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• Adventures in Scrum: Lesson 1 &ndash; The failed Sprint

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  I recently had a conversation with a product owner that wanted to have the Scrum team broken up into smaller units so that less time was wasted on the Scrum Ceremonies! Their complaint was around the need in Scrum to have the entire “Team” (7+-2) involved in the sizing of the work during the “Sprint Planning Meeting”.  The standard flippant answer of all Scrum professionals, “Well that's not Scrum”, does not get you any brownie points in these situations. The response could be “Well we are not doing Scrum then” which in turn leads to “We are doing Scrum…But, we have split the scrum team into units of 2/3 so that they can concentrate on a specific area of work”. While this may work, it is not Scrum and should not be called so… It is just a form of Agile. Don’t get me wrong at this stage, there is nothing wrong with Agile, just don’t call it Scrum. The reason that the Product Owner wants to do this is that, in effect, through a number of miscommunications and failings in our implementation of Scrum, there was NO unit of potentially Shippable software at the end of the first sprint. It does not matter to them that most Scrum teams will fail the first Sprint, even those that are high performing teams. Remember it is the product owners their money! We should NOT break up scrum teams into smaller units for the purpose of having less people tied up in the Scrum Ceremonies. The amount of backlog the Team selects is solely up to the Team… Only the Team can assess what it can accomplish over the upcoming Sprint. - Scrum Guide, Scrum.org The entire team must accept the work and in order to understand what they can accept they must be free to size it as a team. This both encourages common understanding and increases visibility on why team members think a task is of a particular size. This has the benefit of increasing the knowledge of the entire team in the problem domain. A new Team often first realizes that it will either sink or swim as a Team, not individually, in this meeting. The Team realizes that it must rely on itself. As it realizes this, it starts to self-organize to take on the characteristics and behaviour of a real Team. - Scrum Guide, Scrum.org This paragraph goes to the why of having the whole team at the meeting; The goal of Scrum it to produce a unit of potentially shippable software at the end of every Sprint. In order to achieve this we need high performing teams and this is what Scrum as a framework has been optimised to produce. I think that our Product Owner is understandably upset over loosing two weeks work and is losing sight the end goal of Scrum in the failures of the moment. As the man spending the money, I completely understand his perspective and I think that we should not have started Scrum on an internal project, but selected a customer  that is open to the ideas and complications of Scrum. So, what should we have NOT done on our first Scrum project: Should not have had 3 interns as the only on site resource – This lead to bad practices as the experienced guys were not there helping and correcting as they usually would. Should not have had the only experienced guys offsite – With both the experienced technical guys in completely different time zones it was difficult to get time for questions. Helping the guys on site was just plain impossible. Should not have used a part time ScrumMaster – Although the ScrumMaster attended all of the Ceremonies, because they are only in 2 full days of the week it makes it difficult for the team to raise impediments as they go. Should not have used a proxy product owner. – This was probably the worst decision that was made. Mainly because the proxy product owner did not have the same vision as the product owner. While Scrum does not explicitly reject the idea of a Proxy Product Owner, I do not think it works very well in practice. The “single wringable neck” needs to contain both the Money and the Vision as well as attending the required meetings. I will be brining all of these things up at the Sprint Retrospective and we will learn from our mistakes and move on. Do, Inspect then Adapt…   Technorati Tags: Scrum,Sprint Planing,Sprint Retrospective,Scrum.org,Scrum Guide,Scrum Ceremonies,Scrummaster,Product Owner Need Help? Professional Scrum Developer Training SSW has six Professional Scrum Developer Trainers who specialise in training your developers in implementing Scrum with Microsoft's Visual Studio ALM tools.

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• Cowboy Agile?

  - by Robert May

  In a previous post, I outlined the rules of Scrum.  This post details one of those rules. I’ve often heard similar phrases around Scrum that clue me in to someone who doesn’t understand Scrum.  The phrases go something like this: “We don’t do Agile because the idea of letting people just do whatever they want is wrong.  We believe in a more structured approach.” (i.e. Work is Prison, and I’m the Warden!) “I love Agile.  Agile lets us do whatever we want!” (Cowboy Agile?) “We’re Agile, but we use a process that I’ve created.” (Cowboy Agile?) All of those phrases have one thing in common:  The assumption that Agile, and I mean Scrum, lets you do whatever you want.  This is simply not true. Executing Scrum properly requires more dedication, rigor, and diligence than happens in most traditional development methods. Scrum and Waterfall Compared Since Scrum and Waterfall are two of the most commonly used methodologies, a little bit of contrasting and comparing is in order. Waterfall Scrum A project manager defines all tasks and then manages the tasks that team members are working on. The team members define the tasks and estimates of the stories for the current iteration.  Any team member may work on any task in the iteration. Usually only a few milestones that need to be met, the milestones are measured in months, and these milestones are expected to be missed.  Little work is ever done to improve estimates and poor estimators can hide behind high estimates. Stories must be delivered every iteration, milestones are measured in hours, and the team is expected to figure out why their estimates were wrong, even when they were under.  Repeated misses can get the entire team fired. Partially completed work is normal. Partially completed work doesn’t count. Nobody knows the task you’re working on. Everyone knows what you’re working on, whether or not you’re making progress and how much longer you think its going to take, in hours. Little requirement to show working code.  Prototypes are ok. Working code must be shown each iteration.  No smoke and mirrors allowed.  Testing is done in lengthy cycles at the end of development.  Developers aren’t held accountable. Testing is part of the team.  If the testers don’t accept the story as complete, the team can’t count it.  Complete means that the story’s functionality works as designed.  The team can’t have any open defects on the story. Velocity is rarely truly measured and difficult to evaluate. Velocity is integral to the process and can be seen at a glance and everyone in the company knows what it is. A business analyst writes requirements.  Designers mock up screens.  Developers hide behind “I did it just like the spec doc told me to and made the screen exactly like the picture” Developers are expected to collaborate in real time.  If a design is bad or lacks needed details, the developers are required to get it right in the iteration, because all software must be functional.  Designers and Business Analysts are part of the team and must do their work in iterations slightly ahead of the developers. Upper Management is often surprised.  “You told me things were going well two months ago!” Management receives updates at the end of every iteration showing them exactly what the team did and how that compares to what' is remaining in the backlog.  Managers know every iteration what their money is buying. Status meetings are rare or don’t occur.  Email is a primary form of communication. Teams coordinate every single day with each other and use other high bandwidth communication channels to make sure they’re making progress.  Email is used only as a last resort.  Instead, team members stand up, walk to each other, and talk, face to face.  If that’s not possible, they pick up the phone. IF someone asks what happened, its at the end of a lengthy development cycle measured in months, and nobody really knows why it happened. Someone asks what happened every iteration.  The team talks about what happened, and then adapts to make sure that what happened either never happens again or happens every time.   That’s probably enough for now.  As you can see, a lot is required of Scrum teams! One of the key differences in Scrum is that the burden for many activities is shifted to a group of people who share responsibility, instead of a single person having responsibility.  This is a very good thing, since small groups usually come up with better and more insightful work than single individuals.  This shift also results in better velocity.  Team members can take vacations and the rest of the team simply picks up the slack.  With Waterfall, if a key team member takes a vacation, delays can ensue. Scrum requires much more out of every team member and as a result, Scrum teams outperform non-Scrum teams working 60 hour weeks. Recommended Reading Everyone considering Scrum should read Mike Cohn’s excellent book, User Stories Applied. Technorati Tags: Agile,Scrum,Waterfall

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• RDA Health Checks for SOA

  - by ShawnBailey

  What is a health check in RDA? A health check evaluates something in your environment to determine whether a change needs to be considered in order to avoid a problem or optimize fuctionality. Examples of what this 'something' might be are: Configuration Parameters JVM Options Runtime Statistics What have we done for SOA? In the latest release of RDA, 4.30, we have added a Rule Set for SOA called 'Oracle SOA 11g (11.1.1) Post Installation (Generic)'. This Rule Set contains 14 SOA related health checks. These checks were all derived from common issues / solutions we see in support of the SOA product. Many of the recommendations come from the product documentation while others are covered in the SOA Knowledge Base. Our goal is that you will be able to easily identify the areas of concern and understand the guidance available from the output of the Rule Set. Running the health checks for SOA The rules that the checks use are installed with RDA and bundled by product or functional area into what are called 'Rule Sets'. To view the available Rule Sets simply run the command from the RDA home location: rda.cmd (or .sh) -dT hcve This will bring up a list of the available HCVE (Health Check / Verification Engine) Rule Sets. Each Rule Set contains a group of related rules that are used for evalutation and display of results. A rule can be considered synonymous with a single health check and they are assigned an ID, Name and Description that can be seen when they are executed. The Rule Set for SOA is option number 11 and you just enter this selection at the prompt. The Rule Set will then execute to completion. After running an HCVE Rule Set the tool will write the output to the RDA_HOME/output folder. The simplest way to view the output is to drag the .htm file to a browser but of course it can also be uploaded to a Service Request for evaluation by Oracle Support. Many of the Rule Sets will prompt you for information before they can execute their rules but the SOA Rule Set will identify the SOA domains configured in your RDA setup.cfg file. This means that you don't need to answer all of the questions again about where stuff is but it also means that you must have configured RDA for SOA. To run the Rule Set: Download the latest version of RDA from MOS Doc ID 314422.1 Configure RDA for your SOA domains. Detailed steps can be found here In it's simplest form the command is 'rda.cmd (.sh) -S SOA' Go to the RDA home location and enter the command 'rda.cmd (or .sh) -dT hcve' Select option '11' It should be noted that this our first release of a SOA Rule Set so there will probably be some things we need to clean up or fix. None of these rules will actually modify anything on your system as they are read only and do the evaluations internally. Please let us know if you have any issues with the rules or ideas for new ones so we can make them as useful as possible. The Checks Here is a list of the SOA health checks by ID, Name and Description. ID Name Description A00100 SOA Domain Homes Lists the SOA domains that were indentified from the RDA setup.cfg file A00200 Coherence Protocol Conflict Checks to see if you have both Unicast and Multicast configured in the same domain. Checks both the setDomainEnv and config.xml entries (if it exists). We recommend Unicast with fully qualified host names or IP addresses. A00210 Coherence Fully Qualified Host Checks that the host names are fully qualified or that IP addresses are used. Will fail if unqualified host names are detected. A00220 Unicast Local Host Checks that the Coherence localhost is specified for use with Unicast A00300 JTA Timeout Checks that the JTA timeout is configured for the domain and lists the value. The bundled rule will only list the current values of the JTA timeout for each SOA Domain. In the future the rule with fail with a warning if the value is 300 seconds or lower. It is recommended that timeouts follow the pattern 'syncMaxWaitTime' < EJB Timeouts < JTA Timeout. The 300 second value is important because the EJB Timeouts default to 300 seconds. Additional information can be found in MOS Doc ID 880313.1. A00310 XA Max Time Checks that the JTA Maximum XA call time is set for the domain. Fails if it is not explicitly set or if the value is less than or equal to the default of 12000 ms. A00320 XA Timeout Checks that the XA timeout is enabled and that the value is '0' for the SOA Data Source (SOADataSource-jdbc.xml) A00330 JDBC Statement Timeout Checks that the Statement Timeout is set for all SOA Data Sources. Fails if the value is not set or if it is set to the default of -1. A00400 XA Driver Checks that the SOA Data Source is configured to use an XA driver. Fails if it is not. A00410 JDBC Capacity Settings Checks that the minimum and maximum capacity are equal for all SOA Data Sources. Fails if they are not and lists specifically which data sources failed. A00500 SOA Roles Checks that the default SOA roles 'SOAAdmin' and 'SOAOperator' are configured for the soa-infra application in the file sytem-jazn-data.xml. Fails if they are not. A00700 SOA-INFRA Deployment Checks that the soa-infra application is deployed to either a cluster, all members of a cluster or a stand alone server. A00710 SOA Deployments Checks that the SOA related applications are deployed to the same domain members as soa-infra. A00720 SOA Library Deployments Checks that the SOA related libraries are deployed to the same domain members as soa-infra. A00730 Data Source Deployments Checks that the SOA Data Sources are all targeted to the same domain members as soa-infra

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• MSCC: Career & IT Fair 2014

