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• SQLAuthority News – A Successful Community TechDays at Ahmedabad – December 11, 2010

  - by pinaldave

  We recently had one of the best community events in Ahmedabad. We were fortunate that we had SQL Experts from around the world to have presented at this event. This gathering was very special because besides Jacob Sebastian and myself, we had two other speakers traveling all the way from Florida (Rushabh Mehta) and Bangalore (Vinod Kumar).There were a total of nearly 170 attendees and the event was blast. Here are the details of the event. Pinal Dave Presenting at Community Tech Days On the day of the event, it seemed to be the coldest day in Ahmedabad but I was glad to see hundreds of people waiting for the doors to be opened some hours before. We started the day with hot coffee and cookies. Yes, food first; and it was right after my keynote. I could clearly see that the coffee did some magic right away; the hall was almost full after the coffee break. Jacob Sebastian Presenting at Community Tech Days Jacob Sebastian, an SQL Server MVP and a close friend of mine, had an unusual job of surprising everybody with an innovative topic accompanied with lots of question-and-answer portions. That’s definitely one thing to love Jacob, that is, the novelty of the subject. His presentation was entitled “Best Database Practices for the .Net”; it really created magic on the crowd. Pinal Dave Presenting at Community Tech Days Next to Jacob Sebastian, I presented “Best Database Practices for the SharePoint”. It was really fun to present Database with the perspective of the database itself. The main highlight of my presentation was when I talked about how one can speed up the database performance by 40% for SharePoint in just 40 seconds. It was fun because the most important thing was to convince people to use the recommendation as soon as they walk out of the session. It was really amusing and the response of the participants was remarkable. Pinal Dave Presenting at Community Tech Days My session was followed by the most-awaited session of the day: that of Rushabh Mehta. He is an international BI expert who traveled all the way from Florida to present “Self Service BI” session. This session was funny and truly interesting. In fact, no one knew BI could be this much entertaining and fascinating. Rushabh has an appealing style of presenting the session; he instantly got very much interaction from the audience. Rushabh Mehta Presenting at Community Tech Days We had a networking lunch break in-between, when we talked about many various topics. It is always interesting to get in touch with the Community and feel a part of it. I had a wonderful time during the break. Vinod Kumar Presenting at Community Tech Days After lunch was apparently the most difficult session for the presenter as during this time, many people started to fall sleep and get dizzy. This spot was requested by Microsoft SQL Server Evangelist Vinod Kumar himself. During our discussion he suggested that if he gets this slot he would make sure people are up and more interactive than during the morning session. Just like always, this session was one of the best sessions ever. Vinod is true to his word as he presented the subject of “Time Management for Developer”. This session was the biggest hit in the event because the subject was instilled in the mind of every participant. Vinod Kumar Presenting at Community Tech Days Vinod’s session was followed by his own small session. Due to “insistent public demand”, he presented an interesting subject, “Tricks and Tips of SQL Server“. In 20 minutes he has done another awesome job and all attendees wanted more of the tricks. Just as usual he promised to do that next time for us. Vinod’s session was succeeded by Prabhjot Singh Bakshi’s session. He presented an appealing Silverlight concept. Just the same, he did a great job and people cheered him. Prabhjot Presenting at Community Tech Days We had a special invited speaker, Dhananjay Kumar, traveling all the way from Pune. He always supports our cause to help the Community in empowering participants. He presented the topic about Win7 Mobile and SharePoint integration. This was something many did not even expect to be possible. Kudos to Dhananjay for doing a great job. Dhananjay Kumar Presenting at Community Tech Days All in all, this event was one of the best in the Community Tech Days series in Ahmedabad. We were fortunate that legends from the all over the world were present here to present to the Community. I’d say never underestimate the power of the Community and its influence over the direction of the technology. Vinod Kumar Presenting trophy to Pinal Dave Vinod Kumar Presenting trophy to Pinal Dave This event was a very special gathering to me personally because of your support to the vibrant Community. The following awards were won for last year’s performance: Ahmedabad SQL Server User Group (President: Jacob Sebastian; Leader: Pinal Dave) – Best Tier 2 User Group Best Development Community Individual Contributor – Pinal Dave Speakers I was very glad to receive the award for our entire Community. Attendees at Community Tech Days I want to say thanks to Rushabh Mehta, Vinod Kumar and Dhananjay Kumar for visiting the city and presenting various technology topics in Community Tech Days. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: MVP, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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• SQL SERVER – Database Dynamic Caching by Automatic SQL Server Performance Acceleration

  - by pinaldave

  My second look at SafePeak’s new version (2.1) revealed to me few additional interesting features. For those of you who hadn’t read my previous reviews SafePeak and not familiar with it, here is a quick brief: SafePeak is in business of accelerating performance of SQL Server applications, as well as their scalability, without making code changes to the applications or to the databases. SafePeak performs database dynamic caching, by caching in memory result sets of queries and stored procedures while keeping all those cache correct and up to date. Cached queries are retrieved from the SafePeak RAM in microsecond speed and not send to the SQL Server. The application gets much faster results (100-500 micro seconds), the load on the SQL Server is reduced (less CPU and IO) and the application or the infrastructure gets better scalability. SafePeak solution is hosted either within your cloud servers, hosted servers or your enterprise servers, as part of the application architecture. Connection of the application is done via change of connection strings or adding reroute line in the c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file on all application servers. For those who would like to learn more on SafePeak architecture and how it works, I suggest to read this vendor’s webpage: SafePeak Architecture. More interesting new features in SafePeak 2.1 In my previous review of SafePeak new I covered the first 4 things I noticed in the new SafePeak (check out my article “SQLAuthority News – SafePeak Releases a Major Update: SafePeak version 2.1 for SQL Server Performance Acceleration”): Cache setup and fine-tuning – a critical part for getting good caching results Database templates Choosing which database to cache Monitoring and analysis options by SafePeak Since then I had a chance to play with SafePeak some more and here is what I found. 5. Analysis of SQL Performance (present and history): In SafePeak v.2.1 the tools for understanding of performance became more comprehensive. Every 15 minutes SafePeak creates and updates various performance statistics. Each query (or a procedure execute) that arrives to SafePeak gets a SQL pattern, and after it is used again there are statistics for such pattern. An important part of this product is that it understands the dependencies of every pattern (list of tables, views, user defined functions and procs). From this understanding SafePeak creates important analysis information on performance of every object: response time from the database, response time from SafePeak cache, average response time, percent of traffic and break down of behavior. One of the interesting things this behavior column shows is how often the object is actually pdated. The break down analysis allows knowing the above information for: queries and procedures, tables, views, databases and even instances level. The data is show now on all arriving queries, both read queries (that can be cached), but also any types of updates like DMLs, DDLs, DCLs, and even session settings queries. The stats are being updated every 15 minutes and SafePeak dashboard allows going back in time and investigating what happened within any time frame. 6. Logon trigger, for making sure nothing corrupts SafePeak cache data If you have an application with many parts, many servers many possible locations that can actually update the database, or the SQL Server is accessible to many DBAs or software engineers, each can access some database directly and do some changes without going thru SafePeak – this can create a potential corruption of the data stored in SafePeak cache. To make sure SafePeak cache is correct it needs to get all updates to arrive to SafePeak, and if a DBA will access the database directly and do some changes, for example, then SafePeak will simply not know about it and will not clean SafePeak cache. In the new version, SafePeak brought a new feature called “Logon Trigger” to solve the above challenge. By special click of a button SafePeak can deploy a special server logon trigger (with a CLR object) on your SQL Server that actually monitors all connections and informs SafePeak on any connection that is coming not from SafePeak. In SafePeak dashboard there is an interface that allows to control which logins can be ignored based on login names and IPs, while the rest will invoke cache cleanup of SafePeak and actually locks SafePeak cache until this connection will not be closed. Important to note, that this does not interrupt any logins, only informs SafePeak on such connection. On the Dashboard screen in SafePeak you will be able to see those connections and then decide what to do with them. Configuration of this feature in SafePeak dashboard can be done here: Settings -> SQL instances management -> click on instance -> Logon Trigger tab. Other features: 7. User management ability to grant permissions to someone without changing its configuration and only use SafePeak as performance analysis tool. 8. Better reports for analysis of performance using 15 minute resolution charts. 9. Caching of client cursors 10. Support for IPv6 Summary SafePeak is a great SQL Server performance acceleration solution for users who want immediate results for sites with performance, scalability and peak spikes challenges. Especially if your apps are packaged or 3rd party, since no code changes are done. SafePeak can significantly increase response times, by reducing network roundtrip to the database, decreasing CPU resource usage, eliminating I/O and storage access. SafePeak team provides a free fully functional trial www.safepeak.com/download and actually provides a one-on-one assistance during such trial. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: About Me, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Utility, T SQL, Technology

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• WPF Databinding- Not your fathers databinding Part 1-3

  - by Shervin Shakibi

  As Promised here is my advanced databinding presentation from South Florida Code camp and also Orlando Code camp. you can find the demo files here. http://ssccinc.com/wpfdatabinding.zip Here is a quick description of the first demos, there will be 2 other Blogposting in the next few days getting into more advance databinding topics.   Example00 Here we have 3 textboxes, The first textbox mySourceElement Second textbox has a binding to mySourceElement and Path= Text <Binding ElementName="mySourceElement" Path="Text"  />   Third textbox is also bound to the Text property but we use inline Binding <TextBlock Text="{Binding ElementName=mySourceElement,Path=Text }" Grid.Row="2" /> Here is the entire XAML     <Grid  >           <Grid.RowDefinitions >             <RowDefinition Height="*" />             <RowDefinition Height="*" />             <RowDefinition Height="*" />         </Grid.RowDefinitions>         <TextBox Name="mySourceElement" Grid.Row="0"                  TextChanged="mySourceElement_TextChanged">Hello Orlnado</TextBox>         <TextBlock Grid.Row="1">                        <TextBlock.Text>                 <Binding ElementName="mySourceElement" Path="Text"  />             </TextBlock.Text>         </TextBlock>         <TextBlock Text="{Binding ElementName=mySourceElement,Path=Text }" Grid.Row="2" />     </Grid> </Window> Example01 we have a slider control, then we have two textboxes bound to the value property of the slider. one has its text property bound, the second has its fontsize property bound. <Grid>      <Grid.RowDefinitions >          <RowDefinition Height="40px" />          <RowDefinition Height="40px" />          <RowDefinition Height="*" />      </Grid.RowDefinitions>      <Slider Name="fontSizeSlider" Minimum="5" Maximum="100"              Value="10" Grid.Row="0" />      <TextBox Name="SizeTextBox"                    Text="{Binding ElementName=fontSizeSlider, Path=Value}" Grid.Row="1"/>      <TextBlock Text="Example 01"                 FontSize="{Binding ElementName=SizeTextBox,  Path=Text}"  Grid.Row="2"/> </Grid> Example02 very much like the previous example but it also has a font dropdown <Grid>      <Grid.RowDefinitions >          <RowDefinition Height="20px" />          <RowDefinition Height="40px" />          <RowDefinition Height="40px" />          <RowDefinition Height="*" />      </Grid.RowDefinitions>      <ComboBox Name="FontNameList" SelectedIndex="0" Grid.Row="0">          <ComboBoxItem Content="Arial" />          <ComboBoxItem Content="Calibri" />          <ComboBoxItem Content="Times New Roman" />          <ComboBoxItem Content="Verdana" />      </ComboBox>      <Slider Name="fontSizeSlider" Minimum="5" Maximum="100" Value="10" Grid.Row="1" />      <TextBox Name="SizeTextBox"      Text="{Binding ElementName=fontSizeSlider, Path=Value}" Grid.Row="2"/>      <TextBlock Text="Example 01" FontFamily="{Binding ElementName=FontNameList, Path=Text}"                 FontSize="{Binding ElementName=SizeTextBox,  Path=Text}"  Grid.Row="3"/> </Grid> Example03 In this example we bind to an object Employee.cs Notice we added a directive to our xaml which is clr-namespace and the namespace for our employee Class xmlns:local="clr-namespace:Example03" In Our windows Resources we create an instance of our object <Window.Resources>     <local:Employee x:Key="MyEmployee" EmployeeNumber="145"                     FirstName="John"                     LastName="Doe"                     Department="Product Development"                     Title="QA Manager" /> </Window.Resources> then we bind our container to the that instance of the data <Grid DataContext="{StaticResource MyEmployee}">         <Grid.RowDefinitions>             <RowDefinition Height="*" />             <RowDefinition Height="*" />             <RowDefinition Height="*" />             <RowDefinition Height="*" />             <RowDefinition Height="*" />         </Grid.RowDefinitions>         <Grid.ColumnDefinitions >             <ColumnDefinition Width="130px" />             <ColumnDefinition Width="178*" />         </Grid.ColumnDefinitions>     </Grid> and Finally we have textboxes that will bind to that textbox         <Label Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="0">Employee Number</Label>         <TextBox Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="1" Text="{Binding Path=EmployeeNumber}"></TextBox>         <Label Grid.Row="1" Grid.Column="0">First Name</Label>         <TextBox Grid.Row="1" Grid.Column="1" Text="{Binding Path=FirstName}"></TextBox>         <Label Grid.Row="2" Grid.Column="0">Last Name</Label>         <TextBox Grid.Row="2" Grid.Column="1" Text="{Binding Path=LastName}" />         <Label Grid.Row="3" Grid.Column="0">Title</Label>         <TextBox Grid.Row="3" Grid.Column="1" Text="{Binding Path=Title}"></TextBox>         <Label Grid.Row="4" Grid.Column="0">Department</Label>         <TextBox Grid.Row="4" Grid.Column="1" Text="{Binding Path=Department}" />

