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  • When is a try catch not a try catch?

    - by Dearmash
    I have a fun issue where during application shutdown, try / catch blocks are being seemingly ignored in the stack. I don't have a working test project (yet due to deadline, otherwise I'd totally try to repro this), but consider the following code snippet. public static string RunAndPossiblyThrow(int index, bool doThrow) { try { return Run(index); } catch(ApplicationException e) { if(doThrow) throw; } return ""; } public static string Run(int index) { if(_store.Contains(index)) return _store[index]; throw new ApplicationException("index not found"); } public static string RunAndIgnoreThrow(int index) { try { return Run(index); } catch(ApplicationException e) { } return ""; } During runtime this pattern works famously. We get legacy support for code that relies on exceptions for program control (bad) and we get to move forward and slowly remove exceptions used for program control. However, when shutting down our UI, we see an exception thrown from "Run" even though "doThrow" is false for ALL current uses of "RunAndPossiblyThrow". I've even gone so far as to verify this by modifying code to look like "RunAndIgnoreThrow" and I'll still get a crash post UI shutdown. Mr. Eric Lippert, I read your blog daily, I'd sure love to hear it's some known bug and I'm not going crazy. EDIT This is multi-threaded, and I've verified all objects are not modified while being accessed

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  • C++ std::vector memory/allocation

    - by aaa
    from a previous question about vector capacity, http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2663170/stdvector-capacity-after-copying, Mr. Bailey said: In current C++ you are guaranteed that no reallocation occurs after a call to reserve until an insertion would take the size beyond the value of the previous call to reserve. Before a call to reserve, or after a call to reserve when the size is between the value of the previous call to reserve and the capacity the implementation is allowed to reallocate early if it so chooses. So, if I understand correctly, in order to assure that no relocation happens until capacity is exceeded, I must do reserve twice? can you please clarify it? I am using vector as a memory stack like this: std::vector<double> memory; memory.reserve(size); memory.insert(memory.end(), matrix.data().begin(), matrix.data().end()); // smaller than size size_t offset = memory.size(); memory.resize(memory.capacity(), 0); I need to guarantee that relocation does not happen in the above. thank you. ps: I would also like to know if there is a better way to manage memory stack in similar manner other than vector

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  • PHP foreach help

    - by sea_1987
    Hello I have an array that looks like this, Array ( [cfi_title] => Mr [cfi_firstname] => Firstname [cfi_surname] => Lastname [cfi_email] => [email protected] [cfi_subscribe_promotional] => [cfi_tnc] => [friendsName] => Array ( [0] => Firstname 1 [1] => Firstname 2 [2] => Firstname 3 ) [friendsEmail] => Array ( [0] => [email protected] [1] => [email protected] [2] => [email protected] ) [submit_form] => Submit ) My dilema is I need to save the values from the friendsName and friendsEmail arrays into a database, I know I can loop through them but how can I send the matching data, for example I need to save [friendsName][0] and friendsEmail][0] on the same row of database? I know I need to use a foreach but I just cannot figure out the logic.

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  • ELF: linking: Why do I get undefined references in .so files

    - by ki.lya.online.fr
    Hi, I'm trying to build a program against wxWidgets, and I get a linker error. I'd like to really understand what it means. The error is: /usr/lib/libwx_baseu-2.8.so: undefined reference to `std::ctype<char>::_M_widen_init() const@GLIBCXX_3.4.11' What I don't understand is why the error is at libwx_baseu-2.8.so. I thought that .so files had all its symbols resolved, contrary to .o files that still need linking. When I ldd the .so, I get can resolve all its linked libraries, so there is no problem there: $ ldd /usr/lib/libwx_baseu-2.8.so linux-gate.so.1 => (0x00476000) libz.so.1 => /lib/libz.so.1 (0x00d9c000) libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x002a8000) libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x00759000) libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6 (0x002ad000) libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x0068d000) libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x006f0000) libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x00477000) /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x007f6000) Does it means that the .so file was not compiled correctly (in that case, it's a bug in my distribution package) or does it means that there are missing libraries on the linker command line for my particular program? Additionally, do you know how I can get a list on undefined symbols in an ELF file. I tried readelf -s but I can't find the missing symbol. Thank you. Mildred

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  • Can a call to WaitHandle.SignalAndWait be ignored for performance profiling purposes?

    - by Dan Tao
    I just downloaded the trial version of ANTS Performance Profiler from Red Gate and am investigating some of my team's code. Immediately I notice that there's a particular section of code that ANTS is reporting as eating up to 99% CPU time. I am completely unfamiliar with ANTS or performance profiling in general (that is, aside from self-profiling using what I'm sure are extremely crude and frowned-upon methods such as double timeToComplete = (endTime - startTime).TotalSeconds), so I'm still fiddling around with the application and figuring out how it's used. But I did call the developer responsible for the code in question and his immediate reaction was "Yeah, that doesn't surprise me that it says that; but that code calls SignalAndWait [which I could see for myself, thanks to ANTS], which doesn't use any CPU, it just sits there waiting for something to do." He advised me to simply ignore that code and look for anything ELSE I could find. My question: is it true that SignalAndWait requires NO CPU overhead (and if so, how is this possible?), and is it reasonable that a performance profiler would view it as taking up 99% CPU time? I find this particularly curious because, if it's at 99%, that would suggest that our application is often idle, wouldn't it? And yet its performance has become rather sluggish lately. Like I said, I really am just a beginner when it comes to this tool, and I don't know anything about the WaitHandle class. So ANY information to help me to understand what's going on here would be appreciated.

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  • Which knowledge base/rule-based inference engine to choose for real time Runway incursion prevention

    - by Piligrim
    Hello, we are designing a project that would listen to dialog between airport controllers and pilots to prevent runway incursions (eg. one airplane is taking off while other is crossing the runway). Our professor wants us to use Jena for knowledge base (or anything else but it should be some sort of rule-based engine). Inference is not the main thing in Jena and there's not much documentation and examples of this. So we need an engine that would get messages from pilots as input and output possible risks of incursion or any other error in message protocol. It should be easy to write rules, and should be easy to provide engine with real time data. I image it something like this: A pilot sends a message that he lands on some runway, the system remembers that the runway is busy and no one should cross it If someone is given an instruction to cross this runway, the engine should fire a rule that something is wrong When the pilot sends a message that he left the runway and goes to the gate, the system clears the runway and lets other planes to use it. So is Jena, or prolog or any other rules engine suitable for this? I mean it is suitable, but do we really need to use it? I asked the prof. if we could just keep state of the runway and use some simple checks based on messages we receive and he said that it is not scalable and we need the knowledge base. Can someone give me any advise on which approach to use for this system? If you recommend k.b., then which one should we use? The project is written in java. Thank you.

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  • Finding missing symbols in libstd++ on Debian/squeeze

    - by Florian Le Goff
    I'm trying to use a pre-compiled library provided as a .so file. This file is dynamically linked against a few librairies : $ ldd /usr/local/test/lib/libtest.so linux-gate.so.1 = (0xb770d000) libstdc++-libc6.1-1.so.2 = not found libm.so.6 = /lib/i686/cmov/libm.so.6 (0xb75e1000) libc.so.6 = /lib/i686/cmov/libc.so.6 (0xb7499000) /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0xb770e000) libgcc_s.so.1 = /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0xb747c000) Unfortunately, in Debian/squeeze, there is no libstdc++-libc6.1-1.so.* file. Only a libstdc++.so.* file provided by the libstdc++6 package. I tried to link (using ln -s) libstdc++-libc6.1-1.so.2 to the libstdc++.so.6 file. It does not work, a batch of symbols seems to be lacking when I'm trying to ld my .o files with this lib. /usr/local/test/lib/libtest.so: undefined reference to `__builtin_vec_delete' /usr/local/test/lib/libtest.so: undefined reference to `istrstream::istrstream(int, char const *, int)' /usr/local/test/lib/libtest.so: undefined reference to `__rtti_user' /usr/local/test/lib/libtest.so: undefined reference to `__builtin_new' /usr/local/test/lib/libtest.so: undefined reference to `istream::ignore(int, int)' What would you do ? How may I find in which lib those symbols are exported ?

