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• Would having an undergraduate certificate in Computer Science help me get employed as a computer programmer? [on hold]

  - by JDneverSleeps

  I am wondering how would employers perceive the Universtiy Certificate in Computing and Information Systems offered by Athabasca University (a distance education institution... The university is legit and accredited by the Government of Alberta, Canada). I already have a BSc in Statistics from University of Alberta (a classic brick and mortar public university in Alberta, Canada)...so I can state in my resume that I have a "university degree"..... Luckily, I was able to secure a very good employment in my field after the graduation from the U of A. The main reason why I am interested in taking the certificate program through Athabasca is because knowing how to program can increase the chance for promotion in my current job. I also believe that if something turns out bad in my current job and if I ever need to look for a new place to work, having the certificate in computer science will help me get employed as a computer programmer (i.e. my choice for the new job wouldn't be restricted to the field of Statistics). Athabasca University is claiming that the certificate program is meant to be equivalent to the undergraduate minor in computing science. I carefully looked at the certificate's curriculum and as far as I am concerned, the certificate program does have the same level of rigour as the undergraduate minor in Computer Science programs offered by other Canadian universities. I am also confident that the certificate program will get me to pick up enough skills/background to start a career as a computer programmer. The reasons why I am not 100% sure on getting the certificate is worth the tuition are: Athabasca University is a distance education institution (accredited by government but still) The credential that I will receive is "university certificate", not a "undergraduate degree" Do you think it's a good idea for me to pursue the certificate, given the two facts above? again, I already have my Bachelor's degree - although it is not in CS Thanks,

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• Can someone explain the (reasons for the) implications of colum vs row major in multiplication/concatenation?

  - by sebf

  I am trying to learn how to construct view and projection matrices, and keep reaching difficulties in my implementation owing to my confusion about the two standards for matrices. I know how to multiply a matrix, and I can see that transposing before multiplication would completely change the result, hence the need to multiply in a different order. What I don't understand though is whats meant by only 'notational convention' - from the articles here and here the authors appear to assert that it makes no difference to how the matrix is stored, or transferred to the GPU, but on the second page that matrix is clearly not equivalent to how it would be laid out in memory for row-major; and if I look at a populated matrix in my program I see the translation components occupying the 4th, 8th and 12th elements. Given that: "post-multiplying with column-major matrices produces the same result as pre-multiplying with row-major matrices. " Why in the following snippet of code: Matrix4 r = t3 * t2 * t1; Matrix4 r2 = t1.Transpose() * t2.Transpose() * t3.Transpose(); Does r != r2 and why does pos3 != pos for: Vector4 pos = wvpM * new Vector4(0f, 15f, 15f, 1); Vector4 pos3 = wvpM.Transpose() * new Vector4(0f, 15f, 15f, 1); Does the multiplication process change depending on whether the matrices are row or column major, or is it just the order (for an equivalent effect?) One thing that isn't helping this become any clearer, is that when provided to DirectX, my column major WVP matrix is used successfully to transform vertices with the HLSL call: mul(vector,matrix) which should result in the vector being treated as row-major, so how can the column major matrix provided by my math library work?

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• "Unmet Dependencies" problem when trying apt-get install

  - by GChorn

  Anytime I try to install python packages using the command: sudo apt-get install python-package I get the following output: Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done You might want to run 'apt-get -f install' to correct these: The following packages have unmet dependencies: linux-headers-generic : Depends: linux-headers-3.2.0-36-generic but it is not going to be installed linux-headers-generic-pae : Depends: linux-headers-3.2.0-36-generic-pae but it is not going to be installed linux-image-generic : Depends: linux-image-3.2.0-36-generic but it is not going to be installed E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or specify a solution). This seems to have started when these same three packages showed up in Ubuntu's Update Manager and kicked an error when I tried to install them there. Based on the suggestion in the output above, I tried running: sudo apt-get -f install But this only gave me several instances of the following error: dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/linux-image-3.2.0-36-generic_3.2.0-36.57_i386.deb (--unpack): unable to create `/lib/modules/3.2.0-36-generic/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/ath/carl9170/carl9170.ko.dpkg-new' (while processing `./lib/modules/3.2.0-36-generic/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/ath/carl9170/carl9170.ko'): No space left on device Now maybe I'm way off-base here, but I'm wondering if the error could be coming from the "No space left on device" part? The thing is, I'm running Ubuntu as a VirtualBox VM but I've got it set to dynamically increase its virtual hard drive space as needed, so why am I still getting this error? Here's my output when I use dh -f: Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda1 6.9G 5.7G 869M 88% / udev 494M 4.0K 494M 1% /dev tmpfs 201M 784K 200M 1% /run none 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/lock none 501M 76K 501M 1% /run/shm VB_Shared_Folder 466G 271G 195G 59% /media/sf_VB_Shared_Folder When I perform sudo apt-get -f install and the system says, After this operation, 192 MB of additional disk space will be used. Does that mean 192 MB of my virtual machine's current memory, or 192 MB on top of the rest of my free space? As I said, my machine normally dynamically allocates additional memory from the host machine, so I don't see why there would be memory restrictions at all...

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• Do there exist programming languages where a variable can truly know its own name?

  - by Job

  In PHP and Python one can iterate over the local variables and, if there is only once choice where the value matches, you could say that you know what the variable's name is, but this does not always work. Machine code does not have variable names. C compiles to assembly and does not have any native reflection capabilities, so it would not know it's name. (Edit: per Anton's answer the pre-processor can know the variable's name). Do there exist programming languages where a variable would know it's name? It gets tricky if you do something like b = a and b does not become a copy of a but a reference to the same place. EDIT: Why in the world would you want this? I can think of one example: error checking that can survive automatic refactoring. Consider this C# snippet: private void CheckEnumStr(string paramName, string paramValue) { if (paramName != "pony" && paramName != "horse") { string exceptionMessage = String.Format( "Unexpected value '{0}' of the parameter named '{1}'.", paramValue, paramName); throw new ArgumentException(exceptionMessage); } } ... CheckEnumStr("a", a); // Var 'a' does not know its name - this will not survive naive auto-refactoring There are other libraries provided by Microsoft and others that allow to check for errors (sorry the names have escaped me). I have seen one library which with the help of closures/lambdas can accomplish error checking that can survive refactoring, but it does not feel idiomatic. This would be one reason why I might want a language where a variable knows its name.

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• Top 4 Lame Tech Blogging Posts

  - by jkauffman

  From a consumption point of view, tech blogging is a great resource for one-off articles on niche subjects. If you spend any time reading tech blogs, you may find yourself running into several common, useless types of posts tech bloggers slip into. Some of these lame posts may just be natural due to common nerd psychology, and some others are probably due to lame, lemming-like laziness. I’m sure I’ll do my fair share of fitting the mold, but I quickly get bored when I happen upon posts that hit these patterns without any real purpose or personal touches. 1. The Content Regurgitation Posts This is a common pattern fueled by the starving pan-handlers in the web traffic economy. These are posts that are terse opinions or addendums to an existing post. I commonly see these involve huge block quotes from the linked article which almost always produces over 50% of the post itself. I’ve accidentally gone to these posts when I’m knowingly only interested in the source material. Web links can degrade as well, so if the source link is broken, then, well, I’m pretty steamed. I see this occur with simple opinions on technologies, Stack Overflow solutions, or various tech news like posts from Microsoft. It’s not uncommon to go to the linked article and see the author announce that he “added a blog post” as a response or summary of the topic. This is just rude, but those who do it are probably aware of this. It’s a matter of winning that sweet, juicy web traffic. I doubt this leeching is fooling anybody these days. I would like to rally human dignity and urge people to avoid these types of posts, and just leave a comment on the source material. 2. The “Sorry I Haven’t Posted In A While” Posts This one is far too common. You’ll most likely see this quote somewhere in the body of the offending post: I have been really busy. If the poster is especially guilt-ridden, you’ll see a few volleys of excuses. Here are some common reasons I’ve seen, which I’ll list from least to most painfully awkward. Out of town Vague allusions to personal health problems (these typically includes phrases like “sick”, “treatment'”, and “all better now!”) “Personal issues” (which I usually read as "divorce”) Graphic or specific personal health problems (maximum awkwardness potential is achieved if you see links to charity fund websites) I can’t help but to try over-analyzing why this occurs. Personally, I see this an an amalgamation of three plain factors: Life happens Us nerds are duty-driven, and driven to guilt at personal inefficiencies Tech blogs can become personal journals I don’t think we can do much about the first two, but on the third I think we could certainly contain our urges. I’m a pretty boring guy and, whether or I like it or not, I have an unspoken duty to protect the world from hearing about my unremarkable existence. Nobody cares what kind of sandwich I’m eating. Similarly, if I disappear for a while, it’s unlikely that anybody who happens upon my blog would care why. Rest assured, if I stop posting for a while due to a vasectomy, you will be the first to know. 3. The “At A Conference”, or “Conference Review” Posts I don’t know if I’m like everyone else on this one, but I have never been successfully interested in these posts. It even sounds like a good idea: if I can’t make it to a particular conference (like the KCDC this year), wouldn’t I be interested in a concentrated summary of events? Apparently, no! Within this realm, I’ve never read a post by a blogger that held my interest. What really baffles is is that, for whatever reason, I am genuinely engaged and interested when talking to someone in person regarding the same topic. I have noticed the same phenomenon when hearing about others’ vacations. If someone sends me an email about their vacation, I gloss over it and forget about it quickly. In contrast, if I’m speaking to that individual in person about their vacation, I’m actually interested. I’m unsure why the written medium eradicates the intrigue. I was raised by a roaming pack of friendly wild video games, so that may be a factor. 4. The “Top X Number of Y’s That Z” Posts I’ve seen this one crop up a lot more in the past few of years. Here are some fabricated examples: 5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Code Top 7 Good Habits Programmers Learn From Experience The 8 Things to Consider When Giving Estimates Top 4 Lame Tech Blogging Posts These are attention-grabbing headlines, and I’d assume they rack up hits. In fact, I enjoy a good number of these. But, I’ve been drawn to articles like this just to find an endless list of identically formatted posts on the blog’s archive sidebar. Often times these posts have overlapping topics, too. These types of posts give the impression that the author has given thought to prioritize and organize the points as a result of a comprehensive consideration of a particular topic. Did the author really weigh all the possibilities when identifying the “Top 4 Lame Tech Blogging Patterns”? Unfortunately, probably not. What a tool. To reiterate, I still enjoy the format, but I feel it is abused. Nowadays, I’m pretty skeptical when approaching posts in this format. If these trends continue, my brain will filter these blog posts out just as effectively as it ignores the encroaching “do xxx with this one trick” advertisements. Conclusion To active blog readers, I hope my guide has served you precious time in being able to identify lame blog posts at a glance. Save time and energy by skipping over the chaff of the internet! And if you author a blog, perhaps my insight will help you to avoid the occasional urge to produce these needless filler posts.

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• Finding the problem on a partially succeeded build

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  Now that I have the Build failing because of a genuine bug and not just because of a test framework failure, lets see if we can trace through to finding why the first test in our new application failed. Lets look at the build and see if we can see why there is a red cross on it. First, lets open that build list. On Team Explorer Expand your Team Project Collection | Team Project and then Builds. Double click the offending build. Figure: Opening the Build list is a key way to see what the current state of your software is.   Figure: A test is failing, but we can now view the Test Results to find the problem      Figure: You can quite clearly see that the test has failed with “The device is not ready”. To me the “The Device is not ready” smacks of a System.IO exception, but it passed on my local computer, so why not on the build server? Its a FaultException so it is most likely coming from the Service and not the client, so lets take a look at the client method that the test is calling: bool IProfileService.SaveDefaultProjectFile(string strComputerName) { ProjectFile file = new ProjectFile() { ProjectFileName = strComputerName + "_" + System.DateTime.Now.ToString("yyyyMMddhhmmsss") + ".xml", ConnectionString = "persist security info=False; pooling=False; data source=(local); application name=SSW.SQLDeploy.vshost.exe; integrated security=SSPI; initial catalog=SSWSQLDeployNorthwindSample", DateCreated = System.DateTime.Now, DateUpdated = System.DateTime.Now, FolderPath = @"C:\Program Files\SSW SQL Deploy\SampleData\", IsComplete=false, Version = "1.3", NewDatabase = true, TimeOut = 5, TurnOnMSDE = false, Mode="AutomaticMode" }; string strFolderPath = "D:\\"; //LocalSettings.ProjectFileBasePath; string strFileName = strFolderPath + file.ProjectFileName; try { using (FileStream fs = new FileStream(strFileName, FileMode.Create)) { DataContractSerializer serializer = new DataContractSerializer(typeof(ProjectFile)); using (XmlDictionaryWriter writer = XmlDictionaryWriter.CreateTextWriter(fs)) { serializer.WriteObject(writer, file); } } } catch (Exception ex) { //TODO: Log the exception throw ex; return false; } return true; } Figure: You can see on lines 9 and 18 that there are calls being made to specific folders and disks. What is wrong with this code? What assumptions mistakes could the developer have made to make this look OK: That every install would be to “C:\Program Files\SSW SQL Deploy” That every computer would have a “D:\\” That checking in code at 6pm because the had to go home was a good idea. lets solve each of these problems: We are in a web service… lets store data within the web root. So we can call “Server.MapPath(“~/App_Data/SSW SQL Deploy\SampleData”) instead. Never reference an explicit path. If you need some storage for your application use IsolatedStorage. Shelve your code instead. What else could have been done? Code review before check-in – The developer should have shelved their code and asked another dev to look at it. Use Defensive programming – Make sure that any code that has the possibility of failing has checks. Any more options? Let me know and I will add them. What do we do? The correct things to do is to add a Bug to the backlog, but as this is probably going to be fixed in sprint, I will add it directly to the sprint backlog. Right click on the failing test Select “Create Work Item | Bug” Figure: Create an associated bug to add to the backlog. Set the values for the Bug making sure that it goes into the right sprint and Area. Make your steps to reproduce as explicit as possible, but “See test” is valid under these circumstances.   Figure: Add it to the correct Area and set the Iteration to the Area name or the Sprint if you think it will be fixed in Sprint and make sure you bring it up at the next Scrum Meeting. Note: make sure you leave the “Assigned To” field blank as in Scrum team members sign up for work, you do not give it to them. The developer who broke the test will most likely either sign up for the bug, or say that they are stuck and need help. Note: Visual Studio has taken care of associating the failing test with the Bug. Save… Technorati Tags: WCF,MSTest,MSBuild,Team Build 2010,Team Test 2010,Team Build,Team Test

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• Initial Review - Mastering Unreal Technology I: Introduction to Level Design with Unreal Engine 3