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• Add Background Images and Themes to Windows 7 Media Center

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Are you tired of the same Windows Media Center look and feel? Today we’ll show you how change the background and apply themes to WMC. Changing the Basic Color Scheme in WMC There are a couple of very basic color scheme options built in to Windows 7 Media Center. From the WMC Start Menu, select Settings on the Tasks strip and then select General. On the General settings screen select Visual and Sound Effects.   Under Color scheme you’ll find options for Windows Media Center standard, High contrast white, and High contrast black. Simply select a color scheme and click Save before exiting.   If you have used Media Center before you are familiar with the standard blue default theme. There is also the high contrast white. And, the high contrast black. Changing the Background Image with Media Center Studio Themes and custom backgrounds need to be added with the third-party software, Media Center Studio. You can find the download link at the end of this article. You can use your own high resolution photo, or download one from the Internet. For best results, you’ll want to find an image that meets or exceeds the resolution of your monitor. Also, using a darker colored background image is ideal as it should contrast better with the lighter colored text of the start menu. Once you’ve downloaded and installed Media Center Studio (link below), open the application select the Home tab on the ribbon and make sure you are on the Themes tab below. Click New. Select Biography from the left pane and type in a name for your new theme.   Next, click on the triangle next to Images to expand the list below. You’ll want to browse to Images > Common > Background. You should see a list of PNG image files located below Background. We will want to swap out the COMMON.ANIMATED.BACKGROUND.PNG and the COMMON.BACKGROUND.PNG images. Select COMMON.ANIMATED.BACKGROUND.PNG and click on the Browse button on the right.   Browse for your photo and click Open. Your selected image will appear on the left pane. Now, do the same for the COMMON.BACKGROUND.PNG. When finished, select the Home tab on the ribbon at the top and click Save.   Now switch to the Themes tab on the ribbon and the Themes tab below. (There are two Themes tabs which can be a bit confusing). Select your theme on the right pane and click Apply. Note: You won’t see the image backgrounds displayed. Your theme will be applied to Media Center. Close out of Media Center Studio and open Windows Media Center to check out your new background.   You can load multiple backgrounds images and switch them periodically as your mood changes. You might like to find a nice background featuring your favorite movie or TV show.   Perhaps you can even find a background of your favorite sports team.   Installing Themes with Media Center Studio Theme7MC has made available a small group of Media Center Studio Theme packs that are simple to download and install. You can find the download link below. Note: Before installing a theme, turn off any extenders and close Windows Media Center. Download any (or all) of the Theme7MC theme packages to your Media Center PC. Open Media Center Studio, select the Themes tab (the one at the top) and click Import Theme.   Browse for the theme you wish to import and click Open. Select your theme from the themes pane and click Apply. Media Center Studio will proceed to apply your theme. You should then see your new theme appear under Current theme on the left theme pane. Close out of Media Center Studio. Open Media Center and enjoy your new theme. Conclusion Media Center Studio runs on Windows 7 or Vista and gives users a solution for personalizing their Media Center backgrounds. It is a Beta application, however, so it still has a few bugs. Currently, there are only a handful of themes available at Themes7MC, but what they have is pretty slick. If you’d like to further customize the look of Media Center, check out our previous article on how to customize the Media Center start menu with Media Center Studio. Downloads Media Center Studio Theme7MC Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Using Netflix Watchnow in Windows Vista Media Center (Gmedia)How To Rip a Music CD in Windows 7 Media CenterAutomatically Mount and View ISO files in Windows 7 Media CenterSchedule Updates for Windows Media CenterIntegrate Hulu Desktop and Windows Media Center in Windows 7 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup AceStock, a Tiny Desktop Quote Monitor Gmail Button Addon (Firefox) Hyperwords addon (Firefox) Backup Outlook 2010 Daily Motivator (Firefox) FetchMp3 Can Download Videos & Convert Them to Mp3

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• Entity Framework 4.0: Creating objects of correct type when using lazy loading

  - by DigiMortal

  In my posting about Entity Framework 4.0 and POCOs I introduced lazy loading in EF applications. EF uses proxy classes for lazy loading and this means we have new types in that come and go dynamically in runtime. We don’t have these types available when we write code but we cannot forget that EF may expect us to use dynamically generated types. In this posting I will give you simple hint how to use correct types in your code. The background of lazy loading and proxy classes As a first thing I will explain you in short what is proxy class. Business classes when designed correctly have no knowledge about their birth and death – they don’t know how they are created and they don’t know how their data is persisted. This is the responsibility of object runtime. When we use lazy loading we need a little bit different classes that know how to load data for properties when code accesses the property first time. As we cannot add this functionality to our business classes (they may be stored through more than one data access technology or by more than one Data Access Layer (DAL)) we create proxy classes that extend our business classes. If we have class called Product and product has lazy loaded property called Customer then we need proxy class, let’s say ProductProxy, that has same public signature as Product so we can use it INSTEAD OF product in our code. ProductProxy overrides Customer property. If customer is not asked then customer is null. But if we ask for Customer property then overridden property of ProductProxy loads it from database. This is how lazy loading works. Problem – two types for same thing As lazy loading may introduce dynamically generated proxy types we don’t know in our application code which type is returned. We cannot be sure that we have Product not ProductProxy returned. This leads us to the following question: how can we create Product of correct type if we don’t know the correct type? In EF solution is simple. Solution – use factory methods If you are using repositories and you are not using factories (imho it is pretty pointless with mapper) you can add factory methods to your EF based repositories. Take a look at this class. public class Event {     public int ID { get; set; }     public string Title { get; set; }     public string Location { get; set; }     public virtual Party Organizer { get; set; }     public DateTime Date { get; set; } } We have virtual member called Organizer. This property is virtual because we want to use lazy loading on this class so Organizer is loaded only when we ask it. EF provides us with method called CreateObject<T>(). CreateObject<T>() is member of ObjectContext class and it creates the object based on given type. In runtime proxy type for Event is created for us automatically and when we call CreateObject<T>() for Event it returns as object of Event proxy type. The factory method for events repository is as follows. public Event CreateEvent() {     var evt = _context.CreateObject<Event>();     return evt; } And we are done. Instead of creating factory classes we created factory methods that guarantee that created objects are of correct type. Conclusion Although lazy loading introduces some new objects we cannot use at design time because they live only in runtime we can write code without worrying about exact implementation type of object. This holds true until we have clean code and we don’t make any decisions based on object type. EF4.0 provides us with very simple factory method that create and return objects of correct type. All we had to do was adding factory methods to our repositories.

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• SQL Developer Blitz at ODTUG Kscope12

  - by thatjeffsmith

  Oracle Development Tools User Group (ODTUG) puts on an outstanding event, and I enjoy that the content comes FIRST. Yes, the after-event parties and entertainment are first class, but I look forward most to sitting in on some excellent sessions. For Kscope12 one would expect Oracle to have a large presence, and you would be absolutely correct! The APEX team will be there in full force, and we’ll have sessions on JDeveloper, ADF, and .NET. But what I want to talk about today is our awesome line-up of coverage for Oracle SQL Developer (Surprise!) DB and Developer’s Toolbox Symposium Kris Rice or @krisrice, Product Development Manager for SQL Developer, will speak at 10AM Sunday about SQL Developer Data Modeler. Our free data modeling solution allows one to reverse engineer a data dictionary to a model, modify it, and create a script of the changes. Collaboration is an important part of any development team; with built-in subversion support, the modeler makes collaboration easy, not just possible. After the morning break, I’ll be talking about SQL Developer’s PL/SQL support. From creating your code, to debugging, tuning, testing, and documenting PL/SQL – SQL Developer fits the bill. Since I have a full hour, I should have time to do a little riff on using source control to version and manage your revisions too! At 3:15 Jagan Athreya will talk about the new integration between SQL Developer and Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c. Enabling developers to define changes in SQLDeveloper and allowing DBAs to promote these changes to Test and Production via Enterprise Manager will reduce errors, accelerate productivity, and help eliminate unplanned downtime. Get your SQL Developer groove on at ODTUG Kscope12! Presentations SQL Developer Tips and Tricks Monday June 25, Session 5, 4:15 pm – 5:15 pm I’ll take you through my favorite keyboard shortcuts, top 10 preferences every user should tweak, and spotlight features that the average user probably hasn’t discovered yet. My goal for this session is for everyone to take 1-2 tips they can implement immediately to save mucho time. I enjoy interacting with the audience so no two versions of this presentation are the same. Oracle SQL Developer and Data Modeler New Features When: Tuesday June 26, Session 6, 8:30 am – 9:30 am Ashley Chen, my PM-partner-in-crime, will be covering all the new features from our two latest updates. So if you’re new to SQL Developer, or you’ve been using an older version, stop by and see what new toys you have to play with. I also have a bet with Ashley that she will have more attendees than me, so be sure to show up so I can collect. Debugging PL/SQL With SQL Developer When: Wednesday June 27, Session 16, 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm Me again – sorry. This time I have an entire hour to JUST talk about PL/SQL and debugging! Should you use a watch with a break condition, or a breakpoint with a passcount? How does external debugging with a Perl script work? Can I just debug an anonymous PL/SQL block. So if debugging to you is just a DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE() call, stop by and see how our IDE can help you take things to the next level! Or is that level++? Hands-on-Training SQL Developer Soup to Nuts When: Tuesday, 8:00 AM – 9:30 AM If you learn by doing, this is the session for you. Bring your own laptop or use one of the lab machines. We’ll give you a VirtualBox OEL image running 11gR2 EE Database with all the fixin’s (that’s Southern speak for Partitioning, Advanced Compression, Tuning & Diagnostic Packs, etc), TimesTen, APEX and much more. All you have to do is login and run through our lab exercises. You can start with a model and work your way up to debugging and testing your own appliction, or you can pick and choose your lessons to suit your needs. We’ll have people on hand to help you out and answer your questions. Booth Hours We’ll be in the vendor area and have our very own ‘demo pod’ for SQL Developer. Between Kris, Ashley, and I we should be able to answer your questions or show you how to ‘do that thing’ in the tool. Or just stop by and say hello! We’ll be around the following hours’ish: Sunday, June 24, 2012 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM Monday, June 25, 2012 9:00 AM – 4:30 PM Tuesday, June 26, 2012 9:30 AM – 3:30 PM Wednesday, June 27, 2012 10:15 AM – 2:00 PM No Excuses – If You Have Questions, This is Your Chance to Get Your Answers! We’re doing just about everything outside of a scavenger hunt to bring information and value to our users. Let us know what you like, what you don’t like, and we’ll do our best to do more of the former and less of the latter!

