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• What's going on with INETA and the Regional Speakers Bureau?

  - by Chris Williams

  For those of you that have been waiting patiently (and not so patiently) I'm happy to say that we're very near completion on some changes/enhancements/improvements that will allow us to finally go live with the INETA Regional Speakers Bureau. I know quite a few of you have already registered, which is great (though some of you may need to come back and update your info) and we've had a few folks submit requests, mostly in a test capacity, but soon we'll be up and live. Here's how it breaks down. Be sure to read this, because things have changed a bit from when we initially announced it. 1. The majority of our speaker/event funding is going into the Regional Speakers Bureau.  The National Bureau still exists, but it's a good bit smaller than it was before, and it's not an "every group" benefit anymore. We'll be using the National Bureau as more of a strategic task force, targeting high impact events and areas that need some community building love from INETA. These will be identified and handled on a case by case basis, and may include more than just user group events. 2. You're going to get more events per group, per year than you did before. Not only are we focusing more resources on this program, but we're also making a lot of efforts to use it more effectively. With the INETA Regional Speakers Bureau, you should be able to get 2-3 INETA speakers per year, on average. Not every geographical area will have exactly the same experience, but we're doing the best we can. 3. It's not a farm team program for the National Bureau. Unsurprisingly, I managed to offend a number of people when I previously made the comment that the Regional Speakers Bureau program was a farm team or stepping stone to the National Bureau. It was a poor choice of words.  Anyone can participate in the Regional Speakers Bureau, and I look forward to working with all of you. 4. There is assistance for your efforts. The exact final details are still being hammered out, but expect it to look something like this: (all distances listed are based on a round trip) Distances < 120 miles = $0 121 miles - 240 miles = $50 (effectively 1 to 2 hours, each way) 241 miles - 360 miles = $100 (effectively 2 to 3 hours, each way) 361 miles - 480 miles = $200 (effectively 3 to 4 hours, each way) For those of you who travel a lot, we're working on a solution to handle group visits when you're away from home. These will (for now) be handled on a case by case basis. 5. We're going to make it as easy as possible to work with the program. In order to do this, we need a few things from you. For speakers, that means your home address. It also means (maybe) filling out a simple 1 line expense report via the INETA website. For user groups, it means making sure your meeting address is up to date as well. 6. Distances will be automatically calculated from your home of record to the user group event and back. We realize that this is not a perfect solution to every instance, but we're not paying you to speak at an event, and you won't be taxed on this money. It's simply some assistance to make your community efforts easier. Our way of saying thanks for everything you do. 7. Sounds good so far, what's the catch? There's always a catch, right? In this case there are two of them: 1) At this time, Microsoft employees are welcome to use the website to line up speaking engagements with user groups, but are not eligible for financial assistance. 2) Anyone can register and use the website to line up speaking engagements with user groups, however you must receive and maintain a net score of 3+ positive ratings (we're implementing a thumbs up / thumbs down system) in order to receive financial assistance. These ratings are provided by the User Group leaders after the meeting has taken place. 8. Involvement by the User Group leaders is a key factor in the success of this program. Your job isn't done once you request a speaker. After you've had your meeting, it's critical that you go back to the website and take a very small survey. Doing this ensures that the speaker gets rated (and compensated if eligible) and also ensures that you can make another request, since you won't be able to make a new request if you have an old one outstanding. 9. What about Canada? We're definitely working on that. Unfortunately nothing new to report on that front, other than to say that we're trying. So... this is where things stand currently. We're working very quickly to get this in place and get speakers and groups together. If you have any questions, please leave a comment below and I'll answer them as quickly as possible. If I've forgotten anything, or if things change, I'll update it here. Thanks, Chris G. Williams INETA Board of Directors

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• Dual Boot Oracle Solaris 11/11 and Linux (Ubuntu 11.10/grub2)

  - by HartmutStreppel

  After having worked with Open Solaris on my laptop first, then with an upgrade to Oracle Solaris 11 Express, I finally did a fresh install of Oracle Solaris 11/11, when it became available. I am not a big fan of upgrades as I know that I am not the perfect administrator and my system gets spoiled with unclean configurations, outdated packages and wrong settings that cannot be reversed. So I prefer to start from scratch. Especially with Oracle Solaris 11 I wanted to have a system just like a customer would have it in production. The installation was smooth - more or less, if I had only read the documentation a bit better in advance. For a number of reasons I prefer a dual boot system. The most important one is, that especially with mobile devices you often run into network problems. And you have a hard time figuring out where the problem is: in your laptop hardware, in the OS you are running, or really within the network. If you have an alternate OS to boot, you can exclude the OS and your hardware. This makes you feel better. The second OS should be a Linux variant - and for some not so obvious reason I decided to go with the latest Ubuntu release (11.10). It replaced a very old Open Suse installation that had not been booted for a while. I knew that it was probably best to install Ubuntu first and then Oracle Solaris 11, as this would put the right boot information for Oracle Solaris  into the MBR and onto the root partition. But then, how to enable dual boot with the 2 OSes. Searching the web one mainly finds information about dual boot of: Linux and Linux Linux and Windows I do not want to explain which wrong configurations I worked through, but I prefer to explain the final setup, which is extremely simple, and I am wondering why this is not covered as the easiest solution for most dual boot setups. I use chainloader from and to both OS'es, with the only disadvantage that I have to confirm two grub menus each time I want to boot the "other" OS. Still there were some hurdles to jump over: Ubuntu did not like getting its boot blocks being placed on the partition instead of the disk; I must admit that I do not fully understand why. But using the --force option you could get that done Ubuntu needs an active partition; that was easy to achieve grub2 uses a different numbering scheme for the partitions. That is in the docs, if you read them. BTW: The usual disclaimer is valid. There is  no guarantee that what I describe works or works well. Please back up your data carefully before trying any of this. So, Oracle Solaris 11 is installed on the first partition and Ubuntu on the third. With Ubtuntu things initially were a bit more complicated, as I did not know how to boot it. And the live CD did not offer the capability to boot the on-disk image (at least I did not find it). So I booted the live CD, mounted the Ubuntu installation at /mnt and wrote the boot blocks into the partition. This is something that does not seem to be recommended, at least grub-install refrained from doing what I intended. After a bit more research I was bold enough to use the --force option and wrote the boot blocks to /dev/sda3 using grub-install --boot-directory=/mnt/boot --force --no-floppy /dev/sda3 So, I now had a system with the Solaris boot loader in the MBR, Solaris specific boot blocks on the Solaris root partition and Ubuntu specific boot blocks in the Ubuntu partition. I just had to chain them together and I was done. Oracle Solaris 11: I have added the following lines to /rpool/boot/grub/menu.lst (be aware of the /rpool!!!!) title Ubuntu 11.10root (hd0,2)makeactivechainloader +1boot The Ubuntu root file system sits on the third partition (/dev/sda3). Ubuntu: I have added the following lines to /etc/grub.d/40_custom: menuentry "Solaris 11/11" {      set root=(hd0,1)      chainloader +1} Two things need to be mentioned: a) grub2 starts numbering partitions with 1; so my /dev/sda1 is partition 1. b) Oracle Solaris boots without the partition being made active (btw: the command to make a partition active with grub2 is "parttool (hd0,1) boot+", which currently does not work for me). As debugging grub is a bit complicated, I used the grub CLI to perform some tests and also used a tool, that I found on sourceforge.net that was able to prepare a list of all boot loaders on all partitions. This told me that the basic setup was correct. Unfortunately I lost it in the live CD environment. I hope this is helpful for some of the readers.Hartmut

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• Meet our 2009 Oracle Graduates in South Africa

  - by anca.rosu

  Focusing on the broader Oracle community, Oracle South Africa initiated its first skills development programme in May 1988. Since its inception the programme has developed and improved and every year more graduates are taken on board. The Oracle Graduate Programme is made up of specific learning paths designed around customer, partner and Oracle specifications and is structured to meet the urgent skills requirements in the Oracle “economy”. The training programmes have a specific duration and incorporate both theoretical and practical application of Oracle product sets. It is aimed at creating: Meaningful employment for graduates; Learning opportunities for individuals within the organization so that career growth opportunities are exploited to the fullest; Capacity building for small enterprises which is aligned to Oracle’s Enterprise Development Programme Meet our five graduates who joined us in December 2008 and have spent over a year with us! Let’s get their initial feedback on the graduate programme and on their assignment to Jordan. Lector   On the Oracle Graduate Programme: “The Oracle Graduate Programme is an experience of a life time. I would not trade it for anything. It’s challenging and rewarding. I am proud and happy to be in an organization like Oracle” On the assignment in Jordan: "Friendly, welcoming people, world class instructors always willing to go the extra mile. What more can you ask for?"   Lungile On the Oracle Graduate Programme: “I joined Oracle as part of the graduate intake for pre-sales in order to develop my skills and knowledge. Working at Oracle has been an overwhelmingly positive experience as it has encouraged me to progress with my personal development. I am hugely grateful. It has been a great challenge and an awesome opportunity.” On the assignment to Jordan: “Going to Jordan was a great opportunity and the experience of a lifetime. The people were very welcoming and friendly. The culture was totally different from ours - the food, the clothes and the weather. It was an amazingly different experience to work from Sunday to Thursday with Friday and Saturday as the weekend.” Thabo On the Oracle Graduate Programme: “Life is an infinite learning path. I truly value growth. I believe for one to grow, one needs to be challenged to your full potential. The Oracle Graduate Programme offers real growth – and so much more.” On the assignment to Jordan: “I was amazed by the cultural differences. I now understood that to be part of the global community, I must embrace our similarities and understand our differences.”   Albeauty On the Oracle Graduate Programme: “Responsibility, dedication, focus and taking initiative … these are the key points I learned from Oracle. It is such an honour to finally be part of the Oracle family. The graduate programme itself was a great experience as I managed to learn how Oracle operates – it has been the highlight of my year. I believe that my hard work will assist in the growth of the company.” On the Jordan assignment: “A memory worth embracing. Going to Jordan was a great opportunity as I learned a lot with respect to integration between different cultures and getting to adapt to all things different. I, along with almost every other graduate, discovered that Oracle is far more than a database company. Now I know there is far more to the ‘Big Red’ name.” Emmanuel On the Oracle Graduate Programme: “The programme gave me invaluable exposure to the ICT sector and also provided an opportunity to travel, network and exchange ideas with others. The formal training helped me to improve my presentation skills and gave me a better understanding of business etiquette and communication.” On the assignment to Jordan: “It was my first trip abroad. It was a great chance to get to know each other. I had the opportunity to share ideas, share personal stuff as a team. We met experts who gave us superb training in Oracle Technologies. It was great.”   If you have any questions related to this article feel free to contact  [email protected].  You can find our job opportunities via http://campus.oracle.com.   Technorati Tags: Oracle community,South Africa,Graduate Programme,Jordan,Technologies

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• Event Logging in LINQ C# .NET

