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• Recap: Oracle at the Gartner Business Intelligence Summit

  - by kimberly.billings

  Getting to Vegas was no fun. As anyone who lives in the Bay Area knows, the SF airport shuts down one runway when it rains, causing major havoc. So rain, rain, rain on Sunday meant delay, delay, delay at the airport. Needless to say, my 6:30 pm flight didn't land in Vegas until 3:00 am! But the travel pains were worth it. There was a lot to be learned at the Gartner BI Summit this year, and the uptick in attendance was reflected in strong booth traffic and engaging conversations in the Oracle booth. Oracle customer, Dawn Conant, Director, Business Intelligence at Beckman Coulter, generated a lot of interest in her presentation about migrating from Business Objects to Oracle Business Intelligence, Enterprise Edition with Oracle Database 11g. Dawn's story was a very relatable one, as many of the attendees had plans for similar projects. One of the most interesting Gartner-led sessions compared BI/DW megavendors, IBM, Oracle, SAP and Microsoft. According to Gartner analyst Rita Sallam, these megavendors control about two-thirds of the BI market. Sallem attributes this in part to the fact that organizations are expanding their definitions of BI to also include analytics and performance management. In doing so, they require greater integration of BI applications with a broader set of applications and middleware. In a related session, a panel of Gartner analysts compared the Magic Quadrants for BI Platforms; CPM; Data Quality; Data Integration Tools; and Data Warehouses. Oracle is a leader in all of the Magic Quadrants in which it participates and has the most complete stack including hardware and software, according to Donald Feinberg. Feinberg also commented that in situations with VLDW and solid mixed workloads, Oracle Exadata is making a big difference! var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-13185312-1"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {}

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• SSIS Reporting Pack update

  - by jamiet

  Its been a while since I last posted anything in regard to SSIS Reporting Pack, the most recent release being on 27th May 2012, so here is a short update. There is still lots of work to do on SSIS Reporting Pack; lots more features to add, lots of performance work to be done, and a few bug fixes too. I have also been (fairly) hard at work on a framework to be used in conjunction with SSIS 2012 that I refer to as the Restart Framework (currently residing at http://ssisrestartframework.codeplex.com/). There is still much work to be done on the Restart Framework (not least some useful documentation on how to use it) which is why I haven’t mentioned it publicly before now although I am actively checking in changes. One thing I am considering is amalgamating the two projects into one; this would mean I could build a suite of reports that both work against the SSIS Catalog (what you currently know as “SSIS Reporting Pack”) and also against this Restart Framework thing. No decision has been made as yet though. There have been a number of bug reports and feature suggestions for SSIS Reporting Pack added to the Issue Tracker. Thank you to everyone that has submitted something, rest assured I am not going to ignore them forever; my time is at a premium right now unfortunately due to … well … life… so working on these items isn’t near the top of my priority list. Lastly, I am actively using SSIS Reporting Pack in a production environment right now and I’m happy to report that it is proving to be very useful. One of the reports that I have put a lot of time into is execution executable duration.rdl and its proving very adept at easily identifying bottlenecks in our SSIS 2012 executions: The report allows you to browse through the hierarchy of executables in each execution and each bar represents the duration of each executable in relation to all the other executables; longer bars being a good indication of where problems might lie. The colour of the bar indicates whether it was successful or not (green=success). Hovering over a bar brings up a tooltip showing more information about that executable. Clicking on a bar allows you to compare this particular instance of the executable against other executions. Please do let me know if you are using SSIS Reporting Pack. I would like to hear any anecdotes you might have, good or bad. @Jamiet

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• PTLQueue : a scalable bounded-capacity MPMC queue

