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• Java Spotlight Episode 58: Peter Korn and Ofir Leitner on ME Accessibility

  - by Roger Brinkley

  Tweet Interview with Peter Korn and Ofir Leitner on Mobile and Embedded Accessibility. Joining us this week on the Java All Star Developer Panel are Dalibor Topic, Java Free and Open Source Software Ambassador and Alexis Moussine-Pouchkine, Java EE Developer Advocate. Right-click or Control-click to download this MP3 file. You can also subscribe to the Java Spotlight Podcast Feed to get the latest podcast automatically. If you use iTunes you can open iTunes and subscribe with this link: Java Spotlight Podcast in iTunes. Show Notes News Announcing Oracle WebLogic 12c Geronimo 3 beta - Another Apache project now compatible with Java EE 6 NetBeans 7.1 RC1 is out JavaFX links of the weeks JavaFX videos on Parleys: Nicolas Lorain's Introduction to JavaFX 2.0 from JavaOne 2011 & Richard Bair on JavaFX Architecture and Programming Model Events Dec 4, SOUJava Geek Bike Ride 2011, Sao Paulo  Dec 5-7, UKOUG, Birmingham, UK Dec 6-8, Java One Brazil, Sao Paulo Dec 9 UAIJUG, Uberlandia Dec 9 CEJUG, Fortaleza/CE Dec 10 GUJAVA, Florianopolis Dec 10 ALJUG, Maceio/AL Dec 11 Javaneiros, Campo Grande/MS Dec 12 GOJAVA, Goiania/GO Dec 13 RioJUG, Rio de Janeiro Feature interview Peter Korn is Oracle's Accessibility Principal – their senior individual contributor on accessibility. He is also Technical Manager of the AEGIS project, leading an EC-funded €12.6m investment building accessibility into future mainstream ICT (FP7-ICT224348). Mr. Korn co-developed and co-implemented the Java Accessibility API, and developed the Java Access Bridge for Windows. He helped design the open source GNOME Accessibility architecture found on most modern UNIX and GNU/Linux systems, and consulted on accessibility support for OpenOffice.org, Firefox, Thunderbird, and other applications. Prior to Sun/Oracle, Peter co-developed the outSPOKEN for Windows screen reader. Mr. Korn represented Sun/Oracle on TEITAC for the Section 508/255 refresh, co-led the OASIS ODF Accessibility subcommittee, and sits on INCITS V2 where he is contributing to ISO 13066: defining AT-IT interoperability standards including specifically the Java Accessibility API. Ofir Leitner is the architect of one of LWUIT's key features - the HTMLComponent which allows rendering HTML within LWUIT applications and to embed web-flows inside apps. Ofir is also responsible for LWUIT's bidirectional and RTL support and for the accessibility work that is being done these days in LWUIT. Mail Bag What's Cool Devoxx 2011 (Alexis) Eclipsecon Europe Talk by Andrew Overholt: IcedTea & IcedTea-Web Geek bike ride & Rio 500 Twitter followers @JavaSpotlight Show Transcripts Transcript for this show is available here when available.

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• How to Code Faster (Without Sacrificing Quality)

  - by ashes999

  I've been a professional coder for a several years. The comments about my code have generally been the same: writes great code, well-tested, but could be faster. So how do I become a faster coder, without sacrificing quality? For the sake of this question, I'm going to limit the scope to C#, since that's primarily what I code (for fun) -- or Java, which is similar enough in many ways that matter. Things that I'm already doing: Write the minimal solution that will get the job done Write a slew of automated tests (prevents regressions) Write (and use) reusable libraries for all kinds of things Use well-known technologies where they work well (eg. Hibernate) Use design patterns where they fit into place (eg. Singleton) These are all great, but I don't feel like my speed is increasing over time. I do care, because if I can do something to increase my productivity (even by 10%), that's 10% faster than my competitors. (Not that I have any.) Besides which, I've consistently gotten this feeback from my managers -- whether it was small-scale Flash development or enterprise Java/C++ development. Edit: There seem to be a lot of questions about what I mean by fast, and how I know I'm slow. Let me clarify with some more details. I worked in small and medium-sized teams (5-50 people) in various companies over various projects and various technologies (Flash, ASP.NET, Java, C++). The observation of my managers (which they told me directly) is that I'm "slow." Part of this is because a significant number of my peers sacrificed quality for speed; they wrote code that was buggy, hard to read, hard to maintain, and difficult to write automated tests for. My code generally is well-documented, readable, and testable. At Oracle, I would consistently solve bugs slower than other team-members. I know this, because I would get comments to that effect; this means that other (yes, more senior and experienced) developers could do my work in less time than it took me, at nearly the same quality (readability, maintainability, and testability). Why? What am I missing? How can I get better at this? My end goal is simple: if I can make product X in 40 hours today, and I can improve myself somehow so that I can create the same product at 20, 30, or even 38 hours tomorrow, that's what I want to know -- how do I get there? What process can I use to continually improve? I had thought it was about reusing code, but that's not enough, it seems.

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• Challenges and Opportunities to Drive Change in the Healthcare System Explored at America’s Health Insurance Plans Exchange Conference and Institute 2013

  - by elaine blog

  The program theme at the June America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) Exchange Conference and AHIP’s Institute 2013 was Transforming Our Health Care System: Navigating and Succeeding in the New Marketplace.  Topics included care delivery transformation, innovation for a new healthcare eco system, Health Insurance Exchanges, the nexus of consumerism, retail and healthcare, driving value through improved operations and leveraging technology, data and innovation to transform care. Oracle participated as a sponsor of both conferences, signaling the significant investment and activity Oracle continues to make in helping health plans, providers and government agencies become more efficient and more relevant in the healthcare market place. AHIP is a national trade association representing the health insurance industry. AHIP’s members provide health and supplemental benefits to more than 200 million Americans through employer-sponsored coverage, the individual insurance market and public programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.   AHIP advocates for public policies that expand access to affordable health care. Health plans are focusing on the Health Insurance Exchanges and the opportunities they offer to provide better access and higher quality healthcare.  With the opportunities come operational challenges to implementation and innovative technology solutions to consider.   At the Exchange Conference, Oracle hosted a breakfast symposium on “Strategies for Success:  Driving Business Transformation in the Growing Health Insurance Exchange Market”. With Health Insurance Exchanges as catalysts for change, attendees learned about how to achieve integration within an Exchange and deploy new business strategies to support health reform initiatives. Discussion covered steps and processes to successfully establish and implement enrollment systems, quote to card activities, program pricing, claims billing, automated claims processing and new customer service tools. Piyush Pushkar, COO of Benefitalign, an Oracle partner that provides solutions to adopt innovative business models for retail, HIX, consumer-centric health plan and benefits administration, spoke on the state of the Exchanges in the U.S. and the activities health plans are engaged in to support individuals entering the healthcare system, including sales automation, member enrollment automation/portals and integration strategies with the Exchanges. The Oracle and Benefitalign partnership allows seamless integration between a health plan enrollment solution with the HIX individual market and allows for the health plan to customize and characterize the offerings available to the HIX that may or may not be available through other channels.  This approach can benefit the health plan through separation of interests, but also because some state-run HIXs require such separation. Janice W. Young, Program Director, Payer IT Strategies, IDC Health Insights, reviewed a survey of health plans on their investment priorities for this last year as well as this year.  She also identified the 2013-2015 strategies of go/get to market with front end and compliance investments; leveraging existing business processes and internal technologies; and establishing best practices.  Of key interest to the audience was a reform era payer solutions platform overview mapping technologies to support the business operations. David Bonham of the Oracle Health Insurance organization moderated the panel and spoke on Oracle’s presence in healthcare and products for payers to help them drive efficiencies and gain a competitive advantage in an ever changing market. Oracle serves healthcare stakeholders with applications such as billing, rating and underwriting, analytics, CRM, enrollment, and products for processing of health insurance claims including pricing and benefits administration, as well as payment of providers through alternative, non-fee for service reimbursement methods. Oracle in Healthcare….Did you know? More than 80 healthcare payers run Oracle applications. More than 300 leading healthcare providers run Oracle applications. 10 out of the top 12 fortune Global 500 healthcare organizations run Oracle applications. For more information on Oracle solutions for healthcare payers, please visit oracle.com/insurance or these individual solution pages: Oracle Health Insurance Components Oracle Insurance Insbridge Rating and Underwriting Oracle Insurance Revenue Management and Billing Oracle Documaker Oracle Healthcare Oracle CRM Related Resources Webcast On Demand: Strategies for Success: Driving Business Transformation in the Growing Health Insurance Exchange Market Strategy Brief: Executing on the Individual Mandate: Opportunities and Challenges for Healthcare Payers White Paper: White paper: Navigating Alternative Provider Reimbursement Models of the Future Strategy Brief: Enterprise Rating Agility Improves Payer Response to Healthcare Reform Podcast: Technology Implications of Healthcare Reform Don’t forget to keep up with us year-round: Facebook: www.facebook.com/oracleinsurance Twitter: www.twitter.com/oracleinsurance YouTube: www.youtube.com/oracleinsurance