  The first thing you'll want to do before using this code is to create a table in your database called TableHistory: CREATE TABLE [dbo].[TableHistory] (     [TableHistoryID] [int] IDENTITY NOT NULL ,     [TableName] [varchar] (50) NOT NULL ,     [Key1] [varchar] (50) NOT NULL ,     [Key2] [varchar] (50) NULL ,     [Key3] [varchar] (50) NULL ,     [Key4] [varchar] (50) NULL ,     [Key5] [varchar] (50) NULL ,     [Key6] [varchar] (50)NULL ,     [ActionType] [varchar] (50) NULL ,     [Property] [varchar] (50) NULL ,     [OldValue] [varchar] (8000) NULL ,     [NewValue] [varchar] (8000) NULL ,     [ActionUserName] [varchar] (50) NOT NULL ,     [ActionDateTime] [datetime] NOT NULL ) Once you have created the table, you'll need to add it to your custom LINQ class (which I will refer to as DboDataContext), thus creating the TableHistory class. Then, you'll need to add the History.cs file to your project. You'll also want to add the following code to your project to get the system date: public partial class DboDataContext{ [Function(Name = "GetDate", IsComposable = true)] public DateTime GetSystemDate() { MethodInfo mi = MethodBase.GetCurrentMethod() as MethodInfo; return (DateTime)this.ExecuteMethodCall(this, mi, new object[] { }).ReturnValue; }}private static Dictionary<type,> _cachedIL = new Dictionary<type,>();public static T CloneObjectWithIL<t>(T myObject){ Delegate myExec = null; if (!_cachedIL.TryGetValue(typeof(T), out myExec)) { // Create ILGenerator DynamicMethod dymMethod = new DynamicMethod("DoClone", typeof(T), new Type[] { typeof(T) }, true); ConstructorInfo cInfo = myObject.GetType().GetConstructor(new Type[] { }); ILGenerator generator = dymMethod.GetILGenerator(); LocalBuilder lbf = generator.DeclareLocal(typeof(T)); //lbf.SetLocalSymInfo("_temp"); generator.Emit(OpCodes.Newobj, cInfo); generator.Emit(OpCodes.Stloc_0); foreach (FieldInfo field in myObject.GetType().GetFields( System.Reflection.BindingFlags.Instance | System.Reflection.BindingFlags.Public | System.Reflection.BindingFlags.NonPublic)) { // Load the new object on the eval stack... (currently 1 item on eval stack) generator.Emit(OpCodes.Ldloc_0); // Load initial object (parameter) (currently 2 items on eval stack) generator.Emit(OpCodes.Ldarg_0); // Replace value by field value (still currently 2 items on eval stack) generator.Emit(OpCodes.Ldfld, field); // Store the value of the top on the eval stack into // the object underneath that value on the value stack. // (0 items on eval stack) generator.Emit(OpCodes.Stfld, field); } // Load new constructed obj on eval stack -> 1 item on stack generator.Emit(OpCodes.Ldloc_0); // Return constructed object. --> 0 items on stack generator.Emit(OpCodes.Ret); myExec = dymMethod.CreateDelegate(typeof(Func<t,>)); _cachedIL.Add(typeof(T), myExec); } return ((Func<t,>)myExec)(myObject);}I got both of the above methods off of the net somewhere (maybe even from CodeProject), but it's been long enough that I can't recall where I got them.Explanation of the History ClassThe History class records changes by creating a TableHistory record, inserting the values for the primary key for the table being modified into the Key1, Key2, ..., Key6 columns (if you have more than 6 values that make up a primary key on any table, you'll want to modify this), setting the type of change being made in the ActionType column (INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE), old value and new value if it happens to be an update action, and the date and Windows identity of the user who made the change.Let's examine what happens when a call is made to the RecordLinqInsert method:public static void RecordLinqInsert(DboDataContext dbo, IIdentity user, object obj){ TableHistory hist = NewHistoryRecord(obj); hist.ActionType = "INSERT"; hist.ActionUserName = user.Name; hist.ActionDateTime = dbo.GetSystemDate(); dbo.TableHistories.InsertOnSubmit(hist);}private static TableHistory NewHistoryRecord(object obj){ TableHistory hist = new TableHistory(); Type type = obj.GetType(); PropertyInfo[] keys; if (historyRecordExceptions.ContainsKey(type)) { keys = historyRecordExceptions[type].ToArray(); } else { keys = type.GetProperties().Where(o => AttrIsPrimaryKey(o)).ToArray(); } if (keys.Length > KeyMax) throw new HistoryException("object has more than " + KeyMax.ToString() + " keys."); for (int i = 1; i <= keys.Length; i++) { typeof(TableHistory) .GetProperty("Key" + i.ToString()) .SetValue(hist, keys[i - 1].GetValue(obj, null).ToString(), null); } hist.TableName = type.Name; return hist;}protected static bool AttrIsPrimaryKey(PropertyInfo pi){ var attrs = from attr in pi.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(ColumnAttribute), true) where ((ColumnAttribute)attr).IsPrimaryKey select attr; if (attrs != null && attrs.Count() > 0) return true; else return false;}RecordLinqInsert takes as input a data context which it will use to write to the database, the user, and the LINQ object to be recorded (a single object, for instance, a Customer or Order object if you're using AdventureWorks). It then calls the NewHistoryRecord method, which uses LINQ to Objects in conjunction with the AttrIsPrimaryKey method to pull all the primary key properties, set the Key1-KeyN properties of the TableHistory object, and return the new TableHistory object. The code would be called in an application, like so: Continue span.fullpost {display:none;}

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• MVVM Light V4 preview 2 (BL0015) #mvvmlight

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  Over the past few weeks, I have worked hard on a few new features for MVVM Light V4. Here is a second early preview (consider this pre-alpha if you wish). The features are unit-tested, but I am now looking for feedback and there might be bugs! Bug correction: Messenger.CleanupList is now thread safe This was an annoying bug that is now corrected: In some circumstances, an exception could be thrown when the Messenger’s recipients list was cleaned up (i.e. the “dead” instances were removed). The method is called now and then and the exception was thrown apparently at random. In fact it was really a multi-threading issue, which is now corrected. Bug correction: AllowPartiallyTrustedCallers prevents EventToCommand to work This is a particularly annoying regression bug that was introduced in BL0014. In order to allow MVVM Light to work in XBAPs too, I added the AllowPartiallyTrustedCallers attribute to the assemblies. However, we just found out that this causes issues when using EventToCommand. In order to allow EventToCommand to continue working, I reverted to the previous state by removing the AllowPartiallyTrustedCallers attribute for now. I will work with my friends at Microsoft to try and find a solution. Stay tuned. Bug correction: XML documentation file is now generated in Release configuration The XML documentation file was not generated for the Release configuration. This was a simple flag in the project file that I had forgotten to set. This is corrected now. Applying EventToCommand to non-FrameworkElements This feature has been requested in order to be able to execute a command when a Storyboard is completed. I implemented this, but unfortunately found out that EventToCommand can only be added to Storyboards in Silverlight 3 and Silverlight 4, but not in WPF or in Windows Phone 7. This obviously limits the usefulness of this change, but I decided to publish it anyway, because it is pretty damn useful in Silverlight… Why not in WPF? In WPF, Storyboards added to a resource dictionary are frozen. This is a feature of WPF which allows to optimize certain objects for performance: By freezing them, it is a contract where we say “this object will not be modified anymore, so do your perf optimization on them without worrying too much”. Unfortunately, adding a Trigger (such as EventTrigger) to an object in resources does not work if this object is frozen… and unfortunately, there is no way to tell WPF not to freeze the Storyboard in the resources… so there is no way around that (at least none I can see. In Silverlight, objects are not frozen, so an EventTrigger can be added without problems. Why not in WP7? In Windows Phone 7, there is a totally different issue: Adding a Trigger can only be done to a FrameworkElement, which Storyboard is not. Here I think that we might see a change in a future version of the framework, so maybe this small trick will work in the future. Workaround? Since you cannot use the EventToCommand on a Storyboard in WPF and in WP7, the workaround is pretty obvious: Handle the Completed event in the code behind, and call the Command from there on the ViewModel. This object can be obtained by casting the DataContext to the ViewModel type. This means that the View needs to know about the ViewModel, but I never had issues with that anyway. New class: NotifyPropertyChanged Sometimes when you implement a model object (for example Customer), you would like to have it implement INotifyPropertyChanged, but without having all the frills of a ViewModelBase. A new class named NotifyPropertyChanged allows you to do that. This class is a simple implementation of INotifyPropertyChaned (with all the overloads of RaisePropertyChanged that were implemented in BL0014). In fact, ViewModelBase inherits NotifyPropertyChanged. ViewModelBase does not implement IDisposable anymore The IDisposable interface and the Dispose method had been marked obsolete in the ViewModelBase class already in V3. Now they have been removed. Note: By this, I do not mean that IDisposable is a bad interface, or that it shouldn’t be used on viewmodels. In the contrary, I know that this interface is very useful in certain circumstances. However, I think that having it by default on every instance of ViewModelBase was sending a wrong message. This interface has a strong meaning in .NET: After Dispose has been executed, the instance should not be used anymore, and should be ready for garbage collection. What I really wanted to have on ViewModelBase was rather a simple cleanup method, something that can be executed now and then during runtime. This is fulfilled by the ICleanup interface and its Cleanup method. If your ViewModels need IDisposable, you can still use it! You will just have to implement the interface on the class itself, because it is not available on ViewModelBase anymore. What’s next? I have a couple exciting new features implemented already but that need more testing before they go live… Just stay tuned and by MIX11 (12-14 April 2011), we should see at least a major addition to MVVM Light Toolkit, as well as another smaller feature which is pretty cool nonetheless More about this later! Happy Coding Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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• Do Not Optimize Without Measuring

  - by Alois Kraus

  Recently I had to do some performance work which included reading a lot of code. It is fascinating with what ideas people come up to solve a problem. Especially when there is no problem. When you look at other peoples code you will not be able to tell if it is well performing or not by reading it. You need to execute it with some sort of tracing or even better under a profiler. The first rule of the performance club is not to think and then to optimize but to measure, think and then optimize. The second rule is to do this do this in a loop to prevent slipping in bad things for too long into your code base. If you skip for some reason the measure step and optimize directly it is like changing the wave function in quantum mechanics. This has no observable effect in our world since it does represent only a probability distribution of all possible values. In quantum mechanics you need to let the wave function collapse to a single value. A collapsed wave function has therefore not many but one distinct value. This is what we physicists call a measurement. If you optimize your application without measuring it you are just changing the probability distribution of your potential performance values. Which performance your application actually has is still unknown. You only know that it will be within a specific range with a certain probability. As usual there are unlikely values within your distribution like a startup time of 20 minutes which should only happen once in 100 000 years. 100 000 years are a very short time when the first customer tries your heavily distributed networking application to run over a slow WIFI network… What is the point of this? Every programmer/architect has a mental performance model in his head. A model has always a set of explicit preconditions and a lot more implicit assumptions baked into it. When the model is good it will help you to think of good designs but it can also be the source of problems. In real world systems not all assumptions of your performance model (implicit or explicit) hold true any longer. The only way to connect your performance model and the real world is to measure it. In the WIFI example the model did assume a low latency high bandwidth LAN connection. If this assumption becomes wrong the system did have a drastic change in startup time. Lets look at a example. Lets assume we want to cache some expensive UI resource like fonts objects. For this undertaking we do create a Cache class with the UI themes we want to support. Since Fonts are expensive objects we do create it on demand the first time the theme is requested. A simple example of a Theme cache might look like this: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Drawing; struct Theme { public Color Color; public Font Font; } static class ThemeCache { static Dictionary<string, Theme> _Cache = new Dictionary<string, Theme> { {"Default", new Theme { Color = Color.AliceBlue }}, {"Theme12", new Theme { Color = Color.Aqua }}, }; public static Theme Get(string theme) { Theme cached = _Cache[theme]; if (cached.Font == null) { Console.WriteLine("Creating new font"); cached.Font = new Font("Arial", 8); } return cached; } } class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { Theme item = ThemeCache.Get("Theme12"); item = ThemeCache.Get("Theme12"); } } This cache does create font objects only once since on first retrieve of the Theme object the font is added to the Theme object. When we let the application run it should print “Creating new font” only once. Right? Wrong! The vigilant readers have spotted the issue already. The creator of this cache class wanted to get maximum performance. So he decided that the Theme object should be a value type (struct) to not put too much pressure on the garbage collector. The code Theme cached = _Cache[theme]; if (cached.Font == null) { Console.WriteLine("Creating new font"); cached.Font = new Font("Arial", 8); } does work with a copy of the value stored in the dictionary. This means we do mutate a copy of the Theme object and return it to our caller. But the original Theme object in the dictionary will have always null for the Font field! The solution is to change the declaration of struct Theme to class Theme or to update the theme object in the dictionary. Our cache as it is currently is actually a non caching cache. The funny thing was that I found out with a profiler by looking at which objects where finalized. I found way too many font objects to be finalized. After a bit debugging I found the allocation source for Font objects was this cache. Since this cache was there for years it means that the cache was never needed since I found no perf issue due to the creation of font objects. the cache was never profiled if it did bring any performance gain. to make the cache beneficial it needs to be accessed much more often. That was the story of the non caching cache. Next time I will write something something about measuring.

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• Supporting users if they're not on your site

  - by Roger Hart

  Have a look at this Read Write Web article, specifically the paragraph in bold and the comments. Have a wry chuckle, or maybe weep for the future of humanity - your call. Then pause, and worry about information architecture. The short story: Read Write Web bumps up the Google rankings for "Facebook login" at the same time as Facebook makes UI changes, and a few hundred users get confused and leave comments on Read Write Web complaining about not being able to log in to their Facebook accounts.* Blindly clicking the first Google result is not a navigation behaviour I'd anticipated for folks visiting big names sites like Facebook. But then, I use Launchy and don't know where any of my files are, depend on Firefox auto-complete, view Facebook through my IM client, and don't need a map to find my backside with both hands. Not all our users behave in the same way, which means not all of our architecture is within our control, and people can get to your content in all sorts of ways. Even if the Read Write Web episode is a prank of some kind (there are, after all, plenty of folks who enjoy orchestrated trolling) it's still a useful reminder. Your users may take paths through and to your content you cannot control, and they are unlikely to deconstruct their assumptions along the way. I guess the meaningful question is: can you still support those users? If they get to you from Google instead of your front door, does what they find still make sense? Does your information architecture still work if your guests come in through the bathroom window? Ok, so here they broke into the house next door - you can't be expected to deal with that. But the rest is well worth thinking about. Other off-site interaction It's rarely going to be as funny as the comments at Read Write Web, but your users are going to do, say, and read things they think of as being about you and your products, in places you don't control. That's good. If you pay attention to it, you get data. Your users get a better experience. There are easy wins, too. Blogs, forums, social media &c. People may look for and find help with your product on blogs and forums, on Twitter, and what have you. They may learn about your brand in the same way. That's fine, it's an interaction you can be part of. It's time-consuming, certainly, but you have the option. You won't get a blogger to incorporate your site navigation just in case your users end up there, but you can be there when they do. Again, Anne Gentle, Gordon McLean and others have covered this in more depth than I could. Direct contact Sales people, customer care, support, they all talk to people. Are they sending links to your content? if so, which bits? Do they know about all of it? Do they have the content they need to support them - messaging that funnels sales, FAQ that are realistically frequent, detailed examples of things people want to do, that kind of thing. Are they sending links because users can't find the good stuff? Are they sending précis of your content, or re-writes, or brand new stuff? If so, does that mean your content isn't up to scratch, or that you've got content missing? Direct sales/care/support interactions are enormously valuable, and can help you know what content your users find useful. You can't have a table of contents or a "See also" in a phonecall, but your content strategy can support more interactions than browsing. *Passing observation about Facebook. For plenty if folks, it is  the internet. Its services are simple versions of what a lot of people use the internet for, and they're aggregated into one stop. Flickr, Vimeo, Wordpress, Twitter, LinkedIn, and all sorts of games, have Facebook doppelgangers that are not only friendlier to entry-level users, they're right there, behind only one layer of authentication. As such, it could own a lot of interaction convention. Heavy users may well not be tech-savvy, and be quite change averse. That doesn't make this episode not dumb, but I'm happy to go easy on 'em.

