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  • Any tips on reducing wxWidgets application code size?

    - by Billy ONeal
    I have written a minimal wxWidgets application: stdafx.h #define wxNO_REGEX_LIB #define wxNO_XML_LIB #define wxNO_NET_LIB #define wxNO_EXPAT_LIB #define wxNO_JPEG_LIB #define wxNO_PNG_LIB #define wxNO_TIFF_LIB #define wxNO_ZLIB_LIB #define wxNO_ADV_LIB #define wxNO_HTML_LIB #define wxNO_GL_LIB #define wxNO_QA_LIB #define wxNO_XRC_LIB #define wxNO_AUI_LIB #define wxNO_PROPGRID_LIB #define wxNO_RIBBON_LIB #define wxNO_RICHTEXT_LIB #define wxNO_MEDIA_LIB #define wxNO_STC_LIB #include <wx/wxprec.h> Minimal.cpp #include "stdafx.h" #include <memory> #include <wx/wx.h> class Minimal : public wxApp { public: virtual bool OnInit(); }; IMPLEMENT_APP(Minimal) DECLARE_APP(Minimal) class MinimalFrame : public wxFrame { DECLARE_EVENT_TABLE() public: MinimalFrame(const wxString& title); void OnQuit(wxCommandEvent& e); void OnAbout(wxCommandEvent& e); }; BEGIN_EVENT_TABLE(MinimalFrame, wxFrame) EVT_MENU(wxID_ABOUT, MinimalFrame::OnAbout) EVT_MENU(wxID_EXIT, MinimalFrame::OnQuit) END_EVENT_TABLE() MinimalFrame::MinimalFrame(const wxString& title) : wxFrame(0, wxID_ANY, title) { std::auto_ptr<wxMenu> fileMenu(new wxMenu); fileMenu->Append(wxID_EXIT, L"E&xit\tAlt-X", L"Terminate the Minimal Example."); std::auto_ptr<wxMenu> helpMenu(new wxMenu); helpMenu->Append(wxID_ABOUT, L"&About\tF1", L"Show the about dialog box."); std::auto_ptr<wxMenuBar> bar(new wxMenuBar); bar->Append(fileMenu.get(), L"&File"); fileMenu.release(); bar->Append(helpMenu.get(), L"&Help"); helpMenu.release(); SetMenuBar(bar.get()); bar.release(); CreateStatusBar(2); SetStatusText(L"Welcome to wxWidgets!"); } void MinimalFrame::OnAbout(wxCommandEvent& e) { wxMessageBox(L"Some text about me!", L"About", wxOK, this); } void MinimalFrame::OnQuit(wxCommandEvent& e) { Close(); } bool Minimal::OnInit() { std::auto_ptr<MinimalFrame> mainFrame( new MinimalFrame(L"Minimal wxWidgets Application")); mainFrame->Show(); mainFrame.release(); return true; } This minimal program weighs in at 2.4MB! (Executable compression drops this to half a MB or so but that's still HUGE!) (I must statically link because this application needs to be single-binary-xcopy-deployed, so both the C runtime and wxWidgets itself are set for static linking) Any tips on cutting this down? (I'm using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010)

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  • Using the Proxy pattern with C++ iterators

    - by Billy ONeal
    Hello everyone :) I've got a moderately complex iterator written which wraps the FindXFile apis on Win32. (See previous question) In order to avoid the overhead of constructing an object that essentially duplicates the work of the WIN32_FIND_DATAW structure, I have a proxy object which simply acts as a sort of const reference to the single WIN32_FIND_DATAW which is declared inside the noncopyable innards of the iterator. This is great because Clients do not pay for construction of irrelevant information they will probably not use (most of the time people are only interested in file names), and Clients can get at all the information provided by the FindXFile APIs if they need or want this information. This becomes an issue though because there is only ever a single copy of the object's actual data. Therefore, when the iterator is incrememnted, all of the proxies are invalidated (set to whatever the next file pointed to by the iterator is). I'm concerned if this is a major problem, because I can think of a case where the proxy object would not behave as somebody would expect: std::vector<MyIterator::value_type> files; std::copy(MyIterator("Hello"), MyIterator(), std::back_inserter(files)); because the vector contains nothing but a bunch of invalid proxies at that point. Instead, clients need to do something like: std::vector<std::wstring> filesToSearch; std::transform( DirectoryIterator<FilesOnly>(L"C:\\Windows\\*"), DirectoryIterator<FilesOnly>(), std::back_inserter(filesToSearch), std::mem_fun_ref(&DirectoryIterator<FilesOnly>::value_type::GetFullFileName) ); Seeing this, I can see why somebody might dislike what the standard library designers did with std::vector<bool>. I'm still wondering though: is this a reasonable trade off in order to achieve (1) and (2) above? If not, is there any way to still achieve (1) and (2) without the proxy?

