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  • JIRA: Generating per-user time report?

    - by John
    Sorry if SO is not the best place, but I have time-tracking enabled in JIRA and want to be able to generate a time-report for each user over a given date range. The only time-tracking report option I have is very limited and doesn't do what I want, is it possible through standard functionality or a free plugin perhaps?

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  • The Benefits of Smart Grid Business Software

    - by Sylvie MacKenzie, PMP
    Smart Grid Background What Are Smart Grids?Smart Grids use computer hardware and software, sensors, controls, and telecommunications equipment and services to: Link customers to information that helps them manage consumption and use electricity wisely. Enable customers to respond to utility notices in ways that help minimize the duration of overloads, bottlenecks, and outages. Provide utilities with information that helps them improve performance and control costs. What Is Driving Smart Grid Development? Environmental ImpactSmart Grid development is picking up speed because of the widespread interest in reducing the negative impact that energy use has on the environment. Smart Grids use technology to drive efficiencies in transmission, distribution, and consumption. As a result, utilities can serve customers’ power needs with fewer generating plants, fewer transmission and distribution assets,and lower overall generation. With the possible exception of wind farm sprawl, landscape preservation is one obvious benefit. And because most generation today results in greenhouse gas emissions, Smart Grids reduce air pollution and the potential for global climate change.Smart Grids also more easily accommodate the technical difficulties of integrating intermittent renewable resources like wind and solar into the grid, providing further greenhouse gas reductions. CostsThe ability to defer the cost of plant and grid expansion is a major benefit to both utilities and customers. Utilities do not need to use as many internal resources for traditional infrastructure project planning and management. Large T&D infrastructure expansion costs are not passed on to customers.Smart Grids will not eliminate capital expansion, of course. Transmission corridors to connect renewable generation with customers will require major near-term expenditures. Additionally, in the future, electricity to satisfy the needs of population growth and additional applications will exceed the capacity reductions available through the Smart Grid. At that point, expansion will resume—but with greater overall T&D efficiency based on demand response, load control, and many other Smart Grid technologies and business processes. Energy efficiency is a second area of Smart Grid cost saving of particular relevance to customers. The timely and detailed information Smart Grids provide encourages customers to limit waste, adopt energy-efficient building codes and standards, and invest in energy efficient appliances. Efficiency may or may not lower customer bills because customer efficiency savings may be offset by higher costs in generation fuels or carbon taxes. It is clear, however, that bills will be lower with efficiency than without it. Utility Operations Smart Grids can serve as the central focus of utility initiatives to improve business processes. Many utilities have long “wish lists” of projects and applications they would like to fund in order to improve customer service or ease staff’s burden of repetitious work, but they have difficulty cost-justifying the changes, especially in the short term. Adding Smart Grid benefits to the cost/benefit analysis frequently tips the scales in favor of the change and can also significantly reduce payback periods.Mobile workforce applications and asset management applications work together to deploy assets and then to maintain, repair, and replace them. Many additional benefits result—for instance, increased productivity and fuel savings from better routing. Similarly, customer portals that provide customers with near-real-time information can also encourage online payments, thus lowering billing costs. Utilities can and should include these cost and service improvements in the list of Smart Grid benefits. What Is Smart Grid Business Software? Smart Grid business software gathers data from a Smart Grid and uses it improve a utility’s business processes. Smart Grid business software also helps utilities provide relevant information to customers who can then use it to reduce their own consumption and improve their environmental profiles. Smart Grid Business Software Minimizes the Impact of Peak Demand Utilities must size their assets to accommodate their highest peak demand. The higher the peak rises above base demand: The more assets a utility must build that are used only for brief periods—an inefficient use of capital. The higher the utility’s risk profile rises given the uncertainties surrounding the time needed for permitting, building, and recouping costs. The higher the costs for utilities to purchase supply, because generators can charge more for contracts and spot supply during high-demand periods. Smart Grids enable a variety of programs that reduce peak demand, including: Time-of-use pricing and critical peak pricing—programs that charge customers more when they consume electricity during peak periods. Pilot projects indicate that these programs are successful in flattening peaks, thus ensuring better use of existing T&D and generation assets. Direct load control, which lets utilities reduce or eliminate electricity flow to customer equipment (such as air conditioners). Contracts govern the terms and conditions of these turn-offs. Indirect load control, which signals customers to reduce the use of on-premises equipment for contractually agreed-on time periods. Smart Grid business software enables utilities to impose penalties on customers who do not comply with their contracts. Smart Grids also help utilities manage peaks with existing assets by enabling: Real-time asset monitoring and control. In this application, advanced sensors safely enable dynamic capacity load limits, ensuring that all grid assets can be used to their maximum capacity during peak demand periods. Real-time asset monitoring and control applications also detect the location of excessive losses and pinpoint need for mitigation and asset replacements. As a result, utilities reduce outage risk and guard against excess capacity or “over-build”. Better peak demand analysis. As a result: Distribution planners can better size equipment (e.g. transformers) to avoid over-building. Operations engineers can identify and resolve bottlenecks and other inefficiencies that may cause or exacerbate peaks. As above, the result is a reduction in the tendency to over-build. Supply managers can more closely match procurement with delivery. As a result, they can fine-tune supply portfolios, reducing the tendency to over-contract for peak supply and reducing the need to resort to spot market purchases during high peaks. Smart Grids can help lower the cost of remaining peaks by: Standardizing interconnections for new distributed resources (such as electricity storage devices). Placing the interconnections where needed to support anticipated grid congestion. Smart Grid Business Software Lowers the Cost of Field Services By processing Smart Grid data through their business software, utilities can reduce such field costs as: Vegetation management. Smart Grids can pinpoint momentary interruptions and tree-caused outages. Spatial mash-up tools leverage GIS models of tree growth for targeted vegetation management. This reduces the cost of unnecessary tree trimming. Service vehicle fuel. Many utility service calls are “false alarms.” Checking meter status before dispatching crews prevents many unnecessary “truck rolls.” Similarly, crews use far less fuel when Smart Grid sensors can pinpoint a problem and mobile workforce applications can then route them directly to it. Smart Grid Business Software Ensures Regulatory Compliance Smart Grids can ensure compliance with private contracts and with regional, national, or international requirements by: Monitoring fulfillment of contract terms. Utilities can use one-hour interval meters to ensure that interruptible (“non-core”) customers actually reduce or eliminate deliveries as required. They can use the information to levy fines against contract violators. Monitoring regulations imposed on customers, such as maximum use during specific time periods. Using accurate time-stamped event history derived from intelligent devices distributed throughout the smart grid to monitor and report reliability statistics and risk compliance. Automating business processes and activities that ensure compliance with security and reliability measures (e.g. NERC-CIP 2-9). Grid Business Software Strengthens Utilities’ Connection to Customers While Reducing Customer Service Costs During outages, Smart Grid business software can: Identify outages more quickly. Software uses sensors to pinpoint outages and nested outage locations. They also permit utilities to ensure outage resolution at every meter location. Size outages more accurately, permitting utilities to dispatch crews that have the skills needed, in appropriate numbers. Provide updates on outage location and expected duration. This information helps call centers inform customers about the timing of service restoration. Smart Grids also facilitates display of outage maps for customer and public-service use. Smart Grids can significantly reduce the cost to: Connect and disconnect customers. Meters capable of remote disconnect can virtually eliminate the costs of field crews and vehicles previously required to change service from the old to the new residents of a metered property or disconnect customers for nonpayment. Resolve reports of voltage fluctuation. Smart Grids gather and report voltage and power quality data from meters and grid sensors, enabling utilities to pinpoint reported problems or resolve them before customers complain. Detect and resolve non-technical losses (e.g. theft). Smart Grids can identify illegal attempts to reconnect meters or to use electricity in supposedly vacant premises. They can also detect theft by comparing flows through delivery assets with billed consumption. Smart Grids also facilitate outreach to customers. By monitoring and analyzing consumption over time, utilities can: Identify customers with unusually high usage and contact them before they receive a bill. They can also suggest conservation techniques that might help to limit consumption. This can head off “high bill” complaints to the contact center. Note that such “high usage” or “additional charges apply because you are out of range” notices—frequently via text messaging—are already common among mobile phone providers. Help customers identify appropriate bill payment alternatives (budget billing, prepayment, etc.). Help customers find and reduce causes of over-consumption. There’s no waiting for bills in the mail before they even understand there is a problem. Utilities benefit not just through improved customer relations but also through limiting the size of bills from customers who might struggle to pay them. Where permitted, Smart Grids can open the doors to such new utility service offerings as: Monitoring properties. Landlords reduce costs of vacant properties when utilities notify them of unexpected energy or water consumption. Utilities can perform similar services for owners of vacation properties or the adult children of aging parents. Monitoring equipment. Power-use patterns can reveal a need for equipment maintenance. Smart Grids permit utilities to alert owners or managers to a need for maintenance or replacement. Facilitating home and small-business networks. Smart Grids can provide a gateway to equipment networks that automate control or let owners access equipment remotely. They also facilitate net metering, offering some utilities a path toward involvement in small-scale solar or wind generation. Prepayment plans that do not need special meters. Smart Grid Business Software Helps Customers Control Energy Costs There is no end to the ways Smart Grids help both small and large customers control energy costs. For instance: Multi-premises customers appreciate having all meters read on the same day so that they can more easily compare consumption at various sites. Customers in competitive regions can match their consumption profile (detailed via Smart Grid data) with specific offerings from competitive suppliers. Customers seeing inexplicable consumption patterns and power quality problems may investigate further. The result can be discovery of electrical problems that can be resolved through rewiring or maintenance—before more serious fires or accidents happen. Smart Grid Business Software Facilitates Use of Renewables Generation from wind and solar resources is a popular alternative to fossil fuel generation, which emits greenhouse gases. Wind and solar generation may also increase energy security in regions that currently import fossil fuel for use in generation. Utilities face many technical issues as they attempt to integrate intermittent resource generation into traditional grids, which traditionally handle only fully dispatchable generation. Smart Grid business software helps solves many of these issues by: Detecting sudden drops in production from renewables-generated electricity (wind and solar) and automatically triggering electricity storage and smart appliance response to compensate as needed. Supporting industry-standard distributed generation interconnection processes to reduce interconnection costs and avoid adding renewable supplies to locations already subject to grid congestion. Facilitating modeling and monitoring of locally generated supply from renewables and thus helping to maximize their use. Increasing the efficiency of “net metering” (through which utilities can use electricity generated by customers) by: Providing data for analysis. Integrating the production and consumption aspects of customer accounts. During non-peak periods, such techniques enable utilities to increase the percent of renewable generation in their supply mix. During peak periods, Smart Grid business software controls circuit reconfiguration to maximize available capacity. Conclusion Utility missions are changing. Yesterday, they focused on delivery of reasonably priced energy and water. Tomorrow, their missions will expand to encompass sustainable use and environmental improvement.Smart Grids are key to helping utilities achieve this expanded mission. But they come at a relatively high price. Utilities will need to invest heavily in new hardware, software, business process development, and staff training. Customer investments in home area networks and smart appliances will be large. Learning to change the energy and water consumption habits of a lifetime could ultimately prove even more formidable tasks.Smart Grid business software can ease the cost and difficulties inherent in a needed transition to a more flexible, reliable, responsive electricity grid. Justifying its implementation, however, requires a full understanding of the benefits it brings—benefits that can ultimately help customers, utilities, communities, and the world address global issues like energy security and climate change while minimizing costs and maximizing customer convenience. This white paper is available for download here. For further information about Oracle's Primavera Solutions for Utilities, please read our Utilities e-book.

