Search Results

Search found 13469 results on 539 pages for 'avoid trouble'.

Page 494/539 | < Previous Page | 490 491 492 493 494 495 496 497 498 499 500 501  | Next Page >

• Dell Studio 1737 Overheating

  - by Sean

  I am using a Dell Studio 1737 laptop. I have been running Linux and have ran Windows recently for a very long time. I upgraded to the 10.10 distribution and since that distro, it seems that for some reason all Linuxes want to push my laptop to extremes. I have recently upgraded to Ubuntu 12.04 since I heart that it contains kernel fixes for overheating issues. 12.04 will actually eventually cool the system, but that is after the fans run to the point it sounds like a jet aircraft taking off and the laptop makes my hands sweat. In trying to combat the heat problems I have done the following: I installed the propriatery driver for my ATI Mobility HD 3600. I have tried both the one in the Additional Drivers and also tried ATI's latest greatest version. If I don't install this my laptop will overheat and shut off in minutes. Both seem to perform similarly, but the heat problem remains. I have tried limiting the CPU by installing the CPUFreq Indicator. This does help keep the machine from shutting off, but the heat is still uncomfortable to be around the machine. I usually run in power saver mode or run the cpu at 1.6 GHZ just to error on safety. I ran sensors-detect and here are the results: sean@sean-Studio-1737:~$ sudo sensors-detect # sensors-detect revision 5984 (2011-07-10 21:22:53 +0200) # System: Dell Inc. Studio 1737 (laptop) # Board: Dell Inc. 0F237N This program will help you determine which kernel modules you need to load to use lm_sensors most effectively. It is generally safe and recommended to accept the default answers to all questions, unless you know what you're doing. Some south bridges, CPUs or memory controllers contain embedded sensors. Do you want to scan for them? This is totally safe. (YES/no): y Module cpuid loaded successfully. Silicon Integrated Systems SIS5595... No VIA VT82C686 Integrated Sensors... No VIA VT8231 Integrated Sensors... No AMD K8 thermal sensors... No AMD Family 10h thermal sensors... No AMD Family 11h thermal sensors... No AMD Family 12h and 14h thermal sensors... No AMD Family 15h thermal sensors... No AMD Family 15h power sensors... No Intel digital thermal sensor... Success! (driver `coretemp') Intel AMB FB-DIMM thermal sensor... No VIA C7 thermal sensor... No VIA Nano thermal sensor... No Some Super I/O chips contain embedded sensors. We have to write to standard I/O ports to probe them. This is usually safe. Do you want to scan for Super I/O sensors? (YES/no): y Probing for Super-I/O at 0x2e/0x2f Trying family `National Semiconductor/ITE'... No Trying family `SMSC'... No Trying family `VIA/Winbond/Nuvoton/Fintek'... No Trying family `ITE'... No Probing for Super-I/O at 0x4e/0x4f Trying family `National Semiconductor/ITE'... Yes Found `ITE IT8512E/F/G Super IO' (but not activated) Some hardware monitoring chips are accessible through the ISA I/O ports. We have to write to arbitrary I/O ports to probe them. This is usually safe though. Yes, you do have ISA I/O ports even if you do not have any ISA slots! Do you want to scan the ISA I/O ports? (YES/no): y Probing for `National Semiconductor LM78' at 0x290... No Probing for `National Semiconductor LM79' at 0x290... No Probing for `Winbond W83781D' at 0x290... No Probing for `Winbond W83782D' at 0x290... No Lastly, we can probe the I2C/SMBus adapters for connected hardware monitoring devices. This is the most risky part, and while it works reasonably well on most systems, it has been reported to cause trouble on some systems. Do you want to probe the I2C/SMBus adapters now? (YES/no): y Using driver `i2c-i801' for device 0000:00:1f.3: Intel ICH9 Module i2c-i801 loaded successfully. Module i2c-dev loaded successfully. Now follows a summary of the probes I have just done. Just press ENTER to continue: Driver `coretemp': * Chip `Intel digital thermal sensor' (confidence: 9) To load everything that is needed, add this to /etc/modules: #----cut here---- # Chip drivers coretemp #----cut here---- If you have some drivers built into your kernel, the list above will contain too many modules. Skip the appropriate ones! Do you want to add these lines automatically to /etc/modules? (yes/NO)y Successful! Monitoring programs won't work until the needed modules are loaded. You may want to run 'service module-init-tools start' to load them. Unloading i2c-dev... OK Unloading i2c-i801... OK Unloading cpuid... OK sean@sean-Studio-1737:~$ sudo service module-init-tools start module-init-tools stop/waiting I also tried installing i8k but that didn't work since it didn't seem to be able to communicate with the hardware (probably for different kind of device). Also I ran acpi -V and here are the results: Battery 0: Full, 100% Battery 0: design capacity 613 mAh, last full capacity 260 mAh = 42% Adapter 0: on-line Thermal 0: ok, 49.0 degrees C Thermal 0: trip point 0 switches to mode critical at temperature 100.0 degrees C Thermal 1: ok, 48.0 degrees C Thermal 1: trip point 0 switches to mode critical at temperature 100.0 degrees C Thermal 2: ok, 51.0 degrees C Thermal 2: trip point 0 switches to mode critical at temperature 100.0 degrees C Cooling 0: LCD 0 of 15 Cooling 1: Processor 0 of 10 Cooling 2: Processor 0 of 10 I have hit a wall and don't know what to do now. Any advice is appreciated.

  Read the article

• 7 Reasons for Abandonment in eCommerce and the need for Contextual Support by JP Saunders

  - by Tuula Fai

  Shopper confidence, or more accurately the lack thereof, is the bane of the online retailer. There are a number of questions that influence whether a shopper completes a transaction, and all of those attributes revolve around knowledge. What products are available? What products are on offer? What would be the cost of the transaction? What are my options for delivery? In general, most online businesses do a good job of answering basic questions around the products as the shopper engages in the online journey, navigating the product catalog and working through the checkout process. The needs that are harder to address for the shopper are those that are less concerned with product specifics and more concerned with deciding whether the transaction met their needs and delivered value. A recent study by the Baymard Institute [1] finds that more than 60% of ecommerce site visitors will abandon their shopping cart. The study also identifies seven reasons for abandonment out of the commerce process [2]. Most of those reasons come down to poor usability within the commerce experience. Distractions. External distractions within the shopper’s external environment (TV, Children, Pets, etc.) or distractions on the eCommerce page can drive shopper abandonment. Ideally, the selection and check-out process should be straightforward. One common distraction is to drive the shopper away from the task at hand through pop-ups or re-directs. The shopper engaging with support information in the checkout process should not be directed away from the page to consume support. Though confidence may improve, the distraction also means abandonment may increase. Poor Usability. When the experience gets more complicated, buyer’s remorse can set in. While knowledge drives confidence, a lack of understanding erodes it. Therefore it is important that the commerce process is streamlined. In some cases, the number of clicks to complete a purchase is lengthy and unavoidable. In these situations, it is vital to ensure that the complexity of your experience can be explained with contextual support to avoid abandonment. If you can illustrate the solution to a complex action while the user is engaged in that action and address customer frustrations with your checkout process before they arise, you can decrease abandonment. Fraud. The perception of potential fraud can be enough to deter a buyer. Does your site look credible? Can shoppers trust your brand? Providing answers on the security of your experience and the levels of protection applied to profile information may play as big a role in ensuring the sale, as does the support you provide on the product offerings and purchasing process. Does it fit? If it is a clothing item or oversized furniture item, another common form of abandonment is for the shopper to question whether the item can be worn by the intended user. Providing information on the sizing applied to clothing, physical dimensions, and limitations on delivery/returns of oversized items will also assist the sale. A photo alone of the item will help, as it answers some of those questions, but won’t assuage all customer concerns about sizing and fit. Sometimes the customer doesn’t want to buy. Prospective buyers might be browsing through your catalog to kill time, or just might not have the money to purchase the item! You are unlikely to provide any information in contextual support to increase the likelihood to buy if the shopper already has no intentions of doing so. The customer will still likely abandon. Ensuring that any questions are proactively answered as they browse through your site can only increase their likelihood to return and buy at a future date. Can’t Buy. Errors or complexity at checkout can be another major cause of abandonment. Good contextual support is unlikely to help with severe errors caused by technical issues on your site, but it will have a big impact on customers struggling with complexity in the checkout process and needing a question answered prior to completing the sale. Embedded support within the checkout process to patiently explain how to complete a task will help increase conversion rates. Additional Costs. Tax, shipping and other costs or duties can dramatically increase the cost of the purchase and when unexpected, can increase abandonment, particularly if they can’t be adequately explained. Again, a lack of knowledge erodes confidence in the purchase, and cost concerns in particular, erode the perception of your brand’s trustworthiness. Again, providing information on what costs are additive and why they are being levied can decrease the likelihood that the customer will abandon out of the experience. Knowledge drives confidence and confidence drives conversion. If you’d like to understand best practices in providing contextual customer support in eCommerce to provide your shoppers with confidence, download the Oracle Cloud Service and Oracle Commerce - Contextual Support in Commerce White Paper. This white paper discusses the process of adding customer support, including a suggested process for finding where knowledge has the most influence on your shoppers and practical step-by-step illustrations on how contextual self-service can be added to your online commerce experience. Resources: [1] http://baymard.com/checkout-usability [2] http://baymard.com/blog/cart-abandonment

  Read the article

• Explaining Explain Plan Notes for Auto DOP

  - by jean-pierre.dijcks

  I've recently gotten some questions around "why do I not see a parallel plan" while Auto DOP is on (I think)...? It is probably worthwhile to quickly go over some of the ways to find out what Auto DOP was thinking. In general, there is no need to go tracing sessions and look under the hood. The thing to start with is to do an explain plan on your statement and to look at the parameter settings on the system. Parameter Settings to Look At First and foremost, make sure that parallel_degree_policy = AUTO. If you have that parameter set to LIMITED you will not have queuing and we will only do the auto magic if your objects are set to default parallel (so no degree specified). Next you want to look at the value of parallel_degree_limit. It is typically set to CPU, which in default settings equates to the Default DOP of the system. If you are testing Auto DOP itself and the impact it has on performance you may want to leave it at this CPU setting. If you are running concurrent statements you may want to give this some more thoughts. See here for more information. In general, do stick with either CPU or with a specific number. For now avoid the IO setting as I've seen some mixed results with that... In 11.2.0.2 you should also check that IO Calibrate has been run. Best to simply do a: SQL> select * from V$IO_CALIBRATION_STATUS; STATUS        CALIBRATION_TIME ------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------- READY         04-JAN-11 10.04.13.104 AM You should see that your IO Calibrate is READY and therefore Auto DOP is ready. In any case, if you did not run the IO Calibrate step you will get the following note in the explain plan: Note -----    - automatic DOP: skipped because of IO calibrate statistics are missing One more note on calibrate_io, if you do not have asynchronous IO enabled you will see:  ERROR at line 1: ORA-56708: Could not find any datafiles with asynchronous i/o capability ORA-06512: at "SYS.DBMS_RMIN", line 463 ORA-06512: at "SYS.DBMS_RESOURCE_MANAGER", line 1296 ORA-06512: at line 7 While this is changed in some fixes to the calibrate procedure, you should really consider switching asynchronous IO on for your data warehouse. Explain Plan Explanation To see the notes that are shown and explained here (and the above little snippet ) you can use a simple explain plan mechanism. There should  be no need to add +parallel etc. explain plan for <statement> SELECT PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT FROM TABLE(DBMS_XPLAN.DISPLAY()); Auto DOP The note structure displaying why Auto DOP did not work (with the exception noted above on IO Calibrate) is like this: Automatic degree of parallelism is disabled: <reason> These are the reason codes: Parameter -  parallel_degree_policy = manual which will not allow Auto DOP to kick in  Hint - One of the following hints are used NOPARALLEL, PARALLEL(1), PARALLEL(MANUAL) Outline - A SQL outline of an older version (before 11.2) is used SQL property restriction - The statement type does not allow for parallel processing Rule-based mode - Instead of the Cost Based Optimizer the system is using the RBO Recursive SQL statement - The statement type does not allow for parallel processing pq disabled/pdml disabled/pddl disabled - For some reason (alter session?) parallelism is disabled Limited mode but no parallel objects referenced - your parallel_degree_policy = LIMITED and no objects in the statement are decorated with the default PARALLEL degree. In most cases all objects have a specific degree in which case Auto DOP will honor that degree. Parallel Degree Limited When Auto DOP does it works you may see the cap you imposed with parallel_degree_limit showing up in the note section of the explain plan: Note -----    - automatic DOP: Computed Degree of Parallelism is 16 because of degree limit This is an obvious indication that your are being capped for this statement. There is one quite interesting one that happens when you are being capped at DOP = 1. First of you get a serial plan and the note changes slightly in that it does not indicate it is being capped (we hope to update the note at some point in time to be more specific). It right now looks like this: Note -----    - automatic DOP: Computed Degree of Parallelism is 1 Dynamic Sampling With 11.2.0.2 you will start seeing another interesting change in parallel plans, and since we are talking about the note section here, I figured we throw this in for good measure. If we deem the parallel (!) statement complex enough, we will enact dynamic sampling on your query. This happens as long as you did not change the default for dynamic sampling on the system. The note looks like this: Note ----- - dynamic sampling used for this statement (level=5)

  Read the article

• What's New In 11.1.2.1 (Talleyrand SP1)

