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• Touchscreen sensitivity

  - by Aashish J Kumar

  I'm trying to make an android app only for tablets, which will draw the lines as and where the user touches the screen. It is very simple and there are lot more apps like this. I have a doubt regarding the touch-screen technology. Is there any possibility that if the user touch the screen soft then the lines will be dull and if the user touch the screen harder then the lines drawn will be thicker? Is it even possible to do such things in tablet? I don't have info about the hardware and technology used in tablets, please guide me with a valid answers and please refer me to any blogs or docs which says about the touch sense technology. Thank you

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• If I had to create a server farm what should I do? (how others companies work?)

  - by Michel

  I have a business idea but this is not really my field so I'm trying to understand what I'm really dealing with. I have a general understanding of how a web farm works, I'm a web developer and I understand the technology behind it, but I'm curious to know specifically how a web farm is set up and which professionals are involved. Things to consider probably are the hardware, the power supply, the software managment, the cooling system and if possible the usage of green technology/power recycling. Basically, can you explain me how a web hosting company is structured and how it works? A big question, I know, but from what I already read here about the subject a lot of you know this stuff. Thanks for your time guys!

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• How often does memcache on Google AppEngine lose data?

  - by Freed

  Memcache in general and on AppEngine in specific is unreliable in the sense that my data may be deleted from the cache for whatever reason at any point in time. However, in some cases there might be cases where a small risk may be worth the added performance using memcache could give, such as updating some data in memcache that gets saved periodically to some other, more reliable storage. Are there any numbers from Google that could give me an indication of the actual probability that a memcache entry would be lost from the cache before its expiration time, given that I keep within my quotas? Are there any reasons other than hardware failure and administrative operations such as machines at the data centers being upgraded/moved/replaced that would cause entries to be removed from memcache prematurely?

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• Multithreading - are the multi-core processors really doing parallel processing?

  - by so.very.tired

  Are the modern multi-core processors really doing parallel processing? Like, take for example, Intel's core i7 processors. some of them has #of Cores: 4 and #of Threads: 8 (taken from Intel's specifications pages). If I to write a program (say in Java or C) that has multiple threads of execution, will they really be processed concurrently? My instructor said that "it is not always the case with multi-core processors", but didn't gave to much details. And why do Intel have to specify both #of Cores and #of Threads? Isn't thread just a term that describe a program-related abstraction, unlike "cores" which are actual hardware? ("Every thread runs on different core").

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• Android on Desktop tutorials/resources

  - by Ascension Systems

  I'm aware of the android-x86 project and as far as the end result (bootable live/install iso), I am looking to do the same thing. The difference is, I'm looking to do this with the ice cream sandwich branch from android master repo. Ice cream sandwich adds full support for x86 hardware and even sports a build target specifically for running the OS in virtualbox. So my question is, is anyone aware of any documentation for building and deploying to that target? Just in case it's not clear, I'm not just using the android-x86 project because they haven't yet put up a build for anything later than android 3.

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• How to switch data pins on/off on parallel port?

  - by Matt

  I want to simply switch certain data pins on and off, so that they can control a set of relays. I'm not asking about the hardware bit (should be easy), but I don't know where to begin writing the software. I don't want a high level library that can send bytes to a device - I literally want to switch on/off certain pins. I'm running Linux and I want to do this in Java, so would I just need a library? It would be nice if the library has good documentation and is easy to use, but if not then a short example code will help me get started.

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• How to speed up a query?

  - by Soroush Khosravi

  I have a table that every request to the server, stores on it. For each request I will check that it is banned or not. For example it is a query: select * from requests where request_sessID = '4bc0331d983000902b4718c80f12e9b3' AND request_time > (UNIX_TIMESTAMP() - 3600) AND request_isEnable = 1 I also set the engine from InnoDB to MyISAM and row_format to Dynamic but nothing changed. My Hardware is very strong but it took about a minute to execute ! I am a programmer and newbie to mysql How can Speed Up this query? Thanks in Advance

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• West Wind WebSurge - an easy way to Load Test Web Applications

  - by Rick Strahl

  A few months ago on a project the subject of load testing came up. We were having some serious issues with a Web application that would start spewing SQL lock errors under somewhat heavy load. These sort of errors can be tough to catch, precisely because they only occur under load and not during typical development testing. To replicate this error more reliably we needed to put a load on the application and run it for a while before these SQL errors would flare up. It’s been a while since I’d looked at load testing tools, so I spent a bit of time looking at different tools and frankly didn’t really find anything that was a good fit. A lot of tools were either a pain to use, didn’t have the basic features I needed, or are extravagantly expensive. In  the end I got frustrated enough to build an initially small custom load test solution that then morphed into a more generic library, then gained a console front end and eventually turned into a full blown Web load testing tool that is now called West Wind WebSurge. I got seriously frustrated looking for tools every time I needed some quick and dirty load testing for an application. If my aim is to just put an application under heavy enough load to find a scalability problem in code, or to simply try and push an application to its limits on the hardware it’s running I shouldn’t have to have to struggle to set up tests. It should be easy enough to get going in a few minutes, so that the testing can be set up quickly so that it can be done on a regular basis without a lot of hassle. And that was the goal when I started to build out my initial custom load tester into a more widely usable tool. If you’re in a hurry and you want to check it out, you can find more information and download links here: West Wind WebSurge Product Page Walk through Video Download link (zip) Install from Chocolatey Source on GitHub For a more detailed discussion of the why’s and how’s and some background continue reading. How did I get here? When I started out on this path, I wasn’t planning on building a tool like this myself – but I got frustrated enough looking at what’s out there to think that I can do better than what’s available for the most common simple load testing scenarios. When we ran into the SQL lock problems I mentioned, I started looking around what’s available for Web load testing solutions that would work for our whole team which consisted of a few developers and a couple of IT guys both of which needed to be able to run the tests. It had been a while since I looked at tools and I figured that by now there should be some good solutions out there, but as it turns out I didn’t really find anything that fit our relatively simple needs without costing an arm and a leg… I spent the better part of a day installing and trying various load testing tools and to be frank most of them were either terrible at what they do, incredibly unfriendly to use, used some terminology I couldn’t even parse, or were extremely expensive (and I mean in the ‘sell your liver’ range of expensive). Pick your poison. There are also a number of online solutions for load testing and they actually looked more promising, but those wouldn’t work well for our scenario as the application is running inside of a private VPN with no outside access into the VPN. Most of those online solutions also ended up being very pricey as well – presumably because of the bandwidth required to test over the open Web can be enormous. When I asked around on Twitter what people were using– I got mostly… crickets. Several people mentioned Visual Studio Load Test, and most other suggestions pointed to online solutions. I did get a bunch of responses though with people asking to let them know what I found – apparently I’m not alone when it comes to finding load testing tools that are effective and easy to use. As to Visual Studio, the higher end skus of Visual Studio and the test edition include a Web load testing tool, which is quite powerful, but there are a number of issues with that: First it’s tied to Visual Studio so it’s not very portable – you need a VS install. I also find the test setup and terminology used by the VS test runner extremely confusing. Heck, it’s complicated enough that there’s even a Pluralsight course on using the Visual Studio Web test from Steve Smith. And of course you need to have one of the high end Visual Studio Skus, and those are mucho Dinero ($$$) – just for the load testing that’s rarely an option. Some of the tools are ultra extensive and let you run analysis tools on the target serves which is useful, but in most cases – just plain overkill and only distracts from what I tend to be ultimately interested in: Reproducing problems that occur at high load, and finding the upper limits and ‘what if’ scenarios as load is ramped up increasingly against a site. Yes it’s useful to have Web app instrumentation, but often that’s not what you’re interested in. I still fondly remember early days of Web testing when Microsoft had the WAST (Web Application Stress Tool) tool, which was rather simple – and also somewhat limited – but easily allowed you to create stress tests very quickly. It had some serious limitations (mainly that it didn’t work with SSL),  but the idea behind it was excellent: Create tests quickly and easily and provide a decent engine to run it locally with minimal setup. You could get set up and run tests within a few minutes. Unfortunately, that tool died a quiet death as so many of Microsoft’s tools that probably were built by an intern and then abandoned, even though there was a lot of potential and it was actually fairly widely used. Eventually the tools was no longer downloadable and now it simply doesn’t work anymore on higher end hardware. West Wind Web Surge – Making Load Testing Quick and Easy So I ended up creating West Wind WebSurge out of rebellious frustration… The goal of WebSurge is to make it drop dead simple to create load tests. It’s super easy to capture sessions either using the built in capture tool (big props to Eric Lawrence, Telerik and FiddlerCore which made that piece a snap), using the full version of Fiddler and exporting sessions, or by manually or programmatically creating text files based on plain HTTP headers to create requests. I’ve been using this tool for 4 months now on a regular basis on various projects as a reality check for performance and scalability and it’s worked extremely well for finding small performance issues. I also use it regularly as a simple URL tester, as it allows me to quickly enter a URL plus headers and content and test that URL and its results along with the ability to easily save one or more of those URLs. A few weeks back I made a walk through video that goes over most of the features of WebSurge in some detail: Note that the UI has slightly changed since then, so there are some UI improvements. Most notably the test results screen has been updated recently to a different layout and to provide more information about each URL in a session at a glance. The video and the main WebSurge site has a lot of info of basic operations. For the rest of this post I’ll talk about a few deeper aspects that may be of interest while also giving a glance at how WebSurge works. Session Capturing As you would expect, WebSurge works with Sessions of Urls that are played back under load. Here’s what the main Session View looks like: You can create session entries manually by individually adding URLs to test (on the Request tab on the right) and saving them, or you can capture output from Web Browsers, Windows Desktop applications that call services, your own applications using the built in Capture tool. With this tool you can capture anything HTTP -SSL requests and content from Web pages, AJAX calls, SOAP or REST services – again anything that uses Windows or .NET HTTP APIs. Behind the scenes the capture tool uses FiddlerCore so basically anything you can capture with Fiddler you can also capture with Web Surge Session capture tool. Alternately you can actually use Fiddler as well, and then export the captured Fiddler trace to a file, which can then be imported into WebSurge. This is a nice way to let somebody capture session without having to actually install WebSurge or for your customers to provide an exact playback scenario for a given set of URLs that cause a problem perhaps. Note that not all applications work with Fiddler’s proxy unless you configure a proxy. For example, .NET Web applications that make HTTP calls usually don’t show up in Fiddler by default. For those .NET applications you can explicitly override proxy settings to capture those requests to service calls. The capture tool also has handy optional filters that allow you to filter by domain, to help block out noise that you typically don’t want to include in your requests. For example, if your pages include links to CDNs, or Google Analytics or social links you typically don’t want to include those in your load test, so by capturing just from a specific domain you are guaranteed content from only that one domain. Additionally you can provide url filters in the configuration file – filters allow to provide filter strings that if contained in a url will cause requests to be ignored. Again this is useful if you don’t filter by domain but you want to filter out things like static image, css and script files etc. Often you’re not interested in the load characteristics of these static and usually cached resources as they just add noise to tests and often skew the overall url performance results. In my testing I tend to care only about my dynamic requests. SSL Captures require Fiddler Note, that in order to capture SSL requests you’ll have to install the Fiddler’s SSL certificate. The easiest way to do this is to install Fiddler and use its SSL configuration options to get the certificate into the local certificate store. There’s a document on the Telerik site that provides the exact steps to get SSL captures to work with Fiddler and therefore with WebSurge. Session Storage A group of URLs entered or captured make up a Session. Sessions can be saved and restored easily as they use a very simple text format that simply stored on disk. The format is slightly customized HTTP header traces separated by a separator line. The headers are standard HTTP headers except that the full URL instead of just the domain relative path is stored as part of the 1st HTTP header line for easier parsing. Because it’s just text and uses the same format that Fiddler uses for exports, it’s super easy to create Sessions by hand manually or under program control writing out to a simple text file. You can see what this format looks like in the Capture window figure above – the raw captured format is also what’s stored to disk and what WebSurge parses from. The only ‘custom’ part of these headers is that 1st line contains the full URL instead of the domain relative path and Host: header. The rest of each header are just plain standard HTTP headers with each individual URL isolated by a separator line. The format used here also uses what Fiddler produces for exports, so it’s easy to exchange or view data either in Fiddler or WebSurge. Urls can also be edited interactively so you can modify the headers easily as well: Again – it’s just plain HTTP headers so anything you can do with HTTP can be added here. Use it for single URL Testing Incidentally I’ve also found this form as an excellent way to test and replay individual URLs for simple non-load testing purposes. Because you can capture a single or many URLs and store them on disk, this also provides a nice HTTP playground where you can record URLs with their headers, and fire them one at a time or as a session and see results immediately. It’s actually an easy way for REST presentations and I find the simple UI flow actually easier than using Fiddler natively. Finally you can save one or more URLs as a session for later retrieval. I’m using this more and more for simple URL checks. Overriding Cookies and Domains Speaking of HTTP headers – you can also overwrite cookies used as part of the options. One thing that happens with modern Web applications is that you have session cookies in use for authorization. These cookies tend to expire at some point which would invalidate a test. Using the Options dialog you can actually override the cookie: which replaces the cookie for all requests with the cookie value specified here. You can capture a valid cookie from a manual HTTP request in your browser and then paste into the cookie field, to replace the existing Cookie with the new one that is now valid. Likewise you can easily replace the domain so if you captured urls on west-wind.com and now you want to test on localhost you can do that easily easily as well. You could even do something like capture on store.west-wind.com and then test on localhost/store which would also work. Running Load Tests Once you’ve created a Session you can specify the length of the test in seconds, and specify the number of simultaneous threads to run each session on. Sessions run through each of the URLs in the session sequentially by default. One option in the options list above is that you can also randomize the URLs so each thread runs requests in a different order. This avoids bunching up URLs initially when tests start as all threads run the same requests simultaneously which can sometimes skew the results of the first few minutes of a test. While sessions run some progress information is displayed: By default there’s a live view of requests displayed in a Console-like window. On the bottom of the window there’s a running total summary that displays where you’re at in the test, how many requests have been processed and what the requests per second count is currently for all requests. Note that for tests that run over a thousand requests a second it’s a good idea to turn off the console display. While the console display is nice to see that something is happening and also gives you slight idea what’s happening with actual requests, once a lot of requests are processed, this UI updating actually adds a lot of CPU overhead to the application which may cause the actual load generated to be reduced. If you are running a 1000 requests a second there’s not much to see anyway as requests roll by way too fast to see individual lines anyway. If you look on the options panel, there is a NoProgressEvents option that disables the console display. Note that the summary display is still updated approximately once a second so you can always tell that the test is still running. Test Results When the test is done you get a simple Results display: On the right you get an overall summary as well as breakdown by each URL in the session. Both success and failures are highlighted so it’s easy to see what’s breaking in your load test. The report can be printed or you can also open the HTML document in your default Web Browser for printing to PDF or saving the HTML document to disk. The list on the right shows you a partial list of the URLs that were fired so you can look in detail at the request and response data. The list can be filtered by success and failure requests. Each list is partial only (at the moment) and limited to a max of 1000 items in order to render reasonably quickly. Each item in the list can be clicked to see the full request and response data: This particularly useful for errors so you can quickly see and copy what request data was used and in the case of a GET request you can also just click the link to quickly jump to the page. For non-GET requests you can find the URL in the Session list, and use the context menu to Test the URL as configured including any HTTP content data to send. You get to see the full HTTP request and response as well as a link in the Request header to go visit the actual page. Not so useful for a POST as above, but definitely useful for GET requests. Finally you can also get a few charts. The most useful one is probably the Request per Second chart which can be accessed from the Charts menu or shortcut. Here’s what it looks like:   Results can also be exported to JSON, XML and HTML. Keep in mind that these files can get very large rather quickly though, so exports can end up taking a while to complete. Command Line Interface WebSurge runs with a small core load engine and this engine is plugged into the front end application I’ve shown so far. There’s also a command line interface available to run WebSurge from the Windows command prompt. Using the command line you can run tests for either an individual URL (similar to AB.exe for example) or a full Session file. By default when it runs WebSurgeCli shows progress every second showing total request count, failures and the requests per second for the entire test. A silent option can turn off this progress display and display only the results. The command line interface can be useful for build integration which allows checking for failures perhaps or hitting a specific requests per second count etc. It’s also nice to use this as quick and dirty URL test facility similar to the way you’d use Apache Bench (ab.exe). Unlike ab.exe though, WebSurgeCli supports SSL and makes it much easier to create multi-URL tests using either manual editing or the WebSurge UI. Current Status Currently West Wind WebSurge is still in Beta status. I’m still adding small new features and tweaking the UI in an attempt to make it as easy and self-explanatory as possible to run. Documentation for the UI and specialty features is also still a work in progress. I plan on open-sourcing this product, but it won’t be free. There’s a free version available that provides a limited number of threads and request URLs to run. A relatively low cost license  removes the thread and request limitations. Pricing info can be found on the Web site – there’s an introductory price which is $99 at the moment which I think is reasonable compared to most other for pay solutions out there that are exorbitant by comparison… The reason code is not available yet is – well, the UI portion of the app is a bit embarrassing in its current monolithic state. The UI started as a very simple interface originally that later got a lot more complex – yeah, that never happens, right? Unless there’s a lot of interest I don’t foresee re-writing the UI entirely (which would be ideal), but in the meantime at least some cleanup is required before I dare to publish it :-). The code will likely be released with version 1.0. I’m very interested in feedback. Do you think this could be useful to you and provide value over other tools you may or may not have used before? I hope so – it already has provided a ton of value for me and the work I do that made the development worthwhile at this point. You can leave a comment below, or for more extensive discussions you can post a message on the West Wind Message Board in the WebSurge section Microsoft MVPs and Insiders get a free License If you’re a Microsoft MVP or a Microsoft Insider you can get a full license for free. Send me a link to your current, official Microsoft profile and I’ll send you a not-for resale license. Send any messages to [email protected]. Resources For more info on WebSurge and to download it to try it out, use the following links. West Wind WebSurge Home Download West Wind WebSurge Getting Started with West Wind WebSurge Video© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2014Posted in ASP.NET   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Security in OBIEE 11g, Part 2

