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• Is it worth to learn Experimental Languages?

  - by Xander Lamkins

  I'm a young programmer who desires to work in the field someday as a programmer. I know Java, VB.NET and C#. I want to learn a new language (as I programmer, I know that it is valuable to extend what I know - to learn languages that make you think differently). I took a look online to see what languages were common. Everybody knows C and C++ (even those muggles who know so little about computers in general), so I thought, maybe I should push for C. C and C++ are nice but they are old. Things like Haskell and Forth (etc. etc. etc.) are old and have lost their popularity. I'm scared of learning C (or even C++) for this same reason. Java is pretty old as well and is slow because it's run by the JVM and not compiled to native code. I've been a Windows developer for quite a while. I recently started using Java - but only because it was more versatile and spreadable to other places. The problem is that it doesn't look like a very usable language for these reasons: It's most used purpose is for web application and cellphone apps (specifically Android) As far as actual products made with it, the only things that come to mind are Netbeans, Eclipse (hurrah for making and IDE with the language the IDE is for - it's like making a webpage for writing HTML/CSS/Javascript), and Minecraft which happens to be fun but laggy and bipolar as far as computer spec. support. Other than that it's used for servers but heck - I don't only want to make/configure servers. The .NET languages are nice, however: People laugh if I even mention VB.NET or C# in a serious conversation. It isn't cross-platform unless you use MONO (which is still in development and has some improvements to be made). Lacks low level stuff because, like Java with the JVM, it is run/managed by the CLR. My first thought was learning something like C and then using it to springboard into C++ (just to make sure I would have a strong understanding/base), but like I said earlier, it's getting older and older by the minute. What I've Looked Into Fantom looks nice. It's like a nice middleman between my two favorite languages and even lets me publish between the two interchangeably, but, unlike what I want, it compiles to the CLR or JVM (depending on what you publish it to) instead of it being a complete compile. D also looks nice. It seems like a very usable language and from multiple sources it appears to actually be better than C/C++. I would jump right with it, but I'm still unsure of its success because it obviously isn't very mainstream at this point. There are a couple others that looked pretty nice that focused on other things such as Opa with web development and Go by GOOGLE. My Question Is it worth learning these "experimental" languages? I've read other questions that say that if you aren't constantly learning languages and open to all languages that you aren't in the right mindset for programming. I understand this and I still might not quite be getting it, but in truth, if a language isn't going to become mainstream, should I spend my time learning something else? I don't want to learn old (or any going to soon be old) programming languages. I know that many people see this as something important, *but would any of you ever actually consider (assuming you didn't already know) FORTRAN? My goal is to stay current to make sure I'm successful in the future. Disclaimer Yes, I am a young programmer, so I probably made a lot of naive statements in my question. Feel free to correct me on ANYTHING! I have to start learning somewhere so I'm sure a lot of my knowledge is sketchy enough to have caused to incorrect statements or flaws in my thinking. Please leave any feelings you have in the comments.

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• Business School graduate joins Oracle

  - by jessica.ebbelaar(at)oracle.com

  My name is Mathias, I work as an Applications Inside Sales Rep for the French market, and I’d like to give you a brief snapshot of my experience at Oracle. First things first, how did you hear about Oracle? Where have you seen the sharp and recognizable red logo? Was it in Charles de Gaulle Airport when your eyes crossed the 20-metre banner with a picture of a strange big machine in the middle? Was it through reading the Forbes 10 top IT companies worldwide ranking? Or is it because IT is your thing and you cannot but know one of the “big four”? Meeting with a Grenoble Alumnus My story is a little different. My plan was to work in sales, in the IT industry. I had heard about Oracle, but my opinion at the time was that this kind of multinational company was way out of reach for a young graduate, even with high enthusiasm and great excitement to be (finally) on the job market. So, I was really surprised when I had an interesting conversation with a top alumnus of my business school. We were at the Grenoble Ecole de Management graduation ceremony (our graduation!), and before the party got really started, I got to chat with her. She told me of the great experience she was getting by living and working in Dublin. She had already figured it all out: “you work with another 100 young people from 10 different nationalities across Europe, you can be based in Dublin, but then once you work really hard you can move to Malaga Spain or other BUs around the world, you can work with different lines of business and learn about new “techy” and business oriented products, move to the field in your home country or elsewhere, etc.” What, what, what? Moving around Europe, trained by the best sales coaches in the world, acquiring strong IT knowledge and getting on board with one of fastest-growing and most watched companies in the world? Well, I was in. The next day (OK, 3 days after, the time to recover), I sent her my CV, and 3 months later I started as a Business Development Consultant at Oracle in Dublin, representing the latest cloud based CRM across the French market. That was 15 months ago. Since then, I moved line of business twice, I’m always learning new things and working with different and senior stakeholders; I have attended hundreds of hours of sales and product training (priceless when you come from a business background); I passed the Dublin Institute of Technology Sales Certification through different trainings given onsite within Oracle; I’ve led projects based around social media and I’ve gotten involved within various sales deals going on my market. Despite all of these great things, two will remain in my spirit: the multiculturalism that I experience every day in the office, and the American style of management - more direct and open than what you can find in “regular French companies”. Sales Progression Board In May 2012, I passed what we call a ‘Sales Progression Board’ to be promoted to an Inside Sales position. I am now in charge of generating revenue through the sale of Oracle applications on my specific territory. Always keeping in my mind my personal ambition: going to the field one day. Interested to join Oracle in the same role as Mathias? Visit http://campus.oracle.com.

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• Is This Your Idea of Disaster Recovery?

