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• What is Agile Modeling and why do I need it?

  What is Agile Modeling and why do I need it? Agile Modeling is an add-on to existing agile methodologies like Extreme programming (XP) and Rational Unified Process (RUP). Agile Modeling enables developers to develop a customized software development process that actually meets their current development needs and is flexible enough to adjust in the future. According to Scott Ambler, Agile Modeling consists of five core values that enable this methodology to be effective and light weight Agile Modeling Core Values: Communication Simplicity Feedback Courage Humility Communication is a key component to any successful project. Open communication between stakeholder and the development team is essential when developing new applications or maintaining legacy systems. Agile models promote communication amongst software development teams and stakeholders. Furthermore, Agile Models provide a common understanding of an application for members of a software development team allowing them to have a universal common point of reference. The use of simplicity in Agile Models enables the exploration of new ideas and concepts through the use of basic diagrams instead of investing the time in writing tens or hundreds of lines of code. Feedback in regards to application development is essential. Feedback allows a development team to confirm that the development path is on track. Agile Models allow for quick feedback from shareholders because minimal to no technical expertise is required to understand basic models. Courage is important because you need to make important decisions and be able to change direction by either discarding or refactoring your work when some of your decisions prove inadequate, according to Scott Ambler. As a member of a development team, we must admit that we do not know everything even though some of us think we do. This is where humility comes in to play. Everyone is a knowledge expert in their own specific domain. If you need help with your finances then you would consult an accountant. If you have a problem or are in need of help with a topic why would someone not consult with a subject expert? An effective approach is to assume that everyone involved with your project has equal value and therefore should be treated with respect. Agile Model Characteristics: Purposeful Understandable Sufficiently Accurate Sufficiently Consistent Sufficiently Detailed Provide Positive Value Simple as Possible Just Fulfill Basic Requirements According to Scott Ambler, Agile models are the most effective possible because the time that is invested in the model is just enough effort to complete the job. Furthermore, if a model isn’t good enough yet then additional effort can be invested to get more value out of the model. However if a model is good enough, for the current needs, or surpass the current needs, then any additional work done on the model would be a waste. It is important to remember that good enough is in the eye of the beholder, so this can be tough. In order for Agile Models to work effectively Active Stakeholder need to participation in the modeling process. Finally it is also very important to model with others, this allows for additionally input ensuring that all the shareholders needs are reflected in the models. How can Agile Models be incorporated in to our projects? Agile Models can be incorporated in to our project during the requirement gathering and design phases. As requirements are gathered the models should be updated to incorporate the new project details as they are defined and updated. Additionally, the Agile Models created during the requirement phase can be the bases for the models created during the design phase.  It is important to only add to the model when the changes fit within the agile model characteristics and they do not over complicate the design.

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• New Communications Industry Data Model with "Factory Installed" Predictive Analytics using Oracle Da

  - by charlie.berger

  Oracle Introduces Oracle Communications Data Model to Provide Actionable Insight for Communications Service Providers   We've integrated pre-installed analytical methodologies with the new Oracle Communications Data Model to deliver automated, simple, yet powerful predictive analytics solutions for customers.  Churn, sentiment analysis, identifying customer segments - all things that can be anticipated and hence, preconcieved and implemented inside an applications.  Read on for more information! TM Forum Management World, Nice, France - 18 May 2010 News Facts To help communications service providers (CSPs) manage and analyze rapidly growing data volumes cost effectively, Oracle today introduced the Oracle Communications Data Model. With the Oracle Communications Data Model, CSPs can achieve rapid time to value by quickly implementing a standards-based enterprise data warehouse that features communications industry-specific reporting, analytics and data mining. The combination of the Oracle Communications Data Model, Oracle Exadata and the Oracle Business Intelligence (BI) Foundation represents the most comprehensive data warehouse and BI solution for the communications industry. Also announced today, Hong Kong Broadband Network enhanced their data warehouse system, going live on Oracle Communications Data Model in three months. The leading provider increased its subscriber base by 37 percent in six months and reduced customer churn to less than one percent. Product Details Oracle Communications Data Model provides industry-specific schema and embedded analytics that address key areas such as customer management, marketing segmentation, product development and network health. CSPs can efficiently capture and monitor critical data and transform it into actionable information to support development and delivery of next-generation services using: More than 1,300 industry-specific measurements and key performance indicators (KPIs) such as network reliability statistics, provisioning metrics and customer churn propensity. Embedded OLAP cubes for extremely fast dimensional analysis of business information. Embedded data mining models for sophisticated trending and predictive analysis. Support for multiple lines of business, such as cable, mobile, wireline and Internet, which can be easily extended to support future requirements. With Oracle Communications Data Model, CSPs can jump start the implementation of a communications data warehouse in line with communications-industry standards including the TM Forum Information Framework (SID), formerly known as the Shared Information Model. Oracle Communications Data Model is optimized for any Oracle Database 11g platform, including Oracle Exadata, which can improve call data record query performance by 10x or more. Supporting Quotes "Oracle Communications Data Model covers a wide range of business areas that are relevant to modern communications service providers and is a comprehensive solution - with its data model and pre-packaged templates including BI dashboards, KPIs, OLAP cubes and mining models. It helps us save a great deal of time in building and implementing a customized data warehouse and enables us to leverage the advanced analytics quickly and more effectively," said Yasuki Hayashi, executive manager, NTT Comware Corporation. "Data volumes will only continue to grow as communications service providers expand next-generation networks, deploy new services and adopt new business models. They will increasingly need efficient, reliable data warehouses to capture key insights on data such as customer value, network value and churn probability. With the Oracle Communications Data Model, Oracle has demonstrated its commitment to meeting these needs by delivering data warehouse tools designed to fill communications industry-specific needs," said Elisabeth Rainge, program director, Network Software, IDC. "The TM Forum Conformance Mark provides reassurance to customers seeking standards-based, and therefore, cost-effective and flexible solutions. TM Forum is extremely pleased to work with Oracle to certify its Oracle Communications Data Model solution. Upon successful completion, this certification will represent the broadest and most complete implementation of the TM Forum Information Framework to date, with more than 130 aggregate business entities," said Keith Willetts, chairman and chief executive officer, TM Forum. Supporting Resources Oracle Communications Oracle Communications Data Model Data Sheet Oracle Communications Data Model Podcast Oracle Data Warehousing Oracle Communications on YouTube Oracle Communications on Delicious Oracle Communications on Facebook Oracle Communications on Twitter Oracle Communications on LinkedIn Oracle Database on Twitter The Data Warehouse Insider Blog

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• Converting Openfire IM datetime values in SQL Server to / from VARCHAR(15) and DATETIME data types

  - by Brian Biales

  A client is using Openfire IM for their users, and would like some custom queries to audit user conversations (which are stored by Openfire in tables in the SQL Server database). Because Openfire supports multiple database servers and multiple platforms, the designers chose to store all date/time stamps in the database as 15 character strings, which get converted to Java Date objects in their code (Openfire is written in Java).  I did some digging around, and, so I don't forget and in case someone else will find this useful, I will put the simple algorithms here for converting back and forth between SQL DATETIME and the Java string representation. The Java string representation is the number of milliseconds since 1/1/1970.  SQL Server's DATETIME is actually represented as a float, the value being the number of days since 1/1/1900, the portion after the decimal point representing the hours/minutes/seconds/milliseconds... as a fractional part of a day.  Try this and you will see this is true:     SELECT CAST(0 AS DATETIME) and you will see it returns the date 1/1/1900. The difference in days between SQL Server's 0 date of 1/1/1900 and the Java representation's 0 date of 1/1/1970 is found easily using the following SQL:   SELECT DATEDIFF(D, '1900-01-01', '1970-01-01') which returns 25567.  There are 25567 days between these dates. So to convert from the Java string to SQL Server's date time, we need to convert the number of milliseconds to a floating point representation of the number of days since 1/1/1970, then add the 25567 to change this to the number of days since 1/1/1900.  To convert to days, you need to divide the number by 1000 ms/s, then by  60 seconds/minute, then by 60 minutes/hour, then by 24 hours/day.  Or simply divide by 1000*60*60*24, or 86400000.   So, to summarize, we need to cast this string as a float, divide by 86400000 milliseconds/day, then add 25567 days, and cast the resulting value to a DateTime.  Here is an example:   DECLARE @tmp as VARCHAR(15)   SET @tmp = '1268231722123'   SELECT @tmp as JavaTime, CAST((CAST(@tmp AS FLOAT) / 86400000) + 25567 AS DATETIME) as SQLTime   To convert from SQL datetime back to the Java time format is not quite as simple, I found, because floats of that size do not convert nicely to strings, they end up in scientific notation using the CONVERT function or CAST function.  But I found a couple ways around that problem. You can convert a date to the number of  seconds since 1/1/1970 very easily using the DATEDIFF function, as this value fits in an Int.  If you don't need to worry about the milliseconds, simply cast this integer as a string, and then concatenate '000' at the end, essentially multiplying this number by 1000, and making it milliseconds since 1/1/1970.  If, however, you do care about the milliseconds, you will need to use DATEPART to get the milliseconds part of the date, cast this integer to a string, and then pad zeros on the left to make sure this is three digits, and concatenate these three digits to the number of seconds string above.  And finally, I discovered by casting to DECIMAL(15,0) then to VARCHAR(15), I avoid the scientific notation issue.  So here are all my examples, pick the one you like best... First, here is the simple approach if you don't care about the milliseconds:   DECLARE @tmp as VARCHAR(15)   DECLARE @dt as DATETIME   SET @dt = '2010-03-10 14:35:22.123'   SET @tmp = CAST(DATEDIFF(s, '1970-01-01 00:00:00' , @dt) AS VARCHAR(15)) + '000'   SELECT @tmp as JavaTime, @dt as SQLTime If you want to keep the milliseconds:   DECLARE @tmp as VARCHAR(15)   DECLARE @dt as DATETIME   DECLARE @ms as int   SET @dt = '2010-03-10 14:35:22.123'   SET @ms as DATEPART(ms, @dt)   SET @tmp = CAST(DATEDIFF(s, '1970-01-01 00:00:00' , @dt) AS VARCHAR(15))           + RIGHT('000' + CAST(@ms AS VARCHAR(3)), 3)   SELECT @tmp as JavaTime, @dt as SQLTime Or, in one fell swoop:   DECLARE @dt as DATETIME   SET @dt = '2010-03-10 14:35:22.123'   SELECT @dt as SQLTime     , CAST(DATEDIFF(s, '1970-01-01 00:00:00' , @dt) AS VARCHAR(15))           + RIGHT('000' + CAST( DATEPART(ms, @dt) AS VARCHAR(3)), 3) as JavaTime   And finally, a way to simply reverse the math used converting from Java date to SQL date. Note the parenthesis - watch out for operator precedence, you want to subtract, then multiply:   DECLARE @dt as DATETIME   SET @dt = '2010-03-10 14:35:22.123'   SELECT @dt as SQLTime     , CAST(CAST((CAST(@dt as Float) - 25567.0) * 86400000.0 as DECIMAL(15,0)) as VARCHAR(15)) as JavaTime Interestingly, I found that converting to SQL Date time can lose some accuracy, when I converted the time above to Java time then converted  that back to DateTime, the number of milliseconds is 120, not 123.  As I am not interested in the milliseconds, this is ok for me.  But you may want to look into using DateTime2 in SQL Server 2008 for more accuracy.

