steve murch - Page 69 - Developer IT

SQL Server devs–what source control system do you use, if any? (answer and maybe win free stuff)

- by jamiet

Recently I noticed a tweet from notable SQL Server author and community dude-at-large Steve Jones in which he asked how many SQL Server developers were putting their SQL Server source code (i.e. DDL) under source control (I’m paraphrasing because I can’t remember the exact tweet and Twitter’s search functionality is useless). The question surprised me slightly as I thought a more pertinent question would be “how many SQL Server developers are not using source control?” because I have been doing just that for many years now and I simply assumed that use of source control is a given in this day and age. Then I started thinking about it. “Perhaps I’m wrong” I pondered, “perhaps the SQL Server folks that do use source control in their day-to-day jobs are in the minority”. So, dear reader, I’m interested to know a little bit more about your use of source control. Are you putting your SQL Server code into a source control system? If so, what source control server software (e.g. TFS, Git, SVN, Mercurial, SourceSafe, Perforce) are you using? What source control client software are you using (e.g. TFS Team Explorer, Tortoise, Red Gate SQL Source Control, Red Gate SQL Connect, Git Bash, etc…)? Why did you make those particular software choices? Any interesting anecdotes to share in regard to your use of source control and SQL Server? To encourage you to contribute I have five pairs of licenses for Red Gate SQL Source Control and Red Gate SQL Connect to give away to what I consider to be the five best replies (“best” is totally subjective of course but this is my blog so my decision is final ), if you want to be considered don’t forget to leave contact details; email address, Twitter handle or similar will do. To start you off and to perhaps get the brain cells whirring, here are my answers to the questions above: Are you putting your SQL Server code into a source control system? As I think I’ve already said…yes. Always. If so, what source control server software (e.g. TFS, Git, SVN, Mercurial, SourceSafe, Perforce) are you using? I move around a lot between many clients so it changes on a fairly regular basis; my current client uses Team Foundation Server (aka TFS) and as part of a separate project is trialing the use of Team Foundation Service. I have used SVN extensively in the past which I am a fan of (I generally prefer it to TFS) and am trying to get my head around Git by using it for ObjectStorageHelper. What source control client software are you using (e.g. TFS Team Explorer, Tortoise, Red Gate SQL Source Control, Red Gate SQL Connect, Git Bash, etc…)? On my current project, Team Explorer. In the past I have used Tortoise to connect to SVN. Why did you make those particular software choices? I generally use whatever the client uses and given that I work with SQL Server I find that the majority of my clients use TFS, I guess simply because they are Microsoft development shops. Any interesting anecdotes to share in regard to your use of source control and SQL Server? Not an anecdote as such but I am going to share some frustrations about TFS. In many ways TFS is a great product because it integrates many separate functions (source control, work item tracking, build agents) into one whole and I’m firmly of the opinion that that is a good thing if for no reason other than being able to associate your check-ins with a work-item. However, like many people there are aspects to TFS source control that annoy me day-in, day-out. Chief among them has to be the fact that it uses a file’s read-only property to determine if a file should be checked-out or not and, if it determines that it should, it will happily do that check-out on your behalf without you even asking it to. I didn’t realise how ridiculous this was until I first used SVN about three years ago – with SVN you make any changes you wish and then use your source control client to determine which files have changed and thus be checked-in; the notion of “check-out” doesn’t even exist. That sounds like a small thing but you don’t realise how liberating it is until you actually start working that way. Hoping to hear some more anecdotes and opinions in the comments. Remember….free software is up for grabs! @jamiet

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XNA Notes 002

- by George Clingerman

This past week (much like every week in the XNA community) was filled with things happening and people doing cool things (and getting noticed for doing cool things!). You can definitely tell there are some Xbox LIVE Indie game developers starting to make some names for themselves. Can’t wait to name drop them at bars. Me- “Oh you played Game X? Yeah, I know the guy that made that. Pretty cool guy.” Yeah, I’ll be THAT guy. Time Critical XNA News 30 days left to submit XBLIGs made in XNA Game Studio 3.1 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/xna/archive/2011/01/08/30-days-left-to-submit-xna-gs-3-1-games-to-app-hub.aspx Jeromy Walsh wants you to know his XNA 4.0 Winter Workshop starting soon, go get signed up! And the forum is now LIVE on GameDev.net http://gamedevelopedia.com/ http://tinyurl.com/4gg2cfv The XNA Team Per Nick Gravelyn, Aaron Stebner’s blog post is a must read for icons on Windows Phone http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/72022/439597.aspx#439597 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/astebner/archive/2010/10/01/10070507.aspx Shawn Hargreaves writes about Sprite Billboards in a 3D world http://blogs.msdn.com/b/shawnhar/archive/2011/01/12/spritebatch-billboards-in-a-3d-world.aspx XNA MVPs Andy “The ZMan” Dunn wants YOU to come to the MVP Summit and run a 5K http://www.indiegameguy.com/blogs/zman/archive/2010/12/26/come-to-the-mvp-summit-and-run-a-5k-yes-you.aspx Jim Perry updates his forum signature just to make it clear that he’s not speaking for Microsoft or giving official information (LOL, thanks Jim, now if only people will take the time to read that...) XNA MVP | Please use the Forum Search and read the Forum FAQs | My posts are not official info http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/70849/439613.aspx#439613 XNA Developers Robert Boyd (@werezombie) working hard at converting his RPG engine used to make Breath of Death VII and Chtulu Saves the World to XNA 4.0. If you haven’t done the upgrade yet yourself, might be useful to read back through his tweets and recent forum posts to see the problems/solutions he’s encountered. http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/71834/438099.aspx#438099 http://www.twitter.com/werezompire SpynDoctorGames is in the final phase before the release of Your Doodles are Bugged for the PC! Going to be interesting to watch as more XNA game developers explore the PC game market for their games. http://twitter.com/SpynDoctorGames/statuses/24503173217521664 http://www.spyn-doctor.de @DrMistry shares some details of his next title YoYoYo http://www.mstargames.co.uk/mistryblogmain/35-genblog/177-a-new-year-a-new-game-and-maybe-a-new-approach.html Travis Woodward (@RabidLionGames) has a blog post coming this weekend on Farseer and Mario-like platformer movement. http://twitter.com/RabidLionGames/statuses/24992762021548032 http://www.rabidlion.com/ S4G Interview with Radiangames http://n4g.com/news/679492/s4g-interview-with-radiangames XBLAratings.com interviews Steve Flores (@DragonDivide) developer of Alpha Squad http://www.xblaratings.com/developer-qaa/3621-alpha-squad-developer-interview XBox LIVE Indie Games If you haven’t been reading the roundups on IndieGames by NaviFairy on GayGamer, you’ve been missing out! http://gaygamer.net/2011/01/xbox_indie_review_roundup_1112.html Armless Octopus posts the Top 20 Games of 2010 Part 1 http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/01/10/top-20-xbox-live-indie-games-of-2010-part-1/ Armless Octopus posts the Top 20 Games of 2010 Part 2 http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/01/12/top-20-xbox-live-indie-games-of-2010-%E2%80%93-part-2/ Xbox LIVE Indie Game Reviews http://www.gamemarx.com/ Don’t forget to be following @XboxHornet . That’s a great way to snag free copies of Xbox LIVE Indie Games http://twitter.com/XboxHornet/statuses/24471103808208896 http://www.xboxhornet.com/wordpress/ Xbox LIVE Indie Game Review posts the top 20 Xbox 360 LIVE Indie Games of 2010 http://www.xbox-360-community-games-reviews.com/top-20-best-xbox-360-live-indie-games-of-2010/ VVGtv to Stream #XBLIG Again! Help out if you can. http://vvgtv.com/2011/01/07/vvgtv-to-stream-xblig-again/ Indie Gamer Magazine Issue 14 has a look at the Xbox LIVE Winter Indie Game Uprisiing http://www.indiegamemag.com/issue14/ XNA Game Development Andrew Russell announced and asked for help in his development of ExEn: XNA for iPhone, Android and Silverlight http://rockethub.com/projects/752-exen-xna-for-iphone-android-and-silverlight App Hub forums letting you down? Don’t forget about StackOverflow and the game development specific version gamedev.stackexchange http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/xna http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/xna Transmute gets an update from Aaron Foley (@slyprid) and you can now add and visually edit parallax layers to your 2D tile game. http://twitpic.com/3nudj0 http://twitter.com/slyprid/statuses/23418379574448128 http://forgottenstarstudios.com/Transmute/default.html Webcomics Weekly #75 touches on some feelings I’ve seen people try to express (myself included) when talking about game development and what types of games should be released for XBLIG http://www.pvponline.com/2011/01/05/webcomics-weekly-75-sour-oats/ Setting up a new PC for XNA development? Here’s a site that helps you quickly build a installer for all the most common applications developers use. http://ninite.com/ Fun wew thread on the XNA forums asking XBLIG/XNA developers just what their Top 10 favorite video games of all time are. http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/107.aspx Christopher Hill (@Xalterax) stumbled across an entire community that does nothing but create box art. This is a great potential resource for Xbox LIVE Indie Game developers to get some awesome box art for their games. http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/46582/441451.aspx#441451 http://www.vgboxart.com/browse/plat/360/ Don’t forget about the XNA Wiki, fantastic community resource (and roll up those sleeves and contribute already!) http://xnawiki.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

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Use WLST to Delete All JMS Messages From a Destination

- by james.bayer

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

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How to install iodbc in Ubuntu 12.10

