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• SQL SERVER – ASYNC_IO_COMPLETION – Wait Type – Day 11 of 28

  - by pinaldave

  For any good system three things are vital: CPU, Memory and IO (disk). Among these three, IO is the most crucial factor of SQL Server. Looking at real-world cases, I do not see IT people upgrading CPU and Memory frequently. However, the disk is often upgraded for either improving the space, speed or throughput. Today we will look at another IO-related wait type. From Book On-Line: Occurs when a task is waiting for I/Os to finish. ASYNC_IO_COMPLETION Explanation: Any tasks are waiting for I/O to finish. If by any means your application that’s connected to SQL Server is processing the data very slowly, this type of wait can occur. Several long-running database operations like BACKUP, CREATE DATABASE, ALTER DATABASE or other operations can also create this wait type. Reducing ASYNC_IO_COMPLETION wait: When it is an issue related to IO, one should check for the following things associated to IO subsystem: Look at the programming and see if there is any application code which processes the data slowly (like inefficient loop, etc.). Note that it should be re-written to avoid this  wait type. Proper placing of the files is very important. We should check the file system for proper placement of the files – LDF and MDF on separate drive, TempDB on another separate drive, hot spot tables on separate filegroup (and on separate disk), etc. Check the File Statistics and see if there is a higher IO Read and IO Write Stall SQL SERVER – Get File Statistics Using fn_virtualfilestats. Check event log and error log for any errors or warnings related to IO. If you are using SAN (Storage Area Network), check the throughput of the SAN system as well as configuration of the HBA Queue Depth. In one of my recent projects, the SAN was performing really badly and so the SAN administrator did not accept it. After some investigations, he agreed to change the HBA Queue Depth on the development setup (test environment). As soon as we changed the HBA Queue Depth to quite a higher value, there was a sudden big improvement in the performance. It is very likely to happen that there are no proper indexes on the system and yet there are lots of table scans and heap scans. Creating proper index can reduce the IO bandwidth considerably. If SQL Server can use appropriate cover index instead of clustered index, it can effectively reduce lots of CPU, Memory and IO (considering cover index has lesser columns than cluster table and all other; it depends upon the situation). You can refer to the following two articles I wrote that talk about how to optimize indexes: Create Missing Indexes Drop Unused Indexes Checking Memory Related Perfmon Counters SQLServer: Memory Manager\Memory Grants Pending (Consistent higher value than 0-2) SQLServer: Memory Manager\Memory Grants Outstanding (Consistent higher value, Benchmark) SQLServer: Buffer Manager\Buffer Hit Cache Ratio (Higher is better, greater than 90% for usually smooth running system) SQLServer: Buffer Manager\Page Life Expectancy (Consistent lower value than 300 seconds) Memory: Available Mbytes (Information only) Memory: Page Faults/sec (Benchmark only) Memory: Pages/sec (Benchmark only) Checking Disk Related Perfmon Counters Average Disk sec/Read (Consistent higher value than 4-8 millisecond is not good) Average Disk sec/Write (Consistent higher value than 4-8 millisecond is not good) Average Disk Read/Write Queue Length (Consistent higher value than benchmark is not good) Read all the post in the Wait Types and Queue series. Note: The information presented here is from my experience and there is no way that I claim it to be accurate. I suggest reading Book OnLine for further clarification. All the discussions of Wait Stats in this blog are generic and vary from system to system. It is recommended that you test this on a development server before implementing it to a production server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology

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• SQL SERVER – IO_COMPLETION – Wait Type – Day 10 of 28

  - by pinaldave

  For any good system three things are vital: CPU, Memory and IO (disk). Among these three, IO is the most crucial factor of SQL Server. Looking at real-world cases, I do not see IT people upgrading CPU and Memory frequently. However, the disk is often upgraded for either improving the space, speed or throughput. Today we will look at an IO-related wait types. From Book On-Line: Occurs while waiting for I/O operations to complete. This wait type generally represents non-data page I/Os. Data page I/O completion waits appear as PAGEIOLATCH_* waits. IO_COMPLETION Explanation: Any tasks are waiting for I/O to finish. This is a good indication that IO needs to be looked over here. Reducing IO_COMPLETION wait: When it is an issue concerning the IO, one should look at the following things related to IO subsystem: Proper placing of the files is very important. We should check the file system for proper placement of files – LDF and MDF on a separate drive, TempDB on another separate drive, hot spot tables on separate filegroup (and on separate disk),etc. Check the File Statistics and see if there is higher IO Read and IO Write Stall SQL SERVER – Get File Statistics Using fn_virtualfilestats. Check event log and error log for any errors or warnings related to IO. If you are using SAN (Storage Area Network), check the throughput of the SAN system as well as the configuration of the HBA Queue Depth. In one of my recent projects, the SAN was performing really badly so the SAN administrator did not accept it. After some investigations, he agreed to change the HBA Queue Depth on development (test environment) set up and as soon as we changed the HBA Queue Depth to quite a higher value, there was a sudden big improvement in the performance. It is very possible that there are no proper indexes in the system and there are lots of table scans and heap scans. Creating proper index can reduce the IO bandwidth considerably. If SQL Server can use appropriate cover index instead of clustered index, it can effectively reduce lots of CPU, Memory and IO (considering cover index has lesser columns than cluster table and all other; it depends upon the situation). You can refer to the two articles that I wrote; they are about how to optimize indexes: Create Missing Indexes Drop Unused Indexes Checking Memory Related Perfmon Counters SQLServer: Memory Manager\Memory Grants Pending (Consistent higher value than 0-2) SQLServer: Memory Manager\Memory Grants Outstanding (Consistent higher value, Benchmark) SQLServer: Buffer Manager\Buffer Hit Cache Ratio (Higher is better, greater than 90% for usually smooth running system) SQLServer: Buffer Manager\Page Life Expectancy (Consistent lower value than 300 seconds) Memory: Available Mbytes (Information only) Memory: Page Faults/sec (Benchmark only) Memory: Pages/sec (Benchmark only) Checking Disk Related Perfmon Counters Average Disk sec/Read (Consistent higher value than 4-8 millisecond is not good) Average Disk sec/Write (Consistent higher value than 4-8 millisecond is not good) Average Disk Read/Write Queue Length (Consistent higher value than benchmark is not good) Note: The information presented here is from my experience and there is no way that I claim it to be accurate. I suggest reading Book OnLine for further clarification. All the discussions of Wait Stats in this blog are generic and vary from system to system. It is recommended that you test this on a development server before implementing it to a production server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Types, SQL White Papers, T SQL, Technology

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• How can we improve overall Programmer Education & Training?

  - by crosenblum

  Last week, I was just viewing this amazing interview by Kevin Rose of Phillip Rosedale, of Second Life. And they had an amazing discussion about how to find, hire and identify good programmer's, and how hard it is to find good ones. Which has lead me to really think about the way we programmer's learn, are taught. For a majority of us, myself included, we are self-taught. Which is great about being a programmer, anyone can learn and develop skills. But this also means, that there is no real standards of what a good programmer is/are, and what kind of environment's encourage the growth of programming skills. This isn't so much a question, but just a desire in me, to see how we can change the culture of programming, and the manager's of programming, so that education and self-improvement is encouraged. There are a lot of avenue's for continued education, youtube videos, books, conferences, but because of the experiental nature of what we do, it isn't always clear what's important to learn and to master. Let's look at the The Joel 12 Steps. The Joel Test Do you use source control? Can you make a build in one step? Do you make daily builds? Do you have a bug database? Do you fix bugs before writing new code? Do you have an up-to-date schedule? Do you have a spec? Do programmers have quiet working conditions? Do you use the best tools money can buy? Do you have testers? Do new candidates write code during their interview? Do you do hallway usability testing? I think all of these have important value, but because of something I call the Experiential Gap, if a programmer or manager has never experienced any of the negative consequences for not having done items on the list, they will never see the need to do any of them. The Experiental Gap, is my basic theory, that each of us has different jobs and different experiences. So for some of us, that have always worked with dozens of programmer's, source control is a must have. But for people who have always been the only programmer, they can not imagine the need for source control. And it's because of this major flaw in how we learn, that we evaluate people by what best practices they do or not do, and the reason for either can start a flame war. We always evaluate people in our field by what they do, and think "Oh if this guy/gal isn't doing xyz best practice, he/she can't be a good programmer, so let's not waste time or energy talking to them." This is exactly why we have so many programming flame wars, that it becomes, because of the Experiental Gap, we can't imagine people not having made the decisions that we have had to made. So this has lead me to think, that we totally need to rethink how we train, educate and manage programmer's. For example, what percentage of you have had encouragement by your manager's to go to conferences, and even have them pay for it? For me, and a lot of people, this is extremely rare, a lot of us would love to go to conferences, to learn more, but the money ain't there to do that. So the point of this question is really to spark a lot of how can we train, learn and manage better? How can we create a new culture of learning that doesn't insult people for not having the same job experiences. Yes we all have jobs and work to do, but our ability to do our jobs well, depends on our desire, interest and support in improving our mastery of our skills. Right now, I see our culture being rather disorganized, we support the elite, but those tons of us that want to get better, just don't have enough support to learn and improve ourselves. I mean, do we as an industry, want to be perceived as just replaceable cogs? Thank you...

