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• Memory Efficient Windows SOA Server

  - by Antony Reynolds

  Installing a Memory Efficient SOA Suite 11.1.1.6 on Windows Server Well 11.1.1.6 is now available for download so I thought I would build a Windows Server environment to run it.  I will minimize the memory footprint of the installation by putting all functionality into the Admin Server of the SOA Suite domain. Required Software 64-bit JDK SOA Suite If you want 64-bit then choose “Generic” rather than “Microsoft Windows 32bit JVM” or “Linux 32bit JVM” This has links to all the required software. If you choose “Generic” then the Repository Creation Utility link does not show, you still need this so change the platform to “Microsoft Windows 32bit JVM” or “Linux 32bit JVM” to get the software. Similarly if you need a database then you need to change the platform to get the link to XE for Windows or Linux. If possible I recommend installing a 64-bit JDK as this allows you to assign more memory to individual JVMs. Windows XE will work, but it is better if you can use a full Oracle database because of the limitations on XE that sometimes cause it to run out of space with large or multiple SOA deployments. Installation Steps The following flow chart outlines the steps required in installing and configuring SOA Suite. The steps in the diagram are explained below. 64-bit? Is a 64-bit installation required?  The Windows & Linux installers will install 32-bit versions of the Sun JDK and JRockit.  A separate JDK must be installed for 64-bit. Install 64-bit JDK The 64-bit JDK can be either Hotspot or JRockit.  You can choose either JDK 1.7 or 1.6. Install WebLogic If you are using 64-bit then install WebLogic using “java –jar wls1036_generic.jar”.  Make sure you include Coherence in the installation, the easiest way to do this is to accept the “Typical” installation. SOA Suite Required? If you are not installing SOA Suite then you can jump straight ahead and create a WebLogic domain. Install SOA Suite Run the SOA Suite installer and point it at the existing Middleware Home created for WebLogic.  Note to run the SOA installer on Windows the user must have admin privileges.  I also found that on Windows Server 2008R2 I had to start the installer from a command prompt with administrative privileges, granting it privileges when it ran caused it to ignore the jreLoc parameter. Database Available? Do you have access to a database into which you can install the SOA schema.  SOA Suite requires access to an Oracle database (it is supported on other databases but I would always use an oracle database). Install Database I use an 11gR2 Oracle database to avoid XE limitations.  Make sure that you set the database character set to be unicode (AL32UTF8).  I also disabled the new security settings because they get in the way for a developer database.  Don’t forget to check that number of processes is at least 150 and number of sessions is not set, or is set to at least 200 (in the DB init parameters). Run RCU The SOA Suite database schemas are created by running the Repository Creation Utility.  Install the “SOA and BPM Infrastructure” component to support SOA Suite.  If you keep the schema prefix as “DEV” then the config wizard is easier to complete. Run Config Wizard The Config wizard creates the domain which hosts the WebLogic server instances.  To get a minimum footprint SOA installation choose the “Oracle Enterprise Manager” and “Oracle SOA Suite for developers” products.  All other required products will be automatically selected. The “for developers” installs target the appropriate components at the AdminServer rather than creating a separate managed server to house them.  This reduces the number of JVMs required to run the system and hence the amount of memory required.  This is not suitable for anything other than a developer environment as it mixes the admin and runtime functions together in a single server.  It also takes a long time to load all the required modules, making start up a slow process. If it exists I would recommend running the config wizard found in the “oracle_common/common/bin” directory under the middleware home.  This should have access to all the templates, including SOA. If you also want to run BAM in the same JVM as everything else then you need to “Select Optional Configuration” for “Managed Servers, Clusters and Machines”. To target BAM at the AdminServer delete the “bam_server1” managed server that is created by default.  This will result in BAM being targeted at the AdminServer. Installation Issues I had a few problems when I came to test everything in my mega-JVM. Following applications were not targeted and so I needed to target them at the AdminServer: b2bui composer Healthcare UI FMW Welcome Page Application (11.1.0.0.0) How Memory Efficient is It? On a Windows 2008R2 Server running under VirtualBox I was able to bring up both the 11gR2 database and SOA/BPM/BAM in 3G memory.  I allocated a minimum 512M to the PermGen and a minimum of 1.5G for the heap.  The setting from setSOADomainEnv are shown below: set DEFAULT_MEM_ARGS=-Xms1536m -Xmx2048m set PORT_MEM_ARGS=-Xms1536m -Xmx2048m set DEFAULT_MEM_ARGS=%DEFAULT_MEM_ARGS% -XX:PermSize=512m -XX:MaxPermSize=768m set PORT_MEM_ARGS=%PORT_MEM_ARGS% -XX:PermSize=512m -XX:MaxPermSize=768m I arrived at these numbers by monitoring JVM memory usage in JConsole. Task Manager showed total system memory usage at 2.9G – just below the 3G I allocated to the VM. Performance is not stellar but it runs and I could run JDeveloper alongside it on my 8G laptop, so in that sense it was a result!

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• Create Advanced Panoramas with Microsoft Image Composite Editor

  - by Matthew Guay

  Do you enjoy making panoramas with your pictures, but want more features than tools like Live Photo Gallery offer?  Here’s how you can create amazing panoramas for free with the Microsoft Image Composite Editor. Yesterday we took a look at creating panoramic photos in Windows Live Photo Gallery. Today we take a look at a free tool from Microsoft that will give you more advanced features to create your own masterpiece. Getting Started Download Microsoft Image Composite Editor from Microsoft Research (link below), and install as normal.  Note that there are separate version for 32 & 64-bit editions of Windows, so make sure to download the correct one for your computer. Once it’s installed, you can proceed to create awesome panoramas and extremely large image combinations with it.  Microsoft Image Composite Editor integrates with Live Photo Gallery, so you can create more advanced panoramic pictures directly.  Select the pictures you want to combine, click Extras in the menu bar, and select Create Image Composite. You can also create a photo stitch directly from Explorer.  Select the pictures you want to combine, right-click, and select Stitch Images… Or, simply launch the Image Composite Editor itself and drag your pictures into its editor.  Either way you start a image composition, the program will automatically analyze and combine your images.  This application is optimized for multiple cores, and we found it much faster than other panorama tools such as Live Photo Gallery. Within seconds, you’ll see your panorama in the top preview pane. From the bottom of the window, you can choose a different camera motion which will change how the program stitches the pictures together.  You can also quickly crop the picture to the size you want, or use Automatic Crop to have the program select the maximum area with a continuous picture.   Here’s how our panorama looked when we switched the Camera Motion to Planar Motion 2. But, the real tweaking comes in when you adjust the panorama’s projection and orientation.  Click the box button at the top to change these settings. The panorama is now overlaid with a grid, and you can drag the corners and edges of the panorama to change its shape. Or, from the Projection button at the top, you can choose different projection modes. Here we’ve chosen Cylinder (Vertical), which entirely removed the warp on the walls in the image.  You can pan around the image, and get the part you find most important in the center.  Click the Apply button on the top when you’re finished making changes, or click Revert if you want to switch to the default view settings. Once you’ve finished your masterpiece, you can export it easily to common photo formats from the Export panel on the bottom.  You can choose to scale the image or set it to a maximum width and height as well.  Click Export to disk to save the photo to your computer, or select Publish to Photosynth to post your panorama online. Alternately, from the File menu you can choose to save the panorama as .spj file.  This preserves all of your settings in the Image Composite Editor so you can edit it more in the future if you wish.   Conclusion Whether you’re trying to capture the inside of a building or a tall tree, the extra tools in Microsoft Image Composite Editor let you make nicer panoramas than you ever thought possible.  We found the final results surprisingly accurate to the real buildings and objects, especially after tweaking the projection modes.  This tool can be both fun and useful, so give it a try and let us know what you’ve found it useful for. Works with 32 & 64-bit versions of XP, Vista, and Windows 7 Link Download Microsoft Image Composite Editor Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Change or Set the Greasemonkey Script Editor in FirefoxNew Vista Syntax for Opening Control Panel Items from the Command-lineTune Your ClearType Font Settings in Windows VistaChange the Default Editor From Nano on Ubuntu LinuxMake MSE Create a Restore Point Before Cleaning Malware TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 Get a free copy of WinUtilities Pro 2010 World Cup Schedule Boot Snooze – Reboot and then Standby or Hibernate Customize Everything Related to Dates, Times, Currency and Measurement in Windows 7 Google Earth replacement Icon (Icons we like) Build Great Charts in Excel with Chart Advisor

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• Reference Data Management and Master Data: Are Relation ?

  - by Mala Narasimharajan

  Submitted By:  Rahul Kamath  Oracle Data Relationship Management (DRM) has always been extremely powerful as an Enterprise Master Data Management (MDM) solution that can help manage changes to master data in a way that influences enterprise structure, whether it be mastering chart of accounts to enable financial transformation, or revamping organization structures to drive business transformation and operational efficiencies, or restructuring sales territories to enable equitable distribution of leads to sales teams following the acquisition of new products, or adding additional cost centers to enable fine grain control over expenses. Increasingly, DRM is also being utilized by Oracle customers for reference data management, an emerging solution space that deserves some explanation. What is reference data? How does it relate to Master Data? Reference data is a close cousin of master data. While master data is challenged with problems of unique identification, may be more rapidly changing, requires consensus building across stakeholders and lends structure to business transactions, reference data is simpler, more slowly changing, but has semantic content that is used to categorize or group other information assets – including master data – and gives them contextual value. In fact, the creation of a new master data element may require new reference data to be created. For example, when a European company acquires a US business, chances are that they will now need to adapt their product line taxonomy to include a new category to describe the newly acquired US product line. Further, the cross-border transaction will also result in a revised geo hierarchy. The addition of new products represents changes to master data while changes to product categories and geo hierarchy are examples of reference data changes.1 The following table contains an illustrative list of examples of reference data by type. Reference data types may include types and codes, business taxonomies, complex relationships & cross-domain mappings or standards. Types & Codes Taxonomies Relationships / Mappings Standards Transaction Codes Industry Classification Categories and Codes, e.g., North America Industry Classification System (NAICS) Product / Segment; Product / Geo Calendars (e.g., Gregorian, Fiscal, Manufacturing, Retail, ISO8601) Lookup Tables (e.g., Gender, Marital Status, etc.) Product Categories City à State à Postal Codes Currency Codes (e.g., ISO) Status Codes Sales Territories (e.g., Geo, Industry Verticals, Named Accounts, Federal/State/Local/Defense) Customer / Market Segment; Business Unit / Channel Country Codes (e.g., ISO 3166, UN) Role Codes Market Segments Country Codes / Currency Codes / Financial Accounts Date/Time, Time Zones (e.g., ISO 8601) Domain Values Universal Standard Products and Services Classification (UNSPSC), eCl@ss International Classification of Diseases (ICD) e.g., ICD9 à IC10 mappings Tax Rates Why manage reference data? Reference data carries contextual value and meaning and therefore its use can drive business logic that helps execute a business process, create a desired application behavior or provide meaningful segmentation to analyze transaction data. Further, mapping reference data often requires human judgment. Sample Use Cases of Reference Data Management Healthcare: Diagnostic Codes The reference data challenges in the healthcare industry offer a case in point. Part of being HIPAA compliant requires medical practitioners to transition diagnosis codes from ICD-9 to ICD-10, a medical coding scheme used to classify diseases, signs and symptoms, causes, etc. The transition to ICD-10 has a significant impact on business processes, procedures, contracts, and IT systems. Since both code sets ICD-9 and ICD-10 offer diagnosis codes of very different levels of granularity, human judgment is required to map ICD-9 codes to ICD-10. The process requires collaboration and consensus building among stakeholders much in the same way as does master data management. Moreover, to build reports to understand utilization, frequency and quality of diagnoses, medical practitioners may need to “cross-walk” mappings -- either forward to ICD-10 or backwards to ICD-9 depending upon the reporting time horizon. Spend Management: Product, Service & Supplier Codes Similarly, as an enterprise looks to rationalize suppliers and leverage their spend, conforming supplier codes, as well as product and service codes requires supporting multiple classification schemes that may include industry standards (e.g., UNSPSC, eCl@ss) or enterprise taxonomies. Aberdeen Group estimates that 90% of companies rely on spreadsheets and manual reviews to aggregate, classify and analyze spend data, and that data management activities account for 12-15% of the sourcing cycle and consume 30-50% of a commodity manager’s time. Creating a common map across the extended enterprise to rationalize codes across procurement, accounts payable, general ledger, credit card, procurement card (P-card) as well as ACH and bank systems can cut sourcing costs, improve compliance, lower inventory stock, and free up talent to focus on value added tasks. Change Management: Point of Sales Transaction Codes and Product Codes In the specialty finance industry, enterprises are confronted with usury laws – governed at the state and local level – that regulate financial product innovation as it relates to consumer loans, check cashing and pawn lending. To comply, it is important to demonstrate that transactions booked at the point of sale are posted against valid product codes that were on offer at the time of booking the sale. Since new products are being released at a steady stream, it is important to ensure timely and accurate mapping of point-of-sale transaction codes with the appropriate product and GL codes to comply with the changing regulations. Multi-National Companies: Industry Classification Schemes As companies grow and expand across geographies, a typical challenge they encounter with reference data represents reconciling various versions of industry classification schemes in use across nations. While the United States, Mexico and Canada conform to the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) standard, European Union countries choose different variants of the NACE industry classification scheme. Multi-national companies must manage the individual national NACE schemes and reconcile the differences across countries. Enterprises must invest in a reference data change management application to address the challenge of distributing reference data changes to downstream applications and assess which applications were impacted by a given change. References 1 Master Data versus Reference Data, Malcolm Chisholm, April 1, 2006.

