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• Would a Socket Connection Outperform an Intarvaled Database Sweep and Requests?

  - by Jascha

  I'm building a small chat application to add to an existing framework. There will only be 20-50 users MAX at any one time. I was wondering if I could get away with updating a cache file containing (semi) live chat data for whichever users happen to be chatting just by performing timed queries and regular AJAX refreshes for new data as opposed to learning how to open and maintain a socket connection. I'm sure there are existing chat plug-ins out there. But I just had a hell of a time installing one and I could see building the whole damn thing taking just as much time as plugging one in. Am I off to a bad start? Thanks in advance -J (p.s. this is a semi closed network behind a php login so security isn't a great concern)

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• Jagged Edge Arrays in PHP

  - by chriscct7

  I want to store some data in (I guess a semi-2, semi-3d array) in PHP (5.3) What I need to do is store data about each floor like this: Floor Num of Spots Handicap Motorcyle Other 1 100 array(15,16,17) array (47,62) array (99,100) 2 100 array(15,16,17) array (47,62) array (99,100) and on The problem is, is if the Handicap+Motorcyle+Other were ints, I could just store the data in a 2d array. However, they aren't. So I was thinking I could make something almost like a 3D array, with the first two columns only being in 2D. The other thought I had was making a 2D array and for columns 3,4, and 5 instead of saving as array(15,16) //save like 1516 And then split at two digits (1 digit array numbers would be prefaced with a 0). However, I am wondering about the limit of the length of a string, because if I decide to move to a 3 digit length number in the array, like array(100, 104), and I need to store alot of numbers, I am thinking I am going to quickly exceed the max.

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• How can I make my custom keyboard transparent?

  - by Shubh

  I want to make soft keyboard background transparent and key buttons semi-transparent.

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• How to call a bool function...

  - by Gerri

  Hello, I did not see anything that address my particular code problem. I have a bool function in a class; the bool function is named: bool Triplet::operator ==(const Triplet& operand)const And I am trying to call it in Main but having problems just getting the call right. Apparently if I leave out any thing in the wording it gives an error that I have too few aruguments and if I try to use the entire wording of the function, I get the error that I need a semi-colon, but I already have a semi-colon at the end of the call, so I know that something else is wrong and I simply cannot figure out what is wrong! Any help would be appreciated! Thanks in advance.

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• Build turns partially transparent image pixels black

  - by Sean O'Hollaren

  I'm very new to C# and I've run into a problem and haven't been able to solve it. I have a row of buttons that have .png images assigned to them. The images are in .png format to allow transparency, and smoothing the edges in GIMP leaves some semi-transparent pixels. I've set the Image List Toolbar (imglToolbar)'s properties to recognize "Transparent" as the designated color to show up as transparent. I'm working in Visual Studio 2005. The strange thing is that everything looks great when I'm viewing the Visual C# form preview window. The icons look exactly as they should. However, once I actually build the project, the buttons treat every semi-transparent pixel near the edge of the image as if it's black. It seems like it can't handle one that's both transparent and has color. Image of it via the Visual C# form editor: Image of what it looks like when built: Any ideas as to why this is happening?

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• NSBezierPath with transparent fill

  - by nosedive25

  I've got a NSBezierPath that needs to have a semi-transparent fill. When I fill it with a solid color, I get the expected result. However, when filled with a semi-transparent color I get a path with a rounded stroke but an odd, rectangular fill. It looks like: Instead of filling the entire area, I get a filled rectangle inside the stoke with a small, unfilled boarder. I set up my path as follows: NSBezierPath *menuItem = [NSBezierPath bezierPathWithRoundedRect:menuItemRect xRadius:3 yRadius:3] [menuItem setLineWidth:4.0]; [menuItem setLineJoinStyle:NSRoundLineJoinStyle]; [[NSColor whiteColor] set]; [menuItem stroke]; [[NSColor colorWithCalibratedRed:0.000 green:0.000 blue:0.000 alpha:0.500] set]; [menuItem fill]; If anyones got any ideas, that would be great. Thanks

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• End marker for command line arguments

  - by rwallace

  I'm writing a program which takes filenames and options on the command line in the usual way, and also can be directed to read arguments from a file. I'm implementing the semi-standard -- to turn off special treatment of subsequent arguments, and # as comment marker. I also want to implement a marker for 'disregard all arguments from here on', i.e. an end marker. Is there a common/semi-standard way to indicate this? Or, what way would people find least surprising?

