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• Change Data Capture Webinar

  I am going to be doing a webinar with our friends at Attunity on Change Data Capture.  Attunity have a good story around this technology and you can use it in your SSIS loads to great effect. Join Attunity and Konesans/SQLIS for a Webinar on 17 September Space is limited. Reserve your Webinar seat now at: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/693735512 Want increased efficiency and real-time speed when conducting ETL loads? Need lower implementation costs while minimizing system impact? Learn how change data capture (CDC) technologies can reduce ETL load times. Allan Mitchell, Principal Consultant at Konesans and SQLServer MVP specialising in ETL, will explain CDC concepts and benefits and how CDC can dramatically reduce ETL load times. Ian Archibald, Pre-Sales Director EMEA for Attunity, will present and demonstrate Attunity's award-winning Oracle-CDC for SSIS, a fully-integrated SSIS solution for designing, deploying and managing Oracle CDC processes. Title: Change Data Capture - Reducing ETL Load Times Date: Thursday, September 17, 2009 Time: 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM BST ABOUT THE SPEAKERS: Allan Mitchell is the joint owner of Konesans Ltd, a UK based consultancy specializing in SQL Server, and most importantly SQL Server Integration Services. Having been working with SQL Server from 6.5 onwards, he has extensive experience in many aspects of SQL Server, but now focuses on the BI suite of tools. He is a SQL Server MVP, a frequent poster on the MS SSIS/DTS newsgroups, and runs the sqldts.com and sqlis.com resource sites. Ian Archibald, Attunity Pre-Sales Director EMEA, has worked in Attunity’s UK Office for 17 years. An expert in Attunity solutions, Ian has extensive knowledge of Attunity’s products and data integration & CDC technologies. After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar. System Requirements PC-based attendees Required: Windows® 2000, XP Home, XP Pro, 2003 Server, Vista Macintosh®-based attendees Required: Mac OS® X 10.4 (Tiger®) or newer

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• Fitting it together, database, reporting, applications in C#

  - by alvonellos

  Introduction Preamble I was hesitant to post this, since it's an application whose intricate details are defined elsewhere, and answers may not be helpful to others. Within the past few weeks (I was actually going to write a blog post about this after I finished) I've discovered that the barrier I'm encountering is one that's actually quite common for newer developers. This question is not so much about a specific thing as it is about piecing those things together. I've searched the internet far and wide, and found many tutorials on how to create applications that are kind of similar to what I'm looking for. I've also looked at hiring another, more experienced, developer to help me along, but all I've gotten are unqualified candidates that don't have the experience necessary and won't take care of the client or project like I will. I'd rather have the project never transpire than to release a solution that is half-baked. I've asked professors at my school, but they've not turned up answers to my question. I'm an experienced developer, and I've written many applications that are -- very abstractly -- close to what I'm doing, but my experiences from those applications aren't giving me enough leverage to solve this particular problem. I just hope that posting this article isn't a mistake for me to write. Project Description I have a project I'm working on for a client that is a rewrite of an application, originally written in Foxpro 2.6 by someone before me, that performs some analysis (which, sadly, I'm not allowed to disclose as per of my employment contract) on financial data. One day, after a long talk between the client and I -- where he intimately described his frustrations with all the bugs I've been hacking out of this code for 6 months now -- he told me to just rewrite it and gave me a month to write a good 1/8 of this 65k LOC Foxpro monstrosity. this 65k line of code foxpro monstrosity. It'll take me a good 3 - 6 months to rewrite this software (I know things the original programmer did not, like inheritance) going as I am right now, but I'm quickly discovering that I'm going to need to use databases. Prior to this contract I didn't even know about foxpro, and so I've had to learn foxpro on the fly, write procedures and make modifications to the database. I've actually come to like it, and this project would be rewritten in Foxpro if it were still a supported language, because over the past few months, I've come to like the features of Foxpro that make it so easy to develop data-driven applications. I once perfomed an experiment, comparing C# to Foxpro. What took me 45 minutes in C# took me two in Foxpro, and I knew C# prior to Foxpro. I was hoping to leverage the power of C#, but it intimidates me that in foxpro, you can have one line of code and be using a database. Prior to this, I have never written any serious database development from scratch. All the applications that I've written are in a different league. They are either completely data-naive or data-naive enough that I can get away with not using a database through serialization or by designing algorithms that work with the data in a manner that is stateless, so there is no need to worry about databases. I've come to realize, very quickly, that serialization and my efficacy with data structures has been my crutch all these years that's prevented me from adventuring into databases, and has consequently hindered my success in real-world programming. Sure, I've written some database stuff in Perl and Python, and I've done forms and worked with relational databases and tables, I'm a wizard in Access and Excel (seriously) and can do just about anything, but it just feels unnatural writing SQL code in another language... I don't mind writing SQL, and I don't It's that bridge between the database and the program code that drives me absolutely bonkers. I hope I'm not the only one to think this, but it bothers me that I have to create statements like the following string sSql = "SELECT * from tablename" When there's really no reason for that kind of unchecked language binding between two languages and two API's. Don't get my wrong, SQL is great, but I don't like the idea that, when executing commands on a SQL database, that one must intermix database and application software, and there's no database independence, which means that different versions of different databases can break code. This isn't very nice. The nicest thing about Foxpro is the cohesiveness between programming language and database. It's so easy, and Foxpro makes it easy, because the tool just fits the task. I can see why so many developers have created a career with this language, because it lowered the barrier of entry to data-driven applications that so many businesses need. It was wonderful. For my purposes today, with the demands and need for community support, extensibility, and language features, Foxpro isn't a solution that I feel would be the right tool for the job. I'm also worried about working too heavy with the database, because I've seen data-driven .NET applications have issues with database caches, running out of memory, and objects in the database not being collected. (Memory leaks) And OH the queries. Which one, how, and why? There are a plethora of different ways that a database can be setup, I think I counted 5 or 6 different kinds of database applications alone that I can chose from. That is a great mountain for me to climb when I don't even know where to begin when it comes to writing data-driven applications. The problem isn't that I don't know SQL or that I don't know C#. I know both and have worked with both extensively. It's making them work together that's the problem, and it's something I've never done in C# before. Reports The client likes paper. The data needs to be printed out in a format that is extensible, layered, and easy to use. I have never done reporting before, and so this is a bit of a problem. From the data source comes crystal reports, and so there's a dependency on the database, from what I understand. Code reuse A large part of the design decision that I've gone through so far is to break the task of writing a piece of this software into routines and modular DLL's and so forth such that much of the code can be reused. For example, when I setup this database, I want to be able to reuse the same database code over and over again. I also want to make sure that when the day comes that another developer is here, that he/she will be able to pick up just where I left off. The quicker I develop these applications, the better off I am. Tasks & Goals In my project, I need to write routines that apply algorithms and look for predefined patterns in financial data. Additionally, I need to simulate trading based on predefined algorithms and data. Then I need to prepare reports on that data. Additionally, I need to have a way to change the code base for this application quickly and effectively, without hacking together some band-aid solution for a problem that really needs a trauma ward. Special Considerations The solution must be fast, run quickly on existing hardware, and not be too much of a pain to maintain and write. I understand that anything I write I'm married to -- I'm responsible for the things that I write because my reputation and livelihood is dependent on it. Do I really need a database? What about performance? Performance was such a big issue that I hand wrote a data structure that is capable of performing 2 billion operations, using a total of 4 gigs of memory in under 1/4 of a second using the standard core two duo processor. I could not find a similar, pre-written data structure in C# to perform this task. What setup do I use in terms of database? What about reporting? I'd prefer to have PDF's generated, but I'd like to be able to visually sketch those reports and then just have a ReportFactory of some sort, that when I pass some variables in, it just does that data. About Me I'm a lone developer for a small business in this area. This is the first time I've done this and I've never had the breadth and depth of my knowledge tested. I'm incredibly frustrated with this project because I feel incredibly overwhelmed with the task at hand. I'm looking for that entry level point where I can draw a line and say "this is what I need to do" Conclusion I may have not been clear enough on my post. I'm still new to this whole thing, and I've been doing my best to contribute back to the community that I've leached so much knowledge from. I'd be glad to edit my post and add more information if possible. I'm looking for a big-picture solution or design process that helps me get off the ground in this world of data-driven applications, because I have a feeling that it's going to be concentric to my entire career as a programmer for some time. Specifically, if you didn't get it from the rest of the post (I may not have been clear enough) I really need some guidance as to where to go in terms of the design decisions for this project. Some things that'll be useful will be a pro/con list for the different kinds of database projects available in VS2010. I've tried, but generating that list has been as hard as solving the problem itself... If you could walk a developer writing a data-driven application for the first time in C#, how would you do that? Where would you point them to?

