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• EC2 Configuration

  - by user123683

  I am trying to create a server structure for my EC2 account. The design I have chosen consists of 2 instances running in different availability zones, elastic load balancer, an auto-scaling group with cloudwatch monitoring configured and a security group defining rules for access to the instances. This setup is to support an online web application written in PHP. I am trying to decide what is a better policy: Store MySQL DB on a separate Instance Store MySQL DB on an attached EBS volume (from what i know auto-scaling will not replicate the attached EBS volume but will generate new instances from a chosen AMI - is this view correct?) Regards the AMI I plan to use a basic Amazon linux 64 bit AMI, and install bastille (maybe OSSEC) but I am looking to also use an encrypted file system. Are there any issues using an encrypted file system and communication between the DB and webapp i neeed to be aware of? Are there any comms issues using the encrypted filesystem on the instance housing the webapp I was going to launch a second instance or attach a second volume in the second availability zone to act as a standby for the database - I'm just looking for some suggestions about how to get the two DB's to talk - will this be a big task Regards updates for security is it best to create a recent snapshot and just relaunch and allow Amazon to install updates on launch or is the yum update mechanism a suitable alternative - is it better practice to relaunch instead of updates being installed which force a restart. I plan to create two AMI snapshots one for the app server and one for the DB each with the same security measures in place - is this a reasonable - I just figure it is a better policy than having additional applications that are unnecessary included in a AMI that I intend on using. My plan for backup is to create periodic snapshots of the webapp and DB instances (if I use an additional EBS volume instead of separate instances my understanding is that the EBS volume will persist in S3 storage in the event of an unexpected termination and I can create snapshots of the volume backup purposes). Thanks in advance for suggestions and advice. I am new to EC2 and I may have described unnecessary overkill but I want to try implement what can be considered a best practice solution so all advice is appreciated.

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• Should one have a separate user account for work use? [closed]

  - by Tyler Wayne

  This question examines the practice of using a separate OS-level user account to divide work use from personal use (specifically, in a creative profession and on a personal computer). I recently left my in-the-flesh job to go to school, but I'm carrying on with the work remotely. I do all of my work on my laptop, and I currently have a separate user account called "Work" where I do exactly that. However, I'm now starting to question that practice. Because my hobby is the same as my job, I want to save notes of the things I learn while working. Because ideas come at any moment, I often want to throw something into my personal task manager's inbox and look at it again later. That task manager is well-suited to handle both the work and personal aspects of my life. Only my personal account has admin rights, but work sometimes requires me to install programs. My employer has no preference regarding my choice, so that is a non-issue. My work is essentially freelance web development, so advice given with that in mind will be much appreciated. Back up all opinion with some personal experience, please. Ideally, give a list of pros and cons and then name reasons for your position.

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• IP Phone over VPN - one way calls unless default route?

  - by dannymcc

  I have come across a strange problem with our VPN and BCM 50 (Nortel/Avaya) phone system. As you can tell by my other questions I have been doing some work on setting a VPN up from one location to another and it's all working well. With one exception. We have an IP phone that is connected at the remote location, straight to a router which has a VPN tunnel to our main practice. The phone works mostly, but every few calls it turns into a one way call. As in, the caller (from the remote phone) can't hear the receiver- but the receiver can hear the caller. This is fixed by setting the VPN tunnel to be the default route for all traffic. The problem with fixing it that way is that all traffic then goes through the tunnel which slows internet access etc. down considerably. The router is set to send the following over the VPN: 192.168.1.0/24 192.168.2.0/24 192.168.4.0/24 The IP of the remote location is: 192.168.3.0/24 The remote router (where the phone is) is a Draytek 2830n, and the local router (at the main practice) is a Draytek 2820. We are using an IPSec tunnel with AES encryption <- as a result of a previous answer pointing to the incompatibility in the hardware encryption. Any advice would be appreciated!

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• What is proper relationship between /etc/hosts and DNS A records for a Linux server?

  - by MountainX

  I have an Ubuntu server. It is going to be a web server with a URI of www.example.com. I have a DNS A record pointing www.example.com to the server's IP address. Let's say I pick "trinity" as the hostname for this server. I want to set up the DNS records correctly. I need reverse DNS to www.example.com, so a CNAME for www.example.com doesn't seem appropriate. Here's my question: Is it considered best practice to set up two DNS records (which in my case would likely be two A records), one for www.example.com and one for trinity.example.com, both pointing to this server's IP address? (Or, even if it is not accepted as a best practice, is it a good idea?) If so, would the following be a proper /etc/hosts file? $ cat /etc/hosts 127.0.1.1 trinity.local trinity 99.100.101.102 trinity.example.com trinity www.example.com This server is a Linode and Linode's docs seem to imply that the above approach is best (if I am reading them correctly). Here's the relevant section. I bolded the line that seems to apply here. Update /etc/hosts Next, edit your /etc/hosts file to resemble the following example, replacing "plato" with your chosen hostname, "example.com" with your system's domain name, and "12.34.56.78" with your system's IP address. As with the hostname, the domain name part of your FQDN does not necesarily need to have any relationship to websites or other services hosted on the server (although it may if you wish). As an example, you might host "www.something.com" on your server, but the system's FQDN might be "mars.somethingelse.com." File:/etc/hosts 127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost 12.34.56.78 plato.example.com plato The value you assign as your system's FQDN should have an "A" record in DNS pointing to your Linode's IP address. For more information on configuring DNS, please see our guide on configuring DNS with the Linode Manager.

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• Array on servers which receive several hundred GB of data a day

  - by Matthew

  This is hopefully a simple question. Right now we are deploying servers which will serve as data warehouses. I know with raid 5 the best practice is 6 disks per raid 5. However, our plan is to use RAID 10 (both for performance and safety). We have a total of 14 disks (16 actually, but two are being used for OS). Keeping in mind that performance is very much an issue, which is better - doing several raid 1's? Do one large raid 10? One large raid 10 had been our original plan, but I want to see if anyone has any opinions I haven't thought of. Please note: This system was designed for using Raid 1+0, so losing half of the raw storage capacity is not an issue. Sorry i hadn't mentioned that initially. The concern is more whether or not we want to use one large Raid 1+0 containing all 14 disks, or several smaller raid 1+0's and then stripe across them using LVM. I know the best practice for higher raid levels is to never use more than 6 disks in an array.

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• TDD - beginner problems and stumbling blocks

  - by Noufal Ibrahim

  While I've written unit tests for most of the code I've done, I only recently got my hands on a copy of TDD by example by Kent Beck. I have always regretted certain design decisions I made since they prevented the application from being 'testable'. I read through the book and while some of it looks alien, I felt that I could manage it and decided to try it out on my current project which is basically a client/server system where the two pieces communicate via. USB. One on the gadget and the other on the host. The application is in Python. I started off and very soon got entangled in a mess of rewrites and tiny tests which I later figured didn't really test anything. I threw away most of them and and now have a working application for which the tests have all coagulated into just 2. Based on my experiences, I have a few questions which I'd like to ask. I gained some information from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1146218/new-to-tdd-are-there-sample-applications-with-tests-to-show-how-to-do-tdd but have some specific questions which I'd like answers to/discussion on. Kent Beck uses a list which he adds to and strikes out from to guide the development process. How do you make such a list? I initially had a few items like "server should start up", "server should abort if channel is not available" etc. but they got mixed and finally now, it's just something like "client should be able to connect to server" (which subsumed server startup etc.). How do you handle rewrites? I initially selected a half duplex system based on named pipes so that I could develop the application logic on my own machine and then later add the USB communication part. It them moved to become a socket based thing and then moved from using raw sockets to using the Python SocketServer module. Each time things changed, I found that I had to rewrite considerable parts of the tests which was annoying. I'd figured that the tests would be a somewhat invariable guide during my development. They just felt like more code to handle. I needed a client and a server to communicate through the channel to test either side. I could mock one of the sides to test the other but then the whole channel wouldn't be tested and I worry that I'd miss that. This detracted from the whole red/green/refactor rhythm. Is this just lack of experience or am I doing something wrong? The "Fake it till you make it" left me with a lot of messy code that I later spent a lot of time to refactor and clean up. Is this the way things work? At the end of the session, I now have my client and server running with around 3 or 4 unit tests. It took me around a week to do it. I think I could have done it in a day if I were using the unit tests after code way. I fail to see the gain. I'm looking for comments and advice from people who have implemented large non trivial projects completely (or almost completely) using this methodology. It makes sense to me to follow the way after I have something already running and want to add a new feature but doing it from scratch seems to tiresome and not worth the effort. P.S. : Please let me know if this should be community wiki and I'll mark it like that. Update 0 : All the answers were equally helpful. I picked the one I did because it resonated with my experiences the most. Update 1: Practice Practice Practice!

