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• Part 1 - Load Testing In The Cloud

  - by Tarun Arora

  Azure is fascinating, but even more fascinating is the marriage of Azure and TFS! Introduction Recently a client I worked for had 2 major business critical applications being delivered, with very little time budgeted for Performance testing, we immediately hit a bottleneck when the performance testing phase started, the in house infrastructure team could not support the hardware requirements in the short notice. It was suggested that the performance testing be performed on one of the QA environments which was a fraction of the production environment. This didn’t seem right, the team decided to turn to the cloud. The team took advantage of the elasticity offered by Azure, starting with a single test agent which was provisioned and ready for use with in 30 minutes the team scaled up to 17 test agents to perform a very comprehensive performance testing cycle. Issues were identified and resolved but the highlight was that the cost of running the ‘test rig’ proved to be less than if hosted on premise by the infrastructure team. Thank you for taking the time out to read this blog post, in the series of posts, I’ll try and cover the start to end of everything you need to know to use Azure to build your Test Rig in the cloud. But Why Azure? I have my own Data Centre… If the environment is provisioned in your own datacentre, - No matter what level of service agreement you may have with your infrastructure team there will be down time when the environment is patched - How fast can you scale up or down the environments (keeping the enterprise processes in mind) Administration, Cost, Flexibility and Scalability are the areas you would want to think around when taking the decision between your own Data Centre and Azure! How is Microsoft's Public Cloud Offering different from Amazon’s Public Cloud Offering? Microsoft's offering of the Cloud is a hybrid of Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) which distinguishes Microsoft's offering from other providers such as Amazon (Amazon only offers IaaS). PaaS – Platform as a Service IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service Fills the needs of those who want to build and run custom applications as services. Similar to traditional hosting, where a business will use the hosted environment as a logical extension of the on-premises datacentre. A service provider offers a pre-configured, virtualized application server environment to which applications can be deployed by the development staff. Since the service providers manage the hardware (patching, upgrades and so forth), as well as application server uptime, the involvement of IT pros is minimized. On-demand scalability combined with hardware and application server management relieves developers from infrastructure concerns and allows them to focus on building applications. The servers (physical and virtual) are rented on an as-needed basis, and the IT professionals who manage the infrastructure have full control of the software configuration. This kind of flexibility increases the complexity of the IT environment, as customer IT professionals need to maintain the servers as though they are on-premises. The maintenance activities may include patching and upgrades of the OS and the application server, load balancing, failover clustering of database servers, backup and restoration, and any other activities that mitigate the risks of hardware and software failures.   The biggest advantage with PaaS is that you do not have to worry about maintaining the environment, you can focus all your time in solving the business problems with your solution rather than worrying about maintaining the environment. If you decide to use a VM Role on Azure, you are asking for IaaS, more on this later. A nice blog post here on the difference between Saas, PaaS and IaaS. Now that we are convinced why we should be turning to the cloud and why in specific Azure, let’s discuss about the Test Rig. The Load Test Rig – Topology Now the moment of truth, Of course a big part of getting value from cloud computing is identifying the most adequate workloads to take to the cloud, so I’ve decided to try to make a Load Testing rig where the Agents are running on Windows Azure.   I’ll talk you through the above Topology, - User: User kick starts the load test run from the developer workstation on premise. This passes the request to the Test Controller. - Test Controller: The Test Controller is on premise connected to the same domain as the developer workstation. As soon as the Test Controller receives the request it makes use of the Windows Azure Connect service to orchestrate the test responsibilities to all the Test Agents. The Windows Azure Connect endpoint software must be active on all Azure instances and on the Controller machine as well. This allows IP connectivity between them and, given that the firewall is properly configured, allows the Controller to send work loads to the agents. In parallel, the Controller will collect the performance data from the agents, using the traditional WMI mechanisms. - Test Agents: The Test Agents are on the Windows Azure Public Cloud, as soon as the test controller issues instructions to the test agents, the test agents start executing the load tests. The HTTP requests are issued against the web server on premise, the results are captured by the test agents. And finally the results are passed over to the controller. - Servers: The Web Server and DB Server are hosted on premise in the datacentre, this is usually the case with business critical applications, you probably want to manage them your self. Recap and What’s next? So, in the introduction in the series of blog posts on Load Testing in the cloud I highlighted why creating a test rig in the cloud is a good idea, what advantages does Windows Azure offer and the Test Rig topology that I will be using. I would also like to mention that i stumbled upon this [Video] on Azure in a nutshell, great watch if you are new to Windows Azure. In the next post I intend to start setting up the Load Test Environment and discuss pricing with respect to test agent machine types that will be used in the test rig. Hope you enjoyed this post, If you have any recommendations on things that I should consider or any questions or feedback, feel free to add to this blog post. Remember to subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TarunArora.  See you in Part II.   Share this post : CodeProject

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• What to do after a servicing fails on TFS 2010

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  What do you do if you run a couple of hotfixes against your TFS 2010 server and you start to see seem odd behaviour? A customer of mine encountered that very problem, but they could not just, or at least not easily, go back a version.   You see, around the time of the TFS 2010 launch this company decided to upgrade their entire 250+ development team from TFS 2008 to TFS 2010. They encountered a few problems, owing mainly to the size of their TFS deployment, and the way they were using TFS. They were not doing anything wrong, but when you have the largest deployment of TFS outside of Microsoft you tend to run into problems that most people will never encounter. We are talking half a terabyte of source control in TFS with over 80 proxy servers. Its certainly the largest deployment I have ever heard of. When they did their upgrade way back in April, they found two major flaws in the product that meant that they had to back out of the upgrade and wait for a couple of hotfixes. KB983504 – Hotfix KB983578 – Patch KB2401992 -Hotfix In the time since they got the hotfixes they have run 6 successful trial migrations, but we are not talking minutes or hours here. When you have 400+ GB of data it takes time to copy it around. It takes time to do the upgrade and it takes time to do a backup. Well, last week it was crunch time with their developers off for Christmas they had a window of opportunity to complete the upgrade. Now these guys are good, but they wanted Northwest Cadence to be available “just in case”. They did not expect any problems as they already had 6 successful trial upgrades. The problems surfaced around 20 hours in after the first set of hotfixes had been applied. The new Team Project Collection, the only thing of importance, had disappeared from the Team Foundation Server Administration console. The collection would not reattach either. It would not even list the new collection as attachable! Figure: We know there is a database there, but it does not This was a dire situation as 20+ hours to repeat would leave the customer over time with 250+ developers sitting around doing nothing. We tried everything, and then we stumbled upon the command of last resort. TFSConfig Recover /ConfigurationDB:SQLServer\InstanceName;TFS_ConfigurationDBName /CollectionDB:SQLServer\instanceName;"Collection Name" -http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff407077.aspx WARNING: Never run this command! Now this command does something a little nasty. It assumes that there really should not be anything wrong and sets about fixing it. It ignores any servicing levels in the Team Project Collection database and forcibly applies the latest version of the schema. I am sure you can imagine the types of problems this may cause when the schema is updated leaving the data behind. That said, as far as we could see this collection looked good, and we were even able to find and attach the team project collection to the Configuration database. Figure: After attaching the TPC it enters a servicing mode After reattaching the team project collection we found the message “Re-Attaching”. Well, fair enough that sounds like something that may need to happen, and after checking that there was disk IO we left it to it. 14+ hours later, it was still not done so the customer raised a priority support call with MSFT and an engineer helped them out. Figure: Everything looks good, it is just offline. Tip: Did you know that these logs are not represented in the ~/Logs/* folder until they are opened once? The engineer dug around a bit and listened to our situation. He knew that we had run the dreaded “tfsconfig restore”, but was not phased. Figure: This message looks suspiciously like the wrong servicing version As it turns out, the servicing version was slightly out of sync with the schema. KB Schema Successful           KB983504 341 Yes   KB983578 344 sort of   KB2401992 360 nope   Figure: KB, Schema table with notation to its success The Schema version above represents the final end of run version for that hotfix or patch. The only way forward The problem was that the version was somewhere between 341 and 344. This is not a nice place to be in and the engineer give us the  only way forward as the removal of the servicing number from the database so that the re-attach process would apply the latest schema. if his sounds a little like the “tfsconfig recover” command then you are exactly right. Figure: Sneakily changing that 3 to a 1 should do the trick Figure: Changing the status and dropping the version should do it Now that we have done that we should be able to safely reattach and enable the Team Project Collection. Figure: The TPC is now all attached and running You may think that this is the end of the story, but it is not. After a while of mulling and seeking expert advice we came to the opinion that the database was, for want of a better term, “hosed”. There could well be orphaned data in there and the likelihood that we would have problems later down the line is pretty high. We contacted the customer back and made them aware that in all likelihood the repaired database was more like a “cut and shut” than anything else, and at the first sign of trouble later down the line was likely to split in two. So with 40+ hours invested in getting this new database ready the customer threw it away and started again. What would you do? Would you take the “cut and shut” to production and hope for the best?

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• Exception Handling And Other Contentious Political Topics

  - by Justin Jones

  So about three years ago, around the time of my last blog post, I promised a friend I would write this post. Keeping promises is a good thing, and this is my first step towards easing back into regular blogging. I fully expect him to return from Pennsylvania to buy me a beer over this. However, it’s been an… ahem… eventful three years or so, and blogging, unfortunately, got pushed to the back burner on my priority list, along with a few other career minded activities. Now that the personal drama of the past three years is more or less resolved, it’s time to put a few things back on the front burner. What I consider to be proper exception handling practices is relatively well known these days. There are plenty of blog posts out there already on this topic which more or less echo my opinions on this topic. I’ll try to include a few links at the bottom of the post. Several years ago I had an argument with a co-worker who posited that exceptions should be caught at every level and logged. This might seem like sanity on the surface, but the resulting error log looked something like this: Error: System.SomeException Followed by small stack trace. Error: System.SomeException Followed by slightly bigger stack trace. Error: System.SomeException Followed by slightly bigger stack trace. Error: System.SomeException Followed by slightly bigger stack trace. Error: System.SomeException Followed by slightly bigger stack trace. Error: System.SomeException Followed by slightly bigger stack trace. Error: System.SomeException Followed by slightly bigger stack trace. Error: System.SomeException Followed by slightly bigger stack trace.   These were all the same exception. The problem with this approach is that the error log, if you run any kind of analytics on in, becomes skewed depending on how far up the stack trace your exception was thrown. To mitigate this problem, we came up with the concept of the “PreLoggedException”. Basically, we would log the exception at the very top level and subsequently throw the exception back up the stack encapsulated in this pre-logged type, which our logging system knew to ignore. Now the error log looked like this: Error: System.SomeException Followed by small stack trace. Much cleaner, right? Well, there’s still a problem. When your exception happens in production and you go about trying to figure out what happened, you’ve lost more or less all context for where and how this exception was thrown, because all you really know is what method it was thrown in, but really nothing about who was calling the method or why. What gives you this clue is the entire stack trace, which we’re losing here. I believe that was further mitigated by having the logging system pull a system stack trace and add it to the log entry, but what you’re actually getting is the stack for how you got to the logging code. You’re still losing context about the actual error. Not to mention you’re executing a whole slew of catch blocks which are sloooooooowwwww……… In other words, we started with a bad idea and kept band-aiding it until it didn’t suck quite so bad. When I argued for not catching exceptions at every level but rather catching them following a certain set of rules, my co-worker warned me “do yourself a favor, never express that view in any future interviews.” I suppose this is my ultimate dismissal of that advice, but I’m not too worried. My approach for exception handling follows three basic rules: Only catch an exception if 1. You can do something about it. 2. You can add useful information to it. 3. You’re at an application boundary. Here’s what that means: 1. Only catch an exception if you can do something about it. We’ll start with a trivial example of a login system that uses a file. Please, never actually do this in production code, it’s just concocted example. So if our code goes to open a file and the file isn’t there, we get a FileNotFound exception. If the calling code doesn’t know what to do with this, it should bubble up. However, if we know how to create the file from scratch we can create the file and continue on our merry way. When you run into situations like this though, What should really run through your head is “How can I avoid handling an exception at all?” In this case, it’s a trivial matter to simply check for the existence of the file before trying to open it. If we detect that the file isn’t there, we can accomplish the same thing without having to handle in in a catch block. 2. Only catch an exception if you can do something about it. Continuing with the poorly thought out file based login system we contrived in part 1, if the code calls a Login(…) method and the FileNotFound exception is thrown higher up the stack, the code that calls Login must account for a FileNotFound exception. This is kind of counterintuitive because the calling code should not need to know the internals of the Login method, and the data file is an implementation detail. What makes more sense, assuming that we didn’t implement any of the good advice from step 1, is for Login to catch the FileNotFound exception and wrap it in a new exception. For argument’s sake we’ll say LoginSystemFailureException. (Sorry, couldn’t think of anything better at the moment.) This gives us two stack traces, preserving the original stack trace in the inner exception, and also is much more informative to the calling code. 3. Only catch an exception if you’re at an application boundary. At some point we have to catch all the exceptions, even the ones we don’t know what to do with. WinForms, ASP.Net, and most other UI technologies have some kind of built in mechanism for catching unhandled exceptions without fatally terminating the application. It’s still a good idea to somehow gracefully exit the application in this case if possible though, because you can no longer be sure what state your application is in, but nothing annoys a user more than an application just exploding. These unhandled exceptions need to be logged, and this is a good place to catch them. Ideally you never want this option to be exercised, but code as though it will be. When you log these exceptions, give them a “Fatal” status (e.g. Log4Net) and make sure these bugs get handled in your next release. That’s it in a nutshell. If you do it right each exception will only get logged once and with the largest stack trace possible which will make those 2am emergency severity 1 debugging sessions much shorter and less frustrating. Here’s a few people who also have interesting things to say on this topic:  http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericlippert/archive/2008/09/10/vexing-exceptions.aspx http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/9538/Exception-Handling-Best-Practices-in-NET I know there’s more but I can’t find them at the moment.

