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  • RPi and Java Embedded GPIO: Sensor Reading using Java Code

    - by hinkmond
    And, now to program the Java code for reading the fancy-schmancy static electricity sensor connected to your Raspberry Pi, here is the source code we'll use: First, we need to initialize ourselves... /* * Java Embedded Raspberry Pi GPIO Input app */ package jerpigpioinput; import java.io.FileWriter; import java.io.RandomAccessFile; import java.text.DateFormat; import java.text.SimpleDateFormat; import java.util.Calendar; /** * * @author hinkmond */ public class JerpiGPIOInput { static final String GPIO_IN = "in"; // Add which GPIO ports to read here static String[] GpioChannels = { "7" }; /** * @param args the command line arguments */ public static void main(String[] args) { try { /*** Init GPIO port(s) for input ***/ // Open file handles to GPIO port unexport and export controls FileWriter unexportFile = new FileWriter("/sys/class/gpio/unexport"); FileWriter exportFile = new FileWriter("/sys/class/gpio/export"); for (String gpioChannel : GpioChannels) { System.out.println(gpioChannel); // Reset the port unexportFile.write(gpioChannel); unexportFile.flush(); // Set the port for use exportFile.write(gpioChannel); exportFile.flush(); // Open file handle to input/output direction control of port FileWriter directionFile = new FileWriter("/sys/class/gpio/gpio" + gpioChannel + "/direction"); // Set port for input directionFile.write(GPIO_IN); directionFile.flush(); } And, next we will open up a RandomAccessFile pointer to the GPIO port. /*** Read data from each GPIO port ***/ RandomAccessFile[] raf = new RandomAccessFile[GpioChannels.length]; int sleepPeriod = 10; final int MAXBUF = 256; byte[] inBytes = new byte[MAXBUF]; String inLine; int zeroCounter = 0; // Get current timestamp with Calendar() Calendar cal; DateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm:ss.SSS"); String dateStr; // Open RandomAccessFile handle to each GPIO port for (int channum=0; channum Then, loop forever to read in the values to the console. // Loop forever while (true) { // Get current timestamp for latest event cal = Calendar.getInstance(); dateStr = dateFormat.format(cal.getTime()); // Use RandomAccessFile handle to read in GPIO port value for (int channum=0; channum Rinse, lather, and repeat... Compile this Java code on your host PC or Mac with javac from the JDK. Copy over the JAR or class file to your Raspberry Pi, "sudo -i" to become root, then start up this Java app in a shell on your RPi. That's it! You should see a "1" value get logged each time you bring a statically charged item (like a balloon you rub on the cat) near the antenna of the sensor. There you go. You've just seen how Java Embedded technology on the Raspberry Pi is an easy way to access sensors. Hinkmond

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  • Big Data – Operational Databases Supporting Big Data – Columnar, Graph and Spatial Database – Day 14 of 21

    - by Pinal Dave
    In yesterday’s blog post we learned the importance of the Key-Value Pair Databases and Document Databases in the Big Data Story. In this article we will understand the role of Columnar, Graph and Spatial Database supporting Big Data Story. Now we will see a few of the examples of the operational databases. Relational Databases (The day before yesterday’s post) NoSQL Databases (The day before yesterday’s post) Key-Value Pair Databases (Yesterday’s post) Document Databases (Yesterday’s post) Columnar Databases (Tomorrow’s post) Graph Databases (Today’s post) Spatial Databases (Today’s post) Columnar Databases  Relational Database is a row store database or a row oriented database. Columnar databases are column oriented or column store databases. As we discussed earlier in Big Data we have different kinds of data and we need to store different kinds of data in the database. When we have columnar database it is very easy to do so as we can just add a new column to the columnar database. HBase is one of the most popular columnar databases. It uses Hadoop file system and MapReduce for its core data storage. However, remember this is not a good solution for every application. This is particularly good for the database where there is high volume incremental data is gathered and processed. Graph Databases For a highly interconnected data it is suitable to use Graph Database. This database has node relationship structure. Nodes and relationships contain a Key Value Pair where data is stored. The major advantage of this database is that it supports faster navigation among various relationships. For example, Facebook uses a graph database to list and demonstrate various relationships between users. Neo4J is one of the most popular open source graph database. One of the major dis-advantage of the Graph Database is that it is not possible to self-reference (self joins in the RDBMS terms) and there might be real world scenarios where this might be required and graph database does not support it. Spatial Databases  We all use Foursquare, Google+ as well Facebook Check-ins for location aware check-ins. All the location aware applications figure out the position of the phone with the help of Global Positioning System (GPS). Think about it, so many different users at different location in the world and checking-in all together. Additionally, the applications now feature reach and users are demanding more and more information from them, for example like movies, coffee shop or places see. They are all running with the help of Spatial Databases. Spatial data are standardize by the Open Geospatial Consortium known as OGC. Spatial data helps answering many interesting questions like “Distance between two locations, area of interesting places etc.” When we think of it, it is very clear that handing spatial data and returning meaningful result is one big task when there are millions of users moving dynamically from one place to another place & requesting various spatial information. PostGIS/OpenGIS suite is very popular spatial database. It runs as a layer implementation on the RDBMS PostgreSQL. This makes it totally unique as it offers best from both the worlds. Courtesy: mushroom network Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss about very important components of the Big Data Ecosystem – Hive. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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  • Taking a screenshot from within a Silverlight #WP7 application

    - by Laurent Bugnion
    Often times, you want to take a screenshot of an application’s page. There can be multiple reasons. For instance, you can use this to provide an easy feedback method to beta testers. I find this super invaluable when working on integration of design in an app, and the user can take quick screenshots, attach them to an email and send them to me directly from the Windows Phone device. However, the same mechanism can also be used to provide screenshots are a feature of the app, for example if the user wants to save the current status of his application, etc. Caveats Note the following: The code requires an XNA library to save the picture to the media library. To have this, follow the steps: In your application (or class library), add a reference to Microsoft.Xna.Framework. In your code, add a “using” statement to Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Media. In the Properties folder, open WMAppManifest.xml and add the following capability: ID_CAP_MEDIALIB. The method call will fail with an exception if the device is connected to the Zune application on the PC. To avoid this, either disconnect the device when testing, or end the Zune application on the PC. While the method call will not fail on the emulator, there is no way to access the media library, so it is pretty much useless on this platform. This method only prints Silverlight elements to the output image. Other elements (such as a WebBrowser control’s content for instance) will output a black rectangle. The code public static void SaveToMediaLibrary( FrameworkElement element, string title) { try { var bmp = new WriteableBitmap(element, null); var ms = new MemoryStream(); bmp.SaveJpeg( ms, (int)element.ActualWidth, (int)element.ActualHeight, 0, 100); ms.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin); var lib = new MediaLibrary(); var filePath = string.Format(title + ".jpg"); lib.SavePicture(filePath, ms); MessageBox.Show( "Saved in your media library!", "Done", MessageBoxButton.OK); } catch { MessageBox.Show( "There was an error. Please disconnect your phone from the computer before saving.", "Cannot save", MessageBoxButton.OK); } } This method can save any FrameworkElement. Typically I use it to save a whole page, but you can pass any other element to it. On line 7, we create a new WriteableBitmap. This excellent class can render a visual tree into a bitmap. Note that for even more features, you can use the great WriteableBitmapEx class library (which is open source). On lines 9 to 16, we save the WriteableBitmap to a MemoryStream. The only format supported by default is JPEG, however it is possible to convert to other formats with the ImageTools library (also open source). Lines 18 to 20 save the picture to the Windows Phone device’s media library. Using the image To retrieve the image, simply launch the Pictures library on the phone. The image will be in Saved Pictures. From here, you can share the image (by email, for instance), or synchronize it with the PC using the Zune software. Saving to other platforms It is of course possible to save to other platforms than the media library. For example, you can send the image to a web service, or save it to the isolated storage on the device. To do this, instead of using a MemoryStream, you can use any other stream (such as a web request stream, or a file stream) and save to that instead. Hopefully this code will be helpful to you! Happy coding, Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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  • Graduate Life in Oracle by Ramakrishna Nalabothula

