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• A Good Developer is So Hard to Find

  - by James Michael Hare

  Let me start out by saying I want to damn the writers of the Toughest Developer Puzzle Ever – 2. It is eating every last shred of my free time! But as I've been churning through each puzzle and marvelling at the brain teasers and trivia within, I began to think about interviewing developers and why it seems to be so hard to find good ones.  The problem is, it seems like no matter how hard we try to find the perfect way to separate the chaff from the wheat, inevitably someone will get hired who falls far short of expectations or someone will get passed over for missing a piece of trivia or a tricky brain teaser that could have been an excellent team member.   In shops that are primarily software-producing businesses or other heavily IT-oriented businesses (Microsoft, Amazon, etc) there often exists a much tighter bond between HR and the hiring development staff because development is their life-blood. Unfortunately, many of us work in places where IT is viewed as a cost or just a means to an end. In these shops, too often, HR and development staff may work against each other due to differences in opinion as to what a good developer is or what one is worth.  It seems that if you ask two different people what makes a good developer, often you will get three different opinions.   With the exception of those shops that are purely development-centric (you guys have it much easier!), most other shops have management who have very little knowledge about the development process.  Their view can often be that development is simply a skill that one learns and then once aquired, that developer can produce widgets as good as the next like workers on an assembly-line floor.  On the other side, you have many developers that feel that software development is an art unto itself and that the ability to create the most pure design or know the most obscure of keywords or write the shortest-possible obfuscated piece of code is a good coder.  So is it a skill?  An Art?  Or something entirely in between?   Saying that software is merely a skill and one just needs to learn the syntax and tools would be akin to saying anyone who knows English and can use Word can write a 300 page book that is accurate, meaningful, and stays true to the point.  This just isn't so.  It takes more than mere skill to take words and form a sentence, join those sentences into paragraphs, and those paragraphs into a document.  I've interviewed candidates who could answer obscure syntax and keyword questions and once they were hired could not code effectively at all.  So development must be more than a skill.   But on the other end, we have art.  Is development an art?  Is our end result to produce art?  I can marvel at a piece of code -- see it as concise and beautiful -- and yet that code most perform some stated function with accuracy and efficiency and maintainability.  None of these three things have anything to do with art, per se.  Art is beauty for its own sake and is a wonderful thing.  But if you apply that same though to development it just doesn't hold.  I've had developers tell me that all that matters is the end result and how you code it is entirely part of the art and I couldn't disagree more.  Yes, the end result, the accuracy, is the prime criteria to be met.  But if code is not maintainable and efficient, it would be just as useless as a beautiful car that breaks down once a week or that gets 2 miles to the gallon.  Yes, it may work in that it moves you from point A to point B and is pretty as hell, but if it can't be maintained or is not efficient, it's not a good solution.  So development must be something less than art.   In the end, I think I feel like development is a matter of craftsmanship.  We use our tools and we use our skills and set about to construct something that satisfies a purpose and yet is also elegant and efficient.  There is skill involved, and there is an art, but really it boils down to being able to craft code.  Crafting code is far more than writing code.  Anyone can write code if they know the syntax, but so few people can actually craft code that solves a purpose and craft it well.  So this is what I want to find, I want to find code craftsman!  But how?   I used to ask coding-trivia questions a long time ago and many people still fall back on this.  The thought is that if you ask the candidate some piece of coding trivia and they know the answer it must follow that they can craft good code.  For example:   What C++ keyword can be applied to a class/struct field to allow it to be changed even from a const-instance of that class/struct?  (answer: mutable)   So what do we prove if a candidate can answer this?  Only that they know what mutable means.  One would hope that this would infer that they'd know how to use it, and more importantly when and if it should ever be used!  But it rarely does!  The problem with triva questions is that you will either: Approve a really good developer who knows what some obscure keyword is (good) Reject a really good developer who never needed to use that keyword or is too inexperienced to know how to use it (bad) Approve a really bad developer who googled "C++ Interview Questions" and studied like hell but can't craft (very bad) Many HR departments love these kind of tests because they are short and easy to defend if a legal issue arrises on hiring decisions.  After all it's easy to say a person wasn't hired because they scored 30 out of 100 on some trivia test.  But unfortunately, you've eliminated a large part of your potential developer pool and possibly hired a few duds.  There are times I've hired candidates who knew every trivia question I could throw out them and couldn't craft.  And then there are times I've interviewed candidates who failed all my trivia but who I took a chance on who were my best finds ever.    So if not trivia, then what?  Brain teasers?  The thought is, these type of questions measure the thinking power of a candidate.  The problem is, once again, you will either: Approve a good candidate who has never heard the problem and can solve it (good) Reject a good candidate who just happens not to see the "catch" because they're nervous or it may be really obscure (bad) Approve a candidate who has studied enough interview brain teasers (once again, you can google em) to recognize the "catch" or knows the answer already (bad). Once again, you're eliminating good candidates and possibly accepting bad candidates.  In these cases, I think testing someone with brain teasers only tests their ability to answer brain teasers, not the ability to craft code. So how do we measure someone's ability to craft code?  Here's a novel idea: have them code!  Give them a computer and a compiler, or a whiteboard and a pen, or paper and pencil and have them construct a piece of code.  It just makes sense that if we're going to hire someone to code we should actually watch them code.  When they're done, we can judge them on several criteria: Correctness - does the candidate's solution accurately solve the problem proposed? Accuracy - is the candidate's solution reasonably syntactically correct? Efficiency - did the candidate write or use the more efficient data structures or algorithms for the job? Maintainability - was the candidate's code free of obfuscation and clever tricks that diminish readability? Persona - are they eager and willing or aloof and egotistical?  Will they work well within your team? It may sound simple, or it may sound crazy, but when I'm looking to hire a developer, I want to see them actually develop well-crafted code.

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• People, Process & Engagement: WebCenter Partner Keste

  - by Michael Snow

  v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Within the WebCenter group here at Oracle, discussions about people, process and engagement cross over many vertical industries and products. Amidst our growing partner ecosystem, the community provides us insight into great customer use cases every day. Such is the case with our partner, Keste, who provides us a guest post on our blog today with an overview of their innovative solution for a customer in the transportation industry. Keste is an Oracle software solutions and development company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. As a Platinum member of the Oracle® PartnerNetwork, Keste designs, develops and deploys custom solutions that automate complex business processes. Seamless Customer Self-Service Experience in the Trucking Industry with Oracle WebCenter Portal  Keste, Oracle Platinum Partner Customer Overview Omnitracs, Inc., a Qualcomm company provides mobility solutions for trucking fleets to companies in the transportation industry. Omnitracs’ mobility services include basic communications such as text as well as advanced monitoring services such as GPS tracking, temperature tracking of perishable goods, load tracking and weighting distribution, and many others. Customer Business Needs Already the leading provider of mobility solutions for large trucking fleets, they chose to target smaller trucking fleets as new customers. However their existing high-touch customer support method would not be a cost effective or scalable method to manage and service these smaller customers. Omnitracs needed to provide several self-service features to make customer support more scalable while keeping customer satisfaction levels high and the costs manageable. The solution also had to be very intuitive and easy to use. The systems that Omnitracs sells to these trucking customers require professional installation and smaller customers need to track and schedule the installation. Information captured in Oracle eBusiness Suite needed to be readily available for new customers to track these purchases and delivery details. Omnitracs wanted a high impact User Interface to significantly improve customer experience with the ability to integrate with EBS, provisioning systems as well as CRM systems that were already implemented. Omnitracs also wanted to build an architecture platform that could potentially be extended to other Portals. Omnitracs’ stated goal was to deliver an “eBay-like” or “Amazon-like” experience for all of their customers so that they could reach a much broader market beyond their large company customer base. Solution Overview In order to manage the increased complexity, the growing support needs of global customers and improve overall product time-to-market in a cost-effective manner, IT began to deliver a self-service model. This self service model not only transformed numerous business processes but is also allowing the business to keep up with the growing demands of the (internal and external) customers. This solution was a customer service Portal that provided self service capabilities for large and small customers alike for Activation of mobility products, managing add-on applications for the devices (much like the Apple App Store), transferring services when trucks are sold to other companies as well as deactivation all without the involvement of a call service agent or sending multiple emails to different Omnitracs contacts. This is a conceptual view of the Customer Portal showing the details of the components that make up the solution. 12.00 The portal application for transactions was entirely built using ADF 11g R2. Omnitracs’ business had a pressing requirement to have a portal available 24/7 for its customers. Since there were interactions with EBS in the back-end, the downtimes on the EBS would negate this availability. Omnitracs devised a decoupling strategy at the database side for the EBS data. The decoupling of the database was done using Oracle Data Guard and completely insulated the solution from any eBusiness Suite down time. The customer has no knowledge whether eBS is running or not. Here are two sample screenshots of the portal application built in Oracle ADF. Customer Benefits The Customer Portal not only provided the scalability to grow the business but also provided the seamless integration with other disparate applications. Some of the key benefits are: Improved Customer Experience: With a modern look and feel and a Portal that has the aspects of an App Store, the customer experience was significantly improved. Page response times went from several seconds to sub-second for all of the pages. Enabled new product launches: After successfully dominating the large fleet market, Omnitracs now has a scalable solution to sell and manage smaller fleet customers giving them a huge advantage over their nearest competitors. Dozens of new customers have been acquired via this portal through an onboarding process that now takes minutes Seamless Integrations Improves Customer Support: ADF 11gR2 allowed Omnitracs to bring a diverse list of applications into one integrated solution. This provided a seamless experience for customers to route them from Marketing focused application to a customer-oriented portal. Internally, it also allowed Sales Representatives to have an integrated flow for taking a prospect through the various steps to onboard them as a customer. Key integrations included: Unity Core Salesforce.com Merchant e-Solution for credit card Custom Omnitracs Applications like CUPS and AUTO Security utilizing OID and OVD Back end integration with EBS (Data Guard) and iQ Database Business Impact Significant business impacts were realized through the launch of customer portal. It not only allows the business to push through in underserved segments, but also reduces the time it needs to spend on customer support—allowing the business to focus more on sales and identifying the market for new products. Some of the Immediate Benefits are The entire onboarding process is now completely automated and now completes in minutes. This represents an 85% productivity improvement over their previous processes. And it was 160 times faster! With the success of this self-service solution, the business is now targeting about 3X customer growth in the next five years. This represents a tripling of their overall customer base and significant downstream revenue for the ongoing services. 90%+ improvement of customer onboarding and management process by utilizing, single sign on integration using OID/OAM solution, performance improvements and new self-service functionality Unified login for all Customers, Partners and Internal Users enables login to a common portal and seamless access to all other integrated applications targeted at the respective audience Significantly improved customer experience with a better look and feel with a more user experience focused Portal screens. Helped sales of the new product by having an easy way of ordering and activating the product. Data Guard helped increase availability of the Portal to 99%+ and make it independent of EBS downtime. This gave customers the feel of high availability of the portal application. Some of the anticipated longer term Benefits are: Platform that can be leveraged to launch any new product introduction and enable all product teams to reach new customers and new markets Easy integration with content management to allow business owners more control of the product catalog Overall reduced TCO with standardization of the Oracle platform Managed IT support cost savings through optimization of technology skills needed to support and modify this solution ------------------------------------------------------------ 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 -"/ /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}

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• Oracle Tutor: Top 10 to Implement Sustainable Policies and Procedures

  - by emily.chorba(at)oracle.com

  Overview Your organization (executives, managers, and employees) understands the value of having written business process documents (process maps, procedures, instructions, reference documents, and form abstracts). Policies and procedures should be documented because they help to reduce the range of individual decisions and encourage management by exception: the manager only needs to give special attention to unusual problems, not covered by a specific policy or procedure. As more and more procedures are written to cover recurring situations, managers will begin to make decisions which will be consistent from one functional area to the next.Companies should take a project management approach when implementing an environment for a sustainable documentation program and do the following:1. Identify an Executive Champion2. Put together a winning team3. Assign ownership4. Centralize publishing5. Establish the Document Maintenance Process Up Front6. Document critical activities only7. Document actual practice8. Minimize documentation9. Support continuous improvement10. Keep it simple 1. Identify an Executive ChampionAppoint a top down driver. Select one key individual to be a mentor for the procedure planning team. The individual should be a senior manager, such as your company president, CIO, CFO, the vice-president of quality, manufacturing, or engineering. Written policies and procedures can be important supportive aids when known to express the thinking for the chief executive officer and / or the president and to have his or her full support. 2. Put Together a Winning TeamChoose a strong Project Management Leader and staff the procedure planning team with management members from cross functional groups. Make sure team members have the responsibility - and the authority - to make things happen.The winning team should consist of the Documentation Project Manager, Document Owners (one for each functional area), a Document Controller, and Document Specialists (as needed). The Tutor Implementation Guide has complete job descriptions for these roles. 3. Assign Ownership It is virtually impossible to keep process documentation simple and meaningful if employees who are far removed from the activity itself create it. It is impossible to keep documentation up-to-date when responsibility for the document is not clearly understood.Key to the Tutor methodology, therefore, is the concept of ownership. Each document has a single owner, who is responsible for ensuring that the document is necessary and that it reflects actual practice. The owner must be a person who is knowledgeable about the activity and who has the authority to build consensus among the persons who participate in the activity as well as the authority to define or change the way an activity is performed. The owner must be an advocate of the performers and negotiate, not dictate practices.In the Tutor environment, a document's owner is the only person with the authority to approve an update to that document. 4. Centralize Publishing Although it is tempting (especially in a networked environment and with document management software solutions) to decentralize the control of all documents -- with each owner updating and distributing his own -- Tutor promotes centralized publishing by assigning the Document Administrator (gate keeper) to manage the updates and distribution of the procedures library. 5. Establish a Document Maintenance Process Up Front (and stick to it) Everyone in your organization should know they are invited to suggest changes to procedures and should understand exactly what steps to take to do so. Tutor provides a set of procedures to help your company set up a healthy document control system. There are many document management products available to automate some of the document change and maintenance steps. Depending on the size of your organization, a simple document management system can reduce the effort it takes to track and distribute document changes and updates. Whether your company decides to store the written policies and procedures on a file server or in a database, the essential tasks for maintaining documents are the same, though some tasks are automated. 6. Document Critical Activities Only The best way to keep your documentation simple is to reduce the number of process documents to a bare minimum and to include in those documents only as much detail as is absolutely necessary. The first step to reducing process documentation is to document only those activities that are deemed critical. Not all activities require documentation. In fact, some critical activities cannot and should not be standardized. Others may be sufficiently documented with an instruction or a checklist and may not require a procedure. A document should only be created when it enhances the performance of the employee performing the activity. If it does not help the employee, then there is no reason to maintain the document. Activities that represent little risk (such as project status), activities that cannot be defined in terms of specific tasks (such as product research), and activities that can be performed in a variety of ways (such as advertising) often do not require documentation. Sometimes, an activity will evolve to the point where documentation is necessary. For example, an activity performed by single employee may be straightforward and uncomplicated -- that is, until the activity is performed by multiple employees. Sometimes, it is the interaction between co-workers that necessitates documentation; sometimes, it is the complexity or the diversity of the activity.7. Document Actual Practices The only reason to maintain process documentation is to enhance the performance of the employee performing the activity. And documentation can only enhance performance if it reflects reality -- that is, current best practice. Documentation that reflects an unattainable ideal or outdated practices will end up on the shelf, unused and forgotten.Documenting actual practice means (1) auditing the activity to understand how the work is really performed, (2) identifying best practices with employees who are involved in the activity, (3) building consensus so that everyone agrees on a common method, and (4) recording that consensus.8. Minimize Documentation One way to keep it simple is to document at the highest level possible. That is, include in your documents only as much detail as is absolutely necessary.When writing a document, you should ask yourself, What is the purpose of this document? That is, what problem will it solve?By focusing on this question, you can target the critical information.• What questions are the end users likely to have?• What level of detail is required?• Is any of this information extraneous to the document's purpose? Short, concise documents are user friendly and they are easier to keep up to date. 9. Support Continuous Improvement Employees who perform an activity are often in the best position to identify improvements to the process. In other words, continuous improvement is a natural byproduct of the work itself -- but only if the improvements are communicated to all employees who are involved in the process, and only if there is consensus among those employees.Traditionally, process documentation has been used to dictate performance, to limit employees' actions. In the Tutor environment, process documents are used to communicate improvements identified by employees. How does this work? The Tutor methodology requires a process document to reflect actual practice, so the owner of a document must routinely audit its content -- does the document match what the employees are doing? If it doesn't, the owner has the responsibility to evaluate the process, to build consensus among the employees, to identify "best practices," and to communicate these improvements via a document update. Continuous improvement can also be an outgrowth of corrective action -- but only if the solutions to problems are communicated effectively. The goal should be to solve a problem once and only once, which means not only identifying the solution, but ensuring that the solution becomes part of the process. The Tutor system provides the method through which improvements and solutions are documented and communicated to all affected employees in a cost-effective, timely manner; it ensures that improvements are not lost or confined to a single employee. 10. Keep it Simple Process documents don't have to be complex and unfriendly. In fact, the simpler the format and organization, the more likely the documents will be used. And the simpler the method of maintenance, the more likely the documents will be kept up-to-date. Keep it simply by:• Minimizing skills and training required• Following the established Tutor document format and layout• Avoiding technology just for technology's sake No other rule has as major an impact on the success of your internal documentation as -- keep it simple. Learn More For more information about Tutor, visit Oracle.Com or the Tutor Blog. Post your questions at the Tutor Forum.   Emily Chorba Principle Product Manager Oracle Tutor & BPM 