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• Microsoft Forcing Dev/Partners Hands on Win 8 Through Certification

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  I remember 2.5 years ago when Microsoft dropped a bomb on the Microsoft Partner community: all Gold competencies would require .NET 4 based premiere certifications (MCPD). Problem was, this gave a window of about 6 months for partners to update their employees’ certifications. At the place I was working, I put together an aggressive plan and we were able to attain the certs needed. Microsoft is always open that the certification requirements will change as the industry changes. .NET 1.0 certifications are useless here in 2012, and rightfully so they’ve been retired for a long time now. But now we’re seeing a new tactic by Microsoft – shifting gears away from certifications that speak to what industry needs and more to the Windows 8 agenda. Consider that currently the premiere development certification is the Microsoft Certified Professional Developer, which comes in three flavours – Web, Windows, and Azure. All require WCF and Data Access exams, as well as one that deals with the associated base technologies (ASP.NET, WinForms/WPF, Azure), and one that ties all three together in a solution-based exam. For Microsoft-based organizations, these skills aren’t just valid but necessary in building Microsoft applications. But the MCPD is being replaced with our old friend Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer (MCSD). So far, Microsoft has only released two types of MCSD – Web and Windows Store Apps. Windows Store Apps?! In a push to move developers to create WinRT-based applications, desktop development is now considered a second-class citizen in the eyes of Redmond. Also interesting are the language options for the exams: HTML5 and C#. Sorry VB folks, its time to embrace curly braces whether they be JavaScript or C#. Consider too the skills being assessed for the Windows Store Apps: Get your MCSD: Windows Store Apps Using HTML5 Get your MCSD: Windows Store Apps Using C# *Image Source: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/mcsd-windows-store-apps.aspx Nov 21/2012 If you look at the skills being tested in each exam, you’ll find that skills like WCF and Data Access are downplayed compared to things like integrating Charms, facilitating Search, programming for the microphone and camera – all very Windows 8 focussed items. Where this becomes maddening is that Microsoft is still pushing Windows 7 with enterprise clients. According to a ZDNet article, Microsoft wants to see Windows 7 on 70% of enterprise desktops by mid 2013. Assuming they somehow meet that (its a pretty lofty goal), there’s years of traditional desktop-based development that will still be required at some level. For those thinking they’ll just write and stick with the MCPD certification, note that most exams that go towards that certification will be retired at the end of July 2013! (Read the small print). And while details haven’t been finalized, its a safe bet that MCPD certifications eventually won’t count towards Gold-level competencies in the Microsoft Partner program. What this means for Microsoft Partners and Developers is that certification for desktop development is going to be limited to Windows Store Apps unless Microsoft re-introduces a traditional desktop (WPF) based MCSD cert. Web Application Development – It’s Not All Bad There’s big changes on the web side of certification, but I actually see these changes as being for the good! Check out the new exam requirements for MCSD – Web Applications: Get your MCSD: Web Applications certification *Image Source: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/cert-mcsd-web-applications.aspx Nov 21, 2012 We now *start* with HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS3! Now I’m sure that these will be slanted towards web development in IE, and I can hear designers everywhere bemoaning the CSS/IE combination. Still, I applaud Microsoft for adopting HTML5 as the go-to web technology and requiring certified developers to prove they have skills in the basics of web dev. The fact that the second exam clearly states “MVC Web Applications” shows that Web Forms is truly legacy and deprecated. That’s not to say there aren’t those out there that are still supporting or (for whatever reason) doing new dev with Web Forms, but this move by Microsoft is telling the community they better get on the MVC bandwagon if they want to stay current. Fantastic! And of course Azure needs to be here as well, and this is where the Microsoft agenda fits in. It’s no secret that there’s been a huge push in getting developers on to Azure. I don’t see this as being a bad thing either, as cloud computing (whether Azure, private, or 3rd party) is a necessary skill for developers to have here in 2012. The cynic in me realizes that the HTML5/JavaScript/CSS push wouldn’t be as prominent though if not for the Windows 8 Store App play, where HTML5 is a first class citizen (and an available language for the MCSD Windows Store App cert). In this case, the desktop developers loss is the web developers gain. Get Ready for Changes In addition to the changes in certifications, the Microsoft Partner competencies are going through changes as well. Web and Software Development are being merged into a single competency, meaning that licenses you would have received from having both as Gold are reduced. Other competencies are either being removed or changed, as are the exam requirements. In the same way that we’re seeing faster release cycles from Microsoft, so too will we see the Microsoft Partner Program and MS Certifications evolve faster than ever before. Many of us got caught in the last wave of changes, but this time we can see the wave coming – and it looks pretty big!

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• Loading XML file containing leading zeros with SSIS preserving the zeros

  - by Compudicted

  Visiting the MSDN SQL Server Integration Services Forum oftentimes I could see that people would pop up asking this question: “why I am not able to load an element from an XML file that contains zeros so the leading/trailing zeros would remain intact?”. I started to suspect that such a trivial and often-required operation perhaps is being misunderstood by the developer community. I would also like to add that the whole state of affairs surrounding the XML today is probably also going to be increasingly affected by a motion of people who dislike XML in general and many aspects of it as XSD and XSLT invoke a negative reaction at best. Nevertheless, XML is in wide use today and its importance as a bridge between diverse systems is ever increasing. Therefore, I deiced to write up an example of loading an arbitrary XML file that contains leading zeros in one of its elements using SSIS so the leading zeros would be preserved keeping in mind the goal on simplicity into a table in SQL Server database. To start off bring up your BIDS (running as admin) and add a new Data Flow Task (DFT). This DFT will serve as container to adding our XML processing elements (besides, the XML Source is not available anywhere else other than from within the DFT). Double-click your DFT and drag and drop the XMS Source component from the Tool Box’s Data Flow Sources. Now, let the fun begin! Being inspired by the upcoming Christmas I created a simple XML file with one set of data that contains an imaginary SSN number of Rudolph containing several leading zeros like 0000003. This file can be viewed here. To configure the XML Source of course it is quite intuitive to point it to our XML file, next what the XML source needs is either an embedded schema (XSD) or it can generate one for us. In lack of the one I opted to auto-generate it for me and I ended up with an XSD that looked like: <?xml version="1.0"?> <xs:schema attributeFormDefault="unqualified" elementFormDefault="qualified" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <xs:element name="XMasEvent"> <xs:complexType> <xs:sequence> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="CaseInfo"> <xs:complexType> <xs:sequence> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="ID" type="xs:unsignedByte" /> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="CreatedDate" type="xs:unsignedInt" /> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="LastName" type="xs:string" /> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="FirstName" type="xs:string" /> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="SSN" type="xs:unsignedByte" /> <!-- Becomes string -- > <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="DOB" type="xs:unsignedInt" /> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="Event" type="xs:string" /> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="ClosedDate" /> </xs:sequence> </xs:complexType> </xs:element> </xs:sequence> </xs:complexType> </xs:element> </xs:schema> As an aside on the XML file: if your XML file does not contain the outer node (<XMasEvent>) then you may end up in a situation where you see just one field in the output. Now please note that the SSN element’s data type was chosen to be of unsignedByte (and this is for a reason). The reason is stemming from the fact all our figures in the element are digits, this is good, but this is not exactly what we need, because if we will attempt to load the data with this XSD then we are going to either get errors on the destination or most typically lose the leading zeros. So the next intuitive choice is to change the data type to string. Besides, if a SSIS package was already created based on this XSD and the data type change was done thereafter, one should re-set the metadata by right-clicking the XML Source and choosing “Advanced Editor” in which there is a refresh button at the bottom left which will do the trick. So far so good, we are ready to load our XML file, well actually yes, and no, in my experience typically some data conversion may be required. So depending on your data destination you may need to tweak the data types targeted. Let’s add a Data Conversion Task to our DFT. Your package should look like: To make the story short I only will cover the SSN field, so in my data source the target SQL Table has it as nchar(10) and we chose string in our XSD (yes, this is a big difference), under such circumstances the SSIS will complain. So will go and manipulate on the data type of SSN by making it Unicode String (DT_WSTR), World String per se. The conversion should look like: The peek at the Metadata: We are almost there, now all we need is to configure the destination. For simplicity I chose SQL Server Destination. The mapping is a breeze, F5 and I am able to insert my data into SQL Server now! Checking the zeros – they are all intact!

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• Defaulting the HLSL Vertex and Pixel Shader Levels to Feature Level 9_1 in VS 2012

  - by Michael B. McLaughlin

  I love Visual Studio 2012. But this is not a post about that. This is a post about tweaking one particular parameter that I’ve found a bit annoying. Disclaimer: You will be modifying important MSBuild files. If you screw up you will break your build tools. And maybe your computer will catch fire. I’m not responsible. No warranties or guaranties of any sort. This info is provided “as is”. By default, if you add a new vertex shader or pixel shader item to a project, it will be set to build with shader profile 4.0_level_9_3. If you need 9_3 functionality, this is all well and good. But (especially for Windows Store apps) you really want to target the lowest shader profile possible so that your game will run on as many computers as possible. So it’s a good idea to default to 9_1. To do this you could add in new HLSL files via “Add->New Item->Visual C++->HLSL->______ Shader File (.hlsl)” and then edit the shader files’ properties to set them manually to use 9_1 via “Properties->HLSL Compiler->General->Shader Model”. This is fine unless you forget to do this once and then submit your game with 9_3 shaders instead of 9_1 shaders to the Windows Store or to some other game store. Then you’d wind up with either rejection or angry “this doesn’t work on my computer! ripoff!” messages. There’s another option though. In “Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\IDE\ItemTemplates\VC\HLSL\1033\VertexShader” (note the path might vary slightly for you if you are using a 32-bit system or have a non-ENU version of Visual Studio 2012) you will find a “VertexShader.vstemplate” file. If you open this file in a text editor (e.g. Notepad++), then inside the CustomParameters tag within the TemplateContent tag you should see a CustomParameter tag for the ShaderType, i.e.: <CustomParameter Name="$ShaderType$" Value="Vertex"/> On a new line, we are going to add another CustomParameter tag to the CustomParameters tag. It will look like this: <CustomParameter Name="$ShaderModel$" Value="4.0_level_9_1"/> such that we now have:     <CustomParameters>       <CustomParameter Name="$ShaderType$" Value="Vertex"/>       <CustomParameter Name="$ShaderModel$" Value="4.0_level_9_1"/>     </CustomParameters> You can then save the file (you will need to be an Administrator or have Administrator access). Back in the 1033 directory (or whatever the number is for your language), go into the “PixelShader” directory. Edit the “PixelShader.vstemplate” file and make the same change (note that this time $ShaderType$ is “Pixel” not “Vertex”; you shouldn’t be changing that line anyway, but if you were to just copy and replace the above four lines then you will wind up creating pixel shaders that the HLSL compiler would try to compile as vertex shaders, with all sort of weird errors as a result). Once you’ve added the $ShaderModel$ line to “PixelShader.vstemplate” and have saved it, everything should be done. Since Feature Level 9_1 and 9_3 don’t support any of the other shader types, those are set to default to their appropriate minimums already (Compute and Geometry are set to “4.0” and Domain and Hull are set to “5.0”, which are their respective minimums (though not all 4.0 cards support Compute shaders; they were an optional feature added with DirectX 10.1 and only became required for DirectX 11 hardware). In case you are wondering where these magic values come from, you can find them all in the “fxc.xml” file in the “\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft.CPP\v4.0\V110\1033” directory (or whatever your language number is; 1033 is ENU and various other product languages have their own respective numbers (see: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/goglobal/bb964664.aspx ) such that Japanese is 1041 (for example), though for all I know MSBuild tasks might be 1033 for everyone). If, like me, you installed VS 2012 to a drive other than the C:\ drive, you will find the vstemplate files in the drive to which you installed VS 2012 (D:\ in my case) but you will find the fxc.xml file on the C:\ drive. You should not edit fxc.xml. You will almost definitely break things by doing that; it’s just something you can look through to see all the other options that the FXC task takes such that you could, if needed, add further CustomParameter tags if you wanted to default to other supported options. I haven’t tried any others though so I don’t have any advice on how to set them.

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• How many developers before continuous integration becomes effective for us?

