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• Four Easy Ways to Save a Rocky CRM Relationship

  - by Divya Malik

   Today, I am pleased to introduce our guest blogger Luke Christianson. Luke is  an Application Sales rep based out of Minneapolis, MN.  You can find him on LinkedIn and follow him on Twitter. In any relationship, sooner or later, the excitement fades away.  The honeymoon period gives way to the old routines you had, before you committed to each other and you eventually begin doing things apart from one another.  I’m not talking about a marriage…  Well, I guess I am.Commitment to a CRM tool and building a deep and lasting relationship is not much different than the basics of a traditional love story.  After your controlled CRM pilot program, and maybe the National Sales Meeting where you couldn’t escape those three wonderful letters, CRM, you will soon find that if you haven’t designed an environment where it’s going to enable your reps to make more money, the relationship is doomed.   . If you’re currently in a dysfunctional CRM relationship, here are 4 simple tips to re-engaging users and getting that spark back. Shadow a Sales Rep:   Chances are you can find out exactly what is preventing your sales reps from using the application by simply watching how they go about their day.  Sales reps are driven by money, not by additional administrative duties.  Your system needs to be setup so that they can get the information they need quickly, facilitate making key updates and run their business out of one easy-to-use application.  Increase your sales team’s productivity by 5% automatically:    Cancel the weekly forecast calls with your reps and require them update their opportunities in CRM.  Something else that I’ve seen work extremely well, is when you do Monthly or Quarterly reviews, do not let your sales reps bring anything into the room with them; no spreadsheets, notebooks, or computers.  Everything they need to tell you should be able to be put into CRM and fully accessible by the Sales Manager at any time.  Tool time:      Make sure the tools that you have selected meet both your short-term goals and your long term goals.   You need tools that can adapt like your business does.  You probably can’t wait two months for an update to a picklist value or for the addition of a simple workflow rule.  Do you feel the tools that are in place can create the experience you want for your users? and finally, if all else fails... Keep It Simple, Stupid:     Do you really need to require 15 fields to create an Opportunity?  Do you need to clutter the interface with different reports that don’t add daily value?  Most CRM systems on the market today are flexible enough today that your admin could clean up most of the unnecessary interface ‘noise’ in a few hours.  If they're not, see #3. Every strong relationship can be tedious at times, you’ll fight and eventually make amends, you may even threaten to upgrade to a newer model…  But be patient and think about what you want to achieve and you’ll find a partner for life.

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• Dont Throw Duplicate Exceptions

  In your code, youll sometimes have write code that validates input using a variety of checks.  Assuming you havent embraced AOP and done everything with attributes, its likely that your defensive coding is going to look something like this: public void Foo(SomeClass someArgument) { if(someArgument == null) { throw new InvalidArgumentException("someArgument"); } if(!someArgument.IsValid()) { throw new InvalidArgumentException("someArgument"); }   // Do Real Work } Do you see a problem here?  Heres the deal Exceptions should be meaningful.  They have value at a number of levels: In the code, throwing an exception lets the develop know that there is an unsupported condition here In calling code, different types of exceptions may be handled differently At runtime, logging of exceptions provides a valuable diagnostic tool Its this last reason I want to focus on.  If you find yourself literally throwing the exact exception in more than one location within a given method, stop.  The stack trace for such an exception is likely going to be identical regardless of which path of execution led to the exception being thrown.  When that happens, you or whomever is debugging the problem will have to guess which exception was thrown.  Guessing is a great way to introduce additional problems and/or greatly increase the amount of time require to properly diagnose and correct any bugs related to this behavior. Dont Guess Be Specific When throwing an exception from multiple code paths within the code, be specific.  Virtually ever exception allows a custom message use it and ensure each case is unique.  If the exception might be handled differently by the caller, than consider implementing a new custom exception type.  Also, dont automatically think that you can improve the code by collapsing the if-then logic into a single call with short-circuiting (e.g. if(x == null || !x.IsValid()) ) that will guarantee that you cant easily throw different information into the message as easily as constructing the exception separately in each case. The code above might be refactored like so:   public void Foo(SomeClass someArgument) { if(someArgument == null) { throw new ArgumentNullException("someArgument"); } if(!someArgument.IsValid()) { throw new InvalidArgumentException("someArgument"); }   // Do Real Work } In this case its taking advantage of the fact that there is already an ArgumentNullException in the framework, but if you didnt have an IsValid() method and were doing validation on your own, it might look like this: public void Foo(SomeClass someArgument) { if(someArgument.Quantity < 0) { throw new InvalidArgumentException("someArgument", "Quantity cannot be less than 0. Quantity: " + someArgument.Quantity); } if(someArgument.Quantity > 100) { throw new InvalidArgumentException("someArgument", "SomeArgument.Quantity cannot exceed 100. Quantity: " + someArgument.Quantity); }   // Do Real Work }   Note that in this last example, Im throwing the same exception type in each case, but with different Message values.  Im also making sure to include the value that resulted in the exception, as this can be extremely useful for debugging.  (How many times have you wished NullReferenceException would tell you the name of the variable it was trying to reference?) Dont add work to those who will follow after you to maintain your application (especially since its likely to be you).  Be specific with your exception messages follow DRY when throwing exceptions within a given method by throwing unique exceptions for each interesting case of invalid state. Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Capgemini Global Business Process Management Report

  - by JuergenKress

  Welcome to the Capgemini Global Business Process Management (BPM) Report. This report is an exploration of key trends in BPM as seen by CXOs across a broad selection of sectors and geographies. BPM is perhaps at a tipping point - it’s certainly at an exciting stage in its evolution. As both an engineer and an Operational Research practitioner in my early career, and subsequently as a consultant, I have seen BPM through its development over the last 26 years. BPM has its roots in management practices such as Total Quality Management, Business Process Reengineering & Model Based Development; but the advent of the new generation of sophisticated modelling and process execution technologies has greatly enhanced BPM’s power to truly transform businesses. This has created one of the most rapidly growing and attractive market sectors for both services and technology. We see BPM as a critical management discipline that when executed against clear, cross organizational business objectives, can deliver exceptional value to that organization. However, we also see that the potential for BPM is not well understood. Our decision to conduct this global survey stemmed from discussions with our clients. We sought to gain a better impression of their understanding of BPM, how they measure its value, and how far it is prioritized within their Business and Technology Transformation efforts. This research confirms our belief that BPM needs to be a jointly owned Business and IT discipline. It also demonstrates that it is starting to gain significant traction in the market and investments are starting to pay dividends to the early adopters. At Capgemini we are being asked by our clients to help them simplify and improve their business models and the technology that supports them and we are already seeing BPM become an integral and key part of this proposition. Business Process Management is becoming ever more relevant to both large and small organizations in the current economic climate. At a time when many different market sectors are facing slow revenue growth, customer churn and increased pressures on costs, BPM becomes a critical weapon in the battle for efficiency and effectiveness in processes. Furthermore, in a challenging and changing business environment that is characterized by uncertainty, it allows organizations to adapt, be more agile and fleet of foot. Capgemini is seeing strong demand for BPM services in markets such as the USA, the UK, the Netherlands and France; and there are clear signs of increased interest in other geographies such as, Germany, Sweden, Spain, Italy and Australia. In sector terms, the financial services industry has led the way in BPM adoption over the recent past, driven by increased focus on customer- centricity and regulatory compliance. Other sectors, public sector, utilities, telco, retail and manufacturing are now not only catching up, but are starting o use BPM in new ways to create new business models to serve customers and outsmart the competition. The research findings also show however that this is a complex landscape, and we are not seeing adoption of BPM in a clear and consistent way. This report also looks at some of the barriers to adoption, with organizational silos being a major obstacle. Waters are further muddied by fragmented budgets, lack of clear governance and ownership and internal politics. The objective of our investment in this research project was to shed some light on these elements with a view to assisting organizations to create strategies that avoid or at least mitigate some of these barriers to success. Management of change in such endea vours is a key part in enabling the appropriate alignment of business and technology to support their transformation efforts. I hope that you find this report of benefit in the further adoption of Business Process Management. Get the full report here. SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Wiki Technorati Tags: Capgemini,bpm report,bpm market,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• Projective texture and deferred lighting

