Search Results

Search found 21963 results on 879 pages for 'lance may'.

Page 55/879 | < Previous Page | 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62  | Next Page >

• Fast Data - Big Data's achilles heel

  - by thegreeneman

  At OOW 2013 in Mark Hurd and Thomas Kurian's keynote, they discussed Oracle's Fast Data software solution stack and discussed a number of customers deploying Oracle's Big Data / Fast Data solutions and in particular Oracle's NoSQL Database.  Since that time, there have been a large number of request seeking clarification on how the Fast Data software stack works together to deliver on the promise of real-time Big Data solutions.   Fast Data is a software solution stack that deals with one aspect of Big Data, high velocity.   The software in the Fast Data solution stack involves 3 key pieces and their integration:  Oracle Event Processing, Oracle Coherence, Oracle NoSQL Database.   All three of these technologies address a high throughput, low latency data management requirement.   Oracle Event Processing enables continuous query to filter the Big Data fire hose, enable intelligent chained events to real-time service invocation and augments the data stream to provide Big Data enrichment. Extended SQL syntax allows the definition of sliding windows of time to allow SQL statements to look for triggers on events like breach of weighted moving average on a real-time data stream.    Oracle Coherence is a distributed, grid caching solution which is used to provide very low latency access to cached data when the data is too big to fit into a single process, so it is spread around in a grid architecture to provide memory latency speed access.  It also has some special capabilities to deploy remote behavioral execution for "near data" processing.   The Oracle NoSQL Database is designed to ingest simple key-value data at a controlled throughput rate while providing data redundancy in a cluster to facilitate highly concurrent low latency reads.  For example, when large sensor networks are generating data that need to be captured while analysts are simultaneously extracting the data using range based queries for upstream analytics.  Another example might be storing cookies from user web sessions for ultra low latency user profile management, also leveraging that data using holistic MapReduce operations with your Hadoop cluster to do segmented site analysis.  Understand how NoSQL plays a critical role in Big Data capture and enrichment while simultaneously providing a low latency and scalable data management infrastructure thru clustered, always on, parallel processing in a shared nothing architecture. Learn how easily a NoSQL cluster can be deployed to provide essential services in industry specific Fast Data solutions. See these technologies work together in a demonstration highlighting the salient features of these Fast Data enabling technologies in a location based personalization service. The question then becomes how do these things work together to deliver an end to end Fast Data solution.  The answer is that while different applications will exhibit unique requirements that may drive the need for one or the other of these technologies, often when it comes to Big Data you may need to use them together.   You may have the need for the memory latencies of the Coherence cache, but just have too much data to cache, so you use a combination of Coherence and Oracle NoSQL to handle extreme speed cache overflow and retrieval.   Here is a great reference to how these two technologies are integrated and work together.  Coherence & Oracle NoSQL Database.   On the stream processing side, it is similar as with the Coherence case.  As your sliding windows get larger, holding all the data in the stream can become difficult and out of band data may need to be offloaded into persistent storage.  OEP needs an extreme speed database like Oracle NoSQL Database to help it continue to perform for the real time loop while dealing with persistent spill in the data stream.  Here is a great resource to learn more about how OEP and Oracle NoSQL Database are integrated and work together.  OEP & Oracle NoSQL Database.

  Read the article

• Incentivizing Work with Development Teams

  - by MarkPearl

  Recently I saw someone on twitter asking about incentives and if anyone had past experience with incentivizing work. I promised to respond with some of the experiences I have had in the past so here goes... **Disclaimer** - these are my experiences with incentives, generally in software development - in some other industries this may not be applicable – this is also my thinking at this point in time, with more experience my opinion may change. Incentivize at the level that you want people to group at If you are wanting to promote a team mentality, incentivize teams. If you want to promote an individual mentality, incentivize individuals. There is nothing worse than mixing this up. Some organizations put a lot of effort in establishing teams and team mentalities but reward individuals. This has a counter effect on the resources they have put towards establishing a team mentality. In the software projects that I work with we want promote cross functional teams that collaborate. Personally, if I was on a team and knew that there was an opportunity to work on a critical component of the system, and that by doing so I would get a bigger bonus, then I would be hesitant to include other people in solving that problem. Thus, I would hinder the teams efforts in being cross functional and reduce collaboration levels. Does that mean everyone in the team should get an even share of an incentive? In most situations I would say yes - even though this may feel counter-intuitive. I have heard arguments put forward that if “person x contributed more than person Y then they should be rewarded more” – This may sound controversial but I would rather treat people how would you like them to perform, not where they currently are at. To add to this approach, if someone is free loading, you bet your bottom dollar that the team is going to make this a lot more transparent if they feel that individual is going to be rewarded at the same level that everyone else is. Bad incentives promote destructive work If you are going to incentivize people, pick you incentives very carefully. I had an experience once with a sales person who was told they would get a bonus provided that they met an ordering target with a particular supplier. What did this person do? They sold everything at cost for the next month or so. They reached the goal, but the company didn't gain anything from it. It was a bad incentive. Expect the same with development teams, if you incentivize zero bug levels, you will get zero code committed to the solution. If you incentivize lines of code, you will get many many lines of bad code. Is there such a thing as a good incentives? Monetary wise, I am not sure there is. I would much rather encourage organizations to pay their people what they are worth upfront. I would also advise against paying money to teams as an incentive or even a bonus or reward for reaching a milestone. Rather have a breakaway for the team that promotes team building as a reward if they reach a milestone than pay them more money. I would also advise against making the incentive the reason for them to reach the milestone. If this becomes the norm it promotes people to begin to only do their job if there is an incentive at the end of the line. This is not a behaviour one wants to encourage. If the team or individual is in the right mind-set, they should not work any harder than they are right now with normal pay.

