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  • How long would it take to learn Python?

    - by Josh
    Hi all I have decided to take the time out after work to learn Python. Python appeals to me because at work (Web and eLearning Company), I have to follow out very repetitive tasks like delete all these tags, rename all these tasks and even more advanced repetive tasks. Additionally it would be good for me to get an understanding of Python first because of its fairly easy to learn syntax. How long would it take to learn the basics and go through these tutorials on Python (+ the Python tutorial)? I will only be spending 1 hour or so on it in the afternoons. http://openbookproject.net/thinkcs/python/english2e/index.html I have told my piano teacher I would like to take a month of learning piano to do this would this be adequate time? After this I may choose to learn PHP, because that is mainly what we use for web development at work. Thanks Josh

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  • Silverlight Cream for April 04, 2010 -- #830

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Michael Washington, Hassan, David Anson, Jeff Wilcox, UK Application Development Consulting, Davide Zordan, Victor Gaudioso, Anoop Madhusudanan, Phil Middlemiss, and Laurent Bugnion. Shoutouts: Josh Smith has a good-read post up: Design-time data is still data Shawn Hargreaves reported his MIX demo released From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight MVVM: Enabling Design-Time Data in Expression Blend When Using Web Services Michael Washington has a tutorial up on MVVM and using a web service to get design-time data that works in Blend also... lots of information and screenshots. WP7 Transition Animation Hassan has a new WP7 tutorial up that demonstrates playing media and adding transition animation between pages. Tip: For a truly read-only custom DependencyProperty in Silverlight, use a read-only CLR property instead David Anson's latest tip is in response to comments on his previous post and details one by Dr. WPF who points out that a read-only DependencyProperty doesn't actually need to be a DependencyProperty as long as the class implements INotifyPropertyChanged. Template parts and custom controls (quick tip) Jeff Wilcox has posted a set of tips and recommendations to use when developing control development in Silverlight ... this is a post to bookmark. Flexible Data Template Support in Silverlight The UK Application Development Consulting details a 'problem' in Silverlight that doesn't exist in WPF and that is data templates that vary by type... and discusses a way around it. Multi-Touch enabling Silverlight Simon using Blend behaviors and the Surface sample for Silverlight Davide Zordan brought Multi-Touch to the Silverlight Simon game on CodePlex using Blend Behaviors. New Video Tutorial: How to Use a Behavior to Fire Methods from Objects in Styles Victor Gaudioso has a video tutorial up responding to a question from a developer. He demonstrates development of a Behavior that can be attached to objects in or out of Styles that allows you to specify what Method they need to fire. Creating a Silverlight Client for @shanselman ’s Nerd Dinner, using oData and Bing Maps Anoop Madhusudanan took Scott Hanselman's post on an OData API for StackOverflow, and has created a Silverlight client for Nerd Dinner, including BingMaps. A Chrome and Glass Theme - Part 2 Phil Middlemiss has the next part of his Chrome and Glass Theme up. In this one he creates a very nice chrome-look button with visual state changes. MVVM Light Toolkit V3 SP1 for Windows Phone 7 Laurent Bugnion has released a new version of MVVM Light for WP7. Included is an installation manual and information about what was changed. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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  • How to block internet access for wine applications?

    - by YSN
    Hello! Is it possible to prevent specific wine applications or any wine application from accessing the internet? When using certain apps under Windows, they were trying to access the internet from time to time without any obvious reason. I was able to prevent that behaviour with a personal firewall back then. Unfortunately I did not find an application level firewall in Ubuntu up to now. This is especially annoying when I am abroad using data-roaming with my 3G modem. Is there a way to prevent my wine-apps sending or receiving data without my knowledge. Thanks in advance! YSN

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  • DNASTREAM’s RapidLaunch Oracle Accelerate solution for RightNow

    - by Richard Lefebvre
    The Oracle RightNow Accelerate solution from DNASTREAM allows each Customer to enjoy quicker deployment and earlier time to benefits from this SAAS Customer Experience solution. At the start of the project, a full suite of E-Learning simulations & materials is provided by DNASTREAM to match the customer’s processes. This RapidLaunch content library for RightNow can be leveraged by our customers early in their project implementations bringing significant cost efficiencies, time reduction and improved user adoption to their project roll outs. Solution Profile: This Oracle Accelerate solution is based on Oracle RightNow CX that includes Content management, Contact management, Incident management, Customer Portal, Closed incident Survey, Standard reports. As an additional option there is available the Oracle RightNow CX Chat implementation. For more information about RightNow and the DNASTREAM Accelerate solution, visit the Oracle Accelerate microsite or contact www.dnastream.com

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  • HPC Server Dynamic Job Scheduling: when jobs spawn jobs

    - by JoshReuben
    HPC Job Types HPC has 3 types of jobs http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc972750(v=ws.10).aspx · Task Flow – vanilla sequence · Parametric Sweep – concurrently run multiple instances of the same program, each with a different work unit input · MPI – message passing between master & slave tasks But when you try go outside the box – job tasks that spawn jobs, blocking the parent task – you run the risk of resource starvation, deadlocks, and recursive, non-converging or exponential blow-up. The solution to this is to write some performance monitoring and job scheduling code. You can do this in 2 ways: manually control scheduling - allocate/ de-allocate resources, change job priorities, pause & resume tasks , restrict long running tasks to specific compute clusters Semi-automatically - set threshold params for scheduling. How – Control Job Scheduling In order to manage the tasks and resources that are associated with a job, you will need to access the ISchedulerJob interface - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.hpc.scheduler.ischedulerjob_members(v=vs.85).aspx This really allows you to control how a job is run – you can access & tweak the following features: max / min resource values whether job resources can grow / shrink, and whether jobs can be pre-empted, whether the job is exclusive per node the creator process id & the job pool timestamp of job creation & completion job priority, hold time & run time limit Re-queue count Job progress Max/ min Number of cores, nodes, sockets, RAM Dynamic task list – can add / cancel jobs on the fly Job counters When – poll perf counters Tweaking the job scheduler should be done on the basis of resource utilization according to PerfMon counters – HPC exposes 2 Perf objects: Compute Clusters, Compute Nodes http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc720058(v=ws.10).aspx You can monitor running jobs according to dynamic thresholds – use your own discretion: Percentage processor time Number of running jobs Number of running tasks Total number of processors Number of processors in use Number of processors idle Number of serial tasks Number of parallel tasks Design Your algorithms correctly Finally , don’t assume you have unlimited compute resources in your cluster – design your algorithms with the following factors in mind: · Branching factor - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branching_factor - dynamically optimize the number of children per node · cutoffs to prevent explosions - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limit_of_a_sequence - not all functions converge after n attempts. You also need a threshold of good enough, diminishing returns · heuristic shortcuts - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic - sometimes an exhaustive search is impractical and short cuts are suitable · Pruning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruning_(algorithm) – remove / de-prioritize unnecessary tree branches · avoid local minima / maxima - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_minima - sometimes an algorithm cant converge because it gets stuck in a local saddle – try simulated annealing, hill climbing or genetic algorithms to get out of these ruts   watch out for rounding errors – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round-off_error - multiple iterations can in parallel can quickly amplify & blow up your algo ! Use an epsilon, avoid floating point errors,  truncations, approximations Happy Coding !

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  • How to submit sitemap when your website has partial https? - Error: "Not in Domain"

    - by Ralph N
    My website is an ecommerce that is set up to do http for the item browsing portion, but https for things like shopping cart, contact us, etc.. (anything that has forms on it). I've submitted my website a long time ago to google webmaster tools as http://www.mywebsite.com. I also submitted a sitemap with about 40 links - 8 of them are https. I've noticed that for the longest time, google webmaster tools was reporting that 32 out of the 40 links have been crawled. I tested all the links against my robots.txt and realized that my robots text was blocking the https links. Google says those links are "Not In Domain". Is there a way i'm supposed to get around this so that I can have a hybrid-ssl site? I understand the concept that one site is mywebsite.com:80 and the other is mywebsite.com:443, but i'd like to avoid submitting and maintaining 2 seperate websites on google webmaster tools.