  - by Matt Christian

  Recently I purchased 3 large volumes on using the Unreal 3 Engine to create levels and custom games.  This past weekend I cracked the spine of the first and started reading.  Here are my early impressions (I'm ~250 pages into it, with appendices it's about 900). Pros Interestingly, the book starts with an overview of the Unreal engines leading up to Unreal 3 (including Gears of War) and follows with some discussion on planning a mod and what goes into the game development process.  This is nice for an intro to the book and is much preferred rather than a simple chapter detailing what is on the included CD, how to install and setup UnrealEd, etc...  While the chapter on Unreal history and planning can be considered 'fluff', it's much less 'fluffy' than most books provide. I need to mention one thing here that is pretty crucial in the way I'm going to continue reviewing this book.  Most technical books like this are used as a shelf reference; as a thick volume you use for looking up techniques every now and again.  Even so, I prefer reading from cover to cover, including chapters I may already be knowledgable on (I'm sure this is typical for most people).  If there was a chapter on installing UnrealEd (the previously mentioned 'fluff'), I would probably force myself to read it, even though I've installed the game and engine multiple times on different systems. Chapter 3 is where we really get to the introduction piece of UnrealEd, creating your first basic level.  This large chapter details creating two small rooms, adding static meshes, adding lighting, creating and adding particle emitters, creating a door that animates with Unreal Matinee and Kismet, static meshes with physics, and other little additions to make your level look less beginner.  This really is a chapter that overviews the entire rest of the book, as each chapter following details the creation and intermediate usages of Static Meshes, Materials, Lighting, etc... One other very nice part to this book is the way the tutorials are setup.  Each tutorial builds off the previous and all are step-by-step.  If you haven't completed one yet, you can find all the starting files on the CD that comes with the book. Cons While the description of the overview chapter (Chapter 3) is fresh in your mind, let me start the cons by saying this chapter is setup extremely confusing for the noob.  At one point, you end up creating a door mesh and setting it up as a InteropMesh so that it is ready to be animated, only to switch to particles and spend a good portion of time working on a different piece of the level.  Yes, this is actually how I develop my levels (jumping back and forth), though it's very odd for a book to jump out of sequence. The next item might be a positive or a negative depending on your skill level with UnrealEd.  Most of the introduction to the editor layout is found in one of the Appendices instead of before Chapter 3.  For new readers, this might lead to confusion as Appendix A would typically be read between Chapter 2 and 3.  However, this is a positive for those with some experience in UnrealEd as they don't have to force themselves through a 'learn every editor button' chapter.  I'm listing this in the Cons section as the book is 'Introduction to...' and is probably going to be directed toward a lot of very beginner developers. Finally, there's a lack of general description to a lot of the underlying engine and what each piece in UnrealEd is or does.  Sometimes you'll be performing Tutorial after Tutorial with barely a paragraph in between describing ANY of what you've just done.  Tutorial 1.1 Step 6 says to press Button X, so you do.  But why?  This is in part a problem with the structure of the tutorials rather than the content of the book.  Since the tutorials are so focused on a step-by-step (or procedural) description of a process, you learn the process and not why you're doing that.  For example, you might learn how to size a material to a surface, but will only learn what buttons to press and not what each one does. This becomes extremely apparent in the chapter on Static Meshes as most of the chapter is spent in 3D Studio Max.  Since there are books on 3DSM and modelling, the book really only tells you the steps and says to go grab a book on modelling if you're really interested in 3DSM.  Again, I've learned the process to develop my own meshes in 3DSM, but I don't know the why behind the steps. Conclusion So far the book is very good though I would have a hard time recommending it to a complete beginner.  I would suggest anyone looking at this book (obviously including the other 2, more advanced volumes) to pick up a copy of UDK or Unreal 3 (available online or via download services such as Steam) and watch some online tutorials and play with it first.  You'll find plenty of online videos available that were created by the authors and may suit as a better introduction to the editor.

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• How to Automate your Database Documentation

  - by Jonathan Hickford

  In my previous post, “Automating Deployments with SQL Compare command line” I looked at how teams can automate the deployment and post deployment validation of SQL Server databases using the command line versions of Red Gate tools. In this post I’m looking at another use for the command line tools, namely using them to generate up-to-date documentation with every database change. There are many reasons why up-to-date documentation is valuable. For example when somebody new has to work on or administer a database for the first time, or when a new database comes into service. Having database documentation reduces the risks of making incorrect decisions when making changes. Documentation is very useful to business intelligence analysts when writing reports, for example in SSRS. There are a couple of great examples talking about why up to date documentation is valuable on this site:  Database Documentation – Lands of Trolls: Why and How? and Database Documentation Using SQL Doc. The short answer is that it can save you time and reduce risk when you need that most! SQL Doc is a fast simple tool that automatically generates database documentation. It can create documents in HTML, Word or pdf files. The documentation contains information about object definitions and dependencies, along with any other information you want to associate with each object. The SQL Doc GUI, which is included in Red Gate’s SQL Developer Bundle and SQL Toolbelt, allows you to add additional notes to objects, and customise which objects are shown in the docs.  These settings can be saved as a .sqldoc project file. The SQL Doc command line can use this project file to automatically update the documentation every time the database is changed, ensuring that documentation that is always up to date. The simplest way to keep documentation up to date is probably to use a scheduled task to run a script every day. However if you have a source controlled database, or are using a Continuous Integration (CI) server or a build server, it may make more sense to use that instead. If  you’re using SQL Source Control or SSDT Database Projects to help version control your database, you can automatically update the documentation after each change is made to the source control repository that contains your database. To get this automation in place,  you can use the functionality of a Continuous Integration (CI) server, which can trigger commands to run when a source control repository has changed. A CI server will also capture and save the documentation that is created as an artifact, so you can always find the exact documentation for a specific version of the database. This forms an always up to date data dictionary. If you don’t already have a CI server in place there are several you can use, such as the free open source Jenkins or the free starter editions of TeamCity. I won’t cover setting these up in this article, but there is information about using CI servers for automating database tasks on the Red Gate Database Delivery webpage. You may be interested in Red Gate’s SQL CI utility (part of the SQL Automation Pack) which is an easy way to update a database with the latest changes from source control. The PowerShell example below shows how to create the documentation from a database. That database might be your integration database or a shared development database that is always up to date with the latest changes. $serverName = "server\instance" $databaseName = "databaseName" # If you want to document multiple databases use a comma separated list $userName = "username" $password = "password" # Path to SQLDoc.exe $SQLDocPath = "C:\Program Files (x86)\Red Gate\SQL Doc 3\SQLDoc.exe" $arguments = @( "/server:$($serverName)", "/database:$($databaseName)", "/username:$($userName)", "/password:$($password)", "/filetype:html", "/outputfolder:.", # "/project:$args[0]", # If you already have a .sqldoc project file you can pass it as an argument to this script. Values in the project will be overridden with any options set on the command line "/name:$databaseName Report", "/copyrightauthor:$([Environment]::UserName)" ) write-host $arguments & $SQLDocPath $arguments There are several options you can set on the command line to vary how your documentation is created. For example, you can document multiple databases or exclude certain types of objects. In the example above, we set the name of the report to match the database name, and use the current Windows user as the documentation author. For more examples of how you can customise the report from the command line please see the SQL Doc command line documentation If you already have a .sqldoc project file, or wish to further customise the report by including or excluding specific objects, you can use this project on the command line. Any settings you specify on the command line will override the defaults in the project. For details of what you can customise in the project please see the SQL Doc project documentation. In the example above, the line to use a project is commented out, but you can uncomment this line and then pass a path to a .sqldoc project file as an argument to this script.  Conclusion Keeping documentation about your databases up to date is very easy to set up using SQL Doc and PowerShell. By using a CI server to run this process you can trigger the documentation to be run on every change to a source controlled database, and keep historic documentation available. If you are considering more advanced database automation, e.g. database unit testing, change script generation, deploying to large numbers of targets and backup/verification, please email me at [email protected] for further script samples or if you have any questions.

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• SQL Developer Data Modeler v3.3 Early Adopter: Collaborative Design via Excel?

  - by thatjeffsmith

  As you may have heard last week, we have a new version of Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler now available as an Early Adopter release. Version 3.3 has quite a few new features and I’ll be previewing them here. Today’s topic is our new Excel integration. It builds off of last week’s lesson: Search, so you may want to go read that first. They say it takes a village to raise a child. I say it takes a team to build a data model. You have your techie folks, your business folks, your in-betweeners, and your database geeks. Who gets to define how customers are represented and stored in your database? That data lives forever, so you better get it right from the beginning, or you’ll be living in a hacker’s paradise for years to come. Lots of good rantings, ravings, and advice on this topic in general on Karen Lopez’s (@datachick) blog. But let’s say you are the primary modeler on a project. You dutifully interview the business folks for their requirements. You sit down and start to model and think you’re pretty close. Now you need someone to confirm your assumptions and provide some feedback. Do you send your model over? Take a screenshot and blow it up on a whiteboard? Export to HTML and let them take a magic marker to their monitors? Or maybe you bite the bullet and install your modeling software on their desktops and take the hours or days required to train them up on how to use the the tool. Wouldn’t it be nice if they could just mark up their corrections in Excel and let you suck the updates back in? This is what we have started to build in Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler. Let’s say you have a new table called ‘UT_STARTUPS.’ It looks a little something like this: A table in Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler What I would like to do is have my team or co-worker review how I have defined those columns. Perhaps TIMESTAMP is overkill or maybe the column names themselves aren’t up to snuff. What I am going to do is now search for all the columns in my table, then export that to Excel. So do a search for UT_STARTUPS. Search, filter, then Report With the filter set to ‘Columns,’ if I do a report I’ll be only getting the columns that are resolving to my search term. So as long as my table name is unique in the model, I should get what I’m looking for. Here’s what I see when I click on the Report button: XLS or XLSX, either format is just fine I want to decide how the Column data is exported to Excel though, so I’m going to create a report template that I can use going forward. So click the ‘Manage’ button and setup a new template. I’m going to call mine ‘CollaborativeDevelopment.’ The templates allow me to define what properties are included in the reports. Once this is set, I’ll have the XLS file generated, and get to work Now let the Excel junkies do their stuff Note that not ALL of the report properties are update-able (yes, I made up a new word there) via Excel. We’ll have the full list of properties documented going forward, but in my Excel sheet, note that I can’t change the table name or the data types for the columns. I’m going to update some column names and supply ‘nice’ comments so the database users know what’s what. Here’s my input for the designer/architect/database dude: Be kind, please rew…use comments. Save the file, email it back to your modeler. Update the model from Excel That’s right, it’s a right mouse click from your model in the tree If everything goes right, you’ll see a nice confirmation message: It’s alive! Another to-do item on tap – making this dialog more informative. We’ll be showing exactly what in your model was updated from Excel. Let’s take another look at the model now Voila! Why are we doing this again? The goal is to reduce the number of round-trips from the modeler and the business process owner. One is used to working with Excel – why not allow them to mark up their changes in the tool they already know? This is an early adopter release and I anticipate this feature getting a good bit of tuning up before we release. Why don’t you download 3.3, give it a whirl, and let us know what you think?

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• The ugly evolution of running a background operation in the context of an ASP.NET app

  - by Jeff

  If you’re one of the two people who has followed my blog for many years, you know that I’ve been going at POP Forums now for over almost 15 years. Publishing it as an open source app has been a big help because it helps me understand how people want to use it, and having it translated to six languages is pretty sweet. Despite this warm and fuzzy group hug, there has been an ugly hack hiding in there for years. One of the things we find ourselves wanting to do is hide some kind of regular process inside of an ASP.NET application that runs periodically. The motivation for this has always been that a lot of people simply don’t have a choice, because they’re running the app on shared hosting, or don’t otherwise have access to a box that can run some kind of regular background service. In POP Forums, I “solved” this problem years ago by hiding some static timers in an HttpModule. Truthfully, this works well as long as you don’t run multiple instances of the app, which in the cloud world, is always a possibility. With the arrival of WebJobs in Azure, I’m going to solve this problem. This post isn’t about that. The other little hacky problem that I “solved” was spawning a background thread to queue emails to subscribed users of the forum. This evolved quite a bit over the years, starting with a long running page to mail users in real-time, when I had only a few hundred. By the time it got into the thousands, or tens of thousands, I needed a better way. What I did is launched a new thread that read all of the user data in, then wrote a queued email to the database (as in, the entire body of the email, every time), with the properly formatted opt-out link. It was super inefficient, but it worked. Then I moved my biggest site using it, CoasterBuzz, to an Azure Website, and it stopped working. So let’s start with the first stupid thing I was doing. The new thread was simply created with delegate code inline. As best I can tell, Azure Websites are more aggressive about garbage collection, because that thread didn’t queue even one message. When the calling server response went out of scope, so went the magic background thread. Duh, all I had to do was move the thread to a private static variable in the class. That’s the way I was able to keep stuff running from the HttpModule. (And yes, I know this is still prone to failure, particularly if the app recycles. For as infrequently as it’s used, I have not, however, experienced this.) It was still failing, but this time I wasn’t sure why. It would queue a few dozen messages, then die. Running in Azure, I had to turn on the application logging and FTP in to see what was going on. That led me to a helper method I was using as delegate to build the unsubscribe links. The idea here is that I didn’t want yet another config entry to describe the base URL, appended with the right path that would match the routing table. No, I wanted the app to figure it out for you, so I came up with this little thing: public static string FullUrlHelper(this Controller controller, string actionName, string controllerName, object routeValues = null) { var helper = new UrlHelper(controller.Request.RequestContext); var requestUrl = controller.Request.Url; if (requestUrl == null) return String.Empty; var url = requestUrl.Scheme + "://"; url += requestUrl.Host; url += (requestUrl.Port != 80 ? ":" + requestUrl.Port : ""); url += helper.Action(actionName, controllerName, routeValues); return url; } And yes, that should have been done with a string builder. This is useful for sending out the email verification messages, too. As clever as I thought I was with this, I was using a delegate in the admin controller to format these unsubscribe links for tens of thousands of users. I passed that delegate into a service class that did the email work: Func<User, string> unsubscribeLinkGenerator = user => this.FullUrlHelper("Unsubscribe", AccountController.Name, new { id = user.UserID, key = _profileService.GetUnsubscribeHash(user) }); _mailingListService.MailUsers(subject, body, htmlBody, unsubscribeLinkGenerator); Cool, right? Actually, not so much. If you look back at the helper, this delegate then will depend on the controller context to learn the routing and format for the URL. As you might have guessed, those things were turning null after a few dozen formatted links, when the original request to the admin controller went away. That this wasn’t already happening on my dedicated server is surprising, but again, I understand why the Azure environment might be eager to reclaim a thread after servicing the request. It’s already inefficient that I’m building the entire email for every user, but going back to check the routing table for the right link every time isn’t a win either. I put together a little hack to look up one generic URL, and use that as the basis for a string format. If you’re wondering why I didn’t just use the curly braces up front, it’s because they get URL formatted: var baseString = this.FullUrlHelper("Unsubscribe", AccountController.Name, new { id = "--id--", key = "--key--" }); baseString = baseString.Replace("--id--", "{0}").Replace("--key--", "{1}"); Func unsubscribeLinkGenerator = user => String.Format(baseString, user.UserID, _profileService.GetUnsubscribeHash(user)); _mailingListService.MailUsers(subject, body, htmlBody, unsubscribeLinkGenerator); And wouldn’t you know it, the new solution works just fine. It’s still kind of hacky and inefficient, but it will work until this somehow breaks too.

