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• Home directory messed up

  - by nuthan

  Recently, I installed Ubuntu 12.04. For some reason, i backed-up my home directory contents to another directory(say bkp dir). Precisely, I moved Documents, Pictures, Downloads, etc.. to bkp directory. Now, Deleted all my original home directory contents. I restored all the bkp directory content back to home. I find them all on my Desktop. I believe some kinda chain is broken. I dont find respective home directories icons on them. How do i restore it? Also, i dont find them in my places options. Messed up image link Thanks... ls -lh ~ ~/Desktop nuthan@nuthan-desktop:~$ ls -lh ~ ~/Desktop /home/nuthan: total 2.8M drwxr-x--- 11 nuthan nuthan 4.0K May 28 20:05 android-sdk-linux drwxrwxr-x 4 nuthan nuthan 4.0K May 25 13:36 android-sdks drwxrwxr-x 2 nuthan nuthan 4.0K May 18 17:30 convert -rw-rw-r-- 1 nuthan nuthan 0 May 30 09:07 dependancies~ drwxr-xr-x 2 nuthan nuthan 4.0K Jun 6 14:16 Desktop drwxrwxrwx 6 nuthan nuthan 4.0K Jun 6 12:06 Documents drwxr-xr-x 28 nuthan nuthan 12K Jun 6 13:52 Downloads drwxrwxr-x 2 nuthan nuthan 4.0K Mar 6 13:23 examples -rw-r--r-- 1 nuthan nuthan 8.3K May 11 16:19 examples.desktop drwxrwxr-x 4 nuthan nuthan 4.0K May 18 19:04 github -rw-rw-r-- 1 nuthan nuthan 0 May 28 18:40 linux~ drwxr-xr-x 2 nuthan nuthan 4.0K May 11 16:46 Music drwxrwxr-x 2 nuthan nuthan 4.0K May 30 08:48 node-code drwxrwxr-x 4 nuthan nuthan 4.0K May 30 08:40 node_modules drwxr-xr-x 7 nuthan nuthan 4.0K May 25 13:55 noduino drwxrwxr-x 2 nuthan nuthan 4.0K May 30 11:58 nuthan drwxrwxrwx 3 nuthan nuthan 4.0K May 24 11:13 Pictures drwxrwxr-x 6 nuthan nuthan 4.0K Mar 6 13:23 public drwxr-xr-x 2 nuthan nuthan 4.0K May 25 11:44 Public drwxrwxr-x 2 nuthan nuthan 4.0K May 29 18:50 python -rw-rw-r-- 1 nuthan nuthan 983K Jun 6 14:16 Screenshot from 2012-06-06 14:16:37.png -rw-rw-r-- 1 nuthan nuthan 980K Jun 6 14:20 Screenshot from 2012-06-06 14:20:24.png -rw-rw-r-- 1 nuthan nuthan 731K Jun 6 14:22 Screenshot from 2012-06-06 14:22:06.png drwxrwxr-x 3 nuthan nuthan 4.0K May 31 18:17 sketchbook drwxrwxr-x 2 nuthan nuthan 4.0K Jun 6 13:05 sql -rw-rw-r-- 1 nuthan nuthan 201 May 28 22:08 sql~ drwxr-xr-x 2 nuthan nuthan 4.0K May 11 16:46 Templates -rw-rw-r-- 1 nuthan nuthan 5.1K Jun 4 12:29 test~ drwxrwxr-x 3 nuthan nuthan 4.0K May 14 11:09 Titanium_Studio drwxrwxr-x 4 nuthan nuthan 4.0K May 14 21:00 Titanium Studio Workspace drwxrwxr-x 4 nuthan nuthan 4.0K Jun 1 18:29 TPM_Trak drwxrwxr-x 2 nuthan nuthan 4.0K May 24 17:30 Ubuntu One drwxr-xr-x 2 nuthan nuthan 4.0K May 11 16:46 Videos drwxrwxr-x 6 nuthan nuthan 4.0K May 31 15:10 workspace drwxrwxr-x 3 nuthan nuthan 4.0K May 14 11:57 Zend /home/nuthan/Desktop: total 20K -rw-rw-r-- 1 nuthan nuthan 441 May 30 09:07 dependancies -rw-rw-r-- 1 nuthan nuthan 1.6K May 28 18:40 linux -rw-rw-r-- 1 nuthan nuthan 470 May 28 22:16 sql -rw-rw-r-- 1 nuthan nuthan 5.1K Jun 4 19:34 test nuthan@nuthan-desktop:~$

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• Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge: HarQen Nodal

  - by Kellsey Ruppel

  Originally posted by Jake Kuramoto on The Apps Lab blog. We wrapped the Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge last week at OpenWorld, and this week, I’ll be sharing all the entries. All the teams that entered our challenge did a ton of work and built really interesting integrations with Oracle Social Network, and I want to showcase their hard work and innovative ideas. Today, I give you Nodal from the HarQen (@harqen) team, Kris Gösser (@krisgosser), Jesse Vogt (@jesse_vogt) and Matt Stockton (@mstockton). The guys from HarQen built Nodal to provide a visual way to navigate your connections and conversations in Oracle Social Network and view relationships. Using Nodal, you can: Search through names and profiles in Oracle Social Network. Choose people and view their social graphs in a visually useful way. Expand nodes in the social graph and add that person’s social graph to the Nodal view for comparison. Move nodes around and lock them in place for easier viewing, using a physics engine for movement. Adjust the physics engine properties according to your viewing preferences. Select nodes in the social graph and create a conversation directly based on the selection. Here are some shots of Nodal. They really don’t do the physics engine justice, but maybe the guys at Harqen will post a video of what they did for your viewing pleasure. #gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; }   Nodal’s visuals wowed the judges and the audience, and anyone with a decent-sized social network presence understands the need for good network visualization. Tools like Nodal allow you to discover hidden connections in your network and maximize the value of your weak ties and find mavens, a very important key to getting work done. Thanks to the HarQen team for participating in our challenge. We hope they had a good experience. Look for the details of the other entries this week.

