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• Big Data – ClustrixDB – Extreme Scale SQL Database with Real-time Analytics, Releases Software Download – NewSQL

  - by Pinal Dave

  There are so many things to learn and there is so little time we all have. As we have little time we need to be selective to learn whatever we learn. I believe I know quite a lot of things in SQL but I still do not know what is around SQL. I have started to learn about NewSQL recently. If you wonder what is NewSQL I encourage all of you to read my blog post about NewSQL over here Big Data – Buzz Words: What is NewSQL – Day 10 of 21. NewSQL databases are quickly becoming popular – providing the scale of NoSQL with the SQL features and transactions. As a part of learning NewSQL database, I have recently started to learn about ClustrixDB. ClustrixDB has been the most mature NewSQL database used by some of the largest internet sites in the world for over 3 years, with extensive SQL support. In addition to scale, it provides fast real-time analytics by bringing massively parallel processing (MPP), available only in warehousing databases, to the transactional database. The reason I am more intrigued about learning ClustrixDB is their recent announcement on Oct 31. ClustrixDB was only available as an appliance, but now with their software release on Oct 31, everyone can use it. It is now available as forever free for up to 12 cores with community support, and there is a 45 day trial for unlimited cluster sizes. With the forever free world, I am indeed interested in ClustrixDB now. I know that few of the leading eCommerce sites in the world uses them for their transactional database. Here are few of the details I have quickly noted for ClustrixDB. ClustrixDB allows user to: Scale by simply adding nodes to the cluster with a single command Run billions of transactions a day Run fast real-time analytics Achieve high-availability with recovery from node failure Manages itself Easily migrate from MySQL as it is nearly plug-and-play compatible, use MySQL drivers, tools and replication. While I was going through the documentation I realized that ClustrixDB also has extensive support for SQL features including complex queries involving joins on a dozen or more tables, aggregates, sorts, sub-queries. It also supports stored procedures, triggers, foreign keys, partitioned and temporary tables, and fully online schema changes. It is indeed a very matured product and SQL solution. Indeed Clusterix sound very promising solution, I decided to dig a bit deeper to understand who are current customers of the Clustrix as they exist in the industry for quite a few years. Their client list is indeed very interesting and here is my quick research about them. Twoo.com – Europe’s largest social discovery (dating) site runs 4.4 Billion Transactions a day with table sizes over a Terabyte, on a 168 core cluster. EngageBDR – Top 3 in the online advertising category uses ClustrixDB to serve 6.9 billion ads a day through real-time bidding platform. Their reports went from 4 hours to 15 seconds. NoMoreRack – Top 2 fastest growing e-commerce company in US used ClustrixDB for high availability and fast growth through Amazon cloud. MakeMyTrip – India’s leading travel site runs on ClustrixDB with two clusters running as multi-master in Chennai and Bangalore. Many enterprises such as AOL, CSC, Rakuten, Symantec use ClustrixDB when their applications need scale. I must accept that I am impressed with the information I have learned so far and now is the time to do some hand’s on experience with their product. I want to learn this technology so in future when it is about NewSQL, I know what I am talking about. Read more why Clustrix explains why you ClustrixDB might be the right database for you. Download ClustrixDB with me today and install it on your machine so in future when we discuss the technical aspects of it, we all are on the same page. The software can be downloaded here. Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)Filed under: Big Data, MySQL, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Clustrix

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• Programming Language, Turing Completeness and Turing Machine

  - by Amumu

  A programming language is said to be Turing Completeness if it can successfully simulate a universal TM. Let's take functional programming language for example. In functional programming, function has highest priority over anything. You can pass functions around like any primitives or objects. This is called first class function. In functional programming, your function does not produce side effect i.e. output strings onto screen, change the state of variables outside of its scope. Each function has a copy of its own objects if the objects are passed from the outside, and the copied objects are returned once the function finishes its job. Each function written purely in functional style is completely independent to anything outside of it. Thus, the complexity of the overall system is reduced. This is referred as referential transparency. In functional programming, each function can have its local variables kept its values even after the function exits. This is done by the garbage collector. The value can be reused the next time the function is called again. This is called memoization. A function usually should solve only one thing. It should model only one algorithm to answer a problem. Do you think that a function in a functional language with above properties simulate a Turing Machines? Functions (= algorithms = Turing Machines) are able to be passed around as input and returned as output. TM also accepts and simulate other TMs Memoization models the set of states of a Turing Machine. The memorized variables can be used to determine states of a TM (i.e. which lines to execute, what behavior should it take in a give state ...). Also, you can use memoization to simulate your internal tape storage. In language like C/C++, when a function exits, you lose all of its internal data (unless you store it elsewhere outside of its scope). The set of symbols are the set of all strings in a programming language, which is the higher level and human-readable version of machine code (opcode) Start state is the beginning of the function. However, with memoization, start state can be determined by memoization or if you want, switch/if-else statement in imperative programming language. But then, you can't Final accepting state when the function returns a value, or rejects if an exception happens. Thus, the function (= algorithm = TM) is decidable. Otherwise, it's undecidable. I'm not sure about this. What do you think? Is my thinking true on all of this? The reason I bring function in functional programming because I think it's closer to the idea of TM. What experience with other programming languages do you have which make you feel the idea of TM and the ideas of Computer Science in general? Can you specify how you think?

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• Phone number in meta description bad or good for local rankings NAP

  - by bybe

  Once again I'm at it with increasing people's local rankings and I've learnt so much about local rankings in the past 2 weeks it feels like my brain is gonna pop anyway, question is fairly simple for someone who engages in local rankings and I appreciate the question may be a little guess work but isn't SEO mostly guessing anyway? From what I've read and learned that Google works of a system called nap for local rankings (With many other factors but this question is purely based on NAP). For people who care about local rankings NAP stands for Name of Business / Address of Business / Phone Number for Business. Now what what I've read you don't need the whole NAP to be on one website, a P or just a N can help towards your local rankings. It's believed that NAP rewards more than just P and N for example but knowing Google they might have a diversity checker which is my concern what your get to in a moment. Now of course sites weight differently where your business is posted, it's certainly going to be more credible if your NAP details are on your national phone book than say a blog site, so taking in this consideration too. Pure Guess (Not apart of the question but none the less makes a good read on my belief). Now my guess work would make me believe that the formula would look something like (N)+(A)+(P)x(T) So (N)name would be 1 or 0 to indicate present or not So (A)dress would be 1 or 0 to indicate present or not So (P)hone would be 1 or 0 to indicate present or not So (T)rust would be 1-100 to indicate level of trust So a phone number appearing on youtube might look something like 0+0+1x95= 95 and a NAP appearing on your national phone book might look something like 1+1+1x100= 300 Please note that I'm not saying this is the sole factor and I'm sure its way more complex that this with things like other factors on the page, off the page (Reviews, Links, Clicks) and so on but its still a contributor). The Question My question is fairly simple and I'd imagine hard to impossible to have an actual definite answer to this but maybe someone has seen official wording else where on this, is it bad to include address or phone number in the Meta Description? The reason I ask is that one of my competitors has these elements in the meta descriptions and their local rankings are absolutely superb, the problem I have with this is scrap bot sites like 'Similar Too' 'Seo Rankings' and 1,000's of the other scrap box networks that scrap site and then make urls with your site information are mostly limited to your meta description what this means that your phone number, address and sometimes even your company name if the domain is exact will appear as AP, and even NAP on thousands of websites. So, is it a bad strategy to include phone number and address in meta description, everything I read into would suggest its good of course with the downside of maybe lowering quality of description for click thoughts but top rankings would increase this 10 folds anyhow..