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• Short Season, Long Models - Dealing with Seasonality

  - by Michel Adar

  Accounting for seasonality presents a challenge for the accurate prediction of events. Examples of seasonality include: ·         Boxed cosmetics sets are more popular during Christmas. They sell at other times of the year, but they rise higher than other products during the holiday season. ·         Interest in a promotion rises around the time advertising on TV airs ·         Interest in the Sports section of a newspaper rises when there is a big football match There are several ways of dealing with seasonality in predictions. Time Windows If the length of the model time windows is short enough relative to the seasonality effect, then the models will see only seasonal data, and therefore will be accurate in their predictions. For example, a model with a weekly time window may be quick enough to adapt during the holiday season. In order for time windows to be useful in dealing with seasonality it is necessary that: The time window is significantly shorter than the season changes There is enough volume of data in the short time windows to produce an accurate model An additional issue to consider is that sometimes the season may have an abrupt end, for example the day after Christmas. Input Data If available, it is possible to include the seasonality effect in the input data for the model. For example the customer record may include a list of all the promotions advertised in the area of residence. A model with these inputs will have to learn the effect of the input. It is possible to learn it specific to the promotion – and by the way learn about inter-promotion cross feeding – by leaving the list of ads as it is; or it is possible to learn the general effect by having a flag that indicates if the promotion is being advertised. For inputs to properly represent the effect in the model it is necessary that: The model sees enough events with the input present. For example, by virtue of the model lifetime (or time window) being long enough to see several “seasons” or by having enough volume for the model to learn seasonality quickly. Proportional Frequency If we create a model that ignores seasonality it is possible to use that model to predict how the specific person likelihood differs from average. If we have a divergence from average then we can transfer that divergence proportionally to the observed frequency at the time of the prediction. Definitions: Ft = trailing average frequency of the event at time “t”. The average is done over a suitable period of to achieve a statistical significant estimate. F = average frequency as seen by the model. L = likelihood predicted by the model for a specific person Lt = predicted likelihood proportionally scaled for time “t”. If the model is good at predicting deviation from average, and this holds over the interesting range of seasons, then we can estimate Lt as: Lt = L * (Ft / F) Considering that: L = (L – F) + F Substituting we get: Lt = [(L – F) + F] * (Ft / F) Which simplifies to: (i)                  Lt = (L – F) * (Ft / F)  +  Ft This latest expression can be understood as “The adjusted likelihood at time t is the average likelihood at time t plus the effect from the model, which is calculated as the difference from average time the proportion of frequencies”. The formula above assumes a linear translation of the proportion. It is possible to generalize the formula using a factor which we will call “a” as follows: (ii)                Lt = (L – F) * (Ft / F) * a  +  Ft It is also possible to use a formula that does not scale the difference, like: (iii)               Lt = (L – F) * a  +  Ft While these formulas seem reasonable, they should be taken as hypothesis to be proven with empirical data. A theoretical analysis provides the following insights: The Cumulative Gains Chart (lift) should stay the same, as at any given time the order of the likelihood for different customers is preserved If F is equal to Ft then the formula reverts to “L” If (Ft = 0) then Lt in (i) and (ii) is 0 It is possible for Lt to be above 1. If it is desired to avoid going over 1, for relatively high base frequencies it is possible to use a relative interpretation of the multiplicative factor. For example, if we say that Y is twice as likely as X, then we can interpret this sentence as: If X is 3%, then Y is 6% If X is 11%, then Y is 22% If X is 70%, then Y is 85% - in this case we interpret “twice as likely” as “half as likely to not happen” Applying this reasoning to (i) for example we would get: If (L < F) or (Ft < (1 / ((L/F) + 1)) Then  Lt = L * (Ft / F) Else Lt = 1 – (F / L) + (Ft * F / L)  

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• Columnstore Case Study #2: Columnstore faster than SSAS Cube at DevCon Security

  - by aspiringgeek

  Preamble This is the second in a series of posts documenting big wins encountered using columnstore indexes in SQL Server 2012 & 2014.  Many of these can be found in my big deck along with details such as internals, best practices, caveats, etc.  The purpose of sharing the case studies in this context is to provide an easy-to-consume quick-reference alternative. See also Columnstore Case Study #1: MSIT SONAR Aggregations Why Columnstore? As stated previously, If we’re looking for a subset of columns from one or a few rows, given the right indexes, SQL Server can do a superlative job of providing an answer. If we’re asking a question which by design needs to hit lots of rows—DW, reporting, aggregations, grouping, scans, etc., SQL Server has never had a good mechanism—until columnstore. Columnstore indexes were introduced in SQL Server 2012. However, they're still largely unknown. Some adoption blockers existed; yet columnstore was nonetheless a game changer for many apps.  In SQL Server 2014, potential blockers have been largely removed & they're going to profoundly change the way we interact with our data.  The purpose of this series is to share the performance benefits of columnstore & documenting columnstore is a compelling reason to upgrade to SQL Server 2014. The Customer DevCon Security provides home & business security services & has been in business for 135 years. I met DevCon personnel while speaking to the Utah County SQL User Group on 20 February 2012. (Thanks to TJ Belt (b|@tjaybelt) & Ben Miller (b|@DBADuck) for the invitation which serendipitously coincided with the height of ski season.) The App: DevCon Security Reporting: Optimized & Ad Hoc Queries DevCon users interrogate a SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services cube via SSRS. In addition, the SQL Server 2012 relational back end is the target of ad hoc queries; this DW back end is refreshed nightly during a brief maintenance window via conventional table partition switching. SSRS, SSAS, & MDX Conventional relational structures were unable to provide adequate performance for user interaction for the SSRS reports. An SSAS solution was implemented requiring personnel to ramp up technically, including learning enough MDX to satisfy requirements. Ad Hoc Queries Even though the fact table is relatively small—only 22 million rows & 33GB—the table was a typical DW table in terms of its width: 137 columns, any of which could be the target of ad hoc interrogation. As is common in DW reporting scenarios such as this, it is often nearly to optimize for such queries using conventional indexing. DevCon DBAs & developers attended PASS 2012 & were introduced to the marvels of columnstore in a session presented by Klaus Aschenbrenner (b|@Aschenbrenner) The Details Classic vs. columnstore before-&-after metrics are impressive. Scenario Conventional Structures Columnstore ? SSRS via SSAS 10 - 12 seconds 1 second >10x Ad Hoc 5-7 minutes (300 - 420 seconds) 1 - 2 seconds >100x Here are two charts characterizing this data graphically.  The first is a linear representation of Report Duration (in seconds) for Conventional Structures vs. Columnstore Indexes.  As is so often the case when we chart such significant deltas, the linear scale doesn’t expose some the dramatically improved values corresponding to the columnstore metrics.  Just to make it fair here’s the same data represented logarithmically; yet even here the values corresponding to 1 –2 seconds aren’t visible.  The Wins Performance: Even prior to columnstore implementation, at 10 - 12 seconds canned report performance against the SSAS cube was tolerable. Yet the 1 second performance afterward is clearly better. As significant as that is, imagine the user experience re: ad hoc interrogation. The difference between several minutes vs. one or two seconds is a game changer, literally changing the way users interact with their data—no mental context switching, no wondering when the results will appear, no preoccupation with the spinning mind-numbing hurry-up-&-wait indicators.  As we’ve commonly found elsewhere, columnstore indexes here provided performance improvements of one, two, or more orders of magnitude. Simplified Infrastructure: Because in this case a nonclustered columnstore index on a conventional DW table was faster than an Analysis Services cube, the entire SSAS infrastructure was rendered superfluous & was retired. PASS Rocks: Once again, the value of attending PASS is proven out. The trip to Charlotte combined with eager & enquiring minds let directly to this success story. Find out more about the next PASS Summit here, hosted this year in Seattle on November 4 - 7, 2014. DevCon BI Team Lead Nathan Allan provided this unsolicited feedback: “What we found was pretty awesome. It has been a game changer for us in terms of the flexibility we can offer people that would like to get to the data in different ways.” Summary For DW, reports, & other BI workloads, columnstore often provides significant performance enhancements relative to conventional indexing.  I have documented here, the second in a series of reports on columnstore implementations, results from DevCon Security, a live customer production app for which performance increased by factors of from 10x to 100x for all report queries, including canned queries as well as reducing time for results for ad hoc queries from 5 - 7 minutes to 1 - 2 seconds. As a result of columnstore performance, the customer retired their SSAS infrastructure. I invite you to consider leveraging columnstore in your own environment. Let me know if you have any questions.

