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  • Dependency Injection/IoC container practices when writing frameworks

    - by Dave Hillier
    I've used various IoC containers (Castle.Windsor, Autofac, MEF, etc) for .Net in a number of projects. I have found they tend to encourage a number of bad practices. Are there any established practices for IoC container use, particularly when providing a platform/framework? My aim as a framework writer is to make code as simple and as easy to use as possible. I'd rather write one line of code to construct an object than ten or even just two. For example, a couple of code smells that I've noticed and don't have good suggestions to: Large number of parameters (5) for constructors. Creating services tends to be complex; all of the dependencies are injected via the constructor - despite the fact that the components are rarely optional (except for maybe in testing). Lack of private and internal classes; this one may be a specific limitation of using C# and Silverlight, but I'm interested in how it is solved. It's difficult to tell what a frameworks interface is if all the classes are public; it allows me access to private parts that I probably shouldnt touch. Coupling the object lifecycle to the IoC container. It is often difficult to manually construct the dependencies required to create objects. Object lifecycle is too often managed by the IoC framework. I've seen projects where most classes are registered as Singletons. You get a lack of explicit control and are also forced to manage the internals (it relates to the above point, all classes are public and you have to inject them). For example, .Net framework has many static methods. such as, DateTime.UtcNow. Many times I have seen this wrapped and injected as a construction parameter. Depending on concrete implementation makes my code hard to test. Injecting a dependency makes my code hard to use - particularly if the class has many parameters. How do I provide both a testable interface, as well as one that is easy to use? What are the best practices?

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  • Customize the Background in Boxee

    - by DigitalGeekery
    Are you a Boxee user who thinks the default background is little boring? Today we’ll take a look at how to freshen up the look of Boxee by changing the background. Boxee Background When you log into Boxee, select the Settings button at the upper left corner of the Home page.   Select General on the Settings screen. When you select or hover your mouse over the Background Image button, you’ll see options to set a background image or set a background image folder. You’ll have the option of settings a single static image as your background, or choosing an images folder.   If you choose a folder, Boxee will rotate through the images in the folder. To set Background images folder, select that option. Browse for your image folder.. And then select OK.   Boxee will rotate through the images in the folder.   Images will change every ten seconds.   If you prefer a single static image, select Set background image   Choose a image and select OK. Now just enjoy you nice new backgrounds.   If you ever wish to revert back to the default Boxee background, simply select Reset Images on the Settings \ General screen. Adding your own backgrounds is a nice way to customize your Boxee experience. Ideally, you’ll want to choose high resolution images and images oriented as landscape rather than portrait. If you are unfamiliar with Boxee, check out our article on getting started with Boxee.  Looking for a Boxee remote? Read how to use your iPhone or iPod Touch as a Boxee remote. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Integrate Boxee with Media Center in Windows 7Using Pandora in BoxeeWatch Netflix Instant Movies in BoxeeUse your iPhone or iPod Touch as a Boxee RemoteCustomize the Windows 7 Logon Screen TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 Use ILovePDF To Split and Merge PDF Files TimeToMeet is a Simple Online Meeting Planning Tool Easily Create More Bookmark Toolbars in Firefox Filevo is a Cool File Hosting & Sharing Site Get a free copy of WinUtilities Pro 2010 World Cup Schedule

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  • Exciting product releases (and one disappointing thing) with Mix10

    - by Jeff
    Sadly, I'm not at Mix this year, for the first time in a few years. It's a little harder to go if you work for Microsoft, oddly enough. And then there's this little guy next to me, who at ten days old really needs his daddy to be around! But oh, the excitement of what Microsoft has in store! It's great to finally see all of these major releases coming together for Microsoft developer products. There is a great deal of excitement among people internally no matter where you work, because there is so much cool stuff in the pipe. In case you live under a rock...Visual Studio 2010 - Great to see all of the positive feedback on the Twitter and what not. I've been using it on one of my home products for awhile, and I really like it. The newer nightly builds of ReSharper also seem to be gaining speed in quality as well. I like the new debugging features, and the text readability is not imagined. Love it.Silverlight 4 - I've been running a couple of minor SL3 apps on my personal sites for awhile now, and I'm thrilled with the platform. With a couple of key concepts down, .NET folk like you and me can do some stellar things with this, and if you're a Mac nerd (like me), it's all kinds of awesome to be able to build stuff for it without the agony of Objective-C and X Code.Windows Phone 7 Series - A few weeks ago you got to see the shiny new UI that went beyond the icon grid, and now you've got the developer story as well. That I can adapt my existing Silverlight apps with minimal effort to work on the phone is pretty powerful. Millions of .NET devs just because phone developers, using the tools they already know. How great is that?ASP.NET MVC2 - The final bits shipped last week, and there was much rejoicing. I love this framework because of the testability and the real ability to get to the true mechanics of HTTP. The other cool thing is the speed at which the framework has evolved. v2 in less than a year is pretty "un-Microsoft" in a lot of eyes.The video of keynotes and sessions is starting to appear on the Mix site, but for reasons I can't understand, they're WMV downloads. For real? Not that helpful for Mac folk. Why wouldn't they be using a Silverlight player?In any case, the thing that continues to motivate me is that getting what you imagine on to the Internet gets easier every year. This is not a new revelation for me. I've only been at Microsoft for four months, but I've felt this way for years. I'm thrilled to be a part of it.

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  • Best Platform/Engine for turn based Client/Server Android game

    - by Paradine
    I'm currently designing a turn based game for tablets. Initially for Android with porting to iOS later considered in design. I'm having trouble narrowing down the available technologies to even know where to spend my research time. I am hoping that if I explain what I am trying to achieve someone may be able to suggest a platform and/or engine. I've looked into some of the open source Engines ( http://www.cuteandroid.com/ten-open-source-android-2d-or-3d-game-engine-for-android-developers ) and some appear to handle much of what I might require - although with a higher focus on graphics than i need. Mages looks interesting although development appears to have ceased. If I could somehow leverage GoogleApps that would be excellent. Here is what I am trying to achieve: PvP turn based strategy game over internet - minimal animation and bandwidth required Players match up online using MetaGame system MatchID created on Resolution Server and Game starts Clients have 30 second countdown to select MoveString Clients sends small secure timestamped and MatchIDed MoveString to Resolution server Resolution server looks up Move String for each player, Resolves and Updates Players status in MatchID on Server Resolution server updates Client Views Repeat until victory conditions met - MatchID Closed, Rewards earned in MetaGame There will also need to be a full social and account system and metagame backend - but this could be running on separate system(s) Tablet in Offline mode would be catalog browsing and perhaps single player AI - bum I'm focusing on the Resolution Server at this point I'm not even certain if I would be looking at an Android App or a WebApp at this stage! I want a custom GUI so I guess an app - but maybe as I have little animation a WebApp might also work. Probably some combination of both. There will be very small overhead in data between client server - essentially a small text string every 30 seconds sent to the Resolution server which looks up the Effect and applies it to the Opponents string and determines some results to apply to the match. The client view is updated minimally with the results (only 5 in game Integers tracked) - perhaps triggering small animations/popups on the client to show the end result. e.g Explosion. If you have suggestions for a good technology or platform to best achieving the Resolution Server I'd love to hear. Also if you have experience with open source Engines - and could narrow down which (if any ) might be most suitable that would be a big help. Thanks in advance

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  • Source of (programmer) inefficiency

    - by Daniel
    I am interested to gain a better insight about the possible reasons of personal inefficiency as programmers (and only in programming) due to – simply - our own errors (because we are humans – well, almost all of us). I am not interested in how much we are productive or in how many adjustements the customer asks for when the work is done, but where and how each of us spend that part of its time in tasks that are unproductive and there is no one to blame except ourselves. Excluding ego - feeding and / or self – gratification, what I am trying to get (for all of us) is: what are the common issues eating our time; insight on reasons for that issues; identify simple way for us, personally (not delegating actions to other or our organizations), to correct our own problems. Please, do not think in academic terms but aim at the opportunity to compare our daily experiences and understand what are and how we try to fix our personal deficiencies. If you are interested to respond to this post, please: integrate the list if you see something important (or obvious) missing; highlight or name honestly your first issue tellng the way you try to address and solve your issue acting on yourself and yourself only in a sort of "continuous quality improving" My criteria for accepting the answer is: choose the best solution (feasibility and utility) to fix one (or more) of the problems of the list. Of course, selecting an error is not a vote on our skills: maybe we are hyper professional programmers and we lose ten minutes only every year or we are terribly inefficient, losing a couple of days a week: reasons for inefficiency could be really the same - but in a different scale. A possible list: Plain error in the names (variables, functions). Inability to see the obvious in your code. Misreading. Lack of concentration. Trying to use a technology you have not mastered. Errors with data types. Time required to understand your previous code or your documentation. Trying to do something more than requested because you enjoy it Using solutions more complicated than required because you enjoy it. Plain logical errors. Errors due to your fault in communications. Distraction My first personal issue: "Trying to use a technology you do not master." I have to use daily several technologies and I often need to spend significant time correcting code because my assumptions were plainly wrong. Reasons for this: production needs put high pressure and make difficult to find the time to learn. I try to address this reading technical books - as many as I can - even if this actually consumes a lot of time.