  - by Vodácek

  In my previous question, I asked whether it is possible to do projective texturing with deferred lighting. Now (more than half a year later) I have a problem with my implementation of the same thing. I am trying to apply this technique in light pass. (my projector doesn't affect albedo). I have this projector View a Projection matrix: Matrix projection = Matrix.CreateOrthographicOffCenter(-halfWidth * Scale, halfWidth * Scale, -halfHeight * Scale, halfHeight * Scale, 1, 100000); Matrix view = Matrix.CreateLookAt(Position, Target, Vector3.Up); Where halfWidth and halfHeight is are half of the texture's width and height, Position is the Projector's position and target is the projector's target. This seems to be ok. I am drawing full screen quad with this shader: float4x4 InvViewProjection; texture2D DepthTexture; texture2D NormalTexture; texture2D ProjectorTexture; float4x4 ProjectorViewProjection; sampler2D depthSampler = sampler_state { texture = <DepthTexture>; minfilter = point; magfilter = point; mipfilter = point; }; sampler2D normalSampler = sampler_state { texture = <NormalTexture>; minfilter = point; magfilter = point; mipfilter = point; }; sampler2D projectorSampler = sampler_state { texture = <ProjectorTexture>; AddressU = Clamp; AddressV = Clamp; }; float viewportWidth; float viewportHeight; // Calculate the 2D screen position of a 3D position float2 postProjToScreen(float4 position) { float2 screenPos = position.xy / position.w; return 0.5f * (float2(screenPos.x, -screenPos.y) + 1); } // Calculate the size of one half of a pixel, to convert // between texels and pixels float2 halfPixel() { return 0.5f / float2(viewportWidth, viewportHeight); } struct VertexShaderInput { float4 Position : POSITION0; }; struct VertexShaderOutput { float4 Position :POSITION0; float4 PositionCopy : TEXCOORD1; }; VertexShaderOutput VertexShaderFunction(VertexShaderInput input) { VertexShaderOutput output; output.Position = input.Position; output.PositionCopy=output.Position; return output; } float4 PixelShaderFunction(VertexShaderOutput input) : COLOR0 { float2 texCoord =postProjToScreen(input.PositionCopy) + halfPixel(); // Extract the depth for this pixel from the depth map float4 depth = tex2D(depthSampler, texCoord); //return float4(depth.r,0,0,1); // Recreate the position with the UV coordinates and depth value float4 position; position.x = texCoord.x * 2 - 1; position.y = (1 - texCoord.y) * 2 - 1; position.z = depth.r; position.w = 1.0f; // Transform position from screen space to world space position = mul(position, InvViewProjection); position.xyz /= position.w; //compute projection float3 projection=tex2D(projectorSampler,postProjToScreen(mul(position,ProjectorViewProjection)) + halfPixel()); return float4(projection,1); } In first part of pixel shader is recovered position from G-buffer (this code I am using in other shaders without any problem) and then is tranformed to projector viewprojection space. Problem is that projection doesn't appear. Here is an image of my situation: The green lines are the rendered projector frustum. Where is my mistake hidden? I am using XNA 4. Thanks for advice and sorry for my English. EDIT: Shader above is working but projection was too small. When I changed the Scale property to a large value (e.g. 100), the projection appears. But when the camera moves toward the projection, the projection expands, as can bee seen on this YouTube video.

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• Issues glVertexAttribPointer last 2 parameters?

  - by NoobScratcher

  Introduction Hello I will start out by explaining my setup, showing samples as I go along explaining the situation. I'm using these tools: OpenGL 3.3 GLSL 330 C++ Problem The problem is when I render the wavefront obj 3d model it gives a very weird visual glitch the model was supposed to be a square but instead its a triangluated mess with parts of the vertexes pointing in a stretched direction in massive amounts towards the bottom left side of the frustum.... Explanation: I'm using std::vectors to store my wavefront .obj model data using sscanf to get the floating point values into the structure members x,y,z and store them into the Points structure variable p; int index = IndexAssigner(1, 1); ifstream file (list[index].c_str() ); points.push_back(Point()); Point p; int face[4]; while (!file.eof() ) { char modelbuffer[10000]; file.getline(modelbuffer, 10000); switch(modelbuffer[0]) { case 'v' : sscanf(modelbuffer, "v %f %f %f", &p.x, &p.y, &p.z); points.push_back(p); break; case 'f': sscanf(modelbuffer, "f %d %d %d %d", face, face+1, face+2, face+3 ); faces.push_back(face[0]); faces.push_back(face[1]); faces.push_back(face[2]); faces.push_back(face[3]); } //Turn on FileReader aka "RENDER CODE" FileReader = true; } then I render the Points vector using the .data() member of std::vectors to the frustum. Other declarations: int numfloats = 4; float* point=reinterpret_cast<float*>(&points[0]); int num_bytes=numfloats*sizeof(float); Vector declarations: struct Point {float x, y , z; }; std::vector<int>faces; std::vector<Point>points; Render code: glGenBuffers(1, &vertexbuffer); glGenTextures(1, &ModelTexture); glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, vertexbuffer); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_3D, ModelTexture); glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0,GL_RGBA, ModelSurface->w, ModelSurface->h, 0, GL_BGR, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, ModelSurface->pixels); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_NEAREST); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_NEAREST); glBufferData(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, sizeof(points), points.data(), GL_STATIC_DRAW); glVertexAttribPointer(3, 3, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE,num_bytes ,points.data()); glEnableVertexAttribArray(3); //Translation Process GLfloat TranslationMatrix[] = { 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0 }; //Send Translation Matrix up to the vertex shader glUniformMatrix4fv(translation, 1, TRUE, TranslationMatrix); glDrawElements( GL_QUADS, faces.size(), GL_UNSIGNED_INT, faces.data()); I tried looking at what was causing this and went through every function every parameter ,etc looked at the man pages. Then found out that it could be my glVertexAttribPointer. Here are the man pages for glVertexAttribPointer http://www.opengl.org/sdk/docs/man/xhtml/glVertexAttribPointer.xml The last 2 parameters is my problem How do I write those 2 last parameters do I try putting the data from Points into it?. glVertexAttribPointer(3, 3, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE,num_bytes ,points.data()); How does it work with vectors? Is it fast?* if you can not be bothered too look at the man pages here is the scripts coming from the man pages directly. Stride Specifies the byte offset between consecutive generic vertex attributes. If stride is 0, the generic vertex attributes are understood to be tightly packed in the array. The initial value is 0. Pointer Specifies a pointer to the first component of the first generic vertex attribute in the array. The initial value is 0. If you want my full source - http://ideone.com/fPfkg Thanks Again if you do read this.

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• WIF-less claim extraction from ACS: JWT

  - by Elton Stoneman

  ACS support for JWT still shows as "beta", but it meets the spec and it works nicely, so it's becoming the preferred option as SWT is losing favour. (Note that currently ACS doesn’t support JWT encryption, if you want encrypted tokens you need to go SAML). In my last post I covered pulling claims from an ACS token without WIF, using the SWT format. The JWT format is a little more complex, but you can still inspect claims just with string manipulation. The incoming token from ACS is still presented in the BinarySecurityToken element of the XML payload, with a TokenType of urn:ietf:params:oauth:token-type:jwt: <t:RequestSecurityTokenResponse xmlns:t="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/02/trust">   <t:Lifetime>     <wsu:Created xmlns:wsu="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-utility-1.0.xsd">2012-08-31T07:39:55.337Z</wsu:Created>     <wsu:Expires xmlns:wsu="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-utility-1.0.xsd">2012-08-31T09:19:55.337Z</wsu:Expires>   </t:Lifetime>   <wsp:AppliesTo xmlns:wsp="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2004/09/policy">     <EndpointReference xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/08/addressing">       <Address>http://localhost/x.y.z</Address>     </EndpointReference>   </wsp:AppliesTo>   <t:RequestedSecurityToken>     <wsse:BinarySecurityToken wsu:Id="_1eeb5cf4-b40b-40f2-89e0-a3343f6bd985-6A15D1EED0CDB0D8FA48C7D566232154" ValueType="urn:ietf:params:oauth:token-type:jwt" EncodingType="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-soap-message-security-1.0#Base64Binary" xmlns:wsu="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-utility-1.0.xsd" xmlns:wsse="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-secext-1.0.xsd">[ base64string ] </wsse:BinarySecurityToken>   </t:RequestedSecurityToken>   <t:TokenType>urn:ietf:params:oauth:token-type:jwt</t:TokenType>   <t:RequestType>http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/02/trust/Issue</t:RequestType>   <t:KeyType>http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/05/identity/NoProofKey</t:KeyType> </t:RequestSecurityTokenResponse> The token as a whole needs to be base-64 decoded. The decoded value contains a header, payload and signature, dot-separated; the parts are also base-64, but they need to be decoded using a no-padding algorithm (implementation and more details in this MSDN article on validating an Exchange 2013 identity token). The values are then in JSON; the header contains the token type and the hashing algorithm: "{"typ":"JWT","alg":"HS256"}" The payload contains the same data as in the SWT, but JSON rather than querystring format: {"aud":"http://localhost/x.y.z" "iss":"https://adfstest-bhw.accesscontrol.windows.net/" "nbf":1346398795 "exp":1346404795 "http://schemas.microsoft.com/ws/2008/06/identity/claims/authenticationinstant":"2012-08-31T07:39:53.652Z" "http://schemas.microsoft.com/ws/2008/06/identity/claims/authenticationmethod":"http://schemas.microsoft.com/ws/2008/06/identity/authenticationmethod/windows" "http://schemas.microsoft.com/ws/2008/06/identity/claims/windowsaccountname":"xyz" "http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/05/identity/claims/emailaddress":"[email protected]" "http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/05/identity/claims/upn":"[email protected]" "identityprovider":"http://fs.svc.x.y.z.com/adfs/services/trust"} The signature is in the third part of the token. Unlike SWT which is fixed to HMAC-SHA-256, JWT can support other protocols (the one in use is specified as the "alg" value in the header). How to: Validate an Exchange 2013 identity token contains an implementation of a JWT parser and validator; apart from the custom base-64 decoding part, it’s very similar to SWT extraction. I've wrapped the basic SWT and JWT in a ClaimInspector.aspx page on gitHub here: SWT and JWT claim inspector. You can drop it into any ASP.Net site and set the URL to be your redirect page in ACS. Swap ACS to issue SWT or JWT, and using the same page you can inspect the claims that come out.

