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  • What issues carry the highest risk in a software project?

    - by Mehrdad Afshari
    Clearly, software projects are different from other industries in terms of many things like for instance, quality assurance, project progress measurement, and many other things. Unique characteristics of software projects also makes the risk management process unique. Lots of issues in a project might lead it to unacceptable delay or failure to deliver business value. They might even make a complete disaster in the project. What are the deadliest risk factors in a software project? How to analyze, prevent and handle them? Particularly, I'm interested in the issues that you can detect from the beginning and you should keep an eye on (for example, you might be told about a third-party API that the current application uses and lacks documentation). Please share your experiences if they are relevant.

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  • What is the most simple way to execute java class every 30 seconds

    - by Gandalf StormCrow
    I've been reading about java/spring/hibernate and worked trough a "dummy" examples so I told my friend to recommend something a bit harder for me, and now I'm stuck.. here is the simplest class I could think of package spring.com.practice; public class Pitcher { private String shout; public String getShout() { return shout; } public void setShout(String shout) { this.shout = shout; } public void voice() { System.out.println(getShout()); } } What is the most simple way to print out something by calling metod voice() from spring beans, and do it repeadatly every 30 seconds lets say, here is what I've got so far : <bean id="simpleTrigger" class="org.springframework.scheduling.quartz.SimpleTriggerBean"> <property name="jobDetail" ref="jobSchedulerDetail" /> <property name="startDelay" value="0" /> <property name="repeatInterval" value="30" /> </bean> <bean class="org.springframework.scheduling.quartz.SchedulerFactoryBean"> <property name="schedulerName" value="pitcherScheduler" /> <property name="triggers"> <list> <ref bean="simpleTrigger" /> </list> </property> </bean> <bean id="pitcher" class="spring.com.practice.Pitcher"> <property name="shout" value="I started executing..."></property> </bean> And yes I'm trying to run this on Jboss 5, I'm building a project with maven.

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  • Saving a single entity instead of the entire context - revisited

    - by nite
    I’m looking for a way to have fine grained control over what is saved using Entity Framework, rather than the whole ObjectContext.SaveChanges(). My scenario is pretty straight forward, and I’m quite amazed not catered for in EF – pretty basic in NHibernate and all other data access paradigms I’ve seen. I’m generating a bunch of data (in a WPF UI) and allowing the user to fine tune what is proposed and choose what is actually committed to the database. For the proposed entities I’m: getting a bunch of reference entities (eg languages) via my objectcontext, creating the proposed entities and assigning these reference entities to them (as navigation properties), so by virtue of their relationship to the reference entities they’re implicitly added to the objectconext Trying to create & save individual entites based on the proposed entities. I figure this should be really simple & trivial but everything I’ve tried I’ve hit a brick wall, either I set up another objectcontext & add just the entity I need (it then tries to add the whole graph and fails as it’s on another objectcontext). I’ve tried MergeOptions = NoTracking on my reference entities to try to get the Attach/AddObject not to navigate through these to create a graph, no avail. I've removed the navigation properties from the reference entities. I've tried AcceptAllChanges, that works but pretty useless in practice as I do still want to track & save other entities. In a simple test, I can create 2 of my proposed entities, AddObject the one I want to save and then Detach the one I dont then call SaveChanges, this works but again not great in practice. Following are a few links to some of the nifty ideas which in the end don’t help in the end but illustrate the complexity of EF for something so simple. I’m really looking for a SaveSingle/SaveAtomic method, and think it’s a pretty reasonable & basic ask for any DAL, letalone a cutting edge ORM. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1301460/saving-a-single-entity-instead-of-the-entire-context www.codeproject.com/KB/architecture/attachobjectgraph.aspx?fid=1534536&df=90&mpp=25&noise=3&sort=Position&view=Quick&select=3071122&fr=1 bernhardelbl.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!DB54AE2C5D84DB78!238.entry

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  • Should I use early returns in C#?

    - by Bobby
    I've learned Visual Basic and was always taught to keep the flow of the program without interruptions, like Goto, Exit and Return. Using nested ifs instead of one return statement seems very natural to me. Now that I'm partly migrating towards C#, I wonder what the best practice is for C-like languages. I've been working on a C# project for some time, and of course discover more code of ExampleB and it's hurting my mind somehow. But what is the best practice for this, what is more often used and are there any reasons against one of the styles? public void ExampleA() { if (a != b) { if (a != c) { bool foundIt; for (int i = 0; i < d.Count && !foundIt; i++) { if (element == f) foundIt = true; } } } } public void ExampleB() { if (a == b) return; if (a == c) return; foreach (object element in d) { if (element == f) break; } }

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  • Do you ever make a code change and just test rather than trying to fully understand the change you'v

    - by Clay Nichols
    I'm working in a 12 year old code base which I have been the only developer on. There are times that I'll make a a very small change based on an intuition (or quantum leap in logic ;-). Usually I try to deconstruct that change and make sure I read thoroughly the code. However sometimes, (more and more these days) I just test and make sure it had the effect I wanted. (I'm a pretty thorough tester and would test even if I read the code). This works for me and we have surprisingly (compared to most software I see) few bugs escape into the wild. But what I'm wondering is whether this is just the "art" side of coding. Yes, in an ideal world you would exhaustively read every bit of code that your change modified, but I in practice, if you're confident that it only affects a small section of code, is this a common practice? I can obviously see where this would be a disastrous approach in the hands of a poor programmer. But then, I've seen programmers who ostensibly are reading the code and break stuff left and right (in their own code based which only they have been working on).

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  • C# Hook Forms / Windows / Dialogs etc. (via HWND?) to Capture Video Buffer (D3D Device?)

    - by Drax
    I am looking to create a very simple C# application which runs Full-Screen in Direct3D, and is able to grab the Desktop 'scene', mapping each Window from the Desktop to a Textured Polygon in my D3D Scene... I'm hoping to create a simplistic "3D Desktop" type of application as an experiment, and I'm wondering if there is a specific method for doing something like the following: 1)Get a list of all the Windows open on the Desktop (List of HWNDs?). 2)Grab the X,Y position of each Window, as well as the Width and Height. 3)Grab the Rendered image of each Window (magic happens here). 4)Create a new Texture/Surface in D3D using the Width and Height of the Window(s), and apply the Image we grabbed as a Texture. Is there an efficient 'best practice' for acquiring the actual image(s) being rendered to the Desktop? Is there also a 'best practice' for "extending the desktop" to a virtual second, third, etc. "desktop" and being able to swap between them, including creating a unique instance of the task-bar for each virtual desktop. Thanks a million for any suggestions!

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  • zend-framework doctrine, and mvc pattern: what should connect data between models and forms?

    - by Skirmantas
    I am learning Zend Framework and Doctrine. I am wondering what is the best practice to connect forms to models and vice versa. I don't know where I should put my code. I have seen in Zendcast video tutorials where author creates methods like mapFormToRecord and mapRecordToForm in form class. Well I guess it is very handy when form is sophisticated and uses many records. Is it a good practice? I somehow believe that form-class should not need to know about data-records. And sometimes we might have model which is used in many forms. So It would be handy to have few functions in that model which would help to prepare data for forms. For example to give an array of id=name pairs so that it might be used in Zend_Form_Element_Select. However I would like to have a consistency. So I don't want to put this code nor in model nor in form because on different situations I act different. So only controller is what is left to deal it. However this will result in code duplication if one form will be used more than in one controller. Moreover controller gets bloated if form is not from the simple ones. Or maybe there is a consistent pattern in those data conversions between forms and models? I think that there is. At least in my simple cases. So maybe a separate class could be a solution? Where should I put such class and how should I name it? Another question: Zend_Form has validators and filter. Doctrine has validators and filters too. Which do we use and when? What is your way of dealing the connections between forms and models? (Sorry if it was hard for you to read my text. I don't have enough knowledge of English language to express myself freely)

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  • Numpy zero rank array indexing/broadcasting

    - by Lemming
    I'm trying to write a function that supports broadcasting and is fast at the same time. However, numpy's zero-rank arrays are causing trouble as usual. I couldn't find anything useful on google, or by searching here. So, I'm asking you. How should I implement broadcasting efficiently and handle zero-rank arrays at the same time? This whole post became larger than anticipated, sorry. Details: To clarify what I'm talking about I'll give a simple example: Say I want to implement a Heaviside step-function. I.e. a function that acts on the real axis, which is 0 on the negative side, 1 on the positive side, and from case to case either 0, 0.5, or 1 at the point 0. Implementation Masking The most efficient way I found so far is the following. It uses boolean arrays as masks to assign the correct values to the corresponding slots in the output vector. from numpy import * def step_mask(x, limit=+1): """Heaviside step-function. y = 0 if x < 0 y = 1 if x > 0 See below for x == 0. Arguments: x Evaluate the function at these points. limit Which limit at x == 0? limit > 0: y = 1 limit == 0: y = 0.5 limit < 0: y = 0 Return: The values corresponding to x. """ b = broadcast(x, limit) out = zeros(b.shape) out[x>0] = 1 mask = (limit > 0) & (x == 0) out[mask] = 1 mask = (limit == 0) & (x == 0) out[mask] = 0.5 mask = (limit < 0) & (x == 0) out[mask] = 0 return out List Comprehension The following-the-numpy-docs way is to use a list comprehension on the flat iterator of the broadcast object. However, list comprehensions become absolutely unreadable for such complicated functions. def step_comprehension(x, limit=+1): b = broadcast(x, limit) out = empty(b.shape) out.flat = [ ( 1 if x_ > 0 else ( 0 if x_ < 0 else ( 1 if l_ > 0 else ( 0.5 if l_ ==0 else ( 0 ))))) for x_, l_ in b ] return out For Loop And finally, the most naive way is a for loop. It's probably the most readable option. However, Python for-loops are anything but fast. And hence, a really bad idea in numerics. def step_for(x, limit=+1): b = broadcast(x, limit) out = empty(b.shape) for i, (x_, l_) in enumerate(b): if x_ > 0: out[i] = 1 elif x_ < 0: out[i] = 0 elif l_ > 0: out[i] = 1 elif l_ < 0: out[i] = 0 else: out[i] = 0.5 return out Test First of all a brief test to see if the output is correct. >>> x = array([-1, -0.1, 0, 0.1, 1]) >>> step_mask(x, +1) array([ 0., 0., 1., 1., 1.]) >>> step_mask(x, 0) array([ 0. , 0. , 0.5, 1. , 1. ]) >>> step_mask(x, -1) array([ 0., 0., 0., 1., 1.]) It is correct, and the other two functions give the same output. Performance How about efficiency? These are the timings: In [45]: xl = linspace(-2, 2, 500001) In [46]: %timeit step_mask(xl) 10 loops, best of 3: 19.5 ms per loop In [47]: %timeit step_comprehension(xl) 1 loops, best of 3: 1.17 s per loop In [48]: %timeit step_for(xl) 1 loops, best of 3: 1.15 s per loop The masked version performs best as expected. However, I'm surprised that the comprehension is on the same level as the for loop. Zero Rank Arrays But, 0-rank arrays pose a problem. Sometimes you want to use a function scalar input. And preferably not have to worry about wrapping all scalars in at least 1-D arrays. >>> step_mask(1) Traceback (most recent call last): File "<ipython-input-50-91c06aa4487b>", line 1, in <module> step_mask(1) File "script.py", line 22, in step_mask out[x>0] = 1 IndexError: 0-d arrays can't be indexed. >>> step_for(1) Traceback (most recent call last): File "<ipython-input-51-4e0de4fcb197>", line 1, in <module> step_for(1) File "script.py", line 55, in step_for out[i] = 1 IndexError: 0-d arrays can't be indexed. >>> step_comprehension(1) array(1.0) Only the list comprehension can handle 0-rank arrays. The other two versions would need special case handling for 0-rank arrays. Numpy gets a bit messy when you want to use the same code for arrays and scalars. However, I really like to have functions that work on as arbitrary input as possible. Who knows which parameters I'll want to iterate over at some point. Question: What is the best way to implement a function as the one above? Is there a way to avoid if scalar then like special cases? I'm not looking for a built-in Heaviside. It's just a simplified example. In my code the above pattern appears in many places to make parameter iteration as simple as possible without littering the client code with for loops or comprehensions. Furthermore, I'm aware of Cython, or weave & Co., or implementation directly in C. However, the performance of the masked version above is sufficient for the moment. And for the moment I would like to keep things as simple as possible.