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• XNA Notes 005

  - by George Clingerman

  Another week and another crazy amount of activity going on in the XNA community. I’m fairly certain I missed over half of it. In fact, if I am missing things, make sure to email me and I’ll try and make sure I catch it next week! ([email protected]). Also, if you’ve got any advice, things you like/don’t like about the way these XNA Notes are going let me know. I always appreciate feedback (currently spammers are leaving me the nicest comments so you guys have work to do!) Without further ado, here’s this week’s notes! Time Critical XNA News The XNA Team Blob reminds us that February 7th is the last day to submit XNA 3.1 games to peer review! http://blogs.msdn.com/b/xna/archive/2011/01/31/7-days-left-to-submit-xna-gs-3-1-games-on-app-hub.aspx XNA MVPS Chris Williams kicks off the marketing campaign for our book http://geekswithblogs.net/cwilliams/archive/2011/01/28/143680.aspx Catalin Zima posts the comparison cheat sheet for why Angry Birds is different than Chickens Can’t Fly http://www.amusedsloth.com/2011/02/comparison-cheat-sheet-for-chickens-cant-fly-and-angry-birds/ Jim Perry congratulates the developers selected by Game Developer Magazine for Best Xbox LIVE Indie Games of 2010 http://machxgames.com/blog/?p=24 @NemoKrad posts his XNAKUUG talks for all to enjoy http://twitter.com/NemoKrad/statuses/33142362502864896 http://xna-uk.net/blogs/randomchaos/archive/2011/02/03/xblig-uk-2011-january-amp-february-talk.aspx George  (that’s me!) preps for his XNA talk coming up on the 8th http://twitter.com/clingermangw/statuses/32669550554124288 http://www.portlandsilverlight.net/Meetings/Details/15 XNA Developers FireFly posts the last tutorial in his XNA Tower Defense tutorial series http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/26442/451460.aspx#451460 http://xnatd.blogspot.com/2011/01/tutorial-14-polishing-game.html @fredericmy posts the main difference when porting a game from Windows Phone 7 to Xbox 360 http://fairyengine.blogspot.com/2011/01/main-differences-when-porting-game-from.html @ElementCy creates a pretty rad video of a MineCraft type terrain created using XNA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Waw1f7wnl9I Andrew Russel gets the first XNA badge on gamedev.stackexchange http://twitter.com/_AndrewRussell/statuses/32322877004972032 http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/badges?tab=tags And his funding for ExEn has passed $7000 only $3000 to go http://twitter.com/_AndrewRussell/statuses/33042412804771840 Subodh Pushpak blogs about his Windows Phone 7 XNA talk http://geekswithblogs.net/subodhnpushpak/archive/2011/02/01/windows-phone-7-silverlight--xna-development-talk.aspx Slyprid releases the latest version of Transmute and needs more people to test http://twitter.com/slyprid/statuses/32452488418299904 http://forgottenstarstudios.com/ SpynDoctorGames celebrates the 1 year anniversary of Your Doodles Are Bugged! Congrats! http://twitter.com/SpynDoctorGames/statuses/32511689068908544 Noogy (creator of Dust the Elysian Tail) prepares his conversion to XNA 4.0 http://twitter.com/NoogyTweet/statuses/32522008449253376 @philippedasilva posts about the Indiefreaks Game Framework v0.2.0.0 Input management system http://twitter.com/philippedasilva/statuses/32763393957957632 http://indiefreaks.com/2011/02/02/behind-smart-input-system-feature/ Mommy’s Best Games debates what to do about High Scores with their new update http://mommysbest.blogspot.com/2011/02/high-score-shake-up.html @BinaryTweedDeej want to know if there’s anything the community needs to make XNA games for the PC. Give him some feedback! http://twitter.com/BinaryTweedDeej/status/32895453863354368 @mikebmcl promises to write us all a book (I can’t wait to read it!) http://twitter.com/mikebmcl/statuses/33206499102687233 @werezompire is going to live, LIVE, thanks to all the generosity and support from the community! http://twitter.com/werezompire/statuses/32840147644977153 Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG) Making money in Xbox 360 indie game development. Is it possible? http://www.bitmob.com/articles/making-money-in-xbox-360-indie-game-development-is-it-possible @AlejandroDaJ posts some thoughts abut the bitmob article http://twitter.com/AlejandroDaJ/statuses/31068552165330944 http://www.apathyworks.com/blog/view.php?id=00215 Kobun gets my respect as an XBLIG champion. I’m not sure who Kobun is, but if you’ve every read through the comment sections any time Kotaku writes about XBLIGs you’ll see a lot of confusion, disinformation in there. Kobun has been waging a secret war battling that lack of knowledge and he does it well. Also he’s running a pretty kick ass site for Xbox LIVE Indie Game reviews http://xboxindies.teamkobun.com/ @radiangames releases his last Xbox LIVE Indie Game...for now http://bit.ly/gMK6lE Playing Avaglide with the Kinect controller http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqAYbHww53o http://www.joystiq.com/2011/01/30/kinect-hacks-take-to-the-skies-with-avaglide/ Luke Schneider of Radiangames interviewed in Edge magazine http://www.next-gen.biz/features/radiangames-venture Digital Quarters posts thoughts on why XBLIG’s online requirement kills certain genres http://digitalquarters.blogspot.com/2011/02/thoughts-why-xbligs-online-requirement.html Mommy’s Best Games shares the news that several XBLIGs were featured in the March 2011 issue of Famitsu 360 http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/33455/451487.aspx#451487 NaviFairy continues with his Indie-Game-A-Day http://gaygamer.net/2011/02/indie_game_a_day_epic_dungeon.html http://gaygamer.net/2011/02/indie_game_a_day_break_limit_r.html and more every day...that’s kind of the point! Keep your eye on this series! VVGTV continues with it’s awesome reviews/promotions for XBLIGs http://vvgtv.com/ http://vvgtv.com/2011/02/03/iredia-atrams-secret-xblig-review-2/ http://vvgtv.com/2011/02/02/poopocalypse-coming-soon-to-xblig/ ….and even more, you get the point. Magicka is an Indie Game doing really well on Steam AND it’s made using XNA http://www.magickagame.com/ http://twitter.com/Magickagame/statuses/32712762580799488 GameMarx reviews Antipole http://www.gamemarx.com/reviews/73/antipole-is-vvvvvvery-good.aspx Armless Octopus review Alpha Squad http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/01/28/xbox-indie-review-alpha-squad/ An interesting article about Kodu that Jim Perry found http://twitter.com/MachXGames/statuses/32848044105924608 http://www.develop-online.net/news/36915/10-year-old-Jordan-makes-games-The-UK-needs-more-like-her XNA Game Development Sgt. Conker posts about the Natur beta, a new book and whether you can make money with XBLIG http://www.sgtconker.com/ http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/01/a-new-book-on-the-block-and-a-new-natur-beta/ http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/01/making-money-in-xbox-360-indie-game-development-is-it-possible/ Tips for setting up SVN http://bit.ly/fKxgFh @bsimser found tons of royalty free music and soundfx for your XNA Games http://twitter.com/bsimser/statuses/31426632933711872 Post on the new features in the next Sunburn Editor http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/fivesidedbarrel/archive/2011/01/28/new-editor-features-prefabs-components-and-more.aspx @jasons_novaleaf posts source code for light pre-pass optimizations for #xna http://twitter.com/jasons_novaleaf/statuses/33348855403642880 http://jcoluna.wordpress.com/2011/02/01/xna-4-0-light-pre-pass-optimization-round-one/ I’ve been learning about doing an A.I. for turn based games and this article was a great resource. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1535/designing_ai_algorithms_for_.php?print=1

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• What Did You Do? is a Bad Question

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

  Brian Moran (blog | Twitter) did a great presentation today for the PASS Professional Development Virtual Chapter on The Art of Questions.  One of the points that Brian made was that there are good questions and bad (or at least not-as-good) questions.  Good questions tend to open-up the conversation and engender positive reactions (perhaps even trust and respect) between the participants; and bad questions tend to close-down a conversation either through the narrow list of possible responses (e.g. strictly Yes/No) or through the negative reactions they can produce.  And this explains why I so frequently had problems troubleshooting real-time problems with users in the past.  I’ll explain that in more detail below, but before we go on, let me recommend that you watch the recording of Brian’s presentation to learn why the question Why is often problematic in the U.S. and yet we so often resort to it. For a short portion (3 years) of my career, I taught basic computer skills and Office applications in an adult vocational school, and this gave me ample opportunity to do live troubleshooting of user challenges with computers.  And like many people who ended up in computer related jobs, I also have had numerous times where I was called upon by less computer-savvy individuals to help them with some challenge they were having, whether it was part of my job or not.  One of the things that I noticed, especially during my time as a teacher, was that when I was helping somebody, typically the first question I would ask them was, “What did you do?”  This seemed to me like a good way to start my detective work trying to figure out what happened, what went wrong, how to fix it, and how to help the person avoid it again in the future.  I always asked it in a polite tone of voice as I was just trying to gather the facts before diving in deeper.  However; 99.999% of the time, I always got the same answer, “Nothing!”  For a long time this frustrated me because (remember I’m in detective mode at that point) I knew it could not possibly be true.  They HAD to have done SOMETHING…just tell me what were the last actions you took before this problem presented itself.  But no, they always stuck with “Nothing”.  At which point, with frustration growing, and not a little bit of disdain for their lack of helpfulness, I would usually ask them to move aside while I took over their machine and got them out of whatever they had gotten themselves into.  After a while I just grew used to the fact that this was the answer I would usually receive, but I always kept asking because for the .001% of the people who would actually tell me, I could then help them understand what went wrong and how to avoid it in the future. Now, after hearing Brian’s talk, I understand what the problem was.  Even though I meant to just be in an information gathering mode, the words I was using, “What did YOU do?” have such a strong negative connotation that people would instinctively go into defense-mode and stop sharing information that might make them look bad.  Many of them probably were not even consciously aware that they had gone on the defensive, but the self-preservation instinct, especially self-preservation of the ego, is so strong that people would end up there without even realizing it. So, if “What did you do” is a bad question, what would have been better?  Well, one suggestion that Brian makes in his talk is something along the lines of, “Can you tell me what led up to this?” or “what was happening on the computer right before this came up?”  It’s subtle, but the point is to take the focus off of the person and their behavior; instead depersonalizing it and talk about events from more of a 3rd-party observer point of view.  With this approach, people will be more likely to talk about what the computer did and what they did in response to it without feeling the interrogation spotlight is on them.  They are also more likely to mention other events that occurred around the same time that may or may not be related, but which could certainly help you troubleshoot a larger problem if it is not just user actions.  And that is the ultimate goal of your asking the questions.  So yes, it does matter how you ask the question; and there are such things as good questions and bad questions.  Excellent topic Brian!  Thanks for getting the thinking gears churning! (Cross-posted to the Professional Development Virtual Chapter blog.)

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• Know more about Cache Buffer Handle

  - by Liu Maclean(???)

