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• SQL SERVER – Importance of User Without Login

  - by pinaldave

  Some questions are very open ended and it is very hard to come up with exact requirements. Here is one question I was asked in recent User Group Meeting. Question: “In recent version of SQL Server we can create user without login. What is the use of it?” Great question indeed. Let me first attempt to answer this question but after reading my answer I need your help. I want you to help him as well with adding more value to it. Answer: Let us visualize a scenario. An application has lots of different operations and many of them are very sensitive operations. The common practice was to do give application specific role which has more permissions and access level. When a regular user login (not system admin), he/she might have very restrictive permissions. The application itself had a user name and password which means applications can directly login into the database and perform the operation. Developers were well aware of the username and password as it was embedded in the application. When developer leaves the organization or when the password was changed, the part of the application had to be changed where the same username and passwords were used. Additionally, developers were able to use the same username and password and login directly to the same application. In earlier version of SQL Server there were application roles. The same is later on replaced by “User without Login”. Now let us recreate the above scenario using this new “User without Login”. In this case, User will have to login using their own credentials into SQL Server. This means that the user who is logged in will have his/her own username and password. Once the login is done in SQL Server, the user will be able to use the application. Now the database should have another User without Login which has all the necessary permissions and rights to execute various operations. Now, Application will be able to execute the script by impersonating “user without login – with more permissions”. Here there is assumed that user login does not have enough permissions and another user (without login) there are more rights. If a user knows how the application is using the database and their various operations, he can switch the context to user without login making him enable for doing further modification. Make sure to explicitly DENY view definition permission on the database. This will make things further difficult for user as he will have to know exact details to get additional permissions. If a user is System Admin all the details which I just mentioned in above three paragraphs does not apply as admin always have access to everything. Additionally, the method describes above is just one of the architecture and if someone is attempting to damage the system, they will still be able to figure out a workaround. You will have to put further auditing and policy based management to prevent such incidents and accidents. I guess this is my answer. I read it multiple times but I still feel that I am missing something. There should be more to this concept than what I have just described. I have merely described one scenario but there will be many more scenarios where this situation will be useful. Now is your turn to help – please leave a comment with the additional suggestion where exactly “User without Login” will be useful as well did I miss anything when I described above scenario. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Security, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Seamless STP with Oracle SOA Suite

  - by user12339860

  STP stands for “Straight Through Processing”. Wikipedia describes STP as a solution that enables “the entire trade process for capital markets and payment transactions to be conducted electronically without the need for re-keying or manual intervention, subject to legal and regulatory restrictions” .I will deal with the later part of the definition i.e “payment transactions without manual intervention” in this article. The STP that I am writing about involves the interaction between a Bank and its’ corporate customers,to that extent this business case is also called “Corporate Payments”.Simply put a  Corporate Payment-STP solution needs to connect the payment transaction right from the Corporate ERP into the Bank’s Payment Hub. A SOA based STP solution can do a lot more than just process transaction. But before I get to the solution let me describe the perspectives of the two primary parties in this interaction. The Corporate customer and the Bank. Corporate's Interaction with Bank:  Typically it is the treasury department of an enterprise which interacts with the Bank on a daily basis. Here is how a day of interaction would look like from the treasury department of a corp. Corporate Cash Retrieve Beginning of day totals Monitor Cash Accounts Send or receive cash between accounts Supply chain payments Payment Settlements Calculate settlement positions Retrieve End of Day totals Assess Transaction Financial Impact Short Term Investment Desk Retrieve Current Account information Conduct Investment activities Bank’s Interaction with the Corporate :  From the Bank’s perspective, the interaction starts from the point of on boarding a corporate customer to billing the corporate for the value added services it provides. Once the corporate is on-boarded the daily interaction involves Handle the various formats of data arriving from customers Process Beginning of Day & End of Day reporting request from customers Meet compliance requirements Process Payments Transmit Payment Status Challenges with this Interaction :  Both the Bank & the Corporate face many challenges from these interactions. Some of the challenges include Keeping a consistent view of transaction data for various LOBs of the corporate & the Bank Corporate customers use different ERPs, hence the data formats are bound to be different Can the Bank’s IT systems convert the data formats that can be easily mapped to the corporate ERP How does the Bank manage the communication profiles of these customers?  Corporate customers are demanding near real time visibility on their corporate accounts Corporate customers can make better cash management decisions if they can analyse the impact. Can the Bank create opportunities to sell its products to the investment desks at corporate houses & manage their orders? How will the Bank bill the corporate customer for the value added services it provides. What does a SOA based Seamless STP solution bring to the table? Highlights of Oracle SOA based STP solution For the Corporate Customer: No Manual or Paper based banking transactions Secure Delivery of Payment data to the Bank from multiple ERPs without customization Single Portal for monitoring & administering payment transactions Rule based validation of payments Customer has data necessary for more effective handling of payment and cash management decisions  Business measurements track progress toward payment cost goals  For the Bank: Reduces time & complexity of transactions Simplifies the process of introducing new products to corporate customers Single Payment hub for all corporate ERP payments across multiple instruments New Revenue sources by delivering value added services to customers Leverages existing payment infrastructure Remove Inconsistent data formats and interchange between bank and corporate systems  Compliance and many other benefits

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• Oracle at HR Tech: What a Difference a Year Makes

  - by Natalia Rachelson

  Last week, I had the privilege of attending the famous HR Technology Conference (HR Tech) in my new hometown of Chicago. This annual event, which draws the who of who in the world of HR technology, was by far the biggest.  It wasn't just the highest level of attendance that was mind blowing, but also the amazing quality of attendees. Kudos go to the organizers, especially Bill Kutik for pulling together such a phenomenal conference. Conference highlights included Naomi Bloom's (http://infullbloom.us) Masters Panel and Mark Hurd's General Session on the last day of the conference. Naomi managed to do the seemingly impossible -- get all of the industry heavyweights and fierce competitors to travel to Chicago for her panel. Here are the executives she hosted: Our own Steve Miranda Sanjay Poonen, President Global Solutions, SAP Stan Swete, CTO, Workday Mike Capone, VP for Product Development and CIO, ADP John Wookey, EVP, Social Applications, Salesforce.com Adam Rogers, CTO, Ultimate Software       I bet you think "WOW" when you look at these names. Just this panel by itself would have been enough of a draw for any tech conference, so Naomi and Bill really scored. TechTarget published a great review of the conference here.  And here are a few highlights from Steve. "Steve Miranda, EVP Apps Dev Oracle, said delivering software in the cloud helps vendors shape their products to customer needs more efficiently. "As vendors, we're able to improve the software faster," he said. "We can see in real time what customers are using and not using." Miranda underscored Oracle's commitment to socializing its HCM platform,and named recruiting as an area where social has had a significant impact. "We want to make social a part of the fabric, not a separate piece," he said. "Already, if you're doing recruiting without social, it probably doesn't make any sense."" Having Mark Hurd at the conference was another real treat and everyone took notice.  The Business of HR publication covered Mark's participation at HR Tech and the full article is available here. Here is what Business of HR had to say: "In truth, the story of Oracle today is a story similar to many of the current and potential customers they faced at the conference this week. Their business is changing and growing. They've dealt with acquisitions of their own and their competitors continue to nip at their heels. They are dealing with growth (and yes, they are hiring in case you're interested). They have concerns about talent as well. If Oracle feels as strongly about their products as they seem to be, they will be getting their co-president in front of a lot more groups of current and potential customers like they did at the HR Technology Conference this year. And here's hoping this is one executive who won't stop talking about the importance of talent just because he isn't at the HR tech conference anymore." Natalia RachelsonSenior Director, Oracle Applications

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• Question on the implementation of my Entity System

