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• How to encrypt dual boot windows 7 and xp (bitlocker, truecrypt combo?) on sdd (recommended?)

  - by therobyouknow

  I would like to setup a dual boot Windows 7 and Windows XP laptop/notebook computer where each operation system's partition is fully encrypted. I would like to do this on a SSD - a 128Gb Crucial M4. My research Dual boot of truecrypt encrypted OSs on one drive (not possible - in Truecript 7.x at time of writing) This cannot be done on a standard Truecrypt setup - it will only support encrypting one of the operating systems. I have tried this and also read about it here on superuser.com However, I did see a solution here that uses grub4dos as the initial bootloader to chain to separate truecrypt encrypted OSs, in my case Windows 7 and Windows XP: http://yyzyyz.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/truecrypt-how-to-encrypt-multiple.html I am not going to consider this solution as it relies upon some custom code for use in the bootloader that is provided by the author. I would prefer a solution that can be fully understood so that I can be sure that there is nothing undesirable occuring (i.e. malware or just simply bugs in the code). I would like to believe such a solution doesn't have those risks but I can't be sure. BitLocker and Truecrypt combination - possible solution? So I am now considering a combination of encryption programs: I now aim to encrypt Windows XP with Truecrypt and Windows 7 with BitLocker. Assuming Truecrypt bootloader can boot into non-Truecrypt OSs (e.g. via hitting Escape to go to another menu), then this solution may be viable. SSDs and Encryption (use fastest possible spinning hard disk instead (?)) I read on various superuser.com posts and elsewhere that current SSDs are not suited to whole drive encryption for various reasons: impact of performance algorithms that give SSDs advantage over spinning harddisks. Algorithms used in compression of data for example. Wear on the SSD, shortening its life Security issues whereby data is repeated, as indicated in some Truecrypt documentation So I am now considering not using SSD. But with the aim to have the fastest drive possible, I am considering using the Western Digital Scorpion black 2.5" 7200rpm harddisk as this appears to be top rated among spinning platter-based harddrives (don't work for Western Digital). Summary So to achieve whole drive encrypted dual boot Windows 7 and Windows XP with minimal performance impact I intend to use a combination of Truecrypt and Bitlocker on a top-rated conventional spinning platter-based harddisk. Questions Will my summary: achieve whole disk encryption of the dual-boot Windows XP, Windows 7? OR an you suggest a simpler solution, including one that only requires only Truecrypt (BitLocker not available on XP). Or another encryption tool, including paid-for? provide the highest performance. Am I correct to avoid using SDD with encryption for the reasons I discovered? Are the concerns about SSDs and encryption still very real (some articles I read go back to 2010) Thanks for your input!

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• JavaOne Afterglow by Simon Ritter

  - by JuergenKress

  Last week was the eighteenth JavaOne conference and I thought it would be a good idea to write up my thoughts about how things went. Firstly thanks to Yoshio Terada for the photos, I didn't bother bringing a camera with me so it's good to have some pictures to add to the words. Things kicked off full-throttle on Sunday.  We had the Java Champions and JUG leaders breakfast, which was a great way to meet up with a lot of familiar faces and start talking all things Java.  At midday the show really started with the Strategy and Technical Keynotes.  This was always going to be tougher job than some years because there was no big shiny ball to reveal to the audience.  With the Java EE 7 spec being finalised a few months ago and Java SE 8, Java ME 8 and JDK8 not due until the start of next year there was not going to be any big announcement.  I thought both keynotes worked really well each focusing on the things most important to Java developers: Strategy One of the things that is becoming more and more prominent in many companies marketing is the Internet of Things (IoT).  We've moved from the conventional desktop/laptop environment to much more mobile connected computing with smart phones and tablets.  The next wave of the internet is not just billions of people connected, but 10s or 100s of billions of devices connected to the network, all generating data and providing much more precise control of almost any process you can imagine.  This ties into the ideas of Big Data and Cloud Computing, but implementation is certainly not without its challenges.  As Peter Utzschneider explained it's about three Vs: Volume, Velocity and Value.  All these devices will create huge volumes of data at very high speed; to avoid being overloaded these devices will need some sort of processing capabilities that can filter the useful data from the redundant.  The raw data then needs to be turned into useful information that has value.  To make this happen will require applications on devices, at gateways and on the back-end servers, all very tightly integrated.  This is where Java plays a pivotal role, write once, run everywhere becomes essential, having nine million developers fluent in the language makes it the defacto lingua franca of IoT.  There will be lots more information on how this will become a reality, so watch this space. Technical How do we make the IoT a reality, technically?  Using the game of chess Mark Reinhold, with the help of people like John Ceccarelli, Jasper Potts and Richard Bair, showed what you could do.  Using Java EE on the back end, Java SE and JavaFX on the desktop and Java ME Embedded and JavaFX on devices they showed a complete end-to-end demo. This was really impressive, using 3D features from JavaFX 8 (that's included with JDK8) to make a 3D animated Duke chess board.  Jasper also unveiled the "DukePad" a home made tablet using a Raspberry Pi, touch screen and accelerometer. Although the Raspberry Pi doesn't have earth shattering CPU performance (about the same level as a mid 1990s Pentium), it does have really quite good GPU performance so the GUI works really well.  The plans are all open sourced and available here.  One small, but very significant announcement was that Java SE will now be included with the NOOB and Raspbian Linux distros provided by the Raspberry Pi foundation (these can be found here).  No more hassle having to download and install the JDK after you've flashed your SD card OS image.  The finale was the Raspberry Pi powered chess playing robot.  Really very, very cool.  I talked to Jasper about this and he told me each of the chess pieces had been 3D printed and then he had to use acetone to give them a glossy finish (not sure what his wife thought of him spending hours in the kitchen in a gas mask!)  The way the robot arm worked was very impressive as it did not have any positioning data (like a potentiometer connected to each motor), but relied purely on carefully calibrated timings to get the arm to the right place.  Having done things like this myself in the past I know how easy it is to find a small error gets magnified into very big mistakes. Here's some pictures from the keynote: The "Dukepad" architecture Nice clear perspex case so you can see the innards. The very nice 3D chess set.  Maya's obviously a great tool. Read the full article here. WebLogic Partner Community For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Technorati Tags: Simon Ritter,Java One,OOW,Oracle OpenWorld,WebLogic,WebLogic Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• The clock hands of the buffer cache

  - by Tony Davis

  Over a leisurely beer at our local pub, the Waggon and Horses, Phil Factor was holding forth on the esoteric, but strangely poetic, language of SQL Server internals, riddled as it is with 'sleeping threads', 'stolen pages', and 'memory sweeps'. Generally, I remain immune to any twinge of interest in the bowels of SQL Server, reasoning that there are certain things that I don't and shouldn't need to know about SQL Server in order to use it successfully. Suddenly, however, my attention was grabbed by his mention of the 'clock hands of the buffer cache'. Back at the office, I succumbed to a moment of weakness and opened up Google. He wasn't lying. SQL Server maintains various memory buffers, or caches. For example, the plan cache stores recently-used execution plans. The data cache in the buffer pool stores frequently-used pages, ensuring that they may be read from memory rather than via expensive physical disk reads. These memory stores are classic LRU (Least Recently Updated) buffers, meaning that, for example, the least frequently used pages in the data cache become candidates for eviction (after first writing the page to disk if it has changed since being read into the cache). SQL Server clearly needs some mechanism to track which pages are candidates for being cleared out of a given cache, when it is getting too large, and it is this mechanism that is somewhat more labyrinthine than I previously imagined. Each page that is loaded into the cache has a counter, a miniature "wristwatch", which records how recently it was last used. This wristwatch gets reset to "present time", each time a page gets updated and then as the page 'ages' it clicks down towards zero, at which point the page can be removed from the cache. But what is SQL Server is suffering memory pressure and urgently needs to free up more space than is represented by zero-counter pages (or plans etc.)? This is where our 'clock hands' come in. Each cache has associated with it a "memory clock". Like most conventional clocks, it has two hands; one "external" clock hand, and one "internal". Slava Oks is very particular in stressing that these names have "nothing to do with the equivalent types of memory pressure". He's right, but the names do, in that peculiar Microsoft tradition, seem designed to confuse. The hands do relate to memory pressure; the cache "eviction policy" is determined by both global and local memory pressures on SQL Server. The "external" clock hand responds to global memory pressure, in other words pressure on SQL Server to reduce the size of its memory caches as a whole. Global memory pressure – which just to confuse things further seems sometimes to be referred to as physical memory pressure – can be either external (from the OS) or internal (from the process itself, e.g. due to limited virtual address space). The internal clock hand responds to local memory pressure, in other words the need to reduce the size of a single, specific cache. So, for example, if a particular cache, such as the plan cache, reaches a defined "pressure limit" the internal clock hand will start to turn and a memory sweep will be performed on that cache in order to remove plans from the memory store. During each sweep of the hands, the usage counter on the cache entry is reduced in value, effectively moving its "last used" time to further in the past (in effect, setting back the wrist watch on the page a couple of hours) and increasing the likelihood that it can be aged out of the cache. There is even a special Dynamic Management View, sys.dm_os_memory_cache_clock_hands, which allows you to interrogate the passage of the clock hands. Frequently turning hands equates to excessive memory pressure, which will lead to performance problems. Two hours later, I emerged from this rather frightening journey into the heart of SQL Server memory management, fascinated but still unsure if I'd learned anything that I'd put to any practical use. However, I certainly began to agree that there is something almost Tolkeinian in the language of the deep recesses of SQL Server. Cheers, Tony.

