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• Private Cloud: Putting some method behind the madness

  - by Sudip Datta

  Finally, I decided to join the blogging community. And what could be a better time to start than the week after OpenWorld 2012. 50K+ attendees, demonstrations, speaker sessions and a whole lot of buzz on Oracle Cloud..It was raining clouds in this year's Openworld. I am not here to write about Oracle's cloud strategy in general, but on Enterprise Manager's cloud management capabilities. This year's Openworld was the first after we announced the 12c Cloud Control and we were happy to share the stage with quite a few early adopters. Stay tuned for videos from our customers and partners, I will post them as they get published. I met a number of platform administrators in Oracle-DBAs, Middleware Admins, SOA Admins...The cloud has affected them all, at least to the point where it beckoned more than just curiosity..Most IT infrastructure are already heavily virtualized (on VMWare and on others including Oracle VM), and some would claim they are already on “cloud” (at least their Sysadmins told them so). But none of them were confident of the benefits because their pain points continued to grow.. Isn't cloud supposed to ease those? Instead, they were chasing hundreds of databases running on hundreds of VMs, often with as much certainty propounded by Heisenberg. What happened to the age-old IT discipline around administration, compliance, configuration management? VMs are great for what they are. I personally think they have opened the doors to new approaches in which an application stack gets provisioned and updated. In fact, Enterprise Manager 12c is possibly the only tool out there that can provision full-fledged application as VM Assemblies. In this year's Openworld, customers talked on how they provisioned RAC and Siebel assemblies, which as the techies out there know, are not trivial (hearing provisioning time for Siebel down from weeks to hours was gratifying indeed). However, I do have an issue with a "one-size fits all" approach to cloud. In a week's span, I met several personas: Project owners requiring an EC2 like VM instance for their projects Admins needing the same for Sparc-Solaris. DBAs requiring dedicated databases for new projects APEX Developers needing just a ready-to-consume schema as a service Java Developers looking for a runtime platform QA engineers needing a fast clone of their production environment If you drill down further, you will end up peeling more layers of the details. For example, the requirements for Load testing and Functional testing are very different. For Load testing the test environment should ideally be the same as the production. You shouldn't run production on Exadata and load test on a VM; they will just not be good representations of one another. For Functional testing it does not possibly matter. DBAs seem to be at the worst affected of the lot. It seems they have been asked to choose between agile provisioning and  faster runtime performance. And in some cases, it is really a Hobson's choice, because their infrastructure provider made no distinction between the OLTP application and the Virtual desktop! Sad indeed. When one looks at the portfolio of services that we already offer (vanilla IaaS, VM Assembly based PaaS, DBaaS) or have announced (Java PaaS, Instant Cloning, Schema-aaS), one can possibly think that we are trying to be the "renaissance man" ! Well I would have possibly digested that had it not been for the various personas that I described above. Getting the use cases right is very important for an application such as cloud management. We iterate and iterate over these over and over again and re-validate them in CABs (Customer Advisory Boards). We consider over the major aspects of tenancy: service placement, resource isolation (can a tenant execute an expensive SQL and run away with all the resources), quota and security. We, in Engineering, keep reminding ourselves that we are dealing with enterprise clouds. We owe it to our customer base ! In the coming posts, I will drill down more into each of the services. In the meanwhile, here are some collateral and  demos for starters with EM 12c. http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/oem/cloud-mgmt/index.html Sudip Datta The views expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Oracle. Stay Connected: Twitter | Facebook | YouTube | Linkedin | Newsletter --

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• How to get distinct values from the List&lt;T&gt; with LINQ

  - by Vincent Maverick Durano

  Recently I was working with data from a generic List<T> and one of my objectives is to get the distinct values that is found in the List. Consider that we have this simple class that holds the following properties: public class Product { public string Make { get; set; } public string Model { get; set; } }   Now in the page code behind we will create a list of product by doing the following: private List<Product> GetProducts() { List<Product> products = new List<Product>(); Product p = new Product(); p.Make = "Samsung"; p.Model = "Galaxy S 1"; products.Add(p); p = new Product(); p.Make = "Samsung"; p.Model = "Galaxy S 2"; products.Add(p); p = new Product(); p.Make = "Samsung"; p.Model = "Galaxy Note"; products.Add(p); p = new Product(); p.Make = "Apple"; p.Model = "iPhone 4"; products.Add(p); p = new Product(); p.Make = "Apple"; p.Model = "iPhone 4s"; products.Add(p); p = new Product(); p.Make = "HTC"; p.Model = "Sensation"; products.Add(p); p = new Product(); p.Make = "HTC"; p.Model = "Desire"; products.Add(p); p = new Product(); p.Make = "Nokia"; p.Model = "Some Model"; products.Add(p); p = new Product(); p.Make = "Nokia"; p.Model = "Some Model"; products.Add(p); p = new Product(); p.Make = "Sony Ericsson"; p.Model = "800i"; products.Add(p); p = new Product(); p.Make = "Sony Ericsson"; p.Model = "800i"; products.Add(p); return products; }   And then let’s bind the products to the GridView. protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { if (!IsPostBack) { Gridview1.DataSource = GetProducts(); Gridview1.DataBind(); } }   Running the code will display something like this in the page: Now what I want is to get the distinct row values from the list. So what I did is to use the LINQ Distinct operator and unfortunately it doesn't work. In order for it work is you must use the overload method of the Distinct operator for you to get the desired results. So I’ve added this IEqualityComparer<T> class to compare values: class ProductComparer : IEqualityComparer<Product> { public bool Equals(Product x, Product y) { if (Object.ReferenceEquals(x, y)) return true; if (Object.ReferenceEquals(x, null) || Object.ReferenceEquals(y, null)) return false; return x.Make == y.Make && x.Model == y.Model; } public int GetHashCode(Product product) { if (Object.ReferenceEquals(product, null)) return 0; int hashProductName = product.Make == null ? 0 : product.Make.GetHashCode(); int hashProductCode = product.Model.GetHashCode(); return hashProductName ^ hashProductCode; } }   After that you can then bind the GridView like this: protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { if (!IsPostBack) { Gridview1.DataSource = GetProducts().Distinct(new ProductComparer()); Gridview1.DataBind(); } }   Running the page will give you the desired output below: As you notice, it now eliminates the duplicate rows in the GridView. Now what if we only want to get the distinct values for a certain field. For example I want to get the distinct “Make” values such as Samsung, Apple, HTC, Nokia and Sony Ericsson and populate them to a DropDownList control for filtering purposes. I was hoping the the Distinct operator has an overload that can compare values based on the property value like (GetProducts().Distinct(o => o.PropertyToCompare). But unfortunately it doesn’t provide that overload so what I did as a workaround is to use the GroupBy,Select and First LINQ query operators to achieve what I want. Here’s the code to get the distinct values of a certain field. protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { if (!IsPostBack) { DropDownList1.DataSource = GetProducts().GroupBy(o => o.Make).Select(o => o.First()); DropDownList1.DataTextField = "Make"; DropDownList1.DataValueField = "Model"; DropDownList1.DataBind(); } } Running the code will display the following output below:   That’s it! I hope someone find this post useful!

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• In 10.10, USB 3.0 PCI Express card recognized by lspci but not lsusb or dmesg. How to fix?

  - by Paul

  Asus N PC, runs 10.10 x86_64 The Asus N comes with 4 usb 2.0 ports, each labelled 2.0 on the case. Attempting to add two usb 3.0 ports to be provided by a generic usb 3.0 pci express card installed in the pci expres slot. The new card says usb 3.0 and has the blue ports. The card is installed into the laptop unpowered, then the laptop is powered on and boots normally. Nothing happens when a USB 3.0 flash drive is inserted into the usb 3.0 port. uname -a Linux drpaulbrewer-N90SV 2.6.35.8 #1 SMP Fri Jan 14 15:54:11 EST 2011 x86_64 GNU/Linux lspci -v 00:00.0 Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 671MX Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1b27 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64 Kernel modules: sis-agp 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] PCI-to-PCI bridge (prog-if 00 [Normal decode]) Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0 Bus: primary=00, secondary=01, subordinate=01, sec-latency=0 I/O behind bridge: 0000d000-0000dfff Memory behind bridge: fa000000-fdefffff Prefetchable memory behind bridge: 00000000d0000000-00000000dfffffff Capabilities: [d0] Express Root Port (Slot+), MSI 00 Capabilities: [a0] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit- Capabilities: [f4] Power Management version 2 Capabilities: [70] Subsystem: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] PCI-to-PCI bridge Kernel driver in use: pcieport 00:02.0 ISA bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS968 [MuTIOL Media IO] (rev 01) Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0 00:02.5 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE] (rev 01) (prog-if 80 [Master]) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1b27 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 128 I/O ports at 01f0 [size=8] I/O ports at 03f4 [size=1] I/O ports at 0170 [size=8] I/O ports at 0374 [size=1] I/O ports at ffe0 [size=16] Capabilities: [58] Power Management version 2 Kernel driver in use: pata_sis 00:03.0 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.1 Controller (rev 0f) (prog-if 10 [OHCI]) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1b27 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 20 Memory at f9fff000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K] Kernel driver in use: ohci_hcd 00:03.1 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.1 Controller (rev 0f) (prog-if 10 [OHCI]) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1b27 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 21 Memory at f9ffe000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K] Kernel driver in use: ohci_hcd 00:03.3 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 2.0 Controller (prog-if 20 [EHCI]) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1b27 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 22 Memory at f9ffd000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K] Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2 Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd 00:04.0 Ethernet controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 191 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter (rev 02) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 11f5 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 19 Memory at f9ffcc00 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=128] I/O ports at cc00 [size=128] Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2 Kernel driver in use: sis190 Kernel modules: sis190 00:05.0 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SATA Controller / IDE mode (rev 03) (prog-if 8f [Master SecP SecO PriP PriO]) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 1b27 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 17 I/O ports at c800 [size=8] I/O ports at c400 [size=4] I/O ports at c000 [size=8] I/O ports at bc00 [size=4] I/O ports at b800 [size=16] I/O ports at b400 [size=128] Capabilities: [58] Power Management version 2 Kernel driver in use: sata_sis Kernel modules: sata_sis 00:06.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] PCI-to-PCI bridge (prog-if 00 [Normal decode]) Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0 Bus: primary=00, secondary=02, subordinate=02, sec-latency=0 Memory behind bridge: fdf00000-fdffffff Capabilities: [b0] Subsystem: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] Device 0004 Capabilities: [c0] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+ Capabilities: [d0] Express Root Port (Slot+), MSI 00 Capabilities: [f4] Power Management version 2 Kernel driver in use: pcieport 00:07.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] PCI-to-PCI bridge (prog-if 00 [Normal decode]) Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0 Bus: primary=00, secondary=03, subordinate=06, sec-latency=0 I/O behind bridge: 0000e000-0000efff Memory behind bridge: fe000000-febfffff Prefetchable memory behind bridge: 00000000f6000000-00000000f8ffffff Capabilities: [b0] Subsystem: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] Device 0004 Capabilities: [c0] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+ Capabilities: [d0] Express Root Port (Slot+), MSI 00 Capabilities: [f4] Power Management version 2 Kernel driver in use: pcieport 00:0f.0 Audio device: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] Azalia Audio Controller Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 17b3 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 18 Memory at f9ff4000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K] Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2 Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G96 [GeForce GT 130M] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller]) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 2021 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16 Memory at fc000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M] Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M] Memory at fa000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=32M] I/O ports at dc00 [size=128] [virtual] Expansion ROM at fde80000 [disabled] [size=512K] Capabilities: [60] Power Management version 3 Capabilities: [68] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+ Capabilities: [78] Express Endpoint, MSI 00 Capabilities: [b4] Vendor Specific Information: Len=14 <?> Kernel driver in use: nvidia Kernel modules: nvidia-current, nouveau, nvidiafb 02:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR928X Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01) Subsystem: Device 1a3b:1067 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16 Memory at fdff0000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K] Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2 Capabilities: [50] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit- Capabilities: [60] Express Legacy Endpoint, MSI 00 Capabilities: [90] MSI-X: Enable- Count=1 Masked- Kernel driver in use: ath9k Kernel modules: ath9k 03:00.0 USB Controller: NEC Corporation uPD720200 USB 3.0 Host Controller (rev 03) (prog-if 30) Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 10 Memory at febfe000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K] Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 3 Capabilities: [70] MSI: Enable- Count=1/8 Maskable- 64bit+ Capabilities: [90] MSI-X: Enable- Count=8 Masked- Capabilities: [a0] Express Endpoint, MSI 00 lsusb Bus 003 Device 002: ID 0b05:1751 ASUSTek Computer, Inc. BT-253 Bluetooth Adapter Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0bda:0158 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. USB 2.0 multicard reader Bus 001 Device 002: ID 04f2:b071 Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd 2.0M UVC Webcam / CNF7129 Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub dmesg trying to post dmesg exceeded the stackexchange posting limit of 30K... but nothing there is usb 3.0

