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  • They may block off Howard Street—but Oracle OpenWorld is a two-way street.

    - by Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 by Jim Lein, Sr. Director, Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies “Engineered to Inform and Inspire”—that’s the theme of Oracle OpenWorld 2012. In early October, tens of thousands of attendees will descend on the streets of San Francisco because they share one thing in common: the desire to learn more about Oracle. You might think that’s the way we, Oracle employees, look at this event—as just another opportunity for attendees to learn about what we do. But it’s really a two way street. Every year I’m amazed by how informed and inspired I am by our customers and their companies. Midsize companies buy Oracle to grow. As part of the Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies team I get to talk with our partners and business leaders at growing companies almost every day, usually via phone. Oracle OpenWorld presents the perfect opportunity to meet some of them in person, in an informal setting, and in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. The stories our customers tell me about their businesses provide vivid examples of how they have overcome the challenges of managing increasingly complex global operations and growing during uncertain economic conditions. It’s no secret that my favorite session at Oracle OpenWorld (besides Larry Ellison’s keynotes and the Customer Appreciation Event, of course) is the Oracle Accelerate Customer Panel. This year we’re featuring executives from three companies who deployed Oracle ERP rapidly to support their company’s growth: Chris Powell, VP and Corporate Controller of Beats by Dr. Dre, a California based designer and manufacturer of premium headphones (sorry, no free samples), Iñaki Zuazo, CIO of Industrias Juno, a building materials provider based in Spain, Kamran Moosa, Project Coordinator for Spartan Engineering, a provider of engineering and construction support services for an LPG storage project in Texas, and That’s a pretty diverse lineup and it will be interesting to hear the perspectives of both IT and financial project stakeholders. The session, “Oracle Accelerate Customer Case Studies: Rapid Deployment of Oracle Applications”, is at 3:30 pm on Wednesday, October 3, in the Concert room at the Palace Hotel. Oracle loves our hometown of San Francisco and it’s a great place to host Oracle OpenWorld. It’s now San Francisco’s largest conference and the city closes off Howard Street to better accommodate the attendees. Some Bay Area commuters may be inconvenienced for a few days by this closure but the conference brings about $100 million into the local economy. Now that’s a two-way street. More Oracle Accelerate at Oracle OpenWorld “Faster, Better, Cheaper Application Deployment with Oracle Business Accelerators”, Monday, October 1st, 10:45 a.m., Moscone West Room 3016 “Oracle Accelerate and Oracle Business Accelerators for Midsize Companies”, (partners only), Wednesday, October 3, 10:15 a.m., Marriott – Golden Gate B Visit the Oracle Accelerate and Oracle Business Accelerator Kiosk in the Moscone West Exhibit Grounds Download the Focus On Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies Focus document /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}

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  • Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge: TEAM Informatics

    - by Kellsey Ruppel
    Originally posted by Jake Kuramoto on The Apps Lab blog. Here comes another Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge entry, this one courtesy of TEAM Informatics (@teaminformatics). As their name suggests, their entry was a true team effort, featuring the work of Jon Chartrand, Deepthi Sanikommu, Dmitry Shtulman, Raghavendra Joshi, and Daniel Stitely with Wayne Boerger doing the presentation honors. Speaking of the presentation, Wayne’s laptop wouldn’t project onto the plasma we had in the OTN Lounge, but luckily, Noel (@noelportugal) had his iPad and VGA dongle in his backpack of goodies, so they were able to improvise by using the iPad camera to capture Wayne’s demo and project the video to the plasma. Code will find a way. Anyway, TEAM built Do Over, an integration with Atlassian’s JIRA, coincidentally something I’ve chatted with Rich (@rmanalan) about in the past. The basic idea is simple; integrate JIRA issues with Oracle Social Network to expand and centralize the conversation around issue resolution. In Dmitry’s words: We were able to put together a team on fairly short notice and, after batting a few ideas around, decided to pursue an integration with JIRA, an issue and project tracking tool used in-house at TEAM.  After getting to know WebCenter Social, we saw immediate benefits that a JIRA integration could bring, primarily due to the fact that JIRA only allows assignment of an issue to one person at a time.  Integrating Social would allow collaboration and issue resolution to happen right from the JIRA Issue interface. TEAM tackled a very common pain point among developers, i.e. including everyone who needs to be involved in issue resolution into a single thread. If you’ve ever fixed bugs or participated in that process, you’ll know that not everyone has access to the issue resolution system, which makes consolidating discussion time-consuming and fragmented. Why? Because we typically use email as the tool for collaboration. Oracle Social Network allows for all parties involved to work in a single, private and secure conversation, and through its RESTful Public API, information from external systems like JIRA can be brought in for context. TEAM only had time to address half the solution, but given more time, I’m sure they would have made the integration bidirectional, allowing for relevant commentary to be pushed back to JIRA, closing the loop. Here are some screenshot of their integration. #gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } When Oracle Social Network is released, TEAM will have something they use internally to work on issues, and maybe they’ll even productize their work and add it to the Atlassian Marketplace so that other JIRA users can benefit from the combination of Oracle Social Network and JIRA. Thanks to everyone at TEAM for participating in our challenge. We hope they had a good experience. Look for the details of the other entries this week. Be sure to check out a full recap from Dmitry over on the TEAM blog.

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  • #MIX Day 2 Keynote: Put the Phone Down and Listen

    - by andrewbrust
    MIX day 1’s keynote was all about Windows Phone 7 (WP7).  MIX day 2’s was a reminder that Microsoft has much more going on than a new mobile platform.  Steven Sinofsky, Scott Guthrie, Doug Purdy and others showed us lots of other good things coming from Microsoft, mostly in the developer stack, that we certainly shouldn’t overlook.  These included the forthcoming IE9, its new JavaScript compiling engine and support for HTML 5 that takes full advantage of the local PC resources, including the Graphics Processing Unit.  The announcements also included important additions to ASP.NET (and one subtraction, in the form of lighter-weight ViewState technology) including almost-obsessive jQuery support.  That support is so good that John Resig, creator of the jQuery project, came on stage to tell us so.  Then Scott Guthrie told us that Microsoft would be contributing code to Open Source jQuery project. This is not your father’s Microsoft, it would seem. But to me, the crown jewel in today’s keynote were the numerous announcements around the Open Data Protocol (OData).  OData is nothing more than the protocol side of “Astoria” (now known as WCF Data Services, and until recently called ADO.NET Data Services) separated out and opened up as a platform-neutral standard.  The 2009 Professional Developers Conference (PDC) was Microsoft’s vehicle for first announcing OData, as well as project “Dallas,” an Azure-based cloud platform for publishing commercial OData feeds.  And we had already known about “bridges” for Astoria (and thus OData) for PHP and Java.  We also knew that PowerPivot, Microsoft’s forthcoming self-service BI plug-in for Excel 2010, will consume OData feeds and then facilitate drill-down analysis of their data.  And we recently found out that SQL Reporting Services reports (in the forthcoming SQL Server 2008 R2) and SharePoint 2010 lists will be consumable in OData format as well. So what was left to announce?  How about OData clients for Palm webOS and Apple iPhone/Objective C?  How about the release to Open Source of .NET’s OData client?  Or the ability to publish any SQL Azure database as an OData service by simply checking a checkbox at deployment?  Maybe even a Silverlight tool (code-named “Houston”) to create SQL Azure databases (and then publish them as OData) right in the browser?  And what if you you could get at NetFlix’s entire catalog in OData format?  You can – just go to http://odata.netflix.com/Catalog/ and see for yourself.  Douglas Purdy, who made these announcements said “we want OData to work on as many devices and platforms as possible.”  After all the cross-platform OData announcements made in about a half year’s time, it’s hard to dispute this. When Microsoft plays the data card, and plays it well, watch out, because data programmability is the company’s heritage.  I’ll be discussing OData at length in my April Redmond Review column.  I wrote that column two weeks ago, and was convinced then that OData was a big deal. Today upped the ante even more.  And following the Windows Phone 7 euphoria of yesterday was, I think, smart timing.  The phone, if it’s successful, will be because it’s a good developer platform play.  And developer platforms (as well as their creators) are most successful when they have a good data strategy.  OData is very Silverlight-friendly, and that means it’s WP7-friendly too.  Phone plus service-oriented data is a one-two punch.  A phone platform without data would have been a phone with no signal.

