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  • Monitor System Resources from the Windows 7 Taskbar

    - by Asian Angel
    The problem with most system monitoring apps is that they get covered up with all of your open windows, but you can solve that problem by adding monitoring apps to the Taskbar. Setting Up & Using SuperbarMonitor All of the individual monitors and the .dll files necessary to run them come in a single zip file for your convenience. Simply unzip the contents, add them to an appropriate “Program Files Folder”, and create shortcuts for the monitors that you would like to use on your system. For our example we created shortcuts for all five monitors and set the shortcuts up in their own “Start Menu Folder”. You can see what the five monitors (Battery, CPU, Disk, Memory, & Volume) look like when running…they are visual in appearance without text to clutter up the looks. The monitors use colors (red, green, & yellow) to indicate the amount of resources being used for a particular category. Note: Our system is desktop-based but the “Battery Monitor” was shown for the purposes of demonstration…thus the red color seen here. Hovering the mouse over the “Battery, CPU, Disk, & Memory Monitors” on our system displayed a small blank thumbnail. Note: The “Battery Monitor” may or may not display more when used on your laptop. Going one step further and hovering the mouse over the thumbnails displayed a small blank window. There really is nothing that you will need to worry with outside of watching the color for each individual monitor. Nice and simple! The one monitor with extra features on the thumbnail was the “Volume Monitor”. You can turn the volume down, up, on, or off from here…definitely useful if you have been wanting to hide the “Volume Icon” in the “System Tray”. You can also pin the monitors to your “Taskbar” if desired. Keep in mind that if you do close any of the monitors they will “temporarily” disappear from the “Taskbar” until the next time they are started. Note: If you want the monitors to start with your system each time you will need to add the appropriate shortcuts to the “Startup Sub-menu” in your “Start Menu”. Conclusion If you have been wanting a nice visual way to monitor your system’s resources then SuperbarMonitor is definitely worth trying out. Links Download SuperbarMonitor Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Monitor CPU, Memory, and Disk IO In Windows 7 with Taskbar MetersUse Windows Vista Reliability Monitor to Troubleshoot CrashesTaskbar Eliminator Does What the Name Implies: Hides Your Windows TaskbarBring Misplaced Off-Screen Windows Back to Your Desktop (Keyboard Trick)How To Fix System Tray Tooltips Not Displaying in Windows XP TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Follow Finder Finds You Twitter Users To Follow Combine MP3 Files Easily QuicklyCode Provides Cheatsheets & Other Programming Stuff Download Free MP3s from Amazon Awe inspiring, inter-galactic theme (Win 7) Case Study – How to Optimize Popular Wordpress Sites

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  • regarding the Windows Phone 7 series, XNA and Visual Basic

    - by Chris Williams
    as long as we're talking about VB... I figured I would share this as well. Hi everyone, I'm about to express a sentiment that might ruffle a few feathers, but I think most of you know me well enough to know I love like accept VB for what it is and that what I'm about to say is with good intentions. (The rest of you, who don't know me, please take my word for it.) The world is full of VB developers, I was one of them for a long time. I think it's safe to assume that none of us are ignorant people who require handholding. We're working professionals, making a living by using our skills as developers. I'm also willing to bet that quite a few of us are fluent in C# as well as VB. It may not be your preferred language, but many of you can do it and you prove that nearly every day. Honestly, I don't know ANY developers or consultants that have only known ONE language ever. So it pains me greatly when I see the word "CAN'T" being tossed around like a crutch... as in "we CAN'T develop for the windows phone or we CAN'T develop XNA games." At MIX, Microsoft hath decreed that C# is the language of choice for developing for the Windows Phone 7. I think it's a safe bet that you won't see VB support if it isn't there already. (Just like XNA... which is up to version 4.0 by now.)  So what? (Yeah... I said it.) I think everyone here can agree that actual coding is only one part of software design and development. There is nothing stopping ANY of you from beginning the process of designing your killer phone app, writing up specs, requirements, doing UI design, workflow, mockups, storyboards, art, etc.... None of these things are language dependent. IF by the time you've got that stuff out of the way, and there's still no VB support, then start doing some rapid prototyping of your app in C# (I know, I know... heresy!)  You still have to spend time learning how the phone does things, what UI tricks do what, what paradigms make sense, how to use to accelerometer and the tilt and the multitouch functionality. I can guarantee you that time spent doing this is a great investment, no matter WHAT extension your code files have. Eventually, you may have a working prototype. IF by this time, there's STILL no VB support... fret not, you've made significant progress on your app. You've designed it, prototyped it, figured out how to use the phone specific features... so you might as well finish it and pat yourself on the back for learning something new... and possibly being first to market with your new app. I'll be happy to argue any and all of these points online or off with anyone who cares to do so, but there is one undeniable point that you simply can't argue:  Your potential customers do not care AT ALL what programming language you used to write the app they are about to purchase. They care that it works. If your biggest concern is being first to market, than stop complaining and get busy because you're running out of time and the 3000+ people who were at MIX certainly aren't waiting for you. They've already started working on their apps.

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  • SQL SERVER – Puzzle to Win Print Book – Functions FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE with OVER clause and ORDER BY

    - by pinaldave
    Some time an interesting feature and smart audience makes total difference at places. From last two days, I have been writing on SQL Server 2012 feature FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE. Please read following post before I continue today as this question is based on the same. Introduction to FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE Introduction to FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE with OVER clause As a comment of the second post I received excellent question from Nilesh Molankar. He asks what will happen if we change few things in the T-SQL. I really like this question as this kind of questions will make us sharp and help us perform in critical situation in need. We recently publish SQL Server Interview Questions book. I promise that in future version of this book, we will for sure include this question. Instead of repeating his question, I am going to ask something very similar to his question. Let us first run following query (read yesterday’s blog post for more detail): USE AdventureWorks GO SELECT s.SalesOrderID,s.SalesOrderDetailID,s.OrderQty, FIRST_VALUE(SalesOrderDetailID) OVER (PARTITION BY SalesOrderID ORDER BY SalesOrderDetailID ROWS BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING) FstValue, LAST_VALUE(SalesOrderDetailID) OVER (PARTITION BY SalesOrderID ORDER BY SalesOrderDetailID ROWS BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING) LstValue FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail s WHERE SalesOrderID IN (43670, 43669, 43667, 43663) ORDER BY s.SalesOrderID,s.SalesOrderDetailID,s.OrderQty GO Here is the resultset of the above query. Now let us change the ORDER BY clause of OVER clause in above query and see what is the new result. USE AdventureWorks GO SELECT s.SalesOrderID,s.SalesOrderDetailID,s.OrderQty, FIRST_VALUE(SalesOrderDetailID) OVER (PARTITION BY SalesOrderID ORDER BY OrderQty ROWS BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING) FstValue, LAST_VALUE(SalesOrderDetailID) OVER (PARTITION BY SalesOrderID ORDER BY OrderQty ROWS BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING) LstValue FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail s WHERE SalesOrderID IN (43670, 43669, 43667, 43663) ORDER BY s.SalesOrderID,s.SalesOrderDetailID,s.OrderQty GO Now let us see the result and ready for interesting question: Puzzle You can see that row number 2, 3, 4, and 5 has same SalesOrderID = 43667. The FIRST_VALUE is 78 and LAST_VALUE is 77. Now if these function was working on maximum and minimum value they should have given answer as 77 and 80 respectively instead of 78 and 77. Also the value of FIRST_VALUE is greater than LAST_VALUE 77. Why? Explain in detail. Hint Let me give you a simple hint. Just for simplicity I have changed the order of columns selected in the SELECT and ORDER BY (at the end). This will not change resultset but just order of the columns as well order of the rows. However, the data remains the same. USE AdventureWorks GO SELECT s.OrderQty,s.SalesOrderID,s.SalesOrderDetailID, FIRST_VALUE(SalesOrderDetailID) OVER (PARTITION BY SalesOrderID ORDER BY OrderQty ROWS BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING) FstValue, LAST_VALUE(SalesOrderDetailID) OVER (PARTITION BY SalesOrderID ORDER BY OrderQty ROWS BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING) LstValue FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail s WHERE SalesOrderID IN (43670, 43669, 43667, 43663) ORDER BY s.OrderQty,s.SalesOrderID,s.SalesOrderDetailID GO Above query returns following result: Now I am very sure all of you have figured out the solution. Here is the second hint – pay attention to row 2, 3, 4, and 10. Hint2 T-SQL Enhancements: FIRST_VALUE() and LAST_VALUE() MSDN: FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE Rules Leave a comment with your detailed answer by Nov 15′s blog post. Open world-wide (where Amazon ships books) If you blog about puzzle’s solution and if you win, you win additional surprise gift as well. Prizes Print copy of my new book SQL Server Interview Questions Amazon|Flipkart If you already have this book, you can opt for any of my other books SQL Wait Stats [Amazon|Flipkart|Kindle] and SQL Programming [Amazon|Flipkart|Kindle]. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Function, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • Java in Flux: Utopia or Deuteranopia?

