Search Results

Search found 73 results on 3 pages for 'bent rasmussen'.

Page 3/3 | < Previous Page | 1 2 3 

• With WPF and Silverlight against cancer

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  MVPs are well known for their good heart (like the GeekGive initiative shows) and Client App Dev MVP Gregor Biswanger is no exception. At the latest MVP summit (beginning of March 2011), he took over a DVD about WPF 4 and Silverlight 4 and asked a few Microsoft superstars to sign it. Right now, the DVD is auctioned on eBay and of course the proceeds will go to a charitable work: The German League against Cancer (Deutsche Krebshilfe). The post is in German and English (scroll down for the English text). This sounds like a great idea, and considering who signed it, it is going to be a real collectible: Scott Hanselman (Principal Program Manager Lead in Server and Tools Online) Tim Heuer (Program Manager for Microsoft Silverlight) Rob Relyea (Principal Program Manager Lead - Client Platform WPF & Silverlight) Pete Brown (Developer Division Community Program Manager - Windows Client) Eric Fabricant (Program Manager WPF) Jeff Wilcox (Silverlight Senior SDE) Jeffrey R Ferman (SDET Visual Studio Client Dev Tools) Chan Verbeck (Expression Blend Team) Yaniv Feinberg (Expression Blend Team) Douglas Olson (Director Dev Expression) Samuel W. Bent (Principal Software Design Engineer WPF) John Papa (Technical Evangelist for Silverlight) So if you feel that you could do a generous gesture, go ahead and take a look at the auction, and talk about it around you. Let’s prove again that geeks rule, also when it comes to giving to a good cause! Cheers! Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

  Read the article

• Library Organization in .NET

  - by Greg Ros

  I've written a .NET bitwise operations library as part of my projects (stuff ranging from get MSB set to some more complicated bitwise transformations) and I mean to release it as free software. I'm a bit confused about a design aspect of the library, though. Many of the methods/transformations in the library come with different endianness. A simple example is a getBitAt method that regards index 0 as the least significant bit, or the most significant bit, depending on the version used. In practice, I've found that using separate functions for different endianness results in much more comprehensible and reusable code than assuming all operations are little-endian or something. I'm really stumped regarding how best to package the library. Should I have methods that have LE and BE versions take an enum parameter in their signature, e.g. Endianness.Little, Endianness.Big? Should I have different static classes with identically named methods? such as MSB.GetBit and LSB.GetBit On a much wider note, is there a standard I could use in cases like this? Some guide? Is my design issue trivial? I have a perfectionist bent, and I sometimes get stuck on tricky design issues like this... Note: I've sort of realized I'm using endianness somewhat colloquially to refer to the order/place value of digital component parts (be they bits, bytes, or words) in a larger whole, in any setting. I'm not talking about machine-level endianness or serial transmission endianness. Just about place-value semantics in general. So there isn't a context of targeting different machines/transmission techniques or something.

  Read the article

• UCS Documentation: Home1 or Home2? You Decide.

  - by joesciallo

  How you go about finding information can be a very personal affair. We each have our own style of locating content, we each have our particular bent. But when it comes to getting started finding technical information, sometimes the simplest ways are best, especially if you are relatively new to a product or technology, and you just need to get going quickly with that Installation Guide or those Release Notes. With that in mind, I recently created an alternative home page for the Unified Communications Suite documentation. You can now have your Home2, in addition to the original, more wiki-fied Home1. I would recommend Home2 for those who are used to, and are more comfortable with, the spreadsheet-like view of manuals: here you'll find those familiar titles and the option to either view on the wiki or download the equivalent PDF file. Once you get familiar with what guides are available for the UCS component products, then move on to the Home1 layout, and start using some of the more advanced techniques for finding content in a wiki. Either way, you should be able to locate the "thing" you are looking for.

  Read the article

• SQL Saturday #162 Cambridge

  - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

  Despite the efforts of American Airlines, this past weekend I attended the first SQL Saturday in the UK!  Hosted by the SQLCambs Chapter of PASS and organized by Mark (b|t) & Lorraine Broadbent, ably assisted by John Martin (b|t), Mark Pryce-Maher (b|t) and other folks whose names I've unfortunately forgotten, it was held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, which is completely surrounded by Cambridge University. On Friday, they presented 3 pre-conference sessions given by the brilliant American Cloud & DBA Guru, Buck Woody (b|t), the brilliant Danish SQL Server Internals Guru, Mark Rasmussen (b|t), and the brilliant Scottish Business Intelligence Guru and recent Outstanding Pass Volunteer, Jen Stirrup (b|t).  While I would have loved to attend any of their pre-cons (having seen them present several times already), finances and American Airlines ultimately made that impossible.  But not to worry, I caught up with them during the regular sessions and at the speaker dinner.  And I got back the money they all owed me.  (Actually I owed Mark some money) The schedule was jam-packed even with only 4 tracks, there were 8 regular slots, a lunch session for sponsor presentations, and a 15 minute keynote given by Buck Woody, who besides giving an excellent history of SQL Server at Microsoft (and before), also explained the source of the "unknown contact" image that appears in Outlook.  Hint: it's not Buck himself. Amazingly, and against all better judgment, I even got to present at SQL Saturday 162!  I did a 5 minute Lightning Talk on Regular Expressions in SSMS.  I then did a regular 50 minute session on Constraints.  You can download the content for the regular session at that link, and for the regular expression presentation here. I had a great time and had a great audience for both of my sessions.  You would never have guessed this was the first event for the organizers, everything went very smoothly, especially for the number of attendees and the relative smallness of the space.  The event sponsors also deserve a lot of credit for making themselves fit in a small area and for staying through the entire event until the giveaways at the very end. Overall this was one of the best SQL Saturdays I've ever attended and I have to congratulate Mark B, Lorraine, John, Mark P-M, and all the volunteers and speakers for making this an astoundingly hard act to follow!  Well done!

  Read the article

• How can I improve my programming skills with out a computer (or reading material)?

  - by Tom Duckering

  Given the recent and continued chaos with grounded flights and folks stuck in airports, and what not, I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions for activities that would help sharpen and develop a progammer's mind. The constraints are: Laptop is out of battery and there are no free sockets. You're bored of the book you're reading or you have none with you. Reasonable resources such as a pen and pad of paper are available. Rules can be bent within reason. As daft examples, things I have thought about are: How I might optimise the boarding of a plane. How I might improve the UI of a departure board.

  Read the article

• Show data relationship in gridview with dropdownlist or similar?

  - by Anders Svensson

  I have data coming from two tables with a foreign key relationship - one User table containing users of the web application, and one Page table containing details about pages visited by each user. I would like to be able to view these data in a gridview or the like on a page. It's easy enough to just show the User table data like so (I'm using the Entity Framework and LINQ): UserDBEntities context = new UserDBEntities(); GridView1.DataSource = from user in context.UserSet select new { user.Ip, user.Count, user.Description, user.Referer }; GridView1.DataBind(); But how can I show the Page details? I'm not bent on any particular way of showing it, but the only idea I've been able to come up with is to have a dropdown list for each user in a column. But I can't figure out how to get the page data into such a dropdown list. The tables are associated with the primary/foreign key UserID. Any ideas would be welcome (dropdownlist solution or other)!

  Read the article

• WORD CERTIFIED IMPLEMENTATION SPECIALIST EN LAAT ORACLE UNIVERSITY U ASSISTEREN HIERMEE

  - by mseika

  WORD CERTIFIED IMPLEMENTATION SPECIALIST EN LAAT ORACLE UNIVERSITY U ASSISTEREN HIERMEE Word gespecialiseerd!Oracle weet exact welke competenties implementatie specialisten moeten opbouwen en beseft de bijbehorende inspanning die hiervoor nodig is. Het nieuwe Specialized programma van Oracle PartnerNetwork biedt een scala van certificering mogelijkheden aan (Specializations) die aantonen dat de benodigde kennis en vaardigheden bij u en bij uw teamleden aanwezig zijn.Word erkend! Bevestig uw kennis en vaardigheden en ontvang de beloning die u verdient door examens te halen voor de hele portefeuille van producten en oplossingen die Oracle aanbiedt. Haal het examen en ontvang uw OPN Specialist Certificaat. Stap 1: Kies uw SpecialisatieBekijk de Specialization Guide (PDF) - ons aanbod van Specialisaties voor de individu. Stap 2: Bereik de vereiste kennis en de vaardighedenBoek een Oracle University OPN Only Bootcamp en bereik de vereiste kennis en de vaardigheden om een Certified Implementation Specialist te worden.Wij hebben voor u de volgende Bootcamps geselecteerd en de komende maanden ingepland bij Oracle University in Utrecht, The Netherlands: Boot Camp Duur Data Voorbereiding voor Specialization (Exam Code) Database Oracle Database 11g Specialist 5 21-25 jan 12 Oracle Database 11g Certified Implementation Specialist (1Z0-514) Oracle Data Warehousing 11g Implementation 5 3-7 dec 12 3-7 apr 13 Data Warehousing 11g Certified Implementation Specialist (1Z0-515) Exadata Oracle Exadata 11g Technical Boot Camp 3 28-30 jan 13 Oracle Exadata 11g Certified Implementation Specialist (1Z0-536) Fusion Middleware Oracle AIA 11g Implementation 4 20-22 feb 13 Oracle Application Integration Architecture 11g Certified Implementation Specialist (1Z0-543) Oracle BPM 11g Implementation 4 15-18 okt 12 14-17 jan 12 15-18 apr 13 Oracle Unified Business Process Management Suite 11g Billing Certified Implementation Specialist (1Z0-560) Oracle WebCenter 11g Implementation 4 10-13 okt 12 5-8 feb 13 Oracle WebCenter Portal 11g Certified Implementation Specialist (1Z0-541) Oracle Identity Administration and Analytics 11g Implementation 3 7-9 nov 12 6-8 mrt 13 Identity Administration and Analytics 11g Certified Implementation Specialist (1Z0-545) Business Intelligence and Datawarehousing Oracle BI Enterprise Edition 11g Implementation 5 24-28 sep12 11-15 mrt 13 Boek een Boot Camp: U kunt online boeken of gebruik maken van dit inschrijfformulier Prijzen: U merkt dat de ‘OPN Only’ Boot Camps in prijs sterk gereduceerd zijn en bovendien is uw OPN korting (silver, gold, platinum of diamond) nog steeds van toepassing! Stap 3: Boek en neem uw examen afBezoek de examenregistratie web-pagina en lees de instructies voor het boeken van uw examen bij een Pearson VUE Authorized Testcentrum. Examens kunnen betaald worden door één van de gratis examen vouchers die uw bedrijf heeft, door een voucher aan te schaffen bij Oracle University of met uw creditcard bij het Pearson VUE Testcentrum. Stap 4: Ontvang uw OPN Specialist CertificateGefeliciteerd! U bent nu een Certified Implementation Specialist. Heeft u meer informatie of assistentie nodig?Neem dan contact op met uw Oracle University Account Manager of met onze Education Service Desk: eMail: [email protected]:+ 31 30 66 99 244 Bij het boeken graag de volgende code vermelden: E1229

  Read the article

• Number of routers in small community lock up and require reboot.

  - by Anthony Hiscox

  I live in a small town which has one primary ISP. Lately I have noticed that a number of wireless routers have been locking up and requiring a reboot before allowing any connections. This has affected two of my routers, my work router, and a few others. In all cases wired continued to function as usual. Often wireless clients can see the SSID but simply won't connect. I can only think of a few possibilities and was hoping someone here might be able to point me in the right direction: Our ISP is well known to be flaky, something they are doing is causing this, what that might be I have no clue it as seems to affect the wireless only. There's a power issue in town, given our remote location and reputation for crap electrical, this seems reasonable. Only one router was plugged in to a UPS, and I'm not sure of the quality. There is some bug in all the different firmware for every one of these routers (all different). That doesn't seem reasonable, unless; it's an unknown (or known) exploit or DoS of some sort being launched by a massive team of ninjas hell bent on forcing us all to be tethered to our walls by ethernet cables or; it's just been a coincidence and I'm just paranoid (this has some weight, I mean read 4 again). Anyone else experience similar issues and have some tips?

  Read the article

• Light Blue Monitor Screen

  - by SixfootJames

  I have seen this before with an older monitor that over time, the monitor colours change to a light blue haze. This has started happening with an older monitor of mine now (A GigaByte Monitor) and although none of the pins are bent and it's a brand new machine, there is no reason, other than aging that it should show the light blue screen. Perhaps it is just time for a new monitor, but if there is a way of saving it still. I would appreciate the insight. Perhaps there is something I have not tried, perhaps it has something to do with the new machine instead of the monitor? I had the monitor plugged into two other machines over the weekend and didn't have this problem. So I am not quite sure what to make of it. Many thanks! EDIT: I must also add that when I plugged the monitor into the older machines, I had the VGA converter attached to the end of the newer DVI output. Which, when plugged into the newer PC, I don't need of course.