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• The Linux powered LAN Gaming House

  - by sachinghalot

  LAN parties offer the enjoyment of head to head gaming in a real-life social environment. In general, they are experiencing decline thanks to the convenience of Internet gaming, but Kenton Varda is a man who takes his LAN gaming very seriously. His LAN gaming house is a fascinating project, and best of all, Linux plays a part in making it all work.Varda has done his own write ups (short, long), so I'm only going to give an overview here. The setup is a large house with 12 gaming stations and a single server computer.The client computers themselves are rack mounted in a server room, and they are linked to the gaming stations on the floor above via extension cables (HDMI for video and audio and USB for mouse and keyboard). Each client computer, built into a 3U rack mount case, is a well specced gaming rig in its own right, sporting an Intel Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM and an Nvidia GeForce 560 along with a 60GB SSD drive.Originally, the client computers ran Ubuntu Linux rather than Windows and the games executed under WINE, but Varda had to abandon this scheme. As he explains on his site:"Amazingly, a majority of games worked fine, although many had minor bugs (e.g. flickering mouse cursor, minor rendering artifacts, etc.). Some games, however, did not work, or had bad bugs that made them annoying to play."Subsequently, the gaming computers have been moved onto a more conventional gaming choice, Windows 7. It's a shame that WINE couldn't be made to work, but I can sympathize as it's rare to find modern games that work perfectly and at full native speed. Another problem with WINE is that it tends to suffer from regressions, which is hardly surprising when considering the difficulty of constantly improving the emulation of the Windows API. Varda points out that he preferred working with Linux clients as they were easier to modify and came with less licensing baggage.Linux still runs the server and all of the tools used are open source software. The hardware here is a Intel Xeon E3-1230 with 4GB of RAM. The storage hanging off this machine is a bit more complex than the clients. In addition to the 60GB SSD, it also has 2x1TB drives and a 240GB SDD.When the clients were running Linux, they booted over PXE using a toolchain that will be familiar to anyone who has setup Linux network booting. DHCP pointed the clients to the server which then supplied PXELINUX using TFTP. When booted, file access was accomplished through network block device (NBD). This is a very easy to use system that allows you to serve the contents of a file as a block device over the network. The client computer runs a user mode device driver and the device can be mounted within the file system using the mount command.One snag with offering file access via NBD is that it's difficult to impose any security restrictions on different areas of the file system as the server only sees a single file. The advantage is perfomance as the client operating system simply sees a block device, and besides, these security issues aren't relevant in this setup.Unfortunately, Windows 7 can't use NBD, so, Varda had to switch to iSCSI (which works in both server and client mode under Linux). His network cards are not compliant with this standard when doing a netboot, but fortunately, gPXE came to the rescue, and he boostraps it over PXE. gPXE is also available as an ISO image and is worth knowing about if you encounter an awkward machine that can't manage a network boot. It can also optionally boot from a HTTP server rather than the more traditional TFTP server.According to Varda, booting all 12 machines over the Gigabit Ethernet network is surprisingly fast, and once booted, the machines don't seem noticeably slower than if they were using local storage. Once loaded, most games attempt to load in as much data as possible, filling the RAM, and the the disk and network bandwidth required is small. It's worth noting that these are aspects of this project that might differ from some other thin client scenarios.At time of writing, it doesn't seem as though the local storage of the client machines is being utilized. Instead, the clients boot into Windows from an image on the server that contains the operating system and the games themselves. It uses the copy on write feature of LVM so that any writes from a client are added to a differencing image allocated to that client. As the administrator, Varda can log into the Linux server and authorize changes to the master image for updates etc.SummaryOverall, Varda estimates the total cost of the project at about $40,000, and of course, he needed a property that offered a large physical space in order to house the computers and the gaming workstations. Obviously, this project has stark differences to most thin client projects. The balance between storage, network usage, GPU power and security would not be typical of an office installation, for example. The only letdown is that WINE proved to be insufficiently compatible to run a wide variety of modern games, but that is, perhaps, asking too much of it, and hats off to Varda for trying to make it work.

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• career advice for PhD scientist seeking to program?

  - by C SD

  I'm largely a self-taught programmer. In fact, I first started programming about half way through biophysics grad school, and even though I think I've done some pretty nice work, I've never worked as part of a 'serious' development team that had more than one or two other developers (and I wouldn't hesitate to call them equally inexperienced in software development as a profession). After finishing my PhD I applied to Google, on a lark, since I had some confidence in my abilities, if not necessarily my experience, and I was hoping to maybe slip in and absorb all the experience and talent I'd be surrounded with and become productive enough, quickly enough, that they wouldn't immediately regret their decision. I was excited to actually get invited to interview up at Mountain View (this was ~ mid 2008). Overall, my memory of the interview was very positive, but after close to a three month wait (is that normal?) they ended up turning me down. I wasn't too surprised or disappointed (aside from the uncomfortably long wait) given my unusual background and admitted lack of experience. I decided to continue as a postdoc, but focus on improving my skills rather than doing research. I've done about three years of that, and my honest assessment is that I've learned a ton more, but I really need more of a peer group to maintain or accelerate my growth. Google invited me to interview again about eight months ago, and the interview process went even better than the first time around (I thought), though they again declined to give me an offer. I have to admit this second rejection was much more discouraging. They had insisted I interview even after I mentioned to them that a move on my part was unlikely given that I had bought a house, gotten married, etc. since the first interview. I guess I was hoping they'd at least give me an offer that I could parlay into a more conventional, but still interesting, programming position close to home. So here I am, going on my third year out of grad school, a glorified postdoc and I'm starting to get pretty discouraged. Even though I could technically get 'back-on-track' for a career in science, I have been focusing the vast majority of this time on gaining programming experience rather than on research and publications. The problem is, whenever I look, most job listings have requirements that seem impossibly grandiose and I hesitate to apply. That, or the job/project seems incredibly dull. Ironically, applying to Google struck me as less intimidating. I suspect that either most people are just a lot less realistic than I am when it comes to assessing how long it will take for them to get up to speed, or they don't care; my fear is that I'm just woefully unqualified for any interesting, well paying work. IE: I'm confident I could switch fully back into C++ mode with a couple weeks work (I mostly use C,Python,C# daily) but I don't list myself as being 'proficient' in C++ on my CV, or applying for jobs that 'require' such knowledge. The few applications for which I did feel I was a legitimately good match have not elicited a response. I suspect the following things are potential problems with my application/CV and I would like feedback on: I don't have a CS degree. My BS was in biochemistry and molecular biology, my PhD in biophysics. I took a undergrad and grad level CS course at UCSD and completely killed them, but I don't know how to translate that to my CV effectively. I have a PhD, but it's not in CS... I've been debating if I should remove it from my CV, and wether or not it would then be misleading to list at least some of those years as some kind of 'programming' job (in many respects it was). I think there are sometimes strong stigmas associated with 'self-taught' programmers. I am certainly one of those. I even recognize that some of those stigmas hold a hint of truth, but I really do want to be an asset to a team. How do I communicate that even though I have been largely self-directing for ~8 years I can still take marching orders when needed? Do I just say so outright? Should I just become a lot less scrupulous about the whole process? anecdote: I have a friend who applied for positions where he completely fudged his qualifications to get past the first culling. He was much more honest and forthcoming about his actual qualifications when contacted and he still managed to get invited to a couple of interviews and even got some offers. His balls are larger than mine though.

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• Breaking 1NF to model subset constraints. Does this sound sane?

  - by Chris Travers

  My first question here. Appologize if it is in the wrong forum but this seems pretty conceptual. I am looking at doing something that goes against conventional wisdom and want to get some feedback as to whether this is totally insane or will result in problems, so critique away! I am on PostgreSQL 9.1 but may be moving to 9.2 for this part of this project. To re-iterate: Does it seem sane to break 1NF in this way? I am not looking for debugging code so much as where people see problems that this might lead. The Problem In double entry accounting, financial transactions are journal entries with an arbitrary number of lines. Each line has either a left value (debit) or a right value (credit) which can be modelled as a single value with negatives as debits and positives as credits or vice versa. The sum of all debits and credits must equal zero (so if we go with a single amount field, sum(amount) must equal zero for each financial journal entry). SQL-based databases, pretty much required for this sort of work, have no way to express this sort of constraint natively and so any approach to enforcing it in the database seems rather complex. The Write Model The journal entries are append only. There is a possibility we will add a delete model but it will be subject to a different set of restrictions and so is not applicable here. If and when we allow deletes, we will probably do them using a simple ON DELETE CASCADE designation on the foreign key, and require that deletes go through a dedicated stored procedure which can enforce the other constraints. So inserts and selects have to be accommodated but updates and deletes do not for this task. My Proposed Solution My proposed solution is to break first normal form and model constraints on arrays of tuples, with a trigger that breaks the rows out into another table. CREATE TABLE journal_line ( entry_id bigserial primary key, account_id int not null references account(id), journal_entry_id bigint not null, -- adding references later amount numeric not null ); I would then add "table methods" to extract debits and credits for reporting purposes: CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION debits(journal_line) RETURNS numeric LANGUAGE sql IMMUTABLE AS $$ SELECT CASE WHEN $1.amount < 0 THEN $1.amount * -1 ELSE NULL END; $$; CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION credits(journal_line) RETURNS numeric LANGUAGE sql IMMUTABLE AS $$ SELECT CASE WHEN $1.amount > 0 THEN $1.amount ELSE NULL END; $$; Then the journal entry table (simplified for this example): CREATE TABLE journal_entry ( entry_id bigserial primary key, -- no natural keys :-( journal_id int not null references journal(id), date_posted date not null, reference text not null, description text not null, journal_lines journal_line[] not null ); Then a table method and and check constraints: CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION running_total(journal_entry) returns numeric language sql immutable as $$ SELECT sum(amount) FROM unnest($1.journal_lines); $$; ALTER TABLE journal_entry ADD CONSTRAINT CHECK (((journal_entry.running_total) = 0)); ALTER TABLE journal_line ADD FOREIGN KEY journal_entry_id REFERENCES journal_entry(entry_id); And finally we'd have a breakout trigger: CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION je_breakout() RETURNS TRIGGER LANGUAGE PLPGSQL AS $$ BEGIN IF TG_OP = 'INSERT' THEN INSERT INTO journal_line (journal_entry_id, account_id, amount) SELECT NEW.id, account_id, amount FROM unnest(NEW.journal_lines); RETURN NEW; ELSE RAISE EXCEPTION 'Operation Not Allowed'; END IF; END; $$; And finally CREATE TRIGGER AFTER INSERT OR UPDATE OR DELETE ON journal_entry FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE_PROCEDURE je_breaout(); Of course the example above is simplified. There will be a status table that will track approval status allowing for separation of duties, etc. However the goal here is to prevent unbalanced transactions. Any feedback? Does this sound entirely insane? Standard Solutions? In getting to this point I have to say I have looked at four different current ERP solutions to this problems: Represent every line item as a debit and a credit against different accounts. Use of foreign keys against the line item table to enforce an eventual running total of 0 Use of constraint triggers in PostgreSQL Forcing all validation here solely through the app logic. My concerns are that #1 is pretty limiting and very hard to audit internally. It's not programmer transparent and so it strikes me as being difficult to work with in the future. The second strikes me as being very complex and required a series of contraints and foreign keys against self to make work, and therefore it strikes me as complex, hard to sort out at least in my mind, and thus hard to work with. The fourth could be done as we force all access through stored procedures anyway and this is the most common solution (have the app total things up and throw an error otherwise). However, I think proof that a constraint is followed is superior to test cases, and so the question becomes whether this in fact generates insert anomilies rather than solving them. If this is a solved problem it isn't the case that everyone agrees on the solution....