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• Microsoft and Application Architectures

  Microsoft has dealt with several kinds of application architectures to include but not limited to desktop applications, web applications, operating systems, relational database systems, windows services, and web services. Because of the size and market share of Microsoft, virtually every modern language works with or around a Microsoft product. Some of the languages include: Visual Basic, VB.Net, C#, C++, C, ASP.net, ASP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Java and XML. From my experience, Microsoft strives to maintain an n-tier application standard where an application is comprised of multiple layers that perform specific functions, for example: presentation layer, business layer, data access layer are three general layers that just about every formally structured application contains. The presentation layer contains anything to do with displaying information to the screen and how it appears on the screen. The business layer is the middle man between the presentation layer and data access layer and transforms data from the data access layer in to useable information to be stored later or sent to an output device through the presentation layer. The data access layer does as its name implies, it allows the business layer to access data from a data source like MS SQL Server, XML, or another data source. One of my favorite technologies that Microsoft has come out with recently is the .Net Framework. This framework allows developers to code an application in multiple languages and compiles them in to one intermediate language called the Common Language Runtime (CLR). This allows VB and C# developers to work seamlessly together as if they were working in the same project. The only real disadvantage to using the .Net Framework is that it only natively runs on Microsoft operating systems. However, Microsoft does control a majority of the operating systems currently installed on modern computers and servers, especially with personal home computers. Given that the Microsoft .Net Framework is so flexible it is an ideal for business to develop applications around it as long as they wanted to commit to using Microsoft technologies and operating systems in the future. I have been a professional developer for about 9+ years now and have seen the .net framework work flawlessly in just about every instance I have used it. In addition, I have used it to develop web applications, mobile phone applications, desktop applications, web service applications, and windows service applications to name a few.

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• C# 5: At last, async without the pain

  - by Alex.Davies

  For me, the best feature in Visual Studio 11 is the async and await keywords that come with C# 5. I am a big fan of asynchronous programming: it frees up resources, in particular the thread that a piece of code needs to run in. That lets that thread run something else, while waiting for your long-running operation to complete. That's really important if that thread is the UI thread, or if it's holding a lock because it accesses some data structure. Before C# 5, I think I was about the only person in the world who really cared about asynchronous programming. The trouble was that you had to go to extreme lengths to make code asynchronous. I would forever be writing methods that, instead of returning a value, accepted an extra argument that is a "continuation". Then, when calling the method, I'd have to pass a lambda in to it, which contained all the stuff that needed to happen after the method finished. Here is a real snippet of code that is in .NET Demon: m_BuildControl.FilterEnabledForBuilding(     projects,     enabledProjects = m_OutOfDateProjectFinder.FilterNeedsBuilding(         enabledProjects,         newDirtyProjects =         {             // Mark any currently broken projects as dirty             newDirtyProjects.UnionWith(m_BrokenProjects);             // Copy what we found into the set of dirty things             m_DirtyProjects = newDirtyProjects;             RunSomeBuilds();         })); It's just obtuse. Who puts a lambda inside a lambda like that? Well, me obviously. But surely enabledProjects should just be the return value of FilterEnabledForBuilding? And newDirtyProjects should just be the return value of FilterNeedsBuilding? C# 5 async/await lets you write asynchronous code without it looking so stupid. Here's what I plan to change that code to, once we upgrade to VS 11: var enabledProjects = await m_BuildControl.FilterEnabledForBuilding(projects); var newDirtyProjects = await m_OutOfDateProjectFinder.FilterNeedsBuilding(enabledProjects); // Mark any currently broken projects as dirty newDirtyProjects.UnionWith(m_BrokenProjects); // Copy what we found into the set of dirty things m_DirtyProjects = newDirtyProjects; RunSomeBuilds(); Much easier to read! But how is this the same code? If we were on the UI thread, doesn't the UI thread have to block while FilterEnabledForBuilding runs? No, it doesn't, and that's the magic of the await keyword! It cuts your method up into its constituent pieces, much like I did manually with lambdas before. When you run it, only the piece up to the first await actually runs. The rest is passed to FilterEnabledForBuilding as a continuation, which will get called back whenever that method is finished. In the meantime, our thread returns, and can go back to making the UI responsive, or whatever else threads do in their spare time. This is actually a massive simplification, and if you're interested in all the gory details, and speed hacks that the await keyword actually does for you, I recommend Jon Skeet's blog posts about it.

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• Quickly Copy Movie Files to Individually Named Folders

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Some HTPC media manager applications require movie files to be in stored in separate folders to properly store information such as cover art images and other metadata. Here we look at copying movie files to individual folders. If you already have a large movie collection stored in a single folder, we’ll show you how to quickly move those files into their own individually named folders. File2Folder FIle2folder is a handy portable app that automatically creates and moves movie files into a folder of the same filename. There is no installation needed. Simply download and run the .exe file (link below). Enter the current movie directory, or browse for the folder. File2folder now supports both local and network shares. When you are ready to create the folders and move the files, click Move! You’ll see the move progress displayed in the window. When the process is finished, you’ll have all your movie file in individual folders.   Change your mind? Just click the Undo! button…   …and the move and folder creation process will be undone. If you would like to have the folder monitored for new files, click the Start button. File2folder will process any new files it discovers every 180 seconds. To turn it off, click Stop. This simple little program is a huge timesaver for those looking to organize movie collections for their HTPC. We should also note that this will work with any files, not just videos. Download file2folder Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Hack: Turn Off Debug Mode in VMWare Workstation 6 BetaAdd Images and Metadata to Windows 7 Media Center Movie LibraryAdd Folders to the Movie Library in Windows 7 Media CenterAutomatically Mount and View ISO files in Windows 7 Media CenterMove the Public Folder in Windows Vista TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Identify Fonts using WhatFontis.com Windows 7’s WordPad is Actually Good Greate Image Viewing and Management with Zoner Photo Studio Free Windows Media Player Plus! – Cool WMP Enhancer Get Your Team’s World Cup Schedule In Google Calendar Backup Drivers With Driver Magician

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• So, I though I wanted to learn frontend/web development and break out of my comfort zone...

