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• Function Folding in #PowerQuery

  - by Darren Gosbell

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/darrengosbell/archive/2014/05/16/function-folding-in-powerquery.aspxLooking at a typical Power Query query you will noticed that it's made up of a number of small steps. As an example take a look at the query I did in my previous post about joining a fact table to a slowly changing dimension. It was roughly built up of the following steps: Get all records from the fact table Get all records from the dimension table do an outer join between these two tables on the business key (resulting in an increase in the row count as there are multiple records in the dimension table for each business key) Filter out the excess rows introduced in step 3 remove extra columns that are not required in the final result set. If Power Query was to execute a query like this literally, following the same steps in the same order it would not be overly efficient. Particularly if your two source tables were quite large. However Power Query has a feature called function folding where it can take a number of these small steps and push them down to the data source. The degree of function folding that can be performed depends on the data source, As you might expect, relational data sources like SQL Server, Oracle and Teradata support folding, but so do some of the other sources like OData, Exchange and Active Directory. To explore how this works I took the data from my previous post and loaded it into a SQL database. Then I converted my Power Query expression to source it's data from that database. Below is the resulting Power Query which I edited by hand so that the whole thing can be shown in a single expression: let     SqlSource = Sql.Database("localhost", "PowerQueryTest"),     BU = SqlSource{[Schema="dbo",Item="BU"]}[Data],     Fact = SqlSource{[Schema="dbo",Item="fact"]}[Data],     Source = Table.NestedJoin(Fact,{"BU_Code"},BU,{"BU_Code"},"NewColumn"),     LeftJoin = Table.ExpandTableColumn(Source, "NewColumn"                                   , {"BU_Key", "StartDate", "EndDate"}                                   , {"BU_Key", "StartDate", "EndDate"}),     BetweenFilter = Table.SelectRows(LeftJoin, each (([Date] >= [StartDate]) and ([Date] <= [EndDate])) ),     RemovedColumns = Table.RemoveColumns(BetweenFilter,{"StartDate", "EndDate"}) in     RemovedColumns If the above query was run step by step in a literal fashion you would expect it to run two queries against the SQL database doing "SELECT * …" from both tables. However a profiler trace shows just the following single SQL query: select [_].[BU_Code],     [_].[Date],     [_].[Amount],     [_].[BU_Key] from (     select [$Outer].[BU_Code],         [$Outer].[Date],         [$Outer].[Amount],         [$Inner].[BU_Key],         [$Inner].[StartDate],         [$Inner].[EndDate]     from [dbo].[fact] as [$Outer]     left outer join     (         select [_].[BU_Key] as [BU_Key],             [_].[BU_Code] as [BU_Code2],             [_].[BU_Name] as [BU_Name],             [_].[StartDate] as [StartDate],             [_].[EndDate] as [EndDate]         from [dbo].[BU] as [_]     ) as [$Inner] on ([$Outer].[BU_Code] = [$Inner].[BU_Code2] or [$Outer].[BU_Code] is null and [$Inner].[BU_Code2] is null) ) as [_] where [_].[Date] >= [_].[StartDate] and [_].[Date] <= [_].[EndDate] The resulting query is a little strange, you can probably tell that it was generated programmatically. But if you look closely you'll notice that every single part of the Power Query formula has been pushed down to SQL Server. Power Query itself ends up just constructing the query and passing the results back to Excel, it does not do any of the data transformation steps itself. So now you can feel a bit more comfortable showing Power Query to your less technical Colleagues knowing that the tool will do it's best fold all the  small steps in Power Query down the most efficient query that it can against the source systems.

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• The Other Side of XBRL

  - by john.orourke(at)oracle.com

  With the United States SEC's mandate for XBRL filings entering its third year, and impacting over 7000 additional companies in 2011, there's a lot of buzz in the industry about how companies should address the new reporting requirements.  Should they outsource the XBRL tagging process to a third party publisher, handle the process in-house with a bolt-on XBRL tool, or should they integrate XBRL tagging with the financial close and reporting process?  Oracle is recommending the latter approach, in fact  here's a link to a recent webcast that I did with CFO.com on this topic: http://www.cfo.com/webcasts/index.cfm/l_eventarchive/14548560 But production of XBRL-based filings is only half of the story. The other half is consumption of XBRL by regulators, academics, financial analysts and investors.  As I mentioned in my December article on the XBRL US conference, the feedback from these groups is that they are not really leveraging XBRL for analysis of companies due to a lack of tools and historic XBRL-based data on public companies.   The good news here is that the historic data problem is getting better as large, accelerated filers enter their third year of XBRL filings.  And the situation is getting better on the reporting and analysis tools side of the equation as well - and Oracle is leading the way. In early January, Oracle released the Oracle XBRL Extension for Oracle Database 11g.  This is a "no cost option" on top of the latest Oracle Database 11.2.0.2.0 release. With this added functionality organizations will have the ability to create one or more back-end XBRL repositories based on Oracle Database, which provide XBRL storage and query-ability with a set of XBRL-specific services.  The XBRL Extension to Oracle XML DB integrates easily with Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) for analytics and with interactive development environments (IDEs) and design tools for creating and editing XBRL taxonomies. The Oracle XBRL Extension to Oracle Database 11g should be attractive to regulators, stock exchanges, universities and other organizations that need to collect, analyze and disseminate XBRL-based filings.  It should also be attractive to organizations that produce XBRL filings, and need a way to store and compare their own XBRL-based financial filings to those of their peers and competitors. If you would like more information, here's a link to a web page on the Oracle Technology Network with the details about Oracle XBRL Extension for Oracle Database 11g, including data sheet, white paper, presentation, demos and other information: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/features/xmldb/index-087631.html

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• What are the drawbacks of sending XML to browsers and let them apply XSLT?

  - by MainMa

  Context Working as a freelance developer, I often made websites completely based on XSLT. In other words, on every request, an XML file is generated, containing everything we need to know about the page content: the name of the user currently logged in, the top menu entries, if this menu is dynamic/configurable, the text to display in a specific area of the page, etc. Then XSL process (caches, etc.) it to HTML/XHTML page to send to the browser. It has a good point to make it easier to create small-scale websites, especially with PHP. It is a sort of template engine, but which I prefer to other template engines because it's much more powerful than most of template engines, and because I know it better and like it. It is also possible, when need, to give an access to raw XML data on demand for an automated access, without the need to create separate APIs. Of course, it will fail completely on any medium-scale or large-scale website, since, even with good caching techniques, XSL still degrades overall website performance and requires more CPU serverside. Question Modern browsers have the ability to take an XML file and to transform it with an associated XSL file declared in XML like <?xml-stylesheet href="demo.xslt" type="text/xsl"?>. Firefox 3 can do it. Internet Explorer 8 can do it too. It means that it is possible to migrate XSL processing from the server to the client side for 50% of users (according on browser statistics on several websites where I may want to implement this). It means that those 50% of users will receive only the XML file at each request, thus reducing their and server's bandwidth (XML file being much shorter than its processed HTML analog), and reducing server's CPU usage. What are the drawbacks of this technique? I thought about several ones, but it doesn't apply in this situation: Difficult implementation and the need to choose, based on the browser request, when to send raw XML and when to transform it to HTML instead. Obviously, the system will not be much more difficult then the actual one. The only change to make is to add XSL file link to every XML, and to add a browser check. More IO and bandwidth usage, since the XSLT file will be downloaded by the browsers, instead of being cached by the server. I don't think it will be a problem, since XSLT file will be cached by the browsers (like images, or CSS, or JavaScript files are cached actually). Possibly some problems on client side, like maybe problems when saving a page in some browsers. Difficulty to debug code: it is impossible to obtain an HTML source the browser is actually using, since the only displayed source is the downloaded XML. On the other hand, I rarely go look at HTML code on client side, and in most cases, it is unusable directly (whitespace being removed).