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• SQL Developer at Oracle Open World 2012

  - by thatjeffsmith

  We have a lot going on in San Francisco this fall. One of the most personal exciting bits, for what will be my 4th or 5th Open World, is that this will be my FIRST as a member of Team Oracle. I’ve presented once before, but most years it was just me pressing flesh at the vendor booths. After 3-4 days of standing and talking, you’re ready to just go home and not do anything for a few weeks. This time I’ll have a chance to walk around and talk with our users and get a good idea of what’s working and what’s not. Of course it will be a great opportunity for you to find us and get to know your SQL Developer team! 3.4 miles across and back – thanks Ashley for signing me up for the run! This year is going to be a bit crazy. Work wise I’ll be presenting twice, working a booth, and proctoring several of our Hands-On Labs. The fun parts will be equally crazy though – running across the Bay Bridge (I don’t run), swimming the Bay (I don’t swim), having my wife fly out on Wednesday for the concert, and then our first WhiskyFest on Friday (I do drink whisky though.) But back to work – let’s talk about EVERYTHING you can expect from the SQL Developer team. Booth Hours We’ll have 2 ‘demo pods’ in the Exhibition Hall over at Moscone South. Look for the farm of Oracle booths, we’ll be there under the signs that say ‘SQL Developer.’ There will be several people on hand, mostly developers (yes, they still count as people), who can answer your questions or demo the latest features. Come by and say ‘Hi!’, and let us know what you like and what you think we can do better. Seriously. Monday 10AM – 6PM Tuesday 9:45AM – 6PM Wednesday 9:45AM – 4PM Presentations Stop by for an hour, pull up a chair, sit back and soak in all the SQL Developer goodness. You’ll only have to suffer my bad jokes for two of the presentations, so please at least try to come to the other ones. We’ll be talking about data modeling, migrations, source control, and new features in versions 3.1 and 3.2 of SQL Developer and SQL Developer Data Modeler. Day Time Event Monday 10:454:45 What’s New in SQL Developer Why Move to Oracle Application Express Listener Tueday 10:1511:455:00 Using Subversion in Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler Oracle SQL Developer Tips & Tricks Database Design with Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler Wednesday 11:453:30 Migrating Third-Party Databases and Applications to Oracle Exadata 11g Enterprise Options and Management Packs for Developers Hands On Labs (HOLs) The Hands On Labs allow you to come into a classroom environment, sit down at a computer, and run through some exercises. We’ll provide the hardware, software, and training materials. It’s self-paced, but we’ll have several helpers walking around to answer questions and chat up any SQL Developer or database topic that comes to mind. If your employer is sending you to Open World for all that great training, the HOLs are a great opportunity to capitalize on that. They are only 60 minutes each, so you don’t have to worry about burning out. And there’s no homework! Of course, if you do want to take the labs home with you, many are already available via the Developer Day Hands-On Database Applications Developer Lab. You will need your own computer for those, but we’ll take care of the rest. Wednesday PL/SQL Development and Unit Testing with Oracle SQL Developer 10:15 Performance Tuning with Oracle SQL Developer 11:45 Thursday The Soup to Nuts of Data Modeling with Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler 11:15 Some Parting Advice Always wanted to meet your favorite Oracle authors, speakers, and thought-leaders? Don’t be shy, walk right up to them and introduce yourself. Normal social rules still apply, but at the conference everyone is open and up for meeting and talking with attendees. Just understand if there’s a line that you might only get a minute or two. It’s a LONG conference though, so you’ll have plenty of time to catch up with everyone. If you’re going to be around on Tuesday evening, head on over to the OTN Lounge from 4:30 to 6:30 and hang out for our Tweet Meet. That’s right, all the Oracle nerds on Twitter will be there in one place. Be sure to put your Twitter handle on your name tag so we know who you are!

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• 8 Things You Can Do In Android’s Developer Options

  - by Chris Hoffman

  The Developer Options menu in Android is a hidden menu with a variety of advanced options. These options are intended for developers, but many of them will be interesting to geeks. You’ll have to perform a secret handshake to enable the Developer Options menu in the Settings screen, as it’s hidden from Android users by default. Follow the simple steps to quickly enable Developer Options. Enable USB Debugging “USB debugging” sounds like an option only an Android developer would need, but it’s probably the most widely used hidden option in Android. USB debugging allows applications on your computer to interface with your Android phone over the USB connection. This is required for a variety of advanced tricks, including rooting an Android phone, unlocking it, installing a custom ROM, or even using a desktop program that captures screenshots of your Android device’s screen. You can also use ADB commands to push and pull files between your device and your computer or create and restore complete local backups of your Android device without rooting. USB debugging can be a security concern, as it gives computers you plug your device into access to your phone. You could plug your device into a malicious USB charging port, which would try to compromise you. That’s why Android forces you to agree to a prompt every time you plug your device into a new computer with USB debugging enabled. Set a Desktop Backup Password If you use the above ADB trick to create local backups of your Android device over USB, you can protect them with a password with the Set a desktop backup password option here. This password encrypts your backups to secure them, so you won’t be able to access them if you forget the password. Disable or Speed Up Animations When you move between apps and screens in Android, you’re spending some of that time looking at animations and waiting for them to go away. You can disable these animations entirely by changing the Window animation scale, Transition animation scale, and Animator duration scale options here. If you like animations but just wish they were faster, you can speed them up. On a fast phone or tablet, this can make switching between apps nearly instant. If you thought your Android phone was speedy before, just try disabling animations and you’ll be surprised how much faster it can seem. Force-Enable FXAA For OpenGL Games If you have a high-end phone or tablet with great graphics performance and you play 3D games on it, there’s a way to make those games look even better. Just go to the Developer Options screen and enable the Force 4x MSAA option. This will force Android to use 4x multisample anti-aliasing in OpenGL ES 2.0 games and other apps. This requires more graphics power and will probably drain your battery a bit faster, but it will improve image quality in some games. This is a bit like force-enabling antialiasing using the NVIDIA Control Panel on a Windows gaming PC. See How Bad Task Killers Are We’ve written before about how task killers are worse than useless on Android. If you use a task killer, you’re just slowing down your system by throwing out cached data and forcing Android to load apps from system storage whenever you open them again. Don’t believe us? Enable the Don’t keep activities option on the Developer options screen and Android will force-close every app you use as soon as you exit it. Enable this app and use your phone normally for a few minutes — you’ll see just how harmful throwing out all that cached data is and how much it will slow down your phone. Don’t actually use this option unless you want to see how bad it is! It will make your phone perform much more slowly — there’s a reason Google has hidden these options away from average users who might accidentally change them. Fake Your GPS Location The Allow mock locations option allows you to set fake GPS locations, tricking Android into thinking you’re at a location where you actually aren’t. Use this option along with an app like Fake GPS location and you can trick your Android device and the apps running on it into thinking you’re at locations where you actually aren’t. How would this be useful? Well, you could fake a GPS check-in at a location without actually going there or confuse your friends in a location-tracking app by seemingly teleporting around the world. Stay Awake While Charging You can use Android’s Daydream Mode to display certain apps while charging your device. If you want to force Android to display a standard Android app that hasn’t been designed for Daydream Mode, you can enable the Stay awake option here. Android will keep your device’s screen on while charging and won’t turn it off. It’s like Daydream Mode, but can support any app and allows users to interact with them. Show Always-On-Top CPU Usage You can view CPU usage data by toggling the Show CPU usage option to On. This information will appear on top of whatever app you’re using. If you’re a Linux user, the three numbers on top probably look familiar — they represent the system load average. From left to right, the numbers represent your system load over the last one, five, and fifteen minutes. This isn’t the kind of thing you’d want enabled most of the time, but it can save you from having to install third-party floating CPU apps if you want to see CPU usage information for some reason. Most of the other options here will only be useful to developers debugging their Android apps. You shouldn’t start changing options you don’t understand. If you want to undo any of these changes, you can quickly erase all your custom options by sliding the switch at the top of the screen to Off.     

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• It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice

  - by BuckWoody

  I’ve been a little “preachy” lately, telling you that you should let people finish their sentences, and always check a problem out before you tell a user that their issue is “impossible”. Well, I’ll round that out with one more tip today. Keep in mind that all of these things are actions I’ve been guilty of, hopefully in the past. I’m kind of a “work in progress”. And yes, I know these tips are coming from someone who picks on people in presentations, but that is of course done in fun, and (hopefully) with the audience’s knowledge.   (No, this isn’t aimed at any one person or event in particular – I just see it happen a lot)   I’ve seen, unfortunately over and over, someone in authority react badly to someone who is incorrect, or at least perceived to be incorrect. This might manifest itself in a comment, post, question or whatever, but the point is that I’ve seen really intelligent people literally attack someone they view as getting something wrong. Don’t misunderstand me; if someone posts that you should always drop a production database in the middle of the day I think you should certainly speak up and mention that this might be a bad idea!  No, I’m talking about generalizations or even incorrect statements done in good faith. Let me explain with an example.   Suppose someone makes the statement: “If you don’t have enough space on your system, you can just use a DBCC command to shrink the database”. Let’s take two responses to this statement.   Response One: “That’s insane. Everyone knows that shrinking a database is a stupid idea, you’re just going to fragment your indexes all over the place.” Response Two: “That’s an interesting take – in my experience and from what I’ve read here (someurl.com) I think this might not be a universal best practice.”   Of course, both responses let the person making the statement and those reading it know that you don’t agree, and that it’s probably wrong. But the person you responded to and the general audience hearing you (or reading your response) might form two different opinions of you.   The first response says to me “this person really needs to be right, and takes arguments personally. They aren’t thinking of the other person at all, or the folks reading or hearing the exchange. They turned an incorrect technical statement into a personal attack. They haven’t left the other party any room to ‘save face’, and they have potentially turned what could be a positive learning experience for everyone into a negative. Also, they sound more than just a little arrogant.”   The second response says to me “this person has left room for everyone to save face, has presented evidence to the contrary and is thinking about moving the ball forward and getting it right rather than attacking someone for getting it wrong.” It’s the idea of questioning a statement rather than attacking a person.   Perhaps you have a different take. Maybe you think the “direct” approach is best – and maybe that’s worked for you. Something to consider is what you’ve really accomplished while using that first method. Sure, the info you provide is correct, and perhaps someone out there won’t shrink a database because of your response – but perhaps you’ve turned a lot more people off, and now they won’t listen to your other valuable information. You’ll be an expert, but another one of the nameless, arrogant jerks in technology. And I don’t think anyone likes to be thought of that way.   OK, I’ll get down off of the high-horse now. And I’ll keep the title of this entry (said to me by my grandmother when I was a little kid) in mind when I dismount. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• My Interview with Microsoft

  - by Victor Hurdugaci

  This post is for those who want to apply or have already applied (but not finished the interview) for a Microsoft Job. The recruitment process is quite similar for everyone and consists of a few steps. Application E-Mail Interview Phone Interview On Site Interview I will tell you my story and how I went through the four phases. 1. Application My blog's title (Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit) means "Nothing Comes Out of Nothing". You can't get a job at Microsoft by not doing anything - this is true for anything else. The first step you need to complete is the application process. For this, many options are available. You can... ... apply online on Microsoft's Careers website as I did ... send your CV to different e-mail addresses (there are some dedicated e-mails for different positions) ... apply through some 3rd party organization (job shop, campus recruitment, job agency, etc) On MS Careers you just have to post your CV and choose the job you want. That's all! No recommendation letter, no cover letter, no nothing. Of course, not every CV passes the selection process. Here are some tips for improving your resume (worked for me): Don't write it just before applying! Write a draft version, wait a few days and then review it. This way you will find a lot of mistakes and stupid things you wrote initially. If you review it immediately after writing, your mind will not be criticism oriented and will just ignore mistakes. Repeat the write-wait-review process as many times as necessary, until you find that the review revealed no mistakes. After you did the final review and the CV is bullet-proof, ask others to review it. They will definitely find inconsistencies and mistakes and this will make you feel stupid. This is good because will open your eyes will make you go into an 'I want to improve' mode. You'll try to correct everything. After you come up with a modified version go again through steps 1 and 2. Repeat this as many times as necessary. [Special thanks to Lucian Sasu, Nadia Comanici, Andrei Ciobanu, Monica Balan and Lavinia Tanase for reviewing my CV!] Make it short and give only relevant facts. Initially, I come up with a 5 pages CV because I wrote every single technology with which I worked. There were a lot irrelevant things, I wrote Windows Workflow Foundation just because I played with it for a few days. I added extensive descriptions for every project, made a personal details section (name, birth date, address, etc) of 1/2 page. Others suggested to cut everything that was not necessary. You don't need to give extensive descriptions, just add a few words. For example, I wrote "VS Image Visualizer - Visual Studio 2008 debug visualizer for images" and added a link to the project's page - you submit formatted andcan embed links. Add something that makes it different. I don't know if this makes a difference, but I added some lines to separate items just like in the picture below. Definitely Microsoft gets thousands of CVs per day. You need something special. Don't lie! Tell exactly what you did and what is the proficiency level of your skills. For example, don't write "Advanced" for UML if you don't know the difference between composition and aggregation. Be realistic and don't under/over estimate yourself. Use the spell chick. Make sure everything is written in correct English and there are no grammar/spelling mistakes. Noddy likes a WC with grammar mi takes. You mght fail just because of that. Once you completed your CV, choose the job that suits best your needs, apply and wait... The waiting is a problem because all these big companies like Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, Apple, etc. will contact you only if they find something interesting in your application. If you're not suitable, then no rejection is sent. I applied for an Intern Software Development Engineer position at Microsoft Redmond. I cannot apply for a full time position because I want to finish the master program on time, in the next summer - an internship is just what I need. 2. E-Mail Interview January 20, 2010. Two months since I submitted the CV. I wasn't hoping anymore that MS will contact me, when I got an e-mail titled: "Victor Hurdugaci ES DK" from Holly Peterson saying: Read more >>

