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  • Oracle SOA Partner Community Forum Lisbon, Portugal - 21/Apr/10

    - by Claudia Costa
      We would like to invite you to attend our SOA Partner Community Forum that will be in held in Lisbon, April 21, 2010 The Oracle SOA Partner Community Forum is a wonderful opportunity to: Meet with Oracle SOA and BPM Product management Exchange thoughts and knowledge with SOA and BPM experts Learn from successful SOA implementation Network within the Oracle SOA Partner Community During this highly informative event you can learn about partner success stories, participate in an array of breakout sessions, exchange information with other partners and enjoy a vibrant panel discussion. Places are limited, so register today. Registration only takes a few minutes and it is free of charge. By registration you will confirm that you will attend to the event. Seminar is free. In the event that you cancel your registration after April 16th 2010 Oracle may request that you will pay late cancellation fee of € 150. Please visit our website for further information. Alternatively, if you require assistance or have any queries please contact Jürgen Kress. Agenda 10:00     Welcome & Introduction 10:15     SOA Cloud presentation 11:15     SOA Partner Sales Campaign 12:30     Lunch break 13:15     Partner Reference Case 14:15     BPMN 2.0 15:00     Cocktail reception   Become a member of the SOA Partner Community - free of charge! Please first login at http://partner.oracle.com and then visit: http://www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soaThe goal of the SOA Partner Community is to provide you with the latest information on Oracle's SOA and BPM offerings and to facilitate the exchange of experience around Oracle SOA between community members.   The SOA Partner Community keeps you informed about: ·         News & Events ·         Product Information ·         Education & Certification ·         Analyst Report ·         Marketing & Sales ·         Monthly SOA Newsletter ·         Monthly SOA Webcast ·         SOA Community Forum ------------------------------------------------   Location: Lagoas Park Hotel 2740-245, Porto Salvo, Oeiras  

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  • Using Lightbox with _Screen

    Although, I have to admit that I discovered Bernard Bout's ideas and concepts about implementing a lightbox in Visual FoxPro quite a while ago, there was no "spare" time in active projects that allowed me to have a closer look into his solution(s). Luckily, these days I received a demand to focus a little bit more on this. This article describes the steps about how to integrate and make use of Bernard's lightbox class in combination with _Screen in Visual FoxPro. The requirement in this project was to be able to visually lock the whole application (_Screen area) and guide the user to an information that should not be ignored easily. Depending on the importance any current user activity should be interrupted and focus put onto the notification. Getting the "meat", eh, source code Please check out Bernard's blog on Foxite directly in order to get the latest and greatest version. As time of writing this article I use version 6.0 as described in this blog entry: The Fastest Lightbox Ever The Lightbox class is sub-classed from the imgCanvas class from the GdiPlusX project on VFPx and therefore you need to have the source code of GdiPlusX as well, and integrate it into your development environment. The version I use is available here: Release GDIPlusX 1.20 As soon as you open the bbGdiLightbox class the first it, VFP might ask you to update the reference to the gdiplusx.vcx. As we have the sources, no problem and you have access to Bernard's code. The class itself is pretty easy to understand, some properties that you do not need to change and three methods: Setup(), ShowLightbox() and BeforeDraw() The challenge - _Screen or not? Reading Bernard's article about the fastest lightbox ever, he states the following: "The class will only work on a form. It will not support any other containers" Really? And what about _Screen? Isn't that a form class, too? Yes, of course it is but nonetheless trying to use _Screen directly will fail. Well, let's have look at the code to see why: WITH This .Left = 0 .Top = 0 .Height = ThisForm.Height .Width = ThisForm.Width .ZOrder(0) .Visible = .F.ENDWITH During the setup of the lightbox as well as while capturing the image as replacement for your forms and controls, the object reference Thisform is used. Which is a little bit restrictive to my opinion but let's continue. The second issue lies in the method ShowLightbox() and introduced by the call of .Bitmap.FromScreen(): Lparameters tlVisiblilty* tlVisiblilty - show or hide (T/F)* grab a screen dump with controlsIF tlVisiblilty Local loCaptureBmp As xfcBitmap Local lnTitleHeight, lnLeftBorder, lnTopBorder, lcImage, loImage lnTitleHeight = IIF(ThisForm.TitleBar = 1,Sysmetric(9),0) lnLeftBorder = IIF(ThisForm.BorderStyle < 2,0,Sysmetric(3)) lnTopBorder = IIF(ThisForm.BorderStyle < 2,0,Sysmetric(4)) With _Screen.System.Drawing loCaptureBmp = .Bitmap.FromScreen(ThisForm.HWnd,; lnLeftBorder,; lnTopBorder+lnTitleHeight,; ThisForm.Width ,; ThisForm.Height) ENDWITH * save it to a property This.capturebmp = loCaptureBmp ThisForm.SetAll("Visible",.F.) This.DraW() This.Visible = .T.ELSE ThisForm.SetAll("Visible",.T.) This.Visible = .F.ENDIF My first trials in using the class ended in an exception - GdiPlusError:OutOfMemory - thrown by the Bitmap object. Frankly speaking, this happened mainly because of my lack of knowledge about GdiPlusX. After reading some documentation, especially about the FromScreen() method I experimented a little bit. Capturing the visible area of _Screen actually was not the real problem but the dimensions I specified for the bitmap. The modifications - step by step First of all, it is to get rid of restrictive object references on Thisform and to change them into either This.Parent or more generic into This.oForm (even better: This.oControl). The Lightbox.Setup() method now sets the necessary object reference like so: *====================================================================* Initial setup* Default value: This.oControl = "This.Parent"* Alternative: This.oControl = "_Screen"*====================================================================With This .oControl = Evaluate(.oControl) If Vartype(.oControl) == T_OBJECT .Anchor = 0 .Left = 0 .Top = 0 .Width = .oControl.Width .Height = .oControl.Height .Anchor = 15 .ZOrder(0) .Visible = .F. EndIfEndwith Also, based on other developers' comments in Bernard articles on his lightbox concept and evolution I found the source code to handle the differences between a form and _Screen and goes into Lightbox.ShowLightbox() like this: *====================================================================* tlVisibility - show or hide (T/F)* grab a screen dump with controls*====================================================================Lparameters tlVisibility Local loControl m.loControl = This.oControl If m.tlVisibility Local loCaptureBmp As xfcBitmap Local lnTitleHeight, lnLeftBorder, lnTopBorder, lcImage, loImage lnTitleHeight = Iif(m.loControl.TitleBar = 1,Sysmetric(9),0) lnLeftBorder = Iif(m.loControl.BorderStyle < 2,0,Sysmetric(3)) lnTopBorder = Iif(m.loControl.BorderStyle < 2,0,Sysmetric(4)) With _Screen.System.Drawing If Upper(m.loControl.Name) == Upper("Screen") loCaptureBmp = .Bitmap.FromScreen(m.loControl.HWnd) Else loCaptureBmp = .Bitmap.FromScreen(m.loControl.HWnd,; lnLeftBorder,; lnTopBorder+lnTitleHeight,; m.loControl.Width ,; m.loControl.Height) EndIf Endwith * save it to a property This.CaptureBmp = loCaptureBmp m.loControl.SetAll("Visible",.F.) This.Draw() This.Visible = .T. Else This.CaptureBmp = .Null. m.loControl.SetAll("Visible",.T.) This.Visible = .F. Endif {loadposition content_adsense} Are we done? Almost... Although, Bernard says it clearly in his article: "Just drop the class on a form and call it as shown." It did not come clear to my mind in the first place with _Screen, but, yeah, he is right. Dropping the class on a form provides a permanent link between those two classes, it creates a valid This.Parent object reference. Bearing in mind that the lightbox class can not be "dropped" on the _Screen, we have to create the same type of binding during runtime execution like so: *====================================================================* Create global lightbox component*==================================================================== Local llOk, loException As Exception m.llOk = .F. m.loException = .Null. If Not Vartype(_Screen.Lightbox) == "O" Try _Screen.AddObject("Lightbox", "bbGdiLightbox") Catch To m.loException Assert .F. Message m.loException.Message EndTry EndIf m.llOk = (Vartype(_Screen.Lightbox) == "O")Return m.llOk Through runtime instantiation we create a valid binding to This.Parent in the lightbox object and the code works as expected with _Screen. Ease your life: Use properties instead of constants Having a closer look at the BeforeDraw() method might wet your appetite to simplify the code a little bit. Looking at the sample screenshots in Bernard's article you see several forms in different colors. This got me to modify the code like so: *====================================================================* Apply the actual lightbox effect on the captured bitmap.*====================================================================If Vartype(This.CaptureBmp) == T_OBJECT Local loGfx As xfcGraphics loGfx = This.oGfx With _Screen.System.Drawing loGfx.DrawImage(This.CaptureBmp,This.Rectangle,This.Rectangle,.GraphicsUnit.Pixel) * change the colours as needed here * possible colours are (220,128,0,0),(220,0,0,128) etc. loBrush = .SolidBrush.New(.Color.FromArgb( ; This.Opacity, .Color.FromRGB(This.BorderColor))) loGfx.FillRectangle(loBrush,This.Rectangle) EndwithEndif Create an additional property Opacity to specify the grade of translucency you would like to have without the need to change the code in each instance of the class. This way you only need to change the values of Opacity and BorderColor to tweak the appearance of your lightbox. This could be quite helpful to signalize different levels of importance (ie. green, yellow, orange, red, etc...) of notifications to the users of the application. Final thoughts Using the lightbox concept in combination with _Screen instead of forms is possible. Already Jim Wiggins comments in Bernard's article to loop through the _Screen.Forms collection in order to cascade the lightbox visibility to all active forms. Good idea. But honestly, I believe that instead of looping all forms one could use _Screen.SetAll("ShowLightbox", .T./.F., "Form") with Form.ShowLightbox_Access method to gain more speed. The modifications described above might provide even more features to your applications while consuming less resources and performance. Additionally, the restrictions to capture only forms does not exist anymore. Using _Screen you are able to capture and cover anything. The captured area of _Screen does not include any toolbars, docked windows, or menus. Therefore, it is advised to take this concept on a higher level and to combine it with additional classes that handle the state of toolbars, docked windows and menus. Which I did for the customer's project.

