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• How can I install the BlackBerry v5.0.0 component pack into Eclipse?

  - by Dan J

  I'm trying to install the latest v5.0.0 "beta 2" BlackBerry OS Component Pack into Eclipse 3.4.2 with BlackBerry Eclipse plugin v1.0.0.67, but have hit a few problems. Has anybody found an easy way to do this? I had no trouble installing the v4.5.0 and v4.7.0 Component Packs. It's rather strange that BlackBerry are shipping new phones with the v5.0.0 OS installed (e.g. a Storm 2 9550 and Bold 9700 that I just bought), and pushing that update to phones whilst the BlackBerry website still considers the v5.0.0 SDK / Component Packs to be "beta 2"! If anybody knows when an official non-beta Component Pack is going to be released that might solve my problem... In case it helps, the problems I've hit so far are: -Contrary to the implication on the BlackBerry website, the Eclipse "Software Update..." option for the v5.0.0 Component Pack claims it only works on the v1.0.0 Eclipse BlackBerry plugin, not the new v1.1 one. -I then tried to install the v5.0.0 Component Pack through the "Software Updates..." menu in Eclipse using the v1.0.0 Eclipse BlackBery plugin. Once I'd done the 200MB download the install failed with a "Invalid zip file format" error. -I might just have been unlucky with a corrupted download but I did try it twice, once through "Software Updates..." and once by selecting "Archive" to install the downloaded Component Pack (which unlike v4.5.0 and v4.7.0 was a JAR, not a ZIP).

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• PHP sessions causing Apache to hang indefinitely

  - by Kmaid

  The problem is that every so often a page that writes to a Session will cause apache to hang forever for a particular session. Once this error occurs for one user any further modifications to any session of any user will cause the website to hang for this user. This problem has been my sole focus for days. I have a development VPS running Windows 2003 and default latest version of XAMPP using the standard PHP session handler. The code in question actually runs on two other machines perfectly normally so although my common sense says it’s a web server configuration issue but at this point I am willing to try anything. On further investigation there are no errors in the Apache, PHP or System event log. Resources are abundant and there is no “AJAX shit storm” or more than a couple writes to a session per page. I have also implemented session_write_close() wherever possible to try and help elevate the problem. I have checked the session’s directory which is set to “C:\windows\Temp” and found that once a user enters this hanging phase that the corresponding session file is exclusively locked and the only way to resolve this is to stop Apache and wait a few moments for the files to become unlocked and delete them. I am not wondering if deletion is required. The Sessions themselves only contain 4 bits of information. ShoppingCartID, UserID, UserLevel and Refering URL and are alphanumerical with an occasional slash. My PHP.INI’s session section is configured like this: session.save_handler = files session.save_path = "C:\WINDOWS\Temp" session.use_cookies = 1 session.name = PHPSESSID session.auto_start = 0 session.cookie_lifetime = 0 session.cookie_path = / session.cookie_domain = session.cookie_httponly = session.serialize_handler = php session.gc_probability = 1 session.gc_divisor = 100 session.gc_maxlifetime = 1440 session.bug_compat_42 = 1 session.bug_compat_warn = 1 session.referer_check = session.entropy_length = 0 session.entropy_file = session.cache_limiter = nocache session.cache_expire = 180 session.use_trans_sid = 0 session.hash_function = 0 session.hash_bits_per_character = 4 I have tried everything I can think of and the whole problem is now a blur to me. Any ideas would be appreciated and thanks for your time reading this :)

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• Magento - Show Custom Attributes in Grouped Product table.

  - by greencoconut

  I need to find a way to show the value of a custom attribute in place of the "Product Name" shown in the image below. I'm working with /app/design/frontend/default/defaultx/template/catalog/product/view/type/grouped.php The code below doesn't work(the custom attribute is yearmade): <?php if (count($_associatedProducts)): ?> <?php foreach ($_associatedProducts as $_item): ?> <tr> <td><?php echo $this->htmlEscape($_item->getYearmade()) ?></td> Any help would be appreciated. EDIT: So the answer turned out to be quite simple. You see what I failed to mention above was that there was indeed output... but that it was just a number (eg: 52). Turns out this was the ID for that custom attribute value (It was a Dropdown type of custom attribute). So in summary This works for custom attributes of type text: echo $this->htmlEscape($_item->getYearmade()) But for all other types of custom attribute (I think), the following should be used: echo $this->htmlEscape($_item->getAttributeText('yearmade')) I would not have discovered this without the most excellent answer provided by Alan Storm, below. Thank you sir.

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• SQL Alchemy MVC and cross controller joins

  - by Khorkrak

  When using SQL Alchemy for abstracting your data access layer and using controllers as the way to access objects from that abstraction layer, how should joins be handled? So for example, say you have an Orders controller class that manages Order objects such that it provides getOrder, saveOrder, etc methods and likewise a similar controller for User objects. First of all do you even need these controllers? Should you instead just treat SQL Alchemy as "the" thing for handling data access. Why bother with object oriented controller stuff there when you instead have a clean declarative way to obtain and persist objects without having to write SQL directly either. Well one reason could be that perhaps you may want to replace SQL Alchemy with direct SQL or Storm or whatever else. So having controller classes there to act as an intermediate layer helps limit what would need to change then. Anyway - back to the main question - so assuming you have these two controllers, now lets say you want the list of orders for a certain set of users meeting some criteria. How do you go about doing this? Generally you don't want the controllers crossing domains - the Orders controllers knows only about Orders and the User controller just about Users - they don't mess with each other. You also don't want to go fetch all the Users that match and then feed a big list of user ids to the Orders controller to go find the matching Orders. What's needed is a join. Here's where I'm stuck - that seems to mean either the controllers must cross domains or perhaps they should be done away with altogether and you simply do the join via SQL Alchemy directly and get the resulting User and / or Order objects as needed. Thoughts?

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• text not wrapping around some floated images, wraps in IE & FF but not chrome, safari

  - by Hartley

  This is unlike anything I've read about and I've been totally scratching my head for the last few hours trying to figure out what's going on. I have a hand-coded site @ hartbro.com Part of the site is a blog, in which I include pictures. Here's the HTML code around one of the images that's causing trouble. <a href="blogcontent/090811.jpg" class="img"> <img src="blogcontent/090811.jpg" alt="Downed trees" width="25%" class="floatright" /></a> The storm left as quickly as it came. The sky cleared up and we were glad that the oppressive heat had let up. What I've noticed is that, on some of the blog entries that include more than one image, the 2nd image isn't really floating like its supposed to be, with the text wrapping around it. I figure its got to be some sort of conflict with some CSS that I have that's causing the problem but I just can't figure out what it is. I don't understand how it works in FF & IE but not Chrome or Safari?? Here's all of the relevant CSS, let me know if you need anything else. Thanks in advance. img{ margin:10px; } img.floatleft{ float:left; } img.floatright{ float:right; } edit: here's an screen-shot of what's happening.

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• How much detail should be in a project plan or spec?

  - by DeanMc

  I have an issue that I feel many programmers can relate to... I have worked on many small scale projects. After my initial paper brain storm I tend to start coding. What I come up with is usually a rough working model of the actual application. I design in a disconnected fashion so I am talking about underlying code libraries, user interfaces are the last thing as the library usually dictates what is needed in the UI. As my projects get bigger I worry that so should my "spec" or design document. The above paragraph, from my investigations, is echoed all across the internet in one fashion or another. When a UI is concerned there is a bit more information but it is UI specific and does not relate to code libraries. What I am beginning to realise is that maybe code is code is code. It seems from my extensive research that there is no 1:1 mapping between a design document and the code. When I need to research a topic I dump information into OneNote and from there I prioritise features into versions and then into related chunks so that development runs in a fairly linear fashion, my tasks tend to look like so: Implement Binary File Reader Implement Binary File Writer Create Object to encapsulate Data for expression to the caller Now any programmer worth his salt is aware that between those three to do items could be a potential wall of code that could expand out to multiple files. I have tried to map the complete code process for each task but I simply don't think it can be done effectively. By the time one mangles pseudo code it is essentially code anyway so the time investment is negated. So my question is this: Am I right in assuming that the best documentation is the code itself. We are all in agreement that a high level overview is needed. How high should this be? Do you design to statement, class or concept level? What works for you?

