Search Results

Search found 1092 results on 44 pages for 'transition'.

Page 34/44 | < Previous Page | 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41  | Next Page >

• MSSQLSERVER Will Not Start - Event ID 913 and 1814

  - by ThaKidd

  Hello ServerFault! I need some serious help. I have a major database server down and am scratching my head at how to fix it. The server was hit by rolling black outs last week in Dallas and sense then, Microsoft SQL 2005 SP2 will not start up. I am getting the following errors (both when starting the service and while trying to execute mssqlsrv.exe -c -f -m: Event Type: Error Event Source: MSSQLSERVER Event ID: 913 Could not find database ID 3. Database may not be activated yet or may be in transition. Reissue the query once the database is available. If you do not think this error is due to a database that is transitioning its state and this error continues to occur, contact your primary support provider. Please have available for review the Microsoft SQL Server error log and any additional information relevant to the circumstances when the error occurred. and... Event Type: Information Event Source: MSSQLSERVER Event ID: 1814 Could not create tempdb. You may not have enough disk space available. Free additional disk space by deleting other files on the tempdb drive and then restart SQL Server. Check for additional errors in the event log that may indicate why the tempdb files could not be initialized. I have tried to rename the tempdb.mdf to tempdb.old with no success. I have checked and have 193 GB of free hard drive space. What else might cause this problem? Could the server need a chkdsk ran on it or do I need to be looking at some area of the database server? Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.

  Read the article

• Shared firewall or multiple client specific firewalls?

  - by Tauren

  I'm trying to determine if I can use a single firewall for my entire network, including customer servers, or if each customer should have their own firewall. I've found that many hosting companies require each client with a cluster of servers to have their own firewall. If you need a web node and a database node, you also have to get a firewall, and pay another monthly fee for it. I have colo space with several KVM virtualization servers hosting VPS services to many different customers. Each KVM host is running a software iptables firewall that only allows specific ports to be accessed on each VPS. I can control which ports any given VPS has open, allowing a web VPS to be accessed from anywhere on ports 80 and 443, but blocking a database VPS completely to the outside and only allowing a certain other VPS to access it. The configuration works well for my current needs. Note that there is not a hardware firewall protecting the virtualization hosts in place at this time. However, the KVM hosts only have port 22 open, are running nothing except KVM and SSH, and even port 22 cannot be accessed except for inside the netblock. I'm looking at possibly rethinking my network now that I have a client who needs to transition from a single VPS onto two dedicated servers (one web and one DB). A different customer already has a single dedicated server that is not behind any firewall except iptables running on the system. Should I require that each dedicated server customer have their own dedicated firewall? Or can I utilize a single network-wide firewall for multiple customer clusters? I'm familiar with iptables, and am currently thinking I'll use it for any firewalls/routers that I need. But I don't necessarily want to use up 1U of space in my rack for each firewall, nor the power consumption each firewall server will take. So I'm considering a hardware firewall. Any suggestions on what is a good approach?

  Read the article

• ADSL to T1, Is it worth it for us?

  - by Jack Hickerson

  The company I work for has roughly 45-55 simultaneous users (local and remote/VPN) logged in at a given time. We currently subscribe to an ADSL connection but we have been experiencing slower upload/download speeds as our number of users increase. So, I have a few questions with regards to upgrading our connection to a t1 line. I am aware that the number of channels on a t1 line are much greater then that of our current ADSL connection, but I have heard that the number of active users on a t1 line should be no greater than ~30 for optimal performance. I would think this statement is dependent on what each user was using the connection for and could change depending on this variable. That being said, I have tried to break down how the line would be used in our organization based on our major departments: Sales (~60% of total users) - Everyday surfing, email, research, occasional streaming media Marketing (~15% of total users) - Heavy reliance on uploading/downloading, streaming media, file sharing Other (~25% of total users) - email, rare use of any connection intensive activities. I have considered keeping the ADSL for our local users and dedicating the t1 to our remote users (or vice versa) but the cost is significantly higher then what we had hoped for. All factors being equal (# of users, frequency of downloads/uploads from our current activities) Would you suspect a significant performance increase in making the transition to a t1 line from our current ADSL line? What are your thoughts or recommendations?

