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• ROracle support for TimesTen In-Memory Database

  - by Sam Drake

  Today's guest post comes from Jason Feldhaus, a Consulting Member of Technical Staff in the TimesTen Database organization at Oracle.  He shares with us a sample session using ROracle with the TimesTen In-Memory database.  Beginning in version 1.1-4, ROracle includes support for the Oracle Times Ten In-Memory Database, version 11.2.2. TimesTen is a relational database providing very fast and high throughput through its memory-centric architecture.  TimesTen is designed for low latency, high-volume data, and event and transaction management. A TimesTen database resides entirely in memory, so no disk I/O is required for transactions and query operations. TimesTen is used in applications requiring very fast and predictable response time, such as real-time financial services trading applications and large web applications. TimesTen can be used as the database of record or as a relational cache database to Oracle Database. ROracle provides an interface between R and the database, providing the rich functionality of the R statistical programming environment using the SQL query language. ROracle uses the OCI libraries to handle database connections, providing much better performance than standard ODBC.The latest ROracle enhancements include: Support for Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database Support for Date-Time using R's POSIXct/POSIXlt data types RAW, BLOB and BFILE data type support Option to specify number of rows per fetch operation Option to prefetch LOB data Break support using Ctrl-C Statement caching support Times Ten 11.2.2 contains enhanced support for analytics workloads and complex queries: Analytic functions: AVG, SUM, COUNT, MAX, MIN, DENSE_RANK, RANK, ROW_NUMBER, FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE Analytic clauses: OVER PARTITION BY and OVER ORDER BY Multidimensional grouping operators: Grouping clauses: GROUP BY CUBE, GROUP BY ROLLUP, GROUP BY GROUPING SETS Grouping functions: GROUP, GROUPING_ID, GROUP_ID WITH clause, which allows repeated references to a named subquery block Aggregate expressions over DISTINCT expressions General expressions that return a character string in the source or a pattern within the LIKE predicate Ability to order nulls first or last in a sort result (NULLS FIRST or NULLS LAST in the ORDER BY clause) Note: Some functionality is only available with Oracle Exalytics, refer to the TimesTen product licensing document for details. Connecting to TimesTen is easy with ROracle. Simply install and load the ROracle package and load the driver. > install.packages("ROracle") > library(ROracle) Loading required package: DBI > drv <- dbDriver("Oracle") Once the ROracle package is installed, create a database connection object and connect to a TimesTen direct driver DSN as the OS user. > conn <- dbConnect(drv, username ="", password="", dbname = "localhost/SampleDb_1122:timesten_direct") You have the option to report the server type - Oracle or TimesTen? > print (paste ("Server type =", dbGetInfo (conn)$serverType)) [1] "Server type = TimesTen IMDB" To create tables in the database using R data frame objects, use the function dbWriteTable. In the following example we write the built-in iris data frame to TimesTen. The iris data set is a small example data set containing 150 rows and 5 columns. We include it here not to highlight performance, but so users can easily run this example in their R session. > dbWriteTable (conn, "IRIS", iris, overwrite=TRUE, ora.number=FALSE) [1] TRUE Verify that the newly created IRIS table is available in the database. To list the available tables and table columns in the database, use dbListTables and dbListFields, respectively. > dbListTables (conn) [1] "IRIS" > dbListFields (conn, "IRIS") [1] "SEPAL.LENGTH" "SEPAL.WIDTH" "PETAL.LENGTH" "PETAL.WIDTH" "SPECIES" To retrieve a summary of the data from the database we need to save the results to a local object. The following call saves the results of the query as a local R object, iris.summary. The ROracle function dbGetQuery is used to execute an arbitrary SQL statement against the database. When connected to TimesTen, the SQL statement is processed completely within main memory for the fastest response time. > iris.summary <- dbGetQuery(conn, 'SELECT SPECIES, AVG ("SEPAL.LENGTH") AS AVG_SLENGTH, AVG ("SEPAL.WIDTH") AS AVG_SWIDTH, AVG ("PETAL.LENGTH") AS AVG_PLENGTH, AVG ("PETAL.WIDTH") AS AVG_PWIDTH FROM IRIS GROUP BY ROLLUP (SPECIES)') > iris.summary SPECIES AVG_SLENGTH AVG_SWIDTH AVG_PLENGTH AVG_PWIDTH 1 setosa 5.006000 3.428000 1.462 0.246000 2 versicolor 5.936000 2.770000 4.260 1.326000 3 virginica 6.588000 2.974000 5.552 2.026000 4 <NA> 5.843333 3.057333 3.758 1.199333 Finally, disconnect from the TimesTen Database. > dbCommit (conn) [1] TRUE > dbDisconnect (conn) [1] TRUE We encourage you download Oracle software for evaluation from the Oracle Technology Network. See these links for our software: Times Ten In-Memory Database,  ROracle.  As always, we welcome comments and questions on the TimesTen and  Oracle R technical forums.

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• Real tortoises keep it slow and steady. How about the backups?

  - by Maria Zakourdaev

    … Four tortoises were playing in the backyard when they decided they needed hibiscus flower snacks. They pooled their money and sent the smallest tortoise out to fetch the snacks. Two days passed and there was no sign of the tortoise. "You know, she is taking a lot of time", said one of the tortoises. A little voice from just out side the fence said, "If you are going to talk that way about me I won't go." Is it too much to request from the quite expensive 3rd party backup tool to be a way faster than the SQL server native backup? Or at least save a respectable amount of storage by producing a really smaller backup files?  By saying “really smaller”, I mean at least getting a file in half size. After Googling the internet in an attempt to understand what other “sql people” are using for database backups, I see that most people are using one of three tools which are the main players in SQL backup area:  LiteSpeed by Quest SQL Backup by Red Gate SQL Safe by Idera The feedbacks about those tools are truly emotional and happy. However, while reading the forums and blogs I have wondered, is it possible that many are accustomed to using the above tools since SQL 2000 and 2005.  This can easily be understood due to the fact that a 300GB database backup for instance, using regular a SQL 2005 backup statement would have run for about 3 hours and have produced ~150GB file (depending on the content, of course).  Then you take a 3rd party tool which performs the same backup in 30 minutes resulting in a 30GB file leaving you speechless, you run to management persuading them to buy it due to the fact that it is definitely worth the price. In addition to the increased speed and disk space savings you would also get backup file encryption and virtual restore -  features that are still missing from the SQL server. But in case you, as well as me, don’t need these additional features and only want a tool that performs a full backup MUCH faster AND produces a far smaller backup file (like the gain you observed back in SQL 2005 days) you will be quite disappointed. SQL Server backup compression feature has totally changed the market picture. Medium size database. Take a look at the table below, check out how my SQL server 2008 R2 compares to other tools when backing up a 300GB database. It appears that when talking about the backup speed, SQL 2008 R2 compresses and performs backup in similar overall times as all three other tools. 3rd party tools maximum compression level takes twice longer. Backup file gain is not that impressive, except the highest compression levels but the price that you pay is very high cpu load and much longer time. Only SQL Safe by Idera was quite fast with it’s maximum compression level but most of the run time have used 95% cpu on the server. Note that I have used two types of destination storage, SATA 11 disks and FC 53 disks and, obviously, on faster storage have got my backup ready in half time. Looking at the above results, should we spend money, bother with another layer of complexity and software middle-man for the medium sized databases? I’m definitely not going to do so.  Very large database As a next phase of this benchmark, I have moved to a 6 terabyte database which was actually my main backup target. Note, how multiple files usage enables the SQL Server backup operation to use parallel I/O and remarkably increases it’s speed, especially when the backup device is heavily striped. SQL Server supports a maximum of 64 backup devices for a single backup operation but the most speed is gained when using one file per CPU, in the case above 8 files for a 2 Quad CPU server. The impact of additional files is minimal.  However, SQLsafe doesn’t show any speed improvement between 4 files and 8 files. Of course, with such huge databases every half percent of the compression transforms into the noticeable numbers. Saving almost 470GB of space may turn the backup tool into quite valuable purchase. Still, the backup speed and high CPU are the variables that should be taken into the consideration. As for us, the backup speed is more critical than the storage and we cannot allow a production server to sustain 95% cpu for such a long time. Bottomline, 3rd party backup tool developers, we are waiting for some breakthrough release. There are a few unanswered questions, like the restore speed comparison between different tools and the impact of multiple backup files on restore operation. Stay tuned for the next benchmarks.    Benchmark server: SQL Server 2008 R2 sp1 2 Quad CPU Database location: NetApp FC 15K Aggregate 53 discs Backup statements: No matter how good that UI is, we need to run the backup tasks from inside of SQL Server Agent to make sure they are covered by our monitoring systems. I have used extended stored procedures (command line execution also is an option, I haven’t noticed any impact on the backup performance). SQL backup LiteSpeed SQL Backup SQL safe backup database <DBNAME> to disk= '\\<networkpath>\par1.bak' , disk= '\\<networkpath>\par2.bak', disk= '\\<networkpath>\par3.bak' with format, compression EXECUTE master.dbo.xp_backup_database @database = N'<DBName>', @backupname= N'<DBName> full backup', @desc = N'Test', @compressionlevel=8, @filename= N'\\<networkpath>\par1.bak', @filename= N'\\<networkpath>\par2.bak', @filename= N'\\<networkpath>\par3.bak', @init = 1 EXECUTE master.dbo.sqlbackup '-SQL "BACKUP DATABASE <DBNAME> TO DISK= ''\\<networkpath>\par1.sqb'', DISK= ''\\<networkpath>\par2.sqb'', DISK= ''\\<networkpath>\par3.sqb'' WITH DISKRETRYINTERVAL = 30, DISKRETRYCOUNT = 10, COMPRESSION = 4, INIT"' EXECUTE master.dbo.xp_ss_backup @database = 'UCMSDB', @filename = '\\<networkpath>\par1.bak', @backuptype = 'Full', @compressionlevel = 4, @backupfile = '\\<networkpath>\par2.bak', @backupfile = '\\<networkpath>\par3.bak' If you still insist on using 3rd party tools for the backups in your production environment with maximum compression level, you will definitely need to consider limiting cpu usage which will increase the backup operation time even more: RedGate : use THREADPRIORITY option ( values 0 – 6 ) LiteSpeed : use  @throttle ( percentage, like 70%) SQL safe :  the only thing I have found was @Threads option.   Yours, Maria

