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• When to use Aspect Oriented Architecture (AOA/AOD)

  When is it appropriate to use aspect oriented architecture? I think the only honest answer to this question is that it depends on the context for which the question is being asked. There really are no hard and fast rules regarding the selection of an architectural model(s) for a project because each model provides good and bad benefits. Every system is built with a unique requirements and constraints. This context will dictate when to use one type of architecture over another or in conjunction with others. To me aspect oriented architecture models should be a sub-phase in the architectural modeling and design process especially when creating enterprise level models. Personally, I like to use this approach to create a base architectural model that is defined by non-functional requirements and system quality attributes.   This general model can then be used as a starting point for additional models because it is targets all of the business key quality attributes required by the system.Aspect oriented architecture is a method for modeling non-functional requirements and quality attributes of a system known as aspects. These models do not deal directly with specific functionality. They do categorize functionality of the system. This approach allows a system to be created with a strong emphasis on separating system concerns into individual components. These cross cutting components enables a systems to create with compartmentalization in regards to non-functional requirements or quality attributes.  This allows for the reduction in code because an each component maintains an aspect of a system that can be called by other aspects. This approach also allows for a much cleaner and smaller code base during the implementation and support of a system. Additionally, enabling developers to develop systems based on aspect-oriented design projects will be completed faster and will be more reliable because existing components can be shared across a system; thus, the time needed to create and test the functionality is reduced.   Example of an effective use of Aspect Oriented ArchitectureIn my experiences, aspect oriented architecture can be very effective with large or more complex systems. Typically, these types of systems have a large number of concerns so the act of defining them is very beneficial for reducing the system’s complexity because components can be developed to address each concern while exposing functionality to the other system components. The benefits to using the aspect oriented approach as the starting point for a system is that it promotes communication between IT and the business due to the fact that the aspect oriented models are quality attributes focused so not much technical understanding is needed to understand the model.An example of this can be in developing a new intranet website. Common Intranet Concerns: Error Handling Security Logging Notifications Database connectivity Example of a not as effective use of Aspect Oriented ArchitectureAgain in my experiences, aspect oriented architecture is not as effective with small or less complex systems in comparison.  There is no need to model concerns for a system that has a limited amount of them because the added overhead would not be justified for the actual benefits of creating the aspect oriented architecture model.  Furthermore, these types of projects typically have a reduced time schedule and a limited budget.  The creation of the Aspect oriented models would increase the overhead of a project and thus increase the time needed to implement the system. An example of this is seen by creating a small application to poll a network share for new files and then FTP them to a new location.  The two primary concerns for this project is to monitor a network drive and FTP files to a new location.  There is no need to create an aspect model for this system because there will never be a need to share functionality amongst either of these concerns.  To add to my point, this system is so small that it could be created with just a few classes so the added layer of componentizing the concerns would be complete overkill for this situation. References:Brichau, Johan; D'Hondt, Theo. (2006) Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD) - An Introduction. Retreived from: http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~jbrichau/courses/introductionToAOSD.pdf

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• Requesting feedback on my OO design

  - by Prog

  I'm working on an application that creates music by itself. I'm seeking feedback for my OO design so far. This question will focus on one part of the program. The application produces Tune objects, that are the final musical products. Tune is an abstract class with an abstract method play. It has two subclasses: SimpleTune and StructuredTune. SimpleTune owns a Melody and a Progression (chord sequence). It's play implementation plays these two objects simultaneously. StructuredTune owns two Tune instances. It's own play plays the two Tunes one after the other according to a pattern (currently only ABAB). Melody is an abstract class with an abstract play method. It has two subclasses: SimpleMelody and StructuredMelody. SimpleMelody is composed of an array of notes. Invoking play on it plays these notes one after the other. StructuredMelody is composed of an array of Melody objects. Invoking play on it plays these Melodyies one after the other. I think you're starting to see the pattern. Progression is also an abstract class with a play method and two subclasses: SimpleProgression and StructuredProgression, each composed differently and played differently. SimpleProgression owns an array of chords and plays them sequentially. StructuredProgression owns an array of Progressions and it's play implementation plays them sequentially. Every class has a corresponding Generator class. Tune, Melody and Progression are matched with corresponding abstract TuneGenerator, MelodyGenerator and ProgressionGenerator classes, each with an abstract generate method. For example MelodyGenerator defines an abstract Melody generate method. Each of the generators has two subclasses, Simple and Structured. So for example MelodyGenerator has a subclasses SimpleMelodyGenerator, with an implementation of generate that returns a SimpleMelody. (It's important to note that the generate methods encapsulate complex algorithms. They are more than mere factory method. For example SimpleProgressionGenerator.generate() implements an algorithm to compose a series of Chord objects, which are used to instantiate the returned SimpleProgression). Every Structured generator uses another generator internally. It is a Simple generator be default, but in special cases may be a Structured generator. Parts of this design are meant to allow the end-user through the GUI to choose what kind of music is to be created. For example the user can choose between a "simple tune" (SimpleTuneGenerator) and a "full tune" (StructuredTuneGenerator). Other parts of the system aren't subject to direct user-control. What do you think of this design from an OOD perspective? What potential problems do you see with this design? Please share with me your criticism, I'm here to learn. Apart from this, a more specific question: the "every class has a corresponding Generator class" part feels very wrong. However I'm not sure how I could design this differently and achieve the same flexibility. Any ideas?

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• Is a university education really worth it for a good programmer?

  - by Jon Purdy

  The title says it all, but here's the personal side of it: I've been doing design and programming for about as long as I can remember. If there's a programming problem, I can figure it out. (Though admittedly StackOverflow has allowed me to skip the figuring out and get straight to the doing in many instances.) I've made games, esoteric programming languages, and widgets and gizmos galore. I'm currently working on a general-purpose programming language. There's nothing I do better than programming. However, I'm just as passionate about design. Thus when I felt leaving high school that my design skills were lacking, I decided to attend university for New Media Design and Imaging, a digital design-related major. For a year, I diligently studied art and programmed in my free time. As the next year progressed, however, I was obligated to take fewer art and design classes and more technical classes. The trouble was of course that these classes were geared toward non-technical students, and were far beneath my skill level at the time. No amount of petitioning could overcome the institution's reluctance to allow me to test out of such classes, and the major offered no promise for any greater challenge in the future, so I took the extreme route: I switched into the technical equivalent of the major, New Media Interactive Development. A lot of my credits moved over into the new major, but many didn't. It would have been infeasible to switch to a more rigorous technical major such as Computer Science, and having tutored Computer Science students at every level here, I doubt I would be exposed to anything that I haven't already or won't eventually find out on my own, since I'm so involved in the field. I'm now on track to graduate perhaps a year later than I had planned, which puts a significant financial strain on my family and my future self. My schedule continues to be bogged down with classes that are wholly unnecessary for me to take. I'm being re-introduced to subjects that I've covered a thousand times over, simply because I've always been interested in it all. And though I succeed in avoiding the cynical and immature tactic of failing to complete work out of some undeserved sense of superiority, I'm becoming increasingly disillusioned by the lack of intellectual stimulation. Further, my school requires students to complete a number of quarters of co-op work experience proportional to their major. My original major required two quarters, but my current requires three, delaying my graduation even more. To top it all off, college is putting a severe strain on my relationship with my very close partner of a few years, so I've searched diligently for co-op jobs in my area, alas to no avail. I'm now in my third year, and approaching that point past which I can no longer handle this. Either I keep my head down, get a degree no matter what it takes, and try to get a job with a company that will pay me enough to do what I love that I can eventually pay off my loans; or I cut my losses now, move wherever there is work, and in six months start paying off what debt I've accumulated thus far. So the real question is: is a university education really more than just a formality? It's a big decision, and one I can't make lightly. I think this is the appropriate venue for this kind of question, and I hope it sticks around for the sake of others who might someday find themselves in similar situations. My heartfelt thanks for reading, and in advance for your help.

