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• Tracking download of non-html (like pdf) downloads with jQuery and Google Analytics

  - by developerit

  Hi folks, it’s been quite calm at Developer IT’s this summer since we were all involved in other projects, but we are slowly comming back. In this post, we will present a simple way of tracking files download with Google Analytics with the help of jQuery. We work for a client that offers a lot of pdf files to download on their web site and wanted to know which one are the most popular. They use Google Analytics for a long time now and we did not want to have a second interface in order to present those stats to our client. So usign IIS logs was not a idea to consider. Since Google already offers us a splendid web interface and a powerful API, we deceided to hook up simple javascript code into the jQuery click event to notify Analytics that a pdf has been requested. (function ($) { function trackLink(e) { var url = $(this).attr('href'); //alert(url); // for debug purpose // old page tracker code pageTracker._trackPageview(url); // you can use the new one too _gaq.push(["_trackPageview",url]); //always return true, in order for the browser to continue its job return true; } // When DOM ready $(function () { // hook up the click event $('.pdf-links a').click(trackLink); }); })(jQuery); You can be more presice or even be sure not to miss one click by changing the selector which hooks up the click event. I have been usign this code to track AJAX requests and it works flawlessly.

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• Using design-patterns to transform web-service model classes into local model classes and vise versa

  - by Daniil Petrov

  There is a web-application built with play framework 1.2.7. It contains less than 10 model classes. The main purpose of the application is a lightweight access to a complex remote application (more than 50 model classes). The remote application has its own SOAP API and we use it for synchronization of data. There is a scheduled job in the web-app which makes requests to the remote app. It gets bunches of objects from the remote model and populates corresponding objects of the local model. Currently, there are two groups of classes - the local model and the remote model (generated from wsdl schema). It is not allowed to make any modifications to the remote model. Transformations are being made in the scheduled job class. When it gets objects from the remote app it creates local objects. Recently, it was decided to add a possibility to modify the remote objects. It requires more transformations on our side. We need to transform from remote to local model when reading objects and from local to remote when changing objects. I wonder if this would be possible to use some design-patterns to reduce a number of transformations?

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• How Social Is Your Contact Center?

  - by Charles Knapp

  More than 75% of consumers have complained on a social site after a poor customer experience. Yet, 70% of companies have little understanding of the social media conversations about their brand. To deliver upon your brand promise, retain customers, and increase their lifetime value, you must deliver great customer experiences across social, mobile, phone, and chat channels. Siloed channels produce poor customer experiences. Social channels must integrate with the people, processes, technology, and traditional channels used to satisfy customers. The more effective a company’s social marketing, the greater the demand for effective social service. However, service is not a job for social marketers. It is a job for service specialists, focused on KPIs such as response time, first contact resolution, satisfaction, churn, retention, and customer lifetime value. Most social-enabled contact centers are at the early adopter stage, attempting to “bolt on” social media as a side process. Many are experiencing inconsistent customer experiences, higher costs, and negligible return on investments. Service leaders should consider carefully how to integrate social channels with their current customer service and support people, processes, technology, and channels. Here is one company realizing success: the pre-integrated Oracle RightNow Social Experience “empowers our contact center operations by enabling our agents to join customer conversations that are happening on social sites like Twitter and Facebook and integrate those conversations into our overall multichannel customer engagement processes.” — Lisa Larson, Drugstore.com

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• Creating Key Flex Field (KFF) Bean in OAF

  - by Manoj Madhusoodanan

  This blog describes how to create KFF in OAF Page.Here I am going to demonstrate with standard Job KFF. I have created a new structure in Job KFF which I am going to use it in my custom OAF page.Please see the below pic. In the above created structure I have created following segments.You can see the valuesets also. In the custom page I have created an item with following properties. In the Segment List property you can give which segments are going to use in the KFF. The syntax for defining it is  KFF Code|Segment1|Segment2|Segment3|Segment4|Segment N In the table just create a field to hold the code combination.Please click here to see table script. Code combination will goes into JOB_ID field of the table. In the processRequest method of the page controller add following code snippet to attach the KFF structure and CCID column to the KFF bean. Deploy the files belonging to this solution to the server. Following is the output of the above solution. If you click on JobId you can see the KFF window.   Code Combination Id has created in the table.      

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• Excel-based Performance Reviews transformed into Web Application for Performance Management

  - by Webgui

  HR TMS provides enterprise talent management solutions for healthcare, retail and corporate customers, focusing on performance management, compensation management and succession planning. As the competency of nurses and other healthcare workers is critical, the government, via the Joint Commission (JCAHO), tightly monitors their performances. On a regular basis, accredited healthcare organizations are required to review employee performance using a complex set of position dependent job descriptions and competencies. Middlesex Hospital managed their performance reviews for 2500 employees manually with Excel spreadsheets. This was a labor intensive process that proved to be error prone and difficult to manage. Reviews were not always where they belonged and the job descriptions and competencies for healthcare workers were difficult to keep accurate and up to date. As a result, when the Joint Commission visited and requested to see specific review documentation, there was intense stress. Middlesex Hospital needed to automate their review process, pull in the position information from those spreadsheets and be able to deliver reviews online. Users needed to have online access to those reviews from a standard browser. Although the manual system had its issues, it did have the advantage of being very comprehensive and familiar to users. The decision was made to provide a web-based solution that leveraged the look and feel of those spreadsheets in order to insure user acceptance of the system and minimize the training needed. Read the full article here >

