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• PeopleSoft Grants & the Federal Agency Letter of Credit Draw Changes

  - by Mark Rosenberg

  For decades, most, if not all, US Federal agencies that sponsor research allowed grant recipients to request and receive payments using pooled accounts, commonly known as pooled letter of credit (LOC) draws. This enabled organizations, such as universities and hospitals, fast and efficient access to reimbursement of the expenditures they incurred conducting research across a portfolio of grants. To support this business practice, the PeopleSoft Grants solution has delivered an LOC Draw report to provide the total request amount along with all of the supporting invoice details for reconciliation and audit purposes. Now, in an attempt to provide greater transparency, eliminate fraud, strengthen accountability for grant-related financial transactions, and simplify grant award closeout, many US Federal sponsors are transitioning from the “pooling” letter of credit draw method to requesting on a “grant-by-grant” basis. The National Science Foundation, the second largest issuer of Federal awards, already transitioned to detailed grant draws in 2013. And, in response to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) directive to HHS-supported Agencies, the largest Federal awards sponsor, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will fully transition to the new HHS subaccount draw method. This will require NIH award recipients to request payments based on actual expenses incurred on an award-by-award basis. NIH is expected to fully transition to this new draw method by the end of Federal fiscal year 2015.  (The NIH had planned to fully transition to this new method by the end of fiscal 2014; however, the impact to institutions was deemed to be significant enough that a reprieve was recently granted.) In light of these new Federal draw requirements, we have recently released these new features to aid our customers on both PeopleSoft Grants releases 9.1 and 9.2:1. Federal Award Identification Number on the Proposal and Award Profile 2. Letter of credit fields on contract lines to support award basis draws and comply with Federal close out mandates3. Process to produce both pro forma and final LOC Draw Reports in BI Publisher report format4. Subacccount ID field on the LOC Summary and a new BI Publisher version of the LOC Summary report 5. Added Subaccount Field and contract info to be displayed on the LOC summary page6. Ability to generate by a variety of dimensions pro forma and invoiced draw listings 7. Queries for generation and manipulation of data to upload into sponsor payment request systems and perform payment matching8. Contracts LOC Close Out query to quickly review final balances prior to initiating final draws and preparing Federal Financial Reports prior to close The PeopleSoft Development team actively monitors this and other major Federal changes and continues working closely with the Grants Product Advisory Group of the Higher Education User Group to ensure a clear understanding of what our customers need in order to transition to new approaches for doing business with the Federal government. For more information regarding the enhancements to the PeopleSoft Grants solution, existing customers can login to My Oracle Support and review the Enhancements to Letter of Credit Process (Doc ID 1912692.1) associated with resolution ID 904830. This enhanced LOC functionality is available in both PeopleSoft FSCM 9.1 Bundle #31 and PeopleSoft FSCM 9.2 Update Image 8.

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• Compiling for T4

  - by Darryl Gove

  I've recently had quite a few queries about compiling for T4 based systems. So it's probably a good time to review what I consider to be the best practices. Always use the latest compiler. Being in the compiler team, this is bound to be something I'd recommend But the serious points are that (a) Every release the tools get better and better, so you are going to be much more effective using the latest release (b) Every release we improve the generated code, so you will see things get better (c) Old releases cannot know about new hardware. Always use optimisation. You should use at least -O to get some amount of optimisation. -xO4 is typically even better as this will add within-file inlining. Always generate debug information, using -g. This allows the tools to attribute information to lines of source. This is particularly important when profiling an application. The default target of -xtarget=generic is often sufficient. This setting is designed to produce a binary that runs well across all supported platforms. If the binary is going to be deployed on only a subset of architectures, then it is possible to produce a binary that only uses the instructions supported on these architectures, which may lead to some performance gains. I've previously discussed which chips support which architectures, and I'd recommend that you take a look at the chart that goes with the discussion. Crossfile optimisation (-xipo) can be very useful - particularly when the hot source code is distributed across multiple source files. If you're allowed to have something as geeky as favourite compiler optimisations, then this is mine! Profile feedback (-xprofile=[collect: | use:]) will help the compiler make the best code layout decisions, and is particularly effective with crossfile optimisations. But what makes this optimisation really useful is that codes that are dominated by branch instructions don't typically improve much with "traditional" compiler optimisation, but often do respond well to being built with profile feedback. The macro flag -fast aims to provide a one-stop "give me a fast application" flag. This usually gives a best performing binary, but with a few caveats. It assumes the build platform is also the deployment platform, it enables floating point optimisations, and it makes some relatively weak assumptions about pointer aliasing. It's worth investigating. SPARC64 processor, T3, and T4 implement floating point multiply accumulate instructions. These can substantially improve floating point performance. To generate them the compiler needs the flag -fma=fused and also needs an architecture that supports the instruction (at least -xarch=sparcfmaf). The most critical advise is that anyone doing performance work should profile their application. I cannot overstate how important it is to look at where the time is going in order to determine what can be done to improve it. I also presented at Oracle OpenWorld on this topic, so it might be helpful to review those slides.

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• Using elapsed time for SlowMo in XNA

  - by Dave Voyles

  I'm trying to create a slow-mo effect in my pong game so that when a player is a button the paddles and ball will suddenly move at a far slower speed. I believe my understanding of the concepts of adjusting the timing in XNA are done, but I'm not sure of how to incorporate it into my design exactly. The updates for my bats (paddles) are done in my Bat.cs class: /// Controls the bat moving up the screen /// </summary> public void MoveUp() { SetPosition(Position + new Vector2(0, -moveSpeed)); } /// <summary> /// Controls the bat moving down the screen /// </summary> public void MoveDown() { SetPosition(Position + new Vector2(0, moveSpeed)); } /// <summary> /// Updates the position of the AI bat, in order to track the ball /// </summary> /// <param name="ball"></param> public virtual void UpdatePosition(Ball ball) { size.X = (int)Position.X; size.Y = (int)Position.Y; } While the rest of my game updates are done in my GameplayScreen.cs class (I'm using the XNA game state management sample) Class GameplayScreen { ........... bool slow; .......... public override void Update(GameTime gameTime, bool otherScreenHasFocus, bool coveredByOtherScreen) base.Update(gameTime, otherScreenHasFocus, false); if (IsActive) { // SlowMo Stuff Elapsed = (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds; if (Slowmo) Elapsed *= .8f; MoveTimer += Elapsed; double elapsedTime = gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalMilliseconds; if (Keyboard.GetState().IsKeyDown(Keys.Up)) slow = true; else if (Keyboard.GetState().IsKeyDown(Keys.Down)) slow = false; if (slow == true) elapsedTime *= .1f; // Updating bat position leftBat.UpdatePosition(ball); rightBat.UpdatePosition(ball); // Updating the ball position ball.UpdatePosition(); and finally my fixed time step is declared in the constructor of my Game1.cs Class: /// <summary> /// The main game constructor. /// </summary> public Game1() { IsFixedTimeStep = slow = false; } So my question is: Where do I place the MoveTimer or elapsedTime, so that my bat will slow down accordingly?