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• Monitor and Control Memory Usage in Google Chrome

  - by Asian Angel

  Do you want to know just how much memory Google Chrome and any installed extensions are using at a given moment? With just a few clicks you can see just what is going on under the hood of your browser. How Much Memory are the Extensions Using? Here is our test browser with a new tab and the Extensions Page open, five enabled extensions, and one disabled at the moment. You can access Chrome’s Task Manager using the Page Menu, going to Developer, and selecting Task manager… Or by right clicking on the Tab Bar and selecting Task manager. There is also a keyboard shortcut (Shift + Esc) available for the “keyboard ninjas”. Sitting idle as shown above here are the stats for our test browser. All of the extensions are sitting there eating memory even though some of them are not available/active for use on our new tab and Extensions Page. Not so good… If the default layout is not to your liking then you can easily modify the information that is available by right clicking and adding/removing extra columns as desired. For our example we added Shared Memory & Private Memory. Using the about:memory Page to View Memory Usage Want even more detail? Type about:memory into the Address Bar and press Enter. Note: You can also access this page by clicking on the Stats for nerds Link in the lower left corner of the Task Manager Window. Focusing on the four distinct areas you can see the exact version of Chrome that is currently installed on your system… View the Memory & Virtual Memory statistics for Chrome… Note: If you have other browsers running at the same time you can view statistics for them here too. See a list of the Processes currently running… And the Memory & Virtual Memory statistics for those processes. The Difference with the Extensions Disabled Just for fun we decided to disable all of the extension in our test browser… The Task Manager Window is looking rather empty now but the memory consumption has definitely seen an improvement. Comparing Memory Usage for Two Extensions with Similar Functions For our next step we decided to compare the memory usage for two extensions with similar functionality. This can be helpful if you are wanting to keep memory consumption trimmed down as much as possible when deciding between similar extensions. First up was Speed Dial”(see our review here). The stats for Speed Dial…quite a change from what was shown above (~3,000 – 6,000 K). Next up was Incredible StartPage (see our review here). Surprisingly both were nearly identical in the amount of memory being used. Purging Memory Perhaps you like the idea of being able to “purge” some of that excess memory consumption. With a simple command switch modification to Chrome’s shortcut(s) you can add a Purge Memory Button to the Task Manager Window as shown below.  Notice the amount of memory being consumed at the moment… Note: The tutorial for adding the command switch can be found here. One quick click and there is a noticeable drop in memory consumption. Conclusion We hope that our examples here will prove useful to you in managing the memory consumption in your own Google Chrome installation. If you have a computer with limited resources every little bit definitely helps out. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Stupid Geek Tricks: Compare Your Browser’s Memory Usage with Google ChromeMonitor CPU, Memory, and Disk IO In Windows 7 with Taskbar MetersFix for Firefox memory leak on WindowsHow to Purge Memory in Google ChromeHow to Make Google Chrome Your Default Browser 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 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows iFixit Offers Gadget Repair Manuals Online Vista style sidebar for Windows 7 Create Nice Charts With These Web Based Tools Track Daily Goals With 42Goals Video Toolbox is a Superb Online Video Editor Fun with 47 charts and graphs

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• Change the Way Google Search Results Display in Firefox

  - by Asian Angel

  Are you tired of the default look for search results at Google? If you want a different and customized pleasing look for them, then join us as we look at the GoogleMonkeyR User Script. Note: User Style Scripts & User Scripts can be added to most browsers but we are using Firefox & the Greasemonkey extension for our example here. Before Here is the standard look for search results at Google…not bad but it really does not stand out that well either. Installing the User Script You may be asking yourself what makes this particular user script different from others. Take a look at the list of goodies that you get access to and you will understand: Multiple columns of results Removes “Sponsored Links” Add numbers to the results Auto-load more results Removes web search dialogues Open links in a new tab Favicons GooglePreview Self updating Can be configured from a simple user dialogue To get started click on the Webpage Install Button. Once you click on the Webpage Install Button you will see the following window asking for confirmation to add the user script to Firefox. Click Install to complete the process. GoogleMonkeyR in Action Refreshing the same search page shown above shows a noticeable difference already. The light blue background makes the search results stand out a bit better. This is an improvement from before but you will definitely want to have a look to see just how far you can go… Right click on the Greasemonkey Status Bar Icon, go to User Script Commands, and select GoogleMonkeyR Preferences. Once you have clicked on GoogleMonkeyR Preferences the search page will be shaded out and you will have access to the user script’s preferences. This is where you can really make your search results unique looking! Here are the changes that we started out with… After refreshing our search results things looked even better. A look at the entire page of results with our browser maximized and set for two columns. If you have the Auto load more results Option enabled new results will be added very quickly as you scroll down. Our set of search results after adding Favicons & GooglePreview Images. Conclusion If you have been wanting a more dramatic and pleasing look for the search results at Google then you can not go wrong with the GoogleMonkeyR User Script. Change as little or as much as you want to get that perfect look in your browser. Link Install the GoogleMonkeyR User Script Download the Greasemonkey extension for Firefox (Mozilla Add-ons) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Make Firefox Quick Search Use Google’s Beta Search KeysMake Firefox Built-In Search Box Use Google’s Experimental Search KeysMake Firefox Show Google Results for Default Address Bar SearchesCombine Wolfram Alpha & Google Search Results in FirefoxHow To Run 4 Different Google Searches at Once In the Same Tab 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 VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Explorer++ is a Worthy Windows Explorer Alternative Error Goblin Explains Windows Error Codes Twelve must-have Google Chrome plugins Cool Looking Skins for Windows Media Player 12 Move the Mouse Pointer With Your Face Movement Using eViacam Boot Windows Faster With Boot Performance Diagnostics

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• Creating shapes on the fly

  - by Bertrand Le Roy

  Most Orchard shapes get created from part drivers, but they are a lot more versatile than that. They can actually be created from pretty much anywhere, including from templates. One example can be found in the Layout.cshtml file of the ThemeMachine theme: WorkContext.Layout.Footer .Add(New.BadgeOfHonor(), "5"); .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } What this is really doing is create a new shape called BadgeOfHonor and injecting it into the Footer global zone (that has not yet been defined, which in itself is quite awesome) with an ordering rank of "5". We can actually come up with something simpler, if we want to render the shape inline instead of sending it into a zone: @Display(New.BadgeOfHonor()) Now let's try something a little more elaborate and create a new shape for displaying a date and time: @Display(New.DateTime(date: DateTime.Now, format: "d/M/yyyy")) For the moment, this throws a "Shape type DateTime not found" exception because the system has no clue how to render a shape called "DateTime" yet. The BadgeOfHonor shape above was rendering something because there is a template for it in the theme: Themes/ThethemeMachine/Views/BadgeOfHonor.cshtml. We need to provide a template for our new shape to get rendered. Let's add a DateTime.cshtml file into our theme's Views folder in order to make the exception go away: Hi, I'm a date time shape. Now we're just missing one thing. Instead of displaying some static text, which is not very interesting, we can display the actual time that got passed into the shape's dynamic constructor. Those parameters will get added to the template's Model, so they are easy to retrieve: @(((DateTime)Model.date).ToString(Model.format)) Now that may remind you a little of WebForm's user controls. That's a fair comparison, except that these shapes are much more flexible (you can add properties on the fly as necessary), and that the actual rendering is decoupled from the "control". For example, any theme can override the template for a shape, you can use alternates, wrappers, etc. Most importantly, there is no lifecycle and protocol abstraction like there was in WebForms. I think this is a real improvement over previous attempts at similar things.

