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• System crashes/lockups + compiz/cairo/gnome-panel crashing due to cached ram, please help?

  - by Kristian Thomson

  Can someone help me to troubleshoot system crashes and lockups which result in compiz/cairo dock and gnome-panel crashing? I also get no window borders after the crash and a lot of kernel memory errors. Logs are telling me that apps were killed due to not enough memory, but the system is caching like 14GB of my ram so I'm a bit stuck on what/how to stop it. I'm running Ubuntu 12.10 on a 2011 Mac Mini with 16 GB ram. Here's some of the logs that look like they could be causing trouble. I woke up this morning to find chrome/skype/cairo dock and a few others had been killed and here is what the log said. Nov 5 04:00:45 linkandzelda-Macmini kernel: [ 9310.959890] Out of memory: Kill process 12247 (chromium-browse) score 101 or sacrifice child Nov 5 04:00:45 linkandzelda-Macmini kernel: [ 9310.959893] Killed process 12247 (chromium-browse) total-vm:238948kB, anon-rss:17064kB, file-rss:20008kB Nov 5 04:00:45 linkandzelda-Macmini kernel: [ 9310.972283] Out of memory: Kill process 10976 (dropbox) score 3 or sacrifice child Nov 5 04:00:45 linkandzelda-Macmini kernel: [ 9310.972288] Killed process 10976 (dropbox) total-vm:316392kB, anon-rss:115484kB, file-rss:16504kB Nov 5 04:00:45 linkandzelda-Macmini kernel: [ 9310.975890] Out of memory: Kill process 10887 (rhythmbox) score 3 or sacrifice child Nov 5 04:00:45 linkandzelda-Macmini kernel: [ 9310.975895] Killed process 11515 (tray_icon_worke) total-vm:63336kB, anon-rss:15960kB, file-rss:11436kB Nov 5 04:00:45 linkandzelda-Macmini kernel: [ 9311.281535] Out of memory: Kill process 10887 (rhythmbox) score 3 or sacrifice child Nov 5 04:00:45 linkandzelda-Macmini kernel: [ 9311.281539] Killed process 10887 (rhythmbox) total-vm:528980kB, anon-rss:92272kB, file-rss:36520kB Nov 5 04:00:45 linkandzelda-Macmini kernel: [ 9311.283110] Out of memory: Kill process 10889 (skype) score 3 or sacrifice child Nov 5 04:00:45 linkandzelda-Macmini kernel: [ 9311.283113] Killed process 10889 (skype) total-vm:415056kB, anon-rss:84880kB, file-rss:22160kB I went to look deeper into things and saw that the whole time I'm having these kernel errors with out of memory and something mentioning radeon. I have a Radeon HD 6600M graphics card using the open source driver, not the proprietary one. I was wondering if perhaps using the proprietary one would solve the problem. Also, while writing this in Chrome rhythmbox and chrome just got killed while typing this, due to out of memory errors or so it reports, though I have 7 GB of free RAM at the time with 7 GB cached as well. Here is a full copy of my logs that happened in kern.log simply from when I began typing this question. http://pastebin.com/cdxxDktG Thanks in advance, Kris

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• July, the 31 Days of SQL Server DMO’s – Day 24 (sys.dm_db_index_operational_stats)

  - by Tamarick Hill

  The sys.dm_db_index_operational_stats Dynamic Management Function returns information about the IO, locking, and access methods for the indexes that you currently have on your SQL Server Instance. This function takes four input parameters which are (1) database_id, (2) object_id, (3) index_id, and (4) partition_number. Let’s have a look at the results from this function against our AdventureWorks2012 database. This function returns a ton of columns, so not only will I not attempt to describe each of the columns, I wont even attempt to display all of them here. My query below will give you a subset of the columns returned from this function. SELECT database_id, object_id, index_id, partition_number, leaf_insert_count, leaf_delete_count, leaf_update_count, leaf_ghost_count, nonleaf_insert_count, nonleaf_delete_count, nonleaf_update_count, range_scan_count, forwarded_fetch_count, row_lock_count, row_lock_wait_count, page_lock_count, page_lock_wait_count, Index_lock_promotion_attempt_count, index_lock_promotion_count, page_compression_attempt_count, page_compression_success_count FROM sys.dm_db_index_operational_stats(db_id('AdventureWorks2012'), NULL, NULL, NULL) The first four columns in the result set represent the values that we passed in as our input parameters. If you use NULL’s as I did, then you will see results for every index on your system. I specified a database_id so my result set only shows those records pertaining to my AdventureWorks2012 database. The next columns in the result set provide you with information on how may inserts, deletes, or updates that have taken place on your leaf and nonleaf index levels. The nonleaf levels would refer to the intermediate and root index levels. In the middle of these you see a leaf_ghost_count column, which represents the number of records that have been logically deleted and marked as “ghosted”  and are waiting on the background ghost cleanup process to physically remove them. The range_scan_count column represents the number of range or table scans that have been performed against an index. The forwarded_fetch_count column represents the number of rows that were returned from a forwarding row pointer. The row_lock_count and row_lock_wait_count represent the number of row locks that have been requested for an index and the number of times SQL has had to wait on a row lock respectively. The page_lock_count and page_lock_wait_count represent the number of page locks that have been requested for an index and the number of times SQL has had to wait on a page lock respectively. The index_lock_promotion_attempt_count represents the number of times the database engine has attempted to promote a lock to the index level. The index_lock_promotion_count column displays how many times that index lock promotion was successful. Lastly the page_compression_attempt_count and page_compression_success_count represents how many times a page was attempted to be compressed and how many times the attempt was successful. As you can see there is a ton of information returned from this DMV. The DMV we reviewed on yesterday (sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats) provided you with good information on when and how indexes have been used, but this DMF takes an even deeper dive into these statistics. If you are interested in performing a very detailed analysis on the operational stats of your indexes, this is not only a good place to start, but more than likely the best place. For more information on this Dynamic Management Function, please see the below Books Online link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms174281.aspx Follow me on Twitter @PrimeTimeDBA

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• SQL SERVER – Introduction to FIRST _VALUE and LAST_VALUE – Analytic Functions Introduced in SQL Server 2012