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, September 06, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, September 06, 2012Popular Releasesmenu4web: menu4web 0.4.1 - javascript menu for web sites: This release is for those who believe that global variables are evil. menu4web has been wrapped into m4w singleton object. Added "Vertical Tabs" example which illustrates object notation.WinRT XAML Toolkit: WinRT XAML Toolkit - 1.2.1: WinRT XAML Toolkit based on the Windows 8 RTM SDK. Download the latest source from the SOURCE CODE page. For compiled version use NuGet. You can add it to your project in Visual Studio by going to View/Other Windows/Package Manager Console and entering: PM> Install-Package winrtxamltoolkit Features AsyncUI extensions Controls and control extensions Converters Debugging helpers Imaging IO helpers VisualTree helpers Samples Recent changes NOTE: Namespace changes DebugConsol...iPDC - Free Phasor Data Concentrator: iPDC-v1.3.1: iPDC suite version-1.3.1, Modifications and Bug Fixed (from v 1.3.0) New User Manual for iPDC-v1.3.1 available on websites. Bug resolved : PMU Simulator TCP connection error and hang connection for client (PDC). Now PMU Simulator (server) can communicate more than one PDCs (clients) over TCP and UDP parallely. PMU Simulator is now sending the exact data frames as mentioned in data rate by user. PMU Simulator data rate has been verified by iPDC database entries and PMU Connection Tes...Microsoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: AdventureWorks OData Feed: The AdventureWorks OData service exposes resources based on specific SQL views. The SQL views are a limited subset of the AdventureWorks database that results in several consuming scenarios: CompanySales Documents ManufacturingInstructions ProductCatalog TerritorySalesDrilldown WorkOrderRouting How to install the sample You can consume the AdventureWorks OData feed from http://services.odata.org/AdventureWorksV3/AdventureWorks.svc. You can also consume the AdventureWorks OData fe...Desktop Google Reader: 1.4.6: Sorting feeds alphabetical is now optional (see preferences window)DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 06.02.03: Major Highlights Fixed issue where mailto: links were not working when sending bulk email Fixed issue where uses did not see friendship relationships Problem is in 6.2, which does not show in the Versions Affected list above. Fixed the issue with cascade deletes in comments in CoreMessaging_Notification Fixed UI issue when using a date fields as a required profile property during user registration Fixed error when running the product in debug mode Fixed visibility issue when...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.65: Fixed null-reference error in the build task constructor.Active Forums for DotNetNuke CMS: Active Forums 5.0.0 RC: RC release of Active Forums 5.0.Droid Explorer: Droid Explorer 0.8.8.7 Beta: Bug in the display icon for apk's, will fix with next release Added fallback icon if unable to get the image/icon from the Cloud Service Removed some stale plugins that were either out dated or incomplete. Added handler for *.ab files for restoring backups Added plugin to create device backups Backups stored in %USERPROFILE%\Android Backups\%DEVICE_ID%\ Added custom folder icon for the android backups directory better error handling for installing an apk bug fixes for the Runn...BI System Monitor: v2.1: Data Audits report and supporting SQL, and SSIS package Environment Overview report enhancements, improving the appearance, addition of data audit finding indicators Note: SQL 2012 version coming soon.Hidden Capture (HC): Hidden Capture 1.1: Hidden Capture 1.1 by Mohsen E.Dawatgar http://Hidden-Capture.blogfa.comExt Spec: Ext Spec 0.2.1: Refined examples and improved distribution options.The Visual Guide for Building Team Foundation Server 2012 Environments: Version 1: --Nearforums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Nearforums v8.5: Version 8.5 of Nearforums, the ASP.NET MVC Forum Engine. New features include: Built-in search engine using Lucene.NET Flood control improvements Notifications improvements: sync option and mail body View Roadmap for more details webdeploy package sha1 checksum: 961aff884a9187b6e8a86d68913cdd31f8deaf83WiX Toolset: WiX Toolset v3.6: WiX Toolset v3.6 introduces the Burn bootstrapper/chaining engine and support for Visual Studio 2012 and .NET Framework 4.5. Other minor functionality includes: WixDependencyExtension supports dependency checking among MSI packages. WixFirewallExtension supports more features of Windows Firewall. WixTagExtension supports Software Id Tagging. WixUtilExtension now supports recursive directory deletion. Melt simplifies pure-WiX patching by extracting .msi package content and updating .w...Iveely Search Engine: Iveely Search Engine （0.2.0）: ????ISE?0.1.0??，?????，ISE?0.2.0?????????，???????，????????20???follow?ISE，????，??ISE??????????，??????????，?????????，?????????0.2.0??????，??????????。 Iveely Search Engine ?0.2.0?????????“??????????”，??????，?????????，???????，???????????????????，????、????????????。???0.1.0????????????： 1. ??“????” ??。??????????，?????????，???????????????????。??：????????，????????????，??????????????????。??????。 2. ??“????”??。?0.1.0??????，???????，???????????????，?????????????，????????，?0.2.0?，???????...GmailDefaultMaker: GmailDefaultMaker 3.0.0.2: Add QQ Mail BugfixSmart Data Access layer: Smart Data access Layer Ver 3: In this version support executing inline query is added. Check Documentation section for detail.DotNetNuke® Form and List: 06.00.04: DotNetNuke Form and List 06.00.04 Don't forget to backup your installation before upgrade. Changes in 06.00.04 Fix: Sql Scripts for 6.003 missed object qualifiers within stored procedures Fix: added missing resource "cmdCancel.Text" in form.ascx.resx Changes in 06.00.03 Fix: MakeThumbnail was broken if the application pool was configured to .Net 4 Change: Data is now stored in nvarchar(max) instead of ntext Changes in 06.00.02 The scripts are now compatible with SQL Azure, tested in a ne...Coevery - Free CRM: Coevery 1.0.0.24: Add a sample database, and installation instructions.New ProjectsAny-Service: AnyService is a .net 4.0 Windows service shell. It hosts any windows application in non-gui mode to run as a service.BabyCloudDrives - the multi cloud drive desktop's application: wpf ????BLACK ORANGE: Download The HPAD TEXT EDITOR and use it Wisely.. CodePlex New Release Checker: CodePlex New Release Checker is a small library that makes it easy to add, "New Version Available!" functionality to your CodePlex project.Collect: ????????！CSVManager: CSV??CSV?????，????CSV??，??????Exam Project: My Exam Project. Computer Vision, C and OpenCV-FTP: Hey guys thanks for checking out my ftp!Haushaltsbuch: 1ModMaker.Lua: ModMaker.Lua is an open source .NET library that parses and executes Lua code.MyJabbr: MyJabbr netduinoscope: Design shield and software to use netduino as oscilloscopeNetSurveillance Web Application: Net Surveillance Web ApplicationNiconicoApiHelper: ????API?????????OStega: A simple library for encrypt text into an bmp or png image.OURORM: ormTFS Cloud Deployment Toolkit: The TFS Cloud Deployment Toolkit is a set of tools that integrate with TFS 2010 to help manage configuration and deployment to various remote environments.The Visual Guide for Building Team Foundation Server 2012 Environments: A step-by-step guide for building Team Foundation Server 2012 environments that include SharePoint Server 2010, SQL Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 and more!WinRT LineChart: An attempt at creating an usable LineChart for everyone to use in his/her own Windows 8 Apps

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• Scripting Part 1

  - by rbishop

  Dynamic Scripting is a large topic, so let me get a couple of things out of the way first. If you aren't familiar with JavaScript, I can suggest CodeAcademy's JavaScript series. There are also many other websites and books that cover JavaScript from every possible angle.The second thing we need to deal with is JavaScript as a programming language versus a JavaScript environment running in a web browser. Many books, tutorials, and websites completely blur these two together but they are in fact completely separate. What does this really mean in relation to DRM? Since DRM isn't a web browser, there are no document, window, history, screen, or location objects. There are no events like mousedown or click. Trying to call alert('hello!') in DRM will just cause an error. Those concepts are all related to an HTML document (web page) and are part of the Browser Object Model or Document Object Model. DRM has its own object model that exposes DRM-related objects. In practice, feel free to use those sorts of tutorials or practice within your browser; Many of the concepts are directly translatable to writing scripts in DRM. Just don't try to call document.getElementById in your property definition!I think learning by example tends to work the best, so let's try getting a list of all the unique property values for a given node and its children. var uniqueValues = {}; var childEnumerator = node.GetChildEnumerator(); while(childEnumerator.MoveNext()) { var propValue = childEnumerator.GetCurrent().PropValue("Custom.testpropstr1"); print(propValue); if(propValue != null && propValue != '' && !uniqueValues[propValue]) uniqueValues[propValue] = true; } var result = ''; for(var value in uniqueValues){ result += "Found value " + value + ","; } return result;  Now lets break this down piece by piece. var uniqueValues = {}; This declares a variable and initializes it as a new empty Object. You could also have written var uniqueValues = new Object(); Why use an object here? JavaScript objects can also function as a list of keys and we'll use that later to store each property value as a key on the object. var childEnumerator = node.GetChildEnumerator(); while(childEnumerator.MoveNext()) { This gets an enumerator for the node's children. The enumerator allows us to loop through the children one by one. If we wanted to get a filtered list of children, we would instead use ChildrenWith(). When we reach the end of the child list, the enumerator will return false for MoveNext() and that will stop the loop. var propValue = childEnumerator.GetCurrent().PropValue("Custom.testpropstr1"); print(propValue); if(propValue != null && propValue != '' && !uniqueValues[propValue]) uniqueValues[propValue] = true; } This gets the node the enumerator is currently pointing at, then calls PropValue() on it to get the value of a property. We then make sure the prop value isn't null or the empty string, then we make sure the value doesn't already exist as a key. Assuming it doesn't we add it as a key with a value (true in this case because it makes checking for an existing value faster when the value exists). A quick word on the print() function. When viewing the prop grid, running an export, or performing normal DRM operations it does nothing. If you have a lot of print() calls with complicated arguments it can slow your script down slightly, but otherwise has no effect. But when using the script editor, all the output of print() will be shown in the Warnings area. This gives you an extremely useful debugging tool to see what exactly a script is doing. var result = ''; for(var value in uniqueValues){ result += "Found value " + value + ","; } return result; Now we build a string by looping through all the keys in uniqueValues and adding that value to our string. The last step is to simply return the result. Hopefully this small example demonstrates some of the core Dynamic Scripting concepts. Next time, we can try checking for node references in other hierarchies to see if they are using duplicate property values.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, May 26, 2014

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, May 26, 2014Popular ReleasesClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.71.1: More performance improvements. It's faster and consumes less memory.Role Based Views in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: Role Based Views in CRM 2011 and 2013 - 1.1.0.0: Issues fixed in this build: 1. Works for CRM 2013 2. Lookup view not getting blockedSimCityPak: SimCityPak 0.3.1.0: Main New Features: Fixed Importing of Instance Names (get rid of the Dutch translations) Added advanced editor for Decal Dictionaries Added possibility to import .PNG to generate new decals Added advanced editor for Path display entriesSimple Connect To Db: SimpleConnectToDb_v1: SimpleConnectToDb_v1CRM 2011 / CRM 2013 Form Helper: v2014.05.25: v2014.05.25 Added PhoneFormat & PhoneFormatAreaCode v2014.05.24 Initial ReleaseCreate Word documents without MS Word: Release 3.0: Add support for Sections, Sections Headers and Footers and right to left languages.Corporate News App for SharePoint 2013: CorporateNewsApp v1.6.2.0: Important note This version contains a major bug fix about the generic error "Request failed. Unexpected response data from server null" This error occurs on SharePoint Online only, following an update of the Javascript API after May 2014. If you have installed this application manually in your applications company catalog, you can download the CorporateNewsApp.app file in the zip archive and update it manually. If you have installed this application directly from the SharePoint Store, it ...DevOS: DevOS: Plugin-system added Including:DevOS.exe DevOS API.dll Files must be in the some folderTiny Deduplicator: Tiny Deduplicator 1.0.1.0: Increased version number to 1.0.1.0 Moved all options to a separate 'Options' dialog window. Allows the user to specify a selection strategy which will help when dealing with large numbers of duplicate files. Available options are "None," "Keep First," and "Keep Last"C64 Studio: 3.5: Add: BASIC renumber function Add: !PET pseudo op Add: elseif for !if, } else { pseudo op Add: !TRACE pseudo op Add: Watches are saved/restored with a solution Add: Ctrl-A works now in export assembly controls Add: Preliminary graphic import dialog (not fully functional yet) Add: range and block selection in sprite/charset editor (Shift-Click = range, Alt-Click = block) Fix: Expression evaluator could miscalculate when both division and multiplication were in an expression without parenthesisSEToolbox: SEToolbox 01.031.009 Release 1: Added mirroring of ConveyorTubeCurved. Updated Ship cube rotation to rotate ship back to original location (cubes are reoriented but ship appears no different to outsider), and to rotate Grouped items. Repair now fixes the loss of Grouped controls due to changes in Space Engineers 01.030. Added export asteroids. Rejoin ships will merge grouping and conveyor systems (even though broken ships currently only maintain the Grouping on one part of the ship). Installation of this version wi...Player Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows and WP v2.0: Support for new Universal and Windows Phone 8.1 projects for both Xaml and JavaScript projects. See a detailed list of improvements, breaking changes and a general overview of version 2 ADDITIONAL DOWNLOADSSmooth Streaming Client SDK for Windows 8 Applications Smooth Streaming Client SDK for Windows 8.1 Applications Smooth Streaming Client SDK for Windows Phone 8.1 Applications Microsoft PlayReady Client SDK for Windows 8 Applications Microsoft PlayReady Client SDK for Windows 8.1 Applicat...TerraMap (Terraria World Map Viewer): TerraMap 1.0.6: Added support for the new Terraria v1.2.4 update. New items, walls, and tiles Added the ability to select multiple highlighted block types. Added a dynamic, interactive highlight opacity slider, making it easier to find highlighted tiles with dark colors (and fixed blurriness from 1.0.5 alpha). Added ability to find Enchanted Swords (in the stone) and Water Bolt books Fixed Issue 35206: Hightlight/Find doesn't work for Demon Altars Fixed finding Demon Hearts/Shadow Orbs Fixed inst...DotNet.Highcharts: DotNet.Highcharts 4.0 with Examples: DotNet.Highcharts 4.0 Tested and adapted to the latest version of Highcharts 4.0.1 Added new chart type: Heatmap Added new type PointPlacement which represents enumeration or number for the padding of the X axis. Changed target framework from .NET Framework 4 to .NET Framework 4.5. Closed issues: 974: Add 'overflow' property to PlotOptionsColumnDataLabels class 997: Split container from JS 1006: Series/Categories with numeric names don't render DotNet.Highcharts.Samples Updated s...ConEmu - Windows console with tabs: ConEmu 140523 [Alpha]: ConEmu - developer build x86 and x64 versions. Written in C++, no additional packages required. Run "ConEmu.exe" or "ConEmu64.exe". Some useful information you may found: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/conemu http://code.google.com/p/conemu-maximus5/wiki/ConEmuFAQ http://code.google.com/p/conemu-maximus5/wiki/TableOfContents If you want to use ConEmu in portable mode, just create empty "ConEmu.xml" file near to "ConEmu.exe" Aspose for Apache POI: Missing Features of Apache POI SL - v 1.1: Release contain the Missing Features in Apache POI SL SDK in Comparison with Aspose.Slides for dealing with Microsoft Power Point. What's New ?Following Examples: Managing Slide Transitions Manage Smart Art Adding Media Player Adding Audio Frame to Slide Feedback and Suggestions Many more examples are yet to come here. Keep visiting us. Raise your queries and suggest more examples via Aspose Forums or via this social coding site.PowerShell App Deployment Toolkit: PowerShell App Deployment Toolkit v3.1.3: Added CompressLogs option to the config file. Each Install / Uninstall creates a timestamped zip file with all MSI and PSAppDeployToolkit logs contained within Added variable expansion to all paths in the configuration file Added documentation for each of the Toolkit internal variables that can be used Changed Install-MSUpdates to continue if any errors are encountered when installing updates Implement /Force parameter on Update-GroupPolicy (ensure that any logoff message is ignored) ...WordMat: WordMat v. 1.07: A quick fix because scientific notation was broken in v. 1.06 read more at http://wordmat.blogspot.com????: 《????》: 《????》（c???）??“????”???????，???????????????C?????????。???????,???????????????????????. ??????????????????????????????????；????????????????????????????。Mini SQL Query: Mini SQL Query (1.0.72.457): Apologies for the previous update! FK issue fixed and also a template data cache issue.New ProjectsASP.Net MCV4 Simplified Code Samples: This project intended to simplify the same. In this project each task is implemented with minimum lines of code to reduces complicity.Calvin: net???CodeLatino by Latinosoft: A Modified version for codeShow -- Probably taking more than a month.freeasyBackup: A free and easy to use Backup Tool for everyone. Without any cloud restrictions. freeasyExplorer: A free and easy to use File Explorer for everyone.openPDFspeedreader: #spritz #pdfreader #speedreader PDF Editor to Edit PDF Files in your ASP.NET Applications: This sample application allows the users to edit PDF files online using Aspose.Pdf for .NET.SharePoint World Cup 2013: world cup 2014SSAS Long Running Query Performance Helper: This utility helps investigate long running multidimensional or mining queries in discovery, de-parameterization and re-parameterization back to source format.

