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SQL SERVER – #TechEdIn – Presenting Tomorrow on Speed Up! – Parallel Processes and Unparalleled Performance at TechEd India 2012

- by pinaldave

Performance tuning is always a very hot topic when it is about SQL Server. SQL Server Performance Tuning is a very challenging subject that requires expertise in Database Administration and Database Development. I always have enjoyed talking about SQL Server Performance tuning subject. However, in India, it’s actually the very first time someone is presenting on this interesting subject, so this time I had the biggest challenge to present this session. Frequently enough, we get these two kind of questions: How to turn off parallelism as it is reducing performance? How to turn on parallelism as I want more performance? The reality is that not everyone knows what exactly is needed by their system. In this session, I have attempted to answer this very question. I’ve decided to provide a balanced view but stay away from theory, which leads us to say “It depends”. The session will have a clear message about this towards its end. Deck Details Slides: 45+ Demos: 7+ Bonus Quiz: 5 Images: 10+ Session delivery time: 52 Mins + 8 Mins of Q & A I have presented this session a couple of times to my friends and so far have received good feedback. Oftentimes, when people hear that I am going to present 45 slides, they all say it is too much to cover. However, when I am done with the session the usual reaction is that I truly gave justice to those slides. Action Item Here are a few of the action items for all of those who are going to attend this session: If you want to attend the session, just come early. There’s a good chance that you may not get a seat because right before me, there is a session from SQL Guru Vinod Kumar. He performs a powerful delivery of million concepts in just a little time. Quiz. I will be asking few questions during the session as well as before the session starts. If you get the correct answer, I will give unique learning material for you. You may not want to miss this learning opportunity at any cosst. Session Details Title: Speed Up! – Parallel Processes and Unparalleled Performance (Add to Calendar) Abstract: “More CPU, More Performance” – A very common understanding is that usage of multiple CPUs can improve the performance of the query. To get a maximum performance out of any query, one has to master various aspects of the parallel processes. In this deep-dive session, we will explore this complex subject with a very simple interactive demo. Attendees will walk away with proper understanding of CX_PACKET wait types, MAXDOP, parallelism threshold and various other concepts. Date and Time: March 23, 2012, 12:15 to 13:15 Location: Hotel Lalit Ashok - Kumara Krupa High Grounds, Bengaluru – 560001, Karnataka, India. Add to Calendar Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Interview Questions and Answers, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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Bitmap font rendering, UV generation and vertex placement

- by jack

I am generating a bitmap, however, I am not sure on how to render the UV's and placement. I had a thread like this once before, but it was too loosely worded as to what I was looking to do. What I am doing right now is creating a large 1024x1024 image with characters evenly placed every 64 pixels. Here is an example of what I mean. I then save the bitmap X/Y information to a file (which is all multiples of 64). However, I am not sure how to properly use this information and bitmap to render. This falls into two different categories, UV generation and kerning. Now I believe I know how to do both of these, however, when I attempt to couple them together I will get horrendous results. For example, I am trying to render two different text arrays, "123" and "njfb". While ignoring the texture quality (I will be increasing the texture to provide more detail once I fix this issue), here is what it looks like when I try to render them. http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/599/badfontrendering.png Now for the algorithm. I am doing my letter placement with both GetABCWidth and GetKerningPairs. I am using GetABCWidth for the width of the characters, then I am getting the kerning information for adjust the characters. Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can implement my own bitmap font renderer? I am trying to do this without using external libraries such as angel bitmap tool or freetype. I also want to stick to the way the bitmap font sheet is generated so I can do extra effects in the future. Rendering Algorithm for(U32 c = 0, vertexID = 0, i = 0; c < numberOfCharacters; ++c, vertexID += 4, i += 6) { ObtainCharInformation(fontName, m_Text[c]); letterWidth = (charInfo.A + charInfo.B + charInfo.C) * scale; if(c != 0) { DWORD BytesReq = GetGlyphOutlineW(dc, m_Text[c], GGO_GRAY8_BITMAP, &gm, 0, 0, &mat); U8 * glyphImg= new U8[BytesReq]; DWORD r = GetGlyphOutlineW(dc, m_Text[c], GGO_GRAY8_BITMAP, &gm, BytesReq, glyphImg, &mat); for (int k=0; k<nKerningPairs; k++) { if ((kerningpairs[k].wFirst == previousCharIndex) && (kerningpairs[k].wSecond == m_Text[c])) { letterBottomLeftX += (kerningpairs[k].iKernAmount * scale); break; } } letterBottomLeftX -= (gm.gmCellIncX * scale); } SetVertex(letterBottomLeftX, 0.0f, zFight, vertexID); SetVertex(letterBottomLeftX, letterHeight, zFight, vertexID + 1); SetVertex(letterBottomLeftX + letterWidth, letterHeight, zFight, vertexID + 2); SetVertex(letterBottomLeftX + letterWidth, 0.0f, zFight, vertexID + 3); zFight -= 0.001f; float BottomLeftX = (F32)(charInfo.bitmapXOrigin) / (float)m_BitmapWidth; float BottomLeftY = (F32)(charInfo.bitmapYOrigin + charInfo.charBitmapHeight) / (float)m_BitmapWidth; float TopLeftX = BottomLeftX; float TopLeftY = (F32)(charInfo.bitmapYOrigin) / (float)m_BitmapWidth; float TopRightX = (F32)(charInfo.bitmapXOrigin + charInfo.B - charInfo.C) / (float)m_BitmapWidth; float TopRightY = TopLeftY; float BottomRightX = TopRightX; float BottomRightY = BottomLeftY; SetTextureCoordinate(TopLeftX, TopLeftY, vertexID + 1); SetTextureCoordinate(BottomLeftX, BottomLeftY, vertexID + 0); SetTextureCoordinate(BottomRightX, BottomRightY, vertexID + 3); SetTextureCoordinate(TopRightX, TopRightY, vertexID + 2); /// index setting letterBottomLeftX += letterWidth; previousCharIndex = m_Text[c]; }

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Comparing Isis, Google, and Paypal

- by David Dorf

Back in 2010 I was sure NFC would make great strides, but here we are two years later and NFC doesn't seem to be sticking. The obvious reason being the chicken-and-egg problem. Retailers don't want to install the terminals until the phones support NFC, and vice-versa. So consumers continue to sit on the sidelines waiting for either side to blink and make the necessary investment. In the meantime, EMV is looking for a way to sneak into the US with the help of the card brands. There are currently three major solutions that are battling in the marketplace. All three know that replacing mag-stripe alone is not sufficient to move consumers. Long-term it's the offers and loyalty programs combined with tendering that make NFC attractive. NFC solutions cross lots of barriers, so a strong partner system is required. The solutions need to include the carriers, card brands, banks, handset manufacturers, POS terminals, and most of all lots of merchants. Lots of coordination is necessary to make the solution seamless to the consumer. Google Wallet Google's problem has always been that only the Nexus phone has an NFC chip that supports their wallet. There are a couple of additional phones out there now, but adoption is still slow. They acquired Zavers a while back to incorporate digital coupons, but the the bulk of their users continue to be non-NFC. They have taken an open approach by not specifying particular payment brands. Google is piloting in San Francisco and New York, supporting both MasterCard PayPass and stored value. I suppose the other card brands may eventually follow. There's no cost for consumers or merchants -- Google will make money via targeted ads. Isis Not long after Google announced its wallet, AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile announced a joint venture called Isis. They are in the unique position of owning the SIM in the phones they issue. At first it seemed Isis was a vehicle for the carriers to compete with the existing card brands, but Isis later switched to a generic wallet that supports the major card brands. Isis reportedly charges issuers a $5 fee per customer per year. Isis will pilot this summer in Salt Lake City and Austin. PayPal PayPal, the clear winner in the online payment space beyond traditional credit cards, is trying to move into physical stores. After negotiations with Google to provide a wallet broke off, PayPal decided to avoid NFC altogether, at least for now, and focus on payments without any physical card or phone. By avoiding NFC, consumers don't need an NFC-enabled phone and merchants don't need a new reader. Consumers must enter their phone number and PIN in the merchant's existing device, or they can enter their PIN in the PayPal inStore app running on their phone, then show the merchant a unique barcode which authorizes payment. Paypal is free for consumers and charges a fee for merchants. Its not clear, at least to me, how PayPal handles fraudulent transactions and whether the consumer is protected. The wildcard is, of course, Apple. Their mobile technologies set the standard, so incorporating NFC chips would certainly accelerate adoption of many payment solutions. Their announcement today of the iOS Passbook is a step in the right direction, but stops short of handling payments. For those retailers that have invested in modern terminals, it seems the best strategy is to support all the emerging solutions and let the consumers choose the winner.