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• BI Applications overview

  - by sv744

  Welcome to Oracle BI applications blog! This blog will talk about various features, general roadmap, description of functionality and implementation steps related to Oracle BI applications. In the first post we start with an overview of the BI apps and will delve deeper into some of the topics below in the upcoming weeks and months. If there are other topics you would like us to talk about, pl feel free to provide feedback on that. The Oracle BI applications are a set of pre-built applications that enable pervasive BI by providing role-based insight for each functional area, including sales, service, marketing, contact center, finance, supplier/supply chain, HR/workforce, and executive management. For example, Sales Analytics includes role-based applications for sales executives, sales management, as well as front-line sales reps, each of whom have different needs. The applications integrate and transform data from a range of enterprise sources—including Siebel, Oracle, PeopleSoft, SAP, and others—into actionable intelligence for each business function and user role. This blog  starts with the key benefits and characteristics of Oracle BI applications. In a series of subsequent blogs, each of these points will be explained in detail. Why BI apps? Demonstrate the value of BI to a business user, show reports / dashboards / model that can answer their business questions as part of the sales cycle. Demonstrate technical feasibility of BI project and significantly lower risk and improve success Build Vs Buy benefit Don’t have to start with a blank sheet of paper. Help consolidate disparate systems Data integration in M&A situations Insulate BI consumers from changes in the OLTP Present OLTP data and highlight issues of poor data / missing data – and improve data quality and accuracy Prebuilt Integrations BI apps support prebuilt integrations against leading ERP sources: Fusion Applications, E- Business Suite, Peoplesoft, JD Edwards, Siebel, SAP Co-developed with inputs from functional experts in BI and Applications teams. Out of the box dimensional model to source model mappings Multi source and Multi Instance support Rich Data Model    BI apps have a very rich dimensionsal data model built over 10 years that incorporates best practises from BI modeling perspective as well as reflect the source system complexities  Thanks for reading a long post, and be on the lookout for future posts.  We will look forward to your valuable feedback on these topics as well as suggestions on what other topics would you like us to cover. I Conformed dimensional model across all business subject areas allows cross functional reporting, e.g. customer / supplier 360 Over 360 fact tables across 7 product areas CRM – 145, SCM – 47, Financials – 28, Procurement – 20, HCM – 27, Projects – 18, Campus Solutions – 21, PLM - 56 Supported by 300 physical dimensions Support for extensive calendars; Gregorian, enterprise and ledger based Conformed data model and metrics for real time vs warehouse based reporting  Multi-tenant enabled Extensive BI related transformations BI apps ETL and data integration support various transformations required for dimensional models and reporting requirements. All these have been distilled into common patterns and abstracted logic which can be readily reused across different modules Slowly Changing Dimension support Hierarchy flattening support Row / Column Hybrid Hierarchy Flattening As Is vs. As Was hierarchy support Currency Conversion :-  Support for 3 corporate, CRM, ledger and transaction currencies UOM conversion Internationalization / Localization Dynamic Data translations Code standardization (Domains) Historical Snapshots Cycle and process lifecycle computations Balance Facts Equalization of GL accounting chartfields/segments Standardized values for categorizing GL accounts Reconciliation between GL and subledgers to track accounted/transferred/posted transactions to GL Materialization of data only available through costly and complex APIs e.g. Fusion Payroll, EBS / Fusion Accruals Complex event Interpretation of source data – E.g. o    What constitutes a transfer o    Deriving supervisors via position hierarchy o    Deriving primary assignment in PSFT o    Categorizing and transposition to measures of Payroll Balances to specific metrics to support side by side comparison of measures of for example Fixed Salary, Variable Salary, Tax, Bonus, Overtime Payments. o    Counting of Events – E.g. converting events to fact counters so that for example the number of hires can easily be added up and compared alongside the total transfers and terminations. Multi pass processing of multiple sources e.g. headcount, salary, promotion, performance to allow side to side comparison. Adding value to data to aid analysis through banding, additional domain classifications and groupings to allow higher level analytical reporting and data discovery Calculation of complex measures examples: o    COGs, DSO, DPO, Inventory turns  etc o    Transfers within a Hierarchy or out of / into a hierarchy relative to view point in hierarchy. Configurability and Extensibility support  BI apps offer support for extensibility for various entities as automated extensibility or part of extension methodology Key Flex fields and Descriptive Flex support  Extensible attribute support (JDE)  Conformed Domains ETL Architecture BI apps offer a modular adapter architecture which allows support of multiple product lines into a single conformed model Multi Source Multi Technology Orchestration – creates load plan taking into account task dependencies and customers deployment to generate a plan based on a customers of multiple complex etl tasks Plan optimization allowing parallel ETL tasks Oracle: Bit map indexes and partition management High availability support    Follow the sun support. TCO BI apps support several utilities / capabilities that help with overall total cost of ownership and ensure a rapid implementation Improved cost of ownership – lower cost to deploy On-going support for new versions of the source application Task based setups flows Data Lineage Functional setup performed in Web UI by Functional person Configuration Test to Production support Security BI apps support both data and object security enabling implementations to quickly configure the application as per the reporting security needs Fine grain object security at report / dashboard and presentation catalog level Data Security integration with source systems  Extensible to support external data security rules Extensive Set of KPIs Over 7000 base and derived metrics across all modules Time series calculations (YoY, % growth etc) Common Currency and UOM reporting Cross subject area KPIs (analyzing HR vs GL data, drill from GL to AP/AR, etc) Prebuilt reports and dashboards 3000+ prebuilt reports supporting a large number of industries Hundreds of role based dashboards Dynamic currency conversion at dashboard level Highly tuned Performance The BI apps have been tuned over the years for both a very performant ETL and dashboard performance. The applications use best practises and advanced database features to enable the best possible performance. Optimized data model for BI and analytic queries Prebuilt aggregates& the ability for customers to create their own aggregates easily on warehouse facts allows for scalable end user performance Incremental extracts and loads Incremental Aggregate build Automatic table index and statistics management Parallel ETL loads Source system deletes handling Low latency extract with Golden Gate Micro ETL support Bitmap Indexes Partitioning support Modularized deployment, start small and add other subject areas seamlessly Source Specfic Staging and Real Time Schema Support for source specific operational reporting schema for EBS, PSFT, Siebel and JDE Application Integrations The BI apps also allow for integration with source systems as well as other applications that provide value add through BI and enable BI consumption during operational decision making Embedded dashboards for Fusion, EBS and Siebel applications Action Link support Marketing Segmentation Sales Predictor Dashboard Territory Management External Integrations The BI apps data integration choices include support for loading extenral data External data enrichment choices : UNSPSC, Item class etc. Extensible Spend Classification Broad Deployment Choices Exalytics support Databases :  Oracle, Exadata, Teradata, DB2, MSSQL ETL tool of choice : ODI (coming), Informatica Extensible and Customizable Extensible architecture and Methodology to add custom and external content Upgradable across releases

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• Pay in the future should make you think in the present

  - by BuckWoody

  Distributed Computing - and more importantly “-as-a-Service” models of computing have a different cost model. This is something that sounds obvious on the surface but it’s often forgotten during the design and coding phase of a project. In on-premises computing, we’re used to purchasing a server and all of the hardware infrastructure and software licenses needed not only for one project, but several. This is an up-front or “sunk” cost that we consume by running code the organization needs to perform its function. Using a direct connection over wires you’ve already paid for, we don’t often have to think about bandwidth, hits on the data store or the amount of compute we use - we just know more is better. In a pay-as-you-go model, however, each of these architecture decisions has a potential cost impact. The amount of data you store, the number of times you access it, and the amount you send back all come with a charge. The offset is that you don’t buy anything at all up-front, so that sunk cost is freed up. And financial professionals know that money now is worth more than money later. Saving that up-front cost allows you to invest it in other things. It’s not just that you’re using things that now cost money - it’s that the design itself in distributed computing has a cost impact. That can be a really good thing, such as when you dynamically add capacity for paying customers. If you can tie back the cost of a series of clicks to what a user will pay to do so, you can set a profit margin that is easy to track. Here’s a case in point: Assume you are using a large instance in Windows Azure to compute some data that you retrieve from a SQL Azure database. If you don’t monitor the path of the application, you may not know what you are really using. Since you’re paying by the size of the instance, it’s best to maximize it all the time. Recently I evaluated just this situation, and found that downsizing the instance and adding another one where needed, adding a caching function to the application, moving part of the data into Windows Azure tables not only increased the speed of the application, but reduced the cost and more closely tied the cost to the profit. The key is this: from the very outset - the design - make sure you include metrics to measure for the cost/performance (sometimes these are the same) for your application. Windows Azure opens up awesome new ways of doing things, so make sure you study distributed systems architecture before you try and force in the application design you have on premises into your new application structure.

