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• I Know What I Did This Summer: Put Down Trex Decking

  - by thatjeffsmith

  If you’re wondering why I would bore everyone with my pictures and frequent status updates/tweets from the past week – it’s so I could document the process of refurbishing my deck, or what some would call a porch. When we go to take a vacation, buy a car, do anything – we also read personal blogs to get the real story. So, if you’re curious about what it takes to tackle this sort of project, read on. Skills/Equipment/Manpower We Possessed I took the old decking out by myself. I’m about 230 lbs, more than 6′ tall, and I’m pretty healthy. This took about 8 hours over two afternoons. Three of us put the deck back together. My wife has two engineering degrees. Her father also has two engineering degrees. Lots of brainpower available here. Also, her dad ran the public works department for a country for more than 20 years – so lots and lots of practical experience on hand. We had a compound mitre saw, a skilsaw, 2-3 crowbars, a framing hammer, 3 cordless drills, a corded drill, lots of sawhorses, a power sander, an angle grinder, a 10×10 Coleman canopy tent, a Ford F-150 pickup truck, outdoor speakers and lots of iTunes playlists, plenty of water and cold beer. Why We Did This Our deck was relatively young – it was built in 2005. However, the pressure treated boards must not have been adequately maintained before we bought the house. I had powerwashed the deck every other year and had it stained a few times. The boards just rotted. We’re going to be in the house for a long time, and we wanted something that would look nice and require little maintenance. More bad deck boards The deck boards were in bad shape Things We Learned The two most important things: The hidden fasteners have to be put in JUST right. Wedge them into the grooved board, then bend down the bit that is screwed down. We didn’t do this on the first board and couldn’t get the second board to fit nearly close enough. Watching the official TREX YouTube video helped immensely, and we should have watched that first. When pre-drilling holes for the boards that need screwed down – DO NOT pre-drill through the underlying framing wood. ONLY pre-drill through the TREX itself. The screw won’t seat in the board properly. Instead of sitting down flush with the board, it will stop at the top of the board and just spin. I had to call the the place that sold me the screws to find this out. So about a third of our screws look like crap. If it doesn’t look or feel right – stop everything and pick up your computer or your phone. It’s not right, and it will be much easier to stop and find out why. We didn’t do this, and now I’m going to see every screw that’s not flush with the boards and get upset. Oh well. The Process How much time did it take? Well I spent about 8 hours taking the deck apart. And then the 3 of use spent 8 hours the first day, 10 hours the second day, 8 hours the third, and another 6 hours on the fourth day. That’s like 104 man-hours. We supposedly saved four or five thousand dollars in labor, but don’t do the math here or you might get a bit upset. The main thing is that we got what we wanted, and there won’t be any surprises later. Now for some pictures… This 6”+ pry bar made the destruction of the old deck much easier Most of the joists, once exposed, were OK. This joist wasn’t sitting on ANYTHING before. We think a lazy gas person cut the board to sneak a gas line in. Awesome… These monster lag bolts had to be accounted for when putting in the additional framing The border pattern Sheri wanted to put in required a lot more framing. These were the first boards to go down – we screwed them in as there was no way to attach clips I sat, kicked in the boards, and then drilled these clips in – but my wife was able to go MUCH faster by using her hands to lock the boards in and drill on her knees. I liked locking the board in with my feet when they needed to be ‘encouraged’ to go straight. The first board took FOREVER to go in, but then when we got rolling, we were able to put in a 20′ board in less than 10 minutes. This was end of construction day #2 – we got much further than we thought we would. Ah, the dreaded last 10% – what to do here? Remember those ‘floating’ stringers? Yeah, we fixed that up a bit, too. My wife used a website (and her brain) to calculate exactly how to cut the stringers to give us the rise/run we needed with the proper clearance and all that jazz. The stairs with stringers and toe kicks – this was worth the effort It started raining on us as I screwed down the steps – this we managed to get our shade tent up on the deck to protect us from the rain too The stairs, finished Finished, mostly Good corner shot The top of the stairs Stairs, looking down Celebratory beer In Summary There are a few things we’re not happy with. I think we can fix them up – but later. I have a few things left to finish, rewire the lighting, get the gas grille put back in, and rehang some screen doors. I was expecting this to be a lot worse than it was. If I didn’t have the help, I would have never done it myself. But I’m glad that I did have that help and did do that project. It’s not often you get to spend that kind of qualify time with family and building cool stuff.

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• Silverlight IConvertible TypeConverter

  - by codingbloke

  I recently answered the following question on stackoverflow:  Silverlight 3 custom control: only ‘int’ as numeric type for a property? [e.g. long or int64 seems to break] I quickly knocked up the class ConvertibleTypeConverter<T> that I posted in the question (listed later here as well). Afterward I fully expected to find that of the usual clever “bods who blog” to have covered this probably with a better solution than I.  So far though I’ve not found one so I thought I’d blog it myself. The Problem Here is a classic gotcha I’ve seen asked more than once on stackoverflow :- public class MyClass {     public float SomeValue { get; set; } } <local:MyClass SomeValue="45.15" /> This fails with the error  “Failed to create a 'System.Single' from the text '45.15'”  and results in much premature hair loss.  Fortunately this is SL4, in SL3 the error message is almost meaningless.  So what gives, how can it be that this fails when we can see other very similar values parsing happily all over the place? It comes down the fact that the Xaml parser only handles a few of the primitive data types namely: bool, int, string and double.  Since the parser has no idea how to convert a string to a float we get the above error. The Solution The sensible solution is “use double not float” but lets not dwell on that, there has to be occasions where such an answer isn’t acceptable. In order to achieve parsing of other types we need an implementation of TypeConverter for the type of the property and then we need to use the TypeConverterAttribute to decorate the property .  As an example the Silverlight SDK provides one for DateTime the DateTimeTypeConverter (yes I know DateTime isn’t really a primitive). The following class will parse in Xaml:- public class MyClass {     [TypeConverter(typeof(DateTimeTypeConverter))]     public DateTime SomeValue {get; set; } } So far though we would need to create a TypeConverter for each primitive type we are using, what if I had the following mad class to support in Xaml:- public class StrangePrimitives {     public Boolean BooleanProp { get; set; }     public Byte ByteProp { get; set; }     public Char CharProp { get; set; }     public DateTime DateTimeProp { get; set; }     public Decimal DecimalProp { get; set; }     public Double DoubleProp { get; set; }     public Int16 Int16Prop { get; set; }     public Int32 Int32Prop { get; set; }     public Int64 Int64Prop { get; set; }     public SByte SByteProp { get; set; }     public Single SingleProp { get; set; }     public String StringProp { get; set; }     public UInt16 UInt16Prop { get; set; }     public UInt32 UInt32Prop { get; set; }     public UInt64 UInt64Prop { get; set; } } Then I want to fill an instance of StrangePrimitives with the following Xaml which of course fails. <local:StrangePrimitives x:Key="MyStrangePrimitives"                          BooleanProp="True"                          ByteProp="156"                          CharProp="A"                          DateTimeProp="06 Jun 2010"                          DecimalProp="123.56"                          DoubleProp="8372.937803"                          Int16Prop="16532"                          Int32Prop="73738248"                          Int64Prop="12345678909298"                          SByteProp="-123"                          SingleProp="39.0"                          StringProp="Hello, World!"                          UInt16Prop="40000"                          UInt32Prop="4294967295"                          UInt64Prop="18446744073709551615"      /> I got to thinking, though, one thing all these primitive types have in common is that they all implement IConvertible so it should be possible to write just one converter to handle them all.  Here it is:- The ConvertibleTypeConverter public class ConvertibleTypeConverter<T> : TypeConverter where T : IConvertible {     public override bool CanConvertFrom(ITypeDescriptorContext context, Type sourceType)     {         return sourceType.GetInterface("IConvertible", false) != null;     }     public override bool CanConvertTo(ITypeDescriptorContext context, Type destinationType)     {         return destinationType.GetInterface("IConvertible", false) != null;     }     public override object ConvertFrom(ITypeDescriptorContext context, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture, object value)     {         return ((IConvertible)value).ToType(typeof(T), culture);     }     public override object ConvertTo(ITypeDescriptorContext context, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture, object value, Type destinationType)     {         return ((IConvertible)value).ToType(destinationType, culture);     } } I won’t bore you with an explanation of how it works, it simply adapts one existing interface (the IConvertible) and exposes it as another (the TypeConverter).   With that in place the previous strange primitives class can be modified as:- public class StrangePrimitives {     public Boolean BooleanProp { get; set; }     [TypeConverter(typeof(ConvertibleTypeConverter<Byte>))]     public Byte ByteProp { get; set; }     [TypeConverter(typeof(ConvertibleTypeConverter<Char>))]     public Char CharProp { get; set; }     [TypeConverter(typeof(ConvertibleTypeConverter<DateTime>))]     public DateTime DateTimeProp { get; set; }     [TypeConverter(typeof(ConvertibleTypeConverter<Decimal>))]     public Decimal DecimalProp { get; set; }     public Double DoubleProp {get; set; }     [TypeConverter(typeof(ConvertibleTypeConverter<Int16>))]     public Int16 Int16Prop { get; set; }     public Int32 Int32Prop { get; set; }     [TypeConverter(typeof(ConvertibleTypeConverter<Int64>))]     public Int64 Int64Prop { get; set; }     [TypeConverter(typeof(ConvertibleTypeConverter<SByte>))]     public SByte SByteProp { get; set; }     [TypeConverter(typeof(ConvertibleTypeConverter<Single>))]     public Single SingleProp { get; set; }     public String StringProp { get; set; }     [TypeConverter(typeof(ConvertibleTypeConverter<UInt16>))]     public UInt16 UInt16Prop { get; set; }     [TypeConverter(typeof(ConvertibleTypeConverter<UInt32>))]     public UInt32 UInt32Prop { get; set; }     [TypeConverter(typeof(ConvertibleTypeConverter<UInt64>))]     public UInt64 UInt64Prop { get; set; } } This results in the previous Xaml parsing happily.  Now it seems such an obvious thing to do that one may wonder why such a class doesn’t already existing in Silverlight or at least in the SDK.   I would not be surprised if there were some very good reasons hence use the ConvertibleTypeConverter with caution.  It does seem to me to be a useful little class to have lying around in the toolbox for the odd occasion where it may be needed.

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• Advice for a distracted, unhappy, recently graduated programmer? [closed]

  - by Re-Invent

  I graduated 4 months ago. I had offers from a few good places to work at. At the same time I wanted to stick to building a small software business of my own, still have some ideas with good potential, some half done projects frozen in my github. But due to social pressures, I chose a job, the pay is great, but I am half-passionate about it. A small team of smart folks building useful product, working out contracts across the world. I've started finding it extremely boring. Boring to the extent that I skip 2-3 days a week together not doing work. Neither do I spend that time progressing any of my own projects. Yes, I feel stupid at the way I'm wasting time, but I don't understand exactly why is it happening. It's as if all the excitement has been drained. What can I do about it? Long version: School - I was in third standard. Only students, 6th grade had access to computer labs. I once peeked into the lab from the little door opening. No hard-disks, MS DOS on 5 1/2 inch floppies. I asked a senior student to play some sound in BASIC. He used PLAY to compose a tune. Boy! I was so excited, I was jumping from within. Back home, asked my brother to teach me some programming. We bought a book "MODERN All About GW-BASIC for Schools & Colleges". The book had everything, right from printing, to taking input, file i/o, game programming, machine level support, etc. I was in 6th standard, wrote my first game - a wheel of fortune, rotated the wheel by manipulating 16 color palette's definition. Got internet soon, got hooked to QuickBasic programming community. Made some more games "007 in Danger", "Car Crush 2" for submission to allbasiccode archives. I was extremely excited about all this. My interests now swayed into "hacking" (computer security). Taught myself some perl, found it annoying, learnt PHP and a bit of SQL. Also taught myself Visual Basic one of the winters and wrote a pacman clone with Direct X. By the time I was in 10th standard, I created some evil tools using visual basic, php and mysql and eventually landed myself into an unpaid side-job at a government facility, building evil tools for them. It was a dream come true for crackers of that time. And so was I, still very excited. Things changed soon, last two years of school were not so great as I was balancing preps for college, work at govt. and studies for school at same time. College - College was opposite of all I had wished it to be. I imagined it to be a place where I'd spend my 4 years building something awesome. It was rather an epitome of rote learning, attendance, rules, busy schedules, ban on personal laptops, hardly any hackers surrounding you and shit like that. We had to take permissions to even introduce some cultural/creative activities in our annual schedule. The labs won't be open on weekends because the lab employees had to have their leaves. Yes, a horrible place for someone like me. I still managed to pull out a project with a friend over 2 months. Showed it to people high in the academia hierarchy. They were immensely impressed, we proposed to allow personal computers for students. They made up half-assed reasons and didn't agree. We felt frustrated. And so on, I still managed to teach myself new languages, do new projects of my own, do an intern at the same govt. facility, start a small business for sometime, give a talk at a conference I'm passionate about, win game-dev and hacking contest at most respected colleges, solve good deal of programming contest problems, etc. At the same time I was not content with all these restrictions, great emphasis on rote learning, and sheer wastage of time due to college. I never felt I was overdoing, but now I feel I burnt myself out. During my last days at college, I did an intern at a bigco. While I spent my time building prototypes for certain LBS, the other interns around me, even a good friend, was just skipping time. I thought maybe, in a few weeks he would put in some serious efforts at work assigned to him, but all he did was to find creative ways to skip work, hide his face from manager, engage people in talks if they try to question his progress, etc. I tried a few time to get him on track, but it seems all he wanted was to "not to work hard at all and still reap the fruits". I don't know how others take such people, but I find their vicinity very very poisonous to one's own motivation and productivity. Over that, the place where I come from, HRs don't give much value to what have you done past 4 years. So towards the end of out intern, we all were offered work at the bigco, but the slacker, even after not writing more than 200 lines of code was made a much better offer. I felt enraged instantly - "Is this how the corp world treats someone who does fruitful, if not extra-ordinary work form them for past 6 months?". Yes, I did try to negotiate and debate. The bigcos seem blind due to departmentalization of responsibilities and many layers of management. I decided not to be in touch with any characters of that depressing play. Probably the busy time I had at college, ignoring friends, ignoring fun and squeezing every bit of free time for myself is also responsible. Probably this is what has drained all my willingness to work for anyone. I find my day job boring, at the same time I with to maintain it for financial reasons. I feel a bit burnt out, unsatisfied and at the same time an urge to quit working for someone else and start finishing my frozen side-projects (which may be profitable). Though I haven't got much to support myself with food, office, internet bills, etc in savings. I still have my day job, but I don't find it very interesting, even though the pay is higher than the slacker, I don't find money to be a great motivator here. I keep comparing myself to my past version. I wonder how to get rid of this and reboot myself back to the way I was in school days - excited about it, tinkering, building, learning new things daily, and NOT BORED?