  Read the article

• Consolidation in a Database Cloud

  - by B R Clouse

  Consolidation of multiple databases onto a shared infrastructure is the next step after Standardization.  The potential consolidation density is a function of the extent to which the infrastructure is shared.  The three models provide increasing degrees of sharing: Server: each database is deployed in a dedicated VM. Hardware is shared, but most of the software infrastructure is not. Standardization is often applied incompletely since operating environments can be moved as-is onto the shared platform. The potential for VM sprawl is an additional downside. Database: multiple database instances are deployed on a shared software / hardware infrastructure. This model is very efficient and easily implemented with the features in the Oracle Database and supporting products. Many customers have moved to this model and achieved significant, measurable benefits. Schema: multiple schemas are deployed within a single database instance. The most efficient model, it places constraints on the environment. Usually this model will be implemented only by customers deploying their own applications.  (Note that a single deployment can combine Database and Schema consolidations.) Customer value: lower costs, better system utilization In this phase of the maturity model, under-utilized hardware can be used to host more workloads, or retired and those workloads migrated to consolidation platforms. Customers benefit from higher utilization of the hardware resources, resulting in reduced data center floor space, and lower power and cooling costs. And, the OpEx savings from Standardization are multiplied, since there are fewer physical components (both hardware and software) to manage. Customer value: higher productivity The OpEx benefits from Standardization are compounded since not only are there fewer types of things to manage, now there are fewer entities to manage. In this phase, customers discover that their IT staff has time to move away from "day-to-day" tasks and start investing in higher value activities. Database users benefit from consolidating onto shared infrastructures by relieving themselves of the requirement to maintain their own dedicated servers. Also, if the shared infrastructure offers capabilities such as High Availability / Disaster Recovery, which are often beyond the budget and skillset of a standalone database environment, then moving to the consolidation platform can provide access to those capabilities, resulting in less downtime. Capabilities / Characteristics In this phase, customers will typically deploy fixed-size clusters and consolidate on a cluster until that cluster is deemed "full," at which point a new cluster is built. Customers will define one or a few cluster architectures that are used wherever possible; occasionally there may be deployments which must be handled as exceptions. The "full" policy may be based on number of databases deployed on the cluster, or observed peak workload, etc. IT will own the provisioning of new databases on a cluster, making the decision of when and where to place new workloads. Resources may be managed dynamically, e.g., as a priority workload increases, it may be given more CPU and memory to handle the spike. Users will be charged at a fixed, relatively coarse level; or in some cases, no charging will be applied. Activities / Tasks Oracle offers several tools to plan a successful consolidation. Real Application Testing (RAT) has a feature to help plan and validate database consolidations. Enterprise Manager 12c's Cloud Management Pack for Database includes a planning module. Looking ahead, customers should start planning for the Services phase by defining the Service Catalog that will be made available for database services.

  Read the article

• Using WKA in Large Coherence Clusters (Disabling Multicast)

  - by jpurdy

  Disabling hardware multicast (by configuring well-known addresses aka WKA) will place significant stress on the network. For messages that must be sent to multiple servers, rather than having a server send a single packet to the switch and having the switch broadcast that packet to the rest of the cluster, the server must send a packet to each of the other servers. While hardware varies significantly, consider that a server with a single gigabit connection can send at most ~70,000 packets per second. To continue with some concrete numbers, in a cluster with 500 members, that means that each server can send at most 140 cluster-wide messages per second. And if there are 10 cluster members on each physical machine, that number shrinks to 14 cluster-wide messages per second (or with only mild hyperbole, roughly zero). It is also important to keep in mind that network I/O is not only expensive in terms of the network itself, but also the consumption of CPU required to send (or receive) a message (due to things like copying the packet bytes, processing a interrupt, etc). Fortunately, Coherence is designed to rely primarily on point-to-point messages, but there are some features that are inherently one-to-many: Announcing the arrival or departure of a member Updating partition assignment maps across the cluster Creating or destroying a NamedCache Invalidating a cache entry from a large number of client-side near caches Distributing a filter-based request across the full set of cache servers (e.g. queries, aggregators and entry processors) Invoking clear() on a NamedCache The first few of these are operations that are primarily routed through a single senior member, and also occur infrequently, so they usually are not a primary consideration. There are cases, however, where the load from introducing new members can be substantial (to the point of destabilizing the cluster). Consider the case where cluster in the first paragraph grows from 500 members to 1000 members (holding the number of physical machines constant). During this period, there will be 500 new member introductions, each of which may consist of several cluster-wide operations (for the cluster membership itself as well as the partitioned cache services, replicated cache services, invocation services, management services, etc). Note that all of these introductions will route through that one senior member, which is sharing its network bandwidth with several other members (which will be communicating to a lesser degree with other members throughout this process). While each service may have a distinct senior member, there's a good chance during initial startup that a single member will be the senior for all services (if those services start on the senior before the second member joins the cluster). It's obvious that this could cause CPU and/or network starvation. In the current release of Coherence (3.7.1.3 as of this writing), the pure unicast code path also has less sophisticated flow-control for cluster-wide messages (compared to the multicast-enabled code path), which may also result in significant heap consumption on the senior member's JVM (from the message backlog). This is almost never a problem in practice, but with sufficient CPU or network starvation, it could become critical. For the non-operational concerns (near caches, queries, etc), the application itself will determine how much load is placed on the cluster. Applications intended for deployment in a pure unicast environment should be careful to avoid excessive dependence on these features. Even in an environment with multicast support, these operations may scale poorly since even with a constant request rate, the underlying workload will increase at roughly the same rate as the underlying resources are added. Unless there is an infrastructural requirement to the contrary, multicast should be enabled. If it can't be enabled, care should be taken to ensure the added overhead doesn't lead to performance or stability issues. This is particularly crucial in large clusters.

