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• links for 2011-01-13

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Webcast: Oracle WebCenter Suite: Giving Users a Modern Experience Speakers: Vince Casarez (VP Enterprise 2.0 Product Management, Oracle),  Erin Smith (Consulting Practice Manager – Portals, Oracle), Robert Wessa (Consulting Technical Director – Enterprise 2.0 Infrastructure, Oracle)  (tags: oracle otn webcenter webcast enterprise2.0) Oracle & StickyMinds.com Webcast: Load Testing Techniques for Enterprise Applications Mughees Minhas, Senior Director of Product Management, Oracle Server Technologies, answers your questions about the latest techniques for effectively and efficiently testing enterprise application performance. Thursday, January 20, 2011. 10am PT / 1pm ET. (tags: oracle otn stickymings webcast) Bay Area Coherence Special Interest Group (BACSIG) Jan 20, 5:30pm - 8:00pm PT. Presentations: Coherence 3.6 Clustering Features (Rob Lee), Efficient Management and Update of Coherence Clusters to Reduce Down Time ( Rao Bhethanabotla), How To Build a Coherence Practice (Christer Fahlgren). (tags: oracle, otn coherence bacsig) Podcast Show Notes: William Ulrich and Neal McWhorter on Business Architecture (ArchBeat) A four-part interview with the authors of  "Business Architecture: The Art and Practice of Business Transformation"  (tags: oracle otn podcast businessarchitecture) John Brunswick: Overlapping Social Networks in your Enterprise? Strategies to Understand and Govern "Overall it is important to consider if tacit knowledge being captured by the social systems is able to be retained and somehow summarized into an overall organizational directory." - John Brunswick (tags: oracle otn enterprise2.0 socialnetworking) Coherence - How to develop a custom push replication publisher (Middlewarepedia) Cosmin Todur describes "a way of developing a custom push replication publisher that publishes data to a database via JDBC."  (tags: oracle coherence grid) Aino Andriessen: Oracle Diagnostics Logging (ODL) for application development "Logging is a very important aspect of application development as it offers run-time access to the behaviour and data of the application. It’s important for debugging purposes but also to investigate exception situations on production." -- Aino Andriessen (tags: oracle odl java jdeveloper weblogic) Security issues when upgrading a Web Catalog from 10g to 11g Oracle BI By Bakboord "I blogged about upgrading from Oracle BI EE 10g to Oracle BI EE 11g R1 earlier. Although this is a very straight forward process, you could end up with some security issues." -- Daan Bakboord (tags: oracle businessintelligence obiee) Angelo Santagata: SOA Composite Sensors : Good Practice "A good best practice is that for any composites you create, consider publishing a composite sensor value using a primary key of some sort , e.g. orderId, that way if you need to manipulate/query composites you can easily look up the instanceId using the sensorid." - Angelo Santagata (tags: oracle soa sca) Javier Ductor: WebCenter Spaces 11g PS2 Task Flow Customization "Previously, I wrote about Spaces Template Customization. In order to adapt Spaces to customers prototype, it was necessary to change template and skin, as well as the members task flow. In this entry, I describe how to customize this task flow." - Javier Ductor (tags: oracle otn enterprise2.0 webcenter) RonBatra's blog: Cloud Computing Series: VI: Industry Directions "When someone says their 'Product/Solution is in the Cloud,' ask them basic questions to seperate the spin from the reality. I would start with 'tell me what that means' and see which way the conversation goes." - Oracle ACE Director Ron Batra (tags: oracle otn oracleace cloud) First JSRs Proposed for Java EE 7 (The Java Source) With the approval of Java SE 7 and Java SE 8 JSRs last month, attention is now shifting towards the Java EE platform. (tags: oracle java jsr javaee)

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• F# in ASP.NET, mathematics and testing

  - by DigiMortal

  Starting from Visual Studio 2010 F# is full member of .NET Framework languages family. It is functional language with syntax specific to functional languages but I think it is time for us also notice and study functional languages. In this posting I will show you some examples about cool things other people have done using F#. F# and ASP.NET As I am ASP/ASP.NET MVP I am – of course – interested in how people use different languages and technologies with ASP.NET. C# MVP Tomáš Petrícek writes about developing ASP.NET MVC applications using F#. He also shows how to use LINQ To SQL in F# (using F# PowerPack) and provides sample solution and Visual Studio 2010 template for F# MVC web applications. You may also find interesting how you can create controllers in F#. Excellent work, Tomáš! Vladimir Matveev has interesting example about how to use F# and ApplicationHost class to process ASP.NET requests ouside of IIS. This is simple and very straight-forward example and I strongly suggest you to take a look at it. Very cool example is project Strom in Codeplex. Storm is web services testing tool that is fully written on F#. Take a look at this site because Codeplex offers also source code besides binaries. Math Functional languages are strong in fields like mathematics and physics. When I wrote my C# example about BigInteger class I found out that recursive version of Fibonacci algorithm in C# is not performing well. In same time I made same experiment on F# and in F# there were no performance problems with recursive version. You can find F# version of Fibonacci algorithm from Bob Palmer’s blog posting Fibonacci numbers in F#. Although golden spiral is useful for solving many problems I looked for some practical code example and found one. Kean Walmsley published in his Through the Interface blog very interesting posting Creating Fibonacci spirals in AutoCAD using F#. There are also other cool examples you may be interested in. Using numerical components by Extreme Optimization  it is possible to make some numerical integration (quadrature method) using F# (also C# example is available). fsharp.it introduces factorials calculation on F#. Robert Pickering has made very good work on programming The Game of Life in Silverlight and F# – I definitely suggest you to try out this example as it is very illustrative too. Who wants something more complex may take a look at Newton basin fractal example in F# by Jonathan Birge. Testing After some searching and surfing I found out that there is almost everything available for F# to write tests and test your F# code. FsCheck - FsCheck is a port of Haskell's QuickCheck. Important parts of the manual for using FsCheck is almost literally "adapted" from the QuickCheck manual and paper. Any errors and omissions are entirely my responsibility. FsTest - This project is designed to Language Oriented Programming constructs around unit testing and behavior testing in F#. The goal of this project is to create a Domain Specific Language for testing F# code in a way that makes sense for functional programming. FsUnit - FsUnit makes unit-testing with F# more enjoyable. It adds a special syntax to your favorite .NET testing framework. xUnit.NET - xUnit.net is a developer testing framework, built to support Test Driven Development, with a design goal of extreme simplicity and alignment with framework features. It is compatible with .NET Framework 2.0 and later, and offers several runners: console, GUI, MSBuild, and Visual Studio integration via TestDriven.net, CodeRush Test Runner and Resharper. It also offers test project integration for ASP.NET MVC. Getting started Well, as a first thing you need Visual Studio 2010. Then take a look at these resources: F# samples @ MSDN Microsoft F# Developer Center @ MSDN F# Language Reference @ MSDN F# blog F# forums Real World Functional Programming: With Examples in F# and C# (Amazon) Happy F#-ing! :)