    - by david.talamelli
    Preparation for the BIG interview: I prepared in both technical and logical aspects to face the Oracle Interview. I had to cover almost all main areas in technical and many types of problems in logical areas. We attended mock- interviews and written tests at our college, browsed websites and communities. Having started with such a rigorous preparation before Oracle visited the college; it was possible for me to make it into the list of final selection. I put in a big effort to reach this position and I am very happy to achieve this. Why I chose Oracle: Oracle is one of the best technology providers and has a large customer base. I think it is not an easy job to offer services to that many customers. So, the company needs young and dynamic people and I wanted to be one among them. This gave me spirit and led me to walk into Oracle. I am working on different technologies and learning something new in the field. Having many customers is challenging Oracle and my work is challenging me. I am confident enough that customers to both me and Oracle will never lose their faith. Learning at Oracle: The style of learning is good and never resembles a classroom session in a college. It is always fun to learn here. There is no exam to track the performance. There is enough time until we completely learn it. There is no concept of stiff competition. Peers help through KT (Knowledge Transfers) and there are good resources in the Oracle to learn. People are always there to direct you to those. There are lots of opportunities for Web learning too! My Work Area: My team gives me a great opportunity to offer service to the entire product. There were no situations when I got tense with my work or targets and deliverables. I work with a Global Team and my manager is based in the UK. I have a lot of freedom and flexibility. I use the work from home option in case of any disturbances in the city or due to personal problems. I have a weekly meeting with my manager and use Instant Messenger for status updates. My manager plans very well to give me enough time to complete tasks. I have good coordination from the team towards our deadlines. My work has also brought me close to many people across various technology and product teams. I am glad to make many friends across Oracle. I am enjoying my time and work here. I cover all the major activities in the team. I am thankful to everyone from the Development and Quality Assurance Team to have high confidence in me by assigning such big responsibilities. Primary tasks are maintaining the environments that are very unstable at times. This really requires big time and effort to trace the root causes. I am working and still learning on all these areas. The happiest thing is I got chances to travel to USA & UK for training and for supporting a few customer demo projects. I have got to explore more across two countries and got sponsored to visit the places around due to Oracle's policies. I am very much thankful for these what I have from Oracle and for the cooperation there from other colleagues. Fun at Work: Oracle has a club from Employees to conduct games and events. I had an opportunity to participate in competitions, tournaments inside Oracle and Inter-Corporate for all games. I thank Oracle for providing me all these opportunities and I would like to extend my thanks to Senior Management for their confidence in me. I thank Oracle HR Recruiting Team too for selecting me into Oracle and giving me this opportunity to share my experience and feelings. Ramakrishna Nalabothula

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  • How to prepare for a programming competition? Graphs, Stacks, Trees, oh my! [closed]

    - by Simucal
    Last semester I attended ACM's (Association for Computing Machinery) bi-annual programming competition at a local University. My University sent 2 teams of 3 people and we competed amongst other schools in the mid-west. We got our butts kicked. You are given a packet with about 11 problems (1 problem per page) and you have 4 hours to solve as many as you can. They'll run your program you submit against a set of data and your output must match theirs exactly. In fact, the judging is automated for the most part. In any case.. I went there fairly confident in my programming skills and I left there feeling drained and weak. It was a terribly humbling experience. In 4 hours my team of 3 people completed only one of the problems. The top team completed 4 of them and took 1st place. The problems they asked were like no problems I have ever had to answer before. I later learned that in order to solve them some of them effectively you have to use graphs/graph algorithms, trees, stacks. Some of them were simply "greedy" algo's. My question is, how can I better prepare for this semesters programming competition so I don't leave there feeling like a complete moron? What tips do you have for me to be able to answer these problems that involve graphs, trees, various "well known" algorithms? How can I easily identify the algorithm we should implement for a given problem? I have yet to take Algorithm Design in school so I just feel a little out of my element. Here are some examples of the questions asked at the competitions: ACM Problem Sets Update: Just wanted to update this since the latest competition is over. My team placed 1st for our small region (about 6-7 universities with between 1-5 teams each school) and ~15th for the midwest! So, it is a marked improvement over last years performance for sure. We also had no graduate students on our team and after reviewing the rules we found out that many teams had several! So, that would be a pretty big advantage in my own opinion. Problems this semester ranged from about 1-2 "easy" problems (ie bit manipulation, string manipulation) to hard (graph problems involving fairly complex math and network flow problems). We were able to solve 4 problems in our 5 hours. Just wanted to thank everyone for the resources they provided here, we used them for our weekly team practices and it definitely helped! Some quick tips that I have that aren't suggested below: When you are seated at your computer before the competition starts, quickly type out various data structures that you might need that you won't have access to in your languages libraries. I typed out a Graph data-structure complete with floyd-warshall and dijkstra's algorithm before the competition began. We ended up using it in our 2nd problem that we solved and this is the main reason why we solved this problem before anyone else in the midwest. We had it ready to go from the beginning. Similarly, type out the code to read in a file since this will be required for every problem. Save this answer "template" someplace so you can quickly copy/paste it to your IDE at the beginning of each problem. There are no rules on programming anything before the competition starts so get any boilerplate code out the way. We found it useful to have one person who is on permanent whiteboard duty. This is usually the person who is best at math and at working out solutions to get a head start on future problems you will be doing. One person is on permanent programming duty. Your fastest/most skilled "programmer" (most familiar with the language). This will save debugging time also. The last person has several roles between assessing the packet of problems for the next "easiest" problem, helping the person on the whiteboard work out solutions and helping the person programming work out bugs/issues. This person needs to be flexible and be able to switch between roles easily.

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  • Analytics in an Omni-Channel World

    - by David Dorf
    Retail has been around ever since mankind started bartering.  The earliest transactions were very specific to the individuals buying and selling, then someone had the bright idea to open a store.  Those transactions were a little more generic, but the store owner still knew his customers and what they wanted.  As the chains rolled out, customer intimacy was sacrificed for scale, and retailers began to rely on segments and clusters.  But thanks to the widespread availability of data and the technology to convert said data into information, retailers are getting back to details. The retail industry is following a maturity model for analytics that is has progressed through five stages, each delivering more value than the previous. Store Analytics Brick-and-mortar retailers (and pure-play catalogers as well) that collect anonymous basket-level data are able to get some sense of demand to help with allocation decisions.  Promotions and foot-traffic can be measured to understand marketing effectiveness and perhaps focus groups can help test ideas.  But decisions are influenced by the majority, using faceless customer segments and aggregated industry data points.  Loyalty programs help a little, but in many cases the cost outweighs the benefits. Web Analytics The Web made it much easier to collect data on specific, yet still anonymous consumers using cookies to track visits. Clickstreams and product searches are analyzed to understand the purchase journey, gauge demand, and better understand up-selling opportunities.  Personalization begins to allow retailers target market consumers with recommendations. Cross-Channel Analytics This phase is a minor one, but where most retailers probably sit today.  They are able to use information from one channel to bolster activities in another. However, there are technical challenges combining data silos so its not an easy task.  But for those retailers that are able to perform analytics on both sources of data, the pay-off is pretty nice.  Revenue per customer begins to go up as customers have a better brand experience. Mobile & Social Analytics Big data technologies are enabling a 360-degree view of the customer by incorporating psychographic data from social sites alongside traditional demographic data.  Retailers can track individual preferences, opinions, hobbies, etc. in order to understand a consumer's motivations.  Using mobile devices, consumers can interact with brands anywhere, anytime, accessing deep product information and reviews.  Mobile, combined with a loyalty program, presents an opportunity to put shopping into geographic context, understanding paths to the store, patterns within the store, and be an always-on advertising conduit. Omni-Channel Analytics All this data along with the proper technology represents a new paradigm in which the clock is turned back and retail becomes very personal once again.  Rich, individualized data better illuminates demand, allows for highly localized assortments, and helps tailor up-selling.  Interactions with all channels help build an accurate profile of each consumer, and allows retailers to tailor the retail experience to meet the heightened expectations of today's sophisticated shopper.  And of course this culminates in greater customer satisfaction and business profitability.

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  • Tuning Default WorkManager - Advantages and Disadvantages