  Already a couple of weeks ago, I've been addressed by Ibraahim and Yunus to see whether it would be interesting to participate in the 1st Career & IT Fair organised by the UoM Computer Club. Well, luckily we met at the Global Windows Azure Bootcamp and I wasn't too sure whether it would be possible for me to attend after all. The main reason is given because of work demand and furthermore due to the fact that the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community currently has no advertising material at all. Here's the brief statement of the event: "The UOM Students' Computer Club in collaboration with the UOM Students' Union and UOM CSE Department is organising a 'Career & IT Fair' on the 23rd and 24th April 2014. This event has for objective to provide a platform to tertiary students, secondary students as well as vocational students, the opportunity to meet job recruiters." Luckily, I was reminded that the 23rd is a Wednesday, and therefore I decided that it might be interesting to move our weekly Code & Coffee session to the university and hence be able to attend the career fair. As it turned out it was a great choice and thankfully Pritvi, Nadim as well as Ishwon volunteered to be around at the "community booth". Thankfully, the computer club gave us - the MSCC and the LUGM - one of their spaces in the lobby area of the Paul Octave Wiéhé Auditorium. My impression about the event Very well and professionally organised. Seriously, the lads over at the UoM Computer Club did a great job in organising their 2 days event, and felt very comfortable at any time. Actually, it was kind of amusing to some of the members constantly running around and checking everything. Even though that the whole process went smooth and easy off the hand. There were a couple of interesting pieces of information and announcements during the opening ceremony. For example, the Computer Science faculty is a very young one and has been initiated back in 1988 only - just by 4 staff members at that time. Now, after 25 years they have achieved quite a lot and there are currently 1.000+ active students attending the numerous lectures and courses. But there is no room to rest on previous achievements, and I was kind of surprised to hear that there are plans to extend the campus, and offer new lectures in the fields of nanotechnology, big data handling, and - crossing fingers - the introduction and establishment of a space control centre. Mauritius is already part of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) and hopefully there will be more activities into that direction in the near future. Community - Awareness and collaboration As stated earlier, I could only spent one morning but luckily other members of the MSCC and the LUGM stayed during the whole two days and provided answers to any interested person. As for me, I took the opportunity to get in touch with the other companies in the lobby. Mainly, to create some awareness about our IT communities but also to see whether there might be options for future engagement in common activities, too. So far, I was able to speak to representatives of the following companies: ACCA Mauritius Business at Work Infomil LinkByNet Microsoft Indian Ocean Islands & French Pacific Spherinity Training Institute Spoon Consulting Ltd. State Informatics Ltd. Unfortunately, I only had a quick chat with an HR representative of LinkByNet but I fully count on our MSCC members like Nitin or LUGM member Ronny to spread our intentions over there.  So far, all of the representatives were really interested in our concepts and activities and I'm currently catching up with an introduction flyer for the MSCC that I'm going to send out to all those contacts via mail. It would be great to have more craftsmen as well as professional support on board. Some pictures from the event MSCC: Fantastic outlook for the near future. Announcements were made on Big data, nanotechnology, and space control centre in Mauritius. Interesting! MSCC: The lobby area was cramped with students. Great way to exchange and network. Good luck to all candidates! Passing the relay staff to... I recommend you to continue to read about the first Career & IT Fair on Ish's blog. He has a great summary and more details on those two days of IT activities than I have. Thanks and feel free to leave a comment (or two)... 

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• Death March

  - by Nick Harrison

  It is a horrible sight to watch a project fail. There are few things as bad. Watching a project fail regardless of the reason is almost like sitting in a room with a "Dementor" from Harry Potter. It will literally suck all of the life and joy out of the room. Nearly every project that I have seen fail has failed because of political challenges or management challenges. Sometimes there are technical challenges that bring a project to its knees, but usually projects fail for less technical reasons. Here a few observations about projects failing for political reasons. Both the client and the consultants have to be committed to seeing the project succeed. Put simply, you cannot solve a problem when the primary stake holders do not truly want it solved. This could come from a consultant being more interested in extended the engagement. It could come from a client being afraid of what will happen to them once the problem is solved. It could come from disenfranchised stake holders. Sometimes a project is beset on all sides. When you find yourself working on a project that has this kind of threat, do all that you can to constrain the disruptive influences of the bad apples. If their influence cannot be constrained, you truly have no choice but to move on to a new project. Tough choices have to be made to make a project successful. These choices will affect everyone involved in the project. These choices may involve users not getting a change request through that they want. Developers may not get to use the tools that they want. Everyone may have to put in more hours that they originally planned. Steps may be skipped. Compromises will be made, but if everyone stays committed to the end goal, you can still be successful. If individuals start feeling disgruntled or resentful of the compromises reached, the project can easily be derailed. When everyone is not working towards a common goal, it is like driving with one foot on the break and one foot on the accelerator. Not only will you not get to where you are planning, you will also damage the car and possibly the passengers as well.   It is important to always keep the end result in mind. Regardless of the development methodology being followed, the end goal is not comprehensive documentation. In all cases, it is working software. Comprehensive documentation is nice but useless if the software doesn't work.   You can never get so distracted by the next goal that you fail to meet the current goal. Most projects are ultimately marathons. This means that the pace must be sustainable. Regardless of the temptations, you cannot burn the team alive. Processes will fail. Technology will get outdated. Requirements will change, but your people will adapt and learn and grow. If everyone on the team from the most senior analyst to the most junior recruit trusts and respects each other, there is no challenge that they cannot overcome. When everyone involved faces challenges with the attitude "This is my project and I will not let it fail" "You are my teammate and I will not let you fail", you will in fact not fail. When you find a team that embraces this attitude, protect it at all cost. Edward Yourdon wrote a book called Death March. In it, he included a graph for categorizing Death March project types based on the Happiness of the Team and the Chances of Success.   Chances are we have all worked on Death March projects. We will all most likely work on more Death March projects in the future. To a certain extent, they seem to be inevitable, but they should never be suicide or ugly. Ideally, they can all be "Mission Impossible" where everyone works hard, has fun, and knows that there is good chance that they will succeed. If you are ever lucky enough to work on such a project, you will know that sense of pride that comes from the eventual success. You will recognize a profound bond with the team that you worked with. Chances are it will change your life or at least your outlook on life. If you have not already read this book, get a copy and study it closely. It will help you survive and make the most out of your next Death March project.

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• Visual Studio &amp; TFS 11 &ndash; List of extensions and upgrades

  - by terje

  This post is a list of the extensions I recommend for use with Visual Studio 11. It’s coming up all the time – what to install, where are the download sites, last version, etc etc, and thus I thought it better to post it here and keep it updated. The basics are Visual Studio 11 connected to a Team Foundation Server 11. Note that we now are at Beta time, and that also many live in a side-by-side environment with Visual Studio 2010.  The side-by-side is supported by VS 11. However, if you installed a component supporting VS11 before you installed VS11, then you need to reinstall it.  The VSIX installer will understand that it is to apply those only for VS11, and will not touch – nor remove – the same for VS2010. A good example here is the Power Commands. The list is more or less in priority order. The focus is to get a setup which can be used for a complete coding experience for the whole ALM process. The list of course reflects what I use for my work , so it is by no means complete, and for some of the tools there are equally useful alternatives. Many components have not yet arrived with VS11 support.  I will add them as they arrive.  The components directly associated with Visual Studio from Microsoft should be common, see the Microsoft column. If you still need the VS2010 extensions, here they are: The extensions for VS 2010.   Components ready for VS 11, both upgrades and new ones Product Notes Latest Version License Applicable to Microsoft TFS Power Tools Beta 111 Side-by-side with TFS 2010 should work, but remove the Shell Extension from the TFS 2010 power tool first. March 2012(11.0.50321.0) Free TFS integration Yes ReSharper EAP for Beta 11 (updates very often, nearly daily) 7.0.3.261 pr. 16/3/2012 Free as EAP, Licensed later Coding & Quality No Power Commands1 Just reinstall, even if you already have it for VS2010. The reinstall will then apply it to VS 11 1.0.2.3 Free Coding Yes Visualization and Modelling SDK for beta Info here and here. Another download site and info here. Also download from MSDN Subscription site. Requires VS 11 Beta SDK 11 Free now, otherwise Part of MSDN Subscription Modeling Yes Visual Studio 11 Beta SDK Published 16.2.2012     Yes Visual Studio 11 Feedback tool1 Use this to really ease the process of sending bugs back to Microsoft. 1.1 Free as prerelase Visual Studio Yes             #1 Get via Visual Studio’s Tools | Extension Manager (or The Code Gallery). (From Adam : All these are auto updated by the Extension Manager in Visual Studio) #2 Works with ultimate only Components we wait for, not yet in a VS 11 version Product Notes Latest Version License Applicable to Microsoft       Coding Yes Inmeta Build Explorer     Free TFS integration No Build Manager Community Build Manager. Info here from Jakob   Free TFS Integration No Code Contracts Coming real soon   Free Coding & Quality Yes Code Contracts Editor Extensions     Free Coding & Quality Yes Web Std Update     Free Coding (Web) Yes (MSFT) Web Essentials     Free Coding (Web) Yes (MSFT) DotPeek It says up to .Net 4.0, but some tests indicates it seems to be able to handle 4.5. 1.0.0.7999 Free Coding/Investigation No Just Decompile Also says up to .net 4.0   Free Coding/Investigation No dotTrace     Licensed Quality No NDepend   Licensed Quality No tangible T4 editor     Lite version Free (Good enough) Coding (T4 templates) No Pex Moles are now integrated and improved in VS 11 as a new library called Fakes.     Coding & Unit Testing Yes Components which are now integrated into VS 11 Product Notes Productivity Power Tools Features integrated into VS11, with a few exceptions, I don’t think you will miss those. Fakes  Was Moles in 2010. Fakes is improved and made into a product.  NuGet Manager Included in the install, but still an extension package. Info here. Product installation, upgrades and patches for VS/TFS 11   Product Notes Date Applicable to Visual Studio 11 & TFS 11 Beta This is the beta release, and you are free to download and try it out. March 2012 Visual Studio and TFS SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 Cumulative Update 4 The TFS 11 requires the CU1 at least, but you should go up to at least CU4, since this update solves a ghost record problem that otherwise may cause your TFS database to not release records the way it should when you clean it up, see this post for more information on that issue.  Oct 2011 SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1

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• C#/.NET Little Wonders &ndash; Cross Calling Constructors

  - by James Michael Hare

  Just a small post today, it’s the final iteration before our release and things are crazy here!  This is another little tidbit that I love using, and it should be fairly common knowledge, yet I’ve noticed many times that less experienced developers tend to have redundant constructor code when they overload their constructors. The Problem – repetitive code is less maintainable Let’s say you were designing a messaging system, and so you want to create a class to represent the properties for a Receiver, so perhaps you design a ReceiverProperties class to represent this collection of properties. Perhaps, you decide to make ReceiverProperties immutable, and so you have several constructors that you can use for alternative construction: 1: // Constructs a set of receiver properties. 2: public ReceiverProperties(ReceiverType receiverType, string source, bool isDurable, bool isBuffered) 3: { 4: ReceiverType = receiverType; 5: Source = source; 6: IsDurable = isDurable; 7: IsBuffered = isBuffered; 8: } 9: 10: // Constructs a set of receiver properties with buffering on by default. 11: public ReceiverProperties(ReceiverType receiverType, string source, bool isDurable) 12: { 13: ReceiverType = receiverType; 14: Source = source; 15: IsDurable = isDurable; 16: IsBuffered = true; 17: } 18:  19: // Constructs a set of receiver properties with buffering on and durability off. 20: public ReceiverProperties(ReceiverType receiverType, string source) 21: { 22: ReceiverType = receiverType; 23: Source = source; 24: IsDurable = false; 25: IsBuffered = true; 26: } Note: keep in mind this is just a simple example for illustration, and in same cases default parameters can also help clean this up, but they have issues of their own. While strictly speaking, there is nothing wrong with this code, logically, it suffers from maintainability flaws.  Consider what happens if you add a new property to the class?  You have to remember to guarantee that it is set appropriately in every constructor call. This can cause subtle bugs and becomes even uglier when the constructors do more complex logic, error handling, or there are numerous potential overloads (especially if you can’t easily see them all on one screen’s height). The Solution – cross-calling constructors I’d wager nearly everyone knows how to call your base class’s constructor, but you can also cross-call to one of the constructors in the same class by using the this keyword in the same way you use base to call a base constructor. 1: // Constructs a set of receiver properties. 2: public ReceiverProperties(ReceiverType receiverType, string source, bool isDurable, bool isBuffered) 3: { 4: ReceiverType = receiverType; 5: Source = source; 6: IsDurable = isDurable; 7: IsBuffered = isBuffered; 8: } 9: 10: // Constructs a set of receiver properties with buffering on by default. 11: public ReceiverProperties(ReceiverType receiverType, string source, bool isDurable) 12: : this(receiverType, source, isDurable, true) 13: { 14: } 15:  16: // Constructs a set of receiver properties with buffering on and durability off. 17: public ReceiverProperties(ReceiverType receiverType, string source) 18: : this(receiverType, source, false, true) 19: { 20: } Notice, there is much less code.  In addition, the code you have has no repetitive logic.  You can define the main constructor that takes all arguments, and the remaining constructors with defaults simply cross-call the main constructor, passing in the defaults. Yes, in some cases default parameters can ease some of this for you, but default parameters only work for compile-time constants (null, string and number literals).  For example, if you were creating a TradingDataAdapter that relied on an implementation of ITradingDao which is the data access object to retreive records from the database, you might want two constructors: one that takes an ITradingDao reference, and a default constructor which constructs a specific ITradingDao for ease of use: 1: public TradingDataAdapter(ITradingDao dao) 2: { 3: _tradingDao = dao; 4:  5: // other constructor logic 6: } 7:  8: public TradingDataAdapter() 9: { 10: _tradingDao = new SqlTradingDao(); 11:  12: // same constructor logic as above 13: }   As you can see, this isn’t something we can solve with a default parameter, but we could with cross-calling constructors: 1: public TradingDataAdapter(ITradingDao dao) 2: { 3: _tradingDao = dao; 4:  5: // other constructor logic 6: } 7:  8: public TradingDataAdapter() 9: : this(new SqlTradingDao()) 10: { 11: }   So in cases like this where you have constructors with non compiler-time constant defaults, default parameters can’t help you and cross-calling constructors is one of your best options. Summary When you have just one constructor doing the job of initializing the class, you can consolidate all your logic and error-handling in one place, thus ensuring that your behavior will be consistent across the constructor calls. This makes the code more maintainable and even easier to read.  There will be some cases where cross-calling constructors may be sub-optimal or not possible (if, for example, the overloaded constructors take completely different types and are not just “defaulting” behaviors). You can also use default parameters, of course, but default parameter behavior in a class hierarchy can be problematic (default values are not inherited and in fact can differ) so sometimes multiple constructors are actually preferable. Regardless of why you may need to have multiple constructors, consider cross-calling where you can to reduce redundant logic and clean up the code.   Technorati Tags: C#,.NET,Little Wonders