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Is Oracle Policy Automation a Fit for My Agency? I'll bet it is.

- by jeffrey.waterman

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13 MORE Things from the Oracle Social Summit You Should Know

- by Mike Stiles

In our previous blog, we started giving those of you who couldn’t make it just a sampling of the valuable takeaways from the first annual Oracle Social Summit, held Nov 14 and 15 in Las Vegas. And while yes, 13 items is a pretty healthy sampling, we wanted to go the extra mile and give you 13 more, an indication of just how much great information came out of it. Follow the arrow, and come on in as if you were there with us. 1. Weber Shandwick takes a 70/20/10 approach when advising clients how to allocate resources to paid social opportunities. 70% of spend should go toward paid opportunities the agency and client both know work, 20% should go toward paid social the agency knows works, and 10% should go toward experimentation. (Matt Dickman – Weber Shandwick) 2. By 2017, the technically competent CMO will spend more on IT than the CIO. (Gartner Study) 3. CIOs are focused on infrastructure. As the roles of the CMO and CIO continue coming together, those CIOs have to make a very conscious decision to get CMOs what they need. 4. It’s now harder for brands to differentiate based on product. The advantage will go to the brands that are successful in garnering customer trust. 5. More and more, enterprise software is going to start looking like the software consumers are used to seeing and using. 6. You will see brands prioritizing mobile and dropping investments in www, HTML, POS systems, etc. 7. The social graph has to be added to brands’ customer data for a more holistic view. Customers will give you the information you need if the reward is appropriate. 8. Viacom did a study that showed viewers are most honest on social. Not so much on surveys or other feedback vehicles. 9. How are you determining your influencers? Influence isn’t about reach. It’s about getting people to change behavior. 10. A mix of skills is becoming critically important in a social staff. It shouldn’t be a mixture of several disciplines, not just a bunch of “social experts.” 11. If senior management isn’t engaged, the social team is forced into guessing what might be considered a “success” by the C-suite. 12. Mobile customization will be getting big investments from brands in 2013. Brands need to provide shoppers utility, not just information. 75% will use mobile this holiday season to avoid in-store madness. 13. Data becomes information, information becomes insight, and insight becomes actionable. The Oracle Social Summit brought together brands, agencies, Oracle social experts and industry thought leaders to take a serious look at where social stands today, and where it’s headed in the near future. Given the speed of social’s evolution, attending such events (or at least reading nifty summary blogs) is a good investment in making sure your enterprise isn’t falling gradually behind.

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BizTalk: Suspend shape and Convoy

- by Leonid Ganeline

Part 1: BizTalk: Instance Subscription and Convoys: Details This is a Part 2. I am discussing the Suspend shape together with Convoys and going to show that using them together is undesirable. In previous article we investigated the Instance Subscriptions and how they could create situation with dangerous zones in processing. Let' start with Suspend shape. [See the BizTalk Help] "You can use the Suspend shape to make an orchestration instance stop running until an administrator explicitly intervenes, perhaps to reflect an error condition that requires attention beyond the scope of the orchestration. All of the state information for the orchestration instance is saved, and will be reinstated when the administrator resumes the orchestration instance. When an orchestration instance is suspended, an error is raised. You can specify a message string to accompany the error to help the administrator diagnose the situation." On the Suspend shape the orchestration is stopped in the Suspended (Resumable) state. Next we have two choices, one is to resume and the second is to terminate the orchestration. Is the orchestration is stopped or unenlisted? You don't find a note about it anywhere. The fact is the Orchestration is stopped and still enlisted. It is very important. So again, the suspended orchestration can be resumed or terminated. The moment when the operator or the operation script resumes or terminates can be far away. It is also important too. Let's go back to the case from previous article. Make sure you notice the convoy and the dangerous zone after the last Receive shape. Now we have a Suspend shape inside the orchestration. The first orchestration instance is suspended. Next messages start new orchestration instance and have been consumed by this orchestration, right? Wrong! The orchestration is stopped on the Suspend shape but still enlisted. Now the dangerous zone, the "zombie zone" is expanded to the interval between the last receive and the moment of termination or end of the orchestration. The new orchestration instance for this convoy will not start till this moment. How fast operator finds out this suspended orchestration? Maybe hours or days. All this time orchestration is still enlisted and gathering the convoy messages. We can resume the orchestration but we cannot resume these messages together with orchestration. Seems the name Suspended of the orchestration is misleading. The orchestration can be in the Started (and Enlisted)/Stopped (and Enlisted)/Unenlisted state. The Suspend shape switches orchestration exactly to the Stopped state. The Stop name would describe the shape clearly and unambiguously and the Stopped state would describe the orchestration. Imagine we can change the BizTalk. The Orchestration editor can search these situations and returns the compile error. In similar case the Orchestration Editor forces us to use only ordered delivery port with convoys. The run-time core can force the orchestration with convoy be suspended in Unresumable state, that means the run-time unenlists the orchestration instance subscriptions. The Suspend shape name should be changed. The "Suspend" name is misleading. The "Stop" name is clear and unambiguous. The same for the orchestration state, it should be “Stopped” not “Suspended (Resumable)”. Conclusion: It is not recommended using a Suspend shape together with the convoy orchestrations.

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How would you gather client's data on Google App Engine without using Datastore/Backend Instances too much?

- by ruslan

I'm relatively new to StackExchange and not sure if it's appropriate place to ask design question. Site gives me a hint "The question you're asking appears subjective and is likely to be closed". Please let me know. Anyway.. One of the projects I'm working on is online survey engine. It's my first big commercial project on Google App Engine. I need your advice on how to collect stats and efficiently record them in DataStore without bankrupting me. Initial requirements are: After user finishes survey client sends list of pairs [ID (int) + PercentHit (double)]. This list shows how close answers of this user match predefined answers of reference answerers (which identified by IDs). I call them "target IDs". Creator of the survey wants to see aggregated % for given IDs for last hour, particular timeframe or from the beginning of the survey. Some surveys may have thousands of target/reference answerers. So I created entity public class HitsStatsDO implements Serializable { @Id transient private Long id; transient private Long version = (long) 0; transient private Long startDate; @Parent transient private Key parent; // fake parent which contains target id @Transient int targetId; private double avgPercent; private long hitCount; } But writing HitsStatsDO for each target from each user would give a lot of data. For instance I had a survey with 3000 targets which was answered by ~4 million people within one week with 300K people taking survey in first day. Even if we assume they were answering it evenly for 24 hours it would give us ~1040 writes/second. Obviously it hits concurrent writes limit of Datastore. I decided I'll collect data for one hour and save that, that's why there are avgPercent and hitCount in HitsStatsDO. GAE instances are stateless so I had to use dynamic backend instance. There I have something like this: // Contains stats for one hour private class Shard { ReadWriteLock lock = new ReentrantReadWriteLock(); Map<Integer, HitsStatsDO> map = new HashMap<Integer, HitsStatsDO>(); // Key is target ID public void saveToDatastore(); public void updateStats(Long startDate, Map<Integer, Double> hits); } and map with shard for current hour and previous hour (which doesn't stay here for long) private HashMap<Long, Shard> shards = new HashMap<Long, Shard>(); // Key is HitsStatsDO.startDate So once per hour I dump Shard for previous hour to Datastore. Plus I have class LifetimeStats which keeps Map<Integer, HitsStatsDO> in memcached where map-key is target ID. Also in my backend shutdown hook method I dump stats for unfinished hour to Datastore. There is only one major issue here - I have only ONE backend instance :) It raises following questions on which I'd like to hear your opinion: Can I do this without using backend instance ? What if one instance is not enough ? How can I split data between multiple dynamic backend instances? It hard because I don't know how many I have because Google creates new one as load increases. I know I can launch exact number of resident backend instances. But how many ? 2, 5, 10 ? What if I have no load at all for a week. Constantly running 10 backend instances is too expensive. What do I do with data from clients while backend instance is dead/restarting? Thank you very much in advance for your thoughts.

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Why Is Hibernation Still Used?

