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• Experience your music in a whole new way with Zune for PC

  - by Matthew Guay

  Tired of the standard Media Player look and feel, and want something new and innovative?  Zune offers a fresh, new way to enjoy your music, videos, pictures, and podcasts, whether or not you own a Zune device. Microsoft started out on a new multimedia experience for PCs and mobile devices with the launch of the Zune several years ago.  The Zune devices have been well received and noted for their innovative UI, and the Zune HD’s fluid interface is the foundation for the widely anticipated Windows Phone 7.  But regardless of whether or not you have a Zune Device, you can still use the exciting new UI and services directly from your PC.  Zune for Windows is a very nice media player that offers a music and video store and wide support for multimedia formats including those used in Apple products.  And if you enjoy listening to a wide variety of music, it also offers the Zune Pass which lets you stream an unlimited number of songs to your computer and download 10 songs for keeps per month for $14.99/month. Or you can do a pre-paid music card as well.  It does all this using the new Metro UI which beautifully shows information using text in a whole new way.  Here’s a quick look at setting up and using Zune on your PC. Getting Started Download the installer (link below), and run it to begin setup.  Please note that Zune offers a separate version for computers running the 64 bit version of Windows Vista or 7, so choose it if your computer is running these. Once your download is finished, run the installer to setup Zune on your computer.  Accept the EULA when prompted. If there are any updates available, they will automatically download and install during the setup.  So, if you’re installing Zune from a disk (for example, one packaged with a Zune device), you don’t have to worry if you have the latest version.  Zune will proceed to install on your computer.   It may prompt you to restart your computer after installation; click Restart Now so you can proceed with your Zune setup.  The reboot appears to be for Zune device support, and the program ran fine otherwise without rebooting, so you could possibly skip this step if you’re not using a Zune device.  However, to be on the safe side, go ahead and reboot. After rebooting, launch Zune.  It will play a cute introduction video on first launch; press skip if you don’t want to watch it. Zune will now ask you if you want to keep the default settings or change them.  Choose Start to keep the defaults, or Settings to customize to your wishes.  Do note that the default settings will set Zune as your default media player, so click Settings if you wish to change this. If you choose to change the default settings, you can change how Zune finds and stores media on your computer.  In Windows 7, Zune will by default use your Windows 7 Libraries to manage your media, and will in fact add a new Podcasts library to Windows 7. If your media is stored on another location, such as on a server, then you can add this to the Library.  Please note that this adds the location to your system-wide library, not just the Zune player. There’s one last step.  Enter three of your favorite artists, and Zune will add Smart DJ mixes to your Quickplay list based on these.  Some less famous or popular artists may not be recognized, so you may have to try another if your choice isn’t available.  Or, you can click Skip if you don’t want to do this right now. Welcome to Zune!  This is the default first page, QuickPlay, where you can easily access your pinned and new items.   If you have a Zune account, or would like to create a new one, click Sign In on the top. Creating a new account is quick and simple, and if you’re new to Zune, you can try out a 14 day trial of Zune Pass for free if you want. Zune allows you to share your listening habits and favorites with friends or the world, but you can turn this off or change it if you like. Using Zune for Windows To access your media, click the Collection link on the top left.  Zune will show all the media you already have stored on your computer, organized by artist and album. Right-click on any album, and you choose to have Zune find album art or do a variety of other tasks with the media.   When playing media, you can view it in several unique ways.  First, the default Mix view will show related tracks to the music you’re playing from Smart DJ.  You can either play these fully if you’re a Zune Pass subscriber, or otherwise you can play 30 second previews. Then, for many popular artists, Zune will change the player background to show pictures and information in a unique way while the music is playing.  The information may range from history about the artist to the popularity of the song being played.   Zune also works as a nice viewer for the pictures on your computer. Start a slideshow, and Zune will play your pictures with nice transition effects and music from your library. Zune Store The Zune Store offers a wide variety of music, TV shows, and videos for purchase.  If you’re a Zune Pass subscriber, you can listen to or download any song without purchasing it; otherwise, you can preview a 30 second clip first. Zune also offers a wide selection of Podcasts you can subscribe to for free. Using Zune for PC with a Zune Device If you have a Zune device attached to your computer, you can easily add media files to it by simply dragging them to the Zune device icon in the left corner.  In the future, this will also work with Windows Phone 7 devices. If you have a Zune HD, you can also download and add apps to your device. Here’s the detailed information window for the weather app.  Click Download to add it to your device.   Mini Mode The Zune player generally takes up a large portion of your screen, and is actually most impressive when run maximized.  However, if you’re simply wanting to enjoy your tunes while you’re using your computer, you can use the Mini mode to still view music info and control Zune in a smaller mode.  Click the Mini Player button near the window control buttons in the top right to activate it. Now Zune will take up much less of your desktop.  This window will stay on top of other windows so you can still easily view and control it. Zune will display an image of the artist if one is available, and this shows up in Mini mode more often than it does in the full mode. And, in Windows 7, you could simply minimize Zune as you can control it directly from the taskbar thumbnail preview.   Even more controls are available from Zune’s jumplist in Windows 7.  You can directly access your Quickplay links or choose to shuffle all music without leaving the taskbar. Settings Although Zune is designed to be used without confusing menus and settings, you can tweak the program to your liking from the settings panel.  Click Settings near the top left of the window. Here you can change file storage, types, burn, metadata, and many more settings.  You can also setup Zune to stream media to your XBOX 360 if you have one.   You can also customize Zune’s look with a variety of modern backgrounds and gradients. Conclusion If you’re ready for a fresh way to enjoy your media, Zune is designed for you.  It’s innovative UI definitely sets it apart from standard media players, and is very pleasing to use.  Zune is especially nice if your computer is using XP, Vista Home Basic, or 7 Starter as these versions of Windows don’t include Media Center.  Additionally, the mini player mode is a nice touch that brings a feature of Windows 7’s Media Player to XP and Vista.  Zune is definitely one of our favorite music apps.  Try it out, and get a fresh view of your music today! 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• ODI 11g – Expert Accelerator for Model Creation

  - by David Allan

  Following on from my post earlier this morning on scripting model and topology creation tonight I thought I’d add a little UI to make those groovy functions a little more palatable. In OWB we have experts for capturing user input, with the groovy console we open up opportunities to build UI around the scripts in a very easy way – even I can do it;-) After a little googling around I found some useful posts on SwingBuilder, the most useful one that I used for the dialog below was this one here. This dialog captures user input for the technology and context for the model and logical schema etc to be created. You can see there are a variety of interesting controls, and its really easy to do. The dialog captures the users input, then when OK is pressed I call the functions from the earlier post to create the logical schema (plus all the other objects) and model. The image below shows what was created, you can see the model (with typo in name), the model is Oracle technology and references the logical schema ORACLE_SCOTT (that I named in dialog above), the logical schema is mapped via the GLOBAL context to the data server ORACLE_SCOTT_DEV (that I named in dialog above), and the physical schema used was just the user name that I connected with – so if you wanted a different user the schema name could be added to the dialog. In a nutshell, one dialog that encapsulates a simpler mechanism for creating a model. You can create your own scripts that use dialogs like this, capture input and process. You can find the groovy script for this is here odi_create_model.groovy, again I wrapped the user capture code in a groovy function and return the result in a variable and then simply call the createLogicalSchema and createModel functions from the previous posting. The script I supplied above has everything you will need. To execute use Tools->Groovy->Open Script and then execute the green play button on the toolbar. Have fun.

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• Book Review - Programming Windows Azure by Siriram Krishnan

