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  • Moving abroad - Relocation advice

    - by Tim Koekkoek
    Oracle offers graduates from different European countries the opportunity to start their career abroad. Some already have experience with living abroad as they have done an exchange semester or internship in another county, for others it is the first time they will move abroad. Rui started in October 2011 as a Business Development Consultant in Dublin and moved from Portugal to Dublin, Ireland to start his career. For those planning to leave their home country and who desire to work abroad, he will share some tips and tricks in this article. When you’re faced with an opportunity like this, there are lots of things that will come to your mind. Sometimes it can be either very exciting, or even stressful. 1. First of all, try to relax. If you are certain you are moving abroad, all you need to do is some research about the country where you’re going to live, get to know its culture (gastronomy, important dates and events, its economy and effective ways to keep you in touch with your family and friends – such as mobile companies and Internet services), and start to understand the best locations (with good access) you could/should live in are. Don’t forget that initially you can be limited by transport and therefore it is important to explore the ideal places for you. During this time, Oracle provides everything you’ll need (papers, documents, etc.) to cross borders. 2. When you arrive, you understand that you are in a new country, in a new place, where all things (or most) are unknown to you. Before you panic, try to see it as a new challenge where new opportunities will come. Sometimes, it’s not easy I know, but the very best a new place has to give to you, is the opportunity to understand a new culture, get to know other people, other ways of working, and grow both as a person and professionally. So, you have nothing to lose in this kind of experiment. 3. When you arrive at Oracle, there’s a fantastic team that will help you with settling in, HR, Payroll, Relocation, IT. In my case, Oracle helped me with the relocation, they supported me to arrange everything such as helping out with all the paperwork and finding a new apartment. As you can see they will do their best to help you to be successful! 4. Engage with your new co-workers. Going to a place where you don’t know anyone can be tough sometimes but see it as an opportunity to meet people from all over the world and share experiences. Embrace it. 5. Plan ahead, try to get the most information possible and use it. Oracle is a multinational enterprise that will allow you to get to know a new labour market and give you the flexibility you need to understand your view of employment and occupation, giving you the very best opportunities to join different teams and working areas, so that you can work where you fit best. Good luck! If you’re thinking about starting a career abroad, read the following article: http://www.overseasdigest.com/movingtips.htm it can be very useful to you. Interested in starting your career at Oracle like Rui has? Please have a look at https://campus.oracle.com for all of our latest vacancies.

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  • The World of SQL Database Deployment

    - by GGBlogger
    In my early development days, I used Microsoft Access for building databases. It made things easy since I only needed to package the database with the installation package so my clients would have access to it. When we began the development of a new package in Visual Studio .NET I decided to use SQL Server Express. It was free and provided good tools - also free. I thought it was a tremendous idea until it came time to distribute our new software! What a surprise. The nightmare Ah, the choices! Detach the database and have the client reattach it to a newly installed – oh wait. FIRST my new client needs to download and install SQL Server Express with SQL Server Management Studio. That’s not a great thing, but it is one more nightmare step for users who may have other versions of SQL installed. Then the question became – do we detach and reattach or do we do a backup. It was too late (bad planning) to revert to Microsoft Access but we badly needed a simple way to package and distribute both the database AND sample contents. Red Gate to the rescue It took me a while to find an answer but I did find it in a package called SQL Packager sold by a relatively unpublicized company in England called Red Gate. They call their products “ingeniously simple” and I must agree with that description. With SQL Packager you point to the database (more in a minute) you want to distribute. A few mouse clicks and dialogs and you have an executable file that you can ship virtually anywhere and virtually any way which, when run, installs the database on your destination SQL Server instance! It really is that simple. Easier to show than tell Let’s explore a hypothetical case. Let’s say you have a local SQL database of customers and you have decided you want to share it with your subsidiaries or partners. Here is the underlying screen you will see on starting SQL Packager. There are a bunch of possibilities here but I’m going to keep this relatively simple. At this point I simply want to illustrate the simplicity of generating an executable to deliver your database. You will notice that you can set up a new package, edit an existing package or change a bunch of options. Start SQL packager And the following is the default dialog you get on startup. In the next dialog, I’ve selected the Server and Database. I’ve also selected Windows Authentication. Pressing Next causes SQL Packager to run a number of checks and produce a report. Now you’re given a comprehensive list of what is going to be packaged and you’re allowed to change it if you desire. I’ve never made any changes here so I can’t really make any suggestions. The just illustrates the comprehensive nature of so many Red Gate products including this one. Clicking Next gives you still further options. SQL Packager then works its magic and shows you a dialog with the results. Packager then gives you a dialog of the scripts it has generated. The capture above only shows 1 of 4 tabs. Finally pressing Next gives you the option to generate a .NET executable of a C# project. I’ve only generated an executable so I’m not in a position to tell you what the C# project looks like. That may be the subject of further discussions. You can rename the package and tell SQL Packager where to save it. I’ve skipped a lot but this will serve to illustrate the comprehensive (and ingenious) things Red Gate does. All in all, it’s a superb way to distribute populated SQL databases. Oh – we’ll save running the resulting executable for later also but believe me it’s insanely simple.

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  • Framework for Everything - Where to begin? [Longer post]

    - by SquaredSoft
    Back story of this question, feel free to skip down for the specific question Hello, I've been very interested in the idea of abstract programming the last few years. I've made about 30 attempts at creating a piece of software that is capable of almost anything you throw at it. I've undertook some attempts at this that have taken upwards of a year, while getting close, never releasing it beyond my compiler. This has been something I've always tried wrapping my head around, and something is always missing. With the title, I'm sure you're assuming, "Yes of course you noob! You can't account for everything!" To which I have to reply, "Why not?" To give you some background into what I'm talking about, this all started with doing maybe a shade of gray hat SEO software. I found myself constantly having to create similar, but slightly different sets of code. I've gone through as many iterations of way to communicate on http as the universe has particles. "How many times am I going to have to write this multi-threaded class?" is something I found myself asking a lot. Sure, I could create a class library, and just work with that, but I always felt I could optimize what I had, which often was a large undertaking and typically involved frequent use of the CRTL+A keyboard shortcut, mixed with the delete button. It dawned on me that it was time to invest in a plugin system. This would allow me to simply add snippets of code. as time went on, and I could subversion stuff out, and distribute small chunks of code, rather than something that encompasses only a specific function or design. This comes with its own complexity, of course, and by the time I had finished the software scope for this addition, it hit me that I would want to add to everything in the software, not just a new http method, or automation code for a specific website. Great, we're getting more abstract. However, the software that I have in my mind comes down to a quite a few questions regarding its execution. I have to have some parameters to what I am going to do. After writing what the perfect software would do in my mind, I came up with this as a list of requirements: Should be able to use networking A "Macro" or "Expression system" which would allow people to do something like : =First(=ParseToList(=GetUrl("http://www.google.com?q=helloworld!"), Template.Google)) Multithreaded Able to add UI elements through some type of XML -- People can make their own addons etc. Can use third party API through the plugins, such as Microsoft CRM, Exchange, etc. This would allow the software to essentially be used for everything. Really, any task you wish to automate, in a simple way. Making the UI was as also extremely hard. How do you do all of this? Its very difficult. So my question: With so many attempts at this, I'm out of ideas how to successfully complete this. I have a very specific idea in my mind, but I keep failing to execute it. I'm a self taught programmer. I've been doing it for years, and work professionally in it, but I've never encountered something that would be as complex and in-depth as a system which essentially does everything. Where would you start? What are the best practices for design? How can I avoid constantly having to go back and optimize my software. What can I do to generalize this and draw everything out to completion. These are things I struggle with. P.s., I'm using c# as my main language. I feel like in this example, I might be hitting the outer limit of the language, although, I don't know if that is the case, or if I'm just a bad programmer. Thanks for your time.