  - by Carnotaurus

  There is an overhead associated with continuous integration, e.g., set up, re-training, awareness activities, stoppage to fix "bugs" that turn out to be data issues, enforced separation of concerns programming styles, etc. At what point does continuous integration pay for itself? EDIT: These were my findings The set-up was CruiseControl.Net with Nant, reading from VSS or TFS. Here are a few reasons for failure, which have nothing to do with the setup: Cost of investigation: The time spent investigating whether a red light is due a genuine logical inconsistency in the code, data quality, or another source such as an infrastructure problem (e.g., a network issue, a timeout reading from source control, third party server is down, etc., etc.) Political costs over infrastructure: I considered performing an "infrastructure" check for each method in the test run. I had no solution to the timeout except to replace the build server. Red tape got in the way and there was no server replacement. Cost of fixing unit tests: A red light due to a data quality issue could be an indicator of a badly written unit test. So, data dependent unit tests were re-written to reduce the likelihood of a red light due to bad data. In many cases, necessary data was inserted into the test environment to be able to accurately run its unit tests. It makes sense to say that by making the data more robust then the test becomes more robust if it is dependent on this data. Of course, this worked well! Cost of coverage, i.e., writing unit tests for already existing code: There was the problem of unit test coverage. There were thousands of methods that had no unit tests. So, a sizeable amount of man days would be needed to create those. As this would be too difficult to provide a business case, it was decided that unit tests would be used for any new public method going forward. Those that did not have a unit test were termed 'potentially infra red'. An intestesting point here is that static methods were a moot point in how it would be possible to uniquely determine how a specific static method had failed. Cost of bespoke releases: Nant scripts only go so far. They are not that useful for, say, CMS dependent builds for EPiServer, CMS, or any UI oriented database deployment. These are the types of issues that occured on the build server for hourly test runs and overnight QA builds. I entertain that these to be unnecessary as a build master can perform these tasks manually at the time of release, esp., with a one man band and a small build. So, single step builds have not justified use of CI in my experience. What about the more complex, multistep builds? These can be a pain to build, especially without a Nant script. So, even having created one, these were no more successful. The costs of fixing the red light issues outweighed the benefits. Eventually, developers lost interest and questioned the validity of the red light. Having given it a fair try, I believe that CI is expensive and there is a lot of working around the edges instead of just getting the job done. It's more cost effective to employ experienced developers who do not make a mess of large projects than introduce and maintain an alarm system. This is the case even if those developers leave. It doesn't matter if a good developer leaves because processes that he follows would ensure that he writes requirement specs, design specs, sticks to the coding guidelines, and comments his code so that it is readable. All this is reviewed. If this is not happening then his team leader is not doing his job, which should be picked up by his manager and so on. For CI to work, it is not enough to just write unit tests, attempt to maintain full coverage, and ensure a working infrastructure for sizable systems. The bottom line: One might question whether fixing as many bugs before release is even desirable from a business prespective. CI involves a lot of work to capture a handful of bugs that the customer could identify in UAT or the company could get paid for fixing as part of a client service agreement when the warranty period expires anyway.

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• SQL Server Developer Tools &ndash; Codename Juneau vs. Red-Gate SQL Source Control

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

  So how do the new SQL Server Developer Tools (previously code-named Juneau) stack up against SQL Source Control?  Read on to find out. At the PASS Community Summit a couple of weeks ago, it was announced that the previously code-named Juneau software would be released under the name of SQL Server Developer Tools with the release of SQL Server 2012.  This replacement for Database Projects in Visual Studio (also known in a former life as Data Dude) has some great new features.  I won’t attempt to describe them all here, but I will applaud Microsoft for making major improvements.  One of my favorite changes is the way database elements are broken down.  Previously every little thing was in its own file.  For example, indexes were each in their own file.  I always hated that.  Now, SSDT uses a pattern similar to Red-Gate’s and puts the indexes and keys into the same file as the overall table definition. Of course there are really cool features to keep your database model in sync with the actual source scripts, and the rename refactoring feature is now touted as being more than just a search and replace, but rather a “semantic-aware” search and replace.  Funny, it reminds me of SQL Prompt’s Smart Rename feature.  But I’m not writing this just to criticize Microsoft and argue that they are late to the party with this feature set.  Instead, I do see it as a viable alternative for folks who want all of their source code to be version controlled, but there are a couple of key trade-offs that you need to know about when you choose which tool set to use. First, the basics Both tool sets integrate with a wide variety of source control systems including the most popular: Subversion, GIT, Vault, and Team Foundation Server.  Both tools have integrated functionality to produce objects to upgrade your target database when you are ready (DACPACs in SSDT, integration with SQL Compare for SQL Source Control).  If you regularly live in Visual Studio or the Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) then SSDT will likely be comfortable for you.  Like BIDS, SSDT is a Visual Studio Project Type that comes with SQL Server, and if you don’t already have Visual Studio installed, it will install the shell for you.  If you already have Visual Studio 2010 installed, then it will just add this as an available project type.  On the other hand, if you regularly live in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) then you will really enjoy the SQL Source Control integration from within SSMS.  Both tool sets store their database model in script files.  In SSDT, these are on your file system like other source files; in SQL Source Control, these are stored in the folder structure in your source control system, and you can always GET them to your file system if you want to browse them directly. For me, the key differentiating factors are 1) a single, unified check-in, and 2) migration scripts.  How you value those two features will likely make your decision for you. Unified Check-In If you do a continuous-integration (CI) style of development that triggers an automated build with unit testing on every check-in of source code, and you use Visual Studio for the rest of your development, then you will want to really consider SSDT.  Because it is just another project in Visual Studio, it can be added to your existing Solution, and you can then do a complete, or unified single check-in of all changes whether they are application or database changes.  This is simply not possible with SQL Source Control because it is in a different development tool (SSMS instead of Visual Studio) and there is no way to do one unified check-in between the two.  You CAN do really fast back-to-back check-ins, but there is the possibility that the automated build that is triggered from the first check-in will cause your unit tests to fail and the CI tool to report that you broke the build.  Of course, the automated build that is triggered from the second check-in which contains the “other half” of your changes should pass and so the amount of time that the build was broken may be very, very short, but if that is very, very important to you, then SQL Source Control just won’t work; you’ll have to use SSDT. Refactoring and Migrations If you work on a mature system, or on a not-so-mature but also not-so-well-designed system, where you want to refactor the database schema as you go along, but you can’t have data suddenly disappearing from your target system, then you’ll probably want to go with SQL Source Control.  As I wrote previously, there are a number of changes which you can make to your database that the comparison tools (both from Microsoft and Red Gate) simply cannot handle without the possibility (or probability) of data loss.  Currently, SSDT only offers you the ability to inject PRE and POST custom deployment scripts.  There is no way to insert your own script in the middle to override the default behavior of the tool.  In version 3.0 of SQL Source Control (Early Access version now available) you have that ability to create your own custom migration script to take the place of the commands that the tool would have done, and ensure the preservation of your data.  Or, even if the default tool behavior would have worked, but you simply know a better way then you can take control and do things your way instead of theirs. You Decide In the environment I work in, our automated builds are not triggered off of check-ins, but off of the clock (currently once per night) and so there is no point at which the automated build and unit tests will be triggered without having both sides of the development effort already checked-in.  Therefore having a unified check-in, while handy, is not critical for us.  As for migration scripts, these are critically important to us.  We do a lot of new development on systems that have already been in production for years, and it is not uncommon for us to need to do a refactoring of the database.  Because of the maturity of the existing system, that often involves data migrations or other additional SQL tasks that the comparison tools just can’t detect on their own.  Therefore, the ability to create a custom migration script to override the tool’s default behavior is very important to us.  And so, you can see why we will continue to use Red Gate SQL Source Control for the foreseeable future.

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• Need personal advice on how to get out of a company..

  - by SOfan

  Hi, I am an SO user since past 6 months and this is the first time I am turning to SO for personal help. I have asked technical questions before with my real ID. I am stuck inside a service based IT company for the past one year and haven't been able to decide if to leave it, when to leave it and how to leave it. I had taken 2 weeks LWP on medical reason roughly at end of 1 year and then soon after reporting, I applied for 2 months more LWP (on medical/personal ground) with the intention of working on my health,take up a hobby class to ward off depression,pessimism, to have some fun in life, and to look for a job which I really would be excited about - that interests me and which matches with my strength. My leave starts from this Monday. So in any case, I had hard set in mind that I will leave the company after I join them back hopefully with some job offer already in hand (after figuring out what I want do). Neither I can stand the past project,past colleagues,company, HR, pathetically low salary. But if I really listen to my heart, I don't want to have to go back to that office after my sabbatical and again have to see those people. I will have to resign it after my sabbatical ends. Then HR people perhaps wont like it, may even accuse me on face or behind back that primary purpose of my leave must have been to hunt for a better job and I lied about medical and person reasons. Also, if they get nasty and force me to serve 2 months notice period. There is no way I see myself after sabbatical resuming in old project or starting new work. It will be a pain. Since they have already approved 2 months leave and stuff, ideally if they want, they should be just able to relieve me right on the next day after I join back. But, I don't know if they want to get nasty, will they mention about my 2 months sabbatical leave in my experience letter or more scary, the term medical/personal reason. I have hard earned my experience here, have worked against my will, mostly it has been painful and slogged like anything, because I realize the importance of work experience in IT industry. I don't have greed to have those 2 months included extra in my experience letter, but I don't want to mess up with my experience letter in a way which makes my next employer ask question, get suspicious, or be wary if I have any medical reason going on. Being an emotional,moody person or somebody who can't be in an environment, once my mind and heart starts hating it. I think it perhaps is best, if I resign on Monday itself telling them (in polite manner) something that look I took sabbatical for some reason but I don't want to resume working in the company after my sabbatical ends. So please accept my resignation. Now tell me what you want to do about my leave request, my notice period and when you are willing to relieve me. What should I write and how? Some background: I am working in an IT company in India.I am overqualified in the company. It is grossly underpaying me. My education qualifications far exceed anyone's in the whole company being a CS undergrad as well as a CS grad. I joined this company after finishing the grad. I had self-doubts about my skills and interest as a programmer. I like doing research oriented work, though didn't have any particular success during grad. My life here has been very hectic. The project containing many many sub-projects has kept me on my toes and I have never really liked the work. I have been playing against my strength. Also the company strict internet usage policy (you can't read gmails, can't browse any non-work related sites not even news). When working for a client, from the machine we can't even check company related emails.For this one has to go to kiosk like 5 machines in a small room etc. Most of the times those machines are not available, so it was not unusual to keep making rounds to these kiosk machines to check company emails, browse company related emails etc.So it was not so easy to keep in touch with company related basic affairs for a not particular careful person. Things like this which are new to me, make me feel restricted. I am an undecisive person with a sense of failure, self-doubt, not meeting up unrealistic expectation. Somewhere at back of mind, I envy my classmates who make a smooth transition from company to company without causing any gap in their resume. I on other hand have gaps in resume. I get tired after working in a place for sometime. problem with colleagues in general. I am not particular great with people, have few friends, not known for a fun nature, rather serious, scholar. I am not a typical conventional female. I think females are usually more disciplined. But I am not so. I reach office late (though after informing manager). I don't want to blame them entirely, because from my past, it is not unusual for me to get undecisive on things. Also I had doubts about my ability as researched and to succeed there. of building a relationship in a group, to have something to talk about, newspaper. I get cut-off from people. peer pressure. I make blunders in coding, lose patience. Consciously or unconsciously I feel contempt for people here, work here, environment here. I have doubts that either I go to a place which does innovation, does research oriented work, product biggies, have great motivated people, have competent people passionate about products they are building. But then I also doubt my ability to survive there. I have identified that an idea job for me would be 4 days a week, a high salary job. When among people in company/team, I can't think much. I need some time at home to read good authentic books written in good style on what work I am doing.So that I am comfortable with my understanding of work. I get into pressure easily under deadline and need 5th day to cool myself off. I took for 2 weeks leave, because each day was hell for me. May be the depression phase of bipolar is on and also partially it could be that being a work centered person, who derives happiness,self-esteem from work, haven't been enjoying work and have been working for the sole person of proving stability, and ability to stick, against all odds, and facing what challenges I see, bonding with people, identifying opportunities to learn in given task etc.have been averaging one day LWP in 1 week or 10 days. or may be because of my nature,ADD,not being able to switch context,out of touch with news, don't have a circle of friends with who I enjoy. less knowledge in general to talk about, just some technical stuff.anyway, so due to emotional reason, some practical reason etc, I wanted to be very sure before leaving. So my leave starts from Monday and I should feel happy about it. I have taken the leave to for a few purposes - to take care of my health by regular yoga/exercise (with project on, I just can't do anything regular), reassess myself to see what I want to try next which work I might like, look for next job, take up a hobby which I like say singing. I am not clear on my career,job aspiration. I have tried my hands on research. During this year appraisal yesterday, I even had some conflict with my last manager. In meeting with me one on one, he would say all nice things about me, but in feedback to new manager, he hasn't given any excellent feedback. It is all only good. I am angry at this old Manager. Also new manager also scolded me as I didn't agree to his appraisal and waited to hear myself from old Manager. He kind of scolded me for wasting his time. Am I being unethical somewhere? I am always very conscious of if I am cheating anywhere. What advice I am seeking? How to resign and what to write in resignation letter

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• MVVM - how to make creating viewmodels at runtime less painfull

