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  • How to stop Thunar being default file browser

    - by Charles Kane
    On a relatively new 11.04 installation Thunar has become the default file browser simply by using it! Whilst I can open Nautilus easily enough, I'd rather it remained as the default, especially when I choose to view files in dual pane. The only action that I can pinpoint that might have given over my files and folders to Thunar is making Nautilus into Nautilus-Elementary (oh and Unity carked it so I reverted rather unwillingly to Classic, glad I did it is so much more stable and this is my production machine and Unity acts as if it is early alpha as far as I can tell!)

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  • Microsoft and the open source community

    - by Charles Young
    For the last decade, I have repeatedly, in my imitable Microsoft fan boy style, offered an alternative view to commonly held beliefs about Microsoft's stance on open source licensing.  In earlier times, leading figures in Microsoft were very vocal in resisting the idea that commercial licensing is outmoded or morally reprehensible.  Many people interpreted this as all-out corporate opposition to open source licensing.  I never read it that way. It is true that I've met individual employees of Microsoft who are antagonistic towards FOSS (free and open source software), but I've met more who are supportive or at least neutral on the subject.  In any case, individual attitudes of employees don't necessarily reflect a corporate stance.  The strongest opposition I've encountered has actually come from outside the company.  It's not a charitable thought, but I sometimes wonder if there are people in the .NET community who are opposed to FOSS simply because they believe, erroneously, that Microsoft is opposed. Here, for what it is worth, are the points I've repeated endlessly over the years and which have often been received with quizzical scepticism. a)  A decade ago, Microsoft's big problem was not FOSS per se, or even with copyleft.  The thing which really kept them awake at night was the fear that one day, someone might find, deep in the heart of the Windows code base, some code that should not be there and which was published under GPL.  The likelihood of this ever happening has long since faded away, but there was a time when MS was running scared.  I suspect this is why they held out for a while from making Windows source code open to inspection.  Nowadays, as an MVP, I am positively encouraged to ask to see Windows source. b)  Microsoft has never opposed the open source community.  They have had problems with specific people and organisations in the FOSS community.  Back in the 1990s, Richard Stallman gave time and energy to a successful campaign to launch antitrust proceedings against Microsoft.  In more recent times, the negative attitude of certain people to Microsoft's submission of two FOSS licences to the OSI (both of which have long since been accepted), and the mad scramble to try to find any argument, however tenuous, to block their submission was not, let us say, edifying. c) Microsoft has never, to my knowledge, written off the FOSS model.  They certainly don't agree that more traditional forms of licensing are inappropriate or immoral, and they've always been prepared to say so.  One reason why it was so hard to convince people that Microsoft is not rabidly antagonistic towards FOSS licensing is that so many people think they have no involvement in open source.  A decade ago, there was virtually no evidence of any such involvement.  However, that was a long time ago.  Quietly over the years, Microsoft has got on with the job of working out how to make use of FOSS licensing and how to support the FOSS community.  For example, as well as making increasingly extensive use of Github, they run an important FOSS forge (CodePlex) on which they, themselves, host many hundreds of distinct projects.  The total count may even be in the thousands now.  I suspect there is a limit of about 500 records on CodePlex searches because, for the past few years, whenever I search for Microsoft-specific projects on CodePlex, I always get approx. 500 hits.  Admittedly, a large volume of the stuff they publish under FOSS licences amounts to code samples, but many of those 'samples' have grown into useful and fully featured frameworks, libraries and tools. All this is leading up to the observation that yesterday's announcement by Scott Guthrie marks a significant milestone and should not go unnoticed.  If you missed it, let me summarise.   From the first release of .NET, Microsoft has offered a web development framework called ASP.NET.  The core libraries are included in the .NET framework which is released free of charge, but which is not open source.   However, in recent years, the number of libraries that constitute ASP.NET have grown considerably.  Today, most professional ASP.NET web development exploits the ASP.NET MVC framework.  This, together with several other important parts of the ASP.NET technology stack, is released on CodePlex under the Apache 2.0 licence.   Hence, today, a huge swathe of web development on the .NET/Azure platform relies four-square on the use of FOSS frameworks and libraries. Yesterday, Scott Guthrie announced the next stage of ASP.NET's journey towards FOSS nirvana.  This involves extending ASP.NET's FOSS stack to include Web API and the MVC Razor view engine which is rapidly becoming the de facto 'standard' for building web pages in ASP.NET.  However, perhaps the more important announcement is that the ASP.NET team will now accept and review contributions from the community.  Scott points out that this model is already in place elsewhere in Microsoft, and specifically draws attention to development of the Windows Azure SDKs.  These SDKs are central to Azure development.   The .NET and Java SDKs are published under Apache 2.0 on Github and Microsoft is open to community contributions.  Accepting contributions is a more profound move than simply releasing code under FOSS licensing.  It means that Microsoft is wholeheartedly moving towards a full-blooded open source approach for future evolution of some of their central and most widely used .NET and Azure frameworks and libraries.  In conjunction with Scott's announcement, Microsoft has also released Git support for CodePlex (at long last!) and, perhaps more importantly, announced significant new investment in their own FOSS forge. Here at Solidsoft we have several reasons to be very interested in Scott's announcement. I'll draw attention to one of them.  Earlier this year we wrote the initial version of a new UK Government web application called CloudStore.  CloudStore provides a way for local and central government to discover and purchase applications and services. We wrote the web site using ASP.NET MVC which is FOSS.  However, this point has been lost on the ladies and gentlemen of the press and, I suspect, on some of the decision makers on the government side.  They announced a few weeks ago that future versions of CloudStore will move to a FOSS framework, clearly oblivious of the fact that it is already built on a FOSS framework.  We are, it is fair to say, mildly irked by the uninformed and badly out-of-date assumption that “if it is Microsoft, it can't be FOSS”.  Old prejudices live on.