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• After-meeting Free Pizza Social is back to Fladotnet's West Palm Beach .Net User Group

  - by Sam Abraham

  Sherlock Staffing is bringing back the free Pizza/Soda after-meeting social to Fladotnet's West Palm Beach .Net User Group. Group members will have ample time to network and share experiences while enjoying pizza and soda after each meeting. Alex Funkhouser, Sherlock Staffing's President and Chief Talent Agent, is a continuous supporter of the .Net community with Sherlock Staffing maintaining a strong presence in every user group and quickly stepping-in as sponsors to meet any arising community need. In addition to providing the Free Pizza and Soda, Sherlock Staffing will also maintain on-site presence to bring to members of the West Palm Beach .Net User Group the latest insider view on the Job Market and keep the group posted with available opportunities. Alex can be reached at: [email protected]. Check out Sherlock Staffing's Website at: http://www.sherstaff.com About Sherlock Staffing SherStaff is the premier staffing and consulting source for technical talent in Florida and beyond. The company provides recruiting and consulting services to both Fortune 1000 companies and to job candidates in a wide range of technology areas of expertise including the Microsoft Technologies, Oracle, WebSphere, Java/J2EE, and open source/Linux based technologies.  The primary focus is recruiting application developers, network engineers and database administrators. The company prides itself on the long term relationships established with both employers and employees to ensure placement of the best quality candidates in the top quality jobs.

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• SQLAuthority Book Review – DBA Survivor: Become a Rock Star DBA

  - by pinaldave

  DBA Survivor: Become a Rock Star DBA – Thomas LaRock Link to Amazon Link to Flipkart First of all, I thank all my readers when I wrote that I could not get this book in any local book stores, because they offered me to send a copy of this good book. A very special mention goes to Sripada and Jayesh for they gave so much effort in finding my home address and sending me the hard copy. Before, I did not have the copy of the book, but now I have two of it already! It surprises me how my readers were able to find my home address, which I have not publicly shared. Quick Review: This is indeed a one easy-to-read and fun book. We all work day and night with technology yet we should not forget to show our love and care for our family at home. For our souls that starve for peace and guidance, this one book is the “it” book for all the technology enthusiasts. Though this book was specifically written for DBAs, the reach is not limited to DBAs only because the lessons incorporated in it actually applies to all. This is one of the most motivating technical books I have read. Detailed Review: Let us go over a few questions first: Who wants to be as famous as rockstars in the field of Database Administration? How can one learn what it takes to become a top notch software developer? If you are a beginner in your field, how will you go to next level? Your boss may be very kind or like Dilbert’s Boss, what will you do? How do you keep growing when Eco-system around you does not support you? You are almost at top but there is someone else at the TOP, what do you do and how do you avoid office politics? As a database developer what should be your basic responsibility? and many more… I was able to completely read book in one sitting and I loved it. Before I continue with my opinion, I want to echo the opinion of Kevin Kline who has written the Forward of the book. He has truly suggested that “You hold in your hands a collection of insights and wisdom on the topic of database administration gained through many years of hard-won experience, long nights of study, and direct mentorship under some of the industry’s most talented database professionals and information technology (IT) experts.” Today, IT field is getting bigger and better, while talking about terabytes of the database becomes “more” normal every single day. The gods and demigods of database professionals are taking care of these large scale databases and are carefully maintaining them. In this world, there are only a few beginnings on the first step. There are many experts in different technology fields who are asked to address the issues with databases. There is YOU and ME, who is just new to this work. So we ask ourselves WHERE to begin and HOW to begin. We adore and follow the religion of our rockstars, but oftentimes we really have no idea about their background and their struggles. Every rockstar has his success story which needs to be digested before learning his tricks and tips. This book starts with the same note and teaches the two most important lessons for anybody who wants to be a DBA Rockstar –  to focus on their single goal of learning and to excel the technology. The story starts with three simple guidelines – Get Prepared, Get Trained, Get Certified. Once a person learns the skills, and then, it would be about time that he needs to enrich or to improve those skills you have learned. I am sure that the right opportunity will come finding themselves and they will not have to go run behind it. However, the real challenge for any person is the first day or first week. A new employee, no matter how much experienced he is, sometimes has no clue about what should one do at new job. Chapter 2 and chapter 3 precisely talk about what one should do as soon as the new job begins. It is also written with keeping the fact in focus that each job can be very much different but there are few infrastructure setups and programming concepts are the same. Learning basics of database was really interesting. I like to focus on the roots of any technology. It is important to understand the structure of the database before suggesting what indexes needs to be created, the same way this book covers the most essential knowledge one must learn by most database developers. I think the title of the fourth chapter is my favorite sentence in this book. I can see that I will be saying this again and again in the future – “A Development Server Is a Production Server to a Developer“. I have worked in the software industry for almost 8 years now and I have seen so many developers sitting on their chairs and waiting for instructions from their lead about how to improve the code or what to do the next. When I talk to them, I suggest that the experiment with their server and try various techniques. I think they all should understand that for them, a development server is their production server and needs to pay proper attention to the code from the beginning. There should be NO any inappropriate code from the beginning. One has to fully focus and give their best, if they are not sure they should ask but should do something and stay active. Chapter 5 and 6 talks about two essential skills for any developer and database administration – what are the ethics of developers when they are working with production server and how to support software which is running on the production server. I have met many people who know the theory by heart but when put in front of keyboard they do not know where to start. The first thing they do opening the browser and searching online, instead of opening SQL Server Management Studio. This can very well happen to anybody who is experienced as well. Chapter 5 and 6 addresses that situation as well includes the handy scripts which can solve almost all the basic trouble shooting issues. “Where’s the Buffet?” By far, this is the best chapter in this book. If you have ever met me, you would know that I love food. I think after reading this chapter, I felt Thomas has written this just keeping me in mind. I think there will be many other people who feel the same way, too. Even my wife who read this chapter thought this was specifically written for me. I will not talk any more about this chapter as this is one must read chapter. And of course this is about real ‘FOOD‘. I am an SQL Server Trainer and Consultant and I totally agree with the point made in the chapter 8 of this book. Yes, it says here that what is necessary to train employees and people. Millions of dollars worth the labor is continuously done in the world which has faults and incorrect. Once something goes wrong, very expensive consultant comes in and fixes the problem. This whole cycle which can be stopped and improved if proper training is done. There is plenty of free trainings available as well, if one cannot afford paid training. “Connect. Learn. Share” – I think this is a great summary and bird’s eye view of this book. Networking is the key. Everything which is discussed in this book can be taken to next level if one properly uses this tips and continuously grow with it. Connecting with others, helping learn each other and building the good knowledge sharing environment should be the goal of everyone. Before I end the review I want to share a real experience. I have personally met one DBA who has worked in a single department in a company for so long that when he was put in a different department in his company due to closing that department, he could not adjust and quit the job despite the same people and company around him. Adjusting in the new environment gets much tougher as one person gets more and more experienced. This book precisely addresses the same issue along with their solutions. I just cannot stop comparing the book with my personal journey. I found so many things which are coincidently in the book is written as how we developer and DBA think. I must express special thanks to Thomas for taking time in his personal life and write this book for us. This book is indeed a book for everybody who wants to grow healthy in the tough and competitive environment. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Book Review, SQLAuthority News, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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• Access Insurance Company Wins 2010 Technology Innovation Award at IASA