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  • PHP OCI8 and Oracle 11g DRCP Connection Pooling in Pictures

    - by christopher.jones
    Here is a screen shot from a PHP OCI8 connection pooling demo that I like to run. It graphically shows how little database host memory is needed when using DRCP connection pooling with Oracle Database 11g. Migrating to DRCP can be as simple as starting the pool and changing the connection string in your PHP application. The script that generated the data for this graph was a simple "Parts" query application being run under various simulated user loads. I was running the database on a small Oracle Linux server with just 2G of memory. I used PHP OCI8 1.4. Apache is in pre-fork mode, as needed for PHP. Each graph has time on the horizontal access in arbitrary 'tick' time units. Click the image to see it full sized. Pooled connections Beginning with the top left graph, At tick time 65 I used Apache's 'ab' tool to start 100 concurrent 'users' running the application. These users connected to the database using DRCP: $c = oci_pconnect('phpdemo', 'welcome', 'myhost/orcl:pooled'); A second hundred DRCP users were added to the system at tick 80 and a final hundred users added at tick 100. At about tick 110 I stopped the test and restarted Apache. This closed all the connections. The bottom left graph shows the number of statements being executed by the database per second, with some spikes for background database activity and some variability for this small test. Each extra batch of users adds another 'step' of load to the system. Looking at the top right Server Process graph shows the database server processes doing the query work for each web user. As user load is added, the DRCP server pool increases (in green). The pool is initially at its default size 4 and quickly ramps up to about (I'm guessing) 35. At tick time 100 the pool increases to my configured maximum of 40 processes. Those 40 processes are doing the query work for all 300 web users. When I stopped the test at tick 110, the pooled processes remained open waiting for more users to connect. If I had left the test quiet for the DRCP 'inactivity_timeout' period (300 seconds by default), the pool would have shrunk back to 4 processes. Looking at the bottom right, you can see the amount of memory being consumed by the database. During the initial quiet period about 500M of memory was in use. The absolute number is just an indication of my particular DB configuration. As the number of pooled processes increases, each process needs more memory. You can see the shape of the memory graph echoes the Server Process graph above it. Each of the 300 web users will also need a few kilobytes but this is almost too small to see on the graph. Non-pooled connections Compare the DRCP case with using 'dedicated server' processes. At tick 140 I started 100 web users who did not use pooled connections: $c = oci_pconnect('phpdemo', 'welcome', 'myhost/orcl'); This connection string change is the only difference between the two tests. At ticks 155 and 165 I started two more batches of 100 simulated users each. At about tick 195 I stopped the user load but left Apache running. Apache then gradually returned to its quiescent state, killing idle httpd processes and producing the downward slope at the right of the graphs as the persistent database connection in each Apache process was closed. The Executions per Second graph on the bottom left shows the same step increases as for the earlier DRCP case. The database is handling this load. But look at the number of Server processes on the top right graph. There is now a one-to-one correspondence between Apache/PHP processes and DB server processes. Each PHP processes has one DB server processes dedicated to it. Hence the term 'dedicated server'. The memory required on the database is proportional to all those database server processes started. Almost all my system's memory was consumed. I doubt it would have coped with any more user load. Summary Oracle Database 11g DRCP connection pooling significantly reduces database host memory requirements allow more system memory to be allocated for the SGA and allowing the system to scale to handled thousands of concurrent PHP users. Even for small systems, using DRCP allows more web users to be active. More information about PHP and DRCP can be found in the PHP Scalability and High Availability chapter of The Underground PHP and Oracle Manual.

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  • Part 2: Career development as a Software Developer without becoming a manager.

    - by albertpascual
    Seems like my previous post inspired by the work of Michael “Doc” Norton was a great success for the amount of emails I have received. Yet amazed how many people didn’t want to discuss their questions in the comments  sections. I would encourage people to be more public, still I would like to reply to all of you on this public media. I still welcome those emails. What I found out is that many people feels like me, they want to be developers and still be compensated for their experience without wanting to take a job as a manager. Their perfect day is a full day of coding and learning. Many believe their companies will never pay a manager’s salary to a developer no matter what. Most of you ask how to get the ball rolling. And is the later that I’m addressing here, the previous group, will never try. What companies understand developers value and where can I find them? This is a very difficult question to ask, I don’t have a list of those companies or departments, I have seen in my past signs in companies bending backwards to compensate, in more ways the monetary, a developer that is a good resource to them. Allowing the person to move out of the state and still let them work for the company from home is a sign that company goes by individual cases. Allowing them to go to conference that will not benefit the company is another big sign. Simple signs like flexible hours and letting some people work from home. To see those signs you need to be working in that company for awhile and look at the departments where the manager is taking care of their employees in individual cases. Look for the department where people get quiet extra perks, where some people in the department work from home or remotely. In my experience, but not always true, medium to big companies, are prompt to recognize good developers. Then again, some companies just don’t get it and is when you see many technical people managing developers. For all the people that email me stating that developers can also be very good managers, I do not disagree, I just think that a good developers loves writing code, when you remove that part the better salary isn’t enough to keep a developer happy. Burned out developers appreciate being promoted to managers. How do I know I work in a bad company? In my experience I have been a consultant and seen many companies, a few signs I have learned about companies that will not recognize good developers are: When the turn over is pretty high, when developers are moving out in a big rate, no rocket scientist needs to tap you in the shoulder. When the company is looking always to outsource their development resources. The product is not that interesting nor the company cares too much for their final result and support. Code sweat shops. You’ll know when you start working in one of those. Run for the hills! Where do I start? Disclaimer: I have only based this post on Michael “Doc” Norton, this is just my interpretation and ideas. First thing is to look at Michael “Doc” Norton presentation Take Control of Your Development Career http://docondev.blogspot.com/ That should be the first thing any developer should look and follow like it was a pattern. I would personally recommend to find some language or pattern you are interested with and learn it, learn something that will make you happy. Second, join a User Group and get involve in the community. There are hundreds of user groups, and I’m sure you’ll find one in your city or near you town. Code Camps are Developers Meet Ups are also good resources. Third, I would join a open source project you are interested or better yet, create a new open source project with the new technology that you have learn and get coding. Fourth, create a Twitter account and follow the people that talks about the technology you are interested on. If you follow this 4 steps above I think you’ll be on your way, after they are complete, when you release your Open Source project you can say that you accomplished the first steps. Now, do not expect anything to change in your career life, you are changing and should not expect anything in return, besides borrowing some time from sleeping and your family. Creating a good schedule may help you, I find wasted time in many places that I use. Flying for work is actually one of those that allows me to do my best work on a airplane, don’t need to borrow time from anywhere else. Making sure you always have a light, charged laptop is so important. Next steps following the Michael “Doc” Norton Pattern or my interpretation of. First, help run a user group or better yet, start a new user group. I’ll add, as well, go to one conference a year and free development events around your city; Code Camps, Geek Dinners, etc. There are many free events sponsored by different companies for developers to get to know their products, I highly recommend those as the way to get connected. Second, chose a mentor, this is a very hard thing to do I experienced, find an expert in the technology you are learning that has the time for you, it is difficult, I wish you best of luck. Third, learn another technology or pattern, open your horizons a little bit more. Why not, if you had fun previously, keep doing it. Fourth, get involved in forums to answer and ask questions, getting notice in public forums is rewarding for your ego after such a long journey. Final steps following the Michael “Doc” Norton Pattern Teach what you know, become humble on your knowledge, find as many opportunities to teach and to get involved with the community, bring all that to your day job. Mr. Norton talks about getting naked, expose yourself to others in your knowledge and what you do not know. You are never too important for small opportunities, yet don’t  be afraid to take anything big and learn from the experience. Anytime you have the opportunity to talk to somebody that has reach the point the community knows his or her name, means that you should learn from it. Take opportunities that won’t make you money, yet will make you happy. Sometimes you need to spend money and time. Register talks in Code Camps and Dev Meet Ups, those are free, also go to Conference, Development Summits and Geek Diners for example. One day, people will pay you to attend. When will all these pay off? I don’t know. I’m still in the path, there are a few things that during your journey you may get little acknowledgements that you are in the correct path. In my case I think those are the little signs that tells you about your journey. I got awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for ASP.NET in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010. I got selected to speak at the DevConnections in Las Vegas in 2010 and Orlando 2011. I do believe that I do have a long way to go, yet what I do makes me happy and I hope I can keep doing for years to come. Every year I can see an improvement on my code, and more frameworks and languages are under my belt, I learn to embrace them all as well as in my daily job, I have been able to work in a few projects beyond my department. I’m a learner and believer of the Michael “Doc” Norton pattern. Looking forward to learn more about it to be able to apply it better. In my short journey I now see my mistakes, I did a few things right, I have been listening the intelligent people and not being afraid to move along the technology changes. In my professional life, I have tried to avoid being placed in only one technology and product. I have always share my code and never confused anybody that wanted to take over any of my projects, I didn’t think anything I created as my own nor care too much when politics didn’t see my vision. I stayed flexible, ready and visible, yet humble. I keep my head just below the clouds, and avoided managers meetings. I credit my manager for my success, and I faulted publicly only myself for the failures. Hope this helps. Cheers, Al Follow me in Twitter  Read my previous post tweetmeme_url = 'http://weblogs.asp.net/albertpascual/archive/2010/12/09/part-2-career-development-as-a-software-developer-without-becoming-a-manager.aspx'; tweetmeme_source = 'alpascual';

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  • Show raw Text Code from a URL with CodePaste.NET

