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  • Community Branching

    - by Dane Morgridge
    As some may have noticed, I have taken a liking to Ruby (and Rails in particular) quite a bit recently. This last weekend I spoke at the NYC Code Camp on a comparison of ASP.NET and Rails as well as an intro to Entity Framework talk.  I am speaking at RubyNation in April and have submitted to other ruby conferences around the area and I am also doing a Rails and MongoDB talk at the Philly Code Camp in April. Before you start to think this is my "I'm leaving .NET post", which it isn't so I need to clarify. I am not, nor do I intend to any time in the near future plan on abandoning .NET.  I am simply branching out into another community based on a development technology that I very much enjoy.  If you look at my twitter bio, you will see that I am into Entity Framework, Ruby on Rails, C++ and ASP.NET MVC, and not necessarily in that order.  I know you're probably thinking to your self that I am crazy, which is probably true on several levels (especially the C++ part). I was actually crazy enough at the NYC Code Camp to show up wearing a Linux t-shirt, presenting with my MacBook Pro on Entity Framework, ASP.NET MVC and Rails. (I did get pelted in the head with candy by Rachel Appel for it though) At all of the code camps I am submitting to this year, i will be submitting sessions on likely all four topics, and some sessions will be a combination of 2 or more.  For example, my "ASP.NET MVC: A Gateway To Rails?" talk touches ASP.NET MVC, Entity Framework Code First and Rails. Simply put (and I talk about this in my MVC & Rails talk) is that learning and using Rails has made me a better ASP.NET MVC developer. Just one example of this is helper methods.  When I started working with ASP.NET MVC, I didn't really want to use helpers and preferred to just use standard html tags, especially where links were concerned.  It was just me being stubborn and not really seeing all of the benefit of the helpers.  To my defense, coming from WebForms, I wanted to be as bare metal as possible and it seemed at first like a lot of the helpers were an unnecessary abstraction. I took my first look at Rails back in v1 and didn't spend very much time with it so I dismissed it and went on my merry ASP.NET WebForms way.  Then I picked up ASP.NET MVC and grasped the MVC pattern itself much better. After this, I took another look at Rails and everything made sense.  I decided then to learn Rails. (I think it is important for developers to learn new languages and platforms regularly so it was a natural progression for me) I wanted to learn it the right way, so when I dug into code, everyone used helpers everywhere for pretty much everything possible. I took some time to dig in and found out how helpful they were and subsequently realized how awesome they were in ASP.NET MVC also and started using them. In short, I love Rails (and Ruby in general).  I also love ASP.NET MVC and Entity Framework and yes I still love C++.  I have varying degrees of love for them individually at any given moment and it is likely to shift based on the current project I am working on.  I know you're thinking it so before you ask the question. "Which do I use when?", I'm going to give the standard developer answer of: It depends.  There are a lot of factors that I am not going to even go into that would go into a decision.  The most basic question I would ask though is,  does this project depend on .NET?  If it does, then I'd say that ASP.NET MVC is probably going to be the more logical choice and I am going to leave it at that.  I am working on projects right now in both technologies and I don't see that changing anytime soon (one project even uses both). With all that being said, you'll find me at code camps, conferences and user groups presenting on .NET, Ruby or both, writing about .NET and Ruby and I will likely be blogging on both in the future.  I know of others that have successfully branched out to other communities and with any luck I'll be successful at it too. On a (sorta) side note, I read a post by Justin Etheredge the other day that pretty much sums up my feelings about Ruby as a language.  I highly recommend checking it out: What Is So Great About Ruby?

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  • Content Query Web Part and the Yes/No Field

    - by Bil Simser
    The Content Query Web Part (CQWP) is a pretty powerful beast. It allows you to do multiple site queries and aggregate the results. This is great for rolling up content and doing some summary type reporting. Here’s a trick to remember about Yes/No fields and using the CQWP. If you’re building a news style site and want to aggregate say all the announcements that people tag a certain way, up onto the home page this might be a solution. First we need to allow a way for users of all our sites to mark an announcement for inclusion on our Intranet Home Page. We’ll do this by just modifying the Announcement Content type and adding a Yes/No field to it. There are alternate ways of doing this like building a new Announcement type or stapling a feature to all sites to add our column but this is pretty low impact and only affects our current site collection so let’s go with it for now, okay? You can berate me in the comments about the proper way I should have done this part. Go to the Site Settings for the Site Collection and click on Site Content Types under the Galleries. This takes you to the gallery for this site and all subsites. Scroll down until you see the List Content Types and click on Announcements. Now we’re modifying the Announcement content type which affects all those announcement lists that are created by default if you’re building sites using the Team Site template (or creating a new Announcements list on any site for that matter). Click on Add from new site column under the Column list. This will allow us to create a new Yes/No field that users will see in Announcement items. This field will allow the user to flag the announcement for inclusion on the home page. Feel free to modify the fields as you see fit for your environment, this is just an example. Now that we’ve added the column to our Announcements Content type we can go into any site that has an announcement list, modify that announcement and flag it to be included on our home page. See the new Featured column? That was the result of modifying our Announcements Content Type on this site collection. Now we can move onto the dirty part, displaying it in a CQWP on the home page. And here is where the fun begins (and the head scratching should end). On our home page we want to drop a Content Query Web Part and aggregate any Announcement that’s been flagged as Featured by the users (we could also add the filter to handle Expires so we don’t show old content so go ahead and do that if you want). First add a CQWP to the page then modify the settings for the web part. In the first section, Query, we want the List Type to be set to Announcements and the Content type to be Announcement so set your options like this: Click Apply and you’ll see the results display all Announcements from any site in the site collection. I have five team sites created each with a unique announcement added to them. Now comes the filtering. We don’t want to include every announcement, only ones users flag using that Featured column we added. At first blush you might scroll down to the Additional Filters part of the Query options and set the Featured column to be equal to Yes: This seems correct doesn’t it? After all, the column is a Yes/No column and looking at an announcement in the site, it displays the field as Yes or No: However after applying the filter you get this result: (I have the announcements from Team Site 1 and Team Site 4 flagged as Featured) Huh? It’s BACKWARDS! Let’s confirm that. Go back in and change the Additional Filters section from Yes to No and hit Apply and you get this: Wait a minute? Shouldn’t I see Team Site 1 and 4 if the logic is backwards? Why am I seeing the same thing as before. What gives… For whatever reason, unknown to me, a Yes/No field (even though it displays as such) really uses 1 and 0 behind the scenes. Yeah, someone was stuck on using integer values for booleans when they wrote SharePoint (probably after a long night of white boarding ways to mess with developers heads) and came up with this. The solution is pretty simple but not very discoverable. Set the filter to include your flagged items like so: And it will filter the items marked as Featured correctly giving you this result: This kind of solution could also be extended and enhanced. Here are a few suggestions and ideas: Modify the ItemStyle.xsl file to add a new style for this aggregation which would include the first few paragraphs of the body (or perhaps add another field to the Content type called Excerpt or Summary and display that instead) Add an Image column to the Announcement Content type to include a Picture field and display it in the summary Add a Category choice field (Employee News, Current Events, Headlines, etc.) and add multiple CQWPs to the home page filtering each one on a different category I know some may find this topic old and dusty but I didn’t see a lot out there specifically on filtering the Yes/No fields and the whole 1/0 trick was a little wonky, so I figured a few pictures would help walk through overcoming yet another SharePoint weirdness. With a little work and some creative juices you can easily us the power of aggregation and the CQWP to build a news site from content on your team sites.

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  • Oracle RightNow CX for Good Customer Experiences

    - by Andreea Vaduva
    Oracle RightNow CX is all about the customer experience, it’s about understanding what drives a good interaction and it’s about delivering a solution which works for our customers and by extension, their customers. One of the early guiding principles of Oracle RightNow was an 8-point strategy to providing good customer experiences. Establish a knowledge foundation Empowering the customer Empower employees Offer multi-channel choice Listen to the customer Design seamless experiences Engage proactively Measure and improve continuously The application suite provides all of the tools necessary to deliver a rewarding, repeatable and measurable relationship between business and customer. The Knowledge Authoring tool provides gap analysis, WYSIWIG editing (and includes HTML rich content for non-developers), multi-level categorisation, permission based publishing and Web self-service publishing. Oracle RightNow Customer Portal, is a complete web application framework that enables businesses to control their own end-user page branding experience, which in turn will allow customers to self-serve. The Contact Centre Experience Designer builds a combination of workspaces, agent scripting and guided assistances into a Desktop Workflow. These present an agent with the tools they need, at the time they need them, providing even the newest and least experienced advisors with consistently accurate and efficient information, whilst guiding them through the complexities of internal business processes. Oracle RightNow provides access points for customers to feedback about specific knowledge articles or about the support site in general. The system will generate ‘incidents’ based on the scoring of the comments submitted. This makes it easy to view and respond to customer feedback. It is vital, more now than ever, not to under-estimate the power of the social web – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube – they have the ability to cause untold amounts of damage to businesses with a single post – witness musician Dave Carroll and his protest song on YouTube, posted in response to poor customer services from an American airline. The first day saw 150,000 views and is currently at 12,011,375. The Times reported that within 4 days of the post, the airline’s stock price fell by 10 percent, which represented a cost to shareholders of $180 million dollars. It is a universally acknowledged fact, that when customers are unhappy, they will not come back, and, generally speaking, it only takes one bad experience to lose a customer. The idea that customer loyalty can be regained by using social media channels was the subject of a 2011 Survey commissioned by RightNow and conducted by Harris Interactive. The survey discovered that 68% of customers who posted a negative review about a holiday on a social networking site received a response from the business. It further found that 33% subsequently posted a positive review and 34% removed the original negative review. Cloud Monitor provides the perfect mechanism for seeing what is being said about a business on public Facebook pages, Twitter or YouTube posts; it allows agents to respond proactively – either by creating an Oracle RightNow incident or by using the same channel as the original post. This leaves step 8 – Measuring and Improving: How does a business know whether it’s doing the right thing? How does it know if its customers are happy? How does it know if its staff are being productive? How does it know if its staff are being effective? Cue Oracle RightNow Analytics – fully integrated across the entire platform – Service, Marketing and Sales – there are in excess of 800 standard reports. If this were not enough, a large proportion of the database has been made available via the administration console, allowing users without any prior database experience to write their own reports, format them and schedule them for e-mail delivery to a distribution list. It handles the complexities of table joins, and allows for the manipulation of data with ease. Oracle RightNow believes strongly in the customer owning their solution, and to provide the best foundation for success, Oracle University can give you the RightNow knowledge and skills you need. This is a selection of the courses offered: RightNow Customer Service Administration Rel 12.02 (3 days) Available as In Class and Live Virtual Class (Release 11.11 is available as In Class, Live Virtual Class and Training On Demand) This course familiarises users with the tasks and concepts needed to configure and maintain their system. RightNow Customer Portal Designer and Contact Center Experience Designer Administration Rel 12.02 (2 days) Available as In Class and Live Virtual Class (Release 11.11 is available as In Class, Live Virtual Class and Training On Demand) This course introduces basic CP structure and how to make changes to the look, feel and behaviour of their self-service pages RightNow Analytics Rel 12.02 (2 days) Available as In Class, Live Virtual Class and Training On Demand (Release 11.11 is available as In Class and Live Virtual Class) This course equips users with the skills necessary to understand data supplied by standard reports and to create custom reports RightNow Integration and Customization For Developers Rel 12.02 (5-days) Available as In Class and Live Virtual Class (Release 11.11 is available as In Class, Live Virtual Class and Training On Demand) This course is for experienced web developers and offers an introduction to Add-In development using the Desktop Add-In Framework and introduces the core knowledge that developers need to begin integrating Oracle RightNow CX with other systems A full list of courses offered can be found on the Oracle University website. For more information and course dates please get in contact with your local Oracle University team. On top of the Service components, the suite also provides marketing tools, complex survey creation and tracking and sales functionality. I’m a fan of the application, and I think I’ve made that clear: It’s completely geared up to providing customers with support at point of need. It can be configured to meet even the most stringent of business requirements. Oracle RightNow is passionate about, and committed to, providing the best customer experience possible. Oracle RightNow CX is the application that makes it possible. About the Author: Sarah Anderson worked for RightNow for 4 years in both in both a consulting and training delivery capacity. She is now a Senior Instructor with Oracle University, delivering the following Oracle RightNow courses: RightNow Customer Service Administration RightNow Analytics RightNow Customer Portal Designer and Contact Center Experience Designer Administration RightNow Marketing and Feedback

