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• Finding a person in the forest

  - by PointsToShare

  © 2011 By: Dov Trietsch. All rights reserved finding a person in the forest or Limiting the AD result in SharePoint People Picker There are times when we need to limit the SharePoint audience of certain farms or servers or site collections to a particular audience. One of my experiences involved limiting access to US citizens, another to a particular location. Now, most of us – your humble servant included – are not Active Directory experts – but we must be able to handle the “audience restrictions” as required. So here is how it’s done in a nutshell. Important note. Not all could be done in PowerShell (at least not yet)! There are no Windows PowerShell commands to configure People Picker. The stsadm command is: stsadm -o setproperty -pn peoplepicker-searchadcustomquery -pv ADQuery –url http://somethingOrOther Note the long-hyphenated property name. Now to filling the ADQuery.   LDAP Query in a nutshell Syntax LDAP is no older than SQL and an LDAP query is actually a query against the LDAP Database. LDAP attributes are the equivalent of Database columns, so why do we have to learn a new query language? Beats me! But we must, so here it is. The syntax of an LDAP query string is made of individual statements with relational operators including: = Equal <= Lower than or equal >= Greater than or equal… and memberOf – a group membership. ! Not * Wildcard Equal and memberOf are the most commonly used. Checking for absence uses the ! – not and the * - wildcard Example: (SN=Grant) All whose last name – SurName – is Grant Example: (!(SN=Grant)) All except Grant Example: (!(SN=*)) all where there is no SurName i.e SurName is absent (probably Rappers). Example: (CN=MyGroup) Common Name is MyGroup.  Example: (GN=J*) all the Given Names that start with J (JJ, Jane, Jon, John, etc.) The cryptic SN, CN, GN, etc. are attributes and more about them later All the queries are enclosed in parentheses (Query). Complex queries are comprised of sets that are in AND or OR conditions. AND is denoted by the ampersand (&) and the OR is denoted by the vertical pipe (|). The general syntax is that of the Prefix polish notation where the operand precedes the variables. E.g +ab is the sum of a and b. In an LDAP query (&(A)(B)) will garner the objects for which both A and B are true. In an LDAP query (&(A)(B)(C)) will garner the objects for which A, B and C are true. There’s no limit to the number of conditions. In an LDAP query (|(A)(B)) will garner the objects for which either A or B are true. In an LDAP query (|(A)(B)(C)) will garner the objects for which at least one of A, B and C is true. There’s no limit to the number of conditions. More complex queries have both types of conditions and the parentheses determine the order of operations. Attributes Now let’s get into the SN, CN, GN, and other attributes of the query SN – is the SurName (last name) GN – is the Given Name (first name) CN – is the Common Name, usually GN followed by SN OU – is an Organization Unit such as division, department etc. DC – is a Domain Content in the AD forest l – lower case ‘L’ stands for location. Jerusalem anybody? Or Katmandu. UPN – User Principal Name, is usually the first part of an email address. By nature it is unique in the forest. Most systems set the UPN to be the first initial followed by the SN of the person involved. Some limit the total to 8 characters. If we have many ‘jsmith’ we have to somehow distinguish them from each other. DN – is the distinguished name – a name unique to AD forest in which it lives. Usually it’s a CN with some domain or group distinguishers. DN is important in conjunction with the memberOf relation. Groups have stricter requirement. Each group has to have a unique name - its CN and it has to be unique regardless of its place. See more below. All of the attributes are case insensitive. CN, cn, Cn, and cN are identical. objectCategory is an element that requires special consideration. AD contains many different object like computers, printers, and of course people and groups. In the queries below, we’re limiting our search to people (person). Putting it altogether Let’s get a list of all the Johns in the SPAdmin group of the Jerusalem that local domain. (&(objectCategory=person)(memberOf=cn=SPAdmin,ou=Jerusalem,dc=local)) The memberOf=cn=SPAdmin uses the cn (Common Name) of the SPAdmin group. This is how the memberOf relation is used. ‘SPAdmin’ is actually the DN of the group. Also the memberOf relation does not allow wild cards (*) in the group name. Also, you are limited to at most one ‘OU’ entry. Let’s add Marvin Minsky to the search above. |(&(objectCategory=person)(memberOf=cn=SPAdmin,ou=Jerusalem,dc=local))(CN=Marvin Minsky) Here I added the or pipeline at the beginning of the query and put the CN requirement for Minsky at the end. Note that if Marvin was already in the prior result, he’s not going to be listed twice. One last note: You may see a dryer but more complete list of attributes rules and examples in: http://www.tek-tips.com/faqs.cfm?fid=5667 And finally (thus negating the claim that my previous note was last), to the best of my knowledge there are 3 more ways to limit the audience. One is to use the peoplepicker-searchadcustomfilter property using the same ADQuery. This works only in SP1 and above. The second is to limit the search to users within this particular site collection – the property name is peoplepicker-onlysearchwithinsitecollection and the value is yes (-pv yes) And the third is –pn peoplepicker-serviceaccountdirectorypaths –pv “OU=ou1,DC=dc1…..” Again you are limited to at most one ‘OU’ phrase – no OU=ou1,OU=ou2… And now the real end. The main property discussed in this sprawling and seemingly endless monogram – peoplepicker-searchadcustomquery - is the most general way of getting the job done. Here are a few examples of command lines that worked and some that didn’t. Can you see why? C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN>stsa dm -o setproperty -url http://somethingOrOther -pn peoplepicker-searchadcustomfi lter -pv (Title=David) Operation completed successfully. C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN>stsa dm -o setproperty -url http://somethingOrOther -pn peoplepicker-searchadcustomfi lter -pv (!Title=David) Operation completed successfully. C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN>stsa dm -o setproperty -url http://somethingOrOther -pn peoplepicker-searchadcustomfi lter -pv (OU=OURealName,OU=OUMid,OU=OUTop,DC=TopDC,DC=MidDC,DC=BottomDC) Command line error. Too many OUs C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN>stsa dm -o setproperty -url http://somethingOrOther -pn peoplepicker-searchadcustomfi lter -pv (OU=OURealName) Operation completed successfully. C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN>stsa dm -o setproperty -url http://somethingOrOther -pn peoplepicker-searchadcustomfi lter -pv (DC=TopDC,DC=MidDC,DC=BottomDC) Operation completed successfully. C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN>stsa dm -o setproperty -url http://somethingOrOther -pn peoplepicker-searchadcustomfi lter -pv (OU=OURealName,DC=TopDC,DC=MidDC,DC=BottomDC) Operation completed successfully.   That’s all folks!

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• C#/.NET Little Wonders: The Timeout static class

  - by James Michael Hare

  Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders posts can be found here. When I started the “Little Wonders” series, I really wanted to pay homage to parts of the .NET Framework that are often small but can help in big ways.  The item I have to discuss today really is a very small item in the .NET BCL, but once again I feel it can help make the intention of code much clearer and thus is worthy of note. The Problem - Magic numbers aren’t very readable or maintainable In my first Little Wonders Post (Five Little Wonders That Make Code Better) I mention the TimeSpan factory methods which, I feel, really help the readability of constructed TimeSpan instances. Just to quickly recap that discussion, ask yourself what the TimeSpan specified in each case below is 1: // Five minutes? Five Seconds? 2: var fiveWhat1 = new TimeSpan(0, 0, 5); 3: var fiveWhat2 = new TimeSpan(0, 0, 5, 0); 4: var fiveWhat3 = new TimeSpan(0, 0, 5, 0, 0); You’d think they’d all be the same unit of time, right?  After all, most overloads tend to tack additional arguments on the end.  But this is not the case with TimeSpan, where the constructor forms are:     TimeSpan(int hours, int minutes, int seconds);     TimeSpan(int days, int hours, int minutes, int seconds);     TimeSpan(int days, int hours, int minutes, int seconds, int milliseconds); Notice how in the 4 and 5 parameter version we suddenly have the parameter days slipping in front of hours?  This can make reading constructors like those above much harder.  Fortunately, there are TimeSpan factory methods to help make your intention crystal clear: 1: // Ah! Much clearer! 2: var fiveSeconds = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(5); These are great because they remove all ambiguity from the reader!  So in short, magic numbers in constructors and methods can be ambiguous, and anything we can do to clean up the intention of the developer will make the code much easier to read and maintain. Timeout – Readable identifiers for infinite timeout values In a similar way to TimeSpan, let’s consider specifying timeouts for some of .NET’s (or our own) many methods that allow you to specify timeout periods. For example, in the TPL Task class, there is a family of Wait() methods that can take TimeSpan or int for timeouts.  Typically, if you want to specify an infinite timeout, you’d just call the version that doesn’t take a timeout parameter at all: 1: myTask.Wait(); // infinite wait But there are versions that take the int or TimeSpan for timeout as well: 1: // Wait for 100 ms 2: myTask.Wait(100); 3:  4: // Wait for 5 seconds 5: myTask.Wait(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(5); Now, if we want to specify an infinite timeout to wait on the Task, we could pass –1 (or a TimeSpan set to –1 ms), which what the .NET BCL methods with timeouts use to represent an infinite timeout: 1: // Also infinite timeouts, but harder to read/maintain 2: myTask.Wait(-1); 3: myTask.Wait(TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(-1)); However, these are not as readable or maintainable.  If you were writing this code, you might make the mistake of thinking 0 or int.MaxValue was an infinite timeout, and you’d be incorrect.  Also, reading the code above it isn’t as clear that –1 is infinite unless you happen to know that is the specified behavior. To make the code like this easier to read and maintain, there is a static class called Timeout in the System.Threading namespace which contains definition for infinite timeouts specified as both int and TimeSpan forms: Timeout.Infinite An integer constant with a value of –1 Timeout.InfiniteTimeSpan A static readonly TimeSpan which represents –1 ms (only available in .NET 4.5+) This makes our calls to Task.Wait() (or any other calls with timeouts) much more clear: 1: // intention to wait indefinitely is quite clear now 2: myTask.Wait(Timeout.Infinite); 3: myTask.Wait(Timeout.InfiniteTimeSpan); But wait, you may say, why would we care at all?  Why not use the version of Wait() that takes no arguments?  Good question!  When you’re directly calling the method with an infinite timeout that’s what you’d most likely do, but what if you are just passing along a timeout specified by a caller from higher up?  Or perhaps storing a timeout value from a configuration file, and want to default it to infinite? For example, perhaps you are designing a communications module and want to be able to shutdown gracefully, but if you can’t gracefully finish in a specified amount of time you want to force the connection closed.  You could create a Shutdown() method in your class, and take a TimeSpan or an int for the amount of time to wait for a clean shutdown – perhaps waiting for client to acknowledge – before terminating the connection.  So, assume we had a pub/sub system with a class to broadcast messages: 1: // Some class to broadcast messages to connected clients 2: public class Broadcaster 3: { 4: // ... 5:  6: // Shutdown connection to clients, wait for ack back from clients 7: // until all acks received or timeout, whichever happens first 8: public void Shutdown(int timeout) 9: { 10: // Kick off a task here to send shutdown request to clients and wait 11: // for the task to finish below for the specified time... 12:  13: if (!shutdownTask.Wait(timeout)) 14: { 15: // If Wait() returns false, we timed out and task 16: // did not join in time. 17: } 18: } 19: } We could even add an overload to allow us to use TimeSpan instead of int, to give our callers the flexibility to specify timeouts either way: 1: // overload to allow them to specify Timeout in TimeSpan, would 2: // just call the int version passing in the TotalMilliseconds... 3: public void Shutdown(TimeSpan timeout) 4: { 5: Shutdown(timeout.TotalMilliseconds); 6: } Notice in case of this class, we don’t assume the caller wants infinite timeouts, we choose to rely on them to tell us how long to wait.  So now, if they choose an infinite timeout, they could use the –1, which is more cryptic, or use Timeout class to make the intention clear: 1: // shutdown the broadcaster, waiting until all clients ack back 2: // without timing out. 3: myBroadcaster.Shutdown(Timeout.Infinite); We could even add a default argument using the int parameter version so that specifying no arguments to Shutdown() assumes an infinite timeout: 1: // Modified original Shutdown() method to add a default of 2: // Timeout.Infinite, works because Timeout.Infinite is a compile 3: // time constant. 4: public void Shutdown(int timeout = Timeout.Infinite) 5: { 6: // same code as before 7: } Note that you can’t default the ShutDown(TimeSpan) overload with Timeout.InfiniteTimeSpan since it is not a compile-time constant.  The only acceptable default for a TimeSpan parameter would be default(TimeSpan) which is zero milliseconds, which specified no wait, not infinite wait. Summary While Timeout.Infinite and Timeout.InfiniteTimeSpan are not earth-shattering classes in terms of functionality, they do give you very handy and readable constant values that you can use in your programs to help increase readability and maintainability when specifying infinite timeouts for various timeouts in the BCL and your own applications. Technorati Tags: C#,CSharp,.NET,Little Wonders,Timeout,Task

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• Can Google Employees See My Saved Google Chrome Passwords?