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• Need WIF Training?

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  I spend numerous hours every month answering questions about WIF and identity in general. This made me realize that this is still quite a complicated topic once you go beyond the standard fedutil stuff. My good friend Brock and I put together a two day training course about WIF that covers everything we think is important. The course includes extensive lab material where you take standard application and apply all kinds of claims and federation techniques and technologies like WS-Federation, WS-Trust, session management, delegation, home realm discovery, multiple identity providers, Access Control Service, REST, SWT and OAuth. The lab also includes the latest version of the thinktecture identityserver and you will learn how to use and customize it. If you are looking for an open enrollment style of training, have a look here. Or contact me directly! The course outline looks as follows: Day 1 Intro to Claims-based Identity & the Windows Identity Foundation WIF introduces important concepts like conversion of security tokens and credentials to claims, claims transformation and claims-based authorization. In this module you will learn the basics of the WIF programming model and how WIF integrates into existing .NET code. Externalizing Authentication for Web Applications WIF includes support for the WS-Federation protocol. This protocol allows separating business and authentication logic into separate (distributed) applications. The authentication part is called identity provider or in more general terms - a security token service. This module looks at this scenario both from an application and identity provider point of view and walks you through the necessary concepts to centralize application login logic both using a standard product like Active Directory Federation Services as well as a custom token service using WIF’s API support. Externalizing Authentication for SOAP Services One big benefit of WIF is that it unifies the security programming model for ASP.NET and WCF. In the spirit of the preceding modules, we will have a look at how WIF integrates into the (SOAP) web service world. You will learn how to separate authentication into a separate service using the WS-Trust protocol and how WIF can simplify the WCF security model and extensibility API. Day 2 Advanced Topics:  Security Token Service Architecture, Delegation and Federation The preceding modules covered the 80/20 cases of WIF in combination with ASP.NET and WCF. In many scenarios this is just the tip of the iceberg. Especially when two business partners decide to federate, you usually have to deal with multiple token services and their implications in application design. Identity delegation is a feature that allows transporting the client identity over a chain of service invocations to make authorization decisions over multiple hops. In addition you will learn about the principal architecture of a STS, how to customize the one that comes with this training course, as well as how to build your own. Outsourcing Authentication:  Windows Azure & the Azure AppFabric Access Control Service Microsoft provides a multi-tenant security token service as part of the Azure platform cloud offering. This is an interesting product because it allows to outsource vital infrastructure services to a managed environment that guarantees uptime and scalability. Another advantage of the Access Control Service is, that it allows easy integration of both the “enterprise” protocols like WS-* as well as “web identities” like LiveID, Google or Facebook into your applications. ACS acts as a protocol bridge in this case where the application developer doesn’t need to implement all these protocols, but simply uses a service to make it happen. Claims & Federation for the Web and Mobile World Also the web & mobile world moves to a token and claims-based model. While the mechanics are almost identical, other protocols and token types are used to achieve better HTTP (REST) and JavaScript integration for in-browser applications and small footprint devices. Also patterns like how to allow third party applications to work with your data without having to disclose your credentials are important concepts in these application types. The nice thing about WIF and its powerful base APIs and abstractions is that it can shield application logic from these details while you can focus on implementing the actual application. HTH

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• Swiss Re increases data warehouse performance and deploys in record time

  - by KLaker

  Great information on yet another data warehouse deployment on Exadata. A little background on Swiss Re: In 2002, Swiss Re established a data warehouse for its client markets and products to gather reinsurance information across all organizational units into an integrated structure. The data warehouse provided the basis for reporting at the group level with drill-down capability to individual contracts, while facilitating application integration and data exchange by using common data standards. Initially focusing on property and casualty reinsurance information only, it now includes life and health reinsurance, insurance, and nonlife insurance information. Key highlights of the benefits that Swiss Re achieved by using Exadata: Reduced the time to feed the data warehouse and generate data marts by 58% Reduced average runtime by 24% for standard reports comfortably loading two data warehouse refreshes per day with incremental feeds Freed up technical experts by significantly minimizing time spent on tuning activities Most importantly this was one of the fastest project deployments in Swiss Re's history. They went from installation to production in just four months! What is truly surprising is the that it only took two weeks between power-on to testing the machine with full data volumes! Business teams at Swiss Re are now able to fully exploit up-to-date analytics across property, casualty, life, health insurance, and reinsurance lines to identify successful products. These points are highlighted in the following quotes from Dr. Stephan Gutzwiller, Head of Data Warehouse Services at Swiss Re:  "We were operating a complete Oracle stack, including servers, storage area network, operating systems, and databases that was well optimized and delivered very good performance over an extended period of time. When a hardware replacement was scheduled for 2012, Oracle Exadata was a natural choice—and the performance increase was impressive. It enabled us to deliver analytics to our internal customers faster, without hiring more IT staff" “The high quality data that is readily available with Oracle Exadata gives us the insight and agility we need to cater to client needs. We also can continue re-engineering to keep up with the increasing demand without having to grow the organization. This combination creates excellent business value.” Our full press release is available here: http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/customers/customersearch/swiss-re-1-exadata-ss-2050409.html. If you want more information about how Exadata can increase the performance of your data warehouse visit our home page: http://www.oracle.com/us/products/database/exadata-database-machine/overview/index.html

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• TechEd North America 2012 – Day 1 #msTechEd

  - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)

  Yesterday I and Alberto delivered the PreCon day about BISM Tabular in Analysis Services 2012. We received very good feedback and now I am looking forward to meet people that read our blogs and our books! Ping me on Twitter at @marcorus if you want to contact me during the conference. This is my schedule for the next few days: ·         Monday, June 11, 2012 o   10:30am-12:30pm I will be in the Technical Learning Center area, at the Breaktrough Insights (station #8) in the Database & Business Intelligence area (dedicated to SQL Server 2012) o   I will try to watch some sessions in the afternoon o   6:30pm-7:00pm I will be at the O’Reilly booth meeting book readers and doing some book signing ·         Tuesday, June 12, 2012 o   12:30pm-3:30pm I will be in the Technical Learning Center area, at the Breaktrough Insights (station #8) in the Database & Business Intelligence area (dedicated to SQL Server 2012) o   5:00pm-6:15pm I will attend the Alberto’s session DBI413 Many-to-Many Relationships in BISM Tabular (room S330E) o   6:15pm-9:00pm Community Night & Ask the Experts, we’ll discuss about Analysis Services, Tabular and Multidimensional! ·         Wednesday, June 13, 2012 o   11:15am-11:30am Don’t miss this special demo session at the Private Cloud, Public Cloud and Data Platform Theater in the Technical Learning Center area (next to the SQL Server 2012 zone). I and Alberto will present Querying multi-billion rows with many to many relationships in SSAS Tabular (xVelocity) and you’re invited to guess the response time of DAX queries on a 4 billion rows table with many-to-many relationships before we run them! We’ll give away some 8GB USB key if you guess the right answer! o   12:30pm-1:00pm I and Alberto will have a book signing session at the TechEd Bookstore o   3:00pm-5:00pm I will be in the Technical Learning Center area, at the Breaktrough Insights (station #8) in the Database & Business Intelligence area (dedicated to SQL Server 2012) ·         Thursday, June 14, 2012 o   2:45pm-4:00pm I will deliver my DBI319 BISM: Multidimensional vs. Tabular breakthrough session in room S320A. I expect many questions here! And if you want to learn more about Analysis Services Tabular, we announced two more online sessions of our SSAS Tabular Workshop: ·         July 2-3, 2012 - SSAS Workshop Online - America's time zone ·         September 3-4, 2012 - SSAS Workshop Online - America's time zone Register now if you are interested, the early bird for the July session expires on June 19, 2012! I will also deliver a SSAS Workshop in Oslo (Norway) on August 27-28, 2012.  

