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SQL University: What and why of database refactoring

- by Mladen Prajdic

This is a post for a great idea called SQL University started by Jorge Segarra also famously known as SqlChicken on Twitter. It’s a collection of blog posts on different database related topics contributed by several smart people all over the world. So this week is mine and we’ll be talking about database testing and refactoring. In 3 posts we’ll cover: SQLU part 1 - What and why of database testing SQLU part 2 - What and why of database refactoring SQLU part 3 - Tools of the trade This is a second part of the series and in it we’ll take a look at what database refactoring is and why do it. Why refactor a database To know why refactor we first have to know what refactoring actually is. Code refactoring is a process where we change module internals in a way that does not change that module’s input/output behavior. For successful refactoring there is one crucial thing we absolutely must have: Tests. Automated unit tests are the only guarantee we have that we haven’t broken the input/output behavior before refactoring. If you haven’t go back ad read my post on the matter. Then start writing them. Next thing you need is a code module. Those are views, UDFs and stored procedures. By having direct table access we can kiss fast and sweet refactoring good bye. One more point to have a database abstraction layer. And no, ORM’s don’t fall into that category. But also know that refactoring is NOT adding new functionality to your code. Many have fallen into this trap. Don’t be one of them and resist the lure of the dark side. And it’s a strong lure. We developers in general love to add new stuff to our code, but hate fixing our own mistakes or changing existing code for no apparent reason. To be a good refactorer one needs discipline and focus. Now we know that refactoring is all about changing inner workings of existing code. This can be due to performance optimizations, changing internal code workflows or some other reason. This is a typical black box scenario to the outside world. If we upgrade the car engine it still has to drive on the road (preferably faster) and not fly (no matter how cool that would be). Also be aware that white box tests will break when we refactor. What to refactor in a database Refactoring databases doesn’t happen that often but when it does it can include a lot of stuff. Let us look at a few common cases. Adding or removing database schema objects Adding, removing or changing table columns in any way, adding constraints, keys, etc… All of these can be counted as internal changes not visible to the data consumer. But each of these carries a potential input/output behavior change. Dropping a column can result in views not working anymore or stored procedure logic crashing. Adding a unique constraint shows duplicated data that shouldn’t exist. Foreign keys break a truncate table command executed from an application that runs once a month. All these scenarios are very real and can happen. With the proper database abstraction layer fully covered with black box tests we can make sure something like that does not happen (hopefully at all). Changing physical structures Physical structures include heaps, indexes and partitions. We can pretty much add or remove those without changing the data returned by the database. But the performance can be affected. So here we use our performance tests. We do have them, right? Just by adding a single index we can achieve orders of magnitude performance improvement. Won’t that make users happy? But what if that index causes our write operations to crawl to a stop. again we have to test this. There are a lot of things to think about and have tests for. Without tests we can’t do successful refactoring! Fixing bad code We all have some bad code in our systems. We usually refer to that code as code smell as they violate good coding practices. Examples of such code smells are SQL injection, use of SELECT *, scalar UDFs or cursors, etc… Each of those is huge code smell and can result in major code changes. Take SELECT * from example. If we remove a column from a table the client using that SELECT * statement won’t have a clue about that until it runs. Then it will gracefully crash and burn. Not to mention the widely unknown SELECT * view refresh problem that Tomas LaRock (@SQLRockstar on Twitter) and Colin Stasiuk (@BenchmarkIT on Twitter) talk about in detail. Go read about it, it’s informative. Refactoring this includes replacing the * with column names and most likely change to application using the database. Breaking apart huge stored procedures Have you ever seen seen a stored procedure that was 2000 lines long? I have. It’s not pretty. It hurts the eyes and sucks the will to live the next 10 minutes. They are a maintenance nightmare and turn into things no one dares to touch. I’m willing to bet that 100% of time they don’t have a single test on them. Large stored procedures (and functions) are a clear sign that they contain business logic. General opinion on good database coding practices says that business logic has no business in the database. That’s the applications part. Refactoring such behemoths requires writing lots of edge case tests for the stored procedure input/output behavior and then start to refactor it. First we split the logic inside into smaller parts like new stored procedures and UDFs. Those then get called from the master stored procedure. Once we’ve successfully modularized the database code it’s best to transfer that logic into the applications consuming it. This only leaves the stored procedure with common data manipulation logic. Of course this isn’t always possible so having a plethora of performance and behavior unit tests is absolutely necessary to confirm we’ve actually improved the codebase in some way. Refactoring is not a popular chore amongst developers or managers. The former don’t like fixing old code, the latter can’t see the financial benefit. Remember how we talked about being lousy at estimating future costs in the previous post? But there comes a time when it must be done. Hopefully I’ve given you some ideas how to get started. In the last post of the series we’ll take a look at the tools to use and an example of testing and refactoring.

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Personal Technology – Laptop Screen Blank – No Post – No BIOS – No Boot

- by Pinal Dave

If your laptop Screen is Blank and there is no POST, BIOS or boot, you can follow the steps mentioned here and there are chances that it will work if there is no hardware failure inside. Step 1: Remove the power cord from the laptop Step 2: Remove the battery from the laptop Step 3: Hold power button (keep it pressed) for almost 60 seconds Step 4: Plug power back in laptop Step 5: Start computer and it should just start normally. Step 6: Now shut down Step 7: Insert the battery back in the laptop Step 8: Start laptop again and it should work Note 1: If your laptop does not work after inserting back the memory. Remove the memory and repeat above process. Do not insert the battery back as it is malfunctioning. Note 2: If your screen is faulty or have issues with your hardware (motherboard, screen or anything else) this method will not fix your computer. Those, who care about how I come up with this not SQL related blog post, here is the very funny true story. If you are a married man, you will know what I am going to describe next. May be you have faced the same situation or at least you feel and understand my situation. My wife’s computer suddenly stops working when she was searching for my daughter’s mathematics worksheets online. While the fatal accident happened with my wife’s computer (which was my loyal computer for over 4 years before she got it), I was working in my home office, fixing a high priority issue (live order’s database was corrupted) with one of the largest eCommerce websites. While I was working on production server where I was fixing database corruption, my wife ran to my home office. Here is how the conversation went: Wife: This computer does not work. I: Restart it. Wife: It does not start. I: What did you do with it? Wife: Nothing, it just stopped working. I: Okey, I will look into it later, working on the very urgent issue. Wife: I was printing my daughter’s worksheet. I: Hm.. Okey. Wife: It was the mathematics worksheet, which you promised you will teach but you never get around to do it, so I am doing it myself. I: Thanks. I appreciate it. I am very busy with this issue as million dollar transaction are not happening as the database got corrupted and … Wife: So what … umm… You mean to say that you care about this customer more than your daughter. You know she got A+ in every other class but in mathematics she got only A. She missed that extra credit question. I: She is only 4, it is okay. Wife: She is 4.5 years old not 4. So you are not going to fix this computer which does not start at all. I think our daughter next time will even get lower grades as her dad is busy fixing something. I: Alright, I give up bring me that computer. Our daughter who was listening everything so far she finally decided to speak up. Daughter: Dad, it is a laptop not computer. I: Yes, sweety get that laptop here and your dad is going to fix the this small issue of million dollar issue later on. I decided to pay attention to my wife’s computer. She was right. No matter what I do, it will not boot up, it will not start, no BIOS, no POST screen. The computer starts for a second but nothing comes up on the screen. The light indicating hard drive comes up for a second and goes off. Nothing happens. I removed every single USB drive from the laptop but it still would not start. It was indeed no fun for me. Finally I remember my days when I was not married and used to study in University of Southern California, Los Angeles. I remembered that I used to have very old second (or maybe third or fourth) hand computer with me. In polite words, I had pre-owned computer and it used to face very similar issues again and again. I had small routine I used to follow to fix my old computer and I had decided to follow the same steps again with this computer. Step 1: Remove the power cord from the laptop Step 2: Remove the battery from the laptop Step 3: Hold power button (keep it pressed) for almost 60 seconds Step 4: Plug power back in laptop Step 5: Start computer and it should just start normally. Step 6: Now shut down Step 7: Insert the battery back in the laptop Step 8: Start laptop again and it should work Note 1: If your laptop does not work after inserting back the memory. Remove the memory and repeat above process. Do not insert the battery back as it is malfunctioning. Note 2: If your screen is faulty or have issues with your hardware (motherboard, screen or anything else) this method will not fix your computer. Once I followed above process, her computer worked. I was very delighted, that now I can go back to solving the problem where millions of transactions were waiting as I was fixing corrupted database and it the current state of the database was in emergency mode. Once I fixed the computer, I looked at my wife and asked. I: Well, now this laptop is back online, can I get guaranteed that she will get A+ in mathematics in this week’s quiz? Wife: Sure, I promise. I: Fantastic. After saying that I started to look at my database corruption and my wife interrupted me again. Wife: Btw, I forgot to tell you. Our daughter had got A in mathematics last week but she had another quiz today and she already have received A+ there. I kept my promise. I looked at her and she started to walk outside room, before I say anything my phone rang. DBA from eCommerce company had called me, as he was wondering why there is no activity from my side in last 10 minutes. DBA: Hey bud, are you still connected. I see um… no activity in last 10 minutes. I: Oh, well, I was just saving the world. I am back now. After two hours I had fixed the database corruption and everything was normal. I was outsmarted by my wife but honestly I still respect and love her the same as she is the one who spends countless hours with our daughter so she does not miss me and I can continue writing blogs and keep on doing technology evangelism. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Humor, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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

- by aspiringgeek

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

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Rapid Evolution of Society & Technology

- by Michael Snow

We caught up with Brian Solis on the phone the other day and Christie Flanagan had a chance to chat with him and learn a bit more about him and some of the concepts he'll be addressing in our Social Business Thought Leaders Webcast on Thursday 12/13/12. «--- Interview with Brian Solis Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast- mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Be sure and register for this week's webcast ---» ------------------- Guest post by Brian Solis. Reposted (Borrowed) from his posting of May 24, 2012 Dear [insert business name], what’s your promise? - Brian Solis You say you want to get closer to customers, but your actions are different than your words. You say you want to “surprise and delight” customers, but your product development teams are too busy building against a roadmap without consideration of the 5th P of marketing…people. Your employees are your number one asset, however the infrastructure of the organization has turned once optimistic and ambitious intrapreneurs into complacent cogs or worse, your greatest detractors. You question the adoption of disruptive technology by your internal champions yet you’ve not tried to find the value for yourself. You’re a change agent and you truly wish to bring about change, but you’ve not invested time or resources to answer “why” in your endeavors to become a connected or social business. If we are to truly change, we must find purpose. We must uncover the essence of our business and the value it delivers to traditional and connected consumers. We must rethink the spirit of today’s embrace and clearly articulate how transformation is going to improve customer and employee experiences and relationships now and over time. Without doing so, any attempts at evolution will be thwarted by reality. In an era of Digital Darwinism, no business is too big to fail or too small to succeed. These are undisciplined times which require alternative approaches to recognize and pursue new opportunities. But everything begins with acknowledging the 360 view of the world that you see today is actually a filtered view of managed and efficient convenience. Today, many organizations that were once inspired by innovation and engagement have fallen into a process of marketing, operationalizing, managing, and optimizing. That might have worked for the better part of the last century, but for the next 10 years and beyond, new vision, leadership and supporting business models will be written to move businesses from rigid frameworks to adaptive and agile entities. I believe that today’s executives will undergo a great test; a test of character, vision, intention, and universal leadership. It starts with a simple, but essential question…what is your promise? Notice, I didn’t ask about your brand promise. Nor did I ask for you to cite your mission and vision statements. This is much more than value propositions or manufactured marketing language designed to hook audiences and stakeholders. I asked for your promise to me as your consumer, stakeholder, and partner. This isn’t about B2B or B2C, but instead, people to people, person to person. It is this promise that will breathe new life into an organization that on the outside, could be misdiagnosed as catatonic by those who are disrupting your markets. A promise, for example, is meant to inspire. It creates alignment. It serves as the foundation for your vision, mission, and all business strategies and it must come from the top to mean anything. For without it, we cannot genuinely voice what it is we stand for or stand behind. Think for a moment about the definition of community. It’s easy to confuse a workplace or a market where everyone simply shares common characteristics. However, a community in this day and age is much more than belonging to something, it’s about doing something together that makes belonging matter The next few years will force a divide where companies are separated by intention as measured by actions and words. But, becoming a social business is not enough. Becoming more authentic and transparent doesn’t serve as a mantra for a renaissance. A promise is the ink that inscribes the spirit of the relationship between you and me. A promise serves as the words that influence change from within and change beyond the halls of our business. It is the foundation for a renewed embrace, one that must then find its way to every aspect of the organization. It’s the difference between a social business and an adaptive business. While an adaptive business can also be social, it is the culture of the organization that strives to not just use technology to extend current philosophies or processes into new domains, but instead give rise to a new culture where striving for relevance is among its goals. The tools and networks simply become enablers of a greater mission You are reading this because you believe in something more than what you’re doing today. While you fight for change within your organization, remember to aim for a higher purpose. Organizations that strive for innovation, imagination, and relevance will outperform those that do not. Part of your job is to lead a missionary push that unites the groundswell with a top down cascade. Change will only happen because you and other internal champions see what others can’t and will do what other won’t. It takes resolve. It takes the ability to translate new opportunities into business value. And, it takes courage. “This is a very noisy world, so we have to be very clear what we want them to know about us”-Steve Jobs ----------------------------------------------------------------- So -- where do you begin to evaluate the kind of experience you are delivering for your customers, partners, and employees? Take a look at this White Paper: Creating a Successful and Meaningful Customer Experience on the Web and then have a cup of coffee while you listen to the sage advice of Guy Kawasaki in a short video below. An interview with Guy Kawasaki on Maximizing Social Media Channels

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Deterministic/Consistent Unique Masking