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  • Why Cornell University Chose Oracle Data Masking

    - by Troy Kitch
    One of the eight Ivy League schools, Cornell University found itself in the unfortunate position of having to inform over 45,000 University community members that their personal information had been breached when a laptop was stolen. To ensure this wouldn’t happen again, Cornell took steps to ensure that data used for non-production purposes is de-identified with Oracle Data Masking. A recent podcast highlights why organizations like Cornell are choosing Oracle Data Masking to irreversibly de-identify production data for use in non-production environments. Organizations often copy production data, that contains sensitive information, into non-production environments so they can test applications and systems using “real world” information. Data in non-production has increasingly become a target of cyber criminals and can be lost or stolen due to weak security controls and unmonitored access. Similar to production environments, data breaches in non-production environments can cost millions of dollars to remediate and cause irreparable harm to reputation and brand. Cornell’s applications and databases help carry out the administrative and academic mission of the university. They are running Oracle PeopleSoft Campus Solutions that include highly sensitive faculty, student, alumni, and prospective student data. This data is supported and accessed by a diverse set of developers and functional staff distributed across the university. Several years ago, Cornell experienced a data breach when an employee’s laptop was stolen.  Centrally stored backup information indicated there was sensitive data on the laptop. With no way of knowing what the criminal intended, the university had to spend significant resources reviewing data, setting up service centers to handle constituent concerns, and provide free credit checks and identity theft protection services—all of which cost money and took time away from other projects. To avoid this issue in the future Cornell came up with several options; one of which was to sanitize the testing and training environments. “The project management team was brought in and they developed a project plan and implementation schedule; part of which was to evaluate competing products in the market-space and figure out which one would work best for us.  In the end we chose Oracle’s solution based on its architecture and its functionality.” – Tony Damiani, Database Administration and Business Intelligence, Cornell University The key goals of the project were to mask the elements that were identifiable as sensitive in a consistent and efficient manner, but still support all the previous activities in the non-production environments. Tony concludes,  “What we saw was a very minimal impact on performance. The masking process added an additional three hours to our refresh window, but it was well worth that time to secure the environment and remove the sensitive data. I think some other key points you can keep in mind here is that there was zero impact on the production environment. Oracle Data Masking works in non-production environments only. Additionally, the risk of exposure has been significantly reduced and the impact to business was minimal.” With Oracle Data Masking organizations like Cornell can: Make application data securely available in non-production environments Prevent application developers and testers from seeing production data Use an extensible template library and policies for data masking automation Gain the benefits of referential integrity so that applications continue to work Listen to the podcast to hear the complete interview.  Learn more about Oracle Data Masking by registering to watch this SANS Institute Webcast and view this short demo.

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  • Adventures in MVVM &ndash; ViewModel Location and Creation

    - by Brian Genisio's House Of Bilz
    More Adventures in MVVM In this post, I am going to explore how I prefer to attach ViewModels to my Views.  I have published the code to my ViewModelSupport project on CodePlex in case you'd like to see how it works along with some examples.  Some History My approach to View-First ViewModel creation has evolved over time.  I have constructed ViewModels in code-behind.  I have instantiated ViewModels in the resources sectoin of the view. I have used Prism to resolve ViewModels via Dependency Injection. I have created attached properties that use Dependency Injection containers underneath.  Of all these approaches, I continue to find issues either in composability, blendability or maintainability.  Laurent Bugnion came up with a pretty good approach in MVVM Light Toolkit with his ViewModelLocator, but as John Papa points out, it has maintenance issues.  John paired up with Glen Block to make the ViewModelLocator more generic by using MEF to compose ViewModels.  It is a great approach, but I don’t like baking in specific resolution technologies into the ViewModelSupport project. I bring these people up, not to name drop, but to give them credit for the place I finally landed in my journey to resolve ViewModels.  I have come up with my own version of the ViewModelLocator that is both generic and container agnostic.  The solution is blendable, configurable and simple to use.  Use any resolution mechanism you want: MEF, Unity, Ninject, Activator.Create, Lookup Tables, new, whatever. How to use the locator 1. Create a class to contain your resolution configuration: public class YourViewModelResolver: IViewModelResolver { private YourFavoriteContainer container = new YourFavoriteContainer(); public YourViewModelResolver() { // Configure your container } public object Resolve(string viewModelName) { return container.Resolve(viewModelName); } } Examples of doing this are on CodePlex for MEF, Unity and Activator.CreateInstance. 2. Create your ViewModelLocator with your custom resolver in App.xaml: <VMS:ViewModelLocator x:Key="ViewModelLocator"> <VMS:ViewModelLocator.Resolver> <local:YourViewModelResolver /> </VMS:ViewModelLocator.Resolver> </VMS:ViewModelLocator> 3. Hook up your data context whenever you want a ViewModel (WPF): <Border DataContext="{Binding YourViewModelName, Source={StaticResource ViewModelLocator}}"> This example uses dynamic properties on the ViewModelLocator and passes the name to your resolver to figure out how to compose it. 4. What about Silverlight? Good question.  You can't bind to dynamic properties in Silverlight 4 (crossing my fingers for Silverlight 5), but you CAN use string indexing: <Border DataContext="{Binding [YourViewModelName], Source={StaticResource ViewModelLocator}}"> But, as John Papa points out in his article, there is a silly bug in Silverlight 4 (as of this writing) that will call into the indexer 6 times when it binds.  While this is little more than a nuisance when getting most properties, it can be much more of an issue when you are resolving ViewModels six times.  If this gets in your way, the solution (as pointed out by John), is to use an IndexConverter (instantiated in App.xaml and also included in the project): <Border DataContext="{Binding Source={StaticResource ViewModelLocator}, Converter={StaticResource IndexConverter}, ConverterParameter=YourViewModelName}"> It is a bit uglier than the WPF version (this method will also work in WPF if you prefer), but it is still not all that bad.  Conclusion This approach works really well (I suppose I am a bit biased).  It allows for composability from any mechanisim you choose.  It is blendable (consider serving up different objects in Design Mode if you wish... or different constructors… whatever makes sense to you).  It works in Cider.  It is configurable.  It is flexible.  It is the best way I have found to manage View-First ViewModel hookups.  Thanks to the guys mentioned in this article for getting me to something I love using.  Enjoy.

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  • Gamify your Web

    - by Isabel F. Peñuelas
    Yesterday Valencia welcomed the Gamification World Congress that I follow virtually through #GWC2012. BBVA, Iberia, Ligeresa, Axe, Wayra, ESADE, GlaxoSmithKline, Macmillan, Gamisfaction, Nomaders, Blaffin were among the companies presenting success stories on gaming. It has been proved that people remember things easily when an emotion is created. The marketing expectations around Gamification techniques have a lot to do with Neuromarketing theories. There are a lot of expectations on internal enterprise Gamification. In the public Web some sectors are taking the lead on following the trend. The Gartner Analyst Brian Burke opened another Gamification recent event in Madrid remembering that “Gamification is mostly about Engagement”, and this can be applied both to customers or employees. Gamification and Banking The experience of the Spanish Financial Group BBVA that just launched BBVA Game was also presented a week ago at the BBVA Innovation Centre during the event “Gamification & Banking: a fad or a serious business?” . One of the objectives of the BBVA Game was to double the name of registered users. “People like the efficiency of the online channel want to keep a one-to-one contact with the brand”-explained Bernardo Crespo. Another interested data coming out the BBVA presentation was that “only 20% of Spanish users –out of the total holders of Bank Accounts in the country- is familiar with the use of a Web Site to consult their bank accounts”, the project aims also to reverse this situation helping people to learn making a heavy use of the Video in the gaming context. In general Banking presenters seem to agree that Gamification techniques are helping to increase the time spent on the Web. Gamification and Health Using Gamification techniques for chronic illness rehabilitation was another topic of the World Congress. Here you can find some ideas and experiences What can games do for the health (In Spanish) I have personally started my own mental-health gaming project at http://www.lumosity.com/ Gamification in the Enterprise I really recommend Reading this excellent post of Ultan ÓBroin my Introduction to Gamification and Applications. Employee´s motivation and learning are experiencing a 360º turn and it looks than some of us will become soon the Dragon of the year instead of the Employee of the Year. Using Web 2.0 Tools for Gamification Projects  What type of tools do we need for a quick-win Gamification project? To certain extend Gamification can be considered an evolution of the participative Web. Badging, avatars, points and awards, leader boards, progress charts, virtual currencies, gifting and giving challenges and quests are common components and elements. The Web is offering new development frameworks to that purpose as this Avatar Framework from Paypal or Badgeville to include in web applications. Besides, tools to create communities around a game are required to comment, share and vote players as well as for an efficient multimedia management. Due to its entirely open architecture, its community features, and its multimedia and imaging solutions is were I see WebCenter as a tool helping brands to success. Link to Sources & Recommended Readings YouTube Video of BBVAGame presentation Where To Apply Gamification In Your Incentive Jim Calhoun Cancer Challenge Ride and Walkh For my Spanish Readers El aburrimiento es el enemigo número uno del éxito

