bad decisions - Page 341

Big Data – Is Big Data Relevant to me? – Big Data Questionnaires – Guest Post by Vinod Kumar

- by Pinal Dave

This guest post is by Vinod Kumar. Vinod Kumar has worked with SQL Server extensively since joining the industry over a decade ago. Working on various versions of SQL Server 7.0, Oracle 7.3 and other database technologies – he now works with the Microsoft Technology Center (MTC) as a Technology Architect. Let us read the blog post in Vinod’s own voice. I think the series from Pinal is a good one for anyone planning to start on Big Data journey from the basics. In my daily customer interactions this buzz of “Big Data” always comes up, I react generally saying – “Sir, do you really have a ‘Big Data’ problem or do you have a big Data problem?” Generally, there is a silence in the air when I ask this question. Data is everywhere in organizations – be it big data, small data, all data and for few it is bad data which is same as no data :). Wow, don’t discount me as someone who opposes “Big Data”, I am a big supporter as much as I am a critic of the abuse of this term by the people. In this post, I wanted to let my mind flow so that you can also think in the direction I want you to see these concepts. In any case, this is not an exhaustive dump of what is in my mind – but you will surely get the drift how I am going to question Big Data terms from customers!!! Is Big Data Relevant to me? Many of my customers talk to me like blank whiteboard with no idea – “why Big Data”. They want to jump into the bandwagon of technology and they want to decipher insights from their unexplored data a.k.a. unstructured data with structured data. So what are these industry scenario’s that come to mind? Here are some of them: Financials Fraud detection: Banks and Credit cards are monitoring your spending habits on real-time basis. Customer Segmentation: applies in every industry from Banking to Retail to Aviation to Utility and others where they deal with end customer who consume their products and services. Customer Sentiment Analysis: Responding to negative brand perception on social or amplify the positive perception. Sales and Marketing Campaign: Understand the impact and get closer to customer delight. Call Center Analysis: attempt to take unstructured voice recordings and analyze them for content and sentiment. Medical Reduce Re-admissions: How to build a proactive follow-up engagements with patients. Patient Monitoring: How to track Inpatient, Out-Patient, Emergency Visits, Intensive Care Units etc. Preventive Care: Disease identification and Risk stratification is a very crucial business function for medical. Claims fraud detection: There is no precise dollars that one can put here, but this is a big thing for the medical field. Retail Customer Sentiment Analysis, Customer Care Centers, Campaign Management. Supply Chain Analysis: Every sensors and RFID data can be tracked for warehouse space optimization. Location based marketing: Based on where a check-in happens retail stores can be optimize their marketing. Telecom Price optimization and Plans, Finding Customer churn, Customer loyalty programs Call Detail Record (CDR) Analysis, Network optimizations, User Location analysis Customer Behavior Analysis Insurance Fraud Detection & Analysis, Pricing based on customer Sentiment Analysis, Loyalty Management Agents Analysis, Customer Value Management This list can go on to other areas like Utility, Manufacturing, Travel, ITES etc. So as you can see, there are obviously interesting use cases for each of these industry verticals. These are just representative list. Where to start? A lot of times I try to quiz customers on a number of dimensions before starting a Big Data conversation. Are you getting the data you need the way you want it and in a timely manner? Can you get in and analyze the data you need? How quickly is IT to respond to your BI Requests? How easily can you get at the data that you need to run your business/department/project? How are you currently measuring your business? Can you get the data you need to react WITHIN THE QUARTER to impact behaviors to meet your numbers or is it always “rear-view mirror?” How are you measuring: The Brand Customer Sentiment Your Competition Your Pricing Your performance Supply Chain Efficiencies Predictive product / service positioning What are your key challenges of driving collaboration across your global business? What the challenges in innovation? What challenges are you facing in getting more information out of your data? Note: Garbage-in is Garbage-out. Hold good for all reporting / analytics requirements Big Data POCs? A number of customers get into the realm of setting a small team to work on Big Data – well it is a great start from an understanding point of view, but I tend to ask a number of other questions to such customers. Some of these common questions are: To what degree is your advanced analytics (natural language processing, sentiment analysis, predictive analytics and classification) paired with your Big Data’s efforts? Do you have dedicated resources exploring the possibilities of advanced analytics in Big Data for your business line? Do you plan to employ machine learning technology while doing Advanced Analytics? How is Social Media being monitored in your organization? What is your ability to scale in terms of storage and processing power? Do you have a system in place to sort incoming data in near real time by potential value, data quality, and use frequency? Do you use event-driven architecture to manage incoming data? Do you have specialized data services that can accommodate different formats, security, and the management requirements of multiple data sources? Is your organization currently using or considering in-memory analytics? To what degree are you able to correlate data from your Big Data infrastructure with that from your enterprise data warehouse? Have you extended the role of Data Stewards to include ownership of big data components? Do you prioritize data quality based on the source system (that is Facebook/Twitter data has lower quality thresholds than radio frequency identification (RFID) for a tracking system)? Do your retention policies consider the different legal responsibilities for storing Big Data for a specific amount of time? Do Data Scientists work in close collaboration with Data Stewards to ensure data quality? How is access to attributes of Big Data being given out in the organization? Are roles related to Big Data (Advanced Analyst, Data Scientist) clearly defined? How involved is risk management in the Big Data governance process? Is there a set of documented policies regarding Big Data governance? Is there an enforcement mechanism or approach to ensure that policies are followed? Who is the key sponsor for your Big Data governance program? (The CIO is best) Do you have defined policies surrounding the use of social media data for potential employees and customers, as well as the use of customer Geo-location data? How accessible are complex analytic routines to your user base? What is the level of involvement with outside vendors and third parties in regard to the planning and execution of Big Data projects? What programming technologies are utilized by your data warehouse/BI staff when working with Big Data? These are some of the important questions I ask each customer who is actively evaluating Big Data trends for their organizations. These questions give you a sense of direction where to start, what to use, how to secure, how to analyze and more. Sign off Any Big data is analysis is incomplete without a compelling story. The best way to understand this is to watch Hans Rosling – Gapminder (2:17 to 6:06) videos about the third world myths. Don’t get overwhelmed with the Big Data buzz word, the destination to what your data speaks is important. In this blog post, we did not particularly look at any Big Data technologies. This is a set of questionnaire one needs to keep in mind as they embark their journey of Big Data. I did write some of the basics in my blog: Big Data – Big Hype yet Big Opportunity. Do let me know if these questions make sense? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

Read the article

Box2D Joints in entity components system

- by Johnmph

I search a way to have Box2D joints in an entity component system, here is what i found : 1) Having the joints in Box2D/Body component as parameters, we have a joint array with an ID by joint and having in the other body component the same joint ID, like in this example : Entity1 - Box2D/Body component { Body => (body parameters), Joints => { Joint1 => (joint parameters), others joints... } } // Joint ID = Joint1 Entity2 - Box2D/Body component { Body => (body parameters), Joints => { Joint1 => (joint parameters), others joints... } } // Same joint ID than in Entity1 There are 3 problems with this solution : The first problem is the implementation of this solution, we must manage the joints ID to create joints and to know between which bodies they are connected. The second problem is the parameters of joint, where are they got ? on the Entity1 or Entity2 ? If they are the same parameters for the joint, there is no problem but if they are differents ? The third problem is that we can't limit number of bodies to 2 by joint (which is mandatory), a joint can only link 2 bodies, in this solution, nothing prevents to create more than 2 entities with for each a body component with the same joint ID, in this case, how we know the 2 bodies to joint and what to do with others bodies ? 2) Same solution than the first solution but by having entities ID instead of Joint ID, like in this example : Entity1 - Box2D/Body component { Body => (body parameters), Joints => { Entity2 => (joint parameters), others joints... } } Entity2 - Box2D/Body component { Body => (body parameters), Joints => { Entity1 => (joint parameters), others joints... } } With this solution, we fix the first problem of the first solution but we have always the two others problems. 3) Having a Box2D/Joint component which is inserted in the entities which contains the bodies to joint (we share the same joint component between entities with bodies to joint), like in this example : Entity1 - Box2D/Body component { Body => (body parameters) } - Box2D/Joint component { Joint => (Joint parameters) } // Shared, same as in Entity2 Entity2 - Box2D/Body component { Body => (body parameters) } - Box2D/Joint component { Joint => (joint parameters) } // Shared, same as in Entity1 There are 2 problems with this solution : The first problem is the same problem than in solution 1 and 2 : We can't limit number of bodies to 2 by joint (which is mandatory), a joint can only link 2 bodies, in this solution, nothing prevents to create more than 2 entities with for each a body component and the shared joint component, in this case, how we know the 2 bodies to joint and what to do with others bodies ? The second problem is that we can have only one joint by body because entity components system allows to have only one component of same type in an entity. So we can't put two Joint components in the same entity. 4) Having a Box2D/Joint component which is inserted in the entity which contains the first body component to joint and which has an entity ID parameter (this entity contains the second body to joint), like in this example : Entity1 - Box2D/Body component { Body => (body parameters) } - Box2D/Joint component { Entity2 => (Joint parameters) } // Entity2 is the entity ID which contains the other body to joint, the first body being in this entity Entity2 - Box2D/Body component { Body => (body parameters) } There are exactly the same problems that in the third solution, the only difference is that we can have two differents joints by entity instead of one (by putting one joint component in an entity and another joint component in another entity, each joint referencing to the other entity). 5) Having a Box2D/Joint component which take in parameter the two entities ID which contains the bodies to joint, this component can be inserted in any entity, like in this example : Entity1 - Box2D/Body component { Body => (body parameters) } Entity2 - Box2D/Body component { Body => (body parameters) } Entity3 - Box2D/Joint component { Joint => (Body1 => Entity1, Body2 => Entity2, others parameters of joint) } // Entity1 is the ID of the entity which have the first body to joint and Entity2 is the ID of the entity which have the second body to joint (This component can be in any entity, that doesn't matter) With this solution, we fix the problem of the body limitation by joint, we can only have two bodies per joint, which is correct. And we are not limited by number of joints per body, because we can create an another Box2D/Joint component, referencing to Entity1 and Entity2 and put this component in a new entity. The problem of this solution is : What happens if we change the Body1 or Body2 parameter of Joint component at runtime ? We need to add code to sync the Body1/Body2 parameters changes with the real joint object. 6) Same as solution 3 but in a better way : Having a Box2D/Joint component Box2D/Joint which is inserted in the entities which contains the bodies to joint, we share the same joint component between these entities BUT the difference is that we create a new entity to link the body component with the joint component, like in this example : Entity1 - Box2D/Body component { Body => (body parameters) } // Shared, same as in Entity3 Entity2 - Box2D/Body component { Body => (body parameters) } // Shared, same as in Entity4 Entity3 - Box2D/Body component { Body => (body parameters) } // Shared, same as in Entity1 - Box2D/Joint component { Joint => (joint parameters) } // Shared, same as in Entity4 Entity4 - Box2D/Body component { Body => (body parameters) } // Shared, same as in Entity2 - Box2D/Joint component { Joint => (joint parameters) } // Shared, same as in Entity3 With this solution, we fix the second problem of the solution 3, because we can create an Entity5 which will have the shared body component of Entity1 and an another joint component so we are no longer limited in the joint number per body. But the first problem of solution 3 remains, because we can't limit the number of entities which have the shared joint component. To resolve this problem, we can add a way to limit the number of share of a component, so for the Joint component, we limit the number of share to 2, because we can only joint 2 bodies per joint. This solution would be perfect because there is no need to add code to sync changes like in the solution 5 because we are notified by the entity components system when components / entities are added to/removed from the system. But there is a conception problem : How to know easily and quickly between which bodies the joint operates ? Because, there is no way to find easily an entity with a component instance. My question is : Which solution is the best ? Is there any other better solutions ? Sorry for the long text and my bad english.

Read the article

Flashing your Windows Phone Dummies

- by Martin Hinshelwood

The rate at which vendors release new updates for the HD2 is ridiculously slow. You have to wait for Microsoft to release the new OS, then you wait for HTC to build it into a ROM, and then you have to wait up to 6 months for your operator to badly customise it for their network. Once Windows Phone 7 is released this problem should go away as Microsoft is likely to be able to update the phone over the air, but what do we do until then? I want Windows Mobile 6.5.5 now! I’m an early adopter. If there is a new version of something then that’s the version I want. As long as you accept that you are using something on a “let the early adopter beware” and accept that there may be bugs, sometimes serious crippling bugs the go for it. Note that I won't be responsible if you end up bricking your phone, unlocking or flashing your radio or ROM can be risky. If you follow the instructions then you should be fine, I've flashed my phones (SPV, M300, M1000, M2000, M3100, TyTN, TyTN 2, HD2) hundreds of times without any problems! I have been using Windows Mobile 6.5.5 before it was called 6.5.5 and for long enough that I don’t even remember when I first started using it. I was using it on my HTC TyTN 2 before I got an HD2 a couple of months before Christmas, and the first custom ROM’s for the HD2 were a couple of months after that. I always update to the latest ROM that I like, and occasionally I go back to the stock ROM’s to have a look see, but I am always disappointed. Terms: Soft Reset: Same as pulling out the battery, but is like a reboot for your phone Hard Reset: Reinstalls the Operating system from the Image that is stored on it ROM: This is Image that is loaded onto your phone and it is used to reinstall your phone whenever you do a “hard reset”. Stock ROM: A ROM from the original vendor… So HTC Cook a ROM: Referring to Cooking a ROM is the process a ROM developer goes through to take all of the parts (OS, Drivers and Applications) that make up a running phone and compiling them into a ROM. ROM Kitchen: A place where you get an SDK and all the component parts of the phone: OD, Drivers and Application. There are usually lots of Tools for making it easier to compile and build the image. Flashing: The process of updating one of the layers of your phone with a new layer Bricked: This is what happens when flashing goes wrong. Your phone is now good for only one thing… stopping paper blowing away in a windy place. You can “cook” you own ROM using one of the many good “ROM Kitchens” or you can use a ROM built and tested by someone else. I have cooked my own ROM before, and while the tutorials are good, it is a lot of hassle. You can only Flash new ROM’s that are specifically for your phone only so find a ROM for your phone and XDA Developers is the best place to look. It has a forum based structure and you can find your phone quite easily. XDA Developer Forum Installing a new ROM does have its risks. In the past there have been stories about phones being “bricked” but I have not heard of a bricked phone for quite some years. if you follow the instructions carefully you should not have any problems. note: Most of the tools are written by people for whom English is not their first language to you will need concentrate hard to understand some of the instructions. Have you ever read a manual that was just literally translated from another language? Enough said… There are a number of layers on your phone that you will need to know about: SPL: This is the lowest level, like a BIOS on a PC and is the Operating Systems gateway to the hardware Radio: I think of this as the hardware drivers, and you will need a different Radio for CDMA than GSM networks ROM: This is like your Windows CD, but it is stored internally to the Phone. Flashing your phone consists of replacing one Image with another and then wiping your phone and automatically reinstall from the Image. Sometimes when you download an Image wither it is for a Radio or for ROM you only get a file called *.nbh. What do you do with this? Well you need an RUU application to push that Image to your phone. The RUU’s are different per phone, but there is a CustomRUU for the HD2 that will update your phone with any *.nbh placed in the same directory. Download and Instructions for CustomRUU #1 Flash HardSPL An SPL is kind of like a BIOS, and the default one has checks to make sure that you are only installing a signed ROM. This would prevent you from installing one that comes from any other source but the vendor. NOTE: Installing a HARD SPL invalidates your warranty so remember to Flash your phone with a “stock” vendor ROM before trying to send your phone in for repairs. Is the warranty reinstated when you go back to a stock ROM? I don’t know… Updating your SPL to a HardSPL effectively unlocks your phone so you can install anything you like. I would recommend the HardSPL2. Download and Instructions for HardSPL2 #2 Task29 One of the problems that has been seen on the HD2 when flashing new ROM’s is that things are left over from the old ROM. For a while the recommendation was to Flash a stock ROM first, but some clever cookies have come up with “Task29” which formats your phone first. After running this your phone will be blank and will only boot to the white HTC logo and no further. You should follow the instructions and reboot (remove battery) and hold down the “volume down” button while turning you HD2 on to enter the bootloader. From here you can run CustomRUU once the USB message appears. Download and Instructions for Task29 #2 Flash Radio You may need to play around with this one, there is no good and bad version and the latest is not always the best. You know that annoying thing when you hit “end call” on your phone and nothing happens? Well that's down to the Radio. Get this version right for you and you may even be able to make calls. From a Windows Mobile as well Download There are no instructions here, but they are the same as th ROM, but you use this *.nbh file. #3 Flash ROM If you have gotten this far then you are probably a pro by now Just download the latest ROM below and Flash to your phone. I have been really impressed by the Artemis line of ROM’s but it is no way the only choice. I like this one as the developer builds them as close to the stock ROM as possible while updating to the latest of everything. Download and Instructions for Artemis HD2 vXX Conclusion While updating your ROM is not for the faint hearted it provides more options than the Stock ROM’s and quicker feature updates than waiting… Technorati Tags: WM6

Read the article

SQL SERVER – Step by Step Guide to Beginning Data Quality Services in SQL Server 2012 – Introduction to DQS