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  • Project Management Helps AmeriCares Deliver International Aid

    - by Sylvie MacKenzie, PMP
    Excerpt from PROFIT - ORACLE - by Alison Weiss Handle with Care Sound project management helps AmeriCares bring international aid to those in need. The stakes are always high for AmeriCares. On a mission to restore health and save lives during times of disaster, the nonprofit international relief and humanitarian aid organization delivers donated medicines, medical supplies, and humanitarian aid to people in the U.S. and around the globe. Founded in 1982 with the express mission of responding as quickly and efficiently as possible to help people in need, the Stamford, Connecticut-based AmeriCares has delivered more than US$10.5 billion in aid to 147 countries over the past three decades. Launch the Slideshow “It’s critically important to us that we steward all the donations and that the medical supplies and medicines get to people as quickly as possible with no loss,” says Kate Sears, senior vice president for finance and technology at AmeriCares. “Whether we’re shipping IV solutions to victims of cholera in Haiti or antibiotics to Somali famine victims, we need to get the medicines there sooner because it means more people will be helped and lives improved or even saved.” Ten years ago, the tracking systems used by AmeriCares associates were paper-based. In recent years, staff started using spreadsheets, but the tracking processes were not standardized between teams. “Every team was tracking completely different information,” says Megan McDermott, senior associate, Sub-Saharan Africa partnerships, at AmeriCares. “It was just a few key things. For example, we tracked the date a shipment was supposed to arrive and the date we got reports from our partner that a hospital received aid on their end.” While the data was accurate, much detail was being lost in the process. AmeriCares management knew it could do a better job of tracking this enterprise data and in 2011 took a significant step by implementing Oracle’s Primavera P6 Professional Project Management. “It’s a comprehensive solution that has helped us improve the monitoring and controlling processes. It has allowed us to do our distribution better,” says Sears. In addition, the implementation effort has been a change agent, helping AmeriCares leadership rethink project management across the entire organization. Initially, much of the focus was on standardizing processes, but staff members also learned the importance of thinking proactively to prevent possible problems and evaluating results to determine if goals and objectives are truly being met. Such data about process efficiency and overall results is critical not only to AmeriCares staff but also to the donors supporting the organization’s life-saving missions. Efficiency Saves Lives One of AmeriCares’ core operations is to gather product donations from the private sector, establish where the most-urgent needs are, and solicit monetary support to send the aid via ocean cargo or airlift to welfare- and health-oriented nongovernmental organizations, hospitals, health networks, and government ministries based in areas in need. In 2011 alone, AmeriCares sent more than 3,500 shipments to 95 countries in response to both ongoing humanitarian needs and more than two dozen emergencies, including deadly tornadoes and storms in the U.S. and the devastating tsunami in Japan. When it comes to nonprofits in general, donors want to know that the charitable organizations they support are using funds wisely. Typically, nonprofits are evaluated by donors in terms of efficiency, an area where AmeriCares has an excellent reputation: 98 percent of expenses go directly to supporting programs and less than 2 percent represent administrative and fundraising costs. Donors, however, should look at more than simple efficiency, says Peter York, senior partner and chief research and learning officer at TCC Group, a nonprofit consultancy headquartered in New York, New York. They should also look at whether organizations have the systems in place to sustain their missions and continue to thrive. An expert on nonprofit organizational management, York has spent years studying sustainable charitable organizations. He defines them as nonprofits that are able to achieve the ongoing financial support to stay relevant and continue doing core mission work. In his analysis of well over 2,500 larger nonprofits, York has found that many are not sustaining, and are actually scaling back in size. “One of the biggest challenges of nonprofit sustainability is the general public’s perception that every dollar donated has to go only to the delivery of service,” says York. “What our data shows is that there are some fundamental capacities that have to be there in order for organizations to sustain and grow.” York’s research highlights the importance of data-driven leadership at successful nonprofits. “You’ve got to have the tools, the systems, and the technologies to get objective information on what you do, the people you serve, and the results you’re achieving,” says York. “If leaders don’t have the knowledge and the data, they can’t make the strategic decisions about programs to take organizations to the next level.” Historically, AmeriCares associates have used time-tested and cost-effective strategies to ship and then track supplies from donation to delivery to their destinations in designated time frames. When disaster strikes, AmeriCares ships by air and generally pulls out all the stops to deliver the most urgently needed aid within the first few days and weeks. Then, as situations stabilize, AmeriCares turns to delivering sea containers for the postemergency and ongoing aid so often needed over the long term. According to McDermott, getting a shipment out the door is fairly complicated, requiring as many as five different AmeriCares teams collaborating together. The entire process can take months—from when products are received in the warehouse and deciding which recipients to allocate supplies to, to getting customs and governmental approvals in place, actually shipping products, and finally ensuring that the products are received in-country. Delivering that aid is no small affair. “Our volume exceeds half a billion dollars a year worth of donated medicines and medical supplies, so it’s a sizable logistical operation to bring these products in and get them out to the right place quickly to have the most impact,” says Sears. “We really pride ourselves on our controls and efficiencies.” Adding to that complexity is the fact that the longer it takes to deliver aid, the more dire the human need can be. Any time AmeriCares associates can shave off the complicated aid delivery process can translate into lives saved. “It’s really being able to track information consistently that will help us to see where are the bottlenecks and where can we work on improving our processes,” says McDermott. Setting a Standard Productivity and information management improvements were key objectives for AmeriCares when staff began the process of implementing Oracle’s Primavera solution. But before configuring the software, the staff needed to take the time to analyze the systems already in place. According to Greg Loop, manager of database systems at AmeriCares, the organization received guidance from several consultants, including Rich D’Addario, consulting project manager in the Primavera Global Business Unit at Oracle, who was instrumental in shepherding the critical requirements-gathering phase. D’Addario encouraged staff to begin documenting shipping processes by considering the order in which activities occur and which ones are dependent on others to get accomplished. This exercise helped everyone realize that to be more efficient, they needed to keep track of shipments in a more standard way. “The staff didn’t recognize formal project management methodology,” says D’Addario. “But they did understand what the most important things are and that if they go wrong, an entire project can go off course.” Before, if a boatload of supplies was being sent to Haiti and there was a problem somewhere, a lot of time was taken up finding out where the problem was—because staff was not tracking things in a standard way. As a result, even more time was needed to find possible solutions to the problem and alert recipients that the aid might be delayed. “For everyone to put on the project manager hat and standardize the way every single thing is done means that now the whole organization is on the same page as to what needs to occur from the time a hurricane hits Haiti and when a boat pulls in to unload supplies,” says D’Addario. With so much care taken to put a process foundation firmly in place, configuring the Primavera solution was actually quite simple. Specific templates were set up for different types of shipments, and dashboards were implemented to provide executives with clear overviews of every project in the system. AmeriCares’ Loop reports that system planning, refining, and testing, followed by writing up documentation and training, took approximately four months. The system went live in spring 2011 at AmeriCares’ Connecticut headquarters. While the nonprofit has an international presence, with warehouses in Europe and offices in Haiti, India, Japan, and Sri Lanka, most donated medicines come from U.S. entities and are shipped from the U.S. out to the rest of the world. In addition, all shipments are tracked from the U.S. office. AmeriCares doesn’t expect the Primavera system to take months off the shipping time, especially for sea containers. However, any time saved is still important because it will allow aid to be delivered to people more quickly at a lower overall cost. “If we can trim a day or two here or there, that can translate into lives that we’re saving, especially in emergency situations,” says Sears. A Cultural Change Beyond the measurable benefits that come with IT-driven process improvement, AmeriCares management is seeing a change in culture as a result of the Primavera project. One change has been treating every shipment of aid as a project, and everyone involved with facilitating shipments as a project manager. “This is a revolutionary concept for us,” says McDermott. “Before, we were used to thinking we were doing logistics—getting a container from point A to point B without looking at it as one project and really understanding what it meant to manage it.” AmeriCares staff is also happy to report that collaboration within the organization is much more efficient. When someone creates a shipment in the Primavera system, the same shared template is used, which means anyone can log in to the system to see the status of a shipment. Knowledgeable staff can access a shipment project to help troubleshoot a problem. Management can easily check the status of projects across the organization. “Dashboards are really useful,” says McDermott. “Instead of going into the details of each project, you can just see the high-level real-time information at a glance.” The new system is helping team members focus on proactively managing shipments rather than simply reacting when problems occur. For example, when a container is shipped, documents must be included for customs clearance. Now, the shipping template has built-in reminders to prompt team members to ask for copies of these documents from freight forwarders and to follow up with partners to discover if a shipment is on time. In the past, staff may not have worked on securing these documents until they’d been notified a shipment had arrived in-country. Another benefit of capturing and adopting best practices within the Primavera system is that staff training is easier. “Capturing the processes in documented steps and milestones allows us to teach new staff members how to do their jobs faster,” says Sears. “It provides them with the knowledge of their predecessors so they don’t have to keep reinventing the wheel.” With the Primavera system already generating positive results, management is eager to take advantage of advanced capabilities. Loop is working on integrating the company’s proprietary inventory management system with the Primavera system so that when logistics or warehousing operators input data, the information will automatically go into the Primavera system. In the past, this information had to be manually keyed into spreadsheets, often leading to errors. Mining Historical Data Another feature on the horizon for AmeriCares is utilizing Primavera P6 Professional Project Management reporting capabilities. As the system begins to include more historical data, management soon will be able to draw on this information to conduct analysis that has not been possible before and create customized reports. For example, at the beginning of the shipment process, staff will be able to use historical data to more accurately estimate how long the approval process should take for a particular country. This could help ensure that food and medicine with limited shelf lives do not get stuck in customs or used beyond their expiration dates. The historical data in the Primavera system will also help AmeriCares with better planning year to year. The nonprofit’s staff has always put together a plan at the beginning of the year, but this has been very challenging simply because it is impossible to predict disasters. Now, management will be able to look at historical data and see trends and statistics as they set current objectives and prepare for future need. In addition, this historical data will provide AmeriCares management with the ability to review year-end data and compare actual project results with goals set at the beginning of the year—to see if desired outcomes were achieved and if there are areas that need improvement. It’s this type of information that is so valuable to donors. And, according to York, project management software can play a critical role in generating the data to help nonprofits sustain and grow. “It is important to invest in systems to help replicate, expand, and deliver services,” says York. “Project management software can help because it encourages nonprofits to examine program or service changes and how to manage moving forward.” Sears believes that AmeriCares donors will support the return on investment the organization will achieve with the Primavera solution. “It won’t be financial returns, but rather how many more people we can help for a given dollar or how much more quickly we can respond to a need,” says Sears. “I think donors are receptive to such arguments.” And for AmeriCares, it is all about the future and increasing results. The project management environment currently may be quite simple, but IT staff plans to expand the complexity and functionality as the organization grows in its knowledge of project management and the goals it wants to achieve. “As we use the system over time, we’ll continue to refine our best practices and accumulate more data,” says Sears. “It will advance our ability to make better data-driven decisions.”

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  • How to reduce iOS AVPlayer start delay