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  • The Linux powered LAN Gaming House

    - by sachinghalot
    LAN parties offer the enjoyment of head to head gaming in a real-life social environment. In general, they are experiencing decline thanks to the convenience of Internet gaming, but Kenton Varda is a man who takes his LAN gaming very seriously. His LAN gaming house is a fascinating project, and best of all, Linux plays a part in making it all work.Varda has done his own write ups (short, long), so I'm only going to give an overview here. The setup is a large house with 12 gaming stations and a single server computer.The client computers themselves are rack mounted in a server room, and they are linked to the gaming stations on the floor above via extension cables (HDMI for video and audio and USB for mouse and keyboard). Each client computer, built into a 3U rack mount case, is a well specced gaming rig in its own right, sporting an Intel Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM and an Nvidia GeForce 560 along with a 60GB SSD drive.Originally, the client computers ran Ubuntu Linux rather than Windows and the games executed under WINE, but Varda had to abandon this scheme. As he explains on his site:"Amazingly, a majority of games worked fine, although many had minor bugs (e.g. flickering mouse cursor, minor rendering artifacts, etc.). Some games, however, did not work, or had bad bugs that made them annoying to play."Subsequently, the gaming computers have been moved onto a more conventional gaming choice, Windows 7. It's a shame that WINE couldn't be made to work, but I can sympathize as it's rare to find modern games that work perfectly and at full native speed. Another problem with WINE is that it tends to suffer from regressions, which is hardly surprising when considering the difficulty of constantly improving the emulation of the Windows API. Varda points out that he preferred working with Linux clients as they were easier to modify and came with less licensing baggage.Linux still runs the server and all of the tools used are open source software. The hardware here is a Intel Xeon E3-1230 with 4GB of RAM. The storage hanging off this machine is a bit more complex than the clients. In addition to the 60GB SSD, it also has 2x1TB drives and a 240GB SDD.When the clients were running Linux, they booted over PXE using a toolchain that will be familiar to anyone who has setup Linux network booting. DHCP pointed the clients to the server which then supplied PXELINUX using TFTP. When booted, file access was accomplished through network block device (NBD). This is a very easy to use system that allows you to serve the contents of a file as a block device over the network. The client computer runs a user mode device driver and the device can be mounted within the file system using the mount command.One snag with offering file access via NBD is that it's difficult to impose any security restrictions on different areas of the file system as the server only sees a single file. The advantage is perfomance as the client operating system simply sees a block device, and besides, these security issues aren't relevant in this setup.Unfortunately, Windows 7 can't use NBD, so, Varda had to switch to iSCSI (which works in both server and client mode under Linux). His network cards are not compliant with this standard when doing a netboot, but fortunately, gPXE came to the rescue, and he boostraps it over PXE. gPXE is also available as an ISO image and is worth knowing about if you encounter an awkward machine that can't manage a network boot. It can also optionally boot from a HTTP server rather than the more traditional TFTP server.According to Varda, booting all 12 machines over the Gigabit Ethernet network is surprisingly fast, and once booted, the machines don't seem noticeably slower than if they were using local storage. Once loaded, most games attempt to load in as much data as possible, filling the RAM, and the the disk and network bandwidth required is small. It's worth noting that these are aspects of this project that might differ from some other thin client scenarios.At time of writing, it doesn't seem as though the local storage of the client machines is being utilized. Instead, the clients boot into Windows from an image on the server that contains the operating system and the games themselves. It uses the copy on write feature of LVM so that any writes from a client are added to a differencing image allocated to that client. As the administrator, Varda can log into the Linux server and authorize changes to the master image for updates etc.SummaryOverall, Varda estimates the total cost of the project at about $40,000, and of course, he needed a property that offered a large physical space in order to house the computers and the gaming workstations. Obviously, this project has stark differences to most thin client projects. The balance between storage, network usage, GPU power and security would not be typical of an office installation, for example. The only letdown is that WINE proved to be insufficiently compatible to run a wide variety of modern games, but that is, perhaps, asking too much of it, and hats off to Varda for trying to make it work.

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  • Updating a database connection password using a script

    - by Tim Dexter
    An interesting customer requirement that I thought was worthy of sharing today. Thanks to James for the requirement and Bryan for the proposed solution and me for testing the solution and proving it works :0) A customers implementation of Sarbanes Oxley requires them to change all database account passwords every 90 days. This is scripted leveraging shell scripts today for most of their environments. But how can they manage the BI Publisher connections? Now, the customer is running 11g and therefore using weblogic on the middle tier, which is the first clue to Bryans proposed solution. To paraphrase and embellish Bryan's solution a little; why not use a JNDI connection from BIP to the database. Then employ the web logic scripting engine to make updates to the JNDI as needed? BIP is completely uninvolved and with a little 'timing' users will be completely unaware of the password updates i.e. change the password when reports are not being executed. Perfect! James immediately tracked down the WLST script that could be used here, http://middlewaremagic.com/weblogic/?p=4261 (thanks Ravish) Now it was just a case of testing the theory. Some steps: Create the JNDI connection in WLS Create the JNDI connection in BI Publisher pointing to the WLS connection Build new data models using or re-point data sources to use the JNDI connection. Create the WLST script to update the WLS JNDI password as needed. Test! Some details. Creating the JNDI connection in web logic is pretty straightforward. Log into hte console and look for Data Sources under the Services section of the home page and click it Click New >> Generic Datasource Give the connection a name. For the JNDI name, prefix it with 'jdbc/' so I have 'jdbc/localdb' - this name is important you'll need it on the BIP side. Select your db type - this will influence the drivers and information needed on the next page. Being a company man, Im using an Oracle db. Click Next Select the driver of choice, theres lots I know, you can read about them I just chose 'Oracle's Driver (Thin) for Instance connections; Versions 9.0.1 and later' Click Next >> Next Fill out the db name (SID), server, port, username to connect and password >> Next Test the config to ensure you can connect. >> Next Now you need to deploy the connection to your BI server, select it and click Next. You're done with the JNDI config. Creating the JNDI connection on the Publisher side is covered here. Just remember to the connection name you created in WLS e.g. 'jdbc/localdb' Not gonna tell you how to do this, go read the user guide :0) Suffice to say, it works. This requires a little reading around the subject to understand the scripting engine and how to execute scripts. Nicely covered here. However a bit of googlin' and I found an even easier way of running the script. ${ServerHome}/common/bin/wlst.sh updatepwd.py Where updatepwd.py is my script file, it can be in another directory. As part of the wlst.sh script your environment is set up for you so its very simple to execute. The nitty gritty: Need to take Ravish's script above and create a file with a .py extension. Its going to need some modification, as he explains on the web page, to make it work in your environment. I played around with it for a while but kept running into errors. The script as is, tries to loop through all of your connections and modify the user and passwords for each. Not quite what we are looking for. Remember our requirement is to just update the password for a given connection. I also found another issue with the script. WLS 10.x does not allow updates to passwords using clear type ie un-encrypted text while the server is in production mode. Its a bit much to set it back to developer mode bounce it, change the passwords and then bounce and then change back to production and bounce again. After lots of messing about I finally came up with the following: ############################################################################# # # Update password for JNDI connections # ############################################################################# print("*** Trying to Connect.... *****") connect('weblogic','welcome1','t3://localhost:7001') print("*** Connected *****") edit() startEdit() print ("*** Encrypt the password ***") en = encrypt('hr') print "Encrypted pwd: ", en print ("*** Changing pwd for LocalDB ***") dsName = 'LocalDB' print 'Changing Password for DataSource ', dsName cd('/JDBCSystemResources/'+dsName+'/JDBCResource/'+dsName+'/JDBCDriverParams/'+dsName) set('PasswordEncrypted',en) save() activate() Its pretty simple and you can expand on it to loop through the data sources and change each as needed. I have hardcoded the password into the file but you can pass it as a parameter as needed using the properties file method. Im not going to get into the detail of that here but its covered with an example here. Couple of points to note: 1. The change to the password requires a server bounce to get the changes picked up. You can add that to the shell script you will use to call the script above. 2. The script above needs to be run from the MW_HOME\user_projects\domains\bifoundation_domain directory to get the encryption libraries set correctly. My command to run the whole script was: d:\oracle\bi_mw\wlserver_10.3\common\bin\wlst.cmd updatepwd.py - where wlst.cmd is the scripting command line and updatepwd.py was my update password script above. I have not quite spoon fed everything you need to make it a robust script but at least you know you can do it and you can work out the rest I think :0)

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  • "Yes, but that's niche."

    - by Geertjan
    JavaOne 2012 has come to an end though it feels like it hasn't even started yet! What happened, time is a weird thing. Too many things to report on. James Gosling's appearance at the JavaOne community keynote was seen, by everyone (which is quite a lot) of people I talked to, as the highlight of the conference. It was interesting that the software for the Duke's Choice Award winning Liquid Robotics that James Gosling is now part of and came to talk about is a Swing application that uses the WorldWind libraries. It was also interesting that James Gosling pointed out to the conference: "There are things you can't do using HTML." That brings me to the wonderful counter argument to the above, which I spend my time running into a lot: "Yes, but that's niche." It's a killer argument, i.e., it kills all discussions completely in one fell swoop. Kind of when you're talking about someone and then this sentence drops into the conversation: "Yes, but she's got cancer now." Here's one implementation of "Yes, but that's niche": Person A: All applications are moving to the web, tablet, and mobile phone. That's especially true now with HTML5, which is going to wipe away everything everywhere and all applications are going to be browser based. Person B: What about air traffic control applications? Will they run on mobile phones too? And do you see defence applications running in a browser? Don't you agree that there are multiple scenarios imaginable where the Java desktop is the optimal platform for running applications? Person A: Yes, but that's niche. Here's another implementation, though it contradicts the above [despite often being used by the same people], since JavaFX is a Java desktop technology: Person A: Swing is dead. Everyone is going to be using purely JavaFX and nothing else. Person B: Does JavaFX have a docking framework and a module system? Does it have a plugin system?  These are some of the absolutely basic requirements of Java desktop software once you get to high end systems, e.g., banks, defence force, oil/gas services. Those kinds of applications need a web browser and so they love the JavaFX WebView component and they also love the animated JavaFX charting components. But they need so much more than that, i.e., an application framework. Aren't there requirements that JavaFX isn't meeting since it is a UI toolkit, just like Swing is a UI toolkit, and what they have in common is their lack, i.e., natively, of any kind of application framework? Don't people need more than a single window and a monolithic application structure? Person A: Yes, but that's niche. In other words, anything that doesn't fit within the currently dominant philosophy is "niche", for no other reason than that it doesn't fit within the currently dominant philosophy... regardless of the actual needs of real developers. Saying "Yes, but that's niche", kills the discussion completely, because it relegates one side of the conversation to the arcane and irrelevant corners of the universe. You're kind of like Cobol now, as soon as "Yes, but that's niche" is said. What's worst about "Yes, but that's niche" is that it doesn't enter into any discussion about user requirements, i.e., there's so few that need this particular solution that we don't even need to talk about them anymore. Note, of course, that I'm not referring specifically or generically to anyone or anything in particular. Just picking up from conversations I've picked up on as I was scurrying around the Hilton's corridors while looking for the location of my next presentation over the past few days. It does, however, mean that there were people thinking "Yes, but that's niche" while listening to James Gosling pointing out that HTML is not the be-all and end-all of absolutely everything. And so this all leaves me wondering: How many applications must be part of a niche for the niche to no longer be a niche? And what if there are multiple small niches that have the same requirements? Don't all those small niches together form a larger whole, one that should be taken seriously, i.e., a whole that is not a niche?

