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• Convert YouTube Videos to MP3 with YouTube Downloader

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Are you looking for a way to take the music videos you watch on YouTube and convert them to MP3? Today we take a look at an easy way to convert those YouTube videos to MP3 for free with YouTube Downloader. The YouTube Downloader functions in two steps. First, it downloads the video from YouTube in MP4 format, and then allows you to convert that MP4 file to MP3. Note: It also supports conversion conversion to some other formats such as AVI video, MOV, iPhone, PSP, 3GP, and WMV.   Installation and usage Download and Install YouTube Downloader. (See download link below) Open the YouTube Downloader by clicking on the desktop icon. Find a YouTube video you’d like to convert to MP3 and copy the URL. Paste the URL into the “Enter video URL” text box in YouTube Downloader. When you hover your mouse over the text box, the text box will auto-fill with the URL from your clipboard. Select the “Download video from YouTube” radio button and click “Ok.” Choose a folder to location to download your YouTube video and click “Save.” The video is downloaded in MP4 format. Now wait while the video is downloaded to your hard drive.   Select the “Convert video (previously downloaded) from file” radio button. Click the (…) button to the right of the “Select video file” text box to browse for and select the MP4 file you just downloaded. Then select “MPEG Audio Layer (MP3) from the “Convert to” drop down list. Select “OK” to begin the conversion. Choose the conversion quality by moving the slider to the right or left. The options are: Low (96kbps bite rate), Medium (128kbps bit rate), Optimal (192kbps bit rate), and High 256kbps bit rate). Here you can select the output volume as well. Click “OK” when finished. If there is a portion of the beginning or end of the video that you wish to cut out of the MP3, select the “Cut video” check box and choose a Start and End time. Click “OK” when finished. Note: The start and end time represent the audio portion of the MP3 you wish to keep. All portions before and after these times will be cut.   The conversion process will begin and should only take a few moments. Times will vary depending on the size of the video you’re converting. Conversion was successful! The MP3 you converted will be in the same directory you downloaded the video to. Now you’re ready to listen to your MP3 or import it to your Zune, iTunes, or music library. You may also want to delete the MP4 files after the conversion if you will no longer need them. Conclusion YouTube Downloader features a very simple interface that’s user friendly and easy to use. It comes in handy when you watch videos that look horrible, but the sound quality is good. Or if you just need to hear the audio of something posted and don’t need the video. It also allows you to download from Google Video, MySpace, and others. Download YouTube Downloader Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Download YouTube Videos with Cheetah YouTube DownloaderWatch YouTube Videos in Cinema Style in FirefoxStop YouTube Videos from Automatically Playing in FirefoxRemove Unsuitable Comments from YouTubeImprove YouTube Video Viewing in Google Chrome TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Windows Media Player 12: Tweak Video & Sound with Playback Enhancements Own a cell phone, or does a cell phone own you? Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI Integrate Twitter and Delicious and Make Life Easier Design Your Web Pages Using the Golden Ratio Worldwide Growth of the Internet

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• Announcing the new Oracle Retail Workspace, A Configuration of Oracle WebCenter Spaces 11.1.1.5 for Oracle Retail

  - by Oracle Retail Documentation Team

  For the Oracle Retail 13.2.x enterprise, Oracle Retail Workspace 13.2.4 replaces previous versions of Oracle Retail Workspace. Oracle Retail Workspace 13.2.4 is a supported configuration of Oracle WebCenter Spaces 11.1.1.5 for Oracle Retail. Supported Product Overview In order to provide a next-generation Oracle user engagement platform for the retail industry, Oracle Retail Workspace leverages WebCenter Spaces. Oracle Retail Workspace is not a licensed retail application with any code. Instead, retailers purchase the underlying technology and then leverage the Oracle Retail Workspace Implementation Guide to configure a portal utilizing Oracle WebCenter Spaces. Oracle Retail Workspace has been repositioned as a configuration of Oracle WebCenter Spaces for the following reasons: The Oracle Retail Workspace configuration utilizes the external application functionality and the application navigator taskflow of the Oracle WebCenter Framework to configure Oracle Retail applications in Oracle WebCenter Spaces. The Oracle WebCenter Framework improves IT development cycle times by blending Web 2.0 services, processes, business intelligence, and transactions in an integrated JSF framework. The Oracle WebCenter Spaces 11g offers features provided by the previous versions of Oracle Retail Workspace that enable retailers to leverage a productive portal-based environment. List of Documents The following are included in Workspace 13.2.4, A Configuration of WebCenter Spaces 11.1.1.5 for Oracle Retail Oracle Retail Workspace Release Notes Oracle Retail Workspace Implementation Guide Workspace Retail Library—Unsupported The Oracle Retail Workspace Retail Library is comprised of previously-published accelerator documents and sample code downloads hosted on My Oracle Support. They are not supported, nor are they associated with the support lifecycle of the Workspace application. Doc ID: 1461281.1: Oracle Retail Workspace Retail Library Oracle Retail Workspace Retail Library Reference GuideA set of Micro-Applications that can be used to perform some of the operations of Oracle Retail Merchandising System (RMS) from outside the application. This document describes the functional and technical design details of the Micro-Applications available in this release, including the following and more: Create Regular Item Create Purchase Order Item Transfer Update Vendor Oracle Retail Fashion Planning Bundle Reports documentationThe Oracle Retail Fashion Planning Bundle Reports package includes role-based Oracle Business Intelligence (BI) Enterprise Edition (EE) reports and dashboards that provide an illustrative overview highlighting the Fashion Planning Bundle solutions. These dashboards can be leveraged out-of-the-box or can be used along with the other dashboards and reports that may have already been created to support a specific solution or organizational needs. This package includes dashboards for the Assortment Planning, Item Planning, Item Planning Configured for COE, Merchandise Financial Planning Retail Accounting, and Merchandise Financial Planning Cost Accounting applications. Oracle Retail Accelerators for WebLogic Server 11g Micro-Applications Development TutorialThis tutorial describes how you can create a Micro-Application for the Create a Regular Item task in the Retail Merchandising System (RMS) application using Oracle JDeveloper and ADF. Retail Accelerators: Developing ADF Reports for RPASThis document illustrates how you can use the Oracle Application Development Framework 11g (ADF) to generate reports that provide insights from the Oracle Retail Predictive Application Server (RPAS) based applications. Oracle Retail Accelerators Guide for WebCenter 11gOracle Retail Accelerators Guide for WebCenter 11g describes how you can integrate Oracle Retail applications with Oracle WebCenter Spaces and customize WebCenter Spaces to include custom-developed content. Oracle Retail Accelerators, Developing Oracle BI EE reports on RPAS Domain DataThis document illustrates how you can set up the integration between BI EE and RPAS domains to generate BI EE reports and dashboards for RPAS. Oracle Retail Accelerators, Developing Oracle BI EE Reports on RPAS WorkbooksThis document outlines a process to create real-time Oracle Business Intelligence (BI) Enterprise Edition reports against RPAS workbooks dynamically, as opposed to directly going against the RPAS domain for the data. 

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• Redaction in AutoVue

  - by [email protected]

  As the trend to digitize all paper assets continues, so does the push to digitize all the processes around these assets. One such process is redaction - removing sensitive or classified information from documents. While for some this may conjure up thoughts of old CIA documents filled with nothing but blacked out pages, there are actually many uses for redaction today beyond military and government. Many companies have a need to remove names, phone numbers, social security numbers, credit card numbers, etc. from documents that are being scanned in and/or released to the public or less privileged users - insurance companies, banks and legal firms are a few examples. The process of digital redaction actually isn't that far from the old paper method: Step 1. Find a folder with a big red stamp on it labeled "TOP SECRET" Step 2. Make a copy of that document, since some folks still need to access the original contents Step 3. Black out the text or pages you want to hide Step 4. Release or distribute this new 'redacted' copy So where does a solution like AutoVue come in? Well, we've really been doing all of these things for years! 1. With AutoVue's VueLink integration and iSDK, we can integrate to virtually any content management system and view documents of almost any format with a single click. Finding the document and opening it in AutoVue: CHECK! 2. With AutoVue's markup capabilities, adding filled boxes (or other shapes) around certain text is a no-brainer. You can even leverage AutoVue's powerful APIs to automate the addition of markups over certain text or pre-defined regions using our APIs. Black out the text you want to hide: CHECK! 3. With AutoVue's conversion capabilities, you can 'burn-in' the comments into a new file, either as a TIFF, JPEG or PDF document. Burning-in the redactions avoids slip-ups like the recent (well-publicized) TSA one. Through our tight integrations, the newly created copies can be directly checked into the content management system with no manual intervention. Make a copy of that document: CHECK! 4. Again, leveraging AutoVue's integrations, we can now define rules in the system based on a user's privileges. An 'authorized' user wishing to view the document from the repository will get exactly that - no redactions. An 'unauthorized' user, when requesting to view that same document, can get redirected to open the redacted copy of the same document. Release or distribute the new 'redacted' copy: CHECK! See this movie (WMV format, 2mins, 20secs, no audio) for a quick illustration of AutoVue's redaction capabilities. It shows how redactions can be added based on text searches, manual input or pre-defined templates/regions. Let us know what you think in the comments. And remember - this is all in our flagship AutoVue product - no additional software required!