  Read the article

• My App crashes when launched on my Iphone

  - by Miky Mike

  hi guys, I have a problem here : my app crashed on my Iphone (JB) though Xcode doesn't complain about anything. The app works fine on the simulator though. However, there is this in the device logs : Thread 0 Crashed: 0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00078ac8 kill + 8 1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00078ab8 kill + 4 2 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00078aaa raise + 10 3 libSystem.B.dylib 0x0008d03a abort + 50 4 libstdc++.6.dylib 0x00044a20 __gnu_cxx::__verbose_terminate_handler() + 376 5 libobjc.A.dylib 0x00005958 _objc_terminate + 104 6 libstdc++.6.dylib 0x00042df2 _cxxabiv1::_terminate(void (*)()) + 46 7 libstdc++.6.dylib 0x00042e46 std::terminate() + 10 8 libstdc++.6.dylib 0x00042f16 __cxa_throw + 78 9 libobjc.A.dylib 0x00004838 objc_exception_throw + 64 10 CoreFoundation 0x0009fd0e +[NSException raise:format:arguments:] + 62 11 CoreFoundation 0x0009fd48 +[NSException raise:format:] + 28 12 Foundation 0x000125d8 -[NSURL(NSURL) initFileURLWithPath:] + 64 13 Foundation 0x000371e0 +[NSURL(NSURL) fileURLWithPath:] + 24 14 TheLearningMachine 0x00002d08 0x1000 + 7432 15 TheLearningMachine 0x00002e8c 0x1000 + 7820 16 TheLearningMachine 0x00002be4 0x1000 + 7140 17 TheLearningMachine 0x000029b6 0x1000 + 6582 18 UIKit 0x0000e47a -[UIApplication _callInitializationDelegatesForURL:payload:suspended:] + 766 19 UIKit 0x000049e0 -[UIApplication _runWithURL:payload:launchOrientation:statusBarStyle:statusBarHidden:] + 200 20 UIKit 0x0005dfd6 -[UIApplication handleEvent:withNewEvent:] + 1390 21 UIKit 0x0005d8fa -[UIApplication sendEvent:] + 38 22 UIKit 0x0005d330 _UIApplicationHandleEvent + 5104 23 GraphicsServices 0x00005044 PurpleEventCallback + 660 24 CoreFoundation 0x00034cdc __CFRUNLOOP_IS_CALLING_OUT_TO_A_SOURCE1_PERFORM_FUNCTION + 20 25 CoreFoundation 0x00034ca0 __CFRunLoopDoSource1 + 160 26 CoreFoundation 0x00027566 __CFRunLoopRun + 514 27 CoreFoundation 0x00027270 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 224 28 CoreFoundation 0x00027178 CFRunLoopRunInMode + 52 29 UIKit 0x000040fc -[UIApplication _run] + 364 30 UIKit 0x00002128 UIApplicationMain + 664 31 TheLearningMachine 0x00002948 0x1000 + 6472 32 TheLearningMachine 0x000028fc 0x1000 + 6396 Thread 1: 0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x0002d330 kevent + 24 1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x000d6b6c _dispatch_mgr_invoke + 88 2 libSystem.B.dylib 0x000d65bc _dispatch_queue_invoke + 96 3 libSystem.B.dylib 0x000d675c _dispatch_worker_thread2 + 120 4 libSystem.B.dylib 0x0007a67a _pthread_wqthread + 258 5 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00073190 start_wqthread + 0 Thread 2: 0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x0007b19c __workq_kernreturn + 8 1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x0007a790 _pthread_wqthread + 536 2 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00073190 start_wqthread + 0 Thread 3: 0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00000c98 mach_msg_trap + 20 1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00002d64 mach_msg + 44 2 CoreFoundation 0x00027c38 __CFRunLoopServiceMachPort + 88 3 CoreFoundation 0x000274c2 __CFRunLoopRun + 350 4 CoreFoundation 0x00027270 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 224 5 CoreFoundation 0x00027178 CFRunLoopRunInMode + 52 6 WebCore 0x000024e2 RunWebThread(void*) + 362 7 libSystem.B.dylib 0x0007a27e _pthread_start + 242 8 libSystem.B.dylib 0x0006f2a8 thread_start + 0 Thread 0 crashed with ARM Thread State: r0: 0x00000000 r1: 0x00000000 r2: 0x00000001 r3: 0x3e0862b4 r4: 0x00000006 r5: 0x0015a2ec r6: 0x2fffe090 r7: 0x2fffe0a0 r8: 0x3e1a378c r9: 0x00000065 r10: 0x33028e5a r11: 0x3e1ab89c ip: 0x00000025 sp: 0x2fffe0a0 lr: 0x30277abf pc: 0x30277ac8 cpsr: 0x000f0010 Any idea what the problem can be ? I've already spent my whole day on that, but... I'm stuck. Thanks in advance... Miky Mike Ok, Here is more then from the console, I get this : This GDB was configured as "--host=i386-apple-darwin --target=arm-apple-darwin".tty /dev/ttys002 Loading program into debugger… Program loaded. target remote-mobile /tmp/.XcodeGDBRemote-17280-65 Switching to remote-macosx protocol mem 0x1000 0x3fffffff cache mem 0x40000000 0xffffffff none mem 0x00000000 0x0fff none run Running… Error launching remote program: failed to get the task for process 456. Error launching remote program: failed to get the task for process 456. The program being debugged is not being run. The program being debugged is not being run. [Session started at 2010-12-23 20:33:33 +0100.] GNU gdb 6.3.50-20050815 (Apple version gdb-1472) (Thu Aug 5 05:54:10 UTC 2010) Copyright 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc. GDB is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License, and you are welcome to change it and/or distribute copies of it under certain conditions. Type "show copying" to see the conditions. There is absolutely no warranty for GDB. Type "show warranty" for details. This GDB was configured as "--host=i386-apple-darwin --target=arm-apple-darwin".tty /dev/ttys004 Loading program into debugger… Program loaded. target remote-mobile /tmp/.XcodeGDBRemote-17280-72 Switching to remote-macosx protocol mem 0x1000 0x3fffffff cache mem 0x40000000 0xffffffff none mem 0x00000000 0x0fff none run Running… Error launching remote program: failed to get the task for process 508. Error launching remote program: failed to get the task for process 508. The program being debugged is not being run. The program being debugged is not being run. And here is the code page that calls the URL import "TheLearningMachineAppDelegate.h" import "RootViewController.h" @implementation TheLearningMachineAppDelegate @synthesize window; @synthesize navigationController; pragma mark - pragma mark Application lifecycle (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions { RootViewController *rootViewController = (RootViewController *)[navigationController topViewController]; rootViewController.managedObjectContext = self.managedObjectContext; [window addSubview:[navigationController view]]; [window makeKeyAndVisible]; return YES; } (void)applicationWillResignActive:(UIApplication )application { / Sent when the application is about to move from active to inactive state. This can occur for certain types of temporary interruptions (such as an incoming phone call or SMS message) or when the user quits the application and it begins the transition to the background state. Use this method to pause ongoing tasks, disable timers, and throttle down OpenGL ES frame rates. Games should use this method to pause the game. */ } (void)applicationDidEnterBackground:(UIApplication *)application { [self saveContext]; } (void)applicationWillEnterForeground:(UIApplication )application { / Called as part of the transition from the background to the inactive state: here you can undo many of the changes made on entering the background. */ } (void)applicationDidBecomeActive:(UIApplication )application { / Restart any tasks that were paused (or not yet started) while the application was inactive. If the application was previously in the background, optionally refresh the user interface. */ } // Method that saves the managed object context before the application terminates. (void)applicationWillTerminate:(UIApplication *)application { [self saveContext]; } (void)saveContext { NSError *error = nil; if (managedObjectContext != nil) { if ([managedObjectContext hasChanges] && ![managedObjectContext save:&error]) { NSLog(@"Unresolved error %@, %@", error, [error userInfo]); abort(); //Replace this implementation with code to handle the error appropriately. //abort() causes the application to generate a crash log and terminate. You should not use this function in a shipping application, although it may be useful during development. If it is not possible to recover from the error, display an alert panel that instructs the user to quit the application by pressing the Home button. } } } pragma mark - pragma mark Core Data stack // Returns the managed object context for the application. (NSManagedObjectContext *)managedObjectContext { if (managedObjectContext != nil) { return managedObjectContext; } NSPersistentStoreCoordinator *coordinator = [self persistentStoreCoordinator]; if (coordinator != nil) { managedObjectContext = [[NSManagedObjectContext alloc] init]; [managedObjectContext setPersistentStoreCoordinator:coordinator]; } return managedObjectContext; } // Returns the managed object model for the application. (NSManagedObjectModel *)managedObjectModel { if (managedObjectModel != nil) { return managedObjectModel; } NSString *modelPath = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"TheLearningMachine" ofType:@"momd"]; NSURL *modelURL = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:modelPath]; managedObjectModel = [[NSManagedObjectModel alloc] initWithContentsOfURL:modelURL]; return managedObjectModel; } pragma mark - pragma mark Application's Documents directory // Returns the path to the application's Documents directory. - (NSString *)applicationDocumentsDirectory { return [NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES) lastObject]; } // Returns the persistent store coordinator for the application. - (NSPersistentStoreCoordinator *)persistentStoreCoordinator { if (persistentStoreCoordinator != nil) { return persistentStoreCoordinator; } NSURL *storeURL = [NSURL fileURLWithPath: [[self applicationDocumentsDirectory] stringByAppendingPathComponent: @"TheLearningMachine.sqlite"]]; NSError *error = nil; persistentStoreCoordinator = [[NSPersistentStoreCoordinator alloc] initWithManagedObjectModel:[self managedObjectModel]]; if (![persistentStoreCoordinator addPersistentStoreWithType:NSSQLiteStoreType configuration:nil URL:storeURL options:nil error:&error]) { NSLog(@"Unresolved error %@, %@", error, [error userInfo]); abort(); } return persistentStoreCoordinator; } pragma mark - pragma mark Memory management (void)applicationDidReceiveMemoryWarning:(UIApplication )application { / Free up as much memory as possible by purging cached data objects that can be recreated (or reloaded from disk) later. */ } (void)dealloc { [managedObjectContext release]; [managedObjectModel release]; [persistentStoreCoordinator release]; [window release]; [super dealloc]; } @end

  Read the article

• How can I make the XAnalogTV xscreensaver fill my screen?