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• I Clobbered a Leopard with a Window Last Night

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  I’ve had my 15” Mac Book Pro for a little over a year now, and its hands-down the best laptop I’ve ever owned…hardware wise. And I tried, I really really tried, to like OSX. I even bought Parallels so I could run Windows 7 and all my development tools while still trying to live in an OSX world. But in the end, I missed Windows too much. There were just too many shortcomings with OSX that kept me from being productive. For one thing, Office for Mac is *not* Office for Windows. The applications are written by different teams, and Excel on the Mac is just different enough to be painful. The VM experience was adequate, but my MBP would heat up like crazy when running it and the experience trying to get Windows apps to interact with an OSX file system was awkward. And I found I was in the VM more than I thought I’d be. iMovie is not as easy to use for doing simple movie editing as Windows Movie Maker. There’s no free blog editing software for OSX that’s on par with Windows Live Writer. And really, all I was using OSX for was Twitter (which I can use a Windows client for) and web browsing (also something Windows can provide obviously). So I had to ask myself – why am I forcing myself to use an operating system I don’t like, on a laptop that can support Windows 7? And so I paved my MBP and am happily running Windows 7 on it…and its fantastic! All the good stuff with the hardware is still there with the goodness of Win 7. Happy happy. I did run into some snags doing this though, and that’s really what this blog post is about – things to be aware of if you want to install Win 7 directly on your MBP metal. First, Ensure You Have Your Original Mac Install Disk This was a warning my buddy Dylan, who’s been running Win 7 on his MBP for a while now, gave me early on. The reason you need that original disk is that the hardware drivers you need are all located there. Apparently you can’t easily download them, so make sure you have them ahead of time. Second, Forget BootCamp The only reason you need BootCamp is if you still want the option to boot into OSX. If you don’t, then you don’t need BootCamp. In fact, you don’t even need BootCamp to install Win 7. What you *will* need though is a DVD with Win 7 burnt on it. Apple doesn’t support bootable USB drives. Well, actually they do for Mac Book Airs which don’t come with optical drives…but to get it working you’ll need to edit a system file of BootCamp so your make of MBP is included in an XML document, and even then you *still* are using BootCamp meaning you’ll be making an OSX partition. So don’t worry about BootCamp, just burn a Windows 7 disc, put it into the DVD drive, and restart your MBP. Third, Know The Secret Commands So after putting in the Windows 7 DVD and restarting your MBP, you’ll want to hold down the ‘C’ key during boot up. This tells the MBP that it should boot from the DVD drive instead of the hard drive. Interestingly, it appears you don’t have to do this if its the Mac OSX install disc (more on that in a second), but regardless – hold down C and Windows will start the install process. Next up is the partition process. You’ll notice that there’s a partition called ETI or something like that. This has to do with the drive format that Apple uses and how they partition their system drives. What I did – I blew it away! At first I didn’t, but I was told I couldn’t install Windows on the remaining space due to the different drive format. Blowing away the ETI partition (and all other partitions) allowed me to continue the Windows install. *REMEMBER –  No warranty is provided or implied, just telling you what I did and how I got it to work. Ok, so now Windows is installed and I’m rebooting. Everything looks good, but I need drivers! So I put in the OSX install DVD and run the BootCamp assistant which installs all the Windows drivers I need. Fantastic! Oh, I need to restart – no problem. OH NO, PROBLEM! I left the OSX install DVD in the drive and now the MBP wants to boot from the drive and install OSX! I’m not holding down the C key, what the heck?! Ok, well there must be a way to eject this disk…hmm…no physical button on the side…the eject button doesn’t seem to work on the keyboard…no little pin hole to insert something to force the disc out…well what the…?! It turns out, if you want to eject a disc at boot up, you need (and I kid you not) to plug a mouse into the laptop and hold down the right-click button while its booting. This ejected the disc for me. Seriously. Finally, Things You Should Be Aware Of Once you have Windows up and running there’s a few things you need to be aware of, mainly new keyboard shortcuts. For instance, on the Mac keyboard there is no Home, End, PageUp or PageDown. There’s also no obvious way to do something like select large amounts of text (like you would by holding Shift-Home at the end of a line of text for instance). So here’s some shortcuts you need to know: Home – fn + left arrow End – fn + right arrow Select a line of text as you would with the Home key – Shift + fn + left arrow Select a line of text as you would with the End key – Shift + fn + right arrow Page Up – fn + up arrow Page Down – fn + down arrow Also, you’ll notice that the awesome Mac track pad doesn’t respond to taps as clicks. No fear, this is just a setting that needs to be altered in the BootCamp control panel (that controls the Mac Hardware-specific settings within Windows, you can access it easily from the system tray icon) One other thing, battery life seems a bit lower than with OSX, but then again I’m also doing more than Twitter or web browsing on this thing now. Conclusion My laptop runs awesome now that I have Windows 7 on there. It’s obviously up to individual taste, but for me I just didn’t see benefits to living in an OSX world when everything I needed lived in Windows. And also, I finally am back to an operating system that doesn’t require me to eject a USB drive before physically removing it! It’s 2012 folks, how has this not been fixed?! D

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• A brief note for customers running SOA Suite on AIX platforms

  - by christian

  When running Oracle SOA Suite with IBM JVMs on the AIX platform, we have seen performance slowdowns and/or memory leaks. On occasion, we have even encountered some OutOfMemoryError conditions and the concomittant Java coredump. If you are experiencing this issue, the resolution may be to configure -Dsun.reflect.inflationThreshold=0 in your JVM startup parameters. https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-nativememory-aix/ contains a detailed discussion of the IBM AIX JVM memory model, but I will summarize my interpretation and understanding of it in the context of SOA Suite, below. Java ClassLoaders on IBM JVMs are allocated a native memory area into which they are anticipated to map such things as jars loaded from the filesystem. This is an excellent memory optimization, as the file can be loaded into memory once and then shared amongst many JVMs on the same host, allowing for excellent horizontal scalability on AIX hosts. However, Java ClassLoaders are not used exclusively for loading files from disk. A performance optimization by the Oracle Java language developers enables reflectively accessed data to optimize from a JNI call into Java bytecodes which are then amenable to hotspot optimizations, amongst other things. This performance optimization is called inflation, and it is executed by generating a sun.reflect.DelegatingClassLoader instance dynamically to inject the Java bytecode into the virtual machine. It is generally considered an excellent optimization. However, it interacts very negatively with the native memory area allocated by the IBM JVM, effectively locking out memory that could otherwise be used by the Java process. SOA Suite and WebLogic are both very large users of reflection code. They reflectively use many code paths in their operation, generating lots of DelegatingClassLoaders in normal operation. The IBM JVM slowdown and subsequent OutOfMemoryError are as a direct result of the Java memory consumed by the DelegatingClassLoader instances generated by SOA Suite and WebLogic. Java garbage collection runs more frequently to try and keep memory available, until it can no longer do so and throws OutOfMemoryError. The setting sun.reflect.inflationThreshold=0 disables this optimization entirely, never allowing the JVM to generate the optimized reflection code. IBM JVMs are susceptible to this issue primarily because all Java ClassLoaders have this native memory allocation, which is shared with the regular Java heap. Oracle JVMs don't automatically give all ClassLoaders a native memory area, and my understanding is that jar files are never mapped completely from shared memory in the same way as IBM does it. This results in different behaviour characteristics on IBM vs Oracle JVMs.