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• Windows Presentation Foundation 4.5 Cookbook Review

  - by Ricardo Peres

  As promised, here’s my review of Windows Presentation Foundation 4.5 Cookbook, that Packt Publishing kindly made available to me. It is an introductory book, targeted at WPF newcomers or users with few experience, following the typical recipes or cookbook style. Like all Packt Publishing books on development, each recipe comes with sample code that is self-sufficient for understanding the concepts it tries to illustrate. It starts on chapter 1 by introducing the most important concepts, the XAML language itself, what can be declared in XAML and how to do it, what are dependency and attached properties as well as markup extensions and events, which should give readers a most required introduction to how WPF works and how to do basic stuff. It moves on to resources on chapter 2, which also makes since, since it’s such an important concept in WPF. Next, chapter 3, come the panels used for laying controls on the screen, all of the out of the box panels are described with typical use cases. Controls come next in chapter 4; the difference between elements and controls is introduced, as well as content controls, headered controls and items controls, and all standard controls are introduced. The book shows how to change the way they look by using templates. The next chapter, 5, talks about top level windows and the WPF application object: how to access startup arguments, how to set the main window, using standard dialogs and there’s even a sample on how to have a irregularly-shaped window. This is one of the most important concepts in WPF: data binding, which is the theme for the following chapter, 6. All common scenarios are introduced, the binding modes, directions, triggers, etc. It talks about the INotifyPropertyChanged interface and how to use it for notifying data binding subscribers of changes in data sources. Data templates and selectors are also covered, as are value converters and data triggers. Examples include master-detail and sorting, grouping and filtering collections and binding trees and grids. Last it covers validation rules and error templates. Chapter 7 talks about the current trend in WPF development, the Model View View-Model (MVVM) framework. This is a well known pattern for connecting things interface to actions, and it is explained competently. A typical implementation is presented which also presents the command pattern used throughout WPF. A complete application using MVVM is presented from start to finish, including typical features such as undo. Style and layout is covered on chapter 8. Why/how to use styles, applying them automatically,  using the many types of triggers to change styles automatically, using Expression Blend behaviors and templates are all covered. Next chapter, 9, is about graphics and animations programming. It explains how to create shapes, transform common UI elements, apply special effects and perform simple animations. The following chapter, 10, is about creating custom controls, either by deriving from UserControl or from an existing control or framework element class, applying custom templates for changing the way the control looks. One useful example is a custom layout panel that arranges its children along a circumference. The final chapter, 11, is about multi-threading programming and how one can integrate it with WPF. Includes how to invoke methods and properties on WPF classes from threads other than the main UI, using background tasks and timers and even using the new C# 5.0 asynchronous operations. It’s an interesting book, like I said, mostly for newcomers. It provides a competent introduction to WPF, with examples that cover the most common scenarios and also give directions to more complex ones. I recommend it to everyone wishing to learn WPF.

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• SQL SERVER – 2012 – All Download Links in Single Page – SQL Server 2012

  - by pinaldave

  SQL Server 2012 RTM is just announced and recently I wrote about all the SQL Server 2012 Certification on single page. As a feedback, I received suggestions to have a single page where everything about SQL Server 2012 is listed. I will keep this page updated as new updates are announced. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Evaluation Microsoft SQL Server 2012 enables a cloud-ready information platform that will help organizations unlock breakthrough insights across the organization. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Express Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Express is a powerful and reliable free data management system that delivers a rich and reliable data store for lightweight Web Sites and desktop applications. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Feature Pack The Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Feature Pack is a collection of stand-alone packages which provide additional value for Microsoft SQL Server 2012. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Report Builder Report Builder provides a productive report-authoring environment for IT professionals and power users. It supports the full capabilities of SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Master Data Services Add-in For Microsoft Excel The Master Data Services Add-in for Excel gives multiple users the ability to update master data in a familiar tool without compromising the data’s integrity in Master Data Services. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Performance Dashboard Reports The SQL Server 2012 Performance Dashboard Reports are Reporting Services report files designed to be used with the Custom Reports feature of SQL Server Management Studio. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 PowerPivot for Microsoft Excel® 2010 Microsoft PowerPivot for Microsoft Excel 2010 provides ground-breaking technology; fast manipulation of large data sets, streamlined integration of data, and the ability to effortlessly share your analysis through Microsoft SharePoint. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services Add-in for Microsoft SharePoint Technologies 2010 The SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services Add-in for Microsoft SharePoint 2010 technologies allows you to integrate your reporting environment with the collaborative SharePoint 2010 experience. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Semantic Language Statistics The Semantic Language Statistics Database is a required component for the Statistical Semantic Search feature in Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Semantic Language Statistics. Microsoft ®SQL Server 2012 FileStream Driver – Windows Logo Certification Catalog file for Microsoft SQL Server 2012 FileStream Driver that is certified for WindowsServer 2008 R2. It meets Microsoft standards for compatibility and recommended practices with the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating systems. Microsoft SQL Server StreamInsight 2.0 Microsoft StreamInsight is Microsoft’s Complex Event Processing technology to help businesses create event-driven applications and derive better insights by correlating event streams from multiple sources with near-zero latency. Microsoft JDBC Driver 4.0 for SQL Server Download the Microsoft JDBC Driver 4.0 for SQL Server, a Type 4 JDBC driver that provides database connectivity through the standard JDBC application program interfaces (APIs) available in Java Platform, Enterprise Edition 5 and 6. Data Quality Services Performance Best Practices Guide This guide focuses on a set of best practices for optimizing performance of Data Quality Services (DQS). Microsoft Drivers 3.0 for SQL Server for PHP The Microsoft Drivers 3.0 for SQL Server for PHP provide connectivity to Microsoft SQLServer from PHP applications. Product Documentation for Microsoft SQL Server 2012 for firewall and proxy restricted environments The Microsoft SQL Server 2012 setup installs only the Help Viewer…install any documentation. All of the SQL Server documentation is available online. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• USB software protection dongle for Java with an SDK which is cross-platform “for real”. Does it exist?

  - by Unai Vivi

  What I'd like to ask is if anybody knows about an hardware USB-dongle for software protection which offers a very complete out-of-the-box API support for cross-platform Java deployments. Its SDK should provide a jar (only one, not one different library per OS & bitness) ready to be added to one's project as a library. The jar should contain all the native stuff for the various OSes and bitnesses From the application's point of view, one should continue to write (api calls) once and run everywhere, without having to care where the end-user will run the software The provided jar should itself deal with loading the appropriate native library Does such a thing exist? With what I've tried so far, you have different APIs and compiled libraries for win32, linux32, win64, linux64, etc (or you even have to compile stuff yourself on the target machine), but hey, we're doing Java here, we don't know (and don't care) where the program will run! And we can't expect the end-user to be a software engineer, tweak (and break!) its linux server, link libraries, mess with gcc, litter the filesystem, etc... In general, Java support (in a transparent cross-platform fashion) is quite bad with the dongle SDKs I've evaluated so far (e.g. KeyLok and SecuTech's UniKey). I even purchased (no free evaluation kit available) SecureMetric SDKs&dongles (they should've been "soooo" straighforward to integrate -- according to marketing material :\ ) and they were the worst ever: SecureDongle X has no 64bit support and SecureDongle SD is not cross-platform at all. So, has anyone out there been through this and found the ultimate Java security usb dongle for cross-platform deployments? Note: software is low-volume, high-value; application is off-line (intranet with no internet access), so no online-activation alternatives and the like. -- EDIT Tried out HASP dongles (used to be called "Aladdin"), and added them to the no-no list: here, too, there is no out-of-the-box (out-of-the-jar) support: e.g. end-linux-user has to manually put the .so library (the specific file for the appropriate bitness) in the right place on his filesystem, and export an env. variable accordingly. -- EDIT 2 I really don't understand all the negativity and all the downvoting: is this a taboo topic? Is it so hard to understand that a freelance developer has to put food on the table everyday to feed its family and pay the bills at the end of the month? Please don't talk about "adding value" as a supplier, because that'd be off-topic. Furthermore I'm not in direct contact with end-customers, but there's an intermediate reselling entity: it's this entity I want to prevent selling copies of the software without sharing the revenue. -- EDIT 3 I'd like to emphasize the fact that the question is looking for a technical answer, not one about opinions concerning business models, philosophical lucubrations on the concept of value, resellers' reliability, etc. I cannot change resellers, because this isn't a "general purpose" kind of sw, but a very vertical one and (for some reasons it's not worth explaining here) I must go through them. I just need to prevent the "we sold 2 copies, here's your share [bwahaha we sold 10]" scenario.

