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• Up in the Air: Team Oracle Play-by-Play

  - by Aaron Lazenby

  Yesterday, I had the amazing opportunity to fly along with Sean D. Tucker and Team Oracle. Leaving from the San Carols airport, we did a 30 minute flight over the Pacific just south of the coastal town of Half Moon Bay. In that half hour, I rode through a massive 4G loop, survived a crushing hammerhead, and took control of the plane to perform a basic wing over (you can learn what the heck I'm talking about by visiting this website). I have lots of great video, but it's going to take me some time to make sense of it. For now, here's my Twitter-based play-by-play of yesterday's events. Many thanks to Sean D. Tucker and the whole crew (Ben and Ian, especially) for this great opportunity to fly with Team Oracle.Live tweets from @OracleProfitI will be spending the afternoon in a stunt plane, upside down above the San Francisco bay. http://bit.ly/cwkrkIAt the San Carlos airport. More than slightly freaked out. Shaking hands diminish texting ability. Slightly reassuring. http://yfrog.com/1qt61nj There go the doors to the photo plane... #teamoracle http://yfrog.com/58ywljSean D Tucker assures me: "The sky is a great place to be." Helpful, but I'm still nervous. #teamoracle"You get a parachute. He gets a harness." How was this decision made? #teamoracleThe plane with @radu43 has returned. I'm up next...Couldn't help myself...drank a soda before flying. Mistake? We'll see... #teamoracleAdvice of the day "If you pull with two hands, you improve the chances of the chute deploying on the first try." Lovely. #teamoracleI feel so strange. But I flew a high performance airplane. And did an aerobatics move. Wild. #teamoracle"Flying ten feet off he ground, upside-down at 250 miles per hour isn't exciting to me." Sean D. Tucker #teamoracle"What is exciting to me is flying that perfect pattern, just like I imagined it in my head." Sean D. Tucker #teamoracle"You're going to sleep well tonight. You just carried four times your body weight." #teamoracle #gforce Just watched the #teamoracle plane take off for its flight home. I'm waiting for Caltrain. #undignifiedanticlimaxEnough with the #teamoracle. Check http://blogs.oracle.com/profit for the video. Coming soon! 

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• Using a WCF Message Inspector to extend AppFabric Monitoring

  - by Shawn Cicoria

  I read through Ron Jacobs post on Monitoring WCF Data Services with AppFabric http://blogs.msdn.com/b/endpoint/archive/2010/06/09/tracking-wcf-data-services-with-windows-server-appfabric.aspx What is immediately striking are 2 things – it’s so easy to get monitoring data into a viewer (AppFabric Dashboard) w/ very little work.  And the 2nd thing is, why can’t this be a WCF message inspector on the dispatch side. So, I took the base class WCFUserEventProvider that’s located in the WCF/WF samples [1] in the following path, \WF_WCF_Samples\WCF\Basic\Management\AnalyticTraceExtensibility\CS\WCFAnalyticTracingExtensibility\  and then created a few classes that project the injection as a IEndPointBehavior There are just 3 classes to drive injection of the inspector at runtime via config: IDispatchMessageInspector implementation BehaviorExtensionElement implementation IEndpointBehavior implementation The full source code is below with a link to the solution file here: [Solution File] using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Web; using System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher; using System.ServiceModel.Channels; using System.ServiceModel; using System.ServiceModel.Configuration; using System.ServiceModel.Description; using Microsoft.Samples.WCFAnalyticTracingExtensibility; namespace Fabrikam.Services { public class AppFabricE2EInspector : IDispatchMessageInspector { static WCFUserEventProvider evntProvider = null; static AppFabricE2EInspector() { evntProvider = new WCFUserEventProvider(); } public object AfterReceiveRequest( ref Message request, IClientChannel channel, InstanceContext instanceContext) { OperationContext ctx = OperationContext.Current; var opName = ctx.IncomingMessageHeaders.Action; evntProvider.WriteInformationEvent("start", string.Format("operation: {0} at address {1}", opName, ctx.EndpointDispatcher.EndpointAddress)); return null; } public void BeforeSendReply(ref System.ServiceModel.Channels.Message reply, object correlationState) { OperationContext ctx = OperationContext.Current; var opName = ctx.IncomingMessageHeaders.Action; evntProvider.WriteInformationEvent("end", string.Format("operation: {0} at address {1}", opName, ctx.EndpointDispatcher.EndpointAddress)); } } public class AppFabricE2EBehaviorElement : BehaviorExtensionElement { #region BehaviorExtensionElement /// <summary> /// Gets the type of behavior. /// </summary> /// <value></value> /// <returns>The type that implements the end point behavior<see cref="T:System.Type"/>.</returns> public override Type BehaviorType { get { return typeof(AppFabricE2EEndpointBehavior); } } /// <summary> /// Creates a behavior extension based on the current configuration settings. /// </summary> /// <returns>The behavior extension.</returns> protected override object CreateBehavior() { return new AppFabricE2EEndpointBehavior(); } #endregion BehaviorExtensionElement } public class AppFabricE2EEndpointBehavior : IEndpointBehavior //, IServiceBehavior { #region IEndpointBehavior public void AddBindingParameters(ServiceEndpoint endpoint, BindingParameterCollection bindingParameters) {} public void ApplyClientBehavior(ServiceEndpoint endpoint, ClientRuntime clientRuntime) { throw new NotImplementedException(); } public void ApplyDispatchBehavior(ServiceEndpoint endpoint, EndpointDispatcher endpointDispatcher) { endpointDispatcher.DispatchRuntime.MessageInspectors.Add(new AppFabricE2EInspector()); } public void Validate(ServiceEndpoint endpoint) { ; } #endregion IEndpointBehavior } }     [1] http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=35ec8682-d5fd-4bc3-a51a-d8ad115a8792&displaylang=en

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• Getting Started With nServiceBus on VAN Mar 31

  - by van

  Topic: nServiceBus is mature and powerful open source framework that enables to design robust, scalable, message-based, service-oriented architectures. Latest improvements in the configuration API enables developers to quickly get started and build a working simple system that uses messaging infrastructure. The goal of this session is to give a jump start with the framework, introduce basic concepts such as message handlers, Sagas, Pub/Sub, Generic Host and also create a working demo application that uses publish/subscribe messaging. The content of the session is addressed to developers that are interested in learning how to get started using nServiceBus in order to design and build distributed systems. Bio: Bernard Kowalski is currently a Software Developer at Microdesk, one of Autodesk's leading partners in providing variety of Geospatial and Computer-Aided Design solutions. Bernard has experience developing .NET framework-based applications utilizing Windows Forms, Windows Services, ASP.NET MVC, and Web services. In a recent project, Bernard architected and implemented a distributed system based on SOA principles using an open source implementation of an Enterprise Service Bus. Bernard develops software with Agile patterns and practices using Domain Driven Design combined with TDD (Test Driven Development). He is familiar with all of the following APIs: Autodesk Vault/Product Stream API, AutoCAD ActiveX/VBA/.NET API, AutoCAD Mechanical API, Autodesk Inventor API, Autodesk MapGuide Enterprise. Prior to joining Microdesk, Bernard worked as a researcher and teacher at the University of Science and Technology in Krakow, Poland where he was awarded with a PhD in Computer Methods in Materials Science. He also participated in research projects where he developed applications for analysis of hot compression test results using advanced optimization techniques. He also developed Finite Element Method-based programs for thermal and stress analysis using C++ and FORTRAN. Bernard is a member of the Domain Driven Design and ALT.NET user groups in NYC. Virtual ALT.NET (VAN) is the online gathering place of the ALT.NET community. Through conversations, presentations, pair programming and dojos, we strive to improve, explore, and challenge the way we create software. Using net conferencing technology such as Skype and LiveMeeting, we hold regular meetings, open to anyone, usually taking the form of a presentation or an Open Space Technology-style conversation. Please see the Calendar(http://www.virtualaltnet.com/Home/Calendar) to find a VAN group that meets at a time convenient to you, and feel welcome to join a meeting. Past sessions can be found on the Recording page. To stay informed about VAN activities, you can subscribe to the Virtual ALT.NET Google Group and follow the Virtual ALT.NET blog. Times below are Central Standard Time Start Time: Wed, Mar 31, 2010 8:00 PM UTC/GMT -5 hours End Time: Wed, Mar 31, 2010 10:00 PM UTC/GMT -5 hours Attendee URL: http://www.virtualaltnet.com/van Zach Young http://www.virtualaltnet.com

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• Building the Elusive Windows Phone Panorama Control