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• Four New Java Champions

  - by Tori Wieldt

  Four luminaries in the Java community have been selected as new Java Champions. The are Agnes Crepet, Lars Vogel, Yara Senger and Martijn Verburg. They were selected for their technical knowledge, leadership, inspiration, and tireless work for the community. Here is how they rock the Java world: Agnes Crepet Agnes Crepet (France) is a passionate technologist with over 11 years of software engineering experience, especially in the Java technologies, as a Developer, Architect, Consultant and Trainer. She has been using Java since 1999, implementing multiple kinds of applications (from 20 days to 10000 men days) for different business fields (banking, retail, and pharmacy). Currently she is a Java EE Architect for a French pharmaceutical company, the homeopathy world leader. She is also the co-founder, with other passionate Java developers, of a software company named Ninja Squad, dedicated to Software Craftsmanship. Agnes is the leader of two Java User Groups (JUG), the Lyon JUG Duchess France and the founder of the Mix-IT Conferenceand theCast-IT Podcast, two projects about Java and Agile Development. She speaks at Java and JUG conferences around the world and regularly writes articles about the Java Ecosystem for the French print Developer magazine Programmez! and for the Duchess Blog. Follow Agnes @agnes_crepet. Lars Vogel Lars Vogel (Germany) is the founder and CEO of the vogella GmbH and works as Java, Eclipse and Android consultant, trainer and book author. He is a regular speaker at international conferences, such as EclipseCon, Devoxx, Droidcon and O'Reilly's Android Open. With more than one million visitors per month, his website vogella.com is one of the central sources for Java, Eclipse and Android programming information. Lars is committer in the Eclipse project and received in 2010 the "Eclipse Top Contributor Award" and 2012 the "Eclipse Top Newcomer Evangelist Award." Follow Lars on Twitter @vogella. Yara Senger Yara Senger (Brazil) has been a tireless Java activist in Brazil for many years. She is President of SouJava and she is an alternate representative of the group on the JCP Executive Committee. Yara has led SouJava in many initiatives, from technical events to social activities. She is co-founder and director of GlobalCode, which trains developers throughout Brazil.  Last year, she was recipient of the Duke Choice's Award, for the JHome embedded environment.  Yara is also an active speaker, giving presentations in many countries, including JavaOne SF, JavaOne Latin Ameria, JavaOne India, JFokus, and JUGs throughout Brazil. Yara is editor of InfoQ Brasil and also frequently posts at http://blog.globalcode.com.br/search/label/Yara. Follow Yara @YaraSenger. Martijn Verburg Martijn Verburg (UK) is the CTO of jClarity (a Java/JVM performance cloud tooling start-up) and has over 12 years experience as a Java/JVM technology professional and OSS mentor in a variety of organisations from start-ups to large enterprises. He is the co-leader of the London Java Community (~2800 developers) and leads the global effort for the Java User Group "Adopt a JSR" and "Adopt OpenJDK" programmes. These programmes encourage day to day Java developer involvement with OpenJDK, Java standards (JSRs), an important relationship for keeping the Java ecosystem relevant to the 9 million Java developers out there today. As a leading expert on technical team optimisation, his talks and presentations are in high demand by major conferences (JavaOne, Devoxx, OSCON, QCon) where you'll often find him challenging the industry status quo via his alter ego "The Diabolical Developer." You can read more in the OTN ariticle "Challenging the Diabolical Developer: A Conversation with JavaOne Rock Star Martijn Verburg." Follow Martijn @karianna. The Java Champions are an exclusive group of passionate Java technology and community leaders who are community-nominated and selected under a project sponsored by Oracle. Java Champions get the opportunity to provide feedback, ideas, and direction that will help Oracle grow the Java Platform. Congratulations to these new Java Champions!

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• Do I need to match hardware on a Mac to my PC to get the same user experience?

  - by Darth

  I've been playing around with the thought of moving from a PC to a Mac. if you don't want to read this, skip to the "upgrade options" My current setup Most of my time I spent moving back and forth between Linux and Windows. During the last upgrade to Vista, I got myself pc with Core 2 Quad, 8GB of RAM and GeForce 9800GTX+. Currently I'm running dual boot between Ubuntu 10.04 and Windows Vista x64. Most of my work, around 80%, I can do on Ubuntu, which is mostly Ruby/Java programming. If that was all I needed, Ubuntu would be really great. However, I also do quite a lot of Photography and Design, which forces me to use Adobe software (not only Photoshop). I also work with Wacom Intuos4 tablet, which doesn't really have great support on Linux machines. I've tried virtualization both ways (Linux in Win and Win in Linux), but neither was anywhere near satisfying. These are those of many many reasons I want to move to OS X. Upgrade options This is how I see my upgrade options: Mac Mini - cheapest solution, but worst performance iMac - more expensive, better performing with second LCD for free Mac Pro - could match my current PC performance, currently outside of the price range When I compare the Mac hardware vs my current PC, it will be always worse, unless I decide to pump in a lot of money. The question that comes to my head, do I need to match my current PC hardware to get the same user experience with a Mac? If I look at it from the Vista point of view, 2GB RAM is as low as it gets, 4GB is usable ... and the 8GB runs very smoothly. PC HW != Mac HW? If I bought the Mac Mini for roughly the same price I paid for my PC (Core 2 Quad with 8GB RAM), I'd get Core 2 Duo with 4GB RAM. But I don't want to run Vista on it, so I can't compare the hardware directly. Say that I want to do the same things on the Mac Mini as I do on my PC, eg. open up 50 tabs in Google Chrome and start working with a large PSD in Photoshop (couple hundred MB), would running on Mac OS X compensate for the lower hardware performance? My point is, that if I'm about to upgrade, I wouldn't like to upgrade to hardware that runs a lot slower. Good analogy for this is Vista vs Ubuntu, where you can run Ubuntu smoothly on a low end laptop, but in Vista, you'd be happy to open a browser. Does the same principle apply to OS X?

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• SQL SERVER – SQL Server High Availability Options – Notes from the Field #032

  - by Pinal Dave

  [Notes from Pinal]: When it is about High Availability or Disaster Recovery, I often see people getting confused. There are so many options available that when the user has to select what is the most optimal solution for their organization they are often confused. Most of the people even know the salient features of various options, but when they have to figure out one single option to use they are often not sure which option to use. I like to give ask my dear friend time all these kinds of complicated questions. He has a skill to make a complex subject very simple and easy to understand. Linchpin People are database coaches and wellness experts for a data driven world. In this 26th episode of the Notes from the Fields series database expert Tim Radney (partner at Linchpin People) explains in a very simple words the best High Availability Option for your SQL Server.  Working with SQL Server a common challenge we are faced with is providing the maximum uptime possible.  To meet these demands we have to design a solution to provide High Availability (HA). Microsoft SQL Server depending on your edition provides you with several options.  This could be database mirroring, log shipping, failover clusters, availability groups or replication. Each possible solution comes with pro’s and con’s.  Not anyone one solution fits all scenarios so understanding which solution meets which need is important.  As with anything IT related, you need to fully understand your requirements before trying to solution the problem.  When it comes to building an HA solution, you need to understand the risk your organization needs to mitigate the most. I have found that most are concerned about hardware failure and OS failures. Other common concerns are data corruption or storage issues.  For data corruption or storage issues you can mitigate those concerns by having a second copy of the databases. That can be accomplished with database mirroring, log shipping, replication or availability groups with a secondary replica.  Failover clustering and virtualization with shared storage do not provide redundancy of the data. I recently created a chart outlining some pros and cons of each of the technologies that I posted on my blog. I like to use this chart to help illustrate how each technology provides a certain number of benefits.  Each of these solutions carries with it some level of cost and complexity.  As a database professional we should all be familiar with these technologies so we can make the best possible choice for our organization. If you want me to take a look at your server and its settings, or if your server is facing any issue we can Fix Your SQL Server. Note: Tim has also written an excellent book on SQL Backup and Recovery, a must have for everyone. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: Notes from the Field, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Shrinking Database