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• Multitask Like a Pro with AquaSnap

  - by Matthew Guay

  Are you tired of shuffling back and forth between windows?  Here’s a handy app that can help you keep all of your windows organized and accessible. AquaSnap is a great free utility that helps you use multiple windows at the same time easily and efficiently.  One of Windows 7’s greatest new features is Aero Snap, which lets you easily view windows side by side by simply dragging windows to side of your screen.  After using Windows 7 for the past year, Aero Snap is one of the features we really miss when using older versions of Windows. With AquaSnap, you now have all of the features of Aero Snap and more in Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and of course Windows 7.  Not only does it give you Aero Snap features, but AquaSnap also gives you more control over your windows to make you more productive. Getting Started AquaSnap is a a free download for Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and 7.  Download the small installer (link below) and install it with the default settings. AquaSnap automatically runs as soon as it is installed, and you will notice a new icon in your system tray. Now you can go ahead and put it to use.  Drag a window to any edge or corner of your desktop, and you will see an icon showing what part of the screen the window will cover. Dragging it to the side of the screen expanded the window to fill the right half of the screen, just like the default Aero Snap in Windows 7.  You can drag the window away to restore it to its former size. AquaSnap works on any corner of the screen too, so you can have 4 windows side-by-side.  We already have 3 windows snapped to the corners, and notice that we’re dragging a fourth window to the bottom right corner. You can also snap windows to the bottom and top of the screen.  Here we have Word snapped to the bottom half of the screen, and we’re dragging Chrome to the top. You can even snap internal windows in Multiple Document Interface (MDI) programs such as Excel.  Here we are snapping a workbook in Excel to the left to view 2 workbooks side-by-side.   Additionally, AquaSnap lets you keep any window always on top.  Simply shake any window, and it will turn semi-transparent and stay on top of all other windows.  Notice the transparent calculator here on top of Excel. All of AquaSnap’s features work great in Windows 2000, XP, and Vista too.  Here we are snapping IE6 to the left of the screen in XP. Here are 3 windows snapped to the sides in XP.  You can mix the snap modes, and have, for instance, two windows on the right side and one window on the left.  This is a great way to maximize productivity if you need more space in one of the windows. Even AquaShake works to keep a window transparent and on top in XP. Settings AquaSnap has a detailed settings dialog where you can tweak it to work exactly like you want.  Simply right-click on its icon in the taskbar, and select Settings. From the first screen, you can choose if you want AquaSnap to start with Windows, and if you want it to show an icon in the system tray.  If you turn off the system tray icon, you can access the AquaSnap settings from Start > All Programs > AquaSnap > Configuration (or simply search for Configuration in Vista or Windows 7). The second tab in settings lets you choose what you want each snapping region to do.  You can also choose two other presets, including AeroSnap (which works just like the default Aero Snap in Windows 7) and AquaSnap simple (which only snaps at the edges of the screen, not the corners). The third tab lets you increase or decrease the opacity of pinned windows when using AquaShake, and also lets you increase or decrease the shaking sensitivity.  Additionally, if you prefer the standard AeroShake functionality, which minimizes all other open windows when you shake a window, you can choose that too. The fourth tab lets you activate an optional feature, AquaGlass.  If you activate this, it will make windows turn transparent when you drag them across the screen.   Finally, the last tab lets you change the color and opacity of the preview rectangle, or simply turn it off. Or, if you want to temporarily turn AquaSnap off, simply right-click on its icon and select Off.  In Windows 7, turning off AquaSnap will restore your standard Windows Aero Snap functionality, and in other version of Windows it will stop letting you snap windows at all.  You can then repeat the steps and select On when you want to use AquaSnap again. Conclusion AquaSnap is a handy tool to make you more productive at your computer.  With a wide variety of useful features, there’s something here for everyone.  Download AquaSnap Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How to Get Virtual Desktops on Windows XP TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Out of band Security Update for Internet Explorer 7 Cool Looking Screensavers for Windows SyncToy syncs Files and Folders across Computers on a Network (or partitions on the same drive) If it were only this easy Classic Cinema Online offers 100’s of OnDemand Movies OutSync will Sync Photos of your Friends on Facebook and Outlook

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• nm-applet gone?

  - by welp

  nm-applet seems to have disappeared from my system. I am running 12.10. Here's what I get when I check my package manager logs: ? ~ grep network-manager /var/log/dpkg.log 2012-10-06 10:37:08 upgrade network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu5 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu6 2012-10-06 10:37:08 status half-configured network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu5 2012-10-06 10:37:08 status unpacked network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu5 2012-10-06 10:37:08 status half-installed network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu5 2012-10-06 10:37:08 status half-installed network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu5 2012-10-06 10:37:08 status half-installed network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu5 2012-10-06 10:37:08 status half-installed network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu5 2012-10-06 10:37:08 status half-installed network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu5 2012-10-06 10:37:08 status half-installed network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu5 2012-10-06 10:37:08 status half-installed network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu5 2012-10-06 10:37:09 status half-installed network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu5 2012-10-06 10:37:09 status unpacked network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu6 2012-10-06 10:37:09 status unpacked network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu6 2012-10-06 10:39:50 configure network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu6 2012-10-06 10:39:50 status unpacked network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu6 2012-10-06 10:39:50 status unpacked network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu6 2012-10-06 10:39:50 status half-configured network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu6 2012-10-06 10:39:50 status installed network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu6 2012-10-28 22:27:23 status installed network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu6 2012-10-28 22:27:23 remove network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu6 2012-10-28 22:27:23 status half-configured network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu6 2012-10-28 22:27:23 status half-installed network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu6 2012-10-28 22:27:23 status half-installed network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu6 2012-10-28 22:27:23 status half-installed network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu6 2012-10-28 22:27:23 status half-installed network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu6 2012-10-28 22:27:23 status half-installed network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu6 2012-10-28 22:27:23 status half-installed network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu6 2012-10-28 22:27:23 status half-installed network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu6 2012-10-28 22:27:23 status half-installed network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu6 2012-10-28 22:27:23 status config-files network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu6 2012-10-28 22:27:23 status config-files network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu6 2012-10-31 19:58:03 install network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu6 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu6 2012-10-31 19:58:03 status half-installed network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu6 2012-10-31 19:58:03 status half-installed network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu6 2012-10-31 19:58:03 status half-installed network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu6 2012-10-31 19:58:03 status half-installed network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu6 2012-10-31 19:58:03 status half-installed network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu6 2012-10-31 19:58:03 status half-installed network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu6 2012-10-31 19:58:03 status half-installed network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu6 2012-10-31 19:58:03 status half-installed network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu6 2012-10-31 19:58:03 status unpacked network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu6 2012-10-31 19:58:03 status unpacked network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu6 2012-10-31 19:58:06 configure network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu6 2012-10-31 19:58:06 status unpacked network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu6 2012-10-31 19:58:07 status unpacked network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu6 2012-10-31 19:58:07 status half-configured network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu6 2012-10-31 19:58:07 status installed network-manager-gnome:amd64 0.9.6.2-0ubuntu6 ? ~ Unfortunately, I cannot find network-manager-applet package at all: ? ~ apt-cache search network-manager-applet ? ~ Here are the contents of /etc/apt/sources.list: ? ~ cat /etc/apt/sources.list # deb cdrom:[Ubuntu 12.04 LTS _Precise Pangolin_ - Release amd64 (20120425)]/ dists/precise/main/binary-i386/ # deb cdrom:[Ubuntu 12.04 LTS _Precise Pangolin_ - Release amd64 (20120425)]/ dists/precise/restricted/binary-i386/ # deb cdrom:[Ubuntu 12.04 LTS _Precise Pangolin_ - Release amd64 (20120425)]/ precise main restricted # See http://help.ubuntu.com/community/UpgradeNotes for how to upgrade to # newer versions of the distribution. deb http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ quantal main restricted deb-src http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ quantal main restricted ## Major bug fix updates produced after the final release of the ## distribution. deb http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ quantal-updates main restricted deb-src http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ quantal-updates main restricted ## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu ## team. Also, please note that software in universe WILL NOT receive any ## review or updates from the Ubuntu security team. deb http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ quantal universe deb-src http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ quantal universe deb http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ quantal-updates universe deb-src http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ quantal-updates universe ## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu ## team, and may not be under a free licence. Please satisfy yourself as to ## your rights to use the software. Also, please note that software in ## multiverse WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu ## security team. deb http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ quantal multiverse deb-src http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ quantal multiverse deb http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ quantal-updates multiverse deb-src http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ quantal-updates multiverse ## N.B. software from this repository may not have been tested as ## extensively as that contained in the main release, although it includes ## newer versions of some applications which may provide useful features. ## Also, please note that software in backports WILL NOT receive any review ## or updates from the Ubuntu security team. deb http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ quantal-backports main restricted universe multiverse deb-src http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ quantal-backports main restricted universe multiverse deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu quantal-security main restricted deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu quantal-security main restricted deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu quantal-security universe deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu quantal-security universe deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu quantal-security multiverse deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu quantal-security multiverse ## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from Canonical's ## 'partner' repository. ## This software is not part of Ubuntu, but is offered by Canonical and the ## respective vendors as a service to Ubuntu users. # deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu precise partner # deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu precise partner ## This software is not part of Ubuntu, but is offered by third-party ## developers who want to ship their latest software. deb http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu quantal main deb-src http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu quantal main ? ~ Right now, I can't think of anything else. Happy to provide more info upon request.

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• Adopting DBVCS

  - by Wes McClure

  Identify early adopters Pick a small project with a small(ish) team.  This can be a legacy application or a green-field application. Strive to find a team of early adopters that will be eager to try something new. Get the team on board! Research Research the tool(s) that you want to use.  Some tools provide all of the features you would need while some only provide a slice of the pie.  DBVCS requires the ability to manage a set of change scripts that update a database from one version to the next.  Ideally a tool can track database versions and automatically apply updates.  The change script generation process can be manual, but having diff tools available to automatically generate it can really reduce the overhead to adoption.  Finally, an automated tool to generate a script file per database object is an added bonus as your version control system can quickly identify what was changed in a commit (add/del/modify), just like with code changes. Don’t settle on just one tool, identify several.  Then work with the team to evaluate the tools.  Have the team do some tests of the following scenarios with each tool: Baseline an existing database: can the migration tool work with legacy databases?  Caution: most migration platforms do not support baselines or have poor support, especially the fad of fluent APIs. Add/drop tables Add/drop procedures/functions/views Alter tables (rename columns, add columns, remove columns) Massage data – migrations sometimes involve changing data types that cannot be implicitly casted and require you to decide how the data is explicitly cast to the new type.  This is a requirement for a migrations platform.  Think about a case where you might want to combine fields, or move a field from one table to another, you wouldn’t want to lose the data. Run the tool via the command line.  If you cannot automate the tool in Continuous Integration what is the point? Create a copy of a database on demand. Backup/restore databases locally. Let the team give feedback and decide together, what tool they would like to try out. My recommendation at this point would be to include TSqlMigrations and RoundHouse as SQL based migration platforms.  In general I would recommend staying away from the fluent platforms as they often lack baseline capabilities and add overhead to learn a new API when SQL is already a very well known DSL.  Code migrations often get messy with procedures/views/functions as these have to be created with SQL and aren’t cross platform anyways.  IMO stick to SQL based migrations. Reconciling Production If your project is a legacy application, you will need to reconcile the current state of production with your development databases.  Find changes in production and bring them down to development, even if they are old and need to be removed.  Once complete, produce a baseline of either dev or prod as they are now in sync.  Commit this to your VCS of choice. Add whatever schema changes tracking mechanism your tool requires to your development database.  This often requires adding a table to track the schema version of that database.  Your tool should support doing this for you.  You can add this table to production when you do your next release. Script out any changes currently in dev.  Remove production artifacts that you brought down during reconciliation.  Add change scripts for any outstanding changes in dev since the last production release.  Commit these to your repository.   Say No to Shared Dev DBs Simply put, you wouldn’t dream of sharing a code checkout, why would you share a development database?  If you have a shared dev database, back it up, distribute the backups and take the shared version offline (including the dev db server once all projects are using DB VCS).  Doing DB VCS with a shared database is bound to cause problems as people won’t be able to easily script out their own changes from those that others are working on.   First prod release Copy prod to your beta/testing environment.  Add the schema changes table (or mechanism) and do a test run of your changes.  If successful you can schedule this to be run on production.   Evaluation After your first release, evaluate the pain points of the process.  Try to find tools or modifications to existing tools to help fix them.  Don’t leave stones unturned, iteratively evolve your tools and practices to make the process as seamless as possible.  This is why I suggest open source alternatives.  Nothing is set in stone, a good example was adding transactional support to TSqlMigrations.  We ran into situations where an update would break a database, so I added a feature to do transactional updates and rollback on errors!  Another good example is generating change scripts.  We have been manually making these for months now.  I found an open source project called Open DB Diff and integrated this with TSqlMigrations.  These were things we just accepted at the time when we began adopting our tool set.  Once we became comfortable with the base functionality, it was time to start automating more of the process.  Just like anything else with development, never be afraid to try to find tools to make your job easier!   Enjoy -Wes

