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• Neural network for aproximation function for board game

  - by Pax0r

  I am trying to make a neural network for aproximation of some unkown function (for my neural network course). The problem is that this function has very many variables but many of them are not important (for example in [f(x,y,z) = x+y] z is not important). How could I design (and learn) network for this kind of problem? To be more specific the function is an evaluation function for some board game with unkown rules and I need to somehow learn this rules by experience of the agent. After each move the score is given to the agent so actually it needs to find how to get max score. I tried to pass the neighborhood of the agent to the network but there are too many variables which are not important for the score and agent is finding very local solutions.

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• Team activity/game for illustrating design in a SCRUM environment

  - by njreed.myopenid.com

  I'm looking for a team building / training activity for some of my scrum teams. I want something that really illustrates the flexibility that the team has when implementing stories to define the scope and complexity of the feature themselves. Most of the teams have long-term waterfall experience and are used to having a well-defined specification. I'm looking for something that illustrates the need for the team to vary the scope of what they are building themselves, dependent on the time and resources available. I couldn't find anything at tastycupcakes.com and Google wasn't much help. Maybe someone has prepared something themselves they would care to share?

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• Unable to center text in IE but works in firefox

  - by greenpool

  Can somebody point out where I'm going wrong with the following code. Text inside td elements need to be centered except for Summary and Experience. This only appears to work in Firefox/chrome. In IE8 all td text are displayed as left-justified. No matter what I try it doesn't center it. Any particular reason why this would happen? Thanks. css #viewAll { font-family:"Trebuchet MS", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; width:100%; border-collapse:collapse; margin-left:10px; table-layout: fixed; } #viewAll td, #viewAll th { font-size:1.1em; border:1px solid #98bf21; word-wrap:break-word; text-align:center; overflow:hidden; } #viewAll tbody td{ padding:2px; } #viewAll th { font-size:1.1em; padding-top:5px; padding-bottom:4px; background-color:#A7C942; color:#ffffff; } table <?php echo '<table id="viewAll" class="tablesorter">'; echo '<thead>'; echo '<tr align="center">'; echo '<th style="width:70px;">Product</th>'; echo '<th style="width:105px;">Prob</th>'; echo '<th style="width:105px;">I</th>'; echo '<th style="width:60px;">Status</th>'; echo '<th style="width:120px;">Experience</th>'; echo '<th style="width:200px;">Technical Summary</th>'; echo '<th style="width:80px;">Record Created</th>'; echo '<th style="width:80px;">Record Updated</th>'; echo '<th style="width:50px;">Open</th>'; echo '</tr>'; echo '</thead>'; echo '<tbody>'; while ($data=mysqli_fetch_array($result)){ #limiting the summary text displayed in the table $limited_summary = (strlen($data['summary']) > 300) ? substr(($data['summary']),0,300) . '...' : $data['summary']; $limited_exp = (strlen($data['exp']) > 300) ? substr(($data['exp']),0,300) . '...' : $data['exp']; echo '<tr align="center"> <td style="width:70px; text-align:center;">'.$data['product'].'</td>'; //if value is '-' do not display as link if ($data['prob'] != '-'){ echo '<td style="width:105px;">'.$data['prob'].'</a></td>'; } else{ echo '<td style="width:105px; ">'.$data['prob'].'</td>'; } if ($data['i'] != '-'){ echo '<td style="width:105px; ">'.$data['i'].'</a></td>'; } else{ echo '<td style="width:105px; ">'.$data['i'].'</td>'; } echo'<td style="width:40px; " >'.$data['status'].'</td> <td style="width:120px; text-align:left;">'.$limited_cust_exp.'</td> <td style="width:200px; text-align:left;">'.$limited_summary.'</td> <td style="width:80px; ">'.$data['created'].'</td> <td style="width:80px; ">'.$data['updated'].'</td>'; if (isset($_SESSION['username'])){ echo '<td style="width:50px; "> <form action="displayRecord.php" method="get">'.' <input type="hidden" name="id" value="'. $data['id'].'" style="text-decoration: none" /><input type="submit" value="Open" /></form></td>'; }else{ echo '<td style="width:50px; "> <form action="displayRecord.php" method="get">'.' <input type="hidden" name="id" value="'. $data['id'].'" style="text-decoration: none" /><input type="submit" value="View" /></form></td>'; } echo '</tr>'; }#end of while echo '</tbody>'; echo '</table>'; ?>

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• What is this type of programming called (creating an online network)?

  - by Byron S

  For practice purposes, I am looking to build an application that is capable of connecting multiple devices through the internet. It will be similar to craigslist, but I want to make this as an iOS application. I have very little experience with web services, as the most I've done is pulled an RSS feed onto the screen. How are these things normally done? If it's similar to a message board, is it as simple as having a database in a server/cloud, and giving all users access to it? Or is it more complicated than that? How should I begin to learn more about the backend? What kind of services are usually used in this kind of thing? The only database I've used is Core Data.

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• Property and Encapsulation

  - by Lijo

  Hi Team, Following is a question regarding using Properties in class. I am software engineer with 3 years of experience. I have been using public properties instead of exposing member variables publically. Many a people told that this approach helps in encapsulation. I don’t realize any encapsulation advantage by making it a property. While discussions, I came to know that not many people knows about the real reason for going for Property. They just do it as part of coding standard. Can someone clearly explain how Property is better than public member variable? How it improves encapsulation? Thanks Lijo

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• Beginner's Language app

  - by Eiseldora

  Hi I'm a techie with no programing experience. I know html and css, but I'd like to someday be able to make an app for my phone (I have an android) and possibly mobile websites. I made learning a programing language and creating a mobile app a goal for my job, and now my boss would like me to pick a programing language to learn. I found a free open course from MIT (http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-00-introduction-to-computer-science-and-programming-fall-2008/) called introduction to computer science. In the course they teach python, but more importantly it seems they teach how to think like a programmer. When I told my boss about the free online course she didn't think that Python was an appropriate language for me to learn. She'd like me to learn a language that is more similar to one used to make Phone apps. Does anyone out there know a better language for me to pick up that would be similar to Android or iPhone's App language. Thank you

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• Tracking Useful Information

  - by Steve M

  What do the clever programmers here do to keep track of handy programming tricks and useful information they pick up over their many years of experience? Things like useful compiler arguments, IDE short-cuts, clever code snippets, etc. I sometimes find myself frustrated when looking up something that I used to know a year or two ago. My IE favourites probably represent a good chunk of the Internet in the late 1990s, so clearly that isn't effective (at least for me). Or am I just getting old? So.. what do you do?

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• iPhone App on iPad - What is the extra effort?

  - by hol

  I started to develop an iPhone App for a client but the binary not yet submitted to Apple. My client asked me whether they can run the iPhone App also on the iPad. I am not sure what to answer. I am away from home and cannot even check how this all works in XCode. I wonder whether I have to submit two binaries two Apple - one for iPhone and one for iPad - or how this all works? If somebody with experience can explain me. Basically I need to figure out how much more effort I have to consider if it is only making the app work on the iPad. I do not mean the effort to redesign the whole app being a real "iPad app". Just to make it work and when somebody downloads the app and it can be for an iPhone and for an iPad and it does not matter.

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• OpenGL performance on rendering "virtual gallery" (textures)

  - by maticus

  I have a considerable (120-240) amount of 640x480 images that will be displayed as textured flat surfaces (4 vertex polygons) in a 3D environment. About 30-50% of them will be visible in a given frame. It is possible for them to crossover. Nothing else will be present in the environment. The question is - will the modern and/or few-years-old (lets say Radeon 9550) GPU cope with that, and what frame rate can I expect? I aim for 20FPS, but 30-40 would be nice. Would changing the resolution to 320x240 make it more probable to happen? I do not have any previous experience with performance issues of 3D graphics on modern GPUs, and unfortunately I must make a design choice. I don't want to waste time on doing something that couldn't have worked :-)

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• Make jQuery AJAX have a non-javascript (non-ajax) fallback?

  - by DrAgonmoray

  I've gotten a fair amount of work done on my latest project, but I've realized there's a bit of a problem: If you don't have a Javascript-enabled browser, you can't submit any forms because every form uses AJAX to submit it. My question to you all: How can I implement some sort of "fallback" so that if they don't have Javascript enabled, they can still submit the form. Currently I have a banner along the header that says "For the optimal (and by "optimal," we mean "actually working") experience, please enable Javascript in your browser." but that seems like less than the optimal solution. Thanks!

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• What you would learn. [closed]

  - by NDeveloper

  Hi, I have a little free time and would like to learn new development language/technology. I know it can be very subective, but please share with us what you would learn and why. I have about 4 years of .NET development experience mostly distributed applications. And a little more than 2 years of c/c++. There are a lot of options to choose like Google Go/F#/Python/Scala/Java/ASP.NET/Mobile App development like for Android, BB, iPhone.../DB (MS SQL, Oracle or even MongoDB or CouchDB)/any new concepts, etc... I would like to use the time for investment, so gained knowledge will be useful.

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• PHP $_REQUEST doesn't contain all $_GET varaibles

  - by pinky0x51

  Until today I thought that $_REQUEST always contains all variables form $_POST and $_GET. But today I had the strange experience that one variable is part of $_GET but not part of $_REQUEST. I played a little bit around with the URL which hands over the parameters and it seems like always the fist parameter is missing in the $_REQUEST array. Do you have any idea why this could happen? Thanks! URL: localhost/?app=files&getfile=ajax/newfile.php?dir=%2Ftest4&source=http%3A%2F%2Fl??ocalhost%2Fimg%2Flogo.svg&filename=logo.svg&requesttoken=e250827c341650990cd4

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• Is it easier to create a chat client using java or PHP?

  - by Mendy

  first off, my goal: Create a chat client that requires the user to log in with a password. Would it be easier to create it with just HTML an PHP or java? EDIT: Sorry, I didn't mention. I have some experience in javascript. I'm afraid that is all. I could and would learn another language. So I want to know which language would be better to learn for this project? also, for the username and password login I'm guessing I would need some mySQL knowledge? Thanks.