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• Replace Listmenu with Textfield

  - by BRADINO

  Say you have a dropdown form field where you ask the user how they heard about you. You have numerous options and also an other field where if they selected other, then they enter the value in a text field. This is a cleaner alternative where if the user selects Other, then the dropdown turns into a textfield of the same name, so that your post routine, grooming, validation, writing to DB etc all works seamlessly. This example uses prototype JS library. Here is a working example: How did you hear about BRADINO? Select Google Yahoo MSN Other All you have to do is have an dropdown option for Other and then add call the function onchange: onchange="overrideListmenu('how-heard');" Here is the javascript function that uses Prototype: function overrideListmenu(field){         if ($F(field) == 'Other'){             Element.replace($(field), '<input name="'+field+'" id="'+field+'" type="text" value="">');                 $(field).focus();         } } Here is the javascript function that uses jQuery: function overrideListmenu(field){         if ($('#'+field).val() == 'Other'){             $('#'+field).after('<input name="'+field+'" id="'+field+'" type="text" value="">').remove();                 $('#'+field).focus();         } } listmenu replace textfield textfield for other how did you hear about us

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• Big Data: Size isn’t everything

  - by Simon Elliston Ball

  Big Data has a big problem; it’s the word “Big”. These days, a quick Google search will uncover terabytes of negative opinion about the futility of relying on huge volumes of data to produce magical, meaningful insight. There are also many clichéd but correct assertions about the difficulties of correlation versus causation, in massive data sets. In reading some of these pieces, I begin to understand how climatologists must feel when people complain ironically about “global warming” during snowfall. Big Data has a name problem. There is a lot more to it than size. Shape, Speed, and…err…Veracity are also key elements (now I understand why Gartner and the gang went with V’s instead of S’s). The need to handle data of different shapes (Variety) is not new. Data developers have always had to mold strange-shaped data into our reporting systems, integrating with semi-structured sources, and even straying into full-text searching. However, what we lacked was an easy way to add semi-structured and unstructured data to our arsenal. New “Big Data” tools such as MongoDB, and other NoSQL (Not Only SQL) databases, or a graph database like Neo4J, fill this gap. Still, to many, they simply introduce noise to the clean signal that is their sensibly normalized data structures. What about speed (Velocity)? It’s not just high frequency trading that generates data faster than a single system can handle. Many other applications need to make trade-offs that traditional databases won’t, in order to cope with high data insert speeds, or to extract quickly the required information from data streams. Unfortunately, many people equate Big Data with the Hadoop platform, whose batch driven queries and job processing queues have little to do with “velocity”. StreamInsight, Esper and Tibco BusinessEvents are examples of Big Data tools designed to handle high-velocity data streams. Again, the name doesn’t do the discipline of Big Data any favors. Ultimately, though, does analyzing fast moving data produce insights as useful as the ones we get through a more considered approach, enabled by traditional BI? Finally, we have Veracity and Value. In many ways, these additions to the classic Volume, Velocity and Variety trio acknowledge the criticism that without high-quality data and genuinely valuable outputs then data, big or otherwise, is worthless. As a discipline, Big Data has recognized this, and data quality and cleaning tools are starting to appear to support it. Rather than simply decrying the irrelevance of Volume, we need as a profession to focus how to improve Veracity and Value. Perhaps we should just declare the ‘Big’ silent, embrace these new data tools and help develop better practices for their use, just as we did the good old RDBMS? What does Big Data mean to you? Which V gives your business the most pain, or the most value? Do you see these new tools as a useful addition to the BI toolbox, or are they just enabling a dangerous trend to find ghosts in the noise?

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• The New Social Developer Community: a Q&A

  - by Mike Stiles

  In our last blog, we introduced the opportunities that lie ahead for social developers as social applications reach across every aspect and function of the enterprise. Leading the upcoming JavaOne Social Developer Program October 2 at the San Francisco Hilton is Roland Smart, VP of Social Marketing at Oracle. I got to ask Roland a few of the questions an existing or budding social developer might want to know as social extends beyond interacting with friends and marketing and into the enterprise. Why is it smart for developers to specialize as social developers? What opportunities lie in the immediate future that’s making this a critical, in-demand position? Social has changed the way we interact with brands and with each other across the web. As we acclimate to a new social paradigm we also look to extend its benefits into new areas of our lives. The workplace is a logical next step, and we're starting to see social interactions more and more in this context. But unlocking the value of social interactions requires technical expertise and knowledge of developing social apps that tap into the social graph. Developers focused on integrating social experiences into enterprise applications must be familiar with popular social APIs and must understand how to build enterprise social graphs of their own. These developers are part of an emerging community of social developers and are key to socially enabling the enterprise. Facebook rebranded their Preferred Developer Consultant Group (PDC) and the Preferred Marketing Developers (PMD) to underscore the fact developers are required inside marketing organizations to unlock the full potential of their platform. While this trend is starting on the marketing side with marketing developers, this is just an extension of the social developer concept that will ultimately drive social across the enterprise. What are some of the various ways social will be making its way into every area of enterprise organizations? How will it be utilized and what kinds of applications are going to be needed to facilitate and maximize these changes? Check out Oracle’s vision for the social-enabled enterprise. It’s a high-level overview of how social will impact across the enterprise. For example: HR can leverage social in recruiting and retentionSales can leverage social as a prospecting toolMarketing can use social to gain market insightCustomer support can use social to leverage community support to improve customer satisfaction while reducing service costOperations can leverage social improve systems That’s only the beginning. Once sleeves get rolled up and social developers and innovators get to work, still more social functions will no doubt emerge. What makes Java one of, if not the most viable platform on which to build these new enterprise social applications? Java is certainly one of the best platforms on which to build social experiences because there’s such a large existing community of Java developers. This means you can affordably recruit talent, and it's possible to effectively solicit advice from the community through various means, including our new Social Developer Community. Beyond that, there are already some great proof points Java is the best platform for creating social experiences at scale. Consider LinkedIn and Twitter. Tell us more about the benefits of collaboration and more about what the Oracle Social Developer Community is. What opportunities does that offer up and what are some of the ways developers can actively participate in and benefit from that community? Much has been written about the overall benefits of collaborating with other developers. Those include an opportunity to introduce yourself to the community of social developers, foster a reputation, establish an expertise, contribute to the advancement of the space, get feedback, experiment with the latest concepts, and gain inspiration. In short, collaboration is a tool that must be applied properly within a framework to get the most value out of it. The OSDC is a place where social developers can congregate to discuss the opportunities/challenges of building social integrations into their applications. What “needs” will this community have? We don't know yet. But we wanted to create a forum where we can engage and understand what social developers are thinking about, excited about, struggling with, etc. The OSDL can then step in if we can help remove barriers and add value in a serious and committed way so Oracle can help drive practice development.

