if modified since - Page 90

Serial plans: Threshold / Parallel_degree_limit = 1

- by jean-pierre.dijcks

As a very short follow up on the previous post. So here is some more on getting a serial plan and why that happens Another reason - compared to the auto DOP is not on as we looked at in the earlier post - and often more prevalent to get a serial plan is if the plan simply does not take long enough to consider a parallel path. The resulting plan and note looks like this (note that this is a serial plan!): explain plan for select count(1) from sales; SELECT PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT FROM TABLE(DBMS_XPLAN.DISPLAY()); PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Plan hash value: 672559287 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Id | Operation | Name | Rows | Cost (%CPU)| Time | Pstart| Pstop | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | | 1 | 5 (0)| 00:00:01 | | | | 1 | SORT AGGREGATE | | 1 | | | | | | 2 | PARTITION RANGE ALL| | 960 | 5 (0)| 00:00:01 | 1 | 16 | | 3 | TABLE ACCESS FULL | SALES | 960 | 5 (0)| 00:00:01 | 1 | 16 | Note ----- - automatic DOP: Computed Degree of Parallelism is 1 because of parallel threshold 14 rows selected. The parallel threshold is referring to parallel_min_time_threshold and since I did not change the default (10s) the plan is not being considered for a parallel degree computation and is therefore staying with the serial execution. Now we go into the land of crazy: Assume I do want this DOP=1 to happen, I could set the parameter in the init.ora, but to highlight it in this case I changed it on the session: alter session set parallel_degree_limit = 1; The result I get is: ERROR: ORA-02097: parameter cannot be modified because specified value is invalid ORA-00096: invalid value 1 for parameter parallel_degree_limit, must be from among CPU IO AUTO INTEGER>=2 Which of course makes perfect sense...

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Improvements to Joshua Bloch's Builder Design Pattern?

- by Jason Fotinatos

Back in 2007, I read an article about Joshua Blochs take on the "builder pattern" and how it could be modified to improve the overuse of constructors and setters, especially when an object has a large number of properties, most of which are optional. A brief summary of this design pattern is articled here [http://rwhansen.blogspot.com/2007/07/theres-builder-pattern-that-joshua.html]. I liked the idea, and have been using it since. The problem with it, while it is very clean and nice to use from the client perspective, implementing it can be a pain in the bum! There are so many different places in the object where a single property is reference, and thus creating the object, and adding a new property takes a lot of time. So...I had an idea. First, an example object in Joshua Bloch's style: Josh Bloch Style: public class OptionsJoshBlochStyle { private final String option1; private final int option2; // ...other options here <<<< public String getOption1() { return option1; } public int getOption2() { return option2; } public static class Builder { private String option1; private int option2; // other options here <<<<< public Builder option1(String option1) { this.option1 = option1; return this; } public Builder option2(int option2) { this.option2 = option2; return this; } public OptionsJoshBlochStyle build() { return new OptionsJoshBlochStyle(this); } } private OptionsJoshBlochStyle(Builder builder) { this.option1 = builder.option1; this.option2 = builder.option2; // other options here <<<<<< } public static void main(String[] args) { OptionsJoshBlochStyle optionsVariation1 = new OptionsJoshBlochStyle.Builder().option1("firefox").option2(1).build(); OptionsJoshBlochStyle optionsVariation2 = new OptionsJoshBlochStyle.Builder().option1("chrome").option2(2).build(); } } Now my "improved" version: public class Options { // note that these are not final private String option1; private int option2; // ...other options here public String getOption1() { return option1; } public int getOption2() { return option2; } public static class Builder { private final Options options = new Options(); public Builder option1(String option1) { this.options.option1 = option1; return this; } public Builder option2(int option2) { this.options.option2 = option2; return this; } public Options build() { return options; } } private Options() { } public static void main(String[] args) { Options optionsVariation1 = new Options.Builder().option1("firefox").option2(1).build(); Options optionsVariation2 = new Options.Builder().option1("chrome").option2(2).build(); } } As you can see in my "improved version", there are 2 less places in which we need to add code about any addition properties (or options, in this case)! The only negative that I can see is that the instance variables of the outer class are not able to be final. But, the class is still immutable without this. Is there really any downside to this improvement in maintainability? There has to be a reason which he repeated the properties within the nested class that I'm not seeing?

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How can I thoroughly evaluate a prospective employer?