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• Design a T-shirt for .NET Reflector Pro

  - by Laila

  Win a .NET Reflector Pro license, a box of Red Gate goodies, and a t-shirt printed with your design! Red Gate likes t-shirts. Each of our teams has one. In fact, each individual person has one, numbered according to when they joined the company: Red Gate's 1st, 2nd, and so on right up to Red Gate's 170th, with the slogan "More than just a number". Those t-shirts are important, chiefly because they remind the people wearing them that they are important. But that isn't enough. What really makes us great are the people who choose to use our tools. So we'd like to extend our tradition of t-shirts to include you and put the design of our next shirt entirely in your hands. We'd like you to come up with a witty slogan or create an inventive or simply beautiful t-shirt design for .NET Reflector Pro, our add-in for Visual Studio, which allows you to step into decompiled assemblies whilst debugging in Visual Studio. When you're done, post your masterpiece to Twitter with the hash tag #reflectortees, and @redgate will take a look! We'll pick the best design, and the winner will get a licensed copy of .NET Reflector Pro and a box of Red Gate goodies - not to mention a copy of their t-shirt. The winning design will go into production and be worn and given out at tradeshows, conferences, and user group events across the world, proudly bearing the name of their designer. We'll also pick three runners-up who will receive licenses for .NET Reflector Pro. Red Gate goodie box Interested? If you're up for the challenge, then we've got some resources to get you started. Inside the .zip file you'll find high-quality versions of the following: T-shirt templates: don't forget to design the front and the back! Different versions of the .NET Reflector Pro logo and Red Gate logo. Colour sheets to give you an easy reference to the Red Gate colours, including hex and RGB values. You can create and send us as many designs as you like, and each of them will be considered for the prize. To submit your designs, simply tweet including the competition hash tag, #reflectortees, and a link to somewhere we can see your design: either an image hosting site such as Twitpic, Flickr or Picasa, or a personal blog. You will need to create a Twitter account (which is free), if you don't already have one. You only have three limits: The background colour of the t-shirt should be one of our brand colours (red, light/dark grey or black), though you're welcome to use other colours in the rest of the design. You need to make use of either the .NET Reflector Pro logo OR the Red Gate logo (please keep them as they are) If you include any text or slogan, stick with just one or two colors for it. Apart from that, go wild. Go and do whatever it is you do when you get creative: whether you walk barefoot on the grass with a pencil and paper, sit cross-legged on a pile of cushions with a laptop, or simply close your eyes and float through a mist of ideas, now is your chance. Make sure you enjoy it. We're looking forward to seeing your creations. Terms and conditions 1. The closing date for entries is June 11th, 2010 (4 p.m. UK time). Red Gate Software Ltd reserves the right to extend the competition deadline at its discretion. If there is a revision, the revised date will be published on this blog and the date for announcing the results will be postponed accordingly. 2. The winning designer will be notified on June 14th, 2010 through Twitter. The winner must claim his/her prize by sending us a high-resolution image of their design via email (i.e. Illustrator EPS files or appropriate format, ideally at 300dpi). If the winner does not come forward within 3 days of the announcement, they will forfeit their prize and another winner will be selected from the runners-up. The names of the winner and runners-up will be posted on this blog by June 18th.  3. Entry is completed on the designer posting a link to their entry in a tweet with the correct hash tag, #reflectortees. 4. Red Gate Software needs to hold the rights to using the winning design in order to put the t-shirt into production. We will make sure that this is fine with the winner before we do so, but if you do not want us holding the rights to your design, please do not submit your designs. We reserve the right to slightly alter or adjust any artwork we decide to use (mainly to make it easier to print), but we will make sure we contact the winner for approval first. The winner will also need to allow us the use of his/her name for purposes of promoting your design. 5. Entries must be entirely your own original work and must not breach any copyright or third party rights. Red Gate Software Ltd will not be made partially or fully liable for any non-original work submitted by you. 6. This competition is free: you do not need to buy anything or be an existing customer to enter. 7. This competition is not open to employees of Red Gate Software Ltd, their families, or any other company directly connected with the administration of this promotion.

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• Create a Social Community of Trust Along With Your Federal Digital Services Governance

  - by TedMcLaughlan

  The Digital Services Governance Recommendations were recently released, supporting the US Federal Government's Digital Government Strategy Milestone Action #4.2 to establish agency-wide governance structures for developing and delivering digital services. Figure 1 - From: "Digital Services Governance Recommendations" While extremely important from a policy and procedure perspective within an Agency's information management and communications enterprise, these recommendations only very lightly reference perhaps the most important success enabler - the "Trusted Community" required for ultimate usefulness of the services delivered. By "ultimate usefulness", I mean the collection of public, transparent properties around government information and digital services that include social trust and validation, social reach, expert respect, and comparative, standard measures of relative value. In other words, do the digital services meet expectations of the public, social media ecosystem (people AND machines)? A rigid governance framework, controlling by rules, policies and roles the creation and dissemination of digital services may meet the expectations of direct end-users and most stakeholders - including the agency information stewards and security officers. All others who may share comments about the services, write about them, swap or review extracts, repackage, visualize or otherwise repurpose the output for use in entirely unanticipated, social ways - these "stakeholders" will not be governed, but may observe guidance generated by a "Trusted Community". As recognized members of the trusted community, these stakeholders may ultimately define the right scope and detail of governance that all other users might observe, promoting and refining the usefulness of the government product as the social ecosystem expects. So, as part of an agency-centric governance framework, it's advised that a flexible governance model be created for stewarding a "Community of Trust" around the digital services. The first steps follow the approach outlined in the Recommendations: Step 1: Gather a Core Team In addition to the roles and responsibilities described, perhaps a set of characteristics and responsibilities can be developed for the "Trusted Community Steward/Advocate" - i.e. a person or team who (a) are entirely cognizant of and respected within the external social media communities, and (b) are trusted both within the agency and outside as practical, responsible, non-partisan communicators of useful information. The may seem like a standard Agency PR/Outreach team role - but often an agency or stakeholder subject matter expert with a public, active social persona works even better. Step 2: Assess What You Have In addition to existing, agency or stakeholder decision-making bodies and assets, it's important to take a PR/Marketing view of the social ecosystem. How visible are the services across the social channels utilized by current or desired constituents of your agency? What's the online reputation of your agency and perhaps the service(s)? Is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) a facet of external communications/publishing lifecycles? Who are the public champions, instigators, value-adders for the digital services, or perhaps just influential "communicators" (i.e. with no stake in the game)? You're essentially assessing your market and social presence, and identifying the actors (including your own agency employees) in the existing community of trust. Step 3: Determine What You Want The evolving Community of Trust will most readily absorb, support and provide feedback regarding "Core Principles" (Element B of the "six essential elements of a digital services governance structure") shared by your Agency, and obviously play a large, though probably very unstructured part in Element D "Stakeholder Input and Participation". Plan for this, and seek input from the social media community with respect to performance metrics - these should be geared around the outcome and growth of the trusted communities actions. How big and active is this community? What's the influential reach of this community with respect to particular messaging or campaigns generated by the Agency? What's the referral rate TO your digital services, FROM channels owned or operated by members of this community? (this requires governance with respect to content generation inclusive of "markers" or "tags"). At this point, while your Agency proceeds with steps 4 ("Build/Validate the Governance Structure") and 5 ("Share, Review, Upgrade"), the Community of Trust might as well just get going, and start adding value and usefulness to the existing conversations, existing data services - loosely though directionally-stewarded by your trusted advocate(s). Why is this an "Enterprise Architecture" topic? Because it's increasingly apparent that a Public Service "Enterprise" is not wholly contained within Agency facilities, firewalls and job titles - it's also manifested in actual, perceived or representative forms outside the walls, on the social Internet. An Agency's EA model and resulting investments both facilitate and are impacted by the "Social Enterprise". At Oracle, we're very active both within our Enterprise and outside, helping foster social architectures that enable truly useful public services, digital or otherwise.

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• Oracle ATG Web Commerce 10 Implementation Developer Boot Camp - Reading (UK) - October 1-12, 2012

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  REGISTER NOW: Oracle ATG Web Commerce 10 Implementation Developer Boot Camp Reading, UK, October 1-12, 2012! OPN invites you to join us for a 10-day implementation bootcamp on Oracle ATG Web Commerce in Reading, UK from October 1-12, 2012.This 10-day boot camp is designed to provide partners with hands-on experience and technical training to successfully build and deploy Oracle ATG Web Commerce 10 Applications. This particular boot camp is focused on helping partners develop the essential skills needed to implement every aspect of an ATG Commerce Application from scratch, (not CRS-based), with a specific goal of enabling experienced Java/J2EE developers with a path towards becoming functional, effective, and contributing members of an ATG implementation team. Built for both new and experienced ATG developers alike, the collaborative nature of this program and its exercises, have proven to be highly effective and extremely valuable in learning the best practices for implementing ATG solutions. Though not required, this bootcamp provides a structured path to earning a Certified Oracle ATG Web Commerce 10 Specialization! What Is Covered: This boot camp is for Application Developers and Software Architects wanting to gain valuable insight into ATG application development best practices, as well as relevant and applicable implementation experience on projects modeled after four of the most common types of applications built on the ATG platform. The following learning objectives are all critical, and are of equal priority in enabling this role to succeed. This learning boot camp will help with: Building a basic functional transaction-ready ATG Web Commerce 10 Application. Utilizing ATG’s platform features such as scenarios, slots, targeters, user profiles and segments, to create a personalized user experience. Building Nucleus components to support and/or extend application functionality. Understanding the intricacies of ATG order checkout and fulfillment. Specifying, designing and implementing new commerce features in ATG 10. Building a functional commerce application modeled after four of the most common types of applications built on the ATG platform, within an agile-based project team environment and under simulated real-world project conditions. Duration: The Oracle ATG Web Commerce 10 Implementation Developer Boot Camp is an instructor-led workshop spanning 10 days. Audience: Application Developers Software Architects Prerequisite Training and Environment Requirements: Programming and Markup Experience with Java J2EE, JavaScript, XML, HTML and CSS Completion of Oracle ATG Web Commerce 10 Implementation Specialist Development Guided Learning Path modules Participants will be required to bring their own laptop that meets the minimum specifications:   64-bit PC and OS (e.g. Windows 7 64-bit) 4GB RAM or more 40GB Hard Disk Space Laptops will require access to the Internet through Remote Desktop via Windows. Agenda Topics: Week 1 – Day 1 through 5 Build a Basic Commerce Application In week one of the boot camp training, we will apply knowledge learned from the ATG Web Commerce 10 Implementation Developer Guided Learning Path modules, towards building a basic transaction-ready commerce application. There will be little to no lectures delivered in this boot camp, as developers will be fully engaged in ATG Application Development activities and best practices. Developers will work independently on the following lab assignments from day's 1 through 5: Lab Assignments  1 Environment Setup 2 Build a dynamic Home Page 3 Site Authentication 4 Build Customer Registration 5 Display Top Level Categories 6 Display Product Sub-Categories 7 Display Product List Page 8 Display Product Detail Page 9 ATG Inventory 10 Build “Add to Cart” Functionality 11 Build Shopping Cart 12 Build Checkout Page  13 Build Checkout Review Page 14 Create an Order and Build Order Confirmation Page 15 Implement Slots and Targeters for Personalization 16 Implement Pricing and Promotions 17 Order Fulfillment Back to top Week 2 – Day 6 through 10 Team-based Case Project In the second week of the boot camp training, participants will be asked to join a project team that will select a case project for the team to implement. Teams will be able to choose from four of the most common application types developed and deployed on the ATG platform. They are as follows: Hard goods with physical fulfillment, Soft goods with electronic fulfillment, a Service or subscription case example, a Course/Event registration case example. Team projects will have approximately 160 hours of use cases/stories for each team to build (40 hours per developer). Each day's Use Cases/Stories will build upon the prior day's work, and therefore must be fully completed at the end of each day. Please note that this boot camp intends to simulate real-world project conditions, and as such will likely require the need for project teams to possibly work beyond normal business hours. To promote further collaboration and group learning, each team will be asked to present their work and share the methodologies and solutions that they've applied to their cases at the end of each day. Location: Oracle Reading CVC TPC510 Room: Wraysbury Reading, UK 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM  Registration Fee (10 Days): US $3,375 Please click on the following link to REGISTER or  visit the Oracle ATG Web Commerce 10 Implementation Developer Boot Camp page for more information. Questions: Patrick Ty Partner Enablement, Oracle Commerce Phone: 310.343.7687 Mobile: 310.633.1013 Email: [email protected]

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• Code Structure / Level Design: Plants vs Zombies game level dissection