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• Remove Programs from the Open With Menu in Explorer

  - by Matthew Guay

  Would you like to clean up the Open with menu in Windows Explorer?  Here’s how you can remove program entries you don’t want in this menu on any version of Windows. Have you ever accidently opened an mp3 with Notepad, or a zip file with Word?  If so, you’re also likely irritated that these programs now show up in the Open with menu in Windows Explorer every time you select one of those files.  Whenever you open a file type with a particular program, Windows will add an entry for it to the Open with menu.  Usually this is helpful, but it can also clutter up the menu with wrong entries. On our computer, we have tried to open a PDF file with Word and Notepad, neither which can actually view the PDF itself.  Let’s remove these entries.  To do this, we need to remove the registry entries for these programs.  Enter regedit in your Start menu search or in the Run command to open the Registry editor. Backup your registry first just in case, so you can roll-back any changes you make if you accidently delete the wrong value.  Now, browse to the following key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER \Software \Microsoft \Windows \CurrentVersion \ Explorer \FileExts\ Here you’ll see a list of all the file extensions that are registered on your computer. Browse to the file extension you wish to edit, click the white triangle beside it to see the subfolders, and select OpenWithList.  In our test, we want to change the programs associated with PDF files, so we select the OpenWithList folder under .pdf. Notice the names of the programs under the Data column on the right.  Right-click the value for the program you don’t want to see in the Open With menu and select Delete. Click Yes at the prompt to confirm that you want to delete this value. Repeat these steps with all the programs you want to remove from this file type’s Open with menu.  You can go ahead and remove entries from other file types as well if you wish. Once you’ve removed the entries you didn’t want to see, check out the Open with menu in Explorer again.  Now it will be much more streamlined and will only show the programs you want to see. Conclusion This simple trick can help you keep your Open with menu tidy, and only show the programs you want in the list.  It can be irritating to accidently open files in programs that can’t even read them.  This trick works in all versions of Windows, including 2000, XP, Vista, and Windows 7. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Remove ISP Text or Corporate Branding from Internet Explorer Title BarRemove the Username From the Start Menu in XPKeep Start Menu From Closing After Opening ApplicationsRemove PartyPoker (Or Other Items) from the Internet Explorer Tools MenuUninstall, Disable, or Delete Internet Explorer 8 from Windows 7 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 OpenDNS Guide Google TV The iPod Revolution Ultimate Boot CD can help when disaster strikes Windows Firewall with Advanced Security – How To Guides Sculptris 1.0, 3D Drawing app

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• To sample or not to sample...

  - by [email protected]

  Ideally, we would know the exact answer to every question. How many people support presidential candidate A vs. B? How many people suffer from H1N1 in a given state? Does this batch of manufactured widgets have any defective parts? Knowing exact answers is expensive in terms of time and money and, in most cases, is impractical if not impossible. Consider asking every person in a region for their candidate preference, testing every person with flu symptoms for H1N1 (assuming every person reported when they had flu symptoms), or destructively testing widgets to determine if they are "good" (leaving no product to sell). Knowing exact answers, fortunately, isn't necessary or even useful in many situations. Understanding the direction of a trend or statistically significant results may be sufficient to answer the underlying question: who is likely to win the election, have we likely reached a critical threshold for flu, or is this batch of widgets good enough to ship? Statistics help us to answer these questions with a certain degree of confidence. This focuses on how we collect data. In data mining, we focus on the use of data, that is data that has already been collected. In some cases, we may have all the data (all purchases made by all customers), in others the data may have been collected using sampling (voters, their demographics and candidate choice). Building data mining models on all of your data can be expensive in terms of time and hardware resources. Consider a company with 40 million customers. Do we need to mine all 40 million customers to get useful data mining models? The quality of models built on all data may be no better than models built on a relatively small sample. Determining how much is a reasonable amount of data involves experimentation. When starting the model building process on large datasets, it is often more efficient to begin with a small sample, perhaps 1000 - 10,000 cases (records) depending on the algorithm, source data, and hardware. This allows you to see quickly what issues might arise with choice of algorithm, algorithm settings, data quality, and need for further data preparation. Instead of waiting for a model on a large dataset to build only to find that the results don't meet expectations, once you are satisfied with the results on the initial sample, you can  take a larger sample to see if model quality improves, and to get a sense of how the algorithm scales to the particular dataset. If model accuracy or quality continues to improve, consider increasing the sample size. Sampling in data mining is also used to produce a held-aside or test dataset for assessing classification and regression model accuracy. Here, we reserve some of the build data (data that includes known target values) to be used for an honest estimate of model error using data the model has not seen before. This sampling transformation is often called a split because the build data is split into two randomly selected sets, often with 60% of the records being used for model building and 40% for testing. Sampling must be performed with care, as it can adversely affect model quality and usability. Even a truly random sample doesn't guarantee that all values are represented in a given attribute. This is particularly troublesome when the attribute with omitted values is the target. A predictive model that has not seen any examples for a particular target value can never predict that target value! For other attributes, values may consist of a single value (a constant attribute) or all unique values (an identifier attribute), each of which may be excluded during mining. Values from categorical predictor attributes that didn't appear in the training data are not used when testing or scoring datasets. In subsequent posts, we'll talk about three sampling techniques using Oracle Database: simple random sampling without replacement, stratified sampling, and simple random sampling with replacement.

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• JDBC Triggers

  - by Tim Dexter

  Received a question from a customer last week, they were using the new rollup patch on top of 10.1.3.4.1. What are these boxes for? Don't you know? Surely? Well, they are for ... that new functionality, you know it's in the user docs, that thingmabobby doodah. OK, I dont know either, I can have a guess but let me check first. Serveral IM sessions, emails and a dig through the readme for the new patch and I had my answer. Its not in the official documentation, yet. Leslie is on the case. The two fields were designed to allow an Admin to set a users context attributes before a connection is made to a database and for un-setting the attributes after the connection is broken by the extraction engine. We got a sample from the Enterprise Manager team on how they will be using it with their VPD connections. FUNCTION bip_to_em_user (user_name_in IN VARCHAR2) RETURN BOOLEAN IS BEGIN SETEMUSERCONTEXT(user_name_in, MGMT_USER.OP_SET_IDENTIFIER); return TRUE; END bip_to_em_user; And used in the jdbc data source definition like this (pre-process function): sysman.mgmt_bip.bip_to_em_user(:xdo_user_name) You, of course can call any function that is going to return a boolean value, another example might be. FUNCTION set_per_process_username (username_in IN VARCHAR2) RETURN BOOLEAN IS BEGIN SETUSERCONTEXT(username_in); return TRUE; END set_per_process_username Just use your own function/package to set some user context. Very grateful for the mail from Leslie on the EM team's usage but I had to try it out. Rather than set up a VPD, I opted for a simpler test. Can I log the comings and goings of users and their queries using the same pre-process text box. Reaching back into the depths of my developer brain to remember some pl/sql, it was not that deep and I came up with: CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION BIPTEST (user_name_in IN VARCHAR2, smode IN VARCHAR2) RETURN BOOLEAN AS BEGIN INSERT INTO LOGTAB VALUES(user_name_in, sysdate,smode); RETURN true; END BIPTEST; To call it in the pre-fetch trigger. BIPTEST(:xdo_user_name) Not going to set the pl/sql world alight I know, but you get the idea. As a new connection is made to the database its logged in the LOGTAB table. The SMODE value just sets if its an entry or an exit. I used the pre- and post- boxes. NAME UPDATE_DATE S_FLAG oracle 14-MAY-10 09.51.34.000000000 AM Start oracle 14-MAY-10 10.23.57.000000000 AM Finish administrator 14-MAY-10 09.51.38.000000000 AM Start administrator 14-MAY-10 09.51.38.000000000 AM Finish oracle 14-MAY-10 09.51.42.000000000 AM Start oracle 14-MAY-10 09.51.42.000000000 AM Finish It works very well, I had some fun trying to find a nasty query for the extraction engine so that the timestamps from in to out actually had a difference. That engine is fast! The only derived value you can pass from BIP is :xdo_user_name. None of the other server values are available. Connection pools are not currently supported but planned for a future release. Now you know what those fields are for and look for some official documentation, rather than my ramblings, coming soon!