  - by Breakthrough

  I recently installed xscreensaver, as well as the additional/extra screensavers. Many of the OpenGL ones function correctly, going fullscreen as expected. However, for some reason, the XAnalogTV screensaver leaves two "blank" spots on the edges of my screen. If I manually launch XAnalogTV, it displays a window, which it fills correctly. When I maximize the window, the same effect occurs: the window maximizes, but the two edges of the screen are literally "transparent". This effect also occurs when the screensaver is set to fullscreen. For these reasons, I believe the problem may be related to the aspect ratio of the screen. The edges of the screen are literally "ignored", with nothing being drawn there. Specifically, note the transition between the maximized and full-screen screenshots (with the un-drawn whitespace shrinking as the vertical height has been increased). For reference, I am running Xubuntu 12.04 on a Dell Vostro 1520 (Intel P8600, Nvidia 9300M) with a 1440 x 900 display (16:10). I have also set the GetViewPortIsFullOfLies preference to true. Is there any way to force XAnalogTV to fill my entire screen? Alternatively, as I believe the problem is aspect-ratio related, is there any way I can get the screensaver to render larger than my display, and simply discard the extra pixels? Relevant screenshots (windowed, maximized, and full-screen, respectively): You can see in the last two that the scrollbar from Firefox is clearly visible, even though this is a full-screen screensaver.

  Read the article

• How can I make XAnalogTV fill my screen?

  - by Breakthrough

  I recently installed xscreensaver, as well as the additional/extra screensavers. Many of the OpenGL ones function correctly, going fullscreen as expected. However, for some reason, the XAnalogTV screensaver leaves two "blank" spots on the edges of my screen. If I manually launch XAnalogTV, it displays a window, which it fills correctly. When I maximize the window, the same effect occurs: the window maximizes, but the two edges of the screen are literally "transparent". This effect also occurs when the screensaver is set to fullscreen. For these reasons, I believe the problem may be related to the aspect ratio of the screen. The edges of the screen are literally "ignored", with nothing being drawn there. Specifically, note the transition between the maximized and full-screen screenshots (with the un-drawn whitespace shrinking as the vertical height has been increased). For reference, I am running Xubuntu 12.04 on a Dell Vostro 1520 (Intel P8600, Nvidia 9300M) with a 1440 x 900 display (16:10). I have also set the GetViewPortIsFullOfLies preference to true. Is there any way to force XAnalogTV to fill my entire screen? Relevant screenshots (windowed, maximized, and full-screen, respectively):

  Read the article

• IIS not responding with SSL Server Hello

  - by Damien_The_Unbeliever

  I'm having difficulty getting a particular IIS machine to "do" SSL. This is a test environment (one of many) which we've set up "the same" as we have many times previously, but it just doesn't seem to be working. The server is Windows Server 2003 (Version 5.2 (Build 3790.srv03_sp2_gdr.100216-1301 : Service Pack 2)) IIS is hosting 4 sites (including the default site), but only one site is configured for SSL. We're using the same SSL certificate we use on all of our other servers (it's a wildcard cert). (Don't think this is relevant, but including anyway) We've configured the site to require SSL, it has a subdirectory that doesn't require SSL but has an asp page that redirects into SSL. The 403;4 error page for the site is hooked up to this asp page (this is how we do our non-HTTPS into HTTPS transition). Using Microsoft Network Monitor (3.3), I've just run a session against a server where SSL is working. It can pull apart the SSL exchange as the following messages: SSL: Client Hello SSL: Server Hello. Certificate. Server Hello Done SSL: Client Key Exchange. Change Cipher Spec. Encrypted Handshake Message. SSL: Change Cipher Spec. Encrypted Handshake Message However, on our problem server, I only see: SSL: Client Hello. The next packet from the server (from port 443, so it's listening and responding there) contains only 60 bytes, and just seems to have the Tcp headers and not much else (but I'm by no means an expert at deciphering these things). So, where do I look next? Or what additional information do I need to add to this question, and where do I find it?

  Read the article

• Switch to IPv6 and get rid of NAT? Are you kidding?

  - by Ernie

  So our ISP has set up IPv6 recently, and I've been studying what the transition should entail before jumping into the fray. I've noticed three very important issues: Our office NAT router (an old Linksys BEFSR41) does not support IPv6. Nor does any newer router, AFAICT. The book I'm reading about IPv6 tells me that it makes NAT "unnecessary" anyway. If we're supposed to just get rid of this router and plug everything directly to the Internet, I start to panic. There's no way in hell I'll put our billing database (With lots of credit card information!) on the internet for everyone to see. Even if I were to propose setting up Windows' firewall on it to allow only 6 addresses to have any access to it at all, I still break out in a cold sweat. I don't trust Windows, Windows' firewall, or the network at large enough to even be remotely comfortable with that. There's a few old hardware devices (ie, printers) that have absolutely no IPv6 capability at all. And likely a laundry list of security issues that date back to around 1998. And likely no way to actually patch them in any way. And no funding for new printers. I hear that IPv6 and IPSEC are supposed to make all this secure somehow, but without physically separated networks that make these devices invisible to the Internet, I really can't see how. I can likewise really see how any defences I create will be overrun in short order. I've been running servers on the Internet for years now and I'm quite familiar with the sort of things necessary to secure those, but putting something Private on the network like our billing database has always been completely out of the question. What should I be replacing NAT with, if we don't have physically separate networks?

  Read the article

• 2008 SR2 Server Starts Then Fails to Initialize DNS

  - by ThaKidd

  Got a weird situation going on. Background: Just transferred Active Directory from a 2003 Server to 2008 SR2. Removed the 2003 server from AD but I have not upgraded Active Directory to 08 only yet. After the transition a problem started. Whenever I reboot the server and I log in, the DNS server is "stopping". After a few minutes it finishes and I can restart start it at that point. Once it is restarted, all services come up. Now I did try to install HyperV (this is a dev server btw). Once the reboot for HyperV, everything was screwed as in I could not ping anything. Uninstalled and had the DNS server issue. Screwed with IPv6 settings (which I am not using) and problem was resolved for a bit. Also installed an Intel Pro1000 card and had a bit of success with DNS; then it failed. Weird thing is, outside of an error in syslog stating that the DNS server failed to start, there is no specific error that is generated in either System or DNS Server logs. Ideas are much appreciated! Thanks in advance.

  Read the article

• Routing public IPs (each a /32) through a VPN to another server

  - by Lee S

  Hopefully the title makes sense; I have a server currently in a colo facility, with many IP addresses routed to it. They are individual IPs and not in a contiguous block. Due to vastly improved connectivity (fibre) at home I am slowly bringing my infrastructure in-house for managability and eventually, cost savings. What I would like to do though is use the IP addresses allocated to my existing server, at home. I have an IP block allocated to me on my new ISP connection, but for a couple of reasons I'd like to make use of the colo ones for now: Ease of transition - lots of domains, dns, hard-coded IPs in programs, etc. Connectivity fallback. If my primary line goes down and switches to fallback 1 (dsl) or fallback 2 (4G), I lose access to the ISP-allocated IP block of IPs that are only presented on the primary WAN interface. What I'd like to achieve is my home virtualisation server (Proxmox/Debian-based) "dials in" to the colo server in the colo facility (also Proxmox/Debian) via VPN or similar, and gets to make use of the IP addresses that currently terminate on the colo box. If the primary connection to my ISP goes down and one of the fallback routes kicks in, the VPN tunnel will just time out and then be re-established on the backup connection instead. I'm sure this is doable, but I have no idea how. I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty, I just don't really know where to start?