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• Blank screen after installing nvidia restricted driver

  - by LaMinifalda

  I have a new machine with a MSI N560GTX Ti Twin Frozr II/OC graphic card and MSI PH67A-C43 (B3) main board. If i install the current nvidia restricted driver and reboot the machine on Natty (64-bit), then i only get a black screen after reboot and my system does not respond. I can´t see the login screen. On nvidia web page i saw that the current driver is 270.41.06. Is that driver used as current driver? Btw, i am an ubuntu/linux beginner and therefore not very familiar with ubuntu. What can i do to solve the black screen problem? EDIT: Setting the nomodeset parameter does not solve the problem. After ubuntu start, first i see the ubuntu logo, then strange pixels and at the end the black screen. HELP! EDIT2: Thank you, but setting the "video=vesa:off gfxpayload=text" parameters do no solve the problem too. Same result as in last edit. HELP. I would like to see Unity. This is my grub: GRUB_DEFAULT=0 GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0 GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=true GRUB_TIMEOUT=10 GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian` GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="video=vesa:off gfxpayload=text nomodeset quiet splash" GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=" vga=794" EDIT3: I dont know if it is important. If this edit is unnecessary and helpless I will delete it. There are some log files (Xorg.0.log - Xorg.4.log). I dont know how these log files relate to each other. Please, check the errors listed below. In Xorg.1.log I see the following error: [ 20.603] (EE) Failed to initialize GLX extension (ComIatible NVIDIA X driver not found) In Xorg.2.log I see the following error: [ 25.971] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/libfb.so [ 25.971] (**) NVIDIA(0): Depth 24, (--) framebuffer bpp 32 [ 25.971] (==) NVIDIA(0): RGB weight 888 [ 25.971] (==) NVIDIA(0): Default visual is TrueColor [ 25.971] (==) NVIDIA(0): Using gamma correction (1.0, 1.0, 1.0) [ 26.077] (EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize the NVIDIA GPU at PCI:1:0:0. Please [ 26.078] (EE) NVIDIA(0): check your system's kernel log for additional error [ 26.078] (EE) NVIDIA(0): messages and refer to Chapter 8: Common Problems in the [ 26.078] (EE) NVIDIA(0): README for additional information. [ 26.078] (EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize the NVIDIA graphics device! [ 26.078] (II) UnloadModule: "nvidia" [ 26.078] (II) Unloading nvidia [ 26.078] (II) UnloadModule: "wfb" [ 26.078] (II) Unloading wfb [ 26.078] (II) UnloadModule: "fb" [ 26.078] (II) Unloading fb [ 26.078] (EE) Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration. [ 26.078] Fatal server error: [ 26.078] no screens found [ 26.078] Please consult the The X.Org Found [...] In Xorg.4.log I see the following errors: [ 15.437] (**) NVIDIA(0): Depth 24, (--) framebuffer bpp 32 [ 15.437] (==) NVIDIA(0): RGB weight 888 [ 15.437] (==) NVIDIA(0): Default visual is TrueColor [ 15.437] (==) NVIDIA(0): Using gamma correction (1.0, 1.0, 1.0) [ 15.703] (II) NVIDIA(0): NVIDIA GPU GeForce GTX 560 Ti (GF114) at PCI:1:0:0 (GPU-0) [ 15.703] (--) NVIDIA(0): Memory: 1048576 kBytes [ 15.703] (--) NVIDIA(0): VideoBIOS: 70.24.11.00.00 [ 15.703] (II) NVIDIA(0): Detected PCI Express Link width: 16X [ 15.703] (--) NVIDIA(0): Interlaced video modes are supported on this GPU [ 15.703] (--) NVIDIA(0): Connected display device(s) on GeForce GTX 560 Ti at [ 15.703] (--) NVIDIA(0): PCI:1:0:0 [ 15.703] (--) NVIDIA(0): none [ 15.706] (EE) NVIDIA(0): No display devices found for this X screen. [ 15.943] (II) UnloadModule: "nvidia" [ 15.943] (II) Unloading nvidia [ 15.943] (II) UnloadModule: "wfb" [ 15.943] (II) Unloading wfb [ 15.943] (II) UnloadModule: "fb" [ 15.943] (II) Unloading fb [ 15.943] (EE) Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration. [ 15.943] Fatal server error: [ 15.943] no screens found EDIT4 There was a file /etc/X11/xorg.conf. As fossfreedom suggested I executed sudo mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup However, there is still the black screen after reboot. EDIT5 Neutro's advice (reinstalling the headers) did not solve the problem, too. :-( Any further help is appreciated! EDIT6 I just installed driver 173.xxx. After reboot the system shows me only "Checking battery state". Just for information. I will google the problem, but help is also appreciated! ;-) EDIT7 When using the free driver (Ubuntu says that the free driver is in use and activated), Xorg.0.log shows the following errors: [ 9.267] (II) LoadModule: "nouveau" [ 9.267] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/nouveau_drv.so [ 9.267] (II) Module nouveau: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 9.267] compiled for 1.10.0, module version = 0.0.16 [ 9.267] Module class: X.Org Video Driver [ 9.267] ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 10.0 [ 9.267] (II) LoadModule: "nv" [ 9.267] (WW) Warning, couldn't open module nv [ 9.267] (II) UnloadModule: "nv" [ 9.267] (II) Unloading nv [ 9.267] (EE) Failed to load module "nv" (module does not exist, 0) [ 9.267] (II) LoadModule: "vesa" [...] [ 9.399] drmOpenDevice: node name is /dev/dri/card14 [ 9.402] drmOpenDevice: node name is /dev/dri/card15 [ 9.406] (EE) [drm] failed to open device [ 9.406] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/vesa_drv.so [ 9.406] (WW) Falling back to old probe method for fbdev [ 9.406] (II) Loading sub module "fbdevhw" [ 9.406] (II) LoadModule: "fbdevhw" EDIT8 In the meanwhile i tried to install WIN7 64 bit on my machine. As a result i got a BSOD after installing the nvidia driver. :-) For this reason i sent my new machine back to the hardware reseller. I will inform you as soon as i have a new system. Thank you all for the great help and support. EDIT9 In the meanwhile I have a complete new system with "only" a MSI N460GTX Hawk, but more RAM. The system works perfect. :-) The original N560GTX had a hardware defect. Is is possible to close this question? THX!

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• Some mail details about Orange Mauritius

  Being an internet service provider is not easy after all for a lot of companies. Luckily, there are quite some good international operators in this world. For example Orange Mauritius aka Mauritius Telecom aka Wanadoo(?) aka MyT here in Mauritius. The local circumstances give them a quasi-monopol position on fixed lines for telephony and therefore cable-based DSL internet connectivity. So far, not bad but as usual... the details. Just for the records, I am only using the services of Orange for mobile but friends and customers are bound, eh stuck, with other services of Orange Mauritius. And usually, being the IT guy, they get in touch with me to complain about problems or to ask questions on either their ADSL / MyT connection, mail services or whatever. Most of those issues are user-related and easily to solve by tweaking the configuration of their computer a little bit but sometimes it's getting weird. Using Orange ADSL... somewhere else Now, let's imagine we are an Orange ADSL customer for ages and we are using their mail services with our very own mail address like "[email protected]". We configured our mail client like Thunderbird, Outlook Express, Outlook or Windows Mail as publicly described, and we are able to receive and send emails like a champion. No problems at all, the world is green. Did I mention that we have a laptop? Ok, let's take our movable piece of information technology and visit a friend here on the island. Not surprising, he is also customer of Orange, so we can read and answer emails. But Orange is not the online internet service provider and one day, we happen to hang out with someone that uses Emtel via WiMAX or UMTS.. And the fun starts... We can still receive and read emails from our Orange mail account and the IT world is still bright but try to send mails to someone outside the domain "@intnet.mu" or "@orange.mu". Your mail client will deny sending mail with SMTP message 5.1.0 "blah not allowed". First guess, there is problem with the mail client, maybe magically the configuration changed over-night. But no it is still working at home... So, there is for sure a problem with the guy's internet connection. At least, it is his fault not to have Orange internet services, so it can not work properly... The Orange Mail FAQ After some more frustation we finally checkout the Orange Mail FAQ to see whether this (obviously?) common problem has been described already. Sorry, but those FAQ entries are even more confusing as it is not really clear how to handle this scenario. Best of all is that most of the entries are still refering to use servers of the domain "intnet.mu". I mean Orange will disable those systems in favour of the domain "orange.mu" in the near future and does not amend their FAQs. Come on, guys! Ok, settings for POP3 are there. Hm, what about the secure version POP3S? No signs at all... Even changing your mail client to use password encryption with STARTTLS is not allowed at all. Use "bow.intnet.mu" for incoming mail... Ahhh, pretty obvious host name. I mean, at least something like pop.intnet.mu or pop3.intnet.mu would have been more accurate. Funny of all, the hostname "pop.orange.mu" is accessible to receive your mail account. Alright, checking SMTP options for authentication or other like POP-before-SMTP or whatever well-known and established mechanism to send emails are described. I guess that spotting a whale or shark in Mauritian waters would be easier. Trial and error on SMTP settings reveal that neither STARTTLS or any other connection / password encryption is available. Using SSL/TLS on SMTP only reveals that there is no service answering your request. Calling customer service So, we have to bite into the bitter apple and get in touch with Orange customer service and complain/explain them our case and ask for advice. After some hiccups, we finally manage to get hold of someone competent in mail services and we receive the golden spoon of mail configuration made by Orange Mauritius: SMTP hostname: smtpauth.intnet.mu And the world of IT is surprisingly green again. Customer satisfaction? Dear Orange Mauritius, what's the problem with this information? Are you scared of mail spammer? Why isn't there any case in your FAQs? Ok, talking about your FAQs - simply said: they are badly outdated! Configure your mail client to use server name based in the domain intnet.mu but specify your account username with orange.mu as domain part. Although, that there are servers available on the domain orange.mu after all. So, why don't you provide current information like this: POP3 server name: pop.orange.muSMTP server name: smtp.orange.muSMTP authenticated: smtpauth.orange.mu It's not difficult, is it? In my humble opinion not really and you would provide clean, consistent and up-to-date information for your customers. This would produce less frustation and so less traffic on your customer service lines. Which after all, would improve the total user experience and satisfaction level on both sides. Without knowing these facts. Now, imagine you would take your laptop abroad and have to use other internet service providers to be able to be online... Calling your customer service would be unnecessary expensive!