  - by russ.bishop

  This release is primarily about bug fixes and that's what we spent the most time on, but we also addressed a number of other things: 1. Performance improvements We've done a lot of work to improve the performance of page load and execution times. For example, the View Compare page is about half the size it was previously! We've also done a lot of work on the server to improve performance of queries, exports, action scripts, etc. We implemented some finer-grained locking so fewer operations will block other users while they are in progress. We made some optimizations to improve performance when you have a lot of network or database latency as well. Just a few examples: An Import that previously took 8 GB of memory and hours to complete now runs in about 30 minutes and never takes more than 1 GB of RAM. Searching by exact Node Name now completes within 2 seconds even for a hierarchy with millions of nodes. Another search that was taking 30 seconds to run now completes in less than 5 seconds. 2. Upgrade support This release supports automatic upgrade from previous releases, built right into the console. 3. Console Improvements The Console has been reorganized and made easier to use. It is also much more multi-threaded so it responds quicker without freezing up when you save changes or when it needs to get status. 4. Property Namespaces Properties now have a concept called a Namespace. This is tied into the Application Templates to prevent conflicts with duplicate property names. Right now, if you have an AccountType and you pull in the HFM template, it also has AccountType so you end up creating properties with decorations on the name like "Account Type (HFM)". This is no longer necessary. In addition, properties within a namespace must have unique labels but they can be duplicated across namespaces. So in the Property Grid when you click on the HFM category, you just see "AccountType". When you click on MyCategory, you see "AccountType", but they are different properties with different values. Within formulas, the names are still unique (eg: Custom.AccountType vs HFM.AccountType). I'll write more about this one later. 5. Single Sign On DRM now supports Single Sign-On via HSS. For example, if you are using Oracle's OAM as your SSO solution then you configure HSS to use OAM just like you would before. You also configure DRM to use HSS, again just like before. Then you configure OAM to protect the DRM web app, like you would any other website. However once you do those things, users are no longer prompted to enter their username/password. They simply get redirected to OAM if they don't already have a login token, otherwise they pick their application and sail right into DRM. You can also avoid having to pick an application (see the next item) 6. URL-based navigation You can now specify the application you want to log into via the URL. Combined with SSO and your Intranet, it becomes easy to provide links on our intranet portal that take users directly into a specific DRM application. We also support specifying the Version, Hierarchy, and Node. Again, this can be used on your internal portal, but the scenarios get even more interesting when you are using workflow like Oracle BPEL you can automatically generate links within emails that will take users directly to a specific node in the UI. 7. Job status and cancellation A lot of the jobs now report their status and support true cancellation. Action Scripts also report a progress complete percentage since the amount of work is known ahead of time. 8. Action Script Options Action scripts support Option declarations at the top of the file so a script can self-describe (when specified in the file, the corresponding item in the file is ignored). For example: Option|DetectDelimiter Option|UsePropertyNames|true This will tell DRM to automatically detect the delimiter (a pipe symbol in this case) and that all references to properties are by Name, not by Label. Note that when you load a script in the UI, if you use Labels we automatically try to match them up if they are unique. Any duplicates are indicated and you are presented with a choice to pick which property you actually referred to. This is somewhat similar to Version substitution, but tailored for properties. There are other more minor changes and like I said earlier a lot of bug fixes and performance improvements. Hopefully I will get a chance to dig into some of these things in future blog posts.

  Read the article

• Package Manager Console For More Than Managing Packages

  - by Steve Michelotti

  Like most developers, I prefer to not have to pick up the mouse if I don’t have to. I use the Executor launcher for almost everything so it’s extremely rare for me to ever click the “Start” button in Windows. I also use shortcuts keys when I can so I don’t have to pick up the mouse. By now most people know that the Package Manager Console that comes with NuGet is PowerShell embedded inside of Visual Studio. It is based on its PowerConsole predecessor which was the first (that I’m aware of) to embed PowerShell inside of Visual Studio and give access to the Visual Studio automation DTE object. It does this through an inherent $dte variable that is automatically available and ready for use. This variable is also available inside of the NuGet Package Manager console. Adding a new class file to a Visual Studio project is one of those mundane tasks that should be easier. First I have to pick up the mouse. Then I have to right-click where I want it file to go and select “Add –> New Item…” or “Add –> Class…”   If you know the Ctrl+Shift+A shortcut, then you can avoid the mouse for adding a new item but you have to manually assign a shortcut for adding a new class. At this point it pops up a dialog just so I can enter the name of the class I want. Since this is one of the most common tasks developers do, I figure there has to be an easier way and a way that avoids picking up the mouse and popping up dialogs. This is where your embedded PowerShell prompt in Visual Studio comes in. The first thing you should do is to assign a keyboard shortcut so that you can get a PowerShell prompt (i.e., the Package Manager console) quickly without ever picking up the mouse. I assign “Ctrl+P, Ctrl+M” because “P + M” stands for “Package Manager” so it is easy to remember:   At this point I can type this command to add a new class: PM> $dte.ItemOperations.AddNewItem("Code\Class", "Foo.cs") which will result in the class being added: At this point I’ve satisfied my original goal of not having to pick up a mouse and not having the “Add New Item” dialog pop up. However, having to remember that $dte method call is not very user-friendly at all. The best thing to do is to make this a re-usable function that always loads when Visual Studio starts up. There is a $profile variable that you can use to figure out where that location is for your machine: PM> $profile C:\Users\steve.michelotti\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\NuGet_profile.ps1 If the NuGet_profile.ps1 file does not already exist, you can just create it yourself and place it in the directory. Now you can put a function inside like this: 1: function addClass($className) 2: { 3: if ($className.EndsWith(".cs") -eq $false) { 4: $className = $className + ".cs" 5: } 6: 7: $dte.ItemOperations.AddNewItem("Code\Class", $className) 8: } Since it’s in the NuGet_profile.ps1 file, this function will automatically always be available for me after starting Visual Studio. Now I can simply do this: PM> addClass Foo At this point, we have a *very* nice developer experience. All I did to add a new class was: “Ctrl-P, Ctrl-M”, then “addClass Foo”. No mouse, no pop up dialogs, no complex commands to remember. In fact, PowerShell gives you auto-completion as well. If I type “addc” followed by [TAB], then intellisense pops up: You can see my custom function appear in intellisense above. Now I can type the next letter “c” and [TAB] to auto-complete the command. And if that’s still too many key strokes for you, then you can create your own PowerShell custom alias for your function like this: PM> Set-Alias addc addClass PM> addc Foo While all this is very useful, I did run into some issues which prompted me to make even further customization. This command will add the new class file to the current active directory. Depending on your context, this may not be what you want. For example, by convention all view model objects go in the “Models” folder in an MVC project. So if the current document is in the Controllers folder, it will add your class to that folder which is not what you want. You want it to always add it to the “Models” folder if you are adding a new model in an MVC project. For this situation, I added a new function called “addModel” which looks like this: 1: function addModel($className) 2: { 3: if ($className.EndsWith(".cs") -eq $false) { 4: $className = $className + ".cs" 5: } 6: 7: $modelsDir = $dte.ActiveSolutionProjects[0].UniqueName.Replace(".csproj", "") + "\Models" 8: $dte.Windows.Item([EnvDTE.Constants]::vsWindowKindSolutionExplorer).Activate() 9: $dte.ActiveWindow.Object.GetItem($modelsDir).Select([EnvDTE.vsUISelectionType]::vsUISelectionTypeSelect) 10: $dte.ItemOperations.AddNewItem("Code\Class", $className) 11: } First I figure out the path to the Models directory on line #7. Then I activate the Solution Explorer window on line #8. Then I make sure the Models directory is selected so that my context is correct when I add the new class and it will be added to the Models directory as desired. These are just a couple of examples for things you can do with the PowerShell prompt that you have available in the Package Manager console. As developers we spend so much time in Visual Studio, why would you not customize it so that you can work in whatever way you want to work?! The next time you’re not happy about the way Visual Studio makes you do a particular task – automate it! The sky is the limit.

  Read the article

• WebCenter Content shared folders for clustering

  - by Kyle Hatlestad

  When configuring a WebCenter Content (WCC) cluster, one of the things which makes it unique from some other WebLogic Server applications is its requirement for a shared file system.  This is actually not any different then 10g and previous versions of UCM when it ran directly on a JVM.  And while it is simple enough to say it needs a shared file system, there are some crucial details in how those directories are configured. And if they aren't followed, you may result in some unwanted behavior. This blog post will go into the details on how exactly the file systems should be split and what options are required. Beyond documents being stored on the file system and/or database and metadata being stored in the database along with other structured data, there is other information being read and written to on the file system.  Information such as user profile preferences, workflow item state information, metadata profiles, and other details are stored in files.  In addition, for certain processes within WCC, each of the nodes needs to know what the other nodes are doing so they don’t step on each other.  WCC keeps track of this through the use of lock files on the file system.  Because of this, each node of the WCC must have access to the same file system just as they have access to the same database. WCC uses its own locking mechanism using files, so it also needs to have access to those files without file attribute caching and without locking being done by the client (node).  If one of the nodes accesses a certain status file and it happens to be cached, that node might attempt to run a process which another node is already working on.  Or if a particular file is locked by one of the node clients, this could interfere with access by another node.  Unfortunately, when disabling file attribute caching on the file share, this can impact performance.  So it is important to only disable caching and locking on the particular folders which require it.  When configuring WebCenter Content after deploying the domain, it asks for 3 different directories: Content Server Instance Folder, Native File Repository Location, and Weblayout Folder.  And starting in PS5, it now asks for the User Profile Folder. Even if you plan on storing the content in the database, you still need to establish a Native File (Vault) and Weblayout directories.  These will be used for handling temporary files, cached files, and files used to deliver the UI. For these directories, the only folder which needs to have the file attribute caching and locking disabled is the ‘Content Server Instance Folder’.  So when establishing this share through NFS or a clustered file system, be sure to specify those options. For instance, if creating the share through NFS, use the ‘noac’ and ‘nolock’ options for the mount options. For the other directories, caching and locking should be enabled to provide best performance to those locations.   These directory path configurations are contained within the <domain dir>\ucm\cs\bin\intradoc.cfg file: #Server System PropertiesIDC_Id=UCM_server1 #Server Directory Variables IdcHomeDir=/u01/fmw/Oracle_ECM1/ucm/idc/ FmwDomainConfigDir=/u01/fmw/user_projects/domains/base_domain/config/fmwconfig/ AppServerJavaHome=/u01/jdk/jdk1.6.0_22/jre/ AppServerJavaUse64Bit=true IntradocDir=/mnt/share_no_cache/base_domain/ucm/cs/ VaultDir=/mnt/share_with_cache/ucm/cs/vault/ WeblayoutDir=/mnt/share_with_cache/ucm/cs/weblayout/ #Server Classpath variables #Additional Variables #NOTE: UserProfilesDir is only available in PS5 – 11.1.1.6.0UserProfilesDir=/mnt/share_with_cache/ucm/cs/data/users/profiles/ In addition to these folder configurations, it’s also recommended to move node-specific folders to local disk to avoid unnecessary traffic to the shared directory.  So on each node, go to <domain dir>\ucm\cs\bin\intradoc.cfg and add these additional configuration entries: VaultTempDir=<domain dir>/ucm/<cs>/vault/~temp/ TraceDirectory=<domain dir>/servers/<UCM_serverN>/logs/EventDirectory=<domain dir>/servers/<UCM_serverN>/logs/event/ And of course, don’t forget the cluster-specific configuration values to add as well.  These can be added through Admin Server -> General Configuration -> Additional Configuration Variables or directly in the <IntradocDir>/config/config.cfg file: ArchiverDoLocks=true DisableSharedCacheChecking=true ServiceAllowRetry=true    (use only with Oracle RAC Database)PublishLockTimeout=300000  (time can vary depending on publishing time and number of nodes) For additional information and details on clustering configuration, I highly recommend reviewing document [1209496.1] on the support site.  In addition, there is a great step-by-step guide on setting up a WebCenter Content cluster [1359930.1].