  - by miguel.martin

  I am currently creating an Entity System, in C++, it is almost completed (I have all the code there, I just have to add a few things and test it). The only thing is, I can't figure out how to implement some features. This Entity System is based off a bit from the Artemis framework, however it is different. I'm not sure if I'll be able to type this out the way my head processing it. I'm going to basically ask whether I should do something over something else. Okay, now I'll give a little detail on my Entity System itself. Here are the basic classes that my Entity System uses to actually work: Entity - An Id (and some methods to add/remove/get/etc Components) Component - An empty abstract class ComponentManager - Manages ALL components for ALL entities within a Scene EntitySystem - Processes entities with specific components Aspect - The class that is used to help determine what Components an Entity must contain so a specific EntitySystem can process it EntitySystemManager - Manages all EntitySystems within a Scene EntityManager - Manages entities (i.e. holds all Entities, used to determine whether an Entity has been changed, enables/disables them, etc.) EntityFactory - Creates (and destroys) entities and assigns an ID to them Scene - Contains an EntityManager, EntityFactory, EntitySystemManager and ComponentManager. Has functions to update and initialise the scene. Now in order for an EntitySystem to efficiently know when to check if an Entity is valid for processing (so I can add it to a specific EntitySystem), it must recieve a message from the EntityManager (after a call of activate(Entity& e)). Similarly the EntityManager must know when an Entity is destroyed from the EntityFactory in the Scene, and also the ComponentManager must know when an Entity is created AND destroyed. I do have a Listener/Observer pattern implemented at the moment, but with this pattern I may remove a Listener (which is this case is dependent on the method being called). I mainly have this implemented for specific things related to a game, i.e. Teams, Tagging of entities, etc. So... I was thinking maybe I should call a private method (using friend classes) to send out when an Entity has been activated, deleted, etc. i.e. taken from my EntityFactory void EntityFactory::killEntity(Entity& e) { // if the entity doesn't exsist in the entity manager within the scene if(!getScene()->getEntityManager().doesExsist(e)) { return; // go back to the caller! (should throw an exception or something..) } // tell the ComponentManager and the EntityManager that we killed an Entity getScene()->getComponentManager().doOnEntityWillDie(e); getScene()->getEntityManager().doOnEntityWillDie(e); // notify the listners for(Mouth::iterator i = getMouth().begin(); i != getMouth().end(); ++i) { (*i)->onEntityWillDie(*this, e); } _idPool.addId(e.getId()); // add the ID to the pool delete &e; // delete the entity } As you can see on the lines where I am telling the ComponentManager and the EntityManager that an Entity will die, I am calling a method to make sure it handles it appropriately. Now I realise I could do this without calling it explicitly, with the help of that for loop notifying all listener objects connected to the EntityFactory's Mouth (an object used to tell listeners that there's an event), however is this a good idea (good design, or what)? I've gone over the PROS and CONS, I just can't decide what I want to do. Calling Explicitly: PROS Faster? Since these functions are explicitly called, they can't be "removed" CONS Not flexible Bad design? (friend functions) Calling through Listener objects (i.e. ComponentManager/EntityManager inherits from a EntityFactoryListener) PROS More Flexible? Better Design? CONS Slower? (virtual functions) Listeners can be removed, i.e. may be removed and not get called again during the program, which could cause in a crash. P.S. If you wish to view my current source code, I am hosting it on BitBucket.

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• Best Practices - Core allocation

  - by jsavit

  This post is one of a series of "best practices" notes for Oracle VM Server for SPARC (also called Logical Domains) Introduction SPARC T-series servers currently have up to 4 CPU sockets, each of which has up to 8 or (on SPARC T3) 16 CPU cores, while each CPU core has 8 threads, for a maximum of 512 dispatchable CPUs. The defining feature of Oracle VM Server for SPARC is that each domain is assigned CPU threads or cores for its exclusive use. This avoids the overhead of software-based time-slicing and emulation (or binary rewriting) of system state-changing privileged instructions used in traditional hypervisors. To create a domain, administrators specify either the number of CPU threads or cores that the domain will own, as well as its memory and I/O resources. When CPU resources are assigned at the individual thread level, the logical domains constraint manager attempts to assign threads from the same cores to a domain, and avoid "split core" situations where the same CPU core is used by multiple domains. Sometimes this is unavoidable, especially when domains are allocated and deallocated CPUs in small increments. Why split cores can matter Split core allocations can silenty reduce performance because multiple domains with different address spaces and memory contents are sharing the core's Level 1 cache (L1$). This is called false cache sharing since even identical memory addresses from different domains must point to different locations in RAM. The effect of this is increased contention for the cache, and higher memory latency for each domain using that core. The degree of performance impact can be widely variable. For applications with very small memory working sets, and with I/O bound or low-CPU utilization workloads, it may not matter at all: all machines wait for work at the same speed. If the domains have substantial workloads, or are critical to performance then this can have an important impact: This blog entry was inspired by a customer issue in which one CPU core was split among 3 domains, one of which was the control and service domain. The reported problem was increased I/O latency in guest domains, but the root cause might be higher latency servicing the I/O requests due to the control domain being slowed down. What to do about it Split core situations are easily avoided. In most cases the logical domain constraint manager will avoid it without any administrative action, but it can be entirely prevented by doing one of the several actions: Assign virtual CPUs in multiples of 8 - the number of threads per core. For example: ldm set-vcpu 8 mydomain or ldm add-vcpu 24 mydomain. Each domain will then be allocated on a core boundary. Use the whole core constraint when assigning CPU resources. This allocates CPUs in increments of entire cores instead of virtual CPU threads. The equivalent of the above commands would be ldm set-core 1 mydomain or ldm add-core 3 mydomain. Older syntax does the same thing by adding the -c flag to the add-vcpu, rm-vcpu and set-vcpu commands, but the new syntax is recommended. When whole core allocation is used an attempt to add cores to a domain fails if there aren't enough completely empty cores to satisfy the request. See https://blogs.oracle.com/sharakan/entry/oracle_vm_server_for_sparc4 for an excellent article on this topic by Eric Sharakan. Don't obsess: - if the workloads have minimal CPU requirements and don't need anywhere near a full CPU core, then don't worry about it. If you have low utilization workloads being consolidated from older machines onto a current T-series, then there's no need to worry about this or to assign an entire core to domains that will never use that much capacity. In any case, make sure the most important domains have their own CPU cores, in particular the control domain and any I/O or service domain, and of course any important guests. Summary Split core CPU allocation to domains can potentially have an impact on performance, but the logical domains manager tends to prevent this situation, and it can be completely and simply avoided by allocating virtual CPUs on core boundaries.

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• Handling "related" work within a single agile work item

  - by Tesserex

  I'm on a project team of 4 devs, myself included. We've been having a long discussion on how to handle extra work that comes up in the course of a single work item. This extra work is usually things that are slightly related to the task, but not always necessary to accomplish the goal of the item (that may be an opinion). Examples include but are not limited to: refactoring of the code changed by the work item refactoring code neighboring the code changed by the item re-architecting the larger code area around the ticket. For example if an item has you changing a single function, you realize the entire class now could be redone to better accommodate this change. improving the UI on a form you just modified When this extra work is small we don't mind. The problem is when this extra work causes a substantial extension of the item beyond the original feature point estimation. Sometimes a 5 point item will actually take 13 points of time. In one case we had a 13 point item that in retrospect could have been 80 points or more. There are two options going around in our discussion for how to handle this. We can accept the extra work in the same work item, and write it off as a mis-estimation. Arguments for this have included: We plan for "padding" at the end of the sprint to account for this sort of thing. Always leave the code in better shape than you found it. Don't check in half-assed work. If we leave refactoring for later, it's hard to schedule and may never get done. You are in the best mental "context" to handle this work now, since you're waist deep in the code already. Better to get it out of the way now and be more efficient than to lose that context when you come back later. We draw a line for the current work item, and say that the extra work goes into a separate ticket. Arguments include: Having a separate ticket allows for a new estimation, so we aren't lying to ourselves about how many points things really are, or having to admit that all of our estimations are terrible. The sprint "padding" is meant for unexpected technical challenges that are direct barriers to completing the ticket requirements. It is not intended for side items that are just "nice-to-haves". If you want to schedule refactoring, just put it at the top of the backlog. There is no way for us to properly account for this stuff in an estimation, since it seems somewhat arbitrary when it comes up. A code reviewer might say "those UI controls (which you actually didn't modify in this work item) are a bit confusing, can you fix that too?" which is like an hour, but they might say "Well if this control now inherits from the same base class as the others, why don't you move all of this (hundreds of lines of) code into the base and rewire all this stuff, the cascading changes, etc.?" And that takes a week. It "contaminates the crime scene" by adding unrelated work into the ticket, making our original feature point estimates meaningless. In some cases, the extra work postpones a check-in, causing blocking between devs. Some of us are now saying that we should decide some cut off, like if the additional stuff is less than 2 FP, it goes in the same ticket, if it's more, make it a new ticket. Since we're only a few months into using Agile, what's the opinion of all the more seasoned Agile veterans around here on how to handle this?

