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• Top 4 Lame Tech Blogging Posts

  - by jkauffman

  From a consumption point of view, tech blogging is a great resource for one-off articles on niche subjects. If you spend any time reading tech blogs, you may find yourself running into several common, useless types of posts tech bloggers slip into. Some of these lame posts may just be natural due to common nerd psychology, and some others are probably due to lame, lemming-like laziness. I’m sure I’ll do my fair share of fitting the mold, but I quickly get bored when I happen upon posts that hit these patterns without any real purpose or personal touches. 1. The Content Regurgitation Posts This is a common pattern fueled by the starving pan-handlers in the web traffic economy. These are posts that are terse opinions or addendums to an existing post. I commonly see these involve huge block quotes from the linked article which almost always produces over 50% of the post itself. I’ve accidentally gone to these posts when I’m knowingly only interested in the source material. Web links can degrade as well, so if the source link is broken, then, well, I’m pretty steamed. I see this occur with simple opinions on technologies, Stack Overflow solutions, or various tech news like posts from Microsoft. It’s not uncommon to go to the linked article and see the author announce that he “added a blog post” as a response or summary of the topic. This is just rude, but those who do it are probably aware of this. It’s a matter of winning that sweet, juicy web traffic. I doubt this leeching is fooling anybody these days. I would like to rally human dignity and urge people to avoid these types of posts, and just leave a comment on the source material. 2. The “Sorry I Haven’t Posted In A While” Posts This one is far too common. You’ll most likely see this quote somewhere in the body of the offending post: I have been really busy. If the poster is especially guilt-ridden, you’ll see a few volleys of excuses. Here are some common reasons I’ve seen, which I’ll list from least to most painfully awkward. Out of town Vague allusions to personal health problems (these typically includes phrases like “sick”, “treatment'”, and “all better now!”) “Personal issues” (which I usually read as "divorce”) Graphic or specific personal health problems (maximum awkwardness potential is achieved if you see links to charity fund websites) I can’t help but to try over-analyzing why this occurs. Personally, I see this an an amalgamation of three plain factors: Life happens Us nerds are duty-driven, and driven to guilt at personal inefficiencies Tech blogs can become personal journals I don’t think we can do much about the first two, but on the third I think we could certainly contain our urges. I’m a pretty boring guy and, whether or I like it or not, I have an unspoken duty to protect the world from hearing about my unremarkable existence. Nobody cares what kind of sandwich I’m eating. Similarly, if I disappear for a while, it’s unlikely that anybody who happens upon my blog would care why. Rest assured, if I stop posting for a while due to a vasectomy, you will be the first to know. 3. The “At A Conference”, or “Conference Review” Posts I don’t know if I’m like everyone else on this one, but I have never been successfully interested in these posts. It even sounds like a good idea: if I can’t make it to a particular conference (like the KCDC this year), wouldn’t I be interested in a concentrated summary of events? Apparently, no! Within this realm, I’ve never read a post by a blogger that held my interest. What really baffles is is that, for whatever reason, I am genuinely engaged and interested when talking to someone in person regarding the same topic. I have noticed the same phenomenon when hearing about others’ vacations. If someone sends me an email about their vacation, I gloss over it and forget about it quickly. In contrast, if I’m speaking to that individual in person about their vacation, I’m actually interested. I’m unsure why the written medium eradicates the intrigue. I was raised by a roaming pack of friendly wild video games, so that may be a factor. 4. The “Top X Number of Y’s That Z” Posts I’ve seen this one crop up a lot more in the past few of years. Here are some fabricated examples: 5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Code Top 7 Good Habits Programmers Learn From Experience The 8 Things to Consider When Giving Estimates Top 4 Lame Tech Blogging Posts These are attention-grabbing headlines, and I’d assume they rack up hits. In fact, I enjoy a good number of these. But, I’ve been drawn to articles like this just to find an endless list of identically formatted posts on the blog’s archive sidebar. Often times these posts have overlapping topics, too. These types of posts give the impression that the author has given thought to prioritize and organize the points as a result of a comprehensive consideration of a particular topic. Did the author really weigh all the possibilities when identifying the “Top 4 Lame Tech Blogging Patterns”? Unfortunately, probably not. What a tool. To reiterate, I still enjoy the format, but I feel it is abused. Nowadays, I’m pretty skeptical when approaching posts in this format. If these trends continue, my brain will filter these blog posts out just as effectively as it ignores the encroaching “do xxx with this one trick” advertisements. Conclusion To active blog readers, I hope my guide has served you precious time in being able to identify lame blog posts at a glance. Save time and energy by skipping over the chaff of the internet! And if you author a blog, perhaps my insight will help you to avoid the occasional urge to produce these needless filler posts.

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• How to Access a Windows Desktop From Your Tablet or Phone

  - by Chris Hoffman

  iPads and Android tablets can’t run Windows apps locally, but they can access a Windows desktops remotely — even with a physical keyboard. In a pinch, the same tricks can be used to access a Windows desktop from a smartphone. Microsoft recently launched their own official Remote Desktop app for iOS and Android devices. Microsoft’s official apps are primarily useful for businesses — if you’re a typical home user, you’ll want to use a different remote desktop solution. Microsoft’s Remote Desktop App Microsoft now offers official Remote Desktop apps for iPad and iPhone as well as Android tablets and smartphones. The apps use Microsoft’s RDP protocol to connect to remote Windows systems. They’re essentially just new clients for the Remote Desktop feature that has been included in Windows for more than a decade. There are big problems with these apps if you’re an average home user. Microsoft’s Remote Desktop server is not available on standard or Home versions of Windows, only Professional and Enterprise editions. If you do have the appropriate edition of Windows, you’ll have to set up port-forwarding and a dynamic DNS service if you want to access your Windows desktop from outside your local network. You could also set up a VPN — either way you’ll need to do some footwork. This app is a gift to businesses who are already using Remote Desktop and enthusiasts who have the more expensive versions of Windows and don’t mind the configuration process. To set this up, follow our guide to setting up Remote Desktop for Internet access and connect using the Remote Desktop app instead of traditional Remote Desktop clients. TeamViewer If you have the standard edition of Windows or you just don’t want to mess around with port-forwarding and dynamic DNS configuration, you’ll want to skip Remote Desktop and use something else. We like TeamViewer for this. Just as it’s a great way to remotely troubleshoot your relatives’ computers, it’s also a great way to remotely access your own computer. It doesn’t have the same limitations Microsoft’s Remote Desktop system has — it’s completely free for personal use, runs on any edition of Windows, and is easy to set up. There’s no messing around with port-forwarding or dynamic DNS configuration. To get started, just download and run the TeamViewer program on your computer. You can get started with it immediately, but you’ll want to set up unattended access to connect remotely without using the codes displayed on your screen. To connect, just install the TeamViewer mobile app and log in with the details the TeamViewer window displays. TeamViewer also offers software that runs on Mac and Linux, so you can remote-control other types of computers from your tablet. Other Options Microsoft’s Remote Desktop app and TeamViewer aren’t the only options, of course. There are a variety of different apps and services built for this. Splashtop is another fairly popular remote desktop solution that some people report as being faster. Unfortunately, it’s not entirely free — the iPad and iPhone app costs $20 at regular price. To use it over the Internet, you’ll have to purchase an additional “Anywhere Access Pack.” If you’re frustrated with TeamViewer’s speed and you don’t mind spending money, you may want to try Splashtop instead. As always, you could use any VNC server along with a VNC client app. VNC is the do-it-yourself solution — it’s an open protocol. Unlike Microsoft’s RDP protocol, you can install a VNC server of your own, configure it how you like, and use any mobile VNC client app. This is more flexible because you can install a VNC server on any edition of Windows or even non-Windows operating systems, but it otherwise has all the same issues — you have to worry about port-forwarding, setting up dynamic DNS, and securing your VNC server. Keep an eye on Chrome Remote Desktop. Chrome already offers a built-in remote desktop feature that allows you to remotely control your PC from another Windows, Mac, Linux, or Chrome OS device. Google is rumored to be building an Android app for Chrome Remote Desktop, which would allow you to easily access a computer running Chrome from Android tablets. Google’s solution is much more user-friendly for average people than Microsoft’s Remote Desktop solution, which is clearly geared towards businesses. Chrome Remote Desktop just requires signing in with a Google account. Remote desktop solutions like Microsoft’s Remote Desktop app and TeamViewer are also available for Windows tablets. On Windows RT devices like the Surface RT and Surface 2, they allow you to use the full Windows desktop that’s unavailable on your tablet.     