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• Pre Project Documentation

  - by DeanMc

  I have an issue that I feel many programmers can relate to... I have worked on many small scale projects. After my initial paper brain storm I tend to start coding. What I come up with is usually a rough working model of the actual application. I design in a disconnected fashion so I am talking about underlying code libraries, user interfaces are the last thing as the library usually dictates what is needed in the UI. As my projects get bigger I worry that so should my "spec" or design document. The above paragraph, from my investigations, is echoed all across the internet in one fashion or another. When a UI is concerned there is a bit more information but it is UI specific and does not relate to code libraries. What I am beginning to realise is that maybe code is code is code. It seems from my extensive research that there is no 1:1 mapping between a design document and the code. When I need to research a topic I dump information into OneNote and from there I prioritise features into versions and then into related chunks so that development runs in a fairly linear fashion, my tasks tend to look like so: Implement Binary File Reader Implement Binary File Writer Create Object to encapsulate Data for expression to the caller Now any programmer worth his salt is aware that between those three to do items could be a potential wall of code that could expand out to multiple files. I have tried to map the complete code process for each task but I simply don't think it can be done effectively. By the time one mangles pseudo code it is essentially code anyway so the time investment is negated. So my question is this: Am I right in assuming that the best documentation is the code itself. We are all in agreement that a high level overview is needed. How high should this be? Do you design to statement, class or concept level? What works for you?

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• Adding fields until screen is full

  - by Eric

  For the sake of this question, let us suppose that I want a row of buttons. I want to put as many buttons in that row as I can fit on the screen, but no more. In other words, as long as a prospective button will not be cut off or have its text shortened, add it. It seems that I should be able to do something like: HorizontalFieldManager hfm = new HorizontalFieldManager(); int remainingWidth = Display.getWidth(); int i =0; while(true) { ButtonField bf = new ButtonField("B " + i); remainingWidth -= bf.getWidth(); if(remainingWidth<0) break; hfm.add(bf); i++; } add(hfm); But this doesn't work. bf.getWidth() is always 0. I suspect that this is because the button has not yet been laid out when I query for the width. So, perhaps I could just make sure the buttons are always the same size. But this won't work for a few reasons: Different BB platforms have different looks for buttons and text that will fit on a button on a Curve won't fit on a button on a Storm. 3rd party themes may change the look of buttons, so I can't even count on buttons being a certain size on a certain platform. Is there no way for me to actually check the remaining space before adding a button? It feels like a fairly useful feature; am I just missing something?

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• Blackberry - custom logic for checkboxes group

  - by SWATI

  if i click on any checkbox all previous checkboxes must get checked "my logic works" if i uncheck a checkbox then all checkboxes after it must get unchecked "how to do that" MyLogic works for storm but not for other models what to do //well what i want to do is i have 5 checkboxes class myscreen { chk_service = new CheckboxField[5]; chk_service[0]= new CheckboxField("1",true) chk_service[1]= new CheckboxField("2",false) chk_service[2]= new CheckboxField("3",false) chk_service[3]= new CheckboxField("4",false) chk_service[4]= new CheckboxField("5",false) CheckboxFieldChangeListener obj = new CheckboxFieldChangeListener(chk_service); chk_service[0].setChangeListener(obj); chk_service[1].setChangeListener(obj); chk_service[2].setChangeListener(obj); chk_service[3].setChangeListener(obj); chk_service[4].setChangeListener(obj); hm4 = new HorizontalFieldManager(); hm4.add(chk_service[0]); hm4.add(chk_service[1]); hm4.add(chk_service[2]); hm4.add(chk_service[3]); hm4.add(chk_service[4]); add(hm4); } public CheckboxFieldChangeListener (CheckboxField[] arrFields) { m_arrFields = arrFields; } public void fieldChanged(Field field, int context) { if(true == ((CheckboxField) field).getChecked()) { for(int i = 0; i < m_arrFields.length; i++) { if(m_arrFields[i]==field) { //a[j]=i; j++; break; } else { CheckboxField oField = m_arrFields[i]; oField.setChecked(true); } } } a[k] = j; if(false == ((CheckboxField) field).getChecked()) { for(int i =field.getIndex(); i < m_arrFields.length; i++) { if(m_arrFields[i]==field) { //a[j]=i; j++; break; } else { CheckboxField oField = m_arrFields[i]; oField.setChecked(false); } } } } }

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• What stackoverflow questions bring out the best in you? [closed]

  - by Mark Robinson

  This question is to help me (us) ask better questions of this community to encourage better working together. What questions here bring out the best in you? I don't mean which are the best / most appropriate questions but which bring the best out of you? That is, it brings out your best thinking and most constructive behaviour. Consider, for example, questions that make you think or that are asked in a certain way. Or consider specific a question should be. Or more abstractly, questions asked on a certain day / time, ... So I'm not necessarily asking about specific subjects but rather how a question is asked. What inspires you to drop everything and start answering? This comes from my observing questions that get highest points - I’m graduating with a Computer Science degree but I don’t feel like I know how to program. is very positive but my first ever question caused a minor storm. Ironically, I'm nervous posting this question so please don't attack if this is inappropriate.

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• What are good examples of perfectly acceptable approaches to development that are NOT test driven development (TDD)?

  - by markbruns

  The TDD cycle is test, code, refactor, (repeat) and then ship. TDD implies development that is driven by testing, specifically that means understanding requirements and then writing tests first before developing or writing code. My natural inclination is a philosophical bias in favor of TDD; I would like to be convinced that there are other approaches that now work well or even better than TDD so I have asked this question. What are examples of perfectly acceptable approaches that NOT test driven development? I can think of plenty approaches that are not TDD but could be a lot more trouble than what they are worth ... it's not moral judgement, it's just that they are cost more than they are worth ... the following are simply examples of things that might be ok as learning exercises, but approaches I'd find to be NOT acceptable in serious production and NOT TDD might include: Inspecting quality into your product -- Focusing efforts on developing a proficiency in testing/QA can be problematic, especially if you don't work on the requirements and development side first ... symptom of this include bug triaging where the developers have so many different bugs to deal with it, it is necessary to employ a form of triage -- each development cycle gets worse and worse, programmers work more and more hours, sleep less and less, struggle to keep going in death march until they are consumed. Superstition ... believing in things that you don't understand -- this would involve borrowing code that you believe has been proven or tested from somewhere, e.g. legacy code, a magic code starter wizard or an open source project, and you go forward hacking up a storm of modifications, sliding FaceBook Connect into your the user interface, inventing some new magic features on the fly (e.g. a mashup using the Twitter API, GoogleMaps API and maybe Zappos API), showing off your cool new "product" to a few people and then writing up a simple "specification" and list of "test cases" and turning that over to Mechanical Turk for testing.

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• 64-bit linux kernel only seeing 3 of 4GB after upgrade...