  - by ripper234

  I've been a backend developer for a long time, and I really swim in that field. C++/C#/Java, databases, NoSql, caching - I feel very much at ease around these platforms/concepts. In the past few years, I started to taste end-to-end web programming, and recently I decided to take a job offer in a front end team developing a large, complex product. I wanted to break out of my comfort zone and become more of an "all around developer". Problem is, I'm getting more and more convinced I don't like it. Things I like about backend programming, and missing in frontend stuff: More interesting problems - When I compare designing a server that handle massive data, to adding another form to a page or changing the validation logic, I find the former a lot more interesting. Refactoring refactoring refactoring - I am addicted to Visual Studio with Resharper, or IntelliJ. I feel very comfortable writing code as it goes without investing too much thought, because I know that with a few clicks I can refactor it into beautiful code. To my knowledge, this doesn't exist at all in javascript. Intellisense and navigation - I hate looking at a bunch of JS code without instantly being able to know what it does. In VS/IntelliJ I can summon the documentation, navigate to the code, climb up inheritance hiererchies ... life is sweet. Auto-completion - Just hit Ctrl-Space on an object to see what you can do with it. Easier to test - With almost any backend feature, I can use TDD to capture the requirements, see a bunch of failing tests, then implement, knowing that if the tests pass I did my job well. With frontend, while tests can help a bit, I find that most of the testing is still manual - fire up that browser and verify the site didn't break. I miss that feeling of "A green CI means everything is well with the world." Now, I've only seriously practiced frontend development for about two months now, so this might seem premature ... but I'm getting a nagging feeling that I should abandon this quest and return to my comfort zone, because, well, it's so comfy and fun. Another point worth mentioning in this context is that while I am learning some frontend tools, a lot of what I'm learning is our company's specific infrastructure, which I'm not sure will be very useful later on in my career. Any suggestions or tips? Do you think I should give frontend programming "a proper chance" of at least six to twelve months before calling it quits? Could all my pains be growing pains, and will they magically disappear as I get more experienced? Or is gaining this perspective is valuable enough, even if plan to do more "backend stuff" later on, that it's worth grinding my teeth and continuing with my learning?

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• Profiling Startup Of VS2012 &ndash; Ants Profiler

  - by Alois Kraus

  I just downloaded ANTS Profiler 7.4 to check how fast it is and how deep I can analyze the startup of Visual Studio 2012. The Pro version which is useful does cost 445€ which is ok. To measure a complex system I decided to simply profile VS2012 (Update 1) on my older Intel 6600 2,4GHz with 3 GB RAM and a 32 bit Windows 7. Ants Profiler is really easy to use. So lets try it out. The Ants Profiler does want to start the profiled application by its own which seems to be rather common. I did choose Method Level timing of all managed methods. In the configuration menu I did want to get all call stacks to get full details. Once this is configured you are ready to go.   After that you can select the Method Grid to view Wall Clock Time in ms. I hate percentages which are on by default because I do want to look where absolute time is spent and not something else.   From the Method Grid I can drill down to see where time is spent in a nice and I can look at the decompiled methods where the time is spent. This does really look nice. But did you see the size of the scroll bar in the method grid? Although I wanted all call stacks I do get only about 4 pages of methods to drill down. From the scroll bar count I would guess that the profiler does show me about 150 methods for the complete VS startup. This is nonsense. I will never find a bottleneck in VS when I am presented only a fraction of the methods that were actually executed. I have also tried in the configuration window to also profile the extremely trivial functions but there was no noticeable difference. It seems that the Ants Profiler does filter away way too many details to be useful for bigger systems. If you want to optimize a CPU bound operation inside NUnit then Ants Profiler is with its line level timings a very nice tool to work with. But for bigger stuff it is certainly not usable. I also do not like that I must start the profiled application from the profiler UI. This makes it hard to profile processes which are started by some other process. Next: JetBrains dotTrace

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• How to enable and connect to RDP on a Windows Azure Web Role Instance?

  - by Enrique Lima

  We all know there have been some updates to Windows Azure, and one of the biggest I would say is the capability of being able to remote into the “OS level” of the image running a role.  And I am not talking about VM Role, I am talking about a Web Role for example. As developers we use Visual Studio, and when we are getting ready to deploy a project, we have the option of enabling this. Here is how: 1.  We publish our Project 2. On the Deployment dialog, provide all the details for your account, and before clicking OK, click on Configure Remote Desktop connections. 3.  Enable connections and the rest of the configuration.  Now, here is where there is an extra set of steps.  The first thing to know: The certificate used here is different from the other certs you have in place.  I created a new one, the went into certmgr.msc, then to Personal, then I selected the cert I just created.  Did a right-click, then All Tasks > Export.  Because what is needed is a pfx package, make sure when exporting you select to export the private key. 4. Click OK, on the Remote Desktop Configuration screen, now before you click OK on the Deployment, you will need to visit the Azure Portal. And perform the following: Go to your hosted services. Then with the service available, select the Certificates folder location. Then, select Add Certificate from the toolbar (more like Azure Portal Ribbon) Provide the details to upload the recently create pfx file. That will create the Certificate. Click OK on the deployment dialog, this kick off the deployment process. 5. Now, we need to go to the Windows Azure Portal.  Here we will select the Web Role deployed and Configure RDP. 6. Time to test.  Click on the Instance (not the role), this will make the Remote Access Connect Button available.  A file will start the process to be downloaded too 7. You will then be prompted for the credentials you configured. 8.  Validate connectivity … 9. Open IIS Manager … From here on, this is a way to manage and work with your Instance.

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• 5.1 surround sound

  - by rocker9455

  Ok, So i've always had trouble with enabling 5.1 in ubuntu. Running 'alsamixer': I have: Master, Heaphones, PCM, Front, Front Mi, Front Mi, Surround, Center All are at 100% Card:HDA Intel Chip:Realtek ALC888 (This is my onboard sound, Its a dell studio, with 7.1 integrated sound) Running "speaker-test -c6 -twav" I only get the front 2 speakers (Right/Left) making any noise. The others make no noise at all. I have no other sound card to use as all my PCI slots are used up. Daemon.conf: ; daemonize = no ; fail = yes ; allow-module-loading = yes ; allow-exit = yes ; use-pid-file = yes ; system-instance = no ; enable-shm = yes ; shm-size-bytes = 0 # setting this 0 will use the system-default, usually 64 MiB ; lock-memory = no ; cpu-limit = no ; high-priority = yes ; nice-level = -11 ; realtime-scheduling = yes ; realtime-priority = 5 ; exit-idle-time = 20 ; scache-idle-time = 20 ; dl-search-path = (depends on architecture) ; load-default-script-file = yes ; default-script-file = ; log-target = auto ; log-level = notice ; log-meta = no ; log-time = no ; log-backtrace = 0 resample-method = speex-float-1 ; enable-remixing = yes ; enable-lfe-remixing = no flat-volumes = no ; rlimit-fsize = -1 ; rlimit-data = -1 ; rlimit-stack = -1 ; rlimit-core = -1 ; rlimit-as = -1 ; rlimit-rss = -1 ; rlimit-nproc = -1 ; rlimit-nofile = 256 ; rlimit-memlock = -1 ; rlimit-locks = -1 ; rlimit-sigpending = -1 ; rlimit-msgqueue = -1 ; rlimit-nice = 31 ; rlimit-rtprio = 9 ; rlimit-rttime = 1000000 ; default-sample-format = s16le ; default-sample-rate = 44100 ; default-sample-channels = 6 ; default-channel-map = front-left,front-right default-fragments = 8 default-fragment-size-msec = 10