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• Attaching two objects and changing their world matrices accordingly

  - by A-Type

  I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the transformations required to bind two objects together in either a two-way or one-way relationship. I will need to implement both types. For the first case, I want to be able to 'couple' two ships together in space. The ships have different mass, of course. Forces applied to either ship will use combined mass and moment of inertia to calculate and move both ships. The trick is, being sure that the point at which they are coupled remains the same, and they don't move at all relative to each other. The second case is similar: I want a ship to be able to enter the atmosphere of a planet and move relative to the planet. The planet will be orbiting the sun, which is fixed at 0,0,0. Essentially, when the ship is sitting still outside of the atmosphere, the planet will move past it on its course-- but when the ship is sitting still inside the atmosphere, it moves and rotates with the planet, so that it is always relative to the horizon. Essentially, the vertices which make up the ship are now transformed just like the ones that make up the planet, except that the ship can move itself around relative to the planet. I get the feeling I can implement both of these with the same code. Essentially, I am thinking of giving each object (which I call Fixtures) a list of "slave" Fixtures onto which that Fixture's world matrix is imposed. So, this would be the planet imposing its world on any contained ships. In the case of coupling, I would simply make each ship a slave of the other, somehow. Obviously I can't just multiply the ship's world matrix by the planet's, or each ship by the others. What I'd like some help with is what calculations to make in order to get a nice, seamless relative world to the other object. I was thinking maybe I could just multiply the world of the slave by the inverse of the master, but then when you couple two ships you would lose all that world data. So, perhaps I need an intermediate "world" which is the absolute world, but use a secondary "final world" to actually transform the objects?

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• Sync Google Calendar with SharePoint Calendar

  - by dataintegration

  The ADO.NET Providers for Google and SharePoint make it easy to retrieve and update data in both Google's web services and SharePoint. This article shows how the SQL interface to data makes it easy to build applications that need to move data from one source to another. The application described here is a demo Windows application that synchronizes calendar events between Google and SharePoint, but the RSSBus Providers can be used to achieve integrations on both the .NET and the Java platforms, including more sophisticated features like full automation. Getting the Events Step 1: Google accounts can have several calendars. Obtain a list of a user's Google Calendars by issuing a query to the Calendars table. For example: SELECT * FROM Calendars. Step 2: In order to get a list of the events from a given Google Calendar, issue a query to the CalendarEvents table while specifying the CalendarId from the Calendars table. The resulting events can be further filtered by using the StartDateTime or EndDateTime columns. For example: SELECT * FROM CalendarEvents WHERE (CalendarId = '[email protected]') AND (StartDateTime >= '1/1/2012') AND (StartDateTime <= '2/1/2012') Step 3: SharePoint stores data in Lists. There are various types of lists, e.g., document lists and calendar lists. A SharePoint account can have several lists of the same type. To find all the calendar lists in SharePoint, use the ListLists stored procedure and inspect the BaseTemplate column. Step 4: The SharePoint data provider models each SharPoint list as a table. Get the events in a particular calendar by querying the table with the same name as the list. The events may be filtered further by specifying the EventDate or EndDate columns. For example: SELECT * FROM Calendar WHERE (EventDate >= '1/1/2012') AND (EventDate <= '2/1/2012') Synchronizing the Events Synchronizing the events is a simple process. Once the events from Google and SharePoint are available they can be compared and synchronized based on user preference. The sample application does this based on user input, but it is easy to create one that does the synchronization automatically. The INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE statements available in both data providers makes it easy to create, update, or delete events as needed. Pre-Built Demo Application The executable for the demo application can be downloaded here. Note that this demo is built using BETA builds of the ADO.NET Provider for Google V2 and ADO.NET Provider for SharePoint V2, and will expire in 2013. Source Code You can download the full source of the demo application here. You will need the Google ADO.NET Data Provider V2 and the SharePoint ADO.NET Data Provider V2, which can be obtained here.

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• PeopleSoft New Design Solves Navigation Problem

  - by Applications User Experience

  Anna Budovsky, User Experience Principal Designer, Applications User Experience In PeopleSoft we strive to improve User Experience on all levels. Simplifying navigation and streamlining access to the most important pages is always an important goal. No one likes to waste time waiting for pages to load and watching a spinning glass going on and on. Those performance-affecting server trips, page-load waits and just-too-many clicks were complained about for a long time. Something had to be done. A few new designs came in PeopleSoft 9.2 helping users to access their everyday work areas easier and faster. For example, Dashboard and Work Center aggregate most accessed information sections on a single page; Related Information allows users to complete transaction-related-research without interrupting a transaction and Secure Search gets users to a specific page directly. Today we’ll talk about the Actions menu. Most PeopleSoft pages are shared between individual products and product lines. It means changing the content on a single page involves Oracle development and quality assurance time for making and testing the changes. In order to streamline the navigation and cut down on accessing PeopleSoft pages one-page-at-a-time, we introduced a new menu design. The new menu allows accessing shared pages without the Oracle development team making any local changes, and it works as an additional one-click-path to specific high-traffic actionable pages. Let’s look at how many steps it took to Change Salary for an employee in HCM 9.1 before: Figure 1. BEFORE: The 6 steps a user would take to Change Salary in PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 In PeopleSoft 9.1 it took 5 steps + page loading time + additional verification time for making sure a correct employee is selected from the table. In PeopleSoft 9.2 it only takes 2 steps. To complete Ad Hoc Change Salary action, the user can start from the HCM Manager's Dashboard, click the Action menu within a table, choose a menu option, and access a correct employee’s details page to take an action. Figure 2. AFTER: The 2 steps a user would take to Change Salary in PeopleSoft HCM 9.2 The new menu is placed on a row level which ensures the user accesses the correct employee’s details page. The Actions menu separates menu options into hierarchical sections which help to scan and access the correct option quickly. The new menu’s small size and its structure enabled users to access high-traffic pages from any page and from any part of the page. No more spinning hourglass, no more multiple pages upload. The flexible design fits anywhere on a page and provides a fast and reliable path to the correct destination within the product. Now users can: Access any target page no matter how far it is buried from the starting point; Reduce navigation and page-load time; Improve productivity and reduce errors. The new menu design is available and widely used in all PeopleSoft 9.2 product lines.

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• Are there any concerns with using a static read-only unit of work so that it behaves like a cache?