  Read the article

• Running WAMP (XAMPP) and LAMP from One SSD, On 64-bit Windows and Linux Machines

  - by nicorellius

  I have an solid state drive that I develop websites on. The reason I do this is because I work on a few different computers. Historically, I created separate developing environments to use for each machine. This was OK, but if the system changed for some reason, eg, new OS install, it was a pain. So I bought a USB 3.0 enclosure and put a solid state drive in there and it's pretty darn fast, which is good. I was working with three Windows machines and I could simply hook up the drive, launch my XAMPP server and away I went, developing websites: using Dreamweaver, Komodo, Notepad++, Eclipse, etc. Recently, however, one of my Windows machines' hard drive went down and instead of going back to Windows in this case, I went with Ububntu 12.04. I have several Ubuntu workstations and servers and I like Linux, so I thought his was a great opportunity to transition. I went to work installing and trying to set up a LAMP server and, besides from XAMPP 64-bit compatibility out of the box, I'm seeing other issues with getting this Linux server running. I will keep trying to resolve this, but in the meantime... my question is, has anyone ever successfully run both WAMP and LAMP from the same SSD (formatted to NTFS)? I'm sure there are lots of barriers to this happening, like local file system, OS libraries, dependencies, etc. But I was thinking it would be cool if it could be done. I'm no expert, so if this is just plain old stupid, please don't hesitate to let me know.

  Read the article

• As an admin, what tools do you use to log what you do to your boxes?

  - by Jerry

  I am more of a linux applications developer than an admin. Over time, I've built servers and maintained them, sometimes to offer services, mostly just to develop the applications I work on. Way back when I would create a file in my account to keep notes on what I did on each machine, so that I could replicate that when I migrated to other machines. Nowadays, I install something a private trac installation, install it's blog plugin, and then use that to make notes of everything I install, and most commands that I run, as well as the output. This provides me a combination wiki and blog that I find very useful as a "captain's log". I do this mostly so that when I migrate to a new clean machine, I have a much easier time in bringing it up. And yet, I am always amazed when I see others just install this, delete that, run this, setup this config, ... without seeming to use any way to actually note what they are doing. What do YOU do, and what tools are available? I am especially interested in the transition between maintaining a few machines for a few people and maintaining several to dozens of machines providing a real service. What are the best practices, and where can I find good resources? Thanks!

  Read the article

• Suggestions for transitioning to new GW/private network

  - by Quinten

  I am replacing a private T1 link with a new firewall device with an ipsec tunnel for a branch office. I am trying to figure out the right way to transition folks at the new site over to the new connection, so that they default to using the much faster tunnel. Existing network: 192.168.254.0/24, gw 192.168.254.253 (Cisco router plugged in to private t1) Test network I have been using with ipsec tunnel: 192.168.1.0/24, gw 192.168.1.1 (pfsense fw plugged in to public internet), also plugged in to same switch as the old network. There are probably ~20-30 network devices in the existing subnet, about 5 with static IPs. The remote endpoint is already the firewall--I can't set up redundant links to the existing subnet. In other words, as soon as I change the tunnel configuration to point to 192.168.254.0/24, all devices in the existing subnet will stop working because they point to the wrong gateway. I'd like some ability to do this slowly--such that I can move over a few clients and verify the stability of the new link before moving critical services or less tolerant users over. What's the right way to do this? Change the netmask on all of the devices to /16, and update gateway to point to the new device? Could this cause any problems? Also, how should I handle DNS? The pfsense box is not aware of my Active Directory environment. But if I change DNS to use the local servers, it will result in a huge slowdown as DNS queries will still be routed over the private t1. I need some help coming up with a plan that's not too disruptive but will really let me thoroughly test the stability of the IPSEC tunnel before I make the final switch. The AD version is 2008R2, as are the servers. Workstations are mostly Windows XP SP3. I have not configured the 192.168.1.0/24 as a site in AD sites and services.

  Read the article

• In Windows 7 is there a way to login from any user account and see the same workspace and be able to use the running programs of another user?

  - by WickedMongoose

  Our group has a number of Test Stands with PCs that are currently being accessed with a single group login. It has been sent from on high that this is not the way to do things for security reasons and we all agree. However. Multiple team members from around the world log into these Test Stands and need to be able to access programs that have been run from what would be different user profiles if we were to no longer have a single common login. Is there a way to have a common workspace such that when different users login, they will be able to see and interact with all running applications as if they were using a common login? Applications that we run link to and monopolize hardware resources connected to the PC and it is time consuming to restart and reload settings every time a new user logs in. Even if the program did not monopolize the hardware many of these programs are resource intensive and require a large portion of each machine's RAM to run, so trying to run the application again when it is already running from multiple user accounts would quickly consume all system resources. Simple Example: I open a chrome browser while logged into our pc. I then logout and another team member remotes in and should be able to see my open browser and be able to interact with it as if he were the one who opened it. Any alternative process flows or solutions from someone who has gone through a similar transition would be appreciated. This is not a request for how to give all users access to the ability to run a program, but it is the request for how to allow all users access to interact with running applications that have been started by other users and need to be interacted with as if the new user started and has control of the application.

  Read the article

• Make Your PC Look Like Windows Phone 7

  - by Matthew Guay

  Windows Phone 7 offers a unique and exciting UI that displays lots of information efficiently on the screen.  And with a simple Rainmeter theme, you can have the same UI and content directly on your Windows 7 desktop. Turn your Desktop into a Windows Phone 7 lookalike To give your Windows 7 desktop a Windows Phone 7 makeover, first you need to have the free Rainmeter application installed.  If you do not have it installed, download it from the link below and run the setup.  Accept the license agreement, and install it with the default settings. By default Rainmeter will automatically run when you start your computer.  If you do not want this, you can uncheck the box during the setup. Now, download the Omnimo UI theme for Rainmeter (link below).  You will need to unzip the folder first. This theme uses the Segoe UI and the Segoe UI Light font, so Windows Vista users need to install the segoeuil.ttf font first, and XP users need to install both the segoeui.ttf and the segoeuil.ttf font first.  Copy the appropriate fonts to C:\Windows\Fonts, or in Vista double-click on the font and select Install. Now, run the Rainmeter theme setup.  Double-click on the Rainstaller.exe in the Omnimo folder. Click Express install to add the theme and skin to Rainmeter. Click Finish, and by default Rainmeter will open with your new theme. When the new theme opens the first time, you will be asked to read the readme, or simply go to the gallery. When you open the gallery, you can choose from a wide variety of tiles and gadgets to place on your desktop.  You can also choose a different color scheme for your tiles. Once you’re done, click the X in the top right hand corner to close the Gallery.  Welcome to your Windows Phone 7 desktop!  Many of the gadgets are dynamic, and you can change the settings for most of them.  The only thing missing is the transition animations that Windows Phone 7 shows when you launch an application. To make it look even more like Windows Phone 7, you can change your background to black.  This makes the desktop theme really dramatic. And, if you want to add gadgets or change the color scheme, simply click on the + logo on the top. Windows Phone 7 Desktop Wallpapers If you’d prefer to simply change your background, My Microsoft Life has several very nice Windows Phone 7 wallpapers available for free.  Click the link below to download these and other Microsoft-centric wallpapers. If you can’t wait to get the new Windows phone 7, this is a great way to start experiencing the beauty of the phone UI on your desktop. Links Download Rainmeter Download the Omnimo UI Rainmeter theme Download Windows Phone 7 inspired wallpapers Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Try out Windows Phone 7 on your PC todayTest All Features of Windows Phone 7 On Your PCHow-To Geek on Lifehacker: How to Make Windows Vista Less AnnoyingCreate a Shortcut or Hotkey to Mute the System Volume in WindowsMake Ubuntu Automatically Save Changes to Your Session TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Norwegian Life If Web Browsers Were Modes of Transportation Google Translate (for animals) Roadkill’s Scan Port scans for open ports Out of 100 Tweeters Out of band Security Update for Internet Explorer