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• Html Agility Pack for Reading “Real World” HTML

  - by WeigeltRo

  In an ideal world, all data you need from the web would be available via well-designed services. In the real world you sometimes have to scrape the data off a web page. Ugly, dirty – but if you really want that data, you have no choice. Just don’t write (yet another) HTML parser. I stumbled across the Html Agility Pack (HAP) a long time ago, but just now had the need for a robust way to read HTML. A quote from the website: This is an agile HTML parser that builds a read/write DOM and supports plain XPATH or XSLT (you actually don't HAVE to understand XPATH nor XSLT to use it, don't worry...). It is a .NET code library that allows you to parse "out of the web" HTML files. The parser is very tolerant with "real world" malformed HTML. The object model is very similar to what proposes System.Xml, but for HTML documents (or streams). Using the HAP was a simple matter of getting the Nuget package, taking a look at the example and dusting off some of my XPath knowledge from years ago. The documentation on the Codeplex site is non-existing, but if you’ve queried a DOM or used XPath or XSLT before you shouldn’t have problems finding your way around using Intellisense (ReSharper tip: Press Ctrl+Shift+F1 on class members for reading the full doc comments).

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• That’s a wrap! Almost, there’s still one last chance to attend a SQL in the City event in 2012

  - by Red and the Community

  The communities team are back from the SQL in the City multi-city US Tour and we are delighted to have met so many happy SQL Server professionals and Red Gate customers. We set out to run a series of back-to-back events in order to meet, talk to and delight as many SQL Server and Red Gate enthusiasts as possible in 5 different cities in 11 days. We did it! The attendees had a good time too and 99% of them would attend another SQL in the City event in 2013 – so it seems we left an impression. There were a range of topics on the event agenda, ranging from ‘The Whys & Hows of Continuous Integration’, ‘Database Maintenance Essentials’, ‘Red Gate tools – The Complete Lifecycle’, ‘Automated Deployment: Application And Database Releases Without The Headache’, ‘The Ten Commandments of SQL Server Monitoring’ and many more. Videos and slides from the events will be posted to the event website in November, after our last event of 2012. SQL in the City Seattle – November 5 Join us for free and hear from some of the very best names in the SQL Server world. SQL Server MVPs such as; Steve Jones, Grant Fritchey, Brent Ozar, Gail Shaw and more will be presenting at the Bell Harbor conference center for one day only. We’re even taking on board some of the recent attendee-suggestions of how we can improve the events (feedback from the 65% of attendees who came to our US tour events), first off we’re extending the drinks celebration in the evening! Rather than just a 30 minute drink and run, attendees will have up to 2 hours to enjoy free drinks, relax and network in a fantastic environment amongst some really smart like-minded professionals. If you’re interested in expanding your SQL Server knowledge, would like to learn more about Red Gate tools, get yourself registered for the last SQL in the City event of 2012. It’s free, fun and we’re very friendly! I look forward to seeing you in Seattle on Monday November 5. Cheers, Annabel.

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• Oracle Cloud Services Referral Program… Now Available!

  - by Kristin Rose

  The sky is falling, the sky is falling! Oh wait, it’s not the sky, it’s the Oracle Cloud Services Referral Program! This partner program was announced at Oracle OpenWorld 2012, and is now readily available to any Oracle PartnerNetwork member. In fact you can learn all about this program by simply visiting our Oracle Cloud Knowledge Zone. Just as a puffy cumulus should, Oracle Cloud Services are included in the Oracle Cloud Services Referral Partner program. Partners can start to capitalize on the growing demand for Cloud solutions with little investment through Oracle Cloud Services Referral Partner program, or choose to get Specialized. Have a look at all that is available below! Cloud Builder - a Specialization ideally suited for systems integrator and service providers creating private and hybrid cloud solutions with Oracle’s broad portfolio of cloud optimized hardware and software products. Learn more in this video of as part of a series of OPN PartnerCasts. Join the Cloud Builder KnowledgeZone to get started. Oracle Cloud Referral - for VARs or partners seeking to generate revenue with the Oracle Cloud. This program rewards partners referring Oracle Cloud opportunities to Oracle. Register your Oracle Cloud Referral. Oracle Cloud Specializations - provides partners with the expertise and skills to enable partner delivered RapidStart fixed-scope, consulting service packages for setup, configuration and deployment of Oracle Cloud software as a service. Cloud Resale - a resell program for partners to market, sell and deploy Oracle Cloud solutions. Available January 2013. And best of all, partners are already taking advantage of the referral opportunity for Oracle Cloud Services and are seeing tremendous success! Watch as Jeff Porter gives an overview of Oracle's Cloud Services, and be sure to check out the Cloud Computing Programs & Specializations FAQ’s for you, our partners! The Sky’s the Limit, The OPN Communications Team 

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• SQLAuthority Book Review – DBA Survivor: Become a Rock Star DBA