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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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• Lessons learnt in implementing Scrum in a Large Organization that has traditional values

  - by MarkPearl

  I recently had the experience of being involved in a “test” scrum implementation in a large organization that was used to a traditional project management approach. Here are some lessons that I learnt from it. Don’t let the Project Manager be the Product Owner First lesson learnt is to identify the correct product owner – in this instance the product manager assumed the role of the product owner which was a mistake. The product owner is the one who has the most to loose if the project fails. With a methodology that advocates removing the role of the project manager from the process then it is not in the interests of the person who is employed as a project manager to be the product owner – in fact they have the most to gain should the project fail. Know the time commitments of team members to the Project Second lesson learnt is to get a firm time commitment of the members on a team for the sprint and to hold them to it. In this project instance many of the issues we faced were with team members having to double up on supporting existing projects/systems and the scrum project. In many situations they just didn’t get round to doing any work on the scrum project for several days while they tried to meet other commitments. Initially this was not made transparent to the team – in stand up team members would say that had done some work but would be very vague on how much time they had actually spent using the blackhole of their other legacy projects as an excuse – putting up a time burn down chart made time allocations transparent and easy to hold the team to. In addition, how can you plan for a sprint without knowing the actual time available of the members – when I mean actual time, the exercise of getting them to go through all their appointments and lunch times and breaks and removing them from their time commitment helps get you to a realistic time that they can dedicate. Make sure you meet your minimum team sizes In a recent post I wrote about the difference between a partnership and a team. If you are going to do scrum in a large organization make sure you have a minimum team size of at least 3 developers. My experience with larger organizations is that people have a tendency to be sick more, take more leave and generally not be around – if you have a team size of two it is so easy to loose momentum on the project – the more people you have in the team (up to about 9) the more the momentum the project will have when people are not around. Swapping from one methodology to another can seem as waste to the customer It sounds bad, but most customers don’t care what methodology you use. Often they have bought into the “big plan upfront”. If you can, avoid taking a project on midstream from a traditional approach unless the customer has not bought into the process – with this particular project they had a detailed upfront planning breakaway with the customer using the traditional approach and then before the project started we moved onto a scrum implementation – this seemed as waste to the customer. We should have managed the customers expectation properly. Don’t play the role of the scrum master if you can’t be the scrum master With this particular implementation I was the “scrum master”. But all I did was go through the process of the formal meetings of scrum – I attended stand up, retrospectives and planning – but I was not hands on the ground. I was not performing the most important role of removing blockages – and by the end of the project there were a number of blockages “cropping up”. What could have been a better approach was to take someone on the team and train them to be the scrum master and be present to coach them. Alternatively actually be on the team on a fulltime basis and be the scrum master. By just going through the meetings of scrum didn’t mean we were doing scrum. So we failed with this one, if you fail look at it from an agile perspective As this particular project drew to a close and it became more and more apparent that it was not going to succeed the failure of it became depressing. Emotions were expressed by various people on the team that we not encouraging and enforced the failure. Embracing the failure and looking at it for what it is instead of taking it as the end of the world can change how you grow from the experience. Acknowledging that it failed and then focussing on learning from why and how to avoid the failure in the future can change how you feel emotionally about the team, the project and the organization.

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• Getting Started with ADF Mobile Sample Apps

  - by Denis T

  Getting Started with ADF Mobile Sample Apps   Installation Steps Install JDeveloper 11.1.2.3.0 from Oracle Technology Network After installing JDeveloper, go to Help menu and select "Check For Updates" and find the ADF Mobile extension and install this. It will require you restart JDeveloper For iOS development, be on a Mac and have Xcode installed. (Currently only Xcode 4.4 is officially supported. Xcode 4.5 support is coming soon) For Android development, have the Android SDK installed. In the JDeveloper Tools menu, select "Preferences". In the Preferences dialog, select ADF Mobile. You can expand it to select configure your Platform preferences for things like the location of Xcode and the Android SDK. In your /jdeveloper/jdev/extensions/oracle.adf.mobile/Samples folder you will find a PublicSamples.zip. Unzip this into the Samples folder so you have all the projects ready to go. Open each of the sample application's .JWS file to open the corresponding workspace. Then from the "Application" menu, select "Deploy" and then select the deployment profile for the platform you wish to deploy to. Try deploying to the simulator/emulator on each platform first because it won't require signing. Note: If you wish to deploy to the Android emulator, it must be running before you start the deployment.   Sample Application Details   Recommended Order of Use Application Name Description 1 HelloWorld The "hello world" application for ADF Mobile, which demonstrates the basic structure of the framework. This basic application has a single application feature that is implemented with a local HTML file. Use this application to ascertain that the development environment is set up correctly to compile and deploy an application. See also Section 4.2.2, "What Happens When You Create an ADF Mobile Application." 2 CompGallery This application is meant to be a runtime application and not necessarily to review the code, though that is available. It serves as an introduction to the ADF Mobile AMX UI components by demonstrating all of these components. Using this application, you can change the attributes of these components at runtime and see the effects of those changes in real time without recompiling and redeploying the application after each change. See generally Chapter 8, "Creating ADF Mobile AMX User Interface." 3 LayoutDemo This application demonstrates the user interface layout and shows how to create the various list and button styles that are commonly used in mobile applications. It also demonstrates how to create the action sheet style of a popup component and how to use various chart and gauge components. See Section 8.3, "Creating and Using UI Components" and Section 8.5, "Providing Data Visualization." Note: This application must be opened from the Samples directory or the Default springboard option must be cleared in the Applications page of the adfmf-application.xml overview editor, then selected again. 4 JavaDemo This application demonstrates how to bind the user interface to Java beans. It also demonstrates how to invoke EL bindings from the Java layer using the supplied utility classes. See also Section 8.10, "Using Event Listeners" and Section 9.2, "Understanding EL Support." 5 Navigation This application demonstrates the various navigation techniques in ADF Mobile, including bounded task flows and routers. It also demonstrates the various page transitions. See also Section 7.2, "Creating Task Flows." Note: This application must be opened from the Samples directory or the Default springboard option must be cleared in the Applications page of the adfmf-application.xml overview editor, then selected again. 6 LifecycleEvents This application implements lifecycle event handlers on the ADF Mobile application itself and its embedded application features. This application shows you where to insert code to enable the applications to perform their own logic at certain points in the lifecycle. See also Section 5.6, "About Lifecycle Event Listeners." Note: iOS, the LifecycleEvents sample application logs data to the Console application, located at Applications-Utilities-Console application. 7 DeviceDemo This application shows you how to use the DeviceFeatures data control to expose such device features as geolocation, e-mail, SMS, and contacts, as well as how to query the device for its properties. See also Section 9.5, "Using the DeviceFeatures Data Control." Note: You must also run this application on an actual device because SMS and some of the device properties do not function on an iOS simulator or Android emulator. 8 GestureDemo This application demonstrates how gestures can be implemented and used in ADF Mobile applications. See also Section 8.4, "Enabling Gestures." 9 StockTracker This application demonstrates how data change events use Java to enable data changes to be reflected in the user interface. It also has a variety of layout use cases, gestures and basic mobile patterns. See also Section 9.7, "Data Change Events."

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• WPF TabItem Custom ContentTemplate

  - by lloydsparkes

  I have been strugging with this for a while, it would have been simple to do in WindowForms. I am making a IRC Client, there will be a number of Tabs one for each channel connect to. Each Tab needs to show a number of things, UserList, MessageHistory, Topic. In WindowForms i would just have inherited from TabItem, added some Custom Properties, and Controls, and done. In WPF i am having some slight issues with working out how to do it. I have tried many ways of doing it, and below is my current method, but i cannot get the TextBox to bind to the Topic Property. <Style TargetType="{x:Type t:IRCTabItem}" BasedOn="{StaticResource {x:Type TabItem}}" > <Setter Property="ContentTemplate"> <Setter.Value> <DataTemplate> <Grid> <Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <ColumnDefinition Width="540" /> <ColumnDefinition /> </Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <StackPanel Grid.Column="0"> <TextBox Text="{Binding Topic, RelativeSource={RelativeSource AncestorType={x:Type t:IRCTabItem}}}" /> </StackPanel> </Grid> </DataTemplate> </Setter.Value> </Setter> </Style> And the Codebehind public class IRCTabItem : TabItem { static IRCTabItem() { //This OverrideMetadata call tells the system that this element wants to provide a style that is different than its base class. //This style is defined in themes\generic.xaml //DefaultStyleKeyProperty.OverrideMetadata(typeof(IRCTabItem), // new FrameworkPropertyMetadata(typeof(IRCTabItem))); } public static readonly RoutedEvent CloseTabEvent = EventManager.RegisterRoutedEvent("CloseTab", RoutingStrategy.Bubble, typeof(RoutedEventHandler), typeof(IRCTabItem)); public event RoutedEventHandler CloseTab { add { AddHandler(CloseTabEvent, value); } remove { RemoveHandler(CloseTabEvent, value); } } public override void OnApplyTemplate() { base.OnApplyTemplate(); Button closeButton = base.GetTemplateChild("PART_Close") as Button; if (closeButton != null) closeButton.Click += new System.Windows.RoutedEventHandler(closeButton_Click); } void closeButton_Click(object sender, System.Windows.RoutedEventArgs e) { this.RaiseEvent(new RoutedEventArgs(CloseTabEvent, this)); } public bool Closeable { get; set; } public static readonly DependencyProperty CloseableProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("Closeable", typeof(bool), typeof(IRCTabItem), new FrameworkPropertyMetadata(true, FrameworkPropertyMetadataOptions.BindsTwoWayByDefault)); public List<String> UserList { get; set; } public static readonly DependencyProperty UserListProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("UserList", typeof(List<String>), typeof(IRCTabItem), new FrameworkPropertyMetadata(new List<String>(), FrameworkPropertyMetadataOptions.BindsTwoWayByDefault)); public String Topic { get; set; } public static readonly DependencyProperty TopicProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("Topic", typeof(String), typeof(IRCTabItem), new FrameworkPropertyMetadata("Not Connected", FrameworkPropertyMetadataOptions.BindsTwoWayByDefault)); public bool HasAlerts { get; set; } public static readonly DependencyProperty HasAlertsProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("HasAlerts", typeof(bool), typeof(IRCTabItem), new FrameworkPropertyMetadata(false, FrameworkPropertyMetadataOptions.BindsTwoWayByDefault)); } So my questions are: Am i doing it the right way (best practices)? If so how can i bind DataTemplate to Properties? If not so, what is the correct way of achieve what i am trying to achieve?

