void)touchesBegan:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event; - (void)touchesMoved:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event; - (void)touchesEnded:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event; - (void)touchesCancelled:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event; @end #include <math.h> #import "OneFingerRotationGestureRecognizer.h" @implementation OneFingerRotationGestureRecognizer // private helper functions CGFloat distanceBetweenPoints(CGPoint point1, CGPoint point2); CGFloat angleBetweenLinesInDegrees(CGPoint beginLineA, CGPoint endLineA, CGPoint beginLineB, CGPoint endLineB); - (id) initWithMidPoint: (CGPoint) _midPoint innerRadius: (CGFloat) _innerRadius outerRadius: (CGFloat) _outerRadius target: (id <OneFingerRotationGestureRecognizerDelegate>) _target { if ((self = [super initWithTarget: _target action: nil])) { midPoint = _midPoint; innerRadius = _innerRadius; outerRadius = _outerRadius; target = _target; } return self; } /** Calculates the distance between point1 and point 2. */ CGFloat distanceBetweenPoints(CGPoint point1, CGPoint point2) { CGFloat dx = point1.x - point2.x; CGFloat dy = point1.y - point2.y; return sqrt(dx*dx + dy*dy); } CGFloat angleBetweenLinesInDegrees(CGPoint beginLineA, CGPoint endLineA, CGPoint beginLineB, CGPoint endLineB) { CGFloat a = endLineA.x - beginLineA.x; CGFloat b = endLineA.y - beginLineA.y; CGFloat c = endLineB.x - beginLineB.x; CGFloat d = endLineB.y - beginLineB.y; CGFloat atanA = atan2(a, b); CGFloat atanB = atan2(c, d); // convert radiants to degrees return (atanA - atanB) * 180 / M_PI; } #pragma mark - UIGestureRecognizer implementation - (void)reset { [super reset]; cumulatedAngle = 0; } - (void)touchesBegan:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event { [super touchesBegan:touches withEvent:event]; if ([touches count] != 1) { self.state = UIGestureRecognizerStateFailed; return; } } - (void)touchesMoved:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event { [super touchesMoved:touches withEvent:event]; if (self.state == UIGestureRecognizerStateFailed) return; CGPoint nowPoint = [[touches anyObject] locationInView: self.view]; CGPoint prevPoint = [[touches anyObject] previousLocationInView: self.view]; // make sure the new point is within the area CGFloat distance = distanceBetweenPoints(midPoint, nowPoint); if ( innerRadius <= distance && distance <= outerRadius) { // calculate rotation angle between two points CGFloat angle = angleBetweenLinesInDegrees(midPoint, prevPoint, midPoint, nowPoint); // fix value, if the 12 o'clock position is between prevPoint and nowPoint if (angle > 180) { angle -= 360; } else if (angle < -180) { angle += 360; } // sum up single steps cumulatedAngle += angle; // call delegate if ([target respondsToSelector: @selector(rotation:)]) { [target rotation:angle]; } } else { // finger moved outside the area self.state = UIGestureRecognizerStateFailed; } } - (void)touchesEnded:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event { [super touchesEnded:touches withEvent:event]; if (self.state == UIGestureRecognizerStatePossible) { self.state = UIGestureRecognizerStateRecognized; if ([target respondsToSelector: @selector(finalAngle:)]) { [target finalAngle:cumulatedAngle]; } } else { self.state = UIGestureRecognizerStateFailed; } cumulatedAngle = 0; } - (void)touchesCancelled:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event { [super touchesCancelled:touches withEvent:event]; self.state = UIGestureRecognizerStateFailed; cumulatedAngle = 0; } @end Header file for view controller: #import "OneFingerRotationGestureRecognizer.h" @interface OneFingerRotationGestureViewController : UIViewController <OneFingerRotationGestureRecognizerDelegate> @property (nonatomic, strong) IBOutlet UIImageView *image; @property (nonatomic, strong) IBOutlet UITextField *textDisplay; @end then this is in the .m file: gestureRecognizer = [[OneFingerRotationGestureRecognizer alloc] initWithMidPoint: midPoint innerRadius: outRadius / 3 outerRadius: outRadius target: self]; [self.view addGestureRecognizer: gestureRecognizer]; Now my question is, is it possible to add this custom gesture into the cocos2d project found on that github, and if so, what do I need to change in the OneFingerRotationGestureRecognizerDelegate to get it to work within cocos2d. Because at the minute it is setup in a standard iOS project and not a cocos2d project and I do not know enough about UIViews and classing/ sub classing in obj-c to get this to work. Also it seems to inherit from a UIView where cocos2d uses CCLayer. Kind regards, Lewis. I also realise I may have not included enough code from the custom gesture project for readers to interpret it fully, so the full project can be found here: https://github.com/melle/OneFingerRotationGestureDemo