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• How To Get Web Site Thumbnail Image In ASP.NET

  - by SAMIR BHOGAYTA

  Overview One very common requirement of many web applications is to display a thumbnail image of a web site. A typical example is to provide a link to a dynamic website displaying its current thumbnail image, or displaying images of websites with their links as a result of search (I love to see it on Google). Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 makes it quite easier to do it in a ASP.NET application. Background In order to generate image of a web page, first we need to load the web page to get their html code, and then this html needs to be rendered in a web browser. After that, a screen shot can be taken easily. I think there is no easier way to do this. Before .NET framework 2.0 it was quite difficult to use a web browser in C# or VB.NET because we either have to use COM+ interoperability or third party controls which becomes headache later. WebBrowser control in .NET framework 2.0 In .NET framework 2.0 we have a new Windows Forms WebBrowser control which is a wrapper around old shwdoc.dll. All you really need to do is to drop a WebBrowser control from your Toolbox on your form in .NET framework 2.0. If you have not used WebBrowser control yet, it's quite easy to use and very consistent with other Windows Forms controls. Some important methods of WebBrowser control are. public bool GoBack(); public bool GoForward(); public void GoHome(); public void GoSearch(); public void Navigate(Uri url); public void DrawToBitmap(Bitmap bitmap, Rectangle targetBounds); These methods are self explanatory with their names like Navigate function which redirects browser to provided URL. It also has a number of useful overloads. The DrawToBitmap (inherited from Control) draws the current image of WebBrowser to the provided bitmap. Using WebBrowser control in ASP.NET 2.0 The Solution Let's start to implement the solution which we discussed above. First we will define a static method to get the web site thumbnail image. public static Bitmap GetWebSiteThumbnail(string Url, int BrowserWidth, int BrowserHeight, int ThumbnailWidth, int ThumbnailHeight) { WebsiteThumbnailImage thumbnailGenerator = new WebsiteThumbnailImage(Url, BrowserWidth, BrowserHeight, ThumbnailWidth, ThumbnailHeight); return thumbnailGenerator.GenerateWebSiteThumbnailImage(); } The WebsiteThumbnailImage class will have a public method named GenerateWebSiteThumbnailImage which will generate the website thumbnail image in a separate STA thread and wait for the thread to exit. In this case, I decided to Join method of Thread class to block the initial calling thread until the bitmap is actually available, and then return the generated web site thumbnail. public Bitmap GenerateWebSiteThumbnailImage() { Thread m_thread = new Thread(new ThreadStart(_GenerateWebSiteThumbnailImage)); m_thread.SetApartmentState(ApartmentState.STA); m_thread.Start(); m_thread.Join(); return m_Bitmap; } The _GenerateWebSiteThumbnailImage will create a WebBrowser control object and navigate to the provided Url. We also register for the DocumentCompleted event of the web browser control to take screen shot of the web page. To pass the flow to the other controls we need to perform a method call to Application.DoEvents(); and wait for the completion of the navigation until the browser state changes to Complete in a loop. private void _GenerateWebSiteThumbnailImage() { WebBrowser m_WebBrowser = new WebBrowser(); m_WebBrowser.ScrollBarsEnabled = false; m_WebBrowser.Navigate(m_Url); m_WebBrowser.DocumentCompleted += new WebBrowserDocument CompletedEventHandler(WebBrowser_DocumentCompleted); while (m_WebBrowser.ReadyState != WebBrowserReadyState.Complete) Application.DoEvents(); m_WebBrowser.Dispose(); } The DocumentCompleted event will be fired when the navigation is completed and the browser is ready for screen shot. We will get screen shot using DrawToBitmap method as described previously which will return the bitmap of the web browser. Then the thumbnail image is generated using GetThumbnailImage method of Bitmap class passing it the required thumbnail image width and height. private void WebBrowser_DocumentCompleted(object sender, WebBrowserDocumentCompletedEventArgs e) { WebBrowser m_WebBrowser = (WebBrowser)sender; m_WebBrowser.ClientSize = new Size(this.m_BrowserWidth, this.m_BrowserHeight); m_WebBrowser.ScrollBarsEnabled = false; m_Bitmap = new Bitmap(m_WebBrowser.Bounds.Width, m_WebBrowser.Bounds.Height); m_WebBrowser.BringToFront(); m_WebBrowser.DrawToBitmap(m_Bitmap, m_WebBrowser.Bounds); m_Bitmap = (Bitmap)m_Bitmap.GetThumbnailImage(m_ThumbnailWidth, m_ThumbnailHeight, null, IntPtr.Zero); } One more example here : http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/Website_URL_Screenshot.aspx

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• Azure Mobile Services: available modules

  - by svdoever

  Azure Mobile Services has documented a set of objects available in your Azure Mobile Services server side scripts at their documentation page Mobile Services server script reference. Although the documented list is a nice list of objects for the common things you want to do, it will be sooner than later that you will look for more functionality to be included in your script, especially with the new provided feature that you can now create your custom API’s. If you use GIT it is now possible to add any NPM module (node package manager module, say the NuGet of the node world), but why include a module if it is already available out of the box. And you can only use GIT with Azure Mobile Services if you are an administrator on your Azure Mobile Service, not if you are a co-administrator (will be solved in the future). Until now I did some trial and error experimentation to test if a certain module was available. This is easiest to do as follows:   Create a custom API, for example named experiment. In this API use the following code: exports.get = function (request, response) { var module = "nonexistingmodule"; var m = require(module); response.send(200, "Module '%s' found.", module); }; You can now test your service with the following request in your browser: https://yourservice.azure-mobile.net/api/experiment If you get the result: {"code":500,"error":"Error: Internal Server Error"} you know that the module does not exist. In your logs you will find the following error: Error in script '/api/experiment.json'. Error: Cannot find module 'nonexistingmodule' [external code] atC:\DWASFiles\Sites\yourservice\VirtualDirectory0\site\wwwroot\App_Data\config\scripts\api\experiment.js:3:13[external code] If you require an existing (undocumented) module like the OAuth module in the following code, you will get success as a result: exports.get = function (request, response) { var module = "oauth"; var m = require(module); response.send(200, "Module '" + module + "' found."); }; If we look at the standard node.js documentation we see an extensive list of modules that can be used from your code. If we look at the list of files available in the Azure Mobile Services platform as documented in the blog post Azure Mobile Services: what files does it consist of? we see a folder node_modules with many more modules are used to build the Azure Mobile Services functionality on, but that can also be utilized from your server side node script code: apn - An interface to the Apple Push Notification service for Node.js. dpush - Send push notifications to Android devices using GCM. mpns - A Node.js interface to the Microsoft Push Notification Service (MPNS) for Windows Phone. wns - Send push notifications to Windows 8 devices using WNS. pusher - Node library for the Pusher server API (see also: http://pusher.com/) azure - Windows Azure Client Library for node. express - Sinatra inspired web development framework. oauth - Library for interacting with OAuth 1.0, 1.0A, 2 and Echo. Provides simplified client access and allows for construction of more complex apis and OAuth providers. request - Simplified HTTP request client. sax - An evented streaming XML parser in JavaScript sendgrid - A NodeJS implementation of the SendGrid Api. sqlserver – In node repository known as msnodesql - Microsoft Driver for Node.js for SQL Server. tripwire - Break out from scripts blocking node.js event loop. underscore - JavaScript's functional programming helper library. underscore.string - String manipulation extensions for Underscore.js javascript library. xml2js - Simple XML to JavaScript object converter. xmlbuilder - An XML builder for node.js. As stated before, many of these modules are used to provide the functionality of Azure Mobile Services platform, and in general should not be used directly. On the other hand, I needed OAuth badly to authenticate to the new v1.1 services of Twitter, and was very happy that a require('oauth') and a few lines of code did the job. Based on the above modules and a lot of code in the other javascript files in the Azure Mobile Services platform a set of global objects is provided that can be used from your server side node.js script code. In future blog posts I will go into more details with respect to how this code is built-up, all starting at the node.js express entry point app.js.

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• Functional Adaptation

  - by Charles Courchaine

  In real life and OO programming we’re often faced with using adapters, DVI to VGA, 1/4” to 1/8” audio connections, 110V to 220V, wrapping an incompatible interface with a new one, and so on.  Where the adapter pattern is generally considered for interfaces and classes a similar technique can be applied to method signatures.  To be fair, this adaptation is generally used to reduce the number of parameters but I’m sure there are other clever possibilities to be had.  As Jan questioned in the last post, how can we use a common method to execute an action if the action has a differing number of parameters, going back to the greeting example it was suggested having an AddName method that takes a first and last name as parameters.  This is exactly what we’ll address in this post. Let’s set the stage with some review and some code changes.  First, our method that handles the setup/tear-down infrastructure for our WCF service: 1: private static TResult ExecuteGreetingFunc<TResult>(Func<IGreeting, TResult> theGreetingFunc) 2: { 3: IGreeting aGreetingService = null; 4: try 5: { 6: aGreetingService = GetGreetingChannel(); 7: return theGreetingFunc(aGreetingService); 8: } 9: finally 10: { 11: CloseWCFChannel((IChannel)aGreetingService); 12: } 13: } Our original AddName method: 1: private static string AddName(string theName) 2: { 3: return ExecuteGreetingFunc<string>(theGreetingService => theGreetingService.AddName(theName)); 4: } Our new AddName method: 1: private static int AddName(string firstName, string lastName) 2: { 3: return ExecuteGreetingFunc<int>(theGreetingService => theGreetingService.AddName(firstName, lastName)); 4: } Let’s change the AddName method, just a little bit more for this example and have it take the greeting service as a parameter. 1: private static int AddName(IGreeting greetingService, string firstName, string lastName) 2: { 3: return greetingService.AddName(firstName, lastName); 4: } The new signature of AddName using the Func delegate is now Func<IGreeting, string, string, int>, which can’t be used with ExecuteGreetingFunc as is because it expects Func<IGreeting, TResult>.  Somehow we have to eliminate the two string parameters before we can use this with our existing method.  This is where we need to adapt AddName to match what ExecuteGreetingFunc expects, and we’ll do so in the following progression. 1: Func<IGreeting, string, string, int> -> Func<IGreeting, string, int> 2: Func<IGreeting, string, int> -> Func<IGreeting, int>   For the first step, we’ll create a method using the lambda syntax that will “eliminate” the last name parameter: 1: string lastNameToAdd = "Smith"; 2: //Func<IGreeting, string, string, int> -> Func<IGreeting, string, int> 3: Func<IGreeting, string, int> addName = (greetingService, firstName) => AddName(greetingService, firstName, lastNameToAdd); The new addName method gets us one step close to the signature we need.  Let’s say we’re going to call this in a loop to add several names, we’ll take the final step from Func<IGreeting, string, int> -> Func<IGreeting, int> in line as a lambda passed to ExecuteGreetingFunc like so: 1: List<string> firstNames = new List<string>() { "Bob", "John" }; 2: int aID; 3: foreach (string firstName in firstNames) 4: { 5: //Func<IGreeting, string, int> -> Func<IGreeting, int> 6: aID = ExecuteGreetingFunc<int>(greetingService => addName(greetingService, firstName)); 7: Console.WriteLine(GetGreeting(aID)); 8: } If for some reason you needed to break out the lambda on line 6 you could replace it with 1: aID = ExecuteGreetingFunc<int>(ApplyAddName(addName, firstName)); and use this method: 1: private static Func<IGreeting, int> ApplyAddName(Func<IGreeting, string, int> addName, string lastName) 2: { 3: return greetingService => addName(greetingService, lastName); 4: } Splitting out a lambda into its own method is useful both in this style of coding as well as LINQ queries to improve the debugging experience.  It is not strictly necessary to break apart the steps & functions as was shown above; the lambda in line 6 (of the foreach example) could include both the last name and first name instead of being composed of two functions.  The process demonstrated above is one of partially applying functions, this could have also been done with Currying (also see Dustin Campbell’s excellent post on Currying for the canonical curried add example).  Matthew Podwysocki also has some good posts explaining both Currying and partial application and a follow up post that further clarifies the difference between Currying and partial application.  In either technique the ultimate goal is to reduce the number of parameters passed to a function.  Currying makes it a single parameter passed at each step, where partial application allows one to use multiple parameters at a time as we’ve done here.  This technique isn’t for everyone or every problem, but can be extremely handy when you need to adapt a call to something you don’t control.