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  • The Minimalist Approach to Content Governance - Request Phase

    - by Kellsey Ruppel
    Originally posted by John Brunswick. For each project, regardless of size, it is critical to understand the required ownership, business purpose, prerequisite education / resources needed to execute and success criteria around it. Without doing this, there is no way to get a handle on the content life-cyle, resulting in a mass of orphaned material. This lowers the quality of end user experiences.     The good news is that by using a simple process in this request phase - we will not have to revisit this phase unless something drastic changes in the project. For each of the elements mentioned above in this stage, the why, how (technically focused) and impact are outlined with the intent of providing the most value to a small team. 1. Ownership Why - Without ownership information it will not be possible to track and manage any of the content and take advantage of many features of enterprise content management technology. To hedge against this, we need to ensure that both a individual and their group or department within the organization are associated with the content. How - Apply metadata that indicates the owner and department or group that has responsibility for the content. Impact - It is possible to keep the content system optimized by running native reports against the meta-data and acting on them based on what has been outlined for success criteria. This will maximize end user experience, as content will be faster to locate and more relevant to the user by virtue of working through a smaller collection. 2. Business Purpose Why - This simple step will weed out requests that have tepid justification, as users will most likely not spend the effort to request resources if they do not have a real need. How - Use a simple online form to collect and workflow the request to management native to the content system. Impact - Minimizes the amount user generated content that is of low value to the organization. 3. Prerequisite Education Resources Needed Why - If a project cannot be properly staffed the probability of its success is going to be low. By outlining the resources needed - in both skill set and duration - it will cause the requesting party to think critically about the commitment needed to complete their project and what gap must be closed with regard to education of those resources. How - In the simple request form outlined above, resources and a commitment to fulfilling any needed education should be included with a brief acceptance clause that outlines the requesting party's commitment. Impact - This stage acts as a formal commitment to ensuring that resources are able to execute on the vision for the project. 4. Success Criteria Why - Similar to the business purpose, this is a key element in helping to determine if the project and its respective content should continue to exist if it does not meet its intended goal. How - Set a review point for the project content that will check the progress against the originally outlined success criteria and then determine the fate of the content. This can even include logic that will tell the content system to remove items that have not been opened by any users in X amount of time. Impact - This ensures that projects and their contents do not live past their useful lifespans. Just as with orphaned content, non-relevant information will slow user's access to relevant materials for the jobs. Request Phase Summary With a simple form that outlines the ownership of a project and its content, business purpose, education and resources, along with success criteria, we can ensure that an enterprise content management system will stay clean and relevant to end users - allowing it to deliver the most value possible. The key here is to make it straightforward to make the request and let the content management technology manage as much as possible through metadata, retention policies and workflow. Doing these basic steps will allow project content to get off to a great start in the enterprise! Stay tuned for the next installment - the "Create Phase" - covering security access and workflow involved in content creation, enabling a practical layer of governance over our enterprise content repository.

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  • Juggling with JDKs on Apple OS X

    - by Blueberry Coder
    I recently got a shiny new MacBook Pro to help me support our ADF Mobile customers. It is really a wonderful piece of hardware, although I am still adjusting to Apple's peculiar keyboard layout. Did you know, for example, that the « delete » key actually performs a « backspace »? But I disgress... As you may know, ADF Mobile development still requires JDeveloper 11gR2, which in turn runs on Java 6. On the other hand, JDeveloper 12c needs JDK 7. I wanted to install both versions, and wasn't sure how to do it.   If you remember, I explained in a previous blog entry how to install JDeveloper 11gR2 on Apple's OS X. The trick was to use the /usr/libexec/java_home command in order to invoke the proper JDK. In this case, I could have done the same thing; the two JDKs can coexist without any problems, since they install in completely different locations. But I wanted more than just installing JDeveloper. I wanted to be able to select my JDK when using the command line as well. On Windows, this is easy, since I keep all my JDKs in a central location. I simply have to move to the appropriate folder or type the folder name in the command I want to execute. Problem is, on OS X, the paths to the JDKs are... let's say convoluted.  Here is the one for Java 6. /System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home The Java 7 path is not better, just different. /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0_45.jdk/Contents/Home Intuitive, isn't it? Clearly, I needed something better... On OS X, the default command shell is bash. It is possible to configure the shell environment by creating a file named « .profile » in a user's home folder. Thus, I created such a file and put the following inside: export JAVA_7_HOME=$(/usr/libexec/java_home -v1.7) export JAVA_6_HOME=$(/usr/libexec/java_home -v1.6) export JAVA_HOME=$JAVA_7_HOME alias java6='export JAVA_HOME=$JAVA_6_HOME' alias java7='export JAVA_HOME=$JAVA_7_HOME'  The first two lines retrieve the current paths for Java 7 and Java 6 and store them in two environment variables. The third line marks Java 7 as the default. The last two lines create command aliases. Thus, when I type java6, the value for JAVA_HOME is set to JAVA_6_HOME, for example.  I now have an environment which works even better than the one I have on Windows, since I can change my active JDK on a whim. Here a sample, fresh from my terminal window. fdesbien-mac:~ fdesbien$ java6 fdesbien-mac:~ fdesbien$ java -version java version "1.6.0_65" Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_65-b14-462-11M4609) Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 20.65-b04-462, mixed mode) fdesbien-mac:~ fdesbien$ fdesbien-mac:~ fdesbien$ java7 fdesbien-mac:~ fdesbien$ java -version java version "1.7.0_45" Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_45-b18) Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 24.45-b08, mixed mode) fdesbien-mac:~ fdesbien$ Et voilà! Maximum flexibility without downsides, just I like it. 

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  • Fun tips with Analytics

    - by user12620172
    If you read this blog, I am assuming you are at least familiar with the Analytic functions in the ZFSSA. They are basically amazing, very powerful and deep. However, you may not be aware of some great, hidden functions inside the Analytic screen. Once you open a metric, the toolbar looks like this: Now, I’m not going over every tool, as we have done that before, and you can hover your mouse over them and they will tell you what they do. But…. Check this out. Open a metric (CPU Percent Utilization works fine), and click on the “Hour” button, which is the 2nd clock icon. That’s easy, you are now looking at the last hour of data. Now, hold down your ‘Shift’ key, and click it again. Now you are looking at 2 hours of data. Hold down Shift and click it again, and you are looking at 3 hours of data. Are you catching on yet? You can do this with not only the ‘Hour’ button, but also with the ‘Minute’, ‘Day’, ‘Week’, and the ‘Month’ buttons. Very cool. It also works with the ‘Show Minimum’ and ‘Show Maximum’ buttons, allowing you to go to the next iteration of either of those. One last button you can Shift-click is the handy ‘Drill’ button. This button usually drills down on one specific aspect of your metric. If you Shift-click it, it will display a “Rainbow Highlight” of the current metric. This works best if this metric has many ‘Range Average’ items in the left-hand window. Give it a shot. Also, one will sometimes click on a certain second of data in the graph, like this:  In this case, I clicked 4:57 and 21 seconds, and the 'Range Average' on the left went away, and was replaced by the time stamp. It seems at this point to some people that you are now stuck, and can not get back to an average for the whole chart. However, you can actually click on the actual time stamp of "4:57:21" right above the chart. Even though your mouse does not change into the typical browser finger that most links look like, you can click it, and it will change your range back to the full metric. Another trick you may like is to save a certain view or look of a group of graphs. Most of you know you can save a worksheet, but did you know you could Sync them, Pause them, and then Save it? This will save the paused state, allowing you to view it forever the way you see it now.  Heatmaps. Heatmaps are cool, and look like this:  Some metrics use them and some don't. If you have one, and wish to zoom it vertically, try this. Open a heatmap metric like my example above (I believe every metric that deals with latency will show as a heatmap). Select one or two of the ranges on the left. Click the "Change Outlier Elimination" button. Click it again and check out what it does.  Enjoy. Perhaps my next blog entry will be the best Analytic metrics to keep your eyes on, and how you can use the Alerts feature to watch them for you. Steve 