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• SQL SERVER – Service Broker and CAP_CPU_PERCENT – Limiting SQL Server Instances to CPU Usage

  - by pinaldave

  I have mentioned several times on this blog that the best part of blogging is the questions I receive from readers. They are often very interesting. The questions from readers give me a good idea what other readers might be thinking as well. After reading my earlier article Simple Example to Configure Resource Governor – Introduction to Resource Governor – I received an email from a reader and we exchanged a few emails. After exchanging emails we both figured out what is going on. It was indeed interesting and reader suggested to that I should blog about it.  I asked for permission to publish his name but he does not like the attention so we will just call him Jeff. I have converted our emails into chat for easy consumption. Jeff: Your script does not work at all. I think either there is a bug in SQL Server. Pinal: Would you please explain in detail? Jeff: Your code does not limit the CPU usage? Pinal: How did you measure it? Jeff: Well, we have third party tools for it but let us say I have limited the resources for Reporting Services and used your script described in your blog. After that I ran only reporting service workload the CPU is still used more than 100% and it is not limited to 30% as described in your script. Clearly something is wrong somewhere. Pinal: Did you say you ONLY ran reporting server load? Jeff: Yeah, to validate I ran ONLY reporting server load and CPU did not throttle at 30% as per your script. Pinal: Oh! I get it here is the answer - CAP_CPU_PERCENT = 30. Use it. Jeff: What is that, I think your earlier script says it will throttle the Reporting Service workload and Application/OLTP workload and balance it. Pinal: Exactly, that is correct. Jeff: You need to write more in email buddy! Just like your blogs, your answers do not make sense! No Offense! Pinal: Hmm…feedback well taken. Let me try again. In SQL Server 2012 there are a few enhancements with regards to SQL Server Resource Governor. One of the enhancement is how the resources are allocated. Let me explain you with examples. Configuration: [Read Earlier Post] Reporting Workload: MIN_CPU_PERCENT=0, MAX_CPU_PERCENT=30 Application/OLTP Workload: MIN_CPU_PERCENT=50, MAX_CPU_PERCENT=100 Example 1: If there is only Reporting Workload on the server: SQL Server will not limit usage of CPU to only 30% workload but SQL Server instance will use all available CPU (if needed). In another word in this scenario it will use more than 30% CPU. Example 2: If there is Reproting Workload and heavy Application/OLTP workload: SQL Server will allocate a maximum of 30% CPU resources to Reporting Workload and allocate remaining resources to heavy application/OLTP workload. The reason for this enhancement is for better utilization of the resources. Let us think, if there is only single workload, which we have limited to max CPU usage to 30%. The other unused available CPU resources is now wasted. In this situation SQL Server allows the workload to use more than 30% resources leading to overall improved/optimized performance. However, in the case of multiple workload where lots of resources are needed the limits specified in MAX_CPU_PERCENT are acknowledged. Example 3: If there is a situation where the max CPU workload has to be enforced: This is a very interesting scenario, in the case when the max CPU workload has to be enforced irrespective of the workload and enhanced algorithm, the keyword CAP_CPU_PERCENT is essential. It specifies a hard cap on the CPU bandwidth that all requests in the resource pool will receive. It will never let CPU usage for reporting workload to go over 30% in our case. You can use the key word as follows: -- Creating Resource Pool for Report Server CREATE RESOURCE POOL ReportServerPool WITH ( MIN_CPU_PERCENT=0, MAX_CPU_PERCENT=30, CAP_CPU_PERCENT=40, MIN_MEMORY_PERCENT=0, MAX_MEMORY_PERCENT=30) GO Notice that there is MAX_CPU_PERCENT=30 and CAP_CPU_PERCENT=40, what it means is that when SQL Server Instance is under heavy load under different workload it will use the maximum CPU at 30%. However, when the SQL Server instance is not under workload it will go over the 30% limit. However, as CAP_CPU_PERCENT is set to 40, it will not go over 40% in any case by limiting the usage of CPU. CAP_CPU_PERCENT puts a hard limit on the resources usage by workload. Jeff: Nice Pinal, you should blog about it. [A day passes by] Pinal: Jeff, it is done! Click here to read it. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Service Broker

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• It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice

  - by BuckWoody

  I’ve been a little “preachy” lately, telling you that you should let people finish their sentences, and always check a problem out before you tell a user that their issue is “impossible”. Well, I’ll round that out with one more tip today. Keep in mind that all of these things are actions I’ve been guilty of, hopefully in the past. I’m kind of a “work in progress”. And yes, I know these tips are coming from someone who picks on people in presentations, but that is of course done in fun, and (hopefully) with the audience’s knowledge.   (No, this isn’t aimed at any one person or event in particular – I just see it happen a lot)   I’ve seen, unfortunately over and over, someone in authority react badly to someone who is incorrect, or at least perceived to be incorrect. This might manifest itself in a comment, post, question or whatever, but the point is that I’ve seen really intelligent people literally attack someone they view as getting something wrong. Don’t misunderstand me; if someone posts that you should always drop a production database in the middle of the day I think you should certainly speak up and mention that this might be a bad idea!  No, I’m talking about generalizations or even incorrect statements done in good faith. Let me explain with an example.   Suppose someone makes the statement: “If you don’t have enough space on your system, you can just use a DBCC command to shrink the database”. Let’s take two responses to this statement.   Response One: “That’s insane. Everyone knows that shrinking a database is a stupid idea, you’re just going to fragment your indexes all over the place.” Response Two: “That’s an interesting take – in my experience and from what I’ve read here (someurl.com) I think this might not be a universal best practice.”   Of course, both responses let the person making the statement and those reading it know that you don’t agree, and that it’s probably wrong. But the person you responded to and the general audience hearing you (or reading your response) might form two different opinions of you.   The first response says to me “this person really needs to be right, and takes arguments personally. They aren’t thinking of the other person at all, or the folks reading or hearing the exchange. They turned an incorrect technical statement into a personal attack. They haven’t left the other party any room to ‘save face’, and they have potentially turned what could be a positive learning experience for everyone into a negative. Also, they sound more than just a little arrogant.”   The second response says to me “this person has left room for everyone to save face, has presented evidence to the contrary and is thinking about moving the ball forward and getting it right rather than attacking someone for getting it wrong.” It’s the idea of questioning a statement rather than attacking a person.   Perhaps you have a different take. Maybe you think the “direct” approach is best – and maybe that’s worked for you. Something to consider is what you’ve really accomplished while using that first method. Sure, the info you provide is correct, and perhaps someone out there won’t shrink a database because of your response – but perhaps you’ve turned a lot more people off, and now they won’t listen to your other valuable information. You’ll be an expert, but another one of the nameless, arrogant jerks in technology. And I don’t think anyone likes to be thought of that way.   OK, I’ll get down off of the high-horse now. And I’ll keep the title of this entry (said to me by my grandmother when I was a little kid) in mind when I dismount. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Rob Blackwell on interoperability and Azure

  - by Eric Nelson

  At QCon in March we had a sample Azure application implemented in both Java and Ruby to demonstrate that the Windows Azure Platform is not just about .NET. The following is an interesting interview with Rob Blackwell, the R&D director of the partner who implemented the application. UK Interoperability Team Interviews Rob Blackwell, R&D Director at Active Web Solutions. Is Microsoft taking interoperability seriously? Yes. In the past, I think Microsoft has, quite rightly come in for criticism, but architects and developers should look at this again. The Interoperability Bridges site (http://www.interoperabilitybridges.com/ ) shows a wide range of projects that allow interoperability from Java, Ruby and PHP for example. The Windows Azure platform has been architected with interoperable APIs in mind. It's straightforward to access the various storage facilities from just about any language or platform. Azure compute is capable of running more than just C# applications! Why is interoperability important to you? My company provides consultancy and bespoke development services. We're a Microsoft Gold Partner, but we live in the real world where companies have a mix of technologies provided by a variety of vendors. When developing an enterprise software solution, you rarely have a completely blank canvas. We often see integration scenarios where we need to exchange data with legacy systems. It's not unusual to see modern Silverlight applications being built on top of Java or Mainframe based back ends. Could you give us some examples of where interoperability has been important for your projects? We developed an innovative Sea Safety system for the RNLI Lifeboats here in the UK. Commercial Fishing is one of the most dangerous professions and we helped developed the MOB Guardian System which uses satellite technology and man overboard devices to raise the alarm when a fisherman gets into trouble. The solution is implemented in .NET running on Windows, but without interoperable standards, it would have been impossible to communicate with the satellite gateway technology. For more information, please see the case study: http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?CaseStudyID=4000005892 More recently, we were asked to build a web site to accompany the QCon 2010 conference in London to help demonstrate and promote interoperability. We built the site using Java and Restlet and hosted it in Windows Azure Compute. The site accepts feedback from visitors and all the data is stored in Windows Azure Storage. We also ported the application to Ruby on Rails for demonstration purposes. Visitors to the stand were surprised that this was even possible. Why should Java developers be interested in Windows Azure? Windows Azure Storage consists of Blobs, Queues and Tables. The storage is scalable, durable, secure and cost-effective. Using the WindowsAzure4j library, it's easy to use, and takes just a few lines of code. If you are writing an application with large data storage requirements, or you want an offsite backup, it makes a lot of sense. Running Java applications in Azure Compute is straightforward with tools like the Tomcat Solution Accelerator (http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/winazuretomcat )and AzureRunMe (http://azurerunme.codeplex.com/ ). The Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus can also be used to connect heterogeneous systems running on different networks and in different data centres. How can The Service Bus be considered an interoperability solution? I think that the Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus is one of Microsoft’s best kept secrets. Think of it as “a globally scalable application plumbing kit in the sky”. If you have used Enterprise Service Buses before, you’ll be familiar with the concept. Applications can connect to the service bus to securely exchange data – these can be point to point or multicast links. With the AppFabric Service Bus, the applications can exist anywhere that has access to the Internet and the connections can traverse firewalls. This makes it easy to extend or scale your application or reach out to other networks and technologies. For example, let’s say you have a SQL Server database running on premises and you want to expose the data to a Java application running in the cloud. You could set up a point to point Service Bus connection and use JDBC. Traditionally this would have been difficult or impossible without punching holes in firewalls and compromising security. Rob Blackwell is R&D Director at Active Web Solutions, www.aws.net , a Microsoft Gold Partner specialising in leading edge software solutions. He is an occasional writer and conference speaker and blogs at www.robblackwell.org.uk Related Links: UK Azure Online Community – join today. UK Windows Azure Site Start working with Windows Azure

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• Add Hotmail & Live Email Accounts to Outlook 2010