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• What Counts For a DBA: Replaceable

  - by Louis Davidson

  Replaceable is what every employee in every company instinctively strives not to be. Yet, if you’re an irreplaceable DBA, meaning that the company couldn’t find someone else who could do what you do, then you’re not doing a great job. A good DBA is replaceable. I imagine some of you are already reaching for the lighter fluid, about to set the comments section ablaze, but before you destroy a perfectly good Commodore 64, read on… Everyone is replaceable, ultimately. Anyone, anywhere, in any job, could be sitting at their desk reading this, blissfully unaware that this is to be their last day at work. Morbidly, you could be about to take your terminal breath. Ideally, it will be because another company suddenly offered you a truck full of money to take a new job, forcing you to bid a regretful farewell to your current employer (with barely a “so long suckers!” left wafting in the air as you zip out of the office like the Wile E Coyote wearing two pairs of rocket skates). I’ve often wondered what it would be like to be present at the meeting where your former work colleagues discuss your potential replacement. It is perhaps only at this point, as they struggle with the question “What kind of person do we need to replace old Wile?” that you would know your true worth in their eyes. Of course, this presupposes you need replacing. I’ve known one or two people whose absence we adequately compensated with a small rock, to keep their old chair from rolling down a slight incline in the floor. On another occasion, we bought a noise-making machine that frequently attracted attention its way, with unpleasant sounds, but never contributed anything worthwhile. These things never actually happened, of course, but you take my point: don’t confuse replaceable with expendable. Likewise, if the term “trained seal” comes up, someone they can teach to follow basic instructions and push buttons in the right order, then the replacement discussion is going to be over quickly. What, however, if your colleagues decide they’ll need a super-specialist to replace you. That’s a good thing, right? Well, usually, in my experience, no it is not. It often indicates that no one really knows what you do, or how. A typical example is the “senior” DBA who built a system just before 16-bit computing became all the rage and then settled into a long career managing it. Such systems are often central to the company’s operations and the DBA very skilled at what they do, but almost impossible to replace, because the system hasn’t evolved, and runs on processes and routines that others no longer understand or recognize. The only thing you really want to hear, at your replacement discussion, is that they need someone skilled at the fundamentals and adaptable. This means that the person they need understands that their goal is to be an excellent DBA, not a specialist in whatever the-heck the company does. Someone who understands the new versions of SQL Server and can adapt the company’s systems to the way things work today, who uses industry standard methods that any other qualified DBA/programmer can understand. More importantly, this person rarely wants to get “pigeon-holed” and so documents and shares the specialized knowledge and responsibilities with their teammates. Being replaceable doesn’t mean being “dime a dozen”. The company might need four people to take your place due to the depth of your skills, but still, they could find those replacements and those replacements could step right in using techniques that any decent DBA should know. It is a tough question to contemplate, but take some time to think about the sort of person that your colleagues would seek to replace you. If you think they would go looking for a “super-specialist” then consider urgently how you can diversify and share your knowledge, and start documenting all the processes you know as if today were your last day, because who knows, it just might be.

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• Educational, well-written FOSS projects to read, study or discuss

  - by Godot

  Before you say it: yes, this "question" has been asked other times. However, I could not fine many of such questions and not that easily, and those I found had similar results. What I'm trying to say that there are no comprehensive lists of well written Open Source projects, so I decided to set some requirements for the entries (one or possibly more): Idiomatic use of the language in which they are written The project should be lightweight. Not as in "a few kbs", as in "clean" and possibly following the UNIX philosophy, making an efficient use of resources and performing its duty and nothing more. No code bloat, most importantly. Projects like Firefox and GNOME wouldn't qualify, for example. Minimal reliance on external, non-standard libraries, with exceptions for some common FOSS libraries (curses, Xlib, OpenGL and possibly "usual suspects" like gtk+, webkit and Boost). Reliance on well-written libraries is welcome. No reliance on proprietary software - for obvious reasons (programs that rely on XNA, DirectX, Cocoa and similar, for example). Well-documented code is welcome. Include link to web interfaces to their repositories if possible. Here are some sample projects that often pop up in these threads: Operating Systems Plan 9 from Bell Labs: More or less, the official "sequel" to UNIX. Written in C by the same people who invented C! NetBSD: The most portable BSD implementation, written in C and also a good example of portable and organized code. Network and Databases Sqlite: Extremely lightweight and extremely efficient, one of the best pieces of C software I've seen. Count the lines yourself! Lighttpd: A small but pretty reliable web server written in C. Programming languages and VMs Lua: extremely lightweight multi-paradigm programming language. Written in C. Tiny C Compiler: Really tiny C compiler. Not really comparable to GCC or Clang but does its job. PyPy: A Python implementation written in Python. Pharo: OK, I admit it, I'm not really a Smalltalk expert but Pharo is a fork of Squeak and looked rather interesting. Stackless Python - An implementation of Python that doesn't rely on the C call stack - written in C (with some parts in Python) Games and 3D: Angband: One of the most accessible roguelike codebases around here, written in C. Ogre3D: Cross-platform 3D engine. Gets bloated if you don't skip the platform-specific implementation code, otherwise is a pretty solid example of good C++ OO. Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection: Title says it all. Other - dwm: Lightweight window manager. Written in C. Emulation and Reverse Engineering - Bochs: x86 emulator, written in C++ and tiny enough. - MAME: If you want to see C at one of its lowest levels, MAME is for you. May not be as clean as the other projects but it can teach you A LOT. Before you ask: I didn't mention Linux because it has become quite bloated in the last few years, Linus has also confirmed it. Nonetheless, it'd be a great educational read the same, even if for other reasons. Same for GCC. Feel free to edit or wikify my post. I hope you won't lock my question, I'm only trying to organize a little community effort for the good of all those people who want to enhance their coding skills.

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• Best depth sorting method for a Top Down 2D game using a 3D physics engine

  - by Alic44

  I've spent many days googling this and still have issues with my game engine I'd like to ask about, which I haven't seen addressed before. I think the problem is that my game is an unusual combination of a completely 2D graphical approach using XNA's SpriteBatch, and a completely 3D engine (the amazing BEPU physics engine) with rotation mostly disabled. In essence, my question is similar to this one (the part about "faux 3D"), but the difference is that in my game, the player as well as every other creature is represented by 3D objects, and they can all jump, pick up other objects, and throw them around. What this means is that sorting by one value, such as a Z position (how far north/south a character is on the screen) won't work, because as soon as a smaller creature jumps on top of a larger creature, or a box, and walks backwards, the moment its z value is less than that other creature, it will appear to be behind the object it is actually standing on. I actually originally solved this problem by splitting every object in the game into physics boxes which MUST have a Y height equal to their Z depth. I then based the depth sorting value on the object's y position (how high it is off the ground) PLUS its z position (how far north or south it is on the screen). The problem with this approach is that it requires all moving objects in the game to be split graphically into chunks which match up with a physical box which has its y dimension equal to its z dimension. Which is stupid. So, I got inspired last night to rewrite with a fresh approach. My new method is a little more complex, but I think a little more sane: every object which needs to be sorted by depth in the game exposes the interface IDepthDrawable and is added to a list owned by the DepthDrawer object. IDepthDrawable contains: public interface IDepthDrawable { Rectangle Bounds { get; } //possibly change this to a class if struct copying of the xna Rectangle type becomes an issue DepthDrawShape DepthShape { get; } void Draw(SpriteBatch spriteBatch); } The Bounds Rectangle of each IDepthDrawable object represents the 2D Axis-Aligned Bounding Box it will take up when drawn to the screen. Anything that doesn't intersect the screen will be culled at this stage and the remaining on-screen IDepthDrawables will be Bounds tested for intersections with each other. This is where I get a little less sure of what I'm doing. Each group of collisions will be added to a list or other collection, and each list will sort itself based on its DepthShape property, which will have access to the object-to-be-drawn's physics information. For starting out, lets assume everything in the game is an axis aligned 3D Box shape. Boxes are pretty easy to sort. Something like: if (depthShape1.Back > depthShape2.Front) //if depthShape1 is in front of depthShape2. //depthShape1 goes on top. else if (depthShape1.Bottom > depthShape2.Top) //if depthShape1 is above depthShape2. //depthShape1 goes on top. //if neither of these are true, depthShape2 must be in front or above. So, by sorting draw order by several different factors from the physics engine, I believe I can get a really correct draw order. My question is, is this a good way of going about this, or is there some tried and true, tested way which is completely different and has somehow completely eluded me on the internets? And, if this does seem like a good way to remake my draw order sorting, what's the right sorting algorithm for reordering the Bounds Rectangle collision lists, and how do you deal with a Bounds Rectangle colliding with two different object which don't collide with eachother. I know these are solved problems, but I've only been programming for a year so any specific input here will be greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading this far, ye who made it -- sorry it was so long!

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• JPedal Action for Converting PDF to JavaFX

  - by Geertjan

  The question of the day comes from Mark Stephens, from JPedal (JPedal is the leading 100% Java PDF library, providing a Java PDF viewer, PDF to image conversion, PDF printing or adding PDF search and PDF extraction features), in the form of a screenshot: The question is clear. By looking at the annotations above, you can see that Mark has an ActionListener that has been bound to the right-click popup menu on PDF files. Now he needs to get hold of the file to which the Action has been bound. How, oh  how, can one get hold of that file? Well, it's simple. Leave everything you see above exactly as it is but change the Java code section to this: public final class PDF2JavaFXContext implements ActionListener {     private final DataObject context;     public PDF2JavaFXContext(DataObject context) {         this.context = context;     }     public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent ev) {         FileObject fo = context.getPrimaryFile();         File theFile = FileUtil.toFile(fo);         //do something with your file...     } } The point is that the annotations at the top of the class bind the Action to either Actions.alwaysEnabled, which is a factory method for creating always-enabled Actions, or Actions.context, which is a factory method for creating context-sensitive Actions. How does the Action get bound to the factory method? The annotations are converted, when the module is compiled, into XML registration entries in the "generated-layer.xml", which you can find in your "build" folder, in the Files window, after building the module. In Mark's case, since the Action should be context-sensitive to PDF files, he needs to bind his PDF2JavaFXContext ActionListener (which should probably be named "PDF2JavaFXActionListener", since the class is an ActionListener) to Actions.context. All he needs to do that is pass in the object he wants to work with into the constructor of the ActionListener. Now, when the module is built, the annotation processor is going to take the annotations and convert them to XML registration entries, but the constructor will also be checked to see whether it is empty or not. In this case, the constructor isn't empty, hence the Action should be context-sensitive and so the ActionListener is bound to Actions.context. The Actions.context will do all the enablement work for Mark, so that he will not need to provide any code for enabling/disabling the Action. The Action will be enabled whenever a DataObject is selected. Since his Action is bound to Nodes in the Projects window that represent PDF files, the Action will always be enabled whenever Mark right-clicks on a PDF Node, since the Node exposes its own DataObject. Once Mark has access to the DataObject, he can get the underlying FileObject via getPrimaryFile and he can then convert the FileObject to a java.io.File via FileUtil.getConfigFile. Once he's got the java.io.File, he can do with it whatever he needs. Further reading: http://bits.netbeans.org/dev/javadoc/