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• BizTalk: Suspend shape and Convoy

  - by Leonid Ganeline

  Part 1: BizTalk: Instance Subscription and Convoys: Details This is a Part 2. I am discussing the Suspend shape together with Convoys and going to show that using them together is undesirable. In previous article we investigated the Instance Subscriptions and how they could create situation with dangerous zones in processing.  Let' start with Suspend shape. [See the BizTalk Help] "You can use the Suspend shape to make an orchestration instance stop running until an administrator explicitly intervenes, perhaps to reflect an error condition that requires attention beyond the scope of the orchestration. All of the state information for the orchestration instance is saved, and will be reinstated when the administrator resumes the orchestration instance. When an orchestration instance is suspended, an error is raised. You can specify a message string to accompany the error to help the administrator diagnose the situation."   On the Suspend shape the orchestration is stopped in the Suspended (Resumable) state. Next we have two choices, one is to resume and the second is to terminate the orchestration. Is the orchestration is stopped or unenlisted? You don't find a note about it anywhere. The fact is the Orchestration is stopped and still enlisted. It is very important. So again, the suspended orchestration can be resumed or terminated. The moment when the operator or the operation script resumes or terminates can be far away. It is also important too. Let's go back to the case from previous article. Make sure you notice the convoy and the dangerous zone after the last Receive shape.     Now we have a Suspend shape inside the orchestration. The first orchestration instance is suspended. Next messages start new orchestration instance and have been consumed by this orchestration, right? Wrong! The orchestration is stopped on the Suspend shape but still enlisted. Now the dangerous zone, the "zombie zone" is expanded to the interval between the last receive and the moment of termination or end of the orchestration. The new orchestration instance for this convoy will not start till this moment. How fast operator finds out this suspended orchestration? Maybe hours or days. All this time orchestration is still enlisted and gathering the convoy messages. We can resume the orchestration but we cannot resume these messages together with orchestration. Seems the name Suspended of the orchestration is misleading. The orchestration can be in the Started (and Enlisted)/Stopped (and Enlisted)/Unenlisted state. The Suspend shape switches orchestration exactly to the Stopped state. The Stop name would describe the shape clearly and unambiguously and the Stopped state would describe the orchestration. Imagine we can change the BizTalk. The Orchestration editor can search these situations and returns the compile error. In similar case the Orchestration Editor forces us to use only ordered delivery port with convoys. The run-time core can force the orchestration with convoy be suspended in Unresumable state, that means the run-time unenlists the orchestration instance subscriptions. The Suspend shape name should be changed. The "Suspend" name is misleading. The "Stop" name is clear and unambiguous. The same for the orchestration state, it should be “Stopped” not “Suspended (Resumable)”.   Conclusion:  It is not recommended using a Suspend shape together with the convoy orchestrations.

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• SQLAuthority News – Speaking at Southeast Asia SharePoint Conference 2013 – Singapore

  - by pinaldave

  Two years ago I spoke at Southeast Asia SharePoint Conference 2011, Singapore and I had a fantastic time to present to the Singapore audience. The session was very well received and lots of interest was generated. The event is back again this year and with much bigger scale. I will be presenting on SQL Server and Sharepoint subject at the conference. Session Details: Title: Performance in 60 Seconds – Database Tricks Every SharePoint Developer & Admin MUST Know Abstract: SharePoint Developers and System Administrators often come across situations where they face a slow server response, even though their hardware specifications are above  par. This session is for all the SharePoint Developers who want their server to perform at blazing fast speed but want to invest very little time to make it happen. We will go over various database tricks which require absolutely no time to master and require practically no SQL coding at all. After attending this session, Developers will only need 60 seconds to improve performance of their database server in their SharePoint implementation. Date and Time: January 18, 20013 - 3:15 PM-4:15 PM Location: Max Atria is located at Singapore Expo, 1 Expo Drive, Singapore Tel 65 6403 2160 This session will cover lots of interesting tips and tricks about SQL Server and SharePoint co-exists together. I promise that every attendee will walk out with a trick which they can walk out of session and directly apply to their production server to improve its performance. The event is going to be again fantastic event – if you are in Singapore – you must not miss this event. If you are planning vacation – this is the right time to take days off and travel to Singapore for vacation. The event features over 30 sessions to choose from, focus on three areas of business gain: Exploring Information, Improving Productivity and Making it Work. This event has an excellent line up of international speakers (speakers traveling from the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Sri Lanka and India). Register early to reserve a spot at your choice of more than 30 classes taught by Microsoft Certified Masters, MVPs, and other top SharePoint experts! Here I have attempted to answer a few of the questions which every SharePoint professional half: Which sessions suit my skill level? Click here. What sessions are right for me? Click here. Which sessions are of my interests? Click here. Which sessions are on when? Click here. If you register by next Friday, 14, December – you can save $126 on the regular price of the conference. Prizes, Giveaways and … I love conference goodies – I collect them as a souvenir . This event is known for its generous prizes. The first 100 people to register on the day will get a SPECIAL gift at the event. Additionally there are exhibitor booth give away too. Here is the page listing all the prizes and giveaways. Do leave a comment or send me email if you are going to the event, we can sit together and have a coffee. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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• What's wrong with this turn to face algorithm?

