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  • OEG11gR2 integration with OES11gR2 Authorization with condition

    - by pgoutin
    Introduction This OES use-case has been defined originally by Subbu Devulapalli (http://accessmanagement.wordpress.com/).  Based on this OES museum use-case, I have developed the OEG11gR2 policy able to deal with the OES authorization with condition. From an OEG point of view, the way to deal with OES condition is to provide with the OES request some Environmental / Context Attributes.   Museum Use-Case  All painting in the museum have security sensors, an alarm goes off when a person comes too close a painting. The employee designated for maintenance needs to use their ID and disable the alarm before maintenance. You are the Security Administrator for the museum and you have been tasked with creating authorization policies to manage authorization for different paintings. Your first task is to understand how paintings are organized. Asking around, you are surprised to see that there isno formal process in place, so you need to start from scratch. the museum tracks the following attributes for each painting 1. Name of the work 2. Painter 3. Condition (good/poor) 4. Cost You compile the list of paintings  Name of Painting  Painter  Paint Condition  Cost  Mona Lisa  Leonardo da Vinci  Good  100  Magi  Leonardo da Vinci  Poor  40  Starry Night  Vincent Van Gogh  Poor  75  Still Life  Vincent Van Gogh  Good  25 Being a software geek who doesn’t (yet) understand art, you feel that price(or insurance price) of a painting is the most important criteria. So you feel that based on years-of-experience employees can be tasked with maintaining different paintings. You decide that paintings worth over 50 cost should be only handled by employees with over 20 years of experience and employees with less than 10 years of experience should not handle any painting. Lets us start with policy modeling. All paintings have a common set of attributes and actions, so it will be good to have them under a single Resource Type. Based on this resource type we will create the actual resources. So our high level model is: 1) Resource Type: Painting which has action manage and the following four attributes a) Name of the work b) Painter c) Condition (good/poor) d) Cost 2) To keep things simple lets use painting name for Resource name (in real world you will try to use some identifier which is unique, because in future we may end up with more than one painting which has the same name.) 3) Create Resources based on the previous table 4) Create an identity attribute Experience (Integer) 5) Create the following authorization policies a) Allow employees with over 20 years experience to access all paintings b) Allow employees with 10 – 20 years of experience to access painting which cost less than 50 c) Deny access to all paintings for employees with less than 10 year of experience OES Authorization Configuration We do need to create 2 authorization policies with specific conditions a) Allow employees with over 20 years experience to access all paintings b) Allow employees with 10 – 20 years of experience to access painting which cost less than 50 c) Deny access to all paintings for employees with less than 10 year of experience We don’t need an explicit policy for Deny access to all paintings for employees with less than 10 year of experience, because Oracle Entitlements Server will automatically deny if there is no matching policy. OEG Policy The OEG policy looks like the following The 11g Authorization filter configuration is similar to :  The ${PAINTING_NAME} and ${USER_EXPERIENCE} variables are initialized by the "Retrieve from the HTTP header" filters for testing purpose. That's to say, under Service Explorer, we need to provide 2 attributes "Experience" & "Painting" following the OES 11g Authorization filter described above.

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  • Part 7: EBS Modifications and Flagged Files in R12

    - by volker.eckardt(at)oracle.com
    Let me, based on my previous blog, explain the procedure of flagged files a bit better and facilitate the same with screenshots. Flagged files is a concept within the Oracle eBusiness Suite (EBS) release 12, where you flag a standard deployment file, let’s say a Forms file, a Package or a Java class file. When you run the patch analyse, the list of flagged files will be checked and in case one of these files gets patched, the analyse report will tell you. Note: This functionality is also available in release 11, here it is implemented and known as “applcust.txt”. You can flag as many files as you want, in whatever relationship they are with your customizations. In addition to the flag itself you can add a comment. You should use this comment to point to your customization reference (here XXAR_RPT_066 or XXAP_CUST_030). Consider the following two cases: You have created your own report, based on a standard report. In this case you will flag the report file itself, and the key views used. When a patch updates one of these files, you will be informed and can initiate a proper review and testing. (ex.: first line for ARXCTA.rdf) You have created an extensive personalization and because it is business critical you like to be informed if the page definition gets updated. In this case you register the PG.xml file as flagged file. (ex.: second line below for CreateExtBankAcctPG.xml) The menu path to register flagged files is the following: (R) System Administrator > (M) Oracle Applications Manager > Site Map > Maintenance > Register Flagged Files     Your DBA should now run the Patch Analyse every time he is going to apply a new patch. (R) System Administrator > (M) Oracle Applications Manager > Patch Wizard > Task “Recommend/Analyze Patches” The screenshot above shows the impact summary. For this blog entry the number “2” titled “Flagged Files Changed“ is in our focus. When you click the “2” you will get a similar screen like the first in this blog, showing you exactly the files which will get patched if you continue and apply this patch in this environment right now. Note: It is also shown that just 20% of all patch files will get applied. This situation might be different in case your environments are on a different patch level. For sure also the customization impact might then be different. The flagging step can be done directly in the Oracle Applications Manager.  Our developers are responsible for. To transport such a flag+comment we use a FNDLOAD script. It is suggested to put the flagged files data file directly into your CEMLI patch. Herewith the flagged files registration will be executed right at the same time when the patch gets applied. Process Steps: Developer: Builds CEMLI Reviews code and identifies key standard objects referenced Determines standard object files and flags them Creates FNDLOAD file and adds the same to the CEMLI patch DBA: Executes for every new Oracle standard patch the patch analyse in a representative environment Checks and retrieves the flagged files and comments Sends flagged file list back to development team for analyse / retest Developer: Analyses / Updates / Retests effected CEMLIs Prerequisite: The patch analyse has to be executed in an environment where flagged files have been registered. (If you run the patch analyse in a vanilla or outdated environment (compared to your PROD), the analyse will not be so helpful!) When to start with Flagged files? Start right now utilizing this feature. It is an invest to improve the production stability and fulfil your SLA!   Summary Flagged Files is a very helpful EBS R12 technique when analysing patches. Implement a procedure within your development process to maintain such flags. Let the DBA run the patch analyse in an environment with a similar patch and customization level as your current production.   Related Links: EBS Patching Procedures - Chapter 2-13 - Registered Flagged Files

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  • Randomly placing items script not working - sometimes items spawn in walls, sometimes items spawn in weird locations

    - by Timothy Williams
    I'm trying to figure out a way to randomly spawn items throughout my level, however I need to make sure they won't spawn inside another object (walls, etc.) Here's the code I'm currently using, it's based on the Physics.CheckSphere(); function. This runs OnLevelWasLoaded(); It spawns the items perfectly fine, but sometimes items spawn partway in walls. And sometimes items will spawn outside of the SpawnBox range (no clue why it does that.) //This is what randomly generates all the items. void SpawnItems () { if (Application.loadedLevelName == "Menu" || Application.loadedLevelName == "End Demo") return; //The bottom corner of the box we want to spawn items in. Vector3 spawnBoxBot = Vector3.zero; //Top corner. Vector3 spawnBoxTop = Vector3.zero; //If we're in the dungeon, set the box to the dungeon box and tell the items we want to spawn. if (Application.loadedLevelName == "dungeonScene") { spawnBoxBot = new Vector3 (8.857f, 0, 9.06f); spawnBoxTop = new Vector3 (-27.98f, 2.4f, -15); itemSpawn = dungeonSpawn; } //Spawn all the items. for (i = 0; i != itemSpawn.Length; i ++) { spawnedItem = null; //Zeroes out our random location Vector3 randomLocation = Vector3.zero; //Gets the meshfilter of the item we'll be spawning MeshFilter mf = itemSpawn[i].GetComponent<MeshFilter>(); //Gets it's bounds (see how big it is) Bounds bounds = mf.sharedMesh.bounds; //Get it's radius float maxRadius = new Vector3 (bounds.extents.x + 10f, bounds.extents.y + 10f, bounds.extents.z + 10f).magnitude * 5f; //Set which layer is the no walls layer var NoWallsLayer = 1 << LayerMask.NameToLayer("NoWallsLayer"); //Use that layer as your layermask. LayerMask layerMask = ~(1 << NoWallsLayer); //If we're in the dungeon, certain items need to spawn on certain halves. if (Application.loadedLevelName == "dungeonScene") { if (itemSpawn[i].name == "key2" || itemSpawn[i].name == "teddyBearLW" || itemSpawn[i].name == "teddyBearLW_Admiration" || itemSpawn[i].name == "radio") randomLocation = new Vector3(Random.Range(spawnBoxBot.x, -26.96f), Random.Range(spawnBoxBot.y, spawnBoxTop.y), Random.Range(spawnBoxBot.z, -2.141f)); else randomLocation = new Vector3(Random.Range(spawnBoxBot.x, spawnBoxTop.x), Random.Range(spawnBoxBot.y, spawnBoxTop.y), Random.Range(-2.374f, spawnBoxTop.z)); } //Otherwise just spawn them in the box. else randomLocation = new Vector3(Random.Range(spawnBoxBot.x, spawnBoxTop.x), Random.Range(spawnBoxBot.y, spawnBoxTop.y), Random.Range(spawnBoxBot.z, spawnBoxTop.z)); //This is what actually spawns the item. It checks to see if the spot where we want to instantiate it is clear, and if so it instatiates it. Otherwise we have to repeat the whole process again. if (Physics.CheckSphere(randomLocation, maxRadius, layerMask)) spawnedItem = Instantiate(itemSpawn[i], randomLocation, Random.rotation); else i --; //If we spawned something, set it's name to what it's supposed to be. Removes the (clone) addon. if (spawnedItem != null) spawnedItem.name = itemSpawn[i].name; } } What I'm asking for is if you know what's going wrong with this code that it would spawn stuff in walls. Or, if you could provide me with links/code/ideas of a better way to check if an item will spawn in a wall (some other function than Physics.CheckSphere). I've been working on this for a long time, and nothing I try seems to work. Any help is appreciated.