- by glenviewjeff

We hear much about code smells, test smells, and even project smells, but I have heard no discussion about employer "smells" outside of the Joel Test. After much frustration working for employers with a bouquet of unpleasant corporate-culture odors, I believe it's time for me to actively seek a more mature development environment. I've started assembling a list of questions to help vet employers by identifying issues during a job interview, and am looking for additional ideas. I suppose this list could easily be modified by an employer to vet an employee as well, but please answer from the interviewee's perspective. I think it would be important to ask many of these questions of multiple people to find out if consistent answers are given. For the most part, I tried to put the questions in each section in the order they could be asked. An undesired answer to an early question will often make follow-ups moot. Values What constitutes "well-written" software? What attributes does a good developer have? Same question for manager. Process Do you have a development process? How rigorously do you follow it? How do you decide how much process to apply to each project? Describe a typical project lifecycle. Ask the following if they don't come up otherwise: Waterfall/iterative: How much time is spent in upfront requirements gathering? upfront design? Testing Who develops tests (developers or separate test engineers?) When are they developed? When are the tests executed? How long do they take to execute? What makes a good test? How do you know you've tested enough? What percentage of code is tested? Review What is the review process like? What percentage of code is reviewed? Design? How frequently can I expect to participate as code/design reviewer/reviewee? What are the criteria applied to review and where do the criteria come from? Improvement What new tools and techniques have you evaluated or deployed in the past year? What training courses have your employees been given in the past year? What will I be doing for the first six months in your company (hinting at what kind of organized mentorship/training has been thought through, if any) What changes to your development process have been made in the past year? How do you improve and learn from your mistakes as an organization? What was your organizations biggest mistake in the past year, and how was it addressed? What feedback have you given to management lately? Was it implemented? If not, why? How does your company use "best practices?" How do you seek them out from the outside or within, and how do you share them with each other? Ethics Tell me about an ethical problem you or your employees experienced recently and how was it resolved? Do you use open-source software? What open-source contributions have you made? Follow-Ups I liked what @jim-leonardo said on this Stack Overflow question: Really a thing to ask yourself: "Does this person seem like they are trying to recruit me and make me interested?" I think this is one of the most important bits. If they seem to be taking the attitude that the only one being interviewed is you, then they probably will treat you poorly. Good interviewers understand they have to sell the position as much as the candidate needs to sell themselves. @SethP added: Glassdoor.com is a good web site for researching potential employers. It contains information about how specific companies conduct interviews...

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How to develop RPG Damage Formulas?