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• Social Engagement: One Size Doesn't Fit Anyone

  - by Mike Stiles

  The key to achieving meaningful social engagement is to know who you’re talking to, know what they like, and consistently deliver that kind of material to them. Every magazine for women knows this. When you read the article titles promoted on their covers, there’s no mistaking for whom that magazine is intended. And yet, confusion still reigns at many brands as to exactly whom they want to talk to, what those people want to hear, and what kind of content they should be creating for them. In most instances, the root problem is brands want to be all things to all people. Their target audience…the world! Good luck with that. It’s 2012, the age of aggregation and custom content delivery. To cope with the modern day barrage of information, people have constructed technological filters so that content they regard as being “for them” is mostly what gets through. Even if your brand is for men and women, young and old, you may want to consider social properties that divide men from women, and young from old. Yes, a man might find something in a women’s magazine that interests him. But that doesn’t mean he’s going to subscribe to it, or buy even one issue. In fact he’ll probably never see the article he’d otherwise be interested in, because in his mind, “This isn’t for me.” It wasn’t packaged for him. News Flash: men and women are different. So it’s a tall order to craft your Facebook Page or Twitter handle to simultaneously exude the motivators for both. The Harris Interactive study “2012 Connecting and Communicating Online: State of Social Media” sheds light on the differing social behaviors and drivers. -65% of women (vs. 59% of men) stay glued to social because they don’t want to miss anything. -25% of women check social when they wake up, before they check email. Only 18% of men check social before e-mail. -95% of women surveyed belong to Facebook vs. 86% of men. -67% of women log in to Facebook once a day or more vs. 54% of men. -Conventional wisdom is Pinterest is mostly a woman-thing, right? That may be true for viewing, but not true for sharing. Men are actually more likely to share on Pinterest than women, 23% to 10%. -The sharing divide extends to YouTube. 68% of women use it mainly for consumption, as opposed to 52% of men. -Women are as likely to have a Twitter account as men, but they’re much less likely to check it often. 54% of women check it once a week compared to 2/3 of men. Obviously, there are some takeaways from this depending on your target. Women don’t want to miss out on anything, so serialized content might be a good idea, right? Promotional posts that lead to a big payoff could keep them hooked. Posts for women might be better served first thing in the morning. If sharing is your goal, maybe male-targeted content is more likely to get those desired shares. And maybe Twitter is a better place to aim your male-targeted content than Facebook. Some grocery stores started experimenting with male-only aisles. The results have been impressive. Why? Because while it’s true men were finding those same items in the store just fine before, now something has been created just for them. They have a place in the store where they belong. Each brand’s strategy and targets are going to differ. The point is…know who you’re talking to, know how they behave, know what they like, and deliver content using any number of social relationship management targeting tools that meets their expectations. If, however, you’re committed to a one-size-fits-all, “our content is for everybody” strategy (or even worse, a “this is what we want to put out and we expect everybody to love it” strategy), your content will miss the mark for more often than it hits. @mikestilesPhoto via stock.schng

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• Identity Globe Trotters (Sep Edition): The Social Customer

  - by Tanu Sood

  Welcome to the inaugural edition of our monthly series - Identity Globe Trotters. Starting today, the last Friday of every month, we will explore regional commentary on Identity Management. We will invite guest contributors from around the world to share their opinions and experiences around Identity Management and highlight regional nuances, specific drivers, solutions and more. Today's feature is contributed by Michael Krebs, Head of Business Development at esentri consulting GmbH, a (SOA) specialized Oracle Gold Partner based in Ettlingen, Germany. In his current role, Krebs is dealing with the latest developments in Enterprise Social Networking and the Integration of Social Media within business processes.  By Michael Krebs The relevance of "easy sign-on" in the age of the "Social Customer" With the growth of Social Networks, the time people spend within those closed "eco-systems" is growing year by year. With social networks looking to integrate search engines, like Facebook announced some weeks ago, their relevance will continue to grow in contrast to the more conventional search engines. This is one of the reasons why social network accounts of the users are getting more and more like a virtual fingerprint. With the growing relevance of social networks the importance of a simple way for customers to get in touch with say, customer care or contract departments, will be crucial for sales processes in critical markets. Customers want to have one single point of contact and also an easy "login-method" with no dedicated usernames, passwords or proprietary accounts. The golden rule in the future social media driven markets will be: The lower the complexity of the initial contact, the better a company can profit from social networks. If you, for example, can generate a smart way of how an existing customer can use self-service portals, the cost in providing phone support can be lowered significantly. Recruiting and Hiring of "Digital Natives" Another particular example is "social" recruiting processes. The so called "digital natives" don´t want to type in their profile facts and CV´s in proprietary systems. Why not use the actual LinkedIn profile? In German speaking region, the market in the area of professional social networks is dominated by XING, the equivalent to LinkedIn. A few weeks back, this network also opened up their interfaces for integrating social sign-ons or the usage of profile data for recruiting-purposes. In the European (and especially the German) employment market, where the number of young candidates is shrinking because of the low birth rate in the region, it will become essential to use social-media supported hiring processes to find and on-board the rare talents. In fact, you will see traditional recruiting websites integrated with social hiring to attract the best talents in the market, where the pool of potential candidates has decreased dramatically over the years. Identity Management as a key factor in the Customer Experience process To create the biggest value for customers and also future employees, companies need to connect their HCM or CRM-systems with powerful Identity management solutions. With the highly efficient Oracle (social & mobile enabling) Identity Management solution, enterprises can combine easy sign on with secure connections to the backend infrastructure. This combination enables a "one-stop" service with personalized content for customers and talents. In addition, companies can collect valuable data for the enrichment of their CRM-data. The goal is to enrich the so called "Customer Experience" via all available customer channels and contact points. Those systems have already gained importance in the B2C-markets and will gradually spread out to B2B-channels in the near future. Conclusion: Central and "Social" Identity management is key to Customer Experience Management and Talent Management For a seamless delivery of "Customer Experience Management" and a modern way of recruiting the best talent, companies need to integrate Social Sign-on capabilities with modern CX - and Talent management infrastructure. This lowers the barrier for existing and future customers or employees to get in touch with sales, support or human resources. Identity management is the technology enabler and backbone for a modern Customer Experience Infrastructure. Oracle Identity management solutions provide the opportunity to secure Social Applications and connect them with modern CX-solutions. At the end, companies benefit from "best of breed" processes and solutions for enriching customer experience without compromising security. About esentri: esentri is a provider of enterprise social networking and brings the benefits of social network communication into business environments. As one key strength, esentri uses Oracle Identity Management solutions for delivering Social and Mobile access for Oracle’s CRM- and HCM-solutions. …..End Guest Post…. With new and enhanced features optimized to secure the new digital experience, the recently announced Oracle Identity Management 11g Release 2 enables organizations to securely embrace cloud, mobile and social infrastructures and reach new user communities to help further expand and develop their businesses. Additional Resources: Oracle Identity Management 11gR2 release Oracle Identity Management website Datasheet: Mobile and Social Access (pdf) IDM at OOW: Focus on Identity Management Facebook: OracleIDM Twitter: OracleIDM We look forward to your feedback on this post and welcome your suggestions for topics to cover in Identity Globe Trotters. Last Friday, every month!

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• Rails - embedded polymorphic comment list + add comment form - example?

  - by odigity

  Hey, all. Working on my first Rails app. I've searched all around - read a bunch of tutorials, articles, and forum posts, watched some screencasts, and I've found a few examples that come close to what I'm trying to do (notably http://railscasts.com/episodes/154-polymorphic-association and ep 196 about nested model forms), but not exactly. I have two models (Podcast and BlogPost) that need to be commentable, and I have a Comment model that is polymorphically related to both. The railscasts above had a very similar example (ep 154), but Ryan used a full set of nested routes, so there were specific templates for adding and editing comments. What I want to do is show the list of comments right on the Podcast or BlogPost page, along with an Add Comment form at the bottom. I don't need a separate add template/route, and I don't need the ability to edit, only delete. This is a pretty common design on the web, but I can't find a Rails example specifically about this pattern. Here's my current understanding: I need routes for the create and delete actions, of course, but there are no templates associated with those. I'm also guessing that the right approach is to create a partial that can be included at the bottom of both the Podcast and BlogPost show template. The logical name for the partial seems to me to be something like _comments.html.haml. I know it's a common convention to have the object passed to the partial be named after the template, but calling the object 'comments' seems to not match my use case, since what I really need to pass is the commentable object (Podcast or BlogPost). So, I guess I'd use the locals option for the render partial call? (:commentable = @podcast). Inside the partial, I could call commentable.comments to get the comments collection, render that with a second partial (this time with the conventional use case, calling the partial _comment.html.haml), then create a form that submits to... what? REST-wise, it should be a POST to the collection, which would be /podcast|blogpost/:id/comments, and I think the helper for that is podcast_comments_path(podcast) if it were a podcast - not sure what to do though, since I'm using polymorphic comments. That would trigger the Comment.create action, which would then need to redirect back to the podcast|blogpost path /podcast|blogpost/:id. It's all a bit overwhelming, which is why I was really hoping to find a screencast or example that specifically implements this design.

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• Why doesn't my form post when I disable the submit button to prevent double clicking?

  - by John MacIntyre

  Like every other web developer on the planet, I have an issue with users double clicking the submit button on my forms. My understanding is that the conventional way to handle this issue, is to disable the button immediately after the first click, however when I do this, it doesn't post. I did do some research on this, god knows there's enough information, but other questions like Disable button on form submission, disabling the button appears to work. The original poster of Disable button after submit appears to have had the same problem as me, but there is no mention on how/if he resolved it. Here's some code on how to repeat it (tested in IE8 Beta2, but had same problem in IE7) My aspx code <%@ Page Language="C#" CodeFile="Default.aspx.cs" Inherits="_Default" %> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"> function btn_onClick() { var chk = document.getElementById("chk"); if(chk.checked) { var btn = document.getElementById("btn"); btn.disabled = true; } } </script> <body> <form id="form1" runat="server"> <asp:Literal ID="lit" Text="--:--:--" runat="server" /> <br /> <asp:Button ID="btn" Text="Submit" runat="server" /> <br /> <input type="checkbox" id="chk" />Disable button on first click </form> </body> </html> My cs code using System; public partial class _Default : System.Web.UI.Page { protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e) { base.OnInit(e); btn.Click += new EventHandler(btn_Click); btn.OnClientClick = "btn_onClick();"; } void btn_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { lit.Text = DateTime.Now.ToString("HH:mm:ss"); } } Notice that when you click the button, a postback occurs, and the time is updated. But when you check the check box, the next time you click the button, the button is disabled (as expected), but never does the postback. WHAT THE HECK AM I MISSING HERE??? Thanks in advance.