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  • Free Testing / Code Coverage systems for C++

    - by Billy ONeal
    I'd like to start using a Test Driven Development system for a private project since I saw my employer using it and realized it was very useful. My employer's project was in C# but mines are in C and C++. I looked around and saw that several packages exist for both Java and .NET (for example: NCover, NUnit, ...). Unfortunately I found it difficult to find good C++ testing frameworks. Do you know of any unit testing frameworks that satisfy the following requirements? IMPORTANT: Must provide code coverage statistics, as I'd like to have some idea of how well my tests cover my code-base. Must be free Usable with C++ projects EDIT: To be clear, I know of many existing unit test frameworks. The code coverage piece is what's most important.

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  • Is there an easy way to make `boost::ptr_vector` more debugger friendly in Visual Studio?

    - by Billy ONeal
    I'm considering using boost::ptr_container as a result of the responses from this question. My biggest problem with the library is that I cannot view the contents of the collection in the debugger, because the MSVC debugger doesn't recognize it, and therefore I cannot see the contents of the containers. (All the data gets stored as void * internally) I've heard MSVC has a feature called "debugger visualizers" which would allow the user to make the debugger smarter about these kinds of things, but I've never written anything like this, and I'm not hugely firmiliar with such things. For example, compare the behavior of boost::shared_ptr with MSVC's own std::tr1::shared_ptr. In the debugger (i.e. in the Watch window), the boost version shows up as a big mess of internal variables used for implementing the shared pointer, but the MSVC version shows up as a plain pointer to the object (and the shared_ptr's innards are hidden). How can I get started either using or implementing such a thing?

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  • Can I use Visual Studio's testing facilities in native code?

    - by Billy ONeal
    Is it possible to use Visual Studio's testing system with native code? I have no objection to recompiling the code itself under C++/CLI if it's possible the code can be recompiled without changes -- but the production code shipped has to be native code. The Premium Edition comes with code coverage support which I might be able to get cheaply from my University -- but I can get the Professional Edition for free from DreamSpark -- and that's the only thing I can see that I'd use. (But I'd use it a LOT)

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  • Anything like VisualSVN Server for Mercurial?

    - by Billy ONeal
    VisualSVN server is a nice piece of software; particularly in that it uses the builtin Windows authentication mechanism on my server. I'd like to try to start using Mercurial though, and I'd like to keep the Windows authentication scheme. Is there some way to set this kind of thing up using the tools available on Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard (in particular, IIS 7)?

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  • Why are functional languages considered a boon for multi threaded environments?

    - by Billy ONeal
    I hear a lot about functional languages, and how they scale well because there is no state around a function; and therefore that function can be massively parallelized. However, this makes little sense to me because almost all real-world practical programs need/have state to take care of. I also find it interesting that most major scaling libraries, i.e. MapReduce, are typically written in imperative languages like C or C++. I'd like to hear from the functional camp where this hype I'm hearing is coming from....

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  • How might one implement FileTimeToSystemTime?

    - by Billy ONeal
    Hello :) I'm writing a simple wrapper around the Win32 FILETIME structure. boost::datetime has most of what I want, except I need whatever date type I end up using to interpolate with Windows APIs without issues. To that end, I've decided to write my own things for doing this -- most of the operations aren't all that complicated. I'm implementing the TimeSpan - like type at this point, but I'm unsure how I'd implement FileTimeToSystemTime. I could just use the system's built-in FileTimeToSystemTime function, except FileTimeToSystemTime cannot handle negative dates -- I need to be able to represent something like "-12 seconds". How should something like this be implemented? Billy3

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  • Can I have code that executes before and after tests are run by NUnit?

    - by Billy ONeal
    I've got a bunch of tests in NUnit which create garbage data on the filesystem (bad, I know, but I have little control over this). Currently we have a cleanup tool that removes these temporaries and such, but I'd like to be able to run that cleanup tool automatically. I'd have to be able to run it after all tests have finished running. I have similar checking that I'd like to do at the beginning, to ensure that there are none of these temporaries left from previous runs that might change the outcome of the tests. Is such a thing simple or am I going to have to implement a whole new test runner for such a thing?

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  • How does one gets started with Winforms style applications on Win32?

    - by Billy ONeal
    EDIT: I'm extremely tired and frustrated at the moment -- please ignore that bit in this question -- I'll edit it in the morning to be better. Okay -- a bit of background: I'm a C++ programmer mostly, but the only GUI stuff I've ever done was on top of .NET's WinForms platform. I'm completely new to Windows GUI programming, and despite Petzold's excellent book, I'm extremely confused. Namely, it seems that most every reference on getting started with Win32 is all about drawing lines and curves and things -- a topic about which (at least at present time) I couldn't care less. I need a checked list box, a splitter, and a textbox -- something that would take less than 10 minutes to do in Winforms land. It has been recommended to me to use the WTL library, which provides an implementation of all three of these controls -- but I keep getting hung up on simple things, such as getting the damn controls to use the right font, and getting High DPI working correctly. I've spent two freaking days on this, and I can't help but think there has to be a better reference for these kinds of things than I've been able to find. Petzold's book is good, but it hasn't been updated since Windows 95 days, and there's been a LOT changed w.r.t. how applications should be correctly developed since it was published. I guess what I'm looking for is a modern Petzold book. Where can I find such a resource, if any?