- by Hanynowsky

I need to install the library iodbc (depends on libodbc2) in my Quantal machine. Yet there is creepy dependency problem. This was replaced somehow by unixodbc which I don't have, installed. Here is what I get when I try to install : sudo apt-get install libiodbc2-dev Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been created or been moved out of Incoming. The following information may help to resolve the situation: The following packages have unmet dependencies: libiodbc2-dev : Depends: libiodbc2 (= 3.52.7-2build2) but it is not going to be installed Depends: iodbc (= 3.52.7-2build2) but it is not going to be installed E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages. I can tell that iodbc conflicts with odbcinst. Yet, I cannot remove it due to the following: sudo apt-get remove odbcinst Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required: akonadi-backend-mysql calligra-l10n-engb kde-l10n-engb kdevelop-l10n kdevelop-php-docs-l10n kdevelop-php-l10n libakonadi-kabc4 libakonadi-notes4 libakonadiprotocolinternals1 libboost-thread1.49.0 libdmtx0a libgpgme++2 libkcalcore4 libkdgantt2 libkholidays4 libkimap4 libkldap4 libkmbox4 libkmime4 libkolabxml0 libkpgp4 libkresources4 libksieve4 libprison0 libqgpgme1 libqrencode3 libxerces-c3.1 Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them. The following packages will be REMOVED: akonadi-server k3b k3b-i18n katepart kde-runtime kdelibs-bin kdelibs5-plugins kdepim-runtime kdepim-strigi-plugins kdepimlibs-kio-plugins kdoctools kget kmag kmail kmix kmousetool ksystemlog kubuntu-debug-installer language-pack-kde-ar language-pack-kde-en libakonadi-calendar4 libakonadi-contact4 libakonadi-kcal4 libakonadi-kde4 libakonadi-kmime4 libcalendarsupport4 libincidenceeditorsng4 libk3b6 libkabc4 libkactivities-bin libkactivities6 libkalarmcal2 libkatepartinterfaces4 libkcal4 libkcalutils4 libkcddb4 libkde3support4 libkdepim4 libkdepimdbusinterfaces4 libkdewebkit5 libkemoticons4 libkfile4 libkgapi0 libkhtml5 libkio5 libkleo4 libkmanagesieve4 libkmediaplayer4 libknewstuff3-4 libknotifyconfig4 libkolab0 libkonq-common libkonq5abi1 libkontactinterface4 libkparts4 libkpimidentities4 libkpimtextedit4 libkpimutils4 libkprintutils4 libksieveui4 libktexteditor4 libktnef4 libktorrent4 libkworkspace4abi2 libkxmlrpcclient4 libmailcommon4 libmailimporter4 libmailtransport4 libmessagecomposer4 libmessagecore4 libmessagelist4 libmessageviewer4 libmicroblog4 libnepomuk4 libnepomukcore4abi1 libnepomukquery4a libnepomuksync4 libnepomukutils4 libplasma3 libsoprano4 libtemplateparser4 libvirtodbc0 nepomuk-core odbcinst odbcinst1debian2 plasma-scriptengine-javascript qapt-batch soprano-daemon virtuoso-minimal 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 89 to remove and 0 not upgraded. After this operation, 126 MB disk space will be freed. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Other info: Why do the "iodbc" and "libmyodbc" packages conflict with each other? The root problem is that I need to use a new feature introduced in the latest MySQL Workbench builds (DB Migration) which uses odbc for that matter. Here is what Mysql doc says about it : Linux The Migration Wizard uses iODBC as a driver manager for all of its ODBC connections in Linux. This may give you some troubles because most Linux distributions provide ODBC drivers compiled against unixODBC. This is another driver manager not supported by MySQL Workbench so you won’t be able to use those drivers unless you compile them against iODBC. Here’s what you should do. Make sure that you have iODBC installed. If you are using Debian, Ubuntu or another Debian based distro, type this command in your terminal: $ sudo apt-get install iodbc libiodbc2-dev libpq-dev libssl-dev For RPM based distros (RedHat, Fedora, etc.) type this command instead of the previous one: $ sudo yum install iodbc iodbc-dev libpqxx-devel openssl-devel Now we need to install the PostgreSQL ODBC drivers. Download the psqlODBC source tarball from here. Use the latest version available for download. As of this writing the latest version corresponds to the file psqlodbc-09.01.0200.tar.gz. Extract this tarball to a directory in your hard drive and open a terminal and cd into that directory. Type this in the terminal window: $ ./configure --with-iodbc --enable-pthreads $ make $ sudo make install Verify that you have the file psqlodbcw.so in the /usr/local/lib directory. This package seems to pose the problem probably: dpkg -s odbcinst1debian2 Package: odbcinst1debian2 Status: install ok installed Priority: optional Section: libs Installed-Size: 241 Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <[email protected]> Architecture: amd64 Multi-Arch: same Source: unixodbc Version: 2.2.14p2-5ubuntu4 Replaces: unixodbc (<< 2.1.1-2) Depends: libc6 (>= 2.14), libltdl7 (>= 2.4.2), odbcinst Pre-Depends: multiarch-support Breaks: libiodbc2, libmyodbc (<< 5.1.6-2), odbc-postgresql (<< 1:09.00.0310-1.1), tdsodbc (<< 0.82-8) Conflicts: odbcinst1, odbcinst1debian1 Description: Support library for accessing odbc ini files This package contains the libodbcinst library from unixodbc, a library used by ODBC drivers for reading their configuration settings from /etc/odbc.ini and ~/.odbc.ini. . Also contained in this package are the driver setup plugins, which describe the features supported by individual ODBC drivers. Homepage: http://www.unixodbc.org/ Original-Maintainer: Steve Langasek <[email protected]> I have no broken packages:

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Subscribable World Cup 2010 Calendar

- by jamiet

I bang on quite a lot on this blog about ways in which data can get published over the web and one of the most interesting ways, in my opinion, of publishing data in a structured manner that is well understood is to use the iCalendar specification. There isn’t much information in the world that doesn’t have some concept of “when” so iCalendar is a great way of distributing that information. You have probably used iCalendar at some point without even knowing about it. All files with a .ics suffix are iCalendar format files and that is why you can happily import them into Outlook, Hotmail Calendar, Google Calendar etc… where they can be parsed and have the semantic data (when, where and who) extracted from them. Importing of iCalendar format data is really only half the trick though; in my opinion the real value of iCalendar-formatted calendar is the ability to subscribe to them. Subscribing has a simple benefit over importing but that single benefit is of massive importance: a subscriber to an iCalendar calendar can periodically check to see if any updates have been made and, if they have, automatically update the local copy. The real benefit to the user is the productivity gain – a single update to an iCalendar means that all subscribers are automatically made aware of the change and there is zero effort on the part of the subscriber; as my former colleague Howard van Rooijen is fond of saying, “work smarter not harder” – nowhere is this edict more ably demonstrated than subscribing versus importing of calendars. If you want to read some more thoughts about iCalendar then go and read my past blog post Calendar syndication - My big hope for 2009's breakthrough technology or better still go and seek out Jon Udell who speaks very authoritatively on the issue of iCalendar. With this subject of iCalendar on my mind I was interested to discover (via Steve Clayton’s blog post Download the world cup fixtures) that the BBC had made a .ics file available containing all of the matches in the upcoming World Cup. As you can probably guess this was a file that was made available so that it could be imported into your calendar of choice. It had one obvious downside though, right now nobody knows who is going to be playing in the knock-out stages so the calendar looks like this: with no teams being named after 25th June. How much more useful would this calendar have been if the BBC had made it possible to subscribe to the calendar instead, thus the calendar could be updated with the teams for the knock out stages when they are known and every subscriber would have a permanently up-to-date record of all the fixtures in their calendar. Better still, the calendar could be updated with match results as well or perhaps even post a match report from the BBC sport pages; when calendars are made subscribable a sea of opportunity opens up for distribution of information. So with that in mind I have decided to go one better than the BBC. I have imported their .ics into a brand new Hotmail calendar and made it publicly available at the following URLs: HTML http://cid-dc1ed121af0476be.calendar.live.com/calendar/World+Cup+2010/index.html iCalendar webcal://cid-dc1ed121af0476be.calendar.live.com/calendar/World+Cup+2010/calendar.ics The link you’re really interested in is the second one - click on that and it should open up in your calendar software of choice. Or, if you want to view it in an online calendar such as Hotmail Calendar or Google Calendar, copy and paste that URL into the appropriate place. Some people have told me they’re having trouble with the iCalendar link in which case hit the HTML link and then click “View ICS” at the resultant web page: I shall endeavour to keep the calendar updated throughout the World Cup and even if I don’t you’re no worse off than if you had imported the BBC’s .ics file so why not give it a try? If I do keep it up to date then you will have a permanent record of the 2010 World Cup available in your calendar. Forever. If you have your calendar synced to your smartphone then you’ll be carrying match reports around with you without you having to do a single thing. Surely that’s worth a quick click isn’t it? If you have any thoughts let me have them in the comments below. Thanks for reading. @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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In the Mobile and Tablet World, How Much is Too Much?

- by andrewbrust

The week of April 26th was a huge one in the world of mobile and tablet devices, There were so many individual developments, announcements and solidifications of strategy, it’s almost impossible to believe they occurred in the same month, let alone the same week. Things started with Apple and Gizmodo having a Law and Order moment over the latter’s procurement of what appears to be the former’s 4th gen iPhone prototype. We found out on the 26th that Gizmodo blogger Jason Chen’s apartment was raided by police and, honestly, that was a bit much. But Apple didn’t stop there. They also published Steve Job’s critique of Adobe Flash and his explanation of Cupertino’s embargo of Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. If you ask me, this too, was a bit much. Apple finished up the week by releasing the 3G version of its iPad product to the US market. I like (iLike?) my WiFi iPad. The idea of getting a version of it that required a second 3G service monthly subscription, is, well, a bit much. Microsoft was in the news too. It killed a project it hadn’t even acknowledged the existence of: the Courier tablet. That’s a bit much too. If a tree falls in the woods, and Microsoft says they can’t hear it anyway, could they really have chopped it down? Maybe Microsoft Research should have licensed some of Courier’s technology from other parts of Microsoft. Then maybe they could have kept the product alive. Ask HTC: they’re going to be licensing technology from Microsoft because Redmond insists that Google’s Android operating system infringes on certain of their patents. And since HTC now builds a number of handsets on Android, instead of being beholden, as they once were, to Windows Mobile, that means they can keep making their products. Why does HTC have to pay the royalties, and not Google? Maybe Microsoft decided that going after GOOG would have been a bit much, even for them. The agreement came not a moment to soon: HTC released their “Droid Incredible” (that name’s a bit much), an Android 2.1 handset with amazing hardware and HTC’s own Sense UI, on April 30th (this past Friday). This phone is very well-reviewed. Maybe that’s why Google basically decided to beg off introducing a version of its Nexus One phone (also manufactured by HTC) on the Verizon Wireless network. Google backing down? That’s incredible, if not also a bit much. And that brings us to HP. Which this week announced its acquisition of Palm and its webOS mobile phone touch-oriented operating system. HP also killed its own Slate initiative. Apparently HP realized that Windows 7, even with a proprietary HP touch UI added on top, is no match for the iPad. I’m guessing they think webOS might work a bit better, And I’m wondering if HP even wants to use webOS for phone handsets, beyond the Pre and Pixi. Using it just for slate devices would be a bit extreme, but maybe not too much. Honestly, this was not Microsoft’s best week. It killed a project and a close partner did likewise. Then that same partner bought a competing OS product, while another partner released their new product that uses yet another competing OS platform. What did Microsoft actually produce this past week? An update to its Windows Phone 7 developer tools that actually works with the version of Visual Studio 2010 released on April 12th, and the version of Silverlight released three days later. That took three weeks to get synced up, and that’s a bit much too. But at least it happened. Windows Phone 7 is Microsoft’s best hope for a comeback in the SmartPhone market and to offer a credible touch-based tablet device. This week, two of Microsoft’s slate initiatives died, and its only mobile phone victory was around its competitor’s operating system. I hope the new platform gets Redmond out of the PC ghetto and into the classes of device that get people really excited today. If it can’t, that would be a bit much; probably too much. And, as the signs at the Lonestar Cafe in NYC used to say, too much ain’t enough.