  - by Blaine

  Hey everyone. I am running Ubuntu 9.04 64-bit on my macbook. I had 2GB of ram before, and everything ran great. I just upgraded to 2x2GB (4GB), but my system only sees 3GB of it. OS X, which I am dual booting, sees all 4GB. Also, my video performance is incredibly lacking. Before the upgrade my compiz benchmark was full at 80fps, and now it is at 22fps with very choppy window dragging. Has anyone ever heard of this on a 64-bit kernel? I just don't quite understand what could be the issue. 10$ uname -a Linux macbook 2.6.28-15-generic #49-Ubuntu SMP Tue Aug 18 19:25:34 UTC 2009 x86_64 GNU/Linux $ free -m total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 2953 1031 1921 0 114 427 -/+ buffers/cache: 489 2463 Swap: 7812 0 7812 9$ lsmod Module Size Used by i915 77960 2 drm 123232 3 i915 binfmt_misc 18572 1 ppdev 16904 0 btusb 21784 2 bridge 63776 0 stp 11140 1 bridge bnep 22912 2 vboxnetadp 109356 0 vboxnetflt 116972 0 vboxdrv 1721612 1 vboxnetflt uvcvideo 69640 0 compat_ioctl32 18304 1 uvcvideo videodev 45184 2 uvcvideo,compat_ioctl32 v4l1_compat 23940 2 uvcvideo,videodev lp 19588 0 parport 49584 2 ppdev,lp snd_hda_intel 557492 3 snd_pcm_oss 52352 0 snd_mixer_oss 24960 1 snd_pcm_oss snd_pcm 99464 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm_oss arc4 10240 2 snd_seq_dummy 11524 0 ecb 11392 2 snd_seq_oss 41984 0 snd_seq_midi 15744 0 snd_rawmidi 33920 1 snd_seq_midi snd_seq_midi_event 16512 2 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi snd_seq 66272 6 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event ath9k 310584 0 snd_timer 34064 2 snd_pcm,snd_seq snd_seq_device 16276 5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq mac80211 251528 1 ath9k iTCO_wdt 21712 0 iTCO_vendor_support 12420 1 iTCO_wdt joydev 20992 0 video 29204 0 snd 78920 15 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_seq_oss,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device applesmc 37700 0 output 11648 1 video soundcore 16800 1 snd pcspkr 11136 0 cfg80211 43680 1 mac80211 appletouch 19972 0 isight_firmware 11520 0 input_polldev 12688 1 applesmc intel_agp 39408 1 snd_page_alloc 18704 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm led_class 13064 2 ath9k,applesmc hid_apple 15872 0 usbhid 47040 0 ohci1394 42164 0 ieee1394 108288 1 ohci1394 sky2 63364 0 fbcon 49792 0 tileblit 11264 1 fbcon font 17024 1 fbcon bitblit 14464 1 fbcon softcursor 10368 1 bitblit Some information from dmesg: [ 795.820163] ACPI: EC: GPE storm detected, transactions will use polling mode [ 1762.709516] [drm:i915_getparam] *ERROR* Unknown parameter 6 [ 1763.078130] [drm:i915_getparam] *ERROR* Unknown parameter 6 [ 2362.760889] [drm:i915_getparam] *ERROR* Unknown parameter 6 [ 2416.352084] ACPI: EC: missing confirmations, switch off interrupt mode. [ 3718.721095] [drm:i915_getparam] *ERROR* Unknown parameter 6 [ 3719.108914] [drm:i915_getparam] *ERROR* Unknown parameter 6 [ 4318.773266] [drm:i915_getparam] *ERROR* Unknown parameter 6 [ 9513.813066] CE: hpet increasing min_delta_ns to 15000 nsec [ 9693.815684] npviewer.bin[6736]

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• Aamir Khan’s Satyamev Jayate stirs a movement

  - by Gopinath

  Bollywood actor Aamir Khan is known for his dedication and hard work in inspiring millions of viewers though movies by discussing social problems and motivating people to solve them. His movie Rang De Basanthi seeded Indian anti-corruption movement, Tare Zameen Par touched the problems faced by few challenged kids and the latest movie 3 idiots exposed how education institutions in India are producing lakhs of Donkeys out of colleges every year. He extended his dedication of serving the society to small screen with the launch of reality TV show Satyamev Jayate. Before you start misjudging it as one of those non sense drama / entertaining reality shows, let me tell you that it is not a typical music, games, fight or dance reality show. Satyamev Jayate is all about the real people of India, their problems and how to tackle them.  This is not just a reality show, its movement to educate people about the social evils. Its been many years since I spent couple of hours  in front of TV as most of the programs are too cynical or does not add much value.  In my childhood I use to anxiously wait for Mahabarath or He-Man TV shows to start but after a two decades I waited anxiously for the start of Satyamev Jayate. The wait was worth and the 1 hours 30 minutes spent watching it meaningful. When was the last time you were so satisfied after watching a TV show and inspired to do something? I don’t remember. Today, the show focused on female foeticide and its impact. It showed women who were tortured and forced to abort female foetuses. On the show few brave women shared their experiences of giving birth to girl babies and rough times they are going through with their in-laws & husbands. The show not only focused on the problem but also on the root cause of the evil,  inspiring people working to tackle it and what every individual can do his part to solve it.  The best part of the show is,  its not a blame game. When there is a problem most of the people quickly get into identifying who is wrong and start blaming them instead of solve the actual problem.  Aamir did not blame anyone for female foeticide – neither the government who don’t impose strict rules, nor the doctors who abort girl babies to make money or the mother-in-laws & husbands who torcher girl baby mothers are blamed. He careful highlighted the problem, showed horrifying statistics and their impact on the future society and few inspiring people working to tackle the problem.  He touched heart and stirred a movement against the issue. First time ever I voted for a reality show through SMS and it’s for Satyamev Jayate. I’m proud to do so. Here are the few reactions of popular people, activists & media about the program @aamir_khan absolutely the best program I have seen on TV in recent past. Thanku for converting an idiot box into an inspirationsl medium — Kiran Bedi (@thekiranbedi) May 6, 2012 Satyamev Jayate proves tht TV 2 can b a tool of social change. — Shekhar Kapur (@shekharkapur) May 6, 2012 i absolutely loved #satyamevjayate. at least aamir is doing what all of us only talk about. — Harsha Bhogle (@bhogleharsha) May 6, 2012 Now Television will no longer be called an idiot box,the VISION of Television broadens up with#SatyamevJayate !!! — Madhur Bhandarkar (@mbhandarkar268) May 6, 2012 The Sunday 11am slot seems to have come back with a bang… #SatyamevJayate — atul kasbekar (@atulkasbekar) May 6, 2012   I was spellbound, says Prasoon Joshi – It’s a unique show. I was completely bowled over by it. It’s a never-done before concept Aamir Khan strikes the right chord with Satyamev Jayate – The format is quite crisp. Talking about the emotional connect, there are moments when your eyes well up with tears, but the various segments ensure there’s more content than emotional drama ‘Satyamev Jayate’ gutsy, sensible show: Viewers – From filmmakers to clinical psychologists to professors – everyone has given the thumbs up to Aamir Khan’s television show ‘Satyamev Jayate’, saying it is a gutsy, hard-hitting and sensible programme that strikes an emotional chord with the audiences. Aamir Khan’s TV debut ‘Satyamev Jayate’ takes Twitter by storm – The roads of the capital sported a deserted look around 11 am on Sunday morning, as everyone was hooked on to their TV sets. Did you watch the program? What is your opinion? I’m waiting for next 11 AM of next Sunday. Are you?

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• Pella Increases Online Appointment Scheduling and Rapidly Personalizes and Updates Marketing Initiatives

  - by Michael Snow

  Originally posted on Oracle Customers page.Oracle Customer: Pella CorporationLocation:  Pella, IowaIndustry: Industrial Manufacturing Employees:  7,100 Pella Corporation is an innovative leader in creating a better view for homes and businesses by designing, testing, manufacturing, and installing quality windows and doors for new construction, remodeling, and replacement applications. A family-owned company, Pella has an 88-year history of innovation and, today, is the second-largest manufacturer in the country of windows and doors, including patio, entry, and storm doors. The company has 10 manufacturing facilities in United States and window and door showrooms across the United States and Canada. In-home consultations are an important part of Pella’s sales process. Several years ago, the company launched an online appointment scheduling tool to improve customer convenience. While the functionality worked well, the company wanted to increase online conversion rates and decrease the number of incomplete, online appointment schedules. It also wanted to give its business analysts and other line-of-business personnel the ability to update the scheduling tool and interface quickly, without needing IT team intervention and recoding, to better capitalize on opportunities and personalize the interface for specific markets. Pella also looked to reduce IT complexity by selecting a system that integrated easily with its Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 enterprise applications.Pella, which has a large Oracle footprint, selected Oracle WebCenter Sites as the foundation for its new, real-time appointment scheduling application. It used the solution to re-engineer the scheduling process and the information required to set up an appointment. Just a few months after launch, it is seeing improvement in the number of appointments booked online and experiencing fewer abandoned appointments during the scheduling process. As important, Pella can now quickly and easily make changes to images, video, and content displayed on the scheduling tool interface, delivering greater business agility. Previously, such changes required a developer and weeks of coding and testing. Today, a member of Pella’s business analyst team can complete the changes in hours. This capability enables Pella to personalize the Web experience for customers. For example, it can display different products or images for clients in different regions.The solution is also highly scalable. Pella is using Oracle WebCenter Sites for appointment scheduling now and plans to migrate Pella.com, its configurator tool, and dealer microsites onto the platform. Further, Pella plans to leverage the solution to optimize mobile devices. “Moving ahead, we expect to extensively leverage Oracle WebCenter Sites to gain greater flexibility in updating the Web experience, thanks to the ability to make updates quickly without developer resources. Segmentation and targeting capabilities will allow us to create a more personalized experience across both traditional and mobile platforms,” said Teri Lancaster, IT manager, customer experience applications, Pella Corporation. A word from Pella Corporation "Oracle WebCenter Sites?from the start?delivered important benefits. We’ve redesigned the online scheduling process and are seeing more potential customers completing consultation bookings online. More important, the solution opens a world of other possibilities as we plan to migrate Pella.com and our dealer microsites to the platform, and leverage it to optimize the Web experience for our mobile devices.” – Teri Lancaster, IT Manager, Customer Experience Applications, Pella Corporation Oracle Product and Services Oracle WebCenter Sites Why Oracle Pella has a long-standing relationship with Oracle. “We look to Oracle first for a solution. Our Oracle account team came to us with several solutions, and Oracle WebCenter Sites delivered the scalability, ease-of-use, flexibility, and scalability that we required for the appointment scheduling initiative and other Web projects on the horizon, including migrating Pella.com and optimizing our site for mobile platforms,”said Teri Lancaster, IT manager, customer experience applications, Pella Corporation. Implementation Process The Pella implementation team, working with Oracle partner Element Solutions, LLC, integrated the appointment setting application with Pella.com as well as the company’s Oracle E-Business Suite customer relationship management applications. Using Oracle WebCenter Site’s development tools and subversion capabilities to develop the application, the Element Solutions and Pella teams could work remotely and collaboratively, accelerating deployment. Pella went live with the new scheduling tool in just six months. Partner Oracle PartnerElement Solutions, LLC Element Solutions was instrumental at every major stage of the project, including design creation and approval, development, training, and rollout. “Element Solutions was a vital partner for our Oracle WebCenter Sites initiative. The team provided guidance, and more important, critical knowledge transfer at every stage?which equipped us to get the most out of this powerful and versatile solution. We were definitely collaboration partners,” Lancaster said. Resources Pella Corporation Upgrades Enterprise Applications to Continue to Improve Manufacturing Efficiency Thousands of Customers Successfully and Smoothly Upgrade to Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 for New Functionality, Lower Operating Costs and Improved Shared Operations Managing the Virtual World