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• Is the recent trend toward widescreen (16:9) computer monitors a plus or minus for programmers?

  - by DanM

  It's almost gotten to the point where you can't buy a conventional (4:3) monitor anymore. Pretty much everything is widescreen. This is fine for watching movies or TV, but is it good or bad for programming? My initial thoughts on the issue are that widescreens are a net negative for programmers. Here are some of the disadvantages I see: Poor space utiliziation One disadvantage of widescreens you can't argue with is that they offer poor space utilization for the amount of total pixels you get. For example, my Thinkpad, which I bought just before the widescreen craze, has a 15" monitor with a native resolution of 1600 x 1200. The newer 15.4" Thinkpads run at most 1680 x 1050. So (if you do the math) you get fewer pixels in a wider (but not shorter) package. With desktop monitors, you pay a price in terms of desk space used. Two 1680 x 1050 monitors will simply take up more of your desk than two 1600 x 1200 monitors (assuming equal dot pitch). More scrolling If you compare a 1680 x 1050 monitor to a 1600 x 1200 monitor, you get 80 extra pixels of width but 150 fewer pixels of height. The height reduction means you lose approximately 11 lines of code. That's less you can see on the screen at one time and more scrolling you have to do. This harms productivity, maybe not dramatically, but insidiously. Less room for wide panels Widescreens also mean you lose space for wide but short panels common in programming environments. If you use Visual Studio, for example, your code window will be that much shorter when viewing the Find Results, Task List, or Error List (all of which I use frequently). This isn't to say the 80 pixels of extra width you get with widescreen would never be useful, but I tend to keep my lines of code short, so seeing more lines would be more valuable to me than seeing fewer, longer lines. What do you think? Do you agree/disagree? Are you now using one or more widescreen monitors for development? What resolution are you running on each? Do you ever miss the height of the traditional 4:3 monitor? Would you complain if your monitors were one inch narrower but two inches taller?

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• Where are the function literals in c++?

  - by academicRobot

  First of all, maybe literals is not the right term for this concept, but its the closest I could think of (not literals in the sense of functions as first class citizens). The idea is that when you make a conventional function call, it compiles to something like this: callq <immediate address> But if you make a function call using a function pointer, it compiles to something like this: mov <memory location>,%rax callq *%rax Which is all well and good. However, what if I'm writing a template library that requires a callback of some sort with a specified argument list and the user of the library is expected to know what function they want to call at compile time? Then I would like to write my template to accept a function literal as a template parameter. So, similar to template <int int_literal> struct my_template {...};` I'd like to write template <func_literal_t func_literal> struct my_template {...}; and have calls to func_literal within my_template compile to callq <immediate address>. Is there a facility in C++ for this, or a work around to achieve the same effect? If not, why not (e.g. some cataclysmic side effects)? How about C++0x or another language? Solutions that are not portable are fine. Solutions that include the use of member function pointers would be ideal. I'm not particularly interested in being told "You are a <socially unacceptable term for a person of low IQ>, just use function pointers/functors." This is a curiosity based question, and it seems that it might be useful in some (albeit limited) applications. It seems like this should be possible since function names are just placeholders for a (relative) memory address, so why not allow more liberal use (e.g. aliasing) of this placeholder. p.s. I use function pointers and functions objects all the the time and they are great. But this post got me thinking about the don't pay for what you don't use principle in relation to function calls, and it seems like forcing the use of function pointers or similar facility when the function is known at compile time is a violation of this principle, though a small one.

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• web design PSD to html -> more direct ways?

  - by Assembler

  At work I see one colleague designing a site in Photoshop/Fireworks, I see another taking this data, slicing it up and using Dreamweaver to rebuild the same from scratch. It seems like too much mucking around! I know that Photoshop can output a tables based HTML, and Fireworks will create divs with absolute positioning; neither appear to be very helpful. Admittedly, I haven't tried much of (DW/FW) (CS4/CS3) since becoming a programmer, so I don't know if new versions are addressing this work flow issue, but are we still double handling things? Can we attach some sort of layout metadata (this is a rollover button, this will be a SWF, this will be text, this logo will hide "xyz" <h1> text etc) to slices to aid in layout generation? are there some secret tools which assist in this conversion process? Or are we still restricted to doing things by hand? The frustration continues when said hand built page needs to be reworked again to fit Smarty Templates/Wordpress/generic CMS. I acknowledge that designers need to be free of systems to be able to do whatever, but most conventional sites have: a header with navigation a sidebar with more links the main content part maybe another sidebar a footer Given the similarity of a lot of components, shouldn't there be a more systematic approach to going from sliced designs to functional HTML? Or am I over-simplifying things? -edit- Mmmmm.... I suppose I will accept an answer, but they weren't really what I was looking for. It just seems like designing the DOM is a bit of holy grail ("It's only a model!"), and maybe with all the "groovy" things you can do with HTML and Javascript, it would be mighty hard work, but with a set of constraints (that 960 stuff looks interesting), some well designed reset style sheets and a bit of... fairy dust? we should be able to improve the work flow. Photoshop's tables by themselves are pretty much useless, I agree, but surely we can take this data, and then select a group of cells and say "right, this is a text div, overflow:auto" or "these cells are an image block, style it with the same height/width as the selected area". Admittedly here at work there are other elephants in the room that need to make their formal introductions to management, but some parts of the designpage workflow seem... uneducated at best.

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• Symfony2 Forms: is it possible to bind a form in an "unconventional way"?

  - by DonCallisto

  Imagine this scenario: in our company there is an employee that "play" around graphic,css,html and so on. Our new project will born under symfony2 so we're trying some silly - but "real" - stuff (like authentication from db, submit data from a form and persist it to db and so on..) The problem As far i know, learnt from symfony2 "book" that i found on the site (you can find it here), there is an "automated" way for creating and rendering forms: 1) Build the form up into a controller in this way $form = $this->createFormBuilder($task) ->add('task','text'), ->add('dueDate','date'), ->getForm(); return $this->render('pathToBundle:Controller:templateTwig', array('form'=>$form->createview()); 2) Into templateTwig render the template {{ form_widget(form) }} // or single rows method 3) Into a controller (the same that have a route where you can submit data), take back submitted information if($rquest->getMethod()=='POST'){ $form->bindRequest($request); /* and so on */ } Return to scenario Our graphic employee don't want to access controllers, write php and other stuff like those. So he'll write a twig template with a "unconventional" (from symfony2 point of view, but conventional from HTML point of view) method: /* into twig template */ <form action="{{ path('SestanteUserBundle_homepage') }}" method="post" name="userForm"> <div> USERNAME: <input type="text" name="user_name" value="{{ user.username}}"/> </div> <div> EMAIL: <input type="text" name="user_mail" value="{{ user.email }}"/> </div> <input type="hidden" name="user_id" value="{{ id }}" /> <input type="submit" value="modifica i dati"> </form> Now, if into the controller that handle the submission of data we do something like that public function indexAction(Request $request) { if($request->getMethod() == 'POST'){ // sono arrivato per via di un submit, quindi devo modificare i dati prima di farli vedere a video $defaultData = array('message'=>'ho visto questa cosa in esempio, ma non capisco se posso farne a meno'); $form = $this->createFormBuilder($defaultData) ->add('user_name','text') ->add('user_mail','email') ->add('user_id','integer') ->getForm(); $form->bindRequest($request); //bindo la form ad una request $data = $form->getData(); //mi aspetto un'array chiave=>valore /* .... */ We expected that $data will contain an array with key,value from the submitted form. We found that it isn't true. After googling for a while and try with other "bad" ideas, we're frozen into that. So, if you have a "graphic office" that can't handle directly php code, how can we interface from form(s) to controller(s) ? UPDATE It seems that Symfony2 use a different convention for form's field name and lookup once you've submitted that. In particular, if my form's name is addUser and a field is named userName, the field's name will be AddUser[username] so maybe it have a "dynamic" lookup method that will extract form's name, field's name, concat them and lookup for values. Is it possible?

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• Where are the function literals c++?

  - by academicRobot

  First of all, maybe literals is not the right term for this concept, but its the closest I could think of (not literals in the sense of functions as first class citizens). The idea is that when you make a conventional function call, it compiles to something like this: callq <immediate address> But if you make a function call using a function pointer, it compiles to something like this: mov <memory location>,%rax callq *%rax Which is all well and good. However, what if I'm writing a template library that requires a callback of some sort with a specified argument list and the user of the library is expected to know what function they want to call at compile time? Then I would like to write my template to accept a function literal as a template parameter. So, similar to template <int int_literal> struct my_template {...};` I'd like to write template <func_literal_t func_literal> struct my_template {...}; and have calls to func_literal within my_template compile to callq <immediate address>. Is there a facility in C++ for this, or a work around to achieve the same effect? If not, why not (e.g. some cataclysmic side effects)? How about C++0x or another language? Solutions that are not portable are fine. Solutions that include the use of member function pointers would be ideal. I'm not particularly interested in being told "You are a <socially unacceptable term for a person of low IQ>, just use function pointers/functors." This is a curiosity based question, and it seems that it might be useful in some (albeit limited) applications. It seems like this should be possible since function names are just placeholders for a (relative) memory address, so why not allow more liberal use (e.g. aliasing) of this placeholder. p.s. I use function pointers and functions objects all the the time and they are great. But this post got me thinking about the don't pay for what you don't use principle in relation to function calls, and it seems like forcing the use of function pointers or similar facility when the function is known at compile time is a violation of this principle, though a small one.

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• Using Selenium-IDE with a rich Javascript application?

  - by Darien

  Problem At my workplace, we're trying to find the best way to create automated-tests for an almost wholly javascript-driven intranet application. Right now we're stuck trying to find a good tradeoff between: Application code in reusable and nest-able GUI components. Tests which are easily created by the testing team Tests which can be recorded once and then automated Tests which do not break after small cosmetic changes to the site XPath expressions (or other possible expressions, like jQuery selectors) naively generated from Selenium-IDE are often non-repeatable and very fragile. Conversely, having the JS code generate special unique ID values for every important DOM-element on the page... well, that is its own headache, complicated by re-usable GUI components and IDs needing to be consistent when the test is re-run. What successes have other people had with this kind of thing? How do you do automated application-level testing of a rich JS interface? Limitations We are using JavascriptMVC 2.0, hopefully 3.0 soon so that we can upgrade to jQuery 1.4.x. The test-making folks are mostly trained to use Selenium IDE to directly record things. The test leads would prefer a page-unique HTML ID on each clickable element on the page... Training the testers to write or alter special expressions (such as telling them which HTML class-names are important branching points) is a no-go. We try to make re-usable javascript components, but this means very few GUI components can treat themselves (or what they contain) as unique. Some of our components already use HTML ID values in their operation. I'd like to avoid doing this anyway, but it complicates the idea of ID-based testing. It may be possible to add custom facilities (like a locator-builder or new locator method) to the Selenium-IDE installation testers use. Almost everything that goes on occurs within a single "page load" from a conventional browser perspective, even when items are saved Current thoughts I'm considering a system where a custom locator-builder (javascript code) for Selenium-IDE will talk with our application code as the tester is recording. In this way, our application becomes partially responsible for generating a mostly-flexible expression (XPath or jQuery) for any given DOM element. While this can avoid requiring more training for testers, I worry it may be over-thinking things.