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• Is there a theory for "transactional" sequences of failing and no-fail actions?

  - by Ross Bencina

  My question is about writing transaction-like functions that execute sequences of actions, some of which may fail. It is related to the general C++ principle "destructors can't throw," no-fail property, and maybe also with multi-phase transactions or exception safety. However, I'm thinking about it in language-neutral terms. My concern is with correctly designing error handling in C++ functions that must be reliable. I would like to know what the concepts below are called so that I can learn more about them. I'm sorry that I can't ask the question more directly. Since I don't know this area I have provided an example to explain my question. The question is at the end. Here goes: Consider a sequence of steps or actions executed sequentially, where actions belong to one of two classes: those that always succeed, and those that may fail. In the examples below: S stands for an action that always succeeds (called "no-fail" in some settings). F stands for an action that may fail (for example, it might fail to allocate memory or do I/O that could fail). Consider a sequences of actions (executed sequentially from left to right): S->S->S->S Since each action in the sequence above succeeds, the whole sequence succeeds. On the other hand, the following sequence may fail because the last action may fail: S->S->S->F So, claim: a sequence has the no-fail (S) property if and only if all of its actions are no-fail. Now, I'm interested in action sequences that form "atomic transactions", with "failure atomicity," i.e. where either the whole sequence completes successfully, or there is no effect. I.e. if some action fails, the earlier ones must be rolled back. This requires that any successfully executed actions prior to a failing action must always be able to be rolled back. Consider the sequence: S->S->S->F S<-S<-S In the example above, the first row is the forward path of the transaction, and the second row are inverse actions (executed from right to left) that can be used to roll back if the final top row actions fails. It seems to me that for a transaction to support failure atomicity, the following invariant must hold: Claim: To support failure atomicity (either completion or complete roll-back on failure) all actions preceding the latest failable (F) action on the forward path (marked * in the example below) must have no-fail (S) inverses. The following is an example of a sequence that supports failure atomicity: * S->F->F->F S<-S<-S Further, if we want the transaction to be able to attempt cancellation mid-way through, but still guarantee either full completion or full rollback then we need the following property: Claim: To support failure atomicity and cancellation mid-way through execution, in the face of errors in the inverse (cancellation) path, all actions following the earliest failable (F) inverse on the reverse path (marked *) must be no-fail (S). F->F->F->S->S S<-S<-F<-F * I believe that these two conditions guarantee that an abortable/cancelable transaction will never get "stuck". My questions are: What is the study and theory of these properties called? are my claims correct? and what else is there to know? UPDATE 1: Updated terminology: what I previously called "robustness" is called atomicity in the database literature. UPDATE 2: Added explicit reference to failure atomicity, which seems to be a thing.

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• WiFi connected to router, but no internet connection

  - by Quetzacotl

  I just got a new notebook, a ThinkPad Edge E530, and installed Ubuntu on it. I'm pretty new to Ubuntu. On the same laptop, running Windows 7, the Wi-Fi connection works fine. Ethernet connection works both on Win7 and on Ubuntu. Only Wi-Fi on Ubuntu does not work; it connects to the Wi-Fi access point but I don't have Internet access. My wireless card is Intel Centrino Wireless-N 2230. What can fix the problem? EDIT: ifconfig -a eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr b8:88:e3:30:72:34 UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B) Interrupt:43 Base address:0x8000 lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:163 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:163 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:10124 (10.1 KB) TX bytes:10124 (10.1 KB) usb0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 02:15:e0:ec:01:00 UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B) wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 68:5d:43:43:71:e1 inet addr:192.168.2.101 Bcast:192.168.2.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::6a5d:43ff:fe43:71e1/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:40 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:220 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:2801 (2.8 KB) TX bytes:26230 (26.2 KB) route -n Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface 0.0.0.0 192.168.2.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 wlan0 169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 1000 0 0 wlan0 192.168.2.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 2 0 0 wlan0 cat /etc/resolv.conf # Dynamic resolv.conf(5) file for glibc resolver(3) generated by resolvconf(8) # DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE BY HAND -- YOUR CHANGES WILL BE OVERWRITTEN nameserver 127.0.0.1 iwconfig lo no wireless extensions. usb0 no wireless extensions. wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:"SATELITE" Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point: 00:1F:1F:8D:CC:08 Bit Rate=1 Mb/s Tx-Power=16 dBm Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Power Management:off Link Quality=60/70 Signal level=-50 dBm Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:93 Invalid misc:243 Missed beacon:0 eth0 no wireless extensions.

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• Windows8, JavaScript and HTML5 - A good thing?

  - by Albers

  Most of us have seen the Windows 8 news regarding support for native HTML5/JavaScript applications. The press has pushed this as a potential threat to the .NET developer community because JavaScript and HTML5 were called "our new developer platform". The press release refers to "Web-connected and Web-powered apps built using HTML5 and JavaScript that have access to the full power of the PC.".Microsoft has also been hush on details related to these comments. Before we buy the hype and start worrying about a world where we drop our Visual Studio licenses and buy DreamWeaver - let's think about how Windows 8 HTML/JavaScript applications would be implemented. The HTML5 spec offers support for offline applications, but this won't offer the OS-integrated experience the press release refers to. MS has to be planning a way to extend access beyond the traditional JavaScript feature set. Microsoft has a similar option today: HTML Applications or HTAs. They come close to required features, but HTAs need ActiveX or Java integration to provide the promised OS-level access. I'm guessing that Microsoft's future OS strategy isn't built on developers cranking out ActiveX controls or Java applets. So where is Microsoft headed? One possibility is that MS builds a new JavaScript framework from the ground up outside their current APIs. Another idea would be for Microsoft to add support for JavaScript as a first class .NET language using the Dynamic Language Runtime. A solution based on the DLR could be integrated into an HTA-like model to provide the promised access, along with the full range of features in .NET Framework. Security comes included in the Framework. And the work necessary to support this integration would tie in nicely with the effort MS has recently made providing better JavaScript and HTML5 support in Visual Studio 2010. As a bonus, a full-fledged JavaScript DLR implementation would allow single language web solutions across client and server (think node.js) and would appeal to developers who are familiar with JavaScript but have less experience with the Microsoft tech stack. We will all get a better picture after the Build conference in September. But in the mean time we know that Microsoft has a reputation for providing strong developer support. We might want to reserve our harshest judgement and consider that the press release could hint at new opportunities for .NET development.

