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• Downloading stuff from Oracle: an example

  - by user12587121

  Introduction Oracle has a lot of software on offer.  Components of the stack can evolve at different rates and different versions of the components may be in use at any given time.  All this means that even the process of downloading the bits you need can be somewhat daunting.  Here, by way of example, and hopefully to convince you that there is method in the downloading madness,  we describe how to go about downloading the bits for Oracle Identity Manager  (OIM) 11.1.1.5.Firstly, a couple of preliminary points: Folks with Oracle products already installed and looking for bug fixes, patch bundles or patch sets would go directly to the Oracle support website. This Oracle document is a comprehensive description of the Oracle FMW download process and the licensing that applies to downloaded software.   Downloading Oracle Identity Manager 11.1.1.5     To be sure we download the right versions, first locate the Certification Matrix for OIM 11.1.1.5: first go to the Fusion Certification Page then go to the “System Requirements and Supported Platforms for Oracle Identity and Access Management 11gR1” link. Let’s assume you have a 64 bit Linux Machine and an Oracle database already.  Then our  goal is to end up with a list of files like the following: jdk-6u29-linux-x64.bin                    (Java JDK)V26017-01.zip                             (the Repository Creation Utility to create the DB schemas)wls1035_generic.jar                       (the Weblogic Application Server)ofm_iam_generic_11.1.1.5.0_disk1_1of1.zip (the Identity Managament bits)ofm_soa_generic_11.1.1.5.0_disk1_1of2.zip (the SOA bits)ofm_soa_generic_11.1.1.5.0_disk1_2of2.zip jdevstudio11115install.exe                (optional: JDeveloper IDE)soa-jdev-extension.zip                    (optional: SOA extensions for JDeveloper) Downloading the bits 1.    Download the Java JDK, 64 bit version 1.6.0_24+.2.    Download the RCU: here you will see that the RCU is mentioned on the Identity Management home page but no link is provided.  Do not panic.  Due to the amount and turnover of software available only the latest versions are available for download from the main Oracle site.  Over time software gets moved on to the Oracle edelivery site and it is here that we find the RCU version we require: a.    Go to edelivery: https://edelivery.oracle.com b.    Choose Pack ‘ Oracle Fusion Middleware’ and ‘Linux x86-64’ c.    Click on ‘Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g Media Pack for Linux x86-64’ d.    Download: ‘Oracle Fusion Middleware Repository Creation Utility 11g (11.1.1.5.0) for Linux x86’ (V26017.zip) 3.    Download the Weblogic Application Server: WLS 10.3.54.    Download the Oracle Identity Manager bits: one point to clarify here is that currently  the Identity Management bits come in two trains, essentially one for the Directory Services piece and the other for the Access Management and Identity Management parts.  We need to be careful not to confuse the two, in particular to be clear which of the trains is being referred to by  the documentation: a.   So, with this in mind, go to ‘ Oracle Identity and Access Management (11.1.1.5.0)’ and download Disk1. 5.    Download the SOA bits: a.    Go to the edelivery area as for the RCU and download: i.    Oracle SOA Suite 11g Patch Set 4 (11.1.1.5.0) (Part 1 of 2) ii.    Oracle SOA Suite 11g Patch Set 4 (11.1.1.5.0) (Part 2 of 2) 6.    You will want to download some development tooling (for plugins or BPEL workflow development): a.    Download Jdeveloper 11.1.1.5 (11.1.1.6 may work but best to stick to the versions that correspond to the WLS version we are using) b.    Go to the site for  SOA tools and download the SOA Composite Editor 11.1.1.5 That’s it, you may proceed to the installation. 

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• BIP and Mapviewer Mash Up I

  - by Tim Dexter

  I was out in Yellowstone last week soaking up various wildlife and a bit too much rain ... good to be back until the 95F heat yesterday. Taking a little break from the Excel templates; the dev folks are planing an Excel patch in the next week or so that will add a mass of new functionality. At the risk of completely mis leading you I'm going to hang back a while. What I have written so far holds true and will continue to do so. This week, I have been mostly eating 'mapviewer' ... answers on a post card please, TV show and character. I had a request to show how BIP can call mapviewer and render a dynamic map in an output. So I hit the books and colleagues for some answers. Mapviewer is Oracle's geographic information system, hereby known as GIS. I use it a lot in our BIEE demos where the interaction with the maps is very impressive. Need a map of California and its congressional districts? I have contacts; Jerry and David with their little black box of maps. Once in my possession I can build highly interactive, clickable maps that allow the user to drill into more information using a very friendly interface driving BIEE content and navigation. But what about maps in BIP output? Bryan Wise, who has written some articles on this blog did some work a while back with the PL/SQL API interface. The extract for the report called a function that in turn called the mapviewer server, passing a set of mapping requirements, it then returned a URL to a cached copy of that map. Easy to then have BIP render that image. Thats still very doable. You need to install a couple of packages and then load the mapviewer java APIs into the database. Then you can write your function to the APIs. A little involved? Maybe, but the database is doing all the heavy lifting for you. I thought I would investigate another method for getting the maps back into BIP. There is a URL interface you can call, this involves building an XML message to be passed to the mapviewer server. It's pretty straightforward to use on the mapviewer side. On the BIP side things are little more tricksy. After some unexpected messing about I finally got the ubiquitous Hello World map to render using the URL method. Not the most exciting map in the world, lots of ocean and a rather long URL to get it to render. http://127.0.0.1:9704/mapviewer/omserver?xml_request=%3Cmap_request%20title=%22Hello%20World%22%20datasource=%22cagis%22%20format=%22GIF_STREAM%22/%3E Notice all of the encoding in the URL string to handle the spaces, quotes, etc. All necessary to get BIP to make the call to the mapviewer server correctly without truncating the URL if it hits a real space rather than a %20. With that in mind constructing the URL was pretty simple. I'm not going to get into the content of the URL too much, for that you need to bone up on the mapviewer XML API. Check out the home page here and the documentation here. To make the template portable I used the standard CURRENT_SERVER_URL parameter from the BIP server and declared that in my template. <?param@begin:CURRENT_SERVER_URL;'myserver'?> Ignore the 'myserver', that was just a dummy value for testing at runtime it will resolve to: 'http://yourserver:port/xmlpserver' Not quite what we need as mapviewer has its own server path, in my case I needed 'mapviewer/omserver?xml_request=' as the fixed path to the mapviewer request URL. A little concatenation and substringing later I came up with <?param@begin:mURL;concat(substring($CURRENT_SERVER_URL,1,22),'mapviewer/omserver?xml_request=')?> Thats the basic URL that I can then build on. To get the Hello World map I need to add the following: <map_request title="Hello World" datasource="cagis" format="GIF_STREAM"/> Those angle brackets were the source of my headache, BIPs XSLT engine was attempting to process them rather than just pass them. Hok Min to the rescue ... again. I owe him lunch when I get out to HQ again! To solve the problem, I needed to escape all the characters and white space and then use native XSL to assign the string to a parameter. <xsl:param xdofo:ctx="begin"name="pXML">%3Cmap_request%20title=%22Hello%20World%22 %20datasource=%22cagis%22%20format=%22GIF_STREAM%22/%3E</xsl:param> I did not need to assign it to a parameter but I felt that if I were going to do anything more serious than Hello World like plotting points of interest on the map. I would need to dynamically build the URL, so using a set of parameters or variables that I then concatenated would be easier. Now I had the initial server string and the request all I then did was combine the two using a concat: concat($mURL,$pXML) Embedding that into an image tag: <fo:external-graphic src="url({concat($mURL,$pXML)})"/> and I was done. Notice the curly braces to get the concat evaluated prior to the image call. As you will see next time, building the XML message to go onto the URL can get quite complex but I have used it with some data. Ultimately, it would be easier to build an extension to BIP to handle the data to be plotted, it would then build the XML message, call mapviewer and return a URL to the map image for BIP to render. More on that next time ...

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• Open World Day 3

  - by Antony Reynolds

  A Day in the Life of an Oracle OpenWorld Attendee Part IV My third day was exhibition day for me!  I took the opportunity to wander around the JavaOne and OpenWorld exhibitions to see what might be useful for me when selling WebLogic, Coherence & SOA Suite.  I found a number of interesting vendors and thought I would share what I found here.  These are not necessarily endorsements, but observations on companies that I thought had interesting looking products that fill a need I have seen at customers. Highly Available EBS Upgrades A few years ago I worked with a customer that was a port authority.  They wanted to tie E-Business Suite into their operations to provide faster processing of cargo and passengers.  However they only had a 2 hour downtime window to perform upgrades.  This was not a problem for core database and middleware technology, this could accommodate those upgrade timescales easily.  It was a problem for EBS however so I intrigued to find Rapid E-Suite Inc offering an 11i to 12i upgrade service that claims to require no outage.  This could be a real boon to EBS customers like my port friends that need to upgrade without disruption to their business. Mobile on WebLogic I have come across a number of customers who want a comprehensive mobile solution, connected and disconnected operation and so forth.  ADF only addresses part of these requirements currently so I was excited to discover mFrontiers Inc offering an apparently comprehensive solution that should integrate easily with Oracle SOA Suite to mobile enable a SOA infrastructure.  The ability to operate without a network is important for many applications, particularly in industries that require their engineers to enter buildings to perform maintenance or repairs, because network access is not always available – many of my colleagues don’t have mobile access from their homes because they live in the middle of nowhere – and disconnected support is crucial in these situations. Sharepoint Connector for WebCenter Content Obviously Sharepoint is an evil pernicious intrusion into a companies IT estate but it is widely deployed and many people like it but also would like to take advantage of Oracle products such as WebCenter Content.  So I was encouraged to see that Fishbowl Solutions have created a connector for Sharepoint that allows it to bring in content from WebCenter, it looks like a valuable way to maintain the Sharepoint interface end users are used to but extend the range of content by pulling stuff (technical term for content) from WebCenter.   Load Balancing The Enterprise Deployment Guides are Oracles bible on building highly available FMW environments, and each of them requires a front end load balancer.  I have been asked to help configure F5 Load Balancers on a number of occasions over my time at Oracle and each time I come back to it I find more useful features have been added to the BigIP line of load balancers that F5 sell, many of their documents are tailored to FMW.  I like F5, they provide (relatively) easy to use products that do what they say on the side of the box.  They may not have all the bells and whistles of some of their more expensive competitors but they do the job and do it well!  Besides which I like their logo! Other Stuff I saw lots of other interesting products and services, such as a lightweight monitoring tool for Coherence, Forms migration services, JCAPS migration services and lots of cool freebies to take home to the children! A Quiet Night Wednesday night was the partner appreciation event and I had decided to go back to the hotel and have an early night.  I decided to attend the last session of the day – a Maven/Hudson/WebLogic tutorial.  I got the wrong hotel for the session and snuck in 20 minutes late at the back and starting working on the hands on workshop.  One of my co-attendees raised his hand for help and as the presenter came over to help he suddenly stopped and yelled – “Is that Antony”!  It was my old friend Steve Button who used to be based in Redwood Shores but is now a WebLogic guru PM in Australia.  It was good to catch up with him.  As he yelled out a guy with really bad posture turned around to see who he was talking to, this turned out to be my friend Simon Haslan, Oracle ACE from the UK.  After the tutorial Simon and I retired to the coffee shop to catch up and share stories.  2 and half hours later we decided it was time to retire, so much for an early night but great to renew old friendships and find out what real customers are worrying about.