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  Storing your passwords in your web browser seems like a great time saver, but are the passwords secure and inaccessible to others (even employees of the browser company) when squirreled away? Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader MMA is curious if Google employees have (or could have) access to the passwords he stores in Google Chrome: I understand that we are really tempted to save our passwords in Google Chrome. The likely benefit is two fold, You don’t need to (memorize and) input those long and cryptic passwords. These are available wherever you are once you log in to your Google account. The last point sparked my doubt. Since the password is available anywhere, the storage must in some central location, and this should be at Google. Now, my simple question is, can a Google employee see my passwords? Searching over the Internet revealed several articles/messages. Do you save passwords in Chrome? Maybe you should reconsider: Talks about your passwords being stolen by someone who has access to your computer account. Nothing mentioned about the central storage security and vulnerability. There is even a response from Chrome browser security tech lead about the first issue. Chrome’s insane password security strategy: Mostly along the same line. You can steal password from somebody if you have access to the computer account. How to Steal Passwords Saved in Google Chrome in 5 Simple Steps: Teaches you how to actually perform the act mentioned in the previous two when you have access to somebody else’s account. There are many more (including this one at this site), mostly along the same line, points, counter-points, huge debates. I refrain from mentioning them here, simply carry a search if you want to find them. Coming back to my original query, can a Google employee see my password? Since I can view the password using a simple button, definitely they can be unhashed (decrypted) even if encrypted. This is very different from the passwords saved in Unix-like OS’s where the saved password can never be seen in plain text. They use a one-way encryption algorithm to encrypt your passwords. This encrypted password is then stored in the passwd or shadow file. When you attempt to login, the password you type in is encrypted again and compared with the entry in the file that stores your passwords. If they match, it must be the same password, and you are allowed access. Thus, a superuser can change my password, can block my account, but he can never see my password. So are his concerns well founded or will a little insight dispel his worry? The Answer SuperUser contributor Zeel helps put his mind at ease: Short answer: No* Passwords stored on your local machine can be decrypted by Chrome, as long as your OS user account is logged in. And then you can view those in plain text. At first this seems horrible, but how did you think auto-fill worked? When that password field gets filled in, Chrome must insert the real password into the HTML form element – or else the page wouldn’t work right, and you could not submit the form. And if the connection to the website is not over HTTPS, the plain text is then sent over the internet. In other words, if chrome can’t get the plain text passwords, then they are totally useless. A one way hash is no good, because we need to use them. Now the passwords are in fact encrypted, the only way to get them back to plain text is to have the decryption key. That key is your Google password, or a secondary key you can set up. When you sign into Chrome and sync the Google servers will transmit the encrypted passwords, settings, bookmarks, auto-fill, etc, to your local machine. Here Chrome will decrypt the information and be able to use it. On Google’s end all that info is stored in its encrpyted state, and they do not have the key to decrypt it. Your account password is checked against a hash to log in to Google, and even if you let chrome remember it, that encrypted version is hidden in the same bundle as the other passwords, impossible to access. So an employee could probably grab a dump of the encrypted data, but it wouldn’t do them any good, since they would have no way to use it.* So no, Google employees can not** access your passwords, since they are encrypted on their servers. * However, do not forget that any system that can be accessed by an authorized user can be accessed by an unauthorized user. Some systems are easier to break than other, but none are fail-proof. . . That being said, I think I will trust Google and the millions they spend on security systems, over any other password storage solution. And heck, I’m a wimpy nerd, it would be easier to beat the passwords out of me than break Google’s encryption. ** I am also assuming that there isn’t a person who just happens to work for Google gaining access to your local machine. In that case you are screwed, but employment at Google isn’t actually a factor any more. Moral: Hit Win + L before leaving machine. While we agree with zeel that it’s a pretty safe bet (as long as your computer is not compromised) that your passwords are in fact safe while stored in Chrome, we prefer to encrypt all our logins and passwords in a LastPass vault. Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.     

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• Spanning-tree setup with incompatible switches

  - by wfaulk

  I have a set of eight HP ProCurve 2910al-48G Ethernet switches at my datacenter that are set up in a star topology with no physical loops. I want to partially mesh the switches for redundancy and manage the loops with a spanning-tree protocol. However, our connection to the datacenter is provided by two uplinks, each to a Cisco 3750. The datacenter's switches are handling the redundant connection using PVST spanning-tree, which is a Cisco-proprietary spanning-tree implementation that my HP switches do not support. It appears that my switches are not participating in the datacenter's spanning-tree domain, but are blindly passing the BPDUs between the two switchports on my side, which enables the datacenter's switches to recognize the loop and put one of the uplinks into the Blocking state. This is somewhat supposition, but I can confirm that, while my switches say that both of the uplink ports are forwarding, only one is passing any real quantity of data. (I am assuming that I cannot get the datacenter to move away from PVST. I don't know that I'd want them to make that significant of a change anyway.) The datacenter has also sent me this output from their switches (which I have expurgated of any identifiable info): 3750G-1#sh spanning-tree vlan nnn VLAN0nnn Spanning tree enabled protocol ieee Root ID Priority 10 Address 00d0.0114.xxxx Cost 4 Port 5 (GigabitEthernet1/0/5) Hello Time 2 sec Max Age 20 sec Forward Delay 15 sec Bridge ID Priority 32mmm (priority 32768 sys-id-ext nnn) Address 0018.73d3.yyyy Hello Time 2 sec Max Age 20 sec Forward Delay 15 sec Aging Time 300 sec Interface Role Sts Cost Prio.Nbr Type ------------------- ---- --- --------- -------- -------------------------------- Gi1/0/5 Root FWD 4 128.5 P2p Gi1/0/6 Altn BLK 4 128.6 P2p Gi1/0/8 Altn BLK 4 128.8 P2p and: 3750G-2#sh spanning-tree vlan nnn VLAN0nnn Spanning tree enabled protocol ieee Root ID Priority 10 Address 00d0.0114.xxxx Cost 4 Port 6 (GigabitEthernet1/0/6) Hello Time 2 sec Max Age 20 sec Forward Delay 15 sec Bridge ID Priority 32mmm (priority 32768 sys-id-ext nnn) Address 000f.f71e.zzzz Hello Time 2 sec Max Age 20 sec Forward Delay 15 sec Aging Time 300 sec Interface Role Sts Cost Prio.Nbr Type ------------------- ---- --- --------- -------- -------------------------------- Gi1/0/1 Desg FWD 4 128.1 P2p Gi1/0/5 Altn BLK 4 128.5 P2p Gi1/0/6 Root FWD 4 128.6 P2p Gi1/0/8 Desg FWD 4 128.8 P2p The uplinks to my switches are on Gi1/0/8 on both of their switches. The uplink ports are configured with a single tagged VLAN. I am also using a number of other tagged VLANs in my switch infrastructure. And, to be clear, I am passing the tagged VLAN I'm receiving from the datacenter to other ports on other switches in my infrastructure. My question is: how do I configure my switches so that I can use a spanning tree protocol inside my switch infrastructure without breaking the datacenter's spanning tree that I cannot participate in?

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• Why do some games randomly turn my screen a random solid color?

  - by Emlena.PhD

  When playing some games my computer will randomly have an error that I cannot fix without turning it off and back on again. The screen changes to one solid color, which varies (off the top of my head I can remember seeing solid green, magenta, etc..) and the sound blares a single tone. The sound sometimes briefly restores and I can still hear the game sounds and even hear and still be heard by people in my Mumble channel, but the screen doesn't right itself so I'm still blind. What's more is this happens in some games but not in others. While the game is actually running, not while I'm still in the menu. However, it does happen if I'm afk or idle but the game world is still rendering. Games where the error occurs: League of Legends World of Warcraft Trine The Sims 2 Dungeon Defenders Safe games: games where it has never occurred: Tribes: Ascend Star Wars: the Old Republic Battlefield 3 So relatively older games cause the problem while newer games do not? I cannot predict when it will happen, it just seems random. However, if it happens and I try playing the same game further after restart it does appear to occur more frequently after the first time. But if I switch to a safe game it doesn't continue happening. Both of my RAM sticks appear fine, flipped position or either one on their own and games still run, computer still boots. I would think over-heating, but then why not all games? ALso, sometimes it happens immediately after I start playing, within seconds of the 3D world booting up. I'm looking to upgrade very soon so I want to figure out what component or software is fubar and replace/repair it. Any suggestions or recommendations of tools would be helpful. Below is some system information. Dxdiag does not detect any problems. Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.120305-1505) System Manufacturer: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. System Model: EP45-UD3R BIOS: Award Modular BIOS v6.00PG Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8500 @ 3.16GHz (2 CPUs), ~3.2GHz Memory: 4096MB RAM DirectX Version: DirectX 11 DxDiag Version: 6.01.7601.17514 64bit Unicode Graphics card name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 Driver Version: 8.17.12.9610 (error has occurred w/several driver versions) Sound: I do not have a sound card, been using motherboard's built in sound)

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• Ask How-To Geek: Dropbox in the Start Menu, Understanding Symlinks, and Ripping TV Series DVDs

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  This week we take a look at how to incorporate Dropbox into your Windows Start Menu, understanding and using symbolic links, and how to rip your TV series DVDs right to unique and high-quality episode files. Once a week we dip into our reader mailbag and help readers solve their problems, sharing the useful solutions with you in the process. Read on to see our fixes for this week’s reader dilemmas. Add Drobox to Your Start Menu Dear How-To Geek, I use Dropbox all the time and would like to add it right onto my start menu along side the other major shortcuts like Documents, Pictures, etc. It seems like adding Dropbox into the menu should be part of the Dropbox installation package! Sincerely, Dropboxing in Des Moines Dear Dropboxing, We agree, it would be a nice installation option. As it stands you’re going to have to do a little simple hacking to get Dropbox nestled neatly into your start menu. The hack isn’t super elegant but when you’re done you’ll have the link you want and it’ll look like it was there all along. Check out this step-by-step guide here in order to take an existing Library shortcut and rework it to be a Dropbox link. Understanding and Using Symbolic Links Dear How-To Geek, I was talking to a coworker the other day about an issue I’d been having with a media center application I’m running. He suggested using symbolic links to better organize my media and make it easier for the application to access my collection. I had no idea what he was talking about and never got a chance to bug him about it later. Can you clear up this whole symbolic links business for me? I’ve been using computers for years and I’ve never even heard of it! Sincerely, Symbolic Who? Dear Symbolic, Symbolic links aren’t commonly used by many Windows users which is why you likely haven’t run into the concept. Symbolic links are essentially supercharged shortcuts—the newly introduced Windows library system is really just a type of symbolic link system. You can use symbolic links to do all sorts of neat stuff like link folders to your Dropbox folder, organize media, and more. The concept of symbolic links is pretty simple but the execution can be really tricky. We’d suggest reading over our guide to creating symbolic links in Windows 7, Windows XP, and Ubunutu to get a clearer idea what you’re getting into. Rip Your TV DVDs into Handy Episode Files Dear How-To Geek, My wife got me an iPod for Christmas and I still haven’t got around to filling it up. I have tons of entire TV show seasons on DVD and would like to get them on the iPod but I have absolutely no idea where to start. How do I get the shows off the discs? I thought it would be as easy to import the TV shows into iTunes as it is to import tracks off a CD but I was totally wrong. I tried downloading some applications to rip them but those didn’t work at all. Very frustrating! Surely there is an easy and/or automated way to do this, right? Sincerely, Free My DVDs Dear DVDs, Oh man is this a frustration we can relate to. It’s inordinately difficult to get movies and TV shows off physical media and into digital (and portable media player-friendly) formats. There are a multitude of ways to rip DVDs and quite a few applications out there (some good, some mediocre, and some outright malware). We’d recommend a two-part punch to solve your ripping woes. You’ll need a copy of DVDFab to strip away the protections on the discs and rip the disc and Handbrake to load the disc image and convert the files. It’s not quite as smooth as the CD-to-iTunes workflow but it’s still pretty easy. Check out all the steps and settings you’ll want to toggle here. Have a question you want to put before the How-To Geek staff? Shoot us an email at [email protected] and then keep an eye out for a solution in the Ask How-To Geek column. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware How to Change the Default Application for Android Tasks Stop Believing TV’s Lies: The Real Truth About "Enhancing" Images The How-To Geek Valentine’s Day Gift Guide Inspire Geek Love with These Hilarious Geek Valentines Google’s New Personal Blocklist Extension Kills Search Engine Spam KeyCounter Tracks Your Keystrokes and Mouse Clicks Add Custom LED Ambient Lighting to Your PC or Media Center The Trackor Monitors Amazon Prices; Integrates with Chrome, Firefox, and Safari Four Awesome TRON Legacy Themes for Chrome and Iron Anger is Illogical – Old School Style Instructional Video [Star Trek Mashup]

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• 6 Interesting Facts About NASA’s Mars Rover ‘Curiosity’

  - by Gopinath

  Humans quest for exploring the surrounding planets to see whether we can live there or not is taking new shape today. NASA’s Mars probing robot, Curiosity, blasted off today on its 9 months journey to reach Mars and explore it for the possibilities of life there. Scientist says that Curiosity is one most advanced rover ever launched to probe life on other planets. Here is the launch video and some analysis by a news reporter Lets look at the 6 interesting facts about the mission 1. It’s as big as a car Curiosity is the biggest ever rover ever launched by NASA to probe life on outer planets. It’s as big as a car and almost double the size of its predecessor rover Spirit. The length of Curiosity is around 9 feet 10 inches(3 meters), width is 9 feet 1 inch (2.8 meters) and height is 7 feet (2.1 meters). 2. Powered by Plutonium – Lasts 24×7 for 23 months The earlier missions of NASA to explore Mars are powered by Solar power and that hindered capabilities of the rovers to move around when the Sun is hiding. Due to dependency of Sun the earlier rovers were not able to traverse the places where there is no Sun light. Curiosity on the other hand is equipped with a radioisotope power system that generates electricity from the heat emitted by plutonium’s radioactive decay. The plutonium weighs around 10 pounds and can generate power required for operating the rover close to 23 weeks. The best part of the new power system is, Curiosity can roam around in darkness, light and all year around. 3. Rocket powered backpack for a science fiction style landing The Curiosity is so heavy that NASA could not use parachute and balloons to air-drop the rover on the surface of Mars like it’s previous missions. They are trying out a new science fiction style air-dropping mechanism that is similar to sky crane heavy-lift helicopter. The landing of the rover begins first with entry into the Mars atmosphere protected by a heat shield. At about 6 miles to the surface, the heat shield is jettisoned and a parachute is deployed to glide the rover smoothly. When the rover touches 3 miles above the surface, the parachute is jettisoned and the eight motors rocket backpack is used for a smooth and impact free landing as shown in the image. Here is an animation created by NASA on the landing sequence. If you are interested in getting more detailed information about the landing process check this landing sequence picture available on NASA website 4. Equipped with Star Wars style laser gun Hollywood movie directors and novelist always imagined aliens coming to earth with spaceships full of laser guns and blasting the objects which comes on their way. With Curiosity the equations are going to change. It has a powerful laser gun equipped in one of it’s arms to beam laser on rocks to vaporize them. This is not part of any assault mission Curiosity is expected to carry out, the laser gun is will be used to carry out experiments to detect life and understand nature. 5. Most sophisticated laboratory powered by 10 instruments Around 10 state of art instruments are part of Curiosity rover and the these 10 instruments form a most advanced rover based lab ever built by NASA. There are instruments to cut through rocks to examine them and other instruments will search for organic compounds. Mounted cameras can study targets from a distance, arm mounted instruments can study the targets they touch. Microscopic lens attached to the arm can see and magnify tiny objects as tiny as 12.5 micro meters. 6. Rover Carrying 1.24 million names etched on silicon Early June 2009 NASA launched a campaign called “Send Your Name to Mars” and around 1.24 million people registered their names through NASA’s website. All those 1.24 million names are etched on Silicon chips mounted onto Curiosity’s deck. If you had registered your name in the campaign may be your name is going to reach Mars soon. Curiosity On Web If you wish to follow the mission here are few links to help you NASA’s Curiosity Web Page Follow Curiosity on Facebook Follow @MarsCuriosity on Twitter Artistic Gallery Image of Mars Rover Curiosity A printable sheet of Curiosity Mission [pdf] Images credit: NASA This article titled,6 Interesting Facts About NASA’s Mars Rover ‘Curiosity’, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• Create a Slide Show in Windows 7 Media Center

