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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama Top 10 for November 4-10, 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  The Top 10 most popular items shared via the OTN ArchBeat Facebook Page for the week of November 4-10, 2012. OAM/OVD JVM Tuning | @FusionSecExpert Vinay from the Oracle Fusion Middleware Architecture Group (the very prolific A-Team) shares a process for analyzing and improving performance in Oracle Virtual Directory and Oracle Access Manager. Exploring Lambda Expressions for the Java Language and the JVM | Java Magazine In the latest //Java/Architect column in Java Magazine, Ben Evans, Martijn Verburg, and Trisha Gee explain how, "although Lambda expressions might seem unfamiliar to begin with, they're quite easy to pick up, and mastering them will be vital for writing applications that can take full advantage of modern multicore CPUs." SOA Galore: New Books for Technical Eyes Only Shake up up your technical skills with this trio of new technical books from community members covering SOA and BPM. Oracle Solaris 11.1 update focuses on database integration, cloud | Mark Fontecchio TechTarget editor Mark Fontecchio reports on the recent Oracle Solaris 11.1 release, with comments from IDC's Al Gillen. Solving Big Problems in Our 21st Century Information Society | Irving Wladawsky-Berger "I believe that the kind of extensive collaboration between the private sector, academia and government represented by the Internet revolution will be the way we will generally tackle big problems in the 21st century. Just as with the Internet, governments have a major role to play as the catalyst for many of the big projects that the private sector will then take forward and exploit. The need for high bandwidth, robust national broadband infrastructures is but one such example." — Irving Wladawsky-Berger ADF Mobile Custom Javasciprt – iFrame Injection | John Brunswick The ADF Mobile Framework provides a range of out of the box components to add within your AMX pages, according to John Brunswick. But what happens when "an out of the box component does not directly fulfill your development need? What options are available to extend your application interface?" John has an answer. Architects Matter: Making sense of the people who make sense of enterprise IT Why do architects matter? Oracle Enterprise Architect Eric Stephens suggests that you ask yourself this question the next time you take the elevator to the Oracle offices on the 45th floor of the Willis Tower in Chicago, Illinois (or any other skyscraper, for that matter). If you had to take the stairs to get to those offices, who would you blame? "You get the picture," he says. "Architecture is essential for any necessarily complex structure, be it a building or an enterprise." (Read the article...) Converting SSL certificate generated by a 3rd party to an Oracle Wallet | Paulo Albuquerque Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team member Paulo Albuquerque shares "a workaround to get your private key, certificate and CA trusted certificates chain into Oracle Wallet." How Data and BPM are married to get the right information to the right people at the right time | Leon Smiers "Business Process Management…supports a large group of stakeholders within an organization, all with different needs," says Oracle ACE Leon Smiers. "End-to-end processes typically run across departments, stakeholders and applications, and can often have a long life-span. So how do organizations provide all stakeholders with the information they need?" Leon provides answers in this post. Updated Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) Class | Gary Barg Oracle SOA Team blogger Gary Barg has news for those interested in a skills upgrade. This updated Oracle University course "explains how to use Oracle BAM to monitor enterprise business activities across an enterprise in real time. You can measure your key performance indicators (KPIs), determine whether you are meeting service-level agreements (SLAs), and take corrective action in real time." Thought for the Day "For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." — H. L. Mencken (September 12, 1880 – January 29, 1956) Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• SQLAuthority News – Random Thoughts and Random Ideas

  - by pinaldave

  There are days when I keep on wondering about SQL, and even my life overall. Today is Saturday so I decided to write about SQL Server. Just like any other mornings, I woke up at 5 and opened my blog editor. I usually do not open Twitter or Facebook when I am planning to focus on my work, as they are little distractions for me. But today I opened my Twitter account and came across a very interesting quote from a friend: ‘Can I expect you to be different today?’ Well, I think it was very powerful quote for me to read first thing on a new day. This quote froze me for a while and made me think, “Do I really want to write about an SQL Server tip, or something different?”  After a little thinking, I’ve realized that for today I would go on and write something different. I am going to write about a few of the ideas and thoughts I had yesterday. After writing all these, I realized that if I am thinking so much in a day, and if I write a blog post of my random musing of the week or month, it can be so long (and boring). Here are some of my random thoughts I’d like to share with you: When the airplane lands, why does everybody get up and try to rush out when their luggage would be coming probably 20-30 minutes later? I really do not like this question when it was asked to me: “SQL Server is not using optimal index which I just created – how can I force it?” I am not going elaborate on this statement but you are allowed to in the comment section. Why do some people wish Good Morning even when they meet us after 4 PM? Can I optimize a query so much that it gives me a result before I execute it? Is it corruption when someone does their personal household work at office? The lane where I drive is always the slowest lane. Why waste time on correcting others when there are a lot of pending improvements for ourselves? If I have to get Tattoo, which SQL Server Execution Plan symbol should I get? Why do I reach office so early that the coffee machine is yet running its daily cleaning job? Why does every laptop have a ‘Page Up’ key at different locations on the keyboard? While I like color movies, I really appreciate black and white photographs. I do not appreciate statements like, “If I receive your books in PDF, I will spread it to many people to give you much greater exposure. So would you please send them to me ASAP?” Do not tell me, “Why does the database grow back after shrinking it every day?” I suggest you use “Search this blog” for the explanation. Petrol prices are currently at INR 74. I hope the rate remains there. Let me ask you the same question which started my day today:  “Can I expect you to be different today?” Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: About Me, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• maintaining a growing, diverse codebase with continuous integration

  - by Nate

  I am in need of some help with philosophy and design of a continuous integration setup. Our current CI setup uses buildbot. When I started out designing it, I inherited (well, not strictly, as I was involved in its design a year earlier) a bespoke CI builder that was tailored to run the entire build at once, overnight. After a while, we decided that this was insufficient, and started exploring different CI frameworks, eventually choosing buildbot. One of my goals in transitioning to buildbot (besides getting to enjoy all the whiz-bang extras) was to overcome some of the inadequacies of our bespoke nightly builder. Humor me for a moment, and let me explain what I have inherited. The codebase for my company is almost 150 unique c++ Windows applications, each of which has dependencies on one or more of a dozen internal libraries (and many on 3rd party libraries as well). Some of these libraries are interdependent, and have depending applications that (while they have nothing to do with each other) have to be built with the same build of that library. Half of these applications and libraries are considered "legacy" and unportable, and must be built with several distinct configurations of the IBM compiler (for which I have written unique subclasses of Compile), and the other half are built with visual studio. The code for each compiler is stored in two separate Visual SourceSafe repositories (which I am simply handling using a bunch of ShellCommands, as there is no support for VSS). Our original nightly builder simply took down the source for everything, and built stuff in a certain order. There was no way to build only a single application, or pick a revision, or to group things. It would launched virtual machines to build a number of the applications. It wasn't very robust, it wasn't distributable. It wasn't terribly extensible. I wanted to be able to overcame all of these limitations in buildbot. The way I did this originally was to create entries for each of the applications we wanted to build (all 150ish of them), then create triggered schedulers that could build various applications as groups, and then subsume those groups under an overall nightly build scheduler. These could run on dedicated slaves (no more virtual machine chicanery), and if I wanted I could simply add new slaves. Now, if we want to do a full build out of schedule, it's one click, but we can also build just one application should we so desire. There are four weaknesses of this approach, however. One is our source tree's complex web of dependencies. In order to simplify config maintenace, all builders are generated from a large dictionary. The dependencies are retrieved and built in a not-terribly robust fashion (namely, keying off of certain things in my build-target dictionary). The second is that each build has between 15 and 21 build steps, which is hard to browse and look at in the web interface, and since there are around 150 columns, takes forever to load (think from 30 seconds to multiple minutes). Thirdly, we no longer have autodiscovery of build targets (although, as much as one of my coworkers harps on me about this, I don't see what it got us in the first place). Finally, aformentioned coworker likes to constantly bring up the fact that we can no longer perform a full build on our local machine (though I never saw what that got us, either, considering that it took three times as long as the distributed build; I think he is just paranoically phobic of ever breaking the build). Now, moving to new development, we are starting to use g++ and subversion (not porting the old repository, mind you - just for the new stuff). Also, we are starting to do more unit testing ("more" might give the wrong picture... it's more like any), and integration testing (using python). I'm having a hard time figuring out how to fit these into my existing configuration. So, where have I gone wrong philosophically here? How can I best proceed forward (with buildbot - it's the only piece of the puzzle I have license to work on) so that my configuration is actually maintainable? How do I address some of my design's weaknesses? What really works in terms of CI strategies for large, (possibly over-)complex codebases?

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• How can I thoroughly evaluate a prospective employer?