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  • The Sound of Two Toilets Flushing: Constructive Criticism for Virgin Atlantic Complaints Department

    - by Geertjan
    I recently had the experience of flying from London to Johannesburg and back with Virgin Atlantic. The good news was that it was the cheapest flight available and that the take off and landing were absolutely perfect. Hence I really have no reason to complain. Instead, I'd like to offer some constructive criticism which hopefully Richard Branson will find sometime while googling his name. Or maybe someone from the Virgin Atlantic Complaints Department will find it, whatever, just want to put this information out there. Arrangement of restroom facilities. Maybe next time you design an airplane, consider not putting your toilets at a right angle right next to your rows of seats. Being able to reach, without even needing to stretch your arm, from your seat to close, yet again, a toilet door that someone, someone obviously sitting very far from the toilets, carelessly forgot to close is not an indicator of quality interior design. Have you noticed how all other airplanes have their toilets in a cubicle separated from the rows of seats? On those airplanes, people sitting in the seats near the toilets are not constantly being woken up throughout the night whenever someone enters/exits the toilet, whenever the light in the toilet is suddenly switched on, and whenever one of the toilets flushes. Bonus points for Virgin Atlantic passengers in the seats adjoining the toilets is when multiple toilets are flushed simultaneously and multiple passengers enter/exit them at the same time, a bit like an unasked for low budget musical of suddenly illuminated grumpy people in crumpled clothes. What joy that brings at 3 AM is hard to describe. Seats with extra leg room. You know how other airplanes have the seats with the extra leg room? You know what those seats tend to have? Extra leg room. It's really interesting how Virgin Atlantic's seats with extra leg room actually have no extra leg room at all. It should have been a give away, the fact that these special seats are found in the same rows as the standard seats, rather than on the cusp of real glory which is where most airlines put their extra leg room seats, with the only actual difference being that they have a slightly different color. Had you called them "seats with a different color" (i.e., almost not quite green, rather than something vaguely hinting at blue), at least I'd have known what I was getting. Picture the joy at 3 AM, rudely awakened from nightmarish slumber, partly grateful to have been released from a grayish dream of faceless zombies resembling one or two of those in a recent toilet line, by multiple adjoining toilets flushing simultaneously, while you're sitting in a seat with extra leg room that has exactly as much leg room as the seats in neighboring rows. You then have a choice of things to be sincerely annoyed about. Food from the '80's. In the '80's, airplane food came in soggy containers and even breakfast, the most important meal of the day, was a sad heap of vaguely gray colors. The culinary highlight tended to be a squashed tomato, which must have been mashed to a pulp with a brick prior to being regurgitated by a small furry animal, and there was also always a piece of immensely horrid pumpkin, as well as a slice of spongy something you'd never seen before. Sausages and mash at 6 AM on an airplane was always a heavy lump of horribleness. Thankfully, all airlines throughout the world changed from this puke inducing strategy around 1987 sometime. Not Virgin Atlantic, of course. The fatty sausages and mash are still there, bringing you flashbacks to Duran Duran, which is what you were listening to (on your walkman) the last time you saw it in an airplane. Even the golden oldie "squashed tomato attached by slime to three wet peas" is on the menu. How wonderful to have all this in a cramped seat with a long row of early morning bleariness lined up for the toilets, right at your side, bumping into your elbow, groggily, one by one, one after another, more and more, fumble-open-door-silence-flush-fumble-open-door, and on and on, while you tentatively push your fork through a soggy pile of colorless mush, fighting the urge to throw up on the stinky socks of whatever nightmarish zombie is bumping into your elbow at the time. But, then again, the plane landed without a hitch, in fact, extremely smoothly, so I'm certainly not blaming the pilots.

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  • What's going on with my wireless?

    - by Mark Scott
    The WiFi on my Acer laptop (it's a 3810TZ, with Intel Corporation Centrino Wireless-N 1000) works flawlessly on Ubuntu 11.04. On 11.10, it's continually up and down, and it fills the system log with messages such as those below. What is going on? It seems to be unable to decide which regulatory domain it's in. Despite the system configuration being quite clearly set to UK it persists in configuring itself as though it was opeating in Taiwan! Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 wpa_supplicant[1053]: WPA: 4-Way Handshake failed - pre-shared key may be incorrect Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 wpa_supplicant[1053]: CTRL-EVENT-DISCONNECTED bssid=00:50:7f:72:bf:b0 reason=15 Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 wpa_supplicant[1053]: CTRL-EVENT-DISCONNECTED bssid=00:00:00:00:00:00 reason=3 Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.240355] cfg80211: All devices are disconnected, going to restore regulatory settings Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.240362] cfg80211: Restoring regulatory settings Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.240368] cfg80211: Calling CRDA to update world regulatory domain Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.240408] wlan0: deauthenticating from 00:50:7f:72:bf:b0 by local choice (reason=3) Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 NetworkManager[875]: (wlan0): supplicant interface state: 4-way handshake - disconnected Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.246556] cfg80211: Ignoring regulatory request Set by core since the driver uses its own custom regulatory domain Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.246563] cfg80211: World regulatory domain updated: Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.246567] cfg80211: (start_freq - end_freq @ bandwidth), (max_antenna_gain, max_eirp) Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.246572] cfg80211: (2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm) Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.246577] cfg80211: (2457000 KHz - 2482000 KHz @ 20000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm) Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.246582] cfg80211: (2474000 KHz - 2494000 KHz @ 20000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm) Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.246587] cfg80211: (5170000 KHz - 5250000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm) Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.246592] cfg80211: (5735000 KHz - 5835000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm) Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 NetworkManager[875]: (wlan0): supplicant interface state: disconnected - scanning Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 wpa_supplicant[1053]: Trying to authenticate with 00:50:7f:72:bf:b0 (SSID='PoplarHouse' freq=2412 MHz) Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 NetworkManager[875]: (wlan0): supplicant interface state: scanning - authenticating Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.509877] wlan0: authenticate with 00:50:7f:72:bf:b0 (try 1) Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 wpa_supplicant[1053]: Trying to associate with 00:50:7f:72:bf:b0 (SSID='PoplarHouse' freq=2412 MHz) Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.512276] wlan0: authenticated Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.512615] wlan0: associate with 00:50:7f:72:bf:b0 (try 1) Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 NetworkManager[875]: (wlan0): supplicant interface state: authenticating - associating Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.516508] wlan0: RX ReassocResp from 00:50:7f:72:bf:b0 (capab=0x431 status=0 aid=1) Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.516514] wlan0: associated Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 wpa_supplicant[1053]: Associated with 00:50:7f:72:bf:b0 Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.529097] cfg80211: Calling CRDA for country: TW Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 NetworkManager[875]: (wlan0): supplicant interface state: associating - associated Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.535680] cfg80211: Updating information on frequency 2412 MHz for a 20 MHz width channel with regulatory rule: Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.535688] cfg80211: 2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ KHz), (300 mBi, 2700 mBm) Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.535692] cfg80211: Updating information on frequency 2417 MHz for a 20 MHz width channel with regulatory rule: Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.535697] cfg80211: 2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ KHz), (300 mBi, 2700 mBm) Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.535702] cfg80211: Updating information on frequency 2422 MHz for a 20 MHz width channel with regulatory rule: Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.535707] cfg80211: 2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ KHz), (300 mBi, 2700 mBm) Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.535711] cfg80211: Updating information on frequency 2427 MHz for a 20 MHz width channel with regulatory rule: Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.535716] cfg80211: 2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ KHz), (300 mBi, 2700 mBm) Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.535720] cfg80211: Updating information on frequency 2432 MHz for a 20 MHz width channel with regulatory rule: Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.535725] cfg80211: 2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ KHz), (300 mBi, 2700 mBm) Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.535730] cfg80211: Updating information on frequency 2437 MHz for a 20 MHz width channel with regulatory rule: Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.535735] cfg80211: 2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ KHz), (300 mBi, 2700 mBm) Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.535739] cfg80211: Updating information on frequency 2442 MHz for a 20 MHz width channel with regulatory rule: Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.535744] cfg80211: 2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ KHz), (300 mBi, 2700 mBm) Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.535748] cfg80211: Updating information on frequency 2447 MHz for a 20 MHz width channel with regulatory rule: Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.535753] cfg80211: 2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ KHz), (300 mBi, 2700 mBm) Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.535757] cfg80211: Updating information on frequency 2452 MHz for a 20 MHz width channel with regulatory rule: Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.535763] cfg80211: 2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ KHz), (300 mBi, 2700 mBm) Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.535767] cfg80211: Updating information on frequency 2457 MHz for a 20 MHz width channel with regulatory rule: Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.535772] cfg80211: 2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ KHz), (300 mBi, 2700 mBm) Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.535777] cfg80211: Updating information on frequency 2462 MHz for a 20 MHz width channel with regulatory rule: Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.535782] cfg80211: 2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ KHz), (300 mBi, 2700 mBm) Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.535786] cfg80211: Disabling freq 2467 MHz Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.535789] cfg80211: Disabling freq 2472 MHz Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.535794] cfg80211: Regulatory domain changed to country: TW Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.535797] cfg80211: (start_freq - end_freq @ bandwidth), (max_antenna_gain, max_eirp) Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.535802] cfg80211: (2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2700 mBm) Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.535807] cfg80211: (5270000 KHz - 5330000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 1700 mBm) Nov 22 15:34:37 MES3810 kernel: [18239.535812] cfg80211: (5735000 KHz - 5815000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 3000 mBm) Nov 22 15:34:38 MES3810 NetworkManager[875]: (wlan0): supplicant interface state: associated - 4-way handshake Any ideas?

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  • How-to populate different select list content per table row

    - by frank.nimphius
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} A frequent requirement posted on the OTN forum is to render cells of a table column using instances of af:selectOneChoices with each af:selectOneChoice instance showing different list values. To implement this use case, the select list of the table column is populated dynamically from a managed bean for each row. The table's current rendered row object is accessible in the managed bean using the #{row} expression, where "row" is the value added to the table's var property. <af:table var="row">   ...   <af:column ...>     <af:selectOneChoice ...>         <f:selectItems value="#{browseBean.items}"/>     </af:selectOneChoice>   </af:column </af:table> The browseBean managed bean referenced in the code snippet above has a setItems and getItems method defined that is accessible from EL using the #{browseBean.items} expression. When the table renders, then the var property variable - the #{row} reference - is filled with the data object displayed in the current rendered table row. The managed bean getItems method returns a List<SelectItem>, which is the model format expected by the f:selectItems tag to populate the af:selectOneChoice list. public void setItems(ArrayList<SelectItem> items) {} //this method is executed for each table row public ArrayList<SelectItem> getItems() {   FacesContext fctx = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance();   ELContext elctx = fctx.getELContext();   ExpressionFactory efactory =          fctx.getApplication().getExpressionFactory();          ValueExpression ve =          efactory.createValueExpression(elctx, "#{row}", Object.class);      Row rw = (Row) ve.getValue(elctx);         //use one of the row attributes to determine which list to query and   //show in the current af:selectOneChoice list  // ...  ArrayList<SelectItem> alsi = new ArrayList<SelectItem>();  for( ... ){      SelectItem item = new SelectItem();        item.setLabel(...);        item.setValue(...);        alsi.add(item);   }   return alsi;} For better performance, the ADF Faces table stamps it data rows. Stamping means that the cell renderer component - af:selectOneChoice in this example - is instantiated once for the column and then repeatedly used to display the cell data for individual table rows. This however means that you cannot refresh a single select one choice component in a table to change its list values. Instead the whole table needs to be refreshed, rerunning the managed bean list query. Be aware that having individual list values per table row is an expensive operation that should be used only on small tables for Business Services with low latency data fetching (e.g. ADF Business Components and EJB) and with server side caching strategies for the queried data (e.g. storing queried list data in a managed bean in session scope).