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• .NET development on a Retina MacBook Pro with Windows 8

  - by Jeff

  I remember sitting in Building 5 at Microsoft with some of my coworkers, when one of them came in with a shiny new 11” MacBook Air. It was nearly two years ago, and we found it pretty odd that the OEM’s building Windows machines sucked at industrial design in a way that defied logic. While Dell and HP were in a race to the bottom building commodity crap, Apple was staying out of the low-end market completely, and focusing on better design. In the process, they managed to build machines people actually wanted, and maintain an insanely high margin in the process. I stopped buying the commodity crap and custom builds in 2006, when Apple went Intel. As a .NET guy, I was still in it for Microsoft’s stack of development tools, which I found awesome, but had back to back crappy laptops from HP and Dell. After that original 15” MacBook Pro, I also had a Mac Pro tower (that I sold after three years for $1,500!), a 27” iMac, and my favorite, a 17” MacBook Pro (the unibody style) with an SSD added from OWC. The 17” was a little much to carry around because it was heavy, but it sure was nice getting as much as eight hours of battery life, and the screen was amazing. When the rumors started about a 15” model with a “retina” screen inspired by the Air, I made up my mind I wanted one, and ordered it the day it came out. I sold my 17”, after three years, for $750 to a friend who is really enjoying it. I got the base model with the upgrade to 16 gigs of RAM. It feels solid for being so thin, and if you’ve used the third generation iPad or the newer iPhone, you’ll be just as thrilled with the screen resolution. I’m typically getting just over six hours of battery life while running a VM, but Parallels 8 allegedly makes some power improvements, so we’ll see what happens. (It was just released today.) The nice thing about VM’s are that you can run more than one at a time. Primarily I run the Windows 8 VM with four cores (the laptop is quad-core, but has 8 logical cores due to hyperthreading or whatever Intel calls it) and 8 gigs of RAM. I also have a Windows Server 2008 R2 VM I spin up when I need to test stuff in a “real” server environment, and I give it two cores and 4 gigs of RAM. The Windows 8 VM spins up in about 8 seconds. Visual Studio 2012 takes a few more seconds, but count part of that as the “ReSharper tax” as it does its startup magic. The real beauty, the thing I looked most forward to, is that beautifully crisp C# text. Consolas has never looked as good as it does at 10pt. as it does on this display. You know how it looks great at 80pt. when conference speakers demo stuff on a projector? Think that sharpness, only tiny. It’s just gorgeous. Beyond that, everything is just so responsive and fast. Builds of large projects happen in seconds, hundreds of unit tests run in seconds… you just don’t spend a lot of time waiting for stuff. It’s kind of painful to go back to my 27” iMac (which would be better if I put an SSD in it before its third birthday). Are there negatives? A few minor issues, yes. As is the case with OS X, not everything scales right. You’ll see some weirdness at times with splash screens and icons and such. Chrome’s text rendering (in Windows) is apparently not aware of how to deal with higher DPI’s, so text is fuzzy (the OS X version is super sharp, however). You’ll also have to do some fiddling with keyboard settings to use the Windows 8 keyboard shortcuts. Overall, it’s as close to a no-compromise development experience as I’ve ever had. I’m not even going to bother with Boot Camp because the VM route already exceeds my expectations. You definitely get what you pay for. If this one also lasts three years and I can turn around and sell it, it’s worth it for something I use every day.

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• Visual Studio 2010 Productivity Tips and Tricks&ndash;Part 1: Extensions

  - by ToStringTheory

  I don’t know about you, but when it comes to development, I prefer my environment to be as free of clutter as possible.  It may surprise you to know that I have tried ReSharper, and did not like it, for the reason that I stated above.  In my opinion, it had too much clutter.  Don’t get me wrong, there were a couple of features that I did like about it (inversion of if blocks, code feedback), but for the most part, I actually felt that it was slowing me down. Introduction Another large factor besides intrusiveness/speed in my choice to dislike ReSharper would probably be that I have become comfortable with my current setup and extensions.  I believe I have a good collection, and am quite happy with what I can accomplish in a short amount of time.  I figured that I would share some of my tips/findings regarding Visual Studio productivity here, and see what you had to say. The first section of things that I would like to cover, are Visual Studio Extensions.  In case you have been living under a rock for the past several years, Extensions are available under the Tools menu in Visual Studio: The extension manager enables integrated access to the Microsoft Visual Studio Gallery online with access to a few thousand different extensions.  I have tried many extensions, but for reasons of lack reliability, usability, or features, have uninstalled almost all of them.  However, I have come across several that I find I can not do without anymore: NuGet Package Manager (Microsoft) Perspectives (Adam Driscoll) Productivity Power Tools (Microsoft) Web Essentials (Mads Kristensen) Extensions NuGet Package Manager To be honest, I debated on whether or not to put this in here.  Most people seem to have it, however, there was a time when I didn’t, and was always confused when blogs/posts would say to right click and “Add Package Reference…” which with one of the latest updates is now “Manage NuGet Packages”.  So, if you haven’t downloaded the NuGet Package Manager yet, or don’t know what it is, I would highly suggest downloading it now! Features Simply put, the NuGet Package Manager gives you a GUI and command line to access different libraries that have been uploaded to NuGet. Some of its features include: Ability to search NuGet for packages via the GUI, with information in the detail bar on the right. Quick access to see what packages are in a solution, and what packages have updates available, with easy 1-click updating. If you download a package that requires references to work on other NuGet packages, they will be downloaded and referenced automatically. Productivity Tip If you use any type of source control in Visual Studio as well as using NuGet packages, be sure to right-click on the solution and click "Enable NuGet Package Restore". What this does is add a NuGet package to the solution so that it will be checked in along side your solution, as well as automatically grab packages from NuGet on build if needed. This is an extremely simple system to use to manage your package references, instead of having to manually go into TFS and add the Packages folder. Perspectives I can't stand developing with just one monitor. Especially if it comes to debugging. The great thing about Visual Studio 2010, is that all of the panels and windows are floatable, and can dock to other screens. The only bad thing is, I don't use the same toolset with everything that I am doing. By this, I mean that I don't use all of the same windows for debugging a web application, as I do for coding a WPF application. Only thing is, Visual Studio doesn't save the screen positions for all of the undocked windows. So, I got curious one day and decided to check and see if there was an extension to help out. This is where I found Perspectives. Features Perspectives gives you the ability to configure window positions across any or your monitors, and then to save the positions in a profile. Perspectives offers a Panel to manage different presets/favorites, and a toolbar to add to the toolbars at the top of Visual Studio. Ability to 'Favorite' a profile to add it to the perspectives toolbar. Productivity Tip Take the time to setup profiles for each of your scenarios - debugging web/winforms/xaml, coding, maintenance, etc. Try to remember to use the profiles for a few days, and at the end of a week, you may find that your productivity was never better. Productivity Power Tools Ah, the Productivity Power Tools... Quite possibly one of my most used extensions, if not my most used. The tool pack gives you a variety of enhancements ranging from key shortcuts, interface tweaks, and completely new features to Visual Studio 2010. Features I don't want to bore you with all of the features here, so here are my favorite: Quick Find - Unobtrusive search box in upper-right corner of the code window. Great for searching in general, especially in a file. Solution Navigator - The 'Solution Explorer' on steroids. Easy to search for files, see defined members/properties/methods in files, and my favorite feature is the 'set as root' option. Updated 'Add Reference...' Dialog - This is probably my favorite enhancement period... The 'Add Reference...' dialog redone in a manner that resembles the Extension/Package managers. I especially love the ability to search through all of the references. "Ctrl - Click" for Definition - I am still getting used to this as I usually try to use my keyboard for everything, but I love the ability to hold Ctrl and turn property/methods/variables into hyperlinks, that you click on to see their definitions. Great for travelling down a rabbit hole in an application to research problems. While there are other commands/utilities, I find these to be the ones that I lean on the most for the usefulness. Web Essentials If you have do any type of web development in ASP .Net, ASP .Net MVC, even HTML, I highly suggest grabbing the Web Essentials right NOW! This extension alone is great for productivity in web development, and greatly decreases my development time on new features. Features Some of its best features include: CSS Previews - I say 'previews' because of the multiple kinds of previews in CSS that you get font-family, color, background/background-image previews. This is great for just tweaking UI slightly in different ways and seeing how they look in the CSS window at a glance. Live Preview - One word - awesome! This goes well with my multi-monitor setup. I put the site on one monitor in a Live Preview panel, and then as I make changes to CSS/cshtml/aspx/html, the preview window will update with each save/build automatically. For CSS, you can even turn on live-update, so as you are tweaking CSS, the style changes in real time. Great for tweaking colors or font-sizes. Outlining - Small, but I like to be able to collapse regions/declarations that are in the way of new work, or are just distracting. Commenting Shortcuts - I don't know why it wasn't included by default, but it is nice to have the key shortcuts for commenting working in the CSS editor as well. Productivity Tip When working on a site, hit CTRL-ALT-ENTER to launch the Live Preview window. Dock it to another monitor. When you make changes to the document/css, just save and glance at the other monitor. No need to alt tab, then alt tab before continuing editing. Conclusion These extensions are only the most useful and least intrusive - ones that I use every day. The great thing about Visual Studio 2010 is the extensibility options that it gives developers to utilize. Have an extension that you use that isn't intrusive, but isn't listed here? Please, feel free to comment. I love trying new things, and am always looking for new additions to my toolset of the most useful. Finally, please keep an eye out for Part 2 on key shortcuts in Visual Studio. Also, if you are visiting my site (http://tostringtheory.com || http://geekswithblogs.net/tostringtheory) from an actual browser and not a feed, please let me know what you think of the new styling!

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• Why do we (really) program to interfaces?