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, July 26, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, July 26, 2013Popular ReleasesOpen Url Rewriter for DotNetNuke: Open Url Rewriter Core 0.4.3 (Beta): bug fix for removing home page New Tab with rules count for each Portal with memory use estimation OpenUrlRewriter_00.04.03_Install.zip : for dnn 6.01 to 7.06 OpenUrlRewriter71_00.04.03_Install.zip : for dnn 7.1KerbalAlarmClock: v2.5.0.0 Release: Version 2.5.0.0 Recompiled it for 0.21 Fixed some issues with Hyperbolic orbits and AN/DN NodesPayPal Express Checkout for nopCommerce: PayPal Express Checkout for nopCommerce 3.0: - Initial releaseAJAX Control Toolkit: July 2013 Release: AJAX Control Toolkit Release Notes - July 2013 Release Version 7.0725July 2013 release of the AJAX Control Toolkit. AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4.5 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 3.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 3.5 and sample site (Recommended). Notes: - Instructions for using the AJAX Control Toolkit with ASP.NET 4.5 can be found at...MJP's DirectX 11 Samples: Specular Antialiasing Sample: Sample code to complement my presentation that's part of the Physically Based Shading in Theory and Practice course at SIGGRAPH 2013, entitled "Crafting a Next-Gen Material Pipeline for The Order: 1886". Demonstrates various methods of preventing aliasing from specular BRDF's when using high-frequency normal maps. The zip file contains source code as well as a pre-compiled x64 binary.English Practice Helper: English Practice Helper Demo v1.0: The first demoTweetinvi a friendly C# Twitter API: Alpha 0.8.0.1: This is the first release of Tweetinvi. Please report any issue in the discussion or issues. Sincerely, LinviKartris E-commerce: Kartris v2.5003: This fixes an issue where search engines appear to identify as IE and so trigger the noIE page if there is not a non-responsive skin specified.VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.45: changes NEW: Added Support for "ImgBabes.com" links NEW: Added Support for "ImagesIon.com" linksLogicCircuit: LogicCircuit 2.13.07.22: Logic Circuit - is educational software for designing and simulating logic circuits. Intuitive graphical user interface, allows you to create unrestricted circuit hierarchy with multi bit buses, debug circuits behavior with oscilloscope, and navigate running circuits hierarchy. Changes of this versionYou can make visual elements of the circuit been visible on its symbols. This way you can build composite displays, keyboards and reuse them. Please read about displays for more details http://ww...LINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter v2.1.08: Supports .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, Silverlight 4.0, Windows Phone 7.1, Windows Phone 8, Client Profile, Windows 8, and Windows Azure. 100% Twitter API coverage. Also supports Twitter API v1.1! Also on NuGet.AcDown?????: AcDown????? v4.4.3: ??●AcDown??????????、??、??、???????。????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ??v4.4.3 ?? ??Bilibili????????????? ???????????? ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ???? 32??64? ???Linux ????(1)????????Windows XP???，????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)，?????"?????????"??? (2)???????????Linux???，????????Mono?? ??2.10?...Magick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.6.601: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 6.8.6.6. These zip files are also available as a NuGet package: https://nuget.org/profiles/dlemstra/MISAO: Ver. 5.33: Latest app and add-insfacebook???????????: Ver0.0.2: Ver0.0.2CodeCopy Auto Code Converter: Updated for VS2012: Update for Visual Studio 2012C# Intellisense for Notepad++: Initial release: Members auto-complete Integration with native Notepad++ Auto-Completion Auto "open bracket" for methods Right-arrow to accept suggestionsUpida.Net: Upida.Net 0.9.9 (Source code and example): Ability to create validation extensions is added. Some new validation extensions are created.Biko (formally Starksoft FTPS client library): Starksoft FreeFTP: Free FTP client that uses the Biko library.People Picker Plus for SharePoint 2010: PeoplePickerPlus.wsp 1.0.5: This release adds the ability to exclude the People Picker Plus from specific pages. By default the People Picker Plus will be excluded from workflow management pages because of the dynamic (and completely convoluted) people pickers that exist on those pages.New ProjectsAcademy Works: Academy Works offers new solutions for common programming issues like storing data in memory, generic type management or standardized arithmetic operations.Alert Me Web Part for SharePoint 2013: This web part displays all lists in the current site for the current user to subscribe to and allows the current user to remove existing his/her alerts.Bahar Narenj: Bahar Narenj is a content management system (CMS), which enables you to build Web sites. Best of allBahar Narenj, is an open source and full jQuery - Ajaxed.BindingEngine: Custom Binding Engine that support WinFrom. WPF, Web and Mono. It support Property, Collection, Command and Method binding. One ViewModel support mutilple ViewBlakeTest: Blaketest is a mod for the Minecraft-based game Minetest. It aims to add mystical, industrial, scientific, and survival aspects to the game.DIRGeometry: DIRGeometry is a C# based directional geometry, simple and easy to use library.jean0725aspnetwebmmm: djean0725jabbryaminimmm: ddnodeServer: Just a simple node.js serverOLAPExtensions: Query Analysis Services via T-SQL. Execute MDX with more than 8000 characters. Analysis Services temp table. Great alternative to querying cubes with OPENQUERY.OpenRefineEngine: OpenRefineEngine.NET is a Class Library that could perform operations exported by OpenRefine (aka Google Refine) as JSON operations.Optionset Creator: Optionset Creator is a utility for Dynamics CRM 2011 intended to create and update multiple options to an option set(global or local) at one go.prakark07252013git01: *bold* _italics_ +underline+ ! Heading 1 !! Heading 2 * Bullet List ** Bullet List 2 # Number List ## Number List 2 [another wiki page] [url:http://www.example.prakark07252013Hg01: *bold* _italics_ +underline+ ! Heading 1 !! Heading 2 * Bullet List ** Bullet List 2 # Number List ## Number List 2 [another wiki page] [url:http://www.example.prakark07252013Hg02: *bold* _italics_ +underline+ ! Heading 1 !! Heading 2 * Bullet List ** Bullet List 2 # Number List ## Number List 2 [another wiki page] [url:http://www.example.prakark07252013hg03: *bold* _italics_ +underline+ ! Heading 1 !! Heading 2 * Bullet List ** Bullet List 2 # Number List ## Number List 2 [another wiki page] [url:http://www.example.prakark07252013tfs01: *bold* _italics_ +underline+ ! Heading 1 !! Heading 2 * Bullet List ** Bullet List 2 # Number List ## Number List 2 [another wiki page] [url:http://www.example.prakark07252013tfs02: *bold* _italics_ +underline+ ! Heading 1 !! Heading 2 * Bullet List ** Bullet List 2 # Number List ## Number List 2 [another wiki page] [url:http://www.example.QAS Electronic Updates: Sample code for Experian QAS Electronic Updates.ScriptingCollection: a collection of languae to make your application scriptableStudySamples: ssasaTimerService: .NET4.0 Windows????????，??log4net????TProt: Discover the API and functionality of ComputerCraft by dan200 in this C# port. Use the Issues tab to discuss feature requests, bugs, and other comments.UtorrentToXBMC: UTorrent To XBMC This project just fills the gap between UTorrent and XBMC. VAS: EXACT_VASWAOS: WAOSWebParts By Steve: CORE TreeView Webpart allows for place a treeview on any page in the site. This will display any document library in a treeviewXmlObjectMapper: Xml Object Mapper is a framework for transforming .NET objects from/to XML.yince: opop