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• Package Version Numbers, why are they so important

  - by Chris W Beal

  One of the design goals of IPS has been to allow people to easily move forward to a supported "Surface" of component. That is to say, when you  # pkg update your system, you get the latest set of components which all work together, based on the packages you already have installed. During development, this has meant simply you update to the latest "build" of the components. (During development, we build everything and publish everything every two weeks). Now we've released Solaris 11 using the IPS technologies, things are a bit more complicated. We need to be able to reflect all the types of Solaris release we are doing. For example Solaris Development builds, Solaris Update builds and "Support Repository Updates" (the replacement for patches) in the version scheme. So simply saying "151" as the build number isn't sufficient to articulate what you are running, or indeed what is available to update to In my previous blog post I talked about creating your own package, and gave an example FMRI of pkg://tools/[email protected],0.5.11-0.0.0 But it's probably more instructive to look at the FMRI of a Solaris package. The package "core-os" contains all the common utilities and daemons you need to use Solaris.  $ pkg info core-os Name: system/core-os Summary: Core Solaris Description: Operating system core utilities, daemons, and configuration files. Category: System/Core State: Installed Publisher: solaris Version: 0.5.11 Build Release: 5.11 Branch: 0.175.0.0.0.2.1 Packaging Date: Wed Oct 19 07:04:57 2011 Size: 25.14 MB FMRI: pkg://solaris/system/[email protected],5.11-0.175.0.0.0.2.1:20111019T070457Z The FMRI is what we will concentrate on here. In this package "solaris" is the publisher. You can use the pkg publisher command to see where the solaris publisher gets it's bits from $ pkg publisher PUBLISHER TYPE STATUS URI solaris origin online http://pkg.oracle.com/solaris/release/ So we can see we get solaris packages from pkg.oracle.com.  The package name is system/core-os. These can be arbitrary length, just to allow you to group similar packages together. Now on the the interesting? bit, the versions, everything after the @ is part of the version. IPS will only upgrade to a "higher" version. [email protected],5.11-0.175.0.0.0.2.1:20111019T070457Z core-os = Package Name0.5.11 = Component - in this case we're saying it's a SunOS 5.11 package, = separator5.11 = Built on version - to indicate what OS version you built the package on- = another separator0.175.0.0.0.2.1 = Branch Version : = yet another separator20111019T070457Z = Time stamp when the package was published So from that we can see the Branch Version seems rather complex. It is necessarily so, to allow us to describe the hierachy of releases we do In this example we see the following 0.175: is known as the trunkid, and is incremented each build of a new release of Solaris. During Solaris 11 this should not change  0: is the Update release for Solaris. 0 for FCS, 1 for update 1 etc 0: is the SRU for Solaris. 0 for FCS, 1 for SRU 1 etc 0: is reserved for future use 2: Build number of the SRU 1: Nightly ID - only important for Solaris developersTake a hypothetical example [email protected],5.11-0.175.1.5.0.4.1:<something> This would be build 4 of SRU 5 of Update 1 of Solaris 11 This is actually documented in a MOS article 1378134.1 Which you can read if you have a support contract.

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• jtreg update, December 2012

  - by jjg

  There is a new version of jtreg available. The primary new feature is support for tests that have been written for use with TestNG, the popular open source testing framework. TestNG is supported by a variety of tools and plugins, which means that it is now possible to develop tests for OpenJDK using those tools, while still retaining the ability to have the tests be part of the OpenJDK test suite, and run with a single test harness, jtreg. jtreg can be downloaded from the OpenJDK jtreg page: http://openjdk.java.net/jtreg. TestNG support jtreg supports both single TestNG tests, which can be freely intermixed with other types of jtreg tests, and groups of TestNG tests. A single TestNG test class can be compiled and run by providing a test description using the new action tag: @run testng classname The test will be executed by using org.testng.TestNG. No main method is required. A group of TestNG tests organized in a standard package hierarchy can also be compiled and run by jtreg. Any such group must be identified by specifying the root directory of the package hierarchy. You can either do this in the top level TEST.ROOT file, or in a TEST.properties file in any subdirectory enclosing the group of tests. In either case, add a line to the file of the form: TestNG.dirs = dir ... Directories beginning with '/' are evaluated relative to the root directory of the test suite; otherwise they are evaluated relative to the directory containing the declaring file. In particular, note that you can simply use "TestNG.dirs = ." in a TEST.properties file in the root directory of the test group's package hierarchy. No additional test descriptions are necessary, but test descriptions containing information tags, such as @bug, @summary, etc are permitted. All the Java source files in the group will be compiled if necessary, before any of the tests in the group are run. The selected tests within the group will be run, one at a time, using org.testng.TestNG. Library classes The specification for the @library tag has been extended so that any paths beginning with '/' will be evaluated relative to the root directory of the test suite. In addition, some bugs have been fixed that prevented sharing the compiled versions of library classes between tests in different directories. Note: This has uncovered some issues in tests that use a combination of @build and @library tags, such that some tests may fail unexpectedly with ClassNotFoundException. The workaround for now is to ensure that library classes are listed before the test classes in any @build tags. To specify one or more library directories for a group of TestNG tests, add a line of the following form to the TEST.properties file in the root directory of the group's package hierarchy: lib.dirs = dir ... As before, directories beginning with '/' are evaluated relative to the root directory of the test suite; otherwise they are evaluated relative to the directory containing the declaring file. The libraries will be available to all classes in the group; you cannot specify different libraries for different tests within the group. Coming soon ... From this point on, jtreg development will be using the new jtreg repository in the OpenJDK code-tools project. There is a new email alias jtreg-dev at openjdk.java.net for discussions about jtreg development. The existing alias jtreg-use at openjdk.java.net will continue to be available for questions about using jtreg. For more information ... An updated version of the jtreg Tag Language Specification is being prepared, and will be made available when it is ready. In the meantime, you can find more information about the support for TestNG by executing the following command: $ jtreg -onlinehelp TestNG For more information on TestNG itself, visit testng.org.

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• Doubts about several best practices for rest api + service layer

  - by TheBeefMightBeTough

  I'm going to be starting a project soon that exposes a restful api for business intelligence. It may not be limited to a restful api, so I plan to delegate requests to a service layer that then coordinates multiple domain objects (each of which have business logic local to the object). The api will likely have many calls as it is a long-term project. While thinking about the design, I recalled a few best practices. 1) Use command objects at the controller layer (I'm using Spring MVC). 2) Use DTOs at the service layer. 3) Validate in both the controller and service layer, though for different reasons. I have my doubts about these recommendations. 1) Using command objects adds a lot of extra single-purpose classes (potentially one per request). What exactly is the benefit? Annotation based validation can be done using this approach, sure. What if I have two requests that take the same parameters, but have different validation requirements? I would have to have two different classes with exactly the same members but different annotations? Bleh. 2) I have heard that using DTOs is preferable to parameters because it makes for more maintainable code down the road (say, e.g., requirements change and the service parameters need to be altered). I don't quite understand this. Shouldn't an api be more-or-less set in stone? I would understand that in the early phases of a project (or, especially, an entire company) the domain itself will not be well understood, and thus core domain objects may change along with the apis that manipulate these objects. At this point however the number of api methods should be small and their dependents few, so changes to the methods could easily be tolerated from a maintainability standpoint. In a large api with many methods and a substantial domain model, I would think having a DTO for potentially each domain object would become unwieldy. Am I misunderstanding something here? 3) I see validation in the controller and service layer as redundant in most cases. Why would I validate that parameters are not null and are in general well formed in the controller if the service is going to do exactly the same (and more). Couldn't I just do all the validation in the service and throw a runtime exception with a list of bad parameters then catch that in the controller to make the error messages more presentable? Better yet, couldn't I just make the error messages user-friendly in the service and let the exception trickle up to a global handler (ControllerAdvice in spring, for example)? Is there something wrong with either of these approaches? (I do see a use case for controller validation if the input does not map one-to-one with the service input, but since the controllers are for a rest api and not forms, the api parameters will probably map directly to service parameters.) I do also have a question about unchecked vs checked exceptions. Namely, I'm not really sure why I'd ever want to use a checked exception. Every time I have seen them used they just get wrapped into general exceptions (DomainException, SystemException, ApplicationException, w/e) to reduce the signature length of methods, or devs catch Exception rather than dealing with the App1Exception, App2Exception, Sys1Exception, Sys2Exception. I don't see how either of these practices is very useful. Why not just use unchecked exceptions always and catch the ones you actually do care about? You could just document what unchecked exceptions the method throws.

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• The Evolution of Oracle Direct EMEA by John McGann