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  • Sniffing out SQL Code Smells: Inconsistent use of Symbolic names and Datatypes

    - by Phil Factor
    It is an awkward feeling. You’ve just delivered a database application that seems to be working fine in production, and you just run a few checks on it. You discover that there is a potential bug that, out of sheer good chance, hasn’t kicked in to produce an error; but it lurks, like a smoking bomb. Worse, maybe you find that the bug has started its evil work of corrupting the data, but in ways that nobody has, so far detected. You investigate, and find the damage. You are somehow going to have to repair it. Yes, it still very occasionally happens to me. It is not a nice feeling, and I do anything I can to prevent it happening. That’s why I’m interested in SQL code smells. SQL Code Smells aren’t necessarily bad practices, but just show you where to focus your attention when checking an application. Sometimes with databases the bugs can be subtle. SQL is rather like HTML: the language does its best to try to carry out your wishes, rather than to be picky about your bugs. Most of the time, this is a great benefit, but not always. One particular place where this can be detrimental is where you have implicit conversion between different data types. Most of the time it is completely harmless but we’re  concerned about the occasional time it isn’t. Let’s give an example: String truncation. Let’s give another even more frightening one, rounding errors on assignment to a number of different precision. Each requires a blog-post to explain in detail and I’m not now going to try. Just remember that it is not always a good idea to assign data to variables, parameters or even columns when they aren’t the same datatype, especially if you are relying on implicit conversion to work its magic.For details of the problem and the consequences, see here:  SR0014: Data loss might occur when casting from {Type1} to {Type2} . For any experienced Database Developer, this is a more frightening read than a Vampire Story. This is why one of the SQL Code Smells that makes me edgy, in my own or other peoples’ code, is to see parameters, variables and columns that have the same names and different datatypes. Whereas quite a lot of this is perfectly normal and natural, you need to check in case one of two things have gone wrong. Either sloppy naming, or mixed datatypes. Sure it is hard to remember whether you decided that the length of a log entry was 80 or 100 characters long, or the precision of a number. That is why a little check like this I’m going to show you is excellent for tidying up your code before you check it back into source Control! 1/ Checking Parameters only If you were just going to check parameters, you might just do this. It simply groups all the parameters, either input or output, of all the routines (e.g. stored procedures or functions) by their name and checks to see, in the HAVING clause, whether their data types are all the same. If not, it lists all the examples and their origin (the routine) Even this little check can occasionally be scarily revealing. ;WITH userParameter AS  ( SELECT   c.NAME AS ParameterName,  OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME(c.object_ID) + '.' + OBJECT_NAME(c.object_ID) AS ObjectName,  t.name + ' '     + CASE     --we may have to put in the length            WHEN t.name IN ('char', 'varchar', 'nchar', 'nvarchar')             THEN '('               + CASE WHEN c.max_length = -1 THEN 'MAX'                ELSE CONVERT(VARCHAR(4),                    CASE WHEN t.name IN ('nchar', 'nvarchar')                      THEN c.max_length / 2 ELSE c.max_length                    END)                END + ')'         WHEN t.name IN ('decimal', 'numeric')             THEN '(' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(4), c.precision)                   + ',' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(4), c.Scale) + ')'         ELSE ''      END  --we've done with putting in the length      + CASE WHEN XML_collection_ID <> 0         THEN --deal with object schema names             '(' + CASE WHEN is_XML_Document = 1                    THEN 'DOCUMENT '                    ELSE 'CONTENT '                   END              + COALESCE(               (SELECT QUOTENAME(ss.name) + '.' + QUOTENAME(sc.name)                FROM sys.xml_schema_collections sc                INNER JOIN Sys.Schemas ss ON sc.schema_ID = ss.schema_ID                WHERE sc.xml_collection_ID = c.XML_collection_ID),'NULL') + ')'          ELSE ''         END        AS [DataType]  FROM sys.parameters c  INNER JOIN sys.types t ON c.user_Type_ID = t.user_Type_ID  WHERE OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME(c.object_ID) <> 'sys'   AND parameter_id>0)SELECT CONVERT(CHAR(80),objectName+'.'+ParameterName),DataType FROM UserParameterWHERE ParameterName IN   (SELECT ParameterName FROM UserParameter    GROUP BY ParameterName    HAVING MIN(Datatype)<>MAX(DataType))ORDER BY ParameterName   so, in a very small example here, we have a @ClosingDelimiter variable that is only CHAR(1) when, by the looks of it, it should be up to ten characters long, or even worse, a function that should be a char(1) and seems to let in a string of ten characters. Worth investigating. Then we have a @Comment variable that can't decide whether it is a VARCHAR(2000) or a VARCHAR(MAX) 2/ Columns and Parameters Actually, once we’ve cleared up the mess we’ve made of our parameter-naming in the database we’re inspecting, we’re going to be more interested in listing both columns and parameters. We can do this by modifying the routine to list columns as well as parameters. Because of the slight complexity of creating the string version of the datatypes, we will create a fake table of both columns and parameters so that they can both be processed the same way. After all, we want the datatypes to match Unfortunately, parameters do not expose all the attributes we are interested in, such as whether they are nullable (oh yes, subtle bugs happen if this isn’t consistent for a datatype). We’ll have to leave them out for this check. Voila! A slight modification of the first routine ;WITH userObject AS  ( SELECT   Name AS DataName,--the actual name of the parameter or column ('@' removed)  --and the qualified object name of the routine  OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME(ObjectID) + '.' + OBJECT_NAME(ObjectID) AS ObjectName,  --now the harder bit: the definition of the datatype.  TypeName + ' '     + CASE     --we may have to put in the length. e.g. CHAR (10)           WHEN TypeName IN ('char', 'varchar', 'nchar', 'nvarchar')             THEN '('               + CASE WHEN MaxLength = -1 THEN 'MAX'                ELSE CONVERT(VARCHAR(4),                    CASE WHEN TypeName IN ('nchar', 'nvarchar')                      THEN MaxLength / 2 ELSE MaxLength                    END)                END + ')'         WHEN TypeName IN ('decimal', 'numeric')--a BCD number!             THEN '(' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(4), Precision)                   + ',' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(4), Scale) + ')'         ELSE ''      END  --we've done with putting in the length      + CASE WHEN XML_collection_ID <> 0 --tush tush. XML         THEN --deal with object schema names             '(' + CASE WHEN is_XML_Document = 1                    THEN 'DOCUMENT '                    ELSE 'CONTENT '                   END              + COALESCE(               (SELECT TOP 1 QUOTENAME(ss.name) + '.' + QUOTENAME(sc.Name)                FROM sys.xml_schema_collections sc                INNER JOIN Sys.Schemas ss ON sc.schema_ID = ss.schema_ID                WHERE sc.xml_collection_ID = XML_collection_ID),'NULL') + ')'          ELSE ''         END        AS [DataType],       DataObjectType  FROM   (Select t.name AS TypeName, REPLACE(c.name,'@','') AS Name,          c.max_length AS MaxLength, c.precision AS [Precision],           c.scale AS [Scale], c.[Object_id] AS ObjectID, XML_collection_ID,          is_XML_Document,'P' AS DataobjectType  FROM sys.parameters c  INNER JOIN sys.types t ON c.user_Type_ID = t.user_Type_ID  AND parameter_id>0  UNION all  Select t.name AS TypeName, c.name AS Name, c.max_length AS MaxLength,          c.precision AS [Precision], c.scale AS [Scale],          c.[Object_id] AS ObjectID, XML_collection_ID,is_XML_Document,          'C' AS DataobjectType            FROM sys.columns c  INNER JOIN sys.types t ON c.user_Type_ID = t.user_Type_ID   WHERE OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME(c.object_ID) <> 'sys'  )f)SELECT CONVERT(CHAR(80),objectName+'.'   + CASE WHEN DataobjectType ='P' THEN '@' ELSE '' END + DataName),DataType FROM UserObjectWHERE DataName IN   (SELECT DataName FROM UserObject   GROUP BY DataName    HAVING MIN(Datatype)<>MAX(DataType))ORDER BY DataName     Hmm. I can tell you I found quite a few minor issues with the various tabases I tested this on, and found some potential bugs that really leap out at you from the results. Here is the start of the result for AdventureWorks. Yes, AccountNumber is, for some reason, a Varchar(10) in the Customer table. Hmm. odd. Why is a city fifty characters long in that view?  The idea of the description of a colour being 256 characters long seems over-ambitious. Go down the list and you'll spot other mistakes. There are no bugs, but just mess. We started out with a listing to examine parameters, then we mixed parameters and columns. Our last listing is for a slightly more in-depth look at table columns. You’ll notice that we’ve delibarately removed the indication of whether a column is persisted, or is an identity column because that gives us false positives for our code smells. If you just want to browse your metadata for other reasons (and it can quite help in some circumstances) then uncomment them! ;WITH userColumns AS  ( SELECT   c.NAME AS columnName,  OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME(c.object_ID) + '.' + OBJECT_NAME(c.object_ID) AS ObjectName,  REPLACE(t.name + ' '   + CASE WHEN is_computed = 1 THEN ' AS ' + --do DDL for a computed column          (SELECT definition FROM sys.computed_columns cc           WHERE cc.object_id = c.object_id AND cc.column_ID = c.column_ID)     --we may have to put in the length            WHEN t.Name IN ('char', 'varchar', 'nchar', 'nvarchar')             THEN '('               + CASE WHEN c.Max_Length = -1 THEN 'MAX'                ELSE CONVERT(VARCHAR(4),                    CASE WHEN t.Name IN ('nchar', 'nvarchar')                      THEN c.Max_Length / 2 ELSE c.Max_Length                    END)                END + ')'       WHEN t.name IN ('decimal', 'numeric')       THEN '(' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(4), c.precision) + ',' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(4), c.Scale) + ')'       ELSE ''      END + CASE WHEN c.is_rowguidcol = 1          THEN ' ROWGUIDCOL'          ELSE ''         END + CASE WHEN XML_collection_ID <> 0            THEN --deal with object schema names             '(' + CASE WHEN is_XML_Document = 1                THEN 'DOCUMENT '                ELSE 'CONTENT '               END + COALESCE((SELECT                QUOTENAME(ss.name) + '.' + QUOTENAME(sc.name)                FROM                sys.xml_schema_collections sc                INNER JOIN Sys.Schemas ss ON sc.schema_ID = ss.schema_ID                WHERE                sc.xml_collection_ID = c.XML_collection_ID),                'NULL') + ')'            ELSE ''           END + CASE WHEN is_identity = 1             THEN CASE WHEN OBJECTPROPERTY(object_id,                'IsUserTable') = 1 AND COLUMNPROPERTY(object_id,                c.name,                'IsIDNotForRepl') = 0 AND OBJECTPROPERTY(object_id,                'IsMSShipped') = 0                THEN ''                ELSE ' NOT FOR REPLICATION '               END             ELSE ''            END + CASE WHEN c.is_nullable = 0               THEN ' NOT NULL'               ELSE ' NULL'              END + CASE                WHEN c.default_object_id <> 0                THEN ' DEFAULT ' + object_Definition(c.default_object_id)                ELSE ''               END + CASE                WHEN c.collation_name IS NULL                THEN ''                WHEN c.collation_name <> (SELECT                collation_name                FROM                sys.databases                WHERE                name = DB_NAME()) COLLATE Latin1_General_CI_AS                THEN COALESCE(' COLLATE ' + c.collation_name,                '')                ELSE ''                END,'  ',' ') AS [DataType]FROM sys.columns c  INNER JOIN sys.types t ON c.user_Type_ID = t.user_Type_ID  WHERE OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME(c.object_ID) <> 'sys')SELECT CONVERT(CHAR(80),objectName+'.'+columnName),DataType FROM UserColumnsWHERE columnName IN (SELECT columnName FROM UserColumns  GROUP BY columnName  HAVING MIN(Datatype)<>MAX(DataType))ORDER BY columnName If you take a look down the results against Adventureworks, you'll see once again that there are things to investigate, mostly, in the illustration, discrepancies between null and non-null datatypes So I here you ask, what about temporary variables within routines? If ever there was a source of elusive bugs, you'll find it there. Sadly, these temporary variables are not stored in the metadata so we'll have to find a more subtle way of flushing these out, and that will, I'm afraid, have to wait!