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• Where can I find "canonical" sample programs that give quick refreshers for any given language? [on hold]

  - by acheong87

  Note to those close-voting this question: I understand this isn't a conventional programming question and I can agree with the reasoning that it's in the subjective domain (like best-of lists). In other ways though I think it's appropriate because, though it's not a "a specific programming problem," nor concerning "a software algorithm", nor (strictly) concerning "software tools commonly used by programmers", I think it is a "practical, answerable [problem that is] unique to the programming profession," and I think it is "based on an actual [problem I] face." I've been wanting this for some time now, because both approaches of (a) Googling for samples as I write every other line of code and (b) just winging it and seeing what errors crop up, distract me from coding efficiently. This note will be removed if the question gains popularity; this question will be deleted otherwise. I spend most of my time developing in C++, PHP, or Javascript, and every once in a while I have to do something in, say, VBA. In those times, it'd be convenient if I could just put up some sample code on a second monitor, something in between a cheat sheet (often too compact; and doesn't resemble anything that could actually compile/run), and a language reference (often too verbose, or segmented; requires extra steps to search or click through an index), so I can just glance at it and recall things, like how to loop through non-empty cells in a column. I think there's a hidden benefit to seeing formed code, that triggers the right spots in our brains to get back into a language we only need to brush up on. Similar in spirit is how http://ideone.com lets you click "Template" in any given language so you can get started without even doing a search. That template alone tells a lot, sometimes! Case-sensitivity, whitespace conventions, identifier conventions, the spelling of certain types, etc. I couldn't find a resource that pulled together such samples, so if there indeed doesn't exist such a repository, I was hoping this question would inspire professionals and experts to contribute links to the most useful sample code they've used for just this purpose: a keep-on-the-side, form-as-well-as-content, compilable/executable, reminder of a language's basic and oft-used features. Personally I am interested in seeing "samplers" for: VBA, Perl, Python, Java, C# (though for some of these autocompleters in Eclipse, Visual Studio, etc. help enough), awk, and sed. I'm tagging c++, php, and javascript because these are languages for which I'd best be able to evaluate whether proffered sample code matches what I had in mind.

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• Useful software for netbook?

  - by Moayad Mardini

  I'm looking for recommendations of good software that are particularly useful for netbooks. Software that run great on small screens and low CPU/RAM requirments. I'll start off with the following : Operating Systems: Ubuntu Netbook Remix. Easy Peasy: A fork of Ubuntu Netbook Remix that was once called UBuntu EEE. It isn't just for eeePCs though. Definitely worth a look if vanilla Netbook Remix isn't cutting it. (MarkM) Damn Small Linux (Source) Windows 7: With trimming the installation or compressing the Windows directory to fit on an 8GB SSD. (Will Eddins) nLite: A utility to install a lightweight version of Windows XP without the unnecessary components (like Media Player, Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, MSN Explorer, Messenger...). Utilites: TouchFreeze: To disable the touch pad while typing (Source) InSSIDer: Not only does it make it easier to find and keep a wireless connection, but it turns a netbook into the perfect mobile tool for troubleshooting wireless networks. (phenry) AltMove: Adds more functionality to your mouse for interacting with windows. (Rob) ASUS Font Resizer Utility and other tools by ASUS, specific to ASUS Eee PC series. Internet: Run FileZilla FTP client for a small screen : You can hide a lot of FileZilla's interface parts in the View menu, even the directory trees. Go into Settings = Interface and move the message log next to the transfer queue, if you haven't hidden them both or you want to see them. Select a theme with 16x16 icons. (Source) IDEs and Text Editors: Best lightweight IDE/Text Editor: A question on Stack Overflow that has many good suggestions of IDEs and general text editors for programmers. What’s a good linux C/C++ IDE for a low-res screen?: IDEs for Linux-powered netbooks. Online tools: Dropbox: Since the Netbook has limited disk space, you would like to use Cloud Apps like Dropbox and Ubuntu One so that you don't run out of space especially if you are on a holiday. Later when you go back to your desktop with big hard disk,you can take out the files from your dropbox repo. (Manish Sinha) Google products: like Docs, Calendar and Reader (aviraldg) Web sites and software lists: Netbookfiles.com: Netbook specific software downloads. Software Apps to Maximise your Netbook Battery Power: Netbooks are known for their portability. Not only are they small and lightweight but with their increased power efficiency, batteries can last much longer than conventional laptops. This also means you no longer have to carry a power adapter with you! Several brands emphasis the longevity of the battery as a strong selling point, and for those people who travel a lot, it sure is. Free Must-Have Netbook Apps: Finding software for netbooks can present challenges due to limited hard drive space, processor power, RAM, and screen real-estate. That doesn't mean you have to do without essential programs. The apps below cover all the bases -- entertainment, productivity, security, and communication -- without compromising on performance or usability. Best of all, they're free! Useful Netbook Software: With short battery lives and small resolution screens Netbooks, unlike many other computers on the market, could so with some specific software for their use. Now, not all of those I’ve found are specifically designed for Netbooks, but all are relevant. And they’re designed for Windows XP. The question is community wiki, so feel free to edit it. Updated, thank you all for suggestions.

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• Oracle Expands Sun Blade Portfolio for Cloud and Highly Virtualized Environments

  - by Ferhat Hatay

  Oracle announced the expansion of Sun Blade Portfolio for cloud and highly virtualized environments that deliver powerful performance and simplified management as tightly integrated systems.  Along with the SPARC T3-1B blade server, Oracle VM blade cluster reference configuration and Oracle's optimized solution for Oracle WebLogic Suite, Oracle introduced the dual-node Sun Blade X6275 M2 server module with some impressive benchmark results.   Benchmarks on the Sun Blade X6275 M2 server module demonstrate the outstanding performance characteristics critical for running varied commercial applications used in cloud and highly virtualized environments.  These include best-in-class SPEC CPU2006 results with the Intel Xeon processor 5600 series, six Fluent world records and 1.8 times the price-performance of the IBM Power 755 running NAMD, a prominent bio-informatics workload.   Benchmarks for Sun Blade X6275 M2 server module  SPEC CPU2006  The Sun Blade X6275 M2 server module demonstrated best in class SPECint_rate2006 results for all published results using the Intel Xeon processor 5600 series, with a result of 679.  This result is 97% better than the HP BL460c G7 blade, 80% better than the IBM HS22V blade, and 79% better than the Dell M710 blade.  This result demonstrates the density advantage of the new Oracle's server module for space-constrained data centers.     Sun Blade X6275M2 (2 Nodes, Intel Xeon X5670 2.93GHz) - 679 SPECint_rate2006; HP ProLiant BL460c G7 (2.93 GHz, Intel Xeon X5670) - 347 SPECint_rate2006; IBM BladeCenter HS22V (Intel Xeon X5680)  - 377 SPECint_rate2006; Dell PowerEdge M710 (Intel Xeon X5680, 3.33 GHz) - 380 SPECint_rate2006.  SPEC, SPECint, SPECfp reg tm of Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Results from www.spec.org as of 11/24/2010 and this report.    For more specifics about these results, please go to see http://blogs.sun.com/BestPerf   Fluent The Sun Fire X6275 M2 server module produced world-record results on each of the six standard cases in the current "FLUENT 12" benchmark test suite at 8-, 12-, 24-, 32-, 64- and 96-core configurations. These results beat the most recent QLogic score with IBM DX 360 M series platforms and QLogic "Truescale" interconnects.  Results on sedan_4m test case on the Sun Blade X6275 M2 server module are 23% better than the HP C7000 system, and 20% better than the IBM DX 360 M2; Dell has not posted a result for this test case.  Results can be found at the FLUENT website.   ANSYS's FLUENT software solves fluid flow problems, and is based on a numerical technique called computational fluid dynamics (CFD), which is used in the automotive, aerospace, and consumer products industries. The FLUENT 12 benchmark test suite consists of seven models that are well suited for multi-node clustered environments and representative of modern engineering CFD clusters. Vendors benchmark their systems with the principal objective of providing comparative performance information for FLUENT software that, among other things, depends on compilers, optimization, interconnect, and the performance characteristics of the hardware.   FLUENT application performance is representative of other commercial applications that require memory and CPU resources to be available in a scalable cluster-ready format.  FLUENT benchmark has six conventional test cases (eddy_417k, turbo_500k, aircraft_2m, sedan_4m, truck_14m, truck_poly_14m) at various core counts.   All information on the FLUENT website (http://www.fluent.com) is Copyrighted1995-2010 by ANSYS Inc. Results as of November 24, 2010. For more specifics about these results, please go to see http://blogs.sun.com/BestPerf   NAMD Results on the Sun Blade X6275 M2 server module running NAMD (a parallel molecular dynamics code designed for high-performance simulation of large biomolecular systems) show up to a 1.8X better price/performance than IBM's Power 7-based system.  For space-constrained environments, the ultra-dense Sun Blade X6275 M2 server module provides a 1.7X better price/performance per rack unit than IBM's system.     IBM Power 755 4-way Cluster (16U). Total price for cluster: $324,212. See IBM United States Hardware Announcement 110-008, dated February 9, 2010, pp. 4, 21 and 39-46.  Sun Blade X6275 M2 8-Blade Cluster (10U). Total price for cluster:  $193,939. Price/performance and performance/RU comparisons based on f1ATPase molecule test results. Sun Blade X6275 M2 cluster: $3,568/step/sec, 5.435 step/sec/RU. IBM Power 755 cluster: $6,355/step/sec, 3.189 step/sec/U. See http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/reports/system_perf.html. See http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/namd/performance.html for more information, results as of 11/24/10.   For more specifics about these results, please go to see http://blogs.sun.com/BestPerf   Reverse Time Migration The Reverse Time Migration is heavily used in geophysical imaging and modeling for Oil & Gas Exploration.  The Sun Blade X6275 M2 server module showed up to a 40% performance improvement over the previous generation server module with super-linear scalability to 16 nodes for the 9-Point Stencil used in this Reverse Time Migration computational kernel.  The balanced combination of Oracle's Sun Storage 7410 system with the Sun Blade X6275 M2 server module cluster showed linear scalability for the total application throughput, including the I/O and MPI communication, to produce a final 3-D seismic depth imaged cube for interpretation. The final image write time from the Sun Blade X6275 M2 server module nodes to Oracle's Sun Storage 7410 system achieved 10GbE line speed of 1.25 GBytes/second or better performance. Between subsequent runs, the effects of I/O buffer caching on the Sun Blade X6275 M2 server module nodes and write optimized caching on the Sun Storage 7410 system gave up to 1.8 GBytes/second effective write performance. The performance results and characterization of this Reverse Time Migration benchmark could serve as a useful measure for many other I/O intensive commercial applications. 3D VTI Reverse Time Migration Seismic Depth Imaging, see http://blogs.sun.com/BestPerf/entry/3d_vti_reverse_time_migration for more information, results as of 11/14/2010.                            