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• #altnetseattle &ndash; REST Services

  - by GeekAgilistMercenary

  Below are the notes I made in the REST Architecture Session I helped kick off with Andrew. RSS, ATOM, and such needed for better discovery.  i.e. there still is a need for some type of discovery. Difficult is modeling behaviors in a RESTful way.  ??  Invoking some type of state against an object.  For instance in the case of a POST vs. a GET.  The GET is easy, comes back as is, but what about a POST, which often changes some state or something. Challenge is doing multiple workflows with stateful workflows.  How does batch work.  Maybe model the batch as a resource. Frameworks aren’t particularly part of REST, REST is REST.  But point argued that REST is modeled, or part of modeling a state machine of some sort… ? Nothing is 100% reliable w/ REST – comparisons drawn with TCP/IP.  Sufficient probability is made however for the communications, but the idea of a possible failure has to be built into the usage model of REST. Ruby on Rails / RESTfully, and others used.  What were their issues, what do they do.  ATOM feeds, object serialized, using LINQ to XML w/ this.  No state machine libraries. Idempotent areas around REST and single change POST changes are inherent in the architecture. REST – one of the constrained languages is for the interaction w/ the system.  Limiting what can be done on the resources.  - disagreement, there is no agreed upon REST verbs. Sam Ruby – RESTful services.  Expanded the verbs within REST/HTTP pushes you off the web.  Of the existing verbs POST leaves the most up for debate. Robert Reem used Factory to deal with the POST to handle the new state.  The POST identifying what it just did by the return. Different states are put into POST, so that new prospective verbs, without creating verbs for REST/HTTP can be used to advantage without breaking universal clients. Biggest issue with REST services is their lack of state, yet it is also one of their biggest strengths.  What happens is that the client takes up the often onerous task of handling all state, state machines, and other extraneous resource management.  All the GETs, POSTs, DELETEs, INSERTs get all pushed into abstraction.  My 2 cents is that this in a way ends up pushing a huge proprietary burden onto the REST services often removing the point of REST to be simple and to the point. WADL does provide discovery and some state control (sort of?) Statement made, "WADL" isn't needed.  The JSON, XML, or other client side returned data handles this. I then applied the law of 2 feet rule for myself and headed to finish up these notes, post to the Wiki, and figure out what I was going to do next.  For the original Wiki entry check it out here. I will be adding more to this post with a subsequent post.  Please do feel free to post your thoughts and ideas about this, as I am sure everyone in the session will have more for elaboration.

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• Best of OTN - Week of Oct 21st

  - by CassandraClark-OTN

  This week's Best of OTN, for you, the best devs, dba's, sysadmins and architects out there!  In these weekly posts the OTN team will highlight the top content from each community; Architect, Database, Systems and Java.  Since we'll be publishing this on Fridays, we'll also mix in a little fun! Architect Community Top Content- The Road Ahead for WebLogic 12c | Edwin BiemondOracle ACE Edwin Biemond shares his thoughts on announced new features in Oracle WebLogic 12.1.3 & 12.1.4 and compares those upcoming releases to Oracle WebLogic 12.1.2. A Roadmap for SOA Development and Delivery | Mark NelsonDo you know the way to S-O-A? Mark Nelson does. His latest blog post, part of an ongoing series, will help to keep you from getting lost along the way. Updated ODI Statement of Direction | Robert SchweighardtHeads up Oracle Data Integrator fans! A new statement of product direction document is available, offering an overview of the strategic product plans for Oracle’s data integration products for bulk data movement and transformation, specifically Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) and Oracle Warehouse Builder (OWB). Bob Rhubart, Architect Community Manager Friday Funny - "Some people approach every problem with an open mouth." — Adlai E. Stevenson (October 23, 1835 – June 14, 1914) 23rd Vice President of the United States Database Community Top Content - Pre-Built Developer VMs (for Oracle VM VirtualBox)Heard all the chatter about Oracle VirtualBox? Over 1 million downloads per week and look: pre-built virtual appliances designed specifically for developers. Video: Big Data, or BIG DATA?Oracle Ace Director Ben Prusinski explains the differences.?? Webcast Series - Developing Applications in Oracle's Public CloudTime to get started on developing and deploying cloud applications by moving to the cloud. Good friend Gene Eun from Oracle's Cloud team posted this two-part Webcast series that has an overview and demonstration of the Oracle Database Cloud Service. Check out the demos on how to migrate your data to the cloud, extend your application with interactive reporting, and create and access RESTful Web services. Registration required, but so worth it! Laura Ramsey, Database Community Manager Friday Funny - Systems Community Top Content - Video: What Kind of Scalability is Better, Horizontal or Vertical?Rick Ramsey asks the question "Is Oracle's approach to large vertically scaled servers at odds with today's trend of combining lots and lots of small, low-cost servers systems with networking to build a cloud, or is it a better approach?" Michael Palmeter, Director of Solaris Product Management, and Renato Ribeiro, Director Product Management for SPARC Servers, discuss.Video: An Engineer Takes a Minute to Explain CloudBart Smaalders, long-time Oracle Solaris core engineer, takes a minute to explain cloud from a sysadmin point of view. ?Hands-On Lab: How to Deploy and Manage a Private IaaS Cloud Soup to nuts. This lab shows you how to set up and manage a private cloud with Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c in an Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) model. You will first configure the IaaS cloud as the cloud administrator and then deploy guest virtual machines (VMs) as a self-service user. Rick Ramsey, Systems Community Manager Friday Funny - Video: Drunk Airline Pilot - Dean Martin - Foster Brooks Java Community Top Content - Video: NightHacking Interview with James GoslingJames Gosling, the Father of Java, discusses robotics, Java and how to keep his autonomous WaveGliders in the ocean for weeks at a time. Live from Hawaii.  Video: Raspberry Pi Developer Challenge: Remote Controller A developer who knew nothing about Java Embedded or Raspberry Pi shows how he can now control a robot with his phone. The project was built during the Java Embedded Challenge for Raspberry Pi at JavaOne 2013.Java EE 7 Certification Survey - Participants NeededHelp us define how to server your training and certification needs for Java EE 7. Tori Wieldt, Java Community Manager Friday Funny - Programmers have a strong sensitivity to Yak's pheromone. Causes irresistible desire to shave said Yak. Thanks, @rickasaurus! To follow and take part in the conversation follow/like etc. at one or all of the resources below -  OTN TechBlog The Java Source Blog The OTN Garage Blog The OTN ArchBeat Blog @oracletechnet @java @OTN_Garage @OTNArchBeat @OracleDBDev OTN I Love Java OTN Garage OTN ArchBeat Oracle DB Dev OTN Java