  - by lalan

  Hi Friends, I am interested in learning the class structure of Plants vs Zombies, particularly level design; for those who haven't played it - this video contains nice play-through: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89DfdOIJ4xw. How would I go ahead and design the code, mostly structure & classes, which allows for maximum flexibility & clean development? I am familiar with data driven design concepts, and would use events to handle most of dynamic behavior. Dissection at macro level: (Once every Level) Load tilemap, props, etc -- basically build the map (Once every Level) Camera Movement - might consider it as short cut-scene (Once every Level) Show Enemies you'll face during present level (Once every Level) Unit Selection Window/Panel - selection of defensive plants (Once every Level) Camera Movement - might consider it as short cut-scene (Once every Level) HUD Creation - based on unit selection (Level Loop) Enemy creation - based on types of zombies allowed (Level Loop) Sun/Resource generation (Level Loop) Show messages like 'huge wave of zombies coming', 'final wave' (Level Loop) Other unique events - Spawn gifts, money, tombstones, etc (Once every Level) Unlock new plant Potential game scripts: a) Level definitions: Level_1_1.xml, Level_1_2.xml, etc. Level_1_1.xml :: Sample script <map> <tilemap>tilemapFrontLawn</tilemap> <SpawnPoints> tiles where particular type of zombies (land vs water) may spawn</spawnPoints> <props> position, entity array -- lawnmower, </props> </map> <zombies> <... list of zombies who gonna attack by ids...> </zombies> <plants> <... list by plants which are available for defense by ids...> </plants> <progression> <ZombieWave name='first wave' spawnScript='zombieLightWave.lua' unlock='null'> <startMessages time=1.5>Ready</startMessages> <endMessages time=1.5>Huge wave of zombies incoming</endMessages> </ZombieWave> </progression> b) Entities definitions: .xmls containing zombies, plants, sun, lawnmower, coins, etc description. Potential classes: //LevelManager - Based on the level under play, it will load level script. Few of the // functions it may have: class LevelManager { public: bool load(string levelFileName); bool enter(); bool update(float deltatime); bool exit(); private: LevelData* mLevelData; } // LevelData - Contains the details of level loaded by LevelManager. class LevelData { private: string file; // array of camera,dialog,attackwaves, etc in active level LevelCutSceneCamera** mArrayCutSceneCamera; LevelCutSceneDialog** mArrayCutSceneDialog; LevelAttackWave** mArrayAttackWave; .... // which camera,dialog,attackwave is active in level uint mCursorCutSceneCamera; uint mCursorCutSceneDialog; uint mCursorAttackWave; public: // based on cursor, get the next camera,dialog,attackwave,etc in active level // return false/true based on failure/success bool nextCutSceneCamera(LevelCutSceneCamera**); bool nextCutSceneDialog(LevelCutSceneDialog**); } // LevelUnderPlay- LevelManager class LevelUnderPlay { private: LevelCutSceneCamera* mCutSceneCamera; LevelCutSceneDialog* mCutSceneDialog; LevelAttackWave* mAttackWave; Entities** mSelectedPlants; Entities** mAllowedZombies; bool isCutSceneCameraActive; public: bool enter(); bool update(float deltatime); bool exit(); } I am totally confused.. :( Does it make sense of using class composition (have flat class hierarchy) for managing levels. Is it a good idea to just add/remove/update sprites (or any drawable stuff) to current scene from LevelManager or LevelUnderPlay? If I want to make non-linear level design, how should I go ahead? Perhaps I would need a LevelProgression class, which would decide what to do based on decision tree. Any suggestions would be appreciated very much. Thank for your time, lalan

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• Oracle Delivers Latest Release of Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c

  - by Scott McNeil

  Richer Service Catalog for Database and Middleware as a Service; Enhanced Database and Middleware Management Help Drive Enterprise-Scale Private Cloud Adoption News Summary IT organizations are adopting private clouds as a stepping-stone to business-driven, self-service IT. Successful implementations hinge on the ability to efficiently deploy and manage cloud services at enterprise scale. Having a complete cloud management solution integrated with an enterprise-class technology stack is a fundamental requirement for IT. Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Release 4 meets that requirement by helping businesses become more agile and responsive, while reducing cost, complexity, and risk. News Facts Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Release 4, available today, lets organizations rapidly adopt Oracle-based, enterprise-scale private clouds. New capabilities provide advanced technology stack management, secure database administration, and enterprise service governance, enabling Oracle customers and partners to maximize database and application performance and drive innovation using self-service IT platforms. The enhancements have been driven by customers and the growing Oracle Enterprise Manager Ecosystem, comprised of more than 750 Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Specialized partners. Oracle and its partners and customers have built over 140 plug-ins and connectors for Oracle Enterprise Manager. Watch the video highlights. Automation for Broader Cloud Services Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Release 4 allows for a rapid enterprise-wide adoption of database, middleware and infrastructure services in the private cloud, driven by an enhanced API-enabled service catalog. The release features “push button” style provisioning of complete environments such as SOA and Oracle Active Data Guard, and fast data cloning that enables rapid deployment and testing of enterprise applications. Out-of-the-box capabilities to detect data and configuration vulnerabilities provide enhanced cloud service governance along with greater operational control through a flexible and extensible showback mechanism. Enhanced Database Management A new performance warehouse enables predictive database diagnostics and trend analysis and helps identify database problems before they occur. New enterprise data-governance capabilities enhance security by helping systematically discover and protect sensitive data. Step-by-step orchestration of upgrades with the ability to rollback changes enables faster adoption of Oracle Database 12c. Expanded Fusion Middleware Management A new consolidated view of Oracle Fusion Middleware 12c deployments with a guided management capability lets administrators apply best management practices to diverse middleware environments and identify performance issues quickly. A Java VM Diagnostics as a Service feature allows governed access to diagnostics data for IT workers across multiple disciplines for accelerated DevOps resolutions of defects and performance optimization. New automated provisioning for SOA lets middleware administrators perform mass SOA provisioning with ease. Superior Enterprise-Grade Management Private roles and preferred credentials have been added to Oracle Enterprise Manager to provide additional fine-grained security for organizations with complex access control requirements. A new security console provides a single point of control for managing the security of Oracle Enterprise Manager environments. Support for the latest industry standard SNMP v3 protocol, including encryption, enables more secure heterogeneous management. “Smart monitoring” adapts to observed environmental changes and adds self-management capabilities to help Oracle Enterprise Manager run at peak performance, while demanding less IT supervision. Supporting Quotes “Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has a strong tradition of technology breakthroughs and leadership. As a member of Oracle’s Customer Advisory Board for Oracle Enterprise Manager, we have consistently provided feedback and guidance in the areas of enterprise-scale cloud, self-diagnosability, and secure administration for the product,” said Tim Frazier, CIO, NIF and Photon Sciences, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. “We intend to take advantage of the Release 4 features that support enterprise-scale availability and fine-grained security capabilities for private cloud deployments.” “IDC's most recent CloudTrack survey shows that most enterprises plan to adopt hybrid cloud architectures over the next three years,” said Mary Johnston Turner, Research Vice President, Enterprise System Management Software, IDC. “These organizations plan to deploy a wide range of workloads into cloud environments including mission critical database and middleware services that require high levels of fault tolerance and disaster recovery. Such capabilities were traditionally custom configured for each application but cloud offers the possibility to incorporate such properties within the service definition, enabling organizations to adopt cloud without compromise. With the latest release of Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c, Oracle is providing customers with an out-of-the-box experience for delivering highly-resilient cloud services for databases and applications.” “Since its inception, Oracle has been leading the way in innovative, scalable and high performance solutions for the enterprise. With this release of Oracle Enterprise Manager, we are extending this leadership by providing enterprise-scale capabilities for planning, delivering, and managing private clouds. We call this ‘zero-to-cloud – accelerated.’ These enhancements help our customers to expedite their adoption of cloud computing and prepares them for the next generation of self-service IT,” said Prakash Ramamurthy, senior vice president of Systems and Cloud Management at Oracle. Supporting Resources Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Video: Cerner Delivers High Performance Private Cloud Video: BIAS Achieves Outstanding Results with Private Cloud Press Release Stay Connected: Twitter | Facebook | YouTube | Linkedin | Newsletter Download the Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Mobile app

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• Token based Authentication for WCF HTTP/REST Services: Authentication

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  This post shows some of the implementation techniques for adding token and claims based security to HTTP/REST services written with WCF. For the theoretical background, see my previous post. Disclaimer The framework I am using/building here is not the only possible approach to tackle the problem. Based on customer feedback and requirements the code has gone through several iterations to a point where we think it is ready to handle most of the situations. Goals and requirements The framework should be able to handle typical scenarios like username/password based authentication, as well as token based authentication The framework should allow adding new supported token types Should work with WCF web programming model either self-host or IIS hosted Service code can rely on an IClaimsPrincipal on Thread.CurrentPrincipal that describes the client using claims-based identity Implementation overview In WCF the main extensibility point for this kind of security work is the ServiceAuthorizationManager. It gets invoked early enough in the pipeline, has access to the HTTP protocol details of the incoming request and can set Thread.CurrentPrincipal. The job of the SAM is simple: Check the Authorization header of the incoming HTTP request Check if a “registered” token (more on that later) is present If yes, validate the token using a security token handler, create the claims principal (including claims transformation) and set Thread.CurrentPrincipal If no, set an anonymous principal on Thread.CurrentPrincipal. By default, anonymous principals are denied access – so the request ends here with a 401 (more on that later). To wire up the custom authorization manager you need a custom service host – which in turn needs a custom service host factory. The full object model looks like this: Token handling A nice piece of existing WIF infrastructure are security token handlers. Their job is to serialize a received security token into a CLR representation, validate the token and turn the token into claims. The way this works with WS-Security based services is that WIF passes the name/namespace of the incoming token to WIF’s security token handler collection. This in turn finds out which token handler can deal with the token and returns the right instances. For HTTP based services we can do something very similar. The scheme on the Authorization header gives the service a hint how to deal with an incoming token. So the only missing link is a way to associate a token handler (or multiple token handlers) with a scheme and we are (almost) done. WIF already includes token handler for a variety of tokens like username/password or SAML 1.1/2.0. The accompanying sample has a implementation for a Simple Web Token (SWT) token handler, and as soon as JSON Web Token are ready, simply adding a corresponding token handler will add support for this token type, too. All supported schemes/token types are organized in a WebSecurityTokenHandlerCollectionManager and passed into the host factory/host/authorization manager. Adding support for basic authentication against a membership provider would e.g. look like this (in global.asax): var manager = new WebSecurityTokenHandlerCollectionManager(); manager.AddBasicAuthenticationHandler((username, password) => Membership.ValidateUser(username, password));   Adding support for Simple Web Tokens with a scheme of Bearer (the current OAuth2 scheme) requires passing in a issuer, audience and signature verification key: manager.AddSimpleWebTokenHandler(     "Bearer",     "http://identityserver.thinktecture.com/trust/initial",     "https://roadie/webservicesecurity/rest/",     "WFD7i8XRHsrUPEdwSisdHoHy08W3lM16Bk6SCT8ht6A="); In some situations, SAML token may be used as well. The following configures SAML support for a token coming from ADFS2: var registry = new ConfigurationBasedIssuerNameRegistry(); registry.AddTrustedIssuer( "d1 c5 b1 25 97 d0 36 94 65 1c e2 64 fe 48 06 01 35 f7 bd db", "ADFS"); var adfsConfig = new SecurityTokenHandlerConfiguration(); adfsConfig.AudienceRestriction.AllowedAudienceUris.Add( new Uri("https://roadie/webservicesecurity/rest/")); adfsConfig.IssuerNameRegistry = registry; adfsConfig.CertificateValidator = X509CertificateValidator.None; // token decryption (read from config) adfsConfig.ServiceTokenResolver = IdentityModelConfiguration.ServiceConfiguration.CreateAggregateTokenResolver();             manager.AddSaml11SecurityTokenHandler("SAML", adfsConfig);   Transformation The custom authorization manager will also try to invoke a configured claims authentication manager. This means that the standard WIF claims transformation logic can be used here as well. And even better, can be also shared with e.g. a “surrounding” web application. Error handling A WCF error handler takes care of turning “access denied” faults into 401 status codes and a message inspector adds the registered authentication schemes to the outgoing WWW-Authenticate header when a 401 occurs. The next post will conclude with authorization as well as the source code download.   (Wanna learn more about federation, WIF, claims, tokens etc.? Click here.)