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• Windows Azure – Write, Run or Use Software

  - by BuckWoody

  Windows Azure is a platform that has you covered, whether you need to write software, run software that is already written, or Install and use “canned” software whether you or someone else wrote it. Like any platform, it’s a set of tools you can use where it makes sense to solve a problem. The primary location for Windows Azure information is located at http://windowsazure.com. You can find everything there from the development kits for writing software to pricing, licensing and tutorials on all of that. I have a few links here for learning to use Windows Azure – although it’s best if you focus not on the tools, but what you want to solve. I’ve got it broken down here into various sections, so you can quickly locate things you want to know. I’ll include resources here from Microsoft and elsewhere – I use these same resources in the Architectural Design Sessions (ADS) I do with my clients worldwide. Write Software Also called “Platform as a Service” (PaaS), Windows Azure has lots of components you can use together or separately that allow you to write software in .NET or various Open Source languages to work completely online, or in partnership with code you have on-premises or both – even if you’re using other cloud providers. Keep in mind that all of the features you see here can be used together, or independently. For instance, you might only use a Web Site, or use Storage, but you can use both together. You can access all of these components through standard REST API calls, or using our Software Development Kit’s API’s, which are a lot easier. In any case, you simply use Visual Studio, Eclipse, Cloud9 IDE, or even a text editor to write your code from a Mac, PC or Linux.  Components you can use: Azure Web Sites: Windows Azure Web Sites allow you to quickly write an deploy websites, without setting a Virtual Machine, installing a web server or configuring complex settings. They work alone, with other Windows Azure Web Sites, or with other parts of Windows Azure. Web and Worker Roles: Windows Azure Web Roles give you a full stateless computing instance with Internet Information Services (IIS) installed and configured. Windows Azure Worker Roles give you a full stateless computing instance without Information Services (IIS) installed, often used in a "Services" mode. Scale-out is achieved either manually or programmatically under your control. Storage: Windows Azure Storage types include Blobs to store raw binary data, Tables to use key/value pair data (like NoSQL data structures), Queues that allow interaction between stateless roles, and a relational SQL Server database. Other Services: Windows Azure has many other services such as a security mechanism, a Cache (memcacheD compliant), a Service Bus, a Traffic Manager and more. Once again, these features can be used with a Windows Azure project, or alone based on your needs. Various Languages: Windows Azure supports the .NET stack of languages, as well as many Open-Source languages like Java, Python, PHP, Ruby, NodeJS, C++ and more.   Use Software Also called “Software as a Service” (SaaS) this often means consumer or business-level software like Hotmail or Office 365. In other words, you simply log on, use the software, and log off – there’s nothing to install, and little to even configure. For the Information Technology professional, however, It’s not quite the same. We want software that provides services, but in a platform. That means we want things like Hadoop or other software we don’t want to have to install and configure.  Components you can use: Kits: Various software “kits” or packages are supported with just a few clicks, such as Umbraco, Wordpress, and others. Windows Azure Media Services: Windows Azure Media Services is a suite of services that allows you to upload media for encoding, processing and even streaming – or even one or more of those functions. We can add DRM and even commercials to your media if you like. Windows Azure Media Services is used to stream large events all the way down to small training videos. High Performance Computing and “Big Data”: Windows Azure allows you to scale to huge workloads using a few clicks to deploy Hadoop Clusters or the High Performance Computing (HPC) nodes, accepting HPC Jobs, Pig and Hive Jobs, and even interfacing with Microsoft Excel. Windows Azure Marketplace: Windows Azure Marketplace offers data and programs you can quickly implement and use – some free, some for-fee.   Run Software Also known as “Infrastructure as a Service” (IaaS), this offering allows you to build or simply choose a Virtual Machine to run server-based software.  Components you can use: Persistent Virtual Machines: You can choose to install Windows Server, Windows Server with Active Directory, with SQL Server, or even SharePoint from a pre-configured gallery. You can configure your own server images with standard Hyper-V technology and load them yourselves – and even bring them back when you’re done. As a new offering, we also even allow you to select various distributions of Linux – a first for Microsoft. Windows Azure Connect: You can connect your on-premises networks to Windows Azure Instances. Storage: Windows Azure Storage can be used as a remote backup, a hybrid storage location and more using software or even hardware appliances.   Decision Matrix With all of these options, you can use Windows Azure to solve just about any computing problem. It’s often hard to know when to use something on-premises, in the cloud, and what kind of service to use. I’ve used a decision matrix in the last couple of years to take a particular problem and choose the proper technology to solve it. It’s all about options – there is no “silver bullet”, whether that’s Windows Azure or any other set of functions. I take the problem, decide which particular component I want to own and control – and choose the column that has that box darkened. For instance, if I have to control the wiring for a solution (a requirement in some military and government installations), that means the “Networking” component needs to be dark, and so I select the “On Premises” column for that particular solution. If I just need the solution provided and I want no control at all, I can look as “Software as a Service” solutions. Security, Pricing, and Other Info  Security: Security is one of the first questions you should ask in any distributed computing environment. We have certification info, coding guidelines and more, even a general “Request for Information” RFI Response already created for you.   Pricing: Are there licenses? How much does this cost? Is there a way to estimate the costs in this new environment? New Features: Many new features were added to Windows Azure - a good roundup of those changes can be found here. Support: Software Support on Virtual Machines, general support.    

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• 5 Lessons learnt in localization / multi language support in WPF

  - by MarkPearl

  For the last few months I have been secretly working away at the second version of an application that we initially released a few years ago. It’s called MaxCut and it is a free panel/cut optimizer for the woodwork, glass and metal industry. One of the motivations for writing MaxCut was to get an end to end experience in developing an application for general consumption. From the early days of v1 of MaxCut I would get the odd email thanking me for the software and then listing a few suggestions on how to improve it. Two of the most dominant suggestions that we received were… Support for imperial measurements (the original program only supported the metric system) Multi language support (we had someone who volunteered to translate the program into Japanese for us). I am not going to dive into the Imperial to Metric support in todays blog post, but I would like to cover a few brief lessons we learned in adding support for multi-language functionality in the software. I have sectioned them below under different lessons. Lesson 1 – Build multi-language support in from the start So the first lesson I learnt was if you know you are going to do multi language support – build it in from the very beginning! One of the power points of WPF/Silverlight is data binding in XAML and so while it wasn’t to painful to retro fit multi language support into the programing, it was still time consuming and a bit tedious to go through mounds and mounds of views and would have been a minor job to have implemented this while the form was being designed. Lesson 2 – Accommodate for varying word lengths using Grids The next lesson was a little harder to learn and was learnt a bit further down the road in the development cycle. We developed everything in English, assuming that other languages would have similar character length words for equivalent meanings… don’t!. A word that is short in your language may be of varying character lengths in other languages. Some language like Dutch and German allow for concatenation of nouns which has the potential to create really long words. We picked up a few places where our views had been structured incorrectly so that if a word was to long it would get clipped off or cut out. To get around this we began using the WPF grid extensively with column widths that would automatically expand if they needed to. Generally speaking the grid replacement got round this hurdle, and if in future you have a choice between a stack panel or a grid – think twice before going for the easier option… often the grid will be a bit more work to setup, but will be more flexible. Lesson 3 – Separate the separators Our initial run through moving the words to a resource dictionary led us to make what I thought was one potential mistake. If we had a label like the following… “length : “ In the resource dictionary we put it as a single entry. This is fine until you start using a word more than once. For instance in our scenario we used the word “length’ frequently. with different variations of the word with grammar and separators included in the resource we ended up having what I would consider a bloated dictionary. When we removed the separators from the words and put them as their own resources we saw a dramatic reduction in dictionary size… so something that looked like this… “length : “ “length. “ “length?” Was reduced to… “length” “:” “?” “.” While this may not seem like a reduction at first glance, consider that the separators “:?.” are used everywhere and suddenly you see a real reduction in bloat. Lesson 4 – Centralize the Language Dictionary This lesson was learnt at the very end of the project after we had already had a release candidate out in the wild. Because our translations would be done on a volunteer basis and remotely, we wanted it to be really simple for someone to translate our program into another language. As a common design practice we had tiered the application so that we had a business logic layer, a ui layer, etc. The problem was in several of these layers we had resource files specific for that layer. What this resulted in was us having multiple resource files that we would need to send to our translators. To add to our problems, some of the wordings were duplicated in different resource files, which would result in additional frustration from our translators as they felt they were duplicating work. Eventually the workaround was to make a separate project in VS2010 with just the language translations. We then exposed the dictionary as public within this project and made it as a reference to the other projects within the solution. This solved out problem as now we had a central dictionary and could remove any duplication's. Lesson 5 – Make a dummy translation file to test that you haven’t missed anything The final lesson learnt about multi language support in WPF was when checking if you had forgotten to translate anything in the inline code, make a test resource file with dummy data. Ideally you want the data for each word to be identical. In our instance we made one which had all the resource key values pointing to a value of test. This allowed us point the language file to our test resource file and very quickly browse through the program and see if we had missed any linking. The alternative to this approach is to have two language files and swap between the two while running the program to make sure that you haven’t missed anything, but the downside of dual language file approach is that it is much a lot harder spotting a mistake if everything is different – almost like playing Where’s Wally / Waldo. It is much easier spotting variance in uniformity – meaning when you put the “test’ keyword for everything, anything that didn’t say “test” stuck out like a sore thumb. So these are my top five lessons learnt on implementing multi language support in WPF. Feel free to make any suggestions in the comments section if you feel maybe something is more important than one of these or if I got it wrong!

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• JBox2D Polygon Collisions Acting Strange

  - by andy

  I have been playing around with JBox2D and Slick2D and made a little demo with a ground object, a box object, and two different polygons. The problem I am facing is that the collision-detection for the polygons seems to be off (see picture below), but the box's collision works fine. My Code: Main Class package main; import org.jbox2d.common.Vec2; import org.jbox2d.dynamics.BodyType; import org.jbox2d.dynamics.World; import org.newdawn.slick.GameContainer; import org.newdawn.slick.Graphics; import org.newdawn.slick.SlickException; import org.newdawn.slick.state.BasicGameState; import org.newdawn.slick.state.StateBasedGame; import shapes.Box; import shapes.Polygon; public class State1 extends BasicGameState{ World world; int velocityIterations; int positionIterations; float pixelsPerMeter; int state; Box ground; Box box1; Polygon poly1; Polygon poly2; Renderer renderer; public State1(int state) { this.state = state; } @Override public void init(GameContainer gc, StateBasedGame game) throws SlickException { velocityIterations = 10; positionIterations = 10; pixelsPerMeter = 1f; world = new World(new Vec2(0.f, -9.8f)); renderer = new Renderer(gc, gc.getGraphics(), pixelsPerMeter, world); box1 = new Box(-100f, 200f, 40, 50, BodyType.DYNAMIC, world); ground = new Box(-14, -275, 50, 900, BodyType.STATIC, world); poly1 = new Polygon(50f, 10f, new Vec2[] { new Vec2(-6f, -14f), new Vec2(0f, -20f), new Vec2(6f, -14f), new Vec2(10f, 10f), new Vec2(-10f, 10f) }, BodyType.DYNAMIC, world); poly2 = new Polygon(0f, 10f, new Vec2[] { new Vec2(10f, 0f), new Vec2(20f, 0f), new Vec2(30f, 10f), new Vec2(30f, 20f), new Vec2(20f, 30f), new Vec2(10f, 30f), new Vec2(0f, 20f), new Vec2(0f, 10f) }, BodyType.DYNAMIC, world); } @Override public void update(GameContainer gc, StateBasedGame game, int delta) throws SlickException { world.step((float)delta / 180f, velocityIterations, positionIterations); } @Override public void render(GameContainer gc, StateBasedGame game, Graphics g) throws SlickException { renderer.render(); } @Override public int getID() { return this.state; } } Polygon Class package shapes; import org.jbox2d.collision.shapes.PolygonShape; import org.jbox2d.common.Vec2; import org.jbox2d.dynamics.Body; import org.jbox2d.dynamics.BodyDef; import org.jbox2d.dynamics.BodyType; import org.jbox2d.dynamics.FixtureDef; import org.jbox2d.dynamics.World; import org.newdawn.slick.Color; public class Polygon { public float x, y; public Color color; public BodyType bodyType; org.newdawn.slick.geom.Polygon poly; BodyDef def; PolygonShape ps; FixtureDef fd; Body body; World world; Vec2[] verts; public Polygon(float x, float y, Vec2[] verts, BodyType bodyType, World world) { this.verts = verts; this.x = x; this.y = y; this.bodyType = bodyType; this.world = world; init(); } public void init() { def = new BodyDef(); def.type = bodyType; def.position.set(x, y); ps = new PolygonShape(); ps.set(verts, verts.length); fd = new FixtureDef(); fd.shape = ps; fd.density = 2.0f; fd.friction = 0.7f; fd.restitution = 0.5f; body = world.createBody(def); body.createFixture(fd); } } Rendering Class package main; import org.jbox2d.collision.shapes.PolygonShape; import org.jbox2d.collision.shapes.ShapeType; import org.jbox2d.common.MathUtils; import org.jbox2d.common.Vec2; import org.jbox2d.dynamics.Body; import org.jbox2d.dynamics.Fixture; import org.jbox2d.dynamics.World; import org.newdawn.slick.Color; import org.newdawn.slick.GameContainer; import org.newdawn.slick.Graphics; import org.newdawn.slick.geom.Polygon; import org.newdawn.slick.geom.Transform; public class Renderer { World world; float pixelsPerMeter; GameContainer gc; Graphics g; public Renderer(GameContainer gc, Graphics g, float ppm, World world) { this.world = world; this.pixelsPerMeter = ppm; this.g = g; this.gc = gc; } public void render() { Body current = world.getBodyList(); Vec2 center = current.getLocalCenter(); while(current != null) { Vec2 pos = current.getPosition(); g.pushTransform(); g.translate(pos.x * pixelsPerMeter + (0.5f * gc.getWidth()), -pos.y * pixelsPerMeter + (0.5f * gc.getHeight())); Fixture f = current.getFixtureList(); while(f != null) { ShapeType type = f.getType(); g.setColor(getColor(current)); switch(type) { case POLYGON: { PolygonShape shape = (PolygonShape)f.getShape(); Vec2[] verts = shape.getVertices(); int count = shape.getVertexCount(); Polygon p = new Polygon(); for(int i = 0; i < count; i++) { p.addPoint(verts[i].x, verts[i].y); } p.setCenterX(center.x); p.setCenterY(center.y); p = (Polygon)p.transform(Transform.createRotateTransform(current.getAngle() + MathUtils.PI, center.x, center.y)); p = (Polygon)p.transform(Transform.createScaleTransform(pixelsPerMeter, pixelsPerMeter)); g.draw(p); break; } case CIRCLE: { f.getShape(); } default: } f = f.getNext(); } g.popTransform(); current = current.getNext(); } } public Color getColor(Body b) { Color c = new Color(1f, 1f, 1f); switch(b.m_type) { case DYNAMIC: if(b.isActive()) { c = new Color(255, 123, 0); } else { c = new Color(99, 99, 99); } break; case KINEMATIC: break; case STATIC: c = new Color(111, 111, 111); break; default: break; } return c; } } Any help with fixing the collisions would be greatly appreciated, and if you need any other code snippets I would be happy to provide them.