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• How would I get an img element to render under a background-image in CSS.

  - by Nat Ryall

  Basically, I am trying to put a semi-transparent div over an image to serve as a background for text for a slideshow. Unfortunately, the browser seems intent on always rendering the img over the background-image. Is there any way to fix this? Here is my current CSS for the semi-transparent div: #slideshow .info { height: 80px; margin-top: -80px; background: url(../../images/slideshow-info-pixel.png) repeat; } ... with slideshow-info-pixel.png being a single pixel, 50% opacity, PNG 24. I have so far tried z-index and the CSS must be compatible with IE6.

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• New Feature in ODI 11.1.1.6: ODI for Big Data

  - by Julien Testut

  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:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} By Ananth Tirupattur Starting with Oracle Data Integrator 11.1.1.6.0, ODI is offering a solution to process Big Data. This post provides an overview of this feature. With all the buzz around Big Data and before getting into the details of ODI for Big Data, I will provide a brief introduction to Big Data and Oracle Solution for Big Data. So, what is Big Data? Big data includes: structured data (this includes data from relation data stores, xml data stores), semi-structured data (this includes data from weblogs) unstructured data (this includes data from text blob, images) Traditionally, business decisions are based on the information gathered from transactional data. For example, transactional Data from CRM applications is fed to a decision system for analysis and decision making. Products such as ODI play a key role in enabling decision systems. However, with the emergence of massive amounts of semi-structured and unstructured data it is important for decision system to include them in the analysis to achieve better decision making capability. While there is an abundance of opportunities for business for gaining competitive advantages, process of Big Data has challenges. The challenges of processing Big Data include: Volume of data Velocity of data - The high Rate at which data is generated Variety of data In order to address these challenges and convert them into opportunities, we would need an appropriate framework, platform and the right set of tools. Hadoop is an open source framework which is highly scalable, fault tolerant system, for storage and processing large amounts of data. Hadoop provides 2 key services, distributed and reliable storage called Hadoop Distributed File System or HDFS and a framework for parallel data processing called Map-Reduce. Innovations in Hadoop and its related technology continue to rapidly evolve, hence therefore, it is highly recommended to follow information on the web to keep up with latest information. Oracle's vision is to provide a comprehensive solution to address the challenges faced by Big Data. Oracle is providing the necessary Hardware, software and tools for processing Big Data Oracle solution includes: Big Data Appliance Oracle NoSQL Database Cloudera distribution for Hadoop Oracle R Enterprise- R is a statistical package which is very popular among data scientists. ODI solution for Big Data Oracle Loader for Hadoop for loading data from Hadoop to Oracle. Further details can be found here: http://www.oracle.com/us/products/database/big-data-appliance/overview/index.html ODI Solution for Big Data: ODI’s goal is to minimize the need to understand the complexity of Hadoop framework and simplify the adoption of processing Big Data seamlessly in an enterprise. ODI is providing the capabilities for an integrated architecture for processing Big Data. This includes capability to load data in to Hadoop, process data in Hadoop and load data from Hadoop into Oracle. ODI is expanding its support for Big Data by providing the following out of the box Knowledge Modules (KMs). IKM File to Hive (LOAD DATA).Load unstructured data from File (Local file system or HDFS ) into Hive IKM Hive Control AppendTransform and validate structured data on Hive IKM Hive TransformTransform unstructured data on Hive IKM File/Hive to Oracle (OLH)Load processed data in Hive to Oracle RKM HiveReverse engineer Hive tables to generate models Using the Loading KM you can map files (local and HDFS files) to the corresponding Hive tables. For example, you can map weblog files categorized by date into a corresponding partitioned Hive table schema. 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:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Using the Hive control Append KM you can validate and transform data in Hive. In the below example, two source Hive tables are joined and mapped to a target Hive table. 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:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} The Hive Transform KM facilitates processing of semi-structured data in Hive. In the below example, the data from weblog is processed using a Perl script and mapped to target Hive table. 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:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Using the Oracle Loader for Hadoop (OLH) KM you can load data from Hive table or HDFS to a corresponding table in Oracle. OLH is available as a standalone product. ODI greatly enhances OLH capability by generating the configuration and mapping files for OLH based on the configuration provided in the interface and KM options. ODI seamlessly invokes OLH when executing the scenario. In the below example, a HDFS file is mapped to a table in Oracle. Development and Deployment:The following diagram illustrates the development and deployment of ODI solution for Big Data. Using the ODI Studio on your development machine create and develop ODI solution for processing Big Data by connecting to a MySQL DB or Oracle database on a BDA machine or Hadoop cluster. Schedule the ODI scenarios to be executed on the ODI agent deployed on the BDA machine or Hadoop cluster. ODI Solution for Big Data provides several exciting new capabilities to facilitate the adoption of Big Data in an enterprise. You can find more information about the Oracle Big Data connectors on OTN. You can find an overview of all the new features introduced in ODI 11.1.1.6 in the following document: ODI 11.1.1.6 New Features Overview