  - by Matthew Guay

  Microsoft has recently been promoting upcoming updates to their Hotmail service, promising to make it an even better webmail service. But Microsoft’s revamped Outlook 2010 is already here. Here’s how to integrate Hotmail with Outlook. Outlook 2010 works with a wide variety of email accounts, including POP3, IMAP, and Exchange accounts.  The only problem with POP3 and IMAP accounts is that they only sync email, but not your calendar and contacts like Exchange does.  Hotmail, however, lets you sync your email, contacts, and calendar with Outlook with the Hotmail Connector.  This lets you keep all of your PIM data accessible from everywhere.  Let’s look at how we can set this up on our account. Getting Started The easiest way to add Hotmail to Outlook is to first install the Outlook Hotmail Connector (link below).  Make sure Outlook is closed first, and then proceed with the installation as usual. If you enter your Hotmail account into the New Account setup in Outlook before installing the Hotmail Connector, Outlook will prompt you to download the Hotmail Connector.  However, you’ll have to exit Outlook before you can install the Connector, and then will have to re-enter your information when you restart Outlook, so it’s easier to just install it first. Add Your Hotmail Account to Outlook Now you’re ready to add your Hotmail account to Outlook.  If this is the first time you’ve run Outlook 2010, you’ll be greeted with the following screen.  Click Next to proceed with setup. Then select Yes and click Next again. If you’ve already got an email account setup in Outlook, you can add a new account by clicking File and then selecting Add account. Now, enter your Hotmail account information, and click Next. Outlook will search for your account settings and automatically setup your account with the Hotmail connector we previously installed. If you entered your password incorrectly previously, you may see the following popup.  Re-enter your password and click OK, and Outlook will re-verify your settings. Once everything’s finished and setup, you’ll see the following completion screen.  Click Finish to complete the setup and check out your Hotmail in Outlook. Welcome to your Hotmail account in Outlook 2010.  You’ll notice a small notification at the bottom of the window notifying you that you’re connected to Windows Live Hotmail.  Now your email will synchronize with your Hotmail account, and your Outlook calendar and contacts will be synced with your Live calendar and contacts, respectively.  This is the closest you can get to full Exchange without an Exchange account, and in our experience it works great.  In fact, Hotmail Sync seems to work faster than IMAP sync for us. Setup Hotmail With POP3 Access If you need to access your Hotmail email account but don’t want to install the Outlook Connector, then you can add it with POP3 sync.  We recommend going with the Outlook Connector for the best experience, but if you can’t install it (eg. you’re not allowed to install applications on your work PC) then this is a good alternative. To do this, follow our tutorial on setting up a Gmail POP3 account in Outlook. Although the article concentrates on Gmail, the settings are essentially the same. The only thing you’ll want to change is the Incoming and Outgoing mail server. Incoming mail server – pop3.live.com Outgoing mail server – smtp.live.com User name – your Hotmail or Live email address Incoming Server (POP3) – 995 Outgoing Server (SMTP) – 587 Also, check This server requires and encrypted connection Just as in the Gmail example, select TLS for the type of encrypted connection.  Then, on the bottom, make sure to uncheck the box to Remove messages from the server after a number of days.  This way your messages will still be accessible from your Hotmail account online. Conclusion Even though Hotmail is generally not as popular as Gmail, it works great with Outlook integration.  If you’re a heavy user of Windows Live services, or want to try them out, Outlook Connector is the easiest way to keep your desktop activity synced with the cloud.  If you’re just one of the millions of Hotmail users who want to access their old Hotmail account alongside their other accounts, this method works great for you too. If you’re using Outlook 2003 or 2007, check out our article on using Hotmail from Microsoft Outlook. Links Download Outlook Hotmail Connector 32-bit Download Outlook Hotmail Connector 64-bit – note, only for users of Office 2010 x64 Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Use Hotmail from Microsoft OutlookHow to add any POP3 Email Account to HotmailHow to Send and Receive Hotmail from Your Gmail AccountAdd Your Gmail To Windows Live MailManage Your Windows Live Account in Google Chrome TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Creating a Password Reset Disk in Windows Bypass Waiting Time On Customer Service Calls With Lucyphone MELTUP – "The Beginning Of US Currency Crisis And Hyperinflation" Enable or Disable the Task Manager Using TaskMgrED Explorer++ is a Worthy Windows Explorer Alternative Error Goblin Explains Windows Error Codes

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• Top 4 Lame Tech Blogging Posts

  - by jkauffman

  From a consumption point of view, tech blogging is a great resource for one-off articles on niche subjects. If you spend any time reading tech blogs, you may find yourself running into several common, useless types of posts tech bloggers slip into. Some of these lame posts may just be natural due to common nerd psychology, and some others are probably due to lame, lemming-like laziness. I’m sure I’ll do my fair share of fitting the mold, but I quickly get bored when I happen upon posts that hit these patterns without any real purpose or personal touches. 1. The Content Regurgitation Posts This is a common pattern fueled by the starving pan-handlers in the web traffic economy. These are posts that are terse opinions or addendums to an existing post. I commonly see these involve huge block quotes from the linked article which almost always produces over 50% of the post itself. I’ve accidentally gone to these posts when I’m knowingly only interested in the source material. Web links can degrade as well, so if the source link is broken, then, well, I’m pretty steamed. I see this occur with simple opinions on technologies, Stack Overflow solutions, or various tech news like posts from Microsoft. It’s not uncommon to go to the linked article and see the author announce that he “added a blog post” as a response or summary of the topic. This is just rude, but those who do it are probably aware of this. It’s a matter of winning that sweet, juicy web traffic. I doubt this leeching is fooling anybody these days. I would like to rally human dignity and urge people to avoid these types of posts, and just leave a comment on the source material. 2. The “Sorry I Haven’t Posted In A While” Posts This one is far too common. You’ll most likely see this quote somewhere in the body of the offending post: I have been really busy. If the poster is especially guilt-ridden, you’ll see a few volleys of excuses. Here are some common reasons I’ve seen, which I’ll list from least to most painfully awkward. Out of town Vague allusions to personal health problems (these typically includes phrases like “sick”, “treatment'”, and “all better now!”) “Personal issues” (which I usually read as "divorce”) Graphic or specific personal health problems (maximum awkwardness potential is achieved if you see links to charity fund websites) I can’t help but to try over-analyzing why this occurs. Personally, I see this an an amalgamation of three plain factors: Life happens Us nerds are duty-driven, and driven to guilt at personal inefficiencies Tech blogs can become personal journals I don’t think we can do much about the first two, but on the third I think we could certainly contain our urges. I’m a pretty boring guy and, whether or I like it or not, I have an unspoken duty to protect the world from hearing about my unremarkable existence. Nobody cares what kind of sandwich I’m eating. Similarly, if I disappear for a while, it’s unlikely that anybody who happens upon my blog would care why. Rest assured, if I stop posting for a while due to a vasectomy, you will be the first to know. 3. The “At A Conference”, or “Conference Review” Posts I don’t know if I’m like everyone else on this one, but I have never been successfully interested in these posts. It even sounds like a good idea: if I can’t make it to a particular conference (like the KCDC this year), wouldn’t I be interested in a concentrated summary of events? Apparently, no! Within this realm, I’ve never read a post by a blogger that held my interest. What really baffles is is that, for whatever reason, I am genuinely engaged and interested when talking to someone in person regarding the same topic. I have noticed the same phenomenon when hearing about others’ vacations. If someone sends me an email about their vacation, I gloss over it and forget about it quickly. In contrast, if I’m speaking to that individual in person about their vacation, I’m actually interested. I’m unsure why the written medium eradicates the intrigue. I was raised by a roaming pack of friendly wild video games, so that may be a factor. 4. The “Top X Number of Y’s That Z” Posts I’ve seen this one crop up a lot more in the past few of years. Here are some fabricated examples: 5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Code Top 7 Good Habits Programmers Learn From Experience The 8 Things to Consider When Giving Estimates Top 4 Lame Tech Blogging Posts These are attention-grabbing headlines, and I’d assume they rack up hits. In fact, I enjoy a good number of these. But, I’ve been drawn to articles like this just to find an endless list of identically formatted posts on the blog’s archive sidebar. Often times these posts have overlapping topics, too. These types of posts give the impression that the author has given thought to prioritize and organize the points as a result of a comprehensive consideration of a particular topic. Did the author really weigh all the possibilities when identifying the “Top 4 Lame Tech Blogging Patterns”? Unfortunately, probably not. What a tool. To reiterate, I still enjoy the format, but I feel it is abused. Nowadays, I’m pretty skeptical when approaching posts in this format. If these trends continue, my brain will filter these blog posts out just as effectively as it ignores the encroaching “do xxx with this one trick” advertisements. Conclusion To active blog readers, I hope my guide has served you precious time in being able to identify lame blog posts at a glance. Save time and energy by skipping over the chaff of the internet! And if you author a blog, perhaps my insight will help you to avoid the occasional urge to produce these needless filler posts.

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• RK4 Bouncing a Ball

  - by Jonathan Dickinson

  I am trying to wrap my head around RK4. I decided to do the most basic 'ball with gravity that bounces' simulation. I have implemented the following integrator given Glenn Fiedler's tutorial: /// <summary> /// Represents physics state. /// </summary> public struct State { // Also used internally as derivative. // S: Position // D: Velocity. /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the Position. /// </summary> public Vector2 X; // S: Position // D: Acceleration. /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the Velocity. /// </summary> public Vector2 V; } /// <summary> /// Calculates the force given the specified state. /// </summary> /// <param name="state">The state.</param> /// <param name="t">The time.</param> /// <param name="acceleration">The value that should be updated with the acceleration.</param> public delegate void EulerIntegrator(ref State state, float t, ref Vector2 acceleration); /// <summary> /// Represents the RK4 Integrator. /// </summary> public static class RK4 { private const float OneSixth = 1.0f / 6.0f; private static void Evaluate(EulerIntegrator integrator, ref State initial, float t, float dt, ref State derivative, ref State output) { var state = new State(); // These are a premature optimization. I like premature optimization. // So let's not concentrate on that. state.X.X = initial.X.X + derivative.X.X * dt; state.X.Y = initial.X.Y + derivative.X.Y * dt; state.V.X = initial.V.X + derivative.V.X * dt; state.V.Y = initial.V.Y + derivative.V.Y * dt; output = new State(); output.X.X = state.V.X; output.X.Y = state.V.Y; integrator(ref state, t + dt, ref output.V); } /// <summary> /// Performs RK4 integration over the specified state. /// </summary> /// <param name="eulerIntegrator">The euler integrator.</param> /// <param name="state">The state.</param> /// <param name="t">The t.</param> /// <param name="dt">The dt.</param> public static void Integrate(EulerIntegrator eulerIntegrator, ref State state, float t, float dt) { var a = new State(); var b = new State(); var c = new State(); var d = new State(); Evaluate(eulerIntegrator, ref state, t, 0.0f, ref a, ref a); Evaluate(eulerIntegrator, ref state, t + dt * 0.5f, dt * 0.5f, ref a, ref b); Evaluate(eulerIntegrator, ref state, t + dt * 0.5f, dt * 0.5f, ref b, ref c); Evaluate(eulerIntegrator, ref state, t + dt, dt, ref c, ref d); a.X.X = OneSixth * (a.X.X + 2.0f * (b.X.X + c.X.X) + d.X.X); a.X.Y = OneSixth * (a.X.Y + 2.0f * (b.X.Y + c.X.Y) + d.X.Y); a.V.X = OneSixth * (a.V.X + 2.0f * (b.V.X + c.V.X) + d.V.X); a.V.Y = OneSixth * (a.V.Y + 2.0f * (b.V.Y + c.V.Y) + d.V.Y); state.X.X = state.X.X + a.X.X * dt; state.X.Y = state.X.Y + a.X.Y * dt; state.V.X = state.V.X + a.V.X * dt; state.V.Y = state.V.Y + a.V.Y * dt; } } After reading over the tutorial I noticed a few things that just seemed 'out' to me. Notably how the entire simulation revolves around t at 0 and state at 0 - considering that we are working out a curve over the duration it seems logical that RK4 wouldn't be able to handle this simple scenario. Never-the-less I forged on and wrote a very simple Euler integrator: static void Integrator(ref State state, float t, ref Vector2 acceleration) { if (state.X.Y > 100 && state.V.Y > 0) { // Bounce vertically. acceleration.Y = -state.V.Y * t; } else { acceleration.Y = 9.8f; } } I then ran the code against a simple fixed-time step loop and this is what I got: 0.05 0.20 0.44 0.78 1.23 1.76 ... 74.53 78.40 82.37 86.44 90.60 94.86 99.23 103.05 105.45 106.94 107.86 108.42 108.76 108.96 109.08 109.15 109.19 109.21 109.23 109.23 109.24 109.24 109.24 109.24 109.24 109.24 109.24 109.24 109.24 109.24 109.24 109.24 109.24 109.24 ... As I said, I was expecting it to break - however I am unsure of how to fix it. I am currently looking into keeping the previous state and time, and working from that - although at the same time I assume that will defeat the purpose of RK4. How would I get this simulation to print the expected results?