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• JavaOne Latin America Opening Keynotes

  - by Tori Wieldt

  It was a great first day at JavaOne Brazil, which included the Java Strategy and Java Technical keynotes. Henrik Stahl, Senior Director, Product Management for Java opened the keynotes by saying that this is the third year for JavaOne Latin America. He explained, "You know what they say, the first time doesn't count, the second time is a habit and the third time it's a tradition!" He mentioned that he was thrilled that this is largest JavaOne in Brazil to date, and he wants next year to be larger. He said that Oracle knows Latin America is an important hub for development.  "We continually come back to Latin America because of the dedication the community has with driving the continued innovation for Java," he said. Stahl explained that Oracle and the Java community must continue to innovate and Make the Future Java together. The success of Java depends on three important factors: technological innovation, Oracle as a strong steward of Java, and community participation. "The Latin American Java Community (especially in Brazil) is a shining example of how to be positive contributor to Java," Stahl said. Next, George Saab, VP software dev, Java Platform Group at Oracle, discussed some of the recent and upcoming changes to Java. "In addition to the incremental improvements to Java 7, we have also increased the set of platforms supported by Oracle from Linux, Windows, and Solaris to now also include Mac OS X and Linux/ARM for ARM-based PCs such as the Raspberry Pi and emerging ARM based microservers."  Saab announced that EA builds for Linux ARM Hard Float ABI will be available by the end of the year.  Staffan Friberg, Product Manager, Java Platform Group, provided an overview of some of the language coming in Java 8, including Lambda, remove of PermGen, improved data and time APIs and improved security, Java 8 development is moving along. He reminded the audience that they can go to OpenJDK to see this development being done in real-time, and that there are weekly early access builds of OracleJDK 8 that developers can download and try today. Judson Althoff, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Alliances and Channels and Embedded Sales, was invited to the stage, and the audience was told that "even though he is wearing a suit, he is still pretty technical." Althoff started off with a bang: "The Internet of Things is on a collision course with big data and this is a huge opportunity for developers."  For example, Althoff said, today cars are more a data device than a mechanical device. A car embedded with sensors for fuel efficiency, temperature, tire pressure, etc. can generate a petabyte of data A DAY. There are similar examples in healthcare (patient monitoring and privacy requirements creates a complex data problem) and transportation management (sending a package around the world with sensors for humidity, temperature and light). Althoff then brought on stage representatives from three companies that are successful with Java today, first Axel Hansmann, VP Strategy & Marketing Communications, Cinterion. Mr. Hansmann explained that Cinterion, a market leader in Latin America, enables M2M services with Java. At JavaOne San Francisco, Cinterion launched the EHS5, the smallest 3g solderable module, with Java installed on it. This provides Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) with a cost effective, flexible platform for bringing advanced M2M technology to market.Next, Steve Nelson, Director of Marketing for the Americas, at Freescale explained that Freescale is #1 in Embedded Processors in Wired and Wireless Communications, and #1 in Automotive Semiconductors in the Americas. He said that Java provides a mature, proven platform that is uniquely suited to meet the requirements of almost any type of embedded device. He encouraged University students to get involved in the Freescale Cup, a global competition where student teams build, program, and race a model car around a track for speed.Roberto Franco, SBTVD Forum President, SBTVD, talked about Ginga, a Java-based standard for television in Brazil. He said there are 4 million Ginga TV sets in Brazil, and they expect over 20 million TV sets to be sold by the end of 2014. Ginga is also being adopted in other 11 countries in Latin America. Ginga brings interactive services not only at TV set, but also on other devices such as tablets,  PCs or smartphones, as the main or second screen. "Interactive services is already a reality," he said, ' but in a near future, we foresee interactivity enhanced TV content, convergence with OTT services and a big participation from the audience,  all integrated on TV, tablets, smartphones and second screen devices."Before he left the stage, Nandini Ramani thanked Judson for being part of the Java community and invited him to the next Geek Bike Ride in Brazil. She presented him an official geek bike ride jersey.For the Technical Keynote, a "blue screen of death" appeared. With mock concern, Stephin Chin asked the rest of the presenters if they could go on without slides. What followed was a interesting collection of demos, including JavaFX on a tablet, a look at Project Easel in NetBeans, and even Simon Ritter controlling legos with his brainwaves! Stay tuned for more dispatches.

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• JavaOne Latin America Opening Keynotes

  - by Tori Wieldt

  Originally published on blogs.oracle.com/javaone It was a great first day at JavaOne Brazil, which included the Java Strategy and Java Technical keynotes. Henrik Stahl, Senior Director, Product Management for Java opened the keynotes by saying that this is the third year for JavaOne Latin America. He explained, "You know what they say, the first time doesn't count, the second time is a habit and the third time it's a tradition!" He mentioned that he was thrilled that this is largest JavaOne in Brazil to date, and he wants next year to be larger. He said that Oracle knows Latin America is an important hub for development.  "We continually come back to Latin America because of the dedication the community has with driving the continued innovation for Java," he said. Stahl explained that Oracle and the Java community must continue to innovate and Make the Future Java together. The success of Java depends on three important factors: technological innovation, Oracle as a strong steward of Java, and community participation. "The Latin American Java Community (especially in Brazil) is a shining example of how to be positive contributor to Java," Stahl said. Next, George Saab, VP software dev, Java Platform Group at Oracle, discussed some of the recent and upcoming changes to Java. "In addition to the incremental improvements to Java 7, we have also increased the set of platforms supported by Oracle from Linux, Windows, and Solaris to now also include Mac OS X and Linux/ARM for ARM-based PCs such as the Raspberry Pi and emerging ARM based microservers."  Saab announced that EA builds for Linux ARM Hard Float ABI will be available by the end of the year.  Staffan Friberg, Product Manager, Java Platform Group, provided an overview of some of the language coming in Java 8, including Lambda, remove of PermGen, improved data and time APIs and improved security, Java 8 development is moving along. He reminded the audience that they can go to OpenJDK to see this development being done in real-time, and that there are weekly early access builds of OracleJDK 8 that developers can download and try today. Judson Althoff, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Alliances and Channels and Embedded Sales, was invited to the stage, and the audience was told that "even though he is wearing a suit, he is still pretty technical." Althoff started off with a bang: "The Internet of Things is on a collision course with big data and this is a huge opportunity for developers."  For example, Althoff said, today cars are more a data device than a mechanical device. A car embedded with sensors for fuel efficiency, temperature, tire pressure, etc. can generate a petabyte of data A DAY. There are similar examples in healthcare (patient monitoring and privacy requirements creates a complex data problem) and transportation management (sending a package around the world with sensors for humidity, temperature and light). Althoff then brought on stage representatives from three companies that are successful with Java today, first Axel Hansmann, VP Strategy & Marketing Communications, Cinterion. Mr. Hansmann explained that Cinterion, a market leader in Latin America, enables M2M services with Java. At JavaOne San Francisco, Cinterion launched the EHS5, the smallest 3g solderable module, with Java installed on it. This provides Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) with a cost effective, flexible platform for bringing advanced M2M technology to market.Next, Steve Nelson, Director of Marketing for the Americas, at Freescale explained that Freescale is #1 in Embedded Processors in Wired and Wireless Communications, and #1 in Automotive Semiconductors in the Americas. He said that Java provides a mature, proven platform that is uniquely suited to meet the requirements of almost any type of embedded device. He encouraged University students to get involved in the Freescale Cup, a global competition where student teams build, program, and race a model car around a track for speed.Roberto Franco, SBTVD Forum President, SBTVD, talked about Ginga, a Java-based standard for television in Brazil. He said there are 4 million Ginga TV sets in Brazil, and they expect over 20 million TV sets to be sold by the end of 2014. Ginga is also being adopted in other 11 countries in Latin America. Ginga brings interactive services not only at TV set, but also on other devices such as tablets,  PCs or smartphones, as the main or second screen. "Interactive services is already a reality," he said, ' but in a near future, we foresee interactivity enhanced TV content, convergence with OTT services and a big participation from the audience,  all integrated on TV, tablets, smartphones and second screen devices."Before he left the stage, Nandini Ramani thanked Judson for being part of the Java community and invited him to the next Geek Bike Ride in Brazil. She presented him an official geek bike ride jersey.For the Technical Keynote, a "blue screen of death" appeared. With mock concern, Stephin Chin asked the rest of the presenters if they could go on without slides. What followed was a interesting collection of demos, including JavaFX on a tablet, a look at Project Easel in NetBeans, and even Simon Ritter controlling legos with his brainwaves! Stay tuned for more dispatches.