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• XNA 2D Board game - trouble with the cursor

  - by Adorjan

  I just have started making a simple 2D board game using XNA, but I got stuck at the movement of the cursor. This is my problem: I have a 10x10 table on with I should use a cursor to navigate. I simply made that table with the spriteBatch.Draw() function because I couldn't do it on another way. So here is what I did with the cursor: public override void LoadContent() { ... mutato.Position = new Vector2(X, Y); //X=103, Y=107; mutato.Sebesseg = 45; ... mutato.Initialize(content.Load<Texture2D>("cursor"),mutato.Position,mutato.Sebesseg); ... } public override void HandleInput(InputState input) { if (input == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("input"); // Look up inputs for the active player profile. int playerIndex = (int)ControllingPlayer.Value; KeyboardState keyboardState = input.CurrentKeyboardStates[playerIndex]; if (input.IsPauseGame(ControllingPlayer) || gamePadDisconnected) { ScreenManager.AddScreen(new PauseMenuScreen(), ControllingPlayer); } else { // Otherwise move the player position. if (keyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Down)) { Y = (int)mutato.Position.Y + mutato.Move; } if (keyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Up)) { Y = (int)mutato.Position.Y - mutato.Move; } if (keyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Left)) { X = (int)mutato.Position.X - mutato.Move; } if (keyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Right)) { X = (int)mutato.Position.X + mutato.Move; } } } public override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { mutato.Draw(spriteBatch); } Here's the cursor's (mutato) class: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; namespace Battleship.Components { class Cursor { public Texture2D Cursortexture; public Vector2 Position; public int Move; public void Initialize(Texture2D texture, Vector2 position,int move) { Cursortexture = texture; Position = position; Move = move; } public void Update() { } public void Draw(SpriteBatch spriteBatch) { spriteBatch.Draw(Cursortexture, Position, Color.White); } } } And here is a part of the InputState class where I think I should change something: public bool IsNewKeyPress(Keys key, PlayerIndex? controllingPlayer, out PlayerIndex playerIndex) { if (controllingPlayer.HasValue) { // Read input from the specified player. playerIndex = controllingPlayer.Value; int i = (int)playerIndex; return (CurrentKeyboardStates[i].IsKeyDown(key) && LastKeyboardStates[i].IsKeyUp(key)); } } If I leave the movement operation like this it doesn't have any sense: X = (int)mutato.Position.X - mutato.Move; However if I modify it to this: X = (int)mutato.Position.X--; it moves smoothly. Instead of this I need to move the cursor by fields (45 pixels), but I don't have any idea how to manage it.

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• Test your internet connection - Emtel Fixed Broadband

  Already at the begin of April, I had a phone conversation with my representative at Emtel Ltd. about some upcoming issues due to the ongoing construction work in my neighbourhood. Unfortunately, they finally raised the house two levels above ours, and of course this has to have a negative impact on the visibility between the WiMAX outdoor unit on the roof and the aimed access point at Medine. So, today I had a technical team here to do a site survey and to come up with potential solutions. Short version: It doesn't look good after all. The site survey Well, the two technicians did their work properly, even re-arranged the antenna to check the connection with another end point down at La Preneuse. But no improvements. Looks like we are out of luck since the construction next door hasn't finished yet and at the moment, it even looks like they are planning to put at least one more level on top. I really wonder about the sanity of the responsible bodies at the local district council. But that's another story. Anyway, the outdoor unit was once again pointed towards Medine and properly fixed with new cable guides (air from the sea and rust...). Both of them did a good job and fine-tuned the reception signal to a mere 3 over 9; compared to the original 7 over 9 I had before the daily terror started. The site survey has been done, and now it's up to Emtel to come up with (better) solutions. Well, I wouldn't mind to have an unlimited, symmetric 3G/UMTS or even LTE connection. Let's see what they can do... Testing the connection There are several online sites available which offer you to check certain aspects of your internet connection. Personally, I'm used to speedtest.net and it works very well. I think it is good and necessary to check your connection from time to time, and only a couple of days ago, I posted the following on Emtel's wall at Facebook (21.05.2013 - 14:06 hrs): Dear Emtel, could you eventually provide an answer on the miserable results of SpeedTest? I chose Rose Hill (Hosted by Emtel Ltd.) as testing endpoint... Sadly, no response to this. Seems that the marketing department is not willing to deal with customers on Facebook. Okay, over at speedtest.net you can use their Flash-based test suite to check your connection to quite a number of servers of different providers world-wide. It's actually very interesting to see the results for different end points and to compare them to each other. The results Following are the results of Rose Hill (hosted by Emtel) and respectively Frankfurt, Germany (hosted by Vodafone DE): Speedtest.net result of 30.05.2013 between Flic en Flac and Rose Hill, Mauritius (Emtel - Fixed Broadband) Speedtest.net result of 30.05.2013 between Flic en Flac and Frankfurt, Germany (Emtel - Fixed Broadband) Luckily, the results are quite similar in terms of connection speed; which is good. I'm currently on a WiMAX tariff called 'Classic Browsing 2', or Fixed Broadband as they call it now, which provides a symmetric line of 768 Kbps (or roughly 0.75 Mbps). In terms of downloads or uploads this means that I would be able to transfer files in either direction with approximately 96 KB/s. Frankly speaking, thanks to compression, my choice of browser and operating system I usually exceed this value and I have download rates up to 120 KB/s - not too bad after all. Only the ping times are a little bit of concern. Due to the difference in distance, or better said based on the number of hubs between the endpoints, they indicate the amount of time that it takes to send a package from your machine to the remote server and get a response back. A lower value is better, and usually the ping is less than 300 ms between Mauritius and Europe. The alternatives in Mauritius Not sure whether I should note this done because for my requirements there are no alternatives to Emtel WiMAX at the moment. It would be great to have your opinion on the situation of internet connectivity in Mauritius. Are there really alternatives? And if so, what are the conditions?

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• The Social Enterprise: Gangnam Style

  - by Mike Stiles

  Are only small and medium businesses able to put social strategies in place, generate consistent, compelling content for customers, and be nimble enough to listen and respond to the social communities they build? Or are enterprise organizations eagerly and effectively adopting social as well? It depends on whom inside the organization you ask. A study from Attensity looked at who “gets” social inside enterprise organizations. The results were unsurprising. Mostly, Generation X and Y employees who came of age with social as part of their lives and as a key communications vehicle understand it. Imagine being a 25-year-old at a company that bans employees from accessing Facebook at work. You may as well tell them they can’t use phones and must do all calculations on an abacus. To them, such policy is absent of real-world logic and signals to them the organization is destined to be the victim of an up-and-comer. After that, it’s senior management that gets social. You don’t get to be in senior management without reading a few things and paying attention. Most senior managers are well aware of the impact social has had and will have, though they may be unsure of what to do about it. The better ones will utilize those on the inside who do inherently know how to communicate and build virtual relationships using social. The very best will get the past out of the way for these social innovators, so the new communications can be enacted minus counterproductive dictums, double-clutching, meeting-creep, and all the other fading internal practices that water down content and impede change. Organizationally, the Attensity study found 81% of enterprise companies believe failing to embrace social will result in their being left behind. Yet our old friend fear still has many captive in its clutches. 79% feel overwhelmed by the volume of social data available, something a social technology partner with goal-oriented analytics expertise could go a long way toward alleviating. Then there’s the fear of social having a negative impact. This comes from a lack of belief in the product, the customer service, or both. The public uses social not to go out and slay brands. They’re using it to be honest. If the fear is that honesty will reflect badly on the brand, the brand has much bigger, broader problems than what happens on Facebook. Sadly, most enterprise organizations still see social as a megaphone, a one-way channel with which to hit people with ads. They either don’t understand social relationships, or don’t want any. The truly unenlightened manager will always say, “We help them by selling them our stuff.” “Brand affinity” is a term, it’s just not one assigned much value in enterprise organizations. Which brings us to Psy, the Korean performer whose Internet video phenom “Gangnam Style,” as of this writing, has been viewed 438,550,238 times on YouTube. It’s bigger than anything a brand will probably ever publish. Most brands would never have seen the point of making or publishing it. But a funny thing happened on the way to Internet success. The video literally doubled the stock price of Psy’s father’s software firm. NH Investment and Securities said, "The positive sentiment has attracted investors just because of the fact the company is owned by Psy's father and uncle.” The company wasn’t mentioned or seen in the video in any way, yet reaped tangible rewards just for being tangentially associated with it. Imagine your brand being visibly and directly responsible for such a smash and tell me it’s worthless. When enterprise organizations embrace the value of igniting passions, making people happier, solving their problems, informing them, helping them have fun, etc., then they will have fully embraced social, and will reap the brand affinity rewards of heightened awareness, brand loyalty and yes, sales.