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, July 29, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, July 29, 2013Popular ReleasesGIS Raster Tile Normalizer for GeoServer: V110 Extended to tile DEMs: 1) Now imports large DEM datasets. They are stored as 3.25 degree tiles in GeoTIFF 32 bit single band tiles ready to be used by GeoServer. Also, parallel colorized hillshade tiles are optionally created for easy visualization in GeoServer. 2) No longer uses FWTools, but the more recent 32 bit Windows 1.9 GDAL installation from Tamas at http://www.gisinternals.com/sdk/. Also required is Python 2.7, the GDAL Python Bindings from Tamas, and the Numpy python libraries. This is because we use th...R.NET: R.NET 1.5: The major changes in v1.5 are: Initialize method must be called before using R. Settings should be passed to the method. EagerEvaluate method renamed to Evaluate (use Defer method when you want old version of Evaluate).TX264: 0.9.7: --0.9.7 -Added: Encoding time will be shown in the log -Added: 64bit FLAC.exe -Added: Tx264 will now write version info file to its own folder -Added: Option to set encoder priorties (thx to XanaMuui&Ruriko) -Fixed: A possible error where source files were deleted -Updated: x264 to rev2345 -Updated: MediaInfo to 0.7.64 -Updated: MkvToolNix to 6.3.0 -Updated: FLAC to 1.3.0 -Updated: AlphaControls to 8.42 Stable -Updated: QAAC to 2.19 -Updated: SoX build with unicode by Lord_MulderMedia Companion: Media Companion MC3.574b: Some good bug fixes been going on with the new XBMC-Link function. Thanks to all who were able to do testing and gave feedback. New:* Added some adhoc extra General movie filters, one of which is Plot = Outline (see fixes above). To see the filters, add the following line to your config.xml: <ShowExtraMovieFilters>True</ShowExtraMovieFilters>. The others are: Imdb in folder name, Imdb in not folder name & Imdb not in folder name & year mismatch. * Movie - display <tag> list on browser tab ...OfflineBrowser: Preview Release with Search: I've added search to this release.VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.46: changes FIXED LoginMath.NET Numerics: Math.NET Numerics v2.6.0: What's New in Math.NET Numerics 2.6 - Announcement, Explanations and Sample Code. New: Linear Curve Fitting Linear least-squares fitting (regression) to lines, polynomials and linear combinations of arbitrary functions. Multi-dimensional fitting. Also works well in F# with the F# extensions. New: Root Finding Brent's method. ~Candy Chiu, Alexander Täschner Bisection method. ~Scott Stephens, Alexander Täschner Broyden's method, for multi-dimensional functions. ~Alexander Täschner ...AJAX Control Toolkit: July 2013 Release: AJAX Control Toolkit Release Notes - July 2013 Release Version 7.0725July 2013 release of the AJAX Control Toolkit. AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4.5 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 3.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 3.5 and sample site (Recommended). Notes: - Instructions for using the AJAX Control Toolkit with ASP.NET 4.5 can be found at...MJP's DirectX 11 Samples: Specular Antialiasing Sample: Sample code to complement my presentation that's part of the Physically Based Shading in Theory and Practice course at SIGGRAPH 2013, entitled "Crafting a Next-Gen Material Pipeline for The Order: 1886". Demonstrates various methods of preventing aliasing from specular BRDF's when using high-frequency normal maps. The zip file contains source code as well as a pre-compiled x64 binary.English Practice Helper: English Practice Helper Demo v1.1: Fix some bug in sentences compareKartris E-commerce: Kartris v2.5003: This fixes an issue where search engines appear to identify as IE and so trigger the noIE page if there is not a non-responsive skin specified.Blue Mercs Data Gateway: Blue Mercs Data Gateway 2.0: Changes made for major release v2.0 build in support for Microsoft Access Database build in logging support (with optional stopwatch duration) implemented thread DbContext that can be referenced to share context accross layers implented 'having' sql keyword implemented 'top(n)' and 'first' sql keywords implemented 'distinct' sql keyword implemented sql column expressions implemented CTE (common table expressions) joins are refactored allow auto join on keys when using entiti...Wix Test: WIX Test Bootstrapper (Burn): WIX Test Bootstrapper and MSI setup files. Alfa versions.ScriptZilla: ScriptZilla 1.2.5.1: New Programming Languages(C++ too !) and An Better Editor.SSISConnectionBuilder: Alpha 2: Removed SSIS SDK dependencies.VBDownloader: VBDownloader 1.0: VBDownloader v1.0 The open source solution for downloads First releasemysqllib: mysqllib 1.5: La nuova versione 1.5 vede espandersi questa libreria con nuovi metodi e nuove caratteristiche interessanti. Ecco i cambiamenti: (NEW) Aggiunta classe MySqlTable per visualizzare tutti i dettagli della tabella, tra cui una lista di dettagli delle colonne (NEW) Aggiunta classe MySqlColumn per visualizzare tutti i dettagli della colonna, tra cui una lista dei valori della colonna (NEW) Nuovi metodi GetTable(...) e GetColumn(...) per risultati dettagliati di tabelle e colonne (NEW) Nuovi met...GoAgent GUI: GoAgent GUI 1.3.5 Alpha (20130723): ????????Alpha?，???????????，?????????????。 ??????????GoAgent???（???phus lu?GitHub??????GoAgent??????，??????????????????） ????????????????????????Bug ?????????。??????????????。 ????issue????，????????，????????????????。LogicCircuit: LogicCircuit 2.13.07.22: Logic Circuit - is educational software for designing and simulating logic circuits. Intuitive graphical user interface, allows you to create unrestricted circuit hierarchy with multi bit buses, debug circuits behavior with oscilloscope, and navigate running circuits hierarchy. Changes of this versionYou can make visual elements of the circuit been visible on its symbols. This way you can build composite displays, keyboards and reuse them. Please read about displays for more details http://ww...LINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter v2.1.08: Supports .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, Silverlight 4.0, Windows Phone 7.1, Windows Phone 8, Client Profile, Windows 8, and Windows Azure. 100% Twitter API coverage. Also supports Twitter API v1.1! Also on NuGet.New Projects#Zyan Drench, a game for Android: Zyan Drench is a simple yet very entertaining game for Android phones developed using Zyan Communication Framework: http://zyan.com.de Crzy Game Launcher: All in one game launcher and updater. Keep your game up-to-date with this simple to use launcher.Ecobee API: This project is a portable .NET Library wrapping the Ecobee Thermostat API.Fire-Fighting Kinect Game: Fire-Fighting Kinect Game A fire-fighting game that uses Vizard virtual reality software and the Microsoft Kinect to allow the player to put out virtual fires.Fish Atlantis: This is our homework.FreeBee 900 Pro - Open Source XBee® Pro Alternative: https://hg.codeplex.com/freebee900proFuelRex: FuelRex foi feito pra lhe ajudar em seu dia a dia. Facilite seus cálculos e obtenha números reais sobre o gasto de combustíveis, em um aplicativo totalmente.KbdPlayground: A collection of .NET helpers and experimentsMailChimpNET: MailChimpNET provides a .NET PCL based wrapper around the mailchimp.com web API.MVC Generator: Addin for Visual Studio that generates MVC from Entity Framework files. A Rapid Scaffolder with options.One More ENgine project: OMEN projet (One More ENgine) main objective is to provide a simple application container.Orchard Podcasts: The Orchard Podcasting module allows users to create and publish a podcast feed (Yahoo Media RSS) for consumption by users using Orchard v1.6+.Outlook 2013 Backup Add-In: Automatically backups psd-files after closing Outlook. This plugin is compatible with Outlook 2013 32/64 Bit Version. Project Emilie: A little help to make your WinRT XAML projects truly fast and fluid, based on work from two of the top Windows 8 applications.Search WPF: A small utility to browse the WPF classes and interfaces.sGaming: Silverlight 3D EngineTelerik Connect: Simple ASP.NET Project aiming to build a copy of the LinkedIn website functionality.Testing The Unittesting Tools in Visual Studio: This project is a collection of testprograms for verifying the different test adapters available for Visual Studio. TvLinks Torrent Searcher: Easy way to search Torrents for TV Series.xnaGaming: XNA game engine

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• Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship – book review