- by user127817

I'm developing a classical 2d RPG (in a similar vein to final fantasy) and I was wondering if anyone had some advice on how to do damage formulas/links to resources/examples? I'll explain my current setup. Hopefully I'm not overdoing it with this question, and I apologize if my questions is too large/broad My Characters stats are composed of the following: enum Stat { HP = 0, MP = 1, SP = 2, Strength = 3, Vitality = 4, Magic = 5, Spirit = 6, Skill = 7, Speed = 8, //Speed/Agility are the same thing Agility = 8, Evasion = 9, MgEvasion = 10, Accuracy = 11, Luck = 12, }; Vitality is basically defense to physical attacks and spirit is defense to magic attacks. All stats have fixed maximums (9999 for HP, 999 for MP/SP and 255 for the rest). With abilities, the maximums can be increased (99999 for HP, 9999 for HP/SP, 999 for the rest) with typical values (at level 100) before/after abilities+equipment+etc will be 8000/20,000 for HP, 800/2000 for SP/MP, 180/350 for other stats Late game Enemy HP will typically be in the lower millions (with a super boss having the maximum of ~12 million). I was wondering how do people actually develop proper damage formulas that scale correctly? For instance, based on this data, using the damage formulas for Final Fantasy X as a base looked very promising. A full reference here http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps2/197344-final-fantasy-x/faqs/31381 but as a quick example: Str = 127, 'Attack' command used, enemy Def = 34. 1. Physical Damage Calculation: Step 1 ------------------------------------- [{(Stat^3 ÷ 32) + 32} x DmCon ÷16] Step 2 ---------------------------------------- [{(127^3 ÷ 32) + 32} x 16 ÷ 16] Step 3 -------------------------------------- [{(2048383 ÷ 32) + 32} x 16 ÷ 16] Step 4 --------------------------------------------------- [{(64011) + 32} x 1] Step 5 -------------------------------------------------------- [{(64043 x 1)}] Step 6 ---------------------------------------------------- Base Damage = 64043 Step 7 ----------------------------------------- [{(Def - 280.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 8 ------------------------------------------ [{(34 - 280.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 9 ------------------------------------------------- [(-246)^2) ÷ 110] + 16 Step 10 ---------------------------------------------------- [60516 ÷ 110] + 16 Step 11 ------------------------------------------------------------ [550] + 16 Step 12 ---------------------------------------------------------- DefNum = 566 Step 13 ---------------------------------------------- [BaseDmg * DefNum ÷ 730] Step 14 --------------------------------------------------- [64043 * 566 ÷ 730] Step 15 ------------------------------------------------------ [36248338 ÷ 730] Step 16 ------------------------------------------------- Base Damage 2 = 49655 Step 17 ------------ Base Damage 2 * {730 - (Def * 51 - Def^2 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 18 ---------------------- 49655 * {730 - (34 * 51 - 34^2 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 19 ------------------------- 49655 * {730 - (1734 - 1156 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 20 ------------------------------- 49655 * {730 - (1734 - 105) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 21 ------------------------------------- 49655 * {730 - (1629) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 22 --------------------------------------------- 49655 * {730 - 162} ÷ 730 Step 23 ----------------------------------------------------- 49655 * 568 ÷ 730 Step 24 -------------------------------------------------- Final Damage = 38635 I simply modified the dividers to include the attack rating of weapons and the armor rating of armor. Magic Damage is calculated as follows: Mag = 255, Ultima is used, enemy MDef = 1 Step 1 ----------------------------------- [DmCon * ([Stat^2 ÷ 6] + DmCon) ÷ 4] Step 2 ------------------------------------------ [70 * ([255^2 ÷ 6] + 70) ÷ 4] Step 3 ------------------------------------------ [70 * ([65025 ÷ 6] + 70) ÷ 4] Step 4 ------------------------------------------------ [70 * (10837 + 70) ÷ 4] Step 5 ----------------------------------------------------- [70 * (10907) ÷ 4] Step 6 ------------------------------------ Base Damage = 190872 [cut to 99999] Step 7 ---------------------------------------- [{(MDef - 280.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 8 ------------------------------------------- [{(1 - 280.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 9 ---------------------------------------------- [{(-279.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 10 -------------------------------------------------- [(78064) ÷ 110] + 16 Step 11 ------------------------------------------------------------ [709] + 16 Step 12 --------------------------------------------------------- MDefNum = 725 Step 13 --------------------------------------------- [BaseDmg * MDefNum ÷ 730] Step 14 --------------------------------------------------- [99999 * 725 ÷ 730] Step 15 ------------------------------------------------- Base Damage 2 = 99314 Step 16 ---------- Base Damage 2 * {730 - (MDef * 51 - MDef^2 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 17 ------------------------ 99314 * {730 - (1 * 51 - 1^2 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 18 ------------------------------ 99314 * {730 - (51 - 1 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 19 --------------------------------------- 99314 * {730 - (49) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 20 ----------------------------------------------------- 99314 * 725 ÷ 730 Step 21 -------------------------------------------------- Final Damage = 98633 The problem is that the formulas completely fall apart once stats start going above 255. In particular Defense values over 300 or so start generating really strange behavior. High Strength + Defense stats lead to massive negative values for instance. While I might be able to modify the formulas to work correctly for my use case, it'd probably be easier just to use a completely new formula. How do people actually develop damage formulas? I was considering opening excel and trying to build the formula that way (mapping Attack Stats vs. Defense Stats for instance) but I was wondering if there's an easier way? While I can't convey the full game mechanics of my game here, might someone be able to suggest a good starting place for building a damage formula? Thanks

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[EF + Oracle] Entities

- by JTorrecilla

Prologue Following with the Serie I started yesterday about Entity Framework with Oracle, Today I am going to start talking about Entities. What is an Entity? A Entity is an object of the EF model corresponding to a record in a DB table. For example, let’s see, in Image 1 we can see one Entity from our model, and in the second one we can see the mapping done with the DB. (Image 1) (Image 2) More in depth a Entity is a Class inherited from the abstract class “EntityObject”, contained by the “System.Data.Objects.DataClasses” namespace. At the same time, this class inherits from the following Class and interfaces: StructuralObject: It is an Abstract class that inherits from INotifyPropertyChanging and INotifyPropertyChanged interfaces, and it exposes the events that manage the Changes of the class, and the functions related to check the data types of the Properties from our Entity. IEntityWithKey: Interface which exposes the Key of the entity. IEntityWithChangeTracker: Interface which lets indicate the state of the entity (Detached, Modified, Added…) IEntityWithRelationships: Interface which indicates the relations about the entity. Which is the Content of a Entity? A Entity is composed by: Properties, Navigation Properties and Methods. What is a Property? A Entity Property is an object that represents a column from the mapped table from DB. It has a data type equivalent in .Net Framework to the DB Type. When we create the EF model, VS, internally, create the code for each Entity selected in the Tables step, such all methods that we will see in next steps. For each property, VS creates a structure similar to: · Private variable with the mapped Data type. · Function with a name like On{Property_Name}Changing({dataType} value): It manages the event which happens when we try to change the value. · Function with a name like On{Property_Name}Change: It manages the event raised when the property has changed successfully. · Property with Get and Set methods: The Set Method manages the private variable and do the following steps: Raise Changing event. Report the Entity is Changing. Set the prívate variable. For it, Use the SetValidValue function of the StructuralObject. There is a function for each datatype, and the functions takes 2 params: the value, and if the prop allow nulls. Invoke that the entity has been successfully changed. Invoke the Changed event of the Prop. ReportPropertyChanging and ReportPropertyChanged events, let, respectively, indicate that there is pending changes in the Entity, and the changes have success correctly. While the ReportPropertyChanged is raised, the Track State of the Entity will be changed. What is a Navigation Property? Navigation Properties are a kind of property of the type: EntityCollection<TEntity>, where TEntity is an Entity type from the model related with the current one, it is said, is a set of record from a related table in the DB. The EntityCollection class inherits from: · RelatedEnd: There is an abstract class that give the functions needed to obtein the related objects. · ICollection<TEntity> · IEnumerable<TEntity> · IEnumerable · IListSource For the previous interfaces, I wish recommend the following post from Jose Miguel Torres. Navigation properties allow us, to get and query easily objects related with the Entity. Methods? There is only one method in the Entity object. “Create{Entity}”, that allow us to create an object of the Entity by sending the parameters needed to create it. Finally After this chapter, we know what is an Entity, how is related to the DB and the relation to other Entities. In following chapters, we will se CRUD operations(Create, Read, Update, Delete).