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  • The Kids Are Alright. With Facebook and SMS. But Not Twitter

    - by ultan o'broin
    I delivered a lecture to business and technology freshmen (late teens, I reckon) in Trinity College Dublin recently. I spoke about user experience in enterprise applications, trends that UX pros need to be aware of such as social media, community support, mobile and tablet platforms and a bunch of nuances around those areas (data and device security, privacy, reputation, branding, and so on). It was all fairly high level stuff given the audience, and I included lots of colorful screenshots. Irish-related examples helped to get the message across. During the lecture I did a quick poll. “How many students here use Twitter?” Answer: None. “How many use Facebook?” All (pretty much). So what do these guys like to use instead of Twitter? Easy - text messaging (or SMS if you like). They all had phones. Perhaps I should not have been so surprised about Twitter, but it’s always great to have research validated by some guerilla UX research on the street. There’s already quite a bit of research about teen uptake (or lack) of Twitter, telling us young adults don’t tweet. Twitter is seen as something for er, older people. Affordable devices and data plans that allow students to text really quickly are also popular (BlackBerry, for example). Younger people just luuurve to text each other. A lot.  Facebook versus Twitter for younger folks? Well, we know the story. No contest. I would love to engage more with students like these. I’ll plan for it. It will also be interesting to see if Twitter becomes more important to them over time. There were a few other interesting observations about the lack of uptake of Foursquare, Gowalla and mobile apps like that. I  don’t think there’s a huge uptake in these kind of apps in Ireland anyway, but maybe students have different priorities anyway?   I’ll return to that another day. Technorati Tags: Gowalla,FourSquare,Twitter,UX,user experience,user assistance,Trinity College Dublin

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  • Integrating NetBeans for Raspberry Pi Java Development

    - by speakjava
    Raspberry Pi IDE Java Development The Raspberry Pi is an incredible device for building embedded Java applications but, despite being able to run an IDE on the Pi it really pushes things to the limit.  It's much better to use a PC or laptop to develop the code and then deploy and test on the Pi.  What I thought I'd do in this blog entry was to run through the steps necessary to set up NetBeans on a PC for Java code development, with automatic deployment to the Raspberry Pi as part of the build process. I will assume that your starting point is a Raspberry Pi with an SD card that has one of the latest Raspbian images on it.  This is good because this now includes the JDK 7 as part of the distro, so no need to download and install a separate JDK.  I will also assume that you have installed the JDK and NetBeans on your PC.  These can be downloaded here. There are numerous approaches you can take to this including mounting the file system from the Raspberry Pi remotely on your development machine.  I tried this and I found that NetBeans got rather upset if the file system disappeared either through network interruption or the Raspberry Pi being turned off.  The following method uses copying over SSH, which will fail more gracefully if the Pi is not responding. Step 1: Enable SSH on the Raspberry Pi To run the Java applications you create you will need to start Java on the Raspberry Pi with the appropriate class name, classpath and parameters.  For non-JavaFX applications you can either do this from the Raspberry Pi desktop or, if you do not have a monitor connected through a remote command line.  To execute the remote command line you need to enable SSH (a secure shell login over the network) and connect using an application like PuTTY. You can enable SSH when you first boot the Raspberry Pi, as the raspi-config program runs automatically.  You can also run it at any time afterwards by running the command: sudo raspi-config This will bring up a menu of options.  Select '8 Advanced Options' and on the next screen select 'A$ SSH'.  Select 'Enable' and the task is complete. Step 2: Configure Raspberry Pi Networking By default, the Raspbian distribution configures the ethernet connection to use DHCP rather than a static IP address.  You can continue to use DHCP if you want, but to avoid having to potentially change settings whenever you reboot the Pi using a static IP address is simpler. To configure this on the Pi you need to edit the /etc/network/interfaces file.  You will need to do this as root using the sudo command, so something like sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces.  In this file you will see this line: iface eth0 inet dhcp This needs to be changed to the following: iface eth0 inet static     address 10.0.0.2     gateway 10.0.0.254     netmask 255.255.255.0 You will need to change the values in red to an appropriate IP address and to match the address of your gateway. Step 3: Create a Public-Private Key Pair On Your Development Machine How you do this will depend on which Operating system you are using: Mac OSX or Linux Run the command: ssh-keygen -t rsa Press ENTER/RETURN to accept the default destination for saving the key.  We do not need a passphrase so simply press ENTER/RETURN for an empty one and once more to confirm. The key will be created in the file .ssh/id_rsa.pub in your home directory.  Display the contents of this file using the cat command: cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub Open a window, SSH to the Raspberry Pi and login.  Change directory to .ssh and edit the authorized_keys file (don't worry if the file does not exist).  Copy and paste the contents of the id_rsa.pub file to the authorized_keys file and save it. Windows Since Windows is not a UNIX derivative operating system it does not include the necessary key generating software by default.  To generate the key I used puttygen.exe which is available from the same site that provides the PuTTY application, here. Download this and run it on your Windows machine.  Follow the instructions to generate a key.  I remove the key comment, but you can leave that if you want. Click "Save private key", confirm that you don't want to use a passphrase and select a filename and location for the key. Copy the public key from the part of the window marked, "Public key for pasting into OpenSSH authorized_keys file".  Use PuTTY to connect to the Raspberry Pi and login.  Change directory to .ssh and edit the authorized_keys file (don't worry if this does not exist).  Paste the key information at the end of this file and save it. Logout and then start PuTTY again.  This time we need to create a saved session using the private key.  Type in the IP address of the Raspberry Pi in the "Hostname (or IP address)" field and expand "SSH" under the "Connection" category.  Select "Auth" (see the screen shot below). Click the "Browse" button under "Private key file for authentication" and select the file you saved from puttygen. Go back to the "Session" category and enter a short name in the saved sessions field, as shown below.  Click "Save" to save the session. Step 4: Test The Configuration You should now have the ability to use scp (Mac/Linux) or pscp.exe (Windows) to copy files from your development machine to the Raspberry Pi without needing to authenticate by typing in a password (so we can automate the process in NetBeans).  It's a good idea to test this using something like: scp /tmp/foo [email protected]:/tmp on Linux or Mac or pscp.exe foo pi@raspi:/tmp on Windows (Note that we use the saved configuration name instead of the IP address or hostname so the public key is picked up). pscp.exe is another tool available from the creators of PuTTY. Step 5: Configure the NetBeans Build Script Start NetBeans and create a new project (or open an existing one that you want to deploy automatically to the Raspberry Pi). Select the Files tab in the explorer window and expand your project.  You will see a build.xml file.  Double click this to edit it. This file will mostly be comments.  At the end (but within the </project> tag) add the XML for <target name="-post-jar">, shown below Here's the code again in case you want to use cut-and-paste: <target name="-post-jar">   <echo level="info" message="Copying dist directory to remote Pi"/>   <exec executable="scp" dir="${basedir}">     <arg line="-r"/>     <arg value="dist"/>     <arg value="[email protected]:NetBeans/CopyTest"/>   </exec>  </target> For Windows it will be slightly different: <target name="-post-jar">   <echo level="info" message="Copying dist directory to remote Pi"/>   <exec executable="C:\pi\putty\pscp.exe" dir="${basedir}">     <arg line="-r"/>     <arg value="dist"/>     <arg value="pi@raspi:NetBeans/CopyTest"/>   </exec> </target> You will also need to ensure that pscp.exe is in your PATH (or specify a fully qualified pathname). From now on when you clean and build the project the dist directory will automatically be copied to the Raspberry Pi ready for testing.

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  • Innovation and the Role of Social Media

    - by Brian Dirking
    A very interesting post by Andy Mulholland of CAP Gemini this week – “The CIO is trapped between the CEO wanting innovation and the CFO needing compliance” – had many interesting points: “A successful move in one area won’t be recognized and rapidly implemented in other areas to multiply the benefits, or worse unsuccessful ideas will get repeated adding to the cost and time wasted. That’s where the need to really address the combination of social networking, collaboration, knowledge management and business information is required.” Without communicating what works and what doesn’t, the innovations of our organization may be lost, and the failures repeated. That makes sense. If you liked Andy Mulholland’s blog post, you need to hear Howard Beader’s presentation at Enterprise 2.0 Conference on innovation and the role of social media. (Howard will be speaking in the Market Leaders Session at 1 PM on Wednesday June 22nd). Some of the thoughts Howard will share include: • Innovation is more than just ideas, it’s getting ideas to market, and removing the obstacles that stand in the way • Innovation is about parallel processing – you can’t remove the obstacles one by one because you will get to market too late • Innovation can be about product innovation, but it can also be about process innovation This brings us to Andy’s second issue he raises: "..the need for integration with, and visibility of, processes to understand exactly how the enterprise functions and delivers on its policies…" Andy goes on to talk about this from the perspective of compliance and the CFO’s concerns. And it’s true: innovation can come both in product innovation, but also internal process innovation. And process innovation can have as much impact as product innovation.  New supply chain models can disrupt an industry overnight. Many people ignore process innovation as a benefit of social business, because it is perceived as a bottom line rather than top line impact. But it can actually impact your top line by changing your entire business model. Oracle WebCenter sits at this crossroads between product innovation and process innovation, enabling you to drive go-to-market innovations through internal social media tools, removing obstacles in parallel, and also providing you deep insight into your processes so you can identify bottlenecks and realize whole new ways of doing business. Learn more about how at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference, where Oracle will be in booth #213 showing Oracle WebCenter and Oracle Fusion Applications.