    - by Bernt Habermeier
    Note, for the below question: All assets are local on the device -- no network streaming is taking place. The videos contain audio tracks. I'm working on an iOS application that requires playing video files with minimum delay to start the video clip in question. Unfortunately we do not know what specific video clip is next until we actually need to start it up. Specifically: When one video clip is playing, we will know what the next set of (roughly) 10 video clips are, but we don't know which one exactly, until it comes time to 'immediately' play the next clip. What I've done to look at actual start delays is to call addBoundaryTimeObserverForTimes on the video player, with a time period of one millisecond to see when the video actually started to play, and I take the difference of that time stamp with the first place in the code that indicates which asset to start playing. From what I've seen thus-far, I have found that using the combination of AVAsset loading, and then creating an AVPlayerItem from that once it's ready, and then waiting for AVPlayerStatusReadyToPlay before I call play, tends to take between 1 and 3 seconds to start the clip. I've since switched to what I think is roughly equivalent: calling [AVPlayerItem playerItemWithURL:] and waiting for AVPlayerItemStatusReadyToPlay to play. Roughly same performance. One thing I'm observing is that the first AVPlayer item load is slower than the rest. Seems one idea is to pre-flight the AVPlayer with a short / empty asset before trying to play the first video might be of good general practice. [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/900461/slow-start-for-avaudioplayer-the-first-time-a-sound-is-played] I'd love to get the video start times down as much as possible, and have some ideas of things to experiment with, but would like some guidance from anyone that might be able to help. Update: idea 7, below, as-implemented yields switching times of around 500 ms. This is an improvement, but it it'd be nice to get this even faster. Idea 1: Use N AVPlayers (won't work) Using ~ 10 AVPPlayer objects and start-and-pause all ~ 10 clips, and once we know which one we really need, switch to, and un-pause the correct AVPlayer, and start all over again for the next cycle. I don't think this works, because I've read there is roughly a limit of 4 active AVPlayer's in iOS. There was someone asking about this on StackOverflow here, and found out about the 4 AVPlayer limit: fast-switching-between-videos-using-avfoundation Idea 2: Use AVQueuePlayer (won't work) I don't believe that shoving 10 AVPlayerItems into an AVQueuePlayer would pre-load them all for seamless start. AVQueuePlayer is a queue, and I think it really only makes the next video in the queue ready for immediate playback. I don't know which one out of ~10 videos we do want to play back, until it's time to start that one. ios-avplayer-video-preloading Idea 3: Load, Play, and retain AVPlayerItems in background (not 100% sure yet -- but not looking good) I'm looking at if there is any benefit to load and play the first second of each video clip in the background (suppress video and audio output), and keep a reference to each AVPlayerItem, and when we know which item needs to be played for real, swap that one in, and swap the background AVPlayer with the active one. Rinse and Repeat. The theory would be that recently played AVPlayer/AVPlayerItem's may still hold some prepared resources which would make subsequent playback faster. So far, I have not seen benefits from this, but I might not have the AVPlayerLayer setup correctly for the background. I doubt this will really improve things from what I've seen. Idea 4: Use a different file format -- maybe one that is faster to load? I'm currently using .m4v's (video-MPEG4) H.264 format. I have not played around with other formats, but it may well be that some formats are faster to decode / get ready than others. Possible still using video-MPEG4 but with a different codec, or maybe quicktime? Maybe a lossless video format where decoding / setup is faster? Idea 5: Combination of lossless video format + AVQueuePlayer If there is a video format that is fast to load, but maybe where the file size is insane, one idea might be to pre-prepare the first 10 seconds of each video clip with a version that is boated but faster to load, but back that up with an asset that is encoded in H.264. Use an AVQueuePlayer, and add the first 10 seconds in the uncompressed file format, and follow that up with one that is in H.264 which gets up to 10 seconds of prepare/preload time. So I'd get 'the best' of both worlds: fast start times, but also benefits from a more compact format. Idea 6: Use a non-standard AVPlayer / write my own / use someone else's Given my needs, maybe I can't use AVPlayer, but have to resort to AVAssetReader, and decode the first few seconds (possibly write raw file to disk), and when it comes to playback, make use of the raw format to play it back fast. Seems like a huge project to me, and if I go about it in a naive way, it's unclear / unlikely to even work better. Each decoded and uncompressed video frame is 2.25 MB. Naively speaking -- if we go with ~ 30 fps for the video, I'd end up with ~60 MB/s read-from-disk requirement, which is probably impossible / pushing it. Obviously we'd have to do some level of image compression (perhaps native openGL/es compression formats via PVRTC)... but that's kind crazy. Maybe there is a library out there that I can use? Idea 7: Combine everything into a single movie asset, and seekToTime One idea that might be easier than some of the above, is to combine everything into a single movie, and use seekToTime. The thing is that we'd be jumping all around the place. Essentially random access into the movie. I think this may actually work out okay: avplayer-movie-playing-lag-in-ios5 Which approach do you think would be best? So far, I've not made that much progress in terms of reducing the lag.

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, June 14, 2010