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  • Autoscaling in a modern world&hellip;. Part 4

    - by Steve Loethen
    Now that I have the rules and services XML files in the cloud, it is time to sever the bounds of earth and live totally in the cloud.  I have to host the Autoscaling object in Azure as well, point it to the rules, tell it the management certs and get out of the way. A couple of questions.  Where to host?  The most obvious place to me was a worker role.  A simple, single purpose worker role, doing nothing but watching my app.  Here are the steps I used. 1) Created a project.  Separate project from my web site.  I wanted to be able to run the web in the cloud and the autoscaler local for debugging purposes.  Seemed like the easiest way.  2) Add the Wasabi block to the project. 3) Configure the settings.  I used the same settings used for the console app.  It points to the same web role, uses the same rules file.  4) Make sure the certification needed to manage the role is added to the cert store in the sky (“LocalMachine” and “My” are default locations). I ran the worker role in the local fabric.  It worked.  I then published to the cloud, and verified it worked again.  Here is what my code looked like. public override bool OnStart() { Trace.WriteLine("Set Default Connection Limit", "Information"); // Set the maximum number of concurrent connections ServicePointManager.DefaultConnectionLimit = 12; Trace.WriteLine("Set up configuration change code", "Information"); // set up config CloudStorageAccount.SetConfigurationSettingPublisher((configName, configSetter) => configSetter(RoleEnvironment.GetConfigurationSettingValue(configName))); Trace.WriteLine("Get current diagnostic configuration", "Information"); // Get current diagnostic configuration DiagnosticMonitorConfiguration dmc = DiagnosticMonitor.GetDefaultInitialConfiguration(); Trace.WriteLine("Set Diagnostic Buffer Size", "Information"); // Set Diagnostic Buffer size dmc.Logs.BufferQuotaInMB = 4; Trace.WriteLine("Set log transfer period", "Information"); // Set log transfer period dmc.Logs.ScheduledTransferPeriod = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(1); Trace.WriteLine("Set log verbosity", "Information"); // Set log filter to verbose dmc.Logs.ScheduledTransferLogLevelFilter = LogLevel.Verbose; Trace.WriteLine("Start the diagnostic monitor", "Information"); // Start the diagnostic monitor DiagnosticMonitor.Start("Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString", dmc); Trace.WriteLine("Get the current Autoscaler from the EntLib Container", "Information"); // Get the current Autoscaler from the EntLib Container scaler = EnterpriseLibraryContainer.Current.GetInstance<Autoscaler>(); Trace.WriteLine("Start the autoscaler", "Information"); // Start the autoscaler scaler.Start(); Trace.WriteLine("call the base class OnStart", "Information"); // call the base class OnStart return base.OnStart(); } public override void OnStop() { Trace.WriteLine("Stop the Autoscaler", "Information"); // Stop the Autoscaler scaler.Stop(); } I did have to turn on some basic logging for wasabi, which will cover in the next post.  This let me figure out that I hadn’t done the certificate step.

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  • How the "migrations" approach makes database continuous integration possible

    - by David Atkinson
    Testing a database upgrade script as part of a continuous integration process will only work if there is an easy way to automate the generation of the upgrade scripts. There are two common approaches to managing upgrade scripts. The first is to maintain a set of scripts as-you-go-along. Many SQL developers I've encountered will store these in a folder prefixed numerically to ensure they are ordered as they are intended to be run. Occasionally there is an accompanying document or a batch file that ensures that the scripts are run in the defined order. Writing these scripts during the course of development requires discipline. It's all too easy to load up the table designer and to make a change directly to the development database, rather than to save off the ALTER statement that is required when the same change is made to production. This discipline can add considerable overhead to the development process. However, come the end of the project, everything is ready for final testing and deployment. The second development paradigm is to not do the above. Changes are made to the development database without considering the incremental update scripts required to effect the changes. At the end of the project, the SQL developer or DBA, is tasked to work out what changes have been made, and to hand-craft the upgrade scripts retrospectively. The end of the project is the wrong time to be doing this, as the pressure is mounting to ship the product. And where data deployment is involved, it is prudent not to feel rushed. Schema comparison tools such as SQL Compare have made this latter technique more bearable. These tools work by analyzing the before and after states of a database schema, and calculating the SQL required to transition the database. Problem solved? Not entirely. Schema comparison tools are huge time savers, but they have their limitations. There are certain changes that can be made to a database that can't be determined purely from observing the static schema states. If a column is split, how do we determine the algorithm required to copy the data into the new columns? If a NOT NULL column is added without a default, how do we populate the new field for existing records in the target? If we rename a table, how do we know we've done a rename, as we could equally have dropped a table and created a new one? All the above are examples of situations where developer intent is required to supplement the script generation engine. SQL Source Control 3 and SQL Compare 10 introduced a new feature, migration scripts, allowing developers to add custom scripts to replace the default script generation behavior. These scripts are committed to source control alongside the schema changes, and are associated with one or more changesets. Before this capability was introduced, any schema change that required additional developer intent would break any attempt at auto-generation of the upgrade script, rendering deployment testing as part of continuous integration useless. SQL Compare will now generate upgrade scripts not only using its diffing engine, but also using the knowledge supplied by developers in the guise of migration scripts. In future posts I will describe the necessary command line syntax to leverage this feature as part of an automated build process such as continuous integration.

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  • Announcement: Employee Info Starter Kit (v5.0) is Released

    - by Mohammad Ashraful Alam
    Ever wanted to have a simple jQuery menu bound with ASP.NET web site map file? Ever wanted to have cool css design stuffs implemented on your ASP.NET data bound controls? Ever wanted to let Visual Studio generate logical layers for you, which can be easily tested, customized and bound with ASP.NET data controls? If your answers with respect to above questions are ‘yes’, then you will probably happy to try out latest release (v5.0) of Employee Starter Kit, which is intended to address different types of real world challenges faced by web application developers when performing common CRUD operations. Using a single database table ‘Employee’, the current release illustrates how to utilize Microsoft ASP.NET 4.0 Web Form Data Controls, Entity Framework 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 effectively in that context. Employee Info Starter Kit is an open source ASP.NET project template that is highly influenced by the concept ‘Pareto Principle’ or 80-20 rule, where it is targeted to enable a web developer to gain 80% productivity with 20% of effort with respect to learning curve and production. This project template is titled as “Employee Info Starter Kit”, which was initially hosted on Microsoft Code Gallery and been downloaded 1, 50,000+ of copies afterword.  The latest version of this starter kit is hosted in Codeplex. Release Highlights User End Functional Specification The user end functionalities of this starter kit are pretty simple and straight forward that are focused in to perform CRUD operation on employee records as described below. Creating a new employee record Read existing employee records Update an existing employee record Delete existing employee records Architectural Overview Simple 3 layer architecture (presentation, business logic and data access layer) ASP.NET web form based user interface Built-in code generators for logical layers, implemented in Visual Studio default template engine (T4) Built-in Entity Framework entities as business entities (aka: data containers) Data Mapper design pattern based Data Access Layer, implemented in C# and Entity Framework Domain Model design pattern based Business Logic Layer, implemented in C# Object Model for Cross Cutting Concerns (such as validation, logging, exception management) Minimum System Requirements Visual Studio 2010 (Web Developer Express Edition) or higher Sql Server 2005 (Express Edition) or higher Technology Utilized Programming Languages/Scripts Browser side: JavaScript Web server side: C# Code Generation Template: T-4 Template Frameworks .NET Framework 4.0 JavaScript Framework: jQuery 1.5.1 CSS Framework: 960 grid system .NET Framework Components .NET Entity Framework .NET Optional/Named Parameters (new in .net 4.0) .NET Tuple (new in .net 4.0) .NET Extension Method .NET Lambda Expressions .NET Anonymous Type .NET Query Expressions .NET Automatically Implemented Properties .NET LINQ .NET Partial Classes and Methods .NET Generic Type .NET Nullable Type ASP.NET Meta Description and Keyword Support (new in .net 4.0) ASP.NET Routing (new in .net 4.0) ASP.NET Grid View (CSS support for sorting - (new in .net 4.0)) ASP.NET Repeater ASP.NET Form View ASP.NET Login View ASP.NET Site Map Path ASP.NET Skin ASP.NET Theme ASP.NET Master Page ASP.NET Object Data Source ASP.NET Role Based Security Getting Started Guide To see Employee Info Starter Kit in action is pretty easy! Download the latest version. Extract the file. From the extracted folder click the C# project file (Eisk.Web.csproj) to open it in Visual Studio 2010 Hit Ctrl+F5! The current release (v5.0) of Employee Info Starter Kit is properly packaged, fully documented and well tested. If you want to learn more about it in details, just check the following links: Release Home Page Installation Walkthrough Hand on Coding Walkthrough Technical Reference Enjoy!