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• Java thread dump where main thread has no call stack? (jsvc)

  - by dwhsix

  We have a java process running as a daemon (under jsvc). Every several days it just stops doing any work; output to the logfile stops (it is pretty verbose, on 5-minute intervals) and it consumes no CPU or IO. There are no exceptions logged in the logfile nor in syserr or sysout. The last log statement is just prior to a db commit being done, but there is no open connection on the db server (MySQL) and reviewing the code, there should always be additional log output after that, even if it had encountered an exception that was going to bubble up. The most curious thing I find is that in the thread dump (included below), there's no thread in our code at all, and the main thread seems to have no context whatsoever: "main" prio=10 tid=0x0000000000614000 nid=0x445d runnable [0x0000000000000000] java.lang.Thread.State: RUNNABLE As noted earlier, this is a daemon process running using jsvc, but I don't know if that has anything to do with it (I can restructure the code to also allow running it directly, to test). Any suggestions on what might be happening here? Thanks... dwh Full thread dump: Full thread dump Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (14.2-b01 mixed mode): "MySQL Statement Cancellation Timer" daemon prio=10 tid=0x00002aaaf81b8800 nid=0x447b in Object.wait() [0x00002aaaf6a22000] java.lang.Thread.State: WAITING (on object monitor) at java.lang.Object.wait(Native Method) - waiting on <0x00002aaab5556d50> (a java.util.TaskQueue) at java.lang.Object.wait(Object.java:485) at java.util.TimerThread.mainLoop(Timer.java:483) - locked <0x00002aaab5556d50> (a java.util.TaskQueue) at java.util.TimerThread.run(Timer.java:462) "Low Memory Detector" daemon prio=10 tid=0x00000000006a4000 nid=0x4479 runnable [0x0000000000000000] java.lang.Thread.State: RUNNABLE "CompilerThread1" daemon prio=10 tid=0x00000000006a1000 nid=0x4477 waiting on condition [0x0000000000000000] java.lang.Thread.State: RUNNABLE "CompilerThread0" daemon prio=10 tid=0x000000000069d000 nid=0x4476 waiting on condition [0x0000000000000000] java.lang.Thread.State: RUNNABLE "Signal Dispatcher" daemon prio=10 tid=0x000000000069b000 nid=0x4465 waiting on condition [0x0000000000000000] java.lang.Thread.State: RUNNABLE "Finalizer" daemon prio=10 tid=0x0000000000678800 nid=0x4464 in Object.wait() [0x00002aaaf61d6000] java.lang.Thread.State: WAITING (on object monitor) at java.lang.Object.wait(Native Method) - waiting on <0x00002aaab54a1cb8> (a java.lang.ref.ReferenceQueue$Lock) at java.lang.ref.ReferenceQueue.remove(ReferenceQueue.java:118) - locked <0x00002aaab54a1cb8> (a java.lang.ref.ReferenceQueue$Lock) at java.lang.ref.ReferenceQueue.remove(ReferenceQueue.java:134) at java.lang.ref.Finalizer$FinalizerThread.run(Finalizer.java:159) "Reference Handler" daemon prio=10 tid=0x0000000000676800 nid=0x4463 in Object.wait() [0x00002aaaf60d5000] java.lang.Thread.State: WAITING (on object monitor) at java.lang.Object.wait(Native Method) - waiting on <0x00002aaab54a1cf0> (a java.lang.ref.Reference$Lock) at java.lang.Object.wait(Object.java:485) at java.lang.ref.Reference$ReferenceHandler.run(Reference.java:116) - locked <0x00002aaab54a1cf0> (a java.lang.ref.Reference$Lock) "main" prio=10 tid=0x0000000000614000 nid=0x445d runnable [0x0000000000000000] java.lang.Thread.State: RUNNABLE "VM Thread" prio=10 tid=0x0000000000670000 nid=0x4462 runnable "GC task thread#0 (ParallelGC)" prio=10 tid=0x000000000061e000 nid=0x445e runnable "GC task thread#1 (ParallelGC)" prio=10 tid=0x0000000000620000 nid=0x445f runnable "GC task thread#2 (ParallelGC)" prio=10 tid=0x0000000000622000 nid=0x4460 runnable "GC task thread#3 (ParallelGC)" prio=10 tid=0x0000000000623800 nid=0x4461 runnable "VM Periodic Task Thread" prio=10 tid=0x00000000006a6800 nid=0x447a waiting on condition JNI global references: 797 Heap PSYoungGen total 162944K, used 48388K [0x00002aaadff40000, 0x00002aaaf2ab0000, 0x00002aaaf5490000) eden space 102784K, 47% used [0x00002aaadff40000,0x00002aaae2e81170,0x00002aaae63a0000) from space 60160K, 0% used [0x00002aaaeb850000,0x00002aaaeb850000,0x00002aaaef310000) to space 86720K, 0% used [0x00002aaae63a0000,0x00002aaae63a0000,0x00002aaaeb850000) PSOldGen total 699072K, used 699072K [0x00002aaab5490000, 0x00002aaadff40000, 0x00002aaadff40000) object space 699072K, 100% used [0x00002aaab5490000,0x00002aaadff40000,0x00002aaadff40000) PSPermGen total 21248K, used 9252K [0x00002aaab0090000, 0x00002aaab1550000, 0x00002aaab5490000) object space 21248K, 43% used [0x00002aaab0090000,0x00002aaab09993e8,0x00002aaab1550000)

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• Design Question - how do you break the dependency between classes using an interface?

  - by Seth Spearman

  Hello, I apologize in advance but this will be a long question. I'm stuck. I am trying to learn unit testing, C#, and design patterns - all at once. (Maybe that's my problem.) As such I am reading the Art of Unit Testing (Osherove), and Clean Code (Martin), and Head First Design Patterns (O'Reilly). I am just now beginning to understand delegates and events (which you would see if you were to troll my SO questions of recent). I still don't quite get lambdas. To contextualize all of this I have given myself a learning project I am calling goAlarms. I have an Alarm class with members you'd expect (NextAlarmTime, Name, AlarmGroup, Event Trigger etc.) I wanted the "Timer" of the alarm to be extensible so I created an IAlarmScheduler interface as follows... public interface AlarmScheduler { Dictionary<string,Alarm> AlarmList { get; } void Startup(); void Shutdown(); void AddTrigger(string triggerName, string groupName, Alarm alarm); void RemoveTrigger(string triggerName); void PauseTrigger(string triggerName); void ResumeTrigger(string triggerName); void PauseTriggerGroup(string groupName); void ResumeTriggerGroup(string groupName); void SetSnoozeTrigger(string triggerName, int duration); void SetNextOccurrence (string triggerName, DateTime nextOccurrence); } This IAlarmScheduler interface define a component that will RAISE an alarm (Trigger) which will bubble up to my Alarm class and raise the Trigger Event of the alarm itself. It is essentially the "Timer" component. I have found that the Quartz.net component is perfectly suited for this so I have created a QuartzAlarmScheduler class which implements IAlarmScheduler. All that is fine. My problem is that the Alarm class is abstract and I want to create a lot of different KINDS of alarm. For example, I already have a Heartbeat alarm (triggered every (int) interval of minutes), AppointmentAlarm (triggered on set date and time), Daily Alarm (triggered every day at X) and perhaps others. And Quartz.NET is perfectly suited to handle this. My problem is a design problem. I want to be able to instantiate an alarm of any kind without my Alarm class (or any derived classes) knowing anything about Quartz. The problem is that Quartz has awesome factories that return just the right setup for the Triggers that will be needed by my Alarm classes. So, for example, I can get a Quartz trigger by using TriggerUtils.MakeMinutelyTrigger to create a trigger for the heartbeat alarm described above. Or TriggerUtils.MakeDailyTrigger for the daily alarm. I guess I could sum it up this way. Indirectly or directly I want my alarm classes to be able to consume the TriggerUtils.Make* classes without knowing anything about them. I know that is a contradiction, but that is why I am asking the question. I thought about putting a delegate field into the alarm which would be assigned one of these Make method but by doing that I am creating a hard dependency between alarm and Quartz which I want to avoid for both unit testing purposes and design purposes. I thought of using a switch for the type in QuartzAlarmScheduler per here but I know it is bad design and I am trying to learn good design. If I may editorialize a bit. I've decided that coding (predefined) classes is easy. Design is HARD...in fact, really hard and I am really fighting feeling stupid right now. I guess I want to know if you really smart people took a while to really understand and master this stuff or should I feel stupid (as I do) because I haven't grasped it better in the couple of weeks/months I have been studying. You guys are awesome and thanks in advance for your answers. Seth

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• Special characters from MySQL database (e.g. curly apostrophes) are mangling my XML

  - by Toph

  I have a MySQL database of newspaper articles. There's a volume table, an issue table, and an article table. I have a PHP file that generates a property list that is then pulled in and read by an iPhone app. The plist holds each article as a dictionary inside each issue, and each issue as a dictionary inside each volume. The plist doesn't actually hold the whole article -- just a title and URL. Some article titles contain special characters, like curly apostrophes. Looking at the generated XML plist, whenever it hits a special character, it unpredictably gobbles up a whole bunch of text, leaving the XML mangled and unreadable. (...in Chrome, anyway, and I'm guessing on the iPhone. Firefox actually handles it pretty well, showing a white ? in a black diamond in place of any special characters and not gobbling anything.) Example well-formed plist snippet: <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"> <plist version="1.0"> <dict> <key>Rows</key> <array> <dict> <key>Title</key> <string>Vol. 133 (2003-2004)</string> <key>Children</key> <array> <dict> <key>Title</key> <string>No. 18 (Apr 2, 2004)</string> <key>Children</key> <array> <dict> <key>Title</key> <string>Basketball concludes historic season</string> <key>URL</key> <string>http://orient.bowdoin.edu/orient/article_iphone.php?date=2004-04-02&amp;section=1&amp;id=1</string> </dict> <!-- ... --> </array> </dict> </array> </dict> </array> </dict> </plist> Example of what happens when it hits a curly apostrophe: This is from Chrome. This time it ate 5,998 characters, by MS Word's count, skipping down to midway through the opening the title of a pizza story; if I reload it'll behave differently, eating some other amount. The proper title is: Singer-songwriter Farrell ’05 finds success beyond the bubble <dict> <key>Title</key> <string>Singer-songwriter Farrell ing>Students embrace free pizza, College objects to solicitation</string> <key>URL</key> <string>http://orient.bowdoin.edu/orient/article_iphone.php?date=2009-09-18&amp;section=1&amp;id=9</string> </dict> In MySQL that title is stored as (in binary): 53 69 6E 67 |65 72 2D 73 |6F 6E 67 77 |72 69 74 65 72 20 46 61 |72 72 65 6C |6C 20 C2 92 |30 35 20 66 69 6E 64 73 |20 73 75 63 |63 65 73 73 |20 62 65 79 6F 6E 64 20 |74 68 65 20 |62 75 62 62 |6C Any ideas how I can encode/decode things properly? If not, any idea how I can get around the problem some other way? I don't have a clue what I'm talking about, haha; let me know if there's any way I can help you help me. :) And many thanks!