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  • Oracle Announces Availability of Oracle Exaskeleton with Extreme Scale

    - by J Swaroop
    Re-posting Bruce Tierney's original post - albeit a day late: I reckon this is Oracle's most interesting launch this year. Enjoy! The World’s First Human Scale Body Surface (HSBS) Designed to Toughen Spineless Wimps April 1, 2012 Building on the success of Oracle Exalogic, Oracle Exadata, and Oracle Exalytics, Oracle today announced the general availability of Oracle Exaskeleton, toughening up spineless wimps across the globe through the introduction of extreme scalability over the human body leveraging a revolutionary new technology called Human Scale Body Surface (HSBS). First Customer Ship (FCS) was received by the little known and mostly unsuccessful superhero Awkwardman. After applying Oracle Exaskeleton with extreme scale, he has since rebranded himself as Aquaman. Said Aquaman, “I used to feel so helpless in my skin…now I feel like…well…a highly scaled Engineered System thanks to Oracle!” Thousand of meek and mild individuals eagerly lined up outside Oracle Corporation’s Redwood Shores office to purchase the new Oracle Exaskeleton, with the hope of finally gaining the spine they never had. Unfortunately for the individuals, a bully was spotted allegedly kicking the sand covering the beaches of Redwood Shores into the still spineless Exaskeleton hopefuls. Supporting Quotes “Industry analysts are inquiring if Oracle Exaskeleton is a radical departure from Oracle’s traditional enterprise focus into new markets”, said Oracle representative Sabrina Twich, “Oracle has extensive expertise in unified backbone solutions for application infrastructures…this is simply a new port to the human body combining our Business Intelligence (BI) and RDBC (Remote Direct Brain Cell) technologies.” “With this release of Oracle Exaskeleton, Oracle has redefined scalability. Software and hardware vendors had it all wrong” said the Director of Oracle Exaskeleton, “Scalability for hardware is like…um…you know…so scale-ful. No, wait…can I say that again? I didn’t get that right…Scalability is hardware-on-demand with public and private…hybrid clouds, no…<long pause>…Scalability for… nevermind, I don’t want to be in this stupid press release anyway” Releases An upcoming Oracle Exaskeleton service pack release will include a new datasheet with an extensive library of three-letter acronyms (TLAs) as well as the introduction of more four-letter acronyms (FLAs) since technologies vendors have used up almost all of the 17,576 TLA permutations (TLAPs). About Oracle Oracle engineers hardware and software to work together in the cloud and in your data center. It would be an amazing coincidence if any of this is true in some secret Oracle lab, but I doubt it. Trademarks Really…you’re still reading this? Cool! Aquaman - First Customer Ship (FCS) - Oracle Exaskeleton

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  • Roll your own free .NET technical conference

    - by Brian Schroer
    If you can’t get to a conference, let the conference come to you! There are a ton of free recorded conference presentations online… Microsoft TechEd Let’s start with the proverbial 800 pound gorilla. Recent TechEds have recorded the majority of presentations and made them available online the next day. Check out presentations from last month’s TechEd North America 2012 or last week’s TechEd Europe 2012. If you start at http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd, you can also drill down to presentations from prior years or from other regional TechEds (Australia, New Zealand, etc.) The top presentations from my “View Queue”: Damian Edwards: Microsoft ASP.NET and the Realtime Web (SignalR) Jennifer Smith: Design for Non-Designers Scott Hunter: ASP.NET Roadmap: One ASP.NET – Web Forms, MVC, Web API, and more Daniel Roth: Building HTTP Services with ASP.NET Web API Benjamin Day: Scrum Under a Waterfall NDC The Norwegian Developer Conference site has the most interesting presentations, in my opinion. You can find the videos from the June 2012 conference at that link. The 2011 and 2010 pages have a lot of presentations that are still relevant also. My View Queue Top 5: Shay Friedman: Roslyn... hmmmm... what? Hadi Hariri: Just ‘cause it’s JavaScript, doesn’t give you a license to write rubbish Paul Betts: Introduction to Rx Greg Young: How to get productive in a project in 24 hours Michael Feathers: Deep Design Lessons ØREDEV Travelling on from Norway to Sweden... I don’t know why, but the Scandinavians seem to have this conference thing figured out. ØREDEV happens each November, and you can find videos here and here. My View Queue Top 5: Marc Gravell: Web Performance Triage Robby Ingebretsen: Fonts, Form and Function: A Primer on Digital Typography Jon Skeet: Async 101 Chris Patterson: Hacking Developer Productivity Gary Short: .NET Collections Deep Dive aspConf - The Virtual ASP.NET Conference Formerly known as “mvcConf”, this one’s a little different. It’s a conference that takes place completely on the web. The next one’s happening July 17-18, and it’s not too late to register (It’s free!). Check out the recordings from February 2011 and July 2010. It’s two years old and talks about ASP.NET MVC2, but most of it is still applicable, and Jimmy Bogard’s Put Your Controllers On a Diet presentation is the most useful technical talk I have ever seen. CodeStock Videos from the 2011 edition of this Tennessee conference are available. Presentations from last month’s 2012 conference should be available soon here. I’m looking forward to watching Matt Honeycutt’s Build Your Own Application Framework with ASP.NET MVC 3. UserGroup.tv User Group.tv was founded in January of 2011 by Shawn Weisfeld, with the mission of providing User Group content online for free. You can search by date, group, speaker and category tags. My View Queue Top 5: Sergey Rathon & Ian Henehan: UI Test Automation with Selenium Rob Vettor: The Repository Pattern Latish Seghal: The .NET Ninja’s Toolbelt Amir Rajan: Get Things Done With Dynamic ASP.NET MVC Jeffrey Richter: .NET Nuggets – Houston TechFest Keynote

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  • Ghost team foundation build controllers

    - by Martin Hinshelwood
    Quite often after an upgrade there are things left over. Most of the time they are easy to delete, but sometimes it takes a little effort. Even rarer are those times when something just will not go away no matter how much you try. We have had a ghost team build controller hanging around for a while now, and it had defeated my best efforts to get rid of it. The build controller was from our old TFS server from before our TFS 2010 beta 2 upgrade and was really starting to annoy me. Every time I try to delete it I get the message: Controller cannot be deleted because there are build in progress -Manage Build Controller dialog   Figure: Deleting a ghost controller does not always work. I ended up checking all of our 172 Team Projects for the build that was queued, but did not find anything. Jim Lamb pointed me to the “tbl_BuildQueue” table in the team Project Collection database and sure enough there was the nasty little beggar. Figure: The ghost build was easily spotted Adam Cogan asked me: “Why did you suspect this one?” Well, there are a number of things that led me to suspect it: QueueId is very low: Look at the other items, they are in the thousands not single digits ControllerId: I know there is only one legitimate controller, and I am assuming that 6 relates to “zzUnicorn” DefinitionId: This is a very low number and I looked it up in “tbl_BuildDefinition” and it did not exist QueueTime: As we did not upgrade to TFS 2010 until late 2009 a date of 2008 for a queued build is very suspect Status: A status of 2 means that it is still queued This build must have been queued long ago when we were using TFS 2008, probably a beta, and it never got cleaned up. As controllers are new in TFS 2010 it would have created the “zzUnicorn” controller to handle any build servers that already exist. I had previously deleted the Agent, but leaving the controller just looks untidy. Now that the ghost build has been identified there are two options: Delete the row I would not recommend ever deleting anything from the database to achieve something in TFS. It is really not supported. Set the Status to cancelled (Recommended) This is the best option as TFS will then clean it up itself So I set the Status of this build to 2 (cancelled) and sure enough it disappeared after a couple of minutes and I was then able to then delete the “zzUnicorn” controller. Figure: Almost completely clean Now all I have to do is get rid of that untidy “zzBunyip” agent, but that will require rewriting one of our build scripts which will have to wait for now.   Technorati Tags: ALM,TFBS,TFS 2010

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  • At the Java DEMOgrounds - Oracle’s Java Embedded Suite 7.0

    - by Janice J. Heiss
    The Java Embedded Suite 7.0, a new, packaged offering that facilitates the creation of  applications across a wide range of  embedded systems including network appliances, healthcare devices, home gateways, and routers was demonstrated by Oleg Kostukovsky of  Oracle’s Java Embedded Global Business Unit. He presented a device-to-cloud application that relied upon a scan station connected to Java Demos throughout JavaOne. This application allows an NFC tag distributed on a handout given to attendees to be scanned to gather various kinds of data. “A raffle allows attendees to check in at six unique demos and qualify for a prize,” explained Kostukovsky. “At the same time, we are collecting data both from NFC tags and sensors. We have a sensor attached to the back of the skin page that collects temperature, humidity, light intensity, and motion data at each pod. So, all of this data is collected using an application running on a small device behind the scan station."“Analytics are performed on the network using Java Embedded Suite and technology from Oracle partners, SeeControl, Hitachi, and Globalscale,” Kostukovsky said. Next, he showed me a data visualization web site showing sensory, environmental, and scan data that is collected on the device and pushed into the cloud. The Oracle product that enabled all of this, Java Embedded Suite 7.0, was announced in late September. “You can see all kinds of data coming from the stations in real-time -- temperature, power consumption, light intensity and humidity,” explained Kostukovsky. “We can identify trends and look at sensory data and see all the trends of all the components. It uses a Java application written by a partner, SeeControl. So we are using a Java app server and web server and a database.” The Market for Java Embedded Suite 7.0 “It's mainly geared to mission-to-mission applications because the overall architecture applies across multiple industries – telematics, transportation, industrial automation, smart metering, etc. This architecture is one in which the network connects to sensory devices and then pre-analyzes the data from these devices, after which it pushes the data to the cloud for processing and visualization. So we are targeting all those industries with those combined solutions. There is a strong interest from Telcos, from carriers, who are now moving more and more to the space of providing full services for their interim applications. They are looking to deploy solutions that will provide a full service to those who are building M-to-M applications.”

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  • ATI Radeon HD 4650 AGP Video card not recognized properly

    - by PastorLarry
    I have an ASUS ATI Radeon HD 4650 AGP in this system (yeah, I know how old it is). I've been on Ubuntu since 10.04, and the system has never properly recognized the card. I have always had the VESA drivers installed. Now that I have the time to address the problem, 12.04 was listing the card as "Unknown" under the System Settings. Meanwhile, Sysinfo recognizes the card as: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI RV730 Pro AGP [Radeon HD 4600 Series] (prog-if 00 [VGA controller]) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 0028 So I know that this card should be using the radeon driver (or even the radeonhd driver). However, when I installed the mesa-utils package, the card is suddenly reported as: Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe (LLVM 0x300) So now, I'm completely at a loss. It seems that the llvmpipe stuff has to do with OpenGL, but it still appears that I don't have the proper video driver installed. That being said, anyone know what I can do to force the system to recognize the card and use the radeon driver? [EDIT 05.28] I did look at some other information, including glxinfo and a couple of other commands (it was REALLY late, so I don't remember the other commands) and I got these: glxinfo | grep vendor: server glx vendor string: SGI client glx vendor string: Mesa Project and SGI OpenGL vendor string: X.org glxinfo | grep renderer: OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on AMD RV730 One of the other commands gave a whole lot of info and near the end stated that the activation string for the radeon driver was "modprobe radeon". I've tried that from sudo and as root, but it doesn't seem to change anything. I'm at a complete loss. I've even added the xorg-edgers ppa to my Software Sources and updated and rebooted the system, but nothing has changed. Most of all, I can't seem to find any documentation on this issue, as it seems that it's assumed that the radeon driver will install automatically, no questions asked. I feel like such a newbie. Does anyone have any ideas on this? [edit 05.28] results of lsmod | grep radeon (in a more readable format than the comment below): radeon 733693 3 ttm 65344 1 radeon drm_kms_helper 45466 1 radeon drm 197692 5 radeon,ttm,drm_kms_helper i2c_algo_bit 13199 1 radeon [edit 05.29] This is my /etc/X11/xorg.conf: Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "aticonfig Layout" Screen 0 "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0" 0 0 EndSection Section "Module" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0" Option "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver" Option "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor" Option "DPMS" "true" EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "aticonfig-Device[0]-0" Driver "fglrx" BusID "PCI:1:0:0" EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0" So here is my question. Can I simply change the name of the driver in the device section to "radeon" instead of "fglrx" and have the radeon driver work? Or is ther a way to use this as a tmeplate and change the appropriate lines and activate the radeon driver through this file?