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• Career Change Need Advice: Professional Web Developer

  - by bikedorkseattle

  I'm hoping to get some advice here on the steps I should take to make a career change into professional web development. I've been working in cancer research the last 14 years and I need a change. The job market is terrible, the pay is worse, and despite what one would think the atmosphere is generally un-collegial, even in your own group. Venture funding never returned after the dot com burst and with 3 to 5 wars our country is now in, NIH funding is only going to get worse. I know things are not going to get better for my field, sadly, and I know I need to move on. For probably just as long I have fiddled around with web development, I even run a fairly popular site with close to 1 million/month pageviews that pulls a decent income, but not stable enough to live off of right now. My skills are ok for being self taught. I enjoy the fast paced nature of the web and the tools the community creates and how eager people are to help and share knowledge; it's what science should be. I have been trying to find an entry level developer job doing standard HTML/CSS/PHP/MySQL/JS/jQuery type work. A good 50%+ of the jobs want someone with a CS degree, and most want 5 years experience. Having no professional experience and no formal education, I know I'm at a huge disadvantage. I am now considering my options on how to move forward professionally. The way I see it I have basically 3 options. Build up my portfolio of work as much as I can and continue to learn as much as I can on my own. Try to contribute on some open source project when time allows. Network like crazy and go to meetups. Be confident and pray a lot in private. OR While doing above, do some certification programs in PHP and Java, possibly others. Get a Zend Certification. OR Spend a few years getting a CS degree while doing 1. I've already done the work fulltime go to school thing and it doesn't excite me one bit. I didn't have the greatest college experience and am not too eager to return, but I have a family to feed. Is the degree really necessary or is it more of a right of passage type thing in most instances? I appreciate everyones input. Thanks for taking the time to respond.

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• Oracle JDeveloper 11gR2 Cookbook book review

  - by Chris Muir

  I recently received a free copy of Oracle JDeveloper 11gR2 Cookbook published by Packt Publishing for review. Readers of technical cookbooks would know this genre of text includes problems that developers will hit and the prescribed solutions, in this case for Oracle's Application Development Framework (ADF).  Books like this excel themselves on excellent coverage, a logical progress of solutions through out the book, and providing a readable narrative around the numerous steps and code. This book progresses well through ADF application assembly, ADF Business Components, the view layer, security, deployment and tuning.  Each recipe had a clear introduction and I especially enjoyed the "There's more" follow up sections for some recipes that leads the reader onto related ideas and issues the reader really needs to be aware of. Also worthy of comment having worked with ADF for over 5 years, there certainly was recipes and solutions I hadn't encountered before, this book gets bonus points for that. As a reviewer what negatives can I give this text? The book has cast it's net too wide by trying to cover "everything from design and construction, to deployment, testing, debugging and optimization."  ADF is such a large and sophistication technology, this book with 100 recipes barely scrapes the surface.  Don't expect all your ADF problems to be solved here. In turn there is inconsistency in the level of problems and solutions.  I felt at the beginning the book was pitching itself at advanced problems to solve (that's great for me), but then it introduces topics like building a static View Object or train.  These topics in my opinion are fairly simple and are covered by the Oracle documentation just as well, they shouldn't have been included here.  In conclusion, ADF beginners will find this book worthwhile as it will open your eyes to the wider problems and solutions required for ADF, and experts for just the fact they can point junior programmers at the book for certain problems and say "get on with it". Is there scope for more ADF tombs like this?  Yes!  I'd love to see a cookbook specializing on ADF Business Components (hint hint to budding authors).

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• Help with Collision of spawned object(postion fixed) with objects that there are translating on screen

  - by Amrutha

  Hey guys I am creating a game using Corona SDK and so coding it in Lua. So there are 2 separate functions, To translate the hit objects and change their color when they are tapped The link below is the code I am using to for the first function http://developer.anscamobile.com/sample-code/fishies Spawn objects that will hit the translating objects on collision. Alos on collision the spawned object disappears and the translating object bears a color(indicating the collision). In addition the size of this spawned object is dependent on i/p volume level. The function I have written is as follows, --VOICE INPUT CODE local r = media.newRecording() r:startRecording() r:startTuner() --local function newBar() -- local bar = display.newLine( 0, 0, 1, 0 ) -- bar:setColor( 0, 55, 100, 20 ) -- bar.width = 5 -- bar.y=400 -- bar.x=20 -- return bar --end local c1 = display.newImage("str-minion-small.png") c1.isVisible=false local c2 = display.newImage("str-minion-mid.png") c2.isVisible=false local c3 = display.newImage("str-minion-big.png") c3.isVisible=false --SPAWNING local function spawnDisk( event ) local phase = event.phase local volumeBar = display.newLine( 0, 0, 1, 0 ) volumeBar.y = 400 volumeBar.x = 20 -- volumeBar.isVisible=false local v = 20*math.log(r:getTunerVolume()) local MINTHRESH = 30 local LEFTMARGIN = 20 local v2 = MINTHRESH + math.max (v, -MINTHRESH) v2 = (display.contentWidth - 1 * LEFTMARGIN ) * v2 / MINTHRESH volumeBar.xScale = math.max ( 20, v2 ) local l = volumeBar.xScale local cnt1 = 0 local cnt2 = 0 local cnt3 = 0 local ONE =1 local val = event.numTaps --local px=event.x --local py=event.y if "ended" == phase then --audio.play( popSound ) --myLabel.isVisible = false if l > 50 and l <=150 then -- c1:setFillColor(10,105,0) -- c1.isVisible=false c1.x=math.random( 10, 450 ) c1.y=math.random( 10, 300 ) physics.addBody( c1, { density=1, radius=10.0 } ) c1.isVisible=true cnt1= cnt1+ ONE return c1 elseif l > 100 and l <=250 then --c2:setFillColor(200,10,0) c2.x=math.random( 10, 450 ) c2.y=math.random( 10, 300 ) physics.addBody( c2, { density=2, radius=9000.0 } ) c2.isVisible=true cnt2= cnt2+ ONE return c2 elseif l >=250 then c3.x=math.random( 40, 450 ) c3.y=math.random( 40, 300 ) physics.addBody( c3, { density=2, radius=7000.0 , bounce=0.0 } ) c3.isVisible=true cnt3= cnt3+ ONE return c3 end end end buzzR:addEventListener( "touch", spawnDisk ) -- touch the screen to create disks Now both functions work fine independently but there is no collision happening. Its almost as if the translating object and the spawn object are on different layers. The translating object passes through the spawn object freely. Can anyone please tell me how to resolve this problem. And how can I get them to collide. Its my first attempt at game development, that too for a mobile platform so would appreciate all help. Also if I have not been specific do let me know. I ll try to frame the query better :). Thanks in advance.