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• concurrency::accelerator_view

  - by Daniel Moth

  Overview We saw previously that accelerator represents a target for our C++ AMP computation or memory allocation and that there is a notion of a default accelerator. We ended that post by introducing how one can obtain accelerator_view objects from an accelerator object through the accelerator class's default_view property and the create_view method. The accelerator_view objects can be thought of as handles to an accelerator. You can also construct an accelerator_view given another accelerator_view (through the copy constructor or the assignment operator overload). Speaking of operator overloading, you can also compare (for equality and inequality) two accelerator_view objects between them to determine if they refer to the same underlying accelerator. We'll see later that when we use concurrency::array objects, the allocation of data takes place on an accelerator at array construction time, so there is a constructor overload that accepts an accelerator_view object. We'll also see later that a new concurrency::parallel_for_each function overload can take an accelerator_view object, so it knows on what target to execute the computation (represented by a lambda that the parallel_for_each also accepts). Beyond normal usage, accelerator_view is a quality of service concept that offers isolation to multiple "consumers" of an accelerator. If in your code you are accessing the accelerator from multiple threads (or, in general, from different parts of your app), then you'll want to create separate accelerator_view objects for each thread. flush, wait, and queuing_mode When you create an accelerator_view via the create_view method of the accelerator, you pass in an option of immediate or deferred, which are the two members of the queuing_mode enum. At any point you can access this value from the queuing_mode property of the accelerator_view. When the queuing_mode value is immediate (which is the default), any commands sent to the device such as kernel invocations and data transfers (e.g. parallel_for_each and copy, as we'll see in future posts), will get submitted as soon as the runtime sees fit (that is the definition of immediate). When the value of queuing_mode is deferred, the commands will be batched up. To send all buffered commands to the device for execution, there is a non-blocking flush method that you can call. If you wish to block until all the commands have been sent, there is a wait method you can call. Deferring is a more advanced scenario aimed at performance gains when you are submitting many device commands and you want to avoid the tiny overhead of flushing/submitting each command separately. Querying information Just like accelerator, accelerator_view exposes the is_debug and version properties. In fact, you can always access the accelerator object from the accelerator property on the accelerator_view class to access the accelerator interface we looked at previously. Interop with D3D (aka DX) In a later post I'll show an example of an app that uses C++ AMP to compute data that is used in pixel shaders. In those scenarios, you can benefit by integrating C++ AMP into your graphics pipeline and one of the building blocks for that is being able to use the same device context from both the compute kernel and the other shaders. You can do that by going from accelerator_view to device context (and vice versa), through part of our interop API in amp.h: *get_device, create_accelerator_view. More on those in a later post. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• Implementing Database Settings Using Policy Based Management

  - by Ashish Kumar Mehta

  Introduction Database Administrators have always had a tough time to ensuring that all the SQL Servers administered by them are configured according to the policies and standards of organization. Using SQL Server’s  Policy Based Management feature DBAs can now manage one or more instances of SQL Server 2008 and check for policy compliance issues. In this article we will utilize Policy Based Management (aka Declarative Management Framework or DMF) feature of SQL Server to implement and verify database settings on all production databases. It is best practice to enforce the below settings on each Production database. However, it can be tedious to go through each database and then check whether the below database settings are implemented across databases. In this article I will explain it to you how to utilize the Policy Based Management Feature of SQL Server 2008 to create a policy to verify these settings on all databases and in cases of non-complaince how to bring them back into complaince. Database setting to enforce on each user database : Auto Close and Auto Shrink Properties of database set to False Auto Create Statistics and Auto Update Statistics set to True Compatibility Level of all the user database set as 100 Page Verify set as CHECKSUM Recovery Model of all user database set to Full Restrict Access set as MULTI_USER Configure a Policy to Verify Database Settings 1. Connect to SQL Server 2008 Instance using SQL Server Management Studio 2. In the Object Explorer, Click on Management > Policy Management and you will be able to see Policies, Conditions & Facets as child nodes 3. Right click Policies and then select New Policy…. from the drop down list as shown in the snippet below to open the  Create New Policy Popup window. 4. In the Create New Policy popup window you need to provide the name of the policy as “Implementing and Verify Database Settings for Production Databases” and then click the drop down list under Check Condition. As highlighted in the snippet below click on the New Condition… option to open up the Create New Condition window. 5. In the Create New Condition popup window you need to provide the name of the condition as “Verify and Change Database Settings”. In the Facet drop down list you need to choose the Facet as Database Options as shown in the snippet below. Under Expression you need to select Field value as @AutoClose and then choose Operator value as ‘ = ‘ and finally choose Value as False. Now that you have successfully added the first field you can now go ahead and add rest of the fields as shown in the snippet below. Once you have successfully added all the above shown fields of Database Options Facet, click OK to save the changes and to return to the parent Create New Policy – Implementing and Verify Database Settings for Production Database windows where you will see that the newly created condition “Verify and Change Database Settings” is selected by default. Continues…

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• In GLSL is it possible to offset vertices based on height map colour?

  - by Rob

  I am attempting to generate some terrain based upon a heightmap. I have generated a 32 x 32 grid and a corresponding height map - In my vertex shader I am trying to offset the position of the Y axis based upon the colour of the heightmap, white vertices being higher than black ones. //Vertex Shader Code #version 330 uniform mat4 modelMatrix; uniform mat4 viewMatrix; uniform mat4 projectionMatrix; uniform sampler2D heightmap; layout (location=0) in vec4 vertexPos; layout (location=1) in vec4 vertexColour; layout (location=3) in vec2 vertexTextureCoord; layout (location=4) in float offset; out vec4 fragCol; out vec4 fragPos; out vec2 fragTex; void main() { // Retreive the current pixel's colour vec4 hmColour = texture(heightmap,vertexTextureCoord); // Offset the y position by the value of current texel's colour value ? vec4 offset = vec4(vertexPos.x , vertexPos.y + hmColour.r, vertexPos.z , 1.0); // Final Position gl_Position = projectionMatrix * viewMatrix * modelMatrix * offset; // Data sent to Fragment Shader. fragCol = vertexColour; fragPos = vertexPos; fragTex = vertexTextureCoord; } However the code I have produced only creates a grid with none of the y vertices higher than any others. This is the C++ code that generates the grid and texture co-orientates which I believe to be correct as the texture is mapped to the grid, hence the white blob in the middle. The grid-lines are generated in the fragment shader, sorry for any confusion. I have tried multiplying the r value of hmColour by 1000 unfortunately that had no effect. The only other problem it could be is that the texture coordinate data is incorrect ? for (int z = 0; z < MAP_Z ; z++) { for(int x = 0; x < MAP_X ; x++) { //Generate Vertex Buffer vertexData[iVertex++] = float (x) * MAP_X; vertexData[iVertex++] = 0; vertexData[iVertex++] = -(float) (z) * MAP_Z; //Colour Buffer NOT NEEDED colourData[iColour++] = 255.0f; // R colourData[iColour++] = 1.0f; // G colourData[iColour++] = 0.0f; // B //Texture Buffer textureData[iTexture++] = (float ) x * (1.0f / MAP_X); textureData[iTexture++] = (float ) z * (1.0f / MAP_Z); } } The heightmap texture I am trying to use appears like so (without grid-lines). This is the corresponding fragment shader // Fragment Shader Code #version 330 uniform sampler2D hmTexture; layout (location=0) out vec4 fragColour; in vec2 fragTex; in vec4 pos; void main(void) { vec2 line = fragTex * 32; // Without Gridlines fragColour = texture(hmTexture,fragTex); // With grid lines // + mix(vec4(0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0), vec4(1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0), // smoothstep(0.05,fract(line.y), 0.99) * smoothstep(0.05,fract(line.x),0.99)); }

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• Agile Manifesto, Revisited

  - by GeekAgilistMercenary

  Again, conversations give me a zillion things to write about.  The recent conversation that has cropped up again is my various viewpoints of the Agile Manifesto.  Not all the processes that came after the manifesto was written, but just the core manifesto itself.  Just for context, here is the manifesto in all the glory. We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more. Several of the key signatories at the time went on to write some of the core books that really gave Agile Software Development traction.  If you check out the Agile Manifesto Site and do a search for any of those people, you will find a treasure trove of software development information. My 2 Cents First off, I agree with a few people out there.  Agile is not Scrum for instance.  Do NOT get these things confused when checking out Agile, or pushing forward with Scrum.  As David Starr points out in his blog entry, "About 35 minutes into this discussion, I realized I hadn?t heard a question or comment that wasn?t related to Scrum. I asked the room, ?How many people are on an agile team that is NOT using Scrum?? 5 hands. Seriously, out of about 150 people of so. 5 hands." So know, as this is one of my biggest pet peves these days, that Scrum is not Agile.  Another quote David writes, "I assure you, dear reader, 2 week time boxes does not an agile team make." This is the exact problem.  Take a look at the actual manifesto above.  First ideal, "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools".  There are a couple of meanings in this ideal, just as there are in the other written ideals.  But this one has a lot of contention with a set practice such as Scrum.  There are other formulas, namely XP (eXtreme) and Kanban are two that come to mind often.  But none of these are Agile, but instead a process based on the ideals of Agile. Some of you may be thinking, "that?s the same thing".  Well, no, it is not.  This type of differentiation is vitally important.  Agile is a set of ideals.  Processes are nice, but they can change, they may work for some and not others.  The Agile Manifesto covers the ideals behind what is intended, that intention being to learn and find new ways to build better software. Ideals, not processes.  Definition versus implementation.  Class versus object.  The ideals are of utmost importance, the processes are secondary, the first ideal is what really lays this out for me "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools".  Yes, we need tools but we need the individuals and their interactions more. For those coming into a development team, I hope you take this to mind.  It is of utmost importance that this differentiation is known and fought for.  The second the process becomes more important than the individuals and interactions, the team will effectively lose the advantages of Agile Ideals. This is just one of my first thoughts on the topic of Agile.  I will be writing more in the near future about each of the ideals.  I will make a point to outline more of my thoughts, my opinions, and experience with the ideals of Agile and the various processes that are out there.  Maybe, I may stumble upon something new with the help of my readers?  It would be a grand overture to the ideals I hold. For the original entry, check out my personal blog with other juicy tech tidbits, rants, raves, and the like. Agilist Mercenary