  - by Rob Reynolds

  Continuing the series on OBIEE 11g, our guest blogger this week is Pravin Janardanam. Here is Part 2 of his overview of Security in OBIEE 11g. OBIEE 11g Security Overview, Part 2 by Pravin Janardanam In my previous blog on Security, I discussed the OBIEE 11g changes regarding Authentication mechanism, RPD protection and encryption. This blog will include a discussion about OBIEE 11g Authorization and other Security aspects. Authorization: Authorization in 10g was achieved using a combination of Users, Groups and association of privileges and object permissions to users and Groups. Two keys changes to Authorization in OBIEE 11g are: Application Roles Policies / Permission Groups Application Roles are introduced in OBIEE 11g. An application role is specific to the application. They can be mapped to other application roles defined in the same application scope and also to enterprise users or groups, and they are used in authorization decisions. Application roles in 11g take the place of Groups in 10g within OBIEE application. In OBIEE 10g, any changes to corporate LDAP groups require a corresponding change to Groups and their permission assignment. In OBIEE 11g, Application roles provide insulation between permission definitions and corporate LDAP Groups. Permissions are defined at Application Role level and changes to LDAP groups just require a reassignment of the Group to the Application Roles. Permissions and privileges are assigned to Application Roles and users in OBIEE 11g compared to Groups and Users in 10g. The diagram below shows the relationship between users, groups and application roles. Note that the Groups shown in the diagram refer to LDAP Groups (WebLogic Groups by default) and not OBIEE application Groups. The following screenshot compares the permission windows from Admin tool in 10g vs 11g. Note that the Groups in the OBIEE 10g are replaced with Application Roles in OBIEE 11g. The same is applicable to OBIEE web catalog objects.    The default Application Roles available after OBIEE 11g installation are BIAdministrator, BISystem, BIConsumer and BIAuthor. Application policies are the authorization policies that an application relies upon for controlling access to its resources. An Application Role is defined by the Application Policy. The following screenshot shows the policies defined for BIAdministrator and BISystem Roles. Note that the permission for impersonation is granted to BISystem Role. In OBIEE 10g, the permission to manage repositories and Impersonation were assigned to “Administrators” group with no control to separate these permissions in the Administrators group. Hence user “Administrator” also had the permission to impersonate. In OBI11g, BIAdministrator does not have the permission to impersonate. This gives more flexibility to have multiple users perform different administrative functions. Application Roles, Policies, association of Policies to application roles and association of users and groups to application roles are managed using Fusion Middleware Enterprise Manager (FMW EM). They reside in the policy store, identified by the system-jazn-data.xml file. The screenshots below show where they are created and managed in FMW EM. The following screenshot shows the assignment of WebLogic Groups to Application Roles. The following screenshot shows the assignment of Permissions to Application Roles (Application Policies). Note: Object level permission association to Applications Roles resides in the RPD for repository objects. Permissions and Privilege for web catalog objects resides in the OBIEE Web Catalog. Wherever Groups were used in the web catalog and RPD has been replaced with Application roles in OBIEE 11g. Following are the tools used in OBIEE 11g Security Administration: ·       Users and Groups are managed in Oracle WebLogic Administration console (by default). If WebLogic is integrated with other LDAP products, then Users and Groups needs to managed using the interface provide by the respective LDAP vendor – New in OBIEE 11g ·       Application Roles and Application Policies are managed in Oracle Enterprise Manager - Fusion Middleware Control – New in OBIEE 11g ·       Repository object permissions are managed in OBIEE Administration tool – Same as 10g but the assignment is to Application Roles instead of Groups ·       Presentation Services Catalog Permissions and Privileges are managed in OBI Application administration page - Same as 10g but the assignment is to Application Roles instead of Groups Credential Store: Credential Store is a single consolidated service provider to store and manage the application credentials securely. The credential store contains credentials that either user supplied or system generated. Credential store in OBIEE 10g is file based and is managed using cryptotools utility. In 11g, Credential store can be managed directly from the FMW Enterprise Manager and is stored in cwallet.sso file. By default, the Credential Store stores password for deployed RPDs, BI Publisher data sources and BISystem user. In addition, Credential store can be LDAP based but only Oracle Internet Directory is supported right now. As you can see OBIEE security is integrated with Oracle Fusion Middleware security architecture. This provides a common security framework for all components of Business Intelligence and Fusion Middleware applications.

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• Top 31 Favorite Features in Windows Server 2012

  - by KeithMayer

  Over the past month, my fellow IT Pro Technical Evangelists and I have authored a series of articles about our Top 31 Favorite Features in Windows Server 2012.  Now that our series is complete, I’m providing a clickable index below of all of the articles in the series for your convenience, just in case you perhaps missed any of them when they were first released.  Hope you enjoy our Favorite Features in Windows Server 2012! Top 31 Favorite Features in Windows Server 2012 The Cloud OS Platform by Kevin Remde Server Manager in Windows Server 2012 by Brian Lewis Feel the Power of PowerShell 3.0 by Matt Hester Live Migrate Your VMS in One Line of PowerShell by Keith Mayer Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V Replica by Kevin Remde Right-size IT Budgets with “Storage Spaces” by Keith Mayer Yes, there is an “I” in Team – the NIC Team! by Kevin Remde Hyper-V Network Virtualization by Keith Mayer Get Happy over the FREE Hyper-V Server 2012 by Matt Hester Simplified BranchCache in Windows Server 2012 by Brian Lewis Getting Snippy with PowerShell 3.0 by Matt Hester How to Get Unbelievable Data Deduplication Results by Chris Henley of Veeam Simplified VDI Configuration and Management by Brian Lewis Taming the New Task Manager by Keith Mayer Improve File Server Resiliency with ReFS by Keith Mayer Simplified DirectAccess by Sumeeth Evans SMB 3.0 – The Glue in Windows Server 2012 by Matt Hester Continuously Available File Shares by Steven Murawski of Edgenet Server Core - Improved Taste, Less Filling, More Uptime by Keith Mayer Extend Your Hyper-V Virtual Switch by Kevin Remde To NIC or to Not NIC Hardware Requirements by Brian Lewis Simplified Licensing and Server Versions by Kevin Remde I Think, Therefore IPAM! by Kevin Remde Windows Server 2012 and the RSATs by Kevin Remde Top 3 New Tricks in the Active Directory Admin Center by Keith Mayer Dynamic Access Control by Brian Lewis Get the Gremlin out of Your Active Directory Virtualized Infrastructure by Matt Hester Scoping out the New DHCP Failover by Keith Mayer Gone in 8 Seconds – The New CHKDSK by Matt Hester New Remote Desktop Services (RDS) by Brian Lewis No Better Time Than Now to Choose Hyper-V by Matt Hester What’s Next? Keep Learning! Want to learn more about Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V Server 2012?  Want to prepare for certification on Windows Server 2012? Do It: Join our Windows Server 2012 “Early Experts” Challenge online peer study group for FREE at http://earlyexperts.net. You’ll get FREE access to video-based lectures, structured study materials and hands-on lab activities to help you study and prepare!  Along the way, you’ll be part of an IT Pro community of over 1,000+ IT Pros that are all helping each other learn Windows Server 2012! What are Your Favorite Features? Do you have a Favorite Feature in Windows Server 2012 that we missed in our list above?  Feel free to share your favorites in the comments below! Keith Build Your Lab! Download Windows Server 2012 Don’t Have a Lab? Build Your Lab in the Cloud with Windows Azure Virtual Machines Want to Get Certified? Join our Windows Server 2012 "Early Experts" Study Group