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• Guest blog: A Closer Look at Oracle Price Analytics by Will Hutchinson

  - by Takin Babaei

  Overview:  Price Analytics helps companies understand how much of each sale goes into discounts, special terms, and allowances. This visibility lets sales management see the panoply of discounts and start seeing whether each discount drives desired behavior. In Price Analytics monitors parts of the quote-to-order process, tracking quotes, including the whole price waterfall and seeing which result in orders. The “price waterfall” shows all discounts between list price and “pocket price”. Pocket price is the final price the vendor puts in its pocket after all discounts are taken. The value proposition: Based on benchmarks from leading consultancies and companies I have talked to, where they have studied the effects of discounting and started enforcing what many of them call “discount discipline”, they find they can increase the pocket price by 0.8-3%. Yes, in today’s zero or negative inflation environment, one can, through better monitoring of discounts, collect what amounts to a price rise of a few percent. We are not talking about selling more product, merely about collecting a higher pocket price without decreasing quantities sold. Higher prices fall straight to the bottom line. The best reference I have ever found for understanding this phenomenon comes from an article from the September-October 1992 issue of Harvard Business Review called “Managing Price, Gaining Profit” by Michael Marn and Robert Rosiello of McKinsey & Co. They describe the outsized impact price management has on bottom line performance compared to selling more product or cutting variable or fixed costs. Price Analytics manages what Marn and Rosiello call “transaction pricing”, namely the prices of a given transaction, as opposed to what is on the price list or pricing according to the value received. They make the point that if the vendor does not manage the price waterfall, customers will, to the vendor’s detriment. It also discusses its findings that in companies it studied, there was no correlation between discount levels and any indication of customer value. I urge you to read this article. What Price Analytics does: Price analytics looks at quotes the company issues and tracks them until either the quote is accepted or rejected or it expires. There are prebuilt adapters for EBS and Siebel as well as a universal adapter. The target audience includes pricing analysts, product managers, sales managers, and VP’s of sales, marketing, finance, and sales operations. It tracks how effective discounts have been, the win rate on quotes, how well pricing policies have been followed, customer and product profitability, and customer performance against commitments. It has the concept of price waterfall, the deal lifecycle, and price segmentation built into the product. These help product and sales managers understand their pricing and its effectiveness on driving revenue and profit. They also help understand how terms are adhered to during negotiations. They also help people understand what segments exist and how well they are adhered to. To help your company increase its profits and revenues, I urge you to look at this product. If you have questions, please contact me. Will HutchinsonMaster Principal Sales Consultant – Analytics, Oracle Corp. Will Hutchinson has worked in the business intelligence and data warehousing for over 25 years. He started building data warehouses in 1986 at Metaphor, advancing to running Metaphor UK’s sales consulting area. He also worked in A.T. Kearney’s business intelligence practice for over four years, running projects and providing training to new consultants in the IT practice. He also worked at Informatica and then Siebel, before coming to Oracle with the Siebel acquisition. He became Master Principal Sales Consultant in 2009. He has worked on developing ROI and TCO models for business intelligence for over ten years. Mr. Hutchinson has a BS degree in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University and an MBA in Finance from the University of Chicago.

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• New R Interface to Oracle Data Mining Available for Download

  - by charlie.berger

    The R Interface to Oracle Data Mining ( R-ODM) allows R users to access the power of Oracle Data Mining's in-database functions using the familiar R syntax. R-ODM provides a powerful environment for prototyping data analysis and data mining methodologies. R-ODM is especially useful for: Quick prototyping of vertical or domain-based applications where the Oracle Database supports the application Scripting of "production" data mining methodologies Customizing graphics of ODM data mining results (examples: classification, regression, anomaly detection) The R-ODM interface allows R users to mine data using Oracle Data Mining from the R programming environment. It consists of a set of function wrappers written in source R language that pass data and parameters from the R environment to the Oracle RDBMS enterprise edition as standard user PL/SQL queries via an ODBC interface. The R-ODM interface code is a thin layer of logic and SQL that calls through an ODBC interface. R-ODM does not use or expose any Oracle product code as it is completely an external interface and not part of any Oracle product. R-ODM is similar to the example scripts (e.g., the PL/SQL demo code) that illustrates the use of Oracle Data Mining, for example, how to create Data Mining models, pass arguments, retrieve results etc. R-ODM is packaged as a standard R source package and is distributed freely as part of the R environment's Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN). For information about the R environment, R packages and CRAN, see www.r-project.org. R-ODM is particularly intended for data analysts and statisticians familiar with R but not necessarily familiar with the Oracle database environment or PL/SQL. It is a convenient environment to rapidly experiment and prototype Data Mining models and applications. Data Mining models prototyped in the R environment can easily be deployed in their final form in the database environment, just like any other standard Oracle Data Mining model. What is R? R is a system for statistical computation and graphics. It consists of a language plus a run-time environment with graphics, a debugger, access to certain system functions, and the ability to run programs stored in script files. The design of R has been heavily influenced by two existing languages: Becker, Chambers & Wilks' S and Sussman's Scheme. Whereas the resulting language is very similar in appearance to S, the underlying implementation and semantics are derived from Scheme. R was initially written by Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman at the Department of Statistics of the University of Auckland in Auckland, New Zealand. Since mid-1997 there has been a core group (the "R Core Team") who can modify the R source code archive. Besides this core group many R users have contributed application code as represented in the near 1,500 publicly-available packages in the CRAN archive (which has shown exponential growth since 2001; R News Volume 8/2, October 2008). Today the R community is a vibrant and growing group of dozens of thousands of users worldwide. It is free software distributed under a GNU-style copyleft, and an official part of the GNU project ("GNU S"). Resources: R website / CRAN R-ODM