    - by Murali Veligeti
    Before discussing on Tuning Default WorkManager, lets have a brief introduction on What is Default WorkManger Before Weblogic Server 9.0 release, we had the concept of Execute Queues. WebLogic Server (before WLS 9.0), processing was performed in multiple execute queues. Different classes of work were executed in different queues, based on priority and ordering requirements, and to avoid deadlocks. In addition to the default execute queue, weblogic.kernel.default, there were pre-configured queues dedicated to internal administrative traffic, such as weblogic.admin.HTTP and weblogic.admin.RMI.Users could control thread usage by altering the number of threads in the default queue, or configure custom execute queues to ensure that particular applications had access to a fixed number of execute threads, regardless of overall system load. From WLS 9.0 release onwards WebLogic Server uses is a single thread pool (single thread pool which is called Default WorkManager), in which all types of work are executed. WebLogic Server prioritizes work based on rules you define, and run-time metrics, including the actual time it takes to execute a request and the rate at which requests are entering and leaving the pool.The common thread pool changes its size automatically to maximize throughput. The queue monitors throughput over time and based on history, determines whether to adjust the thread count. For example, if historical throughput statistics indicate that a higher thread count increased throughput, WebLogic increases the thread count. Similarly, if statistics indicate that fewer threads did not reduce throughput, WebLogic decreases the thread count. This new strategy makes it easier for administrators to allocate processing resources and manage performance, avoiding the effort and complexity involved in configuring, monitoring, and tuning custom executes queues. The Default WorkManager is used to handle thread management and perform self-tuning.This Work Manager is used by an application when no other Work Managers are specified in the application’s deployment descriptors. In many situations, the default Work Manager may be sufficient for most application requirements. WebLogic Server’s thread-handling algorithms assign each application its own fair share by default. Applications are given equal priority for threads and are prevented from monopolizing them. The default work-manager, as its name tells, is the work-manager defined by default.Thus, all applications deployed on WLS will use it. But sometimes, when your application is already in production, it's obvious you can't take your EAR / WAR, update the deployment descriptor(s) and redeploy it.The default work-manager belongs to a thread-pool, as initial thread-pool comes with only five threads, that's not much. If your application has to face a large number of hits, you may want to start with more than that.Well, that's quite easy. You have  two option to do so.1) Modify the config.xmlJust add the following line(s) in your server definition : <server> <name>AdminServer</name> <self-tuning-thread-pool-size-min>100</self-tuning-thread-pool-size-min> <self-tuning-thread-pool-size-max>200</self-tuning-thread-pool-size-max> [...] </server> 2) Adding some JVM parameters Add the following system property in setDomainEnv.sh/setDomainEnv.cmd or startWebLogic.sh/startWebLogic.cmd : -Dweblogic.threadpool.MinPoolSize=100 -Dweblogic.threadpool.MaxPoolSize=100 Reboot WLS and see the option has been taken into account . Disadvantage: So far its fine. But here there is an disadvantage in tuning Default WorkManager. Internally Weblogic Server has many work managers configured for different types of work.  if we run out of threads in the self-tuning pool(because of system property -Dweblogic.threadpool.MaxPoolSize) due to being undersized, then important work that WLS might need to do could be starved.  So, while limiting the self-tuning would limit the default WorkManager and internally it also limits all other internal WorkManagers which WLS uses.So the best alternative is to override the default WorkManager that means creating a WorkManager for the Application and assign the WorkManager for the application instead of tuning the Default WorkManager.

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  • 5 Ways to Celebrate the Release of Internet Explorer 9

    - by David Wesst
    The day has finally come: Microsoft has released a web browser that is awesome. On Monday night, Microsoft officially introduced the world to the latest edition to its product family: Internet Explorer 9. That makes March 14, 2011 (also known as PI day) the official birthday of Microsoft’s rebirth in the world of web browsing. Just like any big event, you take some time to celebrate. Here are a few things that you can do to celebrate the return of Internet Explorer. 1. Download It If you’re not a big partier, that’s fine. The one thing you can do (and definitely should) is download it and give it a shot. Sure, IE may have disappointed you in the past, but believe me when I say they really put the effort in this time. The absolute least you can do is give it a shot to see how it stands up against your favourite browser. 2. Get yourself an HTML5 Shirt One of the coolest, if not best parts of IE9 being released is that it officially introduces HTML5 as a fully supported platform from Microsoft. IE9 supports a lot of what is already defined in the HTML5 technical spec, which really demonstrates Microsoft’s support of the new standard. Since HTML5 is cool on the web, it means that it is cool to wear it too. Head over to html5shirt.com and get yourself, or your staff, or your whole family, an HTML5 shirt to show the real world that you are ready for the future of the web. 3. HTML5-ify Something Okay, so maybe a shirt isn’t enough for you. Maybe you need start using HTML5 for real. If you have a blog, or a website, or anything out there on the web, celebrate IE9 adding some HTML5 to your site. Whether that is updating old code, adding something new, or just changing your WordPress theme, definitely take a look at what HTML5 can do for you. 4. Help Kill Old IE and Upgrade your Organization See this? This is sad. Upgrading web browsers in an large enterprise or organization is not a trivial task. A lot of companies will use the excuse of not having the resources to upgrade legacy web applications they were built for a specific version of IE and it doesn’t render correctly in legacy browsers. Well, it’s time to stop the excuses. IE9 allows you to define what version of Internet Explorer you would like it to emulate. It takes minimal effort for the developer, and will get rid of the excuses. Show your IT manager or software development team this link and show them how easy it is to make old code render right in the latest and greatest from the IE team. 5. Submit an Entry for DevUnplugged So, you’ve made it to number five eh? Well then, you must be pretty hardcore to make it this far down the list. Fine, let’s take it to the next level and build an HTML5 game. That’s right. A game. Like a video game. HTML5 introduces some amazing new features that can let you build working video games using HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. Plus, Microsoft is celebrating the launch of IE9 with a contest where you can submit an HTML5 game (or audio application) and have a chance to win a whack of cash and other prizes. Head here for the full scoop and rules for the DevUnplugged. This post also appears at http://david.wes.st

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  • Stir Trek 2: Iron Man Edition

    Next month (7 May 2010) Ill be presenting at the second annual Stir Trek event in Columbus, Ohio. Stir Trek (so named because last year its themes mixed MIX and the opening of the Star Trek movie) is a very cool local event.  Its a lot of fun to present at and to attend, because of its unique venue: a movie theater.  And whats more, the cost of admission includes a private showing of a new movie (this year: Iron Man 2).  The sessions cover a variety of topics (not just Microsoft), similar to CodeMash.  The event recently sold out, so Im not telling you all of this so that you can go and sign up (though I believe you can get on the waitlist still).  Rather, this is pretty much just an excuse for me to talk about my session as a way to organize my thoughts. Im actually speaking on the same topic as I did last year, but the key difference is that last year the subject of my session was nowhere close to being released, and this year, its RTM (as of last week).  Thats right, the topic is Whats New in ASP.NET 4 how did you guess? Whats New in ASP.NET 4 So, just what *is* new in ASP.NET 4?  Hasnt Microsoft been spending all of their time on Silverlight and MVC the last few years?  Well, actually, no.  There are some pretty cool things that are now available out of the box in ASP.NET 4.  Theres a nice summary of the new features on MSDN.  Here is my super-brief summary: Extensible Output Caching use providers like distributed cache or file system cache Preload Web Applications IIS 7.5 only; avoid the startup tax for your site by preloading it. Permanent (301) Redirects are finally supported by the framework in one line of code, not two. Session State Compression Can speed up session access in a web farm environment.  Test it to see. Web Forms Features several of which mirror ASP.NET MVC advantages (viewstate, control ids) Set Meta Keywords and Description easily Granular and inheritable control over ViewState Support for more recent browsers and devices Routing (introduced in 3.5 SP1) some new features and zero web.config changes required Client ID control makes client manipulation of DOM elements much simpler. Row Selection in Data Controls fixed (id based, not row index based) FormView and ListView enhancements (less markup, more CSS compliant) New QueryExtender control makes filtering data from other Data Source Controls easy More CSS and Accessibility support Reduction of Tables and more control over output for other template controls Dynamic Data enhancements More control templates Support for inheritance in the Data Model New Attributes ASP.NET Chart Control (learn more) Lots of IDE enhancements Web Deploy tool My session will cover many but not all of these features.  Theres only an hour (3pm-4pm), and its right before the prize giveaway and movie showing, so Ill be moving quickly and most likely answering questions off-line via email after the talk. Hope to see you there! Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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  • How to Waste Your Marketing Budget

    - by Mike Stiles
    Philosophers have long said if you find out where a man’s money is, you’ll know where his heart is. Find out where money in a marketing budget is allocated, and you’ll know how adaptive and ready that company is for the near future. Marketing spends are an investment. Not unlike buying stock, the money is placed in areas the marketer feels will yield the highest return. Good stock pickers know the lay of the land, the sectors, the companies, and trends. Likewise, good marketers should know the media available to them, their audience, what they like & want, what they want their marketing to achieve…and trends. So what are they doing? And how are they doing? A recent eTail report shows nearly half of retailers planned on focusing on SEO, SEM, and site research technologies in the coming months. On the surface, that’s smart. You want people to find you. And you’re willing to let the SEO tail wag the dog and dictate the quality (or lack thereof) of your content such as blogs to make that happen. So search is prioritized well ahead of social, multi-channel initiatives, email, even mobile - despite the undisputed explosive growth and adoption of it by the public. 13% of retailers plan to focus on online video in the next 3 months. 29% said they’d look at it in 6 months. Buying SEO trickery is easy. Attracting and holding an audience with wanted, relevant content…that’s the hard part. So marketers continue to kick the content can down the road. Pretty risky since content can draw and bind customers to you. Asked to look a year ahead, retailers started thinking about CRM systems, customer segmentation, and loyalty, (again well ahead of online video, social and site personalization). What these investors are missing is social is spreading across every function of the enterprise and will be a part of CRM, personalization, loyalty programs, etc. They’re using social for engagement but not for PR, customer service, and sales. Mistake. Allocations are being made seemingly blind to the trends. Even more peculiar are the results of an analysis Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins made. She looked at how much time people spend with media types and how marketers are investing in those media. 26% of media consumption is online, marketers spend 22% of their ad budgets there. 10% of media time is spent with mobile, but marketers are spending 1% of their ad budgets there. 7% of media time is spent with print, but (get this) marketers spend 25% of their ad budgets there. It’s like being on Superman’s Bizarro World. Mary adds that of the online spending, most goes to search while spends on content, even ad content, stayed flat. Stock pickers know to buy low and sell high. It means peering with info in hand into the likely future of a stock and making the investment in it before it peaks. Either marketers aren’t believing the data and trends they’re seeing, or they can’t convince higher-ups to acknowledge change and adjust their portfolios accordingly. Follow @mikestilesImage via stock.xchng