  - by Dave

  Title: Fast concurrent MPMC queue -- I've used the following concurrent queue algorithm enough that it warrants a blog entry. I'll sketch out the design of a fast and scalable multiple-producer multiple-consumer (MPSC) concurrent queue called PTLQueue. The queue has bounded capacity and is implemented via a circular array. Bounded capacity can be a useful property if there's a mismatch between producer rates and consumer rates where an unbounded queue might otherwise result in excessive memory consumption by virtue of the container nodes that -- in some queue implementations -- are used to hold values. A bounded-capacity queue can provide flow control between components. Beware, however, that bounded collections can also result in resource deadlock if abused. The put() and take() operators are partial and wait for the collection to become non-full or non-empty, respectively. Put() and take() do not allocate memory, and are not vulnerable to the ABA pathologies. The PTLQueue algorithm can be implemented equally well in C/C++ and Java. Partial operators are often more convenient than total methods. In many use cases if the preconditions aren't met, there's nothing else useful the thread can do, so it may as well wait via a partial method. An exception is in the case of work-stealing queues where a thief might scan a set of queues from which it could potentially steal. Total methods return ASAP with a success-failure indication. (It's tempting to describe a queue or API as blocking or non-blocking instead of partial or total, but non-blocking is already an overloaded concurrency term. Perhaps waiting/non-waiting or patient/impatient might be better terms). It's also trivial to construct partial operators by busy-waiting via total operators, but such constructs may be less efficient than an operator explicitly and intentionally designed to wait. A PTLQueue instance contains an array of slots, where each slot has volatile Turn and MailBox fields. The array has power-of-two length allowing mod/div operations to be replaced by masking. We assume sensible padding and alignment to reduce the impact of false sharing. (On x86 I recommend 128-byte alignment and padding because of the adjacent-sector prefetch facility). Each queue also has PutCursor and TakeCursor cursor variables, each of which should be sequestered as the sole occupant of a cache line or sector. You can opt to use 64-bit integers if concerned about wrap-around aliasing in the cursor variables. Put(null) is considered illegal, but the caller or implementation can easily check for and convert null to a distinguished non-null proxy value if null happens to be a value you'd like to pass. Take() will accordingly convert the proxy value back to null. An advantage of PTLQueue is that you can use atomic fetch-and-increment for the partial methods. We initialize each slot at index I with (Turn=I, MailBox=null). Both cursors are initially 0. All shared variables are considered "volatile" and atomics such as CAS and AtomicFetchAndIncrement are presumed to have bidirectional fence semantics. Finally T is the templated type. I've sketched out a total tryTake() method below that allows the caller to poll the queue. tryPut() has an analogous construction. Zebra stripping : alternating row colors for nice-looking code listings. See also google code "prettify" : https://code.google.com/p/google-code-prettify/ Prettify is a javascript module that yields the HTML/CSS/JS equivalent of pretty-print. -- pre:nth-child(odd) { background-color:#ff0000; } pre:nth-child(even) { background-color:#0000ff; } border-left: 11px solid #ccc; margin: 1.7em 0 1.7em 0.3em; background-color:#BFB; font-size:12px; line-height:65%; " // PTLQueue : Put(v) : // producer : partial method - waits as necessary assert v != null assert Mask = 1 && (Mask & (Mask+1)) == 0 // Document invariants // doorway step // Obtain a sequence number -- ticket // As a practical concern the ticket value is temporally unique // The ticket also identifies and selects a slot auto tkt = AtomicFetchIncrement (&PutCursor, 1) slot * s = &Slots[tkt & Mask] // waiting phase : // wait for slot's generation to match the tkt value assigned to this put() invocation. // The "generation" is implicitly encoded as the upper bits in the cursor // above those used to specify the index : tkt div (Mask+1) // The generation serves as an epoch number to identify a cohort of threads // accessing disjoint slots while s-Turn != tkt : Pause assert s-MailBox == null s-MailBox = v // deposit and pass message Take() : // consumer : partial method - waits as necessary auto tkt = AtomicFetchIncrement (&TakeCursor,1) slot * s = &Slots[tkt & Mask] // 2-stage waiting : // First wait for turn for our generation // Acquire exclusive "take" access to slot's MailBox field // Then wait for the slot to become occupied while s-Turn != tkt : Pause // Concurrency in this section of code is now reduced to just 1 producer thread // vs 1 consumer thread. // For a given queue and slot, there will be most one Take() operation running // in this section. // Consumer waits for producer to arrive and make slot non-empty // Extract message; clear mailbox; advance Turn indicator // We have an obvious happens-before relation : // Put(m) happens-before corresponding Take() that returns that same "m" for T v = s-MailBox if v != null : s-MailBox = null ST-ST barrier s-Turn = tkt + Mask + 1 // unlock slot to admit next producer and consumer return v Pause tryTake() : // total method - returns ASAP with failure indication for auto tkt = TakeCursor slot * s = &Slots[tkt & Mask] if s-Turn != tkt : return null T v = s-MailBox // presumptive return value if v == null : return null // ratify tkt and v values and commit by advancing cursor if CAS (&TakeCursor, tkt, tkt+1) != tkt : continue s-MailBox = null ST-ST barrier s-Turn = tkt + Mask + 1 return v The basic idea derives from the Partitioned Ticket Lock "PTL" (US20120240126-A1) and the MultiLane Concurrent Bag (US8689237). The latter is essentially a circular ring-buffer where the elements themselves are queues or concurrent collections. You can think of the PTLQueue as a partitioned ticket lock "PTL" augmented to pass values from lock to unlock via the slots. Alternatively, you could conceptualize of PTLQueue as a degenerate MultiLane bag where each slot or "lane" consists of a simple single-word MailBox instead of a general queue. Each lane in PTLQueue also has a private Turn field which acts like the Turn (Grant) variables found in PTL. Turn enforces strict FIFO ordering and restricts concurrency on the slot mailbox field to at most one simultaneous put() and take() operation. PTL uses a single "ticket" variable and per-slot Turn (grant) fields while MultiLane has distinct PutCursor and TakeCursor cursors and abstract per-slot sub-queues. Both PTL and MultiLane advance their cursor and ticket variables with atomic fetch-and-increment. PTLQueue borrows from both PTL and MultiLane and has distinct put and take cursors and per-slot Turn fields. Instead of a per-slot queues, PTLQueue uses a simple single-word MailBox field. PutCursor and TakeCursor act like a pair of ticket locks, conferring "put" and "take" access to a given slot. PutCursor, for instance, assigns an incoming put() request to a slot and serves as a PTL "Ticket" to acquire "put" permission to that slot's MailBox field. To better explain the operation of PTLQueue we deconstruct the operation of put() and take() as follows. Put() first increments PutCursor obtaining a new unique ticket. That ticket value also identifies a slot. Put() next waits for that slot's Turn field to match that ticket value. This is tantamount to using a PTL to acquire "put" permission on the slot's MailBox field. Finally, having obtained exclusive "put" permission on the slot, put() stores the message value into the slot's MailBox. Take() similarly advances TakeCursor, identifying a slot, and then acquires and secures "take" permission on a slot by waiting for Turn. Take() then waits for the slot's MailBox to become non-empty, extracts the message, and clears MailBox. Finally, take() advances the slot's Turn field, which releases both "put" and "take" access to the slot's MailBox. Note the asymmetry : put() acquires "put" access to the slot, but take() releases that lock. At any given time, for a given slot in a PTLQueue, at most one thread has "put" access and at most one thread has "take" access. This restricts concurrency from general MPMC to 1-vs-1. We have 2 ticket locks -- one for put() and one for take() -- each with its own "ticket" variable in the form of the corresponding cursor, but they share a single "Grant" egress variable in the form of the slot's Turn variable. Advancing the PutCursor, for instance, serves two purposes. First, we obtain a unique ticket which identifies a slot. Second, incrementing the cursor is the doorway protocol step to acquire the per-slot mutual exclusion "put" lock. The cursors and operations to increment those cursors serve double-duty : slot-selection and ticket assignment for locking the slot's MailBox field. At any given time a slot MailBox field can be in one of the following states: empty with no pending operations -- neutral state; empty with one or more waiting take() operations pending -- deficit; occupied with no pending operations; occupied with one or more waiting put() operations -- surplus; empty with a pending put() or pending put() and take() operations -- transitional; or occupied with a pending take() or pending put() and take() operations -- transitional. The partial put() and take() operators can be implemented with an atomic fetch-and-increment operation, which may confer a performance advantage over a CAS-based loop. In addition we have independent PutCursor and TakeCursor cursors. Critically, a put() operation modifies PutCursor but does not access the TakeCursor and a take() operation modifies the TakeCursor cursor but does not access the PutCursor. This acts to reduce coherence traffic relative to some other queue designs. It's worth noting that slow threads or obstruction in one slot (or "lane") does not impede or obstruct operations in other slots -- this gives us some degree of obstruction isolation. PTLQueue is not lock-free, however. The implementation above is expressed with polite busy-waiting (Pause) but it's trivial to implement per-slot parking and unparking to deschedule waiting threads. It's also easy to convert the queue to a more general deque by replacing the PutCursor and TakeCursor cursors with Left/Front and Right/Back cursors that can move either direction. Specifically, to push and pop from the "left" side of the deque we would decrement and increment the Left cursor, respectively, and to push and pop from the "right" side of the deque we would increment and decrement the Right cursor, respectively. We used a variation of PTLQueue for message passing in our recent OPODIS 2013 paper. ul { list-style:none; padding-left:0; padding:0; margin:0; margin-left:0; } ul#myTagID { padding: 0px; margin: 0px; list-style:none; margin-left:0;} -- -- There's quite a bit of related literature in this area. I'll call out a few relevant references: Wilson's NYU Courant Institute UltraComputer dissertation from 1988 is classic and the canonical starting point : Operating System Data Structures for Shared-Memory MIMD Machines with Fetch-and-Add. Regarding provenance and priority, I think PTLQueue or queues effectively equivalent to PTLQueue have been independently rediscovered a number of times. See CB-Queue and BNPBV, below, for instance. But Wilson's dissertation anticipates the basic idea and seems to predate all the others. Gottlieb et al : Basic Techniques for the Efficient Coordination of Very Large Numbers of Cooperating Sequential Processors Orozco et al : CB-Queue in Toward high-throughput algorithms on many-core architectures which appeared in TACO 2012. Meneghin et al : BNPVB family in Performance evaluation of inter-thread communication mechanisms on multicore/multithreaded architecture Dmitry Vyukov : bounded MPMC queue (highly recommended) Alex Otenko : US8607249 (highly related). John Mellor-Crummey : Concurrent queues: Practical fetch-and-phi algorithms. Technical Report 229, Department of Computer Science, University of Rochester Thomasson : FIFO Distributed Bakery Algorithm (very similar to PTLQueue). Scott and Scherer : Dual Data Structures I'll propose an optimization left as an exercise for the reader. Say we wanted to reduce memory usage by eliminating inter-slot padding. Such padding is usually "dark" memory and otherwise unused and wasted. But eliminating the padding leaves us at risk of increased false sharing. Furthermore lets say it was usually the case that the PutCursor and TakeCursor were numerically close to each other. (That's true in some use cases). We might still reduce false sharing by incrementing the cursors by some value other than 1 that is not trivially small and is coprime with the number of slots. Alternatively, we might increment the cursor by one and mask as usual, resulting in a logical index. We then use that logical index value to index into a permutation table, yielding an effective index for use in the slot array. The permutation table would be constructed so that nearby logical indices would map to more distant effective indices. (Open question: what should that permutation look like? Possibly some perversion of a Gray code or De Bruijn sequence might be suitable). As an aside, say we need to busy-wait for some condition as follows : "while C == 0 : Pause". Lets say that C is usually non-zero, so we typically don't wait. But when C happens to be 0 we'll have to spin for some period, possibly brief. We can arrange for the code to be more machine-friendly with respect to the branch predictors by transforming the loop into : "if C == 0 : for { Pause; if C != 0 : break; }". Critically, we want to restructure the loop so there's one branch that controls entry and another that controls loop exit. A concern is that your compiler or JIT might be clever enough to transform this back to "while C == 0 : Pause". You can sometimes avoid this by inserting a call to a some type of very cheap "opaque" method that the compiler can't elide or reorder. On Solaris, for instance, you could use :"if C == 0 : { gethrtime(); for { Pause; if C != 0 : break; }}". It's worth noting the obvious duality between locks and queues. If you have strict FIFO lock implementation with local spinning and succession by direct handoff such as MCS or CLH,then you can usually transform that lock into a queue. Hidden commentary and annotations - invisible : * And of course there's a well-known duality between queues and locks, but I'll leave that topic for another blog post. * Compare and contrast : PTLQ vs PTL and MultiLane * Equivalent : Turn; seq; sequence; pos; position; ticket * Put = Lock; Deposit Take = identify and reserve slot; wait; extract & clear; unlock * conceptualize : Distinct PutLock and TakeLock implemented as ticket lock or PTL Distinct arrival cursors but share per-slot "Turn" variable provides exclusive role-based access to slot's mailbox field put() acquires exclusive access to a slot for purposes of "deposit" assigns slot round-robin and then acquires deposit access rights/perms to that slot take() acquires exclusive access to slot for purposes of "withdrawal" assigns slot round-robin and then acquires withdrawal access rights/perms to that slot At any given time, only one thread can have withdrawal access to a slot at any given time, only one thread can have deposit access to a slot Permissible for T1 to have deposit access and T2 to simultaneously have withdrawal access * round-robin for the purposes of; role-based; access mode; access role mailslot; mailbox; allocate/assign/identify slot rights; permission; license; access permission; * PTL/Ticket hybrid Asymmetric usage ; owner oblivious lock-unlock pairing K-exclusion add Grant cursor pass message m from lock to unlock via Slots[] array Cursor performs 2 functions : + PTL ticket + Assigns request to slot in round-robin fashion Deconstruct protocol : explication put() : allocate slot in round-robin fashion acquire PTL for "put" access store message into slot associated with PTL index take() : Acquire PTL for "take" access // doorway step seq = fetchAdd (&Grant, 1) s = &Slots[seq & Mask] // waiting phase while s-Turn != seq : pause Extract : wait for s-mailbox to be full v = s-mailbox s-mailbox = null Release PTL for both "put" and "take" access s-Turn = seq + Mask + 1 * Slot round-robin assignment and lock "doorway" protocol leverage the same cursor and FetchAdd operation on that cursor FetchAdd (&Cursor,1) + round-robin slot assignment and dispersal + PTL/ticket lock "doorway" step waiting phase is via "Turn" field in slot * PTLQueue uses 2 cursors -- put and take. Acquire "put" access to slot via PTL-like lock Acquire "take" access to slot via PTL-like lock 2 locks : put and take -- at most one thread can access slot's mailbox Both locks use same "turn" field Like multilane : 2 cursors : put and take slot is simple 1-capacity mailbox instead of queue Borrow per-slot turn/grant from PTL Provides strict FIFO Lock slot : put-vs-put take-vs-take at most one put accesses slot at any one time at most one put accesses take at any one time reduction to 1-vs-1 instead of N-vs-M concurrency Per slot locks for put/take Release put/take by advancing turn * is instrumental in ... * P-V Semaphore vs lock vs K-exclusion * See also : FastQueues-excerpt.java dice-etc/queue-mpmc-bounded-blocking-circular-xadd/ * PTLQueue is the same as PTLQB - identical * Expedient return; ASAP; prompt; immediately * Lamport's Bakery algorithm : doorway step then waiting phase Threads arriving at doorway obtain a unique ticket number Threads enter in ticket order * In the terminology of Reed and Kanodia a ticket lock corresponds to the busy-wait implementation of a semaphore using an eventcount and a sequencer It can also be thought of as an optimization of Lamport's bakery lock was designed for fault-tolerance rather than performance Instead of spinning on the release counter, processors using a bakery lock repeatedly examine the tickets of their peers --