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• Using Hadooop (HDInsight) with Microsoft - Two (OK, Three) Options

  - by BuckWoody

  Microsoft has many tools for “Big Data”. In fact, you need many tools – there’s no product called “Big Data Solution” in a shrink-wrapped box – if you find one, you probably shouldn’t buy it. It’s tempting to want a single tool that handles everything in a problem domain, but with large, complex data, that isn’t a reality. You’ll mix and match several systems, open and closed source, to solve a given problem. But there are tools that help with handling data at large, complex scales. Normally the best way to do this is to break up the data into parts, and then put the calculation engines for that chunk of data right on the node where the data is stored. These systems are in a family called “Distributed File and Compute”. Microsoft has a couple of these, including the High Performance Computing edition of Windows Server. Recently we partnered with Hortonworks to bring the Apache Foundation’s release of Hadoop to Windows. And as it turns out, there are actually two (technically three) ways you can use it. (There’s a more detailed set of information here: http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/solutions-technologies/business-intelligence/big-data.aspx, I’ll cover the options at a general level below)  First Option: Windows Azure HDInsight Service  Your first option is that you can simply log on to a Hadoop control node and begin to run Pig or Hive statements against data that you have stored in Windows Azure. There’s nothing to set up (although you can configure things where needed), and you can send the commands, get the output of the job(s), and stop using the service when you are done – and repeat the process later if you wish. (There are also connectors to run jobs from Microsoft Excel, but that’s another post)   This option is useful when you have a periodic burst of work for a Hadoop workload, or the data collection has been happening into Windows Azure storage anyway. That might be from a web application, the logs from a web application, telemetrics (remote sensor input), and other modes of constant collection.   You can read more about this option here:  http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2012/10/24/getting-started-with-windows-azure-hdinsight-service.aspx Second Option: Microsoft HDInsight Server Your second option is to use the Hadoop Distribution for on-premises Windows called Microsoft HDInsight Server. You set up the Name Node(s), Job Tracker(s), and Data Node(s), among other components, and you have control over the entire ecostructure.   This option is useful if you want to  have complete control over the system, leave it running all the time, or you have a huge quantity of data that you have to bulk-load constantly – something that isn’t going to be practical with a network transfer or disk-mailing scheme. You can read more about this option here: http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/solutions-technologies/business-intelligence/big-data.aspx Third Option (unsupported): Installation on Windows Azure Virtual Machines  Although unsupported, you could simply use a Windows Azure Virtual Machine (we support both Windows and Linux servers) and install Hadoop yourself – it’s open-source, so there’s nothing preventing you from doing that.   Aside from being unsupported, there are other issues you’ll run into with this approach – primarily involving performance and the amount of configuration you’ll need to do to access the data nodes properly. But for a single-node installation (where all components run on one system) such as learning, demos, training and the like, this isn’t a bad option. Did I mention that’s unsupported? :) You can learn more about Windows Azure Virtual Machines here: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/home/scenarios/virtual-machines/ And more about Hadoop and the installation/configuration (on Linux) here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Hadoop And more about the HDInsight installation here: http://www.microsoft.com/web/gallery/install.aspx?appid=HDINSIGHT-PREVIEW Choosing the right option Since you have two or three routes you can go, the best thing to do is evaluate the need you have, and place the workload where it makes the most sense.  My suggestion is to install the HDInsight Server locally on a test system, and play around with it. Read up on the best ways to use Hadoop for a given workload, understand the parts, write a little Pig and Hive, and get your feet wet. Then sign up for a test account on HDInsight Service, and see how that leverages what you know. If you're a true tinkerer, go ahead and try the VM route as well. Oh - there’s another great reference on the Windows Azure HDInsight that just came out, here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/brunoterkaly/archive/2012/11/16/hadoop-on-azure-introduction.aspx  

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• Virtual host in Apache Zend

  - by llocani

  I'd like to ask you if you can tell me why I can't get Vhost in Apache to work my Vhostconf is: NameVirtualHost *:80 <VirtualHost _default_:80> ServerAdmin [email protected] DocumentRoot "E:/Archivos de programa/Zend/Apache2/htdocs" ServerName localhost <Directory "E:/Archivos de programa/Zend/Apache2/htdocs"> Options FollowSymLinks AllowOverride All Order allow,deny Allow from all </Directory> #AllowOveride all </VirtualHost> <VirtualHost *:80> ServerAdmin [email protected] DocumentRoot "E:/Documents and Settings/dvieira/Mis documentos/NetBeansProjects/HealingHands" ServerName healinghands.loc <Directory "E:/Documents and Settings/dvieira/Mis documentos/NetBeansProjects/HealingHands"> Options FollowSymLinks AllowOverride All Order allow,deny Allow from all </Directory> ErrorLog "E:/Documents and Settings/dvieira/Mis documentos/NetBeansProjects/HealingHands/logs/error.log" CustomLog "E:/Documents and Settings/dvieira/Mis documentos/NetBeansProjects/HealingHands/logs/access.log" common #AllowOveride all </VirtualHost> <VirtualHost *:80> ServerAdmin [email protected] DocumentRoot "E:/Documents and Settings/dvieira/Mis documentos/NetBeansProjects" ServerName dev.loc <Directory "E:/Documents and Settings/dvieira/Mis documentos/NetBeansProjects"> Options FollowSymLinks AllowOverride All Order allow,deny Allow from all </Directory> ErrorLog "E:/Documents and Settings/dvieira/Mis documentos/NetBeansProjects/logs/error.log" CustomLog "E:/Documents and Settings/dvieira/Mis documentos/NetBeansProjects/logs/access.log" common #AllowOveride all </VirtualHost> My httpd.conf is: ServerRoot "E:\Archivos de programa\Zend\Apache2" Listen 80 LoadModule actions_module modules/mod_actions.so LoadModule alias_module modules/mod_alias.so LoadModule asis_module modules/mod_asis.so LoadModule auth_basic_module modules/mod_auth_basic.so LoadModule auth_digest_module modules/mod_auth_digest.so LoadModule authn_default_module modules/mod_authn_default.so LoadModule authn_file_module modules/mod_authn_file.so LoadModule authz_default_module modules/mod_authz_default.so LoadModule authz_groupfile_module modules/mod_authz_groupfile.so LoadModule authz_host_module modules/mod_authz_host.so LoadModule authz_user_module modules/mod_authz_user.so LoadModule autoindex_module modules/mod_autoindex.so LoadModule cgi_module modules/mod_cgi.so LoadModule dir_module modules/mod_dir.so LoadModule env_module modules/mod_env.so LoadModule filter_module modules/mod_filter.so LoadModule headers_module modules/mod_headers.so LoadModule imagemap_module modules/mod_imagemap.so LoadModule include_module modules/mod_include.so LoadModule info_module modules/mod_info.so LoadModule isapi_module modules/mod_isapi.so LoadModule log_config_module modules/mod_log_config.so LoadModule mime_module modules/mod_mime.so LoadModule mime_magic_module modules/mod_mime_magic.so LoadModule negotiation_module modules/mod_negotiation.so LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so LoadModule setenvif_module modules/mod_setenvif.so LoadModule ssl_module modules/mod_ssl.so LoadModule status_module modules/mod_status.so LoadModule userdir_module modules/mod_userdir.so <IfModule !mpm_netware_module> <IfModule !mpm_winnt_module> User daemon Group daemon </IfModule> </IfModule> ServerAdmin [email protected] DocumentRoot "E:\Archivos de programa\Zend\Apache2/htdocs" <Directory /> Options FollowSymLinks AllowOverride all Order allow,deny Allow from all </Directory> <IfModule dir_module> DirectoryIndex index.php index.html home.php </IfModule> <FilesMatch "^\.ht"> Order allow,deny Deny from all Satisfy All </FilesMatch> ErrorLog "logs/error.log" LogLevel warn <IfModule log_config_module> LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\"" combined LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b" common <IfModule logio_module> LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\" %I %O" combinedio </IfModule> CustomLog "logs/access.log" common </IfModule> <IfModule alias_module> Alias /NetBeansProjects "E:\Documents and Settings\dvieira\Mis documentos\NetBeansProjects" ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ "E:\Archivos de programa\Zend\Apache2/cgi-bin/" </IfModule> <IfModule cgid_module> </IfModule> <Directory "E:\Archivos de programa\Zend\Apache2/cgi-bin"> AllowOverride None Options None Order allow,deny Allow from all </Directory> DefaultType text/plain <IfModule mime_module> TypesConfig conf/mime.types AddType application/x-compress .Z AddType application/x-gzip .gz .tgz </IfModule> Include conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf <IfModule ssl_module> SSLRandomSeed startup builtin SSLRandomSeed connect builtin </IfModule> Include "conf/zend.conf" NameVirtualHost *:80 <VirtualHost *:80> Include "E:\Archivos de programa\Zend\ZendServer/etc/sites.d/zend-default-vhost-80.conf" </VirtualHost> Include "E:\Archivos de programa\Zend\ZendServer/etc/sites.d/globals-*.conf" Include "E:\Archivos de programa\Zend\ZendServer/etc/sites.d/vhost_*.conf" And my host in Windows: 127.0.0.1 localhost 127.0.0.1 healinghands.loc 127.0.0.1 dev.loc And I can't get any of the browser to recognize dev.loc or healinghands.loc but a ping does it. Localhost is working fine. I've spent 3 days now traying to solve this for my one but I finally quit and have to ask. The error should be this Error Code 11002: host not found. Background: this error indicates that the gateway could not find an authoritative DNS server for the website you are trying to access. Date: 5/20/2013 5:51:03 PM Server: Source: DNS problem. i'd like to add this ping Haciendo ping a healinghands.loc [127.0.0.1] con 32 bytes de datos: Respuesta desde 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 tiempo<1m TTL=128 Respuesta desde 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 tiempo<1m TTL=128 Respuesta desde 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 tiempo<1m TTL=128 Respuesta desde 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 tiempo<1m TTL=128 Estadísticas de ping para 127.0.0.1: Paquetes: enviados = 4, recibidos = 4, perdidos = 0 (0% perdidos), Tiempos aproximados de ida y vuelta en milisegundos: Mínimo = 0ms, Máximo = 0ms, Media = 0ms Today i've tryed something: i've add this domains into the exceptions of mi ie proxy config. This worked for healinghands.loc but not for dev.loc i really do not understand why, both config are exactly the same except for de documentroot. I will continue searching

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• PASS Summit 2011 &ndash; Part III

  - by Tara Kizer

  Well we’re about a month past PASS Summit 2011, and yet I haven’t finished blogging my notes! Between work and home life, I haven’t been able to come up for air in a bit.  Now on to my notes… On Thursday of the PASS Summit 2011, I attended Klaus Aschenbrenner’s (blog|twitter) “Advanced SQL Server 2008 Troubleshooting”, Joe Webb’s (blog|twitter) “SQL Server Locking & Blocking Made Simple”, Kalen Delaney’s (blog|twitter) “What Happened? Exploring the Plan Cache”, and Paul Randal’s (blog|twitter) “More DBA Mythbusters”.  I think my head grew two times in size from the Thursday sessions.  Just WOW! I took a ton of notes in Klaus' session.  He took a deep dive into how to troubleshoot performance problems.  Here is how he goes about solving a performance problem: Start by checking the wait stats DMV System health Memory issues I/O issues I normally start with blocking and then hit the wait stats.  Here’s the wait stat query (Paul Randal’s) that I use when working on a performance problem.  He highlighted a few waits to be aware of such as WRITELOG (indicates IO subsystem problem), SOS_SCHEDULER_YIELD (indicates CPU problem), and PAGEIOLATCH_XX (indicates an IO subsystem problem or a buffer pool problem).  Regarding memory issues, Klaus recommended that as a bare minimum, one should set the “max server memory (MB)” in sp_configure to 2GB or 10% reserved for the OS (whichever comes first).  This is just a starting point though! Regarding I/O issues, Klaus talked about disk partition alignment, which can improve SQL I/O performance by up to 100%.  You should use 64kb for NTFS cluster, and it’s automatic in Windows 2008 R2. Joe’s locking and blocking presentation was a good session to really clear up the fog in my mind about locking.  One takeaway that I had no idea could be done was that you can set a timeout in T-SQL code view LOCK_TIMEOUT.  If you do this via the application, you should trap error 1222. Kalen’s session went into execution plans.  The minimum size of a plan is 24k.  This adds up fast especially if you have a lot of plans that don’t get reused much.  You can use sys.dm_exec_cached_plans to check how often a plan is being reused by checking the usecounts column.  She said that we can use DBCC FLUSHPROCINDB to clear out the stored procedure cache for a specific database.  I didn’t know we had this available, so this was great to hear.  This will be less intrusive when an emergency comes up where I’ve needed to run DBCC FREEPROCCACHE. Kalen said one should enable “optimize for ad hoc workloads” if you have an adhoc loc.  This stores only a 300-byte stub of the first plan, and if it gets run again, it’ll store the whole thing.  This helps with plan cache bloat.  I have a lot of systems that use prepared statements, and Kalen says we simulate those calls by using sp_executesql.  Cool! Paul did a series of posts last year to debunk various myths and misconceptions around SQL Server.  He continues to debunk things via “DBA Mythbusters”.  You can get a PDF of a bunch of these here.  One of the myths he went over is the number of tempdb data files that you should have.  Back in 2000, the recommendation was to have as many tempdb data files as there are CPU cores on your server.  This no longer holds true due to the numerous cores we have on our servers.  Paul says you should start out with 1/4 to 1/2 the number of cores and work your way up from there.  BUT!  Paul likes what Bob Ward (twitter) says on this topic: 8 or less cores –> set number of files equal to the number of cores Greater than 8 cores –> start with 8 files and increase in blocks of 4 One common myth out there is to set your MAXDOP to 1 for an OLTP workload with high CXPACKET waits.  Instead of that, dig deeper first.  Look for missing indexes, out-of-date statistics, increase the “cost threshold for parallelism” setting, and perhaps set MAXDOP at the query level.  Paul stressed that you should not plan a backup strategy but instead plan a restore strategy.  What are your recoverability requirements?  Once you know that, now plan out your backups. As Paul always does, he talked about DBCC CHECKDB.  He said how fabulous it is.  I didn’t want to interrupt the presentation, so after his session had ended, I asked Paul about the need to run DBCC CHECKDB on your mirror systems.  You could have data corruption occur at the mirror and not at the principal server.  If you aren’t checking for data corruption on your mirror systems, you could be failing over to a corrupt database in the case of a disaster or even a planned failover.  You can’t run DBCC CHECKDB against the mirrored database, but you can run it against a snapshot off the mirrored database.