  - by pinaldave

  DBA Survivor: Become a Rock Star DBA – Thomas LaRock Link to Amazon Link to Flipkart First of all, I thank all my readers when I wrote that I could not get this book in any local book stores, because they offered me to send a copy of this good book. A very special mention goes to Sripada and Jayesh for they gave so much effort in finding my home address and sending me the hard copy. Before, I did not have the copy of the book, but now I have two of it already! It surprises me how my readers were able to find my home address, which I have not publicly shared. Quick Review: This is indeed a one easy-to-read and fun book. We all work day and night with technology yet we should not forget to show our love and care for our family at home. For our souls that starve for peace and guidance, this one book is the “it” book for all the technology enthusiasts. Though this book was specifically written for DBAs, the reach is not limited to DBAs only because the lessons incorporated in it actually applies to all. This is one of the most motivating technical books I have read. Detailed Review: Let us go over a few questions first: Who wants to be as famous as rockstars in the field of Database Administration? How can one learn what it takes to become a top notch software developer? If you are a beginner in your field, how will you go to next level? Your boss may be very kind or like Dilbert’s Boss, what will you do? How do you keep growing when Eco-system around you does not support you? You are almost at top but there is someone else at the TOP, what do you do and how do you avoid office politics? As a database developer what should be your basic responsibility? and many more… I was able to completely read book in one sitting and I loved it. Before I continue with my opinion, I want to echo the opinion of Kevin Kline who has written the Forward of the book. He has truly suggested that “You hold in your hands a collection of insights and wisdom on the topic of database administration gained through many years of hard-won experience, long nights of study, and direct mentorship under some of the industry’s most talented database professionals and information technology (IT) experts.” Today, IT field is getting bigger and better, while talking about terabytes of the database becomes “more” normal every single day. The gods and demigods of database professionals are taking care of these large scale databases and are carefully maintaining them. In this world, there are only a few beginnings on the first step. There are many experts in different technology fields who are asked to address the issues with databases. There is YOU and ME, who is just new to this work. So we ask ourselves WHERE to begin and HOW to begin. We adore and follow the religion of our rockstars, but oftentimes we really have no idea about their background and their struggles. Every rockstar has his success story which needs to be digested before learning his tricks and tips. This book starts with the same note and teaches the two most important lessons for anybody who wants to be a DBA Rockstar –  to focus on their single goal of learning and to excel the technology. The story starts with three simple guidelines – Get Prepared, Get Trained, Get Certified. Once a person learns the skills, and then, it would be about time that he needs to enrich or to improve those skills you have learned. I am sure that the right opportunity will come finding themselves and they will not have to go run behind it. However, the real challenge for any person is the first day or first week. A new employee, no matter how much experienced he is, sometimes has no clue about what should one do at new job. Chapter 2 and chapter 3 precisely talk about what one should do as soon as the new job begins. It is also written with keeping the fact in focus that each job can be very much different but there are few infrastructure setups and programming concepts are the same. Learning basics of database was really interesting. I like to focus on the roots of any technology. It is important to understand the structure of the database before suggesting what indexes needs to be created, the same way this book covers the most essential knowledge one must learn by most database developers. I think the title of the fourth chapter is my favorite sentence in this book. I can see that I will be saying this again and again in the future – “A Development Server Is a Production Server to a Developer“. I have worked in the software industry for almost 8 years now and I have seen so many developers sitting on their chairs and waiting for instructions from their lead about how to improve the code or what to do the next. When I talk to them, I suggest that the experiment with their server and try various techniques. I think they all should understand that for them, a development server is their production server and needs to pay proper attention to the code from the beginning. There should be NO any inappropriate code from the beginning. One has to fully focus and give their best, if they are not sure they should ask but should do something and stay active. Chapter 5 and 6 talks about two essential skills for any developer and database administration – what are the ethics of developers when they are working with production server and how to support software which is running on the production server. I have met many people who know the theory by heart but when put in front of keyboard they do not know where to start. The first thing they do opening the browser and searching online, instead of opening SQL Server Management Studio. This can very well happen to anybody who is experienced as well. Chapter 5 and 6 addresses that situation as well includes the handy scripts which can solve almost all the basic trouble shooting issues. “Where’s the Buffet?” By far, this is the best chapter in this book. If you have ever met me, you would know that I love food. I think after reading this chapter, I felt Thomas has written this just keeping me in mind. I think there will be many other people who feel the same way, too. Even my wife who read this chapter thought this was specifically written for me. I will not talk any more about this chapter as this is one must read chapter. And of course this is about real ‘FOOD‘. I am an SQL Server Trainer and Consultant and I totally agree with the point made in the chapter 8 of this book. Yes, it says here that what is necessary to train employees and people. Millions of dollars worth the labor is continuously done in the world which has faults and incorrect. Once something goes wrong, very expensive consultant comes in and fixes the problem. This whole cycle which can be stopped and improved if proper training is done. There is plenty of free trainings available as well, if one cannot afford paid training. “Connect. Learn. Share” – I think this is a great summary and bird’s eye view of this book. Networking is the key. Everything which is discussed in this book can be taken to next level if one properly uses this tips and continuously grow with it. Connecting with others, helping learn each other and building the good knowledge sharing environment should be the goal of everyone. Before I end the review I want to share a real experience. I have personally met one DBA who has worked in a single department in a company for so long that when he was put in a different department in his company due to closing that department, he could not adjust and quit the job despite the same people and company around him. Adjusting in the new environment gets much tougher as one person gets more and more experienced. This book precisely addresses the same issue along with their solutions. I just cannot stop comparing the book with my personal journey. I found so many things which are coincidently in the book is written as how we developer and DBA think. I must express special thanks to Thomas for taking time in his personal life and write this book for us. This book is indeed a book for everybody who wants to grow healthy in the tough and competitive environment. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Book Review, SQLAuthority News, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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• KB Articles on My Oracle Support

  - by Anthony Shorten

  My Oracle Support is a valuable resource for product information and how to's. It is not just about bug fixes and service packs. To find articles pertaining to any Oracle Utilities product you logon to My Oracle Support (your DBA shoud have access at least) and use the following path to Navigate to the articles: Knowledge - More Applications - Industry Solutions - Utilities You are then presented with a list of products, just select the one that you are interested in. You are then pressented with a list of articles available (25 per page). You can also search on keywords for articles. Here is a list of ones I find useful (with KB ID in []): Customer Care and Billing V2.2.0 Unix Installation Questions [ID 844645.1] Known Framework (FW) Errors [ID 783823.1] Weblogic 10 MP2 CCB Support Question [ID 1119383.1] CCB v2.2.0 Performance Problem Under Heavy Concurrent User Load [ID 808233.1] - This is a description of a patch for performance What Is The Meaning Of The TRUE And FALSE Setting For REL_CBL_THREAD_MEM Within OUAF For Oracle Utilities CCB, BI & ETM [ID 783444.1] Oracle Utilities Framework Support Utility [ID 1079640.1] How to customize XAI error messages? [ID 1061394.1] Oracle Utilities Application Framework - Patch Installation [ID 974985.1] Action Plan for Creating a Weblogic Custom Authentication Provider [ID 954417.1] How to set up XAI service on multiple servers to provide redundancy? [ID 854215.1] The first one is very useful and answer lots of how to questions for installation.

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• SQLAuthority News – Guest Post – FAULT Contract in WCF with Learning Video

  - by pinaldave

  This is guest post by one of my very good friends and .NET MVP, Dhananjay Kumar. The very first impression one gets when they meet him is his politeness. He is an extremely nice person, but has superlative knowledge in .NET and is truly helpful to all of us. Objective: This article will give a basic introduction on: How to handle Exception at service side? How to use Fault contract at Service side? How to handle Service Exception at client side? A Few Points about Exception at Service Exception is technology-specific. Exception should not be shared beyond service boundary. Since Exception is technology-specific, it cannot be propagated to other clients. Exception is of many types. CLR Exception Windows32 Exception Runtime Exception at service C++ Exception Exception is very much native to the technology in which service is made. Exception must be converted from technology-specific information to natural information that can be communicated to the client. SOAP Fault FaultException<T> Service should throw FaultException<T>, instead of the usual CLR exception. FaultException<T> is a specialization of Fault Exception. Any client that programs against FaultException can handle the Exception thrown by FaultException<T>. The type parameter T conveys the error detail. T can be of any type like Exception, CLR Type or any type that can be serialized. T can be of type Data contract. T is a generic parameter that conveys the error details. You can read complete article http://dhananjaykumar.net/2010/05/23/fault-contract-in-wcf-with-learning-video/ Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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• West Palm Beach .Net User Group Meeting - April 27th 2010 - Ted Neward - MVP & INETA Speaker

  - by Sam Abraham

  Ted Neward, MVP & INETA Speaker spoke to us at the West Palm Beach .Net User Group meeting at CompTec about Microsoft OSLO and DSLs on Tuesday April 27th 2010. Ted kept the audience well engaged throughout his presentation and shared his experience with DSLs in a humorous and fun setting. At the conclusion of the talk, we had our free raffle and concluded the evening with networking while enjoying the pizza and soda brought to us by Sherlock Technology (www.sherstaff.com) This meeting was also Vishal Shukla's last appearance at the West Palm Beach .Net User Group as he will be leaving for India in mid-May. Vishal has worked hard side-by-side with the Fladotnet leadership to run the West Palm Beach Group and will sure be missed by all of us. On behalf of the group, I would like to wish Vishal best of luck on his future endeavors and we are all looking forward to seeing him again soon. Thank you Ted for making such a long trip from Redmond to FL to share with us your expertise and knowledge of DSLs and thank you INETA for making this happen with your support of user groups. You can get in touch with Ted through his website (www.tedneward.com)

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• What's your experience with female programmers?

  - by Rachel

  Let me start by saying I'm female, but every single other female programmer I've known has been pretty terrible. The extent of their knowledge seems to be copy/paste and modify some values. Quite often they don't even try to learn new concepts, or understand what they're doing. I'm not saying good female programmers aren't out there, just that the ratio of good/bad programmers seems much worse then males. Perhaps its because everyone feels they have to give female programmers a chance to prove they are not biased? Or is this just me?? What has your experiences been with them? UPDATE: Just want to say thanks for all the responses. I've learned some interesting things and am happy to know that female programmers have such support :) My experience has been very limited with them but all bad, and I agree that it is probably due to my small sample size (around 5). I wasn't trying to be sexist with such a question, I just wanted to find out if it was really that abnormal to be a female programmer. I'm abnormal about a lot of things you'd expect from a female... I play video games in most of my spare time, I liked Math so much I completed my entire math book during christmas break one year (What can I say, I found the subject interesting), I'm not very social, I dislike shopping, I only have 2 pairs of shoes, my significant other doesn't work but does all the housework/laundry/etc... but anyways, thanks :)

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• How to study for 70-573 Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Application Development