- by Dinesh Rajasekharan-Oracle

One of the key requirements while masking data in large databases or multi database environment is to consistently mask some columns, i.e. for a given input the output should always be the same. At the same time the masked output should not be predictable. Deterministic masking also eliminates the need to spend enormous amount of time spent in identifying data relationships, i.e. parent and child relationships among columns defined in the application tables. In this blog post I will explain different ways of consistently masking the data across databases using Oracle Data Masking and Subsetting The readers of post should have minimal knowledge on Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c, Application Data Modeling, Data Masking concepts. For more information on these concepts, please refer to Oracle Data Masking and Subsetting document Oracle Data Masking and Subsetting 12c provides four methods using which users can consistently yet irreversibly mask their inputs. 1. Substitute 2. SQL Expression 3. Encrypt 4. User Defined Function SUBSTITUTE The substitute masking format replaces the original value with a value from a pre-created database table. As the method uses a hash based algorithm in the back end the mappings are consistent. For example consider DEPARTMENT_ID in EMPLOYEES table is replaced with FAKE_DEPARTMENT_ID from FAKE_TABLE. The substitute masking transformation that all occurrences of DEPARTMENT_ID say ‘101’ will be replaced with ‘502’ provided same substitution table and column is used , i.e. FAKE_TABLE.FAKE_DEPARTMENT_ID. The following screen shot shows the usage of the Substitute masking format with in a masking definition: Note that the uniqueness of the masked value depends on the number of columns being used in the substitution table i.e. if the original table contains 50000 unique values, then for the masked output to be unique and deterministic the substitution column should also contain 50000 unique values without which only consistency is maintained but not uniqueness. SQL EXPRESSION SQL Expression replaces an existing value with the output of a specified SQL Expression. For example while masking an EMPLOYEES table the EMAIL_ID of an employee has to be in the format EMPLOYEE’s [email protected] while FIRST_NAME and LAST_NAME are the actual column names of the EMPLOYEES table then the corresponding SQL Expression will look like %FIRST_NAME%||’.’||%LAST_NAME%||’@COMPANY.COM’. The advantage of this technique is that if you are masking FIRST_NAME and LAST_NAME of the EMPLOYEES table than the corresponding EMAIL ID will be replaced accordingly by the masking scripts. One of the interesting aspect’s of a SQL Expressions is that you can use sub SQL expressions, which means that you can write a nested SQL and use it as SQL Expression to address a complex masking business use cases. SQL Expression can also be used to consistently replace value with hashed value using Oracle’s PL/SQL function ORA_HASH. The following SQL Expression will help in the previous example for replacing the DEPARTMENT_IDs with a hashed number ORA_HASH (%DEPARTMENT_ID%, 1000) The following screen shot shows the usage of encrypt masking format with in the masking definition: ORA_HASH takes three arguments: 1. Expression which can be of any data type except LONG, LOB, User Defined Type [nested table type is allowed]. In the above example I used the Original value as expression. 2. Number of hash buckets which can be number between 0 and 4294967295. The default value is 4294967295. You can also co-relate the number of hash buckets to a range of numbers. In the above example above the bucket value is specified as 1000, so the end result will be a hashed number in between 0 and 1000. 3. Seed, can be any number which decides the consistency, i.e. for a given seed value the output will always be same. The default seed is 0. In the above SQL Expression a seed in not specified, so it to 0. If you have to use a non default seed then the function will look like. ORA_HASH (%DEPARTMENT_ID%, 1000, 1234 The uniqueness depends on the input and the number of hash buckets used. However as ORA_HASH uses a 32 bit algorithm, considering birthday paradox or pigeonhole principle there is a 0.5 probability of collision after 232-1 unique values. ENCRYPT Encrypt masking format uses a blend of 3DES encryption algorithm, hashing, and regular expression to produce a deterministic and unique masked output. The format of the masked output corresponds to the specified regular expression. As this technique uses a key [string] to encrypt the data, the same string can be used to decrypt the data. The key also acts as seed to maintain consistent outputs for a given input. The following screen shot shows the usage of encrypt masking format with in the masking definition: Regular Expressions may look complex for the first time users but you will soon realize that it’s a simple language. There are many resources in internet, oracle documentation, oracle learning library, my oracle support on writing a Regular Expressions, out of all the following My Oracle Support document helped me to get started with Regular Expressions: Oracle SQL Support for Regular Expressions[Video](Doc ID 1369668.1) USER DEFINED FUNCTION [UDF] User Defined Function or UDF provides flexibility for the users to code their own masking logic in PL/SQL, which can be called from masking Defintion. The standard format of an UDF in Oracle Data Masking and Subsetting is: Function udf_func (rowid varchar2, column_name varchar2, original_value varchar2) returns varchar2; Where • rowid is the row identifier of the column that needs to be masked • column_name is the name of the column that needs to be masked • original_value is the column value that needs to be masked You can achieve deterministic masking by using Oracle’s built in hash functions like, ORA_HASH, DBMS_CRYPTO.MD4, DBMS_CRYPTO.MD5, DBMS_UTILITY. GET_HASH_VALUE.Please refers to the Oracle Database Documentation for more information on the Oracle Hash functions. For example the following masking UDF generate deterministic unique hexadecimal values for a given string input: CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION RD_DUX (rid varchar2, column_name varchar2, orig_val VARCHAR2) RETURN VARCHAR2 DETERMINISTIC PARALLEL_ENABLE IS stext varchar2 (26); no_of_characters number(2); BEGIN no_of_characters:=6; stext:=substr(RAWTOHEX(DBMS_CRYPTO.HASH(UTL_RAW.CAST_TO_RAW(text),1)),0,no_of_characters); RETURN stext; END; The uniqueness depends on the input and length of the string and number of bits used by hash algorithm. In the above function MD4 hash is used [denoted by argument 1 in the DBMS_CRYPTO.HASH function which is a 128 bit algorithm which produces 2^128-1 unique hashed values , however this is limited by the length of the input string which is 6, so only 6^6 unique values will be generated. Also do not forget about the birthday paradox/pigeonhole principle mentioned earlier in this post. An another example is to consistently replace characters or numbers preserving the length and special characters as shown below: CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION RD_DUS(rid varchar2,column_name varchar2,orig_val VARCHAR2) RETURN VARCHAR2 DETERMINISTIC PARALLEL_ENABLE IS stext varchar2(26); BEGIN DBMS_RANDOM.SEED(orig_val); stext:=TRANSLATE(orig_val,'ABCDEFGHILKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ',DBMS_RANDOM.STRING('U',26)); stext:=TRANSLATE(stext,'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz',DBMS_RANDOM.STRING('L',26)); stext:=TRANSLATE(stext,'0123456789',to_char(DBMS_RANDOM.VALUE(1,9))); stext:=REPLACE(stext,'.','0'); RETURN stext; END; The following screen shot shows the usage of an UDF with in a masking definition: To summarize, Oracle Data Masking and Subsetting helps you to consistently mask data across databases using one or all of the methods described in this post. It saves the hassle of identifying the parent-child relationships defined in the application table. Happy Masking

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Tracing Silex from PHP to the OS with DTrace

- by cj

In this blog post I show the full stack tracing of Brendan Gregg's php_syscolors.d script in the DTrace Toolkit. The Toolkit contains a dozen very useful PHP DTrace scripts and many more scripts for other languages and the OS. For this example, I'll trace the PHP micro framework Silex, which was the topic of the second of two talks by Dustin Whittle at a recent SF PHP Meetup. His slides are at Silex: From Micro to Full Stack. Installing DTrace and PHP The php_syscolors.d script uses some static PHP probes and some kernel probes. For Oracle Linux I discussed installing DTrace and PHP in DTrace PHP Using Oracle Linux 'playground' Pre-Built Packages. On other platforms with DTrace support, follow your standard procedures to enable DTrace and load the correct providers. The sdt and systrace providers are required in addition to fasttrap. On Oracle Linux, I loaded the DTrace modules like: # modprobe fasttrap # modprobe sdt # modprobe systrace # chmod 666 /dev/dtrace/helper Installing the DTrace Toolkit I download DTraceToolkit-0.99.tar.gz and extracted it: $ tar -zxf DTraceToolkit-0.99.tar.gz The PHP scripts are in the Php directory and examples in the Examples directory. Installing Silex I downloaded the "fat" Silex .tgz file from the download page and extracted it: $ tar -zxf silex_fat.tgz I changed the demonstration silex/web/index.php so I could use the PHP development web server: <?php // web/index.php $filename = __DIR__.preg_replace('#(\?.*)$#', '', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']); if (php_sapi_name() === 'cli-server' && is_file($filename)) { return false; } require_once __DIR__.'/../vendor/autoload.php'; $app = new Silex\Application(); //$app['debug'] = true; $app->get('/hello', function() { return 'Hello!'; }); $app->run(); ?> Running DTrace The php_syscolors.d script uses the -Z option to dtrace, so it can be started before PHP, i.e. when there are zero of the requested probes available to be traced. I ran DTrace like: # cd DTraceToolkit-0.99/Php # ./php_syscolors.d Next, I started the PHP developer web server in a second terminal: $ cd silex $ php -S localhost:8080 -t web web/index.php At this point, the web server is idle, waiting for requests. DTrace is idle, waiting for the probes in php_syscolors.d to be fired, at which time the action associated with each probe will run. I then loaded the demonstration page in a browser: http://localhost:8080/hello When the request was fulfilled and the simple output of "Hello" was displayed, I ^C'd php and dtrace in their terminals to stop them. DTrace output over a thousand lines long had been generated. Here is one snippet from when run() was invoked: C PID/TID DELTA(us) FILE:LINE TYPE -- NAME ... 1 4765/4765 21 Application.php:487 func -> run 1 4765/4765 29 ClassLoader.php:182 func -> loadClass 1 4765/4765 17 ClassLoader.php:198 func -> findFile 1 4765/4765 31 ":- syscall -> access 1 4765/4765 26 ":- syscall <- access 1 4765/4765 16 ClassLoader.php:198 func <- findFile 1 4765/4765 25 ":- syscall -> newlstat 1 4765/4765 15 ":- syscall <- newlstat 1 4765/4765 13 ":- syscall -> newlstat 1 4765/4765 13 ":- syscall <- newlstat 1 4765/4765 22 ":- syscall -> newlstat 1 4765/4765 14 ":- syscall <- newlstat 1 4765/4765 15 ":- syscall -> newlstat 1 4765/4765 60 ":- syscall <- newlstat 1 4765/4765 13 ":- syscall -> newlstat 1 4765/4765 13 ":- syscall <- newlstat 1 4765/4765 20 ":- syscall -> open 1 4765/4765 16 ":- syscall <- open 1 4765/4765 26 ":- syscall -> newfstat 1 4765/4765 12 ":- syscall <- newfstat 1 4765/4765 17 ":- syscall -> newfstat 1 4765/4765 12 ":- syscall <- newfstat 1 4765/4765 12 ":- syscall -> newfstat 1 4765/4765 12 ":- syscall <- newfstat 1 4765/4765 20 ":- syscall -> mmap 1 4765/4765 14 ":- syscall <- mmap 1 4765/4765 3201 ":- syscall -> mmap 1 4765/4765 27 ":- syscall <- mmap 1 4765/4765 1233 ":- syscall -> munmap 1 4765/4765 53 ":- syscall <- munmap 1 4765/4765 15 ":- syscall -> close 1 4765/4765 13 ":- syscall <- close 1 4765/4765 34 Request.php:32 func -> main 1 4765/4765 22 Request.php:32 func <- main 1 4765/4765 31 ClassLoader.php:182 func <- loadClass 1 4765/4765 33 Request.php:249 func -> createFromGlobals 1 4765/4765 29 Request.php:198 func -> __construct 1 4765/4765 24 Request.php:218 func -> initialize 1 4765/4765 26 ClassLoader.php:182 func -> loadClass 1 4765/4765 89 ClassLoader.php:198 func -> findFile 1 4765/4765 43 ":- syscall -> access ... The output shows PHP functions being called and returning (and where they are located) and which system calls the PHP functions in turn invoked. The time each line took from the previous one is displayed in the third column. The first column is the CPU number. In this example, the process was always on CPU 1 so the output is naturally ordered without requiring post-processing, or the D script requiring to be modified to display a time stamp. On a terminal, the output of php_syscolors.d is color-coded according to whether each function is a PHP or system one, hence the file name. Summary With one tool, I was able to trace the interaction of a user application with the operating system. I was able to do this to an application running "live" in a web context. The DTrace Toolkit provides a very handy repository of DTrace information. Even though the PHP scripts were created in the time frame of the original PHP DTrace PECL extension, which only had PHP function entry and return probes, the scripts provide core examples for custom investigation and resolution scripts. You can easily adapt the ideas and and create scripts using the other PHP static probes, which are listed in the PHP Manual. Because DTrace is "always on", you can take advantage of it to resolve development questions or fix production situations.

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How to Never Use iTunes With Your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch

- by Chris Hoffman

iTunes isn’t an amazing program on Windows. There was a time when Apple device users had to plug their devices into their PCs or Macs and use iTunes for device activation, updates, and syncing, but iTunes is no longer necessary. Apple still allows you to use iTunes for these things, but you don’t have to. Your iOS device can function independently from iTunes, so you should never be forced to plug it into a PC or Mac. Device Activation When the iPad first came out, it was touted as a device that could replace full PCs and Macs for people who only needed to perform light computing tasks. Yet, to set up a new iPad, users had to plug it into a PC or Mac running iTunes and use iTunes to activate the device. This is no longer necessary. With new iPads, iPhones, and iPod Touches, you can simply go through the setup process after turning on your new device without ever having to plug it into iTunes. Just connect to a Wi-Fi or cellular data network and log in with your Apple ID when prompted. You’ll still see an option that allows you to activate the device via iTunes, but this should only be necessary if you don’t have a wireless Internet connection available for your device. Operating System Updates You no longer have to use Apple’s iTunes software to update to a new version of Apple’s iOS operating system, either. Just open the Settings app on your device, select the General category, and tap Software Update. You’ll be able to update right from your device without ever opening iTunes. Purchased iTunes Media Apple allows you to easily access content you’ve purchased from the iTunes Store on any device. You don’t have to connect your device to your computer and sync via iTunes. For example, you can purchase a movie from the iTunes Store. Then, without any syncing, you can open the iTunes Store app on any of your iOS devices, tap the Purchased section, and see stuff you’ve downloaded. You can download the content right from the store to your device. This also works for apps — apps you purchase from the App Store can be accessed in the Purchased section on the App Store on your device later. You don’t have to sync apps from iTunes to your device, although iTunes still allows you to. You can even set up automatic downloads from the iTunes & App Store settings screen. This would allow you to purchase content on one device and have it automatically download to your other devices without any hassle. Music Apple allows you to re-download purchased music from the iTunes Store in the same way. However, there’s a good chance you have your own music you didn’t purchase from iTunes. Maybe you spent time ripping it all from your old CDs and you’ve been syncing it to your devices via iTunes ever since. Apple’s solution for this is named iTunes Match. This feature isn’t free, but it’s not a bad deal at all. For $25 per year, Apple allows you to upload all your music to your iCloud account. You can then access all your music from any iPhone, IPad, or iPod Touch. You can stream all your music — perfect if you have a huge library and little storage on your device — and choose which songs you want to download to your device for offline use. When you add additional music to your computer, iTunes will notice it and upload it using iTunes Match, making it available for streaming and downloading directly from your iOS devices without any syncing. This feature is named iTunes Match because it doesn’t just upload music — if Apple already has a song you upload, it will “match” your song with Apple’s copy. This means you may get higher-quality versions of your songs if you ripped them from CD at a lower bitrate. Podcasts You don’t have to use iTunes to subscribe to podcasts and sync them to your devices. Even if you have a lowly iPod Touch, you can install APple’s Podcasts app from the app store. Use it to subscribe to podcasts and configure them to automatically download directly to your device. You can use other podcast apps for this, too. Backups You can continue backing up your device’s data through iTunes, generating local backups that are stored on your computer. However, new iOS devices are configured to automatically back up their data to iCloud. This happens automatically in the background without you even having to think about it, and you can restore such backups when setting up a device simply by logging in with your Apple ID. Personal Data In the days of PalmPilots, people would use desktop programs like iTunes to sync their email, contacts, and calendar events with their mobile devices. You probably shouldn’t have to sync this data form your computer. Just sign into your email account — for example, a Gmail account — on your device and iOS will automatically pull your email, contacts, and calendar events from your associated account. Photos Rather than connecting your iOS device to your computer and syncing photos from it, you can use an app that automatically uploads your photos to a web service. Dropbox, Google+, and even Flickr all have this feature in their apps. You’ll be able to access your photos from any computer and have a backup copy without any syncing required. You may still need to use iTunes if you want to sync local music without paying for iTunes Match or copy local video files to your device. Copying large local files over is the only real scenario where you’d need iTunes. If you don’t need to copy such files over, you can go ahead and uninstall iTunes from your Windows PC if you like. You shouldn’t need it.