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• JustMock and Moles – A short overview for TDD alpha geeks

  - by RoyOsherove

  People have been lurking near my house, asking me to write something about Moles and JustMock, so I’ll try to be as objective as possible, taking in the fact that I work at Typemock. If I were NOT working at Typemock I’d write: JustMock JustMock tries to be Typemock at so many levels it’s not even funny. Technically they work the same and the API almost looks like it’s a search and replace work based on the Isolator API (awesome compliment!), but JustMock still has too many growing pains and bugs to be usable. Also, JustMock is missing alot of the legacy abilities such as Non public faking, faking all types and various other things that are really needed in real legacy code. Biggest thing (in terms of isolation integration) is that it does not integrate with other profilers such as coverage, NCover etc.) When JustMock comes out of beta, I feel that it should cost about half as Isolator costs, as it currently provides about half the abilities. Moles Moles is an addon of Pex and was originally only intended to work within the Pex environment. It started as a research project and now it’s a power-tool for VS (so it’s a separate install) Now it’s it’s own little stubbing framework. It’s not really an Isolation framework in the classic sense, because it does not provide any kind of API built in to verify object interactions. You have to use manual flags all on your own to do that. It generates two types of classes per assembly: Manual Stubs(just like you’d hand code them) and Mole classes. Each Mole class is a special API to change and break the behavior that the corresponding type. so MDateTime is how you change behavior for DateTime. In that sense the API is al over the place, and it can become highly unreadable and unmentionable over time in your test. Also, the Moles API isn’t really designed to deal with real Legacy code. It only deals with public types and methods. anything internal or private is ignored and you can’t change its behavior. You also can’t control static constructors. That takes about 95% of legacy scenarios out of the picture if that’s what you’re trying to use it for. Personally, I found it hard to get used to the idea of two parallel APIs for different abilities, and when to choose which. and I know this stuff. I would expect more usability from the API to make it more widely used. I don’t think that Moles in planning to go that route. Publishing it as an Isolation framework is really an afterthought of a tool that was design with a specific task in mind, and generic Isolation isn’t it. it’s only hope is DEQ – a simple code example that shows a simple Isolation API built on the Moles generic engine. Moles can and should be used for very simple cases of detouring functionality such a simple static methods or interfaces and virtual functions (like rhinomock and MOQ do).   Oh, Wait. Ah, good thing I work at Typemock. I won’t write all that. I’ll just write: JustMock and Moles are great tools that enlarge the market space for isolation related technologies, and they prove that the idea of productivity and unit testing can go hand in hand and get people hooked. I look forward to compete with them at this growing market.

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• Easily Add Facebook Chat to Pidgin

  - by Matthew Guay

  Want to keep in touch with your Facebook friends throughout the day?  Here we’ll show you how to easily add Facebook chat to the popular multi-protocol chat client Pidgin. Facebook has recently added support for XMPP chat, which means you can easily add it to popular chat clients such as Pidgin.  Previously you could only add Facebook chat to Pidgin through a plug-in that didn’t always work correctly.  Here we’ll walk you through setting up your Facebook account in Pidgin. Getting Started First, make sure you have a username for your Facebook account (link below).  This is a relatively new feature for Facebook, so if you’ve had your account for a while you may need to choose one.    If you already have one, you should see it listed instead. Now, open Pidgin, and click Manage Accounts. Click Add… Then select XMPP from the Protocol list. Now, enter your Facebook username without the facebook.com part (e.g your.facebook.username, not http://www.facebook.com/your.user.name).  Then, enter chat.facebook.com for the Domain, and enter your standard Facebook password.  You can check the “Remember password” box if you’d like Pidgin to automatically sign in to Facebook chat. Now, click on the Advanced tab, and uncheck the “Require SSL/TLS” box.  Also, make sure the Connect port is 5222.  Click Add, and your Facebook account is added to Pidgin. Now Facebook will show up in your list of accounts, with the username [email protected]. Your Facebook friends will show up directly in your Buddy list, complete with their full name and Facebook profile picture.  Any users that are not in a group will show under your standard list, while ones in a Facebook group will be shown in a separate group.  You can move which groups your Facebook friends show up in, just like you can with other chat contacts.   And no matter if your friend is logged in on the standard Facebook website or through another chat application, it will work the same as always.   This is a great way to keep in touch with your Facebook friends throughout the day.  If you like Facebook chat and already use Pidgin, now you can keep from switching between programs and just chat with all your friends from a central location. Links: Download Pidgin Set your Facebook username Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips The How-To Geek is No Longer on FacebookWin a Free iPod Touch in the How-To Geek Facebook Giveaway!Block Those Irritating Facebook Quiz & Application MessagesPut Your Pidgin Buddy List into the Windows Vista SidebarHow to Lock Down Your Facebook Account TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI Integrate Twitter and Delicious and Make Life Easier Design Your Web Pages Using the Golden Ratio Worldwide Growth of the Internet How to Find Your Mac Address Use My TextTools to Edit and Organize Text

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• POP Forums v9 Beta 1 for ASP.NET MVC 3 posted to CodePlex!

  - by Jeff

  As promised, I posted a beta build of my forum app for ASP.NET MVC 3. Get the new goodies here: http://popforums.codeplex.com/releases/view/58228 This is the first beta for the ASP.NET MVC 3 version of POP Forums. It is nearly feature complete, and ready for testing and feedback. For previous release notes, look here, here and here.Check out the live preview: http://preview.popforums.com/ForumsSetup instructions are on the home page of this project. The new hotness in the beta, or what has been done since the last preview: All views converted to use Razor E-mail subscription/notification of new posts New post indicators/mark read buttons Permalinks to posts Jump to newest post (from new post indicators) Recent topics Favorite topics Moderator functions for topics (pin/close/delete, plus move and rename) Search, ported from v8. Not a ton of optimization here, or new unit testing, but the old version worked pretty well User posts (topics the user posted in) Forgot password Vanity items (signatures and avatars) Hide vanity items per user preference Some minor data caching where appropriate A little bit of UI refinement Lots-o-bug fixes Lots-o-unit tests What's next? The plan between now and the next beta is as follows: Continue working through features/tasks, and fix bugs as they're reported Integrate the forum into a real, production site Refine the UI Refactor as much as possible... the code organization is not entirely logical in some places After the second beta, a release candidate will follow, with a real "final" release after that. Subsequent releases should come relatively frequently and without a lot of risk. The trick in building this thing has been that it mostly tossed the previous WebForms version, which was all full of crusties. The time table for this is a little harder to pin down, as day jobs and families will have their effect. Other notes Refactoring will be a priority. As the features of MVC have evolved, so have my desires to use it in a fashion that makes things clear and easy to follow. I don't even know if anyone will ever start mucking around in the code, but on the off chance they do, I'd like what they find to not suck. Other nice-to-haves are builds to target Windows Azure and SQL CE. A nice setup UI would be super too. I think the ASP.NET MVC world has gone long enough without a decent forum.The biggest challenge that I've found is making the forum something that can be dropped in any app. While it does rope its views into an area, areas are mostly just routing details. I haven't thought of a clever way yet to limit dependency injection, for example, to just the forum bits. I mean, everyone should be using Ninject, but how realistic is that? ;)How much time and effort should you spend on POP Forums in its current state? Change is inevitable, but at this point I'm reasonably committed to not changing the database schema. I really think it will stay as-is. All bets are off for the various interfaces throughout the app, but the data should generally resist change. It's not even that different from v8, which was one of the original goals because I didn't want to rewrite SQL or introduce a new ORM or whatever. My point is that if you wanted to build a site around this today, even though it's not entirely functional, I think it's low risk in terms of data loss. I can't vouch for whether or not you know what you're doing.I've been having some chats with people lately about quoting posts, and honestly there has to be something better and straight forward. That continues to be a holy grail of mine, and some day, I hope to find it.Enjoy... it's starting to feel more real every day!