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• Agile Like Jazz

  - by Jeff Certain

  (I’ve been sitting on this for a week or so now, thinking that it needed to be tightened up a bit to make it less rambling. Since that’s clearly not going to happen, reader beware!) I had the privilege of spending around 90 minutes last night sitting and listening to Sonny Rollins play a concert at the Disney Center in LA. If you don’t know who Sonny Rollins is, I don’t know how to explain the experience; if you know who he is, I don’t need to. Suffice it to say that he has been recording professionally for over 50 years, and helped create an entire genre of music. A true master by any definition. One of the most intriguing aspects of a concert like this, however, is watching the master step aside and let the rest of the musicians play. Not just play their parts, but really play… letting them take over the spotlight, to strut their stuff, to soak up enthusiastic applause from the crowd. Maybe a lot of it has to do with the fact that Sonny Rollins has been doing this for more than a half-century. Maybe it has something to do with a kind of patience you learn when you’re on the far side of 80 – and the man can still blow a mean sax for 90 minutes without stopping! Maybe it has to do with the fact that he was out there for the love of the music and the love of the show, not because he had anything to prove to anyone and, I like to think, not for the money. Perhaps it had more to do with the fact that, when you’re at that level of mastery, the other musicians are going to be good. Really good. Whatever the reasons, there was a incredible freedom on that stage – the ability to improvise, for each musician to showcase their own specialization and skills, and them come back to the common theme, back to being on the same page, as it were. All this took place in the same venue that is home to the L.A. Phil. Somehow, I can’t ever see the same kind of free-wheeling improvisation happening in that context. And, since I’m a geek, I started thinking about agility. Rollins has put together a quintet that reflects his own particular style and past. No upright bass or piano for Rollins – drums, bongos, electric guitar and bass guitar along with his sax. It’s not about the mix of instruments. Other trios, quartets, and sextets use different mixes of instruments. New Orleans jazz tends towards trombones instead of sax; some prefer cornet or trumpet. But no matter what the choice of instruments, size matters. Team sizes are something I’ve been thinking about for a while. We’re on a quest to rethink how our teams are organized. They just feel too big, too unwieldy. In fact, they really don’t feel like teams at all. Most of the time, they feel more like collections or people who happen to report to the same manager. I attribute this to a couple factors. One is over-specialization; we have a tendency to have people work in silos. Although the teams are product-focused, within them our developers are both generalists and specialists. On the one hand, we expect them to be able to build an entire vertical slice of the application; on the other hand, each developer tends to be responsible for the vertical slice. As a result, developers often work on their own piece of the puzzle, in isolation. This sort of feels like working on a jigsaw in a group – each person taking a set of colors and piecing them together to reveal a portion of the overall picture. But what inevitably happens when you go to meld all those pieces together? Inevitably, you have some sections that are too big to move easily. These sections end up falling apart under their own weight as you try to move them. Not only that, but there are other challenges – figuring out where that section fits, and how to tie it into the rest of the puzzle. Often, this is when you find a few pieces need to be added – these pieces are “glue,” if you will. The other issue that arises is due to the overhead of maintaining communications in a team. My mother, who worked in IT for around 30 years, once told me that 20% per team member is a good rule of thumb for maintaining communication. While this is a rule of thumb, it seems to imply that any team over about 6 people is going to become less agile simple because of the communications burden. Teams of ten or twelve seem like they fall into the philharmonic organizational model. Complicated pieces of music requiring dozens of players to all be on the same page requires a much different model than the jazz quintet. There’s much less room for improvisation, originality or freedom. (There are probably orchestral musicians who will take exception to this characterization; I’m calling it like I see it from the cheap seats.) And, there’s one guy up front who is running the show, whose job is to keep all of those dozens of players on the same page, to facilitate communications. Somehow, the orchestral model doesn’t feel much like a self-organizing team, either. The first violin may be the best violinist in the orchestra, but they don’t get to perform free-wheeling solos. I’ve never heard of an orchestra getting together for a jam session. But I have heard of teams that organize their work based on the developers available, rather than organizing the developers based on the work required. I have heard of teams where desired functionality is deferred – or worse yet, schedules are missed – because one critical person doesn’t have any bandwidth available. I’ve heard of teams where people simply don’t have the big picture, because there is too much communication overhead for everyone to be aware of everything that is happening on a project. I once heard Paul Rayner say something to the effect of “you have a process that is perfectly designed to give you exactly the results you have.” Given a choice, I want a process that’s much more like jazz than orchestral music. I want a process that doesn’t burden me with lots of forms and checkboxes and stuff. Give me the simplest, most lightweight process that will work – and a smaller team of the best developers I can find. This seems like the kind of process that will get the kind of result I want to be part of.

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• The Faces in the Crowdsourcing

  - by Applications User Experience

  By Jeff Sauro, Principal Usability Engineer, Oracle Imagine having access to a global workforce of hundreds of thousands of people who can perform tasks or provide feedback on a design quickly and almost immediately. Distributing simple tasks not easily done by computers to the masses is called "crowdsourcing" and until recently was an interesting concept, but due to practical constraints wasn't used often. Enter Amazon.com. For five years, Amazon has hosted a service called Mechanical Turk, which provides an easy interface to the crowds. The service has almost half a million registered, global users performing a quarter of a million human intelligence tasks (HITs). HITs are submitted by individuals and companies in the U.S. and pay from $.01 for simple tasks (such as determining if a picture is offensive) to several dollars (for tasks like transcribing audio). What do we know about the people who toil away in this digital crowd? Can we rely on the work done in this anonymous marketplace? A rendering of the actual Mechanical Turk (from Wikipedia) Knowing who is behind Amazon's Mechanical Turk is fitting, considering the history of the actual Mechanical Turk. In the late 1800's, a mechanical chess-playing machine awed crowds as it beat master chess players in what was thought to be a mechanical miracle. It turned out that the creator, Wolfgang von Kempelen, had a small person (also a chess master) hiding inside the machine operating the arms to provide the illusion of automation. The field of human computer interaction (HCI) is quite familiar with gathering user input and incorporating it into all stages of the design process. It makes sense then that Mechanical Turk was a popular discussion topic at the recent Computer Human Interaction usability conference sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery in Atlanta. It is already being used as a source for input on Web sites (for example, Feedbackarmy.com) and behavioral research studies. Two papers shed some light on the faces in this crowd. One paper tells us about the shifting demographics from mostly stay-at-home moms to young men in India. The second paper discusses the reliability and quality of work from the workers. Just who exactly would spend time doing tasks for pennies? In "Who are the crowdworkers?" University of California researchers Ross, Silberman, Zaldivar and Tomlinson conducted a survey of Mechanical Turk worker demographics and compared it to a similar survey done two years before. The initial survey reported workers consisting largely of young, well-educated women living in the U.S. with annual household incomes above $40,000. The more recent survey reveals a shift in demographics largely driven by an influx of workers from India. Indian workers went from 5% to over 30% of the crowd, and this block is largely male (two-thirds) with a higher average education than U.S. workers, and 64% report an annual income of less than $10,000 (keeping in mind $1 has a lot more purchasing power in India). This shifting demographic certainly has implications as language and culture can play critical roles in the outcome of HITs. Of course, the demographic data came from paying Turkers $.10 to fill out a survey, so there is some question about both a self-selection bias (characteristics which cause Turks to take this survey may be unrepresentative of the larger population), not to mention whether we can really trust the data we get from the crowd. Crowds can perform tasks or provide feedback on a design quickly and almost immediately for usability testing. (Photo attributed to victoriapeckham Flikr While having immediate access to a global workforce is nice, one major problem with Mechanical Turk is the incentive structure. Individuals and companies that deploy HITs want quality responses for a low price. Workers, on the other hand, want to complete the task and get paid as quickly as possible, so that they can get on to the next task. Since many HITs on Mechanical Turk are surveys, how valid and reliable are these results? How do we know whether workers are just rushing through the multiple-choice responses haphazardly answering? In "Are your participants gaming the system?" researchers at Carnegie Mellon (Downs, Holbrook, Sheng and Cranor) set up an experiment to find out what percentage of their workers were just in it for the money. The authors set up a 30-minute HIT (one of the more lengthy ones for Mechanical Turk) and offered a very high $4 to those who qualified and $.20 to those who did not. As part of the HIT, workers were asked to read an email and respond to two questions that determined whether workers were likely rushing through the HIT and not answering conscientiously. One question was simple and took little effort, while the second question required a bit more work to find the answer. Workers were led to believe other factors than these two questions were the qualifying aspect of the HIT. Of the 2000 participants, roughly 1200 (or 61%) answered both questions correctly. Eighty-eight percent answered the easy question correctly, and 64% answered the difficult question correctly. In other words, about 12% of the crowd were gaming the system, not paying enough attention to the question or making careless errors. Up to about 40% won't put in more than a modest effort to get paid for a HIT. Young men and those that considered themselves in the financial industry tended to be the most likely to try to game the system. There wasn't a breakdown by country, but given the demographic information from the first article, we could infer that many of these young men come from India, which makes language and other cultural differences a factor. These articles raise questions about the role of crowdsourcing as a means for getting quick user input at low cost. While compensating users for their time is nothing new, the incentive structure and anonymity of Mechanical Turk raises some interesting questions. How complex of a task can we ask of the crowd, and how much should these workers be paid? Can we rely on the information we get from these professional users, and if so, how can we best incorporate it into designing more usable products? Traditional usability testing will still play a central role in enterprise software. Crowdsourcing doesn't replace testing; instead, it makes certain parts of gathering user feedback easier. One can turn to the crowd for simple tasks that don't require specialized skills and get a lot of data fast. As more studies are conducted on Mechanical Turk, I suspect we will see crowdsourcing playing an increasing role in human computer interaction and enterprise computing. References: Downs, J. S., Holbrook, M. B., Sheng, S., and Cranor, L. F. 2010. Are your participants gaming the system?: screening mechanical turk workers. In Proceedings of the 28th international Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Atlanta, Georgia, USA, April 10 - 15, 2010). CHI '10. ACM, New York, NY, 2399-2402. Link: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1753326.1753688 Ross, J., Irani, L., Silberman, M. S., Zaldivar, A., and Tomlinson, B. 2010. Who are the crowdworkers?: shifting demographics in mechanical turk. In Proceedings of the 28th of the international Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Atlanta, Georgia, USA, April 10 - 15, 2010). CHI EA '10. ACM, New York, NY, 2863-2872. Link: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1753846.1753873

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• It was a figure of speech!

  - by Ratman21

  Yesterday I posted the following as attention getter / advertisement (as well as my feelings). In the groups, (I am in) on the social networking site, LinkedIn and boy did I get responses.    I am fighting mad about (a figure of speech, really) not having a job! Look just because I am over 55 and have gray hair. It does not mean, my brain is dead or I can no longer trouble shoot a router or circuit or LAN issue. Or that I can do “IT” work at all. And I could prove this if; some one would give me at job. Come on try me for 90 days at min. wage. I know you will end up keeping me (hope fully at normal pay) around. Is any one hearing me…come on take up the challenge!     This was the responses I got.   I hear you. We just need to retrain and get our skills up to speed is all. That is what I am doing. I have not given up. Just got to stay on top of the game. Experience is on our side if we have the credentials and we are reasonable about our salaries this should not be an issue.   Already on it, going back to school and have got three certifications (CompTIA A+, Security+ and Network+. I am now studying for my CISCO CCNA certification. As to my salary, I am willing to work at very reasonable rate.   You need to re-brand yourself like a product, market and sell yourself. You need to smarten up, look and feel a million dollars, re-energize yourself, regain your confidents. Either start your own business, or re-write your CV so it stands out from the rest, get the template off the internet. Contact every recruitment agent in your town, state, country and overseas, and on the web. Apply to every job you think you could do, you may not get it but you will make a contact for your network, which may lead to a job at the end of the tunnel. Get in touch with everyone you know from past jobs. Do charity work. I maintain the IT Network, stage electrical and the Telecom equipment in my church,   Again already on it. I have email the world is seems with my resume and cover letters. So far, I have rewritten or had it rewrote, my resume and cover letters; over seven times so far. Re-energize? I never lost my energy level or my self-confidents in my work (now if could get some HR personal to see the same). I also volunteer at my church, I created and maintain the church web sit.   I share your frustration. Sucks being over 50 and looking for work. Please don't sell yourself short at min wage because the employer will think that’s your worth. Keep trying!!   I never stop trying and min wage is only for 90 days. If some one takes up the challenge. Some post asked if I am keeping up technology.   Do you keep up with the latest technology and can speak the language fluidly?   Yep to that and as to speaking it also a yep! I am a geek you know. I heard from others over the 50 year mark and younger too.   I'm with you! I keep getting told that I don't have enough experience because I just recently completed a Masters level course in Microsoft SQL Server, which gave me a project-intensive equivalent of between 2 and 3 years of experience. On top of that training, I have 19 years as an applications programmer and database administrator. I can normalize rings around experienced DBAs and churn out effective code with the best of them. But my 19 years is worthless as far as most recruiters and HR people are concerned because it is not the specific experience for which they're looking. HR AND RECRUITERS TAKE NOTE: Experience, whatever the language, translates across platforms and technology! By the way, I'm also over 55 and still have "got it"!   I never lost it and I also can work rings round younger techs.   I'm 52 and female and seem to be having the same issues. I have over 10 years experience in tech support (with a BS in CIS) and can't get hired either.   Ow, I only have an AS in computer science along with my certifications.   Keep the faith, I have been unemployed since August of 2008. I agree with you...I am willing to return to the beginning of my retail career and work myself back through the ranks, if someone will look past the grey and realize the knowledge I would bring to the table.   I also would like some one to look past the gray.   Interesting approach, volunteering to work for minimum wage for 90 days. I'm in the same situation as you, being 55 & balding w/white hair, so I know where you're coming from. I've been out of work now for a year. I'm in Michigan, where the unemployment rate is estimated to be 15% (the worst in the nation) & even though I've got 30+ years of IT experience ranging from mainframe to PC desktop support, it's difficult to even get a face-to-face interview. I had one prospective employer tell me flat out that I "didn't have the energy required for this position". Mostly I never get any feedback. All I can say is good luck & try to remain optimistic.   He said WHAT! Yes remaining optimistic is key. Along with faith in God. Then there was this (for lack of better word) jerk.   Give it up already. You were too old to work in high tech 10 years ago. Scratch that, 20 years ago! Try selling hot dogs in front of Fry's Electronics. At least you would get a chance to eat lunch with your previous colleagues....   You know funny thing on this person is that I checked out his profile. He is older than I am.