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• Thoughts on Nexus in SQL Server PDW

  - by jamiet

  I have been on a SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse (aka PDW) training course this week and was interested to learn that you can't (yet) use SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) against PDW, instead they ship a 3rd party tool called Nexus Chameleon. This was a bit of a disappointment at the beginning of the week (I'd prefer parity across SQL Server editions) but actually, having used Nexus for 3 days, I'm rather getting used to it. Some of it is a bit clunky (e.g. everything goes via an ODBC DSN) but once you get into using it its the epitome of "it just works". For example, over the past few years I have come to rely on intellisense in SSMS and have learnt to cope with its nuances. There is no intellisense in Nexus but you know what....I don't really miss it that much. In a sense its a breath of fresh air not having to hope that you've crossed the line into that will it work/won't it work grey area with SSMS intellisense. And I don't end up with writing @@CONNECTIONS instead of FROM anymore (anyone else suffer from this?) :) Moreover, Nexus is a standalone tool. Its not a bunch of features shoehorned into something else (Visual Studio). Another thing I like about Nexus is that you can actually do something with your resultset client-side. Take a look at the screenshots below:   You can see Nexus allows you to group a resultest by a column or set of columns. Nice touch. I know that many people have submitted Connect requests asking for the ability to do similar things in SSMS that would mean we don't have to copy resultsets into Excel (I know I have) - Nexus is a step in that direction. Its refreshing to use a tool that just gets out of the way yet still has some really useful features. How ironic that it gets shipped inside an edition of SQL Server! If I had the option of using Nexus in my day job I suspect that over time I would probably gravitate back to SSMS because as yet I haven’t really stretched Nexus’ capabilities, overall SSMS *does* have more features and up until now I've never really had any objections to it ... but its been an interesting awakening into the nuances that plague SSMS. Anyone else used Nexus? Any thoughts on it? @Jamiet

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• Use of Business Parameters in BPM12c

  - by Abhishek Mittal-Oracle

  With the release of BPM12c, a new feature to use Business Parameters is introduced through which we can define a business parameter which will behave as a global variable which can be used within BPM project. Business Administrator can be the one responsible to modify the business parameters value dynamically at run-time which may bring change in BPM process flow where it is used.This feature was a part of BPM10g product and was extensively used. In BPM11g, this feature is not present currently.Business Parameters can be defined in 2 ways:1. Using Jdev to define business parameters, and 2. Using BPM workspace to define business parameters.It is important to note that business parameters need to be mapped with a valid organisation unit defined in a BPM project. If the same is not handled, exceptions like 'BPM-70702' will be thrown by BPM Engine. This is because business parameters work along with organisation defined in a BPM project.At the same time, we can use same business parameter across different organisation units with different values. Business Parameters in BPM12c has this capability to handle multiple values with different organisation units defined in a single BPM project. This enables business to re-use same business parameters defined in a BPM project across different organisations.Business parameters can be defined using the below data types:1. int2. string 3. boolean4. double While defining an business parameter, it is mandatory to provide a default value. Below are the steps to define a business parameter in Jdev: Step 1:  Open 'Organization' and click on 'Business Parameters' tab.Step 2:  Click on '+' button.Step 3: Add business parameter name, type and provide default value(mandatory).Step 4: Click on 'OK' button.Step 5: Business parameter is defined. Below are the steps to define a business parameter in BPM workspace: Step 1: Login to BPM workspace using admin-username and password.Step 2: Click on 'Administration' on the right top side of workspace.Step 3: Click on 'Business Parameters' in the left navigation panel under 'Organization'. Step 4:  Click on '+' button.Step 5: Add business parameter name, type and provide default value(mandatory).Step 6: Click on 'OK' button.Step 7: Business parameter is defined. Note: As told earlier in the blog, it is necessary to define and map a valid organization ID with predefined variable 'organizationalUnit' under data associations in an BPM process before the business parameter is used. I have created one sample PoC demonstrating the use of Business Parameters in BPM12c and it can be found here.

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• Poll Results: Foreign Key Constraints

  - by Darren Gosbell

  A few weeks ago I did the following post asking people – if they used foreign key constraints in their star schemas. The poll is still open if you are interested in adding to it, but here is what the chart looks like as of today. (at the bottom of the poll itself there is a link to the live results, unfortunately I cannot link the live results in here as the blogging platform blocks the required javascript)   Interestingly the results are fairly even. Of the 78 respondents, fractionally over half at least aim to start with referential integrity in their star schemas. I did not want to influence the results by sharing my opinion, but my personal preference is to always aim to have foreign key constraints. But at the same time, I am pragmatic about it, I do have projects where for various reasons some constraints are not defined. And I also have other designs that I have inherited, where it would just be too much work to go back and add foreign key constraints. If you are going to implement foreign keys in your star schema, they really need to be there at the start. In fact this poll was was the result of a feature request for BIDSHelper asking for a feature to check for null/missing foreign keys and I am entirely convinced that BIDS is the wrong place for this sort of functionality. BIDS is a design tool, your data needs to be constantly checked for consistency. It's not that I think that it's impossible to get a design working without foreign key constraints, but I like the idea of failing as soon as possible if there is an error and enforcing foreign key constraints lets me "fail early" if there are constancy issues with my data. By far the biggest concern with foreign keys is performance and I suppose I'm curious as to how often people actually measure and quantify this. I worked on a project a number of years ago that had very large data volumes and we did find that foreign key constraints did have a measurable impact, but what we did was to disable the constraints before loading the data, then enabled and checked them afterwards. This saved as time (although not as much as not having constraints at all), but still let us know early in the process if there were any consistency issues. For the people that do not have consistent data, if you have ETL processes that you control that are building your star schema which you also control, then to be blunt you only have yourself to blame. It is the job of the ETL process to make the data consistent. There are techniques for handling situations like missing data as well as  early and late arriving data. Ralph Kimball's book – The Data Warehouse Toolkit goes through some design patterns for handling data consistency. Having foreign key relationships can also help the relational engine to optimize queries as noted in this recent blog post by Boyan Penev

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• Indie Software Developers - How do I handle taxes?