  - by Rowan Freeman

  Related question: How do I cache data that rarely changes? I'm making an ASP.NET MVC4 application. On every request the security details about the user will need to be checked with the area/controller/action that they are accessing to see if they are allowed to view it. The security information is stored in the database. For example: User Permission UserPermission Action ActionPermission A "Permission" is a token that is applied to an MVC action to indicate that the token is required in order to access the action. Once a user is given the permission (via the UserPermission table) then they have the token and can therefore access the action. I've been looking in to how to cache this data (since it rarely changes) so that I'm only querying in-memory data and not hitting a database (which is a considerable performance hit at the moment). I've tried storing things in lists, using a caching provider but I either run in to problems or performance doesn't improve. One problem that I constantly run in to is that I'm using lazy loading and dynamic proxies with EntityFramework. This means that even if I ToList() everything and store them somewhere static, the relationships are never populated. For example, User.Permissions is an ICollection but it's always null. I don't want to Include() everything because I'm trying to keep things simple and generic (and easy to modify). One thing I know is that an EntityFramework DbContext is a unit of work that acts with 1st-level caching. That is, for the duration of the unit of work, everything that is accessed is cached in memory. I want to create a read-only DbContext that will exist indefinitely and will only be used to read about permission data. Upon testing this it worked perfectly; my page load times went from 200ms+ to 20ms. I can easily force the data to refresh at certain intervals or simply leave it to refresh when the application pool is recycled. Basically it will behave like a cache. Note that the rest of the application will interact with other contexts that exist per request as normal. Is there any disadvantage to this approach? Could I be doing something different?

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• Can see samba shares but not access them

  - by nitefrog

  For the life of me I cannot figure this one out. I have samba installed and set up on the ubuntu box and on the Win7 box I CAN SEE all the shares I created. I created two users on ubuntu that map to the users in windows. On ubuntu they are both admins, user A & B on Windows User A is admin and user B is poweruser. User A can see both shares and access them, but user B can see everythin, but only access the homes directory, the other directory throws an error. I have two drives in Ubuntu and this is the smb.config file (I am new to samba): [global] workgroup = WORKGROUP server string = %h server (Samba, Ubuntu) wins support = no dns proxy = yes name resolve order = lmhosts host wins bcast log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m max log size = 1000 syslog = 0 panic action = /usr/share/samba/panic-action %d security = user encrypt passwords = true passdb backend = tdbsam obey pam restrictions = yes unix password sync = yes passwd program = /usr/bin/passwd %u passwd chat = *Enter\snew\s*\spassword:* %n\n *Retype\snew\s*\spassword:* %n\n *password\supdated\ssuccessfully* . pam password change = yes map to guest = bad user ; usershare max shares = 100 usershare allow guests = yes And here is the share section: Both user A & B can access this from windows. No problems. [homes] comment = Home Directories browseable = no writable = yes Both User A & B can see this share, but only user A can access it. User B get an error thrown. [stuff] comment = Unixmen File Server path = /media/data/appinstall/ browseable = yes ;writable = no read only = yes hosts allow = The permission for the media/data/appinstall/ is as follows: appInstall properties: share name: stuff Allow others to create and delete files in this folder is cheeked Guest access (for people without a user account) is checked permissions: Owner: user A Folder Access: Create and delete files File Access: --- Group: user A Folder Access: Create and delete files File Access: --- Others Folder Access: Create and delete files File Access: --- I am at a loss and need to get this work. Any ideas? The goal is to have a setup like this. 3 users on window machines. Each user on the data drive will have their own personal folder where they are the ones that can only access, then another folder where 2 of the users will have read only and one user full access. I had this setup before on windows, but after what happened I am NEVER going back to windows, so Unix here I am to stay! I am really stuck. I am running Ubuntu 11. I could reformat again and put on version 10 if that would make life easier. I have been dealing with this since Wed. 3pm. Thanks.

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• UK Oracle User Group Event: Trends in Identity Management

  - by B Shashikumar

  As threat levels rise and new technologies such as cloud and mobile computing gain widespread acceptance, security is occupying more and more mindshare among IT executives. To help prepare for the rapidly changing security landscape, the Oracle UK User Group community and our partners at Enline/SENA have put together an User Group event in London on Apr 19 where you can learn more from your industry peers about upcoming trends in identity management. Here are some of the key trends in identity management and security that we predicted at the beginning of last year and look how they have turned out so far. You have to admit that we have a pretty good track record when it comes to forecasting trends in identity management and security. Threat levels will grow—and there will be more serious breaches:   We have since witnessed breaches of high value targets like RSA and Epsilon. Most organizations have not done enough to protect against insider threats. Organizations need to look for security solutions to stop user access to applications based on real-time patterns of fraud and for situations in which employees change roles or employment status within a company. Cloud computing will continue to grow—and require new security solutions: Cloud computing has since exploded into a dominant secular trend in the industry. Cloud computing continues to present many opportunities like low upfront costs, rapid deployment etc. But Cloud computing also increases policy fragmentation and reduces visibility and control. So organizations require solutions that bridge the security gap between the enterprise and cloud applications to reduce fragmentation and increase control. Mobile devices will challenge traditional security solutions: Since that time, we have witnessed proliferation of mobile devices—combined with increasing numbers of employees bringing their own devices to work (BYOD) — these trends continue to dissolve the traditional boundaries of the enterprise. This in turn, requires a holistic approach within an organization that combines strong authentication and fraud protection, externalization of entitlements, and centralized management across multiple applications—and open standards to make all that possible.  Security platforms will continue to converge: As organizations move increasingly toward vendor consolidation, security solutions are also evolving. Next-generation identity management platforms have best-of-breed features, and must also remain open and flexible to remain viable. As a result, developers need products such as the Oracle Access Management Suite in order to efficiently and reliably build identity and access management into applications—without requiring security experts. Organizations will increasingly pursue "business-centric compliance.": Privacy and security regulations have continued to increase. So businesses are increasingly look for solutions that combine strong security and compliance management tools with business ready experience for faster, lower-cost implementations.  If you'd like to hear more about the top trends in identity management and learn how to empower yourself, then join us for the Oracle UK User Group on Thu Apr 19 in London where Oracle and Enline/SENA product experts will come together to share security trends, best practices, and solutions for your business. Register Here.

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• What shall I include in a 10 week web technologies course?

