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• Private Cloud: Putting some method behind the madness

  - by Sudip Datta

  Finally, I decided to join the blogging community. And what could be a better time to start than the week after OpenWorld 2012. 50K+ attendees, demonstrations, speaker sessions and a whole lot of buzz on Oracle Cloud..It was raining clouds in this year's Openworld. I am not here to write about Oracle's cloud strategy in general, but on Enterprise Manager's cloud management capabilities. This year's Openworld was the first after we announced the 12c Cloud Control and we were happy to share the stage with quite a few early adopters. Stay tuned for videos from our customers and partners, I will post them as they get published. I met a number of platform administrators in Oracle-DBAs, Middleware Admins, SOA Admins...The cloud has affected them all, at least to the point where it beckoned more than just curiosity..Most IT infrastructure are already heavily virtualized (on VMWare and on others including Oracle VM), and some would claim they are already on “cloud” (at least their Sysadmins told them so). But none of them were confident of the benefits because their pain points continued to grow.. Isn't cloud supposed to ease those? Instead, they were chasing hundreds of databases running on hundreds of VMs, often with as much certainty propounded by Heisenberg. What happened to the age-old IT discipline around administration, compliance, configuration management? VMs are great for what they are. I personally think they have opened the doors to new approaches in which an application stack gets provisioned and updated. In fact, Enterprise Manager 12c is possibly the only tool out there that can provision full-fledged application as VM Assemblies. In this year's Openworld, customers talked on how they provisioned RAC and Siebel assemblies, which as the techies out there know, are not trivial (hearing provisioning time for Siebel down from weeks to hours was gratifying indeed). However, I do have an issue with a "one-size fits all" approach to cloud. In a week's span, I met several personas: Project owners requiring an EC2 like VM instance for their projects Admins needing the same for Sparc-Solaris. DBAs requiring dedicated databases for new projects APEX Developers needing just a ready-to-consume schema as a service Java Developers looking for a runtime platform QA engineers needing a fast clone of their production environment If you drill down further, you will end up peeling more layers of the details. For example, the requirements for Load testing and Functional testing are very different. For Load testing the test environment should ideally be the same as the production. You shouldn't run production on Exadata and load test on a VM; they will just not be good representations of one another. For Functional testing it does not possibly matter. DBAs seem to be at the worst affected of the lot. It seems they have been asked to choose between agile provisioning and  faster runtime performance. And in some cases, it is really a Hobson's choice, because their infrastructure provider made no distinction between the OLTP application and the Virtual desktop! Sad indeed. When one looks at the portfolio of services that we already offer (vanilla IaaS, VM Assembly based PaaS, DBaaS) or have announced (Java PaaS, Instant Cloning, Schema-aaS), one can possibly think that we are trying to be the "renaissance man" ! Well I would have possibly digested that had it not been for the various personas that I described above. Getting the use cases right is very important for an application such as cloud management. We iterate and iterate over these over and over again and re-validate them in CABs (Customer Advisory Boards). We consider over the major aspects of tenancy: service placement, resource isolation (can a tenant execute an expensive SQL and run away with all the resources), quota and security. We, in Engineering, keep reminding ourselves that we are dealing with enterprise clouds. We owe it to our customer base ! In the coming posts, I will drill down more into each of the services. In the meanwhile, here are some collateral and  demos for starters with EM 12c. http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/oem/cloud-mgmt/index.html Sudip Datta The views expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Oracle. Stay Connected: Twitter | Facebook | YouTube | Linkedin | Newsletter --

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• Using Definition of Done to Drive Agile Maturity

  - by Dylan Smith

  I’ve been an Agile Coach at a lot of different clients over the years, and I want to share an approach I use to help them adopt and mature over time. It’s important to realize that “Agile” is not a black/white yes/no thing. Teams can be varying degrees of agile. I think of this as their agile maturity level. When I coach teams I want them to start out being a little agile, and get more agile as they mature. The approach I teach them is to use the definition of done as a technique to continuously improve their agile maturity over time. We’re probably all familiar with the concept of “Done Done” that represents what *actually* being done a feature means. Not just when a developer says he’s done right after he writes that last line of code that makes the feature kind-of work. Done Done means the coding is done, it’s been tested, installers and deployment packages have been created, user manuals have been updated, architecture docs have been updated, etc. To enable teams to internalize the concept of “Done Done”, they usually get together and come up with their Definition of Done (DoD) that defines all the activities that need to be completed before a feature is considered Done Done. The Done Done technique typically is applied only to features (aka User Stories). What I do is extend this to apply to several concepts such as User Stories, Sprints, Releases (and sometimes Check-Ins). During project kick-off I’ll usually sit down with the team and go through an exercise of creating DoD’s for each of these concepts (Stories/Sprints/Releases). We’ll usually start by just brainstorming a bunch of activities that could end up in these various DoD’s. Here’s some examples: Code Reviews StyleCop FxCop User Manuals Updated Architecture Docs Updated Tested by QA Tested by UAT Installers Created Support Knowledge Base Updated Deployment Instructions (for Ops) written Automated Unit Tests Run Automated Integration Tests Run Then we start by arranging these activities into the place they occur today (e.g. Do you do UAT testing only once per release? every sprint? every feature?). If the team was previously Waterfall most of these activities probably end up in the Release DoD. An extremely mature agile team would probably have most of these activities in the DoD for the User Stories (because an extremely mature agile team will probably do continuous deployment and release every story). So what we need to do as a team, is work to move these activities from their current home (Release DoD) down into the Sprint DoD and eventually into the User Story DoD (and maybe into the lower-level Check-In DoD if we decide to use that). We don’t have to move them all down to User Story immediately, but as a team we figure out what we think we’re capable of moving down to the Sprint cycle, and Story cycle immediately, and that becomes our starting DoD’s. Over time the team makes an effort to continue moving activities down from Release->Sprint->Story as they become more agile and more mature. I try to encourage them to envision a world in which they deploy to production as each User Story is completed. They would need to be updating User Manuals, creating installers, doing UAT testing (typical Release cycle activities) on every single User Story. They may never actually reach that point, but they should envision that, and strive to keep driving the activities down closer to the User Story cycle s they mature. This is a great technique to give a team an easy-to-follow roadmap to mature their agile practices over time. Sure there’s other aspects to maturity outside of this, but it’s a great technique, that’s easy to visualize, to drive agility into the team. Just keep moving those activities (aka “gates”) down the board from Release->Sprint->Story. I’ll try to give an example of what a recent client of mine had for their DoD’s (this is from memory, so probably not 100% accurate): Release Create/Update deployment Instructions For Ops Instructional Videos Updated Run manual regression test suite UAT Testing In this case that meant deploying to an environment shared across the enterprise that mirrored production and asking other business groups to test their own apps to ensure we didn’t break anything outside our system Sprint Deploy to UAT Environment But not necessarily actually request UAT testing occur User Guides updated Sprint Features Video Created In this case we decided to create a video each sprint showing off the progress (video version of Sprint Demo) User Story Manual Test scripts developed and run Tested by BA Deployed in shared QA environment Using automated deployment process Peer Code Review Code Check-In Compiled (warning-free) Passes StyleCop Passes FxCop Create installer packages Run Automated Tests Run Automated Integration Tests PS – One of my clients had a great question when we went through this activity. They said that if a Sprint is by definition done when the end-date rolls around (time-boxed), isn’t a DoD on a sprint meaningless – it’s done on the end-date regardless of whether those other activities are complete or not? My answer is that while that statement is true – the sprint is done regardless when the end date rolls around – if the DoD activities haven’t been completed I would consider the Sprint a failure (similar to not completing what was committed/planned – failure may be too strong a word but you get the idea). In the Retrospective that will become an agenda item to discuss and understand why we weren’t able to complete the activities we agreed would need to be completed each Sprint.