- by Jason Fitzpatrick

With the increased prevalence of fast solid-state hard drives, why do we still have system hibernation? Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader Moses wants to know why he should use hibernate on a desktop machine: I’ve never quite understood the original purpose of the Hibernation power state in Windows. I understand how it works, what processes take place, and what happens when you boot back up from Hibernate, but I’ve never truly understood why it’s used. With today’s technology, most notably with SSDs, RAM and CPUs becoming faster and faster, a cold boot on a clean/efficient Windows installation can be pretty fast (for some people, mere seconds from pushing the power button). Standby is even faster, sometimes instantaneous. Even SATA drives from 5-6 years ago can accomplish these fast boot times. Hibernation seems pointless to me [on desktop computers] when modern technology is considered, but perhaps there are applications that I’m not considering. What was the original purpose behind hibernation, and why do people still use it? Quite a few people use hibernate, so what is Moses missing in the big picture? The Answer SuperUser contributor Vignesh4304 writes: Normally hibernate mode saves your computer’s memory, this includes for example open documents and running applications, to your hard disk and shuts down the computer, it uses zero power. Once the computer is powered back on, it will resume everything where you left off. You can use this mode if you won’t be using the laptop/desktop for an extended period of time, and you don’t want to close your documents. Simple Usage And Purpose: Save electric power and resuming of documents. In simple terms this comment serves nice e.g (i.e. you will sleep but your memories are still present). Why it’s used: Let me describe one sample scenario. Imagine your battery is low on power in your laptop, and you are working on important projects on your machine. You can switch to hibernate mode – it will result your documents being saved, and when you power on, the actual state of application gets restored. Its main usage is like an emergency shutdown with an auto-resume of your documents. MagicAndre1981 highlights the reason we use hibernate everyday: Because it saves the status of all running programs. I leave all my programs open and can resume working the next day very easily. Doing a real boot would require to start all programs again, load all the same files into those programs, get to the same place that I was at before, and put all my windows in exactly the same place. Hibernating saves a lot of work pulling these things back up again. It’s not unusual to find computers around the office here that have been hibernated day in and day out for months without an actual full system shutdown and restart. It’s enormously convenient to freeze your work space at the exact moment you stopped working and to turn right around and resume there the next morning. Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.

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Indexed view deadlocking

- by Dave Ballantyne

Deadlocks can be a really tricky thing to track down the root cause of. There are lots of articles on the subject of tracking down deadlocks, but seldom do I find that in a production system that the cause is as straightforward. That being said, deadlocks are always caused by process A needs a resource that process B has locked and process B has a resource that process A needs. There may be a longer chain of processes involved, but that is the basic premise. Here is one such (much simplified) scenario that was at first non-obvious to its cause: The system has two tables, Products and Stock. The Products table holds the description and prices of a product whilst Stock records the current stock level. USE tempdb GO CREATE TABLE Product ( ProductID INTEGER IDENTITY PRIMARY KEY, ProductName VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL, Price MONEY NOT NULL ) GO CREATE TABLE Stock ( ProductId INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, StockLevel INTEGER NOT NULL ) GO INSERT INTO Product SELECT TOP(1000) CAST(NEWID() AS VARCHAR(255)), ABS(CAST(CAST(NEWID() AS VARBINARY(255)) AS INTEGER))%100 FROM sys.columns a CROSS JOIN sys.columns b GO INSERT INTO Stock SELECT ProductID,ABS(CAST(CAST(NEWID() AS VARBINARY(255)) AS INTEGER))%100 FROM Product There is a single stored procedure of GetStock: Create Procedure GetStock as SELECT Product.ProductID,Product.ProductName FROM dbo.Product join dbo.Stock on Stock.ProductId = Product.ProductID where Stock.StockLevel <> 0 Analysis of the system showed that this procedure was causing a performance overhead and as reads of this data was many times more than writes, an indexed view was created to lower the overhead. CREATE VIEW vwActiveStock With schemabinding AS SELECT Product.ProductID,Product.ProductName FROM dbo.Product join dbo.Stock on Stock.ProductId = Product.ProductID where Stock.StockLevel <> 0 go CREATE UNIQUE CLUSTERED INDEX PKvwActiveStock on vwActiveStock(ProductID) This worked perfectly, performance was improved, the team name was cheered to the rafters and beers all round. Then, after a while, something else happened… The system updating the data changed, The update pattern of both the Stock update and the Product update used to be: BEGIN TRAN UPDATE... COMMIT BEGIN TRAN UPDATE... COMMIT BEGIN TRAN UPDATE... COMMIT It changed to: BEGIN TRAN UPDATE... UPDATE... UPDATE... COMMIT Nothing that would raise an eyebrow in even the closest of code reviews. But after this change we saw deadlocks occuring. You can reproduce this by opening two sessions. In session 1 begin transaction Update Product set ProductName ='Test' where ProductID = 998 Then in session 2 begin transaction Update Stock set Stocklevel = 5 where ProductID = 999 Update Stock set Stocklevel = 5 where ProductID = 998 Hop back to session 1 and.. Update Product set ProductName ='Test' where ProductID = 999 Looking at the deadlock graphs we could see the contention was between two processes, one updating stock and the other updating product, but we knew that all the processes do to the tables is update them. Period. There are separate processes that handle the update of stock and product and never the twain shall meet, no reason why one should be requiring data from the other. Then it struck us, AH the indexed view. Naturally, when you make an update to any table involved in a indexed view, the view has to be updated. When this happens, the data in all the tables have to be read, so that explains our deadlocks. The data from stock is read when you update product and vice-versa. The fix, once you understand the problem fully, is pretty simple, the apps did not guarantee the order in which data was updated. Luckily it was a relatively simple fix to order the updates and deadlocks went away. Note, that there is still a *slight* risk of a deadlock occurring, if both a stock update and product update occur at *exactly* the same time.

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Rolling Along: PASS Board Year 2, Q2

- by Denise McInerney

Eighteen months into my time as a PASS Director I’m especially proud of what the Virtual Chapters have accomplished and want to share that progress with you. I'm also pleased that the organization has invested more resources to support the VCs. In this quarter I got to attend two conferences and meet more members of the SQL community. Virtual Chapters In the first six months of 2013 VCs have hosted more than 50 webinars, offering free technical education to over 6200 attendees. This is a great benefit to PASS members; thanks to the VC leaders, volunteers and speakers who contribute their time to produce these events. The Performance VC held their “Summer Performance Palooza”, an event featuring eight back-to-back sessions. Links to the session recordings can be found on the VCs web site. The new webinar platform, GoToWebinar, has been rolled out to all the VCs. This is a more stable, scalable platform and represents an important investment into the future of the VCs. A few new VCs are in the planning stages, including one focused on Security and one for Russian speakers. Visit the Virtual Chapter home page to sign up for the chapters that interest you. Each Virtual Chapter is offering a discount code for PASS Summit 2013. Be sure to ask your VC leader for the code to save $200 on Summit registration. 24 Hours of PASS The next 24HOP will be on July 31. This Summit Preview edition will feature 24 consecutive webcasts presented by experts who will be speaking at Summit in October. Registration for this free event is open now. And we will be using the GoToWebinar platform for 24HOP also. Business Analytics Conference April marked the first PASS Business Analytics Conference in Chicago. This introduced PASS to another segment of data professionals: the analysts and data scientists who work with the world’s growing collection of data. Overall the inaugural event was a success and gave us a glimpse into this increasingly important space. After Chicago the Board had several serious discussions about the lessons learned from this seven and what we should do next. We agreed to apply those lessons and continue to invest in this event; there will be a PASS Business Analytics Conference in 2014. I’m very pleased the next event will be in San Jose, CA, the heart of Silicon Valley, a place where a great deal of investment and innovation in data analytics is taking place. Global SQL Community Over the last couple of years PASS has been taking steps to become more relevant to SQL communities in different parts of the world. In May I had the opportunity to attend SQL Bits XI in Nottingham, England. It was enlightening to meet and talk with SQL professionals from around the U.K. as well as many other European countries. The many SQL Bits volunteers put on a great event and were gracious hosts. Budgets The Board passed the FY14 budget at the end of June. The budget process can be challenging and requires the Board to make some difficult choices about where to allocate resources. Overall I’m satisfied with the decisions we made and think we are investing in the right activities and programs. Next Up The Board is meeting July 18-19 in Kansas City. We will be holding the Executive Committee election for the Exec Co that will take office in 2014. We will also be discussing plans for the next BA conference as well as the next steps for our Global Growth initiative. Applications for the upcoming Board of Directors election open on July 24. If you are considering running for the Board you can visit the PASS elections site to learn more about the election process. And I encourage anyone considering running to reach out to current and past Board members to learn about what the role entails. Plans for the next PASS Summit are in full swing. We are working on some fun new ideas to introduce attendees to the many ways to become involved in the SQL community.

