Search Results

Search found 26592 results on 1064 pages for 'information presentation'.

Page 336/1064 | < Previous Page | 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343  | Next Page >

• MongoDB usage best practices

  - by andresv

  The project I'm working on uses MongoDB for some stuff so I'm creating some documents to help developers speedup the learning curve and also avoid mistakes and help them write clean & reliable code. This is my first version of it, so I'm pretty sure I will be adding more stuff to it, so stay tuned! C# Official driver notes The 10gen official MongoDB driver should always be referenced in projects by using NUGET. Do not manually download and reference assemblies in any project. C# driver quickstart guide: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/CSharp+Driver+Quickstart Reference links C# Language Center: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/CSharp+Language+Center MongoDB Server Documentation: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Home MongoDB Server Downloads: http://www.mongodb.org/downloads MongoDB client drivers download: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Drivers MongoDB Community content: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/CSharp+Community+Projects Tutorials Tutorial MongoDB con ASP.NET MVC - Ejemplo Práctico (Spanish):http://geeks.ms/blogs/gperez/archive/2011/12/02/tutorial-mongodb-con-asp-net-mvc-ejemplo-pr-225-ctico.aspx MongoDB and C#:http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/87757/MongoDB-and-C C# driver LINQ tutorial:http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/CSharp+Driver+LINQ+Tutorial C# driver reference: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/CSharp+Driver+Tutorial Safe Mode Connection The C# driver supports two connection modes: safe and unsafe. Safe connection mode (only applies to methods that modify data in a database like Inserts, Deletes and Updates. While the current driver defaults to unsafe mode (safeMode == false) it's recommended to always enable safe mode, and force unsafe mode on specific things we know aren't critical. When safe mode is enabled, the driver internal code calls the MongoDB "getLastError" function to ensure the last operation is completed before returning control the the caller. For more information on using safe mode and their implicancies on performance and data reliability see: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/getLastError+Command If safe mode is not enabled, all data modification calls to the database are executed asynchronously (fire & forget) without waiting for the result of the operation. This mode could be useful for creating / updating non-critical data like performance counters, usage logging and so on. It's important to know that not using safe mode implies that data loss can occur without any notification to the caller. As with any wait operation, enabling safe mode also implies dealing with timeouts. For more information about C# driver safe mode configuration see: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/CSharp+getLastError+and+SafeMode The safe mode configuration can be specified at different levels: Connection string: mongodb://hostname/?safe=true Database: when obtaining a database instance using the server.GetDatabase(name, safeMode) method Collection: when obtaining a collection instance using the database.GetCollection(name, safeMode) method Operation: for example, when executing the collection.Insert(document, safeMode) method Some useful SafeMode article: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4604868/mongodb-c-sharp-safemode-official-driver Exception Handling The driver ensures that an exception will be thrown in case of something going wrong, in case of using safe mode (as said above, when not using safe mode no exception will be thrown no matter what the outcome of the operation is). As explained here https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/mongodb-user/mS6jIq5FUiM there is no need to check for any returned value from a driver method inserting data. With updates the situation is similar to any other relational database: if an update command doesn't affect any records, the call will suceed anyway (no exception thrown) and you manually have to check for something like "records affected". For MongoDB, an Update operation will return an instance of the "SafeModeResult" class, and you can verify the "DocumentsAffected" property to ensure the intended document was indeed updated. Note: Please remember that an Update method might return a null instance instead of an "SafeModeResult" instance when safe mode is not enabled. Useful Community Articles Comments about how MongoDB works and how that might affect your application: http://ethangunderson.com/blog/two-reasons-to-not-use-mongodb/ FourSquare using MongoDB had serious scalability problems: http://mashable.com/2010/10/07/mongodb-foursquare/ Is MongoDB a replacement for Memcached? http://www.quora.com/Is-MongoDB-a-good-replacement-for-Memcached/answer/Rick-Branson MongoDB Introduction, shell, when not to use, maintenance, upgrade, backups, memory, sharding, etc: http://www.markus-gattol.name/ws/mongodb.html MongoDB Collection level locking support: https://jira.mongodb.org/browse/SERVER-1240 MongoDB performance tips: http://www.quora.com/MongoDB/What-are-some-best-practices-for-optimal-performance-of-MongoDB-particularly-for-queries-that-involve-multiple-documents Lessons learned migrating from SQL Server to MongoDB: http://www.wireclub.com/development/TqnkQwQ8CxUYTVT90/read MongoDB replication performance: http://benshepheard.blogspot.com.ar/2011/01/mongodb-replication-performance.html

  Read the article

• Fusion CRM ISV program is gaining weight: Examples of certified add-on's

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  The Fusion CRM ISV program is gaining traction. Please find below few examples of the partners having certified their add-on's to seamlessly work on top of Oracle Fusion CRM. For more information, please contact [email protected] ·         Opportunity-to-Quote.  Big Machines now integrates seamlessly to Oracle Fusion CRM, enabling customers with complex products and services and multiple sales channels to streamline the entire opportunity-to-quote process, including product selection, configuration, pricing, quoting, and approval workflows.  Create a custom hyperlink in the Opportunity to invoke Big Machines CPQ application to create a quote and sync up with the Fusion CRM custom quote object using the CRUD operations. The quote can be updated using the custom button in the custom tab in the opportunity details. See: http://www.bigmachines.com/oracle.php  ·         SaaS Billing and Subscription Management.  Is your prospect/customer asking whether top billing partners support Fusion CRM?  Positioning an integrated CRM solution for billing usage and subscription based services?  Need to implement a billable solution on the Oracle Java Cloud Service?  Aria Systems and Zuora have recently engaged with Oracle to deepen their integrations to Fusion CRM and team with Oracle for joint opportunities.  ·         Google Apps, SharePoint, Email-CRM Integrations o   Do your prospects use Google Apps in their business operations?  A “Best of AppExchange” award winner recently completed their integration for Fusion CRM.  CirrusInsight plugs Fusion CRM web services directly into Gmail, allowing you to search existing opportunity or contact, provide account information, and create an interaction such as phone call, appointment, or email against a customer or contact in Fusion CRM directly from Gmail.  o   An EMEA / France based partner, Aryvart provides bi-directional synchronization of appointments and tasks between Google calendar and Oracle Fusion CRM. For customers, it means adopting Oracle Fusion CRM while continuing to use Google calendar for appointments. o   Looking to lower the barrier and expand in SharePoint accounts?  InFact Group (EMEA / France & Germany) provides Microsoft SharePoint Connector for Oracle Fusion CRM. With this solution, you can store documents attached to an opportunity, into Microsoft SharePoint repository. For customers, it means adopting Oracle Fusion CRM while continuing to collaborate across existing content management infrastructure. o   Need to connect to MacMail, GroupWise, or Outlook/Exchange?  Omni Technology is a partner whose Riva CRM Integration recently engaged for support Fusion CRM as a key platform. Migration Tools from competitive CRMs, to Oracle Fusion CRM.  Data Migration Tools from legacy CRMs, to Oracle Fusion CRM.  A partner with the tools and techniques to speed adoption, Conemis provides data integration tools to export data from legacy CRM, and import into Oracle Fusion CRM via WebServices APIs. For customers, it means reducing cost of data migration from legacy CRM system into Oracle Fusion CRM. 

  Read the article

• It&rsquo;s ok to throw System.Exception&hellip;

  - by Chris Skardon

  No. No it’s not. It’s not just me saying that, it’s the Microsoft guidelines: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms229007.aspx  Do not throw System.Exception or System.SystemException. Also – as important: Do not catch System.Exception or System.SystemException in framework code, unless you intend to re-throw.. Throwing: Always, always try to pick the most specific exception type you can, if the parameter you have received in your method is null, throw an ArgumentNullException, value received greater than expected? ArgumentOutOfRangeException. For example: public void ArgChecker(int theInt, string theString) { if (theInt < 0) throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("theInt", theInt, "theInt needs to be greater than zero."); if (theString == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("theString"); if (theString.Length == 0) throw new ArgumentException("theString needs to have content.", "theString"); } Why do we want to do this? It’s a lot of extra code when compared with a simple: public void ArgChecker(int theInt, string theString) { if (theInt < 0 || string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(theString)) throw new Exception("The parameters were invalid."); } It all comes down to a couple of things; the catching of the exceptions, and the information you are passing back to the calling code. Catching: Ok, so let’s go with introduction level Exception handling, taught by many-a-university: You do all your work in a try clause, and catch anything wrong in the catch clause. So this tends to give us code like this: try { /* All the shizzle */ } catch { /* Deal with errors */ } But of course, we can improve on that by catching the exception so we can report on it: try { } catch(Exception ex) { /* Log that 'ex' occurred? */ } Now we’re at the point where people tend to go: Brilliant, I’ve got exception handling nailed, what next??? and code gets littered with the catch(Exception ex) nastiness. Why is it nasty? Let’s imagine for a moment our code is throwing an ArgumentNullException which we’re catching in the catch block and logging. Ok, the log entry has been made, so we can debug the code right? We’ve got all the info… What about an OutOfMemoryException – what can we do with that? That’s right, not a lot, chances are you can’t even log it (you are out of memory after all), but you’ve caught it – and as such - have hidden it. So, as part of this, there are two things you can do one, is the rethrow method: try { /* code */ } catch (Exception ex) { //Log throw; } Note, it’s not catch (Exception ex) { throw ex; } as that will wipe all your important stack trace information. This does get your exception to continue, and is the only reason you would catch Exception (anywhere other than a global catch-all) in your code. The other preferred method is to catch the exceptions you can deal with. It may not matter that the string I’m passing in is null, and I can cope with it like this: try{ DoSomething(myString); } catch(ArgumentNullException){} And that’s fine, it means that any exceptions I can’t deal with (OutOfMemory for example) will be propagated out to other code that can deal with it. Of course, this is horribly messy, no one wants try / catch blocks everywhere and that’s why Microsoft added the ‘Try’ methods to the framework, and it’s a strategy we should continue. If I try: int i = (int) "one"; I will get an InvalidCastException which means I need the try / catch block, but I could mitigate this using the ‘TryParse’ method: int i; if(!Int32.TryParse("one", out i)) return; Similarly, in the ‘DoSomething’ example, it might be beneficial to have a ‘TryDoSomething’ that returns a boolean value indicating the success of continuing. Obviously this isn’t practical in every case, so use the ol’ common sense approach. Onwards Yer thanks Chris, I’m looking forward to writing tonnes of new code. Fear not, that is where helpers come into it… (but that’s the next post)