    - by Tori Wieldt
    What a difference a year makes, indeed. Steve Harris, Senior VP, App Server Dev, Oracle and Adam Messinger, VP, Fusion Middleware Group, Oracle presented an informative keynote at the TheServerSide Java Symposium today. With a title "Java in Flux: Utopia or Deuteranopia?" you know things are going to be interesting (see Aeon Flux if you don't get the title reference).What a YearThey started with a little background, explaining that the reactions to Oracle's acquisition of Sun (and therefore Java) one year ago varied greatly, from "Freak Out!" to "Don't Panic." From the Oracle perspective, being the steward of and key contributor to Java requires a lot of sausage making.  They admitted to Oracle's fair share of Homer Simpson-esque "D'oh" moments in the past year, which was complicated by Oracle's communication style.   "Oracle has a tradition has a saying a few things and sticking by then, in contrast to Sun who was much more open," Adam explained. "We laid out the Java roadmap and are executing on it, and we hope that speaks to our commitment."Java SEAdam talked about having a long term perspective on the Java language (20+ years), letting ideas mature in more experimental languages, then bringing them into Java. Current priorities include: JVM convergence (getting the best features of JRockit into Hotspot); support of parallel/multi-core programming, and of course, all the improvements in JDK7. The JDK7 Developer Preview is underway (please download now and report bugs!). The Oracle development team is also working on Lambda and modularity (Jigsaw) for SE 8. Less certain, but also under discussion are improvements for Java SE 9. Adam is thinking of it as a "back to basics" release. He mentioned reworking JNI, improving data integration and improved device support.Java EE To provide context about Java EE, Steve said Java EE was great at getting businesses on the internet. The success of Java EE resulted in an incredible expansion of the middleware marketplace for developers and vendors.  But with success, came more. Java EE kept piling on capabilities, but that created excess baggage.  Doing simple things was no longer so simple. That's where Java community is so valuable: "When Java EE was too complex and heavyweight, many people were happy to tell us what we were doing wrong and popularize solutions," Steve explained. Because of that feedback, the Java EE teams focused on making things simple again: POJOs and annotations, and leveraging changes in Java SE.  Steve said that "innovation doesn't happen in expert groups, it happens on the ground where developers are solving problems," and platform stewards need to pay attention and take advantage of changes that are taking place.Enter the Cloud "Developers are restless, they want cloud functionality from their own IT dept" Steve explained. With the cloud, the scope of problem has expanded to include the data center itself, with multiple tenants. To move forward, existing APIs in Java EE need to be updated to be tenant-aware, service-enabled, and EE needs to support various styles of deployment. The goal is to get all that done in Java EE 8.Adam questioned Steve about timing and schedule. "Yes, the schedule is aggressive, but it'll work" Steve said. Then Adam asked about modularization. If Java SE 8 comes out at the end of 2012, when can Java EE deliver modularization? Steve suggested that key stakeholders can come with up some pre-SE 8 agreement on how to expose the metadata about modules. He then alluded to Mark Reinhold and John Duimovich's keynote at EclipseCON next week. Stay tuned.Evil Master PlanIn conclusion, Adam finally admitted to Oracle's Evil Master Plan: 1) Invest in and improve Java SE and EE 2) Collaborate with the community 3) Broaden the marketplace for Java development. Bwaaaaaaaaahahaha! <rubs hands together>Key LinksJDK7 Developer Preview  http://jdk7.java.net/preview/Oracle Technology Network http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/index.htmlTheServerSide Java Symposium  http://javasymposium.techtarget.com/"Utopia or Deuteranopia?" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeon_Flux

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  • Silverlight Cream for May 27, 2010 -- #871

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Phil Middlemiss, Max Paulousky, Jeff Wilcox, David Anson, René Schulte, Xianzhong Zhu, Jeff Handley, John Papa, Jeremy Likness, and Marlon Grech. Shoutouts: SilverLaw has a great demo at the Expression Gallery, and we're all going to look forward to the blog post explaining it: Flexible Surface Effect SilverLaw> has another use for the above in this text morphing Effect: Morphing Text Effect Matthias Shapiro contributed a chapter for a book on Visualization and it's available as a free download: Free Chapter From Beautiful Visualization Andy Beaulieu has a demo up as almost a spoiler for a future Coding4Fun app... and how cool is this: Shuffleboard: A Windows Phone 7 Sample Game From SilverlightCream.com: Separating Content and Presentation with the ContentControl Phil Middlemiss' latest is out on SilverlightShow and is all about the ContentControl and separating layout and content ... demo project source included Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Silverlight Applications. Part 1 Max Paulousky has part one of a long series he's starting on a demo project to explain a bunch of MEF, MVVM, and WCF RIA concepts. This first one contains the overview and also discusses SEO. There is a link to the app and material in the post if you read Russian :) Updated Silverlight Unit Test Framework bits for Windows Phone and Silverlight 3 Jeff Wilcox has available updated Unit Test bits for Silverlight 3 -- read that as WP7... read the rest of the information on his post. Easily animate orientation changes for any Windows Phone application with this handy source code David Anson has some code up that you're going to want if you're programming WP7 ... just watch the video ... you'll be downloading the code just like I did :) SilverShader – Introduction to Silverlight and WPF Pixel Shaders René Schulte has a post up at Coding4Fun about PixelShaders... how to write them and an application that uses them... this is a great long tutorial... a must read. Developing Freecell Game Using Silverlight 3 Part 2 Xianzhong Zhu has part 2 of his FreeCell game development posted ... lots of detailed descriptions and code, plus all the code of course! Async Validation with RIA Services Jeff Handley has a post up that is sort of a follow-on to a year-old post on async validation with RIA services and DataForm and how it's all much easier now in SL4. Learning Blend with .toolbox (Silverlight TV #29) John Papa and Arturo Toledo discuss .toolbox in Silverlight TV #29 -- have you made yourself an avatar yet? ... well go get on-board with this great learning tool! Silverlight Out of Browser Dynamic Modules in Offline Mode OOB isn't difficult, dynamic modules can become a bit more, but what if you're OOB... ok what if you're OOB and offline? ... Jeremy Likness has a possible solution for this with an OfflineCatalog. MEFedMVVM v1.0 Explained Marlon Grech has a great into to MEFedMVVM in this post. If you're trying to get your head around MEF and MVVM in either WPF or Silverlight, here's a good starting point. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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  • Java Spotlight Episode 76: Pro Java FX2 - A Definative Guide to Rich Clients with Java Technology