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• Asynchrony in C# 5 (Part II)

  - by javarg

  This article is a continuation of the series of asynchronous features included in the new Async CTP preview for next versions of C# and VB. Check out Part I for more information. So, let’s continue with TPL Dataflow: Asynchronous functions TPL Dataflow Task based asynchronous Pattern Part II: TPL Dataflow Definition (by quote of Async CTP doc): “TPL Dataflow (TDF) is a new .NET library for building concurrent applications. It promotes actor/agent-oriented designs through primitives for in-process message passing, dataflow, and pipelining. TDF builds upon the APIs and scheduling infrastructure provided by the Task Parallel Library (TPL) in .NET 4, and integrates with the language support for asynchrony provided by C#, Visual Basic, and F#.” This means: data manipulation processed asynchronously. “TPL Dataflow is focused on providing building blocks for message passing and parallelizing CPU- and I/O-intensive applications”. Data manipulation is another hot area when designing asynchronous and parallel applications: how do you sync data access in a parallel environment? how do you avoid concurrency issues? how do you notify when data is available? how do you control how much data is waiting to be consumed? etc.  Dataflow Blocks TDF provides data and action processing blocks. Imagine having preconfigured data processing pipelines to choose from, depending on the type of behavior you want. The most basic block is the BufferBlock<T>, which provides an storage for some kind of data (instances of <T>). So, let’s review data processing blocks available. Blocks a categorized into three groups: Buffering Blocks Executor Blocks Joining Blocks Think of them as electronic circuitry components :).. 1. BufferBlock<T>: it is a FIFO (First in First Out) queue. You can Post data to it and then Receive it synchronously or asynchronously. It synchronizes data consumption for only one receiver at a time (you can have many receivers but only one will actually process it). 2. BroadcastBlock<T>: same FIFO queue for messages (instances of <T>) but link the receiving event to all consumers (it makes the data available for consumption to N number of consumers). The developer can provide a function to make a copy of the data if necessary. 3. WriteOnceBlock<T>: it stores only one value and once it’s been set, it can never be replaced or overwritten again (immutable after being set). As with BroadcastBlock<T>, all consumers can obtain a copy of the value. 4. ActionBlock<TInput>: this executor block allows us to define an operation to be executed when posting data to the queue. Thus, we must pass in a delegate/lambda when creating the block. Posting data will result in an execution of the delegate for each data in the queue. You could also specify how many parallel executions to allow (degree of parallelism). 5. TransformBlock<TInput, TOutput>: this is an executor block designed to transform each input, that is way it defines an output parameter. It ensures messages are processed and delivered in order. 6. TransformManyBlock<TInput, TOutput>: similar to TransformBlock but produces one or more outputs from each input. 7. BatchBlock<T>: combines N single items into one batch item (it buffers and batches inputs). 8. JoinBlock<T1, T2, …>: it generates tuples from all inputs (it aggregates inputs). Inputs could be of any type you want (T1, T2, etc.). 9. BatchJoinBlock<T1, T2, …>: aggregates tuples of collections. It generates collections for each type of input and then creates a tuple to contain each collection (Tuple<IList<T1>, IList<T2>>). Next time I will show some examples of usage for each TDF block. * Images taken from Microsoft’s Async CTP documentation.

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• Finalists for Community Manager of the Year Announced

  - by Mike Stiles

  For as long as brand social has been around, there’s still an amazing disparity from company to company on the role of Community Manager. At some brands, they are the lead social innovators. At others, the task has been relegated to interns who are at the company temporarily. Some have total autonomy and trust. Others must get chain-of-command permission each time they engage. So what does a premiere “worth their weight in gold” Community Manager look like? More than anyone else in the building, they have the most intimate knowledge of who the customer is. They live on the front lines and are the first to detect problems and opportunities. They are sincere, raving fans of the brand themselves and are trusted advocates for the others. They’re fun to be around. They aren’t salespeople. Give me one Community Manager who’s been at the job 6 months over 5 focus groups any day. Because not unlike in speed dating, they must immediately learn how to make a positive, lasting impression on fans so they’ll want to return and keep the relationship going. They’re informers and entertainers, with a true belief in the value of the brand’s proposition. Internally, they live at the mercy of the resources allocated toward social. Many, whose managers don’t understand the time involved in properly curating a community, are tasked with 2 or 3 too many of them. 63% of CM’s will spend over 30 hours a week on one community. They come to intuitively know the value of the relationships they’re building, even if they can’t always be shown in a bar graph to the C-suite. Many must communicate how the customer feels to executives that simply don’t seem to want to hear it. Some can get the answers fans want quickly, others are frustrated in their ability to respond within an impressive timeframe. In short, in a corporate world coping with sweeping technological changes, amidst business school doublespeak, pie charts, decks, strat sessions and data points, the role of the Community Manager is the most…human. They are the true emotional connection to the real life customer. Which is why we sought to find a way to recognize and honor who they are, what they do, and how well they have defined the position as social grows and integrates into the larger organization. Meet our 3 finalists for Community Manager of the Year. Jeff Esposito with VistaprintJeff manages and heads up content strategy for all social networks and blogs. He also crafts company-wide policies surrounding the social space. Vistaprint won the NEDMA Gold Award for Twitter Strategy in 2010 and 2011, and a Bronze in 2011 for Social Media Strategy. Prior to Vistaprint, Jeff was Media Relations Manager with the Long Island Ducks. He graduated from Seton Hall University with a BA in English and a minor in Classical Studies. Stacey Acevero with Vocus In addition to social management, Stacey blogs at Vocus on influential marketing and social media, and blogs at PRWeb on public relations and SEO. She’s been named one of the #Nifty50 Women in Tech on Twitter 2 years in a row, as well as included in the 15 up-and-coming PR pros to watch in 2012. Carly Severn with the San Francisco BalletCarly drives engagement, widens the fanbase and generates digital content for America’s oldest professional ballet company. Managed properties include Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube and G+. Prior to joining the SF Ballet, Carly was Marketing & Press Coordinator at The Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge, where she graduated with a degree in English. We invite you to join us at the first annual Oracle Social Media Summit November 14 and 15 at the Wynn in Las Vegas where our finalists will be featured. Over 300 top brand marketers, agency executives, and social leaders & innovators will be exploring how social is transforming business. Space is limited and the information valuable, so get more info and get registered as soon as possible at the event site.

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• Html.ValidationSummary and Multiple Forms

  - by MightyZot

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/MightyZot/archive/2013/11/11/html.validationsummary-and-multiple-forms.aspxThe Html.ValidationSummary helper writes a div with a list of general errors added to the model state while a request is being serviced. There is generally one form per view or partial view, I think, so often there is only one call to Html.ValidationSummary in the page resulting from the assembly of your views. And, consequently, there is no problem with the markup that Html.ValidationSummary spits out as a result. What if you want to put multiple forms in one view? Even if you create a view model that’s an aggregate of the view models for each form, the error validation summary is going to contain errors from both forms. Check out this screen shot, which shows a page with multiple forms. Notice how the error validation summary shows up twice. Grrr! Errors for the login form also show up in the registration form. Luckily, there is an easy way around this. Pull the errors out of the model state and separate them for each form. You’ll need to identify the appropriate form by setting the key when you make calls to ModelState.AddModelError. Assume in my example that errors for the login form are added to model state using the “LoginForm” key. And, likewise, assume that errors for the registration form are added to model state using the “RegistrationForm” key. An example of that might look like this… // If we got this far, something failed, redisplay form ModelState.AddModelError("LoginForm", "User name or password is not right..."); return View(model); Over in the code for your View, you can pull each form’s errors from the model state using lambda expressions that look like these… var LoginFormErrors = ViewData.ModelState.Where(ms => ms.Key == "LoginForm"); var RegistrationFormErrors = ViewData.ModelState.Where(ms => ms.Key == "RegistrationForm"); Now that you have two collections containing errors, you can display only the errors specific to each form. I’m doing that in my code by removing the calls to Html.ValidationSummary and replacing them with enumerators that look like this… if(LoginFormErrors.Count() > 0) { <div class="cdt-error-list">     <ul>     @foreach (var entry in LoginFormErrors)     {         foreach (var error in entry.Value.Errors)         {             <li>@error.ErrorMessage</li>         }     }     </ul> </div> } …and for the registration form, the code looks like this… @if(RegistrationFormErrors.Count() > 0) { <div class="cdt-error-list">     <ul>     @foreach (var entry in RegistrationFormErrors)     {         foreach (var error in entry.Value.Errors)         {             <li>@error.ErrorMessage</li>         }     }     </ul> </div> } The result is a nice clean separation of the list of errors that are specific to each form. And, this is important because each form is submitted separately in my case, so both forms don’t generate errors in the same context. As you’ll see in the screen shot below, errors added to the model state when the login form is submitted do not show up in the registration form’s validation summary.