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• WMemoryProfiler is Released

  - by Alois Kraus

  What is it? WMemoryProfiler is a managed profiling Api to aid integration testing. This free library can get managed heap statistics and memory usage for your own process (remember testing) and other processes as well. The best thing is that it does work from .NET 2.0 up to .NET 4.5 in x86 and x64. To make it more interesting it can attach to any running .NET process. The reason why I do mention this is that commercial profilers do support this functionality only for their professional editions. An normally only since .NET 4.0 since the profiling API only since then does support attaching to a running process. This thing does differ in many aspects from “normal” profilers because while profiling yourself you can get all objects from all managed heaps back as an object array. If you ever wanted to change the state of an object which does only exist a method local in another thread you can get your hands on it now … Enough theory. Show me some code /// <summary> /// Show feature to not only get statisics out of a process but also the newly allocated /// instances since the last call to MarkCurrentObjects. /// GetNewObjects does return the newly allocated objects as object array /// </summary> static void InstanceTracking() { using (var dumper = new MemoryDumper()) // if you have problems use to see the debugger windows true,true)) { dumper.MarkCurrentObjects(); Allocate(); ILookup<Type, object> newObjects = dumper.GetNewObjects() .ToLookup( x => x.GetType() ); Console.WriteLine("New Strings:"); foreach (var newStr in newObjects[typeof(string)] ) { Console.WriteLine("Str: {0}", newStr); } } } … New Strings: Str: qqd Str: String data: Str: String data: 0 Str: String data: 1 … This is really hot stuff. Not only you can get heap statistics but you can directly examine the new objects and make queries upon them. When I do find more time I can reconstruct the object root graph from it from my own process. It this cool or what? You can also peek into the Finalization Queue to check if you did accidentally forget to dispose a whole bunch of objects … /// <summary> /// .NET 4.0 or above only. Get all finalizable objects which are ready for finalization and have no other object roots anymore. /// </summary> static void NotYetFinalizedObjects() { using (var dumper = new MemoryDumper()) { object[] finalizable = dumper.GetObjectsReadyForFinalization(); Console.WriteLine("Currently {0} objects of types {1} are ready for finalization. Consider disposing them before.", finalizable.Length, String.Join(",", finalizable.ToLookup( x=> x.GetType() ) .Select( x=> x.Key.Name)) ); } } How does it work? The W of WMemoryProfiler is a good hint. It does employ Windbg and SOS dll to do the heavy lifting and concentrates on an easy to use Api which does hide completely Windbg. If you do not want to see Windbg you will never see it. In my experience the most complex thing is actually to download Windbg from the Windows 8 Stanalone SDK. This is described in the Readme and the exception you are greeted with if it is missing in much greater detail. So I will not go into this here.   What Next? Depending on the feedback I do get I can imagine some features which might be useful as well Calculate first order GC Roots from the actual object graph Identify global statics in Types in object graph Support read out of finalization queue of .NET 2.0 as well. Support Memory Dump analysis (again a feature only supported by commercial profilers in their professional editions if it is supported at all) Deserialize objects from a memory dump into a live process back (this would need some more investigation but it is doable) The last item needs some explanation. Why on earth would you want to do that? The basic idea is to store in your live process some logging/tracing data which can become quite big but since it is never written to it is very fast to generate. When your process crashes with a memory dump you could transfer this data structure back into a live viewer which can then nicely display your program state at the point it did crash. This is an advanced trouble shooting technique I have not seen anywhere yet but it could be quite useful. You can have here a look at the current feature list of WMemoryProfiler with some examples.   How To Get Started? First I would download the released source package (it is tiny). And compile the complete project. Then you can compile the Example project (it has this name) and uncomment in the main method the scenario you want to check out. If you are greeted with an exception it is time to install the Windows 8 Standalone SDK which is described in great detail in the exception text. Thats it for the first round. I have seen something more limited in the Java world some years ago (now I cannot find the link anymore) but anyway. Now we have something much better.

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• Content in Context: The right medicine for your business applications

  - by Lance Shaw

  For many of you, your companies have already invested in a number of applications that are critical to the way your business is run. HR, Payroll, Legal, Accounts Payable, and while they might need an upgrade in some cases, they are all there and handling the lifeblood of your business. But are they really running as efficiently as they could be? For many companies, the answer is no. The problem has to do with the important information caught up within documents and paper. It’s everywhere except where it truly needs to be – readily available right within the context of the application itself. When the right information cannot be easily found, business processes suffer significantly. The importance of this recently struck me when I recently went to meet my new doctor and get a routine physical. Walking into the office lobby, I couldn't help but notice rows and rows of manila folders in racks from floor to ceiling, filled with documents and sensitive, personal information about various patients like myself.  As I looked at all that paper and all that history, two things immediately popped into my head.  “How do they find anything?” and then the even more alarming, “So much for information security!” It sure looked to me like all those documents could be accessed by anyone with a key to the building. Now the truth is that the offices of many general practitioners look like this all over the United States and the world.  But it had me thinking, is the same thing going on in just about any company around the world, involving a wide variety of important business processes? Probably so. Think about all the various processes going on in your company right now. Invoice payments are being processed through Accounts Payable, contracts are being reviewed by Procurement, and Human Resources is reviewing job candidate submissions and doing background checks. All of these processes and many more like them rely on access to forms and documents, whether they are paper or digital. Now consider that it is estimated that employee’s spend nearly 9 hours a week searching for information and not finding it. That is a lot of very well paid employees, spending more than one day per week not doing their regular job while they search for or re-create what already exists. Back in the doctor’s office, I saw this trend exemplified as well. First, I had to fill out a new patient form, even though my previous doctor had transferred my records over months previously. After filling out the form, I was later introduced to my new doctor who then interviewed me and asked me the exact same questions that I had answered on the form. I understand that there is value in the interview process and it was great to meet my new doctor, but this simple process could have been so much more efficient if the information already on file could have been brought directly together with the new patient information I had provided. Instead of having a highly paid medical professional re-enter the same information into the records database, the form I filled out could have been immediately scanned into the system, associated with my previous information, discrepancies identified, and the entire process streamlined significantly. We won’t solve the health records management issues that exist in the United States in this blog post, but this example illustrates how the automation of information capture and classification can eliminate a lot of repetitive and costly human entry and re-creation, even in a simple process like new patient on-boarding. In a similar fashion, by taking a fresh look at the various processes in place today in your organization, you can likely spot points along the way where automating the capture and access to the right information could be significantly improved. As you evaluate how content-process flows through your organization, take a look at how departments and regions share information between the applications they are using. Business applications are often implemented on an individual department basis to solve specific problems but a holistic approach to overall information management is not taken at the same time. The end result over the years is disparate applications with separate information repositories and in many cases these contain duplicate information, or worse, slightly different versions of the same information. This is where Oracle WebCenter Content comes into the story. More and more companies are realizing that they can significantly improve their existing application processes by automating the capture of paper, forms and other content. This makes the right information immediately accessible in the context of the business process and making the same information accessible across departmental systems which has helped many organizations realize significant cost savings. Here on the Oracle WebCenter team, one of our primary goals is to help customers find new ways to be more effective, more cost-efficient and manage information as effectively as possible. We have a series of three webcasts occurring over the next few weeks that are focused on the integration of enterprise content management within the context of business applications. We hope you will join us for one or all three and that you will find them informative. Click here to learn more about these sessions and to register for them. There are many aspects of information management to consider as you look at integrating content management within your business applications. We've barely scratched the surface here but look for upcoming blog posts where we will discuss more specifics on the value of delivering documents, forms and images directly within applications like Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft Enterprise, JD Edwards Enterprise One, Siebel CRM and many others. What do you think?  Are your important business processes as healthy as they can be?  Do you have any insights to share on the value of delivering content directly within critical business processes? Please post a comment and let us know the value you have realized, the lessons learned and what specific areas you are interested in.