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• Unlocking Productivity

  - by Michael Snow

  Unlocking Productivity in Life Sciences with Consolidated Content Management by Joe Golemba, Vice President, Product Management, Oracle WebCenter As life sciences organizations look to become more operationally efficient, the ability to effectively leverage information is a competitive advantage. Whether data mining at the drug discovery phase or prepping the sales team before a product launch, content management can play a key role in developing, organizing, and disseminating vital information. The goal of content management is relatively straightforward: put the information that people need where they can find it. A number of issues can complicate this; information sits in many different systems, each of those systems has its own security, and the information in those systems exists in many different formats. Identifying and extracting pertinent information from mountains of farflung data is no simple job, but the alternative—wasted effort or even regulatory compliance issues—is worse. An integrated information architecture can enable health sciences organizations to make better decisions, accelerate clinical operations, and be more competitive. Unstructured data matters Often when we think of drug development data, we think of structured data that fits neatly into one or more research databases. But structured data is often directly supported by unstructured data such as experimental protocols, reaction conditions, lot numbers, run times, analyses, and research notes. As life sciences companies seek integrated views of data, they are typically finding diverse islands of data that seemingly have no relationship to other data in the organization. Information like sales reports or call center reports can be locked into siloed systems, and unavailable to the discovery process. Additionally, in the increasingly networked clinical environment, Web pages, instant messages, videos, scientific imaging, sales and marketing data, collaborative workspaces, and predictive modeling data are likely to be present within an organization, and each source potentially possesses information that can help to better inform specific efforts. Historically, content management solutions that had 21CFR Part 11 capabilities—electronic records and signatures—were focused mainly on content-enabling manufacturing-related processes. Today, life sciences companies have many standalone repositories, requiring different skills, service level agreements, and vendor support costs to manage them. With the amount of content doubling every three to six months, companies have recognized the need to manage unstructured content from the beginning, in order to increase employee productivity and operational efficiency. Using scalable and secure enterprise content management (ECM) solutions, organizations can better manage their unstructured content. These solutions can also be integrated with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems or research systems, making content available immediately, in the context of the application and within the flow of the employee’s typical business activity. Administrative safeguards—such as content de-duplication—can also be applied within ECM systems, so documents are never recreated, eliminating redundant efforts, ensuring one source of truth, and maintaining content standards in the organization. Putting it in context Consolidating structured and unstructured information in a single system can greatly simplify access to relevant information when it is needed through contextual search. Using contextual filters, results can include therapeutic area, position in the value chain, semantic commonalities, technology-specific factors, specific researchers involved, or potential business impact. The use of taxonomies is essential to organizing information and enabling contextual searches. Taxonomy solutions are composed of a hierarchical tree that defines the relationship between different life science terms. When overlaid with additional indexing related to research and/or business processes, it becomes possible to effectively narrow down the amount of data that is returned during searches, as well as prioritize results based on specific criteria and/or prior search history. Thus, search results are more accurate and relevant to an employee’s day-to-day work. For example, a search for the word "tissue" by a lab researcher would return significantly different results than a search for the same word performed by someone in procurement. Of course, diverse data repositories, combined with the immense amounts of data present in an organization, necessitate that the data elements be regularly indexed and cached beforehand to enable reasonable search response times. In its simplest form, indexing of a single, consolidated data warehouse can be expected to be a relatively straightforward effort. However, organizations require the ability to index multiple data repositories, enabling a single search to reference multiple data sources and provide an integrated results listing. Security and compliance Beyond yielding efficiencies and supporting new insight, an enterprise search environment can support important security considerations as well as compliance initiatives. For example, the systems enable organizations to retain the relevance and the security of the indexed systems, so users can only see the results to which they are granted access. This is especially important as life sciences companies are working in an increasingly networked environment and need to provide secure, role-based access to information across multiple partners. Although not officially required by the 21 CFR Part 11 regulation, the U.S. Food and Drug Administraiton has begun to extend the type of content considered when performing relevant audits and discoveries. Having an ECM infrastructure that provides centralized management of all content enterprise-wide—with the ability to consistently apply records and retention policies along with the appropriate controls, validations, audit trails, and electronic signatures—is becoming increasingly critical for life sciences companies. Making the move Creating an enterprise-wide ECM environment requires moving large amounts of content into a single enterprise repository, a daunting and risk-laden initiative. The first key is to focus on data taxonomy, allowing content to be mapped across systems. The second is to take advantage new tools which can dramatically speed and reduce the cost of the data migration process through automation. Additional content need not be frozen while it is migrated, enabling productivity throughout the process. The ability to effectively leverage information into success has been gaining importance in the life sciences industry for years. The rapid adoption of enterprise content management, both in operational processes as well as in scientific management, are clear indicators that the companies are looking to use all available data to be better informed, improve decision making, minimize risk, and increase time to market, to maintain profitability and be more competitive. As more and more varieties and sources of information are brought under the strategic management umbrella, the ability to divine knowledge from the vast pool of information is increasingly difficult. Simple search engines and basic content management are increasingly unable to effectively extract the right information from the mountains of data available. By bringing these tools into context and integrating them with business processes and applications, we can effectively focus on the right decisions that make our organizations more profitable. More Information Oracle will be exhibiting at DIA 2012 in Philadelphia on June 25-27. Stop by our booth Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin: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;} (#2825) to learn more about the advantages of a centralized ECM strategy and see the Oracle WebCenter Content solution, our 21 CFR Part 11 compliant content management platform.

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• TGIF: Engagement Wrap-up

  - by Michael Snow

  We've had a very busy week here at Oracle and as we build up to Oracle OpenWorld starting in less than 10 days - it doesn't look like things will be slowing down. Engagement is definitely in the air this week. Our friend, John Mancini published a great article entitled: "The World of Engagement" on his Digital Landfill blog yesterday and we hosted a great webcast with R "Ray" Wang from Constellation Research yesterday on the "9 C's of Engagement". 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} I wanted to wrap-up the week with some key takeaways from our webcast yesterday with Ray Wang. If you missed the webcast yesterday, fear not - it is now available  On-Demand. We'll leave you this week with lots of questions about how to navigate these churning waters of engagement. Stay tuned to the Oracle WebCenter Social Business Thought Leaders Webcast Series as we fuel this dialogue. 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Company Culture Does company support a culture of putting customer satisfaction ahead of profits? Does culture promote creativity and cross functional employee collaboration? Does culture accept different views of multi-generational workforce? Does culture promote employee training and skills development Does culture support upward mobility and long term retention? Does culture support work-life balance? Does the culture provide rewards for employee for outstanding customer support? Channels What are the current primary channels for customer communications? What do you think will be the primary channels in two years? Is company developing support model for emerging channels? Do all channels consistently deliver the same level of customer support? Do you know the cost per transaction across all channels? Do you engage customers proactively across multiple channels? Do all channels have access to the same customer information? Community Does company extend customer support into virtual communities of interest? Does company facilitate educating users through its virtual communities? Does company mine its customer’s experience into useful data? Does company increase the value for customers through using data to deliver new products and services? Does company support two way interactions with its customers through communities of interest? Does company actively support social CRM, online communities and social media markets? Credibility Does company market its trustworthiness through external certificates such as business licenses, BBB certificates or other validations? Does company promote trust through customer testimonials and case studies on ethical business practices? Does company promote truthful market campaigns Does company make it easy for customers to complain? Does company build its reputation for standing behind its products with guarantees for satisfaction? Does company protect its customer data with high security measures> Content What sources do you use to create customer content? Does company mine social media and blogs for customer content? How does your company sort, store and retain its customer content? How frequently does content get updated? What external sources do you use for customer content? How many responses are typically received from a knowledge management system inquiry? Does your company use customer content to design and develop new product and services? Context Does your company market to customers in clusters or individually? Does your company customize its messages and personalize them to specific needs of each individual customer? Does your company store customer data based on their past behaviors, purchases, sentiment analysis and current activities? Does your company manage customer context according to channels used? For example identify personal use channels versus business channels? What is your frequency of collecting customer activities across various touch points? How is your customer data stored and analyzed? Is contextual data used for future customer outreach? Cadence Which channels does your company measure-web site visits, phone calls, IVR, store visits, face to face, social media? Does company make effective use of cross channel marketing to promote more frequent customer engagement? Does your company rate the patterns relevant for your product or service and monitor usage against this pattern? Does your company measure the frequency of both online and offline channels? Does your company apply metrics to the frequency of customer engagements with product or services revenues? Does your company consolidate data for customer engagement across various channels for a complete view of its customer? Catalyst Does company offer coupon discounts? Does company have a customer loyalty program or a VIP membership program? Does company mine customer data to target specific groups of buyers? Do internal employees serve as ambassadors for customer programs? Does company drive loyalty through social media loyalty programs? Does company build rewards based on using loyalty data? Does company offer an employee incentive program to drive customer loyalty?

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• Following my passion

  - by Maria Sandu

  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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:RO;} 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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:RO;} 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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:RO;} What makes you go the extra mile? What makes you move forward and be ambitious? My name is Alin Gheorghe and I am currently working as a Contracts Administrator in the Shared Service Centre in Bucharest, Romania. I have graduated from the Political Science Faculty of the National School of Political and Administrative Studies here in Bucharest and I am currently undergoing a Master Program on Security and Diplomacy at the same university. Although I have been working a full time job here at Oracle since January 2011 and also going to school after work, I am going to tell you how I spend my spare time and about my passion. I always thought that if one doesn’t have something that he would consider a passion it’s always just a matter of time until he would discover one. Looking back, I can tell you that I discovered mine when I was 14 years old and I remember watching a football game when suddenly I became fascinated by the “man in black” that all football players obeyed during the match. That year I attended and promoted a referee course within my local referee committee and about 6 months later I was delegated to my first official game at youth tournament. Almost 10 years have passed since then and I can tell you that I very much love and appreciate this activity that I have spent doing, each and every weekend, 9 months every year, acquiring more than 600 official games until now. And even if not having a real free weekend or holiday might be sound very consuming, I can say that having something I am passionate about helps me to keep myself balanced and happy while giving me an option to channel any stress or anxiety I may feel. I think it’s important to have something of your own besides work that you spend time and effort on. Whether it’s painting, writing or a sport, having a passion can only have a positive effect on your life. And as every extra thing, it’s not always easy to follow your passion, but is it worth it? Speaking from my own experience I am sure it is, and here are some tips and tricks I constantly use not to give up on my passion: 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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:RO;} No matter how much time you spend at work and how much credit you get for that, it will always be the passion related achievements that will comfort you more and boost your self esteem and nothing compares to that feeling you get. I always try to keep this in mind so that each time I think about giving up I get even more ambitious to move forward. Everybody can just do what they are paid to do or what they are requested to do at work but not everybody can go that extra mile when it comes to following their passion and putting in extra work for that. By exercising this constantly you get used to also applying this attitude on the work related tasks. It takes accurate planning, anticipation and forecasting in order to combine your work with your passion. Therefore having a full schedule and keeping up with it will only help develop and exercise such skills and also will prove to you that you are up to such a challenge. I always keep in mind as a final goal that if you get very good at your passion you can actually start earning from it. And I think that is the ultimate level when you can say that you make a living by doing exactly what you are passionate about. In conclusion, by taking the easy way not only do you miss out on something nice, but life’s priceless rewards are usually given by those things that you actually believe in and know how to stand up for over time.

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• Need personal advice on how to get out of a company..

  - by SOfan

  Hi, I am an SO user since past 6 months and this is the first time I am turning to SO for personal help. I have asked technical questions before with my real ID. I am stuck inside a service based IT company for the past one year and haven't been able to decide if to leave it, when to leave it and how to leave it. I had taken 2 weeks LWP on medical reason roughly at end of 1 year and then soon after reporting, I applied for 2 months more LWP (on medical/personal ground) with the intention of working on my health,take up a hobby class to ward off depression,pessimism, to have some fun in life, and to look for a job which I really would be excited about - that interests me and which matches with my strength. My leave starts from this Monday. So in any case, I had hard set in mind that I will leave the company after I join them back hopefully with some job offer already in hand (after figuring out what I want do). Neither I can stand the past project,past colleagues,company, HR, pathetically low salary. But if I really listen to my heart, I don't want to have to go back to that office after my sabbatical and again have to see those people. I will have to resign it after my sabbatical ends. Then HR people perhaps wont like it, may even accuse me on face or behind back that primary purpose of my leave must have been to hunt for a better job and I lied about medical and person reasons. Also, if they get nasty and force me to serve 2 months notice period. There is no way I see myself after sabbatical resuming in old project or starting new work. It will be a pain. Since they have already approved 2 months leave and stuff, ideally if they want, they should be just able to relieve me right on the next day after I join back. But, I don't know if they want to get nasty, will they mention about my 2 months sabbatical leave in my experience letter or more scary, the term medical/personal reason. I have hard earned my experience here, have worked against my will, mostly it has been painful and slogged like anything, because I realize the importance of work experience in IT industry. I don't have greed to have those 2 months included extra in my experience letter, but I don't want to mess up with my experience letter in a way which makes my next employer ask question, get suspicious, or be wary if I have any medical reason going on. Being an emotional,moody person or somebody who can't be in an environment, once my mind and heart starts hating it. I think it perhaps is best, if I resign on Monday itself telling them (in polite manner) something that look I took sabbatical for some reason but I don't want to resume working in the company after my sabbatical ends. So please accept my resignation. Now tell me what you want to do about my leave request, my notice period and when you are willing to relieve me. What should I write and how? Some background: I am working in an IT company in India.I am overqualified in the company. It is grossly underpaying me. My education qualifications far exceed anyone's in the whole company being a CS undergrad as well as a CS grad. I joined this company after finishing the grad. I had self-doubts about my skills and interest as a programmer. I like doing research oriented work, though didn't have any particular success during grad. My life here has been very hectic. The project containing many many sub-projects has kept me on my toes and I have never really liked the work. I have been playing against my strength. Also the company strict internet usage policy (you can't read gmails, can't browse any non-work related sites not even news). When working for a client, from the machine we can't even check company related emails.For this one has to go to kiosk like 5 machines in a small room etc. Most of the times those machines are not available, so it was not unusual to keep making rounds to these kiosk machines to check company emails, browse company related emails etc.So it was not so easy to keep in touch with company related basic affairs for a not particular careful person. Things like this which are new to me, make me feel restricted. I am an undecisive person with a sense of failure, self-doubt, not meeting up unrealistic expectation. Somewhere at back of mind, I envy my classmates who make a smooth transition from company to company without causing any gap in their resume. I on other hand have gaps in resume. I get tired after working in a place for sometime. problem with colleagues in general. I am not particular great with people, have few friends, not known for a fun nature, rather serious, scholar. I am not a typical conventional female. I think females are usually more disciplined. But I am not so. I reach office late (though after informing manager). I don't want to blame them entirely, because from my past, it is not unusual for me to get undecisive on things. Also I had doubts about my ability as researched and to succeed there. of building a relationship in a group, to have something to talk about, newspaper. I get cut-off from people. peer pressure. I make blunders in coding, lose patience. Consciously or unconsciously I feel contempt for people here, work here, environment here. I have doubts that either I go to a place which does innovation, does research oriented work, product biggies, have great motivated people, have competent people passionate about products they are building. But then I also doubt my ability to survive there. I have identified that an idea job for me would be 4 days a week, a high salary job. When among people in company/team, I can't think much. I need some time at home to read good authentic books written in good style on what work I am doing.So that I am comfortable with my understanding of work. I get into pressure easily under deadline and need 5th day to cool myself off. I took for 2 weeks leave, because each day was hell for me. May be the depression phase of bipolar is on and also partially it could be that being a work centered person, who derives happiness,self-esteem from work, haven't been enjoying work and have been working for the sole person of proving stability, and ability to stick, against all odds, and facing what challenges I see, bonding with people, identifying opportunities to learn in given task etc.have been averaging one day LWP in 1 week or 10 days. or may be because of my nature,ADD,not being able to switch context,out of touch with news, don't have a circle of friends with who I enjoy. less knowledge in general to talk about, just some technical stuff.anyway, so due to emotional reason, some practical reason etc, I wanted to be very sure before leaving. So my leave starts from Monday and I should feel happy about it. I have taken the leave to for a few purposes - to take care of my health by regular yoga/exercise (with project on, I just can't do anything regular), reassess myself to see what I want to try next which work I might like, look for next job, take up a hobby which I like say singing. I am not clear on my career,job aspiration. I have tried my hands on research. During this year appraisal yesterday, I even had some conflict with my last manager. In meeting with me one on one, he would say all nice things about me, but in feedback to new manager, he hasn't given any excellent feedback. It is all only good. I am angry at this old Manager. Also new manager also scolded me as I didn't agree to his appraisal and waited to hear myself from old Manager. He kind of scolded me for wasting his time. Am I being unethical somewhere? I am always very conscious of if I am cheating anywhere. What advice I am seeking? How to resign and what to write in resignation letter

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• I Know What I Did This Summer: Put Down Trex Decking

  - by thatjeffsmith

  If you’re wondering why I would bore everyone with my pictures and frequent status updates/tweets from the past week – it’s so I could document the process of refurbishing my deck, or what some would call a porch. When we go to take a vacation, buy a car, do anything – we also read personal blogs to get the real story. So, if you’re curious about what it takes to tackle this sort of project, read on. Skills/Equipment/Manpower We Possessed I took the old decking out by myself. I’m about 230 lbs, more than 6′ tall, and I’m pretty healthy. This took about 8 hours over two afternoons. Three of us put the deck back together. My wife has two engineering degrees. Her father also has two engineering degrees. Lots of brainpower available here. Also, her dad ran the public works department for a country for more than 20 years – so lots and lots of practical experience on hand. We had a compound mitre saw, a skilsaw, 2-3 crowbars, a framing hammer, 3 cordless drills, a corded drill, lots of sawhorses, a power sander, an angle grinder, a 10×10 Coleman canopy tent, a Ford F-150 pickup truck, outdoor speakers and lots of iTunes playlists, plenty of water and cold beer. Why We Did This Our deck was relatively young – it was built in 2005. However, the pressure treated boards must not have been adequately maintained before we bought the house. I had powerwashed the deck every other year and had it stained a few times. The boards just rotted. We’re going to be in the house for a long time, and we wanted something that would look nice and require little maintenance. More bad deck boards The deck boards were in bad shape Things We Learned The two most important things: The hidden fasteners have to be put in JUST right. Wedge them into the grooved board, then bend down the bit that is screwed down. We didn’t do this on the first board and couldn’t get the second board to fit nearly close enough. Watching the official TREX YouTube video helped immensely, and we should have watched that first. When pre-drilling holes for the boards that need screwed down – DO NOT pre-drill through the underlying framing wood. ONLY pre-drill through the TREX itself. The screw won’t seat in the board properly. Instead of sitting down flush with the board, it will stop at the top of the board and just spin. I had to call the the place that sold me the screws to find this out. So about a third of our screws look like crap. If it doesn’t look or feel right – stop everything and pick up your computer or your phone. It’s not right, and it will be much easier to stop and find out why. We didn’t do this, and now I’m going to see every screw that’s not flush with the boards and get upset. Oh well. The Process How much time did it take? Well I spent about 8 hours taking the deck apart. And then the 3 of use spent 8 hours the first day, 10 hours the second day, 8 hours the third, and another 6 hours on the fourth day. That’s like 104 man-hours. We supposedly saved four or five thousand dollars in labor, but don’t do the math here or you might get a bit upset. The main thing is that we got what we wanted, and there won’t be any surprises later. Now for some pictures… This 6”+ pry bar made the destruction of the old deck much easier Most of the joists, once exposed, were OK. This joist wasn’t sitting on ANYTHING before. We think a lazy gas person cut the board to sneak a gas line in. Awesome… These monster lag bolts had to be accounted for when putting in the additional framing The border pattern Sheri wanted to put in required a lot more framing. These were the first boards to go down – we screwed them in as there was no way to attach clips I sat, kicked in the boards, and then drilled these clips in – but my wife was able to go MUCH faster by using her hands to lock the boards in and drill on her knees. I liked locking the board in with my feet when they needed to be ‘encouraged’ to go straight. The first board took FOREVER to go in, but then when we got rolling, we were able to put in a 20′ board in less than 10 minutes. This was end of construction day #2 – we got much further than we thought we would. Ah, the dreaded last 10% – what to do here? Remember those ‘floating’ stringers? Yeah, we fixed that up a bit, too. My wife used a website (and her brain) to calculate exactly how to cut the stringers to give us the rise/run we needed with the proper clearance and all that jazz. The stairs with stringers and toe kicks – this was worth the effort It started raining on us as I screwed down the steps – this we managed to get our shade tent up on the deck to protect us from the rain too The stairs, finished Finished, mostly Good corner shot The top of the stairs Stairs, looking down Celebratory beer In Summary There are a few things we’re not happy with. I think we can fix them up – but later. I have a few things left to finish, rewire the lighting, get the gas grille put back in, and rehang some screen doors. I was expecting this to be a lot worse than it was. If I didn’t have the help, I would have never done it myself. But I’m glad that I did have that help and did do that project. It’s not often you get to spend that kind of qualify time with family and building cool stuff.