  Read the article

• Value of SOA Specialization interview with Thomas Schaller IPT - part III

  - by Jürgen Kress

  Recognized by Oracle, Preferred by Customers. We had the great opportunity to interview Thomas Schaller – Partner from our SOA Specialized Partner IPT Innovation Process Technology from Switzerland Why did IPT decide to become SOA Specialized? " SOA Specialization is a great branding for IPT. We are the SOA Specialists in the Swiss market, as we focus all our services around SOA. With 65 Swiss consultants focused on SOA Security & SOA Testing & BPM – Business Process Management & BSM – Business Service Modeling the partnership with Oracle as the technology leader in SOA is key, therefore it was important to us to become the first SOA Specialized company in Switzerland. As a result IPT is mentioned by Gartner as one of eight European SOA Consulting Firms and included in „Guide to SOA Consulting and System Integration Service Providers“ Can you describe the marketing activities with Oracle? Once a year we organize the largest SOA Conference in Switzerland “SOA, BPM & Integration Forum 2011“ Oracle is much more than a sponsor for the conference. Jointly we invite our customer base to attend this key event. The sales teams address jointly their most important prospects and customers. Oracle supports us with key speakers who present future directions of the Oracle SOA portfolio like Clemens Utschig-Utschig who presented details about the Complex Event Processing (CEP) solution in 2009 and James Allerton-Austin who presented details about the social BPM solution (BPM) in 2010. Additional our key customers presented their Oracle SOA success stories. How did you team with Oracle around the sales activities? "Sales alignment is key for the successful partnership. When we achieved! SOA Specialization we celebrated jointly with the Oracle and IPT middleware sales team. At the Aperol may interesting discussions resulted in joint opportunities and business. A key section of our joint business planning are marketing and sales activities. Together we define campaign topics and target customers. Matthias Breitschmid our superb Oracle partner manager ensures that the defined sales teams align and start the joint business. Regular we review our joint business plan with the joint management teams and Jürgen Kress our EMEA Oracle Sponsor. It is great to see that both companies profit from each other and we receive leads from Oracle!” Did you get Oracle support to train your consultants in the Oracle SOA Suite? “Enablement is key for us to deliver successful SOA projects. Together with Ralph Bellinghausen from the Oracle Enablement team we defined an Oracle trainings plan for our consultants. The monthly SOA Partner Community newsletter is a great resource to get the latest product updates, webcasts and trainings. As a SOA Specialized partner we get also invited to the SOA Blackbelt trainings, this trainings are hosted by Oracle product management where we get not only first hand information we get also direct access to the developers who can support us in critical project phases. Driven by the customer success we have increased our Oracle SOA practice by more than 200% in the last years!” Why did the customer decide for the IPT SOA offering? “SOA Specialization becomes a brand for customers, it proofs that we have the certified SOA skills and that IPT has delivered successful Oracle SOA projects. Jointly with Oracle and all the support we get from marketing, sales, enablement, support and product management we can ensure our customers to deliver their SOA project successful!” What are the next steps for IPT? “SOA Specialization is a super beneficial for IPT. We are looking forward to our upcoming SOA, BPM & Integration Forum 2011 and prepare to become BPM Specialized. part I Torsten Winterberg, Opitz Consulting & part II Debra Lilley, Fujitsu For more information on SOA Specialization and the SOA Partner Community please feel free to register at www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Website

  Read the article

• Using the ASP.NET Membership API with SQL Server / SQL Azure: The new &ldquo;System.Web.Providers&rdquo; namespace

  - by Harish Ranganathan

  The Membership API came in .NET 2.0 and was a huge enhancement in building web applications with users, managing roles, permissions etc.,  The Membership API by default uses SQL Express and until Visual Studio 2008, it was available only through the ASP.NET Configuration manager screen (Website – ASP.NET Configuration) or (Project – ASP.NET Configuration) and for every application, one has to manually visit this place to start using the Security and other settings.  Upon doing that the default SQL Express database aspnet.mdf is created to store all the user profiles. Starting Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0, the Default Website template includes the Membership API controls as a part of the page i.e. When you create a “File – New – ASP.NET Web Application” or an “ASP.NET MVC Application”, by default the Login/Register controls are enabled in the MasterPage and they are termed under “ApplicationServices” setting in the web.config file with connection string pointed to the SQL Express database. In fact, when you run the default website and click on “Logon” –> “Register”, and enter the details for registration and click “Register”, that is the time the aspnet.mdf file is created with the tables for Users, Roles, UsersInRoles, Profile etc., Now, this uses the default SQL Express database within the App_Data folder.  If you want to move your Membership information to some other database such as SQL Server, SQL CE or SQL Azure, you need to manually run the aspnet_regsql command and specify the destination database name. This would create all the Tables, Procedures and Views required to handle the Membership information.  Thereafter you can change the connection string for “ApplicationServices” to point to the database where you had run all the scripts. Now, enter “System.Web.Providers” Alpha. This is available as a part of the NuGet package library.  Scott Hanselman has a neat post describing the steps required to get it up and running as well as doing the basic changes  at http://www.hanselman.com/blog/IntroducingSystemWebProvidersASPNETUniversalProvidersForSessionMembershipRolesAndUserProfileOnSQLCompactAndSQLAzure.aspx Pretty much, it covers what the new System.Web.Providers do. One thing I wanted to clarify is that, the new “System.Web.Providers” add a lot of new settings which are also marked as the defaults, in the web.config.  Even now, they use SQL Express as the default database.  But, if you change the connection string for “DefaultConnection” under connectionStrings to point to your SQL Server or SQL Azure, Membership API would now be able to create all the tables, procedures and views at the destination specified (i.e. SQL Server or SQL Azure). In my case, I modified the DefaultConneciton to point to my SQL Azure database.  Next, I hit F5 to run the application.  The default view loads.  I clicked on “LogOn” and then “Register” since I knew there are no tables/users as of then.  One thing to note is that, I had put “NewDB” as the database name in the connection string that points to SQL Azure.  NewDB wasn’t existing and I would assume it would be created before the tables/views/procedures for Membership are created. Once I clicked on the “Register” to register my first username, it took a while and then registered as well as logged in me in.  Also, I went to the SQL Azure Management Portal and verified that there exists “NewDB” which has just been created I could also connect to the SQL Azure database “NewDB” from Management Studio and found that the tables now don’t have the aspnet_ prefix.  The tables were simply Users, Roles, UsersInRoles, Profiles etc., So, with a few clicks and configuration change, I could actually set up the user base for my application on SQL Azure and even make the SessionState, Roles, Profiles being stored in SQL Azure database. The new System.Web.Proivders also required MARS (MultipleActiveResultSets=true) setting since it uses Entity Framework for the DAL operations.  Also, the “Project – ASP.NET Configuration” screen can be used to further create/manage users/roles etc., although the data is stored on the remote database. With that, a long pending request from the community to have the ability to configure and use remote databases for Application users management without having to run the scripts from SQL Express is fulfilled. Cheers !!!

  Read the article

• Time to stop using &ldquo;Execute Package Task&rdquo;&ndash; a way to execute package in SSIS catalog taking advantage of the new project deployment model ,and the logging and reporting feature