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, March 15, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, March 15, 2010New ProjectsAT Accounts: AT Accounts helps developers to intergrate accounting functionality in their applications. It has both the WPF userinterface and SilverlightChild page list(for dnn4/5): A free module which can display sub pages list for a selected tab. It is template based and support options like Recursive/Child tab prefix/link...dashCommerce: dashCommerce is the leading ASP.NET e-commerce platform.Fire Utilities: My Development Utiltites and base classes: New Zealand Bank Account ValidatorFlyCatch (Bugtracking System): A simple webbased Bugtracking System.fracback: Fractal feedback concepts, based on video feedbackftc3650: code for ftc 3650Google AJAX Search Services for jQuery: This plug-in encapsulates part of the Google AJAX Search API to streamline the process of Google Search integration.Little Black Book DB: This is the Database for the following Projects: SQL Azure PHP Connection SQL Azure Ruby Connection SQL Azure Python Connection SQL Azure .NE...MediaCommMVC: MediaCommMVC is a community platform focusing on photos, videos and discussions. It's based on ASP.NET MVC and uses (fluent) nhibernate, jquery an...Miracle OS: The Miracle OS is an OS from Fox. We work on it, but it isn't ready. Do you want help us? Please send a mail to victor@fox.fi.stMultiwfn: (1)Plotting various graph(filled color/contour/relief map...) (2)Generate Cube file (3)Manipulate & analyze wavefunction Supportting lots of proper...MySpace DataRelay: Data Relay is the foundation of MySpace's middle tier. At its heart, it is a messaging system for relaying information both between clients and ser...NinjaCMS: Ninja CMS is an asp.net based content management system which provides a designer friendly, developer friendly interface to work with. It's flexibl...open gaze and mouse analyzer: Ogama allows recording and analyzing eye- and mouse-tracking data from slideshow eyetracking experiments in parallel. It´s developed in C#.NET and ...Özkasoft.Net | E-Commerce: Özkasoft's E-Commerce ProjectProfiCV: Profi CVpyTarget: Implement a powerful iscsi target in python, and easily use under most popular systems. It also includes the following features: multi-target, mult...SharePoint Platform Extensions: SharePoint Platform Extensions by Espora. Sorting Algorithm Visualization: Sorting Algorithm Visualization Displays Bead Sort, Binary Tree Sort, Bubble Sort, Bucket Sort, Cocktail Sort, Counting Sort, Gnome Sort, In Place ...Specify: A framework for creating executable specifications in .NET. Spell Corrector: A spell corrector that uses Bayes algorithm and BK (Burkhard-Keller) tree.SQL Azure Ruby Connection: This is a demo to show how to connect to SQL Azure with Ruby on Rails.uManage - AD Self-Service Portal: uManage is an Active Directory Self-Service Portal as well as Help Desk web application designed for use on intranet systems. It allows users to u...Winforms Rounded Group Box Control: Rounded Group Box - A Grouping control with Rounded Corners, Gradients, and Drop ShadowWizard Engine: Host application agnostic wizard engine platform, that allows you to fluently define complex conditional flows and provides means for execution of ...WS-Transfer based File Upload: WS-Transer based upload of large files in multiple partsXAMLStylePad: XAMLStylePad - is a simple in use styles and templates XAML-editor. It designed for comfortable coding in XAML with real-time preview result on aut...Your Twitt Engine: Ovo je aplikacija za sve ljude koji su na svom radnom mjestu pod prismotrom poslodavca ili sefa, koji kontroliraju njihov monitor. Tako uz ovu apl...New ReleasesAmiBroker Plug-ins with C#. A non official AmiBroker Plug-in SDK: AniBroker Plug-in SDK v0.0.5: Removed dependency on .NET 4.0, now it works fine with .NET 2.0BeerMath.net: 0.1: Version 0.1Initial set of calculations supported: IBUs Color ABV/ABWChild page list(for dnn4/5): Child Page List 2.6: Source code is also include in module package.dashCommerce: dashCommerce Releases: You can download both Source and WebReady packages at http://www.dashcommerce.org. If you wish to submit patches, then use the Source Code tab her...ExcelDna: ExcelDna Version 0.23: ExcelDna Version 0.23 2010/03/14 - Packing and other features This release adds a number of features to ExcelDna: Add ExplicitExports attribute to ...Family Tree Analyzer: Version 1.0.7.1: Version 1.0.7.0 Update Census form to show family totals Fix England and Wales Lost Cousins reports to be England OR Wales Problems with Gedcom in...Foursquare BlogEngine Widget: foursquare widget for BlogEngine.NET Version 0.2: To see the changes which have been made, visit http://philippkueng.ch/post/Foursquare-BlogEngineNET-Widget-Version-02.aspx For installation instruc...GLB Virtual Player Builder: 0.4.0 Official Archetypes Release: Updated for new archetypes. The builder still includes the old player formats, and you can still import your old players' builds. Please PM me an...Home Access Plus+: v3.1.4.0: Version 3.1.3.1 Release Change Log: Added Breadcrumbs to My Computer File Changes: ~/bin/CHS Extranet.dll ~/bin/CHS Extranet.pdb ~/images/arro...Little Black Book DB: Little Black Book R1: This is the first release of the Little black book presentation I presented at Confoo. I decided to package the Database along with the Windows Az...mite.net - .NET API for mite: Version 1.2.1: Added Support for budget type Modified TimerMapper to return timers Fixed Encoding issue in xml conversionMultiwfn: multiwfn1.0: multiwfn1.0Multiwfn: multiwfn1.0_source: multiwfn1.0_sourceMultiwfn: multiwfn1.1: multiwfn1.1Multiwfn: multiwfn1.1_source: multiwfn1.1_sourceMultiwfn: multiwfn1.2: 1.2 2010-FEB-9 *加入了对10f型轨道的支持。 *新支持非限制性Post-HF波函数用以计算自旋密度。 *新增加直接读入高斯03/09的fch文件的支持，可以观看NBO轨道，详见readme实例4.10。 *绘制平面图时允许通过输入三个点坐标定义平面，允许自定义平面的原点与平移向...Multiwfn: multiwfn1.2_source: Include all the file that needed by compilation in CVF6.5PowerShell Community Extensions: 2.0 Beta 2: Release NotesThis is a pretty close to final release. We have eliminated all of the names that ran afound of the module loading mechanism which me...pyTarget: pyTarget.binary-for-windows-x86.rar: pyTarget.binary-for-windows-x86.rarpyTarget: pyTarget.src.tar.bz2: pyTarget.src.tar.bz2RedBulb for XNA Framework: RedBulbConsole (Console, Menu and TrackHUD Sample): http://bayimg.com/image/jalhmaacd.jpgScrum Sprint Monitor: 1.0.0.45262 (.NET 4.0 RC): Tested against TFS 2010 RC. For the .NET 3.5 SP1 platform, use the .NET 3.5 SP1 download. What is new in this release? Major performance increase ...sELedit: sELedit v1.1: Removed: Clone and Delete Button Added: Context Menu to Item List Added: Clone and Delete button to Context Menu Added: Export / Import Item ...Sorting Algorithm Visualization: Beta 1: Sorting Algorithm VisualizationSpecify: Version 1.0: Version 1.0Spell Corrector: Spell Corrector 0.1: A basic version that supports basic functionality.Spell Corrector: Spell Corrector 0.1 Source Code: Source code of version 0.1Spiral Architecture Driven Development (SADD): SADD v.0.9: Pre-final release with the NEW materials now all in English ! The Final release is coming soon. After guest column for SADD publication in MS Ar...Spiral Architecture Driven Development (SADD) for Russian: SADD v.0.9: Pre-final release with the NEW materials now all in English ! The Final release is coming soon. After guest column for SADD publication in MS Ar...SQL Azure Ruby Connection: Little Black Book Ruby R1: This is the Ruby Demo that I demostrated at Confoo. Special Thanks to Tony Thompson for putting this demo together. To check out Tony's Portfolio ...The Scrum Factory: The Scrum Factory Server - V1a: This is the newest version of the server. Some minor bugs from version v1 were fixed, and some slighted changed were made some database views.twNowplaying: twNowplaying 1.0.0.4: Please note that the user has to press the Twitter logo to log in the first time the application is started.uManage - AD Self-Service Portal: uManage - v1.0 (.NET 4.0 RC): Initial Release of uManage. NOTE: Designed for ASP.NET and .NET 4.0 RC ONLY! This is the initial release of uManage and covers the first phase of ...Virtu: Virtu 0.8: Source Requirements.NET Framework 3.5 with Service Pack 1 Visual Studio 2008 with Service Pack 1, or Visual C# 2008 Express Edition with Service Pa...Visual Studio DSite: Speech Synthesizer (Text to Speech) in Visual C++: A very simple text to speech program written in visual c 2008.White Tiger: 0.0.4.0: *now you can disable the file security checks *winforms aplications created to manage tablesWinforms Rounded Group Box Control: Release 1.0: To use this control simply add the class to your project and compile it. It will then show up in the projects components section in the toolbox. ...WS-Transfer based File Upload: 0.5: Implements the binary file transfer mechanism onlyXsltDb - DotNetNuke XSLT module: 01.00.89: Super modules configuration names. 16767 - Fixed more bug fixes...Yakiimo3D: DirectX11 Rheinhard Tonemapping Source and Binary: DirectX11 Rheinhard tonemapping source and binary.Your Twitt Engine: test: Slobodno probajte sa vasim twitter korisničkim računomMost Popular ProjectsMetaSharpWBFS ManagerRawrAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitASP.NET Ajax LibraryWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETLiveUpload to FacebookMost Active ProjectsLINQ to TwitterRawrN2 CMSBlogEngine.NETpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibrarySharePoint Team-MailerjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesCaliburn: An Application Framework for WPF and SilverlightFarseer Physics EngineCalcium: A modular application toolset leveraging Prism

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• Letter to Ballmer: Making Better Consumer Devices