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• E-Business Suite Technology Sessions at OpenWorld 2012

  - by Max Arderius

  Oracle OpenWorld 2012 is almost here! We're looking forward to updating you on our products, strategy, and roadmaps. This year, the E-Business Suite Applications Technology Group (ATG) will participate in 25 speaker sessions, two Meet the Experts round-table discussions, five demoground booths and seven Special Interest Group meetings as guest speakers. We hope to see you at our sessions.  Please join us to hear the latest news and connect with senior ATG development staff. Here's a downloadable listing of all Applications Technology Group-related sessions with times and locations: FOCUS ON Oracle E-Business Suite - Applications Tools and Technology (PDF) General Sessions GEN8474 - Oracle E-Business Suite - Strategy, Update, and RoadmapCliff Godwin, SVP, Oracle Monday, Oct 1, 12:15 PM - 1:15 PM - Moscone West 2002/2004 In this session, hear Oracle E-Business Suite General Manager Cliff Godwin deliver an update on the Oracle E-Business Suite product line. This session covers the value delivered by the current release of Oracle E-Business Suite, the momentum, and how Oracle E-Business Suite applications integrate into Oracle’s overall applications strategy. You’ll come away with an understanding of the value Oracle E-Business Suite applications deliver now and will deliver in the future. GEN9173 - Optimize and Extend Oracle Applications - The Path to Oracle Fusion ApplicationsNadia Bendjedou, Oracle; Corre Curtice, Bhavish Madurai (CSC) Tuesday, Oct 2, 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM - Moscone West 3002/3004 One of the main objectives of this session is to help organizations build their IT roadmap for the next five years and be aligned with the Oracle Applications strategy in general and the Oracle Fusion Applications strategy in particular. Come hear about some of the common sense, practical steps you can take to optimize the performance of your Oracle Applications today and prepare your path to Oracle Fusion Applications for when your organization is ready to embrace them. Each step you take in adopting Oracle Fusion technology gets you partway to Oracle Fusion Applications. Conference Sessions CON9024 - Oracle E-Business Suite Technology: Latest Features and Roadmap Lisa Parekh, Oracle Monday, Oct 1, 10:45 AM - 11:45 AM - Moscone West 2016 This Oracle development session provides a comprehensive overview of Oracle’s product strategy for Oracle E-Business Suite technology, the capabilities and associated business benefits of recent releases, and a review of capabilities on the product roadmap. This is the cornerstone session for the Oracle E-Business Suite technology stack. Come hear about the latest new usability enhancements of the user interface; systems administration and configuration management tools; security-related updates; and tools and options for extending, customizing, and integrating Oracle E-Business Suite with other applications. CON9021 - Oracle E-Business Suite Future Directions: Deployment and System AdministrationMax Arderius, Oracle Monday, Oct 1, 3:15 PM - 4:15 PM - Moscone West 2016  What’s coming in the next major version of Oracle E-Business Suite 12? This Oracle Development session covers the latest technology stack, including the use of Oracle WebLogic Server (Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g) and Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2). Topics include an architectural overview of the latest updates, installation and upgrade options, new configuration options, and new tools for hot cloning and automated “lights-out” cloning. Come learn how online patching (based on the Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Edition-Based Redefinition feature) will reduce your database patching downtimes to however long it takes to bounce your database server. CON9017 - Desktop Integration in Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 Padmaprabodh Ambale, Gustavo Jimenez, Oracle Monday, Oct 1, 4:45 PM - 5:45 PM - Moscone West 2016 This presentation covers the latest functional enhancements in Oracle Web Applications Desktop Integrator and Oracle Report Manager, enhanced Microsoft Office support, and greater support for building custom desktop integration solutions. The session also presents tips and tricks for upgrading from Oracle Applications Desktop Integrator to Oracle Web Applications Desktop Integrator and Oracle Report Manager. CON9023 - Oracle E-Business Suite Technology Certification Primer and Roadmap Steven Chan, Oracle Tuesday, Oct 2, 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM - Moscone West 2016  Is your Oracle E-Business Suite technology stack up to date? Are you taking advantage of all the latest options and capabilities? This Oracle development session summarizes the latest certifications and roadmap for the Oracle E-Business Suite technology stack, including elements such as database releases and options, Java, Oracle Forms, Oracle Containers for J2EE, desktop operating systems, browsers, JRE releases, development and Web authoring tools, user authentication and management, business intelligence, Oracle Application Management Packs, security options, clouds, Oracle VM, and virtualization. The session also covers the most commonly asked questions about tech stack component support dates and upgrade implications. CON9028 - Minimizing Oracle E-Business Suite Maintenance DowntimesSantiago Bastidas, Elke Phelps, Oracle Tuesday, Oct 2, 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM - Moscone West 2016 This Oracle development session features a survey of the best techniques sysadmins can use to minimize patching downtimes. It starts with an architectural-level review of Oracle E-Business Suite fundamentals and then moves to a practical view of the various tools and approaches for downtimes. Topics include patching shortcuts, merging patches, distributing worker processes across multiple servers, running ADPatch in noninteractive mode, staged APPL_TOPs, shared file systems, deferring systemwide database tasks, avoiding resource bottlenecks, and more. An added bonus: hear about the upcoming Oracle E-Business Suite 12 online patching capabilities based on the groundbreaking Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Edition-Based Redefinition feature. CON9116 - Extending the Use of Oracle E-Business Suite with the Oracle Endeca PlatformOsama Elkady, Muhannad Obeidat, Oracle Tuesday, Oct 2, 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM - Moscone West 2018 The Oracle Endeca platform includes a leading unstructured data correlation and analytics engine, together with a best-in class catalog search and guided navigation solution, to improve the productivity of all types of users in your enterprise. This development session focuses on the details behind the Oracle Endeca platform’s integration into Oracle E-Business Suite. It demonstrates how easily you can extend the use of the Oracle Endeca platform into other areas of Oracle E-Business Suite and how you can bring in your own data and build new Oracle Endeca applications for Oracle E-Business Suite. CON9005 - Oracle E-Business Suite Integration Best PracticesVeshaal Singh, Oracle, Jeffrey Hand, Zebra Technologies Tuesday, Oct 2, 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM - Moscone West 2018 Oracle is investing across applications and technologies to make the application integration experience easier for customers. Today Oracle has certified Oracle E-Business Suite on Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g and provides a comprehensive set of integration technologies. Learn about Oracle’s integration offering across data- and process-centric integrations. These technologies can be used to address various application integration challenges and styles. In this session, you will get an understanding of how, when, and where you can leverage Oracle’s integration technologies to connect end-to-end business processes across your enterprise, including your Oracle Applications portfolio.  CON9026 - Latest Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 User Interface and Usability EnhancementsPadmaprabodh Ambale, Oracle Tuesday, Oct 2, 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM - Moscone West 2016 This Oracle development session details the latest UI enhancements to Oracle Application Framework in Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1. Developers will get a detailed look at new features to enhance usability, offer more capabilities for personalization and extensions, and support the development and use of dashboards and Web services. Topics include new rich UI capabilities such as new home page features, Navigator and Favorites pull-down menus, REST interface, embedded widgets for analytics content, Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF) task flows, third-party widgets, a look-ahead list of values, inline attachments, pop-ups, personalization and extensibility enhancements, business layer extensions, Oracle ADF integration, and mobile devices. CON8805 - Planning Your Oracle E-Business Suite Upgrade from 11i to Release 12.1 and BeyondAnne Carlson, Oracle Tuesday, Oct 2, 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM - Moscone West 3002/3004 Attend this session to hear the latest Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 upgrade planning tips from Oracle’s support, consulting, development, and IT organizations. You’ll get specific cross-product advice on how to understand the factors that affect your project’s duration, decide on your project’s scope, develop a robust testing strategy, leverage Oracle Support resources, and more. In a nutshell, this session tells you things you need to know before embarking upon your Release 12.1 upgrade project. CON9053 - Advanced Management of Oracle E-Business Suite with Oracle Enterprise ManagerAngelo Rosado, Oracle Tuesday, Oct 2, 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM - Moscone West 2016 The task of managing and monitoring Oracle E-Business Suite environments can be very challenging. Oracle Enterprise Manager is the only product on the market that is designed to monitor and manage all the different technologies that constitute Oracle E-Business Suite applications, including end user, midtier, configuration, host, and database management—to name just a few. Customers that have implemented Oracle Enterprise Manager have experienced dramatic improvements in system visibility and diagnostic capability as well as administrator productivity. The purpose of this session is to highlight the key features and benefits of Oracle Enterprise Manager and Oracle Application Management Suite for Oracle E-Business Suite. CON8809 - Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 Upgrade Best Practices: Technical InsightIsam Alyousfi, Udayan Parvate, Oracle Wednesday, Oct 3, 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM - Moscone West 3011 This session is ideal for organizations thinking about upgrading to Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1. It covers the fundamentals of upgrading to Release 12.1, including the technology stack components and supported upgrade paths. Hear from Oracle Development about the set of best practices for patching in general and executing the Release 12.1 technical upgrade, with special considerations for minimizing your downtime. Also get to know about relatively recent upgrade resources. CON9032 - Upgrading Your Customizations of Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1Sara Woodhull, Oracle Wednesday, Oct 3, 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM - Moscone West 2016 Have you personalized Oracle Forms or Oracle Application Framework screens in Oracle E-Business Suite? Have you used mod_plsql in Release 11i? Have you extended or customized your Release 11i environment with other tools? The technical options for upgrading these customizations as part of your Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 upgrade can be bewildering. Come to this Oracle development session to learn about selecting the best upgrade approach for your existing customizations. The session will help you understand customization scenarios and use cases, tools, and technologies to ensure that your Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 environment fits your users’ needs closely and that any future customizations will be easy to upgrade. CON9259 - Oracle E-Business Suite Internationalization and Multilingual FeaturesMaher Al-Nubani, Oracle Wednesday, Oct 3, 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM - Moscone West 2018 Oracle E-Business Suite supports more countries, languages, and regions than ever. Come to this Oracle development session to get an overview of internationalization features and capabilities and see new Release 12 features such as calendar support for Hijra and Thai, new group separators, lightweight multilingual support (MLS) setup, new character sets such as AL32UTF, newly supported languages, Mac certifications, Oracle iSetup support for moving MLS setups, new file export options for Unicode, new MLS number spelling options, and more. CON7188 - Mobile Apps for Oracle E-Business Suite with Oracle ADF Mobile and Oracle SOA SuiteSrikant Subramaniam, Joe Huang, Veshaal Singh, Oracle Wednesday, Oct 3, 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM - Moscone West 3001 Follow your mobile customers, employees, and partners with Oracle Fusion Middleware. See how native iPhone and iPad applications can easily be built for Oracle E-Business Suite with the new Oracle ADF Mobile and Oracle SOA Suite. Using Oracle ADF Mobile, developers can quickly develop native applications for Apple iOS and other mobile platforms. The Oracle SOA Suite/Oracle ADF Mobile combination can execute business transactions on Oracle E-Business Suite. This session includes a demo in which a mobile user approves a business transaction in Oracle E-Business Suite and a demo of the tools used to build a native on-device solution. These concepts for mobile applications also apply to other Oracle applications.CON9029 - Oracle E-Business Suite Directions: Slashing Downtimes with Online PatchingKevin Hudson, Oracle Wednesday, Oct 3, 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM - Moscone West 2016 Oracle E-Business Suite will soon include online patching (based on the Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Edition-Based Redefinition feature), which will reduce your database patching downtimes to however long it takes to bounce your database server. This Oracle development session details how online patching works, with special attention to what’s happening at a database object level when database patches are applied to an Oracle E-Business Suite environment that’s still running. Come learn about the operational and system management implications for minimizing maintenance downtimes when applying database patches with this new technology and the related impact on customizations you might have built on top of Oracle E-Business Suite. CON8806 - Upgrading to Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1: Technical and Functional PanelAndrew Katz, Komori America Corporation; Sandra Vucinic, VLAD Group, Inc. ;Srini Chavali, Cummins Inc.; Amrita Mehrok, Nadia Bendjedou, Anne Carlson Oracle Wednesday, Oct 3, 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM - Moscone West 2018 In this panel discussion, Oracle experts, customers, and partners share their experiences in upgrading to the latest release of Oracle E-Business Suite, Release 12.1. The panelists cover aspects of a typical Release 12 upgrade, technical (upgrading the technical infrastructure) as well