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• Sun Ray 3 Plus Appliance Announced

  - by [email protected]

  There were many of you out there wondering if Oracle was going to keep and add to the Sun Ray and Sun virtualized desktop product suite, there have been a number of affirmative statements over the last many months. However, none of them resound like this; the introduction of a new product pretty much proves the point. A couple minutes before 3:00, local time yesterday, Oracle announced the release of a new Sun Ray, appliance, the Sun Ray 3 Plus. This is the unit that will replace the SR 2 FS (which has been for sale now since the middle of last decade).  Physically it is about the same size as the 2 FS but there are some significant differences... As you can see there is no smart card reader in the front - that has moved to the top to ensure only one hand is required to insert the card.  There is also a larger surround on the card reader that lights up to show the user the card is being read (properly).  A new power on/off switch is on the front which essentially brings power consumption to ~0 watts, but there is also a new 'sleep' timer looking for 30 minutes of inactivity and then will drop the power consumption down to ~ 1watt. There are also 2 USB 2.0 ports are accessible on the front instead of one.  The standard mic in and headphone out ports are there as well.  There is even more interesting stuff on the back. From the top down there are two more USB 2.0 ports for a total of four, but then the Oracle "Peripheral Kit" keyboard includes a 3-port USB Hub, too.  There's a 10/100/1000 Ethernet port as well as a 1000 Mb SFP port.  Standard DB-9 Serial port and then two DVI ports.  Then there is the really big news.  Two DVI ports driving 2560 x 1600 resolution, each. Most PCs can't do that without adding an adapter card.Now the images I have here are ones taken on a prototype a couple months back.  They are essentially the same as the Production unit, but if you would like to see an image of the Production Sun Ray 3 Plus unit you can see one here. There is a full data sheet available here. So this is the first Oracle Sun Ray desktop appliance.  Proof that the product line lives on.  A very good start!

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• Dynamic Grouping and Columns

  - by Tim Dexter

  Some good collaboration between myself and Kan Nishida (Oracle BIP Consulting) over at bipconsulting on a question that came in yesterday to an internal mailing list. Is there a way to allow columns to be place into a template dynamically? This would be similar to the Answers Column selector. A customer has said Crystal can do this and I am trying to see how BI Pub can do the same. Example: Report has Regions as a dimension in a table, they want the user to select a parameter that will insert either Units or Dollars without having to create multiple templates. Now whether Crystal can actually do it or not is another question, can Publisher? Yes we can! Kan took the first stab. His approach, was to allow to swap out columns in a table in the report. Some quick steps: 1. Create a parameter from BIP server UI 2. Declare the parameter in RTF template You can check this post to see how you can declare the parameter from the server. http://bipconsulting.blogspot.com/2010/02/how-to-pass-user-input-values-to-report.html 3. Use the parameter value to condition if a particular column needs to be displayed or not. You can use <?if@column:.....?> syntax for Column level IF condition. The if@column is covered in user documentation. This would allow a developer to create a report with the parameter or multiple parameters to allow the user to pick a column to be included in the report. I took a slightly different tack, with the mention of the column selector in the Answers report I took that to mean that the user wanted to select more of a dimensional column and then have the report recalculate all its totals and subtotals based on that selected column. This is a little bit more involved and involves some smart XSL and XPATH expressions, but still very doable. The user can select a column as a parameter, that is passed to the template rather than the query. The parameter value that is actually passed is the element name that you want to regroup the data by. Inside the template we then reference that parameter value in our for-each-group loop. That's where we need the trixy XSL/XPATH code to get the regrouping to happen. At this juncture, I need to hat tip to Klaus, for his article on dynamic sorting that he wrote back in 2006. I basically took his sorting code and applied it to the for-each loop. You can follow both of Kan's first two steps above i.e. Create a parameter from BIP server UI - this just needs to be based on a 'list' type list of value with name/value pairs e.g. Department/DEPARTMENT_NAME, Job/JOB_TITLE, etc. The user picks the 'friendly' value and the server passes the element name to the template. Declare the parameter in RTF template - been here before lots of times right? <?param@begin:group1;'"DEPARTMENT_NAME"'?> I have used a default value so that I can test the funtionality inside the template builder (notice the single and double quotes.) Next step is to use the template builder to build a re-grouped report layout. It does not matter if its hard coded right now; we will add in the dynamic piece next. Once you have a functioning template that is re-grouping correctly. Open up the for-each-group field and modify it to use the parameter: <?for-each-group:ROW;./*[name(.) = $group1]?> 'group1' is my grouping parameter, declared above. We need the XPATH expression to find the column in the XML structure we want to group that matches the one passed by the parameter. Its essentially looking through the data tree for a match. We can show the actual grouping value in the report output with a similar XPATH expression <?./*[name(.) = $group1]?> In my example, I took things a little further so that I could have a dynamic label for the parameter value. For instance if I am using MANAGER as the parameter I want to show: Manager: Tim Dexter My XML elements are readable e.g. DEPARTMENT_NAME. Its a simple case of replacing the underscore with a space and then 'initcapping' the result: <?xdoxslt:init_cap(translate($group1,'_',' '))?> With this in place, the user can now select a grouping column in the BIP report viewer and the layout will re-group the data and any calculations based on that column. I built a group above report but you could equally build the group left version to truly mimic the Answers column selector. If you are interested you can get an example report, sample data and layout template here. Of course, you can combine Klaus' dynamic sorting, Kan's conditional column approach and this dynamic grouping to build a real kick ass report for users that will keep them happy for hours..