  - by Kevin Shyr

  I set out to find a way to dynamically call package in SSIS 2012.  The following are 2 excellent blogs I found; I used them heavily.  The code below has some addition to parameter types and message types, but was made essentially derived entirely from the blogs. http://sqlblog.com/blogs/jamie_thomson/archive/2011/07/16/ssis-logging-in-denali.aspx http://www.ssistalk.com/2012/07/24/quick-tip-run-ssis-2012-packages-synchronously-and-other-execution-options/   The code: Every package will be called by a PackageController package.  The packageController is initialized with some information on which package to run and what information to pass in.   The following is the stored procedure called from the “Execute SQL Task”.  Here is the highlight of the stored procedure It takes in packageName, project name, and folder name (folder in SSIS project deployment to SSIS catalog) The stored procedure sets the package variables of the upcoming package execution Execute package in SSIS Catalog Get the status of the execution.  Also, if exists, get the error message’s message_id and store them in the management database. Return value to “Execute SQL Task” to manage failure properly CREATE PROCEDURE [AUDIT].[LaunchPackageExecutionInSSISCatalog]        @PackageName NVARCHAR(255)        , @ProjectFolder NVARCHAR(255)        , @ProjectName NVARCHAR(255)        , @AuditKey INT        , @DisableNotification BIT        , @PackageExecutionLogID INT AS BEGIN TRY        DECLARE @execution_id BIGINT = 0;        -- Create a package execution        EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[create_execution]                     @package_name=@PackageName,                     @execution_id=@execution_id OUTPUT,                     @folder_name=@ProjectFolder,                     @project_name=@ProjectName,                     @use32bitruntime=False;          UPDATE [AUDIT].[PackageInstanceExecutionLog] WITH(ROWLOCK)        SET [SSISCatalogExecutionID] = @execution_id        WHERE [PackageInstanceExecutionLogID] = @PackageExecutionLogID          -- this is to set the execution synchronized so that I can check the result in the end        EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[set_execution_parameter_value]                     @execution_id,                      @object_type=50,                     @parameter_name=N'SYNCHRONIZED',                     @parameter_value=1; -- true          /********************************************************         ********************************************************              Section: setting parameters                     Source table:  SSISDB.internal.object_parameters              object_type list:                     20: project level variables                     30: package level variables                     50: execution parameter         ********************************************************         ********************************************************/        EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[set_execution_parameter_value]                     @execution_id,                      @object_type=30,                     @parameter_name=N'FromParent_AuditKey',                     @parameter_value=@AuditKey; -- true          EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[set_execution_parameter_value]                     @execution_id,                      @object_type=30,                     @parameter_name=N'FromParent_DisableNotification',                     @parameter_value=@DisableNotification; -- true          EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[set_execution_parameter_value]                     @execution_id,                      @object_type=30,                     @parameter_name=N'FromParent_PackageInstanceExecutionID',                     @parameter_value=@PackageExecutionLogID; -- true        /********************************************************         ********************************************************              Section: setting variables END         ********************************************************         ********************************************************/            /* This section is carried over from example code           I don't see a reason to change them yet        */        -- Set our package parameters        EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[set_execution_parameter_value]                     @execution_id,                      @object_type=50,                     @parameter_name=N'DUMP_ON_EVENT',                     @parameter_value=1; -- true          EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[set_execution_parameter_value]                     @execution_id,                      @object_type=50,                     @parameter_name=N'DUMP_EVENT_CODE',                     @parameter_value=N'0x80040E4D;0x80004005';          EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[set_execution_parameter_value]                     @execution_id,                      @object_type=50,                     @parameter_name=N'LOGGING_LEVEL',                     @parameter_value= 1; -- Basic          EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[set_execution_parameter_value]                     @execution_id,                      @object_type=50,                     @parameter_name=N'DUMP_ON_ERROR',                     @parameter_value=1; -- true                              /********************************************************         ********************************************************              Section: EXECUTING         ********************************************************         ********************************************************/        EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[start_execution]                     @execution_id;        /********************************************************         ********************************************************              Section: EXECUTING END         ********************************************************         ********************************************************/            /********************************************************         ********************************************************              Section: checking execution result                     Source table:  [SSISDB].[catalog].[executions]              status:                     1: created                     2: running                     3: cancelled                     4: failed                     5: pending                     6: ended unexpectedly                     7: succeeded                     8: stopping                     9: completed         ********************************************************         ********************************************************/        if EXISTS(SELECT TOP 1 1                            FROM [SSISDB].[catalog].[executions] WITH(NOLOCK)                            WHERE [execution_id] = @execution_id                                  AND [status] NOT IN (2, 7, 9)) BEGIN                /********************************************************               ********************************************************                     Section: logging error messages                            Source table:  [SSISDB].[internal].[operation_messages]                     message type:                            10:  OnPreValidate                             20:  OnPostValidate                             30:  OnPreExecute                             40:  OnPostExecute                             60:  OnProgress                             70:  OnInformation                             90:  Diagnostic                             110:  OnWarning                            120:  OnError                            130:  Failure                            140:  DiagnosticEx                             200:  Custom events                             400:  OnPipeline                     message source type:                            10:  Messages logged by the entry APIs (e.g. T-SQL, CLR Stored procedures)                             20:  Messages logged by the external process used to run package (ISServerExec)                             30:  Messages logged by the package-level objects                             40:  Messages logged by tasks in the control flow                             50:  Messages logged by containers (For, ForEach, Sequence) in the control flow                             60:  Messages logged by the Data Flow Task                                    ********************************************************               ********************************************************/                INSERT INTO AUDIT.PackageInstanceExecutionOperationErrorLink                     SELECT @PackageExecutionLogID                                  ,[operation_message_id]                            FROM [SSISDB].[internal].[operation_messages] WITH(NOLOCK)                            WHERE operation_id = @execution_id                                  AND message_type IN (120, 130)                           EXEC [AUDIT].[FailPackageInstanceExecution] @PackageExecutionLogID, 'SSISDB Internal operation_messages found'                GOTO ReturnTrueAsErrorFlag                /********************************************************               ********************************************************                     Section: checking messages END               ********************************************************               ********************************************************/                /* This part is not really working, so now using rowcount to pass status              --DECLARE @PackageErrorMessage NVARCHAR(4000)              --SET @PackageErrorMessage = @PackageName + 'failed with executionID: ' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(20), @execution_id)                --RAISERROR (@PackageErrorMessage -- Message text.              --     , 18 -- Severity,              --     , 1 -- State,              --     , N'check table AUDIT.PackageInstanceExecutionErrorMessages' -- First argument.              --     );              */        END        ELSE BEGIN              GOTO ReturnFalseAsErrorFlagToSignalSuccess        END        /********************************************************         ********************************************************              Section: checking execution result END         ********************************************************         ********************************************************/ END TRY BEGIN CATCH        DECLARE @SSISCatalogCallError NVARCHAR(MAX)        SELECT @SSISCatalogCallError = ERROR_MESSAGE()          EXEC [AUDIT].[FailPackageInstanceExecution] @PackageExecutionLogID, @SSISCatalogCallError          GOTO ReturnTrueAsErrorFlag END CATCH;     /********************************************************  ********************************************************    Section: end result  ********************************************************  ********************************************************/ ReturnTrueAsErrorFlag:        SELECT CONVERT(BIT, 1) AS PackageExecutionErrorExists ReturnFalseAsErrorFlagToSignalSuccess:        SELECT CONVERT(BIT, 0) AS PackageExecutionErrorExists   GO

  Read the article

• Extended Logging with Caller Info Attributes

  - by João Angelo

  .NET 4.5 caller info attributes may be one of those features that do not get much airtime, but nonetheless are a great addition to the framework. These attributes will allow you to programmatically access information about the caller of a given method, more specifically, the code file full path, the member name of the caller and the line number at which the method was called. They are implemented by taking advantage of C# 4.0 optional parameters and are a compile time feature so as an added bonus the returned member name is not affected by obfuscation. The main usage scenario will be for tracing and debugging routines as will see right now. In this sample code I’ll be using NLog, but the example is also applicable to other logging frameworks like log4net. First an helper class, without any dependencies and that can be used anywhere to obtain caller information: using System; using System.IO; using System.Runtime.CompilerServices; public sealed class CallerInfo { private CallerInfo(string filePath, string memberName, int lineNumber) { this.FilePath = filePath; this.MemberName = memberName; this.LineNumber = lineNumber; } public static CallerInfo Create( [CallerFilePath] string filePath = "", [CallerMemberName] string memberName = "", [CallerLineNumber] int lineNumber = 0) { return new CallerInfo(filePath, memberName, lineNumber); } public string FilePath { get; private set; } public string FileName { get { return this.fileName ?? (this.fileName = Path.GetFileName(this.FilePath)); } } public string MemberName { get; private set; } public int LineNumber { get; private set; } public override string ToString() { return string.Concat(this.FilePath, "|", this.MemberName, "|", this.LineNumber); } private string fileName; } Then an extension class specific for NLog Logger: using System; using System.Runtime.CompilerServices; using NLog; public static class LoggerExtensions { public static void TraceMemberEntry( this Logger logger, [CallerFilePath] string filePath = "", [CallerMemberName] string memberName = "", [CallerLineNumber] int lineNumber = 0) { LogMemberEntry(logger, LogLevel.Trace, filePath, memberName, lineNumber); } public static void TraceMemberExit( this Logger logger, [CallerFilePath] string filePath = "", [CallerMemberName] string memberName = "", [CallerLineNumber] int lineNumber = 0) { LogMemberExit(logger, LogLevel.Trace, filePath, memberName, lineNumber); } public static void DebugMemberEntry( this Logger logger, [CallerFilePath] string filePath = "", [CallerMemberName] string memberName = "", [CallerLineNumber] int lineNumber = 0) { LogMemberEntry(logger, LogLevel.Debug, filePath, memberName, lineNumber); } public static void DebugMemberExit( this Logger logger, [CallerFilePath] string filePath = "", [CallerMemberName] string memberName = "", [CallerLineNumber] int lineNumber = 0) { LogMemberExit(logger, LogLevel.Debug, filePath, memberName, lineNumber); } public static void LogMemberEntry( this Logger logger, LogLevel logLevel, [CallerFilePath] string filePath = "", [CallerMemberName] string memberName = "", [CallerLineNumber] int lineNumber = 0) { const string MsgFormat = "Entering member {1} at line {2}"; InternalLog(logger, logLevel, MsgFormat, filePath, memberName, lineNumber); } public static void LogMemberExit( this Logger logger, LogLevel logLevel, [CallerFilePath] string filePath = "", [CallerMemberName] string memberName = "", [CallerLineNumber] int lineNumber = 0) { const string MsgFormat = "Exiting member {1} at line {2}"; InternalLog(logger, logLevel, MsgFormat, filePath, memberName, lineNumber); } private static void InternalLog( Logger logger, LogLevel logLevel, string format, string filePath, string memberName, int lineNumber) { if (logger == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("logger"); if (logLevel == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("logLevel"); logger.Log(logLevel, format, filePath, memberName, lineNumber); } } Finally an usage example: using NLog; internal static class Program { private static readonly Logger Logger = LogManager.GetCurrentClassLogger(); private static void Main(string[] args) { Logger.TraceMemberEntry(); // Compile time feature // Next three lines output the same except for line number Logger.Trace(CallerInfo.Create().ToString()); Logger.Trace(() => CallerInfo.Create().ToString()); Logger.Trace(delegate() { return CallerInfo.Create().ToString(); }); Logger.TraceMemberExit(); } } NOTE: Code for helper class and Logger extension also available here.

  Read the article

• Google, typography, and cognitive fluency for persuasion

  - by Roger Hart

  Cognitive fluency is - roughly - how easy it is to think about something. Mere Exposure (or familiarity) effects are basically about reacting more favourably to things you see a lot. Which is part of why marketers in generic spaces like insipid mass-market lager will spend quite so much money on getting their logo daubed about the place; or that guy at the bus stop starts to look like a dating prospect after a month or two. Recent thinking suggests that exposure effects likely spin off cognitive fluency. We react favourably to things that are easier to think about. I had to give tech support to an older relative recently, and suggested they Google the problem. They were confused. They could not, apparently, Google the problem, because part of it was that their Google toolbar had mysteriously vanished. Once I'd finished trying not to laugh, I started thinking about typography. This is going somewhere, I promise. Google is a ubiquitous brand. Heck, it's a verb, and their recent, jaw-droppingly well constructed Paris advert is more or less about that ubiquity. It trades on Google's integration into any information-seeking behaviour. But, as my tech support encounter suggests, people settle into comfortable patterns of thinking about things. They build schemas, and altering them can take work. Maybe the ubiquity even works to cement that. Alongside their online effort, Google is running billboard campaigns to advertise Chrome, a free product in a crowded space. They are running these ads in some kind of kooky Calibri / Comic Sans hybrid. Now, at first it seems odd that one of the world's more ubiquitous brands needs to run a big print campaign in public places - surely they have all the fluency they need? Well, not so much. Chrome, after all, is not the same as their core product, so there's some basic awareness work to do, and maybe a whole new batch of exposure effect to try and grab. But why the typeface? It's heavily foregrounded, and the ads are extremely textual. Plus, don't we all know that jovial, off-beat fonts look unprofessional, or something? There's a whole bunch of people who want (often rightly) to ban Comic Sans I wonder, though. Are Google trying to subtly disrupt cognitive fluency? There's an interesting paper (pdf) about - among other things - the effects of typography on they way people answer survey questions. Participants given the slightly harder to read question gave more abstract answers. The paper references other work suggesting that generally speaking, less-fluent question framing elicits more considered answers. The Chrome ad typeface is less fluent for print. Reactions may therefore be more considered, abstract, and disruptive. Is that, in fact, what Google need? They have brand ubiquity, but they want here to change accustomed behaviour, to get people to think about changing their browser. Is this actually a very elegant piece of persuasive information design? If you think about their "what is a browser?" vox pop research video, there's certainly a perceptual barrier they're going to have to tackle somehow.