  Read the article

• Rethinking Oracle Optimizer Statistics for P6 Part 2

  - by Brian Diehl

  In the previous post (Part 1), I tried to draw some key insights about the relationship between P6 and Oracle Optimizer Statistics.  The first is that average cardinality has the greatest impact on query optimization and that the particular queries generated by P6 are more likely to use this average during calculations. The second is that these are statistics that are unlikely to change greatly over the life of the application. Ultimately, our goal is to get the best query optimization possible.  Or is it? Stability No application administrator wants to get the call at 9am that their application users cannot get there work done because everything is running slow. This is a possibility with a regularly scheduled nightly collection of statistics. It may not just be slow performance, but a complete loss of service because one or more queries are optimized poorly. Ideally, this should not be the case. The database optimizer should make better decisions with more up-to-date data. Better statistics may give incremental performance benefit. However, this benefit must be balanced against the potential cost of system down time.  It is stability that we ultimately desire and not absolute optimal performance. We do want the benefit from more accurate statistics and better query plans, but not at the risk of an unusable system. As a result, I've developed the following methodology around managing database statistics for the P6 database.  1. No Automatic Re-Gathering - The daily, weekly, or other interval of statistic gathering is unlikely to be beneficial. Quite the opposite. It is more likely to cause problems. 2. Smart Re-Gathering - The time to collect statistics is when things have changed significantly. For a new installation of P6, this is happening more often because the data is growing from a few rows to thousands and more. But for a mature system, the data is not changing significantly from week-to-week. There are times to collect statistics: New releases of the application Changes in the underlying hardware or software versions (ex. new Oracle RDBMS version) When additional user groups are added. The new groups may use the software in significantly different ways. After significant changes in the data. This may be monthly, quarterly or yearly.  3. Always Test - If you take away one thing from this post, it would be to always have a plan to test after changing statistics. In reality, statistics can be collected as often as you desire provided there are tests in place to verify that performance is the same or better. These might be automated tests or simply a manual script of application functions. 4. Have a Way Out - Never change the statistics without a way to return to the previous set. Think of the statistics as one part of the overall application code that also includes the source code--both application and RDBMS. It would be foolish to change to the new code without a way to get back to the previous version. In the final post, I will talk about the actual script I created for P6 PMDB and possible future direction for managing query performance. 

  Read the article

• Appropriate design / technologies to handle dynamic string formatting?

  - by Mark W

  recently I was tasked with implementing a way of adding support for versioning of hardware packet specifications to one of our libraries. First a bit of information about the project. We have a hardware library which has classes for each of the various commands we support sending to our hardware. These hardware modules are essentially just lights with a few buttons, and a 2 or 4 digit display. The packets typically follow the format {SOH}AADD{ETX}, where AA is our sentinel action code, and DD is the device ID. These packet specs are different from one command to the next obviously, and the different firmware versions we have support different specifications. For example, on version 1 an action code of 14 may have a spec of {SOH}AADDTEXT{ETX} which would be AA = 14 literal, DD = device ID, TEXT = literal text to display on the device. Then we come out with a revision with adds an extended byte(s) onto the end of the packet like this {SOH}AADDTEXTE{ETX}. Assume the TEXT field is fixed width for this example. We have now added a new field onto the end which could be used to say specify the color or flash rate of the text/buttons. Currently this java library only supports one version of the commands, the latest. In our hardware library we would have a class for this command, say a DisplayTextArgs.java. That class would have fields for the device ID, the text, and the extended byte. The command class would expose a method which generates the string ("{SOH}AADDTEXTE{ETX}") using the value from the class. In practice we would create the Args class as needed, populate the fields, call the method to get our packet string, then ship that down across the CAN. Some of our other commands specification can vary for the same command, on the same version, depending on some runtime state. For example, another command for version 1 may be {SOH}AA{ETX}, where this action code clears all of the modules behind a specific controller device of their text. We may overload this packet to have option fields with multiple meanings like {SOH}AAOC{ETX} where OC is literal text, which tells the controller to only clear text on a specific module type, and to leave the others alone, or the spec could also have an option format of {SOH}AADD{ETX} to clear the text off a a specific device. Currently, in the method which generates the packet string, we would evaluate fields on the args class to determine which spec we will be using when formatting the packet. For this example, it would be along the lines of: if m_DeviceID != null then use {SOH}AADD{ETX} else if m_ClearOCs == true then use {SOH}AAOC{EXT} else use {SOH}AA{ETX} I had considered using XML, or a database to store String.format format strings, which were linked to firmware version numbers in some table. We would load them up at startup, and pass in the version number of the hardwares firmware we are currently using (I can query the devices for their firmware version, but the version is not included in all packets as part of the spec). This breaks down pretty quickly because of the dynamic nature of how we select which version of the command to use. I then considered using a rule engine to possibly build out expressions which could be interpreted at runtume, to evaluate the args class's state, and from that select the appropriate format string to use, but my brief look at rule engines for java scared me away with its complexity. While it seems like it might be a viable solution, it seems overly complex. So this is why I am here. I wouldn't say design is my strongest skill, and im having trouble figuring out the best way to approach this problem. I probably wont be able to radically change the args classes, but if the trade off was good enough, I may be able to convince my boss that the change is appropriate. What I would like from the community is some feedback on some best practices / design methodologies / API or other resources which I could use to accomplish: Logic to determine which set of commands to use for a given firmware version Of those command, which version of each command to use (based on the args classes state) Keep the rules logic decoupled from the application so as to avoid needing releases for every firmware version Be simple enough so I don't need weeks of study and trial and error to implement effectively.

  Read the article

• Obj-C component-based game architecture and message forwarding

  - by WanderWeird

  Hello, I've been trying to implement a simple component-based game object architecture using Objective-C, much along the lines of the article 'Evolve Your Hierarchy' by Mick West. To this end, I've successfully used a some ideas as outlined in the article 'Objective-C Message Forwarding' by Mike Ash, that is to say using the -(id)forwardingTargetForSelector: method. The basic setup is I have a container GameObject class, that contains three instances of component classes as instance variables: GCPositioning, GCRigidBody, and GCRendering. The -(id)forwardingTargetForSelector: method returns whichever component will respond to the relevant selector, determined using the -(BOOL)respondsToSelector: method. All this, in a way, works like a charm: I can call a method on the GameObject instance of which the implementation is found in one of the components, and it works. Of course, the problem is that the compiler gives 'may not respond to ...' warnings for each call. Now, my question is, how do I avoid this? And specifically regarding the fact that the point is that each instance of GameObject will have a different set of components? Maybe a way to register methods with the container objects, on a object per object basis? Such as, can I create some kind of -(void)registerMethodWithGameObject: method, and how would I do that? Now, it may or may not be obvious that I'm fairly new to Cocoa and Objective-C, and just horsing around, basically, and this whole thing may be very alien here. Of course, though I would very much like to know of a solution to my specific issue, anyone who would care to explain a more elegant way of doing this would additionally be very welcome. Much appreciated, -Bastiaan

  Read the article

• How to automatically remove Flash history/privacy trail? Or stop Flash from storing it?