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  • 500 Internal Server Error with PHP application

    - by James
    I have written a PHP application using Windows and XAMPP. I've been trying to run it on Ubuntu 10.10 with Lighttpd 1.4.26. Parts of the application work fine, but whenever I try to log in, I get a 500 - Internal Server Error page. The only thing that shows up in /var/log/lighttpd/error.log is 2011-02-25 13:43:13: (mod_fastcgi.c.2582) unexpected end-of-file (perhaps the fastcgi process died): pid: 1169 socket: unix:/tmp/php.socket-0 2011-02-25 13:43:13: (mod_fastcgi.c.3367) response not received, request sent: 1596 on socket: unix:/tmp/php.socket-0 for /~denton/customer-facing-portal/index.php?, closing connection If I had any output whatsoever from PHP, this would be a lot easier to debug. Any ideas on how to get some? Here is my /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf file: # Debian lighttpd configuration file # ############ Options you really have to take care of #################### ## modules to load server.modules = ( "mod_alias", "mod_compress", # "mod_rewrite", # "mod_redirect", # "mod_usertrack", # "mod_expire", # "mod_flv_streaming", # "mod_evasive", "mod_setenv" ) ## a static document-root, for virtual-hosting take look at the ## server.virtual-* options server.document-root = "/var/www/" ## where to upload files to, purged daily. server.upload-dirs = ( "/var/cache/lighttpd/uploads" ) ## where to send error-messages to server.errorlog = "/var/log/lighttpd/error.log" ## files to check for if .../ is requested index-file.names = ( "index.php", "index.html", "index.htm", "default.htm", "index.lighttpd.html" ) ## Use the "Content-Type" extended attribute to obtain mime type if possible # mimetype.use-xattr = "enable" ## # which extensions should not be handle via static-file transfer # # .php, .pl, .fcgi are most often handled by mod_fastcgi or mod_cgi static-file.exclude-extensions = ( ".php", ".pl", ".fcgi" ) ######### Options that are good to be but not neccesary to be changed ####### ## Use ipv6 only if available. (disabled for while, check #560837) #include_shell "/usr/share/lighttpd/use-ipv6.pl" ## bind to port (default: 80) # server.port = 81 ## bind to localhost only (default: all interfaces) ## server.bind = "localhost" ## error-handler for status 404 #server.error-handler-404 = "/error-handler.html" #server.error-handler-404 = "/error-handler.php" ## to help the rc.scripts server.pid-file = "/var/run/lighttpd.pid" ## ## Format: <errorfile-prefix><status>.html ## -> ..../status-404.html for 'File not found' #server.errorfile-prefix = "/var/www/" ## virtual directory listings dir-listing.encoding = "utf-8" server.dir-listing = "enable" ### only root can use these options # # chroot() to directory (default: no chroot() ) #server.chroot = "/" ## change uid to <uid> (default: don't change) server.username = "www-data" ## change gid to <gid> (default: don't change) server.groupname = "www-data" #### compress module compress.cache-dir = "/var/cache/lighttpd/compress/" compress.filetype = ("text/plain", "text/html", "application/x-javascript", "text/css") #### url handling modules (rewrite, redirect, access) # url.rewrite = ( "^/$" => "/server-status" ) # url.redirect = ( "^/wishlist/(.+)" => "http://www.123.org/$1" ) #### expire module # expire.url = ( "/buggy/" => "access 2 hours", "/asdhas/" => "access plus 1 seconds 2 minutes") #### external configuration files ## mimetype mapping include_shell "/usr/share/lighttpd/create-mime.assign.pl" ## load enabled configuration files, ## read /etc/lighttpd/conf-available/README first include_shell "/usr/share/lighttpd/include-conf-enabled.pl" ## Set environment variables setenv.add-environment = ( "DB_URL__DEMO" => "192.168.1.231", "DB_NAME_DEMO" => "demo", "DB_USER_DEMO" => "user", "DB_PASS_DEMO" => "password", "DB_AGENCY_DEMO" => "demo" ) Here is my /etc/php5/cgi/php.ini file (sans 1641 lines of comments): [PHP] register_long_arrays = Off short_open_tag = Off engine = On short_open_tag = Off asp_tags = Off precision = 14 y2k_compliance = On output_buffering = 4096 zlib.output_compression = Off implicit_flush = Off unserialize_callback_func = serialize_precision = 100 allow_call_time_pass_reference = Off safe_mode = Off safe_mode_gid = Off safe_mode_include_dir = safe_mode_exec_dir = safe_mode_allowed_env_vars = PHP_ safe_mode_protected_env_vars = LD_LIBRARY_PATH disable_functions = disable_classes = expose_php = On max_execution_time = 30 max_input_time = 60 memory_limit = 128M error_reporting = E_ALL & ~E_DEPRECATED & ~E_STRICT display_errors = On display_startup_errors = On log_errors = On log_errors_max_len = 1024 ignore_repeated_errors = Off ignore_repeated_source = Off report_memleaks = On track_errors = On html_errors = On variables_order = "GPCS" request_order = "GP" register_globals = Off register_long_arrays = Off register_argc_argv = Off auto_globals_jit = On post_max_size = 8M magic_quotes_gpc = Off magic_quotes_runtime = Off magic_quotes_sybase = Off auto_prepend_file = auto_append_file = default_mimetype = "text/html" doc_root = user_dir = enable_dl = Off cgi.fix_pathinfo=1 file_uploads = On upload_max_filesize = 2M max_file_uploads = 20 allow_url_fopen = On allow_url_include = Off default_socket_timeout = 60 [Date] date.timezone = "America/Chicago" [filter] [iconv] [intl] [sqlite] [sqlite3] [Pcre] [Pdo] [Pdo_mysql] pdo_mysql.cache_size = 2000 pdo_mysql.default_socket= [Phar] [Syslog] define_syslog_variables = Off [mail function] SMTP = localhost smtp_port = 25 mail.add_x_header = On [SQL] sql.safe_mode = Off [ODBC] odbc.allow_persistent = On odbc.check_persistent = On odbc.max_persistent = -1 odbc.max_links = -1 odbc.defaultlrl = 4096 odbc.defaultbinmode = 1 [Interbase] ibase.allow_persistent = 1 ibase.max_persistent = -1 ibase.max_links = -1 ibase.timestampformat = "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S" ibase.dateformat = "%Y-%m-%d" ibase.timeformat = "%H:%M:%S" [MySQL] mysql.allow_local_infile = On mysql.allow_persistent = On mysql.cache_size = 2000 mysql.max_persistent = -1 mysql.max_links = -1 mysql.default_port = mysql.default_socket = mysql.default_host = mysql.default_user = mysql.default_password = mysql.connect_timeout = 60 mysql.trace_mode = Off [MySQLi] mysqli.max_persistent = -1 mysqli.allow_persistent = On mysqli.max_links = -1 mysqli.cache_size = 2000 mysqli.default_port = 3306 mysqli.default_socket = mysqli.default_host = mysqli.default_user = mysqli.default_pw = mysqli.reconnect = Off [mysqlnd] mysqlnd.collect_statistics = On mysqlnd.collect_memory_statistics = Off [OCI8] [PostgresSQL] pgsql.allow_persistent = On pgsql.auto_reset_persistent = Off pgsql.max_persistent = -1 pgsql.max_links = -1 pgsql.ignore_notice = 0 pgsql.log_notice = 0 [Sybase-CT] sybct.allow_persistent = On sybct.max_persistent = -1 sybct.max_links = -1 sybct.min_server_severity = 10 sybct.min_client_severity = 10 [bcmath] bcmath.scale = 0 [browscap] [Session] session.save_handler = files session.use_cookies = 1 session.use_only_cookies = 1 session.name = PHPSESSID session.auto_start = 0 session.cookie_lifetime = 0 session.cookie_path = / session.cookie_domain = session.cookie_httponly = session.serialize_handler = php session.gc_probability = 1 session.gc_divisor = 1000 session.gc_maxlifetime = 1440 session.bug_compat_42 = Off session.bug_compat_warn = Off session.referer_check = session.entropy_length = 0 session.cache_limiter = nocache session.cache_expire = 180 session.use_trans_sid = 0 session.hash_function = 0 session.hash_bits_per_character = 5 url_rewriter.tags = "a=href,area=href,frame=src,input=src,form=fakeentry" [MSSQL] mssql.allow_persistent = On mssql.max_persistent = -1 mssql.max_links = -1 mssql.min_error_severity = 10 mssql.min_message_severity = 10 mssql.compatability_mode = Off mssql.secure_connection = Off [Assertion] [COM] [mbstring] [gd] [exif] [Tidy] tidy.clean_output = Off [soap] soap.wsdl_cache_enabled=1 soap.wsdl_cache_dir="/tmp" soap.wsdl_cache_ttl=86400 soap.wsdl_cache_limit = 5 [sysvshm] [ldap] ldap.max_links = -1 [mcrypt] [dba] Update: here is /etc/lighttpd/conf-enabled/15-fastcgi-php.conf As far as I know, it's just the default config file the Ubuntu package installed. ## FastCGI programs have the same functionality as CGI programs, ## but are considerably faster through lower interpreter startup ## time and socketed communication ## ## Documentation: /usr/share/doc/lighttpd-doc/fastcgi.txt.gz ## http://redmine.lighttpd.net/projects/lighttpd/wiki/Docs:ConfigurationOptions#mod_fastcgi-fastcgi ## Start an FastCGI server for php (needs the php5-cgi package) fastcgi.server += ( ".php" => (( "bin-path" => "/usr/bin/php-cgi", "socket" => "/tmp/php.socket", "max-procs" => 1, "idle-timeout" => 20, "bin-environment" => ( "PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN" => "4", "PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS" => "10000" ), "bin-copy-environment" => ( "PATH", "SHELL", "USER" ), "broken-scriptfilename" => "enable" )) )

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  • Proper network configuration for a KVM guest to be on the same networks at the host