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• Deciding On Features For Open Source

  - by Robz / Fervent Coder

  Open source feature selection is subjective. An interesting question was posed to me recently at a presentation - “How do you decide what features to include in the [open source] projects you manage?” Is It Objective? I’d like to say that it’s really objective and that we vote on features and look at what carries the most interest of the populace. Actually no I wouldn’t. I don’t think I would enjoy working on open source (OSS) as much if it someone else decided on what features I should include. It already works that way at work. I don’t want to come home from work and work on things that others decide for me unless they are paying me for those features. So how do I decide on features for our open source projects? I think there are at least three paths to feature selection and they are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Feature Selection IS the Set of Features For the Domain Your product, in whatever domain it is in, needs to have the basic set of features that make it answer the needs of that domain. That is different for every product, but if you take for example a build tool, at the very least it needs to be able to compile source. And these basic needed features are not always objective either. Two people could completely disagree what makes for a required feature to meet a domain need for a product. Even one person may disagree with himself/herself about what features are needed based on different timeframes. So that leads us down to subjective. Feature Selection IS An Answer To Competition Some features go in because the competition adds a feature that may draw others away from your product offering. With OSS, there are all free alternatives, so if your competition adds a killer feature and you don’t, there isn’t much other than learning (how to use the other product) to move your customers off to the competition. If you want to keep your customers, you need to be ready to answer the questions of adding the features your competition has added.  Sometimes it’s about adding a feature that your competition charges for, but you add it for free. That draws people to the free alternative – so sometimes that adds a motivation to select a feature. Sometimes it’s because you want those features in your product, either to learn how you can answer the question of how to do something and/or because you have a need for that feature and you want it in your product. That also leads us down the road to subjective. Feature Selection IS Subjective I decide on features based on what I want to see in the product I am working on. Things I am interested in or have the biggest need for usually get picked first, with things that do not interest me either coming later or not at all. Most people get interested in an area of OSS because it solves a need for them and/or they find it interesting. If one of these two things is not happening and they are not being paid, it’s likely that person will move on to something else they find interesting or just stop OSS altogether. OSS feature selection is just that – subjective. If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t be opinionated and it wouldn’t have a personality about it. Most people like certain OSS because they like where the product is going or the personalities behind the product. For me, I want my products to be easy to use and solve an important problem. If it takes you more than 5-10 minutes to learn how to use my product, I know you are probably going somewhere else. So I pick features that make the product easy to use and learn, and those are not always the simplest features to work on. I work for conventions and make the product opinionated, because I think that is what makes using a product easier, if it already works with little setup. And I like to provide the ability for power users to get in and change the conventions to suit their needs. So those are required features for me above and beyond the domain features. I like to think I do a pretty good job at this. Usually when I present on something I’ve created, I like seeing people’s eyes light up when they see how simple it is to set up a powerful product like UppercuT. Patches And/Or Donations But remember before you say I’m a bad person or won’t use my product, I’ll always accept patches or I might like the feature that you suggest. If you like using the products I provide and they solve a problem for you the two biggest compliments you can provide are either a patch or a donation.  If you think the product is great, but if it could do this one other thing, it would be awesome(!), then consider contacting me and providing a patch, or consider contacting me with a donation and a request to put the feature in. And alternatively, if it’s a big feature, you could hire me to work on the product to make it even better. What If There Are Multiple Committers? In the question of multiple committers, I choose that someone always makes the ultimate decision to select whether a feature should be part of a product or not. But for other OSS project maybe this is not the case. If there is not an ultimate decision maker, then there is the possibility of either adding every feature suggested or having a deadlock on two conflicting features.   So let me pose this question. If you work on Open Source, how do you decide on what features to put in your open source projects? How do you decide what doesn’t belong? What do you do when there are conflicting features?

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• 5 Things I Learned About the IT Labor Shortage

  - by Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies

  by Jim Lein | Sr. Principal Product Marketing Director | Oracle Midsize Programs | @JimLein Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} 5 Things I Learned About the IT Labor Shortage A gentle autumn breeze is nudging the last golden leaves off the aspen trees. It’s time to wrap up the series that I started back in April, “The Growing IT Labor Shortage: Are You Feeling It?” Even in a time of relatively high unemployment, labor shortages exist depending on many factors, including location, industry, IT requirements, and company size. According to Manpower Groups 2013 Talent Shortage Survey, 35% of hiring managers globally are having difficulty filling jobs. Their top three challenges in filling jobs are: 1. lack of technical competencies (hard skills) 2. Lack of available applicants 3. Lack of experience The same report listed Technicians as the most difficult position to fill in the United States For most companies, Human Capital and Talent Management have never been more strategic and they are striving for ways streamline processes, reduce turnover, and lower costs (see this Oracle whitepaper, “ Simplify Workforce Management and Increase Global Agility”). Everyone I spoke to—partner, customer, and Oracle experts—agreed that it can be extremely challenging to hire and retain IT talent in today’s labor market. And they generally agreed on the causes: a. IT is so pervasive that there are myriad moving parts requiring support and expertise, b. thus, it’s hard for university graduates to step in and contribute immediately without experience and specialization, c. big IT companies generally aren’t the talent incubators that they were in the freewheeling 90’s due to bottom line pressures that require hiring talent that can hit the ground running, and d. it’s often too expensive for resource-strapped midsize companies to invest the time and money required to get graduates up to speed. Here are my top lessons learned from my conversations with the experts. 1. A Better Title Would Have Been, “The Challenges of Finding and Retaining IT Talent That Matches Your Requirements” There are more applicants than jobs but it’s getting tougher and tougher to find individuals that perfectly fit each and every role. Top performing companies are increasingly looking to hire the “almost ready”, striving to keep their existing talent more engaged, and leveraging their employee’s social and professional networks to quickly narrow down candidate searches (here’s another whitepaper, “A Strategic Approach to Talent Management”). 2. Size Matters—But So Does Location Midsize companies must strive to build cultures that compete favorably with what large enterprises can offer, especially when they aren’t within commuting distance of IT talent strongholds. They can’t always match the compensation and benefits offered by large enterprises so it's paramount to offer candidates high quality of life and opportunities to build their resumes in alignment with their long term career aspirations. 3. Get By With a Little Help From Your Friends It doesn’t always make sense to invest time and money in training an employee on a task they will not perform frequently. Or get in a bidding war for talent with skills that are rare and in high demand. Many midsize companies are finding that it makes good economic sense to contract with partners for remote support rather than trying to divvy up each and every role amongst their lean staff. Internal staff can be assigned to roles that will have the highest positive impact on achieving organizational goals. 4. It’s Actually Both “What You Know” AND “Who You Know” If I was hiring someone today I would absolutely leverage the social and professional networks of my co-workers. Period. Most research shows that hiring in this manner is less expensive and time consuming AND produces better results. There is also some evidence that suggests new hires from employees’ networks have higher job performance and retention rates. 5. I Have New Respect for Recruiters and Hiring Managers My hats off to them—it’s not easy hiring and retaining top talent with today’s challenges. Check out the infographic, “A New Day: Taking HR from Chaos to Control”, on Oracle’s Human Capital Management solutions home page. You can also explore all of Oracle’s HCM solutions from that page based on your role. You can read all the posts in this series by clicking on the links in the right sidebar. Stay tuned…we’ll continue to post thought leadership on HCM and Talent Management topics.

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• Blog Buzz - Devoxx 2011

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  Some day I will make it to Devoxx – for now, I’m content to vicariously follow the blogs of attendees and pick up on what’s happening.  I’ve been doing more blog "fishing," looking for the best commentary on 2011 Devoxx. There’s plenty of food for thought – and the ideas are not half-baked.The bloggers are out in full, offering useful summaries and commentary on Devoxx goings-on.Constantin Partac, a Java developer and a member of Transylvania JUG, a community from Cluj-Napoca/Romania, offers an excellent summary of the Devoxx keynotes. Here’s a sample:“Oracle Opening Keynote and JDK 7, 8, and 9 Presentation•    Oracle is committed to Java and wants to provide support for it on any device.•    JSE 7 for Mac will be released next week.•    Oracle would like Java developers to be involved in JCP, to adopt a JSR and to attend local JUG meetings.•    JEE 7 will be released next year.•    JEE 7 is focused on cloud integration, some of the features are already implemented in glassfish 4 development branch.•    JSE 8 will be release in summer of 2013 due to “enterprise community request” as they can not keep the pace with an 18    month release cycle.•    The main features included in JSE8 are lambda support, project Jigsaw, new Date/Time API, project Coin++ and adding   support for sensors. JSE 9 probably will focus on some of these features:1.    self tuning JVM2.    improved native language integration3.    processing enhancement for big data4.    reification (adding runtime class type info for generic types)5.    unification of primitive and corresponding object classes6.    meta-object protocol in order to use type and methods define in other JVM languages7.    multi-tenancy8.    JVM resource management” Thanks Constantin! Ivan St. Ivanov, of SAP Labs Bulgaria, also commented on the keynotes with a different focus.  He summarizes Henrik Stahl’s look ahead to Java SE 8 and JavaFX 3.0; Cameron Purdy on Java EE and the cloud; celebrated Java Champion Josh Bloch on what’s good and bad about Java; Mark Reinhold’s quick look ahead to Java SE 9; and Brian Goetz on lambdas and default methods in Java SE 8. Here’s St. Ivanov’s account of Josh Bloch’s comments on the pluses of Java:“He started with the virtues of the platform. To name a few:    Tightly specified language primitives and evaluation order – int is always 32 bits and operations are executed always from left  to right, without compilers messing around    Dynamic linking – when you change a class, you need to recompile and rebuild just the jar that has it and not the whole application    Syntax  similarity with C/C++ – most existing developers at that time felt like at home    Object orientations – it was cool at that time as well as functional programming is today    It was statically typed language – helps in faster runtime, better IDE support, etc.    No operator overloading – well, I’m not sure why it is good. Scala has it for example and that’s why it is far better for defining DSLs. But I will not argue with Josh.”It’s worth checking out St. Ivanov’s summary of Bloch’s views on what’s not so great about Java as well. What's Coming in JAX-RS 2.0Marek Potociar, Principal Software Engineer at Oracle and currently specification lead of Java EE RESTful web services API (JAX-RS), blogged on his talk about what's coming in JAX-RS 2.0, scheduled for final release in mid-2012.  Here’s a taste:“Perhaps the most wanted addition to the JAX-RS is the Client API, that would complete the JAX-RS story, that is currently server-side only. In JAX-RS 2.0 we are adding a completely interface-based and fluent client API that blends nicely in with the existing fluent response builder pattern on the server-side. When we started with the client API, the first proposal contained around 30 classes. Thanks to the feedback from our Expert Group we managed to reduce the number of API classes to 14 (2 of them being exceptions)! The resulting is compact while at the same time we still managed to create an API that reflects the method invocation context flow (e.g. once you decide on the target URI and start setting headers on the request, your IDE will not try to offer you a URI setter in the code completion). This is a subtle but very important usability aspect of an API…” Obviously, Devoxx is a great Java conference, one that is hitting this year at a time when much is brewing in the platform and beginning to be anticipated.