  - by user769227

  John is expanding his Dublin based team and is currently recruiting a Director with marketing and sales leadership experience: http://bit.ly/O8PyDF Should you wish to apply, please send your CV to [email protected] Hi, my name is John McGann and I am part of the Oracle Direct management team, based in Dublin.   Today I’m writing from the Oracle London City office, right in the heart of the financial district and up to very recently at the centre of a fantastic Olympic Games. The Olympics saw individuals and teams from across the globe competing to decide who is Citius, Altius, Fortius - “Faster, Higher, Stronger" There are lots of obvious parallels between the competitive world of the Olympics and the Business environments that many of us operate in, but there are also some interesting differences – especially in my area of responsibility within Oracle. We are of course constantly striving to be the best - the best solution on offer for our clients, bringing simplicity to their management, consumption and application of information technology, and the best provider when compared with our many niche competitors.   In Oracle and especially in Oracle Direct, a key aspect of how we achieve this is what sets us apart from the Olympians.  We have long ago eliminated geographic boundaries as a limitation to what we can achieve. We assemble the strongest individuals across multiple countries and bring them together in teams focussed on a single goal. One such team is the Oracle Direct Sales Programs team. In case you don’t know, Oracle Direct EMEA (Europe Middle East and Africa) is the inside sales division in Oracle and it is where I started my Oracle career.  I remember that my first role involved putting direct mail in envelopes.... things have moved on a bit since then – for me, for Oracle Direct and in how we interact with our customers. Today, the team of over 1000 people is located in the different Oracle Direct offices around Europe – the main ones are Malaga, Berlin, Prague and Dubai plus the headquarters in Dublin. We work in over 20 languages and are in constant contact with current and future Oracle customers, using the latest internet and telephone technologies to effectively communicate and collaborate with each other, our customers and prospects. One of my areas of responsibility within Oracle Direct is the Sales Programs team. This team of 25 people manages the planning and execution of demand generation, leading the process of finding new and incremental revenue within Oracle Direct. The Sales Programs Managers or ‘SPMs’ are embedded within each of the Oracle Direct sales teams, focussed on distinct geographies or product groups. The SPMs are virtual members of the regional sales management teams, and work closely with the sales and marketing teams to define and deliver demand generation activities. The customer contact elements of these activities are executed via the Oracle Direct Sales and Business Development/Lead Generation teams, to deliver the pipeline required to meet our revenue goals. Activities can range from pan-EMEA joint sales and marketing campaigns, to very localised niche campaigns. The campaigns might focus on particular segments of our existing customers, introducing elements of our evolving solution portfolio which customers may not be familiar with. The Sales Programs team also manages ‘Nurture’ activities to ensure that we develop potential business opportunities with contacts and organisations that do not have immediate requirements. Looking ahead, it is really important that we continue to evolve our ability to add value to our clients and reduce the physical limitations of our distance from them through the innovative application of technology. This enables us to enhance the customer buying experience and to enable the Inside Sales teams to manage ever more complex sales cycles from start to finish.  One of my expectations of my team is to actively drive innovation in how we leverage data to better understand our customers, and exploit emerging technologies to better communicate with them.   With the rate of innovation and acquisition within Oracle, we need to ensure that existing and potential customers are aware of all we have to offer that relates to their business goals.   We need to achieve this via a coherent communication and sales strategy to effectively target the right people using the most effective medium. This is another area where the Sales Programs team plays a key role.

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• To SYNC or not to SYNC – Part 4

  - by AshishRay

  This is Part 4 of a multi-part blog article where we are discussing various aspects of setting up Data Guard synchronous redo transport (SYNC). In Part 1 of this article, I debunked the myth that Data Guard SYNC is similar to a two-phase commit operation. In Part 2, I discussed the various ways that network latency may or may not impact a Data Guard SYNC configuration. In Part 3, I talked in details regarding why Data Guard SYNC is a good thing, and the distance implications you have to keep in mind. In this final article of the series, I will talk about how you can nicely complement Data Guard SYNC with the ability to failover in seconds. Wait - Did I Say “Seconds”? Did I just say that some customers do Data Guard failover in seconds? Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. Data Guard has an automatic failover capability, aptly called Fast-Start Failover. Initially available with Oracle Database 10g Release 2 for Data Guard SYNC transport mode (and enhanced in Oracle Database 11g to support Data Guard ASYNC transport mode), this capability, managed by Data Guard Broker, lets your Data Guard configuration automatically failover to a designated standby database. Yes, this means no human intervention is required to do the failover. This process is controlled by a low footprint Data Guard Broker client called Observer, which makes sure that the primary database and the designated standby database are behaving like good kids. If something bad were to happen to the primary database, the Observer, after a configurable threshold period, tells that standby, “Your time has come, you are the chosen one!” The standby dutifully follows the Observer directives by assuming the role of the new primary database. The DBA or the Sys Admin doesn’t need to be involved. And - in case you are following this discussion very closely, and are wondering … “Hmmm … what if the old primary is not really dead, but just network isolated from the Observer or the standby - won’t this lead to a split-brain situation?” The answer is No - It Doesn’t. With respect to why-it-doesn’t, I am sure there are some smart DBAs in the audience who can explain the technical reasons. Otherwise - that will be the material for a future blog post. So - this combination of SYNC and Fast-Start Failover is the nirvana of lights-out, integrated HA and DR, as practiced by some of our advanced customers. They have observed failover times (with no data loss) ranging from single-digit seconds to tens of seconds. With this, they support operations in industry verticals such as manufacturing, retail, telecom, Internet, etc. that have the most demanding availability requirements. One of our leading customers with massive cloud deployment initiatives tells us that they know about server failures only after Data Guard has automatically completed the failover process and the app is back up and running! Needless to mention, Data Guard Broker has the integration hooks for interfaces such as JDBC and OCI, or even for custom apps, to ensure the application gets automatically rerouted to the new primary database after the database level failover completes. Net Net? To sum up this multi-part blog article, Data Guard with SYNC redo transport mode, plus Fast-Start Failover, gives you the ideal triple-combo - that is, it gives you the assurance that for critical outages, you can failover your Oracle databases: very fast without human intervention, and without losing any data. In short, it takes the element of risk out of critical IT operations. It does require you to be more careful with your network and systems planning, but as far as HA is concerned, the benefits outweigh the investment costs. So, this is what we in the MAA Development Team believe in. What do you think? How has your deployment experience been? We look forward to hearing from you!

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• At the Java DEMOgrounds - Oracle Java ME Embedded Enables the “Internet of Things”

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  I caught up with Oracle’s Robert Barnes, Senior Director, Java Product Management, who was demonstrating a new product from Oracle’s Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME) product portfolio, Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2, a complete client Java runtime optimized for microcontrollers and other resource-constrained devices. Oracle’s Java ME Embedded 3.2 is a Java ME runtime based on CLDC 1.1 (JSR-139) and IMP-NG (JSR-228).“What we are showing here is the Java ME Embedded 3.2 that we announced last week,” explained Barnes. “It’s the start of the 'Internet of Things,’ in which you have very very small devices that are on the edge of the network where the sensors sit. You often have a middle area called a gateway or a concentrator which is fairly middle to higher performance. On the back end you have a very high performance server. What this is showing is Java spanning all the way from the server side right down towards the type of chip that you will get at the sensor side as the network.” Barnes explained that he had two different demos running.The first, called the Solar Panel System Demo, measures the brightness of the light.  “This,” said Barnes, “is a light source demo with a Cortex M3 controlling the motor, on the end of which is a sensor which is measuring the brightness of the lamp. This is recording the data of the brightness of the lamp and as we move the lamp out of the way, we should be able using the server to turn the sensor towards the lamp so the brightness reading will go higher. This sends the message back to the server and we can look at the web server sitting on the PC underneath the desk. We can actually see the data being passed back effectively through a back office type of function within a utility environment.” The second demo, the Smart Grid Response Demo, Barnes explained, “has the same board and processor and is still using Java ME embedded with a different app on top. This is a demand response demo. What we are seeing within the managing environment is that people want to track the pricing signals of the electricity. If it’s particularly expensive at any point in time, they may turn something off. This demo sets the price of the electricity as though this is coming from the back of the server sending pricing signals to my home.” The demo had a lamp and a fan and it was tracking the price of electricity. “If I set the price of the electricity to go over 5 cents, then the device will turn off,” explained Barnes. “I can go into my settings and, in this case, change the price to 50 cents and we can wait a minus and the lamp will go off. When I change the pricing signal so that it is lower, the lamp will come back on. The key point is that the Java software we have running is the same across all the different devices; it’s a way to build applications across multiple devices using the same software. This is important because it fixes peak loading on the network and can stops blackouts.” This demo brought me back to a prior decade when Sun Microsystems first promoted  Jini technology, a version of Java that would put everything on the network and give us the smart home. Your home would be automated to tell you when you were out of milk, when to change your light bulbs, etc. You would have access to the web and the network throughout your home.It’s interesting to see how technology moves over time – from the smart home to the Internet of Things.

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• The Healthy Tension That Mobility Creates

  - by Kathryn Perry

  A guest post by Hernan Capdevila, Vice President, Oracle Fusion Apps In my previous post, I talked about the value of the mobile revolution on businesses and workers. Now let me put on a different hat and view the world from the IT department and the IT leader’s viewpoint. The IT leader has different concerns – around privacy, potential liability of information leakage, and intellectual property protection. These concerns and the leader’s goals create a healthy tension with the users. For example, effective device management becomes a must have for the IT leader, especially if you look at the Android ecosystem as an example. There are benefits to the Android strategy, but there are also drawbacks, such as uniformity – in device management, in operating systems, and in the application taxonomy and capabilities. Whereas, if you compare Android to iOS, Apple's operating system, iOS is more unified, more streamlined, and easier to manage. In either case, this is where mobile device management in the cloud makes good sense. I don't think IT departments should be hosting device management and managing that complexity. It should be a cloud service and I predict it's going to be key for our customers. A New Focus for IT Departments So where does that leave the IT departments? I think their futures are in governance, which is a more strategic play than a tactical one. Device management is tactical and it's the “now” topic. But the mobile phenomenon, if you will, is going to drive significant change in terms of how IT plans, hosts, and deploys enterprise applications. For example, opening up enterprise applications for mobile users presents some challenges unless you deploy more complicated network topologies, such as virtual private networks and threat protection technology. If you really want employees to be mobile you need to remove those kinds of barriers. But I don’t think IT departments want to wrestle with exposing their private enterprise data centers and being responsible for hosted business applications – applications in a sense that they’re making vulnerable to the public world. This opens up a significant need and a significant driver for cloud applications. However, it's not just about taking away the complexity – it's also about taking away the responsibility. Why should every business have to carry the responsibility and figure out all the nuts and bolts of how to protect themselves in this public, mobile world? When you use apps in the cloud, either your vendor or your hosting partner should have figured all that out. They need to assure the business that they are adhering to all sorts of security and compliance regulations so users can be connected and have access to information anywhere anytime. More Ideas and Better Service What’s more interesting is the world of possibilities that the connected, cloud-based world enables. I believe that the one-size-fits-all, uber-best practices, lowest-common denominator-like capabilities will go away. IT will now be able to solve very specific business challenges for the different corporate functions it serves. In this new world, IT will play a key role in enabling different organizations within a company to be best in class and delivering greater value to the line of business managers. IT will actually help to differentiate. Net result is a more agile workforce and business because each department is getting work done its own way.