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

  - by Bob Rhubart

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

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

  - by Janice J. Heiss

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

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• More Stuff less Fluff

  - by brendonpage

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/brendonpage/archive/2013/11/08/more-stuff-less-fluff.aspxYAGNI – "You Aren't Going To Need It". This is an acronym commonly used in software development to remind developers to only write what they need. This acronym exists because software developers have gotten into the habit of writing everything they need to solve a problem and then everything they think they're going to possibly need in the future. Since we can't predict the future this results in a large portion of the code that we write never being used. That extra code causes unnecessary complexity, which makes it harder to understand and harder to modify when we inevitably have to write something that we didn't think of. I've known about YAGNI for some time now but I never really got it. The words made sense and the idea was clear but the concept never sank in. I was one of those devs who'd happily write a ton of code in the anticipation of future needs. In my mind this was an essential part of writing high quality code. I didn't realise that in doing so I was actually writing low quality code. If you are anything like me you are probably thinking "Lies and propaganda! High quality code needs to be future proof." I agree! But what makes code future proof? If we could see into the future the answer would be simple, code that allows for or meets all future requirements. Since we can't see the future the best we can do is write code that can easily adapt to future requirements, this means writing flexible code. Flexible code is: Fast to understand. Fast to add to. Fast to modify. To be flexible code has to be simple, this means only making it as complex as it needs to be to meet those 3 criteria. That is high quality code. YAGNI! The art is in deciding where to place the seams (abstractions) that will give you flexibility without making decisions about future functionality. Robert C Martin explains it very nicely, he says a good architecture allows you to defer decisions because if you can defer a decision then you have the flexibility to change it. I've recently had a YAGNI experience which brought this all into perspective. I was working on a new project which had multiple clients that connect to a server hosted in the cloud. I was tasked with adding a feature to the desktop client that would allow users to capture items that would then be saved to the cloud. My immediate thought was "Hey we have multiple clients so I should build a web service for these items, that way we can access them from other clients", so I went to work and this is what I created.  I stood back and gazed upon what I'd created with a warm fuzzy feeling. It was beautiful! Then the time came for the team to use the design I'd created for another feature with a new entity. Let's just say that they didn't get the same warm fuzzy feeling that I did when they looked at the design. After much discussion they eventually got it through to me that I'd bloated the design based on an assumption of future functionality. After much more discussion we cut the design down to the following. This design gives us future flexibility with no extra work, it is as complex as it needs to be. It has been a couple of months since this incident and we still haven't needed to access either of the entities from other clients. Using the simpler design allowed us to do more stuff with less stuff!

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• Process Power to the People that Create Engagement

  - by Michael Snow

  Organizations often speak about their engagement problems as if the problem is the people they are trying to engage - employees,  partners, customers and citizens.  The reality of most engagement problems is that the processes put in place to engage are impersonal, inflexible, unintuitive, and often completely ignorant of the population they are trying to serve. Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Delight? How appropriate during this short week of the US Independence Day Holiday that we're focusing on People, Process and Engagement. As we celebrate this holiday in the US and the historic independence we gained (sorry Brits!) - it's interesting to think back to 1776 to the creation of that pivotal document, the Declaration of Independence. What tremendous pressure to create an engaging document and founding experience they must have felt. "On June 11, 1776, in anticipation of the impending vote for independence from Great Britain, the Continental Congress appointed five men — Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston — to write a declaration that would make clear to people everywhere why this break from Great Britain was both necessary and inevitable. The committee then appointed Jefferson to draft a statement. Jefferson produced a "fair copy" of his draft declaration, which became the basic text of his "original Rough draught." The text was first submitted to Adams, then Franklin, and finally to the other two members of the committee. Before the committee submitted the declaration to Congress on June 28, they made forty-seven emendations to the document. During the ensuing congressional debates of July 1-4, 1776, Congress adopted thirty-nine further revisions to the committee draft. (http://www.constitution.org) If anything was an attempt for engaging the hearts and minds of the 13 Colonies at the time, this document certainly succeeded in its mission. ...Their tools at the time were pen and ink and parchment. Although the final document would later be typeset with lead type for a printing press to distribute to the colonies, all of the original drafts were hand written. And today's enterprise complains about using "Review and Track Changes" at times.  Can you imagine the manual revision control process? or lack thereof?  Collaborative process? Time delays? Would  implementing a better process have helped our founding fathers collaborate better? Declaration of Independence rough draft below. One of many during the creation process. Great comparison across multiple versions of the document here. (from http://www.ushistory.org/): While you may not be creating a new independent nation, getting your employees to engage is crucial to your success as a company in today's world. Oracle WebCenter provides the tools that power engagement. Employees that have better tools for communication, collaboration and getting their job done are more engaged employees. Better engaged employees create more engaged customers and partners. 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 -"/ /* 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"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";}

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• Hidden Features of C#?