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• Ogre3D Fog with overlays

  - by Yourdoom

  I'm building a game with Ogre3d, I've got fog working properly with: scenemanager->setFog(Ogre::FOG_LINEAR, Ogre::ColourValue( 0.23f, 0.725f, 1.0f ), 0, 18, 20 ); However I'm currently implementing a GUI system (libRocket) which is rendered on top of everything else, and this removes the fog, does anyone know how to fix this? (I'm using the default libRocket rendering system for ogre as included in the samples, but this problem also appears when using a semi-transparent overlay).

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• TUL shows off DIY AIO PC at Pre-Computex event, Powered by AMD and Ubuntu

  <b>Semi-Accurate:</b> "TUL might have the solution you've been waiting for if it's the case, as the company was showing off its DIY All-in-One PC today at a Pre-Computex press conference. The system on show was running Ubuntu Linux and had an AMD processor and chipset."

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• Shadow Mapping and Transparent Quads

  - by CiscoIPPhone

  Shadow mapping uses the depth buffer to calculate where shadows should be drawn. My problem is that I'd like some semi transparent textured quads to cast shadows - for example billboarded trees. As the depth value will be set across all of the quad and not just the visible parts it will cast a quad shadow, which is not what I want. How can I make my transparent quads cast correct shadows using shadow mapping?

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• Ubuntu 12.04 can't detect internal mobile broadband (Gobi 2000)

