dr death - Page 65 - Developer IT

Help with jQuery Traversal

- by Jack Webb-Heller

Hi guys, I'm struggling a bit with traversing in jQuery. Here's the relevant markup: <ul id="sortable" class="ui-sortable"> <li> <img src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Vza76tCxL._SL160_.jpg"> <div class="controls"> <span class="move">?</span> <span class="delete">?</span> </div> <div class="data"> <h1>War and Peace (Oxford World's Classics)</h1> <textarea>Published to coincide with the centenary of Tolstoy's death, here is an exciting new edition of one of the great literary works of world literature.</textarea> </div> </li> <li> <img src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51boZxm2seL._SL160_.jpg"> <div class="controls"> <span class="move">?</span> <span class="delete">?</span> </div> <div class="data"> <h1>A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings (Penguin Classics)</h1> <span>Optionally, write your own description in the box below.</span> <textarea>Dicken's Christmas writings-in a new, sumptuous, and delightful clothbound edition.</textarea> </div> </li> </ul> This is code for a jQuery UI 'Sortable' element. Here's what I want to happen. When the Delete thing is clicked ($('.delete')), I want the <li> item it's contained within to be removed. I've tried using $('.delete').parent().parent().remove(); but in the case of having two items, that seems to delete both of them. I'm a bit confused by this. I also tried using closest() to find the closest li, but that didn't seem to work either. How should I best traverse the DOM in this case? Thanks! Jack

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.NET: Avoidance of custom exceptions by utilising existing types, but which?

- by Mr. Disappointment

Consider the following code (ASP.NET/C#): private void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { if (!SetupHelper.SetUp()) { throw new ShitHitFanException(); } } I've never been too hesitant to simply roll my own exception type, basically because I have found (bad practice, or not) that mostly a reasonable descriptive type name gives us enough as developers to go by in order to know what happened and why something might have happened. Sometimes the existing .NET exception types even accommodate these needs - regardless of the message. In this particular scenario, for demonstration purposes only, the application should die a horrible, disgraceful death should SetUp not complete properly (as dictated by its return value), but I can't find an already existing exception type in .NET which would seem to suffice; though, I'm sure one will be there and I simply don't know about it. Brad Abrams posted this article that lists some of the available exception types. I say some because the article is from 2005, and, although I try to keep up to date, it's a more than plausible assumption that more have been added to future framework versions that I am still unaware of. Of course, Visual Studio gives you a nicely formatted, scrollable list of exceptions via Intellisense - but even on analysing those, I find none which would seem to suffice for this situation... ApplicationException: ...when a non-fatal application error occurs The name seems reasonable, but the error is very definitely fatal - the app is dead. ExecutionEngineException: ...when there is an internal error in the execution engine of the CLR Again, sounds reasonable, superficially; but this has a very definite purpose and to help me out here certainly isn't it. HttpApplicationException: ...when there is an error processing an HTTP request Well, we're running an ASP.NET application! But we're also just pulling at straws here. InvalidOperationException: ...when a call is invalid for the current state of an instance This isn't right but I'm adding it to the list of 'possible should you put a gun to my head, yes'. OperationCanceledException: ...upon cancellation of an operation the thread was executing Maybe I wouldn't feel so bad using this one, but I'd still be hijacking the damn thing with little right. You might even ask why on earth I would want to raise an exception here but the idea is to find out that if I were to do so then do you know of an appropriate exception for such a scenario? And basically, to what extent can we piggy-back on .NET while keeping in line with rationality?

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General ORM design question

- by Calvin

Suppose you have 2 classes, Person and Rabbit. A person can do a number of things to a rabbit, s/he can either feed it, buy it and become its owner, or give it away. A rabbit can have none or at most 1 owner at a time. And if it is not fed for a while, it may die. Class Person { Void Feed(Rabbit r); Void Buy(Rabbit r); Void Giveaway(Person p, Rabbit r); Rabbit[] rabbits; } Class Rabbit { Bool IsAlive(); Person pwner; } There are a couple of observations from the domain model: Person and Rabbit can have references to each other Any actions on 1 object can also change the state of the other object Even if no explicit actions are invoked, there can still be a change of state in the objects (e.g. Rabbit can be starved to death, and that causes it to be removed from the Person.rabbits array) As DDD is concerned, I think the correct approach is to synchronize all calls that may change the states in the domain model. For instance, if a Person buys a Rabbit, s/he would need to acquire a lock in Person to make a change to the rabbits array AND also another lock in Rabbit to change its owner before releasing the first one. This would prevent a race condition where 2 Persons claim to be the owner of the little Rabbit. The other approach is to let the database to handle all these synchronizations. Who makes the first call wins, but then the DB needs to have some kind of business logics to figure out if it is a valid transaction (e.g. if a Rabbit already has an owner, it cannot change its owner unless the Person gives it away). There are both pros/cons in either approach, and I’d expect the “best” solution would be somewhere in-between. How would you do it in real life? What’s your take and experience? Also, is it a valid concern that there can be another race condition the domain model has committed its change but before it is fully committed in the database? And for the 3rd observation (i.e. state change due to time factor). How will you do it?

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RSS Feeds currently on Simple-Talk

- by Andrew Clarke

There are a number of news-feeds for the Simple-Talk site, but for some reason they are well hidden. Whilst we set about reorganizing them, I thought it would be a good idea to list some of the more important ones. The most important one for almost all purposes is the Homepage RSS feed which represents the blogs and articles that are placed on the homepage. Main Site Feed representing the Homepage ..which is good for most purposes but won't always have all the blogs, or maybe it will occasionally miss an article. If you aren't interested in all the content, you can just use the RSS feeds that are more relevant to your interests. (We'll be increasing these categories soon) The newsfeed for SQL articles The .NET section newsfeed The newsfeed for Red Gate books The newsfeed for Opinion articles The SysAdmin section newsfeed if you want to get a more refined feed, then you can pick and choose from these feeds for each category so as to make up your custom news-feed in the SQL section, SQL Training Learn SQL Server Database Administration TSQL Programming SQL Server Performance Backup and Recovery SQL Tools SSIS SSRS (Reporting Services) in .NET there are... ASP.NET Windows Forms .NET Framework ,NET Performance Visual Studio .NET tools in Sysadmin there are Exchange General Virtualisation Unified Messaging Powershell in opinion, there is... Geek of the Week Opinion Pieces in Books, there is .NET Books SQL Books SysAdmin Books And all the blogs have got feeds. So although you can get all the blogs from here.. Main Blog Feed You can get individual RSS feeds.. AdamRG's Blog Alex.Davies's Blog AliceE's Blog Andrew Clarke's Blog Andrew Hunter's Blog Bart Read's Blog Ben Adderson's Blog BobCram's Blog bradmcgehee's Blog Brian Donahue's Blog Charles Brown's Blog Chris Massey's Blog CliveT's Blog Damon's Blog David Atkinson's Blog David Connell's Blog Dr Dionysus's Blog drsql's Blog FatherJack's Blog Flibble's Blog Gareth Marlow's Blog Helen Joyce's Blog James's Blog Jason Crease's Blog John Magnabosco's Blog Laila's Blog Lionel's Blog Matt Lee's Blog mikef's Blog Neil Davidson's Blog Nigel Morse's Blog Phil Factor's Blog red@work's Blog reka.burmeister's Blog Richard Mitchell's Blog RobbieT's Blog RobertChipperfield's Blog Rodney's Blog Roger Hart's Blog Simon Cooper's Blog Simon Galbraith's Blog TheFutureOfMonitoring's Blog Tim Ford's Blog Tom Crossman's Blog Tony Davis's Blog As well as these blogs, you also have the forums.... SQL Server for Beginners Forum Programming SQL Server Forum Administering SQL Server Forum .NET framework Forum .Windows Forms Forum ASP.NET Forum ADO.NET Forum

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Smarter, Faster, Cheaper: The Insurance Industry’s Dream

- by Jenna Danko

On June 3rd, I saw the Gaylord Resort Centre in Washington D.C. become the hub of C level executives and managers of insurance carriers for the IASA 2013 Conference. Insurance Accounting/Regulation and Technology sessions took the focus, but there were plenty of tertiary sessions for career development, which complemented the overall strong networking side of the conference. As an exhibitor, Oracle, along with several hundred other product providers, welcomed the opportunity to display and demonstrate our solutions and we were encouraged by hustle and bustle of the exhibition floor. The IASA organizers had pre-arranged fast track tours whereby interested conference delegates could sign up for a series of like-themed presentations from Vendors, giving them a level of 'Speed Dating' introductions to possible solutions and services. Oracle participated in a number of these, which were very well subscribed. Clearly, the conference had a strong business focus; however, attendees saw technology as a key enabler to get their processes done smarter, faster and cheaper. As we navigated through the exhibition, it became clear from the inquiries that came to us that insurance carriers are gravitating to a number of focus areas: Navigating the maze of upcoming regulatory reporting changes. For US carriers with European holdings, Solvency II carries a myriad of rules and reporting requirements. Alignment across the globe of the Own Risk and Solvency Assessment (ORSA) processes brings to the fore the National Insurance of Insurance commissioners' (NAIC) recent guidance manual publication. Doing more with less and to certainly expect more from technology for less dollars. The overall cost of IT, in particular hardware, has dropped in real terms (though the appetite for more has risen: more CPU, more RAM, more storage), but software has seen less change. Clearly, customers expect either to pay less or get a lot more from their software solutions for the same buck. Doing things smarter – A recognition that with the advance of technology to stand still no longer means you are technically going backwards. Technology and, in particular technology interactions with human business processes, has undergone incredible change over the past 5 years. Consumer usage (iPhones, etc.) has been at the forefront, but now at the Enterprise level ever more effective technology exploitation is beginning to take place. That data and, in particular gleaning knowledge from data, is refining and improving business processes. Organizations are now consuming more data than ever before, and it is set to grow exponentially for some time to come. Amassing large volumes of data is one thing, but effectively analyzing that data is another. It is the results of such analysis that leads to improvements both in terms of insurance product offerings and the processes to support them. Regulatory Compliance, damned if you do and damned if you don’t! Clearly, around the globe at lot is changing from a regulatory perspective and it is evident that in terms of regulatory requirements, whilst there is a greater convergence across jurisdictions bringing uniformity, there is also a lot of work to be done in the next 5 years. Just like the big data, hidden behind effective regulatory compliance there often lies golden nuggets that can give competitive advantages. From Oracle's perspective, our Rating Engine, Billing, Document Management and Insurance Analytics solutions on display served to strike up good conversations and, as is always the case at conferences, it was a great opportunity to meet and speak with existing Oracle customers that we might not have otherwise caught up with for a while. Fortunately, I was able to catch up on a few sessions at the close of the Exhibition. The speaker quality was high and the audience asked challenging, but pertinent, questions. During Dr. Jackie Freiberg’s keynote “Bye Bye Business as Usual,” the author discussed 8 strategies to help leaders create a culture where teams consistently deliver innovative ideas by disrupting the status quo. The very first strategy: Get wired for innovation. Freiberg admitted that folks in the insurance and financial services industry understand and know innovation is important, but oftentimes they are slow adopters. Today, technology and innovation go hand in hand. In speaking to delegates during and after the conference, a high degree of satisfaction could be measured from their positive comments of speaker sessions and the exhibitors. I suspect many will be back in 2014 with Indianapolis as the conference location. Did you attend the IASA Conference in Washington D.C.? If so, I would love to hear your comments. Andrew Collins is the Director, Solvency II of Oracle Financial Services. He can be reached at andrew.collins AT oracle.com.