  - by glenviewjeff

  We hear much about code smells, test smells, and even project smells, but I have heard no discussion about employer "smells" outside of the Joel Test. After much frustration working for employers with a bouquet of unpleasant corporate-culture odors, I believe it's time for me to actively seek a more mature development environment. I've started assembling a list of questions to help vet employers by identifying issues during a job interview, and am looking for additional ideas. I suppose this list could easily be modified by an employer to vet an employee as well, but please answer from the interviewee's perspective. I think it would be important to ask many of these questions of multiple people to find out if consistent answers are given. For the most part, I tried to put the questions in each section in the order they could be asked. An undesired answer to an early question will often make follow-ups moot. Values What constitutes "well-written" software? What attributes does a good developer have? Same question for manager. Process Do you have a development process? How rigorously do you follow it? How do you decide how much process to apply to each project? Describe a typical project lifecycle. Ask the following if they don't come up otherwise: Waterfall/iterative: How much time is spent in upfront requirements gathering? upfront design? Testing Who develops tests (developers or separate test engineers?) When are they developed? When are the tests executed? How long do they take to execute? What makes a good test? How do you know you've tested enough? What percentage of code is tested? Review What is the review process like? What percentage of code is reviewed? Design? How frequently can I expect to participate as code/design reviewer/reviewee? What are the criteria applied to review and where do the criteria come from? Improvement What new tools and techniques have you evaluated or deployed in the past year? What training courses have your employees been given in the past year? What will I be doing for the first six months in your company (hinting at what kind of organized mentorship/training has been thought through, if any) What changes to your development process have been made in the past year? How do you improve and learn from your mistakes as an organization? What was your organizations biggest mistake in the past year, and how was it addressed? What feedback have you given to management lately? Was it implemented? If not, why? How does your company use "best practices?" How do you seek them out from the outside or within, and how do you share them with each other? Ethics Tell me about an ethical problem you or your employees experienced recently and how was it resolved? Do you use open-source software? What open-source contributions have you made? Follow-Ups I liked what @jim-leonardo said on this Stack Overflow question: Really a thing to ask yourself: "Does this person seem like they are trying to recruit me and make me interested?" I think this is one of the most important bits. If they seem to be taking the attitude that the only one being interviewed is you, then they probably will treat you poorly. Good interviewers understand they have to sell the position as much as the candidate needs to sell themselves. @SethP added: Glassdoor.com is a good web site for researching potential employers. It contains information about how specific companies conduct interviews...

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• Python Coding standards vs. productivity

  - by Shroatmeister

  I work for a large humanitarian organisation, on a project building software that could help save lives in emergencies by speeding up the distribution of food. Many NGOs desperately need our software and we are weeks behind schedule. One thing that worries me in this project is what I think is an excessive focus on coding standards. We write in python/django and use a version of PEP0008, with various modifications e.g. line lengths can go up to 160 chars and all lines should go that long if possible, no blank lines between imports, line wrapping rules that apply only to certain kinds of classes, lots of templates that we must use, even if they aren't the best way to solve a problem etc. etc. One core dev spent a week rewriting a major part of the system to meet the then new coding standards, throwing away several suites of tests in the process, as the rewrite meant they were 'invalid'. We spent two weeks rewriting all the functionality that was lost, and fixing bugs. He is the lead dev and his word carries weight, so he has convinced the project manager that these standards are necessary. The junior devs do as they are told. I sense that the project manager has a strong feeling of cognitive dissonance about all this but nevertheless agrees with it vehemently as he feels unsure what else to do. Today I got in serious trouble because I had forgotten to put some spaces after commas in a keyword argument. I was literally shouted at by two other devs and the project manager during a Skype call. Personally I think coding standards are important but also think that we are wasting a lot of time obsessing with them, and when I verbalized this it provoked rage. I'm seen as a troublemaker in the team, a team that is looking for scapegoats for its failings. Since the introduction of the coding standards, the team's productivity has measurably plummeted, however this only reinforces the obsession, i.e. the lead dev simply blames our non-adherence to standards for the lack of progress. He believes that we can't read each other's code if we don't adhere to the conventions. This is starting to turn sticky. Now I am trying to modify various scripts, autopep8, pep8ify and PythonTidy to try to match the conventions. We also run pep8 against source code but there are so many implicit amendments to our standard that it's hard to track them all. The lead dev simple picks faults that the pep8 script doesn't pick up and shouts at us in the next stand-up meeting. Every week there are new additions to the coding standards that force us to rewrite existing, working, tested code. Thank heavens we still have tests, (I reverted some commits and fixed a bunch of the ones he removed). All the while there is increasing pressure to meet the deadline. I believe a fundamental issue is that the lead dev and another core dev refuse to trust other developers to do their job. But how to deal with that? We can't do our job because we are too busy rewriting everything. I've never encountered this dynamic in a software engineering team. Am I wrong to question their adherence to coding standards? Has anyone else experienced a similar situation and how have they dealt with it successfully? (I'm not looking for a discussion just actual solutions people have found)

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• DotNetNuke 7.0 Only Weeks Away!

  - by sbwalker

  The software industry moves at a lightning pace, and it is only through constant focus and continuous investment that a software product can remain both stable and relevant over the long term. As we approach the 10 Year Anniversary of the DotNetNuke platform, it seems only fitting that we are on the verge of announcing yet another significant product milestone. DotNetNuke 7.0 is just around the corner and represents a bold step forward for our Content Management Platform, including substantial business productivity enhancements, investments in web platform relevance, and a significant overhaul and modernization of the user interface and user experience. It has been five months since I posted the announcement that the next major version of the platform was going to be DotNetNuke 7.0.  This announcement created tremendous excitement and anticipation in the DotNetNuke community, as major version increments have always been utilized as an opportunity  to introduce revolutionary new product features and capabilities. After months of intense product development, the finish line is finally in sight. With that, I am pleased to announce that we released a Release Candidate (RC) of DotNetNuke 7.0 yesterday. You can download the RC from our project page on Codeplex. A Release Candidate represents a software version which is very near to “release” quality. So although we will not be officially endorsing the RC for production use, or providing an official upgrade path, it does represent a significant milestone in our software development efforts ( if you are looking for a more detailed explanation of our software release terminology, I would encourage you to read the blog written by Co-Founder, Joe Brinkman titled "What's In A Name?" ). Modernizing a software platform does have its share of challenges from a backward compatibility perspective and, as usual, we are taking great care in ensuring a seamless upgrade path for our customers. In order to remain relevant and progressive, you need to be aware that DotNetNuke 7.0 has adopted a new set of baseline infrastructure requirements including ASP.NET 4.0.  As a result we are encouraging all major stakeholders in the ecosystem ( module developers, designers, partners, customers, etc... ) to take the opportunity to install the RC in their own local environments. This is the last opportunity to let us know about any final issues which may need to be addressed prior to final release. Mark your calendars now… the expected public release date (RTM) for DotNetNuke 7.0 will be Wednesday, November 28th. On a side note, we expect to release a 6.2.5 Maintenance version today. This release contains some high priority product quality improvements as well as security patches for some vulnerabilities reported through our standard ecosystem channels. As a result we will be encouraging all of our customers to upgrade to the 6.2.5 release as soon as it is available. I hope everyone is as excited as I am about the upcoming DotNetNuke 7.0 release. Please take the opportunity over the next week to put the new platform through its paces. Remember, only through our collective efforts can we ensure that this release has the greatest market impact of any DotNetNuke release to date.

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• Lost in Translation – Common Mistakes Interpreting Patterns – Mark Simpson, Griffiths-Waite @ SOA, Cloud & Service Technology Symposium 2012

  - by JuergenKress

  ORACLE PROMOTIONAL DISCOUNT FOR EXCLUSIVE ORACLE DISCOUNT, ENTER PROMO CODE: DJMXZ370 For details please visit the registration page International SOA, Cloud + Service Technology Symposium is a yearly event that features the top experts and authors from around the world, providing a series of keynotes, talks, demonstrations, and panels, as well as training and certification workshops - all dedicated to empowering IT professionals to realize modern service technologies and practices in the real world. Click here for a two-page printable conference overview (PDF). Speaker: Mark Simpson, Griffiths-Waite Mark has been specialising in Oracle technology for 13 years, the last 10 of these with Griffiths Waite. Mark leads our SOA technology practice (covering SOA, Business Process Management and Enterprise Architecture). He is a much sought after presenter on the Oracle and SOA conference circuits, and a respected authority on these technologies. Mark has advised a host of UK leading organisations on the deployment of BPM / SOA solutions. Working closely with Oracle US Product Development Mark has contributed to Oracle's SOA Methodology and Oracle's SOA Maturity Model. Lost in Translation – Common Mistakes Interpreting Patterns Learn how small misinterpretations of high-level design patterns can have large and costly project ramifications. Good SOA design benefits from the use of a reference architecture and standardised design patterns. However both of these concepts give an abstracted view of the intended solution, which needs to be interpreted to become realised. A reference implementation is important to demonstrate how key design guidelines can be implemented in the toolset of choice, but the main success factor is how these are used through the build and post live phases of the project. This session will introduce practical design patterns with supporting implementation examples that, if used correctly, will give long term benefit. We will highlight implementations where misinterpretations or misalignment from pattern aims have led to issues post implementation. The session will add depth to the pattern discussions you are already having enabling confidence in proceeding to the next level of realisation whilst considering how they may be implemented within your solution and chosen toolset. September 25, 2012 - 13:55 KEYNOTES & SPEAKERS More than 80 international subject matter experts will be speaking at the Symposium. Below are confirmed keynotes and speakers so far. Over 50% of the agenda has not yet been finalized. Many more speakers to come. View the partial program calendars on the Conference Agenda page. CONFERENCE THEMES & TRACKS Cloud Computing Architecture & Patterns New SOA & Service-Orientation Practices & Models Emerging Service Technology Innovation Service Modeling & Analysis Techniques Service Infrastructure & Virtualization Cloud-based Enterprise Architecture Business Planning for Cloud Computing Projects Real World Case Studies Semantic Web Technologies (with & without the Cloud) Governance Frameworks for SOA and/or Cloud Computing Projects Service Engineering & Service Programming Techniques Interactive Services & the Human Factor New REST & Web Services Tools & Techniques Oracle Specialized SOA & BPM Partners Oracle Specialized partners have proven their skills by certifications and customer references. To find a local Specialized partner please visit http://solutions.oracle.com SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit  www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Technorati Tags: Mark Simpson,Griffiths Waite,SOA Patterns,SOA Symposium,Thomas Erl,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,BPM,Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• Wireless is detected, but not connecting. Ethernet works. How to correct the wireless address?