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  • Loading XML file containing leading zeros with SSIS preserving the zeros

    - by Compudicted
    Visiting the MSDN SQL Server Integration Services Forum oftentimes I could see that people would pop up asking this question: “why I am not able to load an element from an XML file that contains zeros so the leading/trailing zeros would remain intact?”. I started to suspect that such a trivial and often-required operation perhaps is being misunderstood by the developer community. I would also like to add that the whole state of affairs surrounding the XML today is probably also going to be increasingly affected by a motion of people who dislike XML in general and many aspects of it as XSD and XSLT invoke a negative reaction at best. Nevertheless, XML is in wide use today and its importance as a bridge between diverse systems is ever increasing. Therefore, I deiced to write up an example of loading an arbitrary XML file that contains leading zeros in one of its elements using SSIS so the leading zeros would be preserved keeping in mind the goal on simplicity into a table in SQL Server database. To start off bring up your BIDS (running as admin) and add a new Data Flow Task (DFT). This DFT will serve as container to adding our XML processing elements (besides, the XML Source is not available anywhere else other than from within the DFT). Double-click your DFT and drag and drop the XMS Source component from the Tool Box’s Data Flow Sources. Now, let the fun begin! Being inspired by the upcoming Christmas I created a simple XML file with one set of data that contains an imaginary SSN number of Rudolph containing several leading zeros like 0000003. This file can be viewed here. To configure the XML Source of course it is quite intuitive to point it to our XML file, next what the XML source needs is either an embedded schema (XSD) or it can generate one for us. In lack of the one I opted to auto-generate it for me and I ended up with an XSD that looked like: <?xml version="1.0"?> <xs:schema attributeFormDefault="unqualified" elementFormDefault="qualified" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <xs:element name="XMasEvent"> <xs:complexType> <xs:sequence> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="CaseInfo"> <xs:complexType> <xs:sequence> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="ID" type="xs:unsignedByte" /> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="CreatedDate" type="xs:unsignedInt" /> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="LastName" type="xs:string" /> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="FirstName" type="xs:string" /> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="SSN" type="xs:unsignedByte" /> <!-- Becomes string -- > <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="DOB" type="xs:unsignedInt" /> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="Event" type="xs:string" /> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="ClosedDate" /> </xs:sequence> </xs:complexType> </xs:element> </xs:sequence> </xs:complexType> </xs:element> </xs:schema> As an aside on the XML file: if your XML file does not contain the outer node (<XMasEvent>) then you may end up in a situation where you see just one field in the output. Now please note that the SSN element’s data type was chosen to be of unsignedByte (and this is for a reason). The reason is stemming from the fact all our figures in the element are digits, this is good, but this is not exactly what we need, because if we will attempt to load the data with this XSD then we are going to either get errors on the destination or most typically lose the leading zeros. So the next intuitive choice is to change the data type to string. Besides, if a SSIS package was already created based on this XSD and the data type change was done thereafter, one should re-set the metadata by right-clicking the XML Source and choosing “Advanced Editor” in which there is a refresh button at the bottom left which will do the trick. So far so good, we are ready to load our XML file, well actually yes, and no, in my experience typically some data conversion may be required. So depending on your data destination you may need to tweak the data types targeted. Let’s add a Data Conversion Task to our DFT. Your package should look like: To make the story short I only will cover the SSN field, so in my data source the target SQL Table has it as nchar(10) and we chose string in our XSD (yes, this is a big difference), under such circumstances the SSIS will complain. So will go and manipulate on the data type of SSN by making it Unicode String (DT_WSTR), World String per se. The conversion should look like: The peek at the Metadata: We are almost there, now all we need is to configure the destination. For simplicity I chose SQL Server Destination. The mapping is a breeze, F5 and I am able to insert my data into SQL Server now! Checking the zeros – they are all intact!

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  • Moving DataSets through BizTalk

    - by EltonStoneman
    [Source: http://geekswithblogs.net/EltonStoneman] Yuck. But sometimes you have to, so here are a couple of things to bear in mind: Schemas Point a codegen tool at a WCF endpoint which exposes a DataSet and it will generate an XSD which describes the DataSet like this: <xs:elementminOccurs="0"name="GetDataSetResult"nillable="true">  <xs:complexType>     <xs:annotation>       <xs:appinfo>         <ActualTypeName="DataSet"                     Namespace="http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/System.Data"                     xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/" />       </xs:appinfo>     </xs:annotation>     <xs:sequence>       <xs:elementref="xs:schema" />       <xs:any />     </xs:sequence>  </xs:complexType> </xs:element>  In a serialized instance, the element of type xs:schema contains a full schema which describes the structure of the DataSet – tables, columns etc. The second element, of type xs:any, contains the actual content of the DataSet, expressed as DiffGrams: <GetDataSetResult>  <xs:schemaid="NewDataSet"xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"xmlns=""xmlns:msdata="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xml-msdata">     <xs:elementname="NewDataSet"msdata:IsDataSet="true"msdata:UseCurrentLocale="true">       <xs:complexType>         <xs:choiceminOccurs="0"maxOccurs="unbounded">           <xs:elementname="Table1">             <xs:complexType>               <xs:sequence>                 <xs:elementname="Id"type="xs:string"minOccurs="0" />                 <xs:elementname="Name"type="xs:string"minOccurs="0" />                 <xs:elementname="Date"type="xs:string"minOccurs="0" />               </xs:sequence>             </xs:complexType>           </xs:element>         </xs:choice>       </xs:complexType>     </xs:element>  </xs:schema>  <diffgr:diffgramxmlns:diffgr="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xml-diffgram-v1"xmlns:msdata="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xml-msdata">     <NewDataSetxmlns="">       <Table1diffgr:id="Table11"msdata:rowOrder="0"diffgr:hasChanges="inserted">         <Id>377fdf8d-cfd1-4975-a167-2ddb41265def</Id>         <Name>157bc287-f09b-435f-a81f-2a3b23aff8c4</Name>         <Date>a5d78d83-6c9a-46ca-8277-f2be8d4658bf</Date>       </Table1>     </NewDataSet>  </diffgr:diffgram> </GetDataSetResult> Put the XSD into a BizTalk schema and it will fail to compile, giving you error: The 'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema:schema' element is not declared. You should be able to work around that, but I've had no luck in BizTalk Server 2006 R2 – instead you can safely change that xs:schema element to be another xs:any type: <xs:elementminOccurs="0"name="GetDataSetResult"nillable="true">  <xs:complexType>     <xs:sequence>       <xs:any />       <xs:any />     </xs:sequence>  </xs:complexType> </xs:element>  (This snippet omits the annotation, but you can leave it in the schema). For an XML instance to pass validation through the schema, you'll also need to flag the any attributes so they can contain any namespace and skip validation:  <xs:elementminOccurs="0"name="GetDataSetResult"nillable="true">  <xs:complexType>     <xs:sequence>       <xs:anynamespace="##any"processContents="skip" />       <xs:anynamespace="##any"processContents="skip" />     </xs:sequence>  </xs:complexType> </xs:element>  You should now have a compiling schema which can be successfully tested against a serialised DataSet. Transforms If you're mapping a DataSet element between schemas, you'll need to use the Mass Copy Functoid to populate the target node from the contents of both the xs:any type elements on the source node: This should give you a compiled map which you can test against a serialized instance. And if you have a .NET consumer on the other side of the mapped BizTalk output, it will correctly deserialize the response into a DataSet.

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  • Modularity through HTTP

    - by Michael Williamson
    As programmers, we strive for modularity in the code we write. We hope that splitting the problem up makes it easier to solve, and allows us to reuse parts of our code in other applications. Object-orientation is the most obvious of many attempts to get us closer to this ideal, and yet one of the most successful approaches is almost accidental: the web. Programming languages provide us with functions and classes, and plenty of other ways to modularize our code. This allows us to take our large problem, split it into small parts, and solve those small parts without having to worry about the whole. It also makes it easier to reason about our code. So far, so good, but now that we’ve written our small, independent module, for example to send out e-mails to my customers, we’d like to reuse it in another application. By creating DLLs, JARs or our platform’s package container of choice, we can do just that – provided our new application is on the same platform. Want to use a Java library from C#? Well, good luck – it might be possible, but it’s not going to be smooth sailing. Even if a library exists, it doesn’t mean that using it going to be a pleasant experience. Say I want to use Java to write out an XML document to an output stream. You’d imagine this would be a simple one-liner. You’d be wrong: import org.w3c.dom.*; import java.io.*; import javax.xml.transform.*; import javax.xml.transform.dom.*; import javax.xml.transform.stream.*; private static final void writeDoc(Document doc, OutputStream out) throws IOException { try { Transformer t = TransformerFactory.newInstance().newTransformer(); t.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.DOCTYPE_SYSTEM, doc.getDoctype().getSystemId()); t.transform(new DOMSource(doc), new StreamResult(out)); } catch (TransformerException e) { throw new AssertionError(e); // Can't happen! } } Most of the time, there is a good chance somebody else has written the code before, but if nobody can understand the interface to that code, nobody’s going to use it. The result is that most of the code we write is just a variation on a theme. Despite our best efforts, we’ve fallen a little short of our ideal, but the web brings us closer. If we want to send e-mails to our customers, we could write an e-mail-sending library. More likely, we’d use an existing one for our language. Even then, we probably wouldn’t have niceties like A/B testing or DKIM signing. Alternatively, we could just fire some HTTP requests at MailChimp, and get a whole slew of features without getting anywhere near the code that implements them. The web is inherently language agnostic. So long as your language can send and receive text over HTTP, and probably parse some JSON, you’re about as well equipped as anybody. Instead of building libraries for a specific language, we can build a service that almost every language can reuse. The text-based nature of HTTP also helps to limit the complexity of the API. As SOAP will attest, you can still make a horrible mess using HTTP, but at least it is an obvious horrible mess. Complex data structures are tedious to marshal to and from text, providing a strong incentive to keep things simple. By contrast, spotting the complexities in a class hierarchy is often not as easy. HTTP doesn’t solve every problem. It probably isn’t such a good idea to use it inside an inner loop that’s executed thousands of times per second. What’s more, the HTTP approach might introduce some new problems. We often need to add a thin shim to each application that we wish to communicate over HTTP. For instance, we might need to write a small plugin in PHP if we want to integrate WordPress into our system. Suddenly, instead of a system written in one language, we’re maintaining a system with several distinct languages and platforms. Even then, we should strive to avoid re-implementing the same old thing. As programmers, we consistently underestimate both the cost of building a system and the ongoing maintenance. If we allow ourselves to integrate existing applications, even if they’re in unfamiliar languages, we save ourselves those development and maintenance costs, as well as being able to pick the best solution for our problem. Thanks to the web, HTTP is often the easiest way to get there.