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• Speakers, Please Check Your Time

  - by AjarnMark

  Woodrow Wilson was once asked how long it would take him to prepare for a 10 minute speech. He replied "Two weeks". He was then asked how long it would take for a 1 hour speech. "One week", he replied. 2 hour speech? "I'm ready right now," he replied.  Whether that is a true story or an urban legend, I don’t really know, but either way, it is a poignant reminder for all speakers, and particularly apropos this week leading up to the PASS Community Summit. (Cross-posted to the PASS Professional Development Virtual Chapter blog #PASSProfDev.) What’s the point of that story?  Simply this…if you have plenty of time to do your presentation, you don’t need to prepare much because it is easy to throw in more and more material to stretch out to your allotted time.  But if you are on a tight time constraint, then it will take significant preparation to distill your talk down to only the essential points. I have attended seven of the last eight North American Summit events, and every one of them has been fantastic.  The speakers are great, the material is timely and relevant, and the networking opportunities are awesome.  And every year, there is one little thing that just bugs me…speakers going over their allotted time.  Why does it bother me so?  Well, if you look at a typical schedule for a Summit, you’ll see that there are six or more sessions going on at the same time, and only 15 minutes to move from one to another.  If you’re trying to maximize your training dollar by attending something during every session time slot, and you don’t want to be the last guy trying to squeeze into the middle of the row, then those 15 minutes can be critical.  All the more so if you need to stop and use the bathroom or if you have to hike to the opposite end of the convention center.  It is really a bad position to find yourself having to choose between learning the last key points of Speaker A who is going over time, and getting over to Speaker B on time so you don’t miss her key opening remarks. And frankly, I think it is just rude.  Yes, the speakers are the function, after all they are bringing the content that the rest of us are paying to learn.  But it is also an honor to be given the opportunity to speak at a conference like this, and no one speaker is so important that the conference would be a disaster without him.  Speakers know when they submit their abstract, long before the conference, how much time they will have.  It has been the same pattern at the Summit for at least the last eight years.  Program Sessions are 75 minutes long.  Some speakers who have a good track record, and meet other qualifying criteria, are extended an invitation to present a Spotlight Session which is 90 minutes (a 20% increase).  So there really is no excuse.  It’s not like you were promised a 2-hour segment and then discovered when you got here that it was only 75 minutes.  In fact, it’s not like PASS advertised 90-minute sessions for everyone and then a select few were cut back to only 75.  As a speaker, you know well before you get here which type of session you are doing and how long it is, so as a professional, you should plan accordingly. Now you might think that this only happens to rookies, but I’ll tell you that some of the worst offenders are big-name veterans who draw huge attendance numbers for their sessions.  Some attendees blow this off as, “Hey, it’s so-and-so, and I’d stay here for hours and listen to him/her talk.”  To which I would reply, “Then they should have submitted for a pre- or post-conference day-long seminar instead, but don’t try to squeeze your day-long talk into a 90-minute session.”  Now I don’t really believe that these speakers are being malicious or just selfishly trying to extend their time in the spotlight.  I think that most of them are merely being undisciplined and did not trim their presentation sufficiently, or allowed themselves to get off-track (often in a generous attempt to help someone in the audience with a question or problem that really should have been noted for further discussion after the session). So here is my recommendation…my plea, even.  TRIM THE FAT!  Now.  Before it’s too late.  Before you even get on the airplane, take a long, hard look at your presentation and eliminate some of the points that you originally thought you had to make, but in reality are not truly crucial to your main topic.  Delete a few slides.  Test your demos and have them already scripted rather than typing them during your talk.  It is better to cut out too much and end up with plenty of time at the end for Questions & Answers.  And you can always keep some notes on the stuff that you cut out so that you could fill it back in at the end as bonus material if you really do end up with a whole bunch of time on your hands.  But I don’t think you will.  And if you do, that will look even better to the audience as it will look like you’re giving them something extra that not every audience gets.  And they will thank you for that.

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• Soft lockup after upgrade - cannot install from live CD

  - by nbm

  I dual-boot MacIntel Core 2 duo. nVidia graphics. Ran upgrade from ubuntu 13.10 to 14.04 (64 bit). On restart ran into {numbers} Bug: soft lockup - CPU#0 stuck for 22s! [swapper/0:1] Tried loading earlier kernel: same problem Tried re-installing ubuntu from a liveCD that has worked in the past: version 13.04. Same problem. Tried re-partitioning hard drive using Mac OS X disk utility and then installing ubuntu 14.04LTS from liveCD. Same problem. Not possible to verify liveCD disk (creates same "soft lockup" bug.) Tried installing from the liveCD with version 13.04 that I know works (that's how I got Ubuntu on this machine in the first place.) Same problem. I know this is not a hardware problem as OS X works just fine, I am using it right now on the same machine. I have been using various versions of Ubuntu for 2 years. Things I cannot do: Open a terminal Verify CD image Start ubuntu from CD (same soft lockup problem) This problem is similar to some other questions, none of which have been satisfactorily answered: Ubuntu 14.04 soft lockup on Vostro 3500 Cannot do fresh install of Ubuntu 13.04 while booting from DVD: "soft lockup" bug Live CD stalls when installing Ubuntu 13.10 UPDATE 6/11/14: Following some much-appreciated advice from bain (see below) I burned a 12.04LTS disk and started with kernel parameters: noapic, no1apic, acpi=off, nomodeset, elevator=deadline, and clocksource=jiffies. With all of these parameters I was able to load the 12.04LTS CD ("Try without installing"). It worked fine. However, as soon as I tried to install Ubuntu from the CD, my wired ethernet (eth0) connection would hang. There are already various askubuntu questions and bug reports about this problem, none of which had answers for me. (E.g., dhclient eth0 does nothing, none of the various reset commands does anything, manually setting IP &etc does nothing. I could reliably kill the ethernet connection by clicking "install ubuntu" every single time.) I could go ahead and install 12.04 without an internet connection, but the install would freeze after mostly completing (I tried several times.) There were some relevant error messages in the details of the install output script that, IIRC, had to do with searching for missing files and not being able to access eth0 (internet) to get them. To be honest I gave up at that point and I'm not sure I wrote those down. If I find some notes I will post them. At this point I no longer have Ubuntu on my system. I wiped the partitions and am using exclusively OS X. I am leaving this question in case it helps anyone else with similar problems. I love open source and I love Linux, and the next machine I get I will probably just build from Arch. At the moment I miss repositories and a lot of other things about Ubuntu, but the OS X terminal is 'nix, I can pretty much use all the open source apps I like, and while I am not a fan of the Apple software it gets the job done for me. Unlike Ubuntu, which can't even install. I realize this isn't necessarily a place for a soapbox speech, but when I first installed 12.04 several years ago there were already people in the community complaining that Canonical was going too "commercial". But I loved it. Several years later and all I've seen is Canonical adding more not-so-useful bells and whistles to Ubuntu while continually failing to fix basic problems on upgrades. With a dual-boot (and sometimes triple-boot) system it always took me some tweaking to get an upgrade to work, and to some extent that is okay. But at this point I feel like Canonical ought to just put a price tag on Ubuntu. All I see is more commercialism and advertising and product tie-ins, and ongoing problems do not get fixed. I am a big fan of open-source, not-for profit enterprise. I am also a big fan of for-profit enterprise, which certainly has its place and usefulness. I am not a fan of companies who pretend to be in favor of open source but really are just out to make a buck, and IMNSHO that is what Canonical has become. This is a great community and I wish you all the best, but my next install of Linux will not be Ubuntu.

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• Clone a VirtualBox Machine

  I just installed VirtualBox, which I want to try out based on recommendations from peers for running a server from within my Windows 7 x64 OS.  Ive never used VirtualBox, so Im certainly no expert at it, but I did want to share my experience with it thus far.  Specifically, my intention is to create a couple of virtual machines.  One I intend to use as a build server, for which a virtual machine makes sense because I can easily move it around as needed if there are hardware issues (its worth noting my need for setting up a build server at the moment is a result of a disk failure on the old build server).  The other VM I want to set up will act as a proxy server for the issue tracking system were using at Code Project, Axosoft OnTime.  They have a Remote Server application for this purpose, and since the OnTime install is 300 miles away from my location, the Remote Server should speed up my use of the OnTime client by limiting the chattiness with the database (at least, thats the hope). So, I need two VMs, and Im lazy.  I dont want to have to install the OS and such twice.  No problem, it should be simple to clone a virtualbox machine, or clone a virtualbox hard drive, right?  Well unfortunately, if you look at the UI for VirtualBox, theres no such command.  Youre left wondering How do I clone a VirtualBox machine? or the slightly related How do I clone a VirtualBox hard drive? If youve used VirtualPC, then you know that its actually pretty easy to copy and move around those VMs.  Not quite so easy with VirtualBox.  Finding the files is easy, theyre located in your user folder within the .VirtualBox folder (possibly within a HardDisks folder).  The disks have a .vdi extension and will be pretty large if youve installed anything.  The one shown here has just Windows Server 2008 R2 installed on it nothing else. If you copy the .vdi file and rename it, you can use the Virtual Media Manager to view it and you can create a new machine and choose the new drive to attach to.  Unfortunately, if you simply make a copy of the drive, this wont work and youll get an error that says something to the effect of: Cannot register the hard disk PATH with UUID {id goes here} because a hard disk PATH2 with UUID {same id goes here} already exists in the media registry (PATH to XML file). There are command line tools you can use to do this in a way that avoids this error.  Specifically, the c:\Program File\Sun\VirtualBox\VBoxManage.exe program is used for all command line access to VirtualBox, and to copy a virtual disk (.vdi file) you would call something like this: VBoxManage clonehd Disk1.vdi Disk1_Copy.vdi However, in my case this didnt work.  I got basically the same error I showed above, along with some debug information for line 628 of VBoxManageDisk.cpp.  As my main task was not to debug the C++ code used to write VirtualBox, I continued looking for a simple way to clone a virtual drive.  I found it in this blog post. The Secret setvdiuuid Command VBoxManage has a whole bunch of commands you can use with it just pass it /? to see the list.  However, it also has a special command called internalcommands that opens up access to even more commands.  The one thats interesting for us here is the setvdiuuid command.  By calling this command and passing in the file path to your vdi file, it will reset the UUID to a new (random, apparently) UUID.  This then allows the virtual media manager to cope with the file, and lets you set up new machines that reference the newly UUIDd virtual drive.  The full command line would be: VBoxManage internalcommands setvdiuuid MyCopy.vdi The following screenshot shows the error when trying clonehd as well as the successful use of setvdiuuid. Summary Now that I can clone machines easily, its a simple matter to set up base builds of any OS I might need, and then fork from there as needed.  Hopefully the GUI for VirtualBox will be improved to include better support for copying machines/disks, as this is Im sure a very common scenario. Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Orchard shapeshifting