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  • Microsoft Cloud Day - the ups and downs

    - by Charles Young
    The term ‘cloud’ can sometimes obscure the obvious.  Today’s Microsoft Cloud Day conference in London provided a good example.  Scott Guthrie was halfway through what was an excellent keynote when he lost network connectivity.  This proved very disruptive to his presentation which centred on a series of demonstrations of the Azure platform in action.  Great efforts were made to find a solution, but no quick fix presented itself.  The venue’s IT facilities were dreadful – no WiFi, poor 3G reception (forget 4G…this is the UK) and, unbelievably, no-one on hand from the venue staff to help with infrastructure issues.  Eventually, after an unscheduled break, a solution was found and Scott managed to complete his demonstrations.  Further connectivity issues occurred during the day. I can say that the cause was prosaic.  A member of the venue staff had interfered with a patch board and inadvertently disconnected Scott Guthrie’s machine from the network by pulling out a cable. I need to state the obvious here.  If your PC is disconnected from the network it can’t communicate with other systems.  This could include a machine under someone’s desk, a mail server located down the hall, a server in the local data centre, an Internet search engine or even, heaven forbid, a role running on Azure. Inadvertently disconnecting a PC from the network does not imply a fundamental problem with the cloud or any specific cloud platform.  Some of the tweeted comments I’ve seen today are analogous to suggesting that, if you accidently unplug your microwave from the mains, this suggests some fundamental flaw with the electricity supply to your house.   This is poor reasoning, to say the least. As far as the conference was concerned, the connectivity issue in the keynote, coupled with some later problems in a couple of presentations, served to exaggerate the perception of poor organisation.   Software problems encountered before the conference prevented the correct set-up of a smartphone app intended to convey agenda information to attendees.  Although some information was available via this app, the organisers decided to print out an agenda at the last moment.  Unfortunately, the agenda sheet did not convey enough information, and attendees were forced to approach conference staff through the day to clarify locations of the various presentations. Despite these problems, the overwhelming feedback from conference attendees was very positive.  There was a real sense of excitement in the morning keynote.  For many, this was their first sight of new Azure features delivered in the ‘spring’ release.  The most common reaction I heard was amazement and appreciation that Azure’s new IaaS features deliver built-in template support for several flavours of Linux from day one.  This coupled with open source SDKs and several presentations on Azure’s support for Java, node.js, PHP, MongoDB and Hadoop served to communicate that the Azure platform is maturing quickly.  The new virtual network capabilities also surprised many attendees, and the much improved portal experience went down very well. So, despite some very irritating and disruptive problems, the event served its purpose well, communicating the breadth and depth of the newly upgraded Azure platform.  I enjoyed the day very much.

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  • Current Technologies

    - by Charles Cline
    I currently work at the University of Kansas (KU) and before that Stanford University, to be particular the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC).  Collaborating with various Higher Ed institutions the past several years has shown a marked increase in the Microsoft side of the house.  To give you an idea of our current environment, here are some of the things we (Enterprise Systems) have been working on the past two years I’ve been at KU: Migrated from Novell to Active Directory (AD), although we’re still leveraging Novell for IDM.  We currently have 550,000+ objects in AD, and we still have several departments to bring in. Upgraded from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010 and Forefront Online Protection for Exchange (FOPE) Implemented SCCM 2007 for Windows systems management Implemented central file storage using EMC products for the backend, using CIFS as the frontend Restructuring AD domains and Forests to decrease the administrative overhead and provide a primary authentication mechanism for the entire University Determining Key Performance Indicators for AD and Exchange Implemented SCOM 2007 to monitor AD and Exchange Implemented Confluence for collaboration within IT and other technology providers at the University Implemented Data Protection Manager (DPM) for backup of AD and Exchange Built a test and QA environment to better facilitate upcoming changes to the environment Almost ready to raise the AD domain level to 2008 R2   I’m sure I’m missing things, and my next post will be some of the things we’re getting ready for – like Centrify to provide AD for OS X and Linux systems.  If anyone would like more info on a particular area, please drop me a line.  I’d be happy to discuss.