    - by Steve Madsen
    I am running a Debian Linux server on Lenny. Within it, I am running another Lenny instance using KVM. Both servers are externally available, with public IPs, as well as a second interface with private IPs for the LAN. Everything works fine, except the VM sees all network traffic as originating from the host server. I suspect this might have something to do with the iptables-based firewall I'm running on the host. What I'd like to figure out is: how to I properly configure the host's networking such that all of these requirements are met? Both host and VMs have 2 network interfaces (public and private). Both host and VMs can be independently firewalled. Ideally, VM traffic does not have to traverse the host firewall. VMs see real remote IP addresses, not the host's. Currently, the host's network interfaces are configured as bridges. eth0 and eth1 do not have IP addresses assigned to them, but br0 and br1 do. /etc/network/interfaces on the host: # The primary network interface auto br1 iface br1 inet static address 24.123.138.34 netmask 255.255.255.248 network 24.123.138.32 broadcast 24.123.138.39 gateway 24.123.138.33 bridge_ports eth1 bridge_stp off auto br1:0 iface br1:0 inet static address 24.123.138.36 netmask 255.255.255.248 network 24.123.138.32 broadcast 24.123.138.39 # Internal network auto br0 iface br0 inet static address 192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 network 192.168.1.0 broadcast 192.168.1.255 bridge_ports eth0 bridge_stp off This is the libvirt/qemu configuration file for the VM: <domain type='kvm'> <name>apps</name> <uuid>636b6620-0949-bc88-3197-37153b88772e</uuid> <memory>393216</memory> <currentMemory>393216</currentMemory> <vcpu>1</vcpu> <os> <type arch='i686' machine='pc'>hvm</type> <boot dev='hd'/> </os> <features> <acpi/> <apic/> <pae/> </features> <clock offset='utc'/> <on_poweroff>destroy</on_poweroff> <on_reboot>restart</on_reboot> <on_crash>restart</on_crash> <devices> <emulator>/usr/bin/kvm</emulator> <disk type='file' device='cdrom'> <target dev='hdc' bus='ide'/> <readonly/> </disk> <disk type='file' device='disk'> <source file='/raid/kvm-images/apps.qcow2'/> <target dev='vda' bus='virtio'/> </disk> <interface type='bridge'> <mac address='54:52:00:27:5e:02'/> <source bridge='br0'/> <model type='virtio'/> </interface> <interface type='bridge'> <mac address='54:52:00:40:cc:7f'/> <source bridge='br1'/> <model type='virtio'/> </interface> <serial type='pty'> <target port='0'/> </serial> <console type='pty'> <target port='0'/> </console> <input type='mouse' bus='ps2'/> <graphics type='vnc' port='-1' autoport='yes' keymap='en-us'/> </devices> </domain> Along with the rest of my firewall rules, the firewalling script includes this command to pass packets destined for a KVM guest: # Allow bridged packets to pass (for KVM guests). iptables -A FORWARD -m physdev --physdev-is-bridged -j ACCEPT (Not applicable to this question, but a side-effect of my bridging configuration appears to be that I can't ever shut down cleanly. The kernel eventually tells me "unregister_netdevice: waiting for br1 to become free" and I have to hard reset the system. Maybe a sign I've done something dumb?)

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  • Before the Summit of 2012

    - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell
    Today, Monday, was the first day of the PASS Summit Preconference training events, but instead I spent the day at the free SQL in the City event put on by Red Gate. For me this was not a financial decision (pre-con sessions cost extra above the general Summit registration) but rather a matter of interest.  I had already included money for pre-cons in this year’s training budget, but none of them really stood out to me, so even if the Red-Gate event were not going on at the same time, I probably would not have gone to any pre-cons this year.  However, the topics being presented at the SQL in the City event were of great interest to me.  There promised to be good information on Continuous Integration and automated deployment of database changes, which lately has been a real hot topic at my work.  And indeed, Red-Gate announced the release of a new tool (still in Early Access Program…a.k.a. Beta) which is called the Deployment Manager.  Since we are in the middle of a TFS implementation project, it will be interesting to see how this plays out and compares to what we put together with the automated builds in TFS.  But, as I understand it, the primary focus of Deployment Manager is not to be the Build process (Red Gate uses JetBrains’ Team City for that in their shop) but rather to aid in the deployment of those build packages, as well as providing easy rollback and a good visualization of which versions of software are in which environments.  It looks promising and I’ve already downloaded the installer package to play with it later. Overall, I was quite impressed with the SQL in the City event.  Having heard many current and past members of the PASS Board of Directors describe the challenges of putting on a large conference, and the growing pains that the PASS Summit has gone through, I am even more impressed that the Red Gate event ran as smoothly as it did.  And it is quite impressive the amount of money that Red Gate must have spent given that this was a no-charge event to attend, they had a very nice hot lunch, and the after-event drinks celebration.  Well done, folks! Of course it was great to hear from a variety of speakers.  Today I listened to some folks from Red Gate like Grant Fritchey (blog | @GFritchey) and David Atkinson (Product Manager for SQL Source Control and now the Deployment Manager tool set); and also Brent Ozar (blog | @BrentO) and Buck Woody (blog | @BuckWoody).  By the way, if you have never seen either Brent or Buck speak, you really should.  Different styles, but both are very entertaining and educational at the same time.  I love Buck’s sense of humor (here’s a tip…don’t be late to Buck’s session or you’ll become part of the presentation) and I praise Brent’s slides.  Brent’s style very much reminds me of that espoused by Garr Reynolds on his Presentation Zen blog (and book) and I am impressed that he can make a technical presentation so engaging. It was a great day, a great way to kick off the week, and I am excited to get into the full Summit!

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  • Book Review (Book 10) - The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood

    - by BuckWoody
    This is a continuation of the books I challenged myself to read to help my career - one a month, for year. You can read my first book review here, and the entire list is here. The book I chose for March 2012 was: The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick. I was traveling at the end of last month so I’m a bit late posting this review here. Why I chose this book: My personal belief about computing is this: All computing technology is simply re-arranging data. We take data in, we manipulate it, and we send it back out. That’s computing. I had heard from some folks about this book and it’s treatment of data. I heard that it dealt with the basics of data - and the semantics of data, information and so on. It also deals with the earliest forms of history of information, which fascinates me. It’s similar I was told, to GEB which a favorite book of mine as well, so that was a bonus. Some folks I talked to liked it, some didn’t - so I thought I would check it out. What I learned: I liked the book. It was longer than I thought - took quite a while to read, even though I tend to read quickly. This is the kind of book you take your time with. It does in fact deal with the earliest forms of human interaction and the basics of data. I learned, for instance, that the genesis of the binary communication system is based in the invention of telegraph (far-writing) codes, and that the earliest forms of communication were expensive. In fact, many ciphers were invented not to hide military secrets, but to compress information. A sort of early “lol-speak” to keep the cost of transmitting data low! I think the comparison with GEB is a bit over-reaching. GEB is far more specific, fanciful and so on. In fact, this book felt more like something fro Richard Dawkins, and tended to wander around the subject quite a bit. I imagine the author doing his research and writing each chapter as a book that followed on from the last one. This is what possibly bothered those who tended not to like it, I think. Towards the middle of the book, I think the author tended to be a bit too fragmented even for me. He began to delve into memes, biology and more - I think he might have been better off breaking that off into another work. The existentialism just seemed jarring. All in all, I liked the book. I recommend it to any technical professional, specifically ones involved with data technology in specific. And isn’t that all of us? :)

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  • Poll Results: Foreign Key Constraints

    - by Darren Gosbell
    A few weeks ago I did the following post asking people – if they used foreign key constraints in their star schemas. The poll is still open if you are interested in adding to it, but here is what the chart looks like as of today. (at the bottom of the poll itself there is a link to the live results, unfortunately I cannot link the live results in here as the blogging platform blocks the required javascript)   Interestingly the results are fairly even. Of the 78 respondents, fractionally over half at least aim to start with referential integrity in their star schemas. I did not want to influence the results by sharing my opinion, but my personal preference is to always aim to have foreign key constraints. But at the same time, I am pragmatic about it, I do have projects where for various reasons some constraints are not defined. And I also have other designs that I have inherited, where it would just be too much work to go back and add foreign key constraints. If you are going to implement foreign keys in your star schema, they really need to be there at the start. In fact this poll was was the result of a feature request for BIDSHelper asking for a feature to check for null/missing foreign keys and I am entirely convinced that BIDS is the wrong place for this sort of functionality. BIDS is a design tool, your data needs to be constantly checked for consistency. It's not that I think that it's impossible to get a design working without foreign key constraints, but I like the idea of failing as soon as possible if there is an error and enforcing foreign key constraints lets me "fail early" if there are constancy issues with my data. By far the biggest concern with foreign keys is performance and I suppose I'm curious as to how often people actually measure and quantify this. I worked on a project a number of years ago that had very large data volumes and we did find that foreign key constraints did have a measurable impact, but what we did was to disable the constraints before loading the data, then enabled and checked them afterwards. This saved as time (although not as much as not having constraints at all), but still let us know early in the process if there were any consistency issues. For the people that do not have consistent data, if you have ETL processes that you control that are building your star schema which you also control, then to be blunt you only have yourself to blame. It is the job of the ETL process to make the data consistent. There are techniques for handling situations like missing data as well as  early and late arriving data. Ralph Kimball's book – The Data Warehouse Toolkit goes through some design patterns for handling data consistency. Having foreign key relationships can also help the relational engine to optimize queries as noted in this recent blog post by Boyan Penev

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  • Merge Join component sorted outputs [SSIS]

    - by jamiet
    One question that I have been asked a few times of late in regard to performance tuning SSIS data flows is this: Why isn’t the Merge Join output sorted (i.e.IsSorted=True)? This is a fair question. After all both of the Merge Join inputs are sorted, hence why wouldn’t the output be sorted as well? Well here’s a little secret, the Merge Join output IS sorted! There’s a caveat though – it is only under certain circumstances and SSIS itself doesn’t do a good job of informing you of it. Let’s take a look at an example. Here we have a dataflow that consumes data from the [AdventureWorks2008].[Sales].[SalesOrderHeader] & [AdventureWorks2008].[Sales].[SalesOrderDetail] tables then joins them using a Merge Join component: Let’s take a look inside the editor of the Merge Join: We are joining on the [SalesOrderId] field (which is what the two inputs just happen to be sorted upon). We are also putting [SalesOrderHeader].[SalesOrderId] into the output. Believe it or not the output from this Merge Join component is sorted (i.e. has IsSorted=True) but unfortunately the Merge Join component does not have an Advanced Editor hence it is hidden away from us. There are a couple of ways to prove to you that is the case; I could open up the package XML inside the .dtsx file and show you the metadata but there is an easier way than that – I can attach a Sort component to the output. Take a look: Notice that the Sort component is attempting to sort on the [SalesOrderId] column. This gives us the following warning: Validation warning. DFT Get raw data: {992B7C9A-35AD-47B9-A0B0-637F7DDF93EB}: The data is already sorted as specified so the transform can be removed. The warning proves that the output from the Merge Join is sorted! It must be noted that the Merge Join output will only have IsSorted=True if at least one of the join columns is included in the output. So there you go, the Merge Join component can indeed produce a sorted output and that’s very useful in order to avoid unnecessary expensive Sort operations downstream. Hope this is useful to someone out there! @Jamiet  P.S. Thank you to Bob Bojanic on the SSIS product team who pointed this out to me!