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• SOA, Governance, and Drugs

  Why is IT governance important in service oriented architecture (SOA)? IT Governance provides a framework for making appropriate decisions based on company guidelines and accepted standards. This framework also outlines each stakeholder’s responsibilities and authority when making important architectural or design decisions. Furthermore, this framework of governance defines parameters and constraints that are used to give context and perspective when making decisions. The use of governance as it applies to SOA ensures that specific design principles and patterns are used when developing and maintaining services. When governance is consistently applied systems the following benefits are achieved according to Anne Thomas Manes in 2010. Governance makes sure that services conform to standard interface patterns, common data modeling practices, and promotes the incorporation of existing system functionality by building on top of other available services across a system. Governance defines development standards based on proven design principles and patterns that promote reuse and composition. Governance provides developers a set of proven design principles, standards and practices that promote the reduction in system based component dependencies.  By following these guidelines, individual components will be easier to maintain. For me personally, I am a fan of IT governance, and feel that it valuable part of any corporate IT department. However, depending on how it is implemented can really affect the value of using IT governance.  Companies need to find a way to ensure that governance does not become extreme in its policies and procedures. I know for me personally, I would really dislike working under a completely totalitarian or laissez-faire version of governance. Developers need to be able to be creative in their designs and too much governance can really impede the design process and prevent the most optimal design from being developed. On the other hand, with no governance enforced, no standards will be followed and accepted design patterns will be ignored. I have personally had to spend a lot of time working on this particular scenario and I have found that the concept of code reuse and composition is almost nonexistent.  Based on this, too much time and money is wasted on redeveloping existing aspects of an application that already exist within the system as a whole. I think moving forward we will see a staggered form of IT governance, regardless if it is for SOA or IT in general.  Depending on the size of a company and the size of its IT department,  I can see IT governance as a layered approach in that the top layer will be defined by enterprise architects that focus on abstract concepts pertaining to high level design, general  guidelines, acceptable best practices, and recommended design patterns.  The next layer will be defined by solution architects or department managers that further expand on abstracted guidelines defined by the enterprise architects. This layer will contain further definitions as to when various design patterns, coding standards, and best practices are to be applied based on the context of the solutions that are being developed by the department. The final layer will be defined by the system designer or a solutions architect assed to a project in that they will define what design patterns will be used in a solution, naming conventions, as well as outline how a system will function based on the best practices defined by the previous layers. This layered approach allows for IT departments to be flexible in that system designers have creative leeway in designing solutions to meet the needs of the business, but they must operate within the confines of the abstracted IT governance guidelines.  A real world example of this can be seen in the United States as it pertains to governance of the people in that the US government defines rules and regulations in the abstract and then the state governments take these guidelines and applies them based on the will of the people in each individual state. Furthermore, the county or city governments are the ones that actually enforce these rules based on how they are interpreted by local community.  To further define my example, the United States government defines that marijuana is illegal. Each individual state has the option to determine this regulation as it wishes in that the state of Florida determines that all uses of the drug are illegal, but the state of California legally allows the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes only. Based on these accepted practices each local government enforces these rules in that a police officer will arrest anyone in the state of Florida for having this drug on them if they walk down the street, but in California if a person has a medical prescription for the drug they will not get arrested.  REFERENCESThomas Manes, Anne. (2010). Understanding SOA Governance: http://www.soamag.com/I40/0610-2.php

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• UK OUG Conference Highlights and Insights

  - by Richard Bingham

  As per my preemptive post, this was the first time the annual conference organized by the UK Oracle User Group (UKOUG) was split into two events, one for Oracle Applications and another in December for Oracle Technology. Apps13, as it was branded, was hailed as a success, with over 1000 registered attendees and three days of sessions, exhibition, round-tables and many other types of content. As this poster on their stand illustrates, the UKOUG is a strong community with popular participants from both big and small Oracle partners and customers. The venue was a more intimate setting than previous years also, allowing everyone to casually bump into those they hoped to. It gave a real feeling of an Apps Community. The main themes over the days where CRM and Customer Experience, HCM, and FIN/SCM. This allowed people to attend just one focused day if they wanted. In addition the Apps Transformation stream ran across all three days, offering insights, advice, and details on the newer product solutions like Fusion Applications.  Here are some of the key take-aways I got from the conference, specific to my role in Fusion Applications Developer Relations: User Experience continues to be a significant reason for adopting some of the newer application products available, with immediately obvious gains in user productivity and satisfaction reported by customers. Also this doesn't stop with the baked-in UX either, with their Design Patterns proving popular and indeed currently being extended to including things like extending on ADF mobile and customizing the Simplified UI. More on this to come from us soon. The executive sessions emphasized the "it's a journey" phrase, illustrating that modern business applications are powered by technologies such as Cloud, Mobile, Social and Big Data and these can be harnessed to help propel your organization forward. Indeed the emphasis is away from the traditional vendor prescribed linear applications road map, and towards plotting a course based on business priorities supported by a broad range of integrated solutions. To help with this several conference sessions demoed the new "Applications Navigator" tool, developed in partnership with OUG members, which offers a visual framework to help organizations plan their Oracle Applications investments around business and technology imperatives. Initial reaction was positive, especially as customers do not need to decipher Oracle's huge product catalog and embeds the best blend of proven and integrated applications solutions. We'll share more on this when it is generally available. Several sessions focused around explanations and interpretation of Oracle OpenWorld 2013, helping highlight the key Oracle Applications messages and directions. With a relative small percentage of conference attendees also at OpenWorld (from a show of hands) this was a popular way to distill the information available down into specific items of interest for the community. Please note the original OpenWorld 2013 content is still available for download but will not remain available forever (via the Oracle website OpenWorld Content Catalog > pick a session > see the PDF download). With the release of E-Business Suite 12.2 the move to develop and deploy on the Fusion Middleware stack becomes a reality for many Oracle Applications customers. This coupled with recent E-Business Suite features such as the Integrated SOA Gateway and the E-Business Suite SDK for Java, illustrates how the gap between the technologies and techniques involved in extending E-Business Suite and Fusion Applications is quickly narrowing. We'll see this merging continue to evolve going forwards. Getting started with Oracle Cloud Applications is actually easier than many customers expected, with a broad selection of both large and medium sized organizations explaining how they added new features to their existing Oracle Applications portfolios. New functionality available from Fusion HCM and CX are popular extensions that do not have to disrupt those core business services. Coexistence is the buzzword here, and the available integration is also simpler than many expected, commonly involving an initial setup data load, then regularly incremental synchronizations, often without a need for real-time constant communication between systems. With much of this pre-built already the implementation process is also quite rapid. With most people dressed in suits, we wanted to get the conversations going without the traditional english reserve, so we decided to make ourselves a bit more obvious, as the photo below shows. This seemed to be quite successful and helped those interested identify and approach us. Keep a look out for similar again. In fact if you're in the UK there is an "Apps Transformation Day" planned by the UKOUG for the 19th March 2014, with more details to follow. Again something we'll be sure to participate in. I am hoping to attend the next half of the UKOUG annual conference, Tech13, that focuses more on Oracle technology and where there is more likely to be larger attendance of those interested in the lower-level aspects of applications customization and development. If you're going, let me know and maybe we can meet up.