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• What Counts For a DBA – Depth

  - by Louis Davidson

  SQL Server offers very simple interfaces to many of its features. Most people could open up SSMS, connect to a server, write a simple query and see the results. Even several of the core DBA tasks are deceptively straightforward. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to perform a basic database backup or run a trace (even using the newfangled Extended Events!). However, appearances can be deceptive, and often times it is really important that a DBA understands not just the basics of how to perform a task, but why we do a task, and how that task works. As an analogy, consider a child walking into a darkened room. Most would know that they need to turn on the light, and how to do it, so they flick the switch. But what happens if light fails to shine forth. Most would immediately tell you that you need to consider changing the light bulb. So you hop in the car and take them to the local home store and instruct them to buy a replacement. Confronted with a 40 foot display of light bulbs, how will they decide which of the hundreds of types of bulbs, of different types, fittings, shapes, colors, power and efficiency ratings, is the right choice? Obviously the main lesson the child is going to learn this day is how to use their cell phone as a flashlight so they don’t have to ask for help the next time. Likewise, when the metaphorical toddlers who use your database server have issues, they will instinctively know something is wrong, and may even have some idea what caused it, but will have no depth of knowledge to figure out the right solution. That is where the DBA comes in and attempts to save the day. However, when one looks beneath the shiny UI, SQL Server has its own “40 foot display of light bulbs”, in the form of the tremendous number of tools and the often-bewildering amount of information they can present to the DBA, to help us find issues. Unfortunately, resorting to guesswork, to trying different “bulbs” over and over, hoping to stumble on the answer. This is where the right depth of knowledge goes a long way. If we need to write a SELECT statement, then knowing the syntax and where to find the data is not enough. Knowledge of indexes and query plans is essential. Without it, we might hit on a query that “works”, but we are basically still a user, not a programmer, because we have no real control over our platform. Is that level of knowledge deep enough? Probably not, since knowledge of the underlying metadata and structures would be very useful in helping us make sense of any query plan. Understanding the structure of an index makes the “key lookup” operator not sound like what you do when someone tapes your car key to the ceiling. So is even this level of understanding deep enough? Do we need to understand the memory architecture used to process the query? It might be a comforting level of knowledge, and will doubtless come in handy at some point, but is not strictly necessary in most cases. Beyond that lies (more or less) full knowledge of SQL language and the intricacies of every step the SQL Server engine takes to process our query. My personal theory is that, as a professional, our knowledge of a given task should extend, at a minimum, one level deeper than is strictly necessary to perform the task. Anything deeper can be left to the ridiculously smart, or obsessive, or both. As an example. tasked with storing an integer value between 0 and 99999999, it’s essential that I know that choosing an Integer over Decimal(8,0) will likely offer performance benefits. It is then useful that I also understand the value of adding a CHECK constraint, to make sure the values are valid to the desired range; and comforting that I know a little about the underlying processors, registers and computer math. Anything further, I leave to the likes of Joe Chang, whose recent blog post on the topic offers depth by the bucketful!  

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• Oracle Executive Strategy Brief: Enterprise-Grade Cloud Applications

  - by B Shashikumar

  Cloud Computing has clearly evolved into one of the dominant secular trends in the industry. Organizations are looking to the cloud to change how they buy and consume IT. And its no longer about just lower up-front costs. The cloud promises to deliver greater agility and free up resources to focus on innovation versus running and maintaining systems. But are organizations actually realizing these benefits? The full promise of cloud is not being realized by customers who entrust their business to multiple niche cloud providers. While almost 9 out of 10 companies  expect more IT agility with cloud, only 47% are actually getting it (Source: 2011 State of Cloud Survey by Symantec). These niche cloud customers have also seen the promises of lower costs, efficiency gains, improved security, and compliance go unfulfilled. Having one cloud provider for customer relationship management (CRM) and another for human capital management (HCM), and then trying to glue these proprietary systems together while integrating to a back-office financial system can add to complexity and long-term costs. Completing a business process or generating an integrated report is cumbersome, and leverages incomplete data. Why can’t niche cloud providers deliver on the full promise of cloud? It’s simple: you still need to complete business processes. You still need reporting that enables you to take action using data from multiple systems. You still have to comply with SOX and other industry regulations. These requirements don’t go away just because you deploy in the cloud. Delivering lower up-front costs by enabling customers to buy software as a service (SaaS) is the easy part. To get real value that lasts longer than your quarterly report, it’s important to realize the benefits of cloud without compromising on functionality and while having the right level of control and flexibility. This is the true promise of cloud. Oracle’s cloud strategy centers around delivering the benefits of cloud—without compromise. We uniquely empower our customers with complete solutions and choice. From the richest functionality to integrated reporting and great user experience. It’s all available in the cloud. And it works not just with other Oracle cloud applications, but with your existing Oracle and third-party systems as well. This helps protect your current investments and extend their value as you journey to the cloud. We’ve made the necessary investments not only in our applications but also in the underlying technology that makes it all run—from the platform down to the hardware and operating system. We make it all. And we’ve engineered it to work together and be highly optimized for our customers, in the cloud. With Oracle enterprise-grade cloud applications, you get the benefits of cloud plus more power, more choice, and more confidence. Read more about how you can realize the true advantage of Cloud with Oracle Enterprise-grade Cloud applications in the Oracle Executive Strategy Brief here.  You can also attend an Oracle Cloud Conference event at a city near you. Register here. 

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• Drive

  - by erikanollwebb

  Picking up where we left off, let's summarize.  People have both intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation, and whether reward works depends a bit on what you are rewarding.  Rewards don't decreased intrinsic motivation provided you know what you are getting and why, and when you reward high performance.  But as anyone who has watched the great animation of Dan Pink's TED talk knows, even that doesn't tell the whole story.  Although people may not be less intrinsically motivated by rewards, the impact of rewards on actual performance is a really odd questions.  Larger rewards don't necessarily lead to better performance and in fact, some times lead to worse performance.  Pink argues that people are driven and engaged when they have autonomy, mastery and purpose.  If they can self-direct and can be good at what they do and have a sense of purpose for what they are doing, they show the highest engagement.   (Personally, I would add progress to the list.  My experience is that if you have autonomy, mastery and a sense of purpose but don't get a feeling that you are making any progress day to day, your level of engagement will drop rapidly.) So Pink is arguing if we could set up work so that people have a sense of purpose in what they do, have some autonomy and the ability to build mastery, you'll have better companies.  And that's probably true in a lot of ways, but there's a problem.  Sometimes, you have things you need to do but maybe you don't really want to do.  Or that you don't really see the point of.  Or that doesn't have a lot of value to you at the end of the day.  Then what does a company do?  Let me give you an example.  I've worked on some customer relationship management (CRM) tools over the years and done user research with sales people to try and understand their world.  And there's a funny thing about sales tools in CRM.  Sometimes what the company wants a sales person to do is at odds with what a sales person thinks is useful to them.  For example, companies would like to know who a sales person talked to at the company and the person level.  They'd like to know what they talked about, when, and whether the deals closed.  Those metrics would help you build a better sales force and understand what works and what does not.  But sales people see that as busy work that doesn't add any value to their ability to sell.  So you have a sales person who has a lot of autonomy, they like to do things that improve their ability to sell and they usually feel a sense of purpose--the group is trying to make a quota!  That quota will help the company succeed!  But then you have tasks that they don't think fit into that equation.  The company would like to know more about what makes them successful and get metrics on what they do and frankly, have a record of what they do in case they leave, but the sales person thinks it's a waste of time to put all that information into a sales application. They have drive, just not for all the things the company would like.   You could punish them for not entering the information, or you could try to reward them for doing it, but you still have an imperfect model of engagement.  Ideally, you'd like them to want to do it.  If they want to do it, if they are motivated to do it, then the company wins.  If *something* about it is rewarding to them, then they are more engaged and more likely to do it.  So the question becomes, how do you create that interest to do something?

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• Patterns for a tree of persistent data with multiple storage options?