  - by andrewbrust

  Last year, I wrote Steve Ballmer an email, and he was kind enough to write me back.  The email contained a scan of a column I wrote praising Microsoft’s BI strategy.  His reply contained three simple words: “Super nice  thanks.” Well, now I’d like to write to Steve again, in an open letter format, and this time the love may be a bit tougher.  But I’m still super earnest. The past two days have been eventful ones for Microsoft: The company announced the departure of company veterans Robbie Bach and J Allard and the market announced Apple is now besting Microsoft in market capitalization. Plus, announcements were made that make it plain that Ballmer will, in effect, be running Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices division himself. With that in mind, I’d like to offer my list of a dozen things I think Microsoft’s CEO should do to improve that division’s offerings and, hopefully, its bottom line. So here goes:   1. On Windows Phone 7, Stay the Course The press is teeming with headlines and reader comments proclaiming the death-before-arrival of Windows Phone 7.  That’s plain silly.  You’ve got the makings of a great and unique SmartPhone platform, and you’re the only company (even considering RIM) that can offer full fidelity Exchange integration, not to mention implementing Office on the device.  Let the existing team finish this puppy and ship it. And then have them pump out a few updates, over-the-air, quickly.  Show them that Google Android’s not the only product that can do good, rapid dot releases. And another thing: make sure your OEMs’ devices have flawless touch screens.  If they don’t, then you shouldn’t certify them for delivery to customers.  Period. Oh, and kill the Kin, quietly.  It was DOA, and you know it.   2. Move Media Center to the Xbox Platform Media Center is, at its core, a good product.  But delivering a media distribution and DVR platform on a sophisticated PC operating system like Windows 7 just creates too many moving parts.  Xbox already functions as the best Media Center extender device – it should actually be the hub as well. Media Center is mostly based on .NET code – and XNA is a .NET environment for Xbox – find a way to bridge that small gap and make Media Center a joy to work with instead of a frustration.  Beating Apple TV out of this sub-market is the lowest hanging fruit on the tree (goofy pun, but it’s true).   3. Integrate Media Center with Mediaroom, or Kill the Latter You have two media products with almost identical names.  One is for standalone DVRs and the other is for IPTV cable set tops with DVR capabilities.  Can we merge these please?  My previous request of putting Media Center on Xbox would seem to tie into this nicely, since you’ve announced plans to do that with Mediaroom already.   4. Fix the Red Ring of Death People love the Xbox, but they really don’t love sending their consoles back every 18-24 months, when they get a bunch of red lights flashing on power up.  You’ve handled this defect about as gracefully as possible, but it’s been around for a long time now and it doesn’t seem to be fixed yet.  You can do better.  In fact, you must do better, or you insult your customers.   5. Add Blu Ray to Xbox I know, streaming movies are the future; physical media is legacy technology.  So if that’s true, why did you back HD DVD so hard?  You know why: for now, the film studios won’t allow a large selection of new release, HD, surround sound content be distributed on any medium other than Blu Ray or cable pay per view/on-demand.  Don’t you want home theater buffs to see the Xbox as a fantastic device for their rigs?  Don’t you want to put PlayStation 3 out of its misery?  And if you follow my suggestions above (move Media Center to the Xbox and fix the Red Ring problem), you’d have it all sewn up.  Do I think Blu Ray functionality will move a lot of units?  No.  Do I think that it would move more units with desperately needed influential home theater consumers?  You bet.  And you might sell more ZunePass subscriptions in the process. But while you’re at it, make the fan quieter, please.   6. Make More of Windows Home Server Home Server is a fantastic product.  And for reasons unknown to me, it seems like you’re letting it languish.  Development of the add-in ecosystem seems underfunded.  WHS’ unparalleled ease of use and reliability for home PC backup (and emergency restores) goes unsung.  Product cycles are slow.  Support for your OEMs, who are doing great work, especially in the green space with Atom CPUs, seems lacking.  You’ve married a trophy girl and you keep her cloistered at home!  That’s cruel, unusual and, um, incredibly ill-advised.  Make use of this ace card, and while you’re at it, give it real integration with Media Center.  The integration thus far proof-of-concept quality.  You should go way past that – both products will benefit immeasurably.   7. Set Up a Partner Platform for Custom Installers There’s a whole sub-industry of companies that install, integrate and configure home theater, security and connected home products.  They have an industry group. They are influential in the high-end of the consumer electronics industry, and so are their customers.  They love Media Center and they love Windows Home Server.  But I have talked to several of them at the Consumer Electronics Show and they tell me you don’t love them.  They find it very difficult to do business with Microsoft, even though they want nothing more than to sell and evangelize your platform.  This is a travesty.  Please fix it.  Get Allison Watson and the Microsoft Partner Network on board and have her hire someone who knows how to run a channel program for consumer electronics companies.  Problem solved.  Markets expanded.   8. Make Your Own Hardware In other areas, I know you love your partners.  I help run one, so I appreciate that.  But when it came to Xbox and Zune you built them it yourself (albeit on a contract basis, which is fine).  Windows Phone 7 has a chance to work as an OEM play, but it would work better if you produced the devices.  At least consider building a reference device that sells alongside your OEMs’ offerings.  That’s what Google did with the Nexxus One.  And while that phone was not itself a big seller, it catalyzed two wonderful things : (1) a quality bar was set and (2) partners exceeded it.  Before the Nexxus One, the best Android handset out there was the Motorola Droid. The Nexxus One was better, and the HTC Droid Incredible and Evo 4G are now even better than Google’s phone, which is why Verizon and Sprint decided not to carry it.  Imagine if all Windows Phone 6.x devices were on par with the HTC HD2.  I tend to believe you’d have a lot bigger market share than you do now.   9. Continue with Your Retail Initiative From what I hear, it sounds like it’s going well.  And this goes right along with making your own hardware.  When you build it, they will come.  And then it makes the likes of Best Buy and Staples do better.   10. Make an Acquisition (or Two) TiVo and/or Moxi look ripe for the picking.  With their ability to build stuff people love and your ability to run a business, you might just have something.  But do a better job than you did when you bought Danger.  Buy the ideas, not just the customers, eh?   11. Make Beautiful Stuff You’ve heard this one before, I know.  But I have some head-shrinking advice on this one.  You know that Apple obsesses over its industrial design.  You know that appeals to consumers.  But it seems you think doing so is Apple’s game exclusively and so you shouldn’t even try.  Bull dinky.  Come to New York and visit the Museum of Modern Art’s Architecture and Design gallery.  You’ll see that lots of companies and product categories have had very high design value well before Apple existed.  You can do this, and the Zune HD was a great start.  Now run with that.  Find those negative voices in your head that are telling you that you can’t and shut them up.  For good.   12. Burst the Bubble Some of the products you’ve built seem like they were conceived in a bizarro world.  That would appear to be the result of groupthink.  You must do better.  And there’s lots of people willing to advise you.  This includes just about everyone in the Regional Director program, and probably a bunch of MVPs.  Heck, I bet the guys at Engadget could help out too.  Imagine if you let them see the Kin before it shipped.  Talk to high-end gear consumers.  Talk to Best Buy and CostCo customers too.   Signing Off I hope this was of value to you.  As I wrote this I kept telling myself how obvious, even trite, some of these pieces of advice were and then, because of that, doubting they’d really help.  But I decided that they must not be obvious to Microsoft.  Sometimes when you get wrapped up in stuff, it’s hard to clear your head.  I think my head’s pretty clear here though (I’m wrapped up in other stuff), so maybe my perspective can help.  If not, well, then, I guess they all can’t be super nice.

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• Are your personal insecurities screwing up your internal communications?

  - by Lucy Boyes

  I do some internal comms as part of my job. Quite a lot of it involves talking to people about stuff. I’m spending the next couple of weeks talking to lots of people about internal comms itself, because we haven’t done a lot of audience/user feedback gathering, and it turns out that if you talk to people about how they feel and what they think, you get some pretty interesting insights (and an idea of what to do next that isn’t just based on guesswork and generalising from self). Three things keep coming up from talking to people about what we suck at  in terms of internal comms. And, as far as I can tell, they’re all examples where personal insecurity on the part of the person doing the communicating makes the experience much worse for the people on the receiving end. 1. Spending time telling people how you’re going to do something, not what you’re doing and why Imagine you’ve got to give an update to a lot of people who don’t work in your area or department but do have an interest in what you’re doing (either because they want to know because they’re curious or because they need to know because it’s going to affect their work too). You don’t want to look bad at your job. You want to make them think you’ve got it covered – ideally because you do*. And you want to reassure them that there’s lots of exciting work going on in your area to make [insert thing of choice] happen to [insert thing of choice] so that [insert group of people] will be happy. That’s great! You’re doing a good job and you want to tell people about it. This is good comms stuff right here. However, you’re slightly afraid you might secretly be stupid or lazy or incompetent. And you’re exponentially more afraid that the people you’re talking to might think you’re stupid or lazy or incompetent. Or pointless. Or not-adding-value. Or whatever the thing that’s the worst possible thing to be in your company is. So you open by mentioning all the stuff you’re going to do, spending five minutes or so making sure that everyone knows that you’re DOING lots of STUFF. And the you talk for the rest of the time about HOW you’re going to do the stuff, because that way everyone will know that you’ve thought about this really hard and done tons of planning and had lots of great ideas about process and that you’ve got this one down. That’s the stuff you’ve got to say, right? To prove you’re not fundamentally worthless as a human being? Well, maybe. But probably not. See, the people who need to know how you’re going to do the stuff are the people doing the stuff. And those are the people in your area who you’ve (hopefully-please-for-the-love-of-everything-holy) already talked to in depth about how you’re going to do the thing (because else how could they help do it?). They are the only people who need to know the how**. It’s the difference between strategy and tactics. The people outside of your bubble of stuff-doing need to know the strategy – what it is that you’re doing, why, where you’re going with it, etc. The people on the ground with you need the strategy and the tactics, because else they won’t know how to do the stuff. But the outside people don’t really need the tactics at all. Don’t bother with the how unless your audience needs it. They probably don’t. It might make you feel better about yourself, but it’s much more likely that Bob and Jane are thinking about how long this meeting has gone on for already than how personally impressive and definitely-not-an-idiot you are for knowing how you’re going to do some work. Feeling marginally better about yourself (but, let’s face it, still insecure as heck) is not worth the cost, which in this case is the alienation of your audience. 2. Talking for too long about stuff This is kinda the same problem as the previous problem, only much less specific, and I’ve more or less covered why it’s bad already. Basic motivation: to make people think you’re not an idiot. What you do: talk for a very long time about what you’re doing so as to make it sound like you know what you’re doing and lots about it. What your audience wants: the shortest meaningful update. Some of this is a kill your darlings problem – the stuff you’re doing that seems really nifty to you seems really nifty to you, and thus you want to share it with everyone to show that you’re a smart person who thinks up nifty things to do. The downside to this is that it’s mostly only interesting to you – if other people don’t need to know, they likely also don’t care. Think about how you feel when someone is talking a lot to you about a lot of stuff that they’re doing which is at best tangentially interesting and/or relevant. You’re probably not thinking that they’re really smart and clearly know what they’re doing (unless they’re talking a lot and being really engaging about it, which is not the same as talking a lot). You’re probably thinking about something totally unrelated to the thing they’re talking about. Or the fact that you’re bored. You might even – and this is the opposite of what they’re hoping to achieve by talking a lot about stuff – be thinking they’re kind of an idiot. There’s another huge advantage to paring down what you’re trying to say to the barest possible points – it clarifies your thinking. The lightning talk format, as well as other formats which limit the time and/or number of slides you have to say a thing, are really good for doing this. It’s incredibly likely that your audience in this case (the people who need to know some things about your thing but not all the things about your thing) will get everything they need to know from five minutes of you talking about it, especially if trying to condense ALL THE THINGS into a five-minute talk has helped you get clear in your own mind what you’re doing, what you’re trying to say about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. The bonus of this is that by being clear in your thoughts and in what you say, and in not taking up lots of people’s time to tell them stuff they don’t really need to know, you actually come across as much, much smarter than the person who talks for half an hour or more about things that are semi-relevant at best. 3. Waiting until you’ve got every detail sorted before announcing a big change to the people affected by it This is the worst crime on the list. It’s also human nature. Announcing uncertainty – that something important is going to happen (big reorganisation, product getting canned, etc.) but you’re not quite sure what or when or how yet – is scary. There are risks to it. Uncertainty makes people anxious. It might even paralyse them. You can’t run a business while you’re figuring out what to do if you’ve paralysed everyone with fear over what the future might bring. And you’re scared that they might think you’re not the right person to be in charge of [thing] if you don’t even know what you’re doing with it. Best not to say anything until you know exactly what’s going to happen and you can reassure them all, right? Nope. The people who are going to be affected by whatever it is that you don’t quite know all the details of yet aren’t stupid***. You wouldn’t have hired them if they were. They know something’s up because you’ve got your guilty face on and you keep pulling people into meeting rooms and looking vaguely worried. Here’s the deal: it’s a lot less stressful for everyone (including you) if you’re up front from the beginning. We took this approach during a recent company-wide reorganisation and got really positive feedback. People would much, much rather be told that something is going to happen but you’re not entirely sure what it is yet than have you wait until it’s all fixed up and then fait accompli the heck out of them. They will tell you this themselves if you ask them. And here’s why: by waiting until you know exactly what’s going on to communicate, you remove any agency that the people that the thing is going to happen to might otherwise have had. I know you’re scared that they might get scared – and that’s natural and kind of admirable – but it’s also patronising and infantilising. Ask someone whether they’d rather work on a project which has an openly uncertain future from the beginning, or one where everything’s great until it gets shut down with no forewarning, and very few people are going to tell you they’d prefer the latter. Uncertainty is humanising. It’s you admitting that you don’t have all the answers, which is great, because no one does. It allows you to be consultative – you can actually ask other people what they think and how they feel and what they’d like to do and what they think you should do, and they’ll thank you for it and feel listened to and respected as people and colleagues. Which is a really good reason to start talking to them about what’s going on as soon as you know something’s going on yourself. All of the above assumes you actually care about talking to the people who work with you and for you, and that you’d like to do the right thing by them. If that’s not the case, you can cheerfully disregard the advice here, but if it is, you might want to think about the ways above – and the inevitable countless other ways – that making internal communication about you and not about your audience could actually be doing the people you’re trying to communicate with a huge disservice. So take a deep breath and talk. For five minutes or so. About the important things. Not the other things. As soon as you possibly can. And you’ll be fine.   *Of course you do. You’re good at your job. Don’t worry. **This might not always be true, but it is most of the time. Other people who need to know the how will either be people who you’ve already identified as needing-to-know and thus part of the same set as the people in you’re area you’ve already discussed this with, or else they’ll ask you. But don’t bring this stuff up unless someone asks for it, because most of the people in the audience really don’t care and you’re wasting their time. ***I mean, they might be. But let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they’re not.