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• Deferred Shading - Toolkit

  - by AliveDevil

  I recently managed to get some lights rendered in a scene by using a buffer and a for-loop. The problem with this method is the performance drop if more lights are used. I tried to convert Deferred Rendering in XNA4.0 | ROY-T.NL but it is not working, because I am not using any models. I know I have to render color, normals and lights seperate but I don't know how I could get it working. For understanding my structure better I'm using a world-class which holds some chunks. These chunks are loading all vertices from their items. These items have a property which returns the vertices. The item is returning VertexPositionNormalTexture[]. The chunk loads these Vertices and combines them to one large array of VertexPositionNormalTexture via someList.AsParallel().SelectMany(m => m).ToArray()). m is a VertexPositionNormalTexture. someList is List<VertexPositionNormalTexture>. I got my own shader to draw these vertices how I want them to be drawn. The first thing I would try is setting up two RenderTarget2D for rendering the color and normal part. With two different shaders. Than I would have to render the lights and there's the problem: I don't know how. I set up a structure to simplify working with lights but it didn't really help. public struct Light { public Vector3 Position; public Color4 Color; public float Range; public float Intensity; public Light( Vector3 position, Color color, float range, float intensity ) : this() { this.Position = position; this.Color = color; this.Range = range; this.Intensity = intensity; } public float[] Definition { get { return new[] { Position.X, Position.Y, Position.Z, Color.Red, Color.Green, Color.Blue, Intensity, Range }; } } } The next part is equally different because I don't know how to combine the colorMap, normalMap and textureMap to one finalMap. Some information to the system: I'm using SharpDX (Nightly from some months ago) and the SharpDX.Toolkit (I don't want to mess up with Direct3DDevice and similar things). Can someone help me with this problem? If things are missing or I provided insufficient information tell me, I need to get deferred shading working. Things I'm not able to do: create a rendertarget which holds all lights, merge colorMap, normalMap and lightMap to one finalMap and presenting this to the user.

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• What location to put bootloader, when running multiple drives and partition

  - by Matt G

  I have Win8 on my desktop, where a 120G SSD is used to run windows and some select applications, while I have a 2TB HDD to provide basic file storage and where possible, install applications instead of on the SSD. I want to install Ubuntu on a new partition of the HDD (I allocated 300GB, with 5GB swap file). I've used a USB to install the OS, which seemed to have done the job. However, after prompting for a restart, I can no longer boot to ubuntu. During instillation I was confused about where to install the "boot loader instillation". I ended up selecting "/dev/stb" because I figured I would be able to boot with BIOS by selecting the HDD drive as a priority over the SSD. The bootloader is a large part of where I think I went wrong. My partition system looked something like this: /dev/sta ... //SSD ~120 GB /dev/sta1 NTFS (350 MB) //Win8System /dev/sta2 NTFS (118 GB) //Win8C-Drive /dev/stb ... //HDD ~2TB /dev/stb1 NTFS (1563 GB) //FileStorage /dev/stb5 Free Space (300 GB) //Space I want to use for Linux (NOTE: Created two partitions from the 300GB, ~5GB and 295GB. stb5,stb6.) It'd be great if I could get an explanation of what drive you'd select for the boot loader and why, and what selections won't work with regards to the Boot Loader Instillation. I think I understand what Grub is, but I have no idea on how to use it, or play around with it. I seem to be able to get back into OS from my usb, however I believe it's just showing me a preview/trial of Ubuntu (ie, can't access any of the system NTFS drives). Note, if I try to install from the USB again, it will recognize that a version of Ubuntu 13.10 exists on the system. Apologies in advance, have used windows all my life, don't really know to much about Linux at all. Did have a brief skim over some similar questions, didn't find anything too useful. - Where to install bootloader when installing Ubuntu as secondary OS? - ubuntu 12.10 dual boot with windows 8 on two hdds - Dual-boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu on two SSDs with UEFI

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• Would someone please explain Octree Collisions to me?

  - by A-Type

  I've been reading everything I can find on the subject and I feel like the pieces are just about to fall into place, but I just can't quite get it. I'm making a space game, where collisions will occur between planets, ships, asteroids, and the sun. Each of these objects can be subdivided into 'chunks', which I have implemented to speed up rendering (the vertices can and will change often at runtime, so I've separated the buffers). These subdivisions also have bounding primitives to test for collision. All of these objects are made of blocks (yeah, it's that kind of game). Blocks can also be tested for rough collisions, though they do not have individual bounding primitives for memory reasons. I think the rough testing seems to be sufficient, though. So, collision needs to be fairly precise; at block resolution. Some functions rely on two blocks colliding. And, of course, attacking specific blocks is important. Now what I am struggling with is filtering my collision pairs. As I said, I've read a lot about Octrees, but I'm having trouble applying it to my situation as many tutorials are vague with very little code. My main issues are: Are Octrees recalculated each frame, or are they stored in memory and objects are shuffled into different divisions as they move? Despite all my reading I still am not clear on this... the vagueness of it all has been frustrating. How far do Octrees subdivide? Planets in my game are quite large, while asteroids are smaller. Do I subdivide to the size of the planet, or asteroid (where planet is in multiple divisions)? Or is the limit something else entirely, like number of elements in the division? Should I load objects into the octrees as 'chunks' or in the whole, then break into chunks later? This could be specific to my implementation, I suppose. I was going to ask about how big my root needed to be, but I did manage to find this question, and the second answer seems sufficient for me. I'm afraid I don't really get what he means by adding new nodes and doing subdivisions upon adding new objects, probably because I'm confused about whether the tree is maintained in memory or recalculated per-frame.

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• I owe you an explanation

  - by Blueberry Coder

  Welcome to my blog! I am Frédéric Desbiens, a new member of the ADF Product Management team.  I joined Oracle only a few weeks ago. My boss is Grant Ronald, and I have the privilege to work in the same team as Susan Duncan, Frank Nimphius, Lynn Munsinger and Chris Muir. I share with them a passion for all things Java and ADF. With this blog, I hope to help you be more successful with our products – whether you are a customer or a partner. You may have heard of me before. Maybe you have my book in your bookshelf; or maybe we met at a conference. I went to JavaOne, ODTUG Kaleidoscope and Oracle OpenWorld in the past, when I worked for a major consulting firm. I will spare you all the details of my career; you can have a look at my LinkedIn profile if you are curious about my past.  Usually, my posts will be of a technical nature, and will focus on Oracle ADF and Oracle JDeveloper. SOA and portals have always been two topics of interest for me, however, and I will write about them. Over time, you will probably get acquainted with my « strategic » side as well. I devour history books, and always had a tendency to look at the big picture. I will probably not resist to the temptation of mixing IT and history, but this will be occasional, I promise!  At this point, I owe you an explanation about the title of the blog. I am French-Canadian, and wanted to evoke my roots in an obvious yet unobtrusive way. I was born in Chicoutimi, which is one of the main cities found in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region. Traditionally, a large part of the wild blueberry production of the province of Québec come from there. A common nickname for the inhabitants is thus Les Bleuets, « The Blueberries » in English. I hope to see you around. You can also follow me on Twitter under  @BlueberryCoder.

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• Exalogic 2.0.1 Tea Break Snippets - Creating and using Distribution Groups

  - by The Old Toxophilist

  By default running your Exalogic in a Virtual provides you with, what to Cloud Users, is a single large resource and they can just create vServers and not care about how they are laid down on the the underlying infrastructure. All the Cloud Users will know is that they can create vServers. For example if we have a Quarter Rack (8 Nodes) and our Cloud User creates 8 vServers those 8 vServers may run on 8 distinct nodes or may all run on the same node. Although in many cases we, as Cloud Users, may not be to worried how the Virtualisation Algorithm decides where to place our vServers there are cases where it is extremely important that vServers run on distinct physical compute nodes. For example if we have a Weblogic Cluster we will want the Servers with in the cluster to run on distinct physical node to cover for the situation where one physical node is lost. To achieve this the Exalogic Virtualised implementation provides Distribution Groups that define and anti-aliasing policy that the underlying Virtualisation Algorithm will take into account when placing vServers. It should be noted that Distribution Groups must be created before you create vServers because a vServer can only be added to a Distribution Group at creation time. Creating A Distribution Group To create a Distribution Groups we will first need to select the Account in which we want the Distribution Group to be created. Once we have selected the account we will see the Interface update and Account specific Actions will be displayed within the Action Panes. From the Action pane (or Right-Click on the Account) select the "Create Distribution Group" action. This will initiate the create wizard as follows. Distribution Group Details Within the first Step of the Wizard we can specify the name of the distribution group and this should be unique. In addition we can provide a detailed description of the group. Distribution Group Configuration The second step of the configuration wizard allows you to specify the number of elements that are required within this group and will specify a maximum of the number of nodes within you Exalogic. At this point it is always better to specify a group with spare capacity allowing for future expansion. As vServers are added to group the available slots decrease. Summary Finally the last step of the wizard display a summary of the information entered.