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• Spotlight on Claims: Serving Customers Under Extreme Conditions

  - by [email protected]

  Oracle Insurance's director of marketing for EMEA, John Sinclair, recently attended the CII Spotlight on Claims event in London. Bad weather and its implications for the insurance industry have become very topical as the frequency and diversity of natural disasters - including rains, wind and snow - has surged across Europe this winter. On England's wettest day on record, the county of Cumbria was flooded with 12 inches of rain within 24 hours. Freezing temperatures wreaked havoc on European travel, causing high speed TVG trains to break down and stranding hundreds of passengers under the English Chanel in a tunnel all night long without heat or electricity. A storm named Xynthia thrashed France and surrounding countries with hurricane force, flooding ports and killing 51 people. After the Spring Equinox, insurers may have thought the worst had past. Then came along Eyjafjallajökull, spewing out vast quantities of volcanic ash in what is turning out to be one of most costly natural disasters in history. Such extreme events challenge insurance companies' ability to service their customers just when customers need their help most. When you add economic downturn and competitive pressures to the mix, insurers are further stretched and required to continually learn and innovate to meet high customer expectations with reduced budgets. These and other issues were hot topics of discussion at the recent "Spotlight on Claims" seminar in London, focused on how weather is affecting claims and the insurance industry. The event was organized by the CII (Chartered Insurance Institute), a group with 90,000 members. CII has been at the forefront in setting professional standards for the insurance industry for over a century. Insurers came to the conference to hear how they could better serve their customers under extreme weather conditions, learn from the experience of their peers, and hear about technological breakthroughs in climate modeling, geographic intelligence and IT. Customer case studies at the conference highlighted the importance of effective and constant communication in handling the overflow of catastrophe related claims. First and foremost is the need to rapidly establish initial communication with claimants to build their confidence in a positive outcome. Ongoing communication then needs to be continued throughout the claims cycle to mange expectations and maintain ownership of the process from start to finish. Strong internal communication to support frontline staff was also deemed critical to successful crisis management, as was communication with the broader insurance ecosystem to tap into extended resources and business intelligence. Advances in technology - such web based systems to access policies and enter first notice of loss in the field - as well as customer-focused self-service portals and multichannel alerts, are instrumental in improving customer satisfaction and helping insurers to deal with the claims surge, which often can reach four or more times normal workloads. Dynamic models of the global climate system can now be used to better understand weather-related risks, and as these models mature it is hoped that they will soon become more accurate in predicting the timing of catastrophic events. Geographic intelligence is also being used within a claims environment to better assess loss reserves and detect fraud. Despite these advances in dealing with catastrophes and predicting their occurrence, there will never be a substitute for qualified front line staff to deal with customers. In light of pressures to streamline efficiency, there was debate as to whether outsourcing was the solution, or whether it was better to build on the people you have. In the final analysis, nearly everybody agreed that in the future insurance companies would have to work better and smarter to keep on top. An appeal was also made for greater collaboration amongst industry participants in dealing with the extreme conditions and systematic stress brought on by natural disasters. It was pointed out that the public oftentimes judged the industry as a whole rather than the individual carriers when it comes to freakish events, and that all would benefit at such times from the pooling of limited resources and professional skills rather than competing in silos for competitive advantage - especially the end customer. One case study that stood out was on how The Motorists Insurance Group was able to power through one of the most devastating catastrophes in recent years - Hurricane Ike. The keys to Motorists' success were superior people, processes and technology. They did a lot of upfront planning and invested in their people, creating a healthy team environment that delivered "max service" even when they were experiencing the same level of devastation as the rest of the population. Processes were rapidly adapted to meet the challenge of the catastrophe and continually adapted to Ike's specific conditions as they evolved. Technology was fundamental to the execution of their strategy, enabling them anywhere access, on the fly reassigning of resources and rapid training to augment the work force. You can learn more about the Motorists experience by watching this video. John Sinclair is marketing director for Oracle Insurance in EMEA. He has more than 20 years of experience in insurance and financial services.

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• Big Data – Evolution of Big Data – Day 3 of 21

  - by Pinal Dave

  In yesterday’s blog post we answered what is the Big Data. Today we will understand why and how the evolution of Big Data has happened. Though the answer is very simple, I would like to tell it in the form of a history lesson. Data in Flat File In earlier days data was stored in the flat file and there was no structure in the flat file.  If any data has to be retrieved from the flat file it was a project by itself. There was no possibility of retrieving the data efficiently and data integrity has been just a term discussed without any modeling or structure around. Database residing in the flat file had more issues than we would like to discuss in today’s world. It was more like a nightmare when there was any data processing involved in the application. Though, applications developed at that time were also not that advanced the need of the data was always there and there was always need of proper data management. Edgar F Codd and 12 Rules Edgar Frank Codd was a British computer scientist who, while working for IBM, invented the relational model for database management, the theoretical basis for relational databases. He presented 12 rules for the Relational Database and suddenly the chaotic world of the database seems to see discipline in the rules. Relational Database was a promising land for all the unstructured database users. Relational Database brought into the relationship between data as well improved the performance of the data retrieval. Database world had immediately seen a major transformation and every single vendors and database users suddenly started to adopt the relational database models. Relational Database Management Systems Since Edgar F Codd proposed 12 rules for the RBDMS there were many different vendors who started them to build applications and tools to support the relationship between database. This was indeed a learning curve for many of the developer who had never worked before with the modeling of the database. However, as time passed by pretty much everybody accepted the relationship of the database and started to evolve product which performs its best with the boundaries of the RDBMS concepts. This was the best era for the databases and it gave the world extreme experts as well as some of the best products. The Entity Relationship model was also evolved at the same time. In software engineering, an Entity–relationship model (ER model) is a data model for describing a database in an abstract way. Enormous Data Growth Well, everything was going fine with the RDBMS in the database world. As there were no major challenges the adoption of the RDBMS applications and tools was pretty much universal. There was a race at times to make the developer’s life much easier with the RDBMS management tools. Due to the extreme popularity and easy to use system pretty much every data was stored in the RDBMS system. New age applications were built and social media took the world by the storm. Every organizations was feeling pressure to provide the best experience for their users based the data they had with them. While this was all going on at the same time data was growing pretty much every organization and application. Data Warehousing The enormous data growth now presented a big challenge for the organizations who wanted to build intelligent systems based on the data and provide near real time superior user experience to their customers. Various organizations immediately start building data warehousing solutions where the data was stored and processed. The trend of the business intelligence becomes the need of everyday. Data was received from the transaction system and overnight was processed to build intelligent reports from it. Though this is a great solution it has its own set of challenges. The relational database model and data warehousing concepts are all built with keeping traditional relational database modeling in the mind and it still has many challenges when unstructured data was present. Interesting Challenge Every organization had expertise to manage structured data but the world had already changed to unstructured data. There was intelligence in the videos, photos, SMS, text, social media messages and various other data sources. All of these needed to now bring to a single platform and build a uniform system which does what businesses need. The way we do business has also been changed. There was a time when user only got the features what technology supported, however, now users ask for the feature and technology is built to support the same. The need of the real time intelligence from the fast paced data flow is now becoming a necessity. Large amount (Volume) of difference (Variety) of high speed data (Velocity) is the properties of the data. The traditional database system has limits to resolve the challenges this new kind of the data presents. Hence the need of the Big Data Science. We need innovation in how we handle and manage data. We need creative ways to capture data and present to users. Big Data is Reality! Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will try to answer discuss Basics of Big Data Architecture. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• Educause Top-Ten IT Issues - the most change in a decade or more