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Merge replication stopping without errors in SQL 2008 R2

- by Rob Farley

A non-SQL MVP friend of mine, who also happens to be a client, asked me for some help again last week. I was planning on writing this up even before Rob Volk (@sql_r) listed his T-SQL Tuesday topic for this month. Earlier in the year, I (well, LobsterPot Solutions, although I’d been the person mostly involved) had helped out with a merge replication problem. The Merge Agent on the subscriber was just stopping every time, shortly after it started. With no errors anywhere – not in the Windows Event Log, the SQL Agent logs, not anywhere. We’d managed to get the system working again, but didn’t have a good reason about what had happened, and last week, the problem occurred again. I asked him about writing up the experience in a blog post, largely because of the red herrings that we encountered. It was an interesting experience for me, also because I didn’t end up touching my computer the whole time – just tapping on my phone via Twitter and Live Msgr. You see, the thing with replication is that a useful troubleshooting option is to reinitialise the thing. We’d done that last time, and it had started to work again – eventually. I say eventually, because the link being used between the sites is relatively slow, and it took a long while for the initialisation to finish. Meanwhile, we’d been doing some investigation into what the problem could be, and were suitably pleased when the problem disappeared. So I got a message saying that a replication problem had occurred again. Reinitialising wasn’t going to be an option this time either. In this scenario, the subscriber having the problem happened to be in a different domain to the publisher. The other subscribers (within the domain) were fine, just this one in a different domain had the problem. Part of the problem seemed to be a log file that wasn’t being backed up properly. They’d been trying to back up to a backup device that had a corruption, and the log file was growing. Turned out, this wasn’t related to the problem, but of course, any time you’re troubleshooting and you see something untoward, you wonder. Having got past that problem, my next thought was that perhaps there was a problem with the account being used. But the other subscribers were using the same account, without any problems. The client pointed out that that it was almost exactly six months since the last failure (later shown to be a complete red herring). It sounded like something might’ve expired. Checking through certificates and trusts showed no sign of anything, and besides, there wasn’t a problem running a command-prompt window using the account in question, from the subscriber box. ...except that when he ran the sqlcmd –E –S servername command I recommended, it failed with a Named Pipes error. I’ve seen problems with firewalls rejecting connections via Named Pipes but letting TCP/IP through, so I got him to look into SQL Configuration Manager to see what kind of connection was being preferred... Everything seemed fine. And strangely, he could connect via Management Studio. Turned out, he had a typo in the servername of the sqlcmd command. That particular red herring must’ve been reflected in his cheeks as he told me. During the time, I also pinged a friend of mine to find out who I should ask, and Ted Kruger (@onpnt) ‘s name came up. Ted (and thanks again, Ted – really) reconfirmed some of my thoughts around the idea of an account expiring, and also suggesting bumping up the logging to level 4 (2 is Verbose, 4 is undocumented ridiculousness). I’d just told the client to push the logging up to level 2, but the log file wasn’t appearing. Checking permissions showed that the user did have permission on the folder, but still no file was appearing. Then it was noticed that the user had been switched earlier as part of the troubleshooting, and switching it back to the real user caused the log file to appear. Still no errors. A lot more information being pushed out, but still no errors. Ted suggested making sure the FQDNs were okay from both ends, in case the servers were unable to talk to each other. DNS problems can lead to hassles which can stop replication from working. No luck there either – it was all working fine. Another server started to report a problem as well. These two boxes were both SQL 2008 R2 (SP1), while the others, still working, were SQL 2005. Around this time, the client tried an idea that I’d shown him a few years ago – using a Profiler trace to see what was being called on the servers. It turned out that the last call being made on the publisher was sp_MSenumschemachange. A quick interwebs search on that showed a problem that exists in SQL Server 2008 R2, when stored procedures have more than 4000 characters. Running that stored procedure (with the same parameters) manually on SQL 2005 listed three stored procedures, the first of which did indeed have more than 4000 characters. Still no error though, and the problem as listed at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2539378 describes an error that should occur in the Event log. However, this problem is the type of thing that is fixed by a reinitialisation (because it doesn’t need to send the procedure change across as a transaction). And a look in the change history of the long stored procs (you all keep them, right?), showed that the problem from six months earlier could well have been down to this too. Applying SP2 (with sufficient paranoia about backups and how to get back out again if necessary) fixed the problem. The stored proc changes went through immediately after the service pack was applied, and it’s been running happily since. The funny thing is that I didn’t solve the problem. He had put the Profiler trace on the server, and had done the search that found a forum post pointing at this particular problem. I’d asked Ted too, and although he’d given some useful information, nothing that he’d come up with had actually been the solution either. Sometimes, asking for help is the most useful thing you can do. Often though, you don’t end up getting the help from the person you asked – the sounding board is actually what you need. @rob_farley

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JQuery Mobile Code Snippets 1

- by Yousef_Jadallah

I want to share with you some important codes that you may need during JQuery Mobile development.These codes are tested on Alpha 4 version. Beta 1 has been released before two days, Therefore I will test them in my current project and let you know if there is any changes : Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE AR-SA /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE AR-SA /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Show and hide back button in your Application $(document).bind("mobileinit", function () { $.mobile.page.prototype.options.addBackBtn = true; }); Customizing the back button text $(document).bind("mobileinit", function () {$.mobile.page.prototype.options.backBtnText = "previous";}); Hide "Close button" for dialog programatically: $('[data-role=dialog]div[id="YourDiaogdivID"]').live('pagecreate', function (event) { $("a[data-icon='delete']").hide(); }); Change Select option element index: var myselect = $("select#foo"); myselect[0].selectedIndex = 0; //The new index myselect.selectmenu("refresh"); //uset this line of code after any updating on the select element Change Select optoin elemetn text value: $("select#foo").parent().contents().children('.ui-btn-text').text('Your Text Here'); Refreshing a checkbox $("select#foo").parent().contents().children('.ui-btn-text').text('Your Text Here'); Hide select option element $('#foo').parent().hide(); Hide and Show Page Loading Message : $.mobile.pageLoading(); //Show $.mobile.pageLoading(true); //hide overriding $.mobile.loadingMessage $(document).bind("mobileinit", function () { $.mobile.loadingMessage = 'My Loading Message'; }); Hide and Show jQuery-Mobile-Themed-DatePicker $(".ui-datepicker").hide(); $(".ui-datepicker").show(); Build your Custom Loading Message : $('#CustomeLoadingMessage').hide();//Hide the div $('# CustomeLoadingMessage').ajaxStart(function () { $(this).show(); }); $('# CustomeLoadingMessage').ajaxStop(function () { $(this).hide(); }); I wil publish other important codes soon.Hope that helps.

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What's new in Solaris 11.1?

- by Karoly Vegh

Solaris 11.1 is released. This is the first release update since Solaris 11 11/11, the versioning has been changed from MM/YY style to 11.1 highlighting that this is Solaris 11 Update 1. Solaris 11 itself has been great. What's new in Solaris 11.1? Allow me to pick some new features from the What's New PDF that can be found in the official Oracle Solaris 11.1 Documentation. The updates are very numerous, I really can't include all. I. New AI Automated Installer RBAC profiles have been introduced to enable delegation of installation tasks. II. The interactive installer now supports installing the OS to iSCSI targets. III. ASR (Auto Service Request) and OCM (Oracle Configuration Manager) have been enabled by default to proactively provide support information and create service requests to speed up support processes. This is optional and can be disabled but helps a lot in supportcases. For further information, see: http://oracle.com/goto/solarisautoreg IV. The new command svcbundle helps you to create SMF manifests without having to struggle with XML editing. (btw, do you know the interactive editprop subcommand in svccfg? The listprop/setprop subcommands are great for scripting and automating, but for an interactive property editing session try, for example, this: svccfg -s svc:/application/pkg/system-repository:default editprop ) V. pfedit: Ever wondered how to delegate editing permissions to certain files? It is well known "sudo /usr/bin/vi /etc/hosts" is not the right way, for sudo elevates the complete vi process to admin levels, and the user can "break" out of the session as root with simply starting a shell from that vi. Now, the new pfedit command provides a solution exactly to this challenge - an auditable, secure, per-user configurable editing possibility. See the pfedit man page for examples. VI. rsyslog, the popular logging daemon (filters, SSL, formattable output, SQL collect...) has been included in Solaris 11.1 as an alternative to syslog. VII: Zones: Solaris Zones - as a major Solaris differentiator - got lots of love in terms of new features: ZOSS - Zones on Shared Storage: Placing your zones to shared storage (FC, iSCSI) has never been this easy - via zonecfg. parallell updates - with S11's bootenvironments updating zones was no problem and meant no downtime anyway, but still, now you can update them parallelly, a way faster update action if you are running a large number of zones. This is like parallell patching in Solaris 10, but with all the IPS/ZFS/S11 goodness. per-zone fstype statistics: Running zones on a shared filesystems complicate the I/O debugging, since ZFS collects all the random writes and delivers them sequentially to boost performance. Now, over kstat you can find out which zone's I/O has an impact on the other ones, see the examples in the documentation: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E26502_01/html/E29024/gmheh.html#scrolltoc Zones got RDSv3 protocol support for InfiniBand, and IPoIB support with Crossbow's anet (automatic vnic creation) feature. NUMA I/O support for Zones: customers can now determine the NUMA I/O topology of the system from within zones. VIII: Security got a lot of attention too: Automated security/audit reporting, with builtin reporting templates e.g. for PCI (payment card industry) audits. PAM is now configureable on a per-user basis instead of system wide, allowing different authentication requirements for different users SSH in Solaris 11.1 now supports running in FIPS 140-2 mode, that is, in a U.S. government security accredited fashion. SHA512/224 and SHA512/256 cryptographic hash functions are implemented in a FIPS-compliant way - and on a T4 implemented in silicon! That is, goverment-approved cryptography at HW-speed. Generally, Solaris is currently under evaluation to be both FIPS and Common Criteria certified. IX. Networking, as one of the core strengths of Solaris 11, has been extended with: Data Center Bridging (DCB) - not only setups where network and storage share the same fabric (FCoE, anyone?) can have Quality-of-Service requirements. DCB enables peers to distinguish traffic based on priorities. Your NICs have to support DCB, see the documentation, and additional information on Wikipedia. DataLink MultiPathing, DLMP, enables link aggregation to span across multiple switches, even between those of different vendors. But there are essential differences to the good old bandwidth-aggregating LACP, see the documentation: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E26502_01/html/E28993/gmdlu.html#scrolltoc VNIC live migration is now supported from one physical NIC to another on-the-fly X. Data management: FedFS, (Federated FileSystem) is new, it relies on Solaris 11's NFS referring mechanism to join separate shares of different NFS servers into a single filesystem namespace. The referring system has been there since S11 11/11, in Solaris 11.1 FedFS uses a LDAP - as the one global nameservice to bind them all. The iSCSI initiator now uses the T4 CPU's HW-implemented CRC32 algorithm - thus improving iSCSI throughput while reducing CPU utilization on a T4 Storage locking improvements are now RAC aware, speeding up throughput with better locking-communication between nodes up to 20%! XI: Kernel performance optimizations: The new Virtual Memory subsystem ("VM2") scales now to 100+ TB Memory ranges. The memory predictor monitors large memory page usage, and adjust memory page sizes to applications' needs OSM, the Optimized Shared Memory allows Oracle DBs' SGA to be resized online XII: The Power Aware Dispatcher in now by default enabled, reducing power consumption of idle CPUs. Also, the LDoms' Power Management policies and the poweradm settings in Solaris 11 OS will cooperate. XIII: x86 boot: upgrade to the (Grand Unified Bootloader) GRUB2. Because grub2 differs in the configuration syntactically from grub1, one shall not edit the new grub configuration (grub.cfg) but use the new bootadm features to update it. GRUB2 adds UEFI support and also support for disks over 2TB. XIV: Improved viewing of per-CPU statistics of mpstat. This one might seem of less importance at first, but nowadays having better sorting/filtering possibilities on a periodically updated mpstat output of 256+ vCPUs can be a blessing. XV: Support for Solaris Cluster 4.1: The What's New document doesn't actually mention this one, since OSC 4.1 has not been released at the time 11.1 was. But since then it is available, and it requires Solaris 11.1. And it's only a "pkg update" away. ...aand I seriously need to stop here. There's a lot I missed, Edge Virtual Bridging, lofi tuning, ZFS sharing and crypto enhancements, USB3.0, pulseaudio, trusted extensions updates, etc - but if I mention all those then I effectively copy the What's New document. Which I recommend reading now anyway, it is a great extract of the 300+ new projects and RFE-followups in S11.1. And this blogpost is a summary of that extract. For closing words, allow me to come back to Request For Enhancements, RFEs. Any customer can request features. Open up a Support Request, explain that this is an RFE, describe the feature you/your company desires to have in S11 implemented. The more SRs are collected for an RFE, the more chance it's got to get implemented. Feel free to provide feedback about the product, as well as about the Solaris 11.1 Documentation using the "Feedback" button there. Both the Solaris engineers and the documentation writers are eager to hear your input.Feel free to comment about this post too. Except that it's too long ;) wbr,charlie

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Why We Should Learn to Stop Worrying and Love Millennials