  - by rickramsey

  Don't just make do with less. Protect what you've got. By, for instance, deploying Oracle Solaris 10 inside a zone cluster. "Wait," you say, "what is a zone cluster?" It is a zone deployed across different physical servers. "Who would do that!" you ask in a mild panic. Why, an upstanding sysadmin citizen interested in protecting his or her employer's investment with appropriate high availability and disaster recovery. If one server gets wiped out by Hurricane Sandy along with pretty much the entire East Coast of the USA, your zone continues to run on the other server(s). Provided you set them up in Edinburgh. This white paper (pdf) explains what a zone cluster is and how to use it. If a white paper reminds you of having to read War and Peace in school, just use this Oracle RAC and Solaris Cluster Cheat Sheet, instead. "But wait!" you exclaim. "I didn't realize Solaris 10 offered zone clusters!" I didn't, either! And in an earlier version of this blog post I said that zone clusters were only available with Oracle Solaris 11. But Karoly Vegh pointed me to the documentation for Oracle Solaris Cluster 3.3, which explains how to manage zone clusters in Oracle Solaris 10. Bite my fist! So, the point I was trying to make is not just that you can run Oracle Solaris 10 zone clusters, but that you can run them in an Oracle Solaris 11 environment. Now let's return to our conversation and pick up where we left off ... "Oh no! Whatever shall I do?" Fear not. Remember how Oracle Solaris 11 lets you create a Solaris 10 branded zone inside a system running Oracle Solaris 11? Well, the Solaris Cluster engineers thought that was a bang-up idea, and decided to extend Oracle Solaris Cluster so that you could run your Solaris 10 applications inside the protective cocoon of an Oracle Solaris 11 zone cluster. Take advantage of the installation improvements and network virtualization capabilities of Oracle Solaris 11 while still running your application on Oracle Solaris 10. You Luddite, you. That capability is in the latest release of Oracle Solaris Cluster, version 4.1, which became available last Friday. "Last Friday! Is it too late to get a copy?" You can still get a free copy from our download center (see below). And, if you'd like to know what other goodies the 4.1 release of Oracle Solaris Cluster provides, see: What's New In Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.1 (pdf) Free download Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.1 (SPARC or x86) Tech Article: How to Upgrade to Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.0, by Tim Read. As always, you can get the latest information about Oracle Solaris Cluster, plus technical how-to articles, documentation, and more from Oracle Solaris Cluster Resource Page for Sysadmins and Developers. And don't forget about the online launch of Oracle Solaris 11.1 and Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.1, scheduled for Nov 7. "I feel so much better, now!" Think nothing of it. That's what we're here for. - Rick Website Newsletter Facebook Twitter

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• Help Me Help You Fix That

  - by BuckWoody

  If you've been redirected here because you posted on a forum, or asked a question in an e-mail, the person wanted you to know how to get help quickly from a group of folks who are willing to do so - but whose time is valuable. You need to put a little effort into the question first to get others to assist. This is how to do that. It will only take you a moment to read... 1. State the problem succinctly in the title When an e-mail thread starts, or a forum post is the "head" of the conversation, you'll attract more helpers by using a descriptive headline than a vague one. This: "Driver for Epson Line Printer Not Installing on Operating System XYZ" Not this: "Can't print - PLEASE HELP" 2. Explain the Error Completely Make sure you include all pertinent information in the request. More information is better, there's almost no way to add too much data to the discussion. What you were doing, what happened, what you saw, the error message, visuals, screen shots, whatever you can include. This: "I'm getting error '5203 - Driver not compatible with Operating System since about 25 years ago' in a message box on the screen when I tried to run the SETUP.COM file from my older computer. It was a 1995 Compaq Proliant and worked correctly there.." Not this: "I get an error message in a box. It won't install." 3. Explain what you have done to research the problem If the first thing you do is ask a question without doing any research, you're lazy, and no one wants to help you. Using one of the many fine search engines you can most always find the answer to your problem. Sometimes you can't. Do yourself a favor - open a notepad app, and paste the URL's as you look them up. If you get your answer, don't save the note. If you don't get an answer, send the list along with the problem. It will show that you've tried, and also keep people from sending you links that you've already checked. This: "I read the fine manual, and it doesn't mention Operating System XYZ for some reason. Also, I checked the following links, but the instructions there didn't fix the problem: " Not this: <NULL> 4. Say "Please" and "Thank You" Remember, you're asking for help. No one owes you their valuable time. Ask politely, don't pester, endure the people who are rude to you, and when your question is answered, respond back to the thread or e-mail with a thank you to close it out. It helps others that have your same problem know that this is the correct answer. This: "I could really use some help here - if you have any pointers or things to try, I'd appreciate it." Not this: "I really need this done right now - why are there no responses?" This: "Thanks for those responses - that last one did the trick. Turns out I needed a new printer anyway, didn't realize they were so inexpensive now." Not this: <NULL> There are a lot of motivated people that will help you. Help them do that.

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• WiX, MSDeploy and an appealing configuration/deployment paradigm

  - by alexhildyard

  I do a lot of application and server configuration; I've done this for many years and have tended to view the complexity of this strictly in terms of the complexity of the ultimate configuration to be deployed. For example, specific APIs aside, I would tend to regard installing a server certificate as a more complex activity than, say, copying a file or adding a Registry entry.My prejudice revolved around the idea of a sequential deployment script that not only had the explicit prescription to apply a specific server configuration, but also made the implicit presumption that the server in question was in a good known state. Scripts like this fail for hundreds of reasons -- the Default Website didn't exist; the application had already been deployed; the application had already been partially deployed and failed to rollback fully, and so on. And so the problem is that the more complex the configuration activity, the more scope for error in any individual part of that activity, and therefore the greater the chance the server in question will not end up at exactly the desired configuration level.Recently I was introduced to a completely different mindset, which, for want of a better turn of phrase, I will call the "make it so" mindset. It's extremely simple both to explain and to implement. In place of the head-down, imperative script you used to use, you substitute a set of checks -- much like exception handlers -- around each configuration activity, starting with a check of the current system state. Thus the configuration logic becomes: "IF these services aren't started then start them, and IF XYZ website doesn't exist then create it, and IF these shares don't exist then create them, and IF these shares aren't permissioned in some particular way, then permission them so." This works. Really well, in my experience. Scenario 1: You want to get a system into a good known state; it's already in a good known state; you quickly realise there is nothing to do.Scenario 2: You want to get the system into a good known state; your script is flawed or the system is bust; it cannot be put into that state. You know exactly where (at least part of) the problem is and why.Scenario 3: You want to get the system into a good known state; people are fiddling around with the system just now. That's fine. You do what you can, and later you come back and try it againScenario 4: No one wants to deploy anything; they want you to prove that the previous deployment was successful. So you re-run the deployment script with the "-WhatIf" flag. It reports that there was nothing to change. There's your proof.I mentioned two technologies in the title -- MSI and MSDeploy. I am thinking specifically of the conversation that took place here. Having worked with both technologies, I think Rob Mensching's response is appropriately nuanced, and in essence the difference is this: sometimes your target is either to achieve a specific new server state, or to rollback to a known good one. Then again, your target may be to configure what you can, and to understand what you can't. Implicitly MSDeploy's "rollback" is simply to redeploy the previous version, whereas a well-crafted MSI will actively put your system into that state without further intervention. Either way, if all goes well it will leave you with a system in one of two states, whereas MSDeploy could leave your system in one of many states. The key is that MSDeploy and MSI are complementary technologies; which suits you best depends as much on Operational guidance as your Configuration remit.What I wanted to say was that I have always been for atomic, transactional-based configuration, but having worked with the "make it so" paradigm, I have been favourably impressed by the actual results. I'm tempted to put a more technical post up on this in due course.