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Are you looking for a nice way to create and display a slide show from your photo collection? Today we’ll show you how to create a slide show, how to add music to it, and watch it from the comfort of your couch in Windows 7 Media Center. Create Slide Show Launch Windows 7 Media Center and click on the Picture Library tile found under Pictures and Videos.   In the Pictures Library, scroll across to slide shows and click on Create Slide show.   Enter a name for the slide show and click Next.   If you are using a Windows Media Center remote, click on the OK button to bring up the onscreen keyboard. Use the directional buttons to navigate across the keyboard and press OK to select each letter. Click Done when finished. Select Picture Library and click Next. Select the pictures to include in your slide show. If using a remote, navigate through the images and press OK to select. If you are using a mouse, simply click on the selections. When you are finished, click Next.    Now, we can review and edit the slide show. Click the up or down pointing arrows to move pictures up and down in the order.  (more intuitive titles would be helpful in this case as opposed to the randomly generated titles in the example below) If you are finished, click Create. You can also choose to go back and add music to your slide show. (or even more pictures) We’ll take a look at adding some music in our example. Click on the Add More button.   Add Music to Your Slide Show Here we’ll select Music Library to add a song. Click Next.   You’ll now be able to browse your Music Library to select songs for your slide show. Select your songs and click Next.   When you are finished adding Music and Pictures click Create.   Once your slide show is saved, you can play it any time by going to clicking on slide shows in the Picture Library, then selecting the slide show title. Select play slide show when you’re ready to enjoy your new production.   If you ever want to edit or delete the slide show, select it in the Picture Library, and scroll to Actions. You’ll see those option under additional commands. You have the option to Edit Slide Show, Burn a CD/DVD, or Delete. Editing Slide Show Settings Within Media Center, go to Tasks… Click on Pictures…   Then choose Slide Shows. From the Slide Show settings you have the option to Show pictures in random order, Show picture information, Show song information, and Use Pan and zoom effect. You can also adjust the length of time to display each picture, and change the background color. Be sure to click Save to apply and changes before exiting. If you choose to show picture information, the picture title, date, and star rating will be displayed in the top right.   If your slide show is accompanied by music and you choose to show song information, you will get a translucent overlay for a few seconds at the beginning of each song to indicate the song, album, and artist. One of the really cool things about creating a slide show in Windows 7 Media Center is you can complete the entire process using just a Media Center remote. Can’t get enough slide shows? Check out how to turn your desktop into a picture slide show in Windows 7. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Using Netflix Watchnow in Windows Vista Media Center (Gmedia)Add Color Coding to Windows 7 Media Center Program GuideIntegrate Boxee with Media Center in Windows 7Schedule Updates for Windows Media CenterTurn Your Desktop into a Picture Slideshow in Windows 7 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Case Study – How to Optimize Popular Wordpress Sites Restore Hidden Updates in Windows 7 & Vista Iceland an Insurance Job? Find Downloads and Add-ins for Outlook Recycle ! Find That Elusive Icon with FindIcons

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• Stir Trek: Iron Man Edition Recap and Photos

  - by Brian Jackett

  If you’ve noticed my blogging activity has reduced in frequency and technical content lately it’s primarily due to all of the conferences I’ve been attending, speaking at, or planning in the past few months.  This past Friday myself and six other dedicated individuals put on Stir Trek: Iron Man Edition as the culmination of a few months of hard work.  For those unfamiliar, Stir Trek is a web developer conference that was founded last year as an event to showcase content from Microsoft’s MIX conference and end the day with a private showing of the then just-released Star Trek movie.  This year’s conference expanded from 2 to 4 content tracks and upped the number of tickets from 350 to 600.  Even more amazing was the fact that we had 592 people show up day of the event for the lowest drop-off percentage of any conference I’ve been to before.   Nerd Dinner and Swag Bags     The night before Stir Trek: Iron Man Edition we hosted a nerd dinner at the Polaris Shopping mall food court with about 30 in attendance.  Nerd dinners are a great time to meet others passionate about technology and socialize before the whirlwind of the conference hits.  After the nerd dinner 20+ volunteers headed to the conference location and helped us stuff swag bags.  This in and of itself was a monumental task of putting together 600 swag bags with numerous leaflets, sponsor items, and t-shirts.  A big thanks goes out to all who assisted us that night so that we could finish in just under 2 hours instead of taking all night.  My sleep schedule also thanks you. Morning of Stir Trek     After getting a decent amount of sleep I arrived at Marcus Crosswoods theater at 6am to begin setting up for the day.  Myself and Jody Morgan were in charge of registration so we got tables set up, laid out swag bags, and organized our volunteer crew to assist with checking-in attendees.  Despite having 600+ people registration went fairly smoothly and got the day off to a great start.  I especially appreciated the 3+ cups of coffee from Crimson Cup, a local coffee shop.  For any of you that know me you’ll know that I rarely drink coffee except a few times a year when I really need the energy, so that says a lot about how good their coffee is.   Conference Starts     Once registration was completed the day kicked off with Molly Holzschlag keynoting.  Unfortunately Molly suffered from an ear infection and wasn’t able to fly so she had a virtual keynote and a session later in the day.  I was working behind the scenes on various tasks so I was only able to drop in very briefly on the keynote and rest of the morning sessions.  Throughout the day I tried to grab at least 1 or 2 pics of each presenter.  See my album below for the full set of pics.      For lunch we ordered around 150 pizzas from Mellow Mushroom, a local pizza place (notice the theme of supporting local businesses.)  Early on we were concerned about Mellow Mushroom being able to supply that many pizzas and get them delivered (still hot) to the theater, but they did an excellent job day of the event.  I wish I had gotten some pictures of the old school VW van they delivered the pizza in, but I was just a bit busy running around trying to get theaters ready for lunch.  We had attendees from last year who specifically requested that we have Mellow Mushroom supply lunch this year and I’m glad everything worked out being able to use them again.     During the afternoon I was able to attend a few sessions and hear some great content from various speakers.  It was also nice to just sit down and get off my feet for a bit.  After the last sessions the day concluded with a raffle.  There were a few logistical and technical issues that hampered our ability to smoothly conduct the raffle.  To those of you that agree the raffle wasn’t the smoothest experience I would like to say that the Stir Trek planning committee has already begun meeting to discuss ways of improving the conference for next year.  We are also accepting feedback (both positive and negative) at the following link: click here.  If you don’t wish to use the Joind In site you can also email me directly and I’ll be sure to pass along the feedback.   Iron Man 2 Movie     Last but not least, what Stir Trek event would be complete without the feature movie.  This year’s movie was Iron Man 2.  The theater had some really cool props and promotions (see pic below) for the movie.  I really enjoyed Iron Man 2, but I would recommend brushing up on the Iron Man comics and Marvel’s plans for future movies to understand some of the plot elements that come up.  Also make sure you stay through to the end of the movie credits to see a sneak peak of something special, that’s all I’ll say. Conclusion     Again a big thanks goes out to all of the speakers, sponsors, attendees, movie theater staff, volunteers, and everyone else involved in making this event great.  Also big thanks to my fellow Stir Trek planning committee members: Jeff Blankenburg, Matt Casto, Carey Payette, Jody Morgan, Rick Kierner, and Sarah Dutkiewitcz.  I am grateful for everything I learned while helping plan this event and look forward to being involved again next year.  For those interested we are currently targeting Thor as our movie theme for 2011 and then The Avengers for 2012.  These are tentative based on release dates that could shift as we get closer, but for now look solid.   Photos Pics on Facebook (includes tagging)     Stir Trek: Iron Man Edition photos on Facebook Pics on Live site (higher res)      View Full Album         -Frog Out

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• How do you use blog content?

  - by fatherjack

  Do you write a blog, have you ever thought about it? I think people fall into one of a few categories when it comes to blogs, especially blogs with technical content. Writing articles furiously - daily, twice daily and reading dozens of others. Writing the odd piece of content and read plenty of others' output. Started a blog once and its fizzled out but reading lots. Thought about starting a blog someday but never got around to it, hopping into the occasional blog when a link or a Tweet takes them there. Never thought about writing one but often catching content from them when Google (or other preferred search engine) finds content related to their search. Now I am not saying that either of these is right or wrong, nor am I saying that anyone should feel any compulsion to be in any particular category. What I would say is that you as a blog reader have the power to move blog writers from one category to another. How, you might ask? How do I have any power over a blog writer? It is very simple - feedback. If you give feedback then the blog writer knows that they are reaching an audience, if there is no response then they we are simply writing down our thoughts for what could amount to nothing more than a feeble amount of exercise and a few more key stokes towards the onset of RSI. Most blogs have a mechanism to alert the writer when there are comments, and personally speaking, if an email is received saying there has been a response to a blog article then there is a rush of enthusiasm, a moment of excitement that someone is actually reading and considering the text that was submitted and made available for the whole world to read. I am relatively new to this blog game and could be in some extended honeymoon period as I have also recently been incorporated into the Simple Talk 'stable'. I can understand that once you get to the "Dizzy Heights of Ozar" (www.brentozar.com) then getting comments and feedback might not be such a pleasure and may even be rather more of a chore but that, I guess, is the price of fame. For us mere mortals starting out blogging, getting feedback (or even at the moment for me, simply the hope of getting feedback) is what keeps it going. The hope that you will pick a topic that hasn't been done recently by Brad McGehee, Grant Fritchey,  Paul Randall, Thomas LaRock or any one of the dozen of rock star bloggers listed here or others from SQLServerPedia and so on, and then do it well enough to be found, reviewed, or <shudder> (re)tweeted to bring more visitors is what we are striving for, along with the fact that the content we might produce is something that will be of benefit to others. There is only so much point to typing content that no-one is reading and putting it on a blog. You may as well just write it in a diary. A technical blog is not like, say, a blog covering photography techniques where the way to frame and take a picture stands true whether it was written last week, last year or last century - technical content goes sour, quite quickly. There isn't much call for articles about yesterdays technology unless its something that still applies to current versions too, so some content written no more than 2 years ago isn't worth having now. The combination of a piece of content that you know is going to not last long and the fact that no-one reads it is a strong force against writing anything else. Getting feedback counters that despair and gives a value to writing something new. I would say that any feedback is good but there are obviously comments that are just so negative or otherwise badly phrased that they would hasten the demise of a blog but, in general most feedback will encourage a writer. It may not be a comment that supports or agrees with the main theme of a post but if it generates discussion or opens up a previously unexplored viewpoint it is contributing to the blog and is therefore encouraging to the writer. Even if you only say "thank you" before you leave a blog, having taken a section of script to use for yourself or having been given a few links to some content that has widened your knowledge it will be so welcome to the blog owner. Isn't it also the decent thing to do, acknowledging that you have benefited from another's efforts?