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• T-SQL Tuesday - the swag

  - by Rob Farley

  This month’s T-SQL Tuesday is hosted by Kendal van Dyke (@SQLDBA), and is on the topic of swag. He asks about the best SQL Server swag that we’ve ever received from a conference. I can’t say I ever focus on getting the swag at conferences, as I see some people doing. I know there are plenty of people that get around all the sponsors as soon as they’ve arrived, collecting whatever goodies they can, sometimes as token gifts for those at home, sometimes as giveaways for the user groups they attend. I remember a few years ago at my first PASS Summit, the SQLCAT team gave me a large pile of leftover SQL Server swag to give away to my user group – piles of branded things to stop your phone sliding off your car dashboard, and other things. The user group members thought it was great, and over the course of a few months, happily cleared me out of it all. I tend to consider swag to be something that you haven’t earned except by being at a conference, and there was no winning associated with it, it was simply a giveaway item at a sponsor booth. That means I don’t include the HP Mini laptop that was given away at TechEd Australia a few years ago to every attendee, or the SQL Server bag and Camelbak bottle that I was given as a thank-you for writing a guest blog post (which I use as my regular laptop bag and water bottle for work). I don’t even include the copy of Midtown Madness that I got as a door prize at my vey first TechEd event in 1999 (that was a really good game, and even meant that when I went to Chicago last year, I felt a strange familiarity about the place). I don’t want to include shirts in the mix either. I was given a nice SQL Server shirt about five years ago TechEd Australia. It’s a business shirt (buttons, cuffs, pocket on the chest), black with the SQL Server logo on it. It was such a nice shirt that I commented about it to the Product Marketing Manager for Australia (Christine, at the time), who unexpectedly arranged for me to get another one. That was certainly an improvement on the tent I was given at one of the MVP conference I attended. So when I consider these ‘rules’, two pieces of swag come to mind, and I think both were at PASS Summits (although I can’t be sure). One was a hand-warmer from HP, one of the “crystallisation-type” ones, which proved extremely popular when I got home, until one day when it didn’t survive being recharged – not overly SQL related, but still it was good swag. The other was an umbrella, from expressor, which was from the PASS Summit in 2010, my first PASS Summit. I remember it well – Blythe Morrow (now Gietz) (@blythemorrow) was working the booth, having stopped working for PASS some time before, but she’d been on my list of people to meet, as I’d had plenty of contact with her while she’d worked at PASS, my being a chapter leader and general volunteer. There had been an expressor dinner on one of the first evenings, which I’d been asked to be at, which is when I’d met lots of SQL people in person for the first time, including Ted Krueger (@onpnt), Jessica Moss (@jessicamoss) and Blythe. Anyway, at some point the next day I swung by their booth to say hello and thank them for the dinner, and Blythe says “Oh, we have the best swag – here!” and handed me an umbrella. And she was right. It’s excellent. @rob_farley

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• Jersey non blocking client

  - by Pavel Bucek

  Although Jersey already have support for making asynchronous requests, it is implemented by standard blocking way - every asynchronous request is handled by one thread and that thread is released only after request is completely processed. That is OK for lots of cases, but imagine how that will work when you need to do lots of parallel requests. Of course you can limit (and its really wise thing to do, you do want control your resources) number of threads used for asynchronous requests, but you'll get another maybe not pleasant consequence - obviously processing time will incerase. There are few projects which are trying to deal with that problem, commonly named as async http clients. I didn't want to "re-implement a wheel" and I decided I'll use AHC - Async Http Client made by Jeanfrancois Arcand. There is also interesting implementation from Apache - HttpAsyncClient, but it is still in "very early stages of development" and others haven't been in similar or better shape as AHC. How this works? Non-blocking clients allow users to make same asynchronous requests as we can do with standard approach but implementation is different - threads are better utilized, they don't spend most of time in idle state. Simply described - when you make a request (send it over the network), you are waiting for reply from other side. And there comes main advantage of non-blocking approach - it uses these threads for further work, like making other requests or processing responses etc.. Idle time is minimized and your resources (threads) will be far better used. Who should consider using this? Everyone who is making lots of asynchronous requests. I haven't done proper benchmark yet, but some simple dumb tests are showing huge improvement in cases where lots of concurrent asynchronous requests are made in short period. Last but not least - this module is still experimental, so if you don't like something or if you have ideas for improvements/any feedback, feel free to comment this blog post, send mail to [email protected] or contact me personally. All feedback is greatly appreciated! maven dependency (will be present in java.net maven 2 repo by the end of the day): link: http://download.java.net/maven/2/com/sun/jersey/experimental/jersey-non-blocking-client <dependency> <groupId>com.sun.jersey.experimental</groupId> <artifactId>jersey-non-blocking-client</artifactId> <version>1.9-SNAPSHOT</version> </dependency> code snippet: ClientConfig cc = new DefaultNonBlockingClientConfig(); cc.getProperties().put(NonBlockingClientConfig.PROPERTY_THREADPOOL_SIZE, 10); // default value, feel free to change Client c = NonBlockingClient.create(cc); AsyncWebResource awr = c.asyncResource("http://oracle.com"); Future<ClientResponse> responseFuture = awr.get(ClientResponse.class); // or awr.get(new TypeListener<ClientResponse>(ClientResponse.class) { @Override public void onComplete(Future<ClientResponse> f) throws InterruptedException { ... } }); javadoc (temporary location, won't be updated): http://anise.cz/~paja/jersey-non-blocking-client/

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• Exclusive Webcast Series Explains How Project Success Drives Business Success

  - by Melissa Centurio Lopes

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} In the wake of the global financial crisis, organizations throughout the world are redoubling their efforts to enhance financial discipline, achieve operational excellence, and mitigate risk. How can they address all these areas with one comprehensive strategy? With enterprise project portfolio management solutions that provide greater transparency and visibility across all projects and portfolios, says Guy Barlow, Oracle director of industry strategy. In the following interview and in an exclusive, three-part webcast series, Barlow examines today’s new management realities and explains how organizations can succeed in this environment. Q: Financial discipline has always been important, what’s different today? A: A number of organizations are showing that by fiscally aligning projects with the business goals of their organizations, they can shave off hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars in inefficiency and waste. For example, one Oracle customer, the Columbus Regional Airport Authority, reduced its unbudgeted costs from US$24.4 million to US$3.5 million, for an 88 percent improvement. Q: How do organizations achieve results like this? A: First, they need to have the vision to see project management as part of a broad and critical element in their overall enterprise strategy. That means using a single solution, such as Oracle‘s Primavera, to manage multiple projects across multiple functions within a company. So someone in corporate mergers and acquisitions as well as a capital projects team can standardize on the same technology. By doing so they all gain greater efficiency in planning and execution—because the technology can be configured for their specific roles and needs—and the IT organization really benefits from lower maintenance. Second, enterprises must give executive leaders—CFOs, COOs, and CEOs—visibility across the entire business to easily see what projects are on track and which ones are falling behind. In fact, once executives see the power of enterprise project portfolio management, uptake is very quick across the organization. Read the full interview here.

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• Improvements to Joshua Bloch's Builder Design Pattern?

  - by Jason Fotinatos

  Back in 2007, I read an article about Joshua Blochs take on the "builder pattern" and how it could be modified to improve the overuse of constructors and setters, especially when an object has a large number of properties, most of which are optional. A brief summary of this design pattern is articled here [http://rwhansen.blogspot.com/2007/07/theres-builder-pattern-that-joshua.html]. I liked the idea, and have been using it since. The problem with it, while it is very clean and nice to use from the client perspective, implementing it can be a pain in the bum! There are so many different places in the object where a single property is reference, and thus creating the object, and adding a new property takes a lot of time. So...I had an idea. First, an example object in Joshua Bloch's style: Josh Bloch Style: public class OptionsJoshBlochStyle { private final String option1; private final int option2; // ...other options here <<<< public String getOption1() { return option1; } public int getOption2() { return option2; } public static class Builder { private String option1; private int option2; // other options here <<<<< public Builder option1(String option1) { this.option1 = option1; return this; } public Builder option2(int option2) { this.option2 = option2; return this; } public OptionsJoshBlochStyle build() { return new OptionsJoshBlochStyle(this); } } private OptionsJoshBlochStyle(Builder builder) { this.option1 = builder.option1; this.option2 = builder.option2; // other options here <<<<<< } public static void main(String[] args) { OptionsJoshBlochStyle optionsVariation1 = new OptionsJoshBlochStyle.Builder().option1("firefox").option2(1).build(); OptionsJoshBlochStyle optionsVariation2 = new OptionsJoshBlochStyle.Builder().option1("chrome").option2(2).build(); } } Now my "improved" version: public class Options { // note that these are not final private String option1; private int option2; // ...other options here public String getOption1() { return option1; } public int getOption2() { return option2; } public static class Builder { private final Options options = new Options(); public Builder option1(String option1) { this.options.option1 = option1; return this; } public Builder option2(int option2) { this.options.option2 = option2; return this; } public Options build() { return options; } } private Options() { } public static void main(String[] args) { Options optionsVariation1 = new Options.Builder().option1("firefox").option2(1).build(); Options optionsVariation2 = new Options.Builder().option1("chrome").option2(2).build(); } } As you can see in my "improved version", there are 2 less places in which we need to add code about any addition properties (or options, in this case)! The only negative that I can see is that the instance variables of the outer class are not able to be final. But, the class is still immutable without this. Is there really any downside to this improvement in maintainability? There has to be a reason which he repeated the properties within the nested class that I'm not seeing?