  Read the article

• Automating deployments with the SQL Compare command line

  - by Jonathan Hickford

  In my previous article, “Five Tips to Get Your Organisation Releasing Software Frequently” I looked at how teams can automate processes to speed up release frequency. In this post, I’m looking specifically at automating deployments using the SQL Compare command line. SQL Compare compares SQL Server schemas and deploys the differences. It works very effectively in scenarios where only one deployment target is required – source and target databases are specified, compared, and a change script is automatically generated and applied. But if multiple targets exist, and pressure to increase the frequency of releases builds, this solution quickly becomes unwieldy.   This is where SQL Compare’s command line comes into its own. I’ve put together a PowerShell script that loops through the Servers table and pulls out the server and database, these are then passed to sqlcompare.exe to be used as target parameters. In the example the source database is a scripts folder, a folder structure of scripted-out database objects used by both SQL Source Control and SQL Compare. The script can easily be adapted to use schema snapshots.     -- Create a DeploymentTargets database and a Servers table CREATE DATABASE DeploymentTargets GO USE DeploymentTargets GO CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Servers]( [id] [int] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL, [serverName] [nvarchar](50) NULL, [environment] [nvarchar](50) NULL, [databaseName] [nvarchar](50) NULL, CONSTRAINT [PK_Servers] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED ([id] ASC) ) GO -- Now insert your target server and database details INSERT INTO dbo.Servers ( serverName , environment , databaseName) VALUES ( N'myserverinstance' , N'myenvironment1' , N'mydb1') INSERT INTO dbo.Servers ( serverName , environment , databaseName) VALUES ( N'myserverinstance' , N'myenvironment2' , N'mydb2') Here’s the PowerShell script you can adapt for yourself as well. # We're holding the server names and database names that we want to deploy to in a database table. # We need to connect to that server to read these details $serverName = "" $databaseName = "DeploymentTargets" $authentication = "Integrated Security=SSPI" #$authentication = "User Id=xxx;PWD=xxx" # If you are using database authentication instead of Windows authentication. # Path to the scripts folder we want to deploy to the databases $scriptsPath = "SimpleTalk" # Path to SQLCompare.exe $SQLComparePath = "C:\Program Files (x86)\Red Gate\SQL Compare 10\sqlcompare.exe" # Create SQL connection string, and connection $ServerConnectionString = "Data Source=$serverName;Initial Catalog=$databaseName;$authentication" $ServerConnection = new-object system.data.SqlClient.SqlConnection($ServerConnectionString); # Create a Dataset to hold the DataTable $dataSet = new-object "System.Data.DataSet" "ServerList" # Create a query $query = "SET NOCOUNT ON;" $query += "SELECT serverName, environment, databaseName " $query += "FROM dbo.Servers; " # Create a DataAdapter to populate the DataSet with the results $dataAdapter = new-object "System.Data.SqlClient.SqlDataAdapter" ($query, $ServerConnection) $dataAdapter.Fill($dataSet) | Out-Null # Close the connection $ServerConnection.Close() # Populate the DataTable $dataTable = new-object "System.Data.DataTable" "Servers" $dataTable = $dataSet.Tables[0] #For every row in the DataTable $dataTable | FOREACH-OBJECT { "Server Name: $($_.serverName)" "Database Name: $($_.databaseName)" "Environment: $($_.environment)" # Compare the scripts folder to the database and synchronize the database to match # NB. Have set SQL Compare to abort on medium level warnings. $arguments = @("/scripts1:$($scriptsPath)", "/server2:$($_.serverName)", "/database2:$($_.databaseName)", "/AbortOnWarnings:Medium") # + @("/sync" ) # Commented out the 'sync' parameter for safety, write-host $arguments & $SQLComparePath $arguments "Exit Code: $LASTEXITCODE" # Some interesting variations # Check that every database matches a folder. # For example this might be a pre-deployment step to validate everything is at the same baseline state. # Or a post deployment script to validate the deployment worked. # An exit code of 0 means the databases are identical. # # $arguments = @("/scripts1:$($scriptsPath)", "/server2:$($_.serverName)", "/database2:$($_.databaseName)", "/Assertidentical") # Generate a report of the difference between the folder and each database. Generate a SQL update script for each database. # For example use this after the above to generate upgrade scripts for each database # Examine the warnings and the HTML diff report to understand how the script will change objects # #$arguments = @("/scripts1:$($scriptsPath)", "/server2:$($_.serverName)", "/database2:$($_.databaseName)", "/ScriptFile:update_$($_.environment+"_"+$_.databaseName).sql", "/report:update_$($_.environment+"_"+$_.databaseName).html" , "/reportType:Interactive", "/showWarnings", "/include:Identical") } It’s worth noting that the above example generates the deployment scripts dynamically. This approach should be problem-free for the vast majority of changes, but it is still good practice to review and test a pre-generated deployment script prior to deployment. An alternative approach would be to pre-generate a single deployment script using SQL Compare, and run this en masse to multiple targets programmatically using sqlcmd, or using a tool like SQL Multi Script.  You can use the /ScriptFile, /report, and /showWarnings flags to generate change scripts, difference reports and any warnings.  See the commented out example in the PowerShell: #$arguments = @("/scripts1:$($scriptsPath)", "/server2:$($_.serverName)", "/database2:$($_.databaseName)", "/ScriptFile:update_$($_.environment+"_"+$_.databaseName).sql", "/report:update_$($_.environment+"_"+$_.databaseName).html" , "/reportType:Interactive", "/showWarnings", "/include:Identical") There is a drawback of running a pre-generated deployment script; it assumes that a given database target hasn’t drifted from its expected state. Often there are (rightly or wrongly) many individuals within an organization who have permissions to alter the production database, and changes can therefore be made outside of the prescribed development processes. The consequence is that at deployment time, the applied script has been validated against a target that no longer represents reality. The solution here would be to add a check for drift prior to running the deployment script. This is achieved by using sqlcompare.exe to compare the target against the expected schema snapshot using the /Assertidentical flag. Should this return any differences (sqlcompare.exe Exit Code 79), a drift report is outputted instead of executing the deployment script.  See the commented out example. # $arguments = @("/scripts1:$($scriptsPath)", "/server2:$($_.serverName)", "/database2:$($_.databaseName)", "/Assertidentical") Any checks and processes that should be undertaken prior to a manual deployment, should also be happen during an automated deployment. You might think about triggering backups prior to deployment – even better, automate the verification of the backup too.   You can use SQL Compare’s command line interface along with PowerShell to automate multiple actions and checks that you need in your deployment process. Automation is a practical solution where multiple targets and a higher release cadence come into play. As we know, with great power comes great responsibility – responsibility to ensure that the necessary checks are made so deployments remain trouble-free.  (The code sample supplied in this post automates the simple dynamic deployment case – if you are considering more advanced automation, e.g. the drift checks, script generation, deploying to large numbers of targets and backup/verification, please email me at [email protected] for further script samples or if you have further questions)

  Read the article

• HTG Explains: Should You Build Your Own PC?

  - by Chris Hoffman

  There was a time when every geek seemed to build their own PC. While the masses bought eMachines and Compaqs, geeks built their own more powerful and reliable desktop machines for cheaper. But does this still make sense? Building your own PC still offers as much flexibility in component choice as it ever did, but prebuilt computers are available at extremely competitive prices. Building your own PC will no longer save you money in most cases. The Rise of Laptops It’s impossible to look at the decline of geeks building their own PCs without considering the rise of laptops. There was a time when everyone seemed to use desktops — laptops were more expensive and significantly slower in day-to-day tasks. With the diminishing importance of computing power — nearly every modern computer has more than enough power to surf the web and use typical programs like Microsoft Office without any trouble — and the rise of laptop availability at nearly every price point, most people are buying laptops instead of desktops. And, if you’re buying a laptop, you can’t really build your own. You can’t just buy a laptop case and start plugging components into it — even if you could, you would end up with an extremely bulky device. Ultimately, to consider building your own desktop PC, you have to actually want a desktop PC. Most people are better served by laptops. Benefits to PC Building The two main reasons to build your own PC have been component choice and saving money. Building your own PC allows you to choose all the specific components you want rather than have them chosen for you. You get to choose everything, including the PC’s case and cooling system. Want a huge case with room for a fancy water-cooling system? You probably want to build your own PC. In the past, this often allowed you to save money — you could get better deals by buying the components yourself and combining them, avoiding the PC manufacturer markup. You’d often even end up with better components — you could pick up a more powerful CPU that was easier to overclock and choose more reliable components so you wouldn’t have to put up with an unstable eMachine that crashed every day. PCs you build yourself are also likely more upgradable — a prebuilt PC may have a sealed case and be constructed in such a way to discourage you from tampering with the insides, while swapping components in and out is generally easier with a computer you’ve built on your own. If you want to upgrade your CPU or replace your graphics card, it’s a definite benefit. Downsides to Building Your Own PC It’s important to remember there are downsides to building your own PC, too. For one thing, it’s just more work — sure, if you know what you’re doing, building your own PC isn’t that hard. Even for a geek, researching the best components, price-matching, waiting for them all to arrive, and building the PC just takes longer. Warranty is a more pernicious problem. If you buy a prebuilt PC and it starts malfunctioning, you can contact the computer’s manufacturer and have them deal with it. You don’t need to worry about what’s wrong. If you build your own PC and it starts malfunctioning, you have to diagnose the problem yourself. What’s malfunctioning, the motherboard, CPU, RAM, graphics card, or power supply? Each component has a separate warranty through its manufacturer, so you’ll have to determine which component is malfunctioning before you can send it off for replacement. Should You Still Build Your Own PC? Let’s say you do want a desktop and are willing to consider building your own PC. First, bear in mind that PC manufacturers are buying in bulk and getting a better deal on each component. They also have to pay much less for a Windows license than the $120 or so it would cost you to to buy your own Windows license. This is all going to wipe out the cost savings you’ll see — with everything all told, you’ll probably spend more money building your own average desktop PC than you would picking one up from Amazon or the local electronics store. If you’re an average PC user that uses your desktop for the typical things, there’s no money to be saved from building your own PC. But maybe you’re looking for something higher end. Perhaps you want a high-end gaming PC with the fastest graphics card and CPU available. Perhaps you want to pick out each individual component and choose the exact components for your gaming rig. In this case, building your own PC may be a good option. As you start to look at more expensive, high-end PCs, you may start to see a price gap — but you may not. Let’s say you wanted to blow thousands of dollars on a gaming PC. If you’re looking at spending this kind of money, it would be worth comparing the cost of individual components versus a prebuilt gaming system. Still, the actual prices may surprise you. For example, if you wanted to upgrade Dell’s $2293 Alienware Aurora to include a second NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 graphics card, you’d pay an additional $600 on Alienware’s website. The same graphics card costs $650 on Amazon or Newegg, so you’d be spending more money building the system yourself. Why? Dell’s Alienware gets bulk discounts you can’t get — and this is Alienware, which was once regarded as selling ridiculously overpriced gaming PCs to people who wouldn’t build their own. Building your own PC still allows you to get the most freedom when choosing and combining components, but this is only valuable to a small niche of gamers and professional users — most people, even average gamers, would be fine going with a prebuilt system. If you’re an average person or even an average gamer, you’ll likely find that it’s cheaper to purchase a prebuilt PC rather than assemble your own. Even at the very high end, components may be more expensive separately than they are in a prebuilt PC. Enthusiasts who want to choose all the individual components for their dream gaming PC and want maximum flexibility may want to build their own PCs. Even then, building your own PC these days is more about flexibility and component choice than it is about saving money. In summary, you probably shouldn’t build your own PC. If you’re an enthusiast, you may want to — but only a small minority of people would actually benefit from building their own systems. Feel free to compare prices, but you may be surprised which is cheaper. Image Credit: Richard Jones on Flickr, elPadawan on Flickr, Richard Jones on Flickr     

  Read the article

• RDA Health Checks for SOA

  - by ShawnBailey

  What is a health check in RDA? A health check evaluates something in your environment to determine whether a change needs to be considered in order to avoid a problem or optimize fuctionality. Examples of what this 'something' might be are: Configuration Parameters JVM Options Runtime Statistics What have we done for SOA? In the latest release of RDA, 4.30, we have added a Rule Set for SOA called 'Oracle SOA 11g (11.1.1) Post Installation (Generic)'. This Rule Set contains 14 SOA related health checks. These checks were all derived from common issues / solutions we see in support of the SOA product. Many of the recommendations come from the product documentation while others are covered in the SOA Knowledge Base. Our goal is that you will be able to easily identify the areas of concern and understand the guidance available from the output of the Rule Set. Running the health checks for SOA The rules that the checks use are installed with RDA and bundled by product or functional area into what are called 'Rule Sets'. To view the available Rule Sets simply run the command from the RDA home location: rda.cmd (or .sh) -dT hcve This will bring up a list of the available HCVE (Health Check / Verification Engine) Rule Sets. Each Rule Set contains a group of related rules that are used for evalutation and display of results. A rule can be considered synonymous with a single health check and they are assigned an ID, Name and Description that can be seen when they are executed. The Rule Set for SOA is option number 11 and you just enter this selection at the prompt. The Rule Set will then execute to completion. After running an HCVE Rule Set the tool will write the output to the RDA_HOME/output folder. The simplest way to view the output is to drag the .htm file to a browser but of course it can also be uploaded to a Service Request for evaluation by Oracle Support. Many of the Rule Sets will prompt you for information before they can execute their rules but the SOA Rule Set will identify the SOA domains configured in your RDA setup.cfg file. This means that you don't need to answer all of the questions again about where stuff is but it also means that you must have configured RDA for SOA. To run the Rule Set: Download the latest version of RDA from MOS Doc ID 314422.1 Configure RDA for your SOA domains. Detailed steps can be found here In it's simplest form the command is 'rda.cmd (.sh) -S SOA' Go to the RDA home location and enter the command 'rda.cmd (or .sh) -dT hcve' Select option '11' It should be noted that this our first release of a SOA Rule Set so there will probably be some things we need to clean up or fix. None of these rules will actually modify anything on your system as they are read only and do the evaluations internally. Please let us know if you have any issues with the rules or ideas for new ones so we can make them as useful as possible. The Checks Here is a list of the SOA health checks by ID, Name and Description. ID Name Description A00100 SOA Domain Homes Lists the SOA domains that were indentified from the RDA setup.cfg file A00200 Coherence Protocol Conflict Checks to see if you have both Unicast and Multicast configured in the same domain. Checks both the setDomainEnv and config.xml entries (if it exists). We recommend Unicast with fully qualified host names or IP addresses. A00210 Coherence Fully Qualified Host Checks that the host names are fully qualified or that IP addresses are used. Will fail if unqualified host names are detected. A00220 Unicast Local Host Checks that the Coherence localhost is specified for use with Unicast A00300 JTA Timeout Checks that the JTA timeout is configured for the domain and lists the value. The bundled rule will only list the current values of the JTA timeout for each SOA Domain. In the future the rule with fail with a warning if the value is 300 seconds or lower. It is recommended that timeouts follow the pattern 'syncMaxWaitTime' < EJB Timeouts < JTA Timeout. The 300 second value is important because the EJB Timeouts default to 300 seconds. Additional information can be found in MOS Doc ID 880313.1. A00310 XA Max Time Checks that the JTA Maximum XA call time is set for the domain. Fails if it is not explicitly set or if the value is less than or equal to the default of 12000 ms. A00320 XA Timeout Checks that the XA timeout is enabled and that the value is '0' for the SOA Data Source (SOADataSource-jdbc.xml) A00330 JDBC Statement Timeout Checks that the Statement Timeout is set for all SOA Data Sources. Fails if the value is not set or if it is set to the default of -1. A00400 XA Driver Checks that the SOA Data Source is configured to use an XA driver. Fails if it is not. A00410 JDBC Capacity Settings Checks that the minimum and maximum capacity are equal for all SOA Data Sources. Fails if they are not and lists specifically which data sources failed. A00500 SOA Roles Checks that the default SOA roles 'SOAAdmin' and 'SOAOperator' are configured for the soa-infra application in the file sytem-jazn-data.xml. Fails if they are not. A00700 SOA-INFRA Deployment Checks that the soa-infra application is deployed to either a cluster, all members of a cluster or a stand alone server. A00710 SOA Deployments Checks that the SOA related applications are deployed to the same domain members as soa-infra. A00720 SOA Library Deployments Checks that the SOA related libraries are deployed to the same domain members as soa-infra. A00730 Data Source Deployments Checks that the SOA Data Sources are all targeted to the same domain members as soa-infra

  Read the article

• Source-control 'wet-work'?