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  • MPI Cluster Debugger launch integration in VS2010

    Let's assume that you have all the HPC bits installed and that you have existing MPI code (or you created a "Hello World" project using the MPI project template). Of course, you create a single MPI application and at runtime it will correspond to multiple processes (of the same app) launched on multiple nodes (i.e. machines) on the cluster. So how do you debug such a situation by simply hitting the familiar "F5" keystroke (i.e. Debug - Start Debugging)?WATCH IT INSTEAD OF READING ABOUT ITIf you can't bear to read through all the details below, just watch this 19-minute screencast explaining this VS2010 feature. Alternatively, or even additionally, keep on reading.REQUIREMENTWhen you debug an MPI application, you would want the copying of resources from your client machine (where Visual Studio is installed) to each compute node (where Windows HPC Server is installed) to take place automatically for you. 'Resources' in the previous sentence includes your application binary, plus any binary or data dependencies it may have, plus PDBs if needed, plus the debug CRT of the correct bitness, plus msvsmon for remote debugging to work. You would also want, after copying is complete, to have your app and msvsmon launched and attached so that you can hit breakpoints back in Visual Studio on your client machine. All these thing that you would want are delivered in VS2010.STEPS TO F51. In your MPI project where you have placed a breakpoint go to Project Properties - Configuration Properties - Debugging. Ensure the "Debugger to launch" combo box value is set to MPI Cluster Debugger.2. There are a whole bunch of properties here and typically you can ignore all of them except one: Run Environment. By default it is set to run 1 process on your local machine and if you change the number after that to, for example, 4 it will launch 4 processes of your app on your local machine.You want this to run on your cluster though, so go to the dropdown arrow at the end of the Run Environment cell and open it to expose the "Edit Hpc node" menu which opens the Node Selector dialog:In this dialog you can enter (or pick from a list) the cluster head node name and then the number of processes you want to execute on the cluster and then hit OK and… you are done.3. Press F5 and watch your breakpoint get hit (after giving it some time for copying, remote execution, attachment and symbol resolution to take place).GOING DEEPERIn the MPI Cluster Debugger project properties above, you can see many additional properties to the Run Environment. They are all optional, but you may want to understand them in order to fine tune your cluster debugging. Read all about each one of these on the MSDN page Configuration Properties for the MPI Cluster Debugger.In the Node Selector dialog above you can see more options than just the Head Node name and Number of Process to run. They should be self-explanatory but I also cover them in depth in my screencast showing you an example of why you would choose to schedule processes per core versus per node. You can also read about these options on MSDN as part of the page How to: Configure and Launch the MPI Cluster Debugger.To read through an example that touches on MPI project creation, project properties, node selector, and also usage of MPI with OpenMP plus MPI with PPL, read the MSDN page Walkthrough: Launching the MPI Cluster Debugger in Visual Studio 2010.Happy MPI debugging! Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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  • ArchBeat Link-o-Rama Top 10 for September 9-15, 2012

    - by Bob Rhubart
    The Top 10 most-viewed items shared on the OTN ArchBeat Facebook page for the week of September 9-15, 2017. 15 Lessons from 15 Years as a Software Architect | Ingo Rammer In this presentation from the GOTO Conference in Copenhagen, Ingo Rammer shares 15 tips regarding people, complexity and technology that he learned doing software architecture for 15 years. Attend OTN Architect Day – by Architects, for Architects – October 25 You won't need 3D glasses to take in these live presentations (8 sessions, two tracks) on Cloud computing, SOA, and engineered systems. And the ticket price is: Zero. Nothing. Absolutely free. Register now for Oracle Technology Network Architect Day in Los Angeles. Thursday October 25, 2012, 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Sofitel Los Angeles , 8555 Beverly Boulevard , Los Angeles, CA 90048. Cloud API and service designers, stop thinking small | Cloud Computing - InfoWorld "The focus must shift away from fine-grained APIs that provide some type of primitive service, such as pushing data to a block of storage or perhaps making a request to a cloud-rooted database," says InfoWorld's David Linthicum. "To go beyond primitives, you must understand how these services should be used in a much larger architectural context. In other words, you need to understand how businesses will employ these services to form real workplace solutions—inside and outside the enterprise." Adding a runtime picker to a taskflow parameter in WebCenter | Yannick Ongena Oracle ACE Yannick Ongena shows how to create an Oracle WebCenter popup to allow users to "select items or do more complex things." Oracle IAM 11g R2 docs are now available "One of the great things about the new doc set is the inclusion of ePub files," says Fusion Middleware A-Team blogger Chris Johnson. "This means that if you have an iPad you can load up the doc library onto that and read the docs on the couch." Setting up a local Yum Server using the Exalogic ZFS Storage Appliance | Donald A concise technical post from the man named Donald. What's New in Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.2? | The Fat Bloke Sings "One of the trends we've seen is that as the average host platform becomes more powerful, our users are consistently running more and more vm's," says The Fat Bloke. "Some of our users have large libraries of vm's of various vintages, whilst others have groups of vm's that are run together as an assembly of the various tiers in a multi-tiered software solution, for example, a database tier, middleware tier, and front-ends." The new VirtualBox release, a year in the making, addresses the needs of these users, he explains. Configuring Oracle Business Intelligence 11g MDS XML Source Control Management with Git Version Control | Christian Screen Oracle ACE Christian Screen developed this tutorial for those interested in learning how to configure the Oracle Business Intelligence 11g (11.1.1.6) metadata repository for development using the new MDS XML source control management functionality. Identity and Access Management at Oracle Open World 2012 | Brian Eidelman Fusion Middleware A-Team blogger Brian Eideleman highlights three Oracle Openworld sessions that will put Identity and Access Management in the spotlight, and shares a link to the "Focus On: Identity Management" document, a comprehensive listing of Openworld activities also dealing with IM. Starting and stopping WebLogic automatically using Upstart | Chris Johnson "In Ubuntu, RedHat and Oracle Linux there's a new flavor of init called Upstart that all the kids are using," says Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team member Chris Johnson. "It's the new hotness when it comes to making programs into daemons and wiring them to start and stop at appropriate times." Thought for the Day "The purpose of software engineering is to control complexity, not to create it." — Pamela Zave Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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  • ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-08-30

    - by Bob Rhubart
    Next Generation Mobile Clients for Oracle Applications & the role of Oracle Fusion Middleware | Manish Palaparthy Manish Palaparthy examines some of Oracle's mobile applications, and takes a look at the underlying technology. Master Data Management: A Foundation for Big Data Analysis | Manouj Tahiliani "Businesses that have embraced MDM to get a single, enriched and unified view of Master data by resolving semantic discrepancies and augmenting the explicit master data information from within the enterprise with implicit data from outside the enterprise like social profiles will have a leg up in embracing Big Data solutions. This is especially true for large and medium-sized businesses in industries like Retail, Communications, Financial Services, etc that would find it very challenging to get comprehensive analytical coverage and derive long-term success without resolving the limitations of the heterogeneous topology that leads to disparate, fragmented and incomplete master data." — Manouj Tahiliani Architect Day: Boston - Agenda Update Here's the latest updated information on the session schedule and content for Oracle Technology Network Architect Day in Boston, MA on September 12, 2012. Registration is open, but seating is limited. OTN Architect Day: Boston is being held on Wednesday September 12, 2012, 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m., at the Boston Marriott Burlington, One Burlington Mall Road, Burlington, MA 01803. Integrating Coherence & Java EE 6 Applications using ActiveCache | Ricardo Ferreira The seamless integration between Oracle Coherence and Oracle WebLogic Server "provides a comprehensive environment to develop applications without the complexity of extra Java code to manage cache as a dependency," explains Ricardo Ferreira, "since Oracle provides a DI (Dependency Injection) mechanism for Coherence, the same DI mechanism available in standard Java EE applications. This feature is called ActiveCache." Ricardo shows you how to configure ActiveCache in WebLogic and your Java EE application. Cloud Infrastructure has a new standard from the DMTF "Unlike a de facto standard where typically one vendor has change control over the interface, and everyone else has to reverse engineer the inner workings of it, [Cloud Infrastructure Management Interface (CIMI)] is a de jure standard that is under change control of a standards body. One reason the standard took two years to create is that we factored in use cases, requirements and contributed APIs from multiple vendors. These vendors have products shipping today and as a result CIMI has a strong foundation in real world experience." Oracle GoldenGate 11g Release Launch Webcast- September 12 The new release of Oracle GoldenGate 11g is now available for major databases and platforms. Register for this webcast and live Q&A with product experts to learn about the solution's new features. September 12, 2012. 8:00am AM and 10:00AM PT. Speakers: Doug Reid (Director, Product Management, Oracle GoldenGate), Irem Radzik (Director, Product Marketing, Oracle Data Integration Products) Thought for the Day "[When] asking skilled architects…what they do when confronted with highly complex problems… [they] would most likely answer, 'Just use Common Sense.' [A] better expression than 'common sense' is 'contextual sense'—a knowledge of what is reasonable within a given context. Practicing architects through eduction, experience and examples accumulate a considerable body of contextual sense by the time they're entrusted with solving a system-level problem…" — Eberhardt Rechtin (January 16, 1926 – April 14, 2006) Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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  • DataContractSerializer: type is not serializable because it is not public?