  Read the article

• Making a Job Change That's Easy Why Not Try a Career Change

  - by david.talamelli

  A few nights ago I received a comment on one of our blog posts that reminded me of a statistic that I heard a while back. The statistic reflected the change in our views towards work and showed how while people in past generations would stay in one role for their working career - now with so much choice people not only change jobs often but also change careers 4-5 times in their working life. To differentiate between a job change and a career change: when I say job change this could be an IT Sales person moving from one IT Sales role to another IT Sales role. A Career change for example would be that same IT Sales person moving from IT Sales to something outside the scope of their industry - maybe to something like an Engineer or Scuba Dive Instructor. The reason for Career changes can be as varied as the people who make them. Someone's motivation could be to pursue a passion or maybe there is a change in their personal circumstances forcing the change or it could be any other number of reasons. I think it takes courage to make a Career change - it can be easy to stay in your comfort zone and do what you know, but to really push yourself sometimes you need to try something new, it is a matter of making that career transition as smooth as possible for yourself. The comment that was posted is here below (thanks Dean for the kind words they are appreciated). Hi David, I just wanted to let you know that I work for a company called Milestone Search in Melbourne, Victoria Australia. (www.mstone.com.au) We subscribe to your feed on a daily basis and find your blogs both interesting and insightful. Not to mention extremely entertaining. I wonder if you have missed out on getting in journalism as this seems to be something you'd be great at ?: ) Anyways back to my point about changing careers. This could be anything from going from I.T. to Journalism, Engineering to Teaching or any combination of career you can think of. I don't think there ever has been a time where we have had so many opportunities to do so many different things in our working life. While this idea sounds great in theory, putting it into practice would be much harder to do I think. First, in an increasingly competitive job market, employers tend to look for specialists in their field. You may want to make a change but your options may be limited by the number of employers willing to take a chance on someone new to an industry that will likely require a significant investment in time to get brought up to speed. Also, using myself as an example if I was given the opportunity to move into Journalism/Communication/Marketing career from my career as an IT Recruiter - realistically I would have to take a significant pay cut to make this change as my current salary reflects the expertise I have in my current career. I would not immediately be up to speed moving into a new career and would not be able to justify a similar salary. Yes there are transferable skills in any career change, but even though you may have transferable skills you must realise that you will also have a large amount of learning to do which would take time. These are two initial hurdles that I immediately think of, there may be more but nothing is insurmountable. If you work out what you want to do with your working career whatever that may be, you then need to just need to work out the steps to get to your end goal. This is where utilising the power of your networks and using Social Media can come in handy. If you are interested in working somewhere why not proactively take the opportunity to research the industry or company - find out who it is you need to speak to and get in touch with them. We spend so much time working, we should enjoy the work we do and not be afraid to try new things. Waiting for your dream job to fall into your lap or be handed to you on a silver platter is not likely going to happen, so if there is something you do want to do, work out a plan to make it happen and chase after it. This article was originally posted on David Talamelli's Blog - David's Journal on Tap

  Read the article

• Introducing .NET 4.0 with Visual Studio 2010 by Alex Mackey - Book review

  - by Malisa L. Ncube

  Alex (http://simpleisbest.co.uk/) does a very good job in covering the new features of .NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010. His focus is on the developers that have experience in development using previous versions of Visual Studio, more specifically Visual Studio 2008.     The following are my views towards his book. 1. Scope / Coverage Even as the book is labeled as introduction, it is covers a broad spectrum of technologies, features and references that are focused into helping a developer quickly decide what to use in the new .NET framework. a. Content The content included covers as much as possible the new additions that are included in the new .NET version 4.0. He shows the Visual Studio 2010 new features and quickly shows how to extend it using Managed Extensibility Framework. Some of my favorites are parallel debugging enhancements. The author delves into JQuery, which Microsoft has decided to support. Some of the very interesting content is on the out-of-band releases including ASP.NET MVC, Windows Azure Silverlight 3 and WCF Data Services. b. What is not included? Windows Phone 7 Series. This was only talked about in the MIX10. The data may not have been available at the time of writing. Microsoft Pinpoint (Microsoft code name "Dallas") Windows Embedded development. c. Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Visual Studio IDE and MEF Chapter 3: Language and Dynamic Changes Chapter 4: CLR and BCL Changes Chapter 5: Parallelization and Threading Enhancements Chapter 6: Windows Workflow Foundation 4 Chapter 7: Windows Communication Foundation Chapter 8: Entity Framework Chapter 9: WCF Data Services Chapter 10: ASPNET Chapter 11: Microsoft AJAX Library Chapter 12: jQuery Chapter 13: ASPNET MVC Chapter 14: Silverlight Introduction Chapter 15: WPF 4.0 and Silverlight 3.0 Chapter 16: Windows Azure 2. Depth Avoids getting into depth on the topics presented, to present the new concepts in assumption of the developer’s existing knowledge. Code samples are on book and exist mostly as snippets and very easy to follow. There are no downloadable examples. 3. Complexity The book is written in a very simple way and easy to follow. There are no irrelevant intimidating details. So it’s a book that you can grab and never put down until you’ve finished reading the entire book. 4. References The author includes reference links to blogs, Wikis and a lot of online resources including the MSDN documentation, which is a very convenient strategy to avoid flooding the reader with details which may not be of interest to them. Most sites do not use url routing and that is really not nice. There are notes from interviews between the author and people behind the new technologies, in which they explain what some specific areas that need clarifications and what their future views are in relation to the features they are working on. 5. Target The author targets experts that want to make a transition from .NET 3.5 to 4.0. Some obvious 3.5 features have been purposely excluded from the text 6. Overrall It is evident that the author has made extensive research into the breadth of what MS is working on, in relation to .NET and Visual Studio and has also been watching the online community. What I would like to see in the next edition are some details on OData protocol, Expression Blend 4 and Embedded development and Windows Phone development. I should say I’m one of the beneficiaries of this book. Excellent work Alex.   Technorati Tags: .NET,Book-Review,Visual Studio

  Read the article

• “I could use a little help here” or “I can do it myself, thank you” for Cloud Projects