- by HCM-Oracle

By Christine Mellon Much is said and written about the new generations of employees entering our workforce, as though they are a strange specimen, a mysterious life form to be “figured out,” accommodated and engaged – at a safe distance, of course. At its worst, this talk takes a critical and disapproving tone, with baby boomer employees adamantly refusing to validate this new breed of worker, let alone determine how to help them succeed and achieve their potential. The irony of our baby-boomer resentments and suspicions is that they belie the fact that we created the very vision that younger employees are striving to achieve. From our frustrations with empty careers that did not fulfill us, from our opposition to “the man,” from our sharp memories of our parents’ toiling for 30 years just for the right to retire, from the simple desire not to live our lives in a state of invisibility, came the seeds of hope for something better. One characteristic of Millennial workers that grew from these seeds is the desire to experience as much as possible. They are the “Experiential Employee”, with a passion for growing in diverse ways and expanding personal and professional horizons. Rather than rooting themselves in a single company for a career, or even in a single career path, these employees are committed to building a broad portfolio of experiences and capabilities that will enable them to make a difference and to leave a mark of significance in the world. How much richer is the organization that nurtures and leverages this inclination? Our curmudgeonly ways must be surrendered and our focus redirected toward building the next generation of talent ecosystems, if we are to optimize what future generations have to offer. Accelerating Professional Development In spite of our Boomer grumblings about Millennials’ “unrealistic” expectations, the truth is that we have a well-matched set of circumstances. We have executives-in-waiting who want to learn quickly and a concurrent, urgent need to ramp up their development time, based on anticipated high levels of retirement in the next 10+ years. Since we need to rapidly skill up these heirs to the corporate kingdom, isn’t it a fortunate coincidence that they are hungry to learn, develop and move fluidly throughout our organizations?? So our challenge now is to efficiently operationalize the wisdom we have acquired about effective learning and development. We have already evolved from classroom-based models to diverse instructional methods. The next step is to find the best approaches to help younger employees learn quickly and apply new learnings in an impactful way. Creating temporary or even permanent functional partnerships among Millennial employees is one way to maximize outcomes. This might take the form of 2 or more employees owning aspects of what once fell under a single role. While one might argue this would mean duplication of resources, it could be a short term cost while employees come up to speed. And the potential benefits would be numerous: leveraging and validating the inherent sense of community of new generations, creating cross-functional skills with broad applicability, yielding additional perspectives and approaches to traditional work outcomes, and accelerating the performance curve for incumbents through Cooperative Learning (Johnson, D. and Johnson R., 1989, 1999). This well-researched teaching strategy, where students support each other in the absorption and application of new information, has been shown to deliver faster, more efficient learning, and greater retention. Alternately, perhaps short term contracts with exiting retirees, or former retirees, to help facilitate the development of following generations may have merit. Again, a short term cost, certainly. However, the gains realized in shortening the learning curve, and strengthening engagement are substantial and lasting. Ultimately, there needs to be creative thinking applied for each organization on how to accelerate the capabilities of our future leaders in unique ways that mesh with current culture. The manner in which performance is evaluated must finally shift as well. Employees will need to be assessed on how well they have developed key skills and capabilities vs. end-to-end mastery of functional positions they have no interest in keeping for an entire career. As we become more comfortable in placing greater and greater weight on competencies vs. tasks, we will realize increased organizational agility via this new generation of workers, which will be further enhanced by their natural flexibility and appetite for change. Revisiting Succession For many years, organizations have failed to deliver desired succession planning outcomes. According to CEB’s 2013 research, only 28% of current leaders were pre-identified in a succession plan. These disappointing results, along with the entrance of the experiential, Millennial employee into the workforce, may just provide the needed impetus for HR to reinvent succession processes. We have recognized that the best professional development efforts are not always linear, and the time has come to fully adopt this philosophy in regard to succession as well. Paths to specific organizational roles will not look the same for newer generations who seek out unique learning opportunities, without consideration of a singular career destination. Rather than charting particular jobs as precursors for key positions, the experiences and skills behind what makes an incumbent successful must become essential in succession mapping. And the multitude of ways in which those experiences and skills may be acquired must be factored into the process, along with the individual employee’s level of learning agility. While this may seem daunting, it is necessary and long overdue. We have talked about the criticality of competency-based succession, however, we have not lived up to our own rhetoric. Many Boomers have experienced the same frustration in our careers; knowing we are capable of shining in a particular role, but being denied the opportunity due to how our career history lined up, on paper, with documented job requirements. These requirements usually emphasized past jobs/titles and specific tasks, versus capabilities, drive and willingness (let alone determination) to learn new things. How satisfying would it be for us to leave a legacy where such narrow thinking no longer applies and potential is amplified? Realizing Diversity Another bloom from the seeds we Boomers have tried to plant over the past decades is a completely evolved view of diversity. Millennial employees assume a diverse workforce, and are startled by anything less. Their social tolerance, nurtured by wide and diverse networks, is unprecedented. College graduates expect a similar landscape in the “real world” to what they experienced throughout their lives. They appreciate and seek out divergent points of view and experiences without needing any persuasion. The face of our U.S. workforce will likely see dramatic change as Millennials apply their fresh take on hiring and building strong teams, with an inherent sense of inclusion. This wonderful aspect of the Millennial wave should be celebrated and strongly encouraged, as it is the fulfillment of our own aspirations. Future Perfect The Experiential Employee is operating more as a free agent than a long term player, and their commitment will essentially last as long as meaningful organizational culture and personal/professional opportunities keep their interest. As Boomers, we have laid the foundation for this new, spirited employment attitude, and we should take pride in knowing that. Generations to come will challenge organizations to excel in how they identify, manage and nurture talent. Let’s support and revel in the future that we’ve helped invent, rather than lament what we think has been lost. After all, the future is always connected to the past. And as so eloquently phrased by Antoine Lavoisier, French nobleman, chemist and politico: “Nothing is Lost, Nothing is Created, and Everything is Transformed.” Christine has over 25 years of diverse HR experience. She has held HR consulting and corporate roles, including CHRO positions for Echostar in Denver, a 6,000+ employee global engineering firm, and Aepona, a startup software firm, successfully acquired by Intel. Christine is a resource to Oracle clients, to assist in Human Capital Management strategy development and implementation, compensation practices, talent development initiatives, employee engagement, global HR management, and integrated HR systems and processes that support the full employee lifecycle.

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Quaternion Camera Orbiting around a Sphere

- by jessejuicer

Background: I'm trying to create a game where the camera is always rotating around a single sphere. I'm using the DirectX D3DX math functions in C++ on Windows. The Problem: I cannot get both the camera position and orientation both working properly at the same time. Either one works but not both together. Here's the code for my quaternion camera that revolves around a sphere, always looking at the centerpoint of the sphere, ... as far as I understand it (but which isn't working properly): (I'm only going to present rotation around the X axis here, to simplify this post) Whenever the UP key is pressed or held down, the camera should rotate around the X axis, while looking at the centerpoint of the sphere (which is at 0,0,0 in the world). So, I build a quaternion that represents a small angle of rotation around the x axis like this (where 'deltaAngle' is a small enough number for a slow rotation): D3DXVECTOR3 rotAxis; D3DXQUATERNION tempQuat; tempQuat.x = 0.0f; tempQuat.y = 0.0f; tempQuat.z = 0.0f; tempQuat.w = 1.0f; rotAxis.x = 1.0f; rotAxis.y = 0.0f; rotAxis.z = 0.0f; D3DXQuaternionRotationAxis(&tempQuat, &rotAxis, deltaAngle); ...and I accumulate the result into the camera's current orientation quat, like this: D3DXQuaternionMultiply(&cameraOrientationQuat, &cameraOrientationQuat, &tempQuat); ...which all works fine. Now I need to build a view matrix to pass to DirectX SetTransform function. So I build a rotation matrix from the camera orientation quat as follows: D3DXMATRIXA16 rotationMatrix; D3DXMatrixIdentity(&rotationMatrix); D3DXMatrixRotationQuaternion(&rotationMatrix, &cameraOrientationQuat); ...Now (as seen below) if I just transpose that rotationMatrix and plug it into the 3x3 section of the view matrix, then negate the camera's position and plug it into the translation section of the view matrix, the rotation magically works. Perfectly. (even when I add in rotations for all three axes). There's no gimbal lock, just a smooth rotation all around in any direction. BUT- this works even though I never change the camera's position. At all. Which sorta blows my mind. I even display the camera position and can watch it stay constant at it's starting point (0.0, 0.0, -4000.0). It never moves, but the rotation around the sphere is perfect. I don't understand that. For proper view rotation, the camera position should be revolving around the sphere. Here's the rest of building the view matrix (I'll talk about the commented code below). Note that the camera starts out at (0.0, 0.0, -4000.0) and m_camDistToTarget is 4000.0: /* D3DXVECTOR3 vec1; D3DXVECTOR4 vec2; vec1.x = 0.0f; vec1.y = 0.0f; vec1.z = -1.0f; D3DXVec3Transform(&vec2, &vec1, &rotationMatrix); g_cameraActor->pos.x = vec2.x * g_cameraActor->m_camDistToTarget; g_cameraActor->pos.y = vec2.y * g_cameraActor->m_camDistToTarget; g_cameraActor->pos.z = vec2.z * g_cameraActor->m_camDistToTarget; */ D3DXMatrixTranspose(&g_viewMatrix, &rotationMatrix); g_viewMatrix._41 = -g_cameraActor->pos.x; g_viewMatrix._42 = -g_cameraActor->pos.y; g_viewMatrix._43 = -g_cameraActor->pos.z; g_viewMatrix._44 = 1.0f; g_direct3DDevice9->SetTransform( D3DTS_VIEW, &g_viewMatrix ); ...(The world matrix is always an identity, and the perspective projection works fine). ...So, without the commented code being compiled, the rotation works fine. But to be proper, for obvious reasons, the camera position should be rotating around the sphere, which it currently is not. That's what the commented code is supposed to do. And when I add in that chunk of code to do that, and look at all the data as I hold the keys down (using UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT to rotate different directions) all the values look correct! The camera position is rotating around the sphere just fine, and I can watch that happen visually too. The problem is that the camera orientation does not lookat the center of the sphere. It always looks straight forward down the z axis (toward positive z) as it revolves around the sphere. Yet the values of both the rotation matrix and the view matrix seem to be behaving correctly. (The view matrix orientation is the same as the rotation matrix, just transposed). For instance if I just hold down the key to spin around the x axis, I can watch the values of the three axes represented in the view matrix (x, y, and z axes)... view x-axis stays at (1.0, 0.0, 0.0), and view y-axis and z-axis both spin around the x axis just fine. All the numbers are changing as they should be... well, almost. As far as I can tell, the position of the view matrix is spinning around the sphere one direction (like clockwise), and the orientation (the axes in the view matrix) are spinning the opposite direction (like counter-clockwise). Which I guess explains why the orientation appears to stay straight ahead. I know the position is correct. It revolves properly. It's the orientation that's wrong. Can anyone see what am I doing wrong? Am I using these functions incorrectly? Or is my algorithm flawed? As usual I've been combing my code for simple mistakes for many hours. I'm willing to post the actual code, and a video of the behavior, but that will take much more effort. Thought I'd ask this way first.

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Building an Infrastructure Cloud with Oracle VM for x86 + Enterprise Manager 12c

- by Richard Rotter

Cloud Computing? Everyone is talking about Cloud these days. Everyone is explaining how the cloud will help you to bring your service up and running very fast, secure and with little effort. You can find these kinds of presentations at almost every event around the globe. But what is really behind all this stuff? Is it really so simple? And the answer is: Yes it is! With the Oracle SW Stack it is! In this post, I will try to bring this down to earth, demonstrating how easy it could be to build a cloud infrastructure with Oracle's solution for cloud computing.But let me cover some basics first: How fast can you build a cloud?How elastic is your cloud so you can provide new services on demand? How much effort does it take to monitor and operate your Cloud Infrastructure in order to meet your SLAs?How easy is it to chargeback for your services provided? These are the critical success factors of Cloud Computing. And Oracle has an answer to all those questions. By using Oracle VM for X86 in combination with Enterprise Manager 12c you can build and control your cloud environment very fast and easy. What are the fundamental building blocks for your cloud? Oracle Cloud Building Blocks #1 Hardware Surprise, surprise. Even the cloud needs to run somewhere, hence you will need hardware. This HW normally consists of servers, storage and networking. But Oracles goes beyond that. There are Optimized Solutions available for your cloud infrastructure. This is a cookbook to build your HW cloud platform. For example, building your cloud infrastructure with blades and our network infrastructure will reduce complexity in your datacenter (Blades with switch network modules, splitter cables to reduce the amount of cables, TOR (Top Of the Rack) switches which are building the interface to your infrastructure environment. Reducing complexity even in the cabling will help you to manage your environment more efficient and with less risk. Of course, our engineered systems fit into the cloud perfectly too. Although they are considered as a PaaS themselves, having the database SW (for Exadata) and the application development environment (for Exalogic) already deployed on them, in general they are ideal systems to enable you building your own cloud and PaaS infrastructure. #2 Virtualization The next missing link in the cloud setup is virtualization. For me personally, it's one of the most hidden "secret", that oracle can provide you with a complete virtualization stack in terms of a hypervisor on both architectures: X86 and Sparc CPUs. There is Oracle VM for X86 and Oracle VM for Sparc available at no additional license costs if your are running this virtualization stack on top of Oracle HW (and with Oracle Premier Support for HW). This completes the virtualization portfolio together with Solaris Zones introduced already with Solaris 10 a few years ago. Let me explain how Oracle VM for X86 works: Oracle VM for x86 consists of two main parts: - The Oracle VM Server: Oracle VM Server is installed on bare metal and it is the hypervisor which is able to run virtual machines. It has a very small footprint. The ISO-Image of Oracle VM Server is only 200MB large. It is very small but efficient. You can install a OVM-Server in less than 5 mins by booting the Server with the ISO-Image assigned and providing the necessary configuration parameters (like installing an Linux distribution). After the installation, the OVM-Server is ready to use. That's all. - The Oracle VM-Manager: OVM-Manager is the central management tool where you can control your OVM-Servers. OVM-Manager provides the graphical user interface, which is an Application Development Framework (ADF) application, with a familiar web-browser based interface, to manage Oracle VM Servers, virtual machines, and resources. The Oracle VM Manager has the following capabilities: Create virtual machines Create server pools Power on and off virtual machines Manage networks and storage Import virtual machines, ISO files, and templates Manage high availability of Oracle VM Servers, server pools, and virtual machines Perform live migration of virtual machines I want to highlight one of the goodies which you can use if you are running Oracle VM for X86: Preconfigured, downloadable Virtual Machine Templates form edelivery With these templates, you can download completely preconfigured Virtual Machines in your environment, boot them up, configure them at first time boot and use it. There are templates for almost all Oracle SW and Applications (like Fusion Middleware, Database, Siebel, etc.) available. #3) Cloud Management The management of your cloud infrastructure is key. This is a day-to-day job. Acquiring HW, installing a virtualization layer on top of it is done just at the beginning and if you want to expand your infrastructure. But managing your cloud, keeping it up and running, deploying new services, changing your chargeback model, etc, these are the daily jobs. These jobs must be simple, secure and easy to manage. The Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud provides this functionality from one management cockpit. Enterprise Manager 12c uses Oracle VM Manager to control OVM Serverpools. Once you registered your OVM-Managers in Enterprise Manager, then you are able to setup your cloud infrastructure and manage everything from Enterprise Manager. What you need to do in EM12c is: ">Register your OVM Manager in Enterprise ManagerAfter Registering your OVM Manager, all the functionality of Oracle VM for X86 is also available in Enterprise Manager. Enterprise Manager works as a "Manger" of the Manager. You can register as many OVM-Managers you want and control your complete virtualization environment Create Roles and Users for your Self Service Portal in Enterprise ManagerWith this step you allow users to logon on the Enterprise Manager Self Service Portal. Users can request Virtual Machines in this portal. Setup the Cloud InfrastructureSetup the Quotas for your self service users. How many VMs can they request? How much of your resources ( cpu, memory, storage, network, etc. etc.)? Which SW components (templates, assemblys) can your self service users request? In this step, you basically set up the complete cloud infrastructure. Setup ChargebackOnce your cloud is set up, you need to configure your chargeback mechanism. The Enterprise Manager collects the resources metrics, which are used in a very deep level. Almost all collected Metrics could be used in the chargeback module. You can define chargeback plans based on configurations (charge for the amount of cpu, memory, storage is assigned to a machine, or for a specific OS which is installed) or chargeback on resource consumption (% of cpu used, storage used, etc). Or you can also define a combination of configuration and consumption chargeback plans. The chargeback module is very flexible. Here is a overview of the workflow how to handle infrastructure cloud in EM: Summary As you can see, setting up an Infrastructure Cloud Service with Oracle VM for X86 and Enterprise Manager 12c is really simple. I personally configured a complete cloud environment with three X86 servers and a small JBOD san box in less than 3 hours. There is no magic in it, it is all straightforward. Of course, you have to have some experience with Oracle VM and Enterprise Manager. Experience in setting up Linux environments helps as well. I plan to publish a technical cookbook in the next few weeks. I hope you found this post useful and will see you again here on our blog. Any hints, comments are welcome!