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, June 14, 2010New ProjectsBD File Hash: BD File Hash is a convenient file hash and hash compare tool for Windows which currently works with MD5, SHA-1, and SHA-256 algorithms. FileScan: This is an application that searches through a drive or directory structure for files matching a filter. This project was converted from VB to ...genesis9: genesis9HeinanOS: HeinanOS is an operating system developed mainly in C++. HeinanOS is a light OS (1.44 MB image) with a lot of capabilites and many more are being ...MediaBrowserWS - Creates a Web Service for the popular MediaBrowser plugin: Creates a web service in Media Center for accessing your MediaBrowser collection. Allows for external devices (Tablets/phones/laptops) to access a ...MME: New Edition of Managed Menu Extensions for Visual Studio 2010 The Main goal of "MME" is to provide easy access to adding Right Click menus in the ...MVMMapper: Generate the ViewModel and its mapping to the Model when implementing MVVM in .NET. Developed using T4 templates. Current version supports Silver...ProjectArDotNet: Si te agarro te parto! Si te agarro te emperno no me importa que seas menor de edad!Scriptagility for DotNetNuke: Scriptagility is a DotNetNuke module for Javascript developers. This module provides dynamic client scripting infrastructure for developing javascr...simpleLinux Distro: SimpleLinux. is a Linux distributions that is easy to use. Simple Linux website: http://simplelinux.tkTag Cloud Control for asp.net: Tag Cloud Control for asp.net allows the user to display the most important keywords to display in tag cloud. Each Tag has it own navigation url to...thefreeimdb: fsadie qwUppityUp: UppityUp is a simple and light-weight tray application which monitors a remote server and shows a notification when it comes online. This is usefu...Vivid3D 2 - DirectX 10 3D ToolKit: The sequel to my first ever engine wrote several years ago. It is not based on it in anyway. VSIDev: VSI DevXTQXK_WORK: Actionscript 3.0东坡博客: 这是一个ASP。net mvc 2博客。New Releases.NET Extensions - Extension Methods Library: Release 2010.08: Added extension methods for Bitmap manipulation (scaling for now): - Bitmap.ScaleToSize() - Bitmap.ScaleToSizeProportional() - Bitmap.ScaleProport...Black Falcon Software's Database Data-Access-Layers: “SQLHELPER”, “ORAHELPER” - Handling Binary Data: See attached document...BTech Networking Library: BTech Networking Library: Same as pervious just new namespace, extended networking coming soon!!!Community Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V37: Release of the Community Forums NNTP Bridge to access the social and anwsers MS forums with a single, open source NNTP bridge. This release has ad...Generic Entity Model 2: GEM2 build 54383: This is second BETA release of GEM2! Please see source code change sets for updates! Following implementation is not included in this release: My...Hades: Projet Hadès - Official Demo - Version 0.1.0 Beta: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Projet Hadès - Official Demo - Version 0.1.0 Beta ------------------...HeinanOS: HeinanOS M1 Source Code: You can download HeinanOS M1 Source Code and contribute to HeinanOS development! Be aware that you should not use this code for your own systems! ...HeinanOS: Milestone 1: This is the first major release for HeinanOS 1.0 Please note this is a PRE-RELEASE! This release includes the following features: -Bootable DOS-...HKGolden Express: HKGoldenExpress (Build 201006131900): New features: (None) Bug fix: Incorrect message submit date of message/ replies. (Note: Showing message submit date is enabled since Build 20100...HKGolden Express: HKGoldenExpress (Build 201006140110): New features: (None) Bug fix: (None) Improvements: (None) Other changes: Set time zone of message date as Hong Kong. Adjusted the format of messa...MediaCoder.NET: MediaCoder.NET v1.0 Beta 1.5: Installer file for MediaCoder.NET v1.0 beta 1.5. Now converts multiple files.MME: First release: Features of this release 1. One installer MME.msi. However you can also install MMEMenuManagerSetup.vsix which installs a project template that e...MSBuild Launch Pad (mPad): 1.1 Beta 1: Platform selection box is added.MVMMapper: MVMMapper Release v 1.0.1: This release has no downloadable documentation. Please use the Documentation section to get started.NginxTray: NginxTray 0.7 RC2: NginxTray 0.7 RC2PowerAuras: PowerAuras-3.0.0K-beta3: New Auras: Item Name Equipment Slot Tracking Changes from beta1 5 new aura textures Fixed Tracking bug Added graphical equipment slot sele...PowerAuras: PowerAuras-3.0.0K-beta4: New Auras: Item Name Equipment Slot Tracking Changes from beta1 5 new aura textures Fixed Tracking bug Added graphical equipment slot sele...Scriptagility for DotNetNuke: Scriptagility 1.0 (Beta): Initial public release please evaluate and feedbackSharpDevelop: SharpDevelop 4.0 Beta 1: Release notes: http://community.sharpdevelop.net/forums/t/11388.aspxsimpleLinux Distro: Project X3: This is an example of download for simpleLinuxSOAPI - StackOverflow API Parser/Wrapper Generator: SOAPI Beta 3: The SOAPI Beta 3 download will be made availabe later today when the initial documentation is complete. The previously available Beta 1 download h...Sofa: Initial release V1.0: This is the first release of Sofa. As it is made of code being previously used, as we tested it is a stable release. But bugs are always possible,...Tag Cloud Control for asp.net: Tag Cloud Control for asp.net: Tag Cloud Control for asp.net allows the user to display the most important keywords to display in tag cloud. Each Tag has it own navigation url to...UppityUp: UppityUp v0.1: First functional version, supports monitoring availability by ping (ICMP) requests. Fit for general use. Consists of one standalone .exe file - no...VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30613.0: Automatic drop of latest buildWindStyle ExifInfo for Windows Live Writer: 1.1.0.0: Add: Multiple Language(English and Simplified Chinese); Add: Insert multiple files; Fix: Error when insert pictures without Exif info; Update: Icon...Work Recorder - Hold on own time!: WorkRecorder 1.2: +Add a whole day chartXsltDb - DotNetNuke Module Builder: 01.01.24: Syntax highlighting delivered!New samples for RadControls. On single page you can find RadTreeView, RadRating, RadChart, RadFormDecorator, RadEdito...xUnit.net Contrib: xunitcontrib 0.4 (ReSharper 5.0 RTM + dotCover): xunitcontrib release 0.4 (ReSharper runner) This release provides a test runner plugin for Resharper 5.0, 4.5 and 4.1, targetting all versions of x...Most Popular ProjectsCommunity Forums NNTP bridgeRIA Services EssentialsNeatUploadBxf (Basic XAML Framework)Agile Personal Development Methodology.NET Transactional File ManagerSOLID by exampleASP.NET MVC Time PlannerWEI ShareSiverlight ProjectMost Active ProjectsjQuery Library for SharePoint Web Servicespatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleRhyduino - Arduino and Managed CodeCommunity Forums NNTP bridgeCassandraemonBlogEngine.NETLightweight Fluent WorkflowMediaCoder.NETAndrew's XNA Helpers