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• How to become a good team player?

  - by Nick

  I've been programming (obsessively) since I was 12. I am fairly knowledgeable across the spectrum of languages out there, from assembly, to C++, to Javascript, to Haskell, Lisp, and Qi. But all of my projects have been by myself. I got my degree in chemical engineering, not CS or computer engineering, but for the first time this fall I'll be working on a large programming project with other people, and I have no clue how to prepare. I've been using Windows all of my life, but this project is going to be very unix-y, so I purchased a Mac recently in the hopes of familiarizing myself with the environment. I was fortunate to participate in a hackathon with some friends this past year -- both CS majors -- and excitingly enough, we won. But I realized as I worked with them that their workflow was very different from mine. They used Git for version control. I had never used it at the time, but I've since learned all that I can about it. They also used a lot of frameworks and libraries. I had to learn what Rails was pretty much overnight for the hackathon (on the other hand, they didn't know what lexical scoping or closures were). All of our code worked well, but they didn't understand mine, and I didn't understand theirs. I hear references to things that real programmers do on a daily basis -- unit testing, code reviews, but I only have the vaguest sense of what these are. I normally don't have many bugs in my little projects, so I have never needed a bug tracking system or tests for them. And the last thing is that it takes me a long time to understand other people's code. Variable naming conventions (that vary with each new language) are difficult (__mzkwpSomRidicAbbrev), and I find the loose coupling difficult. That's not to say I don't loosely couple things -- I think I'm quite good at it for my own work, but when I download something like the Linux kernel or the Chromium source code to look at it, I spend hours trying to figure out how all of these oddly named directories and files connect. It's a programming sin to reinvent the wheel, but I often find it's just quicker to write up the functionality myself than to spend hours dissecting some library. Obviously, people who do this for a living don't have these problems, and I'll need to get to that point myself. Question: What are some steps that I can take to begin "integrating" with everyone else? Thanks!

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• 4.8M wasn't enough so we went for 5.055M tpmc with Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel r2 :-)

  - by wcoekaer

  We released a new set of benchmarks today. One is an updated tpc-c from a few months ago where we had just over 4.8M tpmc at $0.98 and we just updated it to go to 5.05M and $0.89. The other one is related to Java Middleware performance. You can find the press release here. Now, I don't want to talk about the actual relevance of the benchmark numbers, as I am not in the benchmark team. I want to talk about why these numbers and these efforts, unrelated to what they mean to your workload, matter to customers. The actual benchmark effort is a very big, long, expensive undertaking where many groups work together as a big virtual team. Having the virtual team be within a single company of course helps tremendously... We already start with a very big server setup with tons of storage, many disks, lots of ram, lots of cpu's, cores, threads, large database setups. Getting the whole setup going to start tuning, by itself, is no easy task, but then the real fun starts with tuning the system for optimal performance -and- stability. A benchmark is not just revving an engine at high rpm, it's actually hitting the circuit. The tests require long runs, require surviving availability tests, such as surviving crashes -and- recovery under load. In the TPC-C example, the x4800 system had 4TB ram, 160 threads (8 sockets, hyperthreaded, 10 cores/socket), tons of storage attached, tons of luns visible to the OS. flash storage, non flash storage... many things at high scale that all have to be perfectly synchronized. During this process, we find bugs, we fix bugs, we find performance issues, we fix performance issues, we find interesting potential features to investigate for the future, we start new development projects for future releases and all this goes back into the products. As more and more customers, for Oracle Linux, are running larger and larger, faster and faster, more mission critical, higher available databases..., these things are just absolutely critical. Unrelated to what anyone's specific opinion is about tpc-c or tpc-h or specjenterprise etc, there is a ton of effort that the customer benefits from. All this work makes Oracle Linux and/or Oracle Solaris better platforms. Whether it's faster, more stable, more scalable, more resilient. It helps. Another point that I always like to re-iterate around UEK and UEK2 : we have our kernel source git repository online. Complete changelog of the mainline kernel, and our changes, easy to pull, easy to dissect, easy to know what went in when, why and where. No need to go log into a website and manually click through pages to hopefully discover changes or patches. No need to untar 2 tar balls and run a diff.

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• JS closures - Passing a function to a child, how should the shared object be accessed

  - by slicedtoad

  I have a design and am wondering what the appropriate way to access variables is. I'll demonstrate with this example since I can't seem to describe it better than the title. Term is an object representing a bunch of time data (a repeating duration of time defined by a bunch of attributes) Term has some print functionality but does not implement the print functions itself, rather they are passed in as anonymous functions by the parent. This would be similar to how shaders can be passed to a renderer rather than defined by the renderer. A container (let's call it Box) has a Schedule object that can understand and use Term objects. Box creates Term objects and passes them to Schedule as required. Box also defines the print functions stored in Term. A print function usually takes an argument and uses it to return a string based on that argument and Term's internal data. Sometime the print function could also use data stored in Schedule, though. I'm calling this data shared. So, the question is, what is the best way to access this shared data. I have a lot of options since JS has closures and I'm not familiar enough to know if I should be using them or avoiding them in this case. Options: Create a local "reference" (term used lightly) to the shared data (data is not a primitive) when defining the print function by accessing the shared data through Schedule from Box. Example: var schedule = function(){ var sched = Schedule(); var t1 = Term( function(x){ // Term.print() return (x + sched.data).format(); }); }; Bind it to Term explicitly. (Pass it in Term's constructor or something). Or bind it in Sched after Box passes it. And then access it as an attribute of Term. Pass it in at the same time x is passed to the print function, (from sched). This is the most familiar way for my but it doesn't feel right given JS's closure ability. Do something weird like bind some context and arguments to print. I'm hoping the correct answer isn't purely subjective. If it is, then I guess the answer is just "do whatever works". But I feel like there are some significant differences between the approaches that could have a large impact when stretched beyond my small example.

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• How to handle this unfortunately non hypothetical situation with end-users?

  - by User Smith

  I work in a medium sized company but with a very small IT force. Last year (2011), I wrote an application that is very popular with a large group of end-users. We hit a deadline at the end of last year and some functionality (I will call funcA from now on) was not added into the application that was wanted at the very end. So, this application has been running in live/production since the end of 2011, I might add without issue. Yesterday, a whole group of end-users started complaining that funcA that was never in the application is no longer working. Our priority at this company is that if an application is broken it must be fixed first prior to prioritized projects. I have compared code and queries and there is no difference since 2011, which is proofA. I then was able to get one of the end-users to admit that it never worked proofB, but since then that end-user has went back and said that it was working previously......I believe the horde of end-users has assimilated her. I have also reviewed my notes for this project which has requirements and daily updates regarding the project which specifically states, "funcA not achieved due to time constraints", proofC. I have spoken with many of them and I can see where they could be confused as they are very far from a programming background, but I also know they are intelligent enough to act in a group in order to bypass project prioritization orders in order to get functionality that they want to make their job easier. The worst part is is that now group think is setting in and my boss and the head of IT is actually starting to believe them, even though there is no code or query changes. As far as reviewing the state of the logic it is very cut and dry to the point of if 1 = 1, funcA will not work. So, this is the end of the description of my scenario, but I am trying not to get severally dinged on my performance metrics due to this which would essentially have me moved to fixing a production problem that doesn't exist that will probably take over 1 month. I am looking for direct answers to this question. This question is not for rants, polling, or discussions as this is not the format for StackExchange. Please don't downvote me too terribly it is pretty common on this specific site of stack, I am looking for honest answers to this situation and I couldn't find a forum more appropriate.