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  • Webinar: NoSQL - Data Center Centric Application Enablement

    - by Charles Lamb
    NoSQL - Data Center Centric Application Enablement AUGUST 6 WEBINAR About the Webinar The growth of Datacenter infrastructure is trending out of bounds, along with the pace in user activity and data generation in this digital era. However, the nature of the typical application deployment within the data center is changing to accommodate new business needs. Those changes introduce complexities in application deployment architecture and design, which cascade into requirements for a new generation of database technology (NoSQL) destined to ease that complexity. This webcast will discuss the modern data centers data centric application, the complexities that must be dealt with and common architectures found to describe and prescribe new data center aware services. Well look at the practical issues in implementation and overview current state of art in NoSQL database technology solving the problems of data center awareness in application development. REGISTER NOW>> MORE INFORMATION >> NOTE! All attendees will be entered to win a guest pass to the NoSQL Now! 2013 Conference & Expo. About the Speaker Robert Greene, Oracle NoSQL Product Management Robert GreeneRobert Greene is a principle product manager / strategist for Oracle’s NoSQL Database technology. Prior to Oracle he was the V.P. Technology for a NoSQL Database company, Versant Corporation, where he set the strategy for alignment with Big Data technology trends resulting in the acquisition of the company by Actian Corp in 2012. Robert has been an active member of both commercial and open source initiatives in the NoSQL and Object Relational Mapping spaces for the past 18 years, developing software, leading project teams, authoring articles and presenting at major conferences on these topics. In his previous life, Robert was an electronic engineer developing first generation wireless, spread spectrum based security systems.

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  • Europe's Largest Customer Engagement Conference

    - by Charles Knapp
    What have Ben & Jerry's, HSBC, Innocent, LoveFilm, Oracle, Orange, Virgin, and other leaders learned about innovating to build customer loyalty? Loyalty World will help you better understand, engage and retain your customers. For example, Oracle's Melissa Boxer will deliver a Keynote on "Integrating Social, Marketing, and Loyalty to Deliver Great Customer Experiences." Sundar Swaminathan will speak on "Powering Rich Cross-Channel Customer Experiences with Next-Gen Loyalty Programs." You'll learn best practices from global thought leaders who are producing real results. Learn more about the Conference.

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  • Consumer Electronics Show (CES):CRM for High Technology Firms

    - by charles.knapp
    The Consumer Electronics Show, opening Thursday, showcases product innovations that stem from best practices in design, manufacturing, and distribution. Oracle and IBM invite you to learn best practices from peers, as well as why it matters to use CRM tailored for high technology firms -- offered only by Oracle. On Wednesday, January 5, 1-7 pm at the Bellagio Hotel Las Vegas, learn from peers at IBM, VTech, Plantronics, Cisco, Symantec, and Oracle about how to improve:Channel sales, marketing, and operations management - maximize new product introductions (NPI), sales, forecasts, training, channel promotions, and settlement Winning the deal - determine the right price for the right deal for the "perfect quote," capture the order, and manage orders Collaborative and rapid supply chain planning - improve agility, inventory turns, and profits Please join us for the Oracle/IBM CES High Technology Summit and make useful connections with your peers at the evening networking reception. Register now for this FREE event.

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  • 12/14 IDC Webcast on Insurance Distribution Strategies -- Manage Data and Engage Customers

    - by charles.knapp
    The insurance industry faces unprecedented challenges from new competition, more rigorous regulatory obligations, tighter capital restrictions, and more demanding customers. The winners will be those insurers that can successfully manage complex and disparate data resources to engage successfully with their customers, building trust through outstanding, multi-channel customer service with the insurer and its agents. At the heart of all these issues is the ability of insurers to engage directly with agents and customers using their preferred channels; measure risk and profitability accurately, and quickly to enable swift decision-making; and transform aging IT infrastructure so that the business can drive down costs and protect eroding margins. In this one-hour webcast, moderated by Insurance & Technology Magazine Executive Editor Anthony O'Donnell, you will learn about critical distribution management strategies that work. Join Peter Farley of analyst firm IDC Financial Insights, Scott Mampre of Capgemini, and Srini Venkat of Oracle Insurance to learn ways to maximize improvements to competitiveness, customer service, operating efficiencies - and ultimately profitability and growth. Please join us!

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  • How Can You Get More Productive In Life Sciences Sales?

    - by charles.knapp
    Only half of all doctors will meet with pharmaceutical sales reps, and that percentage continues to decrease. Furthermore, when reps are granted an opportunity to share information, the average interaction is only about a minute and a half. Concurrently, call quotas continue to increase. What does this matter? Sales reps need to spend less time on traditional planning and after-call reporting, more time making calls, and make more productive use of short presentation times. Fortunately for sales reps, Oracle offers the first life sciences CRM that is designed to double sales time and halve reporting time. In particular, our new Life Sciences Edition Offline Client is designed so that you can actually turn the screen around, so that your CRM is useful for presentations and not just reporting, whether you are connected to cloud or working offline such as in restricted clinical environments. Watch Piers Evans, Industry Strategy Director, show what this looks like in the day of a typical pharmaceutical sales representative. By use of this code snippet, I agree to the Brightcove Publisher T and C found at https://accounts.brightcove.com/en/terms-and-conditions/. -- This script tag will cause the Brightcove Players defined above it to be created as soon as the line is read by the browser. If you wish to have the player instantiated only after the rest of the HTML is processed and the page load is complete, remove the line. -- brightcove.createExperiences();

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  • Pricing: Meet or Beat?

    - by charles.knapp
    My home dishwasher started making some really interesting noises. I heard radio advertisements from two retailers who promised to meet any competitor's price. Then, I heard another retailer promising that their everyday prices beat their competitors. That got me to thinking about the power of pricing and promotions in the marketing mix (product, price, placement, promotions, and people). What is more powerful to say in a competitive market: your company will meet a similar offer, or your company will beat the others? Will you sell more if you meet or if you beat? I found that the retailer who promised to beat the others really had the best everyday pricing. Even better for me, another retailer had an exclusive promotional sale for long-term customers. Their loyalty promotion beat the best everyday discounter. So, I got the quality and performance I wanted at a tremendous price. So, I have two challenges for marketers. First, where you really have to compete on price as a dominant factor, give people strong reasons to do business with you. If you try to meet other's prices, make the leap to actually beat and not merely meet. Second, upgrade your firm's capabilities where needed. Oracle offers a complete range of great CRM software for loyalty management, marketing promotions, and pricing management that will help you to grow your business.