as functional (upgrading to the new financial infrastructure). Hear directly from the experts who either develop the product or support, implement, or upgrade it, and find out how to apply their lessons learned to your organization. CON9027 - Personalize and Extend Oracle E-Business Suite Applications with Rich MashupsGustavo Jimenez, Padmaprabodh Ambale, Oracle Wednesday, Oct 3, 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM - Moscone West 2016 This session covers the use of several Oracle Fusion Middleware technologies to personalize and extend your existing Oracle E-Business Suite applications. The Oracle Fusion Middleware technologies covered include Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF), Oracle WebCenter, Oracle Endeca applications, and Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition with Oracle E-Business Suite Oracle Application Framework applications. CON9036 - Advanced Oracle E-Business Suite Architectures: Maximum Availability, Security, and MoreElke Phelps, Oracle Wednesday, Oct 3, 3:30 PM - 4:30 PM - Moscone West 2016 This session includes architecture diagrams and configuration instructions for building a maximum availability architecture (MAA) that will help you design a disaster recovery solution that fits the needs of your business. Database and application high-availability features it describes include Oracle Data Guard, Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC), Oracle Active Data Guard, load-balancing Web and forms services, parallel concurrent processing, and the use of Oracle Exalogic and Oracle Exadata to provide a highly available environment. The session also covers the latest updates to systems management tools, AutoConfig, cloud computing, virtualization, and Oracle WebLogic Server and provides sneak previews of upcoming functionality. CON9047 - Efficiently Scaling Oracle E-Business Suite on Oracle Exadata and Oracle ExalogicIsam Alyousfi, Nishit Rao, Oracle Wednesday, Oct 3, 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM - Moscone West 2016 Oracle Exadata and Oracle Exalogic are designed from the ground up with optimizations in software and hardware to deliver superfast performance for mission-critical applications such as Oracle E-Business Suite. Oracle E-Business Suite applications run three to eight times as fast on the Oracle Exadata/Oracle Exalogic platform in standard benchmark tests. Besides performance, customers benefit from simplified support, enhanced manageability, and the ability to consolidate multiple Oracle E-Business Suite instances. Attend this session to understand best practices for Oracle E-Business Suite deployment on Oracle Exalogic and Oracle Exadata through customer case studies. Learn how adopting the Exa* platform increases efficiency, simplifies scaling, and boosts performance for peak loads. CON8716 - Web Services and SOA Integration Options for Oracle E-Business SuiteRekha Ayothi, Veshaal Singh, Oracle Thursday, Oct 4, 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM - Moscone West 2016 This Oracle development session provides a deep dive into a subset of the Web services and SOA-related integration options available to Oracle E-Business Suite systems integrators. It offers a technical look at Oracle E-Business Suite Integrated SOA Gateway, Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle Application Adapters for Data Integration for Oracle E-Business Suite, and other Web services options for integrating Oracle E-Business Suite with other applications. Systems integrators and developers will get an overview of the latest integration capabilities and technologies available out of the box with Oracle E-Business Suite and possibly a sneak preview of upcoming functionality and features. CON9030 - Recommendations for Oracle E-Business Suite Performance TuningIsam Alyousfi, Samer Barakat, Oracle Thursday, Oct 4, 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM - Moscone West 2018 Need to squeeze more performance out of your existing servers? This packed Oracle development session summarizes practical tips and lessons learned from performance-tuning and benchmarking the world’s largest Oracle E-Business Suite environments. Apps sysadmins will learn concrete tips and techniques for identifying and resolving performance bottlenecks on all layers, with special attention to application- and database-tier servers. Learn about tuning Oracle Forms, Oracle Concurrent Manager, Apache, and Oracle Discoverer. Track down memory leaks and other issues at the Java and JVM layers. The session also covers Oracle E-Business Suite product-level tuning, including Oracle Workflow, Oracle Order Management, Oracle Payroll, and other modules. CON3429 - Using Oracle ADF with Oracle E-Business Suite: The Full Integration ViewSiva Puthurkattil, Lake County; Juan Camilo Ruiz, Sara Woodhull, Oracle Thursday, Oct 4, 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM - Moscone West 3003 Oracle E-Business Suite delivers functionality for handling the core business of your organization. However, user requirements and new technologies are driving an emerging need to implement new types of user interfaces for these applications. This session provides an overview of how to use Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF) to deliver cutting-edge Web 2.0 and mobile rich user interfaces that front existing Oracle E-Business Suite processes, and it also explores all the existing types of integration between the two worlds. CON9020 - Integrating Oracle E-Business Suite with Oracle Identity Management SolutionsSunil Ghosh, Elke Phelps, Oracle Thursday, Oct 4, 12:45 PM - 1:45 PM - Moscone West 2016 Need to integrate Oracle E-Business Suite with Microsoft Windows Kerberos, Active Directory, CA Netegrity SiteMinder, or other third-party authentication systems? Want to understand your options when Oracle Premier Support for Oracle Single Sign-On ends in December 2011? This Oracle Development session covers the latest certified integrations with Oracle Access Manager 11g and Oracle Internet Directory 11g, which can be used individually or as bridges for integrating with third-party authentication solutions. The session presents an architectural overview of how Oracle Access Manager, its WebGate and AccessGate components, and Oracle Internet Directory work together, with implications for Oracle Discoverer, Oracle Portal, and other Oracle Fusion identity management products. CON9019 - Troubleshooting, Diagnosing, and Optimizing Oracle E-Business Suite TechnologyGustavo Jimenez, Oracle Thursday, Oct 4, 2:15 PM - 3:15 PM - Moscone West 2016 This session covers how you can proactively diagnose Oracle E-Business Suite applications, including extensions built with Oracle Fusion Middleware technologies such as Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF) and Oracle WebCenter to catch potential issues in the middle tier before they become more serious. Topics include debugging, logging infrastructure, warning signs, performance tuning, information required when logging service requests, general JVM optimization, and an overall picture of all the moving parts that make it possible for Oracle E-Business Suite to isolate and fix problems. Also learn how Oracle Diagnostics Framework will help prevent downtime caused by failures. CON9031 - The Top 10 Things You Can Do to Secure Your Oracle E-Business Suite InstanceEric Bing, Erik Graversen, Oracle Thursday, Oct 4, 2:15 PM - 3:15 PM - Moscone West 2018 Learn the top 10 things you can do to secure your applications and your sensitive data. This Oracle development session for system administrators and security professionals explores some of the most important and overlooked things you can do to secure your Oracle E-Business Suite instance. It also covers data masking and other mechanisms for protecting sensitive data. Special Interest Groups (SIG) Some of our most senior staff have been invited to participate on the following SIG meetings as guest speakers: SIG10525 - OAUG - Archive & Purge SIGBrian Bent - Pre-Sales Engineer, TierData, Inc. Sunday, Sep 30, 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM - Moscone West 3011 The Archive and Purge SIG is an organization in which users can share their experiences and solicit functional and technical advice on archiving and purging data in Oracle E-Business Suite. This session provides an opportunity for users to network and share best practices, tips, and tricks. Guest: Oracle E-Business Suite Database Performance, Archive & Purging - Q&A SessionIsam Alyousfi, Senior Director, Applications Performance, Oracle SIG10547 - OAUG - Oracle E-Business (EBS) Applications Technology SIGSrini Chavali - IT Director, Cummins Inc Sunday, Sep 30, 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM - Moscone West 3018 The general purpose of the EBS Applications Technology SIG is to inform and educate its members about current and future components of the tech stack as they relate to Oracle E-Business Suite. Attend this meeting for networking and education and to share best practices. Guest: Oracle E-Business Suite Technology Certification Roadmap - Presentation and Q&ASteven Chan, Sr. Director, Applications Technology Group, Oracle SIG10559 - OAUG - User Management SIGSusan Behn - VP of Oracle Delivery, Infosemantics, Inc. Sunday, Sep 30, 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM - Moscone West 3024 The E-Business Suite User Management SIG focuses on the components of user management that enable Oracle E-Business Suite users to define administrative functions and manage users’ access to functions and data based on roles within an organization—rather than the user’s individual identity—which is referred to as role-based access control (RBAC). This meeting includes an introduction to Oracle User Management that covers the Oracle User Management building blocks and presents an example of creating a security policy.Guest: Security and User Management - Q&A SessionEric Bing, Sr. Director, EBS Security, OracleSara Woodhull, Principal Product Manager, Applications Technology Group, Oracle SIG10515 - OAUG – Upgrade SIGBarbara Matthews - Consultant, On Call DBASandra Vucinic, VLAD Group, Inc. Sunday, Sep 30, 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM - Moscone West 3009 This Upgrade SIG session starts with a business meeting and then features a Q&A panel discussion on Oracle E-Business Suite upgrade topics. The session• Reviews Upgrade SIG goals and objectives• Provides answers, during the Q&A session, to questions related to Oracle E-Business Suite upgrades• Shares “real world” experiences, tips, and techniques for Oracle E-Business Suite upgrades to Release 12.1. Guest: Oracle E-Business Suite Upgrade - Q&A SessionAnne Carlson - Sr. Director, Oracle E-Business Suite Product Strategy, OracleUdayan Parvate - Director, EBS Release Engineering, OracleSuzana Ferrari, Sr. Principal Consultant, OracleIsam Alyousfi, Sr. Director, Applications Performance, Oracle SIG10552 - OAUG - Oracle E-Business Suite SIGDonna Rosentrater - Manager, Global Sourcing & Procurement Systems, TJX Sunday, Sep 30, 12:15 PM - 1:45 PM - Moscone West 3020 The E-Business Suite SIG, affiliated with OAUG, supports Oracle E-Business Suite users through networking, education, and sharing of best practices. This SIG meeting will feature a general discussion of Oracle E-Business Suite product strategies in Release 12 and migration to Oracle Fusion Applications. Guest: Oracle E-Business Suite - Q&A SessionJeanne Lowell, Vice President, EBS Product Strategy, OracleNadia Bendjedou, Sr. Director, Product Strategy, Oracle SIG10556 - OAUG - SysAdmin SIGRandy Giefer - Sr Systems and Security Architect, Solution Beacon, LLC Sunday, Sep 30, 12:15 PM - 1:45 PM - Moscone West 3022 The SysAdmin SIG provides a forum in which OAUG members and participants can share updates, tips, and successful practices relating to system administration in an Oracle applications environment. The SysAdmin SIG strives to enable system administrators to become more effective and efficient in their jobs by providing them with access to people and information that can increase their system administration knowledge and experience. Attend this meeting to network, share best practices, and benefit from educational content. Guest: Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2 Online Patching- Presentation and Q&AKevin Hudson, Sr. Director, Applications Technology Group, Oracle SIG10553 - OAUG - Database SIGMichael Brown - Senior DBA, COLIBRI LTD LC Sunday, Sep 30, 2:00 PM - 3:15 PM - Moscone West 3020 The OAUG Database SIG provides an opportunity for applications database administrators to learn from and share their experiences with supporting the various Oracle applications environments. This session will include a brief business meeting followed by a short presentation. It will end with an open discussion among the attendees about items of interest to those present. Guest: Oracle E-Business Suite Database Performance - Presentation and Q&AIsam Alyousfi, Sr. Director, Applications Performance, Oracle Meet the Experts We're planning two round-table discussions where you can review your questions with senior E-Business Suite ATG staff: MTE9648 - Meet the Experts for Oracle E-Business Suite: Planning Your Upgrade Jeanne Lowell - VP, EBS Product Strategy, Oracle John Abraham - Sr. Principal Product Manager, Oracle Nadia Bendjedou - Sr. Director - Product Strategy, Oracle Anne Carlson - Sr. Director, Applications Technology Group, Oracle Udayan Parvate - Director, EBS Release Engineering, Oracle Isam Alyousfi, Sr. Director, Applications Performance, Oracle Monday, Oct 1, 3:15 PM - 4:15 PM - Moscone West 2001A Don’t miss this Oracle Applications Meet the Experts session with experts who specialize in Oracle E-Business Suite upgrade best practices. This is the place where attendees can have informal and semistructured but open one-on-one discussions with Strategy and Development regarding Oracle Applications strategy and your specific business and IT strategy. The experts will be available to discuss the value of the latest releases and share insights into the best path for your enterprise, so come ready with your questions. Space is limited, so make sure you register. MTE9649 - Meet the Oracle E-Business Suite Tools and Technology Experts Lisa Parekh - Vice President, Technology Integration, Oracle Steven Chan - Sr. Director, Oracle Elke Phelps - Sr. Principal Product Manager, Applications Technology Group, Oracle Max Arderius - Manager, Applications Technology Group, Oracle Tuesday, Oct 2, 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM - Moscone West 2001A Don’t miss this Oracle Applications Meet the Experts session with experts who specialize in Oracle E-Business Suite technology. This is the place where attendees can have informal and semistructured but open one-on-one discussions with Strategy and Development regarding Oracle Applications strategy and your specific business and IT strategy. The experts will be available to discuss the value of the latest releases and share insights into the best path for your enterprise, so come ready with your questions. Space is limited, so make sure you register. Demos We have five booths in the exhibition demogrounds this year, where you can try ATG technologies firsthand and get your questions answered. Please stop by and meet our staff at the following locations: Advanced Architecture and Technology Stack for Oracle E-Business Suite (W-067) New User Productivity Capabilities in Oracle E-Business Suite (W-065) End-to-End Management of Oracle E-Business Suite (W-063) Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 Technical Upgrade Best Practices (W-066) SOA-Based Integration for Oracle E-Business Suite (W-064)