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PASS Summit 2010 Recap

- by AjarnMark

Last week I attended my eighth PASS Summit in nine years, and every year it is a fantastic event! I was fortunate my first year to have a contact (Bill Graziano (blog | Twitter) from SQLTeam) that I was expecting to meet, and who got me started on a good track of making new contacts. Each year I have made a few more, and renewed friendships from years past. Many of the attendees agree that the pure networking opportunities are one of the best benefits of attending the Summit. And there’s a lot of great technical stuff, too, some of the things that stick out for me this year include… Pre-Con Monday: PowerShell with Allen White (blog | Twitter). This was the first time that I attended a pre-con. For those not familiar with the concept, the regular sessions for the conference are 75-90 minutes long. For an extra fee, you can attend a full-day session on a single topic during a pre- or post-conference training day. I had been meaning for several months to dive in and learn PowerShell, but just never seemed to find (or make) the time for it, so when I saw this was one of the all-day sessions, and I was planning to be there on Monday anyway, I decided to go for it. And it was well worth it! I definitely came out of there with a good foundation to build my own PowerShell scripts, plus several sample scripts that he showed which already cover the first four or five things I was planning to do with PowerShell anyway. This looks like the right tool for me to build an automated version of our software deployment process, which right now contains many repeated steps. Thanks Allen! Service Broker with Denny Cherry (blog | Twitter). I remembered reading Denny’s blog post on Using Service Broker instead of Replication, and ever since then I have been thinking about using this to populate a new reporting-focused Data Repository that we will be building in the near future. When I saw he was doing this session, I thought it would be great to get more information and be able to ask the author questions. When I brought this idea back to my boss, he really liked it, as we had previously been discussing doing nightly data loads, with an option to manually trigger a mid-day load if up-to-the-minute data was needed for something. If we go the Service Broker route, we can keep the Repository current in near real-time. Hooray! DBA Mythbusters with Paul Randal (blog | Twitter). Even though I read every one of the posts in Paul’s blog series of the same name, I had to go see the legend in person. It was great, and I still learned something new! How to Conduct Effective Meetings with Joe Webb (blog | Twitter). I always like to sit in on a session that Joe does. I met Joe several years ago when both he and Bill Graziano were on the PASS Board of Directors together, and we have kept in touch. Joe is very well-spoken and has great experience with both SQL Server and business. And we could certainly use some pointers at my work (probably yours, too) on making our meetings more effective and to run on-time. Of course, now that I’m the Chapter Leader for the Professional Development virtual chapter, I also had to sit in on this ProfDev session and recruit Joe to do a presentation or two for the chapter next year. Query Optimization with David DeWitt. Anyone who has seen Dr. David DeWitt present the 3rd keynote at a PASS Summit over the last three years knows what a great time it is to sit and listen to him make some really complicated and advanced topic easy to understand (although it still makes your head hurt). It still amazes me that the simple two-table join query from pubs that he used in his example can possibly have 22 million possible physical query plans. Ouch! Exhibit Hall: This year I spent more serious time in the exhibit hall than any year past. I have talked my boss into making a significant (for us) investment in monitoring tools next year, and this was a great opportunity to talk with all the big-hitters. Readers of mine may recall that I fell in love with the SQL Sentry Power Suite several months ago and wrote a blog entry about it just from the trial version. Well as things turned out, short-term budget priorities shifted, and we weren’t able to make the purchase then. I have it in the budget for next year, but since I was going to the Summit, my boss wanted me to look at the other options to see if this was really the one that we wanted. I spent a couple of hours talking with representatives from Red-Gate, Idera, Confio, and Quest about their offerings, and giving them each the same 3 scenarios that I wanted to be able to accomplish based on the questions and issues that arise in our company. It was interesting to discover the different approaches or “world view” that each vendor takes to the subject of performance monitoring and troubleshooting. I may write a separate article that goes into this in more depth, but the product that best aligned with our point of view, and met the current needs we have is still the SQL Sentry Power Suite. I’m not saying that the others are bad or wrong or anything like that, just that the way they tackled the issue did not align as well with our particular needs as does SQL Sentry’s product. And that was something I learned too, when you go shopping for these products, you really need to know what you want to get from them. It’s best if you have a few example scenarios from work that you can use to test out how well each tool fits your particular needs. Overall, another GREAT event. I can’t wait to get the DVDs so I can sit in on a bunch of other sessions that I couldn’t get to because I was in one of the ones above. And I can hardly wait until next year!

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Advice on learning programming languages and math.

- by Joris Ooms

I feel like I'm getting stuck lately when it comes to learning about programming-related things; I thought I'd ask a question here and write it all down in the hope to get some pointers/advice from people. Perhaps writing it down helps me put things in perspective for myself aswell. I study Interactive Multimedia Design. This course is based on two things: graphic design on one hand, and web development on the other hand. I have quite a decent knowledge of web-related languages (the usual HTML/JS/PHP) and I'll be getting a course on ASP.NET next year. In my free time, I have learnt how to work with CodeIgniter, aswell as some diving into Ruby (and Rails) and basic iOS programming. In my first year of college I also did a class on Java (19/20 on the end result). This grade doesn't really mean anything though; I have the basics of OOP down but Java-wise, we learnt next to nothing. Considering the time I have been programming in, for example, PHP.. I can't say I'm bad at it. I'm definitely not good or great at it, but I'm decent. My teachers tell me I have the programming thing down. They just tell me I should keep on learning. So that's what I do, and I try to take in as much as possible; however, sometimes I'm unsure where to start and I have this tendency to always doubt myself. Now, for the 'question'. I want to get into iOS programming. I know iOS programming boils down to programming in Cocoa Touch and Objective-C. I also know Obj-C is a superset of C. I have done a class on C a couple of years ago, but I failed miserably. I got stuck at pointers and never really understood them.. Until like a month ago. I suddenly 'got' it. I have been working through a book on Objective-C for a week or so now, and I understand the basics (I'm at like.. chapter 6 or so). However, I keep running into similar problems as the ones I had when I did the C class: I suck at math. No, really. I come from a Latin-Modern Languages background in high school and I had nearly no math classes back then. I wanted to study Computer Science, but I failed there because of the miserable state of my mathematics knowledge. I can't explain why I'm suddenly talking about math here though, because it isn't directly related to programming.. yet it is. For example, the examples in the book I'm reading now are about programming a fraction-calculator. All good, I can do the programming when I get the formulas down.. but it takes me a full day or more to actually get to that point. I also find it hard to come up with ideas for myself. I made one small iOS app the other day and it's just a button / label kind of thing. When I press the button, it generates a random number. That's really all I could come up with. Can you 'learn' that? It probably comes down to creativity, but evidently, I'm not too great at being creative. Are there any sites or resources out there that provide something like a basic list of things you can program when you're just starting out? Maybe I'm focusing on too many things at once. I want to keep my HTML/CSS at a decent level, while learning PHP and CodeIgniter, while diving into Ruby on Rails and learning Objective-C and the iOS SDK at the same time. I just want to be good at something, I guess. The problem is that I can't seem to be happy with my PHP stuff. I want more, something 'harder'; that's why I decided to pick up the iOS thing. Like I said, I have the basics down of a lot of different languages. I can program something simple in Java, in C, in Objective-C as of this week.. but it ends there. Mostly because I can't come up with ideas for more complex applications, and also because I just doubt myself: 'Oh, that's too complex, I can never do that'. And then it ends there. To conclude my rant, let me basically rephrase my questions into a 'tl;dr' part. A. I want to get into iOS programming and I have basic knowledge of C/Objective-C. However, I struggle to come up with ideas of my own and implement them and I also suck at math which is something that isn't directly related to, yet often needed while programming. What can I do? B. I have an interest in a lot of different programming languages and I can't stop reading/learning. However, I don't feel like I'm good in anything. Should I perhaps focus on just one language for a year or longer, or keep taking it all in at the same time and hope I'll finally get them all down? C. Are there any resources out there that provide basic ideas of things I can program? I'm thinking about 'simple' command-line applications here to help me while studying C/Obj-C away from the whole iPhone SDK. Like I said, the examples in my book are mainly math-based (fraction calculator) and it's kinda hard. :( Thanks a lot for reading my post. I didn't plan it to be this long but oh well. Thanks in advance for any answers.

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Use WLST to Delete All JMS Messages From a Destination