  - by Lucas

  I am running Ubuntu 14.04 with cable internet, and my wireless is detected and connected, but I cannot connect to the internet. I know the problem is with my machine because other machines are connecting to the same router just fine. I can connect via ethernet just fine as well. Here are some notable tests: ping 192.168.0.105 works with 0% packet loss, but ping 192.168.0.1 has 100% packet loss. When I plug in my ethernet, ping 192.168.0.1 works with 0% packet loss. My wireless name is tg, and the router ip is 192.168.0.1 (where I can enter username and password). I suspect that I need to change my wireless address from 192.168.0.105 to 192.168.0.1. Any suggestions on how to proceed? extra info: [lucas@lucas-ThinkPad-W520]/home/lucas$ iwconfig eth0 no wireless extensions. lo no wireless extensions. wlan0 IEEE 802.11abgn ESSID:"tg" Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point: 00:02:6F:83:F8:F4 Bit Rate=1 Mb/s Tx-Power=15 dBm Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Power Management:off Link Quality=62/70 Signal level=-48 dBm Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:52 Invalid misc:166 Missed beacon:0 [lucas@lucas-ThinkPad-W520]/home/lucas$ ifconfig eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr f0:de:f1:b2:53:53 inet addr:192.168.0.100 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::f2de:f1ff:feb2:5353/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:980003 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:498384 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:1320506168 (1.3 GB) TX bytes:59780591 (59.7 MB) Interrupt:20 Memory:f3a00000-f3a20000 lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:65536 Metric:1 RX packets:21927 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:21927 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:1781719 (1.7 MB) TX bytes:1781719 (1.7 MB) wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 24:77:03:29:8f:dc inet addr:192.168.0.105 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::2677:3ff:fe29:8fdc/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:11828 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:15444 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:4855662 (4.8 MB) TX bytes:2250585 (2.2 MB) [lucas@lucas-ThinkPad-W520]/home/lucas$ lspci -nn | grep 0280 03:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 [8086:4238] (rev 3e) [lucas@lucas-ThinkPad-W520]/home/lucas$ rfkill list 0: hci0: Bluetooth Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 1: tpacpi_bluetooth_sw: Bluetooth Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 2: phy0: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no with ethernet unplugged: [lucas@lucas-ThinkPad-W520]/home/lucas$ route -n | grep UG 0.0.0.0 192.168.0.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 wlan0 with ethernet plugged in: [lucas@lucas-ThinkPad-W520]/home/lucas$ route -n | grep UG 0.0.0.0 192.168.0.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0 [lucas@lucas-ThinkPad-W520]/home/lucas$ nm-tool NetworkManager Tool State: connected (global) - Device: wlan0 [tg] ---------------------------------------------------------- Type: 802.11 WiFi Driver: iwlwifi State: connected Default: no HW Address: 24:77:03:29:8F:DC Capabilities: Speed: 52 Mb/s Wireless Properties WEP Encryption: yes WPA Encryption: yes WPA2 Encryption: yes Wireless Access Points (* = current AP) tatum: Infra, 40:8B:07:D8:A5:04, Freq 2437 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 42 W PA WPA2 ums: Infra, 00:20:A6:72:52:BF, Freq 2437 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 59 Alpha 40: Infra, 28:CF:E9:86:59:5D, Freq 5260 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 30 W PA WPA2 thepromiselan: Infra, 58:6D:8F:51:E5:54, Freq 2452 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 34 $ PA WPA2 xfinitywifi: Infra, 06:1D:D5:84:27:A0, Freq 2437 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 52 *tg: Infra, 00:02:6F:83:F8:F4, Freq 2462 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 73 W PA2 ums: Infra, 00:20:A6:A1:9F:25, Freq 2452 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 44 BRIAN-PC_Network:Infra, 20:AA:4B:DD:93:D6, Freq 2462 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 35 W PA2 HOME-C0F8: Infra, 44:32:C8:D2:C0:F8, Freq 2412 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 40 W PA WPA2 abcsexy: Infra, 28:28:5D:27:5D:85, Freq 2412 MHz, Rate 54 Mb/s, Strength 27 W PA WPA2 IPv4 Settings: Address: 192.168.0.105 Prefix: 24 (255.255.255.0) Gateway: 192.168.0.1 DNS: 192.168.0.1 - Device: eth0 [Wired connection 1] ------------------------------------------- Type: Wired Driver: e1000e State: connected Default: yes HW Address: F0:DE:F1:B2:53:53 Capabilities: Carrier Detect: yes Speed: 100 Mb/s Wired Properties Carrier: on IPv4 Settings: Address: 192.168.0.100 Prefix: 24 (255.255.255.0) Gateway: 192.168.0.1 DNS: 192.168.0.1

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• DAC pack up all your troubles

  - by Tony Davis

  Visual Studio 2010, or perhaps its apparently-forthcoming sister, "SQL Studio", is being geared up to become the natural way for developers to create databases. Central to this drive is the introduction of 'data-tier application components', or DACs. Applications are developed as normal but when it comes to deployment, instead of supplying the DBA with a bunch of scripts to create the required database objects, the developer creates a single DAC Package ("DAC Pack"); a zipped XML file containing all the database objects needed by the application, along with versioning information, policies for deployment, and so on. It's an intriguing prospect. Developers can work on their development database using their existing tools and source control, and then package up the changes into a single DACPAC for deployment and management. DBAs get an "application level view" of how their instances are being used and the ability to collectively, rather than individually, manage the objects. The DBA needing to manage a large number of relatively small databases can use "DAC snapshots" to get a quick overview of what has changed across all the databases they manage. The reason that DAC packs haven't caused more excitement is that they can only be pushed to SQL Server 2008 R2, and they must be developed or inspected using Visual Studio 2010. Furthermore, what we see right now in VS2010 is more of a 'work-in-progress' or 'vision of the future', with serious shortcomings and restrictions that render it unsuitable for anything but small 'non-critical' departmental databases. The first problem is that DAC packs support a limited set of schema objects (corresponding closely to the features available on 'Azure'). This means that Service Broker queues, CLR Objects, and perhaps most critically security (permissions, certificates etc.), are off-limits. Applications that require these objects will need to add them via a post-deployment TSQL script, rather defeating the whole idea. More worrying still is the process for altering a database with a DAC pack. The grand 'collective' philosophy, whereby a single XML file can be used for deploying and managing builds and changes, extends, unfortunately, to database upgrades. Any change to a database object will result in the creation of a new database, copying the data from the old version, nuking the previous one, and then renaming the new one. Simple eh? The problem is that even something as trivial as adding a comment to a stored procedure in a 5GB database will require the server to find at least twice as much space, as well sufficient elbow-room in the transaction log for copying the largest table. Of course, you'll need to take the database offline for the full course of the deployment, which is likely to take a long time if there is a lot of data. This upgrade/rename process breaks the log chain, makes any subsequent full restore operation highly complicated, and will also break log shipping. As with any grand vision, the devil is always in the detail. It's hard to fathom why Microsoft hasn't used a SQL Compare-style approach to the upgrade process, altering a database with a change script, and this will surely be adopted in the near future. Something had to be in place for VS2010, but right now DAC packs only make sense for Azure. For this, they're cute, but hardly compelling. Nevertheless, DBAs would do well to get familiar with VS 2010 and DAC packs. Like it or not, they're both coming. Cheers, Tony.