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  • Silverlight Cream for January 16, 2011 -- #1029

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Michael Washington, Jesse Liberty, Deborah Kurata(-2-, -3-, -4-), Sergey Barskiy(-2-), Miroslav Nedyalkov, Jeff Prosise, and Matthias Shapiro(-2-). Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Building a Multi-Page Silverlight LOB Application" Deborah Kurata WP7: "Windows Phone 7 [Controls] Project" Sergey Barskiy Sketchflow: "Sketchflow To Final" Michael Washington From SilverlightCream.com: Sketchflow To Final Check out this post by Michael Washington detailing the Sketchflow he did of his app, and how the final result tracks amazingly well. Windows Phone From Scratch #19 – MVVM Light Toolkit Soup To Nuts #4 Continuing to try to catch up to Jesse Liberty is this post, number 19 in the Windows Phone series and the 4th in that series about MVVMLight, and discussing binding a collection in the ViewModel to a ListBox in the view. Building a Multi-Page Silverlight LOB Application Deborah Kurata has the first 4 parts up (in 2 days) in a 6-part tutorial series she's doing on building a Silverlight LOB app. The first post was an intro and link to the rest as they become available. This 2nd post is getting the app newed up and making sure you've got your head wrapped around multiple pages. Theming a Silverlight Application using Existing Themes Deborah Kurata's next part is about getting started with themes in your app using the themes provided in the toolkit specifically. Theming a Silverlight Application using Custom Themes Deborah Kurata's next tutorial in the series is also about themes, but this time it's about custom themes... or rather customized from a 'standard' one in this case. Adding a New Page to a Multi-Page Silverlight Application Deborah Kurata's last available post in the tutorial series is this one on adding a new page to the app. Windows Phone 7 Project Sergey Barskiy has a pair of posts up about a calendar control that he is building and has out on CodePlex... nice-looking control too! Windows Phone 7 Controls Project Update Sergey Barskiy's second post is an update to the calendar... the biggest update being the ability to use the Toolkit context menu. How to Create Ad Rotator with Telerik TransitionControl and CoverFlow control for Silverlight Miroslav Nedyalkov uses the Telerik TransitionControl and CoverFlow controls to produce a great-looking ad rotator using any ContentControl or ListBox... very nice demo on the page.... Building Touch Interfaces for Windows Phones, Part 2 Jeff Prosise has part 2 of his tutorial series on WP7 Touch Interfaces up... and he's processing touch events directly in this one. Fixing the ListPicker / ScrollViewer Problem in Windows Phone 7 Matthias Shapiro has a couple of posts out that I've missed... this one is on an issue with ListPickers in a ScrollViewer where the listpicker gets hit rather than the scroll, and of course he has a work-around... but you'll need the source for the ListPicker to do it. Embedding a Sound File in Windows Phone 7 app (Silverlight) The next post by Matthias Shapiro is an explanation of embedding a sound file in a WP7 app with 2 conditions: 1) it downloads with your app, and 2) it plays no matter what. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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  • Is SugarCRM really adequate for custom development (or adequate at all)? [closed]

    - by dukeofgaming
    Have you used SugarCRM for custom development successfully?, if so, have you done it programmatically or through the Module Builder? Were you successful? If not, why? I used SugarCRM for a project about two years ago, I ran into errors from the very installation, having to hack the actual installation file to deploy the software in the server and other erros that I can't recall now. Two years after, I'm picking it up for a project once again. I'm feeling like I should have developed the whole thing from scratch myself. Some examples: I couldn't install it in the server (again). I had to install it locally, then copy the files and database over to the server and manually edit the config file. Constantly getting deployment errors from the module builder. One reason is SugarCRM keeps creating a record in the upgrade_history table for a file that does not exist, I keep deleting such record and it keeps coming back corrupt. I get other deployment errors, but have not figured them out. then I have to rollback all files and database to try again. I deleted a custom module with relationships, the relationships stayed in the other modules and cannot be deleted anymore, PHP warnings all over the place. Quick create for custom modules does not appear, hack needed. Its whole cache directory is a joke, permanent data/files are stored there. The module builder interface disappears required fields. Edit the wrong thing, module builder won't deploy again, then pray Quick Repair and/or Rebuild Relationships do the trick. My impression of SugarCRM now is that, regardless of its pretty exterior and apparent functionality, it is a very low quality piece of software. This even scared me more: http://amplicate.com/hate/sugarcrm; a quote: I wis this info had been available when I tried to implement it 2 years ago... I searched high and low and the only info I found was positive. Yes, it's a piece of crap. The community edition was full of bugs... nothing worked. Essentially I got fired for implementing it. I'm glad though, because now I work for myself, am much happier and make more money... so, I should really thank SugarCRM for sucking so much I guess! I figured that perhaps some of you have had similar experiences, and have either sticked with SugarCRM or moved on to another solution. I'm very interested in knowing what your resolutions were -or your current situations are- to make up my own mind, since the project I'm working on is long term and I'm feeling SugarCRM will be more an obstacle than an aid. After further failed attempts to continue using this software I continued to stumble upon dead-ends when using the module editor, I could only recover from this errors by using version control. We are now moving on to a custom implementation using Symfony; perhaps if we were using it with its out-of-the-box modules we would have sticked with it.

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  • Big Data – Basics of Big Data Architecture – Day 4 of 21

    - by Pinal Dave
    In yesterday’s blog post we understood how Big Data evolution happened. Today we will understand basics of the Big Data Architecture. Big Data Cycle Just like every other database related applications, bit data project have its development cycle. Though three Vs (link) for sure plays an important role in deciding the architecture of the Big Data projects. Just like every other project Big Data project also goes to similar phases of the data capturing, transforming, integrating, analyzing and building actionable reporting on the top of  the data. While the process looks almost same but due to the nature of the data the architecture is often totally different. Here are few of the question which everyone should ask before going ahead with Big Data architecture. Questions to Ask How big is your total database? What is your requirement of the reporting in terms of time – real time, semi real time or at frequent interval? How important is the data availability and what is the plan for disaster recovery? What are the plans for network and physical security of the data? What platform will be the driving force behind data and what are different service level agreements for the infrastructure? This are just basic questions but based on your application and business need you should come up with the custom list of the question to ask. As I mentioned earlier this question may look quite simple but the answer will not be simple. When we are talking about Big Data implementation there are many other important aspects which we have to consider when we decide to go for the architecture. Building Blocks of Big Data Architecture It is absolutely impossible to discuss and nail down the most optimal architecture for any Big Data Solution in a single blog post, however, we can discuss the basic building blocks of big data architecture. Here is the image which I have built to explain how the building blocks of the Big Data architecture works. Above image gives good overview of how in Big Data Architecture various components are associated with each other. In Big Data various different data sources are part of the architecture hence extract, transform and integration are one of the most essential layers of the architecture. Most of the data is stored in relational as well as non relational data marts and data warehousing solutions. As per the business need various data are processed as well converted to proper reports and visualizations for end users. Just like software the hardware is almost the most important part of the Big Data Architecture. In the big data architecture hardware infrastructure is extremely important and failure over instances as well as redundant physical infrastructure is usually implemented. NoSQL in Data Management NoSQL is a very famous buzz word and it really means Not Relational SQL or Not Only SQL. This is because in Big Data Architecture the data is in any format. It can be unstructured, relational or in any other format or from any other data source. To bring all the data together relational technology is not enough, hence new tools, architecture and other algorithms are invented which takes care of all the kind of data. This is collectively called NoSQL. Tomorrow Next four days we will answer the Buzz Words – Hadoop. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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  • MVC Portable Areas &ndash; Deploying Static Files