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• Silverlight Cream for April 02, 2010 -- #828

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Phil Middlemiss, Robert Kozak, Kathleen Dollard, Avi Pilosof, Nokola, Jeff Wilcox, David Anson, Timmy Kokke, Tim Greenfield, and Josh Smith. Shoutout: SmartyP has additional info up on his WP7 Pivot app: Preview of My Current Windows Phone 7 Pivot Work From SilverlightCream.com: A Chrome and Glass Theme - Part I Phil Middlemiss is starting a tutorial series on building a new theme for Silverlight, in this first one we define some gradients and color resources... good stuff Phil Intercepting INotifyPropertyChanged This is Robert Kozak's first post on this blog, but it's a good one about INotifyPropertyChanged and MVVM and has a solution in the post with lots of code and discussion. How do I Display Data of Complex Bound Criteria in Horizontal Lists in Silverlight? Kathleen Dollard's latest article in Visual Studio magazine is in answer to a question about displaying a list of complex bound criteria including data, child data, and photos, and displaying them horizontally one at a time. Very nice-looking result, and all the code. Windows Phone: Frame/Page navigation and transitions using the TransitioningContentControl Avi Pilosof discusses the built-in (boring) navigation on WP7, and then shows using the TransitionContentControl from the Toolkit to apply transitions to the navigation. EasyPainter: Cloud Turbulence and Particle Buzz Nokola returns with a couple more effects for EasyPainter: Cloud Turbulence and Particle Buzz ... check out the example screenshots, then go grab the code. Property change notifications for multithreaded Silverlight applications Jeff Wilcox is discussing the need for getting change notifications to always happen on the UI thread in multi-threaded apps... great diagrams to see what's going on. Tip: The default value of a DependencyProperty is shared by all instances of the class that registers it David Anson has a tip up about setting the default value of a DependencyProperty, and the consequence that may have depending upon the type. Building a “real” extension for Expression Blend Timmy Kokke's code is WPF, but the subject is near and dear to us all, Timmy has a real-world Expression Blend extension up... a search for controls in the Objects and Timelines pane ... and even if that doesn't interest you... it's the source to a Blend extension! XPath support in Silverlight 4 + XPathPad Tim Greenfield not only talks about XPath in SL4RC, but he has produced a tool, XPathPad, and provided the source... if you've used XPath, you either are a higher thinker than me(not a big stretch), or you need this :) Using a Service Locator to Work with MessageBoxes in an MVVM Application Josh Smith posted about a question that comes up a lot: showing a messagebox from a ViewModel object. This might not work for custom message boxes or unit testing. This post covers the Unit Testing aspect. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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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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• Using the “Settings.settings” functionalities in VB.NET can be tricky…

  - by Vincent Grondin

  Sometime you’re searching for something forever and when you find it, you realize it was right under your nose.  Maybe you were distracted by other things around… or maybe that thing right under your nose was so well hidden that it deserves a blog post…   That happened to me a few days ago while using the “Settings.settings” functionalities in my VB.NET application…  I thought it was a cool feature and I decided to use it…  So there I am adding new settings with “USER” scope and StringCollection as the data type, testing my application and everything works perfectly fine...  That was before I decided to modify the “Value” of one of my settings…  After changing the value of one of my settings, I start my application again and, to my surprise, my new values aren’t showing!  Hmmm… That’s odd…  My setting was a pretty long list of strings so I was rather angry at myself for not saving my work after I was done…  So I open up the Settings.setting in the designer and click the ellipsis symbol to enter my string collection again, but to my great pleasure (and disbelief) my strings are there!!!  Alright, you rock VB.NET!  You’ve just save me a bunch of typing time and I’m thinking it’s just a simple Visual Studio glitch…  I hit “Save” then “Save All” (just in case) and finally I rebuild everything and fire up my app once again.  Huh?  Where are my darn strings????????  Ok there’s a bug there…  I open up the app.config and my new strings are there!!!  Alright, let’s recap…  My new strings are in the app.config, they show correctly in the Settings.settings designer UI but they aren’t showing at runtime…  Hmmmm?  Let’s try something else…  Let’s start the application but outside Visual Studio this time… I fire up the exe and BAM!  My strings where there!  I “alt-tab” and hit “F5” and BOOM, no strings!  So it’s a bug in the Visual Studio environment… or could it be a FEATURE?  I must admit that I’m a little confused over what’s a bug and what’s a feature in Visual Studio… lol!   Finally I found out there’s a “cache” for your Visual Studio located here:  C:\Users\<your username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\<your app name and a very weird temp ID>\<your app version>\user.config When using the “Settings.settings” with a setting of scope “user”, this file is out of sync with your app.config until you manually decide to update it… The button is right there… under your nose… at the top left corner of your screen in the settings designer…  See the big “Synchronize” button there?  Yep…  Now that’s user friendly isn’t it?  Oh, and wait until you see what it does when you click it…  It prompts you and basically says:  “Would you like your settings to start working inside Visual Studio now that you found out that I exist?” and of course the right answer is yes… or rather “OK”…  Unfortunately, you have to do this every time you edit a value… On the other hand, adding and removing settings seem to work flawlessly without having to click this magical button… go figure!  Oh and I almost forgot… this great “feature” is only available for VB.NET…  A project in C# using Settings.settings will work perfectly EVEN when editing values… Here’s a screenshot that shows this important button: Button Using other data types appears to work perfectly well…   Maybe it’s simply related to the StringCollection data type?  If you are a VB.NET programmer, you should pay attention to this when you plan on using the settings functionalities and your scope is “user” and your data type is StringCollection… Happy coding all!

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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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• Help Protect Your Children with the CEOP Enhanced Internet Explorer 8

  - by Asian Angel

  Do you want to make Internet Explorer safer and more helpful for you and family? Then join us as we look at the CEOP (Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre) enhanced version of Internet Explorer 8. Setting CEOP Up We chose to install the whole CEOP pack in order to have access to complete set of CEOP Tools. The install process will be comprised of two parts…it will begin with CEOP branded windows showing the components being installed… Note: The components can be downloaded separately for those who only want certain CEOP components added to their browser. Then it will move to the traditional Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 install windows. One thing that we did notice is that here you will be told that you will need to restart your computer but in other windows a log off/log on process is mentioned. Just to make certain that everything goes smoothly we recommend restarting your computer when the installation process is complete. In the EULA section you can see the versions of Windows that the CEOP Pack works with. Once you get past the traditional Microsoft install windows you will be dropped back into the CEOP branded windows. CEOP in Action After you have restarted your computer and opened Internet Explorer you will notice that your homepage has been changed. When it comes to your children that is not a bad thing in this instance. It will also give you an opportunity to look through the CEOP online resources. For the moment you may be wondering where everything is but do not worry. First you can find the two new search providers in the drop-down menu for your “Search Bar” and select a new default if desired. The second thing to look for are the new links that have been added to your “Favorites Menu”. These links can definitely be helpful for you and your family. The third part will require your “Favorites Bar” to be visible in order to see the “Click CEOP Button”. If you have not previously done so you will need to turn on subscribing for “Web Slices”. Click on “Yes” to finish the subscription process. Clicking on the “CEOP Button” again will show all kinds of new links to help provide information for you and your children. Notice that the top part is broken down into “topic categories” while the bottom part is set up for “age brackets”…very nice for helping you focus on the information that you want and/or need. Looking for information and help on a particular topic? Clicking on the “Cyberbullying Link” for example will open the following webpage with information about cyberbullying and a link to get help with the problem. Need something that is focused on your child’s age group? Clicking on the “8-10? Link” as an example opened this page. Want information that is focused on you? The “Parent? Link” leads to this page. The “topic categories & age brackets” make the CEOP Button a very helpful and “family friendly” addition to Internet Explorer. Perhaps you (or your child) want to conduct a search for something that is affecting your child. As you type in a “search term” both of the search providers will provide helpful suggestions for dealing with the problem. We felt that these were very nice suggestions in both instances here… Conclusion We have been able to give you a good peek at what the CEOP Tools can do but the best way to see how helpful it can be for you and your family is try it for yourself. Your children’s safety and happiness is worth it. Links Download the Internet Explorer CEOP Pack (link at bottom of webpage) Note: If you are interested in a singular component or only some use these links. Download the Click CEOP Button Download Search CEOP Download Internet Safety and Security Search Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Mysticgeek Blog: A Look at Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 on Windows XPWhen to Use Protect Tab vs Lock Tab in FirefoxMake Ctrl+Tab in Internet Explorer 7 Use Most Recent OrderRemove ISP Text or Corporate Branding from Internet Explorer Title BarQuick Hits: 11 Firefox Tab How-Tos 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 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Download Microsoft Office Help tab The Growth of Citibank Quickly Switch between Tabs in IE Windows Media Player 12: Tweak Video & Sound with Playback Enhancements Own a cell phone, or does a cell phone own you? Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI

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• Best of "The Moth" 2010

  - by Daniel Moth

  It is the time again (like in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009) to look back at my blog for the past year and identify areas of interest that seem to be more prominent than others. After doing so, representative posts follow in my top 5 list (in random order). 1. This was the year where I had to move for the first time since 2004 my blog engine (blogger.com –> dasBlog), host provider (zen –> godaddy), web server technology and OS (apache on Linux –> IIS on Windows Server). My goal was not to break any permalinks or the look and feel of this website. A series of posts covered how I achieved that goal, culminating in a tool for others to use if they wanted to do the same: Tool to convert blogger.com content to dasBlog. Going forward I aim to be sharing more small code utilities like that one… 2. At work I am known for being fairly responsive on email, and more importantly never dropping email balls on the floor. This is due to my email processing system, which I shared here: Processing Email in Outlook. I will be sharing more tips with regards to making the best of the Office products. 3. There is no doubt in my mind that this is the year people will remember as the one where Microsoft finally fights back in the mobile space. Even though the new platform means my Windows Mobile book sales will dwindle :-), I am ecstatic about Windows Phone 7 both as a consumer and as a developer. On the release day, to get you started I shared the top 10 Windows Phone 7 developer resources. I will be sharing my tips from my experience in writing code for and consuming this new platform… 4. For my HPC developer friends using Visual Studio, I shared Slides and code for MPI Cluster Debugger and also gave you all the links you need for getting started with Dryad and DryadLINQ from MSR. Expect more from me on cluster development in the coming year… 5. Still in the HPC space, but actually also in the game and even mainstream development, the big disruption and opportunity comes in the form of GPGPU and, on the Microsoft platform, (currently) DirectCompute. Expect more from me on gpgpu development in the coming year… Subscribe via the link on the left to stay tuned for 2011… I wish you a very Happy New Year (with whatever definition of happiness works for you)! Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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• Cost justification for buying a 32GB superfast Alienware M18x with a price tag of around £5K ($10K)

  - by tonyrogerson

  When considering buying a laptop that’s going to cost me around £5,000 I really need to justify the purchase from a business perspective; my Lenovo W700 has served me very well for the last 2 years, it’s an extremely good machine and as solid as a rock (and as heavy), alas though it is limited to the 8GB. As SQL Server 2012 approaches and with my interest in working in the Business Intelligence space over the next year or two it is clear I need a powerful machine that I can run a full infrastructure though virtualised. My requirements For High Availability / Disaster Recovery research and demonstration Machine for a domain controller Four machines in a shared disk cluster (SQL Server Clustering active – active etc.) Five  machines in a file share cluster (SQL Server Availability Groups) For Business Intelligence research and demonstration Not entirely sure how many machine I want to run here, but it would be to cover the entire BI stack in an enterprise setting, sharepoint, sql server etc. For Big Data Research I have a fondness for the NoSQL approach to scalability and dealing with large volumes so I need a number of machines to research VoltDB, Hadoop etc. As you can see the requirements for a SQL Server consultant to service their clients well is considerable; will 8GB suffice, alas no, it will no longer do. I’m a very strong believer that in order to do your job well you must expense it, short cuts only cost you time, waiting 5 minutes instead of an hour for something to run not only saves me time but my clients time, I can do things quicker and more importantly I can demonstrate concepts. My W700 with the 8GB of RAM and SSD’s cost me around £3.5K two years ago, to be honest I’ve not got the full use I wanted out of it but the machine has had the power when I’ve needed it, it’s served me and my clients well. Alienware now do a model (the M18x) with 32GB of RAM; yes 32GB in a laptop! Dual drives so I can whack a couple of really good SSD’s in there, a quad core with hyper threading i7 and a decent speed. I can reduce the cost of the memory by getting it from Crucial, so instead of £1.5K for 32GB it will be around £900, I can also cost save on the SSD as well. The beauty about the M18x is that it is USB3.0, SATA 3 and also really importantly has eSATA, running VM’s will never be easier, I can have a removeable SSD with my VM’s on it and can plug it into my home machine or laptop – an ideal world! The initial outlay of £5K is peanuts compared to the benefits I’ll give my clients, I will be able to present real enterprise concepts, I’ll also be able to give training on those real enterprise concepts and with real, albeit virtualised machines.

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• Silverlight Cream for March 08, 2010 -- #809

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Michael Washington, Tim Greenfield, Bobby Diaz(-2-), Glenn Block(-2-), Nikhil Kothari, Jianqiang Bao(-2-), and Christopher Bennage. Shoutouts: Adam Kinney announced a Big update for the Project Rosetta site today Arpit Gupta has opened a new blog with a great logo: I think therefore I am dangerous :) From SilverlightCream.com: DotNetNuke Silverlight Traffic Module If it's DNN and Silverlight, it has to be my buddy Michael Washington :) ... Michael has combined those stunning gauges you've seen with website traffic... just too cool!... grab the code and display yours too! Cool demonstration of Silverlight VideoBrush This is a no-code post by Tim Greenfield, but I like the UX on this Jigsaw Puzzle page... and you can make your own. Introducing the Earthquake Locator – A Bing Maps Silverlight Application, part 1 Bobby Diaz has an informative post up on combining earthquake data with BingMaps in Silverlight 3... check it out, the grab the recently posted Live Demo and Source Code Adding Volcanos and Options - Earthquake Locator, part 2 Bobby Diaz also added volcanic activity to his earthquake BinMaps app, and updated the downloadable code and live demo. Building Hello MEF – Part IV – DeploymentCatalog Glenn Block posted a pair of MEF posts yesterday... made me think I missed one :) .. the first one is about the DeploymentCatalog. Note he is going to be using the CodePlex bits in his posts. Building HelloMEF – Part V – Refactoring to ViewModel Glenn Block's part V is about MEF and MVVM -- no, really! ... he is refactoring MVVM into the app with a nod to Josh Smith and Laurent Bugnion... get your head around this... The Case for ViewModel Nikhil Kothari has a post up about the ViewModel, and how it facilitates designer/developer workflow, jumpstarts development, improves scaling, and makes asynch programming development simpler MMORPG programming in Silverlight Tutorial (12)Map Instance (Part I) Jianqiang Bao has part 12 of his MMORPG game up... this one is showing how to deal with obstuctions on maps. MMORPG programming in Silverlight Tutorial (13)Perfect moving mechanism Jianqiang Bao also has part 13 up, and this second one is about sprite movement around the obstructions. 1 Simple Step for Commanding in Silverlight Christopher Bennage blogged about Commanding in Silverlight, he begins with a blog post about commands in Silverlight 4 then goes on to demonstrate the Caliburn way of doing commanding. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    MIX10

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• SQL SERVER – Weekend Project – Visiting Friend’s Company – Koenig Solutions