    - by Roger Brinkley
    Tweet An interview with the authors of Pro Java FX2: A Definative Guide to Rich Clients with Java Technology. Right-click or Control-click to download this MP3 file. You can also subscribe to the Java Spotlight Podcast Feed to get the latest podcast automatically. If you use iTunes you can open iTunes and subscribe with this link:  Java Spotlight Podcast in iTunes. Show Notes News Angela Caicedo has created 3 new Java FX screen cast videos on java UTube channel: Part 1: Building your First Java FX Application with Netbeans 7.1, Part 2: Building your First Java FX Application with Netbeans 7.1, and Getting Started with Scene Builder.  Events March 26-29, EclipseCon, Reston, USA March 27, Virtual Developer Days - Java (Asia Pacific (English)),9:30 am to 2:00pm IST / 12:00pm to 4.30pm SGT  / 3.00pm - 7.30pm AEDT April 4-5, JavaOne Japan, Tokyo, Japan April 12, GreenJUG, Greenville, SC April 17-18, JavaOne Russia, Moscow Russia April 18–20, Devoxx France, Paris, France April 26, Mix-IT, Lyon, France, May 3-4, JavaOne India, Hyderabad, India Feature InterviewPro JavaFX 2: A Definitive Guide to Rich Clients with Java Technology is available from Amazon.com in either paperback or on the Kindle.James L. (Jim) Weaver is a Java and JavaFX developer, author, and speaker with a passion for helping rich-client Java and JavaFX become preferred technologies for new application development. Books that Jim has authored include Inside Java, Beginning J2EE, and Pro JavaFX Platform, with the latter being updated to cover JavaFX 2.0. His professional background includes 15 years as a systems architect at EDS, and the same number of years as an independent developer. Jim is an international speaker at software technology conferences, including the JavaOne conferences in San Francisco and São Paulo. Jim blogs at http://javafxpert.com, tweets @javafxpert. Weiqi Gao is a principal software engineer with Object Computing, Inc., in St. Louis, MO. He has more than 18 years of software development experience and has been using Java technology since 1998. He is interested in programming languages, object-oriented systems, distributed computing, and graphical user interfaces. He is a presenter and a member of the steering committee of the St. Louis Java Users Group. Weiqi holds a PhD in mathematics. Stephen Chin is chief agile methodologist at GXS and a technical expert in client UI technologies. He is lead author on the Pro Android Flash title and coauthored the Pro JavaFX Platform title, which is the leading technical reference for JavaFX. In addition, Stephen runs the very successful Silicon Valley JavaFX User Group, which has hundreds of members and tens of thousands of online viewers. Finally, he is a Java Champion, chair of the OSCON Java conference, and an internationally recognized speaker featured at Devoxx, Codemash, AnDevCon, Jazoon, and JavaOne, where he received a Rock Star Award. Stephen can be followed on twitter @steveonjava and reached via his blog: http://steveonjava.com.Dean Iverson has been writing software professionally for more than 15 years. He is employed by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, where he is a rich client application developer. He also has a small software consultancy called Pleasing Software Solutions, which he cofounded with his wife. Johan Vos started to work with Java in 1995. As part of the Blackdown team, he helped port Java to Linux. With LodgON, the company he cofounded, he has been mainly working on Java-based solutions for social networking software. Because he can't make a choice between embedded development and enterprise development, his main focus is on end-to-end Java, combining the strengths of backend systems and embedded devices. His favorite technologies are currently Java EE/Glassfish at the backend and JavaFX at the frontend. Johan's blog can be followed at http://blogs.lodgon.com/johan, he tweets at http://twitter.com/johanvos. Mail Bag What’s Cool Gerrit Grunwald's SteelSeries FX Experience Tools Canned Animations ComboBox

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  • Do we still have a case against the goto statement? [closed]

    - by FredOverflow
    Possible Duplicate: Is it ever worthwhile using goto? In a recent article, Andrew Koenig writes: When asked why goto statements are harmful, most programmers will say something like "because they make programs hard to understand." Press harder, and you may well hear something like "I don't really know, but that's what I was taught." For that reason, I'd like to summarize Dijkstra's arguments. He then shows two program fragments, one without a goto and and one with a goto: if (n < 0) n = 0; Assuming that n is a variable of a built-in numeric type, we know that after this code, n is nonnegative. Suppose we rewrite this fragment: if (n >= 0) goto nonneg; n = 0; nonneg: ; In theory, this rewrite should have the same effect as the original. However, rewriting has changed something important: It has opened the possibility of transferring control to nonneg from anywhere else in the program. I emphasized the part that I don't agree with. Modern languages like C++ do not allow goto to transfer control arbitrarily. Here are two examples: You cannot jump to a label that is defined in a different function. You cannot jump over a variable initialization. Now consider composing your code of tiny functions that adhere to the single responsibility principle: int clamp_to_zero(int n) { if (n >= 0) goto n_is_not_negative: n = 0; n_is_not_negative: return n; } The classic argument against the goto statement is that control could have transferred from anywhere inside your program to the label n_is_not_negative, but this simply is not (and was never) true in C++. If you try it, you will get a compiler error, because labels are scoped. The rest of the program doesn't even see the name n_is_not_negative, so it's just not possible to jump there. This is a static guarantee! Now, I'm not saying that this version is better then the one without the goto, but to make the latter as expressive as the first one, we would at least have to insert a comment, or even better yet, an assertion: int clamp_to_zero(int n) { if (n < 0) n = 0; // n is not negative at this point assert(n >= 0); return n; } Note that you basically get the assertion for free in the goto version, because the condition n >= 0 is already written in line 1, and n = 0; satisfies the condition trivially. But that's just a random observation. It seems to me that "don't use gotos!" is one of those dogmas like "don't use multiple returns!" that stem from a time where the real problem were functions of hundreds or even thousand of lines of code. So, do we still have a case against the goto statement, other than that it is not particularly useful? I haven't written a goto in at least a decade, but it's not like I was running away in terror whenever I encountered one. 1 Ideally, I would like to see a strong and valid argument against gotos that still holds when you adhere to established programming principles for clean code like the SRP. "You can jump anywhere" is not (and has never been) a valid argument in C++, and somehow I don't like teaching stuff that is not true. 1: Also, I have never been able to resurrect even a single velociraptor, no matter how many gotos I tried :(

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

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

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  • What Counts For a DBA: Imagination

    - by drsql
    "Imagination…One little spark, of inspiration… is at the heart, of all creation." – From the song "One Little Spark", by the Sherman Brothers I have a confession to make. Despite my great enthusiasm for databases and programming, it occurs to me that every database system I've ever worked on has been, in terms of its inputs and outputs, downright dull. Most have been glorified e-spreadsheets, many replacing manual systems built on actual spreadsheets. I've created a lot of database-driven software whose main job was to "count stuff"; phone calls, web visitors, payments, donations, pieces of equipment and so on. Sometimes, instead of counting stuff, the database recorded values from other stuff, such as data from sensors or networking devices. Yee hah! So how do we, as DBAs, maintain high standards and high spirits when we realize that so much of our work would fail to raise the pulse of even the most easily excitable soul? The answer lies in our imagination. To understand what I mean by this, consider a role that, in terms of its output, offers an extreme counterpoint to that of the DBA: the Disney Imagineer. Their job is to design Disney's Theme Parks, of which I'm a huge fan. To me this has always seemed like a fascinating and exciting job. What must an Imagineer do, every day, to inspire the feats of creativity that are so clearly evident in those spectacular rides and shows? Here, if ever there was one, is a role where "dull moments" must be rare indeed, surely? I wanted to find out, and so parted with a considerable sum of money for my wife and I to have lunch with one; I reasoned that if I found one small way to apply their secrets to my own career, it would be money well spent. Early in the conversation with our Imagineer (Cindy Cote), the job did indeed sound magical. However, as talk turned to management meetings, budget-wrangling and insane deadlines, I came to the strange realization that, in fact, her job was a lot more like mine than I would ever have guessed. Much like databases, all those spectacular Disney rides bring with them a vast array of complex plumbing, lighting, safety features, and all manner of other "boring bits", kept well out of sight of the end user, but vital for creating the desired experience; and, of course, it is these "boring bits" that take up much of the Imagineer's time. Naturally, there is still a vital part of their job that is spent testing out new ideas, putting themselves in the place of a park visitor, from a 9-year-old boy to a 90-year-old grandmother, and trying to imagine what experiences they'd like to have. It is these small, but vital, sparks of imagination and creativity that have the biggest impact. The real feat of a successful Imagineer is clearly to never to lose sight of this fact, in among all the rote tasks. It is the same for a DBA. Not matter how seemingly dull is the task at hand, try to put yourself in the shoes of the end user, and imagine how your input will affect the experience he or she will have with the database you're building, and how that may affect the world beyond the bits stored in your database. Then, despite the inevitable rush to be "done", find time to go the extra mile and hone the design so that it delivers something as close to that imagined experience as you can get. OK, our output still can't and won't reach the same spectacular heights as the "Journey into The Imagination" ride at EPCOT Theme Park in Orlando, where I first heard "One Little Spark". However, our imaginative sparks and efforts can, and will, make a difference to the user who now feels slightly more at home with a database application, or to the manager holding a report presented with enough clarity to drive an interesting decision or two. They are small victories, but worth having, and appreciated, or at least that's how I imagine it.