  - by Chan

  I implement a torpedo object that chases a rotating planet. Specifically, it will turn toward the planet each update. Initially my implement was: void move() { vector3<float> to_target = target - get_position(); to_target.normalize(); position += (to_target * speed); } which works perfectly for torpedo that is a solid sphere. Now my torpedo is actually a model, which has a forward vector, so using this method looks odd because it doesn't actually turn toward but jump toward. So I revised it a bit to get, double get_rotation_angle(vector3<float> u, vector3<float> v) const { u.normalize(); v.normalize(); double cosine_theta = u.dot(v); // domain of arccosine is [-1, 1] if (cosine_theta > 1) { cosine_theta = 1; } if (cosine_theta < -1) { cosine_theta = -1; } return math3d::to_degree(acos(cosine_theta)); } vector3<float> get_rotation_axis(vector3<float> u, vector3<float> v) const { u.normalize(); v.normalize(); // fix linear case if (u == v || u == -v) { v[0] += 0.05; v[1] += 0.0; v[2] += 0.05; v.normalize(); } vector3<float> axis = u.cross(v); return axis.normal(); } void turn_to_face() { vector3<float> to_target = (target - position); vector3<float> axis = get_rotation_axis(get_forward(), to_target); double angle = get_rotation_angle(get_forward(), to_target); double distance = math3d::distance(position, target); gl_matrix_mode(GL_MODELVIEW); gl_push_matrix(); { gl_load_identity(); gl_translate_f(position.get_x(), position.get_y(), position.get_z()); gl_rotate_f(angle, axis.get_x(), axis.get_y(), axis.get_z()); gl_get_float_v(GL_MODELVIEW_MATRIX, OM); } gl_pop_matrix(); move(); } void move() { vector3<float> to_target = target - get_position(); to_target.normalize(); position += (get_forward() * speed); } The logic is simple, I find the rotation axis by cross product, the angle to rotate by dot product, then turn toward the target position each update. Unfortunately, it looks extremely odds since the rotation happens too fast that it always turns back and forth. The forward vector for torpedo is from the ModelView matrix, the third column A: MODELVIEW MATRIX -------------------------------------------------- R U A T -------------------------------------------------- 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 -------------------------------------------------- Any suggestion or idea would be greatly appreciated.

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• Grid pathfinding with a lot of entities

  - by Vee

  I'd like to explain this problem with a screenshot from a released game, DROD: Gunthro's Epic Blunder, by Caravel Games. The game is turn-based and tile-based. I'm trying to create something very similar (a clone of the game), and I've got most of the fundamentals done, but I'm having trouble implementing pathfinding. Look at the screenshot. The guys in yellow are friendly, and want to kill the roaches. Every turn, every guy in yellow pathfinds to the closest roach, and every roach pathfinds to the closest guy in yellow. By closest I mean the target with the shortest path, not a simple distance calculation. All of this without any kind of slowdown when loading the level or when passing turns. And all of the entities change position every turn. Also (not shown in screenshot), there can be doors that open and close and change the level's layout. Impressive. I've tried implementing pathfinding in my clone. First attempt was making every roach find a path to a yellow guy every turn, using a breadth-first search algorithm. Obviously incredibly slow with more than a single roach, and would get exponentially slower with more than a single yellow guy. Second attempt was mas making every yellow guy generate a pathmap (still breadth-first search) every time he moved. Worked perfectly with multiple roaches and a single yellow guy, but adding more yellow guys made the game slow and unplayable. Last attempt was implementing JPS (jump point search). Every entity would individually calculate a path to its target. Fast, but with a limited number of entities. Having less than half the entities in the screenshot would make the game slow. And also, I had to get the "closest" enemy by calculating distance, not shortest path. I've asked on the DROD forums how they did it, and a user replied that it was breadth-first search. The game is open source, and I took a look at the source code, but it's C++ (I'm using C#) and I found it confusing. I don't know how to do it. Every approach I tried isn't good enough. And I believe that DROD generates global pathmaps, somehow, but I can't understand how every entity find the best individual path to other entities that move every turn. What's the trick? This is a reply I just got on the DROD forums: Without having looked at the code I'd wager it's two (or so) pathmaps for the whole room: One to the nearest enemy, and one to the nearest friendly for every tile. There's no need to make a separate pathmap for every entity when the overall goal is "move towards nearest enemy/friendly"... just mark every tile with the number of moves it takes to the nearest target and have the entity chose the move that takes it to the tile with the lowest number. To be honest, I don't understand it that well.