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• jQuery Context Menu Plugin and Capturing Right-Click

  - by Ben Griswold

  I was thrilled to find Cory LaViska’s jQuery Context Menu Plugin a few months ago. In very little time, I was able to integrate the context menu with the jQuery Treeview.  I quickly had a really pretty user interface which took full advantage of limited real estate.  And guess what.  As promised, the plugin worked in Chrome, Safari 3, IE 6/7/8, Firefox 2/3 and Opera 9.5.  Everything was perfect and I shipped to the Integration Environment. One thing kept bugging though – right clicks aren’t the standard in a web environment. Sure, when one hovers over the treeview node, the mouse changed from an arrow to a pointer, but without help text most users will certainly left-click rather than right. As I was already doubting the design decision, we did some Mac testing.  The context menu worked in Firefox but not Safari.  Damn.  That’s when I started digging into the Madness of Javascript Mouse Events.  Don’t tell, but it’s complicated.  About as close as one can get to capture the right-click mouse event on all major browsers on Windows and Mac is this: if (event.which == null) /* IE case */ button= (event.button < 2) ? "LEFT" : ((event.button == 4) ? "MIDDLE" : "RIGHT"); else /* All others */ button= (event.which < 2) ? "LEFT" : ((event.which == 2) ? "MIDDLE" : "RIGHT"); Yikes.  The content menu code was simply checking if event.button == 2.  No problem.  Cory offers a jQuery Right Click Plugin which I’m sure works for windows but probably not the Mac either.  (Please note I haven’t verified this.) Anyway, I decided to address my UI design concern and the Safari Mac issue in one swoop.  I decided to make the context menu respond to any mouse click event.  This didn’t take much – especially after seeing how Bill Beckelman updated the library to recognize the left click. First, I added an AnyClick option to the library defaults: // Any click may trigger the dropdown and that's okay // See Javascript Madness: Mouse Events – http: //unixpapa.com/js/mouse.html if (o.anyClick == undefined) o.anyClick = false; And then I trigger the context menu dropdown based on the following conditional: if (evt.button == 2 || o.anyClick) { Nothing tricky about that, right?  Finally, I updated my menu setup to include the AnyClick value, if true: $('.member').contextMenu({ menu: 'memberContextMenu', anyClick: true },             function (action, el, pos) {                 … Now the context menu works in “all” environments if you left, right or even middle click.  Download jQuery Context Menu Plugin for Any Click *Opera 9.5 has an option to allow scripts to detect right-clicks, but it is disabled by default. Furthermore, Opera still doesn’t allow JavaScript to disable the browser’s default context menu which causes a usability conflict.

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• Getting a Database into Source Control

  - by Grant Fritchey

  For any number of reasons, from simple auditing, to change tracking, to automated deployment, to integration with application development processes, you’re going to want to place your database into source control. Using Red Gate SQL Source Control this process is extremely simple. SQL Source Control works within your SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) interface.  This means you can work with your databases in any way that you’re used to working with them. If you prefer scripts to using the GUI, not a problem. If you prefer using the GUI to having to learn T-SQL, again, that’s fine. After installing SQL Source Control, this is what you’ll see when you open SSMS:   SQL Source Control is now a direct piece of the SSMS environment. The key point initially is that I currently don’t have a database selected. You can even see that in the SQL Source Control window where it shows, in red, “No database selected – select a database in Object Explorer.” If I expand my Databases list in the Object Explorer, you’ll be able to immediately see which databases have been integrated with source control and which have not. There are visible differences between the databases as you can see here:   To add a database to source control, I first have to select it. For this example, I’m going to add the AdventureWorks2012 database to an instance of the SVN source control software (I’m using uberSVN). When I click on the AdventureWorks2012 database, the SQL Source Control screen changes:   I’m going to need to click on the “Link database to source control” text which will open up a window for connecting this database to the source control system of my choice.  You can pick from the default source control systems on the left, or define one of your own. I also have to provide the connection string for the location within the source control system where I’ll be storing my database code. I set these up in advance. You’ll need two. One for the main set of scripts and one for special scripts called Migrations that deal with different kinds of changes between versions of the code. Migrations help you solve problems like having to create or modify data in columns as part of a structural change. I’ll talk more about them another day. Finally, I have to determine if this is an isolated environment that I’m going to be the only one use, a dedicated database. Or, if I’m sharing the database in a shared environment with other developers, a shared database.  The main difference is, under a dedicated database, I will need to regularly get any changes that other developers have made from source control and integrate it into my database. While, under a shared database, all changes for all developers are made at the same time, which means you could commit other peoples work without proper testing. It all depends on the type of environment you work within. But, when it’s all set, it will look like this: SQL Source Control will compare the results between the empty folders in source control and the database, AdventureWorks2012. You’ll get a report showing exactly the list of differences and you can choose which ones will get checked into source control. Each of the database objects is scripted individually. You’ll be able to modify them later in the same way. Here’s the list of differences for my new database:   You can select/deselect all the objects or each object individually. You also get a report showing the differences between what’s in the database and what’s in source control. If there was already a database in source control, you’d only see changes to database objects rather than every single object. You can see that the database objects can be sorted by name, by type, or other choices. I’m going to add a comment such as “Initial creation of database in source control.” And then click on the Commit button which will put all the objects in my database into the source control system. That’s all it takes to get the objects into source control initially. Now is when things can get fun with breaking changes to code, automated deployments, unit testing and all the rest.

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• A Letter for Your CEO About Social Marketing’s Future

  - by Mike Stiles

  We’ll leave it to you to decide if or how to sneak this in front of them. Dear Chief: This social marketing thing looks serious. It’s gone beyond having a Facebook page and putting our info and a few promotions on it. It’s seriously disrupting how we’ve always done marketing. And its implications reach well beyond marketing. My concern is that we stay positioned ahead of these changes and are prepared to embrace, adapt and capitalize on these new capabilities as opposed to spending valuable time and money trying to shoehorn social into “the way we’ve always done things.” I’m also concerned about what happens if our competition executes on this before we do. The days of being able to impose our ad messaging on the masses to great effect are numbered. The public now has the tech tools and ability to filter out things that are irrelevant to them. And frankly, spending ad dollars to reach unlikely prospects isn’t the most efficient path for us either. Today, our customers have to genuinely love what we do. That starts with a renewed, customer-centric focus on the quality and usability of our product. If their experience with it is bad, they now have very connected, loud voices that will testify against us. We can’t afford that. Next, their customer service experience, before and after the sale, has to be a pleasant surprise. That requires truly knowing our customers and listening to them. Lip service won’t cut it. We have to get and use as much data on the customer as possible, interact with them wherever they want to interact with us, and commit to impressing them. If we do, they’ll get out there and advertise for us. Since peer-to-peer recommendation is the most effective marketing, that’s money in the bank. Social marketing is about forming relationships, same as how individuals use social. We want them to know us, trust us, and get real value from knowing us. That requires honesty and transparency that before now might have been uncomfortable. I propose that if we clearly make everything we do about our customers’ wants and needs, we’ll have nothing to hide. It will solidify customer loyalty, retention, and thus, revenue. These things can’t happen without certain tools and structural changes in the organization. There are social cloud platforms that integrate social management into all of the necessary areas: CRM, customer service, sales, marketing automation, content marketing, ecommerce, etc. This is will give us a real-time, complete view of the customer so their every interaction with us is attentive, personalized, accurate, relevant, and satisfying. Without it, we’re just a collage of disjointed systems, each gathering data that informs only its own departmental silo. The customer is voluntarily giving us everything we need to know about them to win them over, but we have to start listening and putting the pieces together. There’s still time. Brands are coming to terms with this transition to the socially enabled enterprise, but so far they aren’t moving very fast. Like us, they’re dealing with long-entrenched technologies and processes. CMO’s and CIO’s have to form new partnerships. Content operations have to be initiated and properly staffed and funded. Various departments must be able to utilize interconnected big data. What will separate the winners from the losers? Well chief, that’s why I’m writing you. It’s in your hands. These initiatives won’t get the kind of priority and seriousness that inspire actual deadlines & action unless they come from your desk. You have to be the champion of customer centricity. You have to be our change agent. You have to be our innovator. Otherwise, it’s going to be business as usual, and that puts us in a very vulnerable place. Sincerely, Your Team @mikestilesPhoto: Gary Scott, stock.xchng

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• Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge: TEAM Informatics

  - by Kellsey Ruppel

  Originally posted by Jake Kuramoto on The Apps Lab blog. Here comes another Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge entry, this one courtesy of TEAM Informatics (@teaminformatics). As their name suggests, their entry was a true team effort, featuring the work of Jon Chartrand, Deepthi Sanikommu, Dmitry Shtulman, Raghavendra Joshi, and Daniel Stitely with Wayne Boerger doing the presentation honors. Speaking of the presentation, Wayne’s laptop wouldn’t project onto the plasma we had in the OTN Lounge, but luckily, Noel (@noelportugal) had his iPad and VGA dongle in his backpack of goodies, so they were able to improvise by using the iPad camera to capture Wayne’s demo and project the video to the plasma. Code will find a way. Anyway, TEAM built Do Over, an integration with Atlassian’s JIRA, coincidentally something I’ve chatted with Rich (@rmanalan) about in the past. The basic idea is simple; integrate JIRA issues with Oracle Social Network to expand and centralize the conversation around issue resolution. In Dmitry’s words: We were able to put together a team on fairly short notice and, after batting a few ideas around, decided to pursue an integration with JIRA, an issue and project tracking tool used in-house at TEAM.  After getting to know WebCenter Social, we saw immediate benefits that a JIRA integration could bring, primarily due to the fact that JIRA only allows assignment of an issue to one person at a time.  Integrating Social would allow collaboration and issue resolution to happen right from the JIRA Issue interface. TEAM tackled a very common pain point among developers, i.e. including everyone who needs to be involved in issue resolution into a single thread. If you’ve ever fixed bugs or participated in that process, you’ll know that not everyone has access to the issue resolution system, which makes consolidating discussion time-consuming and fragmented. Why? Because we typically use email as the tool for collaboration. Oracle Social Network allows for all parties involved to work in a single, private and secure conversation, and through its RESTful Public API, information from external systems like JIRA can be brought in for context. TEAM only had time to address half the solution, but given more time, I’m sure they would have made the integration bidirectional, allowing for relevant commentary to be pushed back to JIRA, closing the loop. Here are some screenshot of their integration. #gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } When Oracle Social Network is released, TEAM will have something they use internally to work on issues, and maybe they’ll even productize their work and add it to the Atlassian Marketplace so that other JIRA users can benefit from the combination of Oracle Social Network and JIRA. Thanks to everyone at TEAM for participating in our challenge. We hope they had a good experience. Look for the details of the other entries this week. Be sure to check out a full recap from Dmitry over on the TEAM blog.