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• Cant get lm-sensors to load ATI Radeon temp or fan

  - by woody

  New to Linux and having minor issues :/ . I followed this guide initially but did not recieve the proper output and did not show my ATI Radeon HD 5000 temp or fan speed. Then used this guide, same problems exhibited. No issues installing and no errors. I think its not reading i2c for some reason. The proprietary driver is installed and functioning correctly according fglrxinfo. I can use aticonfig commands and view both temp and fan. Any ideas on how to get it working under 'sensors'? When i run 'sudo sensors-detect' this is my ouput # sensors-detect revision 5984 (2011-07-10 21:22:53 +0200) # System: LENOVO IdeaPad Y560 (laptop) # Board: Lenovo KL3 This program will help you determine which kernel modules you need to load to use lm_sensors most effectively. It is generally safe and recommended to accept the default answers to all questions, unless you know what you're doing. Some south bridges, CPUs or memory controllers contain embedded sensors. Do you want to scan for them? This is totally safe. (YES/no): y Silicon Integrated Systems SIS5595... No VIA VT82C686 Integrated Sensors... No VIA VT8231 Integrated Sensors... No AMD K8 thermal sensors... No AMD Family 10h thermal sensors... No AMD Family 11h thermal sensors... No AMD Family 12h and 14h thermal sensors... No AMD Family 15h thermal sensors... No AMD Family 15h power sensors... No Intel digital thermal sensor... Success! (driver `coretemp') Intel AMB FB-DIMM thermal sensor... No VIA C7 thermal sensor... No VIA Nano thermal sensor... No Some Super I/O chips contain embedded sensors. We have to write to standard I/O ports to probe them. This is usually safe. Do you want to scan for Super I/O sensors? (YES/no): y Probing for Super-I/O at 0x2e/0x2f Trying family `National Semiconductor/ITE'... Yes Found unknown chip with ID 0x8502 Probing for Super-I/O at 0x4e/0x4f Trying family `National Semiconductor/ITE'... No Trying family `SMSC'... No Trying family `VIA/Winbond/Nuvoton/Fintek'... No Trying family `ITE'... No Some hardware monitoring chips are accessible through the ISA I/O ports. We have to write to arbitrary I/O ports to probe them. This is usually safe though. Yes, you do have ISA I/O ports even if you do not have any ISA slots! Do you want to scan the ISA I/O ports? (YES/no): y Probing for `National Semiconductor LM78' at 0x290... No Probing for `National Semiconductor LM79' at 0x290... No Probing for `Winbond W83781D' at 0x290... No Probing for `Winbond W83782D' at 0x290... No Lastly, we can probe the I2C/SMBus adapters for connected hardware monitoring devices. This is the most risky part, and while it works reasonably well on most systems, it has been reported to cause trouble on some systems. Do you want to probe the I2C/SMBus adapters now? (YES/no): y Using driver `i2c-i801' for device 0000:00:1f.3: Intel 3400/5 Series (PCH) Now follows a summary of the probes I have just done. Just press ENTER to continue: Driver `coretemp': * Chip `Intel digital thermal sensor' (confidence: 9) To load everything that is needed, add this to /etc/modules: #----cut here---- # Chip drivers coretemp #----cut here---- If you have some drivers built into your kernel, the list above will contain too many modules. Skip the appropriate ones! Do you want to add these lines automatically to /etc/modules? (yes/NO) My output for 'sensors' is: acpitz-virtual-0 Adapter: Virtual device temp1: +58.0°C (crit = +100.0°C) coretemp-isa-0000 Adapter: ISA adapter Core 0: +56.0°C (high = +84.0°C, crit = +100.0°C) Core 1: +57.0°C (high = +84.0°C, crit = +100.0°C) Core 2: +58.0°C (high = +84.0°C, crit = +100.0°C) Core 3: +57.0°C (high = +84.0°C, crit = +100.0°C) and my '/etc/modules' is: # /etc/modules: kernel modules to load at boot time. # # This file contains the names of kernel modules that should be loaded # at boot time, one per line. Lines beginning with "#" are ignored. lp rtc # Generated by sensors-detect on Fri Nov 30 23:24:31 2012 # Chip drivers coretemp

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• Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge Winners

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  Originally posted by Jake Kuramoto on The Apps Lab blog. Now that OpenWorld 2012 has wrapped, I have time to tell you all about what happened. Maybe you recall that Noel (@noelportugal) and I were running a modified hackathon during the show, the Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge. Without further ado, congratulations to Dimitri Gielis (@dgielis) and Martin Giffy D’Souza (@martindsouza) on their winning entry, an integration between Oracle APEX and Oracle Social Network that integrates feedback and bug submission with Oracle Social Network Conversations, allowing developers, end-users and project leaders to view and discuss the feedback on their APEX applications from within Oracle Social Network. Update: Bob Rhubart of OTN (@brhubart) interviewed Dimitri and Martin right after their big win. Money quote from Dimitri when asked what he’d buy with the $500 in Amazon gift cards, “Oracle Social Network.” Nice one. In their own words: In the developers perspective it’s important to get feedback soon, so after a first iteration and end-users start to test, they can give feedback of the application. Previously it stopped there, and it was up to the developer to communicate further with email, phone etc. With OSN every feedback and communication gets logged and other people can see the discussion immediately as well. For the end users perspective he can now communicate in a more efficient way to not only the developers, but also between themselves. Maybe many end-users (in different locations) would like to change some behaviour, by using OSN they can see the entry somebody put in with a screenshot and they can just start to chat about it. Some key technical end users can have lighten the tasks of the development team by looking at the feedback first and start to communicate with their peers. For the project manager he has now the ability to really see what communication has taken place in certain areas and can make decisions on that. Later, if things come up again, he can always go back in OSN and see what was said at that moment in time. Integrating OSN in the APEX applications enhances the user experience, makes the lives of the developers easier and gives a better overview to project managers. Incidentally, you may already know Dimitri and Martin, since both are Oracle Ace Directors. I ran into Martin at the Ace Director briefings Friday before the conference started, and at that point, he wasn’t sure he’d have time to enter the Challenge. After some coaxing, he and Dimitri agreed to give it a go and banged out their entry on Tuesday night, or more accurately, very early Wednesday morning, the day of the Challenge judging. I think they said it took them about four hours of hardcore coding to get it done, very much like a traditional hackathon, which is essentially a code sprint from idea to finished product. Here are some screenshots of the workflow they built. #gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } I love this idea, i.e. closing the loop between web developers and users, a very common pain point, and so did our judges. Speaking of, special thanks to our panel of three judges: Reggie Bradford (@reggiebradford), serial entrepreneur, founder of Vitrue and SVP of Cloud Product Development at Oracle Robert Hipps (@roberthipps), VP of Development for Oracle Social Network and my former boss Roland Smart (@rsmartx), VP of Social Marketing and the brains behind the Oracle Social Developer Community Finally, thanks to everyone who made this possible, including: The three other teams from HarQen (@harqen), TEAM Informatics (@teaminformatics) and Fishbowl Solutions (@fishbowle20) featuring Friend of the ‘Lab John Sim (@jrsim_uix), who finished and presented entries. I’ll be posting the details of their work this week. The one guy who finished an entry, but couldn’t make the judging, Bex Huff (@bex). Bex rallied from a hospitalization due to an allergic reaction during the show; he’s fine, don’t worry. I’ll post details of his work next week, too. The 40-plus people who registered to compete in the Challenge. Noel for all his hard work, sample code, and flying monkey target, more on that to come. The Oracle Social Network development team for supporting this event. Everyone in legal and the beta program office for their help. And finally, the Oracle Technology Network (@oracletechnet) for hosting the event and providing countless hours of operational and moral support. Sorry if I’ve missed some people, since this was a huge team effort. This event was a big success, and we plan to do similar events in the future. Stay tuned to this channel for more. 

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• How to Use Steam In-Home Streaming

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Steam’s In-Home Streaming is now available to everyone, allowing you to stream PC games from one PC to another PC on the same local network. Use your gaming PC to power your laptops and home theater system. This feature doesn’t allow you to stream games over the Internet, only the same local network. Even if you tricked Steam, you probably wouldn’t get good streaming performance over the Internet. Why Stream? When you use Steam In-Home streaming, one PC sends its video and audio to another PC. The other PC views the video and audio like it’s watching a movie, sending back mouse, keyboard, and controller input to the other PC. This allows you to have a fast gaming PC power your gaming experience on slower PCs. For example, you could play graphically demanding games on a laptop in another room of your house, even if that laptop has slower integrated graphics. You could connect a slower PC to your television and use your gaming PC without hauling it into a different room in your house. Streaming also enables cross-platform compatibility. You could have a Windows gaming PC and stream games to a Mac or Linux system. This will be Valve’s official solution for compatibility with old Windows-only games on the Linux (Steam OS) Steam Machines arriving later this year. NVIDIA offers their own game streaming solution, but it requires certain NVIDIA graphics hardware and can only stream to an NVIDIA Shield device. How to Get Started In-Home Streaming is simple to use and doesn’t require any complex configuration — or any configuration, really. First, log into the Steam program on a Windows PC. This should ideally be a powerful gaming PC with a powerful CPU and fast graphics hardware. Install the games you want to stream if you haven’t already — you’ll be streaming from your PC, not from Valve’s servers. (Valve will eventually allow you to stream games from Mac OS X, Linux, and Steam OS systems, but that feature isn’t yet available. You can still stream games to these other operating systems.) Next, log into Steam on another computer on the same network with the same Steam username. Both computers have to be on the same subnet of the same local network. You’ll see the games installed on your other PC in the Steam client’s library. Click the Stream button to start streaming a game from your other PC. The game will launch on your host PC, and it will send its audio and video to the PC in front of you. Your input on the client will be sent back to the server. Be sure to update Steam on both computers if you don’t see this feature. Use the Steam > Check for Updates option within Steam and install the latest update. Updating to the latest graphics drivers for your computer’s hardware is always a good idea, too. Improving Performance Here’s what Valve recommends for good streaming performance: Host PC: A quad-core CPU for the computer running the game, minimum. The computer needs enough processor power to run the game, compress the video and audio, and send it over the network with low latency. Streaming Client: A GPU that supports hardware-accelerated H.264 decoding on the client PC. This hardware is included on all recent laptops and PCs. Ifyou have an older PC or netbook, it may not be able to decode the video stream quickly enough. Network Hardware: A wired network connection is ideal. You may have success with wireless N or AC networks with good signals, but this isn’t guaranteed. Game Settings: While streaming a game, visit the game’s setting screen and lower the resolution or turn off VSync to speed things up. In-Home Steaming Settings: On the host PC, click Steam > Settings and select In-Home Streaming to view the In-Home Streaming settings. You can modify your streaming settings to improve performance and reduce latency. Feel free to experiment with the options here and see how they affect performance — they should be self-explanatory. Check Valve’s In-Home Streaming documentation for troubleshooting information. You can also try streaming non-Steam games. Click Games > Add a Non-Steam Game to My Library on your host PC and add a PC game you have installed elsewhere on your system. You can then try streaming it from your client PC. Valve says this “may work but is not officially supported.” Image Credit: Robert Couse-Baker on Flickr, Milestoned on Flickr

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• BizTalk 2009 - Installing BizTalk Server 2009 on XP for Development

  - by StuartBrierley

  At my previous employer, when developing for BizTalk Server 2004 using Visual Studio 2003, we made use of separate development and deployment environments; developing in Visual Studio on our client PCs and then deploying to a seperate shared BizTalk 2004 Server from there.  This server was part of a multi-server Standard BizTalk environment comprising of separate BizTalk Server 2004 and SQL Server 2000 servers.  This environment was implemented a number of years ago by an outside consulting company, and while it worked it did occasionally cause contention issues with three developers deploying to the same server to carry out unit testing! Now that I am making the design and implementation decisions about the environment that BizTalk will be developed in and deployed to, I have chosen to create a single "server" installation on my development PC, installling SQL Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and BizTalk Server 2009 on a single system.  The client PC in use is actually a MacBook Pro running Windows XP; not the most powerful of systems for high volume processing but it should be powerful enough to allow development and initial unit testing to take place. I did not need to, and so chose not to, install all of the components detailed in the Microsoft guide for installing BizTalk 2009 on Windows XP but I did follow the basics of the procedures detailed within.  Outlined below are the highlights of this process and any details of what choices I made.   Install IIS I had previsouly installed Windows XP, including all current service packs and critical updates.  At the time of installation this included Service Pack 3, the .Net Framework 3.5 and MS Windows Installer 3.1.  Having a running XP system, my first step was to install IIS - this is quite straightforward and posed no difficulties. Install Visual Studio 2008 The next step for me was to install Visual Studio 2008.  Making sure to select a custom installation is crucial at this point, as you need to make sure that you deselect SQL Server 2005 Express Edition as it can cause the BizTalk installation to fail.  The installation guide suggests that you only select Visual C# when selecting features to install, but  I decided that due to some legacy systems I have code for that I would also select the VB and ASP options. Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 Following the completion of the installation of Visual Studio itself you should then install the Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1. SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition The next step before intalling BizTalk Server 2009 itself is to install SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition. On the feature selection screen make sure that you select the follwoing options: Database Engine Services SQL Server Replication Full-Text Search Analysis Services Reporting Services Business Intelligence Development Studio Client Tools Connectivity Integration Services Management Tools Basic and Complete Use the default instance and the same accounts for all SQL server instances - in my case I used the Network Service and Local Service accounts for the two sets of accounts. On the database engine configuration screen I selected windows authentication and added the current user, adding the same user again on the Analysis services Configuration screen.  All other screens were left on the default settings. The SQL Server 2008 installation also included the installation of hotfix for XP KB942288-v3, the Windows Installer 4.5 Redistributable. System Configuration At this stage I took a moment to disable the SQL Server shared memory protocol and enable the Named Pipes and TCP/IP protocols.  These can be found in the SQL Server Configuration Manager > SQL Server Network Configuration > Protocols for MSSQLServer.  I also made sure that the DTC settings were configured correctley.   BizTalk Server 2009 The penultimate step is to install BizTalk Server 2009 Standard Edition. I had previsouly downloaded the redistributable prerequisites as a CAB file so was able to make use of this when carrying out the installation. When selecting which components to install I selected: Server Runtime BizTalk EDI/AS2 Runtime WCF Adapter Runtime Portal Components Administrative Tools WFC Administartion Tools Developer Tools and SDK, Enterprise SSO Administration Module Enterprise SSO Master Secret Server Business Rules Components BAM Alert Provider BAM Client BAM Eventing Once installation has completed clear the launch BizTalk Server Configuration check box and select finish. Verify the Installation Before configuring BizTalk Server it is a good idea to check that BizTalk Server 2009 is installed and that SQL Server 2008 has started correctly.  The easiest way to verify the BizTalk installation is check the Programs and Features in Control panel.  Check that SQL is started by looking in the SQL Server Configuration Manager. Configure BizTalk Server 2009 Finally we are ready to configure BizTalk Server 2009.  To start this I opted for a custom configuration that allowed me to choose in more detail the settings to be used. For all databases I selected the local server and default database names. For all Accounts I used a local account that had been created specifically for the BizTalk Services. For all windows groups I allowed the configuration wizard to create the default local groups. The configuration wizard then ran:   Upon completion you will be presented with a screen detailing the success or failure of the configuration.  If your configuration failed you will need to sort out the issues and try again (it is possible to save the configuration settings for later use if you want too - except passwords of course!).  If you see lots of nice green ticks - congratulations BizTalk Server 2009 on XP is now installed and configured ready for development.