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• Test your internet connection - Emtel Fixed Broadband

  Already at the begin of April, I had a phone conversation with my representative at Emtel Ltd. about some upcoming issues due to the ongoing construction work in my neighbourhood. Unfortunately, they finally raised the house two levels above ours, and of course this has to have a negative impact on the visibility between the WiMAX outdoor unit on the roof and the aimed access point at Medine. So, today I had a technical team here to do a site survey and to come up with potential solutions. Short version: It doesn't look good after all. The site survey Well, the two technicians did their work properly, even re-arranged the antenna to check the connection with another end point down at La Preneuse. But no improvements. Looks like we are out of luck since the construction next door hasn't finished yet and at the moment, it even looks like they are planning to put at least one more level on top. I really wonder about the sanity of the responsible bodies at the local district council. But that's another story. Anyway, the outdoor unit was once again pointed towards Medine and properly fixed with new cable guides (air from the sea and rust...). Both of them did a good job and fine-tuned the reception signal to a mere 3 over 9; compared to the original 7 over 9 I had before the daily terror started. The site survey has been done, and now it's up to Emtel to come up with (better) solutions. Well, I wouldn't mind to have an unlimited, symmetric 3G/UMTS or even LTE connection. Let's see what they can do... Testing the connection There are several online sites available which offer you to check certain aspects of your internet connection. Personally, I'm used to speedtest.net and it works very well. I think it is good and necessary to check your connection from time to time, and only a couple of days ago, I posted the following on Emtel's wall at Facebook (21.05.2013 - 14:06 hrs): Dear Emtel, could you eventually provide an answer on the miserable results of SpeedTest? I chose Rose Hill (Hosted by Emtel Ltd.) as testing endpoint... Sadly, no response to this. Seems that the marketing department is not willing to deal with customers on Facebook. Okay, over at speedtest.net you can use their Flash-based test suite to check your connection to quite a number of servers of different providers world-wide. It's actually very interesting to see the results for different end points and to compare them to each other. The results Following are the results of Rose Hill (hosted by Emtel) and respectively Frankfurt, Germany (hosted by Vodafone DE): Speedtest.net result of 30.05.2013 between Flic en Flac and Rose Hill, Mauritius (Emtel - Fixed Broadband) Speedtest.net result of 30.05.2013 between Flic en Flac and Frankfurt, Germany (Emtel - Fixed Broadband) Luckily, the results are quite similar in terms of connection speed; which is good. I'm currently on a WiMAX tariff called 'Classic Browsing 2', or Fixed Broadband as they call it now, which provides a symmetric line of 768 Kbps (or roughly 0.75 Mbps). In terms of downloads or uploads this means that I would be able to transfer files in either direction with approximately 96 KB/s. Frankly speaking, thanks to compression, my choice of browser and operating system I usually exceed this value and I have download rates up to 120 KB/s - not too bad after all. Only the ping times are a little bit of concern. Due to the difference in distance, or better said based on the number of hubs between the endpoints, they indicate the amount of time that it takes to send a package from your machine to the remote server and get a response back. A lower value is better, and usually the ping is less than 300 ms between Mauritius and Europe. The alternatives in Mauritius Not sure whether I should note this done because for my requirements there are no alternatives to Emtel WiMAX at the moment. It would be great to have your opinion on the situation of internet connectivity in Mauritius. Are there really alternatives? And if so, what are the conditions?

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• Do Great Work

  - by user12601034

  Have you ever attended an online conference and actually had a desire to attend all of it?? Yesterday I attended the first day of the Great Work MBA program, sponsored by Box of Crayons and hosted by Michael Bungay Stanier. The topic of the day was “Grounding Yourself,” and the day featured five speakers on five different topics. I have to admit that I started the first session with kind of a “blech” feeling that I didn’t really want to participate, but for some reason I did. So I listened to the first session, and I was hooked. I ended up listening to all of the sessions for the day, and I had some great take-aways from the sessions – my highlights included: The opposite of bravery isn’t fear, it’s settling. In essence, you need to be brave in order to accomplish anything. If you’re settling, you’re not being brave, and your accomplishments will likely be lackluster. Bravery requires confidence and permission. You need to work at being brave by taking small wins, build them up and then take slightly larger risks. Additionally, you need to “claim your own crown.” Nobody in the business world is going to give you permission to be a guru in X – you need to give yourself permission to become a guru in X and then do it. Fall in love with obstacles. Everyone is going to face some form of failure. One way to deal with this is to fall in love with solving the puzzle of obstacles. You don’t have to hit it if you can go around it. Understanding purpose brings out the best in people and the best people. As a leader, drawing in people who are passionate and highly motivated about their work creates velocity for your organization. Being clear about purpose is the first step in doing this. You must own your own story. Everything about you creates a “unique you” that is distinct from everyone else. As you take ownership of this, it becomes part of your strength. It’s not a strength if you’re running away from it. Focus on what’s right. Be aware of your tendency to interpret a situation a certain way and differentiate between helpful and unhelpful interpretations. Three questions for how to think differently: 1) Why? 2) Who says so? 3) What would happen if? These three questions can help you build alternative perspectives and options that can increase resiliency. Even though this first day was focused on “Grounding Yourself,” I see plenty of application in the corporate environment for both individuals and leaders of teams. To apply these highlights to my work environment, I would do the following: Understand the purpose – of my company, of my team and of my role on the team. If I know the purpose, I know what I need to bring to the table to make me, my team and my company successful. Declare your goals…your BEHAGS (big, hairy, audacious goals).Have the confidence to declare what you and/or your team is going to accomplish.Sure, you might have to re-state those goals down the line, but you can learn from that as well. Get creative about achieving your goals.Break down your obstacles by asking yourself what is going to stop you from achieving your goals and then, for each obstacles, ask those three questions:Why?Who says so? What would happen if? Focus on what’s right.I had a manager who asked us to write status reports every week.“Status” consisted of 1) What did I accomplish; 2) What will I accomplish next week; 3) How can my manager help me.The focus on our status report was always “what’s right”(“what’s wrong” was always a conversation at the point in time it was needed). I’m normally a skeptic of online webcasts/conferences, and I normally expect to take away maybe one or two ideas. I’m really glad, however, that I took the time to listen to all of the sessions yesterday, and I hope that my take-aways inspire you to think about how you might do great work also. --