  - by Serhat Özgel

  This came to my mind after I learned the following from this question: where T : struct We, C# developers, all know the basics of C#. I mean declarations, conditionals, loops, operators, etc. Some of us even mastered the stuff like Generics, anonymous types, lambdas, linq, ... But what are the most hidden features or tricks of C# that even C# fans, addicts, experts barely know? Here are the revealed features so far: Keywords yield by Michael Stum var by Michael Stum using() statement by kokos readonly by kokos as by Mike Stone as / is by Ed Swangren as / is (improved) by Rocketpants default by deathofrats global:: by pzycoman using() blocks by AlexCuse volatile by Jakub Šturc extern alias by Jakub Šturc Attributes DefaultValueAttribute by Michael Stum ObsoleteAttribute by DannySmurf DebuggerDisplayAttribute by Stu DebuggerBrowsable and DebuggerStepThrough by bdukes ThreadStaticAttribute by marxidad FlagsAttribute by Martin Clarke ConditionalAttribute by AndrewBurns Syntax ?? operator by kokos number flaggings by Nick Berardi where T:new by Lars Mæhlum implicit generics by Keith one-parameter lambdas by Keith auto properties by Keith namespace aliases by Keith verbatim string literals with @ by Patrick enum values by lfoust @variablenames by marxidad event operators by marxidad format string brackets by Portman property accessor accessibility modifiers by xanadont ternary operator (?:) by JasonS checked and unchecked operators by Binoj Antony implicit and explicit operators by Flory Language Features Nullable types by Brad Barker Currying by Brian Leahy anonymous types by Keith __makeref __reftype __refvalue by Judah Himango object initializers by lomaxx format strings by David in Dakota Extension Methods by marxidad partial methods by Jon Erickson preprocessor directives by John Asbeck DEBUG pre-processor directive by Robert Durgin operator overloading by SefBkn type inferrence by chakrit boolean operators taken to next level by Rob Gough pass value-type variable as interface without boxing by Roman Boiko programmatically determine declared variable type by Roman Boiko Static Constructors by Chris Easier-on-the-eyes / condensed ORM-mapping using LINQ by roosteronacid Visual Studio Features select block of text in editor by Himadri snippets by DannySmurf Framework TransactionScope by KiwiBastard DependantTransaction by KiwiBastard Nullable<T> by IainMH Mutex by Diago System.IO.Path by ageektrapped WeakReference by Juan Manuel Methods and Properties String.IsNullOrEmpty() method by KiwiBastard List.ForEach() method by KiwiBastard BeginInvoke(), EndInvoke() methods by Will Dean Nullable<T>.HasValue and Nullable<T>.Value properties by Rismo GetValueOrDefault method by John Sheehan Tips & Tricks nice method for event handlers by Andreas H.R. Nilsson uppercase comparisons by John access anonymous types without reflection by dp a quick way to lazily instantiate collection properties by Will JavaScript-like anonymous inline-functions by roosteronacid Other netmodules by kokos LINQBridge by Duncan Smart Parallel Extensions by Joel Coehoorn

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• Merge method in MergeSort Algorithm .

  - by Tony

  I've seen many mergeSort implementations .Here is the version in Data Structures and Algorithms in Java (2nd Edition) by Robert Lafore : private void recMergeSort(long[] workSpace, int lowerBound,int upperBound) { if(lowerBound == upperBound) // if range is 1, return; // no use sorting else { // find midpoint int mid = (lowerBound+upperBound) / 2; // sort low half recMergeSort(workSpace, lowerBound, mid); // sort high half recMergeSort(workSpace, mid+1, upperBound); // merge them merge(workSpace, lowerBound, mid+1, upperBound); } // end else } // end recMergeSort() private void merge(long[] workSpace, int lowPtr, int highPtr, int upperBound) { int j = 0; // workspace index int lowerBound = lowPtr; int mid = highPtr-1; int n = upperBound-lowerBound+1; // # of items while(lowPtr <= mid && highPtr <= upperBound) if( theArray[lowPtr] < theArray[highPtr] ) workSpace[j++] = theArray[lowPtr++]; else workSpace[j++] = theArray[highPtr++]; while(lowPtr <= mid) workSpace[j++] = theArray[lowPtr++]; while(highPtr <= upperBound) workSpace[j++] = theArray[highPtr++]; for(j=0; j<n; j++) theArray[lowerBound+j] = workSpace[j]; } // end merge() One interesting thing about merge method is that , almost all the implementations didn't pass the lowerBound parameter to merge method . lowerBound is calculated in the merge . This is strange , since lowerPtr = mid + 1 ; lowerBound = lowerPtr -1 ; that means lowerBound = mid ; Why the author didn't pass mid to merge like merge(workSpace, lowerBound,mid, mid+1, upperBound); ? I think there must be a reason , otherwise I can't understand why an algorithm older than half a center ,and have all coincident in the such little detail.

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• Best ways to teach a beginner to program?

  - by Justin Standard

  Original Question I am currently engaged in teaching my brother to program. He is a total beginner, but very smart. (And he actually wants to learn). I've noticed that some of our sessions have gotten bogged down in minor details, and I don't feel I've been very organized. (But the answers to this post have helped a lot.) What can I do better to teach him effectively? Is there a logical order that I can use to run through concept by concept? Are there complexities I should avoid till later? The language we are working with is Python, but advice in any language is welcome. How to Help If you have good ones please add the following in your answer: Beginner Exercises and Project Ideas Resources for teaching beginners Screencasts / blog posts / free e-books Print books that are good for beginners Please describe the resource with a link to it so I can take a look. I want everyone to know that I have definitely been using some of these ideas. Your submissions will be aggregated in this post. Online Resources for teaching beginners: A Gentle Introduction to Programming Using Python How to Think Like a Computer Scientist Alice: a 3d program for beginners Scratch (A system to develop programming skills) How To Design Programs Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs Learn To Program Robert Read's How To Be a Programmer Microsoft XNA Spawning the Next Generation of Hackers COMP1917 Higher Computing lectures by Richard Buckland (requires iTunes) Dive into Python Python Wikibook Project Euler - sample problems (mostly mathematical) pygame - an easy python library for creating games Create Your Own Games With Python ebook Foundations of Programming for a next step beyond basics. Squeak by Example Recommended Print Books for teaching beginners Accelerated C++ Python Programming for the Absolute Beginner Code by Charles Petzold

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• code review: Is it subjective or objective(quantifiable) ?

  - by Ram

  I am putting together some guidelines for code reviews. We do not have one formal process yet, and trying to formalize it. And our team is geographically distributed We are using TFS for source control (used it for tasks/bug tracking/project management as well, but migrated that to JIRA) with VS2008 for development. What are the things you look for when doing a code review ? These are the things I came up with Enforce FXCop rules (we are a Microsoft shop) Check for performance (any tools ?) and security (thinking about using OWASP- code crawler) and thread safety Adhere to naming conventions The code should cover edge cases and boundaries conditions Should handle exceptions correctly (do not swallow exceptions) Check if the functionality is duplicated elsewhere method body should be small(20-30 lines) , and methods should do one thing and one thing only (no side effects/ avoid temporal coupling -) Do not pass/return nulls in methods Avoid dead code Document public and protected methods/properties/variables What other things do you generally look for ? I am trying to see if we can quantify the review process (it would produce identical output when reviewed by different persons) Example: Saying "the method body should be no longer than 20-30 lines of code" as opposed to saying "the method body should be small" Or is code review very subjective ( and would differ from one reviewer to another ) ? The objective is to have a marking system (say -1 point for each FXCop rule violation,-2 points for not following naming conventions,2 point for refactoring etc) so that developers would be more careful when they check in their code.This way, we can identify developers who are consistently writing good/bad code.The goal is to have the reviewer spend about 30 minutes max, to do a review (I know this is subjective, considering the fact that the changeset/revision might include multiple files/huge changes to the existing architecture etc , but you get the general idea, the reviewer should not spend days reviewing someone's code) What other objective/quantifiable system do you follow to identify good/bad code written by developers? Book reference: Clean Code: A handbook of agile software craftmanship by Robert Martin

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• Contact-to-hire from the perspective of the headhunter agency?