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• Using Oracle Linux iSCSI targets with Oracle VM

  - by wim.coekaerts

  A few days ago I had written a blog entry on how to use Oracle Solaris 10 (in my case), ZFS and the iSCSI target feature in Oracle Solaris to create a set of devices exported to my Oracle VM server. Oracle Linux can do this as well and I wanted to make sure I also tried out how to do this on Oracle Linux and here are the results. When you install Oracle Linux 5 update 5 (anything newer than update 3), it comes with an rpm called scsi-target-utils. To begin your quest, should you choose to accept it :) make sure this is installed. rpm -qa |grep scsi-target If it is not installed : up2date scsi-target-utils The target utils come with a tool tgtadm which is similar to iscsitadm on Oracle Solaris. There are 2 components again on the iSCSI server side. (1) create volumes - we will use lvm with lvcreate (2) expose a target using tgtadm. My server has a simple setup. All the disks are part of a single volume group called vgroot. To export a 50Gb volume I just create a new volume : lvcreate -L 50G -nmytest1 vgroot This will show up as a new volume in /dev/mapper as /dev/mapper/vgroot-mytest1. Create as many as you want for your environment. Since I already have my blog entry about the 5 volumes, I am not going to repeat the whole thing. You can just go look at the previous blog entry. Now that we have created the volume, we need to use tgtadm to set it up : make sure the service is running : /etc/init.d/tgtd start or service tgtd start (if you want to keep it running you can do chkconfig tgtd on to start it automatically at boottime) Next you need a targetname to set everything up. My recommendation would be to install iscsi-initiator-utils . This will create an iscsi id and put it in /etc/iscsi/initiatorname.iscsi. For convenience you can do : source /etc/iscsi/initiatorname.iscsi echo $InitiatorName and from here on use $InitiatorName instead of the long complex iqn. create your target : tgtadm --lld iscsi --op new --mode target --tid 1 -T $InitiatorName to show the status : tgtadm --lld iscsi --op show --mode target add the volume previously created : tgtadm --lld iscsi --op new --mode logicalunit --tid 1 --lun 1 -b /dev/mapper/vgroot-mytest1 re-run status to see it's there : tgtadm --lld iscsi --op show --mode target and just like on Oracle Solaris you now have to export (bind) it : tgtadm --lld iscsi --op bind --mode target --tid 1 -I iqn.1986-03.com.sun:01:2a7526f0ffff If you want to export the lun to every iscsi initiator then replace the iqn with ALL. Of course you have to add the iqn of each iscsi initiator or client you want to connect. In the case of my 2 node Oracle VM server setup, both Oracle VM server's initiator names would have to be added. use status again to see that it has this iqn under ACL tgtadm --lld iscsi --op show --mode target You can drop the --lld iscsi if you want, or alias it. It just makes the command line more obvious as to what you are doing. Oracle VM side : Refer back to the previous blog entry for the detailed setup of my Oracle VM server volumes but the exact same commands will be used there. discover : iscsiadm --mode discovery --type sendtargets --portal login : iscsiadm --mode node --targetname iscsi targetname --portal --login get devices : /etc/init.d/iscsi restart and voila you should be in business. have fun.

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• Normalisation and 'Anima notitia copia' (Soul of the Database)

  - by Phil Factor

  (A Guest Editorial for Simple-Talk) The other day, I was staring  at the sys.syslanguages  table in SQL Server with slightly-raised eyebrows . I’d just been reading Chris Date’s  interesting book ‘SQL and Relational Theory’. He’d made the point that you’re not necessarily doing relational database operations by using a SQL Database product.  The same general point was recently made by Dino Esposito about ASP.NET MVC.  The use of ASP.NET MVC doesn’t guarantee you a good application design: It merely makes it possible to test it. The way I’d describe the sentiment in both cases is ‘you can hit someone over the head with a frying-pan but you can’t call it cooking’. SQL enables you to create relational databases. However,  even if it smells bad, it is no crime to do hideously un-relational things with a SQL Database just so long as it’s necessary and you can tell the difference; not only that but also only if you’re aware of the risks and implications. Naturally, I’ve never knowingly created a database that Codd would have frowned at, but around the edges are interfaces and data feeds I’ve written  that have caused hissy fits amongst the Normalisation fundamentalists. Part of the problem for those who agonise about such things  is the misinterpretation of Atomicity.  An atomic value is one for which, in the strange virtual universe you are creating in your database, you don’t have any interest in any of its component parts.  If you aren’t interested in the electrons, neutrinos,  muons,  or  taus, then  an atom is ..er.. atomic. In the same way, if you are passed a JSON string or XML, and required to store it in a database, then all you need to do is to ask yourself, in your role as Anima notitia copia (Soul of the database) ‘have I any interest in the contents of this item of information?’.  If the answer is ‘No!’, or ‘nequequam! Then it is an atomic value, however complex it may be.  After all, you would never have the urge to store the pixels of images individually, under the misguided idea that these are the atomic values would you?  I would, of course,  ask the ‘Anima notitia copia’ rather than the application developers, since there may be more than one application, and the applications developers may be designing the application in the absence of full domain knowledge, (‘or by the seat of the pants’ as the technical term used to be). If, on the other hand, the answer is ‘sure, and we want to index the XML column’, then we may be in for some heavy XML-shredding sessions to get to store the ‘atomic’ values and ensure future harmony as the application develops. I went back to looking at the sys.syslanguages table. It has a months column with the months in a delimited list January,February,March,April,May,June,July,August,September,October,November,December This is an ordered list. Wicked? I seem to remember that this value, like shortmonths and days, is treated as a ‘thing’. It is merely passed off to an external  C++ routine in order to format a date in a particular language, and never accessed directly within the database. As far as the database is concerned, it is an atomic value.  There is more to normalisation than meets the eye.

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• Some Original Expressions

  - by Phil Factor

  Guest Editorial for Simple-Talk newsletterIn a guest editorial for the Simple-Talk Newsletter, Phil Factor wonders if we are still likely to find some more novel and unexpected ways of using the newer features of Transact SQL: or maybe in some features that have always been there! There can be a great deal of fun to be had in trying out recent features of SQL Expressions to see if  they provide new functionality.  It is surprisingly rare to find things that couldn’t be done before, but in a different   and more cumbersome way; but it is great to experiment or to read of someone else making that discovery.  One such recent feature is the ‘table value constructor’, or ‘VALUES constructor’, that managed to get into SQL Server 2008 from Standard SQL.  This allows you to create derived tables of up to 1000 rows neatly within select statements that consist of  lists of row values.  E.g. SELECT Old_Welsh, number FROM (VALUES ('Un',1),('Dou',2),('Tri',3),('Petuar',4),('Pimp',5),('Chwech',6),('Seith',7),('Wyth',8),('Nau',9),('Dec',10)) AS WelshWordsToTen (Old_Welsh, number) These values can be expressions that return single values, including, surprisingly, subqueries. You can use this device to create views, or in the USING clause of a MERGE statement. Joe Celko covered  this here and here.  It can become extraordinarily handy to use once one gets into the way of thinking in these terms, and I’ve rewritten a lot of routines to use the constructor, but the old way of using UNION can be used the same way, but is a little slower and more long-winded. The use of scalar SQL subqueries as an expression in a VALUES constructor, and then applied to a MERGE, has got me thinking. It looks very clever, but what use could one put it to? I haven’t seen anything yet that couldn’t be done almost as  simply in SQL Server 2000, but I’m hopeful that someone will come up with a way of solving a tricky problem, just in the same way that a freak of the XML syntax forever made the in-line  production of delimited lists from an expression easy, or that a weird XML pirouette could do an elegant  pivot-table rotation. It is in this sort of experimentation where the community of users can make a real contribution. The dissemination of techniques such as the Number, or Tally table, or the unconventional ways that the UPDATE statement can be used, has been rapid due to articles and blogs. However, there is plenty to be done to explore some of the less obvious features of Transact SQL. Even some of the features introduced into SQL Server 2000 are hardly well-known. Certain operations on data are still awkward to perform in Transact SQL, but we mustn’t, I think, be too ready to state that certain things can only be done in the application layer, or using a CLR routine. With the vast array of features in the product, and with the tools that surround it, I feel that there is generally a way of getting tricky things done. Or should we just stick to our lasts and push anything difficult out into procedural code? I’d love to know your views.

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• SQL Sentry Truth-Telling and Disk Configuration

  - by AjarnMark

  Recently, SQL Sentry told me something about my SQL Server disk configurations that I just didn’t want to believe, but alas, it was true. Several days ago I posted my First Impressions of the SQL Sentry Power Suite.  Today’s post could fall into the category of, “Hey, as long as you have that fancy tool…”  Unfortunately, it also falls into the category of an overloaded worker taking someone else’s word for the truth, not verifying it with independent fact-checking, and then making decisions based on that.  Here’s my story… I’m not exactly an Accidental DBA (or Involuntary DBA as Paul Randal calls it).  I came to this company five years ago as a lead application developer with extensive experience in database design and development.  I worked my way into management, and along the way, took over the DBA responsibilities.  Fortunately, our systems run pretty smoothly most of the time, but I’m always looking for ways to make them better and to fit into my understanding of best practices.  When I took over as DBA, I inherited a SQL 2000 server with about 30 databases on it supporting our main systems, and a SQL 2005 server with multiple instances.  Both of these servers were configured with the Operating System and Application files on the C drive, data files on a different drive letter, and log files on a third drive letter.  Even before I took over as DBA, I verified that this was true with a previous server administrator, and that these represented actual separate disks.  He stated that they did, and I thought that all was well. Then one day, I’m poking around inside the SQL Sentry Performance Advisor, checking out features as I am evaluating whether to purchase the product, and I come across a Disk Configuration section.  The first thing I notice is that the drives do not have the proper partition offset, which was not at all surprising to me given the age of the installation and the relative newness of that topic.  But what threw me for a loop was that the graphic display appeared to be telling me that I did not in fact have three separate drives (or arrays) but rather had two, and that the log files were merely on a separate volume on the same physical array as the OS.  I figured that I must be reading it wrong so I scanned the Help file, but that just seemed to confirm my interpretation.  Then I thought, “there must be something wrong with the demo version of the software!  This can’t be right!”  But just to double-check, I went to our current server admin to talk it over with him, and sure enough, SQL Sentry was telling the truth! I was stunned!  I quickly went through the grieving process…denial…anger…reconciliation.  Here was something that I thought was such a basic truth that was turned upside down.  OK, granted, this wasn’t disastrous.  Our databases didn’t suddenly grind to a halt.  I didn’t get calls late at night inquiring about the sudden downturn in performance.  But it was a bit of a shock to the system, in a good way, to jolt me out of taking what I had believed as the truth for granted, and instead to Trust, but Verify! Yes, before someone else points it out, I know that there are”free” disk management tools built-in to Windows that would have told me the same thing if I had only looked at them; I did not have to buy a fancy tool to tell me that, but the fact is, until I was evaluating the tool, I had just gone with what I was told, and never bothered to check what was actually there. So, what things do you believe to be true but you actually never verified?