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• Bowing to User Experience

  As a consumer of geeky news it is hard to check my Google Reader without running into two or three posts about Apples iPad and in particular the changes to the developer guidelines which seemingly restrict developers to using Apples Xcode tool and Objective-C language for iPad apps. One of the alternatives to Objective-C affected, is MonoTouch, an option with some appeal to me as it is based on the Mono implementation of C#. Seemingly restricted is the key word here, as far as I can tell, no official announcement has been made about its fate. For more details around MonoTouch for iPhone OS, check out Miguel de Icazas post: http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2010/Apr-28.html. These restrictions have provoked some outrage as the perception is that Apple is arrogantly restricting developers freedom to create applications as they choose and perhaps unwittingly shortchanging iPhone/iPad users who wont benefit from these now never-to-be-made great applications. Apples response has mostly been to say they are concentrating on providing a certain user experience to their customers, and to do this, they insist everyone uses the tools they approve. Which isnt a surprising line of reasoning given Apple restricts the hardware used and content of the apps already. The vogue term for this approach is curated, as in a benevolent museum director selecting only the finest artifacts for display or a wise gardener arranging the plants in a garden just so. If this is what a curated experience is like it is hard to argue that consumers are not responding. My iPhone is probably the most satisfying piece of technology I own. Coming from the Razr, it really was an revolution in how the form factor, interface and user experience all tied together. While the curated approach reinvented the smart phone genre, it is easy to forget that this is not a new approach for Apple. Macbooks and Macs are Apple hardware that run Apple software. And theyve been successful, but not quite in the same way as the iPhone or iPad (based on early indications). Why not? Well a curated approach can only be wildly successful if the curator a) makes the right choices and b) offers choices that no one else has. Although its advantages are eroding, the iPhone was different from other phones, a unique, focused, touch-centric experience. The iPad is an attempt to define another category of computing. Macs and Macbooks are great devices, but are not fundamentally a different user experience than a PC, you still have windows, file folders, mouse and keyboard, and similar applications. So the big question for Apple is can they hold on to their market advantage, continuing innovating in user experience and stay on top? Or are they going be like Xerox, and the rest of the world says thank you for the windows metaphor, now let me implement that better? It will be exciting to watch, with Android already a viable competitor and Microsoft readying Windows Phone 7. And to close the loop back to the restrictions on developing for iPhone OS. At this point the main target appears to be Adobe and Adobe Flash. Apples calculation is that a) they dont need those developers or b) the developers they want will learn Apples stuff anyway. My guess is that they are correct; that as much as I like the idea of developers having more options, I am not going to buy a competitors product to spite Apple unless that product is just as usable. For a non-technical consumer, I dont know that this conversation even factors into the buying decision. If it did, wed be talking about how Microsoft is trying to retake a slice of market share from the behemoth that is Linux.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Get More From Your Service Request

  - by Get Proactive Customer Adoption Team

  Leveraging Service Request Best Practices Use best practices to get there faster. In the daily conversations I have with customers, they sometimes express frustration over their Service Requests. They often feel powerless to make needed changes, so their sense of frustration grows. To help you avoid some of the frustration you might feel in dealing with your Service Requests (SR), here are a few pointers that come from our best practice discussions. Be proactive. If you can anticipate some of the questions that Support will ask, or the information they may need, try to provide this up front, when you log the SR. This could be output from the Remote Diagnostic Agent (RDA), if this is a database issue, or the output from another diagnostic tool, if you’re an EBS customer. Any information you can supply that helps us understand the situation better, helps us resolve the issue sooner. As you use some of these tools proactively, you might even find the solution to the problem before you log an SR! Be right. Make sure you have the correct severity level. Since you select the initial severity level, it’s easy to accept the default without considering how significant this may be. Business impact is the driving factor, so make sure you take a moment to select the severity level that is appropriate to the situation. Also, make sure you ask us to change the severity level, should the situation dictate. Be responsive! If this is an important issue to you, quickly follow up on any action plan submitted to you by Oracle Support. The support engineer assigned to your Service Request will be able to move the issue forward more aggressively when they have the needed information. This is crucial in resolving your issues in a timely manner. Be thorough. If there are five questions in the action plan, make sure you provide an answer for all five questions in one response, rather than trickling them in one at a time. This will allow the engineer to look at all of the information as a whole and to avoid multiple trips to your SR, saving valuable time and getting you a resolution sooner. Be your own advocate! You know your situation best; make sure Oracle Support understands both how and why this issue is important to you and your company. Use the escalation process if you're concerned that your SR isn't going the right direction, the right pace, or through the right person. Don't wait until you're frustrated and angry. An escalation is as simple as a quick conversation on the phone and can be amazingly effective in getting your issues back on track. The support manager you speak with is empowered to make any needed changes. Be our partner. You can make your support experience better. When your SR has been resolved, you may receive a survey request. This is intended to get your feedback about how your SR went and what we can do to improve your overall support experience. Oracle Support is here to help you. Our goal with any Service Request is to provide the best possible solution as quickly as possible. With your help, we’ll be able to do this with your Service Request too.  

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• Customer Loyalty vs. Customer Engagement: Who Cares?