  - by Connor

  I apologize if this is the wrong site to post on, perhaps someone could point me to the proper place if it is not. Hello, I am 17 years old and currently develop applications/games for Android and iPhone as well as develop internet websites and code a variety of my own projects. I have been very fortunate and have made a large amount of money and continue to make money online to the point where I do not need a stable job, though I'd like to get one after college. I've never held a job anywhere, and have never had to pay taxes. I'm coming into a lot of issues and I am quite confused. I get money from MANY sources- 15 different advertisement networks(!), 4 different payment processors, 5 different affiliate networks and a variety of other sources. All of them pay to different places and at different times (checking account, PayPal, reloadable debit card, ect.) I essentially have a list in a Notepad with names and login information for each source. I have also created a PHP script that uses cURL to grab all the revenue from each service, add it all up, then text me every few hours so I can keep track. It's a mess, but it's working OK, and I can create custom reports (for IRS?). But enough of that, my questions are about taxes in the US, and how indie developers handle it all. I'm at slightly over $250k so far this year, with negligible earnings last year. I have it all stockpiled in a bank account and haven't touched it, I'm a bit scared to. What do I file as? A sole proprietor, a business, just a regular person? How can I handle all of the different revenue sources? (AdSense, CJ, LinkShare) So far none of them have sent me any paperwork on taxes and I've read that I'm supposed to pay taxes quarterly? Do I need paperwork from EACH source to file? Or can I just say I got $x total and that'd be it? What percentage do you pay of total earnings? Average? Should I create an LLC? A corporation? Or stay as a developer? What would be the cheapest options? Could I go to jail? I haven't touched the money except a few dollars to help my parents pay the mortgage once. Any insight would be great. My parents have no idea what I should do, both have no forms of higher education and both have no high school diploma's. They just live day by day with simple jobs. I appreciate any help or experience with this.

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• Will my self-taught code be fine, or should I take it to the professional level?

  - by G1i1ch

  Lately I've been getting professional work, hanging out with other programmers, and making friends in the industry. The only thing is I'm 100% self-taught. It's caused my style to extremely deviate from the style of those that are properly trained. It's the techniques and organization of my code that's different. It's a mixture of several things I do. I tend to blend several programming paradigms together. Like Functional and OO. I lean to the Functional side more than OO, but I see the use of OO when something would make more sense as an abstract entity. Like a game object. Next I also go the simple route when doing something. When in contrast, it seems like sometimes the code I see from professional programmers is complicated for the sake of it! I use lots of closures. And lastly, I'm not the best commenter. I find it easier just to read through my code than reading the comment. And most cases I just end up reading the code even if there are comments. Plus I've been told that, because of how simply I write my code, it's very easy to read it. I hear professionally trained programmers go on and on about things like unit tests. Something I've never used before so I haven't even the faintest idea of what they are or how they work. Lots and lots of underscores "_", which aren't really my taste. Most of the techniques I use are straight from me, or a few books I've read. Don't know anything about MVC, I've heard a lot about it though with things like backbone.js. I think it's a way to organize an application. It just confuses me though because by now I've made my own organizational structures. It's a bit of a pain. I can't use template applications at all when learning something new like with Ubuntu's Quickly. I have trouble understanding code that I can tell is from someone trained. Complete OO programming really leaves a bad taste in my mouth, yet that seems to be what EVERYONE else is strictly using. It's left me not that confident in the look of my code, or wondering whether I'll cause sparks when joining a company or maybe contributing to open source projects. In fact I'm rather scared of the fact that people will eventually be checking out my code. Is this just something normal any programmer goes through or should I really look to change up my techniques?

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• WPF TextBlock refresh in real time

  - by TheOnlyBrien

  I'm new to C#, in fact, this is one of the first projects I've tried to start on my own. I am curious why the TextBlock will not refresh with the following code? The WPF window does not even show up when I add the "while" loop to the code. I just want this to have a real time display of the days since I was born. Please help me out or give me constructive direction. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using System.Threading.Tasks; using System.Windows; using System.Windows.Controls; using System.Windows.Data; using System.Windows.Documents; using System.Windows.Input; using System.Windows.Media; using System.Windows.Media.Imaging; using System.Windows.Navigation; using System.Windows.Shapes; namespace daysAliveWPF { /// <summary> /// Interaction logic for MainWindow.xaml /// </summary> public partial class MainWindow : Window { public MainWindow() { InitializeComponent(); DateTime myBirthday = new DateTime(1984, 01, 19); while (true) { TimeSpan daysAlive = DateTime.Now.Subtract(myBirthday); MyTextBlock.Text = daysAlive.TotalDays.ToString(); } } } } Similar code has worked in a Console Window application, so I don't understand what's going on here. Console Application code snip that did work is: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using System.Threading.Tasks; namespace DisplayRealTime { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { DateTime myBirthday = new DateTime(1984, 06, 19); while (true) { TimeSpan daysAlive = DateTime.Now.Subtract(myBirthday); Console.Write("\rTotal Days Alive: {0}", daysAlive.TotalDays.ToString(".#####")); } } } } Thank you!

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• Oracle WebCenter: Social Networking & Collaboration

  - by kellsey.ruppel(at)oracle.com

  We’ve talked in previous weeks about the key goals of the new release of WebCenter are providing a Modern User Experience, unparalleled Application Integration, converging all the best of the existing portal platforms into WebCenter and delivering a Common User Experience Architecture.  We’ve provided an overview of Oracle WebCenter and discussed some of the other key goals in previous weeks, and this week, we’ll focus on how the new release of Oracle WebCenter provides unprecedented Social Networking and Collaboration.We recently talked with Carin Chan, Principal Product Manager at Oracle, around the topic of Social Networking and Collaboration. In today’s work environment, employees have come to expect social and collaborative services to augment their work environment. Whether it is to post a blog or to poll fellow coworkers, employees expect and demand access to highly integrated, collaborative work environments that allow them to quickly contribute at work -- whether it is to make informed decisions, contribute on projects, or share knowledge.Social and collaborative services from Oracle WebCenter add an immeasurable amount of value to achieving a modern user experience. Oracle WebCenter Services provides rich and comprehensive social computing services that include services such as wikis, blogs, instant messaging, presence, activity streams and graphs, and polls/surveys that offer employees access to rich collaborative services to work efficiently.Employees can create pages or spaces that mix and match collaborative services while bringing in data from other applications to share with groups, teams, or organizations. These out of the box social and collaborative services include: People Connections and Activity Streams enable users to quickly assemble and visualize their social business networks and track user activities.Activity Graphs tracks all user activities in real-time and gathers intelligence about these users, their connections and the way they use information to make educated recommendations and provide on the spot information discovery.Wikis and blogs enable the community authoring of documents and sharing of ideas and also allow for the gathering of feedback and comments on those ideas.Tags and links allow users to easily mark, connect and share information with others.RSS feeds are available to track new or changed information related to discussion forums, processes or activities in an Oracle WebCenter environment.Discussion forums enable sharing of group knowledge and easy creation of communities around specific topics.Announcements allow you to manage and publish important news to your user base.Instant Messaging and Presence enable real-time awareness and communication with available users in the context of a business task.Web and Voice Conferencing enables real-time communication with internal and external business users.Lists provide a way to manage list data directly on the web as well as export and import it from and to Microsoft Excel.Oracle WebCenter Analytics provides comprehensive reporting metrics on activity and content usage within portals or composite applications.Activity Streams allow you to track activities and visualize your business networks.While being able to integrate into your portal deployment, these services are also integrated into how users are already working. This includes integration with software such as Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Office and mobile devices such as the Apple iPhone. These services are just a tip of the iceberg regarding social and collaborative services that Oracle WebCenter has to offer your employees. Be sure to keep checking back this week for in future posts, we’ll delve deeper into a few of these collaborative services and discuss how a combination of collaborative services offer a better portal deployment to empower business users. Technorati Tags: UXP, collaboration, enterprise 2.0, modern user experience, oracle, portals, webcenter, social, activity streams, blogs, wikis

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• Is it wise to store a big lump of json on a database row