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• ResourceSerializable: an alternate to ORM and ActiveRecord

  - by Levi Morrison

  A few opinionated reasons I don't like the traditional ORM and ActiveRecord patterns: They work only with a database. Sometimes I'm dealing with objects from an API and other objects from a database. All the implementations I have seen don't allow for that. Feel free to clue me in if I'm wrong on this. They are brittle. Changes in the database will likely break your implemenation. Some implementations can help reduce this, but a few of the ones I've seen don't. Their very design is influenced by the database. If I want to switch to using an API, I'll have to redesign the object to get it to work (likely). It seems to violate the single-responsibility pattern. They know what they are and how they act, but they also know how they are created, destroyed and saved? Seems a bit much. What about an approach that is somewhat more familiar in PHP: implementing an interface? In php 5.4, we'll have the JsonSerializable interface that defines the data to be json_encoded, so users will become accustomed to this type of thing. What if there was a ResourceSerializable interface? This is still an ORM by name, but certainly not by tradition. interface ResourceSerializable { /** * Returns the id that identifies the resource. */ function resourceId(); /** * Returns the 'type' of the resource. */ function resourceType(); /** * Returns the data to be serialized. */ function resourceSerialize(); } Things might be poorly named, I'll take suggestions. Notes: ResourceId will work for API's and databases. As long as your primary key in the database is the same as the resource ID in the API, there is no conflict. All of the API's I've worked with have a unique ID for the resource, so I don't see any issues there. ResourceType is the group or type associated with the resource. You can use this to map the resource to an API call or a database table. If the ResourceType was person, it could map to /api/1/person/{resourceId} and the table persons (or people, if it's smart enough). resourceSerialize() returns the data to be stored. Keys would identify API parameters and database table columns. This also seems easier to test than ActiveRecord / Orm implemenations. I haven't done much automated testing on traditional ActiveRecord/ORM implemenations, so this is merely a guess. But it seems that I being able to create objects independently of the library helps me. I don't have to use load() to get an existing resource, I can simply create one and set all the right properties. This is not so easy in the ActiveRecord / Orm implemenations I've dealt with. Downsides: You need another object to serialize it. This also means you have more code in general as you have to use more objects. You have to map resource types to API calls and database tables. This is even more work, but some ORMs and ActiveRecord implementations require you to map objects to table names anyway. Are there other downsides that you see? Does this seem feasible to you? How would you improve it? Note: I almost asked this on StackOverflow because it might be too vague for their standards, but I'm still not really familiar with programmers.stackexchange.com, so please help me improve my question if it doesn't shape up to standards here.

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• What is the right way to process inconsistent data files?

  - by Tahabi

  I'm working at a company that uses Excel files to store product data, specifically, test results from products before they are shipped out. There are a few thousand spreadsheets with anywhere from 50-100 relevant data points per file. Over the years, the schema for the spreadsheets has changed significantly, but not unidirectionally - in the sense that, changes often get reverted and then re-added in the space of a few dozen to few hundred files. My project is to convert about 8000 of these spreadsheets into a database that can be queried. I'm using MongoDB to deal with the inconsistency in the data, and Python. My question is, what is the "right" or canonical way to deal with the huge variance in my source files? I've written a data structure which stores the data I want for the latest template, which will be the final template used going forward, but that only helps for a few hundred files historically. Brute-forcing a solution would mean writing similar data structures for each version/template - which means potentially writing hundreds of schemas with dozens of fields each. This seems very inefficient, especially when sometimes a change in the template is as little as moving a single line of data one row down or splitting what used to be one data field into two data fields. A slightly more elegant solution I have in mind would be writing schemas for all the variants I can find for pre-defined groups in the source files, and then writing a function to match a particular series of files with a series of variants that matches that set of files. This is because, more often that not, most of the file will remain consistent over a long period, only marred by one or two errant sections, but inside the period, which section is inconsistent, is inconsistent. For example, say a file has four sections with three data fields, which is represented by four Python dictionaries with three keys each. For files 7000-7250, sections 1-3 will be consistent, but section 4 will be shifted one row down. For files 7251-7500, 1-3 are consistent, section 4 is one row down, but a section five appears. For files 7501-7635, sections 1 and 3 will be consistent, but section 2 will have five data fields instead of three, section five disappears, and section 4 is still shifted down one row. For files 7636-7800, section 1 is consistent, section 4 gets shifted back up, section 2 returns to three cells, but section 3 is removed entirely. Files 7800-8000 have everything in order. The proposed function would take the file number and match it to a dictionary representing the data mappings for different variants of each section. For example, a section_four_variants dictionary might have two members, one for the shifted-down version, and one for the normal version, a section_two_variants might have three and five field members, etc. The script would then read the matchings, load the correct mapping, extract the data, and insert it into the database. Is this an accepted/right way to go about solving this problem? Should I structure things differently? I don't know what to search Google for either to see what other solutions might be, though I believe the problem lies in the domain of ETL processing. I also have no formal CS training aside from what I've taught myself over the years. If this is not the right forum for this question, please tell me where to move it, if at all. Any help is most appreciated. Thank you.

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• My Experience at Oracle !!! By Ayush Gupta

  - by Nadiya

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE Hi! My name is Ayush, a Gratuate from BITS Pilani and now working and living in Bangalore. I joined Oracle in August 2013 as a Senior Consultant (SC) and would like to share my experiences over the first couple of months with you.It has been a wonderful journey so far. The last two months have been very exciting for me. First of all I would like to mention that the training program at Oracle that we went through really prepared us well. It matured us and allowed us to go from developing small applications in college to big enterprise products. Two months of initial training has had a lasting impact for me. I am also really enjoying the knowledge I have gained so far and also learning new things in the form of product training. It's really fun to work here. We are treated like adults and we are responsible for our own workloads.With that I can't keep from mentioning the fun times we as a team have in the form of Young Leadership programme in Hotel Fortune Trinity which included Luxurious buffet lunch too. Wishing it could happen more frequently.  Oracle provides one of the best opportunities to learn various technologies across different platforms. What I like best about working at Oracle is the work life balance. With the option of flexible timings, one can easily enjoy planned evenings with friends or maybe working out at the fitness centre in your building. Be it the birthday celebrations at office or the day long team outing at a resort, It’s all together a different experience. Overall, you get to take full ownership of your project and they give you a free leash on how you design your enhancements/changes.As one of the largest international companies, Oracle is obviously an expert on exploring the potential and possibility of inexperienced new hires. We were taught how to make an outstanding team work in a group training session at the first few weeks. From this experience I realized that perfect cooperation is not about where you come from or what your study background is, everyone can find his or her own role to support the team. Even though I am not that skilled in technology, my background has significantly helped me in learning new technologies in Oracle.My idea and suggestion is: for new joiners, the will to learn is be more important than what you have learnt before. Colleagues here at Oracle are professionals in their field, always friendly and glad to help. So don’t worry, all you need to do is just be confident, and have a nice attitude, Oracle will let you fully display your talent. Come and join us, here you can always find a tailor made role for you! /* 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-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; 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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• Cutting-Edge Demos Coming to Collaborate12

  - by mvaughan

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA 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-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} By Kathy Miedema, Oracle Applications User Experience Are you building your Collaborate 2012 agenda? Leave room for a stop at the demogrounds while you’re in Las Vegas from April 22-26. In addition to several presentations on the Oracle user experience, the Applications User Experience (UX) team will be on the demo grounds with a new eye-tracking tool, as well as demos that showcase new user experience designs. Check out our cutting-edge technology, which we use to obtain feedback that helps improve the user experience of Oracle applications, and see what our next-generation designs are in the HCM and FIN user experiences.  Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA 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-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Photo by Martin Taylor – Oracle Applications User Experience An Apps UX team member demonstrates what happens during an eye-tracking test. The dots on the screen show were test participants were looking and how long they spent at each point in the page. The UX team will also be staffing an on-site lab at Collaborate. At on-site labs, conference participants can sign up to join customer feedback sessions on several different kinds of work flow designs, from HCM to FIN to CRM to mobile. The feedback UX team members collect helps inform and fine-tune the user experiences being designed for next-generation applications. At Collaborate12, for example, user experience designs around Help and organizational charts will be tested for usability. The Apps UX team brings on-site labs to many major user group conferences, including OpenWorld 2012 in October in San Francisco. Stay tuned to find out when our recruiters are ready to sign up participants, or leave a comment below to find out whether an on-site lab will be at your next conference. For information on the following presentations, which will be delivered by Apps UX team members, check the Usable Apps Events page. • The Fusion Applications User Experience: Transforming Work into Insight • Customizations Under the Covers – Making Fusion Applications Your Own • OAUG Fusion Middleware SIG (FMWSIG) • 18 Months with Fusion Applications – Stories From The Trenhes • PeopleTools Tips and Techniques