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• Sea Monkey Sales & Marketing, and what does that have to do with ERP?

  - by user709270

  Tier One Defined By Lyle Ekdahl, Oracle JD Edwards Group Vice President and General Manager  I recently became aware of the latest Sea Monkey Sales & Marketing tactic. Wait now, what is Sea Monkey Sales & Marketing and what does that have to do with ERP? Well if you grew up in USA during the 50’s, 60’s and maybe a bit in the early 70’s there was a unifying media of culture known as the comic book. I was a big Iron Man fan. I always liked the troubled hero aspect of Tony Start and hey he was a technologist. This is going somewhere, just hold on. Of course comic books like most media contained advertisements. Ninety pound weakling transformed by Charles Atlas in just 15 minutes per day. Baby Ruth, Juicy Fruit Gum and all assortments of Hostess goodies were on display. The best ad was for the “Amazing Live Sea-Monkeys – The real live fun-pets you grow yourself!” These ads set the standard for exaggeration and half-truth; “…they love attention…so eager to please, they can even be trained…” The cartoon picture on the ad is of a family of royal looking sea creatures – daddy, mommy, son and little sis – sea monkey? There was a disclaimer at the bottom in fine print, “Caricatures shown not intended to depict Artemia.” Ok what ten years old knows what the heck artemia is? Well you grow up fast once you’ve been separated from your buck twenty five plus postage just to discover that it is brine shrimp. Really dumb brine shrimp that don’t take commands or do tricks. Unfortunately the technology industry is full of sea monkey sales and marketing. Yes believe it or not in some cases there is subterfuge and obfuscation used to secure contracts. Hey I get it; the picture on the box might not be the actual size. Make up what you want about your product, but here is what I don’t like, could you leave out the obvious falsity when it comes to my product, especially the negative stuff. So here is the latest one – “Oracle’s JD Edwards is NOT tier one”. Really? Definition please! Well a whole host of googleable and reputable sources confirm that a tier one vendor is large, well known, and enjoys national and international recognition. Let me see large, so thousands of customers? Oh and part of the world’s largest business software and hardware corporation? Check and check JD Edwards has that and that. Well known, enjoying national and international recognition? Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne is available in 21 languages and is directly localized in 33 countries that support some of the world’s largest multinationals and many midsized domestic market companies. Something on the order of half the JD Edwards customer base is outside North America. My passport is on its third insert after 2 years and not from vacations. So if you don’t mind I am going to mark national and international recognition in the got it column. So what else is there? Well let me offer a few criteria. Longevity – The JD Edwards products benefit from 35+ years of intellectual property development; through booms, busts, mergers and acquisitions, we are still here Vision & innovation – JD Edwards is the first full suite ERP to run on the iPad as just one example Proven track record of execution – Since becoming part of Oracle, JD Edwards has released to the market over 20 deliverables including major release, point releases, new apps modules, tool releases, integrations…. Solid, focused functionality with a flexible, interoperable, extensible underlying architecture – JD Edwards offers solid core ERP with specialty modules for verticals all delivered on a well defined independent tools layer that helps enable you to scale your business without an ERP reimplementation A continuation plan – Oracle’s JD Edwards offers our customers a 6 year roadmap as well as interoperability with Oracle’s next generation of applications Oh I almost forgot that the expert sources agree on one additional thing, tier one may be a preferred vendor that offers product and services to you with appealing value. You should check out the TCO studies of JD Edwards. I think you will see what the thousands of customers that rely on these products to run their businesses enjoy – that is the tier one solution with the lowest TCO. Oh and if you get an offer to buy an ERP for no license charge, remember the picture on the box might not be the actual size. 

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• SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #006

  - by pinaldave

  Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2006 This was my very first year of blogging so I was every day learning something new. As I have said many times, that blogging was never an intention. I had really not understood what exactly I am working on or beginning when I was beginning blogging in 2006. I had never knew that my life was going to change forever, once I started blogging. When I look back all of this year, I am happy that we are here together. 2007 IT Outsourcing to India – Top 10 Reasons Companies Outsource Outsourcing is about trust, collaboration and success. Helping other countries in need has been always the course of mankind, outsourcing is nothing different then that. With information technology and process improvements increasing the complexity, costs and skills required to accomplish routine tasks as well as challenging complex tasks, companies are outsourcing such tasks to providers who have the expertise to perform them at lower costs , with greater value and quality outcome. UDF – Remove Duplicate Chars From String This was a very interesting function I wrote in my early career. I am still using this function when I have to remove duplicate chars from strings. I have yet to come across a scenario where it does not work so I keep on using it till today. Please leave a comment if there is any better solution to this problem. FIX : Error : 3702 Cannot drop database because it is currently in use This is a very generic error when DROP Database is command is executed and the database is not dropped. The common mistake user is kept the connection open with this database and trying to drop the database. The database cannot be dropped if there is any other connection open along with it. It is always a good idea to take database in single user mode before dropping it. Here is the quick tutorial regarding how to bring the database in single user mode: Using T-SQL | Using SSMS. 2008 Install SQL Server 2008 – How to Upgrade to SQL Server 2008 – Installation Tutorial This was indeed one of the most popular articles in SQL Server 2008. Lots of people wanted to learn how to install SQL SErver 2008 but they were facing various issues while installation. I build this tutorial which becomes reference points for many. Default Collation of SQL Server 2008 What is the collation of SQL Server 2008 default installations? I often see this question confusing many experienced developers as well. Well the answer is in following image. Ahmedabad SQL Server User Group Meeting – November 2008 User group meetings are fun, now a days I am going to User Group meetings every week but there was a case when I have been just a beginner on this subject. The bug of the community was caught on me years ago when I started to present in Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar SQ LServer User Groups. 2009 Validate an XML document in TSQL using XSD My friend Jacob Sebastian wrote an excellent article on the subject XML and XSD. Because of the ‘eXtensible’ nature of XML (eXtensible Markup Language), often there is a requirement to restrict and validate the content of an XML document to a pre-defined structure and values. XSD (XML Schema Definition Language) is the W3C recommended language for describing and validating XML documents. SQL Server implements XSD as XML Schema Collections. Star Join Query Optimization At present, when queries are sent to very large databases, millions of rows are returned. Also the users have to go through extended query response times when joining multiple tables are involved with such queries. ‘Star Join Query Optimization’ is a new feature of SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition. This mechanism uses bitmap filtering for improving the performance of some types of queries by the effective retrieval of rows from fact tables. 2010 These puzzles are very interesting and intriguing – there was lots of interest on this subject. If you have free time this weekend. You may want to try them out. SQL SERVER – Challenge – Puzzle – Usage of FAST Hint (Solution)  SQL SERVER – Puzzle – Challenge – Error While Converting Money to Decimal (Solution)  SQL SERVER – Challenge – Puzzle – Why does RIGHT JOIN Exists (Open)  Additionally, I had great fun presenting SQL Server Performance Tuning seminar at fantastic locations in Hyderabad. Installing AdventeWorks Database This has been the most popular request I have received on my blog. Here is the quick video about how one can install AdventureWorks. 2011 Effect of SET NOCOUNT on @@ROWCOUNT There was an interesting incident once while I was presenting a session. I wrote a code and suddenly 10 hands went up in the air.  This was a bit surprise to me as I do not know why they all got alerted. I assumed that there should be something wrong with either project, screen or my display. However the real reason was very interesting – I suggest you read the complete blog post to understand this interesting scenario. Error: Deleting Offline Database and Creating the Same Name This is very interesting because once a user deletes the offline database the MDF and LDF file still exists and if the user attempts to create a new database with the same name it will give error. I found this very interesting and the blog explains the concept very quickly. Have you ever faced a similar situation? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• What Counts For a DBA: Simplicity

  - by Louis Davidson

  Too many computer processes do an apparently simple task in a bizarrely complex way. They remind me of this strip by one of my favorite artists: Rube Goldberg. In order to keep the boss from knowing one was late, a process is devised whereby the cuckoo clock kisses a live cuckoo bird, who then pulls a string, which triggers a hat flinging, which in turn lands on a rod that removes a typewriter cover…and so on. We rely on creating automated processes to keep on top of tasks. DBAs have a lot of tasks to perform: backups, performance tuning, data movement, system monitoring, and of course, avoiding being noticed.  Every day, there are many steps to perform to maintain the database infrastructure, including: checking physical structures, re-indexing tables where needed, backing up the databases, checking those backups, running the ETL, and preparing the daily reports and yes, all of these processes have to complete before you can call it a day, and probably before many others have started that same day. Some of these tasks are just naturally complicated on their own. Other tasks become complicated because the database architecture is excessively rigid, and we often discover during “production testing” that certain processes need to be changed because the written requirements barely resembled the actual customer requirements.   Then, with no time to change that rigid structure, we are forced to heap layer upon layer of code onto the problematic processes. Instead of a slight table change and a new index, we end up with 4 new ETL processes, 20 temp tables, 30 extra queries, and 1000 lines of SQL code.  Report writers then need to build reports and make magical numbers appear from those toxic data structures that are overly complex and probably filled with inconsistent data. What starts out as a collection of fairly simple tasks turns into a Goldbergian nightmare of daily processes that are likely to cause your dinner to be interrupted by the smartphone doing the vibration dance that signifies trouble at the mill. So what to do? Well, if it is at all possible, simplify the problem by either going into the code and refactoring the complex code to simple, or taking all of the processes and simplifying them into small, independent, easily-tested steps.  The former approach usually requires an agreement on changing underlying structures that requires countless mind-numbing meetings; while the latter can generally be done to any complex process without the same frustration or anger, though it will still leave you with lots of steps to complete, the ability to test each step independently will definitely increase the quality of the overall process (and with each step reporting status back, finding an actual problem within the process will be definitely less unpleasant.) We all know the principle behind simplifying a sequence of processes because we learned it in math classes in our early years of attending school, starting with elementary school. In my 4 years (ok, 9 years) of undergraduate work, I remember pretty much one thing from my many math classes that I apply daily to my career as a data architect, data programmer, and as an occasional indentured DBA: “show your work”. This process of showing your work was my first lesson in simplification. Each step in the process was in fact, far simpler than the entire process.  When you were working an equation that took both sides of 4 sheets of paper, showing your work was important because the teacher could see every step, judge it, and mark it accordingly.  So often I would make an error in the first few lines of a problem which meant that the rest of the work was actually moving me closer to a very wrong answer, no matter how correct the math was in the subsequent steps. Yet, when I got my grade back, I would sometimes be pleasantly surprised. I passed, yet missed every problem on the test. But why? While I got the fact that 1+1=2 wrong in every problem, the teacher could see that I was using the right process. In a computer process, the process is very similar. We take complex processes, show our work by storing intermediate values, and test each step independently. When a process has 100 steps, each step becomes a simple step that is tested and verified, such that there will be 100 places where data is stored, validated, and can be checked off as complete. If you get step 1 of 100 wrong, you can fix it and be confident (that if you did your job of testing the other steps better than the one you had to repair,) that the rest of the process works. If you have 100 steps, and store the state of the process exactly once, the resulting testable chunk of code will be far more complex and finding the error will require checking all 100 steps as one, and usually it would be easier to find a specific needle in a stack of similarly shaped needles.  The goal is to strive for simplicity either in the solution, or at least by simplifying every process down to as many, independent, testable, simple tasks as possible.  For the tasks that really can’t be done completely independently, minimally take those tasks and break them down into simpler steps that can be tested independently.  Like working out division problems longhand, have each step of the larger problem verified and tested.