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• Need personal advice on how to get out of a company..

  - by SOfan

  Hi, I am an SO user since past 6 months and this is the first time I am turning to SO for personal help. I have asked technical questions before with my real ID. I am stuck inside a service based IT company for the past one year and haven't been able to decide if to leave it, when to leave it and how to leave it. I had taken 2 weeks LWP on medical reason roughly at end of 1 year and then soon after reporting, I applied for 2 months more LWP (on medical/personal ground) with the intention of working on my health,take up a hobby class to ward off depression,pessimism, to have some fun in life, and to look for a job which I really would be excited about - that interests me and which matches with my strength. My leave starts from this Monday. So in any case, I had hard set in mind that I will leave the company after I join them back hopefully with some job offer already in hand (after figuring out what I want do). Neither I can stand the past project,past colleagues,company, HR, pathetically low salary. But if I really listen to my heart, I don't want to have to go back to that office after my sabbatical and again have to see those people. I will have to resign it after my sabbatical ends. Then HR people perhaps wont like it, may even accuse me on face or behind back that primary purpose of my leave must have been to hunt for a better job and I lied about medical and person reasons. Also, if they get nasty and force me to serve 2 months notice period. There is no way I see myself after sabbatical resuming in old project or starting new work. It will be a pain. Since they have already approved 2 months leave and stuff, ideally if they want, they should be just able to relieve me right on the next day after I join back. But, I don't know if they want to get nasty, will they mention about my 2 months sabbatical leave in my experience letter or more scary, the term medical/personal reason. I have hard earned my experience here, have worked against my will, mostly it has been painful and slogged like anything, because I realize the importance of work experience in IT industry. I don't have greed to have those 2 months included extra in my experience letter, but I don't want to mess up with my experience letter in a way which makes my next employer ask question, get suspicious, or be wary if I have any medical reason going on. Being an emotional,moody person or somebody who can't be in an environment, once my mind and heart starts hating it. I think it perhaps is best, if I resign on Monday itself telling them (in polite manner) something that look I took sabbatical for some reason but I don't want to resume working in the company after my sabbatical ends. So please accept my resignation. Now tell me what you want to do about my leave request, my notice period and when you are willing to relieve me. What should I write and how? Some background: I am working in an IT company in India.I am overqualified in the company. It is grossly underpaying me. My education qualifications far exceed anyone's in the whole company being a CS undergrad as well as a CS grad. I joined this company after finishing the grad. I had self-doubts about my skills and interest as a programmer. I like doing research oriented work, though didn't have any particular success during grad. My life here has been very hectic. The project containing many many sub-projects has kept me on my toes and I have never really liked the work. I have been playing against my strength. Also the company strict internet usage policy (you can't read gmails, can't browse any non-work related sites not even news). When working for a client, from the machine we can't even check company related emails.For this one has to go to kiosk like 5 machines in a small room etc. Most of the times those machines are not available, so it was not unusual to keep making rounds to these kiosk machines to check company emails, browse company related emails etc.So it was not so easy to keep in touch with company related basic affairs for a not particular careful person. Things like this which are new to me, make me feel restricted. I am an undecisive person with a sense of failure, self-doubt, not meeting up unrealistic expectation. Somewhere at back of mind, I envy my classmates who make a smooth transition from company to company without causing any gap in their resume. I on other hand have gaps in resume. I get tired after working in a place for sometime. problem with colleagues in general. I am not particular great with people, have few friends, not known for a fun nature, rather serious, scholar. I am not a typical conventional female. I think females are usually more disciplined. But I am not so. I reach office late (though after informing manager). I don't want to blame them entirely, because from my past, it is not unusual for me to get undecisive on things. Also I had doubts about my ability as researched and to succeed there. of building a relationship in a group, to have something to talk about, newspaper. I get cut-off from people. peer pressure. I make blunders in coding, lose patience. Consciously or unconsciously I feel contempt for people here, work here, environment here. I have doubts that either I go to a place which does innovation, does research oriented work, product biggies, have great motivated people, have competent people passionate about products they are building. But then I also doubt my ability to survive there. I have identified that an idea job for me would be 4 days a week, a high salary job. When among people in company/team, I can't think much. I need some time at home to read good authentic books written in good style on what work I am doing.So that I am comfortable with my understanding of work. I get into pressure easily under deadline and need 5th day to cool myself off. I took for 2 weeks leave, because each day was hell for me. May be the depression phase of bipolar is on and also partially it could be that being a work centered person, who derives happiness,self-esteem from work, haven't been enjoying work and have been working for the sole person of proving stability, and ability to stick, against all odds, and facing what challenges I see, bonding with people, identifying opportunities to learn in given task etc.have been averaging one day LWP in 1 week or 10 days. or may be because of my nature,ADD,not being able to switch context,out of touch with news, don't have a circle of friends with who I enjoy. less knowledge in general to talk about, just some technical stuff.anyway, so due to emotional reason, some practical reason etc, I wanted to be very sure before leaving. So my leave starts from Monday and I should feel happy about it. I have taken the leave to for a few purposes - to take care of my health by regular yoga/exercise (with project on, I just can't do anything regular), reassess myself to see what I want to try next which work I might like, look for next job, take up a hobby which I like say singing. I am not clear on my career,job aspiration. I have tried my hands on research. During this year appraisal yesterday, I even had some conflict with my last manager. In meeting with me one on one, he would say all nice things about me, but in feedback to new manager, he hasn't given any excellent feedback. It is all only good. I am angry at this old Manager. Also new manager also scolded me as I didn't agree to his appraisal and waited to hear myself from old Manager. He kind of scolded me for wasting his time. Am I being unethical somewhere? I am always very conscious of if I am cheating anywhere. What advice I am seeking? How to resign and what to write in resignation letter

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• NLP with greatly contrained input and abilities

  - by Mike F

  Hat in hand here. I'm a seasoned developer and I would be grateful for a bit of help. I don't have time to read or digest long intricate discussions on theoretical concepts around NLP (or go get my PHD). That said, I have read a few and it's a damn interesting field. The problem is I need real world solutions, for real world products, in real world time frames. The problem I'm having is right now I'm not sure what the right questions are to ask to get started implementing. I believe this is mostly related to vocabulary. I'll read somewhere, a blog post, a forum post, a whitepaper, and it says, I'm doing flooping with the blargy blarg method, and I go google flooping and blargy blarg, and I get references to more obscurity. It seemingly never ends. So, my question is multiphased. First, more generally, how do I become passingly educated on this quickly? Just in time educated. I only need to know what I need to know to take the next step. I've spent 20 years writing code. Explain quick. I'll get it. (I mean provide a reference to something that explains quickly of course). I'm happy to read the right book, but I don't want to read a book where I read the chapter introduction that explains what floopy floop is and then skip over the rest of the chapter with examples of floopy flooping (because now I get what it is). I also don't want to read a book that goes into too much detail with theoretical underpinnings or history. For example, the Jurafsky book seems like way more than I need: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0131873210. But I will read it if this is the right book to read. (It's also dang expensive!) I need the root node of the expedited learning tree here, if you will. Point me in the right direction and I'll be quite grateful. I'm expecting quite a lot of firehose drinking - I just need the right firehose. Second, what I need to do is take a single sentence, with a very reduced vocabulary, and get a grammar tree (sorry if this is the wrong terminology) that I can do something with. I know I could easily write this command line input style in c in a more conventional manner, but I need it to be way better than that. But I don't need a chatterbot either. What I'm doing needs to live in a constrained environment. I can't use Python (unfortunately). I can't ship with gigabytes of corpuses. I need any libraries I use to be in c/c++. If I have to write this myself, I will. Hopefully, it will be achievable considering the reduced problem set. Maybe, probably, that's just naive. If so, let me know. :-) Thanks in advance - Mike

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• Working on a jQuery plugin : viewport simulator

  - by pixelboy

  Hi community, i'm working on a jQuery plugin that's aiming to simulate one axis camera movements. The first step to achieving this is simple : use conventional, clean markup, and get the prototype to work. Heres how to initiate the plugin : $('#wrapper').fluidGrids({exclude: '.exclude'}); Here's a working demo of the WIP thing : http://sandbox.test.everestconseil.com/protoCitroen/home.html Where am I having issues : Is there a fast way to detect if parent of each target (clickable animated element) is a href link, and if so to save this url ? My clone uses the original background image to then animate it.fade it to black/white. But when you clik on an element, image url is found, but doesn't seem to be injected. Do you see anything ? Finally, about animation of elements : as you can see in source code, I'm using the container $('#wrapper') to position all animated children. What would be the perfect properties to apply to make this cross browser proof ? Here's the source code for the plugin, fully commented. (function($){ $.fn.extend({ //plugin name - fluidGrids fluidGrids: function(options) { //List and default values for available options var defaults = { //The target that we're going to use to handle click event hitTarget: '.animateMe', exclude: '.exclude', animateSpeed: 1000 }; var options = $.extend(defaults, options); return this.each(function() { var o = options; //Assign current element to variable var obj = $(this); //We assign default width height and positions to each object in order to get them back when necessary var objPosition = obj.position(); //Get all ready to animate targets in innerViewport var items = $(o.hitTarget, obj); //Final coords of innerViewport var innerViewport = new Object(); innerViewport.top = parseInt(objPosition.top); innerViewport.left = parseInt(objPosition.left); innerViewport.bottom = obj.height(); innerViewport.right = obj.width(); items.each(function(e){ //Assign a pointer cursor to each clickable element $(this).css("cursor","pointer"); //To load distant url at last, we look for it in Title Attribute if ($(this).attr('title').length){ var targetUrl = $(this).attr('title'); } //We assign default width height and positions to each object in order to get them back when necessary var itemPosition = $(this).position(); var itemTop = itemPosition.top; var itemLeft = itemPosition.left; var itemWidth = $(this).width(); var itemHeight = $(this).height(); //Both the original and it's animated clone var original = $(this); //To give the if (original.css('background-image')){ var urlImageOriginal = original.css('background-image').replace(/^url|[("")]/g, ''); var imageToInsert = "<img src="+urlImageOriginal+"/>" } var clone = $(this).clone(); original.click(function() { $(clone).append(imageToInsert); $(clone).attr("id","clone"); $(clone).attr('top',itemTop); $(clone).attr('left',itemLeft); $(clone).css("position","absolute"); $(clone).insertAfter(this); $(this).hide(); $(clone).animate({ top: innerViewport.top, left: innerViewport.left, width: innerViewport.bottom, height: innerViewport.right }, obj.animateSpeed); $("*",obj).not("#clone, #clone * , a , "+ o.exclude).fadeOut('fast'); //Si l'objet du click est un lien return false; }); }); }); } }); })(jQuery);