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• Gartner PCC Follow-up: Interview with Chaeny Emanavin, Usability Lead - Office of Information Develo

  - by [email protected]

  Last week at the Gartner Portals, Content and Collaboration conference in Baltimore, Chaeny and I co-presented on Oracle Enterprise 2.0 and BIA's Citizen Portal. Chaeny's presentation about the BIA solution was very well received and I wanted to do a follow-up interview with Chaeny to discuss more details about their solution and its Enterprise 2.0 features. Ajay: What were the main objectives for the BIA Citizen Portal? Chaeny: The BIA Citizen Portal is designed to provide all the services of the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the community of 564 federally recognized tribes that include over 1.9 million American Indians and Alaska Natives. The BIA provides the same breadth of services that the entire U.S. Federal Government provides in one small Bureau. So, we needed a solution that was flexible enough to handle content ranging from law enforcement to housing to education. Key objectives for external users was to use the Web as a communications channel and keep them informed on what services are available. We also wanted to build an internal web presence and community for BIA's 5000 employees to ensure that they update their content, leverage internal experts and create single sources of truth for key policy documents. Ajay: How is the project being implemented? Chaeny: We are using a phased approach. In phases 1 & 2, interim internal and external sites were built to ensure usability and functional requirements are being met. In Phases 3 & 4, we built out a modern internal and external presence using Oracle WebCenter Suite and Oracle Universal Content Management (UCM), including enabling delegated content management for our internal business units. Phase 4 was completed in January 2010. Phase 5 will add deeper Enterprise 2.0 collaboration capabilities to the solution. Ajay: Are you integrating any existing sites into the new solution? Chaeny: Yes, we have a SharePoint implementation that we are using for document management. We needed more precise functionality however. We found that SharePoint would let individual administrators of a SharePoint site actually create new sites. In a 3 months span, we had over 200 new sites created and most were not being used. So, we had an enormous sprawl problem. Our requirements mandated increased governance and more granular control over the creation of sites and flexible user access to content. In SharePoint this required custom code and was very time-intensive which was unfeasible given our tight deadlines. We are piloting Oracle WebCenter Spaces as our collaboration solution to mitigate these issues. However, we must integrate our existing SharePoint investment which we can do easily by using the SharePoint connectors available in Oracle WebCenter and UCM. Ajay: What were the key design parameters for your solution? Chaeny: We wanted everything driven by standards and policies. We created a cross-functional steering group called the Indian Affairs Web Council to codify policies that were baked into the system. Other key design areas were focused on security/governance, self-service content management, ease of use, integration with legacy applications and seamless single sign-on. We are using Dublin Core as our metadata standard. We also are using Java, APEX, and ADF as our development standards. Ajay: Why was it important to standardize on a platform? Chaeny: We initially looked at best-of-breed solutions, but we faced a lot of issues getting the different solutions to work together. Going with an integrated solution was more economical, easier to learn and faster to deliver the solution. Ajay: What type of legacy applications are you integrating into the portal? Chaeny: Initially we are starting with administrative apps such as people directory and user admin and then we will integrate HR and Financial applications among others. Ajay: Can you describe some of the E20 collaboration features you are putting into the solution? Chaeny: We are adding Enterprise 2.0 using Oracle WebCenter Spaces to deliver different collaboration tools such as wikis, blogs and discussion forums. Wikis to create rapid, ad hoc monthly roll-up reports; discussion forums to provide context-specific help; blogs to capture tacit organization knowledge from experts, identify gurus and turn tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge. Ajay: Are you doing anything specifically to spur adoption and usage? Chaeny: Yes, we did several things that I think helped us ramp quickly. First, we met our commitments for the new system launch date and also provided extra resources for a customer support "hotline" during the launch period. Prior to launch, we did exhaustive usability studies to capture user requirements around functionality, navigation and other key interaction areas. We also created extensive training programs so that the content managers in each business unit were comfortable using the content management tools and knew the best practices for usage. Finally, to launch the Enterprise 2.0 collaboration capabilities, we are working with a pilot group from the Division of Forestry and Wildland Fire Management of BIA. This group of people in the past have been willing early adopters and they have a strong business need to collaborate with many agencies both internal and external across State, County and other Federal jurisdictions. Their feedback is key to helping us launch Enterprise 2.0 successfully in our broader organization. Ajay: What were the biggest benefits to internal BIA employees and to the external community of users? Chaeny: For our employees, the new Enterprise 2.0-based solution will make it easier to find information; enhance employee productivity by embedding standard business processes into the system and create more of a community by creating connections with experts via social collaboration to ultimately provide better services more quickly. For the external American Indian and Alaska Native communities, we have a better relationship with the users and the new site has improved BIA's perception as a more responsive and customer-centric organization.

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• 2010 Collaboration Summit Impressions

  - by Elena Zannoni

  It's a bit late, but there you have it anyway. April 14 to 16 I attended the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit in SFO. I was running two tracks, one on tracing and one on tools. You can see the tracks and the slides here: http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/collaboration-summit/slides I was pretty busy both days, Thursday with a whole day tracing track, Friday with a half day toolchain track. The sessions were well attended, the rooms were full, with people spilling in the hallways. Some new things were presented, like Kernelshark, by Steve Rostedt, a GUI (yes, believe it or not, a GUI) written in GTK. It is very nice, showing a timeline for traced kernel events, and you can zoom in and filter at will. It works on the latest kernels, and it requires some new things/fixes in GTK. I don't recall exactly what version of GTK though. Dominique Toupin from Ericsson presented something about user requirements for tracing. Mostly though about who's who in the embedded world, and eclipse. Masami and Mathieu presented an update on their work. See their slides. The interesting thing to me was of course the new version of uprobes w/o underlying utrace presented by Jim Keniston. At the end of the session we had a discussion about the future of utrace. Roland wasn't there, butTom Tromey (also from RedHat) collected the feedback. Basically we are at a standstill now that utrace has been rejected yet again. There wasn't much advise that anybody could give, except jokingly, we decided that the only way in is to make it a part of perf events. There needs to be another refactoring, but most of all, this "killer app" that would be enabled because of utrace hasn't materialized yet. We think that having a good debugging story on Linux is enough of a killer app, for instance allowing multiple tracers, and not relying on SIGCHLD etc. I think this wasn't completely clear to the kernel community. Trying to achieve debugging via a gdb stub inside the kernel interfacing to utrace and that is controlled via the gdb remote protocol also lost its appeal (thankfully, since the gdb remote protocol is archaic). Somebody would have to be creative in how to submit utrace. It doesn't have to be called utrace (it was really a random choice, for lack of a letter that was not already used in front of the word "trace"). So basically, I think the ideas behind utrace are sound, and the necessity of a new interface is acknowledged. But I believe the integration/submission process with the kernel folks has to restart from scratch, clean slate. We'll see. There are many conferences and meetings coming up in the near future where things can be discussed further. On the second day, Friday, we had the tools talks. It was interesting to observe the more "kernel" oriented people's behavior towards the gcc etc community. The first talk was by Mark Mitchell, about Gcc and its new plugin architecture. After that, Paolo talked about the new C++1x standard, which will be finalized in 2011. Many features are already implemented in the libstdc++ library and gcc and usable today. We had a few minutes (really, the half day track was quite short) where Bradley Kuhn from the Software Freedom Law Center explained the GPLv3 exception for gcc (due to the new gcc plugin architecture and the availability of the intermediate results from the compilation, which is a new thing). I will not try to explain, but basically you cannot take the result of the preprocessing and then use that in your own proprietary compiler. After, we had a talk by Ian Taylor about the new Gold linker. One good thing in that area is that they are trying to make gold the new default linker (for instance Fedora will use gold as the distro linker). However gold is very different from binutils' old linker. It doesn't use a linker script, for instance. The kernel has been linked with gold many times as an exercise (the ground work was done by Kris Van Hees), but this needs to be constantly tested/monitored because the kernel linker script is very complex, and uses esoteric features (Wenji is now monitoring that each kernel RC can be built with gold). It was positive that people are now aware of gold and the need for it to be ported to more architectures. It seems that the porting is very easy, with little arch dependent code. Finally Tom Tromey presented about gdb and the archer project. Archer is a development branch of gdb mostly done by RedHat, where they are focusing on better c++ printing, c++ expression parsing, and plugins. The archer work is merged regularly in the gdb mainline. In general it was a good conference. I did miss most of the first day, because that's when I flew in. But I caught a couple of talks. Nothing earth shattering, except for Google giving each person registered a free Android phone. Yey.

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• SharePoint Saturday Michigan 2010 Recap, Slides, and Photos

  - by Brian Jackett

  This past weekend I attended SharePoint Saturday Michigan (SPSMI) in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  For those unfamiliar, SharePoint Saturday is a community driven event where various speakers gather to present at a FREE conference on all topics related to SharePoint.  This made my third SharePoint Saturday attended and second I’ve spoken at.  I believe today it was announced that about 210 people total attended the event.  I was very happy with the turnout, especially the ratio of male to female attendees.  Typically with computer related conferences the ratio leans towards more males attending, but both Peter Serzo (one of conference organizers) and I both commented to each other that at the end of the day it appeared to be close to 40% women in the crowd.  So here’s my recap of the weekend. Arrival     Friday afternoon I drove up from Columbus, OH to Ann Arbor, MI and arrived around 4pm.  I was attempting to avoid the rush hour traffic and construction backups.  Turned out to be a good idea because other speakers coming up Friday got stuck on a highway which literally closed down in both directions due to a bad accident.  I was talking my friend Sean McDonough through the highway closing and this was the first time I had seen a solid black traffic line on Google Maps.  Most of us are familiar with Green, Yellow, and Red, but this line was black if that tells you how bad it got. Speaker “Dinner”     Fast forward a few hours and it was time for the speaker “dinner.”  I put “dinner” in quotes because with this night alone SPSMI set a new bar for nicest and most extravagant speaker appreciation events for SharePoint Saturday.  By tapping into some very influential contacts, the conference organizers were able to provide a truck limo (yep you heard right) with refreshments, access to an underground suite at the Palace of Auburn Hills, and courtside tickets to see the Detroit Pistons play that night.  Being a Michigan native I have to say that I was absolutely floored by this experience and very thankful to our conference organizers Peter, Sebastian, and Jesse along with Trillium Teamologies. Sessions     The actual conference started Saturday morning at 9am with the keynote by Rob Collie who is the Microsoft program manager for PowerPivot.  The day continued and I attended the following sessions: Mike Watson (@mikewat) – “SharePoint 2010 Fight Night: Devs vs. Admins” Karl Swedeberg (@kswedberg) – “A Walk on the Client Side with jQuery“ [my session] Brian Jackett (@briantjackett) - “Real World Deployment of SharePoint 2007 Solutions” Jeff Willinger (@jwillie) - “Social Computing and Collaboration Inside and Outside the 4 Walls” Paul Schaeflein (@paulschaeflein) – “PowerShell for the SharePoint Developer” My Presentation     I had a great time presenting my session on Deploying SharePoint 2007 Solutions, but it wasn’t without its fair share of technical issues.  As my session was right after lunch I came in to my room 10 mins early to set up my laptop, slides, and demos.  As a quick background note, a few months ago I got an upgraded laptop from my company Sogeti and have been dual booting it between XP (factory installed) and Windows Server 2008 R2 w/ Hyper-V.  As such I had prepared all of my demo virtual machines to run under Hyper-V.  About 3 minutes before my session was scheduled to start though it became apparent that I did not have the correct display drivers to connect Windows Server 2008 R2 to the projector…     As you can imagine this was a slight cause for concern as I was potentially going to be unable to give my presentation.  Luckily for me I usually prepare for such unforeseen issues and had my presentation and some spare VMs that would run on XP on my external hard drive.  Knowing this I rebooted my machine into XP and began my presentation without slides until about 5 mins into the session when everything was up and running on XP.  Despite this being the first time I gave this presentation I have to say it was one of my favorites I’ve given so far.  The audience was very engaged in the session and I received some great, positive feedback afterwards.  Thanks to all who attended my session, I appreciate it very much. Link to Presentation Files     For those of you who attended my session and would like my slides or demo PowerShell scripts they can be found on my SkyDrive at the link below.  Also, if you have a few minutes and wouldn’t mind rating my session I have this session posted on SpeakerRate.  As speakers we always appreciate any and all feedback attendees offer, so thank you if you are able to provide any. SkyDrive folder with session files Rate my SharePoint 2007 Solutions session   Picture Albums     For everyone else, here are my pictures from the weekend.  The first link is to my FaceBook album which will have tagging (recommend this one.)  The second is to my Live album if you care for higher resolution images. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2154482&id=21905041&l=a3fb72ee8c View Full Album Conclusion     A big thank you goes out to all of the organizers, speakers, sponsors, and attendees of SPSMI.  As I’ve said so many times, without each and every one of you these events wouldn’t be possible.  I thoroughly enjoyed this trip back to my home state and presenting a new session.  For those interested in my upcoming schedule I will be giving two sessions on PowerShell at SharePoint Saturday Charlotte in April, helping plan Stir Trek: Iron Man Edition in May, and I’m submitting sessions to Day of .Net Ann Arbor in May as well.  Beyond that I haven’t planned out any travels.  Thanks for reading my recap.  Look forward to more technical posts now that I have a short break in conferences.         -Frog Out   links: Michigan image