  Read the article

• Is there a low carbon future for the retail industry?

  - by user801960

  Recently Oracle published a report in conjunction with The Future Laboratory and a global panel of experts to highlight the issue of energy use in modern industry and the serious need to reduce carbon emissions radically by 2050.  Emissions must be cut by 80-95% below the levels in 1990 – but what can the retail industry do to keep up with this? There are three key aspects to the retail industry where carbon emissions can be cut:  manufacturing, transport and IT.  Manufacturing Naturally, manufacturing is going to be a big area where businesses across all industries will be forced to make considerable savings in carbon emissions as well as other forms of pollution.  Many retailers of all sizes will use third party factories and will have little control over specific environmental impacts from the factory, but retailers can reduce environmental impact at the factories by managing orders more efficiently – better planning for stock requirements means economies of scale both in terms of finance and the environment. The John Lewis Partnership has made detailed commitments to reducing manufacturing and packaging waste on both its own-brand products and products it sources from third party suppliers. It aims to divert 95 percent of its operational waste from landfill by 2013, which is a huge logistics challenge.  The John Lewis Partnership’s website provides a large amount of information on its responsibilities towards the environment. Transport Similarly to manufacturing, tightening up on logistical planning for stock distribution will make savings on carbon emissions from haulage.  More accurate supply and demand analysis will mean less stock re-allocation after initial distribution, and better warehouse management will mean more efficient stock distribution.  UK grocery retailer Morrisons has introduced double-decked trailers to its haulage fleet and adjusted distribution logistics accordingly to reduce the number of kilometers travelled by the fleet.  Morrisons measures route planning efficiency in terms of cases moved per kilometre and has, over the last two years, increased the number of cases per kilometre by 12.7%.  See Morrisons Corporate Responsibility report for more information. IT IT infrastructure is often initially overlooked by businesses when considering environmental efficiency.  Datacentres and web servers often need to run 24/7 to handle both consumer orders and internal logistics, and this both requires a lot of energy and puts out a lot of heat.  Many businesses are lowering environmental impact by reducing IT system fragmentation in their offices, while an increasing number of businesses are outsourcing their datacenters to cloud-based services.  Using centralised datacenters reduces the power usage at smaller offices, while using cloud based services means the datacenters can be based in a more environmentally friendly location.  For example, Facebook is opening a massive datacentre in Sweden – close to the Arctic Circle – to reduce the need for artificial cooling methods.  In addition, moving to a cloud-based solution makes IT services more easily scaleable, reducing redundant IT systems that would still use energy.  In store, the UK’s Carbon Trust reports that on average, lighting accounts for 25% of a retailer’s electricity costs, and for grocery retailers, up to 50% of their electricity bill comes from refrigeration units.  On a smaller scale, retailers can invest in greener technologies in store and in their offices.  The report concludes that widely shared objectives of energy security, reduced emissions and continued economic growth are dependent on the development of a smart grid capable of delivering energy efficiency and demand response, as well as integrating renewable and variable sources of energy. The report is available to download from http://emeapressoffice.oracle.com/imagelibrary/detail.aspx?MediaDetailsID=1766I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the report.   

  Read the article

• New Release Overview Part 2

  - by brian.harrison

  To continue our discussion of the next release of WCI, lets take a look at a few other new features that have been developed and tested. Password Management With customer implementations starting to go more external, we were finding that these customers wanted to use the native users within the portal because the customer did not want to provide an LDAP server that is externally facing. However, the portal does not provide anything close to the same level of password policy that a standard LDAP environment would provide. With that being the case, we made the decision to provide the same kind of password policies directly within WCI that a standard LDAP environment would have. Password Expiration - In how many days will a password expire which will force the user to change their password? Also, in how many days prior to expiration with the user be notified that their password is about the expire? Password Rotation - How many of your previous passwords will you not be able to use when changing your password? Password Policies - What are the requirements for the password that is being created by the user? Number of Characters Numbers Required Symbols Required Capitalization Required Easily Configurable - Configuration is handled through the Portal Settings utility within Administration. All options are available on the main page of the utility. In addition to the configuration options that were mention above, there has also been a complete rewrite of the Change Password screen to provide better information to the user when they are changing their password. The Change Password will now provide a red light/green light listing of all the policies the user must meet for the changed password to be successful. As the user is typing the password, the red lights will change to green lights as the policies as met. In addition, text will show next to the password text box stating what policy has not been met yet. NOTE: The password policy functionality is not held within the User Editor page within Administration. We did not want to remove the option for Administrators to change a user's password on the fly in the case of a password reset situation. Miscellaneous Features In addition to the Password Management feature, there are a few other features that are related to WCI that should be mentioned. Consolidated Installer - Instead of having up to 12 or 13 different installers, one for each of the main products and separate services, we are going to only provide two installers. One that will be used for Collaboration and its respective images. The second will contain WCI and all of the relevant services required for a WCI architecture as well as the IDK, .NET App Accelerator, SharePoint Console as well as all Content Web Services and Identity Services. Updated Documentation - Most of us are aware that the documentation hasn't been properly kept up to date with the last couple of releases. We are doing everything that we can to remedy this with the next release by consolidating and reviewing everything that is available. We are making sure to fill in the gaps that are already there, add in all documentation for the functionality as well as clearing anything that is no longer valid based on the newly released version. I hope that you enjoyed reading through this new release information. Next time we will start to talk about the new functionality that will be available within the next release of Collaboration. If there is anything in particular that you would like to get more detail about, then please don't hesitate to send me a comment.

  Read the article

• Plymouth and GRUB do not show at all

  - by WarriorIng64

  I am using Ubuntu 11.04 64-bit as my only OS on my desktop computer, which used to only run Ubuntu 10.04 LTS until I had the time to upgrade it with a fresh install. It uses integrated NVIDIA graphics (listed as a GeForce 6150SE nForce 430 by the NVIDIA X Server Settings utility) with the current proprietary driver as provided by the Additional Drivers utility, and has a VGA connection to a 1680x1050 Acer monitor. I used to get the (ugly-looking version of) Plymouth graphical boot screen while under 10.04. It didn't look that great, but I was fine with it. Now, it doesn't show on 11.04 at all during boot (I just get an error message in a moving gray box from the monitor saying "Input Not Supported"), and only rarely it will show on shutdown, all garbled up. I could not get GRUB to show during boot while holding down Shift, either (same error message), but pressing Enter while it should be up starts the system normally. A picture of the error message I was getting: Once fully booted, the system still shows the login screen and desktop just fine. Any information on how to troubleshoot this would be appreciated. If there's any hardware-specific stuff I forgot to include here, let me know the relevant commands to run in a comment below. Things that I've tried: Running plymouth in a framebuffer: no effect Booting with nomodeset as my grub boot: option no effect Booting with nomodeset and plymouth in a framebuffer: no effect other than Plymouth showing during shutdown only Following the Softpedia instructions for fixing Plymouth's resolution: Problem mostly solved, except logo does not show in Plymouth during boot, and both grub and Plymouth are slightly off-center #4 above, but with nomodeset removed as a grub boot option: same effect as #4 #5 above, but with vt.handoff=7 added as a grub boot option: same effect as #4 I have added the current contents of /etc/default/grub as requested in the comments: # If you change this file, run 'update-grub' afterwards to update # /boot/grub/grub.cfg. # For full documentation of the options in this file, see: # info -f grub -n 'Simple configuration' GRUB_DEFAULT=0 GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0 GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=true GRUB_TIMEOUT=10 GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian` GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash video=uvesafb:mode_option=1280x1024-24,mtrr=3,scroll=ywrap" GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="" # Uncomment to enable BadRAM filtering, modify to suit your needs # This works with Linux (no patch required) and with any kernel that obtains # the memory map information from GRUB (GNU Mach, kernel of FreeBSD ...) #GRUB_BADRAM="0x01234567,0xfefefefe,0x89abcdef,0xefefefef" # Uncomment to disable graphical terminal (grub-pc only) #GRUB_TERMINAL=console # The resolution used on graphical terminal # note that you can use only modes which your graphic card supports via VBE # you can see them in real GRUB with the command `vbeinfo' GRUB_GFXMODE=1280x1024 # Uncomment if you don't want GRUB to pass "root=UUID=xxx" parameter to Linux #GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID=true # Uncomment to disable generation of recovery mode menu entries #GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY="true" # Uncomment to get a beep at grub start #GRUB_INIT_TUNE="480 440 1" CURRENT STATUS: I forgot to uncomment one line as per "things that I've tried" #4, so I took care of that. I can now see GRUB during startup when I hold Shift and a normal-looking Plymouth during shutdown...but Plymouth during boot is now just a solid purple screen. In each case, it's displayed a little off-center to the left, with a thin black bar running down the right side of the monitor. The error pictured above no longer shows. I'd say this problem is about 2/3 solved now. UPDATE: After Natty started freezing up on me, I decided to dual-boot with Oneiric, which unfortunately shows the same problems. Rather than trying all these workarounds though, I decided to do what I should have done from the start and file a pair of bug reports. LAST UPDATE: Bug 850908 has been confirmed as a legitimate nouveaufb bug. I have overwritten my 11.04 partition with 12.04 LTS, and I can confirm at this time that the issue is present there, as well. I will now flag this question to be closed, yet I hope it was helpful for anyone who experienced similar issues; if you are still having the same problem as me, please go there and mark yourself as affected. Thanks!