    - by Rick Strahl
    I introduced CodePaste.NET more than 2 years ago. In case you haven't checked it out it's a code-sharing site where you can post some code, assign a title and syntax scheme to it and then share it with others via a short URL. The idea is super simple and it's not the first time this has been done, but it's focused on Microsoft languages and caters to that crowd. Show your own code from the Web There's another feature that I tweeted about recently that's been there for some time, but is not used very much: CodePaste.NET has the ability to show raw text based code from a URL on the Web in syntax colored format for any of the formats provided. I use this all the time with code links to my Subversion repository which only displays code as plain text. Using CodePaste.NET allows me to show syntax colored versions of the same code. For example I can go from this URL: http://www.west-wind.com:8080/svn/WestwindWebToolkit/trunk/Westwind.Utilities/SupportClasses/PropertyBag.cs To a nicely colored source code view at this Url: http://codepaste.net/ShowUrl?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.west-wind.com%3A8080%2Fsvn%2FWestwindWebToolkit%2Ftrunk%2FWestwind.Utilities%2FSupportClasses%2FPropertyBag.cs&Language=C%23 which looks like this:   Use the Form or access URLs directly To get there navigate to the Web Code icon on the CodePaste.NET site and paste your original URL and select a language to display: The form creates a link shown above which has two query string parameters: url - The URL for the raw text on the Web language -  The code language used for syntax highlighting Note that parameters must be URL encoded to work especially the # in C# because otherwise the # will be interpreted by the browser as a hash tag to jump to in the target URL. The URL must be Web accessible so that CodePaste can download it and then apply the syntax coloring. It doesn't work with localhost urls for example. The code returned must be returned in plain text - HTML based text doesn't work. Hope some of you find this a useful feature. Enjoy…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in .NET   Tweet (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); })();

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  • Language Club – Battle of the Dynamic Languages

    - by Ben Griswold
    After dedicating the last eight weeks to learning Ruby, it’s time to move onto another language.  I really dig Ruby.  I really enjoy its dynamism and expressiveness and always-openness and it’s been the highlight of our coding club for me so far. But that’s just my take on the language.  I know a lot of coders who’s stomachs turn with the mere thought of Ruby.  They say it’s Ruby’s openness which has them feeling uneasy.  I’d say “write a bunch of tests and get over it,” but I figure there must be more to it than always open classes and possible method collisions. Yes, there’s something else to it alright. The folks who didn’t fall head over heals for Ruby are already in love with Python.  You might remember that Python was the first language we tackled in our coding club.  My time with Python was okay but it didn’t feel as natural to me as Ruby.  But let’s say we started with Ruby and then moved onto Python.  Would I see Python in a different light right now.  Might I even prefer Python over Ruby?  I suppose it’s possible but it’s pretty tough to test that theory – unless we visit Python for a second time. That’s right. The language club is going to focus on Python again and in my attempt to learn Python – yet again – in the open, I’ll be posting my solutions here just as I did for Ruby.  We don’t always have second chances so I going about this relearning with two primary goals in mind:  First, I’m going to use IronPython and the IronPython tools which provide a Python code editor, a file-based project system, and an interactive Python interpreter, all inside Visual Studio 2010.  As a note, the IronPython tools are now part of the main IronPython installer which is Version 2.7 Alpha 1 (not the latest stable version, 2.6.1) and I’d be crazy not to use them.  Second, I’d like to make sure I’m still learning Python without a complete MS skew so I’m going to run my code through Eclipse using the PyDev plugin as well.  Heck, I might use IDLE too. I already have this setup on my machine so it’s no big deal. Okay, that’s it for now.  I worked on the first ten Euler problems last night and the solutions will be posted shortly. Wish me luck.

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  • Sun Fire X4800 M2 Delivers World Record TPC-C for x86 Systems

    - by Brian
    Oracle's Sun Fire X4800 M2 server equipped with eight 2.4 GHz Intel Xeon Processor E7-8870 chips obtained a result of 5,055,888 tpmC on the TPC-C benchmark. This result is a world record for x86 servers. Oracle demonstrated this world record database performance running Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition with Partitioning. The Sun Fire X4800 M2 server delivered a new x86 TPC-C world record of 5,055,888 tpmC with a price performance of $0.89/tpmC using Oracle Database 11g Release 2. This configuration is available 06/26/12. The Sun Fire X4800 M2 server delivers 3.0x times better performance than the next 8-processor result, an IBM System p 570 equipped with POWER6 processors. The Sun Fire X4800 M2 server has 3.1x times better price/performance than the 8-processor 4.7GHz POWER6 IBM System p 570. The Sun Fire X4800 M2 server has 1.6x times better performance than the 4-processor IBM x3850 X5 system equipped with Intel Xeon processors. This is the first TPC-C result on any system using eight Intel Xeon Processor E7-8800 Series chips. The Sun Fire X4800 M2 server is the first x86 system to get over 5 million tpmC. The Oracle solution utilized Oracle Linux operating system and Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 2 with Partitioning to produce the x86 world record TPC-C benchmark performance. Performance Landscape Select TPC-C results (sorted by tpmC, bigger is better) System p/c/t tpmC Price/tpmC Avail Database MemorySize Sun Fire X4800 M2 8/80/160 5,055,888 0.89 USD 6/26/2012 Oracle 11g R2 4 TB IBM x3850 X5 4/40/80 3,014,684 0.59 USD 7/11/2011 DB2 ESE 9.7 3 TB IBM x3850 X5 4/32/64 2,308,099 0.60 USD 5/20/2011 DB2 ESE 9.7 1.5 TB IBM System p 570 8/16/32 1,616,162 3.54 USD 11/21/2007 DB2 9.0 2 TB p/c/t - processors, cores, threads Avail - availability date Oracle and IBM TPC-C Response times System tpmC Response Time (sec) New Order 90th% Response Time (sec) New Order Average Sun Fire X4800 M2 5,055,888 0.210 0.166 IBM x3850 X5 3,014,684 0.500 0.272 Ratios - Oracle Better 1.6x 1.4x 1.3x Oracle uses average new order response time for comparison between Oracle and IBM. Graphs of Oracle's and IBM's response times for New-Order can be found in the full disclosure reports on TPC's website TPC-C Official Result Page. Configuration Summary and Results Hardware Configuration: Server Sun Fire X4800 M2 server 8 x 2.4 GHz Intel Xeon Processor E7-8870 4 TB memory 8 x 300 GB 10K RPM SAS internal disks 8 x Dual port 8 Gbs FC HBA Data Storage 10 x Sun Fire X4270 M2 servers configured as COMSTAR heads, each with 1 x 3.06 GHz Intel Xeon X5675 processor 8 GB memory 10 x 2 TB 7.2K RPM 3.5" SAS disks 2 x Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array storage (1.92 TB each) 1 x Brocade 5300 switches Redo Storage 2 x Sun Fire X4270 M2 servers configured as COMSTAR heads, each with 1 x 3.06 GHz Intel Xeon X5675 processor 8 GB memory 11 x 2 TB 7.2K RPM 3.5" SAS disks Clients 8 x Sun Fire X4170 M2 servers, each with 2 x 3.06 GHz Intel Xeon X5675 processors 48 GB memory 2 x 300 GB 10K RPM SAS disks Software Configuration: Oracle Linux (Sun Fire 4800 M2) Oracle Solaris 11 Express (COMSTAR for Sun Fire X4270 M2) Oracle Solaris 10 9/10 (Sun Fire X4170 M2) Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition with Partitioning Oracle iPlanet Web Server 7.0 U5 Tuxedo CFS-R Tier 1 Results: System: Sun Fire X4800 M2 tpmC: 5,055,888 Price/tpmC: 0.89 USD Available: 6/26/2012 Database: Oracle Database 11g Cluster: no New Order Average Response: 0.166 seconds Benchmark Description TPC-C is an OLTP system benchmark. It simulates a complete environment where a population of terminal operators executes transactions against a database. The benchmark is centered around the principal activities (transactions) of an order-entry environment. These transactions include entering and delivering orders, recording payments, checking the status of orders, and monitoring the level of stock at the warehouses. Key Points and Best Practices Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition with Partitioning scales easily to this high level of performance. COMSTAR (Common Multiprotocol SCSI Target) is the software framework that enables an Oracle Solaris host to serve as a SCSI Target platform. COMSTAR uses a modular approach to break the huge task of handling all the different pieces in a SCSI target subsystem into independent functional modules which are glued together by the SCSI Target Mode Framework (STMF). The modules implementing functionality at SCSI level (disk, tape, medium changer etc.) are not required to know about the underlying transport. And the modules implementing the transport protocol (FC, iSCSI, etc.) are not aware of the SCSI-level functionality of the packets they are transporting. The framework hides the details of allocation providing execution context and cleanup of SCSI commands and associated resources and simplifies the task of writing the SCSI or transport modules. Oracle iPlanet Web Server middleware is used for the client tier of the benchmark. Each web server instance supports more than a quarter-million users while satisfying the response time requirement from the TPC-C benchmark. See Also Oracle Press Release -- Sun Fire X4800 M2 TPC-C Executive Summary tpc.org Complete Sun Fire X4800 M2 TPC-C Full Disclosure Report tpc.org Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) Home Page Ideas International Benchmark Page Sun Fire X4800 M2 Server oracle.com OTN Oracle Linux oracle.com OTN Oracle Solaris oracle.com OTN Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition oracle.com OTN Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array oracle.com OTN Disclosure Statement TPC Benchmark C, tpmC, and TPC-C are trademarks of the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC). Sun Fire X4800 M2 (8/80/160) with Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition with Partitioning, 5,055,888 tpmC, $0.89 USD/tpmC, available 6/26/2012. IBM x3850 X5 (4/40/80) with DB2 ESE 9.7, 3,014,684 tpmC, $0.59 USD/tpmC, available 7/11/2011. IBM x3850 X5 (4/32/64) with DB2 ESE 9.7, 2,308,099 tpmC, $0.60 USD/tpmC, available 5/20/2011. IBM System p 570 (8/16/32) with DB2 9.0, 1,616,162 tpmC, $3.54 USD/tpmC, available 11/21/2007. Source: http://www.tpc.org/tpcc, results as of 7/15/2011.