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• Oracle Announces Leading ISV Integration With Oracle Sales and Marketing Cloud Service

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  More Than 100 ISVs, including Big Machines, Marketo and Xactly, now Provide Integrated Offerings to Help Maximize Sales and Single Customer Viewpoint Demonstrating its continued commitment to business value via open standards and the cloud, Oracle today announced that more than 100 leading ISVs are integrating in the cloud with Oracle Sales and Marketing Cloud Service, a service available through Oracle Cloud. For the first time Oracle Sales and Marketing Cloud Service users can choose from a wide array of directly integrated third-party solutions, providing a new level of choice, seamless deployment and single view of customers with preferred implementations. Top partners, including ActivePrime, Avaya, BigMachines, Box, Brainshark, Callidus Software, CirrusPath, Clicktools, CRMIT, DBSync, EchoSign from Adobe, Eloqua, Fliptop, FPX, HarQen, HubSpot, iHance, InsideSales.com, InsideView, Interactive Intelligence, Lingotek, LinkPoint360, Marketo, Nuance, PerspecSys, Postcode Anywhere, Revegy, salesElement, StrikeIron, upsourceIT, White Springs, X+1 and Xactly, have announced their availability and integration today. By integrating with Oracle Sales and Marketing Cloud Service, ISV solutions can easily be leveraged by customersBy choosing Oracle Sales and Marketing Cloud Service as a sales platform, customers will continue to have complete choice of their own quoting, lead management and sales methodology solutions and it will all be pre-integrated with Oracle Sales and Marketing Cloud Service. With demonstrable integration fusing standards-based technologies, such as SOAP web services, Oracle Sales and Marketing Cloud Service customers choosing ISV integrations will also benefit from familiar ease-of-use and the Oracle Sales and Marketing Cloud ervice user interface, including buttons, links and custom objects for a rich user experience. ISV integration with Oracle Sales and Marketing Cloud Service also enables on-demand contextual data exchange capabilities, linking Oracle Sales and Marketing Cloud Service business data with third-party application data for a complete CRM view. ISVs building robust, repeatable integrations with Oracle Sales and Marketing Cloud Service can begin the process of achieving Oracle Validated Integration, an Oracle PartnerNetwork program that recognizes Oracle partner solutions with proven integration to Oracle Applications. ISVs can learn more about Oracle Validated Integration    here. For customers, Oracle Validated Integration means that a partner’s integration has been tested and validated as functionally and technically sound, that the partner solution is integrated with Oracle Sales and Marketing Cloud Service in a reliable, standardized way, and that the integration operates and performs as documented. Oracle Cloud provides a broad portfolio of Platform Services, Application Services, and Social Services, all on a subscription basis. Oracle Cloud delivers instant value and productivity for end users, administrators, and developers through functionally rich, integrated, secure, enterprise cloud services. Supporting Quotes “BigMachines is a leader in Configure, Price, and Quote solutions in the Cloud. Our solution delivers accurate quotes directly from an opportunity, integrated with the leading Oracle Sales and Marketing Cloud application from Oracle,” says John Pulling, Senior Vice President of Products at Big Machines. “Together, Big Machines and Oracle efficiently automate changes, enabling a faster, more efficient sales process for our joint customers.”   ”Modern marketing and sales must engage customers and prospects in real time across the web, email, social media, online and offline channels to understand where and how to allocate their budgets for maximum return,” said Srini Venkatesan, Senior VP, Products and Engineering at Marketo. “Alignment and integration with Oracle Sales and Marketing Cloud Service allows Marketo’s solutions to deliver innovative capabilities for sales and marketing to adapt and grow their business on the core Oracle platform for CRM.”   “Sales incentives are the best way to drive better performance. Well managed incentives improve the bottom line, particularly when combined with effective sales systems,” said Christopher Cabrera, president and CEO of Xactly Corporation. “With Oracle Sales and Marketing Cloud Service and Xactly working together, customers gain insight and efficiencies. The combination can create more effective compensation programs, while motivating sales to work to its full potential."   “The tremendous integration of leading ISVs with Oracle Sales and Marketing Cloud Service is a testament to the undeniable business value and demand from customers,” said Anthony Lye, SVP of Oracle CRM. “Oracle Sales and Marketing Cloud Service continues to define the industry, and we are proud to work with these leading ISVs to help users simultaneously maximize sales and revenue and extend their current deployments for a deeper and single customer viewpoint.” Supporting Resources Oracle Sales and Marketing Cloud Service Learn More About Oracle Cloud

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• Playing HTML5 Video with fall back for IE8/IE7 and earlier versions of other browsers using Silverlight

  - by Harish Ranganathan

  One of the popular HTML5 tags is the video tag.  The ability to play videos without depending on a plugin is something that excites web developers to a great extent and no wonder you end up seeing video demos in all HTML5 conferences. Now, coming to HTML5 Video, the tag itself is simply <video id=”ID” src=”FILENAME.mp4/ogv/webm” > in the simplest form.  This also means that the video needs to be H.256 encoded MP4 format or some of the other formats as mentioned above.  For a detailed specification on this, check this Wikipedia article HTML5 video is supported by all the modern browsers such as IE9 (currently in RC stage), Mozilla Firefox 4 and Chrome latest versions.  Here below is a simple example of a HTML5 video tag and the screen shot of how it looks like in IE9 RC <!DOCTYPE html> <head></head> <body> <h1>This is a sample of an HTML5 Video</h1> <video src="video.mp4" id="myvideo">Your browser doesn’t support this currently</video> </body> </html> You can add attributes to the video tag such as “autoplay” which will automatically start playing the video.  Also, you can specify “poster” to display an initial picture before the video starts playing etc., but I am not going into those for now. This would play well in the modern browsers as mentioned above.  However, if the end users are viewing this page from an earlier version of browsers such as IE8/IE7 or IE6, this video wouldn’t play.  Whatever text that is specified between the video tags, would just show up. Note: for demo purposes, I went to the IE9 developer toolbar and chose IE8 as Browser Mode to exhibit this legacy behaviour.  However, in the interest of serving the larger community of users who visit the site, we would like to have a fall back mechanism for playing videos on older version of browsers. Now, Silverlight is supported in IE6/7 & 8 and other browsers too.  If we can have the same video encoded for Silverlight, we can put the fall-back code, as follows:- <video src="videos/video.mp4" id="myvideo">     <object height="252" type="application/x-silverlight-2" width="448">         <param name="source" value="resources/player.xap">         <param name="initParams" value="deferredLoad=true, duration=0, m=http://localhost/DemoSite/videos/video.mp4, autostart=false, autohide=true, showembed=true, postid=0" />         <param name="background" value="#00FFFFFF" />     </object> </video>   Note, this sample uses a Silverlight XAP file with the same video and uses the object tag to embed it instead of the HTML5 video tag. So, when I now run this sample and switch to IE8 (using the IE9 Developer toolbar’s Browser Mode), I get and when clicking on the “Play” icon, Note, there are multiple ways to play videos in Silverlight and this is one of the ways.  For a complete list of Silverlight samples, visit http://www.silverlight.net/learn/  Also, we can use Flash to play video in the fall-back mechanism as well. Thus, we can create a fall-back mechanism for playing HTML5 videos for the older browsers and hence ensure that the end users get to experience the same. Cheers !!!