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  • Training a 'replacement', how to enforce standards?

    - by Mohgeroth
    Not sure that this is the right stack exchange site to ask this of, but here goes... Scope I work for a small company that employs a few hundred people. The development team for the company is small and works out of visual foxpro. A specific department in the company hired me in as a 'lone gunman' to fix and enhance a pre-existing invoicing system. I've successfully taken an Access application that suffered from a lot of risks and limitations and converted it into a C# application driven off of a SQL server backend. I have recently obtained my undergraduate and am no expert by any means. To help make up for that I've felt that earning microsoft certifications will force me to understand more about .net and how it functions. So, after giving my notice with 9 months in advance, 3 months ago a replacement finally showed up. Their role is to learn what I have been designing to an attempt to support the applications designed in C#. The Replacement Fresh out of college with no real-world work experience, the first instinct for anything involving data was and still is listboxes... any time data is mentioned the list box is the control of choice for the replacement. This has gotten to the point, no matter how many times I discuss other controls, where I've seen 5 listboxes on a single form. Classroom experience was almost all C++ console development. So, an example of where I have concern is in a winforms application: Users need to key Reasons into a table to select from later. Given that I know that a strongly typed data set exists, I can just drag the data source from the toolbox and it would create all of this for me. I realize this is a simple example but using databinding is the key. For the past few months now we have been talking about the strongly typed dataset, how to use it and where it interacts with other controls. Data sets, how they work in relation to binding sources, adapters and data grid views. After handing this project off I expected questions about how to implement these since for me this is the way to do it. What happened next simply floors me: An instance of an adapter from the strongly typed dataset was created in the activate event of the form, a table was created and filled with data. Then, a loop was made to manually add rows to a listbox from this table. Finally, a variable was kept to do lookups to figure out what ID the record was for updates if required. How do they modify records you ask? That was my first question too. You won't believe how simple it is, all you do it double click and they type into a pop-up prompt the new value to change it to. As a data entry operator, all the modal popups would drive me absolutely insane. The final solution exceeds 100 lines of code that must be maintained. So my concern is that none of this is sinking in... the department is only allowed 20 hours a week of their time. Up until last week, we've only been given 4-5 hours a week if I'm lucky. The past week or so, I've been lucky to get 10. Question WHAT DO I DO?! I have 4 weeks left until I leave and they fully 'support' this application. I love this job and the opportunity it has given me but it's time for me to spread my wings and find something new. I am in no way, shape or form convinced that they are ready to take over. I do feel that the replacement has the technical ability to 'figure it out' but instead of learning they just write code to do all of this stuff manually. If the replacement wants to code differently in the end, as long as it works I'm fine with that as horrifiying at it looks. However to support what I have designed they MUST to understand how it works and how I have used controls and the framework to make 'magic' happen. This project has about 40 forms, a database with over 30 some odd tables, triggers and stored procedures. It relates labor to invoices to contracts to projections... it's not as simple as it was three years ago when I began this project and the department is now in a position where they cannot survive without it. How in the world can I accomplish any of the following?: Enforce standards or understanding in constent design when the department manager keeps telling them they can do it however they want to Find a way to engage the replacement in active learning of the framework and system design that support must be given for Gracefully inform sr. management that 5-9 hours a week is simply not enough time to learn about the department, pre-existing processes, applications that need to be supported AND determine where potential enhancements to the system go... Yes I know this is a wall of text, thanks for reading through me but I simply don't know what I should be doing. For me, this job is a monster of a reference and things would look extremely bad if I left and things fell apart. How do I handle this?

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  • T-SQL Tuesday #34: Help! I Need Somebody!

    - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)
    Welcome everyone to T-SQL Tuesday Episode 34!  When last we tuned in, Mike Fal (b|t) hosted Trick Shots.  These highlighted techniques or tricks that you figured out on your own which helped you understand SQL Server better. This month, I'm asking you to look back this past week, year, century, or hour...to a time when you COULDN'T figure it out.  When you were stuck on a SQL Server problem and you had to seek help. In the beginning... SQL Server has changed a lot since I started with it.  <Cranky Old Guy> Back in my day, Books Online was neither.  There were no blogs. Google was the third-place search site. There were perhaps two or three community forums where you could ask questions.  (Besides the Microsoft newsgroups...which you had to access with Usenet.  And endure the wrath of...Celko.)  Your "training" was reading a book, made from real dead trees, that you bought from your choice of brick-and-mortar bookstore. And except for your local user groups, there were no conferences, seminars, SQL Saturdays, or any online video hookups where you could interact with a person. You'd have to call Microsoft Support...on the phone...a LANDLINE phone.  And none of this "SQL Family" business!</Cranky Old Guy> Even now, with all these excellent resources available, it's still daunting for a beginner to seek help for SQL Server.  The product is roughly 1247.4523 times larger than it was 15 years ago, and it's simply impossible to know everything about it.*  So whether you are a beginner, or a seasoned pro of over a decade's experience, what do you do when you need help on SQL Server? That's so meta... In the spirit of offering help, here are some suggestions for your topic: Tell us about a person or SQL Server community who have been helpful to you.  It can be about a technical problem, or not, e.g. someone who volunteered for your local SQL Saturday.  Sing their praises!  Let the world know who they are! Do you have any tricks for using Books Online?  Do you use the locally installed product, or are you completely online with BOL/MSDN/Technet, and why? If you've been using SQL Server for over 10 years, how has your help-seeking changed? Are you using Twitter, StackOverflow, MSDN Forums, or another resource that didn't exist when you started? What made you switch? Do you spend more time helping others than seeking help? What motivates you to help, and how do you contribute? Structure your post along the lyrics to The Beatles song Help! Audio or video renditions are particularly welcome! Lyrics must include reference to SQL Server terminology or community, and performances must be in your voice or include you playing an instrument. These are just suggestions, you are free to write whatever you like.  Bonus points if you can incorporate ALL of these into a single post.  (Or you can do multiple posts, we're flexible like that.)  Help us help others by showing how others helped you! Legalese, Your Rights, Yada yada... If you would like to participate in T-SQL Tuesday please be sure to follow the rules below: Your blog post must be published between Tuesday, September 11, 2012 00:00:00 GMT and Wednesday, September 12, 2012 00:00:00 GMT. Include the T-SQL Tuesday logo (above) and hyperlink it back to this post. If you don’t see your post in trackbacks, add the link to the comments below. If you are on Twitter please tweet your blog using the #TSQL2sDay hashtag.  I can be contacted there as @sql_r, in case you have questions or problems with comments/trackback.  I'll have a follow-up post listing all the contributions as soon as I can. Thank you all for participating, and special thanks to Adam Machanic (b|t) for all his help and for continuing this series!

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  • Seizing the Moment with Mobility

    - by Divya Malik
    Empowering people to work where they want to work is becoming more critical now with the consumerisation of technology. Employees are bringing their own devices to the workplace and expecting to be productive wherever they are. Sales people welcome the ability to run their critical business applications where they can be most effective which is typically on the road and when they are still with the customer. Oracle has invested many years of research in understanding customer's Mobile requirements. “The keys to building the best user experience were building in a lot of flexibility in ways to support sales, and being useful,” said Arin Bhowmick, Director, CRM, for the Applications UX team. “We did that by talking to and analyzing the needs of a lot of people in different roles.” The team studied real-life sales teams. “We wanted to study salespeople in context with their work,” Bhowmick said. “We studied all user types in the CRM world because we wanted to build a user interface and user experience that would cater to sales representatives, marketing managers, sales managers, and more. Not only did we do studies in our labs, but also we did studies in the field and in mobile environments because salespeople are always on the go.” Here is a recent post from Hernan Capdevila, Vice President, Oracle Fusion Apps which was featured on the Oracle Applications Blog.  Mobile devices are forcing a paradigm shift in the workplace – they’re changing the way businesses can do business and the type of cultures they can nurture. As our customers talk about their mobile needs, we hear them saying they want instant-on access to enterprise data so workers can be more effective at their jobs anywhere, anytime. They also are interested in being more cost effective from an IT point of view. The mobile revolution – with the idea of BYOD (bring your own device) – has added an interesting dynamic because previously IT was driving the employee device strategy and ecosystem. That's been turned on its head with the consumerization of IT. Now employees are figuring out how to use their personal devices for work purposes and IT has to figure out how to adapt. Blurring the Lines between Work and Personal Life My vision of where businesses will be five years from now is that our work lives and personal lives will be more interwoven together. In turn, enterprises will have to determine how to make employees’ work lives fit more into the fabric of their personal lives. And personal devices like smartphones are going to drive significant business value because they let us accomplish things very incrementally. I can be sitting on a train or in a taxi and be productive. At the end of any meeting, I can capture ideas and tasks or follow up with people in real time. Mobile devices enable this notion of seizing the moment – capitalizing on opportunities that might otherwise have slipped away because we're not connected. For the industry shapers out there, this is game changing. The lean and agile workforce is definitely the future. This notion of the board sitting down with the executive team to lay out strategic objectives for a three- to five-year plan, bringing in HR to determine how they're going to staff the strategic activities, kicking off the execution, and then revisiting the plan in three to five years to create another three- to five-year plan is yesterday's model. Businesses that continue to approach innovating in that way are in the dinosaur age. Today it's about incremental planning and incremental execution, which requires a lot of cohesion and synthesis within the workforce. There needs to be this interweaving notion within the workforce about how ideas cascade down, how people engage, how they stay connected, and how insights are shared. How to Survive and Thrive in Today’s Marketplace The notion of Facebook isn’t new. We lived it pre-Internet days with America Online and Prodigy – Facebook is just the renaissance of these services in a more viral and pervasive way. And given the trajectory of the consumerization of IT with people bringing their personal tooling to work, the enterprise has no option but to adapt. The sooner that businesses realize this from a top-down point of view the sooner that they will be able to really drive significant innovation and adapt to the marketplace. There are a small number of companies right now (I think it's closer to 20% rather than 80%, but the number is expanding) that are able to really innovate in this incremental marketplace. So from a competitive point of view, there's no choice but to be social and stay connected. By far the majority of users on Facebook and LinkedIn are mobile users – people on iPhones, smartphones, Android phones, and tablets. It's not the couch people, right? It's the on-the-go people – those people at the coffee shops. Usually when you're sitting at your desk on a big desktop computer, typically you have better things to do than to be on Facebook. This is a topic I'm extremely passionate about because I think mobile devices are game changing. Mobility delivers significant value to businesses – it also brings dramatic simplification from a functional point of view and transforms our work life experience. Hernan Capdevila Vice President, Oracle Applications Development

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  • How do I cleanly design a central render/animation loop?