  When the Windows Phone 7 Developer SDK was released a couple of weeks ago at MIX10 many people noticed the SDK doesnt include a template for a Panorama control.   Here at Clarity we decided to build our own Panorama control for use in some of our prototypes and I figured I would share what we came up with. There have been a couple of implementations of the Panorama control making their way through the interwebs, but I didnt think any of them really nailed the experience that is shown in the simulation videos.   One of the key design principals in the UX Guide for Windows Phone 7 is the use of motion.  The WP7 OS is fairly stripped of extraneous design elements and makes heavy use of typography and motion to give users the necessary visual cues.  Subtle animations and wide layouts help give the user a sense of fluidity and consistency across the phone experience.  When building the panorama control I was fairly meticulous in recreating the motion as shown in the videos.  The effect that is shown in the application hubs of the phone is known as a Parallax Scrolling effect.  This this pseudo-3D technique has been around in the computer graphics world for quite some time. In essence, the background images move slower than foreground images, creating an illusion of depth in 2D.  Here is an example of the traditional use: http://www.mauriciostudio.com/.  One of the animation gems I've learned while building interactive software is the follow animation.  The premise is straightforward: instead of translating content 1:1 with the interaction point, let the content catch up to the mouse or finger.  The difference is subtle, but the impact on the smoothness of the interaction is huge.  That said, it became the foundation of how I achieved the effect shown below.   Source Code Available HERE Before I briefly describe the approach I took in creating this control..and Ill add some **asterisks ** to the code below as my coding skills arent up to snuff with the rest of my colleagues.  This code is meant to be an interpretation of the WP7 panorama control and is not intended to be used in a production application.  1.  Layout the XAML The UI consists of three main components :  The background image, the Title, and the Content.  You can imagine each  these UI Elements existing on their own plane with a corresponding Translate Transform to create the Parallax effect.  2.  Storyboards + Procedural Animations = Sexy As I mentioned above, creating a fluid experience was at the top of my priorities while building this control.  To recreate the smooth scroll effect shown in the video we need to add some place holder storyboards that we can manipulate in code to simulate the inertia and snapping.  Using the easing functions built into Silverlight helps create a very pleasant interaction.    3.  Handle the Manipulation Events With Silverlight 3 we have some new touch event handlers.  The new Manipulation events makes handling the interactivity pretty straight forward.  There are two event handlers that need to be hooked up to enable the dragging and motion effects: the ManipulationDelta event :  (the most relevant code is highlighted in pink) Here we are doing some simple math with the Manipulation Deltas and setting the TO values of the animations appropriately. Modifying the storyboards dynamically in code helps to create a natural feel.something that cant easily be done with storyboards alone.   And secondly, the ManipulationCompleted event:  Here we take the Final Velocities from the Manipulation Completed Event and apply them to the Storyboards to create the snapping and scrolling effects.  Most of this code is determining what the next position of the viewport will be.  The interesting part (shown in pink) is determining the duration of the animation based on the calculated velocity of the flick gesture.  By using velocity as a variable in determining the duration of the animation we can produce a slow animation for a soft flick and a fast animation for a strong flick. Challenges to the Reader There are a couple of things I didnt have time to implement into this control.  And I would love to see other WPF/Silverlight approaches.  1.  A good mechanism for deciphering when the user is manipulating the content within the panorama control and the panorama itself.   In other words, being able to accurately determine what is a flick and what is click. 2.  Dynamically Sizing the panorama control based on the width of its content.  Right now each control panel is 400px, ideally the Panel items would be measured and then panorama control would update its size accordingly.  3.  Background and content wrapping.  The WP7 UX guidelines specify that the content and background should wrap at the end of the list.  In my code I restrict the drag at the ends of the list (like the iPhone).  It would be interesting to see how this would effect the scroll experience.     Well, Its been fun building this control and if you use it Id love to know what you think.  You can download the Source HERE or from the Expression Gallery  Erik Klimczak  | [email protected] | twitter.com/eklimczDid you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Inside Red Gate - Divisions

  - by Simon Cooper

  When I joined Red Gate back in 2007, there were around 80 people in the company. Now, around 3 years later, it's grown to more than 200. It's a constant battle against Dunbar's number; the maximum number of people you can keep track of in a social group, to try and maintain that 'small company' feel that attracted myself and so many others to apply in the first place. There are several strategies the company's developed over the years to try and mitigate the effects of Dunbar's number. One of the main ones has been divisionalisation. Divisions The first division, .NET, appeared around the same time that I started in 2007. This combined the development, sales, marketing and management of the .NET tools (then, ANTS Profiler v3) into a separate section of the office. The idea was to increase the cohesion and communication between the different people involved in the entire lifecycle of the tools; from initial product development, through to marketing, then to customer support, who would feed back to the development team. This was such a success that the other development teams were re-worked around this model in 2009. Nowadays there are 4 divisions - SQL Tools, DBA, .NET, and New Business. Along the way there have been various tweaks to the details - the sales teams have been merged into the divisions, marketing and product support have been (mostly) centralised - but the same basic model remains. So, how has this helped? As Red Gate has continued to grow over the years, divisionalisation has turned Red Gate from a monolithic software company into what one person described as a 'federation of small businesses'. Each division is free to structure itself as it sees fit, it's free to decide what to concentrate development work on, organise its own newsletters and webinars, decide its own release schedule. Each division is its own small business. In terms of numbers, the size of each division varies from 20 people (.NET) to 52 (SQL Tools); well below Dunbar's number. From a developer's perspective, this means organisational structure is very flat & wide - there's only 2 layers between myself and the CEOs (not that it matters much; everyone can go and have a chat to Neil or Simon, or anyone else inbetween, whenever they want. Provided you can catch them at their desk!). As Red Gate grows, and expands into new areas, new divisions will be created as needed, old ones merged or disbanded, but the division structure will help to maintain that small-company feel that keeps Red Gate working as it does.

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• SOA, Empowerment and Continuous Improvement

  - by Tanu Sood

  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:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Rick Beers is Senior Director of Product Management for Oracle Fusion Middleware. Prior to joining Oracle, Rick held a variety of executive operational positions at Corning, Inc. and Bausch & Lomb. With a professional background that includes senior management positions in manufacturing, supply chain and information technology, Rick brings a unique set of experiences to cover the impact that technology can have on business models, processes and organizations. Rick will be hosting the IT Leader Editorial on a regular basis. I met my twin at Open World. We share backgrounds, experiences and even names. I hosted an invitation-only AppAdvantage Leadership Forum with an overcapacity 85 participants: 55 customers, 15 from the Oracle AppAdvantage team and 15 Partners. It was a lively, open and positive discussion of pace layered architectures and Oracle’s AppAdvantage approach to a unified view of Applications and Middleware. Rick Hassman from Pella was one of the customer panelists and during the pre event prep, Rick and I shared backgrounds and found that we had both been plant managers and led ERP deployments prior to leading IT itself. During the panel conversation I explored this with him, discussing the unique perspectives that this provides to CIO’s. He then hit on a point that I wasn’t able to fully appreciate until a week later. First though, some background. The week after the Forum, one of the participants emailed me with the following thoughts: “I am 150% behind this concept……but we are struggling with the concept of web services and the potential use of the Oracle Service Bus technology let alone moving into using the full SOA/BPM/BAM software to extend our JD Edwards application to both integrate and support business processes”. After thinking a bit I responded this way: While I certainly appreciate the degree of change and effort involved, perhaps I could offer the following: One of the underlying principles behind Oracle AppAdvantage is that more often than not, the choice between changing a business process and invasively customizing ERP represents a Hobson's Choice: neither is acceptable. In this case the third option, moving the process out of ERP, is the only acceptable one. Providing this choice typically requires end to end, real time interoperability across applications and/or services. This real time interoperability, to be sustainable over time requires a service oriented architecture. There's just no way around this. SOA adaptation is admittedly tough at the beginning. New skills, new technology and new headaches. But, like any radically new technology, it has a learning curve that drives cost down rather dramatically over time. Tough choices to be sure, but not entirely different than we face with every major technology cycle. Good points of course, but I felt that something was missing. The points were convincing, perhaps even a bit insightful, but they didn’t get at the heart of what Oracle AppAdvantage is focused upon: how the optimization of technology, applications, processes and relationships can change the very way that organizations operate. And then I thought back to the panel discussion with Rick Hassman at Oracle OpenWorld. Rick stressed that Continuous Improvement is a fundamental business strategy at Pella. I remember Continuous Improvement well as I suspect does everyone who was in American manufacturing during the 80’s. Pioneered by W. Edwards Deming in Japan (and still known alternatively as Kaizen), Continuous Improvement sets in place the business culture that we must not become complacent with success and resistant to the ongoing need for change. Many believe that this single handedly drove the renaissance in American manufacturing through the last two decades, which had become complacent during the 70’s and early 80’s. But what exactly does this have to do with SOA? It was Rick’s next point. He drew the connection that moving those business processes that need to continually change over time out of ERP and into edge applications and services enables continuous improvement by empowering people to continually strive for better ways of doing things rather than be being bound by workflows that cannot change. A compelling connection: that SOA, and the overall Oracle AppAdvantage framework of which it is an integral part, can empower people towards continuous improvement in business processes and as a result drive business leadership and business excellence. What better a case for technology innovation?