  Read the article

• Installed Memory (RAM): 8GB (4GB Useable)

  - by Mike Bannister

  I have 4X 2GB RAM sticks installed, Windows 7 Ultimate x64 shows "Installed Memory (RAM): 8GB (4GB Useable)" in the system information. The motherboard says it supports up to 16GB of memory. I had Windows XP x64 and I'm pretty sure it was able to use all 8Gigs of memory. I've just formatted and am not burning through 4GB for sure. *The BIOS only show 4096MB while booting. I was only able to find one option relating to memory mapping and it took it from 4Gigs to 3 and change. CPU-Z shows all 4 sticks as 2048MB I went in to msconfig and checked the limits, they are not set. I tried resetting the CPU and RAM sticks 3 times, the CPU has no pins to be bent (flat contacts, I5) I rearranged all the RAM. I have separate video memory from the system memory. I have a 64 bit OS (I am 100% certain) Hardware: Memory: Four Corsair XMS3 TW3X4G1333C9AG Motherboard: Asus P7P55D Pro CPU: Intel Core i5-760 BX80605I5760 Graphics: Two ZOTAC ZT-50401-10L GeForce GTX 550 Ti If anyone has new ideas or knows the exact setting in the bios, it would be greatly appreciated.

  Read the article

• It’s the thought that counts…

  - by Tony Davis

  I recently finished editing a book called Tribal SQL, and it was a fantastic experience. It’s a community-sourced book written by first-timers. Fifteen previously unpublished authors contributed one chapter each, with the seemingly simple remit to write about “what makes them passionate about working with SQL Server, something that all SQL Server DBAs and developers really need to know”. Sure, some of the writing skills were a bit rusty as one would expect from busy people, but the ideas and energy were sheer nectar. Any seasoned editor can deal easily with the problem of fixing the output of untrained writers. We can handle with the occasional technical error too, which is why we have technical reviewers. The editor’s real job is to hone the clarity and flow of ideas, making the author’s knowledge and experience accessible to as many others as possible. What the writer needs to bring, on the other hand, is enthusiasm, attention to detail, common sense, and a sense of the person behind the writing. If any of these are missing, no editor can fix it. We can see these essential characteristics in many of the more seasoned and widely-published writers about SQL. To illustrate what I mean by enthusiasm, or passion, take a look at the work of Laerte Junior or Fabiano Amorim. Both authors have English as a second language, but their energy, enthusiasm, sheer immersion in a technology and thirst to know more, drives them, with a little editorial help, to produce articles of far more practical value than one can find in the “manuals”. There’s the attention to detail of the likes of Jonathan Kehayias, or Paul Randal. Read their work and one begins to understand the knowledge coupled with incredible rigor, the willingness to bend and test every piece of advice offered to make sure it’s correct, that marks out the very best technical writing. There’s the common sense of someone like Louis Davidson. All writers, including Louis, like to stretch the grey matter of their readers, but some of the most valuable writing is that which takes a complicated idea, or distils years of experience, and expresses it in a way that sounds like simple common sense. There’s personality and humor. Contrary to what you may have been told, they can and do mix well with technical writing, as long as they don’t become a distraction. Read someone like Rodney Landrum, or Phil Factor, for numerous examples of articles that teach hard technical lessons but also make you smile at least twice along the way. Writing well is not easy and it takes a certain bravery to expose your ideas and knowledge for dissection by others, but it doesn’t mean that writing should be the preserve only of those trained in the art, or best left to the MVPs. I believe that Tribal SQL is testament to the fact that if you have passion for what you do, and really know your topic then, with a little editorial help, you can write, and people will learn from what you have to say. You can read a sample chapter, by Mark Rasmussen, in this issue of Simple-Talk and I hope you’ll consider checking out the book (if you needed any further encouragement, it’s also for a good cause, Computers4Africa). Cheers, Tony  

  Read the article

• What is the best way to process XML sent to WCF 3.5

  - by CRM Junkie

  I have to develop a WCF application in 3.5. The input will be sent in the form of XML and the response would be sent in the form of XML as well. A ASP.NET application will be consuming the WCF and sending/receiving data in XML format. Now, as per my understanding, when consuming WCF from an ASP.NET application, we just add a reference to the service, create an object of the service, pack all the necessary data(Data Members in WCF) into the input object (object of the Data Contract) and call the necessary function. It happens that the ASP.NET application is being developed by a separate party and they are hell bent on receiving and sending data in XML format. What I can perceive from this is that the WCF will take the XML string (a single Data Member string type) as input and send out a XML string (again a single Data Member string type) as output. I have created WCF applications earlier where requests and responses were sent out in XML/JSON format when it was consumed by jQuery ajax calls. In those cases, the XML tags were automatically mapped to the different Data Members defined. What approach should I take in this case? Should I just take a string as input (basically the XML string) or is there any way WCF/.NET 3.5 will automatically map the XML tags with the Data Members for requests and responses and I would not need to parse the XML string separately?

  Read the article

• Visual Studio C++ Solution in Maven2

  - by graham.reeds

  A new project is coming up that will require interaction between Java and C++. It's been decided that the project will be built via Maven2. Unfortunately I don't know anything about Maven and the Java guys don't know anything about C++. They have their build chain all set up with various reports being emitted for each part related to CheckStyle, Findbugs, Corbortura(?) etc. and they want the same to be done with the C++ side. Currently we have 4 apps that need building: 2 services, a tray app and a simple dialog based application. I've been told I need to have a pom for each and configure each to output to a target directory, have the tool chain produce the reports - the most particular being the code coverage which the client wants 100%. I have sourced the tools - Bullseye and QA-C++ and requested eval copies - but I am dismayed to find there is very little information on C++ & Maven, and what little there is seems to be horror stories. Does anyone on SO have a good story about it (or have link to blog post)? Is there a simple explanation anywhere for configuring a Visual Studio solution (preferably C++) to be Mavenized? I am expecting pain but I am getting increasingly wary of this venture - but unfortunately the project manager is Java side and seems hell-bent on Mavenizing it.

  Read the article

• Slide Creation Checklist

  - by Daniel Moth

  PowerPoint is a great tool for conference (large audience) presentations, which is the context for the advice below. The #1 thing to keep in mind when you create slides (at least for conference sessions), is that they are there to help you remember what you were going to say (the flow and key messages) and for the audience to get a visual reminder of the key points. Slides are not there for the audience to read what you are going to say anyway. If they were, what is the point of you being there? Slides are not holders for complete sentences (unless you are quoting) – use Microsoft Word for that purpose either as a physical handout or as a URL link that you share with the audience. When you dry run your presentation, if you find yourself reading the bullets on your slide, you have missed the point. You have a message to deliver that can be done regardless of your slides – remember that. The focus of your audience should be on you, not the screen. Based on that premise, I have created a checklist that I go over before I start a new deck and also once I think my slides are ready. Turn AutoFit OFF. I cannot stress this enough. For each slide, explicitly pick a slide layout. In my presentations, I only use one Title Slide, Section Header per demo slide, and for the rest of my slides one of the three: Title and Content, Title Only, Blank. Most people that are newbies to PowerPoint, get whatever default layout the New Slide creates for them and then start deleting and adding placeholders to that. You can do better than that (and you'll be glad you did if you also follow item #11 below). Every slide must have an image. Remove all punctuation (e.g. periods, commas) other than exclamation points and question marks (! ?). Don't use color or other formatting (e.g. italics, bold) for text on the slide. Check your animations. Avoid animations that hide elements that were on the slide (instead use a new slide and transition). Ensure that animations that bring new elements in, bring them into white space instead of over other existing elements. A good test is to print the slide and see that it still makes sense even without the animation. Print the deck in black and white choosing the "6 slides per page" option. Can I still read each slide without losing any information? If the answer is "no", go back and fix the slides so the answer becomes "yes". Don't have more than 3 bullet levels/indents. In other words: you type some text on the slide, hit 'Enter', hit 'Tab', type some more text and repeat at most one final time that sequence. Ideally your outer bullets have only level of sub-bullets (i.e. one level of indentation beneath them). Don't have more than 3-5 outer bullets per slide. Space them evenly horizontally, e.g. with blank lines in between. Don't wrap. For each bullet on all slides check: does the text for that bullet wrap to a second line? If it does, change the wording so it doesn't. Or create a terser bullet and make the original long text a sub-bullet of that one (thus decreasing the font size, but still being consistent) and have no wrapping. Use the same consistent fonts (i.e. Font Face, Font Size etc) throughout the deck for each level of bullet. In other words, don't deviate form the PowerPoint template you chose (or that was chosen for you). Go on each slide and hit 'Reset'. 'Reset' is a button on the 'Home' tab of the ribbon or you can find the 'Reset Slide' menu when you right click on a slide on the left 'Slides' list. If your slides can survive doing that without you "fixing" things after the Reset action, you are golden! For each slide ask yourself: if I had to replace this slide with a single sentence that conveys the key message, what would that sentence be? This exercise leads you to merge slides (where the key message is split) or split a slide into many, if there were too many key messages on the slide in the first place. It can also lead you to redesign a slide so the text on it really is just explanation or evidence for the key message you are trying to convey. Get the length right. Is the length of this deck suitable for the time you have been given to present? If not, cut content! It is far better to deliver less in a relaxed, polished engaging, memorable way than to deliver in great haste more content. As a rule of thumb, multiply 2 minutes by the number of slides you have, add the time you need for each demo and check if that add to more than the time you have allotted. If it does, start cutting content – we've all been there and it has to be done. As always, rules and guidelines are there to be bent and even broken some times. Start with the above and on a slide-by-slide basis decide which rules you want to bend. That is smarter than throwing all the rules out from the start, right? Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

  Read the article

• Why is my external USB hard drive sometimes completely inaccessible?

  - by Eliah Kagan

  I have an external USB hard drive, consisting of an 1 TB SATA drive in a Rosewill RX35-AT-SU SLV Aluminum 3.5" Silver USB 2.0 External Enclosure, plugged into my SONY VAIO VGN-NS310F laptop. It is plugged directly into the computer (not through a hub). The drive inside the enclosure is a 7200 rpm Western Digital, but I don't remember the exact model. I can remove the drive from the enclosure (again), if people think it's necessary to know that detail. The drive is formatted ext4. I mount it dynamically with udisks on my Lubuntu 11.10 system, usually automatically via PCManFM. (I have had Lubuntu 12.04 on this machine, and experienced all this same behavior with that too.) Every once in a while--once or twice a day--it becomes inaccessible, and difficult to unmount. Attempting to unmount it with sudo umount ... gives an error message saying the drive is in use and suggesting fuser and lsof to find out what is using it. Killing processes found to be using the drive with fuser and lsof is sometimes sufficient to let me unmount it, but usually isn't. Once the drive is unmounted or the machine is rebooted, the drive will not mount. Plugging in the drive and turning it on registers nothing on the computer. dmesg is unchanged. The drive's access light usually blinks vigorously, as though the drive is being accessed constantly. Then eventually, after I keep the drive off for a while (half an hour), I am able to mount it again. While the drive doesn't work on this machine for a while, it will work immediately on another machine running the same version of Ubuntu. Sometimes bringing it back over from the other machine seems to "fix" it. Sometimes it doesn't. The drive doesn't always stop being accessible while mounted, before becoming unmountable. Sometimes it works fine, I turn off the computer, I turn the computer back on, and I cannot mount the drive. Currently this is the only drive with which I have this problem, but I've had problems that I think are the same as this, with different drives, on different Ubuntu machines. This laptop has another external USB drive plugged into it regularly, which doesn't have this problem. Unplugging that drive before plugging in the "problem" drive doesn't fix the problem. I've opened the drive up and made sure the connections were tight in the past, and that didn't seem to help (any more than waiting the same amount of time that it took to open and close the drive, before attempting to remount it). Does anyone have any ideas about what could be causing this, what troubleshooting steps I should perform, and/or how I could fix this problem altogether? Update: I tried replacing the USB data cable (from the enclosure to the laptop), as Merlin suggested. I should've tried that long ago, since it fits the symptoms perfectly (the drive works on another machine, which would make sense because the cable would be bent at a different angle, possibly completing a circuit of frayed wires). Unfortunately, though, this did not help--I have the same problem with the new cable. I'll try to provide additional detailed information about the drive inside the enclosure, next time I'm able to get the drive working. (At the moment I don't have another machine available to attach it.) Major Update (28 June 2012) The drive seems to have deteriorated considerably. I think this is so, because I've attached it to another machine and gotten lots of errors about invalid characters, when copying files from it. I am less interested in recovering data from the drive than I am in figuring out what is wrong with it. I specifically want to figure out if the problem is the drive or the enclosure. Now, when I plug the drive into the original machine where I was having the problems, it still doesn't appear (including with sudo fdisk -l), but it is recognized by the kernel and messages are added to dmesg. Most of the message consist of errors like this, repeated many times: [ 7.707593] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdc] Unhandled sense code [ 7.707599] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdc] Result: hostbyte=invalid driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE [ 7.707606] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdc] Sense Key : Medium Error [current] [ 7.707614] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdc] Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error [ 7.707621] sd 5:0:0:0: [sdc] CDB: Read(10): 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 [ 7.707636] end_request: critical target error, dev sdc, sector 0 [ 7.707641] Buffer I/O error on device sdc, logical block 0 Here are all the lines from dmesg starting with when the drive is recognized. Please note that: I'm back to running Lubuntu 12.04 on this machine (and perhaps that's a factor in better error messages). Now that the drive has been plugged into another machine and back into this one, and also now that this machine is back to running 12.04, the drive's access light doesn't blink as I had described. Looking at the drive, it would appear as though it is working normally, with low or no access. This behavior (the errors) occurs when rebooting the machine with the drive plugged in, and also when manually plugging in the drive. A few of the messages are about /dev/sdb. That drive is working fine. The bad drive is /dev/sdc. I just didn't want to edit anything out from the middle.