  - by Anega

  Hi I have been trying Ubuntu to detect and connect using the buit in mobile broadband capability in my HP 110 netbook but until now nothing seems to work Output of lspci command: 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e2) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02) 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7-M Family) SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 02) 01:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01) 02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR8132 Fast Ethernet (rev c0) Output of lsusb command: Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 001 Device 002: ID 1fea:0008 Bus 005 Device 002: ID 03f0:2a1d Hewlett-Packard Bus 001 Device 005: ID 03f0:241d Hewlett-Packard Gobi 2000 Wireless Modem (QDL mode) So far I have been trying what is intended on several pages, trying to update firmware using wine and then moving .mda or whatever files the update package GobiInstaller.mdi throws out. The results are always the same: After running Output of wine msiexec /a GobiInstaller.msi /qb TARGETDIR="c:\temp" fixme:advapi:GetCurrentHwProfileA (0x33fba8) semi-stub fixme:heap:HeapSetInformation (nil) 1 (nil) 0 fixme:win:RegisterDeviceNotificationA (hwnd=0x13e250, filter=0xf7e984,flags=0x00000001) returns a fake device notification handle! fixme:heap:HeapSetInformation (nil) 1 (nil) 0 fixme:heap:HeapSetInformation (nil) 1 (nil) 0 fixme:advapi:RegisterEventSourceW ((null),L"Bonjour Service"): stub fixme:advapi:ReportEventA (0xcafe4242,0x0004,0x0000,0x00000064, (nil),0x0001,0x00000000,0x79e58c,(nil)): stub fixme:advapi:ReportEventW (0xcafe4242,0x0004,0x0000,0x00000064, (nil),0x0001,0x00000000,0x12e6d0,(nil)): stub fixme:winsock:WSAIoctl WS_SIO_UDP_CONNRESET stub fixme:winsock:WSAIoctl -> SIO_ADDRESS_LIST_CHANGE request: stub fixme:iphlpapi:DeleteIpForwardEntry (pRoute 0x79e920): stub fixme:iphlpapi:CreateIpForwardEntry (pRoute 0x79e958): stub fixme:advapi:ReportEventA (0xcafe4242,0x0004,0x0000,0x00000064, (nil),0x0001,0x00000000,0x79e58c,(nil)): stub fixme:advapi:ReportEventW (0xcafe4242,0x0004,0x0000,0x00000064, (nil),0x0001,0x00000000,0x12e6d0,(nil)): stub fixme:service:EnumServicesStatusW resume handle not supported fixme:service:EnumServicesStatusW resume handle not supported fixme:advapi:ReportEventA (0xcafe4242,0x0004,0x0000,0x00000064,(nil),0x0001,0x00000000,0x79e58c,(nil)): stub fixme:advapi:ReportEventW (0xcafe4242,0x0004,0x0000,0x00000064, (nil),0x0001,0x00000000,0x12e6d0,(nil)): stub fixme:netapi32:NetGetJoinInformation Semi-stub (null) 0x79e644 0x79e63c fixme:winsock:WSAIoctl WS_SIO_UDP_CONNRESET stub fixme:storage:create_storagefile Storage share mode not implemented. err:msi:ITERATE_Actions Execution halted, action L"_693CD41C_A4A2_4FA1_8888_FC56C9E6E13B" returned 1603 err:rpc:I_RpcGetBuffer no binding err:rpc:I_RpcGetBuffer no binding andres@andres-HP-Mini-110-1100:~/.wine/drive_c/Qualcomm$ fixme:advapi:ReportEventA (0xcafe4242,0x0004,0x0000,0x00000064,(nil),0x0001,0x00000000,0x79e588,(nil)): stub fixme:advapi:ReportEventW (0xcafe4242,0x0004,0x0000,0x00000064, (nil),0x0001,0x00000000,0x12e6d0,(nil)): stub And creates 2 empty folders, I have been trying hard and I am not sure if I am doing it the way it should be. Thanks

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• How to do geometric projection shadows?

  - by John Murdoch

  I have decided that since my game world is mostly flat I don't need better shadows than geometric projections - at least for now. The only problem is I don't even know how to do those properly - that is to produce a 4x4 matrix which would render shadows for my objects (that is, I guess, project them on a horizontal XZ plane). I would like a light source at infinity (e.g., the sun at some point in the sky) and thus parallel projection. My current code does something that looks almost right for small flying objects, but actually is a very rude approximation, as it doesn't project the objects onto the ground, but simply moves them there (I think). Also it always wrongly assumes the sun is always on the zenith (projecting straight down). Gdx.gl20.glEnable(GL10.GL_BLEND); Gdx.gl20.glBlendFunc(GL10.GL_SRC_ALPHA, GL10.GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA); //shells shellTexture.bind(); shader.begin(); for (ShellState state : shellStates.values()) { transform.set(camera.combined); transform.mul(state.transform); shader.setUniformMatrix("u_worldView", transform); shader.setUniformi("u_texture", 0); shellMesh.render(shader, GL10.GL_TRIANGLES); } shader.end(); // shadows shader.begin(); for (ShellState state : shellStates.values()) { transform.set(camera.combined); m4.set(state.transform); state.transform.getTranslation(v3); m4.translate(0, -v3.y + 0.5f, 0); // TODO HACK: + 0.5f is a hack to ensure the shadow appears above the ground; this is overall a hack as we are just moving the shell to the surface instead of projecting it on the surface! transform.mul(m4); shader.setUniformMatrix("u_worldView", transform); shader.setUniformi("u_texture", 0); // TODO: make shadow black somehow shellMesh.render(shader, GL10.GL_TRIANGLES); } shader.end(); Gdx.gl.glDisable(GL10.GL_BLEND); So my questions are: a) What is the proper way to produce a Matrix4 to pass to openGL which would render the shadows for my objects? b) I am supposed to use another fragment shader for the shadows which would paint them in semi-transparent grey, correct? c) The limitation of this simplistic approach is that whenever there is some object on the ground (it is not flat) the shadows will not be drawn, correct? d) Do I need to add something very small to the y (up) coordinate to avoid z-fighting with ground textures? Or is the fact they will be semi-transparent enough to resolve that problem?