  - by Robin Winslow

  I have a real-world problem which I'll try to abstract into an illustrative example. So imagine I have data objects in a tree, where parent objects can access children, and children can access parents: // Interfaces interface IParent<TChild> { List<TChild> Children; } interface IChild<TParent> { TParent Parent; } // Classes class Top : IParent<Middle> {} class Middle : IParent<Bottom>, IChild<Top> {} class Bottom : IChild<Middle> {} // Usage var top = new Top(); var middles = top.Children; // List<Middle> foreach (var middle in middles) { var bottoms = middle.Children; // List<Bottom> foreach (var bottom in bottoms) { var middle = bottom.Parent; // Access the parent var top = middle.Parent; // Access the grandparent } } All three data objects have properties that are persisted in two data stores (e.g. a database and a web service), and they need to reflect and synchronise with the stores. Some objects only request from the web service, some only write to it. Data Mapper My favourite pattern for data access is Data Mapper, because it completely separates the data objects themselves from the communication with the data store: class TopMapper { public Top FetchById(int id) { var top = new Top(DataStore.TopDataById(id)); top.Children = MiddleMapper.FetchForTop(Top); return Top; } } class MiddleMapper { public Middle FetchById(int id) { var middle = new Middle(DataStore.MiddleDataById(id)); middle.Parent = TopMapper.FetchForMiddle(middle); middle.Children = BottomMapper.FetchForMiddle(bottom); return middle; } } This way I can have one mapper per data store, and build the object from the mapper I want, and then save it back using the mapper I want. There is a circular reference here, but I guess that's not a problem because most languages can just store memory references to the objects, so there won't actually be infinite data. The problem with this is that every time I want to construct a new Top, Middle or Bottom, it needs to build the entire object tree within that object's Parent or Children property, with all the data store requests and memory usage that that entails. And in real life my tree is much bigger than the one represented here, so that's a problem. Requests in the object In this the objects request their Parents and Children themselves: class Middle { private List<Bottom> _children = null; // cache public List<Bottom> Children { get { _children = _children ?? BottomMapper.FetchForMiddle(this); return _children; } set { BottomMapper.UpdateForMiddle(this, value); _children = value; } } } I think this is an example of the repository pattern. Is that correct? This solution seems neat - the data only gets requested from the data store when you need it, and thereafter it's stored in the object if you want to request it again, avoiding a further request. However, I have two different data sources. There's a database, but there's also a web service, and I need to be able to create an object from the web service and save it back to the database and then request it again from the database and update the web service. This also makes me uneasy because the data objects themselves are no longer ignorant of the data source. We've introduced a new dependency, not to mention a circular dependency, making it harder to test. And the objects now mask their communication with the database. Other solutions Are there any other solutions which could take care of the multiple stores problem but also mean that I don't need to build / request all the data every time?

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• ADO and Two Way Storage Tiering

  - by Andy-Oracle

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 We get asked the following question about Automatic Data Optimization (ADO) storage tiering quite a bit. Can you tier back to the original location if the data gets hot again? The answer is yes but not with standard Automatic Data Optimization policies, at least not reliably. That's not how ADO is meant to operate. ADO is meant to mirror a traditional view of Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) where data will be very volatile when first created, will become less active or cool, and then will eventually cease to be accessed at all (i.e. cold). I think the reason this question gets asked is because customers realize that many of their business processes are cyclical and the thinking goes that those segments that only get used during month end or year-end cycles could sit on lower cost storage when not being used. Unfortunately this doesn't fit very well with the ADO storage tiering model. ADO storage tiering is based on the amount of free and used space in the source tablespace. There are two parameters that control this behavior, TBS_PERCENT_USED and TBS_PERCENT_FREE. When the space in the tablespace exceeds the TBS_PERCENT_USED value then segments specified in storage tiering clause(s) can be moved until the percent of free space reaches the TBS_PERCENT_FREE value. It is worth mentioning that no checks are made for available space in the target tablespace. Now, it is certainly possible to create custom functions to control storage tiering, but this can get complicated. The biggest problem is insuring that there is enough space to move the segment back to tier 1 storage, assuming that that's the goal. This isn't as much of a problem when moving from tier 1 to tier 2 storage because there is typically more tier 2 storage available. At least that's the premise since it is supposed to be less costly, lower performing and higher capacity storage. In either case though, if there isn't enough space then the operation fails. In the case of a customized function, the question becomes do you attempt to free the space so the move can be made or do you just stop and return false so that the move cannot take place? This is really the crux of the issue. Once you cross into this territory you're really going to have to implement two-way hierarchical storage and the whole point of ADO was to provide automatic storage tiering. You're probably better off using heat map and/or business access requirements and building your own hierarchical storage management infrastructure if you really want two way storage tiering. /* 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:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• Pulling My Hair Out - PHP Forms [migrated]

  - by Joe Turner

  Hello and good morning to all. This is my second post on this subject because the first time, things still didn't work and I have now literally been trying to solve this for about 4/5 days straight... I have a file, called 'edit.php', in this file is a form; <?php $company = $_POST["company"]; $phone = $_POST["phone"]; $colour = $_POST["colour"]; $email = $_POST["email"]; $website = $_POST["website"]; $video = $_POST["video"]; $image = $_POST["image"]; $extension = $_POST["extension"]; ?> <form method="post" action="generate.php"><br> <input type="text" name="company" placeholder="Company Name" /><br> <input type="text" name="slogan" placeholder="Slogan" /><br> <input class="color {required:false}" name="colour" placeholder="Company Colour"><br> <input type="text" name="phone" placeholder="Phone Number" /><br> <input type="text" name="email" placeholder="Email Address" /><br> <input type="text" name="website" placeholder="Full Website - Include http://" /><br> <input type="text" name="video" placeholder="Video URL" /><br> <input type="submit" value="Generate QuickLinks" style="background:url(images/submit.png) repeat-x; color:#FFF"/> </form> Then, when the form is submitted, it creates a file using the variables that have been input. The fields that have been filled in go on to become links, I need to be able to say 'if a field is left blank, then put 'XXX' in as a default value'. Does anyone have any ideas? I really think I have tried everything. I'll put below a snippet from the .php file that generates the links... <?php $File = "includes/details.php"; $Handle = fopen($File, 'w'); ?> <?php $File = "includes/details.php"; $Handle = fopen($File, 'w'); $Data = "<div id='logo'> <img width='270px' src='images/logo.png'/img> <h1 style='color:#$_POST[colour]'>$_POST[company]</h1> <h2>$_POST[slogan]</h2> </div> <ul> <li><a class='full-width button' href='tel:$_POST[phone]'>Phone Us</a></li> <li><a class='full-width button' href='mailto:$_POST[email]'>Email Us</a></li> <li><a class='full-width button' href='$_POST[website]'>View Full Website</a></li> <li><a class='full-width button' href='$_POST[video]'>Watch Us</a></li> </ul> \n"; I really do look forward to any response...

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• Generic Adjacency List Graph implementation

  - by DmainEvent

  I am trying to come up with a decent Adjacency List graph implementation so I can start tooling around with all kinds of graph problems and algorithms like traveling salesman and other problems... But I can't seem to come up with a decent implementation. This is probably because I am trying to dust the cobwebs off my data structures class. But what I have so far... and this is implemented in Java... is basically an edgeNode class that has a generic type and a weight-in the event the graph is indeed weighted. public class edgeNode<E> { private E y; private int weight; //... getters and setters as well as constructors... } I have a graph class that has a list of edges a value for the number of Vertices and and an int value for edges as well as a boolean value for whether or not it is directed. The brings up my first question, if the graph is indeed directed, shouldn't I have a value in my edgeNode class? Or would I just need to add another vertices to my LinkedList? That would imply that a directed graph is 2X as big as an undirected graph wouldn't it? public class graph { private List<edgeNode<?>> edges; private int nVertices; private int nEdges; private boolean directed; //... getters and setters as well as constructors... } Finally does anybody have a standard way of initializing there graph? I was thinking of reading in a pipe-delimited file but that is so 1997. public graph GenereateGraph(boolean directed, String file){ List<edgeNode<?>> edges; graph g; try{ int count = 0; String line; FileReader input = new FileReader("C:\\Users\\derekww\\Documents\\JavaEE Projects\\graphFile"); BufferedReader bufRead = new BufferedReader(input); line = bufRead.readLine(); count++; edges = new ArrayList<edgeNode<?>>(); while(line != null){ line = bufRead.readLine(); Object edgeInfo = line.split("|")[0]; int weight = Integer.parseInt(line.split("|")[1]); edgeNode<String> e = new edgeNode<String>((String) edges.add(e); } return g; } catch(Exception e){ return null; } } I guess when I am adding edges if boolean is true I would be adding a second edge. So far, this all depends on the file I write. So if I wrote a file with the following Vertices and weights... Buffalo | 18 br Pittsburgh | 20 br New York | 15 br D.C | 45 br I would obviously load them into my list of edges, but how can I represent one vertices connected to the other... so on... I would need the opposite vertices? Say I was representing Highways connected to each city weighted and un-directed (each edge is bi-directional with weights in some fictional distance unit)... Would my implementation be the best way to do that? I found this tutorial online Graph Tutorial that has a connector object. This appears to me be a collection of vertices pointing to each other. So you would have A and B each with there weights and so on, and you would add this to a list and this list of connectors to your graph... That strikes me as somewhat cumbersome and a little dismissive of the adjacency list concept? Am I wrong and that is a novel solution? This is all inspired by steve skiena's Algorithm Design Manual. Which I have to say is pretty good so far. Thanks for any help you can provide.