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• Alcatel-Lucent: Enterprise 2.0: The Top 5 Things I would Do Over

  - by Kellsey Ruppel

  Happy Monday! Does anyone else feel as if the weekend went entirely too quickly? At least for those of us in the United States, we have the 4th of July Holiday next week to look forward to This week on the blog, we are going to focus on "WebCenter by Example" and highlight best practices from customers and partners. I recently came across this article and I think this is a great example of how we can learn from one another when it comes to social collaboration adoption. Do you agree with Jem? What things or best practices have you learned in your organizations?  By Jem Janik, Enterprise community manager, Alcatel-Lucent  Not so long ago, Engage, the Alcatel-Lucent employee social network and collaboration platform, celebrated its third birthday. With more than 25,000 members actively interacting each month, Engage has been a big enough success that it’s been the subject of external articles, and often those of us who helped launch it will go out and speak about what aspects contributed to that success. Hindsight is still 20/20 and what it takes to successfully launch an enterprise 2.0 community is fairly well-known now.  Today I want to tell you what I suspect you really want to know about.  As the enterprise community manager for Engage, after three years in, what are the top 5 things I wish we (and I mostly mean me) could do over? #5 Define your analytics solution from the start There is so much to do when you launch a community and initially growing it without complete chaos is quite a task.  It doesn’t take too long to get to a point where you want to focus your continued efforts in growing company collaboration.  Do people truly talk across regional boundaries or have we shifted siloed conversations to a new platform.  Is there one organization that doesn’t interact with another? If you are lucky you’ll have someone in your community team well versed in the world of databases and SQL queries, but it takes time to figure out what backend analytics data actually means. Professional support can be expensive and it may be hard to justify later as it typically has the community manager as the only main customer.  Figure out what you think you’ll want to know and how to get it early on. The sooner the better even if it doesn’t seem that critical at the time. #4 Lobbies guide you to the right places One piece of feedback that comes up more and more as we keep growing Engage is it’s hard to find stuff, or new people are not sure where to start. Something we’re doing now is defining some general topic areas of interest to be like “lobbies” into the platform and some common hashtags to go with them. I liken this to walking into a large medical or professional building for the first time.  There are hundreds of offices, and you look to a sign in the lobby to get guided to the right place for you.  We’re building that sign for members now, but again we missed the boat as the majority of the company has had their initial Engage experience. #3 Clean up, clean up, clean up Knowledge work and folksonomies are messy! The day we opened the doors to Engage I would have said we should keep everything ever created in Engage with an argument that it was a window into our collective knowledge so nothing should go.  Well, 6000+ groups and 200,000+ pieces of content later, I’ve changed my mind.  As previously mentioned, with too much “stuff” the system can be overwhelming to new members and it makes it harder to get what you’re looking for.   Do we need that help document about a tool we no longer have? NO!  Do we need that group that had 1 document and 2 discussions in the last two years? NO! Should we only have one group about a given topic instead of 4?  YES! Last fall, Engage defined a cleanup process for groups not used for a long time.  We also formed a volunteer cleaning army who are extra eyes on the hunt for “stuff” that should be updated, merged, or deleted.  It’s better late than never, but in line with what’s becoming a theme I wish these efforts had started earlier. #2 Communications & local community management One of the most important aspects of my job is to make sure people who should be talking to each other are actually doing it.  Connecting people to the other people they should know, the groups they should join, a piece of content that shouldn’t be missed.   I have worked both inside and outside of communications teams, and they are the best informed people in your company.  They know when something big is coming, how it impacts employees, how it fits with strategy, who else knows more, etc.  Having communications professionals who are power users can help scale up community management because they are already so well connected.  They also need to have the platform skills to pay attention without suffering email overload, how to grab someone’s attention, etc.  I wish I’d had figured this out much earlier.  If I had I would have groomed more communications colleagues into advocates and power members right at the start. #1 Grooming advocates vs. natural advocates I’ve just alluded to this above already. The very best advocates are those who naturally embrace your platform and automatically start to see new ways to work within it.  Those advocates seem to come out of the woodwork naturally since some of them are early adopters.  Not surprisingly, our best advocates today are those same people who were willing to come kick the tires when the community was completely empty.  Unfortunately, we didn’t get a global spread of those natural advocates.  I did ask around when we first launched for other people who might be good candidates, but didn’t push too hard as there were so many other things to get ready.  That was a mistake.  If I could get a redo I would have formally asked for people to be assigned where there were gaps and groomed them into an advocate.  Today as we find new advocates to fill the gaps, people are hesitant as the initial set has three years of practice are ahead of the curve power members; it definitely would have been easier earlier on. As fairly early adopters to corporate scale enterprise collaboration, there hasn’t been a roadmap to follow as we’ve grown Engage, which is part of the fun! It’s clear a lot of issues are more easily tackled the earlier you identify and begin to correct them, and I’ve identified the main five I wish I could redo.  In the spirit of collaboration, I hope someone else learns from my mistakes! View the original article by Jem here. 

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• The True Cost of a Solution

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  I had a Twitter chat recently with someone suggesting Oracle and SQL Server were losing out to OSS (Open Source Software) in the enterprise due to their issues with scaling or being too generic (one size fits all). I challenged that a bit, as my experience with enterprise sized clients has been different – adverse to OSS but receptive to an established vendor. The response I got was: Found it easier to influence change by showing how X can’t solve our problems or X is extremely costly to scale. Money talks. I think this is definitely the right approach for anyone pitching an alternate or alien technology as part of a solution: identify the issue, identify the solution, then present pros and cons including a cost/benefit analysis. What can happen though is we get tunnel vision and don’t present a full view of the costs associated with a solution. An “Acura”te Example (I’m so clever…) This is my dream vehicle, a Crystal Black Pearl coloured Acura MDX with the SH-AWD package! We’re a family of 4 (5 if my daughters ever get their wish of adding a dog), and I’ve always wanted a luxury type of vehicle, so this is a perfect replacement in a few years when our Rav 4 has hit the 8 – 10 year mark. MSRP – $62,890 But as we all know, that’s not *really* the cost of the vehicle. There’s taxes and fees added on, there’s the extended warranty if I choose to purchase it, there’s the finance rate that needs to be factored in… MSRP –   $62,890 Taxes –      $7,546 Warranty - $2,500 SubTotal – $72,936 Finance Charge – $ 1094.04 Grand Total – $74,030 Well! Glad we did that exercise – we discovered an extra $11k added on to the MSRP! Well now we have our true price…or do we? Lifetime of the Vehicle I’m expecting to have this vehicle for 7 – 10 years. While the hard cost of the vehicle is known and dealt with, the costs to run and maintain the vehicle are on top of this. I did some research, and here’s what I’ve found: Fuel and Mileage Gas prices are high as it is for regular fuel, but getting into an MDX will require that I *only* purchase premium fuel, which comes at a premium price. I need to expect my bill at the pump to be higher. Comparing the MDX to my 2007 Rav4 also shows I’ll be gassing up more often. The Rav4 has a city MPG of 21, while the MDX plummets to 16! The MDX does have a bigger fuel tank though, so all in all the number of times I hit the pumps might even out. Still, I estimate I’ll be spending approximately $8000 – $10000 more on gas over a 10 year period than my current Rav4. Service Options Limited Although I have options with my Toyota here in Winnipeg (we have 4 Toyota dealerships), I do go to my original dealer for any service work. Still, I like the fact that I have options. However, there’s only one Acura dealership in all of Winnipeg! So if, for whatever reason, I’m not satisfied with the level of service I’m stuck. Non Warranty Service Work Also let’s not forget that there’s a bulk of work required every year that is *not* covered under warranty – oil changes, tire rotations, brake pads, etc. I expect I’ll need to get new tires at the 5 years mark as well, which can easily be $1200 – $1500 (I just paid $1000 for new tires for the Rav4 and we’re at the 5 year mark). Now these aren’t going to be *new* costs that I’m not used to from our existing vehicles, but they should still be factored in. I’d budget $500/year, or $5000 over the 10 years I’ll own the vehicle. Final Assessment So let’s re-assess the true cost of my dream MDX: MSRP                    $62,890 Taxes                       $7,546 Warranty                 $2,500 Finance Charge         $1094 Gas                        $10,000 Service Work            $5000 Grand Total           $89,030 So now I have a better idea of 10 year cost overall, and I’ve identified some concerns with local service availability. And there’s now much more to consider over the original $62,890 price tag. Tying This Back to Technology Solutions The process that we just went through is no different than what organizations do when considering implementing a new system, technology, or technology based solution, within their environments. It’s easy to tout the short term cost savings of particular product/platform/technology in a vacuum. But its when you consider the wider impact that the true cost comes into play. Let’s create a scenario: A company is not happy with its current data reporting suite. An employee suggests moving to an open source solution. The selling points are: - Because its open source its free - The organization would have access to the source code so they could alter it however they wished - It provided features not available with the current reporting suite At first this sounds great to the management and executive, but then they start asking some questions and uncover more information: - The OSS product is built on a technology not used anywhere within the organization - There are no vendors offering product support for the OSS product - The OSS product requires a specific server platform to operate on, one that’s not standard in the organization All of a sudden, the true cost of implementing this solution is starting to become clearer. The company might save money on licensing costs, but their training costs would increase significantly – developers would need to learn how to develop in the technology the OSS solution was built on, IT staff must learn how to set up and maintain a new server platform within their existing infrastructure, and if a problem was found there was no vendor to contact for support. The true cost of implementing a “free” OSS solution is actually spinning up a project to implement it within the organization – no small cost. And that’s just the short-term cost. Now the organization must ensure they maintain trained staff who can make changes to the OSS reporting solution and IT staff that will stay knowledgeable in the new server platform. If those skills are very niche, then higher labour costs could be incurred if those people are hard to find or if trained employees use that knowledge as leverage for higher pay. Maybe a vendor exists that will contract out support, but then there are those costs to consider as well. And let’s not forget end-user training – in our example, anyone that runs reports will need to be trained on how to use the new system. Here’s the Point We still tend to look at software in an “off the shelf” kind of way. It’s very easy to say “oh, this product is better than vendor x’s product – and its free because its OSS!” but the reality is that implementing any new technology within an organization has a cost regardless of the retail price of the product. Training, integration, support – these are real costs that impact an organization and span multiple departments. Whether you’re pitching an improved business process, a new system, or a new technology, you need to consider the bigger picture costs of implementation. What you define as success (in our example, having better reporting functionality) might not be what others define as success if implementing your solution causes them issues. A true enterprise solution needs to consider the entire enterprise.

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• “It’s only test code…”

  - by Chris George

  “Let me hack this in, it’s only test code”, “Don’t worry about getting it reviewed, it’s only test code”, “It doesn’t have to be elegant or efficient, it’s only test code”… do these phrases sound familiar? Chances are if you’ve working with test automation, at one point or other you will have heard these phrases, you have probably even used them yourself! What is certain is that code written under this “it’s only test code” mantra will come back and bite you in the arse! I’ve recently encountered a case where a test was giving a false positive, therefore hiding a real product bug because that test code was very badly written. Firstly it was very difficult to understand what the test was actually trying to achieve let alone how it was doing it, and this complexity masked a simple logic error. These issues are real and they do happen. Let’s take a step back from this and look at what we are trying to do. We are writing test code that tests product code, and we do this to create a suite of tests that will help protect our software against regressions. This test code is making sure that the product behaves as it should by employing some sort of expected result verification. The simple cases of these are generally not a problem. However, automation allows us to explore more complex scenarios in many more permutations. As this complexity increases then so does the complexity of the test code. It is at this point that code which has not been architected properly will cause problems.   Keep your friends close… So, how do we make sure we are doing it right? The development teams I have worked on have always had Test Engineers working very closely with their Software Engineers. This is something that I have always tried to take full advantage of. They are coding experts! So run your ideas past them, ask for advice on how to structure your code, help you design your data structures. This may require a shift in your teams viewpoint, as contrary to this section title and folklore, Software Engineers are not actually the mortal enemy of Test Engineers. As time progresses, and test automation becomes more and more ingrained in what we do, the two roles are converging more than ever. Over the 16 years I have spent as a Test Engineer, I have seen the grey area between the two roles grow significantly larger. This serves to strengthen the relationship and common bond between the two roles which helps to make test code activities so much easier!   Pair for the win Possibly the best thing you could do to write good test code is to pair program on the task. This will serve a few purposes. you will get the benefit of the Software Engineers knowledge and experience the Software Engineer will gain knowledge on the testing process. Sharing the love is a wonderful thing! two pairs of eyes are always better than one… And so are two brains. Between the two of you, I will guarantee you will derive more useful test cases than if it was just one of you.   Code reviews Another policy which certainly pays dividends is the practice of code reviews. By having one of your peers review your code before you commit it serves two purposes. Firstly, it forces you to explain your code. Just the act of doing this will often pick up errors in your code. Secondly, it gets yet another pair of eyes on your code! I cannot stress enough how important code reviews are. The benefits they offer apply as much to product code as test code. In short, Software and Test Engineers should all be doing them! It can be extended even further by getting test code reviewed by a Software Engineer and a Test Engineer, and likewise product code. This serves to keep both functions in the loop with changes going on within your code base.   Learn from your devs I briefly touched on this earlier but I’d like to go into more detail here. Pairing with your Software Engineers when writing your test code is such an amazing opportunity to improve your coding skills. As I sit here writing this article waiting to be called into court for jury service, it reminds me that it takes a lot of patience to be a Test Engineer, almost as much as it takes to be a juror! However tempting it is to go rushing in and start writing your automated tests, resist that urge. Discuss what you want to achieve then talk through the approach you’re going to take. Then code it up together. I find it really enlightening to ask questions like ‘is there a better way to do this?’ Or ‘is this how you would code it?’ The latter question, especially, is where I learn the most. I’ve found that most Software Engineers will be reluctant to show you the ‘right way’ to code something when writing tests because they perceive the ‘right way’ to be too complicated for the Test Engineer (e.g. not mentioning LINQ and instead doing something verbose). So by asking how THEY would code it, it unleashes their true dev-ness and advanced code usually ensues! I would like to point out, however, that you don’t have to accept their method as the final answer. On numerous occasions I have opted for the more simple/verbose solution because I found the code written by the Software Engineer too advanced and therefore I would find it unreadable when I return to the code in a months’ time! Always keep the target audience in mind when writing clever code, and in my case that is mostly Test Engineers.  