  - by ybbest

  I just passed my 70-573 exam today and would like to Share my experience on learning SharePoint 2010 as a beginner. 1. Book Microsoft SharePoint 2010: Building Solutions for SharePoint 2010 by Sahil Malik http://apress.com/book/view/1430228652 Sahil is an expert and MVP in SharePoint 2010.He certainly know his field and the book is well written. More importantly Sahil has got very good sense of humor in delivering the knowledge. 2.A development machine It is of great importance to have a dev machine , you cannot learn a new technology by just reading a book nor by watching some training videos. You need get your hands dirty with SharePoint a lot. 3.Training videos Since I have one year subscription with learndev , I use them as my learning resources. It is quite cheap , only cost US $99 for a year subscription and you will get not only the SharePoint training but the whole training library .The videos are from Appdev . Appdev training is of high quality. http://www.appdev.com/ http://www.learndevnow.com/ You can also get the videos from Microsoft SharePoint site. They are pretty good too. But bear in mind , by just watching these videos you will not learn much , you need to build a SharePoint 2010 machine and play with it .Try to write the sample code yourself and not just copy and paste. 4. Write blogs about your learning. This will motive you in your long journey with SharePoint learning. 5. Do check out the patterns & practices SharePoint Guidance on codeplex. http://spg.codeplex.com/ 6.Thanks for Becky Bertram,who kindly put up all the exam requirements with links to MSDN http://blog.beckybertram.com/Lists/Exam%2070573%20Study%20Guide/AllItems.aspx

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• Why should you choose Oracle WebLogic 12c instead of JBoss EAP 6?