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  • Flow-Design Cheat Sheet &ndash; Part II, Translation

    - by Ralf Westphal
    In my previous post I summarized the notation for Flow-Design (FD) diagrams. Now is the time to show you how to translate those diagrams into code. Hopefully you feel how different this is from UML. UML leaves you alone with your sequence diagram or component diagram or activity diagram. They leave it to you how to translate your elaborate design into code. Or maybe UML thinks it´s so easy no further explanations are needed? I don´t know. I just know that, as soon as people stop designing with UML and start coding, things end up to be very different from the design. And that´s bad. That degrades graphical designs to just time waste on paper (or some designer). I even believe that´s the reason why most programmers view textual source code as the only and single source of truth. Design and code usually do not match. FD is trying to change that. It wants to make true design a first class method in every developers toolchest. For that the first prerequisite is to be able to easily translate any design into code. Mechanically, without thinking. Even a compiler could do it :-) (More of that in some other article.) Translating to Methods The first translation I want to show you is for small designs. When you start using FD you should translate your diagrams like this. Functional units become methods. That´s it. An input-pin becomes a method parameter, an output-pin becomes a return value: The above is a part. But a board can be translated likewise and calls the nested FUs in order: In any case be sure to keep the board method clear of any and all business logic. It should not contain any control structures like if, switch, or a loop. Boards do just one thing: calling nested functional units in proper sequence. What about multiple input-pins? Try to avoid them. Replace them with a join returning a tuple: What about multiple output-pins? Try to avoid them. Or return a tuple. Or use out-parameters: But as I said, this simple translation is for simple designs only. Splits and joins are easily done with method translation: All pretty straightforward, isn´t it. But what about wires, named pins, entry points, explicit dependencies? I suggest you don´t use this kind of translation when your designs need these features. Translating to methods is for small scale designs like you might do once you´re working on the implementation of a part of a larger design. Or maybe for a code kata you´re doing in your local coding dojo. Instead of doing TDD try doing FD and translate your design into methods. You´ll see that way it´s much easier to work collaboratively on designs, remember them more easily, keep them clean, and lessen the need for refactoring. Translating to Events [coming soon]

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  • Launching Ops Center 12c

    - by user12601629
    Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c is most ambitious version of the Ops Center tooling that we've ever released. I think that make it appropriate that we launched it in grand style! When it became clear we were going to be complete with the 12c final release about this time of year, the marketing team proposed that we roll the launch of 12c into Oracle OpenWorld Tokyo.  I thought that sounded like a fine idea!  You see, I have always loved Japan.  I even studied a bit of Japanese language back in school. OpenWorld Tokyo was an outstanding even this year.  It was held in Roppongi, one of the most stylish districts in Tokyo. And, to make things even better, the Sakura (cherry blossoms) were blooming.  If you've never been in Japan for cherry blossom season, it's a must see!  Here are a couple of pics for you. Here is a picture from Roppongi, near the conference.  Here's a picture near the Imperial Palace.  A couple of friends from the local sales team took me here before my flight out. So, now back to the product launch! We choose to launch the product in John Fowler's "Engineered Systems" keynote address.  It made perfect sense because of the close ties of Ops Center to the Systems portfolio of products.  It was a packed house for the keynote.  Here's a picture I took just before we started -- there were also hundreds more people in "overflow" rooms in other parts of the venue. Here's a picture of me on stage during the launch. While there are countless new features in Ops Center 12c that customers will love, I had to limit myself to discussing just three. Mission Critical Clouds Solaris 11 Engineered Systems So, what does Mission Critical Cloud mean?  It means we've expanded EM's cloud capabilities in a couple of key areas. First, we've expanded the "self service provisioning" capabilities we have to include SPARC -- not just x86.  Now you can build clouds of Solaris Zones with ease!  Second, we've much more deeply integrated high-end storage and network management into the cloud layers.  These may our IaaS story is now much more powerful! For Solaris 11, we didn't simply port our monitoring agent to S11.  That would have been easy, but also boring! We support S11 deeply.  Full access to the power of the IPS packaging system, the new virtualized networking stack, new Zones features, the Auto Install framework.  If you're ready to try Solaris 11 then Ops Center is ready for you. Last is on the area of Engineered Systems.  These combinations of hardware and software are fast and powerful. However, we're also on a mission to make them ever easier to manage.  We've made major strides with Ops Center 12c. Manage these systems as racks, not individual components.  The new capabilities for the new engineered systems like Exalogic and SPARC SuperCluster and striking. You can read more here: Oracle Unveils Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c So, I'll wrap this up with one final bit of fun. One of my friends from the Oracle marketing department found a super cool place to get dinner.  It's a restaurant called Gonpachi. It turns out this is the place that inspired the scene in the Quentin Taratino movie Kill Bill where Uma Thurman fights 88 Ninjas.  Here is a picture I snapped while we were there. It was surely a good time. Check it out next time you're in Tokyo.

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  • Best depth sorting method for a Top Down 2D game using a 3D physics engine

    - by Alic44
    I've spent many days googling this and still have issues with my game engine I'd like to ask about, which I haven't seen addressed before. I think the problem is that my game is an unusual combination of a completely 2D graphical approach using XNA's SpriteBatch, and a completely 3D engine (the amazing BEPU physics engine) with rotation mostly disabled. In essence, my question is similar to this one (the part about "faux 3D"), but the difference is that in my game, the player as well as every other creature is represented by 3D objects, and they can all jump, pick up other objects, and throw them around. What this means is that sorting by one value, such as a Z position (how far north/south a character is on the screen) won't work, because as soon as a smaller creature jumps on top of a larger creature, or a box, and walks backwards, the moment its z value is less than that other creature, it will appear to be behind the object it is actually standing on. I actually originally solved this problem by splitting every object in the game into physics boxes which MUST have a Y height equal to their Z depth. I then based the depth sorting value on the object's y position (how high it is off the ground) PLUS its z position (how far north or south it is on the screen). The problem with this approach is that it requires all moving objects in the game to be split graphically into chunks which match up with a physical box which has its y dimension equal to its z dimension. Which is stupid. So, I got inspired last night to rewrite with a fresh approach. My new method is a little more complex, but I think a little more sane: every object which needs to be sorted by depth in the game exposes the interface IDepthDrawable and is added to a list owned by the DepthDrawer object. IDepthDrawable contains: public interface IDepthDrawable { Rectangle Bounds { get; } //possibly change this to a class if struct copying of the xna Rectangle type becomes an issue DepthDrawShape DepthShape { get; } void Draw(SpriteBatch spriteBatch); } The Bounds Rectangle of each IDepthDrawable object represents the 2D Axis-Aligned Bounding Box it will take up when drawn to the screen. Anything that doesn't intersect the screen will be culled at this stage and the remaining on-screen IDepthDrawables will be Bounds tested for intersections with each other. This is where I get a little less sure of what I'm doing. Each group of collisions will be added to a list or other collection, and each list will sort itself based on its DepthShape property, which will have access to the object-to-be-drawn's physics information. For starting out, lets assume everything in the game is an axis aligned 3D Box shape. Boxes are pretty easy to sort. Something like: if (depthShape1.Back > depthShape2.Front) //if depthShape1 is in front of depthShape2. //depthShape1 goes on top. else if (depthShape1.Bottom > depthShape2.Top) //if depthShape1 is above depthShape2. //depthShape1 goes on top. //if neither of these are true, depthShape2 must be in front or above. So, by sorting draw order by several different factors from the physics engine, I believe I can get a really correct draw order. My question is, is this a good way of going about this, or is there some tried and true, tested way which is completely different and has somehow completely eluded me on the internets? And, if this does seem like a good way to remake my draw order sorting, what's the right sorting algorithm for reordering the Bounds Rectangle collision lists, and how do you deal with a Bounds Rectangle colliding with two different object which don't collide with eachother. I know these are solved problems, but I've only been programming for a year so any specific input here will be greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading this far, ye who made it -- sorry it was so long!