  - by Bertrand Le Roy

  I've shown in a previous post how to make it easier to change the layout template for specific contents or areas. But what if you want to change another shape template for specific pages, for example the main Content shape on the home page? Here's how. When we changed the layout, we had the problem that layout is created very early, so early that in fact it can't know what content is going to be rendered. For that reason, we had to rely on a filter and on the routing information to determine what layout template alternates to add. This time around, we are dealing with a content shape, a shape that is directly related to a content item. That makes things a little easier as we have access to a lot more information. What I'm going to do here is handle an event that is triggered every time a shape named "Content" is about to be displayed: public class ContentShapeProvider : IShapeTableProvider { public void Discover(ShapeTableBuilder builder) { builder.Describe("Content") .OnDisplaying(displaying => { // do stuff to the shape }); } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } This handler is implemented in a shape table provider which is where you do all shape related site-wide operations. The first thing we want to do in this event handler is check that we are on the front-end, displaying the "Detail" version, and not the "Summary" or the admin editor: if (displaying.ShapeMetadata.DisplayType == "Detail") { Now I want to provide the ability for the theme developer to provide an alternative template named "Content-HomePage.cshtml" for the home page. In order to determine if we are indeed on the home page I can look at the current site's home page property, which for the default home page provider contains the home page item's id at the end after a semicolon. Compare that with the content item id for the shape we are looking at and you can know if that's the homepage content item. Please note that if that content is also displayed on another page than the home page it will also get the alternate: we are altering at the shape level and not at the URL/routing level like we did with the layout. ContentItem contentItem = displaying.Shape.ContentItem; if (_workContextAccessor.GetContext().CurrentSite .HomePage.EndsWith(';' + contentItem.Id.ToString())) { _workContextAccessor is an injected instance of IWorkContextAccessor from which we can get the current site and its home page. Finally, once we've determined that we are in the specific conditions that we want to alter, we can add the alternate: displaying.ShapeMetadata.Alternates.Add("Content__HomePage"); And that's it really. Here's the full code for the shape provider that I added to a custom theme (but it could really live in any module or theme): using Orchard; using Orchard.ContentManagement; using Orchard.DisplayManagement.Descriptors; namespace CustomLayoutMachine.ShapeProviders { public class ContentShapeProvider : IShapeTableProvider { private readonly IWorkContextAccessor _workContextAccessor; public ContentShapeProvider( IWorkContextAccessor workContextAccessor) { _workContextAccessor = workContextAccessor; } public void Discover(ShapeTableBuilder builder) { builder.Describe("Content") .OnDisplaying(displaying => { if (displaying.ShapeMetadata.DisplayType == "Detail") { ContentItem contentItem = displaying.Shape.ContentItem; if (_workContextAccessor.GetContext() .CurrentSite.HomePage.EndsWith( ';' + contentItem.Id.ToString())) { displaying.ShapeMetadata.Alternates.Add( "Content__HomePage"); } } }); } } } The code for the custom theme, with layout and content alternates, can be downloaded from the following link: Orchard.Themes.CustomLayoutMachine.1.0.nupkg Note: this code is going to be used in the Contoso theme that should be available soon from the theme gallery.

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• Developing Schema Compare for Oracle (Part 6): 9i Query Performance

  - by Simon Cooper

  All throughout the EAP and beta versions of Schema Compare for Oracle, our main request was support for Oracle 9i. After releasing version 1.0 with support for 10g and 11g, our next step was then to get version 1.1 of SCfO out with support for 9i. However, there were some significant problems that we had to overcome first. This post will concentrate on query execution time. When we first tested SCfO on a 9i server, after accounting for various changes to the data dictionary, we found that database registration was taking a long time. And I mean a looooooong time. The same database that on 10g or 11g would take a couple of minutes to register would be taking upwards of 30 mins on 9i. Obviously, this is not ideal, so a poke around the query execution plans was required. As an example, let's take the table population query - the one that reads ALL_TABLES and joins it with a few other dictionary views to get us back our list of tables. On 10g, this query takes 5.6 seconds. On 9i, it takes 89.47 seconds. The difference in execution plan is even more dramatic - here's the (edited) execution plan on 10g: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------| Id | Operation | Name | Bytes | Cost |-------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | | 108K| 939 || 1 | SORT ORDER BY | | 108K| 939 || 2 | NESTED LOOPS OUTER | | 108K| 938 ||* 3 | HASH JOIN RIGHT OUTER | | 103K| 762 || 4 | VIEW | ALL_EXTERNAL_LOCATIONS | 2058 | 3 ||* 20 | HASH JOIN RIGHT OUTER | | 73472 | 759 || 21 | VIEW | ALL_EXTERNAL_TABLES | 2097 | 3 ||* 34 | HASH JOIN RIGHT OUTER | | 39920 | 755 || 35 | VIEW | ALL_MVIEWS | 51 | 7 || 58 | NESTED LOOPS OUTER | | 39104 | 748 || 59 | VIEW | ALL_TABLES | 6704 | 668 || 89 | VIEW PUSHED PREDICATE | ALL_TAB_COMMENTS | 2025 | 5 || 106 | VIEW | ALL_PART_TABLES | 277 | 11 |------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And the same query on 9i: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------| Id | Operation | Name | Bytes | Cost |-------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | | 16P| 55G|| 1 | SORT ORDER BY | | 16P| 55G|| 2 | NESTED LOOPS OUTER | | 16P| 862M|| 3 | NESTED LOOPS OUTER | | 5251G| 992K|| 4 | NESTED LOOPS OUTER | | 4243M| 2578 || 5 | NESTED LOOPS OUTER | | 2669K| 1440 ||* 6 | HASH JOIN OUTER | | 398K| 302 || 7 | VIEW | ALL_TABLES | 342K| 276 || 29 | VIEW | ALL_MVIEWS | 51 | 20 ||* 50 | VIEW PUSHED PREDICATE | ALL_TAB_COMMENTS | 2043 | ||* 66 | VIEW PUSHED PREDICATE | ALL_EXTERNAL_TABLES | 1777K| ||* 80 | VIEW PUSHED PREDICATE | ALL_EXTERNAL_LOCATIONS | 1744K| ||* 96 | VIEW | ALL_PART_TABLES | 852K| |------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Have a look at the cost column. 10g's overall query cost is 939, and 9i is 55,000,000,000 (or more precisely, 55,496,472,769). It's also having to process far more data. What on earth could be causing this huge difference in query cost? After trawling through the '10g New Features' documentation, we found item 1.9.2.21. Before 10g, Oracle advised that you do not collect statistics on data dictionary objects. From 10g, it advised that you do collect statistics on the data dictionary; for our queries, Oracle therefore knows what sort of data is in the dictionary tables, and so can generate an efficient execution plan. On 9i, no statistics are present on the system tables, so Oracle has to use the Rule Based Optimizer, which turns most LEFT JOINs into nested loops. If we force 9i to use hash joins, like 10g, we get a much better plan: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------| Id | Operation | Name | Bytes | Cost |-------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | | 7587K| 3704 || 1 | SORT ORDER BY | | 7587K| 3704 ||* 2 | HASH JOIN OUTER | | 7587K| 822 ||* 3 | HASH JOIN OUTER | | 5262K| 616 ||* 4 | HASH JOIN OUTER | | 2980K| 465 ||* 5 | HASH JOIN OUTER | | 710K| 432 ||* 6 | HASH JOIN OUTER | | 398K| 302 || 7 | VIEW | ALL_TABLES | 342K| 276 || 29 | VIEW | ALL_MVIEWS | 51 | 20 || 50 | VIEW | ALL_PART_TABLES | 852K| 104 || 78 | VIEW | ALL_TAB_COMMENTS | 2043 | 14 || 93 | VIEW | ALL_EXTERNAL_LOCATIONS | 1744K| 31 || 106 | VIEW | ALL_EXTERNAL_TABLES | 1777K| 28 |------------------------------------------------------------------------------- That's much more like it. This drops the execution time down to 24 seconds. Not as good as 10g, but still an improvement. There are still several problems with this, however. 10g introduced a new join method - a right outer hash join (used in the first execution plan). The 9i query optimizer doesn't have this option available, so forcing a hash join means it has to hash the ALL_TABLES table, and furthermore re-hash it for every hash join in the execution plan; this could be thousands and thousands of rows. And although forcing hash joins somewhat alleviates this problem on our test systems, there's no guarantee that this will improve the execution time on customers' systems; it may even increase the time it takes (say, if all their tables are partitioned, or they've got a lot of materialized views). Ideally, we would want a solution that provides a speedup whatever the input. To try and get some ideas, we asked some oracle performance specialists to see if they had any ideas or tips. Their recommendation was to add a hidden hook into the product that allowed users to specify their own query hints, or even rewrite the queries entirely. However, we would prefer not to take that approach; as well as a lot of new infrastructure & a rewrite of the population code, it would have meant that any users of 9i would have to spend some time optimizing it to get it working on their system before they could use the product. Another approach was needed. All our population queries have a very specific pattern - a base table provides most of the information we need (ALL_TABLES for tables, or ALL_TAB_COLS for columns) and we do a left join to extra subsidiary tables that fill in gaps (for instance, ALL_PART_TABLES for partition information). All the left joins use the same set of columns to join on (typically the object owner & name), so we could re-use the hash information for each join, rather than re-hashing the same columns for every join. To allow us to do this, along with various other performance improvements that could be done for the specific query pattern we were using, we read all the tables individually and do a hash join on the client. Fortunately, this 'pure' algorithmic problem is the kind that can be very well optimized for expected real-world situations; as well as storing row data we're not using in the hash key on disk, we use very specific memory-efficient data structures to store all the information we need. This allows us to achieve a database population time that is as fast as on 10g, and even (in some situations) slightly faster, and a memory overhead of roughly 150 bytes per row of data in the result set (for schemas with 10,000 tables in that means an extra 1.4MB memory being used during population). Next: fun with the 9i dictionary views.