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Oracle at HR Tech: What a Difference a Year Makes

- by Natalia Rachelson

Last week, I had the privilege of attending the famous HR Technology Conference (HR Tech) in my new hometown of Chicago. This annual event, which draws the who of who in the world of HR technology, was by far the biggest. It wasn't just the highest level of attendance that was mind blowing, but also the amazing quality of attendees. Kudos go to the organizers, especially Bill Kutik for pulling together such a phenomenal conference. Conference highlights included Naomi Bloom's (http://infullbloom.us) Masters Panel and Mark Hurd's General Session on the last day of the conference. Naomi managed to do the seemingly impossible -- get all of the industry heavyweights and fierce competitors to travel to Chicago for her panel. Here are the executives she hosted: Our own Steve Miranda Sanjay Poonen, President Global Solutions, SAP Stan Swete, CTO, Workday Mike Capone, VP for Product Development and CIO, ADP John Wookey, EVP, Social Applications, Salesforce.com Adam Rogers, CTO, Ultimate Software I bet you think "WOW" when you look at these names. Just this panel by itself would have been enough of a draw for any tech conference, so Naomi and Bill really scored. TechTarget published a great review of the conference here. And here are a few highlights from Steve. "Steve Miranda, EVP Apps Dev Oracle, said delivering software in the cloud helps vendors shape their products to customer needs more efficiently. "As vendors, we're able to improve the software faster," he said. "We can see in real time what customers are using and not using." Miranda underscored Oracle's commitment to socializing its HCM platform,and named recruiting as an area where social has had a significant impact. "We want to make social a part of the fabric, not a separate piece," he said. "Already, if you're doing recruiting without social, it probably doesn't make any sense."" Having Mark Hurd at the conference was another real treat and everyone took notice. The Business of HR publication covered Mark's participation at HR Tech and the full article is available here. Here is what Business of HR had to say: "In truth, the story of Oracle today is a story similar to many of the current and potential customers they faced at the conference this week. Their business is changing and growing. They've dealt with acquisitions of their own and their competitors continue to nip at their heels. They are dealing with growth (and yes, they are hiring in case you're interested). They have concerns about talent as well. If Oracle feels as strongly about their products as they seem to be, they will be getting their co-president in front of a lot more groups of current and potential customers like they did at the HR Technology Conference this year. And here's hoping this is one executive who won't stop talking about the importance of talent just because he isn't at the HR tech conference anymore." Natalia RachelsonSenior Director, Oracle Applications

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Why don't we just fix Javascript?

- by Jan Meyer

Javascript sucks because of a few fatalities well pointed out by Douglas Crockford. We talk a lot about it. But the point here is, why we don't fix it? Coffeescript of course does that and a lot more. But the question here is another: if we provide a webservice that can convert one version of Javascript to the next, and so on, we can keep the language up to date. Such a conversion allows old code to run, albeit with an ever-increasing startup delay, as newer browsers convert old code to the new syntax. To avoid that delay, the site only needs to take the output of the code-transform and paste it in! The effort has immediate benefits for those businesses interested in the results. The rest can sleep tight: their code will continue to run. If we provide backward code-transformation also, then elder browsers can also run ANY new code! Migration scripts should be created by those that make changes to a language. Today they don't, which is in itself a fundamental omission! It should be am obvious part of their job to provide them, as their job isn't really done without them. The onus of making it work should be on them. With this system Any site will be able to run in Any browser, but new code will run best on the newest browsers. This way we reap the benefit of an up-to-date and productive development environment, where today we suffer, supposedly because of yesterday. This is a misconception. We are all trapped in committee-thinking, and we drag along things that only worsen our performance over time! We cause an ever increasing complexity that is hard to underestimate. Javascript is easily fixed. The fact is we don't. As an example, I have seen Patrick Michaud tackle the migration problem in PmWiki. It included forward migration scripts. Whenever syntax changes were made, a migration script was added to transform pages to the new syntax. As far as I know, ALL migrations have worked flawlessly. In other words, we don't tackle the migration problem, we just drag it along. We are incompetent! And why is that? Because technically incompetent people feel they must decide for us. Because they are incompetent, fear rules them. They are obnoxiously conservative, and we suffer the consequence of bad leadership. But the competent don't need to play by the same rules. They can (and must) change them. They are the path forward. It is about time to leave the past behind, and pursue the leanest meanest, no, eternal functionality. That would in and of itself revolutionize programming. So, why don't we stop whining and fix programming? Begin with Javascript and change the world. Even if the browser doesn't hook into this system, coders could. So language updaters should take it upon them to provide migration scripts. Once they exist, browsers may take advantage of them.

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SQL Script to Assign All Items to ALL Sites with Dynamics GP

- by Ryan McBee

v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} When setting up new items within Microsoft Dynamics GP, you will often run into the error message below which reads “This site is not assigned to the selected item. Do you want to assign this site?” The fix is quite simple given that you simply click the Add button below which opens up the Item Quantities Maintenance window which you will hit the save button and proceed with the entry of your Sales Order or Purchase Order. If you have a lot of new items into GP and have just one Site ID setup, the best approach to assigning your items to a particular site is by going to the Site Maintenance Window which is located in Cards>>Inventory>>Site. Once you are in the window below, you can click the Assign button to assign Items to the Site selected. However, if you have you a lot of Sites and Items created, this can be quite a cumbersome and time consuming process. For that, I have created the following SQL Script below that Assigns all Items to all Site ID’s within Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010. declare @item varchar(100) , @loc varchar(100) , @ItemExist int DECLARE TablePositionCursor CURSOR FOR SELECT itemnmbr from IV00101 i OPEN TablePositionCursor FETCH NEXT FROM TablePositionCursor INTO @item WHILE (@@fetch_status <> -1) BEGIN DECLARE TablePositionCursor2 CURSOR FOR select locncode from IV40700 OPEN TablePositionCursor2 FETCH NEXT FROM TablePositionCursor2 INTO @loc WHILE (@@fetch_status <> -1) BEGIN SELECT @ItemExist = isnull(count(*), 0) FROM IV00102 where ITEMNMBR = @item and LOCNCODE = @loc if @ItemExist = 0 BEGIN insert into iv00102 values( @item ,@loc ,'' ,2 ,'' ,0 ,0 ,0 ,0 ,'01/01/1900' ,'' ,'01/01/1900' ,0 ,0 ,0 ,0 ,0 ,0 ,0 ,0 ,0 ,0 ,0 ,0 ,'01/01/1900' ,'01/01/1900' ,'01/01/1900' ,'01/01/1900' ,0 ,'' ,'' ,'' ,1 ,0 ,0 ,1 ,0 ,0 ,1 ,2 ,0 ,0 ,0 ,0 ,0 ,0 ,0 ,1 ,0 ,0 ,0 ,3 ,0 ,0 ,0 ,'' ,'' ,'' ,'' ,'' ,'' ,'' ,'' ,1 ,1 ,'' ,1 ,1 ,0 ,1 ,1 ,1 ,0 ,0 ,0 ,0 ,0 ) END FETCH NEXT FROM TablePositionCursor2 INTO @loc END DEALLOCATE TablePositionCursor2 FETCH NEXT FROM TablePositionCursor INTO @item END DEALLOCATE TablePositionCursor The script below works just for GP 2010 since the columns in the IV00102 have changed from version to version. If you need it for prior versions, please email me and I will send it to you. Disclaimer: I tested this on limited data, if you find an issue or have a suggestion for improvement, please let me know and I will post the update here for everyone. This blog is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

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Sunshine after the iCloud release?