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• An MCM exam, Rob? Really?

  - by Rob Farley

  I took the SQL 2008 MCM Knowledge exam while in Seattle for the PASS Summit ten days ago. I wasn’t planning to do it, but I got persuaded to try. I was meaning to write this post to explain myself before the result came out, but it seems I didn’t get typing quickly enough. Those of you who know me will know I’m a big fan of certification, to a point. I’ve been involved with Microsoft Learning to help create exams. I’ve kept my certifications current since I first took an exam back in 1998, sitting many in beta, across quite a variety of topics. I’ve probably become quite good at them – I know I’ve definitely passed some that I really should’ve failed. I’ve also written that I don’t think exams are worth studying for. (That’s probably not entirely true, but it depends on your motivation. If you’re doing learning, I would encourage you to focus on what you need to know to do your job better. That will help you pass an exam – but the two skills are very different. I can coach someone on how to pass an exam, but that’s a different kind of teaching when compared to coaching someone about how to do a job. For example, the real world includes a lot of “it depends”, where you develop a feel for what the influencing factors might be. In an exam, its better to be able to know some of the “Don’t use this technology if XYZ is true” concepts better.) As for the Microsoft Certified Master certification… I’m not opposed to the idea of having the MCM (or in the future, MCSM) cert. But the barrier to entry feels quite high for me. When it was first introduced, the nearest testing centres to me were in Kuala Lumpur and Manila. Now there’s one in Perth, but that’s still a big effort. I know there are options in the US – such as one about an hour’s drive away from downtown Seattle, but it all just seems too hard. Plus, these exams are more expensive, and all up – I wasn’t sure I wanted to try them, particularly with the fact that I don’t like to study. I used to study for exams. It would drive my wife crazy. I’d have some exam scheduled for some time in the future (like the time I had two booked for two consecutive days at TechEd Australia 2005), and I’d make sure I was ready. Every waking moment would be spent pouring over exam material, and it wasn’t healthy. I got shaken out of that, though, when I ended up taking four exams in those two days in 2005 and passed them all. I also worked out that if I had a Second Shot available, then failing wasn’t a bad thing at all. Even without Second Shot, I’m much more okay about failing. But even just trying an MCM exam is a big effort. I wouldn’t want to fail one of them. Plus there’s the illusion to maintain. People have told me for a long time that I should just take the MCM exams – that I’d pass no problem. I’ve never been so sure. It was almost becoming a pride-point. Perhaps I should fail just to demonstrate that I can fail these things. Anyway – boB Taylor (@sqlboBT) persuaded me to try the SQL 2008 MCM Knowledge exam at the PASS Summit. They set up a testing centre in one of the room there, so it wasn’t out of my way at all. I had to squeeze it in between other commitments, and I certainly didn’t have time to even see what was on the syllabus, let alone study. In fact, I was so exhausted from the week that I fell asleep at least once (just for a moment though) during the actual exam. Perhaps the questions need more jokes, I’m not sure. I knew if I failed, then I might disappoint some people, but that I wouldn’t’ve spent a great deal of effort in trying to pass. On the other hand, if I did pass I’d then be under pressure to investigate the MCM Lab exam, which can be taken remotely (therefore, a much smaller amount of effort to make happen). In some ways, passing could end up just putting a bunch more pressure on me. Oh, and I did.

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• My thoughts on the future of the web with respect to flash, plugins, etc…

  - by joelvarty

  More than 10 years ago I was coding Java applets.  They were great at the time because I could reasonably expect them to run the same way in Netscape and Internet Explorer.  I could also reliably do asynchronous networking back to the server.  But then, Microsoft pulled their native Java runtime from Windows and Internet Explorer.  It got a lot harder to get applets running in people’s browsers. So I started writing ActiveX controls for IE and Java applets for Netscape. Then I switched to Flash, not for too long, but it was enough for me to see that it was a capable and curious implementation of animation, multimedia and script. I even wrote a few Silverlight controls, but then I stopped. I stepped back from all of the “richness” and “interactivity” and I thought about things like accessibility and SEO.  I wondered how my apps and sites might appear to the greater world.  I wondered how the developers I am working with, or who might be inheriting my code down the road, might interact with it. And I thought to myself, What the hell was I thinking? Those embedded controls are not what the web is about, and they run contrary to nearly all of the things that makes the web exciting and fosters innovation within and around.   Those plugins or controls, or whatever you want to refer to them as, are only stop-gaps that fill a hole in the basic HTML/Script/CSS specifications, and that’s all they should ever be used for.  Full stop.  Period.  For instance, I still make use of a nifty little flash control called SWFUpload because it lets me check file size before an upload starts.  I can do the same thing from a Silverlight control.  But rest assured, if I could do this from native javascript, I would in a second.  In fact, the only reason I chose SWFUpload over a ton of other alternatives is that it has a great javascript API so I can do (nearly) all of the UI in regular HTML.  And I ALWAYS provide a non-flash alternative for uploading, and for the rest of any website where the designer has insisted on some piece of creativity that requires flash (usually because the designer is also the flash developer, but that’s an aside…). The web is about openness, and about exposing that openness in such a way that it can be taken advantage of as a small part of a greater whole.  Sure we need security and authentication and ssl and all that stuff, but for me, its something more profound.  For me, the majority of what the web is, is about exposing something that delivers meaning.  What meaning can we derive from an <object> tag?   more later - joel

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• Getting Started With Sinatra

  - by Liam McLennan

  Sinatra is a Ruby DSL for building web applications. It is distinguished from its peers by its minimalism. Here is hello world in Sinatra: require 'rubygems' require 'sinatra' get '/hi' do "Hello World!" end A haml view is rendered by: def '/' haml :name_of_your_view end Haml is also new to me. It is a ruby-based view engine that uses significant white space to avoid having to close tags. A hello world web page in haml might look like: %html %head %title Hello World %body %div Hello World You see how the structure is communicated using indentation instead of opening and closing tags. It makes views more concise and easier to read. Based on my syntax highlighter for Gherkin I have started to build a sinatra web application that publishes syntax highlighted gherkin feature files. I have found that there is a need to have features online so that customers can access them, and so that they can be linked to project management tools like Jira, Mingle, trac etc. The first thing I want my application to be able to do is display a list of the features that it knows about. This will happen when a user requests the root of the application. Here is my sinatra handler: get '/' do feature_service = Finding::FeatureService.new(Finding::FeatureFileFinder.new, Finding::FeatureReader.new) @features = feature_service.features(settings.feature_path, settings.feature_extensions) haml :index end The handler and the view are in the same scope so the @features variable will be available in the view. This is the same way that rails passes data between actions and views. The view to render the result is: %h2 Features %ul - @features.each do |feature| %li %a{:href => "/feature/#{feature.name}"}= feature.name Clearly this is not a complete web page. I am using a layout to provide the basic html page structure. This view renders an <li> for each feature, with a link to /feature/#{feature.name}. Here is what the page looks like: When the user clicks on one of the links I want to display the contents of that feature file. The required handler is: get '/feature/:feature' do @feature_name = params[:feature] feature_service = Finding::FeatureService.new(Finding::FeatureFileFinder.new, Finding::FeatureReader.new) # TODO replace with feature_service.feature(name) @feature = feature_service.features(settings.feature_path, settings.feature_extensions).find do |feature| feature.name == @feature_name end haml :feature end and the view: %h2= @feature.name %pre{:class => "brush: gherkin"}= @feature.description %div= partial :_back_to_index %script{:type => "text/javascript", :src => "/scripts/shCore.js"} %script{:type => "text/javascript", :src => "/scripts/shBrushGherkin.js"} %script{:type => "text/javascript" } SyntaxHighlighter.all(); Now when I click on the Search link I get a nicely formatted feature file: If you would like see the full source it is available on bitbucket.