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  • How can one check for a binary in the GAC in a WiX installer?

    - by Billy ONeal
    I have an application which depends on the Team Foundation Server "Object Model", and looks for such binaries in the GAC. This means that clients of the app need to install Visual Studio, or the standalone TFS object model in order to use the application. I would like the installer to detect that the TFS bits aren't installed, and fail to install appropriately if they are not. Is such a thing possible?

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  • Is there a library available which easily can record and replay results of API calls?

    - by Billy ONeal
    I'm working on writing various things that call relatively complicated Win32 API functions. Here's an example: //Encapsulates calling NtQuerySystemInformation buffer management. WindowsApi::AutoArray NtDll::NtQuerySystemInformation( SystemInformationClass toGet ) const { AutoArray result; ULONG allocationSize = 1024; ULONG previousSize; NTSTATUS errorCheck; do { previousSize = allocationSize; result.Allocate(allocationSize); errorCheck = WinQuerySystemInformation(toGet, result.GetAs<void>(), allocationSize, &allocationSize); if (allocationSize <= previousSize) allocationSize = previousSize * 2; } while (errorCheck == 0xC0000004L); if (errorCheck != 0) { THROW_MANUAL_WINDOWS_ERROR(WinRtlNtStatusToDosError(errorCheck)); } return result; } //Client of the above. ProcessSnapshot::ProcessSnapshot() { using Dll::NtDll; NtDll ntdll; AutoArray systemInfoBuffer = ntdll.NtQuerySystemInformation( NtDll::SystemProcessInformation); BYTE * currentPtr = systemInfoBuffer.GetAs<BYTE>(); //Loop through the results, creating Process objects. SYSTEM_PROCESSES * asSysInfo; do { // Loop book keeping asSysInfo = reinterpret_cast<SYSTEM_PROCESSES *>(currentPtr); currentPtr += asSysInfo->NextEntryDelta; //Create the process for the current iteration and fill it with data. std::auto_ptr<ProcImpl> currentProc(ProcFactory( static_cast<unsigned __int32>(asSysInfo->ProcessId), this)); NormalProcess* nptr = dynamic_cast<NormalProcess*>(currentProc.get()); if (nptr) { nptr->SetProcessName(asSysInfo->ProcessName); } // Populate process threads for(ULONG idx = 0; idx < asSysInfo->ThreadCount; ++idx) { SYSTEM_THREADS& sysThread = asSysInfo->Threads[idx]; Thread thread( currentProc.get(), static_cast<unsigned __int32>(sysThread.ClientId.UniqueThread), sysThread.StartAddress); currentProc->AddThread(thread); } processes.push_back(currentProc); } while(asSysInfo->NextEntryDelta != 0); } My problem is in mocking out the NtDll::NtQuerySystemInformation method -- namely, that the data structure returned is complicated (Well, here it's actually relatively simple but it can be complicated), and writing a test which builds the data structure like the API call does can take 5-6 times as long as writing the code that uses the API. What I'd like to do is take a call to the API, and record it somehow, so that I can return that recorded value to the code under test without actually calling the API. The returned structures cannot simply be memcpy'd, because they often contain inner pointers (pointers to other locations in the same buffer). The library in question would need to check for these kinds of things, and be able to restore pointer values to a similar buffer upon replay. (i.e. check each pointer sized value if it could be interpreted as a pointer within the buffer, change that to an offset, and remember to change it back to a pointer on replay -- a false positive rate here is acceptable) Is there anything out there that does anything like this?

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  • Can I write a test that succeeds if and only if a statement does not compile?

    - by Billy ONeal
    I'd like to prevent clients of my class from doing something stupid. To that end, I have used the type system, and made my class only accept specific types as input. Consider the following example (Not real code, I've left off things like virtual destructors for the sake of example): class MyDataChunk { //Look Ma! Implementation! }; class Sink; class Source { virtual void Run() = 0; Sink *next_; void SetNext(Sink *next) { next_ = next; } }; class Sink { virtual void GiveMeAChunk(const MyDataChunk& data) { //Impl }; }; class In { virtual void Run { //Impl } }; class Out { }; //Note how filter and sorter have the same declaration. Concrete classes //will inherit from them. The seperate names are there to ensure only //that some idiot doesn't go in and put in a filter where someone expects //a sorter, etc. class Filter : public Source, public Sink { //Drop objects from the chain-of-command pattern that don't match a particular //criterion. }; class Sorter : public Source, public Sink { //Sorts inputs to outputs. There are different sorters because someone might //want to sort by filename, size, date, etc... }; class MyClass { In i; Out o; Filter f; Sorter s; public: //Functions to set i, o, f, and s void Execute() { i.SetNext(f); f.SetNext(s); s.SetNext(o); i.Run(); } }; What I don't want is for somebody to come back later and go, "Hey, look! Sorter and Filter have the same signature. I can make a common one that does both!", thus breaking the semantic difference MyClass requires. Is this a common kind of requirement, and if so, how might I implement a test for it?