- by james.bayer

I got a question today about whether WebLogic Server has any tools to delete all messages from a JMS Queue. It just so happens that the WLS Console has this capability already. It’s available on the screen after the “Show Messages” button is clicked on a destination’s Monitoring tab as seen in the screen shot below. The console is great for something ad-hoc, but what if I want to automate this? Well it just so happens that the console is just a weblogic application layered on top of the JMX Management interface. If you look at the MBean Reference, you’ll find a JMSDestinationRuntimeMBean that includes the operation deleteMessages that takes a JMS Message Selector as an argument. If you pass an empty string, that is essentially a wild card that matches all messages. Coding a stand-alone JMX client for this is kind of lame, so let’s do something more suitable to scripting. In addition to the console, WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) based on Jython is another way to browse and invoke MBeans, so an equivalent interactive shell session to delete messages from a destination would looks like this: D:\Oracle\fmw11gr1ps3\user_projects\domains\hotspot_domain\bin>setDomainEnv.cmd D:\Oracle\fmw11gr1ps3\user_projects\domains\hotspot_domain>java weblogic.WLST Initializing WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) ... Welcome to WebLogic Server Administration Scripting Shell Type help() for help on available commands wls:/offline> connect('weblogic','welcome1','t3://localhost:7001') Connecting to t3://localhost:7001 with userid weblogic ... Successfully connected to Admin Server 'AdminServer' that belongs to domain 'hotspot_domain'. Warning: An insecure protocol was used to connect to the server. To ensure on-the-wire security, the SSL port or Admin port should be used instead. wls:/hotspot_domain/serverConfig> serverRuntime() Location changed to serverRuntime tree. This is a read-only tree with ServerRuntimeMBean as the root. For more help, use help(serverRuntime) wls:/hotspot_domain/serverRuntime> cd('JMSRuntime/AdminServer.jms/JMSServers/JMSServer-0/Destinations/SystemModule-0!Queue-0') wls:/hotspot_domain/serverRuntime/JMSRuntime/AdminServer.jms/JMSServers/JMSServer-0/Destinations/SystemModule-0!Queue-0> ls() dr-- DurableSubscribers -r-- BytesCurrentCount 0 -r-- BytesHighCount 174620 -r-- BytesPendingCount 0 -r-- BytesReceivedCount 253548 -r-- BytesThresholdTime 0 -r-- ConsumersCurrentCount 0 -r-- ConsumersHighCount 0 -r-- ConsumersTotalCount 0 -r-- ConsumptionPaused false -r-- ConsumptionPausedState Consumption-Enabled -r-- DestinationInfo javax.management.openmbean.CompositeDataSupport(compositeType=javax.management.openmbean.CompositeType(name=DestinationInfo,items=((itemName=ApplicationName,itemType=javax.management.openmbean.SimpleType(name=java.lang.String)),(itemName=ModuleName,itemType=javax.management.openmbean.SimpleType(name=java.lang.String)),(itemName openmbean.SimpleType(name=java.lang.Boolean)),(itemName=SerializedDestination,itemType=javax.management.openmbean.SimpleType(name=java.lang.String)),(itemName=ServerName,itemType=javax.management.openmbean.SimpleType(name=java.lang.String)),(itemName=Topic,itemType=javax.management.openmbean.SimpleType(name=java.lang.Boolean)),(itemName=VersionNumber,itemType=javax.management.op ule-0!Queue-0, Queue=true, SerializedDestination=rO0ABXNyACN3ZWJsb2dpYy5qbXMuY29tbW9uLkRlc3RpbmF0aW9uSW1wbFSmyJ1qZfv8DAAAeHB3kLZBABZTeXN0ZW1Nb2R1bGUtMCFRdWV1ZS0wAAtKTVNTZXJ2ZXItMAAOU3lzdGVtTW9kdWxlLTABAANBbGwCAlb6IS6T5qL/AAAACgEAC0FkbWluU2VydmVyAC2EGgJW+iEuk+ai/wAAAAsBAAtBZG1pblNlcnZlcgAthBoAAQAQX1dMU19BZG1pblNlcnZlcng=, ServerName=JMSServer-0, Topic=false, VersionNumber=1}) -r-- DestinationType Queue -r-- DurableSubscribers null -r-- InsertionPaused false -r-- InsertionPausedState Insertion-Enabled -r-- MessagesCurrentCount 0 -r-- MessagesDeletedCurrentCount 3 -r-- MessagesHighCount 2 -r-- MessagesMovedCurrentCount 0 -r-- MessagesPendingCount 0 -r-- MessagesReceivedCount 3 -r-- MessagesThresholdTime 0 -r-- Name SystemModule-0!Queue-0 -r-- Paused false -r-- ProductionPaused false -r-- ProductionPausedState Production-Enabled -r-- State advertised_in_cluster_jndi -r-- Type JMSDestinationRuntime -r-x closeCursor Void : String(cursorHandle) -r-x deleteMessages Integer : String(selector) -r-x getCursorEndPosition Long : String(cursorHandle) -r-x getCursorSize Long : String(cursorHandle) -r-x getCursorStartPosition Long : String(cursorHandle) -r-x getItems javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData[] : String(cursorHandle),Long(start),Integer(count) -r-x getMessage javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData : String(cursorHandle),Long(messageHandle) -r-x getMessage javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData : String(cursorHandle),String(messageID) -r-x getMessage javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData : String(messageID) -r-x getMessages String : String(selector),Integer(timeout) -r-x getMessages String : String(selector),Integer(timeout),Integer(state) -r-x getNext javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData[] : String(cursorHandle),Integer(count) -r-x getPrevious javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData[] : String(cursorHandle),Integer(count) -r-x importMessages Void : javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData[],Boolean(replaceOnly) -r-x moveMessages Integer : String(java.lang.String),javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData,Integer(java.lang.Integer) -r-x moveMessages Integer : String(selector),javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData -r-x pause Void : -r-x pauseConsumption Void : -r-x pauseInsertion Void : -r-x pauseProduction Void : -r-x preDeregister Void : -r-x resume Void : -r-x resumeConsumption Void : -r-x resumeInsertion Void : -r-x resumeProduction Void : -r-x sort Long : String(cursorHandle),Long(start),String[](fields),Boolean[](ascending) wls:/hotspot_domain/serverRuntime/JMSRuntime/AdminServer.jms/JMSServers/JMSServer-0/Destinations/SystemModule-0!Queue-0> cmo.deleteMessages('') 2 where the domain name is “hotspot_domain”, the JMS Server name is “JMSServer-0”, the Queue name is “Queue-0” and the System Module is named “SystemModule-0”. To invoke the operation, I use the “cmo” object, which is the “Current Management Object” that represents the currently navigated to MBean. The 2 indicates that two messages were deleted. Combining this WLST code with a recent post by my colleague Steve that shows you how to use an encrypted file to store the authentication credentials, you could easily turn this into a secure automated script. If you need help with that step, a long while back I blogged about some WLST basics. Happy scripting.

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Scripting out Contained Database Users

- by Argenis

Today’s blog post comes from a Twitter thread on which @SQLSoldier, @sqlstudent144 and @SQLTaiob were discussing the internals of contained database users. Unless you have been living under a rock, you’ve heard about the concept of contained users within a SQL Server database (hit the link if you have not). In this article I’d like to show you that you can, indeed, script out contained database users and recreate them on another database, as either contained users or as good old fashioned logins/server principals as well. Why would this be useful? Well, because you would not need to know the password for the user in order to recreate it on another instance. I know there is a limited number of scenarios where this would be necessary, but nonetheless I figured I’d throw this blog post to show how it can be done. A more obscure use case: with the password hash (which I’m about to show you how to obtain) you could also crack the password using a utility like hashcat, as highlighted on this SQLServerCentral article. The Investigation SQL Server uses System Base Tables to save the password hashes of logins and contained database users. For logins it uses sys.sysxlgns, whereas for contained database users it leverages sys.sysowners. I’ll show you what I do to figure this stuff out: I create a login/contained user, and then I immediately browse the transaction log with, for example, fn_dblog. It’s pretty obvious that only two base tables touched by the operation are sys.sysxlgns, and also sys.sysprivs – the latter is used to track permissions. If I connect to the DAC on my instance, I can query for the password hash of this login I’ve just created. A few interesting things about this hash. This was taken on my laptop, and I happen to be running SQL Server 2014 RTM CU2, which is the latest public build of SQL Server 2014 as of time of writing. In 2008 R2 and prior versions (back to 2000), the password hashes would start with 0x0100. The reason why this changed is because starting with SQL Server 2012 password hashes are kept using a SHA512 algorithm, as opposed to SHA-1 (used since 2000) or Snefru (used in 6.5 and 7.0). SHA-1 is nowadays deemed unsafe and is very easy to crack. For regular SQL logins, this information is exposed through the sys.sql_logins catalog view, so there is really no need to connect to the DAC to grab an SID/password hash pair. For contained database users, there is (currently) no method of obtaining SID or password hashes without connecting to the DAC. If we create a contained database user, this is what we get from the transaction log: Note that the System Base Table used in this case is sys.sysowners. sys.sysprivs is used as well, and again this is to track permissions. To query sys.sysowners, you would have to connect to the DAC, as I mentioned previously. And this is what you would get: There are other ways to figure out what SQL Server uses under the hood to store contained database user password hashes, like looking at the execution plan for a query to sys.dm_db_uncontained_entities (Thanks, Robert Davis!) SIDs, Logins, Contained Users, and Why You Care…Or Not. One of the reasons behind the existence of Contained Users was the concept of portability of databases: it is really painful to maintain Server Principals (Logins) synced across most shared-nothing SQL Server HA/DR technologies (Mirroring, Availability Groups, and Log Shipping). Often times you would need the Security Identifier (SID) of these logins to match across instances, and that meant that you had to fetch whatever SID was assigned to the login on the principal instance so you could recreate it on a secondary. With contained users you normally wouldn’t care about SIDs, as the users are always available (and synced, as long as synchronization takes place) across instances. Now you might be presented some particular requirement that might specify that SIDs synced between logins on certain instances and contained database users on other databases. How would you go about creating a contained database user with a specific SID? The answer is that you can’t do it directly, but there’s a little trick that would allow you to do it. Create a login with a specified SID and password hash, create a user for that server principal on a partially contained database, then migrate that user to contained using the system stored procedure sp_user_migrate_to_contained, then drop the login. CREATE LOGIN <login_name> WITH PASSWORD = <password_hash> HASHED, SID = <sid> ; GO USE <partially_contained_db>; GO CREATE USER <user_name> FROM LOGIN <login_name>; GO EXEC sp_migrate_user_to_contained @username = <user_name>, @rename = N’keep_name’, @disablelogin = N‘disable_login’; GO DROP LOGIN <login_name>; GO Here’s how this skeleton would look like in action: And now I have a contained user with a specified SID and password hash. In my example above, I renamed the user after migrated it to contained so that it is, hopefully, easier to understand. Enjoy!

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The Virtues and Challenges of Implementing Basel III: What Every CFO and CRO Needs To Know