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• Imaging: Paper Paper Everywhere, but None Should be in Sight

  - by Kellsey Ruppel

  Author: Vikrant Korde, Technical Architect, Aurionpro's Oracle Implementation Services team My wedding photos are stored in several empty shoeboxes. Yes...I got married before digital photography was mainstream...which means I'm old. But my parents are really old. They have shoeboxes filled with vacation photos on slides (I doubt many of you have even seen a home slide projector...and I hope you never do!). Neither me nor my parents should have shoeboxes filled with any form of photographs whatsoever. They should obviously live in the digital world...with no physical versions in sight (other than a few framed on our walls). Businesses grapple with similar challenges. But instead of shoeboxes, they have file cabinets and warehouses jam packed with paper invoices, legal documents, human resource files, material safety data sheets, incident reports, and the list goes on and on. In fact, regulatory and compliance rules govern many industries, requiring that this paperwork is available for any number of years. It's a real challenge...especially trying to find archived documents quickly and many times with no backup. Which brings us to a set of technologies called Image Process Management (or simply Imaging or Image Processing) that are transforming these antiquated, paper-based processes. Oracle's WebCenter Content Imaging solution is a combination of their WebCenter suite, which offers a robust set of content and document management features, and their Business Process Management (BPM) suite, which helps to automate business processes through the definition of workflows and business rules. Overall, the solution provides an enterprise-class platform for end-to-end management of document images within transactional business processes. It's a solution that provides all of the capabilities needed - from document capture and recognition, to imaging and workflow - to effectively transform your ‘shoeboxes’ of files into digitally managed assets that comply with strict industry regulations. The terminology can be quite overwhelming if you're new to the space, so we've provided a summary of the primary components of the solution below, along with a short description of the two paths that can be executed to load images of scanned documents into Oracle's WebCenter suite. WebCenter Imaging (WCI): the electronic document repository that provides security, annotations, and search capabilities, and is the primary user interface for managing work items in the imaging solution SOA & BPM Suites (workflow): provide business process management capabilities, including human tasks, workflow management, service integration, and all other standard SOA features. It's interesting to note that there a number of 'jumpstart' processes available to help accelerate the integration of business applications, such as the accounts payable invoice processing solution for E-Business Suite that facilitates the processing of large volumes of invoices WebCenter Enterprise Capture (WEC): expedites the capture process of paper documents to digital images, offering high volume scanning and importing from email, and allows for flexible indexing options WebCenter Forms Recognition (WFR): automatically recognizes, categorizes, and extracts information from paper documents with greatly reduced human intervention WebCenter Content: the backend content server that provides versioning, security, and content storage There are two paths that can be executed to send data from WebCenter Capture to WebCenter Imaging, both of which are described below: 1. Direct Flow - This is the simplest and quickest way to push an image scanned from WebCenter Enterprise Capture (WEC) to WebCenter Imaging (WCI), using the bare minimum metadata. The WEC activities are defined below: The paper document is scanned (or imported from email). The scanned image is indexed using a predefined indexing profile. The image is committed directly into the process flow 2. WFR (WebCenter Forms Recognition) Flow - This is the more complex process, during which data is extracted from the image using a series of operations including Optical Character Recognition (OCR), Classification, Extraction, and Export. This process creates three files (Tiff, XML, and TXT), which are fed to the WCI Input Agent (the high speed import/filing module). The WCI Input Agent directory is a standard ingestion method for adding content to WebCenter Imaging, the process for doing so is described below: WEC commits the batch using the respective commit profile. A TIFF file is created, passing data through the file name by including values separated by "_" (underscores). WFR completes OCR, classification, extraction, export, and pulls the data from the image. In addition to the TIFF file, which contains the document image, an XML file containing the extracted data, and a TXT file containing the metadata that will be filled in WCI, are also created. All three files are exported to WCI's Input agent directory. Based on previously defined "input masks", the WCI Input Agent will pick up the seeding file (often the TXT file). Finally, the TIFF file is pushed in UCM and a unique web-viewable URL is created. Based on the mapping data read from the TXT file, a new record is created in the WCI application.  Although these processes may seem complex, each Oracle component works seamlessly together to achieve a high performing and scalable platform. The solution has been field tested at some of the largest enterprises in the world and has transformed millions and millions of paper-based documents to more easily manageable digital assets. For more information on how an Imaging solution can help your business, please contact [email protected] (for U.S. West inquiries) or [email protected] (for U.S. East inquiries). About the Author: Vikrant is a Technical Architect in Aurionpro's Oracle Implementation Services team, where he delivers WebCenter-based Content and Imaging solutions to Fortune 1000 clients. With more than twelve years of experience designing, developing, and implementing Java-based software solutions, Vikrant was one of the founding members of Aurionpro's WebCenter-based offshore delivery team. He can be reached at [email protected].

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• SQLAuthority News – Great Time Spent at Great Indian Developers Summit 2014

  - by Pinal Dave

  The Great Indian Developer Conference (GIDS) is one of the most popular annual event held in Bangalore. This year GIDS is scheduled on April 22, 25. I will be presented total four sessions at this event and each session is very different from each other. Here are the details of four of my sessions, which I presented there. Pluralsight Shades This event was a great event and I had fantastic fun presenting a technology over here. I was indeed very excited that along with me, I had many of my friends presenting at the event as well. I want to thank all of you to attend my session and having standing room every single time. I have already sent resources in my newsletter. You can sign up for the newsletter over here. Indexing is an Art I was amazed with the crowd present in the sessions at GIDS. There was a great interest in the subject of SQL Server and Performance Tuning. Audience at GIDS I believe event like such provides a great platform to meet and share knowledge. Pinal at Pluralsight Booth Here are the abstract of the sessions which I had presented. They were recorded so at some point in time they will be available, but if you want the content of all the courses immediately, I suggest you check out my video courses on the same subject on Pluralsight. Indexes, the Unsung Hero Relevant Pluralsight Course Slow Running Queries are the most common problem that developers face while working with SQL Server. While it is easy to blame SQL Server for unsatisfactory performance, the issue often persists with the way queries have been written, and how Indexes has been set up. The session will focus on the ways of identifying problems that slow down SQL Server, and Indexing tricks to fix them. Developers will walk out with scripts and knowledge that can be applied to their servers, immediately post the session. Indexes are the most crucial objects of the database. They are the first stop for any DBA and Developer when it is about performance tuning. There is a good side as well evil side to indexes. To master the art of performance tuning one has to understand the fundamentals of indexes and the best practices associated with the same. We will cover various aspects of Indexing such as Duplicate Index, Redundant Index, Missing Index as well as best practices around Indexes. SQL Server Performance Troubleshooting: Ancient Problems and Modern Solutions Relevant Pluralsight Course Many believe Performance Tuning and Troubleshooting is an art which has been lost in time. However, truth is that art has evolved with time and there are more tools and techniques to overcome ancient troublesome scenarios. There are three major resources that when bottlenecked creates performance problems: CPU, IO, and Memory. In this session we will focus on High CPU scenarios detection and their resolutions. If time permits we will cover other performance related tips and tricks. At the end of this session, attendees will have a clear idea as well as action items regarding what to do when facing any of the above resource intensive scenarios. Developers will walk out with scripts and knowledge that can be applied to their servers, immediately post the session. To master the art of performance tuning one has to understand the fundamentals of performance, tuning and the best practices associated with the same. We will discuss about performance tuning in this session with the help of Demos. Pinal Dave at GIDS MySQL Performance Tuning – Unexplored Territory Relevant Pluralsight Course Performance is one of the most essential aspects of any application. Everyone wants their server to perform optimally and at the best efficiency. However, not many people talk about MySQL and Performance Tuning as it is an extremely unexplored territory. In this session, we will talk about how we can tune MySQL Performance. We will also try and cover other performance related tips and tricks. At the end of this session, attendees will not only have a clear idea, but also carry home action items regarding what to do when facing any of the above resource intensive scenarios. Developers will walk out with scripts and knowledge that can be applied to their servers, immediately post the session. To master the art of performance tuning one has to understand the fundamentals of performance, tuning and the best practices associated with the same. You will also witness some impressive performance tuning demos in this session. Hidden Secrets and Gems of SQL Server We Bet You Never Knew Relevant Pluralsight Course SQL Trio Session! It really amazes us every time when someone says SQL Server is an easy tool to handle and work with. Microsoft has done an amazing work in making working with complex relational database a breeze for developers and administrators alike. Though it looks like child’s play for some, the realities are far away from this notion. The basics and fundamentals though are simple and uniform across databases, the behavior and understanding the nuts and bolts of SQL Server is something we need to master over a period of time. With a collective experience of more than 30+ years amongst the speakers on databases, we will try to take a unique tour of various aspects of SQL Server and bring to you life lessons learnt from working with SQL Server. We will share some of the trade secrets of performance, configuration, new features, tuning, behaviors, T-SQL practices, common pitfalls, productivity tips on tools and more. This is a highly demo filled session for practical use if you are a SQL Server developer or an Administrator. The speakers will be able to stump you and give you answers on almost everything inside the Relational database called SQL Server. I personally attended the session of Vinod Kumar, Balmukund Lakhani, Abhishek Kumar and my favorite Govind Kanshi. Summary If you have missed this event here are two action items 1) Sign up for Resource Newsletter 2) Watch my video courses on Pluralsight Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: MySQL, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, SQLAuthority News, T SQL Tagged: GIDS

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• Deep in the Heart of Texas

  - by Applications User Experience

  Author: Erika Webb, Manager, Fusion Applications UX User Assistance When I was first working in the usability field, the only way I could consider conducting a usability study was to bring a potential user to a lab environment where I could show them whatever I was interested in learning more about and ask them questions. While I hate to reveal just how long I have been working in this field, let's just say that pads of paper and a stopwatch were key tools for any test I conducted. Over the years, I have worked in simple labs with basic video taping equipment and not much else, and I have worked in corporate environments with sophisticated usability labs and state-of-the-art equipment. Years ago, we conducted all usability studies at the location of the user. If we wanted to see if there were any differences between users in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, we went to those places to run the test. A lab environment is very useful for many test situations. However, there has always been a debate in the usability field about whether bringing someone into a lab environment, however friendly we make it, somehow intrinsically changes the behavior of the user as compared to having them work in their own environment, at their own desk, and on their own computer. We developed systems to create a portable usability lab, so that we could go to the users that we needed to test.  Do lab environments change user behavior patterns? Then 9/11 hit. You may not remember, but no planes flew for weeks afterwards. Companies all over the world couldn't fly-in employees for meetings. Suddenly, traveling to the location of the users had an additional difficulty. The company I was working for at the time had usability specialists stuck in New York for days before they could finally rent a car and drive home to Colorado. This changed the world pretty suddenly, and technology jumped on the change. Companies offering Internet meeting tools were strugglinguntil no one could travel. The Internet boomed with collaboration tools that enabled people to work together wherever they happened to be. This change in technology has made a huge difference in my world. We use collaborative tools to bring our product concepts and ideas to the user across the Internet. As a global company, we benefit from having users from all over the world inform our designs. We now run usability studies with users all over the world in a single day, a feat we couldn't have accomplished 10 years ago by plane! Other technology companies have started to do more of this type of usability testing, since the tools have improved so dramatically. Plus, in our busy world, it's not always easy to find users who can take the time away from their jobs to come to our labs. reaching users where it is convenient for them greatly improves the odds that people do participate. I manage a team of usability specialists who live in India and California, whlie I live in Colorado. We have wonderful labs that we bring users into to show them our products. But very often, we run our studies remotely. We used to take the lab to the users now we use the labs, but we let the users stay where they are. We gain users who might not have been able to leave work to come to our labs, and they get to use the system they are familiar with. And we gain users nearly anywhere that we can set up an Internet connection, as long as the users have a phone, a broadband connection, and a compatible Web browser (with no pop-up blockers). After we recruit participants in a traditional manner, we send them an invitation to participate through the use of a telephone conference call and Web conferencing tool. At Oracle, we use Oracle Web Conference part of Oracle Collaboration Suite, which enables us to give the user control of the mouse, while we present a prototype or wireframe pictures. We can record the sessions over the Web and phone conference. We send the users instructions, plus tips to ensure that we won't have problems sharing screens. In some cases, when time is tight, we even run a five-minute "test session" with users a day in advance to be sure that we can connect. Prior to the test, we send users a participant script that contains information about the study, including any questionnaires. This is exactly the same script we give to participants who come to the labs. We ask users to print this before the beginning of the session. We generally run these studies by having a usability engineer in our usability labs, so that we can record the session as though the user were in the lab with us. Roughly 80% of our application software usability testing at Oracle is performed using remote methods. The probability of getting a   remote test participant decreases the higher up the person is in the target organization. We have a methodology checklist available to help our usability engineers work through the remote processes.