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• I spy a Live Framework portal

  - by jamiet

  Those that have followed my blogs for a while may know that I have a slightly banal interest in Windows Live and, more specifically, the Live Services developer platform'; if that doesn’t sound interesting to you then stop reading now. My interest mainly stems from the Live Mesh technology that was announced a couple of years ago and the data synchronisation platform API that underpins it; that platform is called the Live Framework or LiveFX for short. At the Professional Developer’s Conference (PDC) 2008 Microsoft made LiveFX available to the public as a Tech Preview and I spent some time learning to use it and also built a few test apps on it too. In August 2009 an announcement came that that tech preview was getting shut down: "At the Professional Developer Conference 2008, we gave the developer community access to the technical preview of the Live Framework. The Live Framework is core to our vision of providing you with a consistent programming interface. Now we are working to integrate existing services, controls and the Live Framework into the next release of Windows Live. Your feedback continues to help us build the best possible offerings for Windows Live users, for you and for your customers. " Since then news on LiveFX has disappeared save for a throwaway session at PDC09 and I was hoping that news was going to appear at this week’s MIX conference but nothing was forthcoming. Instead though today I stumbled upon an unannounced portal for future LiveFX applications on Microsoft’s Azure portal at http://live.azure.com. Check it out: I consider this to be very good news. This Azure portal was built after the LiveFX tech preview was decommissioned so seeing Live Services existing so prominently alongside Microsoft’s other cloud efforts like Windows Azure and SQL Azure vindicates my early investment in the platform and gives me hope that we’re going to see something get released very very soon. I believe that the potential uses for this platform are extremely compelling and I’m looking forward to trying some out in the near future. I am also expecting LiveFX to have a heavy dependency on the OData protocol that I talked about yesterday in my post OData.org updated - gives clues about future sql azure enhancements so you can tell where my interest in that stems from. In case you’re wondering the projects that you see listed above (Basic List Sample, JT-proj etc…) are projects that I built on the old Tech Preview platform so clearly that stuff has not gone for good which is also good news; not just because it means I’ll have access to the code I wrote before but I also assume it means that LiveFX won’t have changed much since its tech preview incarnation. I know there are other LiveFX buffs out there and hopefully this news reaches some of them. If you are one of them the please put a comment below and let me know your thoughts! @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• View Mobile Websites in Windows with Safari 4 Developer Tools

  - by Matthew Guay

  Want to try out mobile websites designed for the iPhone and other mobile devices on your PC?  Safari 4 for Windows lets you do this easily with their developer tools. By default, Safari will show standard desktop websites.  But by making a simple change, you can switch it to work like Safari Mobile on the iPhone or iPod Touch. Getting Started First make sure you have Safari 4 for Windows installed.  You can download Safari directly (link below) and install it as usual.   Or if you already have another Apple program installed, such as QuickTime or iTunes, then you can install it from Apple Software update.  Simply enter apple software update in the Start menu search box. And then select Safari 4 from the list of new software available.  Click Install to automatically download and install Safari. Accept the license Agreement, and then Safari will automatically install. Once this is finished, Safari will be ready to use. View Mobile Sites in Safari First, we need to enable the developer tools.  Click the gear icon on the toolbar, and select Preferences. Click the Advanced tab, and then check the box that says “Show Develop menu in menu bar”. Once you’ve closed your settings box, click the page icon, select Develop, then User Agent, and then choose one of the Mobile Safari settings.  In our test we chose Mobile Safari 3.1.2 – iPhone. To make your browser emulate a mobile device better, you can hide the bookmarks and tab bar to have a more streamlined interface. Click the Gear icon, and select “Hide Bookmarks Bar”, and then repeat and click “Hide Tab Bar”. You can also shrink your window to be closer to the size of a mobile device screen.  Once you’ve done these things, Safari should look similar to this screenshot.  Here we have loaded Google.com, and you can see it in its iPhone-style interface. Simply enter any website into the address bar, and it will load in its mobile interface if it has one.  Here is Google’s other mobile offerings, right inside Windows. Gmail loads messages with the default iPhone interface. One especially interesting mobile site is Apple’s online iPhone User Guide.  When loaded in Safari with the iPhone setting, it loads with a very nice mobile UI that works just like an iPhone app.  In fact, you can even click and drag to scroll, just like you would with your finger on an iPhone. Conclusion Even if you do not have a Smartphone, you can still preview what websites will look like on them with this trick. Not all sites will work of course, but it’s fun to play around with different sites that have mobile versions. Links: Safari 4 Download Apple iPhone online user guide Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Make Safari Stop Crashing Every 20 Seconds on Windows VistaCustomize Safari for Windows ToolbarSave Screen Space by Hiding the Bookmarks Toolbar in Safari for WindowsEdit Text in a Webpage with Internet Explorer 8Keep Websites From Using Tiny Fonts in Safari TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Windows Media Player 12: Tweak Video & Sound with Playback Enhancements Own a cell phone, or does a cell phone own you? Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI Integrate Twitter and Delicious and Make Life Easier Design Your Web Pages Using the Golden Ratio Worldwide Growth of the Internet

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• Bancassurers Seek IT Solutions to Support Distribution Model

  - by [email protected]

  Oracle Insurance's director of marketing for EMEA, John Sinclair, attended the third annual Bancassurance Forum in Vienna last month. He reports that the outlook for bancassurance in EMEA remains positive, despite changing market conditions that have led a number of bancassurers to re-examine their business models. Vienna is at the crossroads between mature Western European markets, where bancassurance is now an established best practice, and more recently tapped Eastern European markets that offer the greatest growth potential. Attendance at the Bancassurance Forum was good, with 87 bancassurance attendees, most in very senior positions in the industry. The conference provided the chance for a lively discussion among bancassurers looking to keep abreast of the latest trends in one of Europe's most successful distribution models for insurance. Even under normal business conditions, there is a great demand for best practice sharing within the industry as there is no standard formula for success.  Each company has to chart its own course and choose the strategies for sales, products development and the structure of ownership that make sense for their business, and as soon as they get it right bancassurers need to adapt the mix to keep up with ever changing regulations, completion and economic conditions.  To optimize the overall relationship between banking and insurance for mutual benefit, a balance needs to be struck between potentially conflicting interests. The banking side of the house is looking for greater wallet share from its customers and the ability to increase profitability by bundling insurance products with higher margins - especially in light of the recent economic crisis, where margins for traditional banking products are low and completion high. The insurance side of the house seeks access to new customers through a complementary distribution channel that is efficient and cost effective. To make the relationship work, it is important that both sides of the same house forge strategic and long term relationships - irrespective of whether the underlying business model is supported by a distribution agreement, cross-ownership or other forms of capital structure. However, this third annual conference was not held under normal business conditions. The conference took place in challenging, yet interesting times. ING's forced spinoff of its insurance operations under pressure by the EU Commission and the troubling losses suffered by Allianz as a result of the Dresdner bank sale were fresh in everyone's mind. One year after markets crashed, there is now enough hindsight to better understand the implications for bancassurance and best practices that are emerging to deal with them. The loan-driven business that has been crucial to bancassurance up till now evaporated during the crisis, leaving bancassurers grappling with how to change their overall strategy from a loan-driven to a more diversified model.  Attendees came to the conference to learn what strategies were working - not only to cope with the market shift, but to take advantage of it as markets pick up. Over the course of 14 customer case studies and numerous analyst presentations, topical issues ranging from getting the business model right to the impact on capital structuring of Solvency II were debated openly. Many speakers alluded to the need to specifically design insurance products with the banking distribution channel in mind, which brings with it specific requirements such as a high degree of standardization to achieve efficiency and reduce training costs. Moreover, products must be engineered to suit end consumers who consider banks a one-stop shop. The importance of IT to the successful implementation of bancassurance strategies was a theme that surfaced regularly throughout the conference.  The cross-selling opportunity - that will ultimately determine the success or failure of any bancassurance model - can only be fully realized through a flexible IT architecture that enables banking and insurance processes to be integrated and presented to front-line staff through a common interface. However, the reality is that most bancassurers have legacy IT systems, which constrain the businesses' ability to implement new strategies to maintaining competitiveness in turbulent times. My colleague Glenn Lottering, who chaired the conference, believes that the primary opportunities for bancassurers to extract value from their IT infrastructure investments lie in distribution management, risk management with the advent of Solvency II, and achieving operational excellence. "Oracle is ideally suited to meet the needs of bancassurance," Glenn noted, "supplying market-leading software for both banking and insurance. Oracle provides adaptive systems that let customers easily integrate hybrid business processes from both worlds while leveraging existing IT infrastructure." Overall, the consensus at the conference was that the outlook for bancassurance in EMEA remains positive, despite changing market conditions that have led a number of bancassurers to re-examine their business models. John Sinclair is marketing director for Oracle Insurance in EMEA. He has more than 20 years of experience in insurance and financial services.    