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• Did you miss the OFM Summer Camps III? Get access to the b2b & adapters and SOA Governance training material

  - by JuergenKress

  We posted the SOA Governance and b2b & adapters training material at our SOA Community Workspace (SOA Community membership required). We have no plans to post the ACM and Advanced SOA training material. Special thanks to all the trainers who delivered superb workshops. Thanks to all the partners who invested time and utilization plus travel expenses to attend the camp. Special thanks to all the international partners who traveled a long way to sunny Lisbon – including our Mexican friends! The Summer Camp feedback was excellent, everybody answered the question if he would attend a future OFM Summer Camp with YES and the overall feedback is 4,79 out of 5 (best)! For most of the trainings we had a waiting list with additional partners who want to attend. Make sure you use your middleware skills to deliver successful projects. It would be great if you can support your colegues and the community by sharing the lessons learned and best practice. Thanks for great feedback at twitter please continue to send your pictures to our twitter feed @soacommunity #OFMsummercamps or post them at our Facebook page. Here is a selection of some tweets: Walter Montantes ?México presence en #OFMSummerCamp Lisboa 2013 cc @soacommunity @AdquemTI pic.twitter.com/9NEFwsWCAq SOA Community ?thanks for attending the #OFMSummercamp - save trip home ;-) Want to attend a future training register http://www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa #soacommunity C2B2 Consulting ?Last day at the #OFMSummercamp Oracle SOA Suite Training in Portugal @soacommunity pic.twitter.com/6LZavVlvHc Patrick Sinke ?a FollowFriday for @Oracle_B2B because 19 followers is not enough #FF #OFMSummercamp Patrick Sinke ?Yogesh Sontakke is talking about #SOA #Governance. #OFMSummercamp Nuno Cancelo ?Oracle SOA Governance - Quick Overview #OFMSummerCamp Nuno Cancelo ?Last coffee break. #OFMSummercamp pic.twitter.com/xZi9M5vAWz Scott Haaland Last day of #OFMSummercamp. It's been a great productive week..great students eager to learn. @Oracle_B2B @soacommunity . Patrick Sinke ?singletons are used to retain specific fetching order of files and records in multithread/multi-instance environment. #OFMSummercamp #SOA Patrick Sinke ?SOA's File Adapter is extremely versatile: It writes, reads and converts almost any type of file. #OFMSummercamp pic.twitter.com/XjtJF9Y5SH Patrick Sinke ?Now deep-diving into Java EE Connector Architecture (JCA). Got to do some catching up at home on this subject. #OFMSummercamp #SOA Patrick Sinke ?Today we start with security and OPSS at #OFMSummercamp Advanced #SOA training. Then some #OSB. #OFM #Oracle #whitehorses Remco Cats ?Starting the last day on #OFMSummercamp building ADF Mobile applications with BPM Nuno Cancelo ?While attending #OFMSummerCamp i notice even more the importance of designing software. Any tips in how to become an software architect? Patrick Sinke ?Extensive information on Faullt handling and policies now in Advanced #SOA track. #OFMSummercamp #oraclesoa #middleware #whitehorses C2B2 Consulting ?Geoffroy de Lamalle speaking at the #OFMSummercamp @soacommunity pic.twitter.com/m4oOyzYB2q Patrick Sinke ?Oracle Document editor is a huge tool (6GB), but contains every version and subset of EDI, HL7, etc definitions. Impressive. #OFMSummercamp Patrick Sinke ?Oracle #B2B 11g presentation on #OFMSummercamp by Scott. Unfortunately only 2 hours in SOA advanced class. Very interesting. SOA Community Bon dia #OFMSummercamp - if you are here in sunny Lisbon ;-) you can checkin at http://foursquare.com/ #soacommunity pic.twitter.com/PnmudJgJTZ Nuno Cancelo ?Beautiful day! #OFMSummercamp pic.twitter.com/nwByRM5YE1 Nuno Cancelo ?Relaxing after lunch :-) #OFMSummercamp pic.twitter.com/hOJzebCM5p SOA Community Posted pictures from OFM Summer Camp III at our facebook page - share yours! https://www.facebook.com/soacommunity #OFMSummerCamp #soacommunity Nuno Cancelo ?Coffee break: day3 #OFMSummercamp pic.twitter.com/97n1sAGhx4 Patrick Sinke #OFMSummercamp day 3; SOA Infrastructure. pic.twitter.com/ziivyw3L6q SOA Community ?@soacommunity 28 Aug Bon dia day 3 at #OFMSummercamp in Lisboa. Nial presenting ACM roadmap pic.twitter.com/iN3gTCHSbA SOA Community ?Hands-on time at the b2b & adapters training part of the #OFMSummercamp #soacommunity pic.twitter.com/9BzI7igrX8 SOA Community ?Laptop replacement at #OFMSummercamp - big thanks to Oracle Portugal for the fast help! 10 seconds to cut the cable pic.twitter.com/nwd2Px73pa SOA Community ?Hard work long training until 18.00 now enjoy the beach #ofmsummercamp #soacommunity pic.twitter.com/StogfxJNFH Walter Montantes? Primer día #OFMSummercamp pic.twitter.com/cTNDpzg5pL Miguel Delgadillo ?@walex86 Advanced SOA training by Geoffroy at #OFMSummercamp - full room hard working class pic.twitter.com/2SDz9FVhkh” si le sabes? SOA Community ?Welcome to the #OFMSummercamp in sunny Lisbon ;-) Send us your pictures of the training and city @soacommunity pic.twitter.com/i2ErZaaFbb SOA Community ?Advanced SOA training by Geoffroy at #OFMSummercamp - full room hard working class pic.twitter.com/uKjv0tV2bO Nuno Cancelo #OFMSummercamp afternoon break:) pic.twitter.com/pUaBvt2NIj Impressions of the event are posted at our facebook page. If you missed Lisbon, make sure you attend one of our Additional Middleware Trainings in Europe: We currently run 3 different training roadshows for Business Process Management & ADF & WebLogic across Europe make sure you sing-up for them: ADF & ADF Mobile or Business Process Management Suite or WebLogic Suite. SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Wiki Mix Forum Technorati Tags: b2b,training,education,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• Running Windows Phone Developers Tools CTP under VMWare Player - Yes you can! - But do you want to?

  - by Liam Westley

  This blog is the result of a quick investigation of running the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP under VMWare Player.  In the release notes for Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP it mentions that it is not supported under VirtualPC or Hyper-V.  Some developers have policies where ‘no non-production code’ can be installed on their development workstation and so the only way they can use a CTP like this is in a virtual machine. The dilemma here is that the emulator for Windows Phone itself is a virtual machine and running a virtual machine within another virtual machine is normally frowned upon.  Even worse, previous Windows Mobile emulators detected they were in a virtual machine and refused to run.  Why VMWare? I selected VMWare as a possible solution as it is possible to run VMWare ESXi under VMWare Workstation by manually setting configuration options in the VMX configuration file so that it does not detect the presence of a virtual environment. I actually found that I could use VMWare Player (the free version, that can now create VM images) and that there was no need for any editing of the configuration file (I tried various switches, none of which made any difference to performance). So you can run the CTP under VMWare Player, that’s the good news. The bad news is that it is incredibly slow, bordering on unusable.  However, if it’s the only way you can use the CTP, at least this is an option. VMWare Player configuration I used the latest VMWare Player, 3.0, running under Windows x64 on my HP 6910p laptop with an Intel T7500 Dual Core CPU running at 2.2GHz, 4Gb of memory and using a separate drive for the virtual machines. I created a machine in VMWare Player with a single CPU, 1536 Mb memory and installed Windows 7 x64 from an ISO image.  I then performed a Windows Update, installed VMWare Tools, and finally the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP After a few warnings about performance, I configured Windows 7 to run with Windows 7 Basic theme rather than use Aero (which is available under VMWare Player as it has a WDDM driver). Timings As a test I first launched Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone, and created a default Windows Phone Application project.  I then clicked the run button, which starts the emulator and then loads the default application onto the emulator. For the second test I left the emulator running, stopped the default application, added a single button to change the page title and redeployed to the already running emulator by clicking the run button.   Test 1 (1st run) Test 2 (emulator already running)   VMWare Player 10 minutes  1 minute   Windows x64 native 1 minute  < 10 seconds   Conclusion You can run the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP under VMWare Player, but it’s really, really slow and you would have to have very good reasons to try this approach. If you need to keep a development system free of non production code, and the two systems aren’t required to run simultaneously, then I’d consider a boot from VHD option.  Then you can completely isolate the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP and development environment into a single VHD separate from your main development system.