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• EntityManager injection works in JBoss 7.1.1 but not WebSphere 7

  - by BikerJared

  I've built an EJB that will manage my database access. I'm building a web app around it that uses Struts 2. The problem I'm having is when I deploy the ear, the EntityManager doesn't get injected into my service class (and winds up null and results in NullPointerExceptions). The weird thing is, it works on JBoss 7.1.1 but not on WebSphere 7. You'll notice that Struts doesn't inject the EJB, so I've got some intercepter code that does that. My current working theory right now is that the WS7 container can't inject the EntityManager because of Struts for some unknown reason. My next step is to try Spring next, but I'd really like to get this to work if possible. I've spent a few days searching and trying various things and haven't had any luck. I figured I'd give this a shot. Let me know if I can provide additional information. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <persistence xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" version="1.0" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence/persistence_1_0.xsd"> <persistence-unit name="JPATestPU" transaction-type="JTA"> <description>JPATest Persistence Unit</description> <jta-data-source>jdbc/Test-DS</jta-data-source> <class>org.jaredstevens.jpatest.db.entities.User</class> <properties> <property name="hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto" value="update"/> </properties> </persistence-unit> </persistence> package org.jaredstevens.jpatest.db.entities; import java.io.Serializable; import javax.persistence.*; @Entity @Table public class User implements Serializable { private static final long serialVersionUID = -2643583108587251245L; private long id; private String name; private String email; @Id @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.TABLE) public long getId() { return id; } public void setId(long id) { this.id = id; } @Column(nullable=false) public String getName() { return this.name; } public void setName( String name ) { this.name = name; } @Column(nullable=false) public String getEmail() { return this.email; } @Column(nullable=false) public void setEmail( String email ) { this.email= email; } } package org.jaredstevens.jpatest.db.services; import java.util.List; import javax.ejb.Remote; import javax.ejb.Stateless; import javax.ejb.TransactionAttribute; import javax.ejb.TransactionAttributeType; import javax.persistence.EntityManager; import javax.persistence.PersistenceContext; import javax.persistence.PersistenceContextType; import javax.persistence.Query; import org.jaredstevens.jpatest.db.entities.User; import org.jaredstevens.jpatest.db.interfaces.IUserService; @Stateless(name="UserService",mappedName="UserService") @Remote public class UserService implements IUserService { @PersistenceContext(unitName="JPATestPU",type=PersistenceContextType.TRANSACTION) private EntityManager em; @TransactionAttribute(TransactionAttributeType.REQUIRED) public User getUserById(long userId) { User retVal = null; if(userId > 0) { retVal = (User)this.getEm().find(User.class, userId); } return retVal; } @TransactionAttribute(TransactionAttributeType.REQUIRED) public List<User> getUsers() { List<User> retVal = null; String sql; sql = "SELECT u FROM User u ORDER BY u.id ASC"; Query q = this.getEm().createQuery(sql); retVal = (List<User>)q.getResultList(); return retVal; } @TransactionAttribute(TransactionAttributeType.REQUIRED) public void save(User user) { this.getEm().persist(user); } @TransactionAttribute(TransactionAttributeType.REQUIRED) public boolean remove(long userId) { boolean retVal = false; if(userId > 0) { User user = null; user = (User)this.getEm().find(User.class, userId); if(user != null) this.getEm().remove(user); if(this.getEm().find(User.class, userId) == null) retVal = true; } return retVal; } public EntityManager getEm() { return em; } public void setEm(EntityManager em) { this.em = em; } } package org.jaredstevens.jpatest.actions.user; import javax.ejb.EJB; import org.jaredstevens.jpatest.db.entities.User; import org.jaredstevens.jpatest.db.interfaces.IUserService; import com.opensymphony.xwork2.ActionSupport; public class UserAction extends ActionSupport { @EJB(mappedName="UserService") private IUserService userService; private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L; private String userId; private String name; private String email; private User user; public String getUserById() { String retVal = ActionSupport.SUCCESS; this.setUser(userService.getUserById(Long.parseLong(this.userId))); return retVal; } public String save() { String retVal = ActionSupport.SUCCESS; User user = new User(); if(this.getUserId() != null && Long.parseLong(this.getUserId()) > 0) user.setId(Long.parseLong(this.getUserId())); user.setName(this.getName()); user.setEmail(this.getEmail()); userService.save(user); this.setUser(user); return retVal; } public String getUserId() { return this.userId; } public void setUserId(String userId) { this.userId = userId; } public String getName() { return this.name; } public void setName( String name ) { this.name = name; } public String getEmail() { return this.email; } public void setEmail( String email ) { this.email = email; } public User getUser() { return this.user; } public void setUser(User user) { this.user = user; } } package org.jaredstevens.jpatest.utils; import com.opensymphony.xwork2.ActionInvocation; import com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.Interceptor; public class EJBAnnotationProcessorInterceptor implements Interceptor { private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L; public void destroy() { } public void init() { } public String intercept(ActionInvocation ai) throws Exception { EJBAnnotationProcessor.process(ai.getAction()); return ai.invoke(); } } package org.jaredstevens.jpatest.utils; import java.lang.reflect.Field; import javax.ejb.EJB; import javax.naming.Context; import javax.naming.InitialContext; import javax.naming.NamingException; public class EJBAnnotationProcessor { public static void process(Object instance)throws Exception{ Field[] fields = instance.getClass().getDeclaredFields(); if(fields != null && fields.length > 0){ EJB ejb; for(Field field : fields){ ejb = field.getAnnotation(EJB.class); if(ejb != null){ field.setAccessible(true); field.set(instance, EJBAnnotationProcessor.getEJB(ejb.mappedName())); } } } } private static Object getEJB(String mappedName) { Object retVal = null; String path = ""; Context cxt = null; String[] paths = {"cell/nodes/virgoNode01/servers/server1/","java:module/"}; for( int i=0; i < paths.length; ++i ) { try { path = paths[i]+mappedName; cxt = new InitialContext(); retVal = cxt.lookup(path); if(retVal != null) break; } catch (NamingException e) { retVal = null; } } return retVal; } } <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE struts PUBLIC "-//Apache Software Foundation//DTD Struts Configuration 2.0//EN" "http://struts.apache.org/dtds/struts-2.0.dtd"> <struts> <constant name="struts.devMode" value="true" /> <package name="basicstruts2" namespace="/diagnostics" extends="struts-default"> <interceptors> <interceptor name="ejbAnnotationProcessor" class="org.jaredstevens.jpatest.utils.EJBAnnotationProcessorInterceptor"/> <interceptor-stack name="baseStack"> <interceptor-ref name="defaultStack"/> <interceptor-ref name="ejbAnnotationProcessor"/> </interceptor-stack> </interceptors> <default-interceptor-ref name="baseStack"/> </package> <package name="restAPI" namespace="/conduit" extends="json-default"> <interceptors> <interceptor name="ejbAnnotationProcessor" class="org.jaredstevens.jpatest.utils.EJBAnnotationProcessorInterceptor" /> <interceptor-stack name="baseStack"> <interceptor-ref name="defaultStack" /> <interceptor-ref name="ejbAnnotationProcessor" /> </interceptor-stack> </interceptors> <default-interceptor-ref name="baseStack" /> <action name="UserAction.getUserById" class="org.jaredstevens.jpatest.actions.user.UserAction" method="getUserById"> <result type="json"> <param name="ignoreHierarchy">false</param> <param name="includeProperties"> ^user\.id, ^user\.name, ^user\.email </param> </result> <result name="error" type="json" /> </action> <action name="UserAction.save" class="org.jaredstevens.jpatest.actions.user.UserAction" method="save"> <result type="json"> <param name="ignoreHierarchy">false</param> <param name="includeProperties"> ^user\.id, ^user\.name, ^user\.email </param> </result> <result name="error" type="json" /> </action> </package> </struts> Stack Trace java.lang.NullPointerException org.jaredstevens.jpatest.actions.user.UserAction.save(UserAction.java:38) sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method) sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:60) sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:37) java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:611) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invokeAction(DefaultActionInvocation.java:453) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invokeActionOnly(DefaultActionInvocation.java:292) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:255) org.jaredstevens.jpatest.utils.EJBAnnotationProcessorInterceptor.intercept(EJBAnnotationProcessorInterceptor.java:21) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:249) org.apache.struts2.interceptor.debugging.DebuggingInterceptor.intercept(DebuggingInterceptor.java:256) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:249) com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.DefaultWorkflowInterceptor.doIntercept(DefaultWorkflowInterceptor.java:176) com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.MethodFilterInterceptor.intercept(MethodFilterInterceptor.java:98) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:249) com.opensymphony.xwork2.validator.ValidationInterceptor.doIntercept(ValidationInterceptor.java:265) org.apache.struts2.interceptor.validation.AnnotationValidationInterceptor.doIntercept(AnnotationValidationInterceptor.java:68) com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.MethodFilterInterceptor.intercept(MethodFilterInterceptor.java:98) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:249) com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.ConversionErrorInterceptor.intercept(ConversionErrorInterceptor.java:138) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:249) com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.ParametersInterceptor.doIntercept(ParametersInterceptor.java:211) com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.MethodFilterInterceptor.intercept(MethodFilterInterceptor.java:98) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:249) com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.ParametersInterceptor.doIntercept(ParametersInterceptor.java:211) com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.MethodFilterInterceptor.intercept(MethodFilterInterceptor.java:98) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:249) com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.StaticParametersInterceptor.intercept(StaticParametersInterceptor.java:190) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:249) org.apache.struts2.interceptor.MultiselectInterceptor.intercept(MultiselectInterceptor.java:75) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:249) org.apache.struts2.interceptor.CheckboxInterceptor.intercept(CheckboxInterceptor.java:90) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:249) org.apache.struts2.interceptor.FileUploadInterceptor.intercept(FileUploadInterceptor.java:243) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:249) com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.ModelDrivenInterceptor.intercept(ModelDrivenInterceptor.java:100) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:249) com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.ScopedModelDrivenInterceptor.intercept(ScopedModelDrivenInterceptor.java:141) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:249) com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.ChainingInterceptor.intercept(ChainingInterceptor.java:145) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:249) com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.PrepareInterceptor.doIntercept(PrepareInterceptor.java:171) com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.MethodFilterInterceptor.intercept(MethodFilterInterceptor.java:98) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:249) com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.I18nInterceptor.intercept(I18nInterceptor.java:176) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:249) org.apache.struts2.interceptor.ServletConfigInterceptor.intercept(ServletConfigInterceptor.java:164) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:249) com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.AliasInterceptor.intercept(AliasInterceptor.java:192) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:249) com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.ExceptionMappingInterceptor.intercept(ExceptionMappingInterceptor.java:187) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:249) org.apache.struts2.impl.StrutsActionProxy.execute(StrutsActionProxy.java:54) org.apache.struts2.dispatcher.Dispatcher.serviceAction(Dispatcher.java:511) org.apache.struts2.dispatcher.ng.ExecuteOperations.executeAction(ExecuteOperations.java:77) org.apache.struts2.dispatcher.ng.filter.StrutsPrepareAndExecuteFilter.doFilter(StrutsPrepareAndExecuteFilter.java:91) com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.FilterInstanceWrapper.doFilter(FilterInstanceWrapper.java:188) com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterChain.doFilter(WebAppFilterChain.java:116) com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterChain._doFilter(WebAppFilterChain.java:77) com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterManager.doFilter(WebAppFilterManager.java:908) com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterManager.invokeFilters(WebAppFilterManager.java:997) com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.extension.DefaultExtensionProcessor.invokeFilters(DefaultExtensionProcessor.java:1062) com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.extension.DefaultExtensionProcessor.handleRequest(DefaultExtensionProcessor.java:982) com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.webapp.WebApp.handleRequest(WebApp.java:3935) com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.webapp.WebGroup.handleRequest(WebGroup.java:276) com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.WebContainer.handleRequest(WebContainer.java:931) com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.WSWebContainer.handleRequest(WSWebContainer.java:1583) com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.channel.WCChannelLink.ready(WCChannelLink.java:186) com.ibm.ws.http.channel.inbound.impl.HttpInboundLink.handleDiscrimination(HttpInboundLink.java:452) com.ibm.ws.http.channel.inbound.impl.HttpInboundLink.handleNewRequest(HttpInboundLink.java:511) com.ibm.ws.http.channel.inbound.impl.HttpInboundLink.processRequest(HttpInboundLink.java:305) com.ibm.ws.http.channel.inbound.impl.HttpInboundLink.ready(HttpInboundLink.java:276) com.ibm.ws.tcp.channel.impl.NewConnectionInitialReadCallback.sendToDiscriminators(NewConnectionInitialReadCallback.java:214) com.ibm.ws.tcp.channel.impl.NewConnectionInitialReadCallback.complete(NewConnectionInitialReadCallback.java:113) com.ibm.ws.tcp.channel.impl.AioReadCompletionListener.futureCompleted(AioReadCompletionListener.java:165) com.ibm.io.async.AbstractAsyncFuture.invokeCallback(AbstractAsyncFuture.java:217) com.ibm.io.async.AsyncChannelFuture.fireCompletionActions(AsyncChannelFuture.java:161) com.ibm.io.async.AsyncFuture.completed(AsyncFuture.java:138) com.ibm.io.async.ResultHandler.complete(ResultHandler.java:204) com.ibm.io.async.ResultHandler.runEventProcessingLoop(ResultHandler.java:775) com.ibm.io.async.ResultHandler$2.run(ResultHandler.java:905) com.ibm.ws.util.ThreadPool$Worker.run(ThreadPool.java:1604)

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• Justifiable Perks.