  - by pinaldave

  SQL Server 2012 introduces new analytical functions FIRST_VALUE() and LAST_VALUE(). This function returns first and last value from the list. It will be very difficult to explain this in words so I’d like to attempt to explain its function through a brief example. Instead of creating a new table, I will be using the AdventureWorks sample database as most developers use that for experiment purposes. Now let’s have fun following query: USE AdventureWorks GO SELECT s.SalesOrderID,s.SalesOrderDetailID,s.OrderQty, FIRST_VALUE(SalesOrderDetailID) OVER (ORDER BY SalesOrderDetailID) FstValue, LAST_VALUE(SalesOrderDetailID) OVER (ORDER BY SalesOrderDetailID) LstValue FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail s WHERE SalesOrderID IN (43670, 43669, 43667, 43663) ORDER BY s.SalesOrderID,s.SalesOrderDetailID,s.OrderQty GO The above query will give us the following result: What’s the most interesting thing here is that as we go from row 1 to row 10, the value of the FIRST_VALUE() remains the same but the value of the LAST_VALUE is increasing. The reason behind this is that as we progress in every line – considering that line and all the other lines before it, the last value will be of the row where we are currently looking at. To fully understand this statement, see the following figure: This may be useful in some cases; but not always. However, when we use the same thing with PARTITION BY, the same query starts showing the result which can be easily used in analytical algorithms and needs. Let us have fun through the following query: Let us fun following query. USE AdventureWorks GO SELECT s.SalesOrderID,s.SalesOrderDetailID,s.OrderQty, FIRST_VALUE(SalesOrderDetailID) OVER (PARTITION BY SalesOrderID ORDER BY SalesOrderDetailID) FstValue, LAST_VALUE(SalesOrderDetailID) OVER (PARTITION BY SalesOrderID ORDER BY SalesOrderDetailID) LstValue FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail s WHERE SalesOrderID IN (43670, 43669, 43667, 43663) ORDER BY s.SalesOrderID,s.SalesOrderDetailID,s.OrderQty GO The above query will give us the following result: Let us understand how PARTITION BY windows the resultset. I have used PARTITION BY SalesOrderID in my query. This will create small windows of the resultset from the original resultset and will follow the logic or FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE in this resultset. Well, this is just an introduction to these functions. In the future blog posts we will go deeper to discuss the usage of these two functions. By the way, these functions can be applied over VARCHAR fields as well and are not limited to the numeric field only. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Function, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• What does your Python development workbench look like?

  - by Fabian Fagerholm

  First, a scene-setter to this question: Several questions on this site have to do with selection and comparison of Python IDEs. (The top one currently is What IDE to use for Python). In the answers you can see that many Python programmers use simple text editors, many use sophisticated text editors, and many use a variety of what I would call "actual" integrated development environments – a single program in which all development is done: managing project files, interfacing with a version control system, writing code, refactoring code, making build configurations, writing and executing tests, "drawing" GUIs, and so on. Through its GUI, an IDE supports different kinds of workflows to accomplish different tasks during the journey of writing a program or making changes to an existing one. The exact features vary, but a good IDE has sensible workflows and automates things to let the programmer concentrate on the creative parts of writing software. The non-IDE way of writing large programs relies on a collection of tools that are typically single-purpose; they do "one thing well" as per the Unix philosophy. This "non-integrated development environment" can be thought of as a workbench, supported by the OS and generic interaction through a text or graphical shell. The programmer creates workflows in their mind (or in a wiki?), automates parts and builds a personal workbench, often gradually and as experience accumulates. The learning curve is often steeper than with an IDE, but those who have taken the time to do this can often claim deeper understanding of their tools. (Whether they are better programmers is not part of this question.) With advanced editor-platforms like Emacs, the pieces can be integrated into a whole, while with simpler editors like gedit or TextMate, the shell/terminal is typically the "command center" to drive the workbench. Sometimes people extend an existing IDE to suit their needs. What does your Python development workbench look like? What workflows have you developed and how do they work? For the first question, please give the main "driving" program – the one that you use to control the rest (Emacs, shell, etc.) the "small tools" -- the programs you reach for when doing different tasks For the second question, please describe what the goal of the workflow is (eg. "set up a new project" or "doing initial code design" or "adding a feature" or "executing tests") what steps are in the workflow and what commands you run for each step (eg. in the shell or in Emacs) Also, please describe the context of your work: do you write small one-off scripts, do you do web development (with what framework?), do you write data-munching applications (what kind of data and for what purpose), do you do scientific computing, desktop apps, or something else? Note: A good answer addresses the perspectives above – it doesn't just list a bunch of tools. It will typically be a long answer, not a short one, and will take some thinking to produce; maybe even observing yourself working.

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• Analysis Services Tabular books #ssas #tabular

  - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)

  Many people are looking for books about Analysis Services Tabular. Today there are two books available and they complement each other: Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services: The BISM Tabular Model by Marco Russo, Alberto Ferrari and Chris Webb Applied Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services: Tabular Modeling by Teo Lachev The book I wrote with Alberto and Chris is a complete guide to create tabular models and has a good coverage about DAX, including how to use it for enriching a semantic model with calculated columns and measures and how to use it for querying a Tabular model. In my experience, DAX as a query language is a very interesting option for custom analytical applications that requires a fast calculation engine, or simply for standard reports running in Reporting Services and accessing a Tabular model. You can freely preview the table of content and read some excerpts from the book on Safari Books Online. The book is in printing and should be shipped within mid-July, so finally it will be very soon on the shelf of all the people already preordered it! The Teo Lachev’s book, covers the full spectrum of Tabular models provided by Microsoft: starting with self-service BI, you have users creating a model with PowerPivot for Excel, publishing it to PowerPivot for SharePoint and exploring data by using Power View; then, the PowerPivot for Excel model can be imported in a Tabular model and published in Analysis Services, adding more control on the model through row-level security and partitioning, for example. Teo’s book follows a step-by-step approach describing each feature that is very good for a beginner that is new to PowerPivot and/or to BISM Tabular. If you need to get the big picture and to start using the products that are part of the new Microsoft wave of BI products, the Teo’s book is for you. After you read the book from Teo, or if you already have a certain confidence with PowerPivot or BISM Tabular and you want to go deeper about internals, best practices, design patterns in just BISM Tabular, then our book is a suggested read: it contains several chapters about DAX, includes discussions about new opportunities in data model design offered by Tabular models, and also provides examples of optimizations you can obtain in DAX and best practices in data modeling and queries. It might seem strange that an author write a review of a book that might seem to compete with his one, but in reality these two books complement each other and are not alternatives. If you have any doubt, buy both: you will be not disappointed! Moreover, Amazon usually offers you a deal to buy three books, including the Visualizing Data with Microsoft Power View, another good choice for getting all the details about Power View.

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• More details on America's Cup use of Oracle Data Mining

  - by charlie.berger

  BMW Oracle Racing's America's Cup: A Victory for Database Technology BMW Oracle Racing's victory in the 33rd America's Cup yacht race in February showcased the crew's extraordinary sailing expertise. But to hear them talk, the real stars weren't actually human. "The story of this race is in the technology," says Ian Burns, design coordinator for BMW Oracle Racing. Gathering and Mining Sailing DataFrom the drag-resistant hull to its 23-story wing sail, the BMW Oracle USA trimaran is a technological marvel. But to learn to sail it well, the crew needed to review enormous amounts of reliable data every time they took the boat for a test run. Burns and his team collected performance data from 250 sensors throughout the trimaran at the rate of 10 times per second. An hour of sailing alone generates 90 million data points.BMW Oracle Racing turned to Oracle Data Mining in Oracle Database 11g to extract maximum value from the data. Burns and his team reviewed and shared raw data with crew members daily using a Web application built in Oracle Application Express (Oracle APEX). "Someone would say, 'Wouldn't it be great if we could look at some new combination of numbers?' We could quickly build an Oracle Application Express application and share the information during the same meeting," says Burns. Analyzing Wind and Other Environmental ConditionsBurns then streamed the data to the Oracle Austin Data Center, where a dedicated team tackled deeper analysis. Because the data was collected in an Oracle Database, the Data Center team could dive straight into the analytics problems without having to do any extract, transform, and load processes or data conversion. And the many advanced data mining algorithms in Oracle Data Mining allowed the analytics team to build vital performance analytics. For example, the technology team could remove masking elements such as environmental conditions to give accurate data on the best mast rotation for certain wind conditions. Without the data mining, Burns says the boat wouldn't have run as fast. "The design of the boat was important, but once you've got it designed, the whole race is down to how the guys can use it," he says. "With Oracle database technology we could compare the incremental improvements in our performance from the first day of sailing to the very last day. With data mining we could check data against the things we saw, and we could find things that weren't otherwise easily observable and findable."