- by pinaldave

Data Quality Services is a very important concept of SQL Server. I have recently started to explore the same and I am really learning some good concepts. Here are two very important blog posts which one should go over before continuing this blog post. Installing Data Quality Services (DQS) on SQL Server 2012 Connecting Error to Data Quality Services (DQS) on SQL Server 2012 This article is introduction to Data Quality Services for beginners. We will be using an Excel file Click on the image to enlarge the it. In the first article we learned to install DQS. In this article we will see how we can learn about building Knowledge Base and using it to help us identify the quality of the data as well help correct the bad quality of the data. Here are the two very important steps we will be learning in this tutorial. Building a New Knowledge Base Creating a New Data Quality Project Let us start the building the Knowledge Base. Click on New Knowledge Base. In our project we will be using the Excel as a knowledge base. Here is the Excel which we will be using. There are two columns. One is Colors and another is Shade. They are independent columns and not related to each other. The point which I am trying to show is that in Column A there are unique data and in Column B there are duplicate records. Clicking on New Knowledge Base will bring up the following screen. Enter the name of the new knowledge base. Clicking NEXT will bring up following screen where it will allow to select the EXCE file and it will also let users select the source column. I have selected Colors and Shade both as a source column. Creating a domain is very important. Here you can create a unique domain or domain which is compositely build from Colors and Shade. As this is the first example, I will create unique domain – for Colors I will create domain Colors and for Shade I will create domain Shade. Here is the screen which will demonstrate how the screen will look after creating domains. Clicking NEXT it will bring you to following screen where you can do the data discovery. Clicking on the START will start the processing of the source data provided. Pre-processed data will show various information related to the source data. In our case it shows that Colors column have unique data whereas Shade have non-unique data and unique data rows are only two. In the next screen you can actually add more rows as well see the frequency of the data as the values are listed unique. Clicking next will publish the knowledge base which is just created. Now the knowledge base is created. We will try to take any random data and attempt to do DQS implementation over it. I am using another excel sheet here for simplicity purpose. In reality you can easily use SQL Server table for the same. Click on New Data Quality Project to see start DQS Project. In the next screen it will ask which knowledge base to use. We will be using our Colors knowledge base which we have recently created. In the Colors knowledge base we had two columns – 1) Colors and 2) Shade. In our case we will be using both of the mappings here. User can select one or multiple column mapping over here. Now the most important phase of the complete project. Click on Start and it will make the cleaning process and shows various results. In our case there were two columns to be processed and it completed the task with necessary information. It demonstrated that in Colors columns it has not corrected any value by itself but in Shade value there is a suggestion it has. We can train the DQS to correct values but let us keep that subject for future blog posts. Now click next and keep the domain Colors selected left side. It will demonstrate that there are two incorrect columns which it needs to be corrected. Here is the place where once corrected value will be auto-corrected in future. I manually corrected the value here and clicked on Approve radio buttons. As soon as I click on Approve buttons the rows will be disappeared from this tab and will move to Corrected Tab. If I had rejected tab it would have moved the rows to Invalid tab as well. In this screen you can see how the corrected 2 rows are demonstrated. You can click on Correct tab and see previously validated 6 rows which passed the DQS process. Now let us click on the Shade domain on the left side of the screen. This domain shows very interesting details as there DQS system guessed the correct answer as Dark with the confidence level of 77%. It is quite a high confidence level and manual observation also demonstrate that Dark is the correct answer. I clicked on Approve and the row moved to corrected tab. On the next screen DQS shows the summary of all the activities. It also demonstrates how the correction of the quality of the data was performed. The user can explore their data to a SQL Server Table, CSV file or Excel. The user also has an option to either explore data and all the associated cleansing info or data only. I will select Data only for demonstration purpose. Clicking explore will generate the files. Let us open the generated file. It will look as following and it looks pretty complete and corrected. Well, we have successfully completed DQS Process. The process is indeed very easy. I suggest you try this out yourself and you will find it very easy to learn. In future we will go over advanced concepts. Are you using this feature on your production server? If yes, would you please leave a comment with your environment and business need. It will be indeed interesting to see where it is implemented. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Data Quality Services, DQS

Read the article

TechEd 2010 Day One – How I Travel

- by BuckWoody

Normally when I blog on the first day of a conference, well, there hasn’t been a first day yet. So I talk about the value of a conference or some other facet. And normally in my (non-conference) blogs, I show you how I have learned to be a data professional – things I’ve learned how to do over the years. But in all that time, I don’t think I’ve ever talked about a big part of my job – traveling. I’ve traveled a lot throughout the years, when I’ve taught, gone to conferences, consulted and in my current role assisting Microsoft customers with large-scale database system designs. So I’ll share a few thoughts about what I do. Keep in mind that I travel for short durations, just a day or so, and sometimes I travel internationally. For those I prepare differently – what I’m talking about here is what I do for a multi-day, same-country trip. Hopefully you find it useful. I’ll tag a few other travelers I know to add their thoughts. Preparing for Travel When I’m notified of a trip, I begin researching the location. I find the flights, hotel and (if I have to) a car to use while I’m away. We have an in-house system we use to book the travel, but when I travel not-for-Microsoft I use Expedia and Kayak to find what I need. Traveling on Sunday and Friday is the worst. I have to do it sometimes (like this week) and it’s always a bad idea. But you can blunt the impact by booking as early as you can stand it. That means I have to be up super-early, but the flights are normally on time. I stay flexible, and always have a backup plan in case the flights are delayed or canceled. For the hotel, I tend to go on the cheaper side, and I look for older hotels that have been renovated, or quirky ones. For instance, in Boise, ID recently I stayed at a 60’s-themed (think Mad-Men) hotel that was very cool. Always I go on the less expensive side – I find the “luxury” hotels nail me for Internet, food, everything. The cheaper places include all kinds of things, and even have breakfasts, shuttles and all kinds of things that start to add up. I even call ahead to make sure there’s an iron and ironing board available, since I’ll need those when I get there. I find any way I can not to get a car. I use mass-transit wherever possible, and try to make friends and pay their gas to take me places. In a pinch, I’ll use a taxi. It ends up being cheaper, faster, and less stressful all around. Packing Over the years I’ve learned never to check luggage whenever I can. To do that, I lay out everything I want to take with me on the bed, and then try and make sure I’m really going to use it. I wear a dark wool set of pants, which I can clean and wear in hot and cold climates. I bring undies and socks of course, and for most places I have to wear “dress up” shirts. I bring at least two print T-Shirts in case I want to dress down for something while I’m gone, but I only bring one set of shoes. All the clothes are rolled as tightly as possible as I learned in the military. Then I use those to cushion the electronics I take. For toiletries I bring a shaver, toothpaste and toothbrush, D/O and a small brush. Everything else the hotel will provide. For entertainment, I take a small Zune, a full PC-Headset (so I can make IP calls on the road) and my laptop. I don’t take books or anything else – everything is electronic. I use E-books (downloaded from our Library), Audio-Books (on the Zune) and I also bring along a Kaossilator (more here) to play music in the hotel room or even on the plane without being heard. If I can, I pack into one roll-on bag. There’s not a lot better than this one, but I also have a Bag I was given as a prize for something or other here at Microsoft. Either way, I like something with less pockets and more big, open compartments. Everything gets rolled up and packed in, with all of the wires and charges in small bags my wife made for me. The laptop (and anything I don’t want gate-checked) goes on top or in an outside pouch so I can grab it quickly if I have to gate-check the bag. As much as I can, I try to go in one bag. When I can’t (like this week) I use this bag since it can expand, roll up, crush and even be put away later. It’s super-heavy canvas and worth the price. This allows me to not check a bag. Journey Logistics The day of the trip, I have everything ready since I’m getting up early. I pack a few small snacks inside a plastic large-mouth water bottle, which protects the snacks and lets me get water in the terminal. I bring along those little powdered drink mixes to add to the water. At the airport, I make a beeline for the power-outlets. I charge up my laptop and phone, and download all my e-mails so I can work on them off-line in the air. I don’t travel as often as I used to – just every month or so now, so I don’t have a membership to an airline club. If I travel much more, I’ll invest in one again – they are WELL worth the money, for the wifi, food and quiet if for nothing else. I print out my logistics on paper and put that in my pocket – flight numbers, hotel addresses and phones for everything. That way if I have to make a change, I don’t have to boot up anything or even have power to be able to roll with the punches if things change. Working While Away While I’m away I realize I’m going to be swamped with things at the conference or with my clients. So I turn on Out-Of-Office notifications to let people know I won’t be as responsive, and I keep my Outlook calendar up to date so my co-workers know what I’m up to. I even update it with hotel and phone info in case they really need to reach me. I share my calendar with my wife so my family knows what I’m doing as well. I check my e-mail during breaks, but I only respond to them in the evening or early morning at the hotel. I tweet during conferences. The point is to be as present as possible during the event or when I’m at the clients. Both deserve it. So those are my initial thoughts. I’ll tag Brent Ozar, Brad McGeHee and Paul Randal, and they can tag whomever they wish. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

Read the article

MSCC: Scripting - Administrator's toolbox of magic...

Finally, we made it to have our April meetup - in May. The most obvious explanation is the increased amount of open source and IT activities that either the MSCC, the Linux User Group of Mauritius (LUGM), or the University of Mauritius Student's Computer Club is organising. It's absolutely incredible to see the recent hype of events here on the island. And I'm loving it! Unfortunately, we also had to deal with arranging for a location this time. It was kind of an odyssey as my requests (and phone calls) haven't been answered, even though I tried it several times - well, kind of disappointing and I have to look into that for future gatherings. In my opinion, it is essential that two parameters of a community meeting are fixed as early as possible: Location, and Date and time You can't just change one or both on the very last minute. Well, this time we had to do it due to unforeseen reasons, and I apologise to any MSCC member which couldn't make it to our April meetup. Okay, lesson learned but now back to the actual meetup report ... Shortly after the meeting I placed the following statement as my first impression: "Spontaneous and improvised :) No, seriously, Ish and Dan had well prepared presentations on shell scripting, mainly focused towards Bourne Again Shell (bash), and the pros and cons of scripting versus actually writing something in a decent programming language. I thought that I could cut myself out of the equation but the demand for information about PowerShell was higher than expected..." Well, it turned out that the interest in Windows PowerShell was high, as I even got a couple of questions on it via social media networks during the evening. I also like to mention that the number of attendees went back to what I would call a "standard" number of participation. This time there were 12 craftsmen, but again a good number of First Timers. Reactions of other attendees Here are some impressions and feedback from our participants: "Enjoyed the bash and powershell (linux / windows) presentations ..." -- Nadim on event comments "He [Daniel] also showed us some syntax loopholes in Bash that could leave someone with bad code." -- Ish on MSCC – Let's talk about Scripting Glad to see a couple of first time attendees, especially students from the university itself. Some details on the presentations MSCC: First time visit at the University of Mauritius - Phase II Engineering Tower, room 2.9 Gimme some love ... bash and other shells Ish gave a great introduction into shell scripting as he spoke about existing shell environments and a little bit about their history. Furthermore, he talked about various built-in commands, the use of coreutils, the ability to daisy-chain multiple commands using pipes, the importance of the standard I/O streams and their file descriptors in advanced scripting techniques. Combined with a couple of sample statements in the Linux terminal on Ubuntu 14.04 machine it was a solid presentation. Have a closer look at his slides - published on his blog on MSCC – Let's talk about Scripting. Oddities of scripting After the brief introduction into bash it was Daniel's turn to highlight a good number of oddities when working with shell scripts. First of all, it should be clear that scripting is not supposed for any kind of implementations in terms of software but simply to automate administrative procedures and to simplify routine jobs on a system. One of the cool oddities that he mentioned is that everything (!) in a shell is represented by strings; there are no other types like integer, float, date-time, etc. that you'd like to use in a full-fledged programming language. Let's have a look at his sample: more to come... What's the output? As a conclusion, Daniel suggests that shell scripting should be limited but not restricted to automatic repetitive command stacks and batch jobs, startup wrapper for applications in order to set up the execution environment, and other not too sophisticated jobs. But as soon as it might involve a little bit more logic or you might rely on performance it's better to write an application in Ruby, Python, or Perl (among others of course). This is also enables the possibility to test your code properly. MSCC: Ish talking about Bourne Again Shell (bash) and shell scripting to automate regular tasks MSCC: Daniel gives an overview about the pros and cons of shell scripting versus programming MSCC: PowerShell as your scripting solution on Windows operating systems The path of the Enlightened is long ... and tough. Honestly, even though PowerShell was mentioned without any further details on the meetup's agenda, I didn't expect that there would be demand to give a presentation on Microsoft PowerShell after all. I already took this topic out of the announcement but the audience wanted to have some information. Okay, then let's see what I could do - improvised style. While my machine booted and got hooked up to the projector, I started to talk about the beginnings of PowerShell from back in 2006, and its predecessors MS DOS and Command Prompt. A throwback in history... always good for young people. As usual, Microsoft didn't get it at that time. Instead of listening to their client's needs and demands they ignored the feasibility to administrate Windows server farms without any UI tools. PowerShell is actually a result of this, and seeing that shell scripting is a common, reliable and fast way in an administrator's toolbox for decades, Microsoft had to adapt from their Microsoft Management Console (MMC) to a broader approach. It's not like shell scripting was something new; it is in daily use by alternative operating systems like AIX, HP UX, Solaris, and last but not least Linux. Most interestingly, Microsoft is very good at renovating existing architectures, and over the years PowerShell not only replaced their own combination of Command Prompt and Scripting Hosts (VBScript and CScript) but really turned into a challenging competitor on the market. The shell is easy to extend with cmdlets, and open to other Microsoft products like SQL Server, SharePoint, as well as Third-party software applications. Similar to MMC PowerShell also offers the ability to administer other machine remotely - only without a graphical user interface and therefore it's easier to automate and schedule regular tasks. Following is a sample of a PowerShell script file (extension .ps1): $strComputer = "." $colItems = get-wmiobject -class Win32_BIOS -namespace root\CIMV2 -comp $strComputer foreach ($objItem in $colItems) {write-host "BIOS Characteristics: " $objItem.BiosCharacteristicswrite-host "BIOS Version: " $objItem.BIOSVersionwrite-host "Build Number: " $objItem.BuildNumberwrite-host "Caption: " $objItem.Captionwrite-host "Code Set: " $objItem.CodeSetwrite-host "Current Language: " $objItem.CurrentLanguagewrite-host "Description: " $objItem.Descriptionwrite-host "Identification Code: " $objItem.IdentificationCodewrite-host "Installable Languages: " $objItem.InstallableLanguageswrite-host "Installation Date: " $objItem.InstallDatewrite-host "Language Edition: " $objItem.LanguageEditionwrite-host "List Of Languages: " $objItem.ListOfLanguageswrite-host "Manufacturer: " $objItem.Manufacturerwrite-host "Name: " $objItem.Namewrite-host "Other Target Operating System: " $objItem.OtherTargetOSwrite-host "Primary BIOS: " $objItem.PrimaryBIOSwrite-host "Release Date: " $objItem.ReleaseDatewrite-host "Serial Number: " $objItem.SerialNumberwrite-host "SMBIOS BIOS Version: " $objItem.SMBIOSBIOSVersionwrite-host "SMBIOS Major Version: " $objItem.SMBIOSMajorVersionwrite-host "SMBIOS Minor Version: " $objItem.SMBIOSMinorVersionwrite-host "SMBIOS Present: " $objItem.SMBIOSPresentwrite-host "Software Element ID: " $objItem.SoftwareElementIDwrite-host "Software Element State: " $objItem.SoftwareElementStatewrite-host "Status: " $objItem.Statuswrite-host "Target Operating System: " $objItem.TargetOperatingSystemwrite-host "Version: " $objItem.Versionwrite-host} Which gives you information about your BIOS and Windows OS. Then change the computer name to another one on your network (NetBIOS based) and run the script again. There lots of samples and tutorials at the Microsoft Script Center, and I would advise you to pay a visit over there if you are more interested in PowerShell. The Script Center provides the download links, too. Upcoming Events What are the upcoming events here in Mauritius? So far, we have the following ones (incomplete list as usual) in chronological order: Hacking Defence (14. May 2014) WebCup Maurice (7. & 8. June 2014) Developers Conference (TBA ~ July 2014) Linuxfest 2014 (TBA ~ November 2014) Hopefully, there will be more announcements during the next couple of weeks and months. If you know about any other event, like a bootcamp, a code challenge or hackathon here in Mauritius, please drop me a note in the comment section below this article. Thanks! My resume of the day Spontaneous and improvised :) The new location at the University of Mauritius turned out very well, there is plenty of space, and it could be a good choice for future meetings. Especially, having the ability to get more and more students into our IT community sounds like a great opportunity. Later during the day, I got some promising mails from Nadim regarding future sessions at the local branch of the Middlesex University. Well, we will see in the future... But for now this will be on hold until approximately October when students resume their regular studies. Anyway, it was a good experience at the university, and thanks again to the UoM Student's Computer Club that made the necessary arrangements for the MSCC!