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• Is It Worth It To Learn Experimental Languages

  - by Xander Lamkins

  I'm a young programmer who desires to work in the field someday as a programmer. I know Java, VB.NET and C#. I want to learn a new language (as I programmer, I know that it is valuable to extend what I know - to learn languages that make you think differently). I took a look online to see what languages were common. Everybody knows C and C++ (even those muggles who know so little about computers in general), so I thought, maybe I should push for C. C and C++ are nice but they are old. Things like Haskell and Forth (etc. etc. etc.) are old and have lost their popularity. I'm scared of learning C (or even C++) for this same reason. Java is pretty old as well and is slow because it's run by the JVM and not compiled to native code. I've been a Windows developer for quite a while. I recently started using Java - but only because it was more versatile and spreadable to other places. The problem is that it doesn't look like a very usable language for these reasons: It's most used purpose is for web application and cellphone apps (specifically Android) As far as actual products made with it, the only things that come to mind are Netbeans, Eclipse (hurrah for making and IDE with the language the IDE is for - it's like making a webpage for writing HTML/CSS/Javascript), and Minecraft which happens to be fun but laggy and bipolar as far as computer spec. support. Other than that it's used for servers but heck - I don't only want to make/configure servers. The .NET languages are nice, however: People laugh if I even mention VB.NET or C# in a serious conversation. It isn't cross-platform unless you use MONO (which is still in development and has some improvements to be made). Lacks low level stuff because, like Java with the JVM, it is run/managed by the CLR. My first thought was learning something like C and then using it to springboard into C++ (just to make sure I would have a strong understanding/base), but like I said earlier, it's getting older and older by the minute. What I've Looked Into Fantom looks nice. It's like a nice middleman between my two favorite languages and even lets me publish between the two interchangeably, but, unlike what I want, it compiles to the CLR or JVM (depending on what you publish it to) instead of it being a complete compile. D also looks nice. It seems like a very usable language and from multiple sources it appears to actually be better than C/C++. I would jump right with it, but I'm still unsure of its success because it obviously isn't very mainstream at this point. There are a couple others that looked pretty nice that focused on other things such as Opa with web development and Go by GOOGLE. My Question Is it worth learning these "experimental" languages? I've read other questions that say that if you aren't constantly learning languages and open to all languages that you aren't in the right mindset for programming. I understand this and I still might not quite be getting it, but in truth, if a language isn't going to become mainstream, should I spend my time learning something else? I don't want to learn old (or any going to soon be old) programming languages. I know that many people see this as something important, *but would any of you ever actually consider (assuming you didn't already know) FORTRAN? My goal is to stay current to make sure I'm successful in the future. Disclaimer Yes, I am a young programmer, so I probably made a lot of naive statements in my question. Feel free to correct me on ANYTHING! I have to start learning somewhere so I'm sure a lot of my knowledge is sketchy enough to have caused to incorrect statements or flaws in my thinking. Please leave any feelings you have in the comments.

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• How to Mentor a Junior Developer

  - by Josh Johnson

  This title is a little broad but I may need to give a little background before I can ask my question properly. I know that similar questions have been asked here already. But in my case I'm not asking if I should be mentoring someone or if the person is a good fit for being a software developer. That is not my place to judge. I have not been asked outright, but it is apparent that myself and other fellow senior developers are to mentor the new developers that start here. I have no problem with this whatsoever and, in many cases, it lends me a fresh perspective on things and I end up learning in the process. Also, I remember how beneficial it was in the beginning of my career when someone would take some time to teach me something. When I say "new developer" they could be anywhere from fresh out of college to having a year or two of experience. Recently and in the past we've had people start here who seem to have an attitude toward development/programming which is different from mine and hard for me to reconcile; they seem to extract just enough information to get the task done but not really learn from it. I find myself going over and over the same issues with them. I understand that part of this could be a personality thing, but I feel it's my job to do my best and sort of push them out of the nest while they're under my wing, so to speak. How can I impart just enough information so that they will learn but not give so much as to solve the problem for them? Or perhaps: What's the proper response to questions that are designed to take the path of least resistance and, in essence, force them to learn instead of take the easy way out? These questions are probably more general teaching questions and don't have that much to do specifically with software development. Note: I do not get a say in what tasks they are working on. Management doles the task out and it could be anything from a very simple bug fix to starting an entire application by themselves. While this is not ideal by any means and obviously presents its own gauntlet of challenges, I feel it's a topic best left for another question. So the best I can do is help them with the problem at hand and try to help them break it down into simpler problems and also check their commit logs and point out mistakes that they made. My main objectives are to: Help them out and give them the tools they need to start becoming more self-reliant. Steer them in the right direction and break bad development habits early on. Lessen the amount of time I spend with them (the personality type described above seems to need much more one-on-one time and does not do well over IM or email. While that's generally fine, I can't always stop what I'm working on, break my stride, and help them debug an error on a moments notice; I have my own projects that need to get done).

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• NetworkManager Applet shows no networks

  - by Kkelk

  I am "the friend" referred to in the questions here and here. I decided to come and ask a question myself, as I can still not connect to the wireless network. I downloaded Keryx, as suggested here, and managed to download the necessary package and its dependencies. When I attempted to install the packages on Ubuntu using Keryx, Keryx just closed. Following this, I installed the packages manually using dpkg, and as far as I can tell, this was successful: kieran@ubuntu:~$ cd /host/wifi/Keryx/keryx/projects/Kieran/packages kieran@ubuntu:/host/wifi/Keryx/keryx/projects/Kieran/packages$ sudo dpkg -i *.deb [sudo] password for kieran: Selecting previously deselected package bcmwl-kernel-source. (Reading database ... 118296 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking bcmwl-kernel-source (from bcmwl-kernel-source_5.60.48.36+bdcom-0ubuntu5_i386.deb) ... Selecting previously deselected package dkms. Unpacking dkms (from dkms_2.1.1.2-3ubuntu1.1_all.deb) ... Selecting previously deselected package fakeroot. Unpacking fakeroot (from fakeroot_1.14.4-1ubuntu1_i386.deb) ... Selecting previously deselected package linux-image. Unpacking linux-image (from linux-image_2.6.35.22.23_i386.deb) ... Selecting previously deselected package menu. Unpacking menu (from menu_2.1.44ubuntu1_i386.deb) ... Selecting previously deselected package patch. Unpacking patch (from patch_2.6-2ubuntu1_i386.deb) ... Setting up fakeroot (1.14.4-1ubuntu1) ... update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/fakeroot-sysv to provide /usr/bin/fakeroot (fakeroot) in auto mode. Setting up linux-image (2.6.35.22.23) ... Setting up menu (2.1.44ubuntu1) ... Setting up patch (2.6-2ubuntu1) ... Processing triggers for man-db ... Setting up dkms (2.1.1.2-3ubuntu1.1) ... Setting up bcmwl-kernel-source (5.60.48.36+bdcom-0ubuntu5) ... Loading new bcmwl-5.60.48.36+bdcom DKMS files... First Installation: checking all kernels... Building only for 2.6.35-22-generic Building for architecture i686 Building initial module for 2.6.35-22-generic Done. wl.ko: Running module version sanity check. - Original module - No original module exists within this kernel - Installation - Installing to /lib/modules/2.6.35-22-generic/updates/dkms/ depmod..... DKMS: install Completed. update-initramfs: deferring update (trigger activated) Processing triggers for install-info ... Processing triggers for doc-base ... Processing 31 changed 1 added doc-base file(s)... Registering documents with scrollkeeper... Processing triggers for menu ... Processing triggers for initramfs-tools ... update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.35-22-generic Warning: No support for locale: en_GB.utf8 After rebooting, however, there were still no wireless networks in the NetworkManager Applet list. I opened the file /var/lib/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.state, and both NetworkEnabled and WirelessEnabled were set to True. While i'm very concious I may be asking a stupid question here, both my friend and I have nothing left to suggest, and as such - I would be very grateful for any answers as to how to get wireless working.