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• How to Tell If Your Computer is Overheating and What to Do About It

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Heat is a computer’s enemy. Computers are designed with heat dispersion and ventilation in mind so they don’t overheat. If too much heat builds up, your computer may become unstable or suddenly shut down. The CPU and graphics card produce much more heat when running demanding applications. If there’s a problem with your computer’s cooling system, an excess of heat could even physically damage its components. Is Your Computer Overheating? When using a typical computer in a typical way, you shouldn’t have to worry about overheating at all. However, if you’re encountering system instability issues like abrupt shut downs, blue screens, and freezes — especially while doing something demanding like playing PC games or encoding video — your computer may be overheating. This can happen for several reasons. Your computer’s case may be full of dust, a fan may have failed, something may be blocking your computer’s vents, or you may have a compact laptop that was never designed to run at maximum performance for hours on end. Monitoring Your Computer’s Temperature First, bear in mind that different CPUs and GPUs (graphics cards) have different optimal temperature ranges. Before getting too worried about a temperature, be sure to check your computer’s documentation — or its CPU or graphics card specifications — and ensure you know the temperature ranges your hardware can handle. You can monitor your computer’s temperatures in a variety of different ways. First, you may have a way to monitor temperature that is already built into your system. You can often view temperature values in your computer’s BIOS or UEFI settings screen. This allows you to quickly see your computer’s temperature if Windows freezes or blue screens on you — just boot the computer, enter the BIOS or UEFI screen, and check the temperatures displayed there. Note that not all BIOSes or UEFI screens will display this information, but it is very common. There are also programs that will display your computer’s temperature. Such programs just read the sensors inside your computer and show you the temperature value they report, so there are a wide variety of tools you can use for this, from the simple Speccy system information utility to an advanced tool like SpeedFan. HWMonitor also offer this feature, displaying a wide variety of sensor information. Be sure to look at your CPU and graphics card temperatures. You can also find other temperatures, such as the temperature of your hard drive, but these components will generally only overheat if it becomes extremely hot in the computer’s case. They shouldn’t generate too much heat on their own. If you think your computer may be overheating, don’t just glance as these sensors once and ignore them. Do something demanding with your computer, such as running a CPU burn-in test with Prime 95, playing a PC game, or running a graphical benchmark. Monitor the computer’s temperature while you do this, even checking a few hours later — does any component overheat after you push it hard for a while? Preventing Your Computer From Overheating If your computer is overheating, here are some things you can do about it: Dust Out Your Computer’s Case: Dust accumulates in desktop PC cases and even laptops over time, clogging fans and blocking air flow. This dust can cause ventilation problems, trapping heat and preventing your PC from cooling itself properly. Be sure to clean your computer’s case occasionally to prevent dust build-up. Unfortunately, it’s often more difficult to dust out overheating laptops. Ensure Proper Ventilation: Put the computer in a location where it can properly ventilate itself. If it’s a desktop, don’t push the case up against a wall so that the computer’s vents become blocked or leave it near a radiator or heating vent. If it’s a laptop, be careful to not block its air vents, particularly when doing something demanding. For example, putting a laptop down on a mattress, allowing it to sink in, and leaving it there can lead to overheating — especially if the laptop is doing something demanding and generating heat it can’t get rid of. Check if Fans Are Running: If you’re not sure why your computer started overheating, open its case and check that all the fans are running. It’s possible that a CPU, graphics card, or case fan failed or became unplugged, reducing air flow. Tune Up Heat Sinks: If your CPU is overheating, its heat sink may not be seated correctly or its thermal paste may be old. You may need to remove the heat sink and re-apply new thermal paste before reseating the heat sink properly. This tip applies more to tweakers, overclockers, and people who build their own PCs, especially if they may have made a mistake when originally applying the thermal paste. This is often much more difficult when it comes to laptops, which generally aren’t designed to be user-serviceable. That can lead to trouble if the laptop becomes filled with dust and needs to be cleaned out, especially if the laptop was never designed to be opened by users at all. Consult our guide to diagnosing and fixing an overheating laptop for help with cooling down a hot laptop. Overheating is a definite danger when overclocking your CPU or graphics card. Overclocking will cause your components to run hotter, and the additional heat will cause problems unless you can properly cool your components. If you’ve overclocked your hardware and it has started to overheat — well, throttle back the overclock! Image Credit: Vinni Malek on Flickr     

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• Reference Data Management and Master Data: Are Relation ?

  - by Mala Narasimharajan

  Submitted By:  Rahul Kamath  Oracle Data Relationship Management (DRM) has always been extremely powerful as an Enterprise Master Data Management (MDM) solution that can help manage changes to master data in a way that influences enterprise structure, whether it be mastering chart of accounts to enable financial transformation, or revamping organization structures to drive business transformation and operational efficiencies, or restructuring sales territories to enable equitable distribution of leads to sales teams following the acquisition of new products, or adding additional cost centers to enable fine grain control over expenses. Increasingly, DRM is also being utilized by Oracle customers for reference data management, an emerging solution space that deserves some explanation. What is reference data? How does it relate to Master Data? Reference data is a close cousin of master data. While master data is challenged with problems of unique identification, may be more rapidly changing, requires consensus building across stakeholders and lends structure to business transactions, reference data is simpler, more slowly changing, but has semantic content that is used to categorize or group other information assets – including master data – and gives them contextual value. In fact, the creation of a new master data element may require new reference data to be created. For example, when a European company acquires a US business, chances are that they will now need to adapt their product line taxonomy to include a new category to describe the newly acquired US product line. Further, the cross-border transaction will also result in a revised geo hierarchy. The addition of new products represents changes to master data while changes to product categories and geo hierarchy are examples of reference data changes.1 The following table contains an illustrative list of examples of reference data by type. Reference data types may include types and codes, business taxonomies, complex relationships & cross-domain mappings or standards. Types & Codes Taxonomies Relationships / Mappings Standards Transaction Codes Industry Classification Categories and Codes, e.g., North America Industry Classification System (NAICS) Product / Segment; Product / Geo Calendars (e.g., Gregorian, Fiscal, Manufacturing, Retail, ISO8601) Lookup Tables (e.g., Gender, Marital Status, etc.) Product Categories City à State à Postal Codes Currency Codes (e.g., ISO) Status Codes Sales Territories (e.g., Geo, Industry Verticals, Named Accounts, Federal/State/Local/Defense) Customer / Market Segment; Business Unit / Channel Country Codes (e.g., ISO 3166, UN) Role Codes Market Segments Country Codes / Currency Codes / Financial Accounts Date/Time, Time Zones (e.g., ISO 8601) Domain Values Universal Standard Products and Services Classification (UNSPSC), eCl@ss International Classification of Diseases (ICD) e.g., ICD9 à IC10 mappings Tax Rates Why manage reference data? Reference data carries contextual value and meaning and therefore its use can drive business logic that helps execute a business process, create a desired application behavior or provide meaningful segmentation to analyze transaction data. Further, mapping reference data often requires human judgment. Sample Use Cases of Reference Data Management Healthcare: Diagnostic Codes The reference data challenges in the healthcare industry offer a case in point. Part of being HIPAA compliant requires medical practitioners to transition diagnosis codes from ICD-9 to ICD-10, a medical coding scheme used to classify diseases, signs and symptoms, causes, etc. The transition to ICD-10 has a significant impact on business processes, procedures, contracts, and IT systems. Since both code sets ICD-9 and ICD-10 offer diagnosis codes of very different levels of granularity, human judgment is required to map ICD-9 codes to ICD-10. The process requires collaboration and consensus building among stakeholders much in the same way as does master data management. Moreover, to build reports to understand utilization, frequency and quality of diagnoses, medical practitioners may need to “cross-walk” mappings -- either forward to ICD-10 or backwards to ICD-9 depending upon the reporting time horizon. Spend Management: Product, Service & Supplier Codes Similarly, as an enterprise looks to rationalize suppliers and leverage their spend, conforming supplier codes, as well as product and service codes requires supporting multiple classification schemes that may include industry standards (e.g., UNSPSC, eCl@ss) or enterprise taxonomies. Aberdeen Group estimates that 90% of companies rely on spreadsheets and manual reviews to aggregate, classify and analyze spend data, and that data management activities account for 12-15% of the sourcing cycle and consume 30-50% of a commodity manager’s time. Creating a common map across the extended enterprise to rationalize codes across procurement, accounts payable, general ledger, credit card, procurement card (P-card) as well as ACH and bank systems can cut sourcing costs, improve compliance, lower inventory stock, and free up talent to focus on value added tasks. Change Management: Point of Sales Transaction Codes and Product Codes In the specialty finance industry, enterprises are confronted with usury laws – governed at the state and local level – that regulate financial product innovation as it relates to consumer loans, check cashing and pawn lending. To comply, it is important to demonstrate that transactions booked at the point of sale are posted against valid product codes that were on offer at the time of booking the sale. Since new products are being released at a steady stream, it is important to ensure timely and accurate mapping of point-of-sale transaction codes with the appropriate product and GL codes to comply with the changing regulations. Multi-National Companies: Industry Classification Schemes As companies grow and expand across geographies, a typical challenge they encounter with reference data represents reconciling various versions of industry classification schemes in use across nations. While the United States, Mexico and Canada conform to the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) standard, European Union countries choose different variants of the NACE industry classification scheme. Multi-national companies must manage the individual national NACE schemes and reconcile the differences across countries. Enterprises must invest in a reference data change management application to address the challenge of distributing reference data changes to downstream applications and assess which applications were impacted by a given change. References 1 Master Data versus Reference Data, Malcolm Chisholm, April 1, 2006.

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• Grid Layouts in ADF Faces using Trinidad

  - by frank.nimphius

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} ADF Faces does provide a data table component but none to define grid layouts. Grids are common in web design and developers often try HTML table markup wrapped in an f:verbatim tag or directly added the page to build a desired layout. Usually these attempts fail, showing unpredictable results, However, ADF Faces does not provide a table layout component, but Apache MyFaces Trinidad does. The Trinidad trh:tableLayout component is a thin wrapper around the HTML table element and contains a series of row layout elements, trh:rowLayout. Each trh:rowLayout component may contain one or many trh:cellLayout components to format cells content. <trh:tableLayout id="tl1" halign="left">   <trh:rowLayout id="rl1" valign="top" halign="left">     <trh:cellFormat id="cf1" width="100" header="true">        <af:outputLabel value="Label 1" id="ol1"/>     </trh:cellFormat>     <trh:cellFormat id="cf2" header="true"                               width="300">        <af:outputLabel value="Label 2" id="outputLabel1"/>        </trh:cellFormat>      </trh:rowLayout>      <trh:rowLayout id="rowLayout1" valign="top" halign="left">        <trh:cellFormat id="cellFormat1" width="100" header="false">           <af:outputLabel value="Label 3" id="outputLabel2"/>        </trh:cellFormat>     </trh:rowLayout>        ... </trh:tableLayout> To add the Trinidad tag library to your ADF Faces projects ... Open the Component Palette and right mouse click into it Choose "Edit Tag Libraries" and select the Trinidad components. Move them to the "Selected Libraries" section and Ok the dialog.The first time you drag a Trinidad component to a page, the web.xml file is updated with the required filters Note: The Trinidad tags don't participate in the ADF Faces RC geometry management. However, they are JSF components that are part of the JSF request lifecycle. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} ADF Faces RC components work well with Trinidad layout components that don't use PPR. The PPR implementation of Trinidad is different from the one in ADF Faces. However, when you mix ADF Faces components with Trinidad components, avoid Trinidad components that have integrated PPR behavior. Only use passive Trinidad components.See:http://myfaces.apache.org/trinidad/trinidad-api/tagdoc/trh_tableLayout.htmlhttp://myfaces.apache.org/trinidad/trinidad-api/tagdoc/trh_rowLayout.htmlhttp://myfaces.apache.org/trinidad/trinidad-api/tagdoc/trh_cellFormat.html .