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  • How can I (is there a way to) convert an HRESULT into a system specific error message?

    - by Billy ONeal
    According to this, there's no way to convert a HRESULT error code into a Win32 error code. Therefore (at least to my understanding), my use of FormatMessage in order to generate error messages (i.e. std::wstring Exception::GetWideMessage() const { using std::tr1::shared_ptr; shared_ptr<void> buff; LPWSTR buffPtr; DWORD bufferLength = FormatMessageW( FORMAT_MESSAGE_FROM_SYSTEM | FORMAT_MESSAGE_ALLOCATE_BUFFER | FORMAT_MESSAGE_IGNORE_INSERTS, NULL, GetErrorCode(), 0, reinterpret_cast<LPWSTR>(&buffPtr), 0, NULL); buff.reset(buffPtr, LocalFreeHelper()); return std::wstring(buffPtr, bufferLength); } ) does not work for HRESULTs. How do I generate these kinds of system-specific error strings for HRESULTs?

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  • How can I prevent infinite recursion when using events to bind UI elements to fields?

    - by Billy ONeal
    The following seems to be a relatively common pattern (to me, not to the community at large) to bind a string variable to the contents of a TextBox. class MyBackEndClass { public event EventHandler DataChanged; string _Data; public string Data { get { return _Data; } set { _Data = value; //Fire the DataChanged event } } } class SomeForm : // Form stuff { MyBackEndClass mbe; TextBox someTextBox; SomeForm() { someTextBox.TextChanged += HandleTextBox(); mbe.DataChanged += HandleData(); } void HandleTextBox(Object sender, EventArgs e) { mbe.Data = ((TextBox)sender).Text; } void HandleData(Object sender, EventArgs e) { someTextBox.Text = ((MyBackEndClass) sender).Data; } } The problem is that changing the TextBox fires the changes the data value in the backend, which causes the textbox to change, etc. That runs forever. Is there a better design pattern (other than resorting to a nasty boolean flag) that handles this case correctly? EDIT: To be clear, in the real design the backend class is used to synchronize changes between multiple forms. Therefore I can't just use the SomeTextBox.Text property directly. Billy3

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  • What, *specifically*, makes DataMapper more flexible than ActiveRecord?

    - by Billy ONeal
    I'm comparing Doctrine 2 and Propel 1.5/1.6, and I'm looking in to some of the patterns they use. Doctrine uses the DataMapper pattern, while Propel uses the ActiveRecord pattern. While I can see that DataMapper is considerably more complicated, I'd assume some design flexibility comes from this complication. So far, the only legitimate reason I've found to use DataMapper over ActiveRecord is that DataMapper is better in terms of the single responsibility principle -- because the database rows are not the actual objects being persisted, but with Propel that doesn't really concern me because it's generated code anyway. So -- what makes DataMapper more flexible?

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  • What's the best way to return something like a collection of `std::auto_ptr`s in C++03?

    - by Billy ONeal
    std::auto_ptr is not allowed to be stored in an STL container, such as std::vector. However, occasionally there are cases where I need to return a collection of polymorphic objects, and therefore I can't return a vector of objects (due to the slicing problem). I can use std::tr1::shared_ptr and stick those in the vector, but then I have to pay a high price of maintaining separate reference counts, and object that owns the actual memory (the container) no longer logically "owns" the objects because they can be copied out of it without regard to ownership. C++0x offers a perfect solution to this problem in the form of std::vector<std::unique_ptr<t>>, but I don't have access to C++0x. Some other notes: I don't have access to C++0x, but I do have TR1 available. I would like to avoid use of Boost (though it is available if there is no other option) I am aware of boost::ptr_container containers (i.e. boost::ptr_vector), but I would like to avoid this because it breaks the debugger (innards are stored in void *s which means it's difficult to view the object actually stored inside the container in the debugger)

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  • Is anyone doing "real" TDD with Visual-C++, and if yes, how do they do it?

