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  • Looking for efficient scaling patterns for Silverlight application with distributed text-file data s

    - by Edward Tanguay
    I'm designing a Silverlight software solution for students and teachers to record flashcards, e.g. words and phrases that students find while reading and errors that teachers notice while teaching. Requirements are: each person publishes his own flashcards in a file on a web server, e.g. http://:www.mywebserver.com/flashcards.txt other people subscribe to that person's flashcards by using a Silverlight flashcard reader that I have developed and entering the URLs of flashcard files they want to subscribe to, URLs and imported flashcards being saved in IsolatedStorage the flashcards.txt file has the following simple format: title, then blocks of question/answers: Jim Smith's flashcards from English class 53-222, winter semester 2009 ==fla Das kann nicht sein. That can't be. ==fla Es sei denn, er kommt nicht. Unless he doesn't come. The user then makes public the URL to his flashcard file and other readers begin reading in his flashcards. In order to lower the bar for non-technical users to contribute, it will even be possible for them to save this text in a Google Document, which they publish and distribute the URL. The flashcard readers will then recognize it is a google document and perform the necessary screen scraping to get at the raw text. I have two technical questions about this approach: What is a best way to plan now for scalability issues: e.g. if your reader is subscribed to 10 flashcard files that are each 200K, it will have to download 2MB of text just to find out if any new flashcards are available. Or can I somehow accurately and consistently get at the last update date/time of text files on servers and published google docs? Each reader will have the ability to allow the person to test himself on imported flashcards and add meta information to them, e.g. categorize them, edit them, etc. This information will be stored in IsolatedStorage along with the important flashcards themselves. What is a good pattern to allow these readers to share and synchronize this meta data, e.g. so when you are looking at a flashcard you can see that 5 other people have made corrections to it. The best solution I can think of now is that the Silverlight readers will have to republish their data to a central database, but then there is the problem of uniquely identifying each flashcard, the best approach seems to be URL + position-in-file, or even better URL + original text of both question and answer fields, but both of these have their obvious drawbacks. The main requirement is that the bar for participation is kept as low as possible, i.e. type text in a google document, publish it, distribute the URL, and you're publishing within the flashcard community. So I want to come up with the most efficient technical solutions in order to compensate for the lack of database, lack of unique ids, etc. For those who have designed or developed similar non-traditional, distributed database projects like this, what advice, experience or best-practice tips you can share on the above two points?

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  • compiling numpy with sunperf atlas libraries

    - by user288558
    I would like to use the sunperf libraries when compiling scipy and numpy. I tried using setupscons.py which seems to check from SUNPERF libraries, but it didnt recognize where mine are: here is a listing of /pkg/linux/SS12/sunstudio12.1 (thats where the sunperf library lives): wkerzend@mosura:/home/wkerzend>ls /pkg/linux/SS12/sunstudio12.1/lib/ CCios/ libdbx_agent.so@ libsunperf.so.3@ amd64/ libfcollector.so@ libtha.so@ collector.jar@ libfsu.so@ libtha.so.1@ dbxrc@ libfsu.so.1@ locale/ debugging.so@ libfui.so@ make.rules@ er.rc@ libfui.so.1@ rw7/ libblacs_openmpi.so@ librtc.so@ sse2/ libblacs_openmpi.so.1@ libscalapack.so@ stlport4/ libcollectorAPI.so@ libscalapack.so.1@ svr4.make.rules@ libcollectorAPI.so.1@ libsunperf.so@ tools_svc_mgr@ I tried to specify this directory in sites.cfg, but I still get the following errors: Checking if g77 needs dummy main - MAIN__. Checking g77 name mangling - '_', '', lower-case. Checking g77 C compatibility runtime ...-L/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-redhat-linux/3.4.6 - L/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-redhat-linux/3.4.6 -L/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-redhat- linux/3.4.6/../../../../lib64 -L/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-redhat-linux/3.4.6/../../.. -L/lib/../lib64 -L/usr/lib/../lib64 -lfrtbegin -lg2c -lm Checking MKL ... Failed (could not check header(s) : check config.log in build/scons/scipy/integrate for more details) Checking ATLAS ... Failed (could not check header(s) : check config.log in build/scons/scipy/integrate for more details) Checking SUNPERF ... Failed (could not check symbol cblas_sgemm : check config.log in build/scons/scipy/integrate for more details)) Checking Generic BLAS ... yes Checking for BLAS (Generic BLAS) ... Failed: BLAS (Generic BLAS) test could not be linked and run Exception: Could not find F77 BLAS, needed for integrate package: File "/priv/manana1/wkerzend/install_dir/scipy-0.7.1/scipy/integrate/SConstruct", line 2: GetInitEnvironment(ARGUMENTS).DistutilsSConscript('SConscript') File "/home/wkerzend/python_coala/numscons-0.10.1-py2.6.egg/numscons/core/numpyenv.py", line 108: build_dir = '$build_dir', src_dir = '$src_dir') File "/priv/manana1/wkerzend/python_coala/numscons-0.10.1-py2.6.egg/numscons/scons-local/scons-local-1.2.0/SCons/Script/SConscript.py", line 549: return apply(_SConscript, [self.fs,] + files, subst_kw) File "/priv/manana1/wkerzend/python_coala/numscons-0.10.1-py2.6.egg/numscons/scons-local/scons-local-1.2.0/SCons/Script/SConscript.py", line 259: exec _file_ in call_stack[-1].globals File "/priv/manana1/wkerzend/install_dir/scipy-0.7.1/build/scons/scipy/integrate/SConscript", line 15: raise Exception("Could not find F77 BLAS, needed for integrate package") error: Error while executing scons command. See above for more information. If you think it is a problem in numscons, you can also try executing the scons command with --log-level option for more detailed output of what numscons is doing, for example --log-level=0; the lowest the level is, the more detailed the output it.----- any help is appreciated Wolfgang

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  • Thread not behaving correctly