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• A Gentle Introduction to NuGet

  - by Joe Mayo

  Not too long ago, Microsoft released, NuGet, an automated package manager for Visual Studio.  NuGet makes it easy to download and install assemblies, and their references, into a Visual Studio project.  These assemblies, which I loosely refer to as packages, are often open source, and include projects such as LINQ to Twitter. In this post, I'll explain how to get started in using NuGet with your projects to include: installng NuGet, installing/uninstalling LINQ to Twitter via console command, and installing/uninstalling LINQ to Twitter via graphical reference menu. Installing NuGet The first step you'll need to take is to install NuGet.  Visit the NuGet site, at http://nuget.org/, click on the Install NuGet button, and download the NuGet.Tools.vsix installation file, shown below. Each browser is different (i.e. FireFox, Chrome, IE, etc), so you might see options to run right away, save to a location, or access to the file through the browser's download manager.  Regardless of how you receive the NuGet installer, execute the downloaded NuGet.Tools.vsix to install Nuget into visual Studio. The NuGet Footprint When you open visual Studio, observe that there is a new menu option on the Tools menu, titled Library Package Manager; This is where you use NuGet.  There are two menu options, from the Library Package Manager Menu that you can use: Package Manager Console and Package Manager Settings.  I won't discuss Package Manager Settings in this post, except to give you a general idea that, as one of a set of capabilities, it manages the path to the NuGet server, which is already set for you. Another menu, added by the NuGet installer, is Add Library Package Reference, found by opening the context menu for either a Solution Explorer project or a project's References folder or via the Project menu.  I'll discuss how to use this later in the post. The following discussion is concerned with the other menu option, Package Manager Console, which allows you to manage NuGet packages. Gettng a NuGet Package Selecting Tools -> Library Package Manager -> Package Manager Console opens the Package Manager Console.  As you can see, below, the Package Manager Console is text-based and you'll need to type in commands to work with packages. In this post, I'll explain how to use the Package Manager Console to install LINQ to Twitter, but there are many more commands, explained in the NuGet Package Manager Console Commands documentation.  To install LINQ to Twitter, open your current project where you want LINQ to Twitter installed, and type the following at the PM> prompt: Install-Package linqtotwitter If all works well, you'll receive a confirmation message, similar to the following, after a brief pause: Successfully installed 'linqtotwitter 2.0.20'. Successfully added 'linqtotwitter 2.0.20' to NuGetInstall. Also, observe that a reference to the LinqToTwitter.dll assembly was added to your current project. Uninstalling a NuGet Package I won't be so bold as to assume that you would only want to use LINQ to Twitter because there are other Twitter libraries available; I recommend Twitterizer if you don't care for LINQ to Twitter.  So, you might want to use the following command at the PM> prompt to remove LINQ to Twitter from your project: Uninstall-Package linqtotwitter After a brief pause, you'll see a confirmation message similar to the following: Successfully removed 'linqtotwitter 2.0.20' from NuGetInstall. Also, observe that the LinqToTwitter.dll assembly no longer appears in your project references list. Sometimes using the Package Manager Console is required for more sophisticated scenarios.  However, LINQ to Twitter doesn't have any dependencies and is a very simple install, so you can use another method of installing graphically, which I'll show you next. Graphical Installations As explained earlier, clicking Add Library Package Reference, from the context menu for either a Solution Explorer project or a project's References folder or via the Project menu opens the Add Library Package Reference window. This window will allow you to add a reference a NuGet package in your project. To the left of the window are a few accordian folders to help you find packages that are either on-line or already installed.  Just like the previous section, I'll assume you are installing LINQ to Twitter for the first time, so you would select the Online folder and click All.  After waiting for package descriptions to download, you'll notice that there are too many to scroll through in a short period of time, over 900 as I write this.  Therefore, use the search box located at the top right corner of the window and type LINQ to Twitter as I've done in the previous figure. You'll see LINQ to Twitter appear in the list. Click the Install button on the LINQ to Twitter entry. If the installation was successful, you'll see a message box display and disappear quickly (or maybe not if your machine is very fast or you blink at that moment). Then you'll see a reference to the LinqToTwitter.dll assembly in your project's references list. Note: While running this demo, I ran into an issue where VS had created a file lock on an installation folder without releasing it, causing an error with "packagename already exists. Skipping..." and then an error describing that it couldn't write to a destination folder.  I resolved the problem by closing and reopening VS. If you open the Add a Library Package Reference window again, you'll see LINQ to Twitter listed in the Recent packages folder. Summary You can install NuGet via the on-line home page with a click of a button.  Nuget provides two ways to work with packages, via console or graphical window.  While the graphical window is easiest, the console window is more powerful. You can now quickly add project references to many available packages via the NuGet service. Joe

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• Windows Phone 7 Review &ndash; Part 1: LG Quantum

  - by Nikita Polyakov

  As many of my fellow geeks, I ran out and got a retail windows Phone 7 on the first day. Just had to have it :) I’ve had the developer prototypes in my hands for previous 3 months on and off, so I finally wanted to have one I call my own. I’ve rushed the Launch   I’ve checked out both AT&T and T-Mobile offerings on day 1 and decided on a Samsung Focus. Great screen, super light and thin. If you don’t believe me that this phone can compete with the best of the non-Phone 7 offerings - get it in your hand to compare for yourself. I have to say that even though the on-screen keyboard on Windows Phone 7 is one of the best, the amount of text I write on my phone and my expectation of how long that takes for a short reply are very high. Also the phone being so slick and sexy did not feel solid or confident in my hand or pocket. As the dust settled   Arrives the LG Quantum – now on AT&T and worldwide. First impression of the softer plastic, the back battery cover is solid metal - the entire phone feels solid and indestructible! Phone fits just right in my hand, it’s almost too good. It does not feel like it will crack in your jeans. I feel safe holding it and don’t feel like if I or someone were to bump into me walking it’d fly out of my hand. I’ve dropped and had thrown the Focus a few times on accident as it’s weight is negligible. I won’t even dream of lying the first day adjusting to a 3.5’ LCD screen from the Samsung’s blistering bright and poppy AMOLED 4’ was hard. But the colors and sharpness are still very good. I find it almost easier on the eyes actually for day to day use.  I had a chance to lay the phone down in the line with the prototypes and final versions of other phones that had LCD screens – LG makes HTC looks like a budget LCD compared to a high end LCD in the home theatre department. I am consistently complemented by friends that have the HD7 or Surround on how much better my screen looks. The screen just looks like the most color correct phone out of the line up. Even next to Samsung it makes it look oversaturated, but can’t match the true blacks compensating with true white.   Day to Day Usability   What I also noticed that is a huge difference is how much I am not accidently hitting the soft keys at the bottom. I real pain on Focus since holding it in am average size hand already would accidently touch the controls at the bottom. QWERTY keyboard on this phone is great. It’s like the mission for LG is “make it solid!”. Keyboard has a very durable feel.   LG’s has a secret wild card though is the DLNA support. If you seen an ad for it, you should. Imagine this – playing a song from your phone straight to your network connected A/V receiver. Done. Pictures to TV. Done. Video. Done. DLNA works with components that advertise to as well as Windows 7, XBOX 360 and other consoles.  I will write an extensive review of that experience in near future. LG Exclusive apps – from panorama photo taker to voice to text translator and even look-n-type app that works like a backup inverse camera, there is quite a bit there that won’t be found on the other phones. I’ll review those in more detail in another segment. Conclusion So for a quick comparison: If you want a phone that is super thin, light and is core reference of a Windows Phone 7 – Samsung Focus it is. If you want a great phone with solid secure feel, real keyboard, media features - the hands down winner is LG Quantum.   You can pick up the LG Quantum at AT&T in US and worldwide as LG Optimus 7Q.   Final thought: I have not had SmartPhone that I felt was a reliable trusty primary communication device since Samsung BlackJack II, this time the LG got the crown.   [ Disclosure: Phone was provided to me free of charge. That has been the case for all of my phones for years, nothing new - I get them all. ]

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• Goals for 2010 Retrospective

  - by Brian Jackett

  As we approach the end of 2010 I’d like to take a  few minutes to reflect back on this past year and revisit the goals that I set for myself at the beginning of the year (click here to see those goals).  I feel it is important to track your goals not only to see if you accomplished them but also to see what new directions in life you pursued.  Once we enter into 2011 I’ll follow up with a new post on goals for the new year. Professional Blog – This year I intended to write at least 2 posts a month.  Looking back I far surpassed that goal by writing 47 posts (this one being my 48th).  As with many things in life, quantity does not mean quality.  A good example is a number of my posts announcing upcoming speaking engagements and providing links to presentation slides and scripts.  That aside, I like to at least keep content relatively fresh on this blog  which I was able to accomplish.  At the same time I’ve gotten much more comfortable in my blogging style and it has become much easier to write. Speaking – I didn’t define a clear goal for speaking engagements, but had a rough idea of wanting to speak at 2-3 events.  Once again I far exceeded that number by speaking at 10 separate events and delivering 12+ presentations.  I’m very thankful for all of the opportunities that I was given and all of the wonderful people I have met as a result. Volunteering – This year I intended to help out with the COSPUG (now Buckeye SPUG) steering committee and Stir Trek conference.  I fulfilled both goals and as well as taking on lead organizer duties for the first ever SharePoint Saturday Columbus.  Each of these events and groups turned out to be successful and I was glad to be a part of them all.  I look forward to continuing to volunteer with each next year in some capacity. Android Development – My goal for getting into Android development was a late addition, but one I didn’t necessarily fulfill.  I spent a couple nights downloading the tools, configuring my environment, and going through some “simple” tutorials.  I say “simple” because in my opinion the tutorials were not laid out very well, took a long time to get running properly, and confused me more than helped.  After about a week I was frustrated with the process and didn’t think it was a good use of my time.  On a side note, I’ve dabbled in Windows Phone 7 development over the past few months and have been very excited by how easy and intuitive it was to get started and develop some proof of concepts. Personal Getting in Shape – I had intended to play on recreational sports leagues and work out on a semi-regular basis.  For the most part I fulfilled this goal by playing on various softball and volleyball leagues as well as using the gym.  At the same time I had some major setbacks.  In the spring I badly sprained my ankle and got hit in the knee with a softball which kept me inactive for almost 2 months.  More recently I broke my knuckle (click here to read about it) which I am still recovering from. Volunteering – On the volunteering front I kept my commitments at my parish’s high school youth group.  As for other volunteering opportunities I got involved with a great organization called Columbus Gives Back (website).  I’ve volunteered with them a few times and really enjoy their goal to provide opportunities to people with busy schedules.  They  offer a variety of events typically after work hours and spread out around Columbus with no set commitments on time you need to put in.  If you have the time or motivation I highly recommend them. House/Condo – I had been thinking of buying a house or condo this past summer, but decided to extend my apartment lease for another year instead.  I have begun the search for a place in the past few weeks and am excited begin the process of owning a home. Conclusion     This year I was able to set and achieve many of my goals.  For next year I’ll try to put more specific numbers to all of my goals.  If any of you readers set goals for 2011 feel free to send me a link as I’d love to see what you are aiming to accomplish.  Have a great end of 2010 and best wishes for the start of 2011!       -Frog Out

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• How do I install on an UEFI Asus 1215b netbook?

  - by Tarek

  I'm trying to install Ubuntu 11.10 on a UEFI netbook Asus 1215b using an USB stick. I created a fat32 efi partition of 100MB, 2GB swap, and 2 ext4 partitions (for root (/ ) and /home, respectively). While installing, Ubuntu switches to CLI and starts running efibootmgr. After a few commands (sadly I don't have a screen grab), it stops displaying text but it's still running judging by the HDD led. Then, there's a weird graphic glitch and the screen turns off (HDD led still indicating activity). Finally, it just stops, but doesn't turn off. Not even a hard reboot works (holding down the power button a few secs). I have to plug the netbook off and remove the battery. After that, it still doesn't boot Ubuntu... Anyway, what can I do? I'm considering following the footsteps here and here. Edit: here is the syslog $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] BUG: unable to handle kernel paging request at 00000000ffe1867c $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] IP: [<ffff880066d44c1f>] 0xffff880066d44c1e $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] PGD 14ecc067 PUD 0 $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] Oops: 0000 [#1] SMP $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] CPU 0 $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] Modules linked in: cryptd aes_x86_64 ufs qnx4 hfsplus hfs minix ntfs msdos xfs reiserfs jfs bnep parport_pc rfcomm dm_crypt ppdev bluetooth lp parport joydev eeepc_wmi asus_wmi sparse_keymap uvcvideo videodev v4l2_compat_ioctl32 snd_hda_codec_realtek snd_seq_midi snd_hda_codec_hdmi snd_hda_intel snd_hda_codec arc4 snd_rawmidi snd_hwdep psmouse snd_pcm snd_seq_midi_event ath9k serio_raw sp5100_tco i2c_piix4 k10temp snd_seq mac80211 snd_timer ath9k_common ath9k_hw snd_seq_device ath snd cfg80211 soundcore snd_page_alloc binfmt_misc squashfs overlayfs nls_iso8859_1 nls_cp437 vfat fat dm_raid45 xor dm_mirror dm_region_hash dm_log btrfs zlib_deflate libcrc32c usb_storage uas radeon video ahci libahci ttm drm_kms_helper drm wmi i2c_algo_bit atl1c $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] Pid: 28432, comm: efibootmgr Not tainted 3.0.0-12-generic #20-Ubuntu ASUSTeK Computer INC. 1215B/1215B $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] RIP: 0010:[<ffff880066d44c1f>] [<ffff880066d44c1f>] 0xffff880066d44c1e $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] RSP: 0018:ffff88005e2cbab0 EFLAGS: 00010082 $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] RAX: 00000000ffe1867c RBX: 0000000000000009 RCX: 00000000ffe1867c $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] RDX: 0000000000000000 RSI: ffff88005e2cbbea RDI: ffff88005e2cbb40 $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] RBP: 00000000ffe1867c R08: 0000000000000000 R09: 0000000000000084 $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] R10: ffffc9001101ff83 R11: ffffc90011018685 R12: 0000000000000001 $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] R13: 0000000000000000 R14: ffffc9001101867c R15: ffff88005e2cbbe1 $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] FS: 00007f9cdde13720(0000) GS:ffff880066a00000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] CR2: 00000000ffe1867c CR3: 000000002dace000 CR4: 00000000000006f0 $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] DR0: 0000000000000000 DR1: 0000000000000000 DR2: 0000000000000000 $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] DR3: 0000000000000000 DR6: 00000000ffff0ff0 DR7: 0000000000000400 $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] Process efibootmgr (pid: 28432, threadinfo ffff88005e2ca000, task ffff880014f0dc80) $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] Stack: $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] ffffc90011010000 ffff88005e2cbac8 0000000000010000 ffff880066d4401d $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] 000000000000007c ffff880009e84400 0000000000000090 ffff880066d45738 $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] ffffc9001101867c ffff880066d4331c 0000000000000009 ffffc9001101867b $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] Call Trace: $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] [<ffffffff815e9efe>] ? _raw_spin_lock+0xe/0x20 $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] [<ffffffff811d9c2d>] ? open+0x10d/0x1b0 $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] [<ffffffff8116554b>] ? __dentry_open+0x2bb/0x320 $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] [<ffffffff811d9b20>] ? bin_vma_open+0x70/0x70 $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] [<ffffffff815e9efe>] ? _raw_spin_lock+0xe/0x20 $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] [<ffffffff811849ee>] ? vfsmount_lock_local_unlock+0x1e/0x30 $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] [<ffffffff8104303b>] ? efi_call5+0x4b/0x80 $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] [<ffffffff81042a7f>] ? virt_efi_set_variable+0x2f/0x40 $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] [<ffffffff814bb125>] ? efivar_create+0x1e5/0x280 $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] [<ffffffff811d9d63>] ? write+0x93/0x190 $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] [<ffffffff811d9de4>] ? write+0x114/0x190 $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] [<ffffffff81167813>] ? vfs_write+0xb3/0x180 $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] [<ffffffff81167b3a>] ? sys_write+0x4a/0x90 $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] [<ffffffff815f22c2>] ? system_call_fastpath+0x16/0x1b $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] Code: ec 01 75 f0 41 bc 01 00 00 00 e8 e5 fb ff ff e8 e4 fc ff ff 33 c0 44 0f b7 c0 66 3b c3 73 20 41 0f b7 c0 41 0f b7 d0 03 c5 8b c8 <8a> 00 42 38 04 3a 75 0a 66 45 03 c4 66 44 3b c3 72 e2 33 c0 66 $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] RIP [<ffff880066d44c1f>] 0xffff880066d44c1e $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] RSP <ffff88005e2cbab0> $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] CR2: 00000000ffe1867c $Oct 21 01:05:17 ubuntu kernel: [ 1220.544009] ---[ end trace 493844b002da4787 ]---