    - by Martin
    Test Driven Development implies writing the test before the code and following a certain cycle: Write Test Check Test (run) Write Production Code Check Test (run) Clean up Production Code Check test (run) As far as I'm concerned, this is only possible if your development solution allows you to very quickly switch between the production and test code, and to execute the test for a certain production code part extremely quickly. Now, while there exist lots of Unit Testing Frameworks for C++ (I'm using Bost.Test atm.) it does seem that there doesn't really exist any decent (for native C++) Visual Studio (Plugin) solution that makes the TDD cycle bearable regardless of framework used. "Bearable" means that it's a one-click action to run a test for a certain cpp file without having to manually set up a separate testing project etc. "Bearable" also means that a simple test starts (linking!) and runs very quickly. So, what tools (plugins) and techniques are out there that make the TDD cycle possible for native C++ development with Visual Studio? Note: I'm fine with free or "commercial" tools. Please: No framework recommendations. (Unless the framework has a dedicated Visual Studio plugin and you want to recommend the plugin.) Edit Note: The answers so far have provided links on how to integrate a Unit Testing framework into Visual Studio. The resources more or less describe how to get the UT framework to compile and get your first Tests running. This is not what this question is about. I'm of the opinion that to really work productively, having the Unit Tests in a manually maintained(!), separate vcproj from your production classes will add so much overhead that TDD "isn't possible". As far as I am aware, you do not add extra "projects" to a Java or C# thing to enable Unit Tests and TDD, and for a good reason. This should be possible with C++ given the right tools, but it seems (this question is about) that there are very little tools for TDD/C++/VS. Googling around, I've found one tool, VisualAssert, that seems to aim in the right direction. However, afaiks, it doesn't seem to be in widespread use (compared to CppUnit, Boost.Test etc.). Edit: I would like to add a comment to the context for this question. I think it does a good summary of outlining (part of) the problem: (comment by Billy ONeal) Visual Studio does not use "build scripts" that are reasonably editable by the user. One project produces one binary. Moreover, Java has the property that Java never builds a complete binary -- the binary you build is just a ZIP of the class files. Therefore it's possible to compile separately then JAR together manually (using e.g. 7z). C++ and C# both actually link their binaries, so generally speaking you can't write a script like that. The closest you can get is to compile everything separately and then do two linkings (one for production, one for testing).

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  • Data Quality and Master Data Management Resources

    - by Dejan Sarka
    Many companies or organizations do regular data cleansing. When you cleanse the data, the data quality goes up to some higher level. The data quality level is determined by the amount of work invested in the cleansing. As time passes, the data quality deteriorates, and you need to repeat the cleansing process. If you spend an equal amount of effort as you did with the previous cleansing, you can expect the same level of data quality as you had after the previous cleansing. And then the data quality deteriorates over time again, and the cleansing process starts over and over again. The idea of Data Quality Services is to mitigate the cleansing process. While the amount of time you need to spend on cleansing decreases, you will achieve higher and higher levels of data quality. While cleansing, you learn what types of errors to expect, discover error patterns, find domains of correct values, etc. You don’t throw away this knowledge. You store it and use it to find and correct the same issues automatically during your next cleansing process. The following figure shows this graphically. The idea of master data management, which you can perform with Master Data Services (MDS), is to prevent data quality from deteriorating. Once you reach a particular quality level, the MDS application—together with the defined policies, people, and master data management processes—allow you to maintain this level permanently. This idea is shown in the following picture. OK, now you know what DQS and MDS are about. You can imagine the importance on maintaining the data quality. Here are some resources that help you preparing and executing the data quality (DQ) and master data management (MDM) activities. Books Dejan Sarka and Davide Mauri: Data Quality and Master Data Management with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 – a general introduction to MDM, MDS, and data profiling. Matching explained in depth. Dejan Sarka, Matija Lah and Grega Jerkic: MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-463): Building Data Warehouses with Microsoft SQL Server 2012 – I wrote quite a few chapters about DQ and MDM, and introduced also SQL Server 2012 DQS. Thomas Redman: Data Quality: The Field Guide – you should start with this book. Thomas Redman is the father of DQ and MDM. Tyler Graham: Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Master Data Services – MDS in depth from a product team mate. Arkady Maydanchik: Data Quality Assessment – data profiling in depth. Tamraparni Dasu, Theodore Johnson: Exploratory Data Mining and Data Cleaning – advanced data profiling with data mining. Forthcoming presentations I am presenting a DQS and MDM seminar at PASS SQL Rally Amsterdam 2013: Wednesday, November 6th, 2013: Enterprise Information Management with SQL Server 2012 – a good kick start to your first DQ and / or MDM project. Courses Data Quality and Master Data Management with SQL Server 2012 – I wrote a 2-day course for SolidQ. If you are interested in this course, which I could also deliver in a shorter seminar way, you can contact your closes SolidQ subsidiary, or, of course, me directly on addresses [email protected] or [email protected]. This course could also complement the existing courseware portfolio of training providers, which are welcome to contact me as well. Start improving the quality of your data now!