    - by ivor
    Hello, I wonder if anyone can help me to understand where I could be going wrong with this code; Basically I'm working on a turorial and calling the class below from another class - and it is getting the following error; Exception in thread "Thread-1" java.lang.NullPointerException at org.newdawn.spaceinvaders.TCPChat.run(TCPChat.java:322) at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source) I realise the error is beibg flagged in another class- but I have tested the other class with a small class which sets up a separate thread - and it works fine, but as soon as I try and implement a new thread in this class - it causes all sorts of problems. Am I setting up the thread correctly in this class? Basically I can set up a thread in this class, with a test loop and it's fine, but when I bring in the functionality of the rest of the game it sometimes hangs, or does not display at all. Any suggestions on where I could be going wrong would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for looking. package org.newdawn.spaceinvaders; import java.awt.BorderLayout; import java.awt.Canvas; import java.awt.Color; import java.awt.Dimension; import java.awt.FlowLayout; import java.awt.Graphics2D; import java.awt.GridLayout; import java.awt.event.ActionEvent; import java.awt.event.ActionListener; import java.awt.event.KeyAdapter; import java.awt.event.KeyEvent; import java.awt.event.WindowAdapter; import java.awt.event.WindowEvent; import java.awt.image.BufferStrategy; import java.util.ArrayList; import java.util.Scanner; import java.awt.*;//maybe not needed import javax.swing.*;//maybenot needed import java.util.Random; //import java.io.*; /** * The main hook of our game. This class with both act as a manager * for the display and central mediator for the game logic. * * Display management will consist of a loop that cycles round all * entities in the game asking them to move and then drawing them * in the appropriate place. With the help of an inner class it * will also allow the player to control the main ship. * * As a mediator it will be informed when entities within our game * detect events (e.g. alient killed, played died) and will take * appropriate game actions. * * @author Kevin Glass */ public class Game extends Canvas implements Runnable{ /** The stragey that allows us to use accelerate page flipping */ private BufferStrategy strategy; /** True if the game is currently "running", i.e. the game loop is looping */ private boolean gameRunning = true; /** The list of all the entities that exist in our game */ private ArrayList entities = new ArrayList(); /** The list of entities that need to be removed from the game this loop */ private ArrayList removeList = new ArrayList(); /** The entity representing the player */ private Entity ship; /** The speed at which the player's ship should move (pixels/sec) */ private double moveSpeed = 300; /** The time at which last fired a shot */ private long lastFire = 0; /** The interval between our players shot (ms) */ private long firingInterval = 500; /** The number of aliens left on the screen */ private int alienCount; /** The number of levels progressed */ private double levelCount; /** high score for the user */ private int highScore; /** high score for the user */ private String player = "bob"; //private GetUserInput getPlayer; /** The list of entities that need to be removed from the game this loop */ /** The message to display which waiting for a key press */ private String message = ""; /** True if we're holding up game play until a key has been pressed */ private boolean waitingForKeyPress = true; /** True if the left cursor key is currently pressed */ private boolean leftPressed = false; /** True if the right cursor key is currently pressed */ private boolean rightPressed = false; /** True if we are firing */ private boolean firePressed = false; /** True if game logic needs to be applied this loop, normally as a result of a game event */ private boolean logicRequiredThisLoop = false; //private Thread cThread = new Thread(this); //public Thread t = new Thread(this); //private Thread g = new Thread(this); void setHighscore(int setHS) { highScore = setHS; } public int getHighscore() { return highScore; } public void setPlayer(String setPlayer) { player = setPlayer; } public String getPlayer() { return player; } public void run() { //setup(); System.out.println("hello im running bob"); /*int count = 1; do { System.out.println("Count is: " + count); count++; try{Thread.sleep(1);} catch(InterruptedException e){} } while (count <= 2000000);*/ //Game g =new Game(); //Game g = this; // Start the main game loop, note: this method will not // return until the game has finished running. Hence we are // using the actual main thread to run the game. //setup(); //this.gameLoop(); //try{thread.sleep(1);} //catch{InterruptedException e} } /** * Construct our game and set it running. */ public Game () { //Thread t = new Thread(this);//set up new thread for invaders game //t.run();//run the run method of the game //Game g =new Game(); //setup(); //Thread t = new Thread(this); //thread.start(); //SwingUtilities.invokeLater(this); Thread er = new Thread(this); er.start(); } public void setup(){ //initialise highscore setHighscore(0); // create a frame to contain our game JFrame container = new JFrame("Space Invaders 101"); // get hold the content of the frame and set up the resolution of the game JPanel panel = (JPanel) container.getContentPane(); panel.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(800,600)); //panel.setLayout(null); // setup our canvas size and put it into the content of the frame setBounds(0,0,800,600); panel.add(this); // Tell AWT not to bother repainting our canvas since we're // going to do that our self in accelerated mode setIgnoreRepaint(true); // finally make the window visible container.pack(); container.setResizable(false); container.setVisible(true); // add a listener to respond to the user closing the window. If they // do we'd like to exit the game container.addWindowListener(new WindowAdapter() { public void windowClosing(WindowEvent e) { //cThread.interrupt(); System.exit(0); } }); // add a key input system (defined below) to our canvas // so we can respond to key pressed addKeyListener(new KeyInputHandler()); // request the focus so key events come to us requestFocus(); // create the buffering strategy which will allow AWT // to manage our accelerated graphics createBufferStrategy(2); strategy = getBufferStrategy(); // initialise the entities in our game so there's something // to see at startup initEntities(); } /** * Start a fresh game, this should clear out any old data and * create a new set. */ private void startGame() { // clear out any existing entities and intialise a new set entities.clear(); initEntities(); //initialise highscore setHighscore(0); // blank out any keyboard settings we might currently have leftPressed = false; rightPressed = false; firePressed = false; } /** * Initialise the starting state of the entities (ship and aliens). Each * entitiy will be added to the overall list of entities in the game. */ //private void initEntities() { public void initEntities() { Random randomAlien = new Random(); // create the player ship and place it roughly in the center of the screen //ship = new ShipEntity(this,"sprites/ship.gif",370,550);//orignal ship = new ShipEntity(this,"sprites/ship.gif",700,300);//changed postioning to right hand side entities.add(ship); // create a block of aliens (5 rows, by 12 aliens, spaced evenly) alienCount = 0; levelCount = 1.02; for (int row=0;row<7;row++) {//altered number of rows for (int x=0;x<5;x++) { int r = randomAlien.nextInt(100);//loop added to produce random aliens if (r < 50){ //Entity alien = new AlienEntity(this,"sprites/alien.gif",/*100+*/(x*50),(50)+row*30); Entity alien = new AlienEntity(this,"sprites/alien.gif",100+(x*90),(12)+row*85); entities.add(alien); alienCount++; } } } } //private void initEntities() { public void initAlienEntities() { Random randomAlien = new Random(); // create the player ship and place it roughly in the center of the screen //ship = new ShipEntity(this,"sprites/ship.gif",370,550);//orignal //ship = new ShipEntity(this,"sprites/ship.gif",700,300);//changed postioning to right hand side //entities.add(ship); // create a block of aliens (5 rows, by 12 aliens, spaced evenly) alienCount = 0; levelCount = levelCount + 0.10;//this increases the speed on every level for (int row=0;row<7;row++) {//altered number of rows for (int x=0;x<5;x++) { int r = randomAlien.nextInt(100);//loop added to produce random aliens if (r < 50){//randome check to show alien //Entity alien = new AlienEntity(this,"sprites/alien.gif",/*100+*/(x*50),(50)+row*30); Entity alien = new AlienEntity(this,"sprites/alien.gif",-250+(x*90),(12)+row*85); entities.add(alien); alienCount++; } } } advanceAlienSpeed(levelCount); } /** * Notification from a game entity that the logic of the game * should be run at the next opportunity (normally as a result of some * game event) */ public void updateLogic() { logicRequiredThisLoop = true; } /** * Remove an entity from the game. The entity removed will * no longer move or be drawn. * * @param entity The entity that should be removed */ public void removeEntity(Entity entity) { removeList.add(entity); } /** * Notification that the player has died. */ public void notifyDeath() { message = "Oh no! They got you, try again?"; waitingForKeyPress = true; } /** * Notification that the player has won since all the aliens * are dead. */ public void notifyWin() { message = "Well done! You Win!"; waitingForKeyPress = true; } /** * Notification that an alien has been killed */ public void notifyAlienKilled() { // reduce the alient count, if there are none left, the player has won! alienCount--; if (alienCount == 0) { //notifyWin();win not relevant here... this.initAlienEntities();//call fresh batch of aliens } // if there are still some aliens left then they all need to get faster, so // speed up all the existing aliens advanceAlienSpeed(1.30); } public void advanceAlienSpeed(double speed) { // if there are still some aliens left then they all need to get faster, so // speed up all the existing aliens for (int i=0;i<entities.size();i++) { Entity entity = (Entity) entities.get(i); if (entity instanceof AlienEntity) { // speed up by 2% entity.setHorizontalMovement(entity.getHorizontalMovement() * speed); //entity.setVerticalMovement(entity.getVerticalMovement() * 1.02); } } } /** * Attempt to fire a shot from the player. Its called "try" * since we must first check that the player can fire at this * point, i.e. has he/she waited long enough between shots */ public void tryToFire() { // check that we have waiting long enough to fire if (System.currentTimeMillis() - lastFire < firingInterval) { return; } // if we waited long enough, create the shot entity, and record the time. lastFire = System.currentTimeMillis(); ShotEntity shot = new ShotEntity(this,"sprites/shot.gif",ship.getX()+10,ship.getY()-30); entities.add(shot); } /** * The main game loop. This loop is running during all game * play as is responsible for the following activities: * <p> * - Working out the speed of the game loop to update moves * - Moving the game entities * - Drawing the screen contents (entities, text) * - Updating game events * - Checking Input * <p> */ public void gameLoop() { long lastLoopTime = System.currentTimeMillis(); // keep looping round til the game ends while (gameRunning) { // work out how long its been since the last update, this // will be used to calculate how far the entities should // move this loop long delta = System.currentTimeMillis() - lastLoopTime; lastLoopTime = System.currentTimeMillis(); // Get hold of a graphics context for the accelerated // surface and blank it out Graphics2D g = (Graphics2D) strategy.getDrawGraphics(); g.setColor(Color.black); g.fillRect(0,0,800,600); // cycle round asking each entity to move itself if (!waitingForKeyPress) { for (int i=0;i<entities.size();i++) { Entity entity = (Entity) entities.get(i); entity.move(delta); } } // cycle round drawing all the entities we have in the game for (int i=0;i<entities.size();i++) { Entity entity = (Entity) entities.get(i); entity.draw(g); } // brute force collisions, compare every entity against // every other entity. If any of them collide notify // both entities that the collision has occured for (int p=0;p<entities.size();p++) { for (int s=p+1;s<entities.size();s++) { Entity me = (Entity) entities.get(p); Entity him = (Entity) entities.get(s); if (me.collidesWith(him)) { me.collidedWith(him); him.collidedWith(me); } } } // remove any entity that has been marked for clear up entities.removeAll(removeList); removeList.clear(); // if a game event has indicated that game logic should // be resolved, cycle round every entity requesting that // their personal logic should be considered. if (logicRequiredThisLoop) { //g.drawString("Press any key",(800-g.getFontMetrics().stringWidth("Press any key"))/2,300); for (int i=0;i<entities.size();i++) { Entity entity = (Entity) entities.get(i); entity.doLogic(); } logicRequiredThisLoop = false; } // if we're waiting for an "any key" press then draw the // current message //show highscore at top of screen //show name at top of screen g.setColor(Color.white); g.drawString("Player : "+getPlayer()+" : Score : "+getHighscore(),20,20); if (waitingForKeyPress) { g.setColor(Color.white); g.drawString(message,(800-g.getFontMetrics().stringWidth(message))/2,250); g.drawString("Press any key",(800-g.getFontMetrics().stringWidth("Press any key"))/2,300); } // finally, we've completed drawing so clear up the graphics // and flip the buffer over g.dispose(); strategy.show(); // resolve the movement of the ship. First assume the ship // isn't moving. If either cursor key is pressed then // update the movement appropraitely ship.setVerticalMovement(0);//set to vertical movement if ((leftPressed) && (!rightPressed)) { ship.setVerticalMovement(-moveSpeed);//**took out setHorizaontalMOvement } else if ((rightPressed) && (!leftPressed)) { ship.setVerticalMovement(moveSpeed);//**took out setHorizaontalMOvement } // if we're pressing fire, attempt to fire if (firePressed) { tryToFire(); } // finally pause for a bit. Note: this should run us at about // 100 fps but on windows this might vary each loop due to // a bad implementation of timer try { Thread.sleep(10); } catch (Exception e) {} } } /** * A class to handle keyboard input from the user. The class * handles both dynamic input during game play, i.e. left/right * and shoot, and more static type input (i.e. press any key to * continue) * * This has been implemented as an inner class more through * habbit then anything else. Its perfectly normal to implement * this as seperate class if slight less convienient. * * @author Kevin Glass */ private class KeyInputHandler extends KeyAdapter { /** The number of key presses we've had while waiting for an "any key" press */ private int pressCount = 1; /** * Notification from AWT that a key has been pressed. Note that * a key being pressed is equal to being pushed down but *NOT* * released. Thats where keyTyped() comes in. * * @param e The details of the key that was pressed */ public void keyPressed(KeyEvent e) { // if we're waiting for an "any key" typed then we don't // want to do anything with just a "press" if (waitingForKeyPress) { return; } // if (e.getKeyCode() == KeyEvent.VK_LEFT) { ////leftPressed = true; ///} //// if (e.getKeyCode() == KeyEvent.VK_RIGHT) { //rightPressed = true; if (e.getKeyCode() == KeyEvent.VK_UP) { leftPressed = true; } if (e.getKeyCode() == KeyEvent.VK_DOWN) { rightPressed = true; } if (e.getKeyCode() == KeyEvent.VK_SPACE) { firePressed = true; } } /** * Notification from AWT that a key has been released. * * @param e The details of the key that was released */ public void keyReleased(KeyEvent e) { // if we're waiting for an "any key" typed then we don't // want to do anything with just a "released" if (waitingForKeyPress) { return; } if (e.getKeyCode() == KeyEvent.VK_UP) {//changed from VK_LEFT leftPressed = false; } if (e.getKeyCode() == KeyEvent.VK_DOWN) {//changed from VK_RIGHT rightPressed = false; } if (e.getKeyCode() == KeyEvent.VK_SPACE) { firePressed = false; } } /** * Notification from AWT that a key has been typed. Note that * typing a key means to both press and then release it. * * @param e The details of the key that was typed. */ public void keyTyped(KeyEvent e) { // if we're waiting for a "any key" type then // check if we've recieved any recently. We may // have had a keyType() event from the user releasing // the shoot or move keys, hence the use of the "pressCount" // counter. if (waitingForKeyPress) { if (pressCount == 1) { // since we've now recieved our key typed // event we can mark it as such and start // our new game waitingForKeyPress = false; startGame(); pressCount = 0; } else { pressCount++; } } // if we hit escape, then quit the game if (e.getKeyChar() == 27) { //cThread.interrupt(); System.exit(0); } } } /** * The entry point into the game. We'll simply create an * instance of class which will start the display and game * loop. * * @param argv The arguments that are passed into our game */ //public static void main(String argv[]) { //Game g =new Game(); // Start the main game loop, note: this method will not // return until the game has finished running. Hence we are // using the actual main thread to run the game. //g.gameLoop(); //} }

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  • ActionResult types in MVC2

    - by rajbk
    In ASP.NET MVC, incoming browser requests gets mapped to a controller action method. The action method returns a type of ActionResult in response to the browser request. A basic example is shown below: public class HomeController : Controller { public ActionResult Index() { return View(); } } Here we have an action method called Index that returns an ActionResult. Inside the method we call the View() method on the base Controller. The View() method, as you will see shortly, is a method that returns a ViewResult. The ActionResult class is the base class for different controller results. The following diagram shows the types derived from the ActionResult type. ASP.NET has a description of these methods ContentResult – Represents a text result. EmptyResult – Represents no result. FileContentResult – Represents a downloadable file (with the binary content). FilePathResult – Represents a downloadable file (with a path). FileStreamResult – Represents a downloadable file (with a file stream). JavaScriptResult – Represents a JavaScript script. JsonResult – Represents a JavaScript Object Notation result that can be used in an AJAX application. PartialViewResult – Represents HTML and markup rendered by a partial view. RedirectResult – Represents a redirection to a new URL. RedirectToRouteResult – Represents a result that performs a redirection by using the specified route values dictionary. ViewResult – Represents HTML and markup rendered by a view. To return the types shown above, you call methods that are available in the Controller base class. A list of these methods are shown below.   Methods without an ActionResult return type The MVC framework will translate action methods that do not return an ActionResult into one. Consider the HomeController below which has methods that do not return any ActionResult types. The methods defined return an int, object and void respectfully. public class HomeController : Controller { public int Add(int x, int y) { return x + y; }   public Employee GetEmployee() { return new Employee(); }   public void DoNothing() { } } When a request comes in, the Controller class hands internally uses a ControllerActionInvoker class which inspects the action parameters and invokes the correct action method. The CreateActionResult method in the ControllerActionInvoker class is used to return an ActionResult. This method is shown below. If the result of the action method is null, an EmptyResult instance is returned. If the result is not of type ActionResult, the result is converted to a string and returned as a ContentResult. protected virtual ActionResult CreateActionResult(ControllerContext controllerContext, ActionDescriptor actionDescriptor, object actionReturnValue) { if (actionReturnValue == null) { return new EmptyResult(); }   ActionResult actionResult = (actionReturnValue as ActionResult) ?? new ContentResult { Content = Convert.ToString(actionReturnValue, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture) }; return actionResult; }   In the HomeController class above, the DoNothing method will return an instance of the EmptyResult() Renders an empty webpage the GetEmployee() method will return a ContentResult which contains a string that represents the current object Renders the text “MyNameSpace.Controllers.Employee” without quotes. the Add method for a request of /home/add?x=3&y=5 returns a ContentResult Renders the text “8” without quotes. Unit Testing The nice thing about the ActionResult types is in unit testing the controller. We can, without starting a web server, create an instance of the Controller, call the methods and verify that the type returned is the expected ActionResult type. We can then inspect the returned type properties and confirm that it contains the expected values. Enjoy! Sulley: Hey, Mike, this might sound crazy but I don't think that kid's dangerous. Mike: Really? Well, in that case, let's keep it. I always wanted a pet that could kill me.