  - by jamieb

  I operate a small IT consulting firm. One of my clients has expressed an interest in having an ASP.Net programmer on-site at their location for a six-month contract, with an option to hire. I've never really operated my company as a body shop (renting out talent for the long term) and an unfamiliar with how to price my quote. Assume I were to bring on a new developer as a 1099'ed contractor and then contract that person out to my client for the duration of the project. If I'm billing my client $X per hour for this developer's time, what should I be compensating this developer? $X/2 per hour? What's the typical ratio? If the client decides to hire this person at the end of the contract, what should I be compensated? Is it a flat finders fee, or maybe a function of the developer's annual salary? Would there be any advantage to actually hiring the person as a 1040'd employee rather than a 1099 contractor even if I can't offer him benefits? I know other body shops (like Robert Half) do this and never understood why.

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• OOP 101 - quick question.

  - by R Bennett

  I've used procedural for sometime now and trying to get a better understanding of OOP in Php. Starting at square 1 and I have a quick question ot get this to gel. Many of the basic examples show static values ( $bob-name = "Robert";) when assigning a value, but I want to pass values... say from a form ( $name = $_POST['name']; ) class Person { // define properties public $name; public $weight; public $age; public function title() { echo $this->name . " has submitted a request "; } } $bob = new Person; // want to plug the value in here $bob->name = $name; $bob->title(); I guess I'm getting a little hung up in some areas as far as accessing variables from within the class, encapsulation & "rules", etc., can $name = $_POST['name']; reside anywhere outside of the class or am I missing an important point? Thanks

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• return an ArrayList method

  - by Bopeng Liu

  This is a drive method for two other classes. which i posted here http://codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/33148/book-program-with-arraylist I need some help for the private static ArrayList getAuthors(String authors) method. I am kind a beginner. so please help me finish this drive method. or give me some directions. Instruction some of the elements of the allAuthors array contain asterisks “*” between two authors names. The getAuthors method uses this asterisk as a delimiter between names to store them separately in the returned ArrayList of Strings. import java.util.ArrayList; public class LibraryDrive { public static void main(String[] args) { String[] titles = { "The Hobbit", "Acer Dumpling", "A Christmas Carol", "Marley and Me", "Building Java Programs", "Java, How to Program" }; String[] allAuthors = { "Tolkien, J.R.", "Doofus, Robert", "Dickens, Charles", "Remember, SomeoneIdont", "Reges, Stuart*Stepp, Marty", "Deitel, Paul*Deitel, Harvery" }; ArrayList<String> authors = new ArrayList<String>(); ArrayList<Book> books = new ArrayList<Book>(); for (int i = 0; i < titles.length; i++) { authors = getAuthors(allAuthors[i]); Book b = new Book(titles[i], authors); books.add(b); authors.remove(0); } Library lib = new Library(books); System.out.println(lib); lib.sort(); System.out.println(lib); } private static ArrayList<String> getAuthors(String authors) { ArrayList books = new ArrayList<String>(); // need help here. return books; } }

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• Delphi TRttiType.GetMethods return zero TRttiMethod instances

  - by conciliator

  I've recently been able to fetch a TRttiType for an interface using TRttiContext.FindType using Robert Loves "GetType"-workaround ("registering" the interface by an explicit call to ctx.GetType, e.g. RType := ctx.GetType(TypeInfo(IMyPrettyLittleInterface));). One logical next step would be to iterate the methods of said interface. Consider program rtti_sb_1; {$APPTYPE CONSOLE} uses SysUtils, Rtti, mynamespace in 'mynamespace.pas'; var ctx: TRttiContext; RType: TRttiType; Method: TRttiMethod; begin ctx := TRttiContext.Create; RType := ctx.GetType(TypeInfo(IMyPrettyLittleInterface)); if RType <> nil then begin for Method in RType.GetMethods do WriteLn(Method.Name); end; ReadLn; end. This time, my mynamespace.pas looks like this: IMyPrettyLittleInterface = interface ['{6F89487E-5BB7-42FC-A760-38DA2329E0C5}'] procedure SomeProcedure; end; Unfortunately, RType.GetMethods returns a zero-length TArray-instance. Are there anyone able to reproduce my troubles? (Note that in my example I've explicitly fetched the TRttiType using TRttiContext.GetType, not the workaround; the introduction is included to warn readers that there might be some unresolved issues regarding rtti and interfaces.) Thanks!

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• Script says Undefined

  - by user1058887

  I have this script that would let the user input a text and it would get translated into something else. It works only when the word has only 1 letter. When there is more than 1 letter it says Undefined. Here is the script : function copyit(theField) { var tempval=eval("document."+theField) tempval.focus() tempval.select() therange=tempval.createTextRange() therange.execCommand("Copy") } function results() { var behavior="form"; var text=document.csrAlpha.csrresult2.value; var ff22=text.toLowerCase(); var Words=new Array ; Words["b"]="Dadada"; Words["bob"]="Robert"; Words["flower"]="Banana"; Words["brad"]="Chair"; var trans=""; var regExp=/[\!@#$%^&*(),=";:\/]/; var stringCheck=regExp.exec(ff22); if(!stringCheck) { if(ff22.length > 0) { for(var i=0;i < ff22.length;i++) { var thisChar=ff22.charAt(i); trans += Words[thisChar] + " "; } } else { trans +="Please write something."; } } else { trans +="You entered invalid characters. Remove them and try again."; } document.csrAlpha.csrresult.value=trans; } Please insert your text below:

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• binary quicksort

  - by davit-datuashvili

  hi i want implement Binary quicksort algorithm from robert sedgewick book it looks like this public class quickb{ public static final int bitsword=32; public static void quicksortB(int a[],int l,int r,int d){ int i=l; int j=r-1; if (r<=l || d>bitsword) return ; while (j!=i) { while (digit(a[i],d)==0 && (i<j)) i++; while (digit(a[j],d)==1 && (j>i)) j++; int t=a[i]; a[i]=a[j]; a[j]=t; } if (digit(a[r-1],d)== 0) j++; quicksortB(a,l,j-1,d+1); quicksortB(a,j,r,d+1); } public static void main(String[]args){ int a[]=new int[]{4,7,3,9,8,2}; quicksortB(a,0,a.length-1,0); for (int i=0;i<a.length;i++){ System.out.println(a[i]); } } public static int digit(int m,int d){ return (m>>d)&1; } } but it show me error: java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: 6 at quickb.quicksortB(quickb.java:13) at quickb.main(quickb.java:32) what is wrong?