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• Rotating 2D Object

  - by Vico Pelaez

  Well I am trying to learn openGL and want to make a triangle move one unit (0.1) everytime I press one of the keyboard arrows. However i want the triangle to turn first pointing the direction where i will move one unit. So if my triangle is pointing up and I press right the it should point right first and then move one unit in the x axis. I have implemented the code to move the object one unit in any direction, however I can not get it to turn pointing to the direction it is going. The initial position of the Triangle is pointing up. #define LENGTH 0.05 float posX = -0.5, posY = -0.5, posZ = 0; float inX = 0.0 ,inY = 0.0 ,inZ = 0.0; // what values???? void rect(){ glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION); glLoadIdentity(); glPushMatrix(); glTranslatef(posX,posY,posZ); glRotatef(rotate, inX, inY, inZ); glBegin(GL_TRIANGLES); glColor3f(0.0, 0.0, 1.0); glVertex2f(-LENGTH,-LENGTH); glVertex2f(LENGTH-LENGTH, LENGTH); glVertex2f(LENGTH, -LENGTH); glEnd(); glPopMatrix(); } void display(){ //Clear Window glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT); glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW); glLoadIdentity(); rect(); glFlush(); } void init(){ glClearColor(0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0); glColor3f(1.0, 1.0, 1.0); } float move_unit = 0.01; bool change = false; void keyboardown(int key, int x, int y) { switch (key){ case GLUT_KEY_UP: if(rotate = 0) posY += move_unit; else{ inX = 1.0; rotate = 0; } break; case GLUT_KEY_RIGHT: if(rotate = -90) posX += move_unit; else{ inX = 1.0; // is this value ok?? rotate -= 90; } break; case GLUT_KEY_LEFT: if(rotate = 90) posX -= move_unit; else{ inX = 1.0; // is this value ok??? rotate += 90; } break; case GLUT_KEY_DOWN: if(rotate = 180) posY -= move_unit; else{ inX = 1.0; rotate += 180; } break; case 27: // Escape button exit(0); break; default: break; } glutPostRedisplay(); } int main(int argc, char** argv){ glutInit(&argc, argv); glutInitDisplayMode(GLUT_SINGLE | GLUT_RGB); glutInitWindowSize(500,500); glutInitWindowPosition(0, 0); glutCreateWindow("Triangle turn"); glutSpecialFunc(keyboardown); glutDisplayFunc(display); init(); glutMainLoop()

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• Problem with sprite direction and rotation

  - by user2236165

  I have a sprite called Tool that moves with a speed represented as a float and in a direction represented as a Vector2. When I click the mouse on the screen the sprite change its direction and starts to move towards the mouseclick. In addition to that I rotate the sprite so that it is facing in the direction it is heading. However, when I add a camera that is suppose to follow the sprite so that the sprite is always centered on the screen, the sprite won't move in the given direction and the rotation isn't accurate anymore. This only happens when I add the Camera.View in the spriteBatch.Begin(). I was hoping anyone could maybe shed a light on what I am missing in my code, that would be highly appreciated. Here is the camera class i use: public class Camera { private const float zoomUpperLimit = 1.5f; private const float zoomLowerLimit = 0.1f; private float _zoom; private Vector2 _pos; private int ViewportWidth, ViewportHeight; #region Properties public float Zoom { get { return _zoom; } set { _zoom = value; if (_zoom < zoomLowerLimit) _zoom = zoomLowerLimit; if (_zoom > zoomUpperLimit) _zoom = zoomUpperLimit; } } public Rectangle Viewport { get { int width = (int)((ViewportWidth / _zoom)); int height = (int)((ViewportHeight / _zoom)); return new Rectangle((int)(_pos.X - width / 2), (int)(_pos.Y - height / 2), width, height); } } public void Move(Vector2 amount) { _pos += amount; } public Vector2 Position { get { return _pos; } set { _pos = value; } } public Matrix View { get { return Matrix.CreateTranslation(new Vector3(-_pos.X, -_pos.Y, 0)) * Matrix.CreateScale(new Vector3(Zoom, Zoom, 1)) * Matrix.CreateTranslation(new Vector3(ViewportWidth * 0.5f, ViewportHeight * 0.5f, 0)); } } #endregion public Camera(Viewport viewport, float initialZoom) { _zoom = initialZoom; _pos = Vector2.Zero; ViewportWidth = viewport.Width; ViewportHeight = viewport.Height; } } And here is my Update and Draw-method: protected override void Update (GameTime gameTime) { float elapsed = (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds; TouchCollection touchCollection = TouchPanel.GetState (); foreach (TouchLocation tl in touchCollection) { if (tl.State == TouchLocationState.Pressed || tl.State == TouchLocationState.Moved) { //direction the tool shall move towards direction = touchCollection [0].Position - toolPos; if (direction != Vector2.Zero) { direction.Normalize (); } //change the direction the tool is moving and find the rotationangle the texture must rotate to point in given direction toolPos += (direction * speed * elapsed); RotationAngle = (float)Math.Atan2 (direction.Y, direction.X); } } if (direction != Vector2.Zero) { direction.Normalize (); } //move tool in given direction toolPos += (direction * speed * elapsed); //change cameracentre to the tools position Camera.Position = toolPos; base.Update (gameTime); } protected override void Draw (GameTime gameTime) { graphics.GraphicsDevice.Clear (Color.Blue); spriteBatch.Begin (SpriteSortMode.BackToFront, BlendState.AlphaBlend, null, null, null, null, Camera.View); spriteBatch.Draw (tool, new Vector2 (toolPos.X, toolPos.Y), null, Color.White, RotationAngle, originOfToolTexture, 1, SpriteEffects.None, 1); spriteBatch.End (); base.Draw (gameTime); }

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• I.T. Chargeback : Core to Cloud Computing

  - by Anand Akela

  Contributed by Mark McGill Consolidation and Virtualization have been widely adopted over the years to help deliver benefits such as increased server utilization, greater agility and lower cost to the I.T. organization. These are key enablers of cloud, but in themselves they do not provide a complete cloud solution. Building a true enterprise private cloud involves moving from an admin driven world, where the I.T. department is ultimately responsible for the provisioning of servers, databases, middleware and applications, to a world where the consumers of I.T. resources can provision their infrastructure, platforms and even complete application stacks on demand. Switching from an admin-driven provisioning model to a user-driven model creates some challenges. How do you ensure that users provisioning resources will not provision more than they need? How do you encourage users to return resources when they have finished with them so that others can use them? While chargeback has existed as a concept for many years (especially in mainframe environments), it is the move to this self-service model that has created a need for a new breed of chargeback applications for cloud. Enabling self-service without some form of chargeback is like opening a shop where all of the goods are free. A successful chargeback solution will be able to allocate the costs of shared I.T. infrastructure based on the relative consumption by the users. Doing this creates transparency between the I.T. department and the consumers of I.T. When users are able to understand how their consumption translates to cost they are much more likely to be prudent when it comes to their use of I.T. resources. This also gives them control of their I.T. costs, as moderate usage will translate to a lower charge at the end of the month. Implementing Chargeback successfully create a win-win situation for I.T. and the consumers. Chargeback can help to ensure that I.T. resources are used for activities that deliver business value. It also improves the overall utilization of I.T. infrastructure as I.T. resources that are not needed are not left running idle. Enterprise Manager 12c provides an integrated metering and chargeback solution for Enterprise Manager Targets. This solution is built on top of the rich configuration and utilization information already available in Enterprise Manager. It provides metering not just for virtual machines, but also for physical hosts, databases and middleware. Enterprise Manager 12c provides metering based on the utilization and configuration of the following types of Enterprise Manager Target: Oracle VM Host Oracle Database Oracle WebLogic Server Using Enterprise Manager Chargeback, administrators are able to create a set of Charge Plans that are used to attach prices to the various metered resources. These plans can contain fixed costs (eg. $10/month/database), configuration based costs (eg. $10/month if OS is Windows) and utilization based costs (eg. $0.05/GB of Memory/hour) The self-service user provisioning these resources is then able to view a report that details their usage and helps them understand how this usage translates into cost. Armed with this information, the user is able to determine if the resources are delivering adequate business value based on what is being charged. Figure 1: Chargeback in Self-Service Portal Enterprise Manager 12c provides a variety of additional interfaces into this data. The administrator can access summary and trending reports. Summary reports allow the administrator to drill-down through the cost center hierarchy to identify, for example, the top resource consumers across the organization. Figure 2: Charge Summary Report Trending reports can be used for I.T. planning and budgeting as they show utilization and charge trends over a period of time. Figure 3: CPU Trend Report We also provide chargeback reports through BI Publisher. This provides a way for users who do not have an Enterprise Manager login (such as Line of Business managers) to view charge and usage information. For situations where a bill needs to be produced, chargeback can be integrated with billing applications such as Oracle Billing and Revenue Management (BRM). Further information on Enterprise Manager 12c’s integrated metering and chargeback: White Paper Screenwatch Cloud Management on OTN