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• Backpacks and Booth Paint: TechEd 2012

  - by The Un-T Guy

  Arriving in the parking lot of the Orange County Convention Center, I immediately knew I was in the right place. As far as the eye could see, the acres of asphalt were awash in backpacks, quirky (to be kind) outfits, and bad haircuts. This was the place. This was Microsoft Mecca v2012 for geeks and nerds, the Central Florida event of the year, a gathering of high tech professionals whose skills I both greatly respect and, frankly, fear a little. I was wholly and completely out of element, a dork in a vast sea of geek jumbo. It like was wearing dockers and a golf shirt walking into a RenFaire, but one with really crappy costumes and no turkey legs...save those attached to some of the attendees. Of course the corporate whores...errrr, vendors were in place, ready to parlay the convention's fre-nerd-ic energy into millions of dollars by convincing the big-brained and under-sexed in the crowd (i.e., virtually all of them...present company excluded, of course) that their product or service was the only thing standing between them and professional success, industry fame, and clear skin. "With KramTech 2012," they seemed to scream, "you will be THE ROCK STAR of your company's IT department!" As car shows and tattoo parlors learned long ago, Tech companies seem to believe that the best way to attract the attention of this crowd is through the hint of the promise of sex. They recruit and deploy an army of "sales reps" whose primary qualifications appear to be long hair, short skirts, high heels, and a vagina. Unlike their distant cousins in the car and body art industries, however, this sub-species of booth paint (semi-gloss decoration that adds nothing to the substance of the product) seems torn between committing to being all-out sex objects and recognition that they are in the presence of intelligent, discerning people. People who are smart enough to know exactly what these vendors are doing. Also unlike their distant car show and tattoo shop cousins, these young women (what…are there no gay tech professionals who could use some eye candy?) seem to realize that while IT remains a male-dominated field, there are ever-increasing numbers of intelligent, capable, strong professional women – women who’ve battled to make it in this field through hard work and work performance rather than a hard body and performing after work. This is not to say that all of the young female sales reps are there only because of their physical attributes. Many are competent, intelligent, and driven -- not to mention attractive. They're working hard on the front lines of delivering the next generation of technology. The distinction is pretty clear, however, between these young professionals and the booth paint. The former enthusiastically deliver credible information about the products they’re hawking. The latter are positioned in the aisles, uncomfortably avoiding eye contact as they struggle to operate the badge readers. Surprisingly, not all of the women in attendance seemed to object to the objectification of their younger sisters. One IT professional woman who came of age in the industry (mostly in IT marketing) said, “I have no problem with it. I was a ‘booth babe’ for years and it doesn’t bother me at all.” Others, however, weren’t quite so gracious. One woman I spoke with, an IT manager from Cheyenne, Wyoming, said it was demeaning and frankly, as more and more women grow into IT management positions, not a great marketing idea. “Using these young women is, to me, no different than vendors giving out t-shirts to attract attention. It’s sad because it’s still hard for a woman to be respected in the IT field and this just perpetuates the outdated notion that IT is a male-dominated field.” She went on to say that decisions by vendors to employ these young women in this “inappropriate way” could impact her purchasing decisions. “I might be swayed toward a vendor who has women on staff who are intelligent and dynamic rather than the vendors who use the ‘decoration’ girls.” So in many ways, the IT industry is no different than most other industries as it struggles to maximize performance by finding and developing talent – all of the talent, not just the 50% with a penis. Women in IT, like their brethren, struggle to find their niche in the field, to grow professionally, and reach for the brass ring, struggling to overcome obstacles as they climb the mountain of professional success in a never-ending cycle of economic uncertainty. But as (generally) well-educated and highly-trained professionals, they are probably better positioned than those in many other industries. Beside, they’ve got one other advantage over their non-IT counterparts as they attempt their ascent to the summit: They’ve already got the backpacks.

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• SQLAuthority News – #TechEdIn – TechEd India 2012 Memories and Photos

  - by pinaldave

  TechEd India 2012 was held in Bangalore last March 21 to 23, 2012. Just like every year, this event is bigger, grander and inspiring. Pinal Dave at TechEd India 2012 Family Event Every single year, TechEd is a special affair for my entire family.  Four months before the start of TechEd, I usually start to build the mental image of the event. I start to think  about various things. For the most part, what excites me most is presenting a session and meeting friends. Seriously, I start thinking about presenting my session 4 months earlier than the event!  I work on my presentation day and night. I want to make sure that what I present is accurate and that I have experienced it firsthand. My wife and my daughter also contribute to my efforts. For us, TechEd is a family event, and the two of them feel equally responsible as well. They give up their family time so I can bring out the best content for the Community. Pinal, Shaivi and Nupur at TechEd India 2012 Guinea Pigs (My Experiment Victims) I do not rehearse my session, ever. However, I test my demo almost every single day till the last moment that I have to present it already. I sometimes go over the demo more than 2-3 times a day even though the event is more than a month away. I have two “guinea pigs”: 1) Nupur Dave and 2) Vinod Kumar. When I am at home, I present my demos to my wife Nupur. At times I feel that people often backup their demo, but in my case, I have backup demo presenters. In the office during lunch time, I present the demos to Vinod. I am sure he can walk my demos easily with eyes closed. Pinal and Vinod at TechEd India 2012 My Sessions I’ve been determined to present my sessions in a real and practical manner. I prefer to present the subject that I myself would be eager to attend to and sit through if I were an audience. Just keeping that principle in mind, I have created two sessions this year. SQL Server Misconception and Resolution Pinal and Vinod at TechEd India 2012 We believe all kinds of stuff – that the earth is flat, or that the forbidden fruit is apple, or that the big bang theory explains the origin of the universe, and so many other things. Just like these, we have plenty of misconceptions in SQL Server as well. I have had this dream of co-presenting a session with Vinod Kumar for the past 3 years. I have been asking him every year if we could present a session together, but we never got it to work out, until this year came. Fortunately, we got a chance to stand on the same stage and present a single subject.  I believe that Vinod Kumar and I have an excellent synergy when we are working together. We know each other’s strengths and weakness. We know when the other person will speak and when he will keep quiet. The reason behind this synergy is that we have worked on 2 Video Learning Courses (SQL Server Indexes and SQL Server Questions and Answers) and authored 1 book (SQL Server Questions and Answers) together. Crowd Outside Session Hall This session was inspired from the “Laurel and Hardy” show so we performed a role-playing of those famous characters. We had an excellent time at the stage and, for sure, the audience had a wonderful time, too. We had an extremely large audience for this session and had a great time interacting with them. Speed Up! – Parallel Processes and Unparalleled Performance Pinal Dave at TechEd India 2012 I wanted to approach this session at level 400 and I was very determined to do so. The biggest challenge I had was that this was a total of 60 minutes of session and the audience profile was very generic. I had to present at level 100 as well at 400. I worked hard to tune up these demos. I wanted to make sure that my messages would land perfectly to the minds of the attendees, and when they walk out of the session, they could use the knowledge I shared on their servers. After the session, I felt an extreme satisfaction as I received lots of positive feedback at the event. At one point, so many people rushed towards me that I was a bit scared that the stage might break and someone would get injured. Fortunately, nothing like that happened and I was able to shake hands with everybody. Pinal Dave at TechEd India 2012 Crowd rushing to Pinal at TechEd India 2012 Networking This is one of the primary reasons many of us visit the annual TechEd event. I had a fantastic time meeting SQL Server enthusiasts. Well, it was a terrific time meeting old friends, user group members, MVPs and SQL Enthusiasts. I have taken many photographs with lots of people, but I have received a very few back. If you are reading this blog and have a photo of us at the event, would you please send it to me so I could keep it in my memory lane? SQL Track Speaker: Jacob and Pinal at TechEd India 2012 SQL Community: Pinal, Tejas, Nakul, Jacob, Balmukund, Manas, Sudeepta, Sahal at TechEd India 2012 Star Speakers: Amit and Balmukund at TechEd India 2012 TechED Rockstars: Nakul, Tejas and Pinal at TechEd India 2012 I guess TechEd is a mix of family affair and culture for me! Hamara TechEd (Our TechEd) Please tell me which photo you like the most! Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, SQLAuthority News, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology Tagged: TechEd, TechEdIn

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• T-SQL Tuesday #21 - Crap!

  - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

  Adam Machanic's (blog | twitter) ever popular T-SQL Tuesday series is being held on Wednesday this time, and the topic is… SHIT CRAP. No, not fecal material.  But crap code.  Crap SQL.  Crap ideas that you thought were good at the time, or were forced to do due (doo-doo?) to lack of time. The challenge for me is to look back on my SQL Server career and find something that WASN'T crap.  Well, there's a lot that wasn't, but for some reason I don't remember those that well.  So the additional challenge is to pick one particular turd that I really wish I hadn't squeezed out.  Let's see if this outline fits the bill: An ETL process on text files; That had to interface between SQL Server and an AS/400 system; That didn't use SSIS (should have) or BizTalk (ummm, no) but command-line scripting, using Unix utilities(!) via: xp_cmdshell; That had to email reports and financial data, some of it sensitive Yep, the stench smell is coming back to me now, as if it was yesterday… As to why SSIS and BizTalk were not options, basically I didn't know either of them well enough to get the job done (and I still don't).  I also had a strict deadline of 3 days, in addition to all the other responsibilities I had, so no time to learn them.  And seeing how screwed up the rest of the process was: Payment files from multiple vendors in multiple formats; Sent via FTP, PGP encrypted email, or some other wizardry; Manually opened/downloaded and saved to a particular set of folders (couldn't change this); Once processed, had to be placed BACK in the same folders with the original archived; x2 divisions that had to run separately; Plus an additional vendor file in another format on a completely different schedule; So that they could be MANUALLY uploaded into the AS/400 system (couldn't change this either, even if it was technically possible) I didn't feel so bad about the solution I came up with, which was naturally: Copy the payment files to the local SQL Server drives, using xp_cmdshell Run batch files (via xp_cmdshell) to parse the different formats using sed, a Unix utility (this was before Powershell) Use other Unix utilities (join, split, grep, wc) to process parsed files and generate metadata (size, date, checksum, line count) Run sqlcmd to execute a stored procedure that passed the parsed file names so it would bulk load the data to do a comparison bcp the compared data out to ANOTHER text file so that I could grep that data out of the original file Run another stored procedure to import the matched data into SQL Server so it could process the payments, including file metadata Process payment batches and log which division and vendor they belong to Email the payment details to the finance group (since it was too hard for them to run a web report with the same data…which they ran anyway to compare the emailed file against…which always matched, surprisingly) Email another report showing unmatched payments so they could manually void them…about 3 months afterward All in "Excel" format, using xp_sendmail (SQL 2000 system) Copy the unmatched data back to the original folder locations, making sure to match the file format exactly (if you've ever worked with ACH files, you'll understand why this sucked) If you're one of the 10 people who have read my blog before, you know that I love the DOS "for" command.  Like passionately.  Like fairy-tale love.  So my batch files were riddled with for loops, nested within other for loops, that called other batch files containing for loops.  I think there was one section that had 4 or 5 nested for commands.  It was wrong, disturbed, and completely un-maintainable by anyone, even myself.  Months, even a year, after I left the company I got calls from someone who had to make a minor change to it, and they called me to talk them out of spraying the office with an AK-47 after looking at this code.  (for you Star Trek TOS fans) The funniest part of this, well, one of the funniest, is that I made the deadline…sort of, I was only a day late…and the DAMN THING WORKED practically unchanged for 3 years.  Most of the problems came from the manual parts of the overall process, like forgetting to decrypt the files, or missing/late files, or saved to the wrong folders.  I'm definitely not trying to toot my own horn here, because this was truly one of the dumbest, crappiest solutions I ever came up with.  Fortunately as far as I know it's no longer in use and someone has written a proper replacement.  Today I would knuckle down and do it in SSIS or Powershell, even if it took me weeks to get it right. The real lesson from this crap code is to make things MAINTAINABLE and UNDERSTANDABLE.  sed scripting regular expressions doesn't fit that criteria in any way.  If you ever find yourself under pressure to do something fast at all costs, DON'T DO IT.  Stop and consider long-term maintainability, not just for yourself but for others on your team.  If you can't explain the basic approach in under 5 minutes, it ultimately won't succeed.  And while you may love to leave all that crap behind, it may follow you anyway, and you'll step in it again.   P.S. - if you're wondering about all the manual stuff that couldn't be changed, it was because the entire process had gone through Six Sigma, and was deemed the best possible way.  Phew!  Talk about stink!

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• JavaOne 2011: Content review process and Tips for submissions

  - by arungupta

  The Technical Sessions, Birds of Feather, Panels, and Hands-on labs (basically all the content delivered at JavaOne) forms the backbone of the conference. At this year's JavaOne conference you'll have access to the rock star speakers, the ability to engage with luminaries in the hallways, and have beer (or 2) with community peers in designated areas. Even though the conference is Oct 2-6, 2011, and will be bigger and better than last year's conference, the Call for Paper submission and review/selection evaluation started much earlier.In previous years, I've participated in the review process and this year I was honored to serve as co-lead for the "Enterprise Service Architecture and Cloud" track with Ludovic Champenois. We had a stellar review team with an equal mix of Oracle and external community reviewers. The review process is very overwhelming with the reviewers going through multiple voting iterations on each submission in order to ensure that the selected content is the BEST of the submitted lot. Our ultimate goal was to ensure that the content best represented the track, and most importantly would draw interest and excitement from attendees. As always, the number and quality of submissions were just superb, making for a truly challenging (and rewarding) experience for the reviewers. As co-lead I tried to ensure that I applied a fair and balanced process in the evaluation of content in my track. . Here are some key steps followed by all track leads: Vote on sessions - Each reviewer is required to vote on the sessions on a scale of 1-5 - and also provide a justifying comment. Create buckets - Divide the submissions into different buckets to ensure a fair representation of different topics within a track. This ensures that if a particular bucket got higher votes then the track is not exclusively skewed towards it. Top 7 - The review committee provides a list of the top 7 talks that can be used in the promotional material by the JavaOne team. Generally these talks are easy to identify and a consensus is reached upon them fairly quickly. First cut - Each track is allocated a total number of sessions (including panels), BoFs, and Hands-on labs that can be approved. The track leads then start creating the first cut of the approvals using the casted votes coupled with their prior experience in the subject matter. In our case, Ludo and I have been attending/speaking at JavaOne (and other popular Java-focused conferences) for double digit years. The Grind - The first cut is then refined and refined and refined using multiple selection criteria such as sorting on the bucket, speaker quality, topic popularity, cumulative vote total, and individual vote scale. The sessions that don't make the cut are reviewed again as well to ensure if they need to replace one of the selected one as a potential alternate. I would like to thank the entire Java community for all the submissions and many thanks to the reviewers who spent countless hours reading each abstract, voting on them, and helping us refine the list. I think approximately 3-4 hours cumulative were spent on each submission to reach an evaluation, specifically the border line cases. We gave our recommendations to the JavaOne Program Committee Chairperson (Sharat Chander) and accept/decline notifications should show up in submitter inboxes in the next few weeks. Here are some points to keep in mind when submitting a session to JavaOne next time: JavaOne is a technology-focused conference so any product, marketing or seemingly marketish talk are put at the bottom of the list.Oracle Open World and Oracle Develop are better options for submitting product specific talks. Make your title catchy. Remember the attendees are more likely to read the abstract if they like the title. We try our best to recategorize the talk to a different track if it needs to but please ensure that you are filing in the right track to have all the right eyeballs looking at it. Also, it does not hurt marking an alternate track if your talk meets the criteria. Make sure to coordinate within your team before the submission - multiple sessions from the same team or company does not ensure that the best speaker is picked. In such case we rely upon your "google presence" and/or review committee's prior knowledge of the speaker. The reviewers may not know you or your product at all and you get 750 characters to pitch your idea. Make sure to use all of them, to the last 750th character. Make sure to read your abstract multiple times to ensure that you are giving all the relevant information ? Think through your presentation and see if you are leaving out any important aspects.Also look if the abstract has any redundant information that will not required by the reviewers. There are additional sections that allow you to share information about the speaker and the presentation summary. Use them to blow the horn about yourself and any other relevant details. Please don't say "call me at xxx-xxx-xxxx to find out the details" :-) The review committee enjoyed reviewing the submissions and we certainly hope you'll have a great time attending them. Happy JavaOne!