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• How to set text in Y-axis, instead of numbers, in a RadChart component from Telerik with Bar-type

  - by radbyx

  Hi, I have made an bar RadChart with "SeriesOrientation="Horizontal"". I have the text showing at the end for each bars, but instead I would like that text to be listet in the y-axis, instead of the 1,2,3.. numbers. It seems like i'm not allow to set any text in the y-axis, is there a property I can set? Here is my code snippes: === .ascx === <asp:UpdatePanel ID="UpdatePanel1" runat="server"> <ContentTemplate> <telerik:RadChart ID="RadChart1" runat="server" Skin="WebBlue" AutoLayout="true" Height="350px" Width="680px" SeriesOrientation="Horizontal"> <Series> <telerik:ChartSeries DataYColumn="UnitPrice" Name="Product Unit Price"> </telerik:ChartSeries> </Series> <PlotArea> <YAxis> <Appearance> <TextAppearance TextProperties-Font="Verdana, 8.25pt, style=Bold" /> </Appearance> </YAxis> <XAxis DataLabelsColumn="TenMostExpensiveProducts"> </XAxis> </PlotArea> <ChartTitle> <TextBlock Text="Ten Most Expensive Products" /> </ChartTitle> </telerik:RadChart> </ContentTemplate> </asp:UpdatePanel> ========================= === .ascx === protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { RadChart1.AutoLayout = false; RadChart1.Legend.Visible = false; // Create a ChartSeries and assign its name and chart type ChartSeries chartSeries = new ChartSeries(); chartSeries.Name = "Name"; chartSeries.Type = ChartSeriesType.Bar; // add new items to the series, // passing a value and a label string chartSeries.AddItem(98, "Product1"); chartSeries.AddItem(95, "Product2"); chartSeries.AddItem(100, "Product3"); chartSeries.AddItem(75, "Product4"); chartSeries.AddItem(1, "Product5"); // add the series to the RadChart Series collection RadChart1.Series.Add(chartSeries); // add the RadChart to the page. // this.Page.Controls.Add(RadChart1); // RadChart1.Series[0].Appearance.LegendDisplayMode = ChartSeriesLegendDisplayMode.Nothing; // RadChart1.Series[0].DataYColumn = "Uptime"; RadChart1.PlotArea.XAxis.DataLabelsColumn = "Name"; RadChart1.PlotArea.XAxis.Appearance.TextAppearance.TextProperties.Font = new System.Drawing.Font("Verdana", 8); RadChart1.BackColor = System.Drawing.Color.White; RadChart1.Height = 350; RadChart1.Width = 570; RadChart1.DataBind(); } I want to have the text: "Product1", "Product2", ect in the y-axis, can anyone help? Thx.

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• Qt vs .NET - plz no n00bs who don't know wtf they're talking about [closed]

  - by Pirate for Profit

  Man in all these Qt vs. .NET discussions 90% these people don't know WTF they're talking about. Trying to get a real comparison chart going before we embark on a major fucking project. And yes I'm drunk, and yes I use cocaine. Event Handling In Qt the event handling system you just emit signals when something cool happens and then catch them in slots, for instance emit valueChanged(int percent, bool something); and void MyCatcherObj::valueChanged(int p, bool ok){} blocking them and disconnecting them when needed, doing it across threads... once you get the hang of it, it just seems a lot more natural and intuitive than the way the .NET event handling is set up (you know, object sender, CustomEventArgs e). And I'm not just talking about syntax, because in the end the .NET delegate crap is the bomb. I'm also talking about in more than just reflection (because, yes, .NET obviously has much stronger reflection capabilities). I'm talking about in the way the system feels to a human being. Qt wins hands down i m o. Basically, the footprints make more sense and you can visualize the project easier without the clunky event handling system. I wish I could it explain it better. The only thing is, I do love some of the ease of C# compared to C++ and .NET's assembly architecture. That is a big bonus for modular projects, which are a PITA to do in C++. Database Ease of Doing Crap Also what about datasets and database manipulations. I think .net wins here but I'm not sure. Threading/Conccurency How do you guys think of the threading? In .NET, all I've ever done is make like a list of master worker threads with locks. I like QConcurrentFramework, you don't worry about locks or anything, and with the ease of the signal slot system across threads it's nice to get notified about the progress of things. Memory Usage Also what do you think of the overall memory usage comparison. Is the .NET garbage collector pretty on the ball and quick compared to the instantaneous nature of native memory management? Or does it just let programs leak up a storm and lag the computer then clean it up when it's about to really lag? However, I am a n00b who doesn't know what I'm talking about, please school me on the subject.

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• Entity Attribute Value Database vs. strict Relational Model Ecommerce question

  - by Dr. Zim

  It is safe to say that the EAV/CR database model is bad. That said, Question: What database model, technique, or pattern should be used to deal with "classes" of attributes describing e-commerce products which can be changed at run time? In a good E-commerce database, you will store classes of options (like TV resolution then have a resolution for each TV, but the next product may not be a TV and not have "TV resolution"). How do you store them, search efficiently, and allow your users to setup product types with variable fields describing their products? If the search engine finds that customers typically search for TVs based on console depth, you could add console depth to your fields, then add a single depth for each tv product type at run time. There is a nice common feature among good e-commerce apps where they show a set of products, then have "drill down" side menus where you can see "TV Resolution" as a header, and the top five most common TV Resolutions for the found set. You click one and it only shows TVs of that resolution, allowing you to further drill down by selecting other categories on the side menu. These options would be the dynamic product attributes added at run time. Further discussion: So long story short, are there any links out on the Internet or model descriptions that could "academically" fix the following setup? I thank Noel Kennedy for suggesting a category table, but the need may be greater than that. I describe it a different way below, trying to highlight the significance. I may need a viewpoint correction to solve the problem, or I may need to go deeper in to the EAV/CR. Love the positive response to the EAV/CR model. My fellow developers all say what Jeffrey Kemp touched on below: "new entities must be modeled and designed by a professional" (taken out of context, read his response below). The problem is: entities add and remove attributes weekly (search keywords dictate future attributes) new entities arrive weekly (products are assembled from parts) old entities go away weekly (archived, less popular, seasonal) The customer wants to add attributes to the products for two reasons: department / keyword search / comparison chart between like products consumer product configuration before checkout The attributes must have significance, not just a keyword search. If they want to compare all cakes that have a "whipped cream frosting", they can click cakes, click birthday theme, click whipped cream frosting, then check all cakes that are interesting knowing they all have whipped cream frosting. This is not specific to cakes, just an example.

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• Union struct produces garbage and general question about struct nomenclature

  - by SoulBeaver

  I read about unions the other day( today ) and tried the sample functions that came with them. Easy enough, but the result was clear and utter garbage. The first example is: union Test { int Int; struct { char byte1; char byte2; char byte3; char byte4; } Bytes; }; where an int is assumed to have 32 bits. After I set a value Test t; t.Int = 7; and then cout cout << t.Bytes.byte1 << etc... the individual bytes, there is nothing displayed, but my computer beeps. Which is fairly odd I guess. The second example gave me even worse results. union SwitchEndian { unsigned short word; struct { unsigned char hi; unsigned char lo; } data; } Switcher; Looks a little wonky in my opinion. Anyway, from the description it says, this should automatically store the result in a high/little endian format when I set the value like Switcher.word = 7656; and calling with cout << Switcher.data.hi << endl The result of this were symbols not even defined in the ASCII chart. Not sure why those are showing up. Finally, I had an error when I tried correcting the example by, instead of placing Bytes at the end of the struct, positioning it right next to it. So instead of struct {} Bytes; I wanted to write struct Bytes {}; This tossed me a big ol' error. What's the difference between these? Since C++ cannot have unnamed structs it seemed, at the time, pretty obvious that the Bytes positioned at the beginning and at the end are the things that name it. Except no, that's not the entire answer I guess. What is it then?

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• Rails + AMcharts (with export image php script) - PHP script converted to controller?

  - by Elliot

  Hey Guys, This one might be a little confusing. I'm using AMCharts with rails. Amcharts comes with a PHP script to export images called "export.php" I'm trying to figure out how to take the code in export.php and put it into a controller. Here is the code: <?php // amcharts.com export to image utility // set image type (gif/png/jpeg) $imgtype = 'jpeg'; // set image quality (from 0 to 100, not applicable to gif) $imgquality = 100; // get data from $_POST or $_GET ? $data = &$_POST; // get image dimensions $width = (int) $data['width']; $height = (int) $data['height']; // create image object $img = imagecreatetruecolor($width, $height); // populate image with pixels for ($y = 0; $y < $height; $y++) { // innitialize $x = 0; // get row data $row = explode(',', $data['r'.$y]); // place row pixels $cnt = sizeof($row); for ($r = 0; $r < $cnt; $r++) { // get pixel(s) data $pixel = explode(':', $row[$r]); // get color $pixel[0] = str_pad($pixel[0], 6, '0', STR_PAD_LEFT); $cr = hexdec(substr($pixel[0], 0, 2)); $cg = hexdec(substr($pixel[0], 2, 2)); $cb = hexdec(substr($pixel[0], 4, 2)); // allocate color $color = imagecolorallocate($img, $cr, $cg, $cb); // place repeating pixels $repeat = isset($pixel[1]) ? (int) $pixel[1] : 1; for ($c = 0; $c < $repeat; $c++) { // place pixel imagesetpixel($img, $x, $y, $color); // iterate column $x++; } } } // set proper content type header('Content-type: image/'.$imgtype); header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="chart.'.$imgtype.'"'); // stream image $function = 'image'.$imgtype; if ($imgtype == 'gif') { $function($img); } else { $function($img, null, $imgquality); } // destroy imagedestroy($img); ?>