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• Instant Rename and Rename Refactoring

  - by Petr

  During the last weeks I have got  a few questions about rename refactoring and some users also complain to me that the refactoring in NetBeans 6.x was much faster. So I would like to explain the situation. For some people, who don't know, Instant Rename action and Rename Refactoring  can look like one action. But it's not true, even if  both actions use the same shortcut (CTRL + R). NetBeans 6.x contained only Instant Rename action (speaking about PHP support), which we can mark as very simple rename refactoring through one file. From NetBeans 7.0 the Instant Rename action works only in "non public" context. It means that this action is used for fast renaming variables that has local context like inside a method, or for renaming private methods and fields that can not be used outside of the scope, where they are declared. From user point of view these two action can be simply recognized. When is after CTRL+R called Instant Rename action, then the identifier is surrounded with rectangle and you can rename it directly in the file. It's fast and simple, also the usages of this identifier are renamed in the same time as you write. The picture below shows Instant Rename action for $message identifier, that is visible only in the print_test method and due this after CTRL+R is called Instant Rename. In NetBeans 7.0, there was added Rename Refactoring that is called for public identifiers. It means for identifiers that could be used in other files. If you press CTRL+R shortcut when the caret is inside $hello identifier from the picture above, NetBeans recognizes that $hello is declared / used in a global context and calls the Rename Refactoring that brings a dialog to change the name of the identifier. From this dialog you have to preview suggested changes, through pressing Preview button and then execute the refactoring through Do Refactoring button. Yes, it's more complicated from user point of view than Instant Rename, but in Rename Refactoring NetBeans can change more files at once. It should be  the developer responsibility to decide whether the suggested changes are right and the refactoring can be executed or in some files original name should be kept. Someone can argue that he doesn't use $hello variable in any other file so Instant Rename could be used in such case. Yes it's true, but in such case NetBeans has to know all usages of all identifiers and keep this informations up to date during editing a file. I'm sure that this is not possible due to the performance problems, mainly for big projects. So the usages are computed after pressing the Preview button. And why is the Refactor button always disabled in the Rename dialog and user has to always go through the preview phase? NetBeans has API and SPI for implementing refactoring actions and this dialog is a part of this infrastructure. If you rename an identifier for example in Java, the Refactor buttons is enabled, but Java is strongly type language and you can be almost in 99% sure that the IDE will suggest the right results. In PHP as a dynamic language, we can not be sure, what NetBeans finds is only a "guess". This is why NetBeans pushes developers to preview the changes for PHP rename. I hope that I have explain it clearly. I'm open to any discussion. What I have described above is situation in NetBeans 7.0, 7.0.1 and probably it will be also in NetBeans 7.1, because there is no plan to change it. Please write your opinion here.

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• Finalists for the Microsoft Accelerator for Windows Azure

  - by ScottGu

  Today, I am pleased to announce the ten finalists for the Microsoft Accelerator for Windows Azure powered by TechStars. These startups are about to launch into a three-month program where they will develop new products and businesses using Windows Azure. The response to the program has been fantastic - we received nearly 600 applications from entrepreneurs in 69 countries around the world, spanning a host of industries including retail, travel, entertainment, banking, real estate and more.  There were so many innovative ideas and amazing teams that it really made the selection process hard.  We finally landed on 10 finalists, based on their experience, qualifications, and innovative business ideas built on the cloud. This fall’s Windows Azure class includes: Advertory – Berlin, Germany. Advertory helps local businesses increase revenue and build customer loyalty. Appetas – Seattle, WA. Appetas' mission is to make restaurants look as beautiful online as they do on the plate! BagsUp – Sydney, Australia. Find great places from people you trust. Embarke – San Diego, CA. Embarke allows developers and companies the ability to integrate with any human communication channel (Facebook, Email, Text Message, Twitter) without having to learn the specifics, write code, or spend time on any of them. Fanzo – Seattle, WA. Fanzo puts sports fans in the spotlight. Find other fans, show off your fanswagger and get rewarded for your passion. MetricsHub – Bellevue, WA. A service providing cloud monitoring with incident detection and prebuilt workflows for remedying common problems. Mobilligy – Bellevue, WA. Mobilligy revolutionizes how people pay their bills by bringing convenient, secure, and instant bill payment support to mobile devices. Realty Mogul – Los Angeles, CA. Realty Mogul is a crowdfunding platform for real estate where accredited investors pool capital and invest in properties that are acquired, managed and eventually resold by professional private real estate companies and their management teams. Staq – San Francisco, CA. Back-end as a service for APIs. Socedo – Bellevue, WA. A simple and effective web application for lead generation and relationship management on Twitter. Each startup will be hosted in Seattle and mentored by entrepreneurs and venture capitalists as well as leaders from Windows Azure and other Microsoft organizations. The teams will spend the first month ideating and refining their business concepts with input and advice from their mentors as well as Microsoft customers, followed by two months of design and development. They will present their results to investors and Microsoft partners at an event in mid-January. We are really looking forward to seeing how their businesses evolve.  These teams have demonstrated incredible energy, passion, and innovative capabilities – and they are ready to show the world what’s possible with Windows Azure. Thanks, Scott P.S. And if you are new to Twitter you can also optionally follow me: @scottgu

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• MAXDOP in SQL Azure

  - by Herve Roggero

  In my search of better understanding the scalability options of SQL Azure I stumbled on an interesting aspect: Query Hints in SQL Azure. More specifically, the MAXDOP hint. A few years ago I did a lot of analysis on this query hint (see article on SQL Server Central:  http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Configuring/managingmaxdegreeofparallelism/1029/).  Here is a quick synopsis of MAXDOP: It is a query hint you use when issuing a SQL statement that provides you control with how many processors SQL Server will use to execute the query. For complex queries with lots of I/O requirements, more CPUs can mean faster parallel searches. However the impact can be drastic on other running threads/processes. If your query takes all available processors at 100% for 5 minutes... guess what... nothing else works. The bottom line is that more is not always better. The use of MAXDOP is more art than science... and a whole lot of testing; it depends on two things: the underlying hardware architecture and the application design. So there isn't a magic number that will work for everyone... except 1... :) Let me explain. The rules of engagements are different. SQL Azure is about sharing. Yep... you are forced to nice with your neighbors.  To achieve this goal SQL Azure sets the MAXDOP to 1 by default, and ignores the use of the MAXDOP hint altogether. That means that all you queries will use one and only one processor.  It really isn't such a bad thing however. Keep in mind that in some of the largest SQL Server implementations MAXDOP is usually also set to 1. It is a well known configuration setting for large scale implementations. The reason is precisely to prevent rogue statements (like a SELECT * FROM HISTORY) from bringing down your systems (like a report that should have been running on a different in the first place) and to avoid the overhead generated by executing too many parallel queries that could cause internal memory management nightmares to the host Operating System. Is summary, forcing the MAXDOP to 1 in SQL Azure makes sense; it ensures that your database will continue to function normally even if one of the other tenants on the same server is running massive queries that would otherwise bring you down. Last but not least, keep in mind as well that when you test your database code for performance on-premise, make sure to set the DOP to 1 on your SQL Server databases to simulate SQL Azure conditions.