  - by Phil Factor

  When a design or creative work is flawed beyond remedy, it is often best to destroy it and start again. The other day, I lost the code to a long and intricate SQL batch I was working on. I’d thought it was impossible, but it happened. With all the technology around that is designed to prevent this occurring, this sort of accident has become a rare event.  If it weren’t for a deranged laptop, and my distraction, the code wouldn’t have been lost this time.  As always, I sighed, had a soothing cup of tea, and typed it all in again.  The new code I hastily tapped in  was much better: I’d held in my head the essence of how the code should work rather than the details: I now knew for certain  the start point, the end, and how it should be achieved. Instantly the detritus of half-baked thoughts fell away and I was able to write logical code that performed better.  Because I could work so quickly, I was able to hold the details of all the columns and variables in my head, and the dynamics of the flow of data. It was, in fact, easier and quicker to start from scratch rather than tidy up and refactor the existing code with its inevitable fumbling and half-baked ideas. What a shame that technology is now so good that developers rarely experience the cleansing shock of losing one’s code and having to rewrite it from scratch.  If you’ve never accidentally lost  your code, then it is worth doing it deliberately once for the experience. Creative people have, until Technology mistakenly prevented it, torn up their drafts or sketches, threw them in the bin, and started again from scratch.  Leonardo’s obsessive reworking of the Mona Lisa was renowned because it was so unusual:  Most artists have been utterly ruthless in destroying work that didn’t quite make it. Authors are particularly keen on writing afresh, and the results are generally positive. Lawrence of Arabia actually lost the entire 250,000 word manuscript of ‘The Seven Pillars of Wisdom’ by accidentally leaving it on a train at Reading station, before rewriting a much better version.  Now, any writer or artist is seduced by technology into altering or refining their work rather than casting it dramatically in the bin or setting a light to it on a bonfire, and rewriting it from the blank page.  It is easy to pick away at a flawed work, but the real creative process is far more brutal. Once, many years ago whilst running a software house that supplied commercial software to local businesses, I’d been supervising an accounting system for a farming cooperative. No packaged system met their needs, and it was all hand-cut code.  For us, it represented a breakthrough as it was for a government organisation, and success would guarantee more contracts. As you’ve probably guessed, the code got mangled in a disk crash just a week before the deadline for delivery, and the many backups all proved to be entirely corrupted by a faulty tape drive.  There were some fragments left on individual machines, but they were all of different versions.  The developers were in despair.  Strangely, I managed to re-write the bulk of a three-month project in a manic and caffeine-soaked weekend.  Sure, that elegant universally-applicable input-form routine was‘nt quite so elegant, but it didn’t really need to be as we knew what forms it needed to support.  Yes, the code lacked architectural elegance and reusability. By dawn on Monday, the application passed its integration tests. The developers rose to the occasion after I’d collapsed, and tidied up what I’d done, though they were reproachful that some of the style and elegance had gone out of the application. By the delivery date, we were able to install it. It was a smaller, faster application than the beta they’d seen and the user-interface had a new, rather Spartan, appearance that we swore was done to conform to the latest in user-interface guidelines. (we switched to Helvetica font to look more ‘Bauhaus’ ). The client was so delighted that he forgave the new bugs that had crept in. I still have the disk that crashed, up in the attic. In IT, we have had mixed experiences from complete re-writes. Lotus 123 never really recovered from a complete rewrite from assembler into C, Borland made the mistake with Arago and Quattro Pro  and Netscape’s complete rewrite of their Navigator 4 browser was a white-knuckle ride. In all cases, the decision to rewrite was a result of extreme circumstances where no other course of action seemed possible.   The rewrite didn’t come out of the blue. I prefer to remember the rewrite of Minix by young Linus Torvalds, or the rewrite of Bitkeeper by a slightly older Linus.  The rewrite of CP/M didn’t do too badly either, did it? Come to think of it, the guy who decided to rewrite the windowing system of the Xerox Star never regretted the decision. I’ll agree that one should often resist calls for a rewrite. One of the worst habits of the more inexperienced programmer is to denigrate whatever code he or she inherits, and then call loudly for a complete rewrite. They are buoyed up by the mistaken belief that they can do better. This, however, is a different psychological phenomenon, more related to the idea of some motorcyclists that they are operating on infinite lives, or the occasional squaddies that if they charge the machine-guns determinedly enough all will be well. Grim experience brings out the humility in any experienced programmer.  I’m referring to quite different circumstances here. Where a team knows the requirements perfectly, are of one mind on methodology and coding standards, and they already have a solution, then what is wrong with considering  a complete rewrite? Rewrites are so painful in the early stages, until that point where one realises the payoff, that even I quail at the thought. One needs a natural disaster to push one over the edge. The trouble is that source-control systems, and disaster recovery systems, are just too good nowadays.   If I were to lose this draft of this very blog post, I know I’d rewrite it much better. However, if you read this, you’ll know I didn’t have the nerve to delete it and start again.  There was a time that one prayed that unreliable hardware would deliver you from an unmaintainable mess of a codebase, but now technology has made us almost entirely immune to such a merciful act of God. An old friend of mine with long experience in the software industry has long had the idea of the ‘source-control wet-work’,  where one hires a malicious hacker in some wild eastern country to hack into one’s own  source control system to destroy all trace of the source to an application. Alas, backup systems are just too good to make this any more than a pipedream. Somehow, it would be difficult to promote the idea. As an alternative, could one construct a source control system that, on doing all the code-quality metrics, would systematically destroy all trace of source code that failed the quality test? Alas, I can’t see many managers buying into the idea. In reading the full story of the near-loss of Toy Story 2, it set me thinking. It turned out that the lucky restoration of the code wasn’t the happy ending one first imagined it to be, because they eventually came to the conclusion that the plot was fundamentally flawed and it all had to be rewritten anyway.  Was this an early  case of the ‘source-control wet-job’?’ It is very hard nowadays to do a rapid U-turn in a development project because we are far too prone to cling to our existing source-code.

  Read the article

• How to get paid and figure out if I want to keep this client [migrated]

  - by Heiner Fawkes

  I have a client who is not paying on time, but it looks like the specifics don't match similar questions on this SE site. I got a call from a client I did website work for years ago. I had not done this kind of work for many years and frankly I'm not sure I want to now, but nevertheless about a month ago I agreed to bring his website, SEO, social media, and overall marketing for his small business up to speed. Why? He has told me many times how I'm the most honest, most well-informed contractor he's had experience with. And I personally kind of like him too. So I started working on an hourly basis. I sent one very small invoice and got paid. Then we talked a whole lot about all sorts of feature he would like me to implement. I started that work, and sent a second invoice on the first of the month (one of my two stated billing days). I didn't get paid. On every invoice it states that I charge a whopping ten percent per week late. I sent many voicemails and emails asking to please let me know what's going on with payment, and didn't get replies. Then the 15th of the month rolled around (which I stated initially as one of my invoicing dates). Since I hadn't been paid for the last invoice, I simply didn't send him an invoice at that time but emailed him and said that I will combine it with the next scheduled invoice for this reason (probably a bad idea I realize). Eventually he sent a portion of the invoice payment. I emailed back to let him know that he's three weeks late and what the remaining balance is. Finally we got in touch via phone. He basically told me that he thought I hadn't done all of the work I said I did. He looked at the page source code and it didn't look complete to him. I explained why his perception would be different and what work I had done as specified. He accepted this and said that part of the reason he didn't pay in full is that he's been swamped with personal family stuff, and part of the reason is that he didn't think I did all the work. That struck me as pretty weird. He also expressed concern that he has no idea now how much all the changes he has asked for are going to cost. And once again, he told me how honest and high-quality my services are compared to others he has dealt with. He also said he would pay me more (but not all) of the now three weeks overdue invoice that day. I didn't receive any payment. Basically this is how the client relationship strikes me: He's not good at communication. He's very busy and English isn't his first language. He almost never replies to emails but phone calls are fine. He's asked me to avoid emails for communication and I've asked him to please use email. He might not have enough money to afford all the things he has asked for. But so far I have been working for an hourly fee (which is quite high). He also has started paying monthly for hosting and social media services from me. What seems very abnormal is for a client to be so overdue on payments and to actually withhold payment of an invoice without any communication because he didn't think the work was done. I told him that I will send dollar estimates of each module of remaining work so that we can decide which ones are the highest priority if he cannot afford them all. I also reiterated that in the future if he has doubts about the work or an inability to pay, he must contact me immediately to say so. I basically plan to state the following to him: I would like to work for him and help his business. I also have sympathy for his recent family difficulties. I am happy to figure out payment plans that would work better for him, but first I need to be paid in full for all outstanding invoices, especially given that I skipped one of them just to be nice. The most crucial thing I need is communication about any problems with my work or his ability to pay. Once again, he heeds to pay in full immediately before we negotiate anything else. Does the above seem like an appropriate communication? Is anything missing from it? Is anything I'm doing here really abnormal?

  Read the article

• VB Myth - Case Insensitivity is Awesome!

  - by Damon

  I was reading Andy Brown's article 10 Reasons Why Visual Basic is Better than C# and the first claim is that VB is superior because of case insensitivity.  I think the reasons he outlines are basically as follows: Your fingers get tired finding the shift key (e.g. typing PascalCase and camelCase members) You are much more likely to make mistakes while typing names When you accidentally leave caps lock on, it really matters These three arguments culminate in the conclusion: "It doesn't matter if you disagree with everything else in this article: case-sensitivity alone is sufficient reason to ditch C#!" Righto.  I've been using Visual Basic since version 5.0, I wrote a book about ASP.NET in Visual Basic, so I want everyone to know I'm definitely not a VB.NET hater.  I had to converted to C# because it was the language of preference at the places I've worked, so I'm used to both languages.  I love me some case sensitivity.  So first, let's debunk the claims. First, your fingers do not get tired of finding the shift key unless you are writing code in notepad and compiling everything on the command line.  Visual Studio pretty much takes away the need to use the shift key at all. For the most part, any programmer worth a damn doesn't have to type more than about 3-5 characters of any variable or method name before IntelliSense kicks in to help.  VB or C#, if you are not using the tab key for autocomplete then you are typing too much anyway, regardless of whether the shift key is involved or not.  Also, you've got to be a pretty hard-core candy ass if you're complaining at the end of the day that your little fingers are hurting from hitting the shift key. Second, I cannot logically refute the fact that if there are more stringent rules about case sensitivity it will lead to more mistakes.  As such, know that you will be more prone to mistakes in C#.  However, lets talk about the magnitude of the problem.  If you are using IntelliSense then you have auto-correction built in so you probably won't have much of a problem in the first place.  If you manage to bypass IntelliSense and type something wrong you normally are immediately presented with a red-squiggly to let you know something is amiss.  Normally, a person would look at the problem, figure out what the heck went wrong, and then avoid that problem again in the future.  Granted, I have met people who seem to lack this capability, but their problem is deeper than a decision between VB.NET and C#.  So let's make sure that we're all on the same page about this problem.  If you have two teams of developers, one that uses VB.NET and one that uses C#, do not expect to see the VB.NET team drinking beer at the end of the project in festive revelry while the C# team is crying over what the hell to do because their code is riddled with case-sensitivity problems that nobody can resolve. Lastly, if you leave your caps lock key on, turn it off.  Really, what kind of ass-hat would write an entire VB.NET application ENTIRELY IN CAPS?  I happen to be a fan of case sensitivity because it encourages precision and uniformity.  The last thing I need is a code base that looks like it was ransacked by LeEt HacKors wHo Can uSe wHateVer cASe tHey wanT.  I mean really, if you saw someone write this: PuBLIc Sub MyMethod . End Sub And upon asking them why BL was upper case, they responded "Oh, I accidentally hit the shift key there.  Fortunately for me VB.NET is a case insensitive language so I saved a couple of keystrokes by leaving it in there."  Or if you saw: PUBLIC SUB ANOTHERMETHOD . END SUB And the response to why it was uppercased was "Yeah, I accidentally had caps locks on, fortunately for me VB.NET doesn't care.  Really dodged a bullet there, glad I wasn't using C#."  Would you not think that a bit ridiculous?  If you want to convince C# developers that C# sucks, go for it.  But the case insensitivity argument is crap.

  Read the article

• How to Save Hundreds or Thousands of Dollars on Cell Phone Service

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Cell phone contracts are bad. You get a seemingly cheap phone up front, but you more than pay for the cost of the phone over two years. Prepaid phone plans are surging in North America for a reason. Prepaid phone plans will be cheaper and more flexible than traditional contracts with big carriers for many people. However much you use your phone, there’s a good chance you can save money with a prepaid service. No More Contracts Here’s how cell phone service typically works in North America: You get a subsidized phone for “free”, $99, or $199. You sign up for a two-year contract and more than pay back the cost of that phone over the length of the contract. This is similar to leasing something or purchasing it on a credit card and paying it back over two years — you spend less up front, but you’re paying more in the long run. But this isn’t the only option. You could opt for a cheaper prepaid service that doesn’t lock you into a contract. If you don’t use your phone much, you could just pay for what you use and avoid the hefty cell phone bills. If you use your phone a lot, you could get a cheaper plan, too. Now, this certainly isn’t for everyone. If you want the latest iPhone or Galaxy smartphone every two years and require a 4G data connection, prepaid services may not be for you. On the other hand, if you don’t need the latest phone, you can save money here. You can also save a huge amount of money if you don’t use your phone much. Phone Options When you choose your prepaid or contract-free service, you’ll often be able to purchase a phone from them. You’ll generally be able to find dirt-cheap dumbphones and the cheapest, slowest Android phones for not very much money. If you are able to buy a top-of-the-line smartphone, you’ll have to pay the full, unsubsidized price. That’s $649 for either an iPhone 5S or Samsung Galaxy S4. Whatever phones the service provider offers, you could always buy a phone elsewhere — for example, you could buy an unsubsidized iPhone direct from Apple and then take it to your cell phone service of choice. Most services will allow you to get a SIM card and pop it into your existing phone rather than purchasing a phone. If you can get a hand-me-down smartphone, you can often save quite a bit of money. For example, you may have a family member upgrading from an iPhone 4S to an iPhone 5S. You could take their phone to a prepaid carrier and have a nicer phone on a cheap cell phone plan. If you brought an old smartphone to a big carrier like AT&T or Verizon, they wouldn’t give you a discount on your monthly plan. You’d have to pay the same amount of money every month as if you had gotten a subsidized phone. Google’s Nexus phones are also great options for people looking to buy smartphones and pay up-front. Google’s Nexus 4 offered a modern, almost top-of-the-line Android smartphone experience at $299 or $349 when it came out last year. Google will soon be releasing the Nexus 5 and it’s expected to be priced at $349. That’s certainly a lot more than a cheap phone, but it’s a fairly high-end smartphone at almost half the price of an iPhone 5S or Galaxy S4. Nexus phones can be purchased online from Google’s Play Store. Service Options When choosing a service, you need to consider what you actually use. If you’re someone who only uses your phone rarely, you can get plans that will allow you to pay as little as a few dollars per month. If you’re someone who’s usually in range of Wi-Fi, you may not need much data at all. If you want a plan with unlimited talk, texting, and data usage, you can get it for much cheaper than you’d pay on a major carrier like AT&T. The options here range from pay-as-you-go plans, like the ones offered by T-Mobile, which allow you to put a certain amount of money in and only drain that balance when you actually use minutes, texts, or data. If you only make a few calls and send a few texts per month, you’d only pay a few bucks. On the other end, Walmart’s Straight Talk service is a popular option that offers unlimited talk, texting, and data at $45 per month. Which service is right for you depends on a lot of things, including your usage and what each network’s coverage is like in your area. You’ll want to do some research of your own before choosing a service. Prepaid services also offer you even more flexibility after you choose one. If you’re not happy or a better deal comes along, you can switch — you’re not locked into your service for two years and you won’t pay an early termination fee. Image Credit: Intel Free Press on Flickr, Jon Fingas on Flickr, John Karakatsanis on Flickr, kendalkinggroup on Flickr     