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• Getting Started With Tailoring Business Processes

  - by Richard Bingham

  In this article, and for the sake of simplicity, we will use the term “On-Premise” to mean a deployment where you have design-time development access to the instance, including administration of the technology components, the applications filesystem, and the database. In reality this might be a local development instance that is then supported by a team who can deploy your customizations to the restricted production instance equivalents. Tools Overview Firstly let’s look at the Design-Time tools within JDeveloper for customizing and extending the artifacts of a Business Process. In essence this falls into two buckets; SOA Composite Editor for working with BPEL processes, and the BPM Studio. The SOA Composite Editor As a standard extension to JDeveloper, this graphical design tool should be familiar to anyone previously worked with Oracle SOA Server. With easy-to-use modeling capability, backed-up by full XML source-view (for read-only), it provides everything that is needed to implement the technical design. In simple terms, once deployed to the remote SOA Server the composite components (like Mediator) leverage the Event Delivery Network (EDN) for interaction with the application logic. If you are customizing an existing Fusion Applications BPEL process then be aware that it does support MDS-based customization layers just like Page Composer where different customizations are used based on the run-time context, like for a specific Product or Business Unit. This also makes them safe from patching and upgrades, although only a single active version of the composite is available at run-time. This is defined by a field on the composite record, available in Enterprise Manager. Obviously if you wish to fire different activities and tasks based on the user context then you can should include switches to fork the flows in your custom BPEL process. Figure 1 – A BPEL process in Composite Editor The following describes the simplified steps for making customizations to BPEL processes. This is the most common method of changing the business processes of Fusion Applications, as over 400 BPEL-based composite applications are provided out-of-the-box. Setup your local Fusion Applications JDeveloper environment. The SOA Composite Editor should be installed as part of the Fusion Applications extension. If there are problems you can also find it under the ‘Check for Updates’ help menu option. Since SOA Server is not part of the JDeveloper integrated WebLogic Server, setup a standalone WebLogic environment for deploying and testing. Obviously you might use a Fusion Applications development instance also. Package the existing standard Fusion Applications SOA Composite using Enterprise Manager and export it as a complete SOA Archive (SAR) file, resulting in a local .jar file. You may need to ask your system administrator for this. Import the exported SAR .jar file into JDeveloper using the File menu, under the option ‘SOA Archive into SOA Project’. In JDeveloper set the appropriate customization layer values, and then change from the default role to the Fusion Applications Customization Developer role. Make the customizations and save the application project. Finally redeploy the composite application, either to a direct Application Server connection, or as a fresh SAR (jar) file that can then be re-imported and deployed via Enterprise Manager. The Business Process Management (BPM) Suite In addition to the relatively low-level development environment associated with BPEL process creation, Oracle provides a suite of products that allow business process adjustments to be made without the need for some of the programming skills.  The aim is to abstract much of the technical implementation and to provide a Business Analyst tools for immediately implementing organization changes. Obviously there are some limitations on what they can do, however the BPM Suite functionality increases with each release and for the majority of the cases the tools remains as applicable as its developer-orientated sister. At the current time business processes must be explicitly coded to support just one of these use-cases, either BPEL for developer use or BPM for business analyst use. That said, they both run on the same SOA Server in much the same way. The components bundled in each SOA Composite Application can be verified by inspection through Enterprise Manager. Figure 2 – A BPM Process in JDeveloper BPM Suite. BPM processes are written in a standard notation (BPMN) and the modeling tools are very similar to that of BPEL. The steps to deploy a custom BPM process are also essentially much the same, since the BPM process is bundled into a SOA Composite just like a BPEL process. As such the SOA Composite Editor  actually has support for both artifacts and even allows use of them together, such as a calling a BPM process as a partnerlink from a BPEL process. For more details see the references below. Business Analyst Tooling In addition to using JDeveloper extensions for BPM development, there are run-time tools that Business Analysts can use to make adjustments, so that without high costs of an IT project the system can be tuned to match changes to the business operation. The first tool to consider is the BPM Composer, deployed with the middleware SOA Server and accessible online, and for Fusion Applications it is under the Business Process icon on the homepage of the Application Composer. Figure 3 – Business Process Composer showing a CRM process flow. The key difference between this and using JDeveloper is that the BPM Composer has a Business Catalog prepopulated with features and functions that can be used, mostly through registered WebServices. This means no coding or complex interface development is required, simply drag-drop-configure. The items in the business catalog are seeded by either Oracle (as a BPM Template) or added to by your own custom development. You cannot create or generate catalog content from BPM Composer directly. As per the screenshot you can see the Business Catalog content in the BPM Project browser region. In addition, other online tools for use by Business Analysts include the BPM Worklist application for editing business rules and approval management configuration, plus the SOA Composer which focuses on non-approval business rules and domain value maps. At the current time there are only a handful of BPM processes shipped with Fusion Applications HCM and CRM, including on-boarding workers and processing customer registrations.  This also means a limited number of associated BPM Templates provided out-of-the-box, therefore a limited Business Catalog. That said, BPM-based extension is a powerful capability to leverage and will most likely develop going forwards, especially for use in SaaS deployments where full design-time JDeveloper access is not available. Further Reading For BPEL – Fusion Applications Extensibility Guide – Section 12 For BPM – Fusion Applications Extensibility Guide – Section 7 The product-specific documentation and implementation guides for Fusion Applications Fusion Middleware Developers Guide for SOA Suite Modeling and Implementation Guide for Oracle Business Process Management User’s Guide for Oracle Business Process Composer Oracle University courses on BPM Suite and SOA Development

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• Using R to Analyze G1GC Log Files

  - by user12620111

  Using R to Analyze G1GC Log Files body, td { font-family: sans-serif; background-color: white; font-size: 12px; margin: 8px; } tt, code, pre { font-family: 'DejaVu Sans Mono', 'Droid Sans Mono', 'Lucida Console', Consolas, Monaco, monospace; } h1 { font-size:2.2em; } h2 { font-size:1.8em; } h3 { font-size:1.4em; } h4 { font-size:1.0em; } h5 { font-size:0.9em; } h6 { font-size:0.8em; } a:visited { color: rgb(50%, 0%, 50%); } pre { margin-top: 0; max-width: 95%; border: 1px solid #ccc; white-space: pre-wrap; } pre code { display: block; padding: 0.5em; } code.r, code.cpp { background-color: #F8F8F8; } table, td, th { border: none; } blockquote { color:#666666; margin:0; padding-left: 1em; border-left: 0.5em #EEE solid; } hr { height: 0px; border-bottom: none; border-top-width: thin; border-top-style: dotted; border-top-color: #999999; } @media print { * { background: transparent !important; color: black !important; filter:none !important; -ms-filter: none !important; } body { 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  Using R to Analyze G1GC Log Files   Using R to Analyze G1GC Log Files Introduction Working in Oracle Platform Integration gives an engineer opportunities to work on a wide array of technologies. My team’s goal is to make Oracle applications run best on the Solaris/SPARC platform. When looking for bottlenecks in a modern applications, one needs to be aware of not only how the CPUs and operating system are executing, but also network, storage, and in some cases, the Java Virtual Machine. I was recently presented with about 1.5 GB of Java Garbage First Garbage Collector log file data. If you’re not familiar with the subject, you might want to review Garbage First Garbage Collector Tuning by Monica Beckwith. The customer had been running Java HotSpot 1.6.0_31 to host a web application server. I was told that the Solaris/SPARC server was running a Java process launched using a commmand line that included the following flags: -d64 -Xms9g -Xmx9g -XX:+UseG1GC -XX:MaxGCPauseMillis=200 -XX:InitiatingHeapOccupancyPercent=80 -XX:PermSize=256m -XX:MaxPermSize=256m -XX:+PrintGC -XX:+PrintGCTimeStamps -XX:+PrintHeapAtGC -XX:+PrintGCDateStamps -XX:+PrintFlagsFinal -XX:+DisableExplicitGC -XX:+UnlockExperimentalVMOptions -XX:ParallelGCThreads=8 Several sources on the internet indicate that if I were to print out the 1.5 GB of log files, it would require enough paper to fill the bed of a pick up truck. Of course, it would be fruitless to try to scan the log files by hand. Tools will be required to summarize the contents of the log files. Others have encountered large Java garbage collection log files. There are existing tools to analyze the log files: IBM’s GC toolkit The chewiebug GCViewer gchisto HPjmeter Instead of using one of the other tools listed, I decide to parse the log files with standard Unix tools, and analyze the data with R. Data Cleansing The log files arrived in two different formats. I guess that the difference is that one set of log files was generated using a more verbose option, maybe -XX:+PrintHeapAtGC, and the other set of log files was generated without that option. Format 1 In some of the log files, the log files with the less verbose format, a single trace, i.e. the report of a singe garbage collection event, looks like this: {Heap before GC invocations=12280 (full 61): garbage-first heap total 9437184K, used 7499918K [0xfffffffd00000000, 0xffffffff40000000, 0xffffffff40000000) region size 4096K, 1 young (4096K), 0 survivors (0K) compacting perm gen total 262144K, used 144077K [0xffffffff40000000, 0xffffffff50000000, 0xffffffff50000000) the space 262144K, 54% used [0xffffffff40000000, 0xffffffff48cb3758, 0xffffffff48cb3800, 0xffffffff50000000) No shared spaces configured. 2014-05-14T07:24:00.988-0700: 60586.353: [GC pause (young) 7324M->7320M(9216M), 0.1567265 secs] Heap after GC invocations=12281 (full 61): garbage-first heap total 9437184K, used 7496533K [0xfffffffd00000000, 0xffffffff40000000, 0xffffffff40000000) region size 4096K, 0 young (0K), 0 survivors (0K) compacting perm gen total 262144K, used 144077K [0xffffffff40000000, 0xffffffff50000000, 0xffffffff50000000) the space 262144K, 54% used [0xffffffff40000000, 0xffffffff48cb3758, 0xffffffff48cb3800, 0xffffffff50000000) No shared spaces configured. } A simple grep can be used to extract a summary: $ grep "\[ GC pause (young" g1gc.log 2014-05-13T13:24:35.091-0700: 3.109: [GC pause (young) 20M->5029K(9216M), 0.0146328 secs] 2014-05-13T13:24:35.440-0700: 3.459: [GC pause (young) 9125K->6077K(9216M), 0.0086723 secs] 2014-05-13T13:24:37.581-0700: 5.599: [GC pause (young) 25M->8470K(9216M), 0.0203820 secs] 2014-05-13T13:24:42.686-0700: 10.704: [GC pause (young) 44M->15M(9216M), 0.0288848 secs] 2014-05-13T13:24:48.941-0700: 16.958: [GC pause (young) 51M->20M(9216M), 0.0491244 secs] 2014-05-13T13:24:56.049-0700: 24.066: [GC pause (young) 92M->26M(9216M), 0.0525368 secs] 2014-05-13T13:25:34.368-0700: 62.383: [GC pause (young) 602M->68M(9216M), 0.1721173 secs] But that format wasn't easily read into R, so I needed to be a bit more tricky. I used the following Unix command to create a summary file that was easy for R to read. $ echo "SecondsSinceLaunch BeforeSize AfterSize TotalSize RealTime" $ grep "\[GC pause (young" g1gc.log | grep -v mark | sed -e 's/[A-SU-z\(\),]/ /g' -e 's/->/ /' -e 's/: / /g' | more SecondsSinceLaunch BeforeSize AfterSize TotalSize RealTime 2014-05-13T13:24:35.091-0700 3.109 20 5029 9216 0.0146328 2014-05-13T13:24:35.440-0700 3.459 9125 6077 9216 0.0086723 2014-05-13T13:24:37.581-0700 5.599 25 8470 9216 0.0203820 2014-05-13T13:24:42.686-0700 10.704 44 15 9216 0.0288848 2014-05-13T13:24:48.941-0700 16.958 51 20 9216 0.0491244 2014-05-13T13:24:56.049-0700 24.066 92 26 9216 0.0525368 2014-05-13T13:25:34.368-0700 62.383 602 68 9216 0.1721173 Format 2 In some of the log files, the log files with the more verbose format, a single trace, i.e. the report of a singe garbage collection event, was more complicated than Format 1. Here is a text file with an example of a single G1GC trace in the second format. As you can see, it is quite complicated. It is nice that there is so much information available, but the level of detail can be overwhelming. I wrote this awk script (download) to summarize each trace on a single line. #!/usr/bin/env awk -f BEGIN { printf("SecondsSinceLaunch IncrementalCount FullCount UserTime SysTime RealTime BeforeSize AfterSize TotalSize\n") } ###################### # Save count data from lines that are at the start of each G1GC trace. # Each trace starts out like this: # {Heap before GC invocations=14 (full 0): # garbage-first heap total 9437184K, used 325496K [0xfffffffd00000000, 0xffffffff40000000, 0xffffffff40000000) ###################### /{Heap.*full/{ gsub ( "\\)" , "" ); nf=split($0,a,"="); split(a[2],b," "); getline; if ( match($0, "first") ) { G1GC=1; IncrementalCount=b[1]; FullCount=substr( b[3], 1, length(b[3])-1 ); } else { G1GC=0; } } ###################### # Pull out time stamps that are in lines with this format: # 2014-05-12T14:02:06.025-0700: 94.312: [GC pause (young), 0.08870154 secs] ###################### /GC pause/ { DateTime=$1; SecondsSinceLaunch=substr($2, 1, length($2)-1); } ###################### # Heap sizes are in lines that look like this: # [ 4842M->4838M(9216M)] ###################### /\[ .*]$/ { gsub ( "\\[" , "" ); gsub ( "\ \]" , "" ); gsub ( "->" , " " ); gsub ( "\\( " , " " ); gsub ( "\ \)" , " " ); split($0,a," "); if ( split(a[1],b,"M") > 1 ) {BeforeSize=b[1]*1024;} if ( split(a[1],b,"K") > 1 ) {BeforeSize=b[1];} if ( split(a[2],b,"M") > 1 ) {AfterSize=b[1]*1024;} if ( split(a[2],b,"K") > 1 ) {AfterSize=b[1];} if ( split(a[3],b,"M") > 1 ) {TotalSize=b[1]*1024;} if ( split(a[3],b,"K") > 1 ) {TotalSize=b[1];} } ###################### # Emit an output line when you find input that looks like this: # [Times: user=1.41 sys=0.08, real=0.24 secs] ###################### /\[Times/ { if (G1GC==1) { gsub ( "," , "" ); split($2,a,"="); UserTime=a[2]; split($3,a,"="); SysTime=a[2]; split($4,a,"="); RealTime=a[2]; print DateTime,SecondsSinceLaunch,IncrementalCount,FullCount,UserTime,SysTime,RealTime,BeforeSize,AfterSize,TotalSize; G1GC=0; } } The resulting summary is about 25X smaller that the original file, but still difficult for a human to digest. SecondsSinceLaunch IncrementalCount FullCount UserTime SysTime RealTime BeforeSize AfterSize TotalSize ... 2014-05-12T18:36:34.669-0700: 3985.744 561 0 0.57 0.06 0.16 1724416 1720320 9437184 2014-05-12T18:36:34.839-0700: 3985.914 562 0 0.51 0.06 0.19 1724416 1720320 9437184 2014-05-12T18:36:35.069-0700: 3986.144 563 0 0.60 0.04 0.27 1724416 1721344 9437184 2014-05-12T18:36:35.354-0700: 3986.429 564 0 0.33 0.04 0.09 1725440 1722368 9437184 2014-05-12T18:36:35.545-0700: 3986.620 565 0 0.58 0.04 0.17 1726464 1722368 9437184 2014-05-12T18:36:35.726-0700: 3986.801 566 0 0.43 0.05 0.12 1726464 1722368 9437184 2014-05-12T18:36:35.856-0700: 3986.930 567 0 0.30 0.04 0.07 1726464 1723392 9437184 2014-05-12T18:36:35.947-0700: 3987.023 568 0 0.61 0.04 0.26 1727488 1723392 9437184 2014-05-12T18:36:36.228-0700: 3987.302 569 0 0.46 0.04 0.16 1731584 1724416 9437184 Reading the Data into R Once the GC log data had been cleansed, either by processing the first format with the shell script, or by processing the second format with the awk script, it was easy to read the data into R. g1gc.df = read.csv("summary.txt", row.names = NULL, stringsAsFactors=FALSE,sep="") str(g1gc.df) ## 'data.frame': 8307 obs. of 10 variables: ## $ row.names : chr "2014-05-12T14:00:32.868-0700:" "2014-05-12T14:00:33.179-0700:" "2014-05-12T14:00:33.677-0700:" "2014-05-12T14:00:35.538-0700:" ... ## $ SecondsSinceLaunch: num 1.16 1.47 1.97 3.83 6.1 ... ## $ IncrementalCount : int 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ... ## $ FullCount : int 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ... ## $ UserTime : num 0.11 0.05 0.04 0.21 0.08 0.26 0.31 0.33 0.34 0.56 ... ## $ SysTime : num 0.04 0.01 0.01 0.05 0.01 0.06 0.07 0.06 0.07 0.09 ... ## $ RealTime : num 0.02 0.02 0.01 0.04 0.02 0.04 0.05 0.04 0.04 0.06 ... ## $ BeforeSize : int 8192 5496 5768 22528 24576 43008 34816 53248 55296 93184 ... ## $ AfterSize : int 1400 1672 2557 4907 7072 14336 16384 18432 19456 21504 ... ## $ TotalSize : int 9437184 9437184 9437184 9437184 9437184 9437184 9437184 9437184 9437184 9437184 ... head(g1gc.df) ## row.names SecondsSinceLaunch IncrementalCount ## 1 2014-05-12T14:00:32.868-0700: 1.161 0 ## 2 2014-05-12T14:00:33.179-0700: 1.472 1 ## 3 2014-05-12T14:00:33.677-0700: 1.969 2 ## 4 2014-05-12T14:00:35.538-0700: 3.830 3 ## 5 2014-05-12T14:00:37.811-0700: 6.103 4 ## 6 2014-05-12T14:00:41.428-0700: 9.720 5 ## FullCount UserTime SysTime RealTime BeforeSize AfterSize TotalSize ## 1 0 0.11 0.04 0.02 8192 1400 9437184 ## 2 0 0.05 0.01 0.02 5496 1672 9437184 ## 3 0 0.04 0.01 0.01 5768 2557 9437184 ## 4 0 0.21 0.05 0.04 22528 4907 9437184 ## 5 0 0.08 0.01 0.02 24576 7072 9437184 ## 6 0 0.26 0.06 0.04 43008 14336 9437184 Basic Statistics Once the data has been read into R, simple statistics are very easy to generate. All of the numbers from high school statistics are available via simple commands. For example, generate a summary of every column: summary(g1gc.df) ## row.names SecondsSinceLaunch IncrementalCount FullCount ## Length:8307 Min. : 1 Min. : 0 Min. : 0.0 ## Class :character 1st Qu.: 9977 1st Qu.:2048 1st Qu.: 0.0 ## Mode :character Median :12855 Median :4136 Median : 12.0 ## Mean :12527 Mean :4156 Mean : 31.6 ## 3rd Qu.:15758 3rd Qu.:6262 3rd Qu.: 61.0 ## Max. :55484 Max. :8391 Max. :113.0 ## UserTime SysTime RealTime BeforeSize ## Min. :0.040 Min. :0.0000 Min. : 0.0 Min. : 5476 ## 1st Qu.:0.470 1st Qu.:0.0300 1st Qu.: 0.1 1st Qu.:5137920 ## Median :0.620 Median :0.0300 Median : 0.1 Median :6574080 ## Mean :0.751 Mean :0.0355 Mean : 0.3 Mean :5841855 ## 3rd Qu.:0.920 3rd Qu.:0.0400 3rd Qu.: 0.2 3rd Qu.:7084032 ## Max. :3.370 Max. :1.5600 Max. :488.1 Max. :8696832 ## AfterSize TotalSize ## Min. : 1380 Min. :9437184 ## 1st Qu.:5002752 1st Qu.:9437184 ## Median :6559744 Median :9437184 ## Mean :5785454 Mean :9437184 ## 3rd Qu.:7054336 3rd Qu.:9437184 ## Max. :8482816 Max. :9437184 Q: What is the total amount of User CPU time spent in garbage collection? sum(g1gc.df$UserTime) ## [1] 6236 As you can see, less than two hours of CPU time was spent in garbage collection. Is that too much? To find the percentage of time spent in garbage collection, divide the number above by total_elapsed_time*CPU_count. In this case, there are a lot of CPU’s and it turns out the the overall amount of CPU time spent in garbage collection isn’t a problem when viewed in isolation. When calculating rates, i.e. events per unit time, you need to ask yourself if the rate is homogenous across the time period in the log file. Does the log file include spikes of high activity that should be separately analyzed? Averaging in data from nights and weekends with data from business hours may alias problems. If you have a reason to suspect that the garbage collection rates include peaks and valleys that need independent analysis, see the “Time Series” section, below. Q: How much garbage is collected on each pass? The amount of heap space that is recovered per GC pass is surprisingly low: At least one collection didn’t recover any data. (“Min.=0”) 25% of the passes recovered 3MB or less. (“1st Qu.=3072”) Half of the GC passes recovered 4MB or less. (“Median=4096”) The average amount recovered was 56MB. (“Mean=56390”) 75% of the passes recovered 36MB or less. (“3rd Qu.=36860”) At least one pass recovered 2GB. (“Max.=2121000”) g1gc.df$Delta = g1gc.df$BeforeSize - g1gc.df$AfterSize summary(g1gc.df$Delta) ## Min. 1st Qu. Median Mean 3rd Qu. Max. ## 0 3070 4100 56400 36900 2120000 Q: What is the maximum User CPU time for a single collection? The worst garbage collection (“Max.”) is many standard deviations away from the mean. The data appears to be right skewed. summary(g1gc.df$UserTime) ## Min. 1st Qu. Median Mean 3rd Qu. Max. ## 0.040 0.470 0.620 0.751 0.920 3.370 sd(g1gc.df$UserTime) ## [1] 0.3966 Basic Graphics Once the data is in R, it is trivial to plot the data with formats including dot plots, line charts, bar charts (simple, stacked, grouped), pie charts, boxplots, scatter plots histograms, and kernel density plots. Histogram of User CPU Time per Collection I don't think that this graph requires any explanation. hist(g1gc.df$UserTime, main="User CPU Time per Collection", xlab="Seconds", ylab="Frequency") Box plot to identify outliers When the initial data is viewed with a box plot, you can see the one crazy outlier in the real time per GC. Save this data point for future analysis and drop the outlier so that it’s not throwing off our statistics. Now the box plot shows many outliers, which will be examined later, using times series analysis. Notice that the scale of the x-axis changes drastically once the crazy outlier is removed. par(mfrow=c(2,1)) boxplot(g1gc.df$UserTime,g1gc.df$SysTime,g1gc.df$RealTime, main="Box Plot of Time per GC\n(dominated by a crazy outlier)", names=c("usr","sys","elapsed"), xlab="Seconds per GC", ylab="Time (Seconds)", horizontal = TRUE, outcol="red") crazy.outlier.df=g1gc.df[g1gc.df$RealTime > 400,] g1gc.df=g1gc.df[g1gc.df$RealTime < 400,] boxplot(g1gc.df$UserTime,g1gc.df$SysTime,g1gc.df$RealTime, main="Box Plot of Time per GC\n(crazy outlier excluded)", names=c("usr","sys","elapsed"), xlab="Seconds per GC", ylab="Time (Seconds)", horizontal = TRUE, outcol="red") box(which = "outer", lty = "solid") Here is the crazy outlier for future analysis: crazy.outlier.df ## row.names SecondsSinceLaunch IncrementalCount ## 8233 2014-05-12T23:15:43.903-0700: 20741 8316 ## FullCount UserTime SysTime RealTime BeforeSize AfterSize TotalSize ## 8233 112 0.55 0.42 488.1 8381440 8235008 9437184 ## Delta ## 8233 146432 R Time Series Data To analyze the garbage collection as a time series, I’ll use Z’s Ordered Observations (zoo). “zoo is the creator for an S3 class of indexed totally ordered observations which includes irregular time series.” require(zoo) ## Loading required package: zoo ## ## Attaching package: 'zoo' ## ## The following objects are masked from 'package:base': ## ## as.Date, as.Date.numeric head(g1gc.df[,1]) ## [1] "2014-05-12T14:00:32.868-0700:" "2014-05-12T14:00:33.179-0700:" ## [3] "2014-05-12T14:00:33.677-0700:" "2014-05-12T14:00:35.538-0700:" ## [5] "2014-05-12T14:00:37.811-0700:" "2014-05-12T14:00:41.428-0700:" options("digits.secs"=3) times=as.POSIXct( g1gc.df[,1], format="%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%OS%z:") g1gc.z = zoo(g1gc.df[,-c(1)], order.by=times) head(g1gc.z) ## SecondsSinceLaunch IncrementalCount FullCount ## 2014-05-12 17:00:32.868 1.161 0 0 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:33.178 1.472 1 0 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:33.677 1.969 2 0 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:35.538 3.830 3 0 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:37.811 6.103 4 0 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:41.427 9.720 5 0 ## UserTime SysTime RealTime BeforeSize AfterSize ## 2014-05-12 17:00:32.868 0.11 0.04 0.02 8192 1400 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:33.178 0.05 0.01 0.02 5496 1672 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:33.677 0.04 0.01 0.01 5768 2557 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:35.538 0.21 0.05 0.04 22528 4907 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:37.811 0.08 0.01 0.02 24576 7072 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:41.427 0.26 0.06 0.04 43008 14336 ## TotalSize Delta ## 2014-05-12 17:00:32.868 9437184 6792 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:33.178 9437184 3824 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:33.677 9437184 3211 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:35.538 9437184 17621 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:37.811 9437184 17504 ## 2014-05-12 17:00:41.427 9437184 28672 Example of Two Benchmark Runs in One Log File The data in the following graph is from a different log file, not the one of primary interest to this article. I’m including this image because it is an example of idle periods followed by busy periods. It would be uninteresting to average the rate of garbage collection over the entire log file period. More interesting would be the rate of garbage collect in the two busy periods. Are they the same or different? Your production data may be similar, for example, bursts when employees return from lunch and idle times on weekend evenings, etc. Once the data is in an R Time Series, you can analyze isolated time windows. Clipping the Time Series data Flashing back to our test case… Viewing the data as a time series is interesting. You can see that the work intensive time period is between 9:00 PM and 3:00 AM. Lets clip the data to the interesting period:     par(mfrow=c(2,1)) plot(g1gc.z$UserTime, type="h", main="User Time per GC\nTime: Complete Log File", xlab="Time of Day", ylab="CPU Seconds per GC", col="#1b9e77") clipped.g1gc.z=window(g1gc.z, start=as.POSIXct("2014-05-12 21:00:00"), end=as.POSIXct("2014-05-13 03:00:00")) plot(clipped.g1gc.z$UserTime, type="h", main="User Time per GC\nTime: Limited to Benchmark Execution", xlab="Time of Day", ylab="CPU Seconds per GC", col="#1b9e77") box(which = "outer", lty = "solid") Cumulative Incremental and Full GC count Here is the cumulative incremental and full GC count. When the line is very steep, it indicates that the GCs are repeating very quickly. Notice that the scale on the Y axis is different for full vs. incremental. plot(clipped.g1gc.z[,c(2:3)], main="Cumulative Incremental and Full GC count", xlab="Time of Day", col="#1b9e77") GC Analysis of Benchmark Execution using Time Series data In the following series of 3 graphs: The “After Size” show the amount of heap space in use after each garbage collection. Many Java objects are still referenced, i.e. alive, during each garbage collection. This may indicate that the application has a memory leak, or may indicate that the application has a very large memory footprint. Typically, an application's memory footprint plateau's in the early stage of execution. One would expect this graph to have a flat top. The steep decline in the heap space may indicate that the application crashed after 2:00. The second graph shows that the outliers in real execution time, discussed above, occur near 2:00. when the Java heap seems to be quite full. The third graph shows that Full GCs are infrequent during the first few hours of execution. The rate of Full GC's, (the slope of the cummulative Full GC line), changes near midnight.   plot(clipped.g1gc.z[,c("AfterSize","RealTime","FullCount")], xlab="Time of Day", col=c("#1b9e77","red","#1b9e77")) GC Analysis of heap recovered Each GC trace includes the amount of heap space in use before and after the individual GC event. During garbage coolection, unreferenced objects are identified, the space holding the unreferenced objects is freed, and thus, the difference in before and after usage indicates how much space has been freed. The following box plot and bar chart both demonstrate the same point - the amount of heap space freed per garbage colloection is surprisingly low. par(mfrow=c(2,1)) boxplot(as.vector(clipped.g1gc.z$Delta), main="Amount of Heap Recovered per GC Pass", xlab="Size in KB", horizontal = TRUE, col="red") hist(as.vector(clipped.g1gc.z$Delta), main="Amount of Heap Recovered per GC Pass", xlab="Size in KB", breaks=100, col="red") box(which = "outer", lty = "solid") This graph is the most interesting. The dark blue area shows how much heap is occupied by referenced Java objects. This represents memory that holds live data. The red fringe at the top shows how much data was recovered after each garbage collection. barplot(clipped.g1gc.z[,c("AfterSize","Delta")], col=c("#7570b3","#e7298a"), xlab="Time of Day", border=NA) legend("topleft", c("Live Objects","Heap Recovered on GC"), fill=c("#7570b3","#e7298a")) box(which = "outer", lty = "solid") When I discuss the data in the log files with the customer, I will ask for an explaination for the large amount of referenced data resident in the Java heap. There are two are posibilities: There is a memory leak and the amount of space required to hold referenced objects will continue to grow, limited only by the maximum heap size. After the maximum heap size is reached, the JVM will throw an “Out of Memory” exception every time that the application tries to allocate a new object. If this is the case, the aplication needs to be debugged to identify why old objects are referenced when they are no longer needed. The application has a legitimate requirement to keep a large amount of data in memory. The customer may want to further increase the maximum heap size. Another possible solution would be to partition the application across multiple cluster nodes, where each node has responsibility for managing a unique subset of the data. Conclusion In conclusion, R is a very powerful tool for the analysis of Java garbage collection log files. The primary difficulty is data cleansing so that information can be read into an R data frame. Once the data has been read into R, a rich set of tools may be used for thorough evaluation.