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• Application Composer: Exposing Your Customizations in BI Analytics and Reporting

  - by Richard Bingham

  Introduction This article explains in simple terms how to ensure the customizations and extensions you have made to your Fusion Applications are available for use in reporting and analytics. It also includes four embedded demo videos from our YouTube channel (if they don't appear check the browser address bar for a blocking shield icon). If you are new to Business Intelligence consider first reviewing our getting started article, and you can read more about the topic of custom subject areas in the documentation book Extending Sales. There are essentially four sections to this post. First we look at how custom fields added to standard objects are made available for reporting. Secondly we look at creating custom subject areas on the standard objects. Next we consider reporting on custom objects, starting with simple standalone objects, then child custom objects, and finally custom objects with relationships. Finally this article reviews how flexfields are exposed for reporting. Whilst this article applies to both Cloud/SaaS and on-premises deployments, if you are an on-premises developer then you can also use the BI Administration Tool to customize your BI metadata repository (the RPD) and create new subject areas. Whilst this is not covered here you can read more in Chapter 8 of the Extensibility Guide for Developers. Custom Fields on Standard Objects If you add a custom field to your standard object then it's likely you'll want to include it in your reports. This is very simple, since all new fields are instantly available in the "[objectName] Extension" folder in existing subject areas. The following two minute video demonstrates this. Custom Subject Areas for Standard Objects You can create your own subject areas for use in analytics and reporting via Application Composer. An example use-case could be to simplify the seeded subject areas, since they sometimes contain complex data fields and internal values that could confuse business users. One thing to note is that you cannot create subject areas in a sandbox, as it is not supported by BI, so once your custom object is tested and complete you'll need to publish the sandbox before moving forwards. The subject area creation processes is essentially two-fold. Once the request is submitted the ADF artifacts are generated, then secondly the related metadata is sent to the BI presentation server API's to make the updates there. One thing to note is that this second step may take up to ten minutes to complete. Once finished the status of the custom subject area request should show as 'OK' and it is then ready for use. Within the creation processes wizard-like steps there are three concepts worth highlighting: Date Flattening - this feature permits the roll up of reports at various date levels, such as data by week, month, quarter, or year. You simply check the box to enable it for that date field. Measures - these are your own functions that you can build into the custom subject area. They are related to the field data type and include min-max for dates, and sum(), avg(), and count() for  numeric fields. Implicit Facts - used to make the BI metadata join between your object fields and the calculated measure fields. The advice is to choose the most frequently used measure to ensure consistency. This video shows a simple example, where a simplified subject area is created for the customer 'Contact' standard object, picking just a few fields upon which users can then create reports. Custom Objects Custom subject areas support three types of custom objects. First is a simple standalone custom object and for which the same process mentioned above applies. The next is a custom child object created on a standard object parent, and finally a custom object that is related to a parent object - usually through a dynamic choice list. Whilst the steps in each of these last two are mostly the same, there are differences in the way you choose the objects and their fields. This is illustrated in the videos below.The first video shows the process for creating a custom subject area for a simple standalone custom object. This second video demonstrates how to create custom subject areas for custom objects that are of parent:child type, as well as those those with dynamic-choice-list relationships. &lt;span id=&quot;XinhaEditingPostion&quot;&gt;&lt;/span&gt; Flexfields Dynamic and Extensible Flexfields satisfy a similar requirement as custom fields (for Application Composer), with flexfields common across the Fusion Financials, Supply Chain and Procurement, and HCM applications. The basic principle is when you enable and configure your flexfields, in the edit page under each segment region (for both global and context segments) there is a BI Enabled check box. Once this is checked and you've completed your configuration, you run the Scheduled Process job named 'Import Oracle Fusion Data Extensions for Transactional Business Intelligence' to generate and migrate the related BI artifacts and data. This applies for dynamic, key, and extensible flexfields. Of course there is more to consider in terms of how you wish your flexfields to be implemented and exposed in your reports, and details are given in Chapter 4 of the Extending Applications guide.

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• Windows Phone 8 Announcement

  - by Tim Murphy

  As if the Surface announcement on Monday wasn’t exciting enough, today Microsoft announce that Windows Phone 8 will be coming this fall.  That itself is great news, but the features coming were like confetti flying in all different directions.  Given this speed I couldn’t capture every feature they covered.  A summary of what I did capture is listed below starting with their eight main features. Common Core The first thing that they covered is that Windows Phone 8 will share a core OS with Windows 8.  It will also run natively on multiple cores.  They mentioned that they have run it on up to 64 cores to this point.  The phones as you might expect will at least start as dual core.  If you remember there were metrics saying that Windows Phone 7 performed operations faster on a single core than other platforms did with dual cores.  The metrics they showed here indicate that Windows Phone 8 runs faster on comparable dual core hardware than other platforms. New Screen Resolutions Screen resolution has never been an issue for me, but it has been a criticism of Windows Phone 7 in the media.  Windows Phone 8 will supports three screen resolutions: WVGA 800 x 480, WXGA 1280 x 768, and 720 1280x720.  Hopefully this makes pixel counters a little happier. MicroSD Support This was one of my pet peeves when I got my Samsung Focus. With Windows Phone 8 the operating system will support adding MicroSD cards after initial setup.  Of course this is dependent on the hardware company on implementing it, but I think we have seen that even feature phone manufacturers have not had a problem supporting this in the past. NFC NFC has been an anticipated feature for some time.  What Microsoft showed today included the fact that they didn’t just want it to be for the phone.  There is cross platform NFC functionality between Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8.  The demos , while possibly a bit fanciful, showed would could be achieved even in a retail environment.  We are getting closer and closer to a Minority Report world with these technologies. Wallet Windows Phone 8 isn’t the first platform to have a wallet concept.  What they have done to differentiate themselves is to make it sot that it is not dependent on a SIM type chip like other platforms.  They have also expanded the concept beyond just banks to other types of credits such as airline miles. Nokia Mapping People have been envious of the Lumia phones having the Nokia mapping software.  Now all Windows Phone 8 devices will use NavTeq data and will have the capability to run in an offline fashion.  This is a major step forward from the Bing “touch for the next turn” maps. IT Administration The lack of features for enterprise administration and deployment was a complaint even before the Windows Phone 7 was released.  With the Windows Phone 8 release such features as Bitlocker and Secure boot will be baked into the OS. We will also have the ability to privately sign and distribute applications. Changing Start Screen Joe Belfiore made a big deal about this aspect of the new release.  Users will have more color themes available to them and the live tiles will be highly customizable. You will have the ability to resize and organize the tiles in a more dynamic way.  This allows for less important tiles or ones with less information to be made smaller.  And There Is More So what other tidbits came out of the presentation?  Later this summer the API for WP8 will be available.  There will be developer events coming to a city near you.  Another announcement of interest to developers is the ability to write applications at a native code level.  This is a boon for game developers and those who need highly efficient applications. As a topper on the cake there was mention of in app payment. On the consumer side we also found out that all updates will be available over the air.  Along with this came the fact that Microsoft will support all devices with updates for at least 18 month and you will be able to subscribe for early updates.  Update coming for Windows Phone 7.5 customers to WP7.8.  The main enhancement will be the new live tile features.  The big bonus is that the update will bypass the carriers.  I would assume though that you will be brought up to date with all previous patches that your carrier may not have released. There is so much more, but that is enough for one post.  Needless to say, EXCITING! del.icio.us Tags: Windows Phone 8,WP8,Windows Phone 7,WP7,Announcements,Microsoft

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• Thinking differently about BI delivery

  - by jamiet

  My day job involves implementing Business Intelligence (BI) solutions which, as I have said before, is simply about giving people the information they need to do their jobs. I’m always interested in learning about new ways of achieving that aim and that is my motivation for writing blog entries that are not concerned with SQL or SQL Server per se. Implementing BI systems usually involves hacking together a bunch third party products with some in-house “glue” and delivering information using some shiny, expensive web-based front-end tool; the list of vendors that supply such tools is big and ever-growing. No doubt these tools have their place and of late I have started to wonder whether they can be supplemented with different ways of delivering information. The problem I have with these separate web-based tools is exactly that – they are separate web-based tools. What’s the problem with that you might ask? I’ll explain! They force the information worker to go somewhere unfamiliar in order to get the information they need to do their jobs. Would it not be better if we could deliver information into the tools that those information workers are already using and not force them to go somewhere else? I look at the rise of blogging over recent years and I realise that what made them popular is that people can subscribe to RSS feeds and have information pushed to them in their tool of choice rather than them having to go and find the information for themselves in a tool that has been foisted upon them. Would it not be a good idea to adopt the principle of subscription for the benefit of delivering BI information as well? I think it would and in the rest of this blog entry I’ll outline such a scenario where the power of subscription could be used to enhance the delivery of information to information workers. Typical questions that information workers ask might be: What are my year-on-year sales figures? What was my footfall yesterday? How many widgets have I sold so far today? Each of those questions includes a time element and that shouldn’t surprise us, any BI system that I have worked on includes the dimension of time. Now, what do people use to view and organise their time-oriented information? Its not a trick question, they use a calendar and in the enterprise space more often than not that calendar is managed using Outlook. Given then that information workers are already looking at their calendar in Outlook anyway would it not make sense then to deliver information into that same calendar? Of course it would. Calendars are a great way of visualising information such as sales figures. Observe: Just in this single screenshot I have managed to convey a multitude of information. The information worker can see, at a glance, information about hourly/daily/weekly/monthly sales and, moreover, he/she is viewing that information right inside the tool that they use every day. There is no effort on the part of him/her, the information just appears hour after hour, day after day. Taking the idea further, each one of those calendar items could be a mini-dashboard in its own right. Double-clicking on an item could show a plethora of other information about that time slot such as breaking the sales down per region or year-over-year comparisons. Perhaps the title could employ a sparkline? Loads of possibilities. The point is that calendars are a completely natural way to visualise information; we should make more use of them! The real beauty of delivering information using calendars for us BI developers is that it should be so easy. In the case of Outlook we don’t need to write complicated VBA code that can go and manipulate a person’s calendar, simply publishing data in a format that Outlook can understand is sufficient and happily such formats already exist; iCalendar is the accepted format and the even more flexible xCalendar is hopefully on its way as well.   I’d like to make one last point and this one is with my SQL Server hat on. Reporting Services 2008 R2 introduced the ability to publish data as subscribable Atom feeds so it seems logical that it could also be a vehicle for delivering calendar feeds too. If you think this would be a good idea go and vote for it at Publish data as iCalendar feeds and please please please add some comments (especially if you vote it down). Work smarter, not harder! @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Lessons learnt in implementing Scrum in a Large Organization that has traditional values