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• CascadingDropDown jQuery Plugin for ASP.NET MVC

  - by rajbk

  CascadingDropDown is a jQuery plugin that can be used by a select list to get automatic population using AJAX. A sample ASP.NET MVC project is attached at the bottom of this post.   Usage The code below shows two select lists : <select id="customerID" name="customerID"> <option value="ALFKI">Maria Anders</option> <option value="ANATR">Ana Trujillo</option> <option value="ANTON">Antonio Moreno</option> </select>   <select id="orderID" name="orderID"> </select> When a customer is selected in the first select list, the second list will auto populate itself with the following code: $("#orderID").CascadingDropDown("#customerID", '/Sales/AsyncOrders'); Internally, an AJAX post is made to ‘/Sales/AsyncOrders’ with the post body containing  customerID=[selectedCustomerID]. This executes the action AsyncOrders on the SalesController with signature AsyncOrders(string customerID).  The AsyncOrders method returns JSON which is then used to populate the select list. The JSON format expected is shown below : [{ "Text": "John", "Value": "10326" }, { "Text": "Jane", "Value": "10801" }] Details $(targetID).CascadingDropDown(sourceID, url, settings) targetID The ID of the select list that will auto populate.  sourceID The ID of the select list, which, on change, causes the targetID to auto populate. url The url to post to Options promptText Text for the first item in the select list Default : -- Select -- loadingText Optional text to display in the select list while it is being loaded. Default : Loading.. errorText Optional text to display if an error occurs while populating the list Default: Error loading data. postData Data you want posted to the url in place of the default Example : { postData : { customerID : $(‘#custID’), orderID : $(‘#orderID’) }} will cause customerID=ALFKI&orderID=2343 to be sent as the POST body. Default: A text string obtained by calling serialize on the sourceID onLoading (event) Raised before the list is populated. onLoaded (event) Raised after the list is populated, The code below shows how to “animate” the  select list after load. Example using custom options: $("#orderID").CascadingDropDown("#customerID", '/Sales/AsyncOrders', { promptText: '-- Pick an Order--', onLoading: function () { $(this).css("background-color", "#ff3"); }, onLoaded: function () { $(this).animate({ backgroundColor: '#ffffff' }, 300); } }); To return JSON from our action method, we use the Json ActionResult passing in an IEnumerable<SelectListItem>. public ActionResult AsyncOrders(string customerID) { var orders = repository.GetOrders(customerID).ToList().Select(a => new SelectListItem() { Text = a.OrderDate.HasValue ? a.OrderDate.Value.ToString("MM/dd/yyyy") : "[ No Date ]", Value = a.OrderID.ToString(), }); return Json(orders); } Sample Project using VS 2010 RTM NorthwindCascading.zip

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• Enhance GIMP’s Image Editing Power with Gimp Paint Studio

  - by Asian Angel

  Does your GIMP installation need a little super-charging? Using Gimp Paint Studio you can add a wonderful set of brushes, tools, and more to GIMP and take your work up to the next level. For our example we chose to install the beta version of Gimp Paint Studio on Ubuntu 10.10. Once you download the .zip file and unzip it, all that you need to do is manually transfer the contents shown here to the appropriate GIMP folders on your system. You can see the location of the destination folders here on our system… Note: Make certain to make a back-up copy of the “sessionrc and toolrc files” before you transfer Gimp Paint Studio into your installation (in case you would like to or need to revert back to the originals later). When you finish transferring the files start GIMP up and get ready to have fun. And if your experience is like ours then you should see a noticeable difference in window size and arrangement from the default settings. Here are some samples of the exceptional artwork done by Ramon Miranda and Mozart Couto using Gimp Paint Studio. Really impressive! Artwork by Ramon Miranda & Mozart Couto. Watch the introduction video and see Gimp Paint Studio in action. Download Gimp Paint Studio for Linux, Windows, and Mac [Gimp Paint Studio Homepage] *Keep in mind that there are stable and beta releases available, so choose the version that you are most comfortable with using. View the Installation Guides for Gimp Paint Studio *Page contains wonderful “video and written” versions for adding/installing Gimp Paint Studio to your system. Gimp Paint Studio Video Tutorials Library Visit the Gimp Paint Studio Gallery Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Should You Delete Windows 7 Service Pack Backup Files to Save Space? What Can Super Mario Teach Us About Graphics Technology? Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is Released: But Should You Install It? How To Make Hundreds of Complex Photo Edits in Seconds With Photoshop Actions How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) Enhance GIMP’s Image Editing Power with Gimp Paint Studio Reclaim Vertical UI Space by Moving Your Tabs to the Side in Firefox Wind and Water: Puzzle Battles – An Awesome Game for Linux and Windows How Star Wars Changed the World [Infographic] Tabs Visual Manager Adds Thumbnailed Tab Switching to Chrome Daisies and Rye Swaying in the Summer Wind Wallpaper