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• How to run software, that is not offered though package managers, that requires ia32-libs

  - by Onno

  I'm trying to install the Arma 2 OA dedicated server on a Virtualbox VM so I can test my own missions in a sandbox environment in a way that lets me offload them to another computer in my network. (The other computer is running the VM, but it's a windows machine, and I didn't want to hassle with its installation) It needs at least 2, and preferably 4GB of ram, so I thought I would install the AMD64 version of ubuntu 13.10 to get this going. 'How do you run a 32-bit program on a 64-bit version of Ubuntu?' already explained how to install 32bit software though apt-get and/or dpkg, but that doesn't apply in this case. The server is offered as a compressed download on the site of BI Studio, the developer of the Arma games. Its installation instructions are obviously slightly out of date with the current state of the art. (probably because the state of the art has been updated quite recently :) ) It states that I have to install ia32-libs, which has now apparently been deprecated. Now I have to find out how to get the right packages installed to make sure that it will run. My experience level is like novice-intermediate when it comes to these issues. I've installed a lot of packages though apt-get; I've solved dependency issues in the past; I haven't installed much software without using package managers. I can handle myself with basic administrative work like editing conf files and such. I have just gone ahead and tried to install it without installing ia32-libs through apt-get but to install gcc to get the libs after all. My reasoning being that gcc will include the files for backward compatibility coding and on linux all libs are (as far as I can tell) installed at a system level in /libs . So far it seems to start up. (I can connect with the game server trough my in-game network browser, so it's communicating) I'm not sure if there's any dependency checking going on when running the game server program, so I'm left with a couple of questions: Does 13.10 catch any calls to ia32libs libraries and translate the calls to the right code on amd64? If it runs, does that mean that all required libraries have been loaded correctly, or is there a change of it crashing later on when a library that was needed is missing after all? Is it necessary to do a workaround such as installing gcc? How do I find out what libraries I might need to run this software? (or any other piece of 32-bit software that isn't offered through a package manager)

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• Speaker Notes...

  - by wulfers

  At a .Net User Group meeting this week, I experienced two poorly prepared speakers floundering through presentations….  As a Lead Technologist at the company I work for, I have experience training technical staff and also giving presentations at code camps.  Here are a few guidelines for aspiring speakers you might find helpful…   1.       Do not stand in front of your audience and read your slides.  This is  offensive to your audience and not what they came for...  Your slides are there to reinforce the information you are presenting and to give the audience a little clarification on some terms you may use and as a visual aid for some complicated issues. 2.       Have someone review your presentation (slides, notes, …) who speaks the language you will be presenting in fluently.  Also record at least ten minutes of your presentation and have that same person review that.  One of the speakers this week used the word “Basically” fifty times in less than thirty minutes…  I started to flinch every time he used the term. 3.       Be Prepared  -  before the presentation begins.  Don’t make any last minute changes to your presentation or demo code the night before.  Don’t patch your laptop or demo servers the night before.  If possible create a virtual image that you only use for presentations and use that (refreshed before every presentation). 4.       Know the level of expertise of your audience.  Speaking above or below their abilities will make or break your presentation. 5.       Deliver what you promise. The presentation this week was supposed to be on BDD (Behavior Driven Develpment).  The presenter completely ran off track and 90% of the discussion was how his team mistakenly used TDD (Test Driven Development), and was unhappy with the results.  Based on his loss of focus we only heard a rushed 10 minute presentation on DBB which was a disservice to the audience. 6.       Practice your presentation with your own small team before you try this on a room full of people you don’t know.  A side benefit of doing this with your own team is that you can get candid feedback from your team and also get kudos for training your own team.  I find I can also turn my presentations into technical white papers and get a third benefit from the work I’ve put into a presentation. 7.       Sharpen your own saw.  Pick a topic that is fairly current.  Something you would like to learn about and would benefit your current career path. 8.       Have fun doing it.

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• prism and multiple screens

  - by Avi

  OK - I am studying Prism a little because of a "free weekend" offer on Pluralsight. As this is proving too complex for me, I went to the Prism book and looked at the forward, and this is what it said: What comes after “Hello, World?” WPF and Silverlight developers are blessed with an abundance of excellent books... There’s no lack of tutorials on Model-View-ViewModel ... But they stop short of the guidance you need to deliver a non-trivial application in full. Your first screen goes well. You add a second screen and a third. Because you started your solution with the built-in “Navigation Application Template,” adding new screens feels like hanging shirts on a closet rod. You are on a roll. Until the harsh reality of real application requirements sets in. As it happens, your application has 30 screens not three. There’s no room on that closet rod for 30 screens. Some screens are modal pop-ups; you don’t navigate to a pop-up. Screens become interdependent such that user activity in one screen triggers changes that propagate throughout the UI. Some screens are optional; others are visible only to authorized users. Some screens are permanent, while other screens can be opened and closed at will. You discover that navigating back to a previously displayed screen creates a new instance. That’s not what you expected and, to your horror, the prior instance is gone along with the user’s unsaved changes. Now the issue is, I don't relate to this description. I've never been a UI programmer, but same as everyone else I'm using Windows apps such as MS-Office, and web sites such as Amazon, Facebook and StackExchange. And I look at these and I don't see many "so many screens" issues! Indeed, the only applications having many windows I can think of is Visual Studio. Maybe also Visio, a little. But take Word - You have a ribbon and a main window. Or take Facebook: You have those lists on the left (Favorites, Lists, Groups etc.), the status middle, the adds and then the Contacts sidebar. But it's only one page. Of course, I understand that in enterprise scenarios there are dashboad applications where multiple segments of the screen are updated from multiple non-related services. This I dig. But other scenarios? So - What am I missing? What is the "multiple screens" monster Pirsm is supposed to be the silver bullet solution for? Shoud I invest in studying Prism in addition to learning WPF or ASP.NET MVC?