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  • Using NServiceBus behind a custom web service

    - by Michael Stephenson
    In this post I'd like to talk about an architecture scenario we had recently and how we were able to utilise NServiceBus to help us address this problem. Scenario Cognos is a reporting system used by one of my clients. A while back we developed a web service façade to allow line of business applications to be able to access reports from Cognos to support their various functions. The service was intended to provide access to reports which were quick running reports or pre-generated reports which could be accessed real-time on demand. One of the key aims of the web service was to provide a simple generic interface to allow applications to get any report without needing to worry about the complex .net SDK for Cognos. The web service also supported multi-hop kerberos delegation so that report data could be accesses under the context of the end user. This service was working well for a period of time. The Problem The problem we encountered was that reports were now also required to be available to batch processes. The original design was optimised for low latency so users would enjoy a positive experience, however when the batch processes started to request 250+ concurrent reports over an extended period of time you can begin to imagine the sorts of problems that come into play. The key problems this new scenario caused are: Users may be affected and the latency of on demand reports was significantly slower The Cognos infrastructure was not scaled sufficiently to be able to cope with these long peaks of load From a cost perspective it just isn't feasible to scale the Cognos infrastructure to be able to handle the load when it is only for a couple of hour window each night. We really needed to introduce a second pattern for accessing this service which would support high through-put scenarios. We also had little control over the batch process in terms of being able to throttle its load. We could however make some changes to the way it accessed the reports. The Approach My idea was to introduce a throttling mechanism between the Web Service Façade and Cognos. This would allow the batch processes to push reports requests hard at the web service which we were confident the web service can handle. The web service would then queue these requests and process them behind the scenes and make a call back to the batch application to provide the report once it had been accessed. In terms of technology we had some limitations because we were not able to use WCF or IIS7 where the MSMQ-Activated WCF services could have helped, but we did have MSMQ as an option and I thought NServiceBus could do just the job to help us here. The flow of how this would work was as follows: The batch applications would send a request for a report to the web service The web service uses NServiceBus to send the message to a Queue The NServiceBus Generic Host is running as a windows service with a message handler which subscribes to these messages The message handler gets the message, accesses the report from Cognos The message handler calls back to the original batch application, this is decoupled because the calling application provides a call back url The report gets into the batch application and is processed as normal This approach looks something like the below diagram: The key points are an application wanting to take advantage of the batch driven reports needs to do the following: Implement our call back contract Make a call to the service providing a call back url Provide a correlation ID so it knows how to tie each response back to its request What does NServiceBus offer in this solution So this scenario is not the typical messaging service bus type of solution people implement with NServiceBus, but it did offer the following: Simplified interaction with MSMQ Offered the ability to configure the number of processes working through the queue so we could find a balance between load on Cognos versus the applications end to end processing time NServiceBus offers retries and a way to manage failed messages NServiceBus offers a high availability setup The simple thing is that NServiceBus gave us the platform to build the solution on. We just implemented a message handler which functionally processed a message and we could rely on NServiceBus to do all of the hard work around managing the queues and all of the lower level things that would have took ages to write to any kind of robust level. Conclusion With this approach we were able to deal with a fairly significant performance issue with out too much rework. Hopefully this write up gives people some insight into ideas on how to leverage the excellent NServiceBus framework to help solve integration and high through-put scenarios.

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  • Oracle BI and XS Energy Drinks – Don’t Miss the Amway Presentation!

    - by Michelle Kimihira
    By Maria Forney Amway is a global leader in the direct sales industry with $10.9B in annual sales in more than 100 countries and territories. The company has implemented a global BI framework that provides accurate, consistent, and timely insights to support global, regional and local analytical research, business planning, performance measurement and assessment. Oracle BI EE is used by 1500 employees across Amway sales, marketing, finance, and supply chain business units as well as Amway affiliates in Europe, Russia, South Africa, Japan, Australia, Latin America, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Indonesia. Last week, I spoke with Lead Data Analyst with Amway Global Sales, Dan Arganbright, and IT Manager with Amway BI Competency Center, Mike Olson, about their upcoming presentation at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco. Scheduled during a prime speaking slot on Monday, October 1 at 12:15pm in Moscone West, 2007, Dan and Mike will discuss their experience building Amway’s Distributor Consulting solution, powered by Oracle BI EE. You can find more information here. As background, Amway offers people an opportunity to own their own businesses and consumers exclusive products in health and wellness, beauty and home care.  The Amway internal Sales organization is charged with consulting leadership-level Distributors to help them with data insights and ultimately grow their business. Until recently, this was a resource-intense process of gathering and formatting data. In some markets, it took over 40 hours to collect the data and produce the analysis needed for one consultation session. Amway began its global BI journey in 2006 and since then the company has migrated from having multiple technology providers and integration points to an integrated strategic vendor approach. Today, the company has standardized on Oracle technology for BI.  Amway has achieved cost savings through the retirement of redundant technology platforms. In addition, Mike’s organization has led the charge to align disparate BI organizations into a BI Competency Center.  The following diagram highlights the simplicity of the standardized architecture of Amway today. Dubbed Distributor Consulting, Amway has developed a BI solution using the Oracle technology stack to help Distributor leaders grow their businesses. The Distributor Consulting solution provides over 40 metrics for Sales staff to provide data-driven insights on the Distributors and organizations they support.  Using Oracle BI EE, Exadata, and Oracle Data Integrator, Amway provides customized and personalized business intelligence, and the Oracle BI EE dashboards were developed by the Amway Sales organization, which demonstrates business empowerment of the technology. Amway is also leveraging the power of BI to drive business growth in all of its markets.  A new set of Distributor Segmentation metrics are enabling a better understanding of distributor behaviors. A Global Scorecard that Amway developed provides key metrics at a market and global level for executive-level discussions. Product Analysis teams can now highlight repeat purchase rates, product penetration and the success of CRM campaigns. In the words of Dan and Mike, the addition of Exadata 11 months ago has been “a game changer.”  Amway has been able to dramatically reduce complexity, improve performance and increase business productivity and cost savings. For example, the number of indexes on the global data warehouse was reduced from more than 1,000 to less than 20.  Pulling data for the highest level distributors or the largest markets in the company now can be done in minutes instead of hours.  As a result, IT has shifted from performance tuning and keeping the system operational to higher-value business-focused activities. •       “The distributors that have been introduced to the BI reports have found them extremely helpful. Because they have never had this kind of information before, when they were presented with the reports, they wanted to take action immediately!”  -     Sales Development Manager in Latin America Without giving away more, the Amway case study presentation will be one of the unique customer sessions at OpenWorld this year. Speakers Dan Arganbright and Mike Olson have planned an interactive and entertaining session on Monday October 1 at 12:15pm in Moscone West, 2007. I’ll see you there!

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  • Oracle BI and XS Energy Drinks – Don’t Miss the Amway Presentation!

    - by Maria Forney
    Amway is a global leader in the direct sales industry with $10.9B in annual sales in more than 100 countries and territories. The company has implemented a global BI framework that provides accurate, consistent, and timely insights to support global, regional and local analytical research, business planning, performance measurement and assessment. Oracle BI EE is used by 1500 employees across Amway sales, marketing, finance, and supply chain business units as well as Amway affiliates in Europe, Russia, South Africa, Japan, Australia, Latin America, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Indonesia. Last week, I spoke with Lead Data Analyst with Amway Global Sales, Dan Arganbright, and IT Manager with Amway BI Competency Center, Mike Olson, about their upcoming presentation at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco. Scheduled during a prime speaking slot on Monday, October 1 at 12:15pm in Moscone West, 2007, Dan and Mike will discuss their experience building Amway’s Distributor Consulting solution, powered by Oracle BI EE. You can find more information here. As background, Amway offers people an opportunity to own their own businesses and consumers exclusive products in health and wellness, beauty and home care.  The Amway internal Sales organization is charged with consulting leadership-level Distributors to help them with data insights and ultimately grow their business. Until recently, this was a resource-intense process of gathering and formatting data. In some markets, it took over 40 hours to collect the data and produce the analysis needed for one consultation session. Amway began its global BI journey in 2006 and since then the company has migrated from having multiple technology providers and integration points to an integrated strategic vendor approach. Today, the company has standardized on Oracle technology for BI.  Amway has achieved cost savings through the retirement of redundant technology platforms. In addition, Mike’s organization has led the charge to align disparate BI organizations into a BI Competency Center.  The following diagram highlights the simplicity of the standardized architecture of Amway today. Dubbed Distributor Consulting, Amway has developed a BI solution using the Oracle technology stack to help Distributor leaders grow their businesses. The Distributor Consulting solution provides over 40 metrics for Sales staff to provide data-driven insights on the Distributors and organizations they support.  Using Oracle BI EE, Exadata, and Oracle Data Integrator, Amway provides customized and personalized business intelligence, and the Oracle BI EE dashboards were developed by the Amway Sales organization, which demonstrates business empowerment of the technology. Amway is also leveraging the power of BI to drive business growth in all of its markets.  A new set of Distributor Segmentation metrics are enabling a better understanding of distributor behaviors. A Global Scorecard that Amway developed provides key metrics at a market and global level for executive-level discussions. Product Analysis teams can now highlight repeat purchase rates, product penetration and the success of CRM campaigns. In the words of Dan and Mike, the addition of Exadata 11 months ago has been “a game changer.”  Amway has been able to dramatically reduce complexity, improve performance and increase business productivity and cost savings. For example, the number of indexes on the global data warehouse was reduced from more than 1,000 to less than 20.  Pulling data for the highest level distributors or the largest markets in the company now can be done in minutes instead of hours.  As a result, IT has shifted from performance tuning and keeping the system operational to higher-value business-focused activities. •       “The distributors that have been introduced to the BI reports have found them extremely helpful. Because they have never had this kind of information before, when they were presented with the reports, they wanted to take action immediately!”  -     Sales Development Manager in Latin America Without giving away more, the Amway case study presentation will be one of the unique customer sessions at OpenWorld this year. Speakers Dan Arganbright and Mike Olson have planned an interactive and entertaining session on Monday October 1 at 12:15pm in Moscone West, 2007. I’ll see you there!