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• Opposite Force to Apply to a Collided Rigid Body?

  - by Milo

  I'm working on the physics for my GTA2-like game so I can learn more about game physics. The collision detection and resolution are working great. I'm now just unsure how to compute the force to apply to a body after it collides with a wall. My rigid body looks like this: /our simulation object class RigidBody extends Entity { //linear private Vector2D velocity = new Vector2D(); private Vector2D forces = new Vector2D(); private float mass; private Vector2D v = new Vector2D(); //angular private float angularVelocity; private float torque; private float inertia; //graphical private Vector2D halfSize = new Vector2D(); private Bitmap image; private Matrix mat = new Matrix(); private float[] Vector2Ds = new float[2]; private Vector2D tangent = new Vector2D(); private static Vector2D worldRelVec = new Vector2D(); private static Vector2D relWorldVec = new Vector2D(); private static Vector2D pointVelVec = new Vector2D(); private static Vector2D acceleration = new Vector2D(); public RigidBody() { //set these defaults so we don't get divide by zeros mass = 1.0f; inertia = 1.0f; setLayer(LAYER_OBJECTS); } protected void rectChanged() { if(getWorld() != null) { getWorld().updateDynamic(this); } } //intialize out parameters public void initialize(Vector2D halfSize, float mass, Bitmap bitmap) { //store physical parameters this.halfSize = halfSize; this.mass = mass; image = bitmap; inertia = (1.0f / 20.0f) * (halfSize.x * halfSize.x) * (halfSize.y * halfSize.y) * mass; RectF rect = new RectF(); float scalar = 10.0f; rect.left = (int)-halfSize.x * scalar; rect.top = (int)-halfSize.y * scalar; rect.right = rect.left + (int)(halfSize.x * 2.0f * scalar); rect.bottom = rect.top + (int)(halfSize.y * 2.0f * scalar); setRect(rect); } public void setLocation(Vector2D position, float angle) { getRect().set(position.x,position.y, getWidth(), getHeight(), angle); rectChanged(); } public Vector2D getPosition() { return getRect().getCenter(); } @Override public void update(float timeStep) { doUpdate(timeStep); } public void doUpdate(float timeStep) { //integrate physics //linear acceleration.x = forces.x / mass; acceleration.y = forces.y / mass; velocity.x += (acceleration.x * timeStep); velocity.y += (acceleration.y * timeStep); //velocity = Vector2D.add(velocity, Vector2D.scalarMultiply(acceleration, timeStep)); Vector2D c = getRect().getCenter(); v.x = getRect().getCenter().getX() + (velocity.x * timeStep); v.y = getRect().getCenter().getY() + (velocity.y * timeStep); setCenter(v.x, v.y); forces.x = 0; //clear forces forces.y = 0; //angular float angAcc = torque / inertia; angularVelocity += angAcc * timeStep; setAngle(getAngle() + angularVelocity * timeStep); torque = 0; //clear torque } //take a relative Vector2D and make it a world Vector2D public Vector2D relativeToWorld(Vector2D relative) { mat.reset(); Vector2Ds[0] = relative.x; Vector2Ds[1] = relative.y; mat.postRotate(JMath.radToDeg(getAngle())); mat.mapVectors(Vector2Ds); relWorldVec.x = Vector2Ds[0]; relWorldVec.y = Vector2Ds[1]; return relWorldVec; } //take a world Vector2D and make it a relative Vector2D public Vector2D worldToRelative(Vector2D world) { mat.reset(); Vector2Ds[0] = world.x; Vector2Ds[1] = world.y; mat.postRotate(JMath.radToDeg(-getAngle())); mat.mapVectors(Vector2Ds); worldRelVec.x = Vector2Ds[0]; worldRelVec.y = Vector2Ds[1]; return worldRelVec; } //velocity of a point on body public Vector2D pointVelocity(Vector2D worldOffset) { tangent.x = -worldOffset.y; tangent.y = worldOffset.x; pointVelVec.x = (tangent.x * angularVelocity) + velocity.x; pointVelVec.y = (tangent.y * angularVelocity) + velocity.y; return pointVelVec; } public void applyForce(Vector2D worldForce, Vector2D worldOffset) { //add linear force forces.x += worldForce.x; forces.y += worldForce.y; //add associated torque torque += Vector2D.cross(worldOffset, worldForce); } @Override public void draw( GraphicsContext c) { c.drawRotatedScaledBitmap(image, getPosition().x, getPosition().y, getWidth(), getHeight(), getAngle()); } public Vector2D getVelocity() { return velocity; } public void setVelocity(Vector2D velocity) { this.velocity = velocity; } } The way it is given force is by the applyForce method, this method considers angular torque. I'm just not sure how to come up with the vectors in the case where: RigidBody hits static entity RigidBody hits other RigidBody that may or may not be in motion. Would anyone know a way (without too complex math) that I could figure out the opposite force I need to apply to the car? I know the normal it is colliding with and how deep it collided. My main goal is so that say I hit a building from the side, well the car should not just stay there, it should slowly rotate out of it if I'm more than 45 degrees. Right now when I hit a wall I only change the velocity directly which does not consider angular force. Thanks!