  - by user739873

  The Education IT Issue Panel has released the 2012 top-ten issues facing higher education IT leadership, and instead of the customary reshuffling of the same deck, the issues reflect much of the tumult and dynamism facing higher education generally.  I find it interesting (and encouraging) that at the top of this year's list is "Updating IT Professionals' Skills and Roles to Accommodate Emerging Technologies and Changing IT Management and Service Delivery Models."  This reflects, in my view, the realization that higher education IT must change in order to fully realize the potential for transforming the institution, and therefore it's people must learn new skills, understand and accept new ways of solving problems, and not be tied down by past practices or institutional inertia. What follows in the remaining 9 top issues all speak, in some form or fashion, to the need for dramatic change, but not just in the areas of "funding IT" (code for cost containment or reduction), but rather the need to increase effectiveness and efficiency of the institution through the use of technology—leveraging the wave of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) to the institution's advantage, rather than viewing it as a threat and a problem to be contained. Although it's #10 of 10, IT Governance (and establishment and implementation of the governance model throughout the institution) is key to effectively acting upon many of the preceding issues in this year's list.  In the majority of cases, technology exists to meet the needs and requirements to effectively address many of the challenges outlined in top-ten issues list. Which brings me to my next point. Although I try not to sound too much like an Oracle commercial in these (all too infrequent) blog posts, I can't help but point out how much confluence there is between several of the top issues this year and what my colleagues and I have been evangelizing for some time. Starting from the bottom of the list up: 1) I'm gratified that research and the IT challenges it presents has made the cut.  Big Data (or Large Data as it's phased in the report) is rapidly going to overwhelm much of what exists today even at our most prepared and well-equipped research universities.  Combine large data with the significantly more stringent requirements around data preservation, archiving, sharing, curation, etc. coming from granting agencies like NSF, and you have the brewing storm that could result in a lot of "one-off" solutions to a problem that could very well be addressed collectively and "at scale."   2) Transformative effects of IT – while I see more and more examples of this, there is still much more that can be achieved. My experience tells me that culture (as the report indicates or at least poses the question) gets in the way more than technology not being up to task.  We spend too much time on "context" and not "core," and get lost in the weeds on the journey to truly transforming the institution with technology. 3) Analytics as a key element in improving various institutional outcomes.  In our work around Student Success, we see predictive "academic" analytics as essential to getting in front of the Student Success issue, regardless of how an institution or collections of institutions defines success.  Analytics must be part of the fabric of the key academic enterprise applications, not a bolt-on.  We will spend a significant amount of time on this topic during our semi-annual Education Industry Strategy Council meeting in Washington, D.C. later this month. 4) Cloud strategy for the broad range of applications in the academic enterprise.  Some of the recent work by Casey Green at the Campus Computing Survey would seem to indicate that there is movement in this area but mostly in what has been termed "below the campus" application areas such as collaboration tools, recruiting, and alumni relations.  It's time to get serious about sourcing elements of mature applications like student information systems, HR, Finance, etc. leveraging a model other than traditional on-campus custom. I've only selected a few areas of the list to highlight, but the unifying theme here (and this is where I run the risk of sounding like an Oracle commercial) is that these lofty goals cry out for partners that can bring economies of scale to bear on the problems married with a deep understanding of the nuances unique to higher education.  In a recent piece in Educause Review on Student Information Systems, the author points out that "best of breed is back". Unfortunately I am compelled to point out that best of breed is a large part of the reason we have made as little progress as we have as an industry in advancing some of the causes outlined above.  Don't confuse "integrated" and "full stack" for vendor lock-in.  The best-of-breed market forces that Ron points to ensure that solutions have to be "integratable" or they don't survive in the marketplace. However, by leveraging the efficiencies afforded by adopting solutions that are pre-integrated (and possibly metered out as a service) allows us to shed unnecessary costs – as difficult as these decisions are to make and to drive throughout the organization. Cole

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• NetBeans, JSF, and MySQL Primary Keys using AUTO_INCREMENT

  - by MarkH

  I recently had the opportunity to spin up a small web application using JSF and MySQL. Having developed JSF apps with Oracle Database back-ends before and possessing some small familiarity with MySQL (sans JSF), I thought this would be a cakewalk. Things did go pretty smoothly...but there was one little "gotcha" that took more time than the few seconds it really warranted. The Problem Every DBMS has its own way of automatically generating primary keys, and each has its pros and cons. For the Oracle Database, you use a sequence and point your Java classes to it using annotations that look something like this: @GeneratedValue(strategy=GenerationType.SEQUENCE, generator="POC_ID_SEQ") @SequenceGenerator(name="POC_ID_SEQ", sequenceName="POC_ID_SEQ", allocationSize=1) Between creating the actual sequence in the database and making sure you have your annotations right (watch those typos!), it seems a bit cumbersome. But it typically "just works", without fuss. Enter MySQL. Designating an integer-based field as PRIMARY KEY and using the keyword AUTO_INCREMENT makes the same task seem much simpler. And it is, mostly. But while NetBeans cranks out a superb "first cut" for a basic JSF CRUD app, there are a couple of small things you'll need to bring to the mix in order to be able to actually (C)reate records. The (RUD) performs fine out of the gate. The Solution Omitting all design considerations and activity (!), here is the basic sequence of events I followed to create, then resolve, the JSF/MySQL "Primary Key Perfect Storm": Fire up NetBeans. Create JSF project. Create Entity Classes from Database. Create JSF Pages from Entity Classes. Test run. Try to create record and hit error. It's a simple fix, but one that was fun to find in its completeness. :-) Even though you've told it what to do for a primary key, a MySQL table requires a gentle nudge to actually generate that new key value. Two things are needed to make the magic happen. First, you need to ensure the following annotation is in place in your Java entity classes: @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY) All well and good, but the real key is this: in your controller class(es), you'll have a create() function that looks something like this, minus the comment line and the setId() call in bold red type:     public String create() {         try {             // Assign 0 to ID for MySQL to properly auto_increment the primary key.             current.setId(0);             getFacade().create(current);             JsfUtil.addSuccessMessage(ResourceBundle.getBundle("/Bundle").getString("CategoryCreated"));             return prepareCreate();         } catch (Exception e) {             JsfUtil.addErrorMessage(e, ResourceBundle.getBundle("/Bundle").getString("PersistenceErrorOccured"));             return null;         }     } Setting the current object's primary key attribute to zero (0) prior to saving it tells MySQL to get the next available value and assign it to that record's key field. Short and simple…but not inherently obvious if you've never used that particular combination of NetBeans/JSF/MySQL before. Hope this helps! All the best, Mark

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• Qt vs .NET - plz no n00bs who don't know wtf they're talking about [closed]

  - by Pirate for Profit

  Man in all these Qt vs. .NET discussions 90% these people don't know WTF they're talking about. Trying to get a real comparison chart going before we embark on a major fucking project. And yes I'm drunk, and yes I use cocaine. Event Handling In Qt the event handling system you just emit signals when something cool happens and then catch them in slots, for instance emit valueChanged(int percent, bool something); and void MyCatcherObj::valueChanged(int p, bool ok){} blocking them and disconnecting them when needed, doing it across threads... once you get the hang of it, it just seems a lot more natural and intuitive than the way the .NET event handling is set up (you know, object sender, CustomEventArgs e). And I'm not just talking about syntax, because in the end the .NET delegate crap is the bomb. I'm also talking about in more than just reflection (because, yes, .NET obviously has much stronger reflection capabilities). I'm talking about in the way the system feels to a human being. Qt wins hands down i m o. Basically, the footprints make more sense and you can visualize the project easier without the clunky event handling system. I wish I could it explain it better. The only thing is, I do love some of the ease of C# compared to C++ and .NET's assembly architecture. That is a big bonus for modular projects, which are a PITA to do in C++. Database Ease of Doing Crap Also what about datasets and database manipulations. I think .net wins here but I'm not sure. Threading/Conccurency How do you guys think of the threading? In .NET, all I've ever done is make like a list of master worker threads with locks. I like QConcurrentFramework, you don't worry about locks or anything, and with the ease of the signal slot system across threads it's nice to get notified about the progress of things. Memory Usage Also what do you think of the overall memory usage comparison. Is the .NET garbage collector pretty on the ball and quick compared to the instantaneous nature of native memory management? Or does it just let programs leak up a storm and lag the computer then clean it up when it's about to really lag? However, I am a n00b who doesn't know what I'm talking about, please school me on the subject.