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• Managing game state / 'what to update' within an XNA game 'screen'

  - by codinghands

  Note - having read through other GDev questions suggested when writing this question I'm confident this isn't a dupe. Of course, it's 3am and I'm likely wrong, so please mod as such if so. I'm trying to figure out how best to manage state within my game screens - please bare with me though! At the moment I'm using a heavily modified version of the fantastic game state management example on the XNA site available here. This is working perfectly for my 'Screens' - 'IntroScreen' with some shiny logos, 'TitleScreen' and a 'MenuScreen' stacked on top for the title and menu, 'PlayScreen' for the actual gameplay, etc. Each screen has the a bunch of sprites, and an 'Update' and 'Draw', managed by a 'ScreenManager'. In addition to the above, and as suggested as an answer to my other question here, most screens have a 'GameProcessQueue' class full of 'GameProcess'es which lets me do just about anything (animations, youbetcha!), in any order, in sequence or parallel. Why mention all this? When I talk about managing game state I'm thinking more for complex scenarios within a 'Screen'. 'TitleScreen', 'MenuScreen' and the like are all relatively simple. 'Play Screen' less so. How do people manage the different 'states' within the screen (or whatever you call it) that 'does' gameplay? (for me, the 'PlayScreen') I've thought about the following: Enum of different states in the Screen, 'activeState' enum-type variable, switching on the enum in the Screen Update() loop to determine what Screen Update 'sub'-function is called. I can see this getting hairy pretty fast though as screens get more complex and with the 'PlayScreen' becoming a behemoth mega-class. 'State' class with Update loop - a Screen can have any number of 'States', 1+ of which are 'active'. Screen update loop calls update on all active states. States themselves know which screen they belong to, and may even belong to a 'StateManager' which handles transitioning from one state to the next. Once a state is over it's removed from the ScreenState list. The Screen doesn't need a bunch of GameProcessQueues, each State has its own. Abstract Screen further to be more flexible - I can see the similarities between what I've got (game 'Screens' handled by a ScreenManager) and what I want (states within a screen, and a mechanism to manage them). However at the moment I see 'Screens' as high level and very distinct ('PlayScreen' with baddies != 'MenuScreen' with 4 words and event handlers), where as my proposed 'States' are more intrinsically tied to a specific screen with complex requirements. I think. This is for a turn-based board game, so it's easier to define things as a discrete series of steps (IntroAnimation - P1Turn - P2Turn - P1Turn ... - GameOver - .... Obviously with an open-world RPG things are very different, but any advice in this scenario is appreciated. If I'm just going OOP-crazy please say so. Similarly I'm concious there's a huge amount on this site re: state management. But as my first 'serious' game after a couple of false starts I'd like to get this right, and would rather be harassed and modded down than never ask :)

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• How would you gather client's data on Google App Engine without using Datastore/Backend Instances too much?

  - by ruslan

  I'm relatively new to StackExchange and not sure if it's appropriate place to ask design question. Site gives me a hint "The question you're asking appears subjective and is likely to be closed". Please let me know. Anyway.. One of the projects I'm working on is online survey engine. It's my first big commercial project on Google App Engine. I need your advice on how to collect stats and efficiently record them in DataStore without bankrupting me. Initial requirements are: After user finishes survey client sends list of pairs [ID (int) + PercentHit (double)]. This list shows how close answers of this user match predefined answers of reference answerers (which identified by IDs). I call them "target IDs". Creator of the survey wants to see aggregated % for given IDs for last hour, particular timeframe or from the beginning of the survey. Some surveys may have thousands of target/reference answerers. So I created entity public class HitsStatsDO implements Serializable { @Id transient private Long id; transient private Long version = (long) 0; transient private Long startDate; @Parent transient private Key parent; // fake parent which contains target id @Transient int targetId; private double avgPercent; private long hitCount; } But writing HitsStatsDO for each target from each user would give a lot of data. For instance I had a survey with 3000 targets which was answered by ~4 million people within one week with 300K people taking survey in first day. Even if we assume they were answering it evenly for 24 hours it would give us ~1040 writes/second. Obviously it hits concurrent writes limit of Datastore. I decided I'll collect data for one hour and save that, that's why there are avgPercent and hitCount in HitsStatsDO. GAE instances are stateless so I had to use dynamic backend instance. There I have something like this: // Contains stats for one hour private class Shard { ReadWriteLock lock = new ReentrantReadWriteLock(); Map<Integer, HitsStatsDO> map = new HashMap<Integer, HitsStatsDO>(); // Key is target ID public void saveToDatastore(); public void updateStats(Long startDate, Map<Integer, Double> hits); } and map with shard for current hour and previous hour (which doesn't stay here for long) private HashMap<Long, Shard> shards = new HashMap<Long, Shard>(); // Key is HitsStatsDO.startDate So once per hour I dump Shard for previous hour to Datastore. Plus I have class LifetimeStats which keeps Map<Integer, HitsStatsDO> in memcached where map-key is target ID. Also in my backend shutdown hook method I dump stats for unfinished hour to Datastore. There is only one major issue here - I have only ONE backend instance :) It raises following questions on which I'd like to hear your opinion: Can I do this without using backend instance ? What if one instance is not enough ? How can I split data between multiple dynamic backend instances? It hard because I don't know how many I have because Google creates new one as load increases. I know I can launch exact number of resident backend instances. But how many ? 2, 5, 10 ? What if I have no load at all for a week. Constantly running 10 backend instances is too expensive. What do I do with data from clients while backend instance is dead/restarting? Thank you very much in advance for your thoughts.

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• Ask HTG: How Can I Check the Age of My Windows Installation?

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  Curious about when you installed Windows and how long you’ve been chugging along without a system refresh? Read on as we show you a simple way to see how long-in-the-tooth your Windows installation is. Dear How-To Geek, It feels like it has been forever since I installed Windows 7 and I’m starting to wonder if some of the performance issues I’m experiencing have something to do with how long ago it was installed. It isn’t crashing or anything horrible, mind you, it just feels slower than it used to and I’m wondering if I should reinstall it to wipe the slate clean. Is there a simple way to determine the original installation date of Windows on its host machine? Sincerely, Worried in Windows Although you only intended to ask one question, you actually asked two. Your direct question is an easy one to answer (how to check the Windows installation date). The indirect question is, however, a little trickier (if you need to reinstall Windows to get a performance boost). Let’s start off with the easy one: how to check your installation date. Windows includes a handy little application just for the purposes of pulling up system information like the installation date, among other things. Open the Start Menu and type cmd in the run box (or, alternatively, press WinKey+R to pull up the run dialog and enter the same command). At the command prompt, type systeminfo.exe Give the application a moment to run; it takes around 15-20 seconds to gather all the data. You’ll most likely need to scroll back up in the console window to find the section at the top that lists operating system stats. What you care about is Original Install Date: We’ve been running the machine we tested the command on since August 23 2009. For the curious, that’s one month and a day after the initial public release of Windows 7 (after we were done playing with early test releases and spent a month mucking around in the guts of Windows 7 to report on features and flaws, we ran a new clean installation and kept on trucking). Now, you might be asking yourself: Why haven’t they reinstalled Windows in all that time? Haven’t things slowed down? Haven’t they upgraded hardware? The truth of the matter is, in most cases there’s no need to completely wipe your computer and start from scratch to resolve issues with Windows and, if you don’t bog your system down with unnecessary and poorly written software, things keep humming along. In fact, we even migrated this machine from a traditional mechanical hard drive to a newer solid-state drive back in 2011. Even though we’ve tested piles of software since then, the machine is still rather clean because 99% of that testing happened in a virtual machine. That’s not just a trick for technology bloggers, either, virtualizing is a handy trick for anyone who wants to run a rock solid base OS and avoid the bog-down-and-then-refresh cycle that can plague a heavily used machine. So while it might be the case that you’ve been running Windows 7 for years and heavy software installation and use has bogged your system down to the point a refresh is in order, we’d strongly suggest reading over the following How-To Geek guides to see if you can’t wrangle the machine into shape without a total wipe (and, if you can’t, at least you’ll be in a better position to keep the refreshed machine light and zippy): HTG Explains: Do You Really Need to Regularly Reinstall Windows? PC Cleaning Apps are a Scam: Here’s Why (and How to Speed Up Your PC) The Best Tips for Speeding Up Your Windows PC Beginner Geek: How to Reinstall Windows on Your Computer Everything You Need to Know About Refreshing and Resetting Your Windows 8 PC Armed with a little knowledge, you too can keep a computer humming along until the next iteration of Windows comes along (and beyond) without the hassle of reinstalling Windows and all your apps.         

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• Is it worth to learn Experimental Languages?

  - by Xander Lamkins

  I'm a young programmer who desires to work in the field someday as a programmer. I know Java, VB.NET and C#. I want to learn a new language (as I programmer, I know that it is valuable to extend what I know - to learn languages that make you think differently). I took a look online to see what languages were common. Everybody knows C and C++ (even those muggles who know so little about computers in general), so I thought, maybe I should push for C. C and C++ are nice but they are old. Things like Haskell and Forth (etc. etc. etc.) are old and have lost their popularity. I'm scared of learning C (or even C++) for this same reason. Java is pretty old as well and is slow because it's run by the JVM and not compiled to native code. I've been a Windows developer for quite a while. I recently started using Java - but only because it was more versatile and spreadable to other places. The problem is that it doesn't look like a very usable language for these reasons: It's most used purpose is for web application and cellphone apps (specifically Android) As far as actual products made with it, the only things that come to mind are Netbeans, Eclipse (hurrah for making and IDE with the language the IDE is for - it's like making a webpage for writing HTML/CSS/Javascript), and Minecraft which happens to be fun but laggy and bipolar as far as computer spec. support. Other than that it's used for servers but heck - I don't only want to make/configure servers. The .NET languages are nice, however: People laugh if I even mention VB.NET or C# in a serious conversation. It isn't cross-platform unless you use MONO (which is still in development and has some improvements to be made). Lacks low level stuff because, like Java with the JVM, it is run/managed by the CLR. My first thought was learning something like C and then using it to springboard into C++ (just to make sure I would have a strong understanding/base), but like I said earlier, it's getting older and older by the minute. What I've Looked Into Fantom looks nice. It's like a nice middleman between my two favorite languages and even lets me publish between the two interchangeably, but, unlike what I want, it compiles to the CLR or JVM (depending on what you publish it to) instead of it being a complete compile. D also looks nice. It seems like a very usable language and from multiple sources it appears to actually be better than C/C++. I would jump right with it, but I'm still unsure of its success because it obviously isn't very mainstream at this point. There are a couple others that looked pretty nice that focused on other things such as Opa with web development and Go by GOOGLE. My Question Is it worth learning these "experimental" languages? I've read other questions that say that if you aren't constantly learning languages and open to all languages that you aren't in the right mindset for programming. I understand this and I still might not quite be getting it, but in truth, if a language isn't going to become mainstream, should I spend my time learning something else? I don't want to learn old (or any going to soon be old) programming languages. I know that many people see this as something important, *but would any of you ever actually consider (assuming you didn't already know) FORTRAN? My goal is to stay current to make sure I'm successful in the future. Disclaimer Yes, I am a young programmer, so I probably made a lot of naive statements in my question. Feel free to correct me on ANYTHING! I have to start learning somewhere so I'm sure a lot of my knowledge is sketchy enough to have caused to incorrect statements or flaws in my thinking. Please leave any feelings you have in the comments.