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• Fixing some Visual Studio RC install issues

  - by terje

  The Visual Studio RC has shown some install issues in some cases, particularly for those who upgrades from VS 11 Beta.  I have listed the fixes known now below, and will update if there are more issues.  Note that a repair will not fix the issue, and a Windows restore and subsequent reinstall may not fix it either.  The system seems to remember too much. That was the case for me, at least.  The fixes below however, cures these issues. 1. The Team Explorer Build node doesn’t work You get an error saying System.TypeLoadException like this: To solve this do as follows: 1. Open a command prompt as administrator 2. Go to your program files directory for VS 2012 and down to  the extension folder like:   C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\TeamFoundation\Team Explorer 3. Run “gacutil –if Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Build.Controls.dll     2. The SQL Editor gives loading error When you start up VS 2012 RC you get a loading error message.  The same happens if you try to go from the menu to  SQL/Transact-SQL Editor/New Query.    To solve this do as follows: 1. Open Control Panel/Programs and Features 2. Locate the “Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Data-Tier App Framework     (Note , you might find up to 4 such instances) The ones with version numbers ending in 55 is from the SQL 2012 RC, the ones ending in 60 is from the SQL 2012 RTM.  There are two of each, one for x32 and one for x64.  Which is which no one knows. 3. Right click each of them, and select Repair. (It would be nice if someone with this issue tries only the latest RTM ones, and see if that clears the error, and comment back to this post. I am out of non-functioning VS’s )   3.  Errors referring to some extension You get errors referring to some extension that can’t be loaded, or can’t be found.  Check the activity log (see below), and verify there.  If you see yellow collision warnings there, the fix here should solve those too. To solve these:    1. Open a Visual Studio 2012 command prompt 2.  Run:   devenv /resetsettings     How to check for errors using the log Do as follows to get to the activity log for Visual studio 2012 RC 1. Open a Visual Studio 2012 command prompt 2. Run:   devenv /log This starts up Visual Studio.  3. Go to %appdata%/Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0 4. Double click the file named ActivityLog.xml.  It will start up in your browser, and be formatted using the xslt in the same directory. 5.  Look for items marked in red.  Example for Issue 1 :

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• The inevitable Hello World post!

  - by brendonpage

  Greetings to anyone reading this! This is my first of hopefully many posts. I would like to use this post to introduce myself and to let you know what to expect from this blog in future. Okay so a bit about myself. In case you missed the name of this blog, my name is Brendon Page! I am a Software Developer from South Africa and work for a small company who’s main focus is producing software for the kitchen cupboard industry, although from time to time we do produce custom solutions for other industries. I work in a small team of 3, including myself, and am fortunate enough to work from home! I have been involved in IT since 1996, which is when I got my first PC, and started working as a junior programmer in 2003. Outside of work I enjoy playing squash, PC Games and of course LANing with my friends. If I get any free time between all of that I will usually dedicate some of it to a personal project, these are mainly prototypes for an idea I have had or for something that could be useful at work. I was in 2 minds on whether to include a photo of myself. The reason for this was because while I was looking for a suitable photo to use, it dawned on me how much time I dedicate to pulling funny faces in photos! I also realized how little I shave, which I blame completely on working form home. So after much debate here I am, funny face, beard and all!   Now that you know a bit about me lets move onto what expect from this blog. I work predominantly with Microsoft technologies so most if not all of my posts will be related to something Microsoft. Since most of my job entails Software Development you can expect a lot of posts which will deal with the .NET Framework. I am currently working on a large Silverlight project, so my first few posts will be targeted at in that direction. I will be striving to make the content of my posts as useful as possible from both an explanation and code perspective, I aim to include a working solution for every post, which I will put up on my skydrive for download. Here is what I have planned for my next few posts: Where did my session variables go?  Here I will take you through the lessons I learnt the hard way about the ASP.NET session. I am not going to go into to much depth in this post, as there is already a lot of information available on it. I mainly want to cover it in an effort to keep the scope creep of my posts to a minimum, some the solutions I upload will use it and I would like to have a post that I can reference to explain why I am doing something a certain way. Uploading files through SIlverlight Again there is a lot of existing information on this topic, so I wont be going into to much depth, but I will be using the solution from this as a base for my next post. Generating and Displaying DeepZoom images dynamically in Silverlight Well the title pretty much speaks for it’s self on this one. As I mentioned I will be building off the solution that I create in my ‘Uploading files through Silverlight’ post. Securing DeepZoom images using a custom implementation of the MultiScaleTileSource In this post I will look at the privacy issue surrounding the default usage of DeepZoom images in Silverlight and how to overcome it. This makes the use of DeepZoom in privacy conscious applications more viable. Thanks to anyone who actually read this post! I look forward to producing more which will hopefully be helpful to you.

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• Exadata X3, 11.2.3.2 and Oracle Platinum Services

  - by Rene Kundersma

  Oracle recently announced an Exadata Hardware Update. The overall architecture will remain the same, however some interesting hardware refreshes are done especially for the storage server (X3-2L). Each cell will now have 1600GB of flash, this means an X3-2 full rack will have 20.3 TB of total flash ! For all the details I would like to refer to the Oracle Exadata product page: www.oracle.com/exadata Together with the announcement of the X3 generation. A new Exadata release, 11.2.3.2 is made available. New Exadata systems will be shipped with this release and existing installations can be updated to that release. As always there is a storage cell patch and a patch for the compute node, which again needs to be applied using YUM. Instructions and requirements for patching existing Exadata compute nodes to 11.2.3.2 using YUM can be found in the patch README. Depending on the release you have installed on your compute nodes the README will direct you to a particular section in MOS note 1473002.1. MOS 1473002.1 should only be followed with the instructions from the 11.2.3.2 patch README. Like with 11.2.3.1.0 and 11.2.3.1.1 instructions are added to prepare your systems to use YUM for the first time in case you are still on release 11.2.2.4.2 and earlier. You will also find these One Time Setup instructions in MOS note 1473002.1 By default compute nodes that will be updated to 11.2.3.2.0 will have the UEK kernel. Before 11.2.3.2.0 the 'compatible kernel' was used for the compute nodes. For 11.2.3.2.0 customer will have the choice to replace the UEK kernel with the Exadata standard 'compatible kernel' which is also in the ULN 11.2.3.2 channel. Recommended is to use the kernel that is installed by default. One of the other great new things 11.2.3.2 brings is Writeback Flashcache (wbfc). By default wbfc is disabled after the upgrade to 11.2.3.2. Enable wbfc after patching on the storage servers of your test environment and see the improvements this brings for your applications. Writeback FlashCache can be enabled  by dropping the existing FlashCache, stopping the cellsrv process and changing the FlashCacheMode attribute of the cell. Of course stopping cellsrv can only be done in a controlled manner. Steps: drop flashcache alter cell shutdown services cellsrv again, cellsrv can only be stopped in a controlled manner alter cell flashCacheMode = WriteBack alter cell startup services cellsrv create flashcache all Going back to WriteThrough FlashCache is also possible, but only after flushing the FlashCache: alter cell flashcache all flush Last item I like to highlight in particular is already from a while ago, but a great thing to emphasis: Oracle Platinum Services. On top of the remote fault monitoring with faster response times Oracle has included update and patch deployment services.These services are delivered by Oracle Advanced Customer Support at no additional costs for qualified Oracle Premier Support customers. References: 11.2.3.2.0 README Exadata YUM Repository Population, One-Time Setup Configuration and YUM upgrades  1473002.1 Oracle Platinum Services