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• Featureful commercial text editors?

  - by wrp

  I'm willing to buy tools if they add genuine value over a FOSS equivalent. One thing I wouldn't mind having is an editor with the power of Emacs, but made more user-friendly. There seem to be several commercial editors out there, but I can't find much discussion of them online. Maybe it's because the kind of people who use commercial software don't have time to do much blogging. ;-) If you have used any, what was your evaluation? I'd especially like to hear how you would compare them to Emacs. I'm thinking of editors like VEDIT, Boxer, Crisp, UltraEdit, SlickEdit, etc. To get things started, I tried EditPad Pro because I needed something on a Win98SE box. I was attracted by its powerful support for regexps, but I didn't use it for long. One annoyance was that find-in-files was only available in a separate product you had to buy. The main problem, though, was stability. It sometimes hung and I lost a few files because it corrupted them while editing. After a couple weeks, I found that I was avoiding using it, so I just uninstalled. Edit: Ah...I need to remove some ambiguity. With reference to Emacs, "power" often means its potential for customization. This malleability comes from having an architecture in which most of the functionality is written in a scripting language that runs on a compiled core. Emacs (with elisp) is by far the most widely known such system among home users, but there have been other heavily used editors such as Freemacs (MINT), JED (S-Lang), XEDIT (Rexx), ADAM (TPU), and SlickEdit (Slick-C). In this case, by "power" I'm not referring to extensibility but to realized features. There are three main areas which I think a commercial text editor might be an improvement over Emacs: Stability The only apps I regularly use on Linux that give me flaky behavior are Emacs, Gedit, and Geany. On Windows, I like the look and features of Notepad++, but I find it extremely unstable, especially if I try to use the plugins. Whatever I happen to be doing, I'm using some text editor practically all day long. If I could switch to an editor that never gave me problems, it would definitely lower my stress level. Tools When I started using Emacs, I searched the manual cover to cover to gleam ideas for clever, useful things I could do with it. I'd like to see lots of useful features for editing code, based on detailed knowledge of what the system can do and the accumulated feedback of users. Polish The rule of threes goes that if you develop something for yourself, it's three times harder to make it usable in-house, and three times harder again to make it a viable product for sale. It's understandable, but free software development doesn't seem to benefit from much usability testing. BTW, texteditors.org is a fantastic resource for researching text editors.

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• What do you expect from a package manager for Emacs

  - by tarsius

  Although several hundred Emacs Lisp libraries exist GNU Emacs does not have an (internal) package manager. I guess that most users would agree that it is currently rather inconvenient to find, install and especially keep up-to-date Emacs Lisp libraries. These pages make life a bit easier Emacs Lisp List - Problem: I see dead people (links). Emacswiki - Problem: May contain traces of nuts (malicious code). These are some package managers XEmacs package manager package.el - ELPA pases install.el install-elisp.el plugin.el use-package.el jem-pkg.el epkg/elm - the one I am working. And this are some packages that provide functionality that might be useful in a package manager ell.el - Browse the Emacs Lisp List genauto.el - helps generate autoloads for your elisp packages date-calc.el - date calculation and parsing routines strptime.el - partial implementation of POSIX date and time parsing wikirel.el - Visit relevant pages on the Emacs Wiki loadhist.el, lib-requires.el, elisp-depend.el - Commands to list Emacs Lisp library dependencies. project-root.el - Define a project root and take actions based upon it So I would like to know from you what you consider important/unimportant/supplementary... in a package manager for Emacs. Some ideas Many packages (incorporate the Emacs Lisp List and other lists of libraries). Only packages that have been tested. Support for more than one package archive (so people can choose between many/tested packages). Dependency calculated based on required features only. Dependencies take particular versions into account. Only use versions that have been released upstream. Use versions from version control systems if available. Packages are categorized. Packages can be uninstalled and updated not only installed. Support creating fork of upstream version of packages. Support publishing these forks. Support choosing a fork. After installation packages are activated. Generate autoloads. Integration with Emacswiki (see wikirel.el). Users can tag, comment ... packages and share that information. Only FSF-assigned/GPL/FOSS software or don't care about license. Package manager should be integrated in Emacs. Support contacting author. Lots of metadata. Suggest alternatives before installing a particular package. Some discussions about the subject at hand emacs-devel 20080801 comp.emacs 20021121 RationalElispPackaging I am hoping for these kinds of answers Pointers to more implementations, discussions etc. Lengthy descriptions of a set of features that make up your ideal package manager. Descriptions of one particular disired/undisired feature. This has the advantage that the regular voting mechanism allows us to see what features are most welcomed. Feel free to elaborate on my ideas from above. Surprise me.

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• How to designing a generic databse whos layout may change over time?

  - by mawg

  Here's a tricky one - how do I programatically create and interrogate a database who's contents I can't really foresee? I am implementing a generic input form system. The user can create PHP forms with a WYSIWYG layout and use them for any purpose he wishes. He can also query the input. So, we have three stages: a form is designed and generated. This is a one-off procedure, although the form can be edited later. This designs the database. someone or several people make use of the form - say for daily sales reports, stock keeping, payroll, etc. Their input to the forms is written to the database. others, maybe management, can query the database and generate reports. Since these forms are generic, I can't predict the database structure - other than to say that it will reflect HTML form fields and consist of a the data input from collection of edit boxes, memos, radio buttons and the like. Questions and remarks: A) how can I best structure the database, in terms of tables and columns? What about primary keys? My first thought was to use the control name to identify each column, then I realized that the user can edit the form and rename, so that maybe "name" becomes "employee" or "wages" becomes ":salary". I am leaning towards a unique number for each. B) how best to key the rows? I was thinking of a timestamp to allow me to query and a column for the row Id from A) C) I have to handle column rename/insert/delete. Foe deletion, I am unsure whether to delete the data from the database. Even if the user is not inputting it from the form any more he may wish to query what was previously entered. Or there may be some legal requirements to retain the data. Any gotchas in column rename/insert/delete? D) For the querying, I can have my PHP interrogate the database to get column names and generate a form with a list where each entry has a database column name, a checkbox to say if it should be used in the query and, based on column type, some selection criteria. That ought to be enough to build searches like "position = 'senior salesman' and salary 50k". E) I probably have to generate some fancy charts - graphs, histograms, pie charts, etc for query results of numerical data over time. I need to find some good FOSS PHP for this. F) What else have I forgotten? This all seems very tricky to me, but I am database n00b - maybe it is simple to you gurus?