  - by [email protected]

  Helen Pitts, senior product marketing manager for Oracle Insurance, is blogging from the 2010 IASA Annual Conference and Business Show this week. For the second time in two weeks an Oracle Insurance customer has earned recognition at an insurance industry event for its innovative use of technology to transform their business. Access Insurance Company received the 2010 Technology Innovation Award during the 2010 IASA Annual Conference and Business Show this week in Grapevine, Texas. The company earned the recognition for its "Instant Access" application, which executes all the business rules and processes needed to provide a quote, bind, and issue a policy. CIO Andy Dunn and Tim Reynolds stopped by the Oracle Insurance Booth at IASA to visit with the team, show their award, and share how the platform has provided a strategic advantage to the company and helped it increase revenue by penetrating new markets, increasing market share and improving customer retention. Since implementing Instant Access in 2009 - a platform that leverages both Oracle Insurance Insbridge Rating and Underwriting and Oracle Documaker - the carrier has: Increased policies in force by 22%, from 140,185 to more than 270,000 Grown market share by 4.6% Increased 2009 revenue by 26.5% Increased ratio of policyholders per CSR by 30% Increased its appointed independent producers by 43 percent Now that's true innovation! You can learn more about the company's formula for success by reading Access Insurance Holdings CEO and president Michael McMenamin's interview with Insurance & Technology, Data Mastery Drives Access Insurance's 'Instant Access' Business Technology Platform. Congratulations to Michael, Andy, Tim and the entire team at Access Insurance on this well deserved honor - and for your role as a technology leader for the industry. Helen Pitts is senior product marketing manager for Oracle Insurance.

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• The Most Effective Learning Methods – The Results

  - by BuckWoody

  Yesterday I posted a blank graph and asked where you thought the labels should go for the most effective learning methods, according to a study they read to me and other teachers here at the University of Washington. Here are the labels in the correct order according to that study – and remember, “Teaching” here means one student explaining something to another: It isn’t really that surprising to learn that we comprehend best when we have to teach a subject to someone else, and you can see that the “participation factor” is the key in the learning methods. The real shocker was the retention level at the various learning modes – lecture was down near the single digits! What does this have to do with databases or the DBA? Well, we all need to learn new things – and many of us are asked to teach others a new task. To be a good teacher, we have to know how a student learns best – and of course that makes us better students as well. So next time you’re asked to transfer some knowledge to someone else, take a look at this chart first – and let me know how it affected your knowledge transfer. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Windows HPC Server links