  - by Jeb Dasteel-Oracle

  Have you read the recent Forbes OracleVoice blog titled Customer Loyalty is Dead. Long Live Engagement!? If you haven’t, take a look. This article prompted lots of conversation in the social realm. Many who read the article voiced their reactions to the headline and now I’m jumping in to add my view. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE Customer loyalty is still key. It’s the effect and engagement is the cause. We at least know that to be true for our customers. We are in an age where customers are demanding to be heard. We need them to be actively involved – or engaged – as well. Greater levels of customer engagement, properly targeted, positively correlate with satisfaction. Our data has shown us this over and over. Satisfied customers are more loyal and more willing to vocalize their satisfaction through referencing, and are more likely to purchase again, all of which in turn drives incremental revenue – from the customer doing the referencing AND the customer on the receiving end of that reference. Turning this around completely, if we begin to see the level of a customer’s engagement start to wane, this is an indicator that their satisfaction, loyalty, and future revenue are likely at risk. At Oracle, we’ve put in place many programs to target, encourage, and then track engagement, allowing us to measure engagement as a determinant of loyalty. Some of these programs include our Key Accounts, solution design and architectural, Executive Sponsorship, as well as executive advisory boards. Specific programs allow us to engage specific contacts within specific customer organizations (based on role) and then systematically track their engagement activities over time, along side of tracking customer satisfaction, loyalty, referenceability, and incremental revenue contribution. Continuous measurement of engagement allows us to better understand customer views of what it means to partner with a provider and adjust program participation to better meet the needs of the partnership. We can also track across customer segments, and design new programs that are even more effective than the ones we have in place today. In case you missed any of my previous Forbes articles, I’ve included links below for easy access. Award-Winning Companies Put Customers First The Power of Peer Networks: 5 Reasons to Get (and Stay) Involved Technology At Work: Traveling In Style Customer Central: 8 Strategies for Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business Technology at Work: Five Companies Doing IT Right /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• How can I work efficiently on a desktop sharing workflow?

  - by OSdave

  I am a freelance Magento developer, based in Spain. One of my clients is a Germany based web development company and they're asking me something I think it's impossible. OK, maybe not impossible but definitely not a preferred way of doing things. One of their clients has a Magento Entreprise installation, which is the paid (and I think proprietary) version of Magento. Their client has forbidden them to download the files from his server. My client is asking me now to study one particular module of the application in order to interact with it from a custom module I'll have to develop. As they have a read-only ssh access to their client's server, they came up with this solution: Set up a desktop/screen sharing session between one of their developer's station and mine, alongsides with a skype conversation. Their idea is that I'll say to the developer: show me file foo.php The developer will then open this foo.php file in his IDE. I'll have then to ask him to show me the bar method, the parent class, etc... Remember that it's a read-only session, so forget about putting a Zend_Debug::log() anywhere, and don't even think about a xDebug breakpoint (they don't use any kind of debugger, sic). Their client has also forbidden them to use any version control system... My first reaction when they explained to me this was (and I actually did say it outloud to them): Well, find another client. but they took it as a joke from me. I understand that in a business point of view rejecting a client is not a good practice, but I think that the condition of this assignment make it impossible to complete. At least according to my workflow. I mean, the way I work or learn a new framework/program is: download all files and copy of db on my pc create a git repository and a branch run the application locally use breakpoints use Zend_Debug::log() write the code and tests commit to git repo upload to (test/staging first if there is one, production if not) server I have agreed to try the desktop sharing session, although I think it will be a waste of time. On one hand I don't mind, they pay me for that time, but I know me and I don't like the sensation of loosing my time. On the other hand, I have other clients for whom I can work according to my workflow. I am about to say to them that I cannot (don't want to) do it. Well, I'll first try this desktop sharing session: maybe I'm wrong and it can actually work. But I like to consider myself as a professional, and I know that I don't know everything. So I try to keep an open mind and I am always willing to learn new stuff. So my questions are: Can this desktop-sharing workflow work? What should be done in order to take the most of it? Taking into account all the obstacles (geographic locations, no local, no git), is there another way for me to work on that project?

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• Cloud Fact for Business Managers #3: Where You Data Is, and Who Has Access to It Might Surprise You

  - by yaldahhakim

  Written by: David Krauss While data security and operational risk conversations usually happen around the desk of a CCO/CSO (chief compliance and/or security officer), or perhaps the CFO, since business managers are now selecting cloud providers, they need to be able to at least ask some high-level questions on the topic of risk and compliance.  While the report found that 76% of adopters were motivated to adopt cloud apps because of quick access to software, most of these managers found that after they made a purchase decision their access to exciting new capabilities in the cloud could be hindered due to performance and scalability constraints put forth  by their cloud provider.  If you are going to let your business consume their mission critical business applications as a service, then it’s important to understand who is providing those cloud services and what kind of performance you are going to get.  Different types of departments, companies and industries will all have unique requirements so it’s key to take this also into consideration.   Nothing puts a CEO in a bad mood like a public data breach or finding out the company lost money when customers couldn’t buy a product or service because your cloud service provider had a problem.  With 42% of business managers having seen a data security breach in their department associated directly with the use of cloud applications, this is happening more than you think.   We’ve talked about the importance of being able to avoid information silos through a unified cloud approach and platform.  This is also important when keeping your data safe and secure, and a key conversation to have with your cloud provider.  Your customers want to know that their information is protected when they do business with you, just like you want your own company information protected.   This is really hard to do when each line of business is running different cloud application services managed by different cloud providers, all with different processes and controls.   It only adds to the complexity, and the more complex, the more risky and the chance that something will go wrong. What about compliance? Depending on the cloud provider, it can be difficult at best to understand who has access to your data, and were your data is actually stored.  Add to this multiple cloud providers spanning multiple departments and it becomes very problematic when trying to comply with certain industry and country data security regulations.  With 73% of business managers complaining that having cloud data handled externally by one or more cloud vendors makes it hard for their department to be compliant, this is a big time suck for executives and it puts the organization at risk. Is There A Complete, Integrated, Modern Cloud Out there for Business Executives?If you are a business manager looking to drive faster innovation for your business and want a cloud application that your CIO would approve of, I would encourage you take a look at Oracle Cloud.  It’s everything you want from a SaaS based application, but without compromising on functionality and other modern capabilities like embedded business intelligence, social relationship management (for your entire business), and advanced mobile.  And because Oracle Cloud is built and managed by Oracle, you can be confident that your cloud application services are enterprise-grade.  Over 25 Million users and 10 thousands companies around the globe rely on Oracle Cloud application services everyday – maybe your business should too.  For more information, visit cloud.oracle.com. Additional Resources •    Try it: cloud.oracle.com•    Learn more: http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/features/complete-cloud/index.html•    Research Report: Cloud for Business Managers: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