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  • Pricing: Meet or Beat?

    - by charles.knapp
    My home dishwasher started making some really interesting noises. It was time to shop. I heard radio advertisements from two retailers who promised to meet any competitor's price. Then, another retailer promised that their everyday prices beat their competitors. That got me to thinking about the power of pricing and promotions in the marketing mix (product, price, placement, promotions, and people). What is more powerful to say in a competitive market: your company will meet a similar offer, or your company will beat the others? Will you sell more if you meet or if you beat? I found that the retailer who promised to beat the others really had the best everyday pricing. I was close to making a purchase. Then, another retailer had an exclusive promotional sale for long-term customers. Their loyalty promotion beat the best everyday discounter. So, I got the quality and performance I wanted at a tremendous price. So, I have two challenges for marketers. First, where you really have to compete on price as a dominant factor, give people strong reasons to do business with you. If you try to meet other's prices, make the leap to actually beat and not merely meet competitor prices. Second, upgrade your firm's capabilities where needed. Oracle offers a complete range of great CRM capabilities for loyalty management, marketing promotions, and pricing management that will help you to grow your business.

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  • Tellago releases a RESTful API for BizTalk Server business rules

    - by Charles Young
    Jesus Rodriguez has blogged recently on Tellago Devlabs' release of an open source RESTful API for BizTalk Server Business Rules.   This is an excellent addition to the BizTalk ecosystem and I congratulate Tellago on their work.   See http://weblogs.asp.net/gsusx/archive/2011/02/08/tellago-devlabs-a-restful-api-for-biztalk-server-business-rules.aspx   The Microsoft BRE was originally designed to be used as an embedded library in .NET applications. This is reflected in the implementation of the Rules Engine Update (REU) Service which is a TCP/IP service that is hosted by a Windows service running locally on each BizTalk box. The job of the REU is to distribute rules, managed and held in a central database repository, across the various servers in a BizTalk group.   The engine is therefore distributed on each box, rather than exploited behind a central rules service.   This model is all very well, but proves quite restrictive in enterprise environments. The problem is that the BRE can only run legally on licensed BizTalk boxes. Increasingly we need to deliver rules capabilities across a more widely distributed environment. For example, in the project I am working on currently, we need to surface decisioning capabilities for use within WF workflow services running under AppFabric on non-BTS boxes. The BRE does not, currently, offer any centralised rule service facilities out of the box, and hence you have to roll your own (and then run your rules services on BTS boxes which has raised a few eyebrows on my current project, as all other WCF services run on a dedicated server farm ).   Tellago's API addresses this by providing a RESTful API for querying the rules repository and executing rule sets against XML passed in the request payload. As Jesus points out in his post, using a RESTful approach hugely increases the reach of BRE-based decisioning, allowing simple invocation from code written in dynamic languages, mobile devices, etc.   We developed our own SOAP-based general-purpose rules service to handle scenarios such as the one we face on my current project. SOAP is arguably better suited to enterprise service bus environments (please don't 'flame' me - I refuse to engage in the RESTFul vs. SOAP war). For example, on my current project we use claims based authorisation across the entire service bus and use WIF and WS-Federation for this purpose.   We have extended this to the rules service. I can't release the code for commercial reasons :-( but this approach allows us to legally extend the reach of BRE far beyond the confines of the BizTalk boxes on which it runs and to provide general purpose decisioning capabilities on the bus.   So, well done Tellago.   I haven't had a chance to play with the API yet, but am looking forward to doing so.

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  • How Can You Work Smarter In Life Sciences Sales?

    - by charles.knapp
    One major reason why executives keep choosing Oracle CRM On Demand and Siebel CRM is our ongoing investments that deliver comprehensive business process support, tailored "at the factory" for specific industries. For example, life sciences sales in many cases globally follows an indirect, "influence" model, where a medical clinician uses expert working knowledge to prescribe products that are sold by independent pharmacies. Smarter, presentations to clinicians can increase sales. Oracle's life sciences CRM is built for sales reps by sales reps. We worked with representatives at 15 of the top 20 pharmaceutical firms on our latest release. Oracle helps reps work smarter from planning their day to delivering samples and rapidly presenting details to busy clinicians. Watch Piers Evans, Industry Strategy Director, show what this looks like in the day of a typical pharmaceutical sales rep. By use of this code snippet, I agree to the Brightcove Publisher T and C found at https://accounts.brightcove.com/en/terms-and-conditions/. -- This script tag will cause the Brightcove Players defined above it to be created as soon as the line is read by the browser. If you wish to have the player instantiated only after the rest of the HTML is processed and the page load is complete, remove the line. -- brightcove.createExperiences();

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  • What Should You Look for In a CRM Demo?