  - by Mr Happy

  I apologize for the long question, it reads a bit as a rant, but I promise it's not! I've summarized my question(s) below In the MVC world, things are straightforward. The Model has state, the View shows the Model, and the Controller does stuff to/with the Model (basically), a controller has no state. To do stuff the Controller has some dependencies on web services, repository, the lot. When you instantiate a controller you care about supplying those dependencies, nothing else. When you execute an action (method on Controller), you use those dependencies to retrieve or update the Model or calling some other domain service. If there's any context, say like some user wants to see the details of a particular item, you pass the Id of that item as parameter to the Action. Nowhere in the Controller is there any reference to any state. So far so good. Enter MVVM. I love WPF, I love data binding. I love frameworks that make data binding to ViewModels even easier (using Caliburn Micro a.t.m.). I feel things are less straightforward in this world though. Let's do the exercise again: the Model has state, the View shows the ViewModel, and the ViewModel does stuff to/with the Model (basically), a ViewModel does have state! (to clarify; maybe it delegates all the properties to one or more Models, but that means it must have a reference to the model one way or another, which is state in itself) To do stuff the ViewModel has some dependencies on web services, repository, the lot. When you instantiate a ViewModel you care about supplying those dependencies, but also the state. And this, ladies and gentlemen, annoys me to no end. Whenever you need to instantiate a ProductDetailsViewModel from the ProductSearchViewModel (from which you called the ProductSearchWebService which in turn returned IEnumerable<ProductDTO>, everybody still with me?), you can do one of these things: call new ProductDetailsViewModel(productDTO, _shoppingCartWebService /* dependcy */);, this is bad, imagine 3 more dependencies, this means the ProductSearchViewModel needs to take on those dependencies as well. Also changing the constructor is painfull. call _myInjectedProductDetailsViewModelFactory.Create().Initialize(productDTO);, the factory is just a Func, they are easily generated by most IoC frameworks. I think this is bad because Init methods are a leaky abstraction. You also can't use the readonly keyword for fields that are set in the Init method. I'm sure there are a few more reasons. call _myInjectedProductDetailsViewModelAbstractFactory.Create(productDTO); So... this is the pattern (abstract factory) that is usually recommended for this type of problem. I though it was genious since it satisfies my craving for static typing, until I actually started using it. The amount of boilerplate code is I think too much (you know, apart from the ridiculous variable names I get use). For each ViewModel that needs runtime parameters you'll get two extra files (factory interface and implementation), and you need to type the non-runtime dependencies like 4 extra times. And each time the dependencies change, you get to change it in the factory as well. It feels like I don't even use an DI container anymore. (I think Castle Windsor has some kind of solution for this [with it's own drawbacks, correct me if I'm wrong]). do something with anonymous types or dictionary. I like my static typing. So, yeah. Mixing state and behavior in this way creates a problem which don't exist at all in MVC. And I feel like there currently isn't a really adequate solution for this problem. Now I'd like to observe some things: People actually use MVVM. So they either don't care about all of the above, or they have some brilliant other solution. I haven't found an indepth example of MVVM with WPF. For example, the NDDD-sample project immensely helped me understand some DDD concepts. I'd really like it if someone could point me in the direction of something similar for MVVM/WPF. Maybe I'm doing MVVM all wrong and I should turn my design upside down. Maybe I shouldn't have this problem at all. Well I know other people have asked the same question so I think I'm not the only one. To summarize Am I correct to conclude that having the ViewModel being an integration point for both state and behavior is the reason for some difficulties with the MVVM pattern as a whole? Is using the abstract factory pattern the only/best way to instantiate a ViewModel in a statically typed way? Is there something like an in depth reference implementation available? Is having a lot of ViewModels with both state/behavior a design smell?

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• ODEE Green Field (Windows) Part 4 - Documaker

  - by AndyL-Oracle

  Welcome back! We're about nearing completion of our installation of Oracle Documaker Enterprise Edition ("ODEE") in a green field. In my previous post, I covered the installation of SOA Suite for WebLogic. Before that, I covered the installation of WebLogic, and Oracle 11g database - all of which constitute the prerequisites for installing ODEE. Naturally, if your environment already has a WebLogic server and Oracle database, then you can skip all those components and go straight for the heart of the installation of ODEE. The ODEE installation is comprised of two procedures, the first covers the installation, which is running the installer and answering some questions. This will lay down the files necessary to install into the tiers (e.g. database schemas, WebLogic domains, etcetera). The second procedure is to deploy the configuration files into the various components (e.g. deploy the database schemas, WebLogic domains, SOA composites, etcetera). I will segment my posts accordingly! Let's get started, shall we? Unpack the installation files into a temporary directory location. This should extract a zip file. Extract that zip file into the temporary directory location. Navigate to and execute the installer in Disk1/setup.exe. You may have to allow the program to run if User Account Control is enabled. Once the dialog below is displayed, click Next. Select your ODEE Home - inside this directory is where all the files will be deployed. For ease of support, I recommend using the default, however you can put this wherever you want. Click Next. Select the database type, database connection type – note that the database name should match the value used for the connection type (e.g. if using SID, then the name should be IDMAKER; if using ServiceName, the name should be “idmaker.us.oracle.com”). Verify whether or not you want to enable advanced compression. Note: if you are not licensed for Oracle 11g Advanced Compression option do not use this option! Terrible, terrible calamities will befall you if you do! Click Next. Enter the Documaker Admin user name (default "dmkr_admin" is recommended for support purposes) and set the password. Update the System name and ID (must be unique) if you want/need to - since this is a green field install you should be able to use the default System ID. The only time you'd change this is if you were, for some reason, installing a new ODEE system into an existing schema that already had a system. Click Next. Enter the Assembly Line user name (default "dmkr_asline" is recommended) and set the password. Update the Assembly Line name and ID (must be unique) if you want/need to - it's quite possible that at some point you will create another assembly line, in which case you have several methods of doing so. One is to re-run the installer, and in this case you would pick a different assembly line ID and name. Click Next. Note: you can set the DB folder if needed (typically you don’t – see ODEE Installation Guide for specifics. Select the appropriate Application Server type - in this case, our green field install is going to use WebLogic - set the username to weblogic (this is required) and specify your chosen password. This credential will be used to access the application server console/control panel. Keep in mind that there are specific criteria on password choices that are required by WebLogic, but are not enforced by the installer (e.g. must contain a number, must be of a certain length, etcetera). Choose a strong password. Set the connection information for the JMS server. Note that for the 12.3.x version, the installer creates a separate JVM (WebLogic managed server) that hosts the JMS server, whereas prior editions place the JMS server on the AdminServer.  You may also specify a separate URL to the JMS server in case you intend to move the JMS resources to a separate/different server (e.g. back to AdminServer). You'll need to provide a login principal and credentials - for simplicity I usually make this the same as the WebLogic domain user, however this is not a secure practice! Make your JMS principal different from the WebLogic principal and choose a strong password, then click Next. Specify the Hot Folder(s) (comma-delimited if more than one) - this is the directory/directories that is/are monitored by ODEE for jobs to process. Click Next. If you will be setting up an SMTP server for ODEE to send emails, you may configure the connection details here. The details required are simple: hostname, port, user/password, and the sender's address (e.g. emails will appear to be sent by the address shown here so if the recipient clicks "reply", this is where it will go). Click Next. If you will be using Oracle WebCenter:Content (formerly known as Oracle UCM) you can enable this option and set the endpoints/credentials here. If you aren't sure, select False - you can always go back and enable this later. I'm almost 76% certain there will be a post sometime in the future that details how to configure ODEE + WCC:C! Click Next. If you will be using Oracle UMS for sending MMS/text messages, you can enable and set the endpoints/credentials here. As with UCM, if you're not sure, don't enable it - you can always set it later. Click Next. On this screen you can change the endpoints for the Documaker Web Service (DWS), and the endpoints for approval processing in Documaker Interactive. The deployment process for ODEE will create 3 managed WebLogic servers for hosting various Documaker components (JMS, Interactive, DWS, Dashboard, Documaker Administrator, etcetera) and it will set the ports used for each of these services. In this screen you can change these values if you know how you want to deploy these managed servers - but for now we'll just accept the defaults. Click Next. Verify the installation details and click Install. You can save the installation into a response file if you need to (which might be useful if you want to rerun this installation in an unattended fashion). Allow the installation to progress... Click Next. You can save the response file if needed (e.g. in case you forgot to save it earlier!) Click Finish. That's it, you're done with the initial installation. Have a look around the ODEE_HOME that you just installed (remember we selected c:\oracle\odee_1?) and look at the files that are laid down. Don't change anything just yet! Stay tuned for the next segment where we complete and verify the installation. 

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• Finding the groups of a user in WLS with OPSS

  - by user12587121

  How to find the group memberships for a user from a web application running in Weblogic server ?  This is useful for building up the profile of the user for security purposes for example. WLS as a container offers an identity store service which applications can access to query and manage identities known to the container.  This article for example shows how to recover the groups of the current user, but how can we find the same information for an arbitrary user ? It is the Oracle Platform for Securtiy Services (OPSS) that looks after the identity store in WLS and so it is in the OPSS APIs that we can find the way to recover this information. This is explained in the following documents.  Starting from the FMW 11.1.1.5 book list, with the Security Overview document we can see how WLS uses OPSS: Proceeding to the more detailed Application Security document, we find this list of useful references for security in FMW. We can follow on into the User/Role API javadoc. The Application Security document explains how to ensure that the identity store is configured appropriately to allow the OPSS APIs to work.  We must verify that the jps-config.xml file where the application  is deployed has it's identity store configured--look for the following elements in that file: <serviceProvider type="IDENTITY_STORE" name="idstore.ldap.provider" class="oracle.security.jps.internal.idstore.ldap.LdapIdentityStoreProvider">             <description>LDAP-based IdentityStore Provider</description>  </serviceProvider> <serviceInstance name="idstore.ldap" provider="idstore.ldap.provider">             <property name="idstore.config.provider" value="oracle.security.jps.wls.internal.idstore.WlsLdapIdStoreConfigProvider"/>             <property name="CONNECTION_POOL_CLASS" value="oracle.security.idm.providers.stdldap.JNDIPool"/></serviceInstance> <serviceInstanceRef ref="idstore.ldap"/> The document contains a code sample for using the identity store here. Once we have the identity store reference we can recover the user's group memberships using the RoleManager interface:             RoleManager roleManager = idStore.getRoleManager();            SearchResponse grantedRoles = null;            try{                System.out.println("Retrieving granted WLS roles for user " + userPrincipal.getName());                grantedRoles = roleManager.getGrantedRoles(userPrincipal, false);                while( grantedRoles.hasNext()){                      Identity id = grantedRoles.next();                      System.out.println("  disp name=" + id.getDisplayName() +                                  " Name=" + id.getName() +                                  " Principal=" + id.getPrincipal() +                                  "Unique Name=" + id.getUniqueName());                     // Here, we must use WLSGroupImpl() to build the Principal otherwise                     // OES does not recognize it.                      retSubject.getPrincipals().add(new WLSGroupImpl(id.getPrincipal().getName()));                 }            }catch(Exception ex) {                System.out.println("Error getting roles for user " + ex.getMessage());                ex.printStackTrace();            }        }catch(Exception ex) {            System.out.println("OESGateway: Got exception instantiating idstore reference");        } This small JDeveloper project has a simple servlet that executes a request for the user weblogic's roles on executing a get on the default URL.  The full code to recover a user's goups is in the getSubjectWithRoles() method in the project.

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• Windows Azure – Write, Run or Use Software

  - by BuckWoody

  Windows Azure is a platform that has you covered, whether you need to write software, run software that is already written, or Install and use “canned” software whether you or someone else wrote it. Like any platform, it’s a set of tools you can use where it makes sense to solve a problem. The primary location for Windows Azure information is located at http://windowsazure.com. You can find everything there from the development kits for writing software to pricing, licensing and tutorials on all of that. I have a few links here for learning to use Windows Azure – although it’s best if you focus not on the tools, but what you want to solve. I’ve got it broken down here into various sections, so you can quickly locate things you want to know. I’ll include resources here from Microsoft and elsewhere – I use these same resources in the Architectural Design Sessions (ADS) I do with my clients worldwide. Write Software Also called “Platform as a Service” (PaaS), Windows Azure has lots of components you can use together or separately that allow you to write software in .NET or various Open Source languages to work completely online, or in partnership with code you have on-premises or both – even if you’re using other cloud providers. Keep in mind that all of the features you see here can be used together, or independently. For instance, you might only use a Web Site, or use Storage, but you can use both together. You can access all of these components through standard REST API calls, or using our Software Development Kit’s API’s, which are a lot easier. In any case, you simply use Visual Studio, Eclipse, Cloud9 IDE, or even a text editor to write your code from a Mac, PC or Linux.  Components you can use: Azure Web Sites: Windows Azure Web Sites allow you to quickly write an deploy websites, without setting a Virtual Machine, installing a web server or configuring complex settings. They work alone, with other Windows Azure Web Sites, or with other parts of Windows Azure. Web and Worker Roles: Windows Azure Web Roles give you a full stateless computing instance with Internet Information Services (IIS) installed and configured. Windows Azure Worker Roles give you a full stateless computing instance without Information Services (IIS) installed, often used in a "Services" mode. Scale-out is achieved either manually or programmatically under your control. Storage: Windows Azure Storage types include Blobs to store raw binary data, Tables to use key/value pair data (like NoSQL data structures), Queues that allow interaction between stateless roles, and a relational SQL Server database. Other Services: Windows Azure has many other services such as a security mechanism, a Cache (memcacheD compliant), a Service Bus, a Traffic Manager and more. Once again, these features can be used with a Windows Azure project, or alone based on your needs. Various Languages: Windows Azure supports the .NET stack of languages, as well as many Open-Source languages like Java, Python, PHP, Ruby, NodeJS, C++ and more.   Use Software Also called “Software as a Service” (SaaS) this often means consumer or business-level software like Hotmail or Office 365. In other words, you simply log on, use the software, and log off – there’s nothing to install, and little to even configure. For the Information Technology professional, however, It’s not quite the same. We want software that provides services, but in a platform. That means we want things like Hadoop or other software we don’t want to have to install and configure.  Components you can use: Kits: Various software “kits” or packages are supported with just a few clicks, such as Umbraco, Wordpress, and others. Windows Azure Media Services: Windows Azure Media Services is a suite of services that allows you to upload media for encoding, processing and even streaming – or even one or more of those functions. We can add DRM and even commercials to your media if you like. Windows Azure Media Services is used to stream large events all the way down to small training videos. High Performance Computing and “Big Data”: Windows Azure allows you to scale to huge workloads using a few clicks to deploy Hadoop Clusters or the High Performance Computing (HPC) nodes, accepting HPC Jobs, Pig and Hive Jobs, and even interfacing with Microsoft Excel. Windows Azure Marketplace: Windows Azure Marketplace offers data and programs you can quickly implement and use – some free, some for-fee.   Run Software Also known as “Infrastructure as a Service” (IaaS), this offering allows you to build or simply choose a Virtual Machine to run server-based software.  Components you can use: Persistent Virtual Machines: You can choose to install Windows Server, Windows Server with Active Directory, with SQL Server, or even SharePoint from a pre-configured gallery. You can configure your own server images with standard Hyper-V technology and load them yourselves – and even bring them back when you’re done. As a new offering, we also even allow you to select various distributions of Linux – a first for Microsoft. Windows Azure Connect: You can connect your on-premises networks to Windows Azure Instances. Storage: Windows Azure Storage can be used as a remote backup, a hybrid storage location and more using software or even hardware appliances.   Decision Matrix With all of these options, you can use Windows Azure to solve just about any computing problem. It’s often hard to know when to use something on-premises, in the cloud, and what kind of service to use. I’ve used a decision matrix in the last couple of years to take a particular problem and choose the proper technology to solve it. It’s all about options – there is no “silver bullet”, whether that’s Windows Azure or any other set of functions. I take the problem, decide which particular component I want to own and control – and choose the column that has that box darkened. For instance, if I have to control the wiring for a solution (a requirement in some military and government installations), that means the “Networking” component needs to be dark, and so I select the “On Premises” column for that particular solution. If I just need the solution provided and I want no control at all, I can look as “Software as a Service” solutions. Security, Pricing, and Other Info  Security: Security is one of the first questions you should ask in any distributed computing environment. We have certification info, coding guidelines and more, even a general “Request for Information” RFI Response already created for you.   Pricing: Are there licenses? How much does this cost? Is there a way to estimate the costs in this new environment? New Features: Many new features were added to Windows Azure - a good roundup of those changes can be found here. Support: Software Support on Virtual Machines, general support.    