  I've already described how to setup a Windows HPC Server for development. Before you dive into developing for the cluster, if you are new to this it is probably a good idea to learn the basics by reading some overview material. Below is a list of links.Direct Links to Windows HPC content1. Windows HPC Server 2008 Overview Datasheet (4 page pdf).2. Windows HPC Server 2008 Technical Overview (32 page doc).3. Windows HPC Server 2008 Getting Started Guide (26 page doc) which actually is available online as part of the TechNet technical library section on Windows HPC Server 2008, which includes much more useful data.4. Windows HPC Server 2008 Job Scheduler (38 page doc).5. Windows HPC Server 2008 Job Templates (56 page doc).6. Developing for the Windows HPC Server 2008 Platform (16 page doc or pdf version).Windows HPC sites7. Windows HPC Forums.8. HPC Developer Resources.9. Windows HPC Server 2008 Resource Kit - Developer.10. Windows HPC Server 2008 - TechNet.11. The Windows HPC Team Blog.HPC Course12. High-Performance Computing Fundamentals Course (pluralisight)13. Classic HPC Development using Visual C++ (course slides and materials in a ZIP). Author's blog post.14. From sequential to parallel code (course slides and materials in a ZIP). Author's blog post. Next time I will post resources specific to the most popular programming models for the cluster today: MPI and Cluster SOA - until then, happy reading! Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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• What&rsquo;s wrong with See[Mike]Code? (no relation)

  - by mbcrump

  I have been hearing a lot about the website See[Mike]Code. Basically, the site creates an interview url and a job candidate url and lets you see the potential programmer’s code (specifically .NET developer). Below is the candidate’s URL   Below is the interviewer url   So you might think, ah, this is a good thing. We can screen candidates cheaper and more efficiently. In reality, this is only a good thing if you want your programmer to develop using notepad.  I use the most efficient tools that exist to do my job. I would simply fire up VS2010 and type “for” and hit the tab key twice and get the following template.   I have no problem keeping MSDN/Google in one of my monitors. I spend time learning VS macros and using Aurora XAML/Expression to produce my XAML for WPF. Sure, I can write a for loop without using the VS Macro, but the real question is, “Why should I?”. My point being, if you really want to test a .NET programmer knowledge then fire up his native working environment and let him use the features of the IDE to develop the simple 10-line program. For a more sophisticated program, then give him 20 minutes and allow access to msdn/google. If the programmer cannot find at the right path then give him the boot.

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• Re-running SSRS subscription jobs that have failed

  - by Rob Farley

  Sometimes, an SSRS subscription for some reason. It can be annoying, particularly as the appropriate response can be hard to see immediately. There may be a long list of jobs that failed one morning if a Mail Server is down, and trying to work out a way of running each one again can be painful. It’s almost an argument for using shared schedules a lot, but the problem with this is that there are bound to be other things on that shared schedule that you wouldn’t want to be re-run. Luckily, there’s a table in the ReportServer database called dbo.Subscriptions, which is where LastStatus of the Subscription is stored. Having found the subscriptions that you’re interested in, finding the SQL Agent Jobs that correspond to them can be frustrating. Luckily, the jobstep command contains the subscriptionid, so it’s possible to look them up based on that. And of course, once the jobs have been found, they can be executed easily enough. In this example, I produce a list of the commands to run the jobs. I can copy the results out and execute them. select 'exec sp_start_job @job_name = ''' + cast(j.name as varchar(40)) + '''' from msdb.dbo.sysjobs j  join  msdb.dbo.sysjobsteps js on js.job_id = j.job_id join  [ReportServer].[dbo].[Subscriptions] s  on js.command like '%' + cast(s.subscriptionid as varchar(40)) + '%' where s.LastStatus like 'Failure sending mail%'; Another option could be to return the job step commands directly (js.command in this query), but my preference is to run the job that contains the step. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• 4 Top Tips from the Exceptional DBA Award judges

  - by Rebecca Amos

  There's still time to celebrate your achievements as a DBA – or those of a DBA you know – by submitting a nomination for the Exceptional DBA Awards 2011. To help you get started, here are some top tips from the judges on what they're looking for from this year's winner [hint: it's very likely you're already exceptional!]: "An Exceptional DBA must be able to communicate effectively and clearly with both technical people and the client." Steve Jones. "Exceptional DBAs are like police officers: we're here to serve and protect. Both serving and protecting are vital parts of the job, and we can't just focus on one." Brent Ozar "DBA work can be routine. Exceptional DBAs are enthusiastic about their work and are rarely bored, as there is always something new to learn and master." Brad McGehee. "Remember that cost is an important factor for your company. The ability to save your company money with a different technical solution will make you an Exceptional DBA, and can make you exceptionally well liked." Rodney Landrum. So whether you've brought a team together for a project, taken steps to protect the security of your servers, or learnt a new topic to understand an element of your job better, it's likely you’re already taking the steps that make you the Exceptional DBA the judges are looking for. To get more insider info from the judges, download your free poster of their top tips, and then get started on your entry: www.exceptionaldba.com.

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• Steve Jobs Goes On Medical. iPad 2 and iPhone 5 On Track.

  - by Gopinath

  Here is a bit of disappointing news for Apple fan boys. Steve Jobs is again going on medical leave as he wants to concentrate on his health for sometime. In an email to the employees of Apple Steve said, At my request, the board of directors has granted me a medical leave of absence so I can focus on my health..I will continue as CEO and be involved in major strategic decisions for the company.I have great confidence that Tim and the rest of the executive management team will do a terrific job executing the exciting plans we have in place for 2011   Seems to the plans for release of much anticipated iPad 2 and iPhone 5 will not be affected by Steve’s absence -as rumoured iPad 2 In April, iPhone 5 In June With New Hardware. Here is the full content of the email Steve Jobs sent to all employees: Team, At my request, the board of directors has granted me a medical leave of absence so I can focus on my health. I will continue as CEO and be involved in major strategic decisions for the company. I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for all of Apple’s day to day operations. I have great confidence that Tim and the rest of the executive management team will do a terrific job executing the exciting plans we have in place for 2011. I love Apple so much and hope to be back as soon as I can. In the meantime, my family and I would deeply appreciate respect for our privacy. Steve This article titled,Steve Jobs Goes On Medical. iPad 2 and iPhone 5 On Track., was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• Steve Jobs Goes On Medical. iPad 2 and iPhone 5 On Track.