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• F# Objects &ndash; Integration with the other .Net Languages &ndash; Part 2

  - by MarkPearl

  So in part one of my posting I covered the real basics of object creation. Today I will hopefully dig a little deeper… My expert F# book brings up an interesting point – properties in F# are just syntactic sugar for method calls. This makes sense… for instance assume I had the following object with the property exposed called Firstname. type Person(Firstname : string, Lastname : string) = member v.Firstname = Firstname I could extend the Firstname property with the following code and everything would be hunky dory… type Person(Firstname : string, Lastname : string) = member v.Firstname = Console.WriteLine("Side Effect") Firstname   All that this would do is each time I use the property Firstname, I would see the side effect printed to the screen saying “Side Effect”. Member methods have a very similar look & feel to properties, in fact the only difference really is that you declare that parameters are being passed in. type Person(Firstname : string, Lastname : string) = member v.FullName(middleName) = Firstname + " " + middleName + " " + Lastname   In the code above, FullName requires the parameter middleName, and if viewed from another project in C# would show as a method and not a property. Precomputation Optimizations Okay, so something that is obvious once you think of it but that poses an interesting side effect of mutable value holders is pre-computation of results. All it is, is a slight difference in code but can result in quite a huge saving in performance. Basically pre-computation means you would not need to compute a value every time a method is called – but could perform the computation at the creation of the object (I hope I have got it right). In a way I battle to differentiate this from lazy evaluation but I will show an example to explain the principle. Let me try and show an example to illustrate the principle… assume the following F# module namespace myNamespace open System module myMod = let Add val1 val2 = Console.WriteLine("Compute") val1 + val2 type MathPrecompute(val1 : int, val2 : int) = let precomputedsum = Add val1 val2 member v.Sum = precomputedsum type MathNormalCompute(val1 : int, val2 : int) = member v.Sum = Add val1 val2 Now assume you have a C# console app that makes use of the objects with code similar to the following… using System; using myNamespace; namespace CSharpTest { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { Console.WriteLine("Constructing Objects"); var myObj1 = new myMod.MathNormalCompute(10, 11); var myObj2 = new myMod.MathPrecompute(10, 11); Console.WriteLine(""); Console.WriteLine("Normal Compute Sum..."); Console.WriteLine(myObj1.Sum); Console.WriteLine(myObj1.Sum); Console.WriteLine(myObj1.Sum); Console.WriteLine(""); Console.WriteLine("Pre Compute Sum..."); Console.WriteLine(myObj2.Sum); Console.WriteLine(myObj2.Sum); Console.WriteLine(myObj2.Sum); Console.ReadKey(); } } } The output when running the console application would be as follows…. You will notice with the normal compute object that the system would call the Add function every time the method was called. With the Precompute object it only called the compute method when the object was created. Subtle, but something that could lead to major performance benefits. So… this post has gone off in a slight tangent but still related to F# objects.

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• Google Analytics recording event based on <a> title attribute

  - by rlsaj

  I am declaring: var title = (typeof(el.attr('title')) != 'undefined' ) ? el.attr('title') :""; and then have the following: else if (title.match(/^"Matching Content"\:/i)) { elEv.category = "Matching Content Click"; elEv.action = "click-Matching-Content"; elEv.label = href.replace(/^https?\:\/\//i, ''); elEv.non_i = true; elEv.loc = href; } However, using Google Analytics debugger this is not being recorded. Any suggestions? The complete function is: if (typeof jQuery != 'undefined') { jQuery(document).ready(function gLinkTracking($) { var filetypes = /\.(avi|csv|dat|dmg|doc.*|exe|flv|gif|jpg|mov|mp3|mp4|msi|pdf|png|ppt.*|rar|swf|txt|wav|wma|wmv|xls.*|zip)$/i; var baseHref = ''; if (jQuery('base').attr('href') != undefined) baseHref = jQuery('base').attr('href'); jQuery('a').on('click', function (event) { var el = jQuery(this); var track = true; var href = (typeof(el.attr('href')) != 'undefined' ) ? el.attr('href') :""; var title = (typeof(el.attr('title')) != 'undefined' ) ? el.attr('title') :""; var isThisDomain = href.match(document.domain.split('.').reverse()[1] + '.' + document.domain.split('.').reverse()[0]); if (!href.match(/^javascript:/i)) { var elEv = []; elEv.value=0, elEv.non_i=false; if (href.match(/^mailto\:/i)) { elEv.category = "Email link"; elEv.action = "click-email"; elEv.label = href.replace(/^mailto\:/i, ''); elEv.loc = href; } else if (title.match(/^"Matching Content"\:/i)) { elEv.category = "Matching Content Click"; elEv.action = "click-Matching-Content"; elEv.label = href.replace(/^https?\:\/\//i, ''); elEv.non_i = true; elEv.loc = href; } else if (href.match(filetypes)) { var extension = (/[.]/.exec(href)) ? /[^.]+$/.exec(href) : undefined; elEv.category = "File Downloaded"; elEv.action = "click-" + extension[0]; elEv.label = href.replace(/ /g,"-"); elEv.loc = baseHref + href; } else if (href.match(/^https?\:/i) && !isThisDomain) { elEv.category = "External link"; elEv.action = "click-external"; elEv.label = href.replace(/^https?\:\/\//i, ''); elEv.non_i = true; elEv.loc = href; } else if (href.match(/^tel\:/i)) { elEv.category = "Telephone link"; elEv.action = "click-telephone"; elEv.label = href.replace(/^tel\:/i, ''); elEv.loc = href; } else track = false; if (track) { _gaq.push(['_trackEvent', elEv.category.toLowerCase(), elEv.action.toLowerCase(), elEv.label.toLowerCase(), elEv.value, elEv.non_i]); if ( el.attr('target') == undefined || el.attr('target').toLowerCase() != '_blank') { setTimeout(function() { location.href = elEv.loc; }, 400); return false; } } } }); }); }

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• SSI: Failed String Comparison with CGI Environment Variable [migrated]

  - by Calyo Delphi

  I am currently working on developing a personal website. It's not my first time doing this, but this is my first major foray into implementing SSI. I've run myself into a wall, however, with an if-else directive that uses one of the CGI environment variables as part of its comparison. Even after some limited attempts at debugging, all of the output and documentation that I have means that the comparisons being made should fail outright. This is not the case, and the wrong evaluation is being made by the if-else directive. Here's the code in the file index.shtml: <head> <!--#set var="page" value="Home" --> <!--#include file="headlinks.shtml" --> <style> img#ref { float: right; margin-left: 8px; border-width: 0px; } </style> </head> Here's the code in the file headlinks.shtml: <title><!--#echo var="page" --> &ndash; <!--#echo var="HTTP_HOST" --></title> <!--#set var="docroot" value="${DOCUMENT_ROOT}" --> <!--#echo var="docroot" --> <!--#if expr="( $docroot != '/Applications/MAMP/htdocs' ) || ( $docroot != '/home/dragarch/public_html' )" --> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../style.css"> <link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/svg+xml" href="../favicon.svg" /> <!--#else --> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css"> <link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/svg+xml" href="favicon.svg" /> <!--#endif --> And here's the output for the file index.shtml: <title>Home &ndash; dragarch</title> /Applications/MAMP/htdocs <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../style.css"> <link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/svg+xml" href="../favicon.svg" /> Both style.css and favicon.svg are in the document root with index.shtml, so the if directive should fail and default to the output of the else directive. As you can see, while the document root (which is currently the MAMP htdocs folder on my own notebook) is correct according to the output of the echo directive, the comparison in the if-else directive fails to compare the strings properly. I'm using this page for my documentation: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_include.html I'm at a complete loss as to why this is the case, and need a bit of help here. EDIT: I should note that dragarch is a hostname that I configured in /etc/hosts to point to 127.0.0.1 so I could test the site without having to use localhost. It has no real effect on the functionality of anything, other than to just act as a prettier hostname to use.

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