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• JMSContext, @JMSDestinationDefintion, DefaultJMSConnectionFactory with simplified JMS API: TOTD #213

  - by arungupta

  "What's New in JMS 2.0" Part 1 and Part 2 provide comprehensive introduction to new messaging features introduced in JMS 2.0. The biggest improvement in JMS 2.0 is introduction of the "new simplified API". This was explained in the Java EE 7 Launch Technical Keynote. You can watch a complete replay here. Sending and Receiving a JMS message using JMS 1.1 requires lot of boilerplate code, primarily because the API was designed 10+ years ago. Here is a code that shows how to send a message using JMS 1.1 API: @Statelesspublic class ClassicMessageSender { @Resource(lookup = "java:comp/DefaultJMSConnectionFactory") ConnectionFactory connectionFactory; @Resource(mappedName = "java:global/jms/myQueue") Queue demoQueue; public void sendMessage(String payload) { Connection connection = null; try { connection = connectionFactory.createConnection(); connection.start(); Session session = connection.createSession(false, Session.AUTO_ACKNOWLEDGE); MessageProducer messageProducer = session.createProducer(demoQueue); TextMessage textMessage = session.createTextMessage(payload); messageProducer.send(textMessage); } catch (JMSException ex) { ex.printStackTrace(); } finally { if (connection != null) { try { connection.close(); } catch (JMSException ex) { ex.printStackTrace(); } } } }} There are several issues with this code: A JMS ConnectionFactory needs to be created in a application server-specific way before this application can run. Application-specific destination needs to be created in an application server-specific way before this application can run. Several intermediate objects need to be created to honor the JMS 1.1 API, e.g. ConnectionFactory -> Connection -> Session -> MessageProducer -> TextMessage. Everything is a checked exception and so try/catch block must be specified. Connection need to be explicitly started and closed, and that bloats even the finally block. The new JMS 2.0 simplified API code looks like: @Statelesspublic class SimplifiedMessageSender { @Inject JMSContext context; @Resource(mappedName="java:global/jms/myQueue") Queue myQueue; public void sendMessage(String message) { context.createProducer().send(myQueue, message); }} The code is significantly improved from the previous version in the following ways: The JMSContext interface combines in a single object the functionality of both the Connection and the Session in the earlier JMS APIs.  You can obtain a JMSContext object by simply injecting it with the @Inject annotation.  No need to explicitly specify a ConnectionFactory. A default ConnectionFactory under the JNDI name of java:comp/DefaultJMSConnectionFactory is used if no explicit ConnectionFactory is specified. The destination can be easily created using newly introduced @JMSDestinationDefinition as: @JMSDestinationDefinition(name = "java:global/jms/myQueue",        interfaceName = "javax.jms.Queue") It can be specified on any Java EE component and the destination is created during deployment. JMSContext, Session, Connection, JMSProducer and JMSConsumer objects are now AutoCloseable. This means that these resources are automatically closed when they go out of scope. This also obviates the need to explicitly start the connection JMSException is now a runtime exception. Method chaining on JMSProducers allows to use builder patterns. No need to create separate Message object, you can specify the message body as an argument to the send() method instead. Want to try this code ? Download source code! Download Java EE 7 SDK and install. Start GlassFish: bin/asadmin start-domain Build the WAR (in the unzipped source code directory): mvn package Deploy the WAR: bin/asadmin deploy <source-code>/jms/target/jms-1.0-SNAPSHOT.war And access the application at http://localhost:8080/jms-1.0-SNAPSHOT/index.jsp to send and receive a message using classic and simplified API. A replay of JMS 2.0 session from Java EE 7 Launch Webinar provides complete details on what's new in this specification: Enjoy!

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• How can I thoroughly evaluate a prospective employer?

  - by glenviewjeff

  We hear much about code smells, test smells, and even project smells, but I have heard no discussion about employer "smells" outside of the Joel Test. After much frustration working for employers with a bouquet of unpleasant corporate-culture odors, I believe it's time for me to actively seek a more mature development environment. I've started assembling a list of questions to help vet employers by identifying issues during a job interview, and am looking for additional ideas. I suppose this list could easily be modified by an employer to vet an employee as well, but please answer from the interviewee's perspective. I think it would be important to ask many of these questions of multiple people to find out if consistent answers are given. For the most part, I tried to put the questions in each section in the order they could be asked. An undesired answer to an early question will often make follow-ups moot. Values What constitutes "well-written" software? What attributes does a good developer have? Same question for manager. Process Do you have a development process? How rigorously do you follow it? How do you decide how much process to apply to each project? Describe a typical project lifecycle. Ask the following if they don't come up otherwise: Waterfall/iterative: How much time is spent in upfront requirements gathering? upfront design? Testing Who develops tests (developers or separate test engineers?) When are they developed? When are the tests executed? How long do they take to execute? What makes a good test? How do you know you've tested enough? What percentage of code is tested? Review What is the review process like? What percentage of code is reviewed? Design? How frequently can I expect to participate as code/design reviewer/reviewee? What are the criteria applied to review and where do the criteria come from? Improvement What new tools and techniques have you evaluated or deployed in the past year? What training courses have your employees been given in the past year? What will I be doing for the first six months in your company (hinting at what kind of organized mentorship/training has been thought through, if any) What changes to your development process have been made in the past year? How do you improve and learn from your mistakes as an organization? What was your organizations biggest mistake in the past year, and how was it addressed? What feedback have you given to management lately? Was it implemented? If not, why? How does your company use "best practices?" How do you seek them out from the outside or within, and how do you share them with each other? Ethics Tell me about an ethical problem you or your employees experienced recently and how was it resolved? Do you use open-source software? What open-source contributions have you made? Follow-Ups I liked what @jim-leonardo said on this Stack Overflow question: Really a thing to ask yourself: "Does this person seem like they are trying to recruit me and make me interested?" I think this is one of the most important bits. If they seem to be taking the attitude that the only one being interviewed is you, then they probably will treat you poorly. Good interviewers understand they have to sell the position as much as the candidate needs to sell themselves. @SethP added: Glassdoor.com is a good web site for researching potential employers. It contains information about how specific companies conduct interviews...

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• Monitor SQL Server Replication Jobs

  - by Yaniv Etrogi

  The Replication infrastructure in SQL Server is implemented using SQL Server Agent to execute the various components involved in the form of a job (e.g. LogReader agent job, Distribution agent job, Merge agent job) SQL Server jobs execute a binary executable file which is basically C++ code. You can download all the scripts for this article here SQL Server Job Schedules By default each of job has only one schedule that is set to Start automatically when SQL Server Agent starts. This schedule ensures that when ever the SQL Server Agent service is started all the replication components are also put into action. This is OK and makes sense but there is one problem with this default configuration that needs improvement  -  if for any reason one of the components fails it remains down in a stopped state.   Unless you monitor the status of each component you will typically get to know about such a failure from a customer complaint as a result of missing data or data that is not up to date at the subscriber level. Furthermore, having any of these components in a stopped state can lead to more severe problems if not corrected within a short time. The action required to improve on this default settings is in fact very simple. Adding a second schedule that is set as a Daily Reoccurring schedule which runs every 1 minute does the trick. SQL Server Agent’s scheduler module knows how to handle overlapping schedules so if the job is already being executed by another schedule it will not get executed again at the same time. So, in the event of a failure the failed job remains down for at most 60 seconds. Many DBAs are not aware of this capability and so search for more complex solutions such as having an additional dedicated job running an external code in VBS or another scripting language that detects replication jobs in a stopped state and starts them but there is no need to seek such external solutions when what is needed can be accomplished by T-SQL code. SQL Server Jobs Status In addition to the 1 minute schedule we also want to ensure that key components in the replication are enabled so I can search for those components by their Category, and set their status to enabled in case they are disabled, by executing the stored procedure MonitorEnableReplicationAgents. The jobs that I typically have handled are listed below but you may want to extend this, so below is the query to return all jobs along with their category. SELECT category_id, name FROM msdb.dbo.syscategories ORDER BY category_id; Distribution Cleanup LogReader Agent Distribution Agent Snapshot Agent Jobs By default when a publication is created, a snapshot agent job also gets created with a daily schedule. I see more organizations where the snapshot agent job does not need to be executed automatically by the SQL Server Agent  scheduler than organizations who   need a new snapshot generated automatically. To assure this setting is in place I created the stored procedure MonitorSnapshotAgentsSchedules which disables snapshot agent jobs and also deletes the job schedule. It is worth mentioning that when the publication property immediate_sync is turned off then the snapshot files are not created when the Snapshot agent is executed by the job. You control this property when the publication is created with a parameter called @immediate_sync passed to sp_addpublication and for an existing publication you can use sp_changepublication. Implementation The scripts assume the existence of a database named PerfDB. Steps: Run the scripts to create the stored procedures in the PerfDB database. Create a job that executes the stored procedures every hour. -- Verify that the 1_Minute schedule exists. EXEC PerfDB.dbo.MonitorReplicationAgentsSchedules @CategoryId = 10; /* Distribution */ EXEC PerfDB.dbo.MonitorReplicationAgentsSchedules @CategoryId = 13; /* LogReader */ -- Verify all replication agents are enabled. EXEC PerfDB.dbo.MonitorEnableReplicationAgents @CategoryId = 10; /* Distribution */ EXEC PerfDB.dbo.MonitorEnableReplicationAgents @CategoryId = 13; /* LogReader */ EXEC PerfDB.dbo.MonitorEnableReplicationAgents @CategoryId = 11; /* Distribution clean up */ -- Verify that Snapshot agents are disabled and have no schedule EXEC PerfDB.dbo.MonitorSnapshotAgentsSchedules; Want to read more of about replication? Check at my replication posts at my blog.