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• QT vs. Net - REAL comparisons for R.A.D. projects

  - by Pirate for Profit

  Man in all these Qt vs. .NET discussions 90% these people argue about the dumbest crap. Trying to get a real comparison chart here, because I know a little about both frameworks but I don't know everything. I believe Qt and .NET both have strengths and weaknesses. This is to make a comparison that highlights these so people can make more informed decisions before embarking on a project, in the spirit of R.A.D. Event Handling In Qt the event handling system is very simple. You just emit signals when something cool happens and then catch them in slots. ie. // run some calculations, then emit valueChanged(30, false, 20.2); and then catching it, any object can make a slot to recieve that message easily void MyObj::valueChanged(int percent, bool ok, float timeRemaining). It's easy to "block" an event or "disconnect" when needed, and works seamlessly across threads... once you get the hang of it, it just seems a lot more natural and intuitive than the way the .NET event handling is set up (you know, void valueChanged(object sender, CustomEventArgs e). And I'm not just talking about syntax, because in the end the .NET anonymous delegates are the bomb. I'm also talking about in more than just reflection (because, yes, .NET obviously has much stronger reflection capabilities). I'm talking about in the way the system feels to a human being. Qt wins hands down for the simplest yet still flexible event handling system ever i m o. Plugins and such I do love some of the ease of C# compared to C++, as well as .NET's assembly architecture, even though it leads to a bunch of .dll's (there's ways to combine everything into a single exe though). That is a big bonus for modular projects, which are a PITA to import stuff in C++ as far as RAD is concerned. Database Ease of Doing Crap Also what about datasets and database manipulations. I think .net wins here but I'm not sure. Threading/Conccurency How do you guys think of the threading? In .NET, all I've ever done is make like a list of master worker threads with locks. I like QConcurrentFramework, you don't worry about locks or anything, and with the ease of the signal slot system across threads it's nice to get notified about the progress of things. QConcurrent is the simplest threading mechanism I've ever played with. Memory Usage Also what do you think of the overall memory usage comparison. Is the .NET garbage collector pretty on the ball and quick compared to the instantaneous nature of native memory management? Or does it just let programs leak up a storm and lag the computer then clean it up when it's about to really lag? Doesn't the just-in-time compiler make native code that is pretty good, like and that only happens the first time the program is run? However, I am a n00b who doesn't know what I'm talking about, please school me on the subject.

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• Qt vs .NET - a few comparisons [closed]

  - by Pirate for Profit

  Event Handling In Qt the event handling system you just emit signals when something cool happens and then catch them in slots, for instance emit valueChanged(int percent, bool something); and void MyCatcherObj::valueChanged(int p, bool ok){} blocking them and disconnecting them when needed, doing it across threads... once you get the hang of it, it just seems a lot more natural and intuitive than the way the .NET event handling is set up (you know, object sender, CustomEventArgs e). And I'm not just talking about syntax, because in the end the .NET delegate crap is the bomb. I'm also talking about in more than just reflection (because, yes, .NET obviously has much stronger reflection capabilities). I'm talking about in the way the system feels to a human being. Qt wins hands down i m o. Basically, the footprints make more sense and you can visualize the project easier without the clunky event handling system. I wish I could it explain it better. The only thing is, I do love some of the ease of C# compared to C++ and .NET's assembly architecture. That is a big bonus for modular projects, which are a PITA to do in C++. Database Ease of Doing Crap Also what about datasets and database manipulations. I think .net wins here but I'm not sure. Threading/Conccurency How do you guys think of the threading? In .NET, all I've ever done is make like a list of master worker threads with locks. I like QConcurrentFramework, you don't worry about locks or anything, and with the ease of the signal slot system across threads it's nice to get notified about the progress of things. Memory Usage Also what do you think of the overall memory usage comparison. Is the .NET garbage collector pretty on the ball and quick compared to the instantaneous nature of native memory management? Or does it just let programs leak up a storm and lag the computer then clean it up when it's about to really lag? However, I am a n00b who doesn't know what I'm talking about, please school me on the subject.

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• Cloud Based Load Testing Using TF Service &amp; VS 2013

  - by Tarun Arora [Microsoft MVP]

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/TarunArora/archive/2013/06/30/cloud-based-load-testing-using-tf-service-amp-vs-2013.aspx One of the new features announced as part of the Visual Studio 2013 Ultimate Preview is ‘Cloud Based Load Testing’. In this blog post I’ll walk you through, What is Cloud Based Load Testing? How have I been using this feature? – Success story! Where can you find more resources on this feature? What is Cloud Based Load Testing? It goes without saying that performance testing your application not only gives you the confidence that the application will work under heavy levels of stress but also gives you the ability to test how scalable the architecture of your application is. It is important to know how much is too much for your application! Working with various clients in the industry I have realized that the biggest barriers in Load Testing & Performance Testing adoption are, High infrastructure and administration cost that comes with this phase of testing Time taken to procure & set up the test infrastructure Finding use for this infrastructure investment after completion of testing Is cloud the answer? 100% Visual Studio Compatible Scalable and Realistic Start testing in < 2 minutes Intuitive Pay only for what you need Use existing on premise tests on cloud There are a lot of vendors out there offering Cloud Based Load Testing, to name a few, Load Storm Soasta Blaze Meter Blitz And others… The question you may want to ask is, why should you go with Microsoft’s Cloud based Load Test offering. If you are a Microsoft shop or already have investments in Microsoft technologies, you’ll see great benefit in the natural integration this offers with existing Microsoft products such as Visual Studio and Windows Azure. For example, your existing Web tests authored in Visual Studio 2010 or Visual Studio 2012 will run on the cloud without requiring any modifications what so ever. Microsoft’s cloud test rig also supports API based testing, for example, if you are building a WPF application which consumes WCF services, you can write unit tests to invoke the WCF service, these tests can be run on the cloud test rig and loaded with ‘N’ concurrent users for performance testing. If you have your assets already hosted in the Azure and possibly in the same data centre as the Cloud test rig, your Azure app will not incur a usage cost because of the generated traffic since the traffic is coming from the same data centre. The licensing or pricing information on Microsoft’s cloud based Load test service is yet to be announced, but I would expect this to be priced attractively to match the market competition.   The only additional configuration required for running load tests on Microsoft Cloud based Load Tests service is to select the Test run location as Run tests using Visual Studio Team Foundation Service, How have I been using Microsoft’s Cloud based Load Test Service? I have been part of the Microsoft Cloud Based Load Test Service advisory council for the last 7 months. This gave the opportunity to see the product shape up from concept to working solution. I was also the first person outside of Microsoft to try this offering out. This gave me the opportunity to test real world application at various clients using the Microsoft Load Test Service and provide real world feedback to the Microsoft product team. One of the most recent systems I tested using the Load Test Service has been an insurance quote generation engine. This insurance quote generation engine is,   hosted in Windows Azure expected to get quote requests from across the globe expected to handle 5 Million quote requests in a day (not clear how this load will be distributed across the day) There was no way, I could simulate such kind of load from on premise without standing up additional hardware. But Microsoft’s Cloud based Load Test service allowed me to test my key performance testing scenarios, i.e. Simulate expected Load, Endurance Testing, Threshold Testing and Testing for Latency. Simulating expected load: approach to devising a load pattern My approach to devising a load test pattern has been to run the test scenario with 1 user to figure out the response time. Then work out how many users are required to reach the target load. So, for example, to invoke 1 quote from the quote engine software takes 0.5 seconds. Now if you do the math,   1 quote request by 1 user = 0.5 seconds   quotes generated by 1 user in 24 hour = 1 * (((2 * 60) * 60) * 24) = 172,800   quotes generated by 30 users in 24 hours = 172,800 * 30 =  5,184,000 This was a very simple example, if your application requires more concurrent users to test scenario’s such as caching, etc then you can devise your own load pattern, some examples of load test patterns can be found here.  Endurance Testing To test for endurance, I loaded the quote generation engine with an expected fixed user load and ran the test for very long duration such as over 48 hours and observed the affect of the long running test on the Azure infrastructure. Currently Microsoft Load Test service does not support metrics from the machine under test. I used Azure diagnostics to begin with, but later started using Cerebrata Azure Diagnostics Manager to capture the metrics of the machine under test. Threshold Testing To figure out how much user load the application could cope with before falling on its belly, I opted to step load the quote generation engine by incrementing user load with different variations of incremental user load per minute till the application crashed out and forced an IIS reset. Testing for Latency Currently the Microsoft Load Test service does not support generating geographically distributed load, I however, deployed the insurance quote generation engine in different Azure data centres and ran the same set of performance tests to measure for latency. Because I could compare load test results from different runs by exporting the results to excel (this feature is provided out of the box right from Visual Studio 2010) I could see the different in response times. More resources on Microsoft Cloud based Load Test Service A few important links to get you started, Download Visual Studio Ultimate 2013 Preview Getting started guide for load testing using Team Foundation Service Troubleshooting guide for FAQs and known issues Team Foundation Service forum for questions and support Detailed demo and presentation (link to Tech-Ed session recording) Detailed demo and presentation (link to Build session recording) There a few limits on the usage of Microsoft Cloud based Load Test service that you can read about here. If you have any feedback on Microsoft Cloud based Load Test service, feel free to share it with the product team via the Visual Studio User Voice forum. I hope you found this useful. Thank you for taking the time out and reading this blog post. If you enjoyed the post, remember to subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TarunArora. Stay tuned!