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Open World Day 3

- by Antony Reynolds

A Day in the Life of an Oracle OpenWorld Attendee Part IV My third day was exhibition day for me! I took the opportunity to wander around the JavaOne and OpenWorld exhibitions to see what might be useful for me when selling WebLogic, Coherence & SOA Suite. I found a number of interesting vendors and thought I would share what I found here. These are not necessarily endorsements, but observations on companies that I thought had interesting looking products that fill a need I have seen at customers. Highly Available EBS Upgrades A few years ago I worked with a customer that was a port authority. They wanted to tie E-Business Suite into their operations to provide faster processing of cargo and passengers. However they only had a 2 hour downtime window to perform upgrades. This was not a problem for core database and middleware technology, this could accommodate those upgrade timescales easily. It was a problem for EBS however so I intrigued to find Rapid E-Suite Inc offering an 11i to 12i upgrade service that claims to require no outage. This could be a real boon to EBS customers like my port friends that need to upgrade without disruption to their business. Mobile on WebLogic I have come across a number of customers who want a comprehensive mobile solution, connected and disconnected operation and so forth. ADF only addresses part of these requirements currently so I was excited to discover mFrontiers Inc offering an apparently comprehensive solution that should integrate easily with Oracle SOA Suite to mobile enable a SOA infrastructure. The ability to operate without a network is important for many applications, particularly in industries that require their engineers to enter buildings to perform maintenance or repairs, because network access is not always available – many of my colleagues don’t have mobile access from their homes because they live in the middle of nowhere – and disconnected support is crucial in these situations. Sharepoint Connector for WebCenter Content Obviously Sharepoint is an evil pernicious intrusion into a companies IT estate but it is widely deployed and many people like it but also would like to take advantage of Oracle products such as WebCenter Content. So I was encouraged to see that Fishbowl Solutions have created a connector for Sharepoint that allows it to bring in content from WebCenter, it looks like a valuable way to maintain the Sharepoint interface end users are used to but extend the range of content by pulling stuff (technical term for content) from WebCenter. Load Balancing The Enterprise Deployment Guides are Oracles bible on building highly available FMW environments, and each of them requires a front end load balancer. I have been asked to help configure F5 Load Balancers on a number of occasions over my time at Oracle and each time I come back to it I find more useful features have been added to the BigIP line of load balancers that F5 sell, many of their documents are tailored to FMW. I like F5, they provide (relatively) easy to use products that do what they say on the side of the box. They may not have all the bells and whistles of some of their more expensive competitors but they do the job and do it well! Besides which I like their logo! Other Stuff I saw lots of other interesting products and services, such as a lightweight monitoring tool for Coherence, Forms migration services, JCAPS migration services and lots of cool freebies to take home to the children! A Quiet Night Wednesday night was the partner appreciation event and I had decided to go back to the hotel and have an early night. I decided to attend the last session of the day – a Maven/Hudson/WebLogic tutorial. I got the wrong hotel for the session and snuck in 20 minutes late at the back and starting working on the hands on workshop. One of my co-attendees raised his hand for help and as the presenter came over to help he suddenly stopped and yelled – “Is that Antony”! It was my old friend Steve Button who used to be based in Redwood Shores but is now a WebLogic guru PM in Australia. It was good to catch up with him. As he yelled out a guy with really bad posture turned around to see who he was talking to, this turned out to be my friend Simon Haslan, Oracle ACE from the UK. After the tutorial Simon and I retired to the coffee shop to catch up and share stories. 2 and half hours later we decided it was time to retire, so much for an early night but great to renew old friendships and find out what real customers are worrying about.

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I, Android

- by andrewbrust

I’m just back from the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show (CES). I go to CES to get a sense of what Microsoft is doing in the consumer space, and how people are reacting to it. When I first went to CES 2 years ago, Steve Ballmer announced the beta of Windows 7 at his keynote address, and the crowd went wild. When I went again last year, everyone was hoping for a Windows tablet announcement at the Ballmer keynote. Although they didn’t get one (unless you count the unreleased HP Slate running Windows 7), people continued to show anticipation around Project Natal (which became Xbox 360 Kinect) and around Windows Phone 7. On the show floor last year, there were machines everywhere running Windows 7, including lots of netbooks. Microsoft had a serious influence at the show both years. But this year, one brand, one product, one operating system evidenced itself over and over again: Android. Whether in the multitude of tablet devices that were shown across the show, or the burgeoning number of smartphones shown (including all four forthcoming 4G-LTE handsets at Verizon Wireless’ booth) or the Google TV set top box from Logitech and the embedded implementation in new Sony TV models, Android was was there. There was excitement in the ubiquity of Android 2.2 (Froyo) and the emergence of Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). There was anticipation around the tablet-optimized Android 3.0 (Honeycomb). There were highly customized skins. There was even an official CES Android app for navigating the exhibit halls and planning events. Android was so ubiquitous, in fact, that it became surprising to find a device that was running anything else. It was as if Android had become the de facto Original Equipment Manufacturing (OEM) operating system. Motorola’s booth was nothing less than an Android showcase. And it was large, and it was packed. Clearly Moto’s fortunes have improved dramatically in the last year and change. The fact that the company morphed from being a core Windows Mobile OEM to an Android poster child seems non-coincidental to their improved fortunes. Even erstwhile WinMo OEMs who now do produce Windows Phone 7 devices were not pushing them. Perhaps I missed them, but I couldn’t find WP7 handsets at Samsung’s booth, nor at LG’s. And since the only carrier exhibiting at the show was Verizon Wireless, which doesn’t yet have WP7 devices, this left Microsoft’s booth as the only place to see the phones. Why is Android so popular with consumer electronics manufacturers in Japan, South Korea, China and Taiwan? Yes, it’s free, but there’s more to it than that. Android seems to have succeeded as an OEM OS because it’s directed at OEMs who are permitted to personalize it and extend it, and it provides enough base usability and touch-friendliness that OEMs want it. In the process, it has become a de facto standard (which makes OEMs want it even more), and has done so in a remarkably short time: the OS was launched on a single phone in the US just 2 1/4 years ago. Despite its success and popularity, Apple’s iOS would never be used by OEMs, because it’s not meant to be embedded and customized, but rather to provide a fully finished experience. Ironically, Windows Phone 7 is likewise disqualified from such embedded use. Windows Mobile (6.x and earlier) may have been a candidate had it not atrophied so much in its final 5 years of life. What can Microsoft do? It could start by developing a true touch-centric OS for tablets, whether that be within Windows 8, or derived from Windows Phone 7. It would then need to deconstruct that finished product into components, via a new or altered version of Windows Embedded or Windows Embedded Compact. And if Microsoft went that far, it would only make sense to work with its OEMs and mobile carriers to make certain they showcase their products using the OS at CES, and other consumer electronics venues, prominently. Mostly though, Microsoft would need to decide if it were really committed to putting sustained time, effort and money into a commodity product, especially given the far greater financial return that it now derives from its core Windows and Office franchises. Microsoft would need to see an OEM OS for what it is: a loss leader that helps build brand and platform momentum for up-level products. Is that enough to make the investment worthwhile? One thing is certain: if that question is not acknowledged and answered honestly, then any investment will be squandered.

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JavaOne Latin America Opening Keynotes

- by Tori Wieldt

Originally published on blogs.oracle.com/javaone It was a great first day at JavaOne Brazil, which included the Java Strategy and Java Technical keynotes. Henrik Stahl, Senior Director, Product Management for Java opened the keynotes by saying that this is the third year for JavaOne Latin America. He explained, "You know what they say, the first time doesn't count, the second time is a habit and the third time it's a tradition!" He mentioned that he was thrilled that this is largest JavaOne in Brazil to date, and he wants next year to be larger. He said that Oracle knows Latin America is an important hub for development. "We continually come back to Latin America because of the dedication the community has with driving the continued innovation for Java," he said. Stahl explained that Oracle and the Java community must continue to innovate and Make the Future Java together. The success of Java depends on three important factors: technological innovation, Oracle as a strong steward of Java, and community participation. "The Latin American Java Community (especially in Brazil) is a shining example of how to be positive contributor to Java," Stahl said. Next, George Saab, VP software dev, Java Platform Group at Oracle, discussed some of the recent and upcoming changes to Java. "In addition to the incremental improvements to Java 7, we have also increased the set of platforms supported by Oracle from Linux, Windows, and Solaris to now also include Mac OS X and Linux/ARM for ARM-based PCs such as the Raspberry Pi and emerging ARM based microservers." Saab announced that EA builds for Linux ARM Hard Float ABI will be available by the end of the year. Staffan Friberg, Product Manager, Java Platform Group, provided an overview of some of the language coming in Java 8, including Lambda, remove of PermGen, improved data and time APIs and improved security, Java 8 development is moving along. He reminded the audience that they can go to OpenJDK to see this development being done in real-time, and that there are weekly early access builds of OracleJDK 8 that developers can download and try today. Judson Althoff, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Alliances and Channels and Embedded Sales, was invited to the stage, and the audience was told that "even though he is wearing a suit, he is still pretty technical." Althoff started off with a bang: "The Internet of Things is on a collision course with big data and this is a huge opportunity for developers." For example, Althoff said, today cars are more a data device than a mechanical device. A car embedded with sensors for fuel efficiency, temperature, tire pressure, etc. can generate a petabyte of data A DAY. There are similar examples in healthcare (patient monitoring and privacy requirements creates a complex data problem) and transportation management (sending a package around the world with sensors for humidity, temperature and light). Althoff then brought on stage representatives from three companies that are successful with Java today, first Axel Hansmann, VP Strategy & Marketing Communications, Cinterion. Mr. Hansmann explained that Cinterion, a market leader in Latin America, enables M2M services with Java. At JavaOne San Francisco, Cinterion launched the EHS5, the smallest 3g solderable module, with Java installed on it. This provides Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) with a cost effective, flexible platform for bringing advanced M2M technology to market.Next, Steve Nelson, Director of Marketing for the Americas, at Freescale explained that Freescale is #1 in Embedded Processors in Wired and Wireless Communications, and #1 in Automotive Semiconductors in the Americas. He said that Java provides a mature, proven platform that is uniquely suited to meet the requirements of almost any type of embedded device. He encouraged University students to get involved in the Freescale Cup, a global competition where student teams build, program, and race a model car around a track for speed.Roberto Franco, SBTVD Forum President, SBTVD, talked about Ginga, a Java-based standard for television in Brazil. He said there are 4 million Ginga TV sets in Brazil, and they expect over 20 million TV sets to be sold by the end of 2014. Ginga is also being adopted in other 11 countries in Latin America. Ginga brings interactive services not only at TV set, but also on other devices such as tablets, PCs or smartphones, as the main or second screen. "Interactive services is already a reality," he said, ' but in a near future, we foresee interactivity enhanced TV content, convergence with OTT services and a big participation from the audience, all integrated on TV, tablets, smartphones and second screen devices."Before he left the stage, Nandini Ramani thanked Judson for being part of the Java community and invited him to the next Geek Bike Ride in Brazil. She presented him an official geek bike ride jersey.For the Technical Keynote, a "blue screen of death" appeared. With mock concern, Stephin Chin asked the rest of the presenters if they could go on without slides. What followed was a interesting collection of demos, including JavaFX on a tablet, a look at Project Easel in NetBeans, and even Simon Ritter controlling legos with his brainwaves! Stay tuned for more dispatches.