  - by Kyle Burns

  One of the earliest lessons I was taught in Enterprise development was "always program against an interface".  This was back in the VB6 days and I quickly learned that no code would be allowed to move to the QA server unless my business objects and data access objects each are defined as an interface and have a matching implementation class.  Why?  "It's more reusable" was one answer.  "It doesn't tie you to a specific implementation" a slightly more knowing answer.  And let's not forget the discussion ending "it's a standard".  The problem with these responses was that senior people didn't really understand the reason we were doing the things we were doing and because of that, we were entirely unable to realize the intent behind the practice - we simply used interfaces and had a bunch of extra code to maintain to show for it. It wasn't until a few years later that I finally heard the term "Inversion of Control".  Simply put, "Inversion of Control" takes the creation of objects that used to be within the control (and therefore a responsibility of) of your component and moves it to some outside force.  For example, consider the following code which follows the old "always program against an interface" rule in the manner of many corporate development shops: 1: ICatalog catalog = new Catalog(); 2: Category[] categories = catalog.GetCategories(); In this example, I met the requirement of the rule by declaring the variable as ICatalog, but I didn't hit "it doesn't tie you to a specific implementation" because I explicitly created an instance of the concrete Catalog object.  If I want to test the functionality of the code I just wrote I have to have an environment in which Catalog can be created along with any of the resources upon which it depends (e.g. configuration files, database connections, etc) in order to test my functionality.  That's a lot of setup work and one of the things that I think ultimately discourages real buy-in of unit testing in many development shops. So how do I test my code without needing Catalog to work?  A very primitive approach I've seen is to change the line the instantiates catalog to read: 1: ICatalog catalog = new FakeCatalog();   once the test is run and passes, the code is switched back to the real thing.  This obviously poses a huge risk for introducing test code into production and in my opinion is worse than just keeping the dependency and its associated setup work.  Another popular approach is to make use of Factory methods which use an object whose "job" is to know how to obtain a valid instance of the object.  Using this approach, the code may look something like this: 1: ICatalog catalog = CatalogFactory.GetCatalog();   The code inside the factory is responsible for deciding "what kind" of catalog is needed.  This is a far better approach than the previous one, but it does make projects grow considerably because now in addition to the interface, the real implementation, and the fake implementation(s) for testing you have added a minimum of one factory (or at least a factory method) for each of your interfaces.  Once again, developers say "that's too complicated and has me writing a bunch of useless code" and quietly slip back into just creating a new Catalog and chalking any test failures up to "it will probably work on the server". This is where software intended specifically to facilitate Inversion of Control comes into play.  There are many libraries that take on the Inversion of Control responsibilities in .Net and most of them have many pros and cons.  From this point forward I'll discuss concepts from the standpoint of the Unity framework produced by Microsoft's Patterns and Practices team.  I'm primarily focusing on this library because it questions about it inspired this posting. At Unity's core and that of most any IoC framework is a catalog or registry of components.  This registry can be configured either through code or using the application's configuration file and in the most simple terms says "interface X maps to concrete implementation Y".  It can get much more complicated, but I want to keep things at the "what does it do" level instead of "how does it do it".  The object that exposes most of the Unity functionality is the UnityContainer.  This object exposes methods to configure the catalog as well as the Resolve<T> method which is used to obtain an instance of the type represented by T.  When using the Resolve<T> method, Unity does not necessarily have to just "new up" the requested object, but also can track dependencies of that object and ensure that the entire dependency chain is satisfied. There are three basic ways that I have seen Unity used within projects.  Those are through classes directly using the Unity container, classes requiring injection of dependencies, and classes making use of the Service Locator pattern. The first usage of Unity is when classes are aware of the Unity container and directly call its Resolve method whenever they need the services advertised by an interface.  The up side of this approach is that IoC is utilized, but the down side is that every class has to be aware that Unity is being used and tied directly to that implementation. Many developers don't like the idea of as close a tie to specific IoC implementation as is represented by using Unity within all of your classes and for the most part I agree that this isn't a good idea.  As an alternative, classes can be designed for Dependency Injection.  Dependency Injection is where a force outside the class itself manipulates the object to provide implementations of the interfaces that the class needs to interact with the outside world.  This is typically done either through constructor injection where the object has a constructor that accepts an instance of each interface it requires or through property setters accepting the service providers.  When using dependency, I lean toward the use of constructor injection because I view the constructor as being a much better way to "discover" what is required for the instance to be ready for use.  During resolution, Unity looks for an injection constructor and will attempt to resolve instances of each interface required by the constructor, throwing an exception of unable to meet the advertised needs of the class.  The up side of this approach is that the needs of the class are very clearly advertised and the class is unaware of which IoC container (if any) is being used.  The down side of this approach is that you're required to maintain the objects passed to the constructor as instance variables throughout the life of your object and that objects which coordinate with many external services require a lot of additional constructor arguments (this gets ugly and may indicate a need for refactoring). The final way that I've seen and used Unity is to make use of the ServiceLocator pattern, of which the Patterns and Practices team has also provided a Unity-compatible implementation.  When using the ServiceLocator, your class calls ServiceLocator.Retrieve in places where it would have called Resolve on the Unity container.  Like using Unity directly, it does tie you directly to the ServiceLocator implementation and makes your code aware that dependency injection is taking place, but it does have the up side of giving you the freedom to swap out the underlying IoC container if necessary.  I'm not hugely concerned with hiding IoC entirely from the class (I view this as a "nice to have"), so the single biggest problem that I see with the ServiceLocator approach is that it provides no way to proactively advertise needs in the way that constructor injection does, allowing more opportunity for difficult to track runtime errors. This blog entry has not been intended in any way to be a definitive work on IoC, but rather as something to spur thought about why we program to interfaces and some ways to reach the intended value of the practice instead of having it just complicate your code.  I hope that it helps somebody begin or continue a journey away from being a "Cargo Cult Programmer".

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• Scheduling thread tiles with C++ AMP

  - by Daniel Moth

  This post assumes you are totally comfortable with, what some of us call, the simple model of C++ AMP, i.e. you could write your own matrix multiplication. We are now ready to explore the tiled model, which builds on top of the non-tiled one. Tiling the extent We know that when we pass a grid (which is just an extent under the covers) to the parallel_for_each call, it determines the number of threads to schedule and their index values (including dimensionality). For the single-, two-, and three- dimensional cases you can go a step further and subdivide the threads into what we call tiles of threads (others may call them thread groups). So here is a single-dimensional example: extent<1> e(20); // 20 units in a single dimension with indices from 0-19 grid<1> g(e);      // same as extent tiled_grid<4> tg = g.tile<4>(); …on the 3rd line we subdivided the single-dimensional space into 5 single-dimensional tiles each having 4 elements, and we captured that result in a concurrency::tiled_grid (a new class in amp.h). Let's move on swiftly to another example, in pictures, this time 2-dimensional: So we start on the left with a grid of a 2-dimensional extent which has 8*6=48 threads. We then have two different examples of tiling. In the first case, in the middle, we subdivide the 48 threads into tiles where each has 4*3=12 threads, hence we have 2*2=4 tiles. In the second example, on the right, we subdivide the original input into tiles where each has 2*2=4 threads, hence we have 4*3=12 tiles. Notice how you can play with the tile size and achieve different number of tiles. The numbers you pick must be such that the original total number of threads (in our example 48), remains the same, and every tile must have the same size. Of course, you still have no clue why you would do that, but stick with me. First, we should see how we can use this tiled_grid, since the parallel_for_each function that we know expects a grid. Tiled parallel_for_each and tiled_index It turns out that we have additional overloads of parallel_for_each that accept a tiled_grid instead of a grid. However, those overloads, also expect that the lambda you pass in accepts a concurrency::tiled_index (new in amp.h), not an index<N>. So how is a tiled_index different to an index? A tiled_index object, can have only 1 or 2 or 3 dimensions (matching exactly the tiled_grid), and consists of 4 index objects that are accessible via properties: global, local, tile_origin, and tile. The global index is the same as the index we know and love: the global thread ID. The local index is the local thread ID within the tile. The tile_origin index returns the global index of the thread that is at position 0,0 of this tile, and the tile index is the position of the tile in relation to the overall grid. Confused? Here is an example accompanied by a picture that hopefully clarifies things: array_view<int, 2> data(8, 6, p_my_data); parallel_for_each(data.grid.tile<2,2>(), [=] (tiled_index<2,2> t_idx) restrict(direct3d) { /* todo */ }); Given the code above and the picture on the right, what are the values of each of the 4 index objects that the t_idx variables exposes, when the lambda is executed by T (highlighted in the picture on the right)? If you can't work it out yourselves, the solution follows: t_idx.global       = index<2> (6,3) t_idx.local          = index<2> (0,1) t_idx.tile_origin = index<2> (6,2) t_idx.tile             = index<2> (3,1) Don't move on until you are comfortable with this… the picture really helps, so use it. Tiled Matrix Multiplication Example – part 1 Let's paste here the C++ AMP matrix multiplication example, bolding the lines we are going to change (can you guess what the changes will be?) 01: void MatrixMultiplyTiled_Part1(vector<float>& vC, const vector<float>& vA, const vector<float>& vB, int M, int N, int W) 02: { 03: 04: array_view<const float,2> a(M, W, vA); 05: array_view<const float,2> b(W, N, vB); 06: array_view<writeonly<float>,2> c(M, N, vC); 07: parallel_for_each(c.grid, 08: [=](index<2> idx) restrict(direct3d) { 09: 10: int row = idx[0]; int col = idx[1]; 11: float sum = 0.0f; 12: for(int i = 0; i < W; i++) 13: sum += a(row, i) * b(i, col); 14: c[idx] = sum; 15: }); 16: } To turn this into a tiled example, first we need to decide our tile size. Let's say we want each tile to be 16*16 (which assumes that we'll have at least 256 threads to process, and that c.grid.extent.size() is divisible by 256, and moreover that c.grid.extent[0] and c.grid.extent[1] are divisible by 16). So we insert at line 03 the tile size (which must be a compile time constant). 03: static const int TS = 16; ...then we need to tile the grid to have tiles where each one has 16*16 threads, so we change line 07 to be as follows 07: parallel_for_each(c.grid.tile<TS,TS>(), ...that means that our index now has to be a tiled_index with the same characteristics as the tiled_grid, so we change line 08 08: [=](tiled_index<TS, TS> t_idx) restrict(direct3d) { ...which means, without changing our core algorithm, we need to be using the global index that the tiled_index gives us access to, so we insert line 09 as follows 09: index<2> idx = t_idx.global; ...and now this code just works and it is tiled! Closing thoughts on part 1 The process we followed just shows the mechanical transformation that can take place from the simple model to the tiled model (think of this as step 1). In fact, when we wrote the matrix multiplication example originally, the compiler was doing this mechanical transformation under the covers for us (and it has additional smarts to deal with the cases where the total number of threads scheduled cannot be divisible by the tile size). The point is that the thread scheduling is always tiled, even when you use the non-tiled model. But with this mechanical transformation, we haven't gained anything… Hint: our goal with explicitly using the tiled model is to gain even more performance. In the next post, we'll evolve this further (beyond what the compiler can automatically do for us, in this first release), so you can see the full usage of the tiled model and its benefits… Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• To My 24 Year Old Self, Wherever You Are&hellip;

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  A decade is a milestone in one’s life, regardless of when it occurs. 2011 might seem like a weird year to mark a decade, but 2001 was a defining year for me. It marked my emergence into the technology industry, an unexpected loss of innocence, and triggered an ongoing struggle with faith and belief. Once you go through a valley, climbing the mountain and looking back over where you travelled, you can take in the entirety of the journey. Over the last 10 years I kept journals, and in this new year I took some time to review them. For those today that are me a decade ago, I share with you what I’ve gleamed from my experiences. Take it for what it’s worth, and safe travels on your own journeys through life. Life is a Performance-Based Sport Have confidence, believe you’re capable, but realize that life is a performance-based sport. Everything you get in life is based on whether you can show that you deserve it. Performance is also your best defense against personal attacks. Just make sure you know what standards you’re expected to hit and if people want to poke holes at you let them do the work of trying to find them. Sometimes performance won’t matter though. Good things will happen to bad people, and bad things to good people. What’s important is that you do the right things and ensure the good and bad even out in your own life. How you finish is just as important as how you start. Start strong, end strong. Respect is Your Most Prized Reward Respect is more important than status or ego. The formula is simple: Performing Well + Building Trust + Showing Dedication = Respect Focus on perfecting your craft and helping your team and respect will come. Life is a Team Sport Whatever aspect of your life, you can’t do it alone. You need to rely on the people around you and ensure you’re a positive aspect of their lives; even those that may be difficult or unpleasant. Avoid criticism and instead find ways to help colleagues and superiors better whatever environment you’re in (work, home, etc.). Don’t just highlight gaps and issues, but also come to the table with solutions. At the same time though, stand up for yourself and hold others accountable for the commitments they make to the team. A healthy team needs accountability. Give feedback early and often, and make it verbal. Issues should be dealt with immediately, and positives should be celebrated as they happen. Life is a Contact Sport Difficult moments will happen. Don’t run from them or shield yourself from experiencing them. Embrace them. They will further mold you and reveal who you will become. Find Your Tribe and Embrace Your Community We all need a tribe: a group of people that we gravitate to for support, guidance, wisdom, and friendship. Discover your tribe and immerse yourself in them. Don’t look for a non-existent tribe just to fill the need of belonging though that will leave you empty and bitter when they don’t meet your unrealistic expectations. Try to associate with people more experienced and more knowledgeable than you. You’ll always learn, and you’ll always remember you have much to learn. Put yourself out there, get involved with the community. Opportunities will present themselves. When we open ourselves up to be vulnerable, we also give others the chance to do the same. This helps us all to grow and help each other, it’s very important. And listen to your wife. (Easter *is* a romantic holiday btw, regardless of what you may think.) Don’t Believe Your Own Press Clippings (and by that I mean the ones you write) Until you have a track record of performance to refer to, any notions of grandeur are just that: notions. You lose your rookie status through trials and tribulations, not by the number of stamps in your passport. Be realistic about your own “experience and leadership” and be honest when you aren’t ready for something. And always remember: nobody really cares about you as much as you think they do. Don’t Let Assholes Get You Down The world isn’t evil, but there is evil in the world. Know the difference and don’t paint all people with the same brush. Do be wary of those that use personal beliefs to describe their business (i.e. “We’re a [religion] company”). What matters is the culture of the organization, and that will tell you the moral compass and what is truly valued. Don’t make someone or something a priority that only makes you an option. Life is unfair and enemies/opponents will succeed when you fail. Don’t waste your energy getting upset at this; the only one that will lose out is you. As mentioned earlier, nobody really cares about you as much as you think they do. Misc Ecclesiastes is bullshit. Everything is certainly *not* meaningless. Software development is about delivery, not the process. Having a great process means nothing if you don’t produce anything. Watch “The Weatherman” (“It’s not easy, but easy doesn’t enter into grownup life.”). Read Tony Dungee’s autobiography, even if you don’t like football, and even if you aren’t a Christian. Say no, don’t feel like you have to commit right away when someone asks you to.