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• Managing Your First SharePoint Project or Team

  - by Mark Rackley

  (*editor’s note* If you have proper SharePoint Training, know the difference between a site and a site collection, and have the utmost respect for the knowledge of your SharePoint team skip this blog and go directly to meetdux.com, do not pass go, do not collect $200… otherwise, please proceed) Dear Mr. or Mrs. I-know-nothing-about-SharePoint-but-hey,-I-have-manager-in-my-title-so-I’ll-tell-you-how-to-your-job, Thank you so much for joining the Acme corporation. We appreciate your eagerness and willingness to jump in and help us accomplish all of our goals here at acme (these roadrunner rockets don’t make themselves). You may have noticed that we have this thing called SharePoint lying around and we have invested some time in money to make it not a complete piece of garbage. So, I thought I’d give you some pointers to help make your stay here enjoyable and productive. Yeah… you don’t really know SharePoint Just because you had a mysite at your last organization or had a SharePoint 2003 team site does NOT mean you comprehend the vastness that is SharePoint. You don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes. You don’t know what should and should not be done. No, we CAN’T just query the SQL database directly. Yes, it really does take that long. No, we can’t do that out-of-the-box. Your experience doesn’t mean as much as you think it means… Yes, I’m aware that you co-created the internet with Al Gore and have been managing projects since I was blowing up GI Joe figures with firecrackers, however SharePoint is not like anything you have worked with before from a management perspective. Please don’t tell us the proper way to do our job or tell us how “you” would do it, and PLEASE don’t utter the words “I used to do some .NET development so let me know if you get stuck and need some guidance.” It MAY be possible for a incredible project manager to manage a SharePoint project and not understand the technology, but if you force your ideas on us or treat us like we don’t really know what we’re doing then you will prove yourself to NOT be one of those types. Oh no you didn’t… Please don’t tell us how you can bring in a group of guys of Kazakhstan to do the project for $20/hr. There are many companies out there who can do some really crappy SharePoint work and we don’t want to be stuck maintaining their junk. Do you know what it means to deploy a solution? Neither do some of those companies out there. However, there are are few AWESOME consulting firms out there but $150/hr is cheap for these guys. Believe me, it’s worth it though. You get what you pay for! Show us some respect We truly do appreciate and value your opinion and experience, but when we tell you something is different in SharePoint don’t be condescending and dismiss OUR experience and opinions. We have spent a lot of time and energy learning a very complicated technology that can open up a world of possibilities when used properly. We just want to make sure it is used properly. It’s not the same as .NET development. It’s not like a regular web application. There’s more going on behind the scenes than you can possibly fathom. Have a little faith in us please and listen when we talk. You may actually learn a thing or two. Take some time to learn the technology There is hope… you don’t have to be totally worthless. Take some time to learn SharePoint. Learn what it is and what it can do. Invest some time in learning our SharePoint environment. What’s our logical architecture and taxonomy? What governance do we have in place? If you just thought “huh?” then yes, I’m talking to you. Sincerely, Your SharePoint Team (This rant is not pointed at any particular organization or person. If you think it’s about you, you are wrong. This is just a general rant based upon things people have told me and things I’ve seen. If you don’t think it applies to you, please move on. If you think you might be guilty of handling your SharePoint team the wrong way, then just please listen, learn, and have a little faith in your team. You all have the same goal in mind. Also, take the time to learn something about SharePoint, you will all be less frustrated with each other.)

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• Feedback on meeting of the Linux User Group of Mauritius

  Once upon a time in a country far far away... Okay, actually it's not that bad but it has been a while since the last meeting of the Linux User Group of Mauritius (LUGM). There have been plans in the past but it never really happened. Finally, Selven took the opportunity and organised a new meetup with low administrative overhead, proper scheduling on alternative dates and a small attendee's survey on the preferred option. All the pre-work was nicely executed. First, I wasn't sure whether it would be possible to attend. Luckily I got some additional information, like children should come, too, and I was sold to this community gathering. According to other long-term members of the LUGM it was the first time 'ever' that a gathering was organised outside of Quatre Bornes, and I have to admit it was great! LUGM - user group meeting on the 15.06.2013 in L'Escalier Quick overview of Linux & the LUGM With a little bit of delay the LUGM meeting officially started with a quick overview and introduction to Linux presented by Avinash. During the session he told the audience that there had been quite some activity over the island some years ago but unfortunately it had been quiet during recent times. Of course, we also spoke about the acknowledged world dominance of Linux - thanks to Android - and the interesting possibilities for countries like Mauritius. It is known that a couple of public institutions have there back-end infrastructure running on Red Hat Linux systems but the presence on the desktop is still very low. Users are simply hanging on to Windows XP and older versions of Microsoft Office. Following the introduction of the LUGM Ajay joined into the session and it quickly changed into a panel discussion with lots of interesting questions and answers, sharing of first-hand experience either on the job or in private use of Linux, and a couple of ideas about how the LUGM could promote Linux a bit more in Mauritius. It was great to get an insight into other attendee's opinion and activities. Especially taking into consideration that I'm already using Linux since around 1996/97. Frankly speaking, I bought a SuSE 4.x distribution back in those days because I couldn't achieve certain tasks on Windows NT 4.0 without spending a fortune. OpenELEC Mediacenter Next, Selven gave us decent introduction on OpenELEC: Open Embedded Linux Entertainment Center (OpenELEC) is a small Linux distribution built from scratch as a platform to turn your computer into an XBMC media center. OpenELEC is designed to make your system boot fast, and the install is so easy that anyone can turn a blank PC into a media machine in less than 15 minutes. I didn't know about it until this presentation. In the past, I was mainly attached to Video Disk Recorder (VDR) as it allows the use of satellite receiver cards very easily. Hm, somehow I'm still missing my precious HTPC that I had to leave back in Germany years ago. It was great piece of hardware and software; self-built PC in a standard HiFi-sized (43cm) black desktop casing with 2 full-featured Hauppauge DVB-s cards, an old-fashioned Voodoo graphics card, WiFi card, Pioneer slot-in DVD drive, and fully remote controlled via infra-red thanks to Debian, VDR and LIRC. With EP Guide, scheduled recordings and general multimedia centre it offered all the necessary comfort in the living room, besides a Nintendo game console; actually a GameCube at that time... But I have to admit that putting OpenELEC on a Raspberry Pi would be a cool DIY project in the near future. LUGM - our next generation of linux users (15.06.2013) Project Evil Genius (PEG) Don't be scared of the paragraph header. Ish gave us a cool explanation why he named it PEG - Project Evil Genius; it's because of the time of the day when he was scripting down his ideas to be able to build, package and provide software applications to various Linux distributions. The main influence came from openSuSE but the platform didn't cater for his needs and ideas, so he started to work out something on his own. During his passionate session he also talked about the amazing experience he had due to other Linux users from all over the world. During the next couple of days Ish promised to put his script to GitHub... Looking forward to that. Check out Ish's personal blog over at hacklog.in. Highly recommended to read. Why India? Simply because the registration fees per year for an Indian domain are approximately 20 times less than for a Mauritian domain (.mu). Exploring the beach of L'Escalier af the meeting 'After-party' at the beach of L'Escalier Puh, after such interesting sessions, ideas around Linux and good conversation during the breaks and over lunch it was time for a little break-out. Selven suggested that we all should head down to the beach of L'Escalier and get some impressions of nature down here in the south of the island. Talking about 'beach' ;-) - absolutely not comparable to the white-sanded ones here in Flic en Flac... There are no lagoons down at the south coast of Mauriitus, and watching the breaking waves is a different experience and joy after all. Unfortunately, I was a little bit worried about the thoughtless littering at such a remote location. You have to drive on natural paths through the sugar cane fields and I was really shocked by the amount of rubbish lying around almost everywhere. Sad, really sad and it concurs with Yasir's recent article on the same topic. Resumé & outlook It was a great event. I met with new people, had some good conversations, and even my children enjoyed themselves the whole day. The location was well-chosen, enough space for each and everyone, parking spaces and even a playground for the children. Also, a big "Thank You" to Selven and his helpers for the organisation and preparation of lunch. I'm kind of sure that this was an exceptional meeting of LUGM and I'm really looking forward to the next gathering of Linux geeks. Hopefully, soon. All images are courtesy of Avinash Meetoo. More pictures are available on Flickr.

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• concurrency::index<N> from amp.h

  - by Daniel Moth

  Overview C++ AMP introduces a new template class index<N>, where N can be any value greater than zero, that represents a unique point in N-dimensional space, e.g. if N=2 then an index<2> object represents a point in 2-dimensional space. This class is essentially a coordinate vector of N integers representing a position in space relative to the origin of that space. It is ordered from most-significant to least-significant (so, if the 2-dimensional space is rows and columns, the first component represents the rows). The underlying type is a signed 32-bit integer, and component values can be negative. The rank field returns N. Creating an index The default parameterless constructor returns an index with each dimension set to zero, e.g. index<3> idx; //represents point (0,0,0) An index can also be created from another index through the copy constructor or assignment, e.g. index<3> idx2(idx); //or index<3> idx2 = idx; To create an index representing something other than 0, you call its constructor as per the following 4-dimensional example: int temp[4] = {2,4,-2,0}; index<4> idx(temp); Note that there are convenience constructors (that don’t require an array argument) for creating index objects of rank 1, 2, and 3, since those are the most common dimensions used, e.g. index<1> idx(3); index<2> idx(3, 6); index<3> idx(3, 6, 12); Accessing the component values You can access each component using the familiar subscript operator, e.g. One-dimensional example: index<1> idx(4); int i = idx[0]; // i=4 Two-dimensional example: index<2> idx(4,5); int i = idx[0]; // i=4 int j = idx[1]; // j=5 Three-dimensional example: index<3> idx(4,5,6); int i = idx[0]; // i=4 int j = idx[1]; // j=5 int k = idx[2]; // k=6 Basic operations Once you have your multi-dimensional point represented in the index, you can now treat it as a single entity, including performing common operations between it and an integer (through operator overloading): -- (pre- and post- decrement), ++ (pre- and post- increment), %=, *=, /=, +=, -=,%, *, /, +, -. There are also operator overloads for operations between index objects, i.e. ==, !=, +=, -=, +, –. Here is an example (where no assertions are broken): index<2> idx_a; index<2> idx_b(0, 0); index<2> idx_c(6, 9); _ASSERT(idx_a.rank == 2); _ASSERT(idx_a == idx_b); _ASSERT(idx_a != idx_c); idx_a += 5; idx_a[1] += 3; idx_a++; _ASSERT(idx_a != idx_b); _ASSERT(idx_a == idx_c); idx_b = idx_b + 10; idx_b -= index<2>(4, 1); _ASSERT(idx_a == idx_b); Usage You'll most commonly use index<N> objects to index into data types that we'll cover in future posts (namely array and array_view). Also when we look at the new parallel_for_each function we'll see that an index<N> object is the single parameter to the lambda, representing the (multi-dimensional) thread index… In the next post we'll go beyond being able to represent an N-dimensional point in space, and we'll see how to define the N-dimensional space itself through the extent<N> class. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• First PC Build (Part 1)