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• C#/.NET Little Wonders: Static Char Methods

  - by James Michael Hare

  Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders posts can be found here. Often times in our code we deal with the bigger classes and types in the BCL, and occasionally forgot that there are some nice methods on the primitive types as well.  Today we will discuss some of the handy static methods that exist on the char (the C# alias of System.Char) type. The Background I was examining a piece of code this week where I saw the following: 1: // need to get the 5th (offset 4) character in upper case 2: var type = symbol.Substring(4, 1).ToUpper(); 3:  4: // test to see if the type is P 5: if (type == "P") 6: { 7: // ... do something with P type... 8: } Is there really any error in this code?  No, but it still struck me wrong because it is allocating two very short-lived throw-away strings, just to store and manipulate a single char: The call to Substring() generates a new string of length 1 The call to ToUpper() generates a new upper-case version of the string from Step 1. In my mind this is similar to using ToUpper() to do a case-insensitive compare: it isn’t wrong, it’s just much heavier than it needs to be (for more info on case-insensitive compares, see #2 in 5 More Little Wonders). One of my favorite books is the C++ Coding Standards: 101 Rules, Guidelines, and Best Practices by Sutter and Alexandrescu.  True, it’s about C++ standards, but there’s also some great general programming advice in there, including two rules I love:         8. Don’t Optimize Prematurely         9. Don’t Pessimize Prematurely We all know what #8 means: don’t optimize when there is no immediate need, especially at the expense of readability and maintainability.  I firmly believe this and in the axiom: it’s easier to make correct code fast than to make fast code correct.  Optimizing code to the point that it becomes difficult to maintain often gains little and often gives you little bang for the buck. But what about #9?  Well, for that they state: “All other things being equal, notably code complexity and readability, certain efficient design patterns and coding idioms should just flow naturally from your fingertips and are no harder to write then the pessimized alternatives. This is not premature optimization; it is avoiding gratuitous pessimization.” Or, if I may paraphrase: “where it doesn’t increase the code complexity and readability, prefer the more efficient option”. The example code above was one of those times I feel where we are violating a tacit C# coding idiom: avoid creating unnecessary temporary strings.  The code creates temporary strings to hold one char, which is just unnecessary.  I think the original coder thought he had to do this because ToUpper() is an instance method on string but not on char.  What he didn’t know, however, is that ToUpper() does exist on char, it’s just a static method instead (though you could write an extension method to make it look instance-ish). This leads me (in a long-winded way) to my Little Wonders for the day… Static Methods of System.Char So let’s look at some of these handy, and often overlooked, static methods on the char type: IsDigit(), IsLetter(), IsLetterOrDigit(), IsPunctuation(), IsWhiteSpace() Methods to tell you whether a char (or position in a string) belongs to a category of characters. IsLower(), IsUpper() Methods that check if a char (or position in a string) is lower or upper case ToLower(), ToUpper() Methods that convert a single char to the lower or upper equivalent. For example, if you wanted to see if a string contained any lower case characters, you could do the following: 1: if (symbol.Any(c => char.IsLower(c))) 2: { 3: // ... 4: } Which, incidentally, we could use a method group to shorten the expression to: 1: if (symbol.Any(char.IsLower)) 2: { 3: // ... 4: } Or, if you wanted to verify that all of the characters in a string are digits: 1: if (symbol.All(char.IsDigit)) 2: { 3: // ... 4: } Also, for the IsXxx() methods, there are overloads that take either a char, or a string and an index, this means that these two calls are logically identical: 1: // check given a character 2: if (char.IsUpper(symbol[0])) { ... } 3:  4: // check given a string and index 5: if (char.IsUpper(symbol, 0)) { ... } Obviously, if you just have a char, then you’d just use the first form.  But if you have a string you can use either form equally well. As a side note, care should be taken when examining all the available static methods on the System.Char type, as some seem to be redundant but actually have very different purposes.  For example, there are IsDigit() and IsNumeric() methods, which sound the same on the surface, but give you different results. IsDigit() returns true if it is a base-10 digit character (‘0’, ‘1’, … ‘9’) where IsNumeric() returns true if it’s any numeric character including the characters for ½, ¼, etc. Summary To come full circle back to our opening example, I would have preferred the code be written like this: 1: // grab 5th char and take upper case version of it 2: var type = char.ToUpper(symbol[4]); 3:  4: if (type == 'P') 5: { 6: // ... do something with P type... 7: } Not only is it just as readable (if not more so), but it performs over 3x faster on my machine:    1,000,000 iterations of char method took: 30 ms, 0.000050 ms/item.    1,000,000 iterations of string method took: 101 ms, 0.000101 ms/item. It’s not only immediately faster because we don’t allocate temporary strings, but as an added bonus there less garbage to collect later as well.  To me this qualifies as a case where we are using a common C# performance idiom (don’t create unnecessary temporary strings) to make our code better. Technorati Tags: C#,CSharp,.NET,Little Wonders,char,string

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• Design Pattern for Complex Data Modeling

  - by Aaron Hayman

  I'm developing a program that has a SQL database as a backing store. As a very broad description, the program itself allows a user to generate records in any number of user-defined tables and make connections between them. As for specs: Any record generated must be able to be connected to any other record in any other user table (excluding itself...the record, not the table). These "connections" are directional, and the list of connections a record has is user ordered. Moreover, a record must "know" of connections made from it to others as well as connections made to it from others. The connections are kind of the point of this program, so there is a strong possibility that the number of connections made is very high, especially if the user is using the software as intended. A record's field can also include aggregate information from it's connections (like obtaining average, sum, etc) that must be updated on change from another record it's connected to. To conserve memory, only relevant information must be loaded at any one time (can't load the entire database in memory at load and go from there). I cannot assume the backing store is local. Right now it is, but eventually this program will include syncing to a remote db. Neither the user tables, connections or records are known at design time as they are user generated. I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to design the backing store and the object model to best fit these specs. In my first design attempt on this, I had one object managing all a table's records and connections. I attempted this first because it kept the memory footprint smaller (records and connections were simple dicts), but maintaining aggregate and link information between tables became....onerous (ie...a huge spaghettified mess). Tracing dependencies using this method almost became impossible. Instead, I've settled on a distributed graph model where each record and connection is 'aware' of what's around it by managing it own data and connections to other records. Doing this increases my memory footprint but also let me create a faulting system so connections/records aren't loaded into memory until they're needed. It's also much easier to code: trace dependencies, eliminate cycling recursive updates, etc. My biggest problem is storing/loading the connections. I'm not happy with any of my current solutions/ideas so I wanted to ask and see if anybody else has any ideas of how this should be structured. Connections are fairly simple. They contain: fromRecordID, fromTableID, fromRecordOrder, toRecordID, toTableID, toRecordOrder. Here's what I've come up with so far: Store all the connections in one big table. If I do this, either I load all connections at once (one big db call) or make a call every time a user table is loaded. The big issue here: the size of the connections table has the potential to be huge, and I'm afraid it would slow things down. Store in separate tables all the outgoing connections for each user table. This is probably the worst idea I've had. Now my connections are 'spread out' over multiple tables (one for each user table), which means I have to make a separate DB called to each table (or make a huge join) just to find all the incoming connections for a particular user table. I've avoided making "one big ass table", but I'm not sure the cost is worth it. Store in separate tables all outgoing AND incoming connections for each user table (using a flag to distinguish between incoming vs outgoing). This is the idea I'm leaning towards, but it will essentially double the total DB storage for all the connections (as each connection will be stored in two tables). It also means I have to make sure connection information is kept in sync in both places. This is obviously not ideal but it does mean that when I load a user table, I only need to load one 'connection' table and have all the information I need. This also presents a separate problem, that of connection object creation. Since each user table has a list of all connections, there are two opportunities for a connection object to be made. However, connections objects (designed to facilitate communication between records) should only be created once. This means I'll have to devise a common caching/factory object to make sure only one connection object is made per connection. Does anybody have any ideas of a better way to do this? Once I've committed to a particular design pattern I'm pretty much stuck with it, so I want to make sure I've come up with the best one possible.

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• IRM Item Codes &ndash; what are they for?

  - by martin.abrahams

  A number of colleagues have been asking about IRM item codes recently – what are they for, when are they useful, how can you control them to meet some customer requirements? This is quite a big topic, but this article provides a few answers. An item code is part of the metadata of every sealed document – unless you define a custom metadata model. The item code is defined when a file is sealed, and usually defaults to a timestamp/filename combination. This time/name combo tends to make item codes unique for each new document, but actually item codes are not necessarily unique, as will become clear shortly. In most scenarios, item codes are not relevant to the evaluation of a user’s rights - the context name is the critical piece of metadata, as a user typically has a role that grants access to an entire classification of information regardless of item code. This is key to the simplicity and manageability of the Oracle IRM solution. Item codes are occasionally exposed to users in the UI, but most users probably never notice and never care. Nevertheless, here is one example of where you can see an item code – when you hover the mouse pointer over a sealed file. As you see, the item code for this freshly created file combines a timestamp with the file name. But what are item codes for? The first benefit of item codes is that they enable you to manage exceptions to the policy defined for a context. Thus, I might have access to all oracle – internal files - except for 2011_03_11 13:33:29 Board Minutes.sdocx. This simple mechanism enables Oracle IRM to provide file-by-file control where appropriate, whilst offering the scalability and manageability of classification-based control for the majority of users and content. You really don’t want to be managing each file individually, but never say never. Item codes can also be used for the opposite effect – to include a file in a user’s rights when their role would ordinarily deny access. So, you can assign a role that allows access only to specified item codes. For example, my role might say that I have access to precisely one file – the one shown above. So how are item codes set? In the vast majority of scenarios, item codes are set automatically as part of the sealing process. The sealing API uses the timestamp and filename as shown, and the user need not even realise that this has happened. This automatically creates item codes that are for all practical purposes unique - and that are also intelligible to users who might want to refer to them when viewing or assigning rights in the management UI. It is also possible for suitably authorised users and applications to set the item code manually or programmatically if required. Setting the item code manually using the IRM Desktop The manual process is a simple extension of the sealing task. An authorised user can select the Advanced… sealing option, and will see a dialog that offers the option to specify the item code. To see this option, the user’s role needs the Set Item Code right – you don’t want most users to give any thought at all to item codes, so by default the option is hidden. Setting the item code programmatically A more common scenario is that an application controls the item code programmatically. For example, a document management system that seals documents as part of a workflow might set the item code to match the document’s unique identifier in its repository. This offers the option to tie IRM rights evaluation directly to the security model defined in the document management system. Again, the sealing application needs to be authorised to Set Item Code. The Payslip Scenario To give a concrete example of how item codes might be used in a real world scenario, consider a Human Resources workflow such as a payslips. The goal might be to allow the HR team to have access to all payslips, but each employee to have access only to their own payslips. To enable this, you might have an IRM classification called Payslips. The HR team have a role in the normal way that allows access to all payslips. However, each employee would have an Item Reader role that only allows them to access files that have a particular item code – and that item code might match the employee’s payroll number. So, employee number 123123123 would have access to items with that code. This shows why item codes are not necessarily unique – you can deliberately set the same code on many files for ease of administration. The employees might have the right to unseal or print their payslip, so the solution acts as a secure delivery mechanism that allows payslips to be distributed via corporate email without any fear that they might be accessed by IT administrators, or forwarded accidentally to anyone other than the intended recipient. All that remains is to ensure that as each user’s payslip is sealed, it is assigned the correct item code – something that is easily managed by a simple IRM sealing application. Each month, an employee’s payslip is sealed with the same item code, so you do not need to keep amending the list of items that the user has access to – they have access to all documents that carry their employee code.

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• My Red Gate Experience

  - by Colin Rothwell

  I’m Colin, and I’ve been an intern working with Mike in publishing on Simple-Talk and SQLServerCentral for the past ten weeks. I’ve mostly been working “behind the scenes”, making improvements to the spam filtering, along with various other small tweaks. When I arrived at Red Gate, one of the first things Mike asked me was what I wanted to get out of the internship. It wasn’t a question I’d given a great deal of thought to, but my immediate response was the same as almost anybody: to support my growing family. Well, ok, not quite that, but money was certainly a motivator, along with simply making sure that I didn’t get bored over the summer. Three months is a long time to fill, and many of my friends end up getting bored, or worse, knitting obsessively. With the arrogance which seems fairly common among Cambridge people, I wasn’t expecting to really learn much here! In my mind, the part of the year where I am at Uni is the part where I learn things, whilst Red Gate would be an opportunity to apply what I’d learnt. Thankfully, the opposite is true: I’ve learnt a lot during my time here, and there has been a definite positive impact on the way I write code. The first thing I’ve really learnt is that test-driven development is, in general, a sensible way of working. Before coming, I didn’t really get it: how could you test something you hadn’t yet written? It didn’t make sense! My problem was seeing a test as having to test all the behaviour of a given function. Writing tests which test the bare minimum possible and building them up is a really good way of crystallising the direction the code needs to grow in, and ensures you never attempt to write too much code at time. One really good experience of this was early on in my internship when Mike and I were working on the query used to list active authors: I’d written something which I thought would do the trick, but by starting again using TDD we grew something which revealed that there were several subtle mistakes in the query I’d written. I’ve also been awakened to the value of pair programming. Whilst I could sort of see the point before coming, I also thought that it was impossible that two people would ever get more done at the same computer than if they were working separately. I still think that this is true for projects with pieces that developers can easily work on independently, and with developers who both know the codebase, but I’ve found that pair programming can be really good for learning a code base, and for building up small projects to the point where you can start working on separate components, as well as solving particularly difficult problems. Later on in my internship, for my down tools week project, I was working on adding Python support to Glimpse. Another intern and I we pair programmed the entire project, using ping pong pair programming as much as possible. One bonus that this brought which I wasn’t expecting was that I found myself less prone to distraction: with someone else peering over my shoulder, I didn’t have the ever-present temptation to open gmail, or facebook, or yammer, or twitter, or hacker news, or reddit, and so on, and so forth. I’m quite proud of this project: I think it’s some of the best code I’ve written. I’ve also been really won over to the value of descriptive variables names. In my pre-Red Gate life, as a lone-ranger style cowboy programmer, I’d developed a tendency towards laziness in variable names, sometimes abbreviating or, worse, using acronyms. I’ve swiftly realised that this is a bad idea when working with a team: saving a few key strokes is inevitably not worth it when it comes to reading code again in the future. Longer names also mean you can do away with a majority of comments. I appreciate that if you’ve come up with an O(n*log n) algorithm for something which seemed O(n^2), you probably want to explain how it works, but explaining what a variable name means is a big no no: it’s so very easy to change the behaviour of the code, whilst forgetting about the comments. Whilst at Red Gate, I took the opportunity to attend a code retreat, which really helped me to solidify all the things I’d learnt. To be completely free of any existing code base really lets you focus on best practises and think about how you write code. If you get a chance to go on a similar event, I’d highly recommend it! Cycling to Red Gate, I’ve also become much better at fitting inner tubes: if you’re struggling to get the tube out, or re-fit the tire, letting a bit of air out usually helps. I’ve also become quite a bit better at foosball and will miss having a foosball table! I’d like to finish off by saying thank you to everyone at Red Gate for having me. I’ve really enjoyed working with, and learning from, the team that brings you this web site. If you meet any of them, buy them a drink!