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• JavaOne 2011: Content review process and Tips for submissions

  - by arungupta

  The Technical Sessions, Birds of Feather, Panels, and Hands-on labs (basically all the content delivered at JavaOne) forms the backbone of the conference. At this year's JavaOne conference you'll have access to the rock star speakers, the ability to engage with luminaries in the hallways, and have beer (or 2) with community peers in designated areas. Even though the conference is Oct 2-6, 2011, and will be bigger and better than last year's conference, the Call for Paper submission and review/selection evaluation started much earlier.In previous years, I've participated in the review process and this year I was honored to serve as co-lead for the "Enterprise Service Architecture and Cloud" track with Ludovic Champenois. We had a stellar review team with an equal mix of Oracle and external community reviewers. The review process is very overwhelming with the reviewers going through multiple voting iterations on each submission in order to ensure that the selected content is the BEST of the submitted lot. Our ultimate goal was to ensure that the content best represented the track, and most importantly would draw interest and excitement from attendees. As always, the number and quality of submissions were just superb, making for a truly challenging (and rewarding) experience for the reviewers. As co-lead I tried to ensure that I applied a fair and balanced process in the evaluation of content in my track. . Here are some key steps followed by all track leads: Vote on sessions - Each reviewer is required to vote on the sessions on a scale of 1-5 - and also provide a justifying comment. Create buckets - Divide the submissions into different buckets to ensure a fair representation of different topics within a track. This ensures that if a particular bucket got higher votes then the track is not exclusively skewed towards it. Top 7 - The review committee provides a list of the top 7 talks that can be used in the promotional material by the JavaOne team. Generally these talks are easy to identify and a consensus is reached upon them fairly quickly. First cut - Each track is allocated a total number of sessions (including panels), BoFs, and Hands-on labs that can be approved. The track leads then start creating the first cut of the approvals using the casted votes coupled with their prior experience in the subject matter. In our case, Ludo and I have been attending/speaking at JavaOne (and other popular Java-focused conferences) for double digit years. The Grind - The first cut is then refined and refined and refined using multiple selection criteria such as sorting on the bucket, speaker quality, topic popularity, cumulative vote total, and individual vote scale. The sessions that don't make the cut are reviewed again as well to ensure if they need to replace one of the selected one as a potential alternate. I would like to thank the entire Java community for all the submissions and many thanks to the reviewers who spent countless hours reading each abstract, voting on them, and helping us refine the list. I think approximately 3-4 hours cumulative were spent on each submission to reach an evaluation, specifically the border line cases. We gave our recommendations to the JavaOne Program Committee Chairperson (Sharat Chander) and accept/decline notifications should show up in submitter inboxes in the next few weeks. Here are some points to keep in mind when submitting a session to JavaOne next time: JavaOne is a technology-focused conference so any product, marketing or seemingly marketish talk are put at the bottom of the list.Oracle Open World and Oracle Develop are better options for submitting product specific talks. Make your title catchy. Remember the attendees are more likely to read the abstract if they like the title. We try our best to recategorize the talk to a different track if it needs to but please ensure that you are filing in the right track to have all the right eyeballs looking at it. Also, it does not hurt marking an alternate track if your talk meets the criteria. Make sure to coordinate within your team before the submission - multiple sessions from the same team or company does not ensure that the best speaker is picked. In such case we rely upon your "google presence" and/or review committee's prior knowledge of the speaker. The reviewers may not know you or your product at all and you get 750 characters to pitch your idea. Make sure to use all of them, to the last 750th character. Make sure to read your abstract multiple times to ensure that you are giving all the relevant information ? Think through your presentation and see if you are leaving out any important aspects.Also look if the abstract has any redundant information that will not required by the reviewers. There are additional sections that allow you to share information about the speaker and the presentation summary. Use them to blow the horn about yourself and any other relevant details. Please don't say "call me at xxx-xxx-xxxx to find out the details" :-) The review committee enjoyed reviewing the submissions and we certainly hope you'll have a great time attending them. Happy JavaOne!

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• Computer Networks UNISA - Chap 15 &ndash; Network Management

  - by MarkPearl

  After reading this section you should be able to Understand network management and the importance of documentation, baseline measurements, policies, and regulations to assess and maintain a network’s health. Manage a network’s performance using SNMP-based network management software, system and event logs, and traffic-shaping techniques Identify the reasons for and elements of an asset managements system Plan and follow regular hardware and software maintenance routines Fundamentals of Network Management Network management refers to the assessment, monitoring, and maintenance of all aspects of a network including checking for hardware faults, ensuring high QoS, maintaining records of network assets, etc. Scope of network management differs depending on the size and requirements of the network. All sub topics of network management share the goals of enhancing the efficiency and performance while preventing costly downtime or loss. Documentation The way documentation is stored may vary, but to adequately manage a network one should at least record the following… Physical topology (types of LAN and WAN topologies – ring, star, hybrid) Access method (does it use Ethernet 802.3, token ring, etc.) Protocols Devices (Switches, routers, etc) Operating Systems Applications Configurations (What version of operating system and config files for serve / client software) Baseline Measurements A baseline is a report of the network’s current state of operation. Baseline measurements might include the utilization rate for your network backbone, number of users logged on per day, etc. Baseline measurements allow you to compare future performance increases or decreases caused by network changes or events with past network performance. Obtaining baseline measurements is the only way to know for certain whether a pattern of usage has changed, or whether a network upgrade has made a difference. There are various tools available for measuring baseline performance on a network. Policies, Procedures, and Regulations Following rules helps limit chaos, confusion, and possibly downtime. The following policies and procedures and regulations make for sound network management. Media installations and management (includes designing physical layout of cable, etc.) Network addressing policies (includes choosing and applying a an addressing scheme) Resource sharing and naming conventions (includes rules for logon ID’s) Security related policies Troubleshooting procedures Backup and disaster recovery procedures In addition to internal policies, a network manager must consider external regulatory rules. Fault and Performance Management After documenting every aspect of your network and following policies and best practices, you are ready to asses you networks status on an on going basis. This process includes both performance management and fault management. Network Management Software To accomplish both fault and performance management, organizations often use enterprise-wide network management software. There various software packages that do this, each collect data from multiple networked devices at regular intervals, in a process called polling. Each managed device runs a network management agent. So as not to affect the performance of a device while collecting information, agents do not demand significant processing resources. The definition of a managed devices and their data are collected in a MIB (Management Information Base). Agents communicate information about managed devices via any of several application layer protocols. On modern networks most agents use SNMP which is part of the TCP/IP suite and typically runs over UDP on port 161. Because of the flexibility and sophisticated network management applications are a challenge to configure and fine-tune. One needs to be careful to only collect relevant information and not cause performance issues (i.e. pinging a device every 5 seconds can be a problem with thousands of devices). MRTG (Multi Router Traffic Grapher) is a simple command line utility that uses SNMP to poll devices and collects data in a log file. MRTG can be used with Windows, UNIX and Linux. System and Event Logs Virtually every condition recognized by an operating system can be recorded. This is typically done using event logs. In Windows there is a GUI event log viewer. Similar information is recorded in UNIX and Linux in a system log. Much of the information collected in event logs and syslog files does not point to a problem, even if it is marked with a warning so it is important to filter your logs appropriately to reduce the noise. Traffic Shaping When a network must handle high volumes of network traffic, users benefit from performance management technique called traffic shaping. Traffic shaping involves manipulating certain characteristics of packets, data streams, or connections to manage the type and amount of traffic traversing a network or interface at any moment. Its goals are to assure timely delivery of the most important traffic while offering the best possible performance for all users. Several types of traffic prioritization exist including prioritizing traffic according to any of the following characteristics… Protocol IP address User group DiffServr VLAN tag in a Data Link layer frame Service or application Caching In addition to traffic shaping, a network or host might use caching to improve performance. Caching is the local storage of frequently needed files that would otherwise be obtained from an external source. By keeping files close to the requester, caching allows the user to access those files quickly. The most common type of caching is Web caching, in which Web pages are stored locally. To an ISP, caching is much more than just convenience. It prevents a significant volume of WAN traffic, thus improving performance and saving money. Asset Management Another key component in managing networks is identifying and tracking its hardware. This is called asset management. The first step to asset management is to take an inventory of each node on the network. You will also want to keep records of every piece of software purchased by your organization. Asset management simplifies maintaining and upgrading the network chiefly because you know what the system includes. In addition, asset management provides network administrators with information about the costs and benefits of certain types of hardware or software. Change Management Networks are always in a stage of flux with various aspects including… Software changes and patches Client Upgrades Shared Application Upgrades NOS Upgrades Hardware and Physical Plant Changes Cabling Upgrades Backbone Upgrades For a detailed explanation on each of these read the textbook (Page 750 – 761)

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• Session Report - Modern Software Development Anti-Patterns

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  In this standing-room-only session, building upon his 2011 JavaOne Rock Star “Diabolical Developer” session, Martijn Verburg, this time along with Ben Evans, identified and explored common “anti-patterns” – ways of doing things that keep developers from doing their best work. They emphasized the importance of social interaction and team communication, along with identifying certain psychological pitfalls that lead developers astray. Their emphasis was less on technical coding errors and more how to function well and to keep one’s focus on what really matters. They are the authors of the highly regarded The Well-Grounded Java Developer and are both movers and shakers in the London JUG community and on the Java Community Process. The large room was packed as they gave a fast-moving, witty presentation with lots of laughs and personal anecdotes. Below are a few of the anti-patterns they discussed.Anti-Pattern One: Conference-Driven DeliveryThe theme here is the belief that “Real pros hack code and write their slides minutes before their talks.” Their response to this anti-pattern is an expression popular in the military – PPPPPP, which stands for, “Proper preparation prevents piss-poor performance.”“Communication is very important – probably more important than the code you write,” claimed Verburg. “The more you speak in front of large groups of people the easier it gets, but it’s always important to do dry runs, to present to smaller groups. And important to be members of user groups where you can give presentations. It’s a great place to practice speaking skills; to gain new skills; get new contacts, to network.”They encouraged attendees to record themselves and listen to themselves giving a presentation. They advised them to start with a spouse or friends if need be. Learning to communicate to a group, they argued, is essential to being a successful developer. The emphasis here is that software development is a team activity and good, clear, accessible communication is essential to the functioning of software teams. Anti-Pattern Two: Mortgage-Driven Development The main theme here was that, in a period of worldwide recession and economic stagnation, people are concerned about keeping their jobs. So there is a tendency for developers to treat knowledge as power and not share what they know about their systems with their colleagues, so when it comes time to fix a problem in production, they will be the only one who knows how to fix it – and will have made themselves an indispensable cog in a machine so you cannot be fired. So developers avoid documentation at all costs, or if documentation is required, put it on a USB chip and lock it in a lock box. As in the first anti-pattern, the idea here is that communicating well with your colleagues is essential and documentation is a key part of this. Social interactions are essential. Both Verburg and Evans insisted that increasingly, year by year, successful software development is more about communication than the technical aspects of the craft. Developers who understand this are the ones who will have the most success. Anti-Pattern Three: Distracted by Shiny – Always Use the Latest Technology to Stay AheadThe temptation here is to pick out some obscure framework, try a bit of Scala, HTML5, and Clojure, and always use the latest technology and upgrade to the latest point release of everything. Don’t worry if something works poorly because you are ahead of the curve. Verburg and Evans insisted that there need to be sound reasons for everything a developer does. Developers should not bring in something simply because for some reason they just feel like it or because it’s new. They recommended a site run by a developer named Matt Raible with excellent comparison spread sheets regarding Web frameworks and other apps. They praised it as a useful tool to help developers in their decision-making processes. They pointed out that good developers sometimes make bad choices out of boredom, to add shiny things to their CV, out of frustration with existing processes, or just from a lack of understanding. They pointed out that some code may stay in a business system for 15 or 20 years, but not all code is created equal and some may change after 3 or 6 months. Developers need to know where the code they are contributing fits in. What is its likely lifespan? Anti-Pattern Four: Design-Driven Design The anti-pattern: If you want to impress your colleagues and bosses, use design patents left, right, and center – MVC, Session Facades, SOA, etc. Or the UML modeling suite from IBM, back in the day… Generate super fast code. And the more jargon you can talk when in the vicinity of the manager the better.Verburg shared a true story about a time when he was interviewing a guy for a job and asked him what his previous work was. The interviewee said that he essentially took patterns and uses an approved book of Enterprise Architecture Patterns and applied them. Verburg was dumbstruck that someone could have a job in which they took patterns from a book and applied them. He pointed out that the idea that design is a separate activity is simply wrong. He repeated a saying that he uses, “You should pay your junior developers for the lines of code they write and the things they add; you should pay your senior developers for what they take away.”He explained that by encouraging people to take things away, the code base gets simpler and reflects the actual business use cases developers are trying to solve, as opposed to the framework that is being imposed. He told another true story about a project to decommission a very long system. 98% of the code was decommissioned and people got a nice bonus. But the 2% remained on the mainframe so the 98% reduction in code resulted in zero reduction in costs, because the entire mainframe was needed to run the 2% that was left. There is an incentive to get rid of source code and subsystems when they are no longer needed. The session continued with several more anti-patterns that were equally insightful.