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  • App_offline.htm, CSS, images, and aspnet_isapi.dll

    - by LookitsPuck
    Hey all! So, the site I'm working on is using urlrewriting in coordination with aspnet_isapi.dll (everything is mapped to it). I put up my app_offline.htm file, and all the text shows, however, the CSS or images aren't being served. I'm guessing they're being processed by ASP.NET due to the wildcard mapping instead of IIS. Is this correct? If so, how can I allow IIS to serve these files? Furthermore, an issue I can see arising..in the web.config for the rewriter settings: <rewrite url="^~/images/network/(.*)/(.*).jpg$" to="~/services/ImageHandler.ashx?type=$1&amp;id=$2"/> <rewrite url="^~/image/view/(.*).jpg$" to="~/ServePRView.aspx?id=$1"/> <rewrite url="^~/asset/view/(.*).jpg$" to="~/services/ImageHandler.ashx?id=$1&amp;type=asset"/> Thanks for the help all, -Steve

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  • JMX Based Monitoring - Part Four - Business App Server Monitoring

    - by Anthony Shorten
    In the last blog entry I talked about the Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4 feature for monitoring and managing aspects of the Web Application Server using JMX. In this blog entry I am going to discuss a similar new feature that allows JMX to be used for management and monitoring the Oracle Utilities business application server component. This feature is primarily focussed on performance tracking of the product. In first release of Oracle Utilities Customer Care And Billing (V1.x I am talking about), we used to use Oracle Tuxedo as part of the architecture. In Oracle Utilities Application Framework V2.0 and above, we removed Tuxedo from the architecture. One of the features that some customers used within Tuxedo was the performance tracking ability. The idea was that you enabled performance logging on the individual Tuxedo servers and then used a utility named txrpt to produce a performance report. This report would list every service called, the number of times it was called and the average response time. When I worked a performance consultant, I used this report to identify badly performing services and also gauge the overall performance characteristics of a site. When Tuxedo was removed from the architecture this information was also lost. While you can get some information from access.log and some Mbeans supplied by the Web Application Server it was not at the same granularity as txrpt or as useful. I am happy to say we have not only reintroduced this facility in Oracle Utilities Application Framework but it is now accessible via JMX and also we have added more detail into the performance tracking. Most of this new design was working with customers around the world to make sure we introduced a new feature that not only satisfied their performance tracking needs but allowed for finer grained performance analysis. As with the Web Application Server, the Business Application Server JMX monitoring is enabled by specifying a JMX port number in RMI Port number for JMX Business and initial credentials in the JMX Enablement System User ID and JMX Enablement System Password configuration options. These options are available using the configureEnv[.sh] -a utility. These credentials are shared across the Web Application Server and Business Application Server for authorization purposes. Once this is information is supplied a number of configuration files are built (by the initialSetup[.sh] utility) to configure the facility: spl.properties - contains the JMX URL, the security configuration and the mbeans that are enabled. For example, on my demonstration machine: spl.runtime.management.rmi.port=6750 spl.runtime.management.connector.url.default=service:jmx:rmi:///jndi/rmi://localhost:6750/oracle/ouaf/ejbAppConnector jmx.remote.x.password.file=scripts/ouaf.jmx.password.file jmx.remote.x.access.file=scripts/ouaf.jmx.access.file ouaf.jmx.com.splwg.ejb.service.management.PerformanceStatistics=enabled ouaf.jmx.* files - contain the userid and password. The default configuration uses the JMX default configuration. You can use additional security features by altering the spl.properties file manually or using a custom template. For more security options see JMX Security for more details. Once it has been configured and the changes reflected in the product using the initialSetup[.sh] utility the JMX facility can be used. For illustrative purposes I will use jconsole but any JSR160 complaint browser or client can be used (with the appropriate configuration). Once you start jconsole (ensure that splenviron[.sh] is executed prior to execution to set the environment variables or for remote connection, ensure java is in your path and jconsole.jar in your classpath) you specify the URL in the spl.runtime.management.connnector.url.default entry. For example: You are then able to track performance of the product using the PerformanceStatistics Mbean. The attributes of the PerformanceStatistics Mbean are counts of each object type. This is where this facility differs from txrpt. The information that is collected includes the following: The Service Type is captured so you can filter the results in terms of the type of service. For maintenance type services you can even see the transaction type (ADD, CHANGE etc) so you can see the performance of updates against read transactions. The Minimum and Maximum are also collected to give you an idea of the spread of performance. The last call is recorded. The date, time and user of the last call are recorded to give you an idea of the timeliness of the data. The Mbean maintains a set of counters per Service Type to give you a summary of the types of transactions being executed. This gives you an overall picture of the types of transactions and volumes at your site. There are a number of interesting operations that can also be performed: reset - This resets the statistics back to zero. This is an important operation. For example, txrpt is restricted to collecting statistics per hour, which is ok for most people. But what if you wanted to be more granular? This operation allows to set the collection period to anything you wish. The statistics collected will represent values since the last restart or last reset. completeExecutionDump - This is the operation that produces a CSV in memory to allow extraction of the data. All the statistics are extracted (see the Server Administration Guide for a full list). This can be then loaded into a database, a tool or simply into your favourite spreadsheet for analysis. Here is an extract of an execution dump from my demonstration environment to give you an idea of the format: ServiceName, ServiceType, MinTime, MaxTime, Avg Time, # of Calls, Latest Time, Latest Date, Latest User ... CFLZLOUL, EXECUTE_LIST, 15.0, 64.0, 22.2, 10, 16.0, 2009-12-16::11-25-36-932, ASHORTEN CILBBLLP, READ, 106.0, 1184.0, 466.3333333333333, 6, 106.0, 2009-12-16::11-39-01-645, BOBAMA CILBBLLP, DELETE, 70.0, 146.0, 108.0, 2, 70.0, 2009-12-15::12-53-58-280, BPAYS CILBBLLP, ADD, 860.0, 4903.0, 2243.5, 8, 860.0, 2009-12-16::17-54-23-862, LELLISON CILBBLLP, CHANGE, 112.0, 3410.0, 815.1666666666666, 12, 112.0, 2009-12-16::11-40-01-103, ASHORTEN CILBCBAL, EXECUTE_LIST, 8.0, 84.0, 26.0, 22, 23.0, 2009-12-16::17-54-01-643, LJACKMAN InitializeUserInfoService, READ_SYSTEM, 49.0, 962.0, 70.83777777777777, 450, 63.0, 2010-02-25::11-21-21-667, ASHORTEN InitializeUserService, READ_SYSTEM, 130.0, 2835.0, 234.85777777777778, 450, 216.0, 2010-02-25::11-21-21-446, ASHORTEN MenuLoginService, READ_SYSTEM, 530.0, 1186.0, 703.3333333333334, 9, 530.0, 2009-12-16::16-39-31-172, ASHORTEN NavigationOptionDescriptionService, READ_SYSTEM, 2.0, 7.0, 4.0, 8, 2.0, 2009-12-21::09-46-46-892, ASHORTEN ... There are other operations and attributes available. Refer to the Server Administration Guide provided with your product to understand the full et of operations and attributes. This is one of the many features I am proud that we implemented as it allows flexible monitoring of the performance of the product.