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• Opening the Internet Settings Dialog and using Windows Default Network Settings via Code

  - by Rick Strahl

  Ran into a question from a client the other day that asked how to deal with Internet Connection settings for running  HTTP requests. In this case this is an old FoxPro app and it's using WinInet to handle the actual HTTP connection. Another client asked a similar question about using the IE Web Browser control and configuring connection properties. Regardless of platform or tools used to do HTTP connections, you can probably configure custom connection and proxy settings in your application to configure http connection settings manually. However, this is a repetitive process for each application requires you to track system information in your application which is undesirable. Often it's much easier to rely on the system wide proxy settings that Windows provides via the Internet Settings dialog. The dialog is a Control Panel applet (inetcpl.cpl) and is the same dialog that you see when you pop up Internet Explorer's Options dialog: This dialog controls the Windows connection properties that determine how the Windows HTTP stack connects to the Internet and how Proxy's are used if configured. Depending on how the HTTP client is configured - it can typically inherit and use these global settings. Loading the Settings Dialog Programmatically The settings dialog is a Control Panel applet with the name of: inetcpl.cpl and you can use any Shell execution mechanism (Run dialog, ShellExecute API, Process.Start() in .NET etc.) to invoke the dialog. Changes made there are immediately reflected in any applications that use the default connection settings. In .NET you can simply do this to bring up the Internet Settings dialog with the Connection tab enabled: Process.Start("inetcpl.cpl",",4"); In FoxPro you can simply use the RUN command to execute inetcpl.cpl: lcCmd = "inetcpl.cpl ,4" RUN &lcCmd Using the Default Connection/Proxy Settings When using WinInet you specify the Http connect type in the call to InternetOpen() like this (FoxPro code here): hInetConnection=; InternetOpen(THIS.cUserAgent,0,; THIS.chttpproxyname,THIS.chttpproxybypass,0) The second parameter of 0 specifies that the default system proxy settings should be used and it uses the settings from the Internet Settings Connections tab. Other connection options for HTTP connections include 1 - direct (no proxies and ignore system settings), 3 - explicit Proxy specification. In most situations a connection mode setting of 0 should work. In .NET HTTP connections by default are direct connections and so you need to explicitly specify a default proxy or proxy configuration to use. The easiest way to do this is on the application level in the config file: <configuration> <system.net> <defaultProxy> <proxy bypassonlocal="False" autoDetect="True" usesystemdefault="True" /> </defaultProxy> </system.net> </configuration> You can do the same sort of thing in code specifying the proxy explicitly and using System.Net.WebProxy.GetDefaultProxy(). So when making HTTP calls to Web Services or using the HttpWebRequest class you can set the proxy with: StoreService.Proxy = WebProxy.GetDefaultProxy(); All of this is pretty easy to deal with and in my opinion is a way better choice to managing connection settings than having to track this stuff in your own application. Plus if you use default settings, most of the time it's highly likely that the connection settings are already properly configured making further configuration rare.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in Windows  HTTP  .NET  FoxPro   Tweet (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• StreamInsight and Reactive Framework Challenge

  In his blogpost Roman from the StreamInsight team asked if we could create a Reactive Framework version of what he had done in the post using StreamInsight.  For those who don’t know, the Reactive Framework or Rx to its friends is a library for composing asynchronous and event-based programs using observable collections in the .Net framework.  Yes, there is some overlap between StreamInsight and the Reactive Extensions but StreamInsight has more flexibility and power in its temporal algebra (Windowing, Alteration of event headers) Well here are two alternate ways of doing what Roman did. The first example is a mix of StreamInsight and Rx var rnd = new Random(); var RandomValue = 0; var interval = Observable.Interval(TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds((Int32)rnd.Next(500,3000))) .Select(i => { RandomValue = rnd.Next(300); return RandomValue; }); Server s = Server.Create("Default"); Microsoft.ComplexEventProcessing.Application a = s.CreateApplication("Rx SI Mischung"); var inputStream = interval.ToPointStream(a, evt => PointEvent.CreateInsert( System.DateTime.Now.ToLocalTime(), new { RandomValue = evt}), AdvanceTimeSettings.IncreasingStartTime, "Rx Sample"); var r = from evt in inputStream select new { runningVal = evt.RandomValue }; foreach (var x in r.ToPointEnumerable().Where(e => e.EventKind != EventKind.Cti)) { Console.WriteLine(x.Payload.ToString()); } This next version though uses the Reactive Extensions Only   var rnd = new Random(); var RandomValue = 0; Observable.Interval(TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds((Int32)rnd.Next(500, 3000))) .Select(i => { RandomValue = rnd.Next(300); return RandomValue; }).Subscribe(Console.WriteLine, () => Console.WriteLine("Completed")); Console.ReadKey();   These are very simple examples but both technologies allow us to do a lot more.  The ICEPObservable() design pattern was reintroduced in StreamInsight 1.1 and the more I use it the more I like it.  It is a very useful pattern when wanting to show StreamInsight samples as is the IEnumerable() pattern.

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• La búsqueda de la eficiencia como Santo Grial de las TIC sanitarias

  - by Eloy M. Rodríguez

  Las XVIII Jornadas de Informática Sanitaria en Andalucía se han cerrado el pasado viernes con 11.500 horas de inteligencia colectiva. Aunque el cálculo supongo que resulta de multiplicar las horas de sesiones y talleres por el número de inscritos, lo que no sería del todo real ya que la asistencia media calculo que andaría por las noventa personas, supongo que refleja el global si incluimos el montante de interacciones informales que el formato y lugar de celebración favorecen. Mi resumen subjetivo es que todos somos conscientes de que debemos conseguir más eficiencia en y gracias a las TIC y que para ello hemos señalado algunas pautas, que los asistentes, en sus diferentes roles debiéramos aplicar y ayudar a difundir. En esa línea creo que destaca la necesidad de tener muy claro de dónde se parte y qué se quiere conseguir, para lo que es imprescindible medir y que las medidas ayuden a retroalimentar al sistema en orden de conseguir sus objetivos. Y en este sentido, a nivel anecdótico, quisiera dejar una paradoja que se presentó sobre la eficiencia: partiendo de que el coste/día de hospitalización es mayor al principio que los últimos días de la estancia, si se consigue ser más eficiente y reducir la estancia media, se liberarán últimos días de estancia que se utilizarán para nuevos ingresos, lo que hará que el número de primeros días de estancia aumente el coste económico total. En este caso mejoraríamos el servicio a los ciudadanos pero aumentaríamos el coste, salvo que se tomasen acciones para redimensionar la oferta hospitalaria bajando el coste y sin mejorer la calidad. También fue tema destacado la posibilidad/necesidad de aprovechar las capacidades de las TIC para realizar cambios estructurales y hacer que la medicina pase de ser reactiva a proactiva mediante alarmas que facilitasen que se actuase antes de ocurra el problema grave. Otro tema que se trató fue la necesidad real de corresponsabilizar de verdad al ciudadano, gracias a las enormes posibilidades a bajo coste que ofrecen las TIC, asumiendo un proceso hacia la salud colaborativa que tiene muchos retos por delante pero también muchas más oportunidades. Y la carpeta del ciudadano, emergente en varios proyectos e ideas, es un paso en ese aspecto. Un tema que levantó pasiones fue cuando la Directora Gerente del Sergas se quejó de que los proyectos TIC eran lentísimos. Desgraciadamente su agenda no le permitió quedarse al debate que fue bastante intenso en el que salieron temas como el larguísimo proceso administrativo, las especificaciones cambiantes, los diseños a medida, etc como factores más allá de la eficiencia especifica de los profesionales TIC involucrados en los proyectos. Y por último quiero citar un tema muy interesante en línea con lo hablado en las jornadas sobre la necesidad de medir: el Índice SEIS. La idea es definir una serie de criterios agrupados en grandes líneas y con un desglose fino que monitorice la aportación de las TIC en la mejora de la salud y la sanidad. Nos presentaron unas versiones previas con debate aún abierto entre dos grandes enfoques, partiendo desde los grandes objetivos hasta los procesos o partiendo desde los procesos hasta los objetivos. La discusión no es sólo académica, ya que influye en los parámetros a establecer. La buena noticia es que está bastante avanzado el trabajo y que pronto los servicios de salud podrán tener una herramienta de comparación basada en la realidad nacional. Para los interesados, varios asistentes hemos ido tuiteando las jornadas, por lo que el que quiera conocer un poco más detalles puede ir a Twitter y buscar la etiqueta #jisa18 y empezando del más antiguo al más moderno se puede hacer un seguimiento con puntos de vista subjetivos sobre lo allí ocurrido. No puedo dejar de hacer un par de autocríticas, ya que soy miembro de la SEIS. La primera es sobre el portal de la SEIS que no ha tenido la interactividad que unas jornadas como estas necesitaban. Pronto empezará a tener documentos y análisis de lo allí ocurrido y luego vendrán las crónicas y análisis más cocinados en la revista I+S. Pero en la segunda década del siglo XXI se necesita bastante más. La otra es sobre la no deseada poca presencia de usuarios de las TIC sanitarias en los roles de profesionales sanitarios y ciudadanos usuarios de los sistemas de información sanitarios. Tenemos que ser proactivos para que acudan en número significativo, ya que si no estamos en riesgo de ser unos TIC-sanitarios absolutistas: todo para los usuarios pero sin los usuarios. Tweet

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• Is there a low carbon future for the retail industry?