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  • Faster or more memory-efficient solution in Python for this Codejam problem.

    - by jeroen.vangoey
    I tried my hand at this Google Codejam Africa problem (the contest is already finished, I just did it to improve my programming skills). The Problem: You are hosting a party with G guests and notice that there is an odd number of guests! When planning the party you deliberately invited only couples and gave each couple a unique number C on their invitation. You would like to single out whoever came alone by asking all of the guests for their invitation numbers. The Input: The first line of input gives the number of cases, N. N test cases follow. For each test case there will be: One line containing the value G the number of guests. One line containing a space-separated list of G integers. Each integer C indicates the invitation code of a guest. Output For each test case, output one line containing "Case #x: " followed by the number C of the guest who is alone. The Limits: 1 = N = 50 0 < C = 2147483647 Small dataset 3 = G < 100 Large dataset 3 = G < 1000 Sample Input: 3 3 1 2147483647 2147483647 5 3 4 7 4 3 5 2 10 2 10 5 Sample Output: Case #1: 1 Case #2: 7 Case #3: 5 This is the solution that I came up with: with open('A-large-practice.in') as f: lines = f.readlines() with open('A-large-practice.out', 'w') as output: N = int(lines[0]) for testcase, i in enumerate(range(1,2*N,2)): G = int(lines[i]) for guest in range(G): codes = map(int, lines[i+1].split(' ')) alone = (c for c in codes if codes.count(c)==1) output.write("Case #%d: %d\n" % (testcase+1, alone.next())) It runs in 12 seconds on my machine with the large input. Now, my question is, can this solution be improved in Python to run in a shorter time or use less memory? The analysis of the problem gives some pointers on how to do this in Java and C++ but I can't translate those solutions back to Python.

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  • Recursion - Ship Battle

    - by rgorrosini
    I'm trying to write a little ship battle game in java. It is 100% academic, I made it to practice recursion, so... I want to use it instead of iteration, even if it's simpler and more efficient in most some cases. Let's get down to business. These are the rules: Ships are 1, 2 or 3 cells wide and are placed horizontally only. Water is represented with 0, non-hit ship cells are 1, hit ship cells are 2 and sunken ships have all it's cells in 3. With those rules set, I'm using the following array for testing: int[][] board = new int[][] { {0, 1, 2, 0, 1, 0}, {0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0}, {0, 3, 0, 0, 0, 0}, {0, 0, 2, 1, 2, 0}, {0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1}, }; It works pretty good so far, and to make it more user-friendly I would like to add a couple of reports. these are the methods I need for them: Given the matrix, return the amount of ships in it. Same as a), but separating them by state (amount of non-hit ships, hit and sunken ones). I will need a hand with those reports, and I would like to get some ideas. Remember it must be done using recursion, I want to understand this, and the only way to go is practice! Thanks a lot for your time and patience :).

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  • Learning Python else syntax error

    - by user1441016
    Hi I am learning python by doing the practice problems for Open course at MIT 6.00 Intro to Computer Science. I am Trying to do practice problem 1 part 2 create a recursive function to count the instance of key in target. My code so far... from string import * def countSubStringMatchRecursive (target, key,x,s): if (find(target,key)==find(target,key,s)) and (find(target,key)==find(target,key,(find(target,key)))):#if first and last return (1) elif (find(target,key)==find(target,key,s))and (find(target,key)!=find(target,key,(find(target,key)))):#if first but not last x=1 s= find(target,key) return (countSubStringMatchRecursive(target,key,s,x) elif (find(target,key,s))==-1 and (find(target,key)!=find(target,key,s)):#if last but not first return (x+1) elif:(find(target,key,s))!=-1 and (find(target,key)!=find(target,key,s)):#if not last and not first x=x+1 s= find(target,key,s) return (countSubStringMatchRecursive(target,key,s,x) I getting a syntax error at line 8. I would just like to know what I did wrong there. Dont worry about the other mistakes I should be able to get those sorted out. I just Stuck on this. Thanks.

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  • Create table class as a singleton

    - by Mark
    I got a class that I use as a table. This class got an array of 16 row classes. These row classes all have 6 double variables. The values of these rows are set once and never change. Would it be a good practice to make this table a singleton? The advantage is that it cost less memory, but the table will be called from multiple threads so I have to synchronize my code which way cause a bit slower application. However lookups in this table are probably a very small portion of the total code that is executed. EDIT: This is my code, are there better ways to do this or is this a good practice? Removed synchronized keyword according to recommendations in this question. final class HalfTimeTable { private HalfTimeRow[] table = new HalfTimeRow[16]; private static final HalfTimeTable instance = new HalfTimeTable(); private HalfTimeTable() { if (instance != null) { throw new IllegalStateException("Already instantiated"); } table[0] = new HalfTimeRow(4.0, 1.2599, 0.5050, 1.5, 1.7435, 0.1911); table[1] = new HalfTimeRow(8.0, 1.0000, 0.6514, 3.0, 1.3838, 0.4295); //etc } @Override @Deprecated public Object clone() throws CloneNotSupportedException { throw new CloneNotSupportedException(); } public static HalfTimeTable getInstance() { return instance; } public HalfTimeRow getRow(int rownumber) { return table[rownumber]; } }

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  • Upload File to Windows Azure Blob in Chunks through ASP.NET MVC, JavaScript and HTML5