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Automated SSRS deployment with the RS utility

- by Stacy Vicknair

If you’re familiar with SSRS and development you are probably aware of the SSRS web services. The RS utility is a tool that comes with SSRS that allows for scripts to be executed against against the SSRS web service without needing to create an application to consume the service. One of the better benefits of using this format rather than writing an application is that the script can be modified by others who might be involved in the creation and addition of scripts or management of the SSRS environment. Reporting Services Scripter Jasper Smith from http://www.sqldbatips.com created Reporting Services Scripter to assist with the created of a batch process to deploy an entire SSRS environment. The helper scripts below were created through the modification of his generated scripts. Why not just use this tool? You certainly can. For me, the volume of scripts generated seems less maintainable than just using some common methods extracted from these scripts and creating a deployment in a single script file. I would, however, recommend this as a product if you do not think that your environment will change drastically or if you do not need to deploy with a higher level of control over the deployment. If you just need to replicate, this tool works great. Executing with RS.exe Executing a script against rs.exe is fairly simple. The Script Half the battle is having a starting point. For the scripting I needed to do the below is the starter script. A few notes: This script assumes integrated security. This script assumes your reports have one data source each. Both of the above are just what made sense for my scenario and are definitely modifiable to accommodate your needs. If you are unsure how to change the scripts to your needs, I recommend Reporting Services Scripter to help you understand how the differences. The script has three main methods: CreateFolder, CreateDataSource and CreateReport. Scripting the server deployment is just a process of recreating all of the elements that you need through calls to these methods. If there are additional elements that you need to deploy that aren’t covered by these methods, again I suggest using Reporting Services Scripter to get the code you would need, convert it to a repeatable method and add it to this script! Public Sub Main() CreateFolder("/", "Data Sources") CreateFolder("/", "My Reports") CreateDataSource("/Data Sources", "myDataSource", _ "Data Source=server\instance;Initial Catalog=myDatabase") CreateReport("/My Reports", _ "MyReport", _ "C:\myreport.rdl", _ True, _ "/Data Sources", _ "myDataSource") End Sub Public Sub CreateFolder(parent As String, name As String) Dim fullpath As String = GetFullPath(parent, name) Try RS.CreateFolder(name, parent, GetCommonProperties()) Console.WriteLine("Folder created: {0}", name) Catch e As SoapException If e.Detail.Item("ErrorCode").InnerText = "rsItemAlreadyExists" Then Console.WriteLine("Folder {0} already exists and cannot be overwritten", fullpath) Else Console.WriteLine("Error : " + e.Detail.Item("ErrorCode").InnerText + " (" + e.Detail.Item("Message").InnerText + ")") End If End Try End Sub Public Sub CreateDataSource(parent As String, name As String, connectionString As String) Try RS.CreateDataSource(name, parent,False, GetDataSourceDefinition(connectionString), GetCommonProperties()) Console.WriteLine("DataSource {0} created successfully", name) Catch e As SoapException Console.WriteLine("Error : " + e.Detail.Item("ErrorCode").InnerText + " (" + e.Detail.Item("Message").InnerText + ")") End Try End Sub Public Sub CreateReport(parent As String, name As String, location As String, overwrite As Boolean, dataSourcePath As String, dataSourceName As String) Dim reportContents As Byte() = Nothing Dim warnings As Warning() = Nothing Dim fullpath As String = GetFullPath(parent, name) 'Read RDL definition from disk Try Dim stream As FileStream = File.OpenRead(location) reportContents = New [Byte](stream.Length-1) {} stream.Read(reportContents, 0, CInt(stream.Length)) stream.Close() warnings = RS.CreateReport(name, parent, overwrite, reportContents, GetCommonProperties()) If Not (warnings Is Nothing) Then Dim warning As Warning For Each warning In warnings Console.WriteLine(Warning.Message) Next warning Else Console.WriteLine("Report: {0} published successfully with no warnings", name) End If 'Set report DataSource references Dim dataSources(0) As DataSource Dim dsr0 As New DataSourceReference dsr0.Reference = dataSourcePath Dim ds0 As New DataSource ds0.Item = CType(dsr0, DataSourceDefinitionOrReference) ds0.Name=dataSourceName dataSources(0) = ds0 RS.SetItemDataSources(fullpath, dataSources) Console.Writeline("Report DataSources set successfully") Catch e As IOException Console.WriteLine(e.Message) Catch e As SoapException Console.WriteLine("Error : " + e.Detail.Item("ErrorCode").InnerText + " (" + e.Detail.Item("Message").InnerText + ")") End Try End Sub Public Function GetCommonProperties() As [Property]() 'Common CatalogItem properties Dim descprop As New [Property] descprop.Name = "Description" descprop.Value = "" Dim hiddenprop As New [Property] hiddenprop.Name = "Hidden" hiddenprop.Value = "False" Dim props(1) As [Property] props(0) = descprop props(1) = hiddenprop Return props End Function Public Function GetDataSourceDefinition(connectionString as String) Dim definition As New DataSourceDefinition definition.CredentialRetrieval = CredentialRetrievalEnum.Integrated definition.ConnectString = connectionString definition.Enabled = True definition.EnabledSpecified = True definition.Extension = "SQL" definition.ImpersonateUser = False definition.ImpersonateUserSpecified = True definition.Prompt = "Enter a user name and password to access the data source:" definition.WindowsCredentials = False definition.OriginalConnectStringExpressionBased = False definition.UseOriginalConnectString = False Return definition End Function Private Function GetFullPath(parent As String, name As String) As String If parent = "/" Then Return parent + name Else Return parent + "/" + name End If End Function