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• Animated Ellipse

  - by user287798

  Hi, i need someone to help me. I need a xaml with animated ellipses like the ones shown here:http://www.telerik.com/products/silverlight/chart.aspx They are to act as hotspot indicators on my map. What i have below is a xaml that i was trying to do but the circles don't center and have no fed-in/fade-out effect. May somebody help me please. Thanks Sam 1 <UserControl 2 xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" 3 xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" 4 x:Class="SilverlightApplication3.MainPage" 5 Width="640" Height="480"> 6 7 8 <Canvas> 9 10 <Canvas.Triggers> 11 <EventTrigger RoutedEvent="Canvas.Loaded"> 12 <EventTrigger.Actions> 13 <BeginStoryboard> 14 <Storyboard > 15 <DoubleAnimation RepeatBehavior="Forever" 16 Storyboard.TargetName="Pt1" 17 Storyboard.TargetProperty="ScaleX" 18 From="1" 19 To="0.3" 20 Duration="0:0:5" /> 21 </Storyboard> 22 </BeginStoryboard> 23 24 <BeginStoryboard> 25 <Storyboard> 26 <DoubleAnimation RepeatBehavior="Forever" 27 Storyboard.TargetName="Pt1" 28 Storyboard.TargetProperty="ScaleY" 29 From="1" 30 To="0.3" 31 Duration="0:0:5" /> 32 </Storyboard> 33 </BeginStoryboard> 34 <!--<BeginStoryboard> 35 <Storyboard > 36 <DoubleAnimation RepeatBehavior="Forever" 37 Storyboard.TargetName="rect_Copy" 38 Storyboard.TargetProperty="Width" 39 From="30" 40 To="100" 41 Duration="0:0:5" /> 42 </Storyboard> 43 </BeginStoryboard> 44 45 <BeginStoryboard> 46 <Storyboard> 47 <DoubleAnimation RepeatBehavior="Forever" 48 Storyboard.TargetName="rect_Copy" 49 Storyboard.TargetProperty="Height" 50 From="30" 51 To="100" 52 Duration="0:0:5" /> 53 </Storyboard> 54 </BeginStoryboard>--> 55 </EventTrigger.Actions> 56 </EventTrigger> 57 </Canvas.Triggers> 58 59 60 <Ellipse x:Name="rect" Stroke="Green" Width="100" Height="100" Canvas.Left="30" 61 Canvas.Top="29"> 62 <Ellipse.RenderTransform> 63 <ScaleTransform x:Name="Pt1" ScaleX="1" ScaleY="1"/> 64 </Ellipse.RenderTransform> 65 66 </Ellipse> 67 <Ellipse x:Name="rect_Copy" 68 Stroke="Green" 69 Width="30" 70 Height="30" 71 Canvas.Left="65" 72 Canvas.Top="64"/> 73 74 </Canvas> 75 </UserControl>

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• Binary socket and policy file in Flex

  - by Daniil

  Hi, I'm trying to evaluate whether Flex can access binary sockets. Seems that there's a class calles Socket (flex.net package). The requirement is that Flex will connect to a server serving binary data. It will then subscribe to data and receive the feed which it will interpret and display as a chart. I've never worked with Flex, my experience lies with Java, so everything is new to me. So I'm trying to quickly set something simple up. The Java server expects the following: DataInputStream in = ..... byte cmd = in.readByte(); int size = in.readByte(); byte[] buf = new byte[size]; in.readFully(buf); ... do some stuff and send binary data in something like out.writeByte(1); out.writeInt(10000); ... etc... Flex, needs to connect to a localhost:6666 do the handshake and read data. I got something like this: try { var socket:Socket = new Socket(); socket.connect('192.168.110.1', 9999); Alert.show('Connected.'); socket.writeByte(108); // 'l' socket.writeByte(115); // 's' socket.writeByte(4); socket.writeMultiByte('HHHH', 'ISO-8859-1'); socket.flush(); } catch (err:Error) { Alert.show(err.message + ": " + err.toString()); } The first thing is that Flex does a <policy-file-request/>. I've modified the server to respond with: <?xml version="1.0"?> <!DOCTYPE cross-domain-policy SYSTEM "/xml/dtds/cross-domain-policy.dtd"> <cross-domain-policy> <site-control permitted-cross-domain-policies="master-only"/> <allow-access-from domain="192.168.110.1" to-ports="*" /> </cross-domain-policy> After that - EOFException happens on the server and that's it. So the question is, am I approaching whole streaming data issue wrong when it comes to Flex? Am I sending the policy file wrong? Unfortunately, I can't seem to find a good solid example of how to do it. It seems to me that Flex can do binary Client-Server application, but I personally lack some basic knowledge when doing it. I'm using Flex 3.5 in IntelliJ IDEA IDE. Any help is appreciated. Thank you!

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• QT vs. Net - REAL comparisons for R.A.D. projects

  - by Pirate for Profit

  Man in all these Qt vs. .NET discussions 90% these people argue about the dumbest crap. Trying to get a real comparison chart here, because I know a little about both frameworks but I don't know everything. I believe Qt and .NET both have strengths and weaknesses. This is to make a comparison that highlights these so people can make more informed decisions before embarking on a project, in the spirit of R.A.D. Event Handling In Qt the event handling system is very simple. You just emit signals when something cool happens and then catch them in slots. ie. // run some calculations, then emit valueChanged(30, false, 20.2); and then catching it, any object can make a slot to recieve that message easily void MyObj::valueChanged(int percent, bool ok, float timeRemaining). It's easy to "block" an event or "disconnect" when needed, and works seamlessly across threads... once you get the hang of it, it just seems a lot more natural and intuitive than the way the .NET event handling is set up (you know, void valueChanged(object sender, CustomEventArgs e). And I'm not just talking about syntax, because in the end the .NET anonymous delegates are the bomb. I'm also talking about in more than just reflection (because, yes, .NET obviously has much stronger reflection capabilities). I'm talking about in the way the system feels to a human being. Qt wins hands down for the simplest yet still flexible event handling system ever i m o. Plugins and such I do love some of the ease of C# compared to C++, as well as .NET's assembly architecture, even though it leads to a bunch of .dll's (there's ways to combine everything into a single exe though). That is a big bonus for modular projects, which are a PITA to import stuff in C++ as far as RAD is concerned. Database Ease of Doing Crap Also what about datasets and database manipulations. I think .net wins here but I'm not sure. Threading/Conccurency How do you guys think of the threading? In .NET, all I've ever done is make like a list of master worker threads with locks. I like QConcurrentFramework, you don't worry about locks or anything, and with the ease of the signal slot system across threads it's nice to get notified about the progress of things. QConcurrent is the simplest threading mechanism I've ever played with. Memory Usage Also what do you think of the overall memory usage comparison. Is the .NET garbage collector pretty on the ball and quick compared to the instantaneous nature of native memory management? Or does it just let programs leak up a storm and lag the computer then clean it up when it's about to really lag? Doesn't the just-in-time compiler make native code that is pretty good, like and that only happens the first time the program is run? However, I am a n00b who doesn't know what I'm talking about, please school me on the subject.

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• Artichow PlotGroup: Legends not showing

  - by Hameed

  I am working on a little project on OpenCATS, developing some charts. In one of the charts, I need to add multiple plots to a PlotGroup and add Legends as well. I have written a small function that creates the chart, however I have difficulty displaying the legends when I add them to a PlotGroup object. Here is the code: public function draw($format = false) { /* Make sure we have GD support. */ if (!function_exists('imagecreatefromjpeg')) { die(); } if ($format === false) { $format = IMG_PNG; } $group = new PlotGroup(); $graph = new Graph($this->width, $this->height, NULL, 0, $this->width-135); $graph->setFormat($format); $graph->setBackgroundColor(new Color(0xF4, 0xF4, 0xF4)); $graph->shadow->setSize(3); $graph->title->set($this->title); $graph->title->setFont(new Tuffy(10)); $graph->title->setColor(new Color(0x00, 0x00, 0x8B)); $graph->border->setColor(new Color(187, 187, 187, 15)); $group->axis->bottom->setLabelText($this->xLabels); $group->axis->bottom->label->setFont(new Tuffy(8)); $group->setPadding(25, 145, 10, 22); $plotcount = 0; $plot = array(); foreach ($this->xValues as $xVal) { $plotcount++; $plot[$plotcount-1] = new LinePlot($xVal, LinePlot::LINE); $plot[$plotcount-1]->setPadding(25, 145, 10, 22); if ($plotcount % 5 ==0 ) $plot[$plotcount-1]->setColor(new Blue); else if ($plotcount % 4 ==0 ) $plot[$plotcount-1]->setColor(new DarkGreen); else if ($plotcount % 3 ==0 ) $plot[$plotcount-1]->setColor(new Red); else if ($plotcount % 2 ==0 ) $plot[$plotcount-1]->setColor(new Orange); $plot[$plotcount-1]->setThickness(2); $plot[$plotcount-1]->legend->add($plot[$plotcount-1], $this->legends[$plotcount-1]); $plot[$plotcount-1]->legend->setTextFont(new Tuffy(8)); $plot[$plotcount-1]->legend->setPadding(3, 3, 3, 3, 3); $plot[$plotcount-1]->legend->setPosition(1, 0.825); $plot[$plotcount-1]->legend->setBackgroundColor(new Color(0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF)); $plot[$plotcount-1]->legend->border->setColor(new Color(0xD0, 0xD0, 0xD0)); $plot[$plotcount-1]->legend->shadow->setSize(0); $group->add($plot[$plotcount-1]); } $graph->add($group); $graph->draw(); } } If I draw only one LinePlot it works: So for instance if I change $graph->add($group); to $graph->add($plot[0]); then only one of the lines will show up with the legend next to it.

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• Mailer issue, PHP values do not change

  - by Roland

  I have a script that runs once every month and send out stats to clients, now the stats are displayed in normal text and in the shape of a Pie Graph, now if I run the script mannually from the command line all info on the graphs are correct, but when the cron job executes the script the values for the first client are displaying on the graphs of all clients. but the text is correct. I'm using domDocument to build the HTML and PHPMailer to send out the email with the Graphs embedded into the mail also use pChart to generate the Graph My code that generates the PIE graph is below include_once "pChart.1.26e/pChart/pData.class"; include_once "pChart.1.26e/pChart/pChart.class"; // Dataset definition unset($DataSet); $DataSet = new pData; $DataSet->AddPoint(array($data['total_clicks'],$remaining),"Serie1"); if($remaining < 0){ $DataSet->AddPoint(array("Clicks delivered todate","Clicks remaining = 0"),"Serie2"); }else{ $DataSet->AddPoint(array("Clicks delivered todate","Clicks remaining"),"Serie2"); } $DataSet->AddAllSeries(); $DataSet->SetAbsciseLabelSerie("Serie2"); // Initialise the graph $pie = new pChart(492,292); $pie->drawBackground(255,255,254); $pie->LineWidth = 1.1; $pie->Values = 2; // $pie->drawRoundedRectangle(5,5,375,195,5,230,230,230); //$pie->drawRectangle(0,0,480,288,169,169,169); $pie->drawRectangle(5,5,487,287,169,169,169); $pie->loadColorPalette('pChart.1.26e/color/tones-3.txt',','); // Draw the pie chart $pie->setFontProperties("pChart.1.26e/Fonts/calibrib.ttf",18); $pie->drawTitle(140,33,"Campaign Overview",0,0,0); $pie->setFontProperties("pChart.1.26e/Fonts/calibrib.ttf",11); $pie->drawTitle(343,125,"Total clicks : ".$total_clicks,0,0,0); $pie->setFontProperties("pChart.1.26e/Fonts/calibri.ttf",10); if($remaining < 0){ $pie->setFontProperties("pChart.1.26e/Fonts/calibrib.ttf",10); $pie->drawTitle(260,250,"Campaign over-delivered by ".substr($remaining,1)." clicks",205,53,53); $pie->setFontProperties("pChart.1.26e/Fonts/calibri.ttf",10); } $pie->drawPieLegend(328,140,$DataSet->GetData(),$DataSet->GetDataDescription(),255,255,255); $pie->drawPieGraph($DataSet->GetData(),$DataSet->GetDataDescription(),170,150,130,PIE_VALUE,FALSE,50,30,0); $pie->Render("generated/3dpie.png"); unset($pie); unset($DataSet); $mail->AddEmbeddedImage("/var/www/html/stats/generated/3dpie.png","5"); I just can't understand why this only happens when the cronjob runs?

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