- by Laila

"Why should I believe them? They're the ones that brought us MobileMe? It was not our finest hour, but we learned a lot." Steve Jobs June 6th 2011 Apple's new cloud service has been met with uncritical excitement by industry commentators. It is wonderful what a rename can do. Apple has had a 'cloud' offering for three years called MobileMe, successor to .MAC and iTools, so iCloud is now the fourth internet service Apple have attempted. If this had been Microsoft, there would have been catcalls all around the blogosphere. I'll admit that there is a lot more functionality announced for iCloud than MobileMe has ever managed to achieve, but then almost anything has more functionality than MobileMe. It's an expensive service (£120 a year in the UK, $90 in the states), launched as far back as June 9, 2008, that has delivered very little and suffered a string of technical problems; the documentation was mainly a community effort, built up gradually by the frustrated and angry users. It was supposed to synchronise PC Outlook calendars but couldn't manage Microsoft Exchange (Google could, of course). It used WebDAV to allow Windows users to attach to the filestore, but didn't document how to do it. The method for downloading and uploading files to the cloud-based filestore was ridiculously clunky. It allowed you to post photos on a public site, but forgot to include a way of deleting photos. I could go on with the list, but you can explore the many sites that have flourished to inhabit the support-vacuum left by Apple. MobileMe should have had all the bright new clever things announced for iCloud. Apple dropped the ball, and allowed services such as Flickr to fill the void. However, their PR skills are such that, a name-change later (the .ME.com email address remains), it has turned a rout into a victory, and hundreds of earnest bloggers have been extolling Apple's expertise in cloud matters. This must be frustrating for the other cloud providers who have quietly got the technology working right. I wish iCloud well, even though I resent the expensive mess they made of MobileMe. Apple promise that iCloud will sync files, apps, app data, and media across all the different iOS5 devices, Macs, and PCs. It also hopes to sync music across devices, but not video content. They've offered existing MobileMe users free use of the MobileMe service for a year as the product is morphed, and they will be able to transfer to iCloud when it is launched in the autumn. On June 30, 2012, MobileMe will die, and Apple's iWeb is also soon to join iTools and .MAC in the hereafter. So why get excited about iCloud? That all depends on the level of PC integration. Whereas iOS5 machines will be full participants in the new world of data-sharing (Sorry iPod Touch users) what about .NET libraries? There is talk of synchronising 'My Pictures' libraries with iOS5 and iMac machines, but little more detail as yet. Apple has a lot to prove with iCloud and anyone with actual experience of their past attempts to get into cloud services will be wary.

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Can't connect to certain HTTPS sites

- by mind.blank

I've just moved to a new apartment and with internet connection via a router and I'm finding that I can't connect to quite a few sites that use SSL. For example trying to connect to PayPal: curl -v https://paypal.com * About to connect() to paypal.com port 443 (#0) * Trying 66.211.169.3... connected * successfully set certificate verify locations: * CAfile: none CApath: /etc/ssl/certs * SSLv3, TLS handshake, Client hello (1): * Unknown SSL protocol error in connection to paypal.com:443 * Closing connection #0 curl: (35) Unknown SSL protocol error in connection to paypal.com:443 curl -v -ssl https://paypal.com gives the same output. For some sites it works: curl -v https://www.google.com * About to connect() to www.google.com port 443 (#0) * Trying 74.125.235.112... connected * successfully set certificate verify locations: * CAfile: none CApath: /etc/ssl/certs * SSLv3, TLS handshake, Client hello (1): * SSLv3, TLS handshake, Server hello (2): * SSLv3, TLS handshake, CERT (11): * SSLv3, TLS handshake, Server key exchange (12): * SSLv3, TLS handshake, Server finished (14): * SSLv3, TLS handshake, Client key exchange (16): * SSLv3, TLS change cipher, Client hello (1): * SSLv3, TLS handshake, Finished (20): * SSLv3, TLS change cipher, Client hello (1): * SSLv3, TLS handshake, Finished (20): * SSL connection using ECDHE-RSA-RC4-SHA * Server certificate: * subject: C=US; ST=California; L=Mountain View; O=Google Inc; CN=www.google.com * start date: 2011-10-26 00:00:00 GMT * expire date: 2013-09-30 23:59:59 GMT * common name: www.google.com (matched) * issuer: C=ZA; O=Thawte Consulting (Pty) Ltd.; CN=Thawte SGC CA * SSL certificate verify ok. > GET / HTTP/1.1 > User-Agent: curl/7.22.0 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) libcurl/7.22.0 OpenSSL/1.0.1 zlib/1.2.3.4 libidn/1.23 librtmp/2.3 > Host: www.google.com > Accept: */* > < HTTP/1.1 302 Found < Location: https://www.google.co.jp/ . . . I'm using Ubuntu 12.04, with Windows 7 installed as well. These sites work on Windows :( Not sure if this information helps but I ran ifconfig and got the following: eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 1c:c1:de:bc:e2:4f inet6 addr: 2408:c3:7fff:991:686b:8d18:81b3:8dd1/64 Scope:Global inet6 addr: 2408:c3:7fff:991:1ec1:deff:febc:e24f/64 Scope:Global inet6 addr: fe80::1ec1:deff:febc:e24f/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:87075 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:54522 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:78167937 (78.1 MB) TX bytes:10016891 (10.0 MB) Interrupt:46 Base address:0x4000 eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr ac:81:12:0d:93:80 inet6 addr: fe80::ae81:12ff:fe0d:9380/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:498 TX packets:0 errors:26 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B) Interrupt:17 lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:630 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:630 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:39592 (39.5 KB) TX bytes:39592 (39.5 KB) ppp0 Link encap:Point-to-Point Protocol inet addr:180.57.228.200 P-t-P:118.23.8.175 Mask:255.255.255.255 UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST MTU:1492 Metric:1 RX packets:39631 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:22391 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:3 RX bytes:43462054 (43.4 MB) TX bytes:2834628 (2.8 MB)

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To SYNC or not to SYNC – Part 4

- by AshishRay

This is Part 4 of a multi-part blog article where we are discussing various aspects of setting up Data Guard synchronous redo transport (SYNC). In Part 1 of this article, I debunked the myth that Data Guard SYNC is similar to a two-phase commit operation. In Part 2, I discussed the various ways that network latency may or may not impact a Data Guard SYNC configuration. In Part 3, I talked in details regarding why Data Guard SYNC is a good thing, and the distance implications you have to keep in mind. In this final article of the series, I will talk about how you can nicely complement Data Guard SYNC with the ability to failover in seconds. Wait - Did I Say “Seconds”? Did I just say that some customers do Data Guard failover in seconds? Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. Data Guard has an automatic failover capability, aptly called Fast-Start Failover. Initially available with Oracle Database 10g Release 2 for Data Guard SYNC transport mode (and enhanced in Oracle Database 11g to support Data Guard ASYNC transport mode), this capability, managed by Data Guard Broker, lets your Data Guard configuration automatically failover to a designated standby database. Yes, this means no human intervention is required to do the failover. This process is controlled by a low footprint Data Guard Broker client called Observer, which makes sure that the primary database and the designated standby database are behaving like good kids. If something bad were to happen to the primary database, the Observer, after a configurable threshold period, tells that standby, “Your time has come, you are the chosen one!” The standby dutifully follows the Observer directives by assuming the role of the new primary database. The DBA or the Sys Admin doesn’t need to be involved. And - in case you are following this discussion very closely, and are wondering … “Hmmm … what if the old primary is not really dead, but just network isolated from the Observer or the standby - won’t this lead to a split-brain situation?” The answer is No - It Doesn’t. With respect to why-it-doesn’t, I am sure there are some smart DBAs in the audience who can explain the technical reasons. Otherwise - that will be the material for a future blog post. So - this combination of SYNC and Fast-Start Failover is the nirvana of lights-out, integrated HA and DR, as practiced by some of our advanced customers. They have observed failover times (with no data loss) ranging from single-digit seconds to tens of seconds. With this, they support operations in industry verticals such as manufacturing, retail, telecom, Internet, etc. that have the most demanding availability requirements. One of our leading customers with massive cloud deployment initiatives tells us that they know about server failures only after Data Guard has automatically completed the failover process and the app is back up and running! Needless to mention, Data Guard Broker has the integration hooks for interfaces such as JDBC and OCI, or even for custom apps, to ensure the application gets automatically rerouted to the new primary database after the database level failover completes. Net Net? To sum up this multi-part blog article, Data Guard with SYNC redo transport mode, plus Fast-Start Failover, gives you the ideal triple-combo - that is, it gives you the assurance that for critical outages, you can failover your Oracle databases: very fast without human intervention, and without losing any data. In short, it takes the element of risk out of critical IT operations. It does require you to be more careful with your network and systems planning, but as far as HA is concerned, the benefits outweigh the investment costs. So, this is what we in the MAA Development Team believe in. What do you think? How has your deployment experience been? We look forward to hearing from you!