  - by pinaldave

  I have decided to do some interesting experiments every weekend and share it next week as a weekend project on the blog. Many times our business lives and personal lives are very separate, however this post will talk about one instance where my two lives connect. This weekend I visited my friend’s company. My friend owns Koenig, so of course I am very interested so see that they are doing well.  I have been very impressed this year, as they have expanded into multiple cities and are offering more and more classes about Business Intelligence, Project Management, networking, and much more. Koenig Solutions originally were a company that focused on training IT professionals – from topics like databases and even English language courses.  As the company grew more popular, Koenig began their blog to keep fans updated, and gradually have added more and more courses. I am very happy for my friend’s success, but as a technology enthusiast I am also pleased with Koenig Solutions’ success.  Whenever anyone in our field improves, the field as a whole does better.  Koenig offers high quality classes on a variety of topics at a variety of levels, so anyone can benefit from browsing this blog. I am a big fan of technology (obviously), and I feel blessed to have gotten in on the “ground floor,” even though there are some people out there who think technology has advanced as far as possible – I believe they will be proven wrong.  And that is why I think companies like Koenig Solutions are so important – they are providing training and support in a quickly growing field, and providing job skills in this tough economy. I believe this particular post really highlights how I, and Koenig, feel about the IT industry.  It is quickly expanding, and job opportunities are sure to abound – but how can the average person get started in this exciting field?  This post emphasizes that knowledge is power – know what interests you in the IT field, get an education, and continue your training even after you’ve gotten your foot in the door. Koenig Solutions provides what I feel is one of the most important services in the modern world – in person training.  They obviously offer many online courses, but you can also set up physical, face-to-face training through their website.  As I mentioned before, they offer a wide variety of classes that cater to nearly every IT skill you can think of.  If you have more specific needs, they also offer one of the best English language training courses.  English is turning into the language of technology, so these courses can ensure that you are keeping up the pace. Koenig Solutions and I agree about how important training can be, and even better – they provide some of the best training around.  We share ideals and I am very happy see the success of my friend. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Training, SQLAuthority Author Visit, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Developer Training

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• SQLAuthority News – Social Media Series – LinkedIn and Professional Profile

  - by pinaldave

  Pinal Dave on LinkedIn! It seems like a few year ago, there was a big “boom” in social media websites.  All of a sudden there were so many sites to choose from.  MySpace or Orkut?  Blogging websites for your business or a LinkedIn account?  The nature of the internet is to always be changing, but I believe that out of this huge growth of websites, a few have come to stay.  Facebook is obviously the leader in social media networking, especially for your personal life.  Blogging is great, but it can be more of a way to get your ideas out there, rather than a place for people to connect to you professionally.  If you want to have a professional “face” on the internet, LinkedIn is the way to go. LinkedIn is best explained as “professional Facebook.”  This is simplifying things a little bit too much, but it is certainly a website where you link up with professional contacts, so that others can see where you have worked, who you have worked with, and what projects you have done.  This is a much better place for professional contacts to find you than someplace like Facebook, where all they will see is your face and maybe picture of you at a birthday party or something like that! Because so much of my SQL Server life is conducted on the internet, especially on my blog, I felt that it would be a good idea to have a well-maintained LinkedIn web page as well, so that if anyone is curious about me and my credentials they can quickly and easily find me and see that I am for real, and not someone pretending to know a lot about SQL Server. My linked in profile is www.linkedin.com/in/pinaldave.  I keep all my professional information here, and I update it as often as possible.  Feel free to come find me, especially if you would like to “link up” and share professional information.  The technology world is becoming more and more interconnected, and more and more international.  I feel that it is very important to stay linked up virtually, because so many of us are so far apart physically. I try to keep very connected with my LinkedIn profile.  I let anyone connect with me, and I read updates from the professional world very often.  I keep this profile updated, but do not post things about my personal life or anything that I might put on Twitter, for example.  I also include my e-mail address here, if you would like to contact me professionally.  This is the best place for me to conduct business. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Social Media

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• What’s New in Delphi XE6 Regular Expressions

  - by Jan Goyvaerts

  There’s not much new in the regular expression support in Delphi XE6. The big change that should be made, upgrading to PCRE 8.30 or later and switching to the pcre16 functions that use UTF-16, still hasn’t been made. XE6 still uses PCRE 7.9 and thus continues to require conversion from the UTF-16 strings that Delphi uses natively to the UTF-8 strings that older versions of PCRE require. Delphi XE6 does fix one important issue that has plagued TRegEx since it was introduced in Delphi XE. Previously, TRegEx could not find zero-length matches. So a regex like (?m)^ that should find a zero-length match at the start of each line would not find any matches at all with TRegEx. The reason for this is that TRegEx uses TPerlRegEx to do the heavy lifting. TPerlRegEx sets its State property to [preNotEmpty] in its constructor, which tells it to skip zero-length matches. This is not a problem with TPerlRegEx because users of this class can change the State property. But TRegEx does not provide a way to change this property. So in Delphi XE5 and prior, TRegEx cannot find zero-length matches. In Delphi XE6 TPerlRegEx’s constructor was changed to initialize State to the empty set. This means TRegEx is now able to find zero-length matches. TRegex.Replace() using the regex (?m)^ now inserts the replacement at the start of each line, as you would expect. If you use TPerlRegEx directly, you’ll need to set State to [preNotEmpty] in your own code if you relied on its behavior to skip zero-length matches. You will need to check existing applications that use TRegEx for regular expressions that incorrectly allow zero-length matches. In XE5 and prior, TRegEx using \d* would match all numbers in a string. In XE6, the same regex still matches all numbers, but also finds a zero-length match at each position in the string. RegexBuddy 4 warns about zero-length matches on the Create panel if you set it to Detailed mode. At the bottom of the regex tree there will be a node saying either “your regular expression may find zero-length matches” or “zero-length matches will be skipped” depending on whether your application allows zero-length matches (XE6 TRegEx) or not (XE–XE5 TRegEx).

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• How Can I Test My Computer’s Power Supply?

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  You’re concerned your computer troubles stem from a failing (or outright fried) power supply unit. How can you test the unit to be sure that it’s the source of your hardware headaches? Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader Sam Hoice has some PSU concerns: My computer powered off the other day on its own, and now when I push the power button, nothing happens. My assumption would naturally be that the power supply is done (possibly well done) but is there any good way to test this before I buy a new one? How can Sam test things without damaging his current computer or other hardware?   The Answer SuperUser contributor Grant writes: Unplug the power supply from any of the components inside the computer (or just remove it from the computer completely). USE CAUTION HERE (Though you’d only be shocked with a max of 24 volts) Plug the power supply into the wall. Find the big 24-ish pin connector that connects to the motherboard. Connect the GREEN wire with the adjacent BLACK wire. The power supply’s fan should start up. If it doesn’t then it’s dead. If the fan starts up, then it could be the motherboard that’s dead. You can use a multimeter to check if there is power output from the power supply. Adrien offers a solution for readers who may not be comfortable jamming wires into their power supply unit’s MOBO connector: Most well-stocked geek-stores sell a “power-supply tester” that has all the appropriate connectors to plug each part of your PSU into, with spiffy LEDs indicating status of the various rails, connectors for IDE/SATA/floppy power cables, etc. They run ~$20 US. With a little careful shopping you can even find a highly-rated PSU tester for a measly $6. Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.     

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• Going… Going.. Going.. GONE! The OPNX ScoreBoard

  - by Kristin Rose

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin: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;} It was the bottom of the 9th, the bases were loaded and Oracle PartnerNetwork knocked it out of the park! Partners really scored big this year with the first ever Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange Program at OpenWorld, and it was a win for the ages! With so much to take part in and experience, we wanted to offer you a quick play-by-play of the week in case you couldn’t make every event. Up to bat first was our Global Keynote with Oracle Senior Vice President, Judson Althoff. The Keynote Hall was packed with a full house, and the crowd went wild after the latest Cloud announcements were made. The OPN Exchange General Sessions followed shortly after, and covered topics like Technology, Applications and Engineered Systems – a real game changer for our partners and customers alike! Work hard, play hard has always been our motto, as partners mixed and mingled during Sunday’s AfterDark Reception, all while Macy Gray sung her greatest hits below. But that was only Game Day #1. The rest of the week included: 50+ Partner exclusive sessions, OPN’s Test Fest, the bright and early 5K Partner Fun Run, the Social Media Rally Station at the OPN Lounge, Java Embedded @JavaOne and last but not least, our Ice Cream Social… If only there were some peanuts to go with! Watch below as Judson Althoff recap’s his experience at OPN Exchange this year, and get’s ready for next season! We’re Outta Here! The OPN Communications Team

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• To File Share or to not File Share, that is the Question.