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Lease Accounting Closed for Comment

- by Theresa Hickman

December 15, 2010 marked the last day to send public comments to FASB and IASB on lease accounting. June 2011 is the deadline for the final consideration of the Leases Exposure Draft that will be given to standard setters in order to create a new lease accounting standard. Landlords, lessees, retailers, airlines industry, etc. are all worried right now about the changes to lease accounting. They feel the changes will be too costly and complex without adding significant improvement to the quality and relevance of financial statements. In a nutshell, IASB and FASB want to abolish operating leases where the lessee records the periodic payments as an expense over time. The proposed changes will mean that the accounting for leases will move from the P&L and hit both the lessee's and lessor's balance sheets. For companies that occupy a lot of property, this could significantly increase their liabilities not to mention front-load much of the costs that they were able to spread out over time before. Why are IASB and FASB doing this? Their goal is to have consistent accounting for both the lessees and lessors with higher quality financial statements. Leasing is one of four major projects being undertaken by the IASB and FASB in order to complete convergence between US GAAP and IFRS. I spoke to our resident accounting expert Seamus Moran about this to better understand how this might impact accounting software. He reminded me that the proposed changes to both US GAAP and IFRS in respect to leases are "proposed." It is still inappropriate to account for leases the way they are being proposed and we still need to account for them in accordance to the current regulations, which is what current accounting software programs, such as E-Business Suite Release 12.1 and prior and PeopleSoft Enterprise support. The FASB (US GAAP) and IASB (IFRS) exposure drafts (EDs) that outline the proposal were published. The FASB edition was published on August 17th, with comments due by December 15th. The IASB edition was published on the same date, and comments were due in London on the same date. Exposure drafts are the method both the FASB and the IASB use to solicit General Acceptance, the "GA" in GAAP. Both Boards will consider the input they have received, and perhaps revise the proposal. The proposal has come in for some criticism, both from the finance houses and the uses of the leased assets. There is, given the opposition to it, an excellent chance that the Leasing proposal will be modified or rewritten. We will know this in about six months, the usual time it takes for the FASB and IASB to digest the comments they receive. If they feel the proposal has General Acceptance, they will issue the final Standard at that time; if not, they will issue a revised proposal with another year of comment of drafting. Oracle participates in the standard setting process and is fully aware of the leasing proposal. We have designs that would reflect the proposal in hand. These designs will be finalized when the proposal is finalized. It is likely that customers will develop new financial arrangements if the proposal is finalized, and we are working with customers and partners to stay in touch with people's business responses to the proposal. The IASB and FASB are aware that ERP companies will have to revise their software, and that the companies filing results under IFRS or under US GAAP will have to implement such software. The form and timing of the release of the updated software will depend on the schedule of the take up of the new standard, the complexity of the standard, and the releases supported at the time the standard becomes effective.