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• Mobile Apps for Oracle E-Business Suite

  - by Carlos Chang

  Crosspost from the mobile apps blog.  TL;DR Oracle E-Business Suite is now building mobile apps with Oracle Mobile Application Framework (MAF). Believe it! Build iOS and Android apps with once code base and get it done! By Steven Chan (Oracle Development)  Many things have changed in the mobile space over the last few years. Here's an update on our strategy for mobile apps for the E-Business Suite. Mobile app strategy We're building our family of mobile apps for the E-Business Suite using Oracle Mobile Application Framework.  This framework allows us to write a single application that can be run on Apple iOS and Google Android platforms. Mobile apps for the E-Business Suite will share a common look-and-feel. The E-Business Suite is a suite of over 200 product modules spanning Financials, Supply Chain, Human Resources, and many other areas. Our mobile app strategy is to release standalone apps for specific product modules.  Our Oracle Timecards app, which allows users to create and submit timecards, is an example of a standalone app. Some common functions that span multiple product areas will have dedicated apps, too. An example of this is ourOracle Approvals app, which allows users to review and approve requests for expenses, requisitions, purchase orders, recruitment vacancies and offers, and more. You can read more about our Oracle Mobile Approvals app here: Now Available: Oracle Mobile Approvals for iOS Our goal is to support smaller screen (e.g. smartphones) as well as larger screens (e.g. tablets), with the smaller screen versions generally delivered first.  Where possible, we will deliver these as universal apps.  An example is our Oracle Mobile Field Service app, which allows field service technicians to remotely access customer, product, service request, and task-related information.  This app can run on a smartphone, while providing a richer experience for tablets. Deploying EBS mobile apps The mobile apps, themselves (i.e. client-side components) can be downloaded by end-users from the Apple iTunes today.  Android versions will be available from Google play. You can monitor this blog for Android-related updates. Where possible, our mobile apps should be deployable with a minimum of server-side changes.  These changes will generally involve a consolidated server-side patch for technology-stack components, and possibly a server-side patch for the functional product module. Updates to existing mobile apps may require new server-side components to enable all of the latest mobile functionality. All EBS product modules are certified for internal intranet deployments (i.e. used by employees within an organization's firewall).  Only a subset of EBS products such as iRecruitment are certified to be deployed externally (i.e. used by non-employees outside of an organization's firewall).  Today, many organizations running the E-Business Suite do not expose their EBS environment externally and all of the mobile apps that we're building are intended for internal employee use.  Recognizing this, our mobile apps are currently designed for users who are connected to the organization's intranet via VPN.  We expect that this may change in future updates to our mobile apps. Mobile apps and internationalization The initial releases of our mobile apps will be in English.  Later updates will include translations for all left-to-right languages supported by the E-Business Suite.  Right-to-left languages will not be translated. Customizing apps for enterprise deployments The current generation of mobile apps for Oracle E-Business Suite cannot be customized. We are evaluating options for limited customizations, including corporate branding with logos, corporate color schemes, and others. This is a potentially-complex area with many tricky implications for deployment and maintenance.  We would be interested in hearing your requirements for customizations in enterprise deployments.Prerequisites Apple iOS 7 and higher Android 4.1 (API level 16) and higher, with minimum CPU/memory configurations listed here EBS 12.1: EBS 12.1.3 Family Packs for the related product module EBS 12.2.3 References Oracle E-Business Suite Mobile Apps, Release 12.1 and 12.2 Documentation (Note 1641772.1) Oracle E-Business Suite Mobile Apps Administrator's Guide, Release 12.1 and 12.2 (Note 1642431.1) Follow @OracleMobile on Twitter Oracle Mobile Blog is here. 

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• How many developers before continuous integration becomes effective for us?

  - by Carnotaurus

  There is an overhead associated with continuous integration, e.g., set up, re-training, awareness activities, stoppage to fix "bugs" that turn out to be data issues, enforced separation of concerns programming styles, etc. At what point does continuous integration pay for itself? EDIT: These were my findings The set-up was CruiseControl.Net with Nant, reading from VSS or TFS. Here are a few reasons for failure, which have nothing to do with the setup: Cost of investigation: The time spent investigating whether a red light is due a genuine logical inconsistency in the code, data quality, or another source such as an infrastructure problem (e.g., a network issue, a timeout reading from source control, third party server is down, etc., etc.) Political costs over infrastructure: I considered performing an "infrastructure" check for each method in the test run. I had no solution to the timeout except to replace the build server. Red tape got in the way and there was no server replacement. Cost of fixing unit tests: A red light due to a data quality issue could be an indicator of a badly written unit test. So, data dependent unit tests were re-written to reduce the likelihood of a red light due to bad data. In many cases, necessary data was inserted into the test environment to be able to accurately run its unit tests. It makes sense to say that by making the data more robust then the test becomes more robust if it is dependent on this data. Of course, this worked well! Cost of coverage, i.e., writing unit tests for already existing code: There was the problem of unit test coverage. There were thousands of methods that had no unit tests. So, a sizeable amount of man days would be needed to create those. As this would be too difficult to provide a business case, it was decided that unit tests would be used for any new public method going forward. Those that did not have a unit test were termed 'potentially infra red'. An intestesting point here is that static methods were a moot point in how it would be possible to uniquely determine how a specific static method had failed. Cost of bespoke releases: Nant scripts only go so far. They are not that useful for, say, CMS dependent builds for EPiServer, CMS, or any UI oriented database deployment. These are the types of issues that occured on the build server for hourly test runs and overnight QA builds. I entertain that these to be unnecessary as a build master can perform these tasks manually at the time of release, esp., with a one man band and a small build. So, single step builds have not justified use of CI in my experience. What about the more complex, multistep builds? These can be a pain to build, especially without a Nant script. So, even having created one, these were no more successful. The costs of fixing the red light issues outweighed the benefits. Eventually, developers lost interest and questioned the validity of the red light. Having given it a fair try, I believe that CI is expensive and there is a lot of working around the edges instead of just getting the job done. It's more cost effective to employ experienced developers who do not make a mess of large projects than introduce and maintain an alarm system. This is the case even if those developers leave. It doesn't matter if a good developer leaves because processes that he follows would ensure that he writes requirement specs, design specs, sticks to the coding guidelines, and comments his code so that it is readable. All this is reviewed. If this is not happening then his team leader is not doing his job, which should be picked up by his manager and so on. For CI to work, it is not enough to just write unit tests, attempt to maintain full coverage, and ensure a working infrastructure for sizable systems. The bottom line: One might question whether fixing as many bugs before release is even desirable from a business prespective. CI involves a lot of work to capture a handful of bugs that the customer could identify in UAT or the company could get paid for fixing as part of a client service agreement when the warranty period expires anyway.

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• Microsoft BUILD 2013 Day 1&ndash;Keynote

  - by Tim Murphy

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/tmurphy/archive/2013/06/27/microsoft-build-2013-day-1ndashkeynote.aspx This one is going to be a little long because the keynote was jam-packed so bare with me. The keynote for the first day of BUILD 2013 was kicked off by Steve Balmer.  He made it very clear that Microsoft’s focus is on accelerating its time to market with products and product updates.  His quote was that “Rapid release” is the new norm.  He continued by showing off several new Lumias that have been buzzing around the internet for a while and announce that Sprint will now be carrying the HTC 8XT and Samsung ATIV. Balmer is known for repeating words or phrase for affect.  This time it was “Rapid release, rapid release” and “Touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, …”.  This was fun, but even more fun was when he announce that all attendees would receive an Acer Iconia 8” tablet. SCORE! The next subject Balmer focused on is new apps.  The three new ones were Flipboard, Facebook and NFL Fantasy Football.  I liked the first two because these are ones that people coming from other platforms are missing.  The NFL app is great just because it targets a demographic that can be fanatical.  If these types of apps keep coming than the missing app argument goes away. While many Negative Nancy’s are describing Windows 8.1 as Windows 180 Steve Balmer chose to call it a “refined blend” as in a coffee that has been improved with a new mix.  This includes more multi-tasking options and leveraging Bing straight throughout the entire ecosystem. He ended this first section by explaining that this will also bring more Bing development opportunities to the community. Steve Balmer was followed by Julie Larson-Green who spent her time on stage selling us on Windows 8 all over again from my point of view.  Something that I would not have thought was needed until I had listened to some other attendees who had a number of concerns and complaints.  She showed a number of new gestures that will come with Windows 8.1, and while they were cool I was left wondering if they really improved the experience.  I guess only time will tell. I did like the fact that it the UI implementation to bring up “All Apps” now mirrors that of Windows Phone.  The consistency is a big step forward that I hope to see continue.  The cool factor went up from there as she swiped content from a desktop (mega-tablet) to the XBox One.  This seamless experience I believe is what is really needed for any future platform to be relevant. I was much more enthused by the presentation of Antoine Leblond who humbled us by letting us know that there are 5k new API.  How that can be or how anyone would ever use all of them is another question.  His announcement was that the Visual Studio 2013 preview would be available today along with the Windows 8.1 bits.  One of the features of VS2013 that he demonstrated is the power consumption profiler.  With battery life being a key factor with consumer consumption devices this is a welcome addition. He didn’t limit his presentation to VS2013 features though.  He showed how the Store has been redesigned to enable better search and discoverability of apps and how Win 8.1 can perform multiple screen scales depending on the resolution of the device automatically.  The last feature he demoed was the real time video streaming API which he made sure we understood by attaching a Surface to a little robot.  Oh, but there was one more thing.  Antoine and Julie announce that all attendees would also be getting Surface Pros.  BONUS! How much more could there be?  Gurdeep Singh Pall was about to pile on.  He introduced us to Bing as a platform (BaaP?).  He said if they (Microsoft) could do something with and API that is good 3rd party developers can do something that is dynamite and showed us some of the tools they had produced.  These included natural user interface improvements such as voice commands that looked to put Siri to shame.  Add to that 3D, OCR and translation capabilities and the future looks to be full of opportunities. Balmer then came out to show us one last thing.  Project Spark is a game design environment that will be available for Windows 8.1, XBox 360 and XBox One.  All I can say is that if my kids get their hands on this they are going to be able to learn some of what dad does in a much more enjoyable way. At the end of it all I was both exhausted and energized by what I saw.  What could they have possibly left for the day 2 keynote?  I hear it will feature Scott Hanselman.  If that is right we are in for a treat.  See you there. del.icio.us Tags: BUILD 2013,Windows 8.1,Winodws Phone,XAML,Keynote,Bing,Visual Studio 2013,Project Spark

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• Managing Your First SharePoint Project or Team

  - by Mark Rackley

  (*editor’s note* If you have proper SharePoint Training, know the difference between a site and a site collection, and have the utmost respect for the knowledge of your SharePoint team skip this blog and go directly to meetdux.com, do not pass go, do not collect $200… otherwise, please proceed) Dear Mr. or Mrs. I-know-nothing-about-SharePoint-but-hey,-I-have-manager-in-my-title-so-I’ll-tell-you-how-to-your-job, Thank you so much for joining the Acme corporation. We appreciate your eagerness and willingness to jump in and help us accomplish all of our goals here at acme (these roadrunner rockets don’t make themselves). You may have noticed that we have this thing called SharePoint lying around and we have invested some time in money to make it not a complete piece of garbage. So, I thought I’d give you some pointers to help make your stay here enjoyable and productive. Yeah… you don’t really know SharePoint Just because you had a mysite at your last organization or had a SharePoint 2003 team site does NOT mean you comprehend the vastness that is SharePoint. You don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes. You don’t know what should and should not be done. No, we CAN’T just query the SQL database directly. Yes, it really does take that long. No, we can’t do that out-of-the-box. Your experience doesn’t mean as much as you think it means… Yes, I’m aware that you co-created the internet with Al Gore and have been managing projects since I was blowing up GI Joe figures with firecrackers, however SharePoint is not like anything you have worked with before from a management perspective. Please don’t tell us the proper way to do our job or tell us how “you” would do it, and PLEASE don’t utter the words “I used to do some .NET development so let me know if you get stuck and need some guidance.” It MAY be possible for a incredible project manager to manage a SharePoint project and not understand the technology, but if you force your ideas on us or treat us like we don’t really know what we’re doing then you will prove yourself to NOT be one of those types. Oh no you didn’t… Please don’t tell us how you can bring in a group of guys of Kazakhstan to do the project for $20/hr. There are many companies out there who can do some really crappy SharePoint work and we don’t want to be stuck maintaining their junk. Do you know what it means to deploy a solution? Neither do some of those companies out there. However, there are are few AWESOME consulting firms out there but $150/hr is cheap for these guys. Believe me, it’s worth it though. You get what you pay for! Show us some respect We truly do appreciate and value your opinion and experience, but when we tell you something is different in SharePoint don’t be condescending and dismiss OUR experience and opinions. We have spent a lot of time and energy learning a very complicated technology that can open up a world of possibilities when used properly. We just want to make sure it is used properly. It’s not the same as .NET development. It’s not like a regular web application. There’s more going on behind the scenes than you can possibly fathom. Have a little faith in us please and listen when we talk. You may actually learn a thing or two. Take some time to learn the technology There is hope… you don’t have to be totally worthless. Take some time to learn SharePoint. Learn what it is and what it can do. Invest some time in learning our SharePoint environment. What’s our logical architecture and taxonomy? What governance do we have in place? If you just thought “huh?” then yes, I’m talking to you. Sincerely, Your SharePoint Team (This rant is not pointed at any particular organization or person. If you think it’s about you, you are wrong. This is just a general rant based upon things people have told me and things I’ve seen. If you don’t think it applies to you, please move on. If you think you might be guilty of handling your SharePoint team the wrong way, then just please listen, learn, and have a little faith in your team. You all have the same goal in mind. Also, take the time to learn something about SharePoint, you will all be less frustrated with each other.)