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• SQL Server Connections Fall 2011 - Demos

  - by Adam Machanic

  Today is the last day of the annual SQL Server Connections show in Vegas, and I've just completed my third and final talk. (Now off to find a frosty beverage or two.) This year I did three sessions: SQL302: Parallelism and Performance: Are You Getting Full Return on Your CPU Investment? Over the past five years, multi-core processors have made the jump from semi-obscure to commonplace in the data center. While servers with 16, 32, or even 64 cores were once an out-of-reach choice for all except the...(read more)

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• Is there a library that handles hexagon tiled 2D maps?

  - by Pete Mancini

  It would represent a map that is semi-square of arbitrary size. It would have a simple system for representation of the map coordinates such as 0101 (first column, 1st hex). I'd want the map to be able to tell me the distance between two points, and what other hexes lay between those two points as a list or array. I don't care as much about the language but c# or python would be ideal. Does one exist?

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• c++ most used libraries [on hold]

  - by Basaa

  I'm trying to find out whether or not I want to switch from Java to c++ for my OpenGL game programming. I now have setup a test project in VS 11 professional, with GLUT. I created my windows with GLUT, and I can render OpenGL primitives without any problems. Now my question: What library(s) is/are used mostly in the indie/semi professional industry for using OpenGL in c++? With 'using OpenGL' I mean: Creating and managing an OpenGL window Actually using the OpenGL API Handling user-input (keyboard/mouse)

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• Can anybody recommend an application for laying out algorithms on a mac? [closed]

  - by Scotty

  In my intro to software development class I'm using a program called raptor which really helps me when I'm mapping out semi-complex algorithms and programs. The thing that I like about raptor is that when I'm flowcharting an algorithm, I can run it like an actual program and raptor steps through the code block by block. Unfortunately, raptor is only available on windows and when I'm at home I spend most of my time on Mac OS X. Is there any programs available for mac that help flowchart and step through algoritms?

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• Unable to Align Layers in Photoshop Properly with CS2

  - by Jonathan Sampson

  Cannot Align Semi-Transparent Items? Windows Vista, Photoshop CS2. Steps to repeat: Create new document Fill a circle on a new layer Drop opacity of filled circle to 10% Create new empty layer below circle layer Merge empty layer with filled circle layer Select entire canvas Attempt to align layers to selectionlayer > align layers to selection > vertical centers I get the following error: Could not complete the Vertical Centers command because there are no layers to be moved. Clearly this is not true, as I'm selecting the layer with the semi-translucent ball on it. Now, if you had tried this same command prior to step 5 (when the layer was at 10% opacity) it would have worked. Is there some way around this problem? I need to move layers around that begin as transparent items, with a layer opacity at 100% where 100% of the layers opacity results in showing objects that are themselves not-very opaque. I've confirmed on another machine that this problem doesn't exist in CS3. I may exist in earlier copies of Photoshop, but I only have access to CS2 (has the problem) and CS3 (does not have the problem).