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• SQL SERVER – Why Do We Need Master Data Management – Importance and Significance of Master Data Management (MDM)

  - by pinaldave

  Let me paint a picture of everyday life for you.  Let’s say you and your wife both have address books for your groups of friends.  There is definitely overlap between them, so that you both have the addresses for your mutual friends, and there are addresses that only you know, and some only she knows.  They also might be organized differently.  You might list your friend under “J” for “Joe” or even under “W” for “Work,” while she might list him under “S” for “Joe Smith” or under your name because he is your friend.  If you happened to trade, neither of you would be able to find anything! This is where data management would be very important.  If you were to consolidate into one address book, you would have to set rules about how to organize the book, and both of you would have to follow them.  You would also make sure that poor Joe doesn’t get entered twice under “J” and under “S.” This might be a familiar situation to you, whether you are thinking about address books, record collections, books, or even shopping lists.  Wherever there is a lot of data to consolidate, you are going to run into problems unless everyone is following the same rules. I’m sure that my readers can figure out where I am going with this.  What is SQL Server but a computerized way to organize data?  And Microsoft is making it easier and easier to get all your “addresses” into one place.  In the  2008 version of SQL they introduced a new tool called Master Data Services (MDS) for Master Data Management, and they have improved it for the new 2012 version. MDM was hailed as a major improvement for business intelligence.  You might not think that an organizational system is terribly exciting, but think about the kind of “address books” a company might have.  Many companies have lots of important information, like addresses, credit card numbers, purchase history, and so much more.  To organize all this efficiently so that customers are well cared for and properly billed (only once, not never or multiple times!) is a major part of business intelligence. MDM comes into play because it will comb through these mountains of data and make sure that all the information is consistent, accurate, and all placed in one database so that employees don’t have to search high and low and waste their time. MDM also has operational MDM functions.  This is not a redundancy.  Operational MDM means that when one employee updates one bit of information in the database, for example – updating a new address for a customer, operational MDM ensures that this address is updated throughout the system so that all departments will have the correct information. Another cool thing about MDM is that it features Master Data Services Configuration Manager, which is exactly what it sounds like.  It has a built-in “helper” that lets you set up your database quickly, easily, and with the correct configurations.  While talking about cool features, I can’t skip over the add-in for Excel.  This allows you to link certain data to Excel files for easier sharing and uploading. In summary, I want to emphasize that the scariest part of the database is slowly disappearing.  Everyone knows that a database – one consolidated area for all your data – is a good idea, but the idea of setting one up is daunting.  But SQL Server is making data management easier and easier with features like Master Data Services (MDS). Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Master Data Services, MDM

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• Cutting Subscriber Churn with Media Intelligence

  - by Oracle M&E

  There's lots of talk in media and entertainment companies about using "big data".  But it's often hard to see through the hype and understand how big data brings benefits in the real world.  How about being able to predict with 92% accuracy which subscribers intend to cancel their subscription - and put in place a renewal strategy to dramatically reduce that churn?  That's what Belgian media company De Persgroep has achieved with Oracle's Media Intelligence solution.  "One of the areas in which we're able to achieve beautiful results using big data is the churn prediction," De Persgroep's CIO Luc Verbist explains in a new Oracle video.  "Based on all the data that we collect on websites and all your behavior, payment behavior and so on, we're able to make a prediction model, which, with an accuracy of 92 percent, is able to predict that you probably won't renew your newspaper, anymore. So our approach to renewal is completely different to the people in that segment than towards the other people. And this has brought us a lot of value and a lot of customers who didn't stop their newspaper where else they would have done so." De Persgroep is using Oracle's Big Data Appliance, along with software from Oracle partner NGDATA to build up a detailed "DNA profile" of each individual customer, based on every interaction, in real time.  This means that any change in behavior - a drop in content consumption, a late subscription payment, a negative social media comment - is captured.  Applying advanced data modeling techniques automatically converts those raw interactions into data with real business meaning - like that customer's risk of churning. The very same data profile - comprising hundreds if individual dimensions - can simultaneously drive targeted marketing campaigns - informing audience about new content that's most relevant and encouraging them to subscribe.  It can power content recommendations and personalization right in the content sites and apps. And it can link directly into digital advertising networks via platforms like Oracle's BlueKai data management platform (DMP), to drive increased advertising CPMs. Using Oracle's Media Intelligence solution enables this across De Persgroep's business - comprising eight newspapers and 25 magazines published in Belgium and The Netherlands, and digital properties including websites with 6m daily unique visitors, along with TV and radio stations. "The company strategy is in fact a customer-centric strategy, so we want to get a 360-view about our customers, about our prospects. And the big data project helped us to achieve that goal," says Verbist. Using Oracle's Big Data Appliance to underpin the solution created huge savings.   "The selection of the Big Data Appliance was quite easy.  It was very quick to install, very easy to install, as well. And it was far cheaper than building our own Hadoop cluster. So it was in fact a non-brainer," Verbist explains. Applying Media Intelligence approach has yielded incredible results for De Persgroep, including: Improved products - with a new understanding of how readers are consuming print and digital content across the day Improved customer segmentation - driving a 6X improvement in customer prospecting and acquisition when contacting a specific segment Having the project up and running in three months And that has led to competitive benefits for De Persgroep, as Luc Verbist explains: "one of the results we saw since we started using big data is that we're able to increase the gap between we as the market leader, and the second [by] more than 20 percent."

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• Lease Accounting Closed for Comment

  - by Theresa Hickman

  December 15, 2010 marked the last day to send public comments to FASB and IASB on lease accounting. June 2011 is the deadline for the final consideration of the Leases Exposure Draft that will be given to standard setters in order to create a new lease accounting standard. Landlords, lessees, retailers, airlines industry, etc. are all worried right now about the changes to lease accounting. They feel the changes will be too costly and complex without adding significant improvement to the quality and relevance of financial statements. In a nutshell, IASB and FASB want to abolish operating leases where the lessee records the periodic payments as an expense over time. The proposed changes will mean that the accounting for leases will move from the P&L and hit both the lessee's and lessor's balance sheets. For companies that occupy a lot of property, this could significantly increase their liabilities not to mention front-load much of the costs that they were able to spread out over time before. Why are IASB and FASB doing this? Their goal is to have consistent accounting for both the lessees and lessors with higher quality financial statements. Leasing is one of four major projects being undertaken by the IASB and FASB in order to complete convergence between US GAAP and IFRS. I spoke to our resident accounting expert Seamus Moran about this to better understand how this might impact accounting software. He reminded me that the proposed changes to both US GAAP and IFRS in respect to leases are "proposed." It is still inappropriate to account for leases the way they are being proposed and we still need to account for them in accordance to the current regulations, which is what current accounting software programs, such as E-Business Suite Release 12.1 and prior and PeopleSoft Enterprise support. The FASB (US GAAP) and IASB (IFRS) exposure drafts (EDs) that outline the proposal were published. The FASB edition was published on August 17th, with comments due by December 15th. The IASB edition was published on the same date, and comments were due in London on the same date. Exposure drafts are the method both the FASB and the IASB use to solicit General Acceptance, the "GA" in GAAP. Both Boards will consider the input they have received, and perhaps revise the proposal. The proposal has come in for some criticism, both from the finance houses and the uses of the leased assets. There is, given the opposition to it, an excellent chance that the Leasing proposal will be modified or rewritten. We will know this in about six months, the usual time it takes for the FASB and IASB to digest the comments they receive. If they feel the proposal has General Acceptance, they will issue the final Standard at that time; if not, they will issue a revised proposal with another year of comment of drafting. Oracle participates in the standard setting process and is fully aware of the leasing proposal. We have designs that would reflect the proposal in hand. These designs will be finalized when the proposal is finalized. It is likely that customers will develop new financial arrangements if the proposal is finalized, and we are working with customers and partners to stay in touch with people's business responses to the proposal. The IASB and FASB are aware that ERP companies will have to revise their software, and that the companies filing results under IFRS or under US GAAP will have to implement such software. The form and timing of the release of the updated software will depend on the schedule of the take up of the new standard, the complexity of the standard, and the releases supported at the time the standard becomes effective.