    - by mtoast
    I'm learning some graphics programming, and am in the midst of my first such project of any substance. But, I am really struggling at the moment with how to architect it cleanly. Let me explain. To display complicated graphics in my current language of choice (JavaScript -- have you heard of it?), you have to draw graphical content onto a <canvas> element. And to do animation, you must clear the <canvas> after every frame (unless you want previous graphics to remain). Thus, most canvas-related JavaScript demos I've seen have a function like this: function render() { clearCanvas(); // draw stuff here requestAnimationFrame(render); } render, as you may surmise, encapsulates the drawing of a single frame. What a single frame contains at a specific point in time, well... that is determined by the program state. So, in order for my program to do its thing, I just need to look at the state, and decide what to render. Right? Right. But that is more complicated than it seems. My program is called "Critter Clicker". In my program, you see several cute critters bouncing around the screen. Clicking on one of them agitates it, making it bounce around even more. There is also a start screen, which says "Click to start!" prior to the critters being displayed. Here are a few of the objects I'm working with in my program: StartScreenView // represents the start screen CritterTubView // represents the area in which the critters live CritterList // a collection of all the critters Critter // a single critter model CritterView // view of a single critter Nothing too egregious with this, I think. Yet, when I set out to flesh out my render function, I get stuck, because everything I write seems utterly ugly and reminiscent of a certain popular Italian dish. Here are a couple of approaches I've attempted, with my internal thought process included, and unrelated bits excluded for clarity. Approach 1: "It's conditions all the way down" // "I'll just write the program as I think it, one frame at a time." if (assetsLoaded) { if (userClickedToStart) { if (critterTubDisplayed) { if (crittersDisplayed) { forEach(crittersList, function(c) { if (c.wasClickedRecently) { c.getAgitated(); } }); } else { displayCritters(); } } else { displayCritterTub(); } } else { displayStartScreen(); } } That's a very much simplified example. Yet even with only a fraction of all the rendering conditions visible, render is already starting to get out of hand. So, I dispense with that and try another idea: Approach 2: Under the Rug // "Each view object shall be responsible for its own rendering. // "I'll pass each object the program state, and each can render itself." startScreen.render(state); critterTub.render(state); critterList.render(state); In this setup, I've essentially just pushed those crazy nested conditions to a deeper level in the code, hiding them from view. In other words, startScreen.render would check state to see if it needed actually to be drawn or not, and take the correct action. But this seems more like it only solves a code-aesthetic problem. The third and final approach I'm considering that I'll share is the idea that I could invent my own "wheel" to take care of this. I'm envisioning a function that takes a data structure that defines what should happen at any given point in the render call -- revealing the conditions and dependencies as a kind of tree. Approach 3: Mad Scientist renderTree({ phases: ['startScreen', 'critterTub', 'endCredits'], dependencies: { startScreen: ['assetsLoaded'], critterTub: ['startScreenClicked'], critterList ['critterTubDisplayed'] // etc. }, exclusions: { startScreen: ['startScreenClicked'], // etc. } }); That seems kind of cool. I'm not exactly sure how it would actually work, but I can see it being a rather nifty way to express things, especially if I flex some of JavaScript's events. In any case, I'm a little bit stumped because I don't see an obvious way to do this. If you couldn't tell, I'm coming to this from the web development world, and finding that doing animation is a bit more exotic than arranging an MVC application for handling simple requests - responses. What is the clean, established solution to this common-I-would-think problem?

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  • Data management in unexpected places

    - by Ashok_Ora
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE Data management in unexpected places When you think of network switches, routers, firewall appliances, etc., it may not be obvious that at the heart of these kinds of solutions is an engine that can manage huge amounts of data at very high throughput with low latencies and high availability. Consider a network router that is processing tens (or hundreds) of thousands of network packets per second. So what really happens inside a router? Packets are streaming in at the rate of tens of thousands per second. Each packet has multiple attributes, for example, a destination, associated SLAs etc. For each packet, the router has to determine the address of the next “hop” to the destination; it has to determine how to prioritize this packet. If it’s a high priority packet, then it has to be sent on its way before lower priority packets. As a consequence of prioritizing high priority packets, lower priority data packets may need to be temporarily stored (held back), but addressed fairly. If there are security or privacy requirements associated with the data packet, those have to be enforced. You probably need to keep track of statistics related to the packets processed (someone’s sure to ask). You have to do all this (and more) while preserving high availability i.e. if one of the processors in the router goes down, you have to have a way to continue processing without interruption (the customer won’t be happy with a “choppy” VoIP conversation, right?). And all this has to be achieved without ANY intervention from a human operator – the router is most likely to be in a remote location – it must JUST CONTINUE TO WORK CORRECTLY, even when bad things happen. How is this implemented? As soon as a packet arrives, it is interpreted by the receiving software. The software decodes the packet headers in order to determine the destination, kind of packet (e.g. voice vs. data), SLAs associated with the “owner” of the packet etc. It looks up the internal database of “rules” of how to process this packet and handles the packet accordingly. The software might choose to hold on to the packet safely for some period of time, if it’s a low priority packet. Ah – this sounds very much like a database problem. For each packet, you have to minimally · Look up the most efficient next “hop” towards the destination. The “most efficient” next hop can change, depending on latency, availability etc. · Look up the SLA and determine the priority of this packet (e.g. voice calls get priority over data ftp) · Look up security information associated with this data packet. It may be necessary to retrieve the context for this network packet since a network packet is a small “slice” of a session. The context for the “header” packet needs to be stored in the router, in order to make this work. · If the priority of the packet is low, then “store” the packet temporarily in the router until it is time to forward the packet to the next hop. · Update various statistics about the packet. In most cases, you have to do all this in the context of a single transaction. For example, you want to look up the forwarding address and perform the “send” in a single transaction so that the forwarding address doesn’t change while you’re sending the packet. So, how do you do all this? Berkeley DB is a proven, reliable, high performance, highly available embeddable database, designed for exactly these kinds of usage scenarios. Berkeley DB is a robust, reliable, proven solution that is currently being used in these scenarios. First and foremost, Berkeley DB (or BDB for short) is very very fast. It can process tens or hundreds of thousands of transactions per second. It can be used as a pure in-memory database, or as a disk-persistent database. BDB provides high availability – if one board in the router fails, the system can automatically failover to another board – no manual intervention required. BDB is self-administering – there’s no need for manual intervention in order to maintain a BDB application. No need to send a technician to a remote site in the middle of nowhere on a freezing winter day to perform maintenance operations. BDB is used in over 200 million deployments worldwide for the past two decades for mission-critical applications such as the one described here. You have a choice of spending valuable resources to implement similar functionality, or, you could simply embed BDB in your application and off you go! I know what I’d do – choose BDB, so I can focus on my business problem. What will you do? /* 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-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}

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  • boot issues - long delay, then "gave up waiting for root device"

    - by chazomaticus
    I've had this issue on and off for about two years now. I noticed it on a new (custom built) machine running 10.04 when that first came out, but then it went away until a few months ago. I've gone through a number of hard drive changes but I can't say specifically what if anything I changed hardware-wise to make it stop or start happening. I had assumed upgrading to a modern Ubuntu version would fix the issue, so I installed 12.04 beta on a spare partition last night, but it's still happening. Here's the issue. After grub loads and I select a kernel to boot, the screen goes blank save for a blinking cursor. It sits in this state for many long minutes before it finally gives up and gives me an initramfs shell with the message gave up waiting for root device (and lists the /dev/disk/by-uuid/... path it was waiting for) but no other specific diagnostic information. Now, here's the tricky part. For one, the problem is intermittent - sometimes it progresses from the blinking cursor to the Ubuntu splash boot screen in a few seconds, and once it gets that far it always continues booting fine. The really bizarre thing is that I can "force" it to "find" the root device by repeatedly pressing the space bar and hitting the machine's power button. If I tap those enough, eventually I will notice the hard drive light coming on, at which point it will always continue the boot process after a few seconds. Interestingly, if I wait slightly too long before pressing the power button (30s?), as soon as I press it I get the gave up waiting message and the initramfs shell. I've tried setting up /etc/fstab (and the grub menu.lst or whatever it's called nowadays) to use device names (e.g. /dev/sda1) instead of UUIDs, but I get the same effect just with the device name, not UUID, in the error message. I should also mention that when I boot to Windows 7, there is no issue. It boots slowly all the time just by virtue of being Windows, but it never hangs indefinitely. This would seem to indicate it's a problem in Ubuntu, not the hardware. It's pretty annoying to have to babysit the computer every time it boots. Any ideas? I'm at a loss. Not even sure how to diagnose the issue. Thanks! EDIT: Here's some dmesg output from 10.04. The 15 second gap is where it was doing nothing. I pressed the power button and space bar a few times, and the stuff at 16 seconds happened. Not sure what any of it means. [ 1.320250] scsi18 : ahci [ 1.320294] scsi19 : ahci [ 1.320320] ata19: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m8192@0xfd4fe000 port 0xfd4fe100 ir q 18 [ 1.320323] ata20: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m8192@0xfd4fe000 port 0xfd4fe180 ir q 18 [ 1.403886] usb 2-4: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 4 [ 1.562558] usb 2-4: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice [ 16.477824] ata16: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300) [ 16.477843] ata19: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300) [ 16.477857] ata3: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300) [ 16.477895] ata15: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300) [ 16.477906] ata20: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300) [ 16.477977] ata17: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300) [ 16.478003] ata12: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300) [ 16.478046] ata13: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300) [ 16.478063] ata14: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300) [ 16.478108] ata11: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300) [ 16.478123] ata18: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300) [ 16.478127] ata6: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300) [ 16.478157] ata5: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300) [ 16.478193] ata18.00: ATAPI: MARVELL VIRTUALL, 1.09, max UDMA/66 After that, it took its sweet time, and I had to keep hitting space bar to coax it along. Here's some more dmesg output from a little later in the boot process: [ 17.982291] input: BTC USB Multimedia Keyboard as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00 :13.0/usb5/5-2/5-2:1.0/input/input4 [ 17.982335] generic-usb 0003:046E:5506.0002: input,hidraw1: USB HID v1.10 Key board [BTC USB Multimedia Keyboard] on usb-0000:00:13.0-2/input0 [ 18.005211] input: BTC USB Multimedia Keyboard as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00 :13.0/usb5/5-2/5-2:1.1/input/input5 [ 18.005274] generic-usb 0003:046E:5506.0003: input,hiddev96,hidraw2: USB HID v1.10 Device [BTC USB Multimedia Keyboard] on usb-0000:00:13.0-2/input1 [ 22.484906] EXT4-fs (sda6): INFO: recovery required on readonly filesystem [ 22.484910] EXT4-fs (sda6): write access will be enabled during recovery [ 22.548542] EXT4-fs (sda6): recovery complete [ 22.549074] EXT4-fs (sda6): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode [ 32.516772] Adding 20482832k swap on /dev/sda5. Priority:-1 extents:1 across:20482832k [ 32.742540] udev: starting version 151 [ 33.002004] Bluetooth: Atheros AR30xx firmware driver ver 1.0 [ 33.008135] parport_pc 00:09: reported by Plug and Play ACPI [ 33.008186] parport0: PC-style at 0x378, irq 7 [PCSPP,TRISTATE] [ 33.012076] lp: driver loaded but no devices found [ 33.037271] ppdev: user-space parallel port driver [ 33.090256] lp0: using parport0 (interrupt-driven). Any clues in there?