  - by Ricardo Ferreira

  In this post, I will cover some technical differences between Oracle WebLogic 12c and JBoss EAP 6, which was released a couple days ago from Red Hat. This article claims to help you in the evaluation of key points that you should consider when choosing for an Java EE application server. In the following sections, I will present to you some important aspects that most customers ask us when they are seriously evaluating for an middleware infrastructure, specially if you are considering JBoss for some reason. I would suggest that you keep the following question in mind while you are reading the points: "Why should I choose JBoss instead of WebLogic?" 1) Multi Datacenter Deployment and Clustering - D/R ("Disaster & Recovery") architecture support is embedded on the WebLogic Server 12c product. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no direct D/R support included, Red Hat relies on third-part tools with higher prices. When you consider a middleware solution to host your business critical application, you should worry with every architectural aspect that are related with the solution. Fail-over support is one little aspect of a truly reliable solution. If you do not worry about D/R, your solution will not be reliable. Having said that, with Red Hat and JBoss EAP 6, you have this extra cost that will increase considerably the total cost of ownership of the solution. As we commonly hear from analysts, open-source are not so cheaper when you start seeing the big picture. - WebLogic Server 12c supports advanced LAN clustering, detection of death servers and have a common alert framework. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has limited LAN clustering support with no server death detection. They do not generate any alerts when servers goes down (only if you buy JBoss ON which is a separated technology, but until now does not support JBoss EAP 6) and manual intervention are required when servers goes down. In most cases, admin people must rely on "kill -9", "tail -f someFile.log" and "ps ax | grep java" commands to manage failures and clustering anomalies. - WebLogic Server 12c supports the concept of Node Manager, which is a separated process that runs on the physical | virtual servers that allows extend the administration of the cluster to WebLogic managed servers that are often distributed across multiple machines and geographic locations. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no equivalent technology. Whole server instances must be managed individually. - WebLogic Server 12c Node Manager supports Coherence to boost performance when managing servers. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no similar technology. There is no way to coordinate JBoss and infiniband instances provided by JBoss using high throughput and low latency protocols like InfiniBand. The Node Manager feature also allows another very important feature that JBoss EAP lacks: secure the administration. When using WebLogic Node Manager, all the administration tasks are sent to the managed servers in a secure tunel protected by a certificate, which means that the transport layer that separates the WebLogic administration console from the managed servers are secured by SSL. - WebLogic Server 12c are now integrated with OTD ("Oracle Traffic Director") which is a web server technology derived from the former Sun iPlanet Web Server. This software complements the web server support offered by OHS ("Oracle HTTP Server"). Using OTD, WebLogic instances are load-balanced by a high powerful software that knows how to handle SDP ("Socket Direct Protocol") over InfiniBand, which boost performance when used with engineered systems technologies like Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand only offers support to Apache Web Server with custom modules created to deal with JBoss clusters, but only across standard TCP/IP networks.  2) Application and Runtime Diagnostics - WebLogic Server 12c have diagnostics capabilities embedded on the server called WLDF ("WebLogic Diagnostic Framework") so there is no need to rely on third-part tools. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no diagnostics capabilities. Their only diagnostics tool is the log generated by the application server. Admin people are encouraged to analyse thousands of log lines to find out what is going on. - WebLogic Server 12c complement WLDF with JRockit MC ("Mission Control"), which provides to administrators and developers a complete insight about the JVM performance, behavior and possible bottlenecks. WebLogic Server 12c also have an classloader analysis tool embedded, and even a log analyzer tool that enables administrators and developers to view logs of multiple servers at the same time. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand relies on third-part tools to do something similar. Again, only log searching are offered to find out whats going on. - WebLogic Server 12c offers end-to-end traceability and monitoring available through Oracle EM ("Enterprise Manager"), including monitoring of business transactions that flows through web servers, ESBs, application servers and database servers, all of this with high deep JVM analysis and diagnostics. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand, even using JBoss ON ("Operations Network"), which is a separated technology, does not support those features. Red Hat relies on third-part tools to provide direct Oracle database traceability across JVMs. One of those tools are Oracle EM for non-Oracle middleware that manage JBoss, Tomcat, Websphere and IIS transparently. - WebLogic Server 12c with their JRockit support offers a tool called JRockit Flight Recorder, which can give developers a complete visibility of a certain period of application production monitoring with zero extra overhead. This automatic recording allows you to deep analyse threads latency, memory leaks, thread contention, resource utilization, stack overflow damages and GC ("Garbage Collection") cycles, to observe in real time stop-the-world phenomenons, generational, reference count and parallel collects and mutator threads analysis. JBoss EAP 6 don't even dream to support something similar, even because they don't have their own JVM. 3) Application Server Administration - WebLogic Server 12c offers a complete administration console complemented with scripting and macro-like recording capabilities. A single WebLogic console can managed up to hundreds of WebLogic servers belonging to the same domain. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has a limited console and provides a XML centric administration. JBoss, after ten years, started the development of a rudimentary centralized administration that still leave a lot of administration tasks aside, so admin people and developers must touch scripts and XML configuration files for most advanced and even simple administration tasks. This lead applications to error prone and risky deployments. Even using JBoss ON, JBoss EAP are not able to offer decent administration features for admin people which must be high skilled in JBoss internal architecture and its managing capabilities. - Oracle EM is available to manage multiple domains, databases, application servers, operating systems and virtualization, with a complete end-to-end visibility. JBoss ON does not provide management capabilities across the complete architecture, only basic monitoring. Even deployment must be done aside JBoss ON which does no integrate well with others softwares than JBoss. Until now, JBoss ON does not supports JBoss EAP 6, so even their minimal support for JBoss are not available for JBoss EAP 6 leaving customers uncovered and subject to high skilled JBoss admin people. - WebLogic Server 12c has the same administration model whatever is the topology selected by the customer. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand differentiates between two operational models: standalone-mode and domain-mode, that are not consistent with each other. Depending on the mode used, the administration skill is different. - WebLogic Server 12c has no point-of-failures processes, and it does not need to define any specialized server. Domain model in WebLogic is available for years (at least ten years or more) and is production proven. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand needs special processes to garantee JBoss integrity, the PC ("Process-Controller") and the HC ("Host-Controller"). Different from WebLogic, the domain model in JBoss is quite new (one year at tops) of maturity, and need to mature considerably until start doing things like WebLogic domain model does. - WebLogic Server 12c supports parallel deployment model which enables some artifacts being deployed at the same time. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand does not have any similar feature. Every deployment are done atomically in the containers. This means that if you have a huge EAR (an EAR of 120 MB of size for instance) and deploy onto JBoss EAP 6, this EAR will take some minutes in order to starting accept thread requests. The same EAR deployed onto WebLogic Server 12c will reduce the deployment time at least in 2X compared to JBoss. 4) Support and Upgrades - WebLogic Server 12c has patch management available. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no patch management available, each JBoss EAP instance should be patched manually. To achieve such feature, you need to buy a separated technology called JBoss ON ("Operations Network") that manage this type of stuff. But until now, JBoss ON does not support JBoss EAP 6 so, in practice, JBoss EAP 6 does not have this feature. - WebLogic Server 12c supports previuous WebLogic domains without any reconfiguration since its kernel is robust and mature since its creation in 1995. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has a proven lack of supportability between JBoss AS 4, 5, 6 and 7. Different kernels and messaging engines were implemented in JBoss stack in the last five years reveling their incapacity to create a well architected and proven middleware technology. - WebLogic Server 12c has patch prescription based on customer configuration. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no such capability. People need to create ticket supports and have their installations revised by Red Hat support guys to gain some patch prescription from them. - Oracle WebLogic Server independent of the version has 8 years of support of new patches and has lifetime release of existing patches beyond that. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand provides patches for a specific application server version up to 5 years after the release date. JBoss EAP 4 and previous versions had only 4 years. A good question that Red Hat will argue to answer is: "what happens when you find issues after year 5"?  5) RAC ("Real Application Clusters") Support - WebLogic Server 12c ships with a specific JDBC driver to leverage Oracle RAC clustering capabilities (Fast-Application-Notification, Transaction Affinity, Fast-Connection-Failover, etc). Oracle JDBC thin driver are also available. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand ships only the standard Oracle JDBC thin driver. Load balancing with Oracle RAC are not supported. Manual intervention in case of planned or unplanned RAC downtime are necessary. In JBoss EAP 6, situation does not reestablish automatically after downtime. - WebLogic Server 12c has a feature called Active GridLink for Oracle RAC which provides up to 3X performance on OLTP applications. This seamless integration between WebLogic and Oracle database enable more value added to critical business applications leveraging their investments in Oracle database technology and Oracle middleware. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no performance gains at all, even when admin people implement some kind of connection-pooling tuning. - WebLogic Server 12c also supports transaction and web session affinity to the Oracle RAC, which provides aditional gains of performance. This is particularly interesting if you are creating a reliable solution that are distributed not only in an LAN cluster, but into a different data center. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no such support. 6) Standards and Technology Support - WebLogic Server 12c is fully Java EE 6 compatible and production ready since december of 2011. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand became fully compatible with Java EE 6 only in the community version after three months, and production ready only in a few days considering that this article was written in June of 2012. Red Hat says that they are the masters of innovation and technology proliferation, but compared with Oracle and even other proprietary vendors like IBM, they historically speaking are lazy to deliver the most newest technologies and standards adherence. - Oracle is the steward of Java, driving innovation into the platform from commercial and open-source vendors. Red Hat on the other hand does not have its own JVM and relies on third-part JVMs to complete their application server offer. 95% of Red Hat customers are using Oracle HotSpot as JVM, which means that without Oracle involvement, their support are limited exclusively to the application server layer and we all know that most problems are happens in the JVM layer. - WebLogic Server 12c supports natively JDK 7, which empower developers to explore the maximum of the Java platform productivity when writing code. This feature differentiate WebLogic from others application servers (except GlassFish that are also managed by Oracle) because the usage of JDK 7 introduce such remarkable productivity features like the "try-with-resources" enhancement, catching multiple exceptions with one try block, Strings in the switch statements, JVM improvements in terms of JDBC, I/O, networking, security, concurrency and of course, the most important feature of Java 7: native support for multiple non-Java languages. More features regarding JDK 7 can be found here. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand does not support JDK 7 officially, they comment in their community version that "Java SE 7 can be used with JBoss 7" which does not gives you any guarantees of enterprise support for JDK 7. - Oracle WebLogic Server 12c supports integration with Spring framework allowing Spring applications to use WebLogic special transaction manager, exposing bean interfaces to WebLogic MBeans to take advantage of all WebLogic monitoring and administration advantages. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no special integration with Spring. In fact, Red Hat offers a suspicious package called "JBoss Web Platform" that in theory supports Spring, but in practice this package does not offers any special integration. It is just a facility for Red Hat customers to have support from both JBoss and Spring technology using the same customer support. 7) Lightweight Development - Oracle WebLogic Server 12c and Oracle GlassFish are completely integrated and can share applications without any modifications. Starting with the 12c version, WebLogic now understands natively GlassFish deployment descriptors and specific configurations in order to offer you a truly and reliable migration path from a community Java EE application server to a enterprise middleware product like WebLogic. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no support to natively reuse an existing (or still in development) application from JBoss AS community server. Users of JBoss suffer of critical issues during deployment time that includes: changing the libraries and dependencies of the application, patching the DTD or XSD deployment descriptors, refactoring of the application layers due classloading issues and anomalies, rebuilding of persistence, business and web layers due issues with "usage of the certified version of an certain dependency" or "frameworks that Red Hat potentially does not recommend" etc. If you have the culture or enterprise IT directive of developing Java EE applications using community middleware to in a certain future, transition to enterprise (supported by a vendor) middleware, Oracle WebLogic plus Oracle GlassFish offers you a more sustainable solution. - WebLogic Server 12c has a very light ZIP distribution (less than 165 MB). JBoss EAP 6 ZIP size is around 130 MB, together with JBoss ON you have more 100 MB resulting in a higher download footprint. This is particularly interesting if you plan to use automated setup of application server instances (for example, to rapidly setup a development or staging environment) using Maven or Hudson. - WebLogic Server 12c has a complete integration with Maven allowing developers to setup WebLogic domains with few commands. Tasks like downloading WebLogic, installation, domain creation, data sources deployment are completely integrated. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has a limited offer integration with those tools.  - WebLogic Server 12c has a startup mode called WLX that turns-off EJB, JMS and JCA containers leaving enabled only the web container with Java EE 6 web profile. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no such feature, you need to disable manually the containers that you do not want to use. - WebLogic Server 12c supports fastswap, which enables you to change classes without redeployment. This is particularly interesting if you are developing patches for the application that is already deployed and you do not want to redeploy the entire application. This is the same behavior that most application servers offers to JSP pages, but with WebLogic Server 12c, you have the same feature for Java classes in general. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no such support. Even JBoss EAP 5 does not support this until now. 8) JMS and Messaging - WebLogic Server 12c has a proven and high scalable JMS implementation since its initial release in 1995. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has a still immature technology called HornetQ, which was introduced in JBoss EAP 5 replacing everything that was implemented in the previous versions. Red Hat loves to introduce new technologies across JBoss versions, playing around with customers and their investments. And when they are asked about why they have changed the implementation and caused such a mess, their answer is always: "the previous implementation was inadequate and not aligned with the community strategy so we are creating a new a improved one". This Red Hat practice leads to uncomfortable investments that in a near future (sometimes less than a year) will be affected in someway. - WebLogic Server 12c has troubleshooting and monitoring features included on the WebLogic console and WLDF. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no direct monitoring on the console, activity is reflected only on the logs, no debug logs available in case of JMS issues. - WebLogic Server 12c has extremely good performance and scalability. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has a JMS storage mechanism relying on Oracle database or MySQL. This means that if an issue in production happens and Red Hat affirms that an performance issue is happening due to database problems, they will not support you on the performance issue. They will orient you to call Oracle instead. - WebLogic Server 12c supports messaging enterprise features like SAF ("Store and Forward"), Distributed Queues/Topics and Foreign JMS providers support that leverage JMS implementations without compromise developer code making things completely transparent. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand do not even dream to support such features. 9) Caching and Grid - Coherence, which is the leading and most mature data grid technology from Oracle, is available since early 2000 and was integrated with WebLogic in 2009. Coherence and WebLogic clusters can be both managed from WebLogic administrative console. Even Node Manager supports Coherence. JBoss on the other hand discontinued JBoss Cache, which was their caching implementation just like they did with the messaging implementation (JBossMQ) which was a issue for long term customers. JBoss EAP 6 ships InfiniSpan version 1.0 which is immature and lack a proven record of successful cases and reliability. - WebLogic Server 12c has a feature called ActiveCache which uses Coherence to, without any code changes, replicate HTTP sessions from both WebLogic and other application servers like JBoss, Tomcat, Websphere, GlassFish and even Microsoft IIS. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand does have such support and even when they do in the future, they probably will support only their own application server. - Coherence can be used to manage both L1 and L2 cache levels, providing support to Oracle TopLink and others JPA compliant implementations, even Hibernate. JBoss EAP 6 and Infinispan on the other hand supports only Hibernate. And most important of all: Infinispan does not have any successful case of L1 or L2 caching level support using Hibernate, which lead us to reflect about its viability. 10) Performance - WebLogic Server 12c is certified with Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud and can run unchanged applications at this engineered system. This approach can benefit customers from Exalogic optimization's of both kernel and JVM layers to boost performance in terms of 10X for web, OLTP, JMS and grid applications. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no investment on engineered systems: customers do not have the choice to deploy on a Java ultra fast system if their project becomes relevant and performance issues are detected. - WebLogic Server 12c maintains a performance gain across each new release: starting on WebLogic 5.1, the overall performance gain has been close to 4X, which close to a 20% gain release by release. JBoss on the other hand does not provide SPECJAppServer or SPECJEnterprise performance benchmarks. Their so called "performance gains" remains hidden in their customer environments, which lead us to think if it is true or not since we will never get access to those environments. - WebLogic Server 12c has industry performance benchmarks with submissions across platforms and configurations leading SPECJ. Oracle WebLogic leads SPECJAppServer performance in multiple categories, fitting all customer topologies like: dual-node, single-node, multi-node and multi-node with RAC. JBoss... again, does not provide any SPECJAppServer performance benchmarks. - WebLogic Server 12c has a feature called work manager which allows your application to embrace new performance levels based on critical resource utilization of the CPUs usage. Work managers prioritizes work and allocates threads based on an execution model that takes into account administrator-defined parameters and actual run-time performance and throughput. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no compared feature and probably they never will. Not supporting such feature like work managers, JBoss EAP 6 forces admin people and specially developers to uncover performance gains in a intrusive way, rewriting the code and doing performance refactorings. 11) Professional Services Support - WebLogic Server 12c and any other technology sold by Oracle give customers the possibility of hire OCS ("Oracle Consulting Services") to manage critical scenarios, deployment assistance of new applications, high skilled consultancy of architecture, best practices and people allocation together with customer teams. All OCS services are available without any restrictions, having the customer bought software from Oracle or just starting their implementation before any acquisition. JBoss EAP 6 or Red Hat to be more specifically, only offers professional services if you buy subscriptions from them. If you are developing a new critical application for your business and need the help of Red Hat for a serious issue or architecture decision, they will probably say: "OK... I can help you but after you buy subscriptions from me". Red Hat also does not allows their professional services consultants to manage environments that uses community based software. They will probably force you to first buy a subscription, download their "enterprise" version and them, optionally hire their consultants. - Oracle provides you our university to educate your team into our technologies, including of course specialized trainings of WebLogic application server. At any time and location, you can hire Oracle to train your team so you get trustful knowledge according to your specific needs. Certifications for the products are also available if your technical people desire to differentiate themselves as professionals. Red Hat on the other hand have a limited pool of resources to train your team in their technologies. Basically they are selling training and certification for RHEL ("Red Hat Enterprise Linux") but if you demand more specialized training in JBoss middleware, they will probably connect you to some "certified" partner localized training since they are apparently discontinuing their education center, at least here in Brazil. They were not able to reproduce their success with RHEL education to their middleware division since they need first sell the subscriptions to after gives you specialized training. And again, they only offer you specialized training based on their enterprise version (EAP in the case of JBoss) which means that the courses will be a quite outdated. There are reports of developers that took official training's from Red Hat at this year (2012) and in a certain JBoss advanced course, Red Hat supposedly covered JBossMQ as the messaging subsystem, and even the printed material provided was based on JBossMQ since the training was created for JBoss EAP 4.3. 12) Encouraging Transparency without Ulterior Motives - WebLogic Server 12c like any other software from Oracle can be downloaded any time from anywhere, you should only possess an OTN ("Oracle Technology Network") credential and you can download any enterprise software how many times you want. And is not some kind of "trial" version. It is the official binaries that will be running for ever in your data center. Oracle does not encourages the usage of "specific versions" of our software. The binaries you buy from Oracle are the same binaries anyone in the world could download and use for testing and personal education. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand are not available for download unless you buy a subscription and get access to the Red Hat enterprise repositories. If you need to test, learn or just start creating your application using Red Hat's middleware software, you should download it from the community website. You are not allowed to download the enterprise version that, according to Red Hat are more secure, reliable and robust. But no one of us want to start the development of a software with an unsecured, unreliable and not scalable middleware right? So what you do? You are "invited" by Red Hat to buy subscriptions from them to get access to the "cool" version of the software. - WebLogic Server 12c prices are publicly available in the Oracle website. If you want to know right now how much WebLogic will cost to your organization, just click here and get access to our price list. In the case of WebLogic, check out the "US Oracle Technology Commercial Price List". Oracle also encourages you to get in touch with a sales representative to discuss discounts that would make possible the investment into our technology. But you are not required to do this, only if you are interested in buying our technology or maybe you want to discuss some discount scenarios. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand does not have its cost publicly available in Red Hat's website or in any other media, at least is not so easy to get such information. The only link you will possibly find in their website is a "Contact a Sales Representative" link. This is not a very good relationship between an customer and an vendor. This is not an example of transparency, mainly when the software are sold as open. In this situations, customers expects to see the software prices publicly available, so they can have the chance to decide, based on the existing features of the software, if the cost is fair or not. Conclusion Oracle WebLogic is the most mature, secure, reliable and scalable Java EE application server of the market, and have a proven record of success around the globe to prove it's majority. Don't lose the chance to discover today how WebLogic could fit your needs and sustain your global IT middleware strategy, no matter if your strategy are completely based on the Cloud or not.