    - by Shaun
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/shaunxu/archive/2013/07/01/upload-file-to-windows-azure-blob-in-chunks-through-asp.net.aspxMany people are using Windows Azure Blob Storage to store their data in the cloud. Blob storage provides 99.9% availability with easy-to-use API through .NET SDK and HTTP REST. For example, we can store JavaScript files, images, documents in blob storage when we are building an ASP.NET web application on a Web Role in Windows Azure. Or we can store our VHD files in blob and mount it as a hard drive in our cloud service. If you are familiar with Windows Azure, you should know that there are two kinds of blob: page blob and block blob. The page blob is optimized for random read and write, which is very useful when you need to store VHD files. The block blob is optimized for sequential/chunk read and write, which has more common usage. Since we can upload block blob in blocks through BlockBlob.PutBlock, and them commit them as a whole blob with invoking the BlockBlob.PutBlockList, it is very powerful to upload large files, as we can upload blocks in parallel, and provide pause-resume feature. There are many documents, articles and blog posts described on how to upload a block blob. Most of them are focus on the server side, which means when you had received a big file, stream or binaries, how to upload them into blob storage in blocks through .NET SDK.  But the problem is, how can we upload these large files from client side, for example, a browser. This questioned to me when I was working with a Chinese customer to help them build a network disk production on top of azure. The end users upload their files from the web portal, and then the files will be stored in blob storage from the Web Role. My goal is to find the best way to transform the file from client (end user’s machine) to the server (Web Role) through browser. In this post I will demonstrate and describe what I had done, to upload large file in chunks with high speed, and save them as blocks into Windows Azure Blob Storage.   Traditional Upload, Works with Limitation The simplest way to implement this requirement is to create a web page with a form that contains a file input element and a submit button. 1: @using (Html.BeginForm("About", "Index", FormMethod.Post, new { enctype = "multipart/form-data" })) 2: { 3: <input type="file" name="file" /> 4: <input type="submit" value="upload" /> 5: } And then in the backend controller, we retrieve the whole content of this file and upload it in to the blob storage through .NET SDK. We can split the file in blocks and upload them in parallel and commit. The code had been well blogged in the community. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public ActionResult About(HttpPostedFileBase file) 3: { 4: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 5: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 6: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(file.FileName); 7: var blockDataList = new Dictionary<string, byte[]>(); 8: using (var stream = file.InputStream) 9: { 10: var blockSizeInKB = 1024; 11: var offset = 0; 12: var index = 0; 13: while (offset < stream.Length) 14: { 15: var readLength = Math.Min(1024 * blockSizeInKB, (int)stream.Length - offset); 16: var blockData = new byte[readLength]; 17: offset += stream.Read(blockData, 0, readLength); 18: blockDataList.Add(Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(index)), blockData); 19:  20: index++; 21: } 22: } 23:  24: Parallel.ForEach(blockDataList, (bi) => 25: { 26: blob.PutBlock(bi.Key, new MemoryStream(bi.Value), null); 27: }); 28: blob.PutBlockList(blockDataList.Select(b => b.Key).ToArray()); 29:  30: return RedirectToAction("About"); 31: } This works perfect if we selected an image, a music or a small video to upload. But if I selected a large file, let’s say a 6GB HD-movie, after upload for about few minutes the page will be shown as below and the upload will be terminated. In ASP.NET there is a limitation of request length and the maximized request length is defined in the web.config file. It’s a number which less than about 4GB. So if we want to upload a really big file, we cannot simply implement in this way. Also, in Windows Azure, a cloud service network load balancer will terminate the connection if exceed the timeout period. From my test the timeout looks like 2 - 3 minutes. Hence, when we need to upload a large file we cannot just use the basic HTML elements. Besides the limitation mentioned above, the simple HTML file upload cannot provide rich upload experience such as chunk upload, pause and pause-resume. So we need to find a better way to upload large file from the client to the server.   Upload in Chunks through HTML5 and JavaScript In order to break those limitation mentioned above we will try to upload the large file in chunks. This takes some benefit to us such as - No request size limitation: Since we upload in chunks, we can define the request size for each chunks regardless how big the entire file is. - No timeout problem: The size of chunks are controlled by us, which means we should be able to make sure request for each chunk upload will not exceed the timeout period of both ASP.NET and Windows Azure load balancer. It was a big challenge to upload big file in chunks until we have HTML5. There are some new features and improvements introduced in HTML5 and we will use them to implement our solution.   In HTML5, the File interface had been improved with a new method called “slice”. It can be used to read part of the file by specifying the start byte index and the end byte index. For example if the entire file was 1024 bytes, file.slice(512, 768) will read the part of this file from the 512nd byte to 768th byte, and return a new object of interface called "Blob”, which you can treat as an array of bytes. In fact,  a Blob object represents a file-like object of immutable, raw data. The File interface is based on Blob, inheriting blob functionality and expanding it to support files on the user's system. For more information about the Blob please refer here. File and Blob is very useful to implement the chunk upload. We will use File interface to represent the file the user selected from the browser and then use File.slice to read the file in chunks in the size we wanted. For example, if we wanted to upload a 10MB file with 512KB chunks, then we can read it in 512KB blobs by using File.slice in a loop.   Assuming we have a web page as below. User can select a file, an input box to specify the block size in KB and a button to start upload. 1: <div> 2: <input type="file" id="upload_files" name="files[]" /><br /> 3: Block Size: <input type="number" id="block_size" value="512" name="block_size" />KB<br /> 4: <input type="button" id="upload_button_blob" name="upload" value="upload (blob)" /> 5: </div> Then we can have the JavaScript function to upload the file in chunks when user clicked the button. 1: <script type="text/javascript"> 1: 2: $(function () { 3: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 4: }); 5: });</script> Firstly we need to ensure the client browser supports the interfaces we are going to use. Just try to invoke the File, Blob and FormData from the “window” object. If any of them is “undefined” the condition result will be “false” which means your browser doesn’t support these premium feature and it’s time for you to get your browser updated. FormData is another new feature we are going to use in the future. It could generate a temporary form for us. We will use this interface to create a form with chunk and associated metadata when invoked the service through ajax. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: if (window.File && window.Blob && window.FormData) { 4: alert("Your brwoser is awesome, let's rock!"); 5: } 6: else { 7: alert("Oh man plz update to a modern browser before try is cool stuff out."); 8: return; 9: } 10: }); Each browser supports these interfaces by their own implementation and currently the Blob, File and File.slice are supported by Chrome 21, FireFox 13, IE 10, Opera 12 and Safari 5.1 or higher. After that we worked on the files the user selected one by one since in HTML5, user can select multiple files in one file input box. 1: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 2: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 3: var file = files[i]; 4: var fileSize = file.size; 5: var fileName = file.name; 6: } Next, we calculated the start index and end index for each chunks based on the size the user specified from the browser. We put them into an array with the file name and the index, which will be used when we upload chunks into Windows Azure Blob Storage as blocks since we need to specify the target blob name and the block index. At the same time we will store the list of all indexes into another variant which will be used to commit blocks into blob in Azure Storage once all chunks had been uploaded successfully. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10:  11: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 12: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 13: var blockSizeInKB = $("#block_size").val(); 14: var blockSize = blockSizeInKB * 1024; 15: var blocks = []; 16: var offset = 0; 17: var index = 0; 18: var list = ""; 19: while (offset < fileSize) { 20: var start = offset; 21: var end = Math.min(offset + blockSize, fileSize); 22:  23: blocks.push({ 24: name: fileName, 25: index: index, 26: start: start, 27: end: end 28: }); 29: list += index + ","; 30:  31: offset = end; 32: index++; 33: } 34: } 35: }); Now we have all chunks’ information ready. The next step should be upload them one by one to the server side, and at the server side when received a chunk it will upload as a block into Blob Storage, and finally commit them with the index list through BlockBlobClient.PutBlockList. But since all these invokes are ajax calling, which means not synchronized call. So we need to introduce a new JavaScript library to help us coordinate the asynchronize operation, which named “async.js”. You can download this JavaScript library here, and you can find the document here. I will not explain this library too much in this post. We will put all procedures we want to execute as a function array, and pass into the proper function defined in async.js to let it help us to control the execution sequence, in series or in parallel. Hence we will define an array and put the function for chunk upload into this array. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4:  5: // start to upload each files in chunks 6: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 7: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 8: var file = files[i]; 9: var fileSize = file.size; 10: var fileName = file.name; 11: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 12: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 13: ... ... 14:  15: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 16: blocks.forEach(function (block) { 17: putBlocks.push(function (callback) { 18: }); 19: }); 20: } 21: }); 22: }); As you can see, I used File.slice method to read each chunks based on the start and end byte index we calculated previously, and constructed a temporary HTML form with the file name, chunk index and chunk data through another new feature in HTML5 named FormData. Then post this form to the backend server through jQuery.ajax. This is the key part of our solution. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: blocks.forEach(function (block) { 15: putBlocks.push(function (callback) { 16: // load blob based on the start and end index for each chunks 17: var blob = file.slice(block.start, block.end); 18: // put the file name, index and blob into a temporary from 19: var fd = new FormData(); 20: fd.append("name", block.name); 21: fd.append("index", block.index); 22: fd.append("file", blob); 23: // post the form to backend service (asp.net mvc controller action) 24: $.ajax({ 25: url: "/Home/UploadInFormData", 26: data: fd, 27: processData: false, 28: contentType: "multipart/form-data", 29: type: "POST", 30: success: function (result) { 31: if (!result.success) { 32: alert(result.error); 33: } 34: callback(null, block.index); 35: } 36: }); 37: }); 38: }); 39: } 40: }); Then we will invoke these functions one by one by using the async.js. And once all functions had been executed successfully I invoked another ajax call to the backend service to commit all these chunks (blocks) as the blob in Windows Azure Storage. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: ... ... 15: // invoke the functions one by one 16: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 17: async.series(putBlocks, function (error, result) { 18: var data = { 19: name: fileName, 20: list: list 21: }; 22: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 23: if (!result.success) { 24: alert(result.error); 25: } 26: else { 27: alert("done!"); 28: } 29: }); 30: }); 31: } 32: }); That’s all in the client side. The outline of our logic would be - Calculate the start and end byte index for each chunks based on the block size. - Defined the functions of reading the chunk form file and upload the content to the backend service through ajax. - Execute the functions defined in previous step with “async.js”. - Commit the chunks by invoking the backend service in Windows Azure Storage finally.   Save Chunks as Blocks into Blob Storage In above we finished the client size JavaScript code. It uploaded the file in chunks to the backend service which we are going to implement in this step. We will use ASP.NET MVC as our backend service, and it will receive the chunks, upload into Windows Azure Bob Storage in blocks, then finally commit as one blob. As in the client side we uploaded chunks by invoking the ajax call to the URL "/Home/UploadInFormData", I created a new action under the Index controller and it only accepts HTTP POST request. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public JsonResult UploadInFormData() 3: { 4: var error = string.Empty; 5: try 6: { 7: } 8: catch (Exception e) 9: { 10: error = e.ToString(); 11: } 12:  13: return new JsonResult() 14: { 15: Data = new 16: { 17: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 18: error = error 19: } 20: }; 21: } Then I retrieved the file name, index and the chunk content from the Request.Form object, which was passed from our client side. And then, used the Windows Azure SDK to create a blob container (in this case we will use the container named “test”.) and create a blob reference with the blob name (same as the file name). Then uploaded the chunk as a block of this blob with the index, since in Blob Storage each block must have an index (ID) associated with so that finally we can put all blocks as one blob by specifying their block ID list. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public JsonResult UploadInFormData() 3: { 4: var error = string.Empty; 5: try 6: { 7: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 8: var index = int.Parse(Request.Form["index"]); 9: var file = Request.Files[0]; 10: var id = Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(index)); 11:  12: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 13: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 14: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 15: blob.PutBlock(id, file.InputStream, null); 16: } 17: catch (Exception e) 18: { 19: error = e.ToString(); 20: } 21:  22: return new JsonResult() 23: { 24: Data = new 25: { 26: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 27: error = error 28: } 29: }; 30: } Next, I created another action to commit the blocks into blob once all chunks had been uploaded. Similarly, I retrieved the blob name from the Request.Form. I also retrieved the chunks ID list, which is the block ID list from the Request.Form in a string format, split them as a list, then invoked the BlockBlob.PutBlockList method. After that our blob will be shown in the container and ready to be download. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public JsonResult Commit() 3: { 4: var error = string.Empty; 5: try 6: { 7: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 8: var list = Request.Form["list"]; 9: var ids = list 10: .Split(',') 11: .Where(id => !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(id)) 12: .Select(id => Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(int.Parse(id)))) 13: .ToArray(); 14:  15: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 16: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 17: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 18: blob.PutBlockList(ids); 19: } 20: catch (Exception e) 21: { 22: error = e.ToString(); 23: } 24:  25: return new JsonResult() 26: { 27: Data = new 28: { 29: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 30: error = error 31: } 32: }; 33: } Now we finished all code we need. The whole process of uploading would be like this below. Below is the full client side JavaScript code. 1: <script type="text/javascript" src="~/Scripts/async.js"></script> 2: <script type="text/javascript"> 3: $(function () { 4: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 5: // assert the browser support html5 6: if (window.File && window.Blob && window.FormData) { 7: alert("Your brwoser is awesome, let's rock!"); 8: } 9: else { 10: alert("Oh man plz update to a modern browser before try is cool stuff out."); 11: return; 12: } 13:  14: // start to upload each files in chunks 15: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 16: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 17: var file = files[i]; 18: var fileSize = file.size; 19: var fileName = file.name; 20:  21: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 22: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 23: var blockSizeInKB = $("#block_size").val(); 24: var blockSize = blockSizeInKB * 1024; 25: var blocks = []; 26: var offset = 0; 27: var index = 0; 28: var list = ""; 29: while (offset < fileSize) { 30: var start = offset; 31: var end = Math.min(offset + blockSize, fileSize); 32:  33: blocks.push({ 34: name: fileName, 35: index: index, 36: start: start, 37: end: end 38: }); 39: list += index + ","; 40:  41: offset = end; 42: index++; 43: } 44:  45: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 46: var putBlocks = []; 47: blocks.forEach(function (block) { 48: putBlocks.push(function (callback) { 49: // load blob based on the start and end index for each chunks 50: var blob = file.slice(block.start, block.end); 51: // put the file name, index and blob into a temporary from 52: var fd = new FormData(); 53: fd.append("name", block.name); 54: fd.append("index", block.index); 55: fd.append("file", blob); 56: // post the form to backend service (asp.net mvc controller action) 57: $.ajax({ 58: url: "/Home/UploadInFormData", 59: data: fd, 60: processData: false, 61: contentType: "multipart/form-data", 62: type: "POST", 63: success: function (result) { 64: if (!result.success) { 65: alert(result.error); 66: } 67: callback(null, block.index); 68: } 69: }); 70: }); 71: }); 72:  73: // invoke the functions one by one 74: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 75: async.series(putBlocks, function (error, result) { 76: var data = { 77: name: fileName, 78: list: list 79: }; 80: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 81: if (!result.success) { 82: alert(result.error); 83: } 84: else { 85: alert("done!"); 86: } 87: }); 88: }); 89: } 90: }); 91: }); 92: </script> And below is the full ASP.NET MVC controller code. 1: public class HomeController : Controller 2: { 3: private CloudStorageAccount _account; 4: private CloudBlobClient _client; 5:  6: public HomeController() 7: : base() 8: { 9: _account = CloudStorageAccount.Parse(CloudConfigurationManager.GetSetting("DataConnectionString")); 10: _client = _account.CreateCloudBlobClient(); 11: } 12:  13: public ActionResult Index() 14: { 15: ViewBag.Message = "Modify this template to jump-start your ASP.NET MVC application."; 16:  17: return View(); 18: } 19:  20: [HttpPost] 21: public JsonResult UploadInFormData() 22: { 23: var error = string.Empty; 24: try 25: { 26: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 27: var index = int.Parse(Request.Form["index"]); 28: var file = Request.Files[0]; 29: var id = Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(index)); 30:  31: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 32: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 33: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 34: blob.PutBlock(id, file.InputStream, null); 35: } 36: catch (Exception e) 37: { 38: error = e.ToString(); 39: } 40:  41: return new JsonResult() 42: { 43: Data = new 44: { 45: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 46: error = error 47: } 48: }; 49: } 50:  51: [HttpPost] 52: public JsonResult Commit() 53: { 54: var error = string.Empty; 55: try 56: { 57: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 58: var list = Request.Form["list"]; 59: var ids = list 60: .Split(',') 61: .Where(id => !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(id)) 62: .Select(id => Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(int.Parse(id)))) 63: .ToArray(); 64:  65: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 66: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 67: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 68: blob.PutBlockList(ids); 69: } 70: catch (Exception e) 71: { 72: error = e.ToString(); 73: } 74:  75: return new JsonResult() 76: { 77: Data = new 78: { 79: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 80: error = error 81: } 82: }; 83: } 84: } And if we selected a file from the browser we will see our application will upload chunks in the size we specified to the server through ajax call in background, and then commit all chunks in one blob. Then we can find the blob in our Windows Azure Blob Storage.   Optimized by Parallel Upload In previous example we just uploaded our file in chunks. This solved the problem that ASP.NET MVC request content size limitation as well as the Windows Azure load balancer timeout. But it might introduce the performance problem since we uploaded chunks in sequence. In order to improve the upload performance we could modify our client side code a bit to make the upload operation invoked in parallel. The good news is that, “async.js” library provides the parallel execution function. If you remembered the code we invoke the service to upload chunks, it utilized “async.series” which means all functions will be executed in sequence. Now we will change this code to “async.parallel”. This will invoke all functions in parallel. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: ... ... 15: // invoke the functions one by one 16: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 17: async.parallel(putBlocks, function (error, result) { 18: var data = { 19: name: fileName, 20: list: list 21: }; 22: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 23: if (!result.success) { 24: alert(result.error); 25: } 26: else { 27: alert("done!"); 28: } 29: }); 30: }); 31: } 32: }); In this way all chunks will be uploaded to the server side at the same time to maximize the bandwidth usage. This should work if the file was not very large and the chunk size was not very small. But for large file this might introduce another problem that too many ajax calls are sent to the server at the same time. So the best solution should be, upload the chunks in parallel with maximum concurrency limitation. The code below specified the concurrency limitation to 4, which means at the most only 4 ajax calls could be invoked at the same time. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: ... ... 15: // invoke the functions one by one 16: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 17: async.parallelLimit(putBlocks, 4, function (error, result) { 18: var data = { 19: name: fileName, 20: list: list 21: }; 22: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 23: if (!result.success) { 24: alert(result.error); 25: } 26: else { 27: alert("done!"); 28: } 29: }); 30: }); 31: } 32: });   Summary In this post we discussed how to upload files in chunks to the backend service and then upload them into Windows Azure Blob Storage in blocks. We focused on the frontend side and leverage three new feature introduced in HTML 5 which are - File.slice: Read part of the file by specifying the start and end byte index. - Blob: File-like interface which contains the part of the file content. - FormData: Temporary form element that we can pass the chunk alone with some metadata to the backend service. Then we discussed the performance consideration of chunk uploading. Sequence upload cannot provide maximized upload speed, but the unlimited parallel upload might crash the browser and server if too many chunks. So we finally came up with the solution to upload chunks in parallel with the concurrency limitation. We also demonstrated how to utilize “async.js” JavaScript library to help us control the asynchronize call and the parallel limitation.   Regarding the chunk size and the parallel limitation value there is no “best” value. You need to test vary composition and find out the best one for your particular scenario. It depends on the local bandwidth, client machine cores and the server side (Windows Azure Cloud Service Virtual Machine) cores, memory and bandwidth. Below is one of my performance test result. The client machine was Windows 8 IE 10 with 4 cores. I was using Microsoft Cooperation Network. The web site was hosted on Windows Azure China North data center (in Beijing) with one small web role (1.7GB 1 core CPU, 1.75GB memory with 100Mbps bandwidth). The test cases were - Chunk size: 512KB, 1MB, 2MB, 4MB. - Upload Mode: Sequence, parallel (unlimited), parallel with limit (4 threads, 8 threads). - Chunk Format: base64 string, binaries. - Target file: 100MB. - Each case was tested 3 times. Below is the test result chart. Some thoughts, but not guidance or best practice: - Parallel gets better performance than series. - No significant performance improvement between parallel 4 threads and 8 threads. - Transform with binaries provides better performance than base64. - In all cases, chunk size in 1MB - 2MB gets better performance.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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  • Developer Training – Various Options for Maximum Benefit – Part 4