  - by BuckWoody

  Windows Azure allows you to write code in languages within the .NET stack, you can use Java, C++, PHP, NodeJS and others. Code is code - other than keeping things stateless, using a Web or Worker Role in Azure is not all that different from working with an on-premises system. However…. Working in a scalable, component-based stateless architecture that can use federated security is not all that common for many developers. Some are used to owning the server, scaling up, and state-full paradigms that have a single security domain. Making the transition whilst trying to create a new software application or even port a previous one can be daunting. Sure, we have absolutely tons of free training, kits, videos, online books and more to learn on your own, but some things like architecture can be pivotal as you move along. So the question is, should you just strike out on your own for a Cloud project, or get Microsoft Consulting Services or another partner to work with you on your first one? I use a few decision points to help guide the projects I assist in. Note: I’m a huge fan of having help that ends up giving you training and leaves you in charge. If you do engage with someone to help you, make sure you keep this clear and take more and more ownership yourself as the project progresses. How much time do you have? Usually the first thing I ask is about the timeline for the project. It doesn’t matter how skilled you are, if you have a short window to get things done it’s better to get help - especially if this is your first cloud project. Having someone that knows the platform well can save you amazing amounts of time. If you have longer, then start with the training in the link above and once you feel confident, jump in. How complex is the project? If there are a lot of moving parts, it’s best to engage a partner. The reason is that certain interactions - particularly things like Service Bus or Data Integration  - can be quite different than what you may have encountered before. How many people do you have? I have a “pizza rule” about projects I’ve used in my career - if it takes over two pizzas to feed everyone on the project, it’s too big and will fail. That being said, one developer and a one-week deadline does not a good project make, usually. It’s best to have at least one architect (or someone in that role) guiding the project along, and at least two developers to work on a cloud project. That’s a generalization of course, since I’ve seen great software on Azure with one developer writing code all by herself, but for more complex projects, more (to a point) is better. The nice thing about bringing on a partner is that you don’t have to hire them full time - they help you and then they go away. How critical is the project? There’s no shame in using some help. If the platform is new, if the project is large and complex, and if it is critical to the business, you should engage a partner. That’s regardless of Cloud or anything else - get some help. You don’t want to hit your company’s bottom line in a negative way, but you have to innovate and get them a competitive advantage. Do your research, make sure the partner is qualified to help you, and get it done. Don’t let these questions scare you off. There are lots of projects you can implement on Windows and SQL Azure with nothing other than the Software Development Kit (SDK) that you get for free with Windows Azure. And assistance comes in many forms - sometimes just phone support, a friend you can ask. Microsoft Consulting Services or any of our great partners. You can get help on just the architecture piece or have them show you how to write the code. They’ll get involved as little or as much as you like.

  Read the article

• SQLAuthority News – Public Training Classes In Hyderabad 12-14 May – Microsoft SQL Server 2005/2008

  - by pinaldave

  After successfully delivering many corporate trainings as well as the private training Solid Quality Mentors, India is launching the Public Training in Hyderabad for SQL Server 2008 and SharePoint 2010. This is going to be one of the most unique and one-of-a-kind events in India where Solid Quality Mentors are offering public classes. I will be leading the training on Microsoft SQL Server 2005/2008 Query Optimization & Performance Tuning. This intensive, 3-day course intends to give attendees an in-depth look at Query Optimization and Performance Tuning in SQL Server 2005 and 2008. Designed to prepare SQL Server developers and administrators for a transition into SQL Server 2005 or 2008, the course covers the best practices for a variety of essential tasks in order to maximize the performance. At the end of the course, there would be daily discussions about your real-world problems and find appropriate solutions. Note: Scroll down for course fees, discount, dates and location. Do not forget to take advantage of Discount code ‘SQLAuthority‘. The training premises are very well-equipped as they will be having 1:1 computers. Every participant will be provided with printed course materials. I will pick up your entire lunch tab and we will have lots of SQL talk together. The best participant will receive a special gift at the end of the course. Even though the quality of the material to be delivered together with the course will be of extremely high standard, the course fees are set at a very moderate rate. The fee for the course is INR 14,000/person for the whole 3-day convention. At the rate of 1 USD = 44 INR, this fee converts to less than USD 300. At this rate, it is totally possible to fly from anywhere from the world to India and take the training and still save handsome pocket money. It would be even better if you register using the discount code “SQLAuthority“, for you will instantly get an INR 3000 discount, reducing the total cost of the training to INR 11,000/person for whole 3 days course. This is a onetime offer and will not be available in the future. Please note that there will be a 10.3% service tax on course fees. To register, either send an email to [email protected] or call +91 95940 43399. Feel free to drop me an email at [email protected] for any additional information and clarification. Training Date and Time: May 12-14, 2010 10 AM- 6 PM. Training Venue: Abridge Solutions, #90/B/C/3/1, Ganesh GHR & MSY Plaza, Vittalrao Nagar, Near Image Hospital, Madhapur, Hyderabad – 500 081. The details of the course is as listed below. Day 1 : Strengthen the basics along with SQL Server 2005/2008 New Features Module 01: Subqueries, Ranking Functions, Joins and Set Operations Module 02: Table Expressions Module 03: TOP and APPLY Module 04: SQL Server 2008 Enhancements Day 2: Query Optimization & Performance Tuning 1 Module 05: Logical Query Processing Module 06: Query Tuning Module 07:  Introduction to the Query Processor Module 08:  Review of common query coding which causes poor performance Day 3: Query Optimization & Performance Tuning 2 Module 09:  SQL Server Indexing and index maintenance Module 10:  Plan Guides, query hints, UDFs, and Computed Columns Module 11:  Understanding SQL Server Execution Plans Module 12: Real World Index and Optimization Tips Download the complete PDF brochure. We are also going to have SharePoint 2010 training by Joy Rathnayake on 10-11 May. All the details for discount applies to the same as well. Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Training, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

  Read the article

• A Letter for Your CEO About Social Marketing’s Future

  - by Mike Stiles

  We’ll leave it to you to decide if or how to sneak this in front of them. Dear Chief: This social marketing thing looks serious. It’s gone beyond having a Facebook page and putting our info and a few promotions on it. It’s seriously disrupting how we’ve always done marketing. And its implications reach well beyond marketing. My concern is that we stay positioned ahead of these changes and are prepared to embrace, adapt and capitalize on these new capabilities as opposed to spending valuable time and money trying to shoehorn social into “the way we’ve always done things.” I’m also concerned about what happens if our competition executes on this before we do. The days of being able to impose our ad messaging on the masses to great effect are numbered. The public now has the tech tools and ability to filter out things that are irrelevant to them. And frankly, spending ad dollars to reach unlikely prospects isn’t the most efficient path for us either. Today, our customers have to genuinely love what we do. That starts with a renewed, customer-centric focus on the quality and usability of our product. If their experience with it is bad, they now have very connected, loud voices that will testify against us. We can’t afford that. Next, their customer service experience, before and after the sale, has to be a pleasant surprise. That requires truly knowing our customers and listening to them. Lip service won’t cut it. We have to get and use as much data on the customer as possible, interact with them wherever they want to interact with us, and commit to impressing them. If we do, they’ll get out there and advertise for us. Since peer-to-peer recommendation is the most effective marketing, that’s money in the bank. Social marketing is about forming relationships, same as how individuals use social. We want them to know us, trust us, and get real value from knowing us. That requires honesty and transparency that before now might have been uncomfortable. I propose that if we clearly make everything we do about our customers’ wants and needs, we’ll have nothing to hide. It will solidify customer loyalty, retention, and thus, revenue. These things can’t happen without certain tools and structural changes in the organization. There are social cloud platforms that integrate social management into all of the necessary areas: CRM, customer service, sales, marketing automation, content marketing, ecommerce, etc. This is will give us a real-time, complete view of the customer so their every interaction with us is attentive, personalized, accurate, relevant, and satisfying. Without it, we’re just a collage of disjointed systems, each gathering data that informs only its own departmental silo. The customer is voluntarily giving us everything we need to know about them to win them over, but we have to start listening and putting the pieces together. There’s still time. Brands are coming to terms with this transition to the socially enabled enterprise, but so far they aren’t moving very fast. Like us, they’re dealing with long-entrenched technologies and processes. CMO’s and CIO’s have to form new partnerships. Content operations have to be initiated and properly staffed and funded. Various departments must be able to utilize interconnected big data. What will separate the winners from the losers? Well chief, that’s why I’m writing you. It’s in your hands. These initiatives won’t get the kind of priority and seriousness that inspire actual deadlines & action unless they come from your desk. You have to be the champion of customer centricity. You have to be our change agent. You have to be our innovator. Otherwise, it’s going to be business as usual, and that puts us in a very vulnerable place. Sincerely, Your Team @mikestilesPhoto: Gary Scott, stock.xchng