  - by Iain

  In September I will be teaching a university module on web technologies. This session will be available to 1st year (freshman) students who don't necessarily have any programming knowledge or know how the web works. In the 2nd semester I will be teaching Flash, which is my specialism, so I know exactly what I am going to teach, but in the 1st semester I will be teaching them web standards technologies - HTML, CSS, JS, jQuery, PHP and MySQL. Where I need advice is how to proportion the emphasis for each part, and which parts of each technology to cover. Another real issue I'm struggling with is how much of the bad old ways should I teach them? Do they need to know about bold as well as strong, etc. UPDATE: based, on your feedback I will only be teaching the latest version of everything - CSS3, HTML5 etc. I'm not sure exactly how long the semester will be but I'm guessing about 10-12 weeks. Each session is a 2 hour lab. Obviously there's only so much I can cover in that time and it will be up to the students to go a research this stuff properly on W3 schools etc. My ideas so far were: Lesson 0 - Course intro and overview of the current tech landscape. What is out there, what will we be learning, what won't we. What is a web server, URL etc. Looking at different example websites and discussing how they work. Lesson 1 - HTML basics (head, body, title, img, table, a, lists, h1, strong etc) Lesson 2 - CSS for styling and layout - fonts, webfonts, float etc Lesson 3 - Intro to programming JS (variables, loops, conditionals, functions) Lesson 4 - more JS programming fundamentals, DOM manipulation Lesson 5 - jQuery - making things fly about and look cool Lesson 6 - XML and Ajax Lesson 7 - PHP basics - syntax, server-side principles Lesson 8 - PHP and MySQL - forms, logins, saving user info Lesson 9 - don't know Lesson 10 - don't know Please let me know if you think this is the right order, what have I missed, how to use any spare sessions etc. Thanks :) UPDATE BASED ON RESPONSES: Thanks for all your responses - some great stuff. To be absolutely clear, this is not a computer science course, it is a practical module on a creative technology course. The emphasis definitely has to be on making cool things work rather than understanding how the backbone of the internet works. That can come later, if the students are interested. At the end of the module I would like the students to be able to produce a web page or pages that does something cool, using some or all of the technologies I cover. Many of these topics are of course far beyond the scope of a 2 hour session, however I do not have the option of reducing the syllabus, I will just have to explain what the technology does and encourage the student to research it in their own time.

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• What to do when you inherit an unmaintainable codebase?

  - by GordonM

  I'm currently working at a company with 2 other PHP developers aside from me, and 1 junior developer. The senior developer who originally built the system we're all working on has resigned and will only be here for a matter of weeks. The other developer, who is the only other guy who knows anything about the system, is unhappy here and is looking for a new job. I'm very real danger of being left behind as the only experienced developer on this codebase. Since I've joined this company I've tried to push for better coding standards, project documentation, etc and I do think I've made some headway, but the vast majority of the code is simply unmaintainable and uncommented. A lot of this has to do with the need to get things done fast at points in the project before I joined, but now the technical debt is enormous, even with the two developers who do understand the system on board. Without them, it will simply be impossible to do anything with it. The senior developer is working on trying to at least comment all his code before he leaves but I think the codebase is simply too vast to properly document in the remaining time. Besides, when he does comment it still doesn't make things as clear as it could. If the system was better organized and documented I could probably start refactoring it incrementally, but the whole thing is so tightly coupled that it's very difficult to make any changes in one module without having unintended knock-on effects in other modules. Naturally, there's no unit tests either, and I honestly don't think this codebase could possibly be unit tested anyway given how it's implemented. There also never seems to be enough time to get things done even with 3 developers and 1 junior developer. With one developer and one junior, neither of which had significant input into the early design of the system, I don't see how we could possibly get anything done with keeping the current system working, implementing new features as needed and developing a replacement for the current codebase that is better organized. Is there an approach I can take to cope with this situation, or should I be getting my own CV in order as well at this point? If it was just me and the junior designer who would be left I'd go for the latter option almost without question. However, there's a team of front-end developers and content managers as well, and I'm worried what would become of them if I left and put them in a position where there would be no developers at all. The department might just be closed down altogether under such circumstances, and then I'd have their unemployment on my conscience as well!

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• How do we provide valid time estimates during Sprint Planning without doing "too much" design?

  - by Michael Edenfield

  My team is getting up to speed with Scrum, but most of us are more familiar with non-agile or "pseudo-"agile methodologies. The part that is the biggest hurdle for us is running an efficient Sprint Planning meeting where we break our backlog items into tasks, and estimate hours. (I'm using the terminology from the VS2010 Scrum Template; apologies if I use the wrong word somewhere.) When we try to figure out how long a task is going to take, we often fall into the trap of designing the feature at the code level -- table layout, interfaces, etc -- in order to figure out how long that's going to take. I'm pretty sure this is not the appropriate place to be doing that kind of design. We should be scheduling tasks for these design meetings during the sprint. However, we are having trouble figuring out how else to come up with meaningful estimates for the tasks. Are there any practical habits/techniques/etc. for making a judgement call about how long a feature is going to take, without knowing how you plan to implement it? If our time estimates are going to change significantly once the design has been completed, how can we properly budget our Sprint backlog ahead of time? EDIT: Just to clarify, since some of the comments/answers are very valid but I think addressing the wrong question. We know that what we're doing is not right, and that we should be building time into the sprint for this design. Conceptually all of the developers understand that. We also also bringing in a team member with Scrum experience to keep us on track if we start going off into the weeds. The problem is that, without going through this design process, we are finding it difficult to provide concrete time estimates for anything. We are constantly saying things like "well if we design it this way it might take 8 hours but if we end up having to do this other way instead that will take about 32 but it might not be as bad once we start trying to write it...". I also assume that this process will get better once we have some historical velocity to work from, but many of the technologies and architectural patterns we are using are new to us. But if potentially-wildly-wrong estimates are just a natural part of adapting this process then we will just need to recondition ourselves to accept that :)

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• Creating a shared library that might be used with desktop applications and web projects

  - by dreza

  I have been involved in a number of MVC.NET and c# desktop projects in our company over the last year or so while also managing to kept my nose poked into other projects (in a read-only learning capacity of course). From this I've noticed that across the various projects and teams there is a-lot of functionality that has been well designed against good interfaces and abstractions. Because we tend to like our own work at times, I noticed a couple of projects had the exact same class, method copied into it as it had obviously worked on one and so was easily moved to a new project (probably by the same developer who originally wrote it) I mentioned this fact in one of our programmer meetings we have occasionally and suggested we pull some of this functionality into a core company library that we can build up over time and use across multiple projects. Everyone agreed and I started looking into this possibility. However, I've come across a stumbling block pretty early on. Our team primarily focuses on MVC at the moment and we have projects mainly in 2.0 but are starting to branch to 3.0. We also have a number of desktop applications that might benefit from some shared classes and basic helper methods. Initially when creating this DLL I included some shared classes that could be used across any project type (Web, Client etc) but then I started looking at adding some shared modules that would be useful in our MVC applications only. However this meant I had to include a reference to some Microsoft Web DLL's in order to leverage some of the classes I was creating (at this stage MVC 2.0). Now my issue is that we have a shared DLL that has references to web specific libraries that could also possibly be used in a client application. Not only that, our DLL referenced initially MVC 2.0 and we will eventually move onto MVC 3.0 for all projects. But alot of the classes in this library I expect to still be relevant to MVC 3 etc Our code within this DLL is separated into it's own namespaces such as: CompanyDLL.Primitives CompanyDLL.Web.Mvc CompanyDLL.Helpers etc etc So, my questions are: Is it OK to do a shared library like this, or if we have web specific features in it should we create a separate web DLL only targeted at a specific framework or MVC version? If it's OK, what kind of issues might we face when using the library that references MVC 2 in a MVC 3 project for example. I would be thinking that we might run into some sort of compatibility issue, or even issues where the developers using the library doesn't realize they need MVC 2.0 libraries. They might only want to use some of the generic classes etc The concept seemed like a good idea at the time, but I'm starting to think maybe it's not really a practical solution. But the number of times I've seen copied classes and methods across projects because they are proven tested code is a bit unnerving to be perfectly honest!