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JavaOne Latin America Opening Keynotes

- by Tori Wieldt

It was a great first day at JavaOne Brazil, which included the Java Strategy and Java Technical keynotes. Henrik Stahl, Senior Director, Product Management for Java opened the keynotes by saying that this is the third year for JavaOne Latin America. He explained, "You know what they say, the first time doesn't count, the second time is a habit and the third time it's a tradition!" He mentioned that he was thrilled that this is largest JavaOne in Brazil to date, and he wants next year to be larger. He said that Oracle knows Latin America is an important hub for development. "We continually come back to Latin America because of the dedication the community has with driving the continued innovation for Java," he said. Stahl explained that Oracle and the Java community must continue to innovate and Make the Future Java together. The success of Java depends on three important factors: technological innovation, Oracle as a strong steward of Java, and community participation. "The Latin American Java Community (especially in Brazil) is a shining example of how to be positive contributor to Java," Stahl said. Next, George Saab, VP software dev, Java Platform Group at Oracle, discussed some of the recent and upcoming changes to Java. "In addition to the incremental improvements to Java 7, we have also increased the set of platforms supported by Oracle from Linux, Windows, and Solaris to now also include Mac OS X and Linux/ARM for ARM-based PCs such as the Raspberry Pi and emerging ARM based microservers." Saab announced that EA builds for Linux ARM Hard Float ABI will be available by the end of the year. Staffan Friberg, Product Manager, Java Platform Group, provided an overview of some of the language coming in Java 8, including Lambda, remove of PermGen, improved data and time APIs and improved security, Java 8 development is moving along. He reminded the audience that they can go to OpenJDK to see this development being done in real-time, and that there are weekly early access builds of OracleJDK 8 that developers can download and try today. Judson Althoff, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Alliances and Channels and Embedded Sales, was invited to the stage, and the audience was told that "even though he is wearing a suit, he is still pretty technical." Althoff started off with a bang: "The Internet of Things is on a collision course with big data and this is a huge opportunity for developers." For example, Althoff said, today cars are more a data device than a mechanical device. A car embedded with sensors for fuel efficiency, temperature, tire pressure, etc. can generate a petabyte of data A DAY. There are similar examples in healthcare (patient monitoring and privacy requirements creates a complex data problem) and transportation management (sending a package around the world with sensors for humidity, temperature and light). Althoff then brought on stage representatives from three companies that are successful with Java today, first Axel Hansmann, VP Strategy & Marketing Communications, Cinterion. Mr. Hansmann explained that Cinterion, a market leader in Latin America, enables M2M services with Java. At JavaOne San Francisco, Cinterion launched the EHS5, the smallest 3g solderable module, with Java installed on it. This provides Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) with a cost effective, flexible platform for bringing advanced M2M technology to market.Next, Steve Nelson, Director of Marketing for the Americas, at Freescale explained that Freescale is #1 in Embedded Processors in Wired and Wireless Communications, and #1 in Automotive Semiconductors in the Americas. He said that Java provides a mature, proven platform that is uniquely suited to meet the requirements of almost any type of embedded device. He encouraged University students to get involved in the Freescale Cup, a global competition where student teams build, program, and race a model car around a track for speed.Roberto Franco, SBTVD Forum President, SBTVD, talked about Ginga, a Java-based standard for television in Brazil. He said there are 4 million Ginga TV sets in Brazil, and they expect over 20 million TV sets to be sold by the end of 2014. Ginga is also being adopted in other 11 countries in Latin America. Ginga brings interactive services not only at TV set, but also on other devices such as tablets, PCs or smartphones, as the main or second screen. "Interactive services is already a reality," he said, ' but in a near future, we foresee interactivity enhanced TV content, convergence with OTT services and a big participation from the audience, all integrated on TV, tablets, smartphones and second screen devices."Before he left the stage, Nandini Ramani thanked Judson for being part of the Java community and invited him to the next Geek Bike Ride in Brazil. She presented him an official geek bike ride jersey.For the Technical Keynote, a "blue screen of death" appeared. With mock concern, Stephin Chin asked the rest of the presenters if they could go on without slides. What followed was a interesting collection of demos, including JavaFX on a tablet, a look at Project Easel in NetBeans, and even Simon Ritter controlling legos with his brainwaves! Stay tuned for more dispatches.

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Memento with optional state?

- by Korey Hinton

EDIT: As pointed out by Steve Evers and pdr, I am not correctly implementing the Memento pattern, my design is actually State pattern. Menu Program I built a console-based menu program with multiple levels that selects a particular test to run. Each level more precisely describes the operation. At any level you can type back to go back one level (memento). Level 1: Server Type? [1] Server A [2] Server B Level 2: Server environment? [1] test [2] production Level 3: Test type? [1] load [2] unit Level 4: Data Collection? [1] Legal docs [2] Corporate docs Level 4.5 (optional): Load Test Type [2] Multi TIF [2] Single PDF Level 5: Command Type? [1] Move [2] Copy [3] Remove [4] Custom Level 6: Enter a keyword [setup, cleanup, run] Design States PROBLEM: Right now the STATES enum is the determining factor as to what state is BACK and what state is NEXT yet it knows nothing about what the current memento state is. Has anyone experienced a similar issue and found an effective way to handle mementos with optional state? static enum STATES { SERVER, ENVIRONMENT, TEST_TYPE, COLLECTION, COMMAND_TYPE, KEYWORD, FINISHED } Possible Solution (Not-flexible) In reference to my code below, every case statement in the Menu class could check the state of currentMemo and then set the STATE (enum) accordingly to pass to the Builder. However, this doesn't seem flexible very flexible to change and I'm struggling to see an effective way refactor the design. class Menu extends StateConscious { private State state; private Scanner reader; private ServerUtils utility; Menu() { state = new State(); reader = new Scanner(System.in); utility = new ServerUtils(); } // Recurring menu logic public void startPromptingLoop() { List<State> states = new ArrayList<>(); states.add(new State()); boolean redoInput = false; boolean userIsDone = false; while (true) { // get Memento from last loop Memento currentMemento = states.get(states.size() - 1) .saveMemento(); if (currentMemento == null) currentMemento = new Memento.Builder(0).build(); if (!redoInput) System.out.println(currentMemento.prompt); redoInput = false; // prepare Memento for next loop Memento nextMemento = null; STATES state = STATES.values()[states.size() - 1]; // get user input String selection = reader.nextLine(); switch (selection) { case "exit": reader.close(); return; // only escape case "quit": nextMemento = new Memento.Builder(first(), currentMemento, selection).build(); states.clear(); break; case "back": nextMemento = new Memento.Builder(previous(state), currentMemento, selection).build(); if (states.size() <= 1) { states.remove(0); } else { states.remove(states.size() - 1); states.remove(states.size() - 1); } break; case "1": nextMemento = new Memento.Builder(next(state), currentMemento, selection).build(); break; case "2": nextMemento = new Memento.Builder(next(state), currentMemento, selection).build(); break; case "3": nextMemento = new Memento.Builder(next(state), currentMemento, selection).build(); break; case "4": nextMemento = new Memento.Builder(next(state), currentMemento, selection).build(); break; default: if (state.equals(STATES.CATEGORY)) { String command = selection; System.out.println("Executing " + command + " command on: " + currentMemento.type + " " + currentMemento.environment); utility.executeCommand(currentMemento.nickname, command); userIsDone = true; states.clear(); nextMemento = new Memento.Builder(first(), currentMemento, selection).build(); } else if (state.equals(STATES.KEYWORD)) { nextMemento = new Memento.Builder(next(state), currentMemento, selection).build(); states.clear(); nextMemento = new Memento.Builder(first(), currentMemento, selection).build(); } else { redoInput = true; System.out.println("give it another try"); continue; } break; } if (userIsDone) { // start the recurring menu over from the beginning for (int i = 0; i < states.size(); i++) { if (i != 0) { states.remove(i); // remove all except first } } reader = new Scanner(System.in); this.state = new State(); userIsDone = false; } if (!redoInput) { this.state.restoreMemento(nextMemento); states.add(this.state); } } } }

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7 Steps To Cut Recruiting Costs & Drive Exceptional Business Results