- by Jenna Danko

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) is a group tasked with providing thought-leadership to the global banking industry. Over the years, the BCBS has released volumes of guidance in an effort to promote stability within the financial sector. By effectively communicating best-practices, the Basel Committee has influenced financial regulations worldwide. Basel regulations are intended to help banks: More easily absorb shocks due to various forms of financial-economic stress Improve risk management and governance Enhance regulatory reporting and transparency In June 2011, the BCBS released Basel III: A global regulatory framework for more resilient banks and banking systems. This new set of regulations included many enhancements to previous rules and will have both short and long term impacts on the banking industry. Some of the key features of Basel III include: A stronger capital base More stringent capital standards and higher capital requirements Introduction of capital buffers Additional risk coverage Enhanced quantification of counterparty credit risk Credit valuation adjustments Wrong way risk Asset Value Correlation Multiplier for large financial institutions Liquidity management and monitoring Introduction of leverage ratio Even more rigorous data requirements To implement these features banks need to embark on a journey replete with challenges. These can be categorized into three key areas: Data, Models and Compliance. Data Challenges Data quality - All standard dimensions of Data Quality (DQ) have to be demonstrated. Manual approaches are now considered too cumbersome and automation has become the norm. Data lineage - Data lineage has to be documented and demonstrated. The PPT / Excel approach to documentation is being replaced by metadata tools. Data lineage has become dynamic due to a variety of factors, making static documentation out-dated quickly. Data dictionaries - A strong and clean business glossary is needed with proper identification of business owners for the data. Data integrity - A strong, scalable architecture with work flow tools helps demonstrate data integrity. Manual touch points have to be minimized. Data relevance/coverage - Data must be relevant to all portfolios and storage devices must allow for sufficient data retention. Coverage of both on and off balance sheet exposures is critical. Model Challenges Model development - Requires highly trained resources with both quantitative and subject matter expertise. Model validation - All Basel models need to be validated. This requires additional resources with skills that may not be readily available in the marketplace. Model documentation - All models need to be adequately documented. Creation of document templates and model development processes/procedures is key. Risk and finance integration - This integration is necessary for Basel as the Allowance for Loan and Lease Losses (ALLL) is calculated by Finance, yet Expected Loss (EL) is calculated by Risk Management – and they need to somehow be equal. This is tricky at best from an implementation perspective. Compliance Challenges Rules interpretation - Some Basel III requirements leave room for interpretation. A misinterpretation of regulations can lead to delays in Basel compliance and undesired reprimands from supervisory authorities. Gap identification and remediation - Internal identification and remediation of gaps ensures smoother Basel compliance and audit processes. However business lines are challenged by the competing priorities which arise from regulatory compliance and business as usual work. Qualification readiness - Providing internal and external auditors with robust evidence of a thorough examination of the readiness to proceed to parallel run and Basel qualification In light of new regulations like Basel III and local variations such as the Dodd Frank Act (DFA) and Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (CCAR) in the US, banks are now forced to ask themselves many difficult questions. For example, executives must consider: How will Basel III play into their Risk Appetite? How will they create project plans for Basel III when they haven’t yet finished implementing Basel II? How will new regulations impact capital structure including profitability and capital distributions to shareholders? After all, new regulations often lead to diminished profitability as well as an assortment of implementation problems as we discussed earlier in this note. However, by requiring banks to focus on premium growth, regulators increase the potential for long-term profitability and sustainability. And a more stable banking system: Increases consumer confidence which in turn supports banking activity Ensures that adequate funding is available for individuals and companies Puts regulators at ease, allowing bankers to focus on banking Stability is intended to bring long-term profitability to banks. Therefore, it is important that every banking institution takes the steps necessary to properly manage, monitor and disclose its risks. This can be done with the assistance and oversight of an independent regulatory authority. A spectrum of banks exist today wherein some continue to debate and negotiate with regulators over the implementation of new requirements, while others are simply choosing to embrace them for the benefits I highlighted above. Do share with me how your institution is coping with and embracing these new regulations within your bank. Dr. Varun Agarwal is a Principal in the Banking Practice for Capgemini Financial Services. He has over 19 years experience in areas that span from enterprise risk management, credit, market, and to country risk management; financial modeling and valuation; and international financial markets research and analyses.

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Declarative Architectures in Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

- by BuckWoody

I deal with computing architectures by first laying out requirements, and then laying in any constraints for it's success. Only then do I bring in computing elements to apply to the system. As an example, a requirement might be "world-side availability" and a constraint might be "with less than 80ms response time and full HA" or something similar. Then I can choose from the best fit of technologies which range from full-up on-premises computing to IaaS, PaaS or SaaS. I also deal in abstraction layers - on-premises systems are fully under your control, in IaaS the hardware is abstracted (but not the OS, scale, runtimes and so on), in PaaS the hardware and the OS is abstracted and you focus on code and data only, and in SaaS everything is abstracted - you merely purchase the function you want (like an e-mail server or some such) and simply use it. When you think about solutions this way, the architecture moves to the primary factor in your decision. It's problem-first architecting, and then laying in whatever technology or vendor best fixes the problem. To that end, most architects design a solution using a graphical tool (I use Visio) and then creating documents that let the rest of the team (and business) know what is required. It's the template, or recipe, for the solution. This is extremely easy to do for SaaS - you merely point out what the needs are, research the vendor and present the findings (and bill) to the business. IT might not even be involved there. In PaaS it's not much more complicated - you use the same Application Lifecycle Management and design tools you always have for code, such as Visual Studio or some other process and toolset, and you can "stamp out" the application in multiple locations, update it and so on. IaaS is another story. Here you have multiple machines, operating systems, patches, virus scanning, run-times, scale-patterns and tools and much more that you have to deal with, since essentially it's just an in-house system being hosted by someone else. You can certainly automate builds of servers - we do this as technical professionals every day. From Windows to Linux, it's simple enough to create a "build script" that makes a system just like the one we made yesterday. What is more problematic is being able to tie those systems together in a coherent way (as a solution) and then stamp that out repeatedly, especially when you might want to deploy that solution on-premises, or in one cloud vendor or another. Lately I've been working with a company called RightScale that does exactly this. I'll point you to their site for more info, but the general idea is that you document out your intent for a set of servers, and it will deploy them to on-premises clouds, Windows Azure, and other cloud providers all from the same script. In other words, it doesn't contain the images or anything like that - it contains the scripts to build them on-premises or on a cloud vendor like Microsoft. Using a tool like this, you combine the steps of designing a system (all the way down to passwords and accounts if you wish) and then the document drives the distribution and implementation of that intent. As time goes on and more and more companies implement solutions on various providers (perhaps for HA and DR) then this becomes a compelling investigation. The RightScale information is here, if you want to investigate it further. Yes, there are other methods I've found, but most are tied to a single kind of cloud, and I'm not into vendor lock-in. Poppa Bear Level - Hands-on EvaluateRightScale at no cost. Just bring your Windows Azurecredentials and follow the these tutorials: Sign Up for Windows Azure Add Windows Azure to a RightScale Account Windows Azure Virtual Machines 3-tier Deployment Momma Bear Level - Just the Right level... ;0) WindowsAzure Evaluation Guide - if you are new toWindows Azure Virtual Machines and new to RightScale, we recommend that youread the entire evaluation guide to gain a more complete understanding of theWindows Azure + RightScale solution. WindowsAzure Support Page @ support.rightscale.com - FAQ's, tutorials,etc. for Windows Azure Virtual Machines (Work in Progress) Baby Bear Level - Marketing WindowsAzure Page @ www.rightscale.com - find overview informationincluding solution briefs and presentation & demonstration videos Scale and Automate Applications on Windows Azure Solution Brief - how RightScale makes Windows Azure Virtual Machine even better SQL Server on Windows Azure Solution Brief - Run Highly Available SQL Server on Windows Azure Virtual Machines

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Silverlight Cream Monday WP7 App Review # 1

- by Dave Campbell

I'm going to try something here... if it seems useful, I'll continue, if it doesn't, I'll stop... so give me feedback! There are *lots* of Apps in the WP7 Marketplace, and heaven help me, but the Marketplace sucks for finding stuff. I won't rehash what's already been said in the blogs, but I agree with one and all. I went out last Saturday to find 2 apps that I knew were released, and couldn't do so on my device. Even in the Zune app, it took quite a while to find them... ok, I'll back off a bit, because I just found out I can do 'Search' now if I know the name... I didn't think that was working before. So my thought is on Monday (like today), I will post a review of 5 apps/games I either use or have played with on my device. These are strictly my opinions, you understand, but hey... it's better than a poke in the eye with an iPhone! A few disclaimers: Feel free to write me about your app and tell me about it. While it would be very cool to receive a whole bunch of xap files to review, at this point, for technical reasons, I'm unable to side-load my device. Since I plan on only doing this one day a week, and only 5, I may never get caught up, so if you send me some info, be patient. Re: games ... remember I'm old... I'm from the era of Colossal Cave and Zork. Duke-Nukem 2D and Captain Comic were awesome. I don't own an XBOX or any other game system, so take game reviews from my perspective -- who knows, it may be refreshing :) I won't pay for an app or game just to try it. If you expect me to test-drive your app, it's going to have to have a Free Trial. In this Issue: Jingo! is the first app I bought, just to see what the experience was like. It's very much like a game we used to play in school in the Army in 1971 on paper we passed around. Sort of a cross between hangman and Mastermind, you try to figure out the hidden word in 5 tries. You get really good at 5-letter words after a while. I like this because you have to think, and you're not pressured by a clock Jingo! is by James Furdell and is $1.99 I reviewed René Schulte's Pictures Lab a while back, and have not changed my mind. This is an excellent app for playing with any photo on your device... one you've just taken, one you've synced from your PC, or one you've saved from email. I like this because you can get some cool effects for your photos, and it just works. Pictures Lab is by Schulte Software Development and is $1.99 Since I work as a consultant, and from home, I wanted something I could track my time with. I've test-driven all the contenders I could find so far on the phone, and so far I like ONTRACK! the best. If asked, I have some suggestions, but it's probably just the way I work or think. What I do like is I can tap a project to start/stop/restart a counter, and at the end of the day it shows me how much time I've been working. If there's a way to make an adjustment in case you forget to tap the counter, I don't know how to do it, and that's my biggest complaint. I like this because you can get a daily readout which you can also email as a spreadsheet. The daily results display is very good. ONTRACK! is by Qmino and is $2.99 Remember Item 4 above... I've been playing guitar for 48 years... obviously since before the invention of 'tuners', so I'm not as dependent upon these as some folks are. I've tried some in the past and have always felt I can do just as good by ear (I have perfect relative pitch). So, I gave this app by András Velvárt a dance just to see how it works, and it is surprisingly good. If you're used to one of the stage tuners this may take a little getting used to, but it does the job. The difference with this one is there is no real 'null' point inside which you can think your guitar is in tune. The soundwave stays visible on the device, and if it's moving to the right, your string is flat, if it's moving to the left, your string is sharp. Getting it exact might be tricky, but it is exact! If you need to rely on a tuner, this is a good choice in my opinion, exactly because of the sensitivity.. tune up with this and you're dead-on. Guitar Tuner is by Kinabalu Innovation Limited and is $0.99 Popper 2 is the WP7 version of a wildly popular game by Bill Reiss named Dr. Popper. You can get a trial, or you can now get a free lite version of the game. Popper 2 is a fast-paced bubble breaker game. I find it something fun to play when I just want to buzz out, but maybe the best review is that my daughter didn't want to give my phone back when I showed it to her, and always wants to grab my phone to play 'that game'. A fun distraction with great graphics and a great price Popper 2 is by Blue Rose Systems, LLC and is $1.29 Let me know what you think of the idea of doing reviews, or the layout/whatever, and 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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Updated Agenda for OTN Architect Day Los Angeles (Oct 25)