    - by Steve Michelotti
    This is the second post in a series related to build and deployment considerations as I’ve been exploring MVC Portable Areas: #1 – Using Web Application Project to build portable areas #2 – Conventions for deploying portable area static files #3 – Portable area static files as embedded resources As I’ve been digging more into portable areas, one of the things I’ve liked best is the deployment story which enables my *.aspx, *.ascx pages to be compiled into the assembly as embedded resources rather than having to maintain all those files separately. In traditional web forms, that was always the thing to prevented developers from utilizing *.ascx user controls across projects (see this post for using portable areas in web forms).  However, though the aspx pages are embedded, the supporting static files (e.g., images, css, javascript) are *not*. Most of the demos available online today tend to brush over this issue and focus solely on the aspx side of things. But to create truly robust portable areas, it’s important to have a good story for these supporting files as well.  I’ve been working with two different approaches so far (of course I’d really like to hear if other people are using alternatives). Scenario For the approaches below, the scenario really isn’t that important. It could be something as trivial as this partial view: 1: <%@ Control Language="C#" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewUserControl" %> 2: <img src="<%: Url.Content("~/images/arrow.gif") %>" /> Hello World! The point is that there needs to be careful consideration for *any* scenario that links to an external file such as an image, *.css, *.js, etc. In the example shown above, it uses the Url.Content() method to convert to a relative path. But this method won’t necessary work depending on how you deploy your portable area. One approach to address this issue is to build your portable area project with MSDeploy/WebDeploy so that it is packaged properly before incorporating into the host application. All of the *.cs files are removed and the project is ready for xcopy deployment – however, I do *not* need the “Views” folder since all of the mark up has been compiled into the assembly as embedded resources. Now in the host application we create a folder called “Modules” and deploy any portable areas as sub-folders under that: At this point we can add a simple assembly reference to the Widget1.dll sitting in the Modules\Widget1\bin folder. I can now render the portable image in my view like any other portable area. However, the problem with that is that the view results in this:   It couldn’t find arrow.gif because it looked for /images/arrow.gif and it was *actually* located at /images/Modules/Widget1/images/arrow.gif. One solution is to make the physical location of the portable configurable from the perspective of the host like this: 1: <appSettings> 2: <add key="Widget1" value="Modules\Widget1"/> 3: </appSettings> Using the <appSettings> section is a little cheesy but it could be better formalized into its own section. In fact, if were you willing to rely on conventions (e.g., “Modules\{areaName}”) then then config could be eliminated completely. With this config in place, we could create our own Html helper method called Url.AreaContent() that “wraps” the OOTB Url.Content() method while simply pre-pending the area location path: 1: public static string AreaContent(this UrlHelper urlHelper, string contentPath) 2: { 3: var areaName = (string)urlHelper.RequestContext.RouteData.DataTokens["area"]; 4: var areaPath = (string)ConfigurationManager.AppSettings[areaName]; 5:   6: return urlHelper.Content("~/" + areaPath + "/" + contentPath); With these two items in place, we just change our Url.Content() call to Url.AreaContent() like this: 1: <img src="<%: Url.AreaContent("/images/arrow.gif") %>" /> Hello World! and the arrow.gif now renders correctly:     Since we’re just using our own Url.AreaContent() rather than the built-in Url.Content(), this solution works for images, *.css, *.js, or any externally referenced files.  Additionally, any images referenced inside a css file will work provided it’s a relative reference and not an absolute reference. An alternative to this approach is to build the static file into the assembly as embedded resources themselves. I’ll explore this in another post (linked at the top).

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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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  • Duke's Choice Award Ceremony

    - by Tori Wieldt
    The 2012 Duke's Choice Awards winners and their creative, Java-based technologies and Java community contributions were honored after the Sunday night JavaOne keynotes. Sharat Chander, Group Director for Java Technology Outreach, presented the awards. "Having the community participate directly in both submission and selection truly shows how we are driving exposure of the innovation happening in the Java community," he said. Apache Software Foundation Hadoop Project The Apache Software Foundation’s Hadoop project, written in Java, provides a framework for distributed processing of big data sets across clusters of computers, ranging from a few servers to thousands of machines. This harnessing of large data pools allows organizations to better understand and improve their business. AgroSense Project Improving farming methods to feed a hungry world is the goal of AgroSense, an open source farm information management system built in Java and the NetBeans platform. AgroSense enables farmers, agribusinesses, suppliers and others to develop modular applications that will easily exchange information through a common underlying NetBeans framework. JDuchess Rather than focus on a specific geographic area like most Java User Groups (JUGs), JDuchess fosters the participation of women in the Java community worldwide. The group has more than 500 members in 60 countries, and provides a platform through which women can connect with each other and get involved in all aspects of the Java community. Jelastic, Inc. Moving existing Java applications to the cloud can be a daunting task, but startup Jelastic, Inc. offers the first all-Java platform-as-a-service (PaaS) that enables existing Java applications to be deployed in the cloud without code changes or lock-in. Liquid Robotics Robotics – Liquid Robotics is an ocean data services provider whose Wave Glider technology collects information from the world’s oceans for application in government, science and commercial applications. The organization features the “father of Java” James Gosling as its chief software architect. London Java Community The second user group receiving a Duke’s Choice Award this year, the London Java Community (LJC) and its users have been active in the OpenJDK, the Java Community Process (JCP) and other efforts within the global Java community. NATO The first-ever Community Choice Award goes to the MASE Integrated Console Environment (MICE) in use at NATO. Built in Java on the NetBeans platform, MICE provides a high-performance visualization environment for conducting air defense and battle-space operations. Parleys.com E-learning specialist Parleys.com, based in Brussels, Belgium, uses Java technologies to bring online classes and full IT conferences to desktops, laptops, tablets and mobile devices. Parleys.com has hosted more than 1,700 conferences—including Devoxx and JavaOne—for more than 800,000 unique visitors. Student Nokia Developer Group This year’s student winner, Ram Kashyap, is the founder and president of the Nokia Student Network, and was profiled in the “The New Java Developers” feature in the March/April 2012 issue of Java Magazine. Since then, Ram has maintained a hectic pace, graduating from the People’s Education Society Institute of Technology in Bangalore, India, while working on a Java mobile startup and training students on Java ME. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is on the front lines of crises around the world, from civil wars to natural disasters. To help facilitate its mission of humanitarian relief, the UNHCR has developed a light-client Java application on the NetBeans platform. The Level One registration tool enables the UNHCR to collect information on the number of refugees and their water, food, housing, health, and other needs in the field, and combines that with geocoding information from various sources. This enables the UNHCR to deliver the appropriate kind and amount of assistance where it is needed. You can read more about the winners in the current issue of Java Magazine.

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  • The theory of evolution applied to software

    - by Michel Grootjans
    I recently realized the many parallels you can draw between the theory of evolution and evolving software. Evolution is not the proverbial million monkeys typing on a million typewriters, where one of them comes up with the complete works of Shakespeare. We would have noticed by now, since the proverbial monkeys are now blogging on the Internet ;-) One of the main ideas of the theory of evolution is the balance between random mutations and natural selection. Random mutations happen all the time: millions of mutations over millions of years. Most of them are totally useless. Some of them are beneficial to the evolved species. Natural selection favors the beneficially mutated species. Less beneficial mutations die off. The mutated rabbit doesn't have to be faster than the fox. It just has to be faster than the other rabbits.   Theory of evolution Evolving software Random mutations happen all the time. Most of these mutations are so bad, the new species dies off, or cannot reproduce. Developers write new code all the time. New ideas come up during the act of writing software. The really bad ones don't get past the stage of idea. The bad ones don't get committed to source control. Natural selection favors the beneficial mutated species Good ideas and new code gets discussed in group during informal peer review. Less than good code gets refactored. Enhanced code makes it more readable, maintainable... A good set of traits makes the species superior to others. It becomes widespread A good design tends to make it easier to add new features, easier to understand the current implementations, easier to optimize for performance...thus superior. The best designs get carried over from project to project. They appear in blogs, articles and books about principles, patterns and practices.   Of course the act of writing software is deliberate. This can hardly be called random mutations. Though it sometimes might seem that code evolves through a will of its own ;-) Does this mean that evolving software (evolution) is better than a big design up front (creationism)? Not necessarily. It's a false idea to think that a project starts from scratch and everything evolves from there. Everyone carries his experience of what works and what doesn't. Up front design is necessary, but is best kept simple and minimal, just enough to get you started. Let the good experiences and ideas help to drive the process, whether they come from you or from others, from past experience or from the most junior developer on your team. Once again, balance is the keyword. Balance design up front with evolution on a daily basis. How do you know what balance is right? Through your own experience of what worked and what didn't (here's evolution again). Notes: The evolution of software can quickly degenerate without discipline. TDD is a discipline that leaves little to chance on that part. Write your test to describe the new behavior. Write just enough code to make it behave as specified. Refactor to evolve the code to a higher standard. The responsibility of good design rests continuously on each developers' shoulders. Promiscuous pair programming helps quickly spreading the design to the whole team.