  ??????«latch free:cache buffer handles???SQL????»?????cache buffer handle latch?????,?????????: “?????pin?buffer header???????buffer handle,??buffer handle?????????cache buffer handles?,??????cache buffer handles??????,???????cache???buffer handles,?????(reserved set)?????????????_db_handles_cached(???5)???,?????????????????SQL??????????????????????,????pin??????,????????handle,?????????5?cached buffer handles???handle????????????????,Oracle?????????????????pin?”????“?buffer,????????????????handle???db_block_buffers/processes,????_cursor_db_buffers_pinned???????cache buffer handles?????,??????,????????????SQL,????cache?buffer handles?????????,??????????????,???????????/?????” ????T.ASKMACLEAN.COM????,??????cache Buffer handle?????: cache buffer handle ??: ------------------------------ | Buffer state object | ------------------------------ | Place to hang the buffer | ------------------------------ | Consistent Get? | ------------------------------ | Proc Owning SO | ------------------------------ | Flags(RIR) | ------------------------------ ???? cache buffer handle SO: 70000046fdfe530, type: 24, owner: 70000041b018630, flag: INIT/-/-/0×00(buffer) (CR) PR: 70000048e92d148 FLG: 0×500000lock rls: 0, class bit: 0kcbbfbp: [BH: 7000001c7f069b0, LINK: 70000046fdfe570]where: kdswh02: kdsgrp, why: 0BH (7000001c7f069b0) file#: 12 rdba: 0×03061612 (12/398866) class: 1 ba: 7000001c70ee000set: 75 blksize: 8192 bsi: 0 set-flg: 0 pwbcnt: 0dbwrid: 2 obj: 66209 objn: 48710 tsn: 6 afn: 12hash: [700000485f12138,700000485f12138] lru: [70000025af67790,700000132f69ee0]lru-flags: hot_bufferckptq: [NULL] fileq: [NULL] objq: [700000114f5dd10,70000028bf5d620]use: [70000046fdfe570,70000046fdfe570] wait: [NULL]st: SCURRENT md: SHR tch: 0flags: affinity_lockLRBA: [0x0.0.0] HSCN: [0xffff.ffffffff] HSUB: [65535]where: kdswh02: kdsgrp, why: 0 # Example:#   (buffer) (CR) PR: 37290 FLG:    0#   kcbbfbp    : [BH: befd8, LINK: 7836c] (WAITING) Buffer handle (X$KCBBF) kernel cache, buffer buffer_handles Query x$kcbbf  – lists all the buffer handles ???? _db_handles             System-wide simultaneous buffer operations ,no of buffer handles_db_handles_cached      Buffer handles cached each process , no of processes  default 5_cursor_db_buffers_pinned  additional number of buffers a cursor can pin at once_session_kept_cursor_pins       Number of cursors pins to keep in a session When a buffer is pinned it is attached to buffer state object. ??? ???????? cache buffer handles latch ? buffer pin???: SESSION A : SQL> select * from v$version; BANNER ---------------------------------------------------------------- Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.5.0 - 64bi PL/SQL Release 10.2.0.5.0 - Production CORE    10.2.0.5.0      Production TNS for Linux: Version 10.2.0.5.0 - Production NLSRTL Version 10.2.0.5.0 - Production SQL> create table test_cbc_handle(t1 int); Table created. SQL> insert into test_cbc_handle values(1); 1 row created. SQL> commit; Commit complete. SQL> select rowid from test_cbc_handle; ROWID ------------------ AAANO6AABAAAQZSAAA SQL> select * from test_cbc_handle where rowid='AAANO6AABAAAQZSAAA';         T1 ----------          1 SQL> select addr,name from v$latch_parent where name='cache buffer handles'; ADDR             NAME ---------------- -------------------------------------------------- 00000000600140A8 cache buffer handles SQL> select to_number('00000000600140A8','xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx') from dual; TO_NUMBER('00000000600140A8','XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX') ----------------------------------------------------                                           1610694824 ??cache buffer handles????parent latch ??? child latch ???SESSION A hold ??????cache buffer handles parent latch ???? oradebug call kslgetl ??, kslgetl?oracle??get latch??? SQL> oradebug setmypid; Statement processed. SQL> oradebug call kslgetl 1610694824 1; Function returned 1 ?????SESSION B ???: SQL> select * from v$latchholder;        PID        SID LADDR            NAME                                                                   GETS ---------- ---------- ---------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------- ----------         15        141 00000000600140A8 cache buffer handles                                                    119 cache buffer handles latch ???session A hold??,????????acquire cache buffer handle latch SQL> select * from test_cbc_handle where rowid='AAANO6AABAAAQZSAAA';         T1 ----------          1 ?????Server Process?????? read buffer, ????????"_db_handles_cached", ??process?cache 5? cache buffer handle ??"_db_handles_cached"=0,?process????5????cache buffer handle , ???? process ???pin buffer,???hold cache buffer handle latch??????cache buffer handle SQL> alter system set "_db_handles_cached"=0 scope=spfile; System altered. ????? shutdown immediate; startup; session A: SQL> oradebug setmypid; Statement processed. SQL> oradebug call kslgetl 1610694824 1; Function returned 1 session B: select * from test_cbc_handle where rowid='AAANO6AABAAAQZSAAA'; session B hang!! WHY? SQL> oradebug setmypid; Statement processed. SQL> oradebug dump systemstate 266; Statement processed.   SO: 0x11b30b7b0, type: 2, owner: (nil), flag: INIT/-/-/0x00   (process) Oracle pid=22, calls cur/top: (nil)/0x11b453c38, flag: (0) -             int error: 0, call error: 0, sess error: 0, txn error 0   (post info) last post received: 0 0 0               last post received-location: No post               last process to post me: none               last post sent: 0 0 0               last post sent-location: No post               last process posted by me: none     (latch info) wait_event=0 bits=8       holding    (efd=4) 600140a8 cache buffer handles level=3   SO: 0x11b305810, type: 2, owner: (nil), flag: INIT/-/-/0x00   (process) Oracle pid=10, calls cur/top: 0x11b455ac0/0x11b450a58, flag: (0) -             int error: 0, call error: 0, sess error: 0, txn error 0   (post info) last post received: 0 0 0               last post received-location: No post               last process to post me: none               last post sent: 0 0 0               last post sent-location: No post               last process posted by me: none     (latch info) wait_event=0 bits=2         Location from where call was made: kcbzgs:       waiting for 600140a8 cache buffer handles level=3 FBD93353:000019F0    10   162 10005   1 KSL WAIT BEG [latch: cache buffer handles] 1610694824/0x600140a8 125/0x7d 0/0x0 FF936584:00002761    10   144 10005   1 KSL WAIT BEG [latch: cache buffer handles] 1610694824/0x600140a8 125/0x7d 0/0x0 PID=22 holding ??cache buffer handles latch PID=10 ?? cache buffer handles latch, ????"_db_handles_cached"=0 ?? process??????cache buffer handles ??systemstate???? kcbbfbp cache buffer handle??, ?? "_db_handles_cached"=0 ? cache buffer handles latch?hold ?? ????cache buffer handles latch , ??? buffer?pin?????????? session A exit session B: SQL> select * from v$latchholder; no rows selected SQL> insert into test_cbc_handle values(2); 1 row created. SQL> commit; Commit complete. SQL> SQL> select t1,rowid from test_cbc_handle;         T1 ROWID ---------- ------------------          1 AAANPAAABAAAQZSAAA          2 AAANPAAABAAAQZSAAB SQL> select spid,pid from v$process where addr = ( select paddr from v$session where sid=(select distinct sid from v$mystat)); SPID                PID ------------ ---------- 19251                10 ? GDB ? SPID=19215 ?debug , ?? kcbrls ????breakpoint ??? ????release buffer [oracle@vrh8 ~]$ gdb $ORACLE_HOME/bin/oracle 19251 GNU gdb (GDB) Red Hat Enterprise Linux (7.0.1-37.el5) Copyright (C) 2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html> This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.  Type "show copying" and "show warranty" for details. This GDB was configured as "x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu". For bug reporting instructions, please see: <http://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/bugs/>... Reading symbols from /s01/oracle/product/10.2.0.5/db_1/bin/oracle...(no debugging symbols found)...done. Attaching to program: /s01/oracle/product/10.2.0.5/db_1/bin/oracle, process 19251 Reading symbols from /s01/oracle/product/10.2.0.5/db_1/lib/libskgxp10.so...(no debugging symbols found)...done. Loaded symbols for /s01/oracle/product/10.2.0.5/db_1/lib/libskgxp10.so Reading symbols from /s01/oracle/product/10.2.0.5/db_1/lib/libhasgen10.so...(no debugging symbols found)...done. Loaded symbols for /s01/oracle/product/10.2.0.5/db_1/lib/libhasgen10.so Reading symbols from /s01/oracle/product/10.2.0.5/db_1/lib/libskgxn2.so...(no debugging symbols found)...done. Loaded symbols for /s01/oracle/product/10.2.0.5/db_1/lib/libskgxn2.so Reading symbols from /s01/oracle/product/10.2.0.5/db_1/lib/libocr10.so...(no debugging symbols found)...done. Loaded symbols for /s01/oracle/product/10.2.0.5/db_1/lib/libocr10.so Reading symbols from /s01/oracle/product/10.2.0.5/db_1/lib/libocrb10.so...(no debugging symbols found)...done. Loaded symbols for /s01/oracle/product/10.2.0.5/db_1/lib/libocrb10.so Reading symbols from /s01/oracle/product/10.2.0.5/db_1/lib/libocrutl10.so...(no debugging symbols found)...done. Loaded symbols for /s01/oracle/product/10.2.0.5/db_1/lib/libocrutl10.so Reading symbols from /s01/oracle/product/10.2.0.5/db_1/lib/libjox10.so...(no debugging symbols found)...done. Loaded symbols for /s01/oracle/product/10.2.0.5/db_1/lib/libjox10.so Reading symbols from /s01/oracle/product/10.2.0.5/db_1/lib/libclsra10.so...(no debugging symbols found)...done. Loaded symbols for /s01/oracle/product/10.2.0.5/db_1/lib/libclsra10.so Reading symbols from /s01/oracle/product/10.2.0.5/db_1/lib/libdbcfg10.so...(no debugging symbols found)...done. Loaded symbols for /s01/oracle/product/10.2.0.5/db_1/lib/libdbcfg10.so Reading symbols from /s01/oracle/product/10.2.0.5/db_1/lib/libnnz10.so...(no debugging symbols found)...done. Loaded symbols for /s01/oracle/product/10.2.0.5/db_1/lib/libnnz10.so Reading symbols from /usr/lib64/libaio.so.1...(no debugging symbols found)...done. Loaded symbols for /usr/lib64/libaio.so.1 Reading symbols from /lib64/libdl.so.2...(no debugging symbols found)...done. Loaded symbols for /lib64/libdl.so.2 Reading symbols from /lib64/libm.so.6...(no debugging symbols found)...done. Loaded symbols for /lib64/libm.so.6 Reading symbols from /lib64/libpthread.so.0...(no debugging symbols found)...done. [Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled] Loaded symbols for /lib64/libpthread.so.0 Reading symbols from /lib64/libnsl.so.1...(no debugging symbols found)...done. Loaded symbols for /lib64/libnsl.so.1 Reading symbols from /lib64/libc.so.6...(no debugging symbols found)...done. Loaded symbols for /lib64/libc.so.6 Reading symbols from /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2...(no debugging symbols found)...done. Loaded symbols for /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 Reading symbols from /lib64/libnss_files.so.2...(no debugging symbols found)...done. Loaded symbols for /lib64/libnss_files.so.2 0x00000035c000d940 in __read_nocancel () from /lib64/libpthread.so.0 (gdb) break kcbrls Breakpoint 1 at 0x10e5d24 session B: select * from test_cbc_handle where rowid='AAANPAAABAAAQZSAAA'; select hang !! GDB (gdb) c Continuing. Breakpoint 1, 0x00000000010e5d24 in kcbrls () (gdb) bt #0  0x00000000010e5d24 in kcbrls () #1  0x0000000002e87d25 in qertbFetchByUserRowID () #2  0x00000000030c62b8 in opifch2 () #3  0x00000000032327f0 in kpoal8 () #4  0x00000000013b7c10 in opiodr () #5  0x0000000003c3c9da in ttcpip () #6  0x00000000013b3144 in opitsk () #7  0x00000000013b60ec in opiino () #8  0x00000000013b7c10 in opiodr () #9  0x00000000013a92f8 in opidrv () #10 0x0000000001fa3936 in sou2o () #11 0x000000000072d40b in opimai_real () #12 0x000000000072d35c in main () SQL> oradebug setmypid; Statement processed. SQL> oradebug dump systemstate 266; Statement processed. ?????? kcbbfbp buffer cache handle ?  SO state object ? BH BUFFER HEADER  link???     ----------------------------------------     SO: 0x11b452348, type: 3, owner: 0x11b305810, flag: INIT/-/-/0x00     (call) sess: cur 11b41bd18, rec 0, usr 11b41bd18; depth: 0       ----------------------------------------       SO: 0x1182dc750, type: 24, owner: 0x11b452348, flag: INIT/-/-/0x00       (buffer) (CR) PR: 0x11b305810 FLG: 0x108000       class bit: (nil)       kcbbfbp: [BH: 0xf2fc69f8, LINK: 0x1182dc790]       where: kdswh05: kdsgrp, why: 0       BH (0xf2fc69f8) file#: 1 rdba: 0x00410652 (1/67154) class: 1 ba: 0xf297c000         set: 3 blksize: 8192 bsi: 0 set-flg: 2 pwbcnt: 272         dbwrid: 0 obj: 54208 objn: 54202 tsn: 0 afn: 1         hash: [f2fc47f8,1181f3038] lru: [f2fc6b88,f2fc6968]         obj-flags: object_ckpt_list         ckptq: [1182ecf38,1182ecf38] fileq: [1182ecf58,1182ecf58] objq: [108712a28,108712a28]         use: [1182dc790,1182dc790] wait: [NULL]         st: XCURRENT md: SHR tch: 12         flags: buffer_dirty gotten_in_current_mode block_written_once                 redo_since_read         LRBA: [0xc7.73b.0] HSCN: [0x0.1cbe52] HSUB: [1]         Using State Objects           ----------------------------------------           SO: 0x1182dc750, type: 24, owner: 0x11b452348, flag: INIT/-/-/0x00           (buffer) (CR) PR: 0x11b305810 FLG: 0x108000           class bit: (nil)           kcbbfbp: [BH: 0xf2fc69f8, LINK: 0x1182dc790]           where: kdswh05: kdsgrp, why: 0         buffer tsn: 0 rdba: 0x00410652 (1/67154)         scn: 0x0000.001cbe52 seq: 0x01 flg: 0x02 tail: 0xbe520601         frmt: 0x02 chkval: 0x0000 type: 0x06=trans data tab 0, row 0, @0x1f9a tl: 6 fb: --H-FL-- lb: 0x0  cc: 1 col  0: [ 2]  c1 02 tab 0, row 1, @0x1f94 tl: 6 fb: --H-FL-- lb: 0x2  cc: 1 col  0: [ 2]  c1 15 end_of_block_dump         (buffer) (CR) PR: 0x11b305810 FLG: 0x108000 st: XCURRENT md: SHR tch: 12 ? buffer header?status= XCURRENT mode=KCBMSHARE KCBMSHR     current share ?????  x$kcbbf ????? cache buffer handle SQL> select distinct KCBBPBH from  x$kcbbf ; KCBBPBH ---------------- 00 00000000F2FC69F8            ==>0xf2fc69f8 SQL> select * from x$kcbbf where kcbbpbh='00000000F2FC69F8'; ADDR                   INDX    INST_ID KCBBFSO_TYP KCBBFSO_FLG KCBBFSO_OWN ---------------- ---------- ---------- ----------- ----------- ----------------   KCBBFFLG    KCBBFCR    KCBBFCM KCBBFMBR         KCBBPBH ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------------- ---------------- KCBBPBF          X0KCBBPBH        X0KCBBPBF        X1KCBBPBH ---------------- ---------------- ---------------- ---------------- X1KCBBPBF        KCBBFBH            KCBBFWHR   KCBBFWHY ---------------- ---------------- ---------- ---------- 00000001182DC750        748          1          24           1 000000011B452348    1081344          1          0 00               00000000F2FC69F8 00000001182DC750 00               00000001182DC750 00 00000001182DC7F8 00                      583          0 SQL> desc x$kcbbf;  Name                                      Null?    Type  ----------------------------------------- -------- ----------------------------  ADDR                                               RAW(8)  INDX                                               NUMBER  INST_ID                                            NUMBER  KCBBFSO_TYP                                        NUMBER  KCBBFSO_FLG                                        NUMBER  KCBBFSO_OWN                                        RAW(8)  KCBBFFLG                                           NUMBER  KCBBFCR                                            NUMBER  KCBBFCM                                            NUMBER  KCBBFMBR                                           RAW(8)  KCBBPBH                                            RAW(8)  KCBBPBF                                            RAW(8)  X0KCBBPBH                                          RAW(8)  X0KCBBPBF                                          RAW(8)  X1KCBBPBH                                          RAW(8)  X1KCBBPBF                                          RAW(8)  KCBBFBH                                            RAW(8)  KCBBFWHR                                           NUMBER  KCBBFWHY                                           NUMBER gdb ?? ?process??????kcbrls release buffer? ???cache buffer handle??? SQL> select distinct KCBBPBH from  x$kcbbf ; KCBBPBH ---------------- 00

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• Scripting out Contained Database Users