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• Switch from back-end to front-end programming: I'm out of my comfort zone, should I switch back?

  - by ripper234

  I've been a backend developer for a long time, and I really swim in that field. C++/C#/Java, databases, NoSql, caching - I feel very much at ease around these platforms/concepts. In the past few years, I started to taste end-to-end web programming, and recently I decided to take a job offer in a front end team developing a large, complex product. I wanted to break out of my comfort zone and become more of an "all around developer". Problem is, I'm getting more and more convinced I don't like it. Things I like about backend programming, and missing in frontend stuff: More interesting problems - When I compare designing a server that handle massive data, to adding another form to a page or changing the validation logic, I find the former a lot more interesting. Refactoring refactoring refactoring - I am addicted to Visual Studio with Resharper, or IntelliJ. I feel very comfortable writing code as it goes without investing too much thought, because I know that with a few clicks I can refactor it into beautiful code. To my knowledge, this doesn't exist at all in javascript. Intellisense and navigation - I hate looking at a bunch of JS code without instantly being able to know what it does. In VS/IntelliJ I can summon the documentation, navigate to the code, climb up inheritance hiererchies ... life is sweet. Auto-completion - Just hit Ctrl-Space on an object to see what you can do with it. Easier to test - With almost any backend feature, I can use TDD to capture the requirements, see a bunch of failing tests, then implement, knowing that if the tests pass I did my job well. With frontend, while tests can help a bit, I find that most of the testing is still manual - fire up that browser and verify the site didn't break. I miss that feeling of "A green CI means everything is well with the world." Now, I've only seriously practiced frontend development for about two months now, so this might seem premature ... but I'm getting a nagging feeling that I should abandon this quest and return to my comfort zone, because, well, it's so comfy and fun. Another point worth mentioning in this context is that while I am learning some frontend tools, a lot of what I'm learning is our company's specific infrastructure, which I'm not sure will be very useful later on in my career. Any suggestions or tips? Do you think I should give frontend programming "a proper chance" of at least six to twelve months before calling it quits? Could all my pains be growing pains, and will they magically disappear as I get more experienced? Or is gaining this perspective is valuable enough, even if plan to do more "backend stuff" later on, that it's worth grinding my teeth and continuing with my learning?

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• [EF + Oracle] Intro

  - by JTorrecilla

  Prologue I have a busy personal and working time, and at this moment that I start to get more free time, I decided to start a Serie about Entity Framework with Oracle. A few time ago, I got my first experience with EF and Oracle with Oracle 10 g express and Oracle 10 g with the same results, Doesn’t work. Now I download Oracle 11 g to Test again. Tools To start using EF with Oracle we need the following: 1. Visual Studio 2010. No Express Edition 2. Oracle 11g 3 Oracle Driver for EF (ODAC) Intro People, who are starting with EF developments, I recommend to take a look into Unai Zorrilla’s Blog, the post were written in Spanish but they are great! To this Serie, we are going to define the DB from the Oracle administrator. For that we need to follow the next steps: 1. Create a User with a PassWord. In my example the user will be Jtorrecilla 2. Create a TableSpace 3. Define some example tables   (Image1) When we have created the DB, we are going to start a new project in VS 2010. I will start a C# Project. To start with EF, we need to add a new objet to our Project “ADO .NET Entity Data Model". (Image2) The next step will be to indicate that our model will be based on an existing DB, and indicate the connection string (Images 3 and 4): (Imagen3) (Imagen4) Once we selected the connection string, we will need to indicate that in the connection will be saved “Sensitive” data (Image 5), and in the next step we are going to select the DB objets to use in the project(Image 6).   (Image 5) (Image 6) A the end of the selection, we will press Finish button, and it will generate a EDMX file to add to our solution, and in the IDE will appear the DB Schema with the selected Tables and Relations. (Imagen7) One Entity is composed by a set of properties (each matches with a column from the Table in the DB) and Navigation Properties that represents any relation with other Entities.   Finally With this chapter we have installed the environment, defined a DB and configured the solution to start using EF with Oracle. In the next chapter we are going to see What is a Entity and how it works. I hope you enjoy this Serie!

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• Oracle ENDECA Discovery 3.1 Partner Training 3-Day Workshop

  - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM

  Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 To find out more about the ENDECA training, and to Register for this, click here. June 24-26, 2014: Oracle Reading, UK – Free to partners in EMEA. FREE of charge to OPN member Partners, this Oracle Endeca Information Discovery (OEID) 3-day bootcamp is designed to give partners an understanding of OEID’s features, and how it complements the existing Oracle Business Intelligence suite. This workshop will provide hands-on experience with Oracle Endeca Information Discovery. Topics covered will include Data Exploration with Endeca Information Discovery, Data Ingest, Project Lifecycle, Building an Endeca Server data model and advanced modeling techniques, and Working with Studio. You will also learn about working with ETL components for content acquisitions and other aspects of the project such as security. After taking this course, you will be well prepared to architect, build, demo, and implement an end-to-end Endeca Information Discovery solution. If you are a Bigdata Analytics Architect or Developer, BI or Data Warehouse Architect, developer or consultant, you don’t want to miss this 3-day workshop. Click here to Register for this. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• I didn't mean to become a database developer, but now I am. Should I stop or try to get better?

  - by pretlow majette

  20 years ago I couldn't afford even a cheap POS program when I opened my first surf shop in the Virgin Islands. I bought a copy of Paradox (remember that?) in 1990 and spent months in a back room scratching out a POS application. Over many iterations, including a switch to Access (2000)/SQL Server (2003), I built a POS and backoffice solution that runs four stores with multiple cash registers, a warehouse and office. Until recently, all my stores were connected to the same LAN (in a small shopping center) and performance wasn't an issue. Now that we've opened a location in the States that's changed. Connecting to my local server via the internet has slowed that locations application to a crawl. This is partly due to the slow and crappy dsl service we have in the Virgin Islands, and partly due to my less-than-professional code and sql. With other far-away stores in the works, I need a better solution. I like my application. My staff knows it well, and I'm not inclined to take on the expense of a proper commercial solution. So where does that leave me? I should probably host my sql online to sidestep the slow dsl here. I think I can handle cleaning up my SQL querries to speed that up a bit. What about Access? My version seems so old, but I don't like the newer versions with the 'ribbon'. There are so many options... Should I be learning Visual Studio with an eye on moving completely to the web? Will my VBA skills help me at all there? I don't have the luxury of a year at the keyboard to figure it out anymore. What about dotnetnuke, sharepoint, or lightswitch? They all seem like possibilities, but even understanding their capabilities is daunting. I'm pretty deep into it, but maybe I should bail and hire a consultant or programmer. That sounds expensive tho, and there's no guarantee there either... Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Or, if anybody is interested in buying a small chain of surf shops...