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• Tulsa SharePoint Interest Group - How SharePoint 2010 Business Connectivity Services could change yo

  - by dmccollough

  Bio: Corey Roth is a consultant at Stonebridge specializing in SharePoint solutions in the Oil & Gas Industry. He has ten plus years of experience delivering solutions in the energy, travel, advertising and consumer electronics verticals. Corey has always focused on rapid adoption of new Microsoft technologies including Visual Studio 2010, SharePoint 2010, .NET Framework 4.0, LINQ, and SilverLight. He also contributed greatly to the beta phases of Visual Studio 2005. For his contributions, he was awarded the Microsoft Award for Customer Excellence (ACE). Corey is a graduate of Oklahoma State University. Corey is a member of the .NET Mafia (www.dotnetmafia.com) where he blogs about the latest technology and SharePoint. Abstract: How SharePoint 2010 Business Connectivity Services could change your life - The New BDC How many hours have your wasted building simple ASP.NET applications to do nothing more than simple CRUD operations against a database.  Many tools have made this easier, but now it's so easy, you'll be up and running in minutes.  This session will show you hot easy it is to get started integrating external data from your line of business systems in SharePoint 2010.  You will learn how to register an external content type using SharePoint Designer based upon a database table or web service and then build an external list.  With external lists, you will see how you can perform CRUD operations on your line of business directly from SharePoint without ever having to do manual configuration in XML files.  Finally, we will walk through how to create custom edit forms for your list using InfoPath 2010. Agenda: 6pm - 6:30 Pizza and Mingle - Sponsored by TekSystems 6:30 - 6:45 Announcements 6:45 - 7:45 Presentation! 7:45 - 8:00 Drawings and Door Prizes Location: TCC (Tulsa Community College) Northeast Campus 3727 East Apache Tulsa, OK 74115 918-594-8000 Campus Map | Live | Yahoo | Google | MapQuest Door Prizes: We will be giving away one of each of these: XBox 360 - Halo 3 ODST Telerik Premium Collection ($1300.00 value) ReSharper ($199.00 value) SQLSets ($149.00 value) 64 bit Windows 7 Introducing Windows 7 for Developers Developing Service-Oriented AJAX Applications on the Microsoft Platform Sponsors: Thanks to our sponsors: TekSystems - Thanks for purchasing the Pizza for our meetings. ISOCentric - Thanks for providing us hosting for the groups web site. Tulsa Community College - Thanks for providing us a place to have our meetings. NEVRON - Thanks for providing us prizes to give away. INETA.org - For allowing us to be a Charter Member and providing awesome Speakers! PERPETUUM Software - Thanks for providing us prizes to give away. Telerik - Thanks for providing us prizes to give away. GrapeCity - Thanks for providing us prizes to give away. SQLSets - Thanks for providing us prizes to give away. K2 - Thanks for providing us prizes to give away. Microsoft - For providing us with a lot of support and product giveaways! Orielly books - For providing us with books and discounts. Wrox books - For providing us with books and discounts. Have any special requests? Let us know at this link: http://tinyurl.com/lg5o38. RSVP for this month's meeting by responding to this thread: http://tinyurl.com/yafkzel . (Must be logged in to the site) Be SURE to RSVP no later than Noon on April 12th and you will get an extra entry for the prize drawings! So, do it now, before you forget and miss out! Show up for the first time or bring a new buddy and you both get TWO extra entries!

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• Implementing Release Notes in TFS Team Build 2010

  - by Jakob Ehn

  In TFS Team Build (all versions), each build is associated with changesets and work items. To determine which changesets that should be associated with the current build, Team Build finds the label of the “Last Good Build” an then aggregates all changesets up unitl the label for the current build. Basically this means that if your build is failing, every changeset that is checked in will be accumulated in this list until the build is successful. All well, but there uis a dimension missing here, regarding to releases. Often you can run several release builds until you actually deploy the result of the build to a test or production system. When you do this, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to send the customer a nice release note that contain all work items and changeset since the previously deployed version? At our company, we have developed a Release Repository, which basically is a siple web site with a SQL database as storage. Every time we run a Release Build, the resulting installers, zip-files, sql scripts etc, gets pushed into the release repositor together with the relevant build information. This information contains things such as start time, who triggered the build etc. Also, it contains the associated changesets and work items. When deploying the MSI’s for a new version, we mark the build as Deployed in the release repository. The depoyed status is stored in the release repository database, but it could also have been implemented by setting the Build Quality for that build to Deployed. When generating the release notes, the web site simple runs through each release build back to the previous build that was marked as Deplyed, and aggregates the work items and changesets: Here is a sample screenshot on how this looks for a sample build/application The web site is available both for us and also for the customers and testers, which means that they can easily get the latest version of a particular application and at the same time see what changes are included in this version. There is a lot going on in the Release Build Process that drives this in our TFS 2010 server, but in this post I will show how you can access and read the changeset and work item information in a custom activity. Since Team Build associates changesets and work items for each build, this information is (partially) available inside the build process template. The Associate Changesets and Work Items for non-Shelveset Builds activity (located inside the Try  Compile, Test, and Associate Changesets and Work Items activity) defines and populates a variable called associatedWorkItems   You can see that this variable is an IList containing instances of the Changeset class (from the Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Client namespace). Now, if you want to access this variable later on in the build process template, you need to declare a new variable in the corresponding scope and the assign the value to this variable. In this sample, I declared a variable called assocChangesets in the RunAgent sequence, which basically covers the whol compile, test and drop part of the build process:   Now, you need to assign the value from the AssociatedChangesets to this variable. This is done using the Assign workflow activity:   Now you can add a custom activity any where inside the RunAgent sequence and use this variable. NB: Of course your activity must place somewhere after the variable has been poplated. To finish off, here is code snippet that shows how you can read the changeset and work item information from the variable.   First you add an InArgumet on your activity where you can pass i the variable that we defined. [RequiredArgument] public InArgument<IList<Changeset>> AssociatedChangesets { get; set; } Then you can traverse all the changesets in the list, and for each changeset use the WorkItems property to get the work items that were associated in that changeset: foreach (Changeset ch in associatedChangesets) { // Add change theChangesets.Add( new AssociatedChangeset(ch.ChangesetId, ch.ArtifactUri, ch.Committer, ch.Comment, ch.ChangesetId)); foreach (var wi in ch.WorkItems) { theWorkItems.Add( new AssociatedWorkItem(wi["System.AssignedTo"].ToString(), wi.Id, wi["System.State"].ToString(), wi.Title, wi.Type.Name, wi.Id, wi.Uri)); } } NB: AssociatedChangeset and AssociatedWorkItem are custom classes that we use internally for storing this information that is eventually pushed to the release repository.

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• Windows Azure: Backup Services Release, Hyper-V Recovery Manager, VM Enhancements, Enhanced Enterprise Management Support