  Read the article

• Steps for MySQL DB Replication

  - by Manish Agrawal

  Following are the steps for MySQL Replication implementation on Linux machine: Pre-implementation steps for DB Replication:   1.    Identify the databases to be replicated 2.    Identify the tables to be ignored during replication per database for example log tables 3.  Carefully identify and replace the variables and paths(locations) mentioned (in bold) in the commands given below with appropriate values 4.  Schedule the maintenance activity in odd hours as these activities will affect all the databases on Master database server       Implementation steps for DB Replication:     1.    Configure the /etc/my.cnf file on Master database server to enable Binary logging, setting of server id and configuring of dbnames for which logging should be done. [mysqld] log-bin=mysql-bin server-id=1 binlog-do-db = dbname   Note: You can specify multiple DB in binlog-do-db by using comma separated dbname values like: dbname1, dbname2, …, dbnameN   2.    On Master database, Grant Replication Slave Privileges, by executing following command on mysql prompt mysql> GRANT REPLICATION SLAVE ON *.* TO slaveuser@<hostname> identified by ‘slavepassword’;   3.    Stop the Master & Slave database by giving the command      mysqladmin shutdown   4.    Start the Master database by giving the command      /usr/local/mysql-5.0.22/bin/mysqld_safe --user=user&     5.    mysql> FLUSH TABLES WITH READ LOCK; Note: Leave the client (putty session) from which you issued the FLUSH TABLES statement running, so that the read lock remains in effect. If you exit the client, the lock is released. 6.    mysql > SHOW MASTER STATUS;          +---------------+----------+--------------+------------------+          | File          | Position | Binlog_Do_DB | Binlog_Ignore_DB |          +---------------+----------+--------------+------------------+          | mysql-bin.003 | 117       | dbname       |                  |          +---------------+----------+--------------+------------------+ Note: Note this information as this will be required while starting of Slave and replication in later steps   7.    Take MySQL dump by giving the following command, In another session window (putty window) run the following command: mysqldump –u user --ignore-table=dbname.tbl_name -–ignore-table=dbname.tbl_name2 --master-data dbname > dbname_dump.db Note: When choosing databases to include in the dump, remember that you will need to filter out databases on each slave that you do not want to include in the replication process.     8.    Unlock the tables on Master by giving following command: mysql> UNLOCK TABLES;   9.    Copy the dump file to Slave DB server   10.  Startup the Slave by using option --skip-slave      /usr/local/mysql-5.0.22/bin/mysqld_safe --user=user --skip-slave&   11.  Restore the dump file on Slave DB server      mysql –u user dbname < dbname_dump.db   12.  Stop the Slave database by giving the command      mysqladmin shutdown   13.  Configure the /etc/my.cnf file on the Slave database server [mysqld] server-id=2 replicate-ignore-table = dbname.tablename   14.  Start the Slave Mysql Server with 'replicate-do-db=DB name' option.      /usr/local/mysql-5.0.22/bin/mysqld_safe --user=user --replicate-do-db=dbname --skip-slave   15.  Configure the settings at Slave server for Master host name, log filename and position within the log file as shown in Step 6 above Use Change Master statement in the MySQL session mysql> CHANGE MASTER TO MASTER_HOST='<master_host_name>', MASTER_USER='<replication_user_name>', MASTER_PASSWORD='<replication_password>', MASTER_LOG_FILE='<recorded_log_file_name>', MASTER_LOG_POS=<recorded_log_position>;   16.  On Slave Servers mysql prompt give the following command: a.     mysql > START SLAVE; b.    mysql > SHOW SLAVE STATUS;         Note: To stop slave for backup or any other activity you can use the following command on the Slave Servers mysql prompt: mysql> STOP SLAVE     Refer following links for more information on MySQL DB Replication: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/replication-options.html http://crazytoon.com/2008/04/21/mysql-replication-replicate-by-choice/ http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/mysqldump.html

  Read the article

• Few events I&rsquo;m speaking at in early 2013

  - by Mladen Prajdic

  2013 has started great and the SQL community is already brimming with events. At some of these events you can come say hi. I’ll be glad you do! These are the events with dates and locations that I know I’ll be speaking at so far.   February 16th: SQL Saturday #198 - Vancouver, Canada The session I’ll present in Vancouver is SQL Impossible: Restoring/Undeleting a table Yes, you read the title right. No, it's not about the usual "one table per partition" and "restore full backup then copy the data over" methods. No, there are no 3rd party tools involved. Just you and your SQL Server. Yes, it's crazy. No, it's not for production purposes. And yes, that's why it's so much fun. Prepare to dive into the world of data pages, log records, deletes, truncates and backups and how it all works together to get your table back from the endless void. Want to know more? Come and see! This is an advanced level session where we’ll dive into the internals of data pages, transaction log records and page restores.   March 8th-9th: SQL Saturday #194 - Exeter, UK In Exeter I’ll be presenting twice. On the first day I’ll have a full day precon titled: From SQL Traces to Extended Events - The next big switch This pre-con will give you insight into both of the current tracing technologies in SQL Server. The old SQL Trace which has served us well over the past 10 or so years is on its way out because the overhead and details it produces are no longer enough to deal with today's loads. The new Extended Events are a new lightweight tracing mechanism built directly into the SQLOS thus giving us information SQL Trace just couldn't. They were designed and built with performance in mind and it shows. The new Extended Events are a new lightweight tracing mechanism built directly into the SQLOS thus giving us information SQL Trace just couldn't. They were designed and built with performance in mind and it shows. Mastering Extended Events requires learning at least one new skill: XML querying. The second session I’ll have on Saturday titled: SQL Injection from website to SQL Server SQL Injection is still one of the biggest reasons various websites and applications get hacked. The solution as everyone tells us is simple. Use SQL parameters. But is that enough? In this session we'll look at how would an attacker go about using SQL Injection to gain access to your database, see its schema and data, take over the server, upload files and do various other mischief on your domain. This is a fun session that always brings out a few laughs in the audience because they didn’t realize what can be done.   April 23rd-25th: NTK conference - Bled, Slovenia (Slovenian website only) This is a conference with history. This year marks its 18th year running. It’s a relatively large IT conference that focuses on various Microsoft technologies like .Net, Azure, SQL Server, Exchange, Security, etc… The main session’s language is Slovenian but this is slowly changing so it’s becoming more interesting for foreign attendees. This year it’s happening in the beautiful town of Bled in the Alps. The scenery alone is worth the visit, wouldn’t you agree? And this year there are quite a few well known speakers present! Session title isn’t known yet.       May 2nd-4th: SQL Bits XI – Nottingham, UK SQL Bits is the largest SQL Server conference in Europe. It’s a 3 day conference with top speakers and content all dedicated to SQL Server. The session I’ll present here is an hour long version of the precon I’ll give in Exeter. From SQL Traces to Extended Events - The next big switch The session description is the same as for the Exeter precon but we'll focus more on how the Extended Events work with only a brief overview of old SQL Trace architecture.

  Read the article

• Test and Report Add-on Compatibility in Firefox

  - by Asian Angel

  Now that the new version of Firefox is out you probably have a favorite extension or two that has not updated yet. You can get that extension working again, test it, and report back to Mozilla on how well it does with the Add-on Compatibility Reporter extension. Before For our example we chose a great extension that unfortunately has not been updated yet. As you can see here Firefox is refusing to let the extension install. After As soon as you install Add-on Compatibility Reporter you will be presented with an information page on how the extension works and what you can do with it. You should definitely take a moment to read this as it is very helpful. After trying our non-compatible extension again we were able to proceed with the install process. Notice at the bottom that “compatibility checking” has been overridden. Success! As soon as we restarted our browser it was easy to see the “non-compatible icon” in the “Add-ons Manager Window”…but the extension did install though (terrific!). Clicking on the extension’s entry will reveal a new button in the lower right corner. Using the “Compatibility Drop-Down Menu” you can report if the extension is working as well as before or if it is actually having problems. The extension that we used for our example had no problems whatsoever so good news there. Whichever option you choose you will be presented with a small “Report Window” with information about the extension, your browser’s version number, and your operating system. Click “Submit Report” to send it on its’ way. You will see a confirmation message letting you know that your report was successfully submitted. While the extension itself has not been altered in any form at least you have it working again and have helped verify whether it still works well or not. Notice the “notation” present now in place of the “Compatibility Button” that lets you know that you have already taken care of that particular extension. Looking great… Conclusion If you have a favorite extension that you miss using in the newest release of Firefox then this is definitely an extension to add to your browser. Not only will your extension start working again but you can let Mozilla know how well it is working and (hopefully) help get the extension updated. Links Download the Add-on Compatibility Reporter extension (Mozilla Add-ons) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Firefox 3.6 Release Candidate Available, Here’s How to Fix Your Incompatible ExtensionsUsing Windows 7 or Vista Compatibility ModeMysticgeek Blog: Generate A System Health Report In VistaCheck Extension Compatibility for Upcoming Firefox ReleasesMake Safari Stop Crashing Every 20 Seconds on Windows Vista 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 Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI Integrate Twitter and Delicious and Make Life Easier Design Your Web Pages Using the Golden Ratio Worldwide Growth of the Internet How to Find Your Mac Address Use My TextTools to Edit and Organize Text

  Read the article

• Monitoring the Application alongside SQL Server

  - by Tony Davis

  Sometimes, on Simple-Talk, it takes a while to spot strange and unexpected patterns of user activity, or small bugs. For example, one morning we spotted that an article’s comment count had leapt to 1485, but that only four were displayed. With some rooting around in Google Analytics, and the endlessly annoying Community Server admin-interface, we were able to work out that a few days previously the article had been subject to a spam attack and that the comment count was for some reason including both accepted and unaccepted comments (which in turn uncovered a bug in the SQL). This sort of incident made us a lot keener on monitoring Simple-talk website usage more effectively. However, the metrics we wanted are troublesome, because they are far too specific for Google Analytics to measure, and the SQL Server backend doesn’t keep sufficient information to enable us to plot trends. The latter could provide, for example, the total number of comments made on, or votes cast for, articles, over all time, but not the number that occur by hour over a set time. We lacked a baseline, in other words. We couldn’t alter the database, as it is a bought-in package. We had neither the resources nor inclination to build-in dedicated application monitoring. Possibly, we could investigate a third-party tool to do the job; but then it occurred to us that we were already using a monitoring tool (SQL Monitor) to keep an eye on the database. It stored data, made graphs and sent alerts. Could we get it to monitor some aspects of the application as well? Of course, SQL Monitor’s single purpose is to check and monitor SQL Server, over time, rather than to monitor applications that use SQL Server. However, how different is the business of gathering and plotting SQL Server Wait Stats, from gathering and plotting various aspects of user activity on the site? Not a lot, it turns out. The latest version allows us to write our own custom monitoring scripts, meaning that we could now monitor any metric in the application that returns an integer. It took little time to write a simple SQL Query that collects basic metrics of the total number of subscribers, votes cast, comments made, or views of articles, over time. The SQL Monitor database polls Simple-Talk every second or so in order to get the latest totals, and can then store and plot this information, or even correlate SQL Server usage to application usage. You can see the live data by visiting monitor.red-gate.com. Click the "Analysis" tab, and select one of the "Simple-talk:" entries in the "Show" box and an appropriate data range (e.g. last 30 days). It’s nascent, and we’re still working on it, but it’s already given us more confidence that we’ll spot quickly trends, bugs, or bursts of ‘abnormal’ activity. If there is a sudden rise in comments, we get an alert, and if it’s due to a spam attack, we can moderate or ban the perpetrator very quickly. We’ve often argued that a tool should perform a single job well rather than turn into a Swiss-army knife, but ironically we’ve rather appreciated being able to make best use of what’s there anyway for a slightly different purpose. Is this a good or common practice? What do you think? Cheers, Tony.