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• PASS Summit 2010 BI Workshop Feedbacks

  - by Davide Mauri

  As many other speakers already did, I’d like to share with the SQL Community the feedback of my PASS Summit 2010 Workshop. For those who were not there, my workshop was the “BI From A-Z” and the main objective of that workshop was to introduce people in the BI world not only from a technical point of view but insist a lot on the methodological and “engineered” approach. The will to put more engineering in the IT (and specially in the BI field) is something that has been growing stronger and stronger in me every day for of this last 5 years since is simply envy the fact that Airbus, Fincatieri, BMW (just to name a few) can create very complex machine “just” using putting people together and giving them some rules to follow (Of course this is an oversimplification but I think you get what I mean). The key point of engineering is that, after having defined the project blueprint, you have the possibility to give to a huge number of people, the rules to follow, the correct tools in order to implement the rules easily and semi-automatically and a way to measure the quality of the results. Could this be done in IT? Very big question, so my scope is now limited to BI. So that’s the main point of my workshop: and entry-level approach to BI (level was 200) in order to allow attendees to know the basics, to understand what tools they should use for which purpose and, above all, a set of rules and tools in order to make a BI solution scalable in terms of people working on it, while still maintaining a very good quality. All done not focusing only on the practice but explaining the theory behind to see how it can help *a lot* to build a correct solution despite the technology used to implement it. The idea is to reach a point where more then 70% of the work done to create a BI solution can be reused even if technologies changes. This is a very demanding challenge nowadays with the coming of Denali and its column-aligned storage and the shiny-new DAX language. As you may understand I was looking forward to get the feedback since you may have noticed that there’s a lot of “architectural” stuff in IT but really nothing on “engineering”. So how the session could be perceived by the attendees was really unknown to me. The feedback could also give a good indication if the need of more “engineering” is something I feel only by myself or if is something more broad. I’m very happy to be able to say that the overall score of 4.75 put my workshop in the TOP 20 session (on near 200 sessions)! Here’s the detailed evaluations: How would you rate the usefulness of the information presented in your day-to-day environment? 4.75 Answer:    # of Responses 3    1         4    12        5    42               How would you rate the Speaker's presentation skills? 4.80 Answer:    # of Responses 3 : 1         4 : 9         5 : 45               How would you rate the Speaker's knowledge of the subject? 4.95 Answer:    # of Responses 4 :  3         5 : 52               How would you rate the accuracy of the session title, description and experience level to the actual session? 4.75 Answer:    # of Responses 3 : 2         4 : 10         5 : 43               How would you rate the amount of time allocated to cover the topic/session? 4.44 Answer:    # of Responses 3 : 7         4 : 17        5 : 31               How would you rate the quality of the presentation materials? 4.62 Answer:    # of Responses 4 : 21        5 : 34 The comments where all very positive. Many of them asked for more time on the subject (or to shorten the very last topics). I’ll make treasure of these comments and will review the content accordingly. We’ll organize a two-day classes on this topic, where also more examples will be shown and some arguments will be explained more deeply. I’d just like to answer a comment that asks how much of what I shown is “universally applicable”. I can tell you that all of our BI project follow these rules and they’ve been applied to different markets (Insurance, Fashion, GDO) with different people and different teams and they allowed us to be “Adaptive” against the customer. The more the rules are well defined and the more there are tools that supports their implementations, the easier is to add new people to the project and to add or change solution features. Think of a car. How come that almost any mechanic can help you to fix a problem? Because they know what to expect. Because there a rules that allow them to identify the problem without having to discover each time how the car has been implemented build. And this is of course also true for car upgrades/improvements. Last but not least: thanks a lot to everyone for coming!