- by Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies

By Steve Viarengo, Vice President Product Management, Oracle Taleo Cloud Services Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 In good times, trimming operational costs is an ongoing goal. In tough times, it’s a necessity. In both good times and bad, however, recruiting occurs. Growth increases headcount in good times, and opportunistic or replacement hiring occurs in slow business cycles. By employing creative recruiting strategies in tandem with the latest technology developments, you can reduce recruiting costs while driving exceptional business results. Here are some critical areas to focus on. 1. Target Direct Cost Savings Total recruiting process expenses are the sum of external costs plus internal labor costs. Most organizations can reduce recruiting expenses with direct cost savings. While additional savings on indirect costs can be realized from process improvement and efficiency gains, there are direct cost savings and benefits readily available in three broad areas: sourcing, assessments, and green recruiting. 2. Sourcing: Reduce Agency Costs Agency search firm fees can amount to 35 percent of a new employee’s annual base salary. Typically taken from the hiring department budget, these fees may not be visible to HR. By relying on internal mobility programs, referrals, candidate pipelines, and corporate career Websites, organizations can reduce or eliminate this agency spend. And when you do have to pay third-party agency fees, you can optimize the value you receive by collaborating with agencies to identify referred candidates, ensure access to candidate data and history, and receive automatic notifications and correspondence. 3. Sourcing: Reduce Advertising Costs You can realize significant cost reductions by placing all job positions on your corporate career Website. This will allow you to reap a substantial number of candidates at minimal cost compared to job boards and other sourcing options. 4. Sourcing: Internal Talent Pool Internal talent pools provide a way to reduce sourcing and advertising costs while delivering improved productivity and retention. Internal redeployment reduces costs and ramp-up time while increasing retention and employee satisfaction. 5. Sourcing: External Talent Pool Strategic recruiting requires identifying and matching people with a given set of skills to a particular job while efficiently allocating sourcing expenditures. By using an e-recruiting system (which drives external talent pool management) with a candidate relationship database, you can automate prescreening and candidate matching while communicating with targeted candidates. Candidate relationship management can lower sourcing costs by marketing new job opportunities to candidates sourced in the past. By mining the talent pool in this fashion, you eliminate the need to source a new pool of candidates for each new requisition. Managing and mining the corporate candidate database can reduce the sourcing cost per candidate by as much as 50 percent. 6. Assessments: Reduce Turnover Costs By taking advantage of assessments during the recruitment process, you can achieve a range of benefits, including better productivity, superior candidate performance, and lower turnover (providing considerable savings). Assessments also save recruiter and hiring manager time by focusing on a short list of qualified candidates. Hired for fit, such candidates tend to stay with the organization and produce quality work—ultimately driving revenue. 7. Green Recruiting: Reduce Paper and Processing Costs You can reduce recruiting costs by automating the process—and making it green. A paperless process informs candidates that you’re dedicated to green recruiting. It also leads to direct cost savings. E-recruiting reduces energy use and pollution associated with manufacturing, transporting, and recycling paper products. And process automation saves energy in mailing, storage, handling, filing, and reporting tasks. Direct cost savings come from reduced paperwork related to résumés, advertising, and onboarding. Improving the recruiting process through sourcing, assessments, and green recruiting not only saves costs. It also positions the company to improve the talent base during the recession while retaining the ability to grow appropriately in recovery. /* 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";} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}

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JavaDay Taipei 2014 Trip Report

- by reza_rahman

JavaDay Taipei 2014 was held at the Taipei International Convention Center on August 1st. Organized by Oracle University, it is one of the largest Java developer events in Taiwan. This was another successful year for JavaDay Taipei with a fully sold out venue packed with youthful, energetic developers (this was my second time at the event and I have already been invited to speak again next year!). In addition to Oracle speakers like me, Steve Chin and Naveen Asrani, the event also featured a bevy of local speakers including Taipei Java community leaders. Topics included Java SE, Java EE, JavaFX, cloud and Big Data. It was my pleasure and privilege to present one of the opening keynotes for the event. I presented my session on Java EE titled "JavaEE.Next(): Java EE 7, 8, and Beyond". I covered the changes in Java EE 7 as well as what's coming in Java EE 8. I demoed the Cargo Tracker Java EE BluePrints. I also briefly talked about Adopt-a-JSR for Java EE 8. The slides for the keynote are below (click here to download and view the actual PDF): It appears your Web browser is not configured to display PDF files. No worries, just click here to download the PDF file. In the afternoon I did my JavaScript + Java EE 7 talk titled "Using JavaScript/HTML5 Rich Clients with Java EE 7". This talk is basically about aligning EE 7 with the emerging JavaScript ecosystem (specifically AngularJS). The talk was completely packed. The slide deck for the talk is here: JavaScript/HTML5 Rich Clients Using Java EE 7 from Reza Rahman The demo application code is posted on GitHub. The code should be a helpful resource if this development model is something that interests you. Do let me know if you need help with it but the instructions should be fairly self-explanatory. I am delivering this material at JavaOne 2014 as a two-hour tutorial. This should give me a little more bandwidth to dig a little deeper, especially on the JavaScript end. I finished off Java Day Taipei with my talk titled "Using NoSQL with ~JPA, EclipseLink and Java EE" (this was the last session of the conference). The talk covers an interesting gap that there is surprisingly little material on out there. The talk has three parts -- a birds-eye view of the NoSQL landscape, how to use NoSQL via a JPA centric facade using EclipseLink NoSQL, Hibernate OGM, DataNucleus, Kundera, Easy-Cassandra, etc and how to use NoSQL native APIs in Java EE via CDI. The slides for the talk are here: Using NoSQL with ~JPA, EclipseLink and Java EE from Reza Rahman The JPA based demo is available here, while the CDI based demo is available here. Both demos use MongoDB as the data store. Do let me know if you need help getting the demos up and running. After the event the Oracle University folks hosted a reception in the evening which was very well attended by organizers, speakers and local Java community leaders. I am extremely saddened by the fact that this otherwise excellent trip was scarred by terrible tragedy. After the conference I joined a few folks for a hike on the Maokong Mountain on Saturday. The group included friends in the Taiwanese Java community including Ian and Robbie Cheng. Without warning, fatal tragedy struck on a remote part of the trail. Despite best efforts by us, the excellent Taiwanese Emergency Rescue Team and World class Taiwanese physicians we were unable to save our friend Robbie Cheng's life. Robbie was just thirty-four years old and is survived by his younger brother, mother and father. Being the father of a young child myself, I can only imagine the deep sorrow that this senseless loss unleashes. Robbie was a key member of the Taiwanese Java community and a Java Evangelist at Sun at one point. Ironically the only picture I was able to take of the trail was mere moments before tragedy. I thought I should place him in that picture in profoundly respectful memoriam: Perhaps there is some solace in the fact that there is something inherently honorable in living a bright life, dying young and meeting one's end on a beautiful remote mountain trail few venture to behold let alone attempt to ascend in a long and tired lifetime. Perhaps I'd even say it's a fate I would not entirely regret facing if it were my own. With that thought in mind it seems appropriate to me to quote some lyrics from the song "Runes to My Memory" by legendary Swedish heavy metal band Amon Amarth idealizing a fallen Viking warrior cut down in his prime: "Here I lie on wet sand I will not make it home I clench my sword in my hand Say farewell to those I love When I am dead Lay me in a mound Place my weapons by my side For the journey to Hall up high When I am dead Lay me in a mound Raise a stone for all to see Runes carved to my memory" I submit my deepest condolences to Robbie's family and hope my next trip to Taiwan ends in a less somber note.

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Eloqua Experience 2013: Mystique, Modern Marketing and Masterful Engagement

- by Mike Stiles

The following is a guest post from Erick Mott, a social business leader at Oracle Eloqua. There’s a growing gap between 20th century marketing and a modern marketing way of doing business. I can’t think of a better example of modern marketing in action than what more than 2,000 people experienced in San Francisco at #EE13; customer-obsession, multichannel content, and real-time engagement all coming together at one extraordinary event. This was my first Eloqua Experience as a new Oracle Eloqua employee. In weeks prior, I heard about the mystique but didn’t know what to expect. What I’ve come to understand with more clarity is everything we do revolves around customer success, and we operate and educate at all times with these five tenets in mind: 1. Targeting: Really Know Your Buyer 2. Engagement: Create a 1:1 Relationship 3. Conversion: Visualize Guided Thinking 4. Analysis: Learn What’s Working 5. Marketing Technology: Enable and Extend the Cloud Product News from Eloqua Experience 2013 We made some announcements that John Stetic, VP of Products, Oracle Eloqua covers in this brief ‘Modern Marketing Minute’ video recorded after Wednesday’s keynote; summarized below, too: Oracle Eloqua AdFocus: While understanding the impact of a specific marketing channel was formerly relegated to marketers’ wish lists, the channels we now focus on are digital, social, and mobile. AdFocus gives marketers a single platform to dynamically create, manage and measure display ads alongside owned and earned media. AdFocus enables marketers to target only key accounts or prospects you want to reach with display ads, as well as provide creative content or personalized ad copy based on their persona and activities. Oracle Eloqua Profiler: The details of what we now know about customers have expanded into a universal customer profile, which can be used to create highly targeted segments. Marketers now can take data that’s not even stored in Eloqua to help targeted and score prospects for a complete, multichannel view of the customer. Profiler gives sales reps one, detailed view of the prospect to extend views beyond Oracle Eloqua asset activity (emails, forms, page views) to any external assets stored in Oracle Eloqua. Marketing Resource Management: New capabilities create more secure and controlled access to marketing resources and data. New integrations provide greater insight into campaign resources and management through a central marketing calendar and simplify resource management. Integrated Sales and Marketing Funnel: An integrated sales and marketing funnel view gives marketing and sales users, cross-functional teams, and executive management a consistent and clear view of pipeline performance. It also quickly provides users with historical metrics across different time spans and conditions. Eloqua AppCloud: More than 20 new AppCloud partners have been added to the community, which now includes 100+ apps. Eloqua AppCloud now provides modern marketers with an even broader range of marketing applications that help expand and enrich sales and marketing efforts; easily accessible in the Topliners Community. Social Capabilities: Recent integration between Oracle Eloqua and Oracle Social Relationship Management (SRM) deliver a comprehensive, scalable and integrated modern marketing solution. New capabilities include better tracking of social activities for a more complete customer profile. Engage Facebook custom audiences with AdFocus to deliver ads and meaningful experiences through trusted social networks. Biggest and Best Eloqua Experience. There’s a lot of talk in the industry about the Marketing Cloud. At Oracle Eloqua, we have been on a mission of delivering the most advanced and integrated modern marketing technology on the planet. It’s not just a concept but reality with proven execution, as seen first-hand this week in San Francisco. In this video, Kevin Akeroyd, SVP of Oracle Eloqua, provides some highlights of what made this year’s Eloqua Experience, exceptional, including Steve Woods’ presentation about the journey of modern marketers and Andrea Ward’s conversation with Vince Gilligan, creator of the Breaking Bad television series. The 2013 Markie Awards The Oracle Eloqua Marketing Cloud was best exemplified for me as 19 Markies were awarded to customers for their exceptional creativity and results as modern marketers. Wow, what a night to remember with so many committed and talented people working to create an extraordinary experience! To learn more about how to become a modern marketer, check out these resources. We look forward to seeing you next year at Eloqua Experience. More on Erick: 20 years experience at Oracle, Ektron, Sitecore, Lyris, Habeas, Nokia, creatorbase, Mark Monitor, Cisco Systems, GlobalFluency, Sun Microsystems, Philips NV, Elm Products and CBS TV. Patent holder with agency, Fortune 500, media, and startup company expertise. @mikestiles

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Access Control Service V2 and Facebook Integration

- by Your DisplayName here!