  - by ScottGu

  This morning we released a huge set of updates to Windows Azure.  These new capabilities include: Backup Services: General Availability of Windows Azure Backup Services Hyper-V Recovery Manager: Public preview of Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager Virtual Machines: Delete Attached Disks, Availability Set Warnings, SQL AlwaysOn Configuration Active Directory: Securely manage hundreds of SaaS applications Enterprise Management: Use Active Directory to Better Manage Windows Azure Windows Azure SDK 2.2: A massive update of our SDK + Visual Studio tooling support All of these improvements are now available to use immediately.  Below are more details about them. Backup Service: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Backup Today we are releasing Windows Azure Backup Service as a general availability service.  This release is now live in production, backed by an enterprise SLA, supported by Microsoft Support, and is ready to use for production scenarios. Windows Azure Backup is a cloud based backup solution for Windows Server which allows files and folders to be backed up and recovered from the cloud, and provides off-site protection against data loss. The service provides IT administrators and developers with the option to back up and protect critical data in an easily recoverable way from any location with no upfront hardware cost. Windows Azure Backup is built on the Windows Azure platform and uses Windows Azure blob storage for storing customer data. Windows Server uses the downloadable Windows Azure Backup Agent to transfer file and folder data securely and efficiently to the Windows Azure Backup Service. Along with providing cloud backup for Windows Server, Windows Azure Backup Service also provides capability to backup data from System Center Data Protection Manager and Windows Server Essentials, to the cloud. All data is encrypted onsite before it is sent to the cloud, and customers retain and manage the encryption key (meaning the data is stored entirely secured and can’t be decrypted by anyone but yourself). Getting Started To get started with the Windows Azure Backup Service, create a new Backup Vault within the Windows Azure Management Portal.  Click New->Data Services->Recovery Services->Backup Vault to do this: Once the backup vault is created you’ll be presented with a simple tutorial that will help guide you on how to register your Windows Servers with it: Once the servers you want to backup are registered, you can use the appropriate local management interface (such as the Microsoft Management Console snap-in, System Center Data Protection Manager Console, or Windows Server Essentials Dashboard) to configure the scheduled backups and to optionally initiate recoveries. You can follow these tutorials to learn more about how to do this: Tutorial: Schedule Backups Using the Windows Azure Backup Agent This tutorial helps you with setting up a backup schedule for your registered Windows Servers. Additionally, it also explains how to use Windows PowerShell cmdlets to set up a custom backup schedule. Tutorial: Recover Files and Folders Using the Windows Azure Backup Agent This tutorial helps you with recovering data from a backup. Additionally, it also explains how to use Windows PowerShell cmdlets to do the same tasks. Below are some of the key benefits the Windows Azure Backup Service provides: Simple configuration and management. Windows Azure Backup Service integrates with the familiar Windows Server Backup utility in Windows Server, the Data Protection Manager component in System Center and Windows Server Essentials, in order to provide a seamless backup and recovery experience to a local disk, or to the cloud. Block level incremental backups. The Windows Azure Backup Agent performs incremental backups by tracking file and block level changes and only transferring the changed blocks, hence reducing the storage and bandwidth utilization. Different point-in-time versions of the backups use storage efficiently by only storing the changes blocks between these versions. Data compression, encryption and throttling. The Windows Azure Backup Agent ensures that data is compressed and encrypted on the server before being sent to the Windows Azure Backup Service over the network. As a result, the Windows Azure Backup Service only stores encrypted data in the cloud storage. The encryption key is not available to the Windows Azure Backup Service, and as a result the data is never decrypted in the service. Also, users can setup throttling and configure how the Windows Azure Backup service utilizes the network bandwidth when backing up or restoring information. Data integrity is verified in the cloud. In addition to the secure backups, the backed up data is also automatically checked for integrity once the backup is done. As a result, any corruptions which may arise due to data transfer can be easily identified and are fixed automatically. Configurable retention policies for storing data in the cloud. The Windows Azure Backup Service accepts and implements retention policies to recycle backups that exceed the desired retention range, thereby meeting business policies and managing backup costs. Hyper-V Recovery Manager: Now Available in Public Preview I’m excited to also announce the public preview of a new Windows Azure Service – the Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager (HRM). Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager helps protect your business critical services by coordinating the replication and recovery of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 SP1 and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 R2 private clouds at a secondary location. With automated protection, asynchronous ongoing replication, and orderly recovery, the Hyper-V Recovery Manager service can help you implement Disaster Recovery and restore important services accurately, consistently, and with minimal downtime. Application data in an Hyper-V Recovery Manager scenarios always travels on your on-premise replication channel. Only metadata (such as names of logical clouds, virtual machines, networks etc.) that is needed for orchestration is sent to Azure. All traffic sent to/from Azure is encrypted. You can begin using Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery today by clicking New->Data Services->Recovery Services->Hyper-V Recovery Manager within the Windows Azure Management Portal.  You can read more about Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager in Brad Anderson’s 9-part series, Transform the datacenter. To learn more about setting up Hyper-V Recovery Manager follow our detailed step-by-step guide. Virtual Machines: Delete Attached Disks, Availability Set Warnings, SQL AlwaysOn Today’s Windows Azure release includes a number of nice updates to Windows Azure Virtual Machines.  These improvements include: Ability to Delete both VM Instances + Attached Disks in One Operation Prior to today’s release, when you deleted VMs within Windows Azure we would delete the VM instance – but not delete the drives attached to the VM.  You had to manually delete these yourself from the storage account.  With today’s update we’ve added a convenience option that now allows you to either retain or delete the attached disks when you delete the VM:   We’ve also added the ability to delete a cloud service, its deployments, and its role instances with a single action. This can either be a cloud service that has production and staging deployments with web and worker roles, or a cloud service that contains virtual machines.  To do this, simply select the Cloud Service within the Windows Azure Management Portal and click the “Delete” button: Warnings on Availability Sets with Only One Virtual Machine In Them One of the nice features that Windows Azure Virtual Machines supports is the concept of “Availability Sets”.  An “availability set” allows you to define a tier/role (e.g. webfrontends, databaseservers, etc) that you can map Virtual Machines into – and when you do this Windows Azure separates them across fault domains and ensures that at least one of them is always available during servicing operations.  This enables you to deploy applications in a high availability way. One issue we’ve seen some customers run into is where they define an availability set, but then forget to map more than one VM into it (which defeats the purpose of having an availability set).  With today’s release we now display a warning in the Windows Azure Management Portal if you have only one virtual machine deployed in an availability set to help highlight this: You can learn more about configuring the availability of your virtual machines here. Configuring SQL Server Always On SQL Server Always On is a great feature that you can use with Windows Azure to enable high availability and DR scenarios with SQL Server. Today’s Windows Azure release makes it even easier to configure SQL Server Always On by enabling “Direct Server Return” endpoints to be configured and managed within the Windows Azure Management Portal.  Previously, setting this up required using PowerShell to complete the endpoint configuration.  Starting today you can enable this simply by checking the “Direct Server Return” checkbox: You can learn more about how to use direct server return for SQL Server AlwaysOn availability groups here. Active Directory: Application Access Enhancements This summer we released our initial preview of our Application Access Enhancements for Windows Azure Active Directory.  This service enables you to securely implement single-sign-on (SSO) support against SaaS applications (including Office 365, SalesForce, Workday, Box, Google Apps, GitHub, etc) as well as LOB based applications (including ones built with the new Windows Azure AD support we shipped last week with ASP.NET and VS 2013). Since the initial preview we’ve enhanced our SAML federation capabilities, integrated our new password vaulting system, and shipped multi-factor authentication support. We've also turned on our outbound identity provisioning system and have it working with hundreds of additional SaaS Applications: Earlier this month we published an update on dates and pricing for when the service will be released in general availability form.  In this blog post we announced our intention to release the service in general availability form by the end of the year.  We also announced that the below features would be available in a free tier with it: SSO to every SaaS app we integrate with – Users can Single Sign On to any app we are integrated with at no charge. This includes all the top SAAS Apps and every app in our application gallery whether they use federation or password vaulting. Application access assignment and removal – IT Admins can assign access privileges to web applications to the users in their active directory assuring that every employee has access to the SAAS Apps they need. And when a user leaves the company or changes jobs, the admin can just as easily remove their access privileges assuring data security and minimizing IP loss User provisioning (and de-provisioning) – IT admins will be able to automatically provision users in 3rd party SaaS applications like Box, Salesforce.com, GoToMeeting, DropBox and others. We are working with key partners in the ecosystem to establish these connections, meaning you no longer have to continually update user records in multiple systems. Security and auditing reports – Security is a key priority for us. With the free version of these enhancements you'll get access to our standard set of access reports giving you visibility into which users are using which applications, when they were using them and where they are using them from. In addition, we'll alert you to un-usual usage patterns for instance when a user logs in from multiple locations at the same time. Our Application Access Panel – Users are logging in from every type of devices including Windows, iOS, & Android. Not all of these devices handle authentication in the same manner but the user doesn't care. They need to access their apps from the devices they love. Our Application Access Panel will support the ability for users to access access and launch their apps from any device and anywhere. You can learn more about our plans for application management with Windows Azure Active Directory here.  Try out the preview and start using it today. Enterprise Management: Use Active Directory to Better Manage Windows Azure Windows Azure Active Directory provides the ability to manage your organization in a directory which is hosted entirely in the cloud, or alternatively kept in sync with an on-premises Windows Server Active Directory solution (allowing you to seamlessly integrate with the directory you already have).  With today’s Windows Azure release we are integrating Windows Azure Active Directory even more within the core Windows Azure management experience, and enabling an even richer enterprise security offering.  Specifically: 1) All Windows Azure accounts now have a default Windows Azure Active Directory created for them.  You can create and map any users you want into this directory, and grant administrative rights to manage resources in Windows Azure to these users. 2) You can keep this directory entirely hosted in the cloud – or optionally sync it with your on-premises Windows Server Active Directory.  Both options are free.  The later approach is ideal for companies that wish to use their corporate user identities to sign-in and manage Windows Azure resources.  It also ensures that if an employee leaves an organization, his or her access control rights to the company’s Windows Azure resources are immediately revoked. 3) The Windows Azure Service Management APIs have been updated to support using Windows Azure Active Directory credentials to sign-in and perform management operations.  Prior to today’s release customers had to download and use management certificates (which were not scoped to individual users) to perform management operations.  We still support this management certificate approach (don’t worry – nothing will stop working).  But we think the new Windows Azure Active Directory authentication support enables an even easier and more secure way for customers to manage resources going forward.  4) The Windows Azure SDK 2.2 release (which is also shipping today) includes built-in support for the new Service Management APIs that authenticate with Windows Azure Active Directory, and now allow you to create and manage Windows Azure applications and resources directly within Visual Studio using your Active Directory credentials.  This, combined with updated PowerShell scripts that also support Active Directory, enables an end-to-end enterprise authentication story with Windows Azure. Below are some details on how all of this works: Subscriptions within a Directory As part of today’s update, we have associated all existing Window Azure accounts with a Windows Azure Active Directory (and created one for you if you don’t already have one). When you login to the Windows Azure Management Portal you’ll now see the directory name in the URI of the browser.  For example, in the screen-shot below you can see that I have a “scottgu” directory that my subscriptions are hosted within: Note that you can continue to use Microsoft Accounts (formerly known as Microsoft Live IDs) to sign-into Windows Azure.  These map just fine to a Windows Azure Active Directory – so there is no need to create new usernames that are specific to a directory if you don’t want to.  In the scenario above I’m actually logged in using my @hotmail.com based Microsoft ID which is now mapped to a “scottgu” active directory that was created for me.  By default everything will continue to work just like you used to before. Manage your Directory You can manage an Active Directory (including the one we now create for you by default) by clicking the “Active Directory” tab in the left-hand side of the portal.  This will list all of the directories in your account.  Clicking one the first time will display a getting started page that provides documentation and links to perform common tasks with it: You can use the built-in directory management support within the Windows Azure Management Portal to add/remove/manage users within the directory, enable multi-factor authentication, associate a custom domain (e.g. mycompanyname.com) with the directory, and/or rename the directory to whatever friendly name you want (just click the configure tab to do this).  You can also setup the directory to automatically sync with an on-premises Active Directory using the “Directory Integration” tab. Note that users within a directory by default do not have admin rights to login or manage Windows Azure based resources.  You still need to explicitly grant them co-admin permissions on a subscription for them to login or manage resources in Windows Azure.  You can do this by clicking the Settings tab on the left-hand side of the portal and then by clicking the administrators tab within it. Sign-In Integration within Visual Studio If you install the new Windows Azure SDK 2.2 release, you can now connect to Windows Azure from directly inside Visual Studio without having to download any management certificates.  You can now just right-click on the “Windows Azure” icon within the Server Explorer and choose the “Connect to Windows Azure” context menu option to do so: Doing this will prompt you to enter the email address of the username you wish to sign-in with (make sure this account is a user in your directory with co-admin rights on a subscription): You can use either a Microsoft Account (e.g. Windows Live ID) or an Active Directory based Organizational account as the email.  The dialog will update with an appropriate login prompt depending on which type of email address you enter: Once you sign-in you’ll see the Windows Azure resources that you have permissions to manage show up automatically within the Visual Studio server explorer and be available to start using: No downloading of management certificates required.  All of the authentication was handled using your Windows Azure Active Directory! Manage Subscriptions across Multiple Directories If you have already have multiple directories and multiple subscriptions within your Windows Azure account, we have done our best to create a good default mapping of your subscriptions->directories as part of today’s update.  If you don’t like the default subscription-to-directory mapping we have done you can click the Settings tab in the left-hand navigation of the Windows Azure Management Portal and browse to the Subscriptions tab within it: If you want to map a subscription under a different directory in your account, simply select the subscription from the list, and then click the “Edit Directory” button to choose which directory to map it to.  Mapping a subscription to a different directory takes only seconds and will not cause any of the resources within the subscription to recycle or stop working.  We’ve made the directory->subscription mapping process self-service so that you always have complete control and can map things however you want. Filtering By Directory and Subscription Within the Windows Azure Management Portal you can filter resources in the portal by subscription (allowing you to show/hide different subscriptions).  If you have subscriptions mapped to multiple directory tenants, we also now have a filter drop-down that allows you to filter the subscription list by directory tenant.  This filter is only available if you have multiple subscriptions mapped to multiple directories within your Windows Azure Account:   Windows Azure SDK 2.2 Today we are also releasing a major update of our Windows Azure SDK.  The Windows Azure SDK 2.2 release adds some great new features including: Visual Studio 2013 Support Integrated Windows Azure Sign-In support within Visual Studio Remote Debugging Cloud Services with Visual Studio Firewall Management support within Visual Studio for SQL Databases Visual Studio 2013 RTM VM Images for MSDN Subscribers Windows Azure Management Libraries for .NET Updated Windows Azure PowerShell Cmdlets and ScriptCenter I’ll post a follow-up blog shortly with more details about all of the above. Additional Updates In addition to the above enhancements, today’s release also includes a number of additional improvements: AutoScale: Richer time and date based scheduling support (set different rules on different dates) AutoScale: Ability to Scale to Zero Virtual Machines (very useful for Dev/Test scenarios) AutoScale: Support for time-based scheduling of Mobile Service AutoScale rules Operation Logs: Auditing support for Service Bus management operations Today we also shipped a major update to the Windows Azure SDK – Windows Azure SDK 2.2.  It has so much goodness in it that I have a whole second blog post coming shortly on it! :-) Summary Today’s Windows Azure release enables a bunch of great new scenarios, and enables a much richer enterprise authentication offering. If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using all of the above features today.  Then visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• ASR / SNMP on Exadata