    - by Michael B. McLaughlin
    I recently ran into an odd and annoying error when working with the DataContractSerializer class for a WP7 project. I thought I’d share it to save others who might encounter it the same annoyance I had. So I had an instance of  ObservableCollection<T> that I was trying to serialize (with T being a class I wrote for the project) and whenever it would hit the code to save it, it would give me: The data contract type 'ProjectName.MyMagicItemsClass' is not serializable because it is not public. Making the type public will fix this error. Alternatively, you can make it internal, and use the InternalsVisibleToAttribute attribute on your assembly in order to enable serialization of internal members - see documentation for more details. Be aware that doing so has certain security implications. This, of course, was malarkey. I was trying to write an instance of MyAwesomeClass that looked like this: [DataContract] public class MyAwesomeClass { [DataMember] public ObservableCollection<MyMagicItemsClass> GreatItems { get; set; }   [DataMember] public ObservableCollection<MyMagicItemsClass> SuperbItems { get; set; }     public MyAwesomeClass { GreatItems = new ObservableCollection<MyMagicItemsClass>(); SuperbItems = new ObservableCollection<MyMagicItemsClass>(); } }   That’s all well and fine. And MyMagicItemsClass was also public with a parameterless public constructor. It too had DataContractAttribute applied to it and it had DataMemberAttribute applied to all the properties and fields I wanted to serialize. Everything should be cool, but it’s not because I keep getting that “not public” exception. I could tell you about all the things I tried (generating a List<T> on the fly to make sure it wasn’t ObservableCollection<T>, trying to serialize the the Collections directly, moving it all to a separate library project, etc.), but I want to keep this short. In the end, I remembered my the “Debug->Exceptions…” VS menu option that brings up the list of exception-related circumstances under which the Visual Studio debugger will break. I checked the “Thrown” checkbox for “Common Language Runtime Exceptions”, started the project under the debugger, and voilà: the true problem revealed itself. Some of my properties had fairly elaborate setters whose logic I wanted to ignore. So for some of them, I applied an IgnoreDataMember attribute to them and applied the DataMember attribute to the underlying fields instead. All of which, in line with good programming practices, were private. Well, it just so happens that WP7 apps run in a “partial trust” environment and outside of “full trust”-land, DataContractSerializer refuses to serialize or deserialize non-public members. Of course that exception was swallowed up internally by .NET so all I ever saw was that bizarre message about things that I knew for certain were public being “not public”. I changed all the private fields I was serializing to public and everything worked just fine. In hindsight it all makes perfect sense. The serializer uses reflection to build up its graph of the object in order to write it out. In partial trust, you don’t want people using reflection to get at non-public members of an object since there are potential security problems with allowing that (you could break out of the sandbox pretty quickly by reflecting and calling the appropriate methods and cause some havoc by reflecting and setting the appropriate fields in certain circumstances. The fact that you cannot reflect your own assembly seems a bit heavy-handed, but then again I’m not a compiler writer or a framework designer and I have no idea what sorts of difficulties would go into allowing that from a compilation standpoint or what sorts of security problems allowing that could present (if any). So, lesson learned. If you get an incomprehensible exception message, turn on break on all thrown exceptions and try running it again (it might take a couple of tries, depending) and see what pops out. Chances are you’ll find the buried exception that actually explains what was going on. And if you’re getting a weird exception when trying to use DataContractSerializer complaining about public types not being public, chances are you’re trying to serialize a private or protected field/property.

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  • Analytics in an Omni-Channel World

    - by David Dorf
    Retail has been around ever since mankind started bartering.  The earliest transactions were very specific to the individuals buying and selling, then someone had the bright idea to open a store.  Those transactions were a little more generic, but the store owner still knew his customers and what they wanted.  As the chains rolled out, customer intimacy was sacrificed for scale, and retailers began to rely on segments and clusters.  But thanks to the widespread availability of data and the technology to convert said data into information, retailers are getting back to details. The retail industry is following a maturity model for analytics that is has progressed through five stages, each delivering more value than the previous. Store Analytics Brick-and-mortar retailers (and pure-play catalogers as well) that collect anonymous basket-level data are able to get some sense of demand to help with allocation decisions.  Promotions and foot-traffic can be measured to understand marketing effectiveness and perhaps focus groups can help test ideas.  But decisions are influenced by the majority, using faceless customer segments and aggregated industry data points.  Loyalty programs help a little, but in many cases the cost outweighs the benefits. Web Analytics The Web made it much easier to collect data on specific, yet still anonymous consumers using cookies to track visits. Clickstreams and product searches are analyzed to understand the purchase journey, gauge demand, and better understand up-selling opportunities.  Personalization begins to allow retailers target market consumers with recommendations. Cross-Channel Analytics This phase is a minor one, but where most retailers probably sit today.  They are able to use information from one channel to bolster activities in another. However, there are technical challenges combining data silos so its not an easy task.  But for those retailers that are able to perform analytics on both sources of data, the pay-off is pretty nice.  Revenue per customer begins to go up as customers have a better brand experience. Mobile & Social Analytics Big data technologies are enabling a 360-degree view of the customer by incorporating psychographic data from social sites alongside traditional demographic data.  Retailers can track individual preferences, opinions, hobbies, etc. in order to understand a consumer's motivations.  Using mobile devices, consumers can interact with brands anywhere, anytime, accessing deep product information and reviews.  Mobile, combined with a loyalty program, presents an opportunity to put shopping into geographic context, understanding paths to the store, patterns within the store, and be an always-on advertising conduit. Omni-Channel Analytics All this data along with the proper technology represents a new paradigm in which the clock is turned back and retail becomes very personal once again.  Rich, individualized data better illuminates demand, allows for highly localized assortments, and helps tailor up-selling.  Interactions with all channels help build an accurate profile of each consumer, and allows retailers to tailor the retail experience to meet the heightened expectations of today's sophisticated shopper.  And of course this culminates in greater customer satisfaction and business profitability.

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  • What DX level does my graphics card support? Does it go to 11?

    - by Daniel Moth
    Recently I run into a situation that I have run into quite a few times. Someone encounters a machine and the question arises: "Is there a DirectX 11 card in this machine?". Typically the reason you are interested in that is because cards with DirectX 11 drivers fully support DirectCompute (and by extension C++ AMP) for GPGPU programming. The driver specifically is WDDM (1.1 on Windows 7 and Windows 8 introduces WDDM 1.2 with cool new capabilities). There are many ways for figuring out if you have a DirectX11 card, so here are the approaches that you can use, with a bonus right at the end of the post. Run DxDiag WindowsKey + R, type DxDiag and hit Enter. That is the DirectX diagnostic tool, which unfortunately, only tells you on the "System" tab what is the highest version of DirectX installed on your machine. So if it reports DirectX 11, that doesn't mean you have a DX11 driver! The "Display" tab has a promising "DDI version" label, but unfortunately that doesn't seem to be accurate on the machines I've tested it with (or I may be misinterpreting its use). Either way, this tool is not the one you want for this purpose, although it is good for telling you the WDDM version among other things. Use the Microsoft hardware page There is a Microsoft Windows 7 compatibility center, that lists all hardware (tip: use the advanced search) and you could try and locate your device there… good luck. Use Wikipedia or the hardware vendor's website Use the Wikipedia page for the vendor cards, for both nvidia and amd. Often this information will also be in the specifications for the cards on the IHV site, but is is nice that wikipedia has a single page per vendor that you can search etc. There is a column in the tables for API support where you can see the DirectX version. Check if it is one of these recommended DX11 cards You may not have a DirectX 11 card and are interested in purchasing one. While I am in no position to make recommendations, I will list here some cards from two big IHVs that we know are DirectX 11 capable. Some AMD (aka ATI) cards Low end, inexpensive DX11 hardware: Radeon 5450, 5550, 6450, 6570 Mid range (decent perf, single precision): Radeon 5750, 5770, 6770, 6790 High end (capable of double precision): Radeon 5850, 5870, 6950, 6970 Single precision APUs: AMD E-Series APUs AMD A-Series APUs Some NVIDIA cards Low end, inexpensive DX11 hardware: GeForce GT430, GT 440, GT520, GTS 450 Quadro 400, 600 Mid-range (decent perf, single precision): GeForce GTX 460, GTX 550 Ti, GTX 560, GTX 560 Ti Quadro 2000 High end (capable of double precision): GeForce GTX 480, GTX 570, GTX 580, GTX 590, GTX 595 Quadro 4000, 5000, 6000 Tesla C2050, C2070, C2075 Get the DirectX SDK and run DirectX Caps Viewer Download and install the June 2010 DirectX SDK. As part of that you now have the DirectX Capabilities Viewer utility (find it in your start menu by searching for "DirectX Caps Viewer", the filename is DXCapsViewer.exe). It will list all your devices (emulated, and real hardware ones) under the first node. Expand the hardware entries and then expand again the Direct3D 11 folder. If you see D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL_11_ under that, then your card supports feature level 11 which means it supports DirectCompute and C++ AMP. In the following screenshot of one of my old laptops, the card only goes to feature level 10. Run a utility from the web that just tells you! Of course, writing some C++ AMP code that enumerates accelerators and lists the ones that are capable is trivial. However that requires that you have redistributed the runtime, so a more broadly applicable approach is to use the DX APIs directly to enumerate the DX11 capable cards. That is exactly what the development lead for C++ AMP has done and he describes and shares that utility at this post. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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  • HOWTO Turn off SPARC T4 or Intel AES-NI crypto acceleration.