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• Display System Information on Your Desktop with Desktop Info

  - by Asian Angel

  Do you like to monitor your system but do not want a complicated app to do it with? If you love simplicity and easy configuration then join us as we look at Desktop Info. Desktop Info in Action Desktop Info comes in a zip file format so you will need to unzip the app, place it into an appropriate “Program Files Folder”, and create a shortcut. Do NOT delete the “Read Me File”…this will be extremely useful to you when you make changes to the “Configuration File”. Once you have everything set up you are ready to start Desktop Info up. This is the default layout and set of listings displayed when you start Desktop Info up for the first time. The font colors will be a mix of colors as seen here and the font size will perhaps be a bit small but those are very easy to change if desired. You can access the “Context Menu” directly over the “information area”…so no need to look for it in the “System Tray”. Notice that you can easily access that important “Read Me File” from here… The full contents of the configuration file (.ini file) are displayed here so that you can see exactly what kind of information can be displayed using the default listings. The first section is “Options”…you will most likely want to increase the font size while you are here. Then “Items”… If you are unhappy with any of the font colors in the “information area” this is where you can make the changes. You can turn information display items on or off here. And finally “Files, Registry, & Event Logs”. Here is our displayed information after a few tweaks in the configuration file. Very nice. Conclusion If you have been looking for a system information app that is simple and easy to set up then you should definitely give Desktop Info a try. Links Download Desktop Info Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Ask the Readers: What are Your Computer’s Hardware Specs?Allow Remote Control To Your Desktop On UbuntuHow To Get Detailed Information About Your PCGet CPU / System Load Average on Ubuntu LinuxEnable Remote Desktop (VNC) on Kubuntu TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Test Drive Windows 7 Online Download Wallpapers From National Geographic Site Spyware Blaster v4.3 Yes, it’s Patch Tuesday Generate Stunning Tag Clouds With Tagxedo Install, Remove and HIDE Fonts in Windows 7

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• How to Modify Data Security in Fusion Applications

  - by Elie Wazen

  The reference implementation in Fusion Applications is designed with built-in data security on business objects that implement the most common business practices.  For example, the “Sales Representative” job has the following two data security rules implemented on an “Opportunity” to restrict the list of Opportunities that are visible to an Sales Representative: Can view all the Opportunities where they are a member of the Opportunity Team Can view all the Opportunities where they are a resource of a territory in the Opportunity territory team While the above conditions may represent the most common access requirements of an Opportunity, some customers may have additional access constraints. This blog post explains: How to discover the data security implemented in Fusion Applications. How to customize data security Illustrative example. a.) How to discover seeded data security definitions The Security Reference Manuals explain the Function and Data Security implemented on each job role.  Security Reference Manuals are available on Oracle Enterprise Repository for Oracle Fusion Applications. The following is a snap shot of the security documented for the “Sales Representative” Job. The two data security policies define the list of Opportunities a Sales Representative can view. Here is a sample of data security policies on an Opportunity. Business Object Policy Description Policy Store Implementation Opportunity A Sales Representative can view opportunity where they are a territory resource in the opportunity territory team Role: Opportunity Territory Resource Duty Privilege: View Opportunity (Data) Resource: Opportunity A Sales Representative can view opportunity where they are an opportunity sales team member with view, edit, or full access Role: Opportunity Sales Representative Duty Privilege: View Opportunity (Data) Resource: Opportunity Description of Columns Column Name Description Policy Description Explains the data filters that are implemented as a SQL Where Clause in a Data Security Grant Policy Store Implementation Provides the implementation details of the Data Security Grant for this policy. In this example the Opportunities listed for a “Sales Representative” job role are derived from a combination of two grants defined on two separate duty roles at are inherited by the Sales Representative job role. b.) How to customize data security Requirement 1: Opportunities should be viewed only by members of the opportunity team and not by all the members of all the territories on the opportunity. Solution: Remove the role “Opportunity Territory Resource Duty” from the hierarchy of the “Sales Representative” job role. Best Practice: Do not modify the seeded role hierarchy. Create a custom “Sales Representative” job role and build the role hierarchy with the seeded duty roles. Requirement 2: Opportunities must be more restrictive based on a custom attribute that identifies if a Opportunity is confidential or not. Confidential Opportunities must be visible only the owner of the Opportunity. Solution: Modify the (2) data security policy in the above example as follows: A Sales Representative can view opportunity where they are a territory resource in the opportunity territory team and the opportunity is not confidential. Implementation of this policy is more invasive. The seeded SQL where clause of the data security grant on “Opportunity Territory Resource Duty” has to be modified and the condition that checks for the confidential flag must be added. Best Practice: Do not modify the seeded grant. Create a new grant with the modified condition. End Date the seeded grant. c.) Illustrative Example (Implementing Requirement 2) A data security policy contains the following components: Role Object Instance Set Action Of the above four components, the Role and Instance Set are the only components that are customizable. Object and Actions for that object are seed data and cannot be modified. To customize a seeded policy, “A Sales Representative can view opportunity where they are a territory resource in the opportunity territory team”, Find the seeded policy Identify the Role, Object, Instance Set and Action components of the policy Create a new custom instance set based on the seeded instance set. End Date the seeded policies Create a new data security policy with custom instance set c-1: Find the seeded policy Step 1: 1. Find the Role 2. Open 3. Find Policies Step 2: Click on the Data Security Tab Sort by “Resource Name” Find all the policies with the “Condition” as “where they are a territory resource in the opportunity territory team” In this example, we can see there are 5 policies for “Opportunity Territory Resource Duty” on Opportunity object. Step 3: Now that we know the policy details, we need to create new instance set with the custom condition. All instance sets are linked to the object. Find the object using global search option. Open it and click on “condition” tab Sort by Display name Find the Instance set Edit the instance set and copy the “SQL Predicate” to a notepad. Create a new instance set with the modified SQL Predicate from above by clicking on the icon as shown below. Step 4: End date the seeded data security policies on the duty role and create new policies with your custom instance set. Repeat the navigation in step Edit each of the 5 policies and end date them 3. Create new custom policies with the same information as the seeded policies in the “General Information”, “Roles” and “Action” tabs. 4. In the “Rules” tab, please pick the new instance set that was created in Step 3.

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• Best Practices for Building a Virtualized SPARC Computing Environment

  - by Scott Elvington

  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;} Oracle just published Best Practices for Building a Virtualized SPARC Computing Environment, a white paper that provides guidance on the complete hardware and software stack for deploying and managing your physical and virtual SPARC infrastructure. The solution is based on Oracle SPARC T4 servers, Oracle Solaris 11 with Oracle VM for SPARC 2.2, Sun ZFS storage appliances, Sun 10GbE 72 port switches and Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c. The paper emphasizes the value and importance of planning the resources (compute, network and storage) that will comprise the virtualized environment to achieve the desired capacity, performance and availability characteristics. The document also details numerous operational best practices that will help you deliver on those characteristics with unique capabilities provided by Enterprise Manager Ops Center including policy-based guest placement, pool resource balancing and automated guest recovery in the event of server failure. Plenty of references to supplementary documentation are included to help point you to additional resources. Whether you’re building the first stages of your private cloud or a general-purpose virtualized SPARC computing environment, these documented best practices will help ensure success. Please join Phil Bullinger and Steve Wilson from Oracle to learn more about breakthrough efficiency in private cloud infrastructure and how SPARC based virtualization can help you get started on your cloud journey. Stay Connected: Twitter |  Face book |  You Tube |  Linked in |  Newsletter

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• The broken Promise of the Mobile Web