  Read the article

• 2 Days of Share &amp; Point

  - by Mark Rackley

  Groovy man… SharePoint Saturday Ozarks is back for 2010, bigger and better than before. Join us for a far out time and learn more about SharePoint in one day than you could in a year from the man… Yes! SharePoint Saturday Ozarks is back! SharePoint Saturday Ozarks is the largest SharePoint conference in Arkansas, Southern Missouri, and the very north east tip of Oklahoma. Last year we had a great turn out with 20 speakers, 5 MVPs, and attendees coming from Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Indiana, Ohio, Alabama, Michigan, and Washington. Hey Man… what’s SharePoint Saturday anyway? Sounds like a conspiracy man… Not to worry, SharePoint Saturday is not an arm of the government bent on mind control or any attempt what-so-ever to bring you down man. SharePoint Saturday is grass roots effort started by Michael Lotter (http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/pages/about.aspx). It is a FREE one day event where the best SharePoint speakers gather to present their love, hatred, and frustrations of SharePoint to those lucky individuals who attend. Lessons are learned, contacts are made, prizes are won, food is eaten, assorted beverages are consumed until wee hours of the morning. SharePoint Saturday started with just a few sporadic one day events here and there. However, over the past year SharePoint Saturday has exploded and it’s hard to find a weekend where there is NOT a SharePoint Saturday event happing in some corner of the globe. There are even occasions where there are two SharePoint Saturdays on the same day! Many people are pleasantly surprised at the caliber of speakers at these SharePoint Saturday events. For the most part, these speakers are more eloquent, practiced, and practical than those speakers you find at the major multi-day conferences. These guys aren’t even paid to speak.. they do it out of love man… SharePoint Saturday Ozarks 2009 Alumni We had a star studded cast last year with many returning this year! Just check out the fun that they had… John Ferringer – Admin rockstar… I can still sense the awesomeness   SharePoint poster children Mike Watson & Laura Rogers     Lori Gowin spreading the SharePoint Love Eric Shupps is a little bit country and a little bit rock and roll       Cathy Dew, Sean McDonough, and JD Wade relaxing between gigs Actually, you can see real photos from last year’s SharePoint Saturday ozarks here:  picasaweb.google.com/mrackley/SharePointSaturdayOzarks#    What’s new for SharePoint Saturday Ozarks 2010 SharePoint Saturday Ozarks 2010 will totally blow your mind man. We’re getting the band back to together with many returning speakers and few new faces. Joel Oleson will be speaking this year, maybe he’ll grace us with his song stylings. Sadly, once again, Andrew Connell will not be able to attend SharePoint Saturday Ozarks, however he did feel the need to show his support in his own way. Prizes this year currently include books, software, a Zune HD, and much more! Wait Man… You said 2 days? I thought it was a one day event? Correct you are my herbal smelling friend… SharePoint Saturday Ozarks 2010 will spread the love an additional day this year. The first day will be all about the SharePoint love, on day 2 we will be taking a leisurely float down the Buffalo National River for those interested in a truly unique experience (no banjos allowed please).   Here are the details: WHAT 4 – 5 hour float down the Buffalo National River WHEN & WHERE Sunday June 13th. We will be leaving at 10am from the Parking Lot of: Gordon’s Motel & Canoe Rental Old Highway 7 Jasper, AR 72641 (870) 446-5252 Jasper is about 30 minutes south of Harrison, AR on Highway 7 South. You are responsible for bumming a ride to/from Gordon’s Motel, but they will be shuttling us to/from the river and providing canoes and a boxed lunch. WHAT ELSE? The float trip is dependent on the weather of course, we won’t be floating down the river in a thunderstorm, however I planned SPS Ozarks around a time of year ideal for floating. We aren’t talking class 5 rapids here, you don’t need any real skill, but you need to be okay with possibly tipping your canoe over once or twice. You can bring your own assorted beverages with you, but glass containers are not allowed on the river. I suggest a small cooler with extra snacks and drinks. Also bring clothing you can get wet in (these SharePoint people can get ornery). HOW DO I SIGN UP? When you register for SharePoint Saturday Ozarks, you will have the option to also sign up for the float trip. Seats are limited though! If you do not intend to go, please do not take someone else’s place.  The cost for the float trip will be about $35 dollars per person (which you are responsible for unless we find a sponsor). The price includes shuttle to/from river, canoe, life jackets, paddles, and boxed lunch. Far out man… how do I register??? You can register for SharePoint Saturday Ozarks by going to http://spsozarks.eventbrite.com/ We are limited to 200 people for the conference and 50 people for the float trip, so register today before we are sold out. Lodging for SharePoint Saturday Ozarks will once again take place at the Hotel Seville: Annex Suites are available for $103.20 This is So Groovy.. How can I help? I’m glad you asked! We are still looking for a few sponsors and one or two more speakers. If you are interested please let me know!  You can find out more information at http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/ozarks Hey… wait a minute…. what exactly IS SharePoint man??? Come to SharePoint Saturday Ozarks and find out!!  See you guys there!

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, March 05, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, March 05, 2010New Projects.svn Folders Cleanup Tool: dotSVN Cleanup is a tool that allows you to remove the .svn folders . Just click, browse, say abracadabra ...and the magic is done. Have fun with...Accord: The Accord framework creates an easy we to integrate any Dependency Injection framework into your project, while abstracting the details of your im...Asp.net MVC Lab: Try asp.net mvc outASP.NET Themes management with Webforms: The provided source is an example for how to use themes in ASP.NET Webforms. this source is the "up to date" support for the article I wroteB&W Port Scanner: B&W Port Scanner (formerly Net Inspector) is a fast TCP Port scan utility. The main idea is support of customizable operations to be performed f...BizTalk SWAT - Simple Web Activity Tracker: This is a web based version of BizTalk HAT. The concept is designed to be able to share and enable sharing of orchestration info easily. Some of th...C# Linear Hash Table: A C# dictionary-like implementation of a linear hash table. It is more memory efficiant than the .NET dictionary, and also almost as fast. NOTE: On...DBF Import Export Wizard: DBF Import Export Wizard is a tool for anyone needing to import DBF files into SQL Server or to export SQL Server tables to a DBF file. This proje...Domain as XML - Driven Development: Visual Studio Code Samples: Domain as XML - Driven Development: Visual Studio Code SamplesEasyDownload: This application allows to manage downloads handling an stack of files and several useful configurationsEos2: .FlightTickets: This application allows to buy flight ticketsFotofly PhotoViewer: A Silverlight control that uses the Fotofly metadata library to show the people in a photo (using Windows Live Photo Gallery People metadata) and a...Fujiy source code: Source code examplesGameSet: This application allows to play games with distributed users.Injectivity (Dependency Injection): Injectivity is a dependency injection framework (written in C#) with a strong focus on the ease of configuration and performance. Having been writt...Inventory: Keep track of inputs, materias and salesLoanTin.Com Source Code: LoanTin.Com - a Social Networking Website as same as Tumblr.com, based on source code of Loantiner Project, allow anyone can share anything to anyo...mysln: my solutions.NumTextBox: TextBox控件重写 之NumTextBox，主要实现的功能是，只允许输入数字，或String,Numeric,Currency,Decimal,Float,Double,Short,Int,Long 修改自：http://www.codeproject.com/KB/edit/num...Quick Performance Monitor: This small utility helps to monitor performance counters without using the full blown perfmon tool from Windows. It supports a number of command li...Runo: Runo ResearchSales: This application allows to manage a hardware storeScrewWiki Form Auth Provider: Enables your ASP.NET site to use Forms Authentication to integrate with your ScrewWiki. User management is performed on a parent site, and cookie i...SDS: Scientific DataSet library and tools: The SDS library makes it easy for .Net developers to read, write and share scalars, vectors, matrices and multidimensional grids which are very com...ShapeSweeper: Minesweeper-like game for the Zune HD. Each hidden object has three properties to discover--location, color, and shape--and all three must be corre...SilverlightExcel: an Excel file viewer in Silverlight 4: SilverlightExcel is a Silverlight application allowing you to open and view Excel files and also create graphs.sPWadmin: pwAdmin is an Web Interface based on JSP that uses the PW-Java API to control an PW-Server.Video Player control in Silverlight: A control for playing video in Silverlight 4 with chapters on timeline control. This player will be easily skinnable and customizable. More Featur...XNA Light Pre Pass Renderer: A demo/sample that shows how to write a light pre pass renderer in XNA.Zimms: Collaboration Site for friends, a code depot, and scratch padNew Releases.svn Folders Cleanup Tool: dotSVN Cleanup Tool: dotSVN Cleanup Tool executableAccord: Alpha: Initial build of the Accord framework.AcPrac: AcPrac Ver 0.1: The first version of AcPrac. It is not fully functional, but rather a version to get the bugs out. Please report all bugs.ASP.NET: ASP.NET Browser Definition Files: This download contains: ASP.NET 4 Browser Definition Files -- You can use the new ASP.NET 4 browser definition files with earlier versions of ASP....B&W Port Scanner: Black`n`White Port Scanner 1.0: B&W Port Scanner 1.0 Final Release Date: 03.03.2010 Black`n`WhiteBizTalk SWAT - Simple Web Activity Tracker: BizTalk SWAT: This is a web based version of BizTalk HAT. The concept is designed to be able to share and enable sharing of orchestration info easily. It uses th...BTP Tools: CSB+CUV+HCSB dict files 2010-03-04: 5. is now missing a space between the Strong’s number and the Count: >CSB Translation: 圣所 7, 至圣所G39+G394 it should be: CSB Translation: 圣所 7, 至圣所G...C# Linear Hash Table: Linear Hash Table: First working version of the Linear Hash Table.Cassiopeia: WinTools 1.0 beta: First ReleaseComposure: Caliburn-44007-trunk-vs2010.net40: This is a very simple conversion of the Caliburn trunk (rev 44007) for use in Visual Studio 2010 RC1 built against .NET40. Because the conversion w...Cover Creator: CoverCreator 1.3.0: English and Polish version. Functionality to add image to the front page. Load / save covers.DBF Import Export Wizard: DBF Import Export Wizard Source Code: Version 0.1.0.3DBF Import Export Wizard: DBF_Import_Export_Wizard Setup 0.1.0.3: Zip file contains Setup.exeESB Toolkit Extensions: Tellago BizTalk ESB 2.0 Toolkit Extensions v0.2: Windows Installer file that installs Library on a BizTalk ESB 2.0 system. This Install automatically configures the esb.config to use the new compo...Fotofly PhotoViewer: Fotofly Photoview v0.1: The first public release. Based on a Silverlight application I have been using for over a year at www.tassography.com. This version uses Fotofly v0...HPC with GPUs applied to CG: Cuda Soft Bodies simulation: Cuda src for soft bodiesHPC with GPUs applied to CG: Full Soft Bodies src: full src code for soft bodies simulationInjectivity (Dependency Injection): 2.8.166.2135: Release 2.8.166.2135 of the Injectivity dependency injection framework.Line Counter: 1.5 (Code Outline Preview): This version contains preview of the code outline feature, you can now view C# code outline within Line Counter. Note that the code outline now onl...Micajah Mindtouch Deki Wiki Copier: MicajahWikiCopier: You should use the following line arguments: WikiCopier.exe "http://oldwikiwithdata.wik.is/@api/deki" "login" "password" "http://newwiki.somename.l...ncontrols: Alpha 0.4.0.1: Added some example on the Console Project.NumTextBox: NumTextBox初始版本: TextBox控件重写 之NumTextBox，主要实现的功能是，只允许输入数字，或String,Numeric,Currency,Decimal,Float,Double,Short,Int,Long 此为初始版本PSCodeplex: PS CodePlex 0.2: PS CodePlex 0.2 has some breaking changes to the parameters. A few of the parameters are renamed and a few are made as switch parameters. Add-Rele...Quick Performance Monitor: QPerfMon First release - Version 1.0.0: The first release of the utility.RapidWebDev - .NET Enterprise Software Development Infrastructure: ProductManagement Quick Sample 0.2: This is a sample product management application to demonstrate how to develop enterprise software in RapidWebDev. The glossary of the system are ro...ScrewWiki Form Auth Provider: ScrewWiki Forms Authentication: Initial ReleaseSee.Sharper: See.Sharper.Docs-1.10.3.4: HTML documentation (including Doxygen project)See.Sharper: See.Sharper-1.10.3.4: Solution (Source files, debug and release binaries)Solar.Generic: Solar.Generic 0.8.0.0 Beta (Revised, Renamed): Solar.Generic 0.8.0.0 (Revised & Renamed) Renamed project from Solar.Commons to Solar.Generic. Project solution file is now in format of Visual ...Solar.Security: Solar.Security 1.1.0.0: Performed several major refactorings of code base. Stripped In-Memory implementation of IConfiguration interface of transactional behavior due to...sPWadmin: pwAdmin v0.7: -Star System Simulator: Star System Simulator 2.3: Changes in this release: Fixed several localisation issues. Features in this release: Model star systems in 3D. Euler-Cromer method. Improved...SysI: sysi, stable and ready: This time for sure.TheWhiteAmbit: TheWhiteAmbit - Demo: Two little demos demonstrating: - fast realtime raytracing - generating bent normals for shading (CUDA capable GPU needed = nVidia GeForce >8x00)VsTortoise - a TortoiseSVN add-in for Microsoft Visual Studio: VsTortoise Build 22 Beta: Build 22 (beta) New: Visual Studio 2010 RC support (VsTortoise for Visual Studio 2010 RC screenshots) New: VsTortoise integrates in to Solution E...WinMergeFS: WinMergeFS 0.1.42128alpha: WinMergeFS provides AuFS functionality for windows. With WinMergeFS users can mount multiple directories into a virtual drive. Plugin based root se...WSDLGenerator: WSDLGenerator 0.0.0.2: - Bugs fixed - Code refactored - Added support for custom typesXNA Light Pre Pass Renderer: LightPrePassRendererXNA: Zipped source code for the light pre pass renderer made with XNA.Most Popular ProjectsMetaSharpRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)LiveUpload to FacebookASP.NETMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesMost Active ProjectsUmbraco CMSRawrBlogEngine.NETSDS: Scientific DataSet library and toolsMapWindow GISpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesIonics Isapi Rewrite FilterMDT Web FrontEndDiffPlex - a .NET Diff Generator