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SQL 2012 Licensing Thoughts

- by Geoff N. Hiten

The only thing more controversial than new Federal Tax plans is new Licensing plans from Microsoft. In both cases, everyone calculates several numbers. First, will I pay more or less under this plan? Second, will my competition pay more or less than now? Third, will <insert interesting person/company here> pay more or less? Not that items 2 and 3 are meaningful, that is just how people think. Much like tax plans, the devil is in the details, so lets see how this looks. Microsoft shows it here: http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/future-editions/sql2012-licensing.aspx First up is a switch from per-socket to per-core licensing. Anyone who didn’t see something like this coming should rapidly search for a new line of work because you are not paying attention. The explosion of multi-core processors has made SQL Server a bargain. Microsoft is in business to make money and the old per-socket model was not going to do that going forward. Per-core licensing also simplifies virtualization licensing. Physical Core = Virtual Core, at least for licensing. Oversubscribe your processors, that’s your lookout. You still pay for what is exposed to the VM. The cool part is you can seamlessly move physical and virtual workloads around and the licenses follow. The catch is you have to have Software Assurance to make the licenses mobile. Nice touch there. Let’s have a moment of silence for the late, unlamented, largely ignored Workgroup Edition. To quote the Microsoft FAQ: “Standard becomes our sole edition for basic database needs”. Considering I haven’t encountered a singe instance of SQL Server Workgroup Edition in the wild, I don’t think this will be all that controversial. As for pricing, it looks like a wash with current per-socket pricing based on four core sockets. Interestingly, that is the minimum core count Microsoft proposes to swap to transition per-socket to per-core if you are on Software Assurance. Reading the fine print shows that if you are using more, you will get more core licenses: From the licensing FAQ. 15. How do I migrate from processor licenses to core licenses? What is the migration path? Licenses purchased with Software Assurance (SA) will upgrade to SQL Server 2012 at no additional cost. EA/EAP customers can continue buying processor licenses until your next renewal after June 30, 2012. At that time, processor licenses will be exchanged for core-based licenses sufficient to cover the cores in use by processor-licensed databases (minimum of 4 cores per processor for Standard and Enterprise, and minimum of 8 EE cores per processor for Datacenter). Looks like the folks who invested in the AMD 12-core chips will make out like bandits. Now, on to something new: SQL Server Business Intelligence Edition. Yep, finally a BI-specific SKU licensed for server+CAL configurations only. Note that Enterprise Edition still supports the complete feature set; the BI Edition is intended for smaller shops who want to use the full BI feature set but without needing Enterprise Edition scale (or costs). No, you don’t get ColumnStore, Compression, or Partitioning in the BI Edition. Those are Enterprise scale features, ThankYouVeryMuch. Then again, your starting licensing costs are about one sixth of an Enterprise Edition system (based on an 8 core server). The only part of the message I am missing is if the current Failover Licensing Policy will change. Do we need to fully or partially license failover servers? That is a detail I definitely want to know.

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October in Review

- by Richard Bingham

With OpenWorld over October was time to get back to serious work for everyone, including the Fusion Applications Developer Relations team. Don't forget the OpenWorld content is still available, including presentation downloads, for a limited period of time so be sure to grab anything you found useful or take another scan for anything you might have missed. Of all the announcements, the continued evolution of the Oracle Cloud services for extending and integrating with Fusion Applications is increasing in popularity, and certainly the Cloud Marketplace is something we're becoming involved in. More details to follow. Fusion Concepts Last week Vik from our team started the new "Fusion Concepts" series of articles, providing those new to Fusion Applications an explanation of the architectural basics, with the aim to reduce the learning curve and lay the platform for more efficient and effective development. The series begun with an insightful first post on the different schemas that exist in the Fusion Applications database. Look out for upcoming posts on multi-lingual entities, profile options, look-ups and more. New Learning Resources Our YouTube channel continued to expand with more 'how to' videos on using page composer, extending the Simplified UI (aka FUSE), and integrating BI reports and analytics. Also the Oracle Learning Library is now well established as a central resource for knowledge, now with thousands of tutorials, videos, and documents. Of particular note are the great new extensibility-related videos added by the CRM Product Management team, including more on the ever-expanding capabilities of Application Composer. To see some examples of these search using keyword 'customization' or the product 'Sales Cloud'. Finally on learning resources, as Oliver mentioned the Oracle Press book on Fusion Application Customization and Extensibility is now available for pre-order on Amazon (due out 1st Jan). Out And About October also saw us attend the annual Apps Conference held by the UK Oracle User Group in London. Interestingly there was an Applications Transformation stream of sessions and content that included Fusion Applications with all the latest in the Oracle Applications evolution, as always focused around the three tenets of social, mobile, and cloud. Read more in Richard's post-event write up. Other teams around Oracle have also been busy. Angelo from the Platform Technical Services group has done quite a bit of work using web services with Fusion SaaS and has published many interesting findings on his blog. It's definitely recommended reading if you are working on any related integration projects. The middleware-for-applications group has built a new tool called "AppAdvantage" offering an online assessment of your use of Fusion Middleware technologies with Oracle Applications. As the popularity of integrating cloud applications with on-premises systems continued to grow, leveraging existing middleware technologies (and licenses) to support the integration solution is likely to be of paramount importance. Similarly the "Build Enterprise Application Extensions with Ease" section of the related webpage has AppsUX director Killan Evers speaking about customization using the composer tools. Both are useful resources for those just getting started with a move to Fusion Applications. The Oracle A-Team, specialists in middleware technical architecture, always publish superb content via their 'chronicles' site, now with a substantial amount specifically related to Fusion Applications. Click on the Fusion Applications menu on the top right of their homepage to see more. Last month of particular note was an article on customizing the timeout pop-up message that shows to inactive users, providing design-time insight and easy-to-follow steps. Finally if you're looking at using Oracle Middleware and Cloud to tailor and extend your applications then you may also be interested in this new blog post on the roadmap for Oracle SOA and the latest on-demand Cloud Development webcast.

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At the Java DEMOgrounds - Oracle Java ME Embedded Enables the “Internet of Things”

- by Janice J. Heiss

I caught up with Oracle’s Robert Barnes, Senior Director, Java Product Management, who was demonstrating a new product from Oracle’s Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME) product portfolio, Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2, a complete client Java runtime optimized for microcontrollers and other resource-constrained devices. Oracle’s Java ME Embedded 3.2 is a Java ME runtime based on CLDC 1.1 (JSR-139) and IMP-NG (JSR-228).“What we are showing here is the Java ME Embedded 3.2 that we announced last week,” explained Barnes. “It’s the start of the 'Internet of Things,’ in which you have very very small devices that are on the edge of the network where the sensors sit. You often have a middle area called a gateway or a concentrator which is fairly middle to higher performance. On the back end you have a very high performance server. What this is showing is Java spanning all the way from the server side right down towards the type of chip that you will get at the sensor side as the network.” Barnes explained that he had two different demos running.The first, called the Solar Panel System Demo, measures the brightness of the light. “This,” said Barnes, “is a light source demo with a Cortex M3 controlling the motor, on the end of which is a sensor which is measuring the brightness of the lamp. This is recording the data of the brightness of the lamp and as we move the lamp out of the way, we should be able using the server to turn the sensor towards the lamp so the brightness reading will go higher. This sends the message back to the server and we can look at the web server sitting on the PC underneath the desk. We can actually see the data being passed back effectively through a back office type of function within a utility environment.” The second demo, the Smart Grid Response Demo, Barnes explained, “has the same board and processor and is still using Java ME embedded with a different app on top. This is a demand response demo. What we are seeing within the managing environment is that people want to track the pricing signals of the electricity. If it’s particularly expensive at any point in time, they may turn something off. This demo sets the price of the electricity as though this is coming from the back of the server sending pricing signals to my home.” The demo had a lamp and a fan and it was tracking the price of electricity. “If I set the price of the electricity to go over 5 cents, then the device will turn off,” explained Barnes. “I can go into my settings and, in this case, change the price to 50 cents and we can wait a minus and the lamp will go off. When I change the pricing signal so that it is lower, the lamp will come back on. The key point is that the Java software we have running is the same across all the different devices; it’s a way to build applications across multiple devices using the same software. This is important because it fixes peak loading on the network and can stops blackouts.” This demo brought me back to a prior decade when Sun Microsystems first promoted Jini technology, a version of Java that would put everything on the network and give us the smart home. Your home would be automated to tell you when you were out of milk, when to change your light bulbs, etc. You would have access to the web and the network throughout your home.It’s interesting to see how technology moves over time – from the smart home to the Internet of Things.