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• European e-government Action Plan all about interoperability

  - by trond-arne.undheim

  Yesterday, the European Commission released its European eGovernment Action Plan for 2011-2015. The plan includes measures on providing deeper user empowerment, enhancing the Internal Market, more efficiency and effectiveness of public administrations, and putting in place pre-conditions for developing e-government. The Good - Defines interoperability very clearly. Calls interoperability "a pre-condition for cross-border eGovernment services" (a very strong formulation) and says interoperability "is supported by open specifications". - Uses the terminology "open specifications" which, let's face it, is pretty close to "open standards" which is the term the rest of the world would use. - Confirms that Member States are fully committed to the political priorities of the Malmö Declaration (which was all about open standards) including the very strong action: by 2013: All Member States will have incorporated the political priorities of the Malmö Declaration in their national strategies. Such tight Action Plan integration between Commission and Member State priorities has seldom been attempted before, particularly not in a field where European legal competence is virtually non-existent. What we see now, is the subtle force of soft power rather than the rough force of regulation. In this case, it is the Member States who want Europe to take the lead. Very refreshing! Some quotes that show the commitment to interoperability and open specifications: "The emergence of innovative technologies such as "service-oriented architectures" (SOA), or "clouds" of services,  together with more open specifications which allow for greater sharing, re-use and interoperability reinforce the ability of ICT to play a key role in this quest for effficiency in the public sector." (p.4) "Interoperability is supported through open specifications" (p.13) 2.4.1. Open Specifications and Interoperability (p.13 has a whole section dedicated to this important topic. Open specifications and interoperability are nearly 100% interrelated): "Interoperability is the ability of systems and machines to exchange, process and correctly interpret information. It is more than just a technical challenge, as it also involves legal, organisational and semantic aspects of handling  data" (p.13) "standards and  open platforms offer opportunities for more cost-effective use of resources and delivery of services" (p.13). The Bad Shies away from defining open standards, or even open specifications, the EU's preferred term for the key enabler of interoperability. Verdict 90/100, a very respectable score.

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• SQLOS and Cloud Infrastructure sessions at PASS Summit 2012

  - by SQLOS Team

  The SQL Pass Summit 2012, the largest yet, is in full swing. Here's a summary of the sessions this week on cloud infrastructure and SQLOS topics. Some of these were today, and you can catch the recordings. One more session takes place on Friday covering SQL Server solution patterns in Windows Azure VMs... Also, catch Thursday's keynote with Quentin Clark which will feature a cool IaaS demo!   SQL Server in Windows Azure VM Sessions CLD-309-A SQLCAT: Best Practices and Lessons Learned on SQL Server in an Azure VM Steve Howard, Arvind Ranasaria - Wednesday 11/6 10:15 This session looked at some best practices to optimize Networking, Memory, Disk IO and high availability based on lessons learned during SQLCat work with customer deployments. Well worth catching the recording.   SQL Server in Azure VM patterns: Hybrid Disaster Recovery, data movement and BI Guy Bowerman, Peter Saddow, Michael Washam, Ross LoForte - Friday 11/9 9:45 Rm 613 [Note: In the guides this has an outdated title.] This session has a focus on SQL Server Azure VM solutions. Starting with the basics and then going deeper into: - New features in the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 8.0 to help plan and size SQL VM migrations.- A Look at a Windows Azure VM SQL Server app making use of load balancing and SQL Server high availability features.- A BI case study running SQL BI components in Azure VMs and making use of Windows 8 tiles.- A training class in a VM case study.   SQLOS Sessions DBA-500-HD Inside SQLOS 2012 (half-day session) Bob Ward - Wednesday 11/6 1:30pm Bob Ward from CSS applies his wealth of experience to look at the internals of SQLOS and what's changed in the various SQL 2012 components, including memory, resource governor, scheduler.   DBA-403-M: SQLCAT: Memory Manager Changes in SQL Server 2012 Gus Apostol, Jerome Halmans - 1:30pm Covers the redesigned SQLOS memory manager in SQL Server 2012 including the new page allocator for any size pages (and all that implies), DMVs, demo's. Not sure why this was placed at the same time as the SQLOS half-day session, but since it's recorded it's available for catch-up.   - Guy   Originally posted at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlosteam/

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• Silverlight Cream for April 18, 2010 -- #840

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: CrocusGirl, Giorgetti Alessandro(-2-), smartyP, Pete Brown, David Poll, David Anson, and Bill Reiss. Shoutouts: Yasser Makram has a post up discussing Human Centered ALM with Telerik TeamPulse and Team Foundation Server. I saw this demo'd at DevConnnections and it definitely deserves a look. Shawn Wildermuth posted his materials from DevConnections all on one post: Back from DevConnections with SourceCode Shawn Wildermuth also posted an Updated RIA Services + MVVM Example Laurent Bugnion announced a Small change in MVVM Light Toolkit templates for Blend 4 RC Laurent Bugnion also announced Crowdsourcing MVVM Light Toolkit support The Expression Blend and Design Blog announced Expression Blend 4 Release Candidate Available! Dan Wahlin posted Slides and Code from my Silverlight MVVM Talk at DevConnections From SilverlightCream.com: Windows Phone 7 Design Notes – Part#1: Metro Resources CrocusGirl has blogged about WP7 and the Metro design concept. She has a bunch of resources up and information about Metro and the design methodology. Stay tuned for Part 2. Silverlight, M-V-VM ... and IoC - part 1 Giorgetti Alessandro has part 1 of a multi-parter up on IoC and MVVM for LOB apps in Silverlight ... a pretty quick into to MVVM. Silverlight, M-V-VM … and IoC – part 2 Giorgetti Alessandro also posted part 2 of his series, and this one digs deeper into the code and discusses what goes into the view and the model. Using the Facebook Developer Toolkit With Windows Phone 7 smartyP has a post addressing using the Facebook Developer toolkit with WP7... it took some hacking, and he explains it, and provides it for download. Silverlight and WPF Tip: Fitting items in a ListBox Having trouble fitting items into a Listbox in Silverlight or WPF without getting horizontal scrollbars? Pete Brown has a solution for you in 4 steps. Making printing easier in Silverlight 4 David Poll has a great detailed post up about printing in SL4, taking it to building a higher-level API that allows printing of collections... all demos and source included. Detailed information about the Silverlight Toolkit's new stacked series support David Anson details the improvements to Data Visualization in the Toolkit release from last week. Space Rocks game step 9: the asteroid sprite Bill Reiss has his latest game episode up and this time he's putting asteroid sprites in play. No placement, movement, or collisions yet, but it's a beginning. And, he's updated all his code to Silverlight 4. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• SQLAuthority News – Weekend Experiment with NuoDB – Points to Pondor and Whitepaper