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  • Configuring mod_rewrite and mod_jk for Apache 2.2 and JBoss 4.2.3

    - by The Pretender
    Hello! My problem is as follows: I have JBoss 4.2.3 application server with AJP 1.3 connector running on one host under Windows (192.168.1.2 for my test environment) and Apache 2.2.14 running on another FreeBSD box (192.168.1.10). Apache acts as a "front gate" for all requests and sends them to JBoss via mod_jk. Everything was working fine until I had to do some SEO optimizations. These optimizations include SEF urls, so i decided to use mod_rewrite for Apache to alter requests before they are sent to JBoss. Basically, I nedd to implement 2 rules: Redirect old rules like "http://hostname/directory/" to "http://hostname/" with permanent redirect Forward urls like "http://hostname/wtf/123/" to "http://hostname/wtf/view.htm?id=123" so that end user doesn't see the "ugly" URL (the actual rewrite). Here is my Apache config for test virtual host: <VirtualHost *:80> ServerAdmin [email protected] DocumentRoot "/usr/local/www/dummy" ServerName 192.168.1.10 <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> RewriteEngine On RewriteRule /directory/(.*) /$1 [R=permanent,L] RewriteRule ^/([^/]+)/([0-9]+)/?$ /$1/view.htm?id=$2 </IfModule> JkMount /* jsp-hostname ErrorLog "/var/log/dummy-host.example.com-error_log" CustomLog "/var/log/dummy-host.example.com-access_log" common </VirtualHost> The problem is that second rewrite rule doesn't work. Requests slip through to JBoss unchanged, so I get Tomcat 404 error. But if I add redirect flag to the second rule like RewriteRule ^/([^/]+)/([0-9]+)/?$ /$1/view.htm?id=$2 [R,L] it works like a charm. But redirect is not what I need here :) . I suspect that the problem is that requests are forwarded to the another host (192.168.1.2), but I really don't have any idea on how to make it work. Any help would be appreciated :)

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  • Sort Grid Columns of mixed type in EXTJS Grid

    - by Amit
    Hello, I want to sort the extjs columns, I have the column type as float and from the server side i am getting values which can contain "-" value , now what happens the grid is displaying me the NaN value instead of - and the sort is not working anymore. My requirement is to create a custom sort which can sort first based on number and then sort based on string. Thanks to suggest as renderer also not works for me. My Json String is: {metaData:{"totalProperty":"total", "root":"records","fields":[{"header":"Part Number##false","name":"XJE010^VT-007!0","type":"string"},{"header":"Marketing Status##false","name":"STP716^VT-007!0","type":"string"},{"header":"Package##false","name":"XJE016^VT-007!0","type":"string"},{"header":"Automotive Grade##false","name":"STP472^VT-007!0","type":"string"},{"header":"VDSS##false","name":"XJG810^VT-007!0","type":"float"},{"header":"Drain Current (Dc)(I_D) % (A)##false","name":"XJG273^VT-006!0","type":"float"},{"header":"RDS(on) (@VGS=10V) % (&#937;)##false","name":"XJG640^VT-006!3","type":"float"},{"header":"Features##false","name":"GNP023^VT-007!0","type":"string"},{"header":"RDS(on) (@4.5 or 5V) % (&#937;)##false","name":"XJG640^VT-006!6","type":"float"},{"header":"RDS(on) (@2.7V) % (&#937;)##false","name":"XJG640^VT-006!7","type":"float"},{"header":"RDS(on) (@1.8V) % (&#937;)##false","name":"XJG640^VT-006!8","type":"float"},{"header":"Free Samples##false","name":"STP0881^VT-007!0","type":"string"},{"header":"Total Gate Charge(Qg) typ ()##true","name":"STP049^VT-002!0","type":"float"},{"header":"Total Power Dissipation(PD) % (W)##true","name":"XJG820^VT-006!0","type":"float"}]},"success":"true", "total":13,"records":[{"XJE010^VT-007!0":"STB80PF55$$/cn/analog/product/67164.jsp","STP716^VT-007!0":"Active","XJE016^VT-007!0":"D2PAK","STP472^VT-007!0":"_","XJG810^VT-007!0":"-55","XJG273^VT-006!0":"80","XJG640^VT-006!3":".018","GNP023^VT-007!0":"-","XJG640^VT-006!6":"-","XJG640^VT-006!7":"-","XJG640^VT-006!8":"-","STP0881^VT-007!0":"No","STP049^VT-002!0":"190","XJG820^VT-006!0":"300"},{"XJE010^VT-007!0":"STD10PF06$$/cn/analog/product/64543.jsp","STP716^VT-007!0":"Active","XJE016^VT-007!0":"IPAK TO-251 TO 252 DPAK","STP472^VT-007!0":"_","XJG810^VT-007!0":"-60","XJG273^VT-006!0":"-10","XJG640^VT-006!3":".2","GNP023^VT-007!0":"-","XJG640^VT-006!6":"-","XJG640^VT-006!7":"-","XJG640^VT-006!8":"-","STP0881^VT-007!0":"No ... Regards, Amit

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  • MSSQL: Views that use SELECT * need to be recreated if the underlying table changes

    - by cbp
    Is there a way to make views that use SELECT * stay in sync with the underlying table. What I have discovered is that if changes are made to the underlying table, from which all columns are to be selected, the view needs to be 'recreated'. This can be achieved simly by running an ALTER VIEW statement. However this can lead to some pretty dangerous situations. If you forgot to recreate the view, it will not be returning the correct data. In fact it can be returning seriously messed up data - with the names of the columns all wrong and out of order. Nothing will pick up that the view is wrong unless you happened to have it covered by a test, or a data integrity check fails. For example, Red Gate SQL Compare doesn't pick up the fact that the view needs to be recreated. To replicate the problem, try these statements: CREATE TABLE Foobar (Bar varchar(20)) CREATE VIEW v_Foobar AS SELECT * FROM Foobar INSERT INTO Foobar (Bar) VALUES ('Hi there') SELECT * FROM v_Foobar ALTER TABLE Foobar ADD Baz varchar(20) SELECT * FROM v_Foobar DROP VIEW v_Foobar DROP TABLE Foobar I am tempted to stop using SELECT * in views, which will be a PITA. Is there a setting somewhere perhaps that could fix this behaviour?

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  • Need advice - Developing a flexible documentation system, heavily focused on localization

    - by inkedmn
    I've been charged with building a documentation system/platform. Here's a short list of the major requirements: Easily localized : This will need to support a dozen or so languages out of the gate. (the ability for non-technical personnel to add/update translations would be a big plus, though not 100% required) Flexibility in output formats : At the bare minimum, I need to output the documents (either as a whole or in selected chunks) as PDF and HTML. Bonus points for native formats like Windows Help Files. Managed and deployed via an intuitive user interface (web, ideally). I'm wondering if you folks know of any systems out there that support this type of thing already? I'm not averse to writing this from scratch, but I'd rather not reinvent the wheel if I can help it. The two major candidates I've come across thus far are DocBook and reST. The former seems to have garnered a reputation for, well, sucking. I'm unfamiliar with either, but I'm told that reST would get me a good portion of the way there. Any other suggestions? Would I be better off building this from scratch?