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  • SQL – Building a High Traffic, Profitable Blog – A Unique Gift on Author’s Birthday

    - by Pinal Dave
    Every July 30th, I like to do something new. It is my birthday and I like to give gifts to everyone this day. Last year, at this time I had written an article A Year Older and 3 SQL Server Books and 3 Video Courses – 33. I had written a total of 3 books by that time and had published total of  3 Pluralsight courses. When I look back the year, I feel that I gave my best to last year. Sine Last July 30th, I have written 6 more books and 5 more video courses. The total is now 9 books and 8 video courses. It seems that I have been producing one new book or course every month since last July. Building a High Traffic, Profitable Blog Out of my 8 courses my favorite course is my latest course at Pluralsight. This course is about how to build a high traffic blog and monetize it. I have been blogging for over 7 years and there have been many hurdles and roadblocks but I have never stopped blogging any single day. There have been many instances when I felt I should just hit delete and remove my entire blog from the web but fortunately I had courage to stand by on my decisions. Well at the end, I kept on fighting through the difficult time and kept on blogging. Every day there was a lesson to learn and every day there was an issue to resolve. I never gave up and kept on building new content. Today after 7 years, when I look back there are many stories to tell. It was impossible to write down the stories so I decided to build a course based on my experience. In this course, I share all the best tricks to build a high traffic, profitable blog. When we talk about profit, people often talk about money but the reality is that profit is much bigger word than money. There are many different ways one can profit from their own blog. In this course, I discuss about all different ways about how you can be profitable by building a high traffic blog. I believe this course is for everybody who aspire to build a website or blog which gives them a profit.  Here are the major topics based out of this course. Introduction Techniques to Engage Blog Readers Social Media – Social Sharing and Social Networking Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Monetizing a Blog Frequently Asked Questions Checklists Personally I believe this is the best gift I can give to all of you my friends. Build a successful high traffic blog and monetize it. Here is the list of the all of my video courses and here is the list of all of the books. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: About Me, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Blogging

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  • Google I/O 2010 - Optimize your site with Page Speed

    Google I/O 2010 - Optimize your site with Page Speed Google I/O 2010 - Optimize every bit of your site serving and web pages with Page Speed Tech Talks Richard Rabbat, Bryan McQuade Page Speed is an open-source Firefox/Firebug Add-on. Webmasters and web developers can use Page Speed to evaluate the performance of their web pages and to get suggestions on how to improve them. Learn about the latest rules of web development we've added, updated optimizations, go over a new refreshed UI, see how to collect data through beacons to track progress over time, cut and paste fixes, and how to work with 3rd party libraries more effectively, including Google Analytics. For all I/O 2010 sessions, please go to code.google.com/events/io/2010/sessions.html From: GoogleDevelopers Views: 6 0 ratings Time: 47:15 More in Science & Technology

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  • My History with Agile

    - by Robert May
    I’m going to write my history with Agile here.  That way, in future posts, I can refer back to it, instead of typing it out in the post that contains information you may actually want to read.  Note that I’m actually a pretty senior developer, and do lots of technical interviews.  I’m an Agile fan because of the difference it makes in peoples lives and the improvement in quality it brings, and I’ll sacrifice my technological advance to help teams. Management History I started management pretty early in my career, starting with the first job that I ever had.  I actually do NOT have a CS or similar degree.  I have a Bachelor’s of Business Administration with an emphasis in Computer Information Systems. My first management gigs were around call center work and were very schedule oriented.  I didn’t understand the true value of teams, and I’m ashamed to admit, I actually installed a fingerprint scanner as a time clock in this job.  I shudder to think of the impact that I had on the team spirit.  I didn’t even trust them enough to fill out their time cards correctly.  How sad. I was managing nearly 100 people in this position, with the help of a great set of subordinates. I did try to come up with reward programs for the team, but again, didn’t understand the concept of team, so instead of letting the team determine how the rewards should work, I mandated from on high, which isn’t a good thing. I was told that I wasn’t the type that would be a good manager by people whom I respected a lot.  They said it because I was a computer geek, since they don’t understand good management either, but in retrospect, they were right about me then.  I was too green. After my first job, I went on to other jobs and with the exception of one job, I’ve managed people at them all.  The rest of the management story is important for understanding agile, so I’ll save it for my next post. Technical History I’ve been in software development for many, many years.  I technically started programming on a commodore 64 in basic.  I didn’t know that I was programming, but I was sure having fun.  That was followed by batch files, Gorilla hacking (I always had to win), WordPerfect Macro programming and other things that taught me the basics. My first “real” job was with a telephone company, and that’s where I made my first database application in DataEase, wrote my first VBA app and started using real programming tools, like turbo pascal, vb3-vb5, and semi-real tools like RPG and VisualRPG.  I wrote my first web page in 1994, and built my first data driven web page in 1995 using perlDB.  You really can do anything with Perl.  At this time, I also started a Linux based internet service provider that is still in operation today.  One of the people I worked with is now a Microsoft employee building and designing frameworks you probably know well.  Smart guy.  I also built my first ASP applications connecting to Sql Server 6.5, setup Exchange 5.5 for the company, and many other system administration stuff.  I’m a programmer by choice, mostly because I don’t really like PC support. From there, I went on to a large state agency.  I got to see and maintain true waterfall projects.  5 years of maintaining the 200 VB COM+ (MTS, actually) dlls that were used to calculate a single number is a long time.  That was all Microsoft DNS technologies.  SQL Server and VB6 were the tools of choice, although .net started to be a factor near the end of employment.  I did some heavy XML work at this job and even wrote an XSD parser and validator in VB6 that was a shim until MSXML 3.0 came out.  Prior to 3.0, XSD’s weren’t supported, and I didn’t want to write DTDs. Ironically, jobs after this were more generic.  I pretty much settled in on the .net framework and revisions of it.  Lots of WPF, some silverlight, lots of ASP.NET, some SQL Azure, lots of SQL Server, some Oracle, but I don’t think that I was as passionate about development and technologies.  I was more into the management of development.  I like people. Technorati Tags: Agile,history

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  • World Record Oracle Business Intelligence Benchmark on SPARC T4-4