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Refactoring Part 1 : Intuitive Investments

- by Wes McClure

Fear, it’s what turns maintaining applications into a nightmare. Technology moves on, teams move on, someone is left to operate the application, what was green is now perceived brown. Eventually the business will evolve and changes will need to be made. The approach to those changes often dictates the long term viability of the application. Fear of change, lack of passion and a lack of interest in understanding the domain often leads to a paranoia to do anything that doesn’t involve duct tape and bailing twine. Don’t get me wrong, those have a place in the short term viability of a project but they don’t have a place in the long term. Add to it “us versus them” in regards to the original team and those that maintain it, internal politics and other factors and you have a recipe for disaster. This results in code that quickly becomes unmanageable. Even the most clever of designs will eventually become sub optimal and debt will amount that exponentially makes changes difficult. This is where refactoring comes in, and it’s something I’m very passionate about. Refactoring is about improving the process whereby we make change, it’s an exponential investment in the process of change. Without it we will incur exponential complexity that halts productivity. Investments, especially in the long term, require intuition and reflection. How can we tackle new development effectively via evolving the original design and paying off debt that has been incurred? The longer we wait to ask and answer this question, the more it will cost us. Small requests don’t warrant big changes, but realizing when changes now will pay off in the long term, and especially in the short term, is valuable. I have done my fair share of maintaining applications and continuously refactoring as needed, but recently I’ve begun work on a project that hasn’t had much debt, if any, paid down in years. This is the first in a series of blog posts to try to capture the process which is largely driven by intuition of smaller refactorings from other projects. Signs that refactoring could help: Testability How can decreasing test time not pay dividends? One of the first things I found was that a very important piece often takes 30+ minutes to test. I can only imagine how much time this has cost historically, but more importantly the time it might cost in the coming weeks: I estimate at least 10-20 hours per person! This is simply unacceptable for almost any situation. As it turns out, about 6 hours of working with this part of the application and I was able to cut the time down to under 30 seconds! In less than the lost time of one week, I was able to fix the problem for all future weeks! If we can’t test fast then we can’t change fast, nor with confidence. Code is used by end users and it’s also used by developers, consider your own needs in terms of the code base. Adding logic to enable/disable features during testing can help decouple parts of an application and lead to massive improvements. What exactly is so wrong about test code in real code? Often, these become features for operators and sometimes end users. If you cannot run an integration test within a test runner in your IDE, it’s time to refactor. Readability Are variables named meaningfully via a ubiquitous language? Is the code segmented functionally or behaviorally so as to minimize the complexity of any one area? Are aspects properly segmented to avoid confusion (security, logging, transactions, translations, dependency management etc) Is the code declarative (what) or imperative (how)? What matters, not how. LINQ is a great abstraction of the what, not how, of collection manipulation. The Reactive framework is a great example of the what, not how, of managing streams of data. Are constants abstracted and named, or are they just inline? Do people constantly bitch about the code/design? If the code is hard to understand, it will be hard to change with confidence. It’s a large undertaking if the original designers didn’t pay much attention to readability and as such will never be done to “completion.” Make sure not to go over board, instead use this as you change an application, not in lieu of changes (like with testability). Complexity Simplicity will never be achieved, it’s highly subjective. That said, a lot of code can be significantly simplified, tidy it up as you go. Refactoring will often converge upon a simplification step after enough time, keep an eye out for this. Understandability In the process of changing code, one often gains a better understanding of it. Refactoring code is a good way to learn how it works. However, it’s usually best in combination with other reasons, in effect killing two birds with one stone. Often this is done when readability is poor, in which case understandability is usually poor as well. In the large undertaking we are making with this legacy application, we will be replacing it. Therefore, understanding all of its features is important and this refactoring technique will come in very handy. Unused code How can deleting things not help? This is a freebie in refactoring, it’s very easy to detect with modern tools, especially in statically typed languages. We have VCS for a reason, if in doubt, delete it out (ok that was cheesy)! If you don’t know where to start when refactoring, this is an excellent starting point! Duplication Do not pray and sacrifice to the anti-duplication gods, there are excellent examples where consolidated code is a horrible idea, usually with divergent domains. That said, mediocre developers live by copy/paste. Other times features converge and aren’t combined. Tools for finding similar code are great in the example of copy/paste problems. Knowledge of the domain helps identify convergent concepts that often lead to convergent solutions and will give intuition for where to look for conceptual repetition. 80/20 and the Boy Scouts It’s often said that 80% of the time 20% of the application is used most. These tend to be the parts that are changed. There are also parts of the code where 80% of the time is spent changing 20% (probably for all the refactoring smells above). I focus on these areas any time I make a change and follow the philosophy of the Boy Scout in cleaning up more than I messed up. If I spend 2 hours changing an application, in the 20%, I’ll always spend at least 15 minutes cleaning it or nearby areas. This gives a huge productivity edge on developers that don’t. Ironically after a short period of time the 20% shrinks enough that we don’t have to spend 80% of our time there and can move on to other areas. Refactoring is highly subjective, never attempt to refactor to completion! Learn to be comfortable with leaving one part of the application in a better state than others. It’s an evolution, not a revolution. These are some simple areas to look into when making changes and can help get one started in the process. I’ve often found that refactoring is a convergent process towards simplicity that sometimes spans a few hours but often can lead to massive simplifications over the timespan of weeks and months of regular development.

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Expectations + Rewards = Innovation

- by D'Arcy Lussier

“Innovation” is a heavy word. We regard those that embrace it as “Innovators”. We describe organizations as being “Innovative”. We hold those associated with the word in high regard, even though its dictionary definition is very simple: Introducing something new. What our culture has done is wrapped Innovation in white robes and a gold crown. Innovation is rarely just introducing something new. Innovations and innovators are typically associated with other terms: groundbreaking, genius, industry-changing, creative, leading. Being a true innovator and creating innovations are a big deal, and something companies try to strive for…or at least say they strive for. There’s huge value in being recognized as an innovator in an industry, since the idea is that innovation equates to increased profitability. IBM ran an ad a few years back that showed what their view of innovation is: “The point of innovation is to make actual money.” If the money aspect makes you feel uneasy, consider it another way: the point of innovation is to <insert payoff here>. Companies that innovate will be more successful. Non-profits that innovate can better serve their target clients. Governments that innovate can better provide services to their citizens. True innovation is not easy to come by though. As with anything in business, how well an organization will innovate is reliant on the employees it retains, the expectations placed on those employees, and the rewards available to them. In a previous blog post I talked about one formula: Right Employees + Happy Employees = Productive Employees I want to introduce a new one, that builds upon the previous one: Expectations + Rewards = Innovation The level of innovation your organization will realize is directly associated with the expectations you place on your staff and the rewards you make available to them. Expectations We may feel uncomfortable with the idea of placing expectations on our staff, mainly because expectation has somewhat of a negative or cold connotation to it: “I expect you to act this way or else!” The problem is in the or-else part…we focus on the negative aspects of failing to meet expectations instead of looking at the positive side. “I expect you to act this way because it will produce <insert benefit here>”. Expectations should not be set to punish but instead be set to ensure quality. At a recent conference I spoke with some Microsoft employees who told me that you have five years from starting with the company to reach a “Senior” level. If you don’t, then you’re let go. The expectation Microsoft placed on their staff is that they should be working towards improving themselves, taking more responsibility, and thus ensure that there is a constant level of quality in the workforce. Rewards Let me be clear: a paycheck is not a reward. A paycheck is simply the employer’s responsibility in the employee/employer relationship. A paycheck will never be the key motivator to drive innovation. Offering employees something over and above their required compensation can spur them to greater performance and achievement. Working in the food service industry, this tactic was used again and again: whoever has the highest sales over lunch will receive a free lunch/gift certificate/entry into a draw/etc. There was something to strive for, to try beyond the baseline of what our serving jobs were. It was through this that innovative sales techniques would be tried and honed, with key servers being top sellers time and time again. At a code camp I spoke at, I was amazed to see that all the employees from one company receive $100 Visa gift cards as a thank you for taking time to speak. Again, offering something over and above that can give that extra push for employees. Rewards work. But what about the fairness angle? In the restaurant example I gave, there were servers that would never win the competition. They just weren’t good enough at selling and never seemed to get better. So should those that did work at performing better and produce more sales for the restaurant not get rewarded because those who weren’t working at performing better might get upset? Of course not! Organizations succeed because of their top performers and those that strive to join their ranks. The Expectation/Reward Graph While the Expectations + Rewards = Innovation formula may seem like a simple mathematics formula, there’s much more going under the hood. In fact there are three different outcomes that could occur based on what you put in as values for Expectations and Rewards. Consider the graph below and the descriptions that follow: Disgruntled – High Expectation, Low Reward I worked at a company where the mantra was “Company First, Because We Pay You”. Even today I still hear stories of how this sentiment continues to be perpetuated: They provide you a paycheck and a means to live, therefore you should always put them as your top priority. Of course, this is a huge imbalance in the expectation/reward equation. Why would anyone willingly meet high expectations of availability, workload, deadlines, etc. when there is no reward other than a paycheck to show for it? Remember: paychecks are not rewards! Instead, you see employees be disgruntled which not only affects the level of production but also the level of quality within an organization. It also means that you see higher turnover. Complacent – Low Expectation, Low Reward Complacency is a systemic problem that typically exists throughout all levels of an organization. With no real expectations or rewards, nobody needs to excel. In fact, those that do try to innovate, improve, or introduce new things into the organization might be shunned or pushed out by the rest of the staff who are just doing things the same way they’ve always done it. The bigger issue for the organization with low/low values is that at best they’ll never grow beyond their current size (and may shrink actually), and at worst will cease to exist. Entitled – Low Expectation, High Reward It’s one thing to say you have the best people and reward them as such, but its another thing to actually have the best people and reward them as such. Organizations with Entitled employees are the former: their organization provides them with all types of comforts, benefits, and perks. But there’s no requirement before the rewards are dolled out, and there’s no short-list of who receives the rewards. Everyone in the company is treated the same and is given equal share of the spoils. Entitlement is actually almost identical with Complacency with one notable difference: just try to introduce higher expectations into an entitled organization! Entitled employees have been spoiled for so long that they can’t fathom having rewards taken from them, or having to achieve specific levels of performance before attaining them. Those running the organization also buy in to the Entitled sentiment, feeling that they must persist the same level of comforts to appease their staff…even though the quality of the employee pool may be suspect. Innovative – High Expectation, High Reward Finally we have the Innovative organization which places high expectations but also provides high rewards. This organization gets it: if you truly want the best employees you need to apply equal doses of pressure and praise. Realize that I’m not suggesting crazy overtime or un-realistic working conditions. I do not agree with the “Glengary-Glenross” method of encouragement. But as anyone who follows sports can tell you, the teams that win are the ones where the coaches push their players to be their best; to achieve new levels of performance that they didn’t know they could receive. And the result for the players is more money, fame, and opportunity. It’s in this environment that organizations can focus on innovation – true innovation that builds the business and allows everyone involved to truly benefit. In Closing Organizations love to use the word “Innovation” and its derivatives, but very few actually do innovate. For many, the term has just become another marketing buzzword to lump in with all the other business terms that get overused. But for those organizations that truly get the value of innovation, they will be the ones surging forward while other companies simply fade into the background. And they will be the organizations that expect more from their employees, and give them their just rewards.

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The Presentation Isn't Over Until It's Over

- by Phil Factor

The senior corporate dignitaries settled into their seats looking important in a blue-suited sort of way. The lights dimmed as I strode out in front to give my presentation. I had ten vital minutes to make my pitch. I was about to dazzle the top management of a large software company who were considering the purchase of my software product. I would present them with a dazzling synthesis of diagrams, graphs, followed by a live demonstration of my software projected from my laptop. My preparation had been meticulous: It had to be: A year’s hard work was at stake, so I’d prepared it to perfection. I stood up and took them all in, with a gaze of sublime confidence. Then the laptop expired. There are several possible alternative plans of action when this happens A. Stare at the smoking laptop vacuously, flapping ones mouth slowly up and down B. Stand frozen like a statue, locked in indecision between fright and flight. C. Run out of the room, weeping D. Pretend that this was all planned E. Abandon the presentation in favour of a stilted and tedious dissertation about the software F. Shake your fist at the sky, and curse the sense of humour of your preferred deity I started for a few seconds on plan B, normally referred to as the ‘Rabbit in the headlamps of the car’ technique. Suddenly, a little voice inside my head spoke. It spoke the famous inane words of Yogi Berra; ‘The game isn't over until it's over.’ ‘Too right’, I thought. What to do? I ran through the alternatives A-F inclusive in my mind but none appealed to me. I was completely unprepared for this. Nowadays, longevity has since taught me more than I wanted to know about the wacky sense of humour of fate, and I would have taken two laptops. I hadn’t, but decided to do the presentation anyway as planned. I started out ignoring the dead laptop, but pretending, instead that it was still working. The audience looked startled. They were expecting plan B to be succeeded by plan C, I suspect. They weren’t used to denial on this scale. After my introductory talk, which didn’t require any visuals, I came to the diagram that described the application I’d written. I’d taken ages over it and it was hot stuff. Well, it would have been had it been projected onto the screen. It wasn’t. Before I describe what happened then, I must explain that I have thespian tendencies. My triumph as Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady at the local operatic society is now long forgotten, but I remember at the time of my finest performance, the moment that, glancing up over the vast audience of moist-eyed faces at the during the poignant scene between Eliza and Higgins at the end, I realised that I had a talent that one day could possibly be harnessed for commercial use I just talked about the diagram as if it was there, but throwing in some extra description. The audience nodded helpfully when I’d done enough. Emboldened, I began a sort of mime, well, more of a ballet, to represent each slide as I came to it. Heaven knows I’d done my preparation and, in my mind’s eye, I could see every detail, but I had to somehow project the reality of that vision to the audience, much the same way any actor playing Macbeth should do the ghost of Banquo. My desperation gave me a manic energy. If you’ve ever demonstrated a windows application entirely by mime, gesture and florid description, you’ll understand the scale of the challenge, but then I had nothing to lose. With a brief sentence of description here and there, and arms flailing whilst outlining the size and shape of graphs and diagrams, I used the many tricks of mime, gesture and body-language learned from playing Captain Hook, or the Sheriff of Nottingham in pantomime. I set out determinedly on my desperate venture. There wasn’t time to do anything but focus on the challenge of the task: the world around me narrowed down to ten faces and my presentation: ten souls who had to be hypnotized into seeing a Windows application: one that was slick, well organized and functional I don’t remember the details. Eight minutes of my life are gone completely. I was a thespian berserker. I know however that I followed the basic plan of building the presentation in a carefully controlled crescendo until the dazzling finale where the results were displayed on-screen. ‘And here you see the results, neatly formatted and grouped carefully to enhance the significance of the figures, together with running trend-graphs!’ I waved a mime to signify an animated window-opening, and looked up, in my first pause, to gaze defiantly at the audience. It was a sight I’ll never forget. Ten pairs of eyes were gazing in rapt attention at the imaginary window, and several pairs of eyes were glancing at the imaginary graphs and figures. I hadn’t had an audience like that since my starring role in Beauty and the Beast. At that moment, I realized that my desperate ploy might work. I sat down, slightly winded, when my ten minutes were up. For the first and last time in my life, the audience of a ‘PowerPoint’ presentation burst into spontaneous applause. ‘Any questions?’ ‘Yes, Have you got an agent?’ Yes, in case you’re wondering, I got the deal. They bought the software product from me there and then. However, it was a life-changing experience for me and I have never ever again trusted technology as part of a presentation. Even if things can’t go wrong, they’ll go wrong and they’ll kill the flow of what you’re presenting. if you can’t do something without the techno-props, then you shouldn’t do it. The greatest lesson of all is that great presentations require preparation and ‘stage-presence’ rather than fancy graphics. They’re a great supporting aid, but they should never dominate to the point that you’re lost without them.