Read the article

How to deal with a poor team leader and a tester manager from hell? [closed]

- by Google

Let me begin by explaining my situation and give a little context to the situation. My company has around 15 developers but we're split up on two different areas. We have a fresh product team and the old product team. The old product team does mostly bug fixes/maintenance and a feature here and there. The fresh product had never been released and was new from the ground up. I am on the fresh product team. The team consists of three developers (myself, another developer and a senior developer). The senior is also our team leader. Our roles are as follows: Myself: building the administration client as well as build/release stuff Other dev: building the primary client Team lead: building the server In addition to the dev team, we interact with the test manager often. By "we" I mean me since I do the build stuff and give him the builds to test. Trial 1: The other developer on my team and I have both tried to talk to our manager about our team leader. About two weeks before release we went in his office and had a closed door meeting before our team lead got to work. We expressed our concerns about the product, its release date and our team leader. We expressed our team leader had a "rosey" image of the product's state. Our manager seemed to listen to what we said and thanked us for taking the initiative to speak with him about it. He got us an extra two weeks before release. The situation with the leader didn't change. In fact, it got a little worse. While we were using the two weeks to fix issues he was slacking off quite a bit. Just to name a few things, he installed Windows 8 on his dev machine during this time (claimed him machine was broke), he wrote a plugin for our office messenger that turned turned messages into speech, and one time when I went in his office he was making a 3D model in Blender (for "fun"). He felt the product was "pretty good" and ready for release. During this time I dealt with the test manager on a daily basis. Every bug or issue that popped up he would pretty much attack me personally (regardless of which component the bug was in). The test manager would often push his "views" of what needed to be done with the product. He virtually ordered me to change text on our installer and to add features to the installer and administration client. I tried to express how his suggestions were "valid ideas" but it was too close to release to do those kinds of things and to make matters worse, our technical writer had already finished documentation and such a change would not only affect the dev team but would affect the technical writer and marketing as well. I expressed I wasn't going to make those changes without marketing's consent as well as the technical writer and my manager's. He pretty much said I don't care about the product and said I don't do my job. I would like to take a moment to say I take my job seriously and I do my best. I am the kind of person that goes to work 30-40 mins early and usually leaves 30 minutes later than everyone else. Saying I don't care or do my job is just insulting. His "attacks" on me grew from day to day. Every bug that popped up he would usually comment on in some manner that jabbed me and the other developer. "Oh that bug! Yeah that should have been fixed by now, figures! If someone would do their job!" and other similar kinds of comments. Keep in mind 8 out of 10 bugs were in the server and had nothing to do with me and the other developer. That didn't seem to matter.. On one occasion they got pretty bad and we almost got into a yelling match so I decided to stop talking to him all together. I carried all communication through office email (with my manager cc'd). He never attacked me via email. He still attempted to get aggressive with me in person but I completely ignore him and my only response to any question is, "Ask my team leader." or "Ask a product manager." The product launched after our two week extension. Trial 2: The day after the product launch our team leader went on vacation (thanks....). At this time we got a lot of questions from the tech support... major issues with the product. All of these issues were bugs marked "resolved" by our lovely team leader (a typical situation that often popped up). This is where we currently are. The other developer has been with the company for about three years (I've been there only five months) and told me he was going to speak with our manager alone and hoped it would help get our concerns across a little better in a one-on-one. He spoke with the manager and directly addressed all of our concerns regarding our team leader and the test manager giving us (mostly me) hell. Our manager basically said he understood how hard we work and said he noticed it and there's no doubt about it. He said he spoke with the test manager about his temper. Regarding the team leader, he didn't say a whole lot. He suggested we sit down with the team leader and address our concerns (isn't that the manager's job?). We're still waiting to see if anything has changed but we doubt it. What can we do next? 1) Talk to the team leader (may stress relationship and make work awkward) I admit the team leader is generally a nice guy. He is just a horrible leader and working closely with him is painful. I still don't believe bringing this directly to the team leader would help at all and may negatively impact the situation. 2) I could quit. Other than this situation the job is pretty fantastic. I really like my other coworkers and we have quite a bit of freedom. 3) I could take the situation with the team leader to one of the owners. I would then be throwing my manager under the bus. 4) I could take the situation with the test manager to HR. Any suggestions? Comments?

Read the article

Using SQL Source Control with Fortress or Vault – Part 2

- by AjarnMark

In Part 1, I started talking about using Red-Gate’s newest version of SQL Source Control and how I really like it as a viable method to source control your database development. It looks like this is going to turn into a little series where I will explain how we have done things in the past, and how life is different with SQL Source Control. I will also explain some of my philosophy and methodology around deployment with these tools. But for now, let’s talk about some of the good and the bad of the tool itself. More Kudos and Features I mentioned previously how impressed I was with the responsiveness of Red-Gate’s team. I have been having an ongoing email conversation with Gyorgy Pocsi, and as I have run into problems or requested things behave a little differently, it has not been more than a day or two before a new Build is ready for me to download and test. Quite impressive! I’m sure much of the requests I put in were already in the plans, so I can’t really take credit for them, but throughout this conversation, Red-Gate has implemented several features that were not in the first Early Access version. Those include: Honoring the Fortress configuration option to require Work Item (Bug) IDs on check-ins. Adding the check-in comment text as a comment to the Work Item. Adding the list of checked-in files, along with the Fortress links for automatic History and DIFF view Updating the status of a Work Item on check-in (e.g. setting the item to Complete or, in our case “Dev-Complete”) Support for the Fortress 2.0 API, and not just the Vault Pro 5.1 API. (See later notes regarding support for Fortress 2.0). These were all features that I felt we really needed to have in-place before I could honestly consider converting my team to using SQL Source Control on a regular basis. Now that I have those, my only excuse is not wanting to switch boats on the team mid-stream. So when we wrap up our current release in a few weeks, we will make the jump. In the meantime, I will continue to bang on it to make sure it is stable. It passed one test for stability when I did a test load of one of our larger database schemas into Fortress with SQL Source Control. That database has about 150 tables, 200 User-Defined Functions and nearly 900 Stored Procedures. The initial load to source control went smoothly and took just a brief amount of time. Warnings Remember that this IS still in pre-release stage and while I have not had any problems after that first hiccup I wrote about last time, you still need to treat it with a healthy respect. As I understand it, the RTM is targeted for February. There are a couple more features that I hope make it into the final release version, but if not, they’ll probably be coming soon thereafter. Those are: A Browse feature to let me lookup the Work Item ID instead of having to remember it or look back in my Item details. This is just a matter of convenience. I normally have my Work Item list open anyway, so I can easily look it up, but hey, why not make it even easier. A multi-line comment area. The current space for writing check-in comments is a single-line text box. I would like to have a multi-line space as I sometimes write lengthy commentary. But I recognize that it is a struggle to get most developers to put in more than the word “fixed” as their comment, so this meets the need of the majority as-is, and it’s not a show-stopper for us. Merge. SQL Source Control currently does not have a Merge feature. If two or more people make changes to the same database object, you will get a warning of the conflict and have to choose which one wins (and then manually edit to include the others’ changes). I think it unlikely you will run into actual conflicts in Stored Procedures and Functions, but you might with Views or Tables. This will be nice to have, but I’m not losing any sleep over it. And I have multiple tools at my disposal to do merges manually, so really not a show-stopper for us. Automation has its limits. As cool as this automation is, it has its limits and there are some changes that you will be better off scripting yourself. For example, if you are refactoring table definitions, and want to change a column name, you can write that as a quick sp_rename command and preserve the data within that column. But because this tool is looking just at a before and after picture, it cannot tell that you just renamed a column. To the tool, it looks like you dropped one column and added another. This is not a knock against Red-Gate. All automated scripting tools have this issue, unless the are actively monitoring your every step to know exactly what you are doing. This means that when you go to Deploy your changes, SQL Compare will script the change as a column drop and add, or will attempt to rebuild the entire table. Unfortunately, neither of these approaches will preserve the existing data in that column the way an sp_rename will, and so you are better off scripting that change yourself. Thankfully, SQL Compare will produce warnings about the potential loss of data before it does the actual synchronization and give you a chance to intercept the script and do it yourself. Also, please note that the current official word is that SQL Source Control supports Vault Professional 5.1 and later. Vault Professional is the new name for what was previously known as Fortress. (You can read about the name change on SourceGear’s site.) The last version of Fortress was 2.x, and the API for Fortress 2.x is different from the API for Vault Pro. At my company, we are currently running Fortress 2.0, with plans to upgrade to Vault Pro early next year. Gyorgy was able to come up with a work-around for me to be able to use SQL Source Control with Fortress 2.0, even though it is not officially supported. If you are using Fortress 2.0 and want to use SQL Source Control, be aware that this is not officially supported, but it is working for us, and you can probably get the work-around instructions from Red-Gate if you’re really, really nice to them. Upcoming Topics Some of the other topics I will likely cover in this series over the next few weeks are: How we used to do source control back in the old days (a few weeks ago) before SQL Source Control was available to Vault users What happens when you restore a database that is linked to source control Handling multiple development branches of source code Concurrent Development practices and handling Conflicts Deployment Tips and Best Practices A recap after using the tool for a while

Read the article

Best of Breed vs. Suite – Oracle’s SaaS Delivers Both

- by yaldahhakim

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* 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-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} The debate of which is better: “best of breed” business applications vs. an integrated suite is certainly not a new conversation. This has been argued between IT vendors and CIOs for years. It’s also important to clarify that “best of breed” does not necessarily translate into being the richest functionality; rather it’s often about just having the best fit solution to solve a specific business problem or need. So what does cloud have to do with the niche vs. suite debate? Consuming business applications in a cloud or SaaS deployment model can change the best of breed vs. suite discussion - if the cloud is done right. It’s having your cake and eating it too only better: you don’t have to gather all the ingredients or wait to bake your cake, and you can adjust how big of slice you take. Before you eat, it’s worth pausing to recall much of what we learned about IT over the last decade. These basic IT principles still hold true even though the financial model has changed from buying to renting. In other words, what’s under the technology hood still matters. Architecture and development methodologies like building an application based on open standards so it works with other systems - is still important. Data and information silos, complex integrations, and proprietary technologies that lock you in, are still bad. While some may argue that IT no longer matters with cloud, the opposite is actually true. If anything cloud can help return IT back to its rightful place as key strategic asset vs. a liability on the balance sheet. The “I” in CIO was never meant to stand for “integration” yet it’s amazing how much time and money is poured into these types of initiatives for most organizations each year. Rather the “I” needs to stand for “innovation”. This is where Oracle SaaS can uniquely help. Oracle’s application strategy has not really changed over the years. It’s always been about bringing the best and richest functionality across the enterprise to our customers while leveraging a common, standards-based, and enterprise-grade platform. So not jut best fit, but the best capabilities based on the input of thousands of enterprise customers across the globe. Oracle invests billions in R&D every year to add new capabilities to the broadest cloud portfolio in the industry, spanning across functional pillars like CRM, HCM, ERP, etc. And where it makes sense, Oracle combines key strategic acquisitions to complement organic functionality. The result is best of breed delivered in a suite. Again this is not something new. The game changer now with cloud is that it impacts HOW Oracle customers adopt the richest, most modern applications across the business – and continue on getting it. Consuming oracle applications in the cloud means you can adopt new capabilities and updates very quickly and easily. There’s no hardware to buy or software to manage. Oracle does it for you. Low upfront costs and an OpEx financial model is the easy part. Oracle Cloud Applications take it a big step further. For organizations that demand having the latest and richest functionality and accelerating the time to value from their IT investment, Oracle Cloud is the right path. It’s about holistically changing the “hows” and the “whys” of the organization by leveraging transformational innovations like social, mobile, and big data in a consistent and more powerful way. Not just about sales force automation or talent management. These technologies should impact all parts of the company and Oracle Cloud is the enterprise-grade delivery vehicle. Oracle SaaS helps break down barriers of adoption and is eases the headache of upgrades, investing in new supporting hardware, or adding internal expertise to manage it all. With Oracle Cloud, customers can get best of breed capabilities in either a full suite model or a la carte. And because it’s entirely built on open standards, it’s built to co-exist with existing IT investments. Updates can be automatic or delayed based on a customer’s requirements. And it’s complete – a full suite of cross pillar functionality. Even better, if you don’t like it, need more or less, just turn the dial up or down. Just like your utility bill, you pay for what you use, and can consume more or less power whenever you need it. Lower cost, lower investment risk, without compromising on functionality, security, or performance. Technology still matters in the cloud. So our cloud customers also like that when they adopt our cloud applications, they also get the best underlying technology, from the middleware and database platform down to infrastructure and Oracle’s engineered systems. Therefore it’s not just the greatest and latest in application functionality, but everything underneath that makes it work is also the latest and greatest. The best of breed technology stack powering best of breed business applications, and all delivered in a subscription based model. The best of both worlds. Yep, that’s the idea.

Read the article

Let’s Get Social

- by Kristin Rose

v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* 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-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} You can try to run from it like a bad Facebook picture but you can’t hide. Social media as we know it is quickly taking over our lives and is not going away any time soon. Though attempting to reach as many Twitter followers as Lady Gaga is daunting, learning how to leverage social media to meet your customer’s needs is not. For Oracle, this means interacting directly with our partners through our many social media outlets, and refraining from posting a mindless status on the pastrami on rye we ate for lunch today… though it was delicious. The “correct” way to go about social media is going to mean something different to each company. For example, sending a customer more than one friend request a day may not be the best way to get their attention, but using social media as a two-way marketing channel is. Oracle’s Partner Business Center’s (PBC) twitter handle was recently mentioned by Elateral as the “ideal way to engage with your market and use social media in the channel”. Why you ask? Because the PBC has two named social media leads manning the Twitter feed at all times, helping partners get the information and answers they need more quickly than a Justin Bieber video gone viral. So whether you want to post a video of your favorite customer attempting the Marshmallow challenge or tweet like there’s no tomorrow, be sure to follow @OraclePartnerBiz today, and see how they can help you achieve your next partner milestone with Oracle. Happy Socializing, The OPN Communications Team v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* 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-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* 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-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

Read the article

Brighton Rocks: UA Europe 2011

- by ultan o'broin

User Assistance Europe 2011 was held in Brighton, UK. Having seen Quadrophenia a dozen times, I just had to go along (OK, I wanted to talk about messages in enterprise applications). Sadly, it rained a lot, though that was still eminently more tolerable than being stuck home in Dublin during Bloomsday. So, here are my somewhat selective highlights and observations from the conference, massively skewed towards my own interests, as usual. Enjoyed Leah Guren's (Cow TC) great start ‘keynote’ on the Cultural Dimensions of Software Help Usage. Starting out by revisiting Hofstede's and Hall's work on culture (how many times I have done this for Multilingual magazine?) and then Neilsen’s findings on age as an indicator of performance, Leah showed how it is the expertise of the user that user assistance (UA) needs to be designed for (especially for high-end users), with some considerations made for age, while the gender and culture of users are not major factors. Help also needs to be contextual and concise, embedded close to the action. That users are saying things like “If I want help on Office, I go to Google ” isn't all that profound at this stage, but it is always worth reiterating how search can be optimized to return better results for users. Interestingly, regardless of user education level, the issue of information quality--hinging on the lynchpin of terminology reflecting that of the user--is critical. Major takeaway for me there. Matthew Ellison’s sessions on embedded help and demos were also impressive. Embedded help that is concise and contextual is definitely a powerful UX enabler, and I’m pleased to say that in Oracle Fusion Applications we have embraced the concept fully. Matthew also mentioned in his session about successful software demos that the principle of modality with demos is a must. Look no further than Oracle User Productivity Kit demos See It!, Try It!, Know It, and Do It! modes, for example. I also found some key takeaways in the presentation by Marie-Louise Flacke on notes and warnings. Here, legal considerations seemed to take precedence over providing any real information to users. I was delighted when Marie-Louise called out the Oracle JDeveloper documentation as an exemplar of how to use notes and instructions instead of trying to scare the bejaysus out of people and not providing them with any real information they’d find useful instead. My own session on designing messages for enterprise applications was well attended. Knowing your user profiles (remember user expertise is the king maker for UA so write for each audience involved), how users really work, the required application business and UI rules, what your application technology supports, and how messages integrate with the enterprise help desk and support policies and you will go much further than relying solely on the guideline of "writing messages in plain language". And, remember the value in warnings and confirmation messages too, and how you can use them smartly. I hope y’all got something from my presentation and from my answers to questions afterwards. Ellis Pratt stole the show with his presentation on applying game theory to software UA, using plenty of colorful, relevant examples (check out the Atlassian and DropBox approaches, for example), and striking just the right balance between theory and practice. Completely agree that the approach to take here is not to make UA itself a game, but to invoke UA as part of a bigger game dynamic (time-to-task completion, personal and communal goals, personal achievement and status, and so on). Sure there are gotchas and limitations to gamification, and we need to do more research. However, we'll hear a lot more about this subject in coming years, particularly in the enterprise space. I hope. I also heard good things about the different sessions about DITA usage (including one by Sonja Fuga that clearly opens the door for major innovation in the community content space using WordPress), the progressive disclosure of information (Cerys Willoughby), an overview of controlled language (or "information quality", as I like to position it) solutions and rationale by Dave Gash, and others. I also spent time chatting with Mike Hamilton of MadCap Software, who showed me a cool demo of their Flare product, and the Lingo translation solution. I liked the idea of their licensing model for workers-on-the-go; that’s smart UX-awareness in itself. Also chatted with Julian Murfitt of Mekon about uptake of DITA in the enterprise space. In all, it's worth attending UA Europe. I was surprised, however, not to see conference topics about mobile UA, community conversation and content, and search in its own right. These are unstoppable forces now, and the latter is pretty central to providing assistance now to all but the most irredentist of hard-copy fetishists or advanced technical or functional users working away on the back end of applications and systems. Only saw one iPad too (says the guy who carries three laptops). Tweeting during the conference was pretty much nonexistent during the event, so no community energy there. Perhaps all this can be addressed next year. I would love to see the next UA Europe event come to Dublin (despite Bloomsday, it's not a bad place place, really) now that hotels are so cheap and all. So, what is my overall impression of the state of user assistance in Europe? Clearly, there are still many people in the industry who feel there is something broken with the traditional forms of user assistance (particularly printed doc) and something needs to be done about it. I would suggest they move on and try and embrace change, instead. Many others see new possibilities, offered by UX and technology, as well as the reality of online user behavior in an increasingly connected world and that is encouraging. Such thought leaders need to be listened to. As Ellis Pratt says in his great book, Trends in Technical Communication - Rethinking Help: “To stay relevant means taking a new perspective on the role (of technical writer), and delivering “products” over and above the traditional manual and online Help file... there are a number of new trends in this field - some complementary, some conflicting. Whatever trends emerge as the norm, it’s likely the status quo will change.” It already has, IMO. I hear similar debates in the professional translation world about the onset of translation crowd sourcing (the Facebook model) and machine translation (trust me, that battle is over). Neither of these initiatives has put anyone out of a job and probably won't, though the nature of the work might change. If anything, such innovations have increased the overall need for professional translators as user expectations rise, new audiences emerge, and organizations need to collate and curate user-generated content, combining it with their own. Perhaps user assistance professionals can learn from other professions and grow accordingly.