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• Surviving MATLAB and R as a Hardcore Programmer

  - by dsimcha

  I love programming in languages that seem geared towards hardcore programmers. (My favorites are Python and D.) MATLAB is geared towards engineers and R is geared towards statisticians, and it seems like these languages were designed by people who aren't hardcore programmers and don't think like hardcore programmers. I always find them somewhat awkward to use, and to some extent I can't put my finger on why. Here are some issues I have managed to identify: (Both): The extreme emphasis on vectors and matrices to the extent that there are no true primitives. (Both): The difficulty of basic string manipulation. (Both): Lack of or awkwardness in support for basic data structures like hash tables and "real", i.e. type-parametric and nestable, arrays. (Both): They're really, really slow even by interpreted language standards, unless you bend over backwards to vectorize your code. (Both): They seem to not be designed to interact with the outside world. For example, both are fairly bulky programs that take a while to launch and seem to not be designed to make simple text filter programs easy to write. Furthermore, the lack of good string processing makes file I/O in anything but very standard forms near impossible. (Both): Object orientation seems to have a very bolted-on feel. Yes, you can do it, but it doesn't feel much more idiomatic than OO in C. (Both): No obvious, simple way to get a reference type. No pointers or class references. For example, I have no idea how you roll your own linked list in either of these languages. (MATLAB): You can't put multiple top level functions in a single file, encouraging very long functions and cut-and-paste coding. (MATLAB): Integers apparently don't exist as a first class type. (R): The basic builtin data structures seem way too high level and poorly documented, and never seem to do quite what I expect given my experience with similar but lower level data structures. (R): The documentation is spread all over the place and virtually impossible to browse or search. Even D, which is often knocked for bad documentation and is still fairly alpha-ish, is substantially better as far as I can tell. (R): At least as far as I'm aware, there's no good IDE for it. Again, even D, a fairly alpha-ish language with a small community, does better. In general, I also feel like MATLAB and R could be easily replaced by plain old libraries in more general-purpose langauges, if sufficiently comprehensive libraries existed. This is especially true in newer general purpose languages that include lots of features for library writers. Why do R and MATLAB seem so weird to me? Are there any other major issues that you've noticed that may make these languages come off as strange to hardcore programmers? When their use is necessary, what are some good survival tips? Edit: I'm seeing one issue from some of the answers I've gotten. I have a strong personal preference, when I analyze data, to have one script that incorporates the whole pipeline. This implies that a general purpose language needs to be used. I hate having to write a script to "clean up" the data and spit it out, then another to read it back in a completely different environment, etc. I find the friction of using MATLAB/R for some of my work and a completely different language with a completely different address space and way of thinking for the rest to be a huge source of friction. Furthermore, I know there are glue layers that exist, but they always seem to be horribly complicated and a source of friction.

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• SQL Azure: Notes on Building a Shard Technology

  - by Herve Roggero

  In Chapter 10 of the book on SQL Azure (http://www.apress.com/book/view/9781430229612) I am co-authoring, I am digging deeper in what it takes to write a Shard. It's actually a pretty cool exercise, and I wanted to share some thoughts on how I am designing the technology. A Shard is a technology that spreads the load of database requests over multiple databases, as transparently as possible. The type of shard I am building is called a Vertical Partition Shard  (VPS). A VPS is a mechanism by which the data is stored in one or more databases behind the scenes, but your code has no idea at design time which data is in which database. It's like having a mini cloud for records instead of services. Imagine you have three SQL Azure databases that have the same schema (DB1, DB2 and DB3), you would like to issue a SELECT * FROM Users on all three databases, concatenate the results into a single resultset, and order by last name. Imagine you want to ensure your code doesn't need to change if you add a new database to the shard (DB4). Now imagine that you want to make sure all three databases are queried at the same time, in a multi-threaded manner so your code doesn't have to wait for three database calls sequentially. Then, imagine you would like to obtain a breadcrumb (in the form of a new, virtual column) that gives you a hint as to which database a record came from, so that you could update it if needed. Now imagine all that is done through the standard SqlClient library... and you have the Shard I am currently building. Here are some lessons learned and techniques I am using with this shard: Parellel Processing: Querying databases in parallel is not too hard using the Task Parallel Library; all you need is to lock your resources when needed Deleting/Updating Data: That's not too bad either as long as you have a breadcrumb. However it becomes more difficult if you need to update a single record and you don't know in which database it is. Inserting Data: I am using a round-robin approach in which each new insert request is directed to the next database in the shard. Not sure how to deal with Bulk Loads just yet... Shard Databases:  I use a static collection of SqlConnection objects which needs to be loaded once; from there on all the Shard commands use this collection Extension Methods: In order to make it look like the Shard commands are part of the SqlClient class I use extension methods. For example I added ExecuteShardQuery and ExecuteShardNonQuery methods to SqlClient. Exceptions: Capturing exceptions in a multi-threaded code is interesting... but I kept it simple for now. I am using the ConcurrentQueue to store my exceptions. Database GUID: Every database in the shard is given a GUID, which is calculated based on the connection string's values. DataTable. The Shard methods return a DataTable object which can be bound to objects.  I will be sharing the code soon as an open-source project in CodePlex. Please stay tuned on twitter to know when it will be available (@hroggero). Or check www.bluesyntax.net for updates on the shard. Thanks!

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• Atheros AR9485 wireless card doesn't work in an ASUS K53E

  - by John

  I just installed Ubuntu 11.10 32-bit version in dual boot mode on an ASUS K53. Every thing seems to work fine except for the wireless. The wireless works on Windows 7. Ubuntu finds the wireless card, but it does not appear to be turned on. The only physical means of turning on the card is the FN-F2 key combo. That works on Windows, but not in Ubuntu. I've looked in the forums for a solution and I'm not quite sure what to do. I've gathered the following information: jdwbmc@Spatha:~$ cat /etc/lsb-release; uname -a DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu DISTRIB_RELEASE=11.10 DISTRIB_CODENAME=oneiric DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 11.10" Linux Spatha 3.0.0-12-generic #20-Ubuntu SMP Fri Oct 7 14:50:42 UTC 2011 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux jdwbmc@Spatha:~$ lspci -nnk | grep -iA2 net 02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9485 Wireless Network Adapter [168c:0032] (rev 01) Subsystem: AzureWave Device [1a3b:1186] Kernel driver in use: ath9k -- 04:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Atheros Communications AR8151 v2.0 Gigabit Ethernet [1969:1083] (rev c0) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device [1043:1851] Kernel driver in use: atl1c jdwbmc@Spatha:~$ lsusb Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 001 Device 003: ID 058f:a014 Alcor Micro Corp. jdwbmc@Spatha:~$ iwconfig lo no wireless extensions. eth0 no wireless extensions. wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID off/any Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=0 dBm Retry long limit:7 RTS thrff Fragment thrff Power Managementff jdwbmc@Spatha:~$ rfkill list all 0: phy0: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 1: asus-wlan: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no jdwbmc@Spatha:~$ lsmod Module Size Used by parport_pc 32114 0 ppdev 12849 0 snd_hda_codec_hdmi 31426 1 bnep 17923 2 rfcomm 38408 0 bluetooth 148839 10 bnep,rfcomm snd_hda_codec_realtek 254125 1 binfmt_misc 17292 1 joydev 17393 0 asus_nb_wmi 12469 0 asus_wmi 19333 1 asus_nb_wmi sparse_keymap 13658 1 asus_wmi uvcvideo 67271 0 videodev 85626 1 uvcvideo snd_hda_intel 24262 2 snd_hda_codec 91754 3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_i ntel snd_hwdep 13276 1 snd_hda_codec snd_pcm 80468 3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec snd_seq_midi 13132 0 wmi 18744 1 asus_wmi snd_rawmidi 25241 1 snd_seq_midi snd_seq_midi_event 14475 1 snd_seq_midi snd_seq 51567 2 snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event arc4 12473 2 i915 505108 3 snd_timer 28932 2 snd_pcm,snd_seq snd_seq_device 14172 3 snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq ath9k 112711 0 psmouse 73673 0 serio_raw 12990 0 mac80211 272785 1 ath9k drm_kms_helper 32889 1 i915 ath9k_common 13599 1 ath9k drm 192226 4 i915,drm_kms_helper ath9k_hw 293893 2 ath9k,ath9k_common ath 19387 2 ath9k,ath9k_hw cfg80211 172392 3 ath9k,mac80211,ath snd 55902 14 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_i ntel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hwdep,snd_pcm,snd_rawmidi,s nd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device soundcore 12600 1 snd snd_page_alloc 14115 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm mei 36466 0 i2c_algo_bit 13199 1 i915 video 18908 1 i915 lp 17455 0 parport 40930 3 parport_pc,ppdev,lp ahci 21634 3 libahci 25727 1 ahci atl1c 36638 0 xhci_hcd 72915 0 jdwbmc@Spatha:/var/lib/NetworkManager$ cat NetworkManager.state [main] NetworkingEnabled=true WirelessEnabled=true WWANEnabled=true WimaxEnabled=true jdwbmc@Spatha:~$ lspci -nn | grep 0280 02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9485 Wireless Network Adapter [168c:0032] (rev 01) Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