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• Apprentice Boot Camp in South Africa (Part 2)

  - by Tim Koekkoek

  By Maximilian Michel (DE), Jorge Garnacho (ES), Daniel Maull (UK), Adam Griffiths (UK), Guillermo De Las Nieves (ES), Catriona McGill (UK), Ed Dunlop (UK) Today we have the second part of the adventures of seven apprentices from all over Europe in South-Africa!  Kruger National Park & other experiences Going to the Kruger National Park was definitely an experience we will all remember for the rest of our lives. This trip,organised by Patrick Fitzgerald, owner of the Travellers Nest (where we all stayed), took us from the hustle and bustle of Joburg to experience what Africa is all about, the wild! Although the first week’s training we had prior to this trip to the Kruger was going very well, we all knew this was to be a very nice break before we started the second week of training. And we were right, the animals, scenery and sights we saw were just simply incredible and like I said something we will remember for the rest of our lives. To see lions, elephants, cheetahs and rhinos and many more in a zoo is one thing, but to see them in the wild, in their natural habitat is very special and I personally only realised this from the early 5 am start on the first morning in the Kruger, which was definitely worth it. Not only was it all about the safari, we ate some wonderful food, in particular on the Saturday night, Patrick made us a traditional South African Braai which was one of my favourite meals of the whole two weeks. After the Kruger National Park we had a whole day of traveling back to Johannesburg but even this was made to be a good day by our hosts. Despite the early start on the road it was all worth it by the time we reached God's Window. The walk to the top was made a lot harder by all the steaks we had eaten in the first week but the hard walk was worth it at the top, with views that stretched for miles. The Food The food in South Africa is typically meat and in big amounts, while there we ate a lot of big beef steaks, ribs and kudu sausage. All of the meat we ate was usually cooked with a sauce such as a Barbeque glaze. The restaurants we visited were: Upperdeck Restaurant, with live music and a great terrace to eat, the atmosphere was good for enjoying the music and eating our food. Most of us ate  Spare ribs that weighed 600 kg, with barbecue sauce that was delicious. Die Bosvelder Pub & Restaurant is a restaurant with a very surprising decor, this is because the walls had many of south Africa’s famous animals on them. The food was maybe the best we ate in South Africa. Our orders were: Springbokvlakte Lambs' Neck Stew, beef in gravy and steaks topped with cheese and then more meat on top! All meals were accompanied by a selection of white sauce cauliflower, spinach and zanhorias. Pepper Chair Restaurant, where the specialty is T-Bone steaks of 1.4 kg, but most of us were happy to attempt the 1 kg. Cooked with barbecue sauce over the meat, it was very good!  The only problem was their size causing the  the meat to get cold if you did not eat it very fast! We’re all waiting for our 1.0 kg t-bone steak including our Senior Director EMEA Systems Support Germany & Switzerland: Werner Hoellrigl The Godfather Restaurant, the food here was more meat in abundance. We ate: great ribs, hamburgers, steaks and all accompanied with a small plates of carrot and sauteed spinach, very good. We had two great weeks in South-Africa! If you want to join Oracle, then check http://campus.oracle.com 

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