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• BPM 11g - Dynamic Task Assignment with Multi-level Organization Units

  - by Mark Foster

  I've seen several requirements to have a more granular level of task assignment in BPM 11g based on some value in the data passed to the process. Parametric Roles is normally the first port of call to try to satisfy this requirement, but in this blog we will show how a lot of use-cases can be satisfied by the easier to implement and flexible Organization Unit. The Use-Case Task assignment is to an approval group containing several users. At runtime, a location value in the input data determines which of the particular users the task is ultimately assigned to. In this case we use the Demo Community referenced in the SOA Admin Guide, and specifically the "LoanAnalyticGroup" which contains three users; "szweig", "mmitch" & "fkafka". In our scenario we would like to assign a task to "szweig" if the input data specifies that the location is "JapanCentral", to "fkafka" if the location is "JapanNorth" and to "mmitch" if "JapanSouth", and to all of them if the location is "Japan" i.e....   The Process Simple one human task process.... In the output data association of the "Start" activity we need to set the value of the "Organization Unit" predefined variable based on the input data (note that the  predefined variables can only be set on output data associations)....  ...and in the output data association of the human activity we will reset the "Organization Unit" to empty, always good practice to ensure that the Organization Unit will not be used for any subsequent human activities for which we do not require it.... Set Up the Organization Unit  Log in to the BPM Workspace with an administrator user (weblogic/welcome1 in our case) and choose the "Administration" option. Within "Roles" assign the "ProcessOwner" swim-lane for our process to "LoanAnalyticGroup".... Within "Organization Units" we can model our organization.... "Root Organization Unit" as "Japan" and "Child Organization Unit" as "Central", "South" & "North" as shown. As described previously, add user "szweig" to "Central", "mmitch" to "South" and "fkafka" to "North"....   Test the Process Invalid Data  First let us test with invalid data in the input to see what the consequences are, here we use "X" as input.... ...and looking at the instance we can see it has errored.... Organization Unit Root Level Assignment  Now let us see what happens if we have "Japan" in the input data.... ...looking in the "flow trace" we can see that the task has been assigned....  ... but who has the task been assigned to ? Let us look in the BPM Workspace for user "szweig"....  ...and for "mmitch"....  ... and for "fkafka"....  ...so we can see that with an Organization Unit at "Root" level we have successfully assigned the task to all users. Organization Unit Child Level Assignment  Now let us test with "Japan/North" in the input data.... ...and looking in "fkafka" workspace we see the task has been assigned, remember, he was associated with "JapanNorth"....   ... but what about the workspace of "szweig"....  ...no tasks assigned, neither has "mmitch", just as we expected. Summary  We have seen in this blog how to easily implement multi-level dynamic task routing using Organization Units, a common use-case and a simpler solution than Parametric Roles. 

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• ODI 12c - Aggregating Data

  - by David Allan

  This posting will look at the aggregation component that was introduced in ODI 12c. For many ETL tool users this shouldn't be a big surprise, its a little different than ODI 11g but for good reason. You can use this component for composing data with relational like operations such as sum, average and so forth. Also, Oracle SQL supports special functions called Analytic SQL functions, you can use a specially configured aggregation component or the expression component for these now in ODI 12c. In database systems an aggregate transformation is a transformation where the values of multiple rows are grouped together as input on certain criteria to form a single value of more significant meaning - that's exactly the purpose of the aggregate component. In the image below you can see the aggregate component in action within a mapping, for how this and a few other examples are built look at the ODI 12c Aggregation Viewlet here - the viewlet illustrates a simple aggregation being built and then some Oracle analytic SQL such as AVG(EMP.SAL) OVER (PARTITION BY EMP.DEPTNO) built using both the aggregate component and the expression component. In 11g you used to just write the aggregate expression directly on the target, this made life easy for some cases, but it wan't a very obvious gesture plus had other drawbacks with ordering of transformations (agg before join/lookup. after set and so forth) and supporting analytic SQL for example - there are a lot of postings from creative folks working around this in 11g - anything from customizing KMs, to bypassing aggregation analysis in the ODI code generator. The aggregate component has a few interesting aspects. 1. Firstly and foremost it defines the attributes projected from it - ODI automatically will perform the grouping all you do is define the aggregation expressions for those columns aggregated. In 12c you can control this automatic grouping behavior so that you get the code you desire, so you can indicate that an attribute should not be included in the group by, that's what I did in the analytic SQL example using the aggregate component. 2. The component has a few other properties of interest; it has a HAVING clause and a manual group by clause. The HAVING clause includes a predicate used to filter rows resulting from the GROUP BY clause. Because it acts on the results of the GROUP BY clause, aggregation functions can be used in the HAVING clause predicate, in 11g the filter was overloaded and used for both having clause and filter clause, this is no longer the case. If a filter is after an aggregate, it is after the aggregate (not sometimes after, sometimes having).  3. The manual group by clause let's you use special database grouping grammar if you need to. For example Oracle has a wealth of highly specialized grouping capabilities for data warehousing such as the CUBE function. If you want to use specialized functions like that you can manually define the code here. The example below shows the use of a manual group from an example in the Oracle database data warehousing guide where the SUM aggregate function is used along with the CUBE function in the group by clause. The SQL I am trying to generate looks like the following from the data warehousing guide; SELECT channel_desc, calendar_month_desc, countries.country_iso_code,       TO_CHAR(SUM(amount_sold), '9,999,999,999') SALES$ FROM sales, customers, times, channels, countries WHERE sales.time_id=times.time_id AND sales.cust_id=customers.cust_id AND   sales.channel_id= channels.channel_id  AND customers.country_id = countries.country_id  AND channels.channel_desc IN   ('Direct Sales', 'Internet') AND times.calendar_month_desc IN   ('2000-09', '2000-10') AND countries.country_iso_code IN ('GB', 'US') GROUP BY CUBE(channel_desc, calendar_month_desc, countries.country_iso_code); I can capture the source datastores, the filters and joins using ODI's dataset (or as a traditional flow) which enables us to incrementally design the mapping and the aggregate component for the sum and group by as follows; In the above mapping you can see the joins and filters declared in ODI's dataset, allowing you to capture the relationships of the datastores required in an entity-relationship style just like ODI 11g. The mix of ODI's declarative design and the common flow design provides for a familiar design experience. The example below illustrates flow design (basic arbitrary ordering) - a table load where only the employees who have maximum commission are loaded into a target. The maximum commission is retrieved from the bonus datastore and there is a look using employees as the driving table and only those with maximum commission projected. Hopefully this has given you a taster for some of the new capabilities provided by the aggregate component in ODI 12c. In summary, the actions should be much more consistent in behavior and more easily discoverable for users, the use of the components in a flow graph also supports arbitrary designs and the tool (rather than the interface designer) takes care of the realization using ODI's knowledge modules. Interested to know if a deep dive into each component is interesting for folks. Any thoughts? 

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• Columnstore Case Study #2: Columnstore faster than SSAS Cube at DevCon Security

  - by aspiringgeek

  Preamble This is the second in a series of posts documenting big wins encountered using columnstore indexes in SQL Server 2012 & 2014.  Many of these can be found in my big deck along with details such as internals, best practices, caveats, etc.  The purpose of sharing the case studies in this context is to provide an easy-to-consume quick-reference alternative. See also Columnstore Case Study #1: MSIT SONAR Aggregations Why Columnstore? As stated previously, If we’re looking for a subset of columns from one or a few rows, given the right indexes, SQL Server can do a superlative job of providing an answer. If we’re asking a question which by design needs to hit lots of rows—DW, reporting, aggregations, grouping, scans, etc., SQL Server has never had a good mechanism—until columnstore. Columnstore indexes were introduced in SQL Server 2012. However, they're still largely unknown. Some adoption blockers existed; yet columnstore was nonetheless a game changer for many apps.  In SQL Server 2014, potential blockers have been largely removed & they're going to profoundly change the way we interact with our data.  The purpose of this series is to share the performance benefits of columnstore & documenting columnstore is a compelling reason to upgrade to SQL Server 2014. The Customer DevCon Security provides home & business security services & has been in business for 135 years. I met DevCon personnel while speaking to the Utah County SQL User Group on 20 February 2012. (Thanks to TJ Belt (b|@tjaybelt) & Ben Miller (b|@DBADuck) for the invitation which serendipitously coincided with the height of ski season.) The App: DevCon Security Reporting: Optimized & Ad Hoc Queries DevCon users interrogate a SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services cube via SSRS. In addition, the SQL Server 2012 relational back end is the target of ad hoc queries; this DW back end is refreshed nightly during a brief maintenance window via conventional table partition switching. SSRS, SSAS, & MDX Conventional relational structures were unable to provide adequate performance for user interaction for the SSRS reports. An SSAS solution was implemented requiring personnel to ramp up technically, including learning enough MDX to satisfy requirements. Ad Hoc Queries Even though the fact table is relatively small—only 22 million rows & 33GB—the table was a typical DW table in terms of its width: 137 columns, any of which could be the target of ad hoc interrogation. As is common in DW reporting scenarios such as this, it is often nearly to optimize for such queries using conventional indexing. DevCon DBAs & developers attended PASS 2012 & were introduced to the marvels of columnstore in a session presented by Klaus Aschenbrenner (b|@Aschenbrenner) The Details Classic vs. columnstore before-&-after metrics are impressive. Scenario Conventional Structures Columnstore ? SSRS via SSAS 10 - 12 seconds 1 second >10x Ad Hoc 5-7 minutes (300 - 420 seconds) 1 - 2 seconds >100x Here are two charts characterizing this data graphically.  The first is a linear representation of Report Duration (in seconds) for Conventional Structures vs. Columnstore Indexes.  As is so often the case when we chart such significant deltas, the linear scale doesn’t expose some the dramatically improved values corresponding to the columnstore metrics.  Just to make it fair here’s the same data represented logarithmically; yet even here the values corresponding to 1 –2 seconds aren’t visible.  The Wins Performance: Even prior to columnstore implementation, at 10 - 12 seconds canned report performance against the SSAS cube was tolerable. Yet the 1 second performance afterward is clearly better. As significant as that is, imagine the user experience re: ad hoc interrogation. The difference between several minutes vs. one or two seconds is a game changer, literally changing the way users interact with their data—no mental context switching, no wondering when the results will appear, no preoccupation with the spinning mind-numbing hurry-up-&-wait indicators.  As we’ve commonly found elsewhere, columnstore indexes here provided performance improvements of one, two, or more orders of magnitude. Simplified Infrastructure: Because in this case a nonclustered columnstore index on a conventional DW table was faster than an Analysis Services cube, the entire SSAS infrastructure was rendered superfluous & was retired. PASS Rocks: Once again, the value of attending PASS is proven out. The trip to Charlotte combined with eager & enquiring minds let directly to this success story. Find out more about the next PASS Summit here, hosted this year in Seattle on November 4 - 7, 2014. DevCon BI Team Lead Nathan Allan provided this unsolicited feedback: “What we found was pretty awesome. It has been a game changer for us in terms of the flexibility we can offer people that would like to get to the data in different ways.” Summary For DW, reports, & other BI workloads, columnstore often provides significant performance enhancements relative to conventional indexing.  I have documented here, the second in a series of reports on columnstore implementations, results from DevCon Security, a live customer production app for which performance increased by factors of from 10x to 100x for all report queries, including canned queries as well as reducing time for results for ad hoc queries from 5 - 7 minutes to 1 - 2 seconds. As a result of columnstore performance, the customer retired their SSAS infrastructure. I invite you to consider leveraging columnstore in your own environment. Let me know if you have any questions.