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• SQL Saturday 43 (Redmond, WA) Review

  - by BuckWoody

  Last Saturday (June 12th) we held a “SQL Saturday” (more about those here) event in Redmond, Washington. The event was held at the Microsoft campus, at the Mixer in our new location called the “Commons”. This is a mall-like area that we have on campus, and the Mixer is a large building with lots of meeting rooms, so it made a perfect location for the event. There was a sign to find the parking, and once there they had a sign to show how to get to the building. Since it’s a secure facility, Greg Larsen and crew had a person manning the door so that even late arrivals could get in. We had about 400 sign up for the event, and a little over 300 attend (official numbers later). I think we would have had a lot more, but the sun was out – and you just can’t underestimate the effect of that here in the Pacific Northwest. We joke a lot about not seeing the sun much, but when a day like what we had on Saturday comes around, and on a weekend at that, you’d cancel your wedding to go outside to play in the sun. And your spouse would agree with you for doing it. We had some top-notch speakers, including Clifford Dibble and Kalen Delany. The food was great, we had multiple sponsors (including Confio who seems to be at all of these) and the attendees were from all over the professional spectrum, from developers to BI to DBA’s. Everyone I saw was very engaged, and when I visited room-to-room I saw almost no one in the halls – everyone was in the sessions. I also saw a much larger Microsoft presence this year, especially from Dan Jones’ team. I had a great turnout at my session, and yes, I was wearing an Oracle staff shirt. I did that because I wanted to show that the session I gave on “SQL Server for the Oracle DBA” was non-marketing – I couldn’t exactly bash Oracle wearing their colors! These events are amazing. I can’t emphasize enough how much I appreciate the volunteers and how much work they put into these events, and to you for coming. If you’re reading this and you haven’t attended one yet, definitely find out if there is one in your area – and if not, start one. It’s a lot of work, but it’s totally worth it.       Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Simplifying Human Capital Management with Mobile Applications

  - by HCM-Oracle

  By Aaron Green If you're starting to think 'mobility' is a recurring theme in your reading, you'd be right. For those who haven't started to build organisational capabilities to leverage it, it's fair to say you're late to the party. The good news: better late than never. Research firm eMarketer says the worldwide smartphone audience will total 1.75 billion this year, while communications technology and services provider Ericsson suggests smartphones will triple to 5.6 billion globally by 2019. It should be no surprise, smart phone adoption is reaching the farthest corners of the globe; the subsequent impact of enterprise applications enabled by these devices is driving business performance improvement and will continue to do so. Companies using advanced workforce analytics can add significantly to the bottom line, while impacting customer satisfaction, quality and productivity. It's a statement that makes most business leaders sit forward in their chairs. Achieving these three standards is like sipping The Golden Elixir for the business world. No-one would argue their importance. So what are 'advanced workforce analytics?' Simply, they're unprecedented access to workforce trends and performance markers. Many are made possible by a mobile world and the enterprise applications that come with it on smart devices. Some refer to it as 'the consumerisation of IT'. As this phenomenon has matured and become more widely appreciated it has impacted the spectrum of functional units within an enterprise differently, but powerfully. Whether it's sales, HR, marketing, IT, or operations, all have benefited from a more mobile approach. It has been the catalyst for improvement in, and management of, the employee experience. The net result of which is happier customers. The obvious benefits but the lesser realised impact Most people understand that mobility allows for greater efficiency and productivity, collaboration and flexibility, but how that translates into business outcomes within the various functional groups is lesser known. In actuality mobility has helped galvanise partnerships between cross-functional groups within the enterprise. Where in some quarters it was once feared mobility could fragment a workforce, its rallying cry of support is coming from what you might describe as an unlikely source - HR. As the bedrock of an enterprise, it is conceivable HR might contemplate the possible negative impact of a mobile workforce that no-longer sits in an office, at the same desks every day. After all, who would know what they were doing or saying? How would they collaborate? It's reasonable to see why HR might have a legitimate claim to try and retain as much 'perceived control' as possible. The reality however is mobility has emancipated human capital and its management. Mobility and enterprise applications are expediting decision making. Google calls it Zero Moment of Truth, or ZMOT. It enables smoother operation and can contribute to faster growth. From a collaborative perspective, with the growing use of enterprise social media, which in many cases is being driven by HR, workforce planning and the tangible impact of change is much easier to map. This in turn provides a platform from which individuals and teams can thrive. With more agility and ability to anticipate, staff satisfaction and retention is higher, and real time feedback constant. The management team can save time, energy and costs with more accurate data, which is then intelligently applied across the workforce to truly engage with staff, customers and partners. From a human capital management (HCM) perspective, mobility can help you close the loop on true talent management. It can enhance what managers can offer and what employees can provide in return. It can create nested relationships and powerful partnerships. IT and HR - partners and stewards of mobility One effect of enterprise mobility is an evolution in the nature of the relationship between HR and IT from one of service provision to partnership. The reason for the dynamic shift is largely due to the 'bring your own device' (BYOD) movement, which is transitioning to a 'bring your own application' (BYOA) scenario. As enterprise technology has in some ways reverse-engineered its solutions to help manage this situation, the partnership between IT (the functional owner) and HR (the strategic enabler) is deeply entrenched. And it has to be. The CIO and the HR leader are faced with compliance and regulatory issues and concerns around information security and personal privacy on a daily basis, complicated by global reach and varied domestic legislation. There are tens of thousands of new mobile apps entering the market each month and, unlike many consumer applications which get downloaded but are often never opened again after initial perusal, enterprise applications are being relied upon by functional groups, not least by HR to enhance people management. It requires a systematic approach across all applications in use within the enterprise in order to ensure they're used to best effect. No turning back, and no desire to With real time analytics on performance and the ability for immediate feedback, there is no turning back for managers. In my experience with Oracle, our customers' operational efficiency is at record levels. It's clear as a result of the combination of individual KPIs and organisational goals, CIOs have been able to give HR leaders the ability to build predictive models that feed into an enterprise organisations' evolving strategy. It also helps them ensure regulatory compliance much more easily. Once an arduous task, with mobile enabled automation and quality data, compliance is simpler. Their world has changed for the better. For the CIO, mobility also assists them to optimise performance. While it doesn't come without challenges, mobile-enabled applications and the native experience users have with them means employees don't need high-level technical expertise to train users. It reduces the training and engagement required from the IT team so they can focus on other things that deliver value to the bottom line; all the while lowering the cost of assets and related maintenance work by simplifying processes. Rewards of a mobile enterprise outweigh risks With mobile tools allowing us to increasingly integrate our personal and professional lives, terms like "office hours" are becoming irrelevant, so work/life balance is a cultural must. Enterprises are expected to offer tools that enable workers to access information from anywhere, at any time, from any device. Employees want simplicity and convenience but it doesn't stop at private enterprise. This is a societal shift. Governments, which traditionally have been known to be slower to adopt newer technology, are also offering support for local businesses to go mobile. Several state government websites have advice on how to create mobile apps and more. And as recently as last week the Victorian Minister for Technology Gordon Rich-Phillips unveiled his State government's ICT roadmap for the next two years, which details an increased use of the public cloud, as well as mobile communications, and improved access to online data-sets. Tech giants are investing significantly in solutions designed to simplify mobile deployment and enablement. The mobility trend is creating a wave of change in the industry and driving transformation in the enterprise. If you're not on that wave, the business risk continues to rise as your competitiveness drops. Aaron is the Vice President of HCM Strategy at Oracle Corporation where he is responsible for researching and identifying emerging trends in the practice of Human Resources and works to deliver industry-leading technology solutions. Other responsibilities include, ownership of Oracle's innovative HCM solutions across JAPAC and enabling organisations to transform and modernise their workforce tools. Follow him on Twitter @aaronjgreen

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• Hadoop, NOSQL, and the Relational Model