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• The Next Frontier: Java Embedded @ JavaOne

  - by Kristin Rose

  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;} Now more than ever, the Java platform is the best technology for many embedded use cases. Java’s platform independence, high level of functionality, security, and developer productivity, address the key pain points in building embedded solutions... and that’s not just our opinion. Take a look at the new IDC report on Oracle’s stewardship of Java, “Java: Two and a half Years After the Acquisition” (doc #236309, August 2012). Java already powers around 3 billion devices worldwide, with traditional desktops and servers being only a small portion of that, and the ‘Internet of Things‘ is just really starting to explode. It is estimated that within five years, intelligent and connected embedded devices will outnumber desktops and mobile phones combined, and will generate the majority of the traffic on the Internet. Is your platform and services strategy ready for the coming disruptions and opportunities? It should come as no surprise that Oracle is enthusiastically focused on Java for Embedded .  New this year, Oracle is demonstrating its further commitment to the embedded marketplace by offering, for the first time, a dedicated conference focused on the business aspects of embedded Java: Java Embedded @ JavaOne. Co-located with the technically-focused JavaOne conference, Java Embedded @ JavaOne will run for two days in San Francisco targeting C-level executives, architects, business leaders, and decision makers. With 24 inspired business sessions with expert speakers from 18 prominent companies driving the next generation of Java Embedded business solutions (such as Cinterion, ARM, Hitachi and Rockwell Automation), attendees will learn how Java Embedded technologies and solutions can offer compelling value and a clear path forward to business efficiency and agility. You’ll also see how Oracle’s comprehensive technology portfolio can deliver a complete ‘Machine to Machine’ platform, from device to datacenter, resulting in a highly secure, resilient, high-performance and cost-effective solution. Seating is limited and we expect a lot of interest in this new event, so please register now! Note that if you are already attending the Oracle OpenWorld or JavaOne conferences, you can attend this conference for only $100 more. Watch my video below to find out more. I hope to see you there! Judson Althoff SVP of WWA&C 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;} 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;}

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• Data Source Security Part 1

  - by Steve Felts

  I’ve written a couple of articles on how to store data source security credentials using the Oracle wallet.  I plan to write a few articles on the various types of security available to WebLogic Server (WLS) data sources.  There are more options than you might think! There have been several enhancements in this area in WLS 10.3.6.  There are a couple of more enhancements planned for release WLS 12.1.2 that I will include here for completeness.  This isn’t intended as a teaser.  If you call your Oracle support person, you can get them now as minor patches to WLS 10.3.6.   The current security documentation is scattered in a few places, has a few incorrect statements, and is missing a few topics.  It also seems that the knowledge of how to apply some of these features isn’t written down.  The goal of these articles is to talk about WLS data source security in a unified way and to introduce some approaches to using the available features.  Introduction to WebLogic Data Source Security Options By default, you define a single database user and password for a data source.  You can store it in the data source descriptor or make use of the Oracle wallet.  This is a very simple and efficient approach to security.  All of the connections in the connection pool are owned by this user and there is no special processing when a connection is given out.  That is, it’s a homogeneous connection pool and any request can get any connection from a security perspective (there are other aspects like affinity).  Regardless of the end user of the application, all connections in the pool use the same security credentials to access the DBMS.   No additional information is needed when you get a connection because it’s all available from the data source descriptor (or wallet). java.sql.Connection conn =  mydatasource.getConnection(); Note: You can enter the password as a name-value pair in the Properties field (this not permitted for production environments) or you can enter it in the Password field of the data source descriptor. The value in the Password field overrides any password value defined in the Properties passed to the JDBC Driver when creating physical database connections. It is recommended that you use the Password attribute in place of the password property in the properties string because the Password value is encrypted in the configuration file (stored as the password-encrypted attribute in the jdbc-driver-params tag in the module file) and is hidden in the administration console.  The Properties and Password fields are located on the administration console Data Source creation wizard or Data Source Configuration tab. The JDBC API can also be used to programmatically specify a database user name and password as in the following.  java.sql.Connection conn = mydatasource.getConnection(“user”, “password”); According to the JDBC specification, it’s supposed to take a database user and associated password but different vendors implement this differently.  WLS, by default, treats this as an application server user and password.  The pair is authenticated to see if it’s a valid user and that user is used for WLS security permission checks.  By default, the user is then mapped to a database user and password using the data source credential mapper, so this API sort of follows the specification but database credentials are one-step removed from the application code.  More details and the rationale are described later. While the default approach is simple, it does mean that only one database user is doing all of the work.  You can’t figure out who actually did the update and you can’t restrict SQL operations by who is running the operation, at least at the database level.   Any type of per-user logic will need to be in the application code instead of having the database do it.  There are various WLS data source features that can be configured to provide some per-user information about the operations to the database. WebLogic Data Source Security Options This table describes the features available for WebLogic data sources to configure database security credentials and a brief description.  It also captures information about the compatibility of these features with one another. Feature Description Can be used with Can’t be used with User authentication (default) Default getConnection(user, password) behavior – validate the input and use the user/password in the descriptor. Set client identifier Proxy Session, Identity pooling, Use database credentials Use database credentials Instead of using the credential mapper, use the supplied user and password directly. Set client identifier, Proxy session, Identity pooling User authentication, Multi Data Source Set Client Identifier Set a client identifier property associated with the connection (Oracle and DB2 only). Everything Proxy Session Set a light-weight proxy user associated with the connection (Oracle-only). Set client identifier, Use database credentials Identity pooling, User authentication Identity pooling Heterogeneous pool of connections owned by specified users. Set client identifier, Use database credentials Proxy session, User authentication, Labeling, Multi-datasource, Active GridLink Note that all of these features are available with both XA and non-XA drivers. Currently, the Proxy Session and Use Database Credentials options are on the Oracle tab of the Data Source Configuration tab of the administration console (even though the Use Database Credentials feature is not just for Oracle databases – oops).  The rest of the features are on the Identity tab of the Data Source Configuration tab in the administration console (plan on seeing them all in one place in the future). The subsequent articles will describe these features in more detail.  Keep referring back to this table to see the big picture.

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• Ajax comments form in ASP.NET MVC2

  - by Artiom Chilaru

  I've been playing around with different aspects of MVC for some time now, and I've reached a situation where I'm not sure what would be the best way to solve a problem. I'm hoping that the SO community will help me out here :P I've seen a number of examples of Ajax.BeginForm on the internet, and it seems like a very nifty idea. E.g. you have a dropdown where you select a customer - and on selecting one it will load this client's details in some placeholder on the page. This works perfectly fine. But what to do if you want to tie in some validation in the box? Just hypothetically, imagine an article page, and user comments in the bottom. Below the comments area there's an ajax-y "Add comment" box. When a user adds a comment, it will appear in the comments area, below the last comment there. If I set the Ajax.BeginForm to Append the result of the call to the Comments area, it will work fine. But what if the data posted is not valid? Instead of appending a "successful" comment to the comments area I have to show the user validation errors. At this point I decided that the area INSIDE the Ajax.BeginForm will be inside a partial, and the form's submits will return this partial. Validation works fine. On each submit we reload the contents inside the form element. But how to add the successful comment to the top? Other things to consider: The comment form also has a "Preview" button. When the user clicks on Preview, I should load the rendered comment into a preview box. This will probably be inside the form area as well. I was thinking of using Json results instead. When the user submits the form, the server code will generate a Json object with a Success value, and html rendered partials as some properties. Something like { "success": true, "form": "<html form data>", "comment": "successful comment html to inject into the page" } This would be a perfect solution, except there's no way in MVC to render a partial into a string, inside the controller (separation of context, remember?). So.. what should I do then? Any "correct" way to implement this?

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• Multiple tables\objects in one nHibernate mapping

  - by Morrislgn

  Hi Folks I am trying to create an nHibernate mapping for a class structure like so: class UserDetails{ Guid id; User user; Role role; public User UserInfo{ get;set; } public Role UserRoles{ get;set; } public Guid ID{ Get; set; } } class User{ string name; int id; public string Name{ get;set; } public int ID{ get;set; } } class Role{ string roleName; string roleDesc; int roleId; public string RoleName{ get;set; } public string RoleDesc{ get;set; } public int RoleID{ get;set; } } The underlying DB structure is similar to the tables, but there is a linking table which links user and role using their respective IDs: UserRoleLinkTable[ identity User_Role_ID (pk) userID (FK to User table) roleid (FK to Role table) ] After playing about with nHibernate this is similar to what I want to try and achieve (but it doesnt work!): <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <hibernate-mapping xmlns="urn:nhibernate-mapping-2.2" assembly="Admin" namespace="Admin" > <class name="UserDetails" lazy="false" table="USER"> <id name="ID"> <generator class="guid"></generator> </id> <one-to-one name="UserInfo" class="User" lazy="false" cascade="none"/> <bag name="UserRoles" inverse="false" table="Role" lazy="false" cascade="none" > <key column="Role" /> <many-to-many class="Role" column="ROLE_ID" /> </bag> </class> </hibernate-mapping> I have mappings\entities which appear to work for Role and User (used in other aspects of the project) objects but how do I pull this information into one UserDetails class? The point of the user details to be able to return all this information together as one object. Is it possible to create (for want of a better description) a container using an nHibernate mapping and map the data that way? Hopefully there is enough info to help work this out - thanks in advance for all help given! Cheers, Morris

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• Can Spring.Net function as PostSharp?