  - by Arjan van Bentem

  Many people have heard about third-party cookies, and some browsers even block those by default. Some people may even be using Private Browsing modes. However, only few seem to realise that Adobe's Flash player also leaves a cross-browser trail on your local hard drive, and allows for sending cookie-like information back to the server, including third-party sites. And because it is a plugin, Flash does not take any of the browser's privacy settings into account. Sorry for the long post, but first some details about why using Flash raises a privacy concern, followed by the results of my tests: The Flash player keeps a cross-browser history of the domain names of the Flash-sites your computer has visited. Unlike your browser's history, this history is not limited to a certain number of days. History is also recorded while using so-called Private Browsing modes. It is stored on your hard drive (though, as described below, without going to Adobe's site you won't know what is stored). I am not sure if any date and time information is kept about each visit, but to see the domain names: right-click on some Flash content, open the settings dialog, and click the Help icon or click the Advanced button within the Privacy tab. This opens a browser to the help pages on Adobe.com, where one can click through to the Website Storage Settings panel. One can clear the existing list, but one cannot stop it from being recorded again. Flash allows for storing data on your local hard drive, using so-called Local Shared Objects (aka "Flash Cookies"). Just like HTTP cookies, this data can be sent back to the server, for tracking purposes. They are cross-browser, have no expiration date, and no user defined maximum lifetime can be set in the Flash preferences either. These not being HTTP cookies, they are (of course) not blocked by a browser's cookies preferences and are not removed when the normal HTTP cookies are deleted. Adobe has announced that version 10.1 will obey Private Browsing in most popular browsers, but unfortunately no word about also removing the data whenever normal cookies are deleted manually. And its implementation might be confusing: [..] if the browser is in normal browsing mode when the Flash Player instance is created, then that particular instance will forever be in normal browsing mode (private browsing is turned off). Accordingly, toggling private browsing on or off without refreshing the page or closing the private browsing window will not impact Flash Player. Local Shared Objects are not limited to the site you visit, and third-party storage is enabled by default. At the Global Storage Settings panel one can deselect the default Allow third-party Flash content to store data on your computer. Because of the cross-browser and expiration-less nature (and the fact that few people know about it), I feel that the cross-browser third-party Flash Cookies are more dangerous for visitor tracking than third-party normal HTTP cookies. They are even used to restore plain HTTP cookies that the user tried to delete: "All advertisers, websites and networks use cookies for targeted advertising, but cookies are under attack. According to current research they are being erased by 40% of users creating serious problems," says Mookie Tenembaum, founder of United Virtualities. "From simple frequency capping to the more sophisticated behavioral targeting, cookies are an essential part of any online ad campaign. PIE ["Persistent Identification Element"] will give publishers and third-party providers a persistent backup to cookies effectively rendering them unassailable", adds Tenembaum. [..] To justify this tracking mechanism, UV's Tenembaum said, "The user is not proficient enough in technology to know if the cookie is good or bad, or how it works." When selecting None (zero KB) for Specify the amount of disk space that website websites that you haven't yet visited can use to store information on your computer, and checking Never ask again then some sites do not work. However, the same site might work when setting it to None but without selecting Never ask again, and then choose Deny whenever prompted. Both options would result in zero KB of data being allowed, but the behaviour differs. The plugin also provides a Flash Player cache for Adobe-signed files. I guess these files are not an issue. So: how to automatically delete that information? On a Mac, one can find a settings.sol file and a folder for each visited Flash-website in: $HOME/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player/macromedia.com/support/flashplayer/sys/ Deleting the settings.sol file and all the folders in sys, removes the trail from the settings panels. However, the actual Local Shared Ojects are elsewhere (see Wikipedia for locations on other operating systems), in a randomly named subfolder of: $HOME/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player/#SharedObjects But then: how to remove this automatically? Simply removing the folders and the settings.sol file every now and then (like by using launchd or Windows' Task Scheduler) may interfere with active browsers. Or is it safe to assume that, given the cross-browser nature, the plugin would not care if things are removed while it is active? Only clearing during log-off may not work for those who hibernate all the time. Firefox users can install BetterPrivacy or Objection to delete the Local Shared Objects (for all others browsers as well). I don't know if that also deletes the trail of website domain names. Or: how to stop Flash from storing a history trail? Change of plans: I'm currently testing prohibiting Flash to write to its own sys and #SharedObjects folders. So far, Flash has not tried to restore permissions (though, when deleting the folders, Flash will of course recreate them). I've not encountered any problems but this may take some while to validate, using multiple browsers and sites. I've not yet found a log that reports errors. On a Mac: cd "$HOME/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player/macromedia.com/support/flashplayer" rm -r sys/* chmod u-w sys cd "$HOME/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player" # preserve the randomly named subfolders (only preserving the latest would suffice; see below) rm -r \#SharedObjects/*/* chmod -R u-w \#SharedObjects I guess the above chmods cannot be achieved on an old Windows system (I'm not sure about XP and Vista?). Though maybe on Windows one could replace the folders sys and #SharedObjects with dummy files with the same names? Anyone? Obviously, keeping Flash from storing those Local Shared Objects for all sites may cause problems. Some test results (Flash 10 on Mac OS X): When blocking the sys folder (even when leaving the #SharedObjects folder writable) then YouTube won't remember your volume settings while viewing multiple videos. Temporarily allowing write access to the blocked folders while visiting trusted sites (to only create folders for domains you like, maybe including references in settings.sol) solves that. This way, for YouTube, Flash could be allowed to write to sys/#s.ytimg.com and #SharedObjects/s.ytimg.com, while Flash could not create new folders for other domains. One may also need to make settings.sol read-only afterwards, or delete it again. When blocking both the sys and #SharedObjects folders, YouTube and Vimeo work fine (though they might not remember any settings). However, Bits on the Run refuses to even show the video player. This is solved by temporarily unblocking the #SharedObjects folder, to allow Flash to create a subfolder with some random name. Within this folder, it would create yet another folder for the current Flash website (content.bitsontherun.com). Removing that website-specific folder, and blocking both #SharedObjects and the randomly named subfolder, still seems to allow Bits on the Run to operate, even though it still cannot write anything to disk. So: the existence of the randomly named subfolder (even when write protected) is important for some sites. When I first found the #SharedObjects folder, it held many subfolders with random names, some created on the very same day. I wonder when Flash decides it wants a new folder, and how it determines (and remembers) that random name. For a moment I considered not blocking write access for sys and #SharedObjects, but explicitly creating read-only folders for well-known third-party tracking domains (like based on a list from, for example, AdBlock Plus). That way, any other domain could still create Local Shared Objects. But the list would be long, and the domains from AdBlock Plus are probably all third-party domains anyway, so disabling Allow third-party Flash content to store data on your computer might have the very same result. Any experience anyone? (Final notes: if the above links to the settings panels do not work in the future, then use the URL that is known to Flash player as a starting point: www.adobe.com/go/settingsmanager. See also "You Deleted Your Cookies? Think Again" at Wired.com -- which uses Flash cookies itself as well... For the very suspicious using Time Machine: you may want to exclude both folders, for each user, and remove the trace that is already on your backup.)