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• Recommendations for a free GIS library supporting raster images

  - by gspr

  Hi. I'm quite new to the whole field of GIS, and I'm about to make a small program that essentially overlays GPS tracks on a map together with some other annotations. I primarily need to allow scanned (thus raster) maps (although it would be nice to support proper map formats and something like OpenStreetmap in the long run). My first exploratory program uses Qt's graphics view framework and overlays the GPS points by simply projecting them onto the tangent plane to the WGS84 ellipsoid at a calibration point. This gives half-decent accuracy, and actually looks good. But then I started wondering. To get the accuracy I need (i.e. remove the "half" in "half-decent"), I have to correct for the map projection. While the math is not a problem in itself, supporting many map projection feels like needless work. Even though a few projections would probably be enough, I started thinking about just using something like the PROJ.4 library to do my projections. But then, why not take it all the way? Perhaps I might aswell use a full-blown map library such as Mapnik (edit: Quantum GIS also looks very nice), which will probably pay off when I start to want even more fancy annotations or some other symptom of featuritis. So, finally, to the question: What would you do? Would you use a full-blown map library? If so, which one? Again, it's important that it supports using (and zooming in and out with) raster maps and has pretty overlay features. Or would you just keep it simple, and go with Qt's own graphics view framework together with something like PROJ.4 to handle the map projections? I appreciate any feedback! Some technicalities: I'm writing in C++ with a Qt-based GUI, so I'd prefer something that plays relatively nicely with those. Also, the library must be free software (as in FOSS), and at least decently cross-platform (GNU/Linux, Windows and Mac, at least). Edit: OK, it seems I didn't do quite enough research before asking this question. Both Quantum GIS and Mapnik seem very well suited for my purpose. The former especially so since it's based on Qt.

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• Last week I was presented with a Microsoft MVP award in Virtual Machines – time to thank all who hel

  - by Liam Westley

  MVP in Virtual Machines Last week, on 1st April, I received an e-mail from Microsoft letting me know that I had been presented with a 2010 Microsoft® MVP Award for outstanding contributions in Virtual Machine technical communities during the past year.   It was an honour to be nominated, and is a great reflection on the vibrancy of the UK user group community which made this possible. Virtualisation for developers, not just IT Pros I consider it a special honour as my expertise in virtualisation is as a software developer utilising virtual machines to aid my software development, rather than an IT Pro who manages data centre and network infrastructure.  I’ve been on a minor mission over the past few years to enthuse developers in a topic usually seen as only for network admins, but which can make their life a whole lot easier once understood properly. Continuous learning is fun In 1676, the scientist Isaac Newton, in a letter to Robert Hooke used the phrase (http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/268025.html) ‘If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants’ I’m a nuclear physicist by education, so I am more than comfortable that any knowledge I have is based on the work of others.  Although far from a science, software development and IT is equally built upon the work of others. It’s one of the reasons I despise software patents. So in that sense this MVP award is a result of all the great minds that have provided virtualisation solutions for me to talk about.  I hope that I have always acknowledged those whose work I have used when blogging or giving presentations, and that I have executed my responsibility to share any knowledge gained as widely as possible. Thanks to all those who helped – a big thanks to the UK user group community I reckon this journey started in 2003 when I started attending a user group called the London .Net Users Group (http://www.dnug.org.uk) started by a nice chap called Ian Cooper. The great thing about Ian was that he always encouraged non professional speakers to take the stage at the user group, and my first ever presentation was on 30th September 2003; SQL Server CE 2.0 and the.NET Compact Framework. In 2005 Ian Cooper was on the committee for the first DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper! day, the free community conference held at Microsoft’s UK HQ in Thames Valley park in Reading.  He encouraged me to take part and so on 14th May 2005 I presented a talk previously given to the London .Net User Group on Simplifying access to multiple DB providers in .NET.  From that point on I definitely had the bug; presenting at DDD2, DDD3, groking at DDD4 and SQLBits I and after a break, DDD7, DDD Scotland and DDD8.  What definitely made me keen was the encouragement and infectious enthusiasm of some of the other DDD organisers; Craig Murphy, Barry Dorrans, Phil Winstanley and Colin Mackay. During the first few DDD events I met the Dave McMahon and Richard Costall from NxtGenUG who made it easy to start presenting at their user groups.  Along the way I’ve met a load of great user group organisers; Guy Smith-Ferrier of the .Net Developer Network, Jimmy Skowronski of GL.Net and the double act of Ray Booysen and Gavin Osborn behind what was Vista Squad and is now Edge UG. Final thanks to those who suggested virtualisation as a topic ... Final thanks have to go the people who inspired me to create my Virtualisation for Developers talk.  Toby Henderson (@holytshirt) ensured I took notice of Sun’s VirtualBox, Peter Ibbotson for being a fine sounding board at the Kew Railway over quite a few Adnam’s Broadside and to Guy Smith-Ferrier for allowing his user group to be the guinea pigs for the talk before it was seen at DDD7.  Thanks to all of you I now know much more about virtualisation than I would have thought possible and it continues to be great fun. Conclusion If this was an academy award acceptance speech I would have been cut off after the first few paragraphs, so well done if you made it this far.  I’ll be doing my best to do justice to the MVP award and the UK community.  I’m fortunate in having a new employer who considers presenting at user groups as a good thing, so don’t expect me to stop any time soon. If you’ve never seen me in action, then you can view the original DDD7 Virtualisation for Developers presentation (filmed by the Microsoft Channel 9 team) as part of the full DDD7 video list here, http://www.craigmurphy.com/blog/?p=1591.  Also thanks to Craig Murphy’s fine video work you can also view my latest DDD8 presentation on Commercial Software Development, here, http://vimeo.com/9216563 P.S. If I’ve missed anyone out, do feel free to lambast me in comments, it’s your duty.

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