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  • Top 20 Daily Deal Sites In India

    - by Damodhar
    If you have never heard of Groupon recently, you probably are not working in the tech industry because it is all over the blogosphere. After all, growing from zero to US$1.35 billion valuation in 18 months is pretty AMAZING. Inspired by this, the following bunch of Groupon clone’s are already rising in India. Definitely this business model is emerging and changes the way online shopping happens in India. SnapDeal SnapDeal features a Best deals Coupons at an unbeatable price on the best stuff to do, see, eat, and buy in our city. It provides vouchers and discounts in all the major cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore. KhojGuru Exclusive Discount coupons from hundreds of brands and retailers. These discounts can be easily downloaded as an SMS on to the mobile phone or their print out can be taken. MyDala A platform which gets us great deals in our city.Leveraging the “power of group buying”. Group buying happens when like minded people come together to get deals that we can never get on our own as individuals. SoSasta Great place which would not only tell us about the hidden treasures of our city — but also made them affordable to us at the end of the month. DealsAndYou Deals and You is a group buying portal that features a daily deal on the best stuff in some of India’s leading cities. AajKaCatch Its concept is to provide you the most unique, useful and qualitative product at a very low price. So you can now shop without the hassles of clustered products. BindassBargain Bindaas Bargain offers a new deal every day! Great stuff ranging from cool gadgets, home theatres, luxury watches, smash games. MasthiDeals It get you a great deal on a great stuff to do, eat, buy or see in your city. They have a team of about 25 wonderful people working in Chennai office working side by side with folks in MasthiDeal’s other cities. Koovs Founded by a team of IIT alumni who have brought in their expertise from the internet industry. Koovs is a Bangalore based start up and one point solution for all your desires. Taggle It brings you a variety of offers from some of the most respected brands in the country.This website uses collective buying to create a win-win for local businesses and their customers. BuzzInTown Buzzintown.com is a portal owned by Wortal Inc. There are a US headquartered company, with a presence pan-India through their India subsidiary, managed by a vastly experienced set of global leaders from the media, entertainment and technology industries. BuyThePrice It lines up the best win – win deals for both consumers and vendors and also ensures that each of the orders are dispatched in the shortest time possible. 24HoursLoot 24hoursLoot is an online store for selling a new t-shirt (sometime other products) everyday at deep discounted price in limited quantity/stock. DealMagic Customers get exposure to the best their city has to offer, at unbeatable prices (50-90% off).  We never feature more than one business on our website on any given day, so we have to be very very selective on who gets featured. Dealivore ICUMI Technologies Pvt Ltd is the company operating the Dealivore service. Founded in December 2009, ICUMI is privately owned and funded. LootMore An online store that exclusively focuses on selling cool quality stuff at cheap prices. Here you’ll always find the latest and greatest brands at prices you can afford. Foodome The deals features the best coupons at an unbeatable price on restaurants, fine dining on where to spend your birthday party.They provide coupon only in Chennai as of now. Top Online Shopping Sites- Nation Wide ebay.in eBay is The World’s Online Marketplace, enabling trade on a local, national and international basis. With a diverse and passionate community of individuals and small businesses, eBay offers an online platform where millions of items are traded each day. FutureBazzar Future Group, led by its founder and Group CEO, Mr. Kishore Biyani, is one of India’s leading business houses with multiple businesses spanning across the consumption space. TradeUs Launched in July 2009 and in a short span of time it has turned into one of India’s foremost shopping portals setting the Indian e-commerce abode aflame. BigShoeBazzar (BSB) is the largest online authorized shoe store in South Asia. Croma Promoted by Infiniti Retail Ltd, a 100% subsidiary of Tata Sons.One of the world’s leading retailers, ensuring that you buy nothing but the best. This article titled,Top 20 Daily Deal Sites In India, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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  • Getting a Database into Source Control

    - by Grant Fritchey
    For any number of reasons, from simple auditing, to change tracking, to automated deployment, to integration with application development processes, you’re going to want to place your database into source control. Using Red Gate SQL Source Control this process is extremely simple. SQL Source Control works within your SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) interface.  This means you can work with your databases in any way that you’re used to working with them. If you prefer scripts to using the GUI, not a problem. If you prefer using the GUI to having to learn T-SQL, again, that’s fine. After installing SQL Source Control, this is what you’ll see when you open SSMS:   SQL Source Control is now a direct piece of the SSMS environment. The key point initially is that I currently don’t have a database selected. You can even see that in the SQL Source Control window where it shows, in red, “No database selected – select a database in Object Explorer.” If I expand my Databases list in the Object Explorer, you’ll be able to immediately see which databases have been integrated with source control and which have not. There are visible differences between the databases as you can see here:   To add a database to source control, I first have to select it. For this example, I’m going to add the AdventureWorks2012 database to an instance of the SVN source control software (I’m using uberSVN). When I click on the AdventureWorks2012 database, the SQL Source Control screen changes:   I’m going to need to click on the “Link database to source control” text which will open up a window for connecting this database to the source control system of my choice.  You can pick from the default source control systems on the left, or define one of your own. I also have to provide the connection string for the location within the source control system where I’ll be storing my database code. I set these up in advance. You’ll need two. One for the main set of scripts and one for special scripts called Migrations that deal with different kinds of changes between versions of the code. Migrations help you solve problems like having to create or modify data in columns as part of a structural change. I’ll talk more about them another day. Finally, I have to determine if this is an isolated environment that I’m going to be the only one use, a dedicated database. Or, if I’m sharing the database in a shared environment with other developers, a shared database.  The main difference is, under a dedicated database, I will need to regularly get any changes that other developers have made from source control and integrate it into my database. While, under a shared database, all changes for all developers are made at the same time, which means you could commit other peoples work without proper testing. It all depends on the type of environment you work within. But, when it’s all set, it will look like this: SQL Source Control will compare the results between the empty folders in source control and the database, AdventureWorks2012. You’ll get a report showing exactly the list of differences and you can choose which ones will get checked into source control. Each of the database objects is scripted individually. You’ll be able to modify them later in the same way. Here’s the list of differences for my new database:   You can select/deselect all the objects or each object individually. You also get a report showing the differences between what’s in the database and what’s in source control. If there was already a database in source control, you’d only see changes to database objects rather than every single object. You can see that the database objects can be sorted by name, by type, or other choices. I’m going to add a comment such as “Initial creation of database in source control.” And then click on the Commit button which will put all the objects in my database into the source control system. That’s all it takes to get the objects into source control initially. Now is when things can get fun with breaking changes to code, automated deployments, unit testing and all the rest.