    - by charles.knapp
    I have helped firms evaluate software demos and delivered demos in diverse industries such as manufacturing, healthcare, life sciences, and travel (to name just a few). Here are a few suggestions. First, which vendor has the best fit for your industry? Make sure that the vendor demo staff tell you clearly throughout the demo (not just in a passing comment), what portion of each business process and screen is standard, what has been configured, what has been custom coded, and what has been provided by a partner. If you don't keep asking, what you buy may be less useful than what you saw. This will lead to added (and unbudgeted) costs and time. Second, what are the roles of the primary users? What are their top-most needs, such as exception-oriented dashboards or rapid data entry? Can you get a demo for each key role, showing how the software fits a typical workday? Have the vendor repeatedly tell you what is standard, configured, custom coded, or provided by a partner. Third, how well does the demo balance ease of use with completeness of business processes? One common approach is to hide needed fields or steps that are of low visual value. Another approach is to focus heavily on a visually appealing capability, while downplaying the fit with your key business processes. Result: despite their business acumen, demo attendees may not focus adequately on gaps in business fit So, look for complete disclosure and complete CRM. To arrange a demo from Oracle, please visit http://www.oracle.com/crm.

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  • Functional Adaptation

    - by Charles Courchaine
    In real life and OO programming we’re often faced with using adapters, DVI to VGA, 1/4” to 1/8” audio connections, 110V to 220V, wrapping an incompatible interface with a new one, and so on.  Where the adapter pattern is generally considered for interfaces and classes a similar technique can be applied to method signatures.  To be fair, this adaptation is generally used to reduce the number of parameters but I’m sure there are other clever possibilities to be had.  As Jan questioned in the last post, how can we use a common method to execute an action if the action has a differing number of parameters, going back to the greeting example it was suggested having an AddName method that takes a first and last name as parameters.  This is exactly what we’ll address in this post. Let’s set the stage with some review and some code changes.  First, our method that handles the setup/tear-down infrastructure for our WCF service: 1: private static TResult ExecuteGreetingFunc<TResult>(Func<IGreeting, TResult> theGreetingFunc) 2: { 3: IGreeting aGreetingService = null; 4: try 5: { 6: aGreetingService = GetGreetingChannel(); 7: return theGreetingFunc(aGreetingService); 8: } 9: finally 10: { 11: CloseWCFChannel((IChannel)aGreetingService); 12: } 13: } Our original AddName method: 1: private static string AddName(string theName) 2: { 3: return ExecuteGreetingFunc<string>(theGreetingService => theGreetingService.AddName(theName)); 4: } Our new AddName method: 1: private static int AddName(string firstName, string lastName) 2: { 3: return ExecuteGreetingFunc<int>(theGreetingService => theGreetingService.AddName(firstName, lastName)); 4: } Let’s change the AddName method, just a little bit more for this example and have it take the greeting service as a parameter. 1: private static int AddName(IGreeting greetingService, string firstName, string lastName) 2: { 3: return greetingService.AddName(firstName, lastName); 4: } The new signature of AddName using the Func delegate is now Func<IGreeting, string, string, int>, which can’t be used with ExecuteGreetingFunc as is because it expects Func<IGreeting, TResult>.  Somehow we have to eliminate the two string parameters before we can use this with our existing method.  This is where we need to adapt AddName to match what ExecuteGreetingFunc expects, and we’ll do so in the following progression. 1: Func<IGreeting, string, string, int> -> Func<IGreeting, string, int> 2: Func<IGreeting, string, int> -> Func<IGreeting, int>   For the first step, we’ll create a method using the lambda syntax that will “eliminate” the last name parameter: 1: string lastNameToAdd = "Smith"; 2: //Func<IGreeting, string, string, int> -> Func<IGreeting, string, int> 3: Func<IGreeting, string, int> addName = (greetingService, firstName) => AddName(greetingService, firstName, lastNameToAdd); The new addName method gets us one step close to the signature we need.  Let’s say we’re going to call this in a loop to add several names, we’ll take the final step from Func<IGreeting, string, int> -> Func<IGreeting, int> in line as a lambda passed to ExecuteGreetingFunc like so: 1: List<string> firstNames = new List<string>() { "Bob", "John" }; 2: int aID; 3: foreach (string firstName in firstNames) 4: { 5: //Func<IGreeting, string, int> -> Func<IGreeting, int> 6: aID = ExecuteGreetingFunc<int>(greetingService => addName(greetingService, firstName)); 7: Console.WriteLine(GetGreeting(aID)); 8: } If for some reason you needed to break out the lambda on line 6 you could replace it with 1: aID = ExecuteGreetingFunc<int>(ApplyAddName(addName, firstName)); and use this method: 1: private static Func<IGreeting, int> ApplyAddName(Func<IGreeting, string, int> addName, string lastName) 2: { 3: return greetingService => addName(greetingService, lastName); 4: } Splitting out a lambda into its own method is useful both in this style of coding as well as LINQ queries to improve the debugging experience.  It is not strictly necessary to break apart the steps & functions as was shown above; the lambda in line 6 (of the foreach example) could include both the last name and first name instead of being composed of two functions.  The process demonstrated above is one of partially applying functions, this could have also been done with Currying (also see Dustin Campbell’s excellent post on Currying for the canonical curried add example).  Matthew Podwysocki also has some good posts explaining both Currying and partial application and a follow up post that further clarifies the difference between Currying and partial application.  In either technique the ultimate goal is to reduce the number of parameters passed to a function.  Currying makes it a single parameter passed at each step, where partial application allows one to use multiple parameters at a time as we’ve done here.  This technique isn’t for everyone or every problem, but can be extremely handy when you need to adapt a call to something you don’t control.