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• Beyond Cloud Technology, Enabling A More Agile and Responsive Organization

  - by sxkumar

  This is the second part of the blog “Clouds, Clouds Everywhere But not a Drop of Rain”. In the first part,  I was sharing with you how a broad-based transformation makes cloud more than a technology initiative, I will describe in this section how it requires people (organizational) and process changes as well, and these changes are as critical as is the choice of right tools and technology. People: Most IT organizations have a fairly complex organizational structure. There are different groups, managing different pieces of the puzzle, and yet, they don't always work together. Provisioning a new application therefore may require a request to float endlessly through system administrators, DBAs and middleware admin worlds – resulting in long delays and constant finger pointing.  Cloud users expect end-to-end automation - which requires these silos to be greatly simplified, if not completely eliminated.  Most customers I talk to acknowledge this problem but are quick to admit that such a transformation is hard. As hard as it may be, I am afraid that the status quo is no longer an option. Sticking to an organizational structure that was created ages back will not only impede cloud adoption,  it also risks making the IT skills increasingly irrelevant in a world that is rapidly moving towards converged applications and infrastructure.   Process: Most IT organizations today operate with a mindset that they must fully "control" access to any and all types of IT services. This in turn leads to people clinging on to outdated manual approval processes .  While requiring approvals for scarce resources makes sense, insisting that every single request must be manually approved defeats the very purpose of cloud. Not only this causes delays, thereby at least partially negating the agility benefits, it also results in gross inefficiency. In a cloud environment, self-service access should be governed by policies, quotas that the administrators can define upfront . For a cloud initiative to be successful, IT organizations MUST be ready to empower users by giving them real control rather than insisting on brokering every single interaction between users and the cloud resources. Technology: From a technology perspective, cloud is about consolidation, standardization and automation. A consolidated and standardized infrastructure helps increase utilization and reduces cost. Additionally, it  enables a much higher degree of automation - thereby providing users the required agility while minimizing operational costs.  Obviously, automation is the key to cloud. Unfortunately it hasn’t received as much attention within enterprises as it should have.  Many organizations are just now waking up to the criticality of automation and it still often gets relegated to back burner in favor of other "high priority" projects. However, it is important to understand that without the right type and level of automation, cloud will remain a distant dream for most enterprises. This in turn makes the choice of the cloud management software extremely critical.  For a cloud management software to be effective in an enterprise environment, it must meet the following qualifications: Broad and Deep Solution It should offer a broad and deep solution to enable the kind of broad-based transformation we are talking about.  Its footprint must cover physical and virtual systems, as well as infrastructure, database and application tiers. Too many enterprises choose to equate cloud with virtualization. While virtualization is a critical component of a cloud solution, it is just a component and not the whole solution. Similarly, too many people tend to equate cloud with Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). While it is perfectly reasonable to treat IaaS as a starting point, it is important to realize that it is just the first stepping stone - and on its own it can only provide limited business benefits. It is actually the higher level services, such as (application) platform and business applications, that will bring about a more meaningful transformation to your enterprise. Run and Manage Efficiently Your Mission Critical Applications It should not only be able to run your mission critical applications, it should do so better than before.  For enterprises, applications and data are the critical business assets  As such, if you are building a cloud platform that cannot run your ERP application, it isn't truly a "enterprise cloud".  Also, be wary of  vendors who try to sell you the idea that your applications must be written in a certain way to be able to run on the cloud. That is nothing but a bogus, self-serving argument. For the cloud to be meaningful to enterprises, it should adopt to your applications - and not the other way around.  Automated, Integrated Set of Cloud Management Capabilities At the root of many of the problems plaguing enterprise IT today is complexity. A complex maze of tools and technology, coupled with archaic  processes, results in an environment which is inflexible, inefficient and simply too hard to manage. Management tool consolidation, therefore, is key to the success of your cloud as tool proliferation adds to complexity, encourages compartmentalization and defeats the very purpose that you are building the cloud for. Decision makers ought to be extra cautious about vendors trying to sell them a "suite" of disparate and loosely integrated products as a cloud solution.  An effective enterprise cloud management solution needs to provide a tightly integrated set of capabilities for all aspects of cloud lifecycle management. A simple question to ask: will your environment be more or less complex after you implement your cloud? More often than not, the answer will surprise you.  At Oracle, we have understood these challenges and have been working hard to create cloud solutions that are relevant and meaningful for enterprises.  And we have been doing it for much longer than you may think. Oracle was one of the very first enterprise software companies to make our products available on the Amazon Cloud. As far back as in 2007, we created new cloud solutions such as Cloud Database Backup that are helping customers like Amazon save millions every year.  Our cloud solution portfolio is also the broadest and most deep in the industry  - covering public, private, hybrid, Infrastructure, platform and applications clouds. It is no coincidence therefore that the Oracle Cloud today offers the most comprehensive set of public cloud services in the industry.  And to a large part, this has been made possible thanks to our years on investment in creating cloud enabling technologies. I will dedicated the third and final part of the blog “Clouds, Clouds Everywhere But not a Drop of Rain” to Oracle Cloud Technologies Building Blocks and how they mapped into our vision of Enterprise Cloud. Stay Tuned.

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• DirectX works for 64-bit but not 32-bit

  - by dtbarne

  I'm trying to play a game (Civilization 5) which was previously working but no longer. I believe I've narrowed it down to a DirectX issue because I get an error running dxdiag.exe in 32 bit mode. My goal (at least I believe) is to get Direct3D Acceleration "Enabled" in dxdiag (as it is in 64 bit dxdiag). A very similar issue is here: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-gaming/direct3d-acceleration-is-not-available-in-windows/4c345e6e-dc68-e011-8dfc-68b599b31bf5?page=1 The proposed answer, which looks very promising, doesn't seem to work for me. Like other users in that thread, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Direct3D\Drivers does not have a SoftwareOnly key to change. I even tried manually adding it as a string and dword, to no avail. I have a NVIDIA GeForce GT 525M, and before you ask, yes I've tried updating (also uninstalling, reinstalling) my drivers. I've also tried doing the same with DirectX (and Civilization 5 for that matter). Been debugging for some 4+ hours now after a full day of work and I've run out of ideas. I'm hoping somebody knows the solution here! :) Here's what I see when I open dxdiag: DxDiag has detected that there mgiht have been a problem accessing Direct3D the last time this program was used. Would you like to bypass Direct3D this time? No - Crash Yes - Works, but in Display tab: DirectDraw Acceleration: Disabled Direct3D Acceleration: Not Available AGP Texture Acceleration: Not Available If I click "Run 64-bit DxDiag", all three are "Enabled". I should also note that I've tried the following steps as Microsoft suggests, but I'm not able to do so as the "Change Settings" button is disabled. Some programs run very slowly—or not at all—unless Microsoft DirectDraw or Direct3D hardware acceleration is turned on. To determine this, click the Display tab, and then under DirectX Features, check to see whether DirectDraw, Direct3D, and AGP Texture Acceleration appear as Enabled. If not, try turning on hardware acceleration. Click to open Screen Resolution. Click Advanced settings. Click the Troubleshoot tab, and then click Change settings. If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation. Move the Hardware Acceleration slider to Full. Full dxdiag dump: ------------------ System Information ------------------ Time of this report: 11/8/2012, 23:13:24 Machine name: DTBARNE Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.120830-0333) Language: English (Regional Setting: English) System Manufacturer: Dell Inc. System Model: Dell System XPS L502X BIOS: Default System BIOS Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2450M CPU @ 2.50GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.5GHz Memory: 8192MB RAM Available OS Memory: 8086MB RAM Page File: 2466MB used, 13704MB available Windows Dir: C:\Windows DirectX Version: DirectX 11 DX Setup Parameters: Not found User DPI Setting: Using System DPI System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent) DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled DxDiag Version: 6.01.7601.17514 32bit Unicode DxDiag Previously: Crashed in Direct3D (stage 2). Re-running DxDiag with "dontskip" command line parameter or choosing not to bypass information gathering when prompted might result in DxDiag successfully obtaining this information ------------ DxDiag Notes ------------ Display Tab 1: No problems found. Sound Tab 1: No problems found. Sound Tab 2: No problems found. Input Tab: No problems found. -------------------- DirectX Debug Levels -------------------- Direct3D: 0/4 (retail) DirectDraw: 0/4 (retail) DirectInput: 0/5 (retail) DirectMusic: 0/5 (retail) DirectPlay: 0/9 (retail) DirectSound: 0/5 (retail) DirectShow: 0/6 (retail) --------------- Display Devices --------------- Card name: Intel(R) HD Graphics 3000 Manufacturer: Chip type: DAC type: Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_0126&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_09 Display Memory: Dedicated Memory: n/a Shared Memory: n/a Current Mode: 1920 x 1080 (32 bit) (60Hz) Monitor Name: Generic PnP Monitor Monitor Model: Monitor Id: Native Mode: Output Type: Driver Name: Driver File Version: () Driver Version: DDI Version: Driver Model: WDDM 1.1 Driver Attributes: Final Retail Driver Date/Size: , 0 bytes WHQL Logo'd: n/a WHQL Date Stamp: n/a Device Identifier: Vendor ID: Device ID: SubSys ID: Revision ID: Driver Strong Name: oem11.inf:IntelGfx.NTamd64.6.0:iSNBM0:8.15.10.2696:pci\ven_8086&dev_0126&subsys_04b61028 Rank Of Driver: 00E60001 Video Accel: Deinterlace Caps: n/a D3D9 Overlay: DXVA-HD: DDraw Status: Disabled D3D Status: Not Available AGP Status: Not Available ------------- Sound Devices ------------- Description: Speakers (High Definition Audio Device) Default Sound Playback: Yes Default Voice Playback: Yes Hardware ID: HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_10EC&DEV_0665&SUBSYS_102804B6&REV_1000 Manufacturer ID: 1 Product ID: 65535 Type: WDM Driver Name: HdAudio.sys Driver Version: 6.01.7601.17514 (English) Driver Attributes: Final Retail WHQL Logo'd: Yes Date and Size: 11/20/2010 22:23:47, 350208 bytes Other Files: Driver Provider: Microsoft HW Accel Level: Basic Cap Flags: 0xF1F Min/Max Sample Rate: 100, 200000 Static/Strm HW Mix Bufs: 1, 0 Static/Strm HW 3D Bufs: 0, 0 HW Memory: 0 Voice Management: No EAX(tm) 2.0 Listen/Src: No, No I3DL2(tm) Listen/Src: No, No Sensaura(tm) ZoomFX(tm): No Description: Digital Audio (S/PDIF) (High Definition Audio Device) Default Sound Playback: No Default Voice Playback: No Hardware ID: HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_10EC&DEV_0665&SUBSYS_102804B6&REV_1000 Manufacturer ID: 1 Product ID: 65535 Type: WDM Driver Name: HdAudio.sys Driver Version: 6.01.7601.17514 (English) Driver Attributes: Final Retail WHQL Logo'd: Yes Date and Size: 11/20/2010 22:23:47, 350208 bytes Other Files: Driver Provider: Microsoft HW Accel Level: Basic Cap Flags: 0xF1F Min/Max Sample Rate: 100, 200000 Static/Strm HW Mix Bufs: 1, 0 Static/Strm HW 3D Bufs: 0, 0 HW Memory: 0 Voice Management: No EAX(tm) 2.0 Listen/Src: No, No I3DL2(tm) Listen/Src: No, No Sensaura(tm) ZoomFX(tm): No --------------------- Sound Capture Devices --------------------- Description: Microphone (High Definition Audio Device) Default Sound Capture: Yes Default Voice Capture: Yes Driver Name: HdAudio.sys Driver Version: 6.01.7601.17514 (English) Driver Attributes: Final Retail Date and Size: 11/20/2010 22:23:47, 350208 bytes Cap Flags: 0x1 Format Flags: 0xFFFFF ------------------- DirectInput Devices ------------------- Device Name: Mouse Attached: 1 Controller ID: n/a Vendor/Product ID: n/a FF Driver: n/a Device Name: Keyboard Attached: 1 Controller ID: n/a Vendor/Product ID: n/a FF Driver: n/a Poll w/ Interrupt: No ----------- USB Devices ----------- + USB Root Hub | Vendor/Product ID: 0x8086, 0x1C26 | Matching Device ID: usb\root_hub20 | Service: usbhub | +-+ Generic USB Hub | | Vendor/Product ID: 0x8087, 0x0024 | | Location: Port_#0001.Hub_#0002 | | Matching Device ID: usb\class_09 | | Service: usbhub ---------------- Gameport Devices ---------------- ------------ PS/2 Devices ------------ + Standard PS/2 Keyboard | Matching Device ID: *pnp0303 | Service: i8042prt | + Terminal Server Keyboard Driver | Matching Device ID: root\rdp_kbd | Upper Filters: kbdclass | Service: TermDD | + Synaptics PS/2 Port TouchPad | Matching Device ID: *dll04b6 | Upper Filters: SynTP | Service: i8042prt | + Terminal Server Mouse Driver | Matching Device ID: root\rdp_mou | Upper Filters: mouclass | Service: TermDD ------------------------ Disk & DVD/CD-ROM Drives ------------------------ Drive: C: Free Space: 26.2 GB Total Space: 122.0 GB File System: NTFS Model: M4-CT128M4SSD2 ATA Device Drive: D: Model: Optiarc DVDRWBD BC-5540H ATA Device Driver: c:\windows\system32\drivers\cdrom.sys, 6.01.7601.17514 (English), , 0 bytes -------------- System Devices -------------- Name: High Definition Audio Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C20&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_05\3&11583659&0&D8 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard host CPU bridge Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_0104&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_09\3&11583659&0&00 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard PCI-to-PCI bridge Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C1A&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_B5\3&11583659&0&E5 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard PCI-to-PCI bridge Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_0101&SUBSYS_20108086&REV_09\3&11583659&0&08 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard PCI-to-PCI bridge Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C18&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_B5\3&11583659&0&E4 Driver: n/a Name: Intel(R) Centrino(R) Advanced-N 6230 Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_0091&SUBSYS_52218086&REV_34\4&2634DE8D&0&00E1 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard ISA bridge Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C4B&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_05\3&11583659&0&F8 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard PCI-to-PCI bridge Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C16&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_B5\3&11583659&0&E3 Driver: n/a Name: Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_10EC&DEV_8168&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_06\4&109EAB2F&0&00E5 Driver: n/a Name: Intel(R) Management Engine Interface Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C3A&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_04\3&11583659&0&B0 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard PCI-to-PCI bridge Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C12&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_B5\3&11583659&0&E1 Driver: n/a Name: NVIDIA GeForce GT 525M Device ID: PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0DF5&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_A1\4&4DCA75F&0&0008 Driver: n/a Name: Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C2D&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_05\3&11583659&0&D0 Driver: n/a Name: PCI standard PCI-to-PCI bridge Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C10&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_B5\3&11583659&0&E0 Driver: n/a Name: Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C26&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_05\3&11583659&0&E8 Driver: n/a Name: Standard AHCI 1.0 Serial ATA Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C03&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_05\3&11583659&0&FA Driver: n/a Name: SM Bus Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_1C22&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_05\3&11583659&0&FB Driver: n/a Name: Intel(R) HD Graphics 3000 Device ID: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_0126&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_09\3&11583659&0&10 Driver: n/a Name: Renesas Electronics USB 3.0 Host Controller Device ID: PCI\VEN_1033&DEV_0194&SUBSYS_04B61028&REV_04\4&3494AC3A&0&00E3 Driver: n/a ------------------ DirectShow Filters ------------------ DirectShow Filters: WMAudio Decoder DMO,0x00800800,1,1,WMADMOD.DLL,6.01.7601.17514 WMAPro over S/PDIF DMO,0x00600800,1,1,WMADMOD.DLL,6.01.7601.17514 WMSpeech Decoder DMO,0x00600800,1,1,WMSPDMOD.DLL,6.01.7601.17514 MP3 Decoder DMO,0x00600800,1,1,mp3dmod.dll,6.01.7600.16385 Mpeg4s Decoder DMO,0x00800001,1,1,mp4sdecd.dll,6.01.7600.16385 WMV Screen decoder DMO,0x00600800,1,1,wmvsdecd.dll,6.01.7601.17514 WMVideo Decoder DMO,0x00800001,1,1,wmvdecod.dll,6.01.7601.17514 Mpeg43 Decoder DMO,0x00800001,1,1,mp43decd.dll,6.01.7600.16385 Mpeg4 Decoder DMO,0x00800001,1,1,mpg4decd.dll,6.01.7600.16385 DV Muxer,0x00400000,0,0,qdv.dll,6.06.7601.17514 Color Space Converter,0x00400001,1,1,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 WM ASF Reader,0x00400000,0,0,qasf.dll,12.00.7601.17514 Screen Capture filter,0x00200000,0,1,wmpsrcwp.dll,12.00.7601.17514 AVI Splitter,0x00600000,1,1,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 VGA 16 Color Ditherer,0x00400000,1,1,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 SBE2MediaTypeProfile,0x00200000,0,0,sbe.dll,6.06.7601.17528 Microsoft DTV-DVD Video Decoder,0x005fffff,2,4,msmpeg2vdec.dll,6.01.7140.0000 AC3 Parser Filter,0x00600000,1,1,mpg2splt.ax,6.06.7601.17528 StreamBufferSink,0x00200000,0,0,sbe.dll,6.06.7601.17528 MJPEG Decompressor,0x00600000,1,1,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 MPEG-I Stream Splitter,0x00600000,1,2,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 SAMI (CC) Parser,0x00400000,1,1,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 VBI Codec,0x00600000,1,4,VBICodec.ax,6.06.7601.17514 MPEG-2 Splitter,0x005fffff,1,0,mpg2splt.ax,6.06.7601.17528 Closed Captions Analysis Filter,0x00200000,2,5,cca.dll,6.06.7601.17514 SBE2FileScan,0x00200000,0,0,sbe.dll,6.06.7601.17528 Microsoft MPEG-2 Video Encoder,0x00200000,1,1,msmpeg2enc.dll,6.01.7601.17514 Internal Script Command Renderer,0x00800001,1,0,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 MPEG Audio Decoder,0x03680001,1,1,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 DV Splitter,0x00600000,1,2,qdv.dll,6.06.7601.17514 Video Mixing Renderer 9,0x00200000,1,0,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 Microsoft MPEG-2 Encoder,0x00200000,2,1,msmpeg2enc.dll,6.01.7601.17514 ACM Wrapper,0x00600000,1,1,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 Video Renderer,0x00800001,1,0,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 MPEG-2 Video Stream Analyzer,0x00200000,0,0,sbe.dll,6.06.7601.17528 Line 21 Decoder,0x00600000,1,1,qdvd.dll,6.06.7601.17835 Video Port Manager,0x00600000,2,1,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 Video Renderer,0x00400000,1,0,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 VPS Decoder,0x00200000,0,0,WSTPager.ax,6.06.7601.17514 WM ASF Writer,0x00400000,0,0,qasf.dll,12.00.7601.17514 VBI Surface Allocator,0x00600000,1,1,vbisurf.ax,6.01.7601.17514 File writer,0x00200000,1,0,qcap.dll,6.06.7601.17514 iTV Data Sink,0x00600000,1,0,itvdata.dll,6.06.7601.17514 iTV Data Capture filter,0x00600000,1,1,itvdata.dll,6.06.7601.17514 DVD Navigator,0x00200000,0,3,qdvd.dll,6.06.7601.17835 Overlay Mixer2,0x00200000,1,1,qdvd.dll,6.06.7601.17835 AVI Draw,0x00600064,9,1,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 RDP DShow Redirection Filter,0xffffffff,1,0,DShowRdpFilter.dll, Microsoft MPEG-2 Audio Encoder,0x00200000,1,1,msmpeg2enc.dll,6.01.7601.17514 WST Pager,0x00200000,1,1,WSTPager.ax,6.06.7601.17514 MPEG-2 Demultiplexer,0x00600000,1,1,mpg2splt.ax,6.06.7601.17528 DV Video Decoder,0x00800000,1,1,qdv.dll,6.06.7601.17514 SampleGrabber,0x00200000,1,1,qedit.dll,6.06.7601.17514 Null Renderer,0x00200000,1,0,qedit.dll,6.06.7601.17514 MPEG-2 Sections and Tables,0x005fffff,1,0,Mpeg2Data.ax,6.06.7601.17514 Microsoft AC3 Encoder,0x00200000,1,1,msac3enc.dll,6.01.7601.17514 StreamBufferSource,0x00200000,0,0,sbe.dll,6.06.7601.17528 Smart Tee,0x00200000,1,2,qcap.dll,6.06.7601.17514 Overlay Mixer,0x00200000,0,0,qdvd.dll,6.06.7601.17835 AVI Decompressor,0x00600000,1,1,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 AVI/WAV File Source,0x00400000,0,2,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 Wave Parser,0x00400000,1,1,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 MIDI Parser,0x00400000,1,1,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 Multi-file Parser,0x00400000,1,1,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 File stream renderer,0x00400000,1,1,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 Microsoft DTV-DVD Audio Decoder,0x005fffff,1,1,msmpeg2adec.dll,6.01.7140.0000 StreamBufferSink2,0x00200000,0,0,sbe.dll,6.06.7601.17528 AVI Mux,0x00200000,1,0,qcap.dll,6.06.7601.17514 Line 21 Decoder 2,0x00600002,1,1,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 File Source (Async.),0x00400000,0,1,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 File Source (URL),0x00400000,0,1,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 Infinite Pin Tee Filter,0x00200000,1,1,qcap.dll,6.06.7601.17514 Enhanced Video Renderer,0x00200000,1,0,evr.dll,6.01.7601.17514 BDA MPEG2 Transport Information Filter,0x00200000,2,0,psisrndr.ax,6.06.7601.17669 MPEG Video Decoder,0x40000001,1,1,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 WDM Streaming Tee/Splitter Devices: Tee/Sink-to-Sink Converter,0x00200000,1,1,ksproxy.ax,6.01.7601.17514 Video Compressors: WMVideo8 Encoder DMO,0x00600800,1,1,wmvxencd.dll,6.01.7600.16385 WMVideo9 Encoder DMO,0x00600800,1,1,wmvencod.dll,6.01.7600.16385 MSScreen 9 encoder DMO,0x00600800,1,1,wmvsencd.dll,6.01.7600.16385 DV Video Encoder,0x00200000,0,0,qdv.dll,6.06.7601.17514 MJPEG Compressor,0x00200000,0,0,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 Cinepak Codec by Radius,0x00200000,1,1,qcap.dll,6.06.7601.17514 Intel IYUV codec,0x00200000,1,1,qcap.dll,6.06.7601.17514 Intel IYUV codec,0x00200000,1,1,qcap.dll,6.06.7601.17514 Microsoft RLE,0x00200000,1,1,qcap.dll,6.06.7601.17514 Microsoft Video 1,0x00200000,1,1,qcap.dll,6.06.7601.17514 Audio Compressors: WM Speech Encoder DMO,0x00600800,1,1,WMSPDMOE.DLL,6.01.7600.16385 WMAudio Encoder DMO,0x00600800,1,1,WMADMOE.DLL,6.01.7600.16385 IMA ADPCM,0x00200000,1,1,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 PCM,0x00200000,1,1,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 Microsoft ADPCM,0x00200000,1,1,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 GSM 6.10,0x00200000,1,1,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 CCITT A-Law,0x00200000,1,1,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 CCITT u-Law,0x00200000,1,1,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 MPEG Layer-3,0x00200000,1,1,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 Audio Capture Sources: Microphone (High Definition Aud,0x00200000,0,0,qcap.dll,6.06.7601.17514 PBDA CP Filters: PBDA DTFilter,0x00600000,1,1,CPFilters.dll,6.06.7601.17528 PBDA ETFilter,0x00200000,0,0,CPFilters.dll,6.06.7601.17528 PBDA PTFilter,0x00200000,0,0,CPFilters.dll,6.06.7601.17528 Midi Renderers: Default MidiOut Device,0x00800000,1,0,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth,0x00200000,1,0,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 WDM Streaming Capture Devices: HD Audio Microphone 2,0x00200000,1,1,ksproxy.ax,6.01.7601.17514 Integrated Webcam,0x00200000,1,2,ksproxy.ax,6.01.7601.17514 WDM Streaming Rendering Devices: HD Audio Headphone/Speakers,0x00200000,1,1,ksproxy.ax,6.01.7601.17514 HD Audio SPDIF out,0x00200000,1,1,ksproxy.ax,6.01.7601.17514 BDA Network Providers: Microsoft ATSC Network Provider,0x00200000,0,1,MSDvbNP.ax,6.06.7601.17514 Microsoft DVBC Network Provider,0x00200000,0,1,MSDvbNP.ax,6.06.7601.17514 Microsoft DVBS Network Provider,0x00200000,0,1,MSDvbNP.ax,6.06.7601.17514 Microsoft DVBT Network Provider,0x00200000,0,1,MSDvbNP.ax,6.06.7601.17514 Microsoft Network Provider,0x00200000,0,1,MSNP.ax,6.06.7601.17514 Video Capture Sources: Integrated Webcam,0x00200000,1,2,ksproxy.ax,6.01.7601.17514 Multi-Instance Capable VBI Codecs: VBI Codec,0x00600000,1,4,VBICodec.ax,6.06.7601.17514 BDA Transport Information Renderers: BDA MPEG2 Transport Information Filter,0x00600000,2,0,psisrndr.ax,6.06.7601.17669 MPEG-2 Sections and Tables,0x00600000,1,0,Mpeg2Data.ax,6.06.7601.17514 BDA CP/CA Filters: Decrypt/Tag,0x00600000,1,1,EncDec.dll,6.06.7601.17708 Encrypt/Tag,0x00200000,0,0,EncDec.dll,6.06.7601.17708 PTFilter,0x00200000,0,0,EncDec.dll,6.06.7601.17708 XDS Codec,0x00200000,0,0,EncDec.dll,6.06.7601.17708 WDM Streaming Communication Transforms: Tee/Sink-to-Sink Converter,0x00200000,1,1,ksproxy.ax,6.01.7601.17514 Audio Renderers: Speakers (High Definition Audio,0x00200000,1,0,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 Default DirectSound Device,0x00800000,1,0,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 Default WaveOut Device,0x00200000,1,0,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 Digital Audio (S/PDIF) (High De,0x00200000,1,0,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 DirectSound: Digital Audio (S/PDIF) (High Definition Audio Device),0x00200000,1,0,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 DirectSound: Speakers (High Definition Audio Device),0x00200000,1,0,quartz.dll,6.06.7601.17713 --------------- EVR Power Information --------------- Current Setting: {651288E5-A7ED-4076-A96B-6CC62D848FE1} (Balanced) Quality Flags: 2576 Enabled: Force throttling Allow half deinterlace Allow scaling Decode Power Usage: 100 Balanced Flags: 1424 Enabled: Force throttling Allow batching Force half deinterlace Force scaling Decode Power Usage: 50 PowerFlags: 1424 Enabled: Force throttling Allow batching Force half deinterlace Force scaling Decode Power Usage: 0