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RiverTrail - JavaScript GPPGU Data Parallelism

- by JoshReuben

Where is WebCL ? The Khronos WebCL working group is working on a JavaScript binding to the OpenCL standard so that HTML 5 compliant browsers can host GPGPU web apps – e.g. for image processing or physics for WebGL games - http://www.khronos.org/webcl/ . While Nokia & Samsung have some protype WebCL APIs, Intel has one-upped them with a higher level of abstraction: RiverTrail. Intro to RiverTrail Intel Labs JavaScript RiverTrail provides GPU accelerated SIMD data-parallelism in web applications via a familiar JavaScript programming paradigm. It extends JavaScript with simple deterministic data-parallel constructs that are translated at runtime into a low-level hardware abstraction layer. With its high-level JS API, programmers do not have to learn a new language or explicitly manage threads, orchestrate shared data synchronization or scheduling. It has been proposed as a draft specification to ECMA a (known as ECMA strawman). RiverTrail runs in all popular browsers (except I.E. of course). To get started, download a prebuilt version https://github.com/downloads/RiverTrail/RiverTrail/rivertrail-0.17.xpi , install Intel's OpenCL SDK http://www.intel.com/go/opencl and try out the interactive River Trail shell http://rivertrail.github.com/interactive For a video overview, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jueg6zB5XaM . ParallelArray the ParallelArray type is the central component of this API & is a JS object that contains ordered collections of scalars – i.e. multidimensional uniform arrays. A shape property describes the dimensionality and size– e.g. a 2D RGBA image will have shape [height, width, 4]. ParallelArrays are immutable & fluent – they are manipulated by invoking methods on them which produce new ParallelArray objects. ParallelArray supports several constructors over arrays, functions & even the canvas. // Create an empty Parallel Array var pa = new ParallelArray(); // pa0 = <> // Create a ParallelArray out of a nested JS array. // Note that the inner arrays are also ParallelArrays var pa = new ParallelArray([ [0,1], [2,3], [4,5] ]); // pa1 = <<0,1>, <2,3>, <4.5>> // Create a two-dimensional ParallelArray with shape [3, 2] using the comprehension constructor var pa = new ParallelArray([3, 2], function(iv){return iv[0] * iv[1];}); // pa7 = <<0,0>, <0,1>, <0,2>> // Create a ParallelArray from canvas. This creates a PA with shape [w, h, 4], var pa = new ParallelArray(canvas); // pa8 = CanvasPixelArray ParallelArray exposes fluent API functions that take an elemental JS function for data manipulation: map, combine, scan, filter, and scatter that return a new ParallelArray. Other functions are scalar - reduce returns a scalar value & get returns the value located at a given index. The onus is on the developer to ensure that the elemental function does not defeat data parallelization optimization (avoid global var manipulation, recursion). For reduce & scan, order is not guaranteed - the onus is on the dev to provide an elemental function that is commutative and associative so that scan will be deterministic – E.g. Sum is associative, but Avg is not. map Applies a provided elemental function to each element of the source array and stores the result in the corresponding position in the result array. The map method is shape preserving & index free - can not inspect neighboring values. // Adding one to each element. var source = new ParallelArray([1,2,3,4,5]); var plusOne = source.map(function inc(v) { return v+1; }); //<2,3,4,5,6> combine Combine is similar to map, except an index is provided. This allows elemental functions to access elements from the source array relative to the one at the current index position. While the map method operates on the outermost dimension only, combine, can choose how deep to traverse - it provides a depth argument to specify the number of dimensions it iterates over. The elemental function of combine accesses the source array & the current index within it - element is computed by calling the get method of the source ParallelArray object with index i as argument. It requires more code but is more expressive. var source = new ParallelArray([1,2,3,4,5]); var plusOne = source.combine(function inc(i) { return this.get(i)+1; }); reduce reduces the elements from an array to a single scalar result – e.g. Sum. // Calculate the sum of the elements var source = new ParallelArray([1,2,3,4,5]); var sum = source.reduce(function plus(a,b) { return a+b; }); scan Like reduce, but stores the intermediate results – return a ParallelArray whose ith elements is the results of using the elemental function to reduce the elements between 0 and I in the original ParallelArray. // do a partial sum var source = new ParallelArray([1,2,3,4,5]); var psum = source.scan(function plus(a,b) { return a+b; }); //<1, 3, 6, 10, 15> scatter a reordering function - specify for a certain source index where it should be stored in the result array. An optional conflict function can prevent an exception if two source values are assigned the same position of the result: var source = new ParallelArray([1,2,3,4,5]); var reorder = source.scatter([4,0,3,1,2]); // <2, 4, 5, 3, 1> // if there is a conflict use the max. use 33 as a default value. var reorder = source.scatter([4,0,3,4,2], 33, function max(a, b) {return a>b?a:b; }); //<2, 33, 5, 3, 4> filter // filter out values that are not even var source = new ParallelArray([1,2,3,4,5]); var even = source.filter(function even(iv) { return (this.get(iv) % 2) == 0; }); // <2,4> Flatten used to collapse the outer dimensions of an array into a single dimension. pa = new ParallelArray([ [1,2], [3,4] ]); // <<1,2>,<3,4>> pa.flatten(); // <1,2,3,4> Partition used to restore the original shape of the array. var pa = new ParallelArray([1,2,3,4]); // <1,2,3,4> pa.partition(2); // <<1,2>,<3,4>> Get return value found at the indices or undefined if no such value exists. var pa = new ParallelArray([0,1,2,3,4], [10,11,12,13,14], [20,21,22,23,24]) pa.get([1,1]); // 11 pa.get([1]); // <10,11,12,13,14>

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Get your TFS 2012 task board demo ready in under 1 minute

- by Tarun Arora

Release Notes – http://tfsdemosetup.codeplex.com/ | Download | Source Code | Report a Bug | Ideas In this blog post, I’ll show you how to use the ‘TfsDemoSetup’ application to configure and setup the TFS 2012 task board for a demo in well less than 1 minute Step 1 – Note what you get with a newly created Team Project Create a new Team Project on TFS Preview 2. Click Create Project 3. The project creation has completed 4. Open the team web access and have a look at the home page Note – Since I created the project I am the only Team Member A default Team by the name AdventureWorks Team has been created A few sprints have been assigned to the default team but no dates for sprint start and end have been specified A default Area Path for the team is missing Step 2. Download the TFS Demo Setup Console application from Codeplex 1. Navigate to the TFS Demo Setup project on codeplex https://tfsdemosetup.codeplex.com/ 2. Download Instructions and TFSDemo_<version> 3. Follow the steps in the Instructions.txt file 4. Unzip TFSDemo_<version> and open the target folder. Two important files in this folder, DemoDictionary.xml – This file contains the settings using which the demo environment will be setup SetupTfsDemo.exe – This will run the TFS demo environment setup application Step 3 – Configure the setup (i.e. team name, members, sprint dates, etc) 1. Open up DemoDictionary.xml 2. Walkthrough DemoDictionary.xml a. Basic Team Details <Name> – Specify the name of the team <Description> – Specify a description to go with the team <SetAsDefaultTeam> – This accepts a value “true/false” when set to true, the newly created team will be set as the default team in the project <BacklogIterationPath> – Specify a backlog iteration path for the team b. Iterations – The iterations you specify here will be set as the Teams iterations <Iterations> – Accepts multiple <Iteration> nodes. <Iteration> – This is the most granular level of an Iteration <Path> – The path to the sprint, sample values, Release 1\Sprint 1 or Release 2\Sprint 2 <StartDate> – The sprint start date, this accepts the format yyyy-MM-dd <FinishDate> – The sprint finish date, this accepts the format yyyy-MM-dd c. Team Members – Team Members that need to be added to the newly created team will be added under this section <TeamMembers> – Accepts multiple <TeamMember> nodes. <TeamMember> – This is the most granular level of a Team Member <User> – This accepts the username, if you are running this against TFSPreview then the live id of the user will need to be passed. If you are running this against TFS Server then the user id i.e. Domain\UserName will need to be passed <Team> – Specify the name of the team that you want the user to be assigned to. d. WorkItems – This section will allow you to add work items (product backlog Items and linked tasks) to the current sprint of the team <WorkItems> – Accepts multiple <WorkItem> nodes. <WorkItem> – Accepts one <ProductBacklogItem> and multiple <Task> nodes <ProductBacklogItem> – Used to create a Product Backlog Item type work item <Title> – The title of the Product Backlog Item <Description> – The description of the Product Backlog Type Work Item <AssignedTo> – Used to assign the work item to a team member. The team member name or email address can be passed. <Effort> – The total effort required to complete the Product Backlog Item <Task> – Used to create a linked task to the Product Backlog type work item <Title> – The title of the task type work item <Description> – The description of the Task Type Work Item <AssignedTo> – Used to assign the work item to a team member. The team member name or email address can be passed. <RemainingWork> – The remaining effort to complete the task type work item Step 4 – Setup the demo environment against the newly created Team Project 1. Run SetupTfsDemo.exe 2. Enter Y or y on the prompt to continue setting up TFS Demo setup. 3. Select the newly created Team project, for this blogpost I had created the Team Project – AdventureWorks, so that is what I’ll select in the Connect to TFS Server pop up 3. Click Connect and follow the messages that are written to the console application Step 5 – Validate that the Demo environment is set up as per the configuration 1. The team web access is all lit up You have a Sprint, a burn down chart, team members… 2. The team Demo has been added and has been set up as the default team 3. The Sprint Backlog Iteration path, Sprints and Sprint start and finish dates have been set 4. The default area path has been setup 5. Taskboard – Backlog items view 6. Taskboard – Team members view Step 6 – Exception Handling! 1. This solution has been tested against TFS 2012 Service/Server for the Scrum 2.1 process template. 2. You are likely to run into an exception if you mess up the config file 3. If the team already exists and you run the console app to set up the team (with the same name) you will run into exceptions. Please remember this is just an alpha release, if you have any feedback please leave a comment! Didn’t I say that it would just take 1 minute, Enjoy!

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Probation is Over: PASS Board Year 1, Q2

- by Denise McInerney

Though it's not always official every job begins with a probation period. You start out with lots of questions and every day you find out how much more you have to learn. Usually after a few months you discover that you can actually answer some questions and have at least an idea of what you are supposed to be doing. Now at the end of my second quarter on the "job" of serving on the PASS Board I have reached that point. My probation period is over. The last three months were busy for the entire Board with the budget process, an in-person meeting and moving forward with PASS Global Growth plans. I had also set a specific goal for myself for my 2nd quarter: to see the Board to adopt a Code of Conduct for the PASS Summit. Code of Conduct When I ran for the Board I included my desire to see PASS establish a code of conduct in my campaign platform. I was motivated to do this for a few reasons. Other technical conferences have had incidents of harassment. Most of these did not have a policy in place prior to having a problem, though several conference organizers have since adopted anti-harassment policies or codes of conduct. I felt it would be in PASS' interest to establish a policy so we would be prepared should there be an incident. "This is Community" Adopting a code of conduct would reinforce our community orientation and send a message about the positive character of the Summit. PASS is a leader among technical organizations for its promotion and support of women. Adopting a code of conduct would further demonstrate our leadership in this area. After researching similar polices from other organizations I published a first draft in April. I solicited feedback from the Board, HQ staff and some PASS members. Incorporating that feedback I presented version 4 at the May Board meeting, where we had a good discussion. You can read the meeting minutes for details. I incorporated points from the Board discussion as well as feedback from a legal review to produce a final version which has been submitted to the Board. It will be discussed at the Board meeting July 12. You can read the full text at the end of this post. Virtual Chapters In the first quarter we started ramping up marketing support for the Virtual Chapters. Since then each edition of the Connector has highlighted a different VC to help get out the message about the variety of eductional opporutnities that are offered. These VC profiles will continue in the coming months. I was very pleased to welcome the new DBA Fundamentals VC which is geared toward new DBAs, people who are considering entering the field and those transitioning from a different IT role. Thanks to the contributions of Erin Stellato, Michelle Nalliah and Karla Landrum we published a "Virtual Chapter Guidebook". This document includes great advice on how to build and promote a VC. It's also a reference for how things work, from budgets to webinar hosting. I think this document will be extremely valuable to all our VC leaders and am grateful to those who put it together. Board Meeting/SQL Rally The Board met in May in Dallas. Among the items discussed were Global Growth, the budget, future events and the upcoming elections. We covered a lot of ground in two days and I will again refer you to the meeting minutes for details. The meeting schedule allowed us to participate in the SQL Rally networking events and one full day of the conference. I enjoyed having the opportunity to meet and talk with many PASS members. And my hat is off to the SQL Rally organizers who put on an outstanding event. Global Growth PASS has undertaken a major intitiative to reach and engage SQL Server professionals around the world. This Global Growth plan is ambitious and will have a significant impact on the strategic direction of the organization. We have been reaching out to the community for feedback, including hosting Twitter chats and live Town Hall meetings. I co-hosted two of these events and appreciated hearing the different perspectives of the people who participated If you have not done so I encourage you to read about the Global Growth vision and proposed governance changes and submit your feedback. FY13 Budget July 1 is the beginning of PASS' fiscal year, which makes the end of June the deadline for approving a budget. Each director submits a budget for his or her portfolio. For the Virtual Chapter portfolio I focused on how we can allocate resources to grow the VCs. Budgeting is a give-and-take process, and while I didn't get everything I asked for I'm pleased the FY13 budget includes a significant increase in financial support for the Virtual Chapters. Many people put a lot of work into the budget, but no two people deserve credit more than VP of Finance Douglas McDowell and Accounting Manager Sandy Cherry. Thanks to both of them for getting us across the goal line on time. SQL Saturday I attended SQL Saturdays in Orange Co. CA and Phoenix. It's always inspiring to see the enthusiasm in the community for learning and networking. These events are successful due to the hard work of many volunteers. Thanks to the organizers in both cities for all your efforts. Next Up This quarter we'll be gearing up plans for the VCs at the Summit and exploring ways the VCs can best support PASS' Global Growth work. I'll also be wrapping up work on the Code of Conduct and attending a Board meeting in September. And I will be at SQL Saturday #144 in Sacramento later this month. Here is the language of the Code of Conduct I have submitted to the Board for consideration: PASS Code of Conduct The PASS Summit provides database professionals from a variety of backgrounds with an opportunity to connect, share and learn. We value the strong sense of community that characterizes this event and we seek to foster an inclusive, professional atmosphere. We are dedicated to providing a harassment-free conference experience for everyone, regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, religion or any other protected classification. Everyone at the Summit is expected to follow the Code of Conduct. This includes but is not limited to: PASS Staff, Exhibitors, Speakers, Attendees and anyone affiliated with the event. Participants are expected to follow the Code of Conduct at all Summit events, including PASS-sponsored social events. Participant behavior Harassment includes, but is not limited to, offensive verbal comments related to gender, race, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, religion, or any other protected classification. Intimidation, threats, stalking, harassing photography or recording, sustained disruption of talks or other events, inappropriate physical contact and unwelcome attention will also be considered harassment. Similarly, sexual, racist, derogatory, threatening or other inappropriate language and imagery are not appropriate for any conference venue, including sessions. Recourse If a participant engages in any conduct that is prohibited under this Code of Conduct, the conference organizers may take any action they deem appropriate, including warning the offender or expelling the offender from the conference. No refunds will be granted to attendees expelled from the Summit due to violations of the Code of Conduct. If you are being harassed, witness harassment, or have any other concerns, please contact a member of conference staff immediately. Conference staff can be identified by their “Headquarters/Staff” shirts and are trained to handle the situation appropriately. A Code of Conduct Committee (CCC) made up of the Executive Manager and three members of the Board of Directors designated by the President will be authorized to take action in response to an incident or behavior that violates the Code of Conduct.