  Read the article

• Application Errors vs User Errors in PHP

  - by CogitoErgoSum

  So after much debate back and forth, I've come up with what I think may be a valid plan to handle Application/System errors vs User Errors (I.e. Validation Issues, Permission Issues etc). Application/System Errors will be handled using a custom error handler (via set_error_handler()). Depending on the severity of the error, the user may be redirected to a generic error page (I.e. Fatal Error), or the error may simply be silently logged (i.e E_WARNING). These errors are ones most likely caused by issues outside the users control (Missing file, Bad logic, etc). The second set of errors would be User Generated ones. These are the ones may not automatically trigger an error but would be considered one. In these cases i"ve decided to use the trigger_error() function and typically throw a waning or notice which would be logged silently by the error handler. After that it would be up to the developer to then redirect the user to another page or display some sort of more meaningful message to the user. This way an error of any type is always logged, but user errors still allow the developer freedom to handle it in their own ways. I.e. Redirect them back to their form with it fully repopulated and a message of what went wrong. Does anyone see anything wrong with this, or have a more intuitive way? My approach to error handling is typically everyone has their own ways but there must be a way instituted.

  Read the article

• Best pattern for storing (product) attributes in SQL Server

  - by EdH

  We are starting a new project where we need to store product and many product attributes in a database. The technology stack is MS SQL 2008 and Entity Framework 4.0 / LINQ for data access. The products (and Products Table) are pretty straightforward (a SKU, manufacturer, price, etc..). However there are also many attributes to store with each product (think industrial widgets). These may range from color to certification(s) to pipe size. Every product may have different attributes, and some may have multiples of the same attribute (Ex: Certifications). The current proposal is that we will basically have a name/value pair table with a FK back to the product ID in each row. An example of the attributes Table may look like this: ProdID AttributeName AttributeValue 123 Color Blue 123 FittingSize 1.25 123 Certification AS1111 123 Certification EE2212 123 Certification FM.3 456 Pipe 11 678 Color Red 999 Certification AE1111 ... Note: Attribute name would likely come from a lookup table or enum. So the main question here is: Is this the best pattern for doing something like this? How will the performance be? Queries will be based on a JOIN of the product and attributes table, and generally need many WHEREs to filter on specific attributes - the most common search will be to find a product based on a set of known/desired attributes. If anyone has any suggestions or a better pattern for this type of data, please let me know. Thanks! -Ed

  Read the article

• REST API Best practice: How to accept as input a list of parameter values

  - by whatupwilly

  Hi All, We are launching a new REST API and I wanted some community input on best practices around how we should have input parameters formatted: Right now, our API is very JSON-centric (only returns JSON). The debate of whether we want/need to return XML is a separate issue. As our API output is JSON centric, we have been going down a path where our inputs are a bit JSON centric and I've been thinking that may be convenient for some but weird in general. For example, to get a few product details where multiple products can be pulled at once we currently have: http://our.api.com/Product?id=["101404","7267261"] Should we simplify this as: http://our.api.com/Product?id=101404,7267261 Or is having JSON input handy? More of a pain? We may want to accept both styles but does that flexibility actually cause more confusion and head aches (maintainability, documentation, etc.)? A more complex case is when we want to offer more complex inputs. For example, if we want to allow multiple filters on search: http://our.api.com/Search?term=pumas&filters={"productType":["Clothing","Bags"],"color":["Black","Red"]} We don't necessarily want to put the filter types (e.g. productType and color) as request names like this: http://our.api.com/Search?term=pumas&productType=["Clothing","Bags"]&color=["Black","Red"] Because we wanted to group all filter input together. In the end, does this really matter? It may be likely that there are so many JSON utils out there that the input type just doesn't matter that much. I know our javascript clients making AJAX calls to the API may appreciate the JSON inputs to make their life easier. Thanks, Will

  Read the article

• Custom ASPNetMembership FailureInformation always null, OnValidatingPassword issue

  - by bigb

  As stated here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.web.security.membershipprovider.onvalidatingpassword.aspx "When the ValidatingPassword event has completed, the properties of the ValidatePasswordEventArgs object supplied as the e parameter can be examined to determine whether the current action should be canceled and if a particular Exception, stored in the FailureInformation property, should be thrown." Here is some details/code which really shows why FailureInformation shouldn't be always null http://forums.asp.net/t/991002.aspx if any password security conditions not matched. According with my Membership settings i should get an exception that password does not match password security conditions, but it is not happened. Then i did try to debug System.Web.ApplicationServices.dll(in .NET 4.0 System.Web.Security located here) Framework Code to see whats really happens there, but i cant step into this assembly, may be because of this [TypeForwardedFrom("System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=Neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a")] public abstract class MembershipProvider : ProviderBase Easily i may step into any another .NET 4.0 assembly, but in this one not. I did check, symbols for System.Web.ApplicationServices.dll loaded. Now i have only one idea how ti fix it - to override method OnValidatingPassword(ValidatePasswordEventArgs e). Thats my story. May be some one may help: 1) Any ideas why OnValidatingPassword not working? 2) Any ideas how to step into it?