  Read the article

• Launch Webcast Q&A: Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g - The Platform for the Modern User Experience

  - by howard.beader(at)oracle.com

  Did you have a chance to watch the Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g Launch Webcast yet? Andy MacMillan presented some great information on the webcast and answered quite a few of your questions in the Q&A session as well. For your reading pleasure we have captured a number of the questions and answers and they are summarized below: Question: Can you tell me what should our Portal strategy be for integrating and extending our Oracle enterprise applications? Answer: We recommend that you look at this in two steps, the first would be to ensure that you have a good understanding of our common user experience architecture. Internally our product teams at Oracle are already investing in this quite heavily today for Fusion Applications and this is driving natural convergence from a UX strategy standpoint. The second step would be to look at how best to componentize the back office applications so that the business users across your organization can take advantage of these -- don't make it just about putting a new skin on top of what you already have from an application standpoint, instead look at how best to embed the social computing capabilities as part of the solution for your business users. Question: We are currently using the BEA WebLogic Portal now, should we stay on WLP or should we be looking at moving to WebCenter or when should we move to WebCenter? Answer: Our strategy has been called "Continue & Converge", this theme means that you can continue to use WebLogic or Plumtree portals until your organization is ready to move to WebCenter and in the mean time you can continue to deploy what you need to in your organization of WLP or WCI Portals with the full support of Oracle. In addition WebCenter Services can be leveraged for social computing to complement what you are already doing today and enable your organization to take advantage of some of the latest and greatest social computing capabilities. We have migration scripts and conversion capabilities available as well as programs where Oracle can help you evaluate your options to decide how best to move forward. WebCenter provides the best of the best capabilities and will enable you to take advantage of new capabilities that may not exist in your current portal today. In the end though it's up to you as a customer as to when you want to make the transition to Oracle WebCenter Suite. Question: Can you tell me how is Oracle leveraging WebCenter internally and for its Application and Middleware product UX strategies? Answer: Internally, Oracle is leveraging WebCenter for our employees and thus far we are seeing significant updates with our users taking advantage of the business activity streams, team spaces and collaboration capabilities. From a product strategy standpoint, our product teams are taking advantage of the common user experience architecture and leveraging WebCenter to provide social and collaborative capabilities to the Oracle Applications and providing new types of composite applications with what is coming with Fusion Applications. WebCenter also provides a common user experience across all the products in the Oracle Fusion Middleware family as well. Question: Our organization is currently using SharePoint, but we are also an Oracle Applications customer, how should we be thinking about WebCenter as we move forward? Answer: Great question. Typically, we are seeing organizations using SharePoint for its core use cases of small team collaboration and file server replacement. WebCenter can connect to SharePoint as a content source to feed into WebCenter quite easily and it leverages the robust Oracle ECM product under WebCenter as well. In addition, SharePoint team sites can be connected to WebCenter utilizing our SharePoint connector. With Oracle WebCenter though, we are really targeting business users and enterprise applications, thus affecting positive change on the processes that drive the business to improve productivity across your organization. Question: Are organizations today using WebCenter as a Web platform for externally facing public websites? Answer: Yes, we are seeing a convergence around web content management and portal types of websites with customers converting them from just broadcasting content to making it a much richer personalized experience and also exposing back-office applications as well. Web Content Management capabilities are already embedded in WebCenter so that organizations can take advantage now of the benefits a personalized web experience provides for your customers. This is simply a short summary of a few of the questions addressed on the webcast, please tune in now to learn more about Oracle WebCenter, the user experience platform for the enterprise and the web! The Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g Launch Webcast can be found here

  Read the article

• How the "migrations" approach makes database continuous integration possible

  - by David Atkinson

  Testing a database upgrade script as part of a continuous integration process will only work if there is an easy way to automate the generation of the upgrade scripts. There are two common approaches to managing upgrade scripts. The first is to maintain a set of scripts as-you-go-along. Many SQL developers I've encountered will store these in a folder prefixed numerically to ensure they are ordered as they are intended to be run. Occasionally there is an accompanying document or a batch file that ensures that the scripts are run in the defined order. Writing these scripts during the course of development requires discipline. It's all too easy to load up the table designer and to make a change directly to the development database, rather than to save off the ALTER statement that is required when the same change is made to production. This discipline can add considerable overhead to the development process. However, come the end of the project, everything is ready for final testing and deployment. The second development paradigm is to not do the above. Changes are made to the development database without considering the incremental update scripts required to effect the changes. At the end of the project, the SQL developer or DBA, is tasked to work out what changes have been made, and to hand-craft the upgrade scripts retrospectively. The end of the project is the wrong time to be doing this, as the pressure is mounting to ship the product. And where data deployment is involved, it is prudent not to feel rushed. Schema comparison tools such as SQL Compare have made this latter technique more bearable. These tools work by analyzing the before and after states of a database schema, and calculating the SQL required to transition the database. Problem solved? Not entirely. Schema comparison tools are huge time savers, but they have their limitations. There are certain changes that can be made to a database that can't be determined purely from observing the static schema states. If a column is split, how do we determine the algorithm required to copy the data into the new columns? If a NOT NULL column is added without a default, how do we populate the new field for existing records in the target? If we rename a table, how do we know we've done a rename, as we could equally have dropped a table and created a new one? All the above are examples of situations where developer intent is required to supplement the script generation engine. SQL Source Control 3 and SQL Compare 10 introduced a new feature, migration scripts, allowing developers to add custom scripts to replace the default script generation behavior. These scripts are committed to source control alongside the schema changes, and are associated with one or more changesets. Before this capability was introduced, any schema change that required additional developer intent would break any attempt at auto-generation of the upgrade script, rendering deployment testing as part of continuous integration useless. SQL Compare will now generate upgrade scripts not only using its diffing engine, but also using the knowledge supplied by developers in the guise of migration scripts. In future posts I will describe the necessary command line syntax to leverage this feature as part of an automated build process such as continuous integration.

  Read the article

• New Training and Support Center Coming Soon!