  - by Rick Strahl

  High end mobile devices have been with us now for almost 7 years and they have utterly transformed the way we access information. Mobile phones and smartphones that have access to the Internet and host smart applications are in the hands of a large percentage of the population of the world. In many places even very remote, cell phones and even smart phones are a common sight. I’ll never forget when I was in India in 2011 I was up in the Southern Indian mountains riding an elephant out of a tiny local village, with an elephant herder in front riding atop of the elephant in front of us. He was dressed in traditional garb with the loin wrap and head cloth/turban as did quite a few of the locals in this small out of the way and not so touristy village. So we’re slowly trundling along in the forest and he’s lazily using his stick to guide the elephant and… 10 minutes in he pulls out his cell phone from his sash and starts texting. In the middle of texting a huge pig jumps out from the side of the trail and he takes a picture running across our path in the jungle! So yeah, mobile technology is very pervasive and it’s reached into even very buried and unexpected parts of this world. Apps are still King Apps currently rule the roost when it comes to mobile devices and the applications that run on them. If there’s something that you need on your mobile device your first step usually is to look for an app, not use your browser. But native app development remains a pain in the butt, with the requirement to have to support 2 or 3 completely separate platforms. There are solutions that try to bridge that gap. Xamarin is on a tear at the moment, providing their cross-device toolkit to build applications using C#. While Xamarin tools are impressive – and also *very* expensive – they only address part of the development madness that is app development. There are still specific device integration isssues, dealing with the different developer programs, security and certificate setups and all that other noise that surrounds app development. There’s also PhoneGap/Cordova which provides a hybrid solution that involves creating local HTML/CSS/JavaScript based applications, and then packaging them to run in a specialized App container that can run on most mobile device platforms using a WebView interface. This allows for using of HTML technology, but it also still requires all the set up, configuration of APIs, security keys and certification and submission and deployment process just like native applications – you actually lose many of the benefits that  Web based apps bring. The big selling point of Cordova is that you get to use HTML have the ability to build your UI once for all platforms and run across all of them – but the rest of the app process remains in place. Apps can be a big pain to create and manage especially when we are talking about specialized or vertical business applications that aren’t geared at the mainstream market and that don’t fit the ‘store’ model. If you’re building a small intra department application you don’t want to deal with multiple device platforms and certification etc. for various public or corporate app stores. That model is simply not a good fit both from the development and deployment perspective. Even for commercial, big ticket apps, HTML as a UI platform offers many advantages over native, from write-once run-anywhere, to remote maintenance, single point of management and failure to having full control over the application as opposed to have the app store overloads censor you. In a lot of ways Web based HTML/CSS/JavaScript applications have so much potential for building better solutions based on existing Web technologies for the very same reasons a lot of content years ago moved off the desktop to the Web. To me the Web as a mobile platform makes perfect sense, but the reality of today’s Mobile Web unfortunately looks a little different… Where’s the Love for the Mobile Web? Yet here we are in the middle of 2014, nearly 7 years after the first iPhone was released and brought the promise of rich interactive information at your fingertips, and yet we still don’t really have a solid mobile Web platform. I know what you’re thinking: “But we have lots of HTML/JavaScript/CSS features that allows us to build nice mobile interfaces”. I agree to a point – it’s actually quite possible to build nice looking, rich and capable Web UI today. We have media queries to deal with varied display sizes, CSS transforms for smooth animations and transitions, tons of CSS improvements in CSS 3 that facilitate rich layout, a host of APIs geared towards mobile device features and lately even a number of JavaScript framework choices that facilitate development of multi-screen apps in a consistent manner. Personally I’ve been working a lot with AngularJs and heavily modified Bootstrap themes to build mobile first UIs and that’s been working very well to provide highly usable and attractive UI for typical mobile business applications. From the pure UI perspective things actually look very good. Not just about the UI But it’s not just about the UI - it’s also about integration with the mobile device. When it comes to putting all those pieces together into what amounts to a consolidated platform to build mobile Web applications, I think we still have a ways to go… there are a lot of missing pieces to make it all work together and integrate with the device more smoothly, and more importantly to make it work uniformly across the majority of devices. I think there are a number of reasons for this. Slow Standards Adoption HTML standards implementations and ratification has been dreadfully slow, and browser vendors all seem to pick and choose different pieces of the technology they implement. The end result is that we have a capable UI platform that’s missing some of the infrastructure pieces to make it whole on mobile devices. There’s lots of potential but what is lacking that final 10% to build truly compelling mobile applications that can compete favorably with native applications. Some of it is the fragmentation of browsers and the slow evolution of the mobile specific HTML APIs. A host of mobile standards exist but many of the standards are in the early review stage and they have been there stuck for long periods of time and seem to move at a glacial pace. Browser vendors seem even slower to implement them, and for good reason – non-ratified standards mean that implementations may change and vendor implementations tend to be experimental and  likely have to be changed later. Neither Vendors or developers are not keen on changing standards. This is the typical chicken and egg scenario, but without some forward momentum from some party we end up stuck in the mud. It seems that either the standards bodies or the vendors need to carry the torch forward and that doesn’t seem to be happening quickly enough. Mobile Device Integration just isn’t good enough Current standards are not far reaching enough to address a number of the use case scenarios necessary for many mobile applications. While not every application needs to have access to all mobile device features, almost every mobile application could benefit from some integration with other parts of the mobile device platform. Integration with GPS, phone, media, messaging, notifications, linking and contacts system are benefits that are unique to mobile applications and could be widely used, but are mostly (with the exception of GPS) inaccessible for Web based applications today. Unfortunately trying to do most of this today only with a mobile Web browser is a losing battle. Aside from PhoneGap/Cordova’s app centric model with its own custom API accessing mobile device features and the token exception of the GeoLocation API, most device integration features are not widely supported by the current crop of mobile browsers. For example there’s no usable messaging API that allows access to SMS or contacts from HTML. Even obvious components like the Media Capture API are only implemented partially by mobile devices. There are alternatives and workarounds for some of these interfaces by using browser specific code, but that’s might ugly and something that I thought we were trying to leave behind with newer browser standards. But it’s not quite working out that way. It’s utterly perplexing to me that mobile standards like Media Capture and Streams, Media Gallery Access, Responsive Images, Messaging API, Contacts Manager API have only minimal or no traction at all today. Keep in mind we’ve had mobile browsers for nearly 7 years now, and yet we still have to think about how to get access to an image from the image gallery or the camera on some devices? Heck Windows Phone IE Mobile just gained the ability to upload images recently in the Windows 8.1 Update – that’s feature that HTML has had for 20 years! These are simple concepts and common problems that should have been solved a long time ago. It’s extremely frustrating to see build 90% of a mobile Web app with relative ease and then hit a brick wall for the remaining 10%, which often can be show stoppers. The remaining 10% have to do with platform integration, browser differences and working around the limitations that browsers and ‘pinned’ applications impose on HTML applications. The maddening part is that these limitations seem arbitrary as they could easily work on all mobile platforms. For example, SMS has a URL Moniker interface that sort of works on Android, works badly with iOS (only works if the address is already in the contact list) and not at all on Windows Phone. There’s no reason this shouldn’t work universally using the same interface – after all all phones have supported SMS since before the year 2000! But, it doesn’t have to be this way Change can happen very quickly. Take the GeoLocation API for example. Geolocation has taken off at the very beginning of the mobile device era and today it works well, provides the necessary security (a big concern for many mobile APIs), and is supported by just about all major mobile and even desktop browsers today. It handles security concerns via prompts to avoid unwanted access which is a model that would work for most other device APIs in a similar fashion. One time approval and occasional re-approval if code changes or caches expire. Simple and only slightly intrusive. It all works well, even though GeoLocation actually has some physical limitations, such as representing the current location when no GPS device is present. Yet this is a solved problem, where other APIs that are conceptually much simpler to implement have failed to gain any traction at all. Technically none of these APIs should be a problem to implement, but it appears that the momentum is just not there. Inadequate Web Application Linking and Activation Another important piece of the puzzle missing is the integration of HTML based Web applications. Today HTML based applications are not first class citizens on mobile operating systems. When talking about HTML based content there’s a big difference between content and applications. Content is great for search engine discovery and plain browser usage. Content is usually accessed intermittently and permanent linking is not so critical for this type of content.  But applications have different needs. Applications need to be started up quickly and must be easily switchable to support a multi-tasking user workflow. Therefore, it’s pretty crucial that mobile Web apps are integrated into the underlying mobile OS and work with the standard task management features. Unfortunately this integration is not as smooth as it should be. It starts with actually trying to find mobile Web applications, to ‘installing’ them onto a phone in an easily accessible manner in a prominent position. The experience of discovering a Mobile Web ‘App’ and making it sticky is by no means as easy or satisfying. Today the way you’d go about this is: Open the browser Search for a Web Site in the browser with your search engine of choice Hope that you find the right site Hope that you actually find a site that works for your mobile device Click on the link and run the app in a fully chrome’d browser instance (read tiny surface area) Pin the app to the home screen (with all the limitations outline above) Hope you pointed at the right URL when you pinned Even for you and me as developers, there are a few steps in there that are painful and annoying, but think about the average user. First figuring out how to search for a specific site or URL? And then pinning the app and hopefully from the right location? You’ve probably lost more than half of your audience at that point. This experience sucks. For developers too this process is painful since app developers can’t control the shortcut creation directly. This problem often gets solved by crazy coding schemes, with annoying pop-ups that try to get people to create shortcuts via fancy animations that are both annoying and add overhead to each and every application that implements this sort of thing differently. And that’s not the end of it - getting the link onto the home screen with an application icon varies quite a bit between browsers. Apple’s non-standard meta tags are prominent and they work with iOS and Android (only more recent versions), but not on Windows Phone. Windows Phone instead requires you to create an actual screen or rather a partial screen be captured for a shortcut in the tile manager. Who had that brilliant idea I wonder? Surprisingly Chrome on recent Android versions seems to actually get it right – icons use pngs, pinning is easy and pinned applications properly behave like standalone apps and retain the browser’s active page state and content. Each of the platforms has a different way to specify icons (WP doesn’t allow you to use an icon image at all), and the most widely used interface in use today is a bunch of Apple specific meta tags that other browsers choose to support. The question is: Why is there no standard implementation for installing shortcuts across mobile platforms using an official format rather than a proprietary one? Then there’s iOS and the crazy way it treats home screen linked URLs using a crazy hybrid format that is neither as capable as a Web app running in Safari nor a WebView hosted application. Moving off the Web ‘app’ link when switching to another app actually causes the browser and preview it to ‘blank out’ the Web application in the Task View (see screenshot on the right). Then, when the ‘app’ is reactivated it ends up completely restarting the browser with the original link. This is crazy behavior that you can’t easily work around. In some situations you might be able to store the application state and restore it using LocalStorage, but for many scenarios that involve complex data sources (like say Google Maps) that’s not a possibility. The only reason for this screwed up behavior I can think of is that it is deliberate to make Web apps a pain in the butt to use and forcing users trough the App Store/PhoneGap/Cordova route. App linking and management is a very basic problem – something that we essentially have solved in every desktop browser – yet on mobile devices where it arguably matters a lot more to have easy access to web content we have to jump through hoops to have even a remotely decent linking/activation experience across browsers. Where’s the Money? It’s not surprising that device home screen integration and Mobile Web support in general is in such dismal shape – the mobile OS vendors benefit financially from App store sales and have little to gain from Web based applications that bypass the App store and the cash cow that it presents. On top of that, platform specific vendor lock-in of both end users and developers who have invested in hardware, apps and consumables is something that mobile platform vendors actually aspire to. Web based interfaces that are cross-platform are the anti-thesis of that and so again it’s no surprise that the mobile Web is on a struggling path. But – that may be changing. More and more we’re seeing operations shifting to services that are subscription based or otherwise collect money for usage, and that may drive more progress into the Web direction in the end . Nothing like the almighty dollar to drive innovation forward. Do we need a Mobile Web App Store? As much as I dislike moderated experiences in today’s massive App Stores, they do at least provide one single place to look for apps for your device. I think we could really use some sort of registry, that could provide something akin to an app store for mobile Web apps, to make it easier to actually find mobile applications. This could take the form of a specialized search engine, or maybe a more formal store/registry like structure. Something like apt-get/chocolatey for Web apps. It could be curated and provide at least some feedback and reviews that might help with the integrity of applications. Coupled to that could be a native application on each platform that would allow searching and browsing of the registry and then also handle installation in the form of providing the home screen linking, plus maybe an initial security configuration that determines what features are allowed access to for the app. I’m not holding my breath. In order for this sort of thing to take off and gain widespread appeal, a lot of coordination would be required. And in order to get enough traction it would have to come from a well known entity – a mobile Web app store from a no name source is unlikely to gain high enough usage numbers to make a difference. In a way this would eliminate some of the freedom of the Web, but of course this would also be an optional search path in addition to the standard open Web search mechanisms to find and access content today. Security Security is a big deal, and one of the perceived reasons why so many IT professionals appear to be willing to go back to the walled garden of deployed apps is that Apps are perceived as safe due to the official review and curation of the App stores. Curated stores are supposed to protect you from malware, illegal and misleading content. It doesn’t always work out that way and all the major vendors have had issues with security and the review process at some time or another. Security is critical, but I also think that Web applications in general pose less of a security threat than native applications, by nature of the sandboxed browser and JavaScript environments. Web applications run externally completely and in the HTML and JavaScript sandboxes, with only a very few controlled APIs allowing access to device specific features. And as discussed earlier – security for any device interaction can be granted the same for mobile applications through a Web browser, as they can for native applications either via explicit policies loaded from the Web, or via prompting as GeoLocation does today. Security is important, but it’s certainly solvable problem for Web applications even those that need to access device hardware. Security shouldn’t be a reason for Web apps to be an equal player in mobile applications. Apps are winning, but haven’t we been here before? So now we’re finding ourselves back in an era of installed app, rather than Web based and managed apps. Only it’s even worse today than with Desktop applications, in that the apps are going through a gatekeeper that charges a toll and censors what you can and can’t do in your apps. Frankly it’s a mystery to me why anybody would buy into this model and why it’s lasted this long when we’ve already been through this process. It’s crazy… It’s really a shame that this regression is happening. We have the technology to make mobile Web apps much more prominent, but yet we’re basically held back by what seems little more than bureaucracy, partisan bickering and self interest of the major parties involved. Back in the day of the desktop it was Internet Explorer’s 98+%  market shareholding back the Web from improvements for many years – now it’s the combined mobile OS market in control of the mobile browsers. If mobile Web apps were allowed to be treated the same as native apps with simple ways to install and run them consistently and persistently, that would go a long way to making mobile applications much more usable and seriously viable alternatives to native apps. But as it is mobile apps have a severe disadvantage in placement and operation. There are a few bright spots in all of this. Mozilla’s FireFoxOs is embracing the Web for it’s mobile OS by essentially building every app out of HTML and JavaScript based content. It supports both packaged and certified package modes (that can be put into the app store), and Open Web apps that are loaded and run completely off the Web and can also cache locally for offline operation using a manifest. Open Web apps are treated as full class citizens in FireFoxOS and run using the same mechanism as installed apps. Unfortunately FireFoxOs is getting a slow start with minimal device support and specifically targeting the low end market. We can hope that this approach will change and catch on with other vendors, but that’s also an uphill battle given the conflict of interest with platform lock in that it represents. Recent versions of Android also seem to be working reasonably well with mobile application integration onto the desktop and activation out of the box. Although it still uses the Apple meta tags to find icons and behavior settings, everything at least works as you would expect – icons to the desktop on pinning, WebView based full screen activation, and reliable application persistence as the browser/app is treated like a real application. Hopefully iOS will at some point provide this same level of rudimentary Web app support. What’s also interesting to me is that Microsoft hasn’t picked up on the obvious need for a solid Web App platform. Being a distant third in the mobile OS war, Microsoft certainly has nothing to lose and everything to gain by using fresh ideas and expanding into areas that the other major vendors are neglecting. But instead Microsoft is trying to beat the market leaders at their own game, fighting on their adversary’s terms instead of taking a new tack. Providing a kick ass mobile Web platform that takes the lead on some of the proposed mobile APIs would be something positive that Microsoft could do to improve its miserable position in the mobile device market. Where are we at with Mobile Web? It sure sounds like I’m really down on the Mobile Web, right? I’ve built a number of mobile apps in the last year and while overall result and response has been very positive to what we were able to accomplish in terms of UI, getting that final 10% that required device integration dialed was an absolute nightmare on every single one of them. Big compromises had to be made and some features were left out or had to be modified for some devices. In two cases we opted to go the Cordova route in order to get the integration we needed, along with the extra pain involved in that process. Unless you’re not integrating with device features and you don’t care deeply about a smooth integration with the mobile desktop, mobile Web development is fraught with frustration. So, yes I’m frustrated! But it’s not for lack of wanting the mobile Web to succeed. I am still a firm believer that we will eventually arrive a much more functional mobile Web platform that allows access to the most common device features in a sensible way. It wouldn't be difficult for device platform vendors to make Web based applications first class citizens on mobile devices. But unfortunately it looks like it will still be some time before this happens. So, what’s your experience building mobile Web apps? Are you finding similar issues? Just giving up on raw Web applications and building PhoneGap apps instead? Completely skipping the Web and going native? Leave a comment for discussion. Resources Rick Strahl on DotNet Rocks talking about Mobile Web© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2014Posted in HTML5  Mobile   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Setting up a local AI server - easy with Solaris 11