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  • Where’s my MD.050?

    - by Dave Burke
    A question that I’m sometimes asked is “where’s my MD.050 in OUM?” For those not familiar with an MD.050, it serves the purpose of being a Functional Design Document (FDD) in one of Oracle’s legacy Methods. Functional Design Documents have existed for many years with their primary purpose being to describe the functional aspects of one or more components of an IT system, typically, a Custom Extension of some sort. So why don’t we have a direct replacement for the MD.050/FDD in OUM? In simple terms, the disadvantage of the MD.050/FDD approach is that it tends to lead practitioners into “Design mode” too early in the process. Whereas OUM encourages more emphasis on gathering, and describing the functional requirements of a system ahead of the formal Analysis and Design process. So that just means more work up front for the Business Analyst or Functional Consultants right? Well no…..the design of a solution, particularly when it involves a complex custom extension, does not necessarily take longer just because you put more thought into the functional requirements. In fact, one could argue the complete opposite, in that by putting more emphasis on clearly understanding the nuances of functionality requirements early in the process, then the overall time and cost incurred during the Analysis to Design process should be less. In short, as your understanding of requirements matures over time, it is far easier (and more cost effective) to update a document or a diagram, than to change lines of code. So how does that translate into Tasks and Work Products in OUM? Let us assume you have reached a point on a project where a Custom Extension is needed. One of the first things you should consider doing is creating a Use Case, and remember, a Use Case could be as simple as a few lines of text reflecting a “User Story”, or it could be what Cockburn1 describes a “fully dressed Use Case”. It is worth mentioned at this point the highly scalable nature of OUM in the sense that “documents” should not be produced just because that is the way we have always done things. Some projects may well be predicated upon a base of electronic documents, whilst other projects may take a much more Agile approach to describing functional requirements; through “User Stories” perhaps. In any event, it is quite common for a Custom Extension to involve the creation of several “components”, i.e. some new screens, an interface, a report etc. Therefore several Use Cases might be required, which in turn can then be assembled into a Use Case Package. Once you have the Use Cases attributed to an appropriate (fit-for-purpose) level of detail, and assembled into a Package, you can now create an Analysis Model for the Package. An Analysis Model is conceptual in nature, and depending on the solution being developing, would involve the creation of one or more diagrams (i.e. Sequence Diagrams, Collaboration Diagrams etc.) which collectively describe the Data, Behavior and Use Interface requirements of the solution. If required, the various elements of the Analysis Model may be indexed via an Analysis Specification. For Custom Extension projects that follow a pure Object Orientated approach, then the Analysis Model will naturally support the development of the Design Model without any further artifacts. However, for projects that are transitioning to this approach, then the various elements of the Analysis Model may be represented within the Analysis Specification. If we now return to the original question of “Where’s my MD.050”. The full answer would be: Capture the functional requirements within a Use Case Group related Use Cases into a Package Create an Analysis Model for each Package Consider creating an Analysis Specification (AN.100) as a index to each Analysis Model artifact An alternative answer for a relatively simple Custom Extension would be: Capture the functional requirements within a Use Case Optionally, group related Use Cases into a Package Create an Analysis Specification (AN.100) for each package 1 Cockburn, A, 2000, Writing Effective Use Case, Addison-Wesley Professional; Edition 1

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  • RPi and Java Embedded GPIO: Writing Java code to blink LED

    - by hinkmond
    So, you've followed the previous steps to install Java Embedded on your Raspberry Pi ?, you went to Fry's and picked up some jumper wires, LEDs, and resistors ?, you hooked up the wires, LED, and resistor the the correct pins ?, and now you want to start programming in Java on your RPi? Yes? ???????! OK, then... Here we go. You can use the following source code to blink your first LED on your RPi using Java. In the code you can see that I'm not using any complicated gpio libraries like wiringpi or pi4j, and I'm not doing any low-level pin manipulation like you can in C. And, I'm not using python (hell no!). This is Java programming, so we keep it simple (and more readable) than those other programming languages. See: Write Java code to do this In the Java code, I'm opening up the RPi Debian Wheezy well-defined file handles to control the GPIO ports. First I'm resetting everything using the unexport/export file handles. (On the RPi, if you open the well-defined file handles and write certain ASCII text to them, you can drive your GPIO to perform certain operations. See this GPIO reference). Next, I write a "1" then "0" to the value file handle of the GPIO0 port (see the previous pinout diagram). That makes the LED blink. Then, I loop to infinity. Easy, huh? import java.io.* /* * Java Embedded Raspberry Pi GPIO app */ package jerpigpio; import java.io.FileWriter; /** * * @author hinkmond */ public class JerpiGPIO { static final String GPIO_OUT = "out"; static final String GPIO_ON = "1"; static final String GPIO_OFF = "0"; static final String GPIO_CH00="0"; /** * @param args the command line arguments */ public static void main(String[] args) { FileWriter commandFile; try { /*** Init GPIO port for output ***/ // Open file handles to GPIO port unexport and export controls FileWriter unexportFile = new FileWriter("/sys/class/gpio/unexport"); FileWriter exportFile = new FileWriter("/sys/class/gpio/export"); // Reset the port unexportFile.write(GPIO_CH00); unexportFile.flush(); // Set the port for use exportFile.write(GPIO_CH00); exportFile.flush(); // Open file handle to port input/output control FileWriter directionFile = new FileWriter("/sys/class/gpio/gpio"+GPIO_CH00+"/direction"); // Set port for output directionFile.write(GPIO_OUT); directionFile.flush(); /*--- Send commands to GPIO port ---*/ // Opne file handle to issue commands to GPIO port commandFile = new FileWriter("/sys/class/gpio/gpio"+GPIO_CH00+"/value"); // Loop forever while (true) { // Set GPIO port ON commandFile.write(GPIO_ON); commandFile.flush(); // Wait for a while java.lang.Thread.sleep(200); // Set GPIO port OFF commandFile.write(GPIO_OFF); commandFile.flush(); // Wait for a while java.lang.Thread.sleep(200); } } catch (Exception exception) { exception.printStackTrace(); } } } Hinkmond

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  • Next Generation Mobile Clients for Oracle Applications & the role of Oracle Fusion Middleware

    - by Manish Palaparthy
    Oracle Enterprise Applications have been available with modern web browser based interfaces for a while now. The web browsers available in smart phones no longer require special markup language such as WML since the processing power of these handsets is quite near to that of a typical personal computer. Modern Mobile devices such as the IPhone, Android Phones, BlackBerry, Windows 8 devices can now render XHTML & HTML quite well. This means you could potentially use your mobile browser to access your favorite enterprise application. While the Mobile browser would render the UI, you might find it difficult to use it due to the formatting & Presentation of the Native UI. Smart phones offer a lot more than just a powerful web browser, they offer capabilities such as Maps, GPS, Multi touch, pinch zoom, accelerometers, vivid colors, camera with video, support for 3G, 4G networks, cloud storage, NFC, streaming media, tethering, voice based features, multi tasking, messaging, social networking web browsers with support for HTML 5 and many more features.  While the full potential of Enterprise Mobile Apps is yet to be realized, Oracle has published a few of its applications that take advantage of the above capabilities and are available for the IPhone natively. Here are some of them Iphone Apps  Oracle Business Approvals for Managers: Offers a highly intuitive user interface built as a native mobile application to conveniently access pending actions related to expenses, purchase requisitions, HR vacancies and job offers. You can even view BI reports related to the worklist actions. Works with Oracle E-Business Suite Oracle Business Indicators : Real-time secure access to OBI reports. Oracle Business Approvals for Sales Managers: Enables sales executives to review key targeted tasks, access relevant business intelligence reports. Works with Siebel CRM, Siebel Quote & Order Capture. Oracle Mobile Sales Assistant: CRM application that provides real-time, secure access to the information your sales organization needs, complete frequent tasks, collaborate with colleagues and customers. Works with Oracle CRMOracle Mobile Sales Forecast: Designed specifically for the mobile business user to view key opportunities. Works with Oracle CRM on demand Oracle iReceipts : Part of Oracle PeopleSoft Expenses, which allows users to create and submit expense lines for cash transactions in real-time. Works with Oracle PeopleSoft expenses Now, we have seen some mobile Apps that Oracle has published, I am sure you are intrigued as to how develop your own clients for the use-cases that you deem most fit. For that Oracle has ADF Mobile ADF Mobile You could develop Mobile Applications with the SDK available with the smart phone platforms!, but you'd really have to be a mobile ninja developer to develop apps with the rich user experience like the ones above. The challenges really multiply when you have to support multiple mobile devices. ADF Mobile framework is really handy to meet this challenge ADF Mobile can in be used to Develop Apps for the Mobile browser : An application built with ADF Mobile framework installs on a smart device, renders user interface via HTML5, and has access to device services. This means the programming model is primarily web-based, which offers consistency with other enterprise applications as well as easier migration to new platforms. Develop Apps for the Mobile Client (Native Apps): These applications have access to device services, enabling a richer experience for users than a browser alone can offer. ADF mobile enables rapid and declarative development of rich, on-device mobile applications. Developers only need to write an application once and then they can deploy the same application across multiple leading smart phone platforms. Oracle SOA Suite Although the Mobile users are using the smart phone apps, and actual transactions are being executed in the underlying app, there is lot of technical wizardry that is going under the surface. All of this key technical components to make 1. WebService calls 2. Authentication 3. Intercepting Webservice calls and adding security credentials to the request 4. Invoking the services of the enterprise application 5. Integrating with the Enterprise Application via the Adapter is all being implemented at the SOA infrastructure layer.  As you can see from the above diagram. The key pre-requisites to mobile enable an Enterprise application are The core enterprise application Oracle SOA Suite ADF Mobile

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  • MEB Support to NetBackup MMS