  - by DigiMortal

     Writing code that is easy read and test is not something that is easy to achieve. Unfortunately there are still way too much programming students who write awful spaghetti after graduating. But there is one really good book that helps you raise your code to new level – your code will be also communication tool for you and your fellow programmers. “Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship” by Robert C. Martin is excellent book that helps you start writing the easily readable code. Of course, you are the one who has to learn and practice but using this book you have very good guide that keeps you going to right direction. You can start writing better code while you read this book and you can do it right in your current projects – you don’t have to create new guestbook or some other simple application to start practicing. Take the project you are working on and start making it better! My special thanks to Robert C. Martin I want to say my special thanks to Robert C. Martin for this book. There are many books that teach you different stuff and usually you have markable learning curve to go before you start getting results. There are many books that show you the direction to go and then leave you alone figuring out how to achieve all that stuff you just read about. Clean Code gives you a lot more – the mental tools to use so you can go your way to clean code being sure you will be soon there. I am reading books as much as I have time for it. Clean Code is top-level book for developers who have to write working code. Before anything else take Clean Code and read it. You will never regret your decision. I promise. Fragment of editorial review “Even bad code can function. But if code isn’t clean, it can bring a development organization to its knees. Every year, countless hours and significant resources are lost because of poorly written code. But it doesn’t have to be that way. What kind of work will you be doing? You’ll be reading code—lots of code. And you will be challenged to think about what’s right about that code, and what’s wrong with it. More importantly, you will be challenged to reassess your professional values and your commitment to your craft. Readers will come away from this book understanding How to tell the difference between good and bad code How to write good code and how to transform bad code into good code How to create good names, good functions, good objects, and good classes How to format code for maximum readability How to implement complete error handling without obscuring code logic How to unit test and practice test-driven development This book is a must for any developer, software engineer, project manager, team lead, or systems analyst with an interest in producing better code.” Table of contents Clean code Meaningful names Functions Comments Formatting Objects and data structures Error handling Boundaries Unit tests Classes Systems Emergence Concurrency Successive refinement JUnit internals Refactoring SerialDate Smells and heuristics A Concurrency II org.jfree.date.SerialDate Cross references of heuristics Epilogue Index

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• Principles of Big Data By Jules J Berman, O&rsquo;Reilly Media Book Review

  - by Compudicted

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Compudicted/archive/2013/11/04/principles-of-big-data-by-jules-j-berman-orsquoreilly-media.aspx A fantastic book! Must be part, if not yet, of the fundamentals of the Big Data as a field of science. Highly recommend to those who are into the Big Data practice. Yet, I confess this book is one of my best reads this year and for a number of reasons: The book is full of wisdom, intimate insight, historical facts and real life examples to how Big Data projects get conceived, operate and sadly, yes, sometimes die. But not only that, the book is most importantly is filled with valuable advice, accurate and even overwhelming amount of reference (from the positive side), and the author does not event stop there: there are numerous technical excerpts, links and examples allowing to quickly accomplish many daunting tasks or make you aware of what one needs to perform as a data practitioner (excuse my use of the word practitioner, I just did not find a better substitute to it to trying to reference all who face Big Data). Be aware that Jules Berman’s background is in medicine, naturally, this book discusses this subject a lot as it is very dear to the author’s heart I believe, this does not make this book any less significant however, quite the opposite, I trust if there is an area in science or practice where the biggest benefits can be ripped from Big Data projects it is indeed the medical science, let’s make Cancer history! On a personal note, for me as a database, BI professional it has helped to understand better the motives behind Big Data initiatives, their underwater rivers and high altitude winds that divert or propel them forward. Additionally, I was impressed by the depth and number of mining algorithms covered in it. I must tell this made me very curious and tempting to find out more about these indispensable attributes of Big Data so sure I will be trying stretching my wallet to acquire several books that go more in depth on several most popular of them. My favorite parts of the book, well, all of them actually, but especially chapter 9: Analysis, it is just very close to my heart. But the real reason is it let me see what I do with data from a different angle. And then the next - “Special Considerations”, they are just two logical parts. The writing language is of this book is very acceptable for all levels, I had no technical problem reading it in ebook format on my 8” tablet or a large screen monitor. If I would be asked to say at least something negative I have to state I had a feeling initially that the book’s first part reads like an academic material relaxing the reader as the book progresses forward. I admit I am impressed with Jules’ abilities to use several programming languages and OSS tools, bravo! And I agree, it is not too, too hard to grasp at least the principals of a modern programming language, which seems becomes a defacto knowledge standard item for any modern human being. So grab a copy of this book, read it end to end and make yourself shielded from making mistakes at any stage of your Big Data initiative, by the way this book also helps build better future Big Data projects. Disclaimer: I received a free electronic copy of this book as part of the O'Reilly Blogger Program.

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• Bancassurers Seek IT Solutions to Support Distribution Model

  - by [email protected]

  Oracle Insurance's director of marketing for EMEA, John Sinclair, attended the third annual Bancassurance Forum in Vienna last month. He reports that the outlook for bancassurance in EMEA remains positive, despite changing market conditions that have led a number of bancassurers to re-examine their business models. Vienna is at the crossroads between mature Western European markets, where bancassurance is now an established best practice, and more recently tapped Eastern European markets that offer the greatest growth potential. Attendance at the Bancassurance Forum was good, with 87 bancassurance attendees, most in very senior positions in the industry. The conference provided the chance for a lively discussion among bancassurers looking to keep abreast of the latest trends in one of Europe's most successful distribution models for insurance. Even under normal business conditions, there is a great demand for best practice sharing within the industry as there is no standard formula for success.  Each company has to chart its own course and choose the strategies for sales, products development and the structure of ownership that make sense for their business, and as soon as they get it right bancassurers need to adapt the mix to keep up with ever changing regulations, completion and economic conditions.  To optimize the overall relationship between banking and insurance for mutual benefit, a balance needs to be struck between potentially conflicting interests. The banking side of the house is looking for greater wallet share from its customers and the ability to increase profitability by bundling insurance products with higher margins - especially in light of the recent economic crisis, where margins for traditional banking products are low and completion high. The insurance side of the house seeks access to new customers through a complementary distribution channel that is efficient and cost effective. To make the relationship work, it is important that both sides of the same house forge strategic and long term relationships - irrespective of whether the underlying business model is supported by a distribution agreement, cross-ownership or other forms of capital structure. However, this third annual conference was not held under normal business conditions. The conference took place in challenging, yet interesting times. ING's forced spinoff of its insurance operations under pressure by the EU Commission and the troubling losses suffered by Allianz as a result of the Dresdner bank sale were fresh in everyone's mind. One year after markets crashed, there is now enough hindsight to better understand the implications for bancassurance and best practices that are emerging to deal with them. The loan-driven business that has been crucial to bancassurance up till now evaporated during the crisis, leaving bancassurers grappling with how to change their overall strategy from a loan-driven to a more diversified model.  Attendees came to the conference to learn what strategies were working - not only to cope with the market shift, but to take advantage of it as markets pick up. Over the course of 14 customer case studies and numerous analyst presentations, topical issues ranging from getting the business model right to the impact on capital structuring of Solvency II were debated openly. Many speakers alluded to the need to specifically design insurance products with the banking distribution channel in mind, which brings with it specific requirements such as a high degree of standardization to achieve efficiency and reduce training costs. Moreover, products must be engineered to suit end consumers who consider banks a one-stop shop. The importance of IT to the successful implementation of bancassurance strategies was a theme that surfaced regularly throughout the conference.  The cross-selling opportunity - that will ultimately determine the success or failure of any bancassurance model - can only be fully realized through a flexible IT architecture that enables banking and insurance processes to be integrated and presented to front-line staff through a common interface. However, the reality is that most bancassurers have legacy IT systems, which constrain the businesses' ability to implement new strategies to maintaining competitiveness in turbulent times. My colleague Glenn Lottering, who chaired the conference, believes that the primary opportunities for bancassurers to extract value from their IT infrastructure investments lie in distribution management, risk management with the advent of Solvency II, and achieving operational excellence. "Oracle is ideally suited to meet the needs of bancassurance," Glenn noted, "supplying market-leading software for both banking and insurance. Oracle provides adaptive systems that let customers easily integrate hybrid business processes from both worlds while leveraging existing IT infrastructure." Overall, the consensus at the conference was that the outlook for bancassurance in EMEA remains positive, despite changing market conditions that have led a number of bancassurers to re-examine their business models. John Sinclair is marketing director for Oracle Insurance in EMEA. He has more than 20 years of experience in insurance and financial services.    