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• Beginner Guide to User Styles for Firefox

  - by Asian Angel

  While the default styles for most websites are nice there may be times when you would love to tweak how things look. See how easy it can be to change how websites look with the Stylish Extension for Firefox. Note: Scripts from Userstyles.org can also be added to Greasemonkey if you have it installed. Getting Started After installing the extension you will be presented with a first run page. You may want to keep it open so that you can browse directly to the Userstyles.org website using the link in the upper left corner. In the lower right corner you will have a new Status Bar Icon. If you have used Greasemonkey before this icon works a little differently. It will be faded out due to no user style scripts being active at the moment. You can use either a left or right click to access the Context Menu. The user style script management section is also added into your Add-ons Management Window instead of being separate. When you reach the user style scripts homepage you can choose to either learn more about the extension & scripts or… Start hunting for lots of user style script goodness. There will be three convenient categories to get you jump-started if you wish. You could also conduct a search if you have something specific in mind. Here is some information directly from the website provided for your benefit. Notice the reference to using these scripts with Greasemonkey… This section shows you how the scripts have been categorized and can give you a better idea of how to search for something more specific. Finding & Installing Scripts For our example we decided to look at the Updated Styles Section”first. Based on the page number listing at the bottom there are a lot of scripts available to look through. Time to refine our search a little bit… Using the drop-down menu we selected site styles and entered Yahoo in the search blank. Needless to say 5 pages was a lot easier to look through than 828. We decided to install the Yahoo! Result Number Script. When you do find a script (or scripts) that you like simply click on the Install with Stylish Button. A small window will pop up giving you the opportunity to preview, proceed with the installation, edit the code, or cancel the process. Note: In our example the Preview Function did not work but it may be something particular to the script or our browser’s settings. If you decide to do some quick editing the window shown above will switch over to this one. To return to the previous window and install the user style script click on the Switch to Install Button. After installing the user style the green section in the script’s webpage will actually change to this message… Opening up the Add-ons Manager Window shows our new script ready to go. The script worked perfectly when we conducted a search at Yahoo…the Status Bar Icon also changed from faded out to full color (another indicator that everything is running nicely). Conclusion If you prefer a custom look for your favorite websites then you can have a lot of fun experimenting with different user style scripts. Note: See our article here for specialized How-To Geek User Style Scripts that can be added to your browser. Links Download the Stylish Extension (Mozilla Add-ons) Visit the Userstyles.org Website Install the Yahoo! Result Number User Style Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Spice Up that Boring about:blank Page in FirefoxExpand the Add Bookmark Dialog in Firefox by DefaultEnjoy How-To Geek User Style Script GoodnessAuto-Hide Your Cluttered Firefox Status Bar ItemsBeginner Geek: Delete User Accounts in Windows 7 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Bypass Waiting Time On Customer Service Calls With Lucyphone MELTUP – "The Beginning Of US Currency Crisis And Hyperinflation" Enable or Disable the Task Manager Using TaskMgrED Explorer++ is a Worthy Windows Explorer Alternative Error Goblin Explains Windows Error Codes Twelve must-have Google Chrome plugins

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• Some mail details about Orange Mauritius

  Being an internet service provider is not easy after all for a lot of companies. Luckily, there are quite some good international operators in this world. For example Orange Mauritius aka Mauritius Telecom aka Wanadoo(?) aka MyT here in Mauritius. The local circumstances give them a quasi-monopol position on fixed lines for telephony and therefore cable-based DSL internet connectivity. So far, not bad but as usual... the details. Just for the records, I am only using the services of Orange for mobile but friends and customers are bound, eh stuck, with other services of Orange Mauritius. And usually, being the IT guy, they get in touch with me to complain about problems or to ask questions on either their ADSL / MyT connection, mail services or whatever. Most of those issues are user-related and easily to solve by tweaking the configuration of their computer a little bit but sometimes it's getting weird. Using Orange ADSL... somewhere else Now, let's imagine we are an Orange ADSL customer for ages and we are using their mail services with our very own mail address like "[email protected]". We configured our mail client like Thunderbird, Outlook Express, Outlook or Windows Mail as publicly described, and we are able to receive and send emails like a champion. No problems at all, the world is green. Did I mention that we have a laptop? Ok, let's take our movable piece of information technology and visit a friend here on the island. Not surprising, he is also customer of Orange, so we can read and answer emails. But Orange is not the online internet service provider and one day, we happen to hang out with someone that uses Emtel via WiMAX or UMTS.. And the fun starts... We can still receive and read emails from our Orange mail account and the IT world is still bright but try to send mails to someone outside the domain "@intnet.mu" or "@orange.mu". Your mail client will deny sending mail with SMTP message 5.1.0 "blah not allowed". First guess, there is problem with the mail client, maybe magically the configuration changed over-night. But no it is still working at home... So, there is for sure a problem with the guy's internet connection. At least, it is his fault not to have Orange internet services, so it can not work properly... The Orange Mail FAQ After some more frustation we finally checkout the Orange Mail FAQ to see whether this (obviously?) common problem has been described already. Sorry, but those FAQ entries are even more confusing as it is not really clear how to handle this scenario. Best of all is that most of the entries are still refering to use servers of the domain "intnet.mu". I mean Orange will disable those systems in favour of the domain "orange.mu" in the near future and does not amend their FAQs. Come on, guys! Ok, settings for POP3 are there. Hm, what about the secure version POP3S? No signs at all... Even changing your mail client to use password encryption with STARTTLS is not allowed at all. Use "bow.intnet.mu" for incoming mail... Ahhh, pretty obvious host name. I mean, at least something like pop.intnet.mu or pop3.intnet.mu would have been more accurate. Funny of all, the hostname "pop.orange.mu" is accessible to receive your mail account. Alright, checking SMTP options for authentication or other like POP-before-SMTP or whatever well-known and established mechanism to send emails are described. I guess that spotting a whale or shark in Mauritian waters would be easier. Trial and error on SMTP settings reveal that neither STARTTLS or any other connection / password encryption is available. Using SSL/TLS on SMTP only reveals that there is no service answering your request. Calling customer service So, we have to bite into the bitter apple and get in touch with Orange customer service and complain/explain them our case and ask for advice. After some hiccups, we finally manage to get hold of someone competent in mail services and we receive the golden spoon of mail configuration made by Orange Mauritius: SMTP hostname: smtpauth.intnet.mu And the world of IT is surprisingly green again. Customer satisfaction? Dear Orange Mauritius, what's the problem with this information? Are you scared of mail spammer? Why isn't there any case in your FAQs? Ok, talking about your FAQs - simply said: they are badly outdated! Configure your mail client to use server name based in the domain intnet.mu but specify your account username with orange.mu as domain part. Although, that there are servers available on the domain orange.mu after all. So, why don't you provide current information like this: POP3 server name: pop.orange.muSMTP server name: smtp.orange.muSMTP authenticated: smtpauth.orange.mu It's not difficult, is it? In my humble opinion not really and you would provide clean, consistent and up-to-date information for your customers. This would produce less frustation and so less traffic on your customer service lines. Which after all, would improve the total user experience and satisfaction level on both sides. Without knowing these facts. Now, imagine you would take your laptop abroad and have to use other internet service providers to be able to be online... Calling your customer service would be unnecessary expensive!

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• How to Achieve Real-Time Data Protection and Availabilty....For Real

  - by JoeMeeks

  There is a class of business and mission critical applications where downtime or data loss have substantial negative impact on revenue, customer service, reputation, cost, etc. Because the Oracle Database is used extensively to provide reliable performance and availability for this class of application, it also provides an integrated set of capabilities for real-time data protection and availability. Active Data Guard, depicted in the figure below, is the cornerstone for accomplishing these objectives because it provides the absolute best real-time data protection and availability for the Oracle Database. This is a bold statement, but it is supported by the facts. It isn’t so much that alternative solutions are bad, it’s just that their architectures prevent them from achieving the same levels of data protection, availability, simplicity, and asset utilization provided by Active Data Guard. Let’s explore further. Backups are the most popular method used to protect data and are an essential best practice for every database. Not surprisingly, Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN) is one of the most commonly used features of the Oracle Database. But comparing Active Data Guard to backups is like comparing apples to motorcycles. Active Data Guard uses a hot (open read-only), synchronized copy of the production database to provide real-time data protection and HA. In contrast, a restore from backup takes time and often has many moving parts - people, processes, software and systems – that can create a level of uncertainty during an outage that critical applications can’t afford. This is why backups play a secondary role for your most critical databases by complementing real-time solutions that can provide both data protection and availability. Before Data Guard, enterprises used storage remote-mirroring for real-time data protection and availability. Remote-mirroring is a sophisticated storage technology promoted as a generic infrastructure solution that makes a simple promise – whatever is written to a primary volume will also be written to the mirrored volume at a remote site. Keeping this promise is also what causes data loss and downtime when the data written to primary volumes is corrupt – the same corruption is faithfully mirrored to the remote volume making both copies unusable. This happens because remote-mirroring is a generic process. It has no  intrinsic knowledge of Oracle data structures to enable advanced protection, nor can it perform independent Oracle validation BEFORE changes are applied to the remote copy. There is also nothing to prevent human error (e.g. a storage admin accidentally deleting critical files) from also impacting the remote mirrored copy. Remote-mirroring tricks users by creating a false impression that there are two separate copies of the Oracle Database. In truth; while remote-mirroring maintains two copies of the data on different volumes, both are part of a single closely coupled system. Not only will remote-mirroring propagate corruptions and administrative errors, but the changes applied to the mirrored volume are a result of the same Oracle code path that applied the change to the source volume. There is no isolation, either from a storage mirroring perspective or from an Oracle software perspective.  Bottom line, storage remote-mirroring lacks both the smarts and isolation level necessary to provide true data protection. Active Data Guard offers much more than storage remote-mirroring when your objective is protecting your enterprise from downtime and data loss. Like remote-mirroring, an Active Data Guard replica is an exact block for block copy of the primary. Unlike remote-mirroring, an Active Data Guard replica is NOT a tightly coupled copy of the source volumes - it is a completely independent Oracle Database. Active Data Guard’s inherent knowledge of Oracle data block and redo structures enables a separate Oracle Database using a different Oracle code path than the primary to use the full complement of Oracle data validation methods before changes are applied to the synchronized copy. These include: physical check sum, logical intra-block checking, lost write validation, and automatic block repair. The figure below illustrates the stark difference between the knowledge that remote-mirroring can discern from an Oracle data block and what Active Data Guard can discern. An Active Data Guard standby also provides a range of additional services enabled by the fact that it is a running Oracle Database - not just a mirrored copy of data files. An Active Data Guard standby database can be open read-only while it is synchronizing with the primary. This enables read-only workloads to be offloaded from the primary system and run on the active standby - boosting performance by utilizing all assets. An Active Data Guard standby can also be used to implement many types of system and database maintenance in rolling fashion. Maintenance and upgrades are first implemented on the standby while production runs unaffected at the primary. After the primary and standby are synchronized and all changes have been validated, the production workload is quickly switched to the standby. The only downtime is the time required for user connections to transfer from one system to the next. These capabilities further expand the expectations of availability offered by a data protection solution beyond what is possible to do using storage remote-mirroring. So don’t be fooled by appearances.  Storage remote-mirroring and Active Data Guard replication may look similar on the surface - but the devil is in the details. Only Active Data Guard has the smarts, the isolation, and the simplicity, to provide the best data protection and availability for the Oracle Database. Stay tuned for future blog posts that dive into the many differences between storage remote-mirroring and Active Data Guard along the dimensions of data protection, data availability, cost, asset utilization and return on investment. For additional information on Active Data Guard, see: Active Data Guard Technical White Paper Active Data Guard vs Storage Remote-Mirroring Active Data Guard Home Page on the Oracle Technology Network