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  • Berkeley DB Java Edition 4.0.103 Available

    - by charles.lamb
    We'd like to let you know that JE 4.0.103 is now at http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/berkeley-db/je/index.html. The patch release contains both small features and bug fixes, many of which were prompted by feedback on this forum. Some items to note: New CacheMode values for more control over cache policies, and new statistics to enable better interpretation of caching behavior. These are just one initial part of our continuing work in progress to make JE caching more efficient. Fixes for proper cache utilization calculations when using the -XX:+UseCompressedOops JVM option. A variety of other bug fixes. There is no file format or API changes. As always, we encourage users to move promptly to this new release.

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  • RIF PRD: Presentation syntax issues

    - by Charles Young
    Over Christmas I got to play a bit with the W3C RIF PRD and came across a few issues which I thought I would record for posterity. Specifically, I was working on a grammar for the presentation syntax using a GLR grammar parser tool (I was using the current CTP of ‘M’ (MGrammer) and Intellipad – I do so hope the MS guys don’t kill off M and Intellipad now they have dropped the other parts of SQL Server Modelling). I realise that the presentation syntax is non-normative and that any issues with it do not therefore compromise the standard. However, presentation syntax is useful in its own right, and it would be great to iron out any issues in a future revision of the standard. The main issues are actually not to do with the grammar at all, but rather with the ‘running example’ in the RIF PRD recommendation. I started with the code provided in Example 9.1. There are several discrepancies when compared with the EBNF rules documented in the standard. Broadly the problems can be categorised as follows: ·      Parenthesis mismatch – the wrong number of parentheses are used in various places. For example, in GoldRule, the RHS of the rule (the ‘Then’) is nested in the LHS (‘the If’). In NewCustomerAndWidgetRule, the RHS is orphaned from the LHS. Together with additional incorrect parenthesis, this leads to orphanage of UnknownStatusRule from the entire Document. ·      Invalid use of parenthesis in ‘Forall’ constructs. Parenthesis should not be used to enclose formulae. Removal of the invalid parenthesis gave me a feeling of inconsistency when comparing formulae in Forall to formulae in If. The use of parenthesis is not actually inconsistent in these two context, but in an If construct it ‘feels’ as if you are enclosing formulae in parenthesis in a LISP-like fashion. In reality, the parenthesis is simply being used to group subordinate syntax elements. The fact that an If construct can contain only a single formula as an immediate child adds to this feeling of inconsistency. ·      Invalid representation of compact URIs (CURIEs) in the context of Frame productions. In several places the URIs are not qualified with a namespace prefix (‘ex1:’). This conflicts with the definition of CURIEs in the RIF Datatypes and Built-Ins 1.0 document. Here are the productions: CURIE          ::= PNAME_LN                  | PNAME_NS PNAME_LN       ::= PNAME_NS PN_LOCAL PNAME_NS       ::= PN_PREFIX? ':' PN_LOCAL       ::= ( PN_CHARS_U | [0-9] ) ((PN_CHARS|'.')* PN_CHARS)? PN_CHARS       ::= PN_CHARS_U                  | '-' | [0-9] | #x00B7                  | [#x0300-#x036F] | [#x203F-#x2040] PN_CHARS_U     ::= PN_CHARS_BASE                  | '_' PN_CHARS_BASE ::= [A-Z] | [a-z] | [#x00C0-#x00D6] | [#x00D8-#x00F6]                  | [#x00F8-#x02FF] | [#x0370-#x037D] | [#x037F-#x1FFF]                  | [#x200C-#x200D] | [#x2070-#x218F] | [#x2C00-#x2FEF]                  | [#x3001-#xD7FF] | [#xF900-#xFDCF] | [#xFDF0-#xFFFD]                  | [#x10000-#xEFFFF] PN_PREFIX      ::= PN_CHARS_BASE ((PN_CHARS|'.')* PN_CHARS)? The more I look at CURIEs, the more my head hurts! The RIF specification allows prefixes and colons without local names, which surprised me. However, the CURIE Syntax 1.0 working group note specifically states that this form is supported…and then promptly provides a syntactic definition that seems to preclude it! However, on (much) deeper inspection, it appears that ‘ex1:’ (for example) is allowed, but would really represent a ‘fragment’ of the ‘reference’, rather than a prefix! Ouch! This is so completely ambiguous that it surely calls into question the whole CURIE specification.   In any case, RIF does not allow local names without a prefix. ·      Missing ‘External’ specifiers for built-in functions and predicates.  The EBNF specification enforces this for terms within frames, but does not appear to enforce (what I believe is) the correct use of External on built-in predicates. In any case, the running example only specifies ‘External’ once on the predicate in UnknownStatusRule. External() is required in several other places. ·      The List used on the LHS of UnknownStatusRule is comma-delimited. This is not supported by the EBNF definition. Similarly, the argument list of pred:list-contains is illegally comma-delimited. ·      Unnecessary use of conjunction around a single formula in DiscountRule. This is strictly legal in the EBNF, but redundant.   All the above issues concern the presentation syntax used in the running example. There are a few minor issues with the grammar itself. Note that Michael Kiefer stated in his paper “Rule Interchange Format: The Framework” that: “The presentation syntax of RIF … is an abstract syntax and, as such, it omits certain details that might be important for unambiguous parsing.” ·      The grammar cannot differentiate unambiguously between strategies and priorities on groups. A processor is forced to resolve this by detecting the use of IRIs and integers. This could easily be fixed in the grammar.   ·      The grammar cannot unambiguously parse the ‘->’ operator in frames. Specifically, ‘-’ characters are allowed in PN_LOCAL names and hence a parser cannot determine if ‘status->’ is (‘status’ ‘->’) or (‘status-’ ‘>’).   One way to fix this is to amend the PN_LOCAL production as follows: PN_LOCAL ::= ( PN_CHARS_U | [0-9] ) ((PN_CHARS|'.')* ((PN_CHARS)-('-')))? However, unilaterally changing the definition of this production, which is defined in the SPARQL Query Language for RDF specification, makes me uncomfortable. ·      I assume that the presentation syntax is case-sensitive. I couldn’t find this stated anywhere in the documentation, but function/predicate names do appear to be documented as being case-sensitive. ·      The EBNF does not specify whitespace handling. A couple of productions (RULE and ACTION_BLOCK) are crafted to enforce the use of whitespace. This is not necessary. It seems inconsistent with the rest of the specification and can cause parsing issues. In addition, the Const production exhibits whitespaces issues. The intention may have been to disallow the use of whitespace around ‘^^’, but any direct implementation of the EBNF will probably allow whitespace between ‘^^’ and the SYMSPACE. Of course, I am being a little nit-picking about all this. On the whole, the EBNF translated very smoothly and directly to ‘M’ (MGrammar) and proved to be fairly complete. I have encountered far worse issues when translating other EBNF specifications into usable grammars.   I can’t imagine there would be any difficulty in implementing the same grammar in Antlr, COCO/R, gppg, XText, Bison, etc. A general observation, which repeats a point made above, is that the use of parenthesis in the presentation syntax can feel inconsistent and un-intuitive.   It isn’t actually inconsistent, but I think the presentation syntax could be improved by adopting braces, rather than parenthesis, to delimit subordinate syntax elements in a similar way to so many programming languages. The familiarity of braces would communicate the structure of the syntax more clearly to people like me.  If braces were adopted, parentheses could be retained around ‘var (frame | ‘new()’) constructs in action blocks. This use of parenthesis feels very LISP-like, and I think that this is my issue. It’s as if the presentation syntax represents the deformed love-child of LISP and C. In some places (specifically, action blocks), parenthesis is used in a LISP-like fashion. In other places it is used like braces in C. I find this quite confusing. Here is a corrected version of the running example (Example 9.1) in compliant presentation syntax: Document(    Prefix( ex1 <http://example.com/2009/prd2> )    (* ex1:CheckoutRuleset *)  Group rif:forwardChaining (     (* ex1:GoldRule *)    Group 10 (      Forall ?customer such that And(?customer # ex1:Customer                                     ?customer[ex1:status->"Silver"])        (Forall ?shoppingCart such that ?customer[ex1:shoppingCart->?shoppingCart]           (If Exists ?value (And(?shoppingCart[ex1:value->?value]                                  External(pred:numeric-greater-than-or-equal(?value 2000))))            Then Do(Modify(?customer[ex1:status->"Gold"])))))      (* ex1:DiscountRule *)    Group (      Forall ?customer such that ?customer # ex1:Customer        (If Or( ?customer[ex1:status->"Silver"]                ?customer[ex1:status->"Gold"])         Then Do ((?s ?customer[ex1:shoppingCart-> ?s])                  (?v ?s[ex1:value->?v])                  Modify(?s [ex1:value->External(func:numeric-multiply (?v 0.95))]))))      (* ex1:NewCustomerAndWidgetRule *)    Group (      Forall ?customer such that And(?customer # ex1:Customer                                     ?customer[ex1:status->"New"] )        (If Exists ?shoppingCart ?item                   (And(?customer[ex1:shoppingCart->?shoppingCart]                        ?shoppingCart[ex1:containsItem->?item]                        ?item # ex1:Widget ) )         Then Do( (?s ?customer[ex1:shoppingCart->?s])                  (?val ?s[ex1:value->?val])                  (?voucher ?customer[ex1:voucher->?voucher])                  Retract(?customer[ex1:voucher->?voucher])                  Retract(?voucher)                  Modify(?s[ex1:value->External(func:numeric-multiply(?val 0.90))]))))      (* ex1:UnknownStatusRule *)    Group (      Forall ?customer such that ?customer # ex1:Customer        (If Not(Exists ?status                       (And(?customer[ex1:status->?status]                            External(pred:list-contains(List("New" "Bronze" "Silver" "Gold") ?status)) )))         Then Do( Execute(act:print(External(func:concat("New customer: " ?customer))))                  Assert(?customer[ex1:status->"New"]))))  ) )   I hope that helps someone out there :-)

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  • Consumer Electronics Show (CES) Summit:Best Practices in Transforming Channels and Partnerships

    - by charles.knapp
    Expanding consumer demand is driving the entire high technology industry, accompanied by product lifecycles as short as a few months, continued pricing and promotion pressures, and increased globalization. Unifying global channel management, operations, and execution flow will increase efficiency and growth. IT can help, but one must think beyond generic ERP and CRM. Please join Oracle and IBM at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, Wednesday January 5, 1-7 pm. Learn from IBM, VTech, Plantronics, Cisco, Symantec and Oracle High Tech Product Strategy how to improve:Channel sales, marketing, and operations management - enhance NPI, sales, forecasts, training, promotion planning, execution and settlement Winning the deal - determining the right price for the right deal for the "perfect quote", capturing the order and order management Collaborative and rapid supply chain planning - improve agility, inventory turns, and profits Register now for this FREE event. We hope you'll join us for our Oracle High Technology CES Summit and networking reception with your peers.