  - by Alex K

  A few months back I've discovered PostSharp, and for a time, it was good. But then legal came back with an answer saying that they don't like the licence of the old versions. Then the department told me that 2.0's price was unacceptably high (for the number of seats we need)... I was extremely disapponted, but not disheartened. Can't be the only such framework, I thought. I kept looking for a replacement, but most of it was either dead, ill maintained (especially in documentation department), for academic use, or all of the above (I'm looking at you Aspect.Net) Then I've discovered Spring.Net, and for a time, it was good. I've been reading the documentation and it went on to paint what seemed to be a supperior picture of an AOP nirvana. No longer was I locked to attributes to mark where I wanted code interception to take place, but it could be configured in XML and changes to it didn't require re-compile. Great. Then I looked at the samples and saw the following, in every single usage scenario: // Create AOP proxy using Spring.NET IoC container. IApplicationContext ctx = ContextRegistry.GetContext(); ICommand command = (ICommand)ctx["myServiceCommand"]; command.Execute(); if (command.IsUndoCapable) { command.UnExecute(); } Why must the first two lines of code exist? It ruins everything. This means I cannot simply provide a user with a set of aspects and attributes or XML configs that they can use by sticking appropriate attributes on the appropriate methods/classes/etc or editing the match pattern in XML. They have to modify their program logic to make this work! Is there a way to make Spring.Net behave as PostSharp in this case? (i.e. user only needs to add attributes/XML config, not edit content of any methods. Alternatively, is there a worthy and functioning alternative to PostSharp? I've seen a few question titled like this on SO, but none of them were actually looking to replace PostSharp, they only wanted to supplement its functionality. I need full replacement.

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• Crawling engine architecture - Java/ Perl integration

  - by Bigtwinz

  Hi all, I am looking to develop a management and administration solution around our webcrawling perl scripts. Basically, right now our scripts are saved in SVN and are manually kicked off by SysAdmin/devs etc. Everytime we need to retrieve data from new sources we have to create a ticket with business instructions and goals. As you can imagine, not an optimal solution. There are 3 consistent themes with this system: the retrieval of data has a "conceptual structure" for lack of a better phrase i.e. the retrieval of information follows a particular path we are only looking for very specific information so we dont have to really worry about extensive crawling for awhile (think thousands-tens of thousands of pages vs millions) crawls are url-based instead of site-based. As I enhance this alpha version to a more production-level beta I am looking to add automation and management of the retrieval of data. Additionally our other systems are Java (which I'm more proficient in) and I'd like to compartmentalize the perl aspects so we dont have to lean heavily on outside help. I've evaluated the usual suspects Nutch, Droid etc but the time spent on modifying those frameworks to suit our specific information retrieval cant be justified. So I'd like your thoughts regarding the following architecture. I want to create a solution which use Java as the interface for managing and execution of the perl scripts use Java for configuration and data access stick with perl for retrieval An example use case would be a data analyst delivers us a requirement for crawling perl developer creates the required script and uses this webapp to submit the script (which gets saved to the filesystem) the script gets kicked off from the webapp with specific parameters .... Webapp should be able to create multiple threads of the perl script to initiate multiple crawlers. So questions are what do you think how solid is integration between Java and Perl specifically from calling perl from java has someone used such a system which actually is part perl repository The goal really is to not have a whole bunch of unorganized perl scripts and put some management and organization on our information retrieval. Also, I know I can use perl do do the web part of what we want - but as I mentioned before - trying to keep perl focused. But it seems assbackwards I'm not adverse to making it an all perl solution. Open to any all suggestions and opinions. Thanks

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• Ajax comments form in ASP.NET MVC2, howto?

  - by Artiom Chilaru

  I've been playing around with different aspects of MVC for some time now, and I've reached a situation where I'm not sure what would be the best way to solve a problem. I'm hoping that the SO community will help me out here :P I've seen a number of examples of Ajax.BeginForm on the internet, and it seems like a very nifty idea. E.g. you have a dropdown where you select a customer - and on selecting one it will load this client's details in some placeholder on the page. This works perfectly fine. But what to do if you want to tie in some validation in the box? Just hypothetically, imagine an article page, and user comments in the bottom. Below the comments area there's an ajax-y "Add comment" box. When a user adds a comment, it will appear in the comments area, below the last comment there. If I set the Ajax.BeginForm to Append the result of the call to the Comments area, it will work fine. But what if the data posted is not valid? Instead of appending a "successful" comment to the comments area I have to show the user validation errors. At this point I decided that the area INSIDE the Ajax.BeginForm will be inside a partial, and the form's submits will return this partial. Validation works fine. On each submit we reload the contents inside the form element. But how to add the successful comment to the top? Other things to consider: The comment form also has a "Preview" button. When the user clicks on Preview, I should load the rendered comment into a preview box. This will probably be inside the form area as well. I was thinking of using Json results instead. When the user submits the form, the server code will generate a Json object with a Success value, and html rendered partials as some properties. Something like { "success": true, "form": "<html form data>", "comment": "successful comment html to inject into the page" } This would be a perfect solution, except there's no way in MVC to render a partial into a string, inside the controller (separation of context, remember?). So.. what should I do then? Any "correct" way to implement this? Anyone???

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• Modeling distribution of performance measurements

  - by peterchen

  How would you mathematically model the distribution of repeated real life performance measurements - "Real life" meaning you are not just looping over the code in question, but it is just a short snippet within a large application running in a typical user scenario? My experience shows that you usually have a peak around the average execution time that can be modeled adequately with a Gaussian distribution. In addition, there's a "long tail" containing outliers - often with a multiple of the average time. (The behavior is understandable considering the factors contributing to first execution penalty). My goal is to model aggregate values that reasonably reflect this, and can be calculated from aggregate values (like for the Gaussian, calculate mu and sigma from N, sum of values and sum of squares). In other terms, number of repetitions is unlimited, but memory and calculation requirements should be minimized. A normal Gaussian distribution can't model the long tail appropriately and will have the average biased strongly even by a very small percentage of outliers. I am looking for ideas, especially if this has been attempted/analysed before. I've checked various distributions models, and I think I could work out something, but my statistics is rusty and I might end up with an overblown solution. Oh, a complete shrink-wrapped solution would be fine, too ;) Other aspects / ideas: Sometimes you get "two humps" distributions, which would be acceptable in my scenario with a single mu/sigma covering both, but ideally would be identified separately. Extrapolating this, another approach would be a "floating probability density calculation" that uses only a limited buffer and adjusts automatically to the range (due to the long tail, bins may not be spaced evenly) - haven't found anything, but with some assumptions about the distribution it should be possible in principle. Why (since it was asked) - For a complex process we need to make guarantees such as "only 0.1% of runs exceed a limit of 3 seconds, and the average processing time is 2.8 seconds". The performance of an isolated piece of code can be very different from a normal run-time environment involving varying levels of disk and network access, background services, scheduled events that occur within a day, etc. This can be solved trivially by accumulating all data. However, to accumulate this data in production, the data produced needs to be limited. For analysis of isolated pieces of code, a gaussian deviation plus first run penalty is ok. That doesn't work anymore for the distributions found above. [edit] I've already got very good answers (and finally - maybe - some time to work on this). I'm starting a bounty to look for more input / ideas.