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  • First Impressions of a MacBook (from a PC guy)

    - by dgreen
    Disclaimer: I've been a PC guy my entire working career. I'd probably characterize myself as a power user. Never afraid to bust out the console line. But working with a Mac is totally foreign to me. So for those Mac guys who are curious, this is how your world appears from the outside to a computer literate person :)My Macbook Air has arrived! And it's a thing of beauty:First, the specs: 13" MacBook Air, 2.0GHz Core i7 processor. Upgraded to 8GB of RAM for an additional $100, SSD flash storage  = 256GB. The plan is ultimately to use this baby for some iOS development but also some decent lifting in Windows with Visual Studio. Done a lot of reading  and between VMWare Fusion, Parallels and Bootcamp...I'm going to go with VMWare Fusion for $49.99And now my impressions (please re-read disclaimer before proceeding!):I open the box and am trying to understand exactly how the magsafe connector works (and how to disconnect it).  Why does it have two socket outlet plugs? Who knows.  I feel like Hansel in Zoolander. The files are "in" the computer.Stuck in my external hard drive (usb). So how do I get to the files? To the Googles!Argh...it can't read my external NTFS drive. Fat32 can't support field over 4GB…problematic since some of my existing VMWare image files are much larger than 4GB. Didn't see this coming.Three year old loves iPhoto. Super easy to use. Don't even know what I'm doing but I've already (accidentally) discovered the image filtering options. Fun stuff.First thing I downloaded ever => Chrome. I need something to ground me, something familiar. My token, if you will (sorry, gratuitous Inception joke).Ok, I get it… Finder == windows explorer. But where is my hierarchical structure? I miss the tree :(On that note, yeah…how do I see what "path" my files reside in? I'm afraid to know the answer. You know what scares more though…this notion of a smart folder. Feel like the godfather - just get the job done, I don't care how you handle it, I don't want to know...just get it done. What the hell is AirDrop?Mail…just worked. Still in shock that they have a free client for yahoo mail (please no yahoo jokes).mail -> deleting a message takes 5 seconds. Have they heard of async?"Command" key instead of "Control" ok, then what the $%&^! is the control key for then"aliases" == shortcuts I thinkI don't see the file system. And I'm scared. All these things I'm downloading…these .dmg files (bad name) where are they going? Can't seem to delete when they're doneUgh...realized need to buy a mini-to-vga adaptor if I want to use my external monitor ($13 on ebay, $39 in apple store).Windows docking is trickiest for me…this notion of detached windows with a menu bar at the top. I don't like this paradigm, it's confusing. But maybe because I've been using Windows for too long.Evernote, Dropbox desktop clients seem almost identical…few quirks here and there I need to get used to.iTunes is still a bit gross. In a weird way it's actually worse on a Mac if thats possible. This is not the MacBook's fault…this is a software design issue. Overall: UI will take some getting used to. Can't decide if this represents the future and I'm stuck in the past…or this is the past and I've been spoiled by the future (which would be Windows…don't be hating I happen to be very productive in Win7)  So there you go - my 90 minute first impression of the MacBook universe.

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  • PARTNER WEBCAST- ORACLE COMPETENCE - PROGRAM (COMPETENCE VIRTUAL)

    - by mseika
    I am pleased to invite you to join the second (Competence Virtual). In Competence - program we will present Oracle Applications' Product's new functions and features including sales positioning. The key objectives of these webcasts are to inspire System Integrator's implementation personnel to conduct successful after sales in their Customer projects. Competencewill be presented on 1st Monday of each quarter after the billable day (4:00 to 5:00 PM CET). The webcast is intended for System Integrator's Implementation Certified Specialists but Competence is open for other interested Oracle Applications system Integrator's personnel as well. At first, two Oracle representatives will discuss Oracle's contribution to Partners. Then you will see product breakout session followed by Q&A with Oracle Experts. Each session will last for maximum 1 hour. A Q&A Document covering all questions and answers will be made available two weeks after the webcast. What are the Benefits for Partners? Find out how Competence helps you to improve your after sales Discover new functions and features so you can enrich your Customer’s solution Learn more about Oracle Applications products, especially sales positioning Hear crucial questions raised by colleagues alike, learn from their interest Engage and present your questions to subject experts Be inspired of the richness of Oracle Applications portfolio – for your and your Customer’s benefit.   Note: Should you already be familiar with a specific Product, then choose another one. Doing so you would expand your knowledge of the overall Applications portfolio. Some presentations contain product demonstration, although these presentations are not intended to be extremely detailed technical presentations. Product breakout sessions:- Fusion CRM: Effective, Efficient and Easy- Fusion HCM: Talent management overview performance, goals, talent review- Distributed Order Management - Fusion SCM Solution- Oracle Transportation Management- Oracle Value Chain Planning: Demantra Sales & Operation Planning and Demantra Demand Management- Oracle CX (Customer Experience) - formerly CEM: Powering Great Customer Experiences- EPM 11.1.2.2 Overview- Oracle Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management, 11.1.2.1 For more details please visit and other breakout sessions on OPN page. Delivery FormatCompetence- program (Competence Virtual) is a series of FREE prerecorded Applications product presentations followed by Q&A. It will be delivered over the Web. Participants have the opportunity to submit questions during the cast via chat and subject matter experts will provide verbal answers live. Competence consists of several parallel prerecorded product breakout sessions, each lasting for max. 1 hour. At first, two Oracle representatives will discuss Oracle’s contribution to Partners. Then you’ll see the product breakout sessions followed by Q&A with Oracle Experts. A Q&A document covering all questions and answers will be made available two weeks after the webcast. You can also see Competence afterwards as its content will be available online for the next 6-12 months.The next Competence web casts will be presented as follows: June the 4th  2012 September the 3rd  2012 December the 3rd  2012 March the 4th  2013. Note: Depending on local network bandwidth please allow some seconds time the presentations to download. You might want to refresh your screen by pressing F5. DurationMaximum 1 hour For further information please contact me at [email protected]. Best regards Markku RouhiainenDirector, Applications Partner EnablementWestern Europe

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  • How Can I Start an Incognito/Private Browsing Window from a Shortcut?

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    Sometimes you just want to pop the browser open for a quick web search without reloading all your saved tabs; read on as we show a fellow reader how to make a quick private-browsing shortcut. Dear How-To Geek, I came up with a solution to my problem, but I need your help implementing it. I typically have a ton of tabs open in my web browser and, when I need to free up system resources when gaming or using a resource intense application, I shut down the web browser. The problem arises when I find myself needing to do quick web search while the browser is shut down. I don’t want to open it up, load all the tabs, and waste the resources in doing so all for a quick Google search. The perfect solution, it would seem, is to open up one of Chrome’s Incognito windows: it loads separate, it won’t open up all the old tabs, and it’s perfect for a quick Google search. Is there a way to launch Chrome with a single Incognito window open without having to open the browser in the normal mode (and load the bazillion tabs I have sitting there)? Sincerely, Tab Crazy That’s a rather clever work around to your problem. Since you’ve already done the hard work of figuring out the solution you need, we’re more than happy to help you across the finish line. The magic you seek is available via what are known as “command line options” which allow you to add additional parameters and switches onto a command.   By appending the command the Chrome shortcut uses, we can easily tell it to launch in Incognito mode. (And, for other readers following along at home, we can do the same thing with other browsers like Firefox). First, let’s look at Chrome’s default shortcut: If you right click on it and select the properties menu, you’ll see where the shortcut points: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" If you run that shortcut, you’ll open up normal browsing mode in Chrome and your saved tabs will all load. What we need to do is use the command line switches available for Chrome and tell it that we want it to launch an Incognito window instead. Doing so is as simple as appending the end of the “Target” box’s command line entry with -incognito, like so: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" -incognito We’d also recommend changing the icon to it’s easy to tell the default Chrome shortcut apart from your new Incognito shortcut. When you’re done, make sure to hit OK/Apply at the button to save the changes. You can recreate the same private-browsing-shortcut effect with other major web browsers too. Repeat shortcut editing steps we highlighted above, but change out the -incognito with -private (for Firefox and Internet Explorer) and -newprivatetab (for Opera). With just a simple command line switch applied, you can now launch a lightweight single browser window for those quick web searches without having to stop your game and load up all your saved tabs. Have a pressing tech question? Email us at [email protected] and we’ll do our best to answer it.