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• Slicing the EDG

  - by Antony Reynolds

  Different SOA Domain Configurations In this blog entry I would like to introduce three different configurations for a SOA environment.  I have omitted load balancers and OTD/OHS as they introduce a whole new round of discussion.  For each possible deployment architecture I have identified some of the advantages. Super Domain This is a single EDG style domain for everything needed for SOA/OSB.   It extends the standard EDG slightly but otherwise assumes a single “super” domain. This is basically the SOA EDG.  I have broken out JMS servers and Coherence servers to improve scalability and reduce dependencies. Key Points Separate JMS allows those servers to be kept up separately from rest of SOA Domain, allowing JMS clients to post messages even if rest of domain is unavailable. JMS servers are only used to host application specific JMS destinations, SOA/OSB JMS destinations remain in relevant SOA/OSB managed servers. Separate Coherence servers allow OSB cache to be offloaded from OSB servers. Use of Coherence by other components as a shared infrastructure data grid service. Coherence cluster may be managed by WLS but more likely run as a standalone Coherence cluster. Benefits Single Administration Point (1 Admin Server) Closely follows EDG with addition of application specific JMS servers and standalone Coherence servers for OSB caching and application specific caches. Coherence grid can be scaled independent of OSB/SOA. JMS queues provide for inter-application communication. Drawbacks Patching is an all or nothing affair. Startup time for SOA may be slow if large number of composites deployed. Multiple Domains This extends the EDG into multiple domains, allowing separate management and update of these domains.  I see this type of configuration quite often with customers, although some don't have OWSM, others don't have separate Coherence etc. SOA & BAM are kept in the same domain as little benefit is obtained by separating them. Key Points Separate JMS allows those servers to be kept up separately from rest of SOA Domain, allowing JMS clients to post messages even if other domains are unavailable. JMS servers are only used to host application specific JMS destinations, SOA/OSB JMS destinations remain in relevant SOA/OSB managed servers. Separate Coherence servers allow OSB cache to be offloaded from OSB servers. Use of Coherence by other components as a shared infrastructure data grid service. Coherence cluster may be managed by WLS but more likely run as a standalone Coherence cluster. Benefits Follows EDG but in separate domains and with addition of application specific JMS servers and standalone Coherence servers for OSB caching and application specific caches. Coherence grid can be scaled independent of OSB/SOA. JMS queues provide for inter-application communication. Patch lifecycle of OSB/SOA/JMS are no longer lock stepped. JMS may be kept running independently of other domains allowing applications to insert messages fro later consumption by SOA/OSB. OSB may be kept running independent of other domains, allowing service virtualization to continue independent of other domains availability. All domains use same OWSM policy store (MDS-WSM). Drawbacks Multiple domains to manage and configure. Multiple Admin servers (single view requires use of Grid Control) Multiple Admin servers/WSM clusters waste resources. Additional homes needed to enjoy benefits of separate patching. Cross domain trust needs setting up to simplify cross domain interactions. Startup time for SOA may be slow if large number of composites deployed. Shared Service Environment This model extends the previous multiple domain arrangement to provide a true shared service environment.This extends the previous model by allowing multiple additional SOA domains and/or other domains to take advantage of the shared services.  Only one non-shared domain is shown, but there could be multiple, allowing groups of applications to share patching independent of other application groups. Key Points Separate JMS allows those servers to be kept up separately from rest of SOA Domain, allowing JMS clients to post messages even if other domains are unavailable. JMS servers are only used to host application specific JMS destinations, SOA/OSB JMS destinations remain in relevant SOA/OSB managed servers. Separate Coherence servers allow OSB cache to be offloaded from OSB servers. Use of Coherence by other components as a shared infrastructure data grid service Coherence cluster may be managed by WLS but more likely run as a standalone Coherence cluster. Shared SOA Domain hosts Human Workflow Tasks BAM Common "utility" composites Single OSB domain provides "Enterprise Service Bus" All domains use same OWSM policy store (MDS-WSM) Benefits Follows EDG but in separate domains and with addition of application specific JMS servers and standalone Coherence servers for OSB caching and application specific caches. Coherence grid can be scaled independent of OSB/SOA. JMS queues provide for inter-application communication. Patch lifecycle of OSB/SOA/JMS are no longer lock stepped. JMS may be kept running independently of other domains allowing applications to insert messages fro later consumption by SOA/OSB. OSB may be kept running independent of other domains, allowing service virtualization to continue independent of other domains availability. All domains use same OWSM policy store (MDS-WSM). Supports large numbers of deployed composites in multiple domains. Single URL for Human Workflow end users. Single URL for BAM end users. Drawbacks Multiple domains to manage and configure. Multiple Admin servers (single view requires use of Grid Control) Multiple Admin servers/WSM clusters waste resources. Additional homes needed to enjoy benefits of separate patching. Cross domain trust needs setting up to simplify cross domain interactions. Human Workflow needs to be specially configured to point to shared services domain. Summary The alternatives in this blog allow for patching to have different impacts, depending on the model chosen.  Each organization must decide the tradeoffs for itself.  One extreme is to go for the shared services model and have one domain per SOA application.  This requires a lot of administration of the multiple domains.  The other extreme is to have a single super domain.  This makes the entire enterprise susceptible to an outage at the same time due to patching or other domain level changes.  Hopefully this blog will help your organization choose the right model for you.

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• OData &ndash; The easiest service I can create: now with updates

  - by Jon Dalberg

  The other day I created a simple NastyWord service exposed via OData. It was read-only and used an in-memory backing store for the words. Today I’ll modify it to use a file instead of a list and I’ll accept new nasty words by implementing IUpdatable directly. The first thing to do is enable the service to accept new entries. This is done at configuration time by adding the “WriteAppend” access rule: 1: public class NastyWords : DataService<NastyWordsDataSource> 2: { 3: // This method is called only once to initialize service-wide policies. 4: public static void InitializeService(DataServiceConfiguration config) 5: { 6: config.SetEntitySetAccessRule("*", EntitySetRights.AllRead | EntitySetRights.WriteAppend); 7: config.DataServiceBehavior.MaxProtocolVersion = DataServiceProtocolVersion.V2; 8: } 9: }   Next I placed a file, NastyWords.txt, in the “App_Data” folder and added a few *choice* words to start. This required one simple change to our NastyWordDataSource.cs file: 1: public NastyWordsDataSource() 2: { 3: UpdateFromSource(); 4: } 5:   6: private void UpdateFromSource() 7: { 8: var words = File.ReadAllLines(pathToFile); 9: NastyWords = (from w in words 10: select new NastyWord { Word = w }).AsQueryable(); 11: }   Nothing too shocking here, just reading each line from the NastyWords.txt file and exposing them. Next, I implemented IUpdatable which comes with a boat-load of methods. We don’t need all of them for now since we are only concerned with allowing new values. Here are the methods we must implement, all the others throw a NotImplementedException: 1: public object CreateResource(string containerName, string fullTypeName) 2: { 3: var nastyWord = new NastyWord(); 4: pendingUpdates.Add(nastyWord); 5: return nastyWord; 6: } 7:   8: public object ResolveResource(object resource) 9: { 10: return resource; 11: } 12:   13: public void SaveChanges() 14: { 15: var intersect = (from w in pendingUpdates 16: select w.Word).Intersect(from n in NastyWords 17: select n.Word); 18:   19: if (intersect.Count() > 0) 20: throw new DataServiceException(500, "duplicate entry"); 21:   22: var lines = from w in pendingUpdates 23: select w.Word; 24:   25: File.AppendAllLines(pathToFile, 26: lines, 27: Encoding.UTF8); 28:   29: pendingUpdates.Clear(); 30:   31: UpdateFromSource(); 32: } 33:   34: public void SetValue(object targetResource, string propertyName, object propertyValue) 35: { 36: targetResource.GetType().GetProperty(propertyName).SetValue(targetResource, propertyValue, null); 37: }   I use a simple list to contain the pending updates and only commit them when the “SaveChanges” method is called. Here’s the order these methods are called in our service during an insert: CreateResource – here we just instantiate a new NastyWord and stick a reference to it in our pending updates list. SetValue – this is where the “Word” property of the NastyWord instance is set. SaveChanges – get the list of pending updates, barfing on duplicates, write them to the file and clear our pending list. ResolveResource – the newly created resource will be returned directly here since we aren’t dealing with “handles” to objects but the actual objects themselves. Not too bad, eh? I didn’t find this documented anywhere but a little bit of digging in the OData spec and use of Fiddler made it pretty easy to figure out. Here is some client code which would add a new nasty word: 1: static void Main(string[] args) 2: { 3: var svc = new ServiceReference1.NastyWordsDataSource(new Uri("http://localhost.:60921/NastyWords.svc")); 4: svc.AddToNastyWords(new ServiceReference1.NastyWord() { Word = "shat" }); 5:   6: svc.SaveChanges(); 7: }   Here’s all of the code so far for to implement the service: 1: using System; 2: using System.Collections.Generic; 3: using System.Data.Services; 4: using System.Data.Services.Common; 5: using System.Linq; 6: using System.ServiceModel.Web; 7: using System.Web; 8: using System.IO; 9: using System.Text; 10:   11: namespace ONasty 12: { 13: [DataServiceKey("Word")] 14: public class NastyWord 15: { 16: public string Word { get; set; } 17: } 18:   19: public class NastyWordsDataSource : IUpdatable 20: { 21: private List<NastyWord> pendingUpdates = new List<NastyWord>(); 22: private string pathToFile = @"path to your\App_Data\NastyWords.txt"; 23:   24: public NastyWordsDataSource() 25: { 26: UpdateFromSource(); 27: } 28:   29: private void UpdateFromSource() 30: { 31: var words = File.ReadAllLines(pathToFile); 32: NastyWords = (from w in words 33: select new NastyWord { Word = w }).AsQueryable(); 34: } 35:   36: public IQueryable<NastyWord> NastyWords { get; private set; } 37:   38: public void AddReferenceToCollection(object targetResource, string propertyName, object resourceToBeAdded) 39: { 40: throw new NotImplementedException(); 41: } 42:   43: public void ClearChanges() 44: { 45: pendingUpdates.Clear(); 46: } 47:   48: public object CreateResource(string containerName, string fullTypeName) 49: { 50: var nastyWord = new NastyWord(); 51: pendingUpdates.Add(nastyWord); 52: return nastyWord; 53: } 54:   55: public void DeleteResource(object targetResource) 56: { 57: throw new NotImplementedException(); 58: } 59:   60: public object GetResource(IQueryable query, string fullTypeName) 61: { 62: throw new NotImplementedException(); 63: } 64:   65: public object GetValue(object targetResource, string propertyName) 66: { 67: throw new NotImplementedException(); 68: } 69:   70: public void RemoveReferenceFromCollection(object targetResource, string propertyName, object resourceToBeRemoved) 71: { 72: throw new NotImplementedException(); 73: } 74:   75: public object ResetResource(object resource) 76: { 77: throw new NotImplementedException(); 78: } 79:   80: public object ResolveResource(object resource) 81: { 82: return resource; 83: } 84:   85: public void SaveChanges() 86: { 87: var intersect = (from w in pendingUpdates 88: select w.Word).Intersect(from n in NastyWords 89: select n.Word); 90:   91: if (intersect.Count() > 0) 92: throw new DataServiceException(500, "duplicate entry"); 93:   94: var lines = from w in pendingUpdates 95: select w.Word; 96:   97: File.AppendAllLines(pathToFile, 98: lines, 99: Encoding.UTF8); 100:   101: pendingUpdates.Clear(); 102:   103: UpdateFromSource(); 104: } 105:   106: public void SetReference(object targetResource, string propertyName, object propertyValue) 107: { 108: throw new NotImplementedException(); 109: } 110:   111: public void SetValue(object targetResource, string propertyName, object propertyValue) 112: { 113: targetResource.GetType().GetProperty(propertyName).SetValue(targetResource, propertyValue, null); 114: } 115: } 116:   117: public class NastyWords : DataService<NastyWordsDataSource> 118: { 119: // This method is called only once to initialize service-wide policies. 120: public static void InitializeService(DataServiceConfiguration config) 121: { 122: config.SetEntitySetAccessRule("*", EntitySetRights.AllRead | EntitySetRights.WriteAppend); 123: config.DataServiceBehavior.MaxProtocolVersion = DataServiceProtocolVersion.V2; 124: } 125: } 126: } Next time we’ll allow removing nasty words. Enjoy!

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• A Bite With No Teeth&ndash;Demystifying Non-Compete Clauses

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  *DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer and this post in no way should be considered legal advice. I’m also in Canada, so references made are to Canadian court cases. I received a signed letter the other day, a reminder from my previous employer about some clauses associated with my employment and entry into an employee stock purchase program. So since this is in effect for the next 12 months, I guess I’m not starting that new job tomorrow. I’m kidding of course. How outrageous, how presumptuous, pompous, and arrogant that a company – any company – would actually place these conditions upon an employee. And yet, this is not uncommon. Especially in the IT industry, we see time and again similar wording in our employment agreements. But…are these legal? Is there any teeth behind the threat of the bite? Luckily, the answer seems to be ‘No’. I want to highlight two cases that support this. The first is Lyons v. Multari. In a nutshell, Dentist hires younger Dentist to be an associate. In their short, handwritten agreement, a non-compete clause was written stating “Protective Covenant. 3 yrs. – 5mi” (meaning you can’t set up shop within 5 miles for 3 years). Well, the young dentist left and did start an oral surgery office within 5 miles and within 3 years. Off to court they go! The initial judge sided with the older dentist, but on appeal it was overturned. Feel free to read the transcript of the decision here, but let me highlight one portion from section [19]: The general rule in most common law jurisdictions is that non-competition clauses in employment contracts are void. The sections following [19] explain further, and discuss Elsley v. J.G. Collins Insurance Agency Ltd. and its impact on Canadian law in this regard. The second case is Winnipeg Livestock Sales Ltd. v. Plewman. Desmond Plewman is an auctioneer, and worked at Winnipeg Livestock Sales. Part of his employment agreement was that he could not work for a competitor for 18 months if he left the company. Well, he left, and took up an important role in a competing company. The case went to court and as with Lyons v. Multari, the initial judge found in favour of the plaintiffs. Also as in the first case, that was overturned on appeal. Again, read through the transcript of the decision, but consider section [28]: In other words, even though Plewman has a great deal of skill as an auctioneer, Winnipeg Livestock has no proprietary interest in his professional skill and experience, even if they were acquired during his time working for Winnipeg Livestock.  Thus, Winnipeg Livestock has the burden of establishing that it has a legitimate proprietary interest requiring protection.  On this key question there is little evidence before the Court.  The record discloses that part of Plewman’s job was to “mingle with the … crowd” and to telephone customers and prospective customers about future prospects for the sale of livestock.  It may seem reasonable to assume that Winnipeg Livestock has a legitimate proprietary interest in its customer connections; but there is no evidence to indicate that there is any significant degree of “customer loyalty” in the business, as opposed to customers making choices based on other considerations such as cost, availability and the like. So are there any incidents where a non-compete can actually be valid? Yes, and these are considered “exceptional” cases, meaning that the situation meets certain circumstances. Michael Carabash has a great blog series discussing the above mentioned cases as well as the difference between a non-compete and non-solicit agreement. He talks about the exceptional criteria: In summary, the authorities reveal that the following circumstances will generally be relevant in determining whether a case is an “exceptional” one so that a general non-competition clause will be found to be reasonable: - The length of service with the employer. - The amount of personal service to clients. - Whether the employee dealt with clients exclusively, or on a sustained or     recurring basis. - Whether the knowledge about the client which the employee gained was of a   confidential nature, or involved an intimate knowledge of the client’s   particular needs, preferences or idiosyncrasies. - Whether the nature of the employee’s work meant that the employee had   influence over clients in the sense that the clients relied upon the employee’s   advice, or trusted the employee. - If competition by the employee has already occurred, whether there is   evidence that clients have switched their custom to him, especially without   direct solicitation. - The nature of the business with respect to whether personal knowledge of   the clients’ confidential matters is required. - The nature of the business with respect to the strength of customer loyalty,   how clients are “won” and kept, and whether the clientele is a recurring one. - The community involved and whether there were clientele yet to be exploited   by anyone. I close this blog post with a final quote, one from Zvulony & Co’s blog post on this subject. Again, all of this is not official legal advice, but I think we can see what all these sources are pointing towards. To answer my earlier question, there’s no teeth behind the threat of the bite. In light of this list, and the decisions in Lyons and Orlan, it is reasonably certain that in most employment situations a non-competition clause will be ineffective in protecting an employer from a departing employee who wishes to compete in the same business. The Courts have been relatively consistent in their position that if a non-solicitation clause can protect an employer’s interests, then a non-competition clause is probably unreasonable. Employers (or their solicitors) should avoid the inclination to draft restrictive covenants in broad, catch-all language. Or in other words, when drafting a restrictive covenant – take only what you need! D

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• Computer Networks UNISA - Chap 10 &ndash; In Depth TCP/IP Networking