    - by Hema Sridharan
    In MySQL Enterprise Backup 3.6, new option was introduced to support backup to tapes via SBT interface. SBT stands for System Backup to Tape, an Oracle API that helps to perform backup and restore jobs via media management software such as Oracle's Secure Backup (OSB). There are other storage managers like IBM's Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) and Symantec's Netbackup (NB) which are also supported by MEB but we don't guarantee that it will function as expected for every release. MEB supports SBT API version 2.0 In this blog, I am primarily going to focus the interface of MEB and Symantec's NB. If we are using tapes for backup, ensure that tape library and tape drives are compatible. Test Setup 1. Install NB 7.5 master and media servers in Linux OS. ( NB 7.1 can also be used but for testing purpose I used NB 7.5)2. Install MEB 3.8 also in Linux OS.3. Install NB admin console in your windows desktop and configure the NB master server from there. Note: Ensure that you have root user permission to install NetBackup. Configuration Steps for MEB and NB Once MEB and NB are installed, Ensure that NB is linked to MEB by specifying the library /usr/openv/netbackup/bin/libobk.so64 in the mysqlbackup command line using --sbt-lib-path. Configure the NB master server from windows console. That is configure the storage units by specifying the Storage unit name, Disk type, Media Server name etc.  Create NetBackup policies that are user selectable. But please make sure that policy type is "Oracle".  Define the clients where MEB will be executed. Some times this will be different host where MEB is run or some times in same Media server where NB and tapes are attached. Now once the installation and configuration steps are performed for MEB and NB, the next part is the actual execution.MEB should be run as single file backup using --backup-image option with prefix sbt:(it is a tag which tells MEB that it should stream the backup image through the SBT interface) which is sent to NB client via SBT interface . The resulting backup image is stored where NB stores the images that it backs up. The following diagram shows how MEB interacts with MMS through SBT interface. Backup The following parameters should also be ready for the execution,    --sbt-lib-path : Path to SBT library specific to NetBackup MMS. SBT lib for NetBackup  is in /usr/openv/netbackup/bin/libobk.so64    --sbt-environment: Environment variables must be defined specific to NetBackup. In our example below, we use     NB_ORA_SERV=myserver.com,    NB_ORA_CLIENT=myserver.com,    NB_ORA_POLICY=NBU-MEB    ORACLE_HOME = /export/home2/tmp/hema/mysql-server/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ./mysqlbackup --port=13000 --protocol=tcp --user=root --backup-image=sbt:bkpsbtNB --sbt-lib-path=/usr/openv/netbackup/bin/libobk.so64 --sbt-environment="NB_ORA_SERV=myserver.com, NB_ORA_CLIENT=myserver.com, NB_ORA_POLICY=NBU-MEB, ORACLE_HOME=/export/home2/tmp/hema/mysql-server/” --backup-dir=/export/home2/tmp/hema/MEB_bkdir/ backup-to-image ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Once backup is completed successfully, this should appear in Activity Monitor in NetBackup Console.For restore,  image contents has to be extracted using image-to-backup-dir command and then apply-log and copy-back steps are applied. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ./mysqlbackup --sbt-lib-path=/usr/openv/netbackup/bin/libobk.so64  --backup-dir=/export/home2/tmp/hema/NBMEB/ --backup-image=sbt:bkpsbtNB image-to-backup-dir-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Now apply logs as usual, shutdown the server and perform restore, restart the server and check the data contents. ./mysqlbackup   ---backup-dir=/export/home2/tmp/hema/NBMEB/  apply-log ./mysqlbackup --datadir=/export/home2/tmp/hema/mysql-server/mysql-5.5-meb-repo/mysql-test/var/mysqld.1/data/  --backup-dir=/export/home2/tmp/hema/MEB_bkpdir/ innodb_log_files_in_group=2 --innodb_log_file_size=5M --user=root --port=13000 --protocol=tcp copy-back The NB console should show 'Restore" job as done. If you don't see that there is something wrong with MEB or NetBackup.You can also refer to more detailed steps of MEB and NB integration in whitepaper here

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  • Why Your ERP System Isn't Ready for the Next Evolution of the Enterprise

    - by ken.pulverman
      ERP has been the backbone of enterprise software.  The data held in your ERP system is core of most companies.  Efficiencies gained through the accounting and resource allocation through ERP software have literally saved companies trillions of dollars. Not only does everything seem to be fine with your ERP system, you haven't had to touch it in years.  Why aren't you ready for what comes next? Well judging by the growth rates in the space (Oracle posted only a 3% growth rate, while SAP showed a 12% decline) there hasn't been much modernization going on, just a little replacement activity. If you are like most companies, your ERP system is connected to a proprietary middleware solution that only effectively talks with a handful of other systems you might have acquired from the same vendor.   Connecting your legacy system through proprietary middleware is expensive and brittle and if you are like most companies, you were only willing to pay an SI so much before you said "enough."  So your ERP is working.  It's humming along.  You might not be able to get Order to Promise information when you take orders in your call center, but there are work arounds that work just fine. So what's the problem? The problem is that you built your business around your ERP core, and now there is such pressure to innovate your business processes to keep up that you need a whole new slew of modern apps and you need ERP data to be accessible from everywhere.   Every time you change a sales territory or a comp plan or change a benefits provider your ERP system, literally the economic brain of your business, needs to know what's going on.  And this giant need to access and provide information to your ERP is only growing. What makes matters even more challenging is that apps today come in every flavor under the Sun™.   SaaS, cloud, managed, hybrid, outsourced, composite....and they all have different integration protocols. The only easy way to get ahead of all this is to modernize the way you connect and run your applications.  Unlike the middleware solutions of yesteryear, modern middleware is effectively the operating system of the enterprise.  In the same way that you rely on Apple, Microsoft, and Google to find a video driver for your 23" monitor or to ensure the Word or Keynote runs, modern middleware takes care of intra-application connectivity and process execution.  It effectively allows you to take ERP out of the middle while ensuring connectivity to your vital data for anything you want to do.  The diagram below reflects that change.    In this model, the hegemony of ERP is over.  It too has to become a stealthy modern app to help you quickly adapt to business changes while managing vital information.  And through modern middleware it will connect to everything.  So yes ERP as we've know it is dead, but long live ERP as a connected application member of the modern enterprise. I want to Thank Andrew Zoldan, Group Vice President Oracle Manufacturing Industries Business Unit for introducing me to how some of his biggest customers have benefited by modernizing their applications infrastructure and making ERP a connected application. by John Burke, Group Vice President, Applications Business Unit

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  • Why Your ERP System Isn't Ready for the Next Evolution of the Enterprise

    - by [email protected]
    By ken.pulverman on March 24, 2010 8:51 AM ERP has been the backbone of enterprise software. The data held in your ERP system is core of most companies. Efficiencies gained through the accounting and resource allocation through ERP software have literally saved companies trillions of dollars. Not only does everything seem to be fine with your ERP system, you haven't had to touch it in years. Why aren't you ready for what comes next? Well judging by the growth rates in the space (Oracle posted only a 3% growth rate, while SAP showed a 12% decline) there hasn't been much modernization going on, just a little replacement activity. If you are like most companies, your ERP system is connected to a proprietary middleware solution that only effectively talks with a handful of other systems you might have acquired from the same vendor. Connecting your legacy system through proprietary middleware is expensive and brittle and if you are like most companies, you were only willing to pay an SI so much before you said "enough." So your ERP is working. It's humming along. You might not be able to get Order to Promise information when you take orders in your call center, but there are work arounds that work just fine. So what's the problem? The problem is that you built your business around your ERP core, and now there is such pressure to innovate your business processes to keep up that you need a whole new slew of modern apps and you need ERP data to be accessible from everywhere. Every time you change a sales territory or a comp plan or change a benefits provider your ERP system, literally the economic brain of your business, needs to know what's going on. And this giant need to access and provide information to your ERP is only growing. What makes matters even more challenging is that apps today come in every flavor under the Sun™. SaaS, cloud, managed, hybrid, outsourced, composite....and they all have different integration protocols. The only easy way to get ahead of all this is to modernize the way you connect and run your applications. Unlike the middleware solutions of yesteryear, modern middleware is effectively the operating system of the enterprise. In the same way that you rely on Apple, Microsoft, and Google to find a video driver for your 23" monitor or to ensure that Word or Keynote runs, modern middleware takes care of intra-application connectivity and process execution. It effectively allows you to take ERP out of the middle while ensuring connectivity to your vital data for anything you want to do. The diagram below reflects that change. In this model, the hegemony of ERP is over. It too has to become a stealthy modern app to help you quickly adapt to business changes while managing vital information. And through modern middleware it will connect to everything. So yes ERP as we've know it is dead, but long live ERP as a connected application member of the modern enterprise. I want to Thank Andrew Zoldan, Group Vice President Oracle Manufacturing Industries Business Unit for introducing me to how some of his biggest customers have benefited by modernizing their applications infrastructure and making ERP a connected application. by John Burke, Group Vice President, Applications Business Unit

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  • 256 Worker Role 3D Rendering Demo is now a Lab on my Azure Course

    - by Alan Smith
    Ever since I came up with the crazy idea of creating an Azure application that would spin up 256 worker roles (please vote if you like it ) to render a 3D animation created using the Kinect depth camera I have been trying to think of something useful to do with it. I have also been busy working on developing training materials for a Windows Azure course that I will be delivering through a training partner in Stockholm, and for customers wanting to learn Windows Azure. I hit on the idea of combining the render demo and a course lab and creating a lab where the students would create and deploy their own mini render farms, which would participate in a single render job, consisting of 2,000 frames. The architecture of the solution is shown below. As students would be creating and deploying their own applications, I thought it would be fun to introduce some competitiveness into the lab. In the 256 worker role demo I capture the rendering statistics for each role, so it was fairly simple to include the students name in these statistics. This allowed the process monitor application to capture the number of frames each student had rendered and display a high-score table. When I demoed the application I deployed one instance that started rendering a frame every few minutes, and the challenge for the students was to deploy and scale their applications, and then overtake my single role instance by the end of the lab time. I had the process monitor running on the projector during the lab so the class could see the progress of their deployments, and how they were performing against my implementation and their classmates. When I tested the lab for the first time in Oslo last week it was a great success, the students were keen to be the first to build and deploy their solution and then watch the frames appear. As the students mostly had MSDN suspicions they were able to scale to the full 20 worker role instances and before long we had over 100 worker roles working on the animation. There were, however, a few issues who the couple of issues caused by the competitive nature of the lab. The first student to scale the application to 20 instances would render the most frames and win; there was no way for others to catch up. Also, as they were competing against each other, there was no incentive to help others on the course get their application up and running. I have now re-written the lab to divide the student into teams that will compete to render the most frames. This means that if one developer on the team can deploy and scale quickly, the other team still has a chance to catch up. It also means that if a student finishes quickly and puts their team in the lead they will have an incentive to help the other developers on their team get up and running. As I was using “Sharks with Lasers” for a lot of my demos, and reserved the sharkswithfreakinlasers namespaces for some of the Azure services (well somebody had to do it), the students came up with some creative alternatives, like “Camels with Cannons” and “Honey Badgers with Homing Missiles”. That gave me the idea for the teams having to choose a creative name involving animals and weapons. The team rendering architecture diagram is shown below.   Render Challenge Rules In order to ensure fair play a number of rules are imposed on the lab. ·         The class will be divided into teams, each team choses a name. ·         The team name must consist of a ferocious animal combined with a hazardous weapon. ·         Teams can allocate as many worker roles as they can muster to the render job. ·         Frame processing statistics and rendered frames will be vigilantly monitored; any cheating, tampering, and other foul play will result in penalties. The screenshot below shows an example of the team render farm in action, Badgers with Bombs have taken a lead over Camels with Cannons, and both are  leaving the Sharks with Lasers standing. If you are interested in attending a scheduled delivery of my Windows Azure or Windows Azure Service bus courses, or would like on-site training, more details are here.