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• Effective optimization strategies on modern C++ compilers

  - by user168715

  I'm working on scientific code that is very performance-critical. An initial version of the code has been written and tested, and now, with profiler in hand, it's time to start shaving cycles from the hot spots. It's well-known that some optimizations, e.g. loop unrolling, are handled these days much more effectively by the compiler than by a programmer meddling by hand. Which techniques are still worthwhile? Obviously, I'll run everything I try through a profiler, but if there's conventional wisdom as to what tends to work and what doesn't, it would save me significant time. I know that optimization is very compiler- and architecture- dependent. I'm using Intel's C++ compiler targeting the Core 2 Duo, but I'm also interested in what works well for gcc, or for "any modern compiler." Here are some concrete ideas I'm considering: Is there any benefit to replacing STL containers/algorithms with hand-rolled ones? In particular, my program includes a very large priority queue (currently a std::priority_queue) whose manipulation is taking a lot of total time. Is this something worth looking into, or is the STL implementation already likely the fastest possible? Along similar lines, for std::vectors whose needed sizes are unknown but have a reasonably small upper bound, is it profitable to replace them with statically-allocated arrays? I've found that dynamic memory allocation is often a severe bottleneck, and that eliminating it can lead to significant speedups. As a consequence I'm interesting in the performance tradeoffs of returning large temporary data structures by value vs. returning by pointer vs. passing the result in by reference. Is there a way to reliably determine whether or not the compiler will use RVO for a given method (assuming the caller doesn't need to modify the result, of course)? How cache-aware do compilers tend to be? For example, is it worth looking into reordering nested loops? Given the scientific nature of the program, floating-point numbers are used everywhere. A significant bottleneck in my code used to be conversions from floating point to integers: the compiler would emit code to save the current rounding mode, change it, perform the conversion, then restore the old rounding mode --- even though nothing in the program ever changed the rounding mode! Disabling this behavior significantly sped up my code. Are there any similar floating-point-related gotchas I should be aware of? One consequence of C++ being compiled and linked separately is that the compiler is unable to do what would seem to be very simple optimizations, such as move method calls like strlen() out of the termination conditions of loop. Are there any optimization like this one that I should look out for because they can't be done by the compiler and must be done by hand? On the flip side, are there any techniques I should avoid because they are likely to interfere with the compiler's ability to automatically optimize code? Lastly, to nip certain kinds of answers in the bud: I understand that optimization has a cost in terms of complexity, reliability, and maintainability. For this particular application, increased performance is worth these costs. I understand that the best optimizations are often to improve the high-level algorithms, and this has already been done.

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• Mr Flibble: As Seen Through a Lens, Darkly

  - by Phil Factor

  One of the rewarding things about getting involved with Simple-Talk has been in meeting and working with some pretty daunting talents. I’d like to say that Dom Reed’s talents are at the end of the visible spectrum, but then there is Richard, who pops up on national radio occasionally, presenting intellectual programs, Andrew, master of the ukulele, with his pioneering local history work, and Tony with marathon running and his past as a university lecturer. However, Dom, who is Red Gate’s head of creative design and who did the preliminary design work for Simple-Talk, has taken the art photography to an extreme that was impossible before Photoshop. He’s not the first person to take a photograph of himself every day for two years, but he is definitely the first to weave the results into a frightening narrative that veers from comedy to pathos, using all the arts of Photoshop to create a fictional character, Mr Flibble.   Have a look at some of the Flickr pages. Uncle Spike The B-Men – Woolverine The 2011 BoyZ iN Sink reunion tour turned out to be their last Error 404 – Flibble not found Mr Flibble is not a normal type of alter-ego. We generally prefer to choose bronze age warriors of impossibly magnificent physique and stamina; superheroes who bestride the world, scorning the forces of evil and anarchy in a series noble and righteous quests. Not so Dom, whose Mr Flibble is vulnerable, and laid low by an addiction to toxic substances. His work has gained an international cult following and is used as course material by several courses in photography. Although his work was for a while ignored by the more conventional world of ‘art’ photography they became famous through the internet. His photos have received well over a million views on Flickr. It was definitely time to turn this work into a book, because the whole sequence of images has its maximum effect when seen in sequence. He has a Kickstarter project page, one of the first following the recent UK launch of the crowdfunding platform. The publication of the book should be a major event and the £45 I shall divvy up will be one of the securest investments I shall ever make. The local news in Cambridge picked up on the project and I can quote from the report by the excellent Cabume website , the source of Tech news from the ‘Cambridge cluster’ Put really simply Mr Flibble likes to dress up and take pictures of himself. One of the benefits of a split personality, however is that Mr Flibble is supported in his endeavour by Reed’s top notch photography skills, supreme mastery of Photoshop and unflinching dedication to the cause. The duo have collaborated to take a picture every day for the past 730-plus days. It is not a big surprise that neither Mr Flibble nor Reed watches any TV: In addition to his full-time role at Cambridge software house,Red Gate Software as head of creativity and the two to five hours a day he spends taking the Mr Flibble shots, Reed also helps organise the . And now Reed is using Kickstarter to see if the world is ready for a Mr Flibble coffee table book. Judging by the early response it is. At the time of writing, just a few days after it went live, ‘I Drink Lead Paint: An absurd photography book by Mr Flibble’ had raised £1,545 of the £10,000 target it needs to raise by the Friday 30 November deadline from 37 backers. Following the standard Kickstarter template, Reed is offering a series of rewards based on the amount pledged, ranging from a Mr Flibble desktop wallpaper for pledges of £5 or more to a signed copy of the book for pledges of £45 or more, right up to a starring role in the book for £1,500. Mr Flibble is unquestionably one of the more deranged Kickstarter hopefuls, but don’t think for a second that he doesn’t have a firm grasp on the challenges he faces on the road to immortalisation on 150 gsm stock. Under the section ‘risks and challenges’ on his Kickstarter page his statement begins: “An angry horde of telepathic iguanas discover the world’s last remaining stock of vintage lead paint and hold me to ransom. Gosh how I love to guzzle lead paint. Anyway… faced with such brazen bravado, I cower at the thought of taking on their combined might and die a sad and lonely Flibble deprived of my one and only true liquid love.” At which point, Reed manages to wrestle away the keyboard, giving him the opportunity to present slightly more cogent analysis of the obstacles the project must still overcome. We asked Reed a few questions about Mr Flibble’s Kickstarter adventure and felt that his responses were worth publishing in full: Firstly, how did you manage it – holding down a full time job and also conceiving and executing these ideas on a daily basis? I employed a small team of ferocious gerbils to feed me ideas on a daily basis. Whilst most of their ideas were incomprehensibly rubbish and usually revolved around food, just occasionally they’d give me an idea like my B-Men series. As a backup plan though, I found that the best way to generate ideas was to actually start taking photos. If I were to stand in front of the camera, pull a silly face, place a vegetable on my head or something else equally stupid, the resulting photo of that would typically spark an idea when I came to look at it. Sitting around idly trying to think of an idea was doomed to result in no ideas. I admit that I really struggled with time. I’m proud that I never missed a day, but it was definitely hard when you were late from work, tired or doing something socially on the same day. I don’t watch TV, which I guess really helps, because I’d frequently be spending 2-5 hours taking and processing the photos every day. Are there any overlaps between software development and creative thinking? Software is an inherently creative business and the speed that it moves ensures you always have to find solutions to new things. Everyone in the team needs to be a problem solver. Has it helped me specifically with my photography? Probably. Working within teams that continually need to figure out new stuff keeps the brain feisty I suppose, and I guess I’m continually exposed to a lot of possible sources of inspiration. How specifically will this Kickstarter project allow you to test the commercial appeal of your work and do you plan to get the book into shops? It’s taken a while to be confident saying it, but I know that people like the work that I do. I’ve had well over a million views of my pictures, many humbling comments and I know I’ve garnered some loyal fans out there who anticipate my next photo. For me, this Kickstarter is about seeing if there’s worth to my work beyond just making people smile. In an online world where there’s an abundance of freely available content, can you hope to receive anything from what you do, or would people just move onto the next piece of content if you happen to ask for some support? A book has been the single-most requested thing that people have asked me to produce and it’s something that I feel would showcase my work well. It’s just hard to convince people in the publishing industry just now to take any kind of risk – they’ve been hit hard. If I can show that people would like my work enough to buy a book, then it sends a pretty clear picture that publishers might hear, or it gives me the confidence enough to invest in myself a bit more – hard to do when you’re riddled with self-doubt! I’d love to see my work in the shops, yes. I could see it being the thing that someone flips through idly as they’re Christmas shopping and recognizing that it’d be just the perfect gift for their difficult to buy for friend or relative. That said, working in the software industry means I’m clearly aware of how I could use technology to distribute my work, but I can’t deny that there’s something very appealing to having a physical thing to hold in your hands. If the project is successful is there a chance that it could become a full-time job? At the moment that seems like a distant dream, as should this be successful, there are many more steps I’d need to take to reach any kind of business viability. Kickstarter seems exactly that – a way for people to help kick start me into something that could take off. If people like my work and want me to succeed with it, then taking a look at my Kickstarter page (and hopefully pledging a bit of support) would make my elbows blush considerably. So there is is. An opportunity to open the wallet just a bit to ensure that one of the more unusual talents sees the light in the format it deserves.  