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• Changes in Language Punctuation [closed]

  - by Wes Miller

  More social curiosity than actual programming question... (I got shot for posting this on Stack Overflow. They sent me here. At least i hope here is where they meant.) Based on the few responses I got before the content police ran me off Stack Overflow, I should note that I am legally blind and neatness and consistency in programming are my best friends. A thousand years ago when I took my first programming class (Fortran 66) and a mere 500 years ago when I tokk my first C and C++ classes, there were some pretty standard punctuation practices across languages. I saw them in Basic (shudder), PL/1, PL/AS, Rexx even Pascal. Ok, APL2 is not part of this discussion. Each language has its own peculiar punctuation. Pascal's periods, Fortran's comma separated do loops, almost everybody else's semicolons. As I learned it, each language also has KEYWORDS (if, for, do, while, until, etc.) which are set off by whitespace (or the left margin) if, etc. Each language has function, subroutines of whatever they're called. Some built-in some user coded. They were set off by function_name( parameters );. As in sqrt( x ) or rand( y ); Lately, there seems to be a new set of punctuation rules. Especially in c++ where initializers get glued onto the end of variable declarations int x(0); or auto_ptr p(new gizmo); This usually, briefly fools me into thinking someone is declaring a function prototype or using a function as a integer. Then "if" and 'for' seems to have grown parens; if(true) for(;;), etc. Since when did keywords become functions. I realize some people think they ARE functions with iterators as parameters. But if "for" is a function, where did the arg separating commas go? And finally, functions seem to have shed their parens; sqrt (2) select (...) I know, I koow, loosening whitespace rules is good. Keep reading. Question: when did the old ways disappear and this new way come into vogue? Does anyone besides me find it irritating to read and that the information that the placement of punctuation used to convey is gone? I know full well that K&R put the { at the end of the "if" or "for" to save a byte here and there. Can't use that excuse here. Space as an excuse for loss of readability died as HDD space soared past 100 MiB. Your thoughts are solicited. If there is a good reason to do this, I'll gladly learn it and maybe in another 50 years I'll get used to it. Of course it's good that compilers recognize these (IMHO) typos and keep right on going, but just because you CAN code it that way doesn't mean you HAVE to, right?

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• Oracle Fusion Supply Chain Management (SCM) Designs May Improve End User Productivity

  - by Applications User Experience

  By Applications User Experience on March 10, 2011 Michele Molnar, Senior Usability Engineer, Applications User Experience The Challenge: The SCM User Experience team, in close collaboration with product management and strategy, completely redesigned the user experience for Oracle Fusion applications. One of the goals of this redesign was to increase end user productivity by applying design patterns and guidelines and incorporating findings from extensive usability research. But a question remained: How do we know that the Oracle Fusion designs will actually increase end user productivity? The Test: To answer this question, the SCM Usability Engineers compared Oracle Fusion designs to their corresponding existing Oracle applications using the workflow time analysis method. The workflow time analysis method breaks tasks into a sequence of operators. By applying standard time estimates for all of the operators in the task, an estimate of the overall task time can be calculated. The workflow time analysis method has been recently adopted by the Applications User Experience group for use in predicting end user productivity. Using this method, a design can be tested and refined as needed to improve productivity even before the design is coded. For the study, we selected some of our recent designs for Oracle Fusion Product Information Management (PIM). The designs encompassed tasks performed by Product Managers to create, manage, and define products for their organization. (See Figure 1 for an example.) In applying this method, the SCM Usability Engineers collaborated with Product Management to compare the new Oracle Fusion Applications designs against Oracle’s existing applications. Together, we performed the following activities: Identified the five most frequently performed tasks Created detailed task scenarios that provided the context for each task Conducted task walkthroughs Analyzed and documented the steps and flow required to complete each task Applied standard time estimates to the operators in each task to estimate the overall task completion time Figure 1. The interactions on each Oracle Fusion Product Information Management screen were documented, as indicated by the red highlighting. The task scenario and script provided the context for each task.  The Results: The workflow time analysis method predicted that the Oracle Fusion Applications designs would result in productivity gains in each task, ranging from 8% to 62%, with an overall productivity gain of 43%. All other factors being equal, the new designs should enable these tasks to be completed in about half the time it takes with existing Oracle Applications. Further analysis revealed that these performance gains would be achieved by reducing the number of clicks and screens needed to complete the tasks. Conclusions: Using the workflow time analysis method, we can expect the Oracle Fusion Applications redesign to succeed in improving end user productivity. The workflow time analysis method appears to be an effective and efficient tool for testing, refining, and retesting designs to optimize productivity. The workflow time analysis method does not replace usability testing with end users, but it can be used as an early predictor of design productivity even before designs are coded. We are planning to conduct usability tests later in the development cycle to compare actual end user data with the workflow time analysis results. Such results can potentially be used to validate the productivity improvement predictions. Used together, the workflow time analysis method and usability testing will enable us to continue creating, evaluating, and delivering Oracle Fusion designs that exceed the expectations of our end users, both in the quality of the user experience and in productivity. (For more information about studying productivity, refer to the Measuring User Productivity blog.)

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• VirtualBox appliance for the Oracle Communications Service Delivery Platform (SDP) Products

  - by chlander

  It's been quite awhile since we last blogged. This blog is written by Leif Lourie, a Curriculum Developer for the Oracle Communications Service Delivery Platform (SDP) products. For the last 8 years, Leif has worked as a Curriculum Developer for many of the telecom-oriented products that Oracle offers. He has been working in the telecom industry for about 25 years and has also worked as a software developer, project manager, and solutions architect. He is currently working on courseware for an upcoming release for one of the Service Delivery Platform products. Thanks to Leif not only for this blog, but for making the VM described in the blog available. Cheryl Lander, Oracle Communications InfoDev Senior Director To be able to download, install and test a product within a day is many times very important for people that are doing the primary evaluation of a software product. If it takes longer, it will require a bigger effort, like a proof-of-concept project with many people involved. Of course, if the product is chosen for a more thorough test, it will probably happen anyway, but then maybe with focus on integration instead of product features. We have a long tradition of creating complex software that is easy to install and test and we have often been praised for the ease of getting our products up and running. One key for this has been that there has always been an installer for Windows, as well as for the production environments that usually are Unix and Linux. And, the windows installer has, in most cases, been released for developing and testing purposes. Lately, this has changed. Our products are very seldom released for the Windows platform, at all. And even the Linux versions are almost always released for 64-bit systems. This is creating problems for many of the people that want to try out our products, since few have access to a 64-bit Linux system of the right platform. Most of us are using a laptop with Windows or Mac OS. Some of us are using Linux or Solaris, but probably a non certified distribution for the product you want to test. My job, among other things, is to develop hands-on practices for our products. For me, it is crucial to have access to environments for installing and using our products. For this reason I have been using virtual machines for many years.I have a ready-made base system, with the necessary tools installed for all the products I create hands-on practices for. Whenever I start working on hands-on practices for a new product or a new version, I just copy the base system and start working with a clean slate. This saves me a lot of time! Now, I would like to start saving time for my favorite student: You! If you are using our products and regularly test new versions you might benefit from the virtual machine that is now available on Oracle Technology Network: The Virtual Machine for the Oracle Communications Service Delivery Platform (SDP) Products. This virtual machine contains an installation of the 64-bit version of Oracle Enterprise Linux, version 6. It also has Oracle Database Express Edition (XE), Oracle Java and Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse installed. By using Oracle VM VirtualBox you may use Windows, OS X, Linux or Solaris on your laptop. VirtualBox can be installed on top of any of these platforms and give you the ability to run virtual machines in your laptop. After downloading and starting the virtual machine you will also need to download the installation files for the product you want to test; for example Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper or Oracle Communications Online Mediation Controller. In some cases there are lessons and practices available for the products. The freely available courses are listed in Oracle Learning Library as a Collection of Oracle Communications Service Delivery Platform Courses. As time goes by, we will make this list collection bigger. Also, the goal is to update the virtual machine about one to two times per year. So you will always be able to get a well maintained virtual machine for the Service Delivery Platform products from us. We Value Your Feedback If you would like to suggest improvements or report issues on any of the product documentation, curriculum, or training produced by the Oracle Communications Information Development team, you can use these channels: Email [email protected]. Post a comment on this blog. Thanks for reading!