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  • MySQL for Excel new features (1.2.0): Save and restore Edit sessions

    - by Javier Rivera
    Today we are going to talk about another new feature included in the latest MySQL for Excel release to date (1.2.0) which can be Installed directly from our MySQL Installer downloads page.Since the first release you were allowed to open a session to directly edit data from a MySQL table at Excel on a worksheet and see those changes reflected immediately on the database. You were also capable of opening multiple sessions to work with different tables at the same time (when they belong to the same schema). The problem was that if for any reason you were forced to close Excel or the Workbook you were working on, you had no way to save the state of those open sessions and to continue where you left off you needed to reopen them one by one. Well, that's no longer a problem since we are now introducing a new feature to save and restore active Edit sessions. All you need to do is in click the options button from the main MySQL for Excel panel:  And make sure the Edit Session Options (highlighted in yellow) are set correctly, specially that Restore saved Edit sessions is checked: Then just begin an Edit session like you would normally do, select the connection and schema on the main panel and then select table you want to edit data from and click over Edit MySQL Data. and just import the MySQL data into Excel:You can edit data like you always did with the previous version. To test the save and restore saved sessions functionality, first we need to save the workbook while at least one Edit session is opened and close the file.Then reopen the workbook. Depending on your version of Excel is where the next steps are going to differ:Excel 2013 extra step (first): In Excel 2013 you first need to open the workbook with saved edit sessions, then click the MySQL for Excel Icon on the the Data menu (notice how in this version, every time you open or create a new file the MySQL for Excel panel is closed in the new window). Please note that if you work on Excel 2013 with several workbooks with open edit sessions each at the same time, you'll need to repeat this step each time you open one of them: Following steps:  In Excel 2010 or previous, you just need to make sure the MySQL for Excel panel is already open at this point, if its not, please do the previous step specified above (Excel 2013 extra step). For Excel 2010 or older versions you will only need to do this previous step once.  When saved sessions are detected, you will be prompted what to do with those sessions, you can click Restore to continue working where you left off, click Discard to delete the saved sessions (All edit session information for this file will be deleted from your computer, so you will no longer be prompted the next time you open this same file) or click Nothing to continue without opening saved sessions (This will keep the saved edit sessions intact, to be prompted again about them the next time you open this workbook): And there you have it, now you will be able to save your Edit sessions, close your workbook or turn off your computer and you will still be able to reopen them in the future, to continue working right where you were. Today we talked about how you can save your active Edit sessions and restore them later, this is another feature included in the latest MySQL for Excel release (1.2.0). Please remember you can try this product and many others for free downloading the installer directly from our MySQL Installer downloads page.Happy editing !

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  • Two Weeks To Go, Still Time to Register

    - by speakjava
    Yes, it's now only two weeks to the start of the 17th JavaOne conference! This will be my ninth JavaOne, I came fairly late to this event, attending for the first time in 2002.  Since then I've missed two conferences, 2006 for the birth of my son (a reasonable excuse I think) and 2010 for reasons we'll not go into here.  I have quite the collection of show devices, I've still got the WoWee robot, the HTC phone for JavaFX, the programmable pen and the Sharp Zaurus.  The only one I didn't keep was the homePod music player (I wonder why?) JavaOne is a special conference for many reasons, some of which I list here: A great opportunity to catch up on the latest changes in the Java world.  This is not just in terms of the platform, but as much about what people are doing with Java to build new and cool applications. A chance to meet people.  We have these things called BoFs, which stands for "Birds of a Feather", as in "Birds of a feather, flock together".  The idea being to have sessions where people who are interested in the same topic don't just get to listen to a presentation, but get to talk about it.  These sessions are great, but I find that JavaOne is as much about the people I meet in the corridors and the discussions I have there as it is about the sessions I get to attend. Think outside the box.  There are a lot of sessions at JavaOne covering the full gamut of Java technologies and applications.  Clearly going to sessions that relate to your area of interest is great, but attending some of the more esoteric sessions can often spark thoughts and stimulate the imagination to go off and do new and exciting things once you get back. Get the lowdown from the Java community.  Java is as much about community as anything else and there are plenty of events where you can get involved.  The GlassFish party is always popular and for Java Champions and JUG leaders there's a couple of special events too. Not just all hard work.  Oracle knows how to throw a party and the appreciation event will be a great opportunity to mingle with peers in a more relaxed environment.  This year Pearl Jam and Kings of Leon will be playing live.  Add free beer and what more could you want? So there you have it.  Just a few reasons for why you want to attend JavaOne this year.  Oh, and of course I'll be presenting three sessions which is even more reason to go.  As usual I've gone for some mainstream ("Custom Charts" for JavaFX) and some more 'out there' ("Java and the Raspberry Pi" and "Gestural Interfaces for JavaFX").  Once again I'll be providing plenty of demos so more than half my luggage this year will consist of a Kinect, robot arm, Raspberry Pis, gamepad and even an EEG sensor. If you're a student there's one even more attractive reason for going to JavaOne: It's Free! Registration is here.  Hope to see you there!

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  • Get More Value From Your Oracle Premier Support Investment

    - by Get Proactive Customer Adoption Team
    Untitled Document The Return on Investment in Support Training I’m a typical software user. I’ve been using spreadsheets almost daily for the past 10 years or so. I know how to enter simple formulas, format cells, import files, and I can sort and filter. Sometimes I even use a pivot table. I never attended training. I learnt everything I know on the fly. Sometimes it was intuitive and easy, other times I had to spend minutes and even hours searching for a solution. Yet when I see what some other people can do with their spreadsheets, I know I’m utilizing maybe 15% of the functionality. Pity, one day I really have to sign up for training. Why haven’t I done it yet? Ah, you know, I’m a busy person, I have work to do. And if I need to use a feature that I am unfamiliar with, I’ll spend time on it only when I really need it. Now wait. When I recall how much time I spent trying to figure how things work compared to time I spent doing the productive work, I realize it was not insignificant. I’m unable to sum up all the time I spent ‘learning’ on the fly, but I’m sure it’s been days or even weeks. And after all this time, I’ve mastered 15% of its features. If only I had attended training years ago. That investment would have paid back 10 times! Working with My Oracle Support is no different. Our customers typically use simple search, create service requests, and download patches. They think they know how to use My Oracle Support. And they’re right. They know something but often they’re utilizing only a fragment of My Oracle Support’s potential. For the investment that has been made, using only a small subset of the capabilities offered in My Oracle Support leaves value on the table. There is much more available in My Oracle Support. Dozens of diagnostic tools and proactive health checks will keep verifying your Oracle environments against best practices that Oracle gathers every day thanks to our comprehensive knowledge management process. Automated patch recommendations will help prevent known issues, and upgrade planning and more is included in My Oracle Support. Why are you not utilizing all of these best practices, capabilities and tools? Is it because you don’t have time to invest 2-3 hours of your time to learn about the features? Simply because you think you can learn on the fly like I thought I could? Does learning on the fly how to properly use the Service Request escalation process when you already have critical issue sound like a good idea? My advice is: Invest your time now to learn how My Oracle Support can help you prevent issues on your systems. Learn how to find answers faster and resolve problems more efficiently. Understand how to properly complete a service request. Invest in Support training, offered at no additional cost to Oracle Premier Support customers. It will pay back quicker than you think. It will bring you more value than you think. Discover your advantage with Oracle Premier Support's Proactive Portfolio.