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• Nerdstock 2012: A photo review of Microsoft TechEd North America 2012

  - by The Un-T Guy

  Not only could I not fathom that I would ever be attending a tech event of the magnitude of TechEd, neither could any of my co-workers.  As the least technical person in the history of Information Technology ever, I felt as though I were walking into the belly of the beast, fearing I’d not be allowed out until I could write SSIS packages, program in Visual Basic, or at least arm wrestle a DBA.  Most of my fears were unrealized.   But I made it.  I was here.  I even got to wear the Mark of the Geek neck package with schedule, eyeglass cleaners, name badge (company name obfuscated so they don’t fire me), and a pen.  The name  badge was seemingly the key element, as every vendor in the place wanted to scan it to capture name, email address, and numbers to show their bosses back home.  It also let me eat the food and drink the coffee so that’s a fair trade.   A recurring theme throughout the presentations and vendor demos was “the Cloud” and BYOD (bring your own device).  The below was a common site throughout the week, as attendees from all over the world brought their own devices and were able to (seemingly) seamlessly connect to the Worldwide Innerwebs.  Apparently proof that Microsoft and the event organizers were practicing what they were preaching.   “Cavernous” is one way to describe the downstairs facility itself.  “Freaking cavernous” might be more accurate.  Work sessions were held in classrooms on the second and third floors but the real action was happening downstairs.  Microsoft bookstore, blogger hub (shoutout to Geekswithblogs.net), The Wall (sans Pink Floyd, sadly), couches, recharging stations…   …a game zone with pool and air hockey tables, pinball machines, foosball…   …vintage video games…           …and a even giant chess board.  Looked like this guy was opening with the Kaspersky parry.   The blend of technology and fantasy even went so far as to bring childhood favorites to life.  Assuming, of course, your childhood was pre-video games (like mine) and you were stuck with electric football and Rock ‘em Sock ‘em robots:   And, lest the “combatants” become unruly or – God forbid – afternoon snacks were late, Orange County’s finest was on the scene to keep the peace.  On a high-tech mode of transport, of course.   She wasn’t the only one to think this was a swell way to transition from one concourse to the next.  Given the level of support provided by the entire Orange County Convention Center staff, I knew they had to have some secret.   Here’s one entrance to the vendor zone/”Technical Learning Center.”  Couldn’t help but think of them as the remora attached to the Whale Shark that is Microsoft…   …or perhaps planets orbiting the sun. Microsoft is just that huge and it seemed like every vendor in the industry looks forward to partnering with the tech behemoth.   Aside from the free stuff from the vendors, probably the most popular place in the house was the dining area.  Amazing spreads every day, multiple times a day.  While no attendance numbers were available at press time, literally thousands of attendees were fed, and fed well, every day.  And lest you think my post from earlier in the week exaggerated about the backpacks…   …or that I’m exaggerating about the lunch crowds.  This represents only about between 25-30% of the lunch crowd – it was all my camera could capture at once.  No one went away hungry.   The only thing missing was a a vat of Red Bull but apparently organizers went old school, with probably 100 urns of the original energy drink – coffee – all around the venue.   Of course, following lunch and afternoon sessions, some preferred the even older school method of re-energizing.  There were rumors that Microsoft was serving graham crackers and milk in this area.  But they were only rumors.   Cannot overstate the wonderful service provided by the Orange County Convention Center staff.  Coffee, soft drinks, juice, and water were available always.  Buffet meals were delicious with a wide range of healthy options available, in addition to hundreds (at least) special meal requests supported every day.  Ever tried to keep up with an estimated 9,000 hungry and thirsty IT-ers?  These folks did.  Kudos to all of the staff and many thanks!   And while I occasionally poke fun at the Whale Shark, if nothing else this experience convinced me of one thing:  Microsoft knows how to put on a professional event.  Hundreds of informative, professionally delivered sessions, covering a wide range of topics set at varying levels of expertise (some that even I was able to follow), social activities, vendor partnerships…they brought everything you could ask for to inform, educate, and inspire an entire IT industry.   So as I depart the belly of the beast, I can both take pride in the fact that I survived the week and marvel at the brilliance surrounding me.  The IT industry – or at least the segment associated with Microsoft – is in good, professional hands.  And what won’t fit in their hands can be toted in the Microsoft provided backpacks.  Win-win.   Until New Orleans…

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• Seven Worlds will collide…. High Availability BI is not such a Distant Sun.

  - by Testas

  Over the last 5 years I have observed Microsoft persevere with the notion of Self Service BI over a series of conferences as far back as SQLBits V in Newport. The release of SQL Server 2012, improvements in Excel and the integration with SharePoint 2010 is making this a reality. Business users are now empowered to create their own BI reports through a number of different technologies such as PowerPivot, PowerView and Report Builder. This opens up a whole new way of working; improving staff productivity, promoting efficient decision making and delivering timely business reports. There is, however; a serious question to answer. What happens should any of these applications become unavailable? More to the point, how would the business react should key business users be unable to fulfil reporting requests for key management meetings when they require it?  While the introduction of self-service BI will provide instant access to the creation of management information reports, it will also cause instant support calls should the access to the data become unavailable. These are questions that are often overlooked when a business evaluates the need for self-service BI. But as I have written in other blog posts, the thirst for information is unquenchable once the business users have access to the data. When they are unable to access the information, you will be the first to know about it and will be expected to have a resolution to the downtime as soon as possible. The world of self-service BI is pushing reporting and analytical databases to the tier 1 application level for some of Coeo’s customers. A level that is traditionally associated with mission critical OLTP environments. There is recognition that by making BI readily available to the business user, provisions also need to be made to ensure that the solution is highly available so that there is minimal disruption to the business. This is where High Availability BI infrastructures provide a solution. As there is a convergence of technologies to support a self-service BI culture, there is also a convergence of technologies that need to be understood in order to provide the high availability architecture required to support the self-service BI infrastructure. While you may not be the individual that implements these components, understanding the concepts behind these components will empower you to have meaningful discussions with the right people should you put this infrastructure in place. There are 7 worlds that you will have to understand to successfully implement a highly available BI infrastructure   1.       Server/Virtualised server hardware/software 2.       DNS 3.       Network Load Balancing 4.       Active Directory 5.       Kerberos 6.       SharePoint 7.       SQL Server I have found myself over the last 6 months reaching out to knowledge that I learnt years ago when I studied for the Windows 2000 and 2003 (MCSE) Microsoft Certified System Engineer. (To the point that I am resuming my studies for the Windows Server 2008 equivalent to be up to date with newer technologies) This knowledge has proved very useful in the numerous engagements I have undertaken since being at Coeo, particularly when dealing with High Availability Infrastructures. As a result of running my session at SQLBits X and SQL Saturday in Dublin, the feedback I have received has been that many individuals desire to understand more of the concepts behind the first 6 “worlds” in the list above. Over the coming weeks, a series of blog posts will be put on this site to help understand the key concepts of each area as it pertains to a High Availability BI Infrastructure. Each post will not provide exhaustive coverage of the topic. For example DNS can be a book in its own right when you consider that there are so many different configuration options with Forward Lookup, Reverse Lookups, AD Integrated Zones and DNA forwarders to name some examples. What I want to do is share the pertinent points as it pertains to the BI infrastructure that you build so that you are equipped with the knowledge to have the right discussion when planning this infrastructure. Next, we will focus on the server infrastructure that will be required to support the High Availability BI Infrastructure, from both a physical box and virtualised perspective. Thanks   Chris

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• Review of Samsung Focus Windows Phone 7

  - by mbcrump

  I recently acquired a Samsung Focus Windows Phone 7 device from AT&T and wanted to share what I thought of it as an end-user. Before I get started, here are several of my write-ups for the Windows Phone 7. You may want to check out the second article titled: Hands-on WP7 Review of Prototype Hardware. From start to finish with the final version of Visual Studio Tools for Windows Phone 7 Hands-on : Windows Phone 7 Review on Prototype Hardware. Deploying your Windows Phone 7 Application to the actual hardware. Profile your Windows Phone 7 Application for Free Submitting a Windows Phone 7 Application to the Market. Samsung Focus i917 Phone Size: Perfect! I have been carrying around a Dell Streak (Android) and it is about half the size. It is really nice to have a phone that fits in your pocket without a lot of extra bulk. I bought a case for the Focus and it is still a perfect size.  The phone just feels right. Screen: It has a beautiful Super AMOLED 480x800 screen. I only wish it supported a higher resolution. The colors are beautiful especially in an Xbox Live Game.   3G: I use AT&T and I've had spotty reception. This really can't be blamed on the phone as much as the actual carrier. Battery: I've had excellent battery life compared to my iPhone and Android devices. I usually use my phone throughout the day on and off and still have a charge at the end of the day.  Camera/Video: I'm still looking for the option to send the video to YouTube or the Image to Twitter. The images look good, but the phone needs a forward facing camera. I like the iPhone/Android (Dell Streak) camera better. Built-in Speaker: Sounds great. It’s not a wimpy speaker that you cannot hear.  CPU: Very smooth transitioning from one screen to another. The prototype Windows Phone 7 that I had, was no where near as smooth. (It was also running a slower processor though). OS: I actually like the OS but a few things could be better. CONS: Copy and Paste (Supposed to come in the next update) We need more apps (Pandora missing was a big one for me and Slacker’s advertisement sucks!). As time passes, and more developers get on board then this will be fixed. The browser needs some major work. I have tried to make cross-platform (WP7, Android, iPhone and iPad) web apps and the browser that ships with WP7 just can’t handle it.  Apps need to be organized better. Instead of throw them all on one screen, it would help to allow the user to create categories. PROS: Hands down the best gaming experience on a phone. I have all three major phones (iphone, android and wp7). Nothing compares to the gaming experience on the WP7. The phone just works. I’ve had a LOT of glitches with my Android device. I’ve had maybe 2 with my WP7 device. Exchange and Office support are great. Nice integration with Twitter/Facebook and social media. Easy to navigate and find the information you need on one screen. Let’s look at a few pictures and we will wrap up with my final thoughts on the phone. WP7 Home Screen. Back of the phone is as stylish. It is hard to see due to the shadow but it is a very thin phone. What’s included? Manuals Ear buds Data Cable plus Power Adapter Phone Click a picture to enlarge So, what are my final thoughts on the Phone/OS? I love the Samsung Focus and would recommend it to anyone looking for a WP7 device. Like any first generation product, you need to give it a little while to mature. Right now the phone is missing several features that we are all used to using. That doesn’t mean a year from now it will be in the same situation. (I sure hope we won’t). If you are looking to get into mobile development, I believe WP7 is the easiest platform to develop from. This is especially true if you have a background in Silverlight or WPF.    Subscribe to my feed

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