  Read the article

• Craftsmanship is ALL that Matters

  - by Wayne Molina

  Today, I'm going to talk about a touchy subject: the notion of working in a company that doesn't use the prescribed "best practices" in its software development endeavours.  Over the years I have, using a variety of pseudonyms, asked this question on popular programming forums.  Although I always add in some minor variation of the story to avoid suspicion that it's the same person posting, the crux of the tale remains the same: A Programmer’s Tale A junior software developer has just started a new job at an average company, creating average line-of-business applications for internal use (the most typical scenario programmers find themselves in).  This hypothetical newbie has spent a lot of time reading up on the "theory" of software development, devouring books, blogs and screencasts from well-known and respected software developers in the community in order to broaden his knowledge and "do what the pros do".  He begins his new job, eager to apply what he's learned on a real-world project only to discover that his new teammates doesn't use any of those concepts and techniques.  They hack their way through development, or in a best-case scenario use some homebrew, thrown-together semblance of a framework for their applications that follows not one of the best practices suggested by the “elite” in the software community - things like TDD (TDD as a "best practice" is the only subjective part of this post, but it's included here due to a very large following of respected developers who consider it one), the SOLID principles, well-known and venerable tools, even version control in a worst case and truly nightmarish scenario.  Our protagonist is frustrated that he isn't doing things the "proper" way - a way he's spent personal time digesting and learning about and, more importantly, a way that some of the top developers in the industry advocate - and turns to a forum to ask the advice of his peers. Invariably the answer I, in the guise of the concerned newbie, will receive is that A) I don't know anything and should just shut my mouth and sling code the bad way like everybody else on the team, and B) These "best practices" are fade or a joke, and the only thing that matters is shipping software to your customers. I am here today to say that anyone who says this, or anything like it, is not only full of crap but indicative of exactly the type of “developer” that has helped to give our industry a bad name.  Here is why: One Who Knows Nothing, Understands Nothing On one hand, you have the cognoscenti of the .NET development world.  Guys like James Avery, Jeremy Miller, Ayende Rahien and Rob Conery; all well-respected and noted programmers that are pretty much our version of celebrities.  These guys write blogs, books, and post videos outlining the "correct" way of writing software to make sure it not only works but is maintainable and extensible and a joy to work with.  They tout the virtues of the SOLID principles, or of using TDD/BDD, or using a mature ORM like NHibernate, Subsonic or even Entity Framework. On the other hand, you have Joe Everyman, Lead Software Developer at Initrode Corporation - in our hypothetical story Joe is the junior developer's new boss.  Joe's been with Initrode for 10 years, starting as the company’s very first programmer and over the years building up a little fiefdom of his own until at the present he’s in charge of all Initrode’s software development.  Joe writes code the same way he always has, without bothering to learn much, if anything.  He looked at NHibernate once and found it was "too hard", so he uses a primitive implementation of the TableDataGateway pattern as a wrapper around SqlClient.SqlConnection and SqlClient.SqlCommand instead of an actual ORM (or, in a better case scenario, has created his own ORM); the thought of using LINQ or Entity Framework or really anything other than his own hastily homebrew solution has never occurred to him.  He doesn't understand TDD and considers “testing” to be using the .NET debugger to step through code, or simply loading up an app and entering some values to see if it works.  He doesn't really understand SOLID, and he doesn't care to.  He's worked as a programmer for years, and that's all that counts.  Right?  WRONG. Who would you rather trust?  Someone with years of experience and who writes books, creates well-known software and is akin to a celebrity, or someone with no credibility outside their own minute environment who throws around their clout and company seniority as the "proof" of their ability?  Joe Everyman may have years of experience at Initrode as a programmer, and says to do things "his way" but someone like Jeremy Miller or Ayende Rahien have years of experience at companies just like Initrode, THEY know ten times more than Joe Everyman knows or could ever hope to know, and THEY say to do things "this way". Here's another way of thinking about it: If you wanted to get into politics and needed advice on the best way to do it, would you rather listen to the mayor of Hicktown, USA or Barack Obama?  One is a small-time nobody while the other is very well-known and, as such, would probably have much more accurate and beneficial advice. NOTE: The selection of Barack Obama as an example in no way, shape, or form suggests a political affiliation or political bent to this post or blog, and no political innuendo should be mistakenly read from it; the intent was merely to compare a small-time persona with a well-known persona in a non-software field.  Feel free to replace the name "Barack Obama" with any well-known Congressman, Senator or US President of your choice. DIY Considered Harmful I will say right now that the homebrew development environment is the WORST one for an aspiring programmer, because it relies on nothing outside it's own little box - no useful skill outside of the small pond.  If you are forced to use some half-baked, homebrew ORM created by your Director of Software, you are not learning anything valuable you can take with you in the future; now, if you plan to stay at Initrode for 10 years like Joe Everyman, this is fine and dandy.  However if, like most of us, you want to advance your career outside a very narrow space you will do more harm than good by sticking it out in an environment where you, to be frank, know better than everybody else because you are aware of alternative and, in almost most cases, better tools for the job.  A junior developer who understands why the SOLID principles are good to follow, or why TDD is beneficial, or who knows that it's better to use NHibernate/Subsonic/EF/LINQ/well-known ORM versus some in-house one knows better than a senior developer with 20 years experience who doesn't understand any of that, plain and simple.  Anyone who disagrees is either a liar, or someone who, just like Joe Everyman, Lead Developer, relies on seniority and tenure rather than adapting their knowledge as things evolve. In many cases, the Joe Everymans of the world act this way out of fear - they cannot possibly fathom that a “junior” could know more than them; after all, they’ve spent 10 or more years in the same company, doing the same job, cranking out the same shoddy software.  And here comes a newbie who hasn’t spent 10+ years doing the same things, with a fresh and often radical take on the craft, and Joe Everyman is afraid he might have to put some real effort into his career again instead of just pointing to his 10 years of service at Initrode as “proof” that he’s good, or that he might have to learn something new to improve; in most cases the problem is Joe Everyman, and by extension Initrode itself, has a mentality of just being “good enough”, and mediocrity is the rule of the day. A Thorn Bush is No Place for a Phoenix My advice is that if you work on a team where they don't use the best practices that some of the most famous developers in our field say is the "right" way to do things (and have legions of people who agree), and YOU are aware of these practices and can see why they work, then LEAVE the company.  Find a company where they DO care about quality, and craftsmanship, otherwise you will never be happy.  There is no point in "dumbing" yourself down to the level of your co-workers and slinging code without care to craftsmanship.  In 95% of these situations there will be no point in bringing it to the attention of Joe Everyman because he won't listen; he might even get upset that someone is trying to "upstage" him and fire the newbie, and replace someone with loads of untapped potential with a drone that will just nod affirmatively and grind out the tasks assigned without question. Find a company that has people smart enough to listen to the "best and brightest", and be happy.  Do not, I repeat, DO NOT waste away in a job working for ignorant people.  At the end of the day software development IS a craft, and a level of craftsmanship is REQUIRED for any serious professional.  When you have knowledgeable people with the credibility to back it up saying one thing, and small-time people who are, to put it bluntly, nobodies in the field saying and doing something totally different because they can't comprehend it, leave the nobodies to their own devices to fade into obscurity.  Work for a company that uses REAL software engineering techniques and really cares about craftsmanship.  The biggest issue affecting our career, and the reason software development has never been the respected, white-collar career it was meant to be, is because hacks and charlatans can pass themselves off as professional programmers without following a lick of good advice from programmers much better at the craft than they are.  These modern day snake-oil salesmen entrench themselves in companies by hoodwinking non-technical businesspeople and customers with their shoddy wares, end up in senior/lead/executive positions, and push their lack of knowledge on everybody unfortunate enough to work with/for/under them, crushing any dissent or voices of reason and change under their tyrannical heel and leaving behind a trail of dismayed and, often, unemployed junior developers who were made examples of to keep up the facade and avoid the shadow of doubt being cast upon them. To sum this up another way: If you surround yourself with learned people, you will learn.  Surround yourself with ignorant people who can't, as the saying goes, see the forest through the trees, and you'll learn nothing of any real value.  There is more to software development than just writing code, and the end goal should not be just "shipping software", it should be shipping software that is extensible, maintainable, and above all else software whose creation has broadened your knowledge in some capacity, even if a minor one.  An eager newbie who knows theory and thirsts for knowledge can easily be moulded and taught the advanced topics, but the same can't be said of someone who only cares about the finish line.  This industry needs more people espousing the benefits of software craftsmanship and proper software engineering techniques, and less Joe Everymans who are unwilling to adapt or foster new ways of thinking. Conclusion - I Cast “Protection from Fire” I am fairly certain this post will spark some controversy and might even invite the flames.  Please keep in mind these are opinions and nothing more.  A little healthy rant and subsequent flamewar can be good for the soul once in a while.  To paraphrase The Godfather: It helps to get rid of the bad blood.