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  • My First Iteration Zero

    - by onefloridacoder
    I recently watched a web cast that covered the idea of planning from the concept stage to the product backlog.  It was the first content I had seen related to Iteration Zero and it made a lot of sense from a planning and engagement perspective where the customer is concerned.  It illuminated some of the problems I’ve experienced with getting a large project of the ground.  The idea behind this is to just figure out get everyone to understand what needs to be constructed and to build the initial feature set from a *very* high level.  Once that happens other parts of the high level construction start to take place.  You end up with a feature list that describes what the business wants the system to do, and what it potentially may (or may not) interact with.  Low tech tools are used to create UI mockups that can be used as a starting point for some of the key UI pieces. Toward the end of the webcast they speaker introduced something that was new to me.  He referred to it as an executable skeleton or the steel thread.  The idea with this part of the webcast was to describe walking through the different mocked layers of the application.  Not all layers and collaborators are involved at this stage since it’s Iteration Zero, and each layer is either hard-coded or completely mocked to provide a 35K foot view of how the different layers layers work together.  So imagine two actors on each side of a layer diagram and the flow goes down from the upper left side down through a a consumer, thorough a service layer and then back up the service layer to the destination/actor. I would imagine much could be discussed moving through new/planned or existing/legacy layers, or a little of both to see what’s implied by the current high-level design. One part of the web cast has the business and design team creating the product box (think of your favorite cereal or toy box) with all of the features and even pictures laid out on the outside of the box.  The notion here is that if you handed this box to someone and told them your system was inside they would have an understanding of what the system would be able to do, or the features it could provide.    One of the interesting parts of the webcast was where the speaker described that he worked with a couple of groups in the same room and each group came up with a different product box – the point is that each group had a different idea of what the system was supposed to do.  At this point of the project I thought that to be valuable considering my experience has been that historically this has taken longer than a week to realize that the business unit and design teams see the high level solution differently.  Once my box is finished I plan on moving to the next stage of solution definition which is to plan the UI for this small application using Excel, to map out the UI elements.  I’m my own customer so it feels like cheating, but taking these slow deliberate steps have already provided a few learning opportunities.    So I resist the urge to load all of my user stories into my newly installed VS2010  TFS project and try to reduce or add to, the number of user stories and/or refine the high level estimates I’ve come up with so far.

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  • When to use Aspect Oriented Architecture (AOA/AOD)

    When is it appropriate to use aspect oriented architecture? I think the only honest answer to this question is that it depends on the context for which the question is being asked. There really are no hard and fast rules regarding the selection of an architectural model(s) for a project because each model provides good and bad benefits. Every system is built with a unique requirements and constraints. This context will dictate when to use one type of architecture over another or in conjunction with others. To me aspect oriented architecture models should be a sub-phase in the architectural modeling and design process especially when creating enterprise level models. Personally, I like to use this approach to create a base architectural model that is defined by non-functional requirements and system quality attributes.   This general model can then be used as a starting point for additional models because it is targets all of the business key quality attributes required by the system.Aspect oriented architecture is a method for modeling non-functional requirements and quality attributes of a system known as aspects. These models do not deal directly with specific functionality. They do categorize functionality of the system. This approach allows a system to be created with a strong emphasis on separating system concerns into individual components. These cross cutting components enables a systems to create with compartmentalization in regards to non-functional requirements or quality attributes.  This allows for the reduction in code because an each component maintains an aspect of a system that can be called by other aspects. This approach also allows for a much cleaner and smaller code base during the implementation and support of a system. Additionally, enabling developers to develop systems based on aspect-oriented design projects will be completed faster and will be more reliable because existing components can be shared across a system; thus, the time needed to create and test the functionality is reduced.   Example of an effective use of Aspect Oriented ArchitectureIn my experiences, aspect oriented architecture can be very effective with large or more complex systems. Typically, these types of systems have a large number of concerns so the act of defining them is very beneficial for reducing the system’s complexity because components can be developed to address each concern while exposing functionality to the other system components. The benefits to using the aspect oriented approach as the starting point for a system is that it promotes communication between IT and the business due to the fact that the aspect oriented models are quality attributes focused so not much technical understanding is needed to understand the model.An example of this can be in developing a new intranet website. Common Intranet Concerns: Error Handling Security Logging Notifications Database connectivity Example of a not as effective use of Aspect Oriented ArchitectureAgain in my experiences, aspect oriented architecture is not as effective with small or less complex systems in comparison.  There is no need to model concerns for a system that has a limited amount of them because the added overhead would not be justified for the actual benefits of creating the aspect oriented architecture model.  Furthermore, these types of projects typically have a reduced time schedule and a limited budget.  The creation of the Aspect oriented models would increase the overhead of a project and thus increase the time needed to implement the system. An example of this is seen by creating a small application to poll a network share for new files and then FTP them to a new location.  The two primary concerns for this project is to monitor a network drive and FTP files to a new location.  There is no need to create an aspect model for this system because there will never be a need to share functionality amongst either of these concerns.  To add to my point, this system is so small that it could be created with just a few classes so the added layer of componentizing the concerns would be complete overkill for this situation. References:Brichau, Johan; D'Hondt, Theo. (2006) Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD) - An Introduction. Retreived from: http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~jbrichau/courses/introductionToAOSD.pdf

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  • Multitenant Design for SQL Azure: White Paper Available

    - by Herve Roggero
    Cloud computing is about scaling out all your application tiers, from web application to the database layer. In fact, the whole promise of Azure is to pay for just what you need. You need more IIS servers? No problemo... just spin another web server. You expect to double your storage needs for Azure Tables? No problemo; you are covered there too... just pay for your storage needs. But what about the database tier, SQL Azure? How do you add new databases easily, and transparently, so that your application simply uses more of SQL Azure if its needs to? Without changing a single line of code? And what if you need to scale back down? Welcome to the world of database scalability. There are many terms that describe database scalability, including data federation, multitenant designs, and even NoSQL depending on the technical solution you are implementing.  Because SQL Azure is a transactional database system, NoSQL is not really an option. However data federation and multitenant designs offer some very interesting scalability options that are worth considering. Data federation, a feature of SQL Azure that will be offered in the future, offers very interesting capabilities available natively on the SQL Azure platform. More to come in a few weeks... Multitenant designs on the other hand are design practices and technologies designed to help you reach flexible scalability options not available otherwise. The first incarnation of such a method was made available on CodePlex as an open source project (http://enzosqlshard.codeplex.com).  This project was an attempt to provide a sharding library for educational purposes.  All that sounds really cool... and really esoteric... almost a form of database "voodoo"... However after being on multiple Azure projects I am starting to see a real need. Customers want to be able to free themselves from the database tier, so that if they have 10 new customers tomorrow, all they need to do is add 2 more SQL Azure instances. It's that simple. How you achieve this, and suggested application design guidelines, are available in a white paper I just published.  The white paper offers two primary sections. The first section describes the business and technical problem at hand, and how to classify it according to specific design patterns. For example, I discuss compressed shards through schema separation. The second section offers a method for addressing the needs of a multitenant design using a new library, the big bother of the codeplex project mentioned previously (that I created earlier this year), complete with management interface and such. A Beta of this platform will be made available within weeks; as soon as the documentation will be ready.   I would like to ask you to drop me a quick email at [email protected] if you are going to download the white paper. It's not required, but it would help me get in touch with you for feedback.  You can download this white paper here:   http://www.bluesyntax.net/files/EnzoFramework.pdf . Thank you, and I am looking for feedback, thoughts and implementation opportunities.