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• MS in Computer Science after BE in electronics

  - by Abhinav

  I am doing my 3rd year Bachelors in Electronics and Electrical Communication but from the first year I have been interested in Computer Science. But at that time it was just my hobby. But in second year when I joined robotics my love for computer science rose. I with my team came in top three in 2 National Competition (Technical fests of different IITs) where we used Image Processing, Hardware interfacing etc. But then I realised that Computer Science is not just about coding. I took many lectures from online free schools like Udacity, Coursera in subjects related to Artificial Intelligence, Building a Search Engine, Design and Analysis of Algorithm, Programming a Robotic Car, Programming Languages, Machine Learning, Software Engineering as a Service, WebApps Engineering, Compilers, Applied Crypotography etc. I also did some courses in Core and Advanced Java in my second year from training institute. I will also be taking course in Statistics, Databases, Discrete Mathematics from 25th June. Now I realized how vast is the field of Computer Science and how efficient you become on deciding algorithms and classifying problems into different subfields which have been thoroughly researched so you don't always do brute force thing or naive programming. Now this field has become kind of passion for me. Adding to the fact I am also doing my 6 months internship in software field in Texas Instruments where I am working on Automation and Algorithms. I also have some 5-6 good college level projects in Softwares and Robotics. I also like Electronics but only some fields like Operating System(this subject was there in Electronics also), Micro Processor, Digital, Computer Architecture, DSPs etc. I really want to pursue MS in some field of Computer Science. I am giving GRE in October/November. Till now I have good CG of around 9.4/10 and my 1 year in college is still left. Do I have any chance that some good University in US will consider me for MS in field related to computer science or Robotics. Also Can you suggest somethings that I can do during this 1 year to increase my chances for MS or should I apply for EECS(Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) and then I can shift more towards Computer Science as my major option. My main aim is to do Phd after Ms in CS if I am able to do that somehow. I know that I have to put much extra effort to understand things in MS than CS undergraduates but I will do that with my full dedication, also when I communicate with my college CS students or during my internship period I didn't feel that I am missing very much stuff that they know and was very comfortable during my internship with software employees.

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• Help with Collision of spawned object(postion fixed) with objects that there are translating on screen

  - by Amrutha

  Hey guys I am creating a game using Corona SDK and so coding it in Lua. So there are 2 separate functions, To translate the hit objects and change their color when they are tapped The link below is the code I am using to for the first function http://developer.anscamobile.com/sample-code/fishies Spawn objects that will hit the translating objects on collision. Alos on collision the spawned object disappears and the translating object bears a color(indicating the collision). In addition the size of this spawned object is dependent on i/p volume level. The function I have written is as follows: --VOICE INPUT CODE local r = media.newRecording() r:startRecording() r:startTuner() --local function newBar() -- local bar = display.newLine( 0, 0, 1, 0 ) -- bar:setColor( 0, 55, 100, 20 ) -- bar.width = 5 -- bar.y=400 -- bar.x=20 -- return bar --end local c1 = display.newImage("str-minion-small.png") c1.isVisible=false local c2 = display.newImage("str-minion-mid.png") c2.isVisible=false local c3 = display.newImage("str-minion-big.png") c3.isVisible=false --SPAWNING local function spawnDisk( event ) local phase = event.phase local volumeBar = display.newLine( 0, 0, 1, 0 ) volumeBar.y = 400 volumeBar.x = 20 --volumeBar.isVisible=false local v = 20*math.log(r:getTunerVolume()) local MINTHRESH = 30 local LEFTMARGIN = 20 local v2 = MINTHRESH + math.max (v, -MINTHRESH) v2 = (display.contentWidth - 1 * LEFTMARGIN ) * v2 / MINTHRESH volumeBar.xScale = math.max ( 20, v2 ) local l = volumeBar.xScale local cnt1 = 0 local cnt2 = 0 local cnt3 = 0 local ONE =1 local val = event.numTaps --local px=event.x --local py=event.y if "ended" == phase then --audio.play( popSound ) --myLabel.isVisible = false if l > 50 and l <=150 then --c1:setFillColor(10,105,0) --c1.isVisible=false c1.x=math.random( 10, 450 ) c1.y=math.random( 10, 300 ) physics.addBody( c1, { density=1, radius=10.0 } ) c1.isVisible=true cnt1= cnt1+ ONE return c1 elseif l > 100 and l <=250 then --c2:setFillColor(200,10,0) c2.x=math.random( 10, 450 ) c2.y=math.random( 10, 300 ) physics.addBody( c2, { density=2, radius=9000.0 } ) c2.isVisible=true cnt2= cnt2+ ONE return c2 elseif l >=250 then c3.x=math.random( 40, 450 ) c3.y=math.random( 40, 300 ) physics.addBody( c3, { density=2, radius=7000.0 , bounce=0.0 } ) c3.isVisible=true cnt3= cnt3+ ONE return c3 end end end buzzR:addEventListener( "touch", spawnDisk ) -- touch the screen to create disks Now both functions work fine independently but there is no collision happening. Its almost as if the translating object and the spawn object are on different layers. The translating object passes through the spawn object freely. Can anyone please tell me how to resolve this problem. And how can I get them to collide. Its my first attempt at game development, that too for a mobile platform so would appreciate all help. Also if I have not been specific do let me know. I'll try to frame the query better :). Thanks in advance.

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• Gauging Maturity of your BPM Strategy - part 1 / 2

  - by Sanjeev Sharma

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} In this post I will discuss the essence of maturity assessment and the business imperative for doing the same in the context of BPM. Social psychology purports that an individual progresses from being a beginner to an expert in a given activity or task along four stages of self-awareness: Unconscious Incompetence where the individual does not understand or know how to do something and does not necessarily recognize the deficit and may even deny the usefulness of the skill. Conscious Incompetence where the individual recognizes the deficit, as well as the value of a new skill in addressing the deficit. Conscious Competence where the individual understands or knows how to do something but demonstrating the skill requires explicit concentration. Unconscious Competence where the individual has had so much practice with a skill that it has become "second nature" and serves as a basis of developing other complementary skills. We can extend the above thinking to an organization as a whole by measuring an organization’s level of competence in a specific area or capability, as an aggregate of the competence levels of individuals it is comprised of. After all organizations too like individuals, evolve through experience, develop “memory” and capabilities that are shaped through a constant cycle of learning, un-learning and re-learning. Hence the key to organizational success lies in developing these capabilities to enable execution of its strategy in-line with the external environment i.e. demand, competition, economy etc. However developing a capability merits establishing a base line in order to Assess the magnitude of improvement from past investments Identify gaps and short-comings Prioritize future investments in the right areas A maturity assessment is essentially an organizational self-awareness check that is aimed at depicting the “as-is” snapshot of an existing capability in-order to guide future investments to develop that capability in-line with business goals. This effectively is the essence of a maturity Organizational capabilities stem through its architecture, routines, culture and intellectual resources that are implicitly and explicitly embedded in its business processes. Given that business processes underpin realization of organizational capabilities, is what has prompted business transformation and process management efforts. Thus, the BPM capability of an organization needs to be measured on an on-going basis to ensure delivery of its planned benefits. In my next post I will describe Oracle’s BPM Maturity assessment methodology.