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  • Two network interfaces and two IP addresses on the same subnet in Linux

    - by Scott Duckworth
    I recently ran into a situation where I needed two IP addresses on the same subnet assigned to one Linux host so that we could run two SSL/TLS sites. My first approach was to use IP aliasing, e.g. using eth0:0, eth0:1, etc, but our network admins have some fairly strict settings in place for security that squashed this idea: They use DHCP snooping and normally don't allow static IP addresses. Static addressing is accomplished by using static DHCP entries, so the same MAC address always gets the same IP assignment. This feature can be disabled per switchport if you ask and you have a reason for it (thankfully I have a good relationship with the network guys and this isn't hard to do). With the DHCP snooping disabled on the switchport, they had to put in a rule on the switch that said MAC address X is allowed to have IP address Y. Unfortunately this had the side effect of also saying that MAC address X is ONLY allowed to have IP address Y. IP aliasing required that MAC address X was assigned two IP addresses, so this didn't work. There may have been a way around these issues on the switch configuration, but in an attempt to preserve good relations with the network admins I tried to find another way. Having two network interfaces seemed like the next logical step. Thankfully this Linux system is a virtual machine, so I was able to easily add a second network interface (without rebooting, I might add - pretty cool). A few keystrokes later I had two network interfaces up and running and both pulled IP addresses from DHCP. But then the problem came in: the network admins could see (on the switch) the ARP entry for both interfaces, but only the first network interface that I brought up would respond to pings or any sort of TCP or UDP traffic. After lots of digging and poking, here's what I came up with. It seems to work, but it also seems to be a lot of work for something that seems like it should be simple. Any alternate ideas out there? Step 1: Enable ARP filtering on all interfaces: # sysctl -w net.ipv4.conf.all.arp_filter=1 # echo "net.ipv4.conf.all.arp_filter = 1" >> /etc/sysctl.conf From the file networking/ip-sysctl.txt in the Linux kernel docs: arp_filter - BOOLEAN 1 - Allows you to have multiple network interfaces on the same subnet, and have the ARPs for each interface be answered based on whether or not the kernel would route a packet from the ARP'd IP out that interface (therefore you must use source based routing for this to work). In other words it allows control of which cards (usually 1) will respond to an arp request. 0 - (default) The kernel can respond to arp requests with addresses from other interfaces. This may seem wrong but it usually makes sense, because it increases the chance of successful communication. IP addresses are owned by the complete host on Linux, not by particular interfaces. Only for more complex setups like load- balancing, does this behaviour cause problems. arp_filter for the interface will be enabled if at least one of conf/{all,interface}/arp_filter is set to TRUE, it will be disabled otherwise Step 2: Implement source-based routing I basically just followed directions from http://lartc.org/howto/lartc.rpdb.multiple-links.html, although that page was written with a different goal in mind (dealing with two ISPs). Assume that the subnet is 10.0.0.0/24, the gateway is 10.0.0.1, the IP address for eth0 is 10.0.0.100, and the IP address for eth1 is 10.0.0.101. Define two new routing tables named eth0 and eth1 in /etc/iproute2/rt_tables: ... top of file omitted ... 1 eth0 2 eth1 Define the routes for these two tables: # ip route add default via 10.0.0.1 table eth0 # ip route add default via 10.0.0.1 table eth1 # ip route add 10.0.0.0/24 dev eth0 src 10.0.0.100 table eth0 # ip route add 10.0.0.0/24 dev eth1 src 10.0.0.101 table eth1 Define the rules for when to use the new routing tables: # ip rule add from 10.0.0.100 table eth0 # ip rule add from 10.0.0.101 table eth1 The main routing table was already taken care of by DHCP (and it's not even clear that its strictly necessary in this case), but it basically equates to this: # ip route add default via 10.0.0.1 dev eth0 # ip route add 130.127.48.0/23 dev eth0 src 10.0.0.100 # ip route add 130.127.48.0/23 dev eth1 src 10.0.0.101 And voila! Everything seems to work just fine. Sending pings to both IP addresses works fine. Sending pings from this system to other systems and forcing the ping to use a specific interface works fine (ping -I eth0 10.0.0.1, ping -I eth1 10.0.0.1). And most importantly, all TCP and UDP traffic to/from either IP address works as expected. So again, my question is: is there a better way to do this? This seems like a lot of work for a seemingly simple problem.

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  • Oracle 5th Annual Maintenance Summit - Orlando March 22-23, 2011

    - by stephen.slade(at)oracle.com
    It's not too late to register today or tomorrow for this exclusive 'Maintenance Professionals Only" event.  In 4 tracks, 27 customer and partner speakers will present case studies and success stories in these 'no-sell zone' sessions. The take-aways will be worth attending!This "2 in 1" event combines a Customer Showcase featuring Orlando Utilities Commission (OUC) and Maintenance Summit.  OUC - the local municipal utility providing residential, commercial, and industrial customers with clean, reliable, and affordable electric and water services - will open the event with their CIO as keynote speaker, and host tours of their fleet, facility, and power generation operations. Recognized as a green leader, OUC has been the most reliable power provider in Florida the past 9 years due, in large part, to the operational efficiencies of its plant and asset maintenance systems. This Summit will feature breakout session tracks for EBS, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft and Sustainability. Highlights include over 12 Oracle solution demo stations, over 25 interactive breakout sessions, pool-side networking reception with live band, partner exhibit pavilion and special appearance by Sean D. Tucker, Team Oracle Stunt-Pilot!  Dates:                   March 22-23, 2011 Location:             Orlando World Center Marriott, Orlando, Florida Evite:                     http://www.oracle.com/us/dm/h2fy11/65971-nafm10019768mpp191c003-oem-304204.html Highlights:          Keynotes, Oracle Expert Demo Stations, Interactive Breakout Sessions, Networking Reception, Partner Pavilion, Speakers Tracks:                 EBS, JDE, PSFT, Sustainability Tours:                  Orlando Utility Operations, Fleet and Facility Oracle Demo Stations:  Agile, AutoVue, Primavera, MOC/SSDM, Utilities, PIM, PDQ, UCM, On Demand, Business Accelerators, Facilities Work Management, EBS Enterprise Asset Management, PeopleSoft Maintenance Management, Technology, Hardware/Sun. Partner-Sponsors:   Viziya, Global PTM, MiPro, Asset Management Solutions, Venutureforth, Impac Services, EAM Master, LLC, Meridium

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  • OTN Latinoamérica Tour 2012

    - by Dana Singleterry
    Better late than never. Sorry for the delay on getting this content up for all of you and thanks again for your attendance. A number of excellent questions came out of the sessions I delivered and herein I'm providing you with the content, in pdf format, for those sessions. I'm also providing pointers to Forms to ADF integration/migration as well as some details around OAF as used in E-Business Suite and ADF. Here's the sessions delivered by location. Click on any of the links to download the session content in pdf format. Montevideo Uruguay: Is Oracle ADF Simpler than Oracle Forms? Understanding the Fusion Development Platform Building Web Data Dashboards Without Coding Buenos Aires, Argentina: Is Oracle ADF Simpler than Oracle Forms? Developing Cross Device Mobile Applications Sao Paulo, Brazil Understanding the Fusion Development Platform Is Oracle ADF Simpler than Oracle Forms? A brief note on Form Integration & Migration: Does your organization have an Oracle Forms application that you'd like to migrate to ADF? Or, perhaps you're an Oracle Forms Developer and want to modernize your application development skills? If so, you've come to the right place! This section will strive to answer common questions that arise as you move from Forms to ADF. Our Oracle Forms Statement of Direction points out that Oracle is committed to the long-term support of Oracle Forms and Reports. However, many customers feel they are outgrowing their Forms applications. Users are demanding more sophisticated and interactive users interfaces. Executives are requiring SOA-enabled applications that integrate with peripheral services. Development leads are encouraging a more modern approach to application development, including adherence to design patterns like MVC. So even as Oracle still supports Forms, the list of reasons to move off of it is becoming more compelling and is only gaining further momentum by the fact that Oracle's own Fusion Applications are using ADF. Developers and organizations looking to align with both the technology stack and look-and-feel of Fusion Applications are choosing ADF, and thus reaping the benefits of years of best practices in enterprise application development that are baked into the ADF framework. So, if you decide to migrate off of Forms for any of these reasons, ADF is the way to go. Grant Ronald has published a video of our position on the subject, along with an ODTUG article explaining our direction. These materials explain that there are other migration tools/frameworks/paths, but the best choice is usually to follow Gartner's recommendation that if you are going to migrate off of Oracle Forms, ADF is the least risky and least costly migration path. Please visit the Oracle Forms page here. For details around OAF as used in E-Business Suite (EBS) and when to use ADF with EBS you can review the following blogs from Shay Shmeltzer. To ADF or to OAF? or Can I use ADF with Oracle E-Business Suite?

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  • Extending the ADF Controller exception handler

    - by frank.nimphius
    The Oracle ADF controller provides a declarative option for developers to define a view activity, method activity or router activity to handle exceptions in bounded or unbounded task flows. Exception handling however is for exceptions only and not handling all types of Throwable. Furthermore, exceptions that occur during the JSF RENDER RESPONSE phase are not looked at either as it is considered too late in the cycle. For developers to try themselves to handle unhandled exceptions in ADF Controller, it is possible to extend the default exception handling, while still leveraging the declarative configuration. To add your own exception handler: · Create a Java class that extends ExceptionHandler · Create a textfile with the name “oracle.adf.view.rich.context.Exceptionhandler” (without the quotes) and store it in .adf\META-INF\services (you need to create the “services” folder) · In the file, add the absolute name of your custom exception handler class (package name and class name without the “.class” extension) For any exception you don't handle in your custom exception handler, just re-throw it for the default handler to give it a try … import oracle.adf.view.rich.context.ExceptionHandler; public class MyCustomExceptionHandler extends ExceptionHandler { public MyCustomExceptionHandler() {      super(); } public void handleException(FacesContext facesContext,                              Throwable throwable, PhaseId phaseId)                              throws Throwable {    String error_message;    error_message = throwable.getMessage();    //check error message and handle it if you can    if( … ){          //handle exception        …    }    else{       //delegate to the default ADFc exception handler        throw throwable;}    } } Note however, that it is recommended to first try and handle exceptions with the ADF Controller default exception handling mechanism. In the past, I've seen attempts on OTN to handle regular application use cases with custom exception handlers for where there was no need to override the exception handler. So don't go for this solution to quickly and always think of alternative solutions. Sometimes a try-catch-final block does it better than sophisticated web exception handling.