  - by Anthony Trudeau

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/tonyt/archive/2014/08/05/157959.aspxA couple of months ago I made the decision to build myself a new computer. The intended use is gaming and for using the last real version of Photoshop. I was motivated by the poor state of console gaming and a simple desire to do something I haven’t done before – build a PC from the ground up. I’ve been using PCs for more than two decades. I’ve replaced a component hear and there, but for the last 10 years or so I’ve only used laptops. Therefore, this article will be written from the perspective of someone familiar with PCs, but completely new at building. I’m not an expert and this is not a definitive guide for building a PC, but I do hope that it encourages you to try it yourself. Component List Research There was a lot of research necessary, because building a PC is completely new to me, and I haven’t kept up with what’s out there. The first thing you want to do is nail down what your goals are. Your goals are going to be driven by what you want to do with your computer and personal choice. Don’t neglect the second one, because if you’re doing this for fun you want to get what you want. In my case, I focused on three things: performance, longevity, and aesthetics. The performance aspect is important for gaming and Photoshop. This will drive what components you get. For example, heavy gaming use is going to drive your choice of graphics card. Longevity is relevant to me, because I don’t want to be changing things out anytime soon for the next hot game. The consequence of performance and longevity is cost. Finally, aesthetics was my next consideration. I could have just built a box, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as fun for me. Aesthetics might not be important to you. They are for me. I also like gadgets and that played into at least one purchase for this build. I used PC Part Picker to put together my component list. I found it invaluable during the process and I’d recommend it to everyone. One caveat is that I wouldn’t trust the compatibility aspects. It does a pretty good job of not steering you wrong, but do your own research. The rest of it isn’t really sexy. I started out with what appealed to me and then I made changes and additions as I dived deep into researching each component and interaction I could find. The resources I used are innumerable. I used reviews, product descriptions, forum posts (praises and problems), et al. to assist me. I also asked friends into gaming what they thought about my component list. And when I got near the end I posted my list to the Reddit /r/buildapc forum. I cannot stress the value of extra sets of eyeballs and first hand experiences. Some of the resources I used: PC Part Picker Tom’s Hardware bit-tech Reddit Purchase PC Part Picker favors certain vendors. You should look at others too. In my case I found their favorites to be the best. My priorities were out-the-door price and shipping time. I knew that once I started getting parts I’d want to start building. Luckily, I timed it well and everything arrived within the span of a few days. Here are my opinions on the vendors I ended up using in alphabetical order. Amazon.com is a good, reliable choice. They have excellent customer service in my experience, and I knew I wouldn’t have trouble with them. However, shipping time is often a problem when you use their free shipping unless you order expensive items (I’ve found items over $100 ship quickly). Ultimately though, price wasn’t always the best and their collection of sales tax in my state turned me off them. I did purchase my case from them. I ordered the mouse as well, but I cancelled after it was stuck four days in a “shipping soon” state. I purchased the mouse locally. Best Buy is not my favorite place to do business. There’s a lot of history with poor, uninterested sales representatives and they used to have a lot of bad anti-consumer policies. That’s a lot better now, but the bad taste is still in my mouth. I ended up purchasing the accessories from them including mouse (locally) and headphones. NCIX is a company that I’ve never heard of before. It popped up as a recommendation for my CPU cooler on PC Part Picker. I didn’t do a lot of research on the company, because their policy on you buying insurance for your orders turned me off. That policy makes it clear to me that the company finds me responsible for the shipment once it leaves their dock. That’s not right, and may run afoul of state laws. Regardless they shipped my CPU cooler quickly and I didn’t have a problem. NewEgg.com is a well known company. I had never done business with them, but I’m glad I did. They shipped quickly and provided good visibility over everything. The prices were also the best in most cases. My main complaint is that they have a lot of exchange only return policies on components. To their credit those policies are listed in the cart underneath each item. The visibility tells me that they’re not playing any shenanigans and made me comfortable dealing with that risk. The vast majority of what I ordered came from them. Coming Next In the next part I’ll tackle my build experience.

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• Alcatel-Lucent: Enterprise 2.0: The Top 5 Things I would Do Over

  - by Kellsey Ruppel

  Happy Monday! Does anyone else feel as if the weekend went entirely too quickly? At least for those of us in the United States, we have the 4th of July Holiday next week to look forward to This week on the blog, we are going to focus on "WebCenter by Example" and highlight best practices from customers and partners. I recently came across this article and I think this is a great example of how we can learn from one another when it comes to social collaboration adoption. Do you agree with Jem? What things or best practices have you learned in your organizations?  By Jem Janik, Enterprise community manager, Alcatel-Lucent  Not so long ago, Engage, the Alcatel-Lucent employee social network and collaboration platform, celebrated its third birthday. With more than 25,000 members actively interacting each month, Engage has been a big enough success that it’s been the subject of external articles, and often those of us who helped launch it will go out and speak about what aspects contributed to that success. Hindsight is still 20/20 and what it takes to successfully launch an enterprise 2.0 community is fairly well-known now.  Today I want to tell you what I suspect you really want to know about.  As the enterprise community manager for Engage, after three years in, what are the top 5 things I wish we (and I mostly mean me) could do over? #5 Define your analytics solution from the start There is so much to do when you launch a community and initially growing it without complete chaos is quite a task.  It doesn’t take too long to get to a point where you want to focus your continued efforts in growing company collaboration.  Do people truly talk across regional boundaries or have we shifted siloed conversations to a new platform.  Is there one organization that doesn’t interact with another? If you are lucky you’ll have someone in your community team well versed in the world of databases and SQL queries, but it takes time to figure out what backend analytics data actually means. Professional support can be expensive and it may be hard to justify later as it typically has the community manager as the only main customer.  Figure out what you think you’ll want to know and how to get it early on. The sooner the better even if it doesn’t seem that critical at the time. #4 Lobbies guide you to the right places One piece of feedback that comes up more and more as we keep growing Engage is it’s hard to find stuff, or new people are not sure where to start. Something we’re doing now is defining some general topic areas of interest to be like “lobbies” into the platform and some common hashtags to go with them. I liken this to walking into a large medical or professional building for the first time.  There are hundreds of offices, and you look to a sign in the lobby to get guided to the right place for you.  We’re building that sign for members now, but again we missed the boat as the majority of the company has had their initial Engage experience. #3 Clean up, clean up, clean up Knowledge work and folksonomies are messy! The day we opened the doors to Engage I would have said we should keep everything ever created in Engage with an argument that it was a window into our collective knowledge so nothing should go.  Well, 6000+ groups and 200,000+ pieces of content later, I’ve changed my mind.  As previously mentioned, with too much “stuff” the system can be overwhelming to new members and it makes it harder to get what you’re looking for.   Do we need that help document about a tool we no longer have? NO!  Do we need that group that had 1 document and 2 discussions in the last two years? NO! Should we only have one group about a given topic instead of 4?  YES! Last fall, Engage defined a cleanup process for groups not used for a long time.  We also formed a volunteer cleaning army who are extra eyes on the hunt for “stuff” that should be updated, merged, or deleted.  It’s better late than never, but in line with what’s becoming a theme I wish these efforts had started earlier. #2 Communications & local community management One of the most important aspects of my job is to make sure people who should be talking to each other are actually doing it.  Connecting people to the other people they should know, the groups they should join, a piece of content that shouldn’t be missed.   I have worked both inside and outside of communications teams, and they are the best informed people in your company.  They know when something big is coming, how it impacts employees, how it fits with strategy, who else knows more, etc.  Having communications professionals who are power users can help scale up community management because they are already so well connected.  They also need to have the platform skills to pay attention without suffering email overload, how to grab someone’s attention, etc.  I wish I’d had figured this out much earlier.  If I had I would have groomed more communications colleagues into advocates and power members right at the start. #1 Grooming advocates vs. natural advocates I’ve just alluded to this above already. The very best advocates are those who naturally embrace your platform and automatically start to see new ways to work within it.  Those advocates seem to come out of the woodwork naturally since some of them are early adopters.  Not surprisingly, our best advocates today are those same people who were willing to come kick the tires when the community was completely empty.  Unfortunately, we didn’t get a global spread of those natural advocates.  I did ask around when we first launched for other people who might be good candidates, but didn’t push too hard as there were so many other things to get ready.  That was a mistake.  If I could get a redo I would have formally asked for people to be assigned where there were gaps and groomed them into an advocate.  Today as we find new advocates to fill the gaps, people are hesitant as the initial set has three years of practice are ahead of the curve power members; it definitely would have been easier earlier on. As fairly early adopters to corporate scale enterprise collaboration, there hasn’t been a roadmap to follow as we’ve grown Engage, which is part of the fun! It’s clear a lot of issues are more easily tackled the earlier you identify and begin to correct them, and I’ve identified the main five I wish I could redo.  In the spirit of collaboration, I hope someone else learns from my mistakes! View the original article by Jem here. 

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• Cookbook: SES and UCM setup

  - by George Maggessy

  The purpose of this post is to guide you setting up the integration between UCM and SES. On my next post I’ll show different approaches to integrate WebCenter Portal, UCM and SES based on some common scenarios. Let’s get started. WebCenter Content Configuration WebCenter Content has a component that adds functionality to the content server to allow it to be searched via the Oracle SES. To enable the component installation, go to Administration -&gt; Admin Server and select SESCrawlerExport. Click the update button and restart UCM_server1 managed server. Once the managed server is back, we’ll configure the component. In the menu, under Administration you should see SESCrawlerExport. Click on the link. You’ll see the window below. Click on Configure SESCrawlerExport. Configure the values below: Hostname: SES hostname. Feed Location: Directory where data feeds will be saved. Metadata List: List of metadata that will be searchable by SES. After updating the values click on the Update button. Come back to the SESCrawlerExport Administration UI and click on Take Snapshot button. It will create the data feeds in the specified Feed Location. To check if the correct configuration was done, please access the following URL http://&lt;ucm_server&gt;:&lt;port&gt;/cs/idcplg?IdcService=SES_CRAWLER_DOWLOAD_CONFIG&amp;source=default. It should download config file in the format below: &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt; &lt;rsscrawler xmlns="http://xmlns.oracle.com/search/rsscrawlerconfig"&gt; &lt;feedLocation&gt;&lt;![CDATA[http://adc6160699.us.oracle.com:16200/cs/idcplg?IdcService=SES_CRAWLER_DOWNLOAD_CONTROL&amp;source=default]]&gt;&lt;/feedLocation&gt; &lt;errorFileLocation&gt;&lt;![CDATA[http://adc6160699.us.oracle.com:16200/cs/idcplg?IdcService=SES_CRAWLER_STATUS&amp;IsJava=1&amp;source=default&amp;StatusFeed=]]&gt;&lt;/errorFileLocation&gt; &lt;feedType&gt;controlFeed&lt;/feedType&gt; &lt;sourceName&gt;default&lt;/sourceName&gt; &lt;securityType&gt;attributeBased&lt;/securityType&gt; &lt;securityAttribute name="Account" grant="true"/&gt; &lt;securityAttribute name="DocSecurityGroup" grant="true"/&gt; &lt;securityAttribute name="Collab" grant="true"/&gt; &lt;/rsscrawler&gt; Make sure Account and DocSecurityGroup values are true. SES Configuration Let’s start by configuring the Identity Plug-ins in SES. Go to Global Settings -&gt; System -&gt; Identity Management Setup. Select Oracle Content Server and click the Activate button. We’ll populate the following values: HTTP endpoint for authentication: URL to WebCenter Content. Notice that /cs/idcplg was added at the end of the URL. Admin User: UCM Admin user. This user must have access to all CPOE content. Password: Password to Admin user. Authentication Type: NATIVE. Go back to the Home tab and click on Sources on the top left. Select Oracle Content Server on the right and click the Create button. Configuration URL: URL that point to the configuration file. Example: http://&lt;ucm_hostname&gt;:&lt;port&gt;/cs/idcplg?IdcService=SES_CRAWLER_DOWNLOAD_CONFIG&amp;source=default. User ID: UCM Admin user. Password: Password to Admin user. Click on the Authorization tab and add the appropriate values to the fields below. Make sure you see the ACCOUNT and DOCSECURITYGROUP security attributes at the end of the page. HTTP endpoint for authorization: http://&lt;ucm_hostname&gt;:&lt;port&gt;/cs/idcplg. Display URL prefix: http://&lt;ucm_hostname&gt;:&lt;port&gt;/cs. Administrator user: UCM Admin user. Administrator password. On the Document Types tab, add the documents that should be indexed by SES. As our last step, we’ll configure the Federation Trusted Entities under Global Settings. Entity Name: The user must be present in both the identity management server configured for your WebCenter application and the identity management server configured for Oracle SES. For instance, I used weblogic in my sample. Password: Entity user password.\ Now you are ready to test the integration on the SES UI: http://&lt;ses hostname&gt;:&lt;port&gt;/search/query/.