    - by darrenm
    Since we released hardware crypto acceleration for SPARC T4 and Intel AES-NI support we have had a common question come up: 'How do I test without the hardware crypto acceleration?'. Initially this came up just for development use so developers can do unit testing on a machine that has hardware offload but still cover the code paths for a machine that doesn't (our integration and release testing would run on all supported types of hardware anyway).  I've also seen it asked in a customer context too so that we can show that there is a performance gain from the hardware crypto acceleration, (not just the fact that SPARC T4 much faster performing processor than T3) and measure what it is for their application. With SPARC T2/T3 we could easily disable the hardware crypto offload by running 'cryptoadm disable provider=n2cp/0'.  We can't do that with SPARC T4 or with Intel AES-NI because in both of those classes of processor the encryption doesn't require a device driver instead it is unprivileged user land callable instructions. Turns out there is away to do this by using features of the Solaris runtime loader (ld.so.1). First I need to expose a little bit of implementation detail about how the Solaris Cryptographic Framework is implemented in Solaris 11.  One of the new Solaris 11 features of the linker/loader is the ability to have a single ELF object that has multiple different implementations of the same functions that are selected at runtime based on the capabilities of the machine.  The alternate to this is having the application coded to call getisax() and make the choice itself.  We use this functionality of the linker/loader when we build the userland libraries for the Solaris Cryptographic Framework (specifically libmd.so, and the unfortunately misnamed due to historical reasons libsoftcrypto.so) The Solaris linker/loader allows control of a lot of its functionality via environment variables, we can use that to control the version of the cryptographic functions we run.  To do this we simply export the LD_HWCAP environment variable with values that tell ld.so.1 to not select the HWCAP section matching certain features even if isainfo says they are present.  For SPARC T4 that would be: export LD_HWCAP="-aes -des -md5 -sha256 -sha512 -mont -mpul" and for Intel systems with AES-NI support: export LD_HWCAP="-aes" This will work for consumers of the Solaris Cryptographic Framework that use the Solaris PKCS#11 libraries or use libmd.so interfaces directly.  It also works for the Oracle DB and Java JCE.  However does not work for the default enabled OpenSSL "t4" or "aes-ni" engines (unfortunately) because they do explicit calls to getisax() themselves rather than using multiple ELF cap sections. However we can still use OpenSSL to demonstrate this by explicitly selecting "pkcs11" engine  using only a single process and thread.  $ openssl speed -engine pkcs11 -evp aes-128-cbc ... type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes aes-128-cbc 54170.81k 187416.00k 489725.70k 805445.63k 1018880.00k $ LD_HWCAP="-aes" openssl speed -engine pkcs11 -evp aes-128-cbc ... type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes aes-128-cbc 29376.37k 58328.13k 79031.55k 86738.26k 89191.77k We can clearly see the difference this makes in the case where AES offload to the SPARC T4 was disabled. The "t4" engine is faster than the pkcs11 one because there is less overhead (again on a SPARC T4-1 using only a single process/thread - using -multi you will get even bigger numbers). $ openssl speed -evp aes-128-cbc ... type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes aes-128-cbc 85526.61k 89298.84k 91970.30k 92662.78k 92842.67k Yet another cool feature of the Solaris linker/loader, thanks Rod and Ali. Note these above openssl speed output is not intended to show the actual performance of any particular benchmark just that there is a significant improvement from using hardware acceleration on SPARC T4. For cryptographic performance benchmarks see the http://blogs.oracle.com/BestPerf/ postings.

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  • Remote Desktop (Vino-Server) connects but display doesn't work?

    - by kmassada
    Ubuntu comes default with vino-server, I can remote into my machine, and connect to it, however, the display inside my remote client, is a mirror of my own desktop. I tried using one monitor, thinking that's what is the issue but still won't work. (vino-server:3608): EggSMClient-CRITICAL **: egg_sm_client_set_mode: assertion `global_client == NULL || global_client_mode == EGG_SM_CLIENT_MODE_DISABLED' failed 25/07/2012 12:23:58 PM Autoprobing TCP port in (all) network interface 25/07/2012 12:23:58 PM Listening IPv6://[::]:5900 25/07/2012 12:23:58 PM Listening IPv4://0.0.0.0:5900 25/07/2012 12:23:58 PM Autoprobing selected port 5900 25/07/2012 12:23:58 PM Advertising security type: 'TLS' (18) 25/07/2012 12:23:58 PM Re-binding socket to listen for VNC connections on TCP port 5900 in (all) interface 25/07/2012 12:23:58 PM Listening IPv6://[::]:5900 25/07/2012 12:23:58 PM Listening IPv4://0.0.0.0:5900 25/07/2012 12:23:58 PM Clearing securityTypes 25/07/2012 12:23:58 PM Advertising security type: 'TLS' (18) 25/07/2012 12:23:58 PM Clearing securityTypes 25/07/2012 12:23:58 PM Advertising security type: 'TLS' (18) 25/07/2012 12:23:58 PM Advertising authentication type: 'No Authentication' (1) 25/07/2012 12:23:58 PM Re-binding socket to listen for VNC connections on TCP port 5900 in (all) interface 25/07/2012 12:23:58 PM Listening IPv6://[::]:5900 25/07/2012 12:23:58 PM Listening IPv4://0.0.0.0:5900 25/07/2012 12:23:58 PM Clearing securityTypes 25/07/2012 12:23:58 PM Clearing authTypes 25/07/2012 12:23:58 PM Advertising security type: 'TLS' (18) 25/07/2012 12:23:58 PM Advertising authentication type: 'VNC Authentication' (2) 25/07/2012 12:23:58 PM Clearing securityTypes 25/07/2012 12:23:58 PM Clearing authTypes 25/07/2012 12:23:58 PM Advertising security type: 'TLS' (18) 25/07/2012 12:23:58 PM Advertising authentication type: 'VNC Authentication' (2) 25/07/2012 12:23:58 PM Advertising security type: 'VNC Authentication' (2) (vino-server:3608): LIBDBUSMENU-GLIB-WARNING **: Trying to remove a child that doesn't believe we're it's parent. (vino-server:3608): LIBDBUSMENU-GLIB-WARNING **: Trying to remove a child that doesn't believe we're it's parent. 25/07/2012 12:24:16 PM [IPv4] Got connection from client static-XXXX.bltmmd.fios.verizon.net 25/07/2012 12:24:16 PM other clients: 25/07/2012 12:24:29 PM Client Protocol Version 3.7 25/07/2012 12:24:29 PM Advertising security type 18 25/07/2012 12:24:29 PM Advertising security type 2 25/07/2012 12:24:30 PM Client returned security type 18 25/07/2012 12:24:30 PM Advertising authentication type 2 25/07/2012 12:24:30 PM Client returned authentication type 2 25/07/2012 12:24:37 PM rfbProcessClientNormalMessage: ignoring unknown encoding type -258 25/07/2012 12:24:37 PM Enabling NewFBSize protocol extension for client static-XXXX.bltmmd.fios.verizon.net 25/07/2012 12:24:37 PM rfbProcessClientNormalMessage: ignoring unknown encoding type 1464686185 25/07/2012 12:24:37 PM rfbProcessClientNormalMessage: ignoring unknown encoding type -259 25/07/2012 12:24:37 PM rfbProcessClientNormalMessage: ignoring unknown encoding type -257 (vino-server:3608): LIBDBUSMENU-GLIB-WARNING **: Trying to remove a child that doesn't believe we're it's parent. 25/07/2012 12:24:55 PM Client static-XXXX.bltmmd.fios.verizon.net gone 25/07/2012 12:24:55 PM Statistics: 25/07/2012 12:24:55 PM key events received 0, pointer events 80 25/07/2012 12:24:55 PM framebuffer updates 43, rectangles 152, bytes 292401 25/07/2012 12:24:55 PM tight rectangles 152, bytes 292401 25/07/2012 12:24:55 PM raw bytes equivalent 11621332, compression ratio 39.744502 25/07/2012 12:25:21 PM [IPv4] Got connection from client static-XXXX.bltmmd.fios.verizon.net 25/07/2012 12:25:21 PM other clients: 25/07/2012 12:25:28 PM Client Protocol Version 3.7 25/07/2012 12:25:28 PM Advertising security type 18 25/07/2012 12:25:28 PM Advertising security type 2 25/07/2012 12:25:28 PM Client returned security type 18 25/07/2012 12:25:29 PM Advertising authentication type 2 25/07/2012 12:25:29 PM Client returned authentication type 2 25/07/2012 12:25:37 PM rfbProcessClientNormalMessage: ignoring unknown encoding type -258 25/07/2012 12:25:37 PM Enabling NewFBSize protocol extension for client static-XXXX.bltmmd.fios.verizon.net 25/07/2012 12:25:37 PM rfbProcessClientNormalMessage: ignoring unknown encoding type 1464686185 25/07/2012 12:25:37 PM rfbProcessClientNormalMessage: ignoring unknown encoding type -259 25/07/2012 12:25:37 PM rfbProcessClientNormalMessage: ignoring unknown encoding type -257 (vino-server:3608): LIBDBUSMENU-GLIB-WARNING **: Trying to remove a child that doesn't believe we're it's parent. 25/07/2012 12:25:47 PM Client static-XXXX.bltmmd.fios.verizon.net gone 25/07/2012 12:25:47 PM Statistics: 25/07/2012 12:25:47 PM key events received 0, pointer events 7283 25/07/2012 12:25:47 PM framebuffer updates 27, rectangles 82, bytes 113354 25/07/2012 12:25:47 PM tight rectangles 82, bytes 113354 25/07/2012 12:25:47 PM raw bytes equivalent 5831432, compression ratio 51.444431 couple of things I notice, the following error occurs over and over again. the menu error seems to be caused by ubuntu, similar problems occur http://trac.wxwidgets.org/ticket/14292, (vino-server:3608): LIBDBUSMENU-GLIB-WARNING **: Trying to remove a child that doesn't believe we're it's parent. the second one also seem to be a display related issue, can't seem to figure out a solution. I really rather try to fix this issue than have to use the other vnc clients most suggest. (vino-server:3608): EggSMClient-CRITICAL **: egg_sm_client_set_mode: assertion `global_client == NULL || global_client_mode == EGG_SM_CLIENT_MODE_DISABLED' failed

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  • Type checking and recursive types (Writing the Y combinator in Haskell/Ocaml)