  - by BuckWoody

  As part of my professional development, I’ve created a list of books to read throughout the year, starting in June of 2011. This a review of the first one, called Programming Windows Azure by Siriram Krishnan. You can find my entire list of books I’m reading for my career here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/buckwoody/archive/2011/06/07/head-in-the-clouds-eyes-on-the-books.aspx  Why I Chose This Book: As part of my learning style, I try to read multiple books about a single subject. I’ve found that at least 3 books are necessary to get the right amount of information to me. This is a “technical” work, meaning that it deals with technology and not business, writing or other facets of my career. I’ll have a mix of all of those as I read along. I chose this work in addition to others I’ve read since it covers everything from an introduction to more advanced topics in a single book. It also has some practical examples of actually working with the product, particularly on storage. Although it’s dated, many examples normally translate. I also saw that it had pretty good reviews. What I learned: I learned a great deal about storage, and many useful code snippets. I do think that there could have been more of a focus on the application fabric - but of course that wasn’t as mature a feature when this book was written. I learned some great architecture examples, and in one section I learned more about encryption. In that example, however, I would rather have seen the examples go the other way - the book focused on moving data from on-premise to Azure storage in an encrypted fashion. Using the Application Fabric I would rather see sensitive data left in a hybrid fashion on premise, and connect to for the Azure application. Even so, the examples were very useful. If you’re looking for a good “starter” Azure book, this is a good choice. I also recommend the last chapter as a quick read for a DBA, or Database Administrator. It’s not very long, but useful. Note that the limits described are incorrect - which is one of the dangers of reading a book about any cloud offering. The services offered are updated so quickly that the information is in constant danger of being “stale”. Even so, I found this a useful book, which I believe will help me work with Azure better. Raw Notes: I take notes as I read, calling that process “reading with a pencil”. I find that when I do that I pay attention better, and record some things that I need to know later. I’ll take these notes, categorize them into a OneNote notebook that I synchronize in my Live.com account, and that way I can search them from anywhere. I can even read them on the web, since the Live.com has a OneNote program built in. Note that these are the raw notes, so they might not make a lot of sense out of context - I include them here so you can watch my though process. Programming Windows Azure by Siriram Krishnan: Learning about how to select applications suitable for Distributed Technology. Application Fabric gets the least attention; probably because it was newer at the time. Very clear (Chapter One) Good foundation Background and history, but not too much I normally arrange my descriptions differently, starting with the use-cases and moving to physicality, but this difference helps me. Interesting that I am reading this using Safari Books Online, which uses many of these concepts. Taught me some new aspects of a Hypervisor – very low-level information about the Azure Fabric (not to be confused with the Application Fabric feature) (Chapter Two) Good detail of what is included in the SDK. Even more is available now. CS = Cloud Service (Chapter 3) Place Storage info in the configuration file, since it can be streamed in-line with a running app. Ditto for logging, and keep separated configs for staging and testing. Easy-switch in and switch out.  (Chapter 4) There are two Runtime API’s, one of external and one for internal. Realizing how powerful this paradigm really is. Some places seem light, and to drop off but perhaps that’s best. Managing API is not charged, which is nice. I don’t often think about the price, until it comes to an actual deployment (Chapter 5) Csmanage is something I want to dig into deeper. API requires package moves to Blob storage first, so it needs a URL. Csmanage equivalent can be written in Unix scripting using openssl. Upgrades are possible, and you use the upgradeDomainCount attribute in the Service-Definition.csdef file  Always use a low-privileged account to test on the dev fabric, since Windows Azure runs in partial trust. Full trust is available, but can be dangerous and must be well-thought out. (Chapter 6) Learned how to run full CMD commands in a web window – not that you would ever do that, but it was an interesting view into those links. This leads to a discussion on hosting other runtimes (such as Java or PHP) in Windows Azure. I got an expanded view on this process, although this is where the book shows its age a little. Books can be a problem for Cloud Computing for this reason – things just change too quickly. Windows Azure storage is not eventually consistent – it is instantly consistent with multi-phase commit. Plumbing for this is internal, not required to code that. (Chapter 7) REST API makes the service interoperable, hybrid, and consistent across code architectures. Nicely done. Use affinity groups to keep data and code together. Side note: e-book readers need a common “notes” feature. There’s a decent quick description of REST in this chapter. Learned about CloudDrive code – PowerShell sample that mounts Blob storage as a local provider. Works against Dev fabric by default, can be switched to Account. Good treatment in the storage chapters on the differences between using Dev storage and Azure storage. These can be mitigated. No, blobs are not of any size or number. Not a good statement (Chapter 8) Blob storage is probably Azure’s closest play to Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas). Blob change operations must be authenticated, even when public. Chapters on storage are pretty in-depth. Queue Messages are base-64 encoded (Chapter 9) The visibility timeout ensures processing of message in a disconnected system. Order is not guaranteed for a message, so if you need that set an increasing number in the queue mechanism. While Queues are accessible via REST, they are not public and are secured by default. Interesting – the header for a queue request includes an estimated count. This can be useful to create more worker roles in a dynamic system. Each Entity (row) in the Azure Table service is atomic – all or nothing. (Chapter 10) An entity can have up to 255 Properties  Use “ID” for the class to indicate the key value, or use the [DataServiceKey] Attribute.  LINQ makes working with the Azure Table Service much easier, although Interop is certainly possible. Good description on the process of selecting the Partition and Row Key.  When checking for continuation tokens for pagination, include logic that falls out of the check in case you are at the last page.  On deleting a storage object, it is instantly unavailable, however a background process is dispatched to perform the physical deletion. So if you want to re-create a storage object with the same name, add retry logic into the code. Interesting approach to deleting an index entity without having to read it first – create a local entity with the same keys and apply it to the Azure system regardless of change-state.  Although the “Indexes” description is a little vague, it’s interesting to see a Folding and Stemming discussion a-la the Porter Stemming Algorithm. (Chapter 11)  Presents a better discussion of indexes (at least inverted indexes) later in the chapter. Great treatment for DBA’s in Chapter 11. We need to work on getting secondary indexes in Table storage. There is a limited form of transactions called “Entity Group Transactions” that, although they have conditions, makes a transactional system more possible. Concurrency also becomes an issue, but is handled well if you’re using Data Services in .NET. It watches the Etag and allows you to take action appropriately. I do not recommend using Azure as a location for secure backups. In fact, I would rather have seen the examples in (Chapter 12) go the other way, showing how data could be brought back to a local store as a DR or HA strategy. Good information on cryptography and so on even so. Chapter seems out of place, and should be combined with the Blob chapter.  (Chapter 13) on SQL Azure is dated, although the base concepts are OK.  Nice example of simple ADO.NET access to a SQL Azure (or any SQL Server Really) database.  

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• Interacting with clients using project management systems

  - by Keyo

  I work in web development, that involves a lot of smaller custom projects rather than one large product. Requirements and specifications are always coming from outside the company. We've setup a ticket tracking system (Active Collab, which is rubbish compared to redmine btw) and given access to clients so they can submit issues. The idea being that less time is taken up with long phone conversations and emails. I think it can work really well if done right. However I'm not so sure it's always a good thing. Feature requests have gone up a lot on some projects. The system also needs to be friendly to non-developers while having the many features that developers use. Developers' tickets do not always map 1-to-1 with the tickets clients will create. So the requirements and broader tickets need to be separated from the more specific developer (specification) related tickets. Perhaps we could use two systems, one for clients to submit their requirements or describe a bug, and one for developers to create tickets like implement method x in class y. Maybe this can be achieved by structuring tickets into more appropriate categories or creating sub-tickets under a feature request ticket. I've briefly looked into Pivotal Tracker and it has a fundamentally different workflow. I would like to know how others are communicating with clients and keeping the technical workflow separate from the non-technical workflow. What tools do you use and how do you use them?

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• Taskbar Meters Turn Your Taskbar into a System Resource Monitor

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  If you’re looking for some simple hardware monitoring tools that don’t clutter up your screen real estate but are right in front of you when you need them, Taskbar Meters sit unobtrusively right on the Windows taskbar. Open source, lightweight, and portable Taskbar Meters is actually a set of three applications. There is one for monitoring memory use, one for CPU use, and one for disk activity. Using the application is as simple as running the specific app for the monitoring you want (we have all three running in the screenshot here) and adjusting the sliders to set the update frequency and the percent utilization at which the meters turn from green, to yellow, to red. If you’re testing software loads and benchmarking Taskbar Meters doesn’t offer the kind of fine-tooth-comb view into system performance that you’ll need but for casual “What’s going on with my machine?” monitoring, it’s unobtrusive and effective. Taskbar Meters is an open source set of portable applications, Windows 7 only. Taskbar Meters [Codeplex] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Macs Don’t Make You Creative! So Why Do Artists Really Love Apple? MacX DVD Ripper Pro is Free for How-To Geek Readers (Time Limited!) HTG Explains: What’s a Solid State Drive and What Do I Need to Know? How to Get Amazing Color from Photos in Photoshop, GIMP, and Paint.NET Learn To Adjust Contrast Like a Pro in Photoshop, GIMP, and Paint.NET Have You Ever Wondered How Your Operating System Got Its Name? Lakeside Sunset in the Mountains [Wallpaper] Taskbar Meters Turn Your Taskbar into a System Resource Monitor Create Shortcuts for Your Favorite or Most Used Folders in Ubuntu Create Custom Sized Thumbnail Images with Simple Image Resizer [Cross-Platform] Etch a Circuit Board using a Simple Homemade Mixture Sync Blocker Stops iTunes from Automatically Syncing

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• CIC 2010 - Ghost Stories and Model Based Design

  - by warren.baird

  I was lucky enough to attend the collaboration and interoperability congress recently. The location was very beautiful and interesting, it was held in the mountains about two hours outside Denver, at the Stanley hotel, famous both for inspiring Steven King's novel "The Shining" and for attracting a lot of attention from the "Ghost Hunters" TV show. My visit was prosaic - I didn't get to experience the ghosts the locals promised - but interesting, with some very informative sessions. I noticed one main theme - a lot of people were talking about Model Based Design (MBD), which is moving design and manufacturing away from 2d drawings and towards 3d models. 2d has some pretty deep roots in industrial manufacturing and there have been a lot of challenges encountered in making the leap to 3d. One of the challenges discussed in several sessions was how to get model information out to the non-engineers in the company, which is a topic near and dear to my heart. In the 2D space, people without access to CAD software (for example, people assembling a product on the shop floor) can be given printouts of the design - it's not particularly efficient, and it definitely isn't very green, but it tends to work. There's no direct equivalent in the 3D space. One of the ways that AutoVue is used in industrial manufacturing is to provide non-CAD users with an easy to use, interactive 3D view of their products - in some cases it's directly used by people on the shop floor, but in cases where paper is really ingrained in the process, AutoVue can be used by a technical publications person to create illustrative 2D views that can be printed that show all of the details necessary to complete the work. Are you making the move to model based design? Is AutoVue helping you with your challenges? Let us know in the comments below.