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• Knowing your user is key--Part 1: Motivation

  - by erikanollwebb

  I was thinking where the best place to start in this blog would be and finally came back to a theme that I think is pretty critical--successful gamification in the enterprise comes down to knowing your user.  Lots of folks will say that gamification is about understanding that everyone is a gamer.  But at least in my org, that argument won't play for a lot of people.  Pun intentional.  It's not that I don't see the attraction to the idea--really, very few people play no games at all.  If they don't play video games, they might play solitaire on their computer.  They may play card games, or some type of sport.  Mario Herger has some great facts on how much game playing there is going on at his Enterprise-Gamification.com website. But at the end of the day, I can't sell that into my organization well.  We are Oracle.  We make big, serious software designed run your whole business.  We don't make Angry Birds out of your financial reporting tools.  So I stick with the argument that works better.  Gamification techniques are really just good principals of user experience packaged a little differently.  Feedback?  We already know feedback is important when using software.  Progress indicators?  Got that too.  Game mechanics may package things in a more explicit way but it's not really "new".  To know how to use game mechanics, and what a user experience team is important for, is totally understanding who our users are and what they are motivated by. For several years, I taught college psychology courses, including Motivation.  Motivation is generally broken down into intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.  There's intrinsic, which comes from within the individual.  And there's extrinsic, which comes from outside the individual.  Intrinsic motivation is that motivation that comes from just a general sense of pleasure in the doing of something.  For example, I like to cook.  I like to cook a lot.  The kind of cooking I think is just fun makes other people--people who don't like to cook--cringe.  Like the cake I made this week--the star-spangled rhapsody from The Cake Bible: two layers of meringue, two layers of genoise flavored with a raspberry eau de vie syrup, whipped cream with berries and a mousseline buttercream, also flavored with raspberry liqueur and topped with fresh raspberries and blueberries. I love cooking--I ask for cooking tools for my birthday and Christmas, I take classes like sushi making and knife skills for fun.  I like reading about you can make an emulsion of egg yolks, melted butter and lemon, cook slowly and transform them into a sauce hollandaise (my use of all the egg yolks that didn't go into the aforementioned cake).  And while it's nice when people like what I cook, I don't do it for that.  I do it because I think it's fun.  My former boss, Ultan Ó Broin, loves to fish in the sea off the coast of Ireland.  Not because he gets prizes for it, or awards, but because it's fun.  To quote a note he sent me today when I asked if having been recently ill kept him from the beginning of mackerel season, he told me he had already been out and said "I can fish when on a deathbed" (read more of Ultan's work, see his blogs on User Assistance and Translation.). That's not the kind of intensity you get about something you don't like to do.  I'm sure you can think of something you do just because you like it. So how does that relate to gamification?  Gamification in the enterprise space is about uncovering the game within work.  Gamification is about tapping into things people already find motivating.  But to do that, you need to know what that user is motivated by. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is one of those areas where over-the-top gamification seems to work (not to plug a competitor in this space, but you can search on what Bunchball* has done with a company just a little north of us on 101 for the CRM crowd).  Sales people are naturally competitive and thrive on that plus recognition of their sales work.  You can use lots of game mechanics like leaderboards and challenges and scorecards with this type of user and they love it.  Show my whole org I'm leading in sales for the quarter?  Bring it on!  However, take the average accountant and show how much general ledger activity they have done in the last week and expose it to their whole org on a leaderboard and I think you'd see a lot of people looking for a new job.  Why?  Because in general, accountants aren't extraverts who thrive on competition in their work.  That doesn't mean there aren't game mechanics that would work for them, but they won't be the same game mechanics that work for sales people.  It's a different type of user and they are motivated by different things. To break this up, I'll stop here and post now.  I'll pick this thread up in the next post. Thoughts? Questions? *Disclosure: To my knowledge, Oracle has no relationship with Bunchball at this point in time.

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• What Counts for A DBA - Logic

  - by drsql

  "There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who will always wonder why there are only two items in my list and those who will figured it out the first time they saw this very old joke."  Those readers who will give up immediately and get frustrated with me for not explaining it to them are not likely going to be great technical professionals of any sort, much less a programmer or administrator who will be constantly dealing with the common failures that make up a DBA's day.  Many of these people will stare at this like a dog staring at a traffic signal and still have no more idea of how to decipher the riddle. Without explanation they will give up, call the joke "stupid" and, feeling quite superior, walk away indignantly to their job likely flipping patties of meat-by-product. As a data professional or any programmer who has strayed  to this very data-oriented blog, you would, if you are worth your weight in air, either have recognized immediately what was going on, or felt a bit ignorant.  Your friends are chuckling over the joke, but why is it funny? Unfortunately you left your smartphone at home on the dresser because you were up late last night programming and were running late to work (again), so you will either have to fake a laugh or figure it out.  Digging through the joke, you figure out that the word "two" is the most important part, since initially the joke mentioned 10. Hmm, why did they spell out two, but not ten? Maybe 10 could be interpreted a different way?  As a DBA, this sort of logic comes into play every day, and sometimes it doesn't involve nerdy riddles or Star Wars folklore.  When you turn on your computer and get the dreaded blue screen of death, you don't immediately cry to the help desk and sit on your thumbs and whine about not being able to work. Do that and your co-workers will question your nerd-hood; I know I certainly would. You figure out the problem, and when you have it narrowed down, you call the help desk and tell them what the problem is, usually having to explain that yes, you did in fact try to reboot before calling.  Of course, sometimes humility does come in to play when you reach the end of your abilities, but the ‘end of abilities’ is not something any of us recognize readily. It is handy to have the ability to use logic to solve uncommon problems: It becomes especially useful when you are trying to solve a data-related problem such as a query performance issue, and the way that you approach things will tell your coworkers a great deal about your abilities.  The novice is likely to immediately take the approach of  trying to add more indexes or blaming the hardware. As you become more and more experienced, it becomes increasingly obvious that performance issues are a very complex topic. A query may be slow for a myriad of reasons, from concurrency issues, a poor query plan because of a parameter value (like parameter sniffing,) poor coding standards, or just because it is a complex query that is going to be slow sometimes. Some queries that you will deal with may have twenty joins and hundreds of search criteria, and it can take a lot of thought to determine what is going on.  You can usually figure out the problem to almost any query by using basic knowledge of how joins and queries work, together with the help of such things as the query plan, profiler or monitoring tools.  It is not unlikely that it can take a full day’s work to understand some queries, breaking them down into smaller queries to find a very tiny problem. Not every time will you actually find the problem, and it is part of the process to occasionally admit that the problem is random, and everything works fine now.  Sometimes, it is necessary to realize that a problem is outside of your current knowledge, and admit temporary defeat: You can, at least, narrow down the source of the problem by looking logically at all of the possible solutions. By doing this, you can satisfy your curiosity and learn more about what the actual problem was. For example, in the joke, had you never been exposed to the concept of binary numbers, there is no way you could have known that binary - 10 = decimal - 2, but you could have logically come to the conclusion that 10 must not mean ten in the context of the joke, and at that point you are that much closer to getting the joke and at least won't feel so ignorant.

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• Database Partitioning and Multiple Data Source Considerations

  - by Jeffrey McDaniel

  With the release of P6 Reporting Database 3.0 partitioning was added as a feature to help with performance and data management.  Careful investigation of requirements should be conducting prior to installation to help improve overall performance throughout the lifecycle of the data warehouse, preventing future maintenance that would result in data loss. Before installation try to determine how many data sources and partitions will be required along with the ranges.  In P6 Reporting Database 3.0 any adjustments outside of defaults must be made in the scripts and changes will require new ETL runs for each data source.  Considerations: 1. Standard Edition or Enterprise Edition of Oracle Database.   If you aren't using Oracle Enterprise Edition Database; the partitioning feature is not available. Multiple Data sources are only supported on Enterprise Edition of Oracle   Database. 2. Number of Data source Ids for partitioning during configuration.   This setting will specify how many partitions will be allocated for tables containing data source information.  This setting requires some evaluation prior to installation as       there are repercussions if you don't estimate correctly.   For example, if you configured the software for only 2 data sources and the partition setting was set to 2, however along came a 3rd data source.  The necessary steps to  accommodate this change are as follows: a) By default, 3 partitions are configured in the Reporting Database scripts. Edit the create_star_tables_part.sql script located in <installation directory>\star\scripts   and search for partition.  You’ll see P1, P2, P3.  Add additional partitions and sub-partitions for P4 and so on. These will appear in several areas.  (See P6 Reporting Database 3.0 Installation and Configuration guide for more information on this and how to adjust partition ranges). b) Run starETL -r.  This will recreate each table with the new partition key.  The effect of this step is that all tables data will be lost except for history related tables.   c) Run starETL for each of the 3 data sources (with the data source # (starETL.bat "-s2" -as defined in P6 Reporting Database 3.0 Installation and Configuration guide) The best strategy for this setting is to overestimate based on possible growth.  If during implementation it is deemed that there are atleast 2 data sources with possibility for growth, it is a better idea to set this setting to 4 or 5, allowing room for the future and preventing a ‘start over’ scenario. 3. The Number of Partitions and the Number of Months per Partitions are not specific to multi-data source.  These settings work in accordance to a sub partition of larger tables with regard to time related data.  These settings are dataset specific for optimization.  The number of months per partition is self explanatory, optimally the smaller the partition, the better query performance so if the dataset has an extremely large number of spread/history records, a lower number of months is optimal.  Working in accordance with this setting is the number of partitions, this will determine how many "buckets" will be created per the number of months setting.  For example, if you kept the default for # of partitions of 3, and select 2 months for each partitions you would end up with: -1st partition, 2 months -2nd partition, 2 months -3rd partition, all the remaining records Therefore with records to this setting, it is important to analyze your source db spread ranges and history settings when determining the proper number of months per partition and number of partitions to optimize performance.  Also be aware the DBA will need to monitor when these partition ranges will fill up and when additional partitions will need to be added.  If you get to the final range partition and there are no additional range partitions all data will be included into the last partition. 

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• Do’s and Don’ts Building SharePoint Applications