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• Silverlight Cream Monday WP7 App Review # 1

  - by Dave Campbell

  I'm going to try something here... if it seems useful, I'll continue, if it doesn't, I'll stop... so give me feedback! There are *lots* of Apps in the WP7 Marketplace, and heaven help me, but the Marketplace sucks for finding stuff. I won't rehash what's already been said in the blogs, but I agree with one and all. I went out last Saturday to find 2 apps that I knew were released, and couldn't do so on my device. Even in the Zune app, it took quite a while to find them... ok, I'll back off a bit, because I just found out I can do 'Search' now if I know the name... I didn't think that was working before. So my thought is on Monday (like today), I will post a review of 5 apps/games I either use or have played with on my device. These are strictly my opinions, you understand, but hey... it's better than a poke in the eye with an iPhone! A few disclaimers:     Feel free to write me about your app and tell me about it. While it would be very cool to receive a whole bunch of xap files to review, at this point, for technical reasons, I'm unable to side-load my device. Since I plan on only doing this one day a week, and only 5, I may never get caught up, so if you send me some info, be patient. Re: games ... remember I'm old... I'm from the era of Colossal Cave and Zork. Duke-Nukem 2D and Captain Comic were awesome. I don't own an XBOX or any other game system, so take game reviews from my perspective -- who knows, it may be refreshing :) I won't pay for an app or game just to try it. If you expect me to test-drive your app, it's going to have to have a Free Trial. In this Issue:   Jingo! is the first app I bought, just to see what the experience was like. It's very much like a game we used to play in school in the Army in 1971 on paper we passed around. Sort of a cross between hangman and Mastermind, you try to figure out the hidden word in 5 tries. You get really good at 5-letter words after a while. I like this because you have to think, and you're not pressured by a clock Jingo! is by James Furdell and is $1.99 I reviewed René Schulte's Pictures Lab a while back, and have not changed my mind. This is an excellent app for playing with any photo on your device... one you've just taken, one you've synced from your PC, or one you've saved from email. I like this because you can get some cool effects for your photos, and it just works. Pictures Lab is by Schulte Software Development and is $1.99 Since I work as a consultant, and from home, I wanted something I could track my time with. I've test-driven all the contenders I could find so far on the phone, and so far I like ONTRACK! the best. If asked, I have some suggestions, but it's probably just the way I work or think. What I do like is I can tap a project to start/stop/restart a counter, and at the end of the day it shows me how much time I've been working. If there's a way to make an adjustment in case you forget to tap the counter, I don't know how to do it, and that's my biggest complaint. I like this because you can get a daily readout which you can also email as a spreadsheet. The daily results display is very good. ONTRACK! is by Qmino and is $2.99 Remember Item 4 above... I've been playing guitar for 48 years... obviously since before the invention of 'tuners', so I'm not as dependent upon these as some folks are. I've tried some in the past and have always felt I can do just as good by ear (I have perfect relative pitch). So, I gave this app by András Velvárt a dance just to see how it works, and it is surprisingly good. If you're used to one of the stage tuners this may take a little getting used to, but it does the job. The difference with this one is there is no real 'null' point inside which you can think your guitar is in tune. The soundwave stays visible on the device, and if it's moving to the right, your string is flat, if it's moving to the left, your string is sharp. Getting it exact might be tricky, but it is exact! If you need to rely on a tuner, this is a good choice in my opinion, exactly because of the sensitivity.. tune up with this and you're dead-on. Guitar Tuner is by Kinabalu Innovation Limited and is $0.99 Popper 2 is the WP7 version of a wildly popular game by Bill Reiss named Dr. Popper. You can get a trial, or you can now get a free lite version of the game. Popper 2 is a fast-paced bubble breaker game. I find it something fun to play when I just want to buzz out, but maybe the best review is that my daughter didn't want to give my phone back when I showed it to her, and always wants to grab my phone to play 'that game'. A fun distraction with great graphics and a great price Popper 2 is by Blue Rose Systems, LLC and is $1.29 Let me know what you think of the idea of doing reviews, or the layout/whatever, and Stay in the 'Light!   Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• 2011 The Year of Awesomesauce

  - by MOSSLover

  So I was talking to one of my friends, Cathy Dew, and I’m wondering how to start out this post.  What kind of title should I put?  Somehow we’re just randomly throwing things out and this title pops into my head the one you see above. I woke up today to the buzz of a text message.  I spent New Years laying around until 3 am watching Warehouse 13 Episodes and drinking champagne.  It was one of the best New Year’s I spent with my boyfriend and my cat.  I figured I would sleep in until Noon, but ended up waking up around 11:15 to that text message buzz.  I guess my DE, Rachel Appel, had texted me “Happy New Years”, because Rachel is that kind of person.  I immediately proceeded to check my email.  I noticed my live account had a hit.  The account I rarely ever use had an email.  I sort of had that sinking suspicion I was going to get Silverlight MVP right?  So I open the email and something out of the blue happens it says “blah blah blah SharePoint Server MVP blah blah…”.  I’m sitting here a little confused what?  Really?  Just about when you give up on something the unexplained happens.  I am grateful for what I have every day. So let me tell you a story.  I was a senior in high school and it was December 31st, 1999.  A couple days prior my grandmother was complaining she had a cold and her assisted living facility was not going to let her see a doctor.  She claimed to be very sick.  New Year’s Eve Day 1999 my grandmother was rushed to the hospital sometime very early in the morning.  My uncle, my little brother, and myself were sitting in the waiting room eagerly awaiting news.  The Sydney Opera House was playing in the background as New Years 2000 for Australia was ringing in.  They come out and they tell us my grandmother has pneumonia.  She is in the ICU in critical condition.  Eventually time passes in the day and my parents take my brother and I home.  So in the car we had a huge fight that ended in the worst new years of my life.  The next 30 days were the worst 30 days of my life.  I went to the hospital every single day to do my homework and watch my grandmother.  Each day was a challenge mentally and physically as my grandmother berated me in her demented state.  On the 30th day my grandmother ended up in critical condition in the ICU maxed out on painkillers.  At approximately 3 am I hear my parents telling me they don’t want to wake me up and that my grandmother had passed away.  I must have cried more collectively that day than any other day in my life.  Every New Years Even since I have cried thinking about who she was and what she represented.  She was human looking back she wasn’t anything great, but she was one of the positive lights in my life.  Her and my dad and my other grandmother constantly tried to make me feel great when my mother was telling me the opposite.  I’d like to think since 2000 the past 11 years have been the best 11 years of my life.  I got out of a bad situation by using the tools that I had in front of me.  Good grades and getting into a college so I could aspire to be the person that I wanted to be.  I had some great people along the way to help me out. So getting to the point I like to help people further there lives somehow in the best way I can possibly help out.  This New Years was one of the great years that helped me forget the past and focus on the present.  It makes me realize how far I’ve come since high school and even since college.  The one thing I’ve been grappling with over the years is how do you feel good about making money while helping others out.  I’d to think I try really hard to give back to my community.  I could not have done what I did without other people’s help.  I sent out an email prior to even announcing I got the award today.  I can’t say I did everything on my own.  It’s not possible.  I had the help of others every step of the way.  I’m not sure if this makes sense but the award can’t just be mine.  This award is really owned by each and everyone who helped me get here.  From my dad to my grandmother to Rachel Appel to Bob Hunt to Jason Gallicchio to Cathy Dew to Mark Rackley to Johnny Ennion to Lee Brandt to Jeff Julian to John Alexander to Lori Gowin and to many others.  Thank you guys for all the help and support. Technorati Tags: SharePoint Community,MVP Award,Microsoft Community

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• Basic WCF Unit Testing

  - by Brian

  Coming from someone who loves the KISS method, I was surprised to find that I was making something entirely too complicated. I know, shocker right? Now I'm no unit testing ninja, and not really a WCF ninja either, but had a desire to test service calls without a) going to a database, or b) making sure that the entire WCF infrastructure was tip top. Who does? It's not the environment I want to test, just the logic I’ve written to ensure there aren't any side effects. So, for the K.I.S.S. method: Assuming that you're using a WCF service library (you are using service libraries correct?), it's really as easy as referencing the service library, then building out some stubs for bunking up data. The service contract We’ll use a very basic service contract, just for getting and updating an entity. I’ve used the default “CompositeType” that is in the template, handy only for examples like this. I’ve added an Id property and overridden ToString and Equals. [ServiceContract] public interface IMyService { [OperationContract] CompositeType GetCompositeType(int id); [OperationContract] CompositeType SaveCompositeType(CompositeType item); [OperationContract] CompositeTypeCollection GetAllCompositeTypes(); } The implementation When I implement the service, I want to be able to send known data into it so I don’t have to fuss around with database access or the like. To do this, I first have to create an interface for my data access: public interface IMyServiceDataManager { CompositeType GetCompositeType(int id); CompositeType SaveCompositeType(CompositeType item); CompositeTypeCollection GetAllCompositeTypes(); } For the purposes of this we can ignore our implementation of the IMyServiceDataManager interface inside of the service. Pretend it uses LINQ to Entities to map its data, or maybe it goes old school and uses EntLib to talk to SQL. Maybe it talks to a tape spool on a mainframe on the third floor. It really doesn’t matter. That’s the point. So here’s what our service looks like in its most basic form: public CompositeType GetCompositeType(int id) { //sanity checks if (id == 0) throw new ArgumentException("id cannot be zero."); return _dataManager.GetCompositeType(id); } public CompositeType SaveCompositeType(CompositeType item) { return _dataManager.SaveCompositeType(item); } public CompositeTypeCollection GetAllCompositeTypes() { return _dataManager.GetAllCompositeTypes(); } But what about the datamanager? The constructor takes care of that. I don’t want to expose any testing ability in release (or the ability for someone to swap out my datamanager) so this is what we get: IMyServiceDataManager _dataManager; public MyService() { _dataManager = new MyServiceDataManager(); } #if DEBUG public MyService(IMyServiceDataManager dataManager) { _dataManager = dataManager; } #endif The Stub Now it’s time for the rubber to meet the road… Like most guys that ever talk about unit testing here’s a sample that is painting in *very* broad strokes. The important part however is that within the test project, I’ve created a bunk (unit testing purists would say stub I believe) object that implements my IMyServiceDataManager so that I can deal with known data. Here it is: internal class FakeMyServiceDataManager : IMyServiceDataManager { internal FakeMyServiceDataManager() { Collection = new CompositeTypeCollection(); Collection.AddRange(new CompositeTypeCollection { new CompositeType { Id = 1, BoolValue = true, StringValue = "foo 1", }, new CompositeType { Id = 2, BoolValue = false, StringValue = "foo 2", }, new CompositeType { Id = 3, BoolValue = true, StringValue = "foo 3", }, }); } CompositeTypeCollection Collection { get; set; } #region IMyServiceDataManager Members public CompositeType GetCompositeType(int id) { if (id <= 0) return null; return Collection.SingleOrDefault(m => m.Id == id); } public CompositeType SaveCompositeType(CompositeType item) { var existing = Collection.SingleOrDefault(m => m.Id == item.Id); if (null != existing) { Collection.Remove(existing); } if (item.Id == 0) { item.Id = Collection.Count > 0 ? Collection.Max(m => m.Id) + 1 : 1; } Collection.Add(item); return item; } public CompositeTypeCollection GetAllCompositeTypes() { return Collection; } #endregion } So it’s tough to see in this example why any of this is necessary, but in a real world application you would/should/could be applying much more logic within your service implementation. This all serves to ensure that between refactorings etc, that it doesn’t send sparking cogs all about or let the blue smoke out. Here’s a simple test that brings it all home, remember, broad strokes: [TestMethod] public void MyService_GetCompositeType_ExpectedValues() { FakeMyServiceDataManager fake = new FakeMyServiceDataManager(); MyService service = new MyService(fake); CompositeType expected = fake.GetCompositeType(1); CompositeType actual = service.GetCompositeType(2); Assert.AreEqual<CompositeType>(expected, actual, "Objects are not equal. Expected: {0}; Actual: {1};", expected, actual); } Summary That’s really all there is to it. You could use software x or framework y to do the exact same thing, but in my case I just didn’t really feel like it. This speaks volumes to my not yet ninja unit testing prowess.