  - by MarkPearl

  After reading this section you should be able to Understand methods of network design unique to TCP/IP networks, including subnetting, CIDR, and address translation Explain the differences between public and private TCP/IP networks Describe protocols used between mail clients and mail servers, including SMTP, POP3, and IMAP4 Employ multiple TCP/IP utilities for network discovery and troubleshooting Designing TCP/IP-Based Networks The following sections explain how network and host information in an IPv4 address can be manipulated to subdivide networks into smaller segments. Subnetting Subnetting separates a network into multiple logically defined segments, or subnets. Networks are commonly subnetted according to geographic locations, departmental boundaries, or technology types. A network administrator might separate traffic to accomplish the following… Enhance security Improve performance Simplify troubleshooting The challenges of Classful Addressing in IPv4 (No subnetting) The simplest type of IPv4 is known as classful addressing (which was the Class A, Class B & Class C network addresses). Classful addressing has the following limitations. Restriction in the number of usable IPv4 addresses (class C would be limited to 254 addresses) Difficult to separate traffic from various parts of a network Because of the above reasons, subnetting was introduced. IPv4 Subnet Masks Subnetting depends on the use of subnet masks to identify how a network is subdivided. A subnet mask indicates where network information is located in an IPv4 address. The 1 in a subnet mask indicates that corresponding bits in the IPv4 address contain network information (likewise 0 indicates the opposite) Each network class is associated with a default subnet mask… Class A = 255.0.0.0 Class B = 255.255.0.0 Class C = 255.255.255.0 An example of calculating  the network ID for a particular device with a subnet mask is shown below.. IP Address = 199.34.89.127 Subnet Mask = 255.255.255.0 Resultant Network ID = 199.34.89.0 IPv4 Subnetting Techniques Subnetting breaks the rules of classful IPv4 addressing. Read page 490 for a detailed explanation Calculating IPv4 Subnets Read page 491 – 494 for an explanation Important… Subnetting only applies to the devices internal to your network. Everything external looks at the class of the IP address instead of the subnet network ID. This way, traffic directed to your network externally still knows where to go, and once it has entered your internal network it can then be prioritized and segmented. CIDR (classless Interdomain Routing) CIDR is also known as classless routing or supernetting. In CIDR conventional network class distinctions do not exist, a subnet boundary can move to the left, therefore generating more usable IP addresses on your network. A subnet created by moving the subnet boundary to the left is known as a supernet. With CIDR also came new shorthand for denoting the position of subnet boundaries known as CIDR notation or slash notation. CIDR notation takes the form of the network ID followed by a forward slash (/) followed by the number of bits that are used for the extended network prefix. To take advantage of classless routing, your networks routers must be able to interpret IP addresses that don;t adhere to conventional network class parameters. Routers that rely on older routing protocols (i.e. RIP) are not capable of interpreting classless IP addresses. Internet Gateways Gateways are a combination of software and hardware that enable two different network segments to exchange data. A gateway facilitates communication between different networks or subnets. Because on device cannot send data directly to a device on another subnet, a gateway must intercede and hand off the information. Every device on a TCP/IP based network has a default gateway (a gateway that first interprets its outbound requests to other subnets, and then interprets its inbound requests from other subnets). The internet contains a vast number of routers and gateways. If each gateway had to track addressing information for every other gateway on the Internet, it would be overtaxed. Instead, each handles only a relatively small amount of addressing information, which it uses to forward data to another gateway that knows more about the data’s destination. The gateways that make up the internet backbone are called core gateways. Address Translation An organizations default gateway can also be used to “hide” the organizations internal IP addresses and keep them from being recognized on a public network. A public network is one that any user may access with little or no restrictions. On private networks, hiding IP addresses allows network managers more flexibility in assigning addresses. Clients behind a gateway may use any IP addressing scheme, regardless of whether it is recognized as legitimate by the Internet authorities but as soon as those devices need to go on the internet, they must have legitimate IP addresses to exchange data. When a clients transmission reaches the default gateway, the gateway opens the IP datagram and replaces the client’s private IP address with an Internet recognized IP address. This process is known as NAT (Network Address Translation). TCP/IP Mail Services All Internet mail services rely on the same principles of mail delivery, storage, and pickup, though they may use different types of software to accomplish these functions. Email servers and clients communicate through special TCP/IP application layer protocols. These protocols, all of which operate on a variety of operating systems are discussed below… SMTP (Simple Mail transfer Protocol) The protocol responsible for moving messages from one mail server to another over TCP/IP based networks. SMTP belongs to the application layer of the ODI model and relies on TCP as its transport protocol. Operates from port 25 on the SMTP server Simple sub-protocol, incapable of doing anything more than transporting mail or holding it in a queue MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) The standard message format specified by SMTP allows for lines that contain no more than 1000 ascii characters meaning if you relied solely on SMTP you would have very short messages and nothing like pictures included in an email. MIME us a standard for encoding and interpreting binary files, images, video, and non-ascii character sets within an email message. MIME identifies each element of a mail message according to content type. MIME does not replace SMTP but works in conjunction with it. Most modern email clients and servers support MIME POP (Post Office Protocol) POP is an application layer protocol used to retrieve messages from a mail server POP3 relies on TCP and operates over port 110 With POP3 mail is delivered and stored on a mail server until it is downloaded by a user Disadvantage of POP3 is that it typically does not allow users to save their messages on the server because of this IMAP is sometimes used IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) IMAP is a retrieval protocol that was developed as a more sophisticated alternative to POP3 The single biggest advantage IMAP4 has over POP3 is that users can store messages on the mail server, rather than having to continually download them Users can retrieve all or only a portion of any mail message Users can review their messages and delete them while the messages remain on the server Users can create sophisticated methods of organizing messages on the server Users can share a mailbox in a central location Disadvantages of IMAP are typically related to the fact that it requires more storage space on the server. Additional TCP/IP Utilities Nearly all TCP/IP utilities can be accessed from the command prompt on any type of server or client running TCP/IP. The syntaxt may differ depending on the OS of the client. Below is a list of additional TCP/IP utilities – research their use on your own! Ipconfig (Windows) & Ifconfig (Linux) Netstat Nbtstat Hostname, Host & Nslookup Dig (Linux) Whois (Linux) Traceroute (Tracert) Mtr (my traceroute) Route

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• Notifications for Expiring DBSNMP Passwords

  - by Courtney Llamas

  Most user accounts these days have a password profile on them that automatically expires the password after a set number of days.   Depending on your company’s security requirements, this may be as little as 30 days or as long as 365 days, although typically it falls between 60-90 days. For a normal user, this can cause a small interruption in your day as you have to go get your password reset by an admin. When this happens to privileged accounts, such as the DBSNMP account that is responsible for monitoring database availability, it can cause bigger problems. In Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c you may notice the error message “ORA-28002: the password will expire within 5 days” when you connect to a target, or worse you may get “ORA-28001: the password has expired". If you wait too long, your monitoring will fail because the password is locked out. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could get an alert 10 days before our DBSNMP password expired? Thanks to Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Metric Extensions (ME), you can! See the Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control Administrator’s Guide for more information on Metric Extensions. To create a metric extension, select Enterprise / Monitoring / Metric Extensions, and then click on Create. On the General Properties screen select either Cluster Database or Database Instance, depending on which target you need to monitor.  If you have both RAC and Single instance you may need to create one for each. In this example we will create a Cluster Database metric.  Enter a Name for the ME and a Display Name. Then select SQL for the Adapter.  Adjust the Collection Schedule as desired, for this example we will collect this metric every 1 day. Notice for metric collected every day, we can determine the exact time we want to collect. On the Adapter page, enter the query that you wish to execute.  In this example we will use the query below that specifically checks for the DBSNMP user that is expiring within 10 days. Of course, you can adjust this query to alert for any user that can cause an outage such as an application account or service account such as RMAN. select username, account_status, trunc(expiry_date-sysdate) days_to_expirefrom dba_userswhere username = 'DBSNMP'and expiry_date is not null; The next step is to create the columns to store the data returned from the query.  Click Add and add a column for each of the fields in the same order that data is returned.  The table below will help you complete the column additions. Name Display Name Column Type Value Type Metric Category Unit Username User Name Key String Security AccountStatus Account Status Data String Security DaysToExpire Days Until Expiration Data Number Security Days When creating the DaysToExpire column, you can add a default threshold here for Warning and Critical (say < 10 and 5).  When all columns have been added, click Next. On the Credentials page, you can choose to use the default monitoring credentials or specify new credentials.  We will use the default credentials established for our target (dbsnmp). The next step is to test your Metric Extension.  Click on Add to select a target for testing, then click Select. Now click the button Run Test to execute the test against the selected target(s). We can see in the example below that the Metric Extension has executed and returned a value of 68 days to expire. Click Next to proceed. Review the metric extension in the final screen and click Finish. The metric will be created in Editable status.  Select the metric, click Actions and select Deployable Draft. You can do this once more to move to Published. Finally, we want to apply this metric to a target. When managing many targets, it’s best to add your metric to a template, for details on adding a Metric Extension to a template see the Administrator’s Guide. For this example, we will deploy this to a target directly. Select Actions / Deploy to Targets. Click Add and select the target you wish to deploy to and click Submit.  Once deployment is complete, we can go to the target and view the Metric & Collection Settings to see the new metric and its thresholds.   After some time, you will find the metric has collected and the days to expiration for DBSNMP user can be seen in the All Metrics view.   For metrics collected once per day, you may have to wait up to 24 hours to see the metric and current severity. In the example below, the current severity is Clear (green check) as it is not scheduled to expire within 10 days. To test the notification, we can edit the thresholds for the new metric so they trigger an alert.  Our password expires in 139 days, so we’ll change our Warning to 140 and leave Critical at 5, in our example we also changed the collection time to every 5 minutes.  At the next collection, you’ll find that the current severity changes to a Warning and any related Incident Rules would be triggered to create an Incident or Notification as desired. Now that you get a notification that your DBSNMP passwords is about to expire, you can use OEM Command Line Interface (EM CLI) verb update_db_password to change it at both the database target and the OEM target in one step.  The caveat is you must know the existing password to use the update_db_password command.  To learn more about EM CLI, see the Oracle Enterprise Manager Command Line Interface Guide.  Below is an example of changing the password with the update_db_password verb.  $ ./emcli update_db_password -target_name=emrep -target_type=oracle_database -user_name=dbsnmp -change_at_target=yes -change_all_references=yes Enter value for old_password :Enter value for new_password :Enter value for retype_new_password :Successfully submitted a job to change the password in Enterprise Manager and on the target database: "emrep"Execute "emcli get_jobs -job_id=FA66C1C4D663297FE0437656F20ACC84" to check the status of the job.Search for job name "CHANGE_PWD_JOB_FA66C1C4D662297FE0437656F20ACC84" on the Jobs home page to check job execution details. The subsequent job created will typically run quickly enough that a blackout is not needed, however if you submit a script with many targets to change, your job may run slower so adding a blackout to the script is recommended. $ ./emcli get_jobs -job_id=FA66C1C4D663297FE0437656F20ACC84 Name Type Job ID Execution ID Scheduled Completed TZ Offset Status Status ID Owner Target Type Target Name CHANGE_PWD_JOB_FA66C1C4D662297FE0437656F20ACC84 ChangePassword FA66C1C4D663297FE0437656F20ACC84 FA66C1C4D665297FE0437656F20ACC84 2014-05-28 09:39:12 2014-05-28 09:39:18 GMT-07:00 Succeeded 5 SYSMAN oracle_database emrep After implementing the above Metric Extension and using the EM CLI update_db_password verb, you will be able to stay on top of your DBSNMP password changes without experiencing an unplanned monitoring outage.  

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• Online ALTER TABLE in MySQL 5.6

  - by Marko Mäkelä

  This is the low-level view of data dictionary language (DDL) operations in the InnoDB storage engine in MySQL 5.6. John Russell gave a more high-level view in his blog post April 2012 Labs Release – Online DDL Improvements. MySQL before the InnoDB Plugin Traditionally, the MySQL storage engine interface has taken a minimalistic approach to data definition language. The only natively supported operations were CREATE TABLE, DROP TABLE and RENAME TABLE. Consider the following example: CREATE TABLE t(a INT); INSERT INTO t VALUES (1),(2),(3); CREATE INDEX a ON t(a); DROP TABLE t; The CREATE INDEX statement would be executed roughly as follows: CREATE TABLE temp(a INT, INDEX(a)); INSERT INTO temp SELECT * FROM t; RENAME TABLE t TO temp2; RENAME TABLE temp TO t; DROP TABLE temp2; You could imagine that the database could crash when copying all rows from the original table to the new one. For example, it could run out of file space. Then, on restart, InnoDB would roll back the huge INSERT transaction. To fix things a little, a hack was added to ha_innobase::write_row for committing the transaction every 10,000 rows. Still, it was frustrating that even a simple DROP INDEX would make the table unavailable for modifications for a long time. Fast Index Creation in the InnoDB Plugin of MySQL 5.1 MySQL 5.1 introduced a new interface for CREATE INDEX and DROP INDEX. The old table-copying approach can still be forced by SET old_alter_table=0. This interface is used in MySQL 5.5 and in the InnoDB Plugin for MySQL 5.1. Apart from the ability to do a quick DROP INDEX, the main advantage is that InnoDB will execute a merge-sort algorithm before inserting the index records into each index that is being created. This should speed up the insert into the secondary index B-trees and potentially result in a better B-tree fill factor. The 5.1 ALTER TABLE interface was not perfect. For example, DROP FOREIGN KEY still invoked the table copy. Renaming columns could conflict with InnoDB foreign key constraints. Combining ADD KEY and DROP KEY in ALTER TABLE was problematic and not atomic inside the storage engine. The ALTER TABLE interface in MySQL 5.6 The ALTER TABLE storage engine interface was completely rewritten in MySQL 5.6. Instead of introducing a method call for every conceivable operation, MySQL 5.6 introduced a handful of methods, and data structures that keep track of the requested changes. In MySQL 5.6, online ALTER TABLE operation can be requested by specifying LOCK=NONE. Also LOCK=SHARED and LOCK=EXCLUSIVE are available. The old-style table copying can be requested by ALGORITHM=COPY. That one will require at least LOCK=SHARED. From the InnoDB point of view, anything that is possible with LOCK=EXCLUSIVE is also possible with LOCK=SHARED. Most ALGORITHM=INPLACE operations inside InnoDB can be executed online (LOCK=NONE). InnoDB will always require an exclusive table lock in two phases of the operation. The execution phases are tied to a number of methods: handler::check_if_supported_inplace_alter Checks if the storage engine can perform all requested operations, and if so, what kind of locking is needed. handler::prepare_inplace_alter_table InnoDB uses this method to set up the data dictionary cache for upcoming CREATE INDEX operation. We need stubs for the new indexes, so that we can keep track of changes to the table during online index creation. Also, crash recovery would drop any indexes that were incomplete at the time of the crash. handler::inplace_alter_table In InnoDB, this method is used for creating secondary indexes or for rebuilding the table. This is the ‘main’ phase that can be executed online (with concurrent writes to the table). handler::commit_inplace_alter_table This is where the operation is committed or rolled back. Here, InnoDB would drop any indexes, rename any columns, drop or add foreign keys, and finalize a table rebuild or index creation. It would also discard any logs that were set up for online index creation or table rebuild. The prepare and commit phases require an exclusive lock, blocking all access to the table. If MySQL times out while upgrading the table meta-data lock for the commit phase, it will roll back the ALTER TABLE operation. In MySQL 5.6, data definition language operations are still not fully atomic, because the data dictionary is split. Part of it is inside InnoDB data dictionary tables. Part of the information is only available in the *.frm file, which is not covered by any crash recovery log. But, there is a single commit phase inside the storage engine. Online Secondary Index Creation It may occur that an index needs to be created on a new column to speed up queries. But, it may be unacceptable to block modifications on the table while creating the index. It turns out that it is conceptually not so hard to support online index creation. All we need is some more execution phases: Set up a stub for the index, for logging changes. Scan the table for index records. Sort the index records. Bulk load the index records. Apply the logged changes. Replace the stub with the actual index. Threads that modify the table will log the operations to the logs of each index that is being created. Errors, such as log overflow or uniqueness violations, will only be flagged by the ALTER TABLE thread. The log is conceptually similar to the InnoDB change buffer. The bulk load of index records will bypass record locking. We still generate redo log for writing the index pages. It would suffice to log page allocations only, and to flush the index pages from the buffer pool to the file system upon completion. Native ALTER TABLE Starting with MySQL 5.6, InnoDB supports most ALTER TABLE operations natively. The notable exceptions are changes to the column type, ADD FOREIGN KEY except when foreign_key_checks=0, and changes to tables that contain FULLTEXT indexes. The keyword ALGORITHM=INPLACE is somewhat misleading, because certain operations cannot be performed in-place. For example, changing the ROW_FORMAT of a table requires a rebuild. Online operation (LOCK=NONE) is not allowed in the following cases: when adding an AUTO_INCREMENT column, when the table contains FULLTEXT indexes or a hidden FTS_DOC_ID column, or when there are FOREIGN KEY constraints referring to the table, with ON…CASCADE or ON…SET NULL option. The FOREIGN KEY limitations are needed, because MySQL does not acquire meta-data locks on the child or parent tables when executing SQL statements. Theoretically, InnoDB could support operations like ADD COLUMN and DROP COLUMN in-place, by lazily converting the table to a newer format. This would require that the data dictionary keep multiple versions of the table definition. For simplicity, we will copy the entire table, even for DROP COLUMN. The bulk copying of the table will bypass record locking and undo logging. For facilitating online operation, a temporary log will be associated with the clustered index of table. Threads that modify the table will also write the changes to the log. When altering the table, we skip all records that have been marked for deletion. In this way, we can simply discard any undo log records that were not yet purged from the original table. Off-page columns, or BLOBs, are an important consideration. We suspend the purge of delete-marked records if it would free any off-page columns from the old table. This is because the BLOBs can be needed when applying changes from the log. We have special logging for handling the ROLLBACK of an INSERT that inserted new off-page columns. This is because the columns will be freed at rollback.