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• NHibernate Conventions

  - by Ricardo Peres

  Introduction It seems that nowadays everyone loves conventions! Not the ones that you go to, but the ones that you use, that is! It just happens that NHibernate also supports conventions, and we’ll see exactly how. Conventions in NHibernate are supported in two ways: Naming of tables and columns when not explicitly indicated in the mappings; Full domain mapping. Naming of Tables and Columns Since always NHibernate has supported the concept of a naming strategy. A naming strategy in NHibernate converts class and property names to table and column names and vice-versa, when a name is not explicitly supplied. In concrete, it must be a realization of the NHibernate.Cfg.INamingStrategy interface, of which NHibernate includes two implementations: DefaultNamingStrategy: the default implementation, where each column and table are mapped to identically named properties and classes, for example, “MyEntity” will translate to “MyEntity”; ImprovedNamingStrategy: underscores (_) are used to separate Pascal-cased fragments, for example, entity “MyEntity” will be mapped to a “my_entity” table. The naming strategy can be defined at configuration level (the Configuration instance) by calling the SetNamingStrategy method: 1: cfg.SetNamingStrategy(ImprovedNamingStrategy.Instance); Both the DefaultNamingStrategy and the ImprovedNamingStrategy classes offer singleton instances in the form of Instance static fields. DefaultNamingStrategy is the one NHibernate uses, if you don’t specify one. Domain Mapping In mapping by code, we have the choice of relying on conventions to do the mapping automatically. This means a class will inspect our classes and decide how they will relate to the database objects. The class that handles conventions is NHibernate.Mapping.ByCode.ConventionModelMapper, a specialization of the base by code mapper, NHibernate.Mapping.ByCode.ModelMapper. The ModelMapper relies on an internal SimpleModelInspector to help it decide what and how to map, but the mapper lets you override its decisions.  You apply code conventions like this: 1: //pick the types that you want to map 2: IEnumerable<Type> types = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetExportedTypes(); 3:  4: //conventions based mapper 5: ConventionModelMapper mapper = new ConventionModelMapper(); 6:  7: HbmMapping mapping = mapper.CompileMappingFor(types); 8:  9: //the one and only configuration instance 10: Configuration cfg = ...; 11: cfg.AddMapping(mapping); This is a very simple example, it lacks, at least, the id generation strategy, which you can add by adding an event handler like this: 1: mapper.BeforeMapClass += (IModelInspector modelInspector, Type type, IClassAttributesMapper classCustomizer) => 2: { 3: classCustomizer.Id(x => 4: { 5: //set the hilo generator 6: x.Generator(Generators.HighLow); 7: }); 8: }; The mapper will fire events like this whenever it needs to get information about what to do. And basically this is all it takes to automatically map your domain! It will correctly configure many-to-one and one-to-many relations, choosing bags or sets depending on your collections, will get the table and column names from the naming strategy we saw earlier and will apply the usual defaults to all properties, such as laziness and fetch mode. However, there is at least one thing missing: many-to-many relations. The conventional mapper doesn’t know how to find and configure them, which is a pity, but, alas, not difficult to overcome. To start, for my projects, I have this rule: each entity exposes a public property of type ISet<T> where T is, of course, the type of the other endpoint entity. Extensible as it is, NHibernate lets me implement this very easily: 1: mapper.IsOneToMany((MemberInfo member, Boolean isLikely) => 2: { 3: Type sourceType = member.DeclaringType; 4: Type destinationType = member.GetMemberFromDeclaringType().GetPropertyOrFieldType(); 5:  6: //check if the property is of a generic collection type 7: if ((destinationType.IsGenericCollection() == true) && (destinationType.GetGenericArguments().Length == 1)) 8: { 9: Type destinationEntityType = destinationType.GetGenericArguments().Single(); 10:  11: //check if the type of the generic collection property is an entity 12: if (mapper.ModelInspector.IsEntity(destinationEntityType) == true) 13: { 14: //check if there is an equivalent property on the target type that is also a generic collection and points to this entity 15: PropertyInfo collectionInDestinationType = destinationEntityType.GetProperties().Where(x => (x.PropertyType.IsGenericCollection() == true) && (x.PropertyType.GetGenericArguments().Length == 1) && (x.PropertyType.GetGenericArguments().Single() == sourceType)).SingleOrDefault(); 16:  17: if (collectionInDestinationType != null) 18: { 19: return (false); 20: } 21: } 22: } 23:  24: return (true); 25: }); 26:  27: mapper.IsManyToMany((MemberInfo member, Boolean isLikely) => 28: { 29: //a relation is many to many if it isn't one to many 30: Boolean isOneToMany = mapper.ModelInspector.IsOneToMany(member); 31: return (!isOneToMany); 32: }); 33:  34: mapper.BeforeMapManyToMany += (IModelInspector modelInspector, PropertyPath member, IManyToManyMapper collectionRelationManyToManyCustomizer) => 35: { 36: Type destinationEntityType = member.LocalMember.GetPropertyOrFieldType().GetGenericArguments().First(); 37: //set the mapping table column names from each source entity name plus the _Id sufix 38: collectionRelationManyToManyCustomizer.Column(destinationEntityType.Name + "_Id"); 39: }; 40:  41: mapper.BeforeMapSet += (IModelInspector modelInspector, PropertyPath member, ISetPropertiesMapper propertyCustomizer) => 42: { 43: if (modelInspector.IsManyToMany(member.LocalMember) == true) 44: { 45: propertyCustomizer.Key(x => x.Column(member.LocalMember.DeclaringType.Name + "_Id")); 46:  47: Type sourceType = member.LocalMember.DeclaringType; 48: Type destinationType = member.LocalMember.GetPropertyOrFieldType().GetGenericArguments().First(); 49: IEnumerable<String> names = new Type[] { sourceType, destinationType }.Select(x => x.Name).OrderBy(x => x); 50:  51: //set inverse on the relation of the alphabetically first entity name 52: propertyCustomizer.Inverse(sourceType.Name == names.First()); 53: //set mapping table name from the entity names in alphabetical order 54: propertyCustomizer.Table(String.Join("_", names)); 55: } 56: }; We have to understand how the conventions mapper thinks: For each collection of entities found, it will ask the mapper if it is a one-to-many; in our case, if the collection is a generic one that has an entity as its generic parameter, and the generic parameter type has a similar collection, then it is not a one-to-many; Next, the mapper will ask if the collection that it now knows is not a one-to-many is a many-to-many; Before a set is mapped, if it corresponds to a many-to-many, we set its mapping table. Now, this is tricky: because we have no way to maintain state, we sort the names of the two endpoint entities and we combine them with a “_”; for the first alphabetical entity, we set its relation to inverse – remember, on a many-to-many relation, only one endpoint must be marked as inverse; finally, we set the column name as the name of the entity with an “_Id” suffix; Before the many-to-many relation is processed, we set the column name as the name of the other endpoint entity with the “_Id” suffix, as we did for the set. And that’s it. With these rules, NHibernate will now happily find and configure many-to-many relations, as well as all the others. You can wrap this in a new conventions mapper class, so that it is more easily reusable: 1: public class ManyToManyConventionModelMapper : ConventionModelMapper 2: { 3: public ManyToManyConventionModelMapper() 4: { 5: base.IsOneToMany((MemberInfo member, Boolean isLikely) => 6: { 7: return (this.IsOneToMany(member, isLikely)); 8: }); 9:  10: base.IsManyToMany((MemberInfo member, Boolean isLikely) => 11: { 12: return (this.IsManyToMany(member, isLikely)); 13: }); 14:  15: base.BeforeMapManyToMany += this.BeforeMapManyToMany; 16: base.BeforeMapSet += this.BeforeMapSet; 17: } 18:  19: protected virtual Boolean IsManyToMany(MemberInfo member, Boolean isLikely) 20: { 21: //a relation is many to many if it isn't one to many 22: Boolean isOneToMany = this.ModelInspector.IsOneToMany(member); 23: return (!isOneToMany); 24: } 25:  26: protected virtual Boolean IsOneToMany(MemberInfo member, Boolean isLikely) 27: { 28: Type sourceType = member.DeclaringType; 29: Type destinationType = member.GetMemberFromDeclaringType().GetPropertyOrFieldType(); 30:  31: //check if the property is of a generic collection type 32: if ((destinationType.IsGenericCollection() == true) && (destinationType.GetGenericArguments().Length == 1)) 33: { 34: Type destinationEntityType = destinationType.GetGenericArguments().Single(); 35:  36: //check if the type of the generic collection property is an entity 37: if (this.ModelInspector.IsEntity(destinationEntityType) == true) 38: { 39: //check if there is an equivalent property on the target type that is also a generic collection and points to this entity 40: PropertyInfo collectionInDestinationType = destinationEntityType.GetProperties().Where(x => (x.PropertyType.IsGenericCollection() == true) && (x.PropertyType.GetGenericArguments().Length == 1) && (x.PropertyType.GetGenericArguments().Single() == sourceType)).SingleOrDefault(); 41:  42: if (collectionInDestinationType != null) 43: { 44: return (false); 45: } 46: } 47: } 48:  49: return (true); 50: } 51:  52: protected virtual new void BeforeMapManyToMany(IModelInspector modelInspector, PropertyPath member, IManyToManyMapper collectionRelationManyToManyCustomizer) 53: { 54: Type destinationEntityType = member.LocalMember.GetPropertyOrFieldType().GetGenericArguments().First(); 55: //set the mapping table column names from each source entity name plus the _Id sufix 56: collectionRelationManyToManyCustomizer.Column(destinationEntityType.Name + "_Id"); 57: } 58:  59: protected virtual new void BeforeMapSet(IModelInspector modelInspector, PropertyPath member, ISetPropertiesMapper propertyCustomizer) 60: { 61: if (modelInspector.IsManyToMany(member.LocalMember) == true) 62: { 63: propertyCustomizer.Key(x => x.Column(member.LocalMember.DeclaringType.Name + "_Id")); 64:  65: Type sourceType = member.LocalMember.DeclaringType; 66: Type destinationType = member.LocalMember.GetPropertyOrFieldType().GetGenericArguments().First(); 67: IEnumerable<String> names = new Type[] { sourceType, destinationType }.Select(x => x.Name).OrderBy(x => x); 68:  69: //set inverse on the relation of the alphabetically first entity name 70: propertyCustomizer.Inverse(sourceType.Name == names.First()); 71: //set mapping table name from the entity names in alphabetical order 72: propertyCustomizer.Table(String.Join("_", names)); 73: } 74: } 75: } Conclusion Of course, there is much more to mapping than this, I suggest you look at all the events and functions offered by the ModelMapper to see where you can hook for making it behave the way you want. If you need any help, just let me know!

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