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• The True Cost of a Solution

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  I had a Twitter chat recently with someone suggesting Oracle and SQL Server were losing out to OSS (Open Source Software) in the enterprise due to their issues with scaling or being too generic (one size fits all). I challenged that a bit, as my experience with enterprise sized clients has been different – adverse to OSS but receptive to an established vendor. The response I got was: Found it easier to influence change by showing how X can’t solve our problems or X is extremely costly to scale. Money talks. I think this is definitely the right approach for anyone pitching an alternate or alien technology as part of a solution: identify the issue, identify the solution, then present pros and cons including a cost/benefit analysis. What can happen though is we get tunnel vision and don’t present a full view of the costs associated with a solution. An “Acura”te Example (I’m so clever…) This is my dream vehicle, a Crystal Black Pearl coloured Acura MDX with the SH-AWD package! We’re a family of 4 (5 if my daughters ever get their wish of adding a dog), and I’ve always wanted a luxury type of vehicle, so this is a perfect replacement in a few years when our Rav 4 has hit the 8 – 10 year mark. MSRP – $62,890 But as we all know, that’s not *really* the cost of the vehicle. There’s taxes and fees added on, there’s the extended warranty if I choose to purchase it, there’s the finance rate that needs to be factored in… MSRP –   $62,890 Taxes –      $7,546 Warranty - $2,500 SubTotal – $72,936 Finance Charge – $ 1094.04 Grand Total – $74,030 Well! Glad we did that exercise – we discovered an extra $11k added on to the MSRP! Well now we have our true price…or do we? Lifetime of the Vehicle I’m expecting to have this vehicle for 7 – 10 years. While the hard cost of the vehicle is known and dealt with, the costs to run and maintain the vehicle are on top of this. I did some research, and here’s what I’ve found: Fuel and Mileage Gas prices are high as it is for regular fuel, but getting into an MDX will require that I *only* purchase premium fuel, which comes at a premium price. I need to expect my bill at the pump to be higher. Comparing the MDX to my 2007 Rav4 also shows I’ll be gassing up more often. The Rav4 has a city MPG of 21, while the MDX plummets to 16! The MDX does have a bigger fuel tank though, so all in all the number of times I hit the pumps might even out. Still, I estimate I’ll be spending approximately $8000 – $10000 more on gas over a 10 year period than my current Rav4. Service Options Limited Although I have options with my Toyota here in Winnipeg (we have 4 Toyota dealerships), I do go to my original dealer for any service work. Still, I like the fact that I have options. However, there’s only one Acura dealership in all of Winnipeg! So if, for whatever reason, I’m not satisfied with the level of service I’m stuck. Non Warranty Service Work Also let’s not forget that there’s a bulk of work required every year that is *not* covered under warranty – oil changes, tire rotations, brake pads, etc. I expect I’ll need to get new tires at the 5 years mark as well, which can easily be $1200 – $1500 (I just paid $1000 for new tires for the Rav4 and we’re at the 5 year mark). Now these aren’t going to be *new* costs that I’m not used to from our existing vehicles, but they should still be factored in. I’d budget $500/year, or $5000 over the 10 years I’ll own the vehicle. Final Assessment So let’s re-assess the true cost of my dream MDX: MSRP                    $62,890 Taxes                       $7,546 Warranty                 $2,500 Finance Charge         $1094 Gas                        $10,000 Service Work            $5000 Grand Total           $89,030 So now I have a better idea of 10 year cost overall, and I’ve identified some concerns with local service availability. And there’s now much more to consider over the original $62,890 price tag. Tying This Back to Technology Solutions The process that we just went through is no different than what organizations do when considering implementing a new system, technology, or technology based solution, within their environments. It’s easy to tout the short term cost savings of particular product/platform/technology in a vacuum. But its when you consider the wider impact that the true cost comes into play. Let’s create a scenario: A company is not happy with its current data reporting suite. An employee suggests moving to an open source solution. The selling points are: - Because its open source its free - The organization would have access to the source code so they could alter it however they wished - It provided features not available with the current reporting suite At first this sounds great to the management and executive, but then they start asking some questions and uncover more information: - The OSS product is built on a technology not used anywhere within the organization - There are no vendors offering product support for the OSS product - The OSS product requires a specific server platform to operate on, one that’s not standard in the organization All of a sudden, the true cost of implementing this solution is starting to become clearer. The company might save money on licensing costs, but their training costs would increase significantly – developers would need to learn how to develop in the technology the OSS solution was built on, IT staff must learn how to set up and maintain a new server platform within their existing infrastructure, and if a problem was found there was no vendor to contact for support. The true cost of implementing a “free” OSS solution is actually spinning up a project to implement it within the organization – no small cost. And that’s just the short-term cost. Now the organization must ensure they maintain trained staff who can make changes to the OSS reporting solution and IT staff that will stay knowledgeable in the new server platform. If those skills are very niche, then higher labour costs could be incurred if those people are hard to find or if trained employees use that knowledge as leverage for higher pay. Maybe a vendor exists that will contract out support, but then there are those costs to consider as well. And let’s not forget end-user training – in our example, anyone that runs reports will need to be trained on how to use the new system. Here’s the Point We still tend to look at software in an “off the shelf” kind of way. It’s very easy to say “oh, this product is better than vendor x’s product – and its free because its OSS!” but the reality is that implementing any new technology within an organization has a cost regardless of the retail price of the product. Training, integration, support – these are real costs that impact an organization and span multiple departments. Whether you’re pitching an improved business process, a new system, or a new technology, you need to consider the bigger picture costs of implementation. What you define as success (in our example, having better reporting functionality) might not be what others define as success if implementing your solution causes them issues. A true enterprise solution needs to consider the entire enterprise.

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• Seizing the Moment with Mobility

  - by Divya Malik

  Empowering people to work where they want to work is becoming more critical now with the consumerisation of technology. Employees are bringing their own devices to the workplace and expecting to be productive wherever they are. Sales people welcome the ability to run their critical business applications where they can be most effective which is typically on the road and when they are still with the customer. Oracle has invested many years of research in understanding customer's Mobile requirements. “The keys to building the best user experience were building in a lot of flexibility in ways to support sales, and being useful,” said Arin Bhowmick, Director, CRM, for the Applications UX team. “We did that by talking to and analyzing the needs of a lot of people in different roles.” The team studied real-life sales teams. “We wanted to study salespeople in context with their work,” Bhowmick said. “We studied all user types in the CRM world because we wanted to build a user interface and user experience that would cater to sales representatives, marketing managers, sales managers, and more. Not only did we do studies in our labs, but also we did studies in the field and in mobile environments because salespeople are always on the go.” Here is a recent post from Hernan Capdevila, Vice President, Oracle Fusion Apps which was featured on the Oracle Applications Blog.  Mobile devices are forcing a paradigm shift in the workplace – they’re changing the way businesses can do business and the type of cultures they can nurture. As our customers talk about their mobile needs, we hear them saying they want instant-on access to enterprise data so workers can be more effective at their jobs anywhere, anytime. They also are interested in being more cost effective from an IT point of view. The mobile revolution – with the idea of BYOD (bring your own device) – has added an interesting dynamic because previously IT was driving the employee device strategy and ecosystem. That's been turned on its head with the consumerization of IT. Now employees are figuring out how to use their personal devices for work purposes and IT has to figure out how to adapt. Blurring the Lines between Work and Personal Life My vision of where businesses will be five years from now is that our work lives and personal lives will be more interwoven together. In turn, enterprises will have to determine how to make employees’ work lives fit more into the fabric of their personal lives. And personal devices like smartphones are going to drive significant business value because they let us accomplish things very incrementally. I can be sitting on a train or in a taxi and be productive. At the end of any meeting, I can capture ideas and tasks or follow up with people in real time. Mobile devices enable this notion of seizing the moment – capitalizing on opportunities that might otherwise have slipped away because we're not connected. For the industry shapers out there, this is game changing. The lean and agile workforce is definitely the future. This notion of the board sitting down with the executive team to lay out strategic objectives for a three- to five-year plan, bringing in HR to determine how they're going to staff the strategic activities, kicking off the execution, and then revisiting the plan in three to five years to create another three- to five-year plan is yesterday's model. Businesses that continue to approach innovating in that way are in the dinosaur age. Today it's about incremental planning and incremental execution, which requires a lot of cohesion and synthesis within the workforce. There needs to be this interweaving notion within the workforce about how ideas cascade down, how people engage, how they stay connected, and how insights are shared. How to Survive and Thrive in Today’s Marketplace The notion of Facebook isn’t new. We lived it pre-Internet days with America Online and Prodigy – Facebook is just the renaissance of these services in a more viral and pervasive way. And given the trajectory of the consumerization of IT with people bringing their personal tooling to work, the enterprise has no option but to adapt. The sooner that businesses realize this from a top-down point of view the sooner that they will be able to really drive significant innovation and adapt to the marketplace. There are a small number of companies right now (I think it's closer to 20% rather than 80%, but the number is expanding) that are able to really innovate in this incremental marketplace. So from a competitive point of view, there's no choice but to be social and stay connected. By far the majority of users on Facebook and LinkedIn are mobile users – people on iPhones, smartphones, Android phones, and tablets. It's not the couch people, right? It's the on-the-go people – those people at the coffee shops. Usually when you're sitting at your desk on a big desktop computer, typically you have better things to do than to be on Facebook. This is a topic I'm extremely passionate about because I think mobile devices are game changing. Mobility delivers significant value to businesses – it also brings dramatic simplification from a functional point of view and transforms our work life experience. Hernan Capdevila Vice President, Oracle Applications Development

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• Metrics - A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing (or 'Why you're not clever enough to interpret metrics data')

  - by Jason Crease

  At RedGate Software, I work on a .NET obfuscator  called SmartAssembly.  Various features of it use a database to store various things (exception reports, name-mappings, etc.) The user is given the option of using either a SQL-Server database (which requires them to have Microsoft SQL Server), or a Microsoft Access MDB file (which requires nothing). MDB is the default option, but power-users soon switch to using a SQL Server database because it offers better performance and data-sharing. In the fashionable spirit of optimization and metrics, an obvious product-management question is 'Which is the most popular? SQL Server or MDB?' We've collected data about this fact, using our 'Feature-Usage-Reporting' technology (available as part of SmartAssembly) and more recently our 'Application Metrics' technology: Parameter Number of users % of total users Number of sessions Number of usages SQL Server 28 19.0 8115 8115 MDB 114 77.6 1449 1449 (As a disclaimer, please note than SmartAssembly has far more than 132 users . This data is just a selection of one build) So, it would appear that SQL-Server is used by fewer users, but more often. Great. But here's why these numbers are useless to me: Only the original developers understand the data What does a single 'usage' of 'MDB' mean? Does this happen once per run? Once per option change? On clicking the 'Obfuscate Now' button? When running the command-line version or just from the UI version? Each question could skew the data 10-fold either way, and the answers only known by the developer that instrumented the application in the first place. In other words, only the original developer can interpret the data - product-managers cannot interpret the data unaided. Most of the data is from uninterested users About half of people who download and run a free-trial from the internet quit it almost immediately. Only a small fraction use it sufficiently to make informed choices. Since the MDB option is the default one, we don't know how many of those 114 were people CHOOSING to use the MDB, or how many were JUST HAPPENING to use this MDB default for their 20-second trial. This is a problem we see across all our metrics: Are people are using X because it's the default or are they using X because they want to use X? We need to segment the data further - asking what percentage of each percentage meet our criteria for an 'established user' or 'informed user'. You end up spending hours writing sophisticated and dubious SQL queries to segment the data further. Not fun. You can't find out why they used this feature Metrics can answer the when and what, but not the why. Why did people use feature X? If you're anything like me, you often click on random buttons in unfamiliar applications just to explore the feature-set. If we listened uncritically to metrics at RedGate, we would eliminate the most-important and more-complex features which people actually buy the software for, leaving just big buttons on the main page and the About-Box. "Ah, that's interesting!" rather than "Ah, that's actionable!" People do love data. Did you know you eat 1201 chickens in a lifetime? But just 4 cows? Interesting, but useless. Often metrics give you a nice number: '5.8% of users have 3 or more monitors' . But unless the statistic is both SUPRISING and ACTIONABLE, it's useless. Most metrics are collected, reviewed with lots of cooing. and then forgotten. Unless a piece-of-data could change things, it's useless collecting it. People get obsessed with significance levels The first things that lots of people do with this data is do a t-test to get a significance level ("Hey! We know with 99.64% confidence that people prefer SQL Server to MDBs!") Believe me: other causes of error/misinterpretation in your data are FAR more significant than your t-test could ever comprehend. Confirmation bias prevents objectivity If the data appears to match our instinct, we feel satisfied and move on. If it doesn't, we suspect the data and dig deeper, plummeting down a rabbit-hole of segmentation and filtering until we give-up and move-on. Data is only useful if it can change our preconceptions. Do you trust this dodgy data more than your own understanding, knowledge and intelligence?  I don't. There's always multiple plausible ways to interpret/action any data Let's say we segment the above data, and get this data: Post-trial users (i.e. those using a paid version after the 14-day free-trial is over): Parameter Number of users % of total users Number of sessions Number of usages SQL Server 13 9.0 1115 1115 MDB 5 4.2 449 449 Trial users: Parameter Number of users % of total users Number of sessions Number of usages SQL Server 15 10.0 7000 7000 MDB 114 77.6 1000 1000 How do you interpret this data? It's one of: Mostly SQL Server users buy our software. People who can't afford SQL Server tend to be unable to afford or unwilling to buy our software. Therefore, ditch MDB-support. Our MDB support is so poor and buggy that our massive MDB user-base doesn't buy it.  Therefore, spend loads of money improving it, and think about ditching SQL-Server support. People 'graduate' naturally from MDB to SQL Server as they use the software more. Things are fine the way they are. We're marketing the tool wrong. The large number of MDB users represent uninformed downloaders. Tell marketing to aggressively target SQL Server users. To choose an interpretation you need to segment again. And again. And again, and again. Opting-out is correlated with feature-usage Metrics tends to be opt-in. This skews the data even further. Between 5% and 30% of people choose to opt-in to metrics (often called 'customer improvement program' or something like that). Casual trial-users who are uninterested in your product or company are less likely to opt-in. This group is probably also likely to be MDB users. How much does this skew your data by? Who knows? It's not all doom and gloom. There are some things metrics can answer well. Environment facts. How many people have 3 monitors? Have Windows 7? Have .NET 4 installed? Have Japanese Windows? Minor optimizations.  Is the text-box big enough for average user-input? Performance data. How long does our app take to start? How many databases does the average user have on their server? As you can see, questions about who-the-user-is rather than what-the-user-does are easier to answer and action. Conclusion Use SmartAssembly. If not for the metrics (called 'Feature-Usage-Reporting'), then at least for the obfuscation/error-reporting. Data raises more questions than it answers. Questions about environment are the easiest to answer.