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• Big Data – Buzz Words: What is NoSQL – Day 5 of 21

  - by Pinal Dave

  In yesterday’s blog post we explored the basic architecture of Big Data . In this article we will take a quick look at one of the four most important buzz words which goes around Big Data – NoSQL. What is NoSQL? NoSQL stands for Not Relational SQL or Not Only SQL. Lots of people think that NoSQL means there is No SQL, which is not true – they both sound same but the meaning is totally different. NoSQL does use SQL but it uses more than SQL to achieve its goal. As per Wikipedia’s NoSQL Database Definition – “A NoSQL database provides a mechanism for storage and retrieval of data that uses looser consistency models than traditional relational databases.“ Why use NoSQL? A traditional relation database usually deals with predictable structured data. Whereas as the world has moved forward with unstructured data we often see the limitations of the traditional relational database in dealing with them. For example, nowadays we have data in format of SMS, wave files, photos and video format. It is a bit difficult to manage them by using a traditional relational database. I often see people using BLOB filed to store such a data. BLOB can store the data but when we have to retrieve them or even process them the same BLOB is extremely slow in processing the unstructured data. A NoSQL database is the type of database that can handle unstructured, unorganized and unpredictable data that our business needs it. Along with the support to unstructured data, the other advantage of NoSQL Database is high performance and high availability. Eventual Consistency Additionally to note that NoSQL Database may not provided 100% ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) compliance.  Though, NoSQL Database does not support ACID they provide eventual consistency. That means over the long period of time all updates can be expected to propagate eventually through the system and data will be consistent. Taxonomy Taxonomy is the practice of classification of things or concepts and the principles. The NoSQL taxonomy supports column store, document store, key-value stores, and graph databases. We will discuss the taxonomy in detail in later blog posts. Here are few of the examples of the each of the No SQL Category. Column: Hbase, Cassandra, Accumulo Document: MongoDB, Couchbase, Raven Key-value : Dynamo, Riak, Azure, Redis, Cache, GT.m Graph: Neo4J, Allegro, Virtuoso, Bigdata As of now there are over 150 NoSQL Database and you can read everything about them in this single link. Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss Buzz Word – Hadoop. 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

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• SQL Developer Data Modeler: On Notes, Comments, and Comments in RDBMS

  - by thatjeffsmith

  Ah the beautiful data model. They say a picture is worth a 1,000 words. And then we have our diagrams, how many words are they worth? Our friends from the Human Relations sample schema So our models describe how the data ‘works’ – whether that be at a logical-business level, or a technical-physical level. Developers like to say that their code is self-documenting. These would be very lazy or very bad (or both) developers. Models are the same way, you should document your models with comments and notes! I have 3 basic options: Comments Comments in RDBMS Notes So what’s the difference? Comments You’re describing the entity/table or attribute/column. This information will NOT be published in the database. It will only be available to the model, and hence, folks with access to the model. Table Comments (in the design only!) Comments in RDBMS You’re doing the same thing as above, but your words will be stored IN the data dictionary of the database. Oracle allows you to store comments on the table and column definitions. So your awesome documentation is going to be viewable to anyone with access to the database. RDBMS is an acronym for Relational Database Management System – of which Oracle is one of the first commercial examples If the DDL is produced and ran against a database, these comments WILL be stored in the data dictionary. Notes A place for you to add notes, maybe from a design meeting. Or maybe you’re using this as a to-do or requirements list. Basically it’s for anything that doesn’t literally describe the object at hand – that’s what the comments are for. I totally made these up. Now these are free text fields and you can put whatever you want here. Just make sure you put stuff here that’s worth reading. And it will live on…forever.

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• A Graduate&rsquo;s Journey at Oracle &ndash; Bhaskar Ghosh From Oracle India

  - by david.talamelli

  I am Bhaskar Ghosh, and I work as an Applications Engineer with Oracle. Well, it was three years ago when my journey with one of the largest software companies started. It was a fine day and a decisive moment, when I was placed in Oracle as a campus recruit from College of Engineering Guindy, Anna University, Chennai! I always thought of looking back, the time that helped me learn beyond my boundaries, think broader and ahead, and grow – technically, professionally and personally. Hmmn! Let me recall the eventful moments once again. My first day as an intern at Oracle started in late 2007. I met one of the Oracle Managers at the Oracle Campus in Hyderabad and on the same day I also met another Oracle employee who was to later to become my first manager. I was charged and thrilled with the environment and the wonderful people around me! I was joined by two other interns, who also had a Masters in Computer Applications. We formed a very friendly group with all the interns and the new hires, and shared our excitement and learning. Myself and one of the other Graduates started working on a very interesting project on Semantic technology. We finally had our names added as co-developers for this very project. This phase of five months was the time and we learnt tremendously and worked very hard, partly because we had to travel back and forth to our colleges to submit reports and present for the Masters in Computer Applications final year project reviews. After completing my MCA, I joined as a full-time employee in 2008. During the next year, we worked on interesting and bleeding edge technologies - OWL, RDF, SPARQL, Visualization, J2EE, Social Web features, Semantic Web technologies, Web Services and many more! We developed cool, rich internet and desktop applications. Little did I know at that time, that this learning would help me tremendously for my the next project in Oracle. The following year saw me being assigned a role in a different project that my other team members were working on for the last two years. It took me two months to understand and get into a flow with this new task. I was fortunate that this phase helped me enhance my inter-personal and communication skills, as much as it helped me grow professionally with better ability to tackle multiple priorities and switch between tasks based on the team’s requirements. I was made the POC for all communications with our team and other product teams. I personally feel that this time enhanced me tremendously in technologies like Oracle Forms, J2EE, and Java and Web Services. The last six months, saw myself becoming an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineer member, and continuing my higher education International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad. Oracle supports its employees becoming members of professional bodies, and higher studies are supported by management, I think it is tremendously helpful in the professional and technical growth of the employees. Last three months, I have been working on great and useful enhancements to our product. Ah beautiful! All these years, there have been other moments and events of fun that are too worth mentioning. Clubs and groups at Oracle such as Employee Club, Oracle Volunteers, Football Club, etc. have always kept on organizing numerous events and competitions, full of fun and entertainment. I really enjoyed participating, even if it was small, in the intra-Oracle football tourney, Oracle Volunteer Days, OraFora, OraOvations, and a few more. Those ‘Seasons of Sharing’, those ‘Blood Donation camps’, those ‘Diwali and Christmas gifts and events’, those ‘fun events at the annual function called OraOvations’, those ‘books and cycle stalls’, and those so many other things… It only fills my mind with pleasure. The last three years have been very eventful:they have been full of learning and growth, and under the very able and encouraging guidance of my manager. I have got the opportunity to know about and/or interact with many wonderful personalities, and learn from them, here at Oracle. The environment, the people, and the fellow developers have been so friendly, and always ever ready to help, when we were in doubt.. I really love the big office space, and the flexible timings, and the caring people around. I look forward to a beautiful, learning and motivating journey with Oracle.

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• Using MAC Authentication for simple Web API’s consumption

  - by cibrax

  For simple scenarios of Web API consumption where identity delegation is not required, traditional http authentication schemas such as basic, certificates or digest are the most used nowadays. All these schemas rely on sending the caller credentials or some representation of it in every request message as part of the Authorization header, so they are prone to suffer phishing attacks if they are not correctly secured at transport level with https. In addition, most client applications typically authenticate two different things, the caller application and the user consuming the API on behalf of that application. For most cases, the schema is simplified by using a single set of username and password for authenticating both, making necessary to store those credentials temporally somewhere in memory. The true is that you can use two different identities, one for the user running the application, which you might authenticate just once during the first call when the application is initialized, and another identity for the application itself that you use on every call. Some cloud vendors like Windows Azure or Amazon Web Services have adopted an schema to authenticate the caller application based on a Message Authentication Code (MAC) generated with a symmetric algorithm using a key known by the two parties, the caller and the Web API. The caller must include a MAC as part of the Authorization header created from different pieces of information in the request message such as the address, the host, and some other headers. The Web API can authenticate the caller by using the key associated to it and validating the attached MAC in the request message. In that way, no credentials are sent as part of the request message, so there is no way an attacker to intercept the message and get access to those credentials. Anyways, this schema also suffers from some deficiencies that can generate attacks. For example, brute force can be still used to infer the key used for generating the MAC, and impersonate the original caller. This can be mitigated by renewing keys in a relative short period of time. This schema as any other can be complemented with transport security. Eran Rammer, one of the brains behind OAuth, has recently published an specification of a protocol based on MAC for Http authentication called Hawk. The initial version of the spec is available here. A curious fact is that the specification per se does not exist, and the specification itself is the code that Eran initially wrote using node.js. In that implementation, you can associate a key to an user, so once the MAC has been verified on the Web API, the user can be inferred from that key. Also a timestamp is used to avoid replay attacks. As a pet project, I decided to port that code to .NET using ASP.NET Web API, which is available also in github under https://github.com/pcibraro/hawknet Enjoy!.