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• Tyrus 1.8

  - by Pavel Bucek

  Another version of Tyrus, the reference implementation of JSR 356 – Java API for WebSocket is out! Complete list of fixes and features is below, but let me describe some of the new features in more detail. All information presented here is also available in Tyrusdocumentation. What’s new? First to mention is that JSR 356 Maintenance review Ballot is over and the change proposed for 1.1 release was accepted. More details about changes in the API can be found in this article. Important part is that Tyrus 1.8 implements this API, meaning you can use Lambda expressions and some features of Nashorn without the need for any workarounds. Almost all other features are related to client side support, which was significantly improved in this release. Firstly – I have to admit, that Tyrus client contained security issue – SSL Hostname verification was not performed when connecting to “wss” endpoints. This was fixed as part of TYRUS-339 and resulted in some changes in the client configuration API. Now you can control whether HostnameVerification should be performed (SslEngineConfigurator#setHostnameVerificationEnabled(boolean)) or even set your own HostnameVerifier (please use carefully): #setHostnameVerifier(…). Detailed description can be found in Host verification chapter. Another related enhancement is support for Http Basic and Digest authentication schemes. Tyrus client now enables users to provide credentials and underlying implementation will take care of everything else. Our implementation is strictly non pre-emptive, so the login information is sent always as a response to 401 Http Status Code. If the Basic and Digest are not good enough and there is a need to use some custom scheme or something which is not yet supported in Tyrus, custom Authenticator can be registered and the authentication part of the handshake process will be handled by it. Please seeClient HTTP Authentication chapter in the user guide for more details. There are other features, like fine-grain threadpool configuration for JDK client container, build-in Http redirect support and some reshuffling related to unifying the location of client configuration classes and properties definition – every property should be now part of ClientProperties class. All new features are described in the user guide – in chapterTyrus proprietary configuration. Update – Tyrus 1.8.1 There was another slightly late reported issue related to running in environments with SecurityManager enabled, so this version fixes that. Another noteworthy fixes are TYRUS-355 and TYRUS-361; the first one is about incorrect thread factory used for shared container timeout, which resulted in JVM waiting for that thread and not exiting as it should. The other issue enables relative URIs in Location header when using redirect feature. Links Tyrus homepage mailing list JIRA Complete list of changes: Bug [TYRUS-333] – Multiple endpoints on one client [TYRUS-334] – When connection is closed by a peer, periodic heartbeat pong is not stopped [TYRUS-336] – ReaderBuffer.getNextChars() keeps blocking a server thread after client has closed the session [TYRUS-338] – JDK client SSL filter needs better synchronization during handshake phase [TYRUS-339] – SSL hostname verification is missing [TYRUS-340] – Test PathParamTest are not stable with JDK client [TYRUS-341] – A control frame inside a stream of continuation frames is treated as the part of the stream [TYRUS-343] – ControlFrameInDataStreamTest does not pass on GF [TYRUS-345] – NPE is thrown, when shared container timeout property in JDK client is not set [TYRUS-346] – IllegalStateException is thrown, when using proxy in JDK client [TYRUS-347] – Introduce better synchronization in JDK client thread pool [TYRUS-348] – When a client and server close connection simultaneously, JDK client throws NPE [TYRUS-356] – Tyrus cannot determine the connection port for a wss URL [TYRUS-357] – Exception thrown in MessageHandler#OnMessage is not caught in @OnError method [TYRUS-359] – Client based on Java 7 Asynchronous IO makes application unexitable Improvement [TYRUS-328] – JDK 1.7 AIO Client container – threads – (setting threadpool, limits, …) [TYRUS-332] – Consolidate shared client properties into one file. [TYRUS-337] – Create an SSL version of Basic Servlet test New Feature [TYRUS-228] – Add client support for HTTP Basic/Digest Task [TYRUS-330] – create/run tests/servlet/basic via wss [TYRUS-335] – [clustering] – introduce RemoteSession and expose them via separate method (not include remote sessions in the getOpenSessions()) [TYRUS-344] – Introduce Client support for HTTP Redirect

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• DallasXAML.com – A New User Group for Silverlight, WPF, XBAP, etc.

  - by vblasberg

                                   http://DallasXAML.com   I’ve devoted much of last month to starting the DallasXAML User Group.  I finally got back into user group management after 2 years away from leading the Dallas C# SIG.  Now I’m having fun getting a Silverlight/WPF user group going strong for the Dallas / Ft. Worth community.  Our first meeting was March 3rd at the Improving Enterprises offices in North Dallas.  We had about 25 to 35 attendees in the first meeting and it went well.  We covered the most important topic that everyone should understand well – data binding.   So I chose the XAML user group so we can get together for a common group improvement in the Dallas / Ft. Worth area and learn cross-technology information that we can use now.  It is not a lecture hall.  The great thing is that we’ll provide hands-on experience with most every meeting.  The goal is to get the experience that we can use the next work day.  I unfortunately broke that rule by speaking all through the first meeting, but next month is part two with more hands-on data binding.   The differentiation is this group concentrates on XAML, not Silverlight or Windows Client alone.  What we learn in one area, we gain for all areas.  That includes the Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 coming later this year.  Next year it may be Windows Phone 8, 9, or whatever.    I started developing WPF seriously almost a year ago.  I experienced the painful learning curve.  Anyone who reports that there isn’t a big learning curve either thinks in XAML before it was developed, is on the Silverlight or WPF development team, or has already conquered the learning and forgot the pain.  So I wanted to share the pain or make it easier for others – same thing.  I have found that the more I learn and use good disciplined techniques, the more interesting and rewarding development is again.   A few months ago, I was sitting in the iPhone development session at the Dallas C# SIG.  After the meeting, the audience was polled for future topics.  After a few suggestions, Silverlight got the big hands up.  That makes sense because it’s still the hot topic for many Microsoft developers.  So I surfed around and found that there aren’t enough user groups to help in this area.  I polled a few local group leaders and did the work to start the group.  This week I got a telerik controls licence and improved the site with some great controls, namely the RadHtmlPlaceholder control.  It provides a Silverlight control to show HTML in an IFrame-like area.  On DallasXAML.com, the newsletters and resource pages display in HTML because Silverlight just isn’t there yet.  I’m looking forward to a Silverlight XPS viewer with flow documents.  There are some good commercial version available, but this is a non-profit group.    The DallasXAML.com site points to many other resources such as podcasts and webcasts.  I would rather give them the credit than try to out-do them.  So check out the DallasXAML user group site and attend our meetings if you can.  We meet the first Tuesday of the month.   -Vince DallasXAML User Group Leader  

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• New features in TFS Demo Setup 1.0.0.2

  - by Tarun Arora

  Release Notes – http://tfsdemosetup.codeplex.com/ | Download | Source Code | Report a Bug | Ideas Just pushed out the 2nd release of the TFS Demo setup on CodePlex, below a quick look at some of the new features/improvements in the tool… Details of the existing features can be found here. Feature 1 – Set up Work Items Queries as Team Favorites The task board looks cooler when the team favourite work item queries show up on the task board. The demo setup console application now has the ability to set up the work item queries as team favorites for you. If you want to see how you can add Team Favorites programmatically, refer to this blogpost here. Image 1 – Task board without Team Favorites Let’s see how the TFS Demo Setup application sets-up team favorites as part of the run… Open up the DemoDictionary.xml and you should be able to see the new node <TeamFavorites> this accepts multiple <TeamFavorite>. You simply need to specify the <Type> as Query and in the <Name> specify the name of the work item query that you would like added as a favorite. Image 2 – Highlighting the TeamFavorites block in DemoDictionary.xml So, when the demo set up application is run with the above config, work item queries “Blocked Tasks” and “Open Impediments” are added as team favorites. They then show up on the task board, as highlighted in the screen shot below. Image 3 – Team Favorites setup during the TFS demo setup app execution Feature 2 – Choose what you want to setup and exclude the rest I had a great feature request come in requesting the ability to exclude parts of the setup at the sole discretion of the executioner. To accommodate this, I have added an attribute with each block, the attribute “Run” accepts “true” or “false”. If you set the flag to true then at the time of execution that block would be considered for setup and if you set the flag to false, the block will be ignored during the setup. So, lets look at an example below… The attribute "Run” is set to true for TeamSettings, Team Favorites, TeamMembers and WorkItems. So, all of these would be setup as part of the demo setup application execution. Image 4 – New Attribute Run added to all blocks in DemoDictionary.xml If I did not want to recreate the team and did not want to add new work items but only wanted to add favorites and team members to the existing team “AgileChamps1” then I could simple run the application with below DemoDictionary.xml. Note – TeamSettings Run=”false” and WorkItems Run=”false”. Image 5 – TeamFavorites and TeamMembers set as true and others set to false Feature 3 – Usability Improvement If you try and assign a work item to a team member that does not exist then the application throws a nasty exception. This behaviour has now been changed, upon adding such a work item, the work items will be created and not assigned to any user. The work item id will be printed to the console making it simple for you to assign the work item manually. As you can see in the screen shot below, I am trying to assign the work item to a user “Tarun” and a user “v2” both are *not valid users in my team project collection* so the tool creates the work items and provides me the work item id and lets me know that since the user is invalid the work item could not be assigned to the user. Better user experience ae Image 6 – Behaviour if work item assigned to users are in valid users in team project That’s about it for the current release. I have some new features planned for the next release. Mean while if you have any ideas/comments please feel free to leave a comment. Stay tuned for more… Enjoy! Other posts on TFS Demo Setup can be found here.