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  • Converting a PV vm back into an HVM vm

    - by wim.coekaerts
    I have been doing some Oracle VM benchmark stuff in the last week or 2 in my off hours and yesterday I wanted to convert one of my VMs that was based on a paravirt kernel into a vm that just boots as a regular hardware virt VM with a standard x86-64 kernel. It took me a little while to figure out the fastest way so now that I have it pretty much down I wanted to share the steps. A PV kernel uses pygrub and a paravirt kernel image that lives on the vm image virtual disk. since this disk image does not have to be bootable it doesn't contain a boot sector and if you just restart the VM in hvm mode the virtual bios will just not do much as it can't start the boot process from disk The first thing I do is make a backup of my vm.cfg file :-) and then edit it as follows : the original file contains : bootloader = '/usr/bin/pygrub' I replace that with : acpi = 1 apic = 1 builder = 'hvm' device_model = '/usr/lib/xen/bin/qemu-dm' kernel = '/usr/lib/xen/boot/hvmloader' then changing the disk files. I change my xvd disks to hd disks and I copy over the iso image of my instal lDVD. In the case of my VM template it was based on OL5U4 So I downloaded Enterprise-R5-U4-Server-x86_64-dvd.iso and added it as a cd device. disk = ['file:/ovs/OVM_EL5U4_X86_64_11202RAC_PVM/System.img,xvda,w', 'file:/ovs/OVM_EL5U4_X86_64_11202RAC_PVM/Oracle11202RAC_x86_64-xvdb.img,xvdb,w', ] to disk = ['file:/ovs/OVM_EL5U4_X86_64_11202RAC_PVM/System.img,hda,w', 'file:/ovs/OVM_EL5U4_X86_64_11202RAC_PVM/Oracle11202RAC_x86_64-xvdb.img,hdb,w', 'file:/ovs/OVM_EL5U4_X86_64_11202RAC_PVM/Enterprise-R5-U4-Server-x86_64-dvd.iso, hdc:cdrom,r', ] boot='d' for the network devices (vifs) I change : vif = ['bridge=xenbr2,type=netfront'] to vif = ['bridge=xenbr2,type=ioemu'] That should do it. Next, inside the VM, I copy over the regular kernel rpm that I want to end up running in hvm mode. In this example case it was : kernel-2.6.18-164.0.0.0.1.el5.x8664.rpm. I will use that later on in the process. I put this kernel simply in /root At this point I just start the vm with xm create vm.cfg and start my vnc console to the vm console. Oracle Linux will boot from the iso image, I just go through the install steps and click on UPgrade existing (not re-install). Because the VM is the same as the ISO the install won't actually do anything and it will run through instantly. When the "Reboot" button pops up, don't reboot. Switch to the command prompt console. hi alt-f2 to go to the shell prompt. Now it's easy : umount /mnt/sysimage/boot cd /mnt/sysimage chroot . mount /dev/hda1 (if that was your /boot partition) export PATH=/sbin:$PATH (just to clean that up) edit /etc/modprobe.conf and comment out the xen modules (just put a # in front) Install grub. if your /boot is hda1 then that is (hd0,0) $ grub root (hd0,0) setup (hd0) exit grub now you have a good bootsector, grub installed and you have your grub.conf file Install the new kernel cd root (this is your old /root in your pv image) rpm -ivh remove (or comment out) boot='d' in your vm.cfg restart the VM and you should be good to go, regular grub should start and load your environment. Caveats : this assumes you used labels for your filesystems. if /etc/fstab were to have devices listed then you would have to rename these device before rebooting as well. If you had a /dev/xvda disk then this would be /dev/hda or /dev/sda. All in all it is a relatively short and simple process.

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  • Converting a PV vm back into an HVM vm

    - by wim.coekaerts
    I have been doing some Oracle VM benchmark stuff in the last week or 2 in my off hours and yesterday I wanted to convert one of my VMs that was based on a paravirt kernel into a vm that just boots as a regular hardware virt VM with a standard x86-64 kernel. It took me a little while to figure out the fastest way so now that I have it pretty much down I wanted to share the steps. A PV kernel uses pygrub and a paravirt kernel image that lives on the vm image virtual disk. since this disk image does not have to be bootable it doesn't contain a boot sector and if you just restart the VM in hvm mode the virtual bios will just not do much as it can't start the boot process from disk The first thing I do is make a backup of my vm.cfg file :-) and then edit it as follows : the original file contains : bootloader = '/usr/bin/pygrub' I replace that with : acpi = 1 apic = 1 builder = 'hvm' device_model = '/usr/lib/xen/bin/qemu-dm' kernel = '/usr/lib/xen/boot/hvmloader' then changing the disk files. I change my xvd disks to hd disks and I copy over the iso image of my instal lDVD. In the case of my VM template it was based on OL5U4 So I downloaded Enterprise-R5-U4-Server-x86_64-dvd.iso and added it as a cd device. disk = ['file:/ovs/OVM_EL5U4_X86_64_11202RAC_PVM/System.img,xvda,w', 'file:/ovs/OVM_EL5U4_X86_64_11202RAC_PVM/Oracle11202RAC_x86_64-xvdb.img,xvdb,w', ] to disk = ['file:/ovs/OVM_EL5U4_X86_64_11202RAC_PVM/System.img,hda,w', 'file:/ovs/OVM_EL5U4_X86_64_11202RAC_PVM/Oracle11202RAC_x86_64-xvdb.img,hdb,w', 'file:/ovs/OVM_EL5U4_X86_64_11202RAC_PVM/Enterprise-R5-U4-Server-x86_64-dvd.iso, hdc:cdrom,r', ] boot='d' for the network devices (vifs) I change : vif = ['bridge=xenbr2,type=netfront'] to vif = ['bridge=xenbr2,type=ioemu'] That should do it. Next, inside the VM, I copy over the regular kernel rpm that I want to end up running in hvm mode. In this example case it was : kernel-2.6.18-164.0.0.0.1.el5.x8664.rpm. I will use that later on in the process. I put this kernel simply in /root At this point I just start the vm with xm create vm.cfg and start my vnc console to the vm console. Oracle Linux will boot from the iso image, I just go through the install steps and click on UPgrade existing (not re-install). Because the VM is the same as the ISO the install won't actually do anything and it will run through instantly. When the "Reboot" button pops up, don't reboot. Switch to the command prompt console. hi alt-f2 to go to the shell prompt. Now it's easy : umount /mnt/sysimage/boot cd /mnt/sysimage chroot . mount /dev/hda1 (if that was your /boot partition) export PATH=/sbin:$PATH (just to clean that up) edit /etc/modprobe.conf and comment out the xen modules (just put a # in front) Install grub. if your /boot is hda1 then that is (hd0,0) $ grub root (hd0,0) setup (hd0) exit grub now you have a good bootsector, grub installed and you have your grub.conf file Install the new kernel cd root (this is your old /root in your pv image) rpm -ivh remove (or comment out) boot='d' in your vm.cfg restart the VM and you should be good to go, regular grub should start and load your environment. Caveats : this assumes you used labels for your filesystems. if /etc/fstab were to have devices listed then you would have to rename these device before rebooting as well. If you had a /dev/xvda disk then this would be /dev/hda or /dev/sda. All in all it is a relatively short and simple process.

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  • ArchBeat Link-o-Rama Top 10 for December 9-15, 2012

    - by Bob Rhubart
    You click, we listen. The following list reflects the Top 10 most popular items posted on the OTN ArchBeat Facefbook page for the week of December 9-15, 2012. DevOps Basics II: What is Listening on Open Ports and Files – WebLogic Essentials | Dr. Frank Munz "Can you easily find out which WebLogic servers are listening to which port numbers and addresses?" asks Dr. Frank Munz. The good doctor has an answer—and a tech tip. Using OBIEE against Transactional Schemas Part 4: Complex Dimensions | Stewart Bryson "Another important entity for reporting in the Customer Tracking application is the Contact entity," says Stewart Bryson. "At first glance, it might seem that we should simply build another dimension called Dim – Contact, and use analyses to combine our Customer and Contact dimensions along with our Activity fact table to analyze Customer and Contact behavior." SOA 11g Technology Adapters – ECID Propagation | Greg Mally "Many SOA Suite 11g deployments include the use of the technology adapters for various activities including integration with FTP, database, and files to name a few," says Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team member Greg Mally. "Although the integrations with these adapters are easy and feature rich, there can be some challenges from the operations perspective." Greg's post focuses on technical tips for dealing with one of these challenges. Podcast: DevOps and Continuous Integration In Part 1 of a 3-part program, panelists Tim Hall (Senior Director of product management for Oracle Enterprise Repository and Oracle’s Application Integration Architecture), Robert Wunderlich (Principal Product Manager for Oracle’s Application Integration Architecture Foundation Pack) and Peter Belknap (Director of product management for Oracle SOA Integration) discuss why DevOps matters and how it changes development methodologies and organizational structure. Good To Know - Conflicting View Objects and Shared Entity | Andrejus Baranovskis Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovskis shares his thoughts -- and a sample application -- dealing with an "interesting ADF behavior" encountered over the weekend. Cloud Deployment Models | B. R. Clouse Looking out for the cloud newbies... "As the cloud paradigm grows in depth and breadth, more readers are approaching the topic for the first time, or from a new perspective," says B. R. Clouse. "This blog is a basic review of cloud deployment models, to help orient newcomers and neophytes." Service governance morphs into cloud API management | David Linthicum "When building and using clouds, the ability to manage APIs or services is the single most important item you can provide to ensure the success of the project," says David Linthicum. "But most organizations driving a cloud project for the first time have no experience handling a service-based architecture and don't see the need for API management until after deployment. By then, it's too late." Oracle Fusion Middleware Security: Password Policy in OAM 11g R2 | Rob Otto Rob Otto continues the Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team "Oracle Access Manager Academy" series with a detailed look at OAM's ability to support "a subset of password management processes without the need to use Oracle Identity Manager and LDAP Sync." Understanding the JSF Lifecycle and ADF Optimized Lifecycle | Steven Davelaar Could you call that a surprise ending? Oracle WebCenter & ADF Architecture Team (A-Team) member learned a lot more than he expected while creating a UKOUG presentation entitled "What you need to know about JSF to be succesful with ADF." Expanding on requestaudit - Tracing who is doing what...and for how long | Kyle Hatlestad "One of the most helpful tracing sections in WebCenter Content (and one that is on by default) is the requestaudit tracing," says Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team architect Kyle Hatlestad. Get up close and technical in his post. Thought for the Day "There is no code so big, twisted, or complex that maintenance can't make it worse." — Gerald Weinberg Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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  • Columnstore Case Study #1: MSIT SONAR Aggregations