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• Daylight saving time and Timezone best practices

  - by Oded

  I am hoping to make this question and the answers to it the definitive guide to dealing with daylight saving time, in particular for dealing with the actual change overs. If you have anything to add, please do Many systems are dependent on keeping accurate time, the problem is with changes to time due to daylight savings - moving the clock forward or backwards. For instance, one has business rules in an order taking system that depend on the time of the order - if the clock changes, the rules might not be as clear. How should the time of the order be persisted? There is of course an endless number of scenarios - this one is simply an illustrative one. How have you dealt with the daylight saving issue? What assumptions are part of your solution? (looking for context here) As important, if not more so: What did you try that did not work? Why did it not work? I would be interested in programming, OS, data persistence and other pertinent aspects of the issue. General answers are great, but I would also like to see details especially if they are only available on one platform. Summary of answers and other data: (please add yours) Do: Always persist time according to a unified standard that is not affected by daylight savings. GMT and UTC have been mentioned by different people. Include the local time offset (including DST offset) in stored timestamps. Remember that DST offsets are not always an integer number of hours (e.g. Indian Standard Time is UTC+05:30). If using Java, use JodaTime. - http://joda-time.sourceforge.net/ Create a table TZOffsets with three columns: RegionClassId, StartDateTime, and OffsetMinutes (int, in minutes). See answer Check if your DBMS needs to be shutdown during transition. Business rules should always work on civil time. Internally, keep timestamps in something like civil-time-seconds-from-epoch. See answer Only convert to local times at the last possible moment. Don't: Do not use javascript date and time calculations in web apps unless you ABSOLUTELY have to. Testing: When testing make sure you test countries in the Western and Eastern hemispheres, with both DST in progress and not and a country that does not use DST (6 in total). Reference: Olson database, aka Tz_database - ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub Sources for Time Zone and DST - http://www.twinsun.com/tz/tz-link.htm ISO format (ISO 8601) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601 Mapping between Olson database and Windows TimeZone Ids, from the Unicode Consortium - http://unicode.org/repos/cldr-tmp/trunk/diff/supplemental/windows_tzid.html TimeZone page on WikiPedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tz_database StackOverflow questions tagged dst - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/dst StackOverflow questions tagged timezone - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/timezone Other: Lobby your representative to end the abomination that is DST. We can always hope...

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• Eclipse: How to convert a web project into an AspectJ project and weave and run it using the AJDT pl

  - by Kent

  What I want to do: I want to use the @Configured annotation with Spring. It requires AspectJ to be enabled. I thought that using the AJDT plugin for compile time weaving would solve this problem. Before installing the plug in the dependencies which were supposed to be injected into my @Configured object remained null. What I have done: Installed the AJDT: AspectJ Development Tools plug in for Eclipse 3.4. Right clicked on my web project and converted it into a AspectJ project. Enabled compile time weaving. What doesn't work: When I start the Tomcat 6 server now, I get an exception*. Other information: I haven't configured anything in the AspectJ Build and AspectJ Compiler parts of the project properties. JDT Weaving under Preferences says weaving is enabled. I still have Java build path and Java Compiler under project properties. And they look like I previously configured them (while the above two new entries are not configured). The icon of my @Configured object file looks like any other file (i.e. no indication of any aspect or such, which I think there should be). The file name is MailNotification.java (and not .aj), but I guess it should still work as I'm using a Spring annotation for AspectJ? I haven't found any tutorial or similar which teaches: How to turn a Spring web application project into an AspectJ project and weave aspects into the files using the AJDT plugin, all within Eclipse 3.4. If there is anything like that out there I would be very interested in knowing about it. What I would like to know: Where to go from here? I just want to use the @Configured annotation of Spring. I'm also using @Transactional which I think also needs AspectJ. If it is possible I would like to study AspectJ as little as possible as long as my needs are met. The subject seems interesting, but huge, all I want to do is use the above two mentioned Spring annotations. *** Exception when Tomcat 6 is started: Caused by: java.lang.IllegalStateException: ClassLoader [org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader] does NOT provide an 'addTransformer(ClassFileTransformer)' method. Specify a custom LoadTimeWeaver or start your Java virtual machine with Spring's agent: -javaagent:spring-agent.jar at org.springframework.context.weaving.DefaultContextLoadTimeWeaver.setBeanClassLoader(DefaultContextLoadTimeWeaver.java:82) at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.initializeBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:1322) at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.doCreateBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:473) ... 41 more

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• Is One Tool or a Suite of Tools Better for Scrum?

  - by Rob Wells

  G'day, Edit: We've been using Scrum very successfully for several years on several projects of varying sizes. In fact, our team developed the successful iPlayer project for the BBC using a classical Scrum approach. After using various combinations of tools, some high-tech, some low-tech, across these projects we now wish to try adopting a suitable tool suite. Our manager is to some extent attempting to force the adoption of a single suite of tools for Scrum. I've looked at the SO question "Best Scrum tools" and most people seem to recommend either: a suite of low-tech solutions, e.g. whiteboards, post-its, index cards, etc., or a monolithic tool that tries to satisfy as much as possible of the process, e.g. Agilo, Mingle, ScrumWorks, Target Process, etc. Our team is currently evaluating several different Scrum tools. However, we are looking at selecting a single, monolithic tool, e.g. Agilo. All of the "one-stop" solutions have their strengths and weaknesses with the serious enterprise type solutions being the best sort of fit. But all have some short comings. After reading the paper "Peer Code Review: An Agile Process" over at SmartBear I started wondering if we were trying to force adoption of a tool on a "best fit" basis. I think you can take a couple of reference artefacts of the Scrum development process, say user stories, epics and themes, and the code base which must use a well-known SCM, e.g. SVN, Hg, etc. Then if we take that as the common reference points for the tools employed then we would be able to use a group of tools to handle the different aspects of the Scrum process rather than try forcing a fit of a single tool would is a bit like forcing a square peg into the round hole. In this way, providing you've agreed your common reference points, you can use several tools, each performing their role better than a could be done by a single component in a monolithic tool suite. Is this a more sensible approach? Are the two reference points I mentioned above suitable, or is their a better choice of points where the tools would meet? cheers,

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• Loading .png image from array of uint8_t into OpenGL ES texture

  - by unknownthreat

  Normally, when we want to load a texture for OpenGL ES with .png, we simply add the .png images into XCode. The .png files will be altered for optimization by XCode and these altered png files can loaded into OpenGL ES texture during the runtime. However, what I am trying to do is quite different. I am trying to load a .png file that is not from the prebuilt/compile. The png file will be transmitted externally from UDP, and it will be in the form of array of bytes. I am very sure that the png is transferred correctly, but when it comes to displaying the png image in the form of the OpenGL ES texture, the image somehow shows incorrectly. The colors that are being sent are presented but the positions are somehow very incorrect. However, the position of the colors still retain some aspects of the original position. Here: The left image shows the original .png, while the right shows the png being displayed on iPhone using OpenGL ES Texture. It looks more like the png data is not being decoded or incorrectly processed. Below is OpenGL ES code for turning the image into texture: - (void) setTextureFromImageByte: (uint8_t*)imageByte{ if (self = [super init]){ NSData* imageData = [[NSData alloc] initWithBytes: imageByte length: imageLength]; UIImage* img = [[UIImage alloc] initWithData: imageData]; CGImageRef image = img.CGImage; int width = 512; int height = 512; if (image){ int tempWidth = (int)width, tempHeight = (int)height; if ((tempWidth & (tempWidth - 1)) != 0 ){ NSLog(@"CAUTION! width is not power of 2. width == %d", tempWidth); }else if ((tempHeight & (tempHeight - 1)) != 0 ){ NSLog(@"CAUTION! height is not power of 2. height == %d", tempHeight); }else{ void *spriteData = calloc(width * 4, height * 4); CGContextRef spriteContext = CGBitmapContextCreate(spriteData, width, height, 8, width*4, CGImageGetColorSpace(image), kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedLast); CGContextDrawImage(spriteContext, CGRectMake(0.0, 0.0, width, height), image); CGContextRelease(spriteContext); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 1); glTexSubImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, 0, 0, 320, 435, GL_RGBA, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, spriteData); free(spriteData); } }else NSLog(@"ERROR: Image not loaded..."); [img release]; [imageData release]; } } So does anyone knows how to deal with this? Is it because of iPhone only accepts altered png from XCode? What can we do in this case in order to make the png image be able to display correctly?