I haven’t been blogging about ACS2 in the past because it was not released and I was kinda busy with other stuff. Needless to say I spent quite some time with ACS2 already (both in customer situations as well as in the classroom and at conferences). ACS2 rocks! It’s IMHO the most interesting and useful (and most unique) part of the whole Azure offering! For my talk at VSLive yesterday, I played a little with the Facebook integration. See Steve’s post on the general setup. One claim that you get back from Facebook is an access token. This token can be used to directly talk to Facebook and query additional properties about the user. Which properties you have access to depends on which authorization your Facebook app requests. You can specify this in the identity provider registration page for Facebook in ACS2. In my example I added access to the home town property of the user. Once you have the access token from ACS you can use e.g. the Facebook SDK from Codeplex (also available via NuGet) to talk to the Facebook API. In my sample I used the WIF ClaimsAuthenticationManager to add the additional home town claim. This is not necessarily how you would do it in a “real” app. Depends ;) The code looks like this (sample code!): public class ClaimsTransformer : ClaimsAuthenticationManager { public override IClaimsPrincipal Authenticate( string resourceName, IClaimsPrincipal incomingPrincipal) { if (!incomingPrincipal.Identity.IsAuthenticated) { return base.Authenticate(resourceName, incomingPrincipal); } string accessToken; if (incomingPrincipal.TryGetClaimValue( "http://www.facebook.com/claims/AccessToken", out accessToken)) { try { var home = GetFacebookHometown(accessToken); if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(home)) { incomingPrincipal.Identities[0].Claims.Add( new Claim("http://www.facebook.com/claims/HomeTown", home)); } } catch { } } return incomingPrincipal; } private string GetFacebookHometown(string token) { var client = new FacebookClient(token); dynamic parameters = new ExpandoObject(); parameters.fields = "hometown"; dynamic result = client.Get("me", parameters); return result.hometown.name; } }

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Windows 8/Surface Lunch Event Summary

- by Tim Murphy

Today was a big day for Microsoft with two separate launch event. The first for Windows 8 and all of it’s hardware partners. The second was specifically to introduce the Microsoft Windows 8 Surface tablet. Below are some of the take-aways I got from the webcasts. Windows 8 Launch The three general area that Microsoft focused on were the release of the OS itself, the public unveiling of the Windows Store and the new devices available from its hardware partners. The release of the OS focused on the fact that it will be available at mid-night tonight for both new PCs and for upgrades. I can’t say that this interested me that much since it was already known to most people. I think what they did show well was how easy the OS really is to use. The Windows Store is also not a new feature to those of us who have been running the pre-release versions of Windows 8 or have owned Windows Phone 7 for the past 2 years. What was interesting is that the Windows Store launches with more apps available than any other platforms store at their respective launch. I think this says a lot about how Microsoft focuses on the ability of developers to create software and make it available. The of course were sure to emphasize that the Windows Store has better monetary terms for developers than its competitors. The also showed off the fact that XBox Music streaming is available for to all Windows 8 user for free. Couple this with the Bing suite of apps that give you news, weather, sports and finance right out of the box and I think most people will find the environment a joy to use. I think the hardware demo, while quick and furious, really show where Windows shine: CHOICE! They made a statement that over 1000 devices have been certified for Windows 8. They showed tablets, laptops, desktops, all-in-ones and convertibles. Since these devices have industry standard connectors they give a much wider variety of accessories and devices that you can use with them. Steve Balmer then came on stage and tried to see how many times he could use the “magical”. He focused on how the Windows 8 OS is designed to integrate with SkyDrive, Skype and Outlook.com. He also enforced that they think Windows 8 is the best choice for the Enterprise when it comes to protecting data and integrating across devices including Windows Phone 8. With that we were left to wait for the second event of the day. Surface Launch The second event of the day started with kids with magnets. Ok, they were adults, but who doesn’t like playing with magnets. Steven Sinofsky detached and reattached the Surface keyboard repeatedly, clearly enjoying himself. It turns out that there are 4 magnets in the cover, 2 for alignment and 2 as connectors. They then went to giving us the details on the display. The 10.6” display is optically bonded to the case and is optimized to reduce glare. I think this came through very well in the demonstrations. The properties of the case were also a great selling point. The VaporMg allowed them to drop the device on stage, on purpose, and continue working. Of course they had to bring out the skate boards made from Surface devices. “It just has to feel right” was the reason they gave for many of their design decisions from the weight and size of the device to the way the kickstand and camera work together. While this gave you the feeling that the whole process was trial and error you could tell that a lot of science went into the specs. This included making sure that the magnets were strong enough to hold the cover on and still have a 3 year old remove the cover without effort. I am glad that they also decided the a USB port would be part of the spec since it give so many options. They made the point that this allows Surface to leverage over 420 million existing devices. That works for me. The last feature that I really thought was important was the microSD port. Begin stuck with the onboard memory has been an aggravation of mine with many of the devices in the market today. I think they did job of really getting the audience to understand why you want this platform and this particular device. Using personal examples like creating a video of a birthday party and being in it or the fact that the device was being used to live blog the event and control the lights and presentation. They showed very well that it was not only fun but very capable of getting real work done. Handing out tablets to the crowd didn’t hurt either. In the end I really wanted a Surface even though I really have no need for one on a daily basis. Great job Microsoft! del.icio.us Tags: Windows 8,Win8,Windows 8 Luanch

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NHibernate mapping with optimistic-lock="version" and dynamic-update="true" is generating invalid up

- by SteveBering

I have an entity "Group" with an assigned ID which is added to an aggregate in order to persist it. This causes an issue because NHibernate can't tell if it is new or existing. To remedy this issue, I changed the mapping to make the Group entity use optimistic locking on a sql timestamp version column. This caused a new issue. Group has a bag of sub objects. So when NHibernate flushes a new group to the database, it first creates the Group record in the Groups table, then inserts each of the sub objects, then does an update of the Group records to update the timestamp value. However, the sql that is generated to complete the update is invalid when the mapping is both dynamic-update="true" and optimistic-lock="version". Here is the mapping: <class xmlns="urn:nhibernate-mapping-2.2" dynamic-update="true" mutable="true" optimistic-lock="version" name="Group" table="Groups"> <id name="GroupNumber" type="System.String, mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089"> <column name="GroupNumber" length="5" /> <generator class="assigned" /> </id> <version generated="always" name="Timestamp" type="BinaryBlob" unsaved-value="null"> <column name="TS" not-null="false" sql-type="timestamp" /> </version> <property name="UID" update="false" type="System.Guid, mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089"> <column name="GroupUID" unique="true" /> </property> <property name="Description" type="AnsiString"> <column name="GroupDescription" length="25" not-null="true" /> </property> <bag access="field.camelcase-underscore" cascade="all" inverse="true" lazy="true" name="Assignments" mutable="true" order-by="GroupAssignAssignment"> <key foreign-key="fk_Group_Assignments"> <column name="GroupNumber" /> </key> <one-to-many class="Assignment" /> </bag> <many-to-one class="Aggregate" name="Aggregate"> <column name="GroupParentID" not-null="true" /> </many-to-one> </class> </hibernate-mapping> When the mapping includes both the dynamic update and the optimistic lock, the sql generated is: UPDATE groups SET WHERE GroupNumber = 11111 AND TS=0x00000007877 This is obviously invalid as there are no SET statements. If I remove the dynamic update part, everything gets updated during this update statement instead. This makes the statement valid, but rather unnecessary. Has anyone seen this issue before? Am I missing something? Thanks, Steve

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"No message serializer has been configured" error when starting NServiceBus endpoint

- by SteveBering

My GenericHost hosted service is failing to start with the following message: 2010-05-07 09:13:47,406 [1] FATAL NServiceBus.Host.Internal.GenericHost [(null)] <(null) - System.InvalidOperationException: No message serializer has been con figured. at NServiceBus.Unicast.Transport.Msmq.MsmqTransport.CheckConfiguration() in d:\BuildAgent-02\work\672d81652eaca4e1\src\impl\unicast\NServiceBus.Unicast.Msmq\ MsmqTransport.cs:line 241 at NServiceBus.Unicast.Transport.Msmq.MsmqTransport.Start() in d:\BuildAgent-02\work\672d81652eaca4e1\src\impl\unicast\NServiceBus.Unicast.Msmq\MsmqTransport .cs:line 211 at NServiceBus.Unicast.UnicastBus.NServiceBus.IStartableBus.Start(Action startupAction) in d:\BuildAgent-02\work\672d81652eaca4e1\src\unicast\NServiceBus.Uni cast\UnicastBus.cs:line 694 at NServiceBus.Unicast.UnicastBus.NServiceBus.IStartableBus.Start() in d:\BuildAgent-02\work\672d81652eaca4e1\src\unicast\NServiceBus.Unicast\UnicastBus.cs:l ine 665 at NServiceBus.Host.Internal.GenericHost.Start() in d:\BuildAgent-02\work\672d81652eaca4e1\src\host\NServiceBus.Host\Internal\GenericHost.cs:line 77 My endpoint configuration looks like: public class ServiceEndpointConfiguration : IConfigureThisEndpoint, AsA_Publisher, IWantCustomInitialization { public void Init() { // build out persistence infrastructure var sessionFactory = Bootstrapper.InitializePersistence(); // configure NServiceBus infrastructure var container = Bootstrapper.BuildDependencies(sessionFactory); // set up logging log4net.Config.XmlConfigurator.Configure(); Configure.With() .Log4Net() .UnityBuilder(container) .XmlSerializer(); } } And my app.config looks like: <configSections> <section name="MsmqTransportConfig" type="NServiceBus.Config.MsmqTransportConfig, NServiceBus.Core" /> <section name="UnicastBusConfig" type="NServiceBus.Config.UnicastBusConfig, NServiceBus.Core" /> <section name="Logging" type="NServiceBus.Config.Logging, NServiceBus.Core" /> <section name="log4net" type="log4net.Config.Log4NetConfigurationSectionHandler, log4net" requirePermission="false" /> </configSections> <Logging Threshold="DEBUG" /> <MsmqTransportConfig InputQueue="NServiceBus.ServiceInput" ErrorQueue="NServiceBus.Errors" NumberOfWorkerThreads="1" MaxRetries="2" /> <UnicastBusConfig DistributorControlAddress="" DistributorDataAddress="" ForwardReceivedMessagesTo="NServiceBus.Auditing"> <MessageEndpointMappings>  </MessageEndpointMappings> </UnicastBusConfig> <connectionStrings> <add name="Db" connectionString="Data Source=..." providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" /> </connectionStrings> <log4net debug="true"> <root> <level value="INFO"/> </root> <logger name="NHibernate"> <level value="ERROR" /> </logger> </log4net> This has worked in the past, but seems to be failing when the generic host starts. My endpoint configuration is below, along with the app.config for the service. What is strange is that in my endpoint configuration, I am specifying to use the XmlSerializer for message serialization. I don't see any other errors in the console output preceding the error message. What am I missing? Thanks, Steve

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Code Complete 2ed, composition and delegation.