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  • Why Software Sucks...and What You Can Do About It – book review

    - by DigiMortal
        How do our users see the products we are writing for them and how happy they are with our work? Are they able to get their work done without fighting with cool features and crashes or are they just switching off resistance part of their brain to survive our software? Yeah, the overall picture of software usability landscape is not very nice. Okay, it is not even nice. But, fortunately, Why Software Sucks...and What You Can Do About It by David S. Platt explains everything. Why Software Sucks… is book for software users but I consider it as a-must reading also for developers and specially for their managers whose politics often kills all usability topics as soon as they may appear. For managers usability is soft topic that can be manipulated the way it is best in current state of project. Although developers are not UI designers and usability experts they are still very often forced to deal with these topics and this is how usability problems start (of course, also designers are able to produce designs that are stupid and too hard to use for users, but this blog here is about development). I found this book to be very interesting and funny reading. It is not humor book but it explains you all so you remember later very well what you just read. It took me about three evenings to go through this book and I am still enjoying what I found and how author explains our weird young working field to end users. I suggest this book to all developers – while you are demanding your management to hire or outsource usability expert you are at least causing less pain to end users. So, go and buy this book, just like I did. And… they thanks to mr. Platt :) There is one book more I suggest you to read if you are interested in usability - Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition by Steve Krug. Editorial review from Amazon Today’s software sucks. There’s no other good way to say it. It’s unsafe, allowing criminal programs to creep through the Internet wires into our very bedrooms. It’s unreliable, crashing when we need it most, wiping out hours or days of work with no way to get it back. And it’s hard to use, requiring large amounts of head-banging to figure out the simplest operations. It’s no secret that software sucks. You know that from personal experience, whether you use computers for work or personal tasks. In this book, programming insider David Platt explains why that’s the case and, more importantly, why it doesn’t have to be that way. And he explains it in plain, jargon-free English that’s a joy to read, using real-world examples with which you’re already familiar. In the end, he suggests what you, as a typical user, without a technical background, can do about this sad state of our software—how you, as an informed consumer, don’t have to take the abuse that bad software dishes out. As you might expect from the book’s title, Dave’s expose is laced with humor—sometimes outrageous, but always dead on. You’ll laugh out loud as you recall incidents with your own software that made you cry. You’ll slap your thigh with the same hand that so often pounded your computer desk and wished it was a bad programmer’s face. But Dave hasn’t written this book just for laughs. He’s written it to give long-overdue voice to your own discovery—that software does, indeed, suck, but it shouldn’t. Table of contents Acknowledgments xiii Introduction Chapter 1: Who’re You Calling a Dummy? Where We Came From Why It Still Sucks Today Control versus Ease of Use I Don’t Care How Your Program Works A Bad Feature and a Good One Stopping the Proceedings with Idiocy Testing on Live Animals Where We Are and What You Can Do Chapter 2: Tangled in the Web Where We Came From How It Works Why It Still Sucks Today Client-Centered Design versus Server-Centered Design Where’s My Eye Opener? It’s Obvious—Not! Splash, Flash, and Animation Testing on Live Animals What You Can Do about It Chapter 3: Keep Me Safe The Way It Was Why It Sucks Today What Programmers Need to Know, but Don’t A Human Operation Budgeting for Hassles Users Are Lazy Social Engineering Last Word on Security What You Can Do Chapter 4: Who the Heck Are You? Where We Came From Why It Still Sucks Today Incompatible Requirements OK, So Now What? Chapter 5: Who’re You Looking At? Yes, They Know You Why It Sucks More Than Ever Today Users Don’t Know Where the Risks Are What They Know First Milk You with Cookies? Privacy Policy Nonsense Covering Your Tracks The Google Conundrum Solution Chapter 6: Ten Thousand Geeks, Crazed on Jolt Cola See Them in Their Native Habitat All These Geeks Who Speaks, and When, and about What Selling It The Next Generation of Geeks—Passing It On Chapter 7: Who Are These Crazy Bastards Anyway? Homo Logicus Testosterone Poisoning Control and Contentment Making Models Geeks and Jocks Jargon Brains and Constraints Seven Habits of Geeks Chapter 8: Microsoft: Can’t Live With ’Em and Can’t Live Without ’Em They Run the World Me and Them Where We Came From Why It Sucks Today Damned if You Do, Damned if You Don’t We Love to Hate Them Plus ça Change Growing-Up Pains What You Can Do about It The Last Word Chapter 9: Doing Something About It 1. Buy 2. Tell 3. Ridicule 4. Trust 5. Organize Epilogue About the Author

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  • Databases in Source Control

    - by Grant Fritchey
    I’ve been working as a database professional for quite a long time. But originally, I was a developer. And I loved being a developer. There was this constant feedback loop of a job well done, your code compiled and it ran. Every time this happened successfully, you’d check it into source control. These days you have to add another step; the code passed all the tests, unit, line, regression, qa, whatever, then into source control it goes. As a matter of fact, when I first made the jump from developer to DBA/database developer/database professional, source control was the one thing I couldn’t believe was missing from the DBA toolbox. Come to find out, source control was only the beginning of what was missing from your standard DBAs set of skills. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not disrespecting the DBA. They’re focused where they should be, on your production data. But there has to be a method for developing applications that include databases and the database side of that development and deployment process has long been lacking. This lack of development and deployment methodologies is a part of what has given rise to some of the wackier implementations of Object Relational Mapping tools, the NoSQL movement, and some of the other foul cursing that is directed towards databases, DBAs, and database development by application developers. Some of that is well earned. A lot isn’t. But it is a fact that database professionals, in general, do not have as sophisticated a model for managing development and deployment as application developers do. We could charge out and start trying to come up with our own standards and methods. I’m sure people have done exactly that. However, I’m lazy, and not terribly bright. Rather than try to invent a whole new process, I’m going to look to my developer roots and choose instead to emulate the developers. They’re sitting over there across the hall from me working with SCRUM/Agile/Waterfall/Object Driven/Feature Driven/Test Driven development processes that they’ve been polishing for years. What if I just started working on database development the same way they work on code development? Win! Ah, but now I have to have a mechanism for treating my database like application code. First, I need a method for getting it into source control. That’s where Red Gate’s SQL Source Control comes into the picture. SQL Source Control works within SQL Server Management Studio to connect your database objects up to the source control system of your choice. Right out of the box SQL Source Control can link to TFS, SVN or Vault. With a little work you can connect it to Git or just about any other source control system. With the ability to get my database into source control, a lot of possibilities for more direct integration with the application development teams open up.

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  • They may block off Howard Street—but Oracle OpenWorld is a two-way street.

    - by Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 by Jim Lein, Sr. Director, Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies “Engineered to Inform and Inspire”—that’s the theme of Oracle OpenWorld 2012. In early October, tens of thousands of attendees will descend on the streets of San Francisco because they share one thing in common: the desire to learn more about Oracle. You might think that’s the way we, Oracle employees, look at this event—as just another opportunity for attendees to learn about what we do. But it’s really a two way street. Every year I’m amazed by how informed and inspired I am by our customers and their companies. Midsize companies buy Oracle to grow. As part of the Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies team I get to talk with our partners and business leaders at growing companies almost every day, usually via phone. Oracle OpenWorld presents the perfect opportunity to meet some of them in person, in an informal setting, and in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. The stories our customers tell me about their businesses provide vivid examples of how they have overcome the challenges of managing increasingly complex global operations and growing during uncertain economic conditions. It’s no secret that my favorite session at Oracle OpenWorld (besides Larry Ellison’s keynotes and the Customer Appreciation Event, of course) is the Oracle Accelerate Customer Panel. This year we’re featuring executives from three companies who deployed Oracle ERP rapidly to support their company’s growth: Chris Powell, VP and Corporate Controller of Beats by Dr. Dre, a California based designer and manufacturer of premium headphones (sorry, no free samples), Iñaki Zuazo, CIO of Industrias Juno, a building materials provider based in Spain, Kamran Moosa, Project Coordinator for Spartan Engineering, a provider of engineering and construction support services for an LPG storage project in Texas, and That’s a pretty diverse lineup and it will be interesting to hear the perspectives of both IT and financial project stakeholders. The session, “Oracle Accelerate Customer Case Studies: Rapid Deployment of Oracle Applications”, is at 3:30 pm on Wednesday, October 3, in the Concert room at the Palace Hotel. Oracle loves our hometown of San Francisco and it’s a great place to host Oracle OpenWorld. It’s now San Francisco’s largest conference and the city closes off Howard Street to better accommodate the attendees. Some Bay Area commuters may be inconvenienced for a few days by this closure but the conference brings about $100 million into the local economy. Now that’s a two-way street. More Oracle Accelerate at Oracle OpenWorld “Faster, Better, Cheaper Application Deployment with Oracle Business Accelerators”, Monday, October 1st, 10:45 a.m., Moscone West Room 3016 “Oracle Accelerate and Oracle Business Accelerators for Midsize Companies”, (partners only), Wednesday, October 3, 10:15 a.m., Marriott – Golden Gate B Visit the Oracle Accelerate and Oracle Business Accelerator Kiosk in the Moscone West Exhibit Grounds Download the Focus On Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies Focus document /* 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:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}

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  • Why Haven’t NFC Payments Taken Off?