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  • Upgrading Code from 2007 to 2010

    - by MOSSLover
    So I’ve been doing some upgrades just to see if things will work from 2007 to 2010.  So far most of the stuff I want works, but obviously there are some things that break.  Did you guys know that in 2007 you could add a webpart to the view pages for lists and libraries without losing the toolbar?  In 2010 the ribbon disappears every time you add a webpart.  So if you are using Scot Hillier’s Codeplex project to hide buttons it will not work the same way, because the ribbon is going to disappear altogether. I have also learned another reason why standalone installations are the bane of my existence.  Nine times out of ten the installation is done using Network Service as the application pool account.  You are wondering why is this bad?  Well, let’s just say the site collection administrator with local admin rights wants to attach the IIS Worker process and debug say a webpart.  Visual Studio 2010 will throw a nasty error that tells you that you are not an administrator.  You will say, but I am an administrator?  I have all the correct group permissions on the server and on SQL and in SharePoint.  Then you will go in and decide let’s add my own admin account just to see if I can attach the debugger and you will notice that works properly.  So the morale of the story is create a separate account on your development environment to run all the SharePoint Services and such.  You don’t need to go all out and create the best practices amount of accounts if it’s just your dev environment.  I would at least create one single account to run all your SharePoint process (Services, SQL, and App Pool).  Also, don’t run a standalone install unless you want to kill kittens (this is a quote from Todd Klindt).  We love kittens they are cute and awesome.  Besides you learn more if you click Complete and just skip standalone.  You will learn how to setup SQL Server 2008 and you will learn how to configure your environment.  It will help you in the long run.  So I have ranted enough for today I figure these are enough tidbits for you this time around.  The two of you who read my blog and I know some of you are friends who don’t understand SharePoint.  I might as well have just done “wahwahwahwah” in Charlie Brown adult speak.  Thanks for reading as usual.  I’ll catch you all when I complain more about the upgrade process and share more tidbits, which will inevitably become a presentation at a conference or two. Technorati Tags: Upgrade Code SharePoint 2007 to 2010,Visuaul Studio 2010,SharePoint 2010

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  • Challenge: Learn One New Thing Today

    - by BuckWoody
    Most of us know that there's a lot to learn. I'm teaching a class this morning, and even on the subject where I'm the "expert" (that word always makes me nervous!) I still have a lot to learn. To learn, sometimes I take a class, read a book, or carve out a large chunk of time so that I can fully grasp the subject. But since I've been working, I really don't have a lot of opportunities to do that. Like you, I'm really busy. So what I've been able to learn is to take just a few moments each day and learn something new about SQL Server. I thought I would share that process here. First, I started with an outline of the product. You can use Books Online, a college class syllabus, a training class outline, or a comprehensive book table of contents. Then I checked off the things I felt I knew a little about. Sure, I'll come back around to those, but I want to be as efficient as I can. I then trolled various checklists to see what I needed to know about the subjects I didn't have checked off. From there (I'm doing all this in a notepad, and then later in OneNote when that came out) I developed a block of text for that subject. Every time I ran across a book, article, web site or recording on that topic I wrote that reference down. Later I went back and quickly looked over those resources and tried to figure out how I could parcel it out - 10 minutes for this one, a free seminar (like the one I'm teaching today - ironic) takes 4 hours, a web site takes an hour to grok, that sort of thing.  Then all I did was figure out how much time each day I'll give to training. Sure, it literally may be ten minutes, but it adds up. One final thing - as I used something I learned, I came back and made notes in that topic. You learn to play the piano not just from a book, but by playing the piano, after all. If you don't use what you learn, you'll lose it. So if you're interested in getting better at SQL Server, and you're willing to do a little work, try out this method. Leave a note here for others to encourage them.  Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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  • How to shoot yourself in the foot (DO NOT Read in the office)