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  • Day 6 - Game Menuing Woes and Future Screen Sneak Peeks

    - by dapostolov
    So, after my last post on Day 5 I dabbled with my game class design. I took the approach where each game objects is tightly coupled with a graphic. The good news is I got the menu working but not without some hard knocks and game growing pains. I'll explain later, but for now...here is a class diagram of my first stab at my class structure and some code...   Ok, there are few mistakes, however, I'm going to leave it as is for now... As you can see I created an inital abstract base class called GameSprite. This class when inherited will provide a simple virtual default draw method:        public virtual void DrawSprite(SpriteBatch spriteBatch)         {             spriteBatch.Draw(Sprite, Position, Color.White);         } The benefits of coding it this way allows me to inherit the class and utilise the method in the screen draw method...So regardless of what the graphic object type is it will now have the ability to render a static image on the screen. Example: public class MyStaticTreasureChest : GameSprite {} If you remember the window draw method from Day 3's post, we could use the above code as follows...         protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime)         {             GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.CornflowerBlue);             spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteBlendMode.AlphaBlend);             foreach(var gameSprite in ListOfGameObjects)            {                 gameSprite.DrawSprite(spriteBatch);            }             spriteBatch.End();             base.Draw(gameTime);         } I have to admit the GameSprite object is pretty plain as with its DrawSprite method... But ... we now have the ability to render 3 static menu items on the screen ... BORING! I want those menu items to do something exciting, which of course involves animation... So, let's have a peek at AnimatedGameSprite in the above game diagram. The idea with the AnimatedGameSprite is that it has an image to animate...such as ... characters, fireballs, and... menus! So after inheriting from GameSprite class, I added a few more options such as UpdateSprite...         public virtual void UpdateSprite(float elapsed)         {             _totalElapsed += elapsed;             if (_totalElapsed > _timePerFrame)             {                 _frame++;                 _frame = _frame % _framecount;                 _totalElapsed -= _timePerFrame;             }         }  And an overidden DrawSprite...         public override void DrawSprite(SpriteBatch spriteBatch)         {             int FrameWidth = Sprite.Width / _framecount;             Rectangle sourcerect = new Rectangle(FrameWidth * _frame, 0, FrameWidth, Sprite.Height);             spriteBatch.Draw(Sprite, Position, sourcerect, Color.White, _rotation, _origin, _scale, SpriteEffects.None, _depth);         } With these two methods...I can animate and image, all I had to do was add a few more lines to the screens Update Method (From Day 3), like such:             float elapsed = (float) gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds;             foreach (var item in ListOfAnimatedGameObjects)             {                 item.UpdateSprite(elapsed);             } And voila! My images begin to animate in one spot, on the screen... Hmm, but how do I interact with the menu items using a mouse...well the mouse cursor was easy enough... this.IsMouseVisible = true; But, to have it "interact" with an image was a bit more tricky...I had to perform collision detection!             mouseStateCurrent = Mouse.GetState();             var uiEnabledSprites = (from s in menuItems                                    where s.IsEnabled                                    select s).ToList();             foreach (var item in uiEnabledSprites)             {                 var r = new Rectangle((int)item.Position.X, (int)item.Position.Y, item.Sprite.Width, item.Sprite.Height);                 item.MenuState = MenuState.Normal;                 if (r.Intersects(new Rectangle(mouseStateCurrent.X, mouseStateCurrent.Y, 0, 0)))                 {                     item.MenuState = MenuState.Hover;                     if (mouseStatePrevious.LeftButton == ButtonState.Pressed                         && mouseStateCurrent.LeftButton == ButtonState.Released)                     {                         item.MenuState = MenuState.Pressed;                     }                 }             }             mouseStatePrevious = mouseStateCurrent; So, basically, what it is doing above is iterating through all my interactive objects and detecting a rectangle collision and the object , plays the state animation (or static image).  Lessons Learned, Time Burned... So, I think I did well to start, but after I hammered out my prototype...well...things got sloppy and I began to realise some design flaws... At the time: I couldn't seem to figure out how to open another window, such as the character creation screen Input was not event based and it was bugging me My menu design relied heavily on mouse input and I couldn't use keyboard. Mouse input, is tightly bound with graphic rendering / positioning, so its logic will have to be in each scene. Menu animations would stop mid frame, then continue when the action occured again. This is bad, because...what if I had a sword sliding onthe screen? Then it would slide a quarter of the way, then stop due to another action, then render again mid-slide... it just looked sloppy. Menu, Solved!? To solve the above problems I did a little research and I found some great code in the XNA forums. The one worth mentioning was the GameStateManagementSample. With this sample, you can create a basic "text based" menu system which allows you to swap screens, popup screens, play the game, and quit....basic game state management... In my next post I'm going to dwelve a bit more into this code and adapt it with my code from this prototype. Text based menus just won't cut it for me, for now...however, I'm still going to stick with my animated menu item idea. A sneak peek using the Game State Management Sample...with no changes made... Cool Things to Mention: At work ... I tend to break out in random conversations every-so-often and I get talking about some of my challenges with this game (or some stupid observation about something... stupid) During one conversation I was discussing how I should animate my images; I explained that I knew I had to use the Update method provided, but I didn't know how (at the time) to render an image at an appropriate "pace" and how many frames to use, etc.. I also got thinking that if a machine rendered my images faster / slower, that was surely going to f-up my animations. To which a friend, Sheldon,  answered, surely the Draw method is like a camera taking a snapshot of a scene in time. Then it clicked...I understood the big picture of the game engine... After some research I discovered that the Draw method attempts to keep a framerate of 60 fps. From what I understand, the game engine will even leave out a few calls to the draw method if it begins to slow down. This is why we want to put our sprite updates in the update method. Then using a game timer (provided by the engine), we want to render the scene based on real time passed, not framerate. So even the engine renders at 20 fps, the animations will still animate at the same real time speed! Which brings up another point. Why 60 fps? I'm speculating that Microsoft capped it because LCD's dont' refresh faster than 60 fps? On another note, If the game engine knows its falling behind in rendering...then surely we can harness this to speed up our games. Maybe I can find some flag which tell me if the game is lagging, and what the current framerate is, etc...(instead of coding it like I did last time) Sheldon, suggested maybe I can render like WoW does, in prioritised layers...I think he's onto something, however I don't think I'll have that many graphics to worry about such a problem of graphic latency. We'll see. People to Mention: Well,as you are aware I hadn't posted in a couple days and I was surprised to see a few emails and messenger queries about my game progress (and some concern as to why I stopped). I want to thank everyone for their kind words of support and put everyone at ease by stating that I do intend on completing this project. Granted I only have a few hours each night, but, I'll do it. Thank you to Garth for mailing in my next screen! That was a nice surprise! The Sneek Peek you've been waiting for... Garth has also volunteered to render me some wizard images. He was a bit shocked when I asked for them in 2D animated strips. He said I was going backward (and that I have really bad Game Development Lingo). But, I advised Garth that I will use 3D images later...for now...2D images. Garth also had some great game design ideas to add on. I advised him that I will save his ideas and include them in the future design document (for the 3d version?). Lastly, my best friend Alek, is going to join me in developing this game. This was a project we started eons ago but never completed because of our careers. Now, priorities change and we have some spare time on our hands. Let's see what trouble Alek and I can get into! Tonight I'll be uploading my prototypes and base game to a source control for both of us to work off of. D.

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  • The Social Business Thought Leaders - Ray Wang

    - by kellsey.ruppel
    It seems both consumers and businesses are at the peak of the social hype. Overwhelmed by social media channels, platforms, and processes both in their private and professional life, many early adopters are starting to feel the social fatigue. Mirroring what happened with email and web sites during the late 1990's - early 2000's, more and more managers are looking to move from ubiquitous social media tactics to the most appropriate business use case and processes. This step becomes even more important considering the year over year contraction in IT budgets and the consequent need to maximize return on every dollar spent in new technologies. Ray Wang, CEO and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, suggests engagement through collaborative technologies both as a conceptual model and a transformational tool for enterprises to reap business value. Without participation - the reasoning goes - there is no value and good technology alone is not enough to guarantee employee and customer adoption. Enterprise gamification is a new lever to succeed with Social Business by directing a critical mass of participation towards desired outcomes. What kind of outcomes? A recent study from Constellation Research (see 2012 Q1 Gamification Early Adopters Best Practices) highlights how Marketing, Customer Service and HR are leading the pack with gamification in processes such as: Sustaining long term customer loyalty (76.4%) Improving response in campaign to lead (74.5%) Right channeling incidents for resolution in social media (67.3%) Growing the number service and support incidents resolved by the community (63.6%) Improving employee referral rates and effective recruiting (43.6%) Driving on-boarding success with new hires (20%) More than simply adding badges, points and leaderboards to existing processes, enterprise gamification should be holistically embedded into employee and customer experience to stimulate specific behaviors. According to Ray Wang this can be done at three core levels: Measurable actions. The behaviors we want to facilitate consist of granular actions (i.e likes, comments, posts, recommendations, etc) and more complex actions (i.e projects, initiatives, programmes) attributed to individuals, groups and/or external actors  Reputation. The reputation an individual has earned through his actions is a key factor in building motivation among others and it is determined by its identity, social standing status and competitiveness Incentives or the intrinsic and extrinsic rewards that motivate behaviors and drive actions Listen to Ray Wang's video-interview to learn more about the dynamics that are shaping the future of collaboration and how gamification can help organizations attain new levels of engagement.