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• sp_send_dbmail attach files stored as varbinary in database

  - by Mindstorm Interactive

  I have a two part question relating to sending query results as attachments using sp_send_dbmail. Problem 1: Only basic .txt files will open. Any other format like .pdf or .jpg are corrupted. Problem 2: When attempting to send multiple attachments, I receive one file with all file names glued together. I'm running SQL Server 2005 and I have a table storing uploaded documents: CREATE TABLE [dbo].[EmailAttachment]( [EmailAttachmentID] [int] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL, [MassEmailID] [int] NULL, -- foreign key [FileData] [varbinary](max) NOT NULL, [FileName] [varchar](100) NOT NULL, [MimeType] [varchar](100) NOT NULL I also have a MassEmail table with standard email stuff. Here is the SQL Send Mail script. For brevity, I've excluded declare statements. while ( (select count(MassEmailID) from MassEmail where status = 20 )>0) begin select @MassEmailID = Min(MassEmailID) from MassEmail where status = 20 select @Subject = [Subject] from MassEmail where MassEmailID = @MassEmailID select @Body = Body from MassEmail where MassEmailID = @MassEmailID set @query = 'set nocount on; select cast(FileData as varchar(max)) from Mydatabase.dbo.EmailAttachment where MassEmailID = '+ CAST(@MassEmailID as varchar(100)) select @filename = '' select @filename = COALESCE(@filename+ ',', '') +FileName from EmailAttachment where MassEmailID = @MassEmailID exec msdb.dbo.sp_send_dbmail @profile_name = 'MASS_EMAIL', @recipients = '[email protected]', @subject = @Subject, @body =@Body, @body_format ='HTML', @query = @query, @query_attachment_filename = @filename, @attach_query_result_as_file = 1, @query_result_separator = '; ', @query_no_truncate = 1, @query_result_header = 0; update MassEmailset status= 30,SendDate = GetDate() where MassEmailID = @MassEmailID end I am able to successfully read files from the database so I know the binary data is not corrupted. .txt files only read when I cast FilaData to varchar. But clearly original headers are lost. It's also worth noting that attachment file sizes are different than the original files. That is most likely due to improper encoding as well. So I'm hoping there's a way to create file headers using the stored mimetype, or some way to include file headers in the binary data? I'm also not confident in the values of the last few parameters, and I know coalesce is not quite right, because it prepends the first file name with a comma. But good documentation is nearly impossible to find. Please help!

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• Create a WCF REST Client Proxy Programatically (in C#)

  - by Tawani

  I am trying to create a REST Client proxy programatically in C# using the code below but I keep getting a CommunicationException error. Am I missing something? public static class WebProxyFactory { public static T Create<T>(string url) where T : class { ServicePointManager.Expect100Continue = false; WebHttpBinding binding = new WebHttpBinding(); binding.MaxReceivedMessageSize = 1000000; WebChannelFactory<T> factory = new WebChannelFactory<T>(binding, new Uri(url)); T proxy = factory.CreateChannel(); return proxy; } public static T Create<T>(string url, string userName, string password) where T : class { ServicePointManager.Expect100Continue = false; WebHttpBinding binding = new WebHttpBinding(); binding.Security.Mode = WebHttpSecurityMode.TransportCredentialOnly; binding.Security.Transport.ClientCredentialType = HttpClientCredentialType.Basic; binding.UseDefaultWebProxy = false; binding.MaxReceivedMessageSize = 1000000; WebChannelFactory<T> factory = new WebChannelFactory<T>(binding, new Uri(url)); ClientCredentials credentials = factory.Credentials; credentials.UserName.UserName = userName; credentials.UserName.Password = password; T proxy = factory.CreateChannel(); return proxy; } } So that I can use it as follows: IMyRestService proxy = WebProxyFactory.Create<IMyRestService>(url, usr, pwd); var result = proxy.GetSomthing(); // Fails right here

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• MVC Html.ActionLink not passing querystring properly

  - by Dave Hanna

  This seems like it should be pretty straight forward, but I'm apparently confused. I have a List view that displays a paged list. At the bottom I have a set of actionlinks: <%= Html.ActionLink("First Page", "List", new { page = 1} ) %> &nbsp; <%= Html.ActionLink("Prev Page", "List", new { page = Model.PageNumber - 1 }) %> &nbsp; <%= Html.ActionLink("Next Page", "List", new { page = Model.PageNumber + 1 }) %> &nbsp; <%= Html.ActionLink("Last Page", "List", new { page = Model.LastPage } )%> I'm using the basic default routes setup, except with "List" substituted for "Index": routes.MapRoute( "Default", // Route name "{controller}/{action}/{id}", // URL with parameters new { controller = "Home", action = "List", id = UrlParameter.Optional } // Parameter defaults ); The problem is that the ActionLink helpers are generating links of the form: http://localhost:2083/Retrofit?page=2 rather than http://localhost:2083/Retrofit/?page=2 (with the trailing slash after the controller name & before the query string). When the first URL is routed, it completely loses the query string - if I look at Request.QueryString by the time it gets to the controller, it's null. If I enter the second URL (with the trailing slash), it comes in properly (i.e., QueryString of "page=2"). So how can I either get the ActionLink helper to generate the right URL, or get the Routing to properly parse what ActionLink is generating? Thanks.

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• Configuring WCF 4 with routing (global.asax) for both http & https endpoints

  - by jammer59

  I'm still a newbie with wcf and not too well informed in .net in general. I have a WCF 4 web service that uses the global.asax routing approach and very simplified web.config using the standard endpoint method. This wcf service runs as an application with the default web site on iis 7.5 at present. I need it support both http and https interfaces, if possible. If that's too complex then only https. How is that best handled maintaining the current approach? The contents of the global.asax.cs and web.config files are pretty basic: public class Global : HttpApplication { void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { RegisterRoutes(); } private void RegisterRoutes() { // Edit the base address of Service1 by replacing the "ippay" string below RouteTable.Routes.Add(new ServiceRoute("myservice", new WebServiceHostFactory(), typeof(myservice))); } } <system.serviceModel> <serviceHostingEnvironment aspNetCompatibilityEnabled="true"/> <standardEndpoints> <webHttpEndpoint> <standardEndpoint name="" helpEnabled="true" contentTypeMapper="myservice.Util.RawMapper,myservice"> </standardEndpoint> </webHttpEndpoint> </standardEndpoints>

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• Core Data migration problem: "Persistent store migration failed, missing source managed object model

  - by John Gallagher

  The Background A Cocoa Non Document Core Data project with two Managed Object Models. Model 1 stays the same. Model 2 has changed, so I want to migrate the store. I've created a new version by Design Data Model Add Model Version in Xcode. The difference between versions is a single relationship that's been changed from to a one to many. I've made my changes to the model, then saved. I've made a new Mapping Model that has the old model as a source and new model as a destination. I've ensured all Mapping Models and Data Models and are being compiled and all are copied to the Resource folder of my app bundle. I've switched on migrations by passing in a dictionary with the NSMigratePersistentStoresAutomaticallyOption key as [NSNumber numberWithBool:YES] when adding the Persistent Store. Rather than merging all models in the bundle, I've specified the two models I want to use (model 1 and the new version of model 2) and merged them using modelByMergingModels: The Problem No matter what I do to migrate, I get the error message: "Persistent store migration failed, missing source managed object model." What I've Tried I clean after every single build. I've tried various combinations of having only the model I'm migrating to in Resources, being compiled, or both. Since the error message implies it can't find the source model for my migration, I've tried having every version of the model in both the Resources folder and being compiled. I've made sure I'm not making a really basic error by switching back to the original version of my data model. The app runs fine. I've deleted the Mapping Model and the new version of the model, cleaned, then recreated both. I've tried making a different change in the new model - deleting an entity instead. I'm at my wits end. I can't help but think I've made a huge mistake somewhere that I'm not seeing. Any ideas?

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• Detect blocked popup in Chrome

  - by Andrew

  I am aware of javascript techniques to detect whether a popup is blocked in other browsers (as described in the answer to this question). Here's the basic test: var newWin = window.open(url); if(!newWin || newWin.closed || typeof newWin.closed=='undefined') { //POPUP BLOCKED } But this does not work in Chrome. The "POPUP BLOCKED" section is never reached when the popup is blocked. Of course, the test is working to an extent since Chrome doesn't actually block the popup, but opens it in a tiny minimized window at the lower right corner which lists "blocked" popups. What I would like to do is be able to tell if the popup was blocked by Chrome's popup blocker. I try to avoid browser sniffing in favor of feature detection. Is there a way to do this without browser sniffing? Edit: I have now tried making use of newWin.outerHeight, newWin.left, and other similar properties to accomplish this. Google Chrome returns all position and height values as 0 when the popup is blocked. Unfortunately, it also returns the same values even if the popup is actually opened for an unknown amount of time. After some magical period (a couple of seconds in my testing), the location and size information is returned as the correct values. In other words, I'm still no closer to figuring this out. Any help would be appreciated.

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