  - by MarkPearl

  I recently had the experience of being involved in a “test” scrum implementation in a large organization that was used to a traditional project management approach. Here are some lessons that I learnt from it. Don’t let the Project Manager be the Product Owner First lesson learnt is to identify the correct product owner – in this instance the product manager assumed the role of the product owner which was a mistake. The product owner is the one who has the most to loose if the project fails. With a methodology that advocates removing the role of the project manager from the process then it is not in the interests of the person who is employed as a project manager to be the product owner – in fact they have the most to gain should the project fail. Know the time commitments of team members to the Project Second lesson learnt is to get a firm time commitment of the members on a team for the sprint and to hold them to it. In this project instance many of the issues we faced were with team members having to double up on supporting existing projects/systems and the scrum project. In many situations they just didn’t get round to doing any work on the scrum project for several days while they tried to meet other commitments. Initially this was not made transparent to the team – in stand up team members would say that had done some work but would be very vague on how much time they had actually spent using the blackhole of their other legacy projects as an excuse – putting up a time burn down chart made time allocations transparent and easy to hold the team to. In addition, how can you plan for a sprint without knowing the actual time available of the members – when I mean actual time, the exercise of getting them to go through all their appointments and lunch times and breaks and removing them from their time commitment helps get you to a realistic time that they can dedicate. Make sure you meet your minimum team sizes In a recent post I wrote about the difference between a partnership and a team. If you are going to do scrum in a large organization make sure you have a minimum team size of at least 3 developers. My experience with larger organizations is that people have a tendency to be sick more, take more leave and generally not be around – if you have a team size of two it is so easy to loose momentum on the project – the more people you have in the team (up to about 9) the more the momentum the project will have when people are not around. Swapping from one methodology to another can seem as waste to the customer It sounds bad, but most customers don’t care what methodology you use. Often they have bought into the “big plan upfront”. If you can, avoid taking a project on midstream from a traditional approach unless the customer has not bought into the process – with this particular project they had a detailed upfront planning breakaway with the customer using the traditional approach and then before the project started we moved onto a scrum implementation – this seemed as waste to the customer. We should have managed the customers expectation properly. Don’t play the role of the scrum master if you can’t be the scrum master With this particular implementation I was the “scrum master”. But all I did was go through the process of the formal meetings of scrum – I attended stand up, retrospectives and planning – but I was not hands on the ground. I was not performing the most important role of removing blockages – and by the end of the project there were a number of blockages “cropping up”. What could have been a better approach was to take someone on the team and train them to be the scrum master and be present to coach them. Alternatively actually be on the team on a fulltime basis and be the scrum master. By just going through the meetings of scrum didn’t mean we were doing scrum. So we failed with this one, if you fail look at it from an agile perspective As this particular project drew to a close and it became more and more apparent that it was not going to succeed the failure of it became depressing. Emotions were expressed by various people on the team that we not encouraging and enforced the failure. Embracing the failure and looking at it for what it is instead of taking it as the end of the world can change how you grow from the experience. Acknowledging that it failed and then focussing on learning from why and how to avoid the failure in the future can change how you feel emotionally about the team, the project and the organization.

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• Defining scope for Record Count functoid:

  - by ArunManick

  Defining scope for Record Count functoid: Problem: One of the most common scenarios in BizTalk is calculating the record count of repeating structure. BizTalk has come up with an advanced functoid called Record Count functoid which will give the record count for the repeating structure however you cannot define the scope for a Record Count functoid. Because Record Count functoid accepts exactly one parameter which can be repeating record or field element.   If somebody don’t know what “scope” means I will explain with a simple example. Consider that we have a source schema having a structure Country -> State -> City. Country will have various states and each state will have different cities. Now you want to calculate no. of cities present in each state. Here scope is defined at the parent node “State”. Traditional Record Count functoid will give the total no. of cities present in the source message and not the State level city count.   Source Schema:   Destination Schema:   Soultion #1: As the title indicates we are not going to add one more parameter to the record count functoid. Instead of that, we are going to achieve the solution with the help of Scripting functoid with Inline XSLT script. XSLT is basically the transformation language used in the mapping.     “No.OfCities” indicates the destination field name to which we are going to send the value. In count(City), “count” refers to built in XPath function used in XSLT and “City” refers to source schema record name. Here you can find the list of built-in functions available in XSLT.   The mapping will look like as follows:   The 2 Record Count functoids used in this map will give the total number of states and total number of cities as that of input message.   Soultion #2:  If someone doesn’t like XSLT code and they wish to achieve the solution using functoids alone, then here is another solution.   Use logical Existence functoid to check whether “City” exist or not Connect the output of Logical Existence functoid to the Value Mapping functoid with second parameter as constant “1”. Hence if the first parameter is TRUE it will give the output as “1”. Connect the output of Value Mapping functoid to the Cumulative Sum functoid with scope as “1”   This will calculate the City count at the state level. The mapping will look like as follows:     Let us see the sample input and the map output.   Input: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ns0:Country xmlns:ns0="http://RecordCount.Source">   <State>     <StateName>Tamilnadu</StateName>     <City>       <CityName>Pollachi</CityName>     </City>     <City>       <CityName>Coimbatore</CityName>     </City>     <City>       <CityName>Chennai</CityName>     </City>   </State>   <State>     <StateName>Kerala</StateName>     <City>       <CityName>Palakad</CityName>     </City>   </State>   <State>     <StateName>Karnataka</StateName>     <City>       <CityName>Bangalore</CityName>     </City>     <City>       <CityName>Mangalore</CityName>     </City>   </State> </ns0:Country>     Output: <ns0:Country xmlns:ns0="http://RecordCount.Destination">           <No.OfStates>3</No.OfStates>           <No.OfCities>6</No.OfCities>           <States>                    <No.OfCities>3</No.OfCities>           </States>           <States>                    <No.OfCities>1</No.OfCities>           </States>           <States>                    <No.OfCities>2</No.OfCities>           </States> </ns0:Country>   Conclusion: This is my first post and I hope you enjoyed it.   -Arun

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• GRUB is not Booting Correctly

  - by msknapp

  I have a PC with three hard disks. Windows 7 is installed on the first, Ubuntu 14.04 is installed on the third. After I re-booted, it went straight to Windows 7. So I tried explicitly telling my PC to boot using the third hard disk, but that just takes me to the grub rescue prompt. I followed Scott Severence's instructions here to try and recover. Essentially, I updated grub, reinstalled grub, and then updated it again. After re-booting, absolutely nothing had changed. So instead I tried using the boot-repair tool. In the past it had failed for me, saying that I had programs running and it could not unmount drives, when I was running nothing. I never figured out how to solve that problem, but it went away when I bought another hard drive and used that for my Ubuntu installation, I don't know why. In any case, I ran the boot-repair tool and this time it said it was successful. First time for everything right? I re-booted, only to be taken straight to the grub rescue prompt. So I changed my BIOS settings to use the third hard disk for boot start up. That is the same hard drive where I have Ubuntu and grub installed, and the same one that the grub-repair tool told me to use. It still took me straight to the grub rescue prompt. So I went from not being able to boot Ubuntu, to not being able to boot either OS installed on my system. Thanks boot-repair! Boot repair gave me this URL for future troubleshooting: http://paste.ubuntu.com/8131669 When I try to boot from the third hard disk, this is my console: Loading Operating System ... error: attempt to read or write outside of disk 'hd0'. Entering rescue mode... grub rescue> grub rescue> set cmdpath=(hd0) prefix=(hd0,gpt2)/boot/grub root=hd0,gpt2 grub rescue> ls (hd0) (hd0,gpt3) (hd0,gpt2) (hd0,gpt1) (hd1) (hd2) (hd2,gpt2) (hd2,gpt1) (hd3) Those values look correct to me. I have also experimented with changing some of those values, but 'insmod normal' always throws the same error. Somebody please tell me how to fix this. I have tried everything, reinstalling grub, and running boot-repair. =========================== Update: I think the problem might be that the ubuntu installer did not partition my hard disk correctly. I booted from live USB and then launched gparted and looked at how it partitioned things. This is what gparted says: Partition, File System, Size, Used, Unused, Flags /dev/sda1 (!), unknown, 1.00 MiB, ---, ---, bios_grub /dev/sda2, ext4, 2.71 TiB, 47.30 GiB, 2.67 TiB, /dev/sda3, linux-swap, 16.00 GiB, 0.00 B, 16.00 GiB, So that first line looks problematic. It is supposed to be the /boot partition. However, it was given only 1 MiB? I am assuming that MiB is actually supposed to mean megabyte, no idea why that 'i' is there. It also says the file system is unknown. I read the answer by andrew here, and he says he had to do a custom install, explicitly configuring the boot partition. So I think that maybe Ubuntu's installer has a bug in it, where it does not set up the boot partition correctly if you are not installing on the first hard disk in your computer. I am going to try reinstalling with a custom partition scheme. I read elsewhere (askubuntu won't let me post another link) that I don't even need a /boot partition any more. So instead of following Andrew's instructions ver batim, I'm first going to try having just two partitions: one for /, and another for my 16GB swap space. Both as primary partitions. The first will be formatted as ext4. If that doesn't work, I may try again using /boot. ======================== So I did my custom install with no /boot partition, and it did not work. When I rebooted, I had an error message saying that some address did not exist. So for the hundredth time, I booted from the live USB, and ran boot-repair. Now I get this message GPT detected. Please create a BIOS-Boot partition (>1MB, unformatted filesystem, bios_grub flag). This can be performed via tools such as Gparted. Then try again. I feel like I'm running in circles and nobody will help me.

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• Eloqua Experience 2013: Mystique, Modern Marketing and Masterful Engagement

  - by Mike Stiles

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

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• UK OUG Conference Highlights and Insights

  - by Richard Bingham

  As per my preemptive post, this was the first time the annual conference organized by the UK Oracle User Group (UKOUG) was split into two events, one for Oracle Applications and another in December for Oracle Technology. Apps13, as it was branded, was hailed as a success, with over 1000 registered attendees and three days of sessions, exhibition, round-tables and many other types of content. As this poster on their stand illustrates, the UKOUG is a strong community with popular participants from both big and small Oracle partners and customers. The venue was a more intimate setting than previous years also, allowing everyone to casually bump into those they hoped to. It gave a real feeling of an Apps Community. The main themes over the days where CRM and Customer Experience, HCM, and FIN/SCM. This allowed people to attend just one focused day if they wanted. In addition the Apps Transformation stream ran across all three days, offering insights, advice, and details on the newer product solutions like Fusion Applications.  Here are some of the key take-aways I got from the conference, specific to my role in Fusion Applications Developer Relations: User Experience continues to be a significant reason for adopting some of the newer application products available, with immediately obvious gains in user productivity and satisfaction reported by customers. Also this doesn't stop with the baked-in UX either, with their Design Patterns proving popular and indeed currently being extended to including things like extending on ADF mobile and customizing the Simplified UI. More on this to come from us soon. The executive sessions emphasized the "it's a journey" phrase, illustrating that modern business applications are powered by technologies such as Cloud, Mobile, Social and Big Data and these can be harnessed to help propel your organization forward. Indeed the emphasis is away from the traditional vendor prescribed linear applications road map, and towards plotting a course based on business priorities supported by a broad range of integrated solutions. To help with this several conference sessions demoed the new "Applications Navigator" tool, developed in partnership with OUG members, which offers a visual framework to help organizations plan their Oracle Applications investments around business and technology imperatives. Initial reaction was positive, especially as customers do not need to decipher Oracle's huge product catalog and embeds the best blend of proven and integrated applications solutions. We'll share more on this when it is generally available. Several sessions focused around explanations and interpretation of Oracle OpenWorld 2013, helping highlight the key Oracle Applications messages and directions. With a relative small percentage of conference attendees also at OpenWorld (from a show of hands) this was a popular way to distill the information available down into specific items of interest for the community. Please note the original OpenWorld 2013 content is still available for download but will not remain available forever (via the Oracle website OpenWorld Content Catalog > pick a session > see the PDF download). With the release of E-Business Suite 12.2 the move to develop and deploy on the Fusion Middleware stack becomes a reality for many Oracle Applications customers. This coupled with recent E-Business Suite features such as the Integrated SOA Gateway and the E-Business Suite SDK for Java, illustrates how the gap between the technologies and techniques involved in extending E-Business Suite and Fusion Applications is quickly narrowing. We'll see this merging continue to evolve going forwards. Getting started with Oracle Cloud Applications is actually easier than many customers expected, with a broad selection of both large and medium sized organizations explaining how they added new features to their existing Oracle Applications portfolios. New functionality available from Fusion HCM and CX are popular extensions that do not have to disrupt those core business services. Coexistence is the buzzword here, and the available integration is also simpler than many expected, commonly involving an initial setup data load, then regularly incremental synchronizations, often without a need for real-time constant communication between systems. With much of this pre-built already the implementation process is also quite rapid. With most people dressed in suits, we wanted to get the conversations going without the traditional english reserve, so we decided to make ourselves a bit more obvious, as the photo below shows. This seemed to be quite successful and helped those interested identify and approach us. Keep a look out for similar again. In fact if you're in the UK there is an "Apps Transformation Day" planned by the UKOUG for the 19th March 2014, with more details to follow. Again something we'll be sure to participate in. I am hoping to attend the next half of the UKOUG annual conference, Tech13, that focuses more on Oracle technology and where there is more likely to be larger attendance of those interested in the lower-level aspects of applications customization and development. If you're going, let me know and maybe we can meet up.