  Read the article

• Software development is (mostly) a trade, and what to do about it

  - by Jeff

  (This is another cross-post from my personal blog. I don’t even remember when I first started to write it, but I feel like my opinion is well enough baked to share.) I've been sitting on this for a long time, particularly as my opinion has changed dramatically over the last few years. That I've encountered more crappy code than maintainable, quality code in my career as a software developer only reinforces what I'm about to say. Software development is just a trade for most, and not a huge academic endeavor. For those of you with computer science degrees readying your pitchforks and collecting your algorithm interview questions, let me explain. This is not an assault on your way of life, and if you've been around, you know I'm right about the quality problem. You also know the HR problem is very real, or we wouldn't be paying top dollar for mediocre developers and importing people from all over the world to fill the jobs we can't fill. I'm going to try and outline what I see as some of the problems, and hopefully offer my views on how to address them. The recruiting problem I think a lot of companies are doing it wrong. Over the years, I've had two kinds of interview experiences. The first, and right, kind of experience involves talking about real life achievements, followed by some variation on white boarding in pseudo-code, drafting some basic system architecture, or even sitting down at a comprooder and pecking out some basic code to tackle a real problem. I can honestly say that I've had a job offer for every interview like this, save for one, because the task was to debug something and they didn't like me asking where to look ("everyone else in the company died in a plane crash"). The other interview experience, the wrong one, involves the classic torture test designed to make the candidate feel stupid and do things they never have, and never will do in their job. First they will question you about obscure academic material you've never seen, or don't care to remember. Then they'll ask you to white board some ridiculous algorithm involving prime numbers or some kind of string manipulation no one would ever do. In fact, if you had to do something like this, you'd Google for a solution instead of waste time on a solved problem. Some will tell you that the academic gauntlet interview is useful to see how people respond to pressure, how they engage in complex logic, etc. That might be true, unless of course you have someone who brushed up on the solutions to the silly puzzles, and they're playing you. But here's the real reason why the second experience is wrong: You're evaluating for things that aren't the job. These might have been useful tactics when you had to hire people to write machine language or C++, but in a world dominated by managed code in C#, or Java, people aren't managing memory or trying to be smarter than the compilers. They're using well known design patterns and techniques to deliver software. More to the point, these puzzle gauntlets don't evaluate things that really matter. They don't get into code design, issues of loose coupling and testability, knowledge of the basics around HTTP, or anything else that relates to building supportable and maintainable software. The first situation, involving real life problems, gives you an immediate idea of how the candidate will work out. One of my favorite experiences as an interviewee was with a guy who literally brought his work from that day and asked me how to deal with his problem. I had to demonstrate how I would design a class, make sure the unit testing coverage was solid, etc. I worked at that company for two years. So stop looking for algorithm puzzle crunchers, because a guy who can crush a Fibonacci sequence might also be a guy who writes a class with 5,000 lines of untestable code. Fashion your interview process on ways to reveal a developer who can write supportable and maintainable code. I would even go so far as to let them use the Google. If they want to cut-and-paste code, pass on them, but if they're looking for context or straight class references, hire them, because they're going to be life-long learners. The contractor problem I doubt anyone has ever worked in a place where contractors weren't used. The use of contractors seems like an obvious way to control costs. You can hire someone for just as long as you need them and then let them go. You can even give them the work that no one else wants to do. In practice, most places I've worked have retained and budgeted for the contractor year-round, meaning that the $90+ per hour they're paying (of which half goes to the person) would have been better spent on a full-time person with a $100k salary and benefits. But it's not even the cost that is an issue. It's the quality of work delivered. The accountability of a contractor is totally transient. They only need to deliver for as long as you keep them around, and chances are they'll never again touch the code. There's no incentive for them to get things right, there's little incentive to understand your system or learn anything. At the risk of making an unfair generalization, craftsmanship doesn't matter to most contractors. The education problem I don't know what they teach in college CS courses. I've believed for most of my adult life that a college degree was an essential part of being successful. Of course I would hold that bias, since I did it, and have the paper to show for it in a box somewhere in the basement. My first clue that maybe this wasn't a fully qualified opinion comes from the fact that I double-majored in journalism and radio/TV, not computer science. Eventually I worked with people who skipped college entirely, many of them at Microsoft. Then I worked with people who had a masters degree who sucked at writing code, next to the high school diploma types that rock it every day. I still think there's a lot to be said for the social development of someone who has the on-campus experience, but for software developers, college might not matter. As I mentioned before, most of us are not writing compilers, and we never will. It's actually surprising to find how many people are self-taught in the art of software development, and that should reveal some interesting truths about how we learn. The first truth is that we learn largely out of necessity. There's something that we want to achieve, so we do what I call just-in-time learning to meet those goals. We acquire knowledge when we need it. So what about the gaps in our knowledge? That's where the most valuable education occurs, via our mentors. They're the people we work next to and the people who write blogs. They are critical to our professional development. They don't need to be an encyclopedia of jargon, but they understand the craft. Even at this stage of my career, I probably can't tell you what SOLID stands for, but you can bet that I practice the principles behind that acronym every day. That comes from experience, augmented by my peers. I'm hell bent on passing that experience to others. Process issues If you're a manager type and don't do much in the way of writing code these days (shame on you for not messing around at least), then your job is to isolate your tradespeople from nonsense, while bringing your business into the realm of modern software development. That doesn't mean you slap up a white board with sticky notes and start calling yourself agile, it means getting all of your stakeholders to understand that frequent delivery of quality software is the best way to deal with change and evolving expectations. It also means that you have to play technical overlord to make sure the education and quality issues are dealt with. That's why I make the crack about sticky notes, because without the right technique being practiced among your code monkeys, you're just a guy with sticky notes. You're asking your business to accept frequent and iterative delivery, now make sure that the folks writing the code can handle the same thing. This means unit testing, the right instrumentation, integration tests, automated builds and deployments... all of the stuff that makes it easy to see when change breaks stuff. The prognosis I strongly believe that education is the most important part of what we do. I'm encouraged by things like The Starter League, and it's the kind of thing I'd love to see more of. I would go as far as to say I'd love to start something like this internally at an existing company. Most of all though, I can't emphasize enough how important it is that we mentor each other and share our knowledge. If you have people on your staff who don't want to learn, fire them. Seriously, get rid of them. A few months working with someone really good, who understands the craftsmanship required to build supportable and maintainable code, will change that person forever and increase their value immeasurably.

  Read the article

• How to diagnose failing 6Gbps SATA connection?

  - by whitequark

  I have a Samsung RC530 notebook and OCZ Vertex-3 6Gbps SATA SSD working in AHCI mode. # dmesg | grep DMI SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD. RC530/RC730/RC530/RC730, BIOS 03WD.M008.20110927.PSA 09/27/2011 # lspci -nn 00:1f.2 SATA controller [0106]: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family 6 port SATA AHCI Controller [8086:1c03] (rev 04) # sdparm -a /dev/sda /dev/sda: ATA OCZ-VERTEX3 2.15 At the boot, the following messages are present in dmesg (I am running Debian wheezy @ Linux 3.2.8): # dmesg | grep -iE '(ata|ahci)' [ 5.179783] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: version 3.0 [ 5.179802] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: PCI INT B -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19 [ 5.179864] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: irq 42 for MSI/MSI-X [ 5.195424] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: AHCI 0001.0300 32 slots 6 ports 6 Gbps 0x5 impl SATA mode [ 5.195429] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: flags: 64bit ncq sntf pm led clo pio slum part ems apst [ 5.195436] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: setting latency timer to 64 [ 5.204035] scsi0 : ahci [ 5.204301] scsi1 : ahci [ 5.204447] scsi2 : ahci [ 5.204592] scsi3 : ahci [ 5.204682] scsi4 : ahci [ 5.204799] scsi5 : ahci [ 5.204917] ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m2048@0xf7c06000 port 0xf7c06100 irq 42 [ 5.204920] ata2: DUMMY [ 5.204923] ata3: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m2048@0xf7c06000 port 0xf7c06200 irq 42 [ 5.204924] ata4: DUMMY [ 5.204926] ata5: DUMMY [ 5.204927] ata6: DUMMY [ 5.523039] ata3: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300) [ 5.525911] ata3.00: ATAPI: TSSTcorp CDDVDW SN-208BB, SC00, max UDMA/100 [ 5.531006] ata1: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 300) [ 5.533703] ata3.00: configured for UDMA/100 [ 5.542790] ata1.00: ATA-8: OCZ-VERTEX3, 2.15, max UDMA/133 [ 5.542800] ata1.00: 117231408 sectors, multi 16: LBA48 NCQ (depth 31/32), AA [ 5.552751] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 [ 5.553050] scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access ATA OCZ-VERTEX3 2.15 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5 [ 5.559621] scsi 2:0:0:0: CD-ROM TSSTcorp CDDVDW SN-208BB SC00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5 [ 5.564059] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 117231408 512-byte logical blocks: (60.0 GB/55.8 GiB) [ 5.564127] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off [ 5.564131] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00 [ 5.564158] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA [ 5.564582] sda: sda1 [ 5.564810] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI disk [ 5.572006] sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 16x/24x writer dvd-ram cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray [ 5.572010] cdrom: Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20 [ 5.572189] sr 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0 [ 6.717181] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x50 SAct 0x1 SErr 0x280900 action 0x6 frozen [ 6.717238] ata1.00: irq_stat 0x08000000, interface fatal error [ 6.717291] ata1: SError: { UnrecovData HostInt 10B8B BadCRC } [ 6.717342] ata1.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED [ 6.717395] ata1.00: cmd 60/50:00:20:39:58/00:00:00:00:00/40 tag 0 ncq 40960 in [ 6.717396] res 40/00:00:20:39:58/00:00:00:00:00/40 Emask 0x50 (ATA bus error) [ 6.717503] ata1.00: status: { DRDY } [ 6.717553] ata1: hard resetting link [ 7.033417] ata1: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 300) [ 7.055234] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 [ 7.055262] ata1: EH complete [ 7.147280] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0xf8 SErr 0x280100 action 0x6 frozen [ 7.147340] ata1.00: irq_stat 0x08000000, interface fatal error [ 7.147393] ata1: SError: { UnrecovData 10B8B BadCRC } [ 7.147460] ata1.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED [ 7.147529] ata1.00: cmd 60/08:18:88:17:41/00:00:02:00:00/40 tag 3 ncq 4096 in [ 7.147531] res 40/00:38:50:99:64/00:00:02:00:00/40 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error) [ 7.147691] ata1.00: status: { DRDY } [ 7.147754] ata1.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED [ 7.147821] ata1.00: cmd 60/00:20:f8:42:4c/01:00:02:00:00/40 tag 4 ncq 131072 in [ 7.147822] res 40/00:38:50:99:64/00:00:02:00:00/40 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error) [ 7.147977] ata1.00: status: { DRDY } [ 7.148036] ata1.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED [ 7.148100] ata1.00: cmd 60/50:28:f8:43:4c/00:00:02:00:00/40 tag 5 ncq 40960 in [ 7.148101] res 40/00:38:50:99:64/00:00:02:00:00/40 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error) [ 7.148255] ata1.00: status: { DRDY } [ 7.148315] ata1.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED [ 7.148379] ata1.00: cmd 60/00:30:50:98:64/01:00:02:00:00/40 tag 6 ncq 131072 in [ 7.148380] res 40/00:38:50:99:64/00:00:02:00:00/40 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error) [ 7.148534] ata1.00: status: { DRDY } [ 7.148593] ata1.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED [ 7.148657] ata1.00: cmd 60/00:38:50:99:64/01:00:02:00:00/40 tag 7 ncq 131072 in [ 7.148658] res 40/00:38:50:99:64/00:00:02:00:00/40 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error) [ 7.148813] ata1.00: status: { DRDY } [ 7.148875] ata1: hard resetting link [ 7.464842] ata1: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 300) [ 7.486794] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 [ 7.486822] ata1: EH complete [ 7.546395] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x2f SErr 0x280100 action 0x6 frozen [ 7.546470] ata1.00: irq_stat 0x08000000, interface fatal error [ 7.546531] ata1: SError: { UnrecovData 10B8B BadCRC } [ 7.546588] ata1.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED [ 7.546648] ata1.00: cmd 60/00:00:e0:4b:61/01:00:02:00:00/40 tag 0 ncq 131072 in [ 7.546649] res 40/00:28:e0:4c:61/00:00:02:00:00/40 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error) [ 7.546794] ata1.00: status: { DRDY } [ 7.546847] ata1.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED [ 7.546906] ata1.00: cmd 60/00:08:90:2f:48/01:00:02:00:00/40 tag 1 ncq 131072 in [ 7.546907] res 40/00:28:e0:4c:61/00:00:02:00:00/40 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error) [ 7.547053] ata1.00: status: { DRDY } [ 7.547106] ata1.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED [ 7.547165] ata1.00: cmd 60/00:10:90:30:48/01:00:02:00:00/40 tag 2 ncq 131072 in [ 7.547166] res 40/00:28:e0:4c:61/00:00:02:00:00/40 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error) [ 7.547310] ata1.00: status: { DRDY } [ 7.547363] ata1.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED [ 7.547422] ata1.00: cmd 60/00:18:50:c7:64/01:00:02:00:00/40 tag 3 ncq 131072 in [ 7.547423] res 40/00:28:e0:4c:61/00:00:02:00:00/40 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error) [ 7.547568] ata1.00: status: { DRDY } [ 7.547621] ata1.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED [ 7.547681] ata1.00: cmd 60/00:28:e0:4c:61/01:00:02:00:00/40 tag 5 ncq 131072 in [ 7.547682] res 40/00:28:e0:4c:61/00:00:02:00:00/40 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error) [ 7.547825] ata1.00: status: { DRDY } [ 7.547882] ata1: hard resetting link [ 7.864408] ata1: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 300) [ 7.886351] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 [ 7.886375] ata1: EH complete [ 7.890012] ata1: limiting SATA link speed to 3.0 Gbps [ 7.890016] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x7 SErr 0x280100 action 0x6 frozen [ 7.890093] ata1.00: irq_stat 0x08000000, interface fatal error [ 7.890152] ata1: SError: { UnrecovData 10B8B BadCRC } [ 7.890210] ata1.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED [ 7.890272] ata1.00: cmd 60/00:00:90:33:48/01:00:02:00:00/40 tag 0 ncq 131072 in [ 7.890273] res 40/00:10:e0:4f:61/00:00:02:00:00/40 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error) [ 7.890418] ata1.00: status: { DRDY } [ 7.890472] ata1.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED [ 7.890530] ata1.00: cmd 60/00:08:90:34:48/01:00:02:00:00/40 tag 1 ncq 131072 in [ 7.890531] res 40/00:10:e0:4f:61/00:00:02:00:00/40 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error) [ 7.890672] ata1.00: status: { DRDY } [ 7.890724] ata1.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED [ 7.890781] ata1.00: cmd 60/78:10:e0:4f:61/00:00:02:00:00/40 tag 2 ncq 61440 in [ 7.890782] res 40/00:10:e0:4f:61/00:00:02:00:00/40 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error) [ 7.890925] ata1.00: status: { DRDY } [ 7.890981] ata1: hard resetting link [ 8.208021] ata1: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 320) [ 8.230100] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 [ 8.230124] ata1: EH complete Looks like the SATA interface tries to use 6Gbps link, then fails miserably and Linux fallbacks to 3Gbps. This is somewhat fine for me, as the system boots successfully each time and works under high load (cd linux-3.2.8; make -j16). I've also ran memtest86+ and it did not find any errors. What concerns me more is that Grub sometimes takes a long time to load the images and/or fails to load itself completely. The error is consistent and is probablistic: that is, each time I boot I have a certain chance to fail. Actually, I have a slight suspiction on the cause of the failure. Look at the cabling: What kind of engineer does it this way? Nah. Even 1Gbps Ethernet hardly tolerates cables bent over a small angle, and there you have 6Gbps SATA. How cound I determine and fix the cause of errors and/or switch the link to 3Gbps mode permanently?