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  • Webinar: Integrated Sales & Marketing - An Impossible Dream?

    - by charles.knapp
    Are you making the most of the latest B2B marketing thinking? Are your marketing tactics, your outbound email campaigns and your SEO generating enough of the prospects and leads that your sales teams need? Are your sales and marketing functions aligned and working together with optimised results? In this Webinar with MarketingWeek Magazine, find out how: - To ensure your marketers create and deliver consistently effective, and targeted campaigns - You can triple the customer intelligence your marketers gather, ensuring your sales teams are better informed and qualified than ever before - Generate up to 200% growth in lead volume and start measuring marketing effectiveness against increase in sales and size of an average deal - And hear how BPI OnDemand has delivered integrated sales & marketing across industries, with results such as 100% ROI on system cost for Heal's after just one campaign

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  • Problem upgrading from 13.04 to 13.10

    - by Charles
    Part way through upgrading from 13.04 to 13.10 the process ground to a halt with an error message. Now on retrying by going to 'Check for updates' I get the following: Failed to load the package list This is a serious problem. Try again later. If this problem appears again, please report an error to the developers. E:Encountered a section with no Package: header, E:Problem with MergeList /var/lib/apt/lists/archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_saucy_universe_i18n_Translation-en%%5fGB, E:The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened. Problem reported but my question is, "what can I do now?; Do I have to do a fresh install?; if so will settings etc. in my Home folder (on its own partition) be saved?" 13.04 still seems to be working perfectly, while upgrading I had a terrible internet connection varying between 'dead slow' and 'dead stop', not sure if that caused the problem.

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  • Webcast: Navigating the Future of Customer Service

    - by Charles Knapp
    Customer service is set to change dramatically over the next five years – and now is the time to ensure you have the tools to help you succeed. On  Wednesday, June 13, join Oracle and Forrester Research to discover what the future holds and learn how you can: Empower your agents Delight your customers Shape your customer service future Our speakers are Kate Leggett, Senior Analyst, Forrester Research, and John Perez, Customer Experience Strategist, Oracle RightNow. Kate is a leading expert on customer service strategies, as well as a published author on customer service trends and best practices. Her research focuses on helping organizations establish customer service strategies and deliver successful customer service projects. John has extensive experience of working on customer experience programs with organizations across a range of industries. He works with Oracle RightNow clients to build customer experience strategies that improve efficiency and productivity, increase sales, and drive customer loyalty.

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  • How Do Top Performing High Tech Companies Measure Online Marketing Success?

    - by Charles Knapp
    You might expect a focus on Net Promoter scores, open rates, and click metrics. The real answers from top performers may surprise you. I've been working for a few months with Aberdeen Group and colleagues from IBM and Oracle to survey high technology firms worldwide on best practices in marketing and channel sales effectiveness.  Now, we will share the results of our original customer research in a new white paper and webcast. Register today to learn how leading High Tech companies are increasing their Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI) and growing channel sales revenue. Discover how top performing high tech companies manage and use customer data, measure marketing spend effectiveness, and support internal and channel sales. Learn how best in class high tech companies use enterprise data throughout their customer lifecycle -- messaging to leads, selling to prospects, and serving customers. Our speakers will be: Peter Ostrow, Research Director - Sales Effectiveness, Aberdeen Group David Lasher, Global Business Services Partner, IBM Jonathan Oomrigar, Vice President, Global High Technology Business Unit, Oracle Reserve your place now! This global webinar is on Tuesday, November 15, 10-11 am PST / 1-2 pm EST / 6-7 GMT / 7-8 CET

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  • Do you have to be good at math to be a good programmer?

    - by Charles Roper
    It seems that conventional wisdom suggests that good programmers are also good at math. Or that the two are somehow intrinsically linked. Many programming books I have read provide many examples that are solutions to math problems, or are somehow related to math as if these examples are what make sense to most people. So the question I would like to float is: do you have to be good at math to be a good programmer?

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  • 11/15 Webinar: How Top High Tech Companies Grow Channel Revenue and ROMI

    - by Charles Knapp
    See the results of recent Aberdeen research on best practices in sales and marketing effectiveness. Discover how top performing high tech companies manage and use enterprise customer data, measure marketing spend effectiveness, and support internal and channel sales throughout their customer lifecycle -- messaging to leads, selling to prospects, and serving customers. Our speakers will be: Peter Ostrow, Research Director - Sales Effectiveness, Aberdeen Group David Lasher, Global Business Services Partner, IBM Jonathan Oomrigar, Vice President, Global High Technology Business Unit, Oracle Reserve your place now! This global webinar is on Tuesday, November 15, 10-11 am PST / 1-2 pm EST / 6-7 GMT / 7-8 CET

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