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• Efficient way to render tile-based map in Java

  - by Lucius

  Some time ago I posted here because I was having some memory issues with a game I'm working on. That has been pretty much solved thanks to some suggestions here, so I decided to come back with another problem I'm having. Basically, I feel that too much of the CPU is being used when rendering the map. I have a Core i5-2500 processor and when running the game, the CPU usage is about 35% - and I can't accept that that's just how it has to be. This is how I'm going about rendering the map: I have the X and Y coordinates of the player, so I'm not drawing the whole map, just the visible portion of it; The number of visible tiles on screen varies according to the resolution chosen by the player (the CPU usage is 35% here when playing at a resolution of 1440x900); If the tile is "empty", I just skip drawing it (this didn't visibly lower the CPU usage, but reduced the drawing time in about 20ms); The map is composed of 5 layers - for more details; The tiles are 32x32 pixels; And just to be on the safe side, I'll post the code for drawing the game here, although it's as messy and unreadable as it can be T_T (I'll try to make it a little readable) private void drawGame(Graphics2D g2d){ //Width and Height of the visible portion of the map (not of the screen) int visionWidht = visibleCols * TILE_SIZE; int visionHeight = visibleRows * TILE_SIZE; //Since the map can be smaller than the screen, I center it just to be sure int xAdjust = (getWidth() - visionWidht) / 2; int yAdjust = (getHeight() - visionHeight) / 2; //This "deducedX" thing is to move the map a few pixels horizontally, since the player moves by pixels and not full tiles int playerDrawX = listOfCharacters.get(0).getX(); int deducedX = 0; if (listOfCharacters.get(0).currentCol() - visibleCols / 2 >= 0) { playerDrawX = visibleCols / 2 * TILE_SIZE; map_draw_col = listOfCharacters.get(0).currentCol() - visibleCols / 2; deducedX = listOfCharacters.get(0).getXCol(); } //"deducedY" is the same deal as "deducedX", but vertically int playerDrawY = listOfCharacters.get(0).getY(); int deducedY = 0; if (listOfCharacters.get(0).currentRow() - visibleRows / 2 >= 0) { playerDrawY = visibleRows / 2 * TILE_SIZE; map_draw_row = listOfCharacters.get(0).currentRow() - visibleRows / 2; deducedY = listOfCharacters.get(0).getYRow(); } int max_cols = visibleCols + map_draw_col; if (max_cols >= map.getCols()) { max_cols = map.getCols() - 1; deducedX = 0; map_draw_col = max_cols - visibleCols + 1; playerDrawX = listOfCharacters.get(0).getX() - map_draw_col * TILE_SIZE; } int max_rows = visibleRows + map_draw_row; if (max_rows >= map.getRows()) { max_rows = map.getRows() - 1; deducedY = 0; map_draw_row = max_rows - visibleRows + 1; playerDrawY = listOfCharacters.get(0).getY() - map_draw_row * TILE_SIZE; } //map_draw_row and map_draw_col representes the coordinate of the upper left tile on the screen //iterate through all the tiles on screen and draw them - this is what consumes most of the CPU for (int col = map_draw_col; col <= max_cols; col++) { for (int row = map_draw_row; row <= max_rows; row++) { Tile[] tiles = map.getTiles(col, row); for(int layer = 0; layer < tiles.length; layer++){ Tile currentTile = tiles[layer]; boolean shouldDraw = true; //I only draw the tile if it exists and is not empty (id=-1) if(currentTile != null && currentTile.getId() >= 0){ //The layers above 1 can be draw behing or infront of the player according to where it's standing if(layer > 1 && currentTile.getId() >= 0){ if(playerBehind(col, row, layer, listOfCharacters.get(0))){ behinds.get(0).add(new int[]{col, row}); //the tiles that are infront of the player wont be draw right now shouldDraw = false; } } if(shouldDraw){ g2d.drawImage( tiles[layer].getImage(), (col-map_draw_col)*TILE_SIZE - deducedX + xAdjust, (row-map_draw_row)*TILE_SIZE - deducedY + yAdjust, null); } } } } } } There's some more code in this method but nothing relevant to this question. Basically, the biggest problem is that I iterate over around 5000 tiles (in this specific resolution) 60 times each second. I thought about rendering the visible portion of the map once and storing it into a BufferedImage and when the player moved move the whole image the same amount but to the opposite side and then drawn the tiles that appeared on the screen, but if I do it like that, I wont be able to have animated tiles (at least I think). That being said, any suggestions?

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• Access Control Service V2 and Facebook Integration

  - by Your DisplayName here!

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

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• Building Enterprise Smartphone App &ndash; Part 2: Platforms and Features

  - by Tim Murphy

  This is part 2 in a series of posts based on a talk I gave recently at the Chicago Information Technology Architects Group.  Feel free to leave feedback. In the previous post I discussed what reasons a company might have for creating a smartphone application.  In this installment I will cover some of history and state of the different platforms as well as features that can be leveraged for building enterprise smartphone applications. Platforms Before you start choosing a platform to develop your solutions on it is good to understand how we got here and what features you can leverage. History To my memory we owe all of this to a product called the Apple Newton that came out in 1987. It was the first PDA and back then I was much more of an Apple fan.  I was very impressed with this device even though it never really went anywhere.  The Palm Pilot by US Robotics was the next major advancement in PDA. It had a simple short hand window that allowed for quick stylus entry.. Later, Windows CE came out and started the broadening of the PDA market. After that it was the Palm and CE operating systems that started showing up on cell phones and for some time these were the two dominant operating systems that were distributed with devices from multiple hardware vendors. Current The iPhone was the first smartphone to take away the stylus and give us a multi-touch interface.  It was a revolution in usability and really changed the attractiveness of smartphones for the general public.  This brought us to the beginning of the current state of the market with the concept of an online store that makes it easy for customers to get new features and functionality on demand. With Android, Google made this more than a one horse race.  Not only did they come to compete, their low cost actually made them the leading OS.  Of course what made Android so attractive also is its major fault.  It is so open that it has been a target for malware which leaves consumers exposed.  Fortunately for Google though, most consumers aren’t aware of the threat that they are under. Although Microsoft had put out one of the first smart phone operating systems with CE it had to play catch up and finally came out with the Windows Phone.  They have gone for a market approach between those of iOS and Android.  They support multiple hardware vendors like Google, but they kept a certification process for applications that is similar to Apple.  They also created a user interface that was different enough to give it a clear separation from the other two platforms. The result of all this is hundreds of millions of smartphones being sold monthly across all three platforms giving us a wide range of choices and challenges when it comes to developing solutions. Features So what are the features that make these devices flexible enough be considered for use in the enterprise? The biggest advantage of today's devices is network connectivity.  The ability to access information from multiple sources at a moment’s notice is critical for businesses.  Add to that the ability to communicate over a variety of text, voice and video modes and we have a powerful starting point. Every smartphone has a cameras and they are not just useful for posting to Instagram. We are seeing more applications such as Bing vision that allow us to scan just about any printed code or text to find information.  These capabilities have been made available to developers in the form of standard libraries for reading barcodes of just about an flavor and optical character recognition (OCR) interpretation. Bluetooth give us the ability to communicate with multiple devices. Whether these are headsets, keyboard or printers the wireless communication capabilities are just starting to evolve.  The more these wireless communication protocols grow, the more opportunities we will see to transfer data between users and a variety of devices. Local storage of information that can be called up even when the device cannot reach the network is the other big capability.  This give users the ability to work offline as well and transmit information when connections are restored. These are the tools that we have to work with to build applications that can be leveraged to gain a competitive advantage for companies that implement them. Coming Up In the third installment I will cover key concerns that you face when building enterprise smartphone apps. del.icio.us Tags: smartphones,enterprise smartphone Apps,architecture,iOS,Android,Windows Phone