  - by pinaldave

  This weekend I have downloaded the latest beta version of NuoDB. I found it much improved and better UI. I was very much impressed as the installation was very smooth and I was up and running in less than 5 minutes with the product. The tools which are related to the Administration of the NuoDB seems to get makeover during this beta release. As per the claim they support now Solaris platform and have improved the native MacOS installation. I neither have Mac nor Solaris – I wish I would have experimented with the same. I will appreciate if anyone out there can confirm how the installations goes on these platforms. I have previously blogged about my experiment with NuoDB here: SQL SERVER – Weekend Project – Experimenting with ACID Transactions, SQL Compliant, Elastically Scalable Database SQL SERVER – Beginning NuoDB – Who will Benefit and How to Start SQL SERVER – Follow up on Beginning NuoDB – Who will Benefit and How to Start – Part 2 I am very impressed with the product so far and I have decided to understand the product further deep. Here are few of the questions which I am going to try to find answers with regards to NuoDB. Just so it is clear – NuoDB is not NOSQL, matter of the fact, it is following all the ACID properties of the database. If ACID properties are crucial why many NoSQL products are not adhering to it? (There are few out there do follow ACID but not all). I do understand the scalability of the database however does elasticity is crucial for the database and if yes how? (Elasticity is where the workload on the database is heavily fluctuating and the need of more than a single database server is coming up). How NuoDB has built scalable, elastic and 100% ACID compliance database which supports multiple platforms? How is NOSQL compared to NuoDB’s new architecture? In the next coming weeks, I am going to explore above concepts and dive deeper into the understanding of the same. Meanwhile I have read following white paper written by Experts at University of California at Santa Barbara. Very interesting read and great starter on the subject Database Scalability, Elasticity, and Autonomy in the Cloud. Additionally, my questions are also talking about NoSQL, this weekend I have started to learn about NoSQL from Pluralsight‘s online learning library. I will share my experience very soon. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL White Papers, T SQL, Technology Tagged: NuoDB

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• Oracle WebCenter: Social Networking & Collaboration

  - by kellsey.ruppel(at)oracle.com

  We’ve talked in previous weeks about the key goals of the new release of WebCenter are providing a Modern User Experience, unparalleled Application Integration, converging all the best of the existing portal platforms into WebCenter and delivering a Common User Experience Architecture.  We’ve provided an overview of Oracle WebCenter and discussed some of the other key goals in previous weeks, and this week, we’ll focus on how the new release of Oracle WebCenter provides unprecedented Social Networking and Collaboration.We recently talked with Carin Chan, Principal Product Manager at Oracle, around the topic of Social Networking and Collaboration. In today’s work environment, employees have come to expect social and collaborative services to augment their work environment. Whether it is to post a blog or to poll fellow coworkers, employees expect and demand access to highly integrated, collaborative work environments that allow them to quickly contribute at work -- whether it is to make informed decisions, contribute on projects, or share knowledge.Social and collaborative services from Oracle WebCenter add an immeasurable amount of value to achieving a modern user experience. Oracle WebCenter Services provides rich and comprehensive social computing services that include services such as wikis, blogs, instant messaging, presence, activity streams and graphs, and polls/surveys that offer employees access to rich collaborative services to work efficiently.Employees can create pages or spaces that mix and match collaborative services while bringing in data from other applications to share with groups, teams, or organizations. These out of the box social and collaborative services include: People Connections and Activity Streams enable users to quickly assemble and visualize their social business networks and track user activities.Activity Graphs tracks all user activities in real-time and gathers intelligence about these users, their connections and the way they use information to make educated recommendations and provide on the spot information discovery.Wikis and blogs enable the community authoring of documents and sharing of ideas and also allow for the gathering of feedback and comments on those ideas.Tags and links allow users to easily mark, connect and share information with others.RSS feeds are available to track new or changed information related to discussion forums, processes or activities in an Oracle WebCenter environment.Discussion forums enable sharing of group knowledge and easy creation of communities around specific topics.Announcements allow you to manage and publish important news to your user base.Instant Messaging and Presence enable real-time awareness and communication with available users in the context of a business task.Web and Voice Conferencing enables real-time communication with internal and external business users.Lists provide a way to manage list data directly on the web as well as export and import it from and to Microsoft Excel.Oracle WebCenter Analytics provides comprehensive reporting metrics on activity and content usage within portals or composite applications.Activity Streams allow you to track activities and visualize your business networks.While being able to integrate into your portal deployment, these services are also integrated into how users are already working. This includes integration with software such as Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Office and mobile devices such as the Apple iPhone. These services are just a tip of the iceberg regarding social and collaborative services that Oracle WebCenter has to offer your employees. Be sure to keep checking back this week for in future posts, we’ll delve deeper into a few of these collaborative services and discuss how a combination of collaborative services offer a better portal deployment to empower business users. Technorati Tags: UXP, collaboration, enterprise 2.0, modern user experience, oracle, portals, webcenter, social, activity streams, blogs, wikis

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• Dart and NetBeans IDE 7.4

  - by Geertjan

  Here's the start of Dart in NetBeans IDE. Basic Dart editing support is done and on saving a Dart file the related JavaScript files are automatically generated. In the context of an HTML5 application in NetBeans IDE, that gives you deep integration with the embedded browser and, even better, Chrome, as well as Chrome Developer Tools. Below, notice that the "Sunflower Spectacular" H1 element is selected (click the image to enlarge it to get a better view), which is therefore highlighted in the live DOM view in the bottom left, as well as in the CSS Styles window in the top right, from where the CSS styles can be edited and from where the related files can be opened in the IDE. Identical features are available for Chrome, as well as on Android and iOS. And if you like that, watch this YouTube movie showing how Chrome Developer Tools integration can fit directly into the workflow below. Anyone want to help get this plugin further? What's needed: Much deeper Dart editing support, i.e., right now only very basic syntax coloring is provided, i.e., an ANTLR lexer is integrated into the NetBeans syntax coloring infrastructure. Parsing, error checking, code completion, and some small code templates are needed. A new panel is needed in the Project Properties dialog on NetBeans HTML5 projects for enabling Dart (i.e., similar to enabling Cordova), at which point the "dart.js" file and other Dart artifacts should be added to the project, so that a Dart project is immediately generated and the application should be immediately deployable. Whenever changes are made to a Dart file, Dart should run in the background to create the Dart artifacts in some hidden way, so that the user doesn't see all the Dart artifacts as is currently the case. Some way of recognizing Dart projects (there's a YAML file as an identifier) and creating NetBeans HTML5 projects from that, i.e., from Dart projects outside the IDE. I think that's all... The official Dart Editor is based on Eclipse and requires a massive download of heaps of Eclipse bundles. Compare that to the NetBeans equivalent, which is a very small "HTML5 and PHP" bundle (60 MB), available here, together with the above small Dart plugin. Plus, when you look at how NetBeans IDE integrates with a bunch of Google-oriented projects, i.e., Chrome, Chrome Developer Tools, and Android (via Cordova), that's a pretty interesting toolbox for anyone using Dart. And bear in mind that ANTLRWorks, Microchip, and heaps of other organizations have built and are building their tools on top of NetBeans!