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  • Silverlight Cream for November 16, 2011 -- #1167

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Michael Crump, Andrea Boschin, Michael Sync, WindowsPhoneGeek(-2-), Erno de Weerd, Jesse Liberty, Derik Whittaker, Antoni Dol, Walter Ferrari, and Jeff Blankenburg(-2-). Above the Fold: Silverlight: "10 Laps around Silverlight 5 (Part 6 of 10)" Michael Crump WP7: "31 Days of Mango | Day #2: Device Status" Jeff Blankenburg Metro/WinRT/W8: "Lighting up your C# Metro apps by being a Share Target" Derik Whittaker Shoutouts: Michael Palermo's latest Desert Mountain Developers is up Michael Washington's latest Visual Studio #LightSwitch Daily is up SilverlightShow has announced a webinar you probably don't want to miss: Webinar – Introduction to XAML Development on Windows 8 Check out the top 5 from last week at SilverlightShow: SilverlightShow for November 07 - 13, 2011 From SilverlightCream.com: 10 Laps around Silverlight 5 (Part 6 of 10) Michael Crump covers a lot of territory in this Part 6 of his Silverlight 5 Beta series at SilverlightShow: P/Invoke, Multiple Windows, and Full Trust Windows Phone 7.5 - Manipulating camera stream Andrea Boschin has Part 4 of his Mango series up at SilverlightShow. He's discussing accessing the raw stream from the camera and saving it to a file. Blend 4 + VS 2011 (Preview) = Problem? Michael Sync reports a problem with Blend 4 and the VS2011 preview... followed up by a set of scripts that were posted on Connect to make the problem go away (at least for Michael) Windows Phone Toolkit MultiselectList in depth | Part1: key concepts and API WindowsPhoneGeek begins a series on the MultiselectList in the Phone Toolkit... if you've seen his tutorials, you know they're great... this one is no exception.. lots of code, info and notes getting you on-board with the features Getting Started with Windows Phone Alarms WindowsPhoneGeek next takes a sidestep from his new series and has this post on Alarms in WP7 apps .. one of the type of scheduled actions in WP7.1 ... good write-up, pictures and code Using AppHarbor, Bitbucket and Mercurial with ASP.NET and Silverlight – Part 3 Membership and Role Provider in SQL Server Erno de Weerd's part 3 of his series is up... adding Role and Membership to his application... check it out in this 17-step tutorial Yet Another Podcast #51–Shawn Wildermuth: //build, Xaml Programming & Beyond Jesse Liberty has another of his Yet Another Podcasts up and he's talking with Jon Galloway and Shawn Wildermuth... hear what *that* trio has to say about post //BUILD, and all things XAML Lighting up your C# Metro apps by being a Share Target Derik Whittaker continues to work with Metro... evidenced by this post on wiring your app up to be a Share Target .. allowing your app to consume data from other apps Photoshop in METRO style 2: Filters Antoni Dol follows up his Photoshop in Metro post with this one on filters... he's got some great screenshots... was hoping to see a link to the code... maybe I missed it! Silverlight and Sharepoint working together: a Silverlight menu for Sharepoint - Part 1 Walter Ferrari has part 1 of a series up at SilverlightShow talking about Sharepoint and Silverlight, and using Silverlight Navigation in place of what Sharepoint offers up. 31 Days of Mango | Day #2: Device Status Jeff Blankenburg is motoring along on his 31 Days of Mango. This is his Day 2 post and all about DeviceStatus, or just about everything you would like to know about your user's phone 31 Days of Mango | Day #3: Alarms and Reminders Day 3 of Jeff Blankenburg's series is about Alarms and Reminders... a way to alert your user that something needs to be done... you can create, edit, and delete them as needed Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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  • #iPad at One Week: A Great Device Made with a Heavy Hand

    - by andrewbrust
    I have now had my iPad for a little over a week. In that time, Apple introduced the world to its iPhone OS 4 (and the SDK agreement’s draconian new section 3.3.1), HP introduced is Slate, and Microsoft got ready to launch Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0. And through it all I have used my iPad. I've used it for email, calendar, controlling my Sonos, and writing an essay. I've used it for getting on TripIt and Twitter, and surfing the Web. I've used it for online banking, and online ordering and delivery of food. And the verdict? Honestly? I think it's a great device and I thoroughly enjoy using it. The screen is bright and vibrant. I am surprisingly fast and accurate when I type on it. The touch screen's responsiveness is nearly flawless. The software, including a number of third party applications, include pleasing animations and use of color that make it fun to get work done. And speaking of work, the Exchange integration is, dare I say it, robust. Not as full-featured as on a PC or Windows Mobile device, but still offering core functionality and, so far at least, without bugs. The UI is intuitive, not just to me, but also to my 5 1/2 year old, and also to my nearly-3-year-old son. They picked it up and, with just just a few pointers from me, they almost immediately knew what to do, whether they were looking at photos (and swiping/flicking along as they did so), using a drawing program, playing a game, or watching YouTube videos. The younger of the two of them even tried to get up on a chair and grab the thing today. He dropped it, from about 4 feet off the ground. And it's still fine. (Meanwhile, I'll be keeping it on a higher shelf.) I cannot fully describe yet what makes this form factor and this product so appealing. Maybe it's that it's an always-on device. Maybe it's just being able to hold such a nice, relatively large display so close. Maybe it's the design sensibility, that seems to pervade throughout the app ecosystem. Or maybe it's that one's fingers, and not pens or mice, are the software's preferred input device. Whatever the attraction, it's strong. And no matter how much I tend to root for Microsoft and against Apple, Cupertino has, in my mind, scored big, Can Microsoft compete? Yes, but not with the Windows 7 standard UI (nor with individual OEMs’ own UIs on top). I hope Microsoft builds a variant of the Windows Phone 7 specifically for tablet devices. And I hope they make it clear that all developers, and programming languages, are welcome to the platform. Once that’s established, the OEMs have to build great hardware with fast, responsive touch screens, under Microsoft's watchful eye. That may be the hardest part of getting this right. No matter what, Microsoft's got a fight on its hands. I don't know if it can count on winning that fight, either. But Silverlight and Live Tiles could certainly help. And so can treating developers like adults.  Apple seems intent on treating their devs like kids, and then giving the kids a curfew.  For that, dev-friendly Microsoft may one day give thanks.

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  • Silverlight Cream for February 06, 2011 -- #1042

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Mike Taulty, Timmy Kokke, Laurent Bugnion, Arik Poznanski, Deyan Ginev, Deborah Kurata(-2-), Johnny Tordgeman, Roy Dallal, Jaime Rodriguez, Samuel Jack(-2-), James Ashley. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Customizing Silverlight properties for Visual Designers" Timmy Kokke WP7: "Back button press when using webbrowser control in WP7" Jaime Rodriguez Expression Blend: "Blend Bits 21–Importing from Photoshop & Illustrator…" Mike Taulty From SilverlightCream.com: Blend Bits 21–Importing from Photoshop & Illustrator… Mike Taulty is up to 21 episodes on his Blend Bits sequence now, and this one is about using Blend's import capability, such as a .psd file with all the layers intact. Customizing Silverlight properties for Visual Designers Timmy Kokke has part 1 of 2 parts on making your Silverlight control properties in design surfaces such as Visual Studio designer or Expression Blend. An error when installing MVVM Light templates for VS10 Express Laurent Bugnion has released a new version of MVVMLight that resolves a problem with VS2010 Express version of the templates... no problem with anything else. Reading RSS items on Windows Phone 7 Arik Poznanski has a post up about reading RSS on a WP7, but better yet, he also has code for a helper class that you can grab, plus explanation of wiring it up. Integrating your Windows Phone unit tests with MSBuild #4: The WP7 Unit Test Application Deyan Ginev has a post up about Telerik's WP7 test app that outputs test results in XML from the emulator so they can be integrated with the MSBuild log. Accessing Data in a Silverlight Application: EF I apprently missed this post by Deborah Kurata last week on bringing data into your Silverlight app via Entity Frameworks... good detailed tutorial in VB and C#. Updating Data in a Silverlight Application: EF In Deborah Kurata's latest post, she is continuing with Entity Frameworks by demonstrating updating to the database... full source code will be produced in a later post. Fun with Silverlight and SharePoint 2010 Ribbon Control - Part 2 - An In Depth Look At The Ribbon Control Johnny Tordgeman has Part 2 of his Silverlight and Sharepoint 2010 Ribbon up... taking a deep-dive into the ribbon... great explanation of the attributes, code included. Geographic Coordinates Systems Roy Dallal has some Geo code up that's not necessarily Silverlight, but very cool if you're doing any GIS programming... ya gotta know the coordinate systems! Back button press when using webbrowser control in WP7 Jaime Rodriguez has a post up discussing the much-lamented back-button action in the certification requirements and how to deal with that in a web browser app. Multiplayer-enabling my Windows Phone 7 game: Day 1 Samuel Jack challenged himself to build a WP7 game in 3 days... now he's challenging himself to make it multiplayer in 3 days... this first hour-to-hour post is research of networking and an azure server-side solution. Multiplayer-enabling my Windows Phone 7 game: Day 2–Building a UI with XPF Day 2 for Samuel Jack getting the multiplayer portion of his game working in 3 days.. this day involves getting up-to-speed with XPF. How to Hotwire your WP7 Phone Battery Did you realize if you run your WP7 battery completely down that you can't charge it? James Ashley reports that circumstance, and how he resolved it. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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  • C#: A "Dumbed-Down" C++?