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• Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon support

  - by Robottinosino

  I am considering selling my Mac to get money towards a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 because what I really want to do is to be running an Ubuntu system all the time. Is this machine completely supported in Ubuntu, with no tiny little feature missing just because I am "going Linux"? Optional user story section, skip to the question below if you don't have time: I have a friend who bought a "works on Ubuntu" system a year ago and has hated the fact ever since: battery lasts less than if he boots in Windows (which he despises) and he ascribes that to "no good OS/harware integration and support for advanced chipset power management features", odd behaviour on suspend/resume/hibernate (says: "when it works 90% of the time and the other 10% it makes you lose your work is as good as broken - 90% is the same as 0% he says), some occasional graphics card glitches he can perfectly well live with and has almost grown affectionate to, and finally, and that is what would make him undo his choice if he could, bad "input device drivers". He says: trackpoint and trackpad just "feel different", "so much better" on Windows and that was impossible to know from the website brochure. That story makes me very doubtful... but I want to abandon this "walled garden" of prison that is my Mac and go Ubuntu all the way, no doubt about that! My dilemma at this time is just: "I don't want to live with those eternal frustrations for sure"! Here's a directly answerable phrasing of my question: Is the Lenovo Thinkpad X1 supported on Ubuntu? Yes/no, which version? Which hardware features are not supported? Provide a list Optionally: sort the list in descending order of frustration from your experience Optionally: mention if there are acceptable workarounds to the "out-of-the-box" condition described in the earlier points and whether this ameliorates frustration at least to "tolerable" levels Comment: the Ubuntu hardware certification page is so not-for-end-users it's unreal. Whoa. What would make it end-user friendly is: Link to "buy here and you'll be just fine, this is the right configuration for you, it'll work as long as you press BUY on that page and don't browse further" Remove mentions of may and might not work. Just tell it straight: press buy here and you will get a working system with the exception of A, B, C (so that I can decide whether the philosophical "freedom pleasure" I get from escaping an Apple world is enough to off-balance the loss, for instance, of Bluetooth capabilities (something that I of course use on my Mac) but "could" lose to use free (as in freedom) software The certification page fails to dispel doubts in me as an end-user. I don't feel "eased into Ubuntu", I feel "partially informed".

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• Zenoss Setup for Windows Servers

  - by Jay Fox

  Recently I was saddled with standing up Zenoss for our enterprise.  We're running about 1200 servers, so manually touching each box was not an option.  We use LANDesk for a lot of automated installs and patching - more about that later.The steps below may not necessarily have to be completed in this order - it's just the way I did it.STEP ONE:Setup a standard AD user.  We want to do this so there's minimal security exposure.  Call the account what ever you want "domain/zenoss" for our examples.***********************************************************STEP TWO:Make the following local groups accessible by your zenoss account.Distributed COM UsersPerformance Monitor UsersEvent Log Readers (which doesn't exist on pre-2008 machines)Here's the Powershell script I used to setup access to these local groups:# Created to add Active Directory account to local groups# Must be run from elevated prompt, with permissions on the remote machine(s).# Create txt file should contain the names of the machines that need the account added, one per line.# Script will process machines line by line.foreach($i in (gc c:\tmp\computers.txt)){# Add the user to the first group$objUser=[ADSI]("WinNT://domain/zenoss")$objGroup=[ADSI]("WinNT://$i/Distributed COM Users")$objGroup.PSBase.Invoke("Add",$objUser.PSBase.Path)# Add the user to the second group$objUser=[ADSI]("WinNT://domain/zenoss")$objGroup=[ADSI]("WinNT://$i/Performance Monitor Users")$objGroup.PSBase.Invoke("Add",$objUser.PSBase.Path)# Add the user to the third group - Group doesn't exist on < Server 2008#$objUser=[ADSI]("WinNT://domain/zenoss")#$objGroup=[ADSI]("WinNT://$i/Event Log Readers")#$objGroup.PSBase.Invoke("Add",$objUser.PSBase.Path)}**********************************************************STEP THREE:Setup security on the machines namespace so our domain/zenoss account can access itThe default namespace for zenoss is:  root/cimv2Here's the Powershell script:#Grant account defined below (line 11) access to WMI Namespace#Has to be run as account with permissions on remote machinefunction get-sid{Param ($DSIdentity)$ID = new-object System.Security.Principal.NTAccount($DSIdentity)return $ID.Translate( [System.Security.Principal.SecurityIdentifier] ).toString()}$sid = get-sid "domain\zenoss"$SDDL = "A;;CCWP;;;$sid" $DCOMSDDL = "A;;CCDCRP;;;$sid"$computers = Get-Content "c:\tmp\computers.txt"foreach ($strcomputer in $computers){    $Reg = [WMIClass]"\\$strcomputer\root\default:StdRegProv"    $DCOM = $Reg.GetBinaryValue(2147483650,"software\microsoft\ole","MachineLaunchRestriction").uValue    $security = Get-WmiObject -ComputerName $strcomputer -Namespace root/cimv2 -Class __SystemSecurity    $converter = new-object system.management.ManagementClass Win32_SecurityDescriptorHelper    $binarySD = @($null)    $result = $security.PsBase.InvokeMethod("GetSD",$binarySD)    $outsddl = $converter.BinarySDToSDDL($binarySD[0])    $outDCOMSDDL = $converter.BinarySDToSDDL($DCOM)    $newSDDL = $outsddl.SDDL += "(" + $SDDL + ")"    $newDCOMSDDL = $outDCOMSDDL.SDDL += "(" + $DCOMSDDL + ")"    $WMIbinarySD = $converter.SDDLToBinarySD($newSDDL)    $WMIconvertedPermissions = ,$WMIbinarySD.BinarySD    $DCOMbinarySD = $converter.SDDLToBinarySD($newDCOMSDDL)    $DCOMconvertedPermissions = ,$DCOMbinarySD.BinarySD    $result = $security.PsBase.InvokeMethod("SetSD",$WMIconvertedPermissions)     $result = $Reg.SetBinaryValue(2147483650,"software\microsoft\ole","MachineLaunchRestriction", $DCOMbinarySD.binarySD)}***********************************************************STEP FOUR:Get the SID for our zenoss account.Powershell#Provide AD User get SID$objUser = New-Object System.Security.Principal.NTAccount("domain", "zenoss") $strSID = $objUser.Translate([System.Security.Principal.SecurityIdentifier]) $strSID.Value******************************************************************STEP FIVE:Modify the Service Control Manager to allow access to the zenoss AD account.This command can be run from an elevated command line, or through Powershellsc sdset scmanager "D:(A;;CC;;;AU)(A;;CCLCRPRC;;;IU)(A;;CCLCRPRC;;;SU)(A;;CCLCRPWPRC;;;SY)(A;;KA;;;BA)(A;;CCLCRPRC;;;PUT_YOUR_SID_HERE_FROM STEP_FOUR)S:(AU;FA;KA;;;WD)(AU;OIIOFA;GA;;;WD)"******************************************************************In step two the script plows through a txt file that processes each computer listed on each line.  For the other scripts I ran them on each machine using LANDesk.  You can probably edit those scripts to process a text file as well.That's what got me off the ground monitoring the machines using Zenoss.  Hopefully this is helpful for you.  Watch the line breaks when copy the scripts.