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• puppet rspec no such file to load -- rspec-puppet (LoadError)

  - by Vorsprung

  I have no prior experience at all of ruby. I am not interested in ruby (and so have no knowledge of rails etc) as such but am using puppet to manage a group of servers. I have written some modules and the rspec-puppet system looks like it would be very useful. However, I cannot get rspec-puppet to work I am using Ubuntu LTS 10.04 I have installed puppet rspec using the directions on their web page What I actually did apt-get install rubygems # (installs 1.8) gem install rspec-expectations gem install rspec-puppet I also installed librspec-ruby1.8 Then I ran rspec-puppet-init in a puppet module directory I'd already made (it's a working puppet module) I made a file as defined in the tutorial $ more spec/defines/rule_spec.rb require 'spec_helper' describe 'vanusers::rule' do let(:title) { 't1' } it { should contain_class('vanusers::JamieA') } end but when I try and run it there is a mysterious dependancy issue $ spec spec/defines/rule_spec.rb /home/jamie/git/puppet/modules/vanusers/spec/spec_helper.rb:1:in `require': no such file to load -- rspec-puppet (LoadError) from /home/jamie/git/puppet/modules/vanusers/spec/spec_helper.rb:1 from ./spec/defines/rule_spec.rb:1:in `require' from ./spec/defines/rule_spec.rb:1 from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/spec/runner/example_group_runner.rb:15:in `load' from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/spec/runner/example_group_runner.rb:15:in `load_files' from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/spec/runner/example_group_runner.rb:14:in `each' from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/spec/runner/example_group_runner.rb:14:in `load_files' from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/spec/runner/options.rb:132:in `run_examples' from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/spec/runner/command_line.rb:9:in `run' from /usr/bin/spec:3 Here is the solution I came up with in the end:: apt-get install rubygems gem install rspec-expectations rspec-puppet puppet-lint puppetlabs_spec_helper so your path picks up the gem stuff export PATH=/var/lib/gems/1.8/bin:$PATH cd into module and rm spec/spec_helper.rb rspec-puppet-init replace Rakefile with require 'rake' require 'rspec/core/rake_task' require 'puppetlabs_spec_helper/rake_tasks' Then "rake spec" to run tests or "rake lint" to check files http://sysadvent.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/day-22-getting-started-testing-your.html was an excellent source of info

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• Is Learning C++ Through The Qt Framework Really Learning C++

  - by user866190

  The problem I have, is that most of the C++ books I read spend almost forever on syntax and the basics of the language, e.g. for and loops while, arrays, lists, pointers, etc. But they never seem to build anything that is simple enough to use for learning, yet practical enough to get you to understand the philosophy and power of the language. Then I stumbled upon QT which is an amazing library! But working through the demos they have, it seems like I am now in the reverse dilemma. I feel like the rich man's son driving round in a sports car subsidized by the father. Like I could build fantastic software, but have no clue what's going on under the hood. As an example of my dilemma take the task of building a simple web browser. In pure C++, I wouldn't even know where to start, yet with the Qt library it can be done within a few lines on code. I am not complaining about this. I am just wondering how to fill the knowledge void between the basic structure of the language and the high level interface that the Qt framework provides?