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• Top 10 things I Learned this October

  - by rbewtra

  Last week, I attended the second largest IT conference. It was Gartner Symposium IT Expo held in Orlando, Florida. Earlier this month, I also had the opportunity to be part of the largest IT conference earlier in the month – Oracle Open World . Both were gatherings for senior IT professionals – CIOs, Senior IT  and Line of Business executives, and Developers. At both events, I learned a great deal about how companies are innovating and leveraging technology.  Here are my top 10 take-aways: #10.  Everyone is talking about Social, Mobile and Cloud  - Whether listening to Gartner discuss The Nexus of Forces or listening to Oracle’s Executive Vice President Hasan Rizvi deliver Oracle Fusion Middleware General Session  -- everyone is talking about Social, Mobile Cloud, and Information – Gartner, Oracle, our customers, partners, -- everyone.   #9. SOA is NOT dead, it is more important than ever before – it is an imperative!  #8. The big question around IT security is not “what will you do IF?” but “what will you do WHEN?” #7. General Colin Powell is an IT guy! Aside from having served as National Security Advisor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and as the U.S. Secretary of State. Gen Colin Powell was an inspirational speaker at the Gartner Symposium and it was clear he understands IT and the powerful impact it has on our society and our youth today. #6. Change will happen, we need to plan for it! #5. When everything is connected and just works, we have harnessed the power of technology. Middleware is at the heart of social, mobile and cloud. #4. Innovation is happening everywhere! Attending both IT events I was able to hear from companies of all sizes and across industries – including Tesco, Nike, Electronic Arts, Nintendo, International Speedway--  they all discussed how they are transforming their companies and their industries. #3. “One size fits all” strategy does not work instead it alienates IT and business. The PACE Layered Application Strategy is a framework that allows IT to have that Nexus of Forces conversation with the business. #2. To stay relevant, we need to hire the innovation workers, develop for that innovation layer. #1. My smartphone is the most valuable tool I own! Everyday with it, I am able to communicate via phone, email, text with family, friends, colleagues. I am able to look up directions to my hotel, make reservations at restaurants, view my calendar, take pictures, record messages, check in for flights and so much more…. I can never leave home without it. Look forward to catching up again soon! Additional Information Product Information on Oracle.com: Oracle Fusion Middleware Follow us on Twitter and Facebook Subscribe to our regular Fusion Middleware Newsletter

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• Stateful vs. Stateless Webservices

  - by chrsk

  Imagine a more complex CRUD application which has a three-tier-architecture and communicates over webservices. The client starts a conversation to the server and doing some wizard like stuff. To process the wizard the client needs feedback given by the server. We started a discussion about stateful or stateless webservices for this approach. I made some research combined with my own experience, which points me to the question mentioned later. Stateless webservices having the following properties (in our case): + high scalability + high availability + high speed + rapid testing - bloated contract - implementing more logic on server-side But we can cross out the first two points, our application doesn't needs high scalability and availability. So we come to the stateful webservice. I've read a bunch of blogs and forum posts and the most invented point implementing a stateful webservice was: + simplifies contract (protocol) - bad testing - runs counter to the basic architecture of http But doesn't almost all web applications have these bad points? Web applications uses cookies, query strings, session ids, and all the stuff to avoid the statelessness of http. So why is it that bad for webservices?

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• Error Handling in T-SQL Scalar Function

  - by hydroparadise

  Ok.. this question could easily take multiple paths, so I will hit the more specific path first. While working with SQL Server 2005, I'm trying to create a scalar funtion that acts as a 'TryCast' from varchar to int. Where I encounter a problem is when I add a TRY block in the function; CREATE FUNCTION u_TryCastInt ( @Value as VARCHAR(MAX) ) RETURNS Int AS BEGIN DECLARE @Output AS Int BEGIN TRY SET @Output = CONVERT(Int, @Value) END TRY BEGIN CATCH SET @Output = 0 END CATCH RETURN @Output END Turns out theres all sorts of things wrong with this statement including "Invalid use of side-effecting or time-dependent operator in 'BEGIN TRY' within a function" and "Invalid use of side-effecting or time-dependent operator in 'END TRY' within a function". I can't seem to find any examples of using try statements within a scalar function, which got me thinking, is error handling in a function is possible? The goal here is to make a robust version of the Convert or Cast functions to allow a SELECT statement carry through depsite conversion errors. For example, take the following; CREATE TABLE tblTest ( f1 VARCHAR(50) ) GO INSERT INTO tblTest(f1) VALUES('1') INSERT INTO tblTest(f1) VALUES('2') INSERT INTO tblTest(f1) VALUES('3') INSERT INTO tblTest(f1) VALUES('f') INSERT INTO tblTest(f1) VALUES('5') INSERT INTO tblTest(f1) VALUES('1.1') SELECT CONVERT(int,f1) AS f1_num FROM tblTest DROP TABLE tblTest It never reaches point of dropping the table because the execution gets hung on trying to convert 'f' to an integer. I want to be able to do something like this; SELECT u_TryCastInt(f1) AS f1_num FROM tblTest fi_num __________ 1 2 3 0 5 0 Any thoughts on this? Is there anything that exists that handles this? Also, I would like to try and expand the conversation to support SQL Server 2000 since Try blocks are not an option in that scenario. Thanks in advance.

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• Is HttpContextWrapper all that....useful?