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  • Part 8: How to name EBS Customizations

    - by volker.eckardt(at)oracle.com
    You might wonder why I am discussing this here. The reason is simple: nearly every project has a bit different naming conventions, which makes a the life always a bit complicated (for developers, but also setup responsible, and also for consultants).  Although we always create a document to describe the technical object naming conventions, I have rarely seen a dedicated document  with functional naming conventions. To be precisely, from my stand point, there should always be one global naming definition for an implementation! Let me discuss some related questions: What is the best convention for the customization reference? How to name database objects (tables, packages etc.)? How to name functional objects like Value Sets, Concurrent Programs, etc. How to separate customizations from standard objects best? What is the best convention for the customization reference? The customization reference is the key you use to reference your customization from other lists, from the project plan etc. Usually it is something like XXHU_CONV_22 (HU=customer abbreviation, CONV=Conversion object #22) or XXFA_DEPRN_RPT_02 (FA=Fixed Assets, DEPRN=Short object group, here depreciation, RPT=Report, 02=2nd report in this area) As this is just a reference (not an object name yet), I would prefer the second option. XX=Customization, FA=Main EBS Module linked (you may have sometimes more, but FA is the main) DEPRN_RPT=Short name to specify the customization 02=a unique number Important here is that the HU isn’t used, because XX is enough to mark a custom object, and the 3rd+4th char can be used by the EBS module short name. How to name database objects (tables, packages etc.)? I was leading different developer teams, and I know that one common way is it to take the Customization reference and add more chars behind to classify the object (like _V for view and _T1 for triggers etc.). The only concern I have with this approach is the reusability. If you name your view XXFA_DEPRN_RPT_02_V, no one will by choice reuse this nice view, as it seams to be specific for this CEMLI. My suggestion is rather to name the view XXFA_DEPRN_PERIODS_V and allow herewith reusability for other CEMLIs (although the view will be deployed primarily with CEMLI package XXFA_DEPRN_RPT_02). (check also one of the following Blogs where I will talk about deployment.) How to name Value Sets, Concurrent Programs, etc. For Value Sets I would go with the same convention as for database objects, starting with XX<Module> …. For Concurrent Programs the situation is a bit different. This “object” is seen and used by a lot of users, and they will search for. In many projects it is common to start again with the company short name, or with XX. My proposal would differ. If you have created your own report and you name it “XX: Invoice Report”, the user has to remember that this report does not start with “I”, it starts with X. Would you like typing an X if you are looking for an Invoice report? No, you wouldn’t! So my advise would be to name it:   “Invoice Report (XXAP)”. Still we know it is custom (because of the XXAP), but the end user will type the key “i” to get it (and will see similar reports starting also with “i”). I hope that the general schema behind has now become obvious. How to separate customizations from standard objects best? I would not have this section here if the naming would not play an important role. Unfortunately, we can not always link a custom application to our own object, therefore the naming is really important. In the file system structure we use our $XXyy_TOP, in JAVA_TOP it is perhaps also “xx” in front. But in the database itself? Although there are different concepts in place, still many implementations are using the standard “apps” approach, means custom objects are stored in the apps schema (which should not cause any trouble). Final advise: review the naming conventions regularly, once a month. You may have to add more! And, publish them! To summarize: Technical and functional customized objects should always follow a naming convention. This naming convention should be project wide, and only one place shall be used to maintain (like in a Wiki). If the name is for the end user, rather put a customization identifier at the end; if it is an internal name, start with XX…

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  • Namespaces are obsolete

    - by Bertrand Le Roy
    To those of us who have been around for a while, namespaces have been part of the landscape. One could even say that they have been defining the large-scale features of the landscape in question. However, something happened fairly recently that I think makes this venerable structure obsolete. Before I explain this development and why it’s a superior concept to namespaces, let me recapitulate what namespaces are and why they’ve been so good to us over the years… Namespaces are used for a few different things: Scope: a namespace delimits the portion of code where a name (for a class, sub-namespace, etc.) has the specified meaning. Namespaces are usually the highest-level scoping structures in a software package. Collision prevention: name collisions are a universal problem. Some systems, such as jQuery, wave it away, but the problem remains. Namespaces provide a reasonable approach to global uniqueness (and in some implementations such as XML, enforce it). In .NET, there are ways to relocate a namespace to avoid those rare collision cases. Hierarchy: programmers like neat little boxes, and especially boxes within boxes within boxes. For some reason. Regular human beings on the other hand, tend to think linearly, which is why the Windows explorer for example has tried in a few different ways to flatten the file system hierarchy for the user. 1 is clearly useful because we need to protect our code from bleeding effects from the rest of the application (and vice versa). A language with only global constructs may be what some of us started programming on, but it’s not desirable in any way today. 2 may not be always reasonably worth the trouble (jQuery is doing fine with its global plug-in namespace), but we still need it in many cases. One should note however that globally unique names are not the only possible implementation. In fact, they are a rather extreme solution. What we really care about is collision prevention within our application. What happens outside is irrelevant. 3 is, more than anything, an aesthetical choice. A common convention has been to encode the whole pedigree of the code into the namespace. Come to think about it, we never think we need to import “Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.Agent” and that would be very hard to remember. What we want to do is bring nHibernate into our app. And this is precisely what you’ll do with modern package managers and module loaders. I want to take the specific example of RequireJS, which is commonly used with Node. Here is how you import a module with RequireJS: var http = require("http"); .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } This is of course importing a HTTP stack module into the code. There is no noise here. Let’s break this down. Scope (1) is provided by the one scoping mechanism in JavaScript: the closure surrounding the module’s code. Whatever scoping mechanism is provided by the language would be fine here. Collision prevention (2) is very elegantly handled. Whereas relocating is an afterthought, and an exceptional measure with namespaces, it is here on the frontline. You always relocate, using an extremely familiar pattern: variable assignment. We are very much used to managing our local variable names and any possible collision will get solved very easily by picking a different name. Wait a minute, I hear some of you say. This is only taking care of collisions on the client-side, on the left of that assignment. What if I have two libraries with the name “http”? Well, You can better qualify the path to the module, which is what the require parameter really is. As for hierarchical organization, you don’t really want that, do you? RequireJS’ module pattern does elegantly cover the bases that namespaces used to cover, but it also promotes additional good practices. First, it promotes usage of self-contained, single responsibility units of code through the closure-based, stricter scoping mechanism. Namespaces are somewhat more porous, as using/import statements can be used bi-directionally, which leads us to my second point… Sane dependency graphs are easier to achieve and sustain with such a structure. With namespaces, it is easy to construct dependency cycles (that’s bad, mmkay?). With this pattern, the equivalent would be to build mega-components, which are an easier problem to spot than a decay into inter-dependent namespaces, for which you need specialized tools. I really like this pattern very much, and I would like to see more environments implement it. One could argue that dependency injection has some commonalities with this for example. What do you think? This is the half-baked result of some morning shower reflections, and I’d love to read your thoughts about it. What am I missing?

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  • Finding it Hard to Deliver Right Customer Experience: Think BPM!

    - by Ajay Khanna
    Our relationship with our customers is not a just a single interaction and we should not treat it like one. A customer’s relationship with a vendor is like a journey which starts way before customer makes a purchase and lasts long after that. The journey may start with customer researching a product that may lead to the eventual purchase and may continue with support or service needs for the product. A typical customer journey can be represented as shown below: As you may notice, customers tend to use multiple channels to interact with a company throughout their journey.  They also expect that they should get consistent experience, no matter what interaction channel they may choose. Customers do not like to repeat the information they have already provided and expect companies to remember their preferences, and offer them relevant products and services. If the company fails to meet this expectation, customers not only will abandon the purchase and go to the competitor but may also influence others’ purchase decision. Gone are the days when word of mouth was the only medium, and the customer could influence “Six” others. This is the age of social media and customer’s good or bad experience, especially bad get highly amplified and may influence hundreds of others. Challenges that face B2C companies today include: Delivering consistent experience: The reason that delivering consistent experience is challenging is due to fragmented data, disjointed systems and siloed multichannel interactions. Customers tend to get different service quality if they use web vs. phone vs. store. They get different responses from different service agents or get inconsistent answers if they call sales vs. service group in the company. Such inconsistent experiences result in lower customer satisfaction or NPS (net promoter score) numbers. Increasing Revenue: To stay competitive companies frequently introduce new products and services. Delay in launching such offerings has a significant impact on revenue realization. In addition to new product revenue, there are multiple opportunities to up-sell and cross-sell that impact bottom line. If companies are not able to identify such opportunities, bring a product to market quickly, or not offer the right product to the right customer at the right time, significant loss of revenue may occur. Ensuring Compliance: Companies must be compliant to ever changing regulations, these could be about Know Your Customer (KYC), Export/Import regulations, or taxation policies. In addition to government agencies, companies also need to comply with the SLA that they have committed to their customers. Lapse in meeting any of these requirements may lead to serious fines, penalties and loss in business. Companies have to make sure that they are in compliance will all such regulations and SLA commitments, at any given time. With the advent of social networks and mobile technology, companies not only need to focus on process efficiency but also on customer engagement. Improving engagement means delivering the customer experience as the customer is expecting and interacting with the customer at right time using right channel. Customers expect to be able to contact you via any channel of their choice (web, email, chat, mobile, social media), purchase via any viable channel (web, phone, store, mobile). Customers expect companies to understand their particular needs and remember their preferences on repeated visits. To deliver such an integrated, consistent, and contextual experience, power of BPM in must. Your company may be organized in departments like Marketing, Sales, Service. You may hold prospect data in SFA, order information in ERP, customer issues in CRM. However, the experience delivered to the customer must not be constrained by your system legacy. BPM helps in designing the right experience for the right customer and integrates all the underlining channels, systems, applications to make sure right information will be delivered to the right knowledge worker or to the customer every single time.     Orchestrating information across all systems (MDM, CRM, ERP), departments (commerce, merchandising, marketing service) and channels (Email, phone, web, social)  is the key, and that’s what BPM delivers. In addition to orchestrating systems and channels for consistency, BPM also provides an ability for analysis and decision management. By using data from historical transactions, social media and from other systems, users can determine the customer preferences, customer value, and churn propensity. This information, in the context, is then used while making a decision at a process step. Working with real-time decision management system can also suggest right up-sell or cross-sell offers, discounts or next-best-action steps for a particular customer. Timely action on customer issues or request is also a key tenet of a good customer experience. BPM’s complex event processing capabilities help companies to take proactive actions before issues get escalated. BPM system can be designed to listen to a certain event patters then deduce from those customer situations (credit card stolen, baggage lost, change of address) and do a triage before situation goes out of control. If such a situation arises you can send alerts to right people or immediately invoke corrective actions. Last but not least one of BPM’s key values is to drive continuous improvement. Learning about customers past experiences, interactions and social conversations, provide valuable insight. Such insight can be used to improve products, customer facing processes, and customer experience. You may take these insights as an input to design better more efficient and customer friendly sales, contact center or self-service processes. If customer experience is important for your business, make sure you have incorporated BPM as a part of your strategy to design, orchestrate and improve your customer facing processes.

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  • Why everybody should do Sales!