  - by Ieyasu Sawada

  I have this project which stores product details from amazon into the database. Just to give you an idea on how big it is: [{"title":"Genetic Engineering (Opposing Viewpoints)","short_title":"Genetic Engineering ...","brand":"","condition":"","sales_rank":"7171426","binding":"Book","item_detail_url":"http://localhost/wordpress/product/?asin=0737705124","node_list":"Books > Science & Math > Biological Sciences > Biotechnology","node_category":"Books","subcat":"","model_number":"","item_url":"http://localhost/wordpress/wp-content/ecom-plugin-redirects/ecom_redirector.php?id=128","details_url":"http://localhost/wordpress/product/?asin=0737705124","large_image":"http://localhost/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/ecom/img/large-notfound.png","medium_image":"http://localhost/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/ecom/img/medium-notfound.png","small_image":"http://localhost/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/ecom/img/small-notfound.png","thumbnail_image":"http://localhost/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/ecom/img/thumbnail-notfound.png","tiny_img":"http://localhost/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/ecom/img/tiny-notfound.png","swatch_img":"http://localhost/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/ecom/img/swatch-notfound.png","total_images":"6","amount":"33.70","currency":"$","long_currency":"USD","price":"$33.70","price_type":"List Price","show_price_type":"0","stars_url":"","product_review":"","rating":"","yellow_star_class":"","white_star_class":"","rating_text":" of 5","reviews_url":"","review_label":"","reviews_label":"Read all ","review_count":"","create_review_url":"http://localhost/wordpress/wp-content/ecom-plugin-redirects/ecom_redirector.php?id=132","create_review_label":"Write a review","buy_url":"http://localhost/wordpress/wp-content/ecom-plugin-redirects/ecom_redirector.php?id=19186","add_to_cart_action":"http://localhost/wordpress/wp-content/ecom-plugin-redirects/add_to_cart.php","asin":"0737705124","status":"Only 7 left in stock.","snippet_condition":"in_stock","status_class":"ninstck","customer_images":["http://localhost/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/ecom_images/51M2vvFvs2BL.jpg","http://localhost/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/ecom_images/31FIM-YIUrL.jpg","http://localhost/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/ecom_images/51M2vvFvs2BL.jpg","http://localhost/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/ecom_images/51M2vvFvs2BL.jpg"],"disclaimer":"","item_attributes":[{"attr":"Author","value":"Greenhaven Press"},{"attr":"Binding","value":"Hardcover"},{"attr":"EAN","value":"9780737705126"},{"attr":"Edition","value":"1"},{"attr":"ISBN","value":"0737705124"},{"attr":"Label","value":"Greenhaven Press"},{"attr":"Manufacturer","value":"Greenhaven Press"},{"attr":"NumberOfItems","value":"1"},{"attr":"NumberOfPages","value":"224"},{"attr":"ProductGroup","value":"Book"},{"attr":"ProductTypeName","value":"ABIS_BOOK"},{"attr":"PublicationDate","value":"2000-06"},{"attr":"Publisher","value":"Greenhaven Press"},{"attr":"SKU","value":"G0737705124I2N00"},{"attr":"Studio","value":"Greenhaven Press"},{"attr":"Title","value":"Genetic Engineering (Opposing Viewpoints)"}],"customer_review_url":"http://localhost/wordpress/wp-content/ecom-customer-reviews/0737705124.html","flickr_results":["http://localhost/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/ecom_images/5105560852_06c7d06f14_m.jpg"],"freebase_text":"No around the web data available yet","freebase_image":"http://localhost/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/ecom/img/freebase-notfound.jpg","ebay_related_items":[{"title":"Genetic Engineering (Introducing Issues With Opposing Viewpoints), , Good Book","image":"http://localhost/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/ecom_images/140.jpg","url":"http://localhost/wordpress/wp-content/ecom-plugin-redirects/ecom_redirector.php?id=12165","currency_id":"$","current_price":"26.2"},{"title":"Genetic Engineering Opposing Viewpoints by DAVID BENDER - 1964 Hardcover","image":"http://localhost/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/ecom_images/140.jpg","url":"http://localhost/wordpress/wp-content/ecom-plugin-redirects/ecom_redirector.php?id=130","currency_id":"AUD","current_price":"11.99"}],"no_follow":"rel=\"nofollow\"","new_tab":"target=\"_blank\"","related_products":[],"super_saver_shipping":"","shipping_availability":"","total_offers":"7","added_to_cart":""}] So the structure for the table is: asin title details (the product details in json) Will the performance suffer if I have to store like 10,000 products? Is there any other way of doing this? I'm thinking of the following, but the current setup is really the most convenient one since I also have to use the data on the client side: store the product details in a file. So something like ASIN123.json store the product details in one big file. (I'm guessing it will be a drag to extract data from this file) store each of the fields in the details in its own table field Thanks in advance!

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• The Politics of Junk Filtering

  - by mikef

  If the national postal service, such as the Royal Mail in the UK, were to go through your letters and throw away all the stuff it considered to be junk instead of delivering it to you, you might be rather pleased until you discovered that it took a too liberal decision about what was junk. Catalogs you'd asked for? Junk! Requests from charities? Who needs them! Parcels from competing carriers? Toss them away! The possibility for abuse for an agency that was in a monopolistic position is just too scary to tolerate. After all, the postal service could charge 'consultancy fees' to any sender who wanted to guarantee that his stuff got delivered, or they could even farm this out to other companies. Because Microsoft Outlook is just about the only email client used by the international business community in the west, its' SPAM filter is the final arbiter as to what gets read. My Outlook 2007, set to the default settings, junks all the perfectly innocent email newsletters that I subscribe to. Whereas Google Mail, Yahoo, and LIVE are all pretty accurate in detecting spam, Outlook makes all sorts of silly mistakes. The documentation speaks techno-babble about 'advanced heuristics', but the result boils down to an inaccurate mess. The more that Microsoft fiddles with it, the stickier the mess. To make matters worse, it still lets through obvious spam. The filter is occasionally updated along with other automatic 'security' updates you opt for automatic updates. As an editor for a popular online publication that provides a newsletter service, this is an obvious source of frustration. We follow all the best-practices we know about. We ensure that it is a trivial task to opt out of receiving it. We format the newsletter to the requirements of the Service Providers. We follow up, and resolve, every complaint. As a result, it gets delivered. It is galling to discover that, after all that effort, Outlook then often judges the contents to be junk on a whim, so you don't get to see it. A few days ago, Microsoft published the PST file format specification, under pressure from a European Union interoperability investigation by ECIS (the European Committee for Interoperable Systems). The objective was that other applications could then access existing PST files so as to migrate from existing Outlook installations to other solutions. Joaquín Almunia, the current competition commissioner, should now turn his attention to the more subtle problems of Microsoft Outlook. The Junk problem seems to have come from clumsy implementation of client-side spam filtering rather than from deliberate exploitation of a monopoly on the desktop email client for businesses, but it is a growing problem nonetheless. Cheers, Michael Francis

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• Work at Oracle as a Fresh Student by Ang Sun

  - by Nadiya

  The past months have flown by since I started working at Oracle; but at the same time it feels like I’ve been here forever. I came to Beijing to find a job after I graduated from The University of Southampton with a MSc in Software Engineering. I got an offer the next day after I had an interview with my manager. This new style of working life hasn’t been a problem with me. The atmosphere here is fantastic and everyone is so friendly and easy to talk to. I am the first member in our AIE China Team. We do appreciate those colleagues from Core I/O team who helped us a lot to familiarize ourselves with the new environment. After hire orientation training I got to know many new people from various teams including Middleware, People Soft and Solaris. Also Oracle provides weekly system online training as additional training for those people who need it. The best thing about working at Oracle is that there is a balance between work and rest. It’s good to have a really nice park and green space near the Oracle buildings. Most of us like to walk around the riverside after lunch before we get back to work. I like to grab a cup of latte before discussing issues and the schedule of our projects in a weekly conference call with my US colleagues. It has been great experience; I am working alongside talented colleagues from different countries and nationalities. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* 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:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• Convert DVDs and ISO Files to MKV with MakeMKV

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Looking for a quick and easy way to convert your DVDs or ISOs to MKV files? Today we take a look at the MakeMKV Beta which gets the job done very well. Installing and Using MakeMKV Download and install MakeMKV (See download link below) If converting a DVD, place it into your optical drive. When you open MakeMKV you will be greeted by it’s minimalistic interface. Click on the DVD to hard drive button to open the DVD, or the folder icon on the top menu to browse for an ISO file.   MakeMKV will open the disc or file. Once the disc or file is opened, you’ll see the titles listed in the window on the left. Double-click on the titles to expand the tree structure.   Remove any title or tracks you don’t want to convert by unselecting the check box to the left. On the right side of the window, click the folder icon to select browse for your file output directory. When ready, click the MakeMkv button to begin the conversion process.   Conversion will proceed.   When the conversion is finished. Click OK. That’s all there is to it! Your MKV file is ready to play. Conclusion MakeMKV is currently still in beta and during the beta phase it will rip both DVD and Blu-ray for free. However, the DVD ripping functionality will always remain free. After 30 days if you want to continue ripping Blu-ray discs, you’ll need to purchase a license. DVD rips are very quick…typically around 15-20 minutes depending on the length of the movie. MakeMKV is available for Windows, Mac, Linux and will rip and convert DVDs to MKV files. Not all media players natively support MKV playback, so if you’re having trouble playing MKV files, try downloading VLC Media player, or the latest version of the DivX codec. Download MakeMKV Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How To Rip DVDs with VLCEasily Change Audio File Formats with XRECODEHow To Convert Video Files to MP3 with VLCConvert PDF Files to Word Documents and Other FormatsConvert DVD to MP4 / H.264 with HD Decrypter and Handbrake 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 DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Office 2010 Product Guides Google Maps Place marks – Pizza, Guns or Strip Clubs Monitor Applications With Kiwi LocPDF is a Visual PDF Search Tool Download Free iPad Wallpapers at iPad Decor Get Your Delicious Bookmarks In Firefox’s Awesome Bar

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• What Problems Are Better Solved By SOAP Over REST?