- by Bob Rhubart

Here's the latest information on the session schedule and content for Oracle Technology Network Architect Day in Los Angeles on October 25, 2012. Registration is open, but seating is limited. When: Thursday October 25 12, 2012 8:30am – 5:00pm Where: Sofitel Los Angeles 8555 Beverly Boulevard Los Angeles, CA 90048 Agenda Time Session Title Room 8:30 am - 9:00 am Registration and Continental Breakfast 9:00 am - 9:15 am Welcome and Opening Comments | Bob Rhubart Beverly Ballroom 9:15 am - 10:00 am Engineered Systems: Oracle's Vision for the Future | Ralf Dossmann Oracle's Exadata and Exalogic are impressive products in their own right. But working in combination they deliver unparalleled transaction processing performance with up to a 30x increase over existing legacy systems, with the lowest cost of ownership over a 3 or 5 year basis than any other hardware. In this session you'll learn how to leverage Oracle's Engineered Systems within your enterprise to deliver record-breaking performance at the lowest TCO. Beverly Ballroom 10:00 am - 10:30 am Monitoring and Managing Applications in the Cloud | Basheer Khan Oracle offers a broad portfolio of software and hardware products and services to enable public, private and hybrid clouds to power the enterprise. However, enterprise cloud computing presents new management challenges, that need to be addressed to realize the economic benefits of cloud computing. In this session you will learn about the methods and tools you can use to proactively monitor your end-to-end Oracle Applications environment in the cloud, define service-level objectives, gain insight into your end users, and troubleshoot performance problems from a single console. Beverly Ballroom 10:30 am - 10:45 am Break 10:45 am - 11:30 am Breakout Sessions (pick one) Cloud Computing - Making IT Simple | Dr. James Baty The road to Cloud Computing is not without a few bumps. This session will help to smooth out your journey by tackling some of the potential complications. We'll examine whether standardization is a prerequisite for the Cloud. We'll look at why refactoring isn't just for application code. We'll check out deployable entities and their simplification via higher levels of abstraction. And we'll close out the session with a look at engineered systems and modular clouds. Beverly Ballroom Innovations in Grid Computing with Oracle Coherence | Ashok Aletty Learn how Oracle Coherence can increase the availability, scalability and performance of your existing applications with its advanced low-latency data-grid technologies. Also hear some interesting industry-specific use cases that customers had implemented and how Oracle is integrating Coherence into its Enterprise Java stack. Hollywood Room 11:30 am - 12:15 pm Breakout Sessions (pick one) Enterprise Strategy for Cloud Security | Dave Chappelle Security is high on the list of concerns for many organizations as they evaluate their cloud computing options. This session will examine security in the context of the various forms of cloud computing. We'll consider technical and non-technical aspects of security, and discuss several strategies for cloud computing, from both the consumer and producer perspectives. Beverly Ballroom Oracle Enterprise Manager | Perren Walker This session examines new Oracle Enterprise Manager monitoring, administration, and management features for Oracle Exalogic. It focuses on two management themes: cloud management related to virtualization and applications-to-disk management. For private cloud management, it discusses virtualization management features providing an enhanced set of application deployment capabilities enabling IaaS as well as PaaS interactions. Then from an end-to-end perspective, it covers the specific capabilities and—where applicable—best practices for machine, cloud, middleware, and application administration. Hollywood Room 12:15 pm - 1:15 pm Lunch Beverly Ballroom Lounge 1:15 pm - 2:00 pm Panel Discussion - Q&A with session speakers Beverly Ballroom 2:00 pm - 2:45 pm Breakout Sessions (pick one) Oracle Cloud Reference Architecture | Anbu Krishnaswamy Cloud initiatives are beginning to dominate enterprise IT roadmaps. Successful adoption of Cloud and the subsequent governance challenges warrant a Cloud reference architecture that is applied consistently across the enterprise. This presentation will answer the important questions: What exactly is a Cloud, why you need it, what changes it will bring to the enterprise, and what are the key capabilities of a Cloud infrastructure are - using Oracle's Cloud Reference Architecture, which is part of the IT Strategies from Oracle (ITSO) Cloud Enterprise Technology Strategy ETS). Beverly Ballroom 21st Century SOA | Jeff Davies Service Oriented Architecture has evolved from concept to reality in the last decade. The right methodology coupled with mature SOA technologies has helped customers demonstrate success in both innovation and ROI. In this session you will learn how Oracle SOA Suite's orchestration, virtualization, and governance capabilities provide the infrastructure to run mission critical business and system applications. We'll also take a special look at the convergence of SOA & BPM using Oracle's Unified technology stack. Hollywood Room 2:45 pm - 3:00 pm Break 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm Roundtable Discussion Beverly Ballroom 4:00 pm - 4:15 pm Closing Comments & Readouts from Roundtables Beverly Ballroom 4:15 pm - 5:00 pm Networking / Reception Beverly Ballroom Lounge Note: Session schedule and content subject to change.

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JavaOne 2012 Sunday Strategy Keynote

- by Janice J. Heiss

At the Sunday Strategy Keynote, held at the Masonic Auditorium, Hasan Rizvi, EVP, Middleware and Java Development, stated that the theme for this year's JavaOne is: “Make the future Java”-- meaning that Java continues in its role as the most popular, complete, productive, secure, and innovative development platform. But it also means, he qualified, the process by which we make the future Java -- an open, transparent, collaborative, and community-driven evolution. "Many of you have bet your businesses and your careers on Java, and we have bet our business on Java," he said.Rizvi detailed the three factors they consider critical to the success of Java--technology innovation, community participation, and Oracle's leadership/stewardship. He offered a scorecard in these three realms over the past year--with OS X and Linux ARM support on Java SE, open sourcing of JavaFX by the end of the year, the release of Java Embedded Suite 7.0 middleware platform, and multiple releases on the Java EE side. The JCP process continues, with new JSR activity, and JUGs show a 25% increase in participation since last year. Oracle, meanwhile, continues its commitment to both technology and community development/outreach--with four regional JavaOne conferences last year in various part of the world, as well as the release of Java Magazine, with over 120,000 current subscribers. Georges Saab, VP Development, Java SE, next reviewed features of Java SE 7--the first major revision to the platform under Oracle's stewardship, which has included near-monthly update releases offering hundreds of fixes, performance enhancements, and new features. Saab indicated that developers, ISVs, and hosting providers have all been rapid adopters of the platform. He also noted that Oracle's entire Fusion middleware stack is supported on SE 7. The supported platforms for SE 7 has also increased--from Windows, Linux, and Solaris, to OS X, Linux ARM, and the emerging ARM micro-server market. "In the last year, we've added as many new platforms for Java, as were added in the previous decade," said Saab.Saab also explored the upcoming JDK 8 release--including Project Lambda, Project Nashorn (a modern implementation of JavaScript running on the JVM), and others. He noted that Nashorn functionality had already been used internally in NetBeans 7.3, and announced that they were planning to contribute the implementation to OpenJDK. Nandini Ramani, VP Development, Java Client, ME and Card, discussed the latest news pertaining to JavaFX 2.0--releases on Windows, OS X, and Linux, release of the FX Scene Builder tool, the JavaFX WebView component in NetBeans 7.3, and an OpenJFX project in OpenJDK. Nandini announced, as of Sunday, the availability for download of JavaFX on Linux ARM (developer preview), as well as Scene Builder on Linux. She noted that for next year's JDK 8 release, JavaFX will offer 3D, as well as third-party component integration. Avinder Brar, Senior Software Engineer, Navis, and Dierk König, Canoo Fellow, next took the stage and demonstrated all that JavaFX offers, with a feature-rich, animation-rich, real-time cargo management application that employs Canoo's just open-sourced Dolphin technology.Saab also explored Java SE 9 and beyond--Jigsaw modularity, Penrose Project for interoperability with OSGi, improved multi-tenancy for Java in the cloud, and Project Sumatra. Phil Rogers, HSA Foundation President and AMD Corporate Fellow, explored heterogeneous computing platforms that combine the CPU and the parallel processor of the GPU into a single piece of silicon and shared memory—a hardware technology driven by such advanced functionalities as HD video, face recognition, and cloud workloads. Project Sumatra is an OpenJDK project targeted at bringing Java to such heterogeneous platforms--with hardware and software experts working together to modify the JVM for these advanced applications and platforms.Ramani next discussed the latest with Java in the embedded space--"the Internet of things" and M2M--declaring this to be "the next IT revolution," with Java as the ideal technology for the ecosystem. Last week, Oracle released Java ME Embedded 3.2 (for micro-contollers and low-power devices), and Java Embedded Suite 7.0 (a middleware stack based on Java SE 7). Axel Hansmann, VP Strategy and Marketing, Cinterion, explored his company's use of Java in M2M, and their new release of EHS5, the world's smallest 3G-capable M2M module, running Java ME Embedded. Hansmaan explained that Java offers them the ability to create a "simple to use, scalable, coherent, end-to-end layer" for such diverse edge devices.Marc Brule, Chief Financial Office, Royal Canadian Mint, also explored the fascinating use-case of JavaCard in his country's MintChip e-cash technology--deployable on smartphones, USB device, computer, tablet, or cloud. In parting, Ramani encouraged developers to download the latest releases of Java Embedded, and try them out.Cameron Purdy, VP, Fusion Middleware Development and Java EE, summarized the latest developments and announcements in the Enterprise space--greater developer productivity in Java EE6 (with more on the way in EE 7), portability between platforms, vendors, and even cloud-to-cloud portability. The earliest version of the Java EE 7 SDK is now available for download--in GlassFish 4--with WebSocket support, better JSON support, and more. The final release is scheduled for April of 2013. Nicole Otto, Senior Director, Consumer Digital Technology, Nike, explored her company's Java technology driven enterprise ecosystem for all things sports, including the NikeFuel accelerometer wrist band. Looking beyond Java EE 7, Purdy mentioned NoSQL database functionality for EE 8, the concurrency utilities (possibly in EE 7), some of the Avatar projects in EE 7, some in EE 8, multi-tenancy for the cloud, supporting SaaS applications, and more.Rizvi ended by introducing Dr. Robert Ballard, oceanographer and National Geographic Explorer in Residence--part of Oracle's philanthropic relationship with the National Geographic Society to fund K-12 education around ocean science and conservation. Ballard is best known for having discovered the wreckage of the Titanic. He offered a fascinating video and overview of the cutting edge technology used in such deep-sea explorations, noting that in his early days, high-bandwidth exploration meant that you’d go down in a submarine and "stick your face up against the window." Now, it's a remotely operated, technology telepresence--"I think of my Hercules vehicle as my equivalent of a Na'vi. When I go beneath the sea, I actually send my spirit." Using high bandwidth satellite links, such amazing explorations can now occur via smartphone, laptop, or whatever platform. Ballard’s team regularly offers live feeds and programming out to schools and the world, spanning 188 countries--with embedding educators as part of the expeditions. It's technology at its finest, inspiring the next-generation of scientists and explorers!