    - by beta
    When explaining the Y combinator in the context of Haskell, it's usually noted that the straight-forward implementation won't type-check in Haskell because of its recursive type. For example, from Rosettacode [1]: The obvious definition of the Y combinator in Haskell canot be used because it contains an infinite recursive type (a = a -> b). Defining a data type (Mu) allows this recursion to be broken. newtype Mu a = Roll { unroll :: Mu a -> a } fix :: (a -> a) -> a fix = \f -> (\x -> f (unroll x x)) $ Roll (\x -> f (unroll x x)) And indeed, the “obvious” definition does not type check: ?> let fix f g = (\x -> \a -> f (x x) a) (\x -> \a -> f (x x) a) g <interactive>:10:33: Occurs check: cannot construct the infinite type: t2 = t2 -> t0 -> t1 Expected type: t2 -> t0 -> t1 Actual type: (t2 -> t0 -> t1) -> t0 -> t1 In the first argument of `x', namely `x' In the first argument of `f', namely `(x x)' In the expression: f (x x) a <interactive>:10:57: Occurs check: cannot construct the infinite type: t2 = t2 -> t0 -> t1 In the first argument of `x', namely `x' In the first argument of `f', namely `(x x)' In the expression: f (x x) a (0.01 secs, 1033328 bytes) The same limitation exists in Ocaml: utop # let fix f g = (fun x a -> f (x x) a) (fun x a -> f (x x) a) g;; Error: This expression has type 'a -> 'b but an expression was expected of type 'a The type variable 'a occurs inside 'a -> 'b However, in Ocaml, one can allow recursive types by passing in the -rectypes switch: -rectypes Allow arbitrary recursive types during type-checking. By default, only recursive types where the recursion goes through an object type are supported. By using -rectypes, everything works: utop # let fix f g = (fun x a -> f (x x) a) (fun x a -> f (x x) a) g;; val fix : (('a -> 'b) -> 'a -> 'b) -> 'a -> 'b = <fun> utop # let fact_improver partial n = if n = 0 then 1 else n*partial (n-1);; val fact_improver : (int -> int) -> int -> int = <fun> utop # (fix fact_improver) 5;; - : int = 120 Being curious about type systems and type inference, this raises some questions I'm still not able to answer. First, how does the type checker come up with the type t2 = t2 -> t0 -> t1? Having come up with that type, I guess the problem is that the type (t2) refers to itself on the right side? Second, and perhaps most interesting, what is the reason for the Haskell/Ocaml type systems to disallow this? I guess there is a good reason since Ocaml also will not allow it by default even if it can deal with recursive types if given the -rectypes switch. If these are really big topics, I'd appreciate pointers to relevant literature. [1] http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Y_combinator#Haskell

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  • Restrict number of characters to be typed for af:autoSuggestBehavior

    - by Arunkumar Ramamoorthy
    When using AutoSuggestBehavior for a UI Component, the auto suggest list is displayed as soon as the user starts typing in the field. In this article, we will find how to restrict the autosuggest list to be displayed till the user types in couple of characters. This would be more useful in the low latency networks and also the autosuggest list is bigger. We could display a static message to let the user know that they need to type in more characters to get a list for picking a value from. Final output we would expect is like the below image Lets see how we can implement this. Assuming we have an input text for the users to enter the country name and an autosuggest behavior is added to it. <af:inputText label="Country" id="it1"> <af:autoSuggestBehavior /> </af:inputText> Also, assuming we have a VO (we'll name it as CountryView for this example), with a view criteria to filter out the VO based on the bind variable passed. Now, we would generate View Impl class from the java node (including bind variables) and then expose the setter method of the bind variable to client interface. In the View layer, we would create a tree binding for the VO and the method binding for the setter method of the bind variable exposed above, in the pagedef file As we've already added an input text and an autosuggestbehavior for the test, we would not need to build the suggested items for the autosuggest list.Let us add a method in the backing bean to return us List of select items to be bound to the autosuggest list. padding: 5px; background-color: #fbfbfb; min-height: 40px; width: 544px; height: 168px; overflow: auto;"> public List onSuggest(String searchTerm) { ArrayList<SelectItem> selectItems = new ArrayList<SelectItem>(); if(searchTerm.length()>1) { //get access to the binding context and binding container at runtime BindingContext bctx = BindingContext.getCurrent(); BindingContainer bindings = bctx.getCurrentBindingsEntry(); //set the bind variable value that is used to filter the View Object //query of the suggest list. The View Object instance has a View //Criteria assigned OperationBinding setVariable = (OperationBinding) bindings.get("setBind_CountryName"); setVariable.getParamsMap().put("value", searchTerm); setVariable.execute(); //the data in the suggest list is queried by a tree binding. JUCtrlHierBinding hierBinding = (JUCtrlHierBinding) bindings.get("CountryView1"); //re-query the list based on the new bind variable values hierBinding.executeQuery(); //The rangeSet, the list of queries entries, is of type //JUCtrlValueBndingRef. List<JUCtrlValueBindingRef> displayDataList = hierBinding.getRangeSet(); for (JUCtrlValueBindingRef displayData : displayDataList){ Row rw = displayData.getRow(); //populate the SelectItem list selectItems.add(new SelectItem( (String)rw.getAttribute("Name"), (String)rw.getAttribute("Name"))); } } else{ SelectItem a = new SelectItem("","Type in two or more characters..","",true); selectItems.add(a); } return selectItems; } So, what we are doing in the above method is, to check the length of the search term and if it is more than 1 (i.e 2 or more characters), the return the actual suggest list. Otherwise, create a read only select item new SelectItem("","Type in two or more characters..","",true); and add it to the list of suggested items to be displayed. The last parameter for the SelectItem (boolean) is to make it as readOnly, so that users would not be able to select this static message from the displayed list. Finally, bind this method to the input text's autosuggestbehavior's suggestedItems property. <af:inputText label="Country" id="it1"> <af:autoSuggestBehavior suggestedItems="#{AutoSuggestBean.onSuggest}"/> </af:inputText>

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  • DISA Cross Domain Enterprise Solutions on the NetBeans Platform

    - by Geertjan
    Bray 2.0 is a tool based on the NetBeans Platform that assists in creating valid Data Flow Configuration (DFC) files. The DFC Specification was developed to provide a standardized way for defining, validating, and approving data flows for use on cross-domain guarding solutions. A DFC document specifies key entities such as security domains, guards that facilitate data between security domains, data flows that describe how data travels between security domains, filters that transform and validate the data and more. Related info: http://www.disa.mil/Services/Information-Assurance/Cross-Domain-Solutions The Bray product is in development at Fulcrum IT (http://www.fulcrumco.com). The DFC Specification and Bray were developed in support of the US Department of Defense. Bray 2.0 marks the first release of Bray on the NetBeans Platform and utilizes a number of features that are core to the NetBeans Platform: Modular plugability. Bray consumers can integrate their own tools, file types, and more into the product with relative ease. Robust UI. The NetBeans Platform intuitive UI makes it easy to access and manipulate multiple aspects of a DFC. Explorer. The Explorer is a key component that makes the DFC XML easy to traverse, edit, and find errors. Context-sensitive help. JavaHelp can be readily integrated for the product as well as all the UI within. Editors. Any external file can be added to a DFC. Users can register their own editors or use the provided NetBeans editors to edit files. Printing. The NetBeans Platform Print API makes it easy to determine what should be printed and how.   A screenshot: Bray 2.0 provides a lot of key features in developing valid, robust DFC files:  XML validation. A DFC can be validated against the DFC schema specification. DFC Check List. An interactive, minimal guide for creating a complete DFC. Summary Window. The Summary Window functions like the Navigator in NetBeans IDE. The current "item of interest" is checked against various business rules and provides the ability to quickly find and fix errors. Change Log. Bray audits every change to a DFC and places them in a change log for users to peruse. Comments. Users can optionally add comments for other users to see. Digital signatures. DFC files can be digitally signed. A signature history and signature validation is provided in Bray. Pluggable security schemes. Bray ships with plain text and IC-ISM security schemes. If needed, users can integrate additional ones.  ...and more to come! New features for Bray are constantly in development including use of the NetBeans Visual Library, language support, and more. More screenshots:

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  • First Impressions of a MacBook (from a PC guy)

    - by dgreen
    Disclaimer: I've been a PC guy my entire working career. I'd probably characterize myself as a power user. Never afraid to bust out the console line. But working with a Mac is totally foreign to me. So for those Mac guys who are curious, this is how your world appears from the outside to a computer literate person :)My Macbook Air has arrived! And it's a thing of beauty:First, the specs: 13" MacBook Air, 2.0GHz Core i7 processor. Upgraded to 8GB of RAM for an additional $100, SSD flash storage  = 256GB. The plan is ultimately to use this baby for some iOS development but also some decent lifting in Windows with Visual Studio. Done a lot of reading  and between VMWare Fusion, Parallels and Bootcamp...I'm going to go with VMWare Fusion for $49.99And now my impressions (please re-read disclaimer before proceeding!):I open the box and am trying to understand exactly how the magsafe connector works (and how to disconnect it).  Why does it have two socket outlet plugs? Who knows.  I feel like Hansel in Zoolander. The files are "in" the computer.Stuck in my external hard drive (usb). So how do I get to the files? To the Googles!Argh...it can't read my external NTFS drive. Fat32 can't support field over 4GB…problematic since some of my existing VMWare image files are much larger than 4GB. Didn't see this coming.Three year old loves iPhoto. Super easy to use. Don't even know what I'm doing but I've already (accidentally) discovered the image filtering options. Fun stuff.First thing I downloaded ever => Chrome. I need something to ground me, something familiar. My token, if you will (sorry, gratuitous Inception joke).Ok, I get it… Finder == windows explorer. But where is my hierarchical structure? I miss the tree :(On that note, yeah…how do I see what "path" my files reside in? I'm afraid to know the answer. You know what scares more though…this notion of a smart folder. Feel like the godfather - just get the job done, I don't care how you handle it, I don't want to know...just get it done. What the hell is AirDrop?Mail…just worked. Still in shock that they have a free client for yahoo mail (please no yahoo jokes).mail -> deleting a message takes 5 seconds. Have they heard of async?"Command" key instead of "Control" ok, then what the $%&^! is the control key for then"aliases" == shortcuts I thinkI don't see the file system. And I'm scared. All these things I'm downloading…these .dmg files (bad name) where are they going? Can't seem to delete when they're doneUgh...realized need to buy a mini-to-vga adaptor if I want to use my external monitor ($13 on ebay, $39 in apple store).Windows docking is trickiest for me…this notion of detached windows with a menu bar at the top. I don't like this paradigm, it's confusing. But maybe because I've been using Windows for too long.Evernote, Dropbox desktop clients seem almost identical…few quirks here and there I need to get used to.iTunes is still a bit gross. In a weird way it's actually worse on a Mac if thats possible. This is not the MacBook's fault…this is a software design issue. Overall: UI will take some getting used to. Can't decide if this represents the future and I'm stuck in the past…or this is the past and I've been spoiled by the future (which would be Windows…don't be hating I happen to be very productive in Win7)  So there you go - my 90 minute first impression of the MacBook universe.