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• ANTS CLR and Memory Profiler In Depth Review (Part 2 of 2 &ndash; Memory Profiler)

  - by ToStringTheory

  One of the things that people might not know about me, is my obsession to make my code as efficient as possible. Many people might not realize how much of a task or undertaking that this might be, but it is surely a task as monumental as climbing Mount Everest, except this time it is a challenge for the mind… In trying to make code efficient, there are many different factors that play a part – size of project or solution, tiers, language used, experience and training of the programmer, technologies used, maintainability of the code – the list can go on for quite some time. I spend quite a bit of time when developing trying to determine what is the best way to implement a feature to accomplish the efficiency that I look to achieve. One program that I have recently come to learn about – Red Gate ANTS Performance (CLR) and Memory profiler gives me tools to accomplish that job more efficiently as well. In this review, I am going to cover some of the features of the ANTS memory profiler set by compiling some hideous example code to test against. Notice As a member of the Geeks With Blogs Influencers program, one of the perks is the ability to review products, in exchange for a free license to the program. I have not let this affect my opinions of the product in any way, and Red Gate nor Geeks With Blogs has tried to influence my opinion regarding this product in any way. Introduction – Part 2 In my last post, I reviewed the feature packed Red Gate ANTS Performance Profiler.  Separate from the Red Gate Performance Profiler is the Red Gate ANTS Memory Profiler – a simple, easy to use utility for checking how your application is handling memory management…  A tool that I wish I had had many times in the past.  This post will be focusing on the ANTS Memory Profiler and its tool set. The memory profiler has a large assortment of features just like the Performance Profiler, with the new session looking nearly exactly alike: ANTS Memory Profiler Memory profiling is not something that I have to do very often…  In the past, the few cases I’ve had to find a memory leak in an application I have usually just had to trace the code of the operations being performed to look for oddities…  Sadly, I have come across more undisposed/non-using’ed IDisposable objects, usually from ADO.Net than I would like to ever see.  Support is not fun, however using ANTS Memory Profiler makes this task easier.  For this round of testing, I am going to use the same code from my previous example, using the WPF application. This time, I will choose the ‘Profile Memory’ option from the ANTS menu in Visual Studio, which launches the solution in its currently configured state/start-up project, and then launches the ANTS Memory Profiler to help.  It prepopulates all of the fields with the current project information, and all I have to do is select the ‘Start Profiling’ option. When the window comes up, it is actually quite barren, just giving ideas on how to work the profiler.  You start by getting to the point in your application that you want to profile, and then taking a ‘Memory Snapshot’.  This performs a full garbage collection, and snapshots the managed heap.  Using the same WPF app as before, I will go ahead and take a snapshot now. As you can see, ANTS is already giving me lots of information regarding the snapshot, however this is just a snapshot.  The whole point of the profiler is to perform an action, usually one where a memory problem is being noticed, and then take another snapshot and perform a diff between them to see what has changed.  I am going to go ahead and generate 5000 primes, and then take another snapshot: As you can see, ANTS is already giving me a lot of new information about this snapshot compared to the last.  Information such as difference in memory usage, fragmentation, class usage, etc…  If you take more snapshots, you can use the dropdown at the top to set your actual comparison snapshots. If you beneath the timeline, you will see a breadcrumb trail showing how best to approach profiling memory using ANTS.  When you first do the comparison, you start on the Summary screen.  You can either use the charts at the bottom, or switch to the class list screen to get to the next step.  Here is the class list screen: As you can see, it lists information about all of the instances between the snapshots, as well as at the bottom giving you a way to filter by telling ANTS what your problem is.  I am going to go ahead and select the Int16[] to look at the Instance Categorizer Using the instance categorizer, you can travel backwards to see where all of the instances are coming from.  It may be hard to see in this image, but hopefully the lightbox (click on it) will help: I can see that all of these instances are rooted to the application through the UI TextBlock control.  This image will probably be even harder to see, however using the ‘Instance Retention Graph’, you can trace an objects memory inheritance up the chain to see its roots as well.  This is a simple example, as this is simply a known element.  Usually you would be profiling an actual problem, and comparing those differences.  I know in the past, I have spotted a problem where a new context was created per page load, and it was rooted into the application through an event.  As the application began to grow, performance and reliability problems started to emerge.  A tool like this would have been a great way to identify the problem quickly. Overview Overall, I think that the Red Gate ANTS Memory Profiler is a great utility for debugging those pesky leaks.  3 Biggest Pros: Easy to use interface with lots of options for configuring profiling session Intuitive and helpful interface for drilling down from summary, to instance, to root graphs ANTS provides an API for controlling the profiler. Not many options, but still helpful. 2 Biggest Cons: Inability to automatically snapshot the memory by interval Lack of complete integration with Visual Studio via an extension panel Ratings Ease of Use (9/10) – I really do believe that they have brought simplicity to the once difficult task of memory profiling.  I especially liked how it stepped you further into the drilldown by directing you towards the best options. Effectiveness (10/10) – I believe that the profiler does EXACTLY what it purports to do.  Features (7/10) – A really great set of features all around in the application, however, I would like to see some ability for automatically triggering snapshots based on intervals or framework level items such as events. Customer Service (10/10) – My entire experience with Red Gate personnel has been nothing but good.  their people are friendly, helpful, and happy! UI / UX (9/10) – The interface is very easy to get around, and all of the options are easy to find.  With a little bit of poking around, you’ll be optimizing Hello World in no time flat! Overall (9/10) – Overall, I am happy with the Memory Profiler and its features, as well as with the service I received when working with the Red Gate personnel.  Thank you for reading up to here, or skipping ahead – I told you it would be shorter!  Please, if you do try the product, drop me a message and let me know what you think!  I would love to hear any opinions you may have on the product. Code Feel free to download the code I used above – download via DropBox

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• Delight and Excite

  - by Applications User Experience

  Mick McGee, CEO & President, EchoUser Editor’s Note: EchoUser is a User Experience design firm in San Francisco and a member of the Oracle Usability Advisory Board. Mick and his staff regularly consult on Oracle Applications UX projects. Being part of a user experience design firm, we have the luxury of working with a lot of great people across many great companies. We get to help people solve their problems.  At least we used to. The basic design challenge is still the same; however, the goal is not necessarily to solve “problems” anymore; it is, “I want our products to delight and excite!” The question for us as UX professionals is how to design to those goals, and then how to assess them from a usability perspective. I’m not sure where I first heard “delight and excite” (A book? blog post? Facebook  status? Steve Jobs quote?), but now I hear these listed as user experience goals all the time. In particular, somewhat paradoxically, I routinely hear them in enterprise software conversations. And when asking these same enterprise companies what will make the project successful, we very often hear, “Make it like Apple.” In past days, it was “make it like Yahoo (or Amazon or Google“) but now Apple is the common benchmark. Steve Jobs and Apple were not secrets, but with Jobs’ passing and Apple becoming the world’s most valuable company in the last year, the impact of great design and experience is suddenly very widespread. In particular, users’ expectations have gone way up. Being an enterprise company is no shield to the general expectations that users now have, for all products. Designing a “Minimum Viable Product” The user experience challenge has historically been, to echo the words of Eric Ries (author of Lean Startup) , to create a “minimum viable product”: the proverbial, “make it good enough”. But, in our profession, the “minimum viable” part of that phrase has oftentimes, unfortunately, referred to the design and user experience. Technology typically dominated the focus of the biggest, most successful companies. Few have had the laser focus of Apple to also create and sell design and user experience alongside great technology. But now that Apple is the most valuable company in the world, copying their success is a common undertaking. Great design is now a premium offering that everyone wants, from the one-person startup to the largest companies, consumer and enterprise. This emerging business paradigm will have significant impact across the user experience design process and profession. One area that particularly interests me is, how are we going to evaluate these new emerging “delight and excite” experiences, which are further customized to each particular domain? How to Measure “Delight and Excite” Traditional usability measures of task completion rate, assists, time, and errors are still extremely useful in many situations; however, they are too blunt to offer much insight into emerging experiences “Satisfaction” is usually assessed in user testing, in roughly equivalent importance to the above objective metrics. Various surveys and scales have provided ways to measure satisfying UX, with whatever questions they include. However, to meet the demands of new business goals and keep users at the center of design and development processes, we have to explore new methods to better capture custom-experience goals and emotion-driven user responses. We have had success assessing custom experiences, including “delight and excite”, by employing a variety of user testing methods that tend to combine formative and summative techniques (formative being focused more on identifying usability issues and ways to improve design, and summative focused more on metrics). Our most successful tool has been one we’ve been using for a long time, Magnitude Estimation Technique (MET). But it’s not necessarily about MET as a measure, rather how it is created. Caption: For one client, EchoUser did two rounds of testing.  Each test was a mix of performing representative tasks and gathering qualitative impressions. Each user participated in an in-person moderated 1-on-1 session for 1 hour, using a testing set-up where they held the phone. The primary goal was to identify usability issues and recommend design improvements. MET is based on a definition of the desired experience, which users will then use to rate items of interest (usually tasks in a usability test). In other words, a custom experience definition needs to be created. This can then be used to measure satisfaction in accomplishing tasks; “delight and excite”; or anything else from strategic goals, user demands, or elsewhere. For reference, our standard MET definition in usability testing is: “User experience is your perception of how easy to use, well designed and productive an interface is to complete tasks.” Articulating the User Experience We’ve helped construct experience definitions for several clients to better match their business goals. One example is a modification of the above that was needed for a company that makes medical-related products: “User experience is your perception of how easy to use, well-designed, productive and safe an interface is for conducting tasks. ‘Safe’ is how free an environment (including devices, software, facilities, people, etc.) is from danger, risk, and injury.” Another example is from a company that is pushing hard to incorporate “delight” into their enterprise business line: “User experience is your perception of a product’s ease of use and learning, satisfaction and delight in design, and ability to accomplish objectives.” I find the last one particularly compelling in that there is little that identifies the experience as being for a highly technical enterprise application. That definition could easily be applied to any number of consumer products. We have gone further than the above, including “sexy” and “cool” where decision-makers insisted they were part of the desired experience. We also applied it to completely different experiences where the “interface” was, for example, riding public transit, the “tasks” were train rides, and we followed the participants through the train-riding journey and rated various aspects accordingly: “A good public transportation experience is a cost-effective way of reliably, conveniently, and safely getting me to my intended destination on time.” To construct these definitions, we’ve employed both bottom-up and top-down approaches, depending on circumstances. For bottom-up, user inputs help dictate the terms that best fit the desired experience (usually by way of cluster and factor analysis). Top-down depends on strategic, visionary goals expressed by upper management that we then attempt to integrate into product development (e.g., “delight and excite”). We like a combination of both approaches to push the innovation envelope, but still be mindful of current user concerns. Hopefully the idea of crafting your own custom experience, and a way to measure it, can provide you with some ideas how you can adapt your user experience needs to whatever company you are in. Whether product-development or service-oriented, nearly every company is ultimately providing a user experience. The Bottom Line Creating great experiences may have been popularized by Steve Jobs and Apple, but I’ll be honest, it’s a good feeling to be moving from “good enough” to “delight and excite,” despite the challenge that entails. In fact, it’s because of that challenge that we will expand what we do as UX professionals to help deliver and assess those experiences. I’m excited to see how we, Oracle, and the rest of the industry will live up to that challenge.

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• Smooth animation on a persistently refreshing canvas

  - by Neurofluxation

  Yo everyone! I have been working on an Isometric Tile Game Engine in HTML5/Canvas for a little while now and I have a complete working game. Earlier today I looked back over my code and thought: "hmm, let's try to get this animated smoothly..." And since then, that is all I have tried to do. The problem I would like the character to actually "slide" from tile to tile - but the canvas redrawing doesn't allow this - does anyone have any ideas....? Code and fiddle below... Fiddle with it! http://jsfiddle.net/neuroflux/n7VAu/ <html> <head> <title>tileEngine - Isometric</title> <style type="text/css"> * { margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; cursor: default; } </style> <script type="text/javascript"> var map = Array( //land [[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0]], [[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0]], [[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0]], [[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0]], [[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0]], [[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0]], [[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0]], [[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0]], [[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0]], [[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0],[0,0,0]] ); var tileDict = Array("http://www.wikiword.co.uk/release-candidate/canvas/tileEngine/land.png"); var charDict = Array("http://www.wikiword.co.uk/release-candidate/canvas/tileEngine/mario.png"); var objectDict = Array("http://www.wikiword.co.uk/release-candidate/canvas/tileEngine/rock.png"); //last is one more var objectImg = new Array(); var charImg = new Array(); var tileImg = new Array(); var loaded = 0; var loadTimer; var ymouse; var xmouse; var eventUpdate = 0; var playerX = 0; var playerY = 0; function loadImg(){ //preload images and calculate the total loading time for(var i=0;i<tileDict.length;i++){ tileImg[i] = new Image(); tileImg[i].src = tileDict[i]; tileImg[i].onload = function(){ loaded++; } } i = 0; for(var i=0;i<charDict.length;i++){ charImg[i] = new Image(); charImg[i].src = charDict[i]; charImg[i].onload = function(){ loaded++; } } i = 0; for(var i=0;i<objectDict.length;i++){ objectImg[i] = new Image(); objectImg[i].src = objectDict[i]; objectImg[i].onload = function(){ loaded++; } } } function checkKeycode(event) { //key pressed var keycode; if(event == null) { keyCode = window.event.keyCode; } else { keyCode = event.keyCode; } switch(keyCode) { case 38: //left if(!map[playerX-1][playerY][1] > 0){ playerX--; } break; case 40: //right if(!map[playerX+1][playerY][1] > 0){ playerX++; } break; case 39: //up if(!map[playerX][playerY-1][1] > 0){ playerY--; } break; case 37: //down if(!map[playerX][playerY+1][1] > 0){ playerY++; } break; default: break; } } function loadAll(){ //load the game if(loaded == tileDict.length + charDict.length + objectDict.length){ clearInterval(loadTimer); loadTimer = setInterval(gameUpdate,100); } } function drawMap(){ //draw the map (in intervals) var tileH = 25; var tileW = 50; mapX = 80; mapY = 10; for(i=0;i<map.length;i++){ for(j=0;j<map[i].length;j++){ var drawTile= map[i][j][0]; var xpos = (i-j)*tileH + mapX*4.5; var ypos = (i+j)*tileH/2+ mapY*3.0; ctx.drawImage(tileImg[drawTile],xpos,ypos); if(i == playerX && j == playerY){ you = ctx.drawImage(charImg[0],xpos,ypos-(charImg[0].height/2)); } } } } function init(){ //initialise the main functions and even handlers ctx = document.getElementById('main').getContext('2d'); loadImg(); loadTimer = setInterval(loadAll,10); document.onkeydown = checkKeycode; } function gameUpdate() { //update the game, clear canvas etc ctx.clearRect(0,0,904,460); ctx.fillStyle = "rgba(255, 255, 255, 1.0)"; //assign color drawMap(); } </script> </head> <body align="center" style="text-align: center;" onload="init()"> <canvas id="main" width="904" height="465"> <h1 style="color: white; font-size: 24px;">I'll be damned, there be no HTML5 &amp; canvas support on this 'ere electronic machine!_{This game, jus' plain ol' won't work!}</h1> </canvas> </body> </html>