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• Android - passing data between Activities

  - by Bill Osuch

  (To follow along with this, you should understand the basics of starting new activities: Link ) The easiest way to pass data from one activity to another is to create your own custom bundle and pass it to your new class. First, create two new activities called Search and SearchResults (make sure you add the second one you create to the AndroidManifest.xml file!), and create xml layout files for each. Search's file should look like this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <LinearLayout     xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"     android:layout_width="fill_parent"     android:layout_height="fill_parent"     android:orientation="vertical">     <TextView          android:layout_width="fill_parent"      android:layout_height="wrap_content"      android:text="Name:"/>     <EditText                android:id="@+id/edittext"         android:layout_width="fill_parent"         android:layout_height="wrap_content"/>     <TextView          android:layout_width="fill_parent"         android:layout_height="wrap_content"         android:text="ID Number:"/>     <EditText                android:id="@+id/edittext2"                android:layout_width="fill_parent"                android:layout_height="wrap_content"/>     <Button           android:id="@+id/btnSearch"          android:layout_width="fill_parent"         android:layout_height="wrap_content"         android:text="Search" /> </LinearLayout> and SearchResult's should look like this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <LinearLayout     xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"     android:layout_width="fill_parent"     android:layout_height="fill_parent"     android:orientation="vertical">     <TextView          android:id="@+id/txtName"         android:layout_width="fill_parent"         android:layout_height="wrap_content"/>     <TextView          android:id="@+id/txtState"         android:layout_width="fill_parent"         android:layout_height="wrap_content"         android:text="No data"/> </LinearLayout> Next, we'll override the OnCreate method of Search: @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {     super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);     setContentView(R.layout.search);     Button search = (Button) findViewById(R.id.btnSearch);     search.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {         public void onClick(View view) {                           Intent intent = new Intent(Search.this, SearchResults.class);              Bundle b = new Bundle();                           EditText txt1 = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.edittext);             EditText txt2 = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.edittext2);                                      b.putString("name", txt1.getText().toString());             b.putInt("state", Integer.parseInt(txt2.getText().toString()));                              //Add the set of extended data to the intent and start it             intent.putExtras(b);             startActivity(intent);          }     }); } This is very similar to the previous example, except here we're creating our own bundle, adding some key/value pairs to it, and adding it to the intent. Now, to retrieve the data, we just need to grab the Bundle that was passed to the new Activity and extract our values from it: @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {     super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);     setContentView(R.layout.search_results);     Bundle b = getIntent().getExtras();     int value = b.getInt("state", 0);     String name = b.getString("name");             TextView vw1 = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.txtName);     TextView vw2 = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.txtState);             vw1.setText("Name: " + name);     vw2.setText("State: " + String.valueOf(value)); }

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• Low level programming - what's in it for me?

  - by back2dos

  For years I have considered digging into what I consider "low level" languages. For me this means C and assembly. However I had no time for this yet, nor has it EVER been neccessary. Now because I don't see any neccessity arising, I feel like I should either just schedule some point in time when I will study the subject or drop the plan forever. My Position For the past 4 years I have focused on "web technologies", which may change, and I am an application developer, which is unlikely to change. In application development, I think usability is the most important thing. You write applications to be "consumed" by users. The more usable those applications are, the more value you have produced. In order to achieve good usability, I believe the following things are viable Good design: Well-thought-out features accessible through a well-thought-out user interface. Correctness: The best design isn't worth anything, if not implemented correctly. Flexibility: An application A should constantly evolve, so that its users need not switch to a different application B, that has new features, that A could implement. Applications addressing the same problem should not differ in features but in philosophy. Performance: Performance contributes to a good user experience. An application is ideally always responsive and performs its tasks reasonably fast (based on their frequency). The value of performance optimization beyond the point where it is noticeable by the user is questionable. I think low level programming is not going to help me with that, except for performance. But writing a whole app in a low level language for the sake of performance is premature optimization to me. My Question What could low level programming teach me, what other languages wouldn't teach me? Am I missing something, or is it just a skill, that is of very little use for application development? Please understand, that I am not questioning the value of C and assembly. It's just that in my everyday life, I am quite happy that all the intricacies of that world are abstracted away and managed for me (mostly by layers written in C/C++ and assembly themselves). I just don't see any concepts, that could be new to me, only details I would have to stuff my head with. So what's in it for me? My Conclusion Thanks to everyone for their answers. I must say, nobody really surprised me, but at least now I am quite sure I will drop this area of interest until any need for it arises. To my understanding, writing assembly these days for processors as they are in use in today's CPUs is not only unneccesarily complicated, but risks to result in poorer runtime performance than a C counterpart. Optimizing by hand is nearly impossible due to OOE, while you do not get all kinds of optimizations a compiler can do automatically. Also, the code is either portable, because it uses a small subset of available commands, or it is optimized, but then it probably works on one architecture only. Writing C is not nearly as neccessary anymore, as it was in the past. If I were to write an application in C, I would just as much use tested and established libraries and frameworks, that would spare me implementing string copy routines, sorting algorithms and other kind of stuff serving as exercise at university. My own code would execute faster at the cost of type safety. I am neither keen on reeinventing the wheel in the course of normal app development, nor trying to debug by looking at core dumps :D I am currently experimenting with languages and interpreters, so if there is anything I would like to publish, I suppose I'd port a working concept to C, although C++ might just as well do the trick. Again, thanks to everyone for your answers and your insight.

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• Guessing Excel Data Types

  - by AjarnMark

  Note to Self HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Jet\4.0\Engines\Excel: TypeGuessRows = 0 means scan everything. Note to Others About 10 years ago I stumbled across this bit of information just when I needed it and it saved my project.  Then for some reason, a few years later when it would have been nice, but not critical, for some reason I could not find it again anywhere.  Well, now I have stumbled across it again, and to preserve my future self from nightmares and sudden baldness due to pulling my hair out, I have decided to blog it in the hopes that I can find it again this way. Here’s the story…  When you query data from an Excel spreadsheet, such as with old-fashioned DTS packages in SQL 2000 (my first reference) or simply with an OLEDB Data Adapter from ASP.NET (recent task) and if you are using the Microsoft Jet 4.0 driver (newer ones may deal with this differently) then you can get funny results where the query reports back that a cell value is null even when you know it contains data. What happens is that Excel doesn’t really have data types.  While you can format information in cells to appear like certain data types (e.g. Date, Time, Decimal, Text, etc.) that is not really defining the cell as being of a certain type like we think of when working with databases.  But, presumably, to make things more convenient for the user (programmer) when you issue a query against Excel, the query processor tries to guess what type of data is contained in each column and returns it in an appropriate manner.  This is all well and good IF your data is consistent in every row and matches what the processor guessed.  And, for efficiency’s sake, when the query processor is trying to figure out each column’s data type, it does so by analyzing only the first 8 rows of data (default setting). Now here’s the problem, suppose that your spreadsheet contains information about clothing, and one of the columns is Size.  Now suppose that in the first 8 rows, all of your sizes look like 32, 34, 18, 10, and so on, using numbers, but then, somewhere after the 8th row, you have some rows with sizes like S, M, L, XL.  What happens is that by examining only the first 8 rows, the query processor inferred that the column contained numerical data, and then when it hits the non-numerical data in later rows, it comes back blank.  Major bummer, and a real pain to track down if you don’t know that Excel is doing this, because you study the spreadsheet and say, “the data is RIGHT THERE!  WHY doesn’t the query see it?!?!”  And the hair-pulling begins. So, what’s a developer to do?  One option is to go to the registry setting noted above and change the DWORD value of TypeGuessRows from the default of 8 to 0 (zero).  Setting this value to zero will force Jet to scan every row in the spreadsheet before making its determination as to what type of data the column contains.  And that means that in the example above, it would have treated the column as a string rather than as numeric, and presto! your query now returns all of the values that you know are in there. Of course, there is a caveat… if you are querying large spreadsheets, making Jet scan every row can be quite a performance hit.  You could enter a different number (more than 8) that you believe is a better sampling of rows to make the guess, but you still have the possibility that every row scanned looks alike, but that later rows are different, and that you might get blanks when there really is data there.  That’s the type of gamble, I really don’t like to take with my data. Anyone with a better approach, or with experience with more recent drivers that have a better way of handling data types, please chime in!

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• Serial plans: Threshold / Parallel_degree_limit = 1

  - by jean-pierre.dijcks

  As a very short follow up on the previous post. So here is some more on getting a serial plan and why that happens Another reason - compared to the auto DOP is not on as we looked at in the earlier post - and often more prevalent to get a serial plan is if the plan simply does not take long enough to consider a parallel path. The resulting plan and note looks like this (note that this is a serial plan!): explain plan for select count(1) from sales; SELECT PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT FROM TABLE(DBMS_XPLAN.DISPLAY()); PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Plan hash value: 672559287 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Id  | Operation            | Name  | Rows  | Cost (%CPU)| Time     | Pstart| Pstop | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |   0 | SELECT STATEMENT     |       |     1 |     5   (0)| 00:00:01 |       |     | |   1 |  SORT AGGREGATE      |       |     1 |            |          |       |     | |   2 |   PARTITION RANGE ALL|       |   960 |     5   (0)| 00:00:01 |     1 |  16 | |   3 |    TABLE ACCESS FULL | SALES |   960 |     5   (0)| 00:00:01 |     1 |  16 | Note -----    - automatic DOP: Computed Degree of Parallelism is 1 because of parallel threshold 14 rows selected. The parallel threshold is referring to parallel_min_time_threshold and since I did not change the default (10s) the plan is not being considered for a parallel degree computation and is therefore staying with the serial execution. Now we go into the land of crazy: Assume I do want this DOP=1 to happen, I could set the parameter in the init.ora, but to highlight it in this case I changed it on the session: alter session set parallel_degree_limit = 1; The result I get is: ERROR: ORA-02097: parameter cannot be modified because specified value is invalid ORA-00096: invalid value 1 for parameter parallel_degree_limit, must be from among CPU IO AUTO INTEGER>=2 Which of course makes perfect sense...