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  • Going by the eBook

    - by Tony Davis
    The book and magazine publishing world is rapidly going digital, and the industry is faced with making drastic changes to their ways of doing business. The sudden take-up of digital readers by the book-buying public has surprised even the most technological-savvy of the industry. Printed books just aren't selling like they did. In contrast, eBooks are doing well. The ePub file format is the standard around which all publishers are converging. ePub is a standard for formatting book content, so that it can be reflowed for various devices, with their widely differing screen-sizes, and can be read offline. If you unzip an ePub file, you'll find familiar formats such as XML, XHTML and CSS. This is both a blessing and a curse. Whilst it is good to be able to use familiar technologies that have been developed to a level of considerable sophistication, it doesn't get us all the way to producing a viable publication. XHTML is a page-description language, not a book-description language, as we soon found out during our initial experiments, when trying to specify headers, footers, indexes and chaptering. As a result, it is difficult to predict how any particular eBook application will decide to render a book. There isn't even a consensus as to how the cover image is specified. All of this is awkward for the publisher. Each book must be created and revised in a form from which can be generated a whole range of 'printed media', from print books, to Mobi for kindles, ePub for most Tablets and SmartPhones, HTML for excerpted chapters on websites, and a plethora of other formats for other eBook readers, each with its own idiosyncrasies. In theory, if we can get our content into a clean, semantic XML form, such as DOCBOOKS, we can, from there, after every revision, perform a series of relatively simple XSLT transformations to output anything from a HTML article, to an ePub file for reading on an iPad, to an ICML file (an XML-based file format supported by the InDesign tool), ready for print publication. As always, however, the task looks bigger the closer you get to the detail. On the way to the utopian world of an XML-based book format that encompasses all the diverse requirements of the different publication media, ePub looks like a reasonable format to adopt. Its forthcoming support for HTML 5 and CSS 3, with ePub 3.0, means that features, such as widow-and-orphan controls, multi-column flow and multi-media graphics can be incorporated into eBooks. This starts to make it possible to build an "app-like" experience into the eBook and to free publishers to think of putting context before container; to think of what content is required, be it graphical, textual or audio, from the point of view of the user, rather than what's possible in a given, traditional book "Container". In the meantime, there is a gap between what publishers require and what current technology can provide and, of course building this app-like experience is far from plain sailing. Real portability between devices is still a big challenge, and achieving the sort of wizardry seen in the likes of Theodore Grey's "Elements" eBook will require some serious device-specific programming skills. Cheers, Tony.

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  • Talend Enterprise Data Integration overperforms on Oracle SPARC T4

    - by Amir Javanshir
    The SPARC T microprocessor, released in 2005 by Sun Microsystems, and now continued at Oracle, has a good track record in parallel execution and multi-threaded performance. However it was less suited for pure single-threaded workloads. The new SPARC T4 processor is now filling that gap by offering a 5x better single-thread performance over previous generations. Following our long-term relationship with Talend, a fast growing ISV positioned by Gartner in the “Visionaries” quadrant of the “Magic Quadrant for Data Integration Tools”, we decided to test some of their integration components with the T4 chip, more precisely on a T4-1 system, in order to verify first hand if this new processor stands up to its promises. Several tests were performed, mainly focused on: Single-thread performance of the new SPARC T4 processor compared to an older SPARC T2+ processor Overall throughput of the SPARC T4-1 server using multiple threads The tests consisted in reading large amounts of data --ten's of gigabytes--, processing and writing them back to a file or an Oracle 11gR2 database table. They are CPU, memory and IO bound tests. Given the main focus of this project --CPU performance--, bottlenecks were removed as much as possible on the memory and IO