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Mobile Apps for Oracle E-Business Suite

- by Carlos Chang

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

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Gamification = -10#/3mo

- by erikanollwebb

One of the purposes of gamification of anything is to see if you can modify the behavior of the user. In the enterprise, that might mean getting sales people to enter more information into a CRM system, encouraging employees to update their HR records, motivating people to participate in forums and discussions, or process invoices more quickly. Wikipedia defines behavior modification as "the traditional term for the use of empirically demonstrated behavior change techniques to increase or decrease the frequency of behaviors, such as altering an individual's behaviors and reactions to stimuli through positive and negative reinforcement of adaptive behavior and/or the reduction of behavior through its extinction, punishment and/or satiation." Gamification is just a way to modify someone's behavior using game mechanics. And the magic question is always whether it works. So I thought I would present my own little experiment from the last few months. This spring, I upgraded to a Samsung Galaxy 4. It's a pretty sweet phone in many ways, but one of the little extras I discovered was a built in app called S Health. S Health is an app that you can use to track calories, weight, exercise and it has a built in pedometer. I looked at it when I got the phone, but assumed you had to turn it on to use it so I didn't look at it much. But sometime in July, I realized that in fact, it just ran in the background and was quietly tracking my steps, with a goal of 10,000 per day. 10,000 steps per day is this magic number recommended by the Surgeon General and the American Heart Association. Dr. Oz pushes it as the goal for daily exercise. It's about 5 miles of walking. I'm generally not the kind of person who always has my phone with me. I leave it in my purse and pull it out when I need it. But then I realized that meant I wasn't getting a good measure of my steps. I decided to do a little experiment, and carry it with me as much as possible for a week. That's when I discovered the gamification that changed my life over the last 3 months. When I hit 10,000 steps, the app jingled out a little "success!" tune and I got a badge. I was hooked. I started carrying my phone. I started making sure I had shoes I could walk in with me. I started walking at lunch time, because I realized how often I sat at my desk for 8-10 hours every day without moving. I started pestering my husband to walk with me after work because I hadn't hit my 10,000 yet, leading him at one point to say "I'm not as much a slave to that badge as you are!" I started looking at parking lots differently. Can't get a space up close? No worries, just that many steps toward my 10,000. I even tried to see if there was a second power user level at 15,000 or 20,000 (*sadly, no). If I was close at the end of the day, I have done laps around my house until I got my badge. I have walked around the block one more time to get my badge. I have mentally chastised myself when I forgot to put my phone in my pocket because I don't know how many steps I got. The badge below I got when my boss and I were in New York City and we walked around the block of our hotel just to watch the badge pop up. There are a bunch of tools out on the market now that have similar ideas for helping you to track your exercise, make it social. There are apps (my favorite is still Zombies, Run!). You could buy a FitBit or UP by Jawbone. Interactive fitness makes the Expresso stationary bike with built in video games. All designed to help you be more aware of your activity and keep you engaged and motivated. And the idea is to help you change your behavior. I know someone who would spend extra time and work hard on the Expresso because he had built up strategies for how to kill the most dragons while he was riding to get more points. When the machine broke down, he didn't ride a different bike because it just wasn't that interesting. But for me, just the simple jingle and badge have been all I needed. I admit, I still giggle gleefully when I hear the tune sing out from my pocket. After a few weeks, I noticed I had dropped a few pounds. Not a lot, just 2-3. But then I was really hooked. I started making a point both to eat a little less and hit 10,000 steps as much as I could. I bemoaned that during the floods in Boulder, I wasn't hitting my 10,000 steps. And now, a few months later, I'm almost 10 lbs lighter. All for 1 badge a day. So yes, simple gamification can increase motivation and engagement. And that can lead to changes in behavior. Now the job is to apply that to the enterprise space in a meaningful and engaging way.

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"Guiding" a Domain Expert to Retire from Programming

- by James Kolpack

I've got a friend who does IT at a local non-profit where they're using a custom web application which is no longer supported by the company who built it. (out of business, support was too expensive, I'm not sure...) Development on this app started around 10+ years ago so the technologies being harnessed are pretty out of date now - classic asp using vbscript and SQL Server 2000. The application domain is in the realm of government bookkeeping - so even though the development team is long gone, there are often new requirements of this software. Enter the... The domain expert. This is an middle aged accounting whiz without much (or any?) prior development experience. He studied the pages, code and queries and learned how to ape the style of the original team which, believe me, is mediocre at best. He's very clever and very tenacious but has no experience in software beyond what he's picked up from this app. Otherwise, he's a pleasant guy to talk to and definitely knows his domain. My friend in IT, and probably his superiors in the company, want him out of the code. They view him as wasting his expertise on coding tasks he shouldn't be doing. My friend got me involved with a few small contracts which I handled without much problem - other than somewhat of a communication barrier with the domain expert. He explained the requirements very quickly, assuming prior knowledge of the domain which I do not have. This is partially his normal style, and I think maybe a bit of resentment from my involvement. So, I think he feels like the owner of the code and has entrenched himself in a development position. So... his coding technique. One of his latest endeavors was to make a page that only he could reach (theoretically - the security model for the system is wretched) where he can enter a raw SQL query, run it, and save the query to run again later. A report that I worked on had been originally implemented by him using 6 distinct queries, 3 or 4 temp tables to coordinate the data between the queries, and the final result obtained by importing the data from the final query into Access and doing a pivot and some formatting. It worked - well, some of the results were incorrect - but at what a cost! (I implemented the report in a single query with at least 1/10th the amount of code.) He edits code in notepad. He doesn't seem to know about online reference material for the languages. I recently read an article on Dr. Dobbs titled "What Makes Bad Programmers Different" - and instantly thought of our domain expert. From the article: Their code is large, messy, and bug laden. They have very superficial knowledge of their problem domain and their tools. Their code has a lot of copy/paste and they have very little interest in techniques that reduce it. The fail to account for edge cases, while inefficiently dealing with the general case. They never have time to comment their code or break it into smaller pieces. Empirical evidence plays no little role in their decisions. 5.5 out of 6. My friend is wanting me to argue the case to their management - specifically, I got this email from their manager to respond to: ...Also, I need to talk to you about what effect there is from Domain Expert continuing to make edits to the live environment. If that is a problem for you I need to know so I can have his access blocked. Some examples would help. In my opinion, from a technical standpoint, it's dangerous to have him making changes without any oversight. On the other hand, I'm just doing one-off contracts at this point and don't have much desire to get involved deeply enough that I'm essentially arguing as one of the Bobs from Office Space. I'd like to help my friend out - but I feel like I'm getting in the middle of a political battle. More importantly - if I do get involved and suggest that his editing privileges be removed, it needs to be handled carefully so that doesn't feel belittled. He is beyond a doubt the foremost expert on this system. I'm hoping this is familiar territory for some other stackechangers, because I'm feeling a little bewildered. How should I respond? Should I argue that he shouldn't be allowed to touch the code? Should I phrase it as "no single developer, no matter how experienced, should be working on production code unchecked"? Should I argue to keep him involved with the code, but with a review process? Should I say "glad I could help, but uh, I'm busy now!" Other options? Thanks a bunch!

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Windows 7 BSOD - ntoskrnl?

- by Ken Mason

2 new HP Pavilion notebooks with 7 Home Premium pre-loaded with Norton. My first act was to use the Norton Removal Tool and load ZoneAlarm free and AVG Free. Frequent random BSOD's ever since...I found my way into Debug and have had various reports regarding ntoskrnl, depending on the status of symbols. It's been many years since I played with (DOS 3.x) debug, so this has been a considerable fumble. Excerpts follow and any insights would be greatly appreciated, as I am not a developer: ADDITIONAL_DEBUG_TEXT: Use '!findthebuild' command to search for the target build information. If the build information is available, run '!findthebuild -s ; .reload' to set symbol path and load symbols. MODULE_NAME: nt FAULTING_MODULE: fffff8000305d000 nt DEBUG_FLR_IMAGE_TIMESTAMP: 4b88cfeb BUGCHECK_STR: 0x7f_8 CUSTOMER_CRASH_COUNT: 1 DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID: VISTA_DRIVER_FAULT CURRENT_IRQL: 0 LAST_CONTROL_TRANSFER: from fffff800030ccb69 to fffff800030cd600 STACK_TEXT: fffff80004d6fd28 fffff800030ccb69 : 000000000000007f 0000000000000008 0000000080050033 00000000000006f8 : nt+0x70600 fffff80004d6fd30 000000000000007f : 0000000000000008 0000000080050033 00000000000006f8 fffff80003095e58 : nt+0x6fb69 fffff80004d6fd38 0000000000000008 : 0000000080050033 00000000000006f8 fffff80003095e58 0000000000000000 : 0x7f fffff80004d6fd40 0000000080050033 : 00000000000006f8 fffff80003095e58 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 : 0x8 fffff80004d6fd48 00000000000006f8 : fffff80003095e58 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 : 0x80050033 fffff80004d6fd50 fffff80003095e58 : 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 : 0x6f8 fffff80004d6fd58 0000000000000000 : 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 : nt+0x38e58 STACK_COMMAND: kb FOLLOWUP_IP: nt+70600 fffff800`030cd600 48894c2408 mov qword ptr [rsp+8],rcx SYMBOL_STACK_INDEX: 0 SYMBOL_NAME: nt+70600 FOLLOWUP_NAME: MachineOwner IMAGE_NAME: ntoskrnl.exe BUCKET_ID: WRONG_SYMBOLS Followup: MachineOwner ...................................................................... 0: kd !lmi nt Loaded Module Info: [nt] Module: ntkrnlmp Base Address: fffff8000305d000 Image Name: ntkrnlmp.exe Machine Type: 34404 (X64) Time Stamp: 4b88cfeb Sat Feb 27 00:55:23 2010 Size: 5dc000 CheckSum: 545094 Characteristics: 22 perf Debug Data Dirs: Type Size VA Pointer CODEVIEW 25, 19c65c, 19bc5c RSDS - GUID: {7E9A3CAB-6268-45DE-8E10-816E3080A3B7} Age: 2, Pdb: ntkrnlmp.pdb CLSID 4, 19c658, 19bc58 [Data not mapped] Image Type: FILE - Image read successfully from debugger. ntkrnlmp.exe Symbol Type: PDB - Symbols loaded successfully from symbol server. d:\debugsymbols\ntkrnlmp.pdb\7E9A3CAB626845DE8E10816E3080A3B72\ntkrnlmp.pdb Load Report: public symbols , not source indexed d:\debugsymbols\ntkrnlmp.pdb\7E9A3CAB626845DE8E10816E3080A3B72\ntkrnlmp.pdb 0: kd !analyze -v * Bugcheck Analysis * * UNEXPECTED_KERNEL_MODE_TRAP (7f) This means a trap occurred in kernel mode, and it's a trap of a kind that the kernel isn't allowed to have/catch (bound trap) or that is always instant death (double fault). The first number in the bugcheck params is the number of the trap (8 = double fault, etc) Consult an Intel x86 family manual to learn more about what these traps are. Here is a portion of those codes: If kv shows a taskGate use .tss on the part before the colon, then kv. Else if kv shows a trapframe use .trap on that value Else .trap on the appropriate frame will show where the trap was taken (on x86, this will be the ebp that goes with the procedure KiTrap) Endif kb will then show the corrected stack. Arguments: Arg1: 0000000000000008, EXCEPTION_DOUBLE_FAULT Arg2: 0000000080050033 Arg3: 00000000000006f8 Arg4: fffff80003095e58 Debugging Details: BUGCHECK_STR: 0x7f_8 CUSTOMER_CRASH_COUNT: 1 DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID: VISTA_DRIVER_FAULT PROCESS_NAME: System CURRENT_IRQL: 2 LAST_CONTROL_TRANSFER: from fffff800030ccb69 to fffff800030cd600 STACK_TEXT: fffff80004d6fd28 fffff800030ccb69 : 000000000000007f 0000000000000008 0000000080050033 00000000000006f8 : nt!KeBugCheckEx fffff80004d6fd30 fffff800030cb032 : 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 : nt!KiBugCheckDispatch+0x69 fffff80004d6fe70 fffff80003095e58 : 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 : nt!KiDoubleFaultAbort+0xb2 fffff880089efc60 0000000000000000 : 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 : nt!SeAccessCheckFromState+0x58 STACK_COMMAND: kb FOLLOWUP_IP: nt!KiDoubleFaultAbort+b2 fffff800`030cb032 90 nop SYMBOL_STACK_INDEX: 2 SYMBOL_NAME: nt!KiDoubleFaultAbort+b2 FOLLOWUP_NAME: MachineOwner MODULE_NAME: nt IMAGE_NAME: ntkrnlmp.exe DEBUG_FLR_IMAGE_TIMESTAMP: 4b88cfeb FAILURE_BUCKET_ID: X64_0x7f_8_nt!KiDoubleFaultAbort+b2 BUCKET_ID: X64_0x7f_8_nt!KiDoubleFaultAbort+b2 Followup: MachineOwner I tried running Rootkit Revealer but I don't think it works on x64 systems. Similarly Blacklight seems to have aged off. I'm running Sophos Anti-Rootkit now. So far so good...