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  • Review: Windows 8 - Initial Experience

    - by Tim Murphy
    I originally started this post when I had the Windows 8 preview setup on VirtualBox image.  I have since put the RTM bits on a Dell E6530 that is my new work laptop.  It isn’t a table so I am not getting the touch experience, but as a developer this makes the most sense for the moment. This is the first Windows OS that I have had to spend much time exploring to even get started.  The first thing I ran into was when I clicked on the desktop icon I was lost.  Where is the Start menu? Where are my programs?  How do I get back to the Metro environment?  I finally tried hitting the Windows button and it popped back out to the Metro screen. Once I got past that I found that the look of the Metro interface is clean and well organized.  It should be familiar to anyone who is already using a Zune or Windows Phone 7.  In the Desktop, aside from the lack of the Start button to bring up programs the desktop is just like the Windows 7 environment we are all used to.  I do have to say though that I don’t like popping out to the Metro screen to find program.  I think installers for programs like ones that developers usually work in for a desktop mode will need to give an option for creating a desktop icon and pinning to the task bar of the desktop. One of the things I do really enjoy is having live tiles in the Metro environment.  It is a nice way of feeding my need for constant information.  The one drawback though is that the task bar at the bottom of my screen used to be where I got this information without leaving what I was working on.  It allowed me to see current temperatures and when there were messages waiting.  I have since found that these still work as expected in the Desktop and Toast message keep you up on what is going on in the Metro apps. Thankfully familiar functionality like Alt-Tab and Windows-Tab still work regardless of if apps are in the Metro or the Desktop environment.  Add to this the ability to find any application on the Metro screen by simply typing and things get very comfortable. I also started exploring some of the apps.  If you want see a ton of stats on your team at a glance check out the Sports app.  What games are coming up? Who are the leaders in a number of stats?  The Weather and Finance apps have good features as well and I am sure they will improve as users supply feedback. I have had to install Visual Studio 2010 side-by-side with VS2012 because the Windows Phone 7 SDK would only install on VS2010.  This isn’t a Windows 8 issue per se, but something that you need to be aware of if you are a developer moving to the new ecosystem. The overall experience is a joy despite a few hiccups.  For anyone moving to Windows 8 in on a non-touch laptop or desktop I do suggest this list of keyboard shortcuts.  Enjoy. del.icio.us Tags: Windows 8,Win8,Metro,Review

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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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  • Dependency injection: How to sell it

    - by Mel
    Let it be known that I am a big fan of dependency injection (DI) and automated testing. I could talk all day about it. Background Recently, our team just got this big project that is to built from scratch. It is a strategic application with complex business requirements. Of course, I wanted it to be nice and clean, which for me meant: maintainable and testable. So I wanted to use DI. Resistance The problem was in our team, DI is taboo. It has been brought up a few times, but the gods do not approve. But that did not discourage me. My Move This may sound weird but third-party libraries are usually not approved by our architect team (think: "thou shalt not speak of Unity, Ninject, NHibernate, Moq or NUnit, lest I cut your finger"). So instead of using an established DI container, I wrote an extremely simple container. It basically wired up all your dependencies on startup, injects any dependencies (constructor/property) and disposed any disposable objects at the end of the web request. It was extremely lightweight and just did what we needed. And then I asked them to review it. The Response Well, to make it short. I was met with heavy resistance. The main argument was, "We don't need to add this layer of complexity to an already complex project". Also, "It's not like we will be plugging in different implementations of components". And "We want to keep it simple, if possible just stuff everything into one assembly. DI is an uneeded complexity with no benefit". Finally, My Question How would you handle my situation? I am not good in presenting my ideas, and I would like to know how people would present their argument. Of course, I am assuming that like me, you prefer to use DI. If you don't agree, please do say why so I can see the other side of the coin. It would be really interesting to see the point of view of someone who disagrees. Update Thank you for everyone's answers. It really puts things into perspective. It's nice enough to have another set of eyes to give you feedback, fifteen is really awesome! This are really great answers and helped me see the issue from different sides, but I can only choose one answer, so I will just pick the top voted one. Thanks everyone for taking the time to answer. I have decided that it is probably not the best time to implement DI, and we are not ready for it. Instead, I will concentrate my efforts on making the design testable and attempt to present automated unit testing. I am aware that writing tests is additional overhead and if ever it is decided that the additional overhead is not worth it, personally I would still see it as a win situation since the design is still testable. And if ever testing or DI is a choice in future, the design can easily handle it.

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  • When things go awry

    - by Phil Factor
    The moment the Entrepreneur opened his mouth on prime-time national TV, spelled out the URL and waxed big on how exciting ‘his’ new website was, I knew I was in for a busy night. I’d designed and built it. All at once, half a million people tried to log into the website. Although all my stress-testing paid off, I have to admit that the network locked up tight long before there was any danger of a database or website problem. Soon afterwards, the Entrepreneur and the Big Boss were there in the autopsy meeting. We picked through all our systems in detail to see how they’d borne the unexpected strain. Mercifully, in view of the sour mood of the Big Boss, it turned out that the only thing we could have done better was buy a bigger pipe to and from the internet. We’d specified that ‘big pipe’ when designing the system. The Big Boss had then railed at the cost and so we’d subsequently compromised. I felt that my design decisions were vindicated. The Big Boss brooded for a while. Then he made the significant comment: “What really ****** me off is the fact that, for ten minutes, we couldn’t take people’s money.” At that point I stopped feeling smug. Had the internet connection been better, the system would have reached its limit and failed rather precipitously, and that wasn’t what he wanted. Then it occurred to me that what had gummed up the connection was all those images on the site, that had made it so impressive for the visitors. If there had been a way to automatically pare down the site to the bare essentials under stress… Hmm. I began to consider disaster-recovery in the broadest sense – maintaining a service in spite of unusual or unexpected events. What he said makes a lot of sense: sacrifice whatever isn’t essential to keep the core service running when we approach the capacity limits. Maybe in IT we should borrow (or revive) the business concept of the ‘Skeleton service’, maintaining only the priority parts under stress, using a process that is well-prepared and carefully rehearsed. How might this work? Whatever the event we have to prepare for, it is all about understanding the priorities; knowing what one can dispense with when the going gets tough. In the event of database disaster, it’s much faster to deploy a skeletal system with only the essential data than to restore the entire system, though there would have to be a reconciliation process to update the revived database retrospectively, once the emergency was over. It isn’t just the database that could be designed for resilience. One could prepare for unusually high traffic in a website by designing a system that degraded gradually to a ‘skeletal’ site, one that maintained the commercial essentials without fat images, JavaScript libraries and razzmatazz. This is all what the Big Boss scathingly called ‘a mere technicality’. It seems to me that what is needed first is a culture of application and database design which acknowledges that we live in a very imperfect world, and react accordingly when things go awry.

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  • “Apparently, you signed a software services agreement without fully understanding it.”