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• Anatomy of a .NET Assembly - Signature encodings

  - by Simon Cooper

  If you've just joined this series, I highly recommend you read the previous posts in this series, starting here, or at least these posts, covering the CLR metadata tables. Before we look at custom attribute encoding, we first need to have a brief look at how signatures are encoded in an assembly in general. Signature types There are several types of signatures in an assembly, all of which share a common base representation, and are all stored as binary blobs in the #Blob heap, referenced by an offset from various metadata tables. The types of signatures are: Method definition and method reference signatures. Field signatures Property signatures Method local variables. These are referenced from the StandAloneSig table, which is then referenced by method body headers. Generic type specifications. These represent a particular instantiation of a generic type. Generic method specifications. Similarly, these represent a particular instantiation of a generic method. All these signatures share the same underlying mechanism to represent a type Representing a type All metadata signatures are based around the ELEMENT_TYPE structure. This assigns a number to each 'built-in' type in the framework; for example, Uint16 is 0x07, String is 0x0e, and Object is 0x1c. Byte codes are also used to indicate SzArrays, multi-dimensional arrays, custom types, and generic type and method variables. However, these require some further information. Firstly, custom types (ie not one of the built-in types). These require you to specify the 4-byte TypeDefOrRef coded token after the CLASS (0x12) or VALUETYPE (0x11) element type. This 4-byte value is stored in a compressed format before being written out to disk (for more excruciating details, you can refer to the CLI specification). SzArrays simply have the array item type after the SZARRAY byte (0x1d). Multidimensional arrays follow the ARRAY element type with a series of compressed integers indicating the number of dimensions, and the size and lower bound of each dimension. Generic variables are simply followed by the index of the generic variable they refer to. There are other additions as well, for example, a specific byte value indicates a method parameter passed by reference (BYREF), and other values indicating custom modifiers. Some examples... To demonstrate, here's a few examples and what the resulting blobs in the #Blob heap will look like. Each name in capitals corresponds to a particular byte value in the ELEMENT_TYPE or CALLCONV structure, and coded tokens to custom types are represented by the type name in curly brackets. A simple field: int intField; FIELD I4 A field of an array of a generic type parameter (assuming T is the first generic parameter of the containing type): T[] genArrayField FIELD SZARRAY VAR 0 An instance method signature (note how the number of parameters does not include the return type): instance string MyMethod(MyType, int&, bool[][]); HASTHIS DEFAULT 3 STRING CLASS {MyType} BYREF I4 SZARRAY SZARRAY BOOLEAN A generic type instantiation: MyGenericType<MyType, MyStruct> GENERICINST CLASS {MyGenericType} 2 CLASS {MyType} VALUETYPE {MyStruct} For more complicated examples, in the following C# type declaration: GenericType<T> : GenericBaseType<object[], T, GenericType<T>> { ... } the Extends field of the TypeDef for GenericType will point to a TypeSpec with the following blob: GENERICINST CLASS {GenericBaseType} 3 SZARRAY OBJECT VAR 0 GENERICINST CLASS {GenericType} 1 VAR 0 And a static generic method signature (generic parameters on types are referenced using VAR, generic parameters on methods using MVAR): TResult[] GenericMethod<TInput, TResult>( TInput, System.Converter<TInput, TOutput>); GENERIC 2 2 SZARRAY MVAR 1 MVAR 0 GENERICINST CLASS {System.Converter} 2 MVAR 0 MVAR 1 As you can see, complicated signatures are recursively built up out of quite simple building blocks to represent all the possible variations in a .NET assembly. Now we've looked at the basics of normal method signatures, in my next post I'll look at custom attribute application signatures, and how they are different to normal signatures.

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• [EF + Oracle] Entities

  - by JTorrecilla

  Prologue Following with the Serie I started yesterday about Entity Framework with Oracle, Today I am going to start talking about Entities. What is an Entity? A Entity is an object of the EF model corresponding to a record in a DB table. For example, let’s see, in Image 1 we can see one Entity from our model, and in the second one we can see the mapping done with the DB. (Image 1) (Image 2) More in depth a Entity is a Class inherited from the abstract class “EntityObject”, contained by the “System.Data.Objects.DataClasses” namespace. At the same time, this class inherits from the following Class and interfaces: StructuralObject: It is an Abstract class that inherits from INotifyPropertyChanging and INotifyPropertyChanged interfaces, and it exposes the events that manage the Changes of the class, and the functions related to check the data types of the Properties from our Entity.  IEntityWithKey: Interface which exposes the Key of the entity. IEntityWithChangeTracker: Interface which lets indicate the state of the entity (Detached, Modified, Added…) IEntityWithRelationships: Interface which indicates the relations about the entity. Which is the Content of a Entity? A Entity is composed by: Properties, Navigation Properties and Methods. What is a Property? A Entity Property is an object that represents a column from the mapped table from DB. It has a data type equivalent in .Net Framework to the DB Type. When we create the EF model, VS, internally, create the code for each Entity selected in the Tables step, such all methods that we will see in next steps. For each property, VS creates a structure similar to: · Private variable with the mapped Data type. · Function with a name like On{Property_Name}Changing({dataType} value): It manages the event which happens when we try to change the value. · Function with a name like On{Property_Name}Change: It manages the event raised when the property has changed successfully. · Property with Get and Set methods: The Set Method manages the private variable and do the following steps: Raise Changing event. Report the Entity is Changing. Set the prívate variable. For it, Use the SetValidValue function of the StructuralObject. There is a function for each datatype, and the functions takes 2 params: the value, and if the prop allow nulls. Invoke that the entity has been successfully changed. Invoke the Changed event of the Prop. ReportPropertyChanging and ReportPropertyChanged events, let, respectively, indicate that there is pending changes in the Entity, and the changes have success correctly. While the ReportPropertyChanged is raised, the Track State of the Entity will be changed. What is a Navigation Property? Navigation Properties are a kind of property of the type: EntityCollection<TEntity>, where TEntity is an Entity type from the model related with the current one, it is said, is a set of record from a related table in the DB. The EntityCollection class inherits from: · RelatedEnd: There is an abstract class that give the functions needed to obtein the related objects. · ICollection<TEntity> · IEnumerable<TEntity> · IEnumerable · IListSource For the previous interfaces, I wish recommend the following post from Jose Miguel Torres. Navigation properties allow us, to get and query easily objects related with the Entity. Methods? There is only one method in the Entity object. “Create{Entity}”, that allow us to create an object of the Entity by sending the parameters needed to create it. Finally After this chapter, we know what is an Entity, how is related to the DB and the relation to other Entities. In following chapters, we will se CRUD operations(Create, Read, Update, Delete).

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• Recent improvements in Console Performance

  - by loren.konkus

  Recently, the WebLogic Server development and support organizations have worked with a number of customers to quantify and improve the performance of the Administration Console in large, distributed configurations where there is significant latency in the communications between the administration server and managed servers. These improvements fall into two categories: Constraining the amount of time that the Console stalls waiting for communication Reducing and streamlining the amount of data required for an update A few releases ago, we added support for a configurable domain-wide mbean "Invocation Timeout" value on the Console's configuration: general, advanced section for a domain. The default value for this setting is 0, which means wait indefinitely and was chosen for compatibility with the behavior of previous releases. This configuration setting applies to all mbean communications between the admin server and managed servers, and is the first line of defense against being blocked by a stalled or completely overloaded managed server. Each site should choose an appropriate timeout value for their environment and network latency. In the next release of WebLogic Server, we've added an additional console preference, "Management Operation Timeout", to the Console's shared preference page. This setting further constrains how long certain console pages will wait for slowly responding servers before returning partial results. While not all Console pages support this yet, key pages such as the Servers Configuration and Control table pages and the Deployments Control pages have been updated to support this. For example, if a user requests a Servers Table page and a Management Operation Timeout occurs, the table is displayed with both local configuration and remote runtime information from the responding managed servers and only local configuration information for servers that did not yet respond. This means that a troublesome managed server does not impede your ability to manage your domain using the Console. To support these changes, these Console pages have been re-written to use the Work Management feature of WebLogic Server to interact with each server or deployment concurrently, which further improves the responsiveness of these pages. The basic algorithm for these pages is: For each configuration mbean (ie, Servers) populate rows with configuration attributes from the fast, local mbean server Find a WorkManager For each server, Create a Work instance to obtain runtime mbean attributes for the server Schedule Work instance in the WorkManager Call WorkManager.waitForAll to wait WorkItems to finish, constrained by Management Operation Timeout For each WorkItem, if the runtime information obtained was not complete, add a message indicating which server has incomplete data Display collected data in table In addition to these changes to constrain how long the console waits for communication, a number of other changes have been made to reduce the amount and scope of managed server interactions for key pages. For example, in previous releases the Deployments Control table looked at the status of a deployment on every managed server, even those servers that the deployment was not currently targeted on. (This was done to handle an edge case where a deployment's target configuration was changed while it remained running on previously targeted servers.) We decided supporting that edge case did not warrant the performance impact for all, and instead only look at the status of a deployment on the servers it is targeted to. Comprehensive status continues to be available if a user clicks on the 'status' field for a deployment. Finally, changes have been made to the System Status portlet to reduce its impact on Console page display times. Obtaining health information for this display requires several mbean interactions with managed servers. In previous releases, this mbean interaction occurred with every display, and any delay or impediment in these interactions was reflected in the display time for every page. To reduce this impact, we've made several changes in this portlet: Using Work Management to obtain health concurrently Applying the operation timeout configuration to constrain how long we will wait Caching health information to reduce the cost during rapid navigation from page to page and only obtaining new health information if the previous information is over 30 seconds old. Eliminating heath collection if this portlet is minimized. Together, these Console changes have resulted in significant performance improvements for the customers with large configurations and high latency that we have worked with during their development, and some lesser performance improvements for those with small configurations and very fast networks. These changes will be included in the 11g Rel 1 patch set 2 (10.3.3.0) release of WebLogic Server.