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moving raid 10 to another identical server both on Smart Array 6i controllers

- by SalimQrdl

I have dead HP DL 380G4 with RAID 1+0 with 1 logical volume from 4x72GB drives on built-in Smart Array 6i 128Mb BBWC. It was shut down properly. It seems it was usual death for Proliant with ILO led 2,3,8 lighting. I want to move array to another identical server with same raid firmware level. What is the best strategy?: I have RAID 1+0 on bay 0 bay 1 bay 2 bay 3 As I understand bay0+bay1 are in RAID 1 , bay2+bay3 are in RAID 1, and both RAID 1 pairs are in RAID 0. So should I : Clear RAID config on new server, insert bay 0, bay 2 and power-on or Create RAID 1+0 with 1 logical volume from clear HDDs , and then poweroff ,remove HDDs and insert 2 HDDs(bay 0, bay 2) from old RAID 1+0. then power-on. (each hdd has its raid position info stored but may be could work on same config) According to documentation for Smart Array 6i it could be possible to migrate. however one requirement point is unclear for me Before you move drives, the following conditions must be met: • The array is in its original configuration. " What is orginal and non-original config for RAID 1+0? Another point "If you want to move an array to another controller, you must also consider the following additional limitations: • All drives in the array must be moved at the same time." I want to move one hdd from each RAID 1 pair. to have mirrors untouched just in case. Do they mean to move all 4 simultaniously? Smart Array 6i User Guide: Moving Drives and Arrays You can move drives to other ID positionson the same array controller. You can also move a complete arrayfrom one controller to another, even if the controllers are on different servers. Before you move drives, the following conditions must be met: • If moving thedrives to a different server, the new server must have enough empty bays to accommodate all the drives simultaneously. • The move will not result in more than 14 physical drives per controller channel. • No controller will be configured with more than 32 logical volumes. • The array has no failed or missing drives. • The array is in its original configuration. • The controller is not reading from or writing to any of the spare drives in the array. • The controller is not running capacity expansion, capacity extension, or RAID or stripe size migration. • The controller is using the latestfirmware version (recommended). If you want to move an array to another controller, you must also consider the following additional limitations: • All drives in the array must be moved at the same time. • In most cases, a moved array (and the logical drives that it contains) can still undergo arraycapacity expansion, logical drive capacity extension, or migration of RAID level orstripe size. When all the conditions have been met: Back up all data before removing any drives or changing configuration. This step is requiredif you are moving data-containing drives from a controller that does not have a battery-backed cache. Power down the system. If you are moving an array from a controller that contains a RAID ADG logical volume to a controller that does not support RAID ADG: Move the drives. Power up the system. If a 1724 POST message is displayed, drive positions were changed successfully and the configuration was updated. If a 1785 (NotConfigured)POST message is displayed: a. Power down the system immediately to prevent data loss. b. Return the drives to their original locations. c. Restore the data from backup, if necessary. Check the new drive configuration byrunning ORCA or ACU ("Configuring an Array" on page 9).

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Windows XP Video Configuration Issues

- by Matt

Recently I had my motherboard burn out on me. Needing the machine for work, I purchased a different motherboard and installed that. Generally a reinstall of windows is good at that point but I am not in a position to do that so I just decided I would live with it for now. When I can log-in, everything works fine, what doesn't is getting to the log-in prompt to begin with. Basically when I first installed the new mobo, every time I rebooted the machine, I would not get the windows login prompt. One of the monitors would receive a signal but the screen would be black. Moving the mouse would not show the cursor and hitting the up arrow key and typing my password and hitting enter (which will normally log you in without mouse) wouldn't change anything. I would then change the monitor configuration around (2 lcd's and a crt) and reboot and at least one of the monitors would work and display the login prompt. I could then go into display properties and turn on the other monitors. However if I rebooted again, I would get the black screen on one monitor again. I would then have to change the configuration again to one not used before and I could re-do the manual setup at that point. I think windows saves the configurations so I had to keep giving it new ones. Needless to say I've been trying to not turn off my machine. Early this week I actually got the prompt to come up without playing musical monitors. Thinking everything was getting better, I found no harm in rebooting to install the latest windows updates. Boy was I wrong. Now no matter what I do I can't get a windows log-in prompt to display. I've tried almost every conceivable combination. The new mobo has onboard video so I set that in the bios (yea bios screen always displays fine, its not until windows boots that there is a problem) to be the primary video. Still no luck. I have two other graphics cards in the machine which I'm using. Tried all kinds of configurations between those and on-board but still get this black screen of death. I read somewhere that deleting the video drivers would reset the configurations. I logged into safe mode (which works on one monitor), and uninstalled the display drivers. Still no luck and when I booted back into safe mode, it wanted to install new hardware and the display adapters weren't there as expected. Anyone have any ideas? A fresh install would be a pain and I might be getting my old board back from RMA soon so not sure I want to go through with that just yet. Only thing I can think of is to continue to try other combinations like physically removing the graphics cards. They are both EVGA 8600 cards and the windows boot screen does display fwiw.

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File copying utility like rsync with error handling like ddrescue, for data recovery from a hard drive with bad sectors or hardware failure

- by purefusion

I have a hard drive with either bad blocks or sectors that are failing to read due to potential mechanical issues, such as a bad disk head, bad motor, or some other issue that is causing the hard drive to read data excruciatingly slowly and with lots of read errors. I'm seeing an average of 50 KB/sec, with some reads dropping below 10 KB/sec, and frequently it gets stuck on a file or sector altogether, usually for quite a long time—from 2-10 minutes or more (when using rsync, before it times out). Speed seems to vary wildly, and it gets stuck on files a lot, and when it finally gets "unstuck" it only seems to last for a short burst before it gets stuck again. The drive is also very quiet with only an occasional sound of files copying (usually when it gets stuck/unstuck for a brief time, before getting stuck again). Thus, there are none of those evil sounds that are normally associated with HDD death. Someone suggested that the problems sounded like they might be caused by a misaligned disk head, which requires a lot of re-reads before it finally reads data with success. Sounds plausible, but I digress... Anyway, the problem with rsync is that it seems to have no decent error handling support. Obviously, it wasn't meant for use in recovering data from failing hard drives, but all the so-called "data recovery" utilities out there that are meant for such use usually focus on recovery of deleted files or messed up partitions, rather than copying files off dying hard drives. Deleted file recovery is not what I need, obviously, so perhaps you can understand my disappointment in not being able to find what I'm after yet. Naturally, this is where you'd probably say "You should use ddrescue!" Well, that's all fine and dandy, but I've already got most of the data backed up, so I just want to recover certain files. I'm not concerned with trying to recover a full partition block-by-block as ddrescue does. I am only interested in rescuing just specific files and directories. Ideally, what I'd like is some sort of cross between rsync and ddrescue: something that lets me specify source and destination as directories of normal files like rsync (rather than two full partitions as ddrescue requires), with a way to skip files with errors in an initial run, and then allows me to attempt recovery of those files with errors in a later run (with a slightly altered command, of course), perhaps even offering an option to specify the number of retry attempts ...just like how ddrescue works with blocks, only I want a utility that works with specific files/directories like rsync does. So am I daydreaming here, or does something out there exist that can do this? Or, maybe even a way to make rsync or ddrescue work in such a way? I'm really open to whatever solutions might work, so long as they let me choose which files I want to "rescue", and can skip files with errors in the initial run, and try/retry those errors again later. So far I've tried rsync with the following options, but it often gets stuck on a file for longer than the timeout, and ideally I'd just like it to move on to the next file and come back later to the files it gets stuck on. I don't think that's possible though. Anyway, here's what I've been using up till now: rsync -avP --stats --block-size=512 --timeout=600 /path/to/source/* /path/to/destination/

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Router 2wire, Slackware desktop in DMZ mode, iptables policy aginst ping, but still pingable