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• Big Data: Size isn’t everything

  - by Simon Elliston Ball

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

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• Windows Azure Recipe: Social Web / Big Media

  - by Clint Edmonson

  With the rise of social media there’s been an explosion of special interest media web sites on the web. From athletics to board games to funny animal behaviors, you can bet there’s a group of people somewhere on the web talking about it. Social media sites allow us to interact, share experiences, and bond with like minded enthusiasts around the globe. And through the power of software, we can follow trends in these unique domains in real time. Drivers Reach Scalability Media hosting Global distribution Solution Here’s a sketch of how a social media application might be built out on Windows Azure: Ingredients Traffic Manager (optional) – can be used to provide hosting and load balancing across different instances and/or data centers. Perfect if the solution needs to be delivered to different cultures or regions around the world. Access Control – this service is essential to managing user identity. It’s backed by a full blown implementation of Active Directory and allows the definition and management of users, groups, and roles. A pre-built ASP.NET membership provider is included in the training kit to leverage this capability but it’s also flexible enough to be combined with external Identity providers including Windows LiveID, Google, Yahoo!, and Facebook. The provider model has extensibility points to hook into other identity providers as well. Web Role – hosts the core of the web application and presents a central social hub users. Database – used to store core operational, functional, and workflow data for the solution’s web services. Caching (optional) – as a web site traffic grows caching can be leveraged to keep frequently used read-only, user specific, and application resource data in a high-speed distributed in-memory for faster response times and ultimately higher scalability without spinning up more web and worker roles. It includes a token based security model that works alongside the Access Control service. Tables (optional) – for semi-structured data streams that don’t need relational integrity such as conversations, comments, or activity streams, tables provide a faster and more flexible way to store this kind of historical data. Blobs (optional) – users may be creating or uploading large volumes of heterogeneous data such as documents or rich media. Blob storage provides a scalable, resilient way to store terabytes of user data. The storage facilities can also integrate with the Access Control service to ensure users’ data is delivered securely. Content Delivery Network (CDN) (optional) – for sites that service users around the globe, the CDN is an extension to blob storage that, when enabled, will automatically cache frequently accessed blobs and static site content at edge data centers around the world. The data can be delivered statically or streamed in the case of rich media content. Training These links point to online Windows Azure training labs and resources where you can learn more about the individual ingredients described above. (Note: The entire Windows Azure Training Kit can also be downloaded for offline use.) Windows Azure (16 labs) Windows Azure is an internet-scale cloud computing and services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers, which provides an operating system and a set of developer services which can be used individually or together. It gives developers the choice to build web applications; applications running on connected devices, PCs, or servers; or hybrid solutions offering the best of both worlds. New or enhanced applications can be built using existing skills with the Visual Studio development environment and the .NET Framework. With its standards-based and interoperable approach, the services platform supports multiple internet protocols, including HTTP, REST, SOAP, and plain XML SQL Azure (7 labs) Microsoft SQL Azure delivers on the Microsoft Data Platform vision of extending the SQL Server capabilities to the cloud as web-based services, enabling you to store structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. Windows Azure Services (9 labs) As applications collaborate across organizational boundaries, ensuring secure transactions across disparate security domains is crucial but difficult to implement. Windows Azure Services provides hosted authentication and access control using powerful, secure, standards-based infrastructure. See my Windows Azure Resource Guide for more guidance on how to get started, including links web portals, training kits, samples, and blogs related to Windows Azure.

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• Consumer Oriented Search In Oracle Endeca Information Discovery – Part 1