  - by Stefan Hinker

  Many things are new in Solaris 11, Autoinstall is one of them.  If, like me, you've known Jumpstart for the last 2 centuries or so, you'll have to start from scratch.  Well, almost, as the concepts are similar, and it's not all that difficult.  Just new. I wanted to have an AI server that I could use for demo purposes, on the train if need be.  That answers the question of hardware requirements: portable.  But let's start at the beginning. First, you need an OS image, of course.  In the new world of Solaris 11, it is now called a repository.  The original can be downloaded from the Solaris 11 page at Oracle.   What you want is the "Oracle Solaris 11 11/11 Repository Image", which comes in two parts that can be combined using cat.  MD5 checksums for these (and all other downloads from that page) are available closer to the top of the page. With that, building the repository is quick and simple: # zfs create -o mountpoint=/export/repo rpool/ai/repo # zfs create rpool/ai/repo/s11 # mount -o ro -F hsfs /tmp/sol-11-1111-repo-full.iso /mnt # rsync -aP /mnt/repo /export/repo/s11 # umount /mnt # pkgrepo rebuild -s /export/repo/sol11/repo # zfs snapshot rpool/ai/repo/sol11@fcs # pkgrepo info -s /export/repo/sol11/repo PUBLISHER PACKAGES STATUS UPDATED solaris 4292 online 2012-03-12T20:47:15.378639Z That's all there's to it.  Let's make a snapshot, just to be on the safe side.  You never know when one will come in handy.  To use this repository, you could just add it as a file-based publisher: # pkg set-publisher -g file:///export/repo/sol11/repo solaris In case I'd want to access this repository through a (virtual) network, i'll now quickly activate the repository-service: # svccfg -s application/pkg/server \ setprop pkg/inst_root=/export/repo/sol11/repo # svccfg -s application/pkg/server setprop pkg/readonly=true # svcadm refresh application/pkg/server # svcadm enable application/pkg/server That's all you need - now point your browser to http://localhost/ to view your beautiful repository-server. Step 1 is done.  All of this, by the way, is nicely documented in the README file that's contained in the repository image. Of course, we already have updates to the original release.  You can find them in MOS in the Oracle Solaris 11 Support Repository Updates (SRU) Index.  You can simply add these to your existing repository or create separate repositories for each SRU.  The individual SRUs are self-sufficient and incremental - SRU4 includes all updates from SRU2 and SRU3.  With ZFS, you can also get both: A full repository with all updates and at the same time incremental ones up to each of the updates: # mount -o ro -F hsfs /tmp/sol-11-1111-sru4-05-incr-repo.iso /mnt # pkgrecv -s /mnt/repo -d /export/repo/sol11/repo '*' # umount /mnt # pkgrepo rebuild -s /export/repo/sol11/repo # zfs snapshot rpool/ai/repo/sol11@sru4 # zfs set snapdir=visible rpool/ai/repo/sol11 # svcadm restart svc:/application/pkg/server:default The normal repository is now updated to SRU4.  Thanks to the ZFS snapshots, there is also a valid repository of Solaris 11 11/11 without the update located at /export/repo/sol11/.zfs/snapshot/fcs . If you like, you can also create another repository service for each update, running on a separate port. But now lets continue with the AI server.  Just a little bit of reading in the dokumentation makes it clear that we will need to run a DHCP server for this.  Since I already have one active (for my SunRay installation) and since it's a good idea to have these kinds of services separate anyway, I decided to create this in a Zone.  So, let's create one first: # zfs create -o mountpoint=/export/install rpool/ai/install # zfs create -o mountpoint=/zones rpool/zones # zonecfg -z ai-server zonecfg:ai-server> create create: Using system default template 'SYSdefault' zonecfg:ai-server> set zonepath=/zones/ai-server zonecfg:ai-server> add dataset zonecfg:ai-server:dataset> set name=rpool/ai/install zonecfg:ai-server:dataset> set alias=install zonecfg:ai-server:dataset> end zonecfg:ai-server> commit zonecfg:ai-server> exit # zoneadm -z ai-server install # zoneadm -z ai-server boot ; zlogin -C ai-server Give it a hostname and IP address at first boot, and there's the Zone.  For a publisher for Solaris packages, it will be bound to the "System Publisher" from the Global Zone.  The /export/install filesystem, of course, is intended to be used by the AI server.  Let's configure it now: #zlogin ai-server root@ai-server:~# pkg install install/installadm root@ai-server:~# installadm create-service -n x86-fcs -a i386 \ -s pkg://solaris/install-image/[email protected],5.11-0.175.0.0.0.2.1482 \ -d /export/install/fcs -i 192.168.2.20 -c 3 With that, the core AI server is already done.  What happened here?  First, I installed the AI server software.  IPS makes that nice and easy.  If necessary, it'll also pull in the required DHCP-Server and anything else that might be missing.  Watch out for that DHCP server software.  In Solaris 11, there are two different versions.  There's the one you might know from Solaris 10 and earlier, and then there's a new one from ISC.  The latter is the one we need for AI.  The SMF service names of both are very similar.  The "old" one is "svc:/network/dhcp-server:default". The ISC-server comes with several SMF-services. We at least need "svc:/network/dhcp/server:ipv4".  The command "installadm create-service" creates the installation-service. It's called "x86-fcs", serves the "i386" architecture and gets its boot image from the repository of the system publisher, using version 5.11,5.11-0.175.0.0.0.2.1482, which is Solaris 11 11/11.  (The option "-a i386" in this example is optional, since the installserver itself runs on a x86 machine.) The boot-environment for clients is created in /export/install/fcs and the DHCP-server is configured for 3 IP-addresses starting at 192.168.2.20.  This configuration is stored in a very human readable form in /etc/inet/dhcpd4.conf.  An AI-service for SPARC systems could be created in the very same way, using "-a sparc" as the architecture option. Now we would be ready to register and install the first client.  It would be installed with the default "solaris-large-server" using the publisher "http://pkg.oracle.com/solaris/release" and would query it's configuration interactively at first boot.  This makes it very clear that an AI-server is really only a boot-server.  The true source of packets to install can be different.  Since I don't like these defaults for my demo setup, I did some extra config work for my clients. The configuration of a client is controlled by manifests and profiles.  The manifest controls which packets are installed and how the filesystems are layed out.  In that, it's very much like the old "rules.ok" file in Jumpstart.  Profiles contain additional configuration like root passwords, primary user account, IP addresses, keyboard layout etc.  Hence, profiles are very similar to the old sysid.cfg file. The easiest way to get your hands on a manifest is to ask the AI server we just created to give us it's default one.  Then modify that to our liking and give it back to the installserver to use: root@ai-server:~# mkdir -p /export/install/configs/manifests root@ai-server:~# cd /export/install/configs/manifests root@ai-server:~# installadm export -n x86-fcs -m orig_default \ -o orig_default.xml root@ai-server:~# cp orig_default.xml s11-fcs.small.local.xml root@ai-server:~# vi s11-fcs.small.local.xml root@ai-server:~# more s11-fcs.small.local.xml <!DOCTYPE auto_install SYSTEM "file:///usr/share/install/ai.dtd.1"> <auto_install> <ai_instance name="S11 Small fcs local"> <target> <logical> <zpool name="rpool" is_root="true"> <filesystem name="export" mountpoint="/export"/> <filesystem name="export/home"/> <be name="solaris"/> </zpool> </logical> </target> <software type="IPS"> <destination> <image> <!-- Specify locales to install --> <facet set="false">facet.locale.*</facet> <facet set="true">facet.locale.de</facet> <facet set="true">facet.locale.de_DE</facet> <facet set="true">facet.locale.en</facet> <facet set="true">facet.locale.en_US</facet> </image> </destination> <source> <publisher name="solaris"> <origin name="http://192.168.2.12/"/> </publisher> </source> <!-- By default the latest build available, in the specified IPS repository, is installed. If another build is required, the build number has to be appended to the 'entire' package in the following form: <name>pkg:/[email protected]#</name> --> <software_data action="install"> <name>pkg:/[email protected],5.11-0.175.0.0.0.2.0</name> <name>pkg:/group/system/solaris-small-server</name> </software_data> </software> </ai_instance> </auto_install> root@ai-server:~# installadm create-manifest -n x86-fcs -d \ -f ./s11-fcs.small.local.xml root@ai-server:~# installadm list -m -n x86-fcs Manifest Status Criteria -------- ------ -------- S11 Small fcs local Default None orig_default Inactive None The major points in this new manifest are: Install "solaris-small-server" Install a few locales less than the default.  I'm not that fluid in French or Japanese... Use my own package service as publisher, running on IP address 192.168.2.12 Install the initial release of Solaris 11:  pkg:/[email protected],5.11-0.175.0.0.0.2.0 Using a similar approach, I'll create a default profile interactively and use it as a template for a few customized building blocks, each defining a part of the overall system configuration.  The modular approach makes it easy to configure numerous clients later on: root@ai-server:~# mkdir -p /export/install/configs/profiles root@ai-server:~# cd /export/install/configs/profiles root@ai-server:~# sysconfig create-profile -o default.xml root@ai-server:~# cp default.xml general.xml; cp default.xml mars.xml root@ai-server:~# cp default.xml user.xml root@ai-server:~# vi general.xml mars.xml user.xml root@ai-server:~# more general.xml mars.xml user.xml :::::::::::::: general.xml :::::::::::::: <!DOCTYPE service_bundle SYSTEM "/usr/share/lib/xml/dtd/service_bundle.dtd.1"> <service_bundle type="profile" name="sysconfig"> <service version="1" type="service" name="system/timezone"> <instance enabled="true" name="default"> <property_group type="application" name="timezone"> <propval type="astring" name="localtime" value="Europe/Berlin"/> </property_group> </instance> </service> <service version="1" type="service" name="system/environment"> <instance enabled="true" name="init"> <property_group type="application" name="environment"> <propval type="astring" name="LANG" value="C"/> </property_group> </instance> </service> <service version="1" type="service" name="system/keymap"> <instance enabled="true" name="default"> <property_group type="system" name="keymap"> <propval type="astring" name="layout" value="US-English"/> </property_group> </instance> </service> <service version="1" type="service" name="system/console-login"> <instance enabled="true" name="default"> <property_group type="application" name="ttymon"> <propval type="astring" name="terminal_type" value="vt100"/> </property_group> </instance> </service> <service version="1" type="service" name="network/physical"> <instance enabled="true" name="default"> <property_group type="application" name="netcfg"> <propval type="astring" name="active_ncp" value="DefaultFixed"/> </property_group> </instance> </service> <service version="1" type="service" name="system/name-service/switch"> <property_group type="application" name="config"> <propval type="astring" name="default" value="files"/> <propval type="astring" name="host" value="files dns"/> <propval type="astring" name="printer" value="user files"/> </property_group> <instance enabled="true" name="default"/> </service> <service version="1" type="service" name="system/name-service/cache"> <instance enabled="true" name="default"/> </service> <service version="1" type="service" name="network/dns/client"> <property_group type="application" name="config"> <property type="net_address" name="nameserver"> <net_address_list> <value_node value="192.168.2.1"/> </net_address_list> </property> </property_group> <instance enabled="true" name="default"/> </service> </service_bundle> :::::::::::::: mars.xml :::::::::::::: <!DOCTYPE service_bundle SYSTEM "/usr/share/lib/xml/dtd/service_bundle.dtd.1"> <service_bundle type="profile" name="sysconfig"> <service version="1" type="service" name="network/install"> <instance enabled="true" name="default"> <property_group type="application" name="install_ipv4_interface"> <propval type="astring" name="address_type" value="static"/> <propval type="net_address_v4" name="static_address" value="192.168.2.100/24"/> <propval type="astring" name="name" value="net0/v4"/> <propval type="net_address_v4" name="default_route" value="192.168.2.1"/> </property_group> <property_group type="application" name="install_ipv6_interface"> <propval type="astring" name="stateful" value="yes"/> <propval type="astring" name="stateless" value="yes"/> <propval type="astring" name="address_type" value="addrconf"/> <propval type="astring" name="name" value="net0/v6"/> </property_group> </instance> </service> <service version="1" type="service" name="system/identity"> <instance enabled="true" name="node"> <property_group type="application" name="config"> <propval type="astring" name="nodename" value="mars"/> </property_group> </instance> </service> </service_bundle> :::::::::::::: user.xml :::::::::::::: <!DOCTYPE service_bundle SYSTEM "/usr/share/lib/xml/dtd/service_bundle.dtd.1"> <service_bundle type="profile" name="sysconfig"> <service version="1" type="service" name="system/config-user"> <instance enabled="true" name="default"> <property_group type="application" name="root_account"> <propval type="astring" name="login" value="root"/> <propval type="astring" name="password" value="noIWillNotTellYouMyPasswordNotEvenEncrypted"/> <propval type="astring" name="type" value="role"/> </property_group> <property_group type="application" name="user_account"> <propval type="astring" name="login" value="stefan"/> <propval type="astring" name="password" value="noIWillNotTellYouMyPasswordNotEvenEncrypted"/> <propval type="astring" name="type" value="normal"/> <propval type="astring" name="description" value="Stefan Hinker"/> <propval type="count" name="uid" value="12345"/> <propval type="count" name="gid" value="10"/> <propval type="astring" name="shell" value="/usr/bin/bash"/> <propval type="astring" name="roles" value="root"/> <propval type="astring" name="profiles" value="System Administrator"/> <propval type="astring" name="sudoers" value="ALL=(ALL) ALL"/> </property_group> </instance> </service> </service_bundle> root@ai-server:~# installadm create-profile -n x86-fcs -f general.xml root@ai-server:~# installadm create-profile -n x86-fcs -f user.xml root@ai-server:~# installadm create-profile -n x86-fcs -f mars.xml \ -c ipv4=192.168.2.100 root@ai-server:~# installadm list -p Service Name Profile ------------ ------- x86-fcs general.xml mars.xml user.xml root@ai-server:~# installadm list -n x86-fcs -p Profile Criteria ------- -------- general.xml None mars.xml ipv4 = 192.168.2.100 user.xml None Here's the idea behind these files: "general.xml" contains settings valid for all my clients.  Stuff like DNS servers, for example, which in my case will always be the same. "user.xml" only contains user definitions.  That is, a root password and a primary user.Both of these profiles will be valid for all clients (for now). "mars.xml" defines network settings for an individual client.  This profile is associated with an IP-Address.  For this to work, I'll have to tweak the DHCP-settings in the next step: root@ai-server:~# installadm create-client -e 08:00:27:AA:3D:B1 -n x86-fcs root@ai-server:~# vi /etc/inet/dhcpd4.conf root@ai-server:~# tail -5 /etc/inet/dhcpd4.conf host 080027AA3DB1 { hardware ethernet 08:00:27:AA:3D:B1; fixed-address 192.168.2.100; filename "01080027AA3DB1"; } This completes the client preparations.  I manually added the IP-Address for mars to /etc/inet/dhcpd4.conf.  This is needed for the "mars.xml" profile.  Disabling arbitrary DHCP-replies will shut up this DHCP server, making my life in a shared environment a lot more peaceful ;-)Now, I of course want this installation to be completely hands-off.  For this to work, I'll need to modify the grub boot menu for this client slightly.  You can find it in /etc/netboot.  "installadm create-client" will create a new boot menu for every client, identified by the client's MAC address.  The template for this can be found in a subdirectory with the name of the install service, /etc/netboot/x86-fcs in our case.  If you don't want to change this manually for every client, modify that template to your liking instead. root@ai-server:~# cd /etc/netboot root@ai-server:~# cp menu.lst.01080027AA3DB1 menu.lst.01080027AA3DB1.org root@ai-server:~# vi menu.lst.01080027AA3DB1 root@ai-server:~# diff menu.lst.01080027AA3DB1 menu.lst.01080027AA3DB1.org 1,2c1,2 < default=1 < timeout=10 --- > default=0 > timeout=30 root@ai-server:~# more menu.lst.01080027AA3DB1 default=1 timeout=10 min_mem64=0 title Oracle Solaris 11 11/11 Text Installer and command line kernel$ /x86-fcs/platform/i86pc/kernel/$ISADIR/unix -B install_media=htt p://$serverIP:5555//export/install/fcs,install_service=x86-fcs,install_svc_addre ss=$serverIP:5555 module$ /x86-fcs/platform/i86pc/$ISADIR/boot_archive title Oracle Solaris 11 11/11 Automated Install kernel$ /x86-fcs/platform/i86pc/kernel/$ISADIR/unix -B install=true,inst all_media=http://$serverIP:5555//export/install/fcs,install_service=x86-fcs,inst all_svc_address=$serverIP:5555,livemode=text module$ /x86-fcs/platform/i86pc/$ISADIR/boot_archive Now just boot the client off the network using PXE-boot.  For my demo purposes, that's a client from VirtualBox, of course.  That's all there's to it.  And despite the fact that this blog entry is a little longer - that wasn't that hard now, was it?