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-06-29

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Backward-compatible vs. forward-compatible: a tale of two clouds | William Vambenepe "There is the Cloud that provides value by requiring as few changes as possible. And there is the Cloud that provides value by raising the abstraction and operation level," says William Vambenepe. "The backward-compatible Cloud versus the forward-compatible Cloud." Vambenepe was a panelist on the recent ArchBeat podcast Public, Private, and Hybrid Clouds. Andrejus Baranovskis's Blog: ADF 11g PS5 Application with Customized BPM Worklist Task Flow (MDS Seeded Customization) Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovskis investigates "how you can customize a standard BPM Task Flow through MDS Seeded customization." Oracle OpenWorld 2012 Music Festival If, after a day spent in sessions at Oracle Openworld, you want nothing more than to head back to your hotel for a quiet evening spent responding to email, please ignore the rest of this message. Because every night from Sept 30 to Oct 4 the streets of San Francisco will pulsate with music from a vast array of bands representing more musical styles than a single human brain an comprehend. It's the first ever Oracle Music Festival, baby, 7:00pm to 1:00am every night. Are those emails that important...? Resource Kit: Oracle Exadata - includes demos, videos, product datasheets, and technical white papers. This free resource kit includes several customer case study videos, two 3D product demos, several product datasheets, and three technical architecture white papers. Registration is required for the who don't already have a free Oracle.com membership account. Some execs contemplate making 'Bring Your Own Device' mandatory | ZDNet "Companies and agencies are recognizing that individual employees are doing a better job of handling and managing their devices than their harried and overworked IT departments – who need to focus on bigger priorities, such as analytics and cloud," says ZDNet SOA blogger Joe McKendrick. Podcast Show Notes: Public, Private, and Hybrid Clouds All three parts of this discussion are now available. Featuring a panel of leading Oracle cloud computing experts, including Dr. James Baty, Mark T. Nelson, Ajay Srivastava, and William Vambenepe, the discussion covers an overview of the various flavors of cloud computing, the importance of standards, Why cloud computing is a paradigm shift—and why it isn't, and advice on what architects need to know to take advantage of the cloud. And for those who prefer reading to listening, a complete transcript is also available. Amazon AMIs and Oracle VM templates (Cloud Migrations) Cloud migration expert Tom Laszewski shares an objective comparison of these two resources. IOUC : Blogs : Read the latest news on the global user group community - June 2012! The June 2012 edition of "Are You a Member Yet?"—the quarterly newsletter about Oracle user group communities around the world. Webcast: Introducing Identity Management 11g R2 - July 19 Date: Thursday, July 19, 2012 Time: 10am PT / 1pm ET Please join Oracle and customer executives for the launch of Oracle Identity Management 11g R2, the breakthrough technology that dramatically expands the reach of identity management to cloud and mobile environments. Thought for the Day "The most important single aspect of software development is to be clear about what you are trying to build." — Bjarne Stroustrup Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• Organization &amp; Architecture UNISA Studies &ndash; Chap 6

  - by MarkPearl

  Learning Outcomes Discuss the physical characteristics of magnetic disks Describe how data is organized and accessed on a magnetic disk Discuss the parameters that play a role in the performance of magnetic disks Describe different optical memory devices Magnetic Disk The way data is stored on and retried from magnetic disks Data is recorded on and later retrieved form the disk via a conducting coil named the head (in many systems there are two heads) The writ mechanism exploits the fact that electricity flowing through a coil produces a magnetic field. Electric pulses are sent to the write head, and the resulting magnetic patterns are recorded on the surface below with different patterns for positive and negative currents The physical characteristics of a magnetic disk   Summarize from book   The factors that play a role in the performance of a disk Seek time – the time it takes to position the head at the track Rotational delay / latency – the time it takes for the beginning of the sector to reach the head Access time – the sum of the seek time and rotational delay Transfer time – the time it takes to transfer data RAID The rate of improvement in secondary storage performance has been considerably less than the rate for processors and main memory. Thus secondary storage has become a bit of a bottleneck. RAID works on the concept that if one disk can be pushed so far, additional gains in performance are to be had by using multiple parallel components. Points to note about RAID… RAID is a set of physical disk drives viewed by the operating system as a single logical drive Data is distributed across the physical drives of an array in a scheme known as striping Redundant disk capacity is used to store parity information, which guarantees data recoverability in case of a disk failure (not supported by RAID 0 or RAID 1) Interesting to note that the increase in the number of drives, increases the probability of failure. To compensate for this decreased reliability RAID makes use of stored parity information that enables the recovery of data lost due to a disk failure.   The RAID scheme consists of 7 levels…   Category Level Description Disks Required Data Availability Large I/O Data Transfer Capacity Small I/O Request Rate Striping 0 Non Redundant N Lower than single disk Very high Very high for both read and write Mirroring 1 Mirrored 2N Higher than RAID 2 – 5 but lower than RAID 6 Higher than single disk Up to twice that of a signle disk for read Parallel Access 2 Redundant via Hamming Code N + m Much higher than single disk Highest of all listed alternatives Approximately twice that of a single disk Parallel Access 3 Bit interleaved parity N + 1 Much higher than single disk Highest of all listed alternatives Approximately twice that of a single disk Independent Access 4 Block interleaved parity N + 1 Much higher than single disk Similar to RAID 0 for read, significantly lower than single disk for write Similar to RAID 0 for read, significantly lower than single disk for write Independent Access 5 Block interleaved parity N + 1 Much higher than single disk Similar to RAID 0 for read, lower than single disk for write Similar to RAID 0 for read, generally  lower than single disk for write Independent Access 6 Block interleaved parity N + 2 Highest of all listed alternatives Similar to RAID 0 for read; lower than RAID 5 for write Similar to RAID 0 for read, significantly lower than RAID 5  for write   Read page 215 – 221 for detailed explanation on RAID levels Optical Memory There are a variety of optical-disk systems available. Read through the table on page 222 – 223 Some of the devices include… CD CD-ROM CD-R CD-RW DVD DVD-R DVD-RW Blue-Ray DVD Magnetic Tape Most modern systems use serial recording – data is lade out as a sequence of bits along each track. The typical recording used in serial is referred to as serpentine recording. In this technique when data is being recorded, the first set of bits is recorded along the whole length of the tape. When the end of the tape is reached the heads are repostioned to record a new track, and the tape is again recorded on its whole length, this time in the opposite direction. That process continued back and forth until the tape is full. To increase speed, the read-write head is capable of reading and writing a number of adjacent tracks simultaneously. Data is still recorded serially along individual tracks, but blocks in sequence are stored on adjacent tracks as suggested. A tape drive is a sequential access device. Magnetic tape was the first kind of secondary memory. It is still widely used as the lowest-cost, slowest speed member of the memory hierarchy.

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• How to translate along Z axis in OpenTK

  - by JeremyJAlpha

  I am playing around with an OpenGL sample application I downloaded for Xamarin-Android. The sample application produces a rotating colored cube I would simply like to edit it so that the rotating cube is translated along the Z axis and disappears into the distance. I modified the code by: adding an cumulative variable to store my Z distance, adding GL.Enable(All.DepthBufferBit) - unsure if I put it in the right place, adding GL.Translate(0.0f, 0.0f, Depth) - before the rotate functions, Result: cube rotates a couple of times then disappears, it seems to be getting clipped out of the frustum. So my question is what is the correct way to use and initialize the Z buffer and get the cube to travel along the Z axis? I am sure I am missing some function calls but am unsure of what they are and where to put them. I apologise in advance as this is very basic stuff but am still learning :P, I would appreciate it if anyone could show me the best way to get the cube to still rotate but to also move along the Z axis. I have commented all my modifications in the code: // This gets called when the drawing surface is ready protected override void OnLoad (EventArgs e) { // this call is optional, and meant to raise delegates // in case any are registered base.OnLoad (e); // UpdateFrame and RenderFrame are called // by the render loop. This is takes effect // when we use 'Run ()', like below UpdateFrame += delegate (object sender, FrameEventArgs args) { // Rotate at a constant speed for (int i = 0; i < 3; i ++) rot [i] += (float) (rateOfRotationPS [i] * args.Time); }; RenderFrame += delegate { RenderCube (); }; GL.Enable(All.DepthBufferBit); //Added by Noob GL.Enable(All.CullFace); GL.ShadeModel(All.Smooth); GL.Hint(All.PerspectiveCorrectionHint, All.Nicest); // Run the render loop Run (30); } void RenderCube () { GL.Viewport(0, 0, viewportWidth, viewportHeight); GL.MatrixMode (All.Projection); GL.LoadIdentity (); if ( viewportWidth > viewportHeight ) { GL.Ortho(-1.5f, 1.5f, 1.0f, -1.0f, -1.0f, 1.0f); } else { GL.Ortho(-1.0f, 1.0f, -1.5f, 1.5f, -1.0f, 1.0f); } GL.MatrixMode (All.Modelview); GL.LoadIdentity (); Depth -= 0.02f; //Added by Noob GL.Translate(0.0f,0.0f,Depth); //Added by Noob GL.Rotate (rot[0], 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f); GL.Rotate (rot[1], 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f); GL.Rotate (rot[2], 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f); GL.ClearColor (0, 0, 0, 1.0f); GL.Clear (ClearBufferMask.ColorBufferBit); GL.VertexPointer(3, All.Float, 0, cube); GL.EnableClientState (All.VertexArray); GL.ColorPointer (4, All.Float, 0, cubeColors); GL.EnableClientState (All.ColorArray); GL.DrawElements(All.Triangles, 36, All.UnsignedByte, triangles); SwapBuffers (); }