- by Arlukin

Hi there. After a couple of weeks reading on this forum I thought it was time for me to do my first post. I'm currently rereading Code Complete. I think it's 15 years since the last time, and I find that I still can't write code ;-) Anyway on page 138 in Code Complete you find this coding horror example. (I have removed some of the code) class Emplyee { public: FullName GetName() const; Address GetAddress() const; PhoneNumber GetWorkPhone() const; ... bool IsZipCodeValid( Address address); ... private: ... } What Steve thinks is bad is that the functions are loosely related. Or has he writes "There's no logical connection between employees and routines that check ZIP codes, phone numbers or job classifications" Ok I totally agree with him. Maybe something like the below example is better. class ZipCode { public: bool IsValid() const; ... } class Address { public: ZipCode GetZipCode() const; ... } class Employee { public: Address GetAddress() const; ... } When checking if the zip is valid you would need to do something like this. employee.GetAddress().GetZipCode().IsValid(); And that is not good regarding to the Law of Demeter ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Demeter][1]). So if you like to remove two of the three dots, you need to use delegation and a couple of wrapper functions like this. class ZipCode { public: bool IsValid(); } class Address { public: ZipCode GetZipCode() const; bool IsZipCodeValid() {return GetZipCode()->IsValid()); } class Employee { public: FullName GetName() const; Address GetAddress() const; bool IsZipCodeValid() {return GetAddress()->IsZipCodeValid()); PhoneNumber GetWorkPhone() const; } employee.IsZipCodeValid(); But then again you have routines that has no logical connection. I personally think that all three examples in this post are bad. Is it some other way that I haven't thougt about? //Daniel

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Is the Scala 2.8 collections library a case of "the longest suicide note in history" ?

- by oxbow_lakes

First note the inflammatory subject title is a quotation made about the manifesto of a UK political party in the early 1980s. This question is subjective but it is a genuine question, I've made it CW and I'd like some opinions on the matter. Despite whatever my wife and coworkers keep telling me, I don't think I'm an idiot: I have a good degree in mathematics from the University of Oxford and I've been programming commercially for almost 12 years and in Scala for about a year (also commercially). I have just started to look at the Scala collections library re-implementation which is coming in the imminent 2.8 release. Those familiar with the library from 2.7 will notice that the library, from a usage perspective, has changed little. For example... > List("Paris", "London").map(_.length) res0: List[Int] List(5, 6) ...would work in either versions. The library is eminently useable: in fact it's fantastic. However, those previously unfamiliar with Scala and poking around to get a feel for the language now have to make sense of method signatures like: def map[B, That](f: A => B)(implicit bf: CanBuildFrom[Repr, B, That]): That For such simple functionality, this is a daunting signature and one which I find myself struggling to understand. Not that I think Scala was ever likely to be the next Java (or /C/C++/C#) - I don't believe its creators were aiming it at that market - but I think it is/was certainly feasible for Scala to become the next Ruby or Python (i.e. to gain a significant commercial user-base) Is this going to put people off coming to Scala? Is this going to give Scala a bad name in the commercial world as an academic plaything that only dedicated PhD students can understand? Are CTOs and heads of software going to get scared off? Was the library re-design a sensible idea? If you're using Scala commercially, are you worried about this? Are you planning to adopt 2.8 immediately or wait to see what happens? Steve Yegge once attacked Scala (mistakenly in my opinion) for what he saw as its overcomplicated type-system. I worry that someone is going to have a field day spreading fud with this API (similarly to how Josh Bloch scared the JCP out of adding closures to Java). Note - I should be clear that, whilst I believe that Josh Bloch was influential in the rejection of the BGGA closures proposal, I don't ascribe this to anything other than his honestly-held beliefs that the proposal represented a mistake.

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Copy android.R.layout to my project

- by eric

Good advice from CommonWare and Steve H but it's not as easy to me as I first thought. Based on their advice I'm trying to copy android.R.layout to my project to ensure consistency. How do you do this? I looked in Eclipse's Package Explorer and under Android 1.5android.jarandroidR.classRlayout and find R$layout.class. Do I copy the code out of there into my own class? From my very limited knowledge of Java, the following code doesn't make much sense: public static final class android.R$layout { // Field descriptor #8 I public static final int activity_list_item = 17367040; // Field descriptor #8 I public static final int browser_link_context_header = 17367054; // Field descriptor #8 I public static final int expandable_list_content = 17367041; // Field descriptor #8 I public static final int preference_category = 17367042; // Field descriptor #8 I public static final int select_dialog_item = 17367057; // Field descriptor #8 I public static final int select_dialog_multichoice = 17367059; // Field descriptor #8 I public static final int select_dialog_singlechoice = 17367058; // Field descriptor #8 I public static final int simple_dropdown_item_1line = 17367050; // Field descriptor #8 I public static final int simple_expandable_list_item_1 = 17367046; // Field descriptor #8 I public static final int simple_expandable_list_item_2 = 17367047; // Field descriptor #8 I public static final int simple_gallery_item = 17367051; // Field descriptor #8 I public static final int simple_list_item_1 = 17367043; // Field descriptor #8 I public static final int simple_list_item_2 = 17367044; // Field descriptor #8 I public static final int simple_list_item_checked = 17367045; // Field descriptor #8 I public static final int simple_list_item_multiple_choice = 17367056; // Field descriptor #8 I public static final int simple_list_item_single_choice = 17367055; // Field descriptor #8 I public static final int simple_spinner_dropdown_item = 17367049; // Field descriptor #8 I public static final int simple_spinner_item = 17367048; // Field descriptor #8 I public static final int test_list_item = 17367052; // Field descriptor #8 I public static final int two_line_list_item = 17367053; // Method descriptor #50 ()V // Stack: 3, Locals: 1 public R$layout(); 0 aload_0 [this] 1 invokespecial java.lang.Object() [1] 4 new java.lang.RuntimeException [2] 7 dup 8 ldc <String "Stub!"> [3] 10 invokespecial java.lang.RuntimeException(java.lang.String) [4] 13 athrow Line numbers: [pc: 0, line: 899] Local variable table: [pc: 0, pc: 14] local: this index: 0 type: android.R.layout Inner classes: [inner class info: #5 android/R$layout, outer class info: #64 android/R inner name: #55 layout, accessflags: 25 public static final] }

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Using jQuery or javascript to render json into multi-column table

- by Scott Yu - UX designer

I am trying to render a JSON into a HTML table. But the difficulty is making it so it loops through JSON and renders multiple columns if necessary. For the example below, what I want is this: Result wanted Result Wanted <table> <tr><th>AppName</th><td>App 1</td><td>App 2</td></tr> <tr><th>Last Modified</th><td>10/1/2012</td><td></td></tr> <tr><th>App Logo</th><td>10/1/2012</td><td></td></tr> blahblah </table> <table> <tr><th>AppName</th><td>App 1</td></tr> blahblah </table> JSON Example "Records": [ { "AppName": "App 1", "LastModified": "10/1/2012, 9:30AM", "ShipTo_Name": "Dan North", "ShipTo_Address": "Dan North", "ShipTo_Terms": "Dan North", "ShipTo_DueDate": "Dan North", "Items 1": [ { "Item_Name": "Repairs", "Item_Description": "Repair Work" } ] }, { "AppName": "App 2", "AppLogo": "http://www.google.com/logo.png", "LastModified": "10/1/2012, 9:30AM", "BillTo_Name": "Steve North", "Items 1": [ { "Item_Name": "Repairs", "Item_Description": "Repair Work" } ] } ], "Records": [ { "AppName": "App 1", "LastModified": "10/1/2012, 9:30AM", "ShipTo_Name": "222", "ShipTo_Address": "333 ", "ShipTo_Terms": "444", "ShipTo_DueDate": "5555", "Items 1": [ { "Item_Name": "Repairs", "Item_Description": "Repair Work" } ] } ], Code I am using now function CreateComparisonTable (arr,level,k) { var dumped_text = ""; if(!level) level = 0; //The padding given at the beginning of the line. var level_padding = ""; for(var j=0;j<level+1;j++) level_padding = "--"; if(typeof(arr) == 'object') { //Array/Hashes/Objects for (var item in arr) { var value = arr[item]; if (typeof(value) == 'object') { //If it is an array, if(item !=0) { dumped_text += '<tr><td>' + item + '<br>'; dumped_text += CreateComparisonTable(value,level+1); dumped_text += '</td></tr>'; } else { dumped_text += CreateComparisonTable(value,level, value.length); } } else { dumped_text += '<tr><td>' + level_padding + item + '</td><td>' + value + '</td></tr>'; } } } return dumped_text; } Jsfiddle here

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controlling the class names generated by JAXB for xsd:attributeGroup?