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• 13 Things From the Oracle Social Summit You Should Know

  - by Mike Stiles

  Oracle held its first annual Oracle Social Summit, “The School for the Socially Gifted,” this past week in Las Vegas.  If anyone came to the event uncertain as to why Oracle has such an interest in social, and what its plans for social are, they left with an entirely new vision of where social is headed, and why.For those unable to attend, I was able to keep my MacBook charged just long enough to capture some of the more pertinent takeaways.1. The social enterprise is inevitable.  Social technology is disrupting the hierarchies of big companies.  It’s a revolution in corporate structures, just as it has been in various governments.  It’s not crazy to ask yourself if your CEO is the next Mubarak.  (David Kilpatrick Author of “The Facebook Effect” and founder of the Techonomy Conference) 2. The social enterprise represents collaboration on steroids.  It’s tapping into the power of your people, as opposed to keeping them “in their place.”  3. 1 in every 7 humans on earth is an active Facebook user.  75% have posted a negative comment after a poor customer experience.  The average user will inform 53 people of a bad experience.4. Checking social media is the 2nd biggest use of phones now.  Reading posts from brands is 4th.5. 70% of marketers have little or no understanding of the social conversations happening around their brand.6. Advertising, when done well, is content we care about, preferably informed by those we trust.7. Acquiring low-quality fans through gimmicks, or focusing purely on fan acquisition is a mistake.  And relying purely on organic distribution is a mistake.  (John Yi, Head of Marketing Partnerships – Facebook)8. Using all this newfound data and insight serves to positively affect the customer experience.  It allows organizations to now leverage the investments they’ve made in social up to now.9. Social is not a marketing utopia where everything is free.  It’s pay to play.  The paid component is about driving attention.  10. We are only in the infancy of ad-targeting opportunities in social.  There’s an evolution underway from interest-based targeting to action-based targeting.11. There’s actually very little overlap of the people following you on different social platforms.  Don’t assume it’s the same audience on each.12. People who can create content and who also have an understanding of what drives that content are growing increasingly valuable.13. Oracle Social’s future is enterprise SRM, integrated across marketing, selling, service, HR and every other corner of the organization.And in case you thought those were the only gems to come out of the summit, you may want to keep an eye out for Tuesday’s Social Spotlight, ever so aptly titled “13 More Things from the Oracle Social Summit You Should Know.”

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• Xsigo and Oracle's Storage

  - by Philippe Deverchère

  Xsigo, a virtual network infrastructure provider, has recently been acquired by Oracle. Following this acquisition, one might ask ourselves why it is important to Oracle and how Oracle's storage is going to benefit on the long term from this virtualized infrastructure layer. Well, the first thing to understand is that Virtual Networking addresses both network and storage connectivity. Oracle Virtual Networking, as the Xsigo technology is now called, connects any server to any network and storage, so this is not just about connecting servers to the Internet or Intranet. It is also for a large part connecting servers to NAS and SAN storage. Connecting servers to storage has become increasingly complex in the past few years because of the strong emergence of virtualization at the Operating System level. 50% of enterprise workloads are now virtualized, up from 18% in 2009, resulting in a strong consolidation of various applications in a high density server footprint. At the same time, server I/O capability increased 8x in the last 8 years. All this has pushed IT administrators to multiply the number of I/O connections in the back-end of their physical servers, resulting in a messy and very hard to manage networking infrastructure. Here is a typical view of a rack back-end when no virtual networking is used. We consider that today: - 75% of users have ten or more Ethernet ports per server - 85% of users have two or more SAN ports per server - 58% have had to add connectivity to a server specifically for VMs - 65% consider cable reduction a priority The average is 12 or more ports per server, resulting in an extremely complex infrastructure to manage. What Oracle wants to achieve with its Oracle Virtual Networking offering is pretty simple. The objective is to eliminate the complexity through a dramatic reduction of cabling between servers and storage/networks. It is also to provide a software based management system so that any server can be connected to any network or any storage, on demand, and without physical intervention on the infrastructure. At the end of the day, the picture on the left shows what one wants to get for the back-end of customer's racks: just a couple of connections on each physical server to provide a simple, agile and fast network infrastructure for both storage and networking access. This is exactly what the Oracle Virtual Networking solution does. It transforms a complex, error-prone, difficult to manage and expensive networking infrastructure into a simple, high performance and agile solution for the data center. Practically speaking, and for the sake of simplicity, imagine that each server just hosts a minimal number of physical InfiniBand HCAs (Host Channel Adapter) with two links (for redundancy) onto the Oracle Fabric Interconnect director. Using the Oracle Fabric Manager software, you'll then be able to create virtual NICs and HBAs (called vNIC and vHBA) that will be seen by the servers as standard NICs and HBAs and associate them to networks and storage systems which are physically connected to the back-end of the director through standard Fibre Channel and Ethernet GbE/10GbE ports. In addition to this incredibly simple "at-a-click" connectivity capability, the Oracle Virtual Networking solution offers powerful features such as network isolation, Quality of Service, advanced performance monitoring and non-disruptive reconfiguration, migration and scalability of networking infrastructure. So let's go back now to our initial question: why is Oracle Virtual Networking especially important to Oracle's storage solutions? After all, one could connect any storage in the back-end of the Oracle Fabric Interconnect directors, right? The answer is pretty simple: since Oracle owns both the virtualized networking infrastructure and the storage (ZFS-SA, Pillar Axiom and tape), it is possible to imagine several ways in the future to add value when it comes to connect storage to a virtualized storage network: enhanced storage capabilities, converged management between storage and network, improved diagnostic capabilities and optimized integration resulting in higher performance and unique features/functions. Of course, all this is not going to be done overnight, and future will tell us is which evolutions come first. But there is little doubt that the integration of Xsigo within Oracle is going to create opportunities for Oracle's storage!

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• Free RAM disappears - Memory leak?

  - by Izzy

  On a fresh started system, free reports about 1.5G used RAM (8G RAM alltogether, Ubuntu 12.04 with lightdm and plasma desktop, one konsole window started). Having the apps running I use, it still consumes not more than 2G. However, having the system running for a couple of days, more and more of my free RAM disappears -- without showing up in the list of used apps: while smem --pie=name reports less than 20% used (and 80% being available), everything else says differently. free -m for example reports on about day 7: total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 7459 7013 446 0 178 997 -/+ buffers/cache: 5836 1623 Swap: 9536 296 9240 (so you can see, it's not the buffers or the cache). Today this finally ended with the system crashing completely: the windows manager being gone, apps "hanging in the air" (frameless) -- and a popup notifying me about "too many open files". Syslog reports: kernel: [856738.020829] VFS: file-max limit 752838 reached So I closed those applications I was able to close, and killed X using Ctrl-Alt-backspace. X tried to come up again after that with failsafeX, but was unable to do so as it could no longer detect its configuration. So I switched to a console using Ctrl-Alt-F2, captured all information I could think of (vmstat, free, smem, proc/meminfo, lsof, ps aux), and finally rebooted. X again came up with failsafeX; this time I told it to "recover from my backed-up configuration", then switched to a console and successfully used startx to bring up the graphical environment. I have no real clue to what is causing this issue -- though it must have to do either with X itself, or with some user processes running on X -- as after killing X, free -m output looked like this: total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 7459 2677 4781 0 62 419 -/+ buffers/cache: 2195 5263 Swap: 9536 59 9477 (~3.5GB being freed) -- to compare with the output after a fresh start: total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 7459 1483 5975 0 63 730 -/+ buffers/cache: 689 6769 Swap: 9536 0 9536 Two more helpful outputs are provided by memstat -u. Shortly before the crash: User Count Swap USS PSS RSS mail 1 0 200 207 616 whoopsie 1 764 740 817 2300 colord 1 3200 836 894 2156 root 62 70404 352996 382260 569920 izzy 80 177508 1465416 1519266 1851840 After having X killed: User Count Swap USS PSS RSS mail 1 0 184 188 356 izzy 1 1400 708 739 1080 whoopsie 1 848 668 826 1772 colord 1 3204 804 888 1728 root 62 54876 131708 149950 267860 And after a restart, back in X: User Count Swap USS PSS RSS mail 1 0 212 217 628 whoopsie 1 0 1536 1880 5096 colord 1 0 3740 4217 7936 root 54 0 148668 180911 345132 izzy 47 0 370928 437562 915056 Edit: Just added two graphs from my monitoring system. Interesting to see: everytime when there's a "jump" in memory consumption, CPU peaks as well. Just found this right now -- and it reminds me of another indicator pointing to X itself: Often when returning to my machine and unlocking the screen, I found something doing heavvy work on my CPU. Checking with top, it always turned out to be /usr/bin/X :0 -auth /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 -nolisten tcp vt7 -novtswitch -background none. So after this long explanation, finally my questions: What could be the possible causes? How can I better identify involved processes/applications? What steps could be taken to avoid this behaviour -- short from rebooting the machine all X days? I was running 8.04 (Hardy) for about 5 years on my old machine, never having experienced the like (always more than 100 days uptime, before rebooting for e.g. kernel updates). This now is a complete new machine with a fresh install of 8.04. In case it matters, some specs: AMD A4-3400 APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics, using the open-source ati/radeon driver (so no fglrx installed), 8GB RAM, WDC WD1002FAEX-0 hdd (1TB), Asus F1A75-V Evo mainboard. Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit with KDE4/Plasma. Apps usually open more or less permanently include Evolution, Firefox, konsole (with Midnight Commander running inside, about 4 tabs), and LibreOffice -- plus occasionally Calibre, Gimp and Moneyplex (banking software I'm already using for almost 20 years now, in a version which did fine on Hardy).