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• Ubuntu keyboard shortcuts - two-part question

  - by Don

  Background: I come from a Windows background and just started dual-booting Ubuntu (my first Linux experience) about 4 days ago. So my systems are Windows 7/Ubuntu 12.04, and so far I'm loving Ubuntu. I am a dedicated mouse-abolitionist (trackpads are hell) and do most of my browsing and navigation with keyboard shortcuts. However, on switching to Ubuntu, a lot of my keyboard shortcuts are gone, and my productivity has resultantly taken a huge hit anytime I am using Ubuntu. Problem 1: My computer was designed to display on-screen notifications for a second when I hit caps-lock or num-lock, and there are no constant indicators of the lock status (LEDs, etc). In Ubuntu, the keys still worked, but the notifications were gone. Googling got me a tutorial on key-binding(Compiz) and scripts, so now I have capslock and numlock running this script: #!/bin/bash icon="/usr/share/icons/gnome/scalable/devices/keyboard.svg" case $1 in 'scrl') mask=3 key="Scroll" ;; 'num') mask=2 key="Num" ;; 'caps') mask=1 key="Caps" ;; esac value=$(xset q | grep "LED mask" | sed -r "s/.*LED mask:\s+[0-9a-fA-F]+([0-9a-fA-F]).*/\1/") if [ $(( 0x$value & 0x$mask )) == $mask ] then output="$key Lock" output2="On" else output="$key Lock" output2="Off" fi notify-send -i $icon "$output" "$output2" -t 1000 But, whether turning it off or on, the notifications always say that I have turned it on. Is there an easy fix for this, or an easier way to work it to get it do display the CORRECT notifications? Problem 2: I'm not sure if this is because of my keyboard or Ubuntu. In Windows, I use Chrome and use the ctrl+pgUp/pgDwn shortcuts quite a bit to switch between tabs. On my keyboard, I can enter pgUp and pgDwn by either disabling NumLock and hitting 9 or 3 respectively on the 10key. Alternately I can hold the fn key and hit up or down arrow. The first method is the one I very heavily relied upon, and it works in Firefox for Ubuntu, but not in Chrome nor in Chromium. The second method (ctrl + fn + up/down) works fine in Chrome. However, I'd dearly like to find a method to make the first method work. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance for your help. Update: @julien: I've checked the keyboard layout options - I didn't find anything that seemed useful for this goal. @Marty: The script runs once when the button is pressed. In Compiz, I've tied those two keys to the script, so when I press the button, it runs the script with the button pressed as a parameter. Update: @elmicha: Thanks. That one works a lot better, and it even pops an icon into the status bar when caps lock is on. There's still a very slight problem in that if I quickly tap the key twice, the image will show that it has been turned on and then turned off, and the notifaction will come and go from my status area, but the text of both notifications will be "Caps Lock on". Same with Num Lock. However, if the time between presses is long enough for the first notification to disappear, everything displays correctly. Given how quickly the notifications disappear, I don't expect this will pose too much of a problem for me.

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• Unable to Sign in to the Microsoft Online Services Signin application from Windows 7 client located behind ISA firewall

  - by Ravindra Pamidi

  A while ago i helped a customer troubleshoot authentication problem with Microsoft Online Services Signin application.  This customer was evaluating Microsoft BPOS (Business Productivity Online Services) and was having trouble using the single sign on application behind ISA 2004 firewall.The network structure is fairly simple with single Windows 2003 Active Directory domain and Windows 7 clients. On a successful logon to the Microsoft Online Services Signin application, this application provides single signon functionality to all of Microsoft online services in the BPOS package. Symptoms:When trying to signin it fails with error "The service is currently unavailable. Please try again later. If problems continue, contact your service administrator". If ISA 2004 firewall is removed from the picture the authentication succeeds.Troubleshooting: Enabled ISA Server firewall logging along with Microsoft Network Monitor tool on the Windows 7 Client while reproducing the issue. Analysis of the ISA Server Firewall logs and Microsoft Network capture revealed that the Microsoft Online Services Sign In application when sending request to ISA Server does not send the domain credentials and as a result ISA Server responds with an error code of HTTP 407 Proxy authentication required listing out the supported authentication mechanisms.  The application in question is expected to send the credentials of the domain user in response to this request. However in this case, it fails to send the logged on user's domain credentials. Bit of researching on the Internet revealed that The "Microsoft Online Services Sign In" application by default does not support Outbound Internet Proxy authentication. In order for it to send the logged on user's domain credentials we had to make  changes to its configuration file "SignIn.exe.config" located under "Program Files\Microsoft Online Services\Sign In" folder. Step by Step details to configure the configuration file are documented on Microsoft TechNet website given below.  Configure your outbound authenticating proxy serverhttp://www.microsoft.com/online/help/en-us/helphowto/cc54100d-d149-45a9-8e96-f248ecb1b596.htm After the above problem was addressed we were still not able to use the "Microsoft Online Services Sign In" application and it failed with the same error.  Analysis of another network capture revealed that the application in question is now sending the required credentials and the connection seems to terminate at a later stage. Enabled verbose logging for the "Microsoft Online Services Sign In" application and then reproduced the problem. Analysis of the logs revealed a time difference between the local client and Microsoft Online services server of around seven minutes which is above the acceptable time skew of five minutes. Excerpt from Microsoft Online Services Sign In application verbose log:  1/26/2012 1:57:51 PM Verbose SingleSignOn.GetSSOGenericInterface SSO Interface URL: https://signinservice.apac.microsoftonline.com/ssoservice/UID1/26/2012 1:57:52 PM Exception SSOSignIn.SignIn The security timestamp is invalid because its creation time ('2012-01-26T08:34:52.767Z') is in the future. Current time is '2012-01-26T08:27:52.987Z' and allowed clock skew is '00:05:00'.1/26/2012 1:57:52 PM Exception SSOSignIn.SignIn  Although the Windows 7 Clients successfully synchronized time to the domain controller for the domain, the domain controller was not configured to synchronize time with external NTP servers. This caused a gradual drift in time on the network thus resulting in the above issue. Reconfigured the domain controller holding the PDC FSMO role to synchronize time with external time source ( time.nist.gov ) and edited the system policy on the ISA server firewall to allow NTP traffic to time.nist.gov Configure the time source for the forest:Windows Time Servicehttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc794937(WS.10).aspx Forced synchronization of Windows time using the command w32tm /resync on the domain controller and later on the clients each of which had corrected the seven minutes difference. This resolved the problem with logon to Microsoft Online Services Sign In.

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• Oracle GoldenGate Active-Active Part 1

  - by Nick_W

  My name is Nick Wagner, and I'm a recent addition to the Oracle Maximum Availability Architecture (MAA) product management team.  I've spent the last 15+ years working on database replication products, and I've spent the last 10 years working on the Oracle GoldenGate product.  So most of my posting will probably be focused on OGG.  One question that comes up all the time is around active-active replication with Oracle GoldenGate.  How do I know if my application is a good fit for active-active replication with GoldenGate?   To answer that, it really comes down to how you plan on handling conflict resolution.  I will delve into topology and deployment in a later blog, but here is a simple architecture: The two most common resolution routines are host based resolution and timestamp based resolution. Host based resolution is used less often, but works with the fewest application changes.  Think of it like this: any transactions from SystemA always take precedence over any transactions from SystemB.  If there is a conflict on SystemB, then the record from SystemA will overwrite it.  If there is a conflict on SystemA, then it will be ignored.  It is quite a bit less restrictive, and in most cases, as long as all the tables have primary keys, host based resolution will work just fine.  Timestamp based resolution, on the other hand, is a little trickier. In this case, you can decide which record is overwritten based on timestamps. For example, does the older record get overwritten with the newer record?  Or vice-versa?  This method not only requires primary keys on every table, but it also requires every table to have a timestamp/date column that is updated each time a record is inserted or updated on the table.  Most homegrown applications can always be customized to include these requirements, but it's a little more difficult with 3rd party applications, and might even be impossible for large ERP type applications.  If your database has these features - whether it’s primary keys for host based resolution, or primary keys and timestamp columns for timestamp based resolution - then your application could be a great candidate for active-active replication.  But table structure is not the only requirement.  The other consideration applies when there is a conflict; i.e., do I need to perform any notification or track down the user that had their data overwritten?  In most cases, I don't think it's necessary, but if it is required, OGG can always create an exceptions table that contains all of the overwritten transactions so that people can be notified. It's a bit of extra work to implement this type of option, but if the business requires it, then it can be done. Unless someone is constantly monitoring this exception table or has an automated process in dealing with exceptions, there will be a delay in getting a response back to the end user. Ideally, when setting up active-active resolution we can include some simple procedural steps or configuration options that can reduce, or in some cases eliminate the potential for conflicts.  This makes the whole implementation that much easier and foolproof.  And I'll cover these in my next blog. 