    - by David Dorf
    With the EMV 2015 milestone approaching rapidly, there’s been renewed interest in smartcards, those credit cards with an embedded computer chip.  Back in 1996 I was working for a vendor helping Visa introduce a stored-value smartcard to the US.  Visa Cash was debuted at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, and I firmly believed it was the beginning of a cashless society.  (I later worked on MasterCard’s system called Mondex, from the UK, which debuted the following year in Manhattan). But since you don’t have a Visa Cash card in your wallet, it’s obvious the project never took off.  It was convenient for consumers, faster for merchants, and more cost-effective for banks, so why did it fail?  All emerging payment systems suffer from the chicken-and-egg dilemma.  Consumers won’t carry the cards if few merchants accept them, and merchants won’t install the terminals if few consumers have cards. Today’s emerging payment providers are in a similar pickle.  There has to be enough value for all three constituents – consumers, merchants, banks – to change the status quo.  And it’s not enough to exceed the value, it’s got to be a leap in value, because people generally resist change.  ATMs and transit cards are great examples of this, and airline kiosks and self-checkout systems are to a lesser extent. Although Google Wallet and ISIS, the two leading NFC payment platforms in the US, have shown strong commitment, there’s been very little traction.  Yes, I can load my credit card number into my phone then tap to pay, but what was the incremental value over swiping my old card?  For it to be a leap in value, it has to offer more than just payment, which I can do very easily today.  The other two ingredients are thought to be loyalty programs and digital coupons, but neither Google nor ISIS really did them well. Of course a large portion of the mobile phone market doesn’t even support NFC thanks to Apple, and since it’s not in their best interest that situation is unlikely to change.  Another issue is getting access to the “secure element,” the chip inside the phone where accounts numbers can be held securely.  Telco providers and handset manufacturers own that area, and they’re not willing to share with banks.  (Host Card Emulation, which has been endorsed by MasterCard and Visa, might be a solution.) Square recently gave up on its wallet, and MCX (the group of retailers trying to create a mobile payment platform) is very slow out of the gate.  That leaves PayPal and a slew of smaller companies trying to introduce easier ways to pay. But is it really so cumbersome to carry and swipe (soon to insert) a credit card?  Aren’t there more important problems to solve in the retail customer experience?  Maybe Apple will come up with some novel way to use iBeacons and fingerprint identification to make payments, but for now I think we need to focus on upgrading to Chip-and-PIN and tightening security.  In the meantime, NFC payments will continue to struggle.

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  • From NaN to Infinity...and Beyond!

    - by Tony Davis
    It is hard to believe that it was once possible to corrupt a SQL Server Database by storing perfectly normal data values into a table; but it is true. In SQL Server 2000 and before, one could inadvertently load invalid data values into certain data types via RPC calls or bulk insert methods rather than DML. In the particular case of the FLOAT data type, this meant that common 'special values' for this type, namely NaN (not-a-number) and +/- infinity, could be quite happily plugged into the database from an application and stored as 'out-of-range' values. This was like a time-bomb. When one then tried to query this data; the values were unsupported and so data pages containing them were flagged as being corrupt. Any query that needed to read a column containing the special value could fail or return unpredictable results. Microsoft even had to issue a hotfix to deal with failures in the automatic recovery process, caused by the presence of these NaN values, which rendered the whole database inaccessible! This problem is history for those of us on more current versions of SQL Server, but its ghost still haunts us. Recently, for example, a developer on Red Gate’s SQL Response team reported a strange problem when attempting to load historical monitoring data into a SQL Server 2005 database via the C# ADO.NET provider. The ratios used in some of their reporting calculations occasionally threw out NaN or infinity values, and the subsequent attempts to load these values resulted in a nasty error. It turns out to be a different manifestation of the same problem. SQL Server 2005 still does not fully support the IEEE 754 standard for floating point numbers, in that the FLOAT data type still cannot handle NaN or infinity values. Instead, they just added validation checks that prevent the 'invalid' values from being loaded in the first place. For people migrating from SQL Server 2000 databases that contained out-of-range FLOAT (or DATETIME etc.) data, to SQL Server 2005, Microsoft have added to the latter's version of the DBCC CHECKDB (or CHECKTABLE) command a DATA_PURITY clause. When enabled, this will seek out the corrupt data, but won’t fix it. You have to do this yourself in what can often be a slow, painful manual process. Our development team, after a quizzical shrug of the shoulders, simply decided to represent NaN and infinity values as NULL, and move on, accepting the minor inconvenience of not being able to tell them apart. However, what of scientific, engineering and other applications that really would like the luxury of being able to both store and access these perfectly-reasonable floating point data values? The sticking point seems to be the stipulation in the IEEE 754 standard that, when NaN is compared to any other value including itself, the answer is "unequal" (i.e. FALSE). This is clearly different from normal number comparisons and has repercussions for such things as indexing operations. Even so, this hardly applies to infinity values, which are single definite values. In fact, there is some encouraging talk in the Connect note on this issue that they might be supported 'in the SQL Server 2008 timeframe'. If didn't happen; SQL 2008 doesn't support NaN or infinity values, though one could be forgiven for thinking otherwise, based on the MSDN documentation for the FLOAT type, which states that "The behavior of float and real follows the IEEE 754 specification on approximate numeric data types". However, the truth is revealed in the XPath documentation, which states that "…float (53) is not exactly IEEE 754. For example, neither NaN (Not-a-Number) nor infinity is used…". Is it really so hard to fix this problem the right way, and properly support in SQL Server the IEEE 754 standard for the floating point data type, NaNs, infinities and all? Oracle seems to have managed it quite nicely with its BINARY_FLOAT and BINARY_DOUBLE types, so it is technically possible. We have an enterprise-class database that is marketed as being part of an 'integrated' Windows platform. Absurdly, we have .NET and XPath libraries that fully support the standard for floating point numbers, and we can't even properly store these values, let alone query them, in the SQL Server database! Cheers, Tony.