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• Critical Patch Updates During EBS 11i Exception to Sustaining Support Period

  - by Elke Phelps (Oracle Development)

  As previously blogged in the EBS 11i and 12.1 Support Timeline Changes entry, two important changes to the Oracle Lifetime Support policies were announced at Oracle OpenWorld 2012 - San Francisco.  These changes affect E-Business Suite Releases 11i and 12.1. Critical Patch Updates for EBS 11i during the Exception to Sustaining Support Period You may be wondering about the availability of Critical Patch Updates (CPU) for EBS 11i during the Exception to Sustaining Support period.  The following details the E-Business Suite Critical Patch Update support policy for EBS 11i during the Exception to Sustaining Support period: Oracle will continue to provide CPUs containing critical security fixes for E-Business Suite 11i.  CPUs will be packaged and released as as cumulative patches for both ATG RUP 6 and ATG RUP 7. As always, we try to minimize the number of patches and dependencies required for uptake of a CPU; however, there have been quite a few changes to the 11i baseline since its release.  For dependency reasons the 11i CPUs may require a higher number of files in order to bring them up to a consistent, stable, and well tested level. EBS 11i customer will continue to receive CPUs up to and including the October 2014 CPU. Where can I learn more? There are two interlocking policies that affect the E-Business Suite:  Oracle's Lifetime Support policies for each EBS release (timelines which were updated by this announcement), and the Error Correction Support policies (which state the minimum baselines for new patches). For more information about how these policies interact, see: Understanding Support Windows for E-Business Suite Releases What about E-Business Suite technology stack components? Things get more complicated when one considers individual techstack components such as Oracle Forms or the Oracle Database.  To learn more about the interlocking EBS+techstack component support windows, see these two articles: On Apps Tier Patching and Support: A Primer for E-Business Suite Users On Database Patching and Support: A Primer for E-Business Suite Users Where can I learn more about Critical Patch Updates?The Critical Patch Update Advisory is the starting point for relevant information. It includes a list of products affected, pointers to obtain the patches, a summary of the security vulnerabilities, and links to other important documents.  Related Articles EBS 11i and 12.1 Support Timeline Changes Frequently Asked Questions about Latest EBS Support Changes Extended Support Fees Waived for E-Business Suite 11i and 12.0

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• Addressing threats introduced by the BYOD trend

  - by kyap

  With the growth of the mobile technology segment, enterprises are facing a new type of threats introduced by the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) trend, where employees use their own devices (laptops, tablets or smartphones) not necessarily secured to access corporate network and information.In the past - actually even right now, enterprises used to provide laptops to their employees for their daily work, with specific operating systems including anti-virus and desktop management tools, in order to make sure that the pools of laptop allocated are spyware or trojan-horse free to access the internal network and sensitive information. But the BYOD reality is breaking this paradigm and open new security breaches for enterprises as most of the username/password based systems, especially the internal web applications, can be accessed by less or none protected device.To address this reality we can adopt 3 approaches:1. Coué's approach: Close your eyes and assume that your employees are mature enough to know what he/she should or should not do.2. Consensus approach: Provide a list of restricted and 'certified' devices to the internal network. 3. Military approach: Access internal systems with certified laptop ONLYIf you choose option 1: Thanks for visiting my blog and I hope you find the others entries more useful :)If you choose option 2: The proliferation of new hardware and software updates every quarter makes this approach very costly and difficult to maintain.If you choose option 3: You need to find a way to allow the access into your sensitive application from the corporate authorized machines only, managed by the IT administrators... but how? The challenge with option 3 is to find out how end-users can restrict access to certain sensitive applications only from authorized machines, or from another angle end-users can not access the sensitive applications if they are not using the authorized machine... So what if we find a way to store the applications credential secretly from the end-users, and then automatically submit them when the end-users access the application? With this model, end-users do not know the username/password to access the applications so even if the end-users use their own devices they will not able to login. Also, there's no need to reconfigure existing applications to adapt to the new authenticate scheme given that we are still leverage the same username/password authenticate model at the application level. To adopt this model, you can leverage Oracle Enterprise Single Sign On. In short, Oracle ESSO is a desktop based solution, capable to store credentials of Web and Native based applications. At the application startup and if it is configured as an esso-enabled application - check out my previous post on how to make Skype essso-enabled, Oracle ESSO takes over automatically the sign-in sequence with the store credential on behalf of the end-users. Combined with Oracle ESSO Provisioning Gateway, the credentials can be 'pushed' in advance from an actual provisioning server, like Oracle Identity Manager or Tivoli Identity Manager, so the end-users can login into sensitive application without even knowing the actual username and password, so they can not login with other machines rather than those secured by Oracle ESSO.Below is a graphical illustration of this approach:With this model, not only you can protect the access to sensitive applications only from authorized machine, you can also implement much stronger Password Policies in terms of Password Complexity as well as Password Reset Frequency but end-users will not need to remember the passwords anymore.If you are interested, do not hesitate to check out the Oracle Enterprise Single Sign-on products from OTN !

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• Keep Learning After Your Oracle Training Class is Over - Save 50%!

  - by KJones

  Written by Amit Kumar, Senior Director Oracle University Digital Training        Every training class you take about the latest Oracle application or technology moves you closer to developing the skills you need to succeed. But after class is over, how do you keep up with today’s accelerating pace of innovation? To   To keep with the very latest technological advances, you need an ongoing and flexible training solution.       One that lets you learn during your own downtime.       Knowledge that’s easy to access.       Interactive lessons where you connect with experts.       A simple way to increase your knowledge, on your own time and at your own pace. The new Oracle Learning Streams is the flexible training solution you're looking for. Continuously Learn with Oracle Learning Streams Over time, Oracle Learning Streams help you develop the depth and breadth of knowledge that will give you the tools to become an expert in your field. By taking advantage of comprehensive and frequently updated information, you can keep learning continuously, at your own pace, when it's convenient for you. Sign up today and get 12 months of unlimited access to: •    Hundreds of videos delivered by Oracle experts for fresh and continuous product learning•    Live connections with Oracle's top instructors•    Robust video search capability to find exactly what you’re looking for•    Features that allow you to build your own custom learning queue and request new content Oracle Learning Streams are now available for Oracle Database and Oracle Middleware. Take a moment to preview the content now.  For a Limited Time - Save 50% For a limited time, save 50% when you order Oracle Learning Streams with any other Oracle Classroom, Live Virtual Class or Training On Demand course. Now there is no reason for learning to stop when class is over!