    - by pinaldave
    Developer Training - Importance and Significance - Part 1 Developer Training – Employee Morals and Ethics – Part 2 Developer Training – Difficult Questions and Alternative Perspective - Part 3 Developer Training – Various Options for Developer Training – Part 4 Developer Training – A Conclusive Summary- Part 5 If you have been reading this series, by now you are aware of all the pros and cons that can come along with training.  We’ve asked and answered hard questions, and investigated them “whys” and “hows” of training.  Now it is time to talk about all the different kinds of training that are out there! On Job Training The most common type of training is on the job training.  Everyone receives this kind of education – even experts who come in to consult have to be taught where the printer, pens, and copy machines are.  If you are thinking about more concrete topics, though, on the job training can be some of the easiest to come across.  Picture this: someone in the company whom you really admire is hard at work on a project.  You come up to them and ask to help them out – if they are a busy developer, the odds are that they will say “yes, please!”   If you phrase your question as an offer of help, you can receive training without ever putting someone in the awkward position of acting as a mentor.  However, some people may want the task of being a mentor.  It can never hurt to ask.  Most people will be more than willing to pass their knowledge along. Extreme Programming If your company and coworkers are willing, you can even investigate Extreme Programming.  This is a type of programming that allows small teams to quickly develop code and products that are released with almost immediate user feedback.  You can find more information at http://www.extremeprogramming.org/.  If this is something your company could use, suggest it to your supervisor.  Even if they say no, it will make it clear that you are a go-getter who is interested in new and exciting projects.  If the answer is yes, then you have the opportunity to get some of the best on the job training around. In Person Training Click on Image to Enlarge When you say the word “training,” most people’s minds go back to the classroom, an image they are familiar with.  While training doesn’t always have to be in a traditional setting, because it is so familiar it can also be the most valuable type of training.  There are many ways to get training through a live instructor.  Some companies may be willing to send a representative to you, where employees will get training, sometimes food and coffee, and a live instructor who can answer questions immediately.  Sometimes these trainers are also able to do consultations at the same time, which can invaluable to a company.  If you are the one to asks your supervisor for a training session that can also be turned into a consultation, you may stick in their minds as an incredibly dedicated employee.  If you can’t find a representative, local colleges can also be a good resource for free or cheap classes – or they may have representatives coming who are willing to take on a few more students. Benefits of On Demand Developer Training Of course, you can often get the best of all these types of training with online or On Demand training.  You can get the benefit of a live instructor who is willing to answer questions (although in this case, usually through e-mail or other online venues), there are often real-world examples to follow along – like on the job training – and best of all you can learn whenever you have the time or need.  Did a problem with your server come up at midnight when all your supervisors are safe at home and probably in bed?  No problem!  On Demand training is especially useful if you need to slow down, pause, or rewind a training session.  Not even a real-life instructor can do that! When I was writing this blog post, I felt that each of the subject, which I have covered can be blog posts of itself. However, I wanted to keep the the blog post concise and so touch based on three major training aspects 1) On Job Training 2) In Person Training and 3) Online training. Here is the question for you – is there any other kind of training methods available, which are effective and one should consider it? If yes, what are those, I may write a follow up blog post on the same subject next week. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Developer Training, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • Oracle OpenWorld Preview: Real World Perspectives from Oracle WebCenter Customers

    - by Christie Flanagan
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} If you frequent the Oracle WebCenter blog you’ve probably read a lot about the customer experience revolution over the last few months.  An important aspect of the customer experience revolution is the increasing role that peers play in influencing how others perceive a product, brand or solution, simply by sharing their own, real-world experiences.  Think about it, who do you trust more -- marketers and sales people pitching polished messages or peers with similar roles and similar challenges to the ones you face in your business every day? With this spirit in mind, this polished marketer personally invites you to hear directly from Oracle WebCenter customers about their real-life experiences during our customer panel sessions at Oracle OpenWorld next week.  If you’re currently using WebCenter, thinking about it, or just want to find out more about best practices in social business, next-generation portals, enterprise content management or web experience management, be sure to attend these sessions: CON8899 - Becoming a Social Business: Stories from the Front Lines of Change Wednesday, Oct 3, 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM - Moscone West - 3000Priscilla Hancock - Vice President/CIO, University of Louisville Kellie Christensen - Director of Information Technology, Banner EngineeringWhat does it really mean to be a social business? How can you change your organization to embrace social approaches? What pitfalls do you need to avoid? In this lively panel discussion, customer and industry thought leaders in social business explore these topics and more as they share their stories of the good, the bad, and the ugly that can happen when embracing social methods and technologies to improve business success. Using moderated questions and open Q&A from the audience, the panel discusses vital topics such as the critical factors for success, the major issues to avoid, how to gain senior executive support for social efforts, how to handle undesired behavior, and how to measure business impact. This session will take a thought-provoking look at becoming a social business from the inside. CON8900 - Building Next-Generation Portals: An Interactive Customer Panel DiscussionWednesday, Oct 3, 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM - Moscone West - 3000Roberts Wayne - Director, IT, Canadian Partnership Against CancerMike Beattie - VP Application Development, Aramark Uniform ServicesJohn Chen - Utilities Services Manager 6, Los Angeles Department of Water & PowerJörg Modlmayr - Head of Product Managment, Siemens AGSocial and collaborative technologies have changed how people interact, learn, and collaborate, and providing a modern, social Web presence is imperative to remain competitive in today’s market. Can your business benefit from a more collaborative and interactive portal environment for employees, customers, and partners? Attend this session to hear from Oracle WebCenter Portal customers as they share their strategies and best practices for providing users with a modern experience that adapts to their needs and includes personalized access to content in context. The panel also addresses how customers have benefited from creating next-generation portals by migrating from older portal technologies to Oracle WebCenter Portal. CON8898 - Land Mines, Potholes, and Dirt Roads: Navigating the Way to ECM NirvanaThursday, Oct 4, 12:45 PM - 1:45 PM - Moscone West - 3001Stephen Madsen - Senior Management Consultant, Alberta Agriculture and Rural DevelopmentHimanshu Parikh - Sr. Director, Enterprise Architecture & Middleware, Ross Stores, Inc.Ten years ago, people were predicting that by this time in history, we’d be some kind of utopian paperless society. As we all know, we're not there yet, but are we getting closer? What is keeping companies from driving down the road to enterprise content management bliss? Most people understand that using ECM as a central platform enables organizations to expedite document-centric processes, but most business processes in organizations are still heavily paper-based. Many of these processes could be automated and improved with an ECM platform infrastructure. In this panel discussion, you’ll hear from Oracle WebCenter customers that have already solved some of these challenges as they share their strategies for success and roads to avoid along your journey. CON8897 - Using Web Experience Management to Drive Online Marketing SuccessThursday, Oct 4, 2:15 PM - 3:15 PM - Moscone West - 3001Blane Nelson - Chief Architect, Ancestry.comMike Remedios - CIO, ArbonneCaitlin Scanlon - Product Manager, Monster WorldwideEvery year, the online channel becomes more imperative for driving organizational top-line revenue, but for many companies, mastering how to best market their products and services in a fast-evolving online world with high customer expectations for personalized experiences can be a complex proposition. Come to this panel discussion, and hear directly from customers on how they are succeeding today by using Web experience management to drive marketing success, using capabilities such as targeting and optimization, user-generated content, mobile site publishing, and site visitor personalization to deliver engaging online experiences. Your Handy Guide to WebCenter at Oracle OpenWorld Want a quick and easy guide to all the keynotes, demos, hands-on labs and WebCenter sessions you definitely don't want to miss at Oracle OpenWorld? Download this handy guide, Focus on WebCenter. More helpful links: * Oracle OpenWorld* Oracle Customer Experience Summit @ OpenWorld* Oracle OpenWorld on Facebook * Oracle OpenWorld on Twitter* Oracle OpenWorld on LinkedIn* Oracle OpenWorld Blog

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  • SQLAuthority News – Community Tech Days – A SQL Legends in Ahmedabad – December 11, 2010