Read the article

CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, March 27, 2010

CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, March 27, 2010New ProjectsAlter gear SQL index Management: SQL Index management displays a list of indexes available for the chosen database and allows you to select an individual / group of indexes to be r...ASP League Ladder System: An ASP ladder / league system for online gaming league or real life leagues also.Augmented Reality Strategy Simulator: Augmented Reality Strategy Simulator is a software suite to promote computer aided strategy planning. Sports team can visualize their strategy usin...Boo syntax highlighting for Visual Studio 2010: Simple syntax hightlighting VSX add-in for Boo language in Visual Studio 2010.easySan: easySan zur einfachen Mitgliedsverwaltung im BRKFsUnit: FsUnit makes unit-testing with F# more enjoyable. It adds a special syntax to your favorite .NET testing framework.Laughing Dog XNA Framework: Laughing Dog is a simple to use, component based 2D framework for XNA game development. At present it is very early in development and as such is f...miniTodo: WPFでMVVMの練習にてきとうに作ったTODOアプリ実用は無理です。My Common Library on .NET with CSharp: My Common Library on .NET with CSharp, it conclude database assecc, encrypt string, data caching, StringUtility, thank you for your view.Native code wrapping using c# : fsutil sparse commands: Ever thought about creating HUGE FILES for future use but felt bad for the wasted memory? Well, SPARSE FILES are the ANSWER! This FSUTIL SPARSE CO...Open SOA Platform: A centralized system for administering applications throught a SOA Enterprise Service Bus: Runtime environment (PROD, DEV, ...) , application and s...P-DBMS: Network and Database ProjectPraiseSight: PraiseSight is supposed to become a practical tool for churches to catalog an present their songs, lyrics and presentations on a beamer. The soluti...Pretty Good Frontend: Pretty Good Frontend is a sample frontend for ConfigMgr (SCCM) 2007 and MDT 2010 Zero Touch. S3Appender (Appender for Log4Net that Uses Amazon S3 For Storing Log Files): The S3Appender is a log4net appender that stores log events in either a MemoryStream or FileStream and sends them to S3 based on time intervals and...sEmit: sEmit (sms emitter) is an application written in C# which was built to send text messages. The project was founded in May 2009 by cansik. It works ...Silverlight RIA Tools: A tool set that generates a full RIA Solutions in Silverlightthommo cannon: Cannon for shooting down ThommosTianjin Polytechnic University Online Judge: Online Judge System Built on Microsoft technologies. Vision & Scope: A distributed OJ Solution on Windows and Cloud. Technologies used or planed...Tinare: Tinare is an byte encryption and decryption alogrithm. The input key is a string password.TinyPlug: Small Plugin Manager, written in C# Allows a project to define supported interfaces, and at runtime add plugins which support (inherit) these in...Utility niconv helps to convert text from one encoding to another: .NET implementation of GUN iconv console converter utility. The niconv program converts text from one encoding to another encoding. In the future r...WareFeed - Software Business Analytics: WareFeed is a simple but effective Software Business Analytics tool written in PHP and compatible others languages such as .NET, Java or Python. It...Y36API1: Semestralni projekt na Y36APINew ReleasesAlter gear SQL index Management: Setup 1.0.0: setup for first alpha releaseASP League Ladder System: ASPLeagueRelease_0_4_1: Release v 0.41Augmented Reality Strategy Simulator: Augmented Reality Strategy Simulator: Version 1.0 InstallerAutoAudit: AutoAudit 1.10e: Version 1.10e will be the final iteration of version 1 development. Version 2 will begin adding switches and options. Pleae email your suggestio...Boo syntax highlighting for Visual Studio 2010: Boo syntax VS 2010 - alpha: First release TODO: Multiline comments!Chargify.NET: Chargify.NET 0.6: Updated library, using Metered Components and updated Product information.Composer: V1.0.326.1000 Alpha: Initial Alpha release. Should be stable, with minor issues.CoNatural Components: CoNatural Components 1.6: Code fixes: Created helper classes to generate source code for type mapper/materializer. Fixed issue in optimized type materializer when loading ...CRM External View: 1.2: New Features in v1.2 release Password protected views. No more using Web Data Access role from v1. Filtering capabilities Caching for performan...Designit Video Embed Package: Release 1.1.0 beta1: You can now either have the video embeded directly in the template or have a preview in template that opens the video in a lightbox window.FsUnit: FsUnit 0.9.0 for NUnit: This release is for F# 2.0 and NUnit 2.5+.Laughing Dog XNA Framework: Laughing Dog 0.0.1: Laughing Dog - Alpla - v 0.0.1 First released version of the Laughing Dog framework.LiveUpload to Facebook: LiveUpload to Facebook 3.2: Version 3.2Become a fan on Facebook! Features Quickly and easily upload your photos and videos to Facebook, including any people tags added in Win...MapWindow6: MapWindow 6.0 msi March 26: This version adds the Join feature for creating a new "featureset" with attributes that are joined with attributes from a Excel data label named 'D...Mobile Broadband Logging Monitor: Mobile Broadband Logging Monitor 1.2.2: This edition supports: Newer and older editions of Birdstep Technology's EasyConnect HUAWEI Mobile Partner MWConn User defined location for s...Multiplayer Quiz: Release 1_6_351_0: A beta release of the next version. Please leave any errors in discussions or comments.Native code wrapping using c# : fsutil sparse commands: Fsutil sparse file native code - c sharp wrapper: Project Description A C# code wrapping a native code-Sparse files1 The code is about SPARSE files- the abillity to create huge files (for future us...Nice Libraries: 1.30 build 50325.01: Release 1.30 build 50325.01Pretty Good Frontend: Pretty Good Frontend binaries v1.0: This is the first public release of the Pretty Good Frontend binariesPylor: Pylor 0.1 alpha: This is the very first published version. I hope I can put a sample project soon.Quick Performance Monitor: Version 1.1 refresh: There was a typo or two in the sample batch file. Corrected now.Rapidshare Episode Downloader: RED v0.8.3: 0.8.1 introduced the ability to advance to the next episode. In 0.8.2 a bug was found that if episode number is less then 10, then the preceding 0...RapidWebDev - .NET Enterprise Software Development Infrastructure: RapidWebDev 1.52: RapidWebDev is an infrastructure helps to develop enterprise software solutions in Microsoft .NET easily and productively. This is the release vers...thommo cannon: game: gamethommo cannon: setup: setupthommo cannon: test: testTinare: Tinare DLL: Tinare DLL is a dynamic-link library written in C# which provides the functions to encrypt and decrypt a byte stream with tinare.WeatherBar: WeatherBar 2.1 [No Installation]: Minor changes to release 2.0 (http://weatherbar.codeplex.com/releases/view/42490). Fixed the bug that caused an exception to be thrown if the user...Most Popular ProjectsMetaSharpRawrWBFS ManagerASP.NET Ajax LibrarySilverlight ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseAJAX Control ToolkitLiveUpload to FacebookWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETMost Active ProjectsRawrjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesBlogEngine.NETMicrosoft Biology FoundationFarseer Physics Enginepatterns & practices: Composite WPF and SilverlightLINQ to TwitterTable2ClassFluent Ribbon Control SuiteNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog Module

Read the article

Feedback on IE9 developer tool

- by anirudha

if you already love IE9 this post really not for you. but still you need something more this post for you and want to know about IE9 why not use product guide they give you IE9 product guide well i already put the bad experience into many post here but a little practice more to show what IE9 actually is or what they show. well i believe that their is no one on MSDN can sure that IE9 is another thing for developer to struggle with. because they never thing about the thing they make. the thinking they have that we product windows who are best so everything we do are best and best. come to the point i means Web browsing we can divide them in two parts 1. someone who are developer and use browser mainly for development , debugging and testing what they produced and make better software. 2. user who are not know things more technically but use the web as their passion. so as a developer what developer want. are IE9 is really for developer now make a comparison. commonly every developer have a twitter account to follow the link of someone else to learn and read the best article on web and share to all follower of themselves. chrome and Firefox have many utilities for that but IE still have nothing. social networking is a good way to communicate with others. in IE their is no plug-in to make experience better as firefox and chrome have a list of plug-in to use browser with more comfort. their are a huge list of plug-in on Firefox and chrome is available for making experience better. but IE9 still have no plug-in for that. if you see http://ieaddons.com/ you still see that they are joking yeah white joke who believe on them. they still have no plug-in. are they fool or making other fool. on 2011 whenever Firefox and chrome claim many thing on the plug-in IE9 still have no plug-in. not for developer not for everyone else. yeah a list of useless stuff you can see their. IE9 developer tool maybe better if they copycat the firebug as they copycat Google’s search result for Bing. well it’ not sure but Google claim that. but what is in IE9 developer tool so great that MSDN developer talking about. i found nothing in IE9 developer tool still feel frustrated their is a big trouble to edit css. means you never can change the css without going to CSS tab. but i thing great many thing they make better their but they still produce not better option in IE9 developer tool. as a comparison firebug is great we all know but chrome is a good option if someone want to try their hands on new things. in firebug their is a list of plugin inside firebug available also to make task easier. like firepicker in firebug make colorpicking easier. firebug autocomplete make console script writing better and yslow show you the performance step you need to take for making site better. IE9 still have no plugin or that. IE9 maybe useful stuff whenever the interface they thing to make better. the problem with MSFT these days that they want to ship next version of every softare in WPF. yeah they make live 2011 in wpf. many of user go for someone else or downgrade their 2011 live. the problem they have that they never want to spent the time on learning to use a software again. IE9 not have the serius problem like live have but still IE9 is not so great as chrome. like in chrome their is smooth tabbing. IE9 ditto copycat the things for tabbing. but a little step more in IE have a problem that IE9 tab slip whenever you want to use them. in chrome never slip the tab without user want. well as user someone also want to paint their browser in the style they want or like. in firefox the sollution called personas or themes. same in chrome the things called themes but in IE they still believe that their is no need for them. means use same themes everytime no customization in 2011 yeah great joke. well i read a post [written in 2008] of developer who still claim that they never used Firefox because they have a license for visual studio and some other software and have IE in their system. i not what they want to show. means they always want or thing to show that firefox and chrome is pity and IE is great as all do. but what’s true we all know. when MSFT release IE9 RC they show the ads with comparison of IE9 RC with chrome6 but why not today with chrome 11 developer version. the many things on IE testdrive now work perfect on chrome. well what’s performance matter when a silly browser never give a better experience. yeah performance have matter in useful software. anyone can prove many things whenever they produce a featureless software. well IE9 is looking great in blogger’s post on many kind of website where developer not independently write. actually they are mentally forced to write for IE9 better and show blah blah even blah is very small as they show. i am not believe on some blogger when they write in a style who are easily known that the post in favor of IE9. if you thing of mine then i am not want to hide myself i am one of the lover of open source so i love Firefox and chrome both. but i am not wrong you find yourself that what is difference between IE9 and Firefox and chrome. so don’t believe on someone who are not mentally independent because most of them are write about IE9 because they want to show them better they are forced themselves to show IE9 as a tool and chrome and firefox as pity. well read everything but never believe on everyone without any confident of them. they actually all want to show the things they have as i have with chrome and firefox is better then IE9. so my feedback on IE9 is :- without any plugin , customization or many thing i described in the post make no sense of use of IE9. i still fall in love of firefox and chrome they both give a better support and things to make experience better on the web. so conclusion is that i not forced you to other not IE9. you need to use the tool who save your time. means if your IE9 save your time you should use them because time was more subjective then others. so use the software who save the time as i save my time in chrome and in firefox. i still found nothing inIE9 who save time of mine.

Read the article

Dynamic Code for type casting Generic Types 'generically' in C#

- by Rick Strahl

C# is a strongly typed language and while that's a fundamental feature of the language there are more and more situations where dynamic types make a lot of sense. I've written quite a bit about how I use dynamic for creating new type extensions: Dynamic Types and DynamicObject References in C# Creating a dynamic, extensible C# Expando Object Creating a dynamic DataReader for dynamic Property Access Today I want to point out an example of a much simpler usage for dynamic that I use occasionally to get around potential static typing issues in C# code especially those concerning generic types. TypeCasting Generics Generic types have been around since .NET 2.0 I've run into a number of situations in the past - especially with generic types that don't implement specific interfaces that can be cast to - where I've been unable to properly cast an object when it's passed to a method or assigned to a property. Granted often this can be a sign of bad design, but in at least some situations the code that needs to be integrated is not under my control so I have to make due with what's available or the parent object is too complex or intermingled to be easily refactored to a new usage scenario. Here's an example that I ran into in my own RazorHosting library - so I have really no excuse, but I also don't see another clean way around it in this case. A Generic Example Imagine I've implemented a generic type like this: public class RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType> where TBaseTemplateType : RazorTemplateBase, new() You can now happily instantiate new generic versions of this type with custom template bases or even a non-generic version which is implemented like this: public class RazorEngine : RazorEngine<RazorTemplateBase> { public RazorEngine() : base() { } } To instantiate one: var engine = new RazorEngine<MyCustomRazorTemplate>(); Now imagine that the template class receives a reference to the engine when it's instantiated. This code is fired as part of the Engine pipeline when it gets ready to execute the template. It instantiates the template and assigns itself to the template: var template = new TBaseTemplateType() { Engine = this } The problem here is that possibly many variations of RazorEngine<T> can be passed. I can have RazorTemplateBase, RazorFolderHostTemplateBase, CustomRazorTemplateBase etc. as generic parameters and the Engine property has to reflect that somehow. So, how would I cast that? My first inclination was to use an interface on the engine class and then cast to the interface. Generally that works, but unfortunately here the engine class is generic and has a few members that require the template type in the member signatures. So while I certainly can implement an interface: public interface IRazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType> it doesn't really help for passing this generically templated object to the template class - I still can't cast it if multiple differently typed versions of the generic type could be passed. I have the exact same issue in that I can't specify a 'generic' generic parameter, since there's no underlying base type that's common. In light of this I decided on using object and the following syntax for the property (and the same would be true for a method parameter): public class RazorTemplateBase :MarshalByRefObject,IDisposable { public object Engine {get;set; } } Now because the Engine property is a non-typed object, when I need to do something with this value, I still have no way to cast it explicitly. What I really would need is: public RazorEngine<> Engine { get; set; } but that's not possible. Dynamic to the Rescue Luckily with the dynamic type this sort of thing can be mitigated fairly easily. For example here's a method that uses the Engine property and uses the well known class interface by simply casting the plain object reference to dynamic and then firing away on the properties and methods of the base template class that are common to all templates:/// <summary> /// Allows rendering a dynamic template from a string template /// passing in a model. This is like rendering a partial /// but providing the input as a /// </summary> public virtual string RenderTemplate(string template,object model) { if (template == null) return string.Empty; // if there's no template markup if(!template.Contains("@")) return template; // use dynamic to get around generic type casting dynamic engine = Engine; string result = engine.RenderTemplate(template, model); if (result == null) throw new ApplicationException("RenderTemplate failed: " + engine.ErrorMessage); return result; } Prior to .NET 4.0 I would have had to use Reflection for this sort of thing which would have a been a heck of a lot more verbose, but dynamic makes this so much easier and cleaner and in this case at least the overhead is negliable since it's a single dynamic operation on an otherwise very complex operation call. Dynamic as a Bailout Sometimes this sort of thing often reeks of a design flaw, and I agree that in hindsight this could have been designed differently. But as is often the case this particular scenario wasn't planned for originally and removing the generic signatures from the base type would break a ton of other code in the framework. Given the existing fairly complex engine design, refactoring an interface to remove generic types just to make this particular code work would have been overkill. Instead dynamic provides a nice and simple and relatively clean solution. Now if there were many other places where this occurs I would probably consider reworking the code to make this cleaner but given this isolated instance and relatively low profile operation use of dynamic seems a valid choice for me. This solution really works anywhere where you might end up with an inheritance structure that doesn't have a common base or interface that is sufficient. In the example above I know what I'm getting but there's no common base type that I can cast to. All that said, it's a good idea to think about use of dynamic before you rush in. In many situations there are alternatives that can still work with static typing. Dynamic definitely has some overhead compared to direct static access of objects, so if possible we should definitely stick to static typing. In the example above the application already uses dynamics extensively for dynamic page page templating and passing models around so introducing dynamics here has very little additional overhead. The operation itself also fires of a fairly resource heavy operation where the overhead of a couple of dynamic member accesses are not a performance issue. So, what's your experience with dynamic as a bailout mechanism? © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in CSharp Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