  - by Argenis

    Today’s blog post comes from a Twitter thread on which @SQLSoldier, @sqlstudent144 and @SQLTaiob were discussing the internals of contained database users. Unless you have been living under a rock, you’ve heard about the concept of contained users within a SQL Server database (hit the link if you have not). In this article I’d like to show you that you can, indeed, script out contained database users and recreate them on another database, as either contained users or as good old fashioned logins/server principals as well. Why would this be useful? Well, because you would not need to know the password for the user in order to recreate it on another instance. I know there is a limited number of scenarios where this would be necessary, but nonetheless I figured I’d throw this blog post to show how it can be done. A more obscure use case: with the password hash (which I’m about to show you how to obtain) you could also crack the password using a utility like hashcat, as highlighted on this SQLServerCentral article. The Investigation SQL Server uses System Base Tables to save the password hashes of logins and contained database users. For logins it uses sys.sysxlgns, whereas for contained database users it leverages sys.sysowners. I’ll show you what I do to figure this stuff out: I create a login/contained user, and then I immediately browse the transaction log with, for example, fn_dblog. It’s pretty obvious that only two base tables touched by the operation are sys.sysxlgns, and also sys.sysprivs – the latter is used to track permissions. If I connect to the DAC on my instance, I can query for the password hash of this login I’ve just created. A few interesting things about this hash. This was taken on my laptop, and I happen to be running SQL Server 2014 RTM CU2, which is the latest public build of SQL Server 2014 as of time of writing. In 2008 R2 and prior versions (back to 2000), the password hashes would start with 0x0100. The reason why this changed is because starting with SQL Server 2012 password hashes are kept using a SHA512 algorithm, as opposed to SHA-1 (used since 2000) or Snefru (used in 6.5 and 7.0). SHA-1 is nowadays deemed unsafe and is very easy to crack. For regular SQL logins, this information is exposed through the sys.sql_logins catalog view, so there is really no need to connect to the DAC to grab an SID/password hash pair. For contained database users, there is (currently) no method of obtaining SID or password hashes without connecting to the DAC. If we create a contained database user, this is what we get from the transaction log: Note that the System Base Table used in this case is sys.sysowners. sys.sysprivs is used as well, and again this is to track permissions. To query sys.sysowners, you would have to connect to the DAC, as I mentioned previously. And this is what you would get: There are other ways to figure out what SQL Server uses under the hood to store contained database user password hashes, like looking at the execution plan for a query to sys.dm_db_uncontained_entities (Thanks, Robert Davis!) SIDs, Logins, Contained Users, and Why You Care…Or Not. One of the reasons behind the existence of Contained Users was the concept of portability of databases: it is really painful to maintain Server Principals (Logins) synced across most shared-nothing SQL Server HA/DR technologies (Mirroring, Availability Groups, and Log Shipping). Often times you would need the Security Identifier (SID) of these logins to match across instances, and that meant that you had to fetch whatever SID was assigned to the login on the principal instance so you could recreate it on a secondary. With contained users you normally wouldn’t care about SIDs, as the users are always available (and synced, as long as synchronization takes place) across instances. Now you might be presented some particular requirement that might specify that SIDs synced between logins on certain instances and contained database users on other databases. How would you go about creating a contained database user with a specific SID? The answer is that you can’t do it directly, but there’s a little trick that would allow you to do it. Create a login with a specified SID and password hash, create a user for that server principal on a partially contained database, then migrate that user to contained using the system stored procedure sp_user_migrate_to_contained, then drop the login. CREATE LOGIN <login_name> WITH PASSWORD = <password_hash> HASHED, SID = <sid> ; GO USE <partially_contained_db>; GO CREATE USER <user_name> FROM LOGIN <login_name>; GO EXEC sp_migrate_user_to_contained @username = <user_name>, @rename = N’keep_name’, @disablelogin = N‘disable_login’; GO DROP LOGIN <login_name>; GO Here’s how this skeleton would look like in action: And now I have a contained user with a specified SID and password hash. In my example above, I renamed the user after migrated it to contained so that it is, hopefully, easier to understand. Enjoy!

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• ct.sym steals the ASM class

  - by Geertjan

  Some mild consternation on the Twittersphere yesterday. Marcus Lagergren not being able to find the ASM classes in JDK 8 in NetBeans IDE: And there's no such problem in Eclipse (and apparently in IntelliJ IDEA). Help, does NetBeans (despite being incredibly awesome) suck, after all? The truth of the matter is that there's something called "ct.sym" in the JDK. When javac is compiling code, it doesn't link against rt.jar. Instead, it uses a special symbol file lib/ct.sym with class stubs. Internal JDK classes are not put in that symbol file, since those are internal classes. You shouldn't want to use them, at all. However, what if you're Marcus Lagergren who DOES need these classes? I.e., he's working on the internal JDK classes and hence needs to have access to them. Fair enough that the general Java population can't access those classes, since they're internal implementation classes that could be changed anytime and one wouldn't want all unknown clients of those classes to start breaking once changes are made to the implementation, i.e., this is the rt.jar's internal class protection mechanism. But, again, we're now Marcus Lagergen and not the general Java population. For the solution, read Jan Lahoda, NetBeans Java Editor guru, here: https://netbeans.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=186120 In particular, take note of this: AFAIK, the ct.sym is new in JDK6. It contains stubs for all classes that existed in JDK5 (for compatibility with existing programs that would use private JDK classes), but does not contain implementation classes that were introduced in JDK6 (only API classes). This is to prevent application developers to accidentally use JDK's private classes (as such applications would be unportable and may not run on future versions of JDK). Note that this is not really a NB thing - this is the behavior of javac from the JDK. I do not know about any way to disable this except deleting ct.sym or the option mentioned above. Regarding loading the classes: JVM uses two classpath's: classpath and bootclasspath. rt.jar is on the bootclasspath and has precedence over anything on the "custom" classpath, which is used by the application. The usual way to override classes on bootclasspath is to start the JVM with "-Xbootclasspath/p:" option, which prepends the given jars (and presumably also directories) to bootclasspath. Hence, let's take the first option, the simpler one, and simply delete the "ct.sym" file. Again, only because we need to work with those internal classes as developers of the JDK, not because we want to hack our way around "ct.sym", which would mean you'd not have portable code at the end of the day. Go to the JDK 8 lib folder and you'll find the file: Delete it. Start NetBeans IDE again, either on JDK 7 or JDK 8, doesn't make a difference for these purposes, create a new Java application (or use an existing one), make sure you have set the JDK above as the JDK of the application, and hey presto: The above obviously assumes you have a build of JDK 8 that actually includes the ASM package. And below you can see that not only are the classes found but my build succeeded, even though I'm using internal JDK classes. The yellow markings in the sidebar mean that the classes are imported but not used in the code, where normally, if I hadn't removed "ct.sym", I would have seen red error marking instead, and the code wouldn't have compiled. Note: I've tried setting "-XDignore.symbol.file" in "netbeans.conf" and in other places, but so far haven't got that to work. Simply deleting the "ct.sym" file (or back it up somewhere and put it back when needed) is quite clearly the most straightforward solution. Ultimately, if you want to be able to use those internal classes while still having portable code, do you know what you need to do? You need to create a JDK bug report stating that you need an internal class to be added to "ct.sym". Probably you'll get a motivation back stating WHY that internal class isn't supposed to be used externally. There must be a reason why those classes aren't available for external usage, otherwise they would have been added to "ct.sym". So, now the only remaining question is why the Eclipse compiler doesn't hide the internal JDK classes. Apparently the Eclipse compiler ignores the "ct.sym" file. In other words, at the end of the day, far from being a bug in NetBeans... we have now found a (pretty enormous, I reckon) bug in Eclipse. The Eclipse compiler does not protect you from using internal JDK classes and the code that you create in Eclipse may not work with future releases of the JDK, since the JDK team is simply going to be changing those classes that are not found in the "ct.sym" file while assuming (correctly, thanks to the presence of "ct.sym" mechanism) that no code in the world, other than JDK code, is tied to those classes.

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• Know More About Oracle Row Lock

  - by Liu Maclean(???)