    - by pinaldave
    Ahmedabad is going to be fortunate city again on December 11. We are going to have SQL Server Legends present at the prestigious event of Community Tech Days in Ahmedabad. The venue details are as following: H K Hall, H K College Campus, Near Handloom House, Opp. Natraj Cinema, Ashram Road, Ahmedabad – 380009 Click here to Registration for the event. Agenda of the event is as following. 10:15am – 10:30am     Welcome – Pinal Dave 10:30am – 11:15am     SQL Tips and Tricks for .NET Developers by Jacob Sebastian 11:15am – 11:30am     Tea Break 11:30am – 12:15pm     Best Database Practice for SharePoint Server by Pinal Dave 12:15pm – 01:00pm     Self Service Business Intelligence by Rushabh Mehta 01:00pm – 02:00pm     Lunch 02:00pm – 02:45pm     Managing your future, Managing your time by Vinod Kumar 02:45pm – 03:30pm     Windows Azure News and Introducing Storage Services by Mahesh Devjibhai Dhola 03:30pm – 03:45pm     Tea Break 03:45pm – 04:30pm     Improve Silverlight application with Threads and MEF by Prabhjot Singh Bakshi 04:30pm – 04:45pm     Thank you – Mahesh Devjibhai Dhola Ahmedabad considers itself extremely fortunate when there are SQL Legends presenting on various subjects in front of community. Here is brief introduction about them in my own words. (Their names are in order of the agenda). 1) Jacob Sebastian (SQL Server MVP) – This person needs no introduction. Every developer and programmer in Ahmedabad and India knows him. He is the one man who is founder of various community-related ideas like SQL Challenges, SQL Quiz and BeyondRelational. He works with me on all the community-related activities; we are extremely good friends. 2) Rushabh Mehta (SQL Server MVP) – If you use SQL Server – you know this man. He is the President of SQL Server of Professional Association (PASS) and one of the leading Business Intelligence (BI) Experts renowned in the world. He has blessed Ahmedabad once before and now doing once again this year. 3) Vinod Kumar (Microsoft Evangelist – SQL Server & BI) – Ahmedabad remembers him very well. During his last visit to Ahmedabad, a fight had almost broke outside the hall amidst the rush to listen him. There were more people standing and listening to him than those who were seated. This is one man Ahmedabad will never forget. 4) and Myself. I will not rate myself in the league of abovementioned experts, but I must say that I am fortunate to have friends like those above. We also have two strong .NET presenters – Mahesh and Prabhjot. During this event, there will be plenty of giveaways, lots of fun, demos and pure technical talk, specifically no marketing and promotion – just pure technical talk. The most interesting part is that all the SQL Legends – Jacob, Rushabh and Vinod are for sure presenting on SQL Server but with a twist. Jacob – He is going to talk about .NET and SQL – Optimization Techniques Rushabh – He is going to talk about SQL and BI – Self Service BI Vinod – He is going to talk about professional development of developers – Managing Time Pinal – Best Practices for SharePoint Database Administrators – SharePoint DBA – I have presented this session earlier. I promise this event is going to be one of the best events held ever. You can read about the earlier event over here. ?Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: About Me, MVP, Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, May 25, 2010

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, May 25, 2010New ProjectsBibleNames: BibleNames BibleNames BibleNames BibleNames BibleNamesBing Search for PHP Developers: This is the Bing SDK for PHP, a toolkit that allows you to easily use Bing's API to fetch search results and use in your own application. The Bin...Fading Clock: Fading Clock is a normal clock that has the ability to fade in out. It's developed in C# as a Windows App in .net 2.0.Fuzzy string matching algorithm in C# and LINQ: Fuzzy matching strings. Find out how similar two string is, and find the best fuzzy matching string from a string table. Given a string (strA) and...HexTile editor: Testing hexagonal tile editorhgcheck12: hgcheck12Metaverse Router: Metaverse Router makes it easier for MIIS, ILM, FIM Sync engine administrators to manage multiple provisioning modules, turn on/off provisioning wi...MyVocabulary: Use MyVocabulary to structure and test the words you want to learn in a foreign language. This is a .net 3.5 windows forms application developed in...phpxw: Phpxw 是一个简易的PHP框架。以我自己的姓名命名的。 Phpxw is a simple PHP framework. Take my name named.Plop: Social networking wrappers and projects.PST Data Structure View Tool: PST Data Structure View Tool (PSTViewTool) is a tool supporting the PST file format documentation effort. It allows the user to browse the internal...PST File Format SDK: PST File Format SDK (pstsdk) is a cross platform header only C++ library for reading PST files.QWine: QWine is Queue Machine ApplicationSharePoint Cross Site Collection Security Trimmed Navigation: This SP2010 project will show security trimmed navigation that works across site collections. The project is written for SP2010, but can be easily ...SharePoint List Field Manager: The SharePoint List Field Manager allows users to manage the Boolean properties of a list such as Read Only, Hidden, Show in New Form etc... It sup...Silverlight Toolbar for DataGrid working with RIA Services or local data: DataGridToolbar contains two controls for Silverlight DataGrid designed for RIA Services and local data. It can be used to filter or remove a data,...SilverShader - Silverlight Pixel Shader Demos: SilverShader is an extensible Silverlight application that is used to demonstrate the effect of different pixel shaders. The shaders can be applied...SNCFT Gadget: Ce gadget permet de consulter les horaires des trains et de chercher des informations sur le site de la société nationale des chemins de fer tunisi...Software Transaction Memory: Software Transaction Memory for .NETStreamInsight Samples: This project contains sample code for StreamInsight, Microsoft's platform for complex event processing. The purpose of the samples is to provide a ...StyleAnalizer: A CSS parserSudoku (Multiplayer in RnD): Sudoku project was to practice on C# by making a desktop application using some algorithm Before this, I had worked on http://shaktisaran.tech.o...Tiplican: A small website built for the purpose of learning .Net 4 and MVC 2TPager: Mercurial pager with color support on Windowsunirca: UNIRCA projectWcfTrace: The WcfTrace is a easy way to collect information about WCF-service call order, processing time and etc. It's developed in C#.New ReleasesASP.NET TimePicker Control: 12 24 Hour Bug Fix: 12 24 Hour Bug FixASP.NET TimePicker Control: ASP.NET TimePicker Control: This release fixes a focus bug that manifests itself when switching focus between two different timepicker controls on the same page, and make chan...ASP.NET TimePicker Control: ASP.NET TimePicker Control - colon CSS Fix: Fixes ":" seperator placement issues being too hi and too low in IE and FireFox, respectively.ASP.NET TimePicker Control: Release fixes 24 Hour Mode Bug: Release fixes 24 Hour Mode BugBFBC2 PRoCon: PRoCon 0.5.1.1: Visit http://phogue.net/?p=604 for release notes.BFBC2 PRoCon: PRoCon 0.5.1.2: Release notes can be found at http://phogue.net/?p=604BFBC2 PRoCon: PRoCon 0.5.1.4: Ha.. choosing the "stable" option at the moment is a bit of a joke =\ Release notes at http://phogue.net/?p=604BFBC2 PRoCon: PRoCon 0.5.1.5: BWHAHAHA stable.. ha. Actually this ones looking pretty good now. http://phogue.net/?p=604Bojinx: Bojinx Core V4.5.14: Issues fixed in this release: Fixed an issue that caused referencePropertyName when used through a property configuration in the context to not wo...Bojinx: Bojinx Debugger V0.9B: Output trace and filtering that works with the Bojinx logger.CassiniDev - Cassini 3.5/4.0 Developers Edition: CassiniDev 3.5.1.5 and 4.0.1.5 beta3: Fixed fairly serious bug #13290 http://cassinidev.codeplex.com/WorkItem/View.aspx?WorkItemId=13290Content Rendering: Content Rendering API 1.0.0 Revision 46406: Initial releaseDeploy Workflow Manager: Deploy Workflow Manager Web Part v2: Recommend you test in your development environment first BEFORE using in production.dotSpatial: System.Spatial.Projections Zip May 24, 2010: Adds a new spherical projection.eComic: eComic 2010.0.0.2: Quick release to fix a couple of bugs found in the previous version. Version 2010.0.0.2 Fixed crash error when accessing the "Go To Page" dialog ...Exchange 2010 RBAC Editor (RBAC GUI) - updated on 5/24/2010: RBAC Editor 0.9.4.1: Some bugs fixed; support for unscopoedtoplevel (adding script is not working yet) Please use email address in About menu of the tool for any feedb...Facebook Graph Toolkit: Preview 1 Binaries: The first preview release of the toolkit. Not recommended for use in production, but enought to get started developing your app.Fading Clock: Clock.zip: Clock.zip is a zip file that contains the application Clock.exe.hgcheck12: Rel8082: Rel8082hgcheck12: scsc: scasMetaverse Router: Metaverse Router v1.0: Initial stable release (v.1.0.0.0) of Metaverse Router Working with: FIM 2010 Synchronization Engine ILM 2007 MIIS 2003MSTestGlider: MSTestGlider 1.5: What MSTestGlider 1.5.zip unzips to: http://i49.tinypic.com/2lcv4eg.png If you compile MSTestGlider from its source you will need to change the ou...MyVocabulary: Version 1.0: First releaseNLog - Advanced .NET Logging: Nightly Build 2010.05.24.001: Changes since the last build:2010-05-23 20:45:37 Jarek Kowalski fixed whitespace in NLog.wxs 2010-05-23 12:01:48 Jarek Kowalski BufferingTargetWra...NoteExpress User Tools (NEUT) - Do it by ourselves!: NoteExpress User Tools 2.0.0: 测试版本:NoteExpress 2.5.0.1154 +调整了Tab页的排列方式 注:2.0未做大的改动,仅仅是运行环境由原来的.net 3.5升级到4.0。openrs: Beta Release (Revision 1): This is the beta release of the openrs framework. Please make sure you submit issues in the issue tracker tab. As this is beta, extreme, flawless ...openrs: Revision 2: Revision 2 of the framework. Basic worker example as well as minor improvements on the auth packet.phpxw: Phpxw: Phpxw 1.0 phpxw 是一个简易的PHP框架。以我自己的姓名命名的。 Phpxw is a simple PHP framework. Take my name named. 支持基本的业务逻辑流程,功能模块化,实现了简易的模板技术,同时也可以支持外接模板引擎。 Support...sELedit: sELedit v1.1a: Fixed: clean file before overwriting Fixed: list57 will only created when eLC.Lists.length > 57sGSHOPedit: sGSHOPedit v1.0a: Fixed: bug with wrong item array re-size when adding items after deleting items Added: link to project page pwdatabase.com version is now selec...SharePoint Cross Site Collection Security Trimmed Navigation: Release 1.0.0.0: If you want just the .wsp, and start using this, you can grab it here. Just stsadm add/deploy to your website, and activate the feature as describ...Silverlight 4.0 Popup Menu: Context Menu for Silverlight 4.0 v1.24 Beta: - Updated the demo and added clipboard cut/copy and paste functionality. - Added delay on hover events for both parent and child menus. - Parent me...Silverlight Toolbar for DataGrid working with RIA Services or local data: DataGridToolBar Beta: For Silverlight 4.0sMAPtool: sMAPtool v0.7d (without Maps): Added: link to project pagesMODfix: sMODfix v1.0a: Added: Support for ECM v52 modelssNPCedit: sNPCedit v0.9a: browse source commits for all changes...SocialScapes: SocialScapes TwitterWidget 1.0.0: The SocialScapes TwitterWidget is a DotNetNuke Widget for displaying Twitter searches. This widget will be used to replace the twitter functionali...SQL Server 2005 and 2008 - Backup, Integrity Check and Index Optimization: 23 May 2010: This is the latest version of my solution for Backup, Integrity Check and Index Optimization in SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 200...sqwarea: Sqwarea 0.0.280.0 (alpha): This release brings a lot of improvements. We strongly recommend you to upgrade to this version.sTASKedit: sTASKedit v0.7c: Minor Changes in GUI & BehaviourSudoku (Multiplayer in RnD): Sudoku (Multiplayer in RnD) 1.0.0.0 source: Sudoku project was to practice on C# by making a desktop application using some algorithm Idea: The basic idea of algorithm is from http://www.ac...Sudoku (Multiplayer in RnD): Sudoku (Multiplayer in RnD) 1.0.0.1 source: Worked on user-interface, would improve it Sudoku project was to practice on C# by making a desktop application using some algorithm Idea: The b...TFS WorkItem Watcher: TFS WorkItem Watcher Version 1.0: This version contains the following new features: Added support to autodetect whether to start as a service or to start in console mode. The "-c" ...TfsPolicyPack: TfsPolicyPack 0.1: This is the first release of the TfsPolicyPack. This release includes the following policies: CustomRegexPathPolicythinktecture Starter STS (Community Edition): StarterSTS v1.1 CTP: Added ActAs / identity delegation support.TPager: TPager-20100524: TPager 2010-05-24 releaseTrance Layer: TranceLayer Transformer: Transformer is a Beta version 2, morphing from "Digger" to "Transformer" release cycle. It is intended to be used as a demonstration of muscles wh...TweetSharp: TweetSharp v1.0.0.0: Changes in v1.0.0Added 100% public code comments Bug fixes based on feedback from the Release Candidate Changes to handle Twitter schema additi...VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30524.0: Automatic drop of latest buildWCF Client Generator: Version 0.9.2.33468: Version 0.9.2.33468 Fixed: Nested enum types names are not handled correctly. Can't close Visual Studio if generated files are open when the code...Word 2007 Redaction Tool: Version 1.2: A minor update to the Word 2007 Redaction Tool. This version can be installed directly over any existing version. Updates to Version 1.2Fixed bugs:...xPollinate - Windows Live Writer Cross Post Plugin: 1.0.0.5 for WLW 14.0.8117.416: This version works with WLW 14.0.8117.416. This release includes a fix to enable publishing posts that have been opened directly from a blog, but ...Yet another developer blog - Examples: jQuery Autocomplete in ASP.NET MVC: This sample application shows how to use jQuery Autocomplete plugin in ASP.NET MVC. This application is accompanied by the following entry on Yet a...Most Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)patterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesPHPExcelASP.NETMost Active Projectspatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryRawrpatterns & practices: Windows Azure Security GuidanceSqlServerExtensionsGMap.NET - Great Maps for Windows Forms & PresentationMono.AddinsCaliburn: An Application Framework for WPF and SilverlightBlogEngine.NETIonics Isapi Rewrite FilterSQL Server PowerShell Extensions