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• Converting openGl code to DirectX

  - by Fredrik Boston Westman

  First of all, this is kind of a follow up question on @byte56 excellent anwser on this question concerning picking algorithms. I'm trying to convert one of his code examples to directX 11 however I have run in to some problems ( I can pick but the picking is way off), and I wanted to make sure I had done it rigth before moving on and checking the rest of my code. I am not that familiar with openGl but I can imagine openGl has diffrent coordinations systems, and functions that alters how you must implement to code abit. This is his code example: public Ray GetPickRay() { int mouseX = Mouse.getX(); int mouseY = WORLD.Byte56Game.getHeight() - Mouse.getY(); float windowWidth = WORLD.Byte56Game.getWidth(); float windowHeight = WORLD.Byte56Game.getHeight(); //get the mouse position in screenSpace coords double screenSpaceX = ((float) mouseX / (windowWidth / 2) - 1.0f) * aspectRatio; double screenSpaceY = (1.0f - (float) mouseY / (windowHeight / 2)); double viewRatio = Math.tan(((float) Math.PI / (180.f/ViewAngle) / 2.00f))* zoomFactor; screenSpaceX = screenSpaceX * viewRatio; screenSpaceY = screenSpaceY * viewRatio; //Find the far and near camera spaces Vector4f cameraSpaceNear = new Vector4f((float) (screenSpaceX * NearPlane), (float) (screenSpaceY * NearPlane), (float) (-NearPlane), 1); Vector4f cameraSpaceFar = new Vector4f((float) (screenSpaceX * FarPlane), (float) (screenSpaceY * FarPlane), (float) (-FarPlane), 1); //Unproject the 2D window into 3D to see where in 3D we're actually clicking Matrix4f tmpView = Matrix4f(view); Matrix4f invView = (Matrix4f) tmpView.invert(); Vector4f worldSpaceNear = new Vector4f(); Matrix4f.transform(invView, cameraSpaceNear, worldSpaceNear); Vector4f worldSpaceFar = new Vector4f(); Matrix4f.transform(invView, cameraSpaceFar, worldSpaceFar); //calculate the ray position and direction Vector3f rayPosition = new Vector3f(worldSpaceNear.x, worldSpaceNear.y, worldSpaceNear.z); Vector3f rayDirection = new Vector3f(worldSpaceFar.x - worldSpaceNear.x, worldSpaceFar.y - worldSpaceNear.y, worldSpaceFar.z - worldSpaceNear.z); rayDirection.normalise(); return new Ray(rayPosition, rayDirection); } All rigths reserved to him of course This is my DirectX 11 code : void GraphicEngine::pickRayVector(float mouseX, float mouseY,XMVECTOR& pickRayInWorldSpacePos, XMVECTOR& pickRayInWorldSpaceDir) { float PRVecX, PRVecY; float nearPlane = 0.1f; float farPlane = 200.0f; floar viewAngle = 0.4 * 3.14; PRVecX = ((( 2.0f * mouseX) / ClientWidth ) - 1 ) * tan((viewAngle)/2); PRVecY = (1-(( 2.0f * mouseY) / ClientHeight)) * tan((viewAngle)/2); XMVECTOR cameraSpaceNear = XMVectorSet(PRVecX * nearPlane,PRVecY * nearPlane, -nearPlane, 1.0f); XMVECTOR cameraSpaceFar = XMVectorSet(PRVecX * farPlane,PRVecY * farPlane, -farPlane, 1.0f); // Transform 3D Ray from View space to 3D ray in World space XMMATRIX invMat; XMVECTOR matInvDeter; invMat = XMMatrixInverse(&matInvDeter, cam->getCameraView()); //Inverse of View Space matrix is World space matrix XMVECTOR worldSpaceNear = XMVector3TransformCoord(cameraSpaceNear, invMat); XMVECTOR worldSpaceFar = XMVector3TransformCoord(cameraSpaceFar, invMat); pickRayInWorldSpacePos = worldSpaceNear; pickRayInWorldSpaceDir = worldSpaceFar-worldSpaceNear; pickRayInWorldSpaceDir = XMVector3Normalize(pickRayInWorldSpaceDir); } A couple of notes: The mouse coordinates are already converted so that the top left corner of the client window would be (0,0) and the bottom rigth (800,600) ( or whatever resolution you would have) I hadn't used any far or near plane before, so i just made some arbitrary number up for them. To my understanding it shouldnt matter as long as the object you are trying to pick is in between the range of thoese numbers The viewAngle is the same angle that I used when setting the camera view with XMMatrixPerspectiveFovLH , I just hadn't made it a member variable of my Camera class yet. I removed the variable aspectRation and zoomFactor because I assumed that they where related to some specific function of his game. Now I'm not sure, but I think the problems lies either withing the mouse to viewspace conversion, maby that we use diffrent coordinations systems. Either that or how i transform the matrixes in the the end, because i know order is important when it comes to matrixes. Any help is appriciated! Thanks in advance. Edit: One more note, my code is in c++

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• Automated Error Reporting = More Robust Software

  - by Laila

  I would like to tell you how to revolutionize your software development process </marketing hyperbole> On a more serious note, we (Red Gate's .NET Development team) recently rolled a new tool into our development process which has made our lives dramatically easier AND improved the quality of our software, and I (& one of our developers, Alex Davies) just wanted to take a quick moment to share the love. I work with a development team that takes pride in what they ship, so we take software testing rather seriously. For every development project we run, we allocate at least one software tester for every two developers, and we never ship software without first shipping early access releases and betas to get user feedback. And therein lies the challenge -encouraging users to provide consistent, useful feedback is a headache, but without that feedback, improving the software is. tricky. Until fairly recently, we used the standard (if long-winded) approach of receiving bug reports of variable quality via email or through our support forums. If that didn't give us enough information to reproduce the problem - which was most of the time - we had to enter into a time-consuming to-and-fro conversation with the end-user, to get scrape together the data we needed to work out where the problem lay. As I'm sure you're aware, this is painfully slow. To the delight of the team, we recently got to work with SmartAssembly, which lets us embed automated exception and error reporting into our software with very little pain, and we decided to do a little dogfooding. As a result, we've have made a really handy (if perhaps slightly obvious) discovery: As soon as we release a beta, or indeed any release of software, we now get tonnes of customer feedback through automated error reports. Making this process easier for our users has dramatically increased the amount (and quality) of feedback we get. From their point of view, they get an experience similar to Microsoft's error reporting, and process is essentially idiot-proof. From our side of things, we can now react much faster to the information we get, fixing the bugs and shipping a new-and-improved release, which our users rather appreciate. Smiles and hugs all round. Even more so because, as we're use SmartAssembly's Automated Error Reporting, we get to avoid having to spend weeks building an exception reporting mechanism. It takes just a few minutes to add reporting to a project, and we get a bunch of useful information back, like a stack trace and the values of all the local variables, which we can use to fix bugs. Happily, "Automated Error Reporting = More Robust Software" can actually be read two ways: we've found that we not only ship higher quality software, but we also release within a shorter time. We can ship stable software that our users are happy to upgrade to, and we then bask in the glory of lots of positive customer feedback. Once we'd starting working with SmartAssembly, we were curious to know how widespread error reporting was as a practice. Our product manager ran a survey in autumn last year, and found that 40% of software developers never really considered deploying error reporting. Considering how we've now got plenty of experience on the subject, one of our dev guys, Alex Davies, thought we should share what we've learnt, and he's kindly offered to host a webinar on delivering robust software with Automated Error Reporting. Drawing on our own in-house development experiences, he'll cover how to add error reporting to your program, how to actually use the error reports to fix bugs (don't snigger, not everyone's as bright as you), how to customize the error report dialog that your users see, and how to automatically get log files from your users' machine. The webinar will take place on Jan 25th (that's next week). It's free to attend, but you'll still need to register to hear Alex's dulcet tones.

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