  - by bakasan

  I've been going through the process of cleaning up our controller code to make each action as testable. Generally speaking, this hasn't been too difficult--where we have opportunity to use a fixed object, like say FormsAuthentication, we generally introduce some form of wrapper as appropriate and be on our merry way. For reasons not particularly germaine to this conversation, when it came to dealing with usage of HttpContext, we decided to use the newly created HttpContextWrapper class rather than inventing something homegrown. One thing we did introduce was the ability to swap in a HttpContextWrapper (like say, for unit testing). This was wholly inspired by the way Oren Eini handles unit testing with DateTimes (see article, a pattern we also use) public static class FooHttpContext { public static Func<HttpContextWrapper> Current = () => new HttpContextWrapper(HttpContext.Current); public static void Reset() { Current = () => new HttpContextWrapper(HttpContext.Current); } } Nothing particularly fancy. And it works just fine in our controller code. The kicker came when we go to write unit tests. We're using Moq as our mocking framework, but alas var context = new Mock<HttpContextWrapper>() breaks since HttpContextWrapper doesn't have a parameterless ctor. And what does it take as a ctor parameter? A HttpContext object. So I find myself in a catch 22. I'm using the prescribed way to decouple HttpContext--but I can't mock a value in because the original HttpContext object was sealed and therefore difficult to test. I can map HttpContextBase, which both derive from--but that doesn't really get me what I'm after. Am I just missing the point somewhere with regard to HttpContextWrapper? I can find ways to work around the issue, but we are kind of fond of remaining consistent in decoupling using the Function delegate pattern--but it seems like we're not fully grokking intent of the wrapper.

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• Personal projects competing with employers projects?

  - by jamesorwood123

  Recently at my place of employment it was discovered that I was developing an outside personal project (personal project being a project I have been working on, in my spare time, for my own purposes, using my personal equipment). My employer has an idea which is very similar to my outside project but has not been started, created, put out to market yet. When I originally started working for the company I signed a non-compete contract. My employer is now saying that because my outside/personal project is similar to theirs that I am now a competitor and breaching my original non-compete agreement. What I would like to know is where do I stand in this situation? Also my personal project has not been fully developed, nor is available to anyone other than myself. So if we both don’t have full/released products (full meaning put out to the public) are we actually competitors? There is going to be a meeting in the coming weeks to discuss this issue and would like to have a proper argument in place. I know some of this conversation is best held with a lawyer but I don’t have the money to do that yet. I’m not looking for full legal advice just anyone who has maybe experienced this or can give any advice. Thanks in advance!

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• Ruby on rails generates tests for you. Do those give a false sense of a safety net?

  - by Hamish Grubijan

  Disclaimer: I have not used RoR, and I have not generated tests. But, I will still dare to post this question. Quality Assurance is theoretically impossible to get 100% right in general (Undecidable problem ;), and it is hard in practice. So many developers do not understand that writing good automated tests is an art, and it is hard. When I hear that RoR generates the tests for you, I get very skeptical. It cannot be that easy. Testing is a general concept; it applies across languages. So does the concept of code contracts, it is similar for languages that support it. Code contracts do not generate themselves. The programmer must add the requirements and the promises manually, after doing some thinking about the algorithm / function. If a human gets it wrong, then the tools will propagate the error. Similarly with testing - it takes human judgement about what should happen. Tests do not write themselves, and we are far from the day when a business analyst can just have a conversation with a computer and tell it informally what the requirements are and have the computer do all the work. There is no magic ... how can RoR generate good tests for you? Please shed some light on this. Opinions are ok, for this is a community wiki. Thanks!

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• Enterprise SSO & Identity management / recommendations

  - by Maxim Veksler

  Hello Friends, We've discussed SSO before. I would like to re-enhance the conversation with defined requirements, taking into consideration recent new developments. In the past week I've been doing market research looking for answers to the following key issues: The project should should be: Requirements SSO solution for web applications. Integrates into existing developed products. has Policy based password security (Length, Complexity, Duration and co) Security Policy can be managed using a web interface. Customizable user interface (the password prompt and co. screens). Highly available (99.9%) Scalable. Runs on Red Hat Linux. Nice to have Contains user Groups & Roles. Written in Java. Free Software (open source) solution. None of the solutions came up so far are "killer choice" which leads me to think I will be tooling several projects (OWASP, AcegiSecurity + X??) hence this discussion. We are ISV delivering front-end & backend application suite. The frontend is broken into several modules which should act as autonomous unit, from client point of view he uses the "application" - which leads to this discussion regrading SSO. I would appreciate people sharing their experience & ideas regarding the appropriete solutions. Some solutions are interesting CAS Sun OpenSSO Enterprise JBoss Identity IDM JOSSO Tivoli Access Manager for Enterprise Single Sign-On Or more generally speaking this list Thank you, Maxim.

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• Detecting which MCUs to connect on an incoming conference

  - by Fábio Batista

  Hello, SO. I'm working with the OCS UCCAPI, developing a custom OCS client. I'm currently having a hard time detecting what "kind" of Conference my client is being invited to. Using the Office Communicator client, I can start "IM conferences" (by inviting more than 1 person and selecting "start a IM conversation") or "video conferences" (by selecting more than 1 person and selecting "start a video call"). The Office Communicator client, on the invitees' end, starts correctly the appropriate session (just IM, just Video or IM+Video). However, when receiving the conference invite on my custom client, there's no data about the kind of session I'm being invited. I need this information, in order to make a decision whether or not to connect to the AV MCU and capture/show video. I've tried already: When handling _IUccSessionManagerEvents.OnIncomingSession, parse the RemoteSessionDescription property on the UccIncomingInvitationEvent object: no luck, the only data about the conference modality is an element on the XML about the IM being enabled or not (<im available="true"> or <im available="false">), but nothing about the session having video available or not. When handling _IUccConferenceSessionEvents.OnEnter, check the Media property on the UccConferenceSession. Don't work, all media types are present (MESSAGE, AUDIO, VIDEO, DATA e TELEPHONY), regardless of the type of conference I'm being invited. Also when handling _IUccConferenceSessionEvents.OnEnter, check the Entities collection on the UccConferenceView object, to check which MCUs are enabled for this conference. Don't work either, all MUCs are listed as available (IM, AV, DATA and CONTROL), regardless of the type of conference I'm being invited. I'm running out of ideas. Some references I'm using: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb664307.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd170830.aspx Thanks a lot.

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• Feasibility of using Silverlight for web and windows client with common code base for data intensive

  - by Kabeer

  Hello. Recently in a conversation, someone suggested me to make use of Silverlight if I am targeting a web client and a windows client for the same application. This will cut down my effort for supporting the contrast in both presentation layers. Mine is a product, that will be deployed in enterprises. Both web and windows clients are desirable. With the above context, I have few queries: Is it advisable to adopt the recommended approach and whether this approach is becoming a trend? Besides, some configuration & deployment tweaking, will this significantly reduce effort on the presentation layer? Is there a possibility that my future prospects (for this product) will resist Silverlight footprint? Will I be able to make use of the ASP.Net MVC pattern? Will there be any performance implication for the web client? Will Silverlight support incremental load of controls? If my back-end includes SSRS, will I be able to harness all its front end features with Silverlight? Will I be able to support additional devices with same code base in future? Mine is a very data intensive application from both, data entry and reporting perspective. Is it advisable to use 3rd party controls (like Telerik) for improved user experience and developer productivity? Are their any professional quality open source Silverlight controls (library) available? Further, I seek information of best practices in the context I shared above.