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  • SQL SERVER – Solution – Puzzle – Statistics are not Updated but are Created Once

    - by pinaldave
    Earlier I asked puzzle why statistics are not updated. Read the complete details over here: Statistics are not Updated but are Created Once In the question I have demonstrated even though statistics should have been updated after lots of insert in the table are not updated.(Read the details SQL SERVER – When are Statistics Updated – What triggers Statistics to Update) In this example I have created following situation: Create Table Insert 1000 Records Check the Statistics Now insert 10 times more 10,000 indexes Check the Statistics – it will be NOT updated Auto Update Statistics and Auto Create Statistics for database is TRUE Now I have requested two things in the example 1) Why this is happening? 2) How to fix this issue? I have many answers – here is the how I fixed it which has resolved the issue for me. NOTE: There are multiple answers to this problem and I will do my best to list all. Solution: Create nonclustered Index on column City Here is the working example for the same. Let us understand this script and there is added explanation at the end. -- Execution Plans Difference -- Estimated Execution Plan Vs Actual Execution Plan -- Create Sample Database CREATE DATABASE SampleDB GO USE SampleDB GO -- Create Table CREATE TABLE ExecTable (ID INT, FirstName VARCHAR(100), LastName VARCHAR(100), City VARCHAR(100)) GO CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX IX_ExecTable1 ON ExecTable (City); GO -- Insert One Thousand Records -- INSERT 1 INSERT INTO ExecTable (ID,FirstName,LastName,City) SELECT TOP 1000 ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name) RowID, 'Bob', CASE WHEN  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%2 = 1 THEN 'Smith' ELSE 'Brown' END, CASE WHEN ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%20 = 1 THEN 'New York' WHEN  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%20 = 5 THEN 'San Marino' WHEN  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%20 = 3 THEN 'Los Angeles' WHEN  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%20 = 7 THEN 'La Cinega' WHEN  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%20 = 13 THEN 'San Diego' WHEN  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%20 = 17 THEN 'Las Vegas' ELSE 'Houston' END FROM sys.all_objects a CROSS JOIN sys.all_objects b GO -- Display statistics of the table sp_helpstats N'ExecTable', 'ALL' GO -- Select Statement SELECT FirstName, LastName, City FROM ExecTable WHERE City  = 'New York' GO -- Display statistics of the table sp_helpstats N'ExecTable', 'ALL' GO -- Replace your Statistics over here DBCC SHOW_STATISTICS('ExecTable', IX_ExecTable1); GO -------------------------------------------------------------- -- Round 2 -- Insert One Thousand Records -- INSERT 2 INSERT INTO ExecTable (ID,FirstName,LastName,City) SELECT TOP 1000 ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name) RowID, 'Bob', CASE WHEN  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%2 = 1 THEN 'Smith' ELSE 'Brown' END, CASE WHEN ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%20 = 1 THEN 'New York' WHEN  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%20 = 5 THEN 'San Marino' WHEN  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%20 = 3 THEN 'Los Angeles' WHEN  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%20 = 7 THEN 'La Cinega' WHEN  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%20 = 13 THEN 'San Diego' WHEN  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%20 = 17 THEN 'Las Vegas' ELSE 'Houston' END FROM sys.all_objects a CROSS JOIN sys.all_objects b GO -- Select Statement SELECT FirstName, LastName, City FROM ExecTable WHERE City  = 'New York' GO -- Display statistics of the table sp_helpstats N'ExecTable', 'ALL' GO -- Replace your Statistics over here DBCC SHOW_STATISTICS('ExecTable', IX_ExecTable1); GO -- Clean up Database DROP TABLE ExecTable GO When I created non clustered index on the column city, it also created statistics on the same column with same name as index. When we populate the data in the column the index is update – resulting execution plan to be invalided – this leads to the statistics to be updated in next execution of SELECT. This behavior does not happen on Heap or column where index is auto created. If you explicitly update the index, often you can see the statistics are updated as well. You can see this is for sure happening if you follow the tell of John Sansom. John Sansom‘s suggestion: That was fun! Although the column statistics are invalidated by the time the second select statement is executed, the query is not compiled/recompiled but instead the existing query plan is reused. It is the “next” compiled query against the column statistics that will see that they are out of date and will then in turn instantiate the action of updating statistics. You can see this in action by forcing the second statement to recompile. SELECT FirstName, LastName, City FROM ExecTable WHERE City = ‘New York’ option(RECOMPILE) GO Kevin Cross also have another suggestion: I agree with John. It is reusing the Execution Plan. Aside from OPTION(RECOMPILE), clearing the Execution Plan Cache before the subsequent tests will also work. i.e., run this before round 2: ————————————————————– – Clear execution plan cache before next test DBCC FREEPROCCACHE WITH NO_INFOMSGS; ————————————————————– Nice puzzle! Kevin As this was puzzle John and Kevin both got the correct answer, there was no condition for answer to be part of best practices. I know John and he is finest DBA around – his tremendous knowledge has always impressed me. John and Kevin both will agree that clearing cache either using DBCC FREEPROCCACHE and recompiling each query every time is for sure not good advice on production server. It is correct answer but not best practice. By the way, if you have better solution or have better suggestion please advise. I am open to change my answer and publish further improvement to this solution. On very separate note, I like to have clustered index on my Primary Key, which I have not mentioned here as it is out of the scope of this puzzle. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, Readers Contribution, Readers Question, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Index, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Statistics

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  • Off The Beaten Path—Three Things Growing Midsize Companies are Thankful For

    - by Christine Randle
    By: Jim Lein, Senior Director, Oracle Accelerate Last Sunday I went on a walkabout.  That’s when I just step out the door of my Colorado home and hike through the mountains for hours with no predetermined destination. I favor “social trails”, the unmapped routes pioneered by both animal and human explorers.  These tracks  are usually more challenging than established, marked routes and you can’t be 100% sure of where you’re going to end up. But I’ve found the rewards to be much greater. For awhile, I pondered on how—depending upon your perspective—the current economic situation worldwide could be viewed as either a classic “the glass is half empty” or a “the glass is half full” scenario. Midsize companies buy Oracle to grow and so I’m continually amazed and fascinated by the success stories our customers relate to me.  Oracle’s successful midsize companies are growing via innovation, agility, and opportunity. For them, the glass isn’t half full—it’s overflowing. Growing Midsize Companies are Thankful for: Innovation The sun angling through the pine trees reminded me of a conversation with a European customer a year ago May.  You might not recognize the name but, chances are, your local evening weather report relies on this company’s weather observation, monitoring and measurement products.  For decades, the company was recognized in its industry for product innovation, but its recent rapid growth comes from tailoring end to end product and service solutions based on the needs of distinctly different customer groups across industrial, public sector, and defense sectors.  Hours after that phone call I was walking my dog in a local park and came upon a small white plastic box sprouting short antennas and dangling by a nylon cord from a tree branch.  I cut it down. The name of that customer’s company was stamped on the housing. “It’s a radiosonde from a high altitude weather balloon,” he told me the next day. “Keep it as a souvenir.”  It sits on my fireplace mantle and elicits many questions from guests. Growing Midsize Companies are Thankful for: Agility In July, I had another interesting discussion with the CFO of an Asia-Pacific company which owns and operates a large portfolio of leisure assets. They are best known for their epic outdoor theme parks. However, their primary growth today is coming from a chain of indoor amusement centers in the USA where billiards, bowling, and laser tag take the place of roller coasters, kiddy rides, and wave pools. With mountains and rivers right out my front door, I’m not much for theme parks, but I’ll take a spirited game of laser tag any day.  This company has grown dramatically since first implementing Oracle ERP more than a decade ago. Their profitable expansion into a completely foreign market is derived from the ability to replicate proven and efficient best business practices across diverse operating environments.  They recently went live on Oracle’s Fusion HCM and Taleo. Their CFO explained to me how, with thousands of employees in three countries, Fusion HCM and Taleo would enable them to remain incredibly agile by acting on trends linking individual employee performance to their management, establishing and maintaining those best practices. Growing Midsize Companies are Thankful for: Opportunity I have three GPS apps on my iPhone. I use them mainly to keep track of my stats—distance, time, and vertical gain. However, every once in awhile I need to find the most efficient route back home before dark from my current location (notice I didn’t use the word “lost”). In August I listened in on an interview with the CFO of another European company that designs and delivers telematics solutions—the integrated use of telecommunications and informatics—for managing the mobile workforce. These solutions enable customers to achieve evolutionary step-changes in their performance and service delivery. Forgive the overused metaphor, but this is route optimization on steroids.  The company’s executive team saw an opportunity in this emerging market and went “all in”. Consequently, they are being rewarded with tremendous growth results and market domination by providing the ability for their clients to collect and analyze performance information related to fuel consumption, service workforce safety, and asset productivity. This Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for health, family, friends, and a career with an innovative company that helps companies leverage top tier software to drive and manage growth. And I’m thankful to have learned the lesson that good things happen when you get off the beaten path—both when hiking and when forging new routes through a complex world economy. Halfway through my walkabout on Sunday, after scrambling up a long stretch of scree-covered hill, I crested a ridge with an obstructed view of 14,265 ft Mt Evans just a few miles to the west.  There, nowhere near a house or a trail, someone had placed a wooden lounge chair. Its wood was worn and faded but it was sturdy. I had lunch and a cold drink in my pack. Opportunity knocked and I seized it. Happy Thanksgiving.  