  In the battle for web service supremacy SOAP and REST have been battling for years. In my personal opinion this debate should have never existed. Yes, both forms can be used to create an interactive web service, but each form of a service was developed independent of each other to solve two different yet similar problems. Based my research and experience I would have to say that REST should be the preferred web service methodology and SOAP should only be used in specific situations. Note, I did not say that I was against SOAP, and in fact I actually like to use SOAP when it is needed. Criteria for using SOAP: Does the service need a guaranteed level of reliability and security? Did the provider and consumer of the service agreed on a standardized data exchange format? Does the service need data context and state management? If you answer yes to any of these questions, then you may want to consider SOAP as the format for the web service. Another way to look at the relationship between REST and SOAP is to look at the medical field.  For most things a general doctor or you family health care provider can acceptably treat most conditions from the case of a common cold to a broken bone. A general doctor more aligns with REST in my opinion because for most service requirements REST fulfills a projects needs, but what happens if you need more of an advanced examination, you would go to a specialist. A specialist would already have experience dealing with specific issues that you are experiencing giving them specific context to how best treat you going forward. SOAP acts more like a specialist doctor giving that they understand the context of an issue and can treat it based on the state of other patients they have already treated. An example of where I would use SOAP over REST in real life would be a single sign-on application. I n these cases I need to check validate a username and password for authentication and authorization of a web page request. This service would need to maintain state while it authenticated a user and while it validated access to a web page on a subsequent request. This service must process every request for access and not allow caching to ensure that every request is processed and the appropriate users are allowed to view selected web pages. References: Rozlog, M. (2010). REST and SOAP: When Should I Use Each (or Both)? Retrieved 11 20, 2011, from Infoq.com: http://www.infoq.com/articles/rest-soap-when-to-use-each

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• Favorite moments of JavaOne

  - by Tori Wieldt

  There are so many events and sessions to attend at JavaOne, it's unfair to ask people to choose just one thing they liked, but here are some favorite moments: I loved meeting many open source contributors and friends I have not met in person before and seeing that projects like e.g. Hudson are alive and kicking and have a great future ahead of them. -Manfred Moser My "The Problem with Women" session. It had LOADS of interactivity from the audience, who really helped to make that session.  I came out if it with a real sense of optimism - we love our jobs, we love what we do, and we should be proud of telling everyone about it to attract different talent into the industry. (Read her blog JavaOne: The Problem With Women - A Technical Approach for details.) -Trish Gee My kudos to Oracle for making the presentation materials quickly available to the public. Some of them were already available during JavaOne. Lots of slide decks are already there, and in some cases you may even find the video recordings too. Go to http://www.oracle.com/javaone and select JavaOne Technical Sessions.  -Yakov Fain I loved that not only was James Gosling present at the Community Keynote (which felt more like the keynotes of old times [big space, big screens, fun and tech]) but he was also found wandering the halls of the Hilton the day prior. Bring back James! Add back the toys section in the Community Keynote. Let the t-shirt tossing begin anew. These are "small" things that really fire up the community. -Andres Almiray Seeing James Gosling at JavaOne was a real shot in the arm for Java.  He needs to be there every year. -Frank Greco +42 on having James and the T-shirt tossing. -Stephan Janssen The session "Integrate Java with Robots, Home Automation, Musical Instruments, and Kinect." Fabiane Nardon explained connecting Jenkins to jHome to a truck horn placed in their sysadmin's bedroom. She dubbed it "extreme feedback."  -Tori Wieldt The User Group Forum [on Sunday] was a success! Congratulations Bruno Souza and John Yeary and everybody that were involved. I believe it really helps to increase community participation! There were lots of interesting talks, and great discussion with JUG leaders and members. Thank you Oracle for supporting that! -Yara Senger What was your favorite moment? Please comment! 

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• Oracle 5th Annual Maintenance Summit - Orlando March 22-23, 2011

  - by stephen.slade(at)oracle.com

  It's not too late to register today or tomorrow for this exclusive 'Maintenance Professionals Only" event.  In 4 tracks, 27 customer and partner speakers will present case studies and success stories in these 'no-sell zone' sessions. The take-aways will be worth attending!This "2 in 1" event combines a Customer Showcase featuring Orlando Utilities Commission (OUC) and Maintenance Summit.  OUC - the local municipal utility providing residential, commercial, and industrial customers with clean, reliable, and affordable electric and water services - will open the event with their CIO as keynote speaker, and host tours of their fleet, facility, and power generation operations. Recognized as a green leader, OUC has been the most reliable power provider in Florida the past 9 years due, in large part, to the operational efficiencies of its plant and asset maintenance systems. This Summit will feature breakout session tracks for EBS, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft and Sustainability. Highlights include over 12 Oracle solution demo stations, over 25 interactive breakout sessions, pool-side networking reception with live band, partner exhibit pavilion and special appearance by Sean D. Tucker, Team Oracle Stunt-Pilot!  Dates:                   March 22-23, 2011 Location:             Orlando World Center Marriott, Orlando, Florida Evite:                     http://www.oracle.com/us/dm/h2fy11/65971-nafm10019768mpp191c003-oem-304204.html Highlights:          Keynotes, Oracle Expert Demo Stations, Interactive Breakout Sessions, Networking Reception, Partner Pavilion, Speakers Tracks:                 EBS, JDE, PSFT, Sustainability Tours:                  Orlando Utility Operations, Fleet and Facility Oracle Demo Stations:  Agile, AutoVue, Primavera, MOC/SSDM, Utilities, PIM, PDQ, UCM, On Demand, Business Accelerators, Facilities Work Management, EBS Enterprise Asset Management, PeopleSoft Maintenance Management, Technology, Hardware/Sun. Partner-Sponsors:   Viziya, Global PTM, MiPro, Asset Management Solutions, Venutureforth, Impac Services, EAM Master, LLC, Meridium

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• JavaOne Rock Star – Adam Bien

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  Among the most celebrated developers in recent years, especially in the domain of Java EE and JavaFX, is consultant Adam Bien, who, in addition to being a JavaOne Rock Star for Java EE sessions given in 2009 and 2011, is a Java Champion, the winner of Oracle Magazine’s 2011 Top Java Developer of the Year Award, and recently won a 2012 JAX Innovation Award as a top Java Ambassador. Bien will be presenting the following sessions: TUT3907 - Java EE 6/7: The Lean Parts CON3906 - Stress-Testing Java EE 6 Applications Without Stress CON3908 - Building Serious JavaFX 2 Applications CON3896 - Interactive Onstage Java EE Overengineering I spoke with Bien to get his take on Java today. He expressed excitement that the smallest companies and startups are showing increasing interest in Java EE. “This is a very good sign,” said Bien. “Only a few years ago J2EE was mostly used by larger companies -- now it becomes interesting even for one-person shows. Enterprise Java events are also extremely popular. On the Java SE side, I'm really excited about Project Nashorn.” Nashorn is an upcoming JavaScript engine, developed fully in Java by Oracle, and based on the Da Vinci Machine (JSR 292) which is expected to be available for Java 8.    Bien expressed concern about a common misconception regarding Java's mediocre productivity. “The problem is not Java,” explained Bien, “but rather systems built with ancient patterns and approaches. Sometimes it really is ‘Cargo Cult Programming.’ Java SE/EE can be incredibly productive and lean without the unnecessary and hard-to-maintain bloat. The real problems are ‘Ivory Towers’ and not Java’s lack of productivity.” Bien remarked that if there is one thing he wanted Java developers to understand it is that, "Premature optimization is the root of all evil. Or at least of some evil. Modern JVMs and application servers are hard to optimize upfront. It is far easier to write simple code and measure the results continuously. Identify the hotspots first, then optimize.”   He advised Java EE developers to, “Rethink everything you know about Enterprise Java. Before you implement anything, ask the question: ‘Why?’ If there is no clear answer -- just don't do it. Most well known best practices are outdated. Focus your efforts on the domain problem and not the technology.” Looking ahead, Bien remarked, “I would like to see open source application servers running directly on a hypervisor. Packaging the whole runtime in a single file would significantly simplify the deployment and operations.” Check out a recent Java Magazine interview with Bien about his Java EE 6 stress monitoring tool here.