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Get Your Enterprise Working With Oracle On Track Communication 1.0

- by Josh Lannin

The On Track Development team is very pleased to announce that today On Track is available for our customers to download and evaluate. To learn more about what On Track does start with our whitepaper and datasheet. If you are a developer, take a look at our documentation and samples posted to our OTN page. For this first blog post, I’ll be speaking to several notable points about our product. Graceful Escalation via Conversations: On Track addresses the “Collaboration Problem” through a single guiding principle – graceful escalation – within the construct of a Conversation. In On Track, collaboration is based on a context (called a “Conversation”) that gracefully escalates in form, structure, and content, as dictated by the particular needs of a given collaboration. Within that context, On Track provides a rich set of tools to choose from. These tools provide for communication, coordination, content management, organization, decision making, and analysis -- all essential aspects of collaboration, but not all of them are essential all of the time. Every collaborative interaction will evolve differently. Some will evolve to represent work spreading over the course of years and involving a large, distributed team, while others may involve few people and not evolve at all. Regardless, all collaborative contexts are built from the same parts, utilize the same concepts, and start the same way. The principle of graceful escalation is that you only use the tools and structure you need; so you only incur the complexity you need. Purposeful Collaboration: Through application integration, On Track Conversations bring enterprise application users the communication and collaboration capabilities required to complete business process. By association with specific processes or business objects conversations extend the possible interactions and broaden participation to internal or external non-application users and provide a sophisticated interaction experience, all the while enhancing the data set within the owning application. Purposeful collaboration not only needs to happen in the context of applications, it must support a full range of real-time and long-running interactions to provide the greatest value. Multi Client, Multi Modal: This On Track 1.0 product release includes the same day availability of multiple clients, including iPhone and iPad applications which are now available on the Apple Store, a fully capable and accessible Outlook Add-In, along with our browser web client. With each client we have sought to leverage the strengths of each unique device- our iPhone client supports picture and voice posts, the iPad is optimized for meeting room situations and document viewing, and our Outlook add-in allows you to take emails in context and bring them into On Track. In addition to supporting a diverse array of clients, On Track provides a unified multi modal experience support starting with basic messages moving through to integrated documents with live annotations, snapshots, application sharing, and voice. Next Generation Web Architecture: We believe On Track will help move the bar higher for what users can expect from all web applications, most notably ones that involve real-time activity. On Track is built from the ground up with an innovative, real-time architecture that leverages the extensive push capabilities of our server. Whether you are receiving a new message, viewing where crowds of people are collaborating, or doing live annotation on a document with a set of people, that information comes to you immediately without refreshes or moving back and forth between pages. We’ve leveraged this core architecture across the product experience and raised the user experience bar for this type of application. As well these capabilities are based on open standards and protocols, and are fully extensible by anyone- enabling sophisticated integrations to be created with a wide variety of both legacy and next-generation applications. Agile Product Development: As a product team we operate using continuous feedback and modified agile development methodologies. We have thousands of active internal Oracle users who have helped pilot our product for critical business functions, and the On Track product development team uses our product as our primary vehicle for all our collaboration. Additionally we been working with early access customers who are adopting our technology and providing us valuable feedback - which our process has rapidly realized in improvements to our software. On Track agility extends to our server as well, which is built to scale, and is very simple to install and configure. We are pleased to make this product announcement and encourage you to join us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter, as well as checking back here for the latest product information.

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Day 5 - Tada! My Game Menu Screen Graphics

- by dapostolov

So, tonight I took some time to mash up some graphics for my game menu screen. My artistic talent sucks...but here goes nothing...voila, my menu screen!! The Menu Screen The screen above is displaying 4 sprites, even though it looks like maybe 7... I guess one of the first things for me to test in the future is ... is it more memory efficient (and better frame rate) to draw one big background image OR tp paint the screen black, and place each sprite in set locations? To display the 4 sprites above, I borrowed my code from yesterday ... I know, tacky, but...I wanted to see it, feel it. Do you feel it? FEEL IT! (homer voice & shakes fist) Note: the menu items won't scale properly as it stands with this code, well pretty much they do nothing except look pretty... Paint.Net & Google Fun So how did I create that image above? Well, to create the background and 3 menu items I used Paint.Net. Basically, I scoured Google images for: a stone doorway, a stone pillar, an old book, a wizards hat, and...that's it pretty much it! I'll let you type in those searches and see if you can locate the images I used. I know, bad developer...but I figured since I modified the images considerably it doesn't count...well for a personal project it shouldn't count...*shrug* Anyhow, I extracted each key assest I wanted from each image and applied lots of matting, blurring, color changes, glow effects and such. Then, using my vivid imagination I placed / composed each of the layered assets into the mashed up the "scene" above. Pretty cool, eh? Hey, did you know, the cool mist effect is actually a fire rendition in Paint.net? I set it to black & white with opacity set next to nothing. I'm also very proud of the yellow "light" in the stone doorway. I drew that in and then applied gausian blur to it to give it the effect of light creeping out around the door and into the room...heheh. So did I achieve the dark, mysterious ritual as I stated in my design doc? I think I had a great stab at it! Maybe down the road I can get a real artist to crank out some quality graphics for the game... =) So, What's Next? Well, I don't have that animated brazier yet...however, I thought it would be even cooler if I can get that door pulsing that yellow light and it would be extremely cool to have the smoke / mist moving across the screen! Make the creative ideas stop!! (clutches head) haha! I'm having great fun working on this project =) I recommend others giving something like this a try, it's really fulfilling. OK. Tomorrow... I think I'm going to start creating some game / menu objects as per the design doc, maybe even get a custom mouse cursor up on the screen and handle a couple of mouse events, and lastly, maybe a feature to toggle a framerate display... D.