    - by Brian
    Oracle's SPARC T4-4 server configured with four SPARC T4 3.0 GHz processors delivered the first and best performance of 25,000 concurrent users on Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (BI EE) 11g benchmark using Oracle Database 11g Release 2 running on Oracle Solaris 10. A SPARC T4-4 server running Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g achieved 25,000 concurrent users with an average response time of 0.36 seconds with Oracle BI server cache set to ON. The benchmark data clearly shows that the underlying hardware, SPARC T4 server, and the Oracle BI EE 11g (11.1.1.6.0 64-bit) platform scales within a single system supporting 25,000 concurrent users while executing 415 transactions/sec. The benchmark demonstrated the scalability of Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g 11.1.1.6.0, which was deployed in a vertical scale-out fashion on a single SPARC T4-4 server. Oracle Internet Directory configured on SPARC T4 server provided authentication for the 25,000 Oracle BI EE users with sub-second response time. A SPARC T4-4 with internal Solid State Drive (SSD) using the ZFS file system showed significant I/O performance improvement over traditional disk for the Web Catalog activity. In addition, ZFS helped get past the UFS limitation of 32767 sub-directories in a Web Catalog directory. The multi-threaded 64-bit Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g and SPARC T4-4 server proved to be a successful combination by providing sub-second response times for the end user transactions, consuming only half of the available CPU resources at 25,000 concurrent users, leaving plenty of head room for increased load. The Oracle Business Intelligence on SPARC T4-4 server benchmark results demonstrate that comprehensive BI functionality built on a unified infrastructure with a unified business model yields best-in-class scalability, reliability and performance. Oracle BI EE 11g is a newer version of Business Intelligence Suite with richer and superior functionality. Results produced with Oracle BI EE 11g benchmark are not comparable to results with Oracle BI EE 10g benchmark. Oracle BI EE 11g is a more difficult benchmark to run, exercising more features of Oracle BI. Performance Landscape Results for the Oracle BI EE 11g version of the benchmark. Results are not comparable to the Oracle BI EE 10g version of the benchmark. Oracle BI EE 11g Benchmark System Number of Users Response Time (sec) 1 x SPARC T4-4 (4 x SPARC T4 3.0 GHz) 25,000 0.36 Results for the Oracle BI EE 10g version of the benchmark. Results are not comparable to the Oracle BI EE 11g version of the benchmark. Oracle BI EE 10g Benchmark System Number of Users 2 x SPARC T5440 (4 x SPARC T2+ 1.6 GHz) 50,000 1 x SPARC T5440 (4 x SPARC T2+ 1.6 GHz) 28,000 Configuration Summary Hardware Configuration: SPARC T4-4 server 4 x SPARC T4-4 processors, 3.0 GHz 128 GB memory 4 x 300 GB internal SSD Storage Configuration: "> Sun ZFS Storage 7120 16 x 146 GB disks Software Configuration: Oracle Solaris 10 8/11 Oracle Solaris Studio 12.1 Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g (11.1.1.6.0) Oracle WebLogic Server 10.3.5 Oracle Internet Directory 11.1.1.6.0 Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Benchmark Description Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (Oracle BI EE) delivers a robust set of reporting, ad-hoc query and analysis, OLAP, dashboard, and scorecard functionality with a rich end-user experience that includes visualization, collaboration, and more. The Oracle BI EE benchmark test used five different business user roles - Marketing Executive, Sales Representative, Sales Manager, Sales Vice-President, and Service Manager. These roles included a maximum of 5 different pre-built dashboards. Each dashboard page had an average of 5 reports in the form of a mix of charts, tables and pivot tables, returning anywhere from 50 rows to approximately 500 rows of aggregated data. The test scenario also included drill-down into multiple levels from a table or chart within a dashboard. The benchmark test scenario uses a typical business user sequence of dashboard navigation, report viewing, and drill down. For example, a Service Manager logs into the system and navigates to his own set of dashboards using Service Manager. The BI user selects the Service Effectiveness dashboard, which shows him four distinct reports, Service Request Trend, First Time Fix Rate, Activity Problem Areas, and Cost Per Completed Service Call spanning 2002 to 2005. The user then proceeds to view the Customer Satisfaction dashboard, which also contains a set of 4 related reports, drills down on some of the reports to see the detail data. The BI user continues to view more dashboards – Customer Satisfaction and Service Request Overview, for example. After navigating through those dashboards, the user logs out of the application. The benchmark test is executed against a full production version of the Oracle Business Intelligence 11g Applications with a fully populated underlying database schema. The business processes in the test scenario closely represent a real world customer scenario. See Also SPARC T4-4 Server oracle.com OTN Oracle Business Intelligence oracle.com OTN Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition oracle.com OTN WebLogic Suite oracle.com OTN Oracle Solaris oracle.com OTN Disclosure Statement Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Results as of 30 September 2012.

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  • Special thanks to everyone that helped me in 2010.

    - by mbcrump
    2010 has been a very good year for me and I wanted to create a list and thank everyone for what they have done for me.  I also wanted to thank everyone for reading and subscribing to my blog. It is hard to believe that people actually want to read what I write. I feel like I owe a huge thanks to everyone listed below. Looking back upon 2010, I feel that I’ve grown as a developer and you are part of that reason. Sometimes we get caught up in day to day work and forget to give thanks to those that helped us along the way. The list below is mine, it includes people and companies. This list is obviously not going to include everyone that has helped, just those that have stood out in my mind. When I think back upon 2010, their names keep popping up in my head. So here goes, in no particular order.  People Dave Campbell – For everything he has done for the Silverlight Community with his Silverlight Cream blog. I can’t think of a better person to get recognition at the Silverlight FireStarter event. I also wanted to thank him for spending several hours of his time helping me track down a bug in my feedburner account. Victor Gaudioso – For his large collection of video tutorials on his blog and the passion and enthusiasm he has for Silverlight. We have talked on the phone and I’ve never met anyone so fired up for Silverlight. Kunal Chowdhury – Kunal has always been available for me to bounce ideas off of. Kunal has also answered a lot of questions that stumped me. His blog and CodeProject article have green a great help to me and the Silverlight Community. Glen Gordon – I was looking frantically for a Windows Phone 7 several months before release and Glen found one for me. This allowed me to start a blog series on the Windows Phone 7 hardware and developing an application from start to finish that Scott Guthrie retweeted.  Jeff Blankenburg – For listening to my complaints in the early stages of Windows Phone 7. Jeff was always very polite and gave me his cell phone number to talk it over. He also walked me through several problems that I was having early on. Pete Brown – For writing Silverlight 4 in Action. This book is definitely a labor of love. I followed Pete on Twitter as he was writing it and he spent a lot of late nights and weekends working on it. I felt a lot smarter after reading it the first time. The second time was even better. John Papa – For all of his work on the Silverlight Firestarter and the Silverlight community in general. He has also helped me on a personal level with several things. Daniel Heisler – For putting up with me the past year while we worked on many .NET projects together in 2010. Alvin Ashcraft – For publishing a daily blog post on the best of .NET links. He has linked to my site many times and I really appreciate what he does for the community. Chris Alcock – For publishing the Morning Brew every weekday. I remember when I first appeared on his site, I started getting hundreds of hits on my site and wondered if I was getting a DOS attack or something. It was great to find out that Chris had linked to one of my articles. Joel Cochran – For spending a week teaching “Blend-O-Rama”. This was my one of my favorite sessions of this year. I learned a lot about Expression Blend from it and the best part was that it was free and during lunchtime. Jeremy Likness – Jeremy is smart – very smart. I have learned a lot from Jeremy over the past year. He is also involved in the Silverlight community in every way possible, from forums to blog post to screencast to open source. It goes on and on. The people that I met at VSLive Orlando 2010. I had a great time chatting with Walt Ritscher, Wallace McClure, Tim Huckabee and David Platt. Also a special thanks to all of my friends on Twitter like @wilhil, @DBVaughan, @DataArtist, @wbm, @DirkStrauss and @rsringeri and many many more. Software Companies / Events / May of gave me FREE stuff. =) Microsoft (3) – I was sent a free coupon code by Microsoft to take the Silverlight 4 Beta Exam. I jumped on the offer and took the exam. It was great being selected to try out the exam before it goes public even though Microsoft eventually published a universal coupon code for everyone. I am still waiting to find out if I passed the exam. My fingers are crossed. Microsoft reaching out to me with some questions regarding the .NET Community. I’ve never had a company contact me with such interest in the community. Having a contest where 75 people could win a $100 gift certificate and a T-Shirt for submitting a Windows Phone 7 app. I submitted my app and won. All of the free launch events this year (Windows Phone 7, Visual Studio 2010, ASP.NET MVC). Wintellect – For providing an awesome day of free technical training called T.E.N. Where else can you get free training from some of the best programmers in the world? I also won a contest from them that included a NETAdvantage Ultimate License from Infragistics. VSLive – I attended the Orlando 2010 Conference and it was the best developer’s conference that I have ever attended. I got to know a lot of people at this conference and hang out with many wonderful speakers. I live tweeted the event and while it may have annoyed some, the organizers of VSLive loved it. I won the contest on Twitter and they invited me back to the 2011 session of my choice. This is a very nice gift and I really appreciate the generosity. BarcodeLib.com – For providing free barcode generating tools for a Non-Profit ASP.NET project that I was working on. Their third party controls really made this a breeze compared to my existing solution. NDepend – It is absolutely the best tool to improve code quality. The product is extremely large and I would recommend heading over to their site to check it out. Silverlight Spy – I was writing a blog post on Silverlight Spy and Koen Zwikstra provided a FREE license to me. If you ever wanted to peek inside of a Silverlight Application then this is the tool for you. He is also working on a version that will support OOB and Windows Phone 7. I would recommend checking out his site. Birmingham .NET Users Group / Silverlight Nights User Group – It takes a lot of time to put together a user group meeting every month yet it always seems to happen. I don’t want to name names for fear of leaving someone out but both of these User Groups are excellent if you live in the Birmingham, Alabama area. Publishing Companies Manning Publishing – For giving me early access to Silverlight 4 in Action by Pete Brown. It was really nice to be able to read this awesome book while Pete was writing it. I was also one of the first people to publish a review of the book. Sams Publishing and DZone – For providing a copy of Silverlight 4 Unleashed by Laurent Bugnion for me to review for their site. The review is coming in January 2011. Special Shoutout to the following 3rd Party Silverlight Controls It has been a great pleasure to work with the following companies on 3rd Party Control Giveaways every month. It always amazes me how every 3rd Party Control company is so eager to help out the community. I’ve never been turned down by any of these companies! These giveaways have sparked a lot of interest in Silverlight and hopefully I can continue giving away a new set every month. If you are a 3rd Party Control company and are interested in participating in these giveaways then please email me at mbcrump29[at]gmail[d0t].com. The companies below have already participated in my giveaways: Infragistics (December 2010) - Win a set of Infragistics Silverlight Controls with Data Visualization!  Mindscape (November 2010) - Mindscape Silverlight Controls + Free Mega Pack Contest Telerik (October 2010) - Win Telerik RadControls for Silverlight! ($799 Value) Again, I just wanted to say Thanks to everyone for helping me grow as a developer.  Subscribe to my feed