  - by Bil Simser

  SharePoint is a great platform for building quick LOB applications. Simple things from employee time trackers to server and software inventory to full blown Help Desks can be crafted up using SharePoint from just customizing Lists. No programming necessary. However there are a few tricks I’ve painfully learned over the years that you can use for your own solutions. DO What’s In A Name? When you create a new list, column, or view you’ll commonly name it something like “Expense Reports”. However this has the ugly effect of creating a url to the list as “Expense%20Reports”. Or worse, an internal field name of “Expense_x0x0020_Reports” which is not only cryptic but hard to remember when you’re trying to find the column by internal name. While “Expense Reports 2011” is user friendly, “ExpenseReports2011” is not (unless you’re a programmer). So that’s not the solution. Well, not entirely. Instead when you create your column or list or view use the scrunched up name (I can’t think of the technical term for it right now) of “ExpenseReports2011”, “WomenAtTheOfficeThatAreMen” or “KoalaMeatIsGoodWhenBroiled”. After you’ve created it, go back and change the name to the more friendly “Silly Expense Reports That Nobody Reads”. The original internal name will be the url and code friendly one without spaces while the one used on data entry forms and view headers will be the human version. Smart Columns When building a view include columns that make sense. By default when you add a column the “Add to default view” is checked. Resist the urge to be lazy and leave it checked. Uncheck that puppy and decide consciously what columns should be included in the view. Pick columns that make sense to what the user is trying to do. This means you have to talk to the user. Yes, I know. That can be trying at times and even painful. Go ahead, talk to them. You might learn something. Find out what’s important to them and why. If they’re doing something repetitively as part of their job, try to make their life easier by including what’s most important to them. Do they really need to see the Created *and* Modified date of a document or do they just need the title and author? You’ll only find out after talking to them (or getting them drunk in a bar and leaving them in the back alley handcuffed to a garbage bin, don’t ask). Gotta Keep it Separated Hey, views are there for a reason. Use them. While “All Items” is a fine way to present a list of well, all items, it’s hardly sufficient to present a list of servers built before the Y2K bug hit. You’ll be scrolling the list for hours finally arriving at Page 387 of 12,591 and cursing that SharePoint guy for convincing you that putting your hardware into a list would be of any use to anyone. Next to collecting the data, presenting it is just as important. Views are often overlooked and many times ignored or misused. They’re the way you can slice and dice the data up so that you’re not trying to consume 3,000 years of human evolution on a single web page. Remember views can be filtered so feel free to create a view for each status or one for each operating system or one for each species of Information Worker you might be putting in that list or document library. Not only will it reduce the number of items someone sees at one time, it’ll also make the information that much more relevant. Also remember that each view is a separate page. Use it in navigation by creating a menu on the Quick Launch to each view. The discoverability of the Views menu isn’t overly obvious and if you violate the rule of columns (see Horizontally Scrolling below) the view menu doesn’t even show up until you shuffle the scroll bar to the left. Navigation links, big giant buttons, a screaming flashing “CLICK ME NOW” will help your users find their way. Sort It! Views are great so we’re building nice, rich views for the user. Awesomesauce. However sort is not very discoverable by the user. For example when you’re looking at a view how do you know if it’s ascending or descending and what is it sorted on. Maybe it’s sorted using two fields so what’s that all about? Help your users by letting them know the information they’re looking at is sorted. Maybe you name the view something appropriate like “Bogus Expense Claims Sorted By Deadbeats”. If you use the naming strategy just make sure you keep the name consistent with the description. In the previous example their better be a Deadbeat column so I can see the sort in action. Having a “Loser” column, while equally correct, is a little obtuse to the average Information Worker. Remember, they usually don’t use acronyms and even if they knew how to, it’s not immediately obvious to them that’s what you’re trying to convey. Another option is to simply drop a Content Editor Web Part above the list and explain exactly the view they’re looking at. Each view is it’s own page so one CEWP won’t be used across the board. Be descriptive in what the user is seeing but try to keep it brief. Dumping the first chapter of I, Claudius might be informative to the data but can gobble up screen real estate and miss the point of having the list. DO NOT Useless Attachments The attachments column is, in a word, useless. For the most part. Sure it indicates there’s an attachment on the list item but in the grand scheme of things that’s not overly informative. Maybe it is and by all means, if it makes sense to you include it. Colour it. Make it shine and stand like the Return of Clippy on every SharePoint list. Without it being functional it can be boring. EndUserSharePoint.com has an article to make the son of Clippy that much more useful so feel free to head over and check out this blog post by Paul Grenier on the task (Warning code ahead! Danger Will Robinson!) In any case, I would suggest you remove it from your views. Again if it’s important then include it but consider the jQuery solution above to make it functional. It’s added by default to views and one of things that people forget to clean up. Horizontal Scrolling Screen real estate is premium so building a list that contains 8,000 columns and stretches horizontally across 15 screens probably isn’t the most user friendly experience. Most users can’t figure out how to scroll vertically let alone horizontally so don’t make it even that more confusing for them. Take the Steve Krug approach in your view designs and try not to make the user think. Again views are your friend. Consider splitting up the data into views where one view contains 10 columns and other view contains the other 10. Okay, maybe your information doesn’t work that way but humans can only process 7 pieces of data at a time, 10 at most (then their heads explode and you don’t want to clean that mess up, especially on a Friday night before the big dance). It drives me batshit crazy when I see a view with 80 columns of data. I often ask the user “So what do you do with all this information”. The response is usually “With this data [the first 10 columns] I decide if I’m going to fire everyone, and with this data [the next 10 columns] I decide if I’m going to set the building on fire and collect the insurance”. It’s at that point I show them how to create two new views “People Who Are About To Get The Axe” and “Beach Time For The Executives”. Again, talk to your users and try to reason with them on cutting down the number of columns they see at once. Vertical Scrolling Another big faux pas I find is the use of multi-line comment fields in views. It’s not so bad when you have a statement like this in your view: “I really like, oh my god, thought I was going to scream when I saw this turtle then I decided what I was going to have for dinner and frankly I hate having to work late so when I was talking to the customer I thought, oh my god, what if the customer has turtles and then it appeared to me that I really was hungry so I'm going to have lunch now.” It’s fine if that’s the only column along with two or three others, but once you slap those 20 columns of data into the list, the comment field wraps and forms a new multi-page novel that takes up your entire screen. Do everyone a favour and just avoid adding the column to views. Train the user to just click through to the item if they need to see the contents. Duplicate Information Duplication is never good. Views and great as you can group data together. For example create a view of project status reports grouped by author. Then you can see what project manager is being a dip and not submitting their report. However if you group by author do you really need the Created By field as well in the view? Or if the view is grouped by Project then Author do you need both. Horizontal real estate is always at a premium so try not to clutter up the view with duplicate data like this. Oh  yeah, if you’re scratching your head saying “But Bil, if I don’t include the Project name in the view and I have a lot of items then how do I know which one I’m looking at”. That’s a hint that your grouping is too vague or you have too much data in the view based on that criteria. Filter it down a notch, create some views, and try to keep the group down to a single screen where you can see the group header at the top of the page. Again it’s just managing the information you have. Redundant, See Redundant This partially relates to duplicate information and smart columns but basically remember to not include the obvious in a view. Remember, don’t make me think. If you’ve gone to the trouble (and it was a lot of trouble wasn’t it?) to create separate views of your data by creating a “September Zombie Brain Sales”, “October Zombie Brain Sales”, etc. then please for the love of all that is holy do not include the Month and Product columns in your view. Similarly if you create a “My” view of anything (“My Favourite Brands of Spandex”, “My Co-Workers I Find The Urge To Disinfect”) then again, do not include the owner or author field (or whatever field you use to identify “My”). That’s just silly. Hope that helps! Happy customizing!

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• Time Warp

  - by Jesse

  It’s no secret that daylight savings time can wreak havoc on systems that rely heavily on dates. The system I work on is centered around recording dates and times, so naturally my co-workers and I have seen our fair share of date-related bugs. From time to time, however, we come across something that we haven’t seen before. A few weeks ago the following error message started showing up in our logs: “The supplied DateTime represents an invalid time. For example, when the clock is adjusted forward, any time in the period that is skipped is invalid.” This seemed very cryptic, especially since it was coming from areas of our application that are typically only concerned with capturing date-only (no explicit time component) from the user, like reports that take a “start date” and “end date” parameter. For these types of parameters we just leave off the time component when capturing the date values, so midnight is used as a “placeholder” time. How is midnight an “invalid time”? Globalization Is Hard Over the last couple of years our software has been rolled out to users in several countries outside of the United States, including Brazil. Brazil begins and ends daylight savings time at midnight on pre-determined days of the year. On October 16, 2011 at midnight many areas in Brazil began observing daylight savings time at which time their clocks were set forward one hour. This means that at the instant it became midnight on October 16, it actually became 1:00 AM, so any time between 12:00 AM and 12:59:59 AM never actually happened. Because we store all date values in the database in UTC, always adjust any “local” dates provided by a user to UTC before using them as filters in a query. The error we saw was thrown by .NET when trying to convert the Brazilian local time of 2011-10-16 12:00 AM to UTC since that local time never actually existed. We hadn’t experienced this same issue with any of our US customers because the daylight savings time changes in the US occur at 2:00 AM which doesn’t conflict with our “placeholder” time of midnight. Detecting Invalid Times In .NET you might use code similar to the following for converting a local time to UTC: var localDate = new DateTime(2011, 10, 16); //2011-10-16 @ midnight const string timeZoneId = "E. South America Standard Time"; //Windows system timezone Id for "Brasilia" timezone. var localTimeZone = TimeZoneInfo.FindSystemTimeZoneById(timeZoneId); var convertedDate = TimeZoneInfo.ConvertTimeToUtc(localDate, localTimeZone); The code above throws the “invalid time” exception referenced above. We could try to detect whether or not the local time is invalid with something like this: var localDate = new DateTime(2011, 10, 16); //2011-10-16 @ midnight const string timeZoneId = "E. South America Standard Time"; //Windows system timezone Id for "Brasilia" timezone. var localTimeZone = TimeZoneInfo.FindSystemTimeZoneById(timeZoneId); if (localTimeZone.IsInvalidTime(localDate)) localDate = localDate.AddHours(1); var convertedDate = TimeZoneInfo.ConvertTimeToUtc(localDate, localTimeZone); This code works in this particular scenario, but it hardly seems robust. It also does nothing to address the issue that can arise when dealing with the ambiguous times that fall around the end of daylight savings. When we roll the clocks back an hour they record the same hour on the same day twice in a row. To continue on with our Brazil example, on February 19, 2012 at 12:00 AM, it will immediately become February 18, 2012 at 11:00 PM all over again. In this scenario, how should we interpret February 18, 2011 11:30 PM? Enter Noda Time I heard about Noda Time, the .NET port of the Java library Joda Time, a little while back and filed it away in the back of my mind under the “sounds-like-it-might-be-useful-someday” category.  Let’s see how we might deal with the issue of invalid and ambiguous local times using Noda Time (note that as of this writing the samples below will only work using the latest code available from the Noda Time repo on Google Code. The NuGet package version 0.1.0 published 2011-08-19 will incorrectly report unambiguous times as being ambiguous) : var localDateTime = new LocalDateTime(2011, 10, 16, 0, 0); const string timeZoneId = "Brazil/East"; var timezone = DateTimeZone.ForId(timeZoneId); var localDateTimeMaping = timezone.MapLocalDateTime(localDateTime); ZonedDateTime unambiguousLocalDateTime; switch (localDateTimeMaping.Type) { case ZoneLocalMapping.ResultType.Unambiguous: unambiguousLocalDateTime = localDateTimeMaping.UnambiguousMapping; break; case ZoneLocalMapping.ResultType.Ambiguous: unambiguousLocalDateTime = localDateTimeMaping.EarlierMapping; break; case ZoneLocalMapping.ResultType.Skipped: unambiguousLocalDateTime = new ZonedDateTime( localDateTimeMaping.ZoneIntervalAfterTransition.Start, timezone); break; default: throw new InvalidOperationException(string.Format("Unexpected mapping result type: {0}", localDateTimeMaping.Type)); } var convertedDateTime = unambiguousLocalDateTime.ToInstant().ToDateTimeUtc(); Let’s break this sample down: I’m using the Noda Time ‘LocalDateTime’ object to represent the local date and time. I’ve provided the year, month, day, hour, and minute (zeros for the hour and minute here represent midnight). You can think of a ‘LocalDateTime’ as an “invalidated” date and time; there is no information available about the time zone that this date and time belong to, so Noda Time can’t make any guarantees about its ambiguity. The ‘timeZoneId’ in this sample is different than the ones above. In order to use the .NET TimeZoneInfo class we need to provide Windows time zone ids. Noda Time expects an Olson (tz / zoneinfo) time zone identifier and does not currently offer any means of mapping the Windows time zones to their Olson counterparts, though project owner Jon Skeet has said that some sort of mapping will be publicly accessible at some point in the future. I’m making use of the Noda Time ‘DateTimeZone.MapLocalDateTime’ method to disambiguate the original local date time value. This method returns an instance of the Noda Time object ‘ZoneLocalMapping’ containing information about the provided local date time maps to the provided time zone.  The disambiguated local date and time value will be stored in the ‘unambiguousLocalDateTime’ variable as an instance of the Noda Time ‘ZonedDateTime’ object. An instance of this object represents a completely unambiguous point in time and is comprised of a local date and time, a time zone, and an offset from UTC. Instances of ZonedDateTime can only be created from within the Noda Time assembly (the constructor is ‘internal’) to ensure to callers that each instance represents an unambiguous point in time. The value of the ‘unambiguousLocalDateTime’ might vary depending upon the ‘ResultType’ returned by the ‘MapLocalDateTime’ method. There are three possible outcomes: If the provided local date time is unambiguous in the provided time zone I can immediately set the ‘unambiguousLocalDateTime’ variable from the ‘Unambiguous Mapping’ property of the mapping returned by the ‘MapLocalDateTime’ method. If the provided local date time is ambiguous in the provided time zone (i.e. it falls in an hour that was repeated when moving clocks backward from Daylight Savings to Standard Time), I can use the ‘EarlierMapping’ property to get the earlier of the two possible local dates to define the unambiguous local date and time that I need. I could have also opted to use the ‘LaterMapping’ property in this case, or even returned an error and asked the user to specify the proper choice. The important thing to note here is that as the programmer I’ve been forced to deal with what appears to be an ambiguous date and time. If the provided local date time represents a skipped time (i.e. it falls in an hour that was skipped when moving clocks forward from Standard Time to Daylight Savings Time),  I have access to the time intervals that fell immediately before and immediately after the point in time that caused my date to be skipped. In this case I have opted to disambiguate my local date and time by moving it forward to the beginning of the interval immediately following the skipped period. Again, I could opt to use the end of the interval immediately preceding the skipped period, or raise an error depending on the needs of the application. The point of this code is to convert a local date and time to a UTC date and time for use in a SQL Server database, so the final ‘convertedDate’  variable (typed as a plain old .NET DateTime) has its value set from a Noda Time ‘Instant’. An 'Instant’ represents a number of ticks since 1970-01-01 at midnight (Unix epoch) and can easily be converted to a .NET DateTime in the UTC time zone using the ‘ToDateTimeUtc()’ method. This sample is admittedly contrived and could certainly use some refactoring, but I think it captures the general approach needed to take a local date and time and convert it to UTC with Noda Time. At first glance it might seem that Noda Time makes this “simple” code more complicated and verbose because it forces you to explicitly deal with the local date disambiguation, but I feel that the length and complexity of the Noda Time sample is proportionate to the complexity of the problem. Using TimeZoneInfo leaves you susceptible to overlooking ambiguous and skipped times that could result in run-time errors or (even worse) run-time data corruption in the form of a local date and time being adjusted to UTC incorrectly. I should point out that this research is my first look at Noda Time and I know that I’ve only scratched the surface of its full capabilities. I also think it’s safe to say that it’s still beta software for the time being so I’m not rushing out to use it production systems just yet, but I will definitely be tinkering with it more and keeping an eye on it as it progresses.