  To file share or to not file share, that is the question. The concept of the internet was developed in the 1960’s as a revolutionary idea to share information and data amongst a group of computers. The original concept was to allow universities and the United States Military share data for research and field operations. This network of computers was designed to provide redundant data storage and communications in case one or more locations were destroyed. Since the inception of the internet, people have attempted to use it for sharing data. As the Internet has evolved so did the users and the information they wanted to share. In today’s modern internet people can share information through various avenues, for example: websites, social networks, email, documents, executable files, data files and much more.  Unfortunately, as the internet and its users have grown, some industries have not paid attention. Currently, there are several industries that have really fallen behind in keeping up with current trends, and are severely paying the price for their lack of action. A current example of this is with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and file sharing. RIAA contends that customers who purchase music can only listen to the music and cannot share it with others. This can be seen when the RIAA sued Napster for distributing copyrighted music through a technology called file sharing. File sharing as defined by the Media Awareness Network is downloadable software that permits users to share music, video, image or book files directly with peers. Users of file sharing networks simply had to extract the music from a CD into a music compatible format. Typically most music files at that time where saved as MPEG file format. Once the users got music in this format it was very easy share their music with others. The big question now is who actually owns the music, does the music industry still retain the rights of the music regarding who has access to listen to it, or is it up to the owner of the music CD.  According to the First – Sale Doctrine, it is the right of the purchaser of the CD to decide who can access the information on the CD. In addition, the original owner looses all rights to the music once it has been sold.  The importance of defining who actually owns the music has a great impact on the future of the industry. If the industry is determined to be the actual owner of the music then anyone who has shared at least 1 fine with another is guilty of violating the copyright. However, if the owners of the CD are determined to be the owners of the music then the music industry will have to figure out some other way to protect their music so that it is more lucrative for them or they will go out of business. References: http://www.walthowe.com/navnet/history.html http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/resources/special_initiatives/wa_resources/wa_shared/backgrounders/internet_glossary.cfm#F

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• Limiting DOPs &ndash; Who rules over whom?

  - by jean-pierre.dijcks

  I've gotten a couple of questions from Dan Morgan and figured I start to answer them in this way. While Dan is running on a big system he is running with Database Resource Manager and he is trying to make sure the system doesn't go crazy (remember end user are never, ever crazy!) on very high DOPs. Q: How do I control statements with very high DOPs driven from user hints in queries? A: The best way to do this is to work with DBRM and impose limits on consumer groups. The Max DOP setting you can set in DBRM allows you to overwrite the hint. Now let's go into some more detail here. Assume my object (and for simplicity we assume there is a single object - and do remember that we always pick the highest DOP when in doubt and when conflicting DOPs are available in a query) has PARALLEL 64 as its setting. Assume that the query that selects something cool from that table lives in a consumer group with a max DOP of 32. Assume no goofy things (like running out of parallel_max_servers) are happening. A query selecting from this table will run at DOP 32 because DBRM caps the DOP. As of 11.2.0.1 we also use the DBRM cap to create the original plan (at compile time) and not just enforce the cap at runtime. Now, my user is smart and writes a query with a parallel hint requesting DOP 128. This query is still capped by DBRM and DBRM overrules the hint in the statement. The statement, despite the hint, runs at DOP 32. Note that in the hinted scenario we do compile the statement with DOP 128 (the optimizer obeys the hint). This is another reason to use table decoration rather than hints. Q: What happens if I set parallel_max_servers higher than processes (e.g. the max number of processes allowed to run on my machine)? A: Processes rules. It is important to understand that processes are fixed at startup time. If you increase parallel_max_servers above the number of processes in the processes parameter you should get a warning in the alert log stating it can not take effect. As a follow up, a hinted query requesting more parallel processes than either parallel_max_servers or processes will not be able to acquire the requested number. Parallel_max_processes will prevent this. And since parallel_max_servers should be lower than max processes you can never go over either...

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• Algorithmia Source Code released on CodePlex

  - by FransBouma

  Following the release of our BCL Extensions Library on CodePlex, we have now released the source-code of Algorithmia on CodePlex! Algorithmia is an algorithm and data-structures library for .NET 3.5 or higher and is one of the pillars LLBLGen Pro v3's designer is built on. The library contains many data-structures and algorithms, and the source-code is well documented and commented, often with links to official descriptions and papers of the algorithms and data-structures implemented. The source-code is shared using Mercurial on CodePlex and is licensed under the friendly BSD2 license. User documentation is not available at the moment but will be added soon. One of the main design goals of Algorithmia was to create a library which contains implementations of well-known algorithms which weren't already implemented in .NET itself. This way, more developers out there can enjoy the results of many years of what the field of Computer Science research has delivered. Some algorithms and datastructures are known in .NET but are re-implemented because the implementation in .NET isn't efficient for many situations or lacks features. An example is the linked list in .NET: it doesn't have an O(1) concat operation, as every node refers to the containing LinkedList object it's stored in. This is bad for algorithms which rely on O(1) concat operations, like the Fibonacci heap implementation in Algorithmia. Algorithmia therefore contains a linked list with an O(1) concat feature. The following functionality is available in Algorithmia: Command, Command management. This system is usable to build a fully undo/redo aware system by building your object graph using command-aware classes. The Command pattern is implemented using a system which allows transparent undo-redo and command grouping so you can use it to make a class undo/redo aware and set properties, use its contents without using commands at all. The Commands namespace is the namespace to start. Classes you'd want to look at are CommandifiedMember, CommandifiedList and KeyedCommandifiedList. See the CommandQueueTests in the test project for examples. Graphs, Graph algorithms. Algorithmia contains a sophisticated graph class hierarchy and algorithms implemented onto them: non-directed and directed graphs, as well as a subgraph view class, which can be used to create a view onto an existing graph class which can be self-maintaining. Algorithms include transitive closure, topological sorting and others. A feature rich depth-first search (DFS) crawler is available so DFS based algorithms can be implemented quickly. All graph classes are undo/redo aware, as they can be set to be 'commandified'. When a graph is 'commandified' it will do its housekeeping through commands, which makes it fully undo-redo aware, so you can remove, add and manipulate the graph and undo/redo the activity automatically without any extra code. If you define the properties of the class you set as the vertex type using CommandifiedMember, you can manipulate the properties of vertices and the graph contents with full undo/redo functionality without any extra code. Heaps. Heaps are data-structures which have the largest or smallest item stored in them always as the 'root'. Extracting the root from the heap makes the heap determine the next in line to be the 'maximum' or 'minimum' (max-heap vs. min-heap, all heaps in Algorithmia can do both). Algorithmia contains various heaps, among them an implementation of the Fibonacci heap, one of the most efficient heap datastructures known today, especially when you want to merge different instances into one. Priority queues. Priority queues are specializations of heaps. Algorithmia contains a couple of them. Sorting. What's an algorithm library without sort algorithms? Algorithmia implements a couple of sort algorithms which sort the data in-place. This aspect is important in situations where you want to sort the elements in a buffer/list/ICollection in-place, so all data stays in the data-structure it already is stored in. PropertyBag. It re-implements Tony Allowatt's original idea in .NET 3.5 specific syntax, which is to have a generic property bag and to be able to build an object in code at runtime which can be bound to a property grid for editing. This is handy for when you have data / settings stored in XML or other format, and want to create an editable form of it without creating many editors. IEditableObject/IDataErrorInfo implementations. It contains default implementations for IEditableObject and IDataErrorInfo (EditableObjectDataContainer for IEditableObject and ErrorContainer for IDataErrorInfo), which make it very easy to implement these interfaces (just a few lines of code) without having to worry about bookkeeping during databinding. They work seamlessly with CommandifiedMember as well, so your undo/redo aware code can use them out of the box. EventThrottler. It contains an event throttler, which can be used to filter out duplicate events in an event stream coming into an observer from an event. This can greatly enhance performance in your UI without needing to do anything other than hooking it up so it's placed between the event source and your real handler. If your UI is flooded with events from data-structures observed by your UI or a middle tier, you can use this class to filter out duplicates to avoid redundant updates to UI elements or to avoid having observers choke on many redundant events. Small, handy stuff. A MultiValueDictionary, which can store multiple unique values per key, instead of one with the default Dictionary, and is also merge-aware so you can merge two into one. A Pair class, to quickly group two elements together. Multiple interfaces for helping with building a de-coupled, observer based system, and some utility extension methods for the defined data-structures. We regularly update the library with new code. If you have ideas for new algorithms or want to share your contribution, feel free to discuss it on the project's Discussions page or send us a pull request. Enjoy!