    - by James Michael Hare
    I was spending a lovely day this last weekend watching my sons play outside in one of the better weekends we've had here in Saint Louis for quite some time, and whilst watching them and making sure no limbs were broken or eyes poked out with sticks and other various potential injuries, I was perusing (in the correct sense of the word) this month's MSDN magazine to get a sense of the latest VS2010 features in both IDE and in languages. When I got to the back pages, I saw a wonderful article by David S. Platt entitled, "In Praise of Dumbing Down"  (msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ee336129.aspx).  The title captivated me and I read it and found myself agreeing with it completely especially as it related to my first post on divorcing C++ as my favorite language. Unfortunately, as Mr. Platt mentions, the term dumbing-down has negative connotations, but is really and truly a good thing.  You are, in essence, taking something that is extremely complex and reducing it to something that is much easier to use and far less error prone.  Adding safeties to power tools and anti-kick mechanisms to chainsaws are in some sense "dumbing them down" to the common user -- but that also makes them safer and more accessible for the common user.  This was exactly my point with C++ and C#.  I did not mean to infer that C++ was not a useful or good language, but that in a very high percentage of cases, is too complex and error prone for the job at hand. Choosing the correct programming language for a job is a lot like choosing any other tool for a task.  For example: if I want to dig a French drain in my lawn, I can attempt to use a huge tractor-like backhoe and the job would be done far quicker than if I would dig it by hand.  I can't deny that the backhoe has the raw power and speed to perform.  But you also cannot deny that my chances of injury or chances of severing utility lines or other resources climb at an exponential rate inverse to the amount of training I may have on that machinery. Is C++ a powerful tool?  Oh yes, and it's great for those tasks where speed and performance are paramount.  But for most of us, it's the wrong tool.  And keep in mind, I say this even though I have 17 years of experience in using it and feel myself highly adept in utilizing its features both in the standard libraries, the STL, and in supplemental libraries such as BOOST.  Which, although greatly help with adding powerful features quickly, do very little to curb the relative dangers of the language. So, you may say, the fault is in the developer, that if the developer had some higher skills or if we only hired C++ experts this would not be an issue.  Now, I will concede there is some truth to this.  Obviously, the higher skilled C++ developers you hire the better the chance they will produce highly performant and error-free code.  However, what good is that to the average developer who cannot afford a full stable of C++ experts? That's my point with C#:  It's like a kinder, gentler C++.  It gives you nearly the same speed, and in many ways even more power than C++, and it gives you a much softer cushion for novices to fall against if they code less-than-optimally.  A bug is a bug, of course, in any language, but C# does a good job of hiding and taking on the task of handling almost all of the resource issues that make C++ so tricky.  For my money, C# is much more maintainable, more feature-rich, second only slightly in performance, faster to market, and -- last but not least -- safer and easier to use.  That's why, where I work, I much prefer to see the developers moving to C#.  The quantity of bugs is much lower, and we don't need to hire "experts" to achieve the same results since the language itself handles those resource pitfalls so prevalent in poorly written C++ code.  C++ will still have its place in the world, and I'm sure I'll still use it now and again where it is truly the correct tool for the job, but for nearly every other project C# is a wonderfully "dumbed-down" version of C++ -- in the very best sense -- and to me, that's the smart choice.

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  • Professional Developers, may I join you?

    - by Ben
    I currently work in technical support for a software/hardware company and for the most part it's a good job, but it's feeling more and more like I'm getting 'stuck' here. No raises in the 5 years I've been here, and lately there seems to be more hiring from the outside than promotion from within. The work I do is more technical than end-user support, as we deal primarily with our field technicians who have a little more technical skill than the general user base. As a result I get into much more technical support issues... often tracking down bugs in our software, finding performance bottlenecks in our database schema, etc. The work I'm most proud of are the development projects I've come up with on my own, and worked on during lunch breaks and slow periods in Support. Over the years I've written a number of useful utilities for the company. Diagnostic type applications that several departments use and appreciate. These include apps that simulate our various hardware devices, log file analysis, time-saving utilities for our work processes, etc. My best projects have been the hardware simulation programs, which are the type of thing we probably wouldn't have put a full-time developer on had anyone thought to do it, but they've ended up being popular and useful enough to be used by development, QA, R&D, and Support. They allow us to interface our software with simulated hardware, rather than clutter up our work areas with bulky, hard to acquire equipment. Since starting here my life has moved forward (married, kid, one more on the way), but it feels like my career has not. I still earn what I earned walking in the door my first day. Company budget is tight, bonuses have gone down, and no raises or cost of living / inflation adjustments either. As the sole source of income for my family I feel I need to do more, and I'd like to have a more active role in creating something at work, not just cleaning up other people's mistakes. I enjoy technical work, and I think development is the next logical step in my career. I'd like to bring some "legitimacy" to my part-time development work, and make myself a more skilled and valuable employee. Ultimately if this can help me better support my family, that would be ideal. Can I make the jump to professional developer? I have an engineering degree, but no formal education in computer science. I write WinForms apps using the .NET framework, do some freelance web development, have volunteered to write software for a nonprofit, and have started experimenting with programming microcontrollers. I enjoy learning new things in the limited free time I have available. I think I have the aptitude to take on a development role, even in an 'apprentice' capacity if such an option is possible. Have any of you moved into development like this? Do any of you developers have any advice or cautionary tales? Are there better career options I haven't thought of? I welcome any and all related comments and thank you in advance for posting them.

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  • The theory of evolution applied to software

    - by Michel Grootjans
    I recently realized the many parallels you can draw between the theory of evolution and evolving software. Evolution is not the proverbial million monkeys typing on a million typewriters, where one of them comes up with the complete works of Shakespeare. We would have noticed by now, since the proverbial monkeys are now blogging on the Internet ;-) One of the main ideas of the theory of evolution is the balance between random mutations and natural selection. Random mutations happen all the time: millions of mutations over millions of years. Most of them are totally useless. Some of them are beneficial to the evolved species. Natural selection favors the beneficially mutated species. Less beneficial mutations die off. The mutated rabbit doesn't have to be faster than the fox. It just has to be faster than the other rabbits.   Theory of evolution Evolving software Random mutations happen all the time. Most of these mutations are so bad, the new species dies off, or cannot reproduce. Developers write new code all the time. New ideas come up during the act of writing software. The really bad ones don't get past the stage of idea. The bad ones don't get committed to source control. Natural selection favors the beneficial mutated species Good ideas and new code gets discussed in group during informal peer review. Less than good code gets refactored. Enhanced code makes it more readable, maintainable... A good set of traits makes the species superior to others. It becomes widespread A good design tends to make it easier to add new features, easier to understand the current implementations, easier to optimize for performance...thus superior. The best designs get carried over from project to project. They appear in blogs, articles and books about principles, patterns and practices.   Of course the act of writing software is deliberate. This can hardly be called random mutations. Though it sometimes might seem that code evolves through a will of its own ;-) Does this mean that evolving software (evolution) is better than a big design up front (creationism)? Not necessarily. It's a false idea to think that a project starts from scratch and everything evolves from there. Everyone carries his experience of what works and what doesn't. Up front design is necessary, but is best kept simple and minimal, just enough to get you started. Let the good experiences and ideas help to drive the process, whether they come from you or from others, from past experience or from the most junior developer on your team. Once again, balance is the keyword. Balance design up front with evolution on a daily basis. How do you know what balance is right? Through your own experience of what worked and what didn't (here's evolution again). Notes: The evolution of software can quickly degenerate without discipline. TDD is a discipline that leaves little to chance on that part. Write your test to describe the new behavior. Write just enough code to make it behave as specified. Refactor to evolve the code to a higher standard. The responsibility of good design rests continuously on each developers' shoulders. Promiscuous pair programming helps quickly spreading the design to the whole team.