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• PASS: SQLRally Thoughts

  - by Bill Graziano

  The PASS Board recently decided that we wouldn’t put another US-based SQLRally on the calendar until we had a chance to review the program. I wanted to provide some of my thinking around this. Keep in mind that this is the opinion of one Board member. The Board committed to complete two SQLRally events to determine if an event modeled between SQL Saturday and the Summit was viable. We’ve completed the two events and now it’s time to step back and review the program. This is my seventh year on the PASS Board. Over that time people have asked me why PASS does certain things. Many, many times my answer has been “Because that’s the way we did it last year”. And I am tired of giving that answer. We need to take a step back and review the US-based SQLRally before we schedule another one. It would be irresponsible for me as a Board member to commit resources to this without validating that what we’re doing makes sense for the organization and our members. I have no doubt that this was a great event for the attendees. We just need to validate it’s the best use of our resources. Please keep in mind that we haven’t cancelled the event. We’ve just said we need to review it before scheduling another one. My opinion is that some fairly serious changes are needed to the model before we consider it again – IF we do it again. I’ve come to that conclusion after speaking with the Dallas organizers, our HQ team, our Marketing team, other Board members (including one of the Orlando organizers), attendees in Orlando and Dallas and visiting other similar events. I should point out that their views aren’t unanimous on nearly any part of this event -- which is one of the reasons I want to take some time and think about this before continuing. I think it’s helpful to look at the original goals of what we were trying to accomplish. Andy Warren wrote these up in August of 2010. My summary of these goals and some thoughts on each one is below. Many of these thoughts revolve around the growth of SQL Saturdays. In the two years since that document was written these events have grown significantly. The largest SQL Saturdays are now over 500 people which mean they are nearly the same size as our recent SQLRally. Our goals included: Geographic diversity. We wanted an event in an area of the country that was away from any given Summit location. I think that’s still a valid goal. But we also have SQL Saturdays all over the country. What does SQLRally bring to this that SQLSaturday doesn’t? Speaker growth. One of the stated goals was to build a “farm club” for speakers. This gives us a way for speakers to work up to speaking at Summit by speaking in front of larger crowds. What does SQLRally bring to this that the larger SQL Saturdays aren’t providing? Pre-Conference speakers is one obvious answer here. Lower price. On a per-day basis, SQLRally is roughly 1/4th the price of the Summit. We wanted a way for people to experience something Summit-like at a lower price point. The challenge is that we are very budget constrained at that lower price point. International Event Model.  (I need to write more about this but I’m out of time.  I’ll cover it in the next installment.) There are a number of things I really like about SQLRally. I love the smaller conferences. They give me a chance to meet more people than at something the size of Summit. I like the two day format. That gives you two evenings to be at social events with people. Seeing someone a second day is a great way to build a bond with that person. That’s more difficult to do at a SQL Saturday. We also need to talk about the financial aspects of the event. Last year generated a small $17,000 profit on revenues of $200,000. Percentage-wise that’s reasonable but on an absolute basis it’s not a huge amount in our budget. We think this year will lose between $30,000 and $50,000 and take roughly 1,000 hours of HQ time. We don’t have detailed financials back yet but that’s our best guess at this point. Part of that was driven by using a convention center instead of a hotel. Until we get detailed financials back we won’t have the full picture around the financial impact. This event also takes time and mindshare from our Marketing team. This may sound like a small thing but please don’t underestimate it. Our original vision for this was something that would take very little time from our Marketing team and just a few mentions in the Connector. It turned out to need more than that. And all those mentions and emails take up space we could use to talk about other events and other programs. Last I wanted to talk about some of the things I’m thinking about. I don’t think it’s as simple as saying if we just fix “X” it all gets better. Is this that much better of an event than SQL Saturdays? What if we gave a few SQL Saturdays some extra resources? When SQL Saturdays were around 250 people that wasn’t as viable. With some of those events over 500 we need to reconsider this. We need to get back to a hotel venue. That will help with cost and networking. Is this the best use of the 1,000 HQ hours that we invested in the event? Is our price-point correct? I’m leaning toward raising our price closer to Summit on a per-day basis. I think this will let us put on a higher quality event and alleviate much of the budget pressure. Should growing speakers be a focus? Having top-line pre-conference speakers helps market the event. It will also have an impact on pricing and overall profit. We should also ask if it actually does grow speakers. How many of these people will eventually register for Summit? Attend chapters? Is SQLRally a driver into PASS or is it something that chapters, etc. drive people to? Should we have one paid day and one free instead of two paid days? This is a very interesting model that is used by SQLBits in the UK. This gives you the two day aspect as well as offering options for paid and free attendees. I’m very intrigued by this. Should we focus on a topic? Buried in the minutes is a discussion of whether PASS should have a Business Analytics conference separate from Summit. This is an interesting question to consider. Would making SQLRally be focused on a particular topic make it more attractive? Would that even be a SQLRally? Can PASS effectively manage the two events? (FYI - Probably not.) Would it help differentiate it from Summit and SQL Saturday? These are all questions that I think should be asked and answered before we do this event again. And we can’t do that if we don’t take time to have the discussion. I wanted to get this published before I take off for a few days of vacation. When I get back I’d like to write more about why the international events are different and talk about where we go from here.

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• VNIC - New feature of AK8 - Working with VNICs

  - by Steve Tunstall

  One of the important new features of the AK8 code is the ability to use multiple IP addresses on the same physical network port. This feature is called VNICs, or Virtual NICs. This allows us to no longer "burn" a whole port in a cluster when one cluster peer owns a network port. Traditionally, we have had to leave Net0 empty on controller 2, because it was used for managing controller 1. Vise-versa for Net1 on Controller 1. Then, if you have data going over 10GigE ports, you probably only had half of your ports running at any given time, and the partner 10GigE port on the other controller just sat there, doing nothing, unless the first controller went down. What a waste. Those days are over.  I want to thank and give a big shout-out to our good partner, OnX Enterprise Solutions, for allowing me to come into their lab and play around with their 7320 to do this demo. They let me make a big mess of their lab for the day as I played around with VNICs. If you're looking for a partner who knows Oracle well and can also piece together a solution from multiple vendors to get you what you need, OnX is a good choice. If you would like to talk to your local OnX rep, you can contact Scott Gill at [email protected] and he can point you in the right direction for your area.  Here we go: Here is what your Datalinks window looks like BEFORE you upgrade to AK8. Here's what the same screen looks like after you upgrade. See the new box? So here is my current network setup. I have my 4 physical interfaces setup each with an IP address. If I ping them, no problems.  So I can ping 180, 181, 251, and 252. However, if I try to ping 240, it does not work, as the 240 address is not being used by any of these interfaces, right?Let's change that. Here, I'm going to make a new Datalink by clicking the Datalink "Plus sign" button. I will check the VNIC box and tell it to use igb2, even though another interface is already using it. Now, I will create a new Interface, and choose "v_dl2" for it's datalink. My new network screen looks like this. A few things to take note of here. First, when I click the "igb2" device, it only highlights dl2 and int2. It does not highlight v_dl2 or v_int2.I think it should, but OK, it looks like VNICs don't highlight when you click the device. Second, note how the underscore character in v_dl2 and v_int2 do not seem to show on this screen. You can see it plainly if you go in and edit them, but from here it looks like a space instead of an underscore. Just a cosmetic bug, but something to be aware of. Now, if I click the VNIC datalink "v_dl2", on the other hand, it DOES highlight the device it belongs to, as it should. Seen here: Note that it did not, however, highlight int2 with it, even though int2 is connected to igb2. That's because we clicked v_dl2, which int2 has nothing to do with. So I'm OK with that. So let's try pinging 240 now. Of course, it works great.  So I now make another VNIC, and call it v_dl3 using igb3, and v_int3 with an address of 241. I then setup three shares, using ports 251, 240, and 241.Remember that IP 251 and 240 both are using the same physical port of igb2, and IP 241 is using port igb3. Next, I copy a folder full of stuff over to all three shares at the same time. I have analytics going so I can see the traffic. My top chart is showing the logical interfaces, and the bottom chart is showing the physical ports.Sure enough, look at the igb2 and vnic1 interfaces. They equal the traffic going over the igb2 physical port on the second chart. VNIC2, on the other hand, gets igb3 all to itself. This would work the same way with 10Gig or Infiniband ports. You can now have multiple IP addresses and even completely different subnets sharing the same physical ports. You may need to make route table entries for that. This allows us to use all of the ports you paid for with no more waste.  Very, very cool.  One small "bug" I found when doing this. It's really not a bug, it was designed to do this when VNICs were not around. But now that we have NVIC capability, they should probably change this. I've alerted the engineering team about this and they're looking into it, so perhaps it will be fixed in a later code. Here it is. Remember when we made the new VNIC datalink, I specifically said to click on the "Plus Sign" button to create it? I don't always do that. I really like to use the drag-and-drop method to create my datalinks in the network screen.HOWEVER, if you were to do that for building a VNIC, it will mess you up a little. Watch this. Here, I'm dragging igb3 over to make a new datalink. igb3 is already being used by dl3, but I'm going to make this a VNIC, so who cares, right? Well, the ZFSSA does not KNOW you are going to make it a VNIC, now does it? So... it works as designed and REMOVES the igb3 device from the current dl3 datalink in the background. See how it's now missing? At the same time, the dl3 datalink choice is missing from my list of possible VNICs for me to choose from!!!! Hey!!! I wanted to pick dl3. Why isn't it on the list??? Well, it can't be on this list because dl3 no longer has a device associated with it. Bummer for you. When you click cancel, the device is still missing from dl3. The fix is easy. Just edit dl3 by clicking the pencil button, do absolutely nothing, and click "Apply". The device will magically come back. Now, make the VNIC datalink by clicking the "Plus Sign" button. Sure enough, once you check the VNIC box, dl3 is a valid choice. No problem.  That's it for now. Have fun with VNICs.

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• Combining Shared Secret and Certificates

  - by Michael Stephenson

  As discussed in the introduction article this walkthrough will explain how you can implement WCF security with the Windows Azure Service Bus to ensure that you can protect your endpoint in the cloud with a shared secret but also combine this with certificates so that you can identify the sender of the message.   Prerequisites As in the previous article before going into the walk through I want to explain a few assumptions about the scenario we are implementing but to keep the article shorter I am not going to walk through all of the steps in how to setup some of this. In the solution we have a simple console application which will represent the client application. There is also the services WCF application which contains the WCF service we will expose via the Windows Azure Service Bus. The WCF Service application in this example was hosted in IIS 7 on Windows 2008 R2 with AppFabric Server installed and configured to auto-start the WCF listening services. I am not going to go through significant detail around the IIS setup because it should not matter in relation to this article however if you want to understand more about how to configure WCF and IIS for such a scenario please refer to the following paper which goes into a lot of detail about how to configure this. The link is: http://tinyurl.com/8s5nwrz   Setting up the Certificates To keep the post and sample simple I am going to use the local computer store for all certificates but this bit is really just the same as setting up certificates for an example where you are using WCF without using Windows Azure Service Bus. In the sample I have included two batch files which you can use to create the sample certificates or remove them. Basically you will end up with: A certificate called PocServerCert in the personal store for the local computer which will be used by the WCF Service component A certificate called PocClientCert in the personal store for the local computer which will be used by the client application A root certificate in the Root store called PocRootCA with its associated revocation list which is the root from which the client and server certificates were created   For the sample Im just using development certificates like you would normally, and you can see exactly how these are configured and placed in the stores from the batch files in the solution using makecert and certmgr.   The Service Component To begin with let's look at the service component and how it can be configured to listen to the service bus using a shared secret but to also accept a username token from the client. In the sample the service component is called Acme.Azure.ServiceBus.Poc.Cert.Services. It has a single service which is the Visual Studio template for a WCF service when you add a new WCF Service Application so we have a service called Service1 with its Echo method. Nothing special so far!.... The next step is to look at the web.config file to see how we have configured the WCF service. In the services section of the WCF configuration you can see I have created my service and I have created a local endpoint which I simply used to do a little bit of diagnostics and to check it was working, but more importantly there is the Windows Azure endpoint which is using the ws2007HttpRelayBinding (note that this should also work just the same if your using netTcpRelayBinding). The key points to note on the above picture are the service behavior called MyServiceBehaviour and the service bus endpoints behavior called MyEndpointBehaviour. We will go into these in more detail later.   The Relay Binding The relay binding for the service has been configured to use the TransportWithMessageCredential security mode. This is the important bit where the transport security really relates to the interaction between the service and listening to the Azure Service Bus and the message credential is where we will use our certificate like we have specified in the message/clientCrentialType attribute. Note also that we have left the relayClientAuthenticationType set to RelayAccessToken. This means that authentication will be made against ACS for accessing the service bus and messages will not be accepted from any sender who has not been authenticated by ACS.   The Endpoint Behaviour In the below picture you can see the endpoint behavior which is configured to use the shared secret client credential for accessing the service bus and also for diagnostic purposes I have included the service registry element.     Hopefully if you are familiar with using Windows Azure Service Bus relay feature the above is very familiar to you and this is a very common setup for this section. There is nothing specific to the username token implementation here. The Service Behaviour Now we come to the bit with most of the certificate stuff in it. When you configure the service behavior I have included the serviceCredentials element and then setup to use the clientCertificate check and also specifying the serviceCertificate with information on how to find the servers certificate in the store.     I have also added a serviceAuthorization section where I will implement my own authorization component to perform additional security checks after the service has validated that the message was signed with a good certificate. I also have the same serviceSecurityAudit configuration to log access to my service. My Authorization Manager The below picture shows you implementation of my authorization manager. WCF will eventually hand off the message to my authorization component before it calls the service code. This is where I can perform some logic to check if the identity is allowed to access resources. In this case I am simple rejecting messages from anyone except the PocClientCertificate.     The Client Now let's take a look at the client side of this solution and how we can configure the client to authenticate against ACS but also send a certificate over to the service component so it can implement additional security checks on-premise. I have a console application and in the program class I want to use the proxy generated with Add Service Reference to send a message via the Azure Service Bus. You can see in my WCF client configuration below I have setup my details for the azure service bus url and am using the ws2007HttpRelayBinding.   Next is my configuration for the relay binding. You can see below I have configured security to use TransportWithMessageCredential so we will flow the token from a certificate with the message and also the RelayAccessToken relayClientAuthenticationType which means the component will validate against ACS before being allowed to access the relay endpoint to send a message.     After the binding we need to configure the endpoint behavior like in the below picture. This contains the normal transportClientEndpointBehaviour to setup the ACS shared secret configuration but we have also configured the clientCertificate to look for the PocClientCert.     Finally below we have the code of the client in the console application which will call the service bus. You can see that we have created our proxy and then made a normal call to a WCF in exactly the normal way but the configuration will jump in and ensure that a token is passed representing the client certificate.     Conclusion As you can see from the above walkthrough it is not too difficult to configure a service to use both a shared secret and certificate based token at the same time. This gives you the power and protection offered by the access control service in the cloud but also the ability to flow additional tokens to the on-premise component for additional security features to be implemented. Sample The sample used in this post is available at the following location: https://s3.amazonaws.com/CSCBlogSamples/Acme.Azure.ServiceBus.Poc.Cert.zip

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• What's up with LDoms: Part 5 - A few Words about Consoles