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• Querying Networking Statistics: dlstat(1M)

  - by user12612042

  Oracle Solaris 11 took another big leap forward in networking technologies providing a reliable, secure and scalable infrastructure to meet the growing needs of today's datacenter implementations. Oracle Solaris 11 introduced a new and powerful network stack architecture, also known as Project Crossbow. From Solaris 11 onwards, we introduced a command line tool viz. dlstat(1M) to query network statistics. dlstat (for datalink statistics) is a statistics querying counterpart for dladm(1M) - the datalink administration tool. The tool is very easy to get started. Just type dlstat on a shell prompt on Solaris 11 (or later). For example,: # dlstat LINK IPKTS RBYTES OPKTS OBYTES net0 834.11K 145.91M 575.19K 104.24M net1 7.87K 2.04M 0 0 In this example, the system has two datalinks net0 and net1. The output columns denote input packets/bytes as well as output packets/bytes. The numbers are abbreviated in xxx.xxUnit format. However, one could get the actual counts by simply running dlstat -u R (R for raw): # dlstat -u R LINK IPKTS RBYTES OPKTS OBYTES net0 834271 145931244 575246 104242934 net1 7869 2036958 0 0 In addition, dlstat also supports various subcommands dlstat help The following subcommands are supported: Stats : show-aggr show-ether show-link show-phys show-bridge For more info, run: dlstat help {default|} I will only describe couple of interesting subcommands/options here. For a comprehensive description of all the dlstat subcommands refer dlstat's official manual . For NICs that support multiple rings (e.g. ixgbe), dlstat show-phys -r allows us to query per Rx ring statistics. For example: dlstat show-phys -r net4 LINK TYPE INDEX IPKTS RBYTES net4 rx 0 0 0 net4 rx 1 0 0 net4 rx 2 0 0 net4 rx 3 0 0 net4 rx 4 0 0 net4 rx 5 0 0 net4 rx 6 0 0 net4 rx 7 0 0 In this case, net4 is just a vanity name for an ixgbe datalink. This view is especially useful if one wants to look at the network traffic spread across all the available rings. Furthermore, any of the dlstat commands could be run with -i option to periodically query and display stats. For example, running dlstat show-phys -r net4 -i 5 will emit per Rx ring stats every 5 seconds. This is especially useful while analyzing a live system. Similarly, dlstat show-phys -t could be used to query per Tx ring stats. -r and -t could also be combined as dlstat show-phys -rt to query both Rx as well as Tx stats at the same time. Finally, there is also a quick way to dump ALL the stats. Just run dlstat -A. You probably want to redirect this output to a file because you are going to get a whole load of stats :-).

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• Silverlight User Group of Switzerland (SLUGS)

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  Last Thursday, the Silverlight Firestarter event took place in Redmond, and was streamed live to a large audience worldwide (around 20’000 people). Approximately 30 if them were in Wallisellen near Zurich, in Microsoft Switzerland’s offices. This was not only a great occasion to learn more about the future of Silverlight and to see great demos, but also it was the very first meeting of the Silverlight User Group of Switzerland (SLUGS). Having 30 people for a first meeting was a great success, especially if we consider that it was REALLY cold that night, that it had snowed 20 cm the night before! We all had a good time, and 3 lucky winners went back home with a prize: One LG Optimus 7 Windows Phone and two copies of Silverlight 4 Unleashed. Congratulations to the winners! After the keynote (which went in a whirlwind, shortest 90 minutes ever!), we all had pizza and beverages generously sponsored by the Swiss DPE team, of which not less than 5 guys came to the event! Thanks to Stefano, Ronnie, Sascha, Big Mike and Ken for attending! We decided to have meetings every month. Stay tuned for announcements on when and where the events will take place. We are also in the process of creating various groups online where the attendees can find more information. For instance, I created a group on Flickr where the pictures taken at events will be published. The group is public, and the pictures of the first event are already online! We also have the already known page at http://www.slugs.ch/, check it out. A national group Even though the first event was in Zurich, and that 3 of the founding members live nearby, we would like to try and be a national group. That means having events sometimes in other parts of Switzerland, collaborating with other local user groups, etc. Stay tuned for more Join! We want you, we need you If you are doing Silverlight, for a living or as a hobby, if you are interested in user experience, XAML, Expression Blend and many more topics, you should consider joining! This is a great occasion to exchange experiences, to learn from Silverlight experts, to hear sessions about various topics related to Silverlight, etc. If you want to talk about a topic that is of interest to you, If you want to propose a topic of discussion Or if you just want to hang out then go to http://www.slugs.ch and register! Cheers, Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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• Silverlight Firestarter Wrap Up and WCF RIA Services Talk Sample Code