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• Another question about handling game states

  - by Eva

  I'm making a game designed with the entity-component paradigm that uses systems to communicate between components as explained here. I've reached the point in my development that I need to add game states (such as paused, playing, level start, round start, game over, etc.), but I'm not sure how to do it with my framework. I've looked at this code example on game states which everyone seems to reference, but I don't think it fits with my framework. It seems to have each state handling its own drawing and updating. My framework has a SystemManager that handles all the updating using systems. For example, here's my RenderingSystem class: public class RenderingSystem extends GameSystem { private GameView gameView_; /** * Constructor * Creates a new RenderingSystem. * @param gameManager The game manager. Used to get the game components. */ public RenderingSystem(GameManager gameManager) { super(gameManager); } /** * Method: registerGameView * Registers gameView into the RenderingSystem. * @param gameView The game view registered. */ public void registerGameView(GameView gameView) { gameView_ = gameView; } /** * Method: triggerRender * Adds a repaint call to the event queue for the dirty rectangle. */ public void triggerRender() { Rectangle dirtyRect = new Rectangle(); for (GameObject object : getRenderableObjects()) { GraphicsComponent graphicsComponent = object.getComponent(GraphicsComponent.class); dirtyRect.add(graphicsComponent.getDirtyRect()); } gameView_.repaint(dirtyRect); } /** * Method: renderGameView * Renders the game objects onto the game view. * @param g The graphics object that draws the game objects. */ public void renderGameView(Graphics g) { for (GameObject object : getRenderableObjects()) { GraphicsComponent graphicsComponent = object.getComponent(GraphicsComponent.class); if (!graphicsComponent.isVisible()) continue; GraphicsComponent.Shape shape = graphicsComponent.getShape(); BoundsComponent boundsComponent = object.getComponent(BoundsComponent.class); Rectangle bounds = boundsComponent.getBounds(); g.setColor(graphicsComponent.getColor()); if (shape == GraphicsComponent.Shape.RECTANGULAR) { g.fill3DRect(bounds.x, bounds.y, bounds.width, bounds.height, true); } else if (shape == GraphicsComponent.Shape.CIRCULAR) { g.fillOval(bounds.x, bounds.y, bounds.width, bounds.height); } } } /** * Method: getRenderableObjects * @return The renderable game objects. */ private HashSet<GameObject> getRenderableObjects() { return gameManager.getGameObjectManager().getRelevantObjects( getClass()); } } Also all the updating in my game is event-driven. I don't have a loop like theirs that simply updates everything at the same time. I like my framework because it makes it easy to add new GameObjects, but doesn't have the problems some component-based designs encounter when communicating between components. I would hate to chuck it just to get pause to work. Is there a way I can add game states to my game without removing the entity-component design? Does the game state example actually fit my framework, and I'm just missing something?

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• How to wrap console utils in webserver

  - by Alex Brown

  I have a big dataset (100Mbs/day) and a bunch of console a TCL/TK tools to view it - I want to turn it into a web app that I can build, and others can maintain. In long: my group runs simulations yielding 100s of Mbs of data daily, in multiple (mostly but not only) text forms. We have a bunch of scripts and tools, mostly old school 1990's style stuff requiring a 5-button mouse, as well as lots of ad-hoc scripts that engineers build out of frustration every month or so. These produces UIs, graphs, spreadsheets (various sizes), logs, event histories etc. I want to replace (or at least supplement) the xwindows / console style UI with a web-based one, so I need the following properties: pleasant to program can wrap existing command-line tools in separate views (I don't need to scrape GUIs or anything) as I port logic from the existing scripts I can create a modularised and pleasant codebase to replace it I can attach a web-ui to navigate between views - each view is likely to contain keys which might make sense to view in another I am new to building systems that have logic on the back-end and front-end of a web-server. from that point of view, they do this: backend wraps old-school executables, constructs calls into them and them takes the output and wraps it up, niceifies it and delivers it to the web client. For instance the tool might generate a number of indexed images (per invocation) which I might deliver all at once or on-demand. May (probably) need to to heavy stats on some sources. frontend provides navigation connecting multiple views, performs requests from one view for data from another (or self to self), etc. Probably will have some views with a lot of interactivity. Can people please point me towards viable solutions for this? I know it's a bit of an open question so as answers come in I hope to refine the spec until we have a good match. I guess I expect to see answers like "RoR!" "beans!" "Scala!" but please give an indication of why those are a good fit; I know nothing! I got bumped off SO for asking an open-ended question, so sorry if its OT here too (let me know). I take the policy that I use the best/closest matched language for a project but most of my team are extremely low level (ie pipeline stages and CDyn) so I don't have the peer group to know where to start.

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• iwlwifi on lenovo z570 disabled by hardware switch

  - by Kevin Gallagher

  It was working fine with windows 7. The hardware switch is not disabled. I've toggled it back and forth dozens of times. The wifi light never turns on and it always lists as hardware disabled. I have the latest updates installed. I've been searching for solutions, but none of them seem to work for me. I've tried removing acer-wmi. I've tried setting 11n_disable=1. I've tried resetting the bios. I've tried using rfkill to unblock (only removes soft block). I've rebooted dozens of times. The wifi light turns off as soon as grub loads. Edit: I have a usb edimax wireless nic. It shows hardware disabled as well (although rfkill lists as unblocked). If I unload iwlwifi the usb nic works fine. uname -a `Linux xxx-Ideapad-Z570 3.2.0-55-generic #85-Ubuntu SMP Wed Oct 2 12:29:27 UTC 2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linu`x rfkill list 19: phy18: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: yes dmesg [43463.022996] Intel(R) Wireless WiFi Link AGN driver for Linux, in-tree: [43463.023002] Copyright(c) 2003-2011 Intel Corporation [43463.023107] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17 [43463.023190] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: setting latency timer to 64 [43463.023253] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: pci_resource_len = 0x00002000 [43463.023257] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: pci_resource_base = ffffc900057c8000 [43463.023261] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: HW Revision ID = 0x0 [43463.023797] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: irq 43 for MSI/MSI-X [43463.024013] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Detected Intel(R) Centrino(R) Wireless-N 1000 BGN, REV=0x6C [43463.024250] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: L1 Enabled; Disabling L0S [43463.045496] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: device EEPROM VER=0x15d, CALIB=0x6 [43463.045501] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Device SKU: 0X50 [43463.045504] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Valid Tx ant: 0X1, Valid Rx ant: 0X3 [43463.045542] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Tunable channels: 13 802.11bg, 0 802.11a channels [43463.045744] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: RF_KILL bit toggled to disable radio. [43463.047652] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: loaded firmware version 39.31.5.1 build 35138 [43463.047823] Registered led device: phy18-led [43463.047895] cfg80211: Ignoring regulatory request Set by core since the driver uses its own custom regulatory domain [43463.048037] ieee80211 phy18: Selected rate control algorithm 'iwl-agn-rs' [43463.055533] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready nm-tool State: connected (global) - Device: wlan0 ---------------------------------------------------------------- Type: 802.11 WiFi Driver: iwlwifi State: unavailable Default: no HW Address: 74:E5:0B:4A:9F:C2 Capabilities: Wireless Properties WEP Encryption: yes WPA Encryption: yes WPA2 Encryption: yes Wireless Access Points lshw -C network *-network DISABLED description: Wireless interface product: Centrino Wireless-N 1000 [Condor Peak] vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0 logical name: wlan0 version: 00 serial: 74:e5:0b:4a:9f:c2 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwlwifi driverversion=3.2.0-55-generic firmware=39.31.5.1 build 35138 latency=0 link=no multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bg resources: irq:43 memory:f1500000-f1501fff lspci 03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Centrino Wireless-N 1000 [Condor Peak]

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• How is programming affected by spatial aptitude?