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• Routing audio from GSM module to a Bluetooth HandsFree device

  - by Shaihi

  I have a system with the following setup: I use: Windows CE 6 R3 Microsoft's Bluetooth stack including all profiles Motorola H500 The Audio Gateway service is up and running (checked through services list in cmd) GSM Module is functional - I am able to set outgoing calls and to answer calls. Bluetooth is functional - the A2DP profile plays music to Motorola headphones (can't remember the model right now) I want to hold a conversation using a headset device. I have included all Bluetooth components in the catalog. I pair the device using the Control Panel applet. When I press the button on the Motorla device to answer a call I get a print by the Audio Gateway: BTAGSVC: ConnectionEvent. BTAGSVC: SCOListenThread_Int - Connection Event. BTAGSVC: ConnectionEvent. BTAGSVC: SCOListenThread_Int - Connection Event. BTAGSVC: ConnectionEvent. BTAGSVC: A Bluetooth peer device has connected to the Audio Gateway. BTAGSVC: Could not open registry key for BT Addr: 2. BTAGSVC: The peer device was not accepted since the user has never confirmed it as a device to be used. So my questions are as follows: What do I need to do to pair the device with the Audio Gateway? Once my device is paired, do I need to set anything else up? (except for the GSM module of course)

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• Passing string with (accidental) escape character loses character even though it's a raw string

  - by Steen

  I have a function with a python doctest that fails because one of the test input strings has a backslash that's treated like an escape character even though I've encoded the string as a raw string. My doctest looks like this: >>> infile = [ "Todo: fix me", "/** todo: fix", "* me", "*/", r"""//\todo stuff to fix""", "TODO fix me too", "toDo bug 4663" ] >>> find_todos( infile ) ['fix me', 'fix', 'stuff to fix', 'fix me too', 'bug 4663'] And the function, which is intended to extract the todo texts from a single line following some variation over a todo specification, looks like this: todos = list() for line in infile: print line if todo_match_obj.search( line ): todos.append( todo_match_obj.search( line ).group( 'todo' ) ) And the regular expression called todo_match_obj is: r"""(?:/{0,2}\**\s?todo):?\s*(?P<todo>.+)""" A quick conversation with my ipython shell gives me: In [35]: print "//\todo" // odo In [36]: print r"""//\todo""" //\todo And, just in case the doctest implementation uses stdout (I haven't checked, sorry): In [37]: sys.stdout.write( r"""//\todo""" ) //\todo My regex-foo is not high by any standards, and I realize that I could be missing something here. EDIT: Following Alex Martellis answer, I would like suggestions on what regular expression would actually match the blasted r"""//\todo fix me""". I know that I did not originally ask for someone to do my homework, and I will accept Alex's answer as it really did answer my question (or confirm my fears). But I promise to upvote any good solutions to my problem here :) I'm using Python 2.6.4 (r264:75706, Dec 7 2009, 18:45:15) Thank you for reading this far (If you skipped directly down here, I understand)

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• When should I be cautious using about data binding in .NET?

  - by Ben McCormack

  I just started working on a small team of .NET programmers about a month ago and recently got in a discussion with our team lead regarding why we don't use databinding at all in our code. Every time we work with a data grid, we iterate through a data table and populate the grid row by row; the code usually looks something like this: Dim dt as DataTable = FuncLib.GetData("spGetTheData ...") Dim i As Integer For i = 0 To dt.Rows.Length - 1 '(not sure why we do not use a for each here)' gridRow = grid.Rows.Add() gridRow(constantProductID).Value = dt("ProductID").Value gridRow(constantProductDesc).Value = dt("ProductDescription").Value Next '(I am probably missing something in the code, but that is basically it)' Our team lead was saying that he got burned using data binding when working with Sheridan Grid controls, VB6, and ADO recordsets back in the nineties. He's not sure what the exact problem was, but he remembers that binding didn't work as expected and caused him some major problems. Since then, they haven't trusted data binding and load the data for all their controls by hand. The reason the conversation even came up was because I found data binding to be very simple and really liked separating the data presentation (in this case, the data grid) from the in-memory data source (in this case, the data table). "Loading" the data row by row into the grid seemed to break this distinction. I also observed that with the advent of XAML in WPF and Silverlight, data-binding seems like a must-have in order to be able to cleanly wire up a designer's XAML code with your data. When should I be cautious of using data-binding in .NET?

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• Online voice chat: Why client-server model vs. peer-to-peer model?

  - by sstallings

  I am adding online voice chat to a Silverlight app. I've been reviewing current apps, services and SDKs found thru online searches and forums. I'm finding that the majority of these implement a client-server (C/S) model and I'm trying to understand why that model versus a peer-to-peer (PTP) model. To me PTP would be preferable because going direct between peers would be more efficient (fewer IP hops and no processing along the way by a server computer) and no need for a server and its costs and dependencies. I found some products offer the ability to switch from PTP to C/S if the PTP proves insufficient. As I thought more about it, I could see that C/S could be better if there are more than two peers involved in a conversation, then the server (supposedly with more bandwidth) could do a better job of relaying each peers outgoing traffic to the multiple other peers. In C/S many-to-many voice chatting, each peer's upstream broadband (which is where the bottleneck inherently is) would only have to carry each item of voice traffic once, then the server would use its superior bandwidth to relay the message to the multiple other peers. But, in a situation with one-on-one voice chatting it seems that PTP would be best. A server would not reduce each of the two peer's bandwidth requirements and would only add unnecessary overhead, dependency and cost. In one-on-one voice chatting: Am I mistaken on anything above? Would peer-to-peer be best? Would a server provide anything of value that could not be provided by a client-only program? Is there anything else that I should be taking into consideration? And lastly, can you recommend any Silverlight PTP or C/S voice chat products? Thanks in advance for any info.

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