sub-systems. When possible, the data to process was put into the ZFS filesystem cache, for instance. Also, two external storage devices were directly attached to the servers under test, each one divided in two ZFS pools for read and write operations. Multi-thread: Testing throughput on the Oracle T4-1 The tests were performed with different number of simultaneous threads (1, 2, 4, 8, 12, 16, 32, 48 and 64) and using different storage devices: Flash, Fibre Channel storage, two stripped internal disks and one single internal disk. All storage devices used ZFS as filesystem and volume management. Each thread read a dedicated 1GB-large file containing 12.5M lines with the following structure: customerID;FirstName;LastName;StreetAddress;City;State;Zip;Cust_Status;Since_DT;Status_DT 1;Ronald;Reagan;South Highway;Santa Fe;Montana;98756;A;04-06-2006;09-08-2008 2;Theodore;Roosevelt;Timberlane Drive;Columbus;Louisiana;75677;A;10-05-2009;27-05-2008 3;Andrew;Madison;S Rustle St;Santa Fe;Arkansas;75677;A;29-04-2005;09-02-2008 4;Dwight;Adams;South Roosevelt Drive;Baton Rouge;Vermont;75677;A;15-02-2004;26-01-2007 […] The following graphs present the results of our tests: Unsurprisingly up to 16 threads, all files fit in the ZFS cache a.k.a L2ARC : once the cache is hot there is no performance difference depending on the underlying storage. From 16 threads upwards however, it is clear that IO becomes a bottleneck, having a good IO subsystem is thus key. Single-disk performance collapses whereas the Sun F5100 and ST6180 arrays allow the T4-1 to scale quite seamlessly. From 32 to 64 threads, the performance is almost constant with just a slow decline. For the database load tests, only the best IO configuration --using external storage devices-- were used, hosting the Oracle table spaces and redo log files. Using the Sun Storage F5100 array allows the T4-1 server to scale up to 48 parallel JVM processes before saturating the CPU. The final result is a staggering 646K lines per second insertion in an Oracle table using 48 parallel threads. Single-thread: Testing the single thread performance Seven different tests were performed on both servers. Given the fact that only one thread, thus one file was read, no IO bottleneck was involved, all data being served from the ZFS cache. Read File ? Filter ? Write File: Read file, filter data, write the filtered data in a new file. The filter is set on the “Status” column: only lines with status set to “A” are selected. This limits each output file to about 500 MB. Read File ? Load Database Table: Read file, insert into a single Oracle table. Average: Read file, compute the average of a numeric column, write the result in a new file. Division & Square Root: Read file, perform a division and square root on a numeric column, write the result data in a new file. Oracle DB Dump: Dump the content of an Oracle table (12.5M rows) into a CSV file. Transform: Read file, transform, write the result data in a new file. The transformations applied are: set the address column to upper case and add an extra column at the end, which is the concatenation of two columns. Sort: Read file, sort a numeric and alpha numeric column, write the result data in a new file. The following table and graph present the final results of the tests: Throughput unit is thousand lines per second processed (K lines/second). Improvement is the % of improvement between the T5140 and T4-1. Test T4-1 (Time s.) T5140 (Time s.) Improvement T4-1 (Throughput) T5140 (Throughput) Read/Filter/Write 125 806 645% 100 16 Read/Load Database 195 1111 570% 64 11 Average 96 557 580% 130 22 Division & Square Root 161 1054 655% 78 12 Oracle DB Dump 164 945 576% 76 13 Transform 159 1124 707% 79 11 Sort 251 1336 532% 50 9 The improvement of single-thread performance is quite dramatic: depending on the tests, the T4 is between 5.4 to 7 times faster than the T2+. It seems clear that the SPARC T4 processor has gone a long way filling the gap in single-thread performance, without sacrifying the multi-threaded capability as it still shows a very impressive scaling on heavy-duty multi-threaded jobs. Finally, as always at Oracle ISV Engineering, we are happy to help our ISV partners test their own applications on our platforms, so don't hesitate to contact us and let's see what the SPARC T4-based systems can do for your application! "As describe in this benchmark, Talend Enterprise Data Integration has overperformed on T4. I was generally happy to see that the T4 gave scaling opportunities for many scenarios like complex aggregations. Row by row insertion in Oracle DB is faster with more than 650,000 rows per seconds without using any bulk Oracle capabilities !" Cedric Carbone, Talend CTO.