  ??????Oracle??????????row lock,??ORACLE????????????????????,row lock???????????????????????????????,??Server Process?pin????block buffer????????? ????????,?process A ??update???????? Z?????????, ???????rollback???commit;??Process B??????DML??, ???????rowid???? Z???, ???????????process A????????ITL???,????????cleanout??,????????row???????????commit, ???????Process B????”enq: TX – row lock contention”??????? ????Process B????????????? ?????????Process A???????row,??Process B???????”enq: TX – row lock contention”???? ????????  ????????: SESSION A: SQL> select * from v$version; BANNER ---------------------------------------------------------------- Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.5.0 - 64bi PL/SQL Release 10.2.0.5.0 - Production CORE    10.2.0.5.0      Production TNS for Linux: Version 10.2.0.5.0 - Production NLSRTL Version 10.2.0.5.0 - Production SQL> select * from global_name; GLOBAL_NAME -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- www.oracledatabase12g.com SQL> create table maclean_lock(t1 int); Table created. SQL> insert into maclean_lock values (1); 1 row created. SQL> commit; Commit complete. SQL> select dbms_rowid.rowid_block_number(rowid),dbms_rowid.rowid_relative_fno(rowid) from maclean_lock; DBMS_ROWID.ROWID_BLOCK_NUMBER(ROWID) DBMS_ROWID.ROWID_RELATIVE_FNO(ROWID) ------------------------------------ ------------------------------------                                67642                                    1 SQL>  select distinct sid from v$mystat;        SID ----------        142 SQL> select pid,spid from v$process where addr = ( select paddr from v$session where sid=(select distinct sid from v$mystat));        PID SPID ---------- ------------         17 15636 ??SESSION A ????savepoint ,?update ?????????         SQL>  savepoint NONLOCK; Savepoint created. SQL> select * From v$Lock where sid=142; no rows selected SQL> set linesize 140 pagesize 1400 SQL>  update maclean_lock set t1=t1+2; 1 row updated. SQL> select * From v$Lock where sid=142; ADDR             KADDR                   SID TY        ID1        ID2      LMODE    REQUEST      CTIME      BLOCK ---------------- ---------------- ---------- -- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- 0000000091FC69F0 0000000091FC6A18        142 TM      55829          0          3          0          6          0 00000000914B4008 00000000914B4040        142 TX     393232        609          6          0          6          0         SQL> select dump(3,16) from dual; DUMP(3,16) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Typ=2 Len=2: c1,4 ALTER SYSTEM DUMP DATAFILE 1 BLOCK 67642;  Object id on Block? Y  seg/obj: 0xda16  csc: 0x00.234718  itc: 2  flg: O  typ: 1 - DATA      fsl: 0  fnx: 0x0 ver: 0x01  Itl           Xid                  Uba         Flag  Lck        Scn/Fsc 0x01   0x000a.00f.000001e0  0x00800075.02a6.29  C---    0  scn 0x0000.00234711 0x02   0x0007.018.000001fe  0x0080065c.017a.02  ----    1  fsc 0x0000.00000000 data_block_dump,data header at 0x81d185c =============== tsiz: 0x1fa0 hsiz: 0x14 pbl: 0x081d185c bdba: 0x0041083a      76543210 flag=-------- ntab=1 nrow=1 frre=-1 fsbo=0x14 fseo=0x1f9a avsp=0x1f83 tosp=0x1f83 0xe:pti[0]      nrow=1  offs=0 0x12:pri[0]     offs=0x1f9a block_row_dump: tab 0, row 0, @0x1f9a tl: 6 fb: --H-FL-- lb: 0x2  cc: 1 col  0: [ 2]  c1 04 end_of_block_dump ?? BLOCK DUMP ???? ??????XID=0x0007.018.000001fe ?transaction?? lb:0x1 ??SESSION B ,?????UPDATE?? ???enq: TX - row lock contention ?? SQL> select distinct sid from v$mystat;        SID ----------        140 SQL> select pid,spid from v$process where addr = ( select paddr from v$session where sid=(select distinct sid from v$mystat));        PID SPID ---------- ------------         24 15652 SQL> alter system set "_trace_events"='10000-10999:255:24'; System altered.         SQL> update maclean_lock set t1=t1+2; select * From v$Lock where sid=142 or sid=140 order by sid; SESSION C: SQL> select * From v$Lock where sid=142 or sid=140 order by sid; ADDR             KADDR                   SID TY        ID1        ID2      LMODE    REQUEST      CTIME      BLOCK ---------------- ---------------- ---------- -- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- 0000000091FC6B10 0000000091FC6B38        140 TM      55829          0          3          0         84          0 00000000924F4A58 00000000924F4A78        140 TX     458776        510          0          6         84          0 00000000914B51E8 00000000914B5220        142 TX     458776        510          6          0        312          1 0000000091FC69F0 0000000091FC6A18        142 TM      55829          0          3          0        312          0 ???? SESSION B SID=140 ?SESSION A ?TX ENQUEUE ?X mode?REQUEST SQL> oradebug dump systemstate 266; Statement processed. SESSION B waiter's enqueue lock       SO: 0x924f4a58, type: 5, owner: 0x92bb8dc8, flag: INIT/-/-/0x00       (enqueue) TX-00070018-000001FE    DID: 0001-0018-00000022       lv: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  res_flag: 0x6       req: X, lock_flag: 0x0, lock: 0x924f4a78, res: 0x925617c0       own: 0x92b76be0, sess: 0x92b76be0, proc: 0x92a737a0, prv: 0x925617e0 TX-00070018-000001FE=> TX 458776 510 SESSION A owner's enqueue lock       SO: 0x914b51e8, type: 40, owner: 0x92b796d0, flag: INIT/-/-/0x00       (trans) flg = 0x1e03, flg2 = 0xc0000, prx = 0x0, ros = 2147483647 bsn = 0xed5 bndsn = 0xee7 spn = 0xef7       efd = 3       file:xct.c lineno:1179       DID: 0001-0011-000000C2       parent xid: 0x0000.000.00000000       env: (scn: 0x0000.00234718  xid: 0x0007.018.000001fe  uba: 0x0080065c.017a.02  statement num=0  parent xid: xid: 0x0000.000.00000000  scn: 0x00 00.00234718 0sch: scn: 0x0000.00000000)       cev: (spc = 7818  arsp = 914e8310  ubk tsn: 1 rdba: 0x0080065c  useg tsn: 1 rdba: 0x00800069             hwm uba: 0x0080065c.017a.02  col uba: 0x00000000.0000.00             num bl: 1 bk list: 0x91435070)             cr opc: 0x0 spc: 7818 uba: 0x0080065c.017a.02       (enqueue) TX-00070018-000001FE    DID: 0001-0011-000000C2       lv: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  res_flag: 0x6       mode: X, lock_flag: 0x0, lock: 0x914b5220, res: 0x925617c0       own: 0x92b796d0, sess: 0x92b796d0, proc: 0x92a6ffd8, prv: 0x925617d0        xga: 0x8b7c6d40, heap: UGA       Trans IMU st: 2 Pool index 65535, Redo pool 0x914b58d0, Undo pool 0x914b59b8       Redo pool range [0x86de640 0x86de640 0x86e0e40]       Undo pool range [0x86dbe40 0x86dbe40 0x86de640]         ----------------------------------------         SO: 0x91435070, type: 39, owner: 0x914b51e8, flag: -/-/-/0x00         (List of Blocks) next index = 1         index   itli   buffer hint   rdba       savepoint         -----------------------------------------------------------             0      2   0x647f1fc8    0x41083a     0xee7 ?SESSION A? ROLLBACK ?savepoint: SQL> rollback to NONLOCK; Rollback complete. ????savepoint ??update??????? ??UPDATE???????? ROLLBACK: SQL> select * From v$Lock where sid=142 or sid=140; ADDR             KADDR                   SID TY        ID1        ID2      LMODE    REQUEST      CTIME      BLOCK ---------------- ---------------- ---------- -- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- 00000000924F4A58 00000000924F4A78        140 TX     458776        510          0          6        822          0 0000000091FC6B10 0000000091FC6B38        140 TM      55829          0          3          0        822          0 00000000914B51E8 00000000914B5220        142 TX     458776        510          6          0       1050          1 ???? SESSION A 142 ???SAVEPOINT ???????TM LOCK ????? ROLLBACK TO SAVEPOINT?????SESSION???TX LOCK!!!! ??????SESSION 142???TX ID1=458776 ID2=510, ????ROLLBACK TO SAVEPOINT?????????ABORT TRANSACTION ?? SESSION B  SID=140??  SESSION A ?? , ?????????SESSION B? update???HANG?? ?????????CACHE?????:  Object id on Block? Y  seg/obj: 0xda16  csc: 0x00.2347b7  itc: 2  flg: O  typ: 1 - DATA      fsl: 0  fnx: 0x0 ver: 0x01  Itl           Xid                  Uba         Flag  Lck        Scn/Fsc 0x01   0x000a.00f.000001e0  0x00800075.02a6.29  C---    0  scn 0x0000.00234711 0x02   0x0000.000.00000000  0x00000000.0000.00  ----    0  fsc 0x0000.00000000 data_block_dump,data header at 0x745d85c =============== tsiz: 0x1fa0 hsiz: 0x14 pbl: 0x0745d85c bdba: 0x0041083a      76543210 flag=-------- ntab=1 nrow=1 frre=-1 fsbo=0x14 fseo=0x1f9a avsp=0x1f83 tosp=0x1f83 0xe:pti[0]      nrow=1  offs=0 0x12:pri[0]     offs=0x1f9a block_row_dump: tab 0, row 0, @0x1f9a tl: 6 fb: --H-FL-- lb: 0x0  cc: 1 col  0: [ 2]  c1 02 end_of_block_dump ???? ITL=0x02? ?????????,col  0: [ 2]  c1 02 ????????? ?????????SESSION D ,??????row lock?? ?UPDATE???????? SESSION D: SQL> update maclean_lock set t1=t1+2; 1 row updated. SQL> rollback; Rollback complete. ??SESSION B ??????????? ?????ORACLE????????, ??????????? TX lock?? row lock , ????????2??? row lock?????????, ?TX lock????????ENQUEUE LOCK???? ?????????PROCESS K?DML???????????????????????,??????????TX LOCK, ????PROCESS Z?????????????????????????ROW LOCK????????, ???????OLTP?????????????????????? ??ROW LOCK?Release ??????TX?ENQUEUE LOCK,?????????Process J ????????????, Process K??????????? ,Process K?????????,???row piece?lb??0x0 ,?????ITL, Process Z???ITL???????Process J????XID,?????Process J?????TX lock, PROCESS K ???TX resource?Enqueue Waiter Linked List?????X mode(exclusive)?enqueue lock? ???Process J??TX lock?,Process J?????TX resource?Enqueue Waiter Linked List ???Process K??????,??POST?????Process K? TX lock??????, ???????row lock???????,????????? ?????????? ?????: SESSION A ???PID =17 ?????????????????? SESSION B ???PID =24 ??????? "_trace_events"='10000-10999:255:24';  KST trace ??????? Server Process??? SESSION A PID=17  ?? acqure?SX mode???TM Lock ,?? ????Transaction?????UNDO SEGMENT 7,???XID 7.24.510, ?acquire ?X mode? TX-00070018-000001fe ? ?????? 00070018-000001fe ???? 7- 24 - 510? XID ? 781F4B8A:007A569C    17   142 10704  83 ksqgtl: acquire TM-0000da15-00000000 mode=SX flags=GLOBAL|XACT why="contention" 781F4B92:007A569D    17   142 10704  19 ksqgtl: SUCCESS 781F4BB3:007A569E    17   142 10812   2 0x000000000041083A 0x0000000000000000 0x0000000000234717 781F4BBA:007A569F    17   142 10812   3 0x0000000000000000 0x0000000000000000 0x0000000000000000 781F4BC0:007A56A0    17   142 10812   4 0x0000000000000000 0x0000000000000000 0x0000000000000000 781F4BD3:007A56A1    17   142 10812   5 0x000000000041083A 0x0000000000000000 0x0000000000000000 781F4BFE:007A56A2    17   142 10811   1 0x000000000041083A 0x0000000000000000 0x0000000000234711 0x0000000000000002 781F4C06:007A56A3    17   142 10811   2 0x000000000041083A 0x0000000000000000 0x0000000000234718 0x00007FA074EDA560 781F4C26:007A56A4    17   142 10813   1 ktubnd: Bind usn 7 nax 1 nbx 0 lng 0 par 0 781F4C43:007A56A5    17   142 10813   2 ktubnd: Txn Bound xid: 7.24.510 781F4C4A:007A56A6    17   142 10704  83 ksqgtl: acquire TX-00070018-000001fe mode=X flags=GLOBAL|XACT why="contention" 781F4C51:007A56A7    17   142 10704  19 ksqgtl: SUCCESS ?????????? ???????? 781F4CBF:007A56A8    17   142 10005   1 KSL WAIT BEG [SQL*Net message to client] 1650815232/0x62657100 1/0x1 0/0x0 781F4CCC:007A56A9    17   142 10005   2 KSL WAIT END [SQL*Net message to client] 1650815232/0x62657100 1/0x1 0/0x0 time=13 781F4CDE:007A56AA    17   142 10005   1 KSL WAIT BEG [SQL*Net message from client] 1650815232/0x62657100 1/0x1 0/0x0 786BD85D:007A57E0    17   142 10005   2 KSL WAIT END [SQL*Net message from client] 1650815232/0x62657100 1/0x1 0/0x0 time=5016447 786BD966:007A57E1    17   142 10005   1 KSL WAIT BEG [SQL*Net message to client] 1650815232/0x62657100 1/0x1 0/0x0 786BD96E:007A57E2    17   142 10005   2 KSL WAIT END [SQL*Net message to client] 1650815232/0x62657100 1/0x1 0/0x0 time=8 SESSION B ???PID =24  ,??????? SX mode? TM lock,??row lock? acquire X mode?TX-00070018-000001fe ksqgtl: acquire TM-0000da15-00000000 mode=SX flags=GLOBAL|XACT why="contention" ksqgtl: SUCCESS 0x000000000041083A 0x0000000000000000 0x00000000002354F8 0x0000000000000000 0x0000000000000000 0x0000000000000000 0x0000000000000000 0x0000000000000000 0x0000000000000000 0x000000000041083A 0x0000000000000000 0x00000000002354F8 0x0000000000000001 0x000000000041083A 0x0000000000000000 0x00000000002354F8 0x0000000008A63780 0x0000000000000001 0x0000000000800861 0x0000000000000241 0x0000000000000001 0x000000000041083A 0x0000000000000001 0x0000000000000001 0x000000000041083A 0x0000000000000000 0x00000000002354F9 0x0000000000000002 ksqgtl: acquire TX-00070018-000001fe mode=X flags=GLOBAL|LONG why="row lock contention" C4048EBD:007F52B6    24   140 10005   2 KSL WAIT END [enq: TX - row lock contention] 1415053318/0x54580006 458776/0x70018 510/0x1fe time=2929879 C4048ED4:007F52B7    24   140 10005   1 KSL WAIT BEG [enq: TX - row lock contention] 1415053318/0x54580006 458776/0x70018 510/0x1fe C43146CA:007F535E    24   140 10005   2 KSL WAIT END [enq: TX - row lock contention] 1415053318/0x54580006 458776/0x70018 510/0x1fe time=2930676 ????????? ,PID=24 ??????ksqcmi???????? deadlock C43146D9:007F535F    24   140 10704 134 ksqcmi: performing local deadlock detection on TX-00070018-000001fe C43146F8:007F5360    24   140 10704 150 ksqcmi: deadlock not detected on TX-00070018-000001fe ?? ??? PID 17 ??ROLLBACK ???? ,????????: PID 17 ROLLBACK; D7A495BB:007F9D3E    17   142 10005   4 KSL POST SENT postee=24 loc='ksqrcl' id1=0 id2=0 name=   type=0 D7A495D8:007F9D3F    17   142 10444  12 ABORT TRANSACTION - xid: 0x0007.018.000001fe ??  PID 17 ??? TX resource?Enqueue Waiter linked List ???PID 24???,????KSL POST SENT ?? PID 24, ???ksqrcl???ENQUEUE LOCK ?PID 24??????KSL POST (KSL POST RCVD poster=17), ?ksqgtl???? TX-00070018-000001fe ?? ksqrcl??, ??PID 24???????? TX lock?USN ,??????? USN 3 XID 3.11.582 ,???acquire TX-0003000b-00000246 D7A49616:007F9D41    24   140 10005   3 KSL POST RCVD poster=17 loc='ksqrcl' id1=0 id2=0 name=   type=0 fac#=0 facpost=1 D7A4961C:007F9D42    24   140 10704  19 ksqgtl: SUCCESS D7A4967D:007F9D43    24   140 10704 117 ksqrcl: release TX-00070018-000001fe mode=X D7A496A5:007F9D44    24   140 10813   1 ktubnd: Bind usn 3 nax 1 nbx 0 lng 0 par 0 D7A496C2:007F9D45    24   140 10813   2 ktubnd: Txn Bound xid: 3.11.582 D7A496C7:007F9D46    24   140 10704  83 ksqgtl: acquire TX-0003000b-00000246 mode=X flags=GLOBAL|XACT why="contention" D7A496E4:007F9D47    24   140 10704  19 ksqgtl: SUCCESS ROW LOCK?Release ??????TX?ENQUEUE LOCK,?????????Process J ????????????, Process K??????????? ,Process K?????????,???row piece?lb??0×0 ,?????ITL,Process Z???ITL???????Process J????XID,?????Process J?????TX lock,PROCESS K ???TX resource?Enqueue Waiter Linked List?????X mode(exclusive)?enqueue lock? ???Process J??TX lock?,Process J?????TX resource?Enqueue Waiter Linked List ???Process K??????,??POST?????Process K? TX lock??????,???????row lock???????,?????????

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• Some non-generic collections

  - by Simon Cooper

  Although the collections classes introduced in .NET 2, 3.5 and 4 cover most scenarios, there are still some .NET 1 collections that don't have generic counterparts. In this post, I'll be examining what they do, why you might use them, and some things you'll need to bear in mind when doing so. BitArray System.Collections.BitArray is conceptually the same as a List<bool>, but whereas List<bool> stores each boolean in a single byte (as that's what the backing bool[] does), BitArray uses a single bit to store each value, and uses various bitmasks to access each bit individually. This means that BitArray is eight times smaller than a List<bool>. Furthermore, BitArray has some useful functions for bitmasks, like And, Xor and Not, and it's not limited to 32 or 64 bits; a BitArray can hold as many bits as you need. However, it's not all roses and kittens. There are some fundamental limitations you have to bear in mind when using BitArray: It's a non-generic collection. The enumerator returns object (a boxed boolean), rather than an unboxed bool. This means that if you do this: foreach (bool b in bitArray) { ... } Every single boolean value will be boxed, then unboxed. And if you do this: foreach (var b in bitArray) { ... } you'll have to manually unbox b on every iteration, as it'll come out of the enumerator an object. Instead, you should manually iterate over the collection using a for loop: for (int i=0; i<bitArray.Length; i++) { bool b = bitArray[i]; ... } Following on from that, if you want to use BitArray in the context of an IEnumerable<bool>, ICollection<bool> or IList<bool>, you'll need to write a wrapper class, or use the Enumerable.Cast<bool> extension method (although Cast would box and unbox every value you get out of it). There is no Add or Remove method. You specify the number of bits you need in the constructor, and that's what you get. You can change the length yourself using the Length property setter though. It doesn't implement IList. Although not really important if you're writing a generic wrapper around it, it is something to bear in mind if you're using it with pre-generic code. However, if you use BitArray carefully, it can provide significant gains over a List<bool> for functionality and efficiency of space. OrderedDictionary System.Collections.Specialized.OrderedDictionary does exactly what you would expect - it's an IDictionary that maintains items in the order they are added. It does this by storing key/value pairs in a Hashtable (to get O(1) key lookup) and an ArrayList (to maintain the order). You can access values by key or index, and insert or remove items at a particular index. The enumerator returns items in index order. However, the Keys and Values properties return ICollection, not IList, as you might expect; CopyTo doesn't maintain the same ordering, as it copies from the backing Hashtable, not ArrayList; and any operations that insert or remove items from the middle of the collection are O(n), just like a normal list. In short; don't use this class. If you need some sort of ordered dictionary, it would be better to write your own generic dictionary combining a Dictionary<TKey, TValue> and List<KeyValuePair<TKey, TValue>> or List<TKey> for your specific situation. ListDictionary and HybridDictionary To look at why you might want to use ListDictionary or HybridDictionary, we need to examine the performance of these dictionaries compared to Hashtable and Dictionary<object, object>. For this test, I added n items to each collection, then randomly accessed n/2 items: So, what's going on here? Well, ListDictionary is implemented as a linked list of key/value pairs; all operations on the dictionary require an O(n) search through the list. However, for small n, the constant factor that big-o notation doesn't measure is much lower than the hashing overhead of Hashtable or Dictionary. HybridDictionary combines a Hashtable and ListDictionary; for small n, it uses a backing ListDictionary, but switches to a Hashtable when it gets to 9 items (you can see the point it switches from a ListDictionary to Hashtable in the graph). Apart from that, it's got very similar performance to Hashtable. So why would you want to use either of these? In short, you wouldn't. Any gain in performance by using ListDictionary over Dictionary<TKey, TValue> would be offset by the generic dictionary not having to cast or box the items you store, something the graphs above don't measure. Only if the performance of the dictionary is vital, the dictionary will hold less than 30 items, and you don't need type safety, would you use ListDictionary over the generic Dictionary. And even then, there's probably more useful performance gains you can make elsewhere.

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• VB Myth - Case Insensitivity is Awesome!