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• Technology Selection for a dynamic product

  - by Kuntal Shah

  We are building a product for Procurement Domain in JAVA. Following are the main technical requirements. Platform Independent Database Independent Browser Independent In functional requirements the product is very dynamic in nature. The main reason being the procurement process around the world is different from client to client. Briefly we need to have a dynamic workflow engine and a dynamic template engine. The workflow engine by which we can define any kind of workflows and the template engine allows us to define any kind of data structures and based on definition it can get the user input through workflow. We have been developing this product for almost 2 years. It has been a long time till we can get down with the dynamics of requirements. Till now we have developed a basic workflow and template engine and which is in use at one of the client. We have been using following technologies. GWT-Ext (Front End Framework) Hibernate (Database Layer) In between we have faced some issues with GWT-Ext (mainly browser compatibility) and database optimization due to sub classing in hibernate. For resolving GWT-Ext issue, which a dying community so we decided to move to SmartGWT. In SmartGWT we faced issues related to loading and now we are able to finalize that GWT 2.3 will be the way to go as the library is rich and performance is upto the mark. We are able to almost finalize GWT-Spring based front and middle layer. In hibernate, we found main issues with sub-classing due to that it was throwing astronomical queries and sometimes it would stop firing any queries for 5-10 seconds or may be around 30 seconds and then resume again. Few days back I came to one article related to ORM. I am a traditional .Net SQL developer and I have always worked with relational database. Reading through this article, I also found it relating to the issues I face. I am still not completely convinced of using hibernate and this article just supported my opinion. Following are the questions for which I am looking for an answer. Should we be going with Hibernate in case of dynamic database requirements and the load of the data will be heavy in future? How can we partition the data, how we can efficiently join the data, how we can optimize the queries? If the answer is no then how do we achieve database independence? Is our choice related to GWT and Spring proper or do we need to change that too? Should we use any other key value pair database if the data is dynamic in nature and it is very difficult to make it relational?

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• C++ Little Wonders: The C++11 auto keyword redux

  - by James Michael Hare

  I’ve decided to create a sub-series of my Little Wonders posts to focus on C++.  Just like their C# counterparts, these posts will focus on those features of the C++ language that can help improve code by making it easier to write and maintain.  The index of the C# Little Wonders can be found here. This has been a busy week with a rollout of some new website features here at my work, so I don’t have a big post for this week.  But I wanted to write something up, and since lately I’ve been renewing my C++ skills in a separate project, it seemed like a good opportunity to start a C++ Little Wonders series.  Most of my development work still tends to focus on C#, but it was great to get back into the saddle and renew my C++ knowledge.  Today I’m going to focus on a new feature in C++11 (formerly known as C++0x, which is a major move forward in the C++ language standard).  While this small keyword can seem so trivial, I feel it is a big step forward in improving readability in C++ programs. The auto keyword If you’ve worked on C++ for a long time, you probably have some passing familiarity with the old auto keyword as one of those rarely used C++ keywords that was almost never used because it was the default. That is, in the code below (before C++11): 1: int foo() 2: { 3: // automatic variables (allocated and deallocated on stack) 4: int x; 5: auto int y; 6:  7: // static variables (retain their value across calls) 8: static int z; 9:  10: return 0; 11: } The variable x is assumed to be auto because that is the default, thus it is unnecessary to specify it explicitly as in the declaration of y below that.  Basically, an auto variable is one that is allocated and de-allocated on the stack automatically.  Contrast this to static variables, that are allocated statically and exist across the lifetime of the program. Because auto was so rarely (if ever) used since it is the norm, they decided to remove it for this purpose and give it new meaning in C++11.  The new meaning of auto: implicit typing Now, if your compiler supports C++ 11 (or at least a good subset of C++11 or 0x) you can take advantage of type inference in C++.  For those of you from the C# world, this means that the auto keyword in C++ now behaves a lot like the var keyword in C#! For example, many of us have had to declare those massive type declarations for an iterator before.  Let’s say we have a std::map of std::string to int which will map names to ages: 1: std::map<std::string, int> myMap; And then let’s say we want to find the age of a given person: 1: // Egad that's a long type... 2: std::map<std::string, int>::const_iterator pos = myMap.find(targetName); Notice that big ugly type definition to declare variable pos?  Sure, we could shorten this by creating a typedef of our specific map type if we wanted, but now with the auto keyword there’s no need: 1: // much shorter! 2: auto pos = myMap.find(targetName); The auto now tells the compiler to determine what type pos should be based on what it’s being assigned to.  This is not dynamic typing, it still determines the type as if it were explicitly declared and once declared that type cannot be changed.  That is, this is invalid: 1: // x is type int 2: auto x = 42; 3:  4: // can't assign string to int 5: x = "Hello"; Once the compiler determines x is type int it is exactly as if we typed int x = 42; instead, so don’t' confuse it with dynamic typing, it’s still very type-safe. An interesting feature of the auto keyword is that you can modify the inferred type: 1: // declare method that returns int* 2: int* GetPointer(); 3:  4: // p1 is int*, auto inferred type is int 5: auto *p1 = GetPointer(); 6:  7: // ps is int*, auto inferred type is int* 8: auto p2 = GetPointer(); Notice in both of these cases, p1 and p2 are determined to be int* but in each case the inferred type was different.  because we declared p1 as auto *p1 and GetPointer() returns int*, it inferred the type int was needed to complete the declaration.  In the second case, however, we declared p2 as auto p2 which means the inferred type was int*.  Ultimately, this make p1 and p2 the same type, but which type is inferred makes a difference, if you are chaining multiple inferred declarations together.  In these cases, the inferred type of each must match the first: 1: // Type inferred is int 2: // p1 is int* 3: // p2 is int 4: // p3 is int& 5: auto *p1 = GetPointer(), p2 = 42, &p3 = p2; Note that this works because the inferred type was int, if the inferred type was int* instead: 1: // syntax error, p1 was inferred to be int* so p2 and p3 don't make sense 2: auto p1 = GetPointer(), p2 = 42, &p3 = p2; You could also use const or static to modify the inferred type: 1: // inferred type is an int, theAnswer is a const int 2: const auto theAnswer = 42; 3:  4: // inferred type is double, Pi is a static double 5: static auto Pi = 3.1415927; Thus in the examples above it inferred the types int and double respectively, which were then modified to const and static. Summary The auto keyword has gotten new life in C++11 to allow you to infer the type of a variable from it’s initialization.  This simple little keyword can be used to cut down large declarations for complex types into a much more readable form, where appropriate.   Technorati Tags: C++, C++11, Little Wonders, auto

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• Correct Display configuration. Errors while trying to arrange displays

  - by David Russell Parrish Bojrquez

  I am trying to set up my tv with my laptop trough a VGA cable. The display application in Ubuntu throws a lot of errors to me and I have given up in trying to do it myself. I try to apply the 1920 1080 display. The selected configuration for displays could not be applied Requested size (3200, 1080) exceeds 3D hardware limit (2048, 2048). You must either rearrange the displays so that they fit within a (2048, 2048) square or select the Ubuntu 2D session at login. And Also this: Failed to apply configuration: %s GDBus.Error:org.gtk.GDBus.UnmappedGError.Quark._gnome_2drr_2derror_2dquark.Code3: Requested size (3200, 1080) exceeds 3D hardware limit (2048, 2048). You must either rearrange the displays so that they fit within a (2048, 2048) square or select the Ubuntu 2D session at login. Please Help. @Leozitop No I don't see anything when connected to 1920 1080 because the setup fails before actually applying. Yes there are other resolutions which do work. I believe the problem has something to do with the rotation it is set up. My Ubuntu Display application has only clockwise and counterclockwise options for the TV display. I really don't know why this is happening. Basic procedure: Plug in cable, did not get the resolution I wanted. Changed settings, applied them. Re-peat until desired display is shown. I'm not a computer illiterate, really it baffles me that this is happening. Output of xrandr: david@LapUbuntu:~$ xrandr Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1880 x 800, maximum 4096 x 4096 LVDS1 connected 1280x800+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 331mm x 207mm 1280x800 60.0*+ 1024x768 60.0 800x600 60.3 56.2 640x480 59.9 VGA1 connected 600x800+1280+0 left (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 1600mm x 900mm 1920x1080 60.0 + 1280x1024 60.0 1360x768 60.0 1280x720 60.0 1024x768 60.0 800x600 60.3* 640x480 60.0 TV1 unknown connection (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 848x480 59.9 + 640x480 59.9 + 1024x768 59.9 800x600 59.9 Note that VGA says left and indeed it is, but no other option was available in the display. Also, note the TV1 unknown connection which I have no idea what it is. Note, also, that this has nothing to do with the display since W7 on the computer works fine and since while boot up, and also, before starting session in ubuntu the rotation is normal. I'll also mention that I HAVE re-installed Ubuntu since I had posted this question from a Live CD of 12.04 LTS. And that before the posting of the question also using 12.04 before another backup that I had to do, the VGA setup was fine without any problems.