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• Attaching new animations onto skeleton via props, a good idea?

  - by Cardin

  I'm thinking of coding a game with an idea of mine. I've coded 2D games before, but I'm new to 3D programming, so I'd like to ask if this idea of mine is feasible or out of my depth. I'm making a game where there are many different characters for the player to choose from (JRPG style). So to save time, I have an idea of creating many different varied characters using a completely naked body mesh and animation skeleton, standardised across all characters. For example, by placing different hair, boots, armor props on the character mesh, new characters can be formed. Kinda like playing dress-up with a barbie doll. I'm thinking this can be done by having a bone on the prop that I can programmically attach to the main mesh. Also, I plan to have some props add new animations to the base skeleton, so equipping some particular props would give it new attack, damage, idle animations. This is because I can't expect the character to have the same swinging animation if he had a big sword or an axe. I think this might be possible if the prop has its own instance of the animation skeleton with just only the new animations, and parenting the base body mesh to this new skeleton. So all the base body mesh has are just the basic animations, other animations come from the props. My concerns are, 1) the props might not attach to the mesh properly and jitter a lot, 2) since prop and body are animated differently, the props and base mesh will cause visual artefacts, like the naked thighs showing through the pants when the character walks, 3) a custom pipeline have to be developed to export skeletons without mesh, and also to attach the base body mesh to a new skeleton during runtime in the game. So my question: are these features considered 'easy' to code? Or am I trying to do something few have ever succeeded with on their own? It feels like all these can be done given enough time and I know I definitely have to do a bit of bone matrix calculations, but I really don't want to drag out the development timeline unnecessarily from coding mathematically intense things or analyzing how to parse 3D export formats. I'm currently only at the Game Design stage, so if these features aren't a good idea, I can simply change the design of the game. (Unrelated to question) I could always, as last resort, have the characters have predetermined outfit and weapon selections so as to animate everything manually.

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• Oredev 2012: Summary and source code

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  This week, I had the pleasure to be invited to talk at Oredev, a really cool conference taking place in Malmo, Sweden. The whole event is awesome, including a very special dinner on Monday including sauna and swimming in a 6 degrees cold Baltic sea, and a reception with dinner at the town hall, including the mayor himself. Considering Malmo is a town of 300'000 inhabitants, it is a pretty nice occasion and the historical building itself is really worth seeing. For those interested, I placed my pictures on my Flickr account. I had a workshop on Tuesday morning about Windows 8 development with XAML/C#, and then a session on Wednesday about MVVM in Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8, of course using MVVM Light. I was very nervous because I reworked some of my demos as recently as this morning, in the wake of the Build conference last week and the release of both the Windows Phone SDK and MVVM Light V4.1. Everything went well however, and if I judge by the people I talked t after the talk, and Twitter, everything went pretty well. Before my talk on Tuesday, I had the pleasure to see a talk by Iris Classon (@irisclasson) on the challenges of being a "n00b" and a woman in software development. I especially appreciated her research and conclusions on the lack of women I our industry, a topic that is dear to my heart (because I want the best possible future for my two daughters, and also because I really enjoy working with women on projects, and getting a different insight on the art of software development. I really want to thank the excellent organization committee for their hard work and their fantastic welcome to Malmo. In particular Emily Holweck did a wonderful job and was super helpful throughout the preparation and the conference itself. I made a few pictures during my stay, all with the new Nokia Lumia 920, and hope you will enjoy them too. The source code and the slides… The source code is available for download from Skydrive. You will find the following: Windows 8 workshop slides. MVVM Applied slides Source code package with Win8Demo: The demo I built during the 4 hours workshop, with some light MVVM, web services (JSON), GridView, Design time data (Blend / Visual Studio designer), Bing maps integration, location sensor, Search pane integration. SemanticZoomSample: a sample I put together to demonstrate the SemanticZoom control, with two GridViews and of course full design time data for Blend work. Due to time constraints, I was not able to show this demo during the workshop, but I publish it anyway, hoping it will be useful to someone. PictureUploader: The demo I built during my 50 minutes session about MVVM Applied in Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8. Code sharing, design time data, MVVM Light are used in Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 apps. And in video… You can also see the video of my MVVM talk thanks to the good services of the Oredev team! MVVM Applied in Windows Phone and Windows 8 from Øredev Conference on Vimeo.   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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• Complete Beginner to Game Programming and Unreal Engine 4, Looking For Advice [on hold]

  - by onemic

  I am currently a 2nd year programming student(Just finished my first year so I will be starting my second year in September) and have mainly learned C and C++ in my classes. In terms of what I know of C++, I know about general inheritance, polymorphism, overloading operators, iterators, a little bit about templates(only class and function templates) etc. but not of the more advanced topics like linked lists and other sequential containers(containers in general I guess), enumerations, most of the standard library(other than like strings and vectors), and probably a bunch of other stuff I dont even know about yet. I subscribed to Unreal Engine 4 as I was very intrigued by their Unreal Tournament announcement earlier this month, especially after hearing that UE4 is going completely C++. Of course my end goal in doing this programming program is to eventually go into game/graphics programming. Since it's my summer off, I thought what better way then to actually apply some of my skills to a personal project so I actually have a firmer understanding of C++ past what my professors tell me. My questions are this: What would be the best way to start off making a small personal game in UE4 as a project for the summer? What should I be aiming for, especially for someone that is still learning C++? Should I focus on making a simple 2D game rather than a 3D one to get started? Seeing the Flappy Chicken showcase intrigued me because before I thought the UE engine was pretty much pigeonholed into being for FPS games What should my expectations be going into UE4 and a game engine for the first time?(UE4 will be my first foray into making a game) What can I expect to gain from making things in UE4, in terms of making games and in terms of further fleshing out my knowledge of C++? Would you recommend I start off 100% using C++ for scripting or using the visual blueprints? Since I'm not a designer, how would I be able to add objects and designs to my game? For someone at my level is retaining the UE4 subscription worth it or is it better to cancel and resub when I learn enough about UE4 and C++? Lastly is there anything to be gained in terms of knowledge/insight through me looking at the source code for UE4? I opened it in VS2013, but noticed that most of the files were C# files and not cpp's. Thanks in advance for taking the time to answer.