  - by natli

  The longer I work on a project, the less clear it becomes. It's like I cannot seperate various classes/objects anymore in my head. Everything starts mixing up, and it's extremely hard to take it all apart again. I start putting functions in classes where they really don't belong, and make silly mistakes such as writing code that I later find was 100% obsolete; things are no longer clearly mappable in my head. It isn't until I take a step back for several hours (or days somtimes!) that I can actually see what's going on again, and be productive. I usually try to fight through this, I am so passionate about coding that I wouldn't for the life of me know what else I could be doing. This is when stuff can get really weird, I get so up in my head that I sort of lose touch with reality (to some extent) in that various actions, such as pouring a glass of water, no longer happen on a concious level. It happens on auto pilot, during which pretty much all of my concious concentration (is that even a thing?) is devoted to borderline pointless problem solving (trying to seperate elements of code). It feels like a losing battle. So I took an IQ test a while ago (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale I believe it was) and it turned out my Spatial Aptitude was quite low. I still got a decent score, just above average, so I won't have to poke things with a stick for a living, but I am a little worried that this is such a handicap when writing/engineering computer programs that I won't ever be able to do it seriously or professionally. I am very much interested in what other people think of this.. could a low spatial aptitude be the cause of the above described problems? Maybe I should be looking more along the lines of ADD or something similar, because I did get diagnosed with ADD at the age of 17 (5 years ago) but the medicine I received didn't seem to affect me that much so I never took it all that serious. Sorry if I got a little off topic there, I know this is not a mental help board, the question should be clear; How is programming affected by spatial aptitude? As far as I know people are born with low/med/high spatial aptitude, so I think it's interesting to find out if the more fortunate are better programmers by birth right.

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• Impatient Customers Make Flawless Service Mission Critical for Midsize Companies

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  At times, I can be an impatient customer. But I’m not alone. Research by The Social Habit shows that among customers who contact a brand, product, or company through social media for support, 32% expect a response within 30 minutes and 42% expect a response within 60 minutes! 70% of respondents to another study expected their complaints to be addressed within 24 hours, irrespective of how they contacted the company. I was intrigued when I read a recent blog post by David Vap, Group Vice President of Product Development for Oracle Service Cloud. It’s about “Three Secrets to Innovation” in customer service. In David’s words: 1) Focus on making what’s hard simple 2) Solve real problems for real people 3) Don’t just spin a good vision. Do something about it  I believe midsize companies have a leg up in delivering on these three points, mainly because they have no other choice. How can you grow a business without listening to your customers and providing flawless service? Big companies are often weighed down by customer service practices that have been churning in bureaucracy for years or even decades. When the all-in-one printer/fax/scanner I bought my wife for Christmas (call me a romantic) failed after sixty days, I wasted hours of my time navigating the big brand manufacturer’s complex support and contact policies only to be offered a refurbished replacement after I shipped mine back to them. There was not a happy ending. Let's just say my wife still doesn't have a printer.  Young midsize companies need to innovate to grow. Established midsize company brands need to innovate to survive and reach the next level. Midsize Customer Case Study: The Boston Globe The Boston Globe, established in 1872 and the winner of 22 Pulitzer Prizes, is fighting the prevailing decline in the newspaper industry. Businessman John Henry invested in the Globe in 2013 because he, “…believes deeply in the future of this great community, and the Globe should play a vital role in determining that future”. How well the paper executes on its bold new strategy is truly mission critical—a matter of life or death for an industry icon. This customer case study tells how Oracle’s Service Cloud is helping The Boston Globe “do something about” and not just “spin” it’s strategy and vision via improved customer service. For example, Oracle RightNow Chat Cloud Service is now the preferred support channel for its online environments. The average e-mail or phone call can take three to four minutes to complete while the average chat is only 30 to 40 seconds. It’s a great example of one company leveraging technology to make things simpler to solve real problems for real people. Related: Oracle Cloud Service a leader in The Forrester Wave™: Customer Service Solutions For Small And Midsize Teams, Q2 2014

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• C# Dev - I've tried Lisps, but I don't get it.

  - by Jonathan Mitchem

  After a few months of learning about and playing with lisps, both CL and a bit of Clojure, I'm still not seeing a compelling reason to write anything in it instead of C#. I would really like some compelling reasons, or for someone to point out that I'm missing something really big. The strengths of a Lisp (per my research): Compact, expressive notation - More so than C#, yes... but I seem to be able to express those ideas in C# too. Implicit support for functional programming - C# with LINQ extension methods: mapcar = .Select( lambda ) mapcan = .Select( lambda ).Aggregate( (a,b) = a.Union(b) ) car/first = .First() cdr/rest = .Skip(1) .... etc. Lambda and higher-order function support - C# has this, and the syntax is arguably simpler: "(lambda (x) ( body ))" versus "x = ( body )" "#(" with "%", "%1", "%2" is nice in Clojure Method dispatch separated from the objects - C# has this through extension methods Multimethod dispatch - C# does not have this natively, but I could implement it as a function call in a few hours Code is Data (and Macros) - Maybe I haven't "gotten" macros, but I haven't seen a single example where the idea of a macro couldn't be implemented as a function; it doesn't change the "language", but I'm not sure that's a strength DSLs - Can only do it through function composition... but it works Untyped "exploratory" programming - for structs/classes, C#'s autoproperties and "object" work quite well, and you can easily escalate into stronger typing as you go along Runs on non-Windows hardware - Yeah, so? Outside of college, I've only known one person who doesn't run Windows at home, or at least a VM of Windows on *nix/Mac. (Then again, maybe this is more important than I thought and I've just been brainwashed...) The REPL for bottom-up design - Ok, I admit this is really really nice, and I miss it in C#. Things I'm missing in a Lisp (due to a mix of C#, .NET, Visual Studio, Resharper): Namespaces. Even with static methods, I like to tie them to a "class" to categorize their context (Clojure seems to have this, CL doesn't seem to.) Great compile and design-time support the type system allows me to determine "correctness" of the datastructures I pass around anything misspelled is underlined realtime; I don't have to wait until runtime to know code improvements (such as using an FP approach instead of an imperative one) are autosuggested GUI development tools: WinForms and WPF (I know Clojure has access to the Java GUI libraries, but they're entirely foreign to me.) GUI Debugging tools: breakpoints, step-in, step-over, value inspectors (text, xml, custom), watches, debug-by-thread, conditional breakpoints, call-stack window with the ability to jump to the code at any level in the stack (To be fair, my stint with Emacs+Slime seemed to provide some of this, but I'm partial to the VS GUI-driven approach) I really like the hype surrounding Lisps and I gave it a chance. But is there anything I can do in a Lisp that I can't do as well in C#? It might be a bit more verbose in C#, but I also have autocomplete. What am I missing? Why should I use Clojure/CL?

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• Is there a pedagogical game engine?

  - by K.G.