  - by Phil Factor

  (Guest Editorial for the IT Pro/SysAdmin Newsletter)Whereas Relational Databases fit the world of commerce like a glove, it is useless to pretend that they are a perfect fit for all human endeavours. Although, with SQL Server, we’ve made great strides with indexing text, in processing spatial data and processing markup, there is still a problem in dealing efficiently with large volumes of ephemeral semi-structured data. Key-value stores such as Cassandra, Project Voldemort, and Riak are of great value for ephemeral data, and seem of equal value as a data-feed that provides aggregations to an RDBMS. However, the Document databases such as MongoDB and CouchDB are ideal for semi-structured data for which no fixed schema exists; analytics and logging are obvious examples. NoSQL products, such as MongoDB, tackle the semi-structured data problem with panache. MongoDB is designed with a simple document-oriented data model that scales horizontally across multiple servers. It doesn’t impose a schema, and relies on the application to enforce the data structure. This is another take on the old ‘EAV’ problem (where you don’t know in advance all the attributes of a particular entity) It uses a clever replica set design that allows automatic failover, and uses journaling for data durability. It allows indexing and ad-hoc querying. However, for SQL Server users, the obvious choice for handling semi-structured data is Apache Hadoop. There will soon be an ODBC Driver for Apache Hive .and an Add-in for Excel. Additionally, there are now two Hadoop-based connectors for SQL Server; the Apache Hadoop connector for SQL Server 2008 R2, and the SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse (PDW) connector. We can connect to Hadoop process the semi-structured data and then store it in SQL Server. For one steeped in the culture of Relational SQL Databases, I might be expected to throw up my hands in the air in a gesture of contempt for a technology that was, judging by the overblown journalism on the subject, about to make my own profession as archaic as the Saggar makers bottom knocker (a potter’s assistant who helped the saggar maker to make the bottom of the saggar by placing clay in a metal hoop and bashing it). However, on the contrary, I find that I'm delighted with the advances made by the NoSQL databases in the past few years. Having the flow of ideas from the NoSQL providers will knock any trace of complacency out of the providers of Relational Databases and inspire them into back-fitting some features, such as horizontal scaling, with sharding and automatic failover into SQL-based RDBMSs. It will do the breed a power of good to benefit from all this lateral thinking.

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• Finding furthermost point in game world

  - by user13414

  I am attempting to find the furthermost point in my game world given the player's current location and a normalized direction vector in screen space. My current algorithm is: convert player world location to screen space multiply the direction vector by a large number (2000) and add it to the player's screen location to get the distant screen location convert the distant screen location to world space create a line running from the player's world location to the distant world location loop over the bounding "walls" (of which there are always 4) of my game world check whether the wall and the line intersect if so, where they intersect is the furthermost point of my game world in the direction of the vector Here it is, more or less, in code: public Vector2 GetFurthermostWorldPoint(Vector2 directionVector) { var screenLocation = entity.WorldPointToScreen(entity.Location); var distantScreenLocation = screenLocation + (directionVector * 2000); var distantWorldLocation = entity.ScreenPointToWorld(distantScreenLocation); var line = new Line(entity.Center, distantWorldLocation); float intersectionDistance; Vector2 intersectionPoint; foreach (var boundingWall in entity.Level.BoundingWalls) { if (boundingWall.Intersects(line, out intersectionDistance, out intersectionPoint)) { return intersectionPoint; } } Debug.Assert(false, "No intersection found!"); return Vector2.Zero; } Now this works, for some definition of "works". I've found that the further out my distant screen location is, the less chance it has of working. When digging into the reasons why, I noticed that calls to Viewport.Unproject could result in wildly varying return values for points that are "far away". I wrote this stupid little "test" to try and understand what was going on: [Fact] public void wtf() { var screenPositions = new Vector2[] { new Vector2(400, 240), new Vector2(400, -2000), }; var viewport = new Viewport(0, 0, 800, 480); var projectionMatrix = Matrix.CreatePerspectiveFieldOfView(MathHelper.PiOver4, viewport.Width / viewport.Height, 1, 200000); var viewMatrix = Matrix.CreateLookAt(new Vector3(400, 630, 600), new Vector3(400, 345, 0), new Vector3(0, 0, 1)); var worldMatrix = Matrix.Identity; foreach (var screenPosition in screenPositions) { var nearPoint = viewport.Unproject(new Vector3(screenPosition, 0), projectionMatrix, viewMatrix, worldMatrix); var farPoint = viewport.Unproject(new Vector3(screenPosition, 1), projectionMatrix, viewMatrix, worldMatrix); Console.WriteLine("For screen position {0}:", screenPosition); Console.WriteLine(" Projected Near Point = {0}", nearPoint.TruncateZ()); Console.WriteLine(" Projected Far Point = {0}", farPoint.TruncateZ()); Console.WriteLine(); } } The output I get on the console is: For screen position {X:400 Y:240}: Projected Near Point = {X:400 Y:629.571 Z:599.0967} Projected Far Point = {X:392.9302 Y:-83074.98 Z:-175627.9} For screen position {X:400 Y:-2000}: Projected Near Point = {X:400 Y:626.079 Z:600.7554} Projected Far Point = {X:390.2068 Y:-767438.6 Z:148564.2} My question is really twofold: what am I doing wrong with the unprojection such that it varies so wildly and, thus, does not allow me to determine the corresponding world point for my distant screen point? is there a better way altogether to determine the furthermost point in world space given a current world space location, and a directional vector in screen space?

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• How to determine the source of a request in a distributed service system?

  - by Kabumbus

  Map/Reduce is a great concept for sorting large quantities of data at once. What to do if you have small parts of data and you need to reduce it all the time? Simple example - choosing a service for request. Imagine we have 10 services. Each provides services host with sets of request headers and post/get arguments. Each service declares it has 30 unique keys - 10 per set. service A: name id ... Now imagine we have a distributed services host. We have 200 machines with 10 services on each. Each service has 30 unique keys in there sets. but now to find to which service to map the incoming request we make our services post unique values that map to that sets. We can have up to or more than 10 000 such values sets on each machine per each service. service A machine 1 name = Sam id = 13245 ... service A machine 1 name = Ben id = 33232 ... ... service A machine 100 name = Ron id = 777888 ... So we get 200 * 10 * 30 * 30 * 10 000 == 18 000 000 000 and we get 500 requests per second on our gateway each containing 45 items 15 of which are just noise. And our task is to find a service for request (at least a machine it is running on). On all machines all over cluster for same services we have same rules. We can first select to which service came our request via rules filter 10 * 30. and we will have 200 * 30 * 10 000 == 60 000 000. So... 60 mil is definitely a problem... I hope to get on idea of mapping 30 * 10 000 onto some artificial neural network alike Perceptron that outputs 1 if 30 words (some hashes from words) from the request are correct or if less than Perceptron should return 0. And I’ll send each such Perceptron for each service from each machine to gateway. So I would have a map Perceptron <-> machine for each service. Can any one tall me if my Perceptron idea is at least “sane”? Or normal people do it some other way? Or if there are better ANNs for such purposes?