  Read the article

• Large Object Heap Fragmentation

  - by Paul Ruane

  The C#/.NET application I am working on is suffering from a slow memory leak. I have used CDB with SOS to try to determine what is happening but the data does not seem to make any sense so I was hoping one of you may have experienced this before. The application is running on the 64 bit framework. It is continuously calculating and serialising data to a remote host and is hitting the Large Object Heap (LOH) a fair bit. However, most of the LOH objects I expect to be transient: once the calculation is complete and has been sent to the remote host, the memory should be freed. What I am seeing, however, is a large number of (live) object arrays interleaved with free blocks of memory, e.g., taking a random segment from the LOH: 0:000> !DumpHeap 000000005b5b1000 000000006351da10 Address MT Size ... 000000005d4f92e0 0000064280c7c970 16147872 000000005e45f880 00000000001661d0 1901752 Free 000000005e62fd38 00000642788d8ba8 1056 <-- 000000005e630158 00000000001661d0 5988848 Free 000000005ebe6348 00000642788d8ba8 1056 000000005ebe6768 00000000001661d0 6481336 Free 000000005f214d20 00000642788d8ba8 1056 000000005f215140 00000000001661d0 7346016 Free 000000005f9168a0 00000642788d8ba8 1056 000000005f916cc0 00000000001661d0 7611648 Free 00000000600591c0 00000642788d8ba8 1056 00000000600595e0 00000000001661d0 264808 Free ... Obviously I would expect this to be the case if my application were creating long-lived, large objects during each calculation. (It does do this and I accept there will be a degree of LOH fragmentation but that is not the problem here.) The problem is the very small (1056 byte) object arrays you can see in the above dump which I cannot see in code being created and which are remaining rooted somehow. Also note that CDB is not reporting the type when the heap segment is dumped: I am not sure if this is related or not. If I dump the marked (<--) object, CDB/SOS reports it fine: 0:015> !DumpObj 000000005e62fd38 Name: System.Object[] MethodTable: 00000642788d8ba8 EEClass: 00000642789d7660 Size: 1056(0x420) bytes Array: Rank 1, Number of elements 128, Type CLASS Element Type: System.Object Fields: None The elements of the object array are all strings and the strings are recognisable as from our application code. Also, I am unable to find their GC roots as the !GCRoot command hangs and never comes back (I have even tried leaving it overnight). So, I would very much appreciate it if anyone could shed any light as to why these small (<85k) object arrays are ending up on the LOH: what situations will .NET put a small object array in there? Also, does anyone happen to know of an alternative way of ascertaining the roots of these objects? Thanks in advance. Update 1 Another theory I came up with late yesterday is that these object arrays started out large but have been shrunk leaving the blocks of free memory that are evident in the memory dumps. What makes me suspicious is that the object arrays always appear to be 1056 bytes long (128 elements), 128 * 8 for the references and 32 bytes of overhead. The idea is that perhaps some unsafe code in a library or in the CLR is corrupting the number of elements field in the array header. Bit of a long shot I know... Update 2 Thanks to Brian Rasmussen (see accepted answer) the problem has been identified as fragmentation of the LOH caused by the string intern table! I wrote a quick test application to confirm this: static void Main() { const int ITERATIONS = 100000; for (int index = 0; index < ITERATIONS; ++index) { string str = "NonInterned" + index; Console.Out.WriteLine(str); } Console.Out.WriteLine("Continue."); Console.In.ReadLine(); for (int index = 0; index < ITERATIONS; ++index) { string str = string.Intern("Interned" + index); Console.Out.WriteLine(str); } Console.Out.WriteLine("Continue?"); Console.In.ReadLine(); } The application first creates and dereferences unique strings in a loop. This is just to prove that the memory does not leak in this scenario. Obviously it should not and it does not. In the second loop, unique strings are created and interned. This action roots them in the intern table. What I did not realise is how the intern table is represented. It appears it consists of a set of pages -- object arrays of 128 string elements -- that are created in the LOH. This is more evident in CDB/SOS: 0:000> .loadby sos mscorwks 0:000> !EEHeap -gc Number of GC Heaps: 1 generation 0 starts at 0x00f7a9b0 generation 1 starts at 0x00e79c3c generation 2 starts at 0x00b21000 ephemeral segment allocation context: none segment begin allocated size 00b20000 00b21000 010029bc 0x004e19bc(5118396) Large object heap starts at 0x01b21000 segment begin allocated size 01b20000 01b21000 01b8ade0 0x00069de0(433632) Total Size 0x54b79c(5552028) ------------------------------ GC Heap Size 0x54b79c(5552028) Taking a dump of the LOH segment reveals the pattern I saw in the leaking application: 0:000> !DumpHeap 01b21000 01b8ade0 ... 01b8a120 793040bc 528 01b8a330 00175e88 16 Free 01b8a340 793040bc 528 01b8a550 00175e88 16 Free 01b8a560 793040bc 528 01b8a770 00175e88 16 Free 01b8a780 793040bc 528 01b8a990 00175e88 16 Free 01b8a9a0 793040bc 528 01b8abb0 00175e88 16 Free 01b8abc0 793040bc 528 01b8add0 00175e88 16 Free total 1568 objects Statistics: MT Count TotalSize Class Name 00175e88 784 12544 Free 793040bc 784 421088 System.Object[] Total 1568 objects Note that the object array size is 528 (rather than 1056) because my workstation is 32 bit and the application server is 64 bit. The object arrays are still 128 elements long. So the moral to this story is to be very careful interning. If the string you are interning is not known to be a member of a finite set then your application will leak due to fragmentation of the LOH, at least in version 2 of the CLR. In our application's case, there is general code in the deserialisation code path that interns entity identifiers during unmarshalling: I now strongly suspect this is the culprit. However, the developer's intentions were obviously good as they wanted to make sure that if the same entity is deserialised multiple times then only one instance of the identifier string will be maintained in memory.