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• Columnstore Case Study #2: Columnstore faster than SSAS Cube at DevCon Security

  - by aspiringgeek

  Preamble This is the second in a series of posts documenting big wins encountered using columnstore indexes in SQL Server 2012 & 2014.  Many of these can be found in my big deck along with details such as internals, best practices, caveats, etc.  The purpose of sharing the case studies in this context is to provide an easy-to-consume quick-reference alternative. See also Columnstore Case Study #1: MSIT SONAR Aggregations Why Columnstore? As stated previously, If we’re looking for a subset of columns from one or a few rows, given the right indexes, SQL Server can do a superlative job of providing an answer. If we’re asking a question which by design needs to hit lots of rows—DW, reporting, aggregations, grouping, scans, etc., SQL Server has never had a good mechanism—until columnstore. Columnstore indexes were introduced in SQL Server 2012. However, they're still largely unknown. Some adoption blockers existed; yet columnstore was nonetheless a game changer for many apps.  In SQL Server 2014, potential blockers have been largely removed & they're going to profoundly change the way we interact with our data.  The purpose of this series is to share the performance benefits of columnstore & documenting columnstore is a compelling reason to upgrade to SQL Server 2014. The Customer DevCon Security provides home & business security services & has been in business for 135 years. I met DevCon personnel while speaking to the Utah County SQL User Group on 20 February 2012. (Thanks to TJ Belt (b|@tjaybelt) & Ben Miller (b|@DBADuck) for the invitation which serendipitously coincided with the height of ski season.) The App: DevCon Security Reporting: Optimized & Ad Hoc Queries DevCon users interrogate a SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services cube via SSRS. In addition, the SQL Server 2012 relational back end is the target of ad hoc queries; this DW back end is refreshed nightly during a brief maintenance window via conventional table partition switching. SSRS, SSAS, & MDX Conventional relational structures were unable to provide adequate performance for user interaction for the SSRS reports. An SSAS solution was implemented requiring personnel to ramp up technically, including learning enough MDX to satisfy requirements. Ad Hoc Queries Even though the fact table is relatively small—only 22 million rows & 33GB—the table was a typical DW table in terms of its width: 137 columns, any of which could be the target of ad hoc interrogation. As is common in DW reporting scenarios such as this, it is often nearly to optimize for such queries using conventional indexing. DevCon DBAs & developers attended PASS 2012 & were introduced to the marvels of columnstore in a session presented by Klaus Aschenbrenner (b|@Aschenbrenner) The Details Classic vs. columnstore before-&-after metrics are impressive. Scenario Conventional Structures Columnstore ? SSRS via SSAS 10 - 12 seconds 1 second >10x Ad Hoc 5-7 minutes (300 - 420 seconds) 1 - 2 seconds >100x Here are two charts characterizing this data graphically.  The first is a linear representation of Report Duration (in seconds) for Conventional Structures vs. Columnstore Indexes.  As is so often the case when we chart such significant deltas, the linear scale doesn’t expose some the dramatically improved values corresponding to the columnstore metrics.  Just to make it fair here’s the same data represented logarithmically; yet even here the values corresponding to 1 –2 seconds aren’t visible.  The Wins Performance: Even prior to columnstore implementation, at 10 - 12 seconds canned report performance against the SSAS cube was tolerable. Yet the 1 second performance afterward is clearly better. As significant as that is, imagine the user experience re: ad hoc interrogation. The difference between several minutes vs. one or two seconds is a game changer, literally changing the way users interact with their data—no mental context switching, no wondering when the results will appear, no preoccupation with the spinning mind-numbing hurry-up-&-wait indicators.  As we’ve commonly found elsewhere, columnstore indexes here provided performance improvements of one, two, or more orders of magnitude. Simplified Infrastructure: Because in this case a nonclustered columnstore index on a conventional DW table was faster than an Analysis Services cube, the entire SSAS infrastructure was rendered superfluous & was retired. PASS Rocks: Once again, the value of attending PASS is proven out. The trip to Charlotte combined with eager & enquiring minds let directly to this success story. Find out more about the next PASS Summit here, hosted this year in Seattle on November 4 - 7, 2014. DevCon BI Team Lead Nathan Allan provided this unsolicited feedback: “What we found was pretty awesome. It has been a game changer for us in terms of the flexibility we can offer people that would like to get to the data in different ways.” Summary For DW, reports, & other BI workloads, columnstore often provides significant performance enhancements relative to conventional indexing.  I have documented here, the second in a series of reports on columnstore implementations, results from DevCon Security, a live customer production app for which performance increased by factors of from 10x to 100x for all report queries, including canned queries as well as reducing time for results for ad hoc queries from 5 - 7 minutes to 1 - 2 seconds. As a result of columnstore performance, the customer retired their SSAS infrastructure. I invite you to consider leveraging columnstore in your own environment. Let me know if you have any questions.

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• What Keeps You from Changing Your Public IP Address and Wreaking Havoc on the Internet?

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  What exactly is preventing you (or anyone else) from changing their IP address and causing all sorts of headaches for ISPs and other Internet users? Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader Whitemage is curious about what’s preventing him from wantonly changing his IP address and causing trouble: An interesting question was asked of me and I did not know what to answer. So I’ll ask here. Let’s say I subscribed to an ISP and I’m using cable internet access. The ISP gives me a public IP address of 60.61.62.63. What keeps me from changing this IP address to, let’s say, 60.61.62.75, and messing with another consumer’s internet access? For the sake of this argument, let’s say that this other IP address is also owned by the same ISP. Also, let’s assume that it’s possible for me to go into the cable modem settings and manually change the IP address. Under a business contract where you are allocated static addresses, you are also assigned a default gateway, a network address and a broadcast address. So that’s 3 addresses the ISP “loses” to you. That seems very wasteful for dynamically assigned IP addresses, which the majority of customers are. Could they simply be using static arps? ACLs? Other simple mechanisms? Two things to investigate here, why can’t we just go around changing our addresses, and is the assignment process as wasteful as it seems? The Answer SuperUser contributor Moses offers some insight: Cable modems aren’t like your home router (ie. they don’t have a web interface with simple point-and-click buttons that any kid can “hack” into). Cable modems are “looked up” and located by their MAC address by the ISP, and are typically accessed by technicians using proprietary software that only they have access to, that only runs on their servers, and therefore can’t really be stolen. Cable modems also authenticate and cross-check settings with the ISPs servers. The server has to tell the modem whether it’s settings (and location on the cable network) are valid, and simply sets it to what the ISP has it set it for (bandwidth, DHCP allocations, etc). For instance, when you tell your ISP “I would like a static IP, please.”, they allocate one to the modem through their servers, and the modem allows you to use that IP. Same with bandwidth changes, for instance. To do what you are suggesting, you would likely have to break into the servers at the ISP and change what it has set up for your modem. Could they simply be using static arps? ACLs? Other simple mechanisms? Every ISP is different, both in practice and how close they are with the larger network that is providing service to them. Depending on those factors, they could be using a combination of ACL and static ARP. It also depends on the technology in the cable network itself. The ISP I worked for used some form of ACL, but that knowledge was a little beyond my paygrade. I only got to work with the technician’s interface and do routine maintenance and service changes. What keeps me from changing this IP address to, let’s say, 60.61.62.75 and mess with another consumer’s internet access? Given the above, what keeps you from changing your IP to one that your ISP hasn’t specifically given to you is a server that is instructing your modem what it can and can’t do. Even if you somehow broke into the modem, if 60.61.62.75 is already allocated to another customer, then the server will simply tell your modem that it can’t have it. David Schwartz offers some additional insight with a link to a white paper for the really curious: Most modern ISPs (last 13 years or so) will not accept traffic from a customer connection with a source IP address they would not route to that customer were it the destination IP address. This is called “reverse path forwarding”. See BCP 38. Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.     

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• Silverlight 4 Twitter Client &ndash; Part 7

  - by Max

  Download this article as a PDF Welcome back :) This week we are going to look at something more exciting and a much required feature for any twitter client – auto refresh so as to show new status updates. We are going to achieve this using Silverlight 4 Timers and a bit and refresh our datagrid every 2 minutes to show new updates. We will do this so that we do only minimal request to the twitter api, so that twitter does not block us – there is a limit of 150 request an hour. Let us get started now. Also we will get the profile user id hyperlinked, so that when ever the user click on it, we will take them to their twitter page. Also it was a pain to always run this application by pressing F5, then it would open in a browser you would have to right click uninstall and install it again to see any changes. All this and yet we were not able to debug it :( Now there is a solution for this to run a silverlight application directly out of browser and yet have the debug feature. Super cool, here is how. Right on the Silverlight project and go to debug and then select the Out-Of-Browser application option and choose the *.Web project. Then just right click on the SL project and set as Startup Project. There you go, now every time you press F5, it will automatically run out of browser and still have the debug options. I go to know about this after some binging. Now let us jump to the core straight away. 1) To get the user id hyperlinked, we need to have a DataGridTemplateColumn and within that have a HyperLinkButton. The code for this will  be <data:DataGridTemplateColumn> <data:DataGridTemplateColumn.CellTemplate> <DataTemplate> <HyperlinkButton Click="HyperlinkButton_Click" Content="{Binding UserName}" TargetName="_blank" ></HyperlinkButton> </DataTemplate> </data:DataGridTemplateColumn.CellTemplate> </data:DataGridTemplateColumn> 2) Now let us look at how we are getting this done by looking into HyperlinkButton_Click event handler. There we will dynamically set the NavigateUri to the twitter page. I tried to do this using some binding, eval like stuff as in ASP.NET, but no luck! private void HyperlinkButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { HyperlinkButton hb = (HyperlinkButton)e.OriginalSource; hb.NavigateUri = new Uri("http://twitter.com/" + hb.Content.ToString(), UriKind.Absolute); } 3) Now we need to switch on our Timer right in the OnNavigated to event on our SL page. So we need to modify our OnNavigated event to some thing like below: protected override void OnNavigatedTo(NavigationEventArgs e) { image1.Source = new BitmapImage(new Uri(GlobalVariable.profileImage, UriKind.Absolute)); this.Title = GlobalVariable.getUserName() + " - Home"; if (!GlobalVariable.isLoggedin()) this.NavigationService.Navigate(new Uri("/Login", UriKind.Relative)); else { currentGrid = "Timeline-Grid"; TwitterCredentialsSubmit(); myDispatcherTimer.Interval = new TimeSpan(0, 0, 0, 60, 0); myDispatcherTimer.Tick += new EventHandler(Each_Tick); myDispatcherTimer.Start(); } } I use a global string – here it is currentGrid variable to indicate what is bound in the datagrid so that after every timer tick, I can rebind the latest data to it again. Like I will only rebind the friends timeline again if the data grid currently holds it and I’ll only rebind the respective list status again in the data grid, if already a list status is bound to the data grid. In the above timer code, its set to trigger the Each_Tick event handler every 1 minute (60 seconds). TimeSpan takes in (days, hours, minutes, seconds, milliseconds). 4) Now we need to set the list name in the currentGrid variable when a list button is clicked. So add the code line below to the list button event handler currentGrid = currentList = b.Content.ToString(); 5) Now let us see how Each_Tick event handler is implemented. public void Each_Tick(object o, EventArgs sender) { if (!currentGrid.Equals("Timeline-Grid")) getListStatuses(currentGrid); else { WebRequest.RegisterPrefix("https://", System.Net.Browser.WebRequestCreator.ClientHttp); WebClient myService = new WebClient(); myService.AllowReadStreamBuffering = true; myService.UseDefaultCredentials = false; myService.Credentials = new NetworkCredential(GlobalVariable.getUserName(), GlobalVariable.getPassword()); myService.DownloadStringCompleted += new DownloadStringCompletedEventHandler(TimelineRequestCompleted); myService.DownloadStringAsync(new Uri("https://twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline.xml")); } } If the data grid hold friends timeline, I just use the same bit of code we had already to bind the friends timeline to the data grid. Copy Paste. But if it is some list timeline that is bound in the datagrid, I then call the getListStatus method with the currentGrid string which will actually be holding the list name. 6) I wanted to make the hyperlinks inside the status message as hyperlinks and when the user clicks on it, we can then open that link. I tried using a convertor and using a regex to recognize a url and wrap it up with a href, but that is not gonna work in silverlight textblock :( Anyways that convertor code is in the zip file. 7) You can get the complete project files from here. 8) Please comment below for your doubts, suggestions, improvements. I will try to reply as early as possible. Thanks for all your support. Technorati Tags: Silverlight 4,Datagrid,Twitter API,Silverlight Timer

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