    - by TATWORTH
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/TATWORTH/archive/2013/06/21/how-to-shoot-yourself-in-the-foot-do-not-read.aspxLet me make it absolutely clear - the following is:merely collated by your Geek from http://www.codeproject.com/Lounge.aspx?msg=3917012#xx3917012xxvery, very very funny so you read it in the presence of others at your own riskso here is the list - you have been warned!C You shoot yourself in the foot.   C++ You accidently create a dozen instances of yourself and shoot them all in the foot. Providing emergency medical assistance is impossible since you can't tell which are bitwise copies and which are just pointing at others and saying "That's me, over there."   FORTRAN You shoot yourself in each toe, iteratively, until you run out of toes, then you read in the next foot and repeat. If you run out of bullets, you continue anyway because you have no exception-handling facility.   Modula-2 After realizing that you can't actually accomplish anything in this language, you shoot yourself in the head.   COBOL USEing a COLT 45 HANDGUN, AIM gun at LEG.FOOT, THEN place ARM.HAND.FINGER on HANDGUN.TRIGGER and SQUEEZE. THEN return HANDGUN to HOLSTER. CHECK whether shoelace needs to be retied.   Lisp You shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds...   BASIC Shoot yourself in the foot with a water pistol. On big systems, continue until entire lower body is waterlogged.   Forth Foot yourself in the shoot.   APL You shoot yourself in the foot; then spend all day figuring out how to do it in fewer characters.   Pascal The compiler won't let you shoot yourself in the foot.   Snobol If you succeed, shoot yourself in the left foot. If you fail, shoot yourself in the right foot.   HyperTalk Put the first bullet of the gun into foot left of leg of you. Answer the result.   Prolog You tell your program you want to be shot in the foot. The program figures out how to do it, but the syntax doesn't allow it to explain.   370 JCL You send your foot down to MIS with a 4000-page document explaining how you want it to be shot. Three years later, your foot comes back deep-fried.   FORTRAN-77 You shoot yourself in each toe, iteratively, until you run out of toes, then you read in the next foot and repeat. If you run out of bullets, you continue anyway because you still can't do exception-processing.   Modula-2 (alternative) You perform a shooting on what might be currently a foot with what might be currently a bullet shot by what might currently be a gun.   BASIC (compiled) You shoot yourself in the foot with a BB using a SCUD missile launcher.   Visual Basic You'll really only appear to have shot yourself in the foot, but you'll have so much fun doing it that you won't care.   Forth (alternative) BULLET DUP3 * GUN LOAD FOOT AIM TRIGGER PULL BANG! EMIT DEAD IF DROP ROT THEN (This takes about five bytes of memory, executes in two to ten clock cycles on any processor and can be used to replace any existing function of the language as well as in any future words). (Welcome to bottom up programming - where you, too, can perform compiler pre-processing instead of writing code)   APL (alternative) You hear a gunshot and there's a hole in your foot, but you don't remember enough linear algebra to understand what happened. or @#&^$%&%^ foot   Pascal (alternative) Same as Modula-2 except that the bullet is not the right type for the gun and your hand is blown off.   Snobol (alternative) You grab your foot with your hand, then rewrite your hand to be a bullet. The act of shooting the original foot then changes your hand/bullet into yet another foot (a left foot).   Prolog (alternative) You attempt to shoot yourself in the foot, but the bullet, failing to find its mark, backtracks to the gun, which then explodes in your face.   COMAL You attempt to shoot yourself in the foot with a water pistol, but the bore is clogged, and the pressure build-up blows apart both the pistol and your hand. or draw_pistol aim_at_foot(left) pull_trigger hop(swearing)   Scheme As Lisp, but none of the other appendages are aware of this happening.   Algol You shoot yourself in the foot with a musket. The musket is aesthetically fascinating and the wound baffles the adolescent medic in the emergency room.   Ada If you are dumb enough to actually use this language, the United States Department of Defense will kidnap you, stand you up in front of a firing squad and tell the soldiers, "Shoot at the feet." or The Department of Defense shoots you in the foot after offering you a blindfold and a last cigarette. or After correctly packaging your foot, you attempt to concurrently load the gun, pull the trigger, scream and shoot yourself in the foot. When you try, however, you discover that your foot is of the wrong type. or After correctly packing your foot, you attempt to concurrently load the gun, pull the trigger, scream, and confidently aim at your foot knowing it is safe. However the cordite in the round does an Unchecked Conversion, fires and shoots you in the foot anyway.   Eiffel   You create a GUN object, two FOOT objects and a BULLET object. The GUN passes both the FOOT objects a reference to the BULLET. The FOOT objects increment their hole counts and forget about the BULLET. A little demon then drives a garbage truck over your feet and grabs the bullet (both of it) on the way. Smalltalk You spend so much time playing with the graphics and windowing system that your boss shoots you in the foot, takes away your workstation and makes you develop in COBOL on a character terminal. or You send the message shoot to gun, with selectors bullet and myFoot. A window pops up saying Gunpowder doesNotUnderstand: spark. After several fruitless hours spent browsing the methods for Trigger, FiringPin and IdealGas, you take the easy way out and create ShotFoot, a subclass of Foot with an additional instance variable bulletHole. Object Oriented Pascal You perform a shooting on what might currently be a foot with what might currently be a bullet fired from what might currently be a gun.   PL/I You consume all available system resources, including all the offline bullets. The Data Processing & Payroll Department doubles its size, triples its budget, acquires four new mainframes and drops the original one on your foot. Postscript foot bullets 6 locate loadgun aim gun shoot showpage or It takes the bullet ten minutes to travel from the gun to your foot, by which time you're long since gone out to lunch. The text comes out great, though.   PERL You stab yourself in the foot repeatedly with an incredibly large and very heavy Swiss Army knife. or You pick up the gun and begin to load it. The gun and your foot begin to grow to huge proportions and the world around you slows down, until the gun fires. It makes a tiny hole, which you don't feel. Assembly Language You crash the OS and overwrite the root disk. The system administrator arrives and shoots you in the foot. After a moment of contemplation, the administrator shoots himself in the foot and then hops around the room rabidly shooting at everyone in sight. or You try to shoot yourself in the foot only to discover you must first reinvent the gun, the bullet, and your foot.or The bullet travels to your foot instantly, but it took you three weeks to load the round and aim the gun.   BCPL You shoot yourself somewhere in the leg -- you can't get any finer resolution than that. Concurrent Euclid You shoot yourself in somebody else's foot.   Motif You spend days writing a UIL description of your foot, the trajectory, the bullet and the intricate scrollwork on the ivory handles of the gun. When you finally get around to pulling the trigger, the gun jams.   Powerbuilder While attempting to load the gun you discover that the LoadGun system function is buggy; as a work around you tape the bullet to the outside of the gun and unsuccessfully attempt to fire it with a nail. In frustration you club your foot with the butt of the gun and explain to your client that this approximates the functionality of shooting yourself in the foot and that the next version of Powerbuilder will fix it.   Standard ML By the time you get your code to typecheck, you're using a shoot to foot yourself in the gun.   MUMPS You shoot 583149 AK-47 teflon-tipped, hollow-point, armour-piercing bullets into even-numbered toes on odd-numbered feet of everyone in the building -- with one line of code. Three weeks later you shoot yourself in the head rather than try to modify that line.   Java You locate the Gun class, but discover that the Bullet class is abstract, so you extend it and write the missing part of the implementation. Then you implement the ShootAble interface for your foot, and recompile the Foot class. The interface lets the bullet call the doDamage method on the Foot, so the Foot can damage itself in the most effective way. Now you run the program, and call the doShoot method on the instance of the Gun class. First the Gun creates an instance of Bullet, which calls the doFire method on the Gun. The Gun calls the hit(Bullet) method on the Foot, and the instance of Bullet is passed to the Foot. But this causes an IllegalHitByBullet exception to be thrown, and you die.   Unix You shoot yourself in the foot or % ls foot.c foot.h foot.o toe.c toe.o % rm * .o rm: .o: No such file or directory % ls %   370 JCL (alternative) You shoot yourself in the head just thinking about it.   DOS JCL You first find the building you're in in the phone book, then find your office number in the corporate phone book. Then you have to write this down, then describe, in cubits, your exact location, in relation to the door (right hand side thereof). Then you need to write down the location of the gun (loading it is a proprietary utility), then you load it, and the COBOL program, and run them, and, with luck, it may be run tonight.   VMS   $ MOUNT/DENSITY=.45/LABEL=BULLET/MESSAGE="BYE" BULLET::BULLET$GUN SYS$BULLET $ SET GUN/LOAD/SAFETY=OFF/SIGHT=NONE/HAND=LEFT/CHAMBER=1/ACTION=AUTOMATIC/ LOG/ALL/FULL SYS$GUN_3$DUA3:[000000]GUN.GNU $ SHOOT/LOG/AUTO SYS$GUN SYS$SYSTEM:[FOOT]FOOT.FOOT   %DCL-W-ACTIMAGE, error activating image GUN -CLI-E-IMGNAME, image file $3$DUA240:[GUN]GUN.EXE;1 -IMGACT-F-NOTNATIVE, image is not an OpenVMS Alpha AXP image or %SYS-F-FTSHT, foot shot (fifty lines of traceback omitted) sh,csh, etc You can't remember the syntax for anything, so you spend five hours reading manual pages, then your foot falls asleep. You shoot the computer and switch to C.   Apple System 7 Double click the gun icon and a window giving a selection for guns, target areas, plus balloon help with medical remedies, and assorted sound effects. Click "shoot" button and a small bomb appears with note "Error of Type 1 has occurred."   Windows 3.1 Double click the gun icon and wait. Eventually a window opens giving a selection for guns, target areas, plus balloon help with medical remedies, and assorted sound effects. Click "shoot" button and a small box appears with note "Unable to open Shoot.dll, check that path is correct."   Windows 95 Your gun is not compatible with this OS and you must buy an upgrade and install it before you can continue. Then you will be informed that you don't have enough memory.   CP/M I remember when shooting yourself in the foot with a BB gun was a big deal.   DOS You finally found the gun, but can't locate the file with the foot for the life of you.   MSDOS You shoot yourself in the foot, but can unshoot yourself with add-on software.   Access You try to point the gun at your foot, but it shoots holes in all your Borland distribution diskettes instead.   Paradox Not only can you shoot yourself in the foot, your users can too.   dBase You squeeze the trigger, but the bullet moves so slowly that by the time your foot feels the pain, you've forgotten why you shot yourself anyway. or You buy a gun. Bullets are only available from another company and are promised to work so you buy them. Then you find out that the next version of the gun is the one scheduled to actually shoot bullets.   DBase IV, V1.0 You pull the trigger, but it turns out that the gun was a poorly designed hand grenade and the whole building blows up.   SQL You cut your foot off, send it out to a service bureau and when it returns, it has a hole in it but will no longer fit the attachment at the end of your leg. or Insert into Foot Select Bullet >From Gun.Hand Where Chamber = 'LOADED' And Trigger = 'PULLED'   Clipper You grab a bullet, get ready to insert it in the gun so that you can shoot yourself in the foot and discover that the gun that the bullets fits has not yet been built, but should be arriving in the mail _REAL_SOON_NOW_. Oracle The menus for coding foot_shooting have not been implemented yet and you can't do foot shooting in SQL.   English You put your foot in your mouth, then bite it off. (For those who don't know, English is a McDonnell Douglas/PICK query language which allegedly requires 110% of system resources to run happily.) Revelation [an implementation of the PICK Operating System] You'll be able to shoot yourself in the foot just as soon as you figure out what all these bullets are for.   FlagShip Starting at the top of your head, you aim the gun at yourself repeatedly until, half an hour later, the gun is finally pointing at your foot and you pull the trigger. A new foot with a hole in it appears but you can't work out how to get rid of the old one and your gun doesn't work anymore.   FidoNet You put your foot in your mouth, then echo it internationally.   PicoSpan [a UNIX-based computer conferencing system] You can't shoot yourself in the foot because you're not a host. or (host variation) Whenever you shoot yourself in the foot, someone opens a topic in policy about it.   Internet You put your foot in your mouth, shoot it, then spam the bullet so that everybody gets shot in the foot.   troff rmtroff -ms -Hdrwp | lpr -Pwp2 & .*place bullet in footer .B .NR FT +3i .in 4 .bu Shoot! .br .sp .in -4 .br .bp NR HD -2i .*   Genetic Algorithms You create 10,000 strings describing the best way to shoot yourself in the foot. By the time the program produces the optimal solution, humans have evolved wings and the problem is moot.   CSP (Communicating Sequential Processes) You only fail to shoot everything that isn't your foot.   MS-SQL Server MS-SQL Server’s gun comes pre-loaded with an unlimited supply of Teflon coated bullets, and it only has two discernible features: the muzzle and the trigger. If that wasn't enough, MS-SQL Server also puts the gun in your hand, applies local anesthetic to the skin of your forefinger and stitches it to the gun's trigger. Meanwhile, another process has set up a spinal block to numb your lower body. It will then proceeded to surgically remove your foot, cryogenically freeze it for preservation, and attach it to the muzzle of the gun so that no matter where you aim, you will shoot your foot. In order to avoid shooting yourself in the foot, you need to unstitch your trigger finger, remove your foot from the muzzle of the gun, and have it surgically reattached. Then you probably want to get some crutches and go out to buy a book on SQL Server Performance Tuning.   Sybase Sybase's gun requires assembly, and you need to go out and purchase your own clip and bullets to load the gun. Assembly is complicated by the fact that Sybase has hidden the gun behind a big stack of reference manuals, but it hasn't told you where that stack is. While you were off finding the gun, assembling it, buying bullets, etc., Sybase was also busy surgically removing your foot and cryogenically freezing it for preservation. Instead of attaching it to the muzzle of the gun, though, it packed your foot on dry ice and sent it UPS-Ground to an unnamed hookah bar somewhere in the middle east. In order to shoot your foot, you must modify your gun with a GPS system for targeting and hire some guy named "Indy" to find the hookah bar and wire the coordinates back to you. By this time, you've probably become so daunted at the tasks stand between you and shooting your foot that you hire a guy who's read all the books on Sybase to help you shoot your foot. If you're lucky, he'll be smart enough both to find your foot and to stop you from shooting it.   Magic software You spend 1 week looking up the correct syntax for GUN. When you find it, you realise that GUN will not let you shoot in your own foot. It will allow you to shoot almost anything but your foot. You then decide to build your own gun. You can't use the standard barrel since this will only allow for standard bullets, which will not fire if the barrel is pointed at your foot. After four weeks, you have created your own custom gun. It blows up in your hand without warning, because you failed to initialise the safety catch and it doesn't know whether the initial state is "0", 0, NULL, "ZERO", 0.0, 0,0, "0.0", or "0,00". You fix the problem with your remaining hand by nesting 12 safety catches, and then decide to build the gun without safety catch. You then shoot the management and retire to a happy life where you code in languages that will allow you to shoot your foot in under 10 days.FirefoxLets you shoot yourself in as many feet as you'd like, while using multiple great addons! IEA moving target in terms of standard ammunition size and doesn't always work properly with non-Microsoft ammunition, so sometimes you shoot something other than your foot. However, it's the corporate world's standard foot-shooting apparatus. Hackers seem to enjoy rigging websites up to trigger cascading foot-shooting failures. Windows 98 About the same as Windows 95 in terms of overall bullet capacity and triggering mechanisms. Includes updated DirectShot API. A new version was released later on to support USB guns, Windows 98 SE.WPF:You get your baseball glove and a ball and you head out to your backyard, where you throw balls to your pitchback. Then your unkempt-haired-cargo-shorts-and-sandals-with-white-socks-wearing neighbor uses XAML to sculpt your arm into a gun, the ball into a bullet and the pitchback into your foot. By now, however, only the neighbor can get it to work and he's only around from 6:30 PM - 3:30 AM. LOGO: You very carefully lay out the trajectory of the bullet. Then you start the gun, which fires very slowly. You walk precisely to the point where the bullet will travel and wait, but just before it gets to you, your class time is up and one of the other kids has already used the system to hack into Sony's PS3 network. Flash: Someone has designed a beautiful-looking gun that anyone can shoot their feet with for free. It weighs six hundred pounds. All kinds of people are shooting themselves in the feet, and sending the link to everyone else so that they can too. That is, except for the criminals, who are all stealing iOS devices that the gun won't work with.APL: Its (mostly) all greek to me. Lisp: Place ((gun in ((hand sight (foot then shoot))))) (Lots of Insipid Stupid Parentheses)Apple OS/X and iOS Once a year, Steve Jobs returns from sick leave to tell millions of unwavering fans how they will be able to shoot themselves in the foot differently this year. They retweet and blog about it ad nauseam, and wait in line to be the first to experience "shoot different".Windows ME Usually fails, even at shooting you in the foot. Yo dawg, I heard you like shooting yourself in the foot. So I put a gun in your gun, so you can shoot yourself in the foot while you shoot yourself in the foot. (Okay, I'm not especially proud of this joke.) Windows 2000 Now you really do have to log in, before you are allowed to shoot yourself in the foot.Windows XPYou thought you learned your lesson: Don't use Windows ME. Then, along came this new creature, built on top of Windows NT! So you spend the next couple days installing antivirus software, patches and service packs, just so you can get that driver to install, and then proceed to shoot yourself in the foot. Windows Vista Newer! Glossier! Shootier! Windows 7 The bullets come out a lot smoother. Active Directory Each bullet now has an attached Bullet Identifier, and can be uniquely identified. Policies can be applied to dictate fragmentation, and the gun will occasionally have a confusing delay after the trigger has been pulled. PythonYou try to use import foot; foot.shoot() only to realize that's only available in 3.0, to which you can't yet upgrade from 2.7 because of all those extension libs lacking support. Solaris Shoots best when used on SPARC hardware, but still runs the trigger GUI under Java. After weeks of learning the appropriate STOP command to prevent the trigger from automatically being pressed on boot, you think you've got it under control. Then the one time you ever use dtrace, it hits a bug that fires the gun. MySQL The feature that allows you to shoot yourself in the foot has been in development for about 6 years, and they are adding it into the next version, which is coming out REAL SOON NOW, promise! But you can always check it out of source control and try it yourself (just not in any environment where data integrity is important because it will probably explode.) PostgreSQLAllows you to have a smug look on your face while you shoot yourself in the foot, because those MySQL guys STILL don't have that feature. NoSQL Barrel? Who needs a barrel? Just put the bullet on your foot, and strike it with a hammer. See? It's so much simpler and more efficient that way. You can even strike multiple bullets in one swing if you swing with a good enough arc, because hammers are easy to use. Getting them to synchronize is a little difficult, though.Eclipse There are about a dozen different packages for shooting yourself in the foot, with weird interdependencies on outdated components. Once you finally navigate the morass and get one installed, you then have something to look at while you shoot yourself in the foot with that package: You can watch the screen redraw.Outlook Makes it really easy to let everyone know you shot yourself in the foot!Shooting yourself in the foot using delegates.You really need to shoot yourself in the foot but you hate firearms (you don't want any dependency on the specifics of shooting) so you delegate it to somebody else. You don't care how it is done as long is shooting your foot. You can do it asynchronously in case you know you may faint so you are called back/slapped in the face by your shooter/friend (or background worker) when everything is done.C#You prepare the gun and the bullet, carefully modeling all of the physics of a bullet traveling through a foot. Just before you're about to pull the trigger, you stumble on System.Windows.BodyParts.Foot.ShootAt(System.Windows.Firearms.IGun gun) in the extended framework, realize you just wasted the entire afternoon, and shoot yourself in the head.PHP<?phprequire("foot_safety_check.php");?><!DOCTYPE HTML><html><head> <!--Lower!--><title>Shooting me in the foot</title></head> <body> <!--LOWER!!!--><leg> <!--OK, I made this one up...--><footer><?php echo (dungSift($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], "ie"))?("Your foot is safe, but you might want to wear a hard hat!"):("<div class=\"shot\">BANG!</div>"); ?></footer></leg> </body> </html>