    - by FelixWehmeyer
    I speak with many business students and ask them what job they want to get into. Most of them tell me they want a job in Marketing, Management Consulting or Finance. I hardly ever hear “Sales, that is what I want to do”, and I often wonder why. I would like to start with a quote from Zig Ziglar, a successful salesman: "Nothing happens until someone sells something." But to get back to the main point, why wouldn’t you want to get in sales? When people think of sales, they picture a typical salesman in their head and think that selling is scary and all about manipulating, pressuring and pushing someone into buying something they don’t need. Are these stereotypes accurate? I don’t believe so: So why should you want to be in sales? If you think about selling as providing the solution for the problem and talking about the benefits of making a decision, then every job in this world comes out of selling. In every job you deal with coworkers that you want to convince of your ideas or convincing your boss that the project you want to work on is good for the company.  These days, consumers and businesses are very well informed about services and products. When we are talking about highly complex products, such as IT solutions, businesses don’t accept your run-of-the-mill salesman who is pushing a sale. These are often long projects where salespeople have a consulting and leading role. Salespeople need to be able to consult companies and customers with their problem and convince a client that their solution is the best fit. Next to the fact that sales, is by far, not as scary and shady as you thought, there are a few points that will make you want to consider a sales career: Negotiating skills – When you are in sales you will learn how to negotiate. Salespeople learn to listen to their customers and try to make them happy, overcoming objections and come to a final agreement that both parties are happy with. Persistence/Challenge – As a salesperson you will often hear a negative answer, in a sales role you will start to embrace this and see a ‘no’ as a challenge not as a rejection. This attitude change can help you a lot in your career, but also in your personal life. You will become more optimistic and gain a go-getter attitude. Salary – As salespeople are seen as the moneymakers for the company, companies often reward their sales teams generously. Most likely in a sales role, you will receive a good basic salary and often you get nice bonuses on top of that based on your performance. Oracle is, for instance, the company that offers the highest average commission in the world. Further you can expect many other benefits as companies know that there is a high demand for good salespeople. Teamwork – Sales is a lot like having your own business, you are responsible for your own territory or set of clients. You are the one who is responsible for the revenue coming from that territory. So in order to gain revenue you will have to work together with many departments and people to make that happen. Every (potential) client could be seen as a different project, and you are the project leader. Understanding customers and the business – From any job that you choose sales will get you the most insight in the market. Salespeople are usually well-connected, talk with different customers and learn about the market and are up-to-date about all latest changes. Even if you want to change to a different role in the long run, you have a great head start as you understand the market and customers like no one else. Job security – Look at all the job postings out there. Many of them are sales-related. So if you want to have a steady job, plenty of choice and companies willing to invest in you, sales could be something for you.  Are you interested in exploring a sales career? At Oracle we are always looking for good sales professionals and fresh graduates who want to get into sales! For many languages such as Flemish, Dutch, German, French, Swedish and Norwegian (and more) we are currently looking for graduates who want to develop their career in Oracle. Please have a look at this article for the experience of a Business Development Consultant at Oracle in Dublin. Want to learn more about this job check out this link or send an email to jessica.ebbelaar-at-oracle.com! Have a look at our website http://campus.oracle.com for all of our other latest sales and non-sales vacancies!

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  • implementation of text editor in shell programming

    - by Arka Ghosh
    i have made a text editor in C. when i am changing the extension of that file from .c to .sh and compiling the file in the terminal,some error is shown,like for the global variables an external error is shown,and for the functions i have declared errors are shown there also.please help me to solve this. I am sending my code.. include include include int i,j,ec,fg,ec2; char fn[20],e,c,d; FILE *fp1,*fp2,fp; void Create(); void Append(); void Delete(); void Display(); int main() { do { printf("\n\t\t** TEXT EDITOR *"); printf("\n\n\tMENU:\n\t..\n "); printf("\n\t1.CREATE\n\t2.DISPLAY\n\t3.APPEND\n\t4.DELETE\n\t5.EXIT\n"); printf("\n\tEnter your choice: "); scanf("%d",&ec); switch(ec) { case 1: Create(); break; case 2: Display(); break; case 3: Append(); break; case 4: Delete(); break; case 5: exit(1); } }while(1); } void Create() { fp1=fopen("temp.txt","w"); printf("\n\tEnter the text and press '.' to save\n\n\t"); while(1) { c=getchar(); fputc(c,fp1); if(c == '.') { fclose(fp1); printf("\n\tEnter then new filename: "); scanf("%s",fn); fp1=fopen("temp.txt","r"); fp2=fopen(fn,"w"); while(!feof(fp1)) { c=getc(fp1); putc(c,fp2); } fclose(fp2); break; }} } void Display() { printf("\n\tEnter the file name: "); scanf("%s",fn); fp1=fopen(fn,"r"); if(fp1==NULL) { printf("\n\tFile not found!"); goto end1; } while(!feof(fp1)) { c=getc(fp1); printf("%c",c); } end1: fclose(fp1); printf("\n\n\tPress any key to continue.."); } void Delete() { printf("\n\tEnter the file name: "); scanf("%s",fn); fp1=fopen(fn,"r"); if(fp1==NULL) { printf("\n\tFile not found!"); goto end2; } fclose(fp1); if(remove(fn)==0) { printf("\n\n\tFile has been deleted successfully!"); goto end2; } else printf("\n\tError!\n"); end2: printf("\n\n\tPress any key to continue.."); getchar(); } void Append() { printf("\n\tEnter the file name: "); scanf("%s",fn); fp1=fopen(fn,"r"); if(fp1==NULL) { printf("\n\tFile not found!"); goto end3; } while(!feof(fp1)) { c=getc(fp1); printf("%c",c); } fclose(fp1); printf("\n\tType the text and press 'Ctrl+s' to append.\n"); fp1=fopen(fn,"a"); while(1) { c=getchar(); if(c==19) goto end3; if(c==13) { d='\n'; fputc(d,fp1); } else { fputc(c,fp1); } } end3: fclose(fp1); }

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  • "Imprinting" as a language feature?

    - by MKO
    Idea I had this idea for a language feature that I think would be useful, does anyone know of a language that implements something like this? The idea is that besides inheritance a class can also use something called "imprinting" (for lack of better term). A class can imprint one or several (non-abstract) classes. When a class imprints another class it gets all it's properties and all it's methods. It's like the class storing an instance of the imprinted class and redirecting it's methods/properties to it. A class that imprints another class therefore by definition also implements all it's interfaces and it's abstract class. So what's the point? Well, inheritance and polymorphism is hard to get right. Often composition gives far more flexibility. Multiple inheritance offers a slew of different problems without much benefits (IMO). I often write adapter classes (in C#) by implementing some interface and passing along the actual methods/properties to an encapsulated object. The downside to that approach is that if the interface changes the class breaks. You also you have to put in a lot of code that does nothing but pass things along to the encapsulated object. A classic example is that you have some class that implements IEnumerable or IList and contains an internal class it uses. With this technique things would be much easier Example (c#) [imprint List<Person> as peopleList] public class People : PersonBase { public void SomeMethod() { DoSomething(this.Count); //Count is from List } } //Now People can be treated as an List<Person> People people = new People(); foreach(Person person in people) { ... } peopleList is an alias/variablename (of your choice)used internally to alias the instance but can be skipped if not needed. One thing that's useful is to override an imprinted method, that could be achieved with the ordinary override syntax public override void Add(Person person) { DoSomething(); personList.Add(person); } note that the above is functional equivalent (and could be rewritten by the compiler) to: public class People : PersonBase , IList<Person> { private List<Person> personList = new List<Person>(); public override void Add(object obj) { this.personList.Add(obj) } public override int IndexOf(object obj) { return personList.IndexOf(obj) } //etc etc for each signature in the interface } only if IList changes your class will break. IList won't change but an interface that you, someone in your team, or a thirdparty has designed might just change. Also this saves you writing a whole lot of code for some interfaces/abstract classes. Caveats There's a couple of gotchas. First we, syntax must be added to call the imprinted classes's constructors from the imprinting class constructor. Also, what happends if a class imprints two classes which have the same method? In that case the compiler would detect it and force the class to define an override of that method (where you could chose if you wanted to call either imprinted class or both) So what do you think, would it be useful, any caveats? It seems it would be pretty straightforward to implement something like that in the C# language but I might be missing something :) Sidenote - Why is this different from multiple inheritance Ok, so some people have asked about this. Why is this different from multiple inheritance and why not multiple inheritance. In C# methods are either virtual or not. Say that we have ClassB who inherits from ClassA. ClassA has the methods MethodA and MethodB. ClassB overrides MethodA but not MethodB. Now say that MethodB has a call to MethodA. if MethodA is virtual it will call the implementation that ClassB has, if not it will use the base class, ClassA's MethodA and you'll end up wondering why your class doesn't work as it should. By the terminology sofar you might already confused. So what happens if ClassB inherits both from ClassA and another ClassC. I bet both programmers and compilers will be scratching their heads. The benefit of this approach IMO is that the imprinting classes are totally encapsulated and need not be designed with multiple inheritance in mind. You can basically imprint anything.

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  • Data Source Security Part 5

    - by Steve Felts
    If you read through the first four parts of this series on data source security, you should be an expert on this focus area.  There is one more small topic to cover related to WebLogic Resource permissions.  After that comes the test, I mean example, to see with a real set of configuration parameters what the results are with some concrete values. WebLogic Resource Permissions All of the discussion so far has been about database credentials that are (eventually) used on the database side.  WLS has resource credentials to control what WLS users are allowed to access JDBC resources.  These can be defined on the Policies tab on the Security tab associated with the data source.  There are four permissions: “reserve” (get a new connection), “admin”, “shrink”, and reset (plus the all-inclusive “ALL”); we will focus on “reserve” here because we are talking about getting connections.  By default, JDBC resource permissions are completely open – anyone can do anything.  As soon as you add one policy for a permission, then all other users are restricted.  For example, if I add a policy so that “weblogic” can reserve a connection, then all other users will fail to reserve connections unless they are also explicitly added.  The validation is done for WLS user credentials only, not database user credentials.  Configuration of resources in general is described at “Create policies for resource instances” http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E24329_01/apirefs.1211/e24401/taskhelp/security/CreatePoliciesForResourceInstances.html.  This feature can be very useful to restrict what code and users can get to your database. There are the three use cases: API Use database credentials User for permission checking getConnection() True or false Current WLS user getConnection(user,password) False User/password from API getConnection(user,password) True Current WLS user If a simple getConnection() is used or database credentials are enabled, the current user that is authenticated to the WLS system is checked. If database credentials are not enabled, then the user and password on the API are used. Example The following is an actual example of the interactions between identity-based-connection-pooling-enabled, oracle-proxy-session, and use-database-credentials. On the database side, the following objects are configured.- Database users scott; jdbcqa; jdbcqa3- Permission for proxy: alter user jdbcqa3 grant connect through jdbcqa;- Permission for proxy: alter user jdbcqa grant connect through jdbcqa; The following WebLogic Data Source objects are configured.- Users weblogic, wluser- Credential mapping “weblogic” to “scott”- Credential mapping "wluser" to "jdbcqa3"- Data source descriptor configured with user “jdbcqa”- All tests are run with Set Client ID set to true (more about that below).- All tests are run with oracle-proxy-session set to false (more about that below). The test program:- Runs in servlet- Authenticates to WLS as user “weblogic” Use DB Credentials Identity based getConnection(scott,***) getConnection(weblogic,***) getConnection(jdbcqa3,***) getConnection()  true  true Identity scottClient weblogicProxy null weblogic fails - not a db user User jdbcqa3Client weblogicProxy null Default user jdbcqaClient weblogicProxy null  false  true scott fails - not a WLS user User scottClient scottProxy null jdbcqa3 fails - not a WLS user User scottClient scottProxy null  true  false Proxy for scott fails weblogic fails - not a db user User jdbcqa3Client weblogicProxy jdbcqa Default user jdbcqaClient weblogicProxy null  false  false scott fails - not a WLS user Default user jdbcqaClient scottProxy null jdbcqa3 fails - not a WLS user Default user jdbcqaClient scottProxy null If Set Client ID is set to false, all cases would have Client set to null. If this was not an Oracle thin driver, the one case with the non-null Proxy in the above table would throw an exception because proxy session is only supported, implicitly or explicitly, with the Oracle thin driver. When oracle-proxy-session is set to true, the only cases that will pass (with a proxy of "jdbcqa") are the following.1. Setting use-database-credentials to true and doing getConnection(jdbcqa3,…) or getConnection().2. Setting use-database-credentials to false and doing getConnection(wluser, …) or getConnection(). Summary There are many options to choose from for data source security.  Considerations include the number and volatility of WLS and Database users, the granularity of data access, the depth of the security identity (property on the connection or a real user), performance, coordination of various components in the software stack, and driver capabilities.  Now that you have the big picture (remember that table in part 1), you can make a more informed choice.

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