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  • Perfect Your MySQL Database Administrators Skills

    - by Antoinette O'Sullivan
    With its proven ease-of-use, performance, and scalability, MySQL has become the leading database choice for web-based applications, used by high profile web properties including Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia and thousands of mid-sized companies. Many organizations deploy both Oracle Database and MySQL side by side to serve different needs, and as a database professional you can find training courses on both topics at Oracle University! Check out the upcoming Oracle Database training courses and MySQL training courses. Even if you're only managing Oracle Databases at this point of time, getting familiar with MySQL Database will broaden your career path with growing job demand. Hone your skills as a MySQL Database Administrator by taking the MySQL for Database Administrators course which teaches you how to secure privileges, set resource limitations, access controls and describe backup and recovery basics. You also learn how to create and use stored procedures, triggers and views. You can take this 5 day course through three delivery methods: Training-on-Demand: Take this course at your own pace and at a time that suits you through this high-quality streaming video delivery. You also get to schedule time on a classroom environment to perform the hands-on exercises. Live-Virtual: Attend a live instructor led event from your own desk. 100s of events already of the calendar in many timezones. In-Class: Travel to an education center to attend this class. A sample of events is shown below:  Location  Date  Delivery Language  Budapest, Hungary  26 November 2012  Hungarian  Prague, Czech Republic  19 November 2012  Czech  Warsaw, Poland  10 December 2012  Polish  Belfast, Northern Ireland  26 November, 2012  English  London, England  26 November, 2012  English  Rome, Italy  19 November, 2012  Italian  Lisbon, Portugal  12 November, 2012  European Portugese  Porto, Portugal  21 January, 2013  European Portugese  Amsterdam, Netherlands  19 November, 2012  Dutch  Nieuwegein, Netherlands  8 April, 2013  Dutch  Barcelona, Spain  4 February, 2013  Spanish  Madrid, Spain  19 November, 2012  Spanish  Mechelen, Belgium  25 February, 2013  English  Windhof, Luxembourg  19 November, 2012  English  Johannesburg, South Africa  9 December, 2012  English  Cairo, Egypt  20 October, 2012  English  Nairobi, Kenya  26 November, 2012  English  Petaling Jaya, Malaysia  29 October, 2012  English  Auckland, New Zealand  5 November, 2012  English  Wellington, New Zealand  23 October, 2012  English  Brisbane, Australia  19 November, 2012  English  Edmonton, Canada  7 January, 2013  English  Vancouver, Canada  7 January, 2013  English  Ottawa, Canada  22 October, 2012  English  Toronto, Canada  22 October, 2012  English  Montreal, Canada  22 October, 2012  English  Mexico City, Mexico  10 December, 2012  Spanish  Sao Paulo, Brazil  10 December, 2012  Brazilian Portugese For more information on this course or any aspect of the MySQL curriculum, visit http://oracle.com/education/mysql.

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  • Code Review tools - to use or not?

    - by liortal
    On my dev team, we're doing code reviews, however not in a proper way i believe. The issues our process suffers from: Not enough time is allocated for proper code review. Doing reviews is not mandatory - many times it is simply not done. Devs sit together for reviews, due to lack of another easy mechanism for doing it "offline" without spending both developers' time. My question is: can integration of a tool for code reviews improve the points mentioned above? Is it not needed? I would love to hear from positive/negative experiences.

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  • XNA Screen Manager problem with transitions