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  • Create a Remote Git Repository from an Existing XCode Repository

    - by codeWithoutFear
    Introduction Distributed version control systems (VCS’s), like Git, provide a rich set of features for managing source code.  Many development tools, including XCode, provide built-in support for various VCS’s.  These tools provide simple configuration with limited customization to get you up and running quickly while still providing the safety net of basic version control. I hate losing (and re-doing) work.  I have OCD when it comes to saving and versioning source code.  Save early, save often, and commit to the VCS often.  I also hate merging code.  Smaller and more frequent commits enable me to minimize merge time and effort as well. The work flow I prefer even for personal exploratory projects is: Make small local changes to the codebase to create an incrementally improved (and working) system. Commit these changes to the local repository.  Local repositories are quick to access, function even while offline, and provides the confidence to continue making bold changes to the system.  After all, I can easily recover to a recent working state. Repeat 1 & 2 until the codebase contains “significant” functionality and I have connectivity to the remote repository. Push the accumulated changes to the remote repository.  The smaller the change set, the less likely extensive merging will be required.  Smaller is better, IMHO. The remote repository typically has a greater degree of fault tolerance and active management dedicated to it.  This can be as simple as a network share that is backed up nightly or as complex as dedicated hardware with specialized server-side processing and significant administrative monitoring. XCode’s out-of-the-box Git integration enables steps 1 and 2 above.  Time Machine backups of the local repository add an additional degree of fault tolerance, but do not support collaboration or take advantage of managed infrastructure such as on-premises or cloud-based storage. Creating a Remote Repository These are the steps I use to enable the full workflow identified above.  For simplicity the “remote” repository is created on the local file system.  This location could easily be on a mounted network volume. Create a Test Project My project is called HelloGit and is located at /Users/Don/Dev/HelloGit.  Be sure to commit all outstanding changes.  XCode always leaves a single changed file for me after the project is created and the initial commit is submitted. Clone the Local Repository We want to clone the XCode-created Git repository to the location where the remote repository will reside.  In this case it will be /Users/Don/Dev/RemoteHelloGit. Open the Terminal application. Clone the local repository to the remote repository location: git clone /Users/Don/Dev/HelloGit /Users/Don/Dev/RemoteHelloGit Convert the Remote Repository to a Bare Repository The remote repository only needs to contain the Git database.  It does not need a checked out branch or local files. Go to the remote repository folder: cd /Users/Don/Dev/RemoteHelloGit Indicate the repository is “bare”: git config --bool core.bare true Remove files, leaving the .git folder: rm -R * Remove the “origin” remote: git remote rm origin Configure the Local Repository The local repository should reference the remote repository.  The remote name “origin” is used by convention to indicate the originating repository.  This is set automatically when a repository is cloned.  We will use the “origin” name here to reflect that relationship. Go to the local repository folder: cd /Users/Don/Dev/HelloGit Add the remote: git remote add origin /Users/Don/Dev/RemoteHelloGit Test Connectivity Any changes made to the local Git repository can be pushed to the remote repository subject to the merging rules Git enforces. Create a new local file: date > date.txt /li> Add the new file to the local index: git add date.txt Commit the change to the local repository: git commit -m "New file: date.txt" Push the change to the remote repository: git push origin master Now you can save, commit, and push/pull to your OCD hearts’ content! Code without fear! --Don

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  • How Do You Actually Model Data?

    Since the 1970’s Developers, Analysts and DBAs have been able to represent concepts and relations in the form of data through the use of generic symbols.  But what is data modeling?  The first time I actually heard this term I could not understand why anyone would want to display a computer on a fashion show runway. Hey, what do you expect? At that time I was a freshman in community college, and obviously this was a long time ago.  I have since had the chance to learn what data modeling truly is through using it. Data modeling is a process of breaking down information and/or requirements in to common categories called objects. Once objects start being defined then relationships start to form based on dependencies found amongst other existing objects.  Currently, there are several tools on the market that help data designer actually map out objects and their relationships through the use of symbols and lines.  These diagrams allow for designs to be review from several perspectives so that designers can ensure that they have the optimal data design for their project and that the design is flexible enough to allow for potential changes and/or extension in the future. Additionally these basic models can always be further refined to show different levels of details depending on the target audience through the use of three different types of models. Conceptual Data Model(CDM)Conceptual Data Models include all key entities and relationships giving a viewer a high level understanding of attributes. Conceptual data model are created by gathering and analyzing information from various sources pertaining to a project during the typical planning phase of a project. Logical Data Model (LDM)Logical Data Models are conceptual data models that have been expanded to include implementation details pertaining to the data that it will store. Additionally, this model typically represents an origination’s business requirements and business rules by defining various attribute data types and relationships regarding each entity. This additional information can be directly translated to the Physical Data Model which reduces the actual time need to implement it. Physical Data Model(PDMs)Physical Data Model are transformed Logical Data Models that include the necessary tables, columns, relationships, database properties for the creation of a database. This model also allows for considerations regarding performance, indexing and denormalization that are applied through database rules, data integrity. Further expanding on why we actually use models in modern application/database development can be seen in the benefits that data modeling provides for data modelers and projects themselves, Benefits of Data Modeling according to Applied Information Science Abstraction that allows data designers remove concepts and ideas form hard facts in the form of data. This gives the data designers the ability to express general concepts and/or ideas in a generic form through the use of symbols to represent data items and the relationships between the items. Transparency through the use of data models allows complex ideas to be translated in to simple symbols so that the concept can be understood by all viewpoints and limits the amount of confusion and misunderstanding. Effectiveness in regards to tuning a model for acceptable performance while maintaining affordable operational costs. In addition it allows systems to be built on a solid foundation in terms of data. I shudder at the thought of a world without data modeling, think about it? Data is everywhere in our lives. Data modeling allows for optimizing a design for performance and the reduction of duplication. If one was to design a database without data modeling then I would think that the first things to get impacted would be database performance due to poorly designed database and there would be greater chances of unnecessary data duplication that would also play in to the excessive query times because unneeded records would need to be processed. You could say that a data designer designing a database is like a box of chocolates. You will never know what kind of database you will get until after it is built.

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  • Information on upgrading Kinect Applications to MS SDK Beta 2.

    - by mbcrump
    Introduction Microsoft recently released the Kinect for Windows SDK Beta 2. It contains many enhancements and fixes that can be found here. The only problem with it is that a lot of current demo applications no longer function properly. Today, I’m going to walk you through a typical scenario of upgrading a Kinect application built with Beta 1 to Beta 2. Note: This tutorial covers WPF, but you can use the same techniques for WinForms. 1) Fix the references Let’s start with a fairly popular Kinect demo called Kinect User Interface Demo. This project uses the beta 1 version of Microsoft.Research.Kinect.dll and version 1.0.0.0 of Coding4Fun’s Kinect library. After you download the source code and extract the zip you will see the following references in Visual Studio 2010: Pay attention to the following references as these are the .dlls that you will have to update: Coding4Fun.Kinect.Wpf Microsoft.Research.Kinect If you click on Coding4Fun.Kinect.Wpf file you will see the following version information (v1.0.0.0): This needs to be upgraded to the Coding4Fun Kinect library built against Beta 2. So head over to http://c4fkinect.codeplex.com/ and hit download and you will have the following files. Go ahead and hit the delete key on your keyboard to remove the Coding4Fun.Kinect.Wpf.dll file from your project. Select “Add Reference” and navigate out to the folder where you extracted the files and select Coding4Fun.Kinect.Wpf.dll. If you click on the Coding4Fun.Kinect.Wpf.dll file and check properties it should be listed at 1.1.0.0: Fix Microsoft.Research.Kinect.dll The official SDK Beta 2 released a new .dll that you will need to reference in your application. Go ahead and select Microsoft.Research.Kinect.dll in your application and hit the Delete key on your keyboard. Go ahead and select Add Reference again and select Microsoft.Research.Kinect.dll from the .NET tab. Double check and make sure the version number is 1.0.0.45 as shown below. References fixed – Runtime needs to be updated. So we have fixed the references in a typical Kinect application that uses Microsoft’s SDK and C4F Kinect libraries. Now, we will need to update the runtime. All Beta 1 Kinect applications will instantiate the Runtime with the following code: Can you see that it is now marked with [Depreciated]? That means we need to update it before Microsoft decides to remove it from future versions of the SDK. We can fix this very easily by replacing this code: readonly Runtime _runtime = new Runtime(); with Microsoft.Research.Kinect.Nui.Runtime _nui; and adding similar code to our Loaded event as shown below public MainWindow() { InitializeComponent(); Loaded += new RoutedEventHandler(MainWindow_Loaded); } void MainWindow_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { if (Runtime.Kinects.Count == 0) { txtInfo.Text = "Missing Kinect"; } else { _nui = Runtime.Kinects[0]; _nui.Initialize(RuntimeOptions.UseColor); // Video Frame Ready Event can happen now!!! //_nui.VideoFrameReady += new EventHandler<ImageFrameReadyEventArgs>(_nui_VideoFrameReady); _nui.VideoStream.Open(ImageStreamType.Video, 2, ImageResolution.Resolution640x480, ImageType.Color); } } In this sample, I am testing to see if a Kinect is detected and if it is then I initialize the runtime with my first Kinect by using the Runtime.Kinects[0]. You can also specify other Kinect devices here. The rest of the code is standard code that you simply modify however you wish (ie Skeletal, Depth, etc) depending on what type of video feed you want. Conclusion As you can see it really wasn’t that painful to upgrade your project to Beta 2. I would recommend that you go ahead and upgrade to Beta 2 as future versions of the SDK will use these methods.  Thanks for reading. Subscribe to my feed