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  • After 10 Years, MySQL Still the Right Choice for ScienceLogic's "Best Network Monitoring System on the Planet"

    - by Rebecca Hansen
    ScienceLogic has a pretty fantastic network monitoring appliance.  So good in fact that InfoWorld gave it their "2013 Best Network Monitoring System on the Planet" award.  Inside their "ultraflexible, ultrascalable, carrier-grade" enterprise appliance, ScienceLogic relies on MySQL and has since their start in 2003.  Check out some of the things they've been able to do with MySQL and their reasons for continuing to use MySQL in these highlights from our new MySQL ScienceLogic case study. Science Logic's larger customers use their appliance to monitor and manage  20,000+ devices, each of which generates a steady stream of data and a workload that is 85% write. On a large system, the MySQL database: Averages 8,000 queries every second or about 1 billion queries a day Can reach 175,000 tables and up to 20 million rows in a single table Is 2 terabytes on average and up to 6 terabytes "We told our customers they could add more and more devices. With MySQL, we haven't had any problems. When our customers have problems, we get calls. Not getting calls is a huge benefit." Matt Luebke, ScienceLogic Chief Software Architect.? ScienceLogic was approached by a number of Big Data / NoSQL vendors, but decided against using a NoSQL-only solution. Said Matt, "There are times when you really need SQL. NoSQL can't show me the top 10 users of CPU, or show me the bottom ten consumer of hard disk. That's why we weren't interested in changing and why we are very interested in MySQL 5.6. It's great that it can do relational and key-value using memcached." The ScienceLogic team is very cautious about putting only very stable technology into their product, and according to Matt, MySQL has been very stable: "We've been using MySQL for 10 years and we have never had any reliability problems. Ever." ScienceLogic now uses SSDs for their write-intensive appliance and that change alone has helped them achieve a 5x performance increase. Learn more>> ScienceLogic MySQL Case Study MySQL 5.6 InnoDB Compression options for better SSD performance Tuning MySQL 5.6 for Great Product Performance - on demand webinar Developer and DBA Guide to MySQL 5.6 white paper Guide to MySQL and NoSQL: The Best of Both Worlds white paper

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  • Agile PLM Highlights from Oracle OpenWorld 2012

    - by Kerrie Foy
    Thank you to everyone who joined us at Oracle OpenWorld this year, either in person or virtually (thanks for tweeting #oowplm)!  From customer presentations to after-hours networking opportunities, there was a lot to see and do during the entire conference. Sessions It was our pleasure to feature several customer speakers during our PLM sessions at OpenWorld from such companies as Starbucks, Coca-Cola, Facebook, Eli Lilly, and many more.  Each had a unique perspective to share and fascinating insight into how they successfully leverage Agile PLM to facilitate profitable innovation, protect brand integrity, streamline operations, manage compliance, launch faster, etc.  For example, during the Product Value Chain keynote session, CIO Chris Bedi of JDSU shared how they implemented Agile PLM to support business imperatives around rapid innovation, centralizing product information, collaboration, and eliminate the “Excel gymnastics” required to obtain global portfolio visibility. In just 120 days after implementing, JDSU employees reported significant improvements around product record management, new product introduction, engineering collaboration and more, which created a better work environment to enable critical innovation. I could write on and on about the almost 20 sessions! So to spare yourselves, please visit launch.oracle.com/?plmopenworld2012; it’s a curated selection of PLM presentations from the OpenWorld Content Catalog and available on-demand. Enjoy! Agile Innovation Management During OpenWorld, we announced an exciting new addition to the Agile PLM applications called Innovation Management that redefines the industry’s scope of product lifecycle management.  Our broad vision of complete enterprise PLM for the entire Product Value Chain already broke new ground by helping organizations extend PLM disciplines downstream by connecting product design to commercialization processes; now we are helping executives look farther upstream in the early innovation phases to ultimately close the gap between strategy and execution that so commonly nags innovation initiatives.  More on this coming soon so stay tuned! Unique Networking Opportunities  We know it can be challenging during OpenWorld to find time to productively connect and network with your industry peers, so we hosted an Agile PLM “Birds of a Feather” networking brunch for the second year in a row.  At a fine restaurant close to Moscone we hosted nine tables, each with only ten seats to encourage active conversation.  Furthermore, guests could select from a list of predetermined table topics sponsored by a specialized PLM partner to guarantee – even more so – that they were seated with like-minded company and optimizing their time at the conference.  Everyone enjoyed the opportunity to easily connect with other PLM users during OpenWorld in a more casual setting. What’s Next? Thank you again to all who joined us!  If you haven't yet, mark your calendar to join us for the next Oracle Agile PLM conference at the Value Chain Summit in San Francisco, February 4-6 in 2013!  We’ll have 40 sessions of PLM content in four tracks. Don’t miss it! You can sign up to be notified when official registration opens by visiting www.oracle.com/goto/vcs. 