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• Myths about Coding Craftsmanship part 2

  - by tom

  Myth 3: The source of all bad code is inept developers and stupid people When you review code is this what you assume?  Shame on you.  You are probably making assumptions in your code if you are assuming so much already.  Bad code can be the result of any number of causes including but not limited to using dated techniques (like boxing when generics are available), not following standards (“look how he does the spacing between arguments!” or “did he really just name that variable ‘bln_Hello_Cats’?”), being redundant, using properties, methods, or objects in a novel way (like switching on button.Text between “Hello World” and “Hello World “ //clever use of space character… sigh), not following the SOLID principals, hacking around assumptions made in earlier iterations / hacking in features that should be worked into the overall design.  The first two issues, while annoying are pretty easy to spot and can be fixed so easily.  If your coding team is made up of experienced professionals who are passionate about staying current then these shouldn’t be happening.  If you work with a variety of skills, backgrounds, and experience then there will be some of this stuff going on.  If you have an opportunity to mentor such a developer who is receptive to constructive criticism don’t be a jerk; help them and the codebase will improve.  A little patience can improve the codebase, your work environment, and even your perspective. The novelty and redundancy I have encountered has often been the use of creativity when language knowledge was perceived as unavailable or too time consuming.  When developers learn on the job you get a lot of this.  Rather than going to MSDN developers will use what they know.  Depending on the constraints of their assignment hacking together what they know may seem quite practical.  This was not stupid though I often wonder how much time is actually “saved” by hacking.  These issues are often harder to untangle if we ever do.  They can also grow out of control as we write hack after hack to make it work and get back to some development that is satisfying. Hacking upon an existing hack is what I call “feeding the monster”.  Code monsters are anti-patterns and hacks gone wild.  The reason code monsters continue to get bigger is that they keep growing in scope, touching more and more of the application.  This is not the result of dumb developers. It is probably the result of avoiding design, not taking the time to understand the problems or anticipate or communicate the vision of the product.  If our developers don’t understand the purpose of a feature or product how do we expect potential customers to do so? Forethought and organization are often what is missing from bad code.  Developers who do not use the SOLID principals should be encouraged to learn these principals and be given guidance on how to apply them.  The time “saved” by giving hackers room to hack will be made up for and then some. Not as technical debt but as shoddy work that if not replaced will be struggled with again and again.  Bad code is not the result of dumb developers (usually) it is the result of trying to do too much without the proper resources and neglecting the right thing that needs doing with the first thoughtless thing that comes into our heads. Object oriented code is all about relationships between objects.  Coders who believe their coworkers are all fools tend to write objects that are difficult to work with, not eager to explain themselves, and perform erratically and irrationally.  If you constantly find you are surrounded by idiots you may want to ask yourself if you are being unreasonable, if you are being closed minded, of if you have chosen the right profession.  Opening your mind up to the idea that you probably work with rational, well-intentioned people will probably make you a better coder and it might even make you less grumpy.  If you are surrounded by jerks who do not engage in the exchange of ideas who do not care about their customers or the durability of the code you are building together then I suggest you find a new place to work.  Myth 4: Customers don’t care about “beautiful” code Craftsmanship is customer focused because it means that the job was done right, the product will withstand the abuse, modifications, and scrutiny of our customers.  Users can appreciate a predictable timeline for a release, a product delivered on time and on budget, a feature set that does not interfere with the task(s) it is supporting, quick turnarounds on exception messages, self healing issues, and less issues.  These are all hindered by skimping on craftsmanship.  When we write data access and when we write reusable code.   What do you think?  Does bad code come primarily from low IQ individuals?  Do customers care about beautiful code?

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• The Enterprise is a Curmudgeon

  - by John K. Hines

  Working in an enterprise environment is a unique challenge.  There's a lot more to software development than developing software.  A project lead or Scrum Master has to manage personalities and intra-team politics, has to manage accomplishing the task at hand while creating the opportunities and a reputation for handling desirable future work, has to create a competent, happy team that actually delivers while being careful not to burn bridges or hurt feelings outside the team.  Which makes me feel surprised to read advice like: " The enterprise should figure out what is likely to work best for itself and try to use it." - Ken Schwaber, The Enterprise and Scrum. The enterprises I have experience with are fundamentally unable to be self-reflective.  It's like asking a Roman gladiator if he'd like to carve out a little space in the arena for some silent meditation.  I'm currently wondering how compatible Scrum is with the top-down hierarchy of life in a large organization.  Specifically, manufacturing-mindset, fixed-release, harmony-valuing large organizations.  Now I understand why Agile can be a better fit for companies without much organizational inertia. Recently I've talked with nearly two dozen software professionals and their managers about Scrum and Agile.  I've become convinced that a developer, team, organization, or enterprise can be Agile without using Scrum.  But I'm not sure about what process would be the best fit, in general, for an enterprise that wants to become Agile.  It's possible I should read more than just the introduction to Ken's book. I do feel prepared to answer some of the questions I had asked in a previous post: How can Agile practices (including but not limited to Scrum) be adopted in situations where the highest-placed managers in a company demand software within extremely aggressive deadlines? Answer: In a very limited capacity at the individual level.  The situation here is that the senior management of this company values any software release more than it values developer well-being, end-user experience, or software quality.  Only if the developing organization is given an immediate refactoring opportunity does this sort of development make sense to a person who values sustainable software.   How can Agile practices be adopted by teams that do not perform a continuous cycle of new development, such as those whose sole purpose is to reproduce and debug customer issues? Answer: It depends.  For Scrum in particular, I don't believe Scrum is meant to manage unpredictable work.  While you can easily adopt XP practices for bug fixing, the project-management aspects of Scrum require some predictability.  My question here was meant toward those who want to apply Scrum to non-development teams.  In some cases it works, in others it does not. How can a team measure if its development efforts are both Agile and employ sound engineering practices? Answer: I'm currently leaning toward measuring these independently.  The Agile Principles are a terrific way to measure if a software team is agile.  Sound engineering practices are those practices which help developers meet the principles.  I think Scrum is being mistakenly applied as an engineering practice when it is essentially a project management practice.  In my opinion, XP and Lean are examples of good engineering practices. How can Agile be explained in an accurate way that describes its benefits to sceptical developers and/or revenue-focused non-developers? Answer: Agile techniques will result in higher-quality, lower-cost software development.  This comes primarily from finding defects earlier in the development cycle.  If there are individual developers who do not want to collaborate, write unit tests, or refactor, then these are simply developers who are either working in an area where adding these techniques will not add value (i.e. they are an expert) or they are a developer who is satisfied with the status quo.  In the first case they should be left alone.  In the second case, the results of Agile should be demonstrated by other developers who are willing to receive recognition for their efforts.  It all comes down to individuals, doesn't it?  If you're working in an organization whose Agile adoption consists exclusively of Scrum, consider ways to form individual Agile teams to demonstrate its benefits.  These can even be virtual teams that span people across org-chart boundaries.  Once you can measure real value, whether it's Scrum, Lean, or something else, people will follow.  Even the curmudgeons.

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• java.util.zip.ZipException: Error opening file When Deploying an Application to Weblogic Server

  - by lmestre

  The latest weeks we had a hard time trying to solve a deployment issue.* WebLogic Server 10.3.6* Target: WLS Cluster<21-10-2013 05:29:40 PM CLST> <Error> <Console> <BEA-240003> <Console encountered the following error weblogic.management.DeploymentException:        at weblogic.servlet.internal.WarDeploymentFactory.findOrCreateComponentMBeans(WarDeploymentFactory.java:69)        at weblogic.application.internal.MBeanFactoryImpl.findOrCreateComponentMBeans(MBeanFactoryImpl.java:48)        at weblogic.application.internal.MBeanFactoryImpl.createComponentMBeans(MBeanFactoryImpl.java:110)        at weblogic.application.internal.MBeanFactoryImpl.initializeMBeans(MBeanFactoryImpl.java:76)        at weblogic.management.deploy.internal.MBeanConverter.createApplicationMBean(MBeanConverter.java:89)        at weblogic.management.deploy.internal.MBeanConverter.createApplicationForAppDeployment(MBeanConverter.java:67)        at weblogic.management.deploy.internal.MBeanConverter.setupNew81MBean(MBeanConverter.java:315)        at weblogic.deploy.internal.targetserver.operations.ActivateOperation.compatibilityProcessor(ActivateOperation.java:81)        at weblogic.deploy.internal.targetserver.operations.AbstractOperation.setupPrepare(AbstractOperation.java:295)        at weblogic.deploy.internal.targetserver.operations.ActivateOperation.doPrepare(ActivateOperation.java:97)        at weblogic.deploy.internal.targetserver.operations.AbstractOperation.prepare(AbstractOperation.java:217)        at weblogic.deploy.internal.targetserver.DeploymentManager.handleDeploymentPrepare(DeploymentManager.java:747)        at weblogic.deploy.internal.targetserver.DeploymentManager.prepareDeploymentList(DeploymentManager.java:1216)        at weblogic.deploy.internal.targetserver.DeploymentManager.handlePrepare(DeploymentManager.java:250)        at weblogic.deploy.internal.targetserver.DeploymentServiceDispatcher.prepare(DeploymentServiceDispatcher.java:159)        at weblogic.deploy.service.internal.targetserver.DeploymentReceiverCallbackDeliverer.doPrepareCallback(DeploymentReceiverCallbackDeliverer.java:171)        at weblogic.deploy.service.internal.targetserver.DeploymentReceiverCallbackDeliverer.access$000(DeploymentReceiverCallbackDeliverer.java:13)        at weblogic.deploy.service.internal.targetserver.DeploymentReceiverCallbackDeliverer$1.run(DeploymentReceiverCallbackDeliverer.java:46)        at weblogic.work.SelfTuningWorkManagerImpl$WorkAdapterImpl.run(SelfTuningWorkManagerImpl.java:545)        at weblogic.work.ExecuteThread.execute(ExecuteThread.java:256)        at weblogic.work.ExecuteThread.run(ExecuteThread.java:221)Caused by: java.util.zip.ZipException: Error opening file - C:\Oracle\Middleware\user_projects\domains\MyDomain\servers\MyServer\stage\myapp\myapp.war Message - error in opening zip file        at weblogic.servlet.utils.WarUtils.existsInWar(WarUtils.java:87)        at weblogic.servlet.utils.WarUtils.isWebServices(WarUtils.java:76)        at weblogic.servlet.internal.WarDeploymentFactory.findOrCreateComponentMBeans(WarDeploymentFactory.java:61) So the first idea you have with that error is that the war file is corrupted or has incorrect privileges.        We tried:1. Unzipping the  war file, the file was perfect.2. Checking the size, same size as in other environments.3. Checking the ownership of the file, same as in other environments.4. Checking the permissions of the file, same as other applications.Then we accepted the file was fine, so we tried enabling some deployment debugs, but no clues.We also tried:1. Delete all contents of <MyDomain/servers/<MyServer>/tmp> a and <MyDomain/servers/<MyServer>/cache> folders, the issue persisted.2. When renaming the application the deployment was sucessful3. When targeting to the Admin Server, deployment was also working.4. Using 'Copy this application onto every target for me' didn't help either.Finally, my friend 'Test Case' solved the issue again.I saw this name in the config.xml<jdbc-system-resource>    <name>myapp</name>    <target></target>    <descriptor-file-name>jdbc/myapp-jdbc.xml</descriptor-file-name>  </jdbc-system-resource> So, it turned out that customer had created a DataSource with the same name as the application 'myapp' in the above example.By deleting the datasource and created another exact DataSource with a different name the issue was solved.At this point, Do you know Why 'java.util.zip.ZipException: Error opening file' was occurring?Because all names is WebLogic Server need to be unique.References: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/web.1111/e13709/setup.htm"Assigning Names to WebLogic Server ResourcesMake sure that each configurable resource in your WebLogic Server environment has a unique name. Each, domain, server, machine, cluster, JDBC data source, virtual host, or other resource must have a unique name." Enjoy!

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• Super constructor must be a first statement in Java constructor [closed]