  I'm looking for a book, website, or other resource that gives modern 3D game engines the same treatment as Operating Systems: Design and Implementation gave operating systems. I have read Jason Gregory's Game Engine Architecture, which I enjoyed. However, by intent the author treated components of the architecture as atomic units, whereas what I'm interested in is the plumbing between those units that makes a coherent whole out of ideally loosely coupled parts. In books such as these, one usually reads that "that's academic," but that's the point! I have also read Julian Gold's Object-oriented Game Development, which likewise was good, but I feel is beginning to show its age. Since even mobile platforms these days are multicore and have fast video memory, those kinds of things (concurrency, display item buffering) would ideally be covered. There are other resources, such as the Doom 3 source code, which is highly instructive for its being a shipped product. The problem with those is as follows: float Q_rsqrt( float number ) { long i; float x2, y; const float threehalfs = 1.5F; x2 = number * 0.5F; y = number; i = * ( long * ) &y; // evil floating point bit level hacking i = 0x5f3759df - ( i >> 1 ); // what the f***? y = * ( float * ) &i; y = y * ( threehalfs - ( x2 * y * y ) ); // 1st iteration // y = y * ( threehalfs - ( x2 * y * y ) ); // 2nd iteration, this can be removed return y; } To wit, while brilliant, this kind of source requires more enlightenment than I can usually muster upon first read. In summary, here's my white whale: For an adult reader with experience in programming. I wish I could save all the trees killed by every. Single. Game Programming book ever devoting the first two chapters to "Now just what is a variable anyway?" In C or C++, very preferably C++. Languages that are more concise are fantastic for teaching, except for when what you want to learn is how to cope with a verbose language. There is also the benefit of the guardrails that C++ doesn't provide, such as garbage collection. Platform agnostic. I'm sincerely afraid that this book is out there and it's Visual C++/DirectX oriented. I'm a Linux guy, and I'd do what it takes, but I would very much like to be able to use OpenGL. Thanks for everything! Before anyone gets on my case about it, Fast inverse square root was from Quake III Arena, not Doom 3!

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• best way to "introduce" OOP/OOD to team of experienced C++ engineers

  - by DXM

  I am looking for an efficient way, that also doesn't come off as an insult, to introduce OOP concepts to existing team members? My teammates are not new to OO languages. We've been doing C++/C# for a long time so technology itself is familiar. However, I look around and without major infusion of effort (mostly in the form of code reviews), it seems what we are producing is C code that happens to be inside classes. There's almost no use of single responsibility principle, abstractions or attempts to minimize coupling, just to name a few. I've seen classes that don't have a constructor but get memset to 0 every time they are instantiated. But every time I bring up OOP, everyone always nods and makes it seem like they know exactly what I'm talking about. Knowing the concepts is good, but we (some more than others) seem to have very hard time applying them when it comes to delivering actual work. Code reviews have been very helpful but the problem with code reviews is that they only occur after the fact so to some it seems we end up rewriting (it's mostly refactoring, but still takes lots of time) code that was just written. Also code reviews only give feedback to an individual engineer, not the entire team. I am toying with the idea of doing a presentation (or a series) and try to bring up OOP again along with some examples of existing code that could've been written better and could be refactored. I could use some really old projects that no one owns anymore so at least that part shouldn't be a sensitive issue. However, will this work? As I said most people have done C++ for a long time so my guess is that a) they'll sit there thinking why I'm telling them stuff they already know or b) they might actually take it as an insult because I'm telling them they don't know how to do the job they've been doing for years if not decades. Is there another approach which would reach broader audience than a code review would, but at the same time wouldn't feel like a punishment lecture? I'm not a fresh kid out of college who has utopian ideals of perfectly designed code and I don't expect that from anyone. The reason I'm writing this is because I just did a review of a person who actually had decent high-level design on paper. However if you picture classes: A - B - C - D, in the code B, C and D all implement almost the same public interface and B/C have one liner functions so that top-most class A is doing absolutely all the work (down to memory management, string parsing, setup negotiations...) primarily in 4 mongo methods and, for all intents and purposes, calls almost directly into D. Update: I'm a tech lead(6 months in this role) and do have full support of the group manager. We are working on a very mature product and maintenance costs are definitely letting themselves be known.

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• My Automated NuGet Workflow

  - by Wes McClure

  When we develop libraries (whether internal or public), it helps to have a rapid ability to make changes and test them in a consuming application. Building Setup the library with automatic versioning and a nuspec Setup library assembly version to auto increment build and revision AssemblyInfo –> [assembly: AssemblyVersion("1.0.*")] This autoincrements build and revision based on time of build Major & Minor Major should be changed when you have breaking changes Minor should be changed once you have a solid new release During development I don’t increment these Create a nuspec, version this with the code nuspec - set version to <version>$version$</version> This uses the assembly’s version, which is auto-incrementing Make changes to code Run automated build (ruby/rake) run “rake nuget” nuget task builds nuget package and copies it to a local nuget feed I use an environment variable to point at this so I can change it on a machine level! The nuget command below assumes a nuspec is checked in called Library.nuspec next to the csproj file $projectSolution = 'src\\Library.sln' $nugetFeedPath = ENV["NuGetDevFeed"] msbuild :build => [:clean] do |msb| msb.properties :configuration => :Release msb.targets :Build msb.solution = $projectSolution end task :nuget => [:build] do sh "nuget pack src\\Library\\Library.csproj /OutputDirectory " + $nugetFeedPath end Setup the local nuget feed as a nuget package source (this is only required once per machine) Go to the consuming project Update the package Update-Package Library or Install-Package TLDR change library code run “rake nuget” run “Update-Package library” in the consuming application build/test! If you manually execute any of this process, especially copying files, you will find it a burden to develop the library and will find yourself dreading it, and even worse, making changes downstream instead of updating the shared library for everyone’s sake. Publishing Once you have a set of changes that you want to release, consider versioning and possibly increment the minor version if needed. Pick the package out of your local feed, and copy it to a public / shared feed! I have a script to do this where I can drop the package on a batch file Replace apikey with your nuget feed's apikey Take out the confirm(s) if you don't want them @ECHO off echo Upload %1? set /P anykey="Hit enter to continue " nuget push %1 apikey set /P anykey="Done " Note: helps to prune all the unnecessary versions during testing from your local feed once you are done and ready to publish TLDR consider version number run command to copy to public feed

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• Using HBase or Cassandra for a token server

  - by crippy

  I've been trying to figure out how to use HBase/Cassandra for a token system we're re-implementing. I can probably squeeze quite a lot more from MySQL, but it just seems it has come to clinging on to the wrong tool for the task just because we know it well. Eventually will hit a wall (like happened to us in other areas). Naturally I started looking into possible NoSQL solutions. The prominent ones (at least in terms of buzz) are HBase and Cassandra. The story is more or less like this: A user can send a gift other users. Each gift has a list of recipients or is public in which case limited by number or expiration date For each gift sent we generate some token that uniquely identifies that gift. For each gift we track the list of potential recipients and their current status relating to that gift (accepted, declinded etc). A user can request to see all his currently pending gifts A can request a list of users he has sent a gift to today (used to limit number of gifts sent) Required the ability to "dump" or "ignore" expired gifts (x day old gifts are considered expired) There are some other requirements but I believe the above covers the essentials. How would I go and model that using HBase or Cassandra? Well, the wall was performance. A few 10s of millions of records per day over 2 tables kept for 2 weeks (wish I could have kept it for more but there was no way). The response times kept getting slower and slower until eventually we had to start cutting down number of days we kept data. Caching helps here but it's not an ideal solution since a big part of the ops are updates. Also, as I hinted in my original post. We use MySQL extensively. We know exactly what it can and can't do both in naive implementations followed by native partitioning and finally by horizontally sharding our dataset on the application level to reside on multiple DB nodes. It can be done, but that's not really what I'm trying to get from this. I asked a very specific question about designing a solution using a NoSQL solution since it's very hard to find examples for designs out there. Brainlag, not trying to come off as rude. I actually appreciate it a lot that you are the only one who even bothered to respond. but I see it over and over again. People ask questions and others assume they have no idea what they're talking about and give an irrelevant answer. Ignore RDBMS please. The question is about nosql.

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