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• PASS Summit 2010 BI Workshop Feedbacks

  - by Davide Mauri

  As many other speakers already did, I’d like to share with the SQL Community the feedback of my PASS Summit 2010 Workshop. For those who were not there, my workshop was the “BI From A-Z” and the main objective of that workshop was to introduce people in the BI world not only from a technical point of view but insist a lot on the methodological and “engineered” approach. The will to put more engineering in the IT (and specially in the BI field) is something that has been growing stronger and stronger in me every day for of this last 5 years since is simply envy the fact that Airbus, Fincatieri, BMW (just to name a few) can create very complex machine “just” using putting people together and giving them some rules to follow (Of course this is an oversimplification but I think you get what I mean). The key point of engineering is that, after having defined the project blueprint, you have the possibility to give to a huge number of people, the rules to follow, the correct tools in order to implement the rules easily and semi-automatically and a way to measure the quality of the results. Could this be done in IT? Very big question, so my scope is now limited to BI. So that’s the main point of my workshop: and entry-level approach to BI (level was 200) in order to allow attendees to know the basics, to understand what tools they should use for which purpose and, above all, a set of rules and tools in order to make a BI solution scalable in terms of people working on it, while still maintaining a very good quality. All done not focusing only on the practice but explaining the theory behind to see how it can help *a lot* to build a correct solution despite the technology used to implement it. The idea is to reach a point where more then 70% of the work done to create a BI solution can be reused even if technologies changes. This is a very demanding challenge nowadays with the coming of Denali and its column-aligned storage and the shiny-new DAX language. As you may understand I was looking forward to get the feedback since you may have noticed that there’s a lot of “architectural” stuff in IT but really nothing on “engineering”. So how the session could be perceived by the attendees was really unknown to me. The feedback could also give a good indication if the need of more “engineering” is something I feel only by myself or if is something more broad. I’m very happy to be able to say that the overall score of 4.75 put my workshop in the TOP 20 session (on near 200 sessions)! Here’s the detailed evaluations: How would you rate the usefulness of the information presented in your day-to-day environment? 4.75 Answer:    # of Responses 3    1         4    12        5    42               How would you rate the Speaker's presentation skills? 4.80 Answer:    # of Responses 3 : 1         4 : 9         5 : 45               How would you rate the Speaker's knowledge of the subject? 4.95 Answer:    # of Responses 4 :  3         5 : 52               How would you rate the accuracy of the session title, description and experience level to the actual session? 4.75 Answer:    # of Responses 3 : 2         4 : 10         5 : 43               How would you rate the amount of time allocated to cover the topic/session? 4.44 Answer:    # of Responses 3 : 7         4 : 17        5 : 31               How would you rate the quality of the presentation materials? 4.62 Answer:    # of Responses 4 : 21        5 : 34 The comments where all very positive. Many of them asked for more time on the subject (or to shorten the very last topics). I’ll make treasure of these comments and will review the content accordingly. We’ll organize a two-day classes on this topic, where also more examples will be shown and some arguments will be explained more deeply. I’d just like to answer a comment that asks how much of what I shown is “universally applicable”. I can tell you that all of our BI project follow these rules and they’ve been applied to different markets (Insurance, Fashion, GDO) with different people and different teams and they allowed us to be “Adaptive” against the customer. The more the rules are well defined and the more there are tools that supports their implementations, the easier is to add new people to the project and to add or change solution features. Think of a car. How come that almost any mechanic can help you to fix a problem? Because they know what to expect. Because there a rules that allow them to identify the problem without having to discover each time how the car has been implemented build. And this is of course also true for car upgrades/improvements. Last but not least: thanks a lot to everyone for coming!

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• Am I deluding myself? Business analyst transition to programmer

  - by Ryan

  Current job: Working as the lead business analyst for a Big 4 firm, leading a team of developers and testers working on a large scale re-platforming project (4 onshore dev, 4 offshore devs, several onshore/offshore testers). Also work in a similar capacity on other smaller scale projects. Extent of my role: Gathering/writing out requirements, creating functional specifications, designing the UI (basically mapping out all front-end aspects of the system), working closely with devs to communicate/clarify requirements and come up with solutions when we hit roadblocks, writing test cases (and doing much of the testing), working with senior management and key stakeholders, managing beta testers, creating user guides and leading training sessions, providing key technical support. I also write quite a few macros in Excel using VBA (several of my macros are now used across the entire firm, so there are maybe around 1000 people using them) and use SQL on a daily basis, both on the SQL compact files the program relies on, our SQL Server data and any Access databases I create. The developers feel that I am quite good in this role because I understand a lot about programming, inherent system limitations, structure of the databases, etc so it's easier for me to communicate ideas and come up with suggestions when we face problems. What really interests me is developing software. I do a fair amount of programming in VBA and have been wanting to learn C# for awhile (the dev team uses C# - I review code occasionally for my own sake but have not had any practical experience using it). I'm interested in not just the business process but also the technical side of things, so the traditional BA role doesn't really whet my appetite for the kind of stuff I want to do. Right now I have a few small projects that managers have given me and I'm finding new ways to do them (like building custom Access applications), so there's a bit here and there to keep me interested. My question is this: what I would like to do is create custom Excel or Access applications for small businesses as a freelance business (working as a one-man shop; maybe having an occasional contractor depending on a project's complexity). This would obviously start out as a part-time venture while I have a day job, but eventually become a full-time job. Am I deluding myself to thinking I can go from BA/part-time VBA programmer to making a full-time go of a freelance business (where I would be starting out just writing custom Excel/Access apps in VBA)? Or is this type of thing not usually attempted until someone gains years of full-time programming experience? And is there even a market for these types of applications amongst small businesses (and maybe medium-sized) businesses?

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• How are Reads Distributed in a Workload

  - by Bill Graziano

  People have uploaded nearly one millions rows of trace data to TraceTune.  That’s enough data to start to look at the results in aggregate.  The first thing I want to look at is logical reads.  This is the easiest metric to identify and fix. When you upload a trace, I rank each statement based on the total number of logical reads.  I also calculate each statement’s percentage of the total logical reads.  I do the same thing for CPU, duration and logical writes.  When you view a statement you can see all the details like this: This single statement consumed 61.4% of the total logical reads on the system while we were tracing it.  I also wanted to see the distribution of reads across statements.  That graph looks like this: On average, the highest ranked statement consumed just under 50% of the reads on the system.  When I tune a system, I’m usually starting in one of two modes: this “piece” is slow or the whole system is slow.  If a given piece (screen, report, query, etc.) is slow you can usually find the specific statements behind it and tune it.  You can make that individual piece faster but you may not affect the whole system. When you’re trying to speed up an entire server you need to identity those queries that are using the most disk resources in aggregate.  Fixing those will make them faster and it will leave more disk throughput for the rest of the queries. Here are some of the things I’ve learned querying this data: The highest ranked query averages just under 50% of the total reads on the system. The top 3 ranked queries average 73% of the total reads on the system. The top 10 ranked queries average 91% of the total reads on the system. Remember these are averages across all the traces that have been uploaded.  And I’m guessing that people mainly upload traces where there are performance problems so your mileage may vary. I also learned that slow queries aren’t the problem.  Before I wrote ClearTrace I used to identify queries by filtering on high logical reads using Profiler.  That picked out individual queries but those rarely ran often enough to put a large load on the system. If you look at the execution count by rank you’d see that the highest ranked queries also have the highest execution counts.  The graph would look very similar to the one above but flatter.  These queries don’t look that bad individually but run so often that they hog the disk capacity. The take away from all this is that you really should be tuning the top 10 queries if you want to make your system faster.  Tuning individually slow queries will help those specific queries but won’t have much impact on the system as a whole.

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• "Hello World" in C++ AMP

  - by Daniel Moth

  Some say that the equivalent of "hello world" code in the data parallel world is matrix multiplication :) Below is the before C++ AMP and after C++ AMP code. For more on what it all means, watch the recording of my C++ AMP introduction (the example below is part of the session). void MatrixMultiply(vector<float>& vC, const vector<float>& vA, const vector<float>& vB, int M, int N, int W ) { for (int y = 0; y < M; y++) { for (int x = 0; x < N; x++) { float sum = 0; for(int i = 0; i < W; i++) { sum += vA[y * W + i] * vB[i * N + x]; } vC[y * N + x] = sum; } } } Change the function to use C++ AMP and hence offload the computation to the GPU, and now the calling code (which I am not showing) needs no changes and the overall operation gives you really nice speed up for large datasets…  #include <amp.h> using namespace concurrency; void MatrixMultiply(vector<float>& vC, const vector<float>& vA, const vector<float>& vB, int M, int N, int W ) { array_view<const float,2> a(M, W, vA); array_view<const float,2> b(W, N, vB); array_view<writeonly<float>,2> c(M, N, vC); parallel_for_each( c.grid, [=](index<2> idx) mutable restrict(direct3d) { float sum = 0; for(int i = 0; i < a.x; i++) { sum += a(idx.y, i) * b(i, idx.x); } c[idx] = sum; } ); } Again, you can understand the elements above, by using my C++ AMP presentation slides and recording… Stay tuned for more… Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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