    - by NexAddo
    I'm having issues using the game statemanagement example in the game I am developing. I have no issues with my first three screens transitioning between one another. I have a main menu screen, a splash screen and a high score screen that cycle: mainMenuScreen->splashScreen->highScoreScreen->mainMenuScreen The screens change every 15 seconds. Transition times public MainMenuScreen() { TransitionOnTime = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(0.5); TransitionOffTime = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(0.0); currentCreditAmount = Global.CurrentCredits; } public SplashScreen() { TransitionOnTime = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(0.5); TransitionOffTime = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(0.5); } public HighScoreScreen() { TransitionOnTime = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(0.5); TransitionOffTime = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(0.5); } public GamePlayScreen() { TransitionOnTime = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(0.5); TransitionOffTime = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(0.5); } When a user inserts credits they can play the game after pressing start mainMenuScreen->splashScreen->highScoreScreen->(loops forever) || || || ===========Credits In============= || Start || \/ LoadingScreen || Start || \/ GamePlayScreen During each of these transitions, between screens, the same code is used, which exits(removes) all current active screens and respects transitions, then adds the new screen to the screen manager: foreach (GameScreen screen in ScreenManager.GetScreens()) screen.ExitScreen(); //AddScreen takes a new screen to manage and the controlling player ScreenManager.AddScreen(new NameOfScreenHere(), null); Each screen is removed from the ScreenManager with ExitScreen() and using this function, each screen transition is respected. The problem I am having is with my gamePlayScreen. When the current game is finished and the transition is complete for the gamePlayScreen, it should be removed and the next screens should be added to the ScreenManager. GamePlayScreen Code Snippet private void FinishCurrentGame() { AudioManager.StopSounds(); this.UnloadContent(); if (Global.SaveDevice.IsReady) Stats.Save(); if (HighScoreScreen.IsInHighscores(timeLimit)) { foreach (GameScreen screen in ScreenManager.GetScreens()) screen.ExitScreen(); Global.TimeRemaining = timeLimit; ScreenManager.AddScreen(new BackgroundScreen(), null); ScreenManager.AddScreen(new MessageBoxScreen("Enter your Initials", true), null); } else { foreach (GameScreen screen in ScreenManager.GetScreens()) screen.ExitScreen(); ScreenManager.AddScreen(new BackgroundScreen(), null); ScreenManager.AddScreen(new MainMenuScreen(), null); } } The problem is that when isExiting is set to true by screen.ExitScreen() for the gamePlayScreen, the transition never completes the transition and removes the screen from the ScreenManager. Every other screen that I use the same technique to add and remove each screen fully transitions On/Off and is removed at the appropriate time from the ScreenManager, but noy my GamePlayScreen. Has anyone that has used the GameStateManagement example experienced this issue or can someone see the mistake I am making? EDIT This is what I tracked down. When the game is done, I call foreach (GameScreen screen in ScreenManager.GetScreens()) screen.ExitScreen(); to start the transition off process for the gameplay screen. At this point there is only 1 screen on the ScreenManager stack. The gamePlay screen gets isExiting set to true and starts to transition off. Right after the above call to ExitScreen() I add a background screen and menu screen to the screenManager: ScreenManager.AddScreen(new background(), null); ScreenManager.AddScreen(new Menu(), null); The count of the ScreenManager is now 3. What I noticed while stepping through the updates for GameScreen and ScreenManager, the gameplay screen never gets to the point where the transistion process finishes so the ScreenManager can remove it from the stack. This anomaly does not happen to any of my other screens when I switch between them. Screen Manager Code #region File Description //----------------------------------------------------------------------------- // ScreenManager.cs // // Microsoft XNA Community Game Platform // Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. //----------------------------------------------------------------------------- #endregion #define DEMO #region Using Statements using System; using System.Diagnostics; using System.Collections.Generic; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; using PerformanceUtility.GameDebugTools; #endregion namespace GameStateManagement { /// <summary> /// The screen manager is a component which manages one or more GameScreen /// instances. It maintains a stack of screens, calls their Update and Draw /// methods at the appropriate times, and automatically routes input to the /// topmost active screen. /// </summary> public class ScreenManager : DrawableGameComponent { #region Fields List<GameScreen> screens = new List<GameScreen>(); List<GameScreen> screensToUpdate = new List<GameScreen>(); InputState input = new InputState(); SpriteBatch spriteBatch; SpriteFont font; Texture2D blankTexture; bool isInitialized; bool getOut; bool traceEnabled; #if DEBUG DebugSystem debugSystem; Stopwatch stopwatch = new Stopwatch(); bool debugTextEnabled; #endif #endregion #region Properties /// <summary> /// A default SpriteBatch shared by all the screens. This saves /// each screen having to bother creating their own local instance. /// </summary> public SpriteBatch SpriteBatch { get { return spriteBatch; } } /// <summary> /// A default font shared by all the screens. This saves /// each screen having to bother loading their own local copy. /// </summary> public SpriteFont Font { get { return font; } } public Rectangle ScreenRectangle { get { return new Rectangle(0, 0, GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Width, GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height); } } /// <summary> /// If true, the manager prints out a list of all the screens /// each time it is updated. This can be useful for making sure /// everything is being added and removed at the right times. /// </summary> public bool TraceEnabled { get { return traceEnabled; } set { traceEnabled = value; } } #if DEBUG public bool DebugTextEnabled { get { return debugTextEnabled; } set { debugTextEnabled = value; } } public DebugSystem DebugSystem { get { return debugSystem; } } #endif #endregion #region Initialization /// <summary> /// Constructs a new screen manager component. /// </summary> public ScreenManager(Game game) : base(game) { // we must set EnabledGestures before we can query for them, but // we don't assume the game wants to read them. //TouchPanel.EnabledGestures = GestureType.None; } /// <summary> /// Initializes the screen manager component. /// </summary> public override void Initialize() { base.Initialize(); #if DEBUG debugSystem = DebugSystem.Initialize(Game, "Fonts/MenuFont"); #endif isInitialized = true; } /// <summary> /// Load your graphics content. /// </summary> protected override void LoadContent() { // Load content belonging to the screen manager. ContentManager content = Game.Content; spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice); font = content.Load<SpriteFont>(@"Fonts\menufont"); blankTexture = content.Load<Texture2D>(@"Textures\Backgrounds\blank"); // Tell each of the screens to load their content. foreach (GameScreen screen in screens) { screen.LoadContent(); } } /// <summary> /// Unload your graphics content. /// </summary> protected override void UnloadContent() { // Tell each of the screens to unload their content. foreach (GameScreen screen in screens) { screen.UnloadContent(); } } #endregion #region Update and Draw /// <summary> /// Allows each screen to run logic. /// </summary> public override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { #if DEBUG debugSystem.TimeRuler.StartFrame(); debugSystem.TimeRuler.BeginMark("Update", Color.Blue); if (debugTextEnabled && getOut == false) { debugSystem.FpsCounter.Visible = true; debugSystem.TimeRuler.Visible = true; debugSystem.TimeRuler.ShowLog = true; getOut = true; } else if (debugTextEnabled == false) { getOut = false; debugSystem.FpsCounter.Visible = false; debugSystem.TimeRuler.Visible = false; debugSystem.TimeRuler.ShowLog = false; } #endif // Read the keyboard and gamepad. input.Update(); // Make a copy of the master screen list, to avoid confusion if // the process of updating one screen adds or removes others. screensToUpdate.Clear(); foreach (GameScreen screen in screens) screensToUpdate.Add(screen); bool otherScreenHasFocus = !Game.IsActive; bool coveredByOtherScreen = false; // Loop as long as there are screens waiting to be updated. while (screensToUpdate.Count > 0) { // Pop the topmost screen off the waiting list. GameScreen screen = screensToUpdate[screensToUpdate.Count - 1]; screensToUpdate.RemoveAt(screensToUpdate.Count - 1); // Update the screen. screen.Update(gameTime, otherScreenHasFocus, coveredByOtherScreen); if (screen.ScreenState == ScreenState.TransitionOn || screen.ScreenState == ScreenState.Active) { // If this is the first active screen we came across, // give it a chance to handle input. if (!otherScreenHasFocus) { screen.HandleInput(input); otherScreenHasFocus = true; } // If this is an active non-popup, inform any subsequent // screens that they are covered by it. if (!screen.IsPopup) coveredByOtherScreen = true; } } // Print debug trace? if (traceEnabled) TraceScreens(); #if DEBUG debugSystem.TimeRuler.EndMark("Update"); #endif } /// <summary> /// Prints a list of all the screens, for debugging. /// </summary> void TraceScreens() { List<string> screenNames = new List<string>(); foreach (GameScreen screen in screens) screenNames.Add(screen.GetType().Name); Debug.WriteLine(string.Join(", ", screenNames.ToArray())); } /// <summary> /// Tells each screen to draw itself. /// </summary> public override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { #if DEBUG debugSystem.TimeRuler.StartFrame(); debugSystem.TimeRuler.BeginMark("Draw", Color.Yellow); #endif foreach (GameScreen screen in screens) { if (screen.ScreenState == ScreenState.Hidden) continue; screen.Draw(gameTime); } #if DEBUG debugSystem.TimeRuler.EndMark("Draw"); #endif #if DEMO SpriteBatch.Begin(); SpriteBatch.DrawString(font, "DEMO - NOT FOR RESALE", new Vector2(20, 80), Color.White); SpriteBatch.End(); #endif } #endregion #region Public Methods /// <summary> /// Adds a new screen to the screen manager. /// </summary> public void AddScreen(GameScreen screen, PlayerIndex? controllingPlayer) { screen.ControllingPlayer = controllingPlayer; screen.ScreenManager = this; screen.IsExiting = false; // If we have a graphics device, tell the screen to load content. if (isInitialized) { screen.LoadContent(); } screens.Add(screen); } /// <summary> /// Removes a screen from the screen manager. You should normally /// use GameScreen.ExitScreen instead of calling this directly, so /// the screen can gradually transition off rather than just being /// instantly removed. /// </summary> public void RemoveScreen(GameScreen screen) { // If we have a graphics device, tell the screen to unload content. if (isInitialized) { screen.UnloadContent(); } screens.Remove(screen); screensToUpdate.Remove(screen); } /// <summary> /// Expose an array holding all the screens. We return a copy rather /// than the real master list, because screens should only ever be added /// or removed using the AddScreen and RemoveScreen methods. /// </summary> public GameScreen[] GetScreens() { return screens.ToArray(); } /// <summary> /// Helper draws a translucent black fullscreen sprite, used for fading /// screens in and out, and for darkening the background behind popups. /// </summary> public void FadeBackBufferToBlack(float alpha) { Viewport viewport = GraphicsDevice.Viewport; spriteBatch.Begin(); spriteBatch.Draw(blankTexture, new Rectangle(0, 0, viewport.Width, viewport.Height), Color.Black * alpha); spriteBatch.End(); } #endregion } } Game Screen Parent of GamePlayScreen #region File Description //----------------------------------------------------------------------------- // GameScreen.cs // // Microsoft XNA Community Game Platform // Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. //----------------------------------------------------------------------------- #endregion #region Using Statements using System; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Input; //using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Input.Touch; using System.IO; #endregion namespace GameStateManagement { /// <summary> /// Enum describes the screen transition state. /// </summary> public enum ScreenState { TransitionOn, Active, TransitionOff, Hidden, } /// <summary> /// A screen is a single layer that has update and draw logic, and which /// can be combined with other layers to build up a complex menu system. /// For instance the main menu, the options menu, the "are you sure you /// want to quit" message box, and the main game itself are all implemented /// as screens. /// </summary> public abstract class GameScreen { #region Properties /// <summary> /// Normally when one screen is brought up over the top of another, /// the first screen will transition off to make room for the new /// one. This property indicates whether the screen is only a small /// popup, in which case screens underneath it do not need to bother /// transitioning off. /// </summary> public bool IsPopup { get { return isPopup; } protected set { isPopup = value; } } bool isPopup = false; /// <summary> /// Indicates how long the screen takes to /// transition on when it is activated. /// </summary> public TimeSpan TransitionOnTime { get { return transitionOnTime; } protected set { transitionOnTime = value; } } TimeSpan transitionOnTime = TimeSpan.Zero; /// <summary> /// Indicates how long the screen takes to /// transition off when it is deactivated. /// </summary> public TimeSpan TransitionOffTime { get { return transitionOffTime; } protected set { transitionOffTime = value; } } TimeSpan transitionOffTime = TimeSpan.Zero; /// <summary> /// Gets the current position of the screen transition, ranging /// from zero (fully active, no transition) to one (transitioned /// fully off to nothing). /// </summary> public float TransitionPosition { get { return transitionPosition; } protected set { transitionPosition = value; } } float transitionPosition = 1; /// <summary> /// Gets the current alpha of the screen transition, ranging /// from 1 (fully active, no transition) to 0 (transitioned /// fully off to nothing). /// </summary> public float TransitionAlpha { get { return 1f - TransitionPosition; } } /// <summary> /// Gets the current screen transition state. /// </summary> public ScreenState ScreenState { get { return screenState; } protected set { screenState = value; } } ScreenState screenState = ScreenState.TransitionOn; /// <summary> /// There are two possible reasons why a screen might be transitioning /// off. It could be temporarily going away to make room for another /// screen that is on top of it, or it could be going away for good. /// This property indicates whether the screen is exiting for real: /// if set, the screen will automatically remove itself as soon as the /// transition finishes. /// </summary> public bool IsExiting { get { return isExiting; } protected internal set { isExiting = value; } } bool isExiting = false; /// <summary> /// Checks whether this screen is active and can respond to user input. /// </summary> public bool IsActive { get { return !otherScreenHasFocus && (screenState == ScreenState.TransitionOn || screenState == ScreenState.Active); } } bool otherScreenHasFocus; /// <summary> /// Gets the manager that this screen belongs to. /// </summary> public ScreenManager ScreenManager { get { return screenManager; } internal set { screenManager = value; } } ScreenManager screenManager; public KeyboardState KeyboardState { get {return Keyboard.GetState();} } /// <summary> /// Gets the index of the player who is currently controlling this screen, /// or null if it is accepting input from any player. This is used to lock /// the game to a specific player profile. The main menu responds to input /// from any connected gamepad, but whichever player makes a selection from /// this menu is given control over all subsequent screens, so other gamepads /// are inactive until the controlling player returns to the main menu. /// </summary> public PlayerIndex? ControllingPlayer { get { return controllingPlayer; } internal set { controllingPlayer = value; } } PlayerIndex? controllingPlayer; /// <summary> /// Gets whether or not this screen is serializable. If this is true, /// the screen will be recorded into the screen manager's state and /// its Serialize and Deserialize methods will be called as appropriate. /// If this is false, the screen will be ignored during serialization. /// By default, all screens are assumed to be serializable. /// </summary> public bool IsSerializable { get { return isSerializable; } protected set { isSerializable = value; } } bool isSerializable = true; #endregion #region Initialization /// <summary> /// Load graphics content for the screen. /// </summary> public virtual void LoadContent() { } /// <summary> /// Unload content for the screen. /// </summary> public virtual void UnloadContent() { } #endregion #region Update and Draw /// <summary> /// Allows the screen to run logic, such as updating the transition position. /// Unlike HandleInput, this method is called regardless of whether the screen /// is active, hidden, or in the middle of a transition. /// </summary> public virtual void Update(GameTime gameTime, bool otherScreenHasFocus, bool coveredByOtherScreen) { this.otherScreenHasFocus = otherScreenHasFocus; if (isExiting) { // If the screen is going away to die, it should transition off. screenState = ScreenState.TransitionOff; if (!UpdateTransition(gameTime, transitionOffTime, 1)) { // When the transition finishes, remove the screen. ScreenManager.RemoveScreen(this); } } else if (coveredByOtherScreen) { // If the screen is covered by another, it should transition off. if (UpdateTransition(gameTime, transitionOffTime, 1)) { // Still busy transitioning. screenState = ScreenState.TransitionOff; } else { // Transition finished! screenState = ScreenState.Hidden; } } else { // Otherwise the screen should transition on and become active. if (UpdateTransition(gameTime, transitionOnTime, -1)) { // Still busy transitioning. screenState = ScreenState.TransitionOn; } else { // Transition finished! screenState = ScreenState.Active; } } } /// <summary> /// Helper for updating the screen transition position. /// </summary> bool UpdateTransition(GameTime gameTime, TimeSpan time, int direction) { // How much should we move by? float transitionDelta; if (time == TimeSpan.Zero) transitionDelta = 1; else transitionDelta = (float)(gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalMilliseconds / time.TotalMilliseconds); // Update the transition position. transitionPosition += transitionDelta * direction; // Did we reach the end of the transition? if (((direction < 0) && (transitionPosition <= 0)) || ((direction > 0) && (transitionPosition >= 1))) { transitionPosition = MathHelper.Clamp(transitionPosition, 0, 1); return false; } // Otherwise we are still busy transitioning. return true; } /// <summary> /// Allows the screen to handle user input. Unlike Update, this method /// is only called when the screen is active, and not when some other /// screen has taken the focus. /// </summary> public virtual void HandleInput(InputState input) { } public KeyboardState currentKeyState; public KeyboardState lastKeyState; public bool IsKeyHit(Keys key) { if (currentKeyState.IsKeyDown(key) && lastKeyState.IsKeyUp(key)) return true; return false; } /// <summary> /// This is called when the screen should draw itself. /// </summary> public virtual void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { } #endregion #region Public Methods /// <summary> /// Tells the screen to serialize its state into the given stream. /// </summary> public virtual void Serialize(Stream stream) { } /// <summary> /// Tells the screen to deserialize its state from the given stream. /// </summary> public virtual void Deserialize(Stream stream) { } /// <summary> /// Tells the screen to go away. Unlike ScreenManager.RemoveScreen, which /// instantly kills the screen, this method respects the transition timings /// and will give the screen a chance to gradually transition off. /// </summary> public void ExitScreen() { if (TransitionOffTime == TimeSpan.Zero) { // If the screen has a zero transition time, remove it immediately. ScreenManager.RemoveScreen(this); } else { // Otherwise flag that it should transition off and then exit. isExiting = true; } } #endregion #region Helper Methods /// <summary> /// A helper method which loads assets using the screen manager's /// associated game content loader. /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="T">Type of asset.</typeparam> /// <param name="assetName">Asset name, relative to the loader root /// directory, and not including the .xnb extension.</param> /// <returns></returns> public T Load<T>(string assetName) { return ScreenManager.Game.Content.Load<T>(assetName); } #endregion } }