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• Music Notation Editor - Refactoring view creation logic elsewhere

  - by Cyril Silverman

  Let me preface by saying that knowing some elementary music theory and music notation may be helpful in grasping the problem at hand. I'm currently building a Music Notation and Tablature Editor (in Javascript). But I've come to a point where the core parts of the program are more or less there. All functionality I plan to add at this point will really build off the foundation that I've created. As a result, I want to refactor to really solidify my code. I'm using an API called VexFlow to render notation. Basically I pass the parts of the editor's state to VexFlow to build the graphical representation of the score. Here is a rough and stripped down UML diagram showing you the outline of my program: In essence, a Part has many Measures which has many Notes which has many NoteItems (yes, this is semantically weird, as a chord is represented as a Note with multiple NoteItems, individual pitches or fret positions). All of the relationships are bi-directional. There are a few problems with my design because my Measure class contains the majority of the entire application view logic. The class holds the data about all VexFlow objects (the graphical representation of the score). It contains the graphical Staff object and the graphical notes. (Shouldn't these be placed somewhere else in the program?) While VexFlowFactory deals with actual creation (and some processing) of most of the VexFlow objects, Measure still "directs" the creation of all the objects and what order they are supposed to be created in for both the VexFlowStaff and VexFlowNotes. I'm not looking for a specific answer as you'd need a much deeper understanding of my code. Just a general direction to go in. Here's a thought I had, create an MeasureView/NoteView/PartView classes that contains the basic VexFlow objects for each class in addition to any extraneous logic for it's creation? but where would these views be contained? Do I create a ScoreView that is a parallel graphical representation of everything? So that ScoreView.render() would cascade down PartView and call render for each PartView and casade down into each MeasureView, etc. Again, I just have no idea what direction to go in. The more I think about it, the more ways to go seem to pop into my head. I tried to be as concise and simplistic as possible while still getting my problem across. Please feel free to ask me any questions if anything is unclear. It's quite a struggle trying to dumb down a complicated problem to its core parts.

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• Izenda Reports 6.3 Top 10 Features

  - by gt0084e1

  Izenda 6.3 Top 10 New Features and Capabilities 1. Izenda Maps Add-On The Izenda Maps add-on allows rapid visualization of geographic or geo-spacial data.  It is fully integrated with the the rest of Izenda report package and adds a Maps tab which allows users to add interactive maps to their reports. Contact your representative or [email protected] for limited time discounts. Izenda Maps even has rich drill-down capabilities that allow you to dive deeper with a simple hover (also requires dashboards). 2. Streamlined Pie Charts with "Other" Slices The advanced properties of the Pie Chart now allows you to combine the smaller slices into a single "Other" slice. This reduces the visual complexity without throwing off the scale of the chart. Compare the difference below. 3. Combined Bar + Line Charts The Bar chart now allows dual visualization of multiple metrics simultaneously by adding a line for secondary data. Enabled via AdHocSettings.AllowLineOnBar = true; 4. Stacked Bar Charts The stacked bar chart lets you see a breakdown of a measure based on categorical data.  It is enabled with the following code. AdHocSettings.AllowStackedBarChart = true; 5. Self-Joining Data Sources The self-join features allows for parent-child relationships to be accessed from the Data Sources tab. The same table can be used as a secondary child table within the Report Designer. 6. Report Design From Dashboard View Dashboards now sport both view and design icons to allow quick access to both. 7. Field Arithmetic on Dates Differences between dates can now be used as measures with the arithmetic feature. 8. Simplified Multi-Tenancy Integrating with multi-tenant systems is now easier than ever. The following APIs have been added to facilitate common scenarios. AdHocSettings.CurrentUserTenantId = value; AdHocSettings.SchedulerTenantID = value; AdHocSettings.SchedulerTenantField = "AccountID"; 9. Support For SQL 2008 R2 and SQL Azure Izenda now supports the latest version of Microsoft's database as well as the SQL Azure service. 10. Enhanced Performance and Compatibility for Stored Procedures Izenda now supports more stored procedures than ever and runs them faster too.

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• MySQL and Hadoop Integration - Unlocking New Insight

  - by Mat Keep

  “Big Data” offers the potential for organizations to revolutionize their operations. With the volume of business data doubling every 1.2 years, analysts and business users are discovering very real benefits when integrating and analyzing data from multiple sources, enabling deeper insight into their customers, partners, and business processes. As the world’s most popular open source database, and the most deployed database in the web and cloud, MySQL is a key component of many big data platforms, with Hadoop vendors estimating 80% of deployments are integrated with MySQL. The new Guide to MySQL and Hadoop presents the tools enabling integration between the two data platforms, supporting the data lifecycle from acquisition and organisation to analysis and visualisation / decision, as shown in the figure below The Guide details each of these stages and the technologies supporting them: Acquire: Through new NoSQL APIs, MySQL is able to ingest high volume, high velocity data, without sacrificing ACID guarantees, thereby ensuring data quality. Real-time analytics can also be run against newly acquired data, enabling immediate business insight, before data is loaded into Hadoop. In addition, sensitive data can be pre-processed, for example healthcare or financial services records can be anonymized, before transfer to Hadoop. Organize: Data is transferred from MySQL tables to Hadoop using Apache Sqoop. With the MySQL Binlog (Binary Log) API, users can also invoke real-time change data capture processes to stream updates to HDFS. Analyze: Multi-structured data ingested from multiple sources is consolidated and processed within the Hadoop platform. Decide: The results of the analysis are loaded back to MySQL via Apache Sqoop where they inform real-time operational processes or provide source data for BI analytics tools. So how are companies taking advantage of this today? As an example, on-line retailers can use big data from their web properties to better understand site visitors’ activities, such as paths through the site, pages viewed, and comments posted. This knowledge can be combined with user profiles and purchasing history to gain a better understanding of customers, and the delivery of highly targeted offers. Of course, it is not just in the web that big data can make a difference. Every business activity can benefit, with other common use cases including: - Sentiment analysis; - Marketing campaign analysis; - Customer churn modeling; - Fraud detection; - Research and Development; - Risk Modeling; - And more. As the guide discusses, Big Data is promising a significant transformation of the way organizations leverage data to run their businesses. MySQL can be seamlessly integrated within a Big Data lifecycle, enabling the unification of multi-structured data into common data platforms, taking advantage of all new data sources and yielding more insight than was ever previously imaginable. Download the guide to MySQL and Hadoop integration to learn more. I'd also be interested in hearing about how you are integrating MySQL with Hadoop today, and your requirements for the future, so please use the comments on this blog to share your insights.