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  • Social Business Forum Milano: Day 2

    - by me
    @YourService. The business world has flipped and small business can capitalize  by Frank Eliason (twitter: @FrankEliason ) Technology and social media tools have made it easier than ever for companies to communicate with consumers. They can listen and join in on conversations, solve problems, get instant feedback about their products and services, and more. So why, then, are most companies not doing this? Instead, it seems as if customer service is at an all time low, and that the few companies who are choosing to focus on their customers are experiencing a great competitive advantage. At Your Service explains the importance of refocusing your business on your customers and your employees, and just how to do it. Explains how to create a culture of empowered employees who understand the value of a great customer experience Advises on the need to communicate that experience to their customers and potential customers Frank Eliason, recognized by BusinessWeek as the 'most famous customer service manager in the US, possibly in the world,' has built a reputation for helping large businesses improve the way they connect with customers and enhance their relationships Quotes from the Audience: Bertrand Duperrin ?@bduperrin social service is not about shutting up the loudest cutsomers ! #sbf12 @frankeliason Paolo Pelloni ?@paolopelloniGautam Ghosh ?@GautamGhosh RT @cecildijoux: #sbf12 @frankeliason you need to change things and fix the approach it's not about social media it's about driving change  Peter H. Reiser ?@peterreiser #sbf12 Company Experience = Product Experience + Customer Interactions + Employee Experience @yourservice Engage or lose! Socialize, mobilize, conversify: engage your employees to improve business performance Christian Finn (twitter: @cfinn) First Christian was presenting the flying monkey   Then he outlined the four principals to fix the Intranet: 1. Socalize the Intranet 2. Get Thee to a Single Repository 3. Mobilize the Intranet 4. Conversationalize Your Processes Quotes from the Audience: Oscar Berg ?@oscarberg Engaged employees think their work bring out the best of their ideas @cfinn #sbf12 http://pic.twitter.com/68eddp48 John Stepper ?@johnstepper I like @cfinn's "conversify your processes" A nice related concept to "narrating your work", part of working out loud. http://johnstepper.com/2012/05/26/working-out-loud-your-personal-content-strategy/ Oscar Berg ?@oscarberg Organizations are talent markets - socializing your intranet makes this market function better @cfinn #sbf12 For profit, productivity, and personal benefit: creating a collaborative culture at Deutsche Bank John Stepper (twitter:@johnstepper) Driving adoption of collaboration + social media platforms at Deutsche Bank. John shared some great best practices on how to deploy an enterprise wide  community model  in a large company. He started with the most important question What is the commercial value of adding social ? Then he talked about the success of Community of Practices deployment and outlined some key use cases including the relevant measures to proof the ROI of the investment. Examples:  Community of practice -> measure: systematic collection of value stories  Self-service website  -> measure: based on representative models Optimizing asset inventory - > measure: Actual counts  This use case was particular interesting.  It is a crowd sourced spending/saving of infrastructure model.  User can cancel IT services they don't need (as example Software xx).  5% of the saving goes to social responsibility projects. The John outlined some  best practices on how to address the WIIFM (What's In It For Me) question of the individual users:  - change from hierarchy to graph -  working out loud = observable work + narrating  your work  - add social skills to career objectives - example: building a purposeful social network course/training as part of the job development curriculum And last but not least John gave some important tips on how to get senior management buy-in by establishing management sponsored division level collaboration boards which defines clear uses cases and measures. This divisional use cases are then implemented using a common social platform.  Thanks John - I learned a lot from your presentation!   Quotes from the Audience: Ana Silva ?@AnaDataGirl #sbf12 what's in it for individuals at Deutsche Bank? Shapping their reputations in a big org says @johnstepper #e20Ana Silva ?@AnaDataGirl Any reason why not? MT @magatorlibero #sbf12 is Deutsche B. experience on applying social inside company applicable to Italian people? Oscar Berg ?@oscarberg Your career is not a ladder, it is a network that opens up opportunities - @johnstepper #sbf12 Oscar Berg ?@oscarberg @johnstepper: Institutionalizing collaboration is next - collaboration woven into the fabric of daily work #sbf12 Ana Silva ?@AnaDataGirl #sbf12 @johnstepper talking about how Deutsche Bank is using #socbiz to build purposeful CoP & save money

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  • Unique Business Value vs. Unique IT

    - by barry.perkins
    When the age of computing started, technology was new, exciting, full of potential and had a long way to grow. Vendor architectures were proprietary, and limited in function at first, growing in capability and complexity over time. There were few if any "standards", let alone "open standards" and the concepts of "open systems", and "open architectures" were far in the future. Companies employed intelligent, talented and creative people to implement the best possible solutions for their company. At first, those solutions were "unique" to each company. As time progressed, standards emerged, companies shared knowledge, business capability supplied by technology grew, and companies continued to expand their use of technology. Taking advantage of change required companies to struggle through periodic "revolutionary" change cycles, struggling through costly changes that were fraught with risk, resulted in solutions with an increasingly shorter half-life, and frequently required altering existing business processes and retraining employees and partner businesses. The pace of technological invention and implementation grew at an ever increasing rate, making the "revolutionary" approach based upon "proprietary" or "closed" architectures or technologies no longer viable. Concurrent with the advancement of technology, the rate of change in business increased, leading us to the incredibly fast paced, highly charged, and competitive global economy that we have today, where the most successful companies are companies that are good at implementing, leveraging and exploiting change. Fast forward to today, a world where dramatic changes in business and technology happen continually, a world where "evolutionary" change is crucial. Companies can no longer afford to build "unique IT", nor can they afford regular intervals of "revolutionary" change, with the associated costs and risks. Human ingenuity was once again up to the task, turning technology into a platform supporting business through evolutionary change, by employing "open": open standards; open systems; open architectures; and open solutions. Employing "open", enables companies to implement systems based upon technology, capability and standards that will evolve over time, providing a solid platform upon which a company can drive business needs, requirements, functions, and processes down into the technology, rather than exposing technology to the business, allowing companies to focus on providing "unique business value" rather than "unique IT". The big question! Does moving from "older" technology that no longer meets the needs of today's business, to new "open" technology require yet another "revolutionary change"? A "revolutionary" change with a short half-life, camouflaging reality with great marketing? The answer is "perhaps". With the endless options available to choose from, it is entirely possible to implement a solution that may work well today, but in 5 years time will become yet another albatross for the company to bear. Some solutions may look good today, solving a budget challenge by reducing cost, or solving a specific tactical challenge, but result in highly complex environments, that may be difficult to manage and maintain and limit the future potential of your business. Put differently, some solutions might push today's challenge into the future, resulting in a more complex and expensive solution. There is no such thing as a "1 size fits all" IT solution for business. If all companies implemented business solutions based upon technology that required, or forced the same business processes across all businesses in an industry, it would be extremely difficult to show competitive advantage through "unique business value". It would be equally difficult to "evolve" to meet or exceed business needs and keep up with today's rapid pace of change. How does one ensure that they do not jump from one trap directly into another? Or to put it positively, there are solutions available today that can address these challenges and issues. How does one ensure that the buying decision of today will serve the business well for years into the future? Intelligent & Informed decisions - "buying right" In a previous blog entry, we discussed the value of linking tactical to strategic The key is driving the focus to what is best for your business, handling today's tactical issues while also aligning with a roadmap/strategy that is tightly aligned with your strategic business objectives. When considering the plethora of possible options that provide various approaches to solving today's complex business problems, it is extremely important to ensure that vendors supplying those options, focus on what is best for your business, supplying sufficient information, providing adequate answers to questions, addressing challenges, issues, concerns and objections honestly and openly, and focus on supplying solutions that are tailored for, and deliver the most business value possible for your business. Here are a few questions to consider relative to the proposed options that should help ensure that today's solution doesn't become tomorrow's problem. Do the proposed solutions: Solve the problem(s) you are trying to address? Provide a solid foundation upon which to grow/enhance your business? Provide tactical gains that align with and enable your strategic business goals/objectives? Provide an infrastructure that can be leveraged with subsequent projects? Solve problems for the business overall, the lines of business, or just IT? Simplify your current environment Provide the basis for business: Efficiency Agility Clarity governance, risk, compliance real time business visibility and trend analysis Does your IT staff have the knowledge/experience to successfully manage the proposed systems once they are deployed in production? Done well, you will be presented with options tailored to your business, that enable you to drive the "unique business value" necessary to help your business stand out from others, creating a distinct competitive advantage, delivering what your customers need, when they need it, so you can attract new customers, new business, and grow top line revenue, all at a cost that provides a strong Return on Investment/Return on Assets. The net result is growth with managed cost providing significantly improved profit margin and shareholder value.

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  • BI&EPM in Focus June 2014

    - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM
    Applications Webcast Centre – A Library of Discussion and Research for Best Practice: Achieving Reliable Planning, Budgeting and Forecasting Talent Analytics and Big Data – Is HR ready for the challenge Enterprise Data – The cost of non-quality Customers Josephine Niemiec from ADP talks about Oracle Hyperion Workforce Planning at Collaborate 2014 (link) Video Chris Nelms from Ameren talks about Oracle BI Spend and Procurement Analytics at Collaborate 2014 (link) Video Leggett & Platt Leverages Oracle Hyperion EPM and Demantra (link) Video Pella Corporation Accelerates Close Cycle by Cutting Time for Financial Consolidation from Three Days to Less Than One Day (link) Secretaría General de Administración de Justicia en España Enhances Citizen Services with Near-Real-Time Business Intelligence Gleaned from 500 Databases  (link) Bellco Credit Union Speeds Budget Development by 30%—Gains Insight into Specific Branch and Financial Product Profitability  (link)  Video QDQ media Speeds up Financial Reporting by 24x, Gains Business Agility, and Integrates Seamlessly into Corporate Accounting System  (link) Westfield Group Maximizes Shopping Mall Revenue, Shortens Year-End Financial Consolidation by 75%  (link)  IL&FS Transportation Networks Shortens Financial Consolidation and Reporting Cycle by Eight Days, Gains In-Depth Insight into Business Performance   (link) Angel Trains Optimizes Rail Operations for Purchasing, Sourcing, and Project Management to Meet Challenges of Evolving Rail Industry  (link) Enterprise Performance Management June 11, at Oracle Utrecht, NL: Morning session: Explore Planning and Budgeting in the Cloud (link) June 12, London: PureApps Presents: Best Practice Financial Consolidation and Reporting Workshop (link) July 3, Koln: Oracle Hyperion Business Analytics Roundtable (link) Blog: What's Your Tax Strategy? Automate the Operational Transfer Pricing Process (link) YouTube Video: Automate Tax Reporting with Oracle Hyperion Tax Provision (link) YouTube Video: Introducing Oracle Hyperion Planning’s Tablet Optimized Interface (link) OracleEPMWebcasts @ YouTube (link) Partner webcasts: Wednesday, 4 June, 5.00 GMT - Case Study:  Lessons Learned from Edgewater Ranzal's Internal Implementation of Oracle Planning & Budgeting Cloud Service (PBCS) - Learn more and register here! Thursday, 5 June, 4.00 GMT - Achieving Accountable Care Using Oracle Technology - Learn more and register here! Tuesday, 17 June, 4.00 GMT - Optimizing Performance for Oracle EPM Systems - Learn more and register here! Oracle University Blog: The Coolest Features Available with Oracle Hyperion 11.1.2.3 – Training from OU to help you to best use them (link) Support: Proactive Support: EPM Hyperion Planning 11.1.2.3.500 Using RMI Service [Blog] Proactive Support: Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service Videos (link) Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service (PBCS) 11.1.2.3.410 Patch Bundle [Doc ID 1670981.1] Hyperion Analytic Provider Services 11.1.2.2.106 Patch Set Update [Doc ID 1667350.1] Hyperion Essbase 11.1.2.2.106 Patch Set Update [Doc ID 1667346.1] Hyperion Essbase Administration Services 11.1.2.2.106 Patch Set Update [Doc ID 1667348.1] Hyperion Essbase Studio 11.1.2.2.106 Patch Set Update [Doc ID 1667329.1] Hyperion Smart View 11.1.2.5.210 Patch Set Update [Doc ID 1669427.1] Using HPCM, HSF or DRM Communities (link) Business Intelligence June 12, Birmingham, UK: Oracle Big Data at Work - Use Cases and Architecture (link) June 17, London: Oracle at Cloud & Big Data World Forums (link) June 17, Partner Webcast: Transform your Planning Capabilities with Peloton's CloudAccelerator for Oracle PBCS (link) June 19, London: Oracle at the Whitehall Media Big Data Analytics Conference and Exhibition (link) June 19, London: Partner Event - Agile BI Conference by Peak Indicators [link] June 25, Munich: Oracle Special Day auf der TDWI 2014 Konferenz (link) July 15, London: Oracle Endeca Information Discovery Workshop (link) July 16, London: BI Applications Workshop – Financial Analytics & Procurement Analytics (link) July 17, London: BI Applications Workshop – HR Analytics (link) Milan, Italy: L’Osservatorio Big Data Analytics & Business Intelligence with Politecnico di Milano (link) OBIA 11.1.1.8.1 - Now Available [Blog] What’s New in OBIA 11.1.1.8.1 [Blog] BI Blog: A closer look at Oracle BI Applications 11.1.1.8.1 release (link) Press Release: BI Applications Deliver Greater Insight into Talent and Procurement (link) Support Blog: OBIA 11.1.1.8.1 Upgrade Guide & Documentation (link) YouTube Video: Glenn Hoormann of Ludus talks to us about Oracle Business Intelligence and ERP at Collaborate 2014 (Link) YouTube Video: Performance Architects talks about key BI and Mobile trends, including Endeca at Collaborate 2014 (link) Big Data Blog: 3 Keys for Using Big Data Effectively for Enhanced Customer Experience (link) Big Data Lite Demo VM 3.0 Now Available on OTN BI Blog: Data Relationship Governance - Workflow in a Bottle (link) MDM Blog: Register for Product Data Management Weekly Cloudcasts (link) MDM Blog: Improve your Customer Experience with High Quality Information (link) MDM Blog: Big Data Challenges & Considerations (link) Oracle University: Oracle BI Applications 11g: Implementation using ODI (link) Proactive Support: Monthly Index [Blog] My Oracle Support: Partner Accreditation for Business Analytics Support [Blog] OBIEE 11g Test-to-Production (T2P) / Clone Procedures Guide [Blog] Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-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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  • Developer Training – Difficult Questions and Alternative Perspective – Part 3