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• How to Avoid Your Next 12-Month Science Project

  - by constant

  While most customers immediately understand how the magic of Oracle's Hybrid Columnar Compression, intelligent storage servers and flash memory make Exadata uniquely powerful against home-grown database systems, some people think that Exalogic is nothing more than a bunch of x86 servers, a storage appliance and an InfiniBand (IB) network, built into a single rack. After all, isn't this exactly what the High Performance Computing (HPC) world has been doing for decades? On the surface, this may be true. And some people tried exactly that: They tried to put together their own version of Exalogic, but then they discover there's a lot more to building a system than buying hardware and assembling it together. IT is not Ikea. Why is that so? Could it be there's more going on behind the scenes than merely putting together a bunch of servers, a storage array and an InfiniBand network into a rack? Let's explore some of the special sauce that makes Exalogic unique and un-copyable, so you can save yourself from your next 6- to 12-month science project that distracts you from doing real work that adds value to your company. Engineering Systems is Hard Work! The backbone of Exalogic is its InfiniBand network: 4 times better bandwidth than even 10 Gigabit Ethernet, and only about a tenth of its latency. What a potential for increased scalability and throughput across the middleware and database layers! But InfiniBand is a beast that needs to be tamed: It is true that Exalogic uses a standard, open-source Open Fabrics Enterprise Distribution (OFED) InfiniBand driver stack. Unfortunately, this software has been developed by the HPC community with fastest speed in mind (which is good) but, despite the name, not many other enterprise-class requirements are included (which is less good). Here are some of the improvements that Oracle's InfiniBand development team had to add to the OFED stack to make it enterprise-ready, simply because typical HPC users didn't have the need to implement them: More than 100 bug fixes in the pieces that were not related to the Message Passing Interface Protocol (MPI), which is the protocol that HPC users use most of the time, but which is less useful in the enterprise. Performance optimizations and tuning across the whole IB stack: From Switches, Host Channel Adapters (HCAs) and drivers to low-level protocols, middleware and applications. Yes, even the standard HPC IB stack could be improved in terms of performance. Ethernet over IB (EoIB): Exalogic uses InfiniBand internally to reach high performance, but it needs to play nicely with datacenters around it. That's why Oracle added Ethernet over InfiniBand technology to it that allows for creating many virtual 10GBE adapters inside Exalogic's nodes that are aggregated and connected to Exalogic's IB gateway switches. While this is an open standard, it's up to the vendor to implement it. In this case, Oracle integrated the EoIB stack with Oracle's own IB to 10GBE gateway switches, and made it fully virtualized from the beginning. This means that Exalogic customers can completely rewire their server infrastructure inside the rack without having to physically pull or plug a single cable - a must-have for every cloud deployment. Anybody who wants to match this level of integration would need to add an InfiniBand switch development team to their project. Or just buy Oracle's gateway switches, which are conveniently shipped with a whole server infrastructure attached! IPv6 support for InfiniBand's Sockets Direct Protocol (SDP), Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS), TCP/IP over IB (IPoIB) and EoIB protocols. Because no IPv6 = not very enterprise-class. HA capability for SDP. High Availability is not a big requirement for HPC, but for enterprise-class application servers it is. Every node in Exalogic's InfiniBand network is connected twice for redundancy. If any cable or port or HCA fails, there's always a replacement link ready to take over. This requires extra magic at the protocol level to work. So in addition to Weblogic's failover capabilities, Oracle implemented IB automatic path migration at the SDP level to avoid unnecessary failover operations at the middleware level. Security, for example spoof-protection. Another feature that is less important for traditional users of InfiniBand, but very important for enterprise customers. InfiniBand Partitioning and Quality-of-Service (QoS): One of the first questions we get from customers about Exalogic is: “How can we implement multi-tenancy?” The answer is to partition your IB network, which effectively creates many networks that work independently and that are protected at the lowest networking layer possible. In addition to that, QoS allows administrators to prioritize traffic flow in multi-tenancy environments so they can keep their service levels where it matters most. Resilient IB Fabric Management: InfiniBand is a self-managing network, so a lot of the magic lies in coming up with the right topology and in teaching the subnet manager how to properly discover and manage the network. Oracle's Infiniband switches come with pre-integrated, highly available fabric management with seamless integration into Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center. In short: Oracle elevated the OFED InfiniBand stack into an enterprise-class networking infrastructure. Many years and multiple teams of manpower went into the above improvements - this is something you can only get from Oracle, because no other InfiniBand vendor can give you these features across the whole stack! Exabus: Because it's not About the Size of Your Network, it's How You Use it! So let's assume that you somehow were able to get your hands on an enterprise-class IB driver stack. Or maybe you don't care and are just happy with the standard OFED one? Anyway, the next step is to actually leverage that InfiniBand performance. Here are the choices: Use traditional TCP/IP on top of the InfiniBand stack, Develop your own integration between your middleware and the lower-level (but faster) InfiniBand protocols. While more bandwidth is always a good thing, it's actually the low latency that enables superior performance for your applications when running on any networking infrastructure: The lower the latency, the faster the response travels through the network and the more transactions you can close per second. The reason why InfiniBand is such a low latency technology is that it gets rid of most if not all of your traditional networking protocol stack: Data is literally beamed from one region of RAM in one server into another region of RAM in another server with no kernel/drivers/UDP/TCP or other networking stack overhead involved! Which makes option 1 a no-go: Adding TCP/IP on top of InfiniBand is like adding training wheels to your racing bike. It may be ok in the beginning and for development, but it's not quite the performance IB was meant to deliver. Which only leaves option 2: Integrating your middleware with fast, low-level InfiniBand protocols. And this is what Exalogic's "Exabus" technology is all about. Here are a few Exabus features that help applications leverage the performance of InfiniBand in Exalogic: RDMA and SDP integration at the JDBC driver level (SDP), for Oracle Weblogic (SDP), Oracle Coherence (RDMA), Oracle Tuxedo (RDMA) and the new Oracle Traffic Director (RDMA) on Exalogic. Using these protocols, middleware can communicate a lot faster with each other and the Oracle database than by using standard networking protocols, Seamless Integration of Ethernet over InfiniBand from Exalogic's Gateway switches into the OS, Oracle Weblogic optimizations for handling massive amounts of parallel transactions. Because if you have an 8-lane Autobahn, you also need to improve your ramps so you can feed it with many cars in parallel. Integration of Weblogic with Oracle Exadata for faster performance, optimized session management and failover. As you see, “Exabus” is Oracle's word for describing all the InfiniBand enhancements Oracle put into Exalogic: OFED stack enhancements, protocols for faster IB access, and InfiniBand support and optimizations at the virtualization and middleware level. All working together to deliver the full potential of InfiniBand performance. Who else has 100% control over their middleware so they can develop their own low-level protocol integration with InfiniBand? Even if you take an open source approach, you're looking at years of development work to create, test and support a whole new networking technology in your middleware! The Extras: Less Hassle, More Productivity, Faster Time to Market And then there are the other advantages of Engineered Systems that are true for Exalogic the same as they are for every other Engineered System: One simple purchasing process: No headaches due to endless RFPs and no “Will X work with Y?” uncertainties. Everything has been engineered together: All kinds of bugs and problems have been already fixed at the design level that would have only manifested themselves after you have built the system from scratch. Everything is built, tested and integrated at the factory level . Less integration pain for you, faster time to market. Every Exalogic machine world-wide is identical to Oracle's own machines in the lab: Instant replication of any problems you may encounter, faster time to resolution. Simplified patching, management and operations. One throat to choke: Imagine finger-pointing hell for systems that have been put together using several different vendors. Oracle's Engineered Systems have a single phone number that customers can call to get their problems solved. For more business-centric values, read The Business Value of Engineered Systems. Conclusion: Buy Exalogic, or get ready for a 6-12 Month Science Project And here's the reason why it's not easy to "build your own Exalogic": There's a lot of work required to make such a system fly. In fact, anybody who is starting to "just put together a bunch of servers and an InfiniBand network" is really looking at a 6-12 month science project. And the outcome is likely to not be very enterprise-class. And it won't have Exalogic's performance either. Because building an Engineered System is literally rocket science: It takes a lot of time, effort, resources and many iterations of design/test/analyze/fix to build such a system. That's why InfiniBand has been reserved for HPC scientists for such a long time. And only Oracle can bring the power of InfiniBand in an enterprise-class, ready-to use, pre-integrated version to customers, without the develop/integrate/support pain. For more details, check the new Exalogic overview white paper which was updated only recently. P.S.: Thanks to my colleagues Ola, Paul, Don and Andy for helping me put together this article! var flattr_uid = '26528'; var flattr_tle = 'How to Avoid Your Next 12-Month Science Project'; var flattr_dsc = 'While most customers immediately understand how the magic of Oracle's Hybrid Columnar Compression, intelligent storage servers and flash memory make Exadata uniquely powerful against home-grown database systems, some people think that Exalogic is nothing more than a bunch of x86 servers, a storage appliance and an InfiniBand (IB) network, built into a single rack.After all, isn't this exactly what the High Performance Computing (HPC) world has been doing for decades?On the surface, this may be true. And some people tried exactly that: They tried to put together their own version of Exalogic, but then they discover there's a lot more to building a system than buying hardware and assembling it together. IT is not Ikea.Why is that so? Could it be there's more going on behind the scenes than merely putting together a bunch of servers, a storage array and an InfiniBand network into a rack? Let's explore some of the special sauce that makes Exalogic unique and un-copyable, so you can save yourself from your next 6- to 12-month science project that distracts you from doing real work that adds value to your company.'; var flattr_tag = 'Engineered Systems,Engineered Systems,Infiniband,Integration,latency,Oracle,performance'; var flattr_cat = 'text'; var flattr_url = 'http://constantin.glez.de/blog/2012/04/how-avoid-your-next-12-month-science-project'; var flattr_lng = 'en_GB'

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• SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #003