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• Asynchrony in C# 5 (Part I)

  - by javarg

  I’ve been playing around with the new Async CTP preview available for download from Microsoft. It’s amazing how language trends are influencing the evolution of Microsoft’s developing platform. Much effort is being done at language level today than previous versions of .NET. In these post series I’ll review some major features contained in this release: Asynchronous functions TPL Dataflow Task based asynchronous Pattern Part I: Asynchronous Functions This is a mean of expressing asynchronous operations. This kind of functions must return void or Task/Task<> (functions returning void let us implement Fire & Forget asynchronous operations). The two new keywords introduced are async and await. async: marks a function as asynchronous, indicating that some part of its execution may take place some time later (after the method call has returned). Thus, all async functions must include some kind of asynchronous operations. This keyword on its own does not make a function asynchronous thought, its nature depends on its implementation. await: allows us to define operations inside a function that will be awaited for continuation (more on this later). Async function sample: Async/Await Sample async void ShowDateTimeAsync() {     while (true)     {         var client = new ServiceReference1.Service1Client();         var dt = await client.GetDateTimeTaskAsync();         Console.WriteLine("Current DateTime is: {0}", dt);         await TaskEx.Delay(1000);     } } The previous sample is a typical usage scenario for these new features. Suppose we query some external Web Service to get data (in this case the current DateTime) and we do so at regular intervals in order to refresh user’s UI. Note the async and await functions working together. The ShowDateTimeAsync method indicate its asynchronous nature to the caller using the keyword async (that it may complete after returning control to its caller). The await keyword indicates the flow control of the method will continue executing asynchronously after client.GetDateTimeTaskAsync returns. The latter is the most important thing to understand about the behavior of this method and how this actually works. The flow control of the method will be reconstructed after any asynchronous operation completes (specified with the keyword await). This reconstruction of flow control is the real magic behind the scene and it is done by C#/VB compilers. Note how we didn’t use any of the regular existing async patterns and we’ve defined the method very much like a synchronous one. Now, compare the following code snippet  in contrast to the previuous async/await: Traditional UI Async void ComplicatedShowDateTime() {     var client = new ServiceReference1.Service1Client();     client.GetDateTimeCompleted += (s, e) =>     {         Console.WriteLine("Current DateTime is: {0}", e.Result);         client.GetDateTimeAsync();     };     client.GetDateTimeAsync(); } The previous implementation is somehow similar to the first shown, but more complicated. Note how the while loop is implemented as a chained callback to the same method (client.GetDateTimeAsync) inside the event handler (please, do not do this in your own application, this is just an example).  How it works? Using an state workflow (or jump table actually), the compiler expands our code and create the necessary steps to execute it, resuming pending operations after any asynchronous one. The intention of the new Async/Await pattern is to let us think and code as we normally do when designing and algorithm. It also allows us to preserve the logical flow control of the program (without using any tricky coding patterns to accomplish this). The compiler will then create the necessary workflow to execute operations as the happen in time.

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• Attending a Career Fair: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be shy &ndash; Be prepared&rdquo;

  - by jessica.ebbelaar

  There are a large number of ways to interact with companies nowadays. The career fair is a very effective and personal way to interact with a number of different companies in a very short period of time. Here are some simple tips to help you perform during a career fair. Do research The key to being successful at a career fair is to do research before you go. Make a first selection of the companies you feel could be interesting for you. Include many types of employers. Once you have decided on the list of companies you want to visit, go to their career portal. Inform yourself about what the company does, i.e what roles there are available, how the company culture is described, what impression the testimonials give you. The question that you still have after reviewing this information, are the ones you can discuss with the company on the fair. Sell yourself Visit the companies you have on your top 5 list first, so you will be at your highest energy level to make that first impression. Think in advance about what you are going to tell the recruiter. Prepare a 30-second introduction (including degree, strengths, skills & experience) Be confident when you talk about your experience. Remember to start the conversation with a smile, make good eye contact and give a firm handshake. You could be speaking to your next manager, so be professional! If you already know what jobs you are interested in, relate your skills and experience to the roles that the company has available. If you are not yet sure gather as much information as you can about employment and/or hiring procedures, specific skills necessary for different jobs, training and career paths. Stand out As career fairs are very crowded and the attending companies meet with a lot of potential candidates on one day, you have to make sure you are noticed in a positive way. A good preparation and asking questions that show you have a good understanding of the industry, organization and roles will help you. Be aware of time demands on employers. Do not monopolize an employer's time. Dress appropriately to make a good first impression. Bring your resume Do not forget to bring your resume in print or on a USB-stick to the fair. If you are searching for different types of jobs, bring different versions of your resume. Your resume should be short and professional on white paper that is free of graphics or fancy print styles and containing larger margins for interviewer notes. Follow up After each conversation ask who you can contact for follow-up discussions about the specific roles. Use the back of a business card to record notes that help you remember important details and follow-up instructions. If no card is available, record the contact information and your comments in your notepad or phone. Last but not least, thank everyone you talk to for their time. Follow up as soon as possible with thank you notes that address the companies’ hiring needs, your qualifications, and express your desire for a second interview. What not to do… Do not visit a company with a group of friends. Interact with the companies on your own, to make your own positive impression. Do not walk up to a recruiter and interrupt a current conversation; wait your turn and be polite. What you should absolutely avoid is a grab and run on freebies! Take the time to speak to the company and ask for a freebie at the end of the conversation in case they are not offered to you. Good luck with the preparations for the career fair you will attend. Oracle recruiters look forward to meet you! They will be present on a large number of fairs in the region. For an overview of the fairs go to the Events & Calendar page on http://campus.oracle.com If you have any questions related to this article feel free to contact [email protected].

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• Webcast Q&A: ResCare Solves Content Lifecycle Challenges with Oracle WebCenter

  - by Kellsey Ruppel

  Last week we had the fourth webcast in our WebCenter in Action webcast series, "ResCare Solves Content Lifecycle Challenges with Oracle WebCenter", where customer Joe Lichtefeld from ResCare and Wayne Boerger & Doug Thompson from Oracle Partner TEAM Informatics shared how Oracle WebCenter is powering allowing ResCare to solve content lifecycle challenges, reduce compliance and business risks, and increase adoption of intranet as primary business communication tool In case you missed it, here's a recap of the Q&A.   Joe Lichtefeld, ResCare  Q: Did you run into any issues in the deployment of the platform?A: We experienced very few issues when implementing the content management and search functionalities. There were some challenges in determining the metadata structure. We tried to find a fine balance between having enough fields to provide the functionality needed, but trying to limit the impact to the contributing members.  Q: What has been the biggest benefit your end users have seen?A: The biggest benefit to date is two-fold. Content on the intranet can be maintained by the individual contributors more timely than in our old process of all requests being updated by IT. The other big benefit is the ability to find the most current version of a document instead of relying on emails and phone calls to track down the "current" version. Q: Was there any resistance internally when implementing the solution? If so, how did you overcome that?A: We experienced very little resistance. Most of our community groups were eager to be able to contribute and maintain their information. We had the normal hurdles of training and follow-up training with implementing a new system and process. As our second phase rolled out access to all employees, we have received more positive feedback on the accessibility of information. Wayne Boerger & Doug Thompson, TEAM Informatics Q: Can you integrate multiple repositories with the Google Search Appliance? Yes, the Google Search Appliance is designed to index lots of different repositories, from both public and internal sources. There are included connectors to many repositories, such as SharePoint, databases, file systems, LDAP, and with the TEAM GSA Connector and the Oracle Content Server. And the index for these repositories can be configured into different collections depending on the use cases that each customer has, and really, for each need within a customer environment. Q: How many different filters can you add when the search results are returned? A: Presuming this question is about the filtering on the search results. You can add as many filters as you like and it can be done by collection or any number of other criteria. Most importantly, customers now have the ability to limit the returned content by a set metadata value. Q: With the TEAM Sites Connector, what types of content can you sync? A: There’s really no limit; if it can be checked into the content server, then it is eligible for sync into Sites.  So basically, any digital file that has relevance to a Sites implementation can be checked into the WC Content central repository and then the connector can/will manage it. Q: Using the Connector, are there any limitations around where in Sites that synced content can be used? A: There are no limitations about where it can be used. When setting up your environment to use it, you just need to think through the different destinations on the Sites side that might use the content; that way you’ve got the right information to create the rules needed for the connector. If you missed the webcast, be sure to catch the replay to see a live demonstration of WebCenter in action!  ResCare Solves Content Lifecycle Challenges with Oracle WebCenter from Oracle WebCenter

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