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How to Convert Videos to 3GP for Mobile Phones

- by DigitalGeekery

Would you like to play videos on your phone, but the device only supports 3GP files? We’ll show you how to convert popular video files into 3GP mobile phone video format with Pazera Free Video to 3GP Converter. Download the Pazera Free Video to 3GP Converter (Download link below). It will allow you to convert popular video files (AVI, MPEG, MP4, FLV, MKV, and MOV) to work on your mobile phone. There is no installation to run. You’ll just need to unzip the download folder and double-click the videoto3gp.exe file to run the application. To add video files to the queue, click on the Add files button. Browse for your file, and click Open. Your video will be added to the Queue. You can add multiple files to the queue and convert them all at one time. The converter comes with several pre-configured profiles for conversion settings. To load a profile, select one from the Profile drop down list and then click the Load button. The settings in the panels at the bottom of the application will be automatically updated. If you are a more advanced user, the options on the lower panels allow for adjusting settings to your liking. You can choose between 3GP and 3G2 (for some older phones), H.263, MPEG-4, and XviD video codecs, AAC or AMR-NB audio codecs, as well as a variety of bitrates, resolutions, etc. By default, the converted file will be output to the same location as the input directory. You can change it by clicking the text box input radio button and browsing for a different folder. Click Convert to start the conversion process. A conversion output box will open and display the progress. When finished, click Close. Now you’re ready to load the video onto your phone and enjoy. Conclusion Pazera Free Video to 3GP Converter is not exactly the ultimate video conversion tool, but it is quick and simple enough for the average user to convert most video formats to 3GP. Plus, it’s portable. You can copy the folder to a USB drive and take it with you. Do you have some 3GP video files you’d like to convert to more common formats? Check out our earlier article on how to convert 3GP to AVI and MPEG for free. Link Download Pazera Free Video to 3GP Converter Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Convert .3GP and .3G2 Files to AVI / MPEG for FreeExtract Audio from a Video File with Pazera Free Audio ExtractorConvert PDF Files to Word Documents and Other FormatsConvert YouTube Videos to MP3 with YouTube DownloaderFriday Fun: Watch HD Video Content with Meevid 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 VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Daily Motivator (Firefox) FetchMp3 Can Download Videos & Convert Them to Mp3 Use Flixtime To Create Video Slideshows Creating a Password Reset Disk in Windows Bypass Waiting Time On Customer Service Calls With Lucyphone MELTUP – "The Beginning Of US Currency Crisis And Hyperinflation"

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Collision detection via adjacent tiles - sprite too big

- by BlackMamba

I have managed to create a collision detection system for my tile-based jump'n'run game (written in C++/SFML), where I check on each update what values the surrounding tiles of the player contain and then I let the player move accordingly (i. e. move left when there is an obstacle on the right side). This works fine when the player sprite is not too big: Given a tile size of 5x5 pixels, my solution worked quite fine with a spritesize of 3x4 and 5x5 pixels. My problem is that I actually need the player to be quite gigantic (34x70 pixels given the same tilesize). When I try this, there seems to be an invisible, notably smaller boundingbox where the player collides with obstacles, the player also seems to shake strongly. Here some images to explain what I mean: Works: http://tinypic.com/r/207lvfr/8 Doesn't work: http://tinypic.com/r/2yuk02q/8 Another example of non-functioning: http://tinypic.com/r/kexbwl/8 (the player isn't falling, he stays there in the corner) My code for getting the surrounding tiles looks like this (I removed some parts to make it better readable): std::vector<std::map<std::string, int> > Game::getSurroundingTiles(sf::Vector2f position) { // converting the pixel coordinates to tilemap coordinates sf::Vector2u pPos(static_cast<int>(position.x/tileSize.x), static_cast<int>(position.y/tileSize.y)); std::vector<std::map<std::string, int> > surroundingTiles; for(int i = 0; i < 9; ++i) { // calculating the relative position of the surrounding tile(s) int c = i % 3; int r = static_cast<int>(i/3); // we subtract 1 to place the player in the middle of the 3x3 grid sf::Vector2u tilePos(pPos.x + (c - 1), pPos.y + (r - 1)); // this tells us what kind of block this tile is int tGid = levelMap[tilePos.y][tilePos.x]; // converts the coords from tile to world coords sf::Vector2u tileRect(tilePos.x*5, tilePos.y*5); // storing all the information std::map<std::string, int> tileDict; tileDict.insert(std::make_pair("gid", tGid)); tileDict.insert(std::make_pair("x", tileRect.x)); tileDict.insert(std::make_pair("y", tileRect.y)); // adding the stored information to our vector surroundingTiles.push_back(tileDict); } // I organise the map so that it is arranged like the following: /* * 4 | 1 | 5 * -- -- -- * 2 | / | 3 * -- -- -- * 6 | 0 | 7 * */ return surroundingTiles; } I then check in a loop through the surrounding tiles, if there is a 1 as gid (indicates obstacle) and then check for intersections with that adjacent tile. The problem I just can't overcome is that I think that I need to store the values of all the adjacent tiles and then check for them. How? And may there be a better solution? Any help is appreciated. P.S.: My implementation derives from this blog entry, I mostly just translated it from Objective-C/Cocos2d.

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IE9 and the Mystery of the Broken Video Tag

- by David Wesst

I was very excited when Microsoft released the Internet Explorer 9 Release Candidate. As far as I was concerned, this was another nail in the coffin for IE6 and step in the right direction for us .NET web developers as our base camp was finally starting to support the latest and greatest future-web standards. Unfortunately, my celebration was short lived as I soon hit a snag while loading up an HTML5 site I was building in Visual Studio 2010. The Mystery After updating Internet Explorer, I ran my HTML5 site that had the oh-so-lovely HTML5 video tag showing a video. Even though this worked in IE9 Beta, it appeared that IE9 RC could not load the same file. I figured that it was the video codec. Maybe IE9 RC no longer supported the video codec I used to encode my video. Here's the code I used: <video width="854" height="480" id="myOtherVideo" autoplay="" controls=""> <source src="/DemoSite1/Media/big_buck_bunny.mp4"/> <div> <p>Your browser does not support HTML5 Video.</p> </div> </video> As you can see from the code, I had the "fail-safe" code inside the video tag. The idea there being that if the video tag, or the video files themselves, are not supported by the browser my video should fail gracefully. What was even more strange was the fact that it worked in all the other HTML5 browsers that supported video. The Investigation Whoa! DJ stop the music. How can any of that make sense? Would the IE team really take such huge strides forward only to forget to include a feature that was already in the beta? I don't think so. I did plenty of searching on the web and asking around on the web, but could not seem to find anyone else having the same problem. Eventually I came across this post talking about declaring the MIME type in the .htaccess file. That got me thinking: does my web server support the video MIME type? I was using VS2010, so how do I know what kind of MIME types are supported by default? Still, my page hosted in Cassini (the web development server in VS2010) works on the other browsers. Why wouldn't it work with IE9 RC? To answer that, it was time to open up the upgraded toolbox known as the Developer's Tools in IE9 and use the new Network Tab. The Conclusion If you take a closer look at the results displayed from the Network tab, you can see that IE9 RC has interpreted the video file as text/html rather than video/mp4. To make this work, I decided to use IIS to debug my HTML5 web application by setting the web project's properties. Then, I added the MIME types that I want to support (i.e. video/mp4, video/ogg, video/webm). Et voila! The Mystery of the Broken Video Tag is solved. After Thoughts After solving the mystery, I still had the question about why my site worked in Chrome, Safari, and Firefox 3.6. After asking around, the best answer that I received was from my colleague Tyler Doerksen. He said that IE9 likely depends on the server telling it what kind of file it is downloading rather than trying to read the metadata about the data it is trying to download before doing anything. I have no facts to back this up, but it makes sense to me. In a browser war where milliseconds can make your browser fall back a few places in the race for supremacy, maybe the IE team opted to depend on the server knowing what kind of content it is serving up. Makes sense to me. In any case, that is just an educated guess. If you have any comments, feel free to post on them below. This post also appears at http://david.wes.st

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Understanding the Customer Form in Release 12 from an AR Perspective!!