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• Introducing functional programming constructs in non-functional programming languages

  - by Giorgio

  This question has been going through my mind quite a lot lately and since I haven't found a convincing answer to it I would like to know if other users of this site have thought about it as well. In the recent years, even though OOP is still the most popular programming paradigm, functional programming is getting a lot of attention. I have only used OOP languages for my work (C++ and Java) but I am trying to learn some FP in my free time because I find it very interesting. So, I started learning Haskell three years ago and Scala last summer. I plan to learn some SML and Caml as well, and to brush up my (little) knowledge of Scheme. Well, a lot of plans (too ambitious?) but I hope I will find the time to learn at least the basics of FP during the next few years. What is important for me is how functional programming works and how / whether I can use it for some real projects. I have already developed small tools in Haskell. In spite of my strong interest for FP, I find it difficult to understand why functional programming constructs are being added to languages like C#, Java, C++, and so on. As a developer interested in FP, I find it more natural to use, say, Scala or Haskell, instead of waiting for the next FP feature to be added to my favourite non-FP language. In other words, why would I want to have only some FP in my originally non-FP language instead of looking for a language that has a better support for FP? For example, why should I be interested to have lambdas in Java if I can switch to Scala where I have much more FP concepts and access all the Java libraries anyway? Similarly: why do some FP in C# instead of using F# (to my knowledge, C# and F# can work together)? Java was designed to be OO. Fine. I can do OOP in Java (and I would like to keep using Java in that way). Scala was designed to support OOP + FP. Fine: I can use a mix of OOP and FP in Scala. Haskell was designed for FP: I can do FP in Haskell. If I need to tune the performance of a particular module, I can interface Haskell with some external routines in C. But why would I want to do OOP with just some basic FP in Java? So, my main point is: why are non-functional programming languages being extended with some functional concept? Shouldn't it be more comfortable (interesting, exciting, productive) to program in a language that has been designed from the very beginning to be functional or multi-paradigm? Don't different programming paradigms integrate better in a language that was designed for it than in a language in which one paradigm was only added later? The first explanation I could think of is that, since FP is a new concept (it isn't new at all, but it is new for many developers), it needs to be introduced gradually. However, I remember my switch from imperative to OOP: when I started to program in C++ (coming from Pascal and C) I really had to rethink the way in which I was coding, and to do it pretty fast. It was not gradual. So, this does not seem to be a good explanation to me. Or can it be that many non-FP programmers are not really interested in understanding and using functional programming, but they find it practically convenient to adopt certain FP-idioms in their non-FP language? IMPORTANT NOTE Just in case (because I have seen several language wars on this site): I mentioned the languages I know better, this question is in no way meant to start comparisons between different programming languages to decide which is better / worse. Also, I am not interested in a comparison of OOP versus FP (pros and cons). The point I am interested in is to understand why FP is being introduced one bit at a time into existing languages that were not designed for it even though there exist languages that were / are specifically designed to support FP.

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• Test and Report Add-on Compatibility in Firefox

  - by Asian Angel

  Now that the new version of Firefox is out you probably have a favorite extension or two that has not updated yet. You can get that extension working again, test it, and report back to Mozilla on how well it does with the Add-on Compatibility Reporter extension. Before For our example we chose a great extension that unfortunately has not been updated yet. As you can see here Firefox is refusing to let the extension install. After As soon as you install Add-on Compatibility Reporter you will be presented with an information page on how the extension works and what you can do with it. You should definitely take a moment to read this as it is very helpful. After trying our non-compatible extension again we were able to proceed with the install process. Notice at the bottom that “compatibility checking” has been overridden. Success! As soon as we restarted our browser it was easy to see the “non-compatible icon” in the “Add-ons Manager Window”…but the extension did install though (terrific!). Clicking on the extension’s entry will reveal a new button in the lower right corner. Using the “Compatibility Drop-Down Menu” you can report if the extension is working as well as before or if it is actually having problems. The extension that we used for our example had no problems whatsoever so good news there. Whichever option you choose you will be presented with a small “Report Window” with information about the extension, your browser’s version number, and your operating system. Click “Submit Report” to send it on its’ way. You will see a confirmation message letting you know that your report was successfully submitted. While the extension itself has not been altered in any form at least you have it working again and have helped verify whether it still works well or not. Notice the “notation” present now in place of the “Compatibility Button” that lets you know that you have already taken care of that particular extension. Looking great… Conclusion If you have a favorite extension that you miss using in the newest release of Firefox then this is definitely an extension to add to your browser. Not only will your extension start working again but you can let Mozilla know how well it is working and (hopefully) help get the extension updated. Links Download the Add-on Compatibility Reporter extension (Mozilla Add-ons) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Firefox 3.6 Release Candidate Available, Here’s How to Fix Your Incompatible ExtensionsUsing Windows 7 or Vista Compatibility ModeMysticgeek Blog: Generate A System Health Report In VistaCheck Extension Compatibility for Upcoming Firefox ReleasesMake Safari Stop Crashing Every 20 Seconds on Windows Vista TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI Integrate Twitter and Delicious and Make Life Easier Design Your Web Pages Using the Golden Ratio Worldwide Growth of the Internet How to Find Your Mac Address Use My TextTools to Edit and Organize Text

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• Fast Data: Go Big. Go Fast.

  - by Dain C. Hansen

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 For those of you who may have missed it, today’s second full day of Oracle OpenWorld 2012 started with a rumpus. Joe Tucci, from EMC outlined the human face of big data with real examples of how big data is transforming our world. And no not the usual tried-and-true weblog examples, but real stories about taxi cab drivers in Singapore using big data to better optimize their routes as well as folks just trying to get a better hair cut. Next we heard from Thomas Kurian who talked at length about the important platform characteristics of Oracle’s Cloud and more specifically Oracle’s expanded Cloud Services portfolio. Especially interesting to our integration customers are the messaging support for Oracle’s Cloud applications. What this means is that now Oracle’s Cloud applications have a lightweight integration fabric that on-premise applications can communicate to it via REST-APIs using Oracle SOA Suite. It’s an important element to our strategy at Oracle that supports this idea that whether your requirements are for private or public, Oracle has a solution in the Cloud for all of your applications and we give you more deployment choice than any vendor. If this wasn’t enough to get the juices flowing, later that morning we heard from Hasan Rizvi who outlined in his Fusion Middleware session the four most important enterprise imperatives: Social, Mobile, Cloud, and a brand new one: Fast Data. Today, Rizvi made an important step in the definition of this term to explain that he believes it’s a convergence of four essential technology elements: Event Processing for event filtering, business rules – with Oracle Event Processing Data Transformation and Loading - with Oracle Data Integrator Real-time replication and integration – with Oracle GoldenGate Analytics and data discovery – with Oracle Business Intelligence Each of these four elements can be considered (and architect-ed) together on a single integrated platform that can help customers integrate any type of data (structured, semi-structured) leveraging new styles of big data technologies (MapReduce, HDFS, Hive, NoSQL) to process more volume and variety of data at a faster velocity with greater results.  Fast data processing (and especially real-time) has always been our credo at Oracle with each one of these products in Fusion Middleware. For example, Oracle GoldenGate continues to be made even faster with the recent 11g R2 Release of Oracle GoldenGate which gives us some even greater optimization to Oracle Database with Integrated Capture, as well as some new heterogeneity capabilities. With Oracle Data Integrator with Big Data Connectors, we’re seeing much improved performance by running MapReduce transformations natively on Hadoop systems. And with Oracle Event Processing we’re seeing some remarkable performance with customers like NTT Docomo. Check out their upcoming session at Oracle OpenWorld on Wednesday to hear more how this customer is using Event processing and Big Data together. If you missed any of these sessions and keynotes, not to worry. There's on-demand versions available on the Oracle OpenWorld website. You can also checkout our upcoming webcast where we will outline some of these new breakthroughs in Data Integration technologies for Big Data, Cloud, and Real-time in more details. /* 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-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}