  - by user801960

  Recently Oracle published a report in conjunction with The Future Laboratory and a global panel of experts to highlight the issue of energy use in modern industry and the serious need to reduce carbon emissions radically by 2050.  Emissions must be cut by 80-95% below the levels in 1990 – but what can the retail industry do to keep up with this? There are three key aspects to the retail industry where carbon emissions can be cut:  manufacturing, transport and IT.  Manufacturing Naturally, manufacturing is going to be a big area where businesses across all industries will be forced to make considerable savings in carbon emissions as well as other forms of pollution.  Many retailers of all sizes will use third party factories and will have little control over specific environmental impacts from the factory, but retailers can reduce environmental impact at the factories by managing orders more efficiently – better planning for stock requirements means economies of scale both in terms of finance and the environment. The John Lewis Partnership has made detailed commitments to reducing manufacturing and packaging waste on both its own-brand products and products it sources from third party suppliers. It aims to divert 95 percent of its operational waste from landfill by 2013, which is a huge logistics challenge.  The John Lewis Partnership’s website provides a large amount of information on its responsibilities towards the environment. Transport Similarly to manufacturing, tightening up on logistical planning for stock distribution will make savings on carbon emissions from haulage.  More accurate supply and demand analysis will mean less stock re-allocation after initial distribution, and better warehouse management will mean more efficient stock distribution.  UK grocery retailer Morrisons has introduced double-decked trailers to its haulage fleet and adjusted distribution logistics accordingly to reduce the number of kilometers travelled by the fleet.  Morrisons measures route planning efficiency in terms of cases moved per kilometre and has, over the last two years, increased the number of cases per kilometre by 12.7%.  See Morrisons Corporate Responsibility report for more information. IT IT infrastructure is often initially overlooked by businesses when considering environmental efficiency.  Datacentres and web servers often need to run 24/7 to handle both consumer orders and internal logistics, and this both requires a lot of energy and puts out a lot of heat.  Many businesses are lowering environmental impact by reducing IT system fragmentation in their offices, while an increasing number of businesses are outsourcing their datacenters to cloud-based services.  Using centralised datacenters reduces the power usage at smaller offices, while using cloud based services means the datacenters can be based in a more environmentally friendly location.  For example, Facebook is opening a massive datacentre in Sweden – close to the Arctic Circle – to reduce the need for artificial cooling methods.  In addition, moving to a cloud-based solution makes IT services more easily scaleable, reducing redundant IT systems that would still use energy.  In store, the UK’s Carbon Trust reports that on average, lighting accounts for 25% of a retailer’s electricity costs, and for grocery retailers, up to 50% of their electricity bill comes from refrigeration units.  On a smaller scale, retailers can invest in greener technologies in store and in their offices.  The report concludes that widely shared objectives of energy security, reduced emissions and continued economic growth are dependent on the development of a smart grid capable of delivering energy efficiency and demand response, as well as integrating renewable and variable sources of energy. The report is available to download from http://emeapressoffice.oracle.com/imagelibrary/detail.aspx?MediaDetailsID=1766I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the report.   

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• What Banks Can Learn From An English Teacher’s Advice

  - by Gaurav H

  The earliest definitions I learnt at school pertained to nouns and verbs. Nouns, my teacher said, indicated names of people, things and places. Verbs, the stern lady said, are “action words”. They indicated motion.  The idea for this blog filtered in when I applied these definitions to the entity I most often deal with for my personal financial needs, and think about or relate to from a professional standpoint: ‘a bank’. Noun? It certainly is. At least that’s how I’d had it figured in my head. It used to be a place I visited to get my financial business done. It is the name of an entity I have a business relationship with. But, taking a closer look at how ‘the bank’ has evolved recently makes me wonder. Is it not after all acquiring some shades of a verb? For one, it’s in motion if I consider my mobile device with its financial apps. For another, it’s in ‘quasi-action’ if I consider a highly interactive virtual bank. The point I’m driving at is not semantic. But the words we use and the way we use them are revealing, and can offer tremendous insights into our existing mindsets. I think the same applies to businesses. Banks that first began examining and deconstructing their cherished ‘definitions’ or business models (nouns) were the earliest to adapt, change, and reinvent (verbs). They were able to waltz past disintermediation threats. Though rooted in a ‘brick and mortar’ heritage, their thinking and infrastructure were flexible enough for the digital era. While their physical premises imposed restrictions—opening hours, transaction hours, appointments, waiting time, overcrowding, processing time, clearing time, etc,—their thinking did not. They innovated. Across traditional and new-era channels, they easily slipped in customer services of a differentiated kind: spot loans, deposits with idle account balances, convenient mortgages with multiple liens or collateral, and instant payment options.I believe the most successful banks are those that fit into the rhythm of their customers’ lives rather than forcing their customers to fit into theirs. It was true for banks that existed before the Internet era; it’s true for banks now. I look no further than UBANK, JIBUN and HBOS Germany to make my point. They are resounding successes because they are not trapped in their own definitions of ‘a bank’. They walk with their customers, rather than waiting for their clients to walk-in for services.Back to my English teacher. She once advised me to use more verbs in my composition. Readers relate better to “action” she said. Banks too can profit from her advice. To succeed, they need to interact more. And remain flexible enough to interact with their customers. Sonny Singh is Senior Vice President  and General Manager of the Oracle Financial Services Global Business Unit. He can be reached at sonny.singh AT oracle.com or on twitter @sonnyhsingh

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• Web application / Domain model integration using JSON capable DTOs [on hold]

  - by g-makulik

  I'm a bit confused about architectural choices for the web-applications/java/python world. For c/c++ world the available (open source) choices to implement web applications is pretty limited to zero, involving java or python the choices explode to a,- hard to sort out -, mess of available 'frameworks' and application approaches. I want to sort out a clean MVC model, where the M stands for a fully blown (POCO, POJO driven) domain model (according M.Fowler's EAA pattern) using a mature OO language (Java,C++) for implementation. The background is: I have a system with certain hardware components (that introduce system immanent active behavior) and a configuration database for system meta and HW-components configuration data (these are even usually self contained, since the HW-components are capable to persist their configuration data anyway). For realization of the configuration/status data exchange protocol with the HW-components we have chosen the Google Protobuf format, which works well for the directly wired communication with these components. This protocol is already used successfully with a Java based GUI application via TCP/IP connection to the main system controlling HW-component. This application has some drawbacks and design flaws for historical reasons. Now we want to develop an abstract model (domain model) for configuration and monitoring those HW-components, that represents a more use case oriented view to the overall system behavior. I have the feeling that a plain Java class model would fit best for this (c++ implementation seems to have too much implementation/integration overhead with viable language-bridge interfaces). Google Protobuf message definitions could still serve well to describe DTO objects used to interact with a domain model API. But integrating Google Protobuf messages client side for e.g. data binding in the current view doesn't seem to be a good choice. I'm thinking about some extra serialization features, e.g. for JSON based data exchange with the views/controllers. Most lightweight solutions seem to involve a python based presentation layer using JSON based data transfer (I'm at least not sure to be fully informed about this). Is there some lightweight (applicable for a limited ARM Linux platform) framework available, supporting such architecture to realize a web-application? UPDATE: According to my recent research and comments of colleagues I've noticed that using Java (and some JVM) might not be the preferable choice for integration with python on a limited linux system as we have (running on ARM9 with hard to discuss memory and MCU costs), but C/C++ modules would do well for this (since this forms the native interface to python extensions, doesn't it?). I can imagine to provide a domain model from an appropriate C/C++ API (though I still think it's more efforts and higher skill requirements for the involved developers to do with these languages). Still I'm searching for a good approach that supports such architecture. I'll appreciate any pointers!