  - by Gopinath

  Here is a bit of disappointing news for Apple fan boys. Steve Jobs is again going on medical leave as he wants to concentrate on his health for sometime. In an email to the employees of Apple Steve said, At my request, the board of directors has granted me a medical leave of absence so I can focus on my health..I will continue as CEO and be involved in major strategic decisions for the company.I have great confidence that Tim and the rest of the executive management team will do a terrific job executing the exciting plans we have in place for 2011   In the mail, Steve also said that plans for the product releases scheduled in 2011 will not be affected. This means as rumoured iPad 2 In April, iPhone 5 In June With New Hardware. There is not much information on the medical complications Steve is facing now, but many are thinking  its linked to the liver transplant he had in 2009. What ever may be reason, we wish for this speedy recovery. Here is the full content of the email Steve Jobs sent to all employees: Team, At my request, the board of directors has granted me a medical leave of absence so I can focus on my health. I will continue as CEO and be involved in major strategic decisions for the company. I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for all of Apple’s day to day operations. I have great confidence that Tim and the rest of the executive management team will do a terrific job executing the exciting plans we have in place for 2011. I love Apple so much and hope to be back as soon as I can. In the meantime, my family and I would deeply appreciate respect for our privacy. Steve This article titled,Steve Jobs Goes On Medical. iPad 2 and iPhone 5 On Track., was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• Is copy paste programming bad ?

  - by ring bearer

  With plain google as well as google code search tools it is easy to find how to program using some resource or solve certain problems ( such as a Java class, or a ftp block in perl etc) and so developers are so tempted to just purely copy paste the code (in a way re-use) - is this an incompetency? I have done this myself though I think I am a better programmer than many others I have seen. Who has the time to RTFM? In this age of information abundance, I do not think that copy paste programming is bad. Isn't that what sites like stackoverflow do anyway? People ask - ok here is my problem - how to solve it? now someone will post complete code and the person who asked the question would simply copy paste the most voted answer. No matter how small the problem is. I am working with a bunch of young coders who heavily rely on internet to get their job done. I see convenience (for example, you may be quite good with algorithms and such but you may not know how to use a BufferedReader in Java - would you read complete Javadoc for BufferedReader or look up some example of using it somewhere??) in copy pasting and modifying code to get the job done. What are the real dangers of copy paste coding that can impact their competency?

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• Big Data for Retail

  - by David Dorf

  Right up there with mobile, social, and cloud is the term "big data," which seems to be popping up lots in the press these days.  Companies like Google, Yahoo, and Facebook have popularized a new class of data technologies meant to solve the problem of processing large amounts of data quickly.  I first mentioned this in a posting back in March 2009.  Put simply, big data implies datasets so large they can't normally be processed using a standard transactional database.  The term "noSQL" is often used in this context as well. Actually, using parallel processing within the Oracle database combined with Exadata can achieve impressive results.  Look for more from Oracle at OpenWorld as hinted by Jean-Pierre Dijcks. McKinsey recently released a report on big data in which retail was specifically mentioned as an industry that can benefit from the new technologies.  I won't rehash that report because my friend Rama already did such a good job in his posting, Impact of "Big Data" on Retail. The presentation below does a pretty good job of framing the problem, although it doesn't really get into the available technologies (e.g. Exadata, Hadoop, Cassandra, etc.) and isn't retail specific. Determine the Right Analytic Database: A Survey of New Data Technologies So when a retailer asks me about big data, here's what I say:  Big data refers to a set of technologies for processing large volumes of structured and unstructured data.  Imagine collecting everything uttered by your customers on Facebook and Twitter and combining it with all the data you can find about the products you sell (e.g. reviews, images, demonstration videos), including competitive data.  Assuming you could process all that data, you could then personalize offers to specific customers based on their tastes, ensure prices are competitive, and implement better local assortments.  It's really not that far off.

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• On contract work, obligations to said contract, and looking out for yourself…

  - by jlnorsworthy

  Without boring you all with details, my last two contract assignments were cut short; I was given 3 days notice on one, and 4 weeks notice on the other. Neither of these were due to performance – they both basically came down budget issues. On my second contract, I got the feeling that I may not have been a great place to stay for the duration of my contract. Because of money/time spent getting me in the door, and the possible negative effect of my employer/recruiter, I decided to stay at least for a few months (and start looking several weeks before the end of my supposedly “extendable” contract). These experiences have left me a little wary of contract work. It seems that if I land a bad contract, that my recruiter would take a hit (reputation or otherwise) if I quickly found another job. But on the other hand, the client company won’t think twice of ending the contract early for any reason. I know that the counter argument to this is “maybe your recruiter shouldn’t have put you into a crappy assignment”… either way, it seems that since I am relying on him to provide me with work, that I should try to not damage his reputation with client companies. I’m basically brand new to contracting (these were my first two contracts) so these concerns are new to me. TLDR: Is contract work, by its very nature, largely unstable? Am I worried too much about my recruiter? Should I be quicker to start looking for a new job even after just weeks at a new company (when the environment seems unstable)? If so, do I look through my recruiter or just find another position by any means necessary?