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  • SQL SERVER – DMV – sys.dm_exec_query_optimizer_info – Statistics of Optimizer

    - by pinaldave
    Incredibly, SQL Server has so much information to share with us. Every single day, I am amazed with this SQL Server technology. Sometimes I find several interesting information by just querying few of the DMV. And when I present this info in front of my client during performance tuning consultancy, they are surprised with my findings. Today, I am going to share one of the hidden gems of DMV with you, the one which I frequently use to understand what’s going on under the hood of SQL Server. SQL Server keeps the record of most of the operations of the Query Optimizer. We can learn many interesting details about the optimizer which can be utilized to improve the performance of server. SELECT * FROM sys.dm_exec_query_optimizer_info WHERE counter IN ('optimizations', 'elapsed time','final cost', 'insert stmt','delete stmt','update stmt', 'merge stmt','contains subquery','tables', 'hints','order hint','join hint', 'view reference','remote query','maximum DOP', 'maximum recursion level','indexed views loaded', 'indexed views matched','indexed views used', 'indexed views updated','dynamic cursor request', 'fast forward cursor request') All occurrence values are cumulative and are set to 0 at system restart. All values for value fields are set to NULL at system restart. I have removed a few of the internal counters from the script above, and kept only documented details. Let us check the result of the above query. As you can see, there is so much vital information that is revealed in above query. I can easily say so many things about how many times Optimizer was triggered and what the average time taken by it to optimize my queries was. Additionally, I can also determine how many times update, insert or delete statements were optimized. I was able to quickly figure out that my client was overusing the Query Hints using this dynamic management view. If you have been reading my blog, I am sure you are aware of my series related to SQL Server Views SQL SERVER – The Limitations of the Views – Eleven and more…. With this, I can take a quick look and figure out how many times Views were used in various solutions within the query. Moreover, you can easily know what fraction of the optimizations has been involved in tuning server. For example, the following query would tell me, in total optimizations, what the fraction of time View was “reference“. As this View also includes system Views and DMVs, the number is a bit higher on my machine. SELECT (SELECT CAST (occurrence AS FLOAT) FROM sys.dm_exec_query_optimizer_info WHERE counter = 'view reference') / (SELECT CAST (occurrence AS FLOAT) FROM sys.dm_exec_query_optimizer_info WHERE counter = 'optimizations') AS ViewReferencedFraction Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL DMV, SQL Optimization, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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  • Performance Gains using Indexed Views and Computed Columns

    - by NeilHambly
    Hello This is a quick follow-up blog to the Presention I gave last night @ the London UG Meeting ( 17th March 2010 ) It was a great evening and we had a big full house (over 120 Registered for this event), due to time constraints we had I was unable to spend enough time on this topic to really give it justice or any the myriad of questions that arose form the session, I will be gathering all my material and putting a comprehensive BLOG entry on this topic in the next couple of days.. In the meantime here is the slides from last night if you wanted to again review it or if you where not @ the meeting If you wish to contact me then please feel free to send me emails @ [email protected] Finally  - a quick thanks to Tony Rogerson for allowing me to be a Presenter last night (so we know who we can blame !)  and all the other presenters for thier support Watch this space Folks more to follow soon.. 

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  • New Web Comic: Code Monkey Kung Fu

    - by Dane Morgridge
    It’s been something I’ve wanted to do for quite some time and decided it was finally time. Yesterday, I launched a new web comic “Code Monkey Kung Fu”. After being a programer for more than ten years, I’ve come across quite a few hilarious situations and will be drawing on them for inspiration. I also have a four kids, so they will probably produce a lot as well. My plan is to release on Tuesdays with additional comics mixed in on occasion. I hope you enjoy! http://www.codemonkeykungfu.com

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  • how to evaluate own project

    - by gruszczy
    I am working on a open source project in pure C, that I have started some time ago, but only recently found time to add some features. I can clearly some weaknesses of my old design, so I am trying to refactor my old code. I have no idea however, how to evaluate properly my new code. Do you know about any techniques or tools for code evaluation? I am pretty good with object oriented design, but for about three years I had no contact with purely structural one. Therefore I don't have enough experience, to be able to discern between good and bad design choices.

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  • Fastest way to document software architecture and design

    - by Karsten
    We are a small team of 5 developers and I'm looking for some great advices about how to document the software architecture and design. I'm going for the sweet spot, where the time invested pays off. I don't want to use more time documenting than necessary. I'll quickly give you my thoughts. What are the diagrams I should made? I'm thinking an overall diagram showing the various applications and services. And then some sequence diagrams showing the most important or complicated processes. About the code it self, I really don't see much value in describing or making diagrams for the code outside the .cs files them self. About text documents, I'm a bit uncertain about when to put down on paper. Most developers don't like to either write or read long documents.

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