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  • How Can I Start an Incognito/Private Browsing Window from a Shortcut?

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    Sometimes you just want to pop the browser open for a quick web search without reloading all your saved tabs; read on as we show a fellow reader how to make a quick private-browsing shortcut. Dear How-To Geek, I came up with a solution to my problem, but I need your help implementing it. I typically have a ton of tabs open in my web browser and, when I need to free up system resources when gaming or using a resource intense application, I shut down the web browser. The problem arises when I find myself needing to do quick web search while the browser is shut down. I don’t want to open it up, load all the tabs, and waste the resources in doing so all for a quick Google search. The perfect solution, it would seem, is to open up one of Chrome’s Incognito windows: it loads separate, it won’t open up all the old tabs, and it’s perfect for a quick Google search. Is there a way to launch Chrome with a single Incognito window open without having to open the browser in the normal mode (and load the bazillion tabs I have sitting there)? Sincerely, Tab Crazy That’s a rather clever work around to your problem. Since you’ve already done the hard work of figuring out the solution you need, we’re more than happy to help you across the finish line. The magic you seek is available via what are known as “command line options” which allow you to add additional parameters and switches onto a command.   By appending the command the Chrome shortcut uses, we can easily tell it to launch in Incognito mode. (And, for other readers following along at home, we can do the same thing with other browsers like Firefox). First, let’s look at Chrome’s default shortcut: If you right click on it and select the properties menu, you’ll see where the shortcut points: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" If you run that shortcut, you’ll open up normal browsing mode in Chrome and your saved tabs will all load. What we need to do is use the command line switches available for Chrome and tell it that we want it to launch an Incognito window instead. Doing so is as simple as appending the end of the “Target” box’s command line entry with -incognito, like so: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" -incognito We’d also recommend changing the icon to it’s easy to tell the default Chrome shortcut apart from your new Incognito shortcut. When you’re done, make sure to hit OK/Apply at the button to save the changes. You can recreate the same private-browsing-shortcut effect with other major web browsers too. Repeat shortcut editing steps we highlighted above, but change out the -incognito with -private (for Firefox and Internet Explorer) and -newprivatetab (for Opera). With just a simple command line switch applied, you can now launch a lightweight single browser window for those quick web searches without having to stop your game and load up all your saved tabs. Have a pressing tech question? Email us at [email protected] and we’ll do our best to answer it.

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  • Oracle Announces Release of PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 Feature Pack 2

    - by Jay Zuckert
    Big things sometimes come in small packages.  Today Oracle announced the availability of PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 Feature Pack 2 which delivers a new HR self service user experience that fundamentally changes the way managers and employees interact with the HCM system.  Earlier this year we reviewed a number of new concept designs with our Customer Advisory Boards.  With the accelerated feature pack development cycle we have adopted, these innovations are  now available to all 9.1 customers without the need for an upgrade.   There are no new products that need to be licensed for the capabilities below. For more details on Feature Pack 2, please see the Oracle press release. Included in Feature Pack 2 is a new search-based menu-free navigation that allows managers to search for employees by name and take actions directly from the secure search results.  For example, a manager can now simply type in part of an employee’s first or last name and receive meaningful results from documents related to performance, compensation, learning, recruiting, career planning and more.   Delivered actions can be initiated directly from these search results and the actions are securely tied to HCM security and user role.  The feature pack also includes new pages that will enable managers to be more productive by aggregating key employee data into a single page.  The new Manager Dashboard and Talent Summary provide a consolidated view of data related to a manager’s team and individual team members, respectively.   The Manager Dashboard displays information relevant to their direct reports including team learning, objective alignment, alerts, and pending approvals requiring their attention.  The Talent Summary provides managers with an aggregated view of talent management-related data for an individual employee including performance history, salary history, succession options, total rewards, and competencies.   The information displayed in both the Manager Dashboard and Talent Summary is configurable by system administrators and can be personalized by each of your managers. Other Feature Pack 2 enhancements allow organizations to administer Matrix or Dotted-Line Relationship Management, which addresses the challenge of tracking and maintaining project-based organizations that cut across the enterprise and geographic regions.  From within the Company Directory and Org Viewer organization charts, managers now have access to manager self-service transactions from related actions.  More than 70 manager and employee self-service transactions have been tied into the related action framework accessible from Org Viewer, Manager Dashboard, Talent Summary and Secure Enterprise Search (SES) results.  In addition to making it easier to access manager self-service transactions, the feature pack delivers streamlined transaction pages making everyday tasks such as promoting an employee faster and more efficient. With the delivery of PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 Feature Pack 2, Oracle continues to deliver on its commitment to our PeopleSoft customers.  With this feature pack, HCM 9.1 customers will be able to deploy the newest functionality quickly, without a major release upgrade, and realize added value from their existing PeopleSoft investment.    For customers newly deploying 9.1, a new download with all of Feature Pack 2  will be available early next year.   This will aslo include recertified upgrade paths from 8.8, 8.9 and 9.0, for customers in the upgrade process.

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  • VirtualBox 3.2 is released! A Red Letter Day?

    - by Fat Bloke
    Big news today! A new release of VirtualBox packed full of innovation and improvements. Over the next few weeks we'll take a closer look at some of these new features in a lot more depth, but today we'll whet your appetite with the headline descriptions. To start with, we should point out that this is the first Oracle-branded version which makes today a real Red-letter day ;-)  Oracle VM VirtualBox 3.2 Version 3.2 moves VirtualBox forward in 3 main areas ( handily, all beginning with "P" ) : performance, power and supported guest operating system platforms.  Let's take a look: Performance New Latest Intel hardware support - Harnessing the latest in chip-level support for virtualization, VirtualBox 3.2 supports new Intel Core i5 and i7 processor and Intel Xeon processor 5600 Series support for Unrestricted Guest Execution bringing faster boot times for everything from Windows to Solaris guests; New Large Page support - Reducing the size and overhead of key system resources, Large Page support delivers increased performance by enabling faster lookups and shorter table creation times. New In-hypervisor Networking - Significant optimization of the networking subsystem has reduced context switching between guests and host, increasing network throughput by up to 25%. New New Storage I/O subsystem - VirtualBox 3.2 offers a completely re-worked virtual disk subsystem which utilizes asynchronous I/O to achieve high-performance whilst maintaining high data integrity; New Remote Video Acceleration - The unique built-in VirtualBox Remote Display Protocol (VRDP), which is primarily used in virtual desktop infrastructure deployments, has been enhanced to deliver video acceleration. This delivers a rich user experience coupled with reduced computational expense, which is vital when servers are running hundreds of virtual machines; Power New Page Fusion - Traditional Page Sharing techniques have suffered from long and expensive cache construction as pages are scrutinized as candidates for de-duplication. Taking a smarter approach, VirtualBox Page Fusion uses intelligence in the guest virtual machine to determine much more rapidly and accurately those pages which can be eliminated thereby increasing the capacity or vm density of the system; New Memory Ballooning- Ballooning provides another method to increase vm density by allowing the memory of one guest to be recouped and made available to others; New Multiple Virtual Monitors - VirtualBox 3.2 now supports multi-headed virtual machines with up to 8 virtual monitors attached to a guest. Each virtual monitor can be a host window, or be mapped to the hosts physical monitors; New Hot-plug CPU's - Modern operating systems such Windows Server 2008 x64 Data Center Edition or the latest Linux server platforms allow CPUs to be dynamically inserted into a system to provide incremental computing power while the system is running. Version 3.2 introduces support for Hot-plug vCPUs, allowing VirtualBox virtual machines to be given more power, with zero-downtime of the guest; New Virtual SAS Controller - VirtualBox 3.2 now offers a virtual SAS controller, enabling it to run the most demanding of high-end guests; New Online Snapshot Merging - Snapshots are powerful but can eat up disk space and need to be pruned from time to time. Historically, machines have needed to be turned off to delete or merge snapshots but with VirtualBox 3.2 this operation can be done whilst the machines are running. This allows sophisticated system management with minimal interruption of operations; New OVF Enhancements - VirtualBox has supported the OVF standard for virtual machine portability for some time. Now with 3.2, VirtualBox specific configuration data is also stored in the standard allowing richer virtual machine definitions without compromising portability; New Guest Automation - The Guest Automation APIs allow host-based logic to drive operations in the guest; Platforms New USB Keyboard and Mouse - Support more guests that require USB input devices; New Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.5 - Support for the latest version of Oracle's flagship Linux platform; New Ubuntu 10.04 ("Lucid Lynx") - Support for both the desktop and server version of the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution; And as a man once said, "just one more thing" ... New Mac OS X (experimental) - On Apple hardware only, support for creating virtual machines run Mac OS X. All in all this is a pretty powerful release packed full of innovation and speedups. So what are you waiting for?  -FB 

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  • Columnstore Case Study #1: MSIT SONAR Aggregations