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  • SQL SERVER – Guest Post – Architecting Data Warehouse – Niraj Bhatt

    - by pinaldave
    Niraj Bhatt works as an Enterprise Architect for a Fortune 500 company and has an innate passion for building / studying software systems. He is a top rated speaker at various technical forums including Tech·Ed, MCT Summit, Developer Summit, and Virtual Tech Days, among others. Having run a successful startup for four years Niraj enjoys working on – IT innovations that can impact an enterprise bottom line, streamlining IT budgets through IT consolidation, architecture and integration of systems, performance tuning, and review of enterprise applications. He has received Microsoft MVP award for ASP.NET, Connected Systems and most recently on Windows Azure. When he is away from his laptop, you will find him taking deep dives in automobiles, pottery, rafting, photography, cooking and financial statements though not necessarily in that order. He is also a manager/speaker at BDOTNET, Asia’s largest .NET user group. Here is the guest post by Niraj Bhatt. As data in your applications grows it’s the database that usually becomes a bottleneck. It’s hard to scale a relational DB and the preferred approach for large scale applications is to create separate databases for writes and reads. These databases are referred as transactional database and reporting database. Though there are tools / techniques which can allow you to create snapshot of your transactional database for reporting purpose, sometimes they don’t quite fit the reporting requirements of an enterprise. These requirements typically are data analytics, effective schema (for an Information worker to self-service herself), historical data, better performance (flat data, no joins) etc. This is where a need for data warehouse or an OLAP system arises. A Key point to remember is a data warehouse is mostly a relational database. It’s built on top of same concepts like Tables, Rows, Columns, Primary keys, Foreign Keys, etc. Before we talk about how data warehouses are typically structured let’s understand key components that can create a data flow between OLTP systems and OLAP systems. There are 3 major areas to it: a) OLTP system should be capable of tracking its changes as all these changes should go back to data warehouse for historical recording. For e.g. if an OLTP transaction moves a customer from silver to gold category, OLTP system needs to ensure that this change is tracked and send to data warehouse for reporting purpose. A report in context could be how many customers divided by geographies moved from sliver to gold category. In data warehouse terminology this process is called Change Data Capture. There are quite a few systems that leverage database triggers to move these changes to corresponding tracking tables. There are also out of box features provided by some databases e.g. SQL Server 2008 offers Change Data Capture and Change Tracking for addressing such requirements. b) After we make the OLTP system capable of tracking its changes we need to provision a batch process that can run periodically and takes these changes from OLTP system and dump them into data warehouse. There are many tools out there that can help you fill this gap – SQL Server Integration Services happens to be one of them. c) So we have an OLTP system that knows how to track its changes, we have jobs that run periodically to move these changes to warehouse. The question though remains is how warehouse will record these changes? This structural change in data warehouse arena is often covered under something called Slowly Changing Dimension (SCD). While we will talk about dimensions in a while, SCD can be applied to pure relational tables too. SCD enables a database structure to capture historical data. This would create multiple records for a given entity in relational database and data warehouses prefer having their own primary key, often known as surrogate key. As I mentioned a data warehouse is just a relational database but industry often attributes a specific schema style to data warehouses. These styles are Star Schema or Snowflake Schema. The motivation behind these styles is to create a flat database structure (as opposed to normalized one), which is easy to understand / use, easy to query and easy to slice / dice. Star schema is a database structure made up of dimensions and facts. Facts are generally the numbers (sales, quantity, etc.) that you want to slice and dice. Fact tables have these numbers and have references (foreign keys) to set of tables that provide context around those facts. E.g. if you have recorded 10,000 USD as sales that number would go in a sales fact table and could have foreign keys attached to it that refers to the sales agent responsible for sale and to time table which contains the dates between which that sale was made. These agent and time tables are called dimensions which provide context to the numbers stored in fact tables. This schema structure of fact being at center surrounded by dimensions is called Star schema. A similar structure with difference of dimension tables being normalized is called a Snowflake schema. This relational structure of facts and dimensions serves as an input for another analysis structure called Cube. Though physically Cube is a special structure supported by commercial databases like SQL Server Analysis Services, logically it’s a multidimensional structure where dimensions define the sides of cube and facts define the content. Facts are often called as Measures inside a cube. Dimensions often tend to form a hierarchy. E.g. Product may be broken into categories and categories in turn to individual items. Category and Items are often referred as Levels and their constituents as Members with their overall structure called as Hierarchy. Measures are rolled up as per dimensional hierarchy. These rolled up measures are called Aggregates. Now this may seem like an overwhelming vocabulary to deal with but don’t worry it will sink in as you start working with Cubes and others. Let’s see few other terms that we would run into while talking about data warehouses. ODS or an Operational Data Store is a frequently misused term. There would be few users in your organization that want to report on most current data and can’t afford to miss a single transaction for their report. Then there is another set of users that typically don’t care how current the data is. Mostly senior level executives who are interesting in trending, mining, forecasting, strategizing, etc. don’t care for that one specific transaction. This is where an ODS can come in handy. ODS can use the same star schema and the OLAP cubes we saw earlier. The only difference is that the data inside an ODS would be short lived, i.e. for few months and ODS would sync with OLTP system every few minutes. Data warehouse can periodically sync with ODS either daily or weekly depending on business drivers. Data marts are another frequently talked about topic in data warehousing. They are subject-specific data warehouse. Data warehouses that try to span over an enterprise are normally too big to scope, build, manage, track, etc. Hence they are often scaled down to something called Data mart that supports a specific segment of business like sales, marketing, or support. Data marts too, are often designed using star schema model discussed earlier. Industry is divided when it comes to use of data marts. Some experts prefer having data marts along with a central data warehouse. Data warehouse here acts as information staging and distribution hub with spokes being data marts connected via data feeds serving summarized data. Others eliminate the need for a centralized data warehouse citing that most users want to report on detailed data. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Best Practices, Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing, Database, Pinal Dave, PostADay, Readers Contribution, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • missing Axhost after using axImp.exe

    - by user311130
    Hey all, I want to use to connect with RDP from c# code. I have fpund a code_Guru code that does that but need AxMSTSCLib.dll as a reference. One of this dll member is Axhost. I'm using the command axImp.exe to create a AxMSTSCLib.dll: %%\aximp.exe %windir%\system32\mstscax.dll But there is no Axhost (check the object browser through visual studio). (here is my dll compared with the one which was donloaded from code-guru http://drop.io/hidden/eopb4tphk8qekl/asset/bm8tZ2V0LW9jeC1qcGc%253D http://drop.io/hidden/eopb4tphk8qekl/asset/Z2V0b2N4LTEtanBn ) Anyone knows why? and how can I fix that? or where should i ask this ver specific question? Regards,

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  • saving the videos and photos in iPhone Simultor 4.0

    - by Mohammed Sadiq
    Hi All, From 4.0 apple has extended their api support to access the videos and photos from the phone. I am using only iPhone 4.0 simulator to test my application. When I try to save the video as apple has mentioned in their api docs, its giving the error something like "Error Saving the Asset". The way I try to store the video is as follows : ALAssetsLibraryWriteVideoCompletionBlock _videoCompblock = ^(NSURL *assetURL, NSError *error){ if(assetURL) { NSLog(@"Video AssetUrl : %@", [assetURL absoluteString]); } else if(error) { NSLog(@"The Error occured : %@", [error localizedDescription]); } }; BOOL isSupported = [library deoAtPathIsCompatibleWithSavedPhotosAlbum:videoFileUrl]; if(isSupported) { [library writeVideoAtPathToSavedPhotosAlbum:videoFileUrl completionBlock:_videoCompblock]; } The above methods should print the url of the video on successful saving of the video file. But its printing the error message as "ERROR SAVING THE ASSET". Any idea or help on this topic will be greatly appreciated. Best Regards, Mohammed Sadiq.

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  • Java File and ByteArray or InputStream - please quick help

    - by Peter Perhác
    I want to use jFuge to play some MIDI music in an applet. There's a class for the MIDI pattern - Pattern - and the only method to load the pattern is from a File. Now, I don't know how applets load files and what not, but I am using a framework (PulpCore) that makes loading assets a simple task. If I need to grab an asset from a ZIP catalogue, I can use the Assets class which provides get() and getAsStream() methods. get() returns the given asset as a ByteArray, the other as an InputStream. I need jFuge to load the pattern from either ByteArray or InputStream. In pseudo-code, I would like to do this: Pattern.load(new File(Assets.get("mymidifile.midi"))); however there is no File constructor that would take a ByteArray. Suggestions, please?