  - by pinaldave

  Here is the list of curetted articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2006 This was the first year of my blogging and lots of new things I was learning as I go. I was indeed an infant in blogging a few years ago. However, as time passed by I have learned a lot. This year was year of experiments and new learning. 2007 Working as a full time DBA I often encoutered various errors and I started to learn how to avoid those error and document the same. ERROR Msg 5174 Each file size must be greater than or equal to 512 KB Whenever I see this error I wonder why someone is trying to attempt a database which is extremely small. Anyway, it does not matter what I think I keep on seeing this error often in industries. Anyway the solution of the error is equally interesting – just created larger database. Dilbert Humor This was very first encounter with database humor and I started to love it. It does not matter how many time we read this cartoon it does not get old. Generate Script with Data from Database – Database Publishing Wizard Generating schema script with data is one of the most frequently performed tasks among SQL Server Data Professionals. There are many ways to do the same. In the above article I demonstrated that how we can use the Database Publishing Wizard to accomplish the same. It was new to me at that time but I have not seen much of the adoption of the same still in the industry. Here is one of my videos where I demonstrate how we can generate data with schema. 2008 Delete Backup History – Cleanup Backup History Deleting backup history is important too but should be done carefully. If this is not carried out at regular interval there is good chance that MSDB will be filled up with all the old history. Every organization is different. Some would like to keep the history for 30 days and some for a year but there should be some limit. One should regularly archive the database backup history. South Asia MVP Open Days 2008 This was my very first year Microsoft MVP. I had Indeed big blast at the event and the fun was incredible. After this event I have attended many different MVP events but the fun and learning this particular event presented was amazing and just like me many others are not able to forget the same. Here are other links related to the event: South Asia MVP Open Day 2008 – Goa South Asia MVP Open Day 2008 – Goa – Day 1 South Asia MVP Open Day 2008 – Goa – Day 2 South Asia MVP Open Day 2008 – Goa – Day 3 2009 Enable or Disable Constraint  This is very simple script but I personally keep on forgetting it so I had blogged it. Till today, I keep on referencing this again and again as sometime a very little thing is hard to remember. Policy Based Management – Create, Evaluate and Fix Policies This article will cover the most spectacular feature of SQL 2008 – Policy-based management and how the configuration of SQL Server with policy-based management architecture can make a powerful difference. Policy based management is loaded with several advantages. It can help you implement various policies for reliable configuration of the system. It also provides additional administrative assistance to DBAs and helps them effortlessly manage various tasks of SQL Server across the enterprise. SQLPASS 2009 – My Very First SQPASS Experience Just Brilliant! I never had an experience such a thing in my life. SQL SQL and SQL – all around SQL! I am listing my own reasons here in order of importance to me. Networking with SQL fellows and experts Putting face to the name or avatar Learning and improving my SQL skills Understanding the structure of the largest SQL Server Professional Association Attending my favorite training sessions Since last time I have never missed a single time this event. This event is my favorite event and something keeps me going. Here are additional post related SQLPASS 2009. SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 1 SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 2 SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 3 SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 4 2010 Get All the Information of Database using sys.databases Even though we believe that we know everything about our database, we do not know a lot of things about our database. This little script enables us to know so many details about databases which we may not be familiar with. Run this on your server today and see how much you know your database. Reducing CXPACKET Wait Stats for High Transactional Database While engaging in a performance tuning consultation for a client, a situation occurred where they were facing a lot of CXPACKET Waits Stats. The client asked me if I could help them reduce this huge number of wait stats. I usually receive this kind of request from other client as well, but the important thing to understand is whether this question has any merits or benefits, or not. I discusses the same in this article – a bit long but insightful for sure. Error related to Database in Use There are so many database management operations in SQL Server which requires exclusive access to the database and it is not always possible to get it. When any database is online in SQL Server it either applications or system thread often accesses them. This means database can’t have exclusive access and the operations which required this access throws an error. There is very easy method to overcome this minor issue – a single line script can give you exclusive access to the database. Difference between DATETIME and DATETIME2 Developers have found the root reason of the problem when dealing with Date Functions – when data time values are converted (implicit or explicit) between different data types, which would lose some precision, so the result cannot match each other as expected. In this blog post I go over very interesting details and difference between DATETIME and DATETIME2 History of SQL Server Database Encryption I recently met Michael Coles and Rodeney Landrum the author of one of the kind book Expert SQL Server 2008 Encryption at SQLPASS in Seattle. During the conversation we ended up how Microsoft is evolving encryption technology. The same discussion lead to talking about history of encryption tools in SQL Server. Michale pointed me to page 18 of his book of encryption. He explicitly gave me permission to re-produce relevant part of history from his book. 2011 Functions FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE with OVER clause and ORDER BY Some time an interesting feature and smart audience make a total difference in places. From last two days, I have been writing on SQL Server 2012 feature FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE. I created a puzzle which was very interesting and got many people attempt to resolve it. It was based on following two articles: Introduction to FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE Introduction to FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE with OVER clause I even provided the hint about how one can solve this problem. The best part was many people solved the problem without using hints! Try your luck!  A Real Story of Book Getting ‘Out of Stock’ to A 25% Discount Story Available This is a great problem and everybody would love to have it. We had it and we loved it. Our book got out of stock in 48 hours of releasing and stocks were empty. We faced many issues and learned many valuable lessons. Some we were able to avoid in the future and some we are still facing it as those problems have no solutions. However, since that day – our books never gone out of stock. This inspiring learning story for us and I am confident that you will love to read it as well. Introduction to LEAD and LAG – Analytic Functions Introduced in SQL Server 2012 SQL Server 2012 introduces new analytical function LEAD() and LAG(). This function accesses data from a subsequent row (for lead) and previous row (for lag) in the same result set without the use of a self-join . It will be very difficult to explain this in words so I will attempt small example to explain you this function. I had a fantastic time writing this blog post and I am very confident when you read it, you will like the same. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Keyboard locking up in Visual Studio 2010

  - by Jim Wang

  One of the initiatives I’m involved with on the ASP.NET and Visual Studio teams is the Tactical Test Team (TTT), which is a group of testers who dedicate a portion of their time to roaming around and testing different parts of the product.  What this generally translates to is a day and a bit a week helping out with areas of the product that have been flagged as risky, or tackling problems that span both ASP.NET and Visual Studio.  There is also a separate component of this effort outside of TTT which is to help with customer scenarios and design. I enjoy being on TTT because it allows me the opportunity to look at the entire product and gain expertise in a wide range of areas.  This week, I’m looking at Visual Studio 2010 performance problems, and this gem with the keyboard in Visual Studio locking up ended up catching my attention. First of all, here’s a link to one of the many Connect bugs describing the problem: Microsoft Connect I like this problem because it really highlights the challenges of reproducing customer bugs.  There aren’t any clear steps provided here, and I don’t know a lot about your environment: not just the basics like our OS version, but also what third party plug-ins or antivirus software you might be running that might contribute to the problem.  In this case, my gut tells me that there is more than one bug here, just by the sheer volume of reports.  Here’s another thread where users talk about it: Microsoft Connect The volume and different configurations are staggering.  From a customer perspective, this is a very clear cut case of basic functionality not working in the product, but from our perspective, it’s hard to find something reproducible: even customers don’t quite agree on what causes the problem (installing ReSharper seems to cause a problem…or does it?). So this then, is the start of a QA investigation. If anybody has isolated repro steps (just comment on this post) that they can provide this will immensely help us nail down the issue(s), but I’ll be doing a multi-part series on my progress and methodologies as I look into the problem.

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for December 11, 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Good To Know - Conflicting View Objects and Shared Entity | Andrejus Baranovskis Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovskis shares his thoughts—and a sample application—dealing with an "interesting ADF behavior" encountered over the weekend. Patching Oracle Exalogic - Updating Linux on the Compute Nodes - Part 1 | Jos Nijhoff Jos Nijhoff launches a series of posts the deal with "patching the operating system on the modified Sun Fire X4170 M2 servers...dubbed compute nodes in Exalogic terminology." Expanding on requestaudit - Tracing who is doing what...and for how long | Kyle Hatlestad "One of the most helpful tracing sections in WebCenter Content (and one that is on by default) is the requestaudit tracing," says Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team architect Kyle Hatlestad. Get up close and technical in his post. Oracle Data Integrator Presentation from NYOUG Webinar | Gurcan Orhan Oracle ACE Director and award-winning data warehouse architect Gurcan Orhan shares his presentation from the recent NYOUG LI SIG. SOA 11g Technology Adapters – ECID Propagation | Greg Mally "Many SOA Suite 11g deployments include the use of the technology adapters for various activities including integration with FTP, database, and files to name a few," says Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team member Greg Mally. "Although the integrations with these adapters are easy and feature rich, there can be some challenges from the operations perspective." Greg's post focuses on technical tips for dealing with one of these challenges. Missing Duties for RUP3 upgrade in Fusion Applications Richard from the Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team explains how to safely apply policy store changes in thirteen easy steps. Thought for the Day "Well over half of the time you spend working on a project (on the order of 70 percent) is spent thinking, and no tool, no matter how advanced, can think for you." — Frederick P. Brooks Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• HPET for x86 BSP (how to build it for WCE8)