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• apt-get upgrade stuck at the same package

  - by decibyte

  Current status I've started to suspect this is not an Ubuntu issue, but related to the internet connection here at my work. Until I'm sure, Im leaving my question below: Original question I'm stuck, can't upgrade my system. Running sudo apt-get upgrade gives me the following: mmm@alalunga:~$ sudo apt-get upgrade Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following packages have been kept back: ginn libgrip0 linux-generic-pae linux-headers-generic-pae linux-image-generic-pae The following packages will be upgraded: apport apport-gtk bind9-host build-essential dhcp3-client dhcp3-common dnsutils eog evince evince-common firefox firefox-branding firefox-dbg firefox-globalmenu firefox-gnome-support firefox-locale-en gimp gimp-data gir1.2-totem-1.0 glib-networking glib-networking-common glib-networking-services gnupg gpgv icedtea-6-jre-cacao icedtea-6-jre-jamvm icedtea-6-plugin icedtea-netx icedtea-netx-common icedtea-plugin isc-dhcp-client isc-dhcp-common libapache2-mod-php5 libart-2.0-2 libbind9-80 libdns81 libevince3-3 libgimp2.0 libisc83 libisccc80 libisccfg82 liblwres80 libssl-dev libssl-doc libssl1.0.0 libtotem0 linux-firmware linux-libc-dev openjdk-6-jre openjdk-6-jre-headless openjdk-6-jre-lib openssl php-pear php5-cli php5-common php5-curl php5-dev php5-gd php5-mysql php5-xsl policykit-1-gnome python-apport python-django python-gst0.10 python-problem-report resolvconf thunderbird thunderbird-globalmenu thunderbird-gnome-support totem totem-common totem-mozilla totem-plugins xserver-xorg-input-synaptics 74 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 5 not upgraded. Need to get 317 MB/327 MB of archives. After this operation, 1.481 kB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Get:1 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main openjdk-6-jre-headless i386 6b24-1.11.4-1ubuntu0.12.04.1 [27,3 MB] Get:2 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main openjdk-6-jre-headless i386 6b24-1.11.4-1ubuntu0.12.04.1 [27,3 MB] Get:3 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main openjdk-6-jre-headless i386 6b24-1.11.4-1ubuntu0.12.04.1 [27,3 MB] Get:4 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main openjdk-6-jre-headless i386 6b24-1.11.4-1ubuntu0.12.04.1 [27,3 MB] Get:5 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main openjdk-6-jre-headless i386 6b24-1.11.4-1ubuntu0.12.04.1 [27,3 MB] Get:6 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main openjdk-6-jre-headless i386 6b24-1.11.4-1ubuntu0.12.04.1 [27,3 MB] Get:7 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main openjdk-6-jre-headless i386 6b24-1.11.4-1ubuntu0.12.04.1 [27,3 MB] 9% [7 openjdk-6-jre-headless 27,3 MB/27,3 MB 100%] It keeps downloading the package openjdk-6-jre-headless, then does nothing for a while (hanging on what's the last line above), then download the package again. It's at its 13th download attempt at the moment of writing. The actual downloads seem to be done just fine, but whatever it does after downloading seems to be failing. I tried removing openjdk-6, but then it wanted to install openjdk-7 instead, with the same result, hanging at openjdk-7-jre-headless instead. I also tried changing servers from my local (Danish) to the main server. No luck. It's also keeping me from upgrading alle the other packages. What to do? Update After following instructions in the answer by @lpanebr, it is now stuck at the linux-firmware package. So, maybe it's a more general problem than being related to specific package(s)? Although it did download some packages without problems before getting stuck at linux-firmware.

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• How to solve conflicts with another programmer..

  - by Tio

  Hi all.. I've read this question, but I think it doesn't really applies in my case.. I started to work at new company about 2 months ago with the position of senior web developer, there was already one programmer there, my position is above his, but I'm not his boss.. I don't tell him what to do.. Since the day I started to work at the company, I managed to implement a kind of a test server which he refuses to use, implemented a project management tool which he refuses to use also, and I'm in the process of implementing version control using mercurial ( damn Mercurial that's giving me so much headaches ), which he is going to use.. He is a nice guy, but just the other day we had a big discussion about "best practices", and "coding standards".. for me it's absolutely necessary to have this two things, at the place I'm currently working... otherwise it's not going to work.. This discussion, basically revolved about using short tags and the echo shortcut, and how we shouldn't use it anymore ( because I sometimes use short tags ).. this went for about 15 minutes, until I finally dropped the subject because I had work to do.. and of course he didn't budge even a millimeter, he's continuing to use short tags, and the echo shortcut and he not even cares about what I think.. When I mentioned that we are a team, he told me: "We are not a team, you work on your projects and I work on mine".. Let's just say, that the switch in my brain flipped, I raised my voice, and I told him that he was going nuts.. this was the most improper way to deal it with, I know, but there are certain things that can't be said to me.. The question here, is how do I deal with this? I want, to implement more changes on our work workflow, and I know that it's going to be a pain, with him always complaining and saying things like this.. Our boss is going to intervene in a few days, I talked to him today, the other programmer send him an email the day we had the discussion complaining.. Just to clarify, when I talk about implementing changes, I just don't appear at work, the next day with a sheet of paper, and say: "This is our we are doing things from now on! And there is no discussion.." For example, when I was trying to implement the project management tool, I took the time to talk to everybody that was going to be involved in it, to see what they think about it.. everyone was positive except him, he responded that it was just a mean to control us even more.. Does anyone has any idea on how to deal with this? PS: Truth to be told, I didn't start the best way with him, in the 4º day of work at the company, I found a really bad piece of code on our custom CMS, one of those things that I only expect to find in code produced by a programmer that has only 1 month of training in programming, and I talked to my boss about it... he showed up at the time I saw that piece of code, he saw my face and asked about it, so I told him.. I know the worst thing that can be said to a programmer is saying that their code is awful, but I've already learned that my code isn't the best of the world, so I take criticism in a completely different way now.. maybe he doesn't..

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• Why Is Hibernation Still Used?

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  With the increased prevalence of fast solid-state hard drives, why do we still have system hibernation? Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader Moses wants to know why he should use hibernate on a desktop machine: I’ve never quite understood the original purpose of the Hibernation power state in Windows. I understand how it works, what processes take place, and what happens when you boot back up from Hibernate, but I’ve never truly understood why it’s used. With today’s technology, most notably with SSDs, RAM and CPUs becoming faster and faster, a cold boot on a clean/efficient Windows installation can be pretty fast (for some people, mere seconds from pushing the power button). Standby is even faster, sometimes instantaneous. Even SATA drives from 5-6 years ago can accomplish these fast boot times. Hibernation seems pointless to me [on desktop computers] when modern technology is considered, but perhaps there are applications that I’m not considering. What was the original purpose behind hibernation, and why do people still use it? Quite a few people use hibernate, so what is Moses missing in the big picture? The Answer SuperUser contributor Vignesh4304 writes: Normally hibernate mode saves your computer’s memory, this includes for example open documents and running applications, to your hard disk and shuts down the computer, it uses zero power. Once the computer is powered back on, it will resume everything where you left off. You can use this mode if you won’t be using the laptop/desktop for an extended period of time, and you don’t want to close your documents. Simple Usage And Purpose: Save electric power and resuming of documents. In simple terms this comment serves nice e.g (i.e. you will sleep but your memories are still present). Why it’s used: Let me describe one sample scenario. Imagine your battery is low on power in your laptop, and you are working on important projects on your machine. You can switch to hibernate mode – it will result your documents being saved, and when you power on, the actual state of application gets restored. Its main usage is like an emergency shutdown with an auto-resume of your documents. MagicAndre1981 highlights the reason we use hibernate everyday: Because it saves the status of all running programs. I leave all my programs open and can resume working the next day very easily. Doing a real boot would require to start all programs again, load all the same files into those programs, get to the same place that I was at before, and put all my windows in exactly the same place. Hibernating saves a lot of work pulling these things back up again. It’s not unusual to find computers around the office here that have been hibernated day in and day out for months without an actual full system shutdown and restart. It’s enormously convenient to freeze your work space at the exact moment you stopped working and to turn right around and resume there the next morning. Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.     