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• ROracle support for TimesTen In-Memory Database

  - by Sherry LaMonica

  Today's guest post comes from Jason Feldhaus, a Consulting Member of Technical Staff in the TimesTen Database organization at Oracle.  He shares with us a sample session using ROracle with the TimesTen In-Memory database.  Beginning in version 1.1-4, ROracle includes support for the Oracle Times Ten In-Memory Database, version 11.2.2. TimesTen is a relational database providing very fast and high throughput through its memory-centric architecture.  TimesTen is designed for low latency, high-volume data, and event and transaction management. A TimesTen database resides entirely in memory, so no disk I/O is required for transactions and query operations. TimesTen is used in applications requiring very fast and predictable response time, such as real-time financial services trading applications and large web applications. TimesTen can be used as the database of record or as a relational cache database to Oracle Database. ROracle provides an interface between R and the database, providing the rich functionality of the R statistical programming environment using the SQL query language. ROracle uses the OCI libraries to handle database connections, providing much better performance than standard ODBC.The latest ROracle enhancements include: Support for Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database Support for Date-Time using R's POSIXct/POSIXlt data types RAW, BLOB and BFILE data type support Option to specify number of rows per fetch operation Option to prefetch LOB data Break support using Ctrl-C Statement caching support Times Ten 11.2.2 contains enhanced support for analytics workloads and complex queries: Analytic functions: AVG, SUM, COUNT, MAX, MIN, DENSE_RANK, RANK, ROW_NUMBER, FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE Analytic clauses: OVER PARTITION BY and OVER ORDER BY Multidimensional grouping operators: Grouping clauses: GROUP BY CUBE, GROUP BY ROLLUP, GROUP BY GROUPING SETS Grouping functions: GROUP, GROUPING_ID, GROUP_ID WITH clause, which allows repeated references to a named subquery block Aggregate expressions over DISTINCT expressions General expressions that return a character string in the source or a pattern within the LIKE predicate Ability to order nulls first or last in a sort result (NULLS FIRST or NULLS LAST in the ORDER BY clause) Note: Some functionality is only available with Oracle Exalytics, refer to the TimesTen product licensing document for details. Connecting to TimesTen is easy with ROracle. Simply install and load the ROracle package and load the driver. > install.packages("ROracle") > library(ROracle) Loading required package: DBI > drv <- dbDriver("Oracle") Once the ROracle package is installed, create a database connection object and connect to a TimesTen direct driver DSN as the OS user. > conn <- dbConnect(drv, username ="", password="", dbname = "localhost/SampleDb_1122:timesten_direct") You have the option to report the server type - Oracle or TimesTen? > print (paste ("Server type =", dbGetInfo (conn)$serverType)) [1] "Server type = TimesTen IMDB" To create tables in the database using R data frame objects, use the function dbWriteTable. In the following example we write the built-in iris data frame to TimesTen. The iris data set is a small example data set containing 150 rows and 5 columns. We include it here not to highlight performance, but so users can easily run this example in their R session. > dbWriteTable (conn, "IRIS", iris, overwrite=TRUE, ora.number=FALSE) [1] TRUE Verify that the newly created IRIS table is available in the database. To list the available tables and table columns in the database, use dbListTables and dbListFields, respectively. > dbListTables (conn) [1] "IRIS" > dbListFields (conn, "IRIS") [1] "SEPAL.LENGTH" "SEPAL.WIDTH" "PETAL.LENGTH" "PETAL.WIDTH" "SPECIES" To retrieve a summary of the data from the database we need to save the results to a local object. The following call saves the results of the query as a local R object, iris.summary. The ROracle function dbGetQuery is used to execute an arbitrary SQL statement against the database. When connected to TimesTen, the SQL statement is processed completely within main memory for the fastest response time. > iris.summary <- dbGetQuery(conn, 'SELECT SPECIES, AVG ("SEPAL.LENGTH") AS AVG_SLENGTH, AVG ("SEPAL.WIDTH") AS AVG_SWIDTH, AVG ("PETAL.LENGTH") AS AVG_PLENGTH, AVG ("PETAL.WIDTH") AS AVG_PWIDTH FROM IRIS GROUP BY ROLLUP (SPECIES)') > iris.summary SPECIES AVG_SLENGTH AVG_SWIDTH AVG_PLENGTH AVG_PWIDTH 1 setosa 5.006000 3.428000 1.462 0.246000 2 versicolor 5.936000 2.770000 4.260 1.326000 3 virginica 6.588000 2.974000 5.552 2.026000 4 <NA> 5.843333 3.057333 3.758 1.199333 Finally, disconnect from the TimesTen Database. > dbCommit (conn) [1] TRUE > dbDisconnect (conn) [1] TRUE We encourage you download Oracle software for evaluation from the Oracle Technology Network. See these links for our software: Times Ten In-Memory Database,  ROracle.  As always, we welcome comments and questions on the TimesTen and  Oracle R technical forums.

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• Secure Your Wireless Router: 8 Things You Can Do Right Now

  - by Chris Hoffman

  A security researcher recently discovered a backdoor in many D-Link routers, allowing anyone to access the router without knowing the username or password. This isn’t the first router security issue and won’t be the last. To protect yourself, you should ensure that your router is configured securely. This is about more than just enabling Wi-Fi encryption and not hosting an open Wi-Fi network. Disable Remote Access Routers offer a web interface, allowing you to configure them through a browser. The router runs a web server and makes this web page available when you’re on the router’s local network. However, most routers offer a “remote access” feature that allows you to access this web interface from anywhere in the world. Even if you set a username and password, if you have a D-Link router affected by this vulnerability, anyone would be able to log in without any credentials. If you have remote access disabled, you’d be safe from people remotely accessing your router and tampering with it. To do this, open your router’s web interface and look for the “Remote Access,” “Remote Administration,” or “Remote Management” feature. Ensure it’s disabled — it should be disabled by default on most routers, but it’s good to check. Update the Firmware Like our operating systems, web browsers, and every other piece of software we use, router software isn’t perfect. The router’s firmware — essentially the software running on the router — may have security flaws. Router manufacturers may release firmware updates that fix such security holes, although they quickly discontinue support for most routers and move on to the next models. Unfortunately, most routers don’t have an auto-update feature like Windows and our web browsers do — you have to check your router manufacturer’s website for a firmware update and install it manually via the router’s web interface. Check to be sure your router has the latest available firmware installed. Change Default Login Credentials Many routers have default login credentials that are fairly obvious, such as the password “admin”. If someone gained access to your router’s web interface through some sort of vulnerability or just by logging onto your Wi-Fi network, it would be easy to log in and tamper with the router’s settings. To avoid this, change the router’s password to a non-default password that an attacker couldn’t easily guess. Some routers even allow you to change the username you use to log into your router. Lock Down Wi-Fi Access If someone gains access to your Wi-Fi network, they could attempt to tamper with your router — or just do other bad things like snoop on your local file shares or use your connection to downloaded copyrighted content and get you in trouble. Running an open Wi-Fi network can be dangerous. To prevent this, ensure your router’s Wi-Fi is secure. This is pretty simple: Set it to use WPA2 encryption and use a reasonably secure passphrase. Don’t use the weaker WEP encryption or set an obvious passphrase like “password”. Disable UPnP A variety of UPnP flaws have been found in consumer routers. Tens of millions of consumer routers respond to UPnP requests from the Internet, allowing attackers on the Internet to remotely configure your router. Flash applets in your browser could use UPnP to open ports, making your computer more vulnerable. UPnP is fairly insecure for a variety of reasons. To avoid UPnP-based problems, disable UPnP on your router via its web interface. If you use software that needs ports forwarded — such as a BitTorrent client, game server, or communications program — you’ll have to forward ports on your router without relying on UPnP. Log Out of the Router’s Web Interface When You’re Done Configuring It Cross site scripting (XSS) flaws have been found in some routers. A router with such an XSS flaw could be controlled by a malicious web page, allowing the web page to configure settings while you’re logged in. If your router is using its default username and password, it would be easy for the malicious web page to gain access. Even if you changed your router’s password, it would be theoretically possible for a website to use your logged-in session to access your router and modify its settings. To prevent this, just log out of your router when you’re done configuring it — if you can’t do that, you may want to clear your browser cookies. This isn’t something to be too paranoid about, but logging out of your router when you’re done using it is a quick and easy thing to do. Change the Router’s Local IP Address If you’re really paranoid, you may be able to change your router’s local IP address. For example, if its default address is 192.168.0.1, you could change it to 192.168.0.150. If the router itself were vulnerable and some sort of malicious script in your web browser attempted to exploit a cross site scripting vulnerability, accessing known-vulnerable routers at their local IP address and tampering with them, the attack would fail. This step isn’t completely necessary, especially since it wouldn’t protect against local attackers — if someone were on your network or software was running on your PC, they’d be able to determine your router’s IP address and connect to it. Install Third-Party Firmwares If you’re really worried about security, you could also install a third-party firmware such as DD-WRT or OpenWRT. You won’t find obscure back doors added by the router’s manufacturer in these alternative firmwares. Consumer routers are shaping up to be a perfect storm of security problems — they’re not automatically updated with new security patches, they’re connected directly to the Internet, manufacturers quickly stop supporting them, and many consumer routers seem to be full of bad code that leads to UPnP exploits and easy-to-exploit backdoors. It’s smart to take some basic precautions. Image Credit: Nuscreen on Flickr     

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• SQLIO Writes

  - by Grant Fritchey

  SQLIO is a fantastic utility for testing the abilities of the disks in your system. It has a very unfortunate name though, since it's not really a SQL Server testing utility at all. It really is a disk utility. They ought to call it DiskIO because they'd get more people using I think. Anyway, branding is not the point of this blog post. Writes are the point of this blog post. SQLIO works by slamming your disk. It performs as mean reads as it can or it performs as many writes as it can depending on how you've configured your tests. There are much smarter people than me who will get into all the various types of tests you should run. I'd suggest reading a bit of what Jonathan Kehayias (blog|twitter) has to say or wade into Denny Cherry's (blog|twitter) work. They're going to do a better job than I can describing all the benefits and mechanisms around using this excellent piece of software. My concerns are very focused. I needed to set up a series of tests to see how well our product SQL Storage Compress worked. I wanted to know the effects it would have on a system, the disk for sure, but also memory and CPU. How to stress the system? SQLIO of course. But when I set it up and ran it, following the documentation that comes with it, I was seeing better than 99% compression on the files. Don't get me wrong. Our product is magnificent, wonderful, all things great and beautiful, gets you coffee in the morning and is made mostly from bacon. But 99% compression. No, it's not that good. So what's up? Well, it's the configuration. The default mechanism is to load up a file, something large that will overwhelm your disk cache. You're instructed to load the file with a character 0x0. I never got a computer science degree. I went to film school. Because of this, I didn't memorize ASCII tables so when I saw this, I thought it was zero's or something. Nope. It's NULL. That's right, you're making a very large file, but you're filling it with NULL values. That's actually ok when all you're testing is the disk sub-system. But, when you want to test a compression and decompression, that can be an issue. I got around this fairly quickly. Instead of generating a file filled with NULL values, I just copied a database file for my tests. And to test it with SQL Storage Compress, I used a database file that had already been run through compression (about 40% compression on that file if you're interested). Now the reads were taken care of. I am seeing very realistic performance from decompressing the information for reads through SQLIO. But what about writes? Well, the issue is, what does SQLIO write? I don't have access to the code. But I do have access to the results. I did two different tests, just to be sure of what I was seeing. First test, use the .DAT file as described in the documentation. I opened the .DAT file after I was done with SQLIO, using WordPad. Guess what? It's a giant file full of air. SQLIO writes NULL values. What does that do to compression? I did the test again on a copy of an uncompressed database file. Then I ran the original and the SQLIO modified copy through ZIP to see what happened. I got better than 99% compression out of the SQLIO modified file (original file of 624,896kb went to 275,871kb compressed, after SQLIO it went to 608kb compressed). So, what does SQLIO write? It writes air. If you're trying to test it with compression or maybe some other type of file storage mechanism like dedupe, you need to know this because your tests really won't be valid. Should I find some other mechanism for testing? Yeah, if all I'm interested in is establishing performance to my own satisfaction, yes. But, I want to be able to compare my results with other people's results and we all need to be using the same tool in order for that to happen. SQLIO is the common mechanism that most people I know use to establish disk performance behavior. It'd be better if we could get SQLIO to do writes in some other fashion. Oh, and before I go, I get to brag a bit. Measuring IOPS, SQL Storage Compress outperforms my disk alone by about 30%.

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