- by Stephen Winnall

I am using JAXB to bind XML to Java for an application that I am writing. I have an element called measure which contains two amount elements called amount and maxAmount, with which I want to model a lower and an upper limiting value. amount and maxAmount are otherwise identical and I would like them to be implemented with the same class when unmarshalled into Java. The following is an extract from the XML schema which I feed to JAXB: <xsd:attributeGroup name="AmountAttributes"> <xsd:attribute name="quantity" type="xsd:decimal"/> <xsd:attribute name="numerator" type="xsd:nonNegativeInteger"/> <xsd:attribute name="denominator" type="xsd:positiveInteger"/> </xsd:attributeGroup> <xsd:element name="measure"> <xsd:complexType> <xsd:sequence> <xsd:element minOccurs="0" name="amount"> <xsd:complexType> <xsd:attributeGroup ref="mpr:AmountAttributes"/> </xsd:complexType> </xsd:element> <xsd:element minOccurs="0" name="maxAmount"> <xsd:complexType> <xsd:attributeGroup ref="mpr:AmountAttributes"/> </xsd:complexType> </xsd:element> </xsd:sequence> </xsd:complexType> </xsd:element> JAXB creates from this a more elaborate version of the following: public class Measure { protected Measure.Amount amount; protected Measure.MaxAmount maxAmount; public static class Measure.Amount {} public static class Measure.MaxAmount {} } Measure.Amount and Measure.MaxAmount are identical except for their names, but - of course - as far as Java is concerned they have little to do with each other. Is there a way of making JAXB use the same class for both amount and maxAmount? Just to come completely clean ;-) I should mention that I generate the XML schema from RNC using Trang. If the answer to the question is "change the XML schema", I have the supplementary question "how do I change the RNC to produce that XML schema?". My RNC looks like this: AmountAttributes = QuantityAttribute? & attribute numerator { xsd:nonNegativeInteger }? & attribute denominator { xsd:positiveInteger }? QuantityAttribute = attribute quantity { xsd:decimal } Measure = element measure { element amount { AmountAttributes }?, element maxAmount { AmountAttributes }? }+ I use RNC because I find it simpler to understand, but if the solution to my problem means just using XML Schema, so be it. Steve

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User has many computers, computers have many attributes in different tables, best way to JOIN?

- by krismeld

I have a table for users: USERS: ID | NAME | ---------------- 1 | JOHN | 2 | STEVE | a table for computers: COMPUTERS: ID | USER_ID | ------------------ 13 | 1 | 14 | 1 | a table for processors: PROCESSORS: ID | NAME | --------------------------- 27 | PROCESSOR TYPE 1 | 28 | PROCESSOR TYPE 2 | and a table for harddrives: HARDDRIVES: ID | NAME | ---------------------------| 35 | HARDDRIVE TYPE 25 | 36 | HARDDRIVE TYPE 90 | Each computer can have many attributes from the different attributes tables (processors, harddrives etc), so I have intersection tables like this, to link the attributes to the computers: COMPUTER_PROCESSORS: C_ID | P_ID | --------------| 13 | 27 | 13 | 28 | 14 | 27 | COMPUTER_HARDDRIVES: C_ID | H_ID | --------------| 13 | 35 | So user JOHN, with id 1 owns computer 13 and 14. Computer 13 has processor 27 and 28, and computer 13 has harddrive 35. Computer 14 has processor 27 and no harddrive. Given a user's id, I would like to retrieve a list of that user's computers with each computers attributes. I have figured out a query that gives me a somewhat of a result: SELECT computers.id, processors.id AS p_id, processors.name AS p_name, harddrives.id AS h_id, harddrives.name AS h_name, FROM computers JOIN computer_processors ON (computer_processors.c_id = computers.id) JOIN processors ON (processors.id = computer_processors.p_id) JOIN computer_harddrives ON (computer_harddrives.c_id = computers.id) JOIN harddrives ON (harddrives.id = computer_harddrives.h_id) WHERE computers.user_id = 1 Result: ID | P_ID | P_NAME | H_ID | H_NAME | ----------------------------------------------------------- 13 | 27 | PROCESSOR TYPE 1 | 35 | HARDDRIVE TYPE 25 | 13 | 28 | PROCESSOR TYPE 2 | 35 | HARDDRIVE TYPE 25 | But this has several problems... Computer 14 doesnt show up, because it has no harddrive. Can I somehow make an OUTER JOIN to make sure that all computers show up, even if there a some attributes they don't have? Computer 13 shows up twice, with the same harddrive listet for both. When more attributes are added to a computer (like 3 blocks of ram), the number of rows returned for that computer gets pretty big, and it makes it had to sort the result out in application code. Can I somehow make a query, that groups the two returned rows together? Or a query that returns NULL in the h_name column in the second row, so that all values returned are unique? EDIT: What I would like to return is something like this: ID | P_ID | P_NAME | H_ID | H_NAME | ----------------------------------------------------------- 13 | 27 | PROCESSOR TYPE 1 | 35 | HARDDRIVE TYPE 25 | 13 | 28 | PROCESSOR TYPE 2 | 35 | NULL | 14 | 27 | PROCESSOR TYPE 1 | NULL | NULL | Or whatever result that make it easy to turn it into an array like this [13] => [P_NAME] => [0] => PROCESSOR TYPE 1 [1] => PROCESSOR TYPE 2 [H_NAME] => [0] => HARDDRIVE TYPE 25 [14] => [P_NAME] => [0] => PROCESSOR TYPE 1

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SQLAuthority News – Pluralsight Course Review – Practices for Software Startups – Part 1 of 2

- by pinaldave

This is first part of the two part series of Practices for Software Startup Pluralsight Course. The course is written by Stephen Forte (Blog | Twitter). Stephen Forte is the Chief Strategy Officer of the venture backed company, Telerik, a leading vendor of developer and team productivity tools. Stephen is also a Certified Scrum Master, Certified Scrum Professional, PMP, and also speaks regularly at industry conferences around the world. He has written several books on application and database development. Stephen is also a board member of the Scrum Alliance. Startups – Everybodies Dream Start-up companies are an important topic right now – everyone wants to start their own business. It is also important to remember that all companies were a start up at one point – from your corner store to the giants like Microsoft and Apple. Research proves that not every start-up succeeds, in fact, most will fail before their first year. There are many reasons for this, and this could be due to the fact that there are many stages to a start-up company, and stumbling at any of these stages can lead to failure. It is important to understand what makes a start-up company succeed at all its hurdles to become successful. It is even important to define success. For most start-ups this would mean becoming their own independently functioning company or to be bought out for a hefty profit by a larger company. The idea of making a hefty profit by living your dream is extremely important, and you can even think of start-ups as the new craze. That’s why studying them is so important – they are very popular, but things have changed a lot since their inception. Starting the Startups Beginning a start-up company used to be difficult, but now facilities and information is widely available, and it is much easier. But that means it is much easier to fail, also. Previously to start your own company, everything was planned and organized, resources were ensured and backed up before beginning; even the idea of starting your own business was a big thing. Now anybody can do it, and the steps are simple and outlines everywhere – you can get online software and easily outsource , cloud source, or crowdsource a lot of your material. But without the type of planning previously required, things can often go badly. New Products – New Ideas – New World There are so many fantastic new products, but they don’t reach success all the time. I find start-up companies very interesting, and whenever I meet someone who is interested in the subject or already starting their own company, I always ask what they are doing, their plans, goals, market, etc. I am sorry to say that in most cases, they cannot answer my questions. It is true that many fantastic ideas fail because of bad decisions. These bad decisions were not made intentionally, but people were simply unaware of what they should be doing. This will always lead to failure. But I am happy to say that all these issues can be gone because Pluralsight is now offering a course all about start-ups by Stephen Forte. Stephen is a start up leader. He has successfully started many companies and most are still going strong, or have gone on to even bigger and better things. Beginning Course on Startup I have always thought start-ups are a fascinating subject, and decided to take his course, but it is three hours long. This would be hard to fit into my busy work day all at once, so I decided to do half of his course before my daughter wakes up, and the other half after she goes to sleep. The course is divided into six modules, so this would be easy to do. I began the first chapter early in the morning, at 5 am. Stephen jumped right into the middle of the subject in the very first module – designing your business plan. The first question you will have to answer to yourself, to others, and to investors is: What is your product and when will we be able to see it? So a very important concept is a “minimal viable product.” This means setting goals for yourself and your product. We all have large dreams, but your minimal viable product doesn’t have to be your final vision at the very first. For example: Apple is a giant company, but it is still evolving. Steve Jobs didn’t envision the iPhone 6 at the very beginning. He had to start at the first iPhone and do his market research, and the idea evolved into the technology you see now. So for yourself, you should decide a beginning and stop point. Do your market research. Determine who you want to reach, what audience you want for your product. You can have a great idea that simply will not work in the market, do need, bottlenecks, lack of resources, or competition. There is a lot of research that needs to be done before you even write a business plan, and Stephen covers it in the very first chapter. The Team – Unique Key to Success After jumping right into the subject in the very first module, I wondered what Stephen could have in store for me for the rest of the course. Chapter number two is building a team. Having a team is important regardless of what your startup is. You can be a true visionary with endless ideas and energy, but one person can still not do everything. It is important to decide from the very beginning if you will have cofounders, team leaders, and how many employees you’ll need. Even more important, you’ll need to decide what kind of team you want – what personalities, skills, and type of energy you want each of your employees to bring. Do you want to have an A+ team with a B- idea, or do you have a B- idea that needs an A+ team to sell it? Stephen asks all the hard questions! I was especially impressed by his insight on developing. You have to decide if you need developers, how many, and what their skills should be. I found this insight extremely useful for everyday usage, not just for start-up companies. I would apply this kind of information in management at any position. An amazing team will build an amazing product – and that doesn’t matter if you’re a start-up company or a small team working for a much larger business. Customer Development – The Ultimate Obective Chapter three was about customer development. According to Stephen, there are four different steps to develop a customer base. The first question to ask yourself is if you are envisioning a large customer base buying a few products each, or a small, dedicated base that buys a lot of your product – quantity vs. Quality. He also discusses how to earn, retain, and get more customers. He also says that each customer should be placed in a different role – some will be like investors, who regularly spend with you and invest their money in your business. It is then your job to take that investment and turn it into a better product in the future. You need to deal with their money properly – think of it is as theirs as investors, not yours as profit. At the end of this module I felt that only Stephen could provide this kind of insight, and then he listed all the resources he took his information from. I have never seen a group of people so passionate about their customers. It was indeed a long day for me. In tomorrow’s part 2 we will discuss rest of the three module and also will see a quick video of the Practices for Software Startup Pluralsight Course. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Best Practices, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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