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• A debugging experience with "highly compatible" ASP.NET 4.5

  - by Jeff

  I have to admit that I will pretty much upgrade software for no reason other than being on the latest version. I won't do it if it's super expensive (Adobe gets money from me about once every three or four years at best), but particularly with frameworks and stuff generally available as part of my MSDN subscription, I'll be bleeding edge. CoasterBuzz was running on the MVC 4 framework pretty much as soon as they did a "go live" license for it. I didn't really jump in head-first with Windows 8 and Visual Studio 2012, in part because I just wasn't interested in doing the reinstalls for each new version. Turns out there weren't that many revisions anyway. But when the final versions were released a week and a half ago, I jumped in. I saw on one of the Microsoft sites that .Net 4.5 was a "highly compatible in-place update" to the framework. Good enough for me. I was obviously running it by default in Windows 8, and installed it on my production server. I suppose it's "highly compatible," except when it isn't. Three of my sites are running with various flavors of the MVC version of POP Forums. All of them stopped working under ASP.NET 4.5. It was not immediately obvious what the problem might be beyond an exception indicating that there were no repository classes registered with Ninject, which I use for dependency injection in the forums. This was made all the more weird by the fact that it ran fine locally in the dev Web host. My first instinct was to spin up a Windows Server VM on my local box and put the remote debugger on it. (Side note: running multiple VM's on a Retina MacBook Pro with 16 gigs of RAM is pretty much the most awesome thing ever. I can't believe this computer is for real, and not a 50-pound tower under my desk.) What might have been going on in IIS that doesn't happen in Visual Studio? In the debugging process, I realized that I might be looking in the wrong place. POP Forums creates a Ninject container using a method called from a PreApplicationStartMethod attribute, and at that time registers a module (what Ninject uses to map interfaces to implementations) that maps all of the core dependencies. It also creates an instance of an HttpModule that originally hosted the "services" (search indexing, mailer, etc.), but now just records errors. That's all well and good, but the actual repository mapping, where data is actually read or persisted, happens in Application_Start() in global.asax. The idea there is that you can swap out the SqlSingleWebServer repos for something tuned for multiple servers, Oracle or something else. Of course, if I used something like StructureMap, which does convention-based mapping for dependency injection (a class implementing ISettingsRepository called SettingsRepository is automagically mapped), I wouldn't have to worry about it. In any case, the HttpModule, being instantiated before Application_Start() gets to run, would throw because there was no repo mapped where it could get settings from the database. This makes total sense. The fix is sort of a hack, where I don't setup the innards of the HttpModule until a call to its BeginRequest is made. I say it's a hack, because its primary function, logging exceptions, won't work until the app has warmed up. Still, this brings up an interesting question about the race condition, and what changed in 4.5 when it's running in IIS. In ASP.NET 4, it would appear that the code called via the PreApplicationStartMethod was either failing silently, and running again later, or it was getting to that code after Application_Start was called. In any case, weird thing. The real pain point I'm experiencing now is a bug in MVC 4 that is extremely serious because it renders the mobile/alternate view functionality very much broken.

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• Oracle AutoVue Key Highlights from Oracle OpenWorld 2012

  - by Celine Beck

  We closed another successful Oracle Open World for AutoVue. Thanks to everyone who joined us this year. As usual, from customer presentations to evening networking activities, there was enough to keep us busy during the entire event. Here is a summary of some of the key highlights of the conference: Sessions:We had two AutoVue-specific sessions during Oracle Open World this year. The first session was part of the Product Lifecycle Management track and covered how AutoVue can be used to help drive effective decision making and streamline design for manufacturing processes. Attendees had the opportunity to learn from customer speaker GLOBALFOUNDRIES how they have been leveraging Oracle AutoVue within Agile PLM to enable high degree of collaboration during the exceptionally creative phases of their product development processes, securely, without risking valuable intellectual property. If you are interested, you can actually download the presentation by visiting launch.oracle.com/?plmopenworld2012.AutoVue was also featured as part of the Utilities track. This session focused on how visualization solutions play a critical role in effective plant optimization and configuration strategies defined by owners and operators of power generation facilities. Attendees learnt how integrated with document management systems, and enterprise applications like Oracle Primavera and Asset Lifecycle Management, AutoVue improves change management processes; minimizes risks by providing access to accurate engineering drawings which capture and reflect the as-maintained status of assets; and allows customers to drive complex maintenance projects to successful completion.Augmented Business Visualization for Agile PLMDuring Oracle Open World, we also showcased an Augmented Business Visualization-based solution for Oracle Agile PLM. An Augmented Business Visualization (ABV) solution is one where your structured data (from Oracle Agile PLM for instance) and your unstructured data (documents, designs, 3D models, etc) come together to allow you to make better decisions (check out our blog posts on the topic: Augment the Value of Your Data (or Time to replace the “attach” button) and Context is Everything ). As part of the Agile PLM, the idea is to support more effective decision-making by turning 3D assemblies into color-coded reports, and streamlining business processes like Engineering Change Management by enabling the automatic creation of engineering change requests in Agile PLM directly from documents being viewed in AutoVue. More on this coming soon...probably during the Oracle Value Chain Summit to be held in San Francisco, from Feb. 4-6, 2013 in San Francisco! Mark your calendars and stay tuned for more information! And thanks again for joining us at Oracle OpenWorld!

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• Oracle Coherence 3.5 : Create Internet-scale applications using Oracle's high-performance data grid

  - by frederic.michiara

  Oracle Coherence Coherence provides replicated and distributed (partitioned) data management and caching services on top of a reliable, highly scalable peer-to-peer clustering protocol. Coherence has no single points of failure; it automatically and transparently fails over and redistributes its clustered data management services when a server becomes inoperative or is disconnected from the network. When a new server is added, or when a failed server is restarted, it automatically joins the cluster and Coherence fails back services to it, transparently redistributing the cluster load. Coherence includes network-level fault tolerance features and transparent soft re-start capability to enable servers to self-heal. For the ones looking at an easy reading and first good approach to Oracle Coherence, I would recommend reading the following book : Overview of Oracle Coherence 3.5 Build scalable web sites and Enterprise applications using a market-leading data grid product Design and implement your domain objects to work most effectively with Coherence and apply Domain Driven Designs (DDD) to Coherence applications Leverage Coherence events and continuous queries to provide real-time updates to client applications Successfully integrate various persistence technologies, such as JDBC, Hibernate, or TopLink, with Coherence Filled with numerous examples that provide best practice guidance, and a number of classes you can readily reuse within your own applications This book is targeted to Architects and developers, and as in our team we're more about Solutions Architects than developers I found interest in this book as it help to understand better Oracle Coherence and its value. The only point I may not agree with the authors is that Oracle Coherence is not an alternative to Oracle RAC in providing High Availability, but combining both Oracle RAC and Oracle Coherence will help Architects and Customers to reach higher level of service and high-availability. This book is available on https://www.packtpub.com/oracle-coherence-3-5/book Need to find out about Table of contents : https://www.packtpub.com/toc/oracle-coherence-35-table-contents Discover a sample chapter : https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/6125_Oracle%20Coherence_SampleChapter.pdf Read also articles from the Authors on http://www.packtpub.com/ : Working with Aggregators in Oracle Coherence 3.5 Working with Value Extractors and Simplifying Queries in Oracle Coherence 3.5 Querying the Data Grid in Coherence 3.5: Obtaining Query Results and Using Indexes Installing Coherence 3.5 and Accessing the Data Grid: Part 1 Installing Coherence 3.5 and Accessing the Data Grid: Part 2 For more information on Oracle Coherence : What Oracle Coherence Can Do for You... : http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/coherence/coherencedatagrid/coherence_solutions.html Oracle Coherence on OTN : http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/coherence/index.html Oracle Coherence Knowledge Base : http://coherence.oracle.com/display/COH/Oracle+Coherence+Knowledge+Base+Home

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• How to bill a client for frequently-interrupted time