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  • JCP Awards 10 Year Retrospective

    - by Heather VanCura
    As we celebrate 10 years of JCP Program Award recognition in 2012,  take a look back in the Retrospective article covering the history of the JCP awards.  Most recently, the JCP awards were  celebrated at JavaOne Latin America in Brazil, where SouJava was presented the JCP Member of the Year Award for 2012 (won jointly with the London Java Community) for their contributions and launch of the Global Adopt-a-JSR Program. This is also a good time to honor the JCP Award Nominees and Winners who have been designated as Star Spec Leads.  Spec Leads are key to the Java Community Process (JCP) program. Without them, none of the Java Specification Requests (JSRs) would have begun, much less completed and become implemented in shipping products.  Nominations for 2012 Start Spec Leads are now open until 31 December. The Star Spec Lead program recognizes Spec Leads who have repeatedly proven their merit by producing high quality specifications, establishing best practices, and mentoring others. The point of such honor is to endorse the good work that they do, showcase their methods for other Spec Leads to emulate, and motivate other JCP program members and participants to get involved in the JCP program. Ed Burns – A Star Spec Lead for 2009, Ed first got involved with the JCP program when he became co-Spec Lead of JSR 127, JavaServer Faces (JSF), a role he has continued through JSF 1.2 and now JSF 2.0, which is JSR 314. Linda DeMichiel – Linda thus involved in the JCP program from its very early days. She has been the Spec Lead on at least three JSRs and an EC member for another three. She holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University. Gavin King – Nominated as a JCP Outstanding Spec Lead for 2010, for his work with JSR 299. His endorsement said, “He was not only able to work through disputes and objections to the evolving programming model, but he resolved them into solutions that were more technically sound, and which gained support of its pundits.” Mike Milikich –  Nominated for his work on Java Micro Edition (ME) standards, implementations, tools, and Technology Compatibility Kits (TCKs), Mike was a 2009 Star Spec Lead for JSR 271, Mobile Information Device Profile 3. David Nuescheler – Serving as the CTO for Day Software, acquired by Adobe Systems, David has been a key player in the growth of the company’s global content management solution. In 2002, he became Spec Lead for JSR 170, Content Repository for Java Technology API, continuing for the subsequent version, JSR 283. Bill Shannon – A well-respected name in the Java community, Bill came to Oracle from Sun as a Distinguished Engineer and is still performing at full speed as Spec Lead for JSR 342, Java EE 7,  as an alternate EC member, and hands-on problem solver for the Java community as a whole. Jim Van Peursem – Jim holds a PhD in Computer Engineering. He was part of the Motorola team that worked with Sun labs on the Spotless VM that became the KVM. From within Motorola, Jim has been responsible for many aspects of Java technology deployment, from an independent Connected Limited Device Configuration (CLDC) and Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP) implementations, to handset development, to working with the industry in defining many related standards. Participation in the JCP Program goes well beyond technical proficiency. The JCP Awards Program is an attempt to say “Thank You” to all of the JCP members, Expert Group Members, Spec Leads, and EC members who give their time to contribute to the evolution of Java technology.

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  • Modernizr Rocks HTML5

    - by Laila
    HTML5 is a moving target.  At the moment, we don't know what will be in future versions.  In most circumstances, this really matters to the developer. When you're using Adobe Air, you can be reasonably sure what works, what is there, and what isn't, since you have a version of the browser built-in. With Metro, you can assume that you're going to be using at least IE 10.   If, however,  you are using HTML5 in a web application, then you are going to rely heavily on Feature Detection.  Feature-Detection is a collection of techniques that tell you, via JavaScript, whether the current browser has this feature natively implemented or not Feature Detection isn't just there for the esoteric stuff such as  Geo-location,  progress bars,  <canvas> support,  the new <input> types, Audio, Video, web workers or storage, but is required even for semantic markup, since old browsers make a pigs ear out of rendering this.  Feature detection can't rely just on reading the browser version and inferring from that what works. Instead, you must use JavaScript to check that an HTML5 feature is there before using it.  The problem with relying on the user-agent is that it takes a lot of historical data  to work out what version does what, and, anyway, the user-agent can be, and sometimes is, spoofed. The open-source library Modernizr  is just about the most essential  JavaScript library for anyone using HTML5, because it provides APIs to test for most of the CSS3 and HTML5 features before you use them, and is intelligent enough to alter semantic markup into 'legacy' 'markup  using shims  on page-load  for old browsers. It also allows you to check what video Codecs are installed for playing video. It also provides media queries  and conditional resource-loading (formerly YepNope.js.).  Generally, Modernizr gives you the choice of what you do about browsers that don't support the feature that you want. Often, the best choice is graceful degradation, but the resource-loading feature allows you to dynamically load JavaScript Shims to replace the standard API for missing or defective HTML5 functionality, called 'PolyFills'.  As the Modernizr site says 'Yes, not only can you use HTML5 today, but you can use it in the past, too!' The evolutionary progress of HTML5  requires a more defensive style of JavaScript programming where the programmer adopts a mindset of fearing the worst ( IE 6)  rather than assuming the best, whilst exploiting as many of the new HTML features as possible for the requirements of the site or HTML application.  Why would anyone want the distraction of developing their own techniques to do this when  Modernizr exists to do this for you? Laila

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  • Sweet and Sour Source Control

    - by Tony Davis
    Most database developers don't use Source Control. A recent anonymous poll on SQL Server Central asked its readers "Which Version Control system do you currently use to store you database scripts?" The winner, with almost 30% of the vote was...none: "We don't use source control for database scripts". In second place with almost 28% of the vote was Microsoft's VSS. VSS? Given its reputation for being buggy, unstable and lacking most of the basic features required of a proper source control system, answering VSS is really just another way of saying "I don't use Source Control". At first glance, it's a surprising thought. You wonder how database developers can work in a team and find out what changed, when the system worked before but is now broken; to work out what happened to their changes that now seem to have vanished; to roll-back a mistake quickly so that the rest of the team have a functioning build; to find instantly whether a suspect change has been deployed to production. Unfortunately, the survey didn't ask about the scale of the database development, and correlate the two questions. If there is only one database developer within a schema, who has an automated approach to regular generation of build scripts, then the need for a formal source control system is questionable. After all, a database stores far more about its metadata than a traditional compiled application. However, what is meat for a small development is poison for a team-based development. Here, we need a form of Source Control that can reconcile simultaneous changes, store the history of changes, derive versions and builds and that can cope with forks and merges. The problem comes when one borrows a solution that was designed for conventional programming. A database is not thought of as a "file", but a vast, interdependent and intricate matrix of tables, indexes, constraints, triggers, enumerations, static data and so on, all subtly interconnected. It is an awkward fit. Subversion with its support for merges and forks, and the tolerance of different work practices, can be made to work well, if used carefully. It has a standards-based architecture that allows it to be used on all platforms such as Windows Mac, and Linux. In the words of Erland Sommerskog, developers should "just do it". What's in a database is akin to a "binary file", and the developer must work only from the file. You check out the file, edit it, and save it to disk to compile it. Dependencies are validated at this point and if you've broken anything (e.g. you renamed a column and broke all the objects that reference the column), you'll find out about it right away, and you'll be forced to fix it. Nevertheless, for many this is an alien way of working with SQL Server. Subversion is the powerhouse, not the GUI. It doesn't work seamlessly with your existing IDE, and that usually means SSMS. So the question then becomes more subtle. Would developers be less reluctant to use a fully-featured source (revision) control system for a team database development if they had a turn-key, reliable system that fitted in with their existing work-practices? I'd love to hear what you think. Cheers, Tony.

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  • How should an object that uses composition set its composed components?

    - by Casey
    After struggling with various problems and reading up on component-based systems and reading Bob Nystrom's excellent book "Game Programming Patterns" and in particular the chapter on Components I determined that this is a horrible idea: //Class intended to be inherited by all objects. Engine uses Objects exclusively. class Object : public IUpdatable, public IDrawable { public: Object(); Object(const Object& other); Object& operator=(const Object& rhs); virtual ~Object() =0; virtual void SetBody(const RigidBodyDef& body); virtual const RigidBody* GetBody() const; virtual RigidBody* GetBody(); //Inherited from IUpdatable virtual void Update(double deltaTime); //Inherited from IDrawable virtual void Draw(BITMAP* dest); protected: private: }; I'm attempting to refactor it into a more manageable system. Mr. Nystrom uses the constructor to set the individual components; CHANGING these components at run-time is impossible. It's intended to be derived and be used in derivative classes or factory methods where their constructors do not change at run-time. i.e. his Bjorne object is just a call to a factory method with a specific call to the GameObject constructor. Is this a good idea? Should the object have a default constructor and setters to facilitate run-time changes or no default constructor without setters and instead use a factory method? Given: class Object { public: //...See below for constructor implementation concerns. Object(const Object& other); Object& operator=(const Object& rhs); virtual ~Object() =0; //See below for Setter concerns IUpdatable* GetUpdater(); IDrawable* GetRenderer(); protected: IUpdatable* _updater; IDrawable* _renderer; private: }; Should the components be read-only and passed in to the constructor via: class Object { public: //No default constructor. Object(IUpdatable* updater, IDrawable* renderer); //...remainder is same as above... }; or Should a default constructor be provided and then the components can be set at run-time? class Object { public: Object(); //... SetUpdater(IUpdater* updater); SetRenderer(IDrawable* renderer); //...remainder is same as above... }; or both? class Object { public: Object(); Object(IUpdater* updater, IDrawable* renderer); //... SetUpdater(IUpdater* updater); SetRenderer(IDrawable* renderer); //...remainder is same as above... };