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• Gathering Staff anyone interested?

  - by kasene

  Thread Title - Gathering Staff Rush-Soft Game Design is currently looking for staff of a moderate skill level. Team Name - RushSoft Game Design Project Name - N/A We are gathering staff so that we can begin working on a new game. Target Aim - Freeware / Free Version - Paid Version With our first project our aim is to simply get our name out there. Generally we will be targeting a freeware distribution platform or a Free and Paid version. Compensation - Prehaps in the future but don't rely on it If in the future we start developing a game we intend to make any sort of sizable profit from then yes, there will be compensation however currently our low, low funding comes from generous donations. Any money that we make for now will go to the teams funding for things like engine licenses and company registration. Technology - C/C++ RSETech Our primary functional language will be C/C++ as most games are. We will be using a custom built library built on Direct3D called RSETech or RushSoft Engine Technology. Currently its is fully capable of being used for developing a game. The final version is made up of almost entirely C (No C++ or OOP). There is a C++ version currently in the works. Programming: - Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 / 2010 2D Art - Photoshop CS2 - GIMP Talent Needed - We currently are in need of x2 Programmers - With understanding of the following C/C ++ and game programming aspects: -If/Else Conditions -Functions/Methods -Arrays -Pointers (You don't need to fully understand these. Just know when they need to be used.) -Enums -Loops (For and While) -Structs (and How to use . and - syntax) -Classes (and how to call methods and access variables from a class) -State Machines -Switches -Include Guards -Understanding of how game loops work in general. (Init, Update, Render, Deinit) x2 Artists - As long as you have the means to and are able to draw 2D sprites and collab with a game designer to get a good result. 1 or more Game Designers - You can design levels (for platformers) as well as write game scripts and you can come up with good ideas and game mechanics. As long as you can do these things and are able to work well with artists and programmers you're golden. Business Consultant - Someone who knows the industry and how it works. Will inquire about possible distribution platforms as well as contact other developers, websites, and publishers on RushSofts behalf. Team Structure - Kasene Clark - Co-Founder/Lead Programmer/Game Designer Casey W - Co-Founder/Artist(GC/Animation)/Game Designer Nathan Mayworm - Game Designer. Website - RushSoft Websitek Contact - Kasene Clark [email protected] - [email protected] Phone - 12075181967 Feedback - Any Thank You! -Kasene

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• Spring AOP pointcut that matches annotation on interface

  - by seanizer

  Hello, this is my first post here, so I apologize in advance for any stupidity on my side. I have a service class implemented in Java 6 / Spring 3 that needs an annotation to restrict access by role. I have defined an annotation called RequiredPermission that has as its value attribute one or more values from an enum called OperationType: public @interface RequiredPermission { /** * One or more {@link OperationType}s that map to the permissions required * to execute this method. * * @return */ OperationType[] value();} public enum OperationType { TYPE1, TYPE2; } package com.mycompany.myservice; public interface MyService{ @RequiredPermission(OperationType.TYPE1) void myMethod( MyParameterObject obj ); } package com.mycompany.myserviceimpl; public class MyServiceImpl implements MyService{ public myMethod( MyParameterObject obj ){ // do stuff here } } I also have the following aspect definition: /** * Security advice around methods that are annotated with * {@link RequiredPermission}. * * @param pjp * @param param * @param requiredPermission * @return * @throws Throwable */ @Around(value = "execution(public *" + " com.mycompany.myserviceimpl.*(..))" + " && args(param)" + // parameter object " && @annotation( requiredPermission )" // permission annotation , argNames = "param,requiredPermission") public Object processRequest(final ProceedingJoinPoint pjp, final MyParameterObject param, final RequiredPermission requiredPermission) throws Throwable { if(userService.userHasRoles(param.getUsername(),requiredPermission.values()){ return pjp.proceed(); }else{ throw new SorryButYouAreNotAllowedToDoThatException( param.getUsername(),requiredPermission.value()); } } The parameter object contains a user name and I want to look up the required role for the user before allowing access to the method. When I put the annotation on the method in MyServiceImpl, everything works just fine, the pointcut is matched and the aspect kicks in. However, I believe the annotation is part of the service contract and should be published with the interface in a separate API package. And obviously, I would not like to put the annotation on both service definition and implementation (DRY). I know there are cases in Spring AOP where aspects are triggered by annotations one interface methods (e.g. Transactional). Is there a special syntax here or is it just plain impossible out of the box. PS: I have not posted my spring config, as it seems to be working just fine. And no, those are neither my original class nor method names. Thanks in advance, Sean PPS: Actually, here is the relevant part of my spring config: <aop:aspectj-autoproxy proxy-target-class="false" /> <bean class="com.mycompany.aspect.MyAspect"> <property name="userService" ref="userService" /> </bean>

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• Learning to create beautiful /next-generation GUI

  - by ShaChris23

  I really want to create a stunning-looking GUI desktop application that looks like, for example: Mac OS X interface Picasa desktop client on windows IPhone apps Office 2007 I've mostly been programming GUI using Qt/Swing/WinForm and I'm tired of creating so plain looking GUI, lol. So I was thinking about diving into stuff like: jQuery WPF/C# iPhone SDK Silverlight Adobe Air/Flex Just to get some ideas on how to create really cool looking UI. Does that sound like a good list? Any developers here that could share what platform they use to create very cool looking desktop app? On a sidenote, I really wonder what developers at Apple / Microsoft use to develop their own cool-looking software. EDIT A lot of responses talk about the importance of usability over "cool-looking".. I totally agree that usability and simplicity are the most important aspects of user interface design. I've been doing GUI development for a while now ( 3 years), so that I understand. But using cool-looking UI also improves user experience + it could make big difference on whether or not your software sells. I mean, otherwise why would Microsoft/Apple try to make their OS UI look "cooler" everytime there's a new version? Why would websites like pragprog.com, or versionsapp.com. make their websites look like that? Basically you kill 2 birds with one stone: stunnning-looking UI + super usability (because it looks simple and intuitive). That is what I'm striving for. And as far as I know, I cannot achieve that using Qt/Winform. Most of the books I have read just show you how to make average-looking (read: 1990's) UI. I want to learn how to create cool-looking UI. And the only place I see cool-looking UIs these days are the technology I list above. I'm not enamored with any technology; but I just want to know how things are done in other technology to see if I could apply them to the technology I'm using, or see if I could use those technology in my line of work. An example: if I were to pick between this UI and this UI, I probably would pick the latter, if just based on looks alone. Functionally, they are just the same UI; they both allow you to keep track of your time. They both contain buttons and textboxes, etc. But the fact that they look different, also differentiate them in terms of attractiveness. So in all, I think the "ice on the cake" is very important. I would say it's the thing you strive for after you are certain you have a totally intuitive, usable UI.

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• Delphi LoadLibrary Failing to find DLL other directory - any good options?