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  • An Alphabet of Eponymous Aphorisms, Programming Paradigms, Software Sayings, Annoying Alliteration

    - by Brian Schroer
    Malcolm Anderson blogged about “Einstein’s Razor” yesterday, which reminded me of my favorite software development “law”, the name of which I can never remember. It took much Wikipedia-ing to find it (Hofstadter’s Law – see below), but along the way I compiled the following list: Amara’s Law: We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run. Brook’s Law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later. Clarke’s Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Law of Demeter: Each unit should only talk to its friends; don't talk to strangers. Einstein’s Razor: “Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler” is the popular paraphrase, but what he actually said was “It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience”, an overly complicated quote which is an obvious violation of Einstein’s Razor. (You can tell by looking at a picture of Einstein that the dude was hardly an expert on razors or other grooming apparati.) Finagle's Law of Dynamic Negatives: Anything that can go wrong, will—at the worst possible moment. - O'Toole's Corollary: The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum. Greenspun's Tenth Rule: Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp. (Morris’s Corollary: “…including Common Lisp”) Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law. Issawi’s Omelet Analogy: One cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs - but it is amazing how many eggs one can break without making a decent omelet. Jackson’s Rules of Optimization: Rule 1: Don't do it. Rule 2 (for experts only): Don't do it yet. Kaner’s Caveat: A program which perfectly meets a lousy specification is a lousy program. Liskov Substitution Principle (paraphrased): Functions that use pointers or references to base classes must be able to use objects of derived classes without knowing it Mason’s Maxim: Since human beings themselves are not fully debugged yet, there will be bugs in your code no matter what you do. Nils-Peter Nelson’s Nil I/O Rule: The fastest I/O is no I/O.    Occam's Razor: The simplest explanation is usually the correct one. Parkinson’s Law: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Quentin Tarantino’s Pie Principle: “…you want to go home have a drink and go and eat pie and talk about it.” (OK, he was talking about movies, not software, but I couldn’t find a “Q” quote about software. And wouldn’t it be cool to write a program so great that the users want to eat pie and talk about it?) Raymond’s Rule: Computer science education cannot make anybody an expert programmer any more than studying brushes and pigment can make somebody an expert painter.  Sowa's Law of Standards: Whenever a major organization develops a new system as an official standard for X, the primary result is the widespread adoption of some simpler system as a de facto standard for X. Turing’s Tenet: We shall do a much better programming job, provided we approach the task with a full appreciation of its tremendous difficulty, provided that we respect the intrinsic limitations of the human mind and approach the task as very humble programmers.  Udi Dahan’s Race Condition Rule: If you think you have a race condition, you don’t understand the domain well enough. These rules didn’t exist in the age of paper, there is no reason for them to exist in the age of computers. When you have race conditions, go back to the business and find out actual rules. Van Vleck’s Kvetching: We know about as much about software quality problems as they knew about the Black Plague in the 1600s. We've seen the victims' agonies and helped burn the corpses. We don't know what causes it; we don't really know if there is only one disease. We just suffer -- and keep pouring our sewage into our water supply. Wheeler’s Law: All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection... Except for the problem of too many layers of indirection. Wheeler also said “Compatibility means deliberately repeating other people's mistakes.”. The Wrong Road Rule of Mr. X (anonymous): No matter how far down the wrong road you've gone, turn back. Yourdon’s Rule of Two Feet: If you think your management doesn't know what it's doing or that your organisation turns out low-quality software crap that embarrasses you, then leave. Zawinski's Law of Software Envelopment: Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Zawinski is also responsible for “Some people, when confronted with a problem, think 'I know, I'll use regular expressions.' Now they have two problems.” He once commented about X Windows widget toolkits: “Using these toolkits is like trying to make a bookshelf out of mashed potatoes.”

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  • Building vs. Buying a Master Data Management Solution

    - by david.butler(at)oracle.com
    Many organizations prefer to build their own MDM solutions. The argument is that they know their data quality issues and their data better than anyone. Plus a focused solution will cost less in the long run then a vendor supplied general purpose product. This is not unreasonable if you think of MDM as a point solution for a particular data quality problem. But this approach carries significant risk. We now know that organizations achieve significant competitive advantages when they deploy MDM as a strategic enterprise wide solution: with the most common best practice being to deploy a tactical MDM solution and grow it into a full information architecture. A build your own approach most certainly will not scale to a larger architecture unless it is done correctly with the larger solution in mind. It is possible to build a home grown point MDM solution in such a way that it will dovetail into broader MDM architectures. A very good place to start is to use the same basic technologies that Oracle uses to build its own MDM solutions. Start with the Oracle 11g database to create a flexible, extensible and open data model to hold the master data and all needed attributes. The Oracle database is the most flexible, highly available and scalable database system on the market. With its Real Application Clusters (RAC) it can even support the mixed OLTP and BI workloads that represent typical MDM data access profiles. Use Oracle Data Integration (ODI) for batch data movement between applications, MDM data stores, and the BI layer. Use Oracle Golden Gate for more real-time data movement. Use Oracle's SOA Suite for application integration with its: BPEL Process Manager to orchestrate MDM connections to business processes; Identity Management for managing users; WS Manager for managing web services; Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition for analytics; and JDeveloper for creating or extending the MDM management application. Oracle utilizes these technologies to build its MDM Hubs.  Customers who build their own MDM solution using these components will easily migrate to Oracle provided MDM solutions when the home grown solution runs out of gas. But, even with a full stack of open flexible MDM technologies, creating a robust MDM application can be a daunting task. For example, a basic MDM solution will need: a set of data access methods that support master data as a service as well as direct real time access as well as batch loads and extracts; a data migration service for initial loads and periodic updates; a metadata management capability for items such as business entity matrixed relationships and hierarchies; a source system management capability to fully cross-reference business objects and to satisfy seemingly conflicting data ownership requirements; a data quality function that can find and eliminate duplicate data while insuring correct data attribute survivorship; a set of data quality functions that can manage structured and unstructured data; a data quality interface to assist with preventing new errors from entering the system even when data entry is outside the MDM application itself; a continuing data cleansing function to keep the data up to date; an internal triggering mechanism to create and deploy change information to all connected systems; a comprehensive role based data security system to control and monitor data access, update rights, and maintain change history; a flexible business rules engine for managing master data processes such as privacy and data movement; a user interface to support casual users and data stewards; a business intelligence structure to support profiling, compliance, and business performance indicators; and an analytical foundation for directly analyzing master data. Oracle's pre-built MDM Hub solutions are full-featured 3-tier Internet applications designed to participate in the full Oracle technology stack or to run independently in other open IT SOA environments. Building MDM solutions from scratch can take years. Oracle's pre-built MDM solutions can bring quality data to the enterprise in a matter of months. But if you must build, at lease build with the world's best technology stack in a way that simplifies the eventual upgrade to Oracle MDM and to the full enterprise wide information architecture that it enables.

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  • BPM Suite 11gR1 Released