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• Some Early Considerations

  - by Chris Massey

  Following on from my previous post, I want to say "thank you" to everyone who has got in touch and got involved – you are pioneers! An update on where we are right now: paper prototypes v1 To be more specific, we’ve picked two of the ideas that seem to have more pros than cons, turned them into Balsamiq mockups, and are getting them fleshed out with realistic content. We’ll initially make these available to the aforementioned pioneers (thank you again), roll in the feedback, and then open up to get more data on what works and what doesn’t. If you’ve got any questions about this (or what we’re working on right now), feel free to ask me in the comments below. I’ve had a few people express an interest in the process we’re going through, and I’m more than happy to share details more frequently as we go along – not least because you, dear reader, will help us stay on target and create something Good. To start with, here’s a quick flashback to bring you all up to speed. A Brief Retrospective As you may already know, we’re creating a new publishing asset specifically focused on providing great content for web developers. We don’t yet know exactly what this thing will look like, or exactly how it will work, but we know we want to create something that is useful different. For my part, I’m seriously excited at the prospect of building a genuinely digital publishing system (as opposed to what most publishing is these days, which is print-style publishing which just happens to be on the web). The main challenge at this point is working out our build-measure-assess loop to speed up our experimental turn-around, and that’ll get better as we run more trials. Of course, there are a few things we’ve been pondering at this early conceptual stage: Do we publishing about heterogeneous technology stacks from day 1, or do we start with ASP.NET (which we’re familiar with) & branch out later? There are challenges with either approach. What publishing "modes" are already being well-handled? For example, the likes of Pluralsight, TekPub, and Treehouse have pretty much nailed video training (debate about price, if you like), and unless we think we can do it faster / better / cheaper (unlikely, for the record), we should leave them to it. Where should we base whatever we create? Should we create a completely new asset under a new name, graft something onto Simple-Talk (like the labs), or just build something directly into Simple-Talk? It sounds trivial, but it does have at least some impact on infrastructure and what how we manage the different types of content we (will) have. Are there any obvious problems or niches that we think could address really well, or should we just throw ideas out and see what readers respond to? What kind of users do we want to provide for? This actually deserves a little bit of unpacking… Why are you here? We currently divide readers into (broadly) the categories: Category 1: I know nothing about X, and I’d like to learn about it. Category 2: I know something about X, but I’d like to learn how to do something specific with it. Category 3: Ah man, I have a problem with X, and I need to fix it now. Now that I think about it, I might also include a 4th class of reader: Category 4: I’m looking for something interesting to engage my brain. These are clearly task-based categorizations, and depending on which task you’re performing when you arrive here, you’re going to need different types of content, or will have specific discovery needs. One of the questions that’s at the back of my mind whenever I consider a new idea is “How many of the categories will this satisfy?” As an example, typical video training is very well suited to categories 1, 2, and 4. StackOverflow is very well suited to category 3, and serves as a sign-posting system to the rest. Clearly it’s not necessary to satisfy every category need to be useful and popular, but being aware of what behavior readers might be exhibiting when they arrive will help us tune our ideas appropriately. < / Flashback > We don’t have clean answers to most of these considerations – they’re things we’re aware of, and each idea we look at is going to be best suited to a different mix of the options I’ve described. Our first experimental loop will be coming full circle in the next few days, so we should start to see how the different possibilities vary between ideas. Free to chime in with questions and suggestions about anything I’ve just brain-dumped, or at any stage as we go along. If you see anything that intrigued or enrages you, or just have an idea you’d like to share, I’d love to hear from you.

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• Mousin' down the PathListBox

  - by T

  While modifying the standard media player with a new look and feel for Ineta Live I saw a unique opportunity to use their logo with a dotted I with and attached arc as the scrub control. So I created a PathListBox that I wanted an object to follow when a user did a click and drag action.  Below is how I solved the problem.  Please let me know if you have improvements or know of a completely different way.  I am always eager to learn. First, I created a path using the pen tool in Expression Blend (see the yellow line in image below).  Then I right clicked that path and chose [Path] --> [Make Layout Path].   That created a new PathListBox.  Then I chose the object I want to move down the new PathListBox and Placed it as a child in the Objects and Timeline window (see image below).  If the child object (the thing the user will click and drag) is XAML, it will move much smoother than images. Just as another side note, I wanted there to be no highlight when the user selects the “ball” to drag and drop.  This is done by editing the ItemContainerStyle under Additional Templates on the PathListBox.  Post a question if you need help on this and I will expand my explanation. Here is a pic of the object and the path I wanted it to follow.  I gave the path a yellow solid brush here so you could see it but when I lay this over another object, I will make the path transparent.   To animate this object down the path, the trick is to animate the Start number for the LayoutPath.  Not the StartItemIndex, the Start above Span. In order to enable animation when a user clicks and drags, I put in the following code snippets in the code behind. the DependencyProperties are not necessary for the Drag control.   namespace InetaPlayer { public partial class PositionControl : UserControl { private bool _mouseDown; private double _maxPlayTime; public PositionControl() { // Required to initialize variables InitializeComponent(); //mouse events for scrub control positionThumb.MouseLeftButtonDown += new MouseButtonEventHandler(ValueThumb_MouseLeftButtonDown); positionThumb.MouseLeftButtonUp += new MouseButtonEventHandler(ValueThumb_MouseLeftButtonUp); positionThumb.MouseMove += new MouseEventHandler(ValueThumb_MouseMove); positionThumb.LostMouseCapture += new MouseEventHandler(ValueThumb_LostMouseCapture); } // exposed for binding to real slider using a DependencyProperty enables animation, styling, binding, etc.... public double MaxPlayTime { get { return (double)GetValue(MaxPlayTimeProperty); } set { SetValue(MaxPlayTimeProperty, value); } } public static readonly DependencyProperty MaxPlayTimeProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("MaxPlayTime", typeof(double), typeof(PositionControl), null);   // exposed for binding to real slider using a DependencyProperty enables animation, styling, binding, etc....   public double CurrSliderValue { get { return (double)GetValue(CurrSliderValueProperty); } set { SetValue(CurrSliderValueProperty, value); } }   public static readonly DependencyProperty CurrSliderValueProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("CurrSliderValue", typeof(double), typeof(PositionControl), new PropertyMetadata(0.0, OnCurrSliderValuePropertyChanged));   private static void OnCurrSliderValuePropertyChanged(DependencyObject d, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e) { PositionControl control = d as PositionControl; control.OnCurrSliderValueChanged((double)e.OldValue, (double)e.NewValue); }   private void OnCurrSliderValueChanged(double oldValue, double newValue) { _maxPlayTime = (double) GetValue(MaxPlayTimeProperty); if (!_mouseDown) if (_maxPlayTime!=0) sliderPathListBox.LayoutPaths[0].Start = newValue / _maxPlayTime; else sliderPathListBox.LayoutPaths[0].Start = 0; }   //mouse control   void ValueThumb_MouseMove(object sender, MouseEventArgs e) { if (!_mouseDown) return; //get the offset of how far the drag has been //direction is handled automatically (offset will be negative for left move and positive for right move) Point mouseOff = e.GetPosition(positionThumb); //Divide the offset by 1000 for a smooth transition sliderPathListBox.LayoutPaths[0].Start +=mouseOff.X/1000; _maxPlayTime = (double)GetValue(MaxPlayTimeProperty); SetValue(CurrSliderValueProperty ,sliderPathListBox.LayoutPaths[0].Start*_maxPlayTime); }   void ValueThumb_MouseLeftButtonUp(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e) { _mouseDown = false; } void ValueThumb_LostMouseCapture(object sender, MouseEventArgs e) { _mouseDown = false; } void ValueThumb_MouseLeftButtonDown(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e) { _mouseDown = true; ((UIElement)positionThumb).CaptureMouse(); }   } }   I made this into a user control and exposed a couple of DependencyProperties in order to bind it to a standard Slider in the overall project.  This control is embedded into the standard Expression media player template and is used to replace the standard scrub bar.  When the player goes live, I will put a link here.

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• How to Point sprite's direction towards Mouse or an Object [duplicate]

  - by Irfan Dahir

  This question already has an answer here: Rotating To Face a Point 1 answer I need some help with rotating sprites towards the mouse. I'm currently using the library allegro 5.XX. The rotation of the sprite works but it's constantly inaccurate. It's always a few angles off from the mouse to the left. Can anyone please help me with this? Thank you. P.S I got help with the rotating function from here: http://www.gamefromscratch.com/post/2012/11/18/GameDev-math-recipes-Rotating-to-face-a-point.aspx Although it's by javascript, the maths function is the same. And also, by placing: if(angle < 0) { angle = 360 - (-angle); } doesn't fix it. The Code: #include <allegro5\allegro.h> #include <allegro5\allegro_image.h> #include "math.h" int main(void) { int width = 640; int height = 480; bool exit = false; int shipW = 0; int shipH = 0; ALLEGRO_DISPLAY *display = NULL; ALLEGRO_EVENT_QUEUE *event_queue = NULL; ALLEGRO_BITMAP *ship = NULL; if(!al_init()) return -1; display = al_create_display(width, height); if(!display) return -1; al_install_keyboard(); al_install_mouse(); al_init_image_addon(); al_set_new_bitmap_flags(ALLEGRO_MIN_LINEAR | ALLEGRO_MAG_LINEAR); //smoother rotate ship = al_load_bitmap("ship.bmp"); shipH = al_get_bitmap_height(ship); shipW = al_get_bitmap_width(ship); int shipx = width/2 - shipW/2; int shipy = height/2 - shipH/2; int mx = width/2; int my = height/2; al_set_mouse_xy(display, mx, my); event_queue = al_create_event_queue(); al_register_event_source(event_queue, al_get_mouse_event_source()); al_register_event_source(event_queue, al_get_keyboard_event_source()); //al_hide_mouse_cursor(display); float angle; while(!exit) { ALLEGRO_EVENT ev; al_wait_for_event(event_queue, &ev); if(ev.type == ALLEGRO_EVENT_KEY_UP) { switch(ev.keyboard.keycode) { case ALLEGRO_KEY_ESCAPE: exit = true; break; /*case ALLEGRO_KEY_LEFT: degree -= 10; break; case ALLEGRO_KEY_RIGHT: degree += 10; break;*/ case ALLEGRO_KEY_W: shipy -=10; break; case ALLEGRO_KEY_S: shipy +=10; break; case ALLEGRO_KEY_A: shipx -=10; break; case ALLEGRO_KEY_D: shipx += 10; break; } }else if(ev.type == ALLEGRO_EVENT_MOUSE_AXES) { mx = ev.mouse.x; my = ev.mouse.y; angle = atan2(my - shipy, mx - shipx); } // al_draw_bitmap(ship,shipx, shipy, 0); //al_draw_rotated_bitmap(ship, shipW/2, shipH/2, shipx, shipy, degree * 3.142/180,0); al_draw_rotated_bitmap(ship, shipW/2, shipH/2, shipx, shipy,angle, 0); //I directly placed the angle because the allegro library calculates radians, and if i multiplied it by 180/3. 142 the rotation would go hawire, not would, it actually did. al_flip_display(); al_clear_to_color(al_map_rgb(0,0,0)); } al_destroy_bitmap(ship); al_destroy_event_queue(event_queue); al_destroy_display(display); return 0; } EDIT: This was marked duplicate by a moderator. I'd like to say that this isn't the same as that. I'm a total beginner at game programming, I had a view at that other topic and I had difficulty understanding it. Please understand this, thank you. :/ Also, while I was making a print of what the angle is I got this... Here is a screenshot:http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/7396/fzuq.jpg Which is weird because aren't angles supposed to be 360 degrees only?

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• Is it feasible and useful to auto-generate some code of unit tests?