  Read the article

• BackgroundWorker From ASP.Net Application

  - by Kevin

  We have an ASP.Net application that provides administrators to work with and perform operations on large sets of records. For example, we have a "Polish Data" task that an administrator can perform to clean up data for a record (e.g. reformat phone numbers, social security numbers, etc.) When performed on a small number of records, the task completes relatively quickly. However, when a user performs the task on a larger set of records, the task may take several minutes or longer to complete. So, we want to implement these kinds of tasks using some kind of asynchronous pattern. For example, we want to be able to launch the task, and then use AJAX polling to provide a progress bar and status information. I have been looking into using the BackgroundWorker class, but I have read some things online that make me pause. I would love to get some additional advice on this. For example, I understand that the BackgroundWorker will actually use the thread pool from the current application. In my case, the application is an ASP.Net web site. I have read that this can be a problem because when the application recycles, the background workers will be terminated. Some of the jobs I mentioned above may take 3 minutes, but others may take a few hours. Also, we may have several hundred administrators all performing similar operations during the day. Will the ASP.Net application thread pool be able to handle all of these background jobs efficiently while still performing it's normal request processing? So, I am trying to determine if using the BackgroundWorker class and approach is right for our needs. Should I be looking at an alternative approach? Thanks and sorry for such a long post! Kevin

  Read the article

• Rendering LaTeX on third-party websites

  - by A. Rex

  There are some sites on the web that render LaTeX into some more readable form, such as Wikipedia, some Wordpress blogs, and MathOverflow. They may use images, MathML, jsMath, or something like that. There are other sites on the web where LaTeX appears inline and is not rendered, such as the arXiv, various math forums, or my email. In fact, it is quite common to see an arXiv paper's abstract with raw LaTeX in it, e.g. this paper. Is there a plugin available for Firefox, or would it be possible to write one, that renders LaTeX within pages that do not provide a rendering mechanism themselves? Some notes: It may be impossible to render some of the code, because authors often copy-paste code directly from their source TeX files, which may contain things like "\cite{foo}" or undefined commands. These should be left alone. This question is a repost of a question from MathOverflow that was closed for not being related to math. I program a lot, but Javascript is not my specialty, so comments along the lines of "look at this library" are not particularly helpful to me (but may be to others).

  Read the article

• Informational messages returned with WCF involved

  - by DT

  This question is about “informational messages” and having them flow from a “back end” to a “front end” in a consistent manner. The quick question is “how do you do it”? Background: Web application using WCF to call back end services. In the back end service a “message” may occur. Now, the reason for this “message” may be a number of reasons, but for this discussion let’s assume that a piece of data was looked at and it was determined that the caller should be given back some information regarding it. This “informational” message may occur during a save and also may occur during retrieval of information. Again, the message is not what is important here, but the fact that there is some informational messages to give back under a number of different scenarios. From a team perspective we all want to return these “messages” in a standard way all of the time. Now, in the past this “standard way” has been done different ways by different people. Here are some possibilities: 1) Every operation has a “ref” parameter at the end that contains these messages 2) Every method returns these messages… however, this only kind of works for “Save” methods as one would think that “Retrieve” methods should return actual data and not messages 3) Some approach using the call context so as to not "pollute" all message signatures with something; however, with WCF in the picture this complicates things. That is, going back to the messages go on a header? Question: Back to my question then… how are others returning “messages” such as what was described above back through tiers of an application, over WCF and back to the caller?

  Read the article

• PHP Regex to remove nested form elements but not input elements

  - by that0n3guy

  I'm modifying a PHP script that I have and it is currently outputting a nested form. Something like: <form name="input" action="html_form_action.asp" method="get"> <p>stuff here here, this may or may not be in a div, script, etc..</p> <form name="input" action="html_form_action.asp" method="get"> <div>stuff here possibilly</div> Username: <input type="text" name="user" /> <input type="submit" value="Submit" /> </form> <p>otherstuff this may or may not be in a div, script, etc..</p> </form> Nested form's are a no-no (IE hates them and basically causes the form to stop working), so I need to remove the nested form lines, but not the form items. I need to remove the nested: <form name="input" action="html_form_action.asp" method="get"> and </form> but not the outer <form and </form> or the input or submit stuff. Is this possible to do with regex? Note, the reason I just want to regex out the form rather than find the problem is because I know it will take some significant re-working to get rid of the double form... the regex solution is quick for now.