    - by Manoj Das
    This morning (April 27th, 2010), Oracle BPM Suite 11gR1 became available for download from OTN and eDelivery. If you have been following our plans in this area, you know that this is the release unifying BEA ALBPM product, which became Oracle BPM10gR3, with the Oracle stack. Some of the highlights of this release are: BPMN 2.0 modeling and simulation Web based Process Composer for BPMN and Rules authoring Zero-code environment with full access to Oracle SOA Suite’s rich set of application and other adapters Process Spaces – Out-of-box integration with Web Center Suite Process Analytics – Native process cubes as well as integration with Oracle BAM You can learn more about this release from the documentation. Notes about downloading and installing Please note that Oracle BPM Suite 11gR1 is delivered and installed as part of SOA 11.1.1.3.0, which is a sparse release (only incremental patch). To install: Download and install SOA 11.1.1.2.0, which is a full release (you can find the bits at the above location) Download and install SOA 11.1.1.3.0 During configure step (using the Fusion Middleware configuration wizard), use the Oracle Business Process Management template supplied with the SOA Suite11g (11.1.1.3.0) If you plan to use Process Spaces, also install Web Center 11.1.1.3.0, which also is delivered as a sparse release and needs to be installed on top of Web Center 11.1.1.2.0 Some early feedback We have been receiving very encouraging feedback on this release. Some quotes from partners are included below: “I just attended a preview workshop on BPM Studio, Oracle's BPMN 2.0 tool, held by Clemens Utschig Utschig from Oracle HQ. The usability and ease to get started are impressive. In the business view analysts can intuitively start modeling, then developers refine in their own, more technical view. The BPM Studio sets itself apart from pure play BPMN 2.0 tools by being seamlessly integrated inside a holistic SOA / BPM toolset: BPMN models are placed in SCA-Composites in SOA Suite 11g. This allows to abstract away the complexities of SOA integration aspects from business process aspects. For UIs in BPMN tasks, you have the richness of ADF 11g based Frontends. With BPM Studio we architects have a new modeling and development IDE that gives us interesting design challenges to grasp and elaborate, since many things BPMN 2.0 are different from good ol' BPEL. For example, for simple transformations, you don't use BPEL "assign" any more, but add the transformation directly to the service call. There is much less XPath involved. And, there is no translation from model to BPEL code anymore, so the awkward process model to BPEL roundtrip, which never really worked as well as it looked on marketing slides, is obsolete: With BPMN 2.0 "the model is the code". Now, these are great times to start the journey into BPM! Some tips: Start Projects smoothly, with initial processes being not overly complex and not using the more esoteric areas of BPMN, to manage the learning path and to stay successful with each iteration. Verify non functional requirements by conducting performance and load tests early. As mentioned above, separate all technical integration logic into SOA Suite or Oracle Service Bus. And - share your experience!” Hajo Normann, SOA Architect - Oracle ACE Director - Co-Leader DOAG SIG SOA   "Reuse of components across the Oracle 11G Fusion Middleware stack, like for instance a Database Adapter, is essential. It improves stability and predictability of the solution. BPM just is one of the components plugging into the stack and reuses all other components." Mr. Leon Smiers, Oracle Solution Architect, Capgemini   “I had the opportunity to follow a hands-on workshop held by Clemens for Oracle partners and I was really impressed of the overall offering of BPM11g. BPM11g allows the execution of BPMN 2.0 processes, without having to transform/translate them first to BPEL in order to be executable. The fact that BPMN uses the same underlying service infrastructure of SOA Suite 11g has a lot of benefits for us already familiar with SOA Suite 11g. BPMN is just another SCA component within a SCA composite and can (re)use all the existing components like Rules, Human Workflow, Adapters and Mediator. I also like the fact that BPMN runs on the same service engine as BPEL. By that all known best practices for making a BPEL  process reliable are valid for BPMN processes as well. Last but not least, BPMN is integrated into the superior end-to-end tracing of SOA Suite 11g. With BPM11g, Oracle offers a very competitive product which will have a big effect on the IT market. Clemens and Jürgen: Thanks for the great workshop! I’m really looking forward to my first project using Oracle BPM11g!” Guido Schmutz, Technology Manager / Oracle ACE Director for Fusion Middleware and SOA, Company:  Trivadis Some earlier feedback were summarized in this post.

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  • Monitoring the Application alongside SQL Server

    - by Tony Davis
    Sometimes, on Simple-Talk, it takes a while to spot strange and unexpected patterns of user activity, or small bugs. For example, one morning we spotted that an article’s comment count had leapt to 1485, but that only four were displayed. With some rooting around in Google Analytics, and the endlessly annoying Community Server admin-interface, we were able to work out that a few days previously the article had been subject to a spam attack and that the comment count was for some reason including both accepted and unaccepted comments (which in turn uncovered a bug in the SQL). This sort of incident made us a lot keener on monitoring Simple-talk website usage more effectively. However, the metrics we wanted are troublesome, because they are far too specific for Google Analytics to measure, and the SQL Server backend doesn’t keep sufficient information to enable us to plot trends. The latter could provide, for example, the total number of comments made on, or votes cast for, articles, over all time, but not the number that occur by hour over a set time. We lacked a baseline, in other words. We couldn’t alter the database, as it is a bought-in package. We had neither the resources nor inclination to build-in dedicated application monitoring. Possibly, we could investigate a third-party tool to do the job; but then it occurred to us that we were already using a monitoring tool (SQL Monitor) to keep an eye on the database. It stored data, made graphs and sent alerts. Could we get it to monitor some aspects of the application as well? Of course, SQL Monitor’s single purpose is to check and monitor SQL Server, over time, rather than to monitor applications that use SQL Server. However, how different is the business of gathering and plotting SQL Server Wait Stats, from gathering and plotting various aspects of user activity on the site? Not a lot, it turns out. The latest version allows us to write our own custom monitoring scripts, meaning that we could now monitor any metric in the application that returns an integer. It took little time to write a simple SQL Query that collects basic metrics of the total number of subscribers, votes cast, comments made, or views of articles, over time. The SQL Monitor database polls Simple-Talk every second or so in order to get the latest totals, and can then store and plot this information, or even correlate SQL Server usage to application usage. You can see the live data by visiting monitor.red-gate.com. Click the "Analysis" tab, and select one of the "Simple-talk:" entries in the "Show" box and an appropriate data range (e.g. last 30 days). It’s nascent, and we’re still working on it, but it’s already given us more confidence that we’ll spot quickly trends, bugs, or bursts of ‘abnormal’ activity. If there is a sudden rise in comments, we get an alert, and if it’s due to a spam attack, we can moderate or ban the perpetrator very quickly. We’ve often argued that a tool should perform a single job well rather than turn into a Swiss-army knife, but ironically we’ve rather appreciated being able to make best use of what’s there anyway for a slightly different purpose. Is this a good or common practice? What do you think? Cheers, Tony.

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  • BIND9 server not responding to external queries

    - by Twitchy
    I have set up a BIND server on my dedicated box which I want to host a nameserver for my domain on. When I use dig @202.169.196.59 nzserver.co.nz locally on the server I get the following response... ; <<>> DiG 9.8.1-P1 <<>> @202.169.196.59 nzserver.co.nz ; (1 server found) ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 43773 ;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 2 ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;nzserver.co.nz. IN A ;; ANSWER SECTION: nzserver.co.nz. 3600 IN A 202.169.196.59 ;; AUTHORITY SECTION: nzserver.co.nz. 3600 IN NS ns2.nzserver.co.nz. nzserver.co.nz. 3600 IN NS ns1.nzserver.co.nz. ;; ADDITIONAL SECTION: ns1.nzserver.co.nz. 3600 IN A 202.169.196.59 ns2.nzserver.co.nz. 3600 IN A 202.169.196.59 ;; Query time: 0 msec ;; SERVER: 202.169.196.59#53(202.169.196.59) ;; WHEN: Sat Oct 27 15:40:45 2012 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 116 Which is good, and is the output I want. But when simply using dig nzserver.co.nz I get... ; <<>> DiG 9.8.1-P1 <<>> nzserver.co.nz ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: SERVFAIL, id: 16970 ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0 ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;nzserver.co.nz. IN A ;; Query time: 308 msec ;; SERVER: 202.169.192.61#53(202.169.192.61) ;; WHEN: Sat Oct 27 17:09:12 2012 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 32 And if I use dig @202.169.196.59 nzserver.co.nz on another linux machine I get... ; <<>> DiG 9.7.3 <<>> @202.169.196.59 nzserver.co.nz ; (1 server found) ;; global options: +cmd ;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached Am I doing something wrong here? Port 53 is definitely open. /etc/bind/named.conf.options options { directory "/var/cache/bind"; forwarders { 202.169.192.61; 202.169.206.10; }; listen-on { 202.169.196.59; }; }; /etc/bind/named.conf.local zone "nzserver.co.nz" { type master; file "/etc/bind/nzserver.co.nz.zone"; }; /etc/bind/nzserver.co.nz.zone ; BIND db file for nzserver.co.nz $ORIGIN nzserver.co.nz. @ IN SOA ns1.nzserver.co.nz. mr.steven.french.gmail.com. ( 2012102606 28800 7200 864000 3600 ) NS ns1.nzserver.co.nz. NS ns2.nzserver.co.nz. MX 10 mail.nzserver.co.nz. @ IN A 202.169.196.59 * IN A 202.169.196.59 ns1 IN A 202.169.196.59 ns2 IN A 202.169.196.59 www IN A 202.169.196.59 mail IN A 202.169.196.59