  - by Ruth

  The CRM On Demand Training and Support Center is getting a face lift. In May 2010 we will unveil the new and improved layout, look and feel, and even some new content. Some of you told us loud and clear that you wanted an easier way to find our training courses and other important information. Well, here you are: Immediately you see the look and feel has changed and things have moved around a bit. You may ask, "How can I find the training catalog? Service requests? Downloads?" There are a few ways to find what you're looking for. You may use the search box to find training, quick guides, downloads, best practices, FAQs and more. You may also click the tabs or links in the blue bar, like Browse Training, to browse other documents and information. Here is a brief outline of the tabs and links that will help as you navigate this new tool: The Support tab provides alerts and notifications specific to your application environment. The Get Started tab is organized by role and contains links to resources aimed at helping you get the most out of your first 30 days with CRM On Demand. The Learn More tab outlines information in key topic areas, like administration, integration, and reports. Go to this tab to get the resources you need to move beyond the basics. The Release Information tab contains information specific to the current and upcoming releases of CRM On Demand. Access this tab to learn about and prepare for upgrades to your CRM On Demand application. The Best Practices tab contains a compilation of knowledge gained by experts that work with CRM On Demand day in and day out. Access this knowledge to benefit from their vast experience. The Communities tab offers connections to others in the CRM On Demand community through forums, communities, blogs, and more. The Browse training link opens the training catalog.Take a look at the instructor-led training, Webinars, quick guides, use cases, and tools available to you. The Browse Knowledge link takes you to our knowledge base where you can get answers to frequently asked questions. The Submit a Service Request link directs you to My Oracle Support where you can log a service request. The steps in that process have not changed. The Web Services Library provides simple APIs and a link to Oracle Sample Code where you can get samples that can help you build custom integrations. The Add-On Applications link allows access to our downloadable applications that allow you to extend the functionality of CRM On Demand. The Templates and Tools link provides access to resources that can help you design and build CRM On Demand to meet your company's specific needs. A lot has changed and I know it is a lot to take in. To help you out, we have a printable quick guide that you can use during this transition. As always, let us know what you think: [email protected].

  Read the article

• F# and the rose-tinted reflection

  - by CliveT

  We're already seeing increasing use of many cores on client desktops. It is a change that has been long predicted. It is not just a change in architecture, but our notions of efficiency in a program. No longer can we focus on the asymptotic complexity of an algorithm by counting the steps that a single core processor would take to execute it. Instead we'll soon be more concerned about the scalability of the algorithm and how well we can increase the performance as we increase the number of cores. This may even lead us to throw away our most efficient algorithms, and switch to less efficient algorithms that scale better. We might even be willing to waste cycles in order to speculatively execute at the algorithm rather than the hardware level. State is the big headache in this parallel world. At the hardware level, main memory doesn't necessarily contain the definitive value corresponding to a particular address. An update to a location might still be held in a CPU's local cache and it might be some time before the value gets propagated. To get the latest value, and the notion of "latest" takes a lot of defining in this world of rapidly mutating state, the CPUs may well need to communicate to decide who has the definitive value of a particular address in order to avoid lost updates. At the user program level, this means programmers will need to lock objects before modifying them, or attempt to avoid the overhead of locking by understanding the memory models at a very deep level. I think it's this need to avoid statefulness that has led to the recent resurgence of interest in functional languages. In the 1980s, functional languages started getting traction when research was carried out into how programs in such languages could be auto-parallelised. Sadly, the impracticality of some of the languages, the overheads of communication during this parallel execution, and rapid improvements in compiler technology on stock hardware meant that the functional languages fell by the wayside. The one thing that these languages were good at was getting rid of implicit state, and this single idea seems like a solution to the problems we are going to face in the coming years. Whether these languages will catch on is hard to predict. The mindset for writing a program in a functional language is really very different from the way that object-oriented problem decomposition happens - one has to focus on the verbs instead of the nouns, which takes some getting used to. There are a number of hybrid functional/object languages that have been becoming more popular in recent times. These half-way houses make it easy to use functional ideas for some parts of the program while still allowing access to the underlying object-focused platform without a great deal of impedance mismatch. One example is F# running on the CLR which, in Visual Studio 2010, has because a first class member of the pack. Inside Visual Studio 2010, the tooling for F# has improved to the point where it is easy to set breakpoints and watch values change while debugging at the source level. In my opinion, it is the tooling support that will enable the widespread adoption of functional languages - without this support, people will put off any transition into the functional world for as long as they possibly can. Without tool support it will make it hard to learn these languages. One tool that doesn't currently support F# is Reflector. The idea of decompiling IL to a functional language is daunting, but F# is potentially so important I couldn't dismiss the idea. As I'm currently developing Reflector 6.5, I thought it wise to take four days just to see how far I could get in doing so, even if it achieved little more than to be clearer on how much was possible, and how long it might take. You can read what happened here, and of the insights it gave us on ways to improve the tool.

  Read the article

• Industry perspectives on managing content

  - by aahluwalia

  Earlier this week I was noodling over a topic for my first blog post. My intention for this blog is to bring a practitioner's perspective on ECM to the community; to share and collaborate on best practices and approaches that address today's business problems. Reviewing my past 14 years of experience with web technologies, I wondered what topic would serve as a good "conversation starter". During this time, I received a call from a friend who was seeking insights on how content management applies to specific industries. She approached me because she vaguely remembered that I had worked in the Health Insurance industry in the recent past. She wanted me to tell her about the specific business needs of this industry. She was in for quite a surprise as she found out that I had spent the better part of a decade managing content within the Health Insurance industry and I discovered a great topic for my first blog post! I offer some insights from Health Insurance and invite my fellow practitioners to share their insights from other industries. What does content management mean to these industries? What can solution providers be aware of when offering solutions to these industries? The United States health care system relies heavily on private health insurance, which is the primary source of coverage for approximately 58% Americans. In the late 19th century, "accident insurance" began to be available, which operated much like modern disability insurance. In the late 20th century, traditional disability insurance evolved into modern health insurance programs. The first thing a solution provider must be aware of about the Health Insurance industry is that it tends to be transaction intensive. They are the ones who manage and administer our health plans and process our claims when we visit our health care providers. It helps to keep in mind that they are in the business of delivering health insurance and not technology. You may find the mindset conservative in comparison to the IT industry, however, the Health Insurance industry has benefited and will continue to benefit from the efficiency that technology brings to traditionally paper-driven processes. We are all aware of the impact that Healthcare reform bill has had a significant impact on the Health Insurance industry. They are under a great deal of pressure to explore ways to reduce their administrative costs and increase operational efficiency. Overall, administrative costs of health insurance include the insurer's cost to administer the health plan, the costs borne by employers, health-care providers, governments and individual consumers. Inefficiencies plague health insurance, owing largely to the absence of standardized processes across the industry. To achieve this, industry leaders have come together to establish standards and invest in initiatives to help their healthcare provider partners transition to the next generation of healthcare technology. The move to online services and paperless explanation of benefits are some manifestations of technological advancements in health insurance. Several companies have adopted Toyota's LEAN methodology or Six Sigma principles to improve quality, reduce waste and excessive costs, thereby increasing the value of their plan offerings. A growing number of health insurance companies have transformed their business systems in the past decade alone and adopted some form of content management to reduce the costs involved in administering health plans. The key strategy has been to convert paper documents and forms into electronic formats, automate the content development process and securely distribute content to various audiences via diverse marketing channels, including web and mobile. Enterprise content management solutions can enable document capture of claim forms, manage digital assets, integrate with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Human Capital Management (HCM) solutions, build Business Process Management (BPM) processes, define retention and disposition instructions to comply with state and federal regulations and allow eBusiness and Marketing departments to develop and deliver web content to multiple websites, mobile devices and portals. Content can be shared securely within and outside the organization using Information Rights Management.  At the end of the day, solution providers who can translate strategic goals into solutions that maximize process automation, increase ease of use and minimize IT overhead are likely to be successful in today's health insurance environment.

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41  | Next Page >