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• We Don’t Need No Regions

  - by João Angelo

  If your code reaches a level where you want to hide it behind regions then you have a problem that regions won’t solve. Regions are good to hide things that you don’t want to have knowledge about such as auto-generated code. Normally, when you’re developing you end up reading more code than you write it so why would you want to complicate the reading process. I, for one, would love to have that one discussion around regions where someone convinces me that they solve a problem that has no other alternative solution, but I’m still waiting. The most frequent argument I hear about regions is that they allow you to structure your code, but why don’t just structure it using classes, methods and all that other stuff that OOP is about because at the end of the day, you should be doing object oriented programming and not region oriented programming. Having said that, I do believe that sometimes is helpful to have a quick overview of a code file contents and Visual Studio allows you to do just that through the Collapse to Definitions command (CTRL + M, CTRL + O) which collapses the members of all types; if you like regions, you should try this, it is much more useful to read all the members of a type than all the regions inside a type.

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• Advise on how to move from a .net developer role to a web developer role

  - by dermd

  I've been working primarily as a .net developer for the past 4 years for a financial services company. I've worked on .net 1.1, 2.0, 3.5 and have done the 3.5 enterprise app developer cert (not that that's worth a whole lot!). Before that I worked as a java developer with a bit of Flex thrown in for just over a year. My educational background is an Electronic and computer engineering degree, a higher diploma in systems analysis as well as one in web development (this was mainly java - JSP, Spring, etc) and a science masters in software design and development. I really feel like a change and would like to move to a different field to experience something different. I've done some courses in RoR and played around with it a bit in my spare time. Similarly I've done various web and mobile courses and done up some mobile webapps along with android and ios equivalents (haven't tried pushing them up to the app stores yet but may be worth tidying them up and doing that). I currently work long enough hours so find it hard to find time to work on too many side projects to get a decent portfolio together. But when I do work on the web stuff I do find it really enjoyable so think it's something I'd like to do full time. However, since my experience is pretty much all .net and financial services I find it very hard to get my foot in the door anywhere or get past a phone screen unless their specifically looking for someone with .net knowledge. What is the best way to move into a web development role without starting from scratch again. I do think a lot of the skills I have translate over but I seem to just get paired with .net jobs whenever I look around? Apart from js, jquery, html5, objective C are there any other technologies I should be looking into?

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• Help A Hacker: Give ‘Em The Windows Source Code

  - by Ken Cox [MVP]

  The announcement of another Windows megapatch reminded me of a WikiLeaks story about Microsoft Windows that hasn’t attracted much attention. Alarmingly, we learn that the hackers have the Windows source code to study and test for vulnerabilities. Chinese hackers used the knowledge to breach Google’s accounts and servers: “In 2003, the CNITSEC signed a Government Security Program (GSP) international agreement with Microsoft that allowed select companies such as TOPSEC access to Microsoft source code in order to secure the Windows platform” “CNITSEC enterprises has recruited Chinese hackers in support of nationally-funded "network attack scientific research projects." From June 2002 to March 2003, TOPSEC employed a known Chinese hacker, Lin Yong (a.k.a. Lion and owner of the Honker Union of China), as senior security service engineer…” Windows is widely seen as unsecurable. It doesn’t help that Chinese government-funded hackers are probing the source code for vulnerabilities. It seems odd that people who didn’t write the code can find vulnerabilities faster than the owners of the code. Perhaps the U.S. government should hire its own hackers to go over the same Windows source code and then tell Microsoft how to secure its product?

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• Oracle's Primavera P6 Analytics Now Available!

  - by mark.kromer

  Oracle's Primavera product team has announced this week that general availability of our first Oracle BI (OBI) based analytical product with pre-built business intelligence dashboards, reports and KPIs built in. P6 Analytics uses OBI's drill-down capabilities, summarizations, hierarchies and other BI features to provide knowledge to your business users to make the best decisions on portfolios, projects, schedules & resources with deep insights. Without needing to launch into the P6 tool, your executives, PMO, project sponsors, etc. can view up to date project performance information as well as historic trends of project performance. Using web-based portal technology, P6 Analytics makes it easy to manage by exception and then drill down to quickly identify root cause analysis of problem projects. At the same time, a brand new version of the P6 Reporting Database R2 was just announded and is also now available. This updated reporting database provides you with 4 star schemas with spread data and includes P6 activity, project and resource codes. You can use the data warehouse and ETL functions of the P6 Reporting Database R2 with your own reporting tools or build dashboards that utilize the hierarchies & drill down to the day-level on scheduled activities using Busines Objects, Cognos, Microsoft, etc. Both of these products can be downloaded from E-Delivery under the Primavera applications section in the P6 EPPM v7.0 media pack. I put some examples below of the resource utilization, earned value, landing page and portfolio analysis dashboards that come out of the box with P6 Analytics to give you these deep insights into your projects & portfolios on day 1 of using the tool. Please send an email to Karl or me if you have any questions or would like more information. Oracle Technology Network and the Oracle.com marketing sites are currently being refreshed with further details of these exciting new releases of the Primavera BI and data warehouse products. Lastly, scroll below for some screenshots of the new P6 Analytics R1 product using OBIEE! Thanks, Mark Kromer

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• What&rsquo;s wrong with See[Mike]Code? (no relation)

  - by mbcrump

  I have been hearing a lot about the website See[Mike]Code. Basically, the site creates an interview url and a job candidate url and lets you see the potential programmer’s code (specifically .NET developer). Below is the candidate’s URL   Below is the interviewer url   So you might think, ah, this is a good thing. We can screen candidates cheaper and more efficiently. In reality, this is only a good thing if you want your programmer to develop using notepad.  I use the most efficient tools that exist to do my job. I would simply fire up VS2010 and type “for” and hit the tab key twice and get the following template.   I have no problem keeping MSDN/Google in one of my monitors. I spend time learning VS macros and using Aurora XAML/Expression to produce my XAML for WPF. Sure, I can write a for loop without using the VS Macro, but the real question is, “Why should I?”. My point being, if you really want to test a .NET programmer knowledge then fire up his native working environment and let him use the features of the IDE to develop the simple 10-line program. For a more sophisticated program, then give him 20 minutes and allow access to msdn/google. If the programmer cannot find at the right path then give him the boot.

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• Why is C++ backward compatibility important / necessary?

  - by Giorgio

  As far as understand it is a well-established opinion within the C++ community that C is an obsolete language that was useful 20 years ago but cannot support many modern good programming practices, or even encourages bad practices; certain features that were typical of C++ (C with classes) during the nineties are also obsolete and considered bad practice in modern C++ (e.g., new and delete should be replaced by smart pointer primitives). In view of this, I often wonder why backward compatibility with C and obsolete C++ features is still considered important: to my knowledge there is no 100% compatibility, but most of C and C++ are contained in C++11 as a subset. Of course, there is a lot of legacy code and libraries (possibly containing templates) that are written using a previous standard of the language and which still need to be maintained or used in connection with new code. Nevertheless, maybe it would still be possible to drop obsolete C and C++ features (e.g. the mentioned new / delete) from a future C++ standard so that it is impossible to use them in new code. In this way, old and dangerous programming practices would be quickly banned from new code, and modern, better programming practices would be enforced by the compiler. Legacy code could still be maintained using separate compilation (having C alongside C++ source files is already a common practice). Developers would have to choose between one compiler supporting the old-style C++ that was common during the nineties and a compiler supporting the modern C++? style (the question mark indicates a future, hypothetical revision). Only mixing the two styles would be forbidden. Would this be a viable strategy for encouraging the adoption of modern C++ practices? Are there conceptual reasons or technical problems (e.g. compiling existing templates) that make such a change undesirable or even impossible? Has such a development been proposed in the C++ community. If there has been some extended discussion on the topic, is there any material on-line?