  - by Bob Zurek

  Information Discovery, a core capability of Oracle Endeca Information Discovery, enables business users to rapidly search, discover and navigate through a wide variety of big data including structured, unstructured and semi-structured data. One of the key capabilities, among many, that differentiate our solution from others in the Information Discovery market is our deep support for search across this growing amount of varied big data. Our method and approach is very different than classic simple keyword search that is found in may information discovery solutions. In this first part of a series on the topic of search, I will walk you through many of the key capabilities that go beyond the simple search box that you might experience in products where search was clearly an afterthought or attempt to catch up to our core capabilities in this area. Lets explore. The core data management solution of Oracle Endeca Information Discovery is the Endeca Server, a hybrid search-analytical database that his highly scalable and column-oriented in nature. We will talk in more technical detail about the capabilities of the Endeca Server in future blog posts as this post is intended to give you a feel for the deep search capabilities that are an integral part of the Endeca Server. The Endeca Server provides best-of-breed search features aw well as a new class of features that are the first to be designed around the requirement to bridge structured, semi-structured and unstructured big data. Some of the key features of search include type a heads, automatic alphanumeric spell corrections, positional search, Booleans, wildcarding, natural language, and category search and query classification dialogs. This is just a subset of the advanced search capabilities found in Oracle Endeca Information Discovery. Search is an important feature that makes it possible for business users to explore on the diverse data sets the Endeca Server can hold at any one time. The search capabilities in the Endeca server differ from other Information Discovery products with simple “search boxes” in the following ways: The Endeca Server Supports Exploratory Search.  Enterprise data frequently requires the user to explore content through an ad hoc dialog, with guidance that helps them succeed. This has implications for how to design search features. Traditional search doesn’t assume a dialog, and so it uses relevance ranking to get its best guess to the top of the results list. It calculates many relevance factors for each query, like word frequency, distance, and meaning, and then reduces those many factors to a single score based on a proprietary “black box” formula. But how can a business users, searching, act on the information that the document is say only 38.1% relevant? In contrast, exploratory search gives users the opportunity to clarify what is relevant to them through refinements and summaries. This approach has received consumer endorsement through popular ecommerce sites where guided navigation across a broad range of products has helped consumers better discover choices that meet their, sometimes undetermined requirements. This same model exists in Oracle Endeca Information Discovery. In fact, the Endeca Server powers many of the most popular e-commerce sites in the world. The Endeca Server Supports Cascading Relevance. Traditional approaches of search reduce many relevance weights to a single score. This means that if a result with a good title match gets a similar score to one with an exact phrase match, they’ll appear next to each other in a list. But a user can’t deduce from their score why each got it’s ranking, even though that information could be valuable. Oracle Endeca Information Discovery takes a different approach. The Endeca Server stratifies results by a primary relevance strategy, and then breaks ties within a strata by ordering them with a secondary strategy, and so on. Application managers get the explicit means to compose these strategies based on their knowledge of their own domain. This approach gives both business users and managers a deterministic way to set and understand relevance. Now that you have an understanding of two of the core search capabilities in Oracle Endeca Information Discovery, our next blog post on this topic will discuss more advanced features including set search, second-order relevance as well as an understanding of faceted search mechanisms that include queries and filters.  

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• Consumer Oriented Search In Oracle Endeca Information Discovery - Part 2

  - by Bob Zurek

  As discussed in my last blog posting on this topic, Information Discovery, a core capability of the Oracle Endeca Information Discovery solution enables businesses to search, discover and navigate through a wide variety of big data including structured, unstructured and semi-structured data. With search as a core advanced capabilities of our product it is important to understand some of the key differences and capabilities in the underlying data store of Oracle Endeca Information Discovery and that is our Endeca Server. In the last post on this subject, we talked about Exploratory Search capabilities along with support for cascading relevance. Additional search capabilities in the Endeca Server, which differentiate from simple keyword based "search boxes" in other Information Discovery products also include: The Endeca Server Supports Set Search.  The Endeca Server is organized around set retrieval, which means that it looks at groups of results (all the documents that match a search), as well as the relationship of each individual result to the set. Other approaches only compute the relevance of a document by comparing the document to the search query – not by comparing the document to all the others. For example, a search for “U.S.” in another approach might match to the title of a document and get a high ranking. But what if it were a collection of government documents in which “U.S.” appeared in many titles, making that clue less meaningful? A set analysis would reveal this and be used to adjust relevance accordingly. The Endeca Server Supports Second-Order Relvance. Unlike simple search interfaces in traditional BI tools, which provide limited relevance ranking, such as a list of results based on key word matching, Endeca enables users to determine the most salient terms to divide up the result. Determining this second-order relevance is the key to providing effective guidance. Support for Queries and Filters. Search is the most common query type, but hardly complete, and users need to express a wide range of queries. Oracle Endeca Information Discovery also includes navigation, interactive visualizations, analytics, range filters, geospatial filters, and other query types that are more commonly associated with BI tools. Unlike other approaches, these queries operate across structured, semi-structured and unstructured content stored in the Endeca Server. Furthermore, this set is easily extensible because the core engine allows for pluggable features to be added. Like a search engine, queries are answered with a results list, ranked to put the most likely matches first. Unlike “black box” relevance solutions, which generalize one strategy for everyone, we believe that optimal relevance strategies vary across domains. Therefore, it provides line-of-business owners with a set of relevance modules that let them tune the best results based on their content. The Endeca Server query result sets are summarized, which gives users guidance on how to refine and explore further. Summaries include Guided Navigation® (a form of faceted search), maps, charts, graphs, tag clouds, concept clusters, and clarification dialogs. Users don’t explicitly ask for these summaries; Oracle Endeca Information Discovery analytic applications provide the right ones, based on configurable controls and rules. For example, the analytic application might guide a procurement agent filtering for in-stock parts by visualizing the results on a map and calculating their average fulfillment time. Furthermore, the user can interact with summaries and filters without resorting to writing complex SQL queries. The user can simply just click to add filters. Within Oracle Endeca Information Discovery, all parts of the summaries are clickable and searchable. We are living in a search driven society where business users really seem to enjoy entering information into a search box. We do this everyday as consumers and therefore, we have gotten used to looking for that box. However, the key to getting the right results is to guide that user in a way that provides additional Discovery, beyond what they may have anticipated. This is why these important and advanced features of search inside the Endeca Server have been so important. They have helped to guide our great customers to success. 