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• Scheduling of jobs in the presence of constraints in Java

  - by Asgard

  I want to know how to implement a solution to this problem: A task is performed by running, by more people, some basic jobs with known duration in time units (days, months, etc..). The execution of the jobs could lead to the existence of time constraints: a job, for example, can not start if it is not over another (or others) and so on. I want to design and build an application to check the correctness of jobs activities and to propose a schedule of jobs, if any, which is respectful of the constraints. Input must provide the jobs and associated constraints. The expected output is the scheduling of jobs. The specification of an elementary job consists of the pair <jobs-id, duration> A constraint is expressed by means of a quintuple of the type <S/E, id-job1, B/A, S/E, id-job2> the beginning (S) or the end (E) of a jobs Id-job1, must take place before (B) / after (A) of the beginning (S) / end (E) of the Id-job2. If there are no dependencies between some jobs, then jobs can be done before, in parallel. As a simple example, consider the input: jobs jobs(0, 3) jobs(1, 4) jobs(2, 5) jobs(3, 3) jobs(4, 3) constraints constraints(S, 1, A, E, 0) constraints(S, 4, A, E, 2) Possible output: t 0 1 2 3 4 0 * - * * - 1 * - * * - 2 * - * * - 3 * - * * - 4 - * * - - 5 - * * - - 6 - * - - * 7 - * - - * 8 - * - - * 9 - - - - * How to code an efficient java scheduler(avoiding the intense backtracking if is possible) to manage the jobs with these constraints, as described??? I have seen a discussion on a thread in a forum where an user seems has solved the problem easily, but He haven't given enough details to the users to compile a working project(I'm noob), and I'm interested to know an effective implementation of the solution (without using external libraries). If someone help me, I'll give to him a very good feedback ;)

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• May I know what python is great at [on hold]

  - by user108437

  I am amazed by python on how tidy the code is, so i decided to learn it, and 2 days pass and I am completely in love with python, but I just code it for hobby thing like chatting robot, uploading to file hosting scripts, etc that small tools for my own daily internet life, and not much for work. I can't find a real life usage of python here. I live in Singapore, when I see in the job skill needed, from those companies hiring, only one asking for python. so I begin to be doubtful whether this skill of mine really worth my time investing it? I also heard about django, and don't know how much popular it is comparing to asp.net. So i ask your help to tell me your country and how popular python there and whether you like python or not? I really like python because of the easy scripting language (not complicated like C++) but the usefulness is almost near C++ where many open source library out there that can run both in windows and linux, so the portability is great! i just want to justify my time for learning python, as because my job does not require python, and I don't have much time at home to learn something new.

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• How can I transition from being a "9-5er" to being self-employed?

  - by Stephen Furlani

  Hey, I posted this question last fall about moonlighting, and I feel like I've got a strong case to make to start transitioning from being a Full-Time Employee to being self-employed. So much so, that I find it hard to concentrate at work on the things I'm supposed to be doing. However, self-employment comes with things like no health benefits or guaranteed income... so I don't feel like I can just quit. (At least not in this economy with a house and family). I'm already working 40hrs/wk on my main job, going to school to get my MS, and trying to freelance on weekends and evenings, but I want to give it more time. If I can't take LWOP or just work less than 40hrs/wk I feel like I have to give up self-employment because I just can't give my day job all my best. Would it be reasonable to ask my employer if they can cut my hours (and pay)? Is there something else I can/should do? Has anyone done this transition and had it turn out well? or bad? I am in the USA and I understand answers are not legal advice. Thanks!

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• Runaway version store in tempdb

  - by DavidWimbush

  Today was really a new one. I got back from a week off and found our main production server's tempdb had gone from its usual 200MB to 36GB. Ironically I spent Friday at the most excellent SQLBits VI and one of the sessions I attended was Christian Bolton talking about tempdb issues - including runaway tempdb databases. How just-in-time was that?! I looked into the file growth history and it looks like the problem started when my index maintenance job was chosen as the deadlock victim. (Funny how they almost make it sound like you've won something.) That left tempdb pretty big but for some reason it grew several more times. And since I'd left the file growth at the default 10% (aaargh!) the worse it got the worse it got. The last regrowth event was 2.6GB. Good job I've got Instant Initialization on. Since the Disk Usage report showed it was 99% unallocated I went into the Shrink Files dialogue which helpfully informed me the data file was 250MB.  I'm afraid I've got a life (allegedly) so I restarted the SQL Server service and then immediately ran a script to make the initial size bigger and change the file growth to a number of MB. The script complained that the size was smaller than the current size. Within seconds! WTF? Now I had to find out what was using so much of it. By using the DMV sys.dm_db_file_space_usage I found the problem was in the version store, and using the DMV sys.dm_db_task_space_usage and the Top Transactions by Age report I found that the culprit was a 3rd party database where I had turned on read_committed_snapshot and then not bothered to monitor things properly. Just because something has always worked before doesn't mean it will work in every future case. This application had an implicit transaction that had been running for over 2 hours.