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• SOA Community Newsletter June 2013

  - by JuergenKress

  Dear SOA partner community member Thanks for showing us your interest to rerun the Fusion Middleware Summer Camps! After knowing your suggestions we are happy to announce the 3rd edition of our advanced Fusion Middleware training. The camps will take place from August 26th - 30th 2013 in Lisbon Portugal. Topics will include Adaptive Case Management (ACM) as part of BPM Suite, b2b, Advanced SOA and SOA Governance. Please make sure you plan and book your seat in advance - (Booking is on the basis of first come first seat!). Thanks for all your efforts to become certified and Specialized. For all the experts who achieved the SOA Suite 11g Essentials or BPM Suite 11g Certified Implementation Specialist, you can download a logo for your blog or business card at the Competence Center. For all the companies who achieved a SOA or BPM specialization you can request a nice Plaques for your office. As part of our Industrial SOA article services we published “Canonizing a Language for Architecture” in the Service Technology Magazine and on Oracle Technology Network. If you write books or a blog - make sure you share it with us! Cloud Computing is the hottest topic in IT, specially as an architect you should be aware of the concepts and technology, therefore I highly recommend you Thomas Erl’s latest book named “Cloud Computing”. In the BPM space, Adaptive Case Management (ACM) is the hottest topic, with BPM PS6 the backend ACM functionality and an ACM sample application are available. You can even combine this hype with Customer Experience. The BPM section in this newsletter reflects the high importance of the topic and includes BPM PS6 video showing process lifecycle,BPM Resource Kit, Functional Testing, Introduction to Web Forms, Customized Workspace Application and Instance Patching Demo. B2B also become more and more popular in the Oracle SOA Suite. If you could not attend the training organized in the month May, we offer you an additional B2B training as a part of the Summer Camps or you can download the B2B training material from our SOA Community Workspace (SOA Community membership required). Thanks to all for sharing the valuable SOA content with our community! Special thanks to ec4u for the new reference of SOA Suite and AIA Foundation Pack at a Swiss insurance company. It is time to submit a SOA and BPM  reference request today! In this edition of the newsletter you will see Guido and Ronald's second part of OSB article series and Kathiravan Udayakumar's published an exclusive article on SOA Suite best practice. If you want to submit your content for the next edition of the Newsletter then please feel free to submit it to myself. The A-Team is an excellent contributor to the best practice - make sure you visit the new A-Team page and read their articles such as Getting to know Maven. Also on the SOA side, we have published many new articles from the community Oracle SOA Suite for the Busy IT Professional by Frank Munz, SOA Suite Knowledge - Polyglot Service Implementation with Groovy by Alexander Suchier, QA82 Analyzer - Automated Quality Assurance for Oracle SOA Suite Projects, Verifying the Target by Anthony Reynolds and a new book called Oracle SOA Governance 11g Implementation book by Luis Augusto Weir. Two new SOA on-demand training courses NEW - Oracle Business Rules Self-Study Course & Introduction Human Workflow online course are available now! Make use of the Summer Time and get trained - hope to see you in Lisbon for the Summer Camps! Jürgen Kress Oracle SOA & BPM Partner Adoption EMEA To read the newsletter please visit http://tinyurl.com/soanewsJune2013 (OPN Account required) To become a member of the SOA Partner Community please register at http://www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Technorati Tags: SOA Community newsletter,SOA Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress,SOA,BPM

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• Willy Rotstein on Supply Chain Planning

  - by sarah.taylor(at)oracle.com

  Each time a merchandiser, buyer or planner in Retail makes a business decision around assortment, inventory, pricing and promotions there is an opportunity to improve both Profitability and Customer Service. Improving decision making, however, has always been a tricky business for retailers.  I have worked in this space for more than 15 years. I began my career as an academic, at Imperial College London, and then broadened this interest with Retailers, aiming to optimize their merchandising and supply chain decisions. Planning the business and optimizing profit is a complex process. The complexity arises from the variety of people involved, the large number of decisions to take across all business processes, the uncertainty intrinsic to the retail environment as well as the volume of data available for analysis.  Things are not getting any easier either. The advent of multi-channel, social media and mobile is taking these complexities to a new level and presenting additional opportunities for those willing to exploit them. I guess it is due to the complexities of the decision making process that, over the last couple of years working with Oracle Retail, I have witnessed a clear trend around the deployment of planning systems. Retailers are aiming to simplify their decision making processes. They want to use one joined up planning platform across the business and enhance it with "actionable" data mining and optimization techniques. At Oracle Retail, we have a vibrant community of international retailers who regularly come together to discuss the big issues in retail planning. It is a combination of fashion, grocery and speciality retailers, all sharing their best practice vision for planning and optimizing merchandise decisions. As part of the Retail Exchange program, at the recent National Retail Federation event in New York, I jointly hosted a Planning dinner with Peter Fitzgerald from Google UK, Retail Division. Those retailers from our international planning community who were in New York for the annual NRF event were able to attend. The group comprised some of Europe's great International Retail brands.  All sectors were represented by organisations like Mango, LVMH, Ahold, Morrisons, Shop Direct and River Island. They confirmed the current importance of engaging with Planning and Optimization issues. In particular the impact of the internet was a key topic. We had a great debate about new retail initiatives.  Peter highlighted how mobility is changing retail - in particular with the new "local availability search" initiative. We also had an exciting discussion around the opportunities to improve merchandising using the new data that is becoming available from search, social media and ecommerce sites. It will be our focus to continue to help retailers translate this data into better results while keeping their business operations simple. New developments in "actionable" analytics and computing capacity make this a very exciting area today. Watch this space for my contributions on these topics which will be made available through this blog. Oracle Retail has a strong Planning community. if you are a category manager, a planner, a buyer, a merchandiser, a retail supplier or any retail executive with a keen interest in planning then you would be very welcome to join Oracle Retail's Planning Community. As part of our community you will be able to join our in-person and virtual events, download topical white papers and best practice information specifically tailored to your area of interest.  If anyone would like to register their interest in joining our community of retailers discussing planning then please contact me at [email protected]   Willy Rotstein, Oracle Retail

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• The Value of SOA Specialization - Fujitsu

  - by Jürgen Kress

  Thanks for the nice ink The Value of Specialization In my last post  I talked about Fujitsu's achievement in obtaining SOA and other specializations, but I have heard murmurings from other partners about what just is the value? I think Oracle have to do more to advertise the benefits to customers, we need to see customers asking for specialization for it to really work, but Oracle have made great promises about only recommending those partners who are specialized. For us there was another benefit. Oracle was sponsoring the 3rd Annual SOA Symposium in Berlin and invited us as their first specialized partner to take part. There is a great blog about the symposium on the SOA community blog site. This is real commitment from Oracle and we have other marketing opportunities being worked on with Jürgen. This does generate leads so my message to other Oracle Partners is, you need to do this, it is worthwhile.   Fujitsu - First SOA Specialized Partner Globally Just before Oracle Open World I found out that Fujitsu had achieved the first SOA Specialization globally. I think most partners know what the requirements are for Specialization and that in itself is challenging but the bureaucracy around the actual submission is an exercise in tenacity. I won’t go into that now; I have had my dig at Oracle this month, but enough to say the process could be improved. As a platinum partner we needed 5 specializations and we decided to go for SOA first. The reasoning behind this is that our Oracle Practice is known for being applications centric. We have always had an excellent technical capability but no one ever talked about that, it was just part and parcel of an implementation. However today we have just as many bids that are technology lead as there is applications lead, so it seemed a good plan to work on the areas we were not known for. We appointed a capability lead to be responsible for putting the team through the training and testing and Rosemary (Kell) was excellent, she ensured that everyone was on track and that it wasn’t just getting put into the ‘to do list’. In Fujitsu everyone in the Oracle Practice has an objective to achieve the competency tests in their area, so achieving the 2 pre sales, 2 sales and 1 support was no problem at all. We actually had 22 with the support capability proficiency.  The implementation specialist exams are much harder, more like OCP in the database area. We had help from the Oracle SOA Community; Jürgen Kress who runs this in EMEA is really motivational. At the time we started SOA was a beta exam which means you do not get the results immediately but again we put forward more than we needed. Manjit Chopra, Sukhraj Sahota, Emely Patra, Ian Scorrer and Sunny Sidhu all took the exam and eventually got the results they wanted they had passed. Congratulations. Here is Jurgen expalining why specialization is important. After the tests came the submissions where you need to include deals and experience, this was my bit, and persuading Oracle we really deserved the specialization. Finally we got the news we had been awarded the specialization, and a few days later that we were first globally. I am very proud. However there is no rest for the wicked and we plodded on to make the 5 specializations needed for Platinum and now we are working on the new Diamond status and I think SOA will be one of our 5 ‘super specializations’. This is a global Fujitsu initiative and I work closely with my colleague in Germany Jessika Weiss. It was nice to be able to have a press release about this and a comment from Judson Althoff  head of Oracle Alliances. For more information on SOA Specialization and the SOA Partner Community please feel free to register at www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Website Technorati Tags: SOA,SOA Community,OPN,Oracle,Fujitsu,Debra Lilley,Jürgen Kress,Specialization,SOA Specialization