  - by Werner Willemsens

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/WernerWillemsens/archive/2014/08/02/157895.aspx"I needed a timer". That is how we started a few blogs ago our series about APIC and ACPI. Well, here it is. HPET (High Precision Event Timer) was introduced by Intel in early 2000 to: Replace old style Intel 8253 (1981!) and 8254 timers Support more accurate timers that could be used for multimedia purposes. Hence Microsoft and Intel sometimes refers to HPET as Multimedia timers. An HPET chip consists of a 64-bit up-counter (main counter) counting at a frequency of at least 10 MHz, and a set of (at least three, up to 256) comparators. These comparators are 32- or 64-bit wide. The HPET is discoverable via ACPI. The HPET circuit in recent Intel platforms is integrated into the SouthBridge chip (e.g. 82801) All HPET timers should support one-shot interrupt programming, while optionally they can support periodic interrupts. In most Intel SouthBridges I worked with, there are three HPET timers. TIMER0 supports both one-shot and periodic mode, while TIMER1 and TIMER2 are one-shot only. Each HPET timer can generate interrupts, both in old-style PIC mode and in APIC mode. However in PIC mode, interrupts cannot freely be chosen. Typically IRQ11 is available and cannot be shared with any other interrupt! Which makes the HPET in PIC mode virtually unusable. In APIC mode however more IRQs are available and can be shared with other interrupt generating devices. (Check the datasheet of your SouthBridge) Because of this higher level of freedom, I created the APIC BSP (see previous posts). The HPET driver code that I present you here uses this APIC mode. Hpet.reg [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Drivers\BuiltIn\Hpet] "Dll"="Hpet.dll" "Prefix"="HPT" "Order"=dword:10 "IsrDll"="giisr.dll" "IsrHandler"="ISRHandler" "Priority256"=dword:50 Because HPET does not reside on the PCI bus, but can be found through ACPI as a memory mapped device, you don't need to specify the "Class", "SubClass", "ProgIF" and other PCI related registry keys that you typically find for PCI devices. If a driver needs to run its internal thread(s) at a certain priority level, by convention in Windows CE you add the "Priority256" registry key. Through this key you can easily play with the driver's thread priority for better response and timer accuracy. See later. Hpet.cpp (Hpet.dll) This cpp file contains the complete HPET driver code. The file is part of a folder that you typically integrate in your BSP (\src\drivers\Hpet). It is written as sample (example) code, you most likely want to change this code to your specific needs. There are two sets of #define's that I use to control how the driver works. _TRIGGER_EVENT or _TRIGGER_SEMAPHORE: _TRIGGER_EVENT will let your driver trigger a Windows CE Event when the timer expires, _TRIGGER_SEMAPHORE will trigger a Windows CE counting Semaphore. The latter guarantees that no events get lost in case your application cannot always process the triggers fast enough. _TIMER0 or _TIMER2: both timers will trigger an event or semaphore periodically. _TIMER0 will use a periodic HPET timer interrupt, while _TIMER2 will reprogram a one-shot HPET timer after each interrupt. The one-shot approach is interesting if the frequency you wish to generate is not an even multiple of the HPET main counter frequency. The sample code uses an algorithm to generate a more correct frequency over a longer period (by reducing rounding errors). _TIMER1 is not used in the sample source code. HPT_Init() will locate the HPET I/O memory space, setup the HPET counter (_TIMER0 or _TIMER2) and install the Interrupt Service Thread (IST). Upon timer expiration, the IST will run and on its turn will generate a Windows CE Event or Semaphore. In case of _TIMER2 a new one-shot comparator value is calculated and set for the timer. The IRQ of the HPET timers are programmed to IRQ22, but you can choose typically from 20-23. The TIMERn_INT_ROUT_CAP bits in the TIMn_CONF register will tell you what IRQs you can choose from. HPT_IOControl() can be used to set a new HPET counter frequency (actually you configure the counter timeout value in microseconds), start and stop the timer, and request the current HPET counter value. The latter is interesting because the Windows CE QueryPerformanceCounter() and QueryPerformanceFrequency() APIs implement the same functionality, albeit based on other counter implementations. HpetDrvIst() contains the IST code. DWORD WINAPI HpetDrvIst(LPVOID lpArg) { psHpetDeviceContext pHwContext = (psHpetDeviceContext)lpArg; DWORD mainCount = READDWORD(pHwContext->g_hpet_va, GenCapIDReg + 4); // Main Counter Tick period (fempto sec 10E-15) DWORD i = 0; while (1) { WaitForSingleObject(pHwContext->g_isrEvent, INFINITE); #if defined(_TRIGGER_SEMAPHORE) LONG p = 0; BOOL b = ReleaseSemaphore(pHwContext->g_triggerEvent, 1, &p); #elif defined(_TRIGGER_EVENT) BOOL b = SetEvent(pHwContext->g_triggerEvent); #else #pragma error("Unknown TRIGGER") #endif #if defined(_TIMER0) DWORD currentCount = READDWORD(pHwContext->g_hpet_va, MainCounterReg); DWORD comparator = READDWORD(pHwContext->g_hpet_va, Tim0_ComparatorReg + 0); SETBIT(pHwContext->g_hpet_va, GenIntStaReg, 0); // clear interrupt on HPET level InterruptDone(pHwContext->g_sysIntr); // clear interrupt on OS level _LOGMSG(ZONE_INTERRUPT, (L"%s: HpetDrvIst 0 %06d %08X %08X", pHwContext->g_id, i++, currentCount, comparator)); #elif defined(_TIMER2) DWORD currentCount = READDWORD(pHwContext->g_hpet_va, MainCounterReg); DWORD previousComparator = READDWORD(pHwContext->g_hpet_va, Tim2_ComparatorReg + 0); pHwContext->g_counter2.QuadPart += pHwContext->g_comparator.QuadPart; // increment virtual counter (higher accuracy) DWORD comparator = (DWORD)(pHwContext->g_counter2.QuadPart >> 8); // "round" to real value WRITEDWORD(pHwContext->g_hpet_va, Tim2_ComparatorReg + 0, comparator); SETBIT(pHwContext->g_hpet_va, GenIntStaReg, 2); // clear interrupt on HPET level InterruptDone(pHwContext->g_sysIntr); // clear interrupt on OS level _LOGMSG(ZONE_INTERRUPT, (L"%s: HpetDrvIst 2 %06d %08X %08X (%08X)", pHwContext->g_id, i++, currentCount, comparator, comparator - previousComparator)); #else #pragma error("Unknown TIMER") #endif } return 1; } The following figure shows how the HPET hardware interrupt via ISR -> IST is translated in a Windows CE Event or Semaphore by the HPET driver. The Event or Semaphore can be used to trigger a Windows CE application. HpetTest.cpp (HpetTest.exe)This cpp file contains sample source how to use the HPET driver from an application. The file is part of a separate (smart device) VS2013 solution. It contains code to measure the generated Event/Semaphore times by means of GetSystemTime() and QueryPerformanceCounter() and QueryPerformanceFrequency() APIs. HPET evaluation If you scan the internet about HPET, you'll find many remarks about buggy HPET implementations and bad performance. Unfortunately that is true. I tested the HPET driver on an Intel ICH7M SBC (release date 2008). When a HPET timer expires on the ICH7M, an interrupt indeed is generated, but right after you clear the interrupt, a few more unwanted interrupts (too soon!) occur as well. I tested and debugged it for a loooong time, but I couldn't get it to work. I concluded ICH7M's HPET is buggy Intel hardware. I tested the HPET driver successfully on a more recent NM10 SBC (release date 2013). With the NM10 chipset however, I am not fully convinced about the timer's frequency accuracy. In the long run - on average - all is fine, but occasionally I experienced upto 20 microseconds delays (which were immediately compensated on the next interrupt). Of course, this was all measured by software, but I still experienced the occasional delay when both the HPET driver IST thread as the application thread ran at CeSetThreadPriority(1). If it is not the hardware, only the kernel can cause this delay. But Windows CE is an RTOS and I have never experienced such long delays with previous versions of Windows CE. I tested and developed this on WCE8, I am not heavily experienced with it yet. Internet forum threads however mention inaccurate HPET timer implementations as well. At this moment I haven't figured out what is going on here. Useful references: http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/technical-specifications/software-developers-hpet-spec-1-0a.pdf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Precision_Event_Timer http://wiki.osdev.org/HPET Windows CE BSP source file package for HPET in MyBsp Note that this source code is "As Is". It is still under development and I cannot (and never will) guarantee the correctness of the code. Use it as a guide for your own HPET integration.