  Read the article

• Java Resources for Windows Azure

  - by BuckWoody

  Windows Azure is a Platform as a Service – a PaaS – that runs code you write. That code doesn’t just mean the languages on the .NET platform – you can run code from multiple languages, including Java. In fact, you can develop for Windows and SQL Azure using not only Visual Studio but the Eclipse Integrated Development Environment (IDE) as well.  Although not an exhaustive list, here are several links that deal with Java and Windows Azure: Resource Link Windows Azure Java Development Center http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/java/  Java Development Guidance http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh690943(VS.103).aspx  Running a Java Environment on Windows Azure http://blogs.technet.com/b/port25/archive/2010/10/28/running-a-java-environment-on-windows-azure.aspx  Running a Java Environment on Windows Azure http://blogs.technet.com/b/port25/archive/2010/10/28/running-a-java-environment-on-windows-azure.aspx  Run Java with Jetty in Windows Azure http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dachou/archive/2010/03/21/run-java-with-jetty-in-windows-azure.aspx  Using the plugin for Eclipse http://blogs.msdn.com/b/craig/archive/2011/03/22/new-plugin-for-eclipse-to-get-java-developers-off-the-ground-with-windows-azure.aspx  Run Java with GlassFish in Windows Azure http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dachou/archive/2011/01/17/run-java-with-glassfish-in-windows-azure.aspx  Improving experience for Java developers with Windows  Azure http://blogs.msdn.com/b/interoperability/archive/2011/02/23/improving-experience-for-java-developers-with-windows-azure.aspx  Java Access to SQL Azure via the JDBC Driver for SQL  Server http://blogs.msdn.com/b/brian_swan/archive/2011/03/29/java-access-to-sql-azure-via-the-jdbc-driver-for-sql-server.aspx  How to Get Started with Java, Tomcat on Windows Azure http://blogs.msdn.com/b/usisvde/archive/2011/03/04/how-to-get-started-with-java-tomcat-on-windows-azure.aspx  Deploying Java Applications in Azure http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mariok/archive/2011/01/05/deploying-java-applications-in-azure.aspx  Using the Windows Azure Storage Explorer in Eclipse http://blogs.msdn.com/b/brian_swan/archive/2011/01/11/using-the-windows-azure-storage-explorer-in-eclipse.aspx  Windows Azure Tomcat Solution Accelerator http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/winazuretomcat  Deploying a Java application to Windows Azure with  Command-line Ant http://java.interoperabilitybridges.com/articles/deploying-a-java-application-to-windows-azure-with-command-line-ant  Video: Open in the Cloud: Windows Azure and Java http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/PDC/PDC10/CS10  AzureRunMe  http://azurerunme.codeplex.com/  Windows Azure SDK for Java http://www.interoperabilitybridges.com/projects/windows-azure-sdk-for-java  AppFabric SDK for Java http://www.interoperabilitybridges.com/projects/azure-java-sdk-for-net-services  Information Cards for Java http://www.interoperabilitybridges.com/projects/information-card-for-java  Apache Stonehenge http://www.interoperabilitybridges.com/projects/apache-stonehenge  Channel 9 Case Study on Java and Windows Azure http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Windows-Azure/Gigaspaces/Solution-Provider-Streamlines-Java-Application-Deployment-in-the-Cloud/400000000081   

  Read the article

• What’s the Difference Between Succession Management and Talent Reviews?

  - by HCM-Oracle

  By Marcie Van Houten Is there a difference or are they pieces of one holistic strategic talent process? And can you have one without the other?  First, let me give a quick definition of each.  Succession planning (or management) is about creating succession slates or talent pools in support of a critical job or position or sets thereof. And then using those plans to help mitigate risk and plan talent needs for the organization.  Talent reviews (known by other names often) are sets of meetings where managers and executives come together to review, discuss and often heatedly debate the merits and potential of their employees, and then place and sometimes calibrate that talent on a performance to potential matrix.  These are some of the most strategic conversations happening in conference rooms across the globe. I speak with a lot of organizations about their practices in this area and the answers to these questions are as varied and nuanced as there are organizations thinking about them.  Some are passionate about their talent review processes and have a very evolved and thoughtful approach.  They really know their people, where their talent is, and the opportunities they plan to offer them.  And to them that is their succession process.  They may never create a slate of named candidates for a job or assign employees to formal talent pools.   On the flip side there are other organizations that create slates and slates and often multiple talent pools to support their strategic positions.  Through these, they are able to mitigate the risk associated with having a key player leave their organization.  And for them, that is their succession process.  Some will start from the lower levels of their organization and roll up their succession plans, while other organizations only cover their top 200 executives and key positions with plans.  And then there are organizations that leverage some of all of these.  Ultimately, the goals are to increase employee engagement, reduce talent-related risk, ensure the right talent is aligned to the strategic initiatives and to drive business value.  The approaches are as unique as the organizations they represent and the business opportunities they are looking to seize upon.   And that's ok.  It's great in fact. Because one thing that is common is the recognition that the need to know your people and align your top talent to the future needs of the organization is mission critical. Sure, there are a set of commonly recognized best practices and guiding principles for all of this.  There is no one right or perfect answer.  And that is what makes this all so much darn fun.  With Talent Review and Succession Management from Oracle HCM Cloud, we’ve blended the ability to support your strategic talent review conversations with both succession plans and talent pools allowing for one very seamless and interactive process. So whether you create a lot of succession plans, only focus on talent pools, have a robust talent review process, or all of the above, Oracle has you covered. I’m looking forward to spending time with our customers at the upcoming OHUG Global Conference 2014 happening June 9-13 in Las Vegas.  It’s an opportunity for me to talk to customers about their business and how they are doing strategic talent processes like talent reviews and succession.  I hope to see you there. Marcie Van Houten brings over 20 years of management consulting, information systems and human capital management experience to her role as director of product strategy at Oracle. Ms. Van Houten has spent the past several years at Oracle working closely with customers to help drive the direction of the company's talent and succession management applications. Additionally, she spent nine years at PeopleSoft as Director of Information Systems leading human capital management implementation projects. Marcie Van Houten lives in Walnut Creek, California, and holds a MBA from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.  You can follow her on Twitter: @MarcieVH

  Read the article

• SQL SERVER – ASYNC_IO_COMPLETION – Wait Type – Day 11 of 28

  - by pinaldave

  For any good system three things are vital: CPU, Memory and IO (disk). Among these three, IO is the most crucial factor of SQL Server. Looking at real-world cases, I do not see IT people upgrading CPU and Memory frequently. However, the disk is often upgraded for either improving the space, speed or throughput. Today we will look at another IO-related wait type. From Book On-Line: Occurs when a task is waiting for I/Os to finish. ASYNC_IO_COMPLETION Explanation: Any tasks are waiting for I/O to finish. If by any means your application that’s connected to SQL Server is processing the data very slowly, this type of wait can occur. Several long-running database operations like BACKUP, CREATE DATABASE, ALTER DATABASE or other operations can also create this wait type. Reducing ASYNC_IO_COMPLETION wait: When it is an issue related to IO, one should check for the following things associated to IO subsystem: Look at the programming and see if there is any application code which processes the data slowly (like inefficient loop, etc.). Note that it should be re-written to avoid this  wait type. Proper placing of the files is very important. We should check the file system for proper placement of the files – LDF and MDF on separate drive, TempDB on another separate drive, hot spot tables on separate filegroup (and on separate disk), etc. Check the File Statistics and see if there is a higher IO Read and IO Write Stall SQL SERVER – Get File Statistics Using fn_virtualfilestats. Check event log and error log for any errors or warnings related to IO. If you are using SAN (Storage Area Network), check the throughput of the SAN system as well as configuration of the HBA Queue Depth. In one of my recent projects, the SAN was performing really badly and so the SAN administrator did not accept it. After some investigations, he agreed to change the HBA Queue Depth on the development setup (test environment). As soon as we changed the HBA Queue Depth to quite a higher value, there was a sudden big improvement in the performance. It is very likely to happen that there are no proper indexes on the system and yet there are lots of table scans and heap scans. Creating proper index can reduce the IO bandwidth considerably. If SQL Server can use appropriate cover index instead of clustered index, it can effectively reduce lots of CPU, Memory and IO (considering cover index has lesser columns than cluster table and all other; it depends upon the situation). You can refer to the following two articles I wrote that talk about how to optimize indexes: Create Missing Indexes Drop Unused Indexes Checking Memory Related Perfmon Counters SQLServer: Memory Manager\Memory Grants Pending (Consistent higher value than 0-2) SQLServer: Memory Manager\Memory Grants Outstanding (Consistent higher value, Benchmark) SQLServer: Buffer Manager\Buffer Hit Cache Ratio (Higher is better, greater than 90% for usually smooth running system) SQLServer: Buffer Manager\Page Life Expectancy (Consistent lower value than 300 seconds) Memory: Available Mbytes (Information only) Memory: Page Faults/sec (Benchmark only) Memory: Pages/sec (Benchmark only) Checking Disk Related Perfmon Counters Average Disk sec/Read (Consistent higher value than 4-8 millisecond is not good) Average Disk sec/Write (Consistent higher value than 4-8 millisecond is not good) Average Disk Read/Write Queue Length (Consistent higher value than benchmark is not good) Read all the post in the Wait Types and Queue series. Note: The information presented here is from my experience and there is no way that I claim it to be accurate. I suggest reading Book OnLine for further clarification. All the discussions of Wait Stats in this blog are generic and vary from system to system. It is recommended that you test this on a development server before implementing it to a production server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology

  Read the article

• The Oscar of Java Programming

  - by Tori Wieldt

  Why bother nominating a peer, yourself or your company for a Duke's Choice Award? I asked Duke's Choice Award winner Fabiane Nardon, whose team won in 2005 for the Healthcare Information System they created for the Brazilian government, what it was like winning the award and if it had any impact on her career. Here's what she told me: 1) What was it like to win a Duke's Choice Award? For me it was like winning an Oscar or a Grammy :-) I think that for a Java developer, a Duke's Choice Award is probably the highest award you can get, so it was really an honor. We had an amazing team working on that project and the team really deserved it. We were all very happy when we got that email with the announcement. That moment was one of the most important moments of my career. 2) What benefits have you gotten from being a "Duke's Choice Award Winner?" I think the most important benefit you get from winning a Duke is the fact that you become known by your peers. This opens many doors, since you are approached by more people, get invitations to speak in more conferences, you meet people with the same technical interests you have and so on. I certainly benefited a lot from it. We were lucky that in 2005, when we got our award, the winners were featured in the JavaOne keynote, with short documentaries produced about each one. So, we could be on the stage and talk a little about the project. We got lots of press at the time. We see  today's winners benefiting a lot from the press coverage. 3) How is the the Brazilian Healthcare Information System project doing today? Still running and getting new features every year. I'm not involved on the project anymore, but there are good people taking care of it. We opened the code since the beginning, so different cities could use and add features to it. There are many new developers working on that code base right now and I hope they can take the whole system to a new level. 4) What are you up to these days? I worked in the healthcare field for many years and a few years ago I decided that it was time to move on and take the experience I got designing large scale and mission critical systems to other fields. Since then I have been working with high access internet applications. I also co-founded ToolsCloud, a company that provides a development environment with open source tools in the cloud. We just launched ToolsCloud in USA, so other companies can get the same bundle of tools, hassle free, that several companies are successfully using in Brazil. Besides that, right now I'm personally working on the coolest project I ever worked on. It combines several technical challenges with a good dose of social impact. We should launch it in the second semester and I should keep it as a secret for now. Hopefully it will be useful to many people and disruptive enough to maybe get us a new Duke's Choice Award. Who knows? Read more about Fabiane in the "Heroes of Java" series by Markus Eisele. Her Twitter handle is @FabianeNardon. The Duke's Choice Awards celebrate extreme innovation in the world of Java technology. Nominate an individual, a group or company who show the best in Java innovation. Nominate via the easy online form at www.Java.net/dukeschoice. Nominations are open until June 15, 2012.

  Read the article

• Validating Petabytes of Data with Regularity and Thoroughness

  - by rickramsey

  by Brian Zents When former Intel CEO Andy Grove said “only the paranoid survive,” he wasn’t necessarily talking about tape storage administrators, but it’s a lesson they’ve learned well. After all, tape storage is the last line of defense to prevent data loss, so tape administrators are extra cautious in making sure their data is secure. Not surprisingly, we are often asked for ways to validate tape media and the files on them. In the past, an administrator could validate the media, but doing so was often tedious or disruptive or both. The debut of the Data Integrity Validation (DIV) and Library Media Validation (LMV) features in the Oracle T10000C drive helped eliminate many of these pains. Also available with the Oracle T10000D drive, these features use hardware-assisted CRC checks that not only ensure the data is written correctly the first time, but also do so much more efficiently. Traditionally, a CRC check takes at least 25 seconds per 4GB file with a 2:1 compression ratio, but the T10000C/D drives can reduce the check to a maximum of nine seconds because the entire check is contained within the drive. No data needs to be sent to a host application. A time savings of at least 64 percent is extremely beneficial over the course of checking an entire 8.5TB T10000D tape. While the DIV and LMV features are better than anything else out there, what storage administrators really need is a way to check petabytes of data with regularity and thoroughness. With the launch of Oracle StorageTek Tape Analytics (STA) 2.0 in April, there is finally a solution that addresses this longstanding need. STA bundles these features into one interface to automate all media validation activities across all Oracle SL3000 and SL8500 tape libraries in an environment. And best of all, the validation process can be associated with the health checks an administrator would be doing already through STA. In fact, STA validates the media based on any of the following policies: Random Selection – Randomly selects media for validation whenever a validation drive in the standalone library or library complex is available. Media Health = Action – Selects media that have had a specified number of successive exchanges resulting in an Exchange Media Health of “Action.” You can specify from one to five exchanges. Media Health = Evaluate – Selects media that have had a specified number of successive exchanges resulting in an Exchange Media Health of “Evaluate.” You can specify from one to five exchanges. Media Health = Monitor – Selects media that have had a specified number of successive exchanges resulting in an Exchange Media Health of “Monitor.” You can specify from one to five exchanges. Extended Period of Non-Use – Selects media that have not had an exchange for a specified number of days. You can specify from 365 to 1,095 days (one to three years). Newly Entered – Selects media that have recently been entered into the library. Bad MIR Detected – Selects media with an exchange resulting in a “Bad MIR Detected” error. A bad media information record (MIR) indicates degraded high-speed access on the media. To avoid disrupting host operations, an administrator designates certain drives for media validation operations. If a host requests a file from media currently being validated, the host’s request takes priority. To ensure that the administrator really knows it is the media that is bad, as opposed to the drive, STA includes drive calibration and qualification features. In addition, validation requests can be re-prioritized or cancelled as needed. To ensure that a specific tape isn’t validated too often, STA prevents a tape from being validated twice within 24 hours via one of the policies described above. A tape can be validated more often if the administrator manually initiates the validation. When the validations are complete, STA reports the results. STA does not report simply a “good” or “bad” status. It also reports if media is even degraded so the administrator can migrate the data before there is a true failure. From that point, the administrators’ paranoia is relieved, as they have the necessary information to make a sound decision about the health of the tapes in their environment. About the Photograph Photograph taken by Rick Ramsey in Death Valley, California, May 2014 - Brian Follow OTN Garage on: Web | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube

  Read the article

• October 2012 Critical Patch Update and Critical Patch Update for Java SE Released

  - by Eric P. Maurice

  Hi, this is Eric Maurice. Oracle has just released the October 2012 Critical Patch Update and the October 2012 Critical Patch Update for Java SE.  As a reminder, the release of security patches for Java SE continues to be on a different schedule than for other Oracle products due to commitments made to customers prior to the Oracle acquisition of Sun Microsystems.  We do however expect to ultimately bring Java SE in line with the regular Critical Patch Update schedule, thus increasing the frequency of scheduled security releases for Java SE to 4 times a year (as opposed to the current 3 yearly releases).  The schedules for the “normal” Critical Patch Update and the Critical Patch Update for Java SE are posted online on the Critical Patch Updates and Security Alerts page. The October 2012 Critical Patch Update provides a total of 109 new security fixes across a number of product families including: Oracle Database Server, Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle E-Business Suite, Supply Chain Products Suite, Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise, Oracle Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Oracle Industry Applications, Oracle FLEXCUBE, Oracle Sun products suite, Oracle Linux and Virtualization, and Oracle MySQL. Out of these 109 new vulnerabilities, 5 affect Oracle Database Server.  The most severe of these Database vulnerabilities has received a CVSS Base Score of 10.0 on Windows platforms and 7.5 on Linux and Unix platforms.  This vulnerability (CVE-2012-3137) is related to the “Cryptographic flaws in Oracle Database authentication protocol” disclosed at the Ekoparty Conference.  Because of timing considerations (proximity to the release date of the October 2012 Critical Patch Update) and the need to extensively test the fixes for this vulnerability to ensure compatibility across the products stack, the fixes for this vulnerability were not released through a Security Alert, but instead mitigation instructions were provided prior to the release of the fixes in this Critical Patch Update in My Oracle Support Note 1492721.1.  Because of the severity of these vulnerabilities, Oracle recommends that this Critical Patch Update be installed as soon as possible. Another 26 vulnerabilities fixed in this Critical Patch Update affect Oracle Fusion Middleware.  The most severe of these Fusion Middleware vulnerabilities has received a CVSS Base Score of 10.0; it affects Oracle JRockit and is related to Java vulnerabilities fixed in the Critical Patch Update for Java SE.  The Oracle Sun products suite gets 18 new security fixes with this Critical Patch Update.  Note also that Oracle MySQL has received 14 new security fixes; the most severe of these MySQL vulnerabilities has received a CVSS Base Score of 9.0. Today’s Critical Patch Update for Java SE provides 30 new security fixes.  The most severe CVSS Base Score for these Java SE vulnerabilities is 10.0 and this score affects 10 vulnerabilities.  As usual, Oracle reports the most severe CVSS Base Score, and these CVSS 10.0s assume that the user running a Java Applet or Java Web Start application has administrator privileges (as is typical on Windows XP). However, when the user does not run with administrator privileges (as is typical on Solaris and Linux), the corresponding CVSS impact scores for Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability are "Partial" instead of "Complete", typically lowering the CVSS Base Score to 7.5 denoting that the compromise does not extend to the underlying Operating System.  Also, as is typical in the Critical Patch Update for Java SE, most of the vulnerabilities affect Java and Java FX client deployments only.  Only 2 of the Java SE vulnerabilities fixed in this Critical Patch Update affect client and server deployments of Java SE, and only one affects server deployments of JSSE.  This reflects the fact that Java running on servers operate in a more secure and controlled environment.  As discussed during a number of sessions at JavaOne, Oracle is considering security enhancements for Java in desktop and browser environments.  Finally, note that the Critical Patch Update for Java SE is cumulative, in other words it includes all previously released security fixes, including the fix provided through Security Alert CVE-2012-4681, which was released on August 30, 2012. For More Information: The October 2012 Critical Patch Update advisory is located at http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/cpuoct2012-1515893.html The October 2012 Critical Patch Update for Java SE advisory is located at http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/javacpuoct2012-1515924.html.  An online video about the importance of keeping up with Java releases and the use of the Java auto update is located at http://medianetwork.oracle.com/video/player/1218969104001 More information about Oracle Software Security Assurance is located at http://www.oracle.com/us/support/assurance/index.html  