    - by Dave Ballantyne
    I am not a lawyer. Let me say that again, I am not a lawyer. Todays Dilbert has prompted me to post about my recent experience with SqlServer licensing. I'm in the technical realm and rarely have much to do with purchasing and licensing.  I say “I need” , budget realities will state weather I actually get.  However, I do keep my ear to the ground and due to my community involvement, I know, or at least have an understanding of, some licensing restrictions. Due to a misunderstanding, Microsoft Licensing stated that we needed licenses for our standby servers.  I knew that that was not the case,  and a quick tweet confirmed this. So after composing an email stating exactly what the machines in question were used for ie Log shipped to and used in a disaster recover scenario only,  and posting several Technet articles to back this up, we saved 2 enterprise edition licences, a not inconsiderable cost. However during this discussion, I was made aware of another ‘legalese’ document that could completely override the referenced articles, and anything I knew, or thought i knew, about SqlServer licensing. Personally, I had no knowledge of this.  The “Purchase Use Rights” agreement would appear to be the volume licensing equivalent of the “End User License Agreement” , click throughs we all know and ignore.  Here is a direct quote from Microsoft licensing, when asked for clarification. “Thanks for your email. Just to give some background on the Product Use Rights (PUR), licenses acquired through volume licensing are bound by the most recent PUR at the time of license acquisition. The link for the current PUR and PUR archive is http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/about-licensing/product-licensing.aspx. Further to this, products acquired through boxed product or pre-installed on hardware (OEM) are bound by the End User License Agreement (EULA). The PUR will explain limitations, license requirements and rulings on areas like multiplexing, virtualization, processor licensing, etc. When an article will appear on a Microsoft site or blog describing the licensing of a product, it will be using the PUR as a base. Due to the writing style or language used by the person writing areas of the website or technical blogs, the PUR is what you should use as a rule and not any of the other media. The PUR is updated quarterly and will reference every product available at that time working on the latest version unless otherwise stated. The crux of this is that the PUR is written after extensive discussions between the different branches of Microsoft (legal, technical, etc) and the wording is then approved. This is not always the case for some pages explaining licensing as they are merely intended to advise and not subject to the intense scrutiny as the PUR.” So, exactly what does that mean ? My take :  This is a living document, “updated quarterly” , though presumably this could be done on a whim and a fancy.  It could state , you are only licensed if ,that during install you stand in a corner juggling and that photographic evidence is required. A plainly ridiculous demand but,  what else could it override or new requirements could it state that change your existing understanding of the product or your legal usage of it. As i say, im not a lawyer, but are you checking the PURA prior to purchase ?

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  • Dependency Injection Introduction

    - by MarkPearl
    I recently was going over a great book called “Dependency Injection in .Net” by Mark Seeman. So far I have really enjoyed the book and would recommend anyone looking to get into DI to give it a read. Today I thought I would blog about the first example Mark gives in his book to illustrate some of the benefits that DI provides. The ones he lists are Late binding Extensibility Parallel Development Maintainability Testability To illustrate some of these benefits he gives a HelloWorld example using DI that illustrates some of the basic principles. It goes something like this… class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { var writer = new ConsoleMessageWriter(); var salutation = new Salutation(writer); salutation.Exclaim(); Console.ReadLine(); } } public interface IMessageWriter { void Write(string message); } public class ConsoleMessageWriter : IMessageWriter { public void Write(string message) { Console.WriteLine(message); } } public class Salutation { private readonly IMessageWriter _writer; public Salutation(IMessageWriter writer) { _writer = writer; } public void Exclaim() { _writer.Write("Hello World"); } }   If you had asked me a few years ago if I had thought this was a good approach to solving the HelloWorld problem I would have resounded “No”. How could the above be better than the following…. class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { Console.WriteLine("Hello World"); Console.ReadLine(); } }  Today, my mind-set has changed because of the pain of past programs. So often we can look at a small snippet of code and make judgements when we need to keep in mind that we will most probably be implementing these patterns in projects with hundreds of thousands of lines of code and in projects that we have tests that we don’t want to break and that’s where the first solution outshines the latter. Let’s see if the first example achieves some of the outcomes that were listed as benefits of DI. Could I test the first solution easily? Yes… We could write something like the following using NUnit and RhinoMocks… [TestFixture] public class SalutationTests { [Test] public void ExclaimWillWriteCorrectMessageToMessageWriter() { var writerMock = MockRepository.GenerateMock<IMessageWriter>(); var sut = new Salutation(writerMock); sut.Exclaim(); writerMock.AssertWasCalled(x => x.Write("Hello World")); } }   This would test the existing code fine. Let’s say we then wanted to extend the original solution so that we had a secure message writer. We could write a class like the following… public class SecureMessageWriter : IMessageWriter { private readonly IMessageWriter _writer; private readonly string _secretPassword; public SecureMessageWriter(IMessageWriter writer, string secretPassword) { _writer = writer; _secretPassword = secretPassword; } public void Write(string message) { if (_secretPassword == "Mark") { _writer.Write(message); } else { _writer.Write("Unauthenticated"); } } }   And then extend our implementation of the program as follows… class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { var writer = new SecureMessageWriter(new ConsoleMessageWriter(), "Mark"); var salutation = new Salutation(writer); salutation.Exclaim(); Console.ReadLine(); } }   Our application has now been successfully extended and yet we did very little code change. In addition, our existing tests did not break and we would just need add tests for the extended functionality. Would this approach allow parallel development? Well, I am in two camps on parallel development but with some planning ahead of time it would allow for it as you would simply need to decide on the interface signature and could then have teams develop different sections programming to that interface. So,this was really just a quick intro to some of the basic concepts of DI that Mark introduces very successfully in his book. I am hoping to blog about this further as I continue through the book to list some of the more complex implementations of containers.

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  • Options for different domain and hosting

    - by Carl
    The situation I have a hosting service (one.com) on which I have installed a wordpress.org site in a subdirectory 'wordpress': myhost.com/wordpress/ (myhost.com is actually my own domain, but it already has contents and I don't want wordpress/ to appear in the root of that domain.) I want to use a second domain for this site. Thinking I would be able to forward to the wordpress site without problems, I registered the domain at GoDaddy.com: mydomain.com What I want So when my visitors type in mydomaind.com, I want them to see the contents on myhost.com/wordpress/, and the same for all subpages (mydomain.com/a/subpage fetches from myhost.com/wordpress/a/subpage). Just a redirect isn't enough, I want my visitors to see only mydomain.com as their domain. Some notes If I set up forward with URL masking at GoDaddy, they just give a full frame, pointing to myhost.com/wordpress/. This isn't good enough for me, since mydomain.com will always show up in the adress bar, also for subpages (I want mydomain/a/subpage to show in the adress bar for a subpage). I believe this could in principle be done with a .htaccess file with URL rewriting, but I have no hosting with GoDaddy so I can't upload such a file there. Hosting with GoDaddy is very expensive (of course) so I don't want to do that. I don't think I can use DNS settings; the host of mydomain.com says they don't allow anyone else to point to their name servers. If possible, I wouldn't want to re-install the wordpress site, it would take quite some time. I'd prefer to keep it at myhost.com/wordpress/ (if possible) Anything involving transferring the domain is supposed to take 5-7 working days. I would need my site up-and-running earlier than that, so I'd like to avoid it if possible. Am I locked in? As it seems, I am rather locked-in with GoDaddy. I can't use the domain with .htaccess since I can't upload such a file (and won't pay for hosting by GoDaddy). I can't use any of their forward options since none of them do what I want (one just forwards, the one that masks the URL does it with frames). Would you agree? Possible solutions Transfer the domain to any hosting service with reasonable hosting pricing, as opposed to GoDaddy (I'd probably use one.com, the same host as for myhost.com, in that case), and there either re-install wordpress on the new account, or use .htaccess with URL rewrite on the new account to fetch the contents from myhost.com/wordpress/. Can this be set-up to work with sub-pages as well? And visitors won't ever see "myhost.com/wordpress", just "mydomain.com"? E.i., mydomain.com/a/subpage/ wold fetch from myhost.com/wordpress/a/subpage/? This might be a long shot but: Find some free (preferrably) hosting allowing to point to their nameservers Make DNS settings at GoDaddy so that my domain appears at the site above at that site, put a .htaccess file with URL rewriting to forward to myhost.com/wordpress/ Could this be possible? What services could I use in that case? As I see it, this would be the only way not to have to transfer a domain (taking 5-7 working days) and not having to re-install the wordpress site. Sorry for the long question. All info and ideas are welcome.