  Read the article

• Grid Layouts in ADF Faces using Trinidad

  - by frank.nimphius

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} ADF Faces does provide a data table component but none to define grid layouts. Grids are common in web design and developers often try HTML table markup wrapped in an f:verbatim tag or directly added the page to build a desired layout. Usually these attempts fail, showing unpredictable results, However, ADF Faces does not provide a table layout component, but Apache MyFaces Trinidad does. The Trinidad trh:tableLayout component is a thin wrapper around the HTML table element and contains a series of row layout elements, trh:rowLayout. Each trh:rowLayout component may contain one or many trh:cellLayout components to format cells content. <trh:tableLayout id="tl1" halign="left">   <trh:rowLayout id="rl1" valign="top" halign="left">     <trh:cellFormat id="cf1" width="100" header="true">        <af:outputLabel value="Label 1" id="ol1"/>     </trh:cellFormat>     <trh:cellFormat id="cf2" header="true"                               width="300">        <af:outputLabel value="Label 2" id="outputLabel1"/>        </trh:cellFormat>      </trh:rowLayout>      <trh:rowLayout id="rowLayout1" valign="top" halign="left">        <trh:cellFormat id="cellFormat1" width="100" header="false">           <af:outputLabel value="Label 3" id="outputLabel2"/>        </trh:cellFormat>     </trh:rowLayout>        ... </trh:tableLayout> To add the Trinidad tag library to your ADF Faces projects ... Open the Component Palette and right mouse click into it Choose "Edit Tag Libraries" and select the Trinidad components. Move them to the "Selected Libraries" section and Ok the dialog.The first time you drag a Trinidad component to a page, the web.xml file is updated with the required filters Note: The Trinidad tags don't participate in the ADF Faces RC geometry management. However, they are JSF components that are part of the JSF request lifecycle. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} ADF Faces RC components work well with Trinidad layout components that don't use PPR. The PPR implementation of Trinidad is different from the one in ADF Faces. However, when you mix ADF Faces components with Trinidad components, avoid Trinidad components that have integrated PPR behavior. Only use passive Trinidad components.See:http://myfaces.apache.org/trinidad/trinidad-api/tagdoc/trh_tableLayout.htmlhttp://myfaces.apache.org/trinidad/trinidad-api/tagdoc/trh_rowLayout.htmlhttp://myfaces.apache.org/trinidad/trinidad-api/tagdoc/trh_cellFormat.html .

  Read the article

• C#/.NET Little Wonders: Static Char Methods

  - by James Michael Hare

  Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders posts can be found here. Often times in our code we deal with the bigger classes and types in the BCL, and occasionally forgot that there are some nice methods on the primitive types as well.  Today we will discuss some of the handy static methods that exist on the char (the C# alias of System.Char) type. The Background I was examining a piece of code this week where I saw the following: 1: // need to get the 5th (offset 4) character in upper case 2: var type = symbol.Substring(4, 1).ToUpper(); 3:  4: // test to see if the type is P 5: if (type == "P") 6: { 7: // ... do something with P type... 8: } Is there really any error in this code?  No, but it still struck me wrong because it is allocating two very short-lived throw-away strings, just to store and manipulate a single char: The call to Substring() generates a new string of length 1 The call to ToUpper() generates a new upper-case version of the string from Step 1. In my mind this is similar to using ToUpper() to do a case-insensitive compare: it isn’t wrong, it’s just much heavier than it needs to be (for more info on case-insensitive compares, see #2 in 5 More Little Wonders). One of my favorite books is the C++ Coding Standards: 101 Rules, Guidelines, and Best Practices by Sutter and Alexandrescu.  True, it’s about C++ standards, but there’s also some great general programming advice in there, including two rules I love:         8. Don’t Optimize Prematurely         9. Don’t Pessimize Prematurely We all know what #8 means: don’t optimize when there is no immediate need, especially at the expense of readability and maintainability.  I firmly believe this and in the axiom: it’s easier to make correct code fast than to make fast code correct.  Optimizing code to the point that it becomes difficult to maintain often gains little and often gives you little bang for the buck. But what about #9?  Well, for that they state: “All other things being equal, notably code complexity and readability, certain efficient design patterns and coding idioms should just flow naturally from your fingertips and are no harder to write then the pessimized alternatives. This is not premature optimization; it is avoiding gratuitous pessimization.” Or, if I may paraphrase: “where it doesn’t increase the code complexity and readability, prefer the more efficient option”. The example code above was one of those times I feel where we are violating a tacit C# coding idiom: avoid creating unnecessary temporary strings.  The code creates temporary strings to hold one char, which is just unnecessary.  I think the original coder thought he had to do this because ToUpper() is an instance method on string but not on char.  What he didn’t know, however, is that ToUpper() does exist on char, it’s just a static method instead (though you could write an extension method to make it look instance-ish). This leads me (in a long-winded way) to my Little Wonders for the day… Static Methods of System.Char So let’s look at some of these handy, and often overlooked, static methods on the char type: IsDigit(), IsLetter(), IsLetterOrDigit(), IsPunctuation(), IsWhiteSpace() Methods to tell you whether a char (or position in a string) belongs to a category of characters. IsLower(), IsUpper() Methods that check if a char (or position in a string) is lower or upper case ToLower(), ToUpper() Methods that convert a single char to the lower or upper equivalent. For example, if you wanted to see if a string contained any lower case characters, you could do the following: 1: if (symbol.Any(c => char.IsLower(c))) 2: { 3: // ... 4: } Which, incidentally, we could use a method group to shorten the expression to: 1: if (symbol.Any(char.IsLower)) 2: { 3: // ... 4: } Or, if you wanted to verify that all of the characters in a string are digits: 1: if (symbol.All(char.IsDigit)) 2: { 3: // ... 4: } Also, for the IsXxx() methods, there are overloads that take either a char, or a string and an index, this means that these two calls are logically identical: 1: // check given a character 2: if (char.IsUpper(symbol[0])) { ... } 3:  4: // check given a string and index 5: if (char.IsUpper(symbol, 0)) { ... } Obviously, if you just have a char, then you’d just use the first form.  But if you have a string you can use either form equally well. As a side note, care should be taken when examining all the available static methods on the System.Char type, as some seem to be redundant but actually have very different purposes.  For example, there are IsDigit() and IsNumeric() methods, which sound the same on the surface, but give you different results. IsDigit() returns true if it is a base-10 digit character (‘0’, ‘1’, … ‘9’) where IsNumeric() returns true if it’s any numeric character including the characters for ½, ¼, etc. Summary To come full circle back to our opening example, I would have preferred the code be written like this: 1: // grab 5th char and take upper case version of it 2: var type = char.ToUpper(symbol[4]); 3:  4: if (type == 'P') 5: { 6: // ... do something with P type... 7: } Not only is it just as readable (if not more so), but it performs over 3x faster on my machine:    1,000,000 iterations of char method took: 30 ms, 0.000050 ms/item.    1,000,000 iterations of string method took: 101 ms, 0.000101 ms/item. It’s not only immediately faster because we don’t allocate temporary strings, but as an added bonus there less garbage to collect later as well.  To me this qualifies as a case where we are using a common C# performance idiom (don’t create unnecessary temporary strings) to make our code better. Technorati Tags: C#,CSharp,.NET,Little Wonders,char,string

  Read the article

• How-to hide the close icon for task flows opened in dialogs

  - by frank.nimphius

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} ADF bounded task flows can be opened in an external dialog and return values to the calling application as documented in chapter 19 of Oracle Fusion Middleware Fusion Developer's Guide for Oracle Application Development Framework11g: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E15523_01/web.1111/b31974/taskflows_dialogs.htm#BABBAFJB Setting the task flow call activity property Run as Dialog to true and the Display Type property to inline-popup opens the bounded task flow in an inline popup. To launch the dialog, a command item is used that references the control flow case to the task flow call activity <af:commandButton text="Lookup" id="cb6"         windowEmbedStyle="inlineDocument" useWindow="true"         windowHeight="300" windowWidth="300"         action="lookup" partialSubmit="true"/> By default, the dialog that contains the task flow has a close icon defined that if pressed closes the dialog and returns to the calling page. However, no event is sent to the calling page to handle the close case. To avoid users closing the dialog without the calling application to be notified in a return listener, the close icon shown in the opened dialog can be hidden using ADF Faces skinning. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} The following skin selector hides the close icon in the dialog af|panelWindow::close-icon-style{ display:none; } To learn about skinning, see chapter 20 of Oracle Fusion Middleware Web User Interface Developer's Guide for Oracle Application Development Framework http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E15523_01/web.1111/b31973/af_skin.htm#BAJFEFCJ However, the skin selector that is shown above hides the close icon from all af:panelWindow usages, which may not be intended. To only hide the close icon from dialogs opened by a bounded task flow call activity, the ADF Faces component styleClass property can be used. The af:panelWindow component shown below has a "withCloseWindow" style class property name defined. This name is referenced in the following skin selector, ensuring that the close icon is displayed af|panelWindow.withCloseIcon::close-icon-style{ display:block; } In summary, to hide the close icon shown for bounded task flows that are launched in inline popup dialogs, the default display behavior of the close icon of the af:panelWindow needs to be reversed. Instead to always display the close icon, the close icon is always hidden, using the first skin selector. To show the disclosed icon in other usages of the af:panelWindow component, the component is flagged with a styleClass property value as shown below <af:popup id="p1">   <af:panelWindow id="pw1" contentWidth="300" contentHeight="300"                                 styleClass="withCloseIcon"/> </af:popup> The "withCloseIcon" value is referenced in the second skin definition af|panelWindow.withCloseIcon::close-icon-style{ display:block; } The complete entry of the skin CSS file looks as shown below: af|panelWindow::close-icon-style{ display:none; } af|panelWindow.withCloseIcon::close-icon-style{ display:block; }

  Read the article

• Using Event Driven Programming in games, when is it beneficial?