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• Conducting Effective Web Meetings

  - by BuckWoody

  There are several forms of corporate communication. From immediate, rich communications like phones and IM messaging to historical transactions like e-mail, there are a lot of ways to get information to one or more people. From time to time, it's even useful to have a meeting. (This is where a witty picture of a guy sleeping in a meeting goes. I won't bother actually putting one here; you're already envisioning it in your mind) Most meetings are pointless, and a complete waste of time. This is the fault, completely and solely, of the organizer. It's because he or she hasn't thought things through enough to think about alternate forms of information passing. Here's the criteria for a good meeting - whether in-person or over the web: 100% of the content of a meeting should require the participation of 100% of the attendees for 100% of the time It doesn't get any simpler than that. If it doesn't meet that criteria, then don't invite that person to that meeting. If you're just conveying information and no one has the need for immediate interaction with that information (like telling you something that modifies the message), then send an e-mail. If you're a manager, and you need to get status from lots of people, pick up the phone.If you need a quick answer, use IM. I once had a high-level manager that called frequent meetings. His real need was status updates on various processes, so 50 of us would sit in a room while he asked each one of us questions. He believed this larger meeting helped us "cross pollinate ideas". In fact, it was a complete waste of time for most everyone, except in the one or two moments that they interacted with him. So I wrote some code for a Palm Pilot (which was a kind of SmartPhone but with no phone and no real graphics, but this was in the days when we had just discovered fire and the wheel, although the order of those things is still in debate) that took an average of the salaries of the people in the room (I guessed at it) and ran a timer which multiplied the number of people against the salaries. I left that running in plain sight for him, and when he asked about it, I explained how much the meetings were really costing the company. We had far fewer meetings after. Meetings are now web-enabled. I believe that's largely a good thing, since it saves on travel time and allows more people to participate, but I think the rule above still holds. And in fact, there are some other rules that you should follow to have a great meeting - and fewer of them. Be Clear About the Goal This is important in any meeting, but all of us have probably gotten an invite with a web link and an ambiguous title. Then you get to the meeting, and it's a 500-level deep-dive on something everyone expects you to know. This is unfair to the "expert" and to the participants. I always tell people that invite me to a meeting that I will be as detailed as I can - but the more detail they can tell me about the questions, the more detailed I can be in my responses. Granted, there are times when you don't know what you don't know, but the more you can say about the topic the better. There's another point here - and it's that you should have a clearly defined "win" for the meeting. When the meeting is over, and everyone goes back to work, what were you expecting them to do with the information? Have that clearly defined in your head, and in the meeting invite. Understand the Technology There are several web-meeting clients out there. I use them all, since I meet with clients all over the world. They all work differently - so I take a few moments and read up on the different clients and find out how I can use the tools properly. I do this with the technology I use for everything else, and it's important to understand it if the meeting is to be a success. If you're running the meeting, know the tools. I don't care if you like the tools or not, learn them anyway. Don't waste everyone else's time just because you're too bitter/snarky/lazy to spend a few minutes reading. Check your phone or mic. Check your video size. Install (and learn to use)  ZoomIT (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897434.aspx). Format your slides or screen or output correctly. Learn to use the voting features of the meeting software, and especially it's whiteboard features. Figure out how multiple monitors work. Try a quick meeting with someone to test all this. Do this *before* you invite lots of other people to your meeting.   Use a WebCam I'm not a pretty man. I have a face fit for radio. But after attending a meeting with clients where one Microsoft person used a webcam and another did not, I'm convinced that people pay more attention when a face is involved. There are tons of studies around this, or you can take my word for it, but toss a shirt on over those pajamas and turn the webcam on. Set Up Early Whether you're attending or leading the meeting, don't wait to sign on to the meeting at the time when it starts. I can almost plan that a 10:00 meeting will actually start at 10:10 because the participants/leader is just now installing the web client for the meeting at 10:00. Sign on early, go on mute, and then wait for everyone to arrive. Mute When Not Talking No one wants to hear your screaming offspring / yappy dog / other cubicle conversations / car wind noise (are you driving in a desert storm or something?) while the person leading the meeting is trying to talk. I use the Lync software from Microsoft for my meetings, and I mute everyone by default, and then tell them to un-mute to talk to the group. Share Collateral If you have a PowerPoint deck, mail it out in case you have a tech failure. If you have a document, share it as an attachment to the meeting. Don't make people ask you for the information - that's why you're there to begin with. Even better, send it out early. "But", you say, "then no one will come to the meeting if they have the deck first!" Uhm, then don't have a meeting. Send out the deck and a quick e-mail and let everyone get on with their productive day. Set Actions At the Meeting A meeting should have some sort of outcome (see point one). That means there are actions to take, a follow up, or some deliverable. Otherwise, it's an e-mail. At the meeting, decide who will do what, when things are needed, and so on. And avoid, if at all possible, setting up another meeting, unless absolutely necessary. So there you have it. Whether it's on-premises or on the web, meetings are a necessary evil, and should be treated that way. Like politicians, you should have as few of them as are necessary to keep the roads paved and public libraries open.