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  • Simple method for reliably detecting code in text?

    - by Jeff Atwood
    GMail has this feature where it will warn you if you try to send an email that it thinks might have an attachment. Because GMail detected the string see the attached in the email, but no actual attachment, it warns me with an OK / Cancel dialog when I click the Send button. We have a related problem on Stack Overflow. That is, when a user enters a post like this one: my problem is I need to change the database but I don't won't to create a new connection. example: DataSet dsMasterInfo = new DataSet(); Database db = DatabaseFactory.CreateDatabase("ConnectionString"); DbCommand dbCommand = db.GetStoredProcCommand("uspGetMasterName"); This user did not format their code as code! That is, they didn't indent by 4 spaces per Markdown, or use the code button (or the keyboard shortcut ctrl+k) which does that for them. Thus, our system is accreting a lot of edits where people have to go in and manually format code for people that are somehow unable to figure this out. This leads to a lot of bellyaching. We've improved the editor help several times, but short of driving over to the user's house and pressing the correct buttons on their keyboard for them, we're at a loss to see what to do next. That's why we are considering a Google GMail style warning: Did you mean to post code? You wrote stuff that we think looks like code, but you didn't format it as code by indenting 4 spaces, using the toolbar code button or the ctrl+k code formatting command. However, presenting this warning requires us to detect the presence of what we think is unformatted code in a question. What is a simple, semi-reliable way of doing this? Per Markdown, code is always indented by 4 spaces or within backticks, so anything correctly formatted can be discarded from the check immediately. This is only a warning and it will only apply to low-reputation users asking their first questions (or providing their first answers), so some false positives are OK, so long as they are about 5% or less. Questions on Stack Overflow can be in any language, though we can realistically limit our check to, say, the "big ten" languages. Per the tags page that would be C#, Java, PHP, JavaScript, Objective-C, C, C++, Python, Ruby. Use the Stack Overflow creative commons data dump to audit your potential solution (or just pick a few questions in the top 10 tags on Stack Overflow) and see how it does. Pseudocode is fine, but we use c# if you want to be extra friendly. The simpler the better (so long as it works). KISS! If your solution requires us to attempt to compile posts in 10 different compilers, or an army of people to manually train a bayesian inference engine, that's ... not exactly what we had in mind.

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  • Launching Agile PLM 9.3.3!

    - by Shane Goodwin
    Ten months ago we announced the availability of Agile PLM 9.3.2. Today I have the great pleasure to announce availability of Agile PLM 9.3.3 and AutoVue for Agile PLM 20.2.2 - both are immediately available on Oracle Software Delivery Cloud. In this same timeframe our team has also published Oracle PLM Mobile 1.0, EC MCAD 3.1, and EC MCAD 3.2. Agile PLM 9.3.3 focuses on improving management business processes, improving management of intellectual property, and overall product improvements based on customer feedback. In this short timeframe, we have made very significant progress on all three fronts. The Agile PLM 9.3.3 What’s New Whitepaper discusses all of the new capabilities. Looking forward, we will continue to deliver new releases with laser focus on solving real business problems and making users more productive. With our release of Innovation Management, you will be seeing dramatic new capability to help manage the innovation funnel and the processes to determine what product projects to fund. You will also see us continue this accelerated cadence in releasing new features for Agile PLM. All Agile PLM 9.3.3 Documentation is now available, including an initial version of the Capacity Planning Guide (CPG). As usual, we will be updating the CPG in a few months when we complete our performance and breakpoint testing. Like with other recent Agile PLM versions, the Product Management team has recorded Transfer of Information (TOI) sessions to educate you about the new features. The TOI sessions can be accessed in My Oracle Support on note 1589164.1. As with all other releases, we have also published new versions (1.7.5) of Averify (Patch ID 17583605) and AUT (Patch ID 17583592) in My Oracle Support. Again this year I look forward to seeing many of you at the Oracle Value Chain Summit (February 3-5, San Jose, CA), to talk more about this new release and all of the fascinating ways our customers and partners are driving business value with Agile PLM. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:8.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:107%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}

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  • RIM's current BB7 developer toolset is a joke

    - by mbrit
    tl;dr - RIM's current developer toolset is not fit for purpose.Background to this is that I'm currently working on a PhoneGap/Cordova project for a client that has to run on BlackBerry. The tooling is so ridiculous to use that even though I had a gentle dig at them in a Guardian piece it's worth having a more full-on attack.At the moment, RIM's pitch is that apps are built for the current BBOS7 devices using WebWorks. This is an HTML-based toolset. Essentially a browser is spun up in a native app container and your app is powered by JavaScript. Specific JavaScript libraries exist that thunk down to native capabilities no the device. I happen to use PhoneCap/Cordova in combination with this.The tooling is non-existent. I'm using TextMate, Ant, and Terminal to develop the app. There's no "console.log" output, and no debugging. The only way to instrument the app is to put "alert" calls in your code.Apart from the fact that that's *not* fine in 2012, how about this… every time you deploy a new app to the device, the device has to reboot. This process takes six minutes on a relatively modern BlackBerry device. How about this as well - in order to get a file into the package it has to be signed. My small app over here has 100 different files (75 or so generated). Signing doesn't happen locally, it happens on RIM's servers in Waterloo. Thus whenever you deploy the app you have this utility have to call RIM's servers 100 times. More to the point, sometimes during the day these servers have "micro-downtime" moments where they're unreachable for five or ten minutes, normally two or three times a day. Oh yes, you'll also get an email sent to you per signing on success or failure. 100 inbound emails, per deployment.(I started this post at the beginning of one of these cycles, by the way. That's how long it takes to build and deploy *once*. By the way, the change I made didn't work.)To clarify:* Change the script,* Build it using Ant,* Ant will spin up a Java app that talks to RIM's servers to sign it.* Receive 100 emails, assuming the server is up.* App deployed - takes about 30 seconds.* BlackBerry device restarts - takes about six minutes.* Find and open the app. Go through security prompts.* Test the app, with no "console.log" output and no debugger."Why not use the simulator?" I hear you ask. Well, apart from the fact that the simulator refused to reach any network service over HTTPS that I happen to own? (Some people suggest changing DNS settings for this known issue.) Admittedly, the simulator does show you console.log, but you still have the "six minute" restart issue on the simulator.Developers will understand this problem. Breaking concentration for six-plus minutes every time you want to deploy an app turns developing into a nightmare. Combining that with no worthy debugging tools turns the toolset into a joke.

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  • Geek Bike Ride JavaOne 2012

    - by Tori Wieldt
    "Geek Bike Ride?" the clerk at the bike rental shop asked. "Are you guys all from the same company?" "We aren't even from the same country!" we answered. "I'm from Russia." "We're from Germany."  "I'm from Belgium." "I'm from Palo Alto." "I'm from Japan."  "We're from Brazil." "We're from Brazil." "I'm from Sweden." "Coooool" was all she could say. She was right. The Geek Bike Ride was cooool. We had 39 bike riders and one skater show up Saturday for a great route from San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf, across the Golden Gate bridge, to Saulsalito, and back to the city by ferry. Duke Bike jerseys, sponsored by OTN, were given out. To make sure Java developers got them, each person had to answer a Java question to get a jersey. The questions were really hard, like "Who is the Father of Java?" "What's the biggest Java conference in San Francisco?" The best was when the question was "Name one of Duke's Choice Award winner from this year," and Régina ten Bruggencate answered answered "Me!"  It was foggy throughout the day, with the sun poking out occasionally. The fog was thickest on the bridge, more that one rider commented that we were "in the cloud." It was a great day to meet new friends, and have a chat with old friends. We all had fun, though some of us may more a little more slowly during JavaOne. Ride on!  Photos by permission by Arun Gupta and Yoshio Terada. Thanks, guys!