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• Why We Do What We Do. (Part 3 of 5 Part Series on JDE 5G Postponed)

  - by Kem Butller-Oracle

  By Lyle Ekdahl - Oracle JD Edwards Sr. VP General Manager  In the closing of part two of this 5 part blog series, I stated that in the next installment I would explore the expected results of the digital overdrive era and the impact it will have on our economy. While I have full intentions of writing on that topic, I am inspired today to write about something that is top of mind. It’s top of mind because it has come up several times recently conversations with my Oracle’s JD Edwards team members, with customers and our partners, plus I feel passionately about why I do what I do…. It is not what we do but why we do that thing that we do Do you know what you do? For the most part, I bet you could tell me what you do even if your work has changed over the years.  My real question is, “Do you get excited about what you do, and are you fulfilled? Does your work deliver a sense of purpose, a cause to work for, and something to believe in?”  Alright, I guess that was not a single question. So let me just ask, “Why?” Why are you here, right now? Why do you get up in the morning? Why do you go to work? Of course, I can’t answer those questions for you but I can share with you my POV.   For starters, there are several things that drive me. As many of you know by now, I have a somewhat competitive nature but it is not solely the thrill of winning that actually fuels me. Now don’t get me wrong, I do like winning occasionally. However winning is only a potential result of competing and is clearly not guaranteed. So why compete? Why compete in business, and particularly why in this Enterprise Software business?  Here’s why! I am fascinated by creative and building processes. It is about making or producing things, causing something to come into existence. With the right skill, imagination and determination, whether it’s art or invention; the result can deliver value and inspire. In both avocation and vocation I always gravitate towards the create/build processes.  I believe one of the skills necessary for the create/build process is not just the aptitude but also, and especially, the desire and attitude that drives one to gain a deeper understanding. The more I learn about our customers, the more I seek to understand what makes the successful and what difficult issues cause them to struggle. I like to look for the complex, non-commodity process problems where streamlined design and modern technology can provide an easy and simple solution. It is especially gratifying to see our customers use our software to increase their own ability to deliver value to the market. What an incredible network effect! I know many of you share this customer obsession as well as the create/build addiction focused on simple and elegant design. This is what I believe is at the root of our common culture.  Are JD Edwards customers on a whole different than other ERP solutions’ customers? I would argue that for the most part, yes, they are. They selected our software, and our software is different. Why? Because I believe that the create/build process will generally result in solutions that reflect who built it and their culture. And a culture of people focused on why they create/build will attract different customers than one that is based on what is built or how the solution is delivered. In the past I have referred to this idea as character of the customer, and it transcends industry, size and run rate. Now some would argue that JD Edwards has some customers who are characters. But that is for a different post. As I have told you before, the JD Edwards culture is unique, and its resulting economy is valuable and deserving of our best efforts. 

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• Unable to Sign in to the Microsoft Online Services Signin application from Windows 7 client located behind ISA firewall

  - by Ravindra Pamidi

  A while ago i helped a customer troubleshoot authentication problem with Microsoft Online Services Signin application.  This customer was evaluating Microsoft BPOS (Business Productivity Online Services) and was having trouble using the single sign on application behind ISA 2004 firewall.The network structure is fairly simple with single Windows 2003 Active Directory domain and Windows 7 clients. On a successful logon to the Microsoft Online Services Signin application, this application provides single signon functionality to all of Microsoft online services in the BPOS package. Symptoms:When trying to signin it fails with error "The service is currently unavailable. Please try again later. If problems continue, contact your service administrator". If ISA 2004 firewall is removed from the picture the authentication succeeds.Troubleshooting: Enabled ISA Server firewall logging along with Microsoft Network Monitor tool on the Windows 7 Client while reproducing the issue. Analysis of the ISA Server Firewall logs and Microsoft Network capture revealed that the Microsoft Online Services Sign In application when sending request to ISA Server does not send the domain credentials and as a result ISA Server responds with an error code of HTTP 407 Proxy authentication required listing out the supported authentication mechanisms.  The application in question is expected to send the credentials of the domain user in response to this request. However in this case, it fails to send the logged on user's domain credentials. Bit of researching on the Internet revealed that The "Microsoft Online Services Sign In" application by default does not support Outbound Internet Proxy authentication. In order for it to send the logged on user's domain credentials we had to make  changes to its configuration file "SignIn.exe.config" located under "Program Files\Microsoft Online Services\Sign In" folder. Step by Step details to configure the configuration file are documented on Microsoft TechNet website given below.  Configure your outbound authenticating proxy serverhttp://www.microsoft.com/online/help/en-us/helphowto/cc54100d-d149-45a9-8e96-f248ecb1b596.htm After the above problem was addressed we were still not able to use the "Microsoft Online Services Sign In" application and it failed with the same error.  Analysis of another network capture revealed that the application in question is now sending the required credentials and the connection seems to terminate at a later stage. Enabled verbose logging for the "Microsoft Online Services Sign In" application and then reproduced the problem. Analysis of the logs revealed a time difference between the local client and Microsoft Online services server of around seven minutes which is above the acceptable time skew of five minutes. Excerpt from Microsoft Online Services Sign In application verbose log:  1/26/2012 1:57:51 PM Verbose SingleSignOn.GetSSOGenericInterface SSO Interface URL: https://signinservice.apac.microsoftonline.com/ssoservice/UID1/26/2012 1:57:52 PM Exception SSOSignIn.SignIn The security timestamp is invalid because its creation time ('2012-01-26T08:34:52.767Z') is in the future. Current time is '2012-01-26T08:27:52.987Z' and allowed clock skew is '00:05:00'.1/26/2012 1:57:52 PM Exception SSOSignIn.SignIn  Although the Windows 7 Clients successfully synchronized time to the domain controller for the domain, the domain controller was not configured to synchronize time with external NTP servers. This caused a gradual drift in time on the network thus resulting in the above issue. Reconfigured the domain controller holding the PDC FSMO role to synchronize time with external time source ( time.nist.gov ) and edited the system policy on the ISA server firewall to allow NTP traffic to time.nist.gov Configure the time source for the forest:Windows Time Servicehttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc794937(WS.10).aspx Forced synchronization of Windows time using the command w32tm /resync on the domain controller and later on the clients each of which had corrected the seven minutes difference. This resolved the problem with logon to Microsoft Online Services Sign In.

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• Most Innovative IDM Projects: Awards at OpenWorld

  - by Tanu Sood

  On Tuesday at Oracle OpenWorld 2012, Oracle recognized the winners of Innovation Awards 2012 at a ceremony presided over by Hasan Rizvi, Executive Vice President at Oracle. Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards recognize customers for achieving significant business value through innovative uses of Oracle Fusion Middleware offerings. Winners are selected based on the uniqueness of their business case, business benefits, level of impact relative to the size of the organization, complexity and magnitude of implementation, and the originality of architecture. This year’s Award honors customers for their cutting-edge solutions driving business innovation and IT modernization using Oracle Fusion Middleware. The program has grown over the past 6 years, receiving a record number of nominations from customers around the globe. The winners were selected by a panel of judges that ranked each nomination across multiple different scoring categories. Congratulations to both Avea and ETS for winning this year’s Innovation Award for Identity Management. Identity Management Innovation Award 2012 Winner – Avea Company: Founded in 2004, AveA is the sole GSM 1800 mobile operator of Turkey and has reached a nationwide customer base of 12.8 million as of the end of 2011 Region: Turkey (EMEA) Products: Oracle Identity Manager, Oracle Identity Analytics, Oracle Access Management Suite Business Drivers: ·         To manage the agility and scale required for GSM Operations and enable call center efficiency by enabling agents to change their identity profiles (accounts and entitlements) rapidly based on call load. ·         Enhance user productivity and call center efficiency with self service password resets ·         Enforce compliance and audit reporting ·         Seamless identity management between AveA and parent company Turk Telecom Innovation and Results: ·         One of the first Sun2Oracle identity management migrations designed for high performance provisioning and trusted reconciliation built with connectors developed on the ICF architecture that provides custom user interfaces for  dynamic and rapid management of roles and entitlements along with entitlement level attestation using closed loop remediation between Oracle Identity Manager and Oracle Identity Analytics. ·         Dramatic reduction in identity administration and call center password reset tasks leading to 20% reduction in administration costs and 95% reduction in password related calls. ·         Enhanced user productivity by up to 25% to date ·         Enforced enterprise security and reduced risk ·         Cost-effective compliance management ·         Looking to seamlessly integrate with parent and sister companies’ infrastructure securely. Identity Management Innovation Award 2012 Winner – Education Testing Service (ETS)       See last year's winners here --Company: ETS is a private nonprofit organization devoted to educational measurement and research, primarily through testing. Region: U.S.A (North America) Products: Oracle Access Manager, Oracle Identity Federation, Oracle Identity Manager Business Drivers: ETS develops and administers more than 50 million achievement and admissions tests each year in more than 180 countries, at more than 9,000 locations worldwide.  As the business becomes more globally based, having a robust solution to security and user management issues becomes paramount. The organizations was looking for: ·         Simplified user experience for over 3000 company users and more than 6 million dynamic student and staff population ·         Infrastructure and administration cost reduction ·         Managing security risk by controlling 3rd party access to ETS systems ·         Enforce compliance and manage audit reporting ·         Automate on-boarding and decommissioning of user account to improve security, reduce administration costs and enhance user productivity ·         Improve user experience with simplified sign-on and user self service Innovation and Results: 1.    Manage Risk ·         Centralized system to control user access ·         Provided secure way of accessing service providers' application using federated SSO. ·         Provides reporting capability for auditing, governance and compliance. 2.    Improve efficiency ·         Real-Time provisioning to target systems ·         Centralized provisioning system for user management and access controls. ·         Enabling user self services. 3.    Reduce cost ·         Re-using common shared services for provisioning, SSO, Access by application reducing development cost and time. ·         Reducing infrastructure and maintenance cost by decommissioning legacy/redundant IDM services. ·         Reducing time and effort to implement security functionality in business applications (“onboard” instead of new development). ETS was able to fold in new and evolving requirement in addition to the initial stated goals realizing quick ROI and successfully meeting business objectives. Congratulations to the winners once again. We will be sure to bring you more from these Innovation Award winners over the next few months.

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