Read the article

How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop

- by Eric Z Goodnight

You might think that it’s a complicated process to remove objects from photographs. But really Photoshop makes it quite simple, even when removing all traces of a person from digital photographs. Read on to see just how easy it is. Photoshop was originally created to be an image editing program, and it excels at it. With hardly any Photoshop experience, any beginner can begin removing objects or people from their photos. Have some friends that photobombed an otherwise great pic? Tell them to say their farewells, because here’s how to get rid of them with Photoshop! Tools for Removing Objects Removing an object is not really “magical” work. Your goal is basically to cover up the information you don’t want in an image with information you do want. In this sample image, we want to remove the cigar smoking man, and leave the geisha. Here’s a couple of the tools that can be useful to work with when attempting this kind of task. Clone Stamp and Pattern Stamp Tool: Samples parts of your image from your background, and allows you to paint into your image with your mouse or stylus. Eraser and Brush Tools: Paint flat colors and shapes, and erase cloned layers of image information. Basic, down and dirty photo editing tools. Pen, Quick Selection, Lasso, and Crop tools: Select, isolate, and remove parts of your image with these selection tools. All useful in their own way. Some, like the pen tool, are nightmarishly tough on beginners. Remove a Person with the Clone Stamp Tool (Video) The video above uses the Clone Stamp tool to sample and paint with the background texture. It’s a simple tool to use, although it can be confusing, possibly counter-intuitive. Here’s some pointers, in addition to the video above. Select shortcut key to choose the Clone tool stamp from the Tools Panel. Always create a copy of your background layer before doing heavy edits by right clicking on the background in your Layers Panel and selecting “Duplicate.” Hold with the Clone Tool selected, and click anywhere in your image to sample that area. When you’re sampling an area, your cursor is “Aligned” with your sample area. When you paint, your sample area moves. You can turn the “Aligned” setting off by clicking the in the Options Panel at the top of your screen if you want. Change your brush size and hardness as shown in the video by right-clicking in your image. Use your lasso to copy and paste pieces of your image in order to cover up any parts that seem appropriate. Photoshop Magic with the “Content-Aware Fill” One of the hallmark features of CS5 is the “Content-Aware Fill.” Content aware fill can be an excellent shortcut to removing objects and even people in Photoshop, but it is somewhat limited, and can get confused. Here’s a basic rundown on how it works. Select an object using your Lasso tool, shortcut key . The Lasso works fine as this selection can be rough. Navigate to Edit > Fill, and select “Content-Aware,” as illustrated above, from the pull-down menu. It’s surprisingly simple. After some processing, Photoshop has done the work of removing the object for you. It takes a few moments, and it is not perfect, so be prepared to touch it up with some Copy-Paste, or some Clone stamp action. Content Aware Fill Has Its Limits Keep in mind that the Content Aware Fill is meant to be used with other techniques in mind. It doesn’t always perform perfectly, but can give you a great starting point. Take this image for instance. It is actually plausible to hide this figure and make this image look like he was never there at all. With a selection made with the Lasso tool, navigate to Edit > Fill and select “Content Aware” again. The result is surprisingly good, but as you can see, worthy of some touch up. With a result like this one, you’ll have to get your hands dirty with copy-paste to create believable lines in the background. With many photographs, Content Aware Fill will simply get confused and give you results you won’t be happy with. Additional Touch Up for Bad Background Textures with the Pattern Stamp Tool For the perfectionist, cleaning up the lumpy looking textures that the Clone Stamp can leave is fairly simple using the Pattern Stamp Tool. Sample an piece of your image with your Marquee Tool, shortcut key . Navigate to Edit > Define Pattern to create a new Pattern from your selection. Click OK to continue. Click and hold down on the Clone Stamp tool in your Tools Panel until you can select the Pattern Stamp Tool. Pick your new pattern from the Options at the top of your screen, in the Options Panel. Then simply right click in your image in order to pick as soft a brush as possible to paint with. Paint into your image until your background is as smooth as you want it to be, making your painted out object more and more invisible. If you get lines from your repeated texture, experiment turning the on and off and paint over them. In addition to this, simple use of the Crop Tool, shortcut , can recompose an image, making it look as if it never had another object in it at all. Combine these techniques to find a method that works best for your images. Have questions or comments concerning Graphics, Photos, Filetypes, or Photoshop? Send your questions to [email protected], and they may be featured in a future How-To Geek Graphics article. Image Credits: Geisha Kyoto Gion by Todd Laracuenta via Wikipedia, used under Creative Commons. Moai Rano raraku by Aurbina, in Public Domain. Chris Young visits Wrigley by TonyTheTiger, via Wikipedia, used under Creative Commons. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware How to Change the Default Application for Android Tasks Stop Believing TV’s Lies: The Real Truth About "Enhancing" Images The How-To Geek Valentine’s Day Gift Guide CyanogenMod Updates; Rolls out Android 2.3 to the Less Fortunate MyPaint is an Open-Source Graphics App for Digital Painters Can the Birds and Pigs Really Be Friends in the End? [Angry Birds Video] Add the 2D Version of the New Unity Interface to Ubuntu 10.10 and 11.04 MightyMintyBoost Is a 3-in-1 Gadget Charger Watson Ties Against Human Jeopardy Opponents

Read the article

European Interoperability Framework - a new beginning?

- by trond-arne.undheim

The most controversial document in the history of the European Commission's IT policy is out. EIF is here, wrapped in the Communication "Towards interoperability for European public services", and including the new feature European Interoperability Strategy (EIS), arguably a higher strategic take on the same topic. Leaving EIS aside for a moment, the EIF controversy has been around IPR, defining open standards and about the proper terminology around standardization deliverables. Today, as the document finally emerges, what is the verdict? First of all, to be fair to those among you who do not spend your lives in the intricate labyrinths of Commission IT policy documents on interoperability, let's define what we are talking about. According to the Communication: "An interoperability framework is an agreed approach to interoperability for organisations that want to collaborate to provide joint delivery of public services. Within its scope of applicability, it specifies common elements such as vocabulary, concepts, principles, policies, guidelines, recommendations, standards, specifications and practices." The Good - EIF reconfirms that "The Digital Agenda can only take off if interoperability based on standards and open platforms is ensured" and also confirms that "The positive effect of open specifications is also demonstrated by the Internet ecosystem." - EIF takes a productive and pragmatic stance on openness: "In the context of the EIF, openness is the willingness of persons, organisations or other members of a community of interest to share knowledge and stimulate debate within that community, the ultimate goal being to advance knowledge and the use of this knowledge to solve problems" (p.11). "If the openness principle is applied in full: - All stakeholders have the same possibility of contributing to the development of the specification and public review is part of the decision-making process; - The specification is available for everybody to study; - Intellectual property rights related to the specification are licensed on FRAND terms or on a royalty-free basis in a way that allows implementation in both proprietary and open source software" (p. 26). - EIF is a formal Commission document. The former EIF 1.0 was a semi-formal deliverable from the PEGSCO, a working group of Member State representatives. - EIF tackles interoperability head-on and takes a clear stance: "Recommendation 22. When establishing European public services, public administrations should prefer open specifications, taking due account of the coverage of functional needs, maturity and market support." - The Commission will continue to support the National Interoperability Framework Observatory (NIFO), reconfirming the importance of coordinating such approaches across borders. - The Commission will align its internal interoperability strategy with the EIS through the eCommission initiative. - One cannot stress the importance of using open standards enough, whether in the context of open source or non-open source software. The EIF seems to have picked up on this fact: What does the EIF says about the relation between open specifications and open source software? The EIF introduces, as one of the characteristics of an open specification, the requirement that IPRs related to the specification have to be licensed on FRAND terms or on a royalty-free basis in a way that allows implementation in both proprietary and open source software. In this way, companies working under various business models can compete on an equal footing when providing solutions to public administrations while administrations that implement the standard in their own software (software that they own) can share such software with others under an open source licence if they so decide. - EIF is now among the center pieces of the Digital Agenda (even though this demands extensive inter-agency coordination in the Commission): "The EIS and the EIF will be maintained under the ISA Programme and kept in line with the results of other relevant Digital Agenda actions on interoperability and standards such as the ones on the reform of rules on implementation of ICT standards in Europe to allow use of certain ICT fora and consortia standards, on issuing guidelines on essential intellectual property rights and licensing conditions in standard-setting, including for ex-ante disclosure, and on providing guidance on the link between ICT standardisation and public procurement to help public authorities to use standards to promote efficiency and reduce lock-in.(Communication, p.7)" All in all, quite a few good things have happened to the document in the two years it has been on the shelf or was being re-written, depending on your perspective, in any case, awaiting the storms to calm. The Bad - While a certain pragmatism is required, and governments cannot migrate to full openness overnight, EIF gives a bit too much room for governments not to apply the openness principle in full. Plenty of reasons are given, which should maybe have been put as challenges to be overcome: "However, public administrations may decide to use less open specifications, if open specifications do not exist or do not meet functional interoperability needs. In all cases, specifications should be mature and sufficiently supported by the market, except if used in the context of creating innovative solutions". - EIF does not use the internationally established terminology: open standards. Rather, the EIF introduces the notion of "formalised specification". How do "formalised specifications" relate to "standards"? According to the FAQ provided: The word "standard" has a specific meaning in Europe as defined by Directive 98/34/EC. Only technical specifications approved by a recognised standardisation body can be called a standard. Many ICT systems rely on the use of specifications developed by other organisations such as a forum or consortium. The EIF introduces the notion of "formalised specification", which is either a standard pursuant to Directive 98/34/EC or a specification established by ICT fora and consortia. The term "open specification" used in the EIF, on the one hand, avoids terminological confusion with the Directive and, on the other, states the main features that comply with the basic principle of openness laid down in the EIF for European Public Services. Well, this may be somewhat true, but in reality, Europe is 30 year behind in terminology. Unless the European Standardization Reform gets completed in the next few months, most Member States will likely conclude that they will go on referencing and using standards beyond those created by the three European endorsed monopolists of standardization, CEN, CENELEC and ETSI. Who can afford to begin following the strict Brussels rules for what they can call open standards when, in reality, standards stemming from global standardization organizations, so-called fora/consortia, dominate in the IT industry. What exactly is EIF saying? Does it encourage Member States to go on using non-ESO standards as long as they call it something else? I guess I am all for it, although it is a bit cumbersome, no? Why was there so much interest around the EIF? The FAQ attempts to explain: Some Member States have begun to adopt policies to achieve interoperability for their public services. These actions have had a significant impact on the ecosystem built around the provision of such services, e.g. providers of ICT goods and services, standardisation bodies, industry fora and consortia, etc... The Commission identified a clear need for action at European level to ensure that actions by individual Member States would not create new electronic barriers that would hinder the development of interoperable European public services. As a result, all stakeholders involved in the delivery of electronic public services in Europe have expressed their opinions on how to increase interoperability for public services provided by the different public administrations in Europe. Well, it does not take two years to read 50 consultation documents, and the EU Standardization Reform is not yet completed, so, more pragmatically, you finally had to release the document. Ok, let's leave some of that aside because the document is out and some people are happy (and others definitely not). The Verdict Considering the controversy, the delays, the lobbying, and the interests at stake both in the EU, in Member States and among vendors large and small, this document is pretty impressive. As with a good wine that has not yet come to full maturity, let's say that it seems to be coming in in the 85-88/100 range, but only a more fine-grained analysis, enjoyment in good company, and ultimately, implementation, will tell. The European Commission has today adopted a significant interoperability initiative to encourage public administrations across the EU to maximise the social and economic potential of information and communication technologies. Today, we should rally around this achievement. Tomorrow, let's sit down and figure out what it means for the future.

Read the article

GoldenGate 12c Trail Encryption and Credentials with Oracle Wallet

- by hamsun

I have been asked more than once whether the Oracle Wallet supports GoldenGate trail encryption. Although GoldenGate has supported encryption with the ENCKEYS file for years, Oracle GoldenGate 12c now also supports encryption using the Oracle Wallet. This helps improve security and makes it easier to administer. Two types of wallets can be configured in Oracle GoldenGate 12c: The wallet that holds the master keys, used with trail or TCP/IP encryption and decryption, stored in the new 12c dirwlt/cwallet.sso file. The wallet that holds the Oracle Database user IDs and passwords stored in the ‘credential store’ stored in the new 12c dircrd/cwallet.sso file. A wallet can be created using a ‘create wallet’ command. Adding a master key to an existing wallet is easy using ‘open wallet’ and ‘add masterkey’ commands. GGSCI (EDLVC3R27P0) 42> open wallet Opened wallet at location 'dirwlt'. GGSCI (EDLVC3R27P0) 43> add masterkey Master key 'OGG_DEFAULT_MASTERKEY' added to wallet at location 'dirwlt'. Existing GUI Wallet utilities that come with other products such as the Oracle Database “Oracle Wallet Manager” do not work on this version of the wallet. The default Oracle Wallet can be changed. GGSCI (EDLVC3R27P0) 44> sh ls -ltr ./dirwlt/* -rw-r----- 1 oracle oinstall 685 May 30 05:24 ./dirwlt/cwallet.sso GGSCI (EDLVC3R27P0) 45> info masterkey Masterkey Name: OGG_DEFAULT_MASTERKEY Creation Date: Fri May 30 05:24:04 2014 Version: Creation Date: Status: 1 Fri May 30 05:24:04 2014 Current The second wallet file is used for the credential used to connect to a database, without exposing the user id or password. Once it is configured, this file can be copied so that credentials are available to connect to the source or target database. GGSCI (EDLVC3R27P0) 48> sh cp ./dircrd/cwallet.sso $GG_EURO_HOME/dircrd GGSCI (EDLVC3R27P0) 49> sh ls -ltr ./dircrd/* -rw-r----- 1 oracle oinstall 709 May 28 05:39 ./dircrd/cwallet.sso The encryption wallet file can also be copied to the target machine so the replicat has access to the master key to decrypt records that are encrypted in the trail. Similar to the old ENCKEYS file, the master keys wallet created on the source host must either be stored in a centrally available disk or copied to all GoldenGate target hosts. The wallet is in a platform-independent format, although it is not certified for the iSeries, z/OS, and NonStop platforms. GGSCI (EDLVC3R27P0) 50> sh cp ./dirwlt/cwallet.sso $GG_EURO_HOME/dirwlt The new 12c UserIdAlias parameter is used to locate the credential in the wallet so the source user id and password does not need to be stored as a parameter as long as it is in the wallet. GGSCI (EDLVC3R27P0) 52> view param extwest extract extwest exttrail ./dirdat/ew useridalias gguamer table west.*; The EncryptTrail parameter is used to encrypt the trail using the Advanced Encryption Standard and can be used with a primary extract or pump extract. GGSCI (EDLVC3R27P0) 54> view param pwest extract pwest encrypttrail AES256 rmthost easthost, mgrport 15001 rmttrail ./dirdat/pe passthru table west.*; Once the extracts are running, records can be encrypted using the wallet. GGSCI (EDLVC3R27P0) 60> info extract *west EXTRACT EXTWEST Last Started 2014-05-30 05:26 Status RUNNING Checkpoint Lag 00:00:17 (updated 00:00:01 ago) Process ID 24982 Log Read Checkpoint Oracle Integrated Redo Logs 2014-05-30 05:25:53 SCN 0.0 (0) EXTRACT PWEST Last Started 2014-05-30 05:26 Status RUNNING Checkpoint Lag 24:02:32 (updated 00:00:05 ago) Process ID 24983 Log Read Checkpoint File ./dirdat/ew000004 2014-05-29 05:23:34.748949 RBA 1483 The ‘info masterkey’ command is used to confirm the wallet contains the key after copying it to the target machine. The key is needed to decrypt the data in the trail before the replicat applies the changes to the target database. GGSCI (EDLVC3R27P0) 41> open wallet Opened wallet at location 'dirwlt'. GGSCI (EDLVC3R27P0) 42> info masterkey Masterkey Name: OGG_DEFAULT_MASTERKEY Creation Date: Fri May 30 05:24:04 2014 Version: Creation Date: Status: 1 Fri May 30 05:24:04 2014 Current Once the replicat is running, records can be decrypted using the wallet. GGSCI (EDLVC3R27P0) 44> info reast REPLICAT REAST Last Started 2014-05-30 05:28 Status RUNNING INTEGRATED Checkpoint Lag 00:00:00 (updated 00:00:02 ago) Process ID 25057 Log Read Checkpoint File ./dirdat/pe000004 2014-05-30 05:28:16.000000 RBA 1546 There is no need for the DecryptTrail parameter when using the Oracle Wallet, unlike when using the ENCKEYS file. GGSCI (EDLVC3R27P0) 45> view params reast replicat reast assumetargetdefs discardfile ./dirrpt/reast.dsc, purge useridalias ggueuro map west.*, target east.*; Once a record is inserted into the source table and committed, the encryption can be verified using logdump and then querying the target table. AMER_SQL>insert into west.branch values (50, 80071); 1 row created. AMER_SQL>commit; Commit complete. The following encrypted record can be found using logdump. Logdump 40 >n 2014/05/30 05:28:30.001.154 Insert Len 28 RBA 1546 Name: WEST.BRANCH After Image: Partition 4 G s 0a3e 1ba3 d924 5c02 eade db3f 61a9 164d 8b53 4331 | .>...$\....?a..M.SC1 554f e65a 5185 0257 | UO.ZQ..W Bad compressed block, found length of 7075 (x1ba3), RBA 1546 GGS tokens: TokenID x52 'R' ORAROWID Info x00 Length 20 4141 4157 7649 4141 4741 4141 4144 7541 4170 0001 | AAAWvIAAGAAAADuAAp.. TokenID x4c 'L' LOGCSN Info x00 Length 7 3231 3632 3934 33 | 2162943 TokenID x36 '6' TRANID Info x00 Length 10 3130 2e31 372e 3135 3031 | 10.17.1501 The replicat automatically decrypted this record from the trail and then inserted the row to the target table using the wallet. This select verifies the row was inserted into the target database and the data is not encrypted. EURO_SQL>select * from branch where branch_number=50; BRANCH_NUMBER BRANCH_ZIP ------------- ---------- 50 80071 Book a seat in an upcoming Oracle GoldenGate 12c: Fundamentals for Oracle course now to learn more about GoldenGate 12c new features including how to use GoldenGate with the Oracle wallet, credentials, integrated extracts, integrated replicats, the Oracle Universal Installer, and other new features. Looking for another course? View all Oracle GoldenGate training. Randy Richeson joined Oracle University as a Senior Principal Instructor in March 2005. He is an Oracle Certified Professional (10g-12c) and a GoldenGate Certified Implementation Specialist (10-11g). He has taught GoldenGate since 2010 and also has experience teaching other technical curriculums including GoldenGate Monitor, Veridata, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, and the Oracle Application Server.