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  • Getting Started with Cloud Computing

    - by juanlarios
    You’ve likely heard about how Office 365 and Windows Intune are great applications to get you started with Cloud Computing. Many of you emailed me asking for more info on what Cloud Computing is, including the distinction between "Public Cloud" and "Private Cloud". I want to address these questions and help you get started. Let's begin with a brief set of definitions and some places to find more info; however, an excellent place where you can always learn more about Cloud Computing is the Microsoft Virtual Academy. Public Cloud computing means that the infrastructure to run and manage the applications users are taking advantage of is run by someone else and not you. In other words, you do not buy the hardware or software to run your email or other services being used in your organization – that is done by someone else. Users simply connect to these services from their computers and you pay a monthly subscription fee for each user that is taking advantage of the service. Examples of Public Cloud services include Office 365, Windows Intune, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, Hotmail, and others. Private Cloud computing generally means that the hardware and software to run services used by your organization is run on your premises, with the ability for business groups to self-provision the services they need based on rules established by the IT department. Generally, Private Cloud implementations today are found in larger organizations but they are also viable for small and medium-sized businesses since they generally allow an automation of services and reduction in IT workloads when properly implemented. Having the right management tools, like System Center 2012, to implement and operate Private Cloud is important in order to be successful. So – how do you get started? The first step is to determine what makes the most sense to your organization. The nice thing is that you do not need to pick Public or Private Cloud – you can use elements of both where it makes sense for your business – the choice is yours. When you are ready to try and purchase Public Cloud technologies, the Microsoft Volume Licensing web site is a good place to find links to each of the online services. In particular, if you are interested in a trial for each service, you can visit the following pages: Office 365, CRM Online, Windows Intune, and Windows Azure. For Private Cloud technologies, start with some of the courses on Microsoft Virtual Academy and then download and install the Microsoft Private Cloud technologies including Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and System Center 2012 in your own environment and take it for a spin. Also, keep up to date with the Canadian IT Pro blog to learn about events Microsoft is delivering such as the IT Virtualization Boot Camps and more to get you started with these technologies hands on. Finally, I want to ask for your help to allow the team at Microsoft to continue to provide you what you need. Twice a year through something we call "The Global Relationship Study" – they reach out and contact you to see how they're doing and what Microsoft could do better. If you get an email from "Microsoft Feedback" with the subject line "Help Microsoft Focus on Customers and Partners" between March 5th and April 13th, please take a little time to tell them what you think. Cloud Computing Resources: Microsoft Server and Cloud Computing site – information on Microsoft's overall cloud strategy and products. Microsoft Virtual Academy – for free online training to help improve your IT skillset. Office 365 Trial/Info page – get more information or try it out for yourself. Office 365 Videos – see how businesses like yours have used Office 365 to transition to the cloud. Windows Intune Trial/Info – get more information or try it out for yourself. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online page – information on trying and licensing Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. Additional Resources You May Find Useful: Springboard Series Your destination for technical resources, free tools and expert guidance to ease the deployment and management of your Windows-based client infrastructure. TechNet Evaluation Center Try some of our latest Microsoft products for free, Like System Center 2012 Pre-Release Products, and evaluate them before you buy. AlignIT Manager Tech Talk Series A monthly streamed video series with a range of topics for both infrastructure and development managers. Ask questions and participate real-time or watch the on-demand recording. Tech·Days Online Discover what's next in technology and innovation with Tech·Days session recordings, hands-on labs and Tech·Days TV.

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  • Does *every* project benefit from written specifications?

    - by nikie
    I know this is holy war territory, so please read the question to the end before answering. There are many cases where written specifications make a lot of sense. For example, if you're a contractor and you want to get paid, you need written specs. If you're working in a team with 20 persons, you need written specs. If you're writing a programming language compiler or interpreter (and it's not perl), you'll usually write a formal specification. I don't doubt that there are many more cases where written specifications are a really good idea. I just think that there are cases where there's so little benefit in written specs, that it doesn't outweigh the costs of writing and maintaining them. EDIT: The close votes say that "it is difficult to say what is asked here", so let me clarify: The usefulness of written, detailed specifications is often claimed like a dogma. (If you want examples, look at the comments.) But I don't see the use of them for the kind of development I'm doing. So what is asked here is: How would written specifications help me? Background information: I work for a small company that's developing vertical market software. If our product is easier to use and has better performance than the competition, it sells. If it's harder to use, even if it behaves 100% as the specification says, it doesn't sell. So there are no "external forces" for having written specs. The advantage would have to be somewhere in the development process. Now, I can see how frozen specifications would make a developer's life easier. But we'll never have frozen specs. If we see in the middle of development that feature X is not intuitive to use the way it's specified, then we can only choose between changing the specification or developing a product that won't sell. You'll probably ask by now: How do you know when you're done? Well, we're continually improving our product. The competition does the same. So (hopefully) we're never done. We keep improving the software, and when we reach a point when the benefits of the improvements we've added since the last release outweigh the costs of an update, we create a new release that is then tested, localized, documented and deployed. This also means that there's rarely any schedule pressure. Nobody has to do overtime to make a deadline. If the feature isn't done by the time we want to release the next version, it'll simply go into the next version. The next question might be: How do your developers know what they're supposed to implement? The answer is: They have a lot of domain knowledge. They know the customers business well enough, so a high-level description of the feature (or even just the problem that the customer needs solved) is enough to implement it. If it's not clear, the developer creates a few fake screens to get feedback from marketing/management or customers, but this is nowhere near the level of detail of actual specifications. This might be inefficient for larger teams, but for a small team with low turnover it works quite well. It has the additional benefit that the developer in question often comes up with a better solution than the person writing the specs might have. This question is already getting very long, but let me address one last point: Testing. Like I said in the beginning, if our software behaves 100% like the spec says, it still can be crap. In fact, if it's so unintuitive that you need a spec to know how to test it, it probably is crap. It makes sense to have fixed, written tests for some core functionality and for regression bugs, but again, this is nowhere near a full written spec of how the software should behave when. The main test is: hand the software to a user who doesn't know it yet and tell him to use the new feature X. If she can figure out how to use it and it works, it works.

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  • Failed to unmount partitions

    - by msknapp
    I'm trying to install ubuntu from a pen drive. I have windows 7 installed already and want to keep that installation. I have a 3TB drive that has one 2TB partition on it, so the last 1TB is completely unused, which is where I want to install ubuntu. I started ubuntu in "try ubuntu" mode and then opened gparted, and then deleted the unused partition for the last third of my drive, then tried to install ubuntu. During the install, it asked me if I wanted to unmount the drives I already have The installer has detected that the following disks have mounted partitions: /dev/sda, /dev/sdb Do you want the installer to try to unmount the partitions on these disks before continuing? If you leave them mounted, you will not be able to create, delete, or resize partitions on these disks, but you may be able to install to existing partitions there. No, Yes I said no because I don't want to lose my windows 7 installation, nor any of that data. I wonder, if I had said yes above, would I have lost all the data on those drives? Anyways, I hit no and continued. I chose to install ubuntu alongside windows 7, and hit continue. A few minutes passed when this popup appeared: Failed to unmount partitions The installer needs to commit changes to partition tables, but cannot do so because the partitions on the following mount points could not be unmounted: /media/ubuntu/Three\ Terabyte Drive Terabyte\ DriveDrive Please close any applications using these mount points. Would you like the installer to try to unmount these partitions again? Go Back, Continue Why is this not working? What am I supposed to do? ========== Update: I went ahead and said yes, it can unmount those partitions. It finished installing Ubuntu, but now when i start my machine it just takes me to the grub rescue prompt. Seems like it broke something. What can I do now? =============== Results of fdisk -l: Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00027e14 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 2048 206847 102400 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda2 206848 976771071 488282112 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sdb'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted. Disk /dev/sdb: 3000.6 GB, 3000592982016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 364801 cylinders, total 5860533168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00000000 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 1 4294967295 2147483647+ ee GPT Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary. Disk /dev/sdc: 16.0 GB, 16008609792 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1946 cylinders, total 31266816 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00000000 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdc1 * 32 31266815 15633392 c W95 FAT32 (LBA) Disk /dev/sdd: 999.5 GB, 999501594624 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121515 cylinders, total 1952151552 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x0002ae3f Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdd1 2048 1952151551 976074752 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