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  • Valuing "Working Software over Comprehensive Documentation"

    - by tom.spitz
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-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;} I subscribe to the tenets put forth in the Manifesto for Agile Software Development - http://agilemanifesto.org. As Oracle's chief methodologist, that might seem a self-deprecating attitude. After all, the agile manifesto tells us that we should value "individuals and interactions" over "processes and tools." My job includes process development. I also subscribe to ideas put forth in a number of subsequent works including Balancing Agility and Discipline: A Guide for the Perplexed (Boehm/Turner, Addison-Wesley) and Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products (Highsmith, Addison-Wesley). Both of these books talk about finding the right balance between "agility and discipline" or between a "predictive and adaptive" project approach. So there still seems to be a place for us in creating the Oracle Unified Method (OUM) to become the "single method framework that supports the successful implementation of every Oracle product." After all, the real idea is to apply just enough ceremony and produce just enough documentation to suit the needs of the particular project that supports an enterprise in moving toward its desired future state. The thing I've been struggling with - and the thing I'd like to hear from you about right now - is the prevalence of an ongoing obsession with "documents." OUM provides a comprehensive set of guidance for an iterative and incremental approach to engineering and implementing software systems. Our intent is first to support the information technology system implementation and, as necessary, support the creation of documentation. OUM, therefore, includes a supporting set of document templates. Our guidance is to employ those templates, sparingly, as needed; not create piles of documentation that you're not gonna (sic) need. In other words, don't serve the method, make the method serve you. Yet, there seems to be a "gimme" mentality in some circles that if you give me a sample document - or better yet - a repository of samples - then I will be able to do anything cheaply and quickly. The notion is certainly appealing AND reuse can save time. Plus, documents are a lowest common denominator way of packaging reusable stuff. However, without sustained investment and management I've seen "reuse repositories" turn quickly into garbage heaps. So, I remain a skeptic. I agree that providing document examples that promote consistency is helpful. However, there may be too much emphasis on the documents themselves and not enough on creating a system that meets the evolving needs of the business. How can we shift the emphasis toward working software and away from our dependency on documents - especially on large, complex implementation projects - while still supporting the need for documentation? I'd like to hear your thoughts.

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  • Disneyland Inside Out on iPhone and Android

    - by Ryan Cain
    It's hard to believe October was the last time I was over here on my blog.  Ironically after getter the developer phone from Microsoft I have been knee deep in iPhone programming and for the past few weeks Android programming again.  This time I've spent all my non-working hours programming a fun project for my "other" website, Disneyland Inside Out.  Disneyland Inside Out, a vacation planning site for Disneyland in California, has been around in various forms since June 1996.  It has always been a place for me to explore new technologies and learn about some of the new trends on the web.  I recently migrated the site over to DotNetNuke and have been building out custom modules for DNN.  I've also been hacking things together w/ the URLRewrite module in IIS 7.5 to provide strong SEO optimized URLs.  I can't say all that has really stuck within the DNN model of doing things, but it has worked pretty well. As part of my learning process, I spent most of the Fall bringing Disneyland Inside Out to the iPhone.  I will post more details on my development experiences later.  But this project gave me a really great opportunity to get a good feel for Objective-C development.  After 3 months I actually feel somewhat competent in the language and iPhone SDK, instead of just floundering around getting things to work.  The project also gave me a chance to play with some new frameworks on the iPhone and really dig into the Facebook SDK.  I also dug into some of the Gowalla REST api's as well.  We've been live with the app in iTunes for just about 10 days now, and have been sitting in the top 200 of free travel apps for the past few days.  You can get more info and the direct iTunes download link on our site: Disneyland Inside Out for iPhone Since launching the iPhone version I have gotten back into Android development, porting the Disneyland Inside Out app over to Android.  As I said in my first review of iPhone vs. Android, coming from a managed code background, Android is much easier to get going with.  I just about 3 weeks total I will have about 85 - 90% of the functionality up and running in the Android app, that took probably 1.5 - 2x's that time for iPhone.  That isn't a totally fair comparison as I am much more comfortable w/ Xcode and Objective-C today and can get some of the basic stuff done much faster than I could in the fall.  Though I'd say some of the hardest code to debug is still the null pointer issues on objects that were dealloc'd too early in Objective-C.  This isn't too bad with the NSZoombies enabled for synchronous code, but when you have a lot of async, which my app does, it can be hairy at times to track exactly what was causing the issue.   I will post more details later, as I am trying to wrap up a beta of the Android app today.  But in the meantime, if you have an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad head on over to the site and take a look at my app.

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  • JFall 2012

    - by Geertjan
    JFall 2012 was over far too soon! Seven tracks going on simultaneously in a great location, with many artifacts reminding me of JavaOne, and nice snacks and drinks afterwards. The day started, as such things always do, with a keynote. Thanks to @royvanrijn for the photo below, I didn't take any myself and without a picture this report might have been too dry: What you see above is Steve Chin riding into the keynote hall on his NightHacking bike. The keynote was interesting, I can't be too complimentary about it, since I was part of it myself. Bert Ertman introduced the day and then Steve Chin took over, together with Sharat Chander, Tom Eugelink, Timon Veenstra, and myself. We had a strict choreography for the keynote, one that would ensure a lot of variation and some unexpected surprises, such as Steve being thrown off the stage a few times by Bert because of mentioning JavaOne too many times, rather than the clearly much cooler JFall. Steve talked about JavaOne and the direction Java is headed in, Sharat talked about JavaME and embedded devices, Steve and Tom did a demo involving JavaFX, I did a Project Easel demo, and Timon from Ordina talked about his Duke's Choice Award winning AgroSense project. I think the Project Easel demo (which I repeated later in a screencast for Parleys arranged by Eugene Boogaart) came across well and several people I spoke to especially like the roundtrip/bi-directional work that can be done, from browser to IDE and back again, very simply and intuitively. (In a long conversation on the drive back home afterwards, the scenario of a designer laying out the UI in HTML and then handing the HTML to a developer for back-end work, a developer who would then find it convenient to open the HTML in a browser and quickly navigate from the browser to the resources within the IDE, was discussed and considered to be extremely interesting and worth considering adopting NetBeans for, for no other reason than that.) Later I attended a session by David Delabassee on Java EE 7, Hans Dockter on Gradle, and Sander Mak on cross-build injection attacks. I was sorry to have missed Martijn Verburg's session, which sounded like it was really fantastic, among others, such as Gerrit Grunwald. I did a session too, entitled "Unlocking the Java EE 6 Platform", which was very well attended, pretty much a full room, and the demo went very smoothly. I talked to many people, e.g., a long time with Hans Dockter about how cool Gradle is and how great the Gradle/NetBeans plugin is turning out to be. I also had a long conversation (and did a demo) with Chris Chedgey, from Structure101, after his session, which was incredibly well attended; very interesting how popular modularity is. I met several people for the first time, as well as some colleagues from past places I've worked at. All in all, it was a great conference, unfortunately too short, which was very well attended (clearly over 1000) people, with several international speakers, as well as international attendees such as Mattias Karlsson, Sweden JUG leader. And, unsurprisingly, I came across NetBeans Platform applications again, none of which I had ever heard of before. In each case, "our fat client application" was mentioned in passing, never as a main application, and never in a context where there are plans for the application to be migrated to the web or mobile, simply because doing so makes no business sense at all. Great times at JFall, looking forward to meeting with some of the people I met again soon.

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