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• How can I convince cowboy programmers to use source control?

  - by P.Brian.Mackey

  UPDATE I work on a small team of devs, 4 guys. They have all used source control. Most of them can't stand source control and instead choose not to use it. I strongly believe source control is a necessary part of professional development. Several issues make it very difficult to convince them to use source control: The team is not used to using TFS. I've had 2 training sessions, but was only allotted 1 hour which is insufficient. Team members directly modify code on the server. This keeps code out of sync. Requiring comparison just to be sure you are working with the latest code. And complex merge problems arise Time estimates offered by developers exclude time required to fix any of these problems. So, if I say nono it will take 10x longer...I have to constantly explain these issues and risk myself because now management may perceive me as "slow". The physical files on the server differ in unknown ways over ~100 files. Merging requires knowledge of the project at hand and, therefore, developer cooperation which I am not able to obtain. Other projects are falling out of sync. Developers continue to have a distrust of source control and therefore compound the issue by not using source control. Developers argue that using source control is wasteful because merging is error prone and difficult. This is a difficult point to argue, because when source control is being so badly mis-used and source control continually bypassed, it is error prone indeed. Therefore, the evidence "speaks for itself" in their view. Developers argue that directly modifying server code, bypassing TFS saves time. This is also difficult to argue. Because the merge required to synchronize the code to start with is time consuming. Multiply this by the 10+ projects we manage. Permanent files are often stored in the same directory as the web project. So publishing (full publish) erases these files that are not in source control. This also drives distrust for source control. Because "publishing breaks the project". Fixing this (moving stored files out of the solution subfolders) takes a great deal of time and debugging as these locations are not set in web.config and often exist across multiple code points. So, the culture persists itself. Bad practice begets more bad practice. Bad solutions drive new hacks to "fix" much deeper, much more time consuming problems. Servers, hard drive space are extremely difficult to come by. Yet, user expectations are rising. What can be done in this situation?

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• Silverlight Cream for November 26, 2011 -- #1175

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Michael Washington, Manas Patnaik, Jeff Blankenburg, Doug Mair, Jon Galloway, Richard Bartholomew, Peter Bromberg, Joel Reyes, Zeben Chen, Navneet Gupta, and Cathy Sullivan. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Using ASP.NET PageMethods With Silverlight" Peter Bromberg WP7: "Leveraging Background Services and Agents in Windows Phone 7 (Mango)" Jon Galloway Metro/WinRT/Windows8: "Debugging Contracts using Windows Simulator" Cathy Sullivan LightSwitch: "LightSwitch: It Is About The Money (It Is Always About The Money)" Michael Washington Shoutouts: Michael Palermo's latest Desert Mountain Developers is up Michael Washington's latest Visual Studio #LightSwitch Daily is up From SilverlightCream.com:LightSwitch: It Is About The Money (It Is Always About The Money)Michael Washington has a very nice post up about LightSwitch apps in general and his opinion about the future use... based on what he and I have been up to, I tend to agree on all counts!Accessing Controls from DataGrid ColumnHeader – SilverlightManas Patnaik's latest post is about using the VisualTreeHelper class to iterate through the visual tree to find the controls you need ... including sample code31 Days of Mango | Day #18: Using Sample DataJeff Blankenburg's Day 18 in his 31-Day Mango quest is on Sample Data using Expression Blend, and he begins with great links to his other Blend posts followed by a nice sample data tutorial and source31 Days of Mango | Day #19: Tilt EffectsDoug Mair returns to the reigns of Jeff's 31-Days series with number 19 which is all about Tilt Effects ... as seen in the Phone application when you select a user... Doug shows how to add this effect to your appLeveraging Background Services and Agents in Windows Phone 7 (Mango)Jon Galloway has a WP7 post up discussing Background Services and how they all fit together... he's got a great diagram of that as an overview then really nice discussion of each followed up by his slides from DevConnections, and codeNetflix on Windows 8This one isn't C#/XAML, but Richard Bartholomew has a Netflix on Windows 8 app running that bears noticeUsing ASP.NET PageMethods With SilverlightPeter Bromberg has a post up demonstrating calling PageMethods from a Silverlight app using the ScriptManager controlAWESOME Windows Phone Power ToolJoel Reyes announced the release of a full-featured tool for side-loading apps to your WP7 device... available at codeplexMicrosoft Windows Simulator Rotation and Resolution EmulationZeben Chen discusses the Windows 8 Simulator a bit deeper with this code-laden post showing how to look at roation and orientation-aware apps and resolution.First look at Windows SimulatorNavneet Gupta has a great into post to using the simulator in VS2011 for Windows 8 apps. Four things you really need this for: Touch Emulation, Rotation, Different target resolutions, and ContractsDebugging Contracts using Windows SimulatorCathy Sullivan shows how to debug W8 Contracts in VS2011... why you ask? because when you hit one in the debugger, the target app disappears.. but enter the simulator... check it outStay in the 'Light!Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCreamJoin me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User GroupTechnorati Tags:Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows PhoneMIX10

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• RightNow CX Cloud Service Combined with Oracle Fusion CRM in the Cloud

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  ·        The May 2012 release of Oracle’s RightNow CX Cloud Service, the customer experience suite, is now integrated with Oracle Fusion CRM, helping organizations to achieve sustainable business growth through relevant, cross-channel customer interactions that can increase revenue opportunities and drive organizational efficiencies. Relevant Interactions Build Stronger Customer Relationships ·          Armed with a comprehensive view of all customer interactions across channels, the context and status of these interactions, and an awareness of the customer’s value to the organization, companies can now offer more relevant products and services to customers. ·         Using the combined Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service and Oracle Fusion CRM solutions, organizations can increase customer retention, drive higher levels of customer advocacy, and increase sales conversion rates with tools designed to: - Provide a complete, cross-channel view of the customer to sales, marketing and service. - Empower sales and service departments to easily collaborate to proactively solve customer issues, using opportunities to provide purchase advice at the right time and with the right solutions. - Allow sales to easily review service history in preparation for sales calls. - Enable agents to understand customer value based upon prior buying habits and existing opportunities. Deeper Insight Enables Targeted, Personalized Opportunities ·          The combination of Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service and Oracle Fusion CRM allows sales and marketing organizations to simultaneously leverage service interactions from RightNow CX and sales prediction and segmentation capabilities from Fusion Sales. This helps companies to: - Better match products and services to specific customer needs based on customer service history.  - Deliver targeted, personalized interactions intended to help customers derive more value from purchases and to inform future buying decisions. - Identify new opportunities to increase deal size and conversion rates. Supporting Quotes ·         “Every interaction is a relationship opportunity to grow your business. When these interactions are relevant and add value for customers, customers are more likely to trust the relationship and seek purchase advice,” said David Vap, group vice president, Oracle. “This customer trust provides an opportunity to increase customer product adoption and to reduce the cost of customer acquisition, thereby increasing company profitability.” Supporting Resources ·         Oracle Fusion CRM ·         Oracle Fusion Applications ·         Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service ·         OracleCRM on Facebook ·         OracleCRM on YouTube