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• Reading and conditionally updating N rows, where N > 100,000 for DNA Sequence processing

  - by makerofthings7

  I have a proof of concept application that uses Azure tables to associate DNA sequences to "something". Table 1 is the master table. It uniquely lists every DNA sequence. The PK is a load balanced hash of the RK. The RK is the unique encoded value of the DNA sequence. Additional tables are created per subject. Each subject has a list of N DNA sequences that have one reference in the Master table, where N is 100,000. It is possible for many tables to reference the same DNA sequence, but in this case only one entry will be present in the Master table. My Azure dilemma: I need to lock the reference in the Master table as I work with the data. I need to handle timeouts, and prevent other threads from overwriting my data as one C# thread is working with the information. Other threads need to realise that this is locked, and move onto other unlocked records and do the work. Ideally I'd like to get some progress report of how my computation is going, and have the option to cancel the process (and unwind the locks). Question What is the best approach for this? I'm looking at these code snippets for inspiration: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jimoneil/archive/2010/10/05/azure-home-part-7-asynchronous-table-storage-pagination.aspx http://stackoverflow.com/q/4535740/328397

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• Adding an Admin user to an ASP.NET MVC 4 application using a single drop-in file

  - by Jon Galloway

  I'm working on an ASP.NET MVC 4 tutorial and wanted to set it up so just dropping a file in App_Start would create a user named "Owner" and assign them to the "Administrator" role (more explanation at the end if you're interested). There are reasons why this wouldn't fit into most application scenarios: It's not efficient, as it checks for (and creates, if necessary) the user every time the app starts up The username, password, and role name are hardcoded in the app (although they could be pulled from config) Automatically creating an administrative account in code (without user interaction) could lead to obvious security issues if the user isn't informed However, with some modifications it might be more broadly useful - e.g. creating a test user with limited privileges, ensuring a required account isn't accidentally deleted, or - as in my case - setting up an account for demonstration or tutorial purposes. Challenge #1: Running on startup without requiring the user to install or configure anything I wanted to see if this could be done just by having the user drop a file into the App_Start folder and go. No copying code into Global.asax.cs, no installing addition NuGet packages, etc. That may not be the best approach - perhaps a NuGet package with a dependency on WebActivator would be better - but I wanted to see if this was possible and see if it offered the best experience. Fortunately ASP.NET 4 and later provide a PreApplicationStartMethod attribute which allows you to register a method which will run when the application starts up. You drop this attribute in your application and give it two parameters: a method name and the type that contains it. I created a static class named PreApplicationTasks with a static method named, then dropped this attribute in it: [assembly: PreApplicationStartMethod(typeof(PreApplicationTasks), "Initializer")] That's it. One small gotcha: the namespace can be a problem with assembly attributes. I decided my class didn't need a namespace. Challenge #2: Only one PreApplicationStartMethod per assembly In .NET 4, the PreApplicationStartMethod is marked as AllMultiple=false, so you can only have one PreApplicationStartMethod per assembly. This was fixed in .NET 4.5, as noted by Jon Skeet, so you can have as many PreApplicationStartMethods as you want (allowing you to keep your users waiting for the application to start indefinitely!). The WebActivator NuGet package solves the multiple instance problem if you're in .NET 4 - it registers as a PreApplicationStartMethod, then calls any methods you've indicated using [assembly: WebActivator.PreApplicationStartMethod(type, method)]. David Ebbo blogged about that here:  Light up your NuGets with startup code and WebActivator. In my scenario (bootstrapping a beginner level tutorial) I decided not to worry about this and stick with PreApplicationStartMethod. Challenge #3: PreApplicationStartMethod kicks in before configuration has been read This is by design, as Phil explains. It allows you to make changes that need to happen very early in the pipeline, well before Application_Start. That's fine in some cases, but it caused me problems when trying to add users, since the Membership Provider configuration hadn't yet been read - I got an exception stating that "Default Membership Provider could not be found." The solution here is to run code that requires configuration in a PostApplicationStart method. But how to do that? Challenge #4: Getting PostApplicationStartMethod without requiring WebActivator The WebActivator NuGet package, among other things, provides a PostApplicationStartMethod attribute. That's generally how I'd recommend running code that needs to happen after Application_Start: [assembly: WebActivator.PostApplicationStartMethod(typeof(TestLibrary.MyStartupCode), "CallMeAfterAppStart")] This works well, but I wanted to see if this would be possible without WebActivator. Hmm. Well, wait a minute - WebActivator works in .NET 4, so clearly it's registering and calling PostApplicationStartup tasks somehow. Off to the source code! Sure enough, there's even a handy comment in ActivationManager.cs which shows where PostApplicationStartup tasks are being registered: public static void Run() { if (!_hasInited) { RunPreStartMethods(); // Register our module to handle any Post Start methods. But outside of ASP.NET, just run them now if (HostingEnvironment.IsHosted) { Microsoft.Web.Infrastructure.DynamicModuleHelper.DynamicModuleUtility.RegisterModule(typeof(StartMethodCallingModule)); } else { RunPostStartMethods(); } _hasInited = true; } } Excellent. Hey, that DynamicModuleUtility seems familiar... Sure enough, K. Scott Allen mentioned it on his blog last year. This is really slick - a PreApplicationStartMethod can register a new HttpModule in code. Modules are run right after application startup, so that's a perfect time to do any startup stuff that requires configuration to be read. As K. Scott says, it's this easy: using System; using System.Web; using Microsoft.Web.Infrastructure.DynamicModuleHelper; [assembly:PreApplicationStartMethod(typeof(MyAppStart), "Start")] public class CoolModule : IHttpModule { // implementation not important // imagine something cool here } public static class MyAppStart { public static void Start() { DynamicModuleUtility.RegisterModule(typeof(CoolModule)); } } Challenge #5: Cooperating with SimpleMembership The ASP.NET MVC Internet template includes SimpleMembership. SimpleMembership is a big improvement over traditional ASP.NET Membership. For one thing, rather than forcing a database schema, it can work with your database schema. In the MVC 4 Internet template case, it uses Entity Framework Code First to define the user model. SimpleMembership bootstrap includes a call to InitializeDatabaseConnection, and I want to play nice with that. There's a new [InitializeSimpleMembership] attribute on the AccountController, which calls \Filters\InitializeSimpleMembershipAttribute.cs::OnActionExecuting(). That comment in that method that says "Ensure ASP.NET Simple Membership is initialized only once per app start" which sounds like good advice. I figured the best thing would be to call that directly: new Mvc4SampleApplication.Filters.InitializeSimpleMembershipAttribute().OnActionExecuting(null); I'm not 100% happy with this - in fact, it's my least favorite part of this solution. There are two problems - first, directly calling a method on a filter, while legal, seems odd. Worse, though, the Filter lives in the application's namespace, which means that this code no longer works well as a generic drop-in. The simplest workaround would be to duplicate the relevant SimpleMembership initialization code into my startup code, but I'd rather not. I'm interested in your suggestions here. Challenge #6: Module Init methods are called more than once When debugging, I noticed (and remembered) that the Init method may be called more than once per page request - it's run once per instance in the app pool, and an individual page request can cause multiple resource requests to the server. While SimpleMembership does have internal checks to prevent duplicate user or role entries, I'd rather not cause or handle those exceptions. So here's the standard single-use lock in the Module's init method: void IHttpModule.Init(HttpApplication context) { lock (lockObject) { if (!initialized) { //Do stuff } initialized = true; } } Putting it all together With all of that out of the way, here's the code I came up with: using Mvc4SampleApplication.Filters; using System.Web; using System.Web.Security; using WebMatrix.WebData; [assembly: PreApplicationStartMethod(typeof(PreApplicationTasks), "Initializer")] public static class PreApplicationTasks { public static void Initializer() { Microsoft.Web.Infrastructure.DynamicModuleHelper.DynamicModuleUtility .RegisterModule(typeof(UserInitializationModule)); } } public class UserInitializationModule : IHttpModule { private static bool initialized; private static object lockObject = new object(); private const string _username = "Owner"; private const string _password = "p@ssword123"; private const string _role = "Administrator"; void IHttpModule.Init(HttpApplication context) { lock (lockObject) { if (!initialized) { new InitializeSimpleMembershipAttribute().OnActionExecuting(null); if (!WebSecurity.UserExists(_username)) WebSecurity.CreateUserAndAccount(_username, _password); if (!Roles.RoleExists(_role)) Roles.CreateRole(_role); if (!Roles.IsUserInRole(_username, _role)) Roles.AddUserToRole(_username, _role); } initialized = true; } } void IHttpModule.Dispose() { } } The Verdict: Is this a good thing? Maybe. I think you'll agree that the journey was undoubtedly worthwhile, as it took us through some of the finer points of hooking into application startup, integrating with membership, and understanding why the WebActivator NuGet package is so useful Will I use this in the tutorial? I'm leaning towards no - I think a NuGet package with a dependency on WebActivator might work better: It's a little more clear what's going on Installing a NuGet package might be a little less error prone than copying a file A novice user could uninstall the package when complete It's a good introduction to NuGet, which is a good thing for beginners to see This code either requires either duplicating a little code from that filter or modifying the file to use the namespace Honestly I'm undecided at this point, but I'm glad that I can weigh the options. If you're interested: Why are you doing this? I'm updating the MVC Music Store tutorial to ASP.NET MVC 4, taking advantage of a lot of new ASP.NET MVC 4 features and trying to simplify areas that are giving people trouble. One change that addresses both needs us using the new OAuth support for membership as much as possible - it's a great new feature from an application perspective, and we get a fair amount of beginners struggling with setting up membership on a variety of database and development setups, which is a distraction from the focus of the tutorial - learning ASP.NET MVC. Side note: Thanks to some great help from Rick Anderson, we had a draft of the tutorial that was looking pretty good earlier this summer, but there were enough changes in ASP.NET MVC 4 all the way up to RTM that there's still some work to be done. It's high priority and should be out very soon. The one issue I ran into with OAuth is that we still need an Administrative user who can edit the store's inventory. I thought about a number of solutions for that - making the first user to register the admin, or the first user to use the username "Administrator" is assigned to the Administrator role - but they both ended up requiring extra code; also, I worried that people would use that code without understanding it or thinking about whether it was a good fit.

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• Android Design - Service vs Thread for Networking

  - by Nevyn

  I am writing an Android app, finally (yay me) and for this app I need persistant, but user closeable, network sockets (yes, more than one). I decided to try my hand at writing my own version of an IRC Client. My design issue however, is I'm not sure how to run the Socket connectivity itself. If I put the sockets at the Activity level, they keeps getting closed shortly after the Activity becomes non-visible (also a problem that needs solving...but I think i figured that one out)...but if I run a "connectivity service", I need to find out if I can have multiple instances of it running (the service, that is...one per server/socket). Either that or a I need a way to Thread the sockets themselves and have multiple threads running that I can still communicate with directly (ID system of some sort). Thus the question: Is it a 'better', or at least more "proper" design pattern, to put the Socket and networking in a service, and have the Activities consume said service...or should I tie the sockets directly to some Threaded Process owned by the UI Activity and not bother with the service implementation at all? I do know better than to put the networking directly on the UI thread, but that's as far as I've managed to get.