  - by Arthur Wulf White

  I am learning ActionScript 3 and I see the Event flow adheres to the W3C recommendations. From what I learned events can only be captured by the dispatcher unless, the listener capturing the event is a DisplayObject on stage and a parent of the object firing the event. You can capture the events in the capture(before) or bubbling(after) phase depending on Listner and Event setup you use. Does this system lend itself well for game programming? When is this system useful? Could you give an example of a case where using events is a lot better than going without them? Are they somehow better for performance in games? Please do not mention events you must use to get a game running, like Event.ENTER_FRAME Or events that are required to get input from the user like, KeyboardEvent.KEY_DOWN and MouseEvent.CLICK. I am asking if there is any use in firing events that have nothing to do with user input, frame rendering and the likes(that are necessary). I am referring to cases where objects are communicating. Is this used to avoid storing a collection of objects that are on the stage? Thanks Here is some code I wrote as an example of event behavior in ActionScript 3, enjoy. package regression { import flash.display.Shape; import flash.display.Sprite; import flash.events.Event; import flash.events.EventDispatcher; import flash.events.KeyboardEvent; import flash.events.MouseEvent; import flash.events.EventPhase; /** * ... * @author ... */ public class Check_event_listening_1 extends Sprite { public const EVENT_DANCE : String = "dance"; public const EVENT_PLAY : String = "play"; public const EVENT_YELL : String = "yell"; private var baby : Shape = new Shape(); private var mom : Sprite = new Sprite(); private var stranger : EventDispatcher = new EventDispatcher(); public function Check_event_listening_1() { if (stage) init(); else addEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE, init); } private function init(e:Event = null):void { trace("test begun"); addChild(mom); mom.addChild(baby); stage.addEventListener(EVENT_YELL, onEvent); this.addEventListener(EVENT_YELL, onEvent); mom.addEventListener(EVENT_YELL, onEvent); baby.addEventListener(EVENT_YELL, onEvent); stranger.addEventListener(EVENT_YELL, onEvent); trace("\nTest1 - Stranger yells with no bubbling"); stranger.dispatchEvent(new Event(EVENT_YELL, false)); trace("\nTest2 - Stranger yells with bubbling"); stranger.dispatchEvent(new Event(EVENT_YELL, true)); stage.addEventListener(EVENT_PLAY, onEvent); this.addEventListener(EVENT_PLAY, onEvent); mom.addEventListener(EVENT_PLAY, onEvent); baby.addEventListener(EVENT_PLAY, onEvent); stranger.addEventListener(EVENT_PLAY, onEvent); trace("\nTest3 - baby plays with no bubbling"); baby.dispatchEvent(new Event(EVENT_PLAY, false)); trace("\nTest4 - baby plays with bubbling"); baby.dispatchEvent(new Event(EVENT_PLAY, true)); trace("\nTest5 - baby plays with bubbling but is not a child of mom"); mom.removeChild(baby); baby.dispatchEvent(new Event(EVENT_PLAY, true)); mom.addChild(baby); stage.addEventListener(EVENT_DANCE, onEvent, true); this.addEventListener(EVENT_DANCE, onEvent, true); mom.addEventListener(EVENT_DANCE, onEvent, true); baby.addEventListener(EVENT_DANCE, onEvent); trace("\nTest6 - Mom dances without bubbling - everyone is listening during capture phase(not target and bubble phase)"); mom.dispatchEvent(new Event(EVENT_DANCE, false)); trace("\nTest7 - Mom dances with bubbling - everyone is listening during capture phase(not target and bubble phase)"); mom.dispatchEvent(new Event(EVENT_DANCE, true)); } private function onEvent(e : Event):void { trace("Event was captured"); trace("\nTYPE : ", e.type, "\nTARGET : ", objToName(e.target), "\nCURRENT TARGET : ", objToName(e.currentTarget), "\nPHASE : ", phaseToString(e.eventPhase)); } private function phaseToString(phase : int):String { switch(phase) { case EventPhase.AT_TARGET : return "TARGET"; case EventPhase.BUBBLING_PHASE : return "BUBBLING"; case EventPhase.CAPTURING_PHASE : return "CAPTURE"; default: return "UNKNOWN"; } } private function objToName(obj : Object):String { if (obj == stage) return "STAGE"; else if (obj == this) return "MAIN"; else if (obj == mom) return "Mom"; else if (obj == baby) return "Baby"; else if (obj == stranger) return "Stranger"; else return "Unknown" } } } /*result : test begun Test1 - Stranger yells with no bubbling Event was captured TYPE : yell TARGET : Stranger CURRENT TARGET : Stranger PHASE : TARGET Test2 - Stranger yells with bubbling Event was captured TYPE : yell TARGET : Stranger CURRENT TARGET : Stranger PHASE : TARGET Test3 - baby plays with no bubbling Event was captured TYPE : play TARGET : Baby CURRENT TARGET : Baby PHASE : TARGET Test4 - baby plays with bubbling Event was captured TYPE : play TARGET : Baby CURRENT TARGET : Baby PHASE : TARGET Event was captured TYPE : play TARGET : Baby CURRENT TARGET : Mom PHASE : BUBBLING Event was captured TYPE : play TARGET : Baby CURRENT TARGET : MAIN PHASE : BUBBLING Event was captured TYPE : play TARGET : Baby CURRENT TARGET : STAGE PHASE : BUBBLING Test5 - baby plays with bubbling but is not a child of mom Event was captured TYPE : play TARGET : Baby CURRENT TARGET : Baby PHASE : TARGET Test6 - Mom dances without bubbling - everyone is listening during capture phase(not target and bubble phase) Event was captured TYPE : dance TARGET : Mom CURRENT TARGET : STAGE PHASE : CAPTURE Event was captured TYPE : dance TARGET : Mom CURRENT TARGET : MAIN PHASE : CAPTURE Test7 - Mom dances with bubbling - everyone is listening during capture phase(not target and bubble phase) Event was captured TYPE : dance TARGET : Mom CURRENT TARGET : STAGE PHASE : CAPTURE Event was captured TYPE : dance TARGET : Mom CURRENT TARGET : MAIN PHASE : CAPTURE */

  Read the article

• how to do event checks for loops?

  - by yao jiang

  I am having some trouble getting the logic down for this. Currently, I have an app that animates the astar pathfinding algorithm. On start of the app, the ui will show the following: User can press "space" to randomly choose start/end coords, then the app will animate it. Or, user can choose the start/end by left-click/right-click. During the animation, the user can also left-click to generate blocks, or right-click to choose a new destiantion. Where I am stuck at is how to handle the events while the app is animating. Right now, I am checking events in the main loop, then when the app is animating, I do event checks again. While it works fine, I feel that I am probably doing it wrong. What is the proper way of setting up the main loop that will handle the events while the app is animating? In main loop, the app start animating once user choose start/end. In my draw function, I am putting another event checker in there. def clear(rows): for r in range(rows): for c in range(rows): if r%3 == 1 and c%3 == 1: color = brown; grid[r][c] = 1; buildCoor.append(r); buildCoor.append(c); else: color = white; grid[r][c] = 0; pick_image(screen, color, width*c, height*r); pygame.display.flip(); os.system('cls'); # draw out the grid def draw(start, end, grid, route_coord): # draw the end coords color = red; pick_image(screen, color, width*end[1],height*end[0]); pygame.display.flip(); # then draw the rest of the route for i in range(len(route_coord)): # pausing because we want animation time.sleep(speed); # get the x/y coords x,y = route_coord[i]; event_on = False; if grid[x][y] == 2: color = green; elif grid[x][y] == 3: color = blue; for event in pygame.event.get(): if event.type == pygame.MOUSEBUTTONDOWN: if event.button == 3: print "destination change detected, rerouting"; # get mouse position, px coords pos = pygame.mouse.get_pos(); # get grid coord c = pos[0] // width; r = pos[1] // height; grid[r][c] = 4; end = [r, c]; elif event.button == 1: print "user generated event"; pos = pygame.mouse.get_pos(); # get grid coord c = pos[0] // width; r = pos[1] // height; # mark it as a block for now grid[r][c] = 1; event_on = True; if check_events([x,y]) or event_on: # there is an event # mark it as a block for now grid[y][x] = 1; pick_image(screen, event_x, width*y, height*x); pygame.display.flip(); # then find a new route new_start = route_coord[i-1]; marked_grid, route_coord = find_route(new_start, end, grid); draw(new_start, end, grid, route_coord); return; # just end draw here so it wont throw the "index out of range" error elif grid[x][y] == 4: color = red; pick_image(screen, color, width*y, height*x); pygame.display.flip(); # clear route coord list, otherwise itll just add more unwanted coords route_coord_list[:] = []; clear(rows); # main loop while not done: # check the events for event in pygame.event.get(): # mouse events if event.type == pygame.MOUSEBUTTONDOWN: # get mouse position, px coords pos = pygame.mouse.get_pos(); # get grid coord c = pos[0] // width; r = pos[1] // height; # find which button pressed, highlight grid accordingly if event.button == 1: # left click, start coords if grid[r][c] == 2: grid[r][c] = 0; color = white; elif grid[r][c] == 0 or grid[r][c] == 4: grid[r][c] = 2; start = [r,c]; color = green; else: grid[r][c] = 1; color = brown; elif event.button == 3: # right click, end coords if grid[r][c] == 4: grid[r][c] = 0; color = white; elif grid[r][c] == 0 or grid[r][c] == 2: grid[r][c] = 4; end = [r,c]; color = red; else: grid[r][c] = 1; color = brown; pick_image(screen, color, width*c, height*r); # keyboard events elif event.type == pygame.KEYDOWN: clear(rows); # one way to quit program if event.key == pygame.K_ESCAPE: print "program will now exit."; done = True; # space key for random start/end elif event.key == pygame.K_SPACE: # first clear the ui clear(rows); # now choose random start/end coords buildLoc = zip(buildCoor,buildCoor[1:])[::2]; #print buildLoc; (start_x, start_y, end_x, end_y) = pick_point(); while (start_x, start_y) in buildLoc or (end_x, end_y) in buildLoc: (start_x, start_y, end_x, end_y) = pick_point(); clear(rows); print "chosen random start/end coords: ", (start_x, start_y, end_x, end_y); if (start_x, start_y) in buildLoc or (end_x, end_y) in buildLoc: print "error"; # draw the route marked_grid, route_coord = find_route([start_x,start_y],[end_x,end_y], grid); draw([start_x, start_y], [end_x, end_y], marked_grid, route_coord); # return key for user defined start/end elif event.key == pygame.K_RETURN: # first clear the ui clear(rows); # get the user defined start/end print "user defined start/end are: ", (start[0], start[1], end[0], end[1]); grid[start[0]][start[1]] = 1; grid[end[0]][end[1]] = 2; # draw the route marked_grid, route_coord = find_route(start, end, grid); draw(start, end, marked_grid, route_coord); # c to clear the screen elif event.key == pygame.K_c: print "clearing screen."; clear(rows); # go fullscreen elif event.key == pygame.K_f: if not full_sc: pygame.display.set_mode([1366, 768], pygame.FULLSCREEN); full_sc = True; rows = 15; clear(rows); else: pygame.display.set_mode(size); full_sc = False; # +/- key to change speed of animation elif event.key == pygame.K_LEFTBRACKET: if speed >= 0.1: print SPEED_UP; speed = speed_up(speed); print speed; else: print FASTEST; print speed; elif event.key == pygame.K_RIGHTBRACKET: if speed < 1.0: print SPEED_DOWN; speed = slow_down(speed); print speed; else: print SLOWEST print speed; # second method to quit program elif event.type == pygame.QUIT: print "program will now exit."; done = True; # limit to 20 fps clock.tick(20); # update the screen pygame.display.flip();

  Read the article

• MySQL Connector/Net 6.6.3 Beta 2 has been released

  - by fernando

  MySQL Connector/Net 6.6.3, a new version of the all-managed .NET driver for MySQL has been released.  This is the second of two beta releases intended to introduce users to the new features in the release. This release is feature complete it should be stable enough for users to understand the new features and how we expect them to work.  As is the case with all non-GA releases, it should not be used in any production environment.  It is appropriate for use with MySQL server versions 5.0-5.6. It is now available in source and binary form from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/net/#downloads and mirror sites (note that not all mirror sites may be up to date at this point-if you can't find this version on some mirror, please try again later or choose another download site.) The 6.6 version of MySQL Connector/Net brings the following new features:   * Stored routine debugging   * Entity Framework 4.3 Code First support   * Pluggable authentication (now third parties can plug new authentications mechanisms into the driver).   * Full Visual Studio 2012 support: everything from Server Explorer to Intellisense&   the Stored Routine debugger. Stored Procedure Debugging ------------------------------------------- We are very excited to introduce stored procedure debugging into our Visual Studio integration.  It works in a very intuitive manner by simply clicking 'Debug Routine' from Server Explorer. You can debug stored routines, functions&   triggers. These release contains fixes specific of the debugger as well as other fixes specific of other areas of Connector/NET:   * Added feature to define initial values for InOut stored procedure arguments.   * Debugger: Fixed Visual Studio locked connection after debugging a routine.   * Fix for bug Cannot Create an Entity with a Key of Type String (MySQL bug #65289, Oracle bug #14540202).   * Fix for bug "CacheServerProperties can cause 'Packet too large' error". MySQL Bug #66578 Orabug #14593547.   * Fix for handling unnamed parameter in MySQLCommand. This fix allows the mysqlcommand to handle parameters without requiring naming (e.g. INSERT INTO Test (id,name) VALUES (?, ?) ) (MySQL Bug #66060, Oracle bug #14499549).   * Fixed end of line issue when debugging a routine.   * Added validation to avoid overwriting a routine backup file when it hasn't changed.   * Fixed inheritance on Entity Framework Code First scenarios. (MySql bug #63920 and Oracle bug #13582335).   * Fixed "Trying to customize column precision in Code First does not work" (MySql bug #65001, Oracle bug #14469048).   * Fixed bug ASP.NET Membership database fails on MySql database UTF32 (MySQL bug #65144, Oracle bug #14495292).   * Fix for MySqlCommand.LastInsertedId holding only 32 bit values (MySql bug #65452, Oracle bug #14171960).   * Fixed "Decimal type should have digits at right of decimal point", now default is 2, and user's changes in     EDM designer are recognized (MySql bug #65127, Oracle bug #14474342).   * Fix for NullReferenceException when saving an uninitialized row in Entity Framework (MySql bug #66066, Oracle bug #14479715).   * Fix for error when calling RoleProvider.RemoveUserFromRole(): causes an exception due to a wrong table being used (MySql bug #65805, Oracle bug #14405338).   * Fix for "Memory Leak on MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlCommand", too many MemoryStream's instances created (MySql bug #65696, Oracle bug #14468204).   * Added ANTLR attribution notice (Oracle bug #14379162).   * Fix for debugger failing when having a routine with an if-elseif-else.   * Also the programming interface for authentication plugins has been redefined. Some limitations remains, due to the current debugger architecture:   * Some MySQL functions cannot be debugged currently (get_lock, release_lock, begin, commit, rollback, set transaction level)..   * Only one debug session may be active on a given server. The Debugger is feature complete at this point. We look forward to your feedback. Documentation ------------------------------------- You can view current Connector/Net documentation at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/connector-net.html You can find our team blog at http://blogs.oracle.com/MySQLOnWindows. You can also post questions on our forums at http://forums.mysql.com/. Enjoy and thanks for the support!