    - by pinaldave
    Developer Training - Importance and Significance - Part 1 Developer Training – Employee Morals and Ethics – Part 2 Developer Training – Difficult Questions and Alternative Perspective - Part 3 Developer Training – Various Options for Developer Training – Part 4 Developer Training – A Conclusive Summary- Part 5 Congratulations!  You are now a fully trained developer!  You spent hours in a classroom, watching webinars, and reading materials.  You are now more educated and more prepared than ever before.  Now what? Stay or Quit The simple answer is that you now have two options – stay where you are or move on to a new job.  Even though you might now be smarter than you have ever felt before, this can still be a tough decision to make.  You feel extra trained and ready for a promotion or a raise, but you and your employer might not see eye to eye on this issue.  The logical conclusion is to go on a job hunt, but that might not be the most ethical thing to do. Click Image to Enlarge Manager’s Perspective Click Image to Enlarge Try to see the issue from your manager’s perspective.  You feel that you have just spent a lot of time and energy getting trained, and you should be rewarded.  But they have invested their time and energy in you.  They might see the training as a way to help you complete the goals they require from you, or as a way to help you complete tasks that will ultimately end in a reward or promotion. Moral Compass As in most cases, honesty is the best policy.  Be open with your manager about your expectations, and ask them to explain their goals.  When there is open and honest communication, everyone can walk away happy.  If you’re unable to discuss with your manager for one reason or another, just try to keep the company policy in mind and follow your own moral compass.  If all else fails, and your company is unwilling to make allowances for your new value, offer to pay the company back for the training before moving on your way. Whether you stay at your old job or move on to a new one, you are still faced with the question of what you’re going to do with all your new knowledge.  If you feel comfortable, offer to train others around you who are interested in the same subject.  This can look very good on your resume, and if you are working in a team environment it is sure to help you in the long run! What Next? You can even offer to train other trainers at the company – managers, those above you, or even report back to your original trainer about how your education is helping you in the work place.  Obviously this should be completely voluntary on the trainer’s part.  Taking advice from a “newbie” may not be their favorite idea, but it could also show the company that you are open to expanding your horizons and being helpful to everyone around you. Last in Line for Opportunity Click Image to Enlarge At this time, let us address a subject related to training and what to do with it – what if you are always overlooked for training?  This can as thorny a problem as receiving training in the first place.  The best advice is to let your supervisors know that you are always open to training and very interested in certain topics.  If you are consistently passed over, be patient.  Your turn will probably come, but the company as a whole has to focus on other problems at the moment.  If you feel that there are more personal issues at play, be sure to bring this up with your supervisor in a calm and professional manager so that everything can be worked out best for both parties. You, Yourself and Your Future! If all else fails, offer to pay for training yourself.  Perhaps money problems are at the root of being passed over.  Even if there are other reasons, offering to pay your own way shows your dedication and could work out well for you in the long run.  Always remember – in life you have to go out and make your own way, you cannot always sit and wait for things to land in your lap. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Developer Training, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • PASS Summit 2010 Recap

    - by AjarnMark
    Last week I attended my eighth PASS Summit in nine years, and every year it is a fantastic event!  I was fortunate my first year to have a contact (Bill Graziano (blog | Twitter) from SQLTeam) that I was expecting to meet, and who got me started on a good track of making new contacts.  Each year I have made a few more, and renewed friendships from years past.  Many of the attendees agree that the pure networking opportunities are one of the best benefits of attending the Summit.  And there’s a lot of great technical stuff, too, some of the things that stick out for me this year include… Pre-Con Monday: PowerShell with Allen White (blog | Twitter).  This was the first time that I attended a pre-con.  For those not familiar with the concept, the regular sessions for the conference are 75-90 minutes long.  For an extra fee, you can attend a full-day session on a single topic during a pre- or post-conference training day.  I had been meaning for several months to dive in and learn PowerShell, but just never seemed to find (or make) the time for it, so when I saw this was one of the all-day sessions, and I was planning to be there on Monday anyway, I decided to go for it.  And it was well worth it!  I definitely came out of there with a good foundation to build my own PowerShell scripts, plus several sample scripts that he showed which already cover the first four or five things I was planning to do with PowerShell anyway.  This looks like the right tool for me to build an automated version of our software deployment process, which right now contains many repeated steps.  Thanks Allen! Service Broker with Denny Cherry (blog | Twitter).  I remembered reading Denny’s blog post on Using Service Broker instead of Replication, and ever since then I have been thinking about using this to populate a new reporting-focused Data Repository that we will be building in the near future.  When I saw he was doing this session, I thought it would be great to get more information and be able to ask the author questions.  When I brought this idea back to my boss, he really liked it, as we had previously been discussing doing nightly data loads, with an option to manually trigger a mid-day load if up-to-the-minute data was needed for something.  If we go the Service Broker route, we can keep the Repository current in near real-time.  Hooray! DBA Mythbusters with Paul Randal (blog | Twitter).  Even though I read every one of the posts in Paul’s blog series of the same name, I had to go see the legend in person.  It was great, and I still learned something new! How to Conduct Effective Meetings with Joe Webb (blog | Twitter).  I always like to sit in on a session that Joe does.  I met Joe several years ago when both he and Bill Graziano were on the PASS Board of Directors together, and we have kept in touch.  Joe is very well-spoken and has great experience with both SQL Server and business.  And we could certainly use some pointers at my work (probably yours, too) on making our meetings more effective and to run on-time.  Of course, now that I’m the Chapter Leader for the Professional Development virtual chapter, I also had to sit in on this ProfDev session and recruit Joe to do a presentation or two for the chapter next year. Query Optimization with David DeWitt.  Anyone who has seen Dr. David DeWitt present the 3rd keynote at a PASS Summit over the last three years knows what a great time it is to sit and listen to him make some really complicated and advanced topic easy to understand (although it still makes your head hurt).  It still amazes me that the simple two-table join query from pubs that he used in his example can possibly have 22 million possible physical query plans.  Ouch! Exhibit Hall:  This year I spent more serious time in the exhibit hall than any year past.  I have talked my boss into making a significant (for us) investment in monitoring tools next year, and this was a great opportunity to talk with all the big-hitters.  Readers of mine may recall that I fell in love with the SQL Sentry Power Suite several months ago and wrote a blog entry about it just from the trial version.  Well as things turned out, short-term budget priorities shifted, and we weren’t able to make the purchase then.  I have it in the budget for next year, but since I was going to the Summit, my boss wanted me to look at the other options to see if this was really the one that we wanted.  I spent a couple of hours talking with representatives from Red-Gate, Idera, Confio, and Quest about their offerings, and giving them each the same 3 scenarios that I wanted to be able to accomplish based on the questions and issues that arise in our company.  It was interesting to discover the different approaches or “world view” that each vendor takes to the subject of performance monitoring and troubleshooting.  I may write a separate article that goes into this in more depth, but the product that best aligned with our point of view, and met the current needs we have is still the SQL Sentry Power Suite.  I’m not saying that the others are bad or wrong or anything like that, just that the way they tackled the issue did not align as well with our particular needs as does SQL Sentry’s product.  And that was something I learned too, when you go shopping for these products, you really need to know what you want to get from them.  It’s best if you have a few example scenarios from work that you can use to test out how well each tool fits your particular needs. Overall, another GREAT event.  I can’t wait to get the DVDs so I can sit in on a bunch of other sessions that I couldn’t get to because I was in one of the ones above.  And I can hardly wait until next year!

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  • Plan your SharePoint 2010 Content Type Hub carefully

    - by Wayne
    Currently setting up a new environment on SharePoint 2010 (which was made available for download yesterday if anyone missed that :-). One of the new features of SharePoint 2010 is to set up a Content Type Hub (which is a part of the Metadata Service Application), which is a hub for all Content Types that other Site Collections can subscribe to. That is you only need to manage your content types in one location. Setting up the Content Type Hub is not that difficult but you must make it very careful to avoid a lot of work and troubleshooting. Here is a short tutorial with a few tips and tricks to make it easy for you to get started. Determine location of Content Type Hub First of all you need to decide in which Site Collection to place your Content Type Hub; in the root site collection or a specific one. I think using a specific Site Collection that only acts as a Content Type Hub is the best way, there are no best practice as of now. So I create a new Site Collection, at for instance http://server/sites/CTH/. The top-level site of this site collection should be for instance a Team Site. You cannot use Blank Site by default, which would have been the best option IMHO, since that site does not have the Taxonomy feature stapled upon it (check the TaxonomyFeatureStapler feature for which site templates that can be used). Configure Managed Metadata Service Application Next you need to create your Managed Metadata Service Application or configure the existing one, Central Administration > Application Management > Manage Service Applications. Select the Managed Metadata service application and click Properties if you already have created it. In the bottom of the dialog window when you are creating the service application or when you are editing the properties is a section to fill in the Content Type Hub. In this text box fill in the URL of the Content Type Hub. It is essential that you have decided where your Content Type Hub will reside, since once this is set you cannot change it. The only way to change it is to rebuild the whole managed metadata service application! Also make sure that you enter the URL correctly. I did copy and paste the URL once and got the /default.aspx in the URL which funked the whole service up. Make sure that you only use the URL to the Site Collection of the hub. Now you have to set up so that other Site Collections can consume the content types from the hub. This is done by selecting the connection for the managed metadata service application and clicking properties. A new dialog window opens and there you need to click the Consumes content types from the Content Type Gallery at nnnn. Now you are free to syndicate your Content Types from the Hub. Publish Content Types To publish a Content Type from the hub you need to go to Site Settings > Content Types and select the content type that you would like to publish. Then select Manage publishing for this content type. This takes you to a page from where you can Publish, Unpublish or Republish the content type. Once the content type is published it can take up to an hour for the subscribing Site Collections to get it. This is controlled by the Content Type Subscriber job that is scheduled to run once an hour. To speed up your publishing just go to Central Administration > Monitoring > Review Job Definitions > Content Type Subscriber and click Run now and you content type is very soon available for use. Published Content Type status You can check the status of the content type publishing in your destination site collections by selecting Site Settings > Content Type Publishing. From here you can force a refresh of all subscribed content types, see which ones that are subscribed and finally check the publishing error log. This error log is very useful for detecting errors during the publishing. For instance if you use any features such as ratings, metadata, document ids in your content type hub and your destination site collection does not have those features available this will be reported here.

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