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• Cool SQL formatter tool

  - by AndyScott

  I have to deal with all types of code that was written by people from different organizations, different countries, using different languages, obviously standards are different across these sources.  One of the biggest headaches that I ahve come across is how people differ in the formatting of their SQL statements, specifically stored procs.  When you regularly get over 500 lines in a sproc, if the code is not formatted correctly, you can get lost trying to figure out where one nested BEGIN begins, and another nested END ends.  One of my co-workers showed me this site today that does a pretty damn good job of making sense of that type of code: http://www.dpriver.com/pp/sqlformat.htm.   This is a free website that offers a box to enter your nasty code, and click "Format SQL" and have it clean it for you.  I am sure that there are situations where this may not work, but given the code that I have been working with recently, it does a really good job.  There is a pay version with more options, including VS add-in, desktop component (with quickkeys to clean text in programs like notepad), the ability to output in HTML, and other stuff.  Heck, I watched a demo where the purchased version will take formatted SQL code and turn it into a generic Stringbuilder object embedded in a formatted. Yes, this seems like a shameless plug, but no, I have no relation/knowledge of anyone involved in the development of this product, it just seems useful.  Either way, I recommend checking out the free version.

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• Role of Microsoft certifications ADO.Net, ASP.Net, WPF, WCF and Career?

  - by Steve Johnson

  I am a Microsoft fan and .Net enthusiast. I want to align my career in the lines of current and future .Net technologies. I have an MCTS in ASP.Net 3.5. The question is about the continuation of certifications and my career growth and maybe a different job! I want to keep pace with future Microsoft .Net technologies. My current job however doesn't allow so.So i bid to do .Net based certifications to stay abreast with latest .Net technologies. My questions: What certifications should i follow next? I have MCTS .Net 3.5 WPF(Exam 70-502) and MCTS .Net 3.5 WCF(Exam 70-504) in my mind so that i can go for Silverlight development and seek jobs related to Silverlight development. What other steps i need to take in order to develop professional expertise in technologies such as WPF, WCF and Silverlight when my current employer is reluctant to shift to latest .Net technologies? I am sure that there are a lot of people of around here who are working with .Net technologies and they have industrial experience. I being a new comer and starter in my career need to take right decision and so i am seeking help from this community in guiding me to the right path. Expert replies are much appreciated and thanks in advance. Best Regards Steve.