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• Deciding which technology to use is a big decision when no technology is an obvious choice

  Deciding which technology to use in a new venture or project is a big decision for any company when no technology is an obvious choice. It is always best to analyze the current requirements of the project, and also evaluate the existing technology climate so that the correct technology based on the situation at the time is selected. When evaluation the requirements of a new project it is best to be open to as many technologies as possible initially so a company can be sure that the right decision gets made. Another important aspect of the technology decision is what can the current network and  hardware environment handle, and what would be needed to be adjusted if a specific technology was selected. For example if the current network operating system is Linux then VB6 would force  a huge change in the current computing environment. However if the current network operation system was windows based then very little change would be needed to allow for VB6 if any change had to be done at all. Finally and most importantly an analysis should be done regarding the current technical employees pertaining to their skills and aspirations. For example if you have a team of Java programmers then forcing them to build something in C# might not be an ideal situation. However having a team of VB.net developers who want to develop something in C# would be a better situation based on this example because they are already failure with the .Net Framework and have a desire to use the new technology. In addition to this analysis the cost associated with building and maintaining the project is also a key factor. If two languages are ideal for a project but one technology will increase the budget or timeline by 50% then it might not be the best choice in that situation. An ideal situation for developing in C# applications would be a project that is built on existing Microsoft technologies. An example of this would be a company who uses Windows 2008 Server as their network operating system, Windows XP Pro as their main operation system, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 as their primary database, and has a team of developers experience in the .net framework. In the above situation Java would be a poor technology decision based on their current computing environment and potential lack of Java development by the company’s developers. It would take the developers longer to develop the application due the fact that they would have to first learn the language and then become comfortable with the language. Although these barriers do exist, it does not mean that it is not due able if the company and developers were committed to the project.

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• Integrating Oracle Forms Applications 11g Into SOA (4-6/Mai/10)

  - by Claudia Costa

  Workshop Description This is a Free workshop of 3 days is targeted at Oracle Forms professionals interested in integrating Oracle Forms into a Service Oriented Architecture. The workshop highlights how Forms can be part of a Service Oriented Architecture, how the Oracle Forms functionalities make it possible to integrate existing (or new) Forms applications with new or existing development utilizing the Service Oriented Architecture concepts. The goal is to understand the incremental approach that Forms provides to developers who need to extend their business platform to JEE, allowing Oracle Forms customers to retain their investment in Oracle Forms while leveraging the opportunities offered by complementing technologies. During the event the attendees will implement the Oracle Forms functionalities that make it possible to integrate with SOA. Register Now! Prerequisites ·         Knowledge of the Oracle Forms development environment (mandatory) ·         Basic knowledge of the Oracle database ·         Basic knowledge of the Java Programming Language ·         Basic knowledge of Oracle Jdeveloper or another Java IDE   System Requirements   This workshop requires attendees to provide their own laptops for this class. Attendee laptops must meet the following minimum hardware/software requirements:   ·         Laptop/PC with minimum 4 GB RAM ·         Oracle Database ·         Oracle Forms 11g R1 PS1 (WebLogic Server 10.1.3.2 + Portal, Forms, Reports and Discoverer ) ·         Oracle JDeveloper 11g R1 PS1 http://download.oracle.com/otn/java/jdeveloper/1112/jdevstudio11112install.exe ·         TCP-IP Loopback Adapter Installation (before the SOASuite installation) ·         Oracle SOASuite 11g R1 PS1 (without BAM component) When asked for an admin password, please use 'welcome1 http://download.oracle.com/otn/nt/middleware/11g/ofm_rcu_win_11.1.1.2.0_disk1_1of1.zip http://download.oracle.com/otn/nt/middleware/11g/ofm_soa_generic_11.1.1.2.0_disk1_1of1.zip ·         Oracle BI Publisher 10.1.3.4.1 http://download.oracle.com/otn/nt/ias/101341/bipublisher_windows_x86_101341.zip ·         Oracle BI Publisher Desktop 10.1.3.4. http://download.oracle.com/otn/nt/ias/101341/bipublisher_desktop_windows_x86_101341.zip   ·         At least 1 Oracle Forms solution already upgraded to the Oracle FMW 11g platform.   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   Horário e Local:   4-6 de Maio / 9:30-18:00h Oracle, Porto Salvo Register Here Para mais informação por favor contacte: [email protected]

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• SQL SERVER – Beginning of SQL Server Architecture – Terminology – Guest Post