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• Segmentation and Targeting: Your Tools for Personalizing the Online Customer Experience

  - by Christie Flanagan

  In order to deliver the kind of personalized and engaging online experiences that customers expect today, look to segmentation and targeting.  Segmentation is the practice of dividing your site visitors into distinct groups based on shared characteristics or behavior – for example, a segment may consist of site visitors who have visited pages related to certain product type, or they may consist of visitors within the same age group or geographic area.  The idea is that those within a segment are more likely to have common needs, problems or interests that can be served by your business. Targeting is the process by which the most relevant content, whether an article promotion or other piece of content, is delivered to your visitors based on their segment membership. Segmentation and targeting are used to drive greater engagement on your web presence by delivering content to your site visitors that is tailored to their interests, behavior or other attributes.  You may have a number of different goals for your segmentation and targeting efforts: Up-sell or cross-sell to your customers Conduct A/B testing on your offers and creative Offer discounts, promotions or other incentives for the time and duration that you specify Make is easier to find relevant information about products and services Create premium content model There are two different approaches you can take toward segmentation and targeting for you online customer experience initiatives. The first is more of a manual process, in which marketers manage the process of determining which segments to create and which content to target to those segments. The benefit of this approach is that it gives marketers a high level of control over the whole process which works well when you have a thorough understanding of your segments and which content is most likely to serve their needs.  Tools for marketer managed segmentation and targeting are often built right in to your WEM platform, as they are with Oracle WebCenter Sites. The downside is that the more segments and content that you have, the more time consuming and complicated in can be to manage manually.The second approach relies on predictive intelligence to automate the segmentation and targeting process.  This allows optimization of the process to occur in real time. This approach helps reduce the burden of manual segmentation and targeting and can result in new insights into segments that you may never have thought of on your own.  It also provides you with the capability to quickly test new offers and promotions on your site.  Predictive segmentation and targeting can be achieved by using Oracle WebCenter Sites and Oracle Real-Time Decisions together. *****Get a taste for how Oracle WebCenter Sites and Oracle Real-Time Decisions combine to deliver powerful capabilities for predictive segmentation and targeting by watching this on demand webcast introducing Oracle WebCenter Sites 11g or by reading IDC’s take on the latest release of Oracle’s web experience management solution.  Be sure to return to the Oracle WebCenter blog on Thursday for a closer look at how to optimize the online customer experience using these two products together.

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• The cost of Programmer Team Clustering

  - by MarkPearl

  I recently was involved in a conversation about the productivity of programmers and the seemingly wide range in abilities that different programmers have in this industry. Some of the comments made were reiterated a few days later when I came across a chapter in Code Complete (v2) where it says "In programming specifically, many studies have shown order-of-magnitude differences in the quality of the programs written, the sizes of the programs written, and the productivity of programmers". In line with this is another comment presented by Code Complete when discussing teams - "Good programmers tend to cluster, as do bad programmers". This is something I can personally relate to. I have come across some really good and bad programmers and 99% of the time it turns out the team they work in is the same - really good or really bad. When I have found a mismatch, it hasn't stayed that way for long - the person has moved on, or the team has ejected the individual. Keeping this in mind I would like to comment on the risks an organization faces when forcing teams to remain together regardless of the mix. When you have the situation where someone is not willing to be part of the team but still wants to get a pay check at the end of each month, it presents some interesting challenges and hard decisions to make. First of all, when this occurs you need to give them an opportunity to change - for someone to change, they need to know what the problem is and what is expected. It is unreasonable to expect someone to change but have not indicated what they need to change and the consequences of not changing. If after a reasonable time of an individual being aware of the problem and not making an effort to improve you need to do two things... Follow through with the consequences of not changing. Consider the impact that this behaviour will have on the rest of the team. What is the cost of not following through with the consequences? If there is no follow through, it is often an indication to the individual that they can continue their behaviour. Why should they change if you don't care enough to keep your end of the agreement? In many ways I think it is very similar to the "Broken Windows" principles – if you allow the windows to break and don’t fix them, more will get broken. What is the cost of keeping them on? When keeping a disruptive influence in a team you risk loosing the good in the team. As Code Complete says, good and bad programmers tend to cluster - they have a tendency to keep this balance - if you are not going to help keep the balance they will. The cost of not removing a disruptive influence is that the good in the team will eventually help you maintain the clustering themselves by leaving.

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• How to keep a data structure synchronized over a network?

  - by David Gouveia

  Context In the game I'm working on (a sort of a point and click graphic adventure), pretty much everything that happens in the game world is controlled by an action manager that is structured a bit like: So for instance if the result of examining an object should make the character say hello, walk a bit and then sit down, I simply spawn the following code: var actionGroup = actionManager.CreateGroup(); actionGroup.Add(new TalkAction("Guybrush", "Hello there!"); actionGroup.Add(new WalkAction("Guybrush", new Vector2(300, 300)); actionGroup.Add(new SetAnimationAction("Guybrush", "Sit")); This creates a new action group (an entire line in the image above) and adds it to the manager. All of the groups are executed in parallel, but actions within each group are chained together so that the second one only starts after the first one finishes. When the last action in a group finishes, the group is destroyed. Problem Now I need to replicate this information across a network, so that in a multiplayer session, all players see the same thing. Serializing the individual actions is not the problem. But I'm an absolute beginner when it comes to networking and I have a few questions. I think for the sake of simplicity in this discussion we can abstract the action manager component to being simply: var actionManager = new List<List<string>>(); How should I proceed to keep the contents of the above data structure syncronized between all players? Besides the core question, I'm also having a few other concerns related to it (i.e. all possible implications of the same problem above): If I use a server/client architecture (with one of the players acting as both a server and a client), and one of the clients has spawned a group of actions, should he add them directly to the manager, or only send a request to the server, which in turn will order every client to add that group? What about packet losses and the like? The game is deterministic, but I'm thinking that any discrepancy in the sequence of actions executed in a client could lead to inconsistent states of the world. How do I safeguard against that sort of problem? What if I add too many actions at once, won't that cause problems for the connection? Any way to alleviate that?