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• Multidimensional Thinking–24 Hours of Pass: Celebrating Women in Technology

  - by smisner

  It’s Day 1 of #24HOP and it’s been great to participate in this event with so many women from all over the world in one long training-fest. The SQL community has been abuzz on Twitter with running commentary which is fun to watch while listening to the current speaker. If you missed the fun today because you’re busy with all that work you’ve got to do – don’t despair. All sessions are recorded and will be available soon. Keep an eye on the 24 Hours of Pass page for details. And the fun’s not over today. Rather than run 24 hours consecutively, #24HOP is now broken down into 12-hours over two days, so check out the schedule to see if there’s a session that interests you and fits your schedule. I’m pleased to announce that my business colleague Erika Bakse ( Blog | Twitter) will be presenting on Day 2 – her debut presentation for a PASS event. (And I’m also pleased to say she’s my daughter!) Multidimensional Thinking: The Presentation My contribution to this lineup of terrific speakers was Multidimensional Thinking. Here’s the abstract: “Whether you’re developing Analysis Services cubes or creating PowerPivot workbooks, you need to get into a multidimensional frame of mind to produce a model that best enables users to answer their business questions on their own. Many database professionals struggle initially with multidimensional models because the data modeling process is much different than the one they use to produce traditional, third normal form databases. In this session, I’ll introduce you to the terminology of multidimensional modeling and step through the process of translating business requirements into a viable model.” If you watched the presentation and want a copy of the slides, you can download a copy here. And you’re welcome to download the slides even if you didn’t watch the presentation, but they’ll make more sense if you did! Kimball All the Way There’s only so much I can cover in the time allotted, but I hope that I succeeded in my attempt to build a foundation that prepares you for starting out in business intelligence. One of my favorite resources that will get into much more detail about all kinds of scenarios (well beyond the basics!) is The Data Warehouse Toolkit (Second Edition) by Ralph Kimball. Anything from Kimball or the Kimball Group is worth reading. Kimball material might take reading and re-reading a few times before it makes sense. From my own experience, I found that I actually had to just build my first data warehouse using dimensional modeling on faith that I was going the right direction because it just didn’t click with me initially. I’ve had years of practice since then and I can say it does get easier with practice. The most important thing, in my opinion, is that you simply must prototype a lot and solicit user feedback, because ultimately the model needs to make sense to them. They will definitely make sure you get it right! Schema Generation One question came up after the presentation about whether we use SQL Server Management Studio or Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) to build the tables for the dimensional model. My answer? It really doesn’t matter how you create the tables. Use whatever method that you’re comfortable with. But just so happens that it IS possible to set up your design in BIDS as part of an Analysis Services project and to have BIDS generate the relational schema for you. I did a Webcast last year called Building a Data Mart with Integration Services that demonstrated how to do this. Yes, the subject was Integration Services, but as part of that presentation, I showed how to leverage Analysis Services to build the tables, and then I showed how to use Integration Services to load those tables. I blogged about this presentation in September 2010 and included downloads of the project that I used. In the blog post, I explained that I missed a step in the demonstration. Oops. Just as an FYI, there were two more Webcasts to finish the story begun with the data – Accelerating Answers with Analysis Services and Delivering Information with Reporting Services. If you want to just cut to the chase and learn how to use Analysis Services to build the tables, you can see the Using the Schema Generation Wizard topic in Books Online.

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

  - by Takin Babaei

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

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• How to ace Skype Interviews

  - by FelixWehmeyer

  Many companies these days opt to include a Skype interview in the recruitment process, as it comes close to a face-to-face interview without the time and costs involved for both the company and the candidate. In some cases during the recruitment process at Oracle you also might be asked to conduct a Skype interview. To help you get started with this, we researched some websites to give you several tips and tricks. What most of the bloggers say about this topic is collected in this article to help you prepare. It is all about Technology The bit that can make a Skype interview more complicated than a face-to-face or phone interview is the fact you are using additional technology. Always check the video and audio capabilities of your computer to make sure they work properly. Be prepared for connections to be limited during the interview. Using a webcam can also be confusing, if you do not have a lot of experience using it. Make sure you look at the camera and not the monitor to avoid the impression you are looking away. Practice If you do not feel comfortable using the camera, do a mock interview with a friend or family member before you have the actual interview. Be aware that facial impressions or reactions come across differently on a monitor, so make sure to practice how you  come across during the interview. Good lighting in the room also helps you make you look the best for the interviewer. You and your room Dress code, as in any face-to-face interview,is important to think about. Dress the same way as you would for face-to-face interviews and avoid patterns or informal clothing. Another tip,is to be aware of your surroundings. Make sure the room you use looks good on camera, making sure it is neat and tidy, also think about how the walls look behind you. Also make sure you do not get distracted during the interview by anyone or anything, as this will directly have an impact on your interview and your ability to focus and concentrate. What is in a name What goes for any account that you share during the recruitment process, either your email address or Skype name, is to make sure it comes across as professional. Try to avoid using nicknames or strange words in your accounts, stick to using a first name – last name or an abbreviation of the same. If you would like to read more about this topic, have a look at the links below which we used as inspiration for this blog article. 7 Deadly Skype Interview Sins is fun to read and to gives you some good advice to keep in mind. ·         http://www.inc.com/guides/201103/4-tips-for-conducting-a-job-interview-using-skype.html ·         http://blog.simplyhired.com/2012/05/5-tips-to-a-great-skype-interview.html ·         http://www.cnn.com/2011/LIVING/07/11/skype.interview.tips.cb/index.html http://www.ehow.com/how_5648281_prepare-skype-interview.html

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• Logging errors caused by exceptions deep in the application

  - by Kaleb Pederson

  What are best-practices for logging deep within an application's source? Is it bad practice to have multiple event log entries for a single error? For example, let's say that I have an ETL system whose transform step involves: a transformer, pipeline, processing algorithm, and processing engine. In brief, the transformer takes in an input file, parses out records, and sends the records through the pipeline. The pipeline aggregates the results of the processing algorithm (which could do serial or parallel processing). The processing algorithm sends each record through one or more processing engines. So, I have at least four levels: Transformer - Pipeline - Algorithm - Engine. My code might then look something like the following: class Transformer { void Process(InputSource input) { try { var inRecords = _parser.Parse(input.Stream); var outRecords = _pipeline.Transform(inRecords); } catch (Exception ex) { var inner = new ProcessException(input, ex); _logger.Error("Unable to parse source " + input.Name, inner); throw inner; } } } class Pipeline { IEnumerable<Result> Transform(IEnumerable<Record> records) { // NOTE: no try/catch as I have no useful information to provide // at this point in the process var results = _algorithm.Process(records); // examine and do useful things with results return results; } } class Algorithm { IEnumerable<Result> Process(IEnumerable<Record> records) { var results = new List<Result>(); foreach (var engine in Engines) { foreach (var record in records) { try { engine.Process(record); } catch (Exception ex) { var inner = new EngineProcessingException(engine, record, ex); _logger.Error("Engine {0} unable to parse record {1}", engine, record); throw inner; } } } } } class Engine { Result Process(Record record) { for (int i=0; i<record.SubRecords.Count; ++i) { try { Validate(record.subRecords[i]); } catch (Exception ex) { var inner = new RecordValidationException(record, i, ex); _logger.Error( "Validation of subrecord {0} failed for record {1}", i, record ); } } } } There's a few important things to notice: A single error at the deepest level causes three log entries (ugly? DOS?) Thrown exceptions contain all important and useful information Logging only happens when failure to do so would cause loss of useful information at a lower level. Thoughts and concerns: I don't like having so many log entries for each error I don't want to lose important, useful data; the exceptions contain all the important but the stacktrace is typically the only thing displayed besides the message. I can log at different levels (e.g., warning, informational) The higher level classes should be completely unaware of the structure of the lower-level exceptions (which may change as the different implementations are replaced). The information available at higher levels should not be passed to the lower levels. So, to restate the main questions: What are best-practices for logging deep within an application's source? Is it bad practice to have multiple event log entries for a single error?