  - by Greg

  I find that when I'm working on hourly-billable projects (in particular, those that are research/design/architecture-oriented as opposed to straight coding) that I'm easily distracted by any number of things (email, grab a drink (loss of focus, but nature happens), link off the webpage I was reading, wandering mind (easy when the job calls for a lot of thinking), etc.) This results in very fragmented time, far too incremental IMO to accurately track with a timeclock, and some time very gray. I frequently end up billing for only some fraction of the elapsed time I spent in order to feel fair, but sometimes it takes a really long time to put in an 8-hour day. By contrast, when I've worked for salary I've not worried about whether I'm actively working at any given minute, I just get the job done, and I've never had anything but stellar reviews/feedback from past salaried employers, so I think I get the job done well. I personally believe in an 80/20 cycle: I get 80% of my work done during an inspired 20% of my time. But I have to screw around the other 80% of the time in order to get that first 20%. So the question: what billing/time-tracking policy can I adopt in order to be fair to my hourly customers without having to write off my own less-productive 80% that a salaried employer is willing to overlook in light of the complete package? Note: This question is not about how to be more productive or focused. It's about how to work around whatever salient limitations that I have in a way that's both fair to me and to my customers. Update: A little clarification (to pre-emptively stop some righteous indignation): I currently have a half dozen different project/client groups. It's not a great situation and I'm working at reducing it down to two, but that's my current reality. It's very easy to get off on a thread related to a different project than the one I'm clocking, and I'm not always conscious of it at the time. [I did not intend the question to mean that I was off playing games or making personal calls, etc., and have adjusted wording above to be clearer. Most of the time. I am only human, and sometimes the mind does force you to take a break! :-)]

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• Fair Comments

  - by Tony Davis

  To what extent is good code self-documenting? In one of the most entertaining sessions I saw at the recent PASS summit, Jeremiah Peschka (blog | twitter) got a laugh out of a sleepy post-lunch audience with the following remark: "Some developers say good code is self-documenting; I say, get off my team" I silently applauded the sentiment. It's not that all comments are useful, but that I mistrust the basic premise that "my code is so clearly written, it doesn't need any comments". I've read many pieces describing the road to self-documenting code, and my problem with most of them is that they feed the myth that comments in code are a sign of weakness. They aren't; in fact, used correctly I'd say they are essential. Regardless of how far intelligent naming can get you in describing what the code does, or how well any accompanying unit tests can explain to your fellow developers why it works that way, it's no excuse not to document fully the public interfaces to your code. Maybe I just mixed with the wrong crowd while learning my favorite language, but when I open a stored procedure I lose the will even to read it unless I see a big Phil Factor- or Jeff Moden-style header summarizing in plain English what the code does, how it fits in to the broader application, and a usage example. This public interface describes the high-level process and should explain the role of the code, clearly, for fellow developers, language non-experts, and even any non-technical stake holders in the project. When you step into the body of the code, the low-level details, then I agree that the rules are somewhat different; especially when code is subject to frequent refactoring that can quickly render comments redundant or misleading. At their worst, here, inline comments are sticking plaster to cover up the scars caused by poor naming conventions, failure in clarity when mapping a complex domain into code, or just by not entirely understanding the problem (/ this is the clever part). If you design and refactor your code carefully so that it is as simple as possible, your functions do one thing only, you avoid having two completely different algorithms in the same piece of code, and your functions, classes and variables are intelligently named, then, yes, the need for inline comments should be minimal. And yet, even given this, I'd still argue that many languages (T-SQL certainly being one) just don't lend themselves to readability when performing even moderately-complex tasks. If the algorithm is complex, I still like to see the occasional helpful comment. Please, therefore, be as liberal as you see fit in the detail of the comments you apply to this editorial, for like code it is bound to increase its' clarity and usefulness. Cheers, Tony.

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• SharpDX and game engines, back to zero?

  - by Baboon

  I'm a desktop developer (I mainly do WPF for a living) but I want to make games as a hobby. So a few months ago, I started reading blogs, gamedevSE, you name it. I understand in the C++ DirectX world, you have engines such as Unity3D with designers and whatnot, but as much as I'm ok to spend months understanding game development, I'd prefer to stay with my comfy C#. So I thought I'd develop my first games in /C#/DirectX through SharpDX But then, I can't use game engines anymore, since they're made for C++DirectX and not SharpDX. (ok, I could do P/Invokes but that defeats the purpose of SharpDX). I do know about XNA, and I also do know I can't publish to the marketplace with it (and quite frankly, I don't really want to learn an API that is in jeopardy). So how do you conceal writing games in C# and using existing game engines instead of reinventing the wheel? wait for ports? So I've found out the following: After doing the first tutorials of MOgre and digging around, it seems MOgre gives you the worse of both worlds: . You can't port it with Mono because it directly references a C++/CLI dll (Ogre) and C++/CLI isn't supported by Mono. And since it's not C++ itself, you can't make a pure build. Which, as far as I understand, means I'd be stuck on windows (and not even WinRT/Metro compatible), without capability of porting anything to mobiles or other OS (Mac/Linux). Even though it looks really nice to develop with MOgre, I'd like to learn something a little more open to future broadening. On the other hand, MonoGame seems to be a rewrite of XNA with SharpDX which sounds very promising: Mono allows me to easily port my games to other platforms, mobiles included. SharpDX allows me to access the latest DirectX versions XNA would be my first choice if only MS showed some hope for the future It really looks like MonoGame is nothing else than XNA on SharpDX. Axiom looks good too but I lack info on the subject (and pages with poor design don't give me a good feeling about an API...) XNA with SunBurn looks good: It should be portable to Mono (can anyone with experience give us feedback on that?), thus multi-platform. It's then marketplace-able since Mono itself is. Did I miss something or are 2) and 4) my best options (aside from the fact Mono doesn't support any XAML)?

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• How to handle "circular dependency" in dependency injection

  - by Roel

  The title says "Circular Dependency", but it is not the correct wording, because to me the design seems solid. However, consider the following scenario, where the blue parts are given from external partner, and orange is my own implementation. Also assume there is more then one ConcreteMain, but I want to use a specific one. (In reality, each class has some more dependencies, but I tried to simplify it here) I would like to instanciate all of this with Depency Injection (Unity), but I obviously get a StackOverflowException on the following code, because Runner tries to instantiate ConcreteMain, and ConcreteMain needs a Runner. IUnityContainer ioc = new UnityContainer(); ioc.RegisterType<IMain, ConcreteMain>() .RegisterType<IMainCallback, Runner>(); var runner = ioc.Resolve<Runner>(); How can I avouid this? Is there any way to structure this so that I can use it with DI? The scenario I'm doing now is setting everything up manually, but that puts a hard dependency on ConcreteMain in the class which instantiates it. This is what i'm trying to avoid (with Unity registrations in configuration). All source code below (very simplified example!); public class Program { public static void Main(string[] args) { IUnityContainer ioc = new UnityContainer(); ioc.RegisterType<IMain, ConcreteMain>() .RegisterType<IMainCallback, Runner>(); var runner = ioc.Resolve<Runner>(); Console.WriteLine("invoking runner..."); runner.DoSomethingAwesome(); Console.ReadLine(); } } public class Runner : IMainCallback { private readonly IMain mainServer; public Runner(IMain mainServer) { this.mainServer = mainServer; } public void DoSomethingAwesome() { Console.WriteLine("trying to do something awesome"); mainServer.DoSomething(); } public void SomethingIsDone(object something) { Console.WriteLine("hey look, something is finally done."); } } public interface IMain { void DoSomething(); } public interface IMainCallback { void SomethingIsDone(object something); } public abstract class AbstractMain : IMain { protected readonly IMainCallback callback; protected AbstractMain(IMainCallback callback) { this.callback = callback; } public abstract void DoSomething(); } public class ConcreteMain : AbstractMain { public ConcreteMain(IMainCallback callback) : base(callback){} public override void DoSomething() { Console.WriteLine("starting to do something..."); var task = Task.Factory.StartNew(() =>{ Thread.Sleep(5000);/*very long running task*/ }); task.ContinueWith(t => callback.SomethingIsDone(true)); } }

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• What’s the Difference Between Succession Management and Talent Reviews?