  Read the article

• How to manually add a legend to a ggplot object

  - by Dan

  I have this data frame: structure(list(month_num = 1:24, founded_month = c(4L, 5L, 6L, 7L, 8L, 9L, 10L, 11L, 12L, 1L, 2L, 3L, 4L, 5L, 6L, 7L, 8L, 9L, 10L, 11L, 12L, 1L, 2L, 3L), founded_year = c(2008L, 2008L, 2008L, 2008L, 2008L, 2008L, 2008L, 2008L, 2008L, 2009L, 2009L, 2009L, 2009L, 2009L, 2009L, 2009L, 2009L, 2009L, 2009L, 2009L, 2009L, 2010L, 2010L, 2010L), count = c(270L, 222L, 256L, 250L, 277L, 268L, 246L, 214L, 167L, 408L, 201L, 225L, 203L, 220L, 230L, 225L, 177L, 207L, 166L, 135L, 116L, 122L, 69L, 42L), month_abb = c("Apr", "May", "Jun", "Jul", "Aug", "Sep", "Oct", "Nov", "Dec", "Jan", "Feb", "Mar", "Apr", "May", "Jun", "Jul", "Aug", "Sep", "Oct", "Nov", "Dec", "Jan", "Feb", "Mar"), short_year = c("08", "08", "08", "08", "08", "08", "08", "08", "08", "09", "09", "09", "09", "09", "09", "09", "09", "09", "09", "09", "09", "10", "10", "10" ), proj = c(282, 246, 292, 298, 337, 340, 330, 310, 275, 528, 333, 369, 359, 388, 410, 417, 381, 423, 394, 375, 368, 386, 345, 330), label = c("Apr", "May", "Jun", "Jul", "Aug", "Sep", "Oct", "Nov", "Dec", "Jan\n09", "Feb", "Mar", "Apr", "May", "Jun", "Jul", "Aug", "Sep", "Oct", "Nov", "Dec", "Jan\n10", "Feb", "Mar")), .Names = c("month_num", "founded_month", "founded_year", "count", "month_abb", "short_year", "proj", "label"), row.names = c(NA, -24L), class = "data.frame") and i've got all of this done (I know the code's a bit ugly looking, pointers appreciated): p <- ggplot(m_summary2, aes(x = month_num, y = count)) p + geom_line(colour = rgb(0/255, 172/255, 0/255)) + geom_point(colour = rgb(0/255, 172/255, 0/255)) + geom_line(aes(x = m_summary2$month_num, y = m_summary2$proj), colour = rgb(18/255, 111/255, 150/255)) + geom_point(aes(x = m_summary2$month_num, y = m_summary2$proj), colour = rgb(18/255, 111/255, 150/255)) + scale_x_continuous("Month", breaks = m_summary2$month_num, labels = m_summary2$label) + scale_y_continuous("# Startups Founded") + opts(title = paste("# Startups Founded:", m_summary2$month_abb[1], m_summary2$short_year[1], "-", m_summary2$month_abb[nrow(m_summary2)], m_summary2$short_year[nrow(m_summary2)])) Now I would like to add a legend to clarify that the blue line is a projection and the green line is the current data. Thanks in advance!

  Read the article

• How can I filter these Django records?

  - by mipadi

  I have a set of Django models as shown in the following diagram (the names of the reverse relationships are shown in the yellow bubbles): In each relationship, a Person may have 0 or more of the items. Additionally, the slug field is (unfortunately) not unique; multiple Person records may have the same slug fields. Essentially these records are duplicates. I want to obtain a list of all records that meet the following criteria: All duplicate records (that is, having the same slug) with at least one Entry OR at least one Audio OR at least one Episode OR at least one Article. So far, I have the following query: Person.objects.values('slug').annotate(num_records=Count('slug')).filter(num_records__gt=1) This groups all records by slug, then adds a num_records attribute that says how many records have that slug, but the additional filtering is not performed (and I don't even know if this would work right anyway, since, given a set of duplicate records, one may have, e.g., and Entry and the other may have an Article). In a nutshell, I want to find all duplicate records and collapse them, along with their associated models, into one record. What's the best way to do this with Django?

  Read the article

• Is there a problem with this MySQL Query?

  - by ThinkingInBits

  http://pastie.org/954073 The echos at the top all display valid data that fit the database schema. There are no connection errors Any ideas? Thanks in advance! Here is the echo'ed query INSERT INTO equipment (cat_id, name, year, manufacturer, model, price, location, condition, stock_num, information, description, created, modified) VALUES (1, 'r', 1, 'sdf', 'sdf', '2', 'd', 'd', '3', 'asdfasdfdf', 'df', '10 May 10', '10 May 10') MySQL is giving: #1064 - You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'condition, stock_num, information, description, created, modified) VALUES (1, 'r' at line 1 id int(11) unsigned NO PRI NULL auto_increment Edit Delete cat_id int(11) unsigned NO NULL Edit Delete prod_name varchar(255) YES NULL Edit Delete prod_year varchar(10) YES NULL Edit Delete manufacturer varchar(255) YES NULL Edit Delete model varchar(255) YES NULL Edit Delete price varchar(10) YES NULL Edit Delete location varchar(255) YES NULL Edit Delete condition varchar(25) YES NULL Edit Delete stock_num varchar(128) YES NULL Edit Delete information text YES NULL Edit Delete description text YES NULL Edit Delete created varchar(20) YES NULL Edit Delete modified varchar(20) YES NULL Query: INSERT INTO equipment (cat_id, prod_name, prod_year, manufacturer, model, price, location, condition, stock_num, information, description, created, modified) VALUES (1, 'asdf', '234', 'adf', 'asdf', '34', 'asdf', 'asdf', '234', 'asdf', 'asdf', '10 May 10', '10 May 10')

  Read the article

• Rendering LaTeX on third-party websites?

  - by A. Rex

  There are some sites on the web that render LaTeX into some more readable form, such as Wikipedia, some Wordpress blogs, and MathOverflow. They may use images, MathML, jsMath, or something like that. There are other sites on the web where LaTeX appears inline and is not rendered, such as the arXiv, various math forums, or my email. In fact, it is quite common to see an arXiv paper's abstract with raw LaTeX in it, e.g. this paper. Is there a plugin available for Firefox, or would it be possible to write one, that renders LaTeX within pages that do not provide a rendering mechanism themselves? (The LaTeX would be enclosed within dollar signs, e.g. $\pi$. See the arXiv link above.) Some notes: It may be impossible to render some of the code, because authors often copy-paste code directly from their source TeX files, which may contain things like "\cite{foo}" or undefined commands. These should be left alone. This question is a repost of a question from MathOverflow that was closed for not being related to math. There is one answer there, which is helpful, but perhaps Stack Overflow can provide better answers. I program a lot, but Javascript is not my specialty, so comments along the lines of "look at this library" are not particularly helpful to me (but may be to others).

  Read the article

• How to return proper 404 for google while providing user friendly content to the user?

  - by Marek

  I am bouncing between posting this here and on Superuser. Please excuse me if you feel this does not belong here. I am observing the behavior described here - Googlebot is requesting random urls on my site, like aecgeqfx.html or sutwjemebk.html. I am sure that I am not linking these urls from anywhere on my site. I suspect this may be google probing how we handle non existent content - to cite from an answer to the linked question: [google is requesting random urls to] see if your site correctly handles non-existent files (by returning a 404 response header) We have a custom page for nonexistent content - a styled page saying "Content not found, if you believe you got here by error, please contact us", with a few internal links, served (naturally) with a 200 OK. The URL is served directly (no redirection to a single url). I am afraid this may discriminate the site at google - they may not interpret the user friendly page as a 404 - not found and may think we are trying to fake something and provide duplicate content. How should I proceed to ensure that google will not think the site is bogus while providing user friendly message to users in case they click on dead links by accident?