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• Secure Your Wireless Router: 8 Things You Can Do Right Now

  - by Chris Hoffman

  A security researcher recently discovered a backdoor in many D-Link routers, allowing anyone to access the router without knowing the username or password. This isn’t the first router security issue and won’t be the last. To protect yourself, you should ensure that your router is configured securely. This is about more than just enabling Wi-Fi encryption and not hosting an open Wi-Fi network. Disable Remote Access Routers offer a web interface, allowing you to configure them through a browser. The router runs a web server and makes this web page available when you’re on the router’s local network. However, most routers offer a “remote access” feature that allows you to access this web interface from anywhere in the world. Even if you set a username and password, if you have a D-Link router affected by this vulnerability, anyone would be able to log in without any credentials. If you have remote access disabled, you’d be safe from people remotely accessing your router and tampering with it. To do this, open your router’s web interface and look for the “Remote Access,” “Remote Administration,” or “Remote Management” feature. Ensure it’s disabled — it should be disabled by default on most routers, but it’s good to check. Update the Firmware Like our operating systems, web browsers, and every other piece of software we use, router software isn’t perfect. The router’s firmware — essentially the software running on the router — may have security flaws. Router manufacturers may release firmware updates that fix such security holes, although they quickly discontinue support for most routers and move on to the next models. Unfortunately, most routers don’t have an auto-update feature like Windows and our web browsers do — you have to check your router manufacturer’s website for a firmware update and install it manually via the router’s web interface. Check to be sure your router has the latest available firmware installed. Change Default Login Credentials Many routers have default login credentials that are fairly obvious, such as the password “admin”. If someone gained access to your router’s web interface through some sort of vulnerability or just by logging onto your Wi-Fi network, it would be easy to log in and tamper with the router’s settings. To avoid this, change the router’s password to a non-default password that an attacker couldn’t easily guess. Some routers even allow you to change the username you use to log into your router. Lock Down Wi-Fi Access If someone gains access to your Wi-Fi network, they could attempt to tamper with your router — or just do other bad things like snoop on your local file shares or use your connection to downloaded copyrighted content and get you in trouble. Running an open Wi-Fi network can be dangerous. To prevent this, ensure your router’s Wi-Fi is secure. This is pretty simple: Set it to use WPA2 encryption and use a reasonably secure passphrase. Don’t use the weaker WEP encryption or set an obvious passphrase like “password”. Disable UPnP A variety of UPnP flaws have been found in consumer routers. Tens of millions of consumer routers respond to UPnP requests from the Internet, allowing attackers on the Internet to remotely configure your router. Flash applets in your browser could use UPnP to open ports, making your computer more vulnerable. UPnP is fairly insecure for a variety of reasons. To avoid UPnP-based problems, disable UPnP on your router via its web interface. If you use software that needs ports forwarded — such as a BitTorrent client, game server, or communications program — you’ll have to forward ports on your router without relying on UPnP. Log Out of the Router’s Web Interface When You’re Done Configuring It Cross site scripting (XSS) flaws have been found in some routers. A router with such an XSS flaw could be controlled by a malicious web page, allowing the web page to configure settings while you’re logged in. If your router is using its default username and password, it would be easy for the malicious web page to gain access. Even if you changed your router’s password, it would be theoretically possible for a website to use your logged-in session to access your router and modify its settings. To prevent this, just log out of your router when you’re done configuring it — if you can’t do that, you may want to clear your browser cookies. This isn’t something to be too paranoid about, but logging out of your router when you’re done using it is a quick and easy thing to do. Change the Router’s Local IP Address If you’re really paranoid, you may be able to change your router’s local IP address. For example, if its default address is 192.168.0.1, you could change it to 192.168.0.150. If the router itself were vulnerable and some sort of malicious script in your web browser attempted to exploit a cross site scripting vulnerability, accessing known-vulnerable routers at their local IP address and tampering with them, the attack would fail. This step isn’t completely necessary, especially since it wouldn’t protect against local attackers — if someone were on your network or software was running on your PC, they’d be able to determine your router’s IP address and connect to it. Install Third-Party Firmwares If you’re really worried about security, you could also install a third-party firmware such as DD-WRT or OpenWRT. You won’t find obscure back doors added by the router’s manufacturer in these alternative firmwares. Consumer routers are shaping up to be a perfect storm of security problems — they’re not automatically updated with new security patches, they’re connected directly to the Internet, manufacturers quickly stop supporting them, and many consumer routers seem to be full of bad code that leads to UPnP exploits and easy-to-exploit backdoors. It’s smart to take some basic precautions. Image Credit: Nuscreen on Flickr     

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• Recover RAID 5 data after created new array instead of re-using

  - by Brigadieren

  Folks please help - I am a newb with a major headache at hand (perfect storm situation). I have a 3 1tb hdd on my ubuntu 11.04 configured as software raid 5. The data had been copied weekly onto another separate off the computer hard drive until that completely failed and was thrown away. A few days back we had a power outage and after rebooting my box wouldn't mount the raid. In my infinite wisdom I entered mdadm --create -f... command instead of mdadm --assemble and didn't notice the travesty that I had done until after. It started the array degraded and proceeded with building and syncing it which took ~10 hours. After I was back I saw that that the array is successfully up and running but the raid is not I mean the individual drives are partitioned (partition type f8 ) but the md0 device is not. Realizing in horror what I have done I am trying to find some solutions. I just pray that --create didn't overwrite entire content of the hard driver. Could someone PLEASE help me out with this - the data that's on the drive is very important and unique ~10 years of photos, docs, etc. Is it possible that by specifying the participating hard drives in wrong order can make mdadm overwrite them? when I do mdadm --examine --scan I get something like ARRAY /dev/md/0 metadata=1.2 UUID=f1b4084a:720b5712:6d03b9e9:43afe51b name=<hostname>:0 Interestingly enough name used to be 'raid' and not the host hame with :0 appended. Here is the 'sanitized' config entries: DEVICE /dev/sdf1 /dev/sde1 /dev/sdd1 CREATE owner=root group=disk mode=0660 auto=yes HOMEHOST <system> MAILADDR root ARRAY /dev/md0 metadata=1.2 name=tanserv:0 UUID=f1b4084a:720b5712:6d03b9e9:43afe51b Here is the output from mdstat cat /proc/mdstat Personalities : [linear] [multipath] [raid0] [raid1] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] [raid10] md0 : active raid5 sdd1[0] sdf1[3] sde1[1] 1953517568 blocks super 1.2 level 5, 512k chunk, algorithm 2 [3/3] [UUU] unused devices: <none> fdisk shows the following: fdisk -l Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x000bf62e Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 1 9443 75846656 83 Linux /dev/sda2 9443 9730 2301953 5 Extended /dev/sda5 9443 9730 2301952 82 Linux swap / Solaris Disk /dev/sdb: 750.2 GB, 750156374016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 91201 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x000de8dd Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 1 91201 732572001 8e Linux LVM Disk /dev/sdc: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00056a17 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdc1 1 60801 488384001 8e Linux LVM Disk /dev/sdd: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x000ca948 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdd1 1 121601 976760001 fd Linux raid autodetect Disk /dev/dm-0: 1250.3 GB, 1250254913536 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 152001 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00000000 Disk /dev/dm-0 doesn't contain a valid partition table Disk /dev/sde: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x93a66687 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sde1 1 121601 976760001 fd Linux raid autodetect Disk /dev/sdf: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0xe6edc059 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdf1 1 121601 976760001 fd Linux raid autodetect Disk /dev/md0: 2000.4 GB, 2000401989632 bytes 2 heads, 4 sectors/track, 488379392 cylinders Units = cylinders of 8 * 512 = 4096 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 524288 bytes / 1048576 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00000000 Disk /dev/md0 doesn't contain a valid partition table Per suggestions I did clean up the superblocks and re-created the array with --assume-clean option but with no luck at all. Is there any tool that will help me to revive at least some of the data? Can someone tell me what and how the mdadm --create does when syncs to destroy the data so I can write a tool to un-do whatever was done? After the re-creating of the raid I run fsck.ext4 /dev/md0 and here is the output root@tanserv:/etc/mdadm# fsck.ext4 /dev/md0 e2fsck 1.41.14 (22-Dec-2010) fsck.ext4: Superblock invalid, trying backup blocks... fsck.ext4: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/md0 The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2 filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock: e2fsck -b 8193 Per Shanes' suggestion I tried root@tanserv:/home/mushegh# mkfs.ext4 -n /dev/md0 mke2fs 1.41.14 (22-Dec-2010) Filesystem label= OS type: Linux Block size=4096 (log=2) Fragment size=4096 (log=2) Stride=128 blocks, Stripe width=256 blocks 122101760 inodes, 488379392 blocks 24418969 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user First data block=0 Maximum filesystem blocks=0 14905 block groups 32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group 8192 inodes per group Superblock backups stored on blocks: 32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208, 4096000, 7962624, 11239424, 20480000, 23887872, 71663616, 78675968, 102400000, 214990848 and run fsck.ext4 with every backup block but all returned the following: root@tanserv:/home/mushegh# fsck.ext4 -b 214990848 /dev/md0 e2fsck 1.41.14 (22-Dec-2010) fsck.ext4: Invalid argument while trying to open /dev/md0 The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2 filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock: e2fsck -b 8193 <device> Any suggestions? Regards!

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