- by user135501

I'm in DMZ mode, so I'm firewalling myself, stealthy all ok, but I get faulty test results from Shields Up that there are pings. Yesterday I couldn't make a connection to game servers work, because ping block was enabled (on the router). I disabled it, but this persists even due to my firewall. What is the connection between me and my router in DMZ mode (for my machine, there is bunch of others too behind router firewall)? When it allows router affecting if I'm pingable or not and if router has setting not blocking ping, rules in my iptables for this scenario do not work. Please ignore commented rules, I do uncomment them as I want. These two should do the job right? iptables -A INPUT -p icmp --icmp-type echo-request -j DROP echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/icmp_echo_ignore_all Here are my iptables: #!/bin/sh # Begin /bin/firewall-start # Insert connection-tracking modules (not needed if built into the kernel). #modprobe ip_tables #modprobe iptable_filter #modprobe ip_conntrack #modprobe ip_conntrack_ftp #modprobe ipt_state #modprobe ipt_LOG # allow local-only connections iptables -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT # free output on any interface to any ip for any service # (equal to -P ACCEPT) iptables -A OUTPUT -j ACCEPT # permit answers on already established connections # and permit new connections related to established ones (eg active-ftp) iptables -A INPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT #Gamespy&NWN #iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp -m multiport --ports 5120:5129 -j ACCEPT #iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 6667 --tcp-flags SYN,RST,ACK SYN -j ACCEPT #iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 28910 --tcp-flags SYN,RST,ACK SYN -j ACCEPT #iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 29900 --tcp-flags SYN,RST,ACK SYN -j ACCEPT #iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 29901 --tcp-flags SYN,RST,ACK SYN -j ACCEPT #iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 29920 --tcp-flags SYN,RST,ACK SYN -j ACCEPT #iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m udp -m multiport --ports 5120:5129 -j ACCEPT #iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 6500 -j ACCEPT #iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 27900 -j ACCEPT #iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 27901 -j ACCEPT #iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 29910 -j ACCEPT # Log everything else: What's Windows' latest exploitable vulnerability? iptables -A INPUT -j LOG --log-prefix "FIREWALL:INPUT" # set a sane policy: everything not accepted > /dev/null iptables -P INPUT DROP iptables -P FORWARD DROP iptables -P OUTPUT DROP iptables -A INPUT -p icmp --icmp-type echo-request -j DROP # be verbose on dynamic ip-addresses (not needed in case of static IP) echo 2 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_dynaddr # disable ExplicitCongestionNotification - too many routers are still # ignorant echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_ecn #ping death echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/icmp_echo_ignore_all # If you are frequently accessing ftp-servers or enjoy chatting you might # notice certain delays because some implementations of these daemons have # the feature of querying an identd on your box for your username for # logging. Although there's really no harm in this, having an identd # running is not recommended because some implementations are known to be # vulnerable. # To avoid these delays you could reject the requests with a 'tcp-reset': #iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 113 -j REJECT --reject-with tcp-reset #iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp --sport 113 -m state --state RELATED -j ACCEPT # To log and drop invalid packets, mostly harmless packets that came in # after netfilter's timeout, sometimes scans: #iptables -I INPUT 1 -p tcp -m state --state INVALID -j LOG --log-prefix \ "FIREWALL:INVALID" #iptables -I INPUT 2 -p tcp -m state --state INVALID -j DROP # End /bin/firewall-start

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Why does my computer run slowly and freeze sometimes?

- by Brae

EDIT I disabled sound in the BIOS, rebooted and it hung. I removed the (previously) faulty HDD, rebooted and it hung. I have managed to get my Realtek audio manager open again after its mysterious disappearance. Subsequently my microphone is now working again, to fix it I had to uninstall audio drivers, disable audio in BIOS, install audio drivers, enable audio in BIOS. Access via network (with faulty HDD in) seems to not be triggering hangs at the moment. I think with the sound problem fixed it might play a little nicer, but I think its still going to hang. If it does, then I'm fairly sure its been narrowed down to the mobo. EDIT Pretty convinced my motherboard is the culprit, because nothing else seems to have any obvious problems (bar the hard drive, which the PC still hangs without it being plugged in) So thank you all for helping, once I get more rep ill up a few of the answers. My PC is doing some weird things... Sometimes when I open up a program, lets say Adobe Photoshop, it will load everything normally, nice and quick no problems and I can use it fine. Other times its a little odd, and it loads the program as if it's only using half of the CPU. It's pretty obvious when it does it, normally the loading screen skims past, but when it does this weird load you see it slowly tick though each thing, and the program itself becomes incredibly slow. Even Google Chrome does it sometimes. Yet when I exit and reopen the program without doing anything else, it typically opens fine without lagging. I think this problem is probably a symptom of something bigger, because of other problems I'm having. Random hangs; no matter what I have open or what I'm doing. My PC will sort of freeze up for a few seconds. If music is playing it will either loop the last second or two, or it will buzz. This only lasts for a few seconds then it returns to normal without having to restart. During this time all programs lock up and freeze, and the mouse and keyboard are useless. I am also having a weird issue with my audio jacks, without touching my PC at all, sometimes I will see a popup saying that I have unplugged something or plugged something in, neither of which has actually happened. Pretty sure this is cause by the motherboard. I recently had a 'Pink Screen of Death' (yes pink) which pointed to my audio drivers. The lockups seem to happen with some consistency when someone is accessing my shared files via my home LAN. Which leads me to believe either one of my hard drives is acting up or more likely the controller. One of my drives had a bit of a crash before, I used Spinrite and managed to recover my stuff and now the drive appears to be working okay. This is possibly adding to the problems. My best guess is something has gone wrong with my motherboard, possibly a power issue or a chip has died, I really don't know. So what I would like to know is: Have I have missed some obvious diagnostic to help figure out what it is, or should I just bite the bullet and assume its my motherboard acting up and buy a new system? dxdiag[64-bit] - http://pastebin.com/G30kb2TL PSOD (minidump) - http://pastebin.com/aZsv0H56 HWiNFO64 (system info / specs) - http://pastebin.com/X6h3K8g6

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Week in Geek: 4chan Falls Victim to DDoS Attack Edition

- by Asian Angel

This week we learned how to tweak the low battery action on a Windows 7 laptop, access an eBook collection anywhere in the world, “extend iPad battery life, batch resize photos, & sync massive music collections”, went on a reign of destruction with Snow Crusher, and had fun decorating our desktops with abstract icon collections. Photo by pasukaru76. Random Geek Links We have included extra news article goodness to help you catch up on any developments that you may have missed during the holiday break this past week. Note: The three 27C3 articles listed here represent three different presentations at the 27th Chaos Communication Congress hacker conference. 4chan victim of DDoS as FBI investigates role in PayPal attack Users of 4chan may have gotten a taste of their own medicine after the site was knocked offline by a DDoS attack from an unknown origin early Thursday morning. Report: FBI seizes server in probe of WikiLeaks attacks The FBI has seized a server in Texas as part of its hunt for the groups behind the pro-WikiLeaks denial-of-service attacks launched in December against PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, and others. Mozilla exposes older user-account database Mozilla has disabled 44,000 older user accounts for its Firefox add-ons site after a security researcher found part of a database of the account information on a publicly available server. Data breach affects 4.9 million Honda customers Japanese automaker Honda has put some 2.2 million customers in the United States on a security breach alert after a database containing information on the owners and their cars was hacked. Chinese Trojan discovered in Android games An Android-based Trojan called “Geinimi” has been discovered in the wild and the Trojan is capable of sending personal information to remote servers and exhibits botnet-like behavior. 27C3 presentation claims many mobiles vulnerable to SMS attacks According to security experts, an ‘SMS of death’ threatens to disable many current Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Motorola, Micromax and LG mobiles. 27C3: GSM cell phones even easier to tap Security researchers have demonstrated how open source software on a number of revamped, entry-level cell phones can decrypt and record mobile phone calls in the GSM network. 27C3: danger lurks in PDF documents Security researcher Julia Wolf has pointed out numerous, previously hardly known, security problems in connection with Adobe’s PDF standard. Critical update for WordPress A critical update has been made available for WordPress in the form of version 3.0.4. The update fixes a security bug in WordPress’s KSES library. McAfee Labs Predicts Geolocation, Mobile Devices and Apple Will Top the List of Targets for Emerging Threats in 2011 The list comprises 2010’s most buzzed about platforms and services, including Google’s Android, Apple’s iPhone, foursquare, Google TV and the Mac OS X platform, which are all expected to become major targets for cybercriminals. McAfee Labs also predicts that politically motivated attacks will be on the rise. Windows Phone 7 piracy materializes with FreeMarketplace A proof-of-concept application, FreeMarketplace, that allows any Windows Phone 7 application to be downloaded and installed free of charge has been developed. Empty email accounts, and some bad buzz for Hotmail In the past few days, a number of Hotmail users have been complaining about a rather disconcerting issue: their Hotmail accounts, some up to 10 years old, appear completely empty. No emails, no folders, nothing, just what appears to be a new account. Reports: Nintendo warns of 3DS risk for kids Nintendo has reportedly issued a warning that the 3DS, its eagerly awaited glasses-free 3D portable gaming device, should not be used by children under 6 when the gadget is in 3D-viewing mode. Google eyes ‘cloaking’ as next antispam target Google plans to take a closer look at the practice of “cloaking,” or presenting one look to a Googlebot crawling one’s site while presenting another look to users. Facebook, Twitter stock trading drawing SEC eye? The high degree of investor interest in shares of hot Silicon Valley companies that aren’t yet publicly traded–like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Zynga–may be leading to scrutiny from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Random TinyHacker Links Photo by jcraveiro. Exciting Software Set for Release in 2011 A few bloggers from great websites such as How-To Geek, Guiding Tech and 7 Tutorials took the time to sit down and talk about their software wishes for 2011. Take the time to read it and share… Wikileaks Infopr0n An infographic detailing the quest to plug WikiLeaks. The New York Times Guide to Mobile Apps A growing collection of all mobile app coverage by the New York Times as well as lists of favorite apps from Times writers. 7,000,000,000 (Video) A fascinating look at the world’s population via National Geographic Magazine. Super User Questions Check out the great answers to these hot questions from Super User. How to use a Personal computer as a Linux web server for development purposes? How to link processing power of old computers together? Free virtualization tool for testing suspicious files? Why do some actions not work with Remote Desktop? What is the simplest way to send a large batch of pictures to a distant friend or colleague? How-To Geek Weekly Article Recap Had a busy week and need to get caught up on your HTG reading? Then sit back and relax while enjoying these hot posts full of how-to roundup goodness. The 50 Best How-To Geek Windows Articles of 2010 The 20 Best How-To Geek Explainer Topics for 2010 The 20 Best How-To Geek Linux Articles of 2010 How to Search Just the Site You’re Viewing Using Google Search Ask the Readers: Backing Your Files Up – Local Storage versus the Cloud One Year Ago on How-To Geek Need more how-to geekiness for your weekend? Then look through this great batch of articles from one year ago that focus on dual-booting and O.S. installation goodness. Dual Boot Your Pre-Installed Windows 7 Computer with Vista Dual Boot Your Pre-Installed Windows 7 Computer with XP How To Setup a USB Flash Drive to Install Windows 7 Dual Boot Your Pre-Installed Windows 7 Computer with Ubuntu Easily Install Ubuntu Linux with Windows Using the Wubi Installer The Geek Note We hope that you and your families have had a terrific holiday break as everyone prepares to return to work and school this week. Remember to keep those great tips coming in to us at [email protected]! Photo by pjbeardsley. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The 20 Best How-To Geek Linux Articles of 2010 The 50 Best How-To Geek Windows Articles of 2010 The 20 Best How-To Geek Explainer Topics for 2010 How to Disable Caps Lock Key in Windows 7 or Vista How to Use the Avira Rescue CD to Clean Your Infected PC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials Tune Pop Enhances Android Music Notifications Another Busy Night in Gotham City Wallpaper Classic Super Mario Brothers Theme for Chrome and Iron Experimental Firefox Builds Put Tabs on the Title Bar (Available for Download) Android Trojan Found in the Wild Chaos, Panic, and Disorder Wallpaper

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