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• Learning frameworks without learning languages

  - by Tom Morris

  I've been reading up on GUI frameworks including WPF, GTK and Cocoa (UIKit). I don't really do anything related to Windows (I'm a Mac and Linux guy) or .NET, but I'd like to be able to throw together GUIs for various operating systems. We are in the enviable position now of having high level scripting languages that work with all of the major GUI toolkits. If you are doing Linux GUI programming, you could use GTK in C, but why not just use PyGTK (or PyQt). Similarly, for Java, one can use JRuby. For Mac, there's MacRuby. And on .NET, there's IronRuby. This is all fine and good, and if you are building a serious project, there are tradeoffs that you might encounter when deciding whether to, say, build a WPF app in C# or in IronRuby, or whether you are going to use PyGTK or not. The subjective question I have is: what about learning those frameworks? Are there strong reasons why one should or should not learn something like WPF or Cocoa in a language one is familiar with rather than having to learn a new language as well? I'm not saying you should never learn the language. If you are building Windows applications and you don't know C#, that might be a bit of a problem. But do you think it is okay to learn the framework first? This is both a general question and a specific question. I've used some Cocoa classes from Ruby and Python using things like PyObjC and there always seems to be an impedance mismatch because of the way Objective C libraries get built. Experiences and strong opinions welcome!

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• SQL SERVER – SQL Server Performance: Indexing Basics – SQL in Sixty Seconds #006 – Video

  - by pinaldave

  A DBA’s role is critical, because a production environment has to run 24×7, hence maintenance, trouble shooting, and quick resolutions are the need of the hour.  The first baby step into any performance tuning exercise in SQL Server involves creating, analyzing, and maintaining indexes. Though we have learnt indexing concepts from our college days, indexing implementation inside SQL Server can vary.  Understanding this behavior and designing our applications appropriately will make sure the application is performed to its highest potential. Vinod Kumar and myself we often thought about this and realized that practical understanding of the indexes is very important. One can not master every single aspects of the index. However there are some minimum expertise one should gain if performance is one of the concern. More on Indexes: SQL Index SQL Performance I encourage you to submit your ideas for SQL in Sixty Seconds. We will try to accommodate as many as we can. Here is the interview of Vinod Kumar by myself. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Database, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL in Sixty Seconds, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLServer, T SQL, Video

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• Rescue overdue offshore projects and convince management to use automated tests

  - by oazabir

  I have published two articles on codeproject recently. One is a story where an offshore project was two months overdue, my friend who runs it was paying the team from his own pocket and he was drowning in ever increasing number of change requests and how we brainstormed together to come out of that situation. Tips and Tricks to rescue overdue projects Next one is about convincing management to go for automated test and give developers extra time per sprint, at the cost of reduced productivity for couple of sprints. It’s hard to negotiate this with even dev leads, let alone managers. Whenever you tell them - there’s going to be less features/bug fixes delivered for next 3 or 4 sprints because we want to automate the tests and reduce manual QA effort; everyone gets furious and kicks you out of the meeting. Especially in a startup where every sprint is jam packed with new features and priority bug fixes to satisfy various stakeholders, including the VCs, it’s very hard to communicate the benefits of automated tests across the board. Let me tell you of a story of one of my startups where I had the pleasure to argue on this and came out victorious. How to convince developers and management to use automated test instead of manual test If you like these, please vote for me!

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• SQL SERVER – Download SQL Server Product Documentation

  - by pinaldave

  Today I just returned from Bangalore User Group Meeting. Attending User Group meeting is indeed fun and really great experience. The best part of the User Group is meeting like minded people and have a great conversation with them. During the meeting I was asked why one has to go online to access SQL Server Product Documentation. I can clearly see there can be many reasons for why one wants the documentation to be available offline. The reasons can be anything but not limited to Company Firewall No Internet (power failure, on road or disaster) Internet Bandwidth Limitatoin Company Proxy Issues … and much more… In this kind of situation one needs documentation which is offline and easily available in local computer. The Microsoft SQL Server 2012 setup installs only the Help Viewer and related components for managing Help settings. Setup does not directly install any documentation. All of the SQL Server documentation is available online. Well, Microsoft has recently released Production Documentation available for offline users as well. You just have to download the executable file and follow all the instructions. Please follow the link below for download of the file. There is detailed instruction on how to download and install the documentation offline. Product Documentation for Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Documentation, SQL Download, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• First Step Towards Rapid Enterprise Application Deployment

  - by Antoinette O'Sullivan

  Take Oracle VM Server for x86 training as a first step towards deploying enterprise applications rapidly. You have a choice between the following instructor-led training: Oracle VM with Oracle VM Server for x86 1-day Seminar. Take this course from your own desk on one of the 300 events on the schedule. This seminar tells you how to build a virtualization platform using the Oracle VM Manager and Oracle VM Server for x86 and to sustain the deployment of highly configurable, inter-connected virtual machines. Oracle VM Administration: Oracle VM Server for x86 3-day hands on course. This course teaches you how to build a virtualization platform using the Oracle VM Manager and Oracle VM Server for x86. You learn how deploy and manage highly configurable, inter-connected virtual machines. The course teaches you how to install and configure Oracle VM Server for x86 as well as details of network and storage configuration, pool and repository creation, and virtual machine management.Take this course from your own desk on one of the 450 events on the schedule. You can also take this course in an Oracle classroom on one of the following events:  Location  Date  Delivery Language  Istanbul, Turkey  12 November 2012  Turkish  Wellington, New Zealand  10 Dec 2012  English  Roseveille, United States  19 November 2012  English  Warsaw, Poland  17 October 2012  Polish  Paris, France  17 October 2012  French  Paris, France  21 November 2012  French  Dusseldorfm Germany  5 November 2012  German For more information on Oracle's Virtualization courses see http://oracle.com/education/vm

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• A Simple Approach For Presenting With Code Samples