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  • Remove/squash entries in a vertical hash

    - by Forkrul Assail
    I have a grid that represents an X, Y matrix, stored as a hash here. Some points on the X Y matrix may have values (as type string), and some may not. A typical grid could look like this: {[9, 5]=>"Alaina", [10, 3]=>"Courtney", [11, 1]=>"Gladys", [8, 7]=>"Alford", [14, 11]=>"Lesley", [17, 2]=>"Lawson", [0, 5]=>"Katrine", [2, 1]=>"Tyra", [3, 3]=>"Fredy", [1, 7]=>"Magnus", [6, 9]=>"Nels", [7, 11]=>"Kylie", [11, 0]=>"Kellen", [10, 2]=>"Johan", [14, 10]=>"Justice", [0, 4]=>"Barton", [2, 0]=>"Charley", [3, 2]=>"Magnolia", [1, 6]=>"Maximo", [7, 10]=>"Olga", [19, 5]=>"Isadore", [16, 3]=>"Delfina", [17, 1]=>"Noe", [20, 11]=>"Francis", [10, 5]=>"Creola", [9, 3]=>"Bulah", [8, 1]=>"Lempi", [11, 7]=>"Raquel", [13, 11]=>"Jace", [1, 5]=>"Garth", [3, 1]=>"Ernest", [2, 3]=>"Malcolm", [0, 7]=>"Alejandrin", [7, 9]=>"Marina", [6, 11]=>"Otilia", [16, 2]=>"Hailey", [20, 10]=>"Brandt", [8, 0]=>"Madeline", [9, 2]=>"Leanne", [13, 10]=>"Jenifer", [1, 4]=>"Humberto", [3, 0]=>"Nicholaus", [2, 2]=>"Nadia", [0, 6]=>"Abigail", [6, 10]=>"Zola", [20, 5]=>"Clementina", [23, 3]=>"Alvah", [19, 11]=>"Wallace", [11, 5]=>"Tracey", [8, 3]=>"Hulda", [9, 1]=>"Jedidiah", [10, 7]=>"Annetta", [12, 11]=>"Nicole", [2, 5]=>"Alison", [0, 1]=>"Wilma", [1, 3]=>"Shana", [3, 7]=>"Judd", [4, 9]=>"Lucio", [5, 11]=>"Hardy", [19, 10]=>"Immanuel", [9, 0]=>"Uriel", [8, 2]=>"Milton", [12, 10]=>"Elody", [5, 10]=>"Alexanne", [1, 2]=>"Lauretta", [0, 0]=>"Louvenia", [2, 4]=>"Adelia", [21, 5]=>"Erling", [18, 11]=>"Corene", [22, 3]=>"Haskell", [11, 11]=>"Leta", [10, 9]=>"Terrence", [14, 1]=>"Giuseppe", [15, 3]=>"Silas", [12, 5]=>"Johnnie", [4, 11]=>"Aurelie", [5, 9]=>"Meggie", [2, 7]=>"Phoebe", [0, 3]=>"Sister", [1, 1]=>"Violet", [3, 5]=>"Lilian", [18, 10]=>"Eusebio", [11, 10]=>"Emma", [15, 2]=>"Theodore", [14, 0]=>"Cassidy", [4, 10]=>"Edmund", [2, 6]=>"Claire", [0, 2]=>"Madisen", [1, 0]=>"Kasey", [3, 4]=>"Elijah", [17, 11]=>"Susana", [20, 1]=>"Nicklaus", [21, 3]=>"Kelsie", [10, 11]=>"Garnett", [11, 9]=>"Emanuel", [15, 1]=>"Louvenia", [14, 3]=>"Otho", [13, 5]=>"Vincenza", [3, 11]=>"Tate", [2, 9]=>"Beau", [5, 7]=>"Jason", [6, 1]=>"Jayde", [7, 3]=>"Lamont", [4, 5]=>"Curt", [17, 10]=>"Mack", [21, 2]=>"Lilyan", [10, 10]=>"Ruthe", [14, 2]=>"Georgianna", [4, 4]=>"Nyasia", [6, 0]=>"Sadie", [16, 11]=>"Emil", [21, 1]=>"Melba", [20, 3]=>"Delia", [3, 10]=>"Rosalee", [2, 8]=>"Myrtle", [7, 2]=>"Rigoberto", [14, 5]=>"Jedidiah", [13, 3]=>"Flavie", [12, 1]=>"Evie", [8, 9]=>"Olaf", [9, 11]=>"Stan", [20, 2]=>"Judge", [5, 5]=>"Cassie", [7, 1]=>"Gracie", [6, 3]=>"Armando", [4, 7]=>"Delia", [3, 9]=>"Marley", [16, 10]=>"Robyn", [2, 11]=>"Richie", [12, 0]=>"Gilberto", [13, 2]=>"Dedrick", [9, 10]=>"Liam", [5, 4]=>"Jabari", [7, 0]=>"Enola", [6, 2]=>"Lela", [3, 8]=>"Jade", [2, 10]=>"Johnson", [15, 5]=>"Willow", [12, 3]=>"Fredrick", [13, 1]=>"Beau", [9, 9]=>"Carlie", [8, 11]=>"Daisha", [6, 5]=>"Declan", [4, 1]=>"Carolina", [5, 3]=>"Cruz", [7, 7]=>"Jaime", [0, 9]=>"Anthony", [1, 11]=>"Esta", [13, 0]=>"Shaina", [12, 2]=>"Alec", [8, 10]=>"Lora", [6, 4]=>"Emely", [4, 0]=>"Rodger", [5, 2]=>"Cedrick", [0, 8]=>"Collin", [1, 10]=>"Armani", [16, 5]=>"Brooks", [19, 3]=>"Eleanora", [18, 1]=>"Alva", [7, 5]=>"Melissa", [5, 1]=>"Tabitha", [4, 3]=>"Aniya", [6, 7]=>"Marc", [1, 9]=>"Marjorie", [0, 11]=>"Arvilla", [19, 2]=>"Adela", [7, 4]=>"Zakary", [5, 0]=>"Emely", [4, 2]=>"Alison", [1, 8]=>"Lorenz", [0, 10]=>"Lisandro", [17, 5]=>"Aylin", [18, 3]=>"Giles", [19, 1]=>"Kyleigh", [8, 5]=>"Mary", [11, 3]=>"Claire", [10, 1]=>"Avis", [9, 7]=>"Manuela", [15, 11]=>"Chesley", [18, 2]=>"Kristopher", [24, 3]=>"Zola", [8, 4]=>"Pietro", [10, 0]=>"Delores", [11, 2]=>"Timmy", [15, 10]=>"Khalil", [18, 5]=>"Trudie", [17, 3]=>"Rafael", [16, 1]=>"Anthony"} What I need to do though, is basically remove all the empty entries. Let's say [17,3] = Raphael does not have an element in front of if (let's say - no [16,3] exists) then [17,3] should become [16,3] etc. So basically all empty items will be popped off the vertical (row) structure of the hash. Are there functions I should have a look at or is there an easy squash-like method that would just remove blanks and adjust and move other items? Thanks in advance for your help.

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