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• Functional programming constructs in non-functional programming languages

  - by Giorgio

  This question has been going through my mind quite a lot lately and since I haven't found a convincing answer to it I would like to know if other users of this site have thought about it as well. In the recent years, even though OOP is still the most popular programming paradigm, functional programming is getting a lot of attention. I have only used OOP languages for my work (C++ and Java) but I am trying to learn some FP in my free time because I find it very interesting. So, I started learning Haskell three years ago and Scala last summer. I plan to learn some SML and Caml as well, and to brush up my (little) knowledge of Scheme. Well, a lot of plans (too ambitious?) but I hope I will find the time to learn at least the basics of FP during the next few years. What is important for me is how functional programming works and how / whether I can use it for some real projects. I have already developed small tools in Haskell. In spite of my strong interest for FP, I find it difficult to understand why functional programming constructs are being added to languages like C#, Java, C++, and so on. As a developer interested in FP, I find it more natural to use, say, Scala or Haskell, instead of waiting for the next FP feature to be added to my favourite non-FP language. In other words, why would I want to have only some FP in my originally non-FP language instead of looking for a language that has a better support for FP? For example, why should I be interested to have lambdas in Java if I can switch to Scala where I have much more FP concepts and access all the Java libraries anyway? Similarly: why do some FP in C# instead of using F# (to my knowledge, C# and F# can work together)? Java was designed to be OO. Fine. I can do OOP in Java (and I would like to keep using Java in that way). Scala was designed to support OOP + FP. Fine: I can use a mix of OOP and FP in Scala. Haskell was designed for FP: I can do FP in Haskell. If I need to tune the performance of a particular module, I can interface Haskell with some external routines in C. But why would I want to do OOP with just some basic FP in Java? So, my main point is: why are non-functional programming languages being extended with some functional concept? Shouldn't it be more comfortable (interesting, exciting, productive) to program in a language that has been designed from the very beginning to be functional or multi-paradigm? Don't different programming paradigms integrate better in a language that was designed for it than in a language in which one paradigm was only added later? The first explanation I could think of is that, since FP is a new concept (it isn't new at all, but it is new for many developers), it needs to be introduced gradually. However, I remember my switch from imperative to OOP: when I started to program in C++ (coming from Pascal and C) I really had to rethink the way in which I was coding, and to do it pretty fast. It was not gradual. So, this does not seem to be a good explanation to me. Also, I asked myself if my impression is just plainly wrong due to lack of knowledge. E.g., do C# and C++11 support FP as extensively as, say, Scala or Caml do? In this case, my question would be simply non-existent. Or can it be that many non-FP programmers are not really interested in using functional programming, but they find it practically convenient to adopt certain FP-idioms in their non-FP language? IMPORTANT NOTE Just in case (because I have seen several language wars on this site): I mentioned the languages I know better, this question is in no way meant to start comparisons between different programming languages to decide which is better / worse. Also, I am not interested in a comparison of OOP versus FP (pros and cons). The point I am interested in is to understand why FP is being introduced one bit at a time into existing languages that were not designed for it even though there exist languages that were / are specifically designed to support FP.

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• SQL Server source control from Visual Studio

  - by David Atkinson

  Developers have long since had to context switch between two IDEs, Visual Studio for application code development and SQL Server Management Studio for database development. While this is accepted, especially given the richness of the database development feature set in SSMS, loading a separate tool can seem a little overkill. This is where SQL Connect comes in. This is an add-in to Visual Studio that provides a connected development experience for the SQL Server developer. Connected database development involves modifying a development sandbox database, as opposed to offline development, where SQL text files are modified independently of the database. One of the main complaints of Data Dude (VS DBPro) is that it enforces the offline approach. This gripe is what SQL Connect addresses. If you don't already use SQL Source Control, you can get up and running with SQL Connect by adding a new project to your Visual Studio solution as follows: Then choose your existing development database and you're ready to go. If you already use SQL Source Control, you will need to link SQL Connect to your existing database scripts folder repository, so SQL Connect and SQL Source Control can be used collaboratively (note that SQL Source Control v.3.0.9.18 or later is required). Locate the repository (this can be found in the Setup tab in SQL Source Control). .and create a working folder for it (here I'm using TortoiseSVN). Back in Visual Studio, locate the SQL Connect panel (in the View menu if it hasn't auto loaded) and select Import SQL Source Control project Locate your working folder and click Import. This creates a Red Gate database project under your solution: From here you can modify your development database, and manage your changes in source control. To associate your development database with the project, right click on the project node, select Properties, set the database and Save. Now you're ready to make some changes. Locate the object you'd like to modify in the Solution Explorer, and double click it to invoke a query window or table designer. You also have the option to edit the creation SQL directly using Edit SQL File in Project. Keeping the development database and Visual Studio project in sync is as easy as clicking on a button. One you've made your change, you can use whichever mechanism you choose to commit to source control. Here I'm using the free open-source AnkhSVN to integrate Subversion with Visual Studio. Maintaining your database in a Visual Studio solution means that you can commit database changes and application code changes in the same changeset. This is desirable if you have continuous integration set up as you want to ensure that all files related to a change are committed atomically, so you avoid an interim "broken build". More discussion on SQL Connect and its benefits can be found in the following article on Simple Talk: No More Disconnected SQL Development in Visual Studio The SQL Connect project team is currently assessing the backlog for the next development effort, and they'd appreciate your feature suggestions, as well as your votes on their suggestions site: http://redgate.uservoice.com/forums/140800-sql-connect-for-visual-studio- A 28-day free trial of SQL Connect is available from the Red Gate website. Technorati Tags: SQL Server

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• How to Set Up Your Enterprise Social Organization

  - by Mike Stiles

  The rush for business organizations to establish, grow, and adopt social was driven out of necessity and inevitability. The result, however, was a sudden, booming social presence creating touch points with customers, partners and influencers, but without any corporate social organization or structure in place to effectively manage it. Even today, many business leaders remain uncertain as to how to corral this social media thing so that it makes sense for their enterprise. Imagine their panic when they hear one of the most beneficial approaches to corporate use of social involves giving up at least some hierarchical control and empowering employees to publicly engage customers. And beyond that, they should also be empowered, regardless of their corporate status, to engage and collaborate internally, spurring “off the grid” innovation. An HBR blog points out that traditionally, enterprise organizations function from the top down, and employees work end-to-end, structured around business processes. But the social enterprise opens up structures that up to now have not exactly been embraced by turf-protecting executives and managers. The blog asks, “What if leaders could create a future where customers, associates and suppliers are no longer seen as objects in the system but as valued sources of innovation, ideas and energy?” What if indeed? The social enterprise activates internal resources without the usual obsession with position. It is the dawn of mass collaboration. That does not, however, mean this mass collaboration has to lead to uncontrolled chaos. In an extended interview with Oracle, Altimeter Group analyst Jeremiah Owyang and Oracle SVP Reggie Bradford paint a complete picture of today’s social enterprise, including internal organizational structures Altimeter Group has seen emerge. One sign of a mature social enterprise is the establishing of a social Center of Excellence (CoE), which serves as a hub for high-level social strategy, training and education, research, measurement and accountability, and vendor selection. This CoE is led by a corporate Social Strategist, most likely from a Marketing or Corporate Communications background. Reporting to them are the Community Managers, the front lines of customer interaction and engagement; business unit liaisons that coordinate the enterprise; and social media campaign/product managers, social analysts, and developers. With content rising as the defining factor for social success, Altimeter also sees a Content Strategist position emerging. Across the enterprise, Altimeter has seen 5 organizational patterns. Watching the video will give you the pros and cons of each. Decentralized - Anyone can do anything at any time on any social channel. Centralized – One central groups controls all social communication for the company. Hub and Spoke – A centralized group, but business units can operate their own social under the hub’s guidance and execution. Most enterprises are using this model. Dandelion – Each business unit develops their own social strategy & staff, has its own ability to deploy, and its own ability to engage under the central policies of the CoE. Honeycomb – Every employee can do social, but as opposed to the decentralized model, it’s coordinated and monitored on one platform. The average enterprise has a whopping 178 social accounts, nearly ¼ of which are usually semi-idle and need to be scrapped. The last thing any C-suite needs is to cope with fragmented technologies, solutions and platforms. It’s neither scalable nor strategic. The prepared, effective social enterprise has a technology partner that can quickly and holistically integrate emerging platforms and technologies, such that whatever internal social command structure you’ve set up can continue efficiently executing strategy without skipping a beat. @mikestiles

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• PHP Web Services - Nice try