  - by Damon

  I was reading Andy Brown's article 10 Reasons Why Visual Basic is Better than C# and the first claim is that VB is superior because of case insensitivity.  I think the reasons he outlines are basically as follows: Your fingers get tired finding the shift key (e.g. typing PascalCase and camelCase members) You are much more likely to make mistakes while typing names When you accidentally leave caps lock on, it really matters These three arguments culminate in the conclusion: "It doesn't matter if you disagree with everything else in this article: case-sensitivity alone is sufficient reason to ditch C#!" Righto.  I've been using Visual Basic since version 5.0, I wrote a book about ASP.NET in Visual Basic, so I want everyone to know I'm definitely not a VB.NET hater.  I had to converted to C# because it was the language of preference at the places I've worked, so I'm used to both languages.  I love me some case sensitivity.  So first, let's debunk the claims. First, your fingers do not get tired of finding the shift key unless you are writing code in notepad and compiling everything on the command line.  Visual Studio pretty much takes away the need to use the shift key at all. For the most part, any programmer worth a damn doesn't have to type more than about 3-5 characters of any variable or method name before IntelliSense kicks in to help.  VB or C#, if you are not using the tab key for autocomplete then you are typing too much anyway, regardless of whether the shift key is involved or not.  Also, you've got to be a pretty hard-core candy ass if you're complaining at the end of the day that your little fingers are hurting from hitting the shift key. Second, I cannot logically refute the fact that if there are more stringent rules about case sensitivity it will lead to more mistakes.  As such, know that you will be more prone to mistakes in C#.  However, lets talk about the magnitude of the problem.  If you are using IntelliSense then you have auto-correction built in so you probably won't have much of a problem in the first place.  If you manage to bypass IntelliSense and type something wrong you normally are immediately presented with a red-squiggly to let you know something is amiss.  Normally, a person would look at the problem, figure out what the heck went wrong, and then avoid that problem again in the future.  Granted, I have met people who seem to lack this capability, but their problem is deeper than a decision between VB.NET and C#.  So let's make sure that we're all on the same page about this problem.  If you have two teams of developers, one that uses VB.NET and one that uses C#, do not expect to see the VB.NET team drinking beer at the end of the project in festive revelry while the C# team is crying over what the hell to do because their code is riddled with case-sensitivity problems that nobody can resolve. Lastly, if you leave your caps lock key on, turn it off.  Really, what kind of ass-hat would write an entire VB.NET application ENTIRELY IN CAPS?  I happen to be a fan of case sensitivity because it encourages precision and uniformity.  The last thing I need is a code base that looks like it was ransacked by LeEt HacKors wHo Can uSe wHateVer cASe tHey wanT.  I mean really, if you saw someone write this: PuBLIc Sub MyMethod . End Sub And upon asking them why BL was upper case, they responded "Oh, I accidentally hit the shift key there.  Fortunately for me VB.NET is a case insensitive language so I saved a couple of keystrokes by leaving it in there."  Or if you saw: PUBLIC SUB ANOTHERMETHOD . END SUB And the response to why it was uppercased was "Yeah, I accidentally had caps locks on, fortunately for me VB.NET doesn't care.  Really dodged a bullet there, glad I wasn't using C#."  Would you not think that a bit ridiculous?  If you want to convince C# developers that C# sucks, go for it.  But the case insensitivity argument is crap.

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• Thought Oracle Usability Advisory Board Was Stuffy? Wrong. Justification for Attending OUAB: ROI

  - by ultan o'broin

  Looking for reasons tell your boss why your organization needs to join the Oracle Usability Advisory Board or why you need approval to attend one of its meetings (see the requirements)? Try phrases such as "Continued Return on Investment (ROI)", "Increased Productivity" or "Happy Workers". With OUAB your participation is about realizing and sustaining ROI across the entire applications life-cycle from input to designs to implementation choices and integration, usage and performance and on measuring and improving the onboarding and support experience. If you think this is a boring meeting of middle-aged people sitting around moaning about customizing desktop forms and why the BlackBerry is here to stay, think again! How about this for a rich agenda, all designed to engage the audience in a thought-provoking and feedback-illiciting day of swirling interactions, contextual usage, global delivery, mobility, consumerizationm, gamification and tailoring your implementation to reflect real users doing real work in real environments.  Foldable, rollable ereader devices provide a newspaper-like UK for electronic news. Or a way to wrap silicon chips, perhaps. Explored at the OUAB Europe Meeting (photograph from Terrace Restaurant in TVP. Nom.) At the 7 December 2012 OUAB Europe meeting in Oracle Thames Valley Park, UK, Oracle partners and customers stepped up to the mic and PPT decks with a range of facts and examples to astound any UX conference C-level sceptic. Over the course of the day we covered much ground, but it was all related in a contextual, flexibile, simplication, engagement way aout delivering results for business: that means solving problems. This means being about the user and their tasks and how to make design and technology transforms work into a productive activity that users and bean counters will be excited by. The sessions really gelled for me: 1. Mobile design patterns and the powerful propositions for customers and partners offered by using the design guidance with Oracle ADF Mobile. Customers' and partners' developers existing ADF developers are now productive, efficient ADF Mobile developers applying proven UX guidance using ADF Mobile components and other Oracle Fusion Middleware in the development toolkit. You can find the Mobile UX Design Patterns and Guidance on Building Mobile Apps on OTN. 2. Oracle Voice and Apps. How this medium offers so much potentual in the enterprise and offers a window in Fusion Apps cloud webservices, Oracle RightNow NLP and Nuance technology. Exciting stuff, demoed live on a mobile phone. Stay tuned for more features and modalities and how you can tailor your own apps experience.  3. Oracle RightNow Natural Language Processing (NLP) Virtual Assistant technology (Ella): how contextual intervention and learning from users sessions delivers a great personalized UX for users interacting with Ella, a fifth generation VA to solve problems and seek knowledge. 4. BYOD Keynote: A balanced keynote address contrasting Fujitsu's explaining of the conceprt, challenges, and trends and setting the expectation that BYOD must be embraced in a flexible way,  with the resolute, crafted high security enterprise requirements that nuancing the BYOD concept and proposals with the realities of their world of water tight information and device sharing policies. Fascinating stuff, as well providing anecdotes to make us thing about out own DYOD Deployments. One size does not fit all. 5. Icon Cultural Surveys Results and Insights Arising: Ever wondered about the cultural appropriateness of icons used in software UIs and how these icons assessed for global use? Or considered that social media "Like" icons might be  unacceptable hand gestures in culture or enterprise? Or do the old world icons like Save floppy disk icons still find acceptable? Well the survey results told you. Challenges must be tested, over time, and context of use is critical now, including external factors such as the internet and social media adoption. Indeed the fears about global rejection of the face and hand icons was not borne out, and some of the more anachronistic icons (checkbooks, microphones, real-to-real tape decks, 3.5" floppies for "save") have become accepted metaphors for current actions. More importantly the findings brought into focus the reason for OUAB - engage with and illicit feedback though working groups before we build anything. 6. EReaders and Oracle iBook: What is the uptake and trends of ereaders? And how about a demo of an iBook with enterprise apps content?  Well received by the audience, the session included a live running poll of ereader usage. 7. Gamification Design Jam: Fun, hands on event for teams of Oracle staff, partners and customers, actually building gamified flows, a practice that can be applied right away by customers and partners.  8. UX Direct: A new offering of usability best practices, coming to an external website for you in 2013. FInd a real user, observe their tasks, design and approve, build and measure. Simple stuff to improve apps implications no end. 9. FUSE (an internal term only, basically Fusion Simplified Experience): demo of the new Face of Fusion Applications: inherently mobile, simple to use, social, personalizable and FAST, three great demos from the HCM, CRM and ICT world on how these UX designs can be used in different ways. So, a powerful breadth and depth of UX solutions and opporunities for customers and partners to engage with and explore how they can make their users happy and benefit their business reaping continued ROI from those apps investments. Find out more about the OUAB and how to get involved here ... 

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• Many Different Things Rolled into a Ball

  - by MOSSLover

  Yeah I know I don’t blog much anymore, because life has taken me places that don’t involve the interwebs unfortunately.  I am in the midst of planning two events, starting a non for profit, creating more sessions for various conferences, submitting to various conferences, working a 40 hour a week job, attempting to hang out with boyfriend/friends/family.  So you can see that list does not include this blog sadly that’s how it goes sometimes.  The bottom piece very important over any of the top pieces.  I haven’t seen St. Louis in a while and I get to go back.  I was gone from home for MVP Summit and Best Practices Conference, so the boyfriend and cat didn’t get to see me either for a bit.  Then you have to add in the whole toilet being broken fiasco this week.  Maintenance really thought it would be cool to turn off the ability to flush.  I mean who does that?  Then when we call the owner he comes by turns it on and we figure it was an accident, because well the next day no one came by to tell us there was a leak.  It was all kinds of strangeness and involved me running to other people’s toilets.  As Dan Usher would say, I was a sad panda for a few days.  So I guess I wanted to post a few thoughts here just because I can.  I do not like multiple content editor webparts embedded with html files in numerous pages doing the same thing.  I will tell you why I don’t like these particular webparts and the way they are being used.  First off if you have a bunch of pages with script includes it’s about time you should just dump them into the masterpage.  Why bother finding all 20 pages and changing those pages when you can just use a single masterpage that already exists? The other thing that is bothering me days is screen scraping.  Just don’t do it, because in 2010 you will find the UI is substantially slower.  I understand you are new and you have no idea what to do.  You are also using 2007 am I right?  So then you need to go to codeplex.com and type in a search for SPServices.  Download it, use it, love it and then have it’s babies (well maybe don’t go so far this is not the GRID in Tron). If you have a ton of constants in your code why did you not go in and create a webpart with a bunch of properties and/or link to a configuration list hidden in the browser?  This type of property and list could help you out in the long run.  The power users and administrators can now change the control without you having to compile it over and over again.  It’s good stuff.  Also, you can change the control without compiling it, especially in 2007 where you have to do a farm solution.  In 2010 you can do a sandbox solution I guess, but shouldn’t you make it as easy and supportable as possible for other users? In conclusion I’m an angry person when it comes to viewing something repeatedly and analyzing it in a system.  Now we will move on to the next topic…MVP Summit…So yeah I can’t really talk about particulars, but I can talk about my experience as a person.  Don’t build something up to be cooler than it is only to be dropped from your 10,000 foot perch.  My experience was great, but the content overall was something to be desired.  It’s ok I got to meet a lot of people I would not have met if I had not gone.  Some of it was surreal, such as product group members showing up and talking to us.  It was pretty neat.  Plus I never had the chance to get to that mythical MS Office in Redmond.  Prior to Summit it was like Rainbow Brites unicorn trying taunting me on television when I was a kid.  So I guess with all that said I give it a B.  It was awesome in some way, but lacking in other ways.  The cool part is that I got to go.  Would I have lived without going? Yes, but it was still cool. I could prattle on about other things and make this post massive, but I’m going to pass and give myself a piece of Sunday to play Rockband and do 800 other things.  I hope the two of you who read this blog are well.  I’ll catch you all at another juncture.  Have a good weekend and varying holidays in between. Technorati Tags: SharePoint,MVP Summit,JQuery,Javascript

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• jQuery with SharePoint solutions

  - by KunaalKapoor

  For me jQuery is the 'Plan-B' for everything.And most of my projects include the use of jQuery for something or the other, so I decided to write a small note on what works best while using jQuery along with SharePoint.I prefer to use the jQuery JavaScript library, which is far more robust, easier to use, and allows for plugins. Follow the steps below to add jQuery to your master page. For office 365, the prefered location to add jQuery files is the "Site Asserts" library.Deployment Best PracticesThey are only as good as the context it’s being referenced.  In other words, take into account your world before applying it.Script your deployment options.  Folder in SPD. Use the file system.  Make external references.  The JQuery library is on the Microsoft Ajax Content Delivery Network. You may even choose to publish to and from the document library. (pros and cons to this approach)Reference options when referencing the script.ScriptLink will make sure it’s loaded at the top of the page and only loaded once. You need Visual Studio or SPDContent Editor Web Part (CEWP).  Drop it on the page and it’s there.  Easy but dangerousCustom Actions. Great for global deployments of JQuery.  Loads it on every page. It also works in Sandbox installations.Deployment Maintenance Dont’sDon’t add scripts directly to your Master Page. That’s way too much effort because the pages are hard to maintain.Don’t add scripts directly to the CEWP.  Use a content link instead. That will allow for reuse. If you or someone deletes the CEWP you won’t lose code in the web partSecurity.  Any scripts run with the same privileges of the current user.  In other words, you can’t get in trouble.Development Best PracticesDon’t abuse the DOM.  There are better options to load the DOM without hitting it 1,000 times.User other performance boosters.Try other libraries.  Try some custom codeAvoid String conversionMinify your filesUse CAML to reduce number of returns rowsOnly update your JQuery library AFTER RIGOROUS REGRESSION TESTINGCRUD operations can come with some funSP Services wraps SharePoint’s web services for executionThe Bing SDK is pretty easy to use.  You can add it to your page with a script,  put it into a content editor web part and connect it from the address parameters in a list.Steps:1. Go to jquery.com and download the latest jQuery library to your desktop. You want to get the compressed production version, not the development version.2. Open SharePoint Designer (SPD) and connect to the root level of your site's site collection.In SPD, open the "Style Library" folder. Create a folder named "Scripts" inside of the Style Library. Drag the jQuery library JavaScript file from your desktop into the Scripts folder.In the Scripts folder, create a new JavaScript file and name it (e.g. "actions.js").3. If you are using visual studio add a folder for js, you can create a new folder at the root level or if you prefer more cleaner solutions like me, you can use the layouts folder which cleans out on deactivation/uninstall.4. Within the <head> tag of the master page, add a script reference to the jQuery library just above the content place holder named "PlaceHolderAdditonalPageHead" (and above your custom CSS references, if applicable) as follows:<script src="/Style%20Library/Scripts/{jquery library file}.js" type="text/javascript"></script>Immediately after the jQuery library reference add a script reference to your custom scripts file as follows:<script src="/Style%20Library/Scripts/actions.js" type="text/javascript"></script>Inside your script tag, you can test if jQuery is already defined and if not, then add it to the page.<script type='text/javascript'>  if (typeof jQuery == 'undefined')    document.write('<scr'+'ipt type="text/javascript" src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.6.1.min.js"></sc'+'ript>');</script>For the inquisitive few... Read on if you'd like :)Why jQuery on SharePoiny is AwesomeIt’s all about that visual wow factor.  You can get past that, “But it looks like SharePoint”  Take a long list view and put it into JQuery with pagination, etc and you are the hero.  It’s also about new controls you get with JQuery that you couldn’t do before.Why jQuery with SharePoint should be AwfulAlthough it’s fairly easy to get jQuery up and running. Copy/Paste can cause a problem.  If you don’t understand what it’s doing in the Client Object Model and the Document Object Model then it will do things on your site that were completely unexpected. Many blogs will note workarounds they employed on their sites. Why it’s not working: Debugging “sucks”.You need to develop small blocks of functionality, Test it by putting in some alerts  and console.log. Set breakpoints and monitor the DOM via Firebug and some IE development toolsPerformance - It happens all the time. But you should look at the tradeoffs. More time may give you more functionality.Consistency - ”But it works fine on my computer. So test on many browsers.  Take into account client resourcesHarm the Farm -  You need to code wisely and negatively test.  Don’t be the cause of a DoS attack that’s really JQuery asking for a resource over and over and over again.  So code wisely. Do negative testing. Monitor Server Resources.They also did a demo where JQuery did an endless loop to pull data from a list. It’s a poor decision but also an easy mistake.  They spiked their server resources within a couple seconds and had to shut down the call before it brought it down.ConclusionJQuery is now another tool in your tool kit. You don’t have to use it. Use it where it makes sense and where it helps you get your job done.Don’t abuse it, you will pay for it laterIt will add to page bloat so take that into accountIt can slow your performance