  Read the article

• Nusphere PHPEd: PHP Function Hints Lost Arguments?

  - by Eli

  Hi All, My PHPEd suddenly stopped showing arguments and arg order in the hints, and now just shows a basic description of the function. Before I go digging around in the config files, has anyone else had this problem? Thanks! Edit: Sorry, I may not have been entirely clear on this. There is no problem with my own classes, only with the actual php functions. Example: How it used to work: I type a PHP function, say strpos. As soon as I type the '(' at the end of it, I get the little yellow box, showing something like this: int strpos ( string $haystack , mixed $needle [, int $offset=0 ] ) with the first argument bold. If I type it, and then a comma, it bolds the second arg, and so on. This is really nice, since PHP functions are a bit scrambled as far as argument order, and I don't have to look them up every time. How it works now: I type a php function, say strpos. As soon as I type the '(' at the end of it, I get the little yellow box. It says something like "strpos - Returns the numeric position of the first occurrence of needle in the haystack string." There are no arguments shown, which makes the little box basically worthless - I know what strpos does, I just want a reminder of the argument order. I think this may be a problem with the included PHPDoc, which I never use, but may be the source of the data for the hint box. I did recently upgrade to 5.6, but ended up removing it and restoring 5.2. I installed to a different folder, and uninstalled from there, but it may have overwritten something in the original folder? I'm using v5.2 (5220). Thanks!

  Read the article

• Adding a date every few days

  - by Luke

  I have some code that generates fixtures, I am looking to add a fixture date to the code. $totalRounds = $teams - 1; $matchesPerRound = $teams / 2; $rounds = array(); for ($i = 0; $i < $totalRounds; $i++) { $rounds[$i] = array(); } for ($round = 0; $round < $totalRounds; $round++) { for ($match = 0; $match < $matchesPerRound; $match++) { $home = ($round + $match) % ($teams - 1); $away = ($teams - 1 - $match + $round) % ($teams - 1); // Last team stays in the same place while the others // rotate around it. if ($match == 0) { $away = $teams - 1; } $rounds[$round][$match] = "$user[$home]~$team[$home]@$user[$away]~$team[$away]"; } } $team is the amount of teams in the league. I want to add a variable for every 4 days, and for every round of fixtures generated, I want to add 4 days onto the previous round. For example, if today is 3rd may, i want 3rd may for first fixture, 7th may for second fixture, 11th may for third fixture. By fixture i mean round which includes a set of fixtures!

  Read the article

• Optional Member Objects

  - by David Relihan

  Okay, so you have a load of methods sprinkled around your systems main class. So you do the right thing and refactor by creating a new class and perform move method(s) into a new class. The new class has a single responsibility and all is right with the world again: class Feature { public: Feature(){}; void doSomething(); void doSomething1(); void doSomething2(); }; So now your original class has a member variable of type object: Feature _feature; Which you will call in the main class. Now if you do this many times, you will have many member-objects in your main class. Now these features may or not be required based on configuration so in a way it's costly having all these objects that may or not be needed. Can anyone suggest a way of improving this? At the moment I plan to test in the newly created class if the feature is enabled - so the when a call is made to method I will return if it is not enabled. I could have a pointer to the object and then only call new if feature is enabled - but this means I will have to test before I call a method on it which would be potentially dangerous and not very readable. Would having an auto_ptr to the object improve things: auto_ptr<Feature> feature; Or am I still paying the cost of object invokation even though the object may\or may not be required. BTW - I don't think this is premeature optimisation - I just want to consider the possibilites.

  Read the article

• atk4 advanced crud?

  - by thindery

  I have the following tables: -- ----------------------------------------------------- -- Table `product` -- ----------------------------------------------------- CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `product` ( `id` INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT , `productName` VARCHAR(255) NULL , `s7location` VARCHAR(255) NULL , PRIMARY KEY (`id`) ) ENGINE = InnoDB; -- ----------------------------------------------------- -- Table `pages` -- ----------------------------------------------------- CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `pages` ( `id` INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT , `productID` INT NULL , `pageName` VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL , `isBlank` TINYINT(1) NULL , `pageOrder` INT(11) NULL , `s7page` INT(11) NULL , PRIMARY KEY (`id`) , INDEX `productID` (`productID` ASC) , CONSTRAINT `productID` FOREIGN KEY (`productID` ) REFERENCES `product` (`id` ) ON DELETE NO ACTION ON UPDATE NO ACTION) ENGINE = InnoDB; -- ----------------------------------------------------- -- Table `field` -- ----------------------------------------------------- CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `field` ( `id` INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT , `pagesID` INT NULL , `fieldName` VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL , `fieldType` VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL , `fieldDefaultValue` VARCHAR(255) NULL , PRIMARY KEY (`id`) , INDEX `id` (`pagesID` ASC) , CONSTRAINT `pagesID` FOREIGN KEY (`pagesID` ) REFERENCES `pages` (`id` ) ON DELETE NO ACTION ON UPDATE NO ACTION) ENGINE = InnoDB; I have gotten CRUD to work on the 'product' table. //addproduct.php class page_addproduct extends Page { function init(){ parent::init(); $crud=$this->add('CRUD')->setModel('Product'); } } This works. but I need to get it so that when a new product is created it basically allows me to add new rows into the pages and field tables. For example, the products in the tables are a print product(like a greeting card) that has multiple pages to render. Page 1 may have 2 text fields that can be customized, page 2 may have 3 text fields, a slider to define text size, and a drop down list to pick a color, and page 3 may have five text fields that can all be customized. All three pages (and all form elements, 12 in this example) are associated with 1 product. So when I create the product, could i add a button to create a page for that product, then within the page i can add a button to add a new form element field? I'm still somewhat new to this, so my db structure may not be ideal. i'd appreciate any suggestions and feedback! Could someone point me toward some information, tutorials, documentation, ideas, suggestions, on how I can implement this?

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62  | Next Page >