  - by pinaldave

  SQL Server Architecture is a very deep subject. Covering it in a single post is an almost impossible task. However, this subject is very popular topic among beginners and advanced users.  I have requested my friend Anil Kumar who is expert in SQL Domain to help me write  a simple post about Beginning SQL Server Architecture. As stated earlier this subject is very deep subject and in this first article series he has covered basic terminologies. In future article he will explore the subject further down. Anil Kumar Yadav is Trainer, SQL Domain, Koenig Solutions. Koenig is a premier IT training firm that provides several IT certifications, such as Oracle 11g, Server+, RHCA, SQL Server Training, Prince2 Foundation etc. In this Article we will discuss about MS SQL Server architecture. The major components of SQL Server are: Relational Engine Storage Engine SQL OS Now we will discuss and understand each one of them. 1) Relational Engine: Also called as the query processor, Relational Engine includes the components of SQL Server that determine what your query exactly needs to do and the best way to do it. It manages the execution of queries as it requests data from the storage engine and processes the results returned. Different Tasks of Relational Engine: Query Processing Memory Management Thread and Task Management Buffer Management Distributed Query Processing 2) Storage Engine: Storage Engine is responsible for storage and retrieval of the data on to the storage system (Disk, SAN etc.). to understand more, let’s focus on the following diagram. When we talk about any database in SQL server, there are 2 types of files that are created at the disk level – Data file and Log file. Data file physically stores the data in data pages. Log files that are also known as write ahead logs, are used for storing transactions performed on the database. Let’s understand data file and log file in more details: Data File: Data File stores data in the form of Data Page (8KB) and these data pages are logically organized in extents. Extents: Extents are logical units in the database. They are a combination of 8 data pages i.e. 64 KB forms an extent. Extents can be of two types, Mixed and Uniform. Mixed extents hold different types of pages like index, System, Object data etc. On the other hand, Uniform extents are dedicated to only one type. Pages: As we should know what type of data pages can be stored in SQL Server, below mentioned are some of them: Data Page: It holds the data entered by the user but not the data which is of type text, ntext, nvarchar(max), varchar(max), varbinary(max), image and xml data. Index: It stores the index entries. Text/Image: It stores LOB ( Large Object data) like text, ntext, varchar(max), nvarchar(max),  varbinary(max), image and xml data. GAM & SGAM (Global Allocation Map & Shared Global Allocation Map): They are used for saving information related to the allocation of extents. PFS (Page Free Space): Information related to page allocation and unused space available on pages. IAM (Index Allocation Map): Information pertaining to extents that are used by a table or index per allocation unit. BCM (Bulk Changed Map): Keeps information about the extents changed in a Bulk Operation. DCM (Differential Change Map): This is the information of extents that have modified since the last BACKUP DATABASE statement as per allocation unit. Log File: It also known as write ahead log. It stores modification to the database (DML and DDL). Sufficient information is logged to be able to: Roll back transactions if requested Recover the database in case of failure Write Ahead Logging is used to create log entries Transaction logs are written in chronological order in a circular way Truncation policy for logs is based on the recovery model SQL OS: This lies between the host machine (Windows OS) and SQL Server. All the activities performed on database engine are taken care of by SQL OS. It is a highly configurable operating system with powerful API (application programming interface), enabling automatic locality and advanced parallelism. SQL OS provides various operating system services, such as memory management deals with buffer pool, log buffer and deadlock detection using the blocking and locking structure. Other services include exception handling, hosting for external components like Common Language Runtime, CLR etc. I guess this brief article gives you an idea about the various terminologies used related to SQL Server Architecture. In future articles we will explore them further. Guest Author  The author of the article is Anil Kumar Yadav is Trainer, SQL Domain, Koenig Solutions. Koenig is a premier IT training firm that provides several IT certifications, such as Oracle 11g, Server+, RHCA, SQL Server Training, Prince2 Foundation etc. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Security, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Training, T SQL, Technology

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• Lessons from a SAN Failure

  - by Bill Graziano

  At 1:10AM Sunday morning the main SAN at one of my clients suffered a “partial” failure.  Partial means that the SAN was still online and functioning but the LUNs attached to our two main SQL Servers “failed”.  Failed means that SQL Server wouldn’t start and the MDF and LDF files mostly showed a zero file size.  But they were online and responding and most other LUNs were available.  I’m not sure how SANs know to fail at 1AM on a Saturday night but they seem to.  From a personal standpoint this worked out poorly: I was out with friends and after more than a few drinks.  From a work standpoint this was about the best time to fail you could imagine.  Everything was running well before Monday morning.  But it was a long, long Sunday.  I started tipsy, got tired and ended up hung over later in the day. Note to self: Try not to go out drinking right before the SAN fails. This caught us at an interesting time.  We’re in the process of migrating to an entirely new set of servers so some things were partially moved.  This made it difficult to follow our procedures as cleanly as we’d like.  The benefit was that we had much better documentation of everything on the server.  I would encourage everyone to really think through the process of implementing your DR plan and document as much as possible.  Following a checklist is much easier than trying to remember at night under pressure in a hurry after a few drinks. I had a series of estimates on how long things would take.  They were accurate for any single server failure.  They weren’t accurate for a SAN failure that took two servers down.  This wasn’t bad but we should have communicated better. Don’t forget how many things are outside the database.  Logins, linked servers, DTS packages (yikes!), jobs, service broker, DTC (especially DTC), database triggers and any objects in the master database are all things you need backed up.  We’d done a decent job on this and didn’t find significant problems here.  That said this still took a lot of time.  There were many annoyances as a result of this.  Small settings like a login’s default database had a big impact on whether an application could run.  This is probably the single biggest area of concern when looking to recreate a server.  I’d encourage everyone to go through every single node of SSMS and look for user created objects or settings outside the database. Script out your logins with the proper SID and already encrypted passwords and keep it updated.  This makes life so much easier.  I used an approach based on KB246133 that worked well.  I’ll get my scripts posted over the next few days. The disaster can cause your DR process to fail in unexpected ways.  We have a job that scripts out all logins and role memberships and writes it to a file.  This runs on the DR server and pulls from the production server.  Upon opening the file I found that the contents were a “server not found” error.  Fortunately we had other copies and didn’t need to try and restore the master database.  This now runs on the production server and pushes the script to the DR site.  Soon we’ll get it pushed to our version control software. One of the biggest challenges is keeping your DR resources up to date.  Any server change (new linked server, new SQL Server Agent job, etc.) means that your DR plan (and scripts) is out of date.  It helps to automate the generation of these resources if possible. Take time now to test your database restore process.  We test ours quarterly.  If you have a large database I’d also encourage you to invest in a compressed backup solution.  Restoring backups was the single larger consumer of time during our recovery. And yes, there’s a database mirroring solution planned in our new architecture. I didn’t have much involvement in things outside SQL Server but this caused many, many things to change in our environment.  Many applications today aren’t just executables or web sites.  They are a combination of those plus network infrastructure, reports, network ports, IP addresses, DTS and SSIS packages, batch systems and many other things.  These all needed a little bit of attention to make sure they were functioning properly. Profiler turned out to be a handy tool.  I started a trace for failed logins and kept that running.  That let me fix a number of problems before people were able to report them.  I also ran traces to capture exceptions.  This helped identify problems with linked servers. Overall the thing that gave me the most problem was linked servers.  In order for a linked server to function properly you need to be pointed to the right server, have the proper login information, have the network routes available and have MSDTC configured properly.  We have a lot of linked servers and this created many failure points.  Some of the older linked servers used IP addresses and not DNS names.  This meant we had to go in and touch all those linked servers when the servers moved.

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• Windows and SQL Azure Best Practices: Affinity Groups

  - by BuckWoody

  When you create a Windows Azure application, you’ll pick a subscription to put it under. This is a billing container - underneath that, you’ll deploy a Hosted Service. That holds the Web and Worker Roles that you’ll deploy for your applications. along side that, you use the Storage Account to create storage for the application. (In some cases, you might choose to use only storage or Roles - the info here applies anyway) As you are setting up your environment, you’re asked to pick a “region” where your application will run. If you choose a Region, you’ll be asked where to put the Roles. You’re given choices like Asia, North America and so on. This is where the hardware that physically runs your code lives. We have lots of fault domains, power considerations and so on to keep that set of datacenters running, but keep in mind that this is where the application lives. You also get this selection for Storage Accounts. When you make new storage, it’s a best practice to put it where your computing is. This makes the shortest path from the code to the data, and then back out to the user. One of the selections for the location is “Anywhere U.S.”. This selection might be interpreted to mean that we will bias towards keeping the data and the code together, but that may not be the case. There is a specific abstraction we created for just that purpose: Affinity Groups. An Affinity Group is simply a name you can use to tie together resources. You can do this in two places - when you’re creating the Hosted Service (shown above) and on it’s own tree item on the left, called “Affinity Groups”. When you select either of those actions, You’re presented with a dialog box that allows you to specify a name, and then the Region that  names ties the resources to. Now you can select that Affinity Group just as if it were a Region, and your code and data will stay together. That helps with keeping the performance high. Official Documentation: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/hh531560.aspx

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• BUILD 2013 - Microsoft Set to Unveil It&rsquo;s Reinvention

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/dlussier/archive/2013/06/24/153211.aspxSome thoughts as we head into BUILD this week… This week in San Francisco Microsoft will be hosting the BUILD conference. They’ll be talking up Windows 8.1 (Windows Blue), more Azure, some Windows Phone, XBox, Office 365… actually, they told us on the original BUILD announcement site what we’d be seeing:           While looking at this, consider a recent article from The Verge that talks about the speculation of a huge shake up at Microsoft . From the article: All Things D quotes one insider as saying they're "titanic" changes, noting they might be attached to Ballmer's legacy at the company. "It’s the first time in a long time that it feels like that there will be some major shifts, including some departures," says the alleged insider. Considering Ballmer let Sinofsky go right after the Windows 8 launch, the idea of Microsoft cutting loose some executives doesn’t seem to be big news. But the next piece of the article frames things more interestingly: Ballmer is reportedly considering a new structure that would create four separate divisions: enterprise business, hardware, applications and services, and an operating systems group. This statement got me thinking…what would this new structure look like? Below is one possibility: At a recent (this year or last year, I can’t recall which) Microsoft shareholder’s meeting, Ballmer made the statement that Microsoft is now a products and services company. At the time I don’t think I really let that statement sink in. Partially because I really liked the Microsoft of my professional youth – the one that was a software and platform company. In Canada, Microsoft has been pushing three platform areas: Lync, Azure, and SQL Server. I would expect those to change moving forward as Microsoft continues to look for Partners that will help them increase their Services revenue through solutions that incorporate/are based on Azure, Office 365, Lync, and Dynamics. I also wonder if we’re not seeing a culling of partners through changes to the Microsoft Partner Program. In addition to the changing certification requirements that align more to Microsoft’s goals (i.e. There is no desktop development based MCSD, only Windows 8 Store Apps), competencies that partners can qualify for are being merged, requirements changed, and licenses provided reduced. Ballmer warned as much at the last WPC though that they were looking for partners who were “all in” with Microsoft, and these programs seem to support that sentiment. Heading into BUILD this week, I’ll be looking to answer one question – what does it mean to be a Microsoft developer here in the 2010’s? What is the future of the Microsoft development platform? Sure, Visual Studio is still alive and well and Microsoft realizes that there’s a huge install base of .NET developers actively working on solutions. But they’ve ratcheted down the messaging around their development stack and instead focussed on promoting development for their platforms and services. Last year at BUILD with the release of Windows 8, Microsoft just breached the walls of its cocoon. After this BUILD and the organizational change announcements in July, we’ll see what Microsoft looks like fully emerged from its metamorphosis.

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• A Few Words from Oracle’s Channel Chief

  - by Meghan Fritz-Oracle

  As Oracle enters a new fiscal year, I want to take a moment and reflect on my time at Oracle thus far. The technology industry is currently at an inflection point trying to figure out where growth will come from. When you look at Oracle’s portfolio of products, it's a complete stack from applications to disc, offering differentiation in the marketplace. I was initially drawn to Oracle’s leadership, strategy, and world-class technology. Since joining the Oracle team in October 2013, I’ve had the privilege of traveling around the globe visiting our partners and customers, and wanted to share several common themes that came up during these meetings. Cloud: Many partners are trying to figure out how to build a business around the cloud. Oracle partners can currently resell or refer our cloud services. We saw over 300 percent growth from cloud resale last quarter. Engineered Systems: Hardware and software integrated together to simplify IT allows our joint customers to focus on the innovation they need to compete in a complex marketplace. We're seeing great success in a several areas, with more partners saying, “Let’s start with Oracle on Oracle.” The Internet of Things: This is the next big opportunity for device manufacturers and ISV‘s to capture market share in what is projected to be a mulit-trillion-dollar opportunity, according to Gartner.  Competition: We've got a tremendous middleware platform and a tremendous database install base. We’re not just a database company; we are a complete provider. So looking ahead, what are my priorities for fiscal 2015? Oracle PartnerNetwork has some very exciting plans on the horizon. There’s a lot more leadership and announcements to unfold, especially at this year’s Global Partner Kickoff taking place on June 25 + 26 depending on your region and time zone. I along with several other Oracle executives will be shedding light on Oracle’s strategy for the upcoming year, the latest opportunities within the OPN Specialized Program and sales strategies that will help you to continue to grow and profit with Oracle. Stay tuned for registration information next week.We also have Oracle OpenWorld and JavaOne to look forward to. These conferences are taking place in San Francisco from September 28 – October 2. We’ll have a variety of partner-specific activities for you at OPN Central @ OpenWorld including the OPN keynote, the famed AfterDark networking reception, access to the OPN Lounge and more.In the meantime, I hope that everyone has a great end to fiscal 2014.Best regards,Rich Geraffo Senior Vice President, Worldwide Alliances and Channels

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• ODI 12c's Mapping Designer - Combining Flow Based and Expression Based Mapping