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• Is my work on a developer test being taken advantage of?

  - by CodeWarrior

  I am looking for a job and have applied to a number of positions. One of them responded, I had a pretty lengthy phone interview (perhaps an hour +) and they then set me up with a developer test. I was told that this test is estimated to take between 6 and 8 hours and that, provided it met with their approval, I could be paid for my work on it. That gave me some pause, but I endeavored. The developer test took place on a VM accessed via RDP. The task was to implement a search page in a web project that requests data from the server, displays it on the screen in a table, has a pretty complicated search filtering scheme (there are about 15 statuses and when sending the search to the server you can search by these statuses) in addition to the string/field search. They want some SVG icons to change color on certain data values, they want some data to be represented differently than how it is in the database, etc. Loooong story short, this took one heck of a lot longer than 6-8 hours. Much of it was due to the very poor VM that I was running on (Visual Studio 2013 took 10 minutes to load, and another 15 minutes to open the 3 GB ginormous solution). After completing, I was told to commit my changes to source control... Hmm, OK. I get an email back that they thought that the SVGs could have their color changed differently, they found a bug in this edge-case, there was an occasional problem with this other thing that I never experienced, etc. So I am 13-14 hours into this thing now, and I have to do bug fixes. I do them, and they come back with some more. This is all apparently going into a production application. I noticed some anomalies in the code that was already in there where it looked like other people had coded all of one functionality and not anything else that I could find. Am I just being used for cheap labor? Even if they pay me the promised 50 dollars and hour for 6 hours, I have committed like 18 hours to this thing now. If I bug fix all of the stuff they keep coming up with, I will have worked at least 16 hours for free. I have taken a number of developer tests. I have never taken one where I worked on code that was destined for production. I have never taken one where I implemented a feature that was in the pipeline for development (it was planned for, and I implemented it through the course of the test). And I have never taken one that took 4 rounds and a total of 20+ hours. I get the impression that they are using their developer test to field some of the functionality, that they don't have time for in their normal team, on the cheap. Also, I wouldn't mind a 'devtest' tag.

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• fdisk shows overlapping partitions

  - by Campa

  At every boot to start Ubuntu, a partition gets re-mounted more than 1 times, sometimes causing very long boots. Example below: > dmesg ... [ 21.472020] EXT4-fs (sda5): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro ... [ 42.021537] EXT4-fs (sda5): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,commit=0 ... I suspect there is a problem of overlapping partitions here, regarding sda4 and sda5: > sudo fdisk -l Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 63 610469 305203+ de Dell Utility /dev/sda2 612352 32069631 15728640 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda3 * 32069632 238979788 103455078+ 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda4 238983166 625141759 193079297 5 Extended /dev/sda5 238983168 612630527 186823680 83 Linux /dev/sda6 612632576 625141759 6254592 82 Linux swap / Solaris Further details: > more /etc/fstab ... # <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass> proc /proc proc nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0 # / was on /dev/sda6 during installation UUID=b33be99b-5c9e-449e-ad48-be608aeff001 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1 # swap was on /dev/sda7 during installation UUID=7c9071cc-b77b-40da-9f80-6b8a9a220cb1 none swap sw and > mount /dev/sda5 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro,commit=0) proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev) sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev) fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw) none on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw) none on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw) udev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,mode=0755) devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620) tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,size=10%,mode=0755) none on /run/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,size=5242880) none on /run/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev) binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev) gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/piero/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=piero) I am Running Ubuntu Oneiric + LXDE on Dell Studio XPS machine 64-bit, dual booting with Windows 7. A months ago, I resized the Ubuntu partition and maybe I messed up something by doing that. Do you have any idea, why this long booting is happening?

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• Enterprise with eyes on NoSQL

  - by thegreeneman

  Since joining Oracle a few months back, I have had the fortune of being able to interact with a number of large enterprise organizations and discuss their current state of adoption for NoSQL database technology.   It is worth noting that a large percentage of these organizations do have some NoSQL use and have been steadily increasing their understanding of its applicability for certain data management workloads.   Thru those discussions I’ve learned that it seems one of the biggest issues confronting enterprise adoption of NoSQL databases is the lack of standards for access, administration and monitoring.    This was not so much of an issue with the early adopters of NoSQL technology because they employed a highly DevOps centric approach to application deployment leaving a select few highly qualified developers with the task of managing the production of the system that they designed and implemented. However, as NoSQL technology moves out of the startup and into the hands of larger corporate entities, developers with a broad skill set that are capable of both development and I.T. type production management are in short supply and quickly get moved on to do new projects, often moving to different roles within the company.  This difference in the way smaller more agile startups operate as compared to more established companies is revealing a gap in the NoSQL technology segment that needs to get addressed.    This is one of places that a company such as Oracle has a leg up in the NoSQL Database front.  A combination of having gone thru a past database maturization process,  combined with a vast set of corporate relationships that have grown hand in hand to solve these types of issues, Oracle is in a great place to lead the way in closing the requirements gap for NoSQL technology.  Oracle's understanding of the needs specific to mature organizations have already made their way into the Oracle’s NoSQL Database offering with features such as:  One click cluster deployment with visual topology planning,  standards based monitoring protocols such as SNMP, support for data access for reporting via standard SQL  and integration with emerging standards for data access such as MapReduce.  Given the exciting developments we’re driving in the Oracle NoSQL Database group, I will have a lot more to say about this topic as we move into the second half of the year.