- by user793553

Confused by the Customer Form in Release 12?? Read on, to get some insight into the evolution of this screen, and how it links in with Trading Community Architecture. Historically, the customer data model was owned by Oracle Receivables (AR). However, as the data model changed and more complex relationships and attributes had to be tracked and monitored, the Trading Community Architecture (TCA) product was created. All applications within the E-Business suite that require interaction with a customer integrate with TCA. Customer information is no longer stored in the individual applications but rather in a central repository/registry maintained within TCA. It is important to understand the following entities/concepts stored in TCA: Party: A party is an entity with whom you can have a potential business relationship. A party can be either a Person or an Organization. The Party entity is completely independent of any business relationship; this means that a Party can exist even if you have no transactions with it. The Party is the "umbrella" entity under which you capture all other attributes listed below. Customer: A customer is a party with whom you have an existing business relationship. From an AR perspective, you can simplify the concepts by thinking of a Customer as a Party. This definition however does not apply to all other applications. In the Oracle Receivables Customer form, the information displayed at the Customer level is from TCA's Party information record. Customer Account (also called Account): An account contains information about how you transact business with a particular customer. You can create multiple accounts for a customer. When you create invoices and receipts you associate it to a particular Account of a Customer. Location: A Location is an address. It is a point in space, typically identified by a street number, a street name, a city, a state or province, a country. A location is independent of what it is used for - you do not associate a purpose to a location. Party Site: A Party Site is associated to a Party. It is the location where a party is physically located. When defining sites for a Party, only one can be an identifying address. However, you can define other party sites associated to a party. You can define purposes/usage for Party Sites. Account Site: An Account Site is associated to a Customer Account. It is the location associated to the account you are transacting business with. You can define business purposes (also called site uses) for an Account site. Read more about the Customer Workbench in these notes: Doc ID 1436547.1 Oracle Receivables: Understanding the Customer Form in Release 12 Doc ID 1437866.1 Customer Form - Address: Troubleshooting, Known Issues and Patches Doc ID 1448442.1 Oracle Receivables (AR): Customer Workbench Information Center Do you find this type of blog entry useful? Please add comments to let us know how we can help you more effectively. Thank you!

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Microsoft Build 2012 Day 1 Keynote Summary

- by Tim Murphy

So I have finally dried the tears after watching the Keynote for Build 2012. This wasn’t because it was an emotional presentation, but because for the second year I missed the goodies. Each on site attendee got a Surface RT, a Lumia 920 and a voucher for 100GB of SkyDrive storage. The event was opened with the announcement that in the three days since the launch of Windows 8 over 4 million upgrades have been sold. I don’t care who you are that is an impressive stat. Ballmer then spent a fair amount of time remaking the case for the Windows and Windows Phone platforms similar to what we have heard over the last to launch events. There were some cool, but non-essential demos. The one that was the most fun was the Perceptive Pixel 82” slate device. At first glance I wondered why I would ever want such a device, but then Ballmer explained it’s possible use for schools and boardrooms. The actually made sense. Then things got strange. Steve started explaining features that developers could leverage. Usually this type of information is left to the product leads. He focused on the integration with the Charms features such as Search and Share. Steve “Guggs” Guggenheim showed off an app that would appeal to my kids from Disney called “Agent P” which is base on Phineas and Ferb. Then he got to the meat of the presentation. We found out that you could add a tile that can be used to sell ad space. In the same vein we also found out that you could use Microsoft’s, Paypal’s or any commerce engine of your own creation or choosing. For those who are interested in sports and especially developing sports apps you would have found the small presentation from Michael Bayle of ESPN. He introduced the ESPN app which has tons of features. For the developers in the crowd he also mentioned that ESPN has an API available at developer.espn.com. During the launch events we were told apps were coming. In this presentation we were actually shown a scrolling list of logos and told about a couple of them. Ballmer mentioned specifically Twitter, SAP and DropBox. These are impressive names that were just a couple of the list impressive names. Steve Ballmer addressed the question of why you should develop for the Windows 8 platform. He feels that Microsoft has the best commercial terms for developers, a better way to build apps than other platforms and a variety of form factors. His key point though was the available volume of customers given the current Windows install base and assuming even a flat growth of the platform. This he backed with a promise that Microsoft is going to do better at marketing and you won’t be able to avoid the ads that they are bringing out. The last section of the key note was present by Kevin Gallo from the Windows Phone team. This was the real reason I tuned into the webcast. He impressed upon those watching that the strength of developing for the Microsoft platform is the common programming model that now exist. While there are difference between form factor implementations you can leverage code across them. He claimed that 90% of developer requests for Windows Phone 8 had been implemented. These include: More controls with better performance Better live tiles including lock screen integration Speech support in custom apps Easier submission to the market place App camera integration VOIP and chat support Bluetooth and NFC support Native C++ development Direct 3D development The quote from Kevin that stood out for me was that “Take your Dramamine and buckle your seatbelt type of games are coming to Windows Phone 8”. He back this up by displaying a list of game development frameworks and then having Unity come out and do a demo. Ok, almost done … The last two things of note for me were the announcement that the SDK is immediately available at dev.windowsphone.com and that they were reducing the cost of an individual developer account to $8 for the next 8 days. Let the development commence. del.icio.us Tags: Build 2012,Windows 8,Windows Phone 8,Windows Phone

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ArchBeat Link-o-Rama Top 10 for August 19-26, 2012

- by Bob Rhubart

The Top 10 most popular items shared via the OTN ArchBeat Facebook page for the week of August 19-26, 2012. Now Available: Oracle SQL Developer 3.2 (3.2.09.23) The latest release of Oracle SQl Developer includes UI enhancements, 12c database support, and bug fixes. ADF Tutorial Chapter 3: Creating a Master-Detail taskflow | Yannick Ongena Oracle ACE Yannick Ongena continues his ADF tutorial with a chapter devoted to view layer and using the data control to build pages that allow user to update reference data. GlassFish Community Event at JavaOne 2012 Don't miss out on this exclusive GlassFish Community Event on Sunday, September 30th from 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. in Moscone South. Register Now! Part of JavaOne 2012. Oracle BI 11g Book Authors – Podcast #9 | Art of Business Intelligence In this home-grown podcast, authors Christian Screen, Haroun Khan, and Adrian Ward talk about their new book, "Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g: A Hands-On Tutorial," about their sessions at Oracle OpenWorld, and about their ORACLENERD t-shirts. Oracle Service Bus duplicate message check using Coherence | Jan van Zoggel "Giving the fact that every message on our ESB has an unique messageID element in the SOAP header we could store this on disk, database or in memory,"says Jan van Zoggel. "With the help of Oracle Coherence this last option, in memory, is relatively simple." Even simpler with Jan's detailed instructions. Oracle Technology Network Architect Day - Boston - Sept 12 There are easier ways to increase your IT brainpower. Skip the electrodes and register for Oracle Technology Network Architect Day in Boston, September 12, 2012. This free event includes 8 technical sessions, panel Q&A, roundtable discussions—and a free lunch. 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. at the Boston Marriott Burlington, One Burlington Mall Road, Burlington, MA 01803. Oracle BPM enable BAM | Peter Paul van de Beek "BAM enables you to make decisions based on real-time information gathered from your running processes," says Peter Paul van de Beek. "With BPMN processes you can use the standard Business Indicators that the BPM Suite offers you and use them to with BAM without much extra effort." Sample Application for Switching Application Module Data Sources | Andrejus Baranovskis A sample application and how-to guide from Oracle ACE Director and ADF expert Andrejus Baranovskis. ORCLville: Some Basic BI Thoughts "If we'd stop to consider what business intelligence really is, many of us might grow a different perspective about how we implement enterprise apps," says Oracle ACE Director Floyd Teter. "What if we implemented with an eye to what kind of information we'd like to get from our enterprise apps?" Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.1.20 released |Oracle's Virtualization Blog Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.1.20 was just released at the community and Oracle download sites, reports the Fat Bloke. This is a maintenance release containing bug fixes and stability improvements. Thought for the Day "The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures." — Frederick P. Brooks Source: SoftwareQuotes

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