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• How to draw an Arc in OpenGL

  - by rpgFANATIC

  While making a little Pong game in C++ OpenGL, I decided it'd be fun to create arcs (semi-circles) when stuff bounces. I decided to skip Bezier curves for the moment and just go with straight algebra, but I didn't get far. My algebra follows a simple quadratic function (y = +- sqrt(mx+c)). This little excerpt is just an example I've yet to fully parameterize, I just wanted to see how it would look. When I draw this, however, it gives me a straight vertical line where the line's tangent line approaches -1.0 / 1.0. Is this a limitation of the GL_LINE_STRIP style or is there an easier way to draw semi-circles / arcs? Or did I just completely miss something obvious? void Ball::drawBounce() { float piecesToDraw = 100.0f; float arcWidth = 10.0f; float arcAngle = 4.0f; glBegin(GL_LINE_STRIP); for (float i = 0.0f; i < piecesToDraw; i += 1.0f) // Positive Half { float currentX = (i / piecesToDraw) * arcWidth; glVertex2f(currentX, sqrtf((-currentX * arcAngle)+ arcWidth)); } for (float j = piecesToDraw; j > 0.0f; j -= 1.0f) // Negative half (go backwards in X direction now) { float currentX = (j / piecesToDraw) * arcWidth; glVertex2f(currentX, -sqrtf((-currentX * arcAngle) + arcWidth)); } glEnd(); } Thanks in advance.

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• cleaning up noise in an edge detection algoritum

  - by Faken

  I recently wrote an extremely basic edge detection algorithm that works on an array of chars. The program was meant to detect the edges of blobs of a single particular value on the array and worked by simply looking left, right, up and down on the array element and checking if one of those values is not the same as the value it was currently looking at. The goal was not to produce a mathematical line but rather a set of ordered points that represented a descritized closed loop edge. The algorithm works perfectly fine, except that my data contained a bit of noise hence would randomly produce edges where there should be no edges. This in turn wreaked havoc on some of my other programs down the line. There is two types of noise that the data contains. The first type is fairly sparse and somewhat random. The second type is a semi continuous straight line on the x=y axis. I know the source of the first type of noise, its a feature of the data and there is nothing i can do about it. As for the second type, i know it's my program's fault for causing it...though i haven't a hot clue exactly what is causing it. My question is: How should I go about removing the noise completely? I know that the correct data has points that are always beside each other and is very compact and ordered (with no gaps) and is a closed loop or multiple loops. The first type of noise is usually sparse and random, that could be easily taken care of by checking if any edges is next that noise point is also counted as an edge. If not, then the point is most defiantly noise and should be removed. However, the second type of noise, where we have a semi continuous line about x=y poses more of a problem. The line is sometimes continuous for random lengths (the longest was it went half way across my entire array unbroken). It is even possible for it to intersect the actual edge. Any ideas on how to do this?

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