Read the article

Feedback Filtration–Processing Negative Comments for Positive Gains

- by D'Arcy Lussier

After doing 7 conferences, 5 code camps, and countless user group events, I feel that this is a post I need to write. I actually toyed with other names for this post, however those names would just lend itself to the type of behaviour I want people to avoid – the reactionary, emotional response that speaks to some deeper issue beyond immediate facts and context. Humans are incredibly complex creatures. We’re also emotional, which serves us well in certain situations but can hinder us in others. Those of us in leadership build up a thick skin because we tend to encounter those reactionary, emotional responses more often, and we’re held to a higher standard because of our positions. While we could react with emotion ourselves, as the saying goes – fighting fire with fire just makes a bigger fire. So in this post I’ll share my thought process for dealing with negative feedback/comments and how you can still get value from them. The Thought Process Let’s take a real-world example. This week I held the Prairie IT Pro & Dev Con event. We’ve gotten a lot of session feedback already, most of it overwhelmingly positive. But some not so much – and some to an extreme I rarely see but isn’t entirely surprising to me. So here’s the example from a person we’ll refer to as Mr. Horrible: How was the speaker? Horrible! Worst speaker ever! Did the session meet your expectations? Hard to tell, speaker ruined it. Other Comments: DO NOT bring this speaker back! He was at this conference last year and I hoped enough negative feedback would have taught you to not bring him back...obviously not...I will not return to this conference next year if this speaker is brought back. Now those are very strong words. “Worst speaker ever!” “Speaker ruined it” “I will not return to this conference next year if the speaker is brought back”. The speakers I invite to speak at my conference are not just presenters but friends and colleagues. When I see this, my initial reaction is of course very emotional: I get defensive, I get angry, I get offended. So that’s where the process kicks in. Step 1 – Take a Deep Breath Take a deep breath, calm down, and walk away from the keyboard. I didn’t do that recently during an email convo between some colleagues and it ended up in my reacting emotionally on Twitter – did I mention those colleagues follow my Twitter feed? Yes, I ate some crow. Ok, now that we’re calm, let’s move on to step 2. Step 2 – Strip off the Emotion We need to take off the emotion that people wrap their words in and identify the root issues. For instance, if I see: “I hated this session, the presenter was horrible! He spoke so fast I couldn’t make out what he was saying!” then I drop off the personal emoting (“I hated…”) and the personal attack (“the presenter was horrible”) and focus on the real issue this person had – that the speaker was talking too fast. Now we have a root cause of the displeasure. However, we’re also dealing with humans who are all very different. Before I call up the speaker to talk about his speaking pace, I need to do some other things first. Back to our Mr. Horrible example, I don’t really have much to go on. There’s no details of how the speaker “ruined” the session or why he’s the “worst speaker ever”. In this case, the next step is crucial. Step 3 – Validate the Feedback When I tell people that we really like getting feedback for the sessions, I really really mean it. Not just because we want to hear what individuals have to say but also because we want to know what the group thought. When a piece of negative feedback comes in, I validate it against the group. So with the speaker Mr. Horrible commented on, I go to the feedback and look at other people’s responses: 2 x Excellent 1 x Alright 1 x Not Great 1 x Horrible (our feedback guy) That’s interesting, it’s a bit all over the board. If we look at the comments more we find that the people who rated the speaker excellent liked the presentation style and found the content valuable. The one guy who said “Not Great” even commented that there wasn’t anything really wrong with the presentation, he just wasn’t excited about it. In that light, I can try to make a few assumptions: - Mr. Horrible didn’t like the speakers presentation style - Mr. Horrible was expecting something else that wasn’t communicated properly in the session description - Mr. Horrible, for whatever reason, just didn’t like this presenter Now if the feedback was overwhelmingly negative, there’s a different pattern – one that validates the negative feedback. Regardless, I never take something at face value. Even if I see really good feedback, I never get too happy until I see that there’s a group trend towards the positive. Step 4 – Action Plan Once I’ve validated the feedback, then I need to come up with an action plan around it. Let’s go back to the other example I gave – the one with the speaker going too fast. I went and looked at the feedback and sure enough, other people commented that the speaker had spoken too quickly. Now I can go back to the speaker and let him know so he can get better. But what if nobody else complained about it? I’d still mention it to the speaker, but obviously one person’s opinion needs to be weighed as such. When we did PrDC Winnipeg in 2011, I surveyed the attendees about the food. Everyone raved about it…except one person. Am I going to change the menu next time for that one person while everyone else loved it? Of course not. There’s a saying – A sure way to fail is to try to please everyone. Let’s look at the Mr. Horrible example. What can I communicate to the speaker with such limited information provided in the feedback from Mr. Horrible? Well looking at the groups feedback, I can make a few suggestions: - Ensure that people understand in the session description the style of the talk - Ensure that people understand the level of detail/complexity of the talk and what prerequisite knowledge they should have I’m looking at it as possibly Mr. Horrible assumed a much more advanced talk and was disappointed, while the positive feedback by people who – from their comments – suggested this was all new to them, were thrilled with the session level. Step 5 – Follow Up For some feedback, I follow up personally. Especially with negative or constructive feedback, its important to let the person know you heard them and are making changes because of their comments. Even if their comments were emotionally charged and overtly negative, it’s still important to reach out personally and professionally. When you remove the emotion, negative comments can be the best feedback you get. Also, people have bad days. We’ve all had one of “those days” where we talked more sternly than normal to someone, or got angry at something we’d normally shrug off. We have various stresses in our lives and sometimes they seep out in odd ways. I always try to give some benefit of the doubt, and re-evaluate my view of the person after they’ve responded to my communication. But, there is such a thing as garbage feedback. What Mr. Horrible wrote is garbage. It’s mean spirited. It’s hateful. It provides nothing constructive at all. And a tell-tale sign that feedback is garbage – the person didn’t leave their name even though there was a field for it. Step 6 – Delete It Feedback must be processed in its raw form, and the end products should drive improvements. But once you’ve figured out what those things are, you shouldn’t leave raw feedback lying around. They are snapshots in time that taken alone can be damaging. Also, you should never rest on past praise. In a future blog post, I’m going to talk about how we can provide great feedback that, even when its critical, can still be constructive.

Read the article

ubuntu 12.04 python problem or?

- by Trki

Hi i am trying to fix this for a long time but without success. When i open my zsh terminal i get this error: (terminal is working but error appear) Welcome to the world of tomorrow! virtualenvwrapper_run_hook:12: permission denied: virtualenvwrapper.sh: There was a problem running the initialization hooks. If Python could not import the module virtualenvwrapper.hook_loader, check that virtualenv has been installed for VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_PYTHON= and that PATH is set properly. I tried few things but... dont know how to solve it. Somehow during looking for a search i found i should post here an output of: ? sudo dpkg --configure -a Setting up python-pip (1.0-1build1) ... /var/lib/dpkg/info/python-pip.postinst: 6: /var/lib/dpkg/info/python-pip.postinst: pycompile: not found dpkg: error processing python-pip (--configure): subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 127 Setting up libc-dev-bin (2.15-0ubuntu10.5) ... Setting up gnome-control-center-data (1:3.4.2-0ubuntu0.13) ... Setting up linux-libc-dev (3.2.0-56.86) ... Setting up python-virtualenv (1.7.1.2-1) ... /var/lib/dpkg/info/python-virtualenv.postinst: 6: /var/lib/dpkg/info/python-virtualenv.postinst: pycompile: not found dpkg: error processing python-virtualenv (--configure): subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 127 Setting up libglib2.0-0 (2.32.4-0ubuntu1) ... Setting up libglib2.0-0:i386 (2.32.4-0ubuntu1) ... Setting up gimp (2.6.12-1ubuntu1.2) ... /var/lib/dpkg/info/gimp.postinst: 11: /var/lib/dpkg/info/gimp.postinst: pycompile: not found dpkg: error processing gimp (--configure): subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 127 Setting up libpolkit-gobject-1-0 (0.104-1ubuntu1.1) ... Setting up libgnome-control-center1 (1:3.4.2-0ubuntu0.13) ... Setting up libnm-util2 (0.9.4.0-0ubuntu4.3) ... Setting up libc6-dev (2.15-0ubuntu10.5) ... Setting up libpulse-mainloop-glib0 (1:1.1-0ubuntu15.4) ... dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of virtualenvwrapper: virtualenvwrapper depends on python-virtualenv; however: Package python-virtualenv is not configured yet. dpkg: error processing virtualenvwrapper (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured Setting up libpolkit-agent-1-0 (0.104-1ubuntu1.1) ... Setting up libupower-glib1 (0.9.15-3git1ubuntu0.1) ... Setting up libaccountsservice0 (0.6.15-2ubuntu9.6.1) ... Setting up libpolkit-backend-1-0 (0.104-1ubuntu1.1) ... Setting up libglib2.0-bin (2.32.4-0ubuntu1) ... Setting up libnm-glib4 (0.9.4.0-0ubuntu4.3) ... Setting up policykit-1 (0.104-1ubuntu1.1) ... Setting up gnome-settings-daemon (3.4.2-0ubuntu0.6.4) ... Setting up accountsservice (0.6.15-2ubuntu9.6.1) ... dpkg: error processing ubuntu-system-service (--configure): Package is in a very bad inconsistent state - you should reinstall it before attempting configuration. Processing triggers for libc-bin ... ldconfig deferred processing now taking place Errors were encountered while processing: python-pip python-virtualenv gimp virtualenvwrapper ubuntu-system-service Also: ? python --version zsh: command not found: python Part of my ~/.zshrc # python virtual env wrapper if [ -f ~/.local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh ]; then export WORKON_HOME=~/.virtualenvs source ~/.local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh plugins=("${plugins[@]}" virtualenvwrapper) fi # pythonbrew [[ -s ~/.pythonbrew/etc/bashrc ]] && source ~/.pythonbrew/etc/bashrc Part os zsh -xv # # Invoke the initialization functions # virtualenvwrapper_initialize +/home/trki/.local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh:1179> virtualenvwrapper_initialize +virtualenvwrapper_initialize:1> virtualenvwrapper_derive_workon_home +virtualenvwrapper_derive_workon_home:1> typeset 'workon_home_dir=/home/trki/.virtualenvs' +virtualenvwrapper_derive_workon_home:5> [ /home/trki/.virtualenvs '=' '' ']' +virtualenvwrapper_derive_workon_home:12> echo /home/trki/.virtualenvs +virtualenvwrapper_derive_workon_home:12> unset GREP_OPTIONS +virtualenvwrapper_derive_workon_home:12> grep '^[^/~]' +virtualenvwrapper_derive_workon_home:21> echo /home/trki/.virtualenvs +virtualenvwrapper_derive_workon_home:21> unset GREP_OPTIONS +virtualenvwrapper_derive_workon_home:21> egrep '([\$~]|//)' +virtualenvwrapper_derive_workon_home:30> echo /home/trki/.virtualenvs +virtualenvwrapper_derive_workon_home:31> return 0 +virtualenvwrapper_initialize:1> export 'WORKON_HOME=/home/trki/.virtualenvs' +virtualenvwrapper_initialize:3> virtualenvwrapper_verify_workon_home -q +virtualenvwrapper_verify_workon_home:1> RC=0 +virtualenvwrapper_verify_workon_home:2> [ ! -d /home/trki/.virtualenvs/ ']' +virtualenvwrapper_verify_workon_home:11> return 0 +virtualenvwrapper_initialize:6> [ /home/trki/.virtualenvs '=' '' ']' +virtualenvwrapper_initialize:11> virtualenvwrapper_run_hook initialize +virtualenvwrapper_run_hook:1> typeset hook_script +virtualenvwrapper_run_hook:2> typeset result +virtualenvwrapper_run_hook:4> hook_script=+virtualenvwrapper_run_hook:4> virtualenvwrapper_tempfile initialize-hook +virtualenvwrapper_tempfile:2> typeset 'suffix=initialize-hook' +virtualenvwrapper_tempfile:3> typeset file +virtualenvwrapper_tempfile:5> file=+virtualenvwrapper_tempfile:5> virtualenvwrapper_mktemp -t virtualenvwrapper-initialize-hook-XXXXXXXXXX +virtualenvwrapper_mktemp:1> mktemp -t virtualenvwrapper-initialize-hook-XXXXXXXXXX +virtualenvwrapper_tempfile:5> file=/tmp/virtualenvwrapper-initialize-hook-OhY86PXmo7 +virtualenvwrapper_tempfile:6> [ 0 -ne 0 ']' +virtualenvwrapper_tempfile:6> [ -z /tmp/virtualenvwrapper-initialize-hook-OhY86PXmo7 ']' +virtualenvwrapper_tempfile:6> [ ! -f /tmp/virtualenvwrapper-initialize-hook-OhY86PXmo7 ']' +virtualenvwrapper_tempfile:11> echo /tmp/virtualenvwrapper-initialize-hook-OhY86PXmo7 +virtualenvwrapper_tempfile:12> return 0 +virtualenvwrapper_run_hook:4> hook_script=/tmp/virtualenvwrapper-initialize-hook-OhY86PXmo7 +virtualenvwrapper_run_hook:11> cd /home/trki/.virtualenvs +cd:1> [[ x/home/trki/.virtualenvs == x... ]] +cd:3> [[ x/home/trki/.virtualenvs == x.... ]] +cd:5> [[ x/home/trki/.virtualenvs == x..... ]] +cd:7> [[ x/home/trki/.virtualenvs == x...... ]] +cd:9> [ -d /home/trki/.autoenv ']' +cd:13> cd /home/trki/.virtualenvs +virtualenvwrapper_run_hook:12> '' -m virtualenvwrapper.hook_loader --script /tmp/virtualenvwrapper-initialize-hook-OhY86PXmo7 initialize virtualenvwrapper_run_hook:12: permission denied: +virtualenvwrapper_run_hook:15> result=126 +virtualenvwrapper_run_hook:17> [ 126 -eq 0 ']' +virtualenvwrapper_run_hook:27> [ initialize '=' initialize ']' +virtualenvwrapper_run_hook:29> cat - virtualenvwrapper.sh: There was a problem running the initialization hooks. If Python could not import the module virtualenvwrapper.hook_loader, check that virtualenv has been installed for VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_PYTHON= and that PATH is set properly. +virtualenvwrapper_run_hook:38> rm -f /tmp/virtualenvwrapper-initialize-hook-OhY86PXmo7 +virtualenvwrapper_run_hook:39> return 126 +virtualenvwrapper_initialize:13> virtualenvwrapper_setup_tab_completion +virtualenvwrapper_setup_tab_completion:1> [ -n '' ']' +virtualenvwrapper_setup_tab_completion:20> [ -n 4.3.17 ']' +virtualenvwrapper_setup_tab_completion:30> compctl -K _virtualenvs workon rmvirtualenv cpvirtualenv showvirtualenv +virtualenvwrapper_setup_tab_completion:31> compctl -K _cdvirtualenv_complete cdvirtualenv +virtualenvwrapper_setup_tab_completion:32> compctl -K _cdsitepackages_complete cdsitepackages +virtualenvwrapper_initialize:15> return 0 +/home/trki/.zshrc:17> plugins=( git python django symfony2 zsh-syntax-highlighting composer history-substring-search virtualenvwrapper ) # pythonbrew [[ -s ~/.pythonbrew/etc/bashrc ]] && source ~/.pythonbrew/etc/bashrc +/home/trki/.zshrc:21> [[ -s /home/trki/.pythonbrew/etc/bashrc ]] Also when i try to open ubuntu software center absolutly nothing happens. No idea what to do now.

Read the article

6 Ways to Free Up Hard Drive Space Used by Windows System Files

- by Chris Hoffman

We’ve previously covered the standard ways to free up space on Windows. But if you have a small solid-state drive and really want more hard space, there are geekier ways to reclaim hard drive space. Not all of these tips are recommended — in fact, if you have more than enough hard drive space, following these tips may actually be a bad idea. There’s a tradeoff to changing all of these settings. Erase Windows Update Uninstall Files Windows allows you to uninstall patches you install from Windows Update. This is helpful if an update ever causes a problem — but how often do you need to uninstall an update, anyway? And will you really ever need to uninstall updates you’ve installed several years ago? These uninstall files are probably just wasting space on your hard drive. A recent update released for Windows 7 allows you to erase Windows Update files from the Windows Disk Cleanup tool. Open Disk Cleanup, click Clean up system files, check the Windows Update Cleanup option, and click OK. If you don’t see this option, run Windows Update and install the available updates. Remove the Recovery Partition Windows computers generally come with recovery partitions that allow you to reset your computer back to its factory default state without juggling discs. The recovery partition allows you to reinstall Windows or use the Refresh and Reset your PC features. These partitions take up a lot of space as they need to contain a complete system image. On Microsoft’s Surface Pro, the recovery partition takes up about 8-10 GB. On other computers, it may be even larger as it needs to contain all the bloatware the manufacturer included. Windows 8 makes it easy to copy the recovery partition to removable media and remove it from your hard drive. If you do this, you’ll need to insert the removable media whenever you want to refresh or reset your PC. On older Windows 7 computers, you could delete the recovery partition using a partition manager — but ensure you have recovery media ready if you ever need to install Windows. If you prefer to install Windows from scratch instead of using your manufacturer’s recovery partition, you can just insert a standard Window disc if you ever want to reinstall Windows. Disable the Hibernation File Windows creates a hidden hibernation file at C:\hiberfil.sys. Whenever you hibernate the computer, Windows saves the contents of your RAM to the hibernation file and shuts down the computer. When it boots up again, it reads the contents of the file into memory and restores your computer to the state it was in. As this file needs to contain much of the contents of your RAM, it’s 75% of the size of your installed RAM. If you have 12 GB of memory, that means this file takes about 9 GB of space. On a laptop, you probably don’t want to disable hibernation. However, if you have a desktop with a small solid-state drive, you may want to disable hibernation to recover the space. When you disable hibernation, Windows will delete the hibernation file. You can’t move this file off the system drive, as it needs to be on C:\ so Windows can read it at boot. Note that this file and the paging file are marked as “protected operating system files” and aren’t visible by default. Shrink the Paging File The Windows paging file, also known as the page file, is a file Windows uses if your computer’s available RAM ever fills up. Windows will then “page out” data to disk, ensuring there’s always available memory for applications — even if there isn’t enough physical RAM. The paging file is located at C:\pagefile.sys by default. You can shrink it or disable it if you’re really crunched for space, but we don’t recommend disabling it as that can cause problems if your computer ever needs some paging space. On our computer with 12 GB of RAM, the paging file takes up 12 GB of hard drive space by default. If you have a lot of RAM, you can certainly decrease the size — we’d probably be fine with 2 GB or even less. However, this depends on the programs you use and how much memory they require. The paging file can also be moved to another drive — for example, you could move it from a small SSD to a slower, larger hard drive. It will be slower if Windows ever needs to use the paging file, but it won’t use important SSD space. Configure System Restore Windows seems to use about 10 GB of hard drive space for “System Protection” by default. This space is used for System Restore snapshots, allowing you to restore previous versions of system files if you ever run into a system problem. If you need to free up space, you could reduce the amount of space allocated to system restore or even disable it entirely. Of course, if you disable it entirely, you’ll be unable to use system restore if you ever need it. You’d have to reinstall Windows, perform a Refresh or Reset, or fix any problems manually. Tweak Your Windows Installer Disc Want to really start stripping down Windows, ripping out components that are installed by default? You can do this with a tool designed for modifying Windows installer discs, such as WinReducer for Windows 8 or RT Se7en Lite for Windows 7. These tools allow you to create a customized installation disc, slipstreaming in updates and configuring default options. You can also use them to remove components from the Windows disc, shrinking the size of the resulting Windows installation. This isn’t recommended as you could cause problems with your Windows installation by removing important features. But it’s certainly an option if you want to make Windows as tiny as possible. Most Windows users can benefit from removing Windows Update uninstallation files, so it’s good to see that Microsoft finally gave Windows 7 users the ability to quickly and easily erase these files. However, if you have more than enough hard drive space, you should probably leave well enough alone and let Windows manage the rest of these settings on its own. Image Credit: Yutaka Tsutano on Flickr

Read the article

C#: LINQ vs foreach - Round 1.