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• Autoscaling in a modern world&hellip;. Part 3

  - by Steve Loethen

  The Wasabi Hands on Labs give you a good look at the basic mechanics, but I don’t find the setup too practical.  Using a local console application to host the Autoscaler and rules files is probably the (IMHO) least likely architecture.  Far more common would be hosting in a service on premise (if you want to have the Autoscaler local) or most likely, host it in a Azure role of it’s own.  I chose to go the Azure route. First step was to get the rules.xml and the services.xml files into the cloud.  I tend to be a “one step at a time” sort of guy, so running the console application with the rules sitting in a Azure hosted set of blobs seemed to be the logical first step.  Here are the steps: 1) Create a container in the storage account you wish to use.  Name does not matter, you will get a chance to set the container name (as well as the file names) in the app.config 2) Copy the two files from where you created them to your  container.  I used the same files I had locally.  I made the container public to eliminate security issues, but in the final application, a bit of security needs to be applied (one problem at a time).  The content type was set to text/xml.  I found one reference claiming the importance of this step, and it makes sense. 3) Adjust the app.config to set the location of the files.  This will let you set all the storage account and key information needed to reach into the cloud form your console application.  The sections of your app.config will look like this: <rulesStores> <add name="Blob Rules Store" type="Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.WindowsAzure.Autoscaling.Rules.Configuration.BlobXmlFileRulesStore, Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.WindowsAzure.Autoscaling, Version=5.0.1118.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" blobContainerName="[ContainerName]" blobName="rules.xml" storageAccount="DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=[StorageAccount];AccountKey=[AccountKey]" monitoringRate="00:00:30" certificateThumbprint="" certificateStoreLocation="LocalMachine" checkCertificateValidity="false" /> </rulesStores> <serviceInformationStores> <add name="Blob Service Information Store" type="Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.WindowsAzure.Autoscaling.ServiceModel.Configuration.BlobXmlFileServiceInformationStore, Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.WindowsAzure.Autoscaling, Version=5.0.1118.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" blobContainerName="[ContainerName]" blobName="services.xml" storageAccount="DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=[StorageAccount];AccountKey=[AccountKey]" monitoringRate="00:00:30" certificateThumbprint="" certificateStoreLocation="LocalMachine" checkCertificateValidity="false" /> </serviceInformationStores> Once I had the files up in the sky, I renamed the local copies to just to make my self feel better about the application using the correct set of rules and services.  Deploy the web role to the cloud.  Once it is up and running, start the console application.  You should find the application scales up and down in response to the buttons on the web site.  Tune in next time for moving the hosting of the Autoscaler to a worker role, discussions on getting the logging information into diagnostics into storage, and a set of discussions about certs and how they play a role.

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• A Quick Primer on SharePoint Customization

  - by PeterBrunone

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} This one goes out to all the people who have been asked to change the way a SharePoint site looks.  Management wants to know how long it will take, and you can whip that out by tomorrow, right?  If you don't have time to prepare a treatise on what's involved, or if you just want to lend some extra weight to your case by quoting a blogger who was an MVP for seven years, then dive right in; this post is for you. There are three main components of SharePoint visual customization:   1)       Theme – A theme encompasses all the standardized text formatting and coloring (borders, fonts, etc), including the background images of various sections. All told, there could be around 50 images involved, and a few hundred CSS (style) classes.  Installing a theme once it’s been created is no great feat.  Given the number of pieces, of course, creating a new theme could take anywhere from a day to a week… once decisions have been made about the desired appearance. 2)      Master Page – A master page provides the framework for page layout.  This includes all the top and side menus, where content shows up, et cetera.  Master pages have been around for a long time in ASP.NET (Microsoft’s web development platform), and they do require some .NET programming knowledge.  Beyond that, in SharePoint, there are a few dozen controls which the system expects find on a given page.  They’re not all used at once, but if they’re not there when they’re needed, chaos ensues.  Estimating a custom master page is difficult, as it depends on the level of customization.  I’ve been on projects where I was brought in simply to fix some problems and add a few finishing touches, and it took 2-3 weeks.  Master page customization requires a large amount of testing time to make sure that the HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and control placement all work well together. 3)      Individual page layout – Each page (ideally) uses a master page for its template, but within the content areas defined by the master page, web parts can be added, removed, and configured from within the browser.  The wireframe that Brent provided could most likely be completed simply by manipulating the content on the home page in this fashion, and we had allowed about a day of effort for the task.  If needed, further functionality can be provided by an experienced ASP.NET developer; custom forms are a common example.  This of course is a bit more in-depth than simple content manipulation and could take several days per page (or more; there’s really no way to quantify this without a set of requirements).   That’s basically it.  To recap:  Fonts and coloring are done with themes, and can take anywhere from a day to a week to create (not counting creative time); required technical skills include HTML, CSS, and image manipulation.  Templated layout is done with master pages, and generally requires a developer familiar with both ASP.NET and SharePoint in particular; it can have far-reaching consequences depending on the complexity of the changes, and could add weeks or months to a project.  Page layout can be as simple as content manipulation in the web browser, taking a few hours per page, or it can involve more detail, like custom forms, and can require programming expertise and significantly more development time.

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• Func Delegate in C#

  - by Jalpesh P. Vadgama

  We already know about delegates in C# and I have previously posted about basics of delegates in C#. Following are posts about basic of delegates I have written. Delegates in C# Multicast Delegates in C# In this post we are going to learn about Func Delegates in C#. As per MSDN following is a definition. “Encapsulates a method that has one parameter and returns a value of the type specified by the TResult parameter.” Func can handle multiple arguments. The Func delegates is parameterized type. It takes any valid C# type as parameter and you have can multiple parameters and also you have specify the return type as last parameters. Followings are some examples of parameters. Func<int T,out TResult> Func<int T,int T, out Tresult> Now let’s take a string concatenation example for that. I am going to create two func delegate which will going to concate two strings and three string. Following is a code for that. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; namespace FuncExample { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { Func<string, string, string> concatTwo = (x, y) => string.Format("{0} {1}",x,y); Func<string, string, string, string> concatThree = (x, y, z) => string.Format("{0} {1} {2}", x, y,z); Console.WriteLine(concatTwo("Hello", "Jalpesh")); Console.WriteLine(concatThree("Hello","Jalpesh","Vadgama")); Console.ReadLine(); } } } As you can see in above example, I have create two delegates ‘concatTwo’ and ‘concatThree. The first concat two strings and another concat three strings. If you see the func statements the last parameter is for the out as here its output string so I have written string as last parameter in both statements. Now it’s time to run the example and as expected following is output. That’s it. Hope you like it. Stay tuned for more updates.

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• Fair Comments

  - by Tony Davis

  To what extent is good code self-documenting? In one of the most entertaining sessions I saw at the recent PASS summit, Jeremiah Peschka (blog | twitter) got a laugh out of a sleepy post-lunch audience with the following remark: "Some developers say good code is self-documenting; I say, get off my team" I silently applauded the sentiment. It's not that all comments are useful, but that I mistrust the basic premise that "my code is so clearly written, it doesn't need any comments". I've read many pieces describing the road to self-documenting code, and my problem with most of them is that they feed the myth that comments in code are a sign of weakness. They aren't; in fact, used correctly I'd say they are essential. Regardless of how far intelligent naming can get you in describing what the code does, or how well any accompanying unit tests can explain to your fellow developers why it works that way, it's no excuse not to document fully the public interfaces to your code. Maybe I just mixed with the wrong crowd while learning my favorite language, but when I open a stored procedure I lose the will even to read it unless I see a big Phil Factor- or Jeff Moden-style header summarizing in plain English what the code does, how it fits in to the broader application, and a usage example. This public interface describes the high-level process and should explain the role of the code, clearly, for fellow developers, language non-experts, and even any non-technical stake holders in the project. When you step into the body of the code, the low-level details, then I agree that the rules are somewhat different; especially when code is subject to frequent refactoring that can quickly render comments redundant or misleading. At their worst, here, inline comments are sticking plaster to cover up the scars caused by poor naming conventions, failure in clarity when mapping a complex domain into code, or just by not entirely understanding the problem (/ this is the clever part). If you design and refactor your code carefully so that it is as simple as possible, your functions do one thing only, you avoid having two completely different algorithms in the same piece of code, and your functions, classes and variables are intelligently named, then, yes, the need for inline comments should be minimal. And yet, even given this, I'd still argue that many languages (T-SQL certainly being one) just don't lend themselves to readability when performing even moderately-complex tasks. If the algorithm is complex, I still like to see the occasional helpful comment. Please, therefore, be as liberal as you see fit in the detail of the comments you apply to this editorial, for like code it is bound to increase its' clarity and usefulness. Cheers, Tony.