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• Which techniques to study?

  - by Djentleman

  Just to give you some background info, I'm studying a programming major at a tertiary level and am in my third year, so I'm not a newbie off the street. However, I am still quite new to game programming as a subset of programming. One of my personal projects for next semester is to design and create a 2D platformer game with emphasis on procedural generation and "neato" effects (think metroidvania). I've written up a list of some techniques to help me improve my personal skills (using XNA for the time being). The list is as follows: QuadTrees: Build a basic program in XNA that moves basic 2D sprites (circles and squares) around a set path and speed and changes their colour when they collide. Add functionality to add and delete objects of different sizes (select a direction and speed when adding and just drag and drop them in). Particles: Build a basic program in XNA in which you can select different colours and create particle effects of those colours on screen by clicking and dragging the mouse around (simple particles emerging from where the mouse is clicked). Add functionality where you can change the amount of particles to be drawn and the speed at which they travel and when they expire. Possibly implement gravity and wind after part 3 is complete. Physics: Build a basic program in XNA where you have a ball in a set 2D environment, a wind slider, and a gravity slider (can go to negative for reverse gravity). You can click to drag the ball around and release to throw it and, depending on what you do, the ball interacts with the environment. Implement other shapes afterwards. Random 2D terrain generation: Build a basic program in XNA that randomly generates terrain (including hills, caves, etc) created from 2D tiles. Add functionality that draws the tiles from a tileset and places different tiles depending on where they lie on the y-axis (dirt on top, then rock, then lava, etc). Randomised objects: Build a basic program in XNA that, when a button is clicked, displays a randomised item sprite based on parameters (type, colour, etc) with the images pulled from tilesets. Add the ability to save the item as an object, which stores it in a side-pane where it can be selected for viewing. Movement: Build a basic program in XNA where you can move an object around in an environment (tile-based) with a camera that pans with it. No gravity. Implement gravity and wind, allow the character to jump and fall with some basic platforms. So my question is this: Are there any other commonly used techniques that I should research, and can I get some suggestions as to the effectiveness of the techniques I've chosen to work on (e.g., don't do QuadTree stuff because [insert reason here], or, do [insert technique here] before you start working on particles because [insert reason here])? I hope this is clear enough and please let me know if I can further clarify anything!

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• A Complete Customer Experience Solution (3 of 3 in 'No Customer Left Behind' Series)

  - by Kathryn Perry

  A guest post by David Vap, Group Vice President, Oracle Applications Product Development In my previous post, I talked about taking three concrete steps to improve your customers' overall experiences: 1) understand your customer, 2) empower your ecosystem, and 3) adapt your business. To do these effectively and efficiently, it's important to find the right technology that can bridge the gaps across your channels, interactions, departments, and repositories. Oracle has spent the past three years and more than six billion dollars acquiring and developing some of the world's best-of-breed applications. The result is the most comprehensive customer experience (CX) portfolio offering in the World - bar none: ATG Best in Class Selling Experiences Fatwire Best in Class Marketing Experiences Inquira Best in Class Support Experiences Endecca Best in Class Search Experiences RightNow Best in Class Service Experiences Vitrue & Involver Best in Class Social Marketing Collective Intellect Best In Class Social Listening We don't expect organizations to eat the CX elephant in one bite, nor should they try to. There are key strategic initiatives within each of the four main pillars of our customer experience offering for which we deliver solutions: 1. Customer Experience for Marketing Social Listening and Engagement Social Marketing Marketing Websites Demand Generation and Lead Management Marketing and Loyalty Management 2. Customer Experience for Commerce Search, Navigation & Content Delivery Cross-Channel Commerce Targeting & Product Recommendations Social Commerce Order Management & Fulfillment Retail Store Operations 3. Customer Experience for Sales Sales Force Automation Social Selling Territory & Quota Management Revenue Forecasting Partner Relationship Management Quote to Cash Incentive Compensation 4. Customer Experience for Service Cross-Channel Customer Service Knowledge Management Social Customer Service Eligibility Management Contracts, Assets, and Entitlements Industry-Specific Solutions eBilling Oracle's customer experience portfolio is socially infused at each layer of our pillars rather than simply bolted on as a side process. This combines with the power of the Cloud to run the parts of the solution that need the access, efficiency, and agility from a managed infrastructure. You can get the compliance control from on-premise backbone infrastructure systems that run your business and don't change that often. Please take advantage of our teams of Oracle customer experience professionals and our key agency and technology partner ecosystem. They can help you develop strategic solution roadmaps that build and deliver customer experience and that are tailored to your business needs and objectives. No one has built a better customer service portfolio to manage the entire customer journey than Oracle. It is backed by CX thought leadership programs, a commitment from our executives, and a worldview that your technology decisions must be driven by your customer experiences to succeed. If you’d like to follow up on this conversation, please leave a comment or contact me at [email protected]. You can get more information on Oracle’s complete customer experience solution here.

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• Where and how to reference composite MVP components?

  - by Lea Hayes

  I am learning about the MVP (Model-View-Presenter) Passive View flavour of MVC. I intend to expose events from view interfaces rather than using the observer pattern to remove explicit coupling with presenter. Context: Windows Forms / Client-Side JavaScript. I am led to believe that the MVP (or indeed MVC in general) pattern can be applied at various levels of a user interface ranging from the main "Window" to an embedded "Text Field". For instance, the model to the text field is probably just a string whereas the model to the "Window" contains application specific view state (like a persons name which resides within the contained text field). Given a more complex scenario: Documentation viewer which contains: TOC navigation pane Document view Search pane Since each of these 4 user interface items are complex and can be reused elsewhere it makes sense to design these using MVP. Given that each of these user interface items comprises of 3 components; which component should be nested? where? who instantiates them? Idea #1 - Embed View inside View from Parent View public class DocumentationViewer : Form, IDocumentationViewerView { public DocumentationViewer() { ... // Unclear as to how model and presenter are injected... TocPane = new TocPaneView(); } protected ITocPaneView TocPane { get; private set; } } Idea #2 - Embed Presenter inside View from Parent View public class DocumentationViewer : Form, IDocumentationViewerView { public DocumentationViewer() { ... // This doesn't seem like view logic... var tocPaneModel = new TocPaneModel(); var tocPaneView = new TocPaneView(); TocPane = new TocPanePresenter(tocPaneModel, tocPaneView); } protected TocPanePresenter TocPane { get; private set; } } Idea #3 - Embed View inside View from Parent Presenter public class DocumentationViewer : Form, IDocumentationViewerView { ... // Part of IDocumentationViewerView: public ITocPaneView TocPane { get; set; } } public class DocumentationViewerPresenter { public DocumentationViewerPresenter(DocumentationViewerModel model, IDocumentationViewerView view) { ... var tocPaneView = new TocPaneView(); var tocPaneModel = new TocPaneModel(model.Toc); var tocPanePresenter = new TocPanePresenter(tocPaneModel, tocPaneView); view.TocPane = tocPaneView; } } Some better idea...