  - by Val

  I know the answer: "we need rules to prevent shooting into your own foot". Ok, I make millions of programming mistakes every day. To be prevented, we need one simple rule: prohibit all JLS and do not use Java. If we explain everything by "not shooting your foot", this is reasonable. But there is not much reason is such reason. When I programmed in Delphy, I always wanted the compiler to check me if I read uninitializable. I have discovered myself that is is stupid to read uncertain variable because it leads unpredictable result and is errorenous obviously. By just looking at the code I could see if there is an error. I wished if compiler could do this job. It is also a reliable signal of programming error if function does not return any value. But I never wanted it do enforce me the super constructor first. Why? You say that constructors just initialize fields. Super fields are derived; extra fields are introduced. From the goal point of view, it does not matter in which order you initialize the variables. I have studied parallel architectures and can say that all the fields can even be assigned in parallel... What? Do you want to use the unitialized fields? Stupid people always want to take away our freedoms and break the JLS rules the God gives to us! Please, policeman, take away that person! Where do I say so? I'm just saying only about initializing/assigning, not using the fields. Java compiler already defends me from the mistake of accessing notinitialized. Some cases sneak but this example shows how this stupid rule does not save us from the read-accessing incompletely initialized in construction: public class BadSuper { String field; public String toString() { return "field = " + field; } public BadSuper(String val) { field = val; // yea, superfirst does not protect from accessing // inconstructed subclass fields. Subclass constr // must be called before super()! System.err.println(this); } } public class BadPost extends BadSuper { Object o; public BadPost(Object o) { super("str"); this. o = o; } public String toString() { // superconstructor will boom here, because o is not initialized! return super.toString() + ", obj = " + o.toString(); } public static void main(String[] args) { new BadSuper("test 1"); new BadPost(new Object()); } } It shows that actually, subfields have to be inilialized before the supreclass! Meantime, java requirement "saves" us from writing specializing the class by specializing what the super constructor argument is, public class MyKryo extends Kryo { class MyClassResolver extends DefaultClassResolver { public Registration register(Registration registration) { System.out.println(MyKryo.this.getDepth()); return super.register(registration); } } MyKryo() { // cannot instantiate MyClassResolver in super super(new MyClassResolver(), new MapReferenceResolver()); } } Try to make it compilable. It is always pain. Especially, when you cannot assign the argument later. Initialization order is not important for initialization in general. I could understand that you should not use super methods before initializing super. But, the requirement for super to be the first statement is different. It only saves you from the code that does useful things simply. I do not see how this adds safety. Actually, safety is degraded because we need to use ugly workarounds. Doing post-initialization, outside the constructors also degrades safety (otherwise, why do we need constructors?) and defeats the java final safety reenforcer. To conclude Reading not initialized is a bug. Initialization order is not important from the computer science point of view. Doing initalization or computations in different order is not a bug. Reenforcing read-access to not initialized is good but compilers fail to detect all such bugs Making super the first does not solve the problem as it "Prevents" shooting into right things but not into the foot It requires to invent workarounds, where, because of complexity of analysis, it is easier to shoot into the foot doing post-initialization outside the constructors degrades safety (otherwise, why do we need constructors?) and that degrade safety by defeating final access modifier When there was java forum alive, java bigots attecked me for these thoughts. Particularly, they dislaked that fields can be initialized in parallel, saying that natural development ensures correctness. When I replied that you could use an advanced engineering to create a human right away, without "developing" any ape first, and it still be an ape, they stopped to listen me. Cos modern technology cannot afford it. Ok, Take something simpler. How do you produce a Renault? Should you construct an Automobile first? No, you start by producing a Renault and, once completed, you'll see that this is an automobile. So, the requirement to produce fields in "natural order" is unnatural. In case of alarmclock or armchair, which are still chair and clock, you may need first develop the base (clock and chair) and then add extra. So, I can have examples where superfields must be initialized first and, oppositely, when they need to be initialized later. The order does not exist in advance. So, the compiler cannot be aware of the proper order. Only programmer/constructor knows is. Compiler should not take more responsibility and enforce the wrong order onto programmer. Saying that I cannot initialize some fields because I did not ininialized the others is like "you cannot initialize the thing because it is not initialized". This is a kind of argument we have. So, to conclude once more, the feature that "protects" me from doing things in simple and right way in order to enforce something that does not add noticeably to the bug elimination at that is a strongly negative thing and it pisses me off, altogether with the all the arguments to support it I've seen so far. It is "a conceptual question about software development" Should there be the requirement to call super() first or not. I do not know. If you do or have an idea, you have place to answer. I think that I have provided enough arguments against this feature. Lets appreciate the ones who benefit form it. Let it just be something more than simple abstract and stupid "write your own language" or "protection" kind of argument. Why do we need it in the language that I am going to develop?

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• ROracle support for TimesTen In-Memory Database

  - by Sherry LaMonica

  Today's guest post comes from Jason Feldhaus, a Consulting Member of Technical Staff in the TimesTen Database organization at Oracle.  He shares with us a sample session using ROracle with the TimesTen In-Memory database.  Beginning in version 1.1-4, ROracle includes support for the Oracle Times Ten In-Memory Database, version 11.2.2. TimesTen is a relational database providing very fast and high throughput through its memory-centric architecture.  TimesTen is designed for low latency, high-volume data, and event and transaction management. A TimesTen database resides entirely in memory, so no disk I/O is required for transactions and query operations. TimesTen is used in applications requiring very fast and predictable response time, such as real-time financial services trading applications and large web applications. TimesTen can be used as the database of record or as a relational cache database to Oracle Database. ROracle provides an interface between R and the database, providing the rich functionality of the R statistical programming environment using the SQL query language. ROracle uses the OCI libraries to handle database connections, providing much better performance than standard ODBC.The latest ROracle enhancements include: Support for Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database Support for Date-Time using R's POSIXct/POSIXlt data types RAW, BLOB and BFILE data type support Option to specify number of rows per fetch operation Option to prefetch LOB data Break support using Ctrl-C Statement caching support Times Ten 11.2.2 contains enhanced support for analytics workloads and complex queries: Analytic functions: AVG, SUM, COUNT, MAX, MIN, DENSE_RANK, RANK, ROW_NUMBER, FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE Analytic clauses: OVER PARTITION BY and OVER ORDER BY Multidimensional grouping operators: Grouping clauses: GROUP BY CUBE, GROUP BY ROLLUP, GROUP BY GROUPING SETS Grouping functions: GROUP, GROUPING_ID, GROUP_ID WITH clause, which allows repeated references to a named subquery block Aggregate expressions over DISTINCT expressions General expressions that return a character string in the source or a pattern within the LIKE predicate Ability to order nulls first or last in a sort result (NULLS FIRST or NULLS LAST in the ORDER BY clause) Note: Some functionality is only available with Oracle Exalytics, refer to the TimesTen product licensing document for details. Connecting to TimesTen is easy with ROracle. Simply install and load the ROracle package and load the driver. > install.packages("ROracle") > library(ROracle) Loading required package: DBI > drv <- dbDriver("Oracle") Once the ROracle package is installed, create a database connection object and connect to a TimesTen direct driver DSN as the OS user. > conn <- dbConnect(drv, username ="", password="", dbname = "localhost/SampleDb_1122:timesten_direct") You have the option to report the server type - Oracle or TimesTen? > print (paste ("Server type =", dbGetInfo (conn)$serverType)) [1] "Server type = TimesTen IMDB" To create tables in the database using R data frame objects, use the function dbWriteTable. In the following example we write the built-in iris data frame to TimesTen. The iris data set is a small example data set containing 150 rows and 5 columns. We include it here not to highlight performance, but so users can easily run this example in their R session. > dbWriteTable (conn, "IRIS", iris, overwrite=TRUE, ora.number=FALSE) [1] TRUE Verify that the newly created IRIS table is available in the database. To list the available tables and table columns in the database, use dbListTables and dbListFields, respectively. > dbListTables (conn) [1] "IRIS" > dbListFields (conn, "IRIS") [1] "SEPAL.LENGTH" "SEPAL.WIDTH" "PETAL.LENGTH" "PETAL.WIDTH" "SPECIES" To retrieve a summary of the data from the database we need to save the results to a local object. The following call saves the results of the query as a local R object, iris.summary. The ROracle function dbGetQuery is used to execute an arbitrary SQL statement against the database. When connected to TimesTen, the SQL statement is processed completely within main memory for the fastest response time. > iris.summary <- dbGetQuery(conn, 'SELECT SPECIES, AVG ("SEPAL.LENGTH") AS AVG_SLENGTH, AVG ("SEPAL.WIDTH") AS AVG_SWIDTH, AVG ("PETAL.LENGTH") AS AVG_PLENGTH, AVG ("PETAL.WIDTH") AS AVG_PWIDTH FROM IRIS GROUP BY ROLLUP (SPECIES)') > iris.summary SPECIES AVG_SLENGTH AVG_SWIDTH AVG_PLENGTH AVG_PWIDTH 1 setosa 5.006000 3.428000 1.462 0.246000 2 versicolor 5.936000 2.770000 4.260 1.326000 3 virginica 6.588000 2.974000 5.552 2.026000 4 <NA> 5.843333 3.057333 3.758 1.199333 Finally, disconnect from the TimesTen Database. > dbCommit (conn) [1] TRUE > dbDisconnect (conn) [1] TRUE We encourage you download Oracle software for evaluation from the Oracle Technology Network. See these links for our software: Times Ten In-Memory Database,  ROracle.  As always, we welcome comments and questions on the TimesTen and  Oracle R technical forums.

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• Code Contracts: How they look after compiling?

  - by DigiMortal

  When you are using new tools that make also something at code level then it is good idea to check out what additions are made to code during compilation. Code contracts have simple syntax when we are writing code at Visual Studio but what happens after compilation? Are our methods same as they look in code or are they different after compilation? In this posting I will show you how code contracts look after compiling. In my previous examples about code contracts I used randomizer class with method called GetRandomFromRangeContracted. public int GetRandomFromRangeContracted(int min, int max) {     Contract.Requires<ArgumentOutOfRangeException>(         min < max,         "Min must be less than max"     );       Contract.Ensures(         Contract.Result<int>() >= min &&         Contract.Result<int>() <= max,         "Return value is out of range"     );       return _generator.Next(min, max); } Okay, it is nice to dream about similar code when we open our assembly with Reflector and disassemble it. But… this time we have something interesting. While reading this code don’t feel uncomfortable about the names of variables. This is disassembled code. .NET Framework internally allows these names. It is our compilators that doesn’t accept them when we are building our code. public int GetRandomFromRangeContracted(int min, int max) {     int Contract.Old(min);     int Contract.Old(max);     if (__ContractsRuntime.insideContractEvaluation <= 4)     {         try         {             __ContractsRuntime.insideContractEvaluation++;             __ContractsRuntime.Requires<ArgumentOutOfRangeException>(                min < max,                "Min must be less than max", "min < max");         }         finally         {             __ContractsRuntime.insideContractEvaluation--;         }     }     try     {         Contract.Old(min) = min;     }     catch (Exception exception1)     {         if (exception1 == null)         {             throw;         }     }     try     {         Contract.Old(max) = max;         catch (Exception exception2)     {         if (exception2 == null)         {             throw;         }     }     int CS$1$0000 = this._generator.Next(min, max);     int Contract.Result<int>() = CS$1$0000;     if (__ContractsRuntime.insideContractEvaluation <= 4)     {         try         {             __ContractsRuntime.insideContractEvaluation++;             __ContractsRuntime.Ensures(                (Contract.Result<int>() >= Contract.Old(min)) &&                (Contract.Result<int>() <= Contract.Old(max)),                "Return value is out of range",                "Contract.Result<int>() >= min && Contract.Result<int>() <= max");         }         finally         {             __ContractsRuntime.insideContractEvaluation--;         }     }     return Contract.Result<int>(); } As we can see then contracts are not simply if-then-else checks and exceptions throwing. We can see that there is counter that is incremented before checks and decremented after these whatever the result of check was. One thing that is annoying for me are null checks for exception1 and exception2. Is there really some situation possible when null is thrown instead of some instance that is Exception or that inherits from exception? Conclusion Code contracts are more complex mechanism that it seems when we look at it on our code level. Internally there are done more things than we know. I don’t say it is wrong, it is just good to know how our code looks after compiling. Looking at this example it is sure we need also performance tests for contracted code to see how heavy is their impact to system performance when we run code that makes heavy use of code contracts.

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• Using Resources the Right Way

  - by BuckWoody

  It’s an interesting time in computing technology. At one point there was a dearth of information available for solving a given problem, or educating ourselves on broader topics so that we can solve problems in the future. With dozens, perhaps hundreds or thousands of web sites and content available (for free, in many cases) from vendors, peers, even colleges and universities, it seems like there is actually too much information. Who has the time to absorb all this information and training? Even if you had the inclination, where to start? In fact, it seems so overwhelming that I often hear people saying that they can’t find the training they need, or that vendor X or Y “doesn’t help their users”. On questioning these folks, however, I often find that they – and sometimes I - haven’t put in the effort to learn what resources we have. That’s where blogs, like this one, can help. If you follow a blog, either by checking it often or perhaps subscribing to the Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed, you’ll be able to spread out the search or create a mental filter for the information you need. But it’s not enough just read a blog or a web page. The creators need real feedback – what doesn’t work, and what does. Yes, you’re allowed to tell a vendor or writer “This helped me because…” so that you reinforce the positives. To be sure, bring up what doesn’t work as well –  that’s fine. But be specific, and be constructive. You’d be surprised at how much it matters. I know for a fact at Microsoft we listen – there is a real live person that reads your comments. I’m sure this is true of other vendors, and I also know that most blog authors – yours truly most especially – wants to know what you think.   In this blog entry I’d to call your attention to three resources you have at your disposal, and how you can use them to help. I’ll try to bring up things like this from time to time that I find useful, and cover in them in more depth like this. Think of this as a synopsis of a longer set of resources that you can use to filter whether you want to research further, bookmark, or forward on to a circle of friends where you think it might help them.   Data Driven Design Concepts http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/jj156154 I’ll start with a great site that walks you through the process of designing a solution from a data-first perspective. As you know, I believe all computing is merely re-arranging data. If you follow that logic as well, you’ll realize that whenever you create a solution, you should start at the data-end of the application. This resource helps you do that. Even if you don’t use the specific technologies the instructions use, the concepts hold for almost any other technology that deals with data. This should be a definite bookmark for a developer, DBA, or Data Architect. When I mentioned my admiration for this resource here at Microsoft, the team that created it contacted me and asked if I’d share an e-mail address to my readers so that you can comment on it. You’re guaranteed to be heard – you can suggest changes, talk about how useful – or not – it is, and so on. Here’s that address:  [email protected]   End-to-End Example of a complete Hybrid Application – with Live Demo https://azurestocktrader.cloudapp.net/Default.aspx I learn by example. I also like having ready-made, live, functional demos that show the completed solution at work. If you’ve ever wanted to learn how a complex, complete, hybrid application that bridges on-premises systems with cloud-based databases, code, functions and more, this is it. It’s a stock-trading simulator, and you can get everything from the design to the code itself, or you can just play with the application. It’s running on Windows Azure, the actual production servers we use for everything else. Using a Cloud-Based Service https://azureconfigweb.cloudapp.net/Default.aspx Along with that stock-trading application, you have a full demonstration and usable code sample of a web-based service available. If you’re a developer, this is a style of code you need to understand for everything from iPhone development to a full Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) environment. So check out these resources. I’ll post more from time to time as I run across them. Hopefully they’ll be as useful to you as they are to me. Oh, and if you have a comment on any of the resources, let them know. And if you have any comments about these or any of my entries, feel free to post away. To quote a famous TV Show: “Hello Seattle – I’m listening…”