  - by Stefan Hinker

  Back again to look at a detail of LDom configuration that is often forgotten - the virtual console server. Remember, LDoms are SPARC systems.  As such, each guest will have it's own OBP running.  And to connect to that OBP, the administrator will need a console connection.  Since it's OBP, and not some x86 BIOS, this console will be very serial in nature ;-)  It's really very much like in the good old days, where we had a terminal concentrator where all those serial cables ended up in.  Just like with other components in LDoms, the virtualized solution looks very similar. Every LDom guest requires exactly one console connection.  Envision this similar to the RS-232 port on older SPARC systems.  The LDom framework provides one or more console services that provide access to these connections.  This would be the virtual equivalent of a network terminal server (NTS), where all those serial cables are plugged in.  In the physical world, we'd have a list somewhere, that would tell us which TCP-Port of the NTS was connected to which server.  "ldm list" does just that: root@sun # ldm list NAME STATE FLAGS CONS VCPU MEMORY UTIL UPTIME primary active -n-cv- UART 16 7680M 0.4% 27d 8h 22m jupiter bound ------ 5002 20 8G mars active -n---- 5000 2 8G 0.5% 55d 14h 10m venus active -n---- 5001 2 8G 0.5% 56d 40m pluto inactive ------ 4 4G The column marked "CONS" tells us, where to reach the console of each domain. In the case of the primary domain, this is actually a (more) physical connection - it's the console connection of the physical system, which is either reachable via the ILOM of that system, or directly via the serial console port on the chassis. All the other guests are reachable through the console service which we created during the inital setup of the system.  Note that pluto does not have a port assigned.  This is because pluto is not yet bound.  (Binding can be viewed very much as the assembly of computer parts - CPU, Memory, disks, network adapters and a serial console cable are all put together when binding the domain.)  Unless we set the port number explicitly, LDoms Manager will do this on a first come, first serve basis.  For just a few domains, this is fine.  For larger deployments, it might be a good idea to assign these port numbers manually using the "ldm set-vcons" command.  However, there is even better magic associated with virtual consoles. You can group several domains into one console group, reachable through one TCP port of the console service.  This can be useful when several groups of administrators are to be given access to different domains, or for other grouping reasons.  Here's an example: root@sun # ldm set-vcons group=planets service=console jupiter root@sun # ldm set-vcons group=planets service=console pluto root@sun # ldm bind jupiter root@sun # ldm bind pluto root@sun # ldm list NAME STATE FLAGS CONS VCPU MEMORY UTIL UPTIME primary active -n-cv- UART 16 7680M 6.1% 27d 8h 24m jupiter bound ------ 5002 200 8G mars active -n---- 5000 2 8G 0.6% 55d 14h 12m pluto bound ------ 5002 4 4G venus active -n---- 5001 2 8G 0.5% 56d 42m root@sun # telnet localhost 5002 Trying 127.0.0.1... Connected to localhost. Escape character is '^]'. sun-vnts-planets: h, l, c{id}, n{name}, q:l DOMAIN ID DOMAIN NAME DOMAIN STATE 2 jupiter online 3 pluto online sun-vnts-planets: h, l, c{id}, n{name}, q:npluto Connecting to console "pluto" in group "planets" .... Press ~? for control options .. What I did here was add the two domains pluto and jupiter to a new console group called "planets" on the service "console" running in the primary domain.  Simply using a group name will create such a group, if it doesn't already exist.  By default, each domain has its own group, using the domain name as the group name.  The group will be available on port 5002, chosen by LDoms Manager because I didn't specify it.  If I connect to that console group, I will now first be prompted to choose the domain I want to connect to from a little menu. Finally, here's an example how to assign port numbers explicitly: root@sun # ldm set-vcons port=5044 group=pluto service=console pluto root@sun # ldm bind pluto root@sun # ldm list NAME STATE FLAGS CONS VCPU MEMORY UTIL UPTIME primary active -n-cv- UART 16 7680M 3.8% 27d 8h 54m jupiter active -t---- 5002 200 8G 0.5% 30m mars active -n---- 5000 2 8G 0.6% 55d 14h 43m pluto bound ------ 5044 4 4G venus active -n---- 5001 2 8G 0.4% 56d 1h 13m With this, pluto would always be reachable on port 5044 in its own exclusive console group, no matter in which order other domains are bound. Now, you might be wondering why we always have to mention the console service name, "console" in all the examples here.  The simple answer is because there could be more than one such console service.  For all "normal" use, a single console service is absolutely sufficient.  But the system is flexible enough to allow more than that single one, should you need them.  In fact, you could even configure such a console service on a domain other than the primary (or control domain), which would make that domain a real console server.  I actually have a customer who does just that - they want to separate console access from the control domain functionality.  But this is definately a rather sophisticated setup. Something I don't want to go into in this post is access control.  vntsd, which is the daemon providing all these console services, is fully RBAC-aware, and you can configure authorizations for individual users to connect to console groups or individual domain's consoles.  If you can't wait until I get around to security, check out the man page of vntsd. Further reading: The Admin Guide is rather reserved on this subject.  I do recommend to check out the Reference Manual. The manpage for vntsd will discuss all the control sequences as well as the grouping and authorizations mentioned here.

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• At times, you need to hire a professional.

  - by Phil Factor

  After months of increasingly demanding toil, the development team I belonged to was told that the project was to be canned and the whole team would be fired.  I’d been brought into the team as an expert in the data implications of a business re-engineering of a major financial institution. Nowadays, you’d call me a data architect, I suppose.  I’d spent a happy year being paid consultancy fees solving a succession of interesting problems until the point when the company lost is nerve, and closed the entire initiative. The IT industry was in one of its characteristic mood-swings downwards.  After the announcement, we met in the canteen. A few developers had scented the smell of death around the project already hand had been applying unsuccessfully for jobs. There was a sense of doom in the mass of dishevelled and bleary-eyed developers. After giving vent to anger and despair, talk turned to getting new employment. It was then that I perked up. I’m not an obvious choice to give advice on getting, or passing,  IT interviews. I reckon I’ve failed most of the job interviews I’ve ever attended. I once even failed an interview for a job I’d already been doing perfectly well for a year. The jobs I’ve got have mostly been from personal recommendation. Paradoxically though, from years as a manager trying to recruit good staff, I know a lot about what IT managers are looking for.  I gave an impassioned speech outlining the important factors in getting to an interview.  The most important thing, certainly in my time at work is the quality of the résumé or CV. I can’t even guess the huge number of CVs (résumés) I’ve read through, scanning for candidates worth interviewing.  Many IT Developers find it impossible to describe their  career succinctly on two sides of paper.  They leave chunks of their life out (were they in prison?), get immersed in detail, put in irrelevancies, describe what was going on at work rather than what they themselves did, exaggerate their importance, criticize their previous employers, aren’t  aware of the important aspects of a role to a potential employer, suffer from shyness and modesty,  and lack any sort of organized perspective of their work. There are many ways of failing to write a decent CV. Many developers suffer from the delusion that their worth can be recognized purely from the code that they write, and shy away from anything that seems like self-aggrandizement. No.  A resume must make a good impression, which means presenting the facts about yourself in a clear and positive way. You can’t do it yourself. Why not have your resume professionally written? A good professional CV Writer will know the qualities being looked for in a CV and interrogate you to winkle them out. Their job is to make order and sense out of a confused career, to summarize in one page a mass of detail that presents to any recruiter the information that’s wanted. To stand back and describe an accurate summary of your skills, and work-experiences dispassionately, without rancor, pity or modesty. You are no more capable of producing an objective documentation of your career than you are of taking your own appendix out.  My next recommendation was more controversial. This is to have a professional image overhaul, or makeover, followed by a professionally-taken photo portrait. I discovered this by accident. It is normal for IT professionals to face impossible deadlines and long working hours by looking more and more like something that had recently blocked a sink. Whilst working in IT, and in a state of personal dishevelment, I’d been offered the role in a high-powered amateur production of an old ex- Broadway show, purely for my singing voice. I was supposed to be the presentable star. When the production team saw me, the air was thick with tension and despair. I was dragged kicking and protesting through a succession of desperate grooming, scrubbing, dressing, dieting. I emerged feeling like “That jewelled mass of millinery, That oiled and curled Assyrian bull, Smelling of musk and of insolence.” (Tennyson Maud; A Monodrama (1855) Section v1 stanza 6) I was then photographed by a professional stage photographer.  When the photographs were delivered, I was amazed. It wasn’t me, but it looked somehow respectable, confident, trustworthy.   A while later, when the show had ended, I took the photos, and used them for work. They went with the CV to job applications. It did the trick better than I could ever imagine.  My views went down big with the developers. Old rivalries were put immediately to one side. We voted, with a show of hands, to devote our energies for the entire notice period to getting employable. We had a team sourcing the CV Writer,  a team organising the make-overs and photographer, and a third team arranging  mock interviews. A fourth team determined the best websites and agencies for recruitment, with the help of friends in the trade.  Because there were around thirty developers, we were in a good negotiating position.  Of the three CV Writers we found who lived locally, one proved exceptional. She was an ex-journalist with an eye to detail, and years of experience in manipulating language. We tried her skills out on a developer who seemed a hopeless case, and he was called to interview within a week.  I was surprised, too, how many companies were experts at image makeovers. Within the month, we all looked like those weird slick  people in the ‘Office-tagged’ stock photographs who stare keenly and interestedly at PowerPoint slides in sleek chromium-plated high-rise offices. The portraits we used still adorn the entries of many of my ex-colleagues in LinkedIn. After a months’ worth of mock interviews, and technical Q&A, our stutters, hesitations, evasions and periphrastic circumlocutions were all gone.  There is little more to relate. With the résumés or CVs, mugshots, and schooling in how to pass interviews, we’d all got new and better-paid jobs well  before our month’s notice was ended. Whilst normally, an IT team under the axe is a sad and depressed place to belong to, this wonderful group of people had proved the power of organized group action in turning the experience to advantage. It left us feeling slightly guilty that we were somehow cheating, but I guess we were merely leveling the playing-field.

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• Portable class libraries and fetching JSON

  - by Jeff

  After much delay, we finally have the Windows Phone 8 SDK to go along with the Windows 8 Store SDK, or whatever ridiculous name they’re giving it these days. (Seriously… that no one could come up with a suitable replacement for “metro” is disappointing in an otherwise exciting set of product launches.) One of the neat-o things is the potential for code reuse, particularly across Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 apps. This is accomplished in part with portable class libraries, which allow you to share code between different types of projects. With some other techniques and quasi-hacks, you can share some amount of code, and I saw it mentioned in one of the Build videos that they’re seeing as much as 70% code reuse. Not bad. However, I’ve already hit a super annoying snag. It appears that the HttpClient class, with its idiot-proof async goodness, is not included in the Windows Phone 8 class libraries. Shock, gasp, horror, disappointment, etc. The delay in releasing it already caused dismay among developers, and I’m sure this won’t help. So I started refactoring some code I already had for a Windows 8 Store app (ugh) to accommodate the use of HttpWebRequest instead. I haven’t tried it in a Windows Phone 8 project beyond compiling, but it appears to work. I used this StackOverflow answer as a starting point since it’s been a long time since I used HttpWebRequest, and keep in mind that it has no exception handling. It needs refinement. The goal here is to new up the client, and call a method that returns some deserialized JSON objects from the Intertubes. Adding facilities for headers or cookies is probably a good next step. You need to use NuGet for a Json.NET reference. So here’s the start: using System.Net; using System.Threading.Tasks; using Newtonsoft.Json; using System.IO; namespace MahProject {     public class ServiceClient<T> where T : class     {         public ServiceClient(string url)         {             _url = url;         }         private readonly string _url;         public async Task<T> GetResult()         {             var response = await MakeAsyncRequest(_url);             var result = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<T>(response);             return result;         }         public static Task<string> MakeAsyncRequest(string url)         {             var request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url);             request.ContentType = "application/json";             Task<WebResponse> task = Task.Factory.FromAsync(                 request.BeginGetResponse,                 asyncResult => request.EndGetResponse(asyncResult),                 null);             return task.ContinueWith(t => ReadStreamFromResponse(t.Result));         }         private static string ReadStreamFromResponse(WebResponse response)         {             using (var responseStream = response.GetResponseStream())                 using (var reader = new StreamReader(responseStream))                 {                     var content = reader.ReadToEnd();                     return content;                 }         }     } } Calling it in some kind of repository class may look like this, if you wanted to return an array of Park objects (Park model class omitted because it doesn’t matter): public class ParkRepo {     public async Task<Park[]> GetAllParks()     {         var client = new ServiceClient<Park[]>(http://superfoo/endpoint);         return await client.GetResult();     } } And then from inside your WP8 or W8S app (see what I did there?), when you load state or do some kind of UI event handler (making sure the method uses the async keyword): var parkRepo = new ParkRepo(); var results = await parkRepo.GetAllParks(); // bind results to some UI or observable collection or something Hopefully this saves you a little time.

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• SSIS - Range lookups

  - by Repieter

    When developing an ETL solution in SSIS we sometimes need to do range lookups in SSIS. Several solutions for this can be found on the internet, but now we have built another solution which I would like to share, since it's pretty easy to implement and the performance is fast.   You can download the sample package to see how it works. Make sure you have the AdventureWorks2008R2 and AdventureWorksDW2008R2 databases installed. (Apologies for the layout of this blog, I don't do this too often :))   To give a little bit more information about the example, this is basically what is does: we load a facttable and do an SCD type 2 lookup operation of the Product dimension. This is done with a script component.   First we query the Data warehouse to create the lookup dataset. The query that is used for that is:   SELECT     [ProductKey]     ,[ProductAlternateKey]     ,[StartDate]     ,ISNULL([EndDate], '9999-01-01') AS EndDate FROM [DimProduct]     The output of this query is stored in a DataTable:     string lookupQuery = @"                         SELECT                             [ProductKey]                             ,[ProductAlternateKey]                             ,[StartDate]                             ,ISNULL([EndDate], '9999-01-01') AS EndDate                         FROM [DimProduct]";           OleDbCommand oleDbCommand = new OleDbCommand(lookupQuery, _oleDbConnection);         OleDbDataAdapter adapter = new OleDbDataAdapter(oleDbCommand);           _dataTable = new DataTable();         adapter.Fill(_dataTable);     Now that the dimension data is stored in the DataTable we use the following method to do the actual lookup:   public int RangeLookup(string businessKey, DateTime lookupDate)     {         // set default return value (Unknown)         int result = -1;           DataRow[] filteredRows;         filteredRows = _dataTable.Select(string.Format("ProductAlternateKey = '{0}'", businessKey));           for (int i = 0; i < filteredRows.Length; i++)         {             // check if the lookupdate is found between the startdate and enddate of any of the records             if (lookupDate >= (DateTime)filteredRows[i][2] && lookupDate < (DateTime)filteredRows[i][3])             {                 result = (filteredRows[i][0] == null) ? -1 : (int)filteredRows[i][0];                 break;             }         }           filteredRows = null;           return result;     }       This method is executed for every row that passes the script component. This is implemented in the ProcessInputRow method   public override void Input0_ProcessInputRow(Input0Buffer Row)     {         // Perform the lookup operation on the current row and put the value in the Surrogate Key Attribute         Row.ProductKey = RangeLookup(Row.ProductNumber, Row.OrderDate);     }   Now what actually happens?!   1. Every record passes the business key and the orderdate to the RangeLookup method. 2. The DataTable is then filtered on the business key of the current record. The output is stored in a DataRow [] object. 3. We loop over the DataRow[] object to see where the orderdate meets the following expression: (lookupDate >= (DateTime)filteredRows[i][2] && lookupDate < (DateTime)filteredRows[i][3]) 4. When the expression returns true (so where the data is between the Startdate and the EndDate), the surrogate key of the dimension record is returned   We have done some testing with this solution and it works great for us. Hope others can use this example to do their range lookups.