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• Tools of the Trade

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

  I got pretty excited a couple of days ago when my new laptop arrived. “The new phone books are here!  The new phone books are here!  I’m a somebody!” - Steve Martin in The Jerk It is a Dell Precision M4500 with an Intel i7 Core 2.8 GHZ running 64-bit Windows 7 with a 15.6” widescreen, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD.  For some of you high fliers, this may be nothing to write home about, but compared to the 32–bit Windows XP laptop with 2 GB of RAM and a regular hard disk that I’m coming from, it’s a really nice step forward.  I won’t even bore you with the details of the desktop PC I was first given when I started here 5 1/2 years ago.  Let’s just say that things have improved.  One really nice thing is that while we are definitely running a lean and mean department in terms of staffing, my boss believes in supporting that lean staff with good tools in order to stay lean instead of having to spend even more money on additional employees.  Of course, that only goes so far, and at some point you have to add more people in order to get more work done, which is why we are bringing on-board a new employee and a new contract developer next week.  But that’s a different story for a different time. But the main topic for this post is to highlight the variety of tools that I use in my job and that you might find useful, too.  This is easy to do right now because the process of building up my new laptop from scratch has forced me to assemble a list of software that had to be installed and configured.  Keep in mind as you look through this list that I play many roles in our company.  My official title is Software Engineering Manager, but in addition to managing the team, I am also an active ASP.NET and SQL developer, the Database Administrator, and 50% of the SAN Administrator team.  So, without further ado, here are the tools and some comments about why I use them: Tool Purpose Virtual Clone Drive Easily mount an ISO image as a DVD Drive.  This is particularly handy when you are downloading disk images from Microsoft for your tools. SQL Server 2008 R2 Developer Edition We are migrating all of our active systems to SQL 2008 R2.  Developer Edition has all the features of Enterprise Edition, but intended for development use. SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition (BIDS ONLY) The migration to SSRS 2008 R2 is just getting started, and in the meantime, maintenance work still has to be done on the reports on our SQL 2005 server.  For some reason, you can’t use BIDS from 2008 to write reports for a 2005 server.  There is some different format and when you open 2005 reports in 2008 BIDS, it forces you to upgrade, and they can no longer be uploaded to a 2005 server.  Hopefully Microsoft will fix this soon in some manner similar to Visual Studio now allows you to pick which version of the .NET Framework you are coding against. Visual Studio 2010 Premium All of our application development is in ASP.NET, and we might as well use the tool designed for it. I’ve used a version of Visual Studio going all the way back to VB 6.0 and Visual Interdev. Vault Professional Client Several years ago we replaced Visual Source Safe with SourceGear Vault (then Fortress, and now Vault Pro), and I love it.  It is very reliable with low overhead - perfect for a small to medium size development team.  And being a small ISV, their support is exceptional. Red-Gate Developer Bundle with the SQL Source Control update for Vault I first used, and fell in love with, SQL Prompt shortly before Red-Gate bought it, and then Red-Gate’s first release made me love it even more.  SQL Refactor (which has since been rolled into the latest version of SQL Prompt) has saved me many hours and migraine’s trying to understand somebody else’s code when their indenting was nonexistant, or worse, irrational.  SQL Compare has been awesome for troubleshooting potential schema issues between different instances of system databases.  SQL Data Compare helped us identify the cause behind a bug which appeared in PROD but could not be reproduced in a nearly (but not quite exactly) identical copy in UAT.  And the newest tool we are embracing: SQL Source Control.  I blogged about it here (and here, and here) last December.  This is really going to help us keep each developer’s copy of the database in sync with one another. Fiddler Helps you watch the whole traffic stream on web visits.  Haven’t used it a lot, but it did help me track down some odd 404 errors we were finding in our own application logs.  Has some other JavaScript troubleshooting capabilities, but some of its usefulness has been supplanted by the Developer Tools option in IE8. Funduc Search & Replace Find any string anywhere in a mound of source code really, really fast.  Does RegEx searches, if you understand that foreign language.  Has really helped with some refactoring work to pinpoint, for example, everywhere a particular stored procedure is referenced, whether in .NET code or other SQL procedures (which we have in script files).  Provides in-context preview of the search results.  Fantastic tool, and a bargain price. SciTE SciTE is a Scintilla based Text Editor and it is a fantastic, light-weight tool for quickly reviewing (or writing) program code, SQL scripts, and extract files.  It has language-specific syntax highlighting.  I used it to write several batch and CMD programs a year ago, and to examine data extract files for exchanging information with other systems.  Extremely handy are the options to View End of Line and View Whitespace.  Ever receive a file that is supposed to use CRLF as an end-of-line marker, but really only has CRs?  SciTE will quickly make that visible. Infragistics Controls We do a lot of ASP.NET development, and frequently use the WebGrid, WebTab, and date picker controls.  We will likely be implementing the Hierarchical Data Grid soon.  Infragistics has control suites for WebForms, WinForms, Silverlight, and coming soon MVC/JQuery. WinZip - WITH Command-Line add-in The classic compression program with a great command-line interface that allows me to build those CMD (and soon PowerShell) programs for automated compression jobs.  Our versioned Build packages are zip files. XML Notepad Haven’t used this a lot myself, but one of my team really likes it for examining large XML files. LINQPad Again, haven’t used this one a lot, but it was recommended to me for learning and practicing my LINQ skills which will come in handy as we implement Entity Framework. SQL Sentry Plan Explorer SQL Server Show Plan on steroids.  Great for helping you focus on the parts of a large query that are of most importance.  Also great for just compressing the graphical plan into more readable layout. Araxis Merge A great DIFF and Merge tool.  SourceGear provides a great tool called DiffMerge that we use all the time, but occasionally, I like the cross-edit capabilities of Araxis Merge.  For a while, we also produced DIFF reports in HTML that showed all the changes that occurred between two releases.  This was most important when we were putting out very small, but very important hot fixes on a very politically hot system.  The reports produced by Araxis Merge gave the Director of IS assurance that we were not accidentally introducing ripples throughout the system with our releases. Idera SQL Admin Toolset A great collection of tools including a password checker to help analyze your SQL Server for weak user passwords, a Backup Status tool to quickly scan a large list of servers and databases to identify any that are overdue for backups.  Particularly helpful for highlighting new databases that have been deployed without getting included in your backup processing.  I also like Space Analyzer to keep an eye on disk space consumed by database files. Idera SQL Job Manager This free tool provides a nice calendar view of SQL Server Job Schedules, but to a degree, you also get what you pay for.  We will be purchasing SQL Sentry Event Manager later this year as an even better job schedule reviewer/manager.  But in the meantime, this at least gives me a good view on potential resource conflicts across multiple instances of SQL Server. DBFViewer 2000 I inherited a couple of FoxPro databases that I have to keep an eye on occasionally and have not yet been able to migrate them to SQL Server. Balsamiq Mockups We are still in evaluation-mode on this tool, but I really like it as a quick UI mockup tool that does not require Visual Studio, so someone other than a programmer can do UI design.  The interface looks hand-drawn which definitely has some psychological benefits when communicating to users, too. FeedDemon I have to stay on top of my WAY TOO MANY blog subscriptions somehow.  I may read blogs on a couple of different computers, and FeedDemon’s integration with Google Reader allows me to keep them all in sync.  I don’t particularly like the Google Reader interface, or the fact that it always wanted to mark articles as read just because I scrolled past them.  FeedDemon solves this problem for me, and provides a multi-tabbed interface which is good because fairly frequently one blog will link to something else I want to read, and I can end up with a half-dozen open tabs all from one article. Synergy+ In my office, I run four monitors across two computers all with one mouse and keyboard.  Synergy is the magic software that makes this work. TweetDeck I’m not the most active Tweeter in the world, but when I want to check-in with the Twitterverse, this really helps.  I have found the #sqlhelp and #PoshHelp hash tags particularly useful, and I also have columns setup to make it easy to monitor #sqlpass, #PASSProfDev, and short term events like #sqlsat68.   Whew!  That’s a lot.  No wonder it took me a couple of days to get everything setup the way I wanted it.  Oh, that and actually getting some work accomplished at the same time.  Anyway, I know that is a huge dump of info, and most people never make it here to the end, so for those who did, let me say, CONGRATULATIONS, you made it! I hope you’ll find a new tool or two to make your work life a little easier.

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