  Thanks to the membership in the O'Reilly User Group Programme the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community (short: MSCC) recently received a welcome package with several book titles. Among them is the latest publication of Lorna Jane Mitchell - 'PHP Web Services: APIs for the Modern Web'. Following is the book review I put on Amazon: Nice try! Initially, I was astonished that a small book like 'PHP Web Services' would be able to cover all the interesting topics about APIs and Web Services, independently whether they are written in PHP or not. And unfortunately, the title isn't able to stand up to the readers (or at least my) expectations. Maybe as a light defense, there is no usual paragraph about the intended audience of that book, but still I have to admit that the first half (chapters 1 to 8) are well written and Lorna has her points on the various technologies. Also, the code samples in PHP are clean and easy to understand. With chapter 'Debugging Web Services' the book started to change my mind about the clarity of advice and the instructions on designing and developing good APIs. Eventually, this might be related to the fact that I'm used to other tools since years, like Telerik Fiddler as HTTP proxy in order to trace and inspect any kind of request/response handling. Including localhost monitoring, SSL certification acceptance, and the ability to debug mobile devices, especially iOS-based ones. Compared to Charles, Fiddler is available for free. What really got me off the hook is the following statement in chapter 10 about Service Type Decisions: "For users who have larger systems using technology stacks such as Java, C++, or .NET, it may be easier for them to integrate with a SOAP service." WHAT? A couple of pages earlier the author recommends to stay away from 'old-fashioned' API styles like SOAP (if possible). And on top of that I wonder why there are tons of documentation towards development of RESTful Web Services based on WebAPI. The ASP.NET stack clearly moves away from SOAP to JSON and REST since years! Honestly, as a software developer on the .NET stack this leaves a mixed feeling after all. As for the remaining chapters I simply consider them as 'blah blah' without any real value and lots of theoretical advice. Related to the chapter 13 about 'Documentation', I just had the 'pleasure' to write a C#-based client against a Java-based SOAP Web Service. Personally, I take the WSDL as the master reference in the first place and Visual Studio generates all the stub types involved in the communication. During the implementation and testing I came across a 'java.lang.NullPointerException' in various methods and for various method parameters. The WSDL and the generated types were declared as Nullable, so nothing to worry about, or? Well, I logged in a support ticket, and guess what was the response to that scenario? "The service definition in the WSDL is wrong, please refer to the documentation in order to use the methods and parameters correctly" - No comment! Lorna's title is a quick read and in some areas she has good advice on designing and implementing Web Services and APIs. But roughly 100 pages aren't enough to cover a vast topic like that. After all, nice try and I'm looking forward to an improved second edition. Honestly, I never thought that I would come across a poor review. In general, it's a good book but it clearly has a lack of depth, the PHP code samples are incomplete (closing tags missing), and there are too many assumptions and theoretical statements.

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• List of available whitepapers as at 04 May 2010

  - by Anthony Shorten

  The following table lists the whitepapers available, from My Oracle Support, for any Oracle Utilities Application Framework based product: KB Id Document Title Contents 559880.1 ConfigLab Design Guidelines Whitepaper outlining how to design and implement a ConfigLab solution. 560367.1 Technical Best Practices for Oracle Utilities Application Framework Based Products Whitepaper summarizing common technical best practices used by partners, implementation teams and customers.  560382.1 Performance Troubleshooting Guideline Series A set of whitepapers on tracking performance at each tier in the framework. The individual whitepapers are as follows: Concepts - General Concepts and Performance Troublehooting processes Client Troubleshooting - General troubleshooting of the browser client with common issues and resolutions. Network Troubleshooting - General troubleshooting of the network with common issues and resolutions. Web Application Server Troubleshooting - General troubleshooting of the Web Application Server with common issues and resolutions. Server Troubleshooting - General troubleshooting of the Operating system with common issues and resolutions. Database Troubleshooting - General troubleshooting of the database with common issues and resolutions. Batch Troubleshooting - General troubleshooting of the background processing component of the product with common issues and resolutions. 560401.1 Software Configuration Management Series  A set of whitepapers on how to manage customization (code and data) using the tools provided with the framework. The individual whitepapers are as follows: Concepts - General concepts and introduction. Environment Management - Principles and techniques for creating and managing environments. Version Management - Integration of Version control and version management of configuration items.  Release Management - Packaging configuration items into a release.  Distribution - Distribution and installation of  releases across environments  Change Management - Generic change management processes for product implementations. Status Accounting -Status reporting techniques using product facilities.  Defect Management -Generic defect management processes for product implementations. Implementing Single Fixes - Discussion on the single fix architecture and how to use it in an implementation. Implementing Service Packs - Discussion on the service packs and how to use them in an implementation. Implementing Upgrades - Discussion on the the upgrade process and common techniques for minimizing the impact of upgrades. 773473.1 Oracle Utilities Application Framework Security Overview Whitepaper summarizing the security facilities in the framework. Updated for OUAF 4.0.1 774783.1 LDAP Integration for Oracle Utilities Application Framework based products Whitepaper summarizing how to integrate an external LDAP based security repository with the framework.  789060.1 Oracle Utilities Application Framework Integration Overview Whitepaper summarizing all the various common integration techniques used with the product (with case studies). 799912.1 Single Sign On Integration for Oracle Utilities Application Framework based products Whitepaper outlining a generic process for integrating an SSO product with the framework. 807068.1 Oracle Utilities Application Framework Architecture Guidelines This whitepaper outlines the different variations of architecture that can be considered. Each variation will include advice on configuration and other considerations. 836362.1 Batch Best Practices for Oracle Utilities Application Framework based products This whitepaper oulines the common and best practices implemented by sites all over the world. Updated for OUAF 4.0.1 856854.1 Technical Best Practices V1 Addendum  Addendum to Technical Best Practices for Oracle Utilities Application Framework Based Products containing only V1.x specific advice. 942074.1 XAI Best Practices This whitepaper outlines the common integration tasks and best practices for the Web Services Integration provided by the Oracle Utilities Application Framework. Updated for OUAF 4.0.1 970785.1 Oracle Identity Manager Integration Overview This whitepaper outlines the principals of the prebuilt intergration between Oracle Utilities Application Framework Based Products and Orade Identity Manager used to provision user and user group secuity information 1068958.1 Production Environment Configuration Guidelines (New!) Whitepaper outlining common production level settings for the products

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• SQLAuthority News – Amazon Gift Card Raffle for Beta Tester Feedback for NuoDB

  - by pinaldave

  As regular readers know I’ve been spending some time working with the NuoDB beta software. They contacted me last week and asked if I would give you a chance to try their new web-based console for their scalable, SQL-compliant database. They have just put out their final beta release, Beta 9.  It contains a preview of a new web-based “NuoConsole” that will replace and extend the functionality of their current desktop version.  I haven’t spent any time with the new console yet but a really quick look tells me it should make it easier to do deeper monitoring than the older one. It also looks like they have added query-level reporting through the console. I will try to play with it soon. NuoDB is doing a last, big push to get some more feedback from developers before they release their 1.0 product sometime in the next several weeks. Since the console is new, they are especially interested in some quick feedback on it before general availability. For SQLAuthority readers only, NuoDB will raffle off three $50 Amazon gift cards in exchange for your feedback on the NuoConsole preview. Here’s how to Enter Download NuoDBeta 9 here You must build a domain before you can start the console. Launch the Web Console. Windows Code: start java -jar jarnuodbwebconsole.jar Mac, Linux, Solaris, Unix Code: java -jar jar/nuodbwebconsole.jar Access the Web Console: Code: http://localhost:8080 When you have tried it out, go to a short (8 question) survey to enter the raffle Click here for the survey You must complete the survey before midnight EDT on October 17, 2012. Here’s what else they are saying about this last beta before general availability: Beta 9 now supports the Zend PHP framework so that PHP developers can directly integrate web applications with NuoDB. Multi-threaded HDFS support – NuoDB Storage Managers can now be configured to persist data to the high performance Hadoop distributed file system (HDFS). Beta 9 optimizes for multi-thread I/O streams at maximum performance. This enhancement allows users to make Hadoop their core storage with no extra effort which is a pretty cool idea. Improved Performance –On a single transaction node, Beta 9 offers performance comparable with MySQL and MariaDB. As additional nodes are added, NuoDB performance improves significantly at near linear scale. Query & Explain Plan Logging – Beta 9 introduces SQL explain plans for your queries. Qualify queries with the word “EXPLAIN” and NuoDB will respond with the details of the execution plan allowing performance optimization to SQL. Through the NuoConsole, you can now kill hung or long running queries. Java App Server Support – Beta 9 now supports leading Web JEE app servers including JBoss, Tomcat, and ColdFusion. They’ve also reported: Improved PHP/PDO drivers Support for Drupal Faster Ruby on Rails driver The Hibernate Dialect supports version 4.1 And good news for my readers: numerous SQL enhancements They will share the results of the web console feedback with me.  I’ll let you know how it goes. Also the winner of their last contest was Jaime Martínez Lafargue!  Do leave a comment here once you complete the survey.  Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: SQL Authority Tagged: NuoDB

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