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  • Getting Started with NASM

    - by MarkPearl
    Today I got to play with NASM. This is an assembler and disassembler that can be used to write 16-bit, 32-bit & 64-bit programs. Let me say upfront that the last time I looked at assembly code at any depth was when I was studying Computer Science in Pietermaritzburg – ten years ago – and we never ever got to touch any real assembly code so a lot of what I am looking at today is very new to me. The first thing I did was download NASM compiler. This turned out to be a bit more complicated than I thought. Originally I went to http://www.nasm.us/ and downloaded the nasm-2.09.04.zip file which I thought had all I needed. No luck! It seemed to just have the uncompiled code, and from what I could tell I would need to recompile and build it – possibly in c++? Well, I wasn’t going to waste my time with that, so a bit more searching and I found the Win32 (http://www.nasm.us/pub/nasm/releasebuilds/2.09.04/win32/) folder Nasm.exe which I downloaded. Choosing an IDE So, I have NASM compiler but to compile anything you need to pass a string of special characters in the command prompt. That’s fine if I was going to just do one program once every couple of years, but since I am aiming to do quite a bit more exploration of NASM I began searching for an IDE. There were a few options, even apparently Visual Studio with a bit of tweeking could do the job, but from past experience I wanted to avoid the VS route as it can sometimes get confusing. I eventually settled on TextPad which I had used a few years ago for a similar project and it had been simple enough yet powerful enough to do the job. A bit of searching and I found a syntax file for NASM and everything seemed hunky dory. Configuring TextPad to run the NASM Compiler Next was to get TextPad to run the NASM compiler. TextPad has this external tools option that allows one to configure special commands. To simplify the process I first created a bat file in the NASM directory that allowed me to simply compile asm files. The bat file was called as.bat and had just one line of code… nasm -f bin %1.asm -o %1.com -l %1.lst Once I had created as.bat I just needed to go into TextPad and create a tool. I have made a quick video of that just showing you where the various settings are which is viewable below. The 64Bit Problem So I now have an ‘IDE’ linked to my NASM compiler so everything should be fine right? No! Whenever I tried to compile an asm program it compiles fine, but when I try and run it I get an error – “This version of the file is not compatible with the version Windows you’re running. Check your computer’s system information to see whether you need an x86 (32-bit) or x64 (64-bit) version of the program, and then contact the software publisher." Well.. it turns out there are a few complications with having a 64 bit OS! So after searching google and coming to any real solution that I could find other than perhaps attempting to build the code for nasm, I eventually resorted to running a VM with Windows XP on it and putting NASM there… My first hello world program So I attempt my first hello world program as per an example I found… the code was quite simple and is shown below… bits16 org 0x100 jmp main message: db 'Hello World',0ah,0dh,'$' main: mov dx,message mov ah,09 int 21h int 20h Running the build tool from TextPad and everything compiles fine and I now have a console app with helllo world shown. Conclusion It’s very early days with NASM. I have been spoilt with Visual Studio and high order languages so I assume it will be a painful ride getting into the basics of assembly programming but I am hoping that at the end of it, I will at least have a bit more exposure to a language closer to the metal.

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  • Big Data – How to become a Data Scientist and Learn Data Science? – Day 19 of 21

    - by Pinal Dave
    In yesterday’s blog post we learned the importance of the analytics in Big Data Story. In this article we will understand how to become a Data Scientist for Big Data Story. Data Scientist is a new buzz word, everyone seems to be wanting to become Data Scientist. Let us go over a few key topics related to Data Scientist in this blog post. First of all we will understand what is a Data Scientist. In the new world of Big Data, I see pretty much everyone wants to become Data Scientist and there are lots of people I have already met who claims that they are Data Scientist. When I ask what is their role, I have got a wide variety of answers. What is Data Scientist? Data scientists are the experts who understand various aspects of the business and know how to strategies data to achieve the business goals. They should have a solid foundation of various data algorithms, modeling and statistics methodology. What do Data Scientists do? Data scientists understand the data very well. They just go beyond the regular data algorithms and builds interesting trends from available data. They innovate and resurrect the entire new meaning from the existing data. They are artists in disguise of computer analyst. They look at the data traditionally as well as explore various new ways to look at the data. Data Scientists do not wait to build their solutions from existing data. They think creatively, they think before the data has entered into the system. Data Scientists are visionary experts who understands the business needs and plan ahead of the time, this tremendously help to build solutions at rapid speed. Besides being data expert, the major quality of Data Scientists is “curiosity”. They always wonder about what more they can get from their existing data and how to get maximum out of future incoming data. Data Scientists do wonders with the data, which goes beyond the job descriptions of Data Analysist or Business Analysist. Skills Required for Data Scientists Here are few of the skills a Data Scientist must have. Expert level skills with statistical tools like SAS, Excel, R etc. Understanding Mathematical Models Hands-on with Visualization Tools like Tableau, PowerPivots, D3. j’s etc. Analytical skills to understand business needs Communication skills On the technology front any Data Scientists should know underlying technologies like (Hadoop, Cloudera) as well as their entire ecosystem (programming language, analysis and visualization tools etc.) . Remember that for becoming a successful Data Scientist one require have par excellent skills, just having a degree in a relevant education field will not suffice. Final Note Data Scientists is indeed very exciting job profile. As per research there are not enough Data Scientists in the world to handle the current data explosion. In near future Data is going to expand exponentially, and the need of the Data Scientists will increase along with it. It is indeed the job one should focus if you like data and science of statistics. Courtesy: emc Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss about various Big Data Learning resources. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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  • Windows Phone 7 Silverlight / XNA development talk

    - by subodhnpushpak
    Hi, I presented on Windows Phone 7 app development using Silverlight. Here are few pics from the event Windows Phone 7 development VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL     I demonstrated the Visual studio, emulator capabilities/ features. An demo on Wp7 app communication with an OData Service, along with a demo on XNA app. There was lot of curious questions; I am listing them here because these keep on popping up again and again: 1. What tools does it takes to develop Wp7 app? Are they free? A typical WP7 app can be developed either using Silverlight or XNA. For developers, Visual Studio 2010 is a good choice as it provides an integrated development environment with lots of useful project templates; which makes the task really easy. For designers, Blend may be used to develop the UI in XAML. Both the tools are FREE (express version) to download and very intuitive to use. 2. What about the learning curve? If you know C#, (or any other programming language), learning curve is really flat. XAML (used for UI) may be new for you, but trust me; its very intuitive. Also you can use Microsoft Blend to generate the UI (XAML) for you. 3. How can I develop /test app without using actual device? How can I be sure my app runs as expected on actual device? The WP7 SDK comes along with an excellent emulator; which you can use for development/ testing on a computer. Later you can just change a setting and deploy the application on WP7. You will require Zune software for deploying the application on phone along with Developers key from WP7 marketplace. You can obtain key from marketplace by filling a form. The whole process for registering  is easy; just follow the steps on the site. 4. Which one should I use? Silverlight or XNA? Use Silverlight for enterprise/ business / utility apps. Use XNA for Games app. While each platform is capable / strong and may be used in conjunction as well; The methodologies used for development in these platforms are very different. XNA works on typical Do..While loop where as Silverlight works on event based methodology. 5. Where are the learning resources? Are they free? There is lots of stuff on WP7. Most of them are free. There is a excellent free book by Charles Petzold to download and http://www.microsoft.com/windowsphone is full of demos /todos / vidoes. All the exciting stuff was captured live and you can view it here; in case you were not able to catch it live!! @ http://livestre.am/AUfx. My talk starts from 3:19:00 timeline in the video!! Is there an app you miss on WP7? Do let me know about it and I may work on it for free !!! Keep discovering. Keep is Simple. WP7. Subodh

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  • From DBA to Data Analyst