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• b2Body moves without stopping

  - by SentineL

  I got a quite strange bug. It is difficult to explain it in two words, but i'll try to do this in short. My b2Body has restitution, friction, density, mass and collision group. I controlling my b2Body via setting linear velocity to it (called on every iteration): (void)moveToDirection:(CGPoint)direction onlyHorizontal:(BOOL)horizontal { b2Vec2 velocity = [controlledObject getBody]-GetLinearVelocity(); double horizontalSpeed = velocity.x + controlledObject.acceleration * direction.x; velocity.x = (float32) (abs((int) horizontalSpeed) < controlledObject.runSpeed ? horizontalSpeed : controlledObject.maxSpeed * direction.x); if (!horizontal) { velocity.y = velocity.y + controlledObject.runSpeed * direction.y; } [controlledObject getBody]->SetLinearVelocity(velocity); } My floor is static b2Body, it has as restitution, friction, density, mass and same collision group in some reason, I'm setting b2Body's friction of my Hero to zero when it is moving, and returning it to 1 when he stops. When I'm pushing run button, hero runs. when i'm releasing it, he stops. All of this works perfect. On jumping, I'm setting linear velocity to my Hero: (void)jump { b2Vec2 velocity = [controlledObject getBody]->GetLinearVelocity(); velocity.y = velocity.y + [[AppDel cfg] getHeroJumpVlelocity]; [controlledObject getBody]->SetLinearVelocity(velocity); } If I'll run, jump, and release run button, while he is in air, all will work fine. And here is my problem: If I'll run, jump, and continue running on landing (or when he goes from one static body to another: there is small fall, probably), Hero will start move, like he has no friction, but he has! I checked this via beakpoints: he has friction, but I can move left of right, and he will never stop, until i'll jump (or go from one static body to another), with unpressed running button. I allready tried: Set friction to body on every iteration double-check am I setting friction to right fixture. set Linear Damping to Hero: his move slows down on gugged moveing. A little more code: I have a sensor and body fixtures in my hero: (void) addBodyFixture { b2CircleShape dynamicBox; dynamicBox.m_radius = [[AppDel cfg] getHeroRadius]; b2FixtureDef bodyFixtureDef; bodyFixtureDef.shape = &dynamicBox; bodyFixtureDef.density = 1.0f; bodyFixtureDef.friction = [[AppDel cfg] getHeroFriction]; bodyFixtureDef.restitution = [[AppDel cfg] getHeroRestitution]; bodyFixtureDef.filter.categoryBits = 0x0001; bodyFixtureDef.filter.maskBits = 0x0001; bodyFixtureDef.filter.groupIndex = 0; bodyFixtureDef.userData = [NSNumber numberWithInt:FIXTURE_BODY]; [physicalBody addFixture:bodyFixtureDef]; } (void) addSensorFixture { b2CircleShape sensorBox; sensorBox.m_radius = [[AppDel cfg] getHeroRadius] * 0.95; sensorBox.m_p.Set(0, -[[AppDel cfg] getHeroRadius] / 10); b2FixtureDef sensor; sensor.shape = &sensorBox; sensor.filter.categoryBits = 0x0001; sensor.filter.maskBits = 0x0001; sensor.filter.groupIndex = 0; sensor.isSensor = YES; sensor.userData = [NSNumber numberWithInt:FIXTURE_SENSOR]; [physicalBody addFixture:sensor]; } Here I'm tracking is hero in air: void FixtureContactListener::BeginContact(b2Contact* contact) { // We need to copy out the data because the b2Contact passed in // is reused. Squirrel *squirrel = (Squirrel *)contact->GetFixtureB()->GetBody()->GetUserData(); if (squirrel) { [squirrel addContact]; } } void FixtureContactListener::EndContact(b2Contact* contact) { Squirrel *squirrel = (Squirrel *)contact->GetFixtureB()->GetBody()->GetUserData(); if (squirrel) { [squirrel removeContact]; } } here is Hero's logic on contacts: - (void) addContact { if (contactCount == 0) [self landing]; contactCount++; } - (void) removeContact { contactCount--; if (contactCount == 0) [self flying]; if (contactCount <0) contactCount = 0; } - (void)landing { inAir = NO; acceleration = [[AppDel cfg] getHeroRunAcceleration]; [sprite stopAllActions]; (running ? [sprite runAction:[self runAction]] : [sprite runAction:[self standAction]]); } - (void)flying { inAir = YES; acceleration = [[AppDel cfg] getHeroAirAcceleration]; [sprite stopAllActions]; [self flyAction]; } here is Hero's moving logic: - (void)stop { running = NO; if (!inAir) { [sprite stopAllActions]; [sprite runAction:[self standAction]]; } } - (void)left { [physicalBody setFriction:0]; if (!running && !inAir) { [sprite stopAllActions]; [sprite runAction:[self runAction]]; } running = YES; moveingDirection = NO; [bodyControls moveToDirection:CGPointMake(-1, 0) onlyHorizontal:YES]; } - (void)right { [physicalBody setFriction:0]; if (!running && !inAir) { [sprite stopAllActions]; [sprite runAction:[self runAction]]; } running = YES; moveingDirection = YES; [bodyControls moveToDirection:CGPointMake(1, 0) onlyHorizontal:YES]; } - (void)jump { if (!inAir) { [bodyControls jump]; } } and here is my update method (called on every iteration): - (void)update:(NSMutableDictionary *)buttons { if (!isDead) { [self updateWithButtonName:BUTTON_LEFT inButtons:buttons whenPressed:@selector(left) whenUnpressed:@selector(stop)]; [self updateWithButtonName:BUTTON_RIGHT inButtons:buttons whenPressed:@selector(right) whenUnpressed:@selector(stop)]; [self updateWithButtonName:BUTTON_UP inButtons:buttons whenPressed:@selector(jump) whenUnpressed:@selector(nothing)]; [self updateWithButtonName:BUTTON_DOWN inButtons:buttons whenPressed:@selector(nothing) whenUnpressed:@selector(nothing)]; [sprite setFlipX:(moveingDirection)]; } [self checkPosition]; if (!running) [physicalBody setFriction:[[AppDel cfg] getHeroFriction]]; else [physicalBody setFriction:0]; } - (void)updateWithButtonName:(NSString *)buttonName inButtons:(NSDictionary *)buttons whenPressed:(SEL)pressedSelector whenUnpressed:(SEL)unpressedSelector { NSNumber *buttonNumber = [buttons objectForKey:buttonName]; if (buttonNumber == nil) return; if ([buttonNumber boolValue]) [self performSelector:pressedSelector]; else [self performSelector:unpressedSelector]; } - (void)checkPosition { b2Body *body = [self getBody]; b2Vec2 position = body->GetPosition(); CGPoint inWorldPosition = [[AppDel cfg] worldMeterPointFromScreenPixel:CGPointMake(position.x * PTM_RATIO, position.y * PTM_RATIO)]; if (inWorldPosition.x < 0 || inWorldPosition.x > WORLD_WIDGH / PTM_RATIO || inWorldPosition.y <= 0) { [self kill]; } }

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• Who could ask for more with LESS CSS? (Part 2 of 3&ndash;Setup)

  - by ToStringTheory

  Welcome to part two in my series covering the LESS CSS language.  In the first post, I covered the two major CSS precompiled languages - LESS and SASS to a small extent, iterating over some of the features that you could expect to find in them.  In this post, I will go a little further in depth into the setup and execution of using the LESS framework. Introduction It really doesn’t take too much to get LESS working in your project.  The basic workflow will be including the necessary translator in your project, defining bundles for the LESS files, add the necessary code to your layouts.cshtml file, and finally add in all your necessary styles to the LESS files!  Lets get started… New Project Just like all great experiments in Visual Studio, start up a File > New Project, and create a new MVC 4 Web Application.  The Base Package After you have the new project spun up, use the Nuget Package Manager to install the Bundle Transformer: LESS package. This will take care of installing the main translator that we will be using for LESS code (dotless which is another Nuget package), as well as the core framework for the Bundle Transformer library.  The installation will come up with some instructions in a readme file on how to modify your web.config to handle all your *.less requests through the Bundle Transformer, which passes the translating onto dotless. Where To Put These LESS Files?! This step isn’t really a requirement, however I find that I don’t like how ASP.Net MVC just has a content directory where they store CSS, content images, css images….  In my project, I went ahead and created a new directory just for styles – LESS files, CSS files, and images that are only referenced in LESS or CSS.  Ignore the MVC directory as this was my testbed for another project I was working on at the same time.  As you can see here, I have: A top level directory for images which contains only images used in a page A top level directory for scripts A top level directory for Styles A few directories for plugins I am using (Colrizr, JQueryUI, Farbtastic) Multiple *.less files for different functions (I’ll go over these in a minute) I find that this layout offers the best separation of content types.  Bring Out Your Bundles! The next thing that we need to do is add in the necessary code for the bundling of these LESS files.  Go ahead and open your BundleConfig.cs file, usually located in the /App_Start/ folder of the project.  As you will see in a minute, instead of using the method Microsoft does in the base MVC 4 project, I change things up a bit.  Define Constants The first thing I do is define constants for each of the virtual paths that will be used in the bundler: The main reason is that I hate magic strings in my program, so the fact that you first defined a virtual path in the BundleConfig file, and then used that path in the _Layout.cshtml file really irked me. Add Bundles to the BundleCollection Next, I am going to define the bundles for my styles in my AddStyleBundles method: That is all it takes to get all of my styles in play with LESS.  The CssTransformer and NullOrderer types come from the Bundle Transformer we grabbed earlier.  If we didn’t use that package, we would have to write our own function (not too hard, but why do it if it’s been done). I use the site.less file as my main hub for LESS - I will cover that more in the next section. Add Bundles To Layout.cshtml File With the constants in the BundleConfig file, instead of having to use the same magic string I defined for the bundle virtual path, I am able to do this: Notice here that besides the RenderSection magic strings (something I am working on in another side project), all of the bundles are now based on const strings.  If I need to change the virtual path, I only have to do it in one place.  Nifty! Get Started! We are now ready to roll!  As I said in the previous section, I use the site.less file as a central hub for my styles: As seen here, I have a reset.css file which is a simple CSS reset.  Next, I have created a file for managing all my color variables – colors.less: Here, you can see some of the standards I started to use, in this case for color variables.  I define all color variables with the @col prefix.  Currently, I am going for verbose variable names. The next file imported is my font.less file that defines the typeface information for the site: Simple enough.  A couple of imports for fonts from Google, and then declaring variables for use throughout LESS.  I also set up the heading sizes, margins, etc..  You can also see my current standardization for font declaration strings – @font. Next, I pull in a mixins.less file that I grabbed from the Twitter Bootstrap library that gives some useful parameterized mixins for use such as border-radius, gradient, box-shadow, etc… The common.less file is a file that just contains items that I will be defining that can be used across all my LESS files.  Kind of like my own mixins or font-helpers: Finally I have my layout.less file that contains all of my definitions for general site layout – width, main/sidebar widths, footer layout, etc: That’s it!  For the rest of my one off definitions/corrections, I am currently putting them into the site.less file beneath my original imports Note Probably my favorite side effect of using the LESS handler/translator while bundling is that it also does a CSS checkup when rendering…  See, when your web.config is set to debug, bundling will output the url to the direct less file, not the bundle, and the http handler intercepts the call, compiles the less, and returns the result.  If there is an error in your LESS code, the CSS file can be returned empty, or may have the error output as a comment on the first couple lines. If you have the web.config set to not debug, then if there is an error in your code, you will end up with the usual ASP.Net exception page (unless you catch the exception of course), with information regarding the failure of the conversion, such as brace mismatch, undefined variable, etc…  I find it nifty. Conclusion This is really just the beginning.  LESS is very powerful and exciting!  My next post will show an actual working example of why LESS is so powerful with its functions and variables…  At least I hope it will!  As for now, if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions on my current practice, I would love to hear them!  Feel free to drop a comment or shoot me an email using the contact page.  In the mean time, I plan on posting the final post in this series tomorrow or the day after, with my side project, as well as a whole base ASP.Net MVC4 templated project with LESS added in it so that you can check out the layout I have in this post.  Until next time…

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• FOUR questions to ask if you are implementing DATABASE-AS-A-SERVICE

  - by Sudip Datta

  During my ongoing tenure at Oracle, I have met all types of DBAs. Happy DBAs, unhappy DBAs, proud DBAs, risk-loving DBAs, cautious DBAs. These days, as Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) becomes more mainstream, I find some complacent DBAs who are basking in their achievement of having implemented DBaaS. Some others, however, are not that happy. They grudgingly complain that they did not have much of a say in the implementation, they simply had to follow what their cloud architects (mostly infrastructure admins) offered them. In most cases it would be a database wrapped inside a VM that would be labeled as “Database as a Service”. In other cases, it would be existing brute-force automation simply exposed in a portal. As much as I think that there is more to DBaaS than those approaches and often get tempted to propose Enterprise Manager 12c, I try to be objective. Neither do I want to dampen the spirit of the happy ones, nor do I want to stoke the pain of the unhappy ones. As I mentioned in my previous post, I don’t deny vanilla automation could be useful. I like virtualization too for what it has helped us accomplish in terms of resource management, but we need to scrutinize its merit on a case-by-case basis and apply it meaningfully. For DBAs who either claim to have implemented DBaaS or are planning to do so, I simply want to provide four key questions to ponder about: 1. Does it make life easier for your end users? Database-as-a-Service can have several types of end users. Junior DBAs, QA Engineers, Developers- each having their own skillset. The objective of DBaaS is to make their life simple, so that they can focus on their core responsibilities without having to worry about additional stuff. For example, if you are a Developer using Oracle Application Express (APEX), you want to deal with schema, objects and PL/SQL code and not with datafiles or listener configuration. If you are a QA Engineer needing database copies for functional testing, you do not want to deal with underlying operating system patching and compliance issues. The question to ask, therefore, is, whether DBaaS makes life easier for those users. It is often convenient to give them VM shells to deal with a la Amazon EC2 IaaS, but is that what they really want? Is it a productive use of a developer's time if he needs to apply RPM errata to his Linux operating system. Asking him to keep the underlying operating system current is like making a guest responsible for a restaurant's decor. 2. Does it make life easier for your administrators? Cloud, in general, is supposed to free administrators from attending to mundane tasks like provisioning services for every single end user request. It is supposed to enable a readily consumable platform and enforce standardization in the process. For example, if a Service Catalog exposes DBaaS of specific database versions and configurations, it, by its very nature, enforces certain discipline and standardization within the IT environment. What if, instead of specific database configurations, cloud allowed each end user to create databases of their liking resulting in hundreds of version and patch levels and thousands of individual databases. Therefore the right question to ask is whether the unwanted consequence of DBaaS is OS and database sprawl. And if so, who is responsible for tracking them, backing them up, administering them? Studies have shown that these administrative overheads increase exponentially with new targets, and it could result in a management nightmare. That leads us to our next question. 3. Does it satisfy your Security Officers and Compliance Auditors? Compliance Auditors need to know who did what and when. They also want the cloud platform to be secure, so that end users have little freedom in tampering with it. Dealing with VM sprawl is not the easiest of challenges, let alone dealing with them as they keep getting reconfigured and moved around. This leads to the proverbial needle in the haystack problem, and all it needs is one needle to cause a serious compliance issue in the enterprise. Bottomline is, flexibility and agility should not come at the expense of compliance and it is very important to get the balance right. Can we have security and isolation without creating compliance challenges? Instead of a ‘one size fits all approach’ i.e. OS level isolation, can we think smartly about database isolation or schema based isolation? This is where the appropriate resource modeling needs to be applied. The usual systems management vendors out there with heterogeneous common-denominator approach have compromised on these semantics. If you follow Enterprise Manager’s DBaaS solution, you will see that we have considered different models, not precluding virtualization, for different customer use cases. The judgment to use virtual assemblies versus databases on physical RAC versus Schema-as-a-Service in a single database, should be governed by the need of the applications and not by putting compliance considerations in the backburner. 4. Does it satisfy your CIO? Finally, does it satisfy your higher ups? As the sponsor of cloud initiative, the CIO is expected to lead an IT transformation project, not merely a run-of-the-mill IT operations. Simply virtualizing server resources and delivering them through self-service is a good start, but hardly transformational. CIOs may appreciate the instant benefit from server consolidation, but studies have revealed that the ROI from consolidation would flatten out at 20-25%. The question would be: what next? As we go higher up in the stack, the need to virtualize, segregate and optimize shifts to those layers that are more palpable to the business users. As Sushil Kumar noted in his blog post, " the most important thing to note here is the enterprise private cloud is not just an IT project, rather it is a business initiative to create an IT setup that is more aligned with the needs of today's dynamic and highly competitive business environment." Business users could not care less about infrastructure consolidation or virtualization - they care about business agility and service level assurance. Last but not the least, lot of CIOs get miffed if we ask them to throw away their existing hardware investments for implementing DBaaS. In Oracle, we always emphasize on freedom of choosing a platform; hence Enterprise Manager’s DBaaS solution is platform neutral. It can work on any Operating System (that the agent is certified on) Oracle’s hardware as well as 3rd party hardware. As a parting note, I urge you to remember these 4 questions. Remember that your satisfaction as an implementer lies in the satisfaction of others.

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