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  • BizTalk Testing Series - The xpath Function

    - by Michael Stephenson
    Background While the xpath function in a BizTalk orchestration is a very powerful feature I have often come across the situation where someone has hard coded an xpath expression in an orchestration. If you have read some of my previous posts about testing I've tried to get across the general theme like test-driven or test-assisted development approaches where the underlying principle is that your building up your solution of small well tested units that are put together and the resulting solution is usually quite robust. You will be finding more bugs within your unit tests and fewer outside of your team. The thing I don't like about the xpath functions usual usage is when you come across an orchestration which has something like the below snippet in an expression or assign shape: string result = xpath(myMessage,"string(//Order/OrderItem/ProductName)"); My main issue with this is that the xpath statement is hard coded in the orchestration and you don't really know it works until you are running the orchestration. Some of the problems I think you end up with are: You waste time with lengthy debugging of the orchestration when your statement isn't working You might not know the function isn't working quite as expected because the testable unit around it is big You are much more open to regression issues if your schema changes     Approach to Testing The technique I usually follow is to hold the xpath statement as a constant in a helper class or to format a constant with a helper function to get the actual xpath statement. It is then used by the orchestration like follows. string result = xpath(myMessage, MyHelperClass.ProductNameXPathStatement); This means that because the xpath statement is available outside of the orchestration it now becomes testable in its own right. This means: I can test it in its own right I'm less likely to waste time tracking down problems caused by an error in the statement I can reduce the risk or regression issuess I'm now able to implement some testing around my xpath statements which usually are something like the following:    The test will use a sample xml file The sample will be validated against the schema The test will execute the xpath statement and then check the results are as expected     Walk-through BizTalk uses the XPathNavigator internally behind the xpath function to implement the queries you will usually use using the navigators select or evaluate functions. In the sample (link at bottom) I have a small solution which contains a schema from which I have generated a sample instance. I will then use this instance as the basis for my tests.     In the below diagram you can see the helper class which I've encapsulated my xpath expressions in, and some helper functions which will format the expression in the case of a repeating node which would want to inject an index into the xpath query.             I have then created a test class which has some functions to execute some queries against my sample xml file. An example of this is below.         In the test class I have a couple of helper functions which will execute the xpath expressions in a similar way to BizTalk. You could have a proper helper class to do this if you wanted.         You can see now in the BizTalk expression editor I can use these functions alongside the xpath function.         Conclusion I hope you can see with very little effort you can make your life much easier by testing xpath statements outside of an orchestration rather than using them directly hard coded into the orchestration.     This can also save you lots of pain longer term because your build should break if your schema changes unexpectedly causing these xpath tests to fail where as your tests around the orchestration will be more difficult to troubleshoot and workout the cause of the problem.     Sample Link The sample is available from the following link: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/testbtsxpathfunction     Other Tools On the subject of using the xpath function, if you don't already use it the below tool is very useful for creating your xpath statements (thanks BizBert) http://www.bizbert.com/bizbert/2007/11/30/XPath+The+Hidden+Language+Of+BizTalk.aspx

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  • How to Build Services from Legacy Applications

    - by Chris Falter
    The SOA consultants invaded the executive suite at your company or agency, preached the true religion, and converted the unbelievers. Now by divine imperative you must convert your legacy applications into a suite of reusable services.  But as usual, you lack the time and resources that you need in order to develop the services properly.  So you googled or bing’ed, found this blog post, and began crying in gratitude.  Yes, as the title implies, I am going to reveal my easy, 3-step, works-every-time process for converting silos of legacy applications into the inventory of services your CIO has been dreaming about.  So just close your eyes and count to 3 … now open them … and here it is…. Not. While wishful thinking is too often the coin of the IT realm, even the most naive practitioner knows that converting legacy applications into reusable services requires more than a magic wand.  The reason is simple: if your starting point is your legacy applications, then you will simply be bolting a web service technology layer on top of your legacy API.  And that legacy API is built in the image of the silo applications.  Enter the wide gate of the legacy API, follow the broad path of generating service interfaces from existing code, and you will arrive at the siloed enterprise destruction that you thought you were escaping. The Straight and Narrow Path This past week I had the opportunity to learn how the FBI Criminal Justice Information Systems department has been transitioning from silo applications to a service inventory.  Lafe Hutcheson, IT Specialist in the architecture group and fellow attendee at an SOA Architect Certification Workshop, was my guide.  Lafe has survived the chaos of an SOA initiative, so it is not surprising that he was able to return from a US Army deployment to Kabul, Afghanistan with nary a scratch.  According to Lafe, building their service inventory is a three-phase process: Model a business process.  This requires intense collaboration between the IT and business wings of the organization, of course.  The FBI uses IBM Websphere tools to model the process with BPMN. Identify candidate services to facilitate the business process. Convert the BPMN to an executable BPEL orchestration, model and develop the services, and use a BPEL engine to run the process.  The FBI uses ActiveVOS for orchestration services. The 12 Step Program to End Your Legacy API Addiction Thomas Erl has documented a process for building a web service inventory that is quite similar to the FBI process. Erl’s process adds a technology architecture definition phase, which allows for the technology environment to influence the inventory blueprint.  For example, if you are using an enterprise service bus, you will probably not need to build your own utility services for logging or intermediate routing.  Erl also lists a service-oriented analysis phase that highlights the 12-step process of applying the principles of service orientation to modeling your services.  Erl depicts the modeling of a service inventory as an iterative process: model a business process, define the relevant technology architecture, define the service inventory blueprint, analyze the services, then model another business process, rinse and repeat.  (Astute readers will note that Erl’s diagram, restricted to analysis and modeling process, does not include the implementation phase that concludes the FBI service development methodology.) The service-oriented analysis phase is where you find the 12 steps that will free you from your legacy API addiction. In a nutshell, you identify the steps in the process that need services; identify the different types of services (agnostic entity services, service compositions, and utility services) that are required; apply service-orientation principles; and normalize the inventory into cohesive service models. Rather than discuss each of the 12 steps individually, I will close by simply referring my readers to Erl’s explanation.

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  • My First Iteration Zero

    - by onefloridacoder
    I recently watched a web cast that covered the idea of planning from the concept stage to the product backlog.  It was the first content I had seen related to Iteration Zero and it made a lot of sense from a planning and engagement perspective where the customer is concerned.  It illuminated some of the problems I’ve experienced with getting a large project of the ground.  The idea behind this is to just figure out get everyone to understand what needs to be constructed and to build the initial feature set from a *very* high level.  Once that happens other parts of the high level construction start to take place.  You end up with a feature list that describes what the business wants the system to do, and what it potentially may (or may not) interact with.  Low tech tools are used to create UI mockups that can be used as a starting point for some of the key UI pieces. Toward the end of the webcast they speaker introduced something that was new to me.  He referred to it as an executable skeleton or the steel thread.  The idea with this part of the webcast was to describe walking through the different mocked layers of the application.  Not all layers and collaborators are involved at this stage since it’s Iteration Zero, and each layer is either hard-coded or completely mocked to provide a 35K foot view of how the different layers layers work together.  So imagine two actors on each side of a layer diagram and the flow goes down from the upper left side down through a a consumer, thorough a service layer and then back up the service layer to the destination/actor. I would imagine much could be discussed moving through new/planned or existing/legacy layers, or a little of both to see what’s implied by the current high-level design. One part of the web cast has the business and design team creating the product box (think of your favorite cereal or toy box) with all of the features and even pictures laid out on the outside of the box.  The notion here is that if you handed this box to someone and told them your system was inside they would have an understanding of what the system would be able to do, or the features it could provide.    One of the interesting parts of the webcast was where the speaker described that he worked with a couple of groups in the same room and each group came up with a different product box – the point is that each group had a different idea of what the system was supposed to do.  At this point of the project I thought that to be valuable considering my experience has been that historically this has taken longer than a week to realize that the business unit and design teams see the high level solution differently.  Once my box is finished I plan on moving to the next stage of solution definition which is to plan the UI for this small application using Excel, to map out the UI elements.  I’m my own customer so it feels like cheating, but taking these slow deliberate steps have already provided a few learning opportunities.    So I resist the urge to load all of my user stories into my newly installed VS2010  TFS project and try to reduce or add to, the number of user stories and/or refine the high level estimates I’ve come up with so far.

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  • Silverlight Cream for January 15, 2011 -- #1028

    - by Dave Campbell
    Note to #1024 Swag Winners: I'm sending emails to the vendors Sunday night, thanks for your patience (a few of you have not contacted me yet) In this Issue: Ezequiel Jadib, Daniel Egan(-2-), Page Brooks, Jason Zander, Andrej Tozon, Marlon Grech, Jonathan van de Veen, Walt Ritscher, Jesse Liberty, Jeremy Likness, Sacha Barber, William E. Burrows, and WindowsPhoneGeek. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Building a Radar Control in Silverlight - Part 1" Page Brooks WP7: "Tutorial: Dynamic Tile Push Notification for Windows Phone 7" Jason Zander Training: "WP7 Unleashed Session I–Hands on Labs" Daniel Egan From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight Rough Cut Editor SP1 Released Ezequiel Jadib has an announcement about the Rough Cut Editor SP1 release, and he walks you through the content, installation and a bit of the initial use. WP7 Unleashed Session I–Hands on Labs Daniel Egan posted Part 1 of 3 of a new WP7 HOL ... video online and material to download... get 'em while they're hot! WP7 Saving to Media Library Daniel Egan has another post up as well on saving an image to the media library... not the update from Tim Heuer... all good info Building a Radar Control in Silverlight - Part 1 This freakin' cool post from Page Brooks is the first one of a series on building a 'Radar Control' in Silverlight ... seriously, go to the bottom and run the demo... I pretty much guarantee you'll take the next link which is download the code... don't forget to read the article too! Tutorial: Dynamic Tile Push Notification for Windows Phone 7 Jason Zander has a nice-looking tutorial up on dynamic tile notifications... good diagrams and discussion and plenty of code. Reactive.buffering.from event. Andrej Tozon is continuing his Reactive Extensions posts with this one on buffering: BufferWithTime and BufferWIthCount ... good stuff, good write-up, and the start of a WP7 game? MEFedMVVM with PRISM 4 Marlon Grech combines his MEFedMVVM with Prism 4, and says it was easy... check out the post and the code. Adventures while building a Silverlight Enterprise application part #40 Jonathan van de Veen has a discussion up about things you need to pay attention to as your project gets close to first deployment... lots of good information to think about Silverlight or not. Customize Windows 7 Preview pane for XAML files Walt Ritscher has a (very easy) XAML extension for Windows 7 that allows previewing of XAML files in an explorer window... as our UK friends say "Brilliant!" Entity Framework Code-First, oData & Windows Phone Client From the never-ending stream of posts that is Jesse Liberty comes this one on EF Code-First... so Jesse's describing Code-First and OData all wrapped up about a WP7 app Sterling Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 Database Triggers and Auto-Identity Sterling and Database Triggers sitting in a tree... woot for WP7 from Jeremy Likness... provides database solutions including Validation, Data-specific concerns such as 'last modified', and post-save processing ... all good, Jeremy! A Look At Fluent APIs Sacha Barber has a great post up that isn't necessarily Silverlight, but is it? ... we've been hearing a lot about Fluent APIs... read on to see what the buzz is. Windows Phone 7 - Part 3 - Final Application William E. Burrows has Part 3 of his WP7 tutorial series up... this one completing the Golf Handicap app by giving the user the ability to manage scores. User Control vs Custom Control in Silverlight for WP7 WindowsPhoneGeek has a great diagram and description-filled post up on User Controls and Custom Controls in WP7... good external links too. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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  • SNTP, why do you mock me?!