  - by dwahlin

  I had a great time attending and speaking at the Silverlight Firestarter event up in Redmond on December 2, 2010. In addition to getting a chance to hang out with a lot of cool people from Microsoft such as Scott Guthrie, John Papa, Tim Heuer, Brian Goldfarb, John Allwright, David Pugmire, Jesse Liberty, Jeff Handley, Yavor Georgiev, Jossef Goldberg, Mike Cook and many others, I also had a chance to chat with a lot of people attending the event and hear about what projects they’re working on which was awesome. If you didn’t get a chance to look through all of the new features coming in Silverlight 5 check out John Papa’s post on the subject. While at the Silverlight Firestarter event I gave a presentation on WCF RIA Services and wanted to get the code posted since several people have asked when it’d be available. The talk can be viewed by clicking the image below. Code from the talk follows as well as additional links. I had a few people ask about the green bracelet on my left hand since it looks like something you’d get from a waterpark. It was used to get us access down a little hall that led backstage and allowed us to go backstage during the event. I thought it looked kind of dorky but it was required to get through security. Sample Code from My WCF RIA Services Talk (To login to the 2 apps use “user” and “P@ssw0rd”. Make sure to do a rebuild of the projects in Visual Studio before running them.) View All Silverlight Firestarter Talks and Scott Guthrie’s Keynote WCF RIA Services SP1 Beta for Silverlight 4 WCF RIA Services Code Samples (including some SP1 samples) Improved binding support in EntitySet and EntityCollection with SP1 (Kyle McClellan’s Blog) Introducing an MVVM-Friendly DomainDataSource: The DomainCollectionView (Kyle McClellan’s Blog) I’ve had the chance to speak at a lot of conferences but never with as many cameras, streaming capabilities, people watching live and overall hype involved. Over 1000 people registered to attend the conference in person at the Microsoft campus and well over 15,000 to watch it through the live stream.  The event started for me on Tuesday afternoon with a flight up to Seattle from Phoenix. My flight was delayed 1 1/2 hours (I seem to be good at booking delayed flights) so I didn’t get up there until almost 8 PM. John Papa did a tech check at 9 PM that night and I was scheduled for 9:30 PM. We basically plugged in my laptop backstage (amazing number of servers, racks and audio devices back there) and made sure everything showed up properly on the projector and the machines recording the presentation. In addition to a dedicated show director, there were at least 5 tech people back stage and at least that many up in the booth running lights, audio, cameras, and other aspects of the show. I wish I would’ve taken a picture of the backstage setup since it was pretty massive – servers all over the place. I definitely gained a new appreciation for how much work goes into these types of events. Here’s what the room looked like right before my tech check– not real exciting at this point. That’s Yavor Georgiev (who spoke on WCF Services at the Firestarter) in the background. We had plenty of monitors to reference during the presentation. Two monitors for slides (right and left side) and a notes monitor. The 4th monitor showed the time and they’d type in notes to us as we talked (such as “You’re over time!” in my case since I went around 4 minutes over :-)). Wednesday morning I went back on campus at Microsoft and watched John Papa film a few Silverlight TV episodes with Dave Campbell and Ryan Plemons.   Next I had the chance to watch the dry run of the keynote with Scott Guthrie and John Papa. We were all blown away by the demos shown since they were even better than expected. Starting at 1 PM on Wednesday I went over to Building 35 and listened to Yavor Georgiev (WCF Services), Jaime Rodriguez (Windows Phone 7), Jesse Liberty (Data Binding) and Jossef Goldberg and Mike Cook (Silverlight Performance) give their different talks and we all shared feedback with each other which was a lot of fun. Jeff Handley from the RIA Services team came afterwards and listened to me give a dry run of my WCF RIA Services talk. He had some great feedback that I really appreciated getting. That night I hung out with John Papa and Ward Bell and listened to John walk through his keynote demos. I also got a sneak peak of the gift given to Dave Campbell for all his work with Silverlight Cream over the years. It’s a poster signed by all of the key people involved with Silverlight: Thursday morning I got up fairly early to get to the event center by 8 AM for speaker pictures. It was nice and quiet at that point although outside the room there was a huge line of people waiting to get in.     At around 8:30 AM everyone was let in and the main room was filled quickly. Two other overflow rooms in the Microsoft conference center (Building 33) were also filled to capacity. At around 9 AM Scott Guthrie kicked off the event and all the excitement started! From there it was all a blur but it was definitely a lot of fun. All of the sessions for the Silverlight Firestarter were recorded and can be watched here (including the keynote). Corey Schuman, John Papa and I also released 11 lab exercises and associated videos to help people get started with Silverlight. Definitely check them out if you’re interested in learning more! Level 100: Getting Started Lab 01 - WinForms and Silverlight Lab 02 - ASP.NET and Silverlight Lab 03 - XAML and Controls Lab 04 - Data Binding Level 200: Ready for More Lab 05 - Migrating Apps to Out-of-Browser Lab 06 - Great UX with Blend Lab 07 - Web Services and Silverlight Lab 08 - Using WCF RIA Services Level 300: Take me Further Lab 09 - Deep Dive into Out-of-Browser Lab 10 - Silverlight Patterns: Using MVVM Lab 11 - Silverlight and Windows Phone 7

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• SQL Server Scripts I Use

  - by Bill Graziano

  When I get to a new client I usually find myself using the same set of scripts for maintenance and troubleshooting.  These are all drop in solutions for various maintenance issues. Reindexing.  I use Michelle Ufford’s (SQLFool) re-indexing script.  I like that it has a throttle and only re-indexes when needed.  She also has a variety of other interesting scripts on her blog too. Server Activity.  Adam Machanic is up to version 10 of sp_WhoIsActive.  It’s a great replacement for the sp_who* stored procedures and does so much more.  If a server is acting funny this is one of the first tools I use. Backups.  Tara Kizer has a great little T-SQL script for SQL Server backups.  Wait Stats.  Paul Randal has a great script to display wait stats.  The biggest benefit for me is that his script filters out at least three dozen wait stats that I just don’t care about (for example LAZYWRITER_SLEEP). Update Statistics.  I didn’t find anything I liked so I wrote a simple script to update stats myself.  The big need for me was that it had to run inside a time window and update the oldest statistics first.  Is there a better one? Diagnostic Queries.  Glenn Berry has a huge collection of DMV queries available.  He also just highlighted five of them including two I really like dealing with unused indexes and suggested indexes. Single Use Query Plans.  Kim Tripp has a script that counts the number of single-use query plans.  This should guide you in whether to enable the Optimize for Adhoc Workloads option in SQL Server 2008. Granting Permissions to Developers.  This is one of those scripts I didn’t even know I needed until I needed it.  Kendra Little wrote it to grant a login read-only permission to all the databases.  It also grants view server state and a few other handy permissions.   What else do you use?  What should I add to my list?

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• Oracle's Australian Graduate Recruitment Program

  - by david.talamelli

  I have been with Oracle for 5 years now and one thing that I have found that there is never a shortage of here is - Variety. Over the last 5 years I have had the opportunity to work on projects across various countries, across various technologies and skill-sets and also across various level of seniority. No two days are the same. One of the projects I was fortunate to be involved in occurred last year and it is one of the ones that is closest to me. Last year I was able to take responsibility for our 2011 Graduate Recruitment drive in Australia. Two weeks ago I went to Sydney to meet our Graduates who started in February 2011 with us and it was great to see them come to the end (or beginning actually) of our journey together. I am excited at the potential of what our Graduates careers will develop into here with us. I remember at our interviewing last year trying to explain life in Oracle, it is great to see those same Graduates with us now learning and developing life and business skills that I hope they will take with them in their professional careers. I was talking to one of my colleagues this week who mentioned the excitement and energy that our new Graduates bring is infectious, and I agree it really is. Our Graduates have a big learning curve ahead of them and they are about to start going on rotations into some of our Business Groups - but I think it is a great experience to see how a global company operates and pulls together to achieve results together. Here is a picture we took the other week of this year's Oracle Graduates (if any of our Graduates are reading this blog - it was great seeing you in NSW and I do wish you all the success here at Oracle) Once again Oracle's Graduate Program will be running in 2011 in Australia (Graduates will start in Jan/Feb 2012). The Oracle Australia Graduate Development Program is a one-year program consisting of orientation, formal training, project rotations in one core line of business and finally job placement. The formal training is a combination of structured development programs on soft skills and functional competencies via various delivery formats. Graduates are also expected to work in a team environment and complete multiple projects addressing real business challenges and at the time gaining a broad business understanding. For our Australia program we are hiring in our North Ryde and Melbourne offices. Resume submissions are being accepted now. First Round interviews will take place in June 2011 with Final Round interviews in July 2011. The Australia Graduate Program is open to Australian Residents and Citizens who are either in the final year of their studies or have graduated the previous year. For more details on Oracle and our Graduate Program visit our Campus website To express your interest, mail your resume to [email protected]

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