  - by Jesse Taber

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/GruffCode/archive/2013/07/31/a-simple-approach-for-presenting-with-code-samples.aspxI’ve been getting ready for a presentation and have been struggling a bit with the best way to show and execute code samples. I don’t present often (hardly ever), but when I do I like the presentation to have a lot of succinct and executable code snippets to help illustrate the points that I’m making. Depending on what the presentation is about, I might just want to build an entire sample application that I would run during the presentation. In other cases, however, building a full-blown application might not really be the best way to present the code. The presentation I’m working on now is for an open source utility library for dealing with dates and times. I could have probably cooked up a sample app for accepting date and time input and then contrived ways in which it could put the library through its paces, but I had trouble coming up with one app that would illustrate all of the various features of the library that I wanted to highlight. I finally decided that what I really needed was an approach that met the following criteria: Simple: I didn’t want the user interface or overall architecture of a sample application to serve as a distraction from the demonstration of the syntax of the library that the presentation is about. I want to be able to present small bits of code that are focused on accomplishing a single task. Several of these examples will look similar, and that’s OK. I want each sample to “stand on its own” and not rely much on external classes or methods (other than the library that is being presented, of course). “Debuggable” (not really a word, I know): I want to be able to easily run the sample with the debugger attached in Visual Studio should I want to step through any bits of code and show what certain values might be at run time. As far as I know this rules out something like LinqPad, though using LinqPad to present code samples like this is actually a very interesting idea that I might explore another time. Flexible and Selectable: I’m going to have lots of code samples to show, and I want to be able to just package them all up into a single project or module and have an easy way to just run the sample that I want on-demand. Since I’m presenting on a .NET framework library, one of the simplest ways in which I could execute some code samples would be to just create a Console application and use Console.WriteLine to output the pertinent info at run time. This gives me a “no frills” harness from which to run my code samples, and I just hit ‘F5’ to run it with the debugger. This satisfies numbers 1 and 2 from my list of criteria above, but item 3 is a little harder. By default, just running a console application is going to execute the ‘main’ method, and then terminate the program after all code is executed. If I want to have several different code samples and run them one at a time, it would be cumbersome to keep swapping the code I want in and out of the ‘main’ method of the console application. What I really want is an easy way to keep the console app running throughout the whole presentation and just have it run the samples I want when I want. I could setup a simple Windows Forms or WPF desktop application with buttons for the different samples, but then I’m getting away from my first criteria of keeping things as simple as possible. Infinite Loops To The Rescue I found a way to have a simple console application satisfy all three of my requirements above, and it involves using an infinite loop and some Console.ReadLine calls that will give the user an opportunity to break out and exit the program. (All programs that need to run until they are closed explicitly (or crash!) likely use similar constructs behind the scenes. Create a new Windows Forms project, look in the ‘Program.cs’ that gets generated, and then check out the docs for the Application.Run method that it calls.). Here’s how the main method might look: 1: static void Main(string[] args) 2: { 3: do 4: { 5: Console.Write("Enter command or 'exit' to quit: > "); 6: var command = Console.ReadLine(); 7: if ((command ?? string.Empty).Equals("exit", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase)) 8: { 9: Console.WriteLine("Quitting."); 10: break; 11: } 12: 13: } while (true); 14: } The idea here is the app prompts me for the command I want to run, or I can type in ‘exit’ to break out of the loop and let the application close. The only trick now is to create a set of commands that map to each of the code samples that I’m going to want to run. Each sample is already encapsulated in a single public method in a separate class, so I could just write a big switch statement or create a hashtable/dictionary that maps command text to an Action that will invoke the proper method, but why re-invent the wheel? CLAP For Your Own Presentation I’ve blogged about the CLAP library before, and it turns out that it’s a great fit for satisfying criteria #3 from my list above. CLAP lets you decorate methods in a class with an attribute and then easily invoke those methods from within a console application. CLAP was designed to take the arguments passed into the console app from the command line and parse them to determine which method to run and what arguments to pass to that method, but there’s no reason you can’t re-purpose it to accept command input from within the infinite loop defined above and invoke the corresponding method. Here’s how you might define a couple of different methods to contain two different code samples that you want to run during your presentation: 1: public static class CodeSamples 2: { 3: [Verb(Aliases="one")] 4: public static void SampleOne() 5: { 6: Console.WriteLine("This is sample 1"); 7: } 8:   9: [Verb(Aliases="two")] 10: public static void SampleTwo() 11: { 12: Console.WriteLine("This is sample 2"); 13: } 14: } A couple of things to note about the sample above: I’m using static methods. You don’t actually need to use static methods with CLAP, but the syntax ends up being a bit simpler and static methods happen to lend themselves well to the “one self-contained method per code sample” approach that I want to use. The methods are decorated with a ‘Verb’ attribute. This tells CLAP that they are eligible targets for commands. The “Aliases” argument lets me give them short and easy-to-remember aliases that can be used to invoke them. By default, CLAP just uses the full method name as the command name, but with aliases you can simply the usage a bit. I’m not using any parameters. CLAP’s main feature is its ability to parse out arguments from a command line invocation of a console application and automatically pass them in as parameters to the target methods. My code samples don’t need parameters ,and honestly having them would complicate giving the presentation, so this is a good thing. You could use this same approach to invoke methods with parameters, but you’d have a couple of things to figure out. When you invoke a .NET application from the command line, Windows will parse the arguments and pass them in as a string array (called ‘args’ in the boilerplate console project Program.cs). The parsing that gets done here is smart enough to deal with things like treating strings in double quotes as one argument, and you’d have to re-create that within your infinite loop if you wanted to use parameters. I plan on either submitting a pull request to CLAP to add this capability or maybe just making a small utility class/extension method to do it and posting that here in the future. So I now have a simple class with static methods to contain my code samples, and an infinite loop in my ‘main’ method that can accept text commands. Wiring this all up together is pretty easy: 1: static void Main(string[] args) 2: { 3: do 4: { 5: try 6: { 7: Console.Write("Enter command or 'exit' to quit: > "); 8: var command = Console.ReadLine(); 9: if ((command ?? string.Empty).Equals("exit", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase)) 10: { 11: Console.WriteLine("Quitting."); 12: break; 13: } 14:   15: Parser.Run<CodeSamples>(new[] { command }); 16: Console.WriteLine("---------------------------------------------------------"); 17: } 18: catch (Exception ex) 19: { 20: Console.Error.WriteLine("Error: " + ex.Message); 21: } 22:   23: } while (true); 24: } Note that I’m now passing the ‘CodeSamples’ class into the CLAP ‘Parser.Run’ as a type argument. This tells CLAP to inspect that class for methods that might be able to handle the commands passed in. I’m also throwing in a little “----“ style line separator and some basic error handling (because I happen to know that some of the samples are going to throw exceptions for demonstration purposes) and I’m good to go. Now during my presentation I can just have the console application running the whole time with the debugger attached and just type in the alias of the code sample method that I want to run when I want to run it.

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• How to negotiate with software vendors who do not follow HL7 standards

  - by Peter Turner

  Take, for instance the "", I'd hope that anyone who has spent any time in dealing with HL7 messages knows that the "" signifies that something should be deleted. "" is not an empty string, it's not a filler etc... But occasionally, one may meet a vendor who persists in sending "" instead of just sending nothing at all. Since, I work for a small business and have an extremely flexible HL7 interface, I can ignore ""'s in received messages. But these things are adding up. Some vendors like to send custom formatted fields with psuedo-components that they leave others to interpret themselves. Some vendors send all their information in note segments and assume you're going to only show users the information they send in a monospace font. Some vendors even have the audacity to send Carriage Return Line Feeds at the end of each line of a file interface. Some vendors absolutely refuse to send decimal numbers and in-so-doing refuse to send any numbers. So, with all this crippling humanity against the simple plastic software man, how does one bend without breaking*? Or better yet, how does one fight back and still make money? *my answer is usually to create an interface for the interface and keep the HL7 processing pure, but I don't think this is the best solution

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• Change in Job Title and Responsibilities

  - by John Conwell

  I've spent the past 7 years focused primarily on code and database performance.  It's an area that I have a passion for, as well as a propensity.  But what I've found is that its very hard to change the culture of a development environment.  You can teach performance, you can encourage performance, you might see slight shift in how devs think about performance.  But without full management backing and support you wont get long lasting changes in the development culture.  And in the end, you are back to being the "Perf Guy", fixing performance design flaws, after the fact, one by one by one. Which is why last year I asked my boss to changed my title and responsibilities to more naturally align with the team I was working for.  So now I'm a Computing Research Engineer (vague, I know), researching in the field of Big Data analytics and visualization. I've found this change revitalizing and a lot of fun.  And given the nature of Big Data (its, um…big) the performance aspects are always ever present.

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• MySql multiple selects batching in .net

  - by Amith George

  I have a situation in my application. For each x-axis point in my chart, I am plotting 5 y-axis values. To calculate each of these 5 values, I need to make 4 different queries. Ie, for each x-axis point I need to fire 20 sql queries. Now, I need to plot 40 such points in the my chart. Its resulting in a pathetic performance where it takes close to a minute to get all the data back from the database. Each of 4 different queries consists of a join between 2 tables. One has only 6 rows. The other close to 10,000. Each of the 4 queries has different WHERE clauses, so they are different queries. For each point in the x-axis, only the values for the where clauses change. I have tried combining each of the 4 queries into one big string. Basically batch the four selects. These are again batched for each y-axis value. So, for each x-axis point, I am now firing one big command that consists of 20 different select statements. Technically, I should be experiencing a big performance boost, right? Instead of hitting the db 40x5x4 = 800 times, I am now hitting it just 40 times. But instead of taking 60 seconds, it taking 50-55 seconds... not much of a help. I am using MySql 5.1, and the 6.1 version of its .Net connector. What can I do to improve the performance? Edit: One of the 4 queries is as follows: SELECT SUM(TIME_TO_SEC(TIMEDIFF(T1.col2, T1.col1))* T2.col1 / (3600 *1000)) AS TotalTime FROM Table T1 JOIN Table T2 ON T1.col3 = T2.col3 WHERE T1.col4 = 'i' AND T1.col1 >= '2009-12-25 00:00:00' AND T1.col2 <= '2009-12-26 00:00:00'; The other 3 queries are similar, only the where clause changes slightly. This set of 4 queries is fired 5 times. The first 3 times against the join of table T1 and T2, passing in different values for col4. And the next two times against the join of table T3 and T2 passing in different values for col4. These 5 values are the y-axis values for a particular x-axis point. The data returned by all these queries is the same format. so, we tried doing a UNION ALL on all these queries. No substantial difference. One strange thing, however, after indexing the foreign key on the table T1 [while it contained over a lakh records], the queries were using the index, but they had become slower. At times, the queries would take double the time to return the data.

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• SQL SERVER – A Funny Cartoon on Index

  - by pinaldave

  Performance Tuning has been my favorite subject and I have done it for many years now. Today I will list one of the most common conversation about Index I have heard in my life. Every single time, I am at consultation for performance tuning I hear following conversation among various team members. I want to ask you, does this kind of conversation happens in your organization? Any way, If you think Index solves all of your performance problem I think it is not true. There are many other reason one has to consider along with Indexes. For example I consider following various topic one need to understand for performance tuning. ?Logical Query Processing ?Efficient Join Techniques ?Query Tuning Considerations ?Avoiding Common Performance Tuning Issues Statistics and Best Practices ?TempDB Tuning ?Hardware Planning ?Understanding Query Processor ?Using SQL Server 2005 and 2008 Updated Feature Sets ?CPU, Memory, I/O Bottleneck Index Tuning (of course) ?Many more… Well, I have written this blog thinking I will keep this blog post a bit easy and not load up. I will in future discuss about other performance tuning concepts. Let me know what do you think about the cartoon I made. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Humor, SQL Index, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• SQL SERVER – Solution – Generating Zero Without using Any Numbers in T-SQL

  - by pinaldave

  SQL Server MVP and my friend My friend Madhivanan has asked very interesting question on his blog regarding How to Generate Zero without using Any Numbers in T-SQL. He has demonstrated various methods how one can generate Zero. When I posted note regarding how one he has generated Zero without using number in my blog post for Free Online Training, blog readers have come up with few very interesting answers. I really found them very interesting and here I am listing them with due credit. Special mention to Andery.ca as the answer Andery provided is the one, I myself come up with after very first look and that is why I had left the same as hint in the original article. anil try this select count(cast(null as int)) or any false condition select count(*) where ‘a’=’b’ Varinder Sandhu It seems every currency symbol that SQL Server supports. Return the same value as zero i tried some as select € select ¥ select £ Andrey.ca select count(*)-count(*) Vinay Kumar Another way for generate zero. select Ascii(‘Y’)-Ascii(‘Y’) OR select LEN(”) I like Madhivanan’s answer. and it was awesome. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, Readers Contribution, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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