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• HOWTO Turn off SPARC T4 or Intel AES-NI crypto acceleration.

  - by darrenm

  Since we released hardware crypto acceleration for SPARC T4 and Intel AES-NI support we have had a common question come up: 'How do I test without the hardware crypto acceleration?'. Initially this came up just for development use so developers can do unit testing on a machine that has hardware offload but still cover the code paths for a machine that doesn't (our integration and release testing would run on all supported types of hardware anyway).  I've also seen it asked in a customer context too so that we can show that there is a performance gain from the hardware crypto acceleration, (not just the fact that SPARC T4 much faster performing processor than T3) and measure what it is for their application. With SPARC T2/T3 we could easily disable the hardware crypto offload by running 'cryptoadm disable provider=n2cp/0'.  We can't do that with SPARC T4 or with Intel AES-NI because in both of those classes of processor the encryption doesn't require a device driver instead it is unprivileged user land callable instructions. Turns out there is away to do this by using features of the Solaris runtime loader (ld.so.1). First I need to expose a little bit of implementation detail about how the Solaris Cryptographic Framework is implemented in Solaris 11.  One of the new Solaris 11 features of the linker/loader is the ability to have a single ELF object that has multiple different implementations of the same functions that are selected at runtime based on the capabilities of the machine.  The alternate to this is having the application coded to call getisax() and make the choice itself.  We use this functionality of the linker/loader when we build the userland libraries for the Solaris Cryptographic Framework (specifically libmd.so, and the unfortunately misnamed due to historical reasons libsoftcrypto.so) The Solaris linker/loader allows control of a lot of its functionality via environment variables, we can use that to control the version of the cryptographic functions we run.  To do this we simply export the LD_HWCAP environment variable with values that tell ld.so.1 to not select the HWCAP section matching certain features even if isainfo says they are present.  For SPARC T4 that would be: export LD_HWCAP="-aes -des -md5 -sha256 -sha512 -mont -mpul" and for Intel systems with AES-NI support: export LD_HWCAP="-aes" This will work for consumers of the Solaris Cryptographic Framework that use the Solaris PKCS#11 libraries or use libmd.so interfaces directly.  It also works for the Oracle DB and Java JCE.  However does not work for the default enabled OpenSSL "t4" or "aes-ni" engines (unfortunately) because they do explicit calls to getisax() themselves rather than using multiple ELF cap sections. However we can still use OpenSSL to demonstrate this by explicitly selecting "pkcs11" engine  using only a single process and thread.  $ openssl speed -engine pkcs11 -evp aes-128-cbc ... type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes aes-128-cbc 54170.81k 187416.00k 489725.70k 805445.63k 1018880.00k $ LD_HWCAP="-aes" openssl speed -engine pkcs11 -evp aes-128-cbc ... type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes aes-128-cbc 29376.37k 58328.13k 79031.55k 86738.26k 89191.77k We can clearly see the difference this makes in the case where AES offload to the SPARC T4 was disabled. The "t4" engine is faster than the pkcs11 one because there is less overhead (again on a SPARC T4-1 using only a single process/thread - using -multi you will get even bigger numbers). $ openssl speed -evp aes-128-cbc ... type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes aes-128-cbc 85526.61k 89298.84k 91970.30k 92662.78k 92842.67k Yet another cool feature of the Solaris linker/loader, thanks Rod and Ali. Note these above openssl speed output is not intended to show the actual performance of any particular benchmark just that there is a significant improvement from using hardware acceleration on SPARC T4. For cryptographic performance benchmarks see the http://blogs.oracle.com/BestPerf/ postings.

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• SQL Script to Assign All Items to ALL Sites with Dynamics GP

  - by Ryan McBee

  v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} When setting up new items within Microsoft Dynamics GP, you will often run into the error message below which reads “This site is not assigned to the selected item.  Do you want to assign this site?”  The fix is quite simple given that you simply click the Add button below which opens up the Item Quantities Maintenance window which you will hit the save button and proceed with the entry of your Sales Order or Purchase Order.   If you have a lot of new items into GP and have just one Site ID setup, the best approach to assigning your items to a particular site is by going to the Site Maintenance Window which is located in Cards>>Inventory>>Site.  Once you are in the window below, you can click the Assign button to assign Items to the Site selected.     However, if you have you a lot of Sites and Items created, this can be quite a cumbersome and time consuming process.  For that, I have created the following SQL Script below that Assigns all Items to all Site ID’s within Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010.    declare @item varchar(100)       , @loc varchar(100)       , @ItemExist int         DECLARE TablePositionCursor CURSOR FOR         SELECT itemnmbr from IV00101 i         OPEN TablePositionCursor       FETCH NEXT FROM TablePositionCursor INTO @item       WHILE (@@fetch_status <> -1)             BEGIN                         DECLARE TablePositionCursor2 CURSOR FOR                         select locncode from IV40700                   OPEN TablePositionCursor2                   FETCH NEXT FROM TablePositionCursor2 INTO  @loc                   WHILE (@@fetch_status <> -1)                         BEGIN                           SELECT @ItemExist = isnull(count(*), 0) FROM IV00102 where ITEMNMBR = @item and LOCNCODE = @loc                                                 if @ItemExist  = 0                               BEGIN                                      insert into iv00102 values(                                     @item                                     ,@loc                                     ,''                                     ,2                                     ,''                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,'01/01/1900'                                     ,''                                     ,'01/01/1900'                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,'01/01/1900'                                     ,'01/01/1900'                                     ,'01/01/1900'                                     ,'01/01/1900'                                     ,0                                     ,''                                     ,''                                     ,''                                     ,1                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,1                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,1                                     ,2                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,1                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,3                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,''                                     ,''                                     ,''                                     ,''                                     ,''                                     ,''                                     ,''                                     ,''                                     ,1                                     ,1                                     ,''                                     ,1                                     ,1                                     ,0                                     ,1                                     ,1                                     ,1                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                       )                         END                               FETCH NEXT FROM TablePositionCursor2 INTO @loc                         END                   DEALLOCATE TablePositionCursor2                     FETCH NEXT FROM TablePositionCursor INTO  @item             END       DEALLOCATE TablePositionCursor     The script below works just for GP 2010 since the columns in the IV00102 have changed from version to version.  If you need it for prior versions, please email me and I will send it to you.   Disclaimer: I tested this on limited data, if you find an issue or have a suggestion for improvement, please let me know and I will post the update here for everyone.  This blog is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

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• Growing Talent

  The subtitle of Daniel Coyles intriguing book The Talent Code is Greatness Isnt Born. Its Grown. Heres How. The Talent Code proceeds to layout a theory of how expertise can be cultivated through specific practices that encourage the growth of myelin in the brain. Myelin is a material that is produced and wraps around heavily used circuits in the brain, making them more efficient. Coyle uses an analogy that geeks will appreciate. When a circuit in the brain is used a lot (i.e. a specific action is repeated), the myelin insulates that circuit, increasing its bandwidth from telephone over copper to high speed broadband. This leads to the funny phenomenon of effortless expertise. Although highly skilled, the best players make it look easy. Coyle provides some biological backing for the long held theory that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery over a given subject. 10,000 hours or 10 years, as in, Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years and others. However, it is not just that more hours equals more mastery. The other factors that Coyle identifies includes deep practice, practice which crucially involves drills that are challenging without being impossible. Another way to put it is that every day you spend doing only tasks you find monotonous and automatic, you are literally stagnating your brains development! Perhaps Coyles subtitle, needs one more phrase, Greatness Isnt Born. Its Grown. Heres How. And oh yeah, its not easy. Challenging yourself, continuing to persist in the face of repeated failures, practicing every day is not easy. As consultants, we sell our expertise, so it makes sense that we plan projects so that people can play to their strengths. At the same time, an important part of our culture is constant improvement, challenging yourself to be better. And the balancing contest ensues. I just finished working on a proof of concept (POC) we did for a project we are bidding on. Completely time boxed, so our team naturally split responsibilities amongst ourselves according to who was better at what. I must have been pretty bad at the other components, as I found myself working on the user interface, not my usual strength. The POC had a website frontend, and one thing I do know is HTML. After starting out in pure ASP.NET WebForms, I got frustrated as time was ticking, I knew what I wanted in HTML, but I couldnt coax the right output out of the ASP.NET controls. I needed two or three elements on the screen that were identical in layout, with different content. With a backup plan in  of writing the HTML into the response by hand, I decided to challenge myself a bit and see what I could do in an hour or two using the Microsoft submitted jQuery micro-templating JavaScript library. This risk paid off. I was able to quickly get the user interface up and running, responsive to the JSON data we were working with. I felt energized by the double win of getting the POC ready and learning something new. Opportunities  specifically like this POC dont come around often, but the takeaway is that while it wont be easy, there are ways to generate your own opportunities to grow towards greatness.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Notes from a short presentation on NodeJs