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• ObjectStorageHelper<T> now available for Windows 8 RTM

  - by jamiet

  In October 2011 I wrote a blog post entitled ObjectStorageHelper<T> – A WinRT utility for Windows 8 where I introduced a little utility class called ObjectStorageHelper<T> that I had been working on while noodling around on the Developer Preview of Windows 8. ObjectStorageHelper<T> makes it easy for anyone building apps for Windows 8 to save data to files. How easy? As easy as this: var myPoco = new Poco() { IntProp = 1, StringProp = "one" }; var objectStorageHelper = new ObjectStorageHelper<Poco>(StorageType.Local); await objectStorageHelper.SaveAsync(myPoco); Compare that to the plumbing code that you would have to write otherwise: var Obj = new Poco() { IntProp = 1, StringProp = "one" }; StorageFile file = null; StorageFolder folder = GetFolder(storageType); file = await folder.CreateFileAsync(FileName(Obj), CreationCollisionOption.ReplaceExisting); IRandomAccessStream writeStream = await file.OpenAsync(FileAccessMode.ReadWrite); using (Stream outStream = Task.Run(() => writeStream.AsStreamForWrite()).Result) {     serializer.Serialize(outStream, Obj);     await outStream.FlushAsync(); } and you can see how ObjectStorageHelper<T> can help save a Windows 8 developer quite a few headaches. ObjectStorageHelper<T> simply requires you to pass it an object to be saved, tell it where to save it (Roaming, Local or Temporary), and you’re done. Retrieving an object from storage is equally as simple: var objectStorageHelper = new ObjectStorageHelper<Poco>(StorageType.Local); var myPoco = await objectStorageHelper.LoadAsync(); Please check the homepage for the project at http://winrtstoragehelper.codeplex.com/ for (much) more info. A number of people have used and tested ObjectStorageHelper<T> since those early days and one of those folks in particular, David Burela, was good enough to report a couple of bugs: Saving Asynchronously Save fails when class is in another project As a result of David’s bug reports and some more extensive testing on my side I have overhauled the initial code that I wrote last October and am confident that it is now much more robust and ready for primetime (check the commit history if you’re interested). The source code (which, again, you can find on Codeplex at http://winrtstoragehelper.codeplex.com/) includes a suite of unit tests to test all of the basic use cases (if you can think of any more please let me know). If you use this in any of your Windows 8 projects then please let me know. I love getting feedback and I’d also love to know if this is actually being used anywhere. @Jamiet

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• Silverlight Cream for November 26, 2011 -- #1175

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Michael Washington, Manas Patnaik, Jeff Blankenburg, Doug Mair, Jon Galloway, Richard Bartholomew, Peter Bromberg, Joel Reyes, Zeben Chen, Navneet Gupta, and Cathy Sullivan. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Using ASP.NET PageMethods With Silverlight" Peter Bromberg WP7: "Leveraging Background Services and Agents in Windows Phone 7 (Mango)" Jon Galloway Metro/WinRT/Windows8: "Debugging Contracts using Windows Simulator" Cathy Sullivan LightSwitch: "LightSwitch: It Is About The Money (It Is Always About The Money)" Michael Washington Shoutouts: Michael Palermo's latest Desert Mountain Developers is up Michael Washington's latest Visual Studio #LightSwitch Daily is up From SilverlightCream.com:LightSwitch: It Is About The Money (It Is Always About The Money)Michael Washington has a very nice post up about LightSwitch apps in general and his opinion about the future use... based on what he and I have been up to, I tend to agree on all counts!Accessing Controls from DataGrid ColumnHeader – SilverlightManas Patnaik's latest post is about using the VisualTreeHelper class to iterate through the visual tree to find the controls you need ... including sample code31 Days of Mango | Day #18: Using Sample DataJeff Blankenburg's Day 18 in his 31-Day Mango quest is on Sample Data using Expression Blend, and he begins with great links to his other Blend posts followed by a nice sample data tutorial and source31 Days of Mango | Day #19: Tilt EffectsDoug Mair returns to the reigns of Jeff's 31-Days series with number 19 which is all about Tilt Effects ... as seen in the Phone application when you select a user... Doug shows how to add this effect to your appLeveraging Background Services and Agents in Windows Phone 7 (Mango)Jon Galloway has a WP7 post up discussing Background Services and how they all fit together... he's got a great diagram of that as an overview then really nice discussion of each followed up by his slides from DevConnections, and codeNetflix on Windows 8This one isn't C#/XAML, but Richard Bartholomew has a Netflix on Windows 8 app running that bears noticeUsing ASP.NET PageMethods With SilverlightPeter Bromberg has a post up demonstrating calling PageMethods from a Silverlight app using the ScriptManager controlAWESOME Windows Phone Power ToolJoel Reyes announced the release of a full-featured tool for side-loading apps to your WP7 device... available at codeplexMicrosoft Windows Simulator Rotation and Resolution EmulationZeben Chen discusses the Windows 8 Simulator a bit deeper with this code-laden post showing how to look at roation and orientation-aware apps and resolution.First look at Windows SimulatorNavneet Gupta has a great into post to using the simulator in VS2011 for Windows 8 apps. Four things you really need this for: Touch Emulation, Rotation, Different target resolutions, and ContractsDebugging Contracts using Windows SimulatorCathy Sullivan shows how to debug W8 Contracts in VS2011... why you ask? because when you hit one in the debugger, the target app disappears.. but enter the simulator... check it outStay in the 'Light!Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCreamJoin me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User GroupTechnorati Tags:Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows PhoneMIX10

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• Is inline SQL still classed as bad practice now that we have Micro ORMs?

  - by Grofit

  This is a bit of an open ended question but I wanted some opinions, as I grew up in a world where inline SQL scripts were the norm, then we were all made very aware of SQL injection based issues, and how fragile the sql was when doing string manipulations all over the place. Then came the dawn of the ORM where you were explaining the query to the ORM and letting it generate its own SQL, which in a lot of cases was not optimal but was safe and easy. Another good thing about ORMs or database abstraction layers were that the SQL was generated with its database engine in mind, so I could use Hibernate/Nhibernate with MSSQL, MYSQL and my code never changed it was just a configuration detail. Now fast forward to current day, where Micro ORMs seem to be winning over more developers I was wondering why we have seemingly taken a U-Turn on the whole in-line sql subject. I must admit I do like the idea of no ORM config files and being able to write my query in a more optimal manner but it feels like I am opening myself back up to the old vulnerabilities such as SQL injection and I am also tying myself to one database engine so if I want my software to support multiple database engines I would need to do some more string hackery which seems to then start to make code unreadable and more fragile. (Just before someone mentions it I know you can use parameter based arguments with most micro orms which offers protection in most cases from sql injection) So what are peoples opinions on this sort of thing? I am using Dapper as my Micro ORM in this instance and NHibernate as my regular ORM in this scenario, however most in each field are quite similar. What I term as inline sql is SQL strings within source code. There used to be design debates over SQL strings in source code detracting from the fundamental intent of the logic, which is why statically typed linq style queries became so popular its still just 1 language, but with lets say C# and Sql in one page you have 2 languages intermingled in your raw source code now. Just to clarify, the SQL injection is just one of the known issues with using sql strings, I already mention you can stop this from happening with parameter based queries, however I highlight other issues with having SQL queries ingrained in your source code, such as the lack of DB Vendor abstraction as well as losing any level of compile time error capturing on string based queries, these are all issues which we managed to side step with the dawn of ORMs with their higher level querying functionality, such as HQL or LINQ etc (not all of the issues but most of them). So I am less focused on the individual highlighted issues and more the bigger picture of is it now becoming more acceptable to have SQL strings directly in your source code again, as most Micro ORMs use this mechanism. Here is a similar question which has a few different view points, although is more about the inline sql without the micro orm context: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5303746/is-inline-sql-hard-coding

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• Free eBook with SQL Server performance tips and nuggets

  - by Claire Brooking

  I’ve often found that the kind of tips that turn out to be helpful are the ones that encourage me to make a small step outside of a routine. No dramatic changes – just a quick suggestion that changes an approach. As a languages student at university, one of the best I spotted came from outside the lecture halls and ended up saving me time (and lots of huffing and puffing) – the use of a rainbow of sticky notes for well-used pages and letter categories in my dictionary. Simple, but armed with a heavy dictionary that could double up as a step stool, those markers were surprisingly handy. When the Simple-Talk editors told me about a book they were planning that would give a series of tips for developers on how to improve database performance, we all agreed it needed to contain a good range of pointers for big-hitter performance topics. But we wanted to include some of the smaller, time-saving nuggets too. We hope we’ve struck a good balance. The 45 Database Performance Tips eBook covers different tips to help you avoid code that saps performance, whether that’s the ‘gotchas’ to be aware of when using Object to Relational Mapping (ORM) tools, or what to be aware of for indexes, database design, and T-SQL. The eBook is also available to download with SQL Prompt from Red Gate. We often hear that it’s the productivity-boosting side of SQL Prompt that makes it useful for everyday coding. So when a member of the SQL Prompt team mentioned an idea to make the most of tab history, a new feature in SQL Prompt 6 for SQL Server Management Studio, we were intrigued. Now SQL Prompt can save tabs we have been working on in SSMS as a way to maintain an active template for queries we often recycle. When we need to reuse the same code again, we search for our saved tab (and we can also customize its name to speed up the search) to get started. We hope you find the eBook helpful, and as always on Simple-Talk, we’d love to hear from you too. If you have a performance tip for SQL Server you’d like to share, email Melanie on the Simple-Talk team ([email protected]) and we’ll publish a collection in a follow-up post.

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