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  • ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-06-28

    - by Bob Rhubart
    Oracle Magazine Technologist of the Year Awards to honor architects at #OOW12 Seven of the ten categories in this year's Oracle Magazine Technologist of the Year Awards are designated to celebrate architects. The winners will be honored at Oracle OpenWorld -- and showered with adulation from their colleagues. Nominations for these awards close on Tuesday July 17, so make sure you submit your nominations right away. Oracle E-Business Suite 12 Certified on Additional Linux Platforms (Oracle E-Business Suite Technology) Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (12.1.1 and higher) is now certified on the following additional Linux x86/x86-64 operating systems: Oracle Linux 6 (32-bit), Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 (32-bit), Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 (64-bit), and Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) version 11 (64-bit). FairScheduling Conventions in Hadoop (The Data Warehouse Insider)"If you're going to have several concurrent users and leverage the more interactive aspects of the Hadoop environment (e.g. Pig and Hive scripting), the FairScheduler is definitely the way to go," says Dan McClary. Learn how in his technical post. SOA Learning Library (SOA & BPM Partner Community Blog) The Oracle Learning Library offers a vast collection of e-learning resources covering a mind-boggling array of products and topics. And it's all free—if you have an Oracle.com membership. And if you don't, that's free, too. Could this be any easier? Oracle Fusion Middleware Security: LibOVD: when and how | Andre Correa Fusion Middleware A-Team blogger Andre Correa offers some background on LibOVD and shares technical tips for its use. Virtual Developer Day: Oracle Fusion Development Yes, it's called "Developer Day," but there's plenty for architects, too. This free event includes hands-on labs, live Q&A with product experts, and a dizzying amount of technical information about Oracle ADF and Fusion Development -- all without having to pack a bag or worry about getting stuck in a seat between two professional wrestlers. Tuesday, July 10, 2012 9:00 a.m. PT – 1:00 p.m. PT 11:00 a.m. CT – 3:00 p.m. CT 12:00 p.m. ET – 4:00 p.m. ET 1:00 p.m. BRT – 5:00 p.m. BRT Thought for the Day "Computers allow you to make more mistakes faster than any other invention in human history with the possible exception of handguns and tequila." — Mitch Ratcliffe Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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  • Sometimes keyboard & touchpad work... sometimes not

    - by Voyagerfan5761
    When I first ran Ubuntu from CD on this Dell Inspiron 2650, it worked for about ten to fifteen minutes, then it hung (I was probably trying to do too much at once from a Live CD). The next time, my mouse and keyboard didn't work. I rebooted three times and finally got them working. I then installed Ubuntu alongside Windows XP. After installing, selecting the OS in GRUB worked, but my touchpad and keyboard were again not working. I rebooted, and they worked. (I fortunately had a USB mouse with which to reboot.) Booting Ubuntu and then rebooting to enable my keyboard and touchpad has become a routine ever since. Often several reboots are required; at one point I had to reboot over a dozen times in a row before getting a session where everything worked properly. (My installation has been in place for about three days a week now.) I've looked around for a device manager equivalent to no avail. Sometimes the hardware is properly detected, and sometimes it's not. Once or twice I've had the keyboard detected properly but the touchpad not. Plugging in my wireless card also sometimes requires a plug, unplug, and plug again to get it working. So is there some solution? I'm without an Internet connection at home, and this "laptop" is really a wall wart on my desk, so suggestions for packages may take a while to test. Xorg logs I captured two three four sample Xorg logs: one from a startup where the devices worked; one from when they didn't; one from a session where Ubuntu thought my touchpad was a normal mouse; and one from a session where my keyboard worked but the touchpad didn't. See this gist. Updated 2010-12-15 01:50 UTC with Xorg.0.log.keyboardonly file illustrating the case where the keyboard worked but not the touchpad. Updated 2011-01-11 04:10 UTC with Xorg.0.log.touchpadregmouse to illustrate a case where the touchpad was detected as a regular mouse (no "Touchpad" tab in mouse prefs).

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  • ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-06-05

    - by Bob Rhubart
    Why is enterprise software often so complicated? | Rajesh Raheja rraheja.wordpress.com Rajesh Raheja shares "a few examples of requirements that lead to creation of complex platform infrastructures that up the complex enterprise software." Educause Top-Ten IT Issues - the most change in a decade or more | Cole Clark blogs.oracle.com Cole Clark discusses why "higher education IT must change in order to fully realize the potential for transforming the institution, and therefore it's people must learn new skills, understand and accept new ways of solving problems, and not be tied down by past practices or institutional inertia." Oracle VM RAC template - what it took | Wim Coekaerts blogs.oracle.com Wim Coekaerts shares an example that shows how easy it is to deploy a complete Oracle RAC cluster with Oracle VM. Oracle Cloud and Oracle Platinum Services Announcements oracle.com Featuring Larry Ellison and Mark Hurd. Wednesday, June 06, 2012. 1:00 p.m. PT – 2:30 p.m. PT Creating an Oracle Endeca Information Discovery 2.3 Application Part 1 : Scoping and Design | Mark Rittman www.rittmanmead.com Oracle ACE Director Mark Rittman launches a new series that dives into "the various stages in building a simple Oracle Endeca Information Discovery application, using the recent Endeca Information Discovery 2.3 release." Introducing Decision Tables in the SOA Suite 11g | Lucas Jellama technology.amis.nl Oracle ACE Director Lucas Jellema demonstrates how "the decision table can be put to good use to implement the business logic behind the classical game of Rock, Paper and Scissors." Application integration: reorganise, recycle, repurpose | Andrew Clarke radiofreetooting.blogspot.com "Integration is a topic which is in everybody's baliwick," says Oracle ACE Andrew Clarke. "The business people want to get the best value from their existing IT investments. The architects need to understand the interfaces between the silos and across the layers. The developers have to implement it." Using XA Transactions in Coherence-based Applications | Jonathan Purdy blogs.oracle.com Purdy shares "a few common approaches when integrating Coherence into applications via the use of an application server's transaction manager." Thought for the Day "The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones..." — John Maynard Keynes (June 5, 1883 - April 4, 1946) Source: Quotations Page

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  • Saddling your mountain lion with JDeveloper

    - by Blueberry Coder
    Last October, Apple released Java Update 2012-006. This patch brought the Apple-provided JDK for OS X Lion v10.7 and OS X Mountain Lion v10.8 to version 1.6.0_37. At the same time, it disabled the Apple Java plugins and removed the Java Preferences panel that enabled users to manage the various Java releases on their computer. On the Windows and Linux platforms, JDeveloper 11g R1 has been certified  to run on Java 7 since patch set 5. This is not the case on OS X.   ( The above is not a typo. Apple's OS for personal computer is now known as OS X; the « Mac » prefix has been dropped with the 10.8 release. And it's pronounced « Oh-Ess-Ten », by the way. Yes, I am a nitpicker. I know... ) Please note JDeveloper 11g R2 is not certified either. On any platform. It will generally work, but there are known issues with ADF Mobile. Personally, I would recommend to wait for 12c before going to JDK 7.  Now, suppose you have installed Oracle's JDK 7 on your Mac. JDeveloper will not run on it. It will even not install. Susan and I discovered this the hard way while setting up the ADF Mobile hands-on lab we ran at the UKOUG 2012 conference. The lab was a great success nevertheless, attracting nearly a hundred delegates. It was great to see the interest ADF Mobile already generates, especially among PL/SQL Developers and DBAs. But what did we do to make it work?  While Java Update 2012-006 removed the Java Preferences panel, it leaved in place OS X's command-line Java infrastructure. Thus, it is possible to invoke the Apple JDK 6 to start the JDeveloper installer. Suppose your user is named « Fred », and that the JDeveloper installer is on your desktop. You can execute the following command in a terminal window (on a single line) to start the installer:  /usr/libexec/java_home --version 1.6.0  --exec java -jar /Users/Fred/Desktop/jdevstudio11116install.jar  The JDeveloper installer, being provided a valid JDK reference, will set up the IDE and embedded WebLogic Server instance accordingly. Clever engineering at its finest!

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  • The Birth of SSAS Compare

    - by Red Gate Software BI Tools Team
    Noemi Moreno, Red Gate Business Intelligence Specialist Software vendors – even Microsoft – tend to forget about the needs of business intelligence developers. We are a rare and rather invisible species. For example, BIDS remained in VS 2008 until SQL Server 2012. It took until this release before we got something as simple as an “undo” function. Before I joined Red Gate as a BI specialist, I worked on SQL Development. I’ll never forget the time I discovered Red Gate’s SQL Compare tool and how it reduced the task of preparing a database release from a couple of days to ten minutes. When I moved to SSAS, MDX and cubes, I became frustrated with the deployment process because I couldn’t find a tool that made Cube releases as easy as they are with SQL Compare. This became my quest. I pitched the idea to a few people in Red Gate’s regular Down Tools Week, when everyone puts down their day-to-day tasks and works on their own projects. My task was to reason with a roomful of cynical developers, hardened to the blandishments of project managers, for help to develop a tool that would compare two different SSAS databases and create the script to process only the objects that needed processing, thereby reducing release time to only a few minutes. I walked to the podium and gave them the full story of the distressed BI specialists, doomed to spend tedious hours preparing deployment scripts. A few developers recovered from their torpor to cast a languid eye at my presentation. It wasn’t enough. In a sudden impulse, I blurted out a promise to perform a flamenco dance for just the team if the tool was able to successfully compare two SSAS databases and generate a script by the end of the week. I was lucky enough that some of them believed me and jumped in: David Pond (Dev), Matt Burton (Dev), Tilman Bregler (Dev), Shobana Sekar (Test), Ruchija Raj (Test), Nick Sutherland (Product Manager) and Irma Tanovic (BI). They didn’t know that Irma and I would be away on a conference in Amsterdam and would leave them without our support. But to my surprise, they had a working tool by the time we came back – basic, and with a few bugs, but a working tool nonetheless! Seeing it compare a very basic SSAS database, detect the changes and generate the scripts was amazing! Something that normally takes half a day was done in under a minute. Since then, a few months have passed and a BI Tools team has been created at Red Gate to work full time on BI tools for BI developers, starting with SSAS Compare. How cool is that? So download the free beta and give us your feedback. And the flamenco? I still need to deliver that. Tilman reminds me every day! I need to get the full flamenco costume.