    - by aspiringgeek
    Preamble This is the first in a series of posts documenting big wins encountered using columnstore indexes in SQL Server 2012 & 2014.  Many of these can be found in this deck along with details such as internals, best practices, caveats, etc.  The purpose of sharing the case studies in this context is to provide an easy-to-consume quick-reference alternative. Why Columnstore? If we’re looking for a subset of columns from one or a few rows, given the right indexes, SQL Server can do a superlative job of providing an answer. If we’re asking a question which by design needs to hit lots of rows—DW, reporting, aggregations, grouping, scans, etc., SQL Server has never had a good mechanism—until columnstore. Columnstore indexes were introduced in SQL Server 2012. However, they're still largely unknown. Some adoption blockers existed; yet columnstore was nonetheless a game changer for many apps.  In SQL Server 2014, potential blockers have been largely removed & they're going to profoundly change the way we interact with our data.  The purpose of this series is to share the performance benefits of columnstore & documenting columnstore is a compelling reason to upgrade to SQL Server 2014. App: MSIT SONAR Aggregations At MSIT, performance & configuration data is captured by SCOM. We archive much of the data in a partitioned data warehouse table in SQL Server 2012 for reporting via an application called SONAR.  By definition, this is a primary use case for columnstore—report queries requiring aggregation over large numbers of rows.  New data is refreshed each night by an automated table partitioning mechanism—a best practices scenario for columnstore. The Win Compared to performance using classic indexing which resulted in the expected query plan selection including partition elimination vs. SQL Server 2012 nonclustered columnstore, query performance increased significantly.  Logical reads were reduced by over a factor of 50; both CPU & duration improved by factors of 20 or more.  Other than creating the columnstore index, no special modifications or tweaks to the app or databases schema were necessary to achieve the performance improvements.  Existing nonclustered indexes were rendered superfluous & were deleted, thus mitigating maintenance challenges such as defragging as well as conserving disk capacity. Details The table provides the raw data & summarizes the performance deltas. Logical Reads (8K pages) CPU (ms) Durn (ms) Columnstore 160,323 20,360 9,786 Conventional Table & Indexes 9,053,423 549,608 193,903 ? x56 x27 x20 The charts provide additional perspective of this data.  "Conventional vs. Columnstore Metrics" document the raw data.  Note on this linear display the magnitude of the conventional index performance vs. columnstore.  The “Metrics (?)” chart expresses these values as a ratio. Summary For DW, reports, & other BI workloads, columnstore often provides significant performance enhancements relative to conventional indexing.  I have documented here, the first in a series of reports on columnstore implementations, results from an initial implementation at MSIT in which logical reads were reduced by over a factor of 50; both CPU & duration improved by factors of 20 or more.  Subsequent features in this series document performance enhancements that are even more significant. 

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  • links for 2010-12-23

    - by Bob Rhubart
    Oracle VM Virtualbox 4.0 extension packs (Wim Coekaerts Blog) Wim Coekaerts describes the the new extension pack in Oracle VM Virtualbox 4.0 and how it's different from 3.2 and earlier releases. (tags: oracle otn virtualization virtualbox) Oracle Fusion Middleware Security: Creating OES SM instances on 64 bit systems "I've already opened a bug on this against OES 10gR3 CP5, but in case anyone else runs into it before it gets fixed I wanted to blog it too. (NOTE: CP5 is when official support was introduced for running OES on a 64 bit system with a 64 bit JVM)" - Chris Johnson (tags: oracle otn fusionmiddleware security) Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control: Shared loader directory, RAC and WebLogic Clustering "RAC is optional. Even the load balancer is optional. The feed from the agents also goes to the load balancer on a different port and it is routed to the available management server. In normal case, this is ok." - Porus Homi Havewala (tags: WebLogic oracle otn grid clustering) Magic Web Doctor: Thought Process on Upgrading WebLogic Server to 11g "Upgrading to new versions can be challenging task, but it's done for linear scalability, continuous enhanced availability, efficient manageability and automatic/dynamic infrastructure provisioning at a low cost." - Chintan Patel (tags: oracle otn weblogic upgrading) InfoQ: Using a Service Bus to Connect the Supply Chain Peter Paul van de Beek presents a case study of using a service bus in a supply channel connecting a wholesale supplier with hundreds of retailers, the overall context and challenges faced – including the integration of POS software coming from different software providers-, the solution chosen and its implementation, how it worked out and the lessons learned along the way. (tags: ping.fm) Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.0 is released! - The Fat Bloke Sings The Fat Bloke spreads the news and shares some screenshots.  (tags: oracle otn virtualization virtualbox) Leaks on Wikis: "Corporations...You're Next!" Oracle Desktop Virtualization Can Help. (Oracle's Virtualization Blog) "So what can you do to guard against these types of breaches where there is no outsider (or even insider) intrusion to detect per se, but rather someone with malicious intent is physically walking out the door with data that they are otherwise allowed to access in their daily work?" - Adam Hawley (tags: oracle otn virtualization security) OTN ArchBeat Podcast Guest Roster As the OTN ArchBeat Podcast enters its third year, it's time to acknowledge the invaluable contributions of the guests who have participated in ArchBeat programs. Check out this who's who of ArchBeat podcast panelists, with links to their respective interviews and more. (tags: oracle otn oracleace podcast archbeat) Show Notes: Architects in the Cloud (ArchBeat) Now available! Part 2 (of 4) of the ArchBeat interview with Stephen G. Bennett and Archie Reed, the authors of "Silver Clouds, Dark Linings: A Concise Guide to Cloud Computing." (tags: oracle otn podcast cloud) A Cautionary Tale About Multi-Source JNDI Configuration (Scott Nelson's Portal Productivity Ponderings) "I ran into this issue after reading that p13nDataSource and cgDataSource-NonXA should not be configured as multi-source. There were some issues changing them to use the basic JDBC connection string and when rolling back to the bad configuration the server went 'Boom.'" - Scott Nelson (tags: weblogic jdbc oracle jndi)

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  • Responding to the page unload in a managed bean

    - by frank.nimphius
    Though ADF Faces provides an uncommitted data warning functionality, developers may have the requirement to respond to the page unload event within custom application code, programmed in a managed bean. The af:clientListener tag that is used in ADF Faces to listen for JavaScript and ADF Faces client component events does not provide the option to listen for the unload event. So this often recommended way of implementing JavaScript in ADF Faces does not work for this use case. To send an event from JavaScript to the server, ADF Faces provides the af:serverListener tag that you use to queue a CustomEvent that invokes method in a managed bean. While this is part of the solution, during testing, it turns out, the browser native JavaScript unload event itself is not very helpful to send an event to the server using the af:serverListener tag. The reason for this is that when the unload event fires, the page already has been unloaded and the ADF Faces AdfPage object needed to queue the custom event already returns null. So the solution to the unload page event handling is the unbeforeunload event, which I am not sure if all browsers support them. I tested IE and FF and obviously they do though. To register the beforeunload event, you use an advanced JavaScript programming technique that dynamically adds listeners to page events. <af:document id="d1" onunload="performUnloadEvent"                      clientComponent="true"> <af:resource type="javascript">   window.addEventListener('beforeunload',                            function (){performUnloadEvent()},false)      function performUnloadEvent(){   //note that af:document must have clientComponent="true" set   //for JavaScript to access the component object   var eventSource = AdfPage.PAGE.findComponentByAbsoluteId('d1');   //var x and y are dummy variables obviously needed to keep the page   //alive for as long it takes to send the custom event to the server   var x = AdfCustomEvent.queue(eventSource,                                "handleOnUnload",                                {args:'noargs'},false);   //replace args:'noargs' with key:value pairs if your event needs to   //pass arguments and values to the server side managed bean.   var y = 0; } </af:resource> <af:serverListener type="handleOnUnload"                    method="#{UnloadHandler.onUnloadHandler}"/> // rest of the page goes here … </af:document> The managed bean method called by the custom event has the following signature:  public void onUnloadHandler(ClientEvent clientEvent) {  } I don't really have a good explanation for why the JavaSCript variables "x" and "y" are needed, but this is how I got it working. To me it ones again shows how fragile custom JavaScript development is and why you should stay away from using it whenever possible. Note: If the unload event is produced through navigation in JavaServer Faces, then there is no need to use JavaScript for this. If you know that navigation is performed from one page to the next, then the action you want to perform can be handled in JSF directly in the context of the lifecycle.

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  • Managing game state / 'what to update' within an XNA game 'screen'

    - by codinghands
    Note - having read through other GDev questions suggested when writing this question I'm confident this isn't a dupe. Of course, it's 3am and I'm likely wrong, so please mod as such if so. I'm trying to figure out how best to manage state within my game screens - please bare with me though! At the moment I'm using a heavily modified version of the fantastic game state management example on the XNA site available here. This is working perfectly for my 'Screens' - 'IntroScreen' with some shiny logos, 'TitleScreen' and a 'MenuScreen' stacked on top for the title and menu, 'PlayScreen' for the actual gameplay, etc. Each screen has the a bunch of sprites, and an 'Update' and 'Draw', managed by a 'ScreenManager'. In addition to the above, and as suggested as an answer to my other question here, most screens have a 'GameProcessQueue' class full of 'GameProcess'es which lets me do just about anything (animations, youbetcha!), in any order, in sequence or parallel. Why mention all this? When I talk about managing game state I'm thinking more for complex scenarios within a 'Screen'. 'TitleScreen', 'MenuScreen' and the like are all relatively simple. 'Play Screen' less so. How do people manage the different 'states' within the screen (or whatever you call it) that 'does' gameplay? (for me, the 'PlayScreen') I've thought about the following: Enum of different states in the Screen, 'activeState' enum-type variable, switching on the enum in the Screen Update() loop to determine what Screen Update 'sub'-function is called. I can see this getting hairy pretty fast though as screens get more complex and with the 'PlayScreen' becoming a behemoth mega-class. 'State' class with Update loop - a Screen can have any number of 'States', 1+ of which are 'active'. Screen update loop calls update on all active states. States themselves know which screen they belong to, and may even belong to a 'StateManager' which handles transitioning from one state to the next. Once a state is over it's removed from the ScreenState list. The Screen doesn't need a bunch of GameProcessQueues, each State has its own. Abstract Screen further to be more flexible - I can see the similarities between what I've got (game 'Screens' handled by a ScreenManager) and what I want (states within a screen, and a mechanism to manage them). However at the moment I see 'Screens' as high level and very distinct ('PlayScreen' with baddies != 'MenuScreen' with 4 words and event handlers), where as my proposed 'States' are more intrinsically tied to a specific screen with complex requirements. I think. This is for a turn-based board game, so it's easier to define things as a discrete series of steps (IntroAnimation - P1Turn - P2Turn - P1Turn ... - GameOver - .... Obviously with an open-world RPG things are very different, but any advice in this scenario is appreciated. If I'm just going OOP-crazy please say so. Similarly I'm concious there's a huge amount on this site re: state management. But as my first 'serious' game after a couple of false starts I'd like to get this right, and would rather be harassed and modded down than never ask :)

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  • What DX level does my graphics card support? Does it go to 11?