- by James Michael Hare

So I was reading Peter Kellner's blog entry on Resharper 5.0 and its LINQ refactoring and thought that was very cool. But that raised a point I had always been curious about in my head -- which is a better choice: manual foreach loops or LINQ? The answer is not really clear-cut. There are two sides to any code cost arguments: performance and maintainability. The first of these is obvious and quantifiable. Given any two pieces of code that perform the same function, you can run them side-by-side and see which piece of code performs better. Unfortunately, this is not always a good measure. Well written assembly language outperforms well written C++ code, but you lose a lot in maintainability which creates a big techncial debt load that is hard to offset as the application ages. In contrast, higher level constructs make the code more brief and easier to understand, hence reducing technical cost. Now, obviously in this case we're not talking two separate languages, we're comparing doing something manually in the language versus using a higher-order set of IEnumerable extensions that are in the System.Linq library. Well, before we discuss any further, let's look at some sample code and the numbers. First, let's take a look at the for loop and the LINQ expression. This is just a simple find comparison: // find implemented via LINQ public static bool FindViaLinq(IEnumerable<int> list, int target) { return list.Any(item => item == target); } // find implemented via standard iteration public static bool FindViaIteration(IEnumerable<int> list, int target) { foreach (var i in list) { if (i == target) { return true; } } return false; } Okay, looking at this from a maintainability point of view, the Linq expression is definitely more concise (8 lines down to 1) and is very readable in intention. You don't have to actually analyze the behavior of the loop to determine what it's doing. So let's take a look at performance metrics from 100,000 iterations of these methods on a List<int> of varying sizes filled with random data. For this test, we fill a target array with 100,000 random integers and then run the exact same pseudo-random targets through both searches. List<T> On 100,000 Iterations Method Size Total (ms) Per Iteration (ms) % Slower Any 10 26 0.00046 30.00% Iteration 10 20 0.00023 - Any 100 116 0.00201 18.37% Iteration 100 98 0.00118 - Any 1000 1058 0.01853 16.78% Iteration 1000 906 0.01155 - Any 10,000 10,383 0.18189 17.41% Iteration 10,000 8843 0.11362 - Any 100,000 104,004 1.8297 18.27% Iteration 100,000 87,941 1.13163 - The LINQ expression is running about 17% slower for average size collections and worse for smaller collections. Presumably, this is due to the overhead of the state machine used to track the iterators for the yield returns in the LINQ expressions, which seems about right in a tight loop such as this. So what about other LINQ expressions? After all, Any() is one of the more trivial ones. I decided to try the TakeWhile() algorithm using a Count() to get the position stopped like the sample Pete was using in his blog that Resharper refactored for him into LINQ: // Linq form public static int GetTargetPosition1(IEnumerable<int> list, int target) { return list.TakeWhile(item => item != target).Count(); } // traditionally iterative form public static int GetTargetPosition2(IEnumerable<int> list, int target) { int count = 0; foreach (var i in list) { if(i == target) { break; } ++count; } return count; } Once again, the LINQ expression is much shorter, easier to read, and should be easier to maintain over time, reducing the cost of technical debt. So I ran these through the same test data: List<T> On 100,000 Iterations Method Size Total (ms) Per Iteration (ms) % Slower TakeWhile 10 41 0.00041 128% Iteration 10 18 0.00018 - TakeWhile 100 171 0.00171 88% Iteration 100 91 0.00091 - TakeWhile 1000 1604 0.01604 94% Iteration 1000 825 0.00825 - TakeWhile 10,000 15765 0.15765 92% Iteration 10,000 8204 0.08204 - TakeWhile 100,000 156950 1.5695 92% Iteration 100,000 81635 0.81635 - Wow! I expected some overhead due to the state machines iterators produce, but 90% slower? That seems a little heavy to me. So then I thought, well, what if TakeWhile() is not the right tool for the job? The problem is TakeWhile returns each item for processing using yield return, whereas our for-loop really doesn't care about the item beyond using it as a stop condition to evaluate. So what if that back and forth with the iterator state machine is the problem? Well, we can quickly create an (albeit ugly) lambda that uses the Any() along with a count in a closure (if a LINQ guru knows a better way PLEASE let me know!), after all , this is more consistent with what we're trying to do, we're trying to find the first occurence of an item and halt once we find it, we just happen to be counting on the way. This mostly matches Any(). // a new method that uses linq but evaluates the count in a closure. public static int TakeWhileViaLinq2(IEnumerable<int> list, int target) { int count = 0; list.Any(item => { if(item == target) { return true; } ++count; return false; }); return count; } Now how does this one compare? List<T> On 100,000 Iterations Method Size Total (ms) Per Iteration (ms) % Slower TakeWhile 10 41 0.00041 128% Any w/Closure 10 23 0.00023 28% Iteration 10 18 0.00018 - TakeWhile 100 171 0.00171 88% Any w/Closure 100 116 0.00116 27% Iteration 100 91 0.00091 - TakeWhile 1000 1604 0.01604 94% Any w/Closure 1000 1101 0.01101 33% Iteration 1000 825 0.00825 - TakeWhile 10,000 15765 0.15765 92% Any w/Closure 10,000 10802 0.10802 32% Iteration 10,000 8204 0.08204 - TakeWhile 100,000 156950 1.5695 92% Any w/Closure 100,000 108378 1.08378 33% Iteration 100,000 81635 0.81635 - Much better! It seems that the overhead of TakeAny() returning each item and updating the state in the state machine is drastically reduced by using Any() since Any() iterates forward until it finds the value we're looking for -- for the task we're attempting to do. So the lesson there is, make sure when you use a LINQ expression you're choosing the best expression for the job, because if you're doing more work than you really need, you'll have a slower algorithm. But this is true of any choice of algorithm or collection in general. Even with the Any() with the count in the closure it is still about 30% slower, but let's consider that angle carefully. For a list of 100,000 items, it was the difference between 1.01 ms and 0.82 ms roughly in a List<T>. That's really not that bad at all in the grand scheme of things. Even running at 90% slower with TakeWhile(), for the vast majority of my projects, an extra millisecond to save potential errors in the long term and improve maintainability is a small price to pay. And if your typical list is 1000 items or less we're talking only microseconds worth of difference. It's like they say: 90% of your performance bottlenecks are in 2% of your code, so over-optimizing almost never pays off. So personally, I'll take the LINQ expression wherever I can because they will be easier to read and maintain (thus reducing technical debt) and I can rely on Microsoft's development to have coded and unit tested those algorithm fully for me instead of relying on a developer to code the loop logic correctly. If something's 90% slower, yes, it's worth keeping in mind, but it's really not until you start get magnitudes-of-order slower (10x, 100x, 1000x) that alarm bells should really go off. And if I ever do need that last millisecond of performance? Well then I'll optimize JUST THAT problem spot. To me it's worth it for the readability, speed-to-market, and maintainability.

Read the article

Custom Model Binding of IEnumerable Properties in ASP.Net MVC 2

- by Doug Lampe

MVC 2 provides a GREAT feature for dealing with enumerable types. Let's say you have an object with a parent/child relationship and you want to allow users to modify multiple children at the same time. You can simply use the following syntax for any indexed enumerables (arrays, generic lists, etc.) and then your values will bind to your enumerable model properties. 1: <% using (Html.BeginForm("TestModelParameter", "Home")) 2: { %> 3: < table > 4: < tr >< th >ID</th><th>Name</th><th>Description</th></tr> 5: <% for (int i = 0; i < Model.Items.Count; i++) 6: { %> 7: < tr > 8: < td > 9: <%= i %> 10: </ td > 11: < td > 12: <%= Html.TextBoxFor(m => m.Items[i].Name) %> 13: </ td > 14: < td > 15: <%= Model.Items[i].Description %> 16: </ td > 17: </ tr > 18: <% } %> 19: </ table > 20: < input type ="submit" /> 21: <% } %> Then just update your model either by passing it into your action method as a parameter or explicitly with UpdateModel/TryUpdateModel. 1: public ActionResult TestTryUpdate() 2: { 3: ContainerModel model = new ContainerModel(); 4: TryUpdateModel(model); 5: 6: return View("Test", model); 7: } 8: 9: public ActionResult TestModelParameter(ContainerModel model) 10: { 11: return View("Test", model); 12: } Simple right? Well, not quite. The problem is the DefaultModelBinder and how it sets properties. In this case our model has a property that is a generic list (Items). The first bad thing the model binder does is create a new instance of the list. This can be fixed by making the property truly read-only by removing the set accessor. However this won't help because this behaviour continues. As the model binder iterates through the items to "set" their values, it creates new instances of them as well. This means you lose any information not passed via the UI to your controller so in the examplel above the "Description" property would be blank for each item after the form posts. One solution for this is custom model binding. I have put together a solution which allows you to retain the structure of your model. Model binding is a somewhat advanced concept so you may need to do some additional research to really understand what is going on here, but the code is fairly simple. First we will create a binder for the parent object which will retain the state of the parent as well as some information on which children have already been bound. 1: public class ContainerModelBinder : DefaultModelBinder 2: { 3: /// <summary> 4: /// Gets an instance of the model to be used to bind child objects. 5: /// </summary> 6: public ContainerModel Model { get; private set; } 7: 8: /// <summary> 9: /// Gets a list which will be used to track which items have been bound. 10: /// </summary> 11: public List<ItemModel> BoundItems { get; private set; } 12: 13: public ContainerModelBinder() 14: { 15: BoundItems = new List<ItemModel>(); 16: } 17: 18: protected override object CreateModel(ControllerContext controllerContext, ModelBindingContext bindingContext, Type modelType) 19: { 20: // Set the Model property so child binders can find children. 21: Model = base.CreateModel(controllerContext, bindingContext, modelType) as ContainerModel; 22: 23: return Model; 24: } 25: } Next we will create the child binder and have it point to the parent binder to get instances of the child objects. Note that this only works if there is only one property of type ItemModel in the parent class since the property to find the item in the parent is hard coded. 1: public class ItemModelBinder : DefaultModelBinder 2: { 3: /// <summary> 4: /// Gets the parent binder so we can find objects in the parent's collection 5: /// </summary> 6: public ContainerModelBinder ParentBinder { get; private set; } 7: 8: public ItemModelBinder(ContainerModelBinder containerModelBinder) 9: { 10: ParentBinder = containerModelBinder; 11: } 12: 13: protected override object CreateModel(ControllerContext controllerContext, ModelBindingContext bindingContext, Type modelType) 14: { 15: // Find the item in the parent collection and add it to the bound items list. 16: ItemModel item = ParentBinder.Model.Items.FirstOrDefault(i => !ParentBinder.BoundItems.Contains(i)); 17: ParentBinder.BoundItems.Add(item); 18: 19: return item; 20: } 21: } Finally, we will register these binders in Global.asax.cs so they will be used to bind the classes. 1: protected void Application_Start() 2: { 3: AreaRegistration.RegisterAllAreas(); 4: 5: ContainerModelBinder containerModelBinder = new ContainerModelBinder(); 6: ModelBinders.Binders.Add(typeof(ContainerModel), containerModelBinder); 7: ModelBinders.Binders.Add(typeof(ItemModel), new ItemModelBinder(containerModelBinder)); 8: 9: RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes); 10: } I'm sure some of my fellow geeks will comment that this could be done more efficiently by simply rewriting some of the methods of the default model binder to get the same desired behavior. I like my method shown here because it extends the binder class instead of modifying it so it minimizes the potential for unforseen problems. In a future post (if I ever get around to it) I will explore creating a generic version of these binders.

Read the article

Clustering for Mere Mortals (Pt 3)

- by Geoff N. Hiten

The Controller Now we get to the meat of the matter. You want a virtual cluster, the first thing you have to do is create your own portable domain. Start with a plain vanilla install of Windows 2003 R2 Standard on a semi-default VM. (1 GB RAM, 2 cores, 2 NICs, 128GB dynamically expanding VHD file). I chose this because it had the smallest disk and memory footprint of any current supported Microsoft Server product. I created the VM with a single dynamically expanding VHD, one fixed 16 GB VHD, and two NICs. One NIC is connected to the outside world and the other one is part of an internal-only network. The first NIC is set up as a DHCP client. We will get to the other one later. I actually tried this with Windows 2008 R2, but it failed miserably. Not sure whether it was 2008 R2 or the fact I tried to use cloned VMs in the cluster. Clustering is one place where NewSID would really come in handy. Too bad Microsoft bought and buried it. Load and Patch the OS (hence the need for the outside connection).This is a good time to go get dinner. Maybe a movie too. There are close to a hundred patches that need to be downloaded and applied. Avoiding that mess was why I put so much time into trying to get the 2008 R2 version working. Maybe next time. Don’t forget to add the extensions for VMLite (or whatever virtualization product you prefer). Set a fixed IP address on the internal-only NIC. Do not give it a gateway. Put the same IP address for the NIC and for the DNS Server. This IP should be in a range that is never available on your public network. You will need all the addresses in the range available. See the previous post for the exact settings I used. I chose 10.97.230.1 as the server. The rest of the 10.97.230 range is what I will use later. For the curious, those numbers are based on elements of my home address. Not truly random, but good enough for this project. Do not bridge the network connections. I never allowed the cluster nodes direct access to any public network. Format the fixed VHD and leave it alone for now. Promote the VM to a Domain Controller. If you have never done this, don’t worry. The only meaningful decision is what to call the new domain. I prefer a bogus name that does not correspond to a real Top-Level Domain (TLD). .com, .biz., .net, .org are all TLDs that we know and love. I chose .test as the TLD since it is descriptive AND it does not exist in the real world. The domain is called MicroAD. This gives me MicroAD.Test as my domain. During the promotion process, you will be prompted to install DNS as part of the Domain creation process. You want to accept this option. The installer will automatically assign this DNS server as the authoritative owner of the MicroAD.test DNS domain (not to be confused with the MicroAD.test Active Directory domain.) For the rest of the DCPROMO process, just accept the defaults. Now let’s make our IP address management easy. Add the DHCP Role to the server. Add the server (10.97.230.1 in this case) as the default gateway to assign to DHCP clients. Here is where you have to be VERY careful and bind it ONLY to the Internal NIC. Trust me, your network admin will NOT like an extra DHCP server “helping” out on her network. Go ahead and create a range of 10-20 IP Addresses in your scope. You might find other uses for a pocket domain controller <cough> Mirroring </cough> than just for building a cluster. And Clustering in SQL 2008 and Windows 2008 R2 fully supports DHCP addresses. Now we have three of the five key roles ready. Two more to go. Next comes file sharing. Since your cluster node VMs will not have access to any outside, you have to have some way to get files into these VMs. I simply go to the root of C: and create a “Shared” folder. I then share it out and grant full control to “Everyone” to both the share and to the underlying NTFS folder. This will be immensely useful for Service Packs, demo databases, and any other software that isn’t packaged as an ISO that we can mount to the VM. Finally we need to create a block-level multi-connect storage device. The kind folks at Starwinds Software (http://www.starwindsoftware.com/) graciously gave me a non-expiring demo license for expressly this purpose. Their iSCSI SAN software lets you create an iSCSI target from nearly any storage medium. Refreshingly, their product does exactly what they say it does. Thanks. Remember that 16 GB VHD file? That is where we are going to carve into our LUNs. I created an iSCSI folder off the root, just so I can keep everything organized. I then carved 5 ea. 2 GB iSCSI targets from that folder. I chose a fixed VHD for performance. I tried this earlier with a dynamically expanding VHD, but too many layers of abstraction and sparseness combined to make it unusable even for a demo. Stick with a fixed VHD so there is a one-to-one mapping between abstract and physical storage. If you read the previous post, you know what I named these iSCSI LUNs and why. Yes, I do have some left over space. Always leave yourself room for future growth or options. This gets us up to where we can actually build the nodes and install SQL. As with most clusters, the real work happens long before the individual nodes get installed and configured. At least it does if you want the cluster to be a true high-availability platform.