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• Some OBI EE Tricks and Tips in the Admin Tool By Gerry Langton

  - by hamsun

  How to set the log level from a Session variable Initialization block As we know it is normal to set the log level non-zero for a particular user when we wish to debug problems. However sometimes it is inconvenient to go into each user’s properties in the Admin tool and update the log level. So I am showing a method which allows the log level to be set for all users via a session initialization block. This is particularly useful for anyone wanting an alternative way to set the log level. The screen shots shown are using the OBIEE 11g SampleApp demo but are applicable to any environment. Open the appropriate rpd in on-line mode and navigate to Manage Variables. Select Session Initialization Blocks, right click in the white space and create a New Initialization Block. I called the Initialization block Set_Loglevel . Now click on ‘Edit Data Source’ to enter the SQL. Chose the ‘Use OBI EE Server’ option for the SQL. This means that the SQL provided must use tables which have been defined in the Physical layer of the RPD, and whilst there is no need to provide a connection pool you must work in On-Line mode. The SQL can access any of the RPD tables and is purely used to return a value of 2. The ‘Test’ button confirms that the SQL is valid. Next, click on the ‘Edit Data Target’ button to add the LOGLEVEL variable to the initialization block. Check the ‘Enable any user to set the value’ option so that this will work for any user. Click OK and the following message will display as LOGLEVEL is a system session variable: Click ‘Yes’. Click ‘OK’ to save the Initialization block. Then check in the On-LIne changes. To test that LOGLEVEL has been set, log in to OBIEE using an administrative login (e.g. weblogic) and reload server metadata, either from the Analysis editor or from Administration > Reload Files and Metadata link. Run a query then navigate to Administration > Manage Sessions and click ‘View Log’ for the query just issued (which should be approximately the last in the list). A log file should exist and with LOGLEVEL set to 2 should include both logical and physical sql. If more diagnostic information is required then set LOGLEVEL to a higher value. If logging is required only for a particular analysis then an alternative method can be used directly from the Analysis editor. Edit the analysis for which debugging is required and click on the Advanced tab. Scroll down to the Advanced SQL clauses section and enter the following in the Prefix box: SET VARIABLE LOGLEVEL = 2; Click the ‘Apply SQL’ button. The SET VARIABLE statement will now prefix the Analysis’s logical SQL. So that any time this analysis is run it will produce a log. You can find information about training for Oracle BI EE products here or in the OU Learning Paths. Please send me an email at [email protected] if you have any further questions. About the Author: Gerry Langton started at Siebel Systems in 1999 working as a technical instructor teaching both Siebel application development and also Siebel Analytics (which subsequently became Oracle BI EE). From 2006 Gerry has worked as Senior Principal Instructor within Oracle University specialising in Oracle BI EE, Oracle BI Publisher and Oracle Data Warehouse development for BI.

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• Project Euler 17: (Iron)Python

  - by Ben Griswold

  In my attempt to learn (Iron)Python out in the open, here’s my solution for Project Euler Problem 17.  As always, any feedback is welcome. # Euler 17 # http://projecteuler.net/index.php?section=problems&id=17 # If the numbers 1 to 5 are written out in words: # one, two, three, four, five, then there are # 3 + 3 + 5 + 4 + 4 = 19 letters used in total. # If all the numbers from 1 to 1000 (one thousand) # inclusive were written out in words, how many letters # would be used? # # NOTE: Do not count spaces or hyphens. For example, 342 # (three hundred and forty-two) contains 23 letters and # 115 (one hundred and fifteen) contains 20 letters. The # use of "and" when writing out numbers is in compliance # with British usage. import time start = time.time() def to_word(n): h = { 1 : "one", 2 : "two", 3 : "three", 4 : "four", 5 : "five", 6 : "six", 7 : "seven", 8 : "eight", 9 : "nine", 10 : "ten", 11 : "eleven", 12 : "twelve", 13 : "thirteen", 14 : "fourteen", 15 : "fifteen", 16 : "sixteen", 17 : "seventeen", 18 : "eighteen", 19 : "nineteen", 20 : "twenty", 30 : "thirty", 40 : "forty", 50 : "fifty", 60 : "sixty", 70 : "seventy", 80 : "eighty", 90 : "ninety", 100 : "hundred", 1000 : "thousand" } word = "" # Reverse the numbers so position (ones, tens, # hundreds,...) can be easily determined a = [int(x) for x in str(n)[::-1]] # Thousands position if (len(a) == 4 and a[3] != 0): # This can only be one thousand based # on the problem/method constraints word = h[a[3]] + " thousand " # Hundreds position if (len(a) >= 3 and a[2] != 0): word += h[a[2]] + " hundred" # Add "and" string if the tens or ones # position is occupied with a non-zero value. # Note: routine is broken up this way for [my] clarity. if (len(a) >= 2 and a[1] != 0): # catch 10 - 99 word += " and" elif len(a) >= 1 and a[0] != 0: # catch 1 - 9 word += " and" # Tens and ones position tens_position_value = 99 if (len(a) >= 2 and a[1] != 0): # Calculate the tens position value per the # first and second element in array # e.g. (8 * 10) + 1 = 81 tens_position_value = int(a[1]) * 10 + a[0] if tens_position_value <= 20: # If the tens position value is 20 or less # there's an entry in the hash. Use it and there's # no need to consider the ones position word += " " + h[tens_position_value] else: # Determine the tens position word by # dividing by 10 first. E.g. 8 * 10 = h[80] # We will pick up the ones position word later in # the next part of the routine word += " " + h[(a[1] * 10)] if (len(a) >= 1 and a[0] != 0 and tens_position_value > 20): # Deal with ones position where tens position is # greater than 20 or we have a single digit number word += " " + h[a[0]] # Trim the empty spaces off both ends of the string return word.replace(" ","") def to_word_length(n): return len(to_word(n)) print sum([to_word_length(i) for i in xrange(1,1001)]) print "Elapsed Time:", (time.time() - start) * 1000, "millisecs" a=raw_input('Press return to continue')

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• Using the Script Component as a Conditional Split

  This is a quick walk through on how you can use the Script Component to perform Conditional Split like behaviour, splitting your data across multiple outputs. We will use C# code to decide what does flows to which output, rather than the expression syntax of the Conditional Split transformation. Start by setting up the source. For my example the source is a list of SQL objects from sys.objects, just a quick way to get some data: SELECT type, name FROM sys.objects type name S syssoftobjrefs F FK_Message_Page U Conference IT queue_messages_23007163 Shown above is a small sample of the data you could expect to see. Once you have setup your source, add the Script Component, selecting Transformation when prompted for the type, and connect it up to the source. Now open the component, but don’t dive into the script just yet. First we need to select some columns. Select the Input Columns page and then select the columns we want to uses as part of our filter logic. You don’t need to choose columns that you may want later, this is just the columns used in the script itself. Next we need to add our outputs. Select the Inputs and Outputs page.You get one by default, but we need to add some more, it wouldn’t be much of a split otherwise. For this example we’ll add just one more. Click the Add Output button, and you’ll see a new output is added. Now we need to set some properties, so make sure our new Output 1 is selected. In the properties grid change the SynchronousInputID property to be our input Input 0, and  change the ExclusionGroup property to 1. Now select Ouput 0 and change the ExclusionGroup property to 2. This value itself isn’t important, provided each output has a different value other than zero. By setting this property on both outputs it allows us to split the data down one or the other, making each exclusive. If we left it to 0, that output would get all the rows. It can be a useful feature allowing you to copy selected rows to one output whilst retraining the full set of data in the other. Now we can go back to the Script page and start writing some code. For the example we will do a very simple test, if the value of the type column is U, for user table, then it goes down the first output, otherwise it ends up in the other. This mimics the exclusive behaviour of the conditional split transformation. public override void Input0_ProcessInputRow(Input0Buffer Row) { // Filter all user tables to the first output, // the remaining objects down the other if (Row.type.Trim() == "U") { Row.DirectRowToOutput0(); } else { Row.DirectRowToOutput1(); } } The code itself is very simple, a basic if clause that determines which of the DirectRowToOutput methods we call, there is one for each output. Of course you could write a lot more code to implement some very complex logic, but the final direction is still just a method call. If we now close the script component, we can hook up the outputs and test the package. Your numbers will vary depending on the sample database but as you can see we have clearly split out input data into two outputs. As a final tip, when adding the outputs I would normally rename them, changing the Name in the Properties grid. This means the generated methods follow the pattern as do the path label shown on the design surface, making everything that much easier to recognise.

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