  - by skiwi

  Earlier today I have come up with an idea, based upon a particular real use case, which I would want to have checked for feasability and usefulness. This question will feature a fair chunk of Java code, but can be applied to all languages running inside a VM, and maybe even outside. While there is real code, it uses nothing language-specific, so please read it mostly as pseudo code. The idea Make unit testing less cumbersome by adding in some ways to autogenerate code based on human interaction with the codebase. I understand this goes against the principle of TDD, but I don't think anyone ever proved that doing TDD is better over first creating code and then immediatly therafter the tests. This may even be adapted to be fit into TDD, but that is not my current goal. To show how it is intended to be used, I'll copy one of my classes here, for which I need to make unit tests. public class PutMonsterOnFieldAction implements PlayerAction { private final int handCardIndex; private final int fieldMonsterIndex; public PutMonsterOnFieldAction(final int handCardIndex, final int fieldMonsterIndex) { this.handCardIndex = Arguments.requirePositiveOrZero(handCardIndex, "handCardIndex"); this.fieldMonsterIndex = Arguments.requirePositiveOrZero(fieldMonsterIndex, "fieldCardIndex"); } @Override public boolean isActionAllowed(final Player player) { Objects.requireNonNull(player, "player"); Hand hand = player.getHand(); Field field = player.getField(); if (handCardIndex >= hand.getCapacity()) { return false; } if (fieldMonsterIndex >= field.getMonsterCapacity()) { return false; } if (field.hasMonster(fieldMonsterIndex)) { return false; } if (!(hand.get(handCardIndex) instanceof MonsterCard)) { return false; } return true; } @Override public void performAction(final Player player) { Objects.requireNonNull(player); if (!isActionAllowed(player)) { throw new PlayerActionNotAllowedException(); } Hand hand = player.getHand(); Field field = player.getField(); field.setMonster(fieldMonsterIndex, (MonsterCard)hand.play(handCardIndex)); } } We can observe the need for the following tests: Constructor test with valid input Constructor test with invalid inputs isActionAllowed test with valid input isActionAllowed test with invalid inputs performAction test with valid input performAction test with invalid inputs My idea mainly focuses on the isActionAllowed test with invalid inputs. Writing these tests is not fun, you need to ensure a number of conditions and you check whether it really returns false, this can be extended to performAction, where an exception needs to be thrown in that case. The goal of my idea is to generate those tests, by indicating (through GUI of IDE hopefully) that you want to generate tests based on a specific branch. The implementation by example User clicks on "Generate code for branch if (handCardIndex >= hand.getCapacity())". Now the tool needs to find a case where that holds. (I haven't added the relevant code as that may clutter the post ultimately) To invalidate the branch, the tool needs to find a handCardIndex and hand.getCapacity() such that the condition >= holds. It needs to construct a Player with a Hand that has a capacity of at least 1. It notices that the capacity private int of Hand needs to be at least 1. It searches for ways to set it to 1. Fortunately it finds a constructor that takes the capacity as an argument. It uses 1 for this. Some more work needs to be done to succesfully construct a Player instance, involving the creation of objects that have constraints that can be seen by inspecting the source code. It has found the hand with the least capacity possible and is able to construct it. Now to invalidate the test it will need to set handCardIndex = 1. It constructs the test and asserts it to be false (the returned value of the branch) What does the tool need to work? In order to function properly, it will need the ability to scan through all source code (including JDK code) to figure out all constraints. Optionally this could be done through the javadoc, but that is not always used to indicate all constraints. It could also do some trial and error, but it pretty much stops if you cannot attach source code to compiled classes. Then it needs some basic knowledge of what the primitive types are, including arrays. And it needs to be able to construct some form of "modification trees". The tool knows that it needs to change a certain variable to a different value in order to get the correct testcase. Hence it will need to list all possible ways to change it, without using reflection obviously. What this tool will not replace is the need to create tailored unit tests that tests all kinds of conditions when a certain method actually works. It is purely to be used to test methods when they invalidate constraints. My questions: Is creating such a tool feasible? Would it ever work, or are there some obvious problems? Would such a tool be useful? Is it even useful to automatically generate these testcases at all? Could it be extended to do even more useful things? Does, by chance, such a project already exist and would I be reinventing the wheel? If not proven useful, but still possible to make such thing, I will still consider it for fun. If it's considered useful, then I might make an open source project for it depending on the time. For people searching more background information about the used Player and Hand classes in my example, please refer to this repository. At the time of writing the PutMonsterOnFieldAction has not been uploaded to the repo yet, but this will be done once I'm done with the unit tests.

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• IE9, LightSwitch Beta 2 and Zune HD: A Study in Risk Management?

  - by andrewbrust

  Photo by parl, 'Risk.’ Under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License This has been a busy week for Microsoft, and for me as well.  On Monday, Microsoft launched Internet Explorer 9 at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, TX.  That evening I flew from New York to Seattle.  On Tuesday morning, Microsoft launched Visual Studio LightSwitch, Beta 2 with a Go-Live license, in Redmond, and I had the privilege of speaking at the keynote presentation where the announcement was made.  Readers of this blog know I‘m a fan of LightSwitch, so I was happy to tell the app dev tools partners in the audience that I thought the LightSwitch extensions ecosystem represented a big opportunity – comparable to the opportunity when Visual Basic 1.0 was entering its final beta roughly 20 years ago.  On Tuesday evening, I flew back to New York (and wrote most of this post in-flight). Two busy, productive days.  But there was a caveat that impacts the accomplishments, because Monday was also the day reports surfaced from credible news agencies that Microsoft was discontinuing its dedicated Zune hardware efforts.  While the Zune brand, technology and service will continue to be a component of Windows Phone and a piece of the Xbox puzzle as well, speculation is that Microsoft will no longer be going toe-to-toe with iPod touch in the portable music player market. If we take all three of these developments together (even if one of them is based on speculation), two interesting conclusions can reasonably be drawn, one good and one less so. Microsoft is doubling down on technologies it finds strategic and de-emphasizing those that it does not.  HTML 5 and the Web are strategic, so here comes IE9, and it’s a very good browser.  Try it and see.  Silverlight is strategic too, as is SQL Server, Windows Azure and SQL Azure, so here comes Visual Studio LightSwitch Beta 2 and a license to deploy its apps to production.  Downloads of that product have exceeded Microsoft’s projections by more than 50%, and the company is even citing analyst firms’ figures covering the number of power-user developers that might use it. (I happen to think the product will be used by full-fledged developers as well, but that’s a separate discussion.) Windows Phone is strategic too…I wasn’t 100% positive of that before, but the Nokia agreement has made me confident.  Xbox as an entertainment appliance is also strategic.  Standalone music players are not strategic – and even if they were, selling them has been a losing battle for Microsoft.  So if Microsoft has consolidated the Zune content story and the ZunePass subscription into Xbox and Windows Phone, it would make sense, and would be a smart allocation of resources.  Essentially, it would be for the greater good. But it’s not all good.  In this scenario, Zune player customers would lose out.  Unless they wanted to switch to Windows Phone, and then use their phone’s battery for the portable media needs, they’re going to need a new platform.  They’re going to feel abandoned.  Even if Zune lives, there have been other such cul de sacs for customers.  Remember SPOT watches?  Live Spaces?  The original Live Mesh?  Microsoft discontinued each of these products.  The company is to be commended for cutting its losses, as admitting a loss isn’t easy.  But Redmond won’t be well-regarded by the victims of those decisions.  Instead, it gets black marks. What’s the answer?  I think it’s a bit like the 1980’s New York City “don’t block the box” gridlock rules: don’t enter an intersection unless you see a clear path through it.  If the light turns red and you’re blocking the perpendicular traffic, that’s your fault in judgment.  You get fined and get points on your license and you don’t get to shrug it off as beyond your control.  Accountability is key.  The same goes for Microsoft.  If it decides to enter a market, it should see a reasonable path through success in that market. Switching analogies, Microsoft shouldn’t make investments haphazardly, and it certainly shouldn’t ask investors to buy into a high-risk fund that is sold as safe and which offers only moderate returns.  People won’t continue to invest with a fund manager with a track record of over-zealous, imprudent, sub-prime investments.  The same is true on the product side for Microsoft, and not just with music players and geeky wrist watches.  It’s true of Web browsers, and line-of-business app dev tools, and smartphones, and cloud platforms and operating systems too.  When Microsoft is casual about its own risk, it raises risk for its customers, and weakens its reputation, market share and credibility.  That doesn’t mean all risk is bad, but it does mean no product team’s risk should be taken lightly. For mutual fund companies, it’s the CEO’s job to give his fund managers autonomy, but to make sure they’re conforming to a standard of rational risk management.  Because all those funds carry the same brand, and many of them serve the same investors. The same goes for Microsoft, its product portfolio, its executive ranks and its product managers.

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• Styles for XAML (Silverlight &amp; WPF)

  - by GeekAgilistMercenary

  This is a quick walk through of how to setup things for skinning within a XAML Application.  First thing, find the App.xaml file within the WPF or Silverlight Project. Within the App.xaml file set some default styles for your controls.  I set the following for a button, label, and border control for an application I am creating. Button Control <Style x:Key="ButtonStyle" TargetType="Button"> <Setter Property="FontFamily" Value="Arial" /> <Setter Property="FontWeight" Value="Bold" /> <Setter Property="FontSize" Value="14" /> <Setter Property="Width" Value="180" /> <Setter Property="Height" Value="Auto" /> <Setter Property="Margin" Value="8" /> <Setter Property="Padding" Value="8" /> <Setter Property="Foreground" Value="AliceBlue" /> <Setter Property="Background" > <Setter.Value> <LinearGradientBrush EndPoint="0.5,1" StartPoint="0.5,0"> <GradientStop Color="Black" Offset="0" /> <GradientStop Color="#FF5B5757" Offset="1" /> </LinearGradientBrush> </Setter.Value> </Setter> </Style> Label Control <Style x:Key="LabelStyle" TargetType="Label"> <Setter Property="Width" Value="Auto"/> <Setter Property="Height" Value="28" /> <Setter Property="Foreground" Value="Black"/> <Setter Property="Margin" Value="8"/> </Style> Border Control <Style x:Key="BorderStyle" TargetType="Border"> <Setter Property="BorderThickness" Value="4"/> <Setter Property="Width" Value="Auto"/> <Setter Property="Height" Value="Auto" /> <Setter Property="Margin" Value="0,8,0,0"/> <Setter Property="CornerRadius" Value="18"/> <Setter Property="BorderBrush"> <Setter.Value> <LinearGradientBrush EndPoint="1,0.5" StartPoint="0,0.5"> <GradientStop Color="CornflowerBlue" Offset="0" /> <GradientStop Color="White" Offset="1" /> </LinearGradientBrush> </Setter.Value> </Setter> </Style> These provide good examples of setting individual properties to a default, such as; <Setter Property="Width" Value="Auto"/> <Setter Property="Height" Value="Auto" /> Also for settings a more complex property, such as with a LinearGradientBrush; <Setter Property="BorderBrush"> <Setter.Value> <LinearGradientBrush EndPoint="1,0.5" StartPoint="0,0.5"> <GradientStop Color="CornflowerBlue" Offset="0" /> <GradientStop Color="White" Offset="1" /> </LinearGradientBrush> </Setter.Value> </Setter> These property setters should be located between the opening and closing <Application.Resources></Application.Resources> tags. <Application x:Class="ScorecardAndDashboard.App" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" StartupUri="MainWindow.xaml"> <Application.Resources> </Application.Resources> </Application> Now in the pages, user controls, or whatever you are marking up with XAML, for the Style Property just set a StaticResource such as shown below. <!-- Border Control --> <Border Name="borderPollingFrequency" Style="{StaticResource BorderStyle}"> <!-- Label Control --> <Label Content="Trigger Name:" Style="{StaticResource LabelStyle}"></Label> <!-- Button Control --> <Button Content="Save Schedule" Name="buttonSaveSchedule" Style="{StaticResource ButtonStyle}" HorizontalAlignment="Right"/> That's it.  Simple as that.  There are other ways to setup resource files that are separate from the App.xaml, but the App.xaml file is always a good quick place to start.  As moving the styles to a specific resource file later is a mere copy and paste. Original post is available along with other technical ramblings.

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