  - by rene.kundersma

  Recently I worked with ASR on Exadata for multiple customers. ASR is a great functionality that enables your 'systems' to alert Oracle when hardware failures occur. Sun hardware is using ASM for sometime and since 2009/2010 this is also available for Exadata. My goal is not to re-write the documentation so for general information I like to refer to this link. So, where is this note about ? Well, it is about two things I experienced around setting up ASR. I like to provide my experience so others can be successful with ASR fast as well. (It is however expected that things will be updated in the latest documentation.) First, imagine yourself configuring SNMP traps to be sent to ASR. In this situation be sure to not erase any existing SNMP Subscribers settings for example the subscription to Enterprise Manager Grid Control or whatever you already subscribed for. So, when you have documentation stating to execute "cellcli -e alter cell snmpSubscriber=(host=, port=)" be sure to add existing snmpSubscribers when they exist. The syntax allows this: snmpSubscriber= ((host=host [,port=port] [,community=community][,type=ASR]) [,(host=host[,port=port][,community=community][,type=ASR])...) Second, when configuring SnmpSubscribers using DCLI you have to work with a slash to escape the brackets. Be sure to verify your SNMP settings after setting them because you might end up with a bracket in the 'asrs.state' file stating 'public\' in stead of 'public'. Having the extra slash after the word 'public' of course doesn't help when sending SNMP-traps: dcli -g dbs_group -l root -n "/opt/oracle.cellos/compmon/exadata_mon_hw_asr.pl -validate_snmp_subscriber -type asr" cn38: Sending test trap to destination - 173.25.100.43:162 cn38: (1). count - 50 Failed to run "/usr/bin/snmptrap -v 2c -c public\ -M "+/opt/oracle.cellos/compmon/" -m SUN-HW-TRAP-MIB 173.25.100.43:162 "" SUN-HW- TRAP-MIB::sunHwTrapTestTrap sunHwTrapSystemIdentifier s " Sun Oracle Database Machine secret" sunHwTrapChassisId s "secret" sunHwTrapProductName s "SUN FIRE X4170 SERVER" sunHwTrapTestMessage s "This is a test trap. Exadata Compute Server: cn38.oracle.com "" cn38: getaddrinfo: +/opt/oracle.cellos/compmon/ Name or service not known cn38: snmptrap: Unknown host (+/opt/oracle.cellos/compmon/) All together ASR is a great addition to Exadata that I highly recommend. Some excellent documentation is written on the implementation details and available on MyOracleSupport. See "Oracle Database Machine Monitoring (Doc ID 1110675.1)" Rene Kundersma Technical Architect Oracle Technology Services

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• Windows CE: Using IOCTL_DISK_GET_STORAGEID

  - by Bruce Eitman

  A customer approached me recently to ask if I had any code that demonstrated how to use STORAGE_IDENTIFICATION, which is the data structure used to get the Storage ID from a disk. I didn’t have anything, which of course sends me off writing code and blogging about it. Simple enough, right? Go read the documentation for STORAGE_IDENTIFICATION which lead me to IOCTL_DISK_GET_STORAGEID. Except that the documentation for IOCTL_DISK_GET_STORAGEID seems to have a problem.   The most obvious problem is that it shows how to call CreateFile() to get the handle to use with DeviceIoControl(), but doesn’t show how to call DeviceIoControl(). That is odd, but not really a problem. But, the call to CreateFile() seems to be wrong, or at least it was in my testing. The documentation shows the call to be: hVolume = CreateFile(TEXT("\Storage Card\Vol:"), GENERIC_READ|GENERIC_WRITE, 0, NULL, OPEN_EXISTING, 0, NULL); I tried that, but my testing with an SD card mounted as Storage Card failed on the call to CreateFile(). I tried several variations of this, but none worked. Then I remembered that some time ago I wrote an article about enumerating the disks (Windows CE: Displaying Disk Information). I pulled up that code and tried again with both the disk device name and the partition volume name. The disk device name worked. The device names are DSKx:, where x is the disk number. I created the following function to output the Manufacturer ID and Serial Number returned from IOCTL_DISK_GET_STORAGEID:   #include "windows.h" #include "Diskio.h"     BOOL DisplayDiskID( TCHAR *Disk ) {                 STORAGE_IDENTIFICATION *StoreID = NULL;                 STORAGE_IDENTIFICATION GetSizeStoreID;                 DWORD dwSize;                 HANDLE hVol;                 TCHAR VolumeName[MAX_PATH];                 TCHAR *ManfID;                 TCHAR *SerialNumber;                 BOOL RetVal = FALSE;                 DWORD GLE;                   // Note that either of the following works                 //_stprintf(VolumeName, _T("\\%s\\Vol:"), Disk);                 _stprintf(VolumeName, _T("\\%s"), Disk);                   hVol = CreateFile( Disk, GENERIC_READ|GENERIC_WRITE, 0, NULL, OPEN_EXISTING, 0, NULL);                   if( hVol != INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE )                 {                                 if(DeviceIoControl(hVol, IOCTL_DISK_GET_STORAGEID, (LPVOID)NULL, 0, &GetSizeStoreID, sizeof(STORAGE_IDENTIFICATION), &dwSize, NULL) == FALSE)                                 {                                                 GLE = GetLastError();                                                 if( GLE == ERROR_INSUFFICIENT_BUFFER )                                                 {                                                                 StoreID = (STORAGE_IDENTIFICATION *)malloc( GetSizeStoreID.dwSize );                                                                 if(DeviceIoControl(hVol, IOCTL_DISK_GET_STORAGEID, (LPVOID)NULL, 0, StoreID, GetSizeStoreID.dwSize, &dwSize, NULL) != FALSE)                                                                 {                                                                                 RETAILMSG( 1, (TEXT("DisplayDiskID: Flags %X\r\n"), StoreID->dwFlags ));                                                                                 if( !(StoreID->dwFlags & MANUFACTUREID_INVALID) )                                                                                 {                                                                                                 ManfID = (TCHAR *)((DWORD)StoreID + StoreID->dwManufactureIDOffset);                                                                                                 RETAILMSG( 1, (TEXT("DisplayDiskID: Manufacture ID %s\r\n"), ManfID ));                                                                                 }                                                                                 if( !(StoreID->dwFlags & SERIALNUM_INVALID) )                                                                                 {                                                                                                 SerialNumber = (TCHAR *)((DWORD)StoreID + StoreID->dwSerialNumOffset);                                                                                                 RETAILMSG( 1, (TEXT("DisplayDiskID: Serial Number %s\r\n"), SerialNumber ));                                                                                 }                                                                                 RetVal = TRUE;                                                                 }                                                                 else                                                                                 RETAILMSG( 1, (TEXT("DisplayDiskID: DeviceIoControl failed (%d)\r\n"), GLE));                                                                                                                                                 free(StoreID);                                                 }                                                 else                                                                 RETAILMSG( 1, (TEXT("No Disk Identifcation available for %s\r\n"), VolumeName ));                                 }                                 else                                                 RETAILMSG( 1, (TEXT("DisplayDiskID: DeviceIoControl succeeded (and shouldn't have)\r\n")));                                                                                 CloseHandle (hVol);                 }                 else                                 RETAILMSG( 1, (TEXT("DisplayDiskID: Failed to open volume (%s)\r\n"), VolumeName ));                   return RetVal; } Further testing showed that both \DSKx: and \DSKx:\Vol: work when calling CreateFile();   Copyright © 2010 – Bruce Eitman All Rights Reserved