  - by Phil Factor

      I was once the director of a start-up IT Company, and had the task of recruiting a proportion of the management team. As my background was in IT management, I was rather more familiar with recruiting Geeks for technology jobs, but here, one of my early tasks was interviewing a Marketing Director.  The small group of financiers had suggested a rather strange Irishman called  Halleran.  From my background in City of London dealing-rooms, I was slightly unprepared for the experience of interviewing anyone wearing a pink suit. Many of my older City colleagues would have required resuscitation after seeing his white leather shoes. However, nobody will accuse me of prejudging an interviewee. After all, many Linux experts who I’ve come to rely on have appeared for interview dressed as hobbits. In fact, the interview went well, and we had even settled his salary.  I was somewhat unprepared for the coda.    ‘And I will need to be provided with a Ferrari  by the company.’    ‘Hmm. That seems reasonable.’    Initially, he looked startled, and then a slow smile of victory spread across his face.    ‘What colour would you like?’ I asked genially.    ‘It has to be red.’ He looked very earnest on this point.    ‘Fine. I have to go past Hamleys on the way home this evening, so I’ll pick one up then for you.’    ‘Er.. Hamley’s is a toyshop, not a Ferrari Dealership.’    I stared at him in bafflement for a few seconds. ‘You’re not seriously asking for a real Ferrari are you?’     ‘Well, yes. Not for my own sake, you understand. I’d much prefer a simple run-about, but my position demands it. How could I maintain the necessary status in the office without one? How could I do my job in marketing when my grey Datsun was all too visible in the car Park? It is a tool of the job.’    ‘Excuse me a moment, but I must confer with the MD’    I popped out to see Chris, the MD. ‘Chris, I’m interviewing a lunatic in a pink suit who is trying to demand that a Ferrari is a precondition of his employment. I tried the ‘misunderstanding trick’ but it didn’t faze him.’     ‘Sorry, Phil, but we’ve got to hire him. The VCs insist on it. You’ve got to think of something that doesn’t involve committing to the purchase of a Ferrari. Current funding barely covers the rent for the building.’    ‘OK boss. Leave it to me.’    On return, I slapped O’Halleran’s file on the table with a genial, paternalistic smile. ‘Of course you should have a Ferrari. The only trouble is that it will require a justification document that can be presented to the board. I’m sure you’ll have no problem in preparing this document in the required format.’ The initial look of despair was quickly followed by a bland look of acquiescence. He had, earlier in the interview, argued with great eloquence his skill in preparing the tiresome documents that underpin the essential corporate and government deals that were vital to the success of this new enterprise. The justification of a Ferrari should be a doddle.     After the interview, Chris nervously asked how I’d fared.     ‘I think it is all solved.’    ‘… without promising a Ferrari, I hope.’    ‘Well, I did actually; on condition he justified it in writing.’    Chris issued a stream of invective. The strain of juggling the resources in an underfunded startup was beginning to show.    ‘Don’t worry. In the unlikely event of him coming back with the required document, I’ll give him mine.’    ‘Yours?’ He strode over to the window to stare down at the car park.    He needn’t have worried: I knew that his breed of marketing man could more easily lay an ostrich egg than to prepare a decent justification document. My Ferrari is still there at the back of my garage. Few know of the Ferrari cultivator, a simple inexpensive motorized device designed for the subsistence farmers of southern Italy. It is the very devil to start, but it creates a perfect tilth for the seedbed.

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• Mixed Emotions: Humans React to Natural Language Computer

  - by Applications User Experience

  There was a big event in Silicon Valley on Tuesday, November 15. Watson, the natural language computer developed at IBM Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York, and its inventor and principal research investigator, David Ferrucci, were guests at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California for another round of the television game Jeopardy. You may have read about or watched on YouTube how Watson beat Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, two top Jeopardy competitors, last February. This time, Watson swept the floor with two Silicon Valley high-achievers, one a venture capitalist with a background  in math, computer engineering, and physics, and the other a technology and finance writer well-versed in all aspects of culture and humanities. Watson is the product of the DeepQA research project, which attempts to create an artificially intelligent computing system through advances in natural language processing (NLP), among other technologies. NLP is a computing strategy that seeks to provide answers by processing large amounts of unstructured data contained in multiple large domains of human knowledge. There are several ways to perform NLP, but one way to start is by recognizing key words, then processing  contextual  cues associated with the keyword concepts so that you get many more “smart” (that is, human-like) deductions,  rather than a series of “dumb” matches.  Jeopardy questions often require more than key word matching to get the correct answer; typically several pieces of information put together, often from vastly different categories, to come up with a satisfactory word string solution that can be rephrased as a question.  Smarter than your average search engine, but is it as smart as a human? Watson was especially fast at descrambling mixed-up state capital names, and recalling and pairing movie titles where one started and the other ended in the same word (e.g., Billion Dollar Baby Boom, where both titles used the word Baby). David said they had basically removed the variable of how fast Watson hit the buzzer compared to human contestants, but frustration frequently appeared on the faces of the contestants beaten to the punch by Watson. David explained that top Jeopardy winners like Jennings achieved their success with a similar strategy, timing their buzz to the end of the reading of the clue,  and “running the board”, being first to respond on about 60% of the clues.  Similar results for Watson. It made sense that Watson would be good at the technical and scientific stuff, so I figured the venture capitalist was toast. But I thought for sure Watson would lose to the writer in categories such as pop culture, wines and foods, and other humanities. Surprisingly, it held its own. I was amazed it could recognize a word definition of a syllogism in the category of philosophy. So what was the audience reaction to all of this? We started out expecting our formidable human contestants to easily run some of their categories; however, they started off on the wrong foot with the state capitals which Watson could unscramble so efficiently. By the end of the first round, contestants and the audience were feeling a little bit, well, …. deflated. Watson was winning by about $13,000, and the humans had gone into negative dollars. The IBM host said he was going to “slow Watson down a bit,” and the humans came back with respectable scores in Double Jeopardy. This was partially thanks to a very sympathetic audience (and host, also a human) providing “group-think” on many questions, especially baseball ‘s most valuable players, which by the way, couldn’t have been hard because even I knew them.  Yes, that’s right, the humans cheated. Since Watson could speak but not hear us (it didn’t have speech recognition capability), it was probably unaware of this. In Final Jeopardy, the single question had to do with law. I was sure Watson would blow this one, but all contestants were able to answer correctly about a copyright law. In a career devoted to making computers more helpful to people, I think I may have seen how a computer can do too much. I’m not sure I’d want to work side-by-side with a Watson doing my job. Certainly listening and empathy are important traits we humans still have over Watson.  While there was great enthusiasm in the packed room of computer scientists and their friends for this standing-room-only show, I think it made several of us uneasy (especially the poor human contestants whose egos were soundly bashed in the first round). This computer system, by the way , only took 4 years to program. David Ferrucci mentioned several practical uses for Watson, including medical diagnoses and legal strategies. Are you “the expert” in your job? Imagine NLP computing on an Oracle database.   This may be the user interface of the future to enable users to better process big data. How do you think you’d like it? Postscript: There were three little boys sitting in front of me in the very first row. They looked, how shall I say it, … unimpressed!

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• ORA-7445 Troubleshooting

  - by [email protected]

      QUICKLINK: Note 153788.1 ORA-600/ORA-7445 Lookup tool Note 1082674.1 : A Video To Demonstrate The Usage Of The ORA-600/ORA-7445 Lookup Tool [Video]   Have you observed an ORA-07445 error reported in your alert log? While the ORA-600 error is "captured" as a handled exception in the Oracle source code, the ORA-7445 is an unhandled exception error due to an OS exception which should result in the creation of a core file.  An ORA-7445 is a generic error, and can occur from anywhere in the Oracle code. The precise location of the error is identified by the core file and/or trace file it produces.  Looking for the best way to diagnose? Whenever an ORA-7445 error is raised a core file is generated.  There may be a trace file generated with the error as well.   Prior to 11g, the core files are located in the CORE_DUMP_DEST directory.   Starting with 11g, there is a new advanced fault diagnosability infrastructure to manage trace data.  Diagnostic files are written into a root directory for all diagnostic data called the ADR home.   Core files at 11g will go to the ADR HOME/cdump directory.   For more information on the Oracle 11g Diagnosability feature see Note 453125.1 11g Diagnosability Frequently Asked Questions Note 443529.1 11g Quick Steps to Package and Send Critical Error Diagnostic Information to Support[Video]   NOTE:  While the core file is captured in the Diagnosability infrastructure, the file may not be included with a diagnostic package.1.  Check the Alert LogThe alert log may indicate additional errors or other internal errors at the time of the problem.   In some cases, the ORA-7445 error will occur along with ORA-600, ORA-3113, ORA-4030 errors.  The ORA-7445 error can be side effects of the other problems and you should review the first error and associated core file or trace file and work down the list of errors.   Note 1020463.6 DIAGNOSING ORA-3113 ERRORS Note 1812.1 TECH:  Getting a Stack Trace from a CORE file Note 414966.1 RDA Documentation Index   If the ORA-7445 errors are not associated with other error conditions, ensure the trace data is not truncated. If you see a message at the end of the file   "MAX DUMP FILE SIZE EXCEEDED"   the MAX_DUMP_FILE_SIZE parameter is not setup high enough or to 'unlimited'. There could be vital diagnostic information missing in the file and discovering the root issue may be very difficult.  Set the MAX_DUMP_FILE_SIZE appropriately and regenerate the error for complete trace information. For pointers on deeper analysis of these errors see   Note 390293.1 Introduction to 600/7445 Internal Error Analysis Note 211909.1 Customer Introduction to ORA-7445 Errors 2.  Search 600/7445 Lookup Tool Visit My Oracle Support to access the ORA-00600 Lookup tool (Note 153788.1). The ORA-600/ORA-7445 Lookup tool may lead you to applicable content in My Oracle Support on the problem and can be used to investigate the problem with argument data from the error message or you can pull out key stack pointers from the associated trace file to match up against known bugs.3.  "Fine tune" searches in Knowledge Base As the ORA-7445 error indicates an unhandled exception in the Oracle source code, your search in the Oracle Knowledge Base will need to focus on the stack data from the core file or the trace file. Keep in mind that searches on generic argument data will bring back a large result set.  The more you can learn about the environment and code leading to the errors, the easier it will be to narrow the hit list to match your problem. Note 153788.1 ORA-600/ORA-7445 TroubleshooterNote 1082674.1 A Video To Demonstrate The Usage Of The ORA-600/ORA-7445 Lookup Tool [Video] NOTE:  If no trace file is captured, see Note 1812.1 TECH:  Getting a Stack Trace from a CORE file.  Core files are managed through 11g Diagnosability, but are not packaged with other diagnostic data automatically.  The core files can be quite large, but may be useful during analysis within Oracle Support.4.  If assistance is required from Oracle Should it become necessary to get assistance from Oracle Support on an ORA-7445 problem, please provide at a minimum, the Alert log  Associated tracefile(s) or incident package at 11g Patch level  information Core file(s)  Information about changes in configuration and/or application prior to  issues  If error is reproducible, a self-contained reproducible testcase: Note.232963.1 How to Build a Testcase for Oracle Data Server Support to Reproduce ORA-600 and ORA-7445 Errors RDA report or Oracle Configuration Manager information Oracle Configuration Manager Quick Start Guide Note 548815.1 My Oracle Support Configuration Management FAQ Note 414966.1 RDA Documentation Index ***For reference to the content in this blog, refer to Note.1092832.1 Master Note for Diagnosing ORA-600

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• Deploying Data Mining Models using Model Export and Import, Part 2

  - by [email protected]

  In my last post, Deploying Data Mining Models using Model Export and Import, we explored using DBMS_DATA_MINING.EXPORT_MODEL and DBMS_DATA_MINING.IMPORT_MODEL to enable moving a model from one system to another. In this post, we'll look at two distributed scenarios that make use of this capability and a tip for easily moving models from one machine to another using only Oracle Database, not an external file transport mechanism, such as FTP. The first scenario, consider a company with geographically distributed business units, each collecting and managing their data locally for the products they sell. Each business unit has in-house data analysts that build models to predict which products to recommend to customers in their space. A central telemarketing business unit also uses these models to score new customers locally using data collected over the phone. Since the models recommend different products, each customer is scored using each model. This is depicted in Figure 1.Figure 1: Target instance importing multiple remote models for local scoring In the second scenario, consider multiple hospitals that collect data on patients with certain types of cancer. The data collection is standardized, so each hospital collects the same patient demographic and other health / tumor data, along with the clinical diagnosis. Instead of each hospital building it's own models, the data is pooled at a central data analysis lab where a predictive model is built. Once completed, the model is distributed to hospitals, clinics, and doctor offices who can score patient data locally.Figure 2: Multiple target instances importing the same model from a source instance for local scoring Since this blog focuses on model export and import, we'll only discuss what is necessary to move a model from one database to another. Here, we use the package DBMS_FILE_TRANSFER, which can move files between Oracle databases. The script is fairly straightforward, but requires setting up a database link and directory objects. We saw how to create directory objects in the previous post. To create a database link to the source database from the target, we can use, for example: create database link SOURCE1_LINK connect to <schema> identified by <password> using 'SOURCE1'; Note that 'SOURCE1' refers to the service name of the remote database entry in your tnsnames.ora file. From SQL*Plus, first connect to the remote database and export the model. Note that the model_file_name does not include the .dmp extension. This is because export_model appends "01" to this name.  Next, connect to the local database and invoke DBMS_FILE_TRANSFER.GET_FILE and import the model. Note that "01" is eliminated in the target system file name.  connect <source_schema>/<password>@SOURCE1_LINK; BEGIN  DBMS_DATA_MINING.EXPORT_MODEL ('EXPORT_FILE_NAME' || '.dmp',                                 'MY_SOURCE_DIR_OBJECT',                                 'name =''MY_MINING_MODEL'''); END; connect <target_schema>/<password>; BEGIN  DBMS_FILE_TRANSFER.GET_FILE ('MY_SOURCE_DIR_OBJECT',                               'EXPORT_FILE_NAME' || '01.dmp',                               'SOURCE1_LINK',                               'MY_TARGET_DIR_OBJECT',                               'EXPORT_FILE_NAME' || '.dmp' );  DBMS_DATA_MINING.IMPORT_MODEL ('EXPORT_FILE_NAME' || '.dmp',                                 'MY_TARGET_DIR_OBJECT'); END; To clean up afterward, you may want to drop the exported .dmp file at the source and the transferred file at the target. For example, utl_file.fremove('&directory_name', '&model_file_name' || '.dmp');

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