  Read the article

• External File Upload Optimizations for Windows Azure

  - by rgillen

  [Cross posted from here: http://rob.gillenfamily.net/post/External-File-Upload-Optimizations-for-Windows-Azure.aspx] I’m wrapping up a bit of the work we’ve been doing on data movement optimizations for cloud computing and the latest set of data yielded some interesting points I thought I’d share. The work done here is not really rocket science but may, in some ways, be slightly counter-intuitive and therefore seemed worthy of posting. Summary: for those who don’t like to read detailed posts or don’t have time, the synopsis is that if you are uploading data to Azure, block your data (even down to 1MB) and upload in parallel. Set your block size based on your source file size, but if you must choose a fixed value, use 1MB. Following the above will result in significant performance gains… upwards of 10x-24x and a reduction in overall file transfer time of upwards of 90% (eg, uploading a 1GB file averaged 46.37 minutes prior to optimizations and averaged 1.86 minutes afterwards). Detail: For those of you who want more detail, or think that the claims at the end of the preceding paragraph are over-reaching, what follows is information and code supporting these claims. As the title would indicate, these tests were run from our research facility pointing to the Azure cloud (specifically US North Central as it is physically closest to us) and do not represent intra-cloud results… we have performed intra-cloud tests and the overall results are similar in notion but the data rates are significantly different as well as the tipping points for the various block sizes… this will be detailed separately). We started by building a very simple console application that would loop through a directory and upload each file to Azure storage. This application used the shipping storage client library from the 1.1 version of the azure tools. The only real variation from the client library is that we added code to collect and record the duration (in ms) and size (in bytes) for each file transferred. The code is available here. We then created a directory that had a collection of files for the following sizes: 2KB, 32KB, 64KB, 128KB, 512KB, 1MB, 5MB, 10MB, 25MB, 50MB, 100MB, 250MB, 500MB, 750MB, and 1GB (50 files for each size listed). These files contained randomly-generated binary data and do not benefit from compression (a separate discussion topic). Our file generation tool is available here. The baseline was established by running the application described above against the directory containing all of the data files. This application uploads the files in a random order so as to avoid transferring all of the files of a given size sequentially and thereby spreading the affects of periodic Internet delays across the collection of results.  We then ran some scripts to split the resulting data and generate some reports. The raw data collected for our non-optimized tests is available via the links in the Related Resources section at the bottom of this post. For each file size, we calculated the average upload time (and standard deviation) and the average transfer rate (and standard deviation). As you likely are aware, transferring data across the Internet is susceptible to many transient delays which can cause anomalies in the resulting data. It is for this reason that we randomized the order of source file processing as well as executed the tests 50x for each file size. We expect that these steps will yield a sufficiently balanced set of results. Once the baseline was collected and analyzed, we updated the test harness application with some methods to split the source file into user-defined block sizes and then to upload those blocks in parallel (using the PutBlock() method of Azure storage). The parallelization was handled by simply relying on the Parallel Extensions to .NET to provide a Parallel.For loop (see linked source for specific implementation details in Program.cs, line 173 and following… less than 100 lines total). Once all of the blocks were uploaded, we called PutBlockList() to assemble/commit the file in Azure storage. For each block transferred, the MD5 was calculated and sent ensuring that the bits that arrived matched was was intended. The timer for the blocked/parallelized transfer method wraps the entire process (source file splitting, block transfer, MD5 validation, file committal). A diagram of the process is as follows: We then tested the affects of blocking & parallelizing the transfers by running the updated application against the same source set and did a parameter sweep on the block size including 256KB, 512KB, 1MB, 2MB, and 4MB (our assumption was that anything lower than 256KB wasn’t worth the trouble and 4MB is the maximum size of a block supported by Azure). The raw data for the parallel tests is available via the links in the Related Resources section at the bottom of this post. This data was processed and then compared against the single-threaded / non-optimized transfer numbers and the results were encouraging. The Excel version of the results is available here. Two semi-obvious points need to be made prior to reviewing the data. The first is that if the block size is larger than the source file size you will end up with a “negative optimization” due to the overhead of attempting to block and parallelize. The second is that as the files get smaller, the clock-time cost of blocking and parallelizing (overhead) is more apparent and can tend towards negative optimizations. For this reason (and is supported in the raw data provided in the linked worksheet) the charts and dialog below ignore source file sizes less than 1MB. (click chart for full size image) The chart above illustrates some interesting points about the results: When the block size is smaller than the source file, performance increases but as the block size approaches and then passes the source file size, you see decreasing benefit to the point of negative gains (see the values for the 1MB file size) For some of the moderately-sized source files, small blocks (256KB) are best As the size of the source file gets larger (see values for 50MB and up), the smallest block size is not the most efficient (presumably due, at least in part, to the increased number of blocks, increased number of individual transfer requests, and reassembly/committal costs). Once you pass the 250MB source file size, the difference in rate for 1MB to 4MB blocks is more-or-less constant The 1MB block size gives the best average improvement (~16x) but the optimal approach would be to vary the block size based on the size of the source file.    (click chart for full size image) The above is another view of the same data as the prior chart just with the axis changed (x-axis represents file size and plotted data shows improvement by block size). It again highlights the fact that the 1MB block size is probably the best overall size but highlights the benefits of some of the other block sizes at different source file sizes. This last chart shows the change in total duration of the file uploads based on different block sizes for the source file sizes. Nothing really new here other than this view of the data highlights the negative affects of poorly choosing a block size for smaller files.   Summary What we have found so far is that blocking your file uploads and uploading them in parallel results in significant performance improvements. Further, utilizing extension methods and the Task Parallel Library (.NET 4.0) make short work of altering the shipping client library to provide this functionality while minimizing the amount of change to existing applications that might be using the client library for other interactions.   Related Resources Source code for upload test application Source code for random file generator ODatas feed of raw data from non-optimized transfer tests Experiment Metadata Experiment Datasets 2KB Uploads 32KB Uploads 64KB Uploads 128KB Uploads 256KB Uploads 512KB Uploads 1MB Uploads 5MB Uploads 10MB Uploads 25MB Uploads 50MB Uploads 100MB Uploads 250MB Uploads 500MB Uploads 750MB Uploads 1GB Uploads Raw Data OData feeds of raw data from blocked/parallelized transfer tests Experiment Metadata Experiment Datasets Raw Data 256KB Blocks 512KB Blocks 1MB Blocks 2MB Blocks 4MB Blocks Excel worksheet showing summarizations and comparisons

  Read the article

• Short Season, Long Models - Dealing with Seasonality

  - by Michel Adar

  Accounting for seasonality presents a challenge for the accurate prediction of events. Examples of seasonality include: ·         Boxed cosmetics sets are more popular during Christmas. They sell at other times of the year, but they rise higher than other products during the holiday season. ·         Interest in a promotion rises around the time advertising on TV airs ·         Interest in the Sports section of a newspaper rises when there is a big football match There are several ways of dealing with seasonality in predictions. Time Windows If the length of the model time windows is short enough relative to the seasonality effect, then the models will see only seasonal data, and therefore will be accurate in their predictions. For example, a model with a weekly time window may be quick enough to adapt during the holiday season. In order for time windows to be useful in dealing with seasonality it is necessary that: The time window is significantly shorter than the season changes There is enough volume of data in the short time windows to produce an accurate model An additional issue to consider is that sometimes the season may have an abrupt end, for example the day after Christmas. Input Data If available, it is possible to include the seasonality effect in the input data for the model. For example the customer record may include a list of all the promotions advertised in the area of residence. A model with these inputs will have to learn the effect of the input. It is possible to learn it specific to the promotion – and by the way learn about inter-promotion cross feeding – by leaving the list of ads as it is; or it is possible to learn the general effect by having a flag that indicates if the promotion is being advertised. For inputs to properly represent the effect in the model it is necessary that: The model sees enough events with the input present. For example, by virtue of the model lifetime (or time window) being long enough to see several “seasons” or by having enough volume for the model to learn seasonality quickly. Proportional Frequency If we create a model that ignores seasonality it is possible to use that model to predict how the specific person likelihood differs from average. If we have a divergence from average then we can transfer that divergence proportionally to the observed frequency at the time of the prediction. Definitions: Ft = trailing average frequency of the event at time “t”. The average is done over a suitable period of to achieve a statistical significant estimate. F = average frequency as seen by the model. L = likelihood predicted by the model for a specific person Lt = predicted likelihood proportionally scaled for time “t”. If the model is good at predicting deviation from average, and this holds over the interesting range of seasons, then we can estimate Lt as: Lt = L * (Ft / F) Considering that: L = (L – F) + F Substituting we get: Lt = [(L – F) + F] * (Ft / F) Which simplifies to: (i)                  Lt = (L – F) * (Ft / F)  +  Ft This latest expression can be understood as “The adjusted likelihood at time t is the average likelihood at time t plus the effect from the model, which is calculated as the difference from average time the proportion of frequencies”. The formula above assumes a linear translation of the proportion. It is possible to generalize the formula using a factor which we will call “a” as follows: (ii)                Lt = (L – F) * (Ft / F) * a  +  Ft It is also possible to use a formula that does not scale the difference, like: (iii)               Lt = (L – F) * a  +  Ft While these formulas seem reasonable, they should be taken as hypothesis to be proven with empirical data. A theoretical analysis provides the following insights: The Cumulative Gains Chart (lift) should stay the same, as at any given time the order of the likelihood for different customers is preserved If F is equal to Ft then the formula reverts to “L” If (Ft = 0) then Lt in (i) and (ii) is 0 It is possible for Lt to be above 1. If it is desired to avoid going over 1, for relatively high base frequencies it is possible to use a relative interpretation of the multiplicative factor. For example, if we say that Y is twice as likely as X, then we can interpret this sentence as: If X is 3%, then Y is 6% If X is 11%, then Y is 22% If X is 70%, then Y is 85% - in this case we interpret “twice as likely” as “half as likely to not happen” Applying this reasoning to (i) for example we would get: If (L < F) or (Ft < (1 / ((L/F) + 1)) Then  Lt = L * (Ft / F) Else Lt = 1 – (F / L) + (Ft * F / L)  

  Read the article

• Polite busy-waiting with WRPAUSE on SPARC

  - by Dave

  Unbounded busy-waiting is an poor idea for user-space code, so we typically use spin-then-block strategies when, say, waiting for a lock to be released or some other event. If we're going to spin, even briefly, then we'd prefer to do so in a manner that minimizes performance degradation for other sibling logical processors ("strands") that share compute resources. We want to spin politely and refrain from impeding the progress and performance of other threads — ostensibly doing useful work and making progress — that run on the same core. On a SPARC T4, for instance, 8 strands will share a core, and that core has its own L1 cache and 2 pipelines. On x86 we have the PAUSE instruction, which, naively, can be thought of as a hardware "yield" operator which temporarily surrenders compute resources to threads on sibling strands. Of course this helps avoid intra-core performance interference. On the SPARC T2 our preferred busy-waiting idiom was "RD %CCR,%G0" which is a high-latency no-nop. The T4 provides a dedicated and extremely useful WRPAUSE instruction. The processor architecture manuals are the authoritative source, but briefly, WRPAUSE writes a cycle count into the the PAUSE register, which is ASR27. Barring interrupts, the processor then delays for the requested period. There's no need for the operating system to save the PAUSE register over context switches as it always resets to 0 on traps. Digressing briefly, if you use unbounded spinning then ultimately the kernel will preempt and deschedule your thread if there are other ready threads than are starving. But by using a spin-then-block strategy we can allow other ready threads to run without resorting to involuntary time-slicing, which operates on a long-ish time scale. Generally, that makes your application more responsive. In addition, by blocking voluntarily we give the operating system far more latitude regarding power management. Finally, I should note that while we have OS-level facilities like sched_yield() at our disposal, yielding almost never does what you'd want or naively expect. Returning to WRPAUSE, it's natural to ask how well it works. To help answer that question I wrote a very simple C/pthreads benchmark that launches 8 concurrent threads and binds those threads to processors 0..7. The processors are numbered geographically on the T4, so those threads will all be running on just one core. Unlike the SPARC T2, where logical CPUs 0,1,2 and 3 were assigned to the first pipeline, and CPUs 4,5,6 and 7 were assigned to the 2nd, there's no fixed mapping between CPUs and pipelines in the T4. And in some circumstances when the other 7 logical processors are idling quietly, it's possible for the remaining logical processor to leverage both pipelines. Some number T of the threads will iterate in a tight loop advancing a simple Marsaglia xor-shift pseudo-random number generator. T is a command-line argument. The main thread loops, reporting the aggregate number of PRNG steps performed collectively by those T threads in the last 10 second measurement interval. The other threads (there are 8-T of these) run in a loop busy-waiting concurrently with the T threads. We vary T between 1 and 8 threads, and report on various busy-waiting idioms. The values in the table are the aggregate number of PRNG steps completed by the set of T threads. The unit is millions of iterations per 10 seconds. For the "PRNG step" busy-waiting mode, the busy-waiting threads execute exactly the same code as the T worker threads. We can easily compute the average rate of progress for individual worker threads by dividing the aggregate score by the number of worker threads T. I should note that the PRNG steps are extremely cycle-heavy and access almost no memory, so arguably this microbenchmark is not as representative of "normal" code as it could be. And for the purposes of comparison I included a row in the table that reflects a waiting policy where the waiting threads call poll(NULL,0,1000) and block in the kernel. Obviously this isn't busy-waiting, but the data is interesting for reference. _table { border:2px black dotted; margin: auto; width: auto; } _tr { border: 2px red dashed; } _td { border: 1px green solid; } _table { border:2px black dotted; margin: auto; width: auto; } _tr { border: 2px red dashed; } td { background-color : #E0E0E0 ; text-align : right ; } th { text-align : left ; } td { background-color : #E0E0E0 ; text-align : right ; } th { text-align : left ; } Aggregate progress T = #worker threads Wait Mechanism for 8-T threadsT=1T=2T=3T=4T=5T=6T=7T=8 Park thread in poll() 32653347334833483348334833483348 no-op 415 831 124316482060249729303349 RD %ccr,%g0 "pause" 14262429269228623013316232553349 PRNG step 412 829 124616702092251029303348 WRPause(8000) 32443361333133483349334833483348 WRPause(4000) 32153308331533223347334833473348 WRPause(1000) 30853199322432513310334833483348 WRPause(500) 29173070315032223270330933483348 WRPause(250) 26942864294930773205338833483348 WRPause(100) 21552469262227902911321433303348

  Read the article

• Making your ASP.NET/HTML Websites Indic aware &ndash; accepting Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Hindi and ot