    - by aspiringgeek
    Preamble This is the first in a series of posts documenting big wins encountered using columnstore indexes in SQL Server 2012 & 2014.  Many of these can be found in this deck along with details such as internals, best practices, caveats, etc.  The purpose of sharing the case studies in this context is to provide an easy-to-consume quick-reference alternative. Why Columnstore? If we’re looking for a subset of columns from one or a few rows, given the right indexes, SQL Server can do a superlative job of providing an answer. If we’re asking a question which by design needs to hit lots of rows—DW, reporting, aggregations, grouping, scans, etc., SQL Server has never had a good mechanism—until columnstore. Columnstore indexes were introduced in SQL Server 2012. However, they're still largely unknown. Some adoption blockers existed; yet columnstore was nonetheless a game changer for many apps.  In SQL Server 2014, potential blockers have been largely removed & they're going to profoundly change the way we interact with our data.  The purpose of this series is to share the performance benefits of columnstore & documenting columnstore is a compelling reason to upgrade to SQL Server 2014. App: MSIT SONAR Aggregations At MSIT, performance & configuration data is captured by SCOM. We archive much of the data in a partitioned data warehouse table in SQL Server 2012 for reporting via an application called SONAR.  By definition, this is a primary use case for columnstore—report queries requiring aggregation over large numbers of rows.  New data is refreshed each night by an automated table partitioning mechanism—a best practices scenario for columnstore. The Win Compared to performance using classic indexing which resulted in the expected query plan selection including partition elimination vs. SQL Server 2012 nonclustered columnstore, query performance increased significantly.  Logical reads were reduced by over a factor of 50; both CPU & duration improved by factors of 20 or more.  Other than creating the columnstore index, no special modifications or tweaks to the app or databases schema were necessary to achieve the performance improvements.  Existing nonclustered indexes were rendered superfluous & were deleted, thus mitigating maintenance challenges such as defragging as well as conserving disk capacity. Details The table provides the raw data & summarizes the performance deltas. Logical Reads (8K pages) CPU (ms) Durn (ms) Columnstore 160,323 20,360 9,786 Conventional Table & Indexes 9,053,423 549,608 193,903 ? x56 x27 x20 The charts provide additional perspective of this data.  "Conventional vs. Columnstore Metrics" document the raw data.  Note on this linear display the magnitude of the conventional index performance vs. columnstore.  The “Metrics (?)” chart expresses these values as a ratio. Summary For DW, reports, & other BI workloads, columnstore often provides significant performance enhancements relative to conventional indexing.  I have documented here, the first in a series of reports on columnstore implementations, results from an initial implementation at MSIT in which logical reads were reduced by over a factor of 50; both CPU & duration improved by factors of 20 or more.  Subsequent features in this series document performance enhancements that are even more significant. 

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  • Green (Screen) Computing

    - by onefloridacoder
    I recently was given an assignment to create a UX where a user could use the up and down arrow keys, as well as the tab and enter keys to move through a Silverlight datagrid that is going be used as part of a high throughput data entry UI. And to be honest, I’ve not trapped key codes since I coded JavaScript a few years ago.  Although the frameworks I’m using made it easy, it wasn’t without some trial and error.    The other thing that bothered me was that the customer tossed this into the use case as they were delivering the use case.  Fine.  I’ll take a whack at anything and beat up myself and beg (I’m not beyond begging for help) the community for help to get something done if I have to. It wasn’t as bad as I thought and I thought I would hopefully save someone a few keystrokes if you wanted to build a green screen for your customer.   Here’s the ValueConverter to handle changing the strings to decimals and then back again.  The value is a nullable valuetype so there are few extra steps to take.  Usually the “ConvertBack()” method doesn’t get addressed but in this case we have two-way binding and the converter needs to ensure that if the user doesn’t enter a value it will remain null when the value is reapplied to the model object’s setter.  1: using System; 2: using System.Windows.Data; 3: using System.Globalization; 4:  5: public class NullableDecimalToStringConverter : IValueConverter 6: { 7: public object Convert(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) 8: { 9: if (!(((decimal?)value).HasValue)) 10: { 11: return (decimal?)null; 12: } 13: if (!(value is decimal)) 14: { 15: throw new ArgumentException("The value must be of type decimal"); 16: } 17:  18: NumberFormatInfo nfi = culture.NumberFormat; 19: nfi.NumberDecimalDigits = 4; 20:  21: return ((decimal)value).ToString("N", nfi); 22: } 23:  24: public object ConvertBack(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) 25: { 26: decimal nullableDecimal; 27: decimal.TryParse(value.ToString(), out nullableDecimal); 28:  29: return nullableDecimal == 0 ? null : nullableDecimal.ToString(); 30: } 31: }            The ConvertBack() method uses TryParse to create a value from the incoming string so if the parse fails, we get a null value back, which is what we would expect.  But while I was testing I realized that if the user types something like “2..4” instead of “2.4”, TryParse will fail and still return a null.  The user is getting “puuu-lenty” of eye-candy to ensure they know how many values are affected in this particular view. Here’s the XAML code.   This is the simple part, we just have a DataGrid with one column here that’s bound to the the appropriate ViewModel property with the Converter referenced as well. 1: <data:DataGridTextColumn 2: Header="On-Hand" 3: Binding="{Binding Quantity, 4: Mode=TwoWay, 5: Converter={StaticResource DecimalToStringConverter}}" 6: IsReadOnly="False" /> Nothing too magical here.  Just some XAML to hook things up.   Here’s the code behind that’s handling the DataGridKeyup event.  These are wired to a local/private method but could be converted to something the ViewModel could use, but I just need to get this working for now. 1: // Wire up happens in the constructor 2: this.PicDataGrid.KeyUp += (s, e) => this.HandleKeyUp(e);   1: // DataGrid.BeginEdit fires when DataGrid.KeyUp fires. 2: private void HandleKeyUp(KeyEventArgs args) 3: { 4: if (args.Key == Key.Down || 5: args.Key == Key.Up || 6: args.Key == Key.Tab || 7: args.Key == Key.Enter ) 8: { 9: this.PicDataGrid.BeginEdit(); 10: } 11: }   And that’s it.  The ValueConverter was the biggest problem starting out because I was using an existing converter that didn’t take nullable value types into account.   Once the converter was passing back the appropriate value (null, “#.####”) the grid cell(s) and the model objects started working as I needed them to. HTH.

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  • What information must never appear in logs?

    - by MainMa
    I'm about to write the company guidelines about what must never appear in logs (trace of an application). In fact, some developers try to include as many information as possible in trace, making it risky to store those logs, and extremely dangerous to submit them, especially when the customer doesn't know this information is stored, because she never cared about this and never read documentation and/or warning messages. For example, when dealing with files, some developers are tempted to trace the names of the files. For example before appending file name to a directory, if we trace everything on error, it will be easy to notice for example that the appended name is too long, and that the bug in the code was to forget to check for the length of the concatenated string. It is helpful, but this is sensitive data, and must never appear in logs. In the same way: Passwords, IP addresses and network information (MAC address, host name, etc.)¹, Database accesses, Direct input from user and stored business data must never appear in trace. So what other types of information must be banished from the logs? Are there any guidelines already written which I can use? ¹ Obviously, I'm not talking about things as IIS or Apache logs. What I'm talking about is the sort of information which is collected with the only intent to debug the application itself, not to trace the activity of untrusted entities. Edit: Thank you for your answers and your comments. Since my question is not too precise, I'll try to answer the questions asked in the comments: What I'm doing with the logs? The logs of the application may be stored in memory, which means either in plain on hard disk on localhost, in a database, again in plain, or in Windows Events. In every case, the concern is that those sources may not be safe enough. For example, when a customer runs an application and this application stores logs in plain text file in temp directory, anybody who has a physical access to the PC can read those logs. The logs of the application may also be sent through internet. For example, if a customer has an issue with an application, we can ask her to run this application in full-trace mode and to send us the log file. Also, some application may sent automatically the crash report to us (and even if there are warnings about sensitive data, in most cases customers don't read them). Am I talking about specific fields? No. I'm working on general business applications only, so the only sensitive data is business data. There is nothing related to health or other fields covered by specific regulations. But thank you to talk about that, I probably should take a look about those fields for some clues about what I can include in guidelines. Isn't it easier to encrypt the data? No. It would make every application much more difficult, especially if we want to use C# diagnostics and TraceSource. It would also require to manage authorizations, which is not the easiest think to do. Finally, if we are talking about the logs submitted to us from a customer, we must be able to read the logs, but without having access to sensitive data. So technically, it's easier to never include sensitive information in logs at all and to never care about how and where those logs are stored.