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  • College Ratings via the Federal Government

    - by user9147039
    A few weeks back you might remember news about a higher education rating system proposal from the Obama administration. As I've discussed previously, political and stakeholder pressures to improve outcomes and increase transparency are stronger than ever before. The executive branch proposal is intended to make progress in this area. Quoting from the proposal itself, "The ratings will be based upon such measures as: Access, such as percentage of students receiving Pell grants; Affordability, such as average tuition, scholarships, and loan debt; and Outcomes, such as graduation and transfer rates, graduate earnings, and advanced degrees of college graduates.” This is going to be quite complex, to say the least. Most notably, higher ed is not monolithic. From community and other 2-year colleges, to small private 4-year, to professional schools, to large public research institutions…the many walks of higher ed life are, well, many. Designing a ratings system that doesn't wind up with lots of unintended consequences and collateral damage will be difficult. At best you would end up potentially tarnishing the reputation of certain institutions that were actually performing well against the metrics and outcome measures that make sense in their "context" of education. At worst you could spend a lot of time and resources designing a system that would lose credibility with its "customers". A lot of institutions I work with already have in place systems like the one described above. They are tracking completion rates, completion timeframes, transfers to other institutions, job placement, and salary information. As I talk to these institutions there are several constants worth noting: • Deciding on which metrics to measure is complicated. While employment and salary data are relatively easy to track, qualitative measures are more difficult. How do you quantify the benefit to someone who studies in one field that may not compensate him or her as well as another field but that provides huge personal fulfillment and reward is a difficult measure to quantify? • The data is available but the systems to transform the data into actual information that can be used in meaningful ways are not. Too often in higher ed information is siloed. As such, much of the data that need to be a part of a comprehensive system sit in multiple organizations, oftentimes outside the reach of core IT. • Politics and culture are big barriers. One of the areas that my team and I spend a lot of time talking about with higher ed institutions all over the world is the imperative to optimize for student success. This, like the tracking of the students’ achievement after graduation, requires a level or organizational capacity that does not currently exist. The primary barrier is the culture of "data islands" in higher ed, and the need for leadership to drive out the divisions between departments, schools, colleges, etc. and institute academy-wide analytics and data stewardship initiatives that will enable student success. • Data quality is a very big issue. So many disparate systems exist (some on premise, some "in the cloud") that keep data about "persons" using different means to identify them. Establishing a single source of truth about an individual and his or her data is difficult without some type of data quality policy and tools. Good tools actually exist but are seldom leveraged. Don't misunderstand - I think it's a great idea to drive additional transparency and accountability into the system of higher education. And not just at home, but globally. Students and parents need access to key data to make informed, responsible choices. The tools exist to not only enable this kind of information to be shared but to capture the very metrics stakeholders care most about and in a way that makes sense in the context of a given institution's "place" in the overall higher ed panoply.

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  • How can I work efficiently on a desktop sharing workflow?

    - by OSdave
    I am a freelance Magento developer, based in Spain. One of my clients is a Germany based web development company and they're asking me something I think it's impossible. OK, maybe not impossible but definitely not a preferred way of doing things. One of their clients has a Magento Entreprise installation, which is the paid (and I think proprietary) version of Magento. Their client has forbidden them to download the files from his server. My client is asking me now to study one particular module of the application in order to interact with it from a custom module I'll have to develop. As they have a read-only ssh access to their client's server, they came up with this solution: Set up a desktop/screen sharing session between one of their developer's station and mine, alongsides with a skype conversation. Their idea is that I'll say to the developer: show me file foo.php The developer will then open this foo.php file in his IDE. I'll have then to ask him to show me the bar method, the parent class, etc... Remember that it's a read-only session, so forget about putting a Zend_Debug::log() anywhere, and don't even think about a xDebug breakpoint (they don't use any kind of debugger, sic). Their client has also forbidden them to use any version control system... My first reaction when they explained to me this was (and I actually did say it outloud to them): Well, find another client. but they took it as a joke from me. I understand that in a business point of view rejecting a client is not a good practice, but I think that the condition of this assignment make it impossible to complete. At least according to my workflow. I mean, the way I work or learn a new framework/program is: download all files and copy of db on my pc create a git repository and a branch run the application locally use breakpoints use Zend_Debug::log() write the code and tests commit to git repo upload to (test/staging first if there is one, production if not) server I have agreed to try the desktop sharing session, although I think it will be a waste of time. On one hand I don't mind, they pay me for that time, but I know me and I don't like the sensation of loosing my time. On the other hand, I have other clients for whom I can work according to my workflow. I am about to say to them that I cannot (don't want to) do it. Well, I'll first try this desktop sharing session: maybe I'm wrong and it can actually work. But I like to consider myself as a professional, and I know that I don't know everything. So I try to keep an open mind and I am always willing to learn new stuff. So my questions are: Can this desktop-sharing workflow work? What should be done in order to take the most of it? Taking into account all the obstacles (geographic locations, no local, no git), is there another way for me to work on that project?

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  • Spotlight on Oracle Social Relationship Management. Social Enable Your Enterprise with Oracle SRM.

    - by Pat Ma
    Facebook is now the most popular site on the Internet. People are tweeting more than they send email. Because there are so many people on social media, companies and brands want to be there too. They want to be able to listen to social chatter, engage with customers on social, create great-looking Facebook pages, and roll out social-collaborative work environments within their organization. This is where Oracle Social Relationship Management (SRM) comes in. Oracle SRM is a product that allows companies to manage their presence with prospects and customers on social channels. Let's talk about two popular use cases with Oracle SRM. Easy Publishing - Companies now have an average of 178 social media accounts - with every product or geography or employee group creating their own social media channel. For example, if you work at an international hotel chain with every single hotel creating their own Facebook page for their location, that chain can have well over 1,000 social media accounts. Managing these channels is a mess - with logging in and out of every account, making sure that all accounts are on brand, and preventing rogue posts from destroying the brand. This is where Oracle SRM comes in. With Oracle Social Relationship Management, you can log into one window and post messages to all 1,000+ social channels at once. You can set up approval flows and have each account generate their own content but that content must be approved before publishing. The benefits of this are easy social media publishing, brand consistency across all channels, and protection of your brand from inappropriate posts. Monitoring and Listening - People are writing and talking about your company right now on social media. 75% of social media users have written a negative post about a brand after a poor customer service experience. Think about all the negative posts you see in your Facebook news feed about delayed flights or being on hold for 45 minutes. There is so much social chatter going on around your brand that it's almost impossible to keep up or comprehend what's going on. That's where Oracle SRM comes in. With Social Relationship Management, a company can monitor and listen to what people are saying about them on social channels. They can drill down into individual posts or get a high level view of trends and mentions. The benefits of this are comprehending what's being said about your brand and its competitors, understanding customers and their intent, and responding to negative posts before they become a PR crisis. Oracle SRM is part of Oracle Cloud. The benefits of cloud deployment for customers are faster deployments, less maintenance, and lower cost of ownership versus on-premise deployments. Oracle SRM also fits into Oracle's vision to social enable your enterprise. With Oracle SRM, social media is not just a marketing channel. Social media is also mechanism for sales, customer support, recruiting, and employee collaboration. For more information about how Oracle SRM can social enable your enterprise, please visit oracle.com/social. For more information about Oracle Cloud, please visit cloud.oracle.com.