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• Watching Green Day and discovering Sitecore, priceless.

  - by jonel

  I’m feeling inspired and I’d like to share a technique we’ve implemented in Sitecore to address a URL mapping from our legacy site that we wanted to carry over to the new beautiful Littelfuse.com. The challenge is to carry over all of our series URLs that have been published in our datasheets, we currently have a lot of series and having to create a manual mapping for those could be really tedious. It has the format of http://www.littelfuse.com/series/series-name.html, for instance, http://www.littelfuse.com/series/flnr.html. It would have been easier if we have our information architecture defined like this but that would have been too easy. I took a solution that is 2-fold. First, I need to create a URL rewrite rule using the IIS URL Rewrite Module 2.0. Secondly, we need to implement a handler that will take care of the actual lookup of the actual series. It will be amazing after we’ve gone over the details. Let’s start with the URL rewrite. Create a new blank rule, you can name it with anything you wish. The key part here to talk about is the Pattern and the Action groups. The Pattern is nothing but regex. Basically, I’m telling it to match the regex I have defined. In the Action group, I am telling it what to do, in this case, rewrite to the redirect.aspx webform. In this implementation, I will be using Rewrite instead of redirect so the URL sticks in the browser. If you opt to use Redirect, then the URL bar will display the new URL our webform will redirect to. Let me explain one small thing, the (\w+) in my Pattern group’s regex, will actually translate to {R:1} in my Action’s group. This is where the magic begins. Now let’s see what our Redirect.aspx contains. Remember our {R:1} above which becomes the query string variable s? This are basic .Net code. The only thing that you will probably ask is the LFSearch class. It’s our own implementation of addressing finding items by using a field search, we supply the fieldname, the value of the field, the template name of the item we are after, and the value of true or false if we want to do an exact search, or not. If eureka, then redirect to that item’s Path (Url). If not, tell the user tough luck, here’s the 404 page as a consolation. Amazing, ain’t it?

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• Spotlight on Claims: Serving Customers Under Extreme Conditions

  - by [email protected]

  Oracle Insurance's director of marketing for EMEA, John Sinclair, recently attended the CII Spotlight on Claims event in London. Bad weather and its implications for the insurance industry have become very topical as the frequency and diversity of natural disasters - including rains, wind and snow - has surged across Europe this winter. On England's wettest day on record, the county of Cumbria was flooded with 12 inches of rain within 24 hours. Freezing temperatures wreaked havoc on European travel, causing high speed TVG trains to break down and stranding hundreds of passengers under the English Chanel in a tunnel all night long without heat or electricity. A storm named Xynthia thrashed France and surrounding countries with hurricane force, flooding ports and killing 51 people. After the Spring Equinox, insurers may have thought the worst had past. Then came along Eyjafjallajökull, spewing out vast quantities of volcanic ash in what is turning out to be one of most costly natural disasters in history. Such extreme events challenge insurance companies' ability to service their customers just when customers need their help most. When you add economic downturn and competitive pressures to the mix, insurers are further stretched and required to continually learn and innovate to meet high customer expectations with reduced budgets. These and other issues were hot topics of discussion at the recent "Spotlight on Claims" seminar in London, focused on how weather is affecting claims and the insurance industry. The event was organized by the CII (Chartered Insurance Institute), a group with 90,000 members. CII has been at the forefront in setting professional standards for the insurance industry for over a century. Insurers came to the conference to hear how they could better serve their customers under extreme weather conditions, learn from the experience of their peers, and hear about technological breakthroughs in climate modeling, geographic intelligence and IT. Customer case studies at the conference highlighted the importance of effective and constant communication in handling the overflow of catastrophe related claims. First and foremost is the need to rapidly establish initial communication with claimants to build their confidence in a positive outcome. Ongoing communication then needs to be continued throughout the claims cycle to mange expectations and maintain ownership of the process from start to finish. Strong internal communication to support frontline staff was also deemed critical to successful crisis management, as was communication with the broader insurance ecosystem to tap into extended resources and business intelligence. Advances in technology - such web based systems to access policies and enter first notice of loss in the field - as well as customer-focused self-service portals and multichannel alerts, are instrumental in improving customer satisfaction and helping insurers to deal with the claims surge, which often can reach four or more times normal workloads. Dynamic models of the global climate system can now be used to better understand weather-related risks, and as these models mature it is hoped that they will soon become more accurate in predicting the timing of catastrophic events. Geographic intelligence is also being used within a claims environment to better assess loss reserves and detect fraud. Despite these advances in dealing with catastrophes and predicting their occurrence, there will never be a substitute for qualified front line staff to deal with customers. In light of pressures to streamline efficiency, there was debate as to whether outsourcing was the solution, or whether it was better to build on the people you have. In the final analysis, nearly everybody agreed that in the future insurance companies would have to work better and smarter to keep on top. An appeal was also made for greater collaboration amongst industry participants in dealing with the extreme conditions and systematic stress brought on by natural disasters. It was pointed out that the public oftentimes judged the industry as a whole rather than the individual carriers when it comes to freakish events, and that all would benefit at such times from the pooling of limited resources and professional skills rather than competing in silos for competitive advantage - especially the end customer. One case study that stood out was on how The Motorists Insurance Group was able to power through one of the most devastating catastrophes in recent years - Hurricane Ike. The keys to Motorists' success were superior people, processes and technology. They did a lot of upfront planning and invested in their people, creating a healthy team environment that delivered "max service" even when they were experiencing the same level of devastation as the rest of the population. Processes were rapidly adapted to meet the challenge of the catastrophe and continually adapted to Ike's specific conditions as they evolved. Technology was fundamental to the execution of their strategy, enabling them anywhere access, on the fly reassigning of resources and rapid training to augment the work force. You can learn more about the Motorists experience by watching this video. John Sinclair is marketing director for Oracle Insurance in EMEA. He has more than 20 years of experience in insurance and financial services.

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• Design considerations on JSON schema for scalars with a consistent attachment property

  - by casperOne

  I'm trying to create a JSON schema for the results of doing statistical analysis based on disparate pieces of data. The current schema I have looks something like this: { // Basic key information. video : "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uwfjpfK0jo", start : "00:00:00", end : null, // For results of analysis, to be populated: // *** This is where it gets interesting *** analysis : { game : { value: "Super Street Fighter 4: Arcade Edition Ver. 2012", confidence: 0.9725 } teams : [ { player : { value : "Desk", confidence: 0.95, } characters : [ { value : "Hakan", confidence: 0.80 } ] } ] } } The issue is the tuples that are used to store a value and the confidence related to that value (i.e. { value : "some value", confidence : 0.85 }), populated after the results of the analysis. This leads to a creep of this tuple for every value. Take a fully-fleshed out value from the characters array: { name : { value : "Hakan", confidence: 0.80 } ultra : { value: 1, confidence: 0.90 } } As the structures that represent the values become more and more detailed (and more analysis is done on them to try and determine the confidence behind that analysis), the nesting of the tuples adds great deal of noise to the overall structure, considering that the final result (when verified) will be: { name : "Hakan", ultra : 1 } (And recall that this is just a nested value) In .NET (in which I'll be using to work with this data), I'd have a little helper like this: public class UnknownValue<T> { T Value { get; set; } double? Confidence { get; set; } } Which I'd then use like so: public class Character { public UnknownValue<Character> Name { get; set; } } While the same as the JSON representation in code, it doesn't have the same creep because I don't have to redefine the tuple every time and property accessors hide the appearance of creep. Of course, this is an apples-to-oranges comparison, the above is code while the JSON is data. Is there a more formalized/cleaner/best practice way of containing the creep of these tuples in JSON, or is the approach above an accepted approach for the type of data I'm trying to store (and I'm just perceiving it the wrong way)? Note, this is being represented in JSON because this will ultimately go in a document database (something like RavenDB or elasticsearch). I'm not concerned about being able to serialize into the object above, because I can always use data transfer objects to facilitate getting data into/out of my underlying data store.

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