  - by Harish Ranganathan

  Its been a month since I wrote my last post.  Much of work has been happening around planning for Tech Ed India, the upcoming Virtual TechDays this week as well as our Developer content at the Great Indian Developer Summit 2010.  Its going to be one exciting period starting this week and I am glad I would be able to meet a lot of folks who have written to me personally that they would like to catch up at Tech Ed India. For now, I had a chance to meet the Microsoft India Development Centre team that worked on the Microsoft Indic Language Input Tool (erstwhile Akshara). The team updated me that they have also released the scripts  so that the Indic input feature can be encapsulated into your own websites.  For example, if you are having a web page where you collect user information, you can pretty much make your site indic aware i.e. accept inputs in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Hindi etc.,  All you would need to include would be a bunch of scripts onto your web pages and you are ready to make it, like I said, “indic aware” I have built a sample web page that accepts First Name, Last Name, Address and an additional field.  When it comes to accepting indic, sometimes, you may want to avoid the indic input in certain fields and accept it in English.  You can specify the MicrosoftILITWebAttach="false" attribute to the Text Boxes and Text Areas (TextMode=”Multiline” in ASP.NET) so that the particular field automatically switches over to English input.  Similarly, the moment you specify that the TextMode=”Password” to make it as a password field, it automatically ignores all indic recognition and shows the masked dots for the words entered. Note that, this is, when we are going for the Opt-out mode, where we are specifying that by default all the input controls would need indic awareness and we would specify for those controls where it is not required.  The other mode is Opt-in mode where you would need to add a different property to the script definition i.e. attachMode=”optin” .  When we do this, we need to explicitly add the MicrosoftILITWebAttach="true" attribute for every control where we need indic input. I have created a sample web page which accepts First Name, Last Name, Address and an additional input field to demonstrate the “Opt-out”.   You can copy paste this into any of your web pages to check it <form id="form1" runat="server">     <!-- Microsoft Indic Language Input Tool embed code --> <input type="hidden" id="MicrosoftILITWebEmbedInfo" attachMode="optout" value="" /> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://ilit.microsoft.com/bookmarklet/script/Tamil.js" defer="defer"></script>     <div>     <h2>         Welcome to the Registration Page     </h2>     <p>         First Name: <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtFirstName" />         <br />         <br />         Last Name: <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtLastName" />         <br />         <br />         Password:         <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtPassword" TextMode="Password" />         <br />         <br />         Address: <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtAddress" TextMode="MultiLine" Height="100" Width="200" />         <br />         <br />         English Text: <asp:TextBox ID="txtEnglishText" runat="server" MicrosoftILITWebAttach="false" />     </p>     <p>         <!-- Microsoft Indic Language Input Tool attribution image link --> <a style="text-decoration: none" href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=184205&clcid=0x409"><img style="border: 0px" alt="Transliteration by Microsoft" src="http://ilit.microsoft.com/bookmarklet/images/attribution.png"></a>     </p>     </div>     </form> If you note the code snippet above, I have included the scripts in the top with the attachMode set to “optout” and for the last TextBox, I have mentioned the MicrosoftILITWebAttach="false” attribute to make it accept English input.   Additionally, you also need to add the “Microsoft Indic Language Input Tool attribution image” to your web page as a courtesy to the team that developed this feature.  It would basically add a image saying “Transliteration by Microsoft” similar to a Copy Right image.  You can see the screen shot below where I have typed it in Tamil.  In that you will notice that the password field behaves as expected and the last field accepts English Text.  You can also notice the icon that comes in the first textbox that indicates that, the field is going to accept indic text.   This sample is using Tamil, but you can pretty much do it for Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Bengali etc.,   The website for getting the Indic script and other instructions is http://specials.msn.co.in/ilit/WebEmbed.aspx?language=Tamil You can replace the querystring value “Tamil” to other languages as mentioned above to get the respective script. This also works for plain HTML based websites and doesn’t necessarily need you to use ASP.NET to achieve the functionality. Note that, this form is not completely localized.  This is transliterated.  You can add label controls for FirstName, LastName indication etc., and use the Visual Studio tools to localize and get those values from resource files.  In the resource files, you can enter the text in different languages to make this a truly localized page.  If you just want to download the Indic Tool Desktop version (that can be used for typing in Word, Excel, pretty much any input area), you can download it from http://specials.msn.co.in/ilit/  In the same page, there is also a web version where you can type and get text then and there if you dont want to install the desktop version. So, go ahead, download / use them in your websites and enjoy the power of Indic. Cheers !!!

  Read the article

• A deadlock was detected while trying to lock variables in SSIS

  Error: 0xC001405C at SQL Log Status: A deadlock was detected while trying to lock variables "User::RowCount" for read/write access. A lock cannot be acquired after 16 attempts. The locks timed out. Have you ever considered variable locking when building your SSIS packages? I expect many people haven’t just because most of the time you never see an error like the one above. I’ll try and explain a few key concepts about variable locking and hopefully you never will see that error. First of all, what is all this variable locking all about? Put simply SSIS variables have to be locked before they can be accessed, and then of course unlocked once you have finished with them. This is baked into SSIS, presumably to reduce the risk of race conditions, but with that comes some additional overhead in that you need to be careful to avoid lock conflicts in some scenarios. The most obvious place you will come across any hint of locking (no pun intended) is the Script Task or Script Component with their ReadOnlyVariables and ReadWriteVariables properties. These two properties allow you to enter lists of variables to be used within the task, or to put it another way, these lists of variables to be locked, so that they are available within the task. During the task pre-execute phase the variables and locked, you then use them during the execute phase when you code is run, and then unlocked for you during the post-execute phase. So by entering the variable names in one of the two list, the locking is taken care of for you, and you just read and write to the Dts.Variables collection that is exposed in the task for the purpose. As you can see in the image above, the variable PackageInt is specified, which means when I write the code inside that task I don’t have to worry about locking at all, as shown below. public void Main() { // Set the variable value to something new Dts.Variables["PackageInt"].Value = 199; // Raise an event so we can play in the event handler bool fireAgain = true; Dts.Events.FireInformation(0, "Script Task Code", "This is the script task raising an event.", null, 0, ref fireAgain); Dts.TaskResult = (int)ScriptResults.Success; } As you can see as well as accessing the variable, hassle free, I also raise an event. Now consider a scenario where I have an event hander as well as shown below. Now what if my event handler uses tries to use the same variable as well? Well obviously for the point of this post, it fails with the error quoted previously. The reason why is clearly illustrated if you consider the following sequence of events. Package execution starts Script Task in Control Flow starts Script Task in Control Flow locks the PackageInt variable as specified in the ReadWriteVariables property Script Task in Control Flow executes script, and the On Information event is raised The On Information event handler starts Script Task in On Information event handler starts Script Task in On Information event handler attempts to lock the PackageInt variable (for either read or write it doesn’t matter), but will fail because the variable is already locked. The problem is caused by the event handler task trying to use a variable that is already locked by the task in Control Flow. Events are always raised synchronously, therefore the task in Control Flow that is raising the event will not regain control until the event handler has completed, so we really do have un-resolvable locking conflict, better known as a deadlock. In this scenario we can easily resolve the problem by managing the variable locking explicitly in code, so no need to specify anything for the ReadOnlyVariables and ReadWriteVariables properties. public void Main() { // Set the variable value to something new, with explicit lock control Variables lockedVariables = null; Dts.VariableDispenser.LockOneForWrite("PackageInt", ref lockedVariables); lockedVariables["PackageInt"].Value = 199; lockedVariables.Unlock(); // Raise an event so we can play in the event handler bool fireAgain = true; Dts.Events.FireInformation(0, "Script Task Code", "This is the script task raising an event.", null, 0, ref fireAgain); Dts.TaskResult = (int)ScriptResults.Success; } Now the package will execute successfully because the variable lock has already been released by the time the event is raised, so no conflict occurs. For those of you with a SQL Engine background this should all sound strangely familiar, and boils down to getting in and out as fast as you can to reduce the risk of lock contention, be that SQL pages or SSIS variables. Unfortunately we cannot always manage the locking ourselves. The Execute SQL Task is very often used in conjunction with variables, either to pass in parameter values or get results out. Either way the task will manage the locking for you, and will fail when it cannot lock the variables it requires. The scenario outlined above is clear cut deadlock scenario, both parties are waiting on each other, so it is un-resolvable. The mechanism used within SSIS isn’t actually that clever, and whilst the message says it is a deadlock, it really just means it tried a few times, and then gave up. The last part of the error message is actually the most accurate in terms of the failure, A lock cannot be acquired after 16 attempts. The locks timed out.  Now this may come across as a recommendation to always manage locking manually in the Script Task or Script Component yourself, but I think that would be an overreaction. It is more of a reminder to be aware that in high concurrency scenarios, especially when sharing variables across multiple objects, locking is important design consideration. Update – Make sure you don’t try and use explicit locking as well as leaving the variable names in the ReadOnlyVariables and ReadWriteVariables lock lists otherwise you’ll get the deadlock error, you cannot lock a variable twice!

  Read the article

• Top 10 Browser Productivity Tips

  - by Renso

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/renso/archive/2013/10/14/top-10-browser-productivity-tips.aspxYou don’t have to be a geek to be a productive browser user. The tips below have been selected by actions users take most of the time to navigate a web-site but use long-standing keyboard or mouse actions to get them done, when there are keyboard short-cuts you can use instead. Since you hands are already on the keyboard it is almost always faster to sue a keyboard shortcut to get something done that you usually used the mouse for. For example right-clicking on something to copy it and then doing to same for pasting something is very time consuming, keyboard shortcuts have been created that simplify the task. All it takes are a few memory brain cells to remember them. Here are the tips, in no particular order:   Tip 1 Hold down the spacebar on your keyboard to page to the end of your web page rather than using your mouse. This is really a slow way of doing it. If you want to page one page at a time, hit the spacebar once, and again to page again. But if you want to page all the way to the end of the web page simply hit Ctrl+End (that is hold down the Ctrl key and hit the End button on your keyboard). To get to the top of your web page, simply hit Ctrl + Home to go all the way to the top of your web page. Tip 2 Where are my downloads? Some folks run downloads again-and-again because they do not know where the last one went and they do not see the popup, or browser note on their web page in the footer, etc. Simply hit Ctrl+J. Works in most browsers. Tip 3 Selecting a US state from a drop down box. Don’t use the mouse, takes just way too long to scroll. When you tab to the drop down box or click on it with your mouse, simply hit the first character of the state and it will be selected. For Texas for example hit the letter “T” twice on your keyboard to get to it. The same concept can be applied to any drop down box that is alphabetical or numerically sorted. Tip 4 Fixing spelling errors. All modern-day browsers support this now. You see the red wavy lines underscoring a word, yes it is a spelling error. How do you fix it? Don’t overtype it or try and fix it manually, fist right-click on it and a list of suggestions comes up. If it does not show up, like my name “Renso” and you know how to spell your name as in this example, look further down the list of options (the little window popup that appears when you right click) and you should see an option to “Add to Dictionary”. Be warned, when you add it, it only adds it to the browser you’re using’s dictionary. If you use Google Chrome, Firefox and IE, each one will have their own list. Tip 5 So you have trouble seeing the text on the screen. Or you are looking at a photo, for example in Facebook. You want to zoom in to read better or zoom into a photo a bit more. Hit Ctrl++ (hold down Ctrl key and hit the plus key – actually it’s the equal key but it is easier to remember that it is plus for bigger). Hit the minus to zoom out. Now you can’t remember what the original size was since you were so excited to hit it 20 times, or was that 21… Simply hit Ctrl+0 (that is zero) and it will reset it to the default. Tip 6 So you closed a couple of tabs in your browser. Suddenly you remember something you wanted to double-check something on one of the tabs, you cannot remember the URL ad the tab is gone forever, or is it? Simply hit Ctrl+Shift+t and it will bring back your tabs one by one each time you click the T. This has also been a great way for me to quickly close some tabs because I don’t want my boss to see I’m shopping and then hitting Ctrl+Shift+t to quickly get it back and complete my check-put and purchase. Or, for parents, when you walk into your daughter’s room and you see she quickly clicks and closes a window/tab in here browser. Not to worry my little darling, daddy will Ctrl+Shift+t and see what boys on Facebook you were talking too… Tip 7 The web browser is frozen on your PC/Laptop/Whatever, in this example it may be your Internet Explorer browser. I don’t mention Firefox or Chrome here because it probably never happens in their world. You cannot close it, it won’t respond to anything you have done s far except for the next step you are about to take, which is throw your two-day old coffee on your keyboard. This happens especially on sites that want to force you to complete a purchase order. Hit Ctrl+Alt+Del on your keyboard on any version of windows, select TASK MANAGER. In the  First Tab, which is the Process Tab, look for the item in question. In this example you should see Internet Explorer. Right-click it and select “End Task”. It will force the thread out of memory and terminate that process. You can of course do this with any program running under your account. Tip 8 This is a personal favorite of mine. To select words in the paragraph without using the mouse. You don’t want to select one character at a time like when you use the Ctrl+arrows as it can be very slow if you want to select a lot of text. You also want to select whole words. Simply use the Ctrl+Shift_arrow (right or left depending which direction you want to go. Tip 9 I was a bit reluctant to add this one, but being in the professional services industry still come across many-a-folk that simply can’t copy-and-paste them-all text or images that reside on them screens, y’all. Ctrl+c to copy and Ctrl+v to paste it. Works a lot faster than using the mouse. You may be asking: “Well why in the devil did they not use Ctrl+p for paste…. because that is for printing. This is of course not limited to the browser world, it applies to almost any piece of software running on PC or Mac. Go try it on an image on your browser, right-click it and select copy. Open a word document and Ctrl+v to paste the image in there. Please consider copyright laws. Tip 10 Getting rid of annoying ads. Now this only works when you load a web page, meaning when you get back to the same page later you will have to do this again and you will need to learn a tool to do it, WELL WORTH IT. For example, I use GrooveShark to listen to music but I don’t like the ads they show. Install a tool like Firebug for Firefox or use the Ctrl+Shift+I on Chrome to bring up the developer toolbar. Shows at the bottom of the page. With Firefox, once you have installed Firebug as an add-on, a yellow bug should appear on the top right-hand-side of your browser, click on it to display the developer toolbar. You will need to learn how to use it, but once you know how to select an item/section on the window (usually just right-click the add you don’t want to see and select “Inspect Element”, the developer toolbar will appear (if not already there)) and then simply hit delete and it will remove the add from the screen. If you don’t know HTML you may need to play with it a bit, but once you understand how it works can open up a whole new world for you on how web pages actually work. If you can think of any others that have saved you a ton of time please let me know so I can add them to a top 99 list.

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 490 491 492 493 494 495 496 497 498 499 500 501  | Next Page >