    - by Daniel Moth
    Recently I run into a situation that I have run into quite a few times. Someone encounters a machine and the question arises: "Is there a DirectX 11 card in this machine?". Typically the reason you are interested in that is because cards with DirectX 11 drivers fully support DirectCompute (and by extension C++ AMP) for GPGPU programming. The driver specifically is WDDM (1.1 on Windows 7 and Windows 8 introduces WDDM 1.2 with cool new capabilities). There are many ways for figuring out if you have a DirectX11 card, so here are the approaches that you can use, with a bonus right at the end of the post. Run DxDiag WindowsKey + R, type DxDiag and hit Enter. That is the DirectX diagnostic tool, which unfortunately, only tells you on the "System" tab what is the highest version of DirectX installed on your machine. So if it reports DirectX 11, that doesn't mean you have a DX11 driver! The "Display" tab has a promising "DDI version" label, but unfortunately that doesn't seem to be accurate on the machines I've tested it with (or I may be misinterpreting its use). Either way, this tool is not the one you want for this purpose, although it is good for telling you the WDDM version among other things. Use the Microsoft hardware page There is a Microsoft Windows 7 compatibility center, that lists all hardware (tip: use the advanced search) and you could try and locate your device there… good luck. Use Wikipedia or the hardware vendor's website Use the Wikipedia page for the vendor cards, for both nvidia and amd. Often this information will also be in the specifications for the cards on the IHV site, but is is nice that wikipedia has a single page per vendor that you can search etc. There is a column in the tables for API support where you can see the DirectX version. Check if it is one of these recommended DX11 cards You may not have a DirectX 11 card and are interested in purchasing one. While I am in no position to make recommendations, I will list here some cards from two big IHVs that we know are DirectX 11 capable. Some AMD (aka ATI) cards Low end, inexpensive DX11 hardware: Radeon 5450, 5550, 6450, 6570 Mid range (decent perf, single precision): Radeon 5750, 5770, 6770, 6790 High end (capable of double precision): Radeon 5850, 5870, 6950, 6970 Single precision APUs: AMD E-Series APUs AMD A-Series APUs Some NVIDIA cards Low end, inexpensive DX11 hardware: GeForce GT430, GT 440, GT520, GTS 450 Quadro 400, 600 Mid-range (decent perf, single precision): GeForce GTX 460, GTX 550 Ti, GTX 560, GTX 560 Ti Quadro 2000 High end (capable of double precision): GeForce GTX 480, GTX 570, GTX 580, GTX 590, GTX 595 Quadro 4000, 5000, 6000 Tesla C2050, C2070, C2075 Get the DirectX SDK and run DirectX Caps Viewer Download and install the June 2010 DirectX SDK. As part of that you now have the DirectX Capabilities Viewer utility (find it in your start menu by searching for "DirectX Caps Viewer", the filename is DXCapsViewer.exe). It will list all your devices (emulated, and real hardware ones) under the first node. Expand the hardware entries and then expand again the Direct3D 11 folder. If you see D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL_11_ under that, then your card supports feature level 11 which means it supports DirectCompute and C++ AMP. In the following screenshot of one of my old laptops, the card only goes to feature level 10. Run a utility from the web that just tells you! Of course, writing some C++ AMP code that enumerates accelerators and lists the ones that are capable is trivial. However that requires that you have redistributed the runtime, so a more broadly applicable approach is to use the DX APIs directly to enumerate the DX11 capable cards. That is exactly what the development lead for C++ AMP has done and he describes and shares that utility at this post. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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  • Iterative and Incremental Principle Series 4: Iteration Planning – (a.k.a What should I do today?)

    - by llowitz
    Welcome back to the fourth of a five part series on applying the Iteration and Incremental principle.  During the last segment, we discussed how the Implementation Plan includes the number of the iterations for a project, but not the specifics about what will occur during each iteration.  Today, we will explore Iteration Planning and discuss how and when to plan your iterations. As mentioned yesterday, OUM prescribes initially planning your project approach at a high level by creating an Implementation Plan.  As the project moves through the lifecycle, the plan is progressively refined.  Specifically, the details of each iteration is planned prior to the iteration start. The Iteration Plan starts by identifying the iteration goal.  An example of an iteration goal during the OUM Elaboration Phase may be to complete the RD.140.2 Create Requirements Specification for a specific set of requirements.  Another project may determine that their iteration goal is to focus on a smaller set of requirements, but to complete both the RD.140.2 Create Requirements Specification and the AN.100.1 Prepare Analysis Specification.  In an OUM project, the Iteration Plan needs to identify both the iteration goal – how far along the implementation lifecycle you plan to be, and the scope of work for the iteration.  Since each iteration typically ranges from 2 weeks to 6 weeks, it is important to identify a scope of work that is achievable, yet challenging, given the iteration goal and timeframe.  OUM provides specific guidelines and techniques to help prioritize the scope of work based on criteria such as risk, complexity, customer priority and dependency.  In OUM, this prioritization helps focus early iterations on the high risk, architecturally significant items helping to mitigate overall project risk.  Central to the prioritization is the MoSCoW (Must Have, Should Have, Could Have, and Won’t Have) list.   The result of the MoSCoW prioritization is an Iteration Group.  This is a scope of work to be worked on as a group during one or more iterations.  As I mentioned during yesterday’s blog, it is pointless to plan my daily exercise in advance since several factors, including the weather, influence what exercise I perform each day.  Therefore, every morning I perform Iteration Planning.   My “Iteration Plan” includes the type of exercise for the day (run, bike, elliptical), whether I will exercise outside or at the gym, and how many interval sets I plan to complete.    I use several factors to prioritize the type of exercise that I perform each day.  Since running outside is my highest priority, I try to complete it early in the week to minimize the risk of not meeting my overall goal of doing it twice each week.  Regardless of the specific exercise I select, I follow the guidelines in my Implementation Plan by applying the 6-minute interval sets.  Just as in OUM, the iteration goal should be in context of the overall Implementation Plan, and the iteration goal should move the project closer to achieving the phase milestone goals. Having an Implementation Plan details the strategy of what I plan to do and keeps me on track, while the Iteration Plan affords me the flexibility to juggle what I do each day based on external influences thus maximizing my overall success. Tomorrow I’ll conclude the series on applying the Iterative and Incremental approach by discussing how to manage the iteration duration and highlighting some benefits of applying this principle.

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  • Gartner PCC: A Shovel & Some Ah-Ha's

    - by kellsey.ruppel
    When Gartner Vice President and leading analyst Whit Andrews kicked off the Gartner Portals, Content & Collaboration Summit on Monday, March 12 at the Gaylord Palms in Orlando, FL by bringing a shovel to the stage, eyebrows raised and a few thoughts went through my head. Either this guy plans to go help the construction workers outside construct that new pool at the Gaylord or he took a wrong turn and is at the wrong conference. Oh and how did he get that shovel through airport security? As Whit explained more his objective became more clear…take everything anyone has ever told you about portals and throw it out the window, as portals have evolved and times they are most certainly changing. The future Web is here, available not only on browsers but also via a broad spectrum of access points, including automobiles, consumer electronics and more and more mobile devices. Not merely prevalent, the future Web is also multimedia-driven and operates in real time, driven by mobility, social media, streaming video and other dynamic services. Applications and user experiences are in the midst of an evolution — from the early, simple mobile Web models to today’s Web 2.0 mobile apps and, ultimately, to a world of predominantly Web apps. Additionally, cloud services will forever change how portals and user experience are designed, built, delivered, sourced and managed. So what does this mean for you? Today’s organizations need software that will enable them to not just do their jobs, but to do it in a way that is familiar and easy for them.  What does this mean for IT? Use software and technology as an enabler, not as a roadblock. Overall, we had a great week in Orlando learning about how to improve the user experience, manage content explosion, launch social initiatives, transition to mobile environments and understand cloud and SaaS options.  We had some great conversations throughout the conference and at the Oracle booth. Lots of demonstrations were given of Oracle WebCenter Sites and Oracle Social Network. And as Christie mentioned earlier this week, our Vice President of Product Management and Strategy for WebCenter Loren Weinberg presented on the topic of customer engagement and talked about how organization’s relationships with their customers have fundamentally changed today and the resulting impact that has on their priorities.  Loren also talked about the importance of customer engagement, why that matters now more than ever, and what you can do to help your company or organization succeed in this new world. The question asked in every keynote and session was a simple one: What is your “ah-ha” moment? I personally had quite a few, some of which I’ve captured below. 70% of internal social initiatives eventually fail. By 2014, refusing to communicate with consumers via social media will be as harmful as ignoring emails/phone calls is today. Customer engagement = multi-channel + social & interactive + personal & relevant + optimized. If people choose to talk about your product/company/service, it's because it's remarkable. -- Seth Godin's keynote (one of the highlights of the conference!) The Web will become the primary method used for delivering content and applications to mobile devices. By 2015, 20% of smart phone users worldwide will conduct commerce using context-enriched services on a weekly basis.  86% of customers will pay more for a better customer experience. 6 P's of Quality User Experience. Product. Enabled by: People, Patterns, Process, Profit, Priorities. Did you attend the Gartner Summit? What were your ah-ha moments?

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