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  • NHibernate FetchMode.Lazy

    - by RyanFetz
    I have an object which has a property on it that has then has collections which i would like to not load in a couple situations. 98% of the time i want those collections fetched but in the one instance i do not. Here is the code I have... Why does it not set the fetch mode on the properties collections? [DataContract(Name = "ThemingJob", Namespace = "")] [Serializable] public class ThemingJob : ServiceJob { [DataMember] public virtual Query Query { get; set; } [DataMember] public string Results { get; set; } } [DataContract(Name = "Query", Namespace = "")] [Serializable] public class Query : LookupEntity<Query>, DAC.US.Search.Models.IQueryEntity { [DataMember] public string QueryResult { get; set; } private IList<Asset> _Assets = new List<Asset>(); [IgnoreDataMember] [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlIgnore] public IList<Asset> Assets { get { return _Assets; } set { _Assets = value; } } private IList<Theme> _Themes = new List<Theme>(); [IgnoreDataMember] [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlIgnore] public IList<Theme> Themes { get { return _Themes; } set { _Themes = value; } } private IList<Affinity> _Affinity = new List<Affinity>(); [IgnoreDataMember] [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlIgnore] public IList<Affinity> Affinity { get { return _Affinity; } set { _Affinity = value; } } private IList<Word> _Words = new List<Word>(); [IgnoreDataMember] [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlIgnore] public IList<Word> Words { get { return _Words; } set { _Words = value; } } } using (global::NHibernate.ISession session = NHibernateApplication.GetCurrentSession()) { global::NHibernate.ICriteria criteria = session.CreateCriteria(typeof(ThemingJob)); global::NHibernate.ICriteria countCriteria = session.CreateCriteria(typeof(ThemingJob)); criteria.AddOrder(global::NHibernate.Criterion.Order.Desc("Id")); var qc = criteria.CreateCriteria("Query"); qc.SetFetchMode("Assets", global::NHibernate.FetchMode.Lazy); qc.SetFetchMode("Themes", global::NHibernate.FetchMode.Lazy); qc.SetFetchMode("Affinity", global::NHibernate.FetchMode.Lazy); qc.SetFetchMode("Words", global::NHibernate.FetchMode.Lazy); pageIndex = Convert.ToInt32(pageIndex) - 1; // convert to 0 based paging index criteria.SetMaxResults(pageSize); criteria.SetFirstResult(pageIndex * pageSize); countCriteria.SetProjection(global::NHibernate.Criterion.Projections.RowCount()); int totalRecords = (int)countCriteria.List()[0]; return criteria.List<ThemingJob>().ToPagedList<ThemingJob>(pageIndex, pageSize, totalRecords); }

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  • Flex SWF assets loaded into Flash SWF at runtime within same ApplicationDomain

    - by Xyre
    I'm trying to load a swf compiled by the Flex SDK into a swf exported by the Flash IDE and instantiate the assets by way of getDefinition(). Normally this works fine with assets exported from the Flash IDE then loaded into another swf also from Flash IDE. This is how I could normally do this using only the Flash IDE: Loader - Using same ApplicationDomain - getDefinition(class) Now, using the 'Test.as' compiled from Flex SDK using the [Embed] metadata tag: Loader - Using same ApplicationDomain - getDefinition("Test_" + class) The problem is I'd rather not have to keep track of the asset libraries loaded to prefix the class name I'd like to get (('Test_" + class) vs (class)). Is there any way of doing this without referencing the library the class is being pulled from or without accessing the original loader? This way I don't need to know which swf the asset is coming from, just the class name that I could instantiate from the current ApplicaitonDomain. Thanks

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  • Flex 3: Embedding MovieClip Symbol to Image Control programmatically

    - by BlueDude
    I've reviewed all the documentation and Google results surrounding this and I think I have everything setup correctly. My problem is that the symbol is not appearing in my app. I have a MovieClip symbol that I've embedded to my Flex Component. I need to create a new Image control for each item from my dataProvider and assign this embedded symbol as the Image's source. I thought it was simple but apparently not. Here's a stub of the code: [Embed(source="../assets/assetLib.swf", symbol="StarMC")] private var StarClass:Class; protected function rebuildChildren():void { iterator.seek( CursorBookmark.FIRST ); while ( !iterator.afterLast ) { child = new Image(); var asset:MovieClipAsset = new StarClass() as MovieClipAsset; (child as Image).source = asset; } } I know the child is being created because I can draw a shape and and that appears. Am I doing something wrong? Thank you!

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  • Is there a method I can use across controllers and if so, how do I use it?

    - by Angela
    I have several controllers that take an instance of different classes each (Email, Call, Letter, etc) and they all have to go through this same substitution: @email.message.gsub!("{FirstName}", @contact.first_name) @email.message.gsub!("{Company}", @contact.company_name) @email.message.gsub!("{Colleagues}", @colleagues.to_sentence) @email.message.gsub!("{NextWeek}", (Date.today + 7.days).strftime("%A, %B %d")) @email.message.gsub!("{ContactTitle}", @contact.title ) So, for example, @call.message for Call, @letter.message for Letter, etcetera. This isn't very dry. I'd like to have something like def messagesub(asset) @asset.message.gsub.... end or something like that so I can just use messagesub method in each controller.

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  • Need to open the SMS/MMS app and have an image pre-loaded into the text input in iPhone OS

    - by jmurphy
    Hello, I am trying to open the SMS/MMS app on the iPhone and have an image that is saved in the camera roll pre loaded into the text field. Is this possible? Here is the code I have tried: NSString *urlString = [NSString stringWithString:@"sms://asset/asset.JPG?id=1000000041&ext=JPG"]; NSString *escaped = [urlString stringByAddingPercentEscapesUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]; NSLog(@"URL: %@", escaped); [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[NSURL URLWithString:escaped]]; I received the URL from a return after I saved the image to the camera roll. Unfortunately this doesn't work. Any ideas? Thanks!

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  • Incorporation of YUI 3 in rails

    - by lorefnon
    I was wondering if any effort has been made towards integration of YUI3 with rails asset pipeline. By integration, I don't just mean a couple of helpers for including the library but rather a complete integration of YUI module loader. I'll elaborate the idea in detail: Currently, developers developing modules using YUI rely on Ant tasks for concatenating the module components and wrapping them up with some associated metadata and generating target files ( and optionally minifying and running jslint). Also, when fetching the modules, the YUI loader calculates the module dependencies and generates a single file comprising of all the dependencies which havent been included already in the page. I was wondering if the whole functionality could be seamlessly integrated into the Asset pipeline of rails.

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  • send data from one table to another page

    - by user91599
    I have this table I want when I click on a link in a table row that do a redirect to another page the data will be sent to the new page that can help me I have not found how to start I'm really stuck code table <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" class="display" id="example"> <thead> <tr> <th>Date</th> <th>provider</th> <th>CI</th> <th>CELL</th> <th>BSC</th> <th>Commentaire</th> <th>nbr</th> <th>Type</th> <th><img src="{{ asset('image/Modify.png') }}" ALIGN="CENTER"/></th> <th><img src="{{ asset('image/Info.png') }}" ALIGN="CENTER"/></th> <th><img src="{{ asset('image/Male.png') }}" ALIGN="CENTER"/></th> <th>type_alertes</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <div class="textbox"> <h2> Information KPI dégradées</h2> <div class="textbox_content" id="kpi_dégrades"> {% for liste in listes %} <tr class="gradeU"> <td>{{ liste.DAT }} </td> <td>{{ liste.PROVIDER}} </td> <td>{{ liste.CI}} </td> <td>{{ liste.CELL}} </td> <td>{{ liste.BSC}}</td> <td>{{ liste.Cmts}}</td> <td >{{ liste.nbr}}</td> <td>{{ liste.TYPE}}</td> <td><a class="edit" href="">Edit</a></td> <td onclick="getInfo('{{ liste.CELL}}')">Information KPI dégradés</td> <td>{{ liste.user_name}}</td> <td>{{ liste.type_alertes}}</td> </tr> {% endfor %} </div> </div> </tbody>

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  • group by with 3 diffrent