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  • Protecting Consolidated Data on Engineered Systems

    - by Steve Enevold
    In this time of reduced budgets and cost cutting measures in Federal, State and Local governments, the requirement to provide services continues to grow. Many agencies are looking at consolidating their infrastructure to reduce cost and meet budget goals. Oracle's engineered systems are ideal platforms for accomplishing these goals. These systems provide unparalleled performance that is ideal for running applications and databases that traditionally run on separate dedicated environments. However, putting multiple critical applications and databases in a single architecture makes security more critical. You are putting a concentrated set of sensitive data on a single system, making it a more tempting target.  The environments were previously separated by iron so now you need to provide assurance that one group, department, or application's information is not visible to other personnel or applications resident in the Exadata system. Administration of the environments requires formal separation of duties so an administrator of one application environment cannot view or negatively impact others. Also, these systems need to be in protected environments just like other critical production servers. They should be in a data center protected by physical controls, network firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention, etc Exadata also provides unique security benefits, including a reducing attack surface by minimizing packages and services to only those required. In addition to reducing the possible system areas someone may attempt to infiltrate, Exadata has the following features: 1.    Infiniband, which functions as a secure private backplane 2.    IPTables  to perform stateful packet inspection for all nodes               Cellwall implements firewall services on each cell using IPTables 3.    Hardware accelerated encryption for data at rest on storage cells Oracle is uniquely positioned to provide the security necessary for implementing Exadata because security has been a core focus since the company's beginning. In addition to the security capabilities inherent in Exadata, Oracle security products are all certified to run in an Exadata environment. Database Vault Oracle Database Vault helps organizations increase the security of existing applications and address regulatory mandates that call for separation-of-duties, least privilege and other preventive controls to ensure data integrity and data privacy. Oracle Database Vault proactively protects application data stored in the Oracle database from being accessed by privileged database users. A unique feature of Database Vault is the ability to segregate administrative tasks including when a command can be executed, or that the DBA can manage the health of the database and objects, but may not see the data Advanced Security  helps organizations comply with privacy and regulatory mandates by transparently encrypting all application data or specific sensitive columns, such as credit cards, social security numbers, or personally identifiable information (PII). By encrypting data at rest and whenever it leaves the database over the network or via backups, Oracle Advanced Security provides the most cost-effective solution for comprehensive data protection. Label Security  is a powerful and easy-to-use tool for classifying data and mediating access to data based on its classification. Designed to meet public-sector requirements for multi-level security and mandatory access control, Oracle Label Security provides a flexible framework that both government and commercial entities worldwide can use to manage access to data on a "need to know" basis in order to protect data privacy and achieve regulatory compliance  Data Masking reduces the threat of someone in the development org taking data that has been copied from production to the development environment for testing, upgrades, etc by irreversibly replacing the original sensitive data with fictitious data so that production data can be shared safely with IT developers or offshore business partners  Audit Vault and Database Firewall Oracle Audit Vault and Database Firewall serves as a critical detective and preventive control across multiple operating systems and database platforms to protect against the abuse of legitimate access to databases responsible for almost all data breaches and cyber attacks.  Consolidation, cost-savings, and performance can now be achieved without sacrificing security. The combination of built in protection and Oracle’s industry-leading data protection solutions make Exadata an ideal platform for Federal, State, and local governments and agencies.

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  • Insurers Pushed to Transform Their Business

    - by Calvin Glenn
    Everyone in the P&C industry has heard it “We can’t do it.” “Nobody wants to do it.” “We can’t afford to do it.”  Unfortunately, what they’re referencing are the reasons many insurers are still trying to maintain their business processing on legacy policy administration systems, attempting to bide time until there is no other recourse but to give in, bite the bullet, and take on the monumental task of replacing an entire policy administration system (PAS). Just the thought of that project sends IT, Business Users and Management reeling. However, is that fear real?  It is a bit daunting when one realizes that a complete policy administration system replacement will touch most every function an insurer manages, from quoting and rating, to underwriting, distribution, and even customer service. With that, everyone has heard at least one horror story around a transformation initiative that has far exceeded budget and the promised implementation / go-live timeline.    But, does it have to be that hard?  Surely, in the age where a person can voice-activate their DVR to record a TV program from a cell phone, there has to be someone somewhere who’s figured out how to simplify this process. To be able to help insurers, of all sizes, transform and grow their business while also delivering on their overall objectives of providing speed to market, straight-through-processing for applications, quoting, underwriting, and simplified product development. Maybe we’re looking too hard and the answer is simple and straight-forward. Why replace the entire machine when all it really needs is a new part…a single enterprise rating system? This core, modular piece of the policy administration system is the foundation of product development and rate management that enables insurers to provide the right product at the right price to the right customer through the best channels at any given moment in time. The real benefit of a single enterprise rating system is the ability to deliver enhanced business capabilities, such as improved product management, streamlined underwriting, and speed to market. With these benefits, carriers have accomplished a portion of their overall transformation goal. Furthermore, lessons learned from the rating project can be applied to the bigger, down-the-road PAS project to support the successful completion of the overall transformation endeavor. At the recent Oracle OpenWorld Conference in San Francisco, information was shared with attendees about a recent “go-live” project from an Oracle Insurance Tier 1 insurer who did what is proposed above…replaced just the rating portion of their legacy policy administration system with Oracle Insurance Insbridge Rating and Underwriting.  This change provided the insurer greater flexibility to set rates that better reflect risk while enabling the company to support its market segment strategy. Using the Oracle Insurance Insbridge enterprise rating solution, the insurer was able to reduce processing time for agents and underwriters, gained the ability to support proprietary rating models and improved pricing accuracy.      There is mounting pressure on P&C insurers to produce growth and show net profitability in the midst of modest overall industry growth, large weather-related losses and intensifying competition for market share.  Insurers are also being asked to improve customer service, offer a differentiated value proposition and simplify insurance processes.  While the demands are many there is an easy answer…invest in and update the most mission critical application in your arsenal, the single enterprise rating system. Download the Podcast to listen to “Stand-Alone Rating Engine - Leading Force Behind Core Transformation Projects in the P&C Market,” a podcast originally recorded in October 2013. Related Resources: White Paper: Stand-Alone Rating Engine: Leading Force Behind Core Transformation Projects in the P&C Market Webcast On Demand: Stand-Alone Rating Engine and Core Transformation for P&C Insurers Don’t forget to keep up with us year-round: Facebook: www.facebook.com/oracleinsurance Twitter: www.twitter.com/oracleinsurance YouTube: www.youtube.com/oracleinsurance

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  • How to Mentor a Junior Developer

    - by Josh Johnson
    This title is a little broad but I may need to give a little background before I can ask my question properly. I know that similar questions have been asked here already. But in my case I'm not asking if I should be mentoring someone or if the person is a good fit for being a software developer. That is not my place to judge. I have not been asked outright, but it is apparent that myself and other fellow senior developers are to mentor the new developers that start here. I have no problem with this whatsoever and, in many cases, it lends me a fresh perspective on things and I end up learning in the process. Also, I remember how beneficial it was in the beginning of my career when someone would take some time to teach me something. When I say "new developer" they could be anywhere from fresh out of college to having a year or two of experience. Recently and in the past we've had people start here who seem to have an attitude toward development/programming which is different from mine and hard for me to reconcile; they seem to extract just enough information to get the task done but not really learn from it. I find myself going over and over the same issues with them. I understand that part of this could be a personality thing, but I feel it's my job to do my best and sort of push them out of the nest while they're under my wing, so to speak. How can I impart just enough information so that they will learn but not give so much as to solve the problem for them? Or perhaps: What's the proper response to questions that are designed to take the path of least resistance and, in essence, force them to learn instead of take the easy way out? These questions are probably more general teaching questions and don't have that much to do specifically with software development. Note: I do not get a say in what tasks they are working on. Management doles the task out and it could be anything from a very simple bug fix to starting an entire application by themselves. While this is not ideal by any means and obviously presents its own gauntlet of challenges, I feel it's a topic best left for another question. So the best I can do is help them with the problem at hand and try to help them break it down into simpler problems and also check their commit logs and point out mistakes that they made. My main objectives are to: Help them out and give them the tools they need to start becoming more self-reliant. Steer them in the right direction and break bad development habits early on. Lessen the amount of time I spend with them (the personality type described above seems to need much more one-on-one time and does not do well over IM or email. While that's generally fine, I can't always stop what I'm working on, break my stride, and help them debug an error on a moments notice; I have my own projects that need to get done).

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