  - by Chris Thornton

  Two Delphi programs need to load foo.dll, which contains some code that injects a client-auth certificate into a SOAP request. foo.dll resides in c:\fooapp\foo.dll and is normally loaded by c:\fooapp\foo.exe. That works fine. The other program needs the same functionality, but it resides in c:\program files\unwantedstepchild\sadapp.exe. Both aps load the DLL with this code: FOOLib := LoadLibrary('foo.dll'); ... If FOOLib <> 0 then begin FOOProc := GetProcAddress(FOOLib , 'xInjectCert'); FOOProc(myHttpRequest, Data, CertName); end; It works great for foo.exe, as the dll is right there. sadapp.exe fails to load the library, so FOOLib is 0, and the rest never gets called. The sadapp.exe program therefore silently fails to inject the cert, and when we test against production, it the cert is missing, do the connection fails. Obviously, we should have fully-qualified the path to the DLL. Without going into a lot of details, there were aspects of the testing that masked this problem until recently, and now it's basically too late to fix in code, as that would require a full regression test, and there isn't time for that. Since we've painted ourselves into a corner, I need to know if there are any options that I've overlooked. While we can't change the code (for this release), we CAN tweak the installer. I've found that placing c:\fooapp into the path works. As does adding a second copy of foo.dll directly into c:\program files\unwantedstepchild. c:\fooapp\foo.exe will always be running while sadapp.exe is running, so I was hoping that Windows would find it that way, but apparently not. Is there a way to tell Windows that I really want that same DLL? Maybe a manifest or something? This is the sort of "magic bullet" that I'm looking for. I know I can: Modify the windows path, probably in the installer. That's ugly. Add a second copy of the DLL, directly into the unwantedstepchild folder. Also ugly Delay the project while we code and test a proper fix. Unacceptable. Other? Thanks for any guidance, especially with "Other". I understand that this issue is not necessarily specific to Delphi. Thanks!

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• Advice for Architecture Design Logic for software application

  - by Prasad

  Hi, I have a framework of basic to complex set of objects/classes (C++) running into around 500. With some rules and regulations - all these objects can communicate with each other and hence can cover most of the common queries in the domain. My Dream: I want to provide these objects as icons/glyphs (as I learnt recently) on a workspace. All these objects can be dragged/dropped into the workspace. They have to communicate only through their methods(interface) and in addition to few iterative and conditional statements. All these objects are arranged finally to execute a protocol/workflow/dataflow/process. After drawing the flow, the user clicks the Execute/run button. All the user interaction should be multi-touch enabled. The best way to show my dream is : Jeff Han's Multitouch Video. consider Jeff is playing with my objects instead of the google maps. :-) it should be like playing a jigsaw puzzle. Objective: how can I achieve the following while working on this final product: a) the development should be flexible to enable provision for web services b) the development should enable easy web application development c) The development should enable client-server architecture - d) further it should also enable mouse based drag/drop desktop application like Adobe programs etc. I mean to say: I want to economize on investments. Now I list my efforts till now in design : a) Created an Editor (VB) where the user writes (manually) the object / class code b) On Run/Execute, the code is copied into a main() function and passed to interpreter. c) Catch the output and show it in the console. The interpreter can be separated to become a server and the Editor can become the client. This needs lot of standard client-server architecture work. But some how I am not comfortable in the tightness of this system. Without interpreter is there much faster and better embeddable solution to this? - other than writing a special compiler for these objects. Recently learned about AXIS-C++ can help me - looks like - a friend suggested. Is that the way to go ? Here are my questions: (pl. consider me a self taught programmer and NOT my domain) a) From the stage of C++ objects to multi-touch product, how can I make sure I will develop the parallel product/service models as well.? What should be architecture aspects I should consider ? b) What technologies are best suited for this? c) If I am thinking of moving to Cloud Computing, how difficult/ how redundant / how unnecessary my efforts will be ? d) How much time in months would it take to get the first beta ? I take the liberty to ask if any of the experts here are interested in this project, please email me: [email protected] Thank you for any help. Looking forward.

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• How are you using IronPython?

  - by Will Dean

  I'm keen to drink some modern dynamic language koolaid, so I've believed all the stuff on Michael Foord's blog and podcasts, I've bought his book (and read some of it), and I added an embedded IPy runtime to a large existing app a year or so ago (though that was for someone else and I didn't really use it myself). Now I need to do some fairly simple code generation stuff, where I'm going to call a few methods on a few .net objects (custom, C#-authored objects), create a few strings, write some files, etc. The experience of trying this leaves me feeling like the little boy who thinks he's the only one who can see that The Emperor has no clothes on. If you're using IronPython, I'd really appreciate knowing how you deal with the following aspects of it: Code editing - do you use the .NET framework without Intellisense? Refactoring - I know a load of 'refactoring' is about working around language-related busywork, so if Python is sufficiently lightweight then we won't need that, But things like renames seem to me to be essential to iteratively developing quality code regardless of language. Crippling startup time - One of the things which is supposed to be good about interpreted languages is the lack of compile time leading to fast interactive development. Unfortunately I can compile a C# application and launch it quicker than IPy can start up. Interactive hacking - the IPy console/repl is supposed to be good for this, but I haven't found a good way to take the code you've interactively arrived at and persist it into a file - cut and paste from the console is fairly miserable. And the console seems to hold references to .NET assemblies you've imported, so you have to quit it and restart it if you're working on the C# stuff as well. Hacking on C# in something like LinqPad seems a much faster and easier way to try things out (and has proper Intellisense). Do you use the console? Debugging - what's the story here? I know someone on the IPy team is working on a command-line hobby-project, but let's just say I'm not immediately attracted to a command line debugger. I don't really need a debugger from little Python scripts, but I would if I were to use IPy for scripting unit tests, for example. Unit testing - I can see that dynamic languages could be great for this, but is there any IDE test-runner integration (like for Resharper, etc). The Foord book has a chapter about this, which I'll admit I have not yet read properly, but it does seem to involve driving a console-mode test-runner from the command prompt, which feels to be an enormous step back from using an integrated test runner like TestDriven.net or Resharper. I really want to believe in this stuff, so I am still working on the assumption that I've missed something. I would really like to know how other people are dealing with IPy, particularly if they're doing it in a way which doesn't feel like we've just lost 15 years'-worth of tool development.

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• Square Peg Web: Gets you the traffic to where it matters most: Your Website!

  - by demetriusalwyn

  Have you decided to start your business online or is your business not reaching the targeted audience? Come to Square Peg Web; where you will find what you want to make your business reach new heights. The team at Square Peg Web is professionals who understand what you want and make sure you get it right. Our confidence stems from the fact of thousands of satisfied clients who keep referring friends and business associates to us and we do not let our clients down. Many companies promise the sky but how far is does their work live up to the promises? We do not know about the others however, we are sure that we strive to put together all our ideas and thoughts to make your website rank among the top. Web hosting is something that needs to have a personal touch; Square Peg Web customizes everything to suit your requirements so that you do not have to look further. With Square Peg Web you have a host of features to make your Business go viral. Some of the product details that are offered with Square Peg Web are unlimited product options/ variants/ properties giving you an option on price modifiers. You get unlimited customized input fields for your products and you can also Customer-define the prices. Square Peg Web provides you an option of using multiple product images with zoom features and one can also list a particular product in several categories. There are other aspects which make Square Peg Web the best choice for your website needs; every sale of yours’ is important to you and to us. We make sure that each sale is tracked by the product and also the list of bestsellers that appeal to the audience. Other comprehensive statistics of Square Peg Web includes searchable order data, an interface for shipments and order fulfillments, export sales & customer data for usage in a spreadsheet and the ability to export orders to QuickBooks format. With Square Peg Web; Admin Panel is a lot simpler. Administrative access is completely password protected and any changes done are all in real-time. You can have absolute control on the cart from anywhere around the world using your web browser and the topping on the cake is the unlimited amount of admin accounts that can be created for you. Square Peg Web offers you a world of experience with the options of choosing from marketing websites to e-commerce and from customized applications to community oriented sites. Some of the projects which appear in the portfolio of Square Peg Web are Online Marketing Web Sites, E-Commerce Web Sites, customized web applications, Blog designing and programming, video sharing and the option of downloading web sites, online advertisements, flash animation, customer and product support web sites, web site re-designing and planning and complete information architecture.

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