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  • Mexico leading in Business Transformation Strategies:

    - by [email protected]
    By John Burke Group Vice President Oracle Applications Business Unit     I recently completed a business tour in Mexico, and was surprised by both the economic vibrancy of the country and the thought leadership expressed by many of the customers I met.  An example of the economic vibrancy of the country: across the street from my hotel was the local Bentley dealership, Coach Store, Yves Saint Laurent and of course a Starbucks.  I only made it to Starbucks.  Both the Coach Store and YSL had a line of folks waiting to get in... As for thought leadership, there were several illustrations only on the first day. I had the opportunity to meet with a branch of the Mexican Federal Government. Their questions were not about clerical task automation, far from it! We discussed citizen on-line access to fees and services - for example looking up the duty on an international goods shipment, or tracking that my taxes have been received, or the status of my request for a certain service.  Eligibility, policies and status.  Having an integrated rules or policy automation system that would allow businesses and citizens to access accurate information and ensure the proper collection of fees and payment for 3rd party provided services.    Then in the afternoon, I met with the owner of a roofing company (note: most roofs in Mexico are flat and made of cement).  This CEO started discussing how he wanted to transform his business from a cement products company to a service company and market 5-10-15 year service contracts which would guarantee the structural integrity of the roof and of course that the roof would remain waterproof.  Although his products were guaranteed, they required an annual inspection and most home owners never schedule that inspection until it is too late and water damage has occurred.  These emergency calls reduce his margin and reduce customer satisfaction.  This lead to a discussion of business models in general and why long term differentiation can only come from service, not just for the music or news industries, but also for roofing companies!    I completely agreed with the transformational concepts described in both meetings and quickly understood why there is a Bentley dealership near my hotel.    

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  • Adding Vertices to a dynamic mesh via Method Call

    - by Raven Dreamer
    I have a C# Struct with a static method, "Get Shape" which populates a List with the vertices of a polyhedron. Method Signature: public static void GetShape(Block b, int x, int y, int z, List<Vector3> vertices, List<int> triangles, List<Vector2> uvs, List<Vector2> uv2s) Adding directly to the vertices list (via vertices.Add(vector3) ), the code works as expected, and the new polyhedron appears when I trigger the method. However, I want to do some processing on the vertices I'm adding (a rotation), and the most sensible way I can think to do that is by creating a separate list of Vector3s, and then combining the lists when I'm done. However, vertices.AddRange(newVerts) does not add the shape to the mesh, nor does a foreach loop with verts.Add(vertices[i]). And this is before I've added in any of the processing! I have a feeling this might stem from passing the list of vertices in as a parameter, rather than returning a list and then adding to the vertices in the calling object, but since I'm filling 4 lists, I was trying to avoid having to create a data struct to return all four at once. Any ideas? The working version of the method is reprinted below, in full: public static void GetShape(Block b, int x, int y, int z, List<Vector3> vertices, List<int> triangles, List<Vector2> uvs, List<Vector2> uv2s) { //List<Vector3> vertices = new List<Vector3>(); int l_blockShape = b.blockShape; int l_blockType = b.blockType; //CheckFace checks if the block is empty //if this block is empty, don't draw anything. int vertexIndex; //only y faces need to be hidden. //if((l_blockShape & BlockShape.NegZFace) == BlockShape.NegZFace) { vertexIndex = vertices.Count; //top left, top right, bottom right, bottom left vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.2f, y + 1, z+.2f)); vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.8f, y + 1, z+.2f)); vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.8f, y , z+.2f)); vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.2f, y , z+.2f)); // first triangle for the face triangles.Add(vertexIndex); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+1); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+3); // second triangle for the face triangles.Add(vertexIndex+1); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+2); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+3); //UVs for the face uvs.Add( new Vector2(0,1)); uvs.Add( new Vector2(1,1)); uvs.Add( new Vector2(1,0)); uvs.Add( new Vector2(0,0)); //UV2s (lightmapping?) uv2s.Add( new Vector2(0,1)); uv2s.Add( new Vector2(1,1)); uv2s.Add( new Vector2(1,0)); uv2s.Add( new Vector2(0,0)); } //XY Z+1 face //if((l_blockShape & BlockShape.PosZFace) == BlockShape.PosZFace) { vertexIndex = vertices.Count; //top left, top right, bottom right, bottom left vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.8f, y + 1, z+.8f)); vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.2f, y + 1, z+.8f)); vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.2f, y , z+.8f)); vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.8f, y , z+.8f)); // first triangle for the face triangles.Add(vertexIndex); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+1); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+3); // second triangle for the face triangles.Add(vertexIndex+1); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+2); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+3); //UVs for the face uvs.Add( new Vector2(0,1)); uvs.Add( new Vector2(1,1)); uvs.Add( new Vector2(1,0)); uvs.Add( new Vector2(0,0)); //UV2s (lightmapping?) uv2s.Add( new Vector2(0,1)); uv2s.Add( new Vector2(1,1)); uv2s.Add( new Vector2(1,0)); uv2s.Add( new Vector2(0,0)); } //ZY face //if((l_blockShape & BlockShape.NegXFace) == BlockShape.NegXFace) { vertexIndex = vertices.Count; //top left, top right, bottom right, bottom left vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.2f, y + 1, z+.8f)); vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.2f, y + 1, z+.2f)); vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.2f, y , z+.2f)); vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.2f, y , z+.8f)); // first triangle for the face triangles.Add(vertexIndex); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+1); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+3); // second triangle for the face triangles.Add(vertexIndex+1); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+2); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+3); //UVs for the face uvs.Add( new Vector2(0,1)); uvs.Add( new Vector2(1,1)); uvs.Add( new Vector2(1,0)); uvs.Add( new Vector2(0,0)); //UV2s (lightmapping?) uv2s.Add( new Vector2(0,1)); uv2s.Add( new Vector2(1,1)); uv2s.Add( new Vector2(1,0)); uv2s.Add( new Vector2(0,0)); } //ZY X+1 face // if((l_blockShape & BlockShape.PosXFace) == BlockShape.PosXFace) { vertexIndex = vertices.Count; //top left, top right, bottom right, bottom left vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.8f, y + 1, z+.2f)); vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.8f, y + 1, z+.8f)); vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.8f, y , z+.8f)); vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.8f, y , z+.2f)); // first triangle for the face triangles.Add(vertexIndex); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+1); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+3); // second triangle for the face triangles.Add(vertexIndex+1); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+2); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+3); //UVs for the face uvs.Add( new Vector2(0,1)); uvs.Add( new Vector2(1,1)); uvs.Add( new Vector2(1,0)); uvs.Add( new Vector2(0,0)); //UV2s (lightmapping?) uv2s.Add( new Vector2(0,1)); uv2s.Add( new Vector2(1,1)); uv2s.Add( new Vector2(1,0)); uv2s.Add( new Vector2(0,0)); } //ZX face if((l_blockShape & BlockShape.NegYFace) == BlockShape.NegYFace) { vertexIndex = vertices.Count; //top left, top right, bottom right, bottom left vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.8f, y , z+.8f)); vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.8f, y , z+.2f)); vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.2f, y , z+.2f)); vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.2f, y , z+.8f)); // first triangle for the face triangles.Add(vertexIndex+3); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+1); triangles.Add(vertexIndex); // second triangle for the face triangles.Add(vertexIndex+3); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+2); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+1); //UVs for the face uvs.Add( new Vector2(0,1)); uvs.Add( new Vector2(1,1)); uvs.Add( new Vector2(1,0)); uvs.Add( new Vector2(0,0)); //UV2s (lightmapping?) uv2s.Add( new Vector2(0,1)); uv2s.Add( new Vector2(1,1)); uv2s.Add( new Vector2(1,0)); uv2s.Add( new Vector2(0,0)); } //ZX + 1 face if((l_blockShape & BlockShape.PosYFace) == BlockShape.PosYFace) { vertexIndex = vertices.Count; //top left, top right, bottom right, bottom left vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.8f, y+1 , z+.2f)); vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.8f, y+1 , z+.8f)); vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.2f, y+1 , z+.8f)); vertices.Add(new Vector3(x+.2f, y+1 , z+.2f)); // first triangle for the face triangles.Add(vertexIndex+3); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+1); triangles.Add(vertexIndex); // second triangle for the face triangles.Add(vertexIndex+3); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+2); triangles.Add(vertexIndex+1); //UVs for the face uvs.Add( new Vector2(0,1)); uvs.Add( new Vector2(1,1)); uvs.Add( new Vector2(1,0)); uvs.Add( new Vector2(0,0)); //UV2s (lightmapping?) uv2s.Add( new Vector2(0,1)); uv2s.Add( new Vector2(1,1)); uv2s.Add( new Vector2(1,0)); uv2s.Add( new Vector2(0,0)); } }

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  • Book Review (Book 11) - Applied Architecture Patterns on the Microsoft Platform

    - by BuckWoody
    This is a continuation of the books I challenged myself to read to help my career - one a month, for year. You can read my first book review here, and the entire list is here. The book I chose for April 2012 was: Applied Architecture Patterns on the Microsoft Platform. I was traveling at the end of last month so I’m a bit late posting this review here. Why I chose this book: I actually know a few of the authors on this book, so when they told me about it I wanted to check it out. The premise of the book is exactly as it states in the title - to learn how to solve a problem using products from Microsoft. What I learned: I liked the book - a lot. They've arranged the content in a "Solution Decision Framework", that presents a few elements to help you identify a need and then propose alternate solutions to solve them, and then the rationale for the choice. But the payoff is that the authors then walk through the solution they implement and what they ran into doing it. I really liked this approach. It's not a huge book, but one I've referred to again since I've read it. It's fairly comprehensive, and includes server-oriented products, not things like Microsoft Office or other client-side tools. In fact, I would LOVE to have a work like this for Open Source and other vendors as well - would make for a great library for a Systems Architect. This one is unashamedly aimed at the Microsoft products, and even if I didn't work here, I'd be fine with that. As I said, it would be interesting to see some books on other platforms like this, but I haven't run across something that presents other systems in quite this way. And that brings up an interesting point - This book is aimed at folks who create solutions within an organization. It's not aimed at Administrators, DBA's, Developers or the like, although I think all of those audiences could benefit from reading it. The solutions are made up, and not to a huge level of depth - nor should they be. It's a great exercise in thinking these kinds of things through in a structured way. The information is a bit dated, especially for Windows and SQL Azure. While the general concepts hold, the cloud platform from Microsoft is evolving so quickly that any printed book finds it hard to keep up with the improvements. I do have one quibble with the text - the chapters are a bit uneven. This is always a danger with multiple authors, but it shows up in a couple of chapters. I winced at one of the chapters that tried to take a more conversational, humorous style. This kind of academic work doesn't lend itself to that style. I recommend you get the book - and use it. I hope they keep it updated - I'll be a frequent customer. :)  

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