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Cloud Backup: Getting the Users' Backs Up

- by Tony Davis

On Wednesday last week, Microsoft announced that as of July 1, all data transfers into its Microsoft Azure cloud will be free (though you have to pay for transferring data out). On Thursday last week, SQL Azure in Western Europe went down. It was a relatively short outage, but since SQL Azure currently provides no easy way to take a standard backup of a database and store it locally, many people had no recourse but to wait patiently for their cloud-based app to resume. It seems that Microsoft are very keen encourage developers to move their data onto their cloud, but are developers ready to do it, given that such basic backup capabilities are lacking? Recently on Simple-Talk, Mike Mooney described a perfect use case for the Microsoft Cloud. They had a simple web-based application with a SQL Server backend; they could move the application to Windows Azure, and the data into SQL Azure and in the process free themselves from much of the hassle surrounding management and scaling of the hardware, network and so on. It was a great fit and yet it nearly didn't happen; lack of support for the BACKUP command almost proved a show-stopper. Of course, backups of Azure databases are always and have always been taken automatically, for disaster recovery purposes, but these are strictly on-cloud copies and as of now it is not possible to use them to them to restore a database to a particular point in time. It seems that none of those clever Microsoft people managed to predict the need to perform basic backups of Azure databases so that copies could be stored locally, outside the Azure universe. At the very least, as Mike points out, performing a local backup before a new deployment is more or less mandatory. Microsoft did at least note the sound of gnashing teeth and, as a stop-gap measure, offered SQL Azure Database Copy which basically allows you to create an online clone of your database, but this doesn't allow for storing local archives of the data. To that end MS has provided SQL Azure Import/Export, to package up and export a database and its data, using BACPACs. These BACPACs do not guarantee transactional consistency; for example, if a child table is modified after the parent is copied, then the copied database will be in inconsistent state (meaning, to add to the fun, BACPACs need to be created from a database copy). In any event, widespread problems with BACPAC's evil cousin, the DACPAC have been well-documented, and it seems likely that many will also give BACPAC the bum's rush. Finally, in a TechEd 2011 presentation tagged "SQL Azure Advanced Administration", it was announced that "backup and restore" were coming in the next SQL Azure CTP. And yet this still doesn't mean that we'll get simple backups as DBAs know and love them. What it does mean, at least, is the ability to restore any given database to a point in time within a 2-week window. For the time being, if you want a local copy of your data and don't want to brave the BACPAC, one is left with SSIS or BCP, creative use of schema and data comparison tools, or use of SQL Azure Backup (currently in beta) in order to perform this simple but vital task. Cheers, Tony.

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Silverlight Cream for January 15, 2011 -- #1028