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• Programming Windows 8 Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript - All you need in one title

  It took me a while to work through the 800+ pages of this title. And yes, I really mean working not reading... Since the release of Windows 8 it should be obvious to any Windows software developer that there are new ways to develop, deploy and market applications for a broader audience. Interestingly, Microsoft started to narrow the technological gap between the various platforms - desktop, web, smartphone and XBox - and development of modern apps with HTML, CSS and JavaScript couldn't be easier. Kraig covers all facets of modern Windows 8 apps from the basic building blocks and project templates in Visual Studio 2012 over to the thoughtful use of specific APIs to finally proper deployment in the App Store and potential monetization. The organisation of the book is lied out like step by step instructions or a tutorial. Kraig literally takes the reader by the hand and explains in detail in his examples about the reasons, the pros, and the cons of a certain way of implementation. Thanks to cross-references to other chapters he leaves the choice to the reader to dig deeper right now or to catch up at some time later. Personally, I have to admit that I really enjoyed the relaxed writing style. App development is not dust-dry rocket science and it should be joyful to learn about new technologies. And thanks to the richness of the various chapters and samples you could easily adapt and transfer the knowledge gained in this title to other platforms like Windows Phone 8. And last but not least: The ebook is freely available at Amazon, Microsoft Press and O'Reilly. Don't think about it, just get the book. Now. Update: I already mentioned this title in other blog entries which are related to Microsoft certification. Feel free to read on and to discover more online resources: Learning content for MCSDs: Web Applications and Windows Store Apps using HTML5 More content for MCSDs: Web Applications and Windows Store Apps using HTML5 O'Reilly offers free webcasts on their site, too. And in case that you would like to know more about Kraig's book and his experience with various development teams, please checkout this one: Zero to App in Two Weeks: Programming Windows 8 Apps in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The recording should be available soon.

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• Best practices for logging and tracing in .NET

  - by Levidad

  I've been reading a lot about tracing and logging, trying to find some golden rule for best practices in the matter, but there isn't any. People say that good programmers produce good tracing, but put it that way and it has to come from experience. I've also read similar questions in here and through the internet and they are not really the same thing I am asking or do not have a satisfying answer, maybe because the questions lack some detail. So, folks say that tracing should sort of replicate the experience of debugging the application in cases where you can't attach a debugger. It should provide enough context so that you can see which path is taken at each control point in the application. Going deeper, you can even distinguish between tracing and event logging, in that "event logging is different from tracing in that it captures major states rather than detailed flow of control". Now, say I want to do my tracing and logging using only the standard .NET classes, those in the System.Diagnostics namespace. I figured that the TraceSource class is better for the job than the static Trace class, because I want to differentiate among the trace levels and using the TraceSource class I can pass in a parameter informing the event type, while using the Trace class I must use Trace.WriteLineIf and then verify things like SourceSwitch.TraceInformation and SourceSwitch.TraceErrors, and it doesn't even have properties like TraceVerbose or TraceStart. With all that in mind, would you consider a good practice to do as follows: Trace a "Start" event when begining a method, which should represent a single logical operation or a pipeline, along with a string representation of the parameter values passed in to the method. Trace an "Information" event when inserting an item into the database. Trace an "Information" event when taking one path or another in an important if/else statement. Trace a "Critical" or "Error" in a catch block depending on weather this is a recoverable error. Trace a "Stop" event when finishing the execution of the method. And also, please clarify when best to trace Verbose and Warning event types. If you have examples of code with nice trace/logging and are willing to share, that would be excelent. Note: I've found some good information here, but still not what I am looking for: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ff714589.aspx Thanks in advance!

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• Somewhere to get inspiration - Pair up the creative with the tech

  - by Morten Bergfall

  I am a somewhat green developer; some work experience, last year of school. As most of you, I am constantly working on an assortment of personal projects. Since my mind often has a somewhat drifting characteristic; I am not always able to keep the projects in check. After some time they all exhibit the moral fiber of Vikings, harlots and chain-letter-knitters. This includes constant forking, round-abouting, eating of school assignments of rather mundane, and hence pretty yawn-inducing, specifications, and of course quite a bit of gathering of folder dust. Well, on to my question....is there a place, forum... or something with the purpose of linking people with ideas to the people actually being able to bring said ideas to life? Of course, I know of the professional ones, like rent-a-coder and such. And there seem to be a lot of open source projects available for participation. What I'm looking for doesn't really fit into any of those categories....the form would be somewhat like rent-a-coder, but this is ideas&inspiration, not bubble-sort-my-quarterly-for-a-buck. The possibilities for developing bonds, spicy code, and plain old fun seem quite possible.As I see it, the main benefit would be that we (that is the tech-flipside of the proverbial eCoin) get something worthwhile to do, rather than squeeze the last creative grain out of our code-heavy brains.To give it some perspective...: My last project consists of an absurd jQuery-plugin that includes animated png-robots migrating from Google Earth to drag a html-element of your choosing onto the map, where it gets color, for so to be dragged back by this poorly animated robot.... Often, the line between the creative and the tech is blurred, to say the least. I wouldn't think that would be a problem. Think someone who has developed a nifty little windows application, then sees possibility for a broader use, perhaps some sort of networking functionality. This fellow sadly lacks the skill to implememet this. So he, she or it would then seek a developer with the know-how and they could complete this project together. So, do any of you know of such a place, or can nudge in the right direction? And yes, I understand completely that I should be dedicating myself to doing school work, or applying for mundane developer positions, so please.... :-) UPDATE Sadly, I'm situated in Oslo, Norway, and the number of developers are somewhat limited...and I have had quite some ahem personality issues with the ones who are available ;-) So I feel I must go deeper; search the multitude of the web...