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• WEBLOGIC 12C HANDS-ON BOOTCAMP

  - by agallego

    Oracle PartnerNetwork | Account | Feedback   JOIN THE ORACLE WEBLOGIC PARTNER COMMUNITY AND ATTEND A WEBLOGIC 12C HANDS-ON BOOTCAMP Dear partner As a valued partner we would like to invite you for the WebLogic Partner Community and our WebLogic 12c hands-on Bootcamps – free of charge! Please first login at http://partner.oracle.com and then visit: WebLogic Partner Community. (If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center). The goal of the WebLogic Partner Community is to provide you with the latest information on Oracle's offerings and to facilitate the exchange of experience within community members. Register Now FREE Assessment vouchers to become certified and WebLogic Server 12c 200 new Features and Training Connect and Network   WebLogic Blogs   WebLogic on Facebook   WebLogic on LinkedIn   WebLogic on Twitter   WebLogic on Oracle Mix WebLogic 12c hands-on Workshops We offer free3 days hands-on WebLogic 12c workshops for Oracle partners who want to become Application Grid Specialized: Register Here! Country Date Location Registration   Germany  3-5 April 2012 Oracle Düsseldorf Click here   France  24-26 April 2012 Oracle Colombes Click here   Spain 08-10 May 2012  Oracle Madrid  Click here   Netherlands  22-24 May 2012  Oracle Amsterdam  Click here   United Kingdom  06-08 June 2012  Oracle Reading  Click here   Italy  19-21 June 2012  Oracle Cinisello Balsamo  Click here   Portugal  10-12 July 2012  Oracle Lisbon  Click here Skill requirements Attendees need to have the following skills as this is required by the product-set and to make sure they get the most out of the training: Basic knowledge in Java and JavaEE Understanding the Application Server concept Basic knowledge in older releases of WebLogic Server would be beneficial Member of WebLogic Partner Community for registration please vist http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea Hardware requirements Every participant works on his own notebook. The minimal hardware requirements are: 4Gb physical RAM (we will boot the image with 2Gb RAM)  dual core CPU 15 GB HD Software requirements Please install Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.1.8 Follow-up and certification  With the workshop registration you agree to the following next steps Follow-up training attend and pass the Oracle Application Grid Certified Implementation Specialist Registration For details and registration please visit Register Here Free WebLogic Certification (Free assessment voucher to become certified) For all WebLogic experts, we offer free vouchers worth $195 for the Oracle Application Grid Certified Implementation Specialist assessment. To demonstrate your WebLogic knowledge you first have to pass the free online assessment Oracle Application Grid PreSales Specialist. For free vouchers, please send an e-mail with the screenshot of your Oracle Application Grid PreSales certirficate to [email protected] including your Name, Company, E-mail and Country. Note: This offer is limited to partners from Europe Middle East and Africa. Partners from other countries please contact your Oracle partner manager. WebLogic Specialization To become specialized in Application Grid, please make sure that you access the: Application Grid Specialization Guide Application Grid Specialization Checklist If you have any questions please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Oracle WebLogic Server 12c Key New Capabilities Java EE 6 and Developer Productivity Simplified Deployment and Management with Virtualization Integrated Traffic Management Enhanced High Availability and Disaster Recovery Much Higher Performance For more information please visit: Presentation from the WebLogic 12c launch Technical Presentation from the WebLogic 12c launch WebLogic OTN Website WebLogic 12c Virtual Conference Environment WebLogic Partner Community For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea (OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Best regards, Jürgen Kress WebLogic Partner Adoption EMEA Tel. +49 89 1430 1479 E-Mail: [email protected]   Copyright © 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Contact PBC | Legal Notices and Terms of Use | Privacy Statement Oracle Corporation - Worldwide Headquarters, 500 Oracle Parkway, OPL - E-mail Services, Redwood Shores, CA 94065, United States Your privacy is important to us. You can login to your account to update your e-mail subscriptions or you can opt-out of all Oracle Marketing e-mails at any time. Please note that opting-out of Marketing communications does not affect your receipt of important business communications related to your current relationship with Oracle such as Security Updates, Event Registration notices, Account Management and Support/Service communications.

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• Business Case for investing time developing Stubs and BizUnit Tests

  - by charlie.mott

  I was recently in a position where I had to justify why effort should be spent developing Stubbed Integration Tests for BizTalk solutions. These tests are usually developed using the BizUnit framework. I assumed that most seasoned BizTalk developers would consider this best practice. Even though Microsoft suggest use of BizUnit on MSDN, I've not found a single site listing the justifications for investing time writing stubs and BizUnit tests. Stubs Stubs should be developed to isolate your development team from external dependencies. This is described by Michael Stephenson here. Failing to do this can result in the following problems: In contract-first scenarios, the external system interface will have been defined.  But the interface may not have been setup or even developed yet for the BizTalk developers to work with. By the time you open the target location to see the data BizTalk has sent, it may have been swept away. If you are relying on the UI of the target system to see the data BizTalk has sent, what do you do if it fails to arrive? It may take time for the data to be processed or it may be scheduled to be processed later. Learning how to use the source\target systems and investigations into where things go wrong in these systems will slow down the BizTalk development effort. By the time the data is visible in a UI it may have undergone further transformations. In larger development teams working together, do you all use the same source and target instances. How do you know which data was created by whose tests? How do you know which event log error message are whose?  Another developer may have “cleaned up” your data. It is harder to write BizUnit tests that clean up the data\logs after each test run. What if your B2B partners' source or target system cannot support the sort of testing you want to do. They may not even have a development or test instance that you can work with. Their single test instance may be used by the SIT\UAT teams. There may be licencing costs of setting up an instances of the external system. The stubs I like to use are generic stubs that can accept\return any message type.  Usually I need to create one per protocol. They should be driven by BizUnit steps to: validates the data received; and select a response messages (or error response). Once built, they can be re-used for many integration tests and from project to project. I’m not saying that developers should never test against a real instance.  Every so often, you still need to connect to real developer or test instances of the source and target endpoints\services. The interface developers may ask you to send them some data to see if everything still works.  Or you might want some messages sent to BizTalk to get confidence that everything still works beyond BizTalk. Tests Automated “Stubbed Integration Tests” are usually built using the BizUnit framework. These facilitate testing of the entire integration process from source stub to target stub. It will ensure that all of the BizTalk components are configured together correctly to meet all the requirements. More fine grained unit testing of individual BizTalk components is still encouraged.  But BizUnit provides much the easiest way to test some components types (e.g. Orchestrations). Using BizUnit with the Behaviour Driven Development approach described by Mike Stephenson delivers the following benefits: source: http://biztalkbddsample.codeplex.com – Video 1. Requirements can be easily defined using Given/When/Then Requirements are close to the code so easier to manage as features and scenarios Requirements are defined in domain language The feature files can be used as part of the documentation The documentation is accurate to the build of code and can be published with a release The scenarios are effective to document the scenarios and are not over excessive The scenarios are maintained with the code There’s an abstraction between the intention and implementation of tests making them easier to understand The requirements drive the testing These same tests can also be used to drive load testing as described here. If you don't do this ... If you don't follow the above “Stubbed Integration Tests” approach, the developer will need to manually trigger the tests. This has the following risks: Developers are unlikely to check all the scenarios each time and all the expected conditions each time. After the developer leaves, these manual test steps may be lost. What test scenarios are there?  What test messages did they use for each scenario? There is no mechanism to prove adequate test coverage. A test team may attempt to automate integration test scenarios in a test environment through the triggering of tests from a source system UI. If this is a replacement for BizUnit tests, then this carries the following risks: It moves the tests downstream, so problems will be found later in the process. Testers may not check all the expected conditions within the BizTalk infrastructure such as: event logs, suspended messages, etc. These automated tests may also get in the way of manual tests run on these environments.

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• Is your dream an international experience?

  - by Maria Sandu

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-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;} Studying in Poland, having two summer jobs in England, doing one internship in India, working in Thailand for half a year and now working in Prague. Does it seem an adventure? Well it is and I will tell you how I came to have this international experience. Dzien Dobry! My name is Wojciech Jurojc, I am Polish and I am currently a Business Development Consultant within Oracle, based in Prague. I joined Oracle on the 1st of August 2011. I graduated in 2010 and obtained 2 Masters Degrees in Political Science and Economics. I would like to tell you more about my past and how I joined Oracle. In 2005 I began studying at the Faculty of Political Sciences Gdansk University. In 2008, I obtained a Bachelors Degree. During these three years I had the opportunity to go to England twice, where I worked as a Bartender, first in Blackpool and then in Manchester. This allowed me to improve my language skills and become more confident. In the meantime, I joined the International Student Organization-AIESEC, where I was organized conferences and conducted student projects. Also I met a mass of interesting people from around the world. After graduation in 2008, I was able to get an Internship within a big company in Poland. I worked there as an Intern in the Purchase Department. That was my first adventure within a corporate environment. I learnt a lot about purchasing processes and negotiations. In September 2008, I started studying two Masters Faculties: Political Science and Economics. It was very difficult, but it was not impossible. Over the next two years of studying I was able to go on a three month internship to India where I worked as a Marketing Assistant in an NGO. I was travelling around northern India and did presentations to the academic community about green energy and environmental projects. I had the opportunity to visit Nepal and walked in the Himalayas. That was a huge experience as well as a cultural shock. It taught me how to deal with many problems and to appreciate what I have. At the end of 2009 I was working as a Marketing Assistant for a Leasing company, where I learnt useful sales knowledge and improved my objection handling skills. In July 2010, I graduated with a double Masters and found a job in Thailand as Sales Representative in an IT company. I worked in Thailand until the end of January 2011. Besides that, I was working in an International company with interesting people and I had the opportunity to travel around Thailand and visit Cambodia. After this adventure I started looking for jobs in Europe where I could further develop my sales skills. I found Oracle and I don’t regret this decision which I made. I am currently working in Prague in an international Hardware team and I know that is not the end of my adventures. At this moment, I am working in a team of 12 members. Ten of them are based in Prague and 2 others are based in Russia. We come from different countries such as: Czech Republic, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, Slovakia and Kazakhstan. I am working on the Polish market, cooperating with our Hardware customers and partners. What do I enjoy the most about my job? I enjoy every challenge that I face in my daily activities as there are always new experiences for me and new things that I learn. As part of Oracle, I gain international exposure and therefore more career opportunities to explore. I have planned my next step for the career path I dream of and I am currently working on it. I recommend you check our Career Page if you’re looking for an international career. If you want to find out more about our job opportunities, follow us on https://campus.oracle.com .

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• Profiling NetBeans 7.0 Beta 2 and Reporting Problems

  - by christopher.jones

  With NetBeans 7.0 recently going into Beta 2 phase, now is the time to test it out properly and report issues. The development team has been squashing bugs, including memory issues with the PHP bundle.There are some great new PHP related features in NetBeans 7.0, so you know you want to try it out.If you identify something wrong with NetBeans, please report it following the guidelines http://wiki.netbeans.org/IssueReportingGuidelinesDepending on the issues, data to attach to the report is mentioned on: http://wiki.netbeans.org/FaqLogMessagesFile and http://wiki.netbeans.org/FaqProfileMeNowIf you have a memory issue then a memory dump would also be useful. Run the jmap tool for this. There is some background information on http://wiki.netbeans.org/FaqMemoryDump. Here's how I used it.First I set my environment to match the JDK used by NetBeans. In my case I am using a nightly build so the JDK is in the configuration file under $HOME/netbeans-dev-201102210501:$ egrep netbeans_jdkhome $HOME/netbeans-dev-201102210501/etc/netbeans.conf netbeans_jdkhome="/home/cjones/src/jdk1.6.0_24" $ export JAVA_HOME=/home/cjones/src/jdk1.6.0_24 $ export PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH Next, I found the correct process number to examine:$ ps -ef | egrep 'netbeans|jdk'cjones   23230     1  0 16:07 ?        00:00:00 /bin/bash /home/cjones/netbeans-cjones   23438 23230  2 16:07 ?        00:00:09 /home/cjones/src/jdk1.6.0_24/binFinally I used the parent JDK process as the jmap argument:$ jmap -histo:live 23438 num     #instances         #bytes  class name----------------------------------------------   1:         12075        9028656  [I   2:         49535        6581920  <constMethodKlass>   3:         49535        3964128  <methodKlass>   4:         80256        3840776  <symbolKlass>   5:         36093        3635336  [C   6:          5095        3341312  <constantPoolKlass>   7:          5095        2486016  <instanceKlassKlass>   8:          4325        1961432  <constantPoolCacheKlass>   9:         18729        1763976  [B  10:         59952        1438848  java.util.HashMap$Entry  . . .This histogram memory report will help identify the kind of memory issues you are seeing. It may not be as complete as an often tens of megabyte jmap -dump:live,file=/tmp/nbheap.log 23438 heap dump, but is much more easily attached to a bug report.If you want to keep up to date with NetBeans, nightly builds are at: http://bits.netbeans.org/download/trunk/nightly/latest/zip/

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