  Read the article

• SQL SERVER – IO_COMPLETION – Wait Type – Day 10 of 28

  - by pinaldave

  For any good system three things are vital: CPU, Memory and IO (disk). Among these three, IO is the most crucial factor of SQL Server. Looking at real-world cases, I do not see IT people upgrading CPU and Memory frequently. However, the disk is often upgraded for either improving the space, speed or throughput. Today we will look at an IO-related wait types. From Book On-Line: Occurs while waiting for I/O operations to complete. This wait type generally represents non-data page I/Os. Data page I/O completion waits appear as PAGEIOLATCH_* waits. IO_COMPLETION Explanation: Any tasks are waiting for I/O to finish. This is a good indication that IO needs to be looked over here. Reducing IO_COMPLETION wait: When it is an issue concerning the IO, one should look at the following things related to IO subsystem: Proper placing of the files is very important. We should check the file system for proper placement of files – LDF and MDF on a separate drive, TempDB on another separate drive, hot spot tables on separate filegroup (and on separate disk),etc. Check the File Statistics and see if there is higher IO Read and IO Write Stall SQL SERVER – Get File Statistics Using fn_virtualfilestats. Check event log and error log for any errors or warnings related to IO. If you are using SAN (Storage Area Network), check the throughput of the SAN system as well as the configuration of the HBA Queue Depth. In one of my recent projects, the SAN was performing really badly so the SAN administrator did not accept it. After some investigations, he agreed to change the HBA Queue Depth on development (test environment) set up and as soon as we changed the HBA Queue Depth to quite a higher value, there was a sudden big improvement in the performance. It is very possible that there are no proper indexes in the system and there are lots of table scans and heap scans. Creating proper index can reduce the IO bandwidth considerably. If SQL Server can use appropriate cover index instead of clustered index, it can effectively reduce lots of CPU, Memory and IO (considering cover index has lesser columns than cluster table and all other; it depends upon the situation). You can refer to the two articles that I wrote; they are about how to optimize indexes: Create Missing Indexes Drop Unused Indexes Checking Memory Related Perfmon Counters SQLServer: Memory Manager\Memory Grants Pending (Consistent higher value than 0-2) SQLServer: Memory Manager\Memory Grants Outstanding (Consistent higher value, Benchmark) SQLServer: Buffer Manager\Buffer Hit Cache Ratio (Higher is better, greater than 90% for usually smooth running system) SQLServer: Buffer Manager\Page Life Expectancy (Consistent lower value than 300 seconds) Memory: Available Mbytes (Information only) Memory: Page Faults/sec (Benchmark only) Memory: Pages/sec (Benchmark only) Checking Disk Related Perfmon Counters Average Disk sec/Read (Consistent higher value than 4-8 millisecond is not good) Average Disk sec/Write (Consistent higher value than 4-8 millisecond is not good) Average Disk Read/Write Queue Length (Consistent higher value than benchmark is not good) Note: The information presented here is from my experience and there is no way that I claim it to be accurate. I suggest reading Book OnLine for further clarification. All the discussions of Wait Stats in this blog are generic and vary from system to system. It is recommended that you test this on a development server before implementing it to a production server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Types, SQL White Papers, T SQL, Technology

  Read the article

• Floating Panels and Describe Windows in Oracle SQL Developer

  - by thatjeffsmith

  One of the challenges I face as I try to share tips about our software is that I tend to assume there are features that you just ‘know about.’ Either they’re so intuitive that you MUST know about them, or it’s a feature that I’ve been using for so long I forget that others may have never even seen it before. I want to cover two of those today - Describe (DESC) – SHIFT+F4 Floating Panels My super-exciting desktop SQL Developer and Describe DESC or Describe is an Oracle SQL*Plus command. It shows what a table or view is composed of in terms of it’s column definition. Here’s an example: SQL*Plus: Release 11.2.0.3.0 Production on Fri Sep 21 14:25:37 2012 Copyright (c) 1982, 2011, Oracle. All rights reserved. Connected to: Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.3.0 - Production With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options SQL> desc beer; Name Null? Type ----------------------------------------- -------- ---------------------------- BREWERY NOT NULL VARCHAR2(100) CITY VARCHAR2(100) STATE VARCHAR2(100) COUNTRY VARCHAR2(100) ID NUMBER SQL> You can get the same information – and a good bit more – in SQL Developer using the SQL Developer DESC command. You invoke it with SHIFT+F4. It will open a floating (non-modal!) window with the information you want. Here’s an example: I can see my column definitions, constratins, stats, privs, etc A few ‘cool’ things you should be aware of: I can open as many as I want, and still work in my worksheet, browser, etc. I can also DESC an index, user, or most any other database object I can of course move them off my primary desktop display The DESC panel’s are read-only. I can’t drop a constraint from within the DESC window of a given table. But for dragging columns into my worksheet, and checking out the stats for my objects as I query them – it’s very, very handy. Try This Right Now Type ‘scott.emp’ (or some other table you have), place your cursor on the text, and hit SHIFT+F4. You’ll see the EMP object open. Now click into a column name in the columns page. Drag it into your worksheet. It will paste that column name into your query. This is an alternative for those that don’t like our code insight feature or dragging columns off the connection tree (new for v3.2!) Got it? SQL Developer’s Floating Panels Ok, let’s talk about a similar feature. Did you know that any dockable panel from the View menu can also be ‘floated?’ One of my favorite features is the SQL History. Every query I run is recorded, and I can recall them later without having to remember what I ran and when. And I USUALLY use the keyboard shortcuts for this. Let your trouble float away…if only it were so easy as a right-click in the real world. But sometimes I still want to see my recall list without having to give up my screen real estate. So I just mouse-right click on the panel tab and select ‘Float.’ Then I move it over to my secondary display – see the poorly lit picture in the beginning of this post. And that’s it. Simple, I know. But I thought you should know about these two things!

  Read the article

• How to convert from amateur web app developer to professional web apper?

  - by Nilesh

  This is more of a practical question on web app development and deployment process. Here is some background information. I use PHP for server side scripting, javascript for client side. I use Netbeans and notepad++. I user Firefox and firebug for debugging and testing. The process I use is very amateurish, I code something in netbeans, something in notepad++ and since there is nothing to compile, I just refresh the firefox browser and test it. This is convenient and faster compared to the Java development enviornment where you would have to atleast compile and deploy the jar files before you could run them. I have been thinking of putting a formal process in my development and find it hard putting it together. There are so many things to do before you can deploy your final web app. I keep hearing jslint, compression, unit testing (selenium), Ant, YUI compressor etc but I am now looking for some steps that I can take to make me more organized. For e.g I use netbeans but don't use any projects within it. I directly update the files. I don't use any source control but use my Iomega backup that saves each save into a different version and at the end of the day I backup the dev directory to my Amazon s3 account. For me development environment is just a DEV directory, TEST is my intermediate stage and PROD is the final directory that gets pushed out to the server. But all these directories are in the same apache home. I have few php scripts that just copies the needed files into the production directory. Thats about it for my development approach. I know I am missing the following - Regression testing (manual or automated ??) - automated testing (selenium ??) - automated deployment (ANT ??) - source control (svn ??) - quality control (jslint ??) Can someone explain what are the missing steps and how to go about filling those steps in order to have more professional approach. I am looking for tools with example tutorials in streamlining the whole development to deployment stage. For me just getting a hang of database, server side and client side development all in synchronization was itself a huge accomplishment. And now I feel there is lot missing before you can produce quality web application. For e.g I see lot of mention about using automated testing but how to put in use with respect to javascript and php. How to use ANT for the deployment etc. Is this all too much for a single or two person development team? Is there a way to automate all the above so that I just keep coding in netbeans and then run a batch file that is configured once and run it everytime to produce the code in the production directory? Lot of these information is scattered on the web and here, if someone can guide I would be happy to consolidate here. Thank you for your patience :)

  Read the article

• Windows Azure Use Case: New Development

  - by BuckWoody

  This is one in a series of posts on when and where to use a distributed architecture design in your organization's computing needs. You can find the main post here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/buckwoody/archive/2011/01/18/windows-azure-and-sql-azure-use-cases.aspx Description: Computing platforms evolve over time. Originally computers were directed by hardware wiring - that, the “code” was the path of the wiring that directed an electrical signal from one component to another, or in some cases a physical switch controlled the path. From there software was developed, first in a very low machine language, then when compilers were created, computer languages could more closely mimic written statements. These language statements can be compiled into the lower-level machine language still used by computers today. Microprocessors replaced logic circuits, sometimes with fewer instructions (Reduced Instruction Set Computing, RISC) and sometimes with more instructions (Complex Instruction Set Computing, CISC). The reason this history is important is that along each technology advancement, computer code has adapted. Writing software for a RISC architecture is significantly different than developing for a CISC architecture. And moving to a Distributed Architecture like Windows Azure also has specific implementation details that our code must follow. But why make a change? As I’ve described, we need to make the change to our code to follow advances in technology. There’s no point in change for its own sake, but as a new paradigm offers benefits to our users, it’s important for us to leverage those benefits where it makes sense. That’s most often done in new development projects. It’s a far simpler task to take a new project and adapt it to Windows Azure than to try and retrofit older code designed in a previous computing environment. We can still use the same coding languages (.NET, Java, C++) to write code for Windows Azure, but we need to think about the architecture of that code on a new project so that it runs in the most efficient, cost-effective way in a Distributed Architecture. As we receive new requests from the organization for new projects, a distributed architecture paradigm belongs in the decision matrix for the platform target. Implementation: When you are designing new applications for Windows Azure (or any distributed architecture) there are many important details to consider. But at the risk of over-simplification, there are three main concepts to learn and architect within the new code: Stateless Programming - Stateless program is a prime concept within distributed architectures. Rather than each server owning the complete processing cycle, the information from an operation that needs to be retained (the “state”) should be persisted to another location c(like storage) common to all machines involved in the process.  An interesting learning process for Stateless Programming (although not unique to this language type) is to learn Functional Programming. Server-Side Processing - Along with developing using a Stateless Design, the closer you can locate the code processing to the data, the less expensive and faster the code will run. When you control the network layer, this is less important, since you can send vast amounts of data between the server and client, allowing the client to perform processing. In a distributed architecture, you don’t always own the network, so it’s performance is unpredictable. Also, you may not be able to control the platform the user is on (such as a smartphone, PC or tablet), so it’s imperative to deliver only results and graphical elements where possible.  Token-Based Authentication - Also called “Claims-Based Authorization”, this code practice means instead of allowing a user to log on once and then running code in that context, a more granular level of security is used. A “token” or “claim”, often represented as a Certificate, is sent along for a series or even one request. In other words, every call to the code is authenticated against the token, rather than allowing a user free reign within the code call. While this is more work initially, it can bring a greater level of security, and it is far more resilient to disconnections. Resources: See the references of “Nondistributed Deployment” and “Distributed Deployment” at the top of this article for more information with graphics:  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee658120.aspx  Stack Overflow has a good thread on functional programming: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/844536/advantages-of-stateless-programming  Another good discussion on Stack Overflow on server-side processing is here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3064018/client-side-or-server-side-processing Claims Based Authorization is described here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ee335707.aspx

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343  | Next Page >