    - by Denise McInerney
    Cross posted from the PASS Blog There is a lot changing in the data professional’s world these days. More data is being produced and stored. More enterprises are trying to use that data to improve their products and services and understand their customers better. More data platforms and tools seem to be crowding the market. For a traditional DBA this can be a confusing and perhaps unsettling time. It’s also a time that offers great opportunity for career growth. I speak from personal experience. We sometimes refer to the “accidental DBA”, the person who finds herself suddenly responsible for managing the database because she has some other technical skills. While it was not accidental, six months ago I was unexpectedly offered a chance to transition out of my DBA role and become a data analyst. I have since come to view this offer as a gift, though at the time I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. Throughout my DBA career I’ve gotten support from my PASS friends and colleagues and they were the first ones I turned to for counsel about this new situation. Everyone was encouraging and I received two pieces of valuable advice: first, leverage what I already know about data and second, work to understand the business’ needs. Bringing the power of data to bear to solve business problems is really the heart of the job. The challenge is figuring out how to do that. PASS had been the source of much of my technical training as a DBA, so I naturally started there to begin my Business Intelligence education. Once again the Virtual Chapter webinars, local chapter meetings and SQL Saturdays have been invaluable. I work in a large company where we are fortunate to have some very talented data scientists and analysts. These colleagues have been generous with their time and advice. I also took a statistics class through Coursera where I got a refresher in statistics and an introduction to the R programming language. And that’s not the end of the free resources available to someone wanting to acquire new skills. There are many knowledgeable Business Intelligence and Analytics professionals who teach through their blogs. Every day I can learn something new from one of these experts. Sometimes we plan our next career move and sometimes it just happens. Either way a database professional who follows industry developments and acquires new skills will be better prepared when change comes. Take the opportunity to learn something about the changing data landscape and attend a Business Intelligence, Business Analytics or Big Data Virtual Chapter meeting. And if you are moving into this new world of data consider attending the PASS Business Analytics Conference in April where you can meet and learn from those who are already on that road. It’s been said that “the only thing constant is change.” That’s never been more true for the data professional than it is today. But if you are someone who loves data and grasps its potential you are in the right place at the right time.

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  • DataContractSerializer: type is not serializable because it is not public?

    - by Michael B. McLaughlin
    I recently ran into an odd and annoying error when working with the DataContractSerializer class for a WP7 project. I thought I’d share it to save others who might encounter it the same annoyance I had. So I had an instance of  ObservableCollection<T> that I was trying to serialize (with T being a class I wrote for the project) and whenever it would hit the code to save it, it would give me: The data contract type 'ProjectName.MyMagicItemsClass' is not serializable because it is not public. Making the type public will fix this error. Alternatively, you can make it internal, and use the InternalsVisibleToAttribute attribute on your assembly in order to enable serialization of internal members - see documentation for more details. Be aware that doing so has certain security implications. This, of course, was malarkey. I was trying to write an instance of MyAwesomeClass that looked like this: [DataContract] public class MyAwesomeClass { [DataMember] public ObservableCollection<MyMagicItemsClass> GreatItems { get; set; }   [DataMember] public ObservableCollection<MyMagicItemsClass> SuperbItems { get; set; }     public MyAwesomeClass { GreatItems = new ObservableCollection<MyMagicItemsClass>(); SuperbItems = new ObservableCollection<MyMagicItemsClass>(); } }   That’s all well and fine. And MyMagicItemsClass was also public with a parameterless public constructor. It too had DataContractAttribute applied to it and it had DataMemberAttribute applied to all the properties and fields I wanted to serialize. Everything should be cool, but it’s not because I keep getting that “not public” exception. I could tell you about all the things I tried (generating a List<T> on the fly to make sure it wasn’t ObservableCollection<T>, trying to serialize the the Collections directly, moving it all to a separate library project, etc.), but I want to keep this short. In the end, I remembered my the “Debug->Exceptions…” VS menu option that brings up the list of exception-related circumstances under which the Visual Studio debugger will break. I checked the “Thrown” checkbox for “Common Language Runtime Exceptions”, started the project under the debugger, and voilà: the true problem revealed itself. Some of my properties had fairly elaborate setters whose logic I wanted to ignore. So for some of them, I applied an IgnoreDataMember attribute to them and applied the DataMember attribute to the underlying fields instead. All of which, in line with good programming practices, were private. Well, it just so happens that WP7 apps run in a “partial trust” environment and outside of “full trust”-land, DataContractSerializer refuses to serialize or deserialize non-public members. Of course that exception was swallowed up internally by .NET so all I ever saw was that bizarre message about things that I knew for certain were public being “not public”. I changed all the private fields I was serializing to public and everything worked just fine. In hindsight it all makes perfect sense. The serializer uses reflection to build up its graph of the object in order to write it out. In partial trust, you don’t want people using reflection to get at non-public members of an object since there are potential security problems with allowing that (you could break out of the sandbox pretty quickly by reflecting and calling the appropriate methods and cause some havoc by reflecting and setting the appropriate fields in certain circumstances. The fact that you cannot reflect your own assembly seems a bit heavy-handed, but then again I’m not a compiler writer or a framework designer and I have no idea what sorts of difficulties would go into allowing that from a compilation standpoint or what sorts of security problems allowing that could present (if any). So, lesson learned. If you get an incomprehensible exception message, turn on break on all thrown exceptions and try running it again (it might take a couple of tries, depending) and see what pops out. Chances are you’ll find the buried exception that actually explains what was going on. And if you’re getting a weird exception when trying to use DataContractSerializer complaining about public types not being public, chances are you’re trying to serialize a private or protected field/property.

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  • What DX level does my graphics card support? Does it go to 11?

    - by Daniel Moth
    Recently I run into a situation that I have run into quite a few times. Someone encounters a machine and the question arises: "Is there a DirectX 11 card in this machine?". Typically the reason you are interested in that is because cards with DirectX 11 drivers fully support DirectCompute (and by extension C++ AMP) for GPGPU programming. The driver specifically is WDDM (1.1 on Windows 7 and Windows 8 introduces WDDM 1.2 with cool new capabilities). There are many ways for figuring out if you have a DirectX11 card, so here are the approaches that you can use, with a bonus right at the end of the post. Run DxDiag WindowsKey + R, type DxDiag and hit Enter. That is the DirectX diagnostic tool, which unfortunately, only tells you on the "System" tab what is the highest version of DirectX installed on your machine. So if it reports DirectX 11, that doesn't mean you have a DX11 driver! The "Display" tab has a promising "DDI version" label, but unfortunately that doesn't seem to be accurate on the machines I've tested it with (or I may be misinterpreting its use). Either way, this tool is not the one you want for this purpose, although it is good for telling you the WDDM version among other things. Use the Microsoft hardware page There is a Microsoft Windows 7 compatibility center, that lists all hardware (tip: use the advanced search) and you could try and locate your device there… good luck. Use Wikipedia or the hardware vendor's website Use the Wikipedia page for the vendor cards, for both nvidia and amd. Often this information will also be in the specifications for the cards on the IHV site, but is is nice that wikipedia has a single page per vendor that you can search etc. There is a column in the tables for API support where you can see the DirectX version. Check if it is one of these recommended DX11 cards You may not have a DirectX 11 card and are interested in purchasing one. While I am in no position to make recommendations, I will list here some cards from two big IHVs that we know are DirectX 11 capable. Some AMD (aka ATI) cards Low end, inexpensive DX11 hardware: Radeon 5450, 5550, 6450, 6570 Mid range (decent perf, single precision): Radeon 5750, 5770, 6770, 6790 High end (capable of double precision): Radeon 5850, 5870, 6950, 6970 Single precision APUs: AMD E-Series APUs AMD A-Series APUs Some NVIDIA cards Low end, inexpensive DX11 hardware: GeForce GT430, GT 440, GT520, GTS 450 Quadro 400, 600 Mid-range (decent perf, single precision): GeForce GTX 460, GTX 550 Ti, GTX 560, GTX 560 Ti Quadro 2000 High end (capable of double precision): GeForce GTX 480, GTX 570, GTX 580, GTX 590, GTX 595 Quadro 4000, 5000, 6000 Tesla C2050, C2070, C2075 Get the DirectX SDK and run DirectX Caps Viewer Download and install the June 2010 DirectX SDK. As part of that you now have the DirectX Capabilities Viewer utility (find it in your start menu by searching for "DirectX Caps Viewer", the filename is DXCapsViewer.exe). It will list all your devices (emulated, and real hardware ones) under the first node. Expand the hardware entries and then expand again the Direct3D 11 folder. If you see D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL_11_ under that, then your card supports feature level 11 which means it supports DirectCompute and C++ AMP. In the following screenshot of one of my old laptops, the card only goes to feature level 10. Run a utility from the web that just tells you! Of course, writing some C++ AMP code that enumerates accelerators and lists the ones that are capable is trivial. However that requires that you have redistributed the runtime, so a more broadly applicable approach is to use the DX APIs directly to enumerate the DX11 capable cards. That is exactly what the development lead for C++ AMP has done and he describes and shares that utility at this post. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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