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• Sitting Pretty

  - by Phil Factor

  Guest Editorial for Simple-Talk IT Pro newsletter'DBAs and SysAdmins generally prefer an expression of calmness under adversity. It is a subtle trick, and requires practice in front of a mirror to get it just right. Too much adversity and they think you're not coping; too much calmness and they think you're under-employed' I dislike the term 'avatar', when used to describe a portrait photograph. An avatar, in the sense of a picture, is merely the depiction of one's role-play alter-ego, often a ridiculous bronze-age deity. However, professional image is important. The choice and creation of online photos has an effect on the way your message is received and it is important to get that right. It is fine to use that photo of you after ten lagers on holiday in an Ibiza nightclub, but what works on Facebook looks hilarious on LinkedIn. My splendid photograph that I use online was done by a professional photographer at great expense and I've never had the slightest twinge of regret when I remember how much I paid for it. It is me, but a more pensive and dignified edition, oozing trust and wisdom. One gasps at the magical skill that a professional photographer can conjure up, without digital manipulation, to make the best of a derisory noggin (ed: slang for a head). Even if he had offered to depict me as a semi-naked, muscle-bound, sword-wielding hero, I'd have demurred. No, any professional person needs a carefully cultivated image that looks right. I'd never thought of using that profile shot, though I couldn't help noticing the photographer flinch slightly when he first caught sight of my face. There is a problem with using an avatar. The use of a single image doesn't express the appropriate emotion. At the moment, it is weird to see someone with a laughing portrait writing something solemn. A neutral cast to the face, somewhat like a passport photo, is probably the best compromise. Actually, the same is true of a working life in IT. One of the first skills I learned was not to laugh at managers, but, instead, to develop a facial expression that promoted a sense of keenness, energy and respect. Every profession has its own preferred facial cast. A neighbour of mine has the natural gift of a face that displays barely repressed grief. Though he is characteristically cheerful, he earns a remarkable income as a pallbearer. DBAs and SysAdmins generally prefer an expression of calmness under adversity. It is a subtle trick, and requires practice in front of a mirror to get it just right. Too much adversity and they think you're not coping; too much calmness and they think you're under-employed. With an appropriate avatar, you could do away with a lot of the need for 'smilies' to give clues as to the meaning of what you've written on forums and blogs. If you had a set of avatars, showing the full gamut of human emotions expressible in writing: Rage, fear, reproach, joy, ebullience, apprehension, exasperation, dissembly, irony, pathos, euphoria, remorse and so on. It would be quite a drop-down list on forums, but given the vast prairies of space on the average hard drive, who cares? It would cut down on the number of spats in Forums just as long as one picks the right avatar. As an unreconstructed geek, I find it hard to admit to the value of image in the workplace, but it is true. Just as we use professionals to tidy up and order our CVs and job applications, we should employ experts to enhance our professional image. After all you don't perform surgery or dentistry on yourself do you?

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• Parsing T-SQL – The easy way

  - by Dave Ballantyne

  Every once in a while, I hit an issue that would require me to interrogate/parse some T-SQL code.  Normally, I would shy away from this and attempt to solve the problem in some other way.  I have written parsers before in the the past using LEX and YACC, and as much fun and awesomeness that path is,  I couldnt justify the time it would take. However, this week I have been faced with just such an issue and at the back of my mind I can remember reading through the SQLServer 2012 feature pack and seeing something called “Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Transact-SQL Language Service “.  This is described there as : “The SQL Server Transact-SQL Language Service is a component based on the .NET Framework which provides parsing validation and IntelliSense services for Transact-SQL for SQL Server 2012, SQL Server 2008 R2, and SQL Server 2008. “ Sounds just what I was after.  Documentation is very scant on this so dont take what follows as best practice or best use, just a practice and a use. Knowing what I was sort of looking for something, I found the relevant assembly in the gac which is the simply named ,’Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.SqlParser’. Even knowing that you wont find much in terms of documentation if you do a web-search, but you will find the MSDN documentation that list the members and methods etc… The “scanner”  class sounded the most appropriate for my needs as that is described as “Scans Transact-SQL searching for individual units of code or tokens.”. After a bit of poking, around the code i ended up with was something like [System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.SqlParser") | Out-Null $ParseOptions = New-Object Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.SqlParser.Parser.ParseOptions $ParseOptions.BatchSeparator = 'GO' $Parser = new-object Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.SqlParser.Parser.Scanner($ParseOptions) $Sql = "Create Procedure MyProc as Select top(10) * from dbo.Table" $Parser.SetSource($Sql,0) $Token=[Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.SqlParser.Parser.Tokens]::TOKEN_SET $Start =0 $End = 0 $State =0 $IsEndOfBatch = $false $IsMatched = $false $IsExecAutoParamHelp = $false while(($Token = $Parser.GetNext([ref]$State ,[ref]$Start, [ref]$End, [ref]$IsMatched, [ref]$IsExecAutoParamHelp ))-ne [Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.SqlParser.Parser.Tokens]::EOF) { try{ ($TokenPrs =[Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.SqlParser.Parser.Tokens]$Token) | Out-Null $TokenPrs $Sql.Substring($Start,($end-$Start)+1) }catch{ $TokenPrs = $null } } As you can see , the $Sql variable holds the sql to be parsed , that is pushed into the $Parser object using SetSource,  and then we will use GetNext until the EOF token is returned.  GetNext will also return the Start and End character positions within the source string of the parsed text. This script’s output is : TOKEN_CREATE Create TOKEN_PROCEDURE Procedure TOKEN_ID MyProc TOKEN_AS as TOKEN_SELECT Select TOKEN_TOP top TOKEN_INTEGER 10 TOKEN_FROM from TOKEN_ID dbo TOKEN_TABLE Table note that the ‘(‘, ‘)’  and ‘*’ characters have returned a token type that is not present in the Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.SqlParser.Parser.Tokens Enum that has caused an error which has been caught in the catch block.  Fun, Fun ,Fun , Simple T-SQL Parsing.  Hope this helps someone in the same position,  let me know how you get on.

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• Where should instantiated classes be stored?

  - by Eric C.