Read the article

Clustering for Mere Mortals (Pt3)

- by Geoff N. Hiten

The Controller Now we get to the meat of the matter. You want a virtual cluster, the first thing you have to do is create your own portable domain. IStart with a plain vanilla install of Windows 2003 R2 Standard on a semi-default VM. (1 GB RAM, 2 cores, 2 NICs, 128GB dynamically expanding VHD file). I chose this because it had the smallest disk and memory footprint of any current supported Microsoft Server product. I created the VM with a single dynamically expanding VHD, one fixed 16 GB VHD, and two NICs. One NIC is connected to the outside world and the other one is part of an internal-only network. The first NIC is set up as a DHCP client. We will get to the other one later. I actually tried this with Windows 2008 R2, but it failed miserably. Not sure whether it was 2008 R2 or the fact I tried to use cloned VMs in the cluster. Clustering is one place where NewSID would really come in handy. Too bad Microsoft bought and buried it. Load and Patch the OS (hence the need for the outside connection).This is a good time to go get dinner. Maybe a movie too. There are close to a hundred patches that need to be downloaded and applied. Avoiding that mess was why I put so much time into trying to get the 2008 R2 version working. Maybe next time. Don’t forget to add the extensions for VMLite (or whatever virtualization product you prefer). Set a fixed IP address on the internal-only NIC. Do not give it a gateway. Put the same IP address for the NIC and for the DNS Server. This IP should be in a range that is never available on your public network. You will need all the addresses in the range available. See the previous post for the exact settings I used. I chose 10.97.230.1 as the server. The rest of the 10.97.230 range is what I will use later. For the curious, those numbers are based on elements of my home address. Not truly random, but good enough for this project. Do not bridge the network connections. I never allowed the cluster nodes direct access to any public network. Format the fixed VHD and leave it alone for now. Promote the VM to a Domain Controller. If you have never done this, don’t worry. The only meaningful decision is what to call the new domain. I prefer a bogus name that does not correspond to a real Top-Level Domain (TLD). .com, .biz., .net, .org are all TLDs that we know and love. I chose .test as the TLD since it is descriptive AND it does not exist in the real world. The domain is called MicroAD. This gives me MicroAD.Test as my domain. During the promotion process, you will be prompted to install DNS as part of the Domain creation process. You want to accept this option. The installer will automatically assign this DNS server as the authoritative owner of the MicroAD.test DNS domain (not to be confused with the MicroAD.test Active Directory domain.) For the rest of the DCPROMO process, just accept the defaults. Now let’s make our IP address management easy. Add the DHCP Role to the server. Add the server (10.97.230.1 in this case) as the default gateway to assign to DHCP clients. Here is where you have to be VERY careful and bind it ONLY to the Internal NIC. Trust me, your network admin will NOT like an extra DHCP server “helping” out on her network. Go ahead and create a range of 10-20 IP Addresses in your scope. You might find other uses for a pocket domain controller <cough> Mirroring </cough> than just for building a cluster. And Clustering in SQL 2008 and Windows 2008 R2 fully supports DHCP addresses. Now we have three of the five key roles ready. Two more to go. Next comes file sharing. Since your cluster node VMs will not have access to any outside, you have to have some way to get files into these VMs. I simply go to the root of C: and create a “Shared” folder. I then share it out and grant full control to “Everyone” to both the share and to the underlying NTFS folder. This will be immensely useful for Service Packs, demo databases, and any other software that isn’t packaged as an ISO that we can mount to the VM. Finally we need to create a block-level multi-connect storage device. The kind folks at Starwinds Software (http://www.starwindsoftware.com/) graciously gave me a non-expiring demo license for expressly this purpose. Their iSCSI SAN software lets you create an iSCSI target from nearly any storage medium. Refreshingly, their product does exactly what they say it does. Thanks. Remember that 16 GB VHD file? That is where we are going to carve into our LUNs. I created an iSCSI folder off the root, just so I can keep everything organized. I then carved 5 ea. 2 GB iSCSI targets from that folder. I chose a fixed VHD for performance. I tried this earlier with a dynamically expanding VHD, but too many layers of abstraction and sparseness combined to make it unusable even for a demo. Stick with a fixed VHD so there is a one-to-one mapping between abstract and physical storage. If you read the previous post, you know what I named these iSCSI LUNs and why. Yes, I do have some left over space. Always leave yourself room for future growth or options. This gets us up to where we can actually build the nodes and install SQL. As with most clusters, the real work happens long before the individual nodes get installed and configured. At least it does if you want the cluster to be a true high-availability platform.

Read the article

Extending Oracle CEP with Predictive Analytics

- by vikram.shukla(at)oracle.com

Introduction: OCEP is often used as a business rules engine to execute a set of business logic rules via CQL statements, and take decisions based on the outcome of those rules. There are times where configuring rules manually is sufficient because an application needs to deal with only a small and well-defined set of static rules. However, in many situations customers don't want to pre-define such rules for two reasons. First, they are dealing with events with lots of columns and manually crafting such rules for each column or a set of columns and combinations thereof is almost impossible. Second, they are content with probabilistic outcomes and do not care about 100% precision. The former is the case when a user is dealing with data with high dimensionality, the latter when an application can live with "false" positives as they can be discarded after further inspection, say by a Human Task component in a Business Process Management software. The primary goal of this blog post is to show how this can be achieved by combining OCEP with Oracle Data Mining® and leveraging the latter's rich set of algorithms and functionality to do predictive analytics in real time on streaming events. The secondary goal of this post is also to show how OCEP can be extended to invoke any arbitrary external computation in an RDBMS from within CEP. The extensible facility is known as the JDBC cartridge. The rest of the post describes the steps required to achieve this: We use the dataset available at http://blogs.oracle.com/datamining/2010/01/fraud_and_anomaly_detection_made_simple.html to showcase the capabilities. We use it to show how transaction anomalies or fraud can be detected. Building the model: Follow the self-explanatory steps described at the above URL to build the model. It is very simple - it uses built-in Oracle Data Mining PL/SQL packages to cleanse, normalize and build the model out of the dataset. You can also use graphical Oracle Data Miner® to build the models. To summarize, it involves: Specifying which algorithms to use. In this case we use Support Vector Machines as we're trying to find anomalies in highly dimensional dataset.Build model on the data in the table for the algorithms specified. For this example, the table was populated in the scott/tiger schema with appropriate privileges. Configuring the Data Source: This is the first step in building CEP application using such an integration. Our datasource looks as follows in the server config file. It is advisable that you use the Visualizer to add it to the running server dynamically, rather than manually edit the file. <data-source> <name>DataMining</name> <data-source-params> <jndi-names> <element>DataMining</element> </jndi-names> <global-transactions-protocol>OnePhaseCommit</global-transactions-protocol> </data-source-params> <connection-pool-params> <credential-mapping-enabled></credential-mapping-enabled> <test-table-name>SQL SELECT 1 from DUAL</test-table-name> <initial-capacity>1</initial-capacity> <max-capacity>15</max-capacity> <capacity-increment>1</capacity-increment> </connection-pool-params> <driver-params> <use-xa-data-source-interface>true</use-xa-data-source-interface> <driver-name>oracle.jdbc.OracleDriver</driver-name> <url>jdbc:oracle:thin:@localhost:1522:orcl</url> <properties> <element> <value>scott</value> <name>user</name> </element> <element> <value>{Salted-3DES}AzFE5dDbO2g=</value> <name>password</name> </element> <element> <name>com.bea.core.datasource.serviceName</name> <value>oracle11.2g</value> </element> <element> <name>com.bea.core.datasource.serviceVersion</name> <value>11.2.0</value> </element> <element> <name>com.bea.core.datasource.serviceObjectClass</name> <value>java.sql.Driver</value> </element> </properties> </driver-params> </data-source> Designing the EPN: The EPN is very simple in this example. We briefly describe each of the components. The adapter ("DataMiningAdapter") reads data from a .csv file and sends it to the CQL processor downstream. The event payload here is same as that of the table in the database (refer to the attached project or do a "desc table-name" from a SQL*PLUS prompt). While this is for convenience in this example, it need not be the case. One can still omit fields in the streaming events, and need not match all columns in the table on which the model was built. Better yet, it does not even need to have the same name as columns in the table, as long as you alias them in the USING clause of the mining function. (Caveat: they still need to draw values from a similar universe or domain, otherwise it constitutes incorrect usage of the model). There are two things in the CQL processor ("DataMiningProc") that make scoring possible on streaming events. 1. User defined cartridge function Please refer to the OCEP CQL reference manual to find more details about how to define such functions. We include the function below in its entirety for illustration. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <jdbcctxconfig:config xmlns:jdbcctxconfig="http://www.bea.com/ns/wlevs/config/application" xmlns:jc="http://www.oracle.com/ns/ocep/config/jdbc"> <jc:jdbc-ctx> <name>Oracle11gR2</name> <data-source>DataMining</data-source> <function name="prediction2"> <param name="CQLMONTH" type="char"/> <param name="WEEKOFMONTH" type="int"/> <param name="DAYOFWEEK" type="char" /> <param name="MAKE" type="char" /> <param name="ACCIDENTAREA" type="char" /> <param name="DAYOFWEEKCLAIMED" type="char" /> <param name="MONTHCLAIMED" type="char" /> <param name="WEEKOFMONTHCLAIMED" type="int" /> <param name="SEX" type="char" /> <param name="MARITALSTATUS" type="char" /> <param name="AGE" type="int" /> <param name="FAULT" type="char" /> <param name="POLICYTYPE" type="char" /> <param name="VEHICLECATEGORY" type="char" /> <param name="VEHICLEPRICE" type="char" /> <param name="FRAUDFOUND" type="int" /> <param name="POLICYNUMBER" type="int" /> <param name="REPNUMBER" type="int" /> <param name="DEDUCTIBLE" type="int" /> <param name="DRIVERRATING" type="int" /> <param name="DAYSPOLICYACCIDENT" type="char" /> <param name="DAYSPOLICYCLAIM" type="char" /> <param name="PASTNUMOFCLAIMS" type="char" /> <param name="AGEOFVEHICLES" type="char" /> <param name="AGEOFPOLICYHOLDER" type="char" /> <param name="POLICEREPORTFILED" type="char" /> <param name="WITNESSPRESNT" type="char" /> <param name="AGENTTYPE" type="char" /> <param name="NUMOFSUPP" type="char" /> <param name="ADDRCHGCLAIM" type="char" /> <param name="NUMOFCARS" type="char" /> <param name="CQLYEAR" type="int" /> <param name="BASEPOLICY" type="char" /> <return-component-type>char</return-component-type> <sql><![CDATA[ SELECT to_char(PREDICTION_PROBABILITY(CLAIMSMODEL, '0' USING *)) AS probability FROM (SELECT :CQLMONTH AS MONTH, :WEEKOFMONTH AS WEEKOFMONTH, :DAYOFWEEK AS DAYOFWEEK, :MAKE AS MAKE, :ACCIDENTAREA AS ACCIDENTAREA, :DAYOFWEEKCLAIMED AS DAYOFWEEKCLAIMED, :MONTHCLAIMED AS MONTHCLAIMED, :WEEKOFMONTHCLAIMED, :SEX AS SEX, :MARITALSTATUS AS MARITALSTATUS, :AGE AS AGE, :FAULT AS FAULT, :POLICYTYPE AS POLICYTYPE, :VEHICLECATEGORY AS VEHICLECATEGORY, :VEHICLEPRICE AS VEHICLEPRICE, :FRAUDFOUND AS FRAUDFOUND, :POLICYNUMBER AS POLICYNUMBER, :REPNUMBER AS REPNUMBER, :DEDUCTIBLE AS DEDUCTIBLE, :DRIVERRATING AS DRIVERRATING, :DAYSPOLICYACCIDENT AS DAYSPOLICYACCIDENT, :DAYSPOLICYCLAIM AS DAYSPOLICYCLAIM, :PASTNUMOFCLAIMS AS PASTNUMOFCLAIMS, :AGEOFVEHICLES AS AGEOFVEHICLES, :AGEOFPOLICYHOLDER AS AGEOFPOLICYHOLDER, :POLICEREPORTFILED AS POLICEREPORTFILED, :WITNESSPRESNT AS WITNESSPRESENT, :AGENTTYPE AS AGENTTYPE, :NUMOFSUPP AS NUMOFSUPP, :ADDRCHGCLAIM AS ADDRCHGCLAIM, :NUMOFCARS AS NUMOFCARS, :CQLYEAR AS YEAR, :BASEPOLICY AS BASEPOLICY FROM dual) ]]> </sql> </function> </jc:jdbc-ctx> </jdbcctxconfig:config> 2. Invoking the function for each event. Once this function is defined, you can invoke it from CQL as follows: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <wlevs:config xmlns:wlevs="http://www.bea.com/ns/wlevs/config/application"> <processor> <name>DataMiningProc</name> <rules> <query id="q1"><![CDATA[ ISTREAM(SELECT S.CQLMONTH, S.WEEKOFMONTH, S.DAYOFWEEK, S.MAKE, : S.BASEPOLICY, C.F AS probability FROM StreamDataChannel [NOW] AS S, TABLE(prediction2@Oracle11gR2(S.CQLMONTH, S.WEEKOFMONTH, S.DAYOFWEEK, S.MAKE, ..., S.BASEPOLICY) AS F of char) AS C) ]]></query> </rules> </processor> </wlevs:config> Finally, the last stage in the EPN prints out the probability of the event being an anomaly. One can also define a threshold in CQL to filter out events that are normal, i.e., below a certain mark as defined by the analyst or designer. Sample Runs: Now let's see how this behaves when events are streamed through CEP. We use only two events for brevity, one normal and other one not. This is one of the "normal" looking events and the probability of it being anomalous is less than 60%. Event is: eventType=DataMiningOutEvent object=q1 time=2904821976256 S.CQLMONTH=Dec, S.WEEKOFMONTH=5, S.DAYOFWEEK=Wednesday, S.MAKE=Honda, S.ACCIDENTAREA=Urban, S.DAYOFWEEKCLAIMED=Tuesday, S.MONTHCLAIMED=Jan, S.WEEKOFMONTHCLAIMED=1, S.SEX=Female, S.MARITALSTATUS=Single, S.AGE=21, S.FAULT=Policy Holder, S.POLICYTYPE=Sport - Liability, S.VEHICLECATEGORY=Sport, S.VEHICLEPRICE=more than 69000, S.FRAUDFOUND=0, S.POLICYNUMBER=1, S.REPNUMBER=12, S.DEDUCTIBLE=300, S.DRIVERRATING=1, S.DAYSPOLICYACCIDENT=more than 30, S.DAYSPOLICYCLAIM=more than 30, S.PASTNUMOFCLAIMS=none, S.AGEOFVEHICLES=3 years, S.AGEOFPOLICYHOLDER=26 to 30, S.POLICEREPORTFILED=No, S.WITNESSPRESENT=No, S.AGENTTYPE=External, S.NUMOFSUPP=none, S.ADDRCHGCLAIM=1 year, S.NUMOFCARS=3 to 4, S.CQLYEAR=1994, S.BASEPOLICY=Liability, probability=.58931702982118561 isTotalOrderGuarantee=true\nAnamoly probability: .58931702982118561 However, the following event is scored as an anomaly with a very high probability of 89%. So there is likely to be something wrong with it. A close look reveals that the value of "deductible" field (10000) is not "normal". What exactly constitutes normal here?. If you run the query on the database to find ALL distinct values for the "deductible" field, it returns the following set: {300, 400, 500, 700} Event is: eventType=DataMiningOutEvent object=q1 time=2598483773496 S.CQLMONTH=Dec, S.WEEKOFMONTH=5, S.DAYOFWEEK=Wednesday, S.MAKE=Honda, S.ACCIDENTAREA=Urban, S.DAYOFWEEKCLAIMED=Tuesday, S.MONTHCLAIMED=Jan, S.WEEKOFMONTHCLAIMED=1, S.SEX=Female, S.MARITALSTATUS=Single, S.AGE=21, S.FAULT=Policy Holder, S.POLICYTYPE=Sport - Liability, S.VEHICLECATEGORY=Sport, S.VEHICLEPRICE=more than 69000, S.FRAUDFOUND=0, S.POLICYNUMBER=1, S.REPNUMBER=12, S.DEDUCTIBLE=10000, S.DRIVERRATING=1, S.DAYSPOLICYACCIDENT=more than 30, S.DAYSPOLICYCLAIM=more than 30, S.PASTNUMOFCLAIMS=none, S.AGEOFVEHICLES=3 years, S.AGEOFPOLICYHOLDER=26 to 30, S.POLICEREPORTFILED=No, S.WITNESSPRESENT=No, S.AGENTTYPE=External, S.NUMOFSUPP=none, S.ADDRCHGCLAIM=1 year, S.NUMOFCARS=3 to 4, S.CQLYEAR=1994, S.BASEPOLICY=Liability, probability=.89171554529576691 isTotalOrderGuarantee=true\nAnamoly probability: .89171554529576691 Conclusion: By way of this example, we show: real-time scoring of events as they flow through CEP leveraging Oracle Data Mining.how CEP applications can invoke complex arbitrary external computations (function shipping) in an RDBMS.

Search Results

Search found 8959 results on 359 pages for 'bad decisions'.

Page 341/359 | < Previous Page | 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 | Next Page >

- by Pinal Dave

- by Johnmph

- by Martin Hinshelwood

- by pinaldave

- by BuckWoody

- by Google

- by AjarnMark

- by yaldahhakim

- by Kristin Rose

- by ultan o'broin

- by anirudha

- by Rick Strahl

- by Eric Z Goodnight

- by trond-arne.undheim

- by hamsun

- by D'Arcy Lussier

- by Trki

- by Chris Hoffman

- by James Michael Hare

- by Doug Lampe

- by Geoff N. Hiten

- by Geoff N. Hiten

- by vikram.shukla(at)oracle.com

< Previous Page | 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 | Next Page >