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• Chicago SQL Saturday

  - by Johnm

  This past Saturday, April 17, 2010, I journeyed North to the great city of Chicago for some SQL Server fun, learning and fellowship. The Chicago edition of this grassroots phenomenon was the 31st scheduled SQL Saturday since the program's birth in late 2007. The Chicago SQL Saturday consisted of four tracks with eight sessions each and was a very energetic and fast paced day for the 300+/- SQL Server enthusiasts in attendance. The speaker line up included national notables such as Kevin Kline, Brent Ozar, and Brad McGehee. My hometown of Indianapolis was well represented in the speaker line up with Arie Jones, Aaron King and Derek Comingore. The day began with a very humorous keynote by Kevin Kline and Brent Ozar who emphasized the importance of community events such as SQL Saturday and the monthly user group meetings. They also brilliantly included the impact that getting involved in the SQL community through social media can have on your professional career. My approach to the day was to try to experience as much of the event as I could, so there were very few sessions that I attended for their full duration. I leaped from session to session like a bumble bee, gleaning bits of nectar from each session. Amid these leaps I took the opportunity to briefly chat with some of the in-the-queue speakers as well as other attendees that wondered the hallways. I especially enjoyed a great discussion with Devin Knight about his plans regarding the upcoming Jacksonville SQL Saturday as well as an interesting SQL interpretation of the Iron Chef, which I think would catch on like wild-fire. There were two sessions that stood out as exceptional. So much so that I could not pull myself away: Kevin Kline presented on "SQL Server Internals and Architecture". This session could have been classified as one that is intended for the beginner. Kevin even personally warned me of such as I entered the room. I am a believer in revisiting the basics regardless of the level of your mastery, so I entered into this session in that spirit. It was a very clear and precise presentation. Masterfully illustrated and demonstrated. Brad McGehee presented on "How and When to Use Indexed Views". This was a topic that I was recently exploring and was considering to for use in an integration project. Brad effectively communicated the complexity of this feature and what is involved to gain their full benefit. It was clear at the conclusion of this session that it was not the right feature for my specific needs. Overall, the event was a great success. The use of volunteers, from an attendee's perspective was masterful. The only recommendation that I would have for the next Chicago SQL Saturday would be to include more time in between sessions to permit some level of networking among the attendees, one-on-one questions for speakers and visits to the sponsor booths. Congratulations to Wendy Pastrick, Ted Krueger, and Aaron Lowe for their efforts and a very successful SQL Saturday!

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• MSMQ messages using HTTP just won't get delivered

  - by John Breakwell

  I'm starting off the blog with a discussion of an unusual problem that has hit a couple of my customers this month. It's not a problem you'd expect to bump into and the solution is potentially painful. Scenario You want to make use of the HTTP protocol to send MSMQ messages from one machine to another. You have installed HTTP support for MSMQ and have addressed your messages correctly but they will not leave the outgoing queue. There is no configuration for HTTP support - setup has already done all that for you (although you may want to check the most recent "Installation of the MSMQ HTTP Support Subcomponent" section of MSMQINST.LOG to see if anything DID go wrong) - so you can't tweak anything. Restarting services and servers makes no difference - the messages just will not get delivered. The problem is documented and resolved by Knowledgebase article 916699 "The message may not be delivered when you use the HTTP protocol to send a message to a server that is running Message Queuing 3.0". It is unlikely that you would be able to resolve the problem without the assistance of PSS because there are no messages that can be seen to assist you and only access to the source code exposes the root cause. As this communication is over HTTP, the IIS logs would be a good place to start. POST entries are logged which show that connectivity is working and message delivery is being attempted: #Software: Microsoft Internet Information Services 6.0 #Version: 1.0 #Date: 2006-09-12 12:11:29 #Fields: date time s-sitename s-ip cs-method cs-uri-stem cs-uri-query s-port cs-username c-ip cs(User-Agent) sc-status sc-substatus sc-win32-status 2006-09-12 12:12:12 W3SVC1 10.1.17.219 POST /msmq/private$/test - 80 - 10.2.200.3 - 200 0 0 If you capture the traffic with Network Monitor you can see the POST being sent to the server but you also see a response being returned to the client: HTTP: Response to Client; HTTP/1.1; Status Code = 500 - Internal Server Error "Internal Server Error" means we can probably stop looking at IIS and instead focus on the Message Queuing ISAPI extension (Mqise.dll). MSMQ 3.0 (Windows XP and Windows Server 2003) comes with error logging enabled by default but the log files are in binary format - MSMQ 2.0 generated logging in plain text. The symbolic information needed for formatting the files is not currently publicly available so log files have to be sent in to Microsoft PSS.  Although this does mean raising a support case, formatting the log files to text and returning them to the customer shouldn't take long. Obviously the engineer analyses them for you - I just want to point out that you can see the logging output in text format if you want it. The important entries in the log for this problem are: [7]b48.928 09/12/2006-13:20:44.552 [mqise GetNetBiosNameFromIPAddr] ERROR:Failed to get the NetBios name from the DNS name, error = 0xea [7]b48.928 09/12/2006-13:20:44.552 [mqise RPCToServer] ERROR:RPC call R_ProcessHTTPRequest failed, error code = 1702(RPC_S_INVALID_BINDING) which allow a Microsoft escalation engineer to check the MQISE source code to see what is going wrong. This problem according to the article occurs when the extension tries to bind to the local MSMQ service after the extension receives a POST request that contains an MSMQ message. MSMQ resolves the server name by using the DNS host name but the extension cannot bind to the service because the buffer that MSMQ uses to resolve the server name is too small - server names that are exactly 15 characters long will not fit. RPC exception 0x6a6 (RPC_S_INVALID_BINDING) occurs in the W3wp.exe process but the exception is handled and so you do not receive an error message. The workaround is to rename the MSMQ server to something less than 15 characters. If the problem has only just been noticed in a production environment - an application may have been modified to get through a newly-implemented firewall, for example - then renaming is going to be an issue. Other applications may need to be reinstalled or modified if server names are hard-coded or stored in the registry. The renaming may also break a company naming convention where the name is built up from something like location+department+number. If you want to learn more about MSMQ logging then check out Chapter 15 of the MSMQ FAQ. In fact, even if you DON'T want to learn anything about MSMQ logging you should read the FAQ anyway as there is a huge amount of useful information on known issues and the like.

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• What’s new in IIS8, Perf, Indexing Service-Week 49

  - by OWScott

  You can find this week’s video here. After some delays in the publishing process week 49 is finally live.  This week I'm taking Q&A from viewers, starting with what's new in IIS8, a question on enable32BitAppOnWin64, performance settings for asp.net, the ARR Helper, and Indexing Services. Starting this week for the remaining four weeks of the 52 week series I'll be taking questions and answers from the viewers. Already a number of questions have come in. This week we look at five topics. Pre-topic: We take a look at the new features in IIS8. Last week Internet Information Services (IIS) 8 Beta was released to the public. This week's video touches on the upcoming features in the next version of IIS. Here’s a link to the blog post which was mentioned in the video Question 1: In a number of places (http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/201/32-bit-mode-worker-processes/, http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/MIX/MIX08/T06), I've saw that enable32BitAppOnWin64 is recommended for performance reasons. I'm guessing it has to do with memory usage... but I never could find detailed explanation on why this is recommended (even Microsoft books are vague on this topic - they just say - do it, but provide no reason why it should be done). Do you have any insight into this? (Predrag Tomasevic) Question 2: Do you have any recommendations on modifying aspnet.config and machine.config to deliver better performance when it comes to "high number of concurrent connections"? I've implemented recommendations for modifying machine.config from this article (http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/10ASPNetPerformance.aspx - ASP.NET Process Configuration Optimization section)... but I would gladly listen to more recommendations if you have them. (Predrag Tomasevic) Question 3: Could you share more of your experience with ARR Helper? I'm specifically interested in configuring ARR Helper (for example - how to only accept only X-Forwards-For from certain IPs (proxies you trust)). (Predrag Tomasevic) Question 4: What is the replacement for indexing service to use in coding web search pages on a Windows 2008R2 server? (Susan Williams) Here’s the link that was mentioned: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee692804.aspx This is now week 49 of a 52 week series for the web pro. You can view past and future weeks here: http://dotnetslackers.com/projects/LearnIIS7/ You can find this week’s video here.

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• Add SiteAdvisor to Google Chrome

  - by Asian Angel

  With the continued increase in malware knowing when a website is trouble can save you from a painful experience. If you are looking to add a bit more security to your Chromium-based Browser then join us as we look at the SiteAdvisor for Chrome extension. SiteAdvisor for Chrome in Action Once you have installed the extension you should go into the options first. You can choose which style of warning that you would like to receive when encountering a “less then reputable” website. The default setting is for the “Toolbar Icon Warning” but can be easily changed to a full “Webpage Redirect”. Note: The “Toolbar Button/Icon” does not display a drop-down window when clicked on. Here is an example if you go with the default and receive the “Toolbar Icon Warning”. Once again the same website except with the full “Webpage Redirect” in effect…of the two options this is the recommended setting. Notice that details are provided for “why” the website is listed as “less than reputable”. An example of a website that is all good…nothing but checkmarks and green. Terrific! There may be those of you who would be more comfortable with a “double layer” of protection while browsing. As you can see here SiteAdvisor and WOT work nicely together. You can read more about WOT for Chrome here. Conclusion If you worry about “less than reputable” websites SiteAdvisor for Chrome can help provide a layer of security that will warn you when you are getting ready to “browse” into possible trouble. Links Download the SiteAdvisor for Chrome extension (Google Chrome Extensions) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Find a Website’s Actual Location with Chrome FlagsHow to Make Google Chrome Your Default BrowserEnable Vista Black Style Theme for Google Chrome in XPIncrease Google Chrome’s Omnibox Popup Suggestion Count With an Undocumented SwitchDisable YouTube Comments while using Chrome 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 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Geek Parents – Did you try Parental Controls in Windows 7? Change DNS servers on the fly with DNS Jumper Live PDF Searches PDF Files and Ebooks Converting Mp4 to Mp3 Easily Use Quick Translator to Translate Text in 50 Languages (Firefox) Get Better Windows Search With UltraSearch

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