  Read the article

• E-Business Suite Technology Sessions at OpenWorld 2012

  - by Max Arderius

  Oracle OpenWorld 2012 is almost here! We're looking forward to updating you on our products, strategy, and roadmaps. This year, the E-Business Suite Applications Technology Group (ATG) will participate in 25 speaker sessions, two Meet the Experts round-table discussions, five demoground booths and seven Special Interest Group meetings as guest speakers. We hope to see you at our sessions.  Please join us to hear the latest news and connect with senior ATG development staff. Here's a downloadable listing of all Applications Technology Group-related sessions with times and locations: FOCUS ON Oracle E-Business Suite - Applications Tools and Technology (PDF) General Sessions GEN8474 - Oracle E-Business Suite - Strategy, Update, and RoadmapCliff Godwin, SVP, Oracle Monday, Oct 1, 12:15 PM - 1:15 PM - Moscone West 2002/2004 In this session, hear Oracle E-Business Suite General Manager Cliff Godwin deliver an update on the Oracle E-Business Suite product line. This session covers the value delivered by the current release of Oracle E-Business Suite, the momentum, and how Oracle E-Business Suite applications integrate into Oracle’s overall applications strategy. You’ll come away with an understanding of the value Oracle E-Business Suite applications deliver now and will deliver in the future. GEN9173 - Optimize and Extend Oracle Applications - The Path to Oracle Fusion ApplicationsNadia Bendjedou, Oracle; Corre Curtice, Bhavish Madurai (CSC) Tuesday, Oct 2, 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM - Moscone West 3002/3004 One of the main objectives of this session is to help organizations build their IT roadmap for the next five years and be aligned with the Oracle Applications strategy in general and the Oracle Fusion Applications strategy in particular. Come hear about some of the common sense, practical steps you can take to optimize the performance of your Oracle Applications today and prepare your path to Oracle Fusion Applications for when your organization is ready to embrace them. Each step you take in adopting Oracle Fusion technology gets you partway to Oracle Fusion Applications. Conference Sessions CON9024 - Oracle E-Business Suite Technology: Latest Features and Roadmap Lisa Parekh, Oracle Monday, Oct 1, 10:45 AM - 11:45 AM - Moscone West 2016 This Oracle development session provides a comprehensive overview of Oracle’s product strategy for Oracle E-Business Suite technology, the capabilities and associated business benefits of recent releases, and a review of capabilities on the product roadmap. This is the cornerstone session for the Oracle E-Business Suite technology stack. Come hear about the latest new usability enhancements of the user interface; systems administration and configuration management tools; security-related updates; and tools and options for extending, customizing, and integrating Oracle E-Business Suite with other applications. CON9021 - Oracle E-Business Suite Future Directions: Deployment and System AdministrationMax Arderius, Oracle Monday, Oct 1, 3:15 PM - 4:15 PM - Moscone West 2016  What’s coming in the next major version of Oracle E-Business Suite 12? This Oracle Development session covers the latest technology stack, including the use of Oracle WebLogic Server (Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g) and Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2). Topics include an architectural overview of the latest updates, installation and upgrade options, new configuration options, and new tools for hot cloning and automated “lights-out” cloning. Come learn how online patching (based on the Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Edition-Based Redefinition feature) will reduce your database patching downtimes to however long it takes to bounce your database server. CON9017 - Desktop Integration in Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 Padmaprabodh Ambale, Gustavo Jimenez, Oracle Monday, Oct 1, 4:45 PM - 5:45 PM - Moscone West 2016 This presentation covers the latest functional enhancements in Oracle Web Applications Desktop Integrator and Oracle Report Manager, enhanced Microsoft Office support, and greater support for building custom desktop integration solutions. The session also presents tips and tricks for upgrading from Oracle Applications Desktop Integrator to Oracle Web Applications Desktop Integrator and Oracle Report Manager. CON9023 - Oracle E-Business Suite Technology Certification Primer and Roadmap Steven Chan, Oracle Tuesday, Oct 2, 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM - Moscone West 2016  Is your Oracle E-Business Suite technology stack up to date? Are you taking advantage of all the latest options and capabilities? This Oracle development session summarizes the latest certifications and roadmap for the Oracle E-Business Suite technology stack, including elements such as database releases and options, Java, Oracle Forms, Oracle Containers for J2EE, desktop operating systems, browsers, JRE releases, development and Web authoring tools, user authentication and management, business intelligence, Oracle Application Management Packs, security options, clouds, Oracle VM, and virtualization. The session also covers the most commonly asked questions about tech stack component support dates and upgrade implications. CON9028 - Minimizing Oracle E-Business Suite Maintenance DowntimesSantiago Bastidas, Elke Phelps, Oracle Tuesday, Oct 2, 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM - Moscone West 2016 This Oracle development session features a survey of the best techniques sysadmins can use to minimize patching downtimes. It starts with an architectural-level review of Oracle E-Business Suite fundamentals and then moves to a practical view of the various tools and approaches for downtimes. Topics include patching shortcuts, merging patches, distributing worker processes across multiple servers, running ADPatch in noninteractive mode, staged APPL_TOPs, shared file systems, deferring systemwide database tasks, avoiding resource bottlenecks, and more. An added bonus: hear about the upcoming Oracle E-Business Suite 12 online patching capabilities based on the groundbreaking Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Edition-Based Redefinition feature. CON9116 - Extending the Use of Oracle E-Business Suite with the Oracle Endeca PlatformOsama Elkady, Muhannad Obeidat, Oracle Tuesday, Oct 2, 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM - Moscone West 2018 The Oracle Endeca platform includes a leading unstructured data correlation and analytics engine, together with a best-in class catalog search and guided navigation solution, to improve the productivity of all types of users in your enterprise. This development session focuses on the details behind the Oracle Endeca platform’s integration into Oracle E-Business Suite. It demonstrates how easily you can extend the use of the Oracle Endeca platform into other areas of Oracle E-Business Suite and how you can bring in your own data and build new Oracle Endeca applications for Oracle E-Business Suite. CON9005 - Oracle E-Business Suite Integration Best PracticesVeshaal Singh, Oracle, Jeffrey Hand, Zebra Technologies Tuesday, Oct 2, 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM - Moscone West 2018 Oracle is investing across applications and technologies to make the application integration experience easier for customers. Today Oracle has certified Oracle E-Business Suite on Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g and provides a comprehensive set of integration technologies. Learn about Oracle’s integration offering across data- and process-centric integrations. These technologies can be used to address various application integration challenges and styles. In this session, you will get an understanding of how, when, and where you can leverage Oracle’s integration technologies to connect end-to-end business processes across your enterprise, including your Oracle Applications portfolio.  CON9026 - Latest Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 User Interface and Usability EnhancementsPadmaprabodh Ambale, Oracle Tuesday, Oct 2, 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM - Moscone West 2016 This Oracle development session details the latest UI enhancements to Oracle Application Framework in Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1. Developers will get a detailed look at new features to enhance usability, offer more capabilities for personalization and extensions, and support the development and use of dashboards and Web services. Topics include new rich UI capabilities such as new home page features, Navigator and Favorites pull-down menus, REST interface, embedded widgets for analytics content, Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF) task flows, third-party widgets, a look-ahead list of values, inline attachments, pop-ups, personalization and extensibility enhancements, business layer extensions, Oracle ADF integration, and mobile devices. CON8805 - Planning Your Oracle E-Business Suite Upgrade from 11i to Release 12.1 and BeyondAnne Carlson, Oracle Tuesday, Oct 2, 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM - Moscone West 3002/3004 Attend this session to hear the latest Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 upgrade planning tips from Oracle’s support, consulting, development, and IT organizations. You’ll get specific cross-product advice on how to understand the factors that affect your project’s duration, decide on your project’s scope, develop a robust testing strategy, leverage Oracle Support resources, and more. In a nutshell, this session tells you things you need to know before embarking upon your Release 12.1 upgrade project. CON9053 - Advanced Management of Oracle E-Business Suite with Oracle Enterprise ManagerAngelo Rosado, Oracle Tuesday, Oct 2, 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM - Moscone West 2016 The task of managing and monitoring Oracle E-Business Suite environments can be very challenging. Oracle Enterprise Manager is the only product on the market that is designed to monitor and manage all the different technologies that constitute Oracle E-Business Suite applications, including end user, midtier, configuration, host, and database management—to name just a few. Customers that have implemented Oracle Enterprise Manager have experienced dramatic improvements in system visibility and diagnostic capability as well as administrator productivity. The purpose of this session is to highlight the key features and benefits of Oracle Enterprise Manager and Oracle Application Management Suite for Oracle E-Business Suite. CON8809 - Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 Upgrade Best Practices: Technical InsightIsam Alyousfi, Udayan Parvate, Oracle Wednesday, Oct 3, 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM - Moscone West 3011 This session is ideal for organizations thinking about upgrading to Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1. It covers the fundamentals of upgrading to Release 12.1, including the technology stack components and supported upgrade paths. Hear from Oracle Development about the set of best practices for patching in general and executing the Release 12.1 technical upgrade, with special considerations for minimizing your downtime. Also get to know about relatively recent upgrade resources. CON9032 - Upgrading Your Customizations of Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1Sara Woodhull, Oracle Wednesday, Oct 3, 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM - Moscone West 2016 Have you personalized Oracle Forms or Oracle Application Framework screens in Oracle E-Business Suite? Have you used mod_plsql in Release 11i? Have you extended or customized your Release 11i environment with other tools? The technical options for upgrading these customizations as part of your Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 upgrade can be bewildering. Come to this Oracle development session to learn about selecting the best upgrade approach for your existing customizations. The session will help you understand customization scenarios and use cases, tools, and technologies to ensure that your Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 environment fits your users’ needs closely and that any future customizations will be easy to upgrade. CON9259 - Oracle E-Business Suite Internationalization and Multilingual FeaturesMaher Al-Nubani, Oracle Wednesday, Oct 3, 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM - Moscone West 2018 Oracle E-Business Suite supports more countries, languages, and regions than ever. Come to this Oracle development session to get an overview of internationalization features and capabilities and see new Release 12 features such as calendar support for Hijra and Thai, new group separators, lightweight multilingual support (MLS) setup, new character sets such as AL32UTF, newly supported languages, Mac certifications, Oracle iSetup support for moving MLS setups, new file export options for Unicode, new MLS number spelling options, and more. CON7188 - Mobile Apps for Oracle E-Business Suite with Oracle ADF Mobile and Oracle SOA SuiteSrikant Subramaniam, Joe Huang, Veshaal Singh, Oracle Wednesday, Oct 3, 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM - Moscone West 3001 Follow your mobile customers, employees, and partners with Oracle Fusion Middleware. See how native iPhone and iPad applications can easily be built for Oracle E-Business Suite with the new Oracle ADF Mobile and Oracle SOA Suite. Using Oracle ADF Mobile, developers can quickly develop native applications for Apple iOS and other mobile platforms. The Oracle SOA Suite/Oracle ADF Mobile combination can execute business transactions on Oracle E-Business Suite. This session includes a demo in which a mobile user approves a business transaction in Oracle E-Business Suite and a demo of the tools used to build a native on-device solution. These concepts for mobile applications also apply to other Oracle applications.CON9029 - Oracle E-Business Suite Directions: Slashing Downtimes with Online PatchingKevin Hudson, Oracle Wednesday, Oct 3, 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM - Moscone West 2016 Oracle E-Business Suite will soon include online patching (based on the Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Edition-Based Redefinition feature), which will reduce your database patching downtimes to however long it takes to bounce your database server. This Oracle development session details how online patching works, with special attention to what’s happening at a database object level when database patches are applied to an Oracle E-Business Suite environment that’s still running. Come learn about the operational and system management implications for minimizing maintenance downtimes when applying database patches with this new technology and the related impact on customizations you might have built on top of Oracle E-Business Suite. CON8806 - Upgrading to Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1: Technical and Functional PanelAndrew Katz, Komori America Corporation; Sandra Vucinic, VLAD Group, Inc. ;Srini Chavali, Cummins Inc.; Amrita Mehrok, Nadia Bendjedou, Anne Carlson Oracle Wednesday, Oct 3, 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM - Moscone West 2018 In this panel discussion, Oracle experts, customers, and partners share their experiences in upgrading to the latest release of Oracle E-Business Suite, Release 12.1. The panelists cover aspects of a typical Release 12 upgrade, technical (upgrading the technical infrastructure) as well as functional (upgrading to the new financial infrastructure). Hear directly from the experts who either develop the product or support, implement, or upgrade it, and find out how to apply their lessons learned to your organization. CON9027 - Personalize and Extend Oracle E-Business Suite Applications with Rich MashupsGustavo Jimenez, Padmaprabodh Ambale, Oracle Wednesday, Oct 3, 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM - Moscone West 2016 This session covers the use of several Oracle Fusion Middleware technologies to personalize and extend your existing Oracle E-Business Suite applications. The Oracle Fusion Middleware technologies covered include Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF), Oracle WebCenter, Oracle Endeca applications, and Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition with Oracle E-Business Suite Oracle Application Framework applications. CON9036 - Advanced Oracle E-Business Suite Architectures: Maximum Availability, Security, and MoreElke Phelps, Oracle Wednesday, Oct 3, 3:30 PM - 4:30 PM - Moscone West 2016 This session includes architecture diagrams and configuration instructions for building a maximum availability architecture (MAA) that will help you design a disaster recovery solution that fits the needs of your business. Database and application high-availability features it describes include Oracle Data Guard, Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC), Oracle Active Data Guard, load-balancing Web and forms services, parallel concurrent processing, and the use of Oracle Exalogic and Oracle Exadata to provide a highly available environment. The session also covers the latest updates to systems management tools, AutoConfig, cloud computing, virtualization, and Oracle WebLogic Server and provides sneak previews of upcoming functionality. CON9047 - Efficiently Scaling Oracle E-Business Suite on Oracle Exadata and Oracle ExalogicIsam Alyousfi, Nishit Rao, Oracle Wednesday, Oct 3, 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM - Moscone West 2016 Oracle Exadata and Oracle Exalogic are designed from the ground up with optimizations in software and hardware to deliver superfast performance for mission-critical applications such as Oracle E-Business Suite. Oracle E-Business Suite applications run three to eight times as fast on the Oracle Exadata/Oracle Exalogic platform in standard benchmark tests. Besides performance, customers benefit from simplified support, enhanced manageability, and the ability to consolidate multiple Oracle E-Business Suite instances. Attend this session to understand best practices for Oracle E-Business Suite deployment on Oracle Exalogic and Oracle Exadata through customer case studies. Learn how adopting the Exa* platform increases efficiency, simplifies scaling, and boosts performance for peak loads. CON8716 - Web Services and SOA Integration Options for Oracle E-Business SuiteRekha Ayothi, Veshaal Singh, Oracle Thursday, Oct 4, 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM - Moscone West 2016 This Oracle development session provides a deep dive into a subset of the Web services and SOA-related integration options available to Oracle E-Business Suite systems integrators. It offers a technical look at Oracle E-Business Suite Integrated SOA Gateway, Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle Application Adapters for Data Integration for Oracle E-Business Suite, and other Web services options for integrating Oracle E-Business Suite with other applications. Systems integrators and developers will get an overview of the latest integration capabilities and technologies available out of the box with Oracle E-Business Suite and possibly a sneak preview of upcoming functionality and features. CON9030 - Recommendations for Oracle E-Business Suite Performance TuningIsam Alyousfi, Samer Barakat, Oracle Thursday, Oct 4, 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM - Moscone West 2018 Need to squeeze more performance out of your existing servers? This packed Oracle development session summarizes practical tips and lessons learned from performance-tuning and benchmarking the world’s largest Oracle E-Business Suite environments. Apps sysadmins will learn concrete tips and techniques for identifying and resolving performance bottlenecks on all layers, with special attention to application- and database-tier servers. Learn about tuning Oracle Forms, Oracle Concurrent Manager, Apache, and Oracle Discoverer. Track down memory leaks and other issues at the Java and JVM layers. The session also covers Oracle E-Business Suite product-level tuning, including Oracle Workflow, Oracle Order Management, Oracle Payroll, and other modules. CON3429 - Using Oracle ADF with Oracle E-Business Suite: The Full Integration ViewSiva Puthurkattil, Lake County; Juan Camilo Ruiz, Sara Woodhull, Oracle Thursday, Oct 4, 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM - Moscone West 3003 Oracle E-Business Suite delivers functionality for handling the core business of your organization. However, user requirements and new technologies are driving an emerging need to implement new types of user interfaces for these applications. This session provides an overview of how to use Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF) to deliver cutting-edge Web 2.0 and mobile rich user interfaces that front existing Oracle E-Business Suite processes, and it also explores all the existing types of integration between the two worlds. CON9020 - Integrating Oracle E-Business Suite with Oracle Identity Management SolutionsSunil Ghosh, Elke Phelps, Oracle Thursday, Oct 4, 12:45 PM - 1:45 PM - Moscone West 2016 Need to integrate Oracle E-Business Suite with Microsoft Windows Kerberos, Active Directory, CA Netegrity SiteMinder, or other third-party authentication systems? Want to understand your options when Oracle Premier Support for Oracle Single Sign-On ends in December 2011? This Oracle Development session covers the latest certified integrations with Oracle Access Manager 11g and Oracle Internet Directory 11g, which can be used individually or as bridges for integrating with third-party authentication solutions. The session presents an architectural overview of how Oracle Access Manager, its WebGate and AccessGate components, and Oracle Internet Directory work together, with implications for Oracle Discoverer, Oracle Portal, and other Oracle Fusion identity management products. CON9019 - Troubleshooting, Diagnosing, and Optimizing Oracle E-Business Suite TechnologyGustavo Jimenez, Oracle Thursday, Oct 4, 2:15 PM - 3:15 PM - Moscone West 2016 This session covers how you can proactively diagnose Oracle E-Business Suite applications, including extensions built with Oracle Fusion Middleware technologies such as Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF) and Oracle WebCenter to catch potential issues in the middle tier before they become more serious. Topics include debugging, logging infrastructure, warning signs, performance tuning, information required when logging service requests, general JVM optimization, and an overall picture of all the moving parts that make it possible for Oracle E-Business Suite to isolate and fix problems. Also learn how Oracle Diagnostics Framework will help prevent downtime caused by failures. CON9031 - The Top 10 Things You Can Do to Secure Your Oracle E-Business Suite InstanceEric Bing, Erik Graversen, Oracle Thursday, Oct 4, 2:15 PM - 3:15 PM - Moscone West 2018 Learn the top 10 things you can do to secure your applications and your sensitive data. This Oracle development session for system administrators and security professionals explores some of the most important and overlooked things you can do to secure your Oracle E-Business Suite instance. It also covers data masking and other mechanisms for protecting sensitive data. Special Interest Groups (SIG) Some of our most senior staff have been invited to participate on the following SIG meetings as guest speakers: SIG10525 - OAUG - Archive & Purge SIGBrian Bent - Pre-Sales Engineer, TierData, Inc. Sunday, Sep 30, 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM - Moscone West 3011 The Archive and Purge SIG is an organization in which users can share their experiences and solicit functional and technical advice on archiving and purging data in Oracle E-Business Suite. This session provides an opportunity for users to network and share best practices, tips, and tricks. Guest: Oracle E-Business Suite Database Performance, Archive & Purging - Q&A SessionIsam Alyousfi, Senior Director, Applications Performance, Oracle SIG10547 - OAUG - Oracle E-Business (EBS) Applications Technology SIGSrini Chavali - IT Director, Cummins Inc Sunday, Sep 30, 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM - Moscone West 3018 The general purpose of the EBS Applications Technology SIG is to inform and educate its members about current and future components of the tech stack as they relate to Oracle E-Business Suite. Attend this meeting for networking and education and to share best practices. Guest: Oracle E-Business Suite Technology Certification Roadmap - Presentation and Q&ASteven Chan, Sr. Director, Applications Technology Group, Oracle SIG10559 - OAUG - User Management SIGSusan Behn - VP of Oracle Delivery, Infosemantics, Inc. Sunday, Sep 30, 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM - Moscone West 3024 The E-Business Suite User Management SIG focuses on the components of user management that enable Oracle E-Business Suite users to define administrative functions and manage users’ access to functions and data based on roles within an organization—rather than the user’s individual identity—which is referred to as role-based access control (RBAC). This meeting includes an introduction to Oracle User Management that covers the Oracle User Management building blocks and presents an example of creating a security policy.Guest: Security and User Management - Q&A SessionEric Bing, Sr. Director, EBS Security, OracleSara Woodhull, Principal Product Manager, Applications Technology Group, Oracle SIG10515 - OAUG – Upgrade SIGBarbara Matthews - Consultant, On Call DBASandra Vucinic, VLAD Group, Inc. Sunday, Sep 30, 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM - Moscone West 3009 This Upgrade SIG session starts with a business meeting and then features a Q&A panel discussion on Oracle E-Business Suite upgrade topics. The session• Reviews Upgrade SIG goals and objectives• Provides answers, during the Q&A session, to questions related to Oracle E-Business Suite upgrades• Shares “real world” experiences, tips, and techniques for Oracle E-Business Suite upgrades to Release 12.1. Guest: Oracle E-Business Suite Upgrade - Q&A SessionAnne Carlson - Sr. Director, Oracle E-Business Suite Product Strategy, OracleUdayan Parvate - Director, EBS Release Engineering, OracleSuzana Ferrari, Sr. Principal Consultant, OracleIsam Alyousfi, Sr. Director, Applications Performance, Oracle SIG10552 - OAUG - Oracle E-Business Suite SIGDonna Rosentrater - Manager, Global Sourcing & Procurement Systems, TJX Sunday, Sep 30, 12:15 PM - 1:45 PM - Moscone West 3020 The E-Business Suite SIG, affiliated with OAUG, supports Oracle E-Business Suite users through networking, education, and sharing of best practices. This SIG meeting will feature a general discussion of Oracle E-Business Suite product strategies in Release 12 and migration to Oracle Fusion Applications. Guest: Oracle E-Business Suite - Q&A SessionJeanne Lowell, Vice President, EBS Product Strategy, OracleNadia Bendjedou, Sr. Director, Product Strategy, Oracle SIG10556 - OAUG - SysAdmin SIGRandy Giefer - Sr Systems and Security Architect, Solution Beacon, LLC Sunday, Sep 30, 12:15 PM - 1:45 PM - Moscone West 3022 The SysAdmin SIG provides a forum in which OAUG members and participants can share updates, tips, and successful practices relating to system administration in an Oracle applications environment. The SysAdmin SIG strives to enable system administrators to become more effective and efficient in their jobs by providing them with access to people and information that can increase their system administration knowledge and experience. Attend this meeting to network, share best practices, and benefit from educational content. Guest: Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2 Online Patching- Presentation and Q&AKevin Hudson, Sr. Director, Applications Technology Group, Oracle SIG10553 - OAUG - Database SIGMichael Brown - Senior DBA, COLIBRI LTD LC Sunday, Sep 30, 2:00 PM - 3:15 PM - Moscone West 3020 The OAUG Database SIG provides an opportunity for applications database administrators to learn from and share their experiences with supporting the various Oracle applications environments. This session will include a brief business meeting followed by a short presentation. It will end with an open discussion among the attendees about items of interest to those present. Guest: Oracle E-Business Suite Database Performance - Presentation and Q&AIsam Alyousfi, Sr. Director, Applications Performance, Oracle Meet the Experts We're planning two round-table discussions where you can review your questions with senior E-Business Suite ATG staff: MTE9648 - Meet the Experts for Oracle E-Business Suite: Planning Your Upgrade Jeanne Lowell - VP, EBS Product Strategy, Oracle John Abraham - Sr. Principal Product Manager, Oracle Nadia Bendjedou - Sr. Director - Product Strategy, Oracle Anne Carlson - Sr. Director, Applications Technology Group, Oracle Udayan Parvate - Director, EBS Release Engineering, Oracle Isam Alyousfi, Sr. Director, Applications Performance, Oracle Monday, Oct 1, 3:15 PM - 4:15 PM - Moscone West 2001A Don’t miss this Oracle Applications Meet the Experts session with experts who specialize in Oracle E-Business Suite upgrade best practices. This is the place where attendees can have informal and semistructured but open one-on-one discussions with Strategy and Development regarding Oracle Applications strategy and your specific business and IT strategy. The experts will be available to discuss the value of the latest releases and share insights into the best path for your enterprise, so come ready with your questions. Space is limited, so make sure you register. MTE9649 - Meet the Oracle E-Business Suite Tools and Technology Experts Lisa Parekh - Vice President, Technology Integration, Oracle Steven Chan - Sr. Director, Oracle Elke Phelps - Sr. Principal Product Manager, Applications Technology Group, Oracle Max Arderius - Manager, Applications Technology Group, Oracle Tuesday, Oct 2, 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM - Moscone West 2001A Don’t miss this Oracle Applications Meet the Experts session with experts who specialize in Oracle E-Business Suite technology. This is the place where attendees can have informal and semistructured but open one-on-one discussions with Strategy and Development regarding Oracle Applications strategy and your specific business and IT strategy. The experts will be available to discuss the value of the latest releases and share insights into the best path for your enterprise, so come ready with your questions. Space is limited, so make sure you register. Demos We have five booths in the exhibition demogrounds this year, where you can try ATG technologies firsthand and get your questions answered. Please stop by and meet our staff at the following locations: Advanced Architecture and Technology Stack for Oracle E-Business Suite (W-067) New User Productivity Capabilities in Oracle E-Business Suite (W-065) End-to-End Management of Oracle E-Business Suite (W-063) Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 Technical Upgrade Best Practices (W-066) SOA-Based Integration for Oracle E-Business Suite (W-064)