  I'm having a bit of a design dilemma here. I'm writing a library that consists of a bunch of template classes that are designed to be used as a base for creating content. For example: public class Template { public string Name {get; set;} public string Description {get; set;} public string Attribute1 {get; set;} public string Attribute2 {get; set;} public Template() { //constructor } public void DoSomething() { //does something } ... } The problem is, not only is the library providing the templates, it will also supply quite a few predefined templates which are instances of these template classes. The question is, where do I put these instances of the templates? The three solutions I've come up with so far are: 1) Provide serialized instances of the templates as files. On the one hand, this solution would keep the instances separated from the library itself, which is nice, but it would also potentially add complexity for the user. Even if we provided methods for loading/deserializing the files, they'd still have to deal with a bunch of files, and some kind of config file so the app knows where to look for those files. Plus, creating the template files would probably require a separate app, so if the user wanted to stick with the files method of storing templates, we'd have to provide some kind of app for creating the template files. Also, this requires external dependencies for testing the templates in the user's code. 2) Add readonly instances to the template class Example: public class Template { public string Name {get; set;} public string Description {get; set;} public string Attribute1 {get; set;} public string Attribute2 {get; set;} public Template PredefinedTemplate { get { Template templateInstance = new Template(); templateInstance.Name = "Some Name"; templateInstance.Description = "A description"; ... return templateInstance; } } public Template() { //constructor } public void DoSomething() { //does something } ... } This method would be convenient for users, as they would be able to access the predefined templates in code directly, and would be able to unit test code that used them. The drawback here is that the predefined templates pollute the Template type namespace with a bunch of extra stuff. I suppose I could put the predefined templates in a different namespace to get around this drawback. The only other problem with this approach is that I'd have to basically duplicate all the namespaces in the library in the predefined namespace (e.g. Templates.SubTemplates and Predefined.Templates.SubTemplates) which would be a pain, and would also make refactoring more difficult. 3) Make the templates abstract classes and make the predefined templates inherit from those classes. For example: public abstract class Template { public string Name {get; set;} public string Description {get; set;} public string Attribute1 {get; set;} public string Attribute2 {get; set;} public Template() { //constructor } public void DoSomething() { //does something } ... } and public class PredefinedTemplate : Template { public PredefinedTemplate() { this.Name = "Some Name"; this.Description = "A description"; this.Attribute1 = "Some Value"; ... } } This solution is pretty similar to #2, but it ends up creating a lot of classes that don't really do anything (none of our predefined templates are currently overriding behavior), and don't have any methods, so I'm not sure how good a practice this is. Has anyone else had any experience with something like this? Is there a best practice of some kind, or a different/better approach that I haven't thought of? I'm kind of banging my head against a wall trying to figure out the best way to go. Thanks!

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• Come up with a real-world problem in which only the best solution will do (a problem from Introduction to algorithms) [closed]

  - by Mike

  EDITED (I realized that the question certainly needs a context) The problem 1.1-5 in the book of Thomas Cormen et al Introduction to algorithms is: "Come up with a real-world problem in which only the best solution will do. Then come up with one in which a solution that is “approximately” the best is good enough." I'm interested in its first statement. And (from my understanding) it is asked to name a real-world problem where only the exact solution will work as opposed to a real-world problem where good-enough solution will be ok. So what is the difference between the exact and good enough solution. Consider some physics problem for example the simulation of the fulid flow in the permeable medium. To make this simulation happen some simplyfing assumptions have to be made when deriving a mathematical model. Otherwise the model becomes at least complex and unsolvable. Virtually any particle in the universe has its influence on the fluid flow. But not all particles are equal. Those that form the permeable medium are much more influental than the ones located light years away. Then when the mathematical model needs to be solved an exact solution can rarely be found unless the mathematical model is simple enough (wich probably means the model isn't close to reality). We take an approximate numerical method and after hours of coding and days of verification come up with the program or algorithm which is a solution. And if the model and an algorithm give results close to a real problem by some degree that is good enough soultion. Its worth noting the difference between exact solution algorithm and exact computation result. When considering real-world problems and real-world computation machines I believe all physical problems solutions where any calculations are taken can not be exact because universal physical constants are represented approximately in the computer. Any numbers are represented with the limited precision, at least limited by amount of memory available to computing machine. I can imagine plenty of problems where good-enough, good to some degree solution will work, like train scheduling, automated trading, satellite orbit calculation, health care expert systems. In that cases exact solutions can't be derived due to constraints on computation time, limitations in computer memory or due to the nature of problems. I googled this question and like what this guy suggests: there're kinds of mathematical problems that need exact solutions (little note here: because the question is taken from the book "Introduction to algorithms" the term "solution" means an algorithm or a program, which in this case gives exact answer on each input). But that's probably more of theoretical interest. So I would like to narrow down the question to: What are the real-world practical problems where only the best (exact) solution algorithm or program will do (but not the good-enough solution)? There are problems like breaking of cryptographic ciphers where only exact solution matters in practice and again in practice the process of deciphering without knowing a secret should take reasonable amount of time. Returning to the original question this is the problem where good-enough (fast-enough) solution will do there's no practical need in instant crack though it's desired. So the quality of "best" can be understood in any sense: exact, fastest, requiring least memory, having minimal possible network traffic etc. And still I want this question to be theoretical if possible. In a sense that there may be example of computer X that has limited resource R of amount Y where the best solution to problem P is the one that takes not more than available Y for inputs of size N*Y. But that's the problem of finding solution for P on computer X which is... well, good enough. My final thought that we live in a world where it is required from programming solutions to practical purposes to be good enough. In rare cases really very very good but still not the best ones. Isn't it? :) If it's not can you provide an example? Or can you name any such unsolved problem of practical interest?

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• Manually iterating over a selection of XML elements (C#, XDocument)

  - by user316117

  What is the “best practice” way of manually iterating (i.e., one at a time with a “next” button) over a set of XElements in my XDocument? Say I select the set of elements I want thusly: var elems = from XElement el in m_xDoc.Descendants() where (el.Name.LocalName.ToString() == "q_a") select el; I can use an IEnumerator to iterate over them, i.e., IEnumerator m_iter; But when I get to the end and I want to wrap around to the beginning if I call Reset() on it, it throws a NotSupportedException. That’s because, as the Microsoft C# 2.0 Specification under chapter 22 "Iterators" says "Note that enumerator objects do not support the IEnumerator.Reset method. Invoking this method causes a System.NotSupportedException to be thrown ." So what IS the right way of doing this? And what if I also want to have bidirectional iteration, i.e., a “back” button, too? Someone on a Microsoft discussion forum said I shouldn’t be using IEnumerable directly anyway. He said there was a way to do what I want with LINQ but I didn’t understand what. Someone else suggested dumping the XElements into a List with ToList(), which I think would work, but I wasn’t sure it was “best practice”. Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

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• Sample uniformly at random from an n-dimensional unit simplex.

  - by dreeves

  Sampling uniformly at random from an n-dimensional unit simplex is the fancy way to say that you want n random numbers such that they are all non-negative, they sum to one, and every possible vector of n non-negative numbers that sum to one are equally likely. In the n=2 case you want to sample uniformly from the segment of the line x+y=1 (ie, y=1-x) that is in the positive quadrant. In the n=3 case you're sampling from the triangle-shaped part of the plane x+y+z=1 that is in the positive octant of R3: (Image from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplex.) Note that picking n uniform random numbers and then normalizing them so they sum to one does not work. You end up with a bias towards less extreme numbers. Similarly, picking n-1 uniform random numbers and then taking the nth to be one minus the sum of them also introduces bias. Wikipedia gives two algorithms to do this correctly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplex#Random_sampling (Though the second one currently claims to only be correct in practice, not in theory. I'm hoping to clean that up or clarify it when I understand this better. I initially stuck in a "WARNING: such-and-such paper claims the following is wrong" on that Wikipedia page and someone else turned it into the "works only in practice" caveat.) Finally, the question: What do you consider the best implementation of simplex sampling in Mathematica (preferably with empirical confirmation that it's correct)? Related questions http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2171074/generating-a-probability-distribution http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3007975/java-random-percentages

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• Lisp Style question label local functions or not?

  - by Andrew Myers

  I was wondering if there is a standard practice regarding the use of labels in Lisp. I've been messing around with a Lisp implementation of the algorithm described in the first answer here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/352203/generating-permutations-lazily My current version uses labels to break out portions of functionality. (defun next-permutation (pmute) (declare (vector pmute)) (let ((len (length pmute))) (if (> len 2) (labels ((get-pivot () (do ((pivot (1- len) (1- pivot))) ((or (= pivot 0) (< (aref pmute (1- pivot)) (aref pmute pivot))) pivot))) (get-swap (pivot) (let ((swp (1- len))) (loop for i from (1- len) downto pivot do (if (or (and (> (aref pmute i) (aref pmute (1- pivot))) (< (aref pmute i) (aref pmute swp))) (< (aref pmute swp) (aref pmute (1- pivot)))) (setf swp i))) swp)) (next (swp pivot) (rotatef (aref pmute (1- pivot)) (aref pmute swp)) (reverse-vector pmute pivot (1- len)))) (let ((piv (get-pivot))) (if (> piv 0) (next (get-swap piv) piv) nil)))))) Since each label is only called once I was wondering if this is considered bad practice since the only reason to do it in this case is for aesthetic reasons. I would argue that the current version with labels is clearer but that may go against common wisdom that I'm not aware of, being new to Lisp.

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