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Microphone not capturing sound on 12.04 Lenovo G580

- by Yam Marcovic

In both Skype and the Sound Recorder application, I am not capturing any audio from my built-in microphone. I'm not sure why. Otherwise, sound output is working well. I have tried running gstreamer-properties and setting the Default Input plugin to PulseAUdio as well (to match the output), and it didn't help. I have tried running alsamixer -V all and I only get 2 input-related entries: Capture(L R) which is on 100 and not muted (can't be either), and Analog Mic Boost which is on 20db. Extra info: Camera (video) is working well on Skype and Kamerka. Can you please help me get my microphone to work? lspci: 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Ivy Bridge DRAM Controller (rev 09) Subsystem: Lenovo Device 3977 Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx- Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort+ >SERR- <PERR- INTx- Latency: 0 Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: agpgart-intel 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Ivy Bridge Graphics Controller (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller]) Subsystem: Lenovo Device 3977 Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx+ Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx- Latency: 0 Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42 Region 0: Memory at e0000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M] Region 2: Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M] Region 4: I/O ports at 3000 [size=64] Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled] Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: i915 Kernel modules: i915 00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point USB xHCI Host Controller (rev 04) (prog-if 30 [XHCI]) Subsystem: Lenovo Device 3977 Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx+ Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx- Latency: 0 Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 41 Region 0: Memory at e0600000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K] Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: xhci_hcd 00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point MEI Controller #1 (rev 04) Subsystem: Lenovo Device 3977 Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx+ Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx- Latency: 0 Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 43 Region 0: Memory at e0614000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16] Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: mei Kernel modules: mei 00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 04) (prog-if 20 [EHCI]) Subsystem: Lenovo Device 3977 Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx- Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx- Latency: 0 Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 16 Region 0: Memory at e0619000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1K] Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Panther Point High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04) Subsystem: Lenovo Device 3977 Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx+ Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx- Latency: 0, Cache Line Size: 64 bytes Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 44 Region 0: Memory at e0610000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K] Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev c4) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode]) Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx- Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx- Latency: 0, Cache Line Size: 64 bytes Bus: primary=00, secondary=01, subordinate=01, sec-latency=0 I/O behind bridge: 00002000-00002fff Memory behind bridge: e0500000-e05fffff Secondary status: 66MHz- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- <SERR- <PERR- BridgeCtl: Parity- SERR- NoISA- VGA- MAbort- >Reset- FastB2B- PriDiscTmr- SecDiscTmr- DiscTmrStat- DiscTmrSERREn- Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: pcieport Kernel modules: shpchp 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev c4) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode]) Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx- Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx- Latency: 0, Cache Line Size: 64 bytes Bus: primary=00, secondary=02, subordinate=02, sec-latency=0 Memory behind bridge: e0400000-e04fffff Secondary status: 66MHz- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- <SERR- <PERR- BridgeCtl: Parity- SERR- NoISA- VGA- MAbort- >Reset- FastB2B- PriDiscTmr- SecDiscTmr- DiscTmrStat- DiscTmrSERREn- Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: pcieport Kernel modules: shpchp 00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 04) (prog-if 20 [EHCI]) Subsystem: Lenovo Device 3977 Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx- Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx- Latency: 0 Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 23 Region 0: Memory at e0618000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1K] Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point LPC Controller (rev 04) Subsystem: Lenovo Device 3977 Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx- Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx- Latency: 0 Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel modules: iTCO_wdt 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point 6 port SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 04) (prog-if 01 [AHCI 1.0]) Subsystem: Lenovo Device 3977 Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx+ Status: Cap+ 66MHz+ UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx- Latency: 0 Interrupt: pin B routed to IRQ 40 Region 0: I/O ports at 3088 [size=8] Region 1: I/O ports at 3094 [size=4] Region 2: I/O ports at 3080 [size=8] Region 3: I/O ports at 3090 [size=4] Region 4: I/O ports at 3060 [size=32] Region 5: Memory at e0617000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=2K] Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: ahci 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation Panther Point SMBus Controller (rev 04) Subsystem: Lenovo Device 3977 Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster- SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx- Status: Cap- 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx- Interrupt: pin C routed to IRQ 10 Region 0: Memory at e0615000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256] Region 4: I/O ports at 3040 [size=32] Kernel modules: i2c-i801 01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR8162 Fast Ethernet (rev 08) Subsystem: Lenovo Device 3979 Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx- Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx- Latency: 0, Cache Line Size: 64 bytes Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 11 Region 0: Memory at e0500000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256K] Region 2: I/O ports at 2000 [size=128] Capabilities: <access denied> 02:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01) Subsystem: Lenovo Device 31a1 Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx- Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx- Latency: 0, Cache Line Size: 64 bytes Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 17 Region 0: Memory at e0400000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K] Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: ath9k Kernel modules: ath9k aplay -l **** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices **** card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: CONEXANT Analog [CONEXANT Analog] Subdevices: 1/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0] Subdevices: 1/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, August 03, 2014

CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, August 03, 2014Popular ReleasesBoxStarter: Boxstarter 2.4.76: Running the Setup.bat file will install Chocolatey if not present and then install the Boxstarter modules.GMare: GMare Beta 1.2: Features Added: - Instance painting by holding the alt key down while pressing the left mouse button - Functionality to the binary exporter so that backgrounds from image files can be used - On the binary exporter background information can be edited manually now - Update to the GMare binary read GML script - Game Maker Studio export - Import from GMare project. Multiple options to import desired properties of a .gmpx - 10 undo/redo levels instead of 5 is now the default - New preferences dia...Json.NET: Json.NET 6.0 Release 4: New feature - Added Merge to LINQ to JSON New feature - Added JValue.CreateNull and JValue.CreateUndefined New feature - Added Windows Phone 8.1 support to .NET 4.0 portable assembly New feature - Added OverrideCreator to JsonObjectContract New feature - Added support for overriding the creation of interfaces and abstract types New feature - Added support for reading UUID BSON binary values as a Guid New feature - Added MetadataPropertyHandling.Ignore New feature - Improv...SQL Server Dialog: SQL Server Dialog: Input server, user and password Show folder and file in treeview Customize icon Filter file extension Skip system generate folder and fileAitso-a platform for spatial optimization and based on artificial immune systems: Aitso_0.14.08.01: Aitso0.14.08.01Installer.zipVidCoder: 1.5.24 Beta: Added NL-Means denoiser. Updated HandBrake core to SVN 6254. Added extra error handling to DVD player code to avoid a crash when the player was moved.AutoUpdater.NET : Auto update library for VB.NET and C# Developer: AutoUpdater.NET 1.3: Fixed problem in DownloadUpdateDialog where download continues even if you close the dialog. Added support for new url field for 64 bit application setup. AutoUpdater.NET will decide which download url to use by looking at the value of IntPtr.Size. Added German translation provided by Rene Kannegiesser. Now developer can handle update logic herself using event suggested by ricorx7. Added italian translation provided by Gianluca Mariani. Fixed bug that prevents Application from exiti...SEToolbox: SEToolbox 01.041.012 Release 1: Added voxel material textures to read in with mods. Fixed missing texture replacements for mods. Fixed rounding issue in raytrace code. Fixed repair issue with corrupt checkpoint file. Fixed issue with updated SE binaries 01.041.012 using new container configuration.Magick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.9.601: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 6.8.9.6 Breaking changes: - Changed arguments for the Map method of MagickImage. - QuantizeSettings uses Riemersma by default.Multiple Threads TCP Server: Project: this Project is based on VS 2013, .net freamwork 4.0, you can open it by vs 2010 or laterAricie Shared: Aricie.Shared Version 1.8.00: Version 1.8.0 - Release Notes New: Expression Builder to design Flee Expressions New: Cryptographic helpers and configuration classes Improvement: Many fixes and improvements with property editor Improvement: Token Replace Property explorer now has a restricted mode for additional security Improvement: Better variables, types and object manipulation Fixed: smart file and flee bugs Fixed: Removed Exception while trying to read unsuported files Improvement: several performance twe...Accesorios de sitios Torrent en Español para Synology Download Station: Pack de Torrents en Español 6.0.0: Agregado los módulos de DivXTotal, el módulo de búsqueda depende del de alojamiento para bajar las series Utiliza el rss: http://www.divxtotal.com/rss.php DbEntry.Net (Leafing Framework): DbEntry.Net 4.2: DbEntry.Net is a lightweight Object Relational Mapping (ORM) database access compnent for .Net 4.0+. It has clearly and easily programing interface for ORM and sql directly, and supoorted Access, Sql Server, MySql, SQLite, Firebird, PostgreSQL and Oracle. It also provide a Ruby On Rails style MVC framework. Asp.Net DataSource and a simple IoC. DbEntry.Net.v4.2.Setup.zip include the setup package. DbEntry.Net.v4.2.Src.zip include source files and unit tests. DbEntry.Net.v4.2.Samples.zip ...Azure Storage Explorer: Azure Storage Explorer 6 Preview 1: Welcome to Azure Storage Explorer 6 Preview 1 This is the first release of the latest Azure Storage Explorer, code-named Phoenix. What's New?Here are some important things to know about version 6: Open Source Now being run as a full open source project. Full source code on CodePlex. Collaboration encouraged! Updated Code Base Brand-new code base (WPF/C#/.NET 4.5) Visual Studio 2013 solution (previously VS2010) Uses the Task Parallel Library (TPL) for asynchronous background operat...Wsus Package Publisher: release v1.3.1407.29: Updated WPP to recognize the very latest console version. Some files was missing into the latest release of WPP which lead to crash when trying to make a custom update. Add a workaround to avoid clipboard modification when double-clicking on a label when creating a custom update. Add the ability to publish detectoids. (This feature is still in a BETA phase. Packages relying on these detectoids to determine which computers need to be updated, may apply to all computers).VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: PG-Ripper 1.4.32: changes NEW: Added Support for 'ImgMega.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'ImgCandy.net' links NEW: Added Support for 'ImgPit.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'Img.yt' links FIXED: 'Radikal.ru' links FIXED: 'ImageTeam.org' links FIXED: 'ImgSee.com' links FIXED: 'Img.yt' linksAsp.Net MVC-4,Entity Framework and JQGrid Demo with Todo List WebApplication: Asp.Net MVC-4,Entity Framework and JQGrid Demo: Asp.Net MVC-4,Entity Framework and JQGrid Demo with simple Todo List WebApplication, Overview TodoList is a simple web application to create, store and modify Todo tasks to be maintained by the users, which comprises of following fields to the user (Task Name, Task Description, Severity, Target Date, Task Status). TodoList web application is created using MVC - 4 architecture, code-first Entity Framework (ORM) and Jqgrid for displaying the data.Waterfox: Waterfox 31.0 Portable: New features in Waterfox 31.0: Added support for Unicode 7.0 Experimental support for WebCL New features in Firefox 31.0:New Add the search field to the new tab page Support of Prefer:Safe http header for parental control mozilla::pkix as default certificate verifier Block malware from downloaded files Block malware from downloaded files audio/video .ogg and .pdf files handled by Firefox if no application specified Changed Removal of the CAPS infrastructure for specifying site-sp...SuperSocket, an extensible socket server framework: SuperSocket 1.6.3: The changes below are included in this release: fixed an exception when collect a server's status but it has been stopped fixed a bug that can cause an exception in case of sending data when the connection dropped already fixed the log4net missing issue for a QuickStart project fixed a warning in a QuickStart projectYnote Classic: Ynote Classic 2.8.5 Beta: Several Changes - Multiple Carets and Multiple Selections - Improved Startup Time - Improved Syntax Highlighting - Search Improvements - Shell Command - Improved StabilityNew ProjectsCreek: Creek is a Collection of many C# Frameworks and my ownSpeaking Speedometer (android): Simple speaking speedometerT125Protocol { Alpha version }: implement T125 Protocol for communicate with a mainframe.Unix Time: This library provides a System.UnixTime as a new Type providing conversion between Unix Time and .NET DateTime.