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  • Traditional POS is Dead

    - by David Dorf
    Traditional POS is dead -- I've heard that one before. Here's an excerpt from Joe Skorupa's blog over at RIS where he relayed ten trends that were presented at NRF. 7. Mobile POS signals death of traditional POS. Shoppers don't love self-checkout, but they prefer it to long queues or dealing with associates. Fixed POS is expensive and bulky. Mobile POS frees floor space for other purposes and converts associates from being cashiers to being sales assistants that provide new levels of customer service and incremental basket sales. In addition to unplugging the POS, new alternatives are starting to take hold - thin client, POS as a service, and replacing POS software with e-commerce platforms. I'll grant that in some situations for some retailers there might be an opportunity to to ditch the traditional POS, but for the majority of retailers that's just not practical. Take it from a guy that had to wake up at 3am after every Thanksgiving to monitor POS systems across the US on Black Friday. If a retailer's website goes down on Black Friday, they will take a significant hit. If a retailer's chain-wide POS system goes down on Black Friday, that retailer will cease to exist. Mobile POS works great for Apple because the majority of purchases are one or two big-ticket items that don't involve cash. There's still a traditional POS in every store to fall back on (its just hidden). Try this at home: Choose your favorite e-commerce site and add an item to the cart while timing how long it takes. Now multiply that by 15 to represent the 15 items you might buy at store like Target. The user interface isn't optimized for bulk purchases, and that's how it should be. The webstore and POS are designed for different purposes. Self-checkout is a great addition to POS and so is mobile checkout. But they add capabilities to POS, not replace it. Centralized architectures, even those based in the cloud, are quite viable as long as there's resiliency in the registers. You cannot assume perfect access to the network, so a POS must always be able to sell regardless of connectivity. Clearly the different selling channels should be sharing common functionality. Things like calculating tax, accepting coupons, and processing electronic payments can be shared, usually through a service-oriented architecture. This lowers costs and providers greater consistency, both of which help retailers. On paper these technologies look really good and we should continue to push boundaries, but I'm not ready to call the patient dead just yet.

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  • Jitter during wall collisions with Bullet Physics: contact/penetration tolerance?

    - by Niriel
    I use the bullet physics engine through Panda3d. My scene is still very simple, think 'Wolfenstein3d': tile-based, walls are solid cubes. I expect walls to block the player, and I expect the player to slide along the walls in case of non-normal incidence. What I get is what I expect, with one difference: there is some jitter. If I try to force myself into the wall, then I see the frames blinking quickly between two positions. These differ by about 0.04 units of distance, which corresponds to 4 cm in my game. I noticed a 4 cm elsewhere: the bottom of my player capsule is 4 cm below ground, when at rest. Does that mean that there is somewhere in the Bullet engine a default 0.04-units-long tolerance to differentiate contact from collision? If so, what should I do ? Should I change the scale of my game so that these 0.04 units correspond to 0.4 cm, making the jitter ten times smaller? Or can I ask bullet to change its tolerance to a smaller value? Edit This is the jitter I get: 6.155 - 6.118 = 0.036 LPoint3f(0, 6.11694, 0.835) LPoint3f(0, 6.15499, 0.835) LPoint3f(0, 6.11802, 0.835) LPoint3f(0, 6.15545, 0.835) LPoint3f(0, 6.11817, 0.835) LPoint3f(0, 6.15726, 0.835) LPoint3f(0, 6.11876, 0.835) LPoint3f(0, 6.15911, 0.835) LPoint3f(0, 6.11937, 0.835) I found a setMargin method. I set it to 5 mm both on the BoxShape for the walls and on the Capsule shape for the player. It still jitters by about 35 mm as illustrated by this log (11.117 - 11.082 = 0.035): LPoint3f(0, 11.0821, 0.905) LPoint3f(0, 11.1169, 0.905) LPoint3f(0, 11.082, 0.905) LPoint3f(0, 11.117, 0.905) LPoint3f(0, 11.082, 0.905) LPoint3f(0, 11.117, 0.905) LPoint3f(0, 11.0821, 0.905) LPoint3f(0, 11.1175, 0.905) LPoint3f(0, 11.0822, 0.905) LPoint3f(0, 11.1178, 0.905) LPoint3f(0, 11.0823, 0.905) LPoint3f(0, 11.1183, 0.905) The margin on the capsule did change my penetration with the floor though, I'm a bit higher (0.905 instead of 0.835). However, it did not change anything when colliding with the walls. How can I make the collisions against the walls less jittery? Edit, the day after: After more investigation, it appears that dynamic objects behave well. My problem comes from the btKinematicCharacterController that I use for moving my character; that stuff is totally bugged, according to the whole Internet :/.

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  • Why do old programming languages continue to be revised?

    - by SunAvatar
    This question is not, "Why do people still use old programming languages?" I understand that quite well. In fact the two programming languages I know best are C and Scheme, both of which date back to the 70s. Recently I was reading about the changes in C99 and C11 versus C89 (which seems to still be the most-used version of C in practice and the version I learned from K&R). Looking around, it seems like every programming language in heavy use gets a new specification at least once per decade or so. Even Fortran is still getting new revisions, despite the fact that most people using it are still using FORTRAN 77. Contrast this with the approach of, say, the typesetting system TeX. In 1989, with the release of TeX 3.0, Donald Knuth declared that TeX was feature-complete and future releases would contain only bug fixes. Even beyond this, he has stated that upon his death, "all remaining bugs will become features" and absolutely no further updates will be made. Others are free to fork TeX and have done so, but the resulting systems are renamed to indicate that they are different from the official TeX. This is not because Knuth thinks TeX is perfect, but because he understands the value of a stable, predictable system that will do the same thing in fifty years that it does now. Why do most programming language designers not follow the same principle? Of course, when a language is relatively new, it makes sense that it will go through a period of rapid change before settling down. And no one can really object to minor changes that don't do much more than codify existing pseudo-standards or correct unintended readings. But when a language still seems to need improvement after ten or twenty years, why not just fork it or start over, rather than try to change what is already in use? If some people really want to do object-oriented programming in Fortran, why not create "Objective Fortran" for that purpose, and leave Fortran itself alone? I suppose one could say that, regardless of future revisions, C89 is already a standard and nothing stops people from continuing to use it. This is sort of true, but connotations do have consequences. GCC will, in pedantic mode, warn about syntax that is either deprecated or has a subtly different meaning in C99, which means C89 programmers can't just totally ignore the new standard. So there must be some benefit in C99 that is sufficient to impose this overhead on everyone who uses the language. This is a real question, not an invitation to argue. Obviously I do have an opinion on this, but at the moment I'm just trying to understand why this isn't just how things are done already. I suppose the question is: What are the (real or perceived) advantages of updating a language standard, as opposed to creating a new language based on the old?

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  • Analysing SQLBits Feedback

    - by jamiet
    Earlier this week I received all the feedback that people offered on my session at SQLBits 7 in York – “SSIS Dataflow Performance Tuning” (the video is available online if you wish to see it). As you may have gathered from previous posts on this blog and my less-SQLy-focused Wordpress blog I am a big fan of collecting and tracking both personal and public data and session feedback lends itself very well to tracking because it is quantitative rather than qualitative; by that I mean attendees are invited to provide marks out of ten rather than (or, in the case of SQLBits, as well as) written comments. The SQLBits feedback is also useful because they use a consistent format – the same questions are asked each time – this means it is particularly easy to to track whether the scores that people give are trending up or down. I suspect that somewhere the SQLBits organisers have a big Analysis Services cube (ok, perhaps its an Excel pivot table) that allows them to analyse these scores per conference, speaker, track etc.… and there’s no reason that we as session speakers cannot do the same thing. To that end I have started to store my feedback in an Excel spreadsheet of my own which in the interests of transparency is available for public viewing (only a web browser required) on SkyDrive at http://cid-550f681dad532637.office.live.com/view.aspx/Public/Misc/Personal%20SQLBits%20Session%20Feedback.xlsx. I have used a pivot table to aggregate all that feedback and here is a screenshot: I am hereby making a public plea to the SQLBits organisers (on the off-chance that they are reading) to please continue to keep the feedback format consistent in the future and I encourage them to publish all of the feedback in an anonymised form. I would also encourage anyone doing conference speaking to track their conference feedback in the same way that I am doing so that you get an insight into whether or not you are improving over time. It is not difficult to setup and maintaining it as you do more sessions takes very little effort. Storing feedback data like this leads me to wider thoughts about well-known conventions and data format standardisation. Let’s imagine a utopia where there were a standard set of questions for capturing session feedback that were leveraged at every conference regardless of subject matter, location or culture; that would give rise to immense cross-conference and cross-discipline analysis – the data analyst in me goes giddy at the thought of it. It is scenarios like this that drive my interest both in data formats such as iCalendar, microformats and RDF, and in emerging movements such as the semantic web and linked data, all things which I have written about in the past. I don’t know whether we will ever reach the stage where every piece of data has structured, descriptive metadata associated with it but I live in hope. @Jamiet

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  • Speaker Notes...

    - by wulfers
    At a .Net User Group meeting this week, I experienced two poorly prepared speakers floundering through presentations….  As a Lead Technologist at the company I work for, I have experience training technical staff and also giving presentations at code camps.  Here are a few guidelines for aspiring speakers you might find helpful…   1.       Do not stand in front of your audience and read your slides.  This is  offensive to your audience and not what they came for...  Your slides are there to reinforce the information you are presenting and to give the audience a little clarification on some terms you may use and as a visual aid for some complicated issues. 2.       Have someone review your presentation (slides, notes, …) who speaks the language you will be presenting in fluently.  Also record at least ten minutes of your presentation and have that same person review that.  One of the speakers this week used the word “Basically” fifty times in less than thirty minutes…  I started to flinch every time he used the term. 3.       Be Prepared  -  before the presentation begins.  Don’t make any last minute changes to your presentation or demo code the night before.  Don’t patch your laptop or demo servers the night before.  If possible create a virtual image that you only use for presentations and use that (refreshed before every presentation). 4.       Know the level of expertise of your audience.  Speaking above or below their abilities will make or break your presentation. 5.       Deliver what you promise. The presentation this week was supposed to be on BDD (Behavior Driven Develpment).  The presenter completely ran off track and 90% of the discussion was how his team mistakenly used TDD (Test Driven Development), and was unhappy with the results.  Based on his loss of focus we only heard a rushed 10 minute presentation on DBB which was a disservice to the audience. 6.       Practice your presentation with your own small team before you try this on a room full of people you don’t know.  A side benefit of doing this with your own team is that you can get candid feedback from your team and also get kudos for training your own team.  I find I can also turn my presentations into technical white papers and get a third benefit from the work I’ve put into a presentation. 7.       Sharpen your own saw.  Pick a topic that is fairly current.  Something you would like to learn about and would benefit your current career path. 8.       Have fun doing it.

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