    - by Matthew
    --- SOLVED SEE EDIT 5 --- My w2k3 pdc is configured as an authoritative time server. Other servers on the domain are able to sync with it if I manually specify it in the peer list. By if I try to sync from flags 'domhier', it wont resync; I get the error message The computer did not resync because no time data was available. I can only think that it is not querying the pdc. I also tried setting the registry as shown here (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/193825). But no luck (I have not restarted the server, I am hoping I wont have to since it is the pdc) If you would like any further information on my config, please let me know. Edit 1: I have set the w32time service config AnnouceFlags to 0x05 as documented here www.krr.org/microsoft/authoritative_time_servers.php and a number of other places. The PDC syncs to an external time source (ntp). I can get the stripchart on the client from the pdc no problems. The loginserver for the host I am trying to configure is shown as the pdc. Edit 2: The packet capture has revealed something interesting. The client is contacting the correct server, and getting a valid response but I still get the same error message. Here is the NTP excerpt from the client to the server Flags: 11.. .... = Leap Indicator: alarm condition (clock not synchronized) (3) ..01 1... = Version number: NTP Version 3 (3) .... .011 = Mode: client (3) Peer Clock Stratum: unspecified or unavailable (0) Peer Polling Interval: 10 (1024 sec) Peer Clock Precision: 0.015625 sec Root Delay: 0.0000 sec Root Dispersion: 1.0156 sec Reference Clock ID: NULL Reference Clock Update Time: Sep 1, 2010 05:29:39.8170 UTC Originate Time Stamp: NULL Receive Time Stamp: NULL Transmit Time Stamp: Nov 8, 2010 01:44:44.1450 UTC Key ID: DC080000 Here is the reply NTP excerpt from the server to the client Flags: 0x1c 00.. .... = Leap Indicator: no warning (0) ..01 1... = Version number: NTP Version 3 (3) .... .100 = Mode: server (4) Peer Clock Stratum: secondary reference (3) Peer Polling Interval: 10 (1024 sec) Peer Clock Precision: 0.00001 sec Root Delay: 0.1484 sec Root Dispersion: 0.1060 sec Reference Clock ID: 192.189.54.17 Reference Clock Update Time: Nov 8,2010 01:18:04.6223 UTC Originate Time Stamp: Nov 8, 2010 01:44:44.1450 UTC Receive Time Stamp: Nov 8, 2010 01:46:44.1975 UTC Transmit Time Stamp: Nov 8, 2010 01:46:44.1975 UTC Key ID: 00000000 Edit 3: dumpreg for paramters on pdc Value Name Value Type Value Data ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ServiceMain REG_SZ SvchostEntry_W32Time ServiceDll REG_EXPAND_SZ C:\WINDOWS\system32\w32time.dll NtpServer REG_SZ bhvmmgt01.domain.com,0x1 Type REG_SZ AllSync and config Value Name Value Type Value Data -------------------------------------------------------------------------- LastClockRate REG_DWORD 156249 MinClockRate REG_DWORD 155860 MaxClockRate REG_DWORD 156640 FrequencyCorrectRate REG_DWORD 4 PollAdjustFactor REG_DWORD 5 LargePhaseOffset REG_DWORD 50000000 SpikeWatchPeriod REG_DWORD 900 HoldPeriod REG_DWORD 5 LocalClockDispersion REG_DWORD 10 EventLogFlags REG_DWORD 2 PhaseCorrectRate REG_DWORD 7 MinPollInterval REG_DWORD 6 MaxPollInterval REG_DWORD 10 UpdateInterval REG_DWORD 100 MaxNegPhaseCorrection REG_DWORD -1 MaxPosPhaseCorrection REG_DWORD -1 AnnounceFlags REG_DWORD 5 MaxAllowedPhaseOffset REG_DWORD 300 FileLogSize REG_DWORD 10000000 FileLogName REG_SZ C:\Windows\Temp\w32time.log FileLogEntries REG_SZ 0-300 Edit 4: Here are some notables from the ntp log file on the pdc. ReadConfig: failed. Use default one 'TimeJumpAuditOffset'=0x00007080 DomainHierachy: we are now the domain root. ClockDispln: we're a reliable time service with no time source: LS: 0, TN: 864000000000, WAIT: 86400000 Edit 5: F&^%ING SOLVED! Ok so I was reading about people with similar problems, some mentioned w32time server settings applied by GPO, but I tested this early on and there were no settings applied to this service by gpo. Others said that the reporting software may not be picking up some old gpo settings applied. So I searched the registry for all w32time instaces. I came across an interesting key that indicated there may be some other ntp software running on the server. Sure enough, I look through the installed software list and there the little F*&%ER is. Uninstalled and now working like a dream. FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU

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  • The Power to Control Power

    - by speakjava
    I'm currently working on a number of projects using embedded Java on the Raspberry Pi and Beagle Board.  These are nice and small, so don't take up much room on my desk as you can see in this picture. As you can also see I have power and network connections emerging from under my desk.  One of the (admittedly very minor) drawbacks of these systems is that they have no on/off switch.  Instead you insert or remove the power connector (USB for the RasPi, a barrel connector for the Beagle).  For the Beagle Board this can potentially be an issue; with the micro-SD card located right next to the connector it has been known for people to eject the card when trying to power off the board, which can be quite serious for the hardware. The alternative is obviously to leave the boards plugged in and then disconnect the power from the outlet.  Simple enough, but a picture of underneath my desk shows that this is not the ideal situation either. This made me think that it would be great if I could have some way of controlling a mains voltage outlet using a remote switch or, even better, from software via a USB connector.  A search revealed not much that fit my requirements, and anything that was close seemed very expensive.  Obviously the only way to solve this was to build my own.Here's my solution.  I decided my system would support both control mechanisms (remote physical switch and USB computer control) and be modular in its design for optimum flexibility.  I did a bit of searching and found a company in Hong Kong that were offering solid state relays for 99p plus shipping (£2.99, but still made the total price very reasonable).  These would handle up to 380V AC on the output side so more than capable of coping with the UK 240V supply.  The other great thing was that being solid state, the input would work with a range of 3-32V and required a very low current of 7.5mA at 12V.  For the USB control an Arduino board seemed the obvious low-cost and simple choice.  Given the current requirments of the relay, the Arduino would not require the additional power supply and could be powered just from the USB.Having secured the relays I popped down to Homebase for a couple of 13A sockets, RS for a box and an Arduino and Maplin for a toggle switch.  The circuit is pretty straightforward, as shown in the diagram (only one output is shown to make it as simple as possible).  Originally I used a 2 pole toggle switch to select the remote switch or USB control by switching the negative connections of the low voltage side.  Unfortunately, the resistance between the digital pins of the Arduino board was not high enough, so when using one of the remote switches it would turn on both of the outlets.  I changed to a 4 pole switch and isolated both positive and negative connections. IMPORTANT NOTE: If you want to follow my design, please be aware that it requires working with mains voltages.  If you are at all concerned with your ability to do this please consult a qualified electrician to help you.It was a tight fit, especially getting the Arduino in, but in the end it all worked.  The completed box is shown in the photos. The remote switch was pretty simple just requiring the squeezing of two rocker switches and a 9V battery into the small RS supplied box.  I repurposed a standard stereo cable with phono plugs to connect the switch box to the mains outlets.  I chopped off one set of plugs and wired it to the rocker switches.  The photo shows the RasPi and the Beagle board now controllable from the switch box on the desk. I've tested the Arduino side of things and this works fine.  Next I need to write some software to provide an interface for control of the outlets.  I'm thinking a JavaFX GUI would be in keeping with the total overkill style of this project.

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  • How to Draw Lines on the Screen

    - by Geertjan
    I've seen occasional questions on mailing lists about how to use the NetBeans Visual Library to draw lines, e.g., to make graphs or diagrams of various kinds by drawing on the screen. So, rather than drag/drop causing widgets to be added, you'd want widgets to be added on mouse clicks, and you'd want to be able to connect those widgets together somehow. Via the code below, you'll be able to click on the screen, which causes a dot to appear. When you have multiple dots, you can hold down the Ctrl key and connect them together. A guiding line appears to help you position the dots exactly in line with each other. When you go to File | Print, you'll be able to preview and print the diagram you've created. A picture that speaks 1000 words: Here's the code: public final class PlotterTopComponent extends TopComponent { private final Scene scene; private final LayerWidget baseLayer; private final LayerWidget connectionLayer; private final LayerWidget interactionLayer; public PlotterTopComponent() { initComponents(); setName(Bundle.CTL_PlotterTopComponent()); setToolTipText(Bundle.HINT_PlotterTopComponent()); setLayout(new BorderLayout()); this.scene = new Scene(); this.baseLayer = new LayerWidget(scene); this.interactionLayer = new LayerWidget(scene); this.connectionLayer = new LayerWidget(scene); scene.getActions().addAction(new SceneCreateAction()); scene.addChild(baseLayer); scene.addChild(interactionLayer); scene.addChild(connectionLayer); add(scene.createView(), BorderLayout.CENTER); putClientProperty("print.printable", true); } private class SceneCreateAction extends WidgetAction.Adapter { @Override public WidgetAction.State mousePressed(Widget widget, WidgetAction.WidgetMouseEvent event) { if (event.getClickCount() == 1) { if (event.getButton() == MouseEvent.BUTTON1 || event.getButton() == MouseEvent.BUTTON2) { baseLayer.addChild(new BlackDotWidget(scene, widget, event)); repaint(); return WidgetAction.State.CONSUMED; } } return WidgetAction.State.REJECTED; } } private class BlackDotWidget extends ImageWidget { public BlackDotWidget(Scene scene, Widget widget, WidgetAction.WidgetMouseEvent event) { super(scene); setImage(ImageUtilities.loadImage("org/netbeans/plotter/blackdot.gif")); setPreferredLocation(widget.convertLocalToScene(event.getPoint())); getActions().addAction( ActionFactory.createExtendedConnectAction( connectionLayer, new BlackDotConnectProvider())); getActions().addAction( ActionFactory.createAlignWithMoveAction( baseLayer, interactionLayer, ActionFactory.createDefaultAlignWithMoveDecorator())); } } private class BlackDotConnectProvider implements ConnectProvider { @Override public boolean isSourceWidget(Widget source) { return source instanceof BlackDotWidget && source != null ? true : false; } @Override public ConnectorState isTargetWidget(Widget src, Widget trg) { return src != trg && trg instanceof BlackDotWidget ? ConnectorState.ACCEPT : ConnectorState.REJECT; } @Override public boolean hasCustomTargetWidgetResolver(Scene arg0) { return false; } @Override public Widget resolveTargetWidget(Scene arg0, Point arg1) { return null; } @Override public void createConnection(Widget source, Widget target) { ConnectionWidget conn = new ConnectionWidget(scene); conn.setTargetAnchor(AnchorFactory.createCircularAnchor(target, 10)); conn.setSourceAnchor(AnchorFactory.createCircularAnchor(source, 10)); connectionLayer.addChild(conn); } } ... ... ... Note: The code above was written based on the Visual Library tutorials on the NetBeans Platform Learning Trail, in particular via the "ConnectScene" sample in the "test.connect" package, which is part of the very long list of Visual Library samples referred to in the Visual Library tutorials on the NetBeans Platform Learning Trail. The next steps are to add a reconnect action and an action to delete a dot by double-clicking on it. Would be interesting to change the connecting line so that the length of the line were to be shown, i.e., as you draw a line from one dot to another, you'd see a constantly changing number representing the current distance of the connecting line. Also, once lines are connected to form a rectangle, would be cool to be able to write something within that rectangle. Then one could really create diagrams, which would be pretty cool.