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Experiences with learning Chinese

- by Greg Low

I've had a few friends asking me about learning Chinese and what I've found works and doesn't work. I was answering a question on a mailing list today and I thought I should post this info where it might be useful to many. The question that was initially asked was whether Rosetta Stone was useful but I've provided much more info on learning the language here. I’ve used Rosetta Stone with Chinese but it’s really hard to know whether to recommend it or not. Rosetta Stone works the same way in all languages. They show you photos and then let you both see and hear the target language and get you to work out what they’re talking about. The thinking is that that’s how children learn. However, at first, I found it very frustrating. I’d be staring at photos trying to work out what they were really trying to get at. Sometimes it’s far from obvious. I could not have survived without Google Translate open at the same time. The other weird thing is that the photos are from a mixture of countries. While that’s good in a way, it also means that they are endlessly showing pictures of something that would never happen in the target language and culture. For any language, constant interaction with a speaker of the target language is needed. Rosetta Stone has a “Studio” option. That’s the best part of the program. In my case, it lets me connect around twice a week to a live online class from Beijing. Classes usually have the teacher plus two to four students. You get some Studio access with the initial packages but need to purchase it for ongoing use. I find it very inexpensive. It seems to work out to about $70 (AUD/USD) for six months. That’s a real bargain. The other downside to Rosetta Stone is that they tend to teach very formal language, but as with other languages, that’s not how the locals speak. It might have been correct at one point but no-one actually says that. As an example, Rosetta Stone teach Gonggòng qìche (pronounced roughly like “gong gong chee chure” for bus. Most of my friends from areas like Taiwan would just say Gongche. Google Translate says Zongxiàn (pronounced somewhat like “dzong sheean”) instead. Mind you, the Rosetta Stone option isn't really as bad as "omnibus"; it's more like saying "public bus". If you say the option they provide, people would understand you. I also listen to ChinesePod in the car. They also have SpanishPod. Each podcast is about five minutes of spoken conversation. It is very good for providing current language. Another resource I use is local Meetup groups. Most cities have these and for a variety of languages. It’s way less structured (just standard conversation) but good for getting interaction. The obvious challenge for Asian languages is reading/writing. The input editors for Chinese that are part of Windows are excellent. Many of my Chinese friends speak fluently but cannot read or write. I was determined to learn to do both. For writing, I’m talking about on a computer, not with a pen. (Mind you, I can barely write English with a pen nowadays). When using Rosetta Stone, you can choose to have the Chinese words displayed in pinyin (Wo xihuan xuéxí zhongguó) or in Chinese characters (???????) or both. This year, I’ve been forcing myself to just use the Chinese characters. I use a pinyin input editor in Windows though, as it’s very fast. (The character recognition input in the iPad is also amazing). Notice from the example that I provided above that the pronunciation of the pinyin isn’t that obvious to us at first either. Since changing to only using characters, I find I can now read many more Chinese characters fluently. It’s a major challenge though. I can read about 300 now and yet you need around 2,500 to be able to read a newspaper fairly well. Tones are a major issue for some Asian languages. Mandarin has four tones (plus a neutral tone) and there is a major difference in meaning between two words that are spelled the same in pinyin but with different tones. For example, Ma (3rd tone?) is a horse, Ma (1st tone?) is like “mom”, and ma (neutral tone?) is a question mark and so on. Clearly you don’t want to mix these up. As in English, they also have words that do sound the same but mean different things in different contexts. What’s interesting is that even though we see two words that differ only by tone as very similar, to a native speaker, if you say the right words with the wrong tone, you might as well have said a completely different word. My wife’s dialect of Chinese has eight tones. It’s much worse. The reason I’m so keen to learn to read/write Chinese is that even though the different dialects are pronounced so differently that speakers of one dialect often cannot understand another dialect, the writing is generally the same. The only difference is that many years ago, the Chinese government created a simplified set of characters for some of the most commonly used ones. Older Chinese and most Cantonese speakers often struggle with the simplified characters. This is the simplified form of “three apples”: ???? This is the traditional form of the same words: ???? Note that two of the characters are the same but the middle two are quite different. For most languages, the best thing is to watch current movies in the target language but to watch them with the target language as subtitles, not your native language. You want to know what they actually said, not what it roughly means (which is what the English subtitle would give you). The difficulty with Asian languages like Chinese is that you have the added challenge of understanding the subtitles when they are written in the target language. I wish there were Mandarin Chinese movies with pinyin subtitles. For learning to read characters, I also recommend HanCard on the iPad. It is targeted at the HSK language proficiency levels. (I’m intending to take the first HSK exam as soon as I’m ready). Hope that info helps someone get started.

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Possible SWITCH Optimization in DAX – #powerpivot #dax #tabular

- by Marco Russo (SQLBI)

In one of the Advanced DAX Workshop I taught this year, I had an interesting discussion about how to optimize a SWITCH statement (which could be frequently used checking a slicer, like in the Parameter Table pattern). Let’s start with the problem. What happen when you have such a statement? Sales := SWITCH ( VALUES ( Period[Period] ), "Current", [Internet Total Sales], "MTD", [MTD Sales], "QTD", [QTD Sales], "YTD", [YTD Sales], BLANK () ) The SWITCH statement is in reality just syntax sugar for a nested IF statement. When you place such a measure in a pivot table, for every cell of the pivot table the IF options are evaluated. In order to optimize performance, the DAX engine usually does not compute cell-by-cell, but tries to compute the values in bulk-mode. However, if a measure contains an IF statement, every cell might have a different execution path, so the current implementation might evaluate all the possible IF branches in bulk-mode, so that for every cell the result from one of the branches will be already available in a pre-calculated dataset. The price for that could be high. If you consider the previous Sales measure, the YTD Sales measure could be evaluated for all the cells where it’s not required, and also when YTD is not selected at all in a Pivot Table. The actual optimization made by the DAX engine could be different in every build, and I expect newer builds of Tabular and Power Pivot to be better than older ones. However, we still don’t live in an ideal world, so it could be better trying to help the engine finding a better execution plan. One student (Niek de Wit) proposed this approach: Selection := IF ( HASONEVALUE ( Period[Period] ), VALUES ( Period[Period] ) ) Sales := CALCULATE ( [Internet Total Sales], FILTER ( VALUES ( 'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity] ), 'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity] = IF ( [Selection] = "Current", 'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity], -1 ) ) ) + CALCULATE ( [MTD Sales], FILTER ( VALUES ( 'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity] ), 'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity] = IF ( [Selection] = "MTD", 'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity], -1 ) ) ) + CALCULATE ( [QTD Sales], FILTER ( VALUES ( 'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity] ), 'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity] = IF ( [Selection] = "QTD", 'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity], -1 ) ) ) + CALCULATE ( [YTD Sales], FILTER ( VALUES ( 'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity] ), 'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity] = IF ( [Selection] = "YTD", 'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity], -1 ) ) ) At first sight, you might think it’s impossible that this approach could be faster. However, if you examine with the profiler what happens, there is a different story. Every original IF’s execution branch is now a separate CALCULATE statement, which applies a filter that does not execute the required measure calculation if the result of the FILTER is empty. I used the ‘Internet Sales’[Order Quantity] column in this example just because in Adventure Works it has only one value (every row has 1): in the real world, you should use a column that has a very low number of distinct values, or use a column that has always the same value for every row (so it will be compressed very well!). Because the value –1 is never used in this column, the IF comparison in the filter discharge all the values iterated in the filter if the selection does not match with the desired value. I hope to have time in the future to write a longer article about this optimization technique, but in the meantime I’ve seen this optimization has been useful in many other implementations. Please write your feedback if you find scenarios (in both Power Pivot and Tabular) where you obtain performance improvements using this technique!

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Conducting Effective Web Meetings

- by BuckWoody

There are several forms of corporate communication. From immediate, rich communications like phones and IM messaging to historical transactions like e-mail, there are a lot of ways to get information to one or more people. From time to time, it's even useful to have a meeting. (This is where a witty picture of a guy sleeping in a meeting goes. I won't bother actually putting one here; you're already envisioning it in your mind) Most meetings are pointless, and a complete waste of time. This is the fault, completely and solely, of the organizer. It's because he or she hasn't thought things through enough to think about alternate forms of information passing. Here's the criteria for a good meeting - whether in-person or over the web: 100% of the content of a meeting should require the participation of 100% of the attendees for 100% of the time It doesn't get any simpler than that. If it doesn't meet that criteria, then don't invite that person to that meeting. If you're just conveying information and no one has the need for immediate interaction with that information (like telling you something that modifies the message), then send an e-mail. If you're a manager, and you need to get status from lots of people, pick up the phone.If you need a quick answer, use IM. I once had a high-level manager that called frequent meetings. His real need was status updates on various processes, so 50 of us would sit in a room while he asked each one of us questions. He believed this larger meeting helped us "cross pollinate ideas". In fact, it was a complete waste of time for most everyone, except in the one or two moments that they interacted with him. So I wrote some code for a Palm Pilot (which was a kind of SmartPhone but with no phone and no real graphics, but this was in the days when we had just discovered fire and the wheel, although the order of those things is still in debate) that took an average of the salaries of the people in the room (I guessed at it) and ran a timer which multiplied the number of people against the salaries. I left that running in plain sight for him, and when he asked about it, I explained how much the meetings were really costing the company. We had far fewer meetings after. Meetings are now web-enabled. I believe that's largely a good thing, since it saves on travel time and allows more people to participate, but I think the rule above still holds. And in fact, there are some other rules that you should follow to have a great meeting - and fewer of them. Be Clear About the Goal This is important in any meeting, but all of us have probably gotten an invite with a web link and an ambiguous title. Then you get to the meeting, and it's a 500-level deep-dive on something everyone expects you to know. This is unfair to the "expert" and to the participants. I always tell people that invite me to a meeting that I will be as detailed as I can - but the more detail they can tell me about the questions, the more detailed I can be in my responses. Granted, there are times when you don't know what you don't know, but the more you can say about the topic the better. There's another point here - and it's that you should have a clearly defined "win" for the meeting. When the meeting is over, and everyone goes back to work, what were you expecting them to do with the information? Have that clearly defined in your head, and in the meeting invite. Understand the Technology There are several web-meeting clients out there. I use them all, since I meet with clients all over the world. They all work differently - so I take a few moments and read up on the different clients and find out how I can use the tools properly. I do this with the technology I use for everything else, and it's important to understand it if the meeting is to be a success. If you're running the meeting, know the tools. I don't care if you like the tools or not, learn them anyway. Don't waste everyone else's time just because you're too bitter/snarky/lazy to spend a few minutes reading. Check your phone or mic. Check your video size. Install (and learn to use) ZoomIT (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897434.aspx). Format your slides or screen or output correctly. Learn to use the voting features of the meeting software, and especially it's whiteboard features. Figure out how multiple monitors work. Try a quick meeting with someone to test all this. Do this *before* you invite lots of other people to your meeting. Use a WebCam I'm not a pretty man. I have a face fit for radio. But after attending a meeting with clients where one Microsoft person used a webcam and another did not, I'm convinced that people pay more attention when a face is involved. There are tons of studies around this, or you can take my word for it, but toss a shirt on over those pajamas and turn the webcam on. Set Up Early Whether you're attending or leading the meeting, don't wait to sign on to the meeting at the time when it starts. I can almost plan that a 10:00 meeting will actually start at 10:10 because the participants/leader is just now installing the web client for the meeting at 10:00. Sign on early, go on mute, and then wait for everyone to arrive. Mute When Not Talking No one wants to hear your screaming offspring / yappy dog / other cubicle conversations / car wind noise (are you driving in a desert storm or something?) while the person leading the meeting is trying to talk. I use the Lync software from Microsoft for my meetings, and I mute everyone by default, and then tell them to un-mute to talk to the group. Share Collateral If you have a PowerPoint deck, mail it out in case you have a tech failure. If you have a document, share it as an attachment to the meeting. Don't make people ask you for the information - that's why you're there to begin with. Even better, send it out early. "But", you say, "then no one will come to the meeting if they have the deck first!" Uhm, then don't have a meeting. Send out the deck and a quick e-mail and let everyone get on with their productive day. Set Actions At the Meeting A meeting should have some sort of outcome (see point one). That means there are actions to take, a follow up, or some deliverable. Otherwise, it's an e-mail. At the meeting, decide who will do what, when things are needed, and so on. And avoid, if at all possible, setting up another meeting, unless absolutely necessary. So there you have it. Whether it's on-premises or on the web, meetings are a necessary evil, and should be treated that way. Like politicians, you should have as few of them as are necessary to keep the roads paved and public libraries open.

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Applications: The Mathematics of Movement, Part 2

- by TechTwaddle

In part 1 of this series we saw how we can make the marble move towards the click point, with a fixed speed. In this post we’ll see, first, how to get rid of Atan2(), sine() and cosine() in our calculations, and, second, reducing the speed of the marble as it approaches the destination, so it looks like the marble is easing into it’s final position. As I mentioned in one of the previous posts, this is achieved by making the speed of the marble a function of the distance between the marble and the destination point. Getting rid of Atan2(), sine() and cosine() Ok, to be fair we are not exactly getting rid of these trigonometric functions, rather, replacing one form with another. So instead of writing sin(?), we write y/length. You see the point. So instead of using the trig functions as below, double x = destX - marble1.x; double y = destY - marble1.y; //distance between destination and current position, before updating marble position distanceSqrd = x * x + y * y; double angle = Math.Atan2(y, x); //Cos and Sin give us the unit vector, 6 is the value we use to magnify the unit vector along the same direction incrX = speed * Math.Cos(angle); incrY = speed * Math.Sin(angle); marble1.x += incrX; marble1.y += incrY; we use the following, double x = destX - marble1.x; double y = destY - marble1.y; //distance between destination and marble (before updating marble position) lengthSqrd = x * x + y * y; length = Math.Sqrt(lengthSqrd); //unit vector along the same direction as vector(x, y) unitX = x / length; unitY = y / length; //update marble position incrX = speed * unitX; incrY = speed * unitY; marble1.x += incrX; marble1.y += incrY; so we replaced cos(?) with x/length and sin(?) with y/length. The result is the same. Adding oomph to the way it moves In the last post we had the speed of the marble fixed at 6, double speed = 6; to make the marble decelerate as it moves, we have to keep updating the speed of the marble in every frame such that the speed is calculated as a function of the length. So we may have, speed = length/12; ‘length’ keeps decreasing as the marble moves and so does speed. The Form1_MouseUp() function remains the same as before, here is the UpdatePosition() method, private void UpdatePosition() { double incrX = 0, incrY = 0; double lengthSqrd = 0, length = 0, lengthSqrdNew = 0; double unitX = 0, unitY = 0; double speed = 0; double x = destX - marble1.x; double y = destY - marble1.y; //distance between destination and marble (before updating marble position) lengthSqrd = x * x + y * y; length = Math.Sqrt(lengthSqrd); //unit vector along the same direction as vector(x, y) unitX = x / length; unitY = y / length; //speed as a function of length speed = length / 12; //update marble position incrX = speed * unitX; incrY = speed * unitY; marble1.x += incrX; marble1.y += incrY; //check for bounds if ((int)marble1.x < MinX + marbleWidth / 2) { marble1.x = MinX + marbleWidth / 2; } else if ((int)marble1.x > (MaxX - marbleWidth / 2)) { marble1.x = MaxX - marbleWidth / 2; } if ((int)marble1.y < MinY + marbleHeight / 2) { marble1.y = MinY + marbleHeight / 2; } else if ((int)marble1.y > (MaxY - marbleHeight / 2)) { marble1.y = MaxY - marbleHeight / 2; } //distance between destination and marble (after updating marble position) x = destX - (marble1.x); y = destY - (marble1.y); lengthSqrdNew = x * x + y * y; /* * End Condition: * 1. If there is not much difference between lengthSqrd and lengthSqrdNew * 2. If the marble has moved more than or equal to a distance of totLenToTravel (see Form1_MouseUp) */ x = startPosX - marble1.x; y = startPosY - marble1.y; double totLenTraveledSqrd = x * x + y * y; if ((int)totLenTraveledSqrd >= (int)totLenToTravelSqrd) { System.Console.WriteLine("Stopping because Total Len has been traveled"); timer1.Enabled = false; } else if (Math.Abs((int)lengthSqrd - (int)lengthSqrdNew) < 4) { System.Console.WriteLine("Stopping because no change in Old and New"); timer1.Enabled = false; } } A point to note here is that, in this implementation, the marble never stops because it travelled a distance of totLenToTravelSqrd (first if condition). This happens because speed is a function of the length. During the final few frames length becomes very small and so does speed; and so the amount by which the marble shifts is quite small, and the second if condition always hits true first. I’ll end this series with a third post. In part 3 we will cover two things, one, when the user clicks, the marble keeps moving in that direction, rebounding off the screen edges and keeps moving forever. Two, when the user clicks on the screen, the marble moves towards it, with it’s speed reducing by every frame. It doesn’t come to a halt when the destination point is reached, instead, it continues to move, rebounds off the screen edges and slowly comes to halt. The amount of time that the marble keeps moving depends on how far the user clicks from the marble. I had mentioned this second situation here. Finally, here’s a video of this program running,

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