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  • Delegates: A Practical Understanding

    - by samerpaul
    It's been a while since I have written on this blog, and I'm planning on reviving it this summer, since I have more time to do so again.I've also recently started working on the iPhone platform, so I haven't been as busy in .NET as before.In either case, today's blog post applies to both C# and Objective-C, because it's more about a practical understanding of delegates than it is about code. When I was learning coding, I felt like delegates was one of the hardest things to conceptually understand, and a lot of books don't really do a good job (in my opinion) of explaining it. So here's my stab at it.A Real Life Example of DelegatesLet's say there are three of you. You, your friend, and your brother. You're each in a different room in your house so you can't hear each other, even if you shout. 1)You are playing a computer game2) Friend is building a puzzle3) Brother is nappingNow, you three are going to stay in your room but you want to be informed if anything interesting is happening to the one of you. Let's say you (playing the computer game) want to know when your brother wakes up.You could keep walking to the room, checking to see if he's napping, and then walking back to your room. But that would waste a lot of time / resources, and what if you miss when he's awake before he goes back to sleep? That would be bad.Instead, you hand him a 2-way radio that works between your room and his room. And you inform him that when he wakes up, he should press a button on the radio and say "I'm awake". You are going to be listening to that radio, waiting for him to say he's awake. This, in essence, is how a delegate works.You're creating an "object" (the radio) that allows you to listen in on an event you specify. You don't want him to send any other messages to you right now, except when he wakes up. And you want to know immediately when he does, so you can go over to his room and say hi. (the methods that are called when a delegate event fires). You're also currently specifying that only you are listening on his radio.Let's say you want your friend to come into the room at the same time as you, and do something else entirely, like fluff your brother's pillow. You will then give him an identical radio, that also hooks into your brother's radio, and inform him to wait and listen for the "i'm awake" signal.Then, when your brother wakes up, he says "I'm awake!" and both you and your friend walk into the room. You say hi, and your friend fluffs the pillow, then you both exit.Later, if you decide you don't care to say hi anymore, you turn off your radio. Now, you have no idea when your brother is awake or not, because you aren't listening anymore.So again, you are each classes in this example, and each of you have your own methods. You're playing a computer game (PlayComputerGame()), your friend is building a puzzle (BuildPuzzle()) and your brother is napping (Napping()). You create a delegate (ImAwake) that you set your brother to do, when he wakes up. You listen in on that delegate (giving yourself a radio and turning it on), and when you receive the message, you fire a new method called SayHi()). Your friend is also wired up to the same delegate (using an identical radio) and fires the method FluffPillow().Hopefully this makes sense, and helps shed some light on how delegates operate. Let me know! Feel free to drop me a line at Twitter (preferred method of contact) here: samerabousalbi

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  • Upgrade to Xubuntu 13.10 - Saucy Salamander

    As a common 'fashion' it is possible to upgrade an existing installation of Ubuntu or one of its derivates every six months. Of course, you might opt-in for the adventure and directly keep your system always on the latest version (including alphas and betas), or you might like to play safe and stay on the long-term support (LTS) versions which are updated every two years only. As for me, I'd like to jump from release to release on my main desktop machine. And since 17th October Saucy Salamander or also known as Ubuntu 13.10 has been released for general use. The following paragraphs document the steps I went in order to upgrade my system to the recent version. Don't worry about the fact that I'm actually using Xubuntu. It's mainly a flavoured version of Ubuntu running Xfce 4.10 as default X Window manager. Well, I have Gnome and LXDE on the same system... just out of couriosity. Preparing the system Before you think about upgrading you have to ensure that your current system is running on the latest packages. This can be done easily via a terminal like so: $ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y dist-upgrade --fix-missing Next, we are going to initiate the upgrade itself: $ sudo update-manager As a result the graphical Software Updater should inform you that a newer version of Ubuntu is available for installation. Ubuntu's Software Updater informs you whether an upgrade is available Running the upgrade After clicking 'Upgrade...' you will be presented with information about the new version. Details about Ubuntu 13.10 (Saucy Salamander) Simply continue with the procedure and your system will be analysed for the next steps. Analysing the existing system and preparing the actual upgrade to 13.10 Next, we are at the point of no return. Last confirmation dialog before having a coffee break while your machine is occupied to download the necessary packages. Not the best bandwidth at hand after all... yours might be faster. Are you really sure that you want to start the upgrade? Let's go and have fun! Anyway, bye bye Raring Ringtail and Welcome Saucy Salamander! In case that you added any additional repositories like Medibuntu or PPAs you will be informed that they are going to be disabled during the upgrade and they might require some manual intervention after completion. Ubuntu is playing safe and third party repositories are disabled during the upgrade Well, depending on your internet bandwidth this might take something between a couple of minutes and some hours to download all the packages and then trigger the actual installation process. In my case I left my PC unattended during the night. Time to reboot Finally, it's time to restart your system and see what's going to happen... In my case absolutely nothing unexpected. The system booted the new kernel 3.11.0 as usual and I was greeted by a new login screen. Honestly, 'same' system as before - which is good and I love that fact of consistency - and I can continue to work productively. And also Software Updater confirms that we just had a painless upgrade: System is running Ubuntu 13.10 - Saucy Salamander - and up to date See you in six months again... ;-) Post-scriptum In case that you would to upgrade to the latest development version of Ubuntu, run the following command in a console: $ sudo update-manager -d And repeat all steps as described above.

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  • Multidimensional multiple-choice knapsack problem: find a feasible solution

    - by Onheiron
    My assignment is to use local search heuristics to solve the Multidimensional multiple-choice knapsack problem, but to do so I first need to find a feasible solution to start with. Here is an example problem with what I tried so far. Problem R1 R2 R3 RESOUCES : 8 8 8 GROUPS: G1: 11.0 3 2 2 12.0 1 1 3 G2: 20.0 1 1 3 5.0 2 3 2 G3: 10.0 2 2 3 30.0 1 1 3 Sorting strategies To find a starting feasible solution for my local search I decided to ignore maximization of gains and just try to fit the resources requirements. I decided to sort the choices (strategies) in each group by comparing their "distance" from the multidimensional space origin, thus calculating SQRT(R1^2 + R2^2 + ... + RN^2). I felt like this was a keen solution as it somehow privileged those choices with resouce usages closer to each other (e.g. R1:2 R2:2 R3:2 < R1:1 R2:2 R3:3) even if the total sum is the same. Doing so and selecting the best choice from each group proved sufficent to find a feasible solution for many[30] different benchmark problems, but of course I knew it was just luck. So I came up with the problem presented above which sorts like this: R1 R2 R3 RESOUCES : 8 8 8 GROUPS: G1: 12.0 1 1 3 < select this 11.0 3 2 2 G2: 20.0 1 1 3 < select this 5.0 2 3 2 G3: 30.0 1 1 3 < select this 10.0 2 2 3 And it is not feasible because the resources consmption is R1:3, R2:3, R3:9. The easy solution is to pick one of the second best choices in group 1 or 2, so I'll need some kind of iteration (local search[?]) to find the starting feasible solution for my local search solution. Here are the options I came up with Option 1: iterate choices I tried to find a way to iterate all the choices with a specific order, something like G1 G2 G3 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 2 2 2 1 ... believeng that feasible solutions won't be that far away from the unfeasible one I start with and thus the number of iterations will keep quite low. Does this make any sense? If yes, how can I iterate the choices (grouped combinations) of each group keeping "as near as possibile" to the previous iteration? Option 2: Change the comparation term I tried to think how to find a better variable to sort the choices on. I thought at a measure of how "precious" a resource is based on supply and demand, so that an higer demand of a more precious resource will push you down the list, but this didn't help at all. Also I thought there probably isn't gonna be such a comparsion variable which assures me a feasible solution at first strike. I there such a variable? If not, is there a better sorting criteria anyways? Option 3: implement any known sub-optimal fast solving algorithm Unfortunately I could not find any of such algorithms online. Any suggestion?

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