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• Oracle Linux Partner Pavilion Spotlight - Part II

  - by Ted Davis

  As we draw closer to the first day of Oracle OpenWorld, starting in less than a week, we continue to showcase some of our premier partners exhibiting in the Oracle Linux Partner Pavilion ( Booth #1033). We have Independent Hardware Vendors, Independent Software Vendors and Systems Integrators that show the breadth of support in the Oracle Linux and Oracle VM ecosystem. In today's post we highlight three additional Oracle Linux / Oracle VM Partners from the pavilion. Micro Focus delivers mainframe solutions software and software delivery tools with its Borland products. These tools are grouped under the following solutions: Analysis and testing tools for JDeveloper Micro Focus Enterprise Analyzer is key to the success of application overhaul and modernization strategies by ensuring that they are based on a solid knowledge foundation. It reveals the reality of enterprise application portfolios and the detailed constructs of business applications. COBOL for Oracle Database, Oracle Linux, and Tuxedo Micro Focus Visual COBOL delivers the next generation of COBOL development and deployment. Itbrings the productivity of the Eclipse IDE to COBOL, and provides the ability to deploy key business critical COBOL applications to Oracle Linux both natively and under a JVM. Migration and Modernization tooling for mainframes Enterprise application knowledge, development, test and workload re-hosting tools significantly improves the efficiency of business application delivery, enabling CIOs and IT leaders to modernize application portfolios and target platforms such as Oracle Linux. When it comes to Oracle Linux database environments, supporting high transaction rates with minimal response times is no longer just a goal. It’s a strategic imperative. The “data deluge” is impacting the ability of databases and other strategic applications to access data and provide real-time analytics and reporting. As such, customer demand for accelerated application performance is increasing. Visit LSI at the Oracle Linux Pavilion, #733, to find out how LSI Nytro Application Acceleration products are designed from the ground up for database acceleration. Our intelligent solid-state storage solutions help to eliminate I/O bottlenecks, increase throughput and enable Oracle customers achieve the highest levels of DB performance. Accelerate Your Exadata Success With Teleran. Teleran’s software solutions for Oracle Exadata and Oracle Database reduce the cost, time and effort of migrating and consolidating applications on Exadata. In addition Teleran delivers visibility and control solutions for BI/data warehouse performance and user management that ensure service levels and cost efficiency.Teleran will demonstrate these solutions at the Oracle Open World Linux Pavilion: Consolidation Accelerator - Reduces the cost, time and risk ofof migrating and consolidation applications on Exadata. Application Readiness – Identifies legacy application performance enhancements needed to take advantage of Exadata performance features Workload Accelerator – Identifies and clusters workloads for faster performance on Exadata Application Visibility and Control - Improves performance, user productivity, and alignment to business objectives while reducing support and resource costs. Thanks for reading today's Partner Spotlight. Three more partners will be highlighted tomorrow. If you missed our first Partner Spotlight check it out here.

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• TechEd 2010 Day Three: The Database Designer (Isn't)

  - by BuckWoody

  Yesterday at TechEd 2010 here in New Orleans I worked the front-booth, answering general SQL Server questions for the masses. I was actually a little surprised to find most of the questions I got were from folks that wanted to know more about Stream Insight and Master Data Services. In past conferences I've been asked a lot of "free consulting" questions, about problems folks have had from older products. I don't mind that a bit - in fact, I'm always happy to help in any way I can. But this time people are really interested in the new features in the product, and I like that they are thinking ahead, not just having to solve problems in production. My presentation was on "Database Design in an Hour". We had the usual fun, and SideShow Bob made an appearance - I kid you not. The guy in the back of the room looked just like Sideshow Bob, so I quickly held a "bes thair" contest, and he won. Duing the presentation, I explain the tools you can use to design databases. I also explain that the "Database Designer" tool in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) isn't truly a desinger - it uses non-standard notation, doesn't have a meta-data dictionary, and worst of all, it works at the physical level. In other words, whatever you do in SSMS will automatically change the field/table/relationship structures in the database. We fixed this in SSMS 2008 and higher by adding an option to block that, but the tool is not a good design function nonetheless. To be fair, no one I know of at Microsoft recommends that it is - but I was shocked to hear so many developers in the room defending it as a good tool. I think the main issue for someone who doesn't have to work with Relational Systems a great deal is that it can be difficult to figure out Foreign Keys. The syntax makes them look "backwards", so it's just easier to grab a field and place it on the table you want to point to. There are options. You can download a couple of free tools (CA has a community edition of ER-WIN, Quest has one, and Embarcadero also has one) and if you design more than one or two databases a year, it may be worth buying a true design tool. For years I used Visio, but we changed it so that it doesn't forward-engineer (create the DDL) any more, so it isn't a true design tool either. So investigate those free and not-so-free tools. You'll find they help you in your job - but stay away from the Database Designer in SSMS. Or I'll send Sideshow Bob over there to straighten you out. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• How do you conquer the challenge of designing for large screen real-estate?

  - by Berin Loritsch

  This question is a bit more subjective, but I'm hoping to get some new perspective. I'm so used to designing for a certain screen size (typically 1024x768) that I find that size to not be a problem. Expanding the size to 1280x1024 doesn't buy you enough screen real estate to make an appreciable difference, but will give me a little more breathing room. Basically, I just expand my "grid size" and the same basic design for the slightly smaller screen still works. However, in the last couple of projects my clients were all using 1080p (1920x1080) screens and they wanted solutions to use as much of that real estate as possible. 1920 pixels across provides just under twice the width I am used to, and the wide screen makes some of my old go to design approaches not to work as well. The problem I'm running into is that when presented with so much space, I'm confronted with some major problems. How many columns should I use? The wide format lends itself to a 3 column split with a 2:1:1 split (i.e. the content column bigger than the other two). However, if I go with three columns what do I do with that extra column? How do I make efficient use of the screen real estate? There's a temptation to put everything on the screen at once, but too much information actually makes the application harder to use. White space is important to help make sense of complex information, but too much makes related concepts look too separate. I'm usually working with web applications that have complex data, and visualization and presentation is key to making sense of the raw data. When your user also has a large screen (at least 24"), some information is out of eye sight and you need to move the pointer a long distance. How do you make sure everything that's needed stays within the visual hot points? Simple sites like blogs actually do better when the width is constrained, which results in a lot of wasted real estate. I kind of wonder if having the text box and the text preview side by side would be a big benefit for the admin side of that type of screen? (1:1 two column split). For your answers, I know almost everything in design is "it depends". What I'm looking for is: General principles you use How your approach to design has changed I'm finding that i have to retrain myself how to work with this different format. Every bump in resolution I've worked through to date has been about 25%: 640 to 800 (25% increase), 800 to 1024 (28% increase), and 1024 to 1280 (25% increase). However, the jump from 1280 to 1920 is a good 50% increase in space--the equivalent from jumping from 640 straight to 1024. There was no commonly used middle size to help learn lessons more gradually.

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