  - by Aligned

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Aligned/archive/2014/05/30/notes-from-a-short-presentation-on-nodejs.aspxI volunteered myself to give a short 30 minute presentation at a work lunch and learn on NodeJs. With my limited experience I see using Node as a great tool for build process improvement, scaffolding with yeoman, and running tests with Karma. I haven’t looked into using as a full server or development stack. I guess I’m too stuck on IIS and Visual Studio :-). Here are my notes, that aren’t very well formatted, but I wanted to share it anyways. What is it? "Node.js is a platform built on Chrome's JavaScript runtime for easily building fast, scalable network applications. Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices." Why should you be interested? another popular tool that can help you get the job done you can use the command prompt! can be run at build or release time to automate tasks What are some uses? https://www.npmjs.org/ - NuGet for Node packages http://bower.io/ - NuGet for UI JavaScript libraries (jQuery, Bootstrap, Angular, etc) http://yeoman.io/ "Our workflow is comprised of three tools for improving your productivity and satisfaction when building a web app: yo (the scaffolding tool), grunt (the build tool) and bower (for package management)." -> yeoman asks which components you want alternative - http://joakimbeng.eu01.aws.af.cm/slush-replacing-yeoman-with-gulp/ https://www.npmjs.org/package/generator-cg-angular - phantom js, less, // git is needed for bower http://git-scm.com/ run installer in Windows before you can use bower // select Run Git from the Windows Command Prompt in the installer // requires a reboot http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20069297/bower-git-not-in-the-path-error npm install -g git npm install -g yo npm install -g generator-cg-angular mkdir myapp cd myapp yo cg-angular npm install -g bower npm install -g grunt-cli yo bower grunt serve grunt test grunt build // there are many generators (generator-angular) is another one // I like the Nuget HotTowel-Angular from John Papa myself // needed IIS Node for Express -> prompt from WebMatrix Karma bat to startup Karma - see below image compression - https://www.npmjs.org/search?q=optimize+images, https://github.com/heldr/node-smushit - do it from the command line LESS compiling js and css combine and minification at build with Gulp for requireJS apps quick lightweight HTTP server - "Express" Build pipeline with Grunt or Gulp http://www.johnpapa.net/gulp-and-grunt-at-anglebrackets/ Gulp is the newer and improved over Grunt. Supposed to be easier to use, but Grunt is more established. https://github.com/johnpapa/ng-demos/tree/master/grunt-gulp https://github.com/assetgraph/assetgraph-builder Does a lot of the minimizing, combining, image optimization etc using Node. Looks interesting.... http://nodejs.org http://nodeschool.io/ http://sub.watchmecode.net/getting-started-with-nodejs-installing-and-writing-your-first-code/ https://stormpath.com/blog/build-a-killer-node-dot-js-client-for-your-rest-plus-json-api/ https://codio.com/ http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ItsJustASoftwareIssueEdgejsBringsNodeAndNETTogetherOnThreePlatforms.aspx run unit tests - Karma in msBuild karma-start.bat @echo off cd %~dp0\.. REM 604800 is to make sure we only update once every 7 days call npm install --cache-min 604800 -g grunt-cli call npm install --cache-min 604800 call npm install --cache-min 604800 -g karma-cli karma start UnitTests\karma.conf.js REM karma start UnitTests\karma.conf.js --single-run REM see karma-start.bat and karam.config.js REM jsHint comes from Nuget

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• Oracle Fusion Supply Chain Management (SCM) Designs May Improve End User Productivity

  - by Applications User Experience

  By Applications User Experience on March 10, 2011 Michele Molnar, Senior Usability Engineer, Applications User Experience The Challenge: The SCM User Experience team, in close collaboration with product management and strategy, completely redesigned the user experience for Oracle Fusion applications. One of the goals of this redesign was to increase end user productivity by applying design patterns and guidelines and incorporating findings from extensive usability research. But a question remained: How do we know that the Oracle Fusion designs will actually increase end user productivity? The Test: To answer this question, the SCM Usability Engineers compared Oracle Fusion designs to their corresponding existing Oracle applications using the workflow time analysis method. The workflow time analysis method breaks tasks into a sequence of operators. By applying standard time estimates for all of the operators in the task, an estimate of the overall task time can be calculated. The workflow time analysis method has been recently adopted by the Applications User Experience group for use in predicting end user productivity. Using this method, a design can be tested and refined as needed to improve productivity even before the design is coded. For the study, we selected some of our recent designs for Oracle Fusion Product Information Management (PIM). The designs encompassed tasks performed by Product Managers to create, manage, and define products for their organization. (See Figure 1 for an example.) In applying this method, the SCM Usability Engineers collaborated with Product Management to compare the new Oracle Fusion Applications designs against Oracle’s existing applications. Together, we performed the following activities: Identified the five most frequently performed tasks Created detailed task scenarios that provided the context for each task Conducted task walkthroughs Analyzed and documented the steps and flow required to complete each task Applied standard time estimates to the operators in each task to estimate the overall task completion time Figure 1. The interactions on each Oracle Fusion Product Information Management screen were documented, as indicated by the red highlighting. The task scenario and script provided the context for each task.  The Results: The workflow time analysis method predicted that the Oracle Fusion Applications designs would result in productivity gains in each task, ranging from 8% to 62%, with an overall productivity gain of 43%. All other factors being equal, the new designs should enable these tasks to be completed in about half the time it takes with existing Oracle Applications. Further analysis revealed that these performance gains would be achieved by reducing the number of clicks and screens needed to complete the tasks. Conclusions: Using the workflow time analysis method, we can expect the Oracle Fusion Applications redesign to succeed in improving end user productivity. The workflow time analysis method appears to be an effective and efficient tool for testing, refining, and retesting designs to optimize productivity. The workflow time analysis method does not replace usability testing with end users, but it can be used as an early predictor of design productivity even before designs are coded. We are planning to conduct usability tests later in the development cycle to compare actual end user data with the workflow time analysis results. Such results can potentially be used to validate the productivity improvement predictions. Used together, the workflow time analysis method and usability testing will enable us to continue creating, evaluating, and delivering Oracle Fusion designs that exceed the expectations of our end users, both in the quality of the user experience and in productivity. (For more information about studying productivity, refer to the Measuring User Productivity blog.)

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• Detect Unicode Usage in SQL Column

  One optimization you can make to a SQL table that is overly large is to change from nvarchar (or nchar) to varchar (or char).  Doing so will cut the size used by the data in half, from 2 bytes per character (+ 2 bytes of overhead for varchar) to only 1 byte per character.  However, you will lose the ability to store Unicode characters, such as those used by many non-English alphabets.  If the tables are storing user-input, and your application is or might one day be used internationally, its likely that using Unicode for your characters is a good thing.  However, if instead the data is being generated by your application itself or your development team (such as lookup data), and you can be certain that Unicode character sets are not required, then switching such columns to varchar/char can be an easy improvement to make. Avoid Premature Optimization If you are working with a lookup table that has a small number of rows, and is only ever referenced in the application by its numeric ID column, then you wont see any benefit to using varchar vs. nvarchar.  More generally, for small tables, you wont see any significant benefit.  Thus, if you have a general policy in place to use nvarchar/nchar because it offers more flexibility, do not take this post as a recommendation to go against this policy anywhere you can.  You really only want to act on measurable evidence that suggests that using Unicode is resulting in a problem, and that you wont lose anything by switching to varchar/char. Obviously the main reason to make this change is to reduce the amount of space required by each row.  This in turn affects how many rows SQL Server can page through at a time, and can also impact index size and how much disk I/O is required to respond to queries, etc.  If for example you have a table with 100 million records in it and this table has a column of type nchar(5), this column will use 5 * 2 = 10 bytes per row, and with 100M rows that works out to 10 bytes * 100 million = 1000 MBytes or 1GB.  If it turns out that this column only ever stores ASCII characters, then changing it to char(5) would reduce this to 5*1 = 5 bytes per row, and only 500MB.  Of course, if it turns out that it only ever stores the values true and false then you could go further and replace it with a bit data type which uses only 1 byte per row (100MB  total). Detecting Whether Unicode Is In Use So by now you think that you have a problem and that it might be alleviated by switching some columns from nvarchar/nchar to varchar/char but youre not sure whether youre currently using Unicode in these columns.  By definition, you should only be thinking about this for a column that has a lot of rows in it, since the benefits just arent there for a small table, so you cant just eyeball it and look for any non-ASCII characters.  Instead, you need a query.  Its actually very simple: SELECT DISTINCT(CategoryName)FROM CategoriesWHERE CategoryName <> CONVERT(varchar, CategoryName) Summary Gregg Stark for the tip. Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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