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  • Construction Paper, Legos, and Architectural Modeling

    I can remember as a kid playing with construction paper and Legos to explore my imagination. Through my exploration I was able to build airplanes, footballs, guns, and more, out of paper. Additionally I could create entire cities, robots, or anything else I could image out of Legos.  These toys, I now realize were in fact tools that gave me an opportunity to explore my ideas in the physical world through the use of modeling.  My imagination was allowed to run wild as I, unknowingly at the time, made design decisions that directly affected the models I was building from the raw materials.  To prove my point further, I can remember building a paper airplane that seemed to go nowhere when I tried to throw it. So I decided to attach a paper clip to the plane before I decided to throw it the next time to test my concept that by adding more weight to the plane that it would fly better and for longer distances. The paper airplane allowed me to model my design decision through the use of creating an artifact in that I created a paper airplane that was carrying extra weight through the incorporation of the paper clip in to the design. Also, I remember using Legos to build all sorts of creations, and these creations became artifacts of my imagination. As I further and further defined my Lego creations through the process of playing I was able to create elaborate artifacts of my imagination. These artifacts represented design decision I had made in the evolution of my creation through my child like design process. In some form or fashion the artifacts I created as a kid are very similar to the artifacts that I create when I model a software architectural concept or a software design in that the process of making decisions is directly translated in to a tangible model in the form of an architectural model. Architectural models have been defined as artifacts that depict design decisions of a system’s architecture.  The act of creating architectural models is the act of architectural modeling. Furthermore, architectural modeling is the process of creating a physical model based architectural concepts and documenting these design decisions. In the process of creating models, the standard notation used is Architectural modeling notation. This notation is the primary method of capturing the essence of design decisions regarding architecture.  Modeling notations can vary based on the need and intent of a project; typically they range from natural language to a diagram based notation. Currently, Unified Markup Language (UML) is the industry standard in terms of architectural modeling notation  because allows for architectures to be defined through a series of boxes, lines, arrows and other basic symbols that encapsulate design designs in to virtual components, connectors, configurations and interfaces.  Furthermore UML allows for additional break down of models through the use of natural language as to explain each section of the model in plain English. One of the major factors in architectural modeling is to define what is to be modeled. As a basic rule of thumb, I tend to model architecture based on the complexity of systems or sub sub-systems of architecture. Another key factor is the level of detail that is actually needed for a model. For example if I am modeling a system for a CEO to view then the low level details will be omitted. In comparison, if I was modeling a system for another engineer to actually implement I would include as much detailed information as I could to help the engineer implement my design.

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  • The Best Data Integration for Exadata Comes from Oracle

    - by maria costanzo
    Oracle Data Integrator and Oracle GoldenGate offer unique and optimized data integration solutions for Oracle Exadata. For example, customers that choose to feed their data warehouse or reporting database with near real-time throughout the day, can do so without decreasing  performance or availability of source and target systems. And if you ask why real-time, the short answer is: in today’s fast-paced, always-on world, business decisions need to use more relevant, timely data to be able to act fast and seize opportunities. A longer response to "why real-time" question can be found in a related blog post. If we look at the solution architecture, as shown on the diagram below,  Oracle Data Integrator and Oracle GoldenGate are both uniquely designed to take full advantage of the power of the database and to eliminate unnecessary middle-tier components. Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) is the best bulk data loading solution for Exadata. ODI is the only ETL platform that can leverage the full power of Exadata, integrate directly on the Exadata machine without any additional hardware, and by far provides the simplest setup and fastest overall performance on an Exadata system. We regularly see customers achieving a 5-10 times boost when they move their ETL to ODI on Exadata. For  some companies the performance gain is even much higher. For example a large insurance company did a proof of concept comparing ODI vs a traditional ETL tool (one of the market leaders) on Exadata. The same process that was taking 5hrs and 11 minutes to complete using the competing ETL product took 7 minutes and 20 seconds with ODI. Oracle Data Integrator was 42 times faster than the conventional ETL when running on Exadata.This shows that Oracle's own data integration offering helps you to gain the most out of your Exadata investment with a truly optimized solution. GoldenGate is the best solution for streaming data from heterogeneous sources into Exadata in real time. Oracle GoldenGate can also be used together with Data Integrator for hybrid use cases that also demand non-invasive capture, high-speed real time replication. Oracle GoldenGate enables real-time data feeds from heterogeneous sources non-invasively, and delivers to the staging area on the target Exadata system. ODI runs directly on Exadata to use the database engine power to perform in-database transformations. Enterprise Data Quality is integrated with Oracle Data integrator and enables ODI to load trusted data into the data warehouse tables. Only Oracle can offer all these technical benefits wrapped into a single intelligence data warehouse solution that runs on Exadata. Compared to traditional ETL with add-on CDC this solution offers: §  Non-invasive data capture from heterogeneous sources and avoids any performance impact on source §  No mid-tier; set based transformations use database power §  Mini-batches throughout the day –or- bulk processing nightly which means maximum availability for the DW §  Integrated solution with Enterprise Data Quality enables leveraging trusted data in the data warehouse In addition to Starwood Hotels and Resorts, Morrison Supermarkets, United Kingdom’s fourth-largest food retailer, has seen the power of this solution for their new BI platform and shared their story with us. Morrisons needed to analyze data across a large number of manufacturing, warehousing, retail, and financial applications with the goal to achieve single view into operations for improved customer service. The retailer deployed Oracle GoldenGate and Oracle Data Integrator to bring new data into Oracle Exadata in near real-time and replicate the data into reporting structures within the data warehouse—extending visibility into operations. Using Oracle's data integration offering for Exadata, Morrisons produced financial reports in seconds, rather than minutes, and improved staff productivity and agility. You can read more about Morrison’s success story here and hear from Starwood here. From an Irem Radzik article.

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  • Musings on the launch of SQL Monitor

    - by Phil Factor
    For several years, I was responsible for the smooth running of a large number of enterprise database servers. We ran a network monitoring tool that was primitive by today’s standards but which performed the useful function of polling every system, including all the Servers in my charge. It ran a configurable script for each service that you needed to monitor that was merely required to return one of a number of integer values. These integer values represented the pain level of the service, from 10 (“hurtin’ real bad”) to 1 (“Things is great”). Not only could you program the visual appearance of each server on the network diagram according to the value of the integer, but you could even opt to run a sound file. Very soon, we had a large TFT Screen, high on the wall of the server room, with every server represented by an icon, and a speaker next to it that would give out a series of grunts, groans, snores, shrieks and funeral marches, depending on the problem. One glance at the display, and you could dive in with iSQL/QA/SSMS and check what was going on with your favourite diagnostic tools. If you saw a server icon burst into flames on the screen or droop like a jelly, you dropped your mug of coffee to do it.  It was real fun, but I remember it more for the huge difference it made to have that real-time visibility into how your servers are performing. The management soon stopped making jokes about the real reason we wanted the TFT screen. (It rendered DVDs beautifully they said; particularly flesh-tints). If you are instantly alerted when things start to go wrong, then there was a good chance you could fix it before being alerted to the problem by the users of the system.  There is a world of difference between this sort of tool, one that gives whoever is ‘on watch’ in the server room the first warning of a potential problem on one of any number of servers, and the breed of tool that attempts to provide some sort of prosthetic DBA Brain. I like to get the early warning, to get the right information to help to diagnose a problem: No auto-fix, but just the information. I prefer to leave the task of ascertaining the exact cause of a problem to my own routines, custom code, intuition and forensic instincts. A simulated aircraft cockpit doesn’t do anything for me, especially before I know where I should be flying.  Time has moved on, and that TFT screen is now, with SQL Monitor, an iPad or any other mobile or static device that can support a browser. Rather than trying to reproduce the conceptual topology of the servers, it lists them in their groups so as to give a display that scales with the increasing number of databases you monitor.  It gives the history of the major events and trends for the servers. It gives the icons and colours that you can spot out of the corner of your eye, but goes on to give you just enough information in drill-down to give you a much clearer idea of where to look with your DBA tools and routines. It doesn't swamp you with information.  Whereas a few server and database-level problems are pretty easily fixed, others depend on judgement and experience to sort out.  Although the idea of an application that automates the bulk of a DBA’s skills is attractive to many, I can’t see it happening soon. SQL Server’s complexity increases faster than the panaceas can be created. In the meantime, I believe that the best way of helping  DBAs  is to make the monitoring process as simple and effective as possible,  and provide the right sort of detail and ‘evidence’ to allow them to decide on the fix. In the end, it is still down to the skill of the DBA.

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  • Replicating between Cloud and On-Premises using Oracle GoldenGate

    - by Ananth R. Tiru
    Do you have applications running on the cloud that you need to connect with the on premises systems. The most likely answer to this question is an astounding YES!  If so, then you understand the importance of keep the data fresh at all times across the cloud and on-premises environments. This is also one of the key focus areas for the new GoldenGate 12c release which we announced couple of week ago via a press release. Most enterprises have spent years avoiding the data “silos” that inhibit productivity. For example, an enterprise which has adopted a CRM strategy could be relying on an on-premises based marketing application used for developing and nurturing leads. At the same time it could be using a SaaS based Sales application to create opportunities and quotes. The sales and the marketing teams which use these systems need to be able to access and share the data in a reliable and cohesive way. This example can be extended to other applications areas such as HR, Supply Chain, and Finance and the demands the users place on getting a consistent view of the data. When it comes to moving data in hybrid environments some of the key requirements include minimal latency, reliability and security: Data must remain fresh. As data ages it becomes less relevant and less valuable—day-old data is often insufficient in today’s competitive landscape. Reliability must be guaranteed despite system or connectivity issues that can occur between the cloud and on-premises instances. Security is a key concern when replicating between cloud and on-premises instances. There are several options to consider when replicating between the cloud and on-premises instances. Option 1 – Secured network established between the cloud and on-premises A secured network is established between the cloud and on-premises which enables the applications (including replication software) running on the cloud and on-premises to have seamless connectivity to other applications irrespective of where they are physically located. Option 2 – Restricted network established between the cloud and on-premises A restricted network is established between the cloud and on-premises instances which enable certain ports (required by replication) be opened on both the cloud and on the on-premises instances and white lists the IP addresses of the cloud and on-premises instances. Option 3 – Restricted network access from on-premises and cloud through HTTP proxy This option can be considered when the ports required by the applications (including replication software) are not open and the cloud instance is not white listed on the on-premises instance. This option of tunneling through HTTP proxy may be only considered when proper security exceptions are obtained. Oracle GoldenGate Oracle GoldenGate is used for major Fortune 500 companies and other industry leaders worldwide to support mission-critical systems for data availability and integration. Oracle GoldenGate addresses the requirements for ensuring data consistency between cloud and on-premises instances, thus facilitating the business process to run effectively and reliably. The architecture diagram below illustrates the scenario where the cloud and the on-premises instance are connected using GoldenGate through a secured network In the above scenario, Oracle GoldenGate is installed and configured on both the cloud and the on-premises instances. On the cloud instance Oracle GoldenGate is installed and configured on the machine where the database instance can be accessed. Oracle GoldenGate can be configured for unidirectional or bi-directional replication between the cloud and on premises instances. The specific configuration details of Oracle GoldenGate processes will depend upon the option selected for establishing connectivity between the cloud and on-premises instances. The knowledge article (ID - 1588484.1) titled ' Replicating between Cloud and On-Premises using Oracle GoldenGate' discusses in detail the options for replicating between the cloud and on-premises instances. The article can be found on My Oracle Support. To learn more about Oracle GoldenGate 12c register for our launch webcast where we will go into these new features in more detail.   You may also want to download our white paper "Oracle GoldenGate 12c Release 1 New Features Overview" I would love to hear your requirements for replicating between on-premises and cloud instances, as well as your comments about the strategy discussed in the knowledge article to address your needs. Please post your comments in this blog or in the Oracle GoldenGate public forum - https://forums.oracle.com/community/developer/english/business_intelligence/system_management_and_integration/goldengate

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