  Read the article

• PC powers off at random times

  - by Timo Huovinen

  Short Version After experiencing some problems with Mobo batteries my PC started to power off at random times, the power off is instant and sudden and does not restart afterwards, need help figuring out the cause. Facts: Powers off when PC is playing games Powers off when PC is idle Powers off when PC is in safe mode Powers off when PC is in BIOS Powers off when PC is booted through a Windows installation USB Replaced the motherboard battery several times Replaced the 650W PSU with a 750W PSU Replaced the RAM Swapped the RAM between slots Re-applied thermal paste to the CPU Checked if the motherboard touches the case Nothing is overclocked PC Specs PC specs: OS: Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 RAM: klingston 1333MHz 4GB stick CPU: AMD Phenom II x4 955 Mobo: Gigabyte 88GMA-UD2H rev 2.2 Motherboard battery: CR2032 3v HDD: 500GB Seagate ST3500418AS ATA Device Graphics: ATI/AMD Radeon HD 6870 Very Long version Around 10 months ago I built a brand new gaming PC. Around 6 months ago it's time setting in windows started resetting to the year 2010. I swapped the Motherboard battery for a new one of the exact same size and shape and voltage, and the problems disappeared...for around 2 weeks. Then the same problem happened again, time gets reset, I swapped the battery again, and the problem was gone for good and everything was great for about 3 months.. then another problem started happening, the PC started to power off suddenly and without warning at completely random times, sometimes the PC works for and hour, sometimes 5 minutes. So I read on the forums that it might be either the PSU or the motherboard Battery or RAM or HDD or the Graphics card or the CPU or the motherboard or the drivers or a Virus or Grounding issues, or something short circuiting, basically it can be anything... I spent some days researching, and decided to remove the possibility of a virus. I reset the CMOS, cleared all BIOS settings and reinstalled windows 7 after a full format of the HDD, but the random power off kept happening. I then disabled the restart on error option in windows and looked at the event log for error events, but they did not help me figure out the problem. Network list service depends on network location awareness the dependency group failed to start Source Kernel Power Event 41 Task Category 63 Source Disk Event ID 11 Task Category None The driver detected a controller error on device disk I took apart the PC, every little piece, re-applied some expensive thermal paste to the CPU, and double checked that none of the pieces are touching the PC case. The problem was gone, the PC no longer powered off randomly I re-attached the graphics card and all was good for 4 months... then the power off problem appeared again, but was happening at high intervals, the PC would shutdown once in 2 days on average, at random points in time, sometimes when it's idle all day long, sometimes when it's running CRYSIS 2. I checked the CPU temperature, because I know that AMD CPU's have a built in protection mechanism that switches off the PC if the CPU gets too hot, and the Temp was 50C system temp, and 45C CPU after running the PC all day long (I did not do tests to see if there are any temperature spikes, don't know how to do them) Originally the PSU that powered the PC was 650Watts and had one 4 pin cable to power the CPU, I replaced it with a new 750Watts PSU which has two 4 pin cables for the CPU, but the problem remained. I removed the graphics card and let the motherboard use the built in one, but the PC kept suddenly powering off at random times. I took apart the PC completely again, and re-applied thermal paste to the CPU, added lots of insulation, and checked for any type of short-circuit possibility again and again, but the problem remained. The problem was like that for some months. I replaced the Battery a couple of times over the time, changed lots of options in windows, and tried everything I could, but it kept powering off, so I stopped using the PC as much as I used to, just living with the random power offs from time to time, until a couple of days ago, when the power off happens almost immediately after powering on the PC. I replaced the RAM with a brand new one, but that did not help. Took apart the PC again, checked for anything anywhere that might cause it, found some small scratches on the very edge of the motherboard to the left of the PCI express x16 slot. This might cause the problem, I thought, but the scratch looks very superficial, not deep at all, and if the scratch did harm the motherboard, wouldn't it cause it to not start at all? And why did it start to power off a while ago, and then suddenly stop powering off? The scratches could not have vanished??? did chkdsk \d but it powered off when it was at 75% I removed the hard disks, the graphics card, while I fiddled with the BIOS settings, and suddenly the PC shut down while I was looking at the BIOS version. This makes me realize, it is not caused by: HDD, Windows, Drivers or the Graphics card I cleared the CMOS again, updated the BIOS from F5 to F6f beta, but that did not help, it might even seem that the PC powers off even sooner. The shutdown even happened to me while I booted through a windows 7 installation USB and was in the repair console. I removed one of the cables powering the CPU, now only one 4pin cable powers it, and it worked for 30mins after doing that, which makes me think that it's the CPU overheating, and because it gets less power, it overheats slower? The things that I am still considering: CPU overheating (does not seem to overheat, maybe false readings?) Motherboard short circuiting (faulty motherboard?) I desperately need some advice in what is faulty, is it a faulty Motherboard or an overheating CPU? or maybe something else? I have been breaking my head over this problem over a span of 6 months. I'm not sure if this is a good place to ask this question, if it is not, then tell me where I can get some experienced help. More info I have also discovered a mysterious piece that seems to have fallen out of the motherboard i119.photobucket.com/albums/o126/yurikolovsky/strangepiece.jpg What is it? Looks like each time that it powers off the datetime gets reset I also found another forum post tomshardware.co.uk/forum/… except I don't have Integrated PeripheralsUSB Keyboard Function option in BIOS :S Comments summary (asked by Random moderator) Q. tell me, if the computer restarts, is it immediately? Does it take a second and then restarts? Do you see (BSOD) or hear (PSU, short circuit) any suspicious when it happens? After reading trough it, it remains the mainboard that is faulty. – JohannesM A. Immediate power off, all the fans stop instantly, all the light turn off instantly, no sound or anything, and it remains off until I turn it back on. Thanks for the feedback, faulty motherboard is what I fear. Q. Try stress-testing the system with Prime95 and see if errors or shutdowns occur when the CPU is under full load. – speakr A. Prime95 heat stress test peaked CPU heat at 60C after 5mins, it powered off after 30mins of testing in the middle of the test with no errors, Prime95 Heat test or the stress-testing with low RAM usage (small or in-place FFTs) do not report errors while testing for 10-60 mins. The power off does not seem like it is affected by Prime95 at all Makes me wonder if it's a CPU or Motherboard issue at all. Q. I had similar random/intermittent problems with my old board. It gave one of a few different symptoms: keyboard and/or mouse would die and/or the RAM wouldn't work and/or it would shut down. It was in bad shape. One problems was that my old PSU had literally burned the connector on it (browned around the pins), another was that a broken lead inside the layers of the PCB would work sometimes if it happened to be hot or if I bent the board—by jamming a hunk of wood behind it. I managed to keep the board alive for several years, but eventually nothing I did would make it work correctly anymore. – Synetech A. I will try that as the last resort, ok? ;) Q. Have you tried a different power cord, surge protector, outlet (on a different circuit). It's worth a shot just to ensure it's not subpar wiring or a week circuit (dips in power may cause shutdown if the PSU can't pull enough juice from the wall). – Kyle A. yes, I attached the PC to an entirely different outlet on a different circuit and the problem persists. After connecting it to a different outlet after starting the PC it gave me 3 long beeps and 1 short one, then the PC immediately proceeded to boot up normally. Q. Re-check your mainboard manual and all PSU connections to your mainboard to be sure that nothing is missing (e.g. 12V ATX 4-pin/6-pin connector). If you can provoke shutdowns with Prime95, then consider buying new hardware -- a stable system should run Prime95 for 24h without any errors. Prime95 mentions errors in the log when they occur and gives a summary after the stress test was stopped manually (e.g. "0 errors, 0 warnings", if all is fine) – speakr A. Re-checked, there are no more PSU connectors that I can physically connect, except the one ATX 4-pin (there are 2 that power the CPU) that I disconnected on purpose, I have reconnected it but the problem persists. Q. With one PC I had a short curcuit. The power button on the front plate had its cables soldered, but not isolated, and the contacts were very close to the metal case. A heavier touch was enough to cause a shutdown. The PC's vibration could be enough – ott-- A. yes, it seems to switch off with even the lightest touch, I switched on the PC, then pulled out the front panel power cable that connects to the motherboard so the power button does not work anymore, after 5 mins of working like that, with the power button completely disconnected, just sitting idle, the PC powered off again, I don't think it's the power button. Q. I wonder if you dare to operate components without the case, that is remove motherboard, power, disk ( just put the motherboard on a wooden desk). Don't bend the adapters when running like that. – ott-- A. yes, I do dare to do that, but only tomorrow, too tired/late right now.

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 1 2 3