  - by Madhu Nair

  post by David Allan ODI is renowned for its declarative designer and minimal expression based paradigm. The new ODI 12c release has extended this even further to provide an extended declarative mapping designer. The ODI 12c mapper is a fusion of ODI's new declarative designer with the familiar flow based designer while retaining ODI’s key differentiators of: Minimal expression based definition, The ability to incrementally design an interface and to extract/load data from any combination of sources, and most importantly Backed by ODI’s extensible knowledge module framework. The declarative nature of the product has been extended to include an extensible library of common components that can be used to easily build simple to complex data integration solutions. Big usability improvements through consistent interactions of components and concepts all constructed around the familiar knowledge module framework provide the utmost flexibility. Here is a little taster: So what is a mapping? A mapping comprises of a logical design and at least one physical design, it may have many. A mapping can have many targets, of any technology and can be arbitrarily complex. You can build reusable mappings and use them in other mappings or other reusable mappings. In the example below all of the information from an Oracle bonus table and a bonus file are joined with an Oracle employees table before being written to a target. Some things that are cool include the one-click expression cross referencing so you can easily see what's used where within the design. The logical design in a mapping describes what you want to accomplish  (see the animated GIF here illustrating how the above mapping was designed) . The physical design lets you configure how it is to be accomplished. So you could have one logical design that is realized as an initial load in one physical design and as an incremental load in another. In the physical design below we can customize how the mapping is accomplished by picking Knowledge Modules, in ODI 12c you can pick multiple nodes (on logical or physical) and see common properties. This is useful as we can quickly compare property values across objects - below we can see knowledge modules settings on the access points between execution units side by side, in the example one table is retrieved via database links and the other is an external table. In the logical design I had selected an append mode for the integration type, so by default the IKM on the target will choose the most suitable/default IKM - which in this case is an in-built Oracle Insert IKM (see image below). This supports insert and select hints for the Oracle database (the ANSI SQL Insert IKM does not support these), so by default you will get direct path inserts with Oracle on this statement. In ODI 12c, the mapper is just that, a mapper. Design your mapping, write to multiple targets, the targets can be in the same data server, in different data servers or in totally different technologies - it does not matter. ODI 12c will derive and generate a plan that you can use or customize with knowledge modules. Some of the use cases which are greatly simplified include multiple heterogeneous targets, multi target inserts for Oracle and writing of XML. Let's switch it up now and look at a slightly different example to illustrate expression reuse. In ODI you can define reusable expressions using user functions. These can be reused across mappings and the implementations specialized per technology. So you can have common expressions across Oracle, SQL Server, Hive etc. shielding the design from the physical aspects of the generated language. Another way to reuse is within a mapping itself. In ODI 12c expressions can be defined and reused within a mapping. Rather than replicating the expression text in larger expressions you can decompose into smaller snippets, below you can see UNIT_TAX AMOUNT has been defined and is used in two downstream target columns - its used in the TOTAL_TAX_AMOUNT plus its used in the UNIT_TAX_AMOUNT (a recording of the calculation).  You can see the columns that the expressions depend on (upstream) and the columns the expression is used in (downstream) highlighted within the mapper. Also multi selecting attributes is a convenient way to see what's being used where, below I have selected the TOTAL_TAX_AMOUNT in the target datastore and the UNIT_TAX_AMOUNT in UNIT_CALC. You can now see many expressions at once now and understand much more at the once time without needlessly clicking around and memorizing information. Our mantra during development was to keep it simple and make the tool more powerful and do even more for the user. The development team was a fusion of many teams from Oracle Warehouse Builder, Sunopsis and BEA Aqualogic, debating and perfecting the mapper in ODI 12c. This was quite a project from supporting the capabilities of ODI in 11g to building the flow based mapping tool to support the future. I hope this was a useful insight, there is so much more to come on this topic, this is just a preview of much more that you will see of the mapper in ODI 12c.

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• Performance considerations for common SQL queries

  - by Jim Giercyk

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/NibblesAndBits/archive/2013/10/16/performance-considerations-for-common-sql-queries.aspxSQL offers many different methods to produce the same results.  There is a never-ending debate between SQL developers as to the “best way” or the “most efficient way” to render a result set.  Sometimes these disputes even come to blows….well, I am a lover, not a fighter, so I decided to collect some data that will prove which way is the best and most efficient.  For the queries below, I downloaded the test database from SQLSkills:  http://www.sqlskills.com/sql-server-resources/sql-server-demos/.  There isn’t a lot of data, but enough to prove my point: dbo.member has 10,000 records, and dbo.payment has 15,554.  Our result set contains 6,706 records. The following queries produce an identical result set; the result set contains aggregate payment information for each member who has made more than 1 payment from the dbo.payment table and the first and last name of the member from the dbo.member table.   /*************/ /* Sub Query  */ /*************/ SELECT  a.[Member Number] ,         m.lastname ,         m.firstname ,         a.[Number Of Payments] ,         a.[Average Payment] ,         a.[Total Paid] FROM    ( SELECT    member_no 'Member Number' ,                     AVG(payment_amt) 'Average Payment' ,                     SUM(payment_amt) 'Total Paid' ,                     COUNT(Payment_No) 'Number Of Payments'           FROM      dbo.payment           GROUP BY  member_no           HAVING    COUNT(Payment_No) > 1         ) a         JOIN dbo.member m ON a.[Member Number] = m.member_no         /***************/ /* Cross Apply  */ /***************/ SELECT  ca.[Member Number] ,         m.lastname ,         m.firstname ,         ca.[Number Of Payments] ,         ca.[Average Payment] ,         ca.[Total Paid] FROM    dbo.member m         CROSS APPLY ( SELECT    member_no 'Member Number' ,                                 AVG(payment_amt) 'Average Payment' ,                                 SUM(payment_amt) 'Total Paid' ,                                 COUNT(Payment_No) 'Number Of Payments'                       FROM      dbo.payment                       WHERE     member_no = m.member_no                       GROUP BY  member_no                       HAVING    COUNT(Payment_No) > 1                     ) ca /********/                    /* CTEs  */ /********/ ; WITH    Payments           AS ( SELECT   member_no 'Member Number' ,                         AVG(payment_amt) 'Average Payment' ,                         SUM(payment_amt) 'Total Paid' ,                         COUNT(Payment_No) 'Number Of Payments'                FROM     dbo.payment                GROUP BY member_no                HAVING   COUNT(Payment_No) > 1              ),         MemberInfo           AS ( SELECT   p.[Member Number] ,                         m.lastname ,                         m.firstname ,                         p.[Number Of Payments] ,                         p.[Average Payment] ,                         p.[Total Paid]                FROM     dbo.member m                         JOIN Payments p ON m.member_no = p.[Member Number]              )     SELECT  *     FROM    MemberInfo /************************/ /* SELECT with Grouping   */ /************************/ SELECT  p.member_no 'Member Number' ,         m.lastname ,         m.firstname ,         COUNT(Payment_No) 'Number Of Payments' ,         AVG(payment_amt) 'Average Payment' ,         SUM(payment_amt) 'Total Paid' FROM    dbo.payment p         JOIN dbo.member m ON m.member_no = p.member_no GROUP BY p.member_no ,         m.lastname ,         m.firstname HAVING  COUNT(Payment_No) > 1   We can see what is going on in SQL’s brain by looking at the execution plan.  The Execution Plan will demonstrate which steps and in what order SQL executes those steps, and what percentage of batch time each query takes.  SO….if I execute all 4 of these queries in a single batch, I will get an idea of the relative time SQL takes to execute them, and how it renders the Execution Plan.  We can settle this once and for all.  Here is what SQL did with these queries:   Not only did the queries take the same amount of time to execute, SQL generated the same Execution Plan for each of them.  Everybody is right…..I guess we can all finally go to lunch together!  But wait a second, I may not be a fighter, but I AM an instigator.     Let’s see how a table variable stacks up.  Here is the code I executed: /********************/ /*  Table Variable  */ /********************/ DECLARE @AggregateTable TABLE     (       member_no INT ,       AveragePayment MONEY ,       TotalPaid MONEY ,       NumberOfPayments MONEY     ) INSERT  @AggregateTable         SELECT  member_no 'Member Number' ,                 AVG(payment_amt) 'Average Payment' ,                 SUM(payment_amt) 'Total Paid' ,                 COUNT(Payment_No) 'Number Of Payments'         FROM    dbo.payment         GROUP BY member_no         HAVING  COUNT(Payment_No) > 1   SELECT  at.member_no 'Member Number' ,         m.lastname ,         m.firstname ,         at.NumberOfPayments 'Number Of Payments' ,         at.AveragePayment 'Average Payment' ,         at.TotalPaid 'Total Paid' FROM    @AggregateTable at         JOIN dbo.member m ON m.member_no = at.member_no In the interest of keeping things in groupings of 4, I removed the last query from the previous batch and added the table variable query.  Here’s what I got:     Since we first insert into the table variable, then we read from it, the Execution Plan renders 2 steps.  BUT, the combination of the 2 steps is only 22% of the batch.  It is actually faster than the other methods even though it is treated as 2 separate queries in the Execution Plan.  The argument I often hear against Table Variables is that SQL only estimates 1 row for the table size in the Execution Plan.  While this is true, the estimate does not come in to play until you read from the table variable.  In this case, the table variable had 6,706 rows, but it still outperformed the other queries.  People argue that table variables should only be used for hash or lookup tables.  The fact is, you have control of what you put IN to the variable, so as long as you keep it within reason, these results suggest that a table variable is a viable alternative to sub-queries. If anyone does volume testing on this theory, I would be interested in the results.  My suspicion is that there is a breaking point where efficiency goes down the tubes immediately, and it would be interesting to see where the threshold is. Coding SQL is a matter of style.  If you’ve been around since they introduced DB2, you were probably taught a little differently than a recent computer science graduate.  If you have a company standard, I strongly recommend you follow it.    If you do not have a standard, generally speaking, there is no right or wrong answer when talking about the efficiency of these types of queries, and certainly no hard-and-fast rule.  Volume and infrastructure will dictate a lot when it comes to performance, so your results may vary in your environment.  Download the database and try it!

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• Ask the Readers: Do You Prefer Computers, Game Consoles, or Other Devices for Your Gaming Needs?

  - by Asian Angel

  Nearly everyone who has access to a computer will play games on it at some point, but many people also use a separate game platform as well. What we would like to know this week is if you prefer using a computer, game consoles, or other devices for your gaming needs. Photo of Faith and Kate Connors from Mirror’s Edge by Tamahikari Tammas. Video games are a perfect way to relax and have fun at home (or at work if you can sneak in some game time!). The increasing variety of devices available with each passing year are making it easier to have access to a gaming platform to suit your needs or “darkest gaming desires”. For many people their computers are the perfect platform…they can play Flash-based games in their browsers, use the default set of games that come with their system, and install any extras that catch their eyes. The added benefit is that when game time is over they can drop right into their browsing, e-mail, personal projects, or work without having to switch hardware. The convenience of the “all-in-one” platform is certainly appealing! Perhaps you prefer to use your computer for other activities outside of gaming and own one or more separate game consoles. You might have chosen an Xbox, Playstation, or Nintendo for example. Maybe a hand-held is preferable for its’ size and portability. Then there are mobile phones and the iPad… With so many options it may feel hard to choose the right platform(s) without a good bit of research regarding display, availability of games for a particular platform, how long before the platform starts to become “obsolete”, etc. What we would like to know this week is which gaming platform you prefer. Is there only one that you choose to use or do you use multiple platforms for gaming? Is there a particular reason such as convenience for your choices? You may even be keeping an older platform around just for a certain game (or games) made for it. Are there any recommendations or advice that you would like to share with your fellow readers? Let us know in the comments! How-To Geek Polls require Javascript. Please Click Here to View the Poll. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC HTG Projects: How to Create Your Own Custom Papercraft Toy How to Combine Rescue Disks to Create the Ultimate Windows Repair Disk What is Camera Raw, and Why Would a Professional Prefer it to JPG? The How-To Geek Guide to Audio Editing: The Basics How To Boot 10 Different Live CDs From 1 USB Flash Drive The 20 Best How-To Geek Linux Articles of 2010 Apture Highlights Turns Your Cursor into a Search Tool Add Classic Sci-Fi Goodness to Your Desktop with the Matrix Theme for Windows 7 You Can’t Walk Straight without Visual Markers [Video] Lord of the Rings Movie Parody Double Feature [Video] Turn a Webpage into an Asteroids-Styled Shooting Game in Opera Dolphin Browser Mini Leaves Beta; Sports New GUI, Easy Bookmarking, and More

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