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• Combobox binding with different types

  - by George Evjen

  Binding to comboboxes in Silverlight has been an adventure the past couple of days. In our framework at ArchitectNow we use LookupGroups and LookupValues. In our database we would have a LookupGroup of NBA Teams for example. The group would be called NBATeams, we get the LookupGroupID and then get the values from the LookupValues table. So we would end up with a list of all 30+ teams. Our lookup values entity has a display text(string), value(string), IsActive and some other fields. With our applications we load all this information into the system when the user is logging in or right after they login. So in cache we have a list of groups and values that we can get at whenever we want to. We get this information in our framework simply by creating an observable collection of type LookupValue. To get a list of these values into our property all we have to do is. var NBATeams = AppContext.Current.LookupSerivce.GetLookupValues(“NBATeams”); Our combobox then is bound like this. (We use telerik components in most if not all our projects) <telerik:RadComboBox ItemsSource="{Binding NBATeams}”></telerik:RadComboBox> This should give you a list in your combobox. We also set up another property in our ViewModel that is a just single object of NBATeams  - “SelectedNBATeam” Our selectedItem in our combobox would look like, we would set this to a two way binding since we are sending data back. SelectedItem={Binding SelectedNBATeam, mode=TwoWay}” This is all pretty straight forward and we use this pattern throughout all our applications. What do you do though when you have a combobox in a ItemsControl or ListBox? Here we have a list of NBA Teams that are a string that are being brought back from the database. We cant have the selected item be our LookupValue because the data is a string and its being bound in an ItemsControl. In the example above we would just have the combobox in a form. Here though we have it in a ItemsControl, where there is no selected item from the initial ItemsSource. In order to get the selected item to be displayed in the combobox you have to convert the LookupValue to a string. Then instead of using SelectedItem in the combobox use SelectedValue. To convert the LookupValue we do this. Create an observable collection of strings public ObservableCollection<string> NBATeams { get; set;} Then convert your lookups to strings var NBATeams = new ObservableCollection<string>(AppContext.Current.LookupService.GetLookupValues(“NBATeams”).Select(x => x.DisplayText)); This will give us a list of strings and our selected value should be bound to the NBATeams property in our ItemsSource in our ItemsControl. SelectedValue={Binding NBATeam, mode=TwoWay}”

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• Best Advice Ever: Learn By Helping Others

  - by Argenis

  I remember when back in 2001 my friend and former SQL Server MVP Carlos Eduardo Rojas was busy earning his MVP street-cred in the NNTP forums, aka Newsgroups. I always thought he was playing the Sheriff trying to put some order in a Wild Wild West town by trying to understand what these people were asking. He spent a lot of time doing this stuff – and I thought it was just plain crazy. After all, he was doing it for free. What was he gaining from all of that work? It was not until the advent of Twitter and #SQLHelp that I realized the real gain behind helping others. Forget about the glory and the laurels of others thanking you (and thinking you’re the best thing ever – ha!), or whatever award with whatever three letter acronym might be given to you. It’s about what you learn in the process of helping others. See, when you teach something, it’s usually at a fixed date and time, and on a specific topic. But helping others with their issues or general questions is something that goes on 24x7, on whatever topic under the sun. Just go look at sites like DBA.StackExchange.com, or the SQLServerCentral forums. It’s questions coming in literally non-stop from all corners or the world. And yet a lot of people are willing to help you, regardless of who you are, where you come from, or what time of day it is. And in my case, this process of helping others usually leads to me learning something new. Especially in those cases where the question isn’t really something I’m good at. The delicate part comes when you’re ready to give an answer, but you’re not sure. Often times I’ll try to validate with Internet searches and what have you. Often times I’ll throw in a question mark at the end of the answer, so as not to look authoritative, but rather suggestive. But as time passes by, you get more and more comfortable with that topic. And that’s the real gain.  I have done this for many years now on #SQLHelp, which is my preferred vehicle for providing assistance. I cannot tell you how much I’ve learned from it. By helping others, by watching others help. It’s all knowledge and experience you gain…and you might not be getting all that in your day job today. Such thing, my dear reader, is invaluable. It’s what will differentiate yours amongst a pack of resumes. It’s what will get you places. Take it from me - a guy who, like you, knew nothing about SQL Server.

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• Oops, I left my kernel zone configuration behind!

  - by mgerdts

  Most people use boot environments to move in one direction.  A system starts with an initial installation and from time to time new boot environments are created - typically as a result of pkg update - and then the new BE is booted.  This post is of little interest to those people as no hackery is needed.  This post is about some mild hackery. During development, I commonly test different scenarios across multiple boot environments.  Many times, those tests aren't related to the act of configuring or installing zone and I so it's kinda handy to avoid the effort involved of zone configuration and installation.  A somewhat common order of operations is like the following: # beadm create -e golden -a test1 # reboot Once the system is running in the test1 BE, I install a kernel zone. # zonecfg -z a178 create -t SYSsolaris-kz # zoneadm -z a178 install Time passes, and I do all kinds of stuff to the test1 boot environment and want to test other scenarios in a clean boot environment.  So then I create a new one from my golden BE and reboot into it. # beadm create -e golden -a test2 # reboot Since the test2 BE was created from the golden BE, it doesn't have the configuration for the kernel zone that I configured and installed.  Getting that zone over to the test2 BE is pretty easy.  My test1 BE is really known as s11fixes-2. root@vzl-212:~# beadm mount s11fixes-2 /mnt root@vzl-212:~# zonecfg -R /mnt -z a178 export | zonecfg -z a178 -f - root@vzl-212:~# beadm unmount s11fixes-2 root@vzl-212:~# zoneadm -z a178 attach root@vzl-212:~# zoneadm -z a178 boot On the face of it, it would seem as though it would have been easier to just use zonecfg -z a178 create -t SYSolaris-kz within the test2 BE to get the new configuration over.  That would almost work, but it would have left behind the encryption key required for access to host data and any suspend image.  See solaris-kz(5) for more info on host data.  I very commonly have more complex configurations that contain many storage URIs and non-default resource controls.  Retyping them would be rather tedious.

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• AWS EC2 Oracle RDB - Storing and managing my data

  - by llaszews

  When create an Oracle Database on the Amazon cloud you will need to store you database files somewhere on the EC2 cloud. There are basically three places where database files can be stored: 1. Local drive - This is the local drive that is part of the virtual server EC2 instance. 2. Elastic Block Storage (EBS) - Network attached storage that appears as a local drive. 3. Simple Storage Server (S3) - 'Storage for the Internet'. S3 is not high speed and intended for store static document type files. S3 can also be used for storing static web page files. Local drives are ephemeral so not appropriate to be used as a database storage device. The leaves EBS which is the best place to store database files. EBS volumes appear as local disk drives. They are actually network-attached to an Amazon EC2 instance. In addition, EBS persists independently from the running life of a single Amazon EC2 instance. If you use an EBS backed instance for your database data, it will remain available after reboot but not after terminate. In many cases you would not need to terminate your instance but only stop it, which is equivalent of shutdown. In order to save your database data before you terminate an instance, you can snapshot the EBS to S3. Using EBS as a data store you can move your Oracle data files from one instance to another. This allows you to move your database from one region or or zone to another. Unfortunately, to scale out your Oracle RDS on AWS you can not have read only replicas. This is only possible with the other Oracle relational database - MySQL. The free micro instances use EBS as its storage. This is a very good white paper that has more details: AWS Storage Options This white paper also discusses: SQS, SimpleDB, and Amazon RDS in the context of storage devices. However, these are not storage devices you would use to store an Oracle database. This slide deck discusses a lot of information that is in the white paper: AWS Storage Options slideshow

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