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• Microsoft Virtual Academy

  Carpe Diem It's been since a while that I could write an article for this blog but alas, I was (and still am) very busy with customer's work. Which is actually good. So, what is this article going to tell you? Well, in general, just what I already tweeted, that life is constant process of learning - especially as software craftsman. Due to an upcoming new customer project in ASP.NET I had to seize the opportunity to get my head deeper into latest available technologies, like Windows Azure and SQL Azure. I know... cloud computing and so on is not a recent development and already available since quite a while but I never any means to get myself into this since roughly two weeks ago. Microsoft Virtual Academy I can't remember exactly what guided me towards the Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA), oh wait... Yes, it was a posting on Facebook from an old CLIP community friend. He posted a shortened URL with #MVA tag that caught my attention. Thanks for that Thomas Kuberek. After the usual sign in or registration via Live ID I was a little bit surprised that Mauritius is not an available country option... Quick mail exchange with the MVA Decan, and yeah, apologies for the missing entry. So, currently I'm learning about Microsoft products and services, and collecting points under "Not Listed Country" until Mauritius is going to be added. Hopefully soon, as MVA honors your effort with different knowledge ranks that are compared to other students with public profiles. I think it's a nice move to add some game and competition factor into the learning game. The tracks and their different modules are mainly references to publicly available material online, namely on either MSDN, TechNet, Channel9, or other Microsoft based sites. The course material therefore also varies in different media and formats, ranging from simple online articles over downloadable documents (.docx or .pdf) to Silverlight / Windows Media streams with download options. Self-assessment and students ranking Each module in a track can be finished by taking part in a self-assessment. Up to now, the assessment I did (and passed) were limited to 10 minutes available time, and consisted of six to seven questions on the module training material. Nothing too serious but it gives you a glimpse idea how Microsoft certification exams are structured. Conclusion Nothing really new but nicely gathered, assembled and presented to the MVA students. At the moment, I wouldn't dare to compare the richness and quality of those courses with professional training offers, like Pluralsight .NET Training, LearnDevNow, VTC, etc. at all, but I think that MVA has potential. Give it a try, and let me know about your opinions.

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• SQL Community – stronger than ever

  - by Rob Farley

  I posted a few hours ago about a reflection of the Summit, but I wanted to write another one for this month’s T-SQL Tuesday, hosted by Chris Yates. In January of this year, Adam Jorgensen and I joked around in a video that was used for the SQL Server 2012 launch. We were asked about SQLFamily, and we said how we were like brothers – how we could drive each other crazy (the look he gave me as I patted his stomach was priceless), but that we’d still look out for each other, just like in a real family. And this is really true. Last week at the PASS Summit, there was a lot going on. I was busy as always, as were many others. People told me their good news, their awful news, and some whinged to me about other people who were driving them crazy. But throughout this, people in the SQL Server community genuinely want the best for each other. I’m sure there are exceptions, but I don’t see much of this. Australians aren’t big on cheering for each other. Neither are the English. I think we see it as an American thing. It could be easy for me to consider that the SQL Community that I see at the PASS Summit is mainly there because it’s a primarily American organisation. But when you speak to people like sponsors, or people involved in several types of communities, you quickly hear that it’s not just about that – that PASS has something special. It goes beyond cheering, it’s a strong desire to see each other succeed. I see MVPs feel disappointed for those people who don’t get awarded. I see Summit speakers concerned for those who missed out on the chance to speak. I see chapter leaders excited about the opportunity to help other chapters. And throughout, I see a gentleness and love for people that you rarely see outside the church (and sadly, many churches don’t have it either). Chris points out that the M-W dictionary defined community as “a unified body of individuals”, and I feel like this is true of the SQL Server community. It goes deeper though. It’s not just unity – and we’re most definitely different to each other – it’s more than that. We all want to see each other grow. We all want to pull ourselves up, to serve each other, and to grow PASS into something more than it is today. In that other post of mine I wrote a bit about Paul White’s experience at his first Summit. His missus wrote to me on Facebook saying that she welled up over it. But that emotion was nothing about what I wrote – it was about the reaction that the SQL Community had had to Paul. Be proud of it, my SQL brothers and sisters, and never lose it.

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• Music Notation Editor - Refactoring view creation logic elseware

  - by Cyril Silverman

  Let me preface by saying that knowing some elementary music theory and music notation may be helpful in grasping the problem at hand. I'm currently building a Music Notation and Tablature Editor (in Javascript). But I've come to a point where the core parts of the program are more or less there. All functionality I plan to add at this point will really build off the foundation that I've created. As a result, I want to refactor to really solidify my code. I'm using an API called VexFlow to render notation. Basically I pass the parts of the editor's state to VexFlow to build the graphical representation of the score. Here is a rough and stripped down UML diagram showing you the outline of my program: In essence, a Part has many Measures which has many Notes which has many NoteItems (yes, this is semantically weird, as a chord is represented as a Note with multiple NoteItems, individual pitches or fret positions). All of the relationships are bi-directional. There are a few problems with my design because my Measure class contains the majority of the entire application view logic. The class holds the data about all VexFlow objects (the graphical representation of the score). It contains the graphical Staff object and the graphical notes. (Shouldn't these be placed somewhere else in the program?) While VexFlowFactory deals with actual creation (and some processing) of most of the VexFlow objects, Measure still "directs" the creation of all the objects and what order they are supposed to be created in for both the VexFlowStaff and VexFlowNotes. I'm not looking for a specific answer as you'd need a much deeper understanding of my code. Just a general direction to go in. Here's a thought I had, create an MeasureView/NoteView/PartView classes that contains the basic VexFlow objects for each class in addition to any extraneous logic for it's creation? but where would these views be contained? Do I create a ScoreView that is a parallel graphical representation of everything? So that ScoreView.render() would cascade down PartView and call render for each PartView and casade down into each MeasureView, etc. Again, I just have no idea what direction to go in. The more I think about it, the more ways to go seem to pop into my head. I tried to be as concise and simplistic as possible while still getting my problem across. Please feel free to ask me any questions if anything is unclear. It's quite a struggle trying to dumb down a complicated problem to its core parts.

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• C++ Accelerated Massive Parallelism

  - by Daniel Moth

  At AMD's Fusion conference Herb Sutter announced in his keynote session a technology that our team has been working on that we call C++ Accelerated Massive Parallelism (C++ AMP) and during the keynote I showed a brief demo of an app built with our technology. After the keynote, I go deeper into the technology in my breakout session. If you read both those abstracts, you'll get some information about what C++ AMP is, without being too explicit since we published the abstracts before the technology was announced. You can find the official online announcement at Soma's blog post. Here, I just wanted to capture the key points about C++ AMP that can serve as an introduction and an FAQ. So, in no particular order… C++ AMP lowers the barrier to entry for heterogeneous hardware programmability and brings performance to the mainstream, without sacrificing developer productivity or solution portability. is designed not only to help you address today's massively parallel hardware (i.e. GPUs and APUs), but it also future proofs your code investments with a forward looking design. is part of Visual C++. You don't need to use a different compiler or learn different syntax. is modern C++. Not C or some other derivative. is integrated and supported fully in Visual Studio vNext. Editing, building, debugging, profiling and all the other goodness of Visual Studio work well with C++ AMP. provides an STL-like library as part of the existing concurrency namespace and delivered in the new amp.h header file. makes it extremely easy to work with large multi-dimensional data on heterogeneous hardware; in a manner that exposes parallelization. introduces only one core C++ language extension. builds on DirectX (and DirectCompute in particular) which offers a great hardware abstraction layer that is ubiquitous and reliable. The architecture is such, that this point can be thought of as an implementation detail that does not surface to the API layer. Stay tuned on my blog for more over the coming months where I will switch from just talking about C++ AMP to showing you how to use the API with code examples… Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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