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• WebLogic JDBC Use of Oracle Wallet for SSL

  - by Steve Felts

  Introduction Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) can be used to secure the connection between the middle tier “client”, WebLogic Server (WLS) in this case, and the Oracle database server.  Data between WLS and database can be encrypted.  The server can be authenticated so you have proof that the database can be trusted by validating a certificate from the server.  The client can be authenticated so that the database only accepts connections from clients that it trusts. Similar to the discussion in an earlier article about using the Oracle wallet for database credentials, the Oracle wallet can also be used with SSL to store the keys and certificates.  By using it correctly, clear text passwords can be eliminated from the JDBC configuration and client/server configuration can be simplified by sharing the wallet across multiple datasources. There is a very good Oracle Technical White Paper on using SSL with the Oracle thin driver at http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/enterprise-edition/wp-oracle-jdbc-thin-ssl-130128.pdf [LINK1].  The link http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/weblogic/index-087556.html [LINK2] describes how to use WebLogic Server with Oracle JDBC Driver SSL. The information in this article is a guide on what steps need to be taken in the variety of available options; use the links above for details. SSL from the driver to the database server is basically turned on by specifying a protocol of “tcps” in the URL.  However, there is a fair amount of setup needed.  Also remember that there is an overhead in performance. Creating the wallets The common use cases are 1. “data encryption and server-only authentication”, requiring just a trust store, or 2. “data encryption and authentication of both tiers” (client and server), requiring a trust store and a key store. It is recommended to use the auto-login wallet type so that clear text passwords are not needed in the datasource configuration to open the wallet.  The store type for an auto-login wallet is “SSO” (Single Sign On), not “JKS” or “PKCS12” as in [LINK2].  The file name is “cwallet.sso”. Wallets are created using the orapki tool.  They need to be created based on the usage (encryption and/or authentication).  This is discussed in detail in [LINK1] in Appendix B or in the Advanced Security Administrator’s Guide of the Database documentation. Database Server Configuration It is necessary to update the sqlnet.ora and listener.ora files with the directory location of the wallet using WALLET_LOCATION.  These files also indicate whether or not SSL_CLIENT_AUTHENTICATION is being used (true or false). The Oracle Listener must also be configured to use the TCPS protocol.  The recommended port is 2484. LISTENER = (ADDRESS_LIST= (ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=tcps)(HOST=servername)(PORT=2484))) WebLogic Server Classpath The WebLogic Server CLASSPATH must have three additional security files. The files that need to be added to the WLS CLASSPATH are $MW_HOME/modules/com.oracle.osdt_cert_1.0.0.0.jar $MW_HOME/modules/com.oracle.osdt_core_1.0.0.0.jar $MW_HOME/modules/com.oracle.oraclepki_1.0.0.0.jar One way to do this is to add them to PRE_CLASSPATH environment variable for use with the standard WebLogic scripts. Setting the Oracle Security Provider It’s necessary to enable the Oracle PKI provider on the client side.  This can either be done statically by updating the java.security file under the JRE or dynamically by setting it in a WLS startup class using java.security.Security.insertProviderAt(new oracle.security.pki.OraclePKIProvider (), 3); See the full example of the startup class in [LINK2]. Datasource Configuration When creating a WLS datasource, set the PROTOCOL in the URL to tcps as in the following. jdbc:oracle:thin:@(DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=tcps)(HOST=host)(PORT=port))(CONNECT_DATA=(SERVICE_NAME=myservice))) For encryption and server authentication, use the datasource connection properties: - javax.net.ssl.trustStore=location of wallet file on the client - javax.net.ssl.trustStoreType=”SSO” For client authentication, use the datasource connection properties: - javax.net.ssl.keyStore=location of wallet file on the client - javax.net.ssl.keyStoreType=”SSO” Note that the driver connection properties for the wallet require a file name, not a directory name. Active GridLink ONS over SSL For completeness, there is another SSL usage for WLS datasources.  The communication with the Oracle Notification Service (ONS) for load balancing information and node up/down events can use SSL also. Create an auto-login wallet and use the wallet on the client and server.  The following is a sample sequence to create a test wallet for use with ONS. orapki wallet create -wallet ons -auto_login -pwd ONS_Wallet orapki wallet add -wallet ons -dn "CN=ons_test,C=US" -keysize 1024 -self_signed -validity 9999 -pwd ONS_Wallet orapki wallet export -wallet ons -dn "CN=ons_test,C=US" -cert ons/cert.txt -pwd ONS_Wallet On the database server side, it’s necessary to define the walletfile directory in the file $CRS_HOME/opmn/conf/ons.config and run onsctl stop/start. When configuring an Active GridLink datasource, the connection to the ONS must be defined.  In addition to the host and port, the wallet file directory must be specified.  By not giving a password, a SSO wallet is assumed. Summary To use SSL with the Oracle thin driver without any clear text passwords, use an SSO Oracle Wallet.  SSL support in the Oracle thin driver is available starting in 10g Release 2.

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• Mapping Repeating Sequence Groups in BizTalk

  - by Paul Petrov

  Repeating sequence groups can often be seen in real life XML documents. It happens when certain sequence of elements repeats in the instance document. Here’s fairly abstract example of schema definition that contains sequence group: <xs:schemaxmlns:b="http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003"            xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"            xmlns="NS-Schema1"            targetNamespace="NS-Schema1" >  <xs:elementname="RepeatingSequenceGroups">     <xs:complexType>       <xs:sequencemaxOccurs="1"minOccurs="0">         <xs:sequencemaxOccurs="unbounded">           <xs:elementname="A"type="xs:string" />           <xs:elementname="B"type="xs:string" />           <xs:elementname="C"type="xs:string"minOccurs="0" />         </xs:sequence>       </xs:sequence>     </xs:complexType>  </xs:element> </xs:schema> And here’s corresponding XML instance document: <ns0:RepeatingSequenceGroupsxmlns:ns0="NS-Schema1">  <A>A1</A>  <B>B1</B>  <C>C1</C>  <A>A2</A>  <B>B2</B>  <A>A3</A>  <B>B3</B>  <C>C3</C> </ns0:RepeatingSequenceGroups> As you can see elements A, B, and C are children of anonymous xs:sequence element which in turn can be repeated N times. Let’s say we need do simple mapping to the schema with similar structure but with different element names: <ns0:Destinationxmlns:ns0="NS-Schema2">  <Alpha>A1</Alpha>  <Beta>B1</Beta>  <Gamma>C1</Gamma>  <Alpha>A2</Alpha>  <Beta>B2</Beta>  <Gamma>C2</Gamma> </ns0:Destination> The basic map for such typical task would look pretty straightforward: If we test this map without any modification it will produce following result: <ns0:Destinationxmlns:ns0="NS-Schema2">  <Alpha>A1</Alpha>  <Alpha>A2</Alpha>  <Alpha>A3</Alpha>  <Beta>B1</Beta>  <Beta>B2</Beta>  <Beta>B3</Beta>  <Gamma>C1</Gamma>  <Gamma>C3</Gamma> </ns0:Destination> The original order of the elements inside sequence is lost and that’s not what we want. Default behavior of the BizTalk 2009 and 2010 Map Editor is to generate compatible map with older versions that did not have ability to preserve sequence order. To enable this feature simply open map file (*.btm) in text/xml editor and find attribute PreserveSequenceOrder of the root <mapsource> element. Set its value to Yes and re-test the map: <ns0:Destinationxmlns:ns0="NS-Schema2">  <Alpha>A1</Alpha>  <Beta>B1</Beta>  <Gamma>C1</Gamma>  <Alpha>A2</Alpha>  <Beta>B2</Beta>  <Alpha>A3</Alpha>  <Beta>B3</Beta>  <Gamma>C3</Gamma> </ns0:Destination> The result is as expected – all corresponding elements are in the same order as in the source document. Under the hood it is achieved by using one common xsl:for-each statement that pulls all elements in original order (rather than using individual for-each statement per element name in default mode) and xsl:if statements to test current element in the loop:  <xsl:templatematch="/s0:RepeatingSequenceGroups">     <ns0:Destination>       <xsl:for-eachselect="A|B|C">         <xsl:iftest="local-name()='A'">           <Alpha>             <xsl:value-ofselect="./text()" />           </Alpha>         </xsl:if>         <xsl:iftest="local-name()='B'">           <Beta>             <xsl:value-ofselect="./text()" />           </Beta>         </xsl:if>         <xsl:iftest="local-name()='C'">           <Gamma>             <xsl:value-ofselect="./text()" />           </Gamma>         </xsl:if>       </xsl:for-each>     </ns0:Destination>  </xsl:template> BizTalk Map editor became smarter so learn and use this lesser known feature of XSLT 2.0 in your maps and XSL stylesheets.

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• Easy Made Easier

  - by dragonfly

      How easy is it to deploy a 2 node, fully redundant Oracle RAC cluster? Not very. Unless you use an Oracle Database Appliance. The focus of this member of Oracle's Engineered Systems family is to simplify the configuration, management and maintenance throughout the life of the system, while offering pay-as-you-grow scaling. Getting a 2-node RAC cluster up and running in under 2 hours has been made possible by the Oracle Database Appliance. Don't take my word for it, just check out these blog posts from partners and end users. The Oracle Database Appliance Experience - Zip Zoom Zoom http://www.fuadarshad.com/2012/02/oracle-database-appliance-experience.html Off-the-shelf Oracle database servers http://normanweaver.wordpress.com/2011/10/10/off-the-shelf-oracle-database-servers/ Oracle Database Appliance – Deployment Steps http://marcel.vandewaters.nl/oracle/database-appliance/oracle-database-appliance-deployment-steps     See how easy it is to deploy an Oracle Database Appliance for high availability with RAC? Now for the meat of this post, which is the first in a series of posts describing tips for making the deployment of an ODA even easier. The key to the easy deployment of an Oracle Database Appliance is the Appliance Manager software, which does the actual software deployment and configuration, based on best practices. But in order for it to do that, it needs some basic information first, including system name, IP addresses, etc. That's where the Appliance Manager GUI comes in to play, taking a wizard approach to specifying the information needed.     Using the Appliance Manager GUI is pretty straight forward, stepping through several screens of information to enter data in typical wizard style. Like most configuration tasks, it helps to gather the required information before hand. But before you rush out to a committee meeting on what to use for host names, and rely on whatever IP addresses might be hanging around, make sure you are familiar with some of the auto-fill defaults for the Appliance Manager. I'll step through the key screens below to highlight the results of the auto-fill capability of the Appliance Manager GUI.     Depending on which of the 2 Configuration Types (Config Type screen) you choose, you will get a slightly different set of screens. The Typical configuration assumes certain default configuration choices and has the fewest screens, where as the Custom configuration gives you the most flexibility in what you configure from the start. In the examples below, I have used the Custom config type.     One of the first items you are asked for is the System Name (System Info screen). This is used to identify the system, but also as the base for the default hostnames on following screens. In this screen shot, the System Name is "oda".     When you get to the next screen (Generic Network screen), you enter your domain name, DNS IP address(es), and NTP IP address(es). Next up is the Public Network screen, seen below, where you will see the host name fields are automatically filled in with default host names based on the System Name, in this case "oda". The System Name is also the basis for default host names for the extra ethernet ports available for configuration as part of a Custom configuration, as seen in the 2nd screen shot below (Other Network). There is no requirement to use these host names, as you can easily edit any of the host names. This does make filling in the configuration details easier and less prone to "fat fingers" if you are OK with these host names. Here is a full list of the automatically filled in host names. 1 2 1-vip 2-vip -scan 1-ilom 2-ilom 1-net1 2-net1 1-net2 2-net2 1-net3 2-net3     Another auto-fill feature of the Appliance Manager GUI follows a common practice of deploying IP Addresses for a RAC cluster in sequential order. In the screen shot below, I entered the first IP address (Node1-IP), then hit Tab to move to the next field. As a result, the next 5 IP address fields were automatically filled in with the next 5 IP addresses sequentially from the first one I entered. As with the host names, these are not required, and can be changed to whatever your IP address values are. One note of caution though, if the first IP Address field (Node1-IP) is filled out and you click in that field and back out, the following 5 IP addresses will be set to the sequential default. If you don't use the sequential IP addresses, pay attention to where you click that mouse. :-)     In the screen shot below, by entering the netmask value in the Netmask field, in this case 255.255.255.0, the gateway value was auto-filled into the Gateway field, based on the IP addresses and netmask previously entered. As always, you can change this value.     My last 2 screen shots illustrate that the same sequential IP address autofill and netmask to gateway autofill works when entering the IP configuration details for the Integrated Lights Out Manager (ILOM) for both nodes. The time these auto-fill capabilities save in entering data is nice, but from my perspective not as important as the opportunity to avoid data entry errors. In my next post in this series, I will touch on the benefit of using the network validation capability of the Appliance Manager GUI prior to deploying an Oracle Database Appliance.

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