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  • F1 Pit Pragmatics

    - by mikef
    "I hate computers. No, really, I hate them. I love the communications they facilitate, I love the conveniences they provide to my life. but I actually hate the computers themselves." - Scott Merrill, 'I hate computers: confessions of a Sysadmin' If Scott's goal was to polarize opinion and trigger raging arguments over the 'real reasons why computers suck', then he certainly succeeded. Impassioned vitriol sits side-by-side with rational debate. Yet Scott's fundamental point is absolutely on the money - Computers are a means to an end. The IT industry is finally starting to put weight behind the notion that good User Experience is an absolutely crucial goal, a cause championed by the likes of Microsoft's Bill Buxton, and which Apple's increasingly ubiquitous touch screen interface exemplifies. However, that doesn't change the fact that, occasionally, you just have to man up and deal with complex systems. In fact, sometimes you just need to sacrifice everything else in the name of performance. You'll find a perfect example of this Faustian bargain in Trevor Clarke's fascinating look into the (diabolical) IT infrastructure of modern F1 racing - high performance, high availability. high everything. To paraphrase, each car has up to 100 sensors, transmitting around 30Gb of data over the course of a race (70% in real-time). This data is then processed by no less than 3 servers (per car) so that the engineers in the pit have access to telemetry, strategy information, timing feeds, a connection back to the operations room in the team's home base - the list goes on. All of this while the servers are exposed "to carbon dust, oil, vibration, rain, heat, [and] variable power". Now, this is admittedly an extreme context where there's no real choice but to use complex systems where ease-of-use is, at best, a secondary concern. The flip-side is seen in small-scale personal computing such as that seen in Apple's iDevices, which are incredibly intuitive but limited in their scope. In terms of what kinds of systems they prefer to use, I suspect that most SysAdmins find themselves somewhere along this axis of Power vs. Usability, and which end of this axis you resonate with also hints at where you think the IT industry should focus its energy. Do you see yourself in the F1 pit, making split-second decisions, wrestling with information flows and reticent hardware to bend them to your will? If so, I imagine you feel that computers are subtle tools which need to be tuned and honed, using the advanced knowledge possessed only by responsible SysAdmins (If you have an iPhone, I suspect it's jail-broken). If the machines throw enigmatic errors, it's the price of flexibility and raw power. Alternatively, would you prefer to have your role more accessible, with users empowered by knowledge, spreading the load of managing IT environments? In that case, then you want hardware and software to have User Experience as their primary focus, and are of the "means to an end" school of thought (you're probably also fed up with users not listening to you when you try and help). At its heart, the dichotomy is between raw power (which might be difficult to use) and ease-of-use (which might have some limitations, but you can be up and running immediately). Of course, the ultimate goal is a fusion of flexibility, power and usability all in one system. It's achievable in specific software environments, and Red Gate considers it a target worth aiming for, but in other cases it's a goal right up there with cold fusion. I think it'll be a long time before we see it become ubiquitous. In the meantime, are you Power-Hungry or a Champion of Usability? Cheers, Michael Francis Simple Talk SysAdmin Editor

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  • SUPINFO International University in Mauritius

    Since a while I'm considering to pick up my activities as a student and I'd like to get a degree in Computer Science. Personal motivation I mean after all this years as a professional software (and database) developer I have the personal urge to complete this part of my education. Having various certifications by Microsoft and being awarded as an Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) twice looks pretty awesome on a resume but having a "proper" degree would just complete my package. During the last couple of years I already got in touch with C-SAC (local business school with degree courses), the University of Mauritius and BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT to check the options to enroll as an experienced software developer. Quite frankly, it was kind of alienating to receive that feedback: Start from scratch! No seriously? Spending x amount of years to sit for courses that might be outdated and form part of your daily routine? Probably being in an awkward situation in which your professional expertise might exceed the lecturers knowledge? I don't know... but if that's path to walk... Well, then I might have to go for it. SUPINFO International University Some weeks ago I was contacted by the General Manager, Education Recruitment and Development of Medine Education Village, Yamal Matabudul, to have a chat on how the local IT scene, namely the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community (MSCC), could assist in their plans to promote their upcoming campus. Medine went into partnership with the French-based SUPINFO International University and Mauritius will be the 36th location world-wide for SUPINFO. Actually, the concept of SUPINFO is very likely to the common understanding of an apprenticeship in Germany. Not only does a student enroll into the programme but will also be placed into various internships as part of the curriculum. It's a big advantage in my opinion as the person stays in touch with the daily procedures and workflows in the real world of IT. Statements like "We just received a 'crash course' of information and learned new technology which is equivalent to 1.5 months of lectures at the university" wouldn't form part of the experience of such an education. Open Day at the Medine Education Village Last Saturday, Medine organised their Open Day and it was the official inauguration of the SUPINFO campus in Mauritius. It's now listed on their website, too - but be warned, the site is mainly in French language although the courses are all done in English. Not only was it a big opportunity to "hang out" on the campus of Medine but it was great to see the first professional partners for their internship programme, too. Oh, just for the records, IOS Indian Ocean Software Ltd. will also be among the future employers for SUPINFO students. More about that in an upcoming blog entry. Open Day at Medine Education Village - SUPINFO International University in Mauritius Mr Alick Mouriesse, President of SUPINFO, arrived the previous day and he gave all attendees a great overview of the roots of SUPINFO, the general development of the educational syllabus and their high emphasis on their partnerships with local IT companies in order to assist their students to get future jobs but also feel the heartbeat of technology live. Something which is completely missing in classic institutions of tertiary education in Computer Science. And since I was on tour with my children, as usual during weekends, he also talked about the outlook of having a SUPINFO campus in Mauritius. Apart from the close connection to IT companies and providing internships to students, SUPINFO clearly works on an international level. Meaning students of SUPINFO can move around the globe and can continue their studies seamlessly. For example, you might enroll for your first year in France, then continue to do 2nd and 3rd year in Canada or any other country with a SUPINFO campus to earn your bachelor degree, and then live and study in Mauritius for the next 2 years to achieve a Master degree. Having a chat with Dale Smith, Expand Technologies, after his interesting session on Technological Entrepreneurship - TechPreneur More questions by other craftsmen of the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community And of course, this concept works in any direction, giving Mauritian students a huge (!) opportunity to live, study and work abroad. And thanks to this, Medine already announced that there will be new facilities near Cascavelle to provide dormitories and other facilities to international students coming to our island. Awesome! Okay, but why SUPINFO? Well, coming back to my original statement - I'd like to get a degree in Computer Science - SUPINFO has a process called Validation of Acquired Experience (VAE) which is tailor-made for employees in the field of IT, and allows you to enroll in their course programme. I already got in touch with their online support chat but was only redirected to some FAQs on their website, unfortunately. So, during the Open Day I seized the opportunity to have an one-on-one conversation with Alick Mouriesse, and he clearly encouraged me to gather my certifications and working experience. SUPINFO does an individual evaluation prior to their assignment regarding course level, and hopefully my chances of getting some modules ahead of studies are looking better than compared to the other institutes. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to go down the easy route but why should someone sit for "Database 101" or "Principles of OOP" when applying and preaching database normalisation and practicing Clean Code Developer are like flesh and blood? Anyway, I'll be off to get my transcripts of certificates together with my course assignments from the old days at the university. Yes, I studied Applied Chemistry for a couple of years before intersecting into IT and software development particularly... ;-)

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