  - by HCM-Oracle

  By Marcie Van Houten Is there a difference or are they pieces of one holistic strategic talent process? And can you have one without the other?  First, let me give a quick definition of each.  Succession planning (or management) is about creating succession slates or talent pools in support of a critical job or position or sets thereof. And then using those plans to help mitigate risk and plan talent needs for the organization.  Talent reviews (known by other names often) are sets of meetings where managers and executives come together to review, discuss and often heatedly debate the merits and potential of their employees, and then place and sometimes calibrate that talent on a performance to potential matrix.  These are some of the most strategic conversations happening in conference rooms across the globe. I speak with a lot of organizations about their practices in this area and the answers to these questions are as varied and nuanced as there are organizations thinking about them.  Some are passionate about their talent review processes and have a very evolved and thoughtful approach.  They really know their people, where their talent is, and the opportunities they plan to offer them.  And to them that is their succession process.  They may never create a slate of named candidates for a job or assign employees to formal talent pools.   On the flip side there are other organizations that create slates and slates and often multiple talent pools to support their strategic positions.  Through these, they are able to mitigate the risk associated with having a key player leave their organization.  And for them, that is their succession process.  Some will start from the lower levels of their organization and roll up their succession plans, while other organizations only cover their top 200 executives and key positions with plans.  And then there are organizations that leverage some of all of these.  Ultimately, the goals are to increase employee engagement, reduce talent-related risk, ensure the right talent is aligned to the strategic initiatives and to drive business value.  The approaches are as unique as the organizations they represent and the business opportunities they are looking to seize upon.   And that's ok.  It's great in fact. Because one thing that is common is the recognition that the need to know your people and align your top talent to the future needs of the organization is mission critical. Sure, there are a set of commonly recognized best practices and guiding principles for all of this.  There is no one right or perfect answer.  And that is what makes this all so much darn fun.  With Talent Review and Succession Management from Oracle HCM Cloud, we’ve blended the ability to support your strategic talent review conversations with both succession plans and talent pools allowing for one very seamless and interactive process. So whether you create a lot of succession plans, only focus on talent pools, have a robust talent review process, or all of the above, Oracle has you covered. I’m looking forward to spending time with our customers at the upcoming OHUG Global Conference 2014 happening June 9-13 in Las Vegas.  It’s an opportunity for me to talk to customers about their business and how they are doing strategic talent processes like talent reviews and succession.  I hope to see you there. Marcie Van Houten brings over 20 years of management consulting, information systems and human capital management experience to her role as director of product strategy at Oracle. Ms. Van Houten has spent the past several years at Oracle working closely with customers to help drive the direction of the company's talent and succession management applications. Additionally, she spent nine years at PeopleSoft as Director of Information Systems leading human capital management implementation projects. Marcie Van Houten lives in Walnut Creek, California, and holds a MBA from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.  You can follow her on Twitter: @MarcieVH

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• Java Spotlight Episode 103: 2012 Duke Choice Award Winners

  - by Roger Brinkley

  Our annual interview with the 2012 Duke Choice Award Winners recorded live at the JavaOne 2012. Right-click or Control-click to download this MP3 file. You can also subscribe to the Java Spotlight Podcast Feed to get the latest podcast automatically. If you use iTunes you can open iTunes and subscribe with this link:  Java Spotlight Podcast in iTunes. Show Notes Events Oct 13, Devoxx 4 Kids Nederlands Oct 15-17, JAX London Oct 20, Devoxx 4 Kids Français Oct 22-23, Freescale Technology Forum - Japan, Tokyo Oct 30-Nov 1, Arm TechCon, Santa Clara Oct 31, JFall, Netherlands Nov 2-3, JMagreb, Morocco Nov 13-17, Devoxx, Belgium Feature Interview Duke Choice Award Winners 2012 - Show Presentation London Java CommunityThe second user group receiving a Duke’s Choice Award this year, the London Java Community (LJC) and its users have been active in the OpenJDK, the Java Community Process (JCP) and other efforts within the global Java community. Student Nokia Developer GroupThis year’s student winner, Ram Kashyap, is the founder and president of the Nokia Student Network, and was profiled in the “The New Java Developers” feature in the March/April 2012 issue of Java Magazine. Since then, Ram has maintained a hectic pace, graduating from the People’s Education Society Institute of Technology in Bangalore, India, while working on a Java mobile startup and training students on Java ME. Jelastic, Inc.Moving existing Java applications to the cloud can be a daunting task, but startup Jelastic, Inc. offers the first all-Java platform-as-a-service (PaaS) that enables existing Java applications to be deployed in the cloud without code changes or lock-in. NATOThe first-ever Community Choice Award goes to the MASE Integrated Console Environment (MICE) in use at NATO. Built in Java on the NetBeans platform, MICE provides a high-performance visualization environment for conducting air defense and battle-space operations. DuchessRather than focus on a specific geographic area like most Java User Groups (JUGs), Duchess fosters the participation of women in the Java community worldwide. The group has more than 500 members in 60 countries, and provides a platform through which women can connect with each other and get involved in all aspects of the Java community. AgroSense ProjectImproving farming methods to feed a hungry world is the goal of AgroSense, an open source farm information management system built in Java and the NetBeans platform. AgroSense enables farmers, agribusinesses, suppliers and others to develop modular applications that will easily exchange information through a common underlying NetBeans framework. Apache Software Foundation Hadoop ProjectThe Apache Software Foundation’s Hadoop project, written in Java, provides a framework for distributed processing of big data sets across clusters of computers, ranging from a few servers to thousands of machines. This harnessing of large data pools allows organizations to better understand and improve their business. Parleys.comE-learning specialist Parleys.com, based in Brussels, Belgium, uses Java technologies to bring online classes and full IT conferences to desktops, laptops, tablets and mobile devices. Parleys.com has hosted more than 1,700 conferences—including Devoxx and JavaOne—for more than 800,000 unique visitors. Winners not presenting at JavaOne 2012 Duke Choice Awards BOF Liquid RoboticsRobotics – Liquid Robotics is an ocean data services provider whose Wave Glider technology collects information from the world’s oceans for application in government, science and commercial applications. The organization features the “father of Java” James Gosling as its chief software architect.United Nations High Commissioner for RefugeesThe United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is on the front lines of crises around the world, from civil wars to natural disasters. To help facilitate its mission of humanitarian relief, the UNHCR has developed a light-client Java application on the NetBeans platform. The Level One registration tool enables the UNHCR to collect information on the number of refugees and their water, food, housing, health, and other needs in the field, and combines that with geocoding information from various sources. This enables the UNHCR to deliver the appropriate kind and amount of assistance where it is needed.

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• What have my fellow Delphi programmers done to make Eclipse/Java more like Delphi?

  - by Robert Oschler

  I am a veteran Delphi programmer working on my first real Android app. I am using Eclipse and Java as my development environment. The thing I miss the most of course is Delphi's VCL components and the associated IDE tools for design-time editing and code creation. Fortunately I am finding Eclipse to be one hell of an IDE with it's lush context sensitive help, deep auto-complete and code wizard facilities, and other niceties. This is a huge double treat since it is free. However, here is an example of something in the Eclipse/Java environment that will give a Delphi programmer pause. I will use the simple case of adding an "on-click" code stub for an OK button. DELPHI Drop button on a form Double-click button on form and fill in the code that will fire when the button is clicked ECLIPSE Drop button on layout in the graphical XML file editor Add the View.OnClickListener interface to the containing class's "implements" list if not there already. (Command+1 on Macs, Ctrl + 1 on PCs I believe). Use Eclipse to automatically add the code stub for unimplemented methods needed to support the View.OnClickListener interface, thus creating the event handler function stub. Find the stub and fill it in. However, if you have more than one possible click event source then you will need to inspect the View parameter to see which View element triggered the OnClick() event, thus requiring a case statement to handle multiple click event sources. NOTE: I am relatively new to Eclipse/Java so if there is a much easier way of doing this please let me know. Now that work flow isn't all that terrible, but again, that's just the simplest of use cases. Ratchet up the amount of extra work and thinking for a more complex component (aka widget) and the large number of properties/events it might have. It won't be long before you miss dearly the Delphi intelligent property editor and other designers. Eclipse tries to cover this ground by having an extensive list of properties in the menu that pops up when you right-click over a component/widget in the XML graphical layout editor. That's a huge and welcome assist but it's just not even close to the convenience of the Delphi IDE. Let me be very clear. I absolutely am not ranting nor do I want to start a Delphi vs. Java ideology discussion. Android/Eclipse/Java is what it is and there is a lot that impresses me. What I want to know is what other Delphi programmers that made the switch to the Eclipse/Java IDE have done to make things more Delphi like, and not just to make component/widget event code creation easier but any programming task. For example: Clever tips/tricks Eclipse plugins you found other ideas? Any great blog posts or web resources on the topic are appreciated too. -- roschler

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