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• C#/.NET Little Wonders: Fun With Enum Methods

  - by James Michael Hare

  Once again lets dive into the Little Wonders of .NET, those small things in the .NET languages and BCL classes that make development easier by increasing readability, maintainability, and/or performance. So probably every one of us has used an enumerated type at one time or another in a C# program.  The enumerated types we create are a great way to represent that a value can be one of a set of discrete values (or a combination of those values in the case of bit flags). But the power of enum types go far beyond simple assignment and comparison, there are many methods in the Enum class (that all enum types “inherit” from) that can give you even more power when dealing with them. IsDefined() – check if a given value exists in the enum Are you reading a value for an enum from a data source, but are unsure if it is actually a valid value or not?  Casting won’t tell you this, and Parse() isn’t guaranteed to balk either if you give it an int or a combination of flags.  So what can we do? Let’s assume we have a small enum like this for result codes we want to return back from our business logic layer: 1: public enum ResultCode 2: { 3: Success, 4: Warning, 5: Error 6: } In this enum, Success will be zero (unless given another value explicitly), Warning will be one, and Error will be two. So what happens if we have code like this where perhaps we’re getting the result code from another data source (could be database, could be web service, etc)? 1: public ResultCode PerformAction() 2: { 3: // set up and call some method that returns an int. 4: int result = ResultCodeFromDataSource(); 5:  6: // this will suceed even if result is < 0 or > 2. 7: return (ResultCode) result; 8: } So what happens if result is –1 or 4?  Well, the cast does not fail, so what we end up with would be an instance of a ResultCode that would have a value that’s outside of the bounds of the enum constants we defined. This means if you had a block of code like: 1: switch (result) 2: { 3: case ResultType.Success: 4: // do success stuff 5: break; 6:  7: case ResultType.Warning: 8: // do warning stuff 9: break; 10:  11: case ResultType.Error: 12: // do error stuff 13: break; 14: } That you would hit none of these blocks (which is a good argument for always having a default in a switch by the way). So what can you do?  Well, there is a handy static method called IsDefined() on the Enum class which will tell you if an enum value is defined.  1: public ResultCode PerformAction() 2: { 3: int result = ResultCodeFromDataSource(); 4:  5: if (!Enum.IsDefined(typeof(ResultCode), result)) 6: { 7: throw new InvalidOperationException("Enum out of range."); 8: } 9:  10: return (ResultCode) result; 11: } In fact, this is often recommended after you Parse() or cast a value to an enum as there are ways for values to get past these methods that may not be defined. If you don’t like the syntax of passing in the type of the enum, you could clean it up a bit by creating an extension method instead that would allow you to call IsDefined() off any isntance of the enum: 1: public static class EnumExtensions 2: { 3: // helper method that tells you if an enum value is defined for it's enumeration 4: public static bool IsDefined(this Enum value) 5: { 6: return Enum.IsDefined(value.GetType(), value); 7: } 8: }   HasFlag() – an easier way to see if a bit (or bits) are set Most of us who came from the land of C programming have had to deal extensively with bit flags many times in our lives.  As such, using bit flags may be almost second nature (for a quick refresher on bit flags in enum types see one of my old posts here). However, in higher-level languages like C#, the need to manipulate individual bit flags is somewhat diminished, and the code to check for bit flag enum values may be obvious to an advanced developer but cryptic to a novice developer. For example, let’s say you have an enum for a messaging platform that contains bit flags: 1: // usually, we pluralize flags enum type names 2: [Flags] 3: public enum MessagingOptions 4: { 5: None = 0, 6: Buffered = 0x01, 7: Persistent = 0x02, 8: Durable = 0x04, 9: Broadcast = 0x08 10: } We can combine these bit flags using the bitwise OR operator (the ‘|’ pipe character): 1: // combine bit flags using 2: var myMessenger = new Messenger(MessagingOptions.Buffered | MessagingOptions.Broadcast); Now, if we wanted to check the flags, we’d have to test then using the bit-wise AND operator (the ‘&’ character): 1: if ((options & MessagingOptions.Buffered) == MessagingOptions.Buffered) 2: { 3: // do code to set up buffering... 4: // ... 5: } While the ‘|’ for combining flags is easy enough to read for advanced developers, the ‘&’ test tends to be easy for novice developers to get wrong.  First of all you have to AND the flag combination with the value, and then typically you should test against the flag combination itself (and not just for a non-zero)!  This is because the flag combination you are testing with may combine multiple bits, in which case if only one bit is set, the result will be non-zero but not necessarily all desired bits! Thanks goodness in .NET 4.0 they gave us the HasFlag() method.  This method can be called from an enum instance to test to see if a flag is set, and best of all you can avoid writing the bit wise logic yourself.  Not to mention it will be more readable to a novice developer as well: 1: if (options.HasFlag(MessagingOptions.Buffered)) 2: { 3: // do code to set up buffering... 4: // ... 5: } It is much more concise and unambiguous, thus increasing your maintainability and readability. It would be nice to have a corresponding SetFlag() method, but unfortunately generic types don’t allow you to specialize on Enum, which makes it a bit more difficult.  It can be done but you have to do some conversions to numeric and then back to the enum which makes it less of a payoff than having the HasFlag() method.  But if you want to create it for symmetry, it would look something like this: 1: public static T SetFlag<T>(this Enum value, T flags) 2: { 3: if (!value.GetType().IsEquivalentTo(typeof(T))) 4: { 5: throw new ArgumentException("Enum value and flags types don't match."); 6: } 7:  8: // yes this is ugly, but unfortunately we need to use an intermediate boxing cast 9: return (T)Enum.ToObject(typeof (T), Convert.ToUInt64(value) | Convert.ToUInt64(flags)); 10: } Note that since the enum types are value types, we need to assign the result to something (much like string.Trim()).  Also, you could chain several SetFlag() operations together or create one that takes a variable arg list if desired. Parse() and ToString() – transitioning from string to enum and back Sometimes, you may want to be able to parse an enum from a string or convert it to a string - Enum has methods built in to let you do this.  Now, many may already know this, but may not appreciate how much power are in these two methods. For example, if you want to parse a string as an enum, it’s easy and works just like you’d expect from the numeric types: 1: string optionsString = "Persistent"; 2:  3: // can use Enum.Parse, which throws if finds something it doesn't like... 4: var result = (MessagingOptions)Enum.Parse(typeof (MessagingOptions), optionsString); 5:  6: if (result == MessagingOptions.Persistent) 7: { 8: Console.WriteLine("It worked!"); 9: } Note that Enum.Parse() will throw if it finds a value it doesn’t like.  But the values it likes are fairly flexible!  You can pass in a single value, or a comma separated list of values for flags and it will parse them all and set all bits: 1: // for string values, can have one, or comma separated. 2: string optionsString = "Persistent, Buffered"; 3:  4: var result = (MessagingOptions)Enum.Parse(typeof (MessagingOptions), optionsString); 5:  6: if (result.HasFlag(MessagingOptions.Persistent) && result.HasFlag(MessagingOptions.Buffered)) 7: { 8: Console.WriteLine("It worked!"); 9: } Or you can parse in a string containing a number that represents a single value or combination of values to set: 1: // 3 is the combination of Buffered (0x01) and Persistent (0x02) 2: var optionsString = "3"; 3:  4: var result = (MessagingOptions) Enum.Parse(typeof (MessagingOptions), optionsString); 5:  6: if (result.HasFlag(MessagingOptions.Persistent) && result.HasFlag(MessagingOptions.Buffered)) 7: { 8: Console.WriteLine("It worked again!"); 9: } And, if you really aren’t sure if the parse will work, and don’t want to handle an exception, you can use TryParse() instead: 1: string optionsString = "Persistent, Buffered"; 2: MessagingOptions result; 3:  4: // try parse returns true if successful, and takes an out parm for the result 5: if (Enum.TryParse(optionsString, out result)) 6: { 7: if (result.HasFlag(MessagingOptions.Persistent) && result.HasFlag(MessagingOptions.Buffered)) 8: { 9: Console.WriteLine("It worked!"); 10: } 11: } So we covered parsing a string to an enum, what about reversing that and converting an enum to a string?  The ToString() method is the obvious and most basic choice for most of us, but did you know you can pass a format string for enum types that dictate how they are written as a string?: 1: MessagingOptions value = MessagingOptions.Buffered | MessagingOptions.Persistent; 2:  3: // general format, which is the default, 4: Console.WriteLine("Default : " + value); 5: Console.WriteLine("G (default): " + value.ToString("G")); 6:  7: // Flags format, even if type does not have Flags attribute. 8: Console.WriteLine("F (flags) : " + value.ToString("F")); 9:  10: // integer format, value as number. 11: Console.WriteLine("D (num) : " + value.ToString("D")); 12:  13: // hex format, value as hex 14: Console.WriteLine("X (hex) : " + value.ToString("X")); Which displays: 1: Default : Buffered, Persistent 2: G (default): Buffered, Persistent 3: F (flags) : Buffered, Persistent 4: D (num) : 3 5: X (hex) : 00000003 Now, you may not really see a difference here between G and F because I used a [Flags] enum, the difference is that the “F” option treats the enum as if it were flags even if the [Flags] attribute is not present.  Let’s take a non-flags enum like the ResultCode used earlier: 1: // yes, we can do this even if it is not [Flags] enum. 2: ResultCode value = ResultCode.Warning | ResultCode.Error; And if we run that through the same formats again we get: 1: Default : 3 2: G (default): 3 3: F (flags) : Warning, Error 4: D (num) : 3 5: X (hex) : 00000003 Notice that since we had multiple values combined, but it was not a [Flags] marked enum, the G and default format gave us a number instead of a value name.  This is because the value was not a valid single-value constant of the enum.  However, using the F flags format string, it broke out the value into its component flags even though it wasn’t marked [Flags]. So, if you want to get an enum to display appropriately for whether or not it has the [Flags] attribute, use G which is the default.  If you always want it to attempt to break down the flags, use F.  For numeric output, obviously D or  X are the best choice depending on whether you want decimal or hex. Summary Hopefully, you learned a couple of new tricks with using the Enum class today!  I’ll add more little wonders as I think of them and thanks for all the invaluable input!   Technorati Tags: C#,.NET,Little Wonders,Enum,BlackRabbitCoder

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• Data munging and data import scripting

  - by morpheous

  I need to write some scripts to carry out some tasks on my server (running Ubuntu server 8.04 TLS). The tasks are to be run periodically, so I will be running the scripts as cron jobs. I have divided the tasks into "group A" and "group B" - because (in my mind at least), they are a bit different. Task Group A import data from a file and possibly reformat it - by reformatting, I mean doing things like santizing the data, possibly normalizing it and or running calculations on 'columns' of the data Import the munged data into a database. For now, I am mostly using mySQL for the vast majority of imports - although some files will be imported into a sqlLite database. Note: The files will be mostly text files, although some of the files are in a binary format (my own proprietary format, written by a C++ application I developed). Task Group B Extract data from the database Perform calculations on the data and either insert or update tables in the database. My coding experience is is primarily as a C/C++ developer, although I have been using PHP as well for the last 2 years or so. I am from a windows background so I am still finding my feet in the linux environment. My question is this - I need to write scripts to perform the tasks I described above. Although I suppose I could write a few C++ applications to be used in the shell scripts, I think it may be better to write them in a scripting language (maybe this is a flawed assumption?). My thinking is that it would be easier to modify thins in a script - no need to rebuild etc for changes to functionality. Additionally, C++ data munging in C++ tends to involve more lines of code than "natural" scripting languages such as Perl, Python etc. Assuming that the majority of people on here agree that scripting is the way to go, herein lies my dilema. Which scripting language to use to perform the tasks above (giving my background). My gut instinct tells me that Perl (shudder) would be the most obvious choice for performing all of the above tasks. BUT (and that is a big BUT). The mere mention of Perl makes my toes curl, as I had a very, very bag experience with it a while back. The syntax seems quite unnatural to me - despite how many times I have tried to learn it - so if possible, I would really like to give it a miss. PHP (which I already know), also am not sure is a good candidate for scripting on the CLI (I have not seen many examples on how to do this etc - so I may be wrong). The last thing I must mention is that IF I have to learn a new language in order to do this, I cannot afford (time constraint) to spend more than a day, in learning the key commands/features required in order to do this (I can always learn the details of the language later, once I have actually deployed the scripts). So, which scripting language would you recommend (PHP, Python, Perl, [insert your favorite here]) - and most importantly WHY?. Or, should I just stick to writing little C++ applications that I call in a shell script?. Lastly, if you have suggested a scripting language, can you please show with a FEW lines (Perl mongers - I'm looking in your direction [nothing to cryptic!] ;) ) how I can use the language you suggested to do what I want to do. Hopefully, the lines you present will convince me that it can be done easily and elegantly in the language you suggested.

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• Please recommend me intermediate-to-advanced Python books to buy.

  - by anonnoir

  I'm in the final year, final semester of my law degree, and will be graduating very soon. (April, to be specific.) But before I begin practice, I plan to take 2 two months off, purely for serious programming study. So I'm currently looking for some Python-related books, gauged intermediate to advanced, which are interesting (because of the subject matter itself) and possibly useful to my future line of work. I've identified 2 possible purchases at the moment: Natural Language Processing with Python. The law deals mostly with words, and I've quite a number of ideas as to where I might go with NLP. Data extraction, summaries, client management systems linked with document templates, etc. Programming Collective Intelligence. This book fascinates me, because I've always liked the idea of machine learning (and I'm currently studying it by the side too, for fun). I'd like to build/play around with Web 2.0 applications; and who knows if I can apply some of the things I learn to my legal work. (E.g. Playground experiments to determine how and under what circumstances judges might be biased, by forcing algorithms to pore through judgments and calculate similarities, etc.) Please feel free to criticize my current choices, but do at least offer or recommend other books that I should read in their place. My budget can deal with 4 books, max. These books will be used heavily throughout the 2 months; I will be reading them back to back, absorbing the explanations given, and hacking away at their code. Also, the books themselves should satisfy 2 main criteria: Application. The book must teach how to solve problems. I like reading theory, but I want to build things and solve problems first. Even playful applications are fine, because games and experiments always have real-world applications sooner or later. Readability. I like reading technical books, no matter how difficult they are. I enjoy the effort and the feeling that you're learning something. But the book shouldn't contain code or explanations that are too cryptic or erratic. Even if it's difficult, the book's content should be accessible with focused reading. Note: I realize that I am somewhat of a beginner to the whole programming thing, so please don't put me down. But from experience, I think it's better to aim up and leave my comfort zone when learning new things, rather than to just remain stagnant the way I am. (At least the difficulty gives me focus: i.e. if a programmer can be that good, perhaps if I sustain my own efforts I too can be as good as him someday.) If anything, I'm also a very determined person, so two months of day-to-night intensive programming study with nothing else on my mind should, I think, give me a bit of a fighting chance to push my programming skills to a much higher level.

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