    - by NN
    I have 2 table and I wanna a query with 3 column result in on of them 2 column with view count and title name and in the other 1 column with type_ and i wanna to grouping type_ with max(view count) and show the them title but i didn't have any idea about grouping expression. i think we can solve in by using sub query but i don't know which column use in group by. 2 table join with this expression class pk=resource key i exam this query: SELECT t.title,j.type_ FROM tags asset t,journal article j where type_ in (select type_ from journal article,tags asset where class pk=resource key group by type_) but the answer was wrong

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  • The Connected Company: WebCenter Portal - Feedback - Analytics and Polls

    - by Michael Snow
    Evernote Export body, td { }Guest Post by: Mitchell Palski, Staff Sales Consultant The importance of connecting peers has been widely recognized and socialized as a critical component of employee intranets. Organizations are striving to provide mediums for sharing knowledge and improving awareness across their enterprise. Indirectly, the socialization of your enterprise should lead to cost savings and improved product/service quality. However, many times the direct effects of connecting an organization’s leadership with its employees are overlooked. Oracle WebCenter Portal can help you bridge that gap by gathering implicit and explicit feedback. Implicit Feedback Through Usage Analytics Analytics allows administrators to track and analyze WebCenter Portal traffic and usage. Analytics provides the following basic functionality: Usage Tracking Metrics: Analytics collects and reports metrics of common WebCenter Portal functions, including community and portlet traffic. Behavior Tracking: Analytics can be used to analyze WebCenter Portal metrics to determine usage patterns, such as page visit duration and usage over time. User Profile Correlation: Analytics can be used to correlate metric information with user profile information. Usage tracking reports can be viewed and filtered by user profile data such as country, company or title. Usage analytics help measure how users interact with website content – allowing your IT staff and business analysts to make informed decisions when planning development for your next intranet enhancement. For example: If users are not accessing your Announcements page and missing critical information that they need to be aware of, you may elect to use graphical links on the home page to direct more users to that page. As a result, the number of employee help-requests to HR decreases. If users are not accessing your News page to read recent articles, you may elect to stop spending as much time updating the page with new stories and cut costs in your communications department. You notice that there is a high volume of users accessing the Employee Dashboard page so your organization decides to continue making personalization enhancements to the page and investing in the Portal tool that most users are accessing. Usage analytics aren’t necessarily a new concept in the IT industry. What sets WebCenter Portal Analytics apart is: Reports are tailored for WebCenter specific tools Report can be easily added to a page as simple as a drag-and-drop Explicit Feedback Through Polls WebCenter Portal users can create, edit, take, and analyze online polls. With polls, you can survey your audience (such as their opinions and their experience level), check whether they can recall important information, and gather feedback and metrics. How many times have you been involved in a requirements discussion and someone has asked a question similar to “Well how do you know that no one likes our home page?” and the response is “Everyone says they hate it! That’s all anyone complains about.” No one has any measurable, quantifiable metric to gauge user satisfaction. Analytics measure usage, but your organization also needs to measure the quality of your portal as defined by the actual people that use it. With that information, your leadership can make informed decisions that will not only match usage patterns but also relate to employees on a personal level. The end result is a connection between employees and leadership that gives everyone in the organization a sense of ownership of their Portal rather than the feeling of development decisions being segregated to leadership only. Polls can be created and edited through the Poll Manager: Polls and View Poll Results can easily be added to a page through drag-and-drop. What did we learn? Being a “connected” company doesn’t just mean helping employees connect with each other horizontally across your enterprise. It also means connecting those employees to the decisions that affect their everyday activities. Through WebCenter Portal Usage Analytics and Polls, any decision that is made to remove a Portal page, update a Portal page, or develop new Portal functionality, can be justified by quantifiable metrics. Instead of fielding complaints and hearing that your employees don’t have a voice, give those employees a voice and listen!

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  • Using Content Analytics for More Effective Engagement

    - by Kellsey Ruppel
    Using Content Analytics for More Effective Engagement: Turning High-Volume Content into Templates for Success By Mitchell Palski, Oracle WebCenter Sales Consultant Many organizations use Oracle WebCenter Portal to develop these basic types of portals: Intranet portals used for collaboration, employee self-service, and company communication Extranet portals used by customers and partners for self-service and support Team collaboration portals that allow users to share documents and content, track activity, and engage in discussions Portals are intended to provide a personalized, single point of interaction with web-based applications and information. The user experiences that a Portal is capable of displaying should be relevant to an individual user or class of users (a group or role). The components of a Portal that would vary based on a user’s identity include: Web content such as images, news articles, and on-screen instruction Social tools such as threaded discussions, polls/surveys, and blogs Document management tools to upload, download, and edit files Web applications that present data visualizations and data entry modules These collections of content, tools, and applications make up valuable workspaces. The challenge that a development team may have is defining which combinations are the most effective for its users. No one wants to create and manage a workspace that goes un-used or (even worse) that is used but is ineffective. Oracle WebCenter Portal provides you with the capabilities to not only rapidly develop variations of portals, but also identify which portals are the most effective and should be re-used throughout an enterprise. Capturing Portal AnalyticsOracle WebCenter Portal provides an analytics service that allows administrators and business users to track and analyze portal usage. These analytics are captured in the form of: Usage tracking metrics Behavior tracking User Profile Correlation The out-of-the-box task reports that come with Oracle WebCenter Portal include: WebCenter Portal Traffic Page Traffic Login Metrics Portlet Traffic Portlet Response Time Portlet Instance Traffic Portlet Instance Response Time Search Metrics Document Metrics Wiki Metrics Blog Metrics Discussion Metrics Portal Traffic Portal Response Time By determining the usage and behavior tracking metrics that are associated with specific user profiles (including groups and roles), your administrators will be able to identify the components of your solution that are the most valuable.  Your first step as an administrator should be to identify the specific pages and/or components are used the most frequently. Next, determine the user(s) or user-group(s) that are accessing those high-use elements of a portal. It is also important to determine patterns in high-usage and see if they correlate to a specific schedule. One of the goals of any development team (especially those that are following Agile methodologies) should be to develop reusable web components to minimize redundant development. Oracle WebCenter Portal provides you the tools to capture the successful workspaces that have already been developed and identified so that they can be reused for similar user demographics. Re-using Successful PortalsWhen creating a new Portal in Oracle WebCenter, developers have the option to base that portal on a template that includes: Pre-seeded data such as pages, tools, user roles, and look-and-feel assets Specific sub-sets of page-layouts, tools, and other resources to standardize what is added to a Portal’s pages Any custom components that your team creates during development cycles Once you have identified a successful workspace and its most valuable components, leverage Oracle WebCenter’s ability to turn that custom portal into a portal template. By creating a template from your already successful portal, you are empowering your enterprise by providing a starting point for future initiatives. Your new projects, new teams, and new web pages can benefit from lessons learned and adjustments that have already been made to optimize user experiences instead of starting from scratch. ***For a complete explanation of how to work with Portal Templates, be sure to read the Fusion Middleware documentation available online.

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  • What is the basic pattern for using (N)Hibernate?

    - by Vilx-
    I'm creating a simple Windows Forms application with NHibernate and I'm a bit confused about how I'm supposed to use it. To quote the manual: ISession (NHibernate.ISession) A single-threaded, short-lived object representing a conversation between the application and the persistent store. Wraps an ADO.NET connection. Factory for ITransaction. Holds a mandatory (first-level) cache of persistent objects, used when navigating the object graph or looking up objects by identifier. Now, suppose I have the following scenario: I have a simple classifier which is a MSSQL table with two columns - ID (auto_increment) and Name (nvarchar). To edit this classifier I create a form which contains a single gridview and two buttons - OK and Cancel. The user can nearly directly edit the table in the gridview, and when he hits OK the changes he made are persisted to the DB (or if he hits cancel, nothing happens). Now, I have several questions about how to organize this: What should the lifetime of my ISession be? Should I create a single ISession for my whole application; an ISession for each of my forms (the application is single-threaded MDI); or an ISession for every DB operation/transaction? Does NHibernate offer some kind of built-in dirty tracking or must I do this myself? The manual mentions something like it here and there but does not go into details. How is this done? Is there not a huge overhead? Is it somehow tied with the cache(s) that NHibernate has? What are these caches for? Are they not specific to a single ISession? That is, if I use a seperate ISession for every transaction, won't it break the dirty tracking? How does the built-in dirty tracking detect deleted objects?

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