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• When runs a product out of support?

  That is a question I get regularly from customers. Microsoft has a great site where you can find that information. Unfortunately this site is not easy to find, and a lot of people are not aware of this site. A good reason to promote it a little. So if you ever get a question on this topic, go to http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/search/Default.aspx. At that site, you can find also the details of the policy Microsoft Support Lifecycle Policy The Microsoft Support Lifecycle policy took effect in October 2002, and applies to most products currently available through retail purchase or volume licensing and most future release products. Through the policy, Microsoft will offer a minimum of: 10 years of support (5 years Mainstream Support and 5 years Extended Support) at the supported service pack level for Business and Developer products 5 years Mainstream Support at the supported service pack level for Consumer/Hardware/Multimedia products 3 years of Mainstream Support for products that are annually released (for example, Money, Encarta, Picture It!, and Streets & Trips) Phases of the Support Lifecycle Mainstream Support Mainstream Support is the first phase of the product support lifecycle. At the supported service pack level, Mainstream Support includes: Incident support (no-charge incident support, paid incident support, support charged on an hourly basis, support for warranty claims) Security update support The ability to request non-security hotfixes Please note: Enrollment in a maintenance program may be required to receive these benefits for certain products Extended Support The Extended Support phase follows Mainstream Support for Business and Developer products. At the supported service pack level, Extended Support includes: Paid support Security update support at no additional cost Non-security related hotfix support requires a separate Extended Hotfix Support Agreement to be purchased (per-fix fees also apply) Please note: Microsoft will not accept requests for warranty support, design changes, or new features during the Extended Support phase Extended Support is not available for Consumer, Hardware, or Multimedia products Enrollment in a maintenance program may be required to receive these benefits for certain products Self-Help Online Support Self-Help Online Support is available throughout a product's lifecycle and for a minimum of 12 months after the product reaches the end of its support. Microsoft online Knowledge Base articles, FAQs, troubleshooting tools, and other resources, are provided to help customers resolve common issues. Please note: Enrollment in a maintenance program may be required to receive these benefits for certain products (source: http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/#tab1)

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• How can I learn to effectively write Pythonic code?

  - by Matt Fenwick

  I'm tired of getting downvoted and/or semi-rude comments on my Python answers, saying things like "this isn't Pythonic" or "that's not the Python way of doing things". To clarify, I'm not tired of getting corrected and downvoted, and I'm not tired of being wrong: I'm tired of feeling like there's a whole field of Python that I know nothing about, and seems to be implicit knowledge of experienced Python programmers. Doing a google search for "Pythonic" reveals a wide range of interpretations. The wikipedia page says: A common neologism in the Python community is pythonic, which can have a wide range of meanings related to program style. To say that code is pythonic is to say that it uses Python idioms well, that it is natural or shows fluency in the language. Likewise, to say of an interface or language feature that it is pythonic is to say that it works well with Python idioms, that its use meshes well with the rest of the language. It also discusses the term "unpythonic": In contrast, a mark of unpythonic code is that it attempts to write C++ (or Lisp, Perl, or Java) code in Python—that is, provides a rough transcription rather than an idiomatic translation of forms from another language. The concept of pythonicity is tightly bound to Python's minimalist philosophy of readability and avoiding the "there's more than one way to do it" approach. Unreadable code or incomprehensible idioms are unpythonic. I suspect one way to learn the Pythonic way is just to program in Python a whole bunch. But I bet I could write a bunch of crap and not improve that much without some guidance, whereas a good resource might speed up the learning process significantly. PEP 8 might be exactly what I'm looking for, or maybe not. I'm not sure; on the one hand it covers a lot of ground, but on the other hand, I feel like it's more suited as a reference for knowledgeable programmers than a tutorial for fresh 'uns. How do I get my foot in the Pythonic/Python way of doing things door?

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• Getting Started with ASP.NET MVC 3 and Razor

  - by dwahlin

  I had a chance to give a talk on ASP.NET MVC 3, Razor and jQuery today at a company and wanted to post the slides and demos from the talk. The focus was on getting started with ASP.NET MVC 3 projects and .cshtml files including creating pages using the new Razor syntax (which I personally love….never going back to the Web Forms View Engine) as well as working with jQuery. Topics covered in the demos (download below) include: Binding form data to custom object properties Validating a model using data annotations and IValidatableObject Integrating jQuery into MVC sites (using the DataTables plugin) Using the new WebGrid class to generate tables with sorting and paging functionality Integrating Silverlight applications into MVC sites Exposing JSON data from a controller action and consuming it in Silverlight Using the Ajax helper to add AJAX functionality (without jQuery)     The code and slides from the talk can be downloaded here.     If you or your company is interested in training, consulting or mentoring on jQuery or .NET technologies please visit http://www.thewahlingroup.com for more information. We’ve provided training, consulting and mentoring services to some of the largest companies in the world and would enjoy sharing our knowledge and real-world lessons learned with you.

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• Information regarding Collection 6233 - Implementing and Maintaining Business Intelligence in Micros

  - by Testas

  At the London SQL Server User Group I was asked a number of questions regarding the release of Collection 6233 - Implementing and Maintaining Business Intelligence in Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008: Integration Services, Reporting Services and Analysis Services, which has been authored by myself. Particularly regarding the SSIS component of the collection. Elearning is an interactive training experience that enables you to learn at your own pace. With a variety of learning tools including demonstrations, animations as well as written materials and the addition of labs that enables you to reinforce your learning. Microsoft Elearning can provide a valuable learning tool when you may not have the time to take out of the office to attend a courseThis 24-hour collection provides you with the skills and knowledge required to implement and maintain business intelligence solutions on SQL Server 2008 and also helps students to prepare for Exam 70-448 and you can buy each part individually see: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/elearning/course/6233.mspx   However, you will create a simple data warehouse in this collection and use SSIS to create packages to populate the data warehouse with data, exploring key concepts and tools to faciliatate this. This was a decision thart I took when writing this course based on feedback from hundreds of students who attended Microsoft Official Courses on SSIS. They wanted a course that allowed them to use SSIS to work with a data warehouse. This collection will certainly enable you to explore the options available in SSIS to meet this requirement while at the same time meeting the certification requirements I hope this answers the questions regarding this collection and hope you enjoy this collection   Chris  

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• Keep Oracle VM 3 Up to Date

  - by Honglin Su

  More and more customers turn to Oracle VM 3 to virtualize their enterprise applications. Oracle VM support subscription is an integrated part of their successes. Customers enjoy the benefit of the industry-leading global support 24x7 for their server virtualization implementation, and receive access to patches, fixes, and updates via Unbreakable Linux Network (ULN). For customers running Oracle systems, Oracle VM support is included in Oracle Premium Support for Systems at no extra cost, and customers receive comprehensive systems coverage that includes single point accountability for Oracle server and storage hardware; integrated software (for example, firmware); and operating system software (Oracle Solaris, Oracle Linux, and Oracle VM). To run a successful virtualization infrastructure, it's important to keep Oracle VM 3 environment up to date by leveraging Oracle VM support resources.  Oracle VM Server Updates: You can easily upgrade Oracle VM Server using a Yum repository. You can download the latest server patch updates from ULN. To receive notification on the software update delivered to Oracle ULN for Oracle VM, you can sign up here. For information on setting up an Oracle VM Server Yum repository and using Oracle VM Manager to perform the upgrade of Oracle VM Servers, see Updating and Upgrading Oracle VM Servers in the Oracle VM User's Guide .  Oracle VM Manager Updates: Get the download instructions at OTN, and apply latest Oracle VM Manager patch. Be sure to review the patch README before you apply the patches. Support customers have access to extremely valuable knowledge notes from My Oracle Support. They are the first to receive useful tips to help address issues in Oracle VM deployments. For example, Upgrade to Oracle VM 3.1.1 using Yum Repository may cause network configuration scripts to be renamed causing network failure after reboot (Doc ID 1464126.1) Oracle VM server reboots after network becomes unresponsive due to deep C-State power management setting (Doc ID 1440197.1) For more information about Oracle's virtualization, visit oracle.com/virtualization.

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