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• Namespaces are obsolete

  - by Bertrand Le Roy

  To those of us who have been around for a while, namespaces have been part of the landscape. One could even say that they have been defining the large-scale features of the landscape in question. However, something happened fairly recently that I think makes this venerable structure obsolete. Before I explain this development and why it’s a superior concept to namespaces, let me recapitulate what namespaces are and why they’ve been so good to us over the years… Namespaces are used for a few different things: Scope: a namespace delimits the portion of code where a name (for a class, sub-namespace, etc.) has the specified meaning. Namespaces are usually the highest-level scoping structures in a software package. Collision prevention: name collisions are a universal problem. Some systems, such as jQuery, wave it away, but the problem remains. Namespaces provide a reasonable approach to global uniqueness (and in some implementations such as XML, enforce it). In .NET, there are ways to relocate a namespace to avoid those rare collision cases. Hierarchy: programmers like neat little boxes, and especially boxes within boxes within boxes. For some reason. Regular human beings on the other hand, tend to think linearly, which is why the Windows explorer for example has tried in a few different ways to flatten the file system hierarchy for the user. 1 is clearly useful because we need to protect our code from bleeding effects from the rest of the application (and vice versa). A language with only global constructs may be what some of us started programming on, but it’s not desirable in any way today. 2 may not be always reasonably worth the trouble (jQuery is doing fine with its global plug-in namespace), but we still need it in many cases. One should note however that globally unique names are not the only possible implementation. In fact, they are a rather extreme solution. What we really care about is collision prevention within our application. What happens outside is irrelevant. 3 is, more than anything, an aesthetical choice. A common convention has been to encode the whole pedigree of the code into the namespace. Come to think about it, we never think we need to import “Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.Agent” and that would be very hard to remember. What we want to do is bring nHibernate into our app. And this is precisely what you’ll do with modern package managers and module loaders. I want to take the specific example of RequireJS, which is commonly used with Node. Here is how you import a module with RequireJS: var http = require("http"); .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } This is of course importing a HTTP stack module into the code. There is no noise here. Let’s break this down. Scope (1) is provided by the one scoping mechanism in JavaScript: the closure surrounding the module’s code. Whatever scoping mechanism is provided by the language would be fine here. Collision prevention (2) is very elegantly handled. Whereas relocating is an afterthought, and an exceptional measure with namespaces, it is here on the frontline. You always relocate, using an extremely familiar pattern: variable assignment. We are very much used to managing our local variable names and any possible collision will get solved very easily by picking a different name. Wait a minute, I hear some of you say. This is only taking care of collisions on the client-side, on the left of that assignment. What if I have two libraries with the name “http”? Well, You can better qualify the path to the module, which is what the require parameter really is. As for hierarchical organization, you don’t really want that, do you? RequireJS’ module pattern does elegantly cover the bases that namespaces used to cover, but it also promotes additional good practices. First, it promotes usage of self-contained, single responsibility units of code through the closure-based, stricter scoping mechanism. Namespaces are somewhat more porous, as using/import statements can be used bi-directionally, which leads us to my second point… Sane dependency graphs are easier to achieve and sustain with such a structure. With namespaces, it is easy to construct dependency cycles (that’s bad, mmkay?). With this pattern, the equivalent would be to build mega-components, which are an easier problem to spot than a decay into inter-dependent namespaces, for which you need specialized tools. I really like this pattern very much, and I would like to see more environments implement it. One could argue that dependency injection has some commonalities with this for example. What do you think? This is the half-baked result of some morning shower reflections, and I’d love to read your thoughts about it. What am I missing?

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• What Counts for A DBA - Logic

  - by drsql

  "There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who will always wonder why there are only two items in my list and those who will figured it out the first time they saw this very old joke."  Those readers who will give up immediately and get frustrated with me for not explaining it to them are not likely going to be great technical professionals of any sort, much less a programmer or administrator who will be constantly dealing with the common failures that make up a DBA's day.  Many of these people will stare at this like a dog staring at a traffic signal and still have no more idea of how to decipher the riddle. Without explanation they will give up, call the joke "stupid" and, feeling quite superior, walk away indignantly to their job likely flipping patties of meat-by-product. As a data professional or any programmer who has strayed  to this very data-oriented blog, you would, if you are worth your weight in air, either have recognized immediately what was going on, or felt a bit ignorant.  Your friends are chuckling over the joke, but why is it funny? Unfortunately you left your smartphone at home on the dresser because you were up late last night programming and were running late to work (again), so you will either have to fake a laugh or figure it out.  Digging through the joke, you figure out that the word "two" is the most important part, since initially the joke mentioned 10. Hmm, why did they spell out two, but not ten? Maybe 10 could be interpreted a different way?  As a DBA, this sort of logic comes into play every day, and sometimes it doesn't involve nerdy riddles or Star Wars folklore.  When you turn on your computer and get the dreaded blue screen of death, you don't immediately cry to the help desk and sit on your thumbs and whine about not being able to work. Do that and your co-workers will question your nerd-hood; I know I certainly would. You figure out the problem, and when you have it narrowed down, you call the help desk and tell them what the problem is, usually having to explain that yes, you did in fact try to reboot before calling.  Of course, sometimes humility does come in to play when you reach the end of your abilities, but the ‘end of abilities’ is not something any of us recognize readily. It is handy to have the ability to use logic to solve uncommon problems: It becomes especially useful when you are trying to solve a data-related problem such as a query performance issue, and the way that you approach things will tell your coworkers a great deal about your abilities.  The novice is likely to immediately take the approach of  trying to add more indexes or blaming the hardware. As you become more and more experienced, it becomes increasingly obvious that performance issues are a very complex topic. A query may be slow for a myriad of reasons, from concurrency issues, a poor query plan because of a parameter value (like parameter sniffing,) poor coding standards, or just because it is a complex query that is going to be slow sometimes. Some queries that you will deal with may have twenty joins and hundreds of search criteria, and it can take a lot of thought to determine what is going on.  You can usually figure out the problem to almost any query by using basic knowledge of how joins and queries work, together with the help of such things as the query plan, profiler or monitoring tools.  It is not unlikely that it can take a full day’s work to understand some queries, breaking them down into smaller queries to find a very tiny problem. Not every time will you actually find the problem, and it is part of the process to occasionally admit that the problem is random, and everything works fine now.  Sometimes, it is necessary to realize that a problem is outside of your current knowledge, and admit temporary defeat: You can, at least, narrow down the source of the problem by looking logically at all of the possible solutions. By doing this, you can satisfy your curiosity and learn more about what the actual problem was. For example, in the joke, had you never been exposed to the concept of binary numbers, there is no way you could have known that binary - 10 = decimal - 2, but you could have logically come to the conclusion that 10 must not mean ten in the context of the joke, and at that point you are that much closer to getting the joke and at least won't feel so ignorant.

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• Are IE9 really good ?

  - by anirudha

  IE9 started a campaign for kill IE6 from the core because they know that IE6 is a big trouble or  problem for them for promote 9 version of IE. so they started a campaign for killing IE6. next time they kill IE 7 , 8,9 whenever they found this old version have a big problem for them to promote next version of IE.   Why they not make a update system who automatically update the browser and tell user to restart and update goes installed in the user system. well IE9 should learn from all other that they have very well design auto-update system who never give user in trouble that your browser goes old. Chrome and Firefox both update themselves and say user restart to enjoy another good version. in IE6 a big problem is that updates. no one sure that they installed new version of IE6 without any hassles and update goes install without any problem because they really know or care about “you need this to install this and this for this” so they thing “why I update IE whenever I am unsure that my browser goes update and I have no problem again” so they do nothing because their work done with no problem because common person used high profile application who work even in IE6. so they do nothing.    IE6 countdown website have designed a banner for warn or force user to upgrade to next version of IE. well there is no good reason for put the banner on website some of reason are:-   Windows 7 comes with pre-installed IE8 and Vista comes with upgrade version them IE6 so that is sure that you force a user who have Windows XP [luna] and if they want to upgrade IE then they can get IE8 not version 9 because IE9 is design for Windows 7 or Vista Service pack 2. so What is the use of update when user still have a outdate version too because IE8 is old version and not have any capability of HTML5 so forcing user by using the banner have no sense. I am not know why they all listed on website put the banner on their own website. it’s good that you offer user what they want instead of giving them a outdate version of IE again. My means to give a user list of browser they can try to enhance their browser experience instead of only IE.   IE9 build upon WPF and they spent more time on using WPF in IE instead of making user experience browser.  many thing is designed wrongly in IE first thing is tabs. the tabs in chrome are bigger and easily to move and same in Firefox even not have smooth tabbing. IE have same tabbing as chrome have but leak a point that it’s too small. if you really  want to move then sometime they create a problem that they going elsewhere from the current instance of IE.   Chrome have a big buttons, tabs and menu to enhance browser experience and Firefox have a good feature that you can make them bigger or small. you can put the icon for add-ons on the toolbar for easily use but IE have no relation with customization so we never can thinking about that.   When chrome provide lot’s of extensions and a  webstore for browser application and same feature in Firefox can be seen then there is no plugin in IE. really you can see their IE addons Website where no plugin listed for web development. even in the category or tag. as a response from many blog there is new for developer that new version of IE9 developer tool. well IE9 have three new tabs a blogger tell on their blog. when I trying them I found many thing but I still unable to edit the Css from the HTML tab and no plugin I found I can get to enhance IE9 web development. something more other provide never IE9 give me like personas , customization , browser extension or any other they used to tell a small thing customization  .   IE9 still have some problem with JavaScript that when I use Firefox and chrome and logout in both then my cookie is deleted but in IE it’s not done. it’s show me that IE9 still have different from other not for good thing even some bad thing too. When I trying to read a article that is written in Hindi using Unicode font I found that they show many thing misspelled. there is three Sha in Hindi but they all goes wrong in IE. the misprint thing is not that the writing  for the articles goes wrong. it’s problem or browser to rendering a font. the Firefox and chrome not give me this problem even opera render the font in italic style by decrease the font-size but all those work perfect.   in Pwn2Own the apple’s safari  and IE9 both are hacked. this is a awesome news for whose who thing that  open-source is lose in  Security and close-source is highly-secured software. well this is not a good parameter for talking about software. it’s should depend how much application tested and used. because more testing and more use of application make them better.   I  appreciate IE to making their new version 9 and good luck for them. there is a another matter that I personally found nothing on them.

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• Deduping your redundancies

  - by nospam(at)example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp)

  Robin Harris of Storagemojo pointed to an interesting article about about deduplication and it's impact to the resiliency of your data against data corruption on ACM Queue. The problem in short: A considerable number of filesystems store important metadata at multiple locations. For example the ZFS rootblock is copied to three locations. Other filesystems have similar provisions to protect their metadata. However you can easily proof, that the rootblock pointer in the uberblock of ZFS for example is pointing to blocks with absolutely equal content in all three locatition (with zdb -uu and zdb -r). It has to be that way, because they are protected by the same checksum. A number of devices offer block level dedup, either as an option or as part of their inner workings. However when you store three identical blocks on them and the devices does block level dedup internally, the device may just deduplicated your redundant metadata to a block stored just once that is stored on the non-voilatile storage. When this block is corrupted, you have essentially three corrupted copies. Three hit with one bullet. This is indeed an interesting problem: A device doing deduplication doesn't know if a block is important or just a datablock. This is the reason why I like deduplication like it's done in ZFS. It's an integrated part and so important parts don't get deduplicated away. A disk accessed by a block level interface doesn't know anything about the importance of a block. A metadata block is nothing different to it's inner mechanism than a normal data block because there is no way to tell that this is important and that those redundancies aren't allowed to fall prey to some clever deduplication mechanism. Robin talks about this in regard of the Sandforce disk controllers who use a kind of dedup to reduce some of the nasty effects of writing data to flash, but the problem is much broader. However this is relevant whenever you are using a device with block level deduplication. It's just the point that you have to activate it for most implementation by command, whereas certain devices do this by default or by design and you don't know about it. However I'm not perfectly sure about that ? given that storage administration and server administration are often different groups with different business objectives I would ask your storage guys if they have activated dedup without telling somebody elase on their boxes in order to speak less often with the storage sales rep. The problem is even more interesting with ZFS. You may use ditto blocks to protect important data to store multiple copies of data in the pool to increase redundancy, even when your pool just consists out of one disk or just a striped set of disk. However when your device is doing dedup internally it may remove your redundancy before it hits the nonvolatile storage. You've won nothing. Just spend your disk quota on the the LUNs in the SAN and you make your disk admin happy because of the good dedup ratio However you can just fall in this specific "deduped ditto block"trap when your pool just consists out of a single device, because ZFS writes ditto blocks on different disks, when there is more than just one disk. Yet another reason why you should spend some extra-thought when putting your zpool on a single LUN, especially when the LUN is sliced and dices out of a large heap of storage devices by a storage controller. However I have one problem with the articles and their specific mention of ZFS: You can just hit by this problem when you are using the deduplicating device for the pool. However in the specifically mentioned case of SSD this isn't the usecase. Most implementations of SSD in conjunction with ZFS are hybrid storage pools and so rotating rust disk is used as pool and SSD are used as L2ARC/sZIL. And there it simply doesn't matter: When you really have to resort to the sZIL (your system went down, it doesn't matter of one block or several blocks are corrupt, you have to fail back to the last known good transaction group the device. On the other side, when a block in L2ARC is corrupt, you simply read it from the pool and in HSP implementations this is the already mentioned rust. In conjunction with ZFS this is more interesting when using a storage array, that is capable to do dedup and where you use LUNs for your pool. However as mentioned before, on those devices it's a user made decision to do so, and so it's less probable that you deduplicating your redundancies. Other filesystems lacking acapability similar to hybrid storage pools are more "haunted" by this problem of SSD using dedup-like mechanisms internally, because those filesystem really store the data on the the SSD instead of using it just as accelerating devices. However at the end Robin is correct: It's jet another point why protecting your data by creating redundancies by dispersing it several disks (by mirror or parity RAIDs) is really important. No dedup mechanism inside a device can dedup away your redundancy when you write it to a totally different and indepenent device.

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