- by Dave Campbell

Note to #1024 Swag Winners: I'm sending emails to the vendors Sunday night, thanks for your patience (a few of you have not contacted me yet) In this Issue: Ezequiel Jadib, Daniel Egan(-2-), Page Brooks, Jason Zander, Andrej Tozon, Marlon Grech, Jonathan van de Veen, Walt Ritscher, Jesse Liberty, Jeremy Likness, Sacha Barber, William E. Burrows, and WindowsPhoneGeek. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Building a Radar Control in Silverlight - Part 1" Page Brooks WP7: "Tutorial: Dynamic Tile Push Notification for Windows Phone 7" Jason Zander Training: "WP7 Unleashed Session I–Hands on Labs" Daniel Egan From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight Rough Cut Editor SP1 Released Ezequiel Jadib has an announcement about the Rough Cut Editor SP1 release, and he walks you through the content, installation and a bit of the initial use. WP7 Unleashed Session I–Hands on Labs Daniel Egan posted Part 1 of 3 of a new WP7 HOL ... video online and material to download... get 'em while they're hot! WP7 Saving to Media Library Daniel Egan has another post up as well on saving an image to the media library... not the update from Tim Heuer... all good info Building a Radar Control in Silverlight - Part 1 This freakin' cool post from Page Brooks is the first one of a series on building a 'Radar Control' in Silverlight ... seriously, go to the bottom and run the demo... I pretty much guarantee you'll take the next link which is download the code... don't forget to read the article too! Tutorial: Dynamic Tile Push Notification for Windows Phone 7 Jason Zander has a nice-looking tutorial up on dynamic tile notifications... good diagrams and discussion and plenty of code. Reactive.buffering.from event. Andrej Tozon is continuing his Reactive Extensions posts with this one on buffering: BufferWithTime and BufferWIthCount ... good stuff, good write-up, and the start of a WP7 game? MEFedMVVM with PRISM 4 Marlon Grech combines his MEFedMVVM with Prism 4, and says it was easy... check out the post and the code. Adventures while building a Silverlight Enterprise application part #40 Jonathan van de Veen has a discussion up about things you need to pay attention to as your project gets close to first deployment... lots of good information to think about Silverlight or not. Customize Windows 7 Preview pane for XAML files Walt Ritscher has a (very easy) XAML extension for Windows 7 that allows previewing of XAML files in an explorer window... as our UK friends say "Brilliant!" Entity Framework Code-First, oData & Windows Phone Client From the never-ending stream of posts that is Jesse Liberty comes this one on EF Code-First... so Jesse's describing Code-First and OData all wrapped up about a WP7 app Sterling Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 Database Triggers and Auto-Identity Sterling and Database Triggers sitting in a tree... woot for WP7 from Jeremy Likness... provides database solutions including Validation, Data-specific concerns such as 'last modified', and post-save processing ... all good, Jeremy! A Look At Fluent APIs Sacha Barber has a great post up that isn't necessarily Silverlight, but is it? ... we've been hearing a lot about Fluent APIs... read on to see what the buzz is. Windows Phone 7 - Part 3 - Final Application William E. Burrows has Part 3 of his WP7 tutorial series up... this one completing the Golf Handicap app by giving the user the ability to manage scores. User Control vs Custom Control in Silverlight for WP7 WindowsPhoneGeek has a great diagram and description-filled post up on User Controls and Custom Controls in WP7... good external links too. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight Silverlight 3 Silverlight 4 Windows Phone MIX10

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Managing game state / 'what to update' within an XNA game 'screen'

- by codinghands

Note - having read through other GDev questions suggested when writing this question I'm confident this isn't a dupe. Of course, it's 3am and I'm likely wrong, so please mod as such if so. I'm trying to figure out how best to manage state within my game screens - please bare with me though! At the moment I'm using a heavily modified version of the fantastic game state management example on the XNA site available here. This is working perfectly for my 'Screens' - 'IntroScreen' with some shiny logos, 'TitleScreen' and a 'MenuScreen' stacked on top for the title and menu, 'PlayScreen' for the actual gameplay, etc. Each screen has the a bunch of sprites, and an 'Update' and 'Draw', managed by a 'ScreenManager'. In addition to the above, and as suggested as an answer to my other question here, most screens have a 'GameProcessQueue' class full of 'GameProcess'es which lets me do just about anything (animations, youbetcha!), in any order, in sequence or parallel. Why mention all this? When I talk about managing game state I'm thinking more for complex scenarios within a 'Screen'. 'TitleScreen', 'MenuScreen' and the like are all relatively simple. 'Play Screen' less so. How do people manage the different 'states' within the screen (or whatever you call it) that 'does' gameplay? (for me, the 'PlayScreen') I've thought about the following: Enum of different states in the Screen, 'activeState' enum-type variable, switching on the enum in the Screen Update() loop to determine what Screen Update 'sub'-function is called. I can see this getting hairy pretty fast though as screens get more complex and with the 'PlayScreen' becoming a behemoth mega-class. 'State' class with Update loop - a Screen can have any number of 'States', 1+ of which are 'active'. Screen update loop calls update on all active states. States themselves know which screen they belong to, and may even belong to a 'StateManager' which handles transitioning from one state to the next. Once a state is over it's removed from the ScreenState list. The Screen doesn't need a bunch of GameProcessQueues, each State has its own. Abstract Screen further to be more flexible - I can see the similarities between what I've got (game 'Screens' handled by a ScreenManager) and what I want (states within a screen, and a mechanism to manage them). However at the moment I see 'Screens' as high level and very distinct ('PlayScreen' with baddies != 'MenuScreen' with 4 words and event handlers), where as my proposed 'States' are more intrinsically tied to a specific screen with complex requirements. I think. This is for a turn-based board game, so it's easier to define things as a discrete series of steps (IntroAnimation - P1Turn - P2Turn - P1Turn ... - GameOver - .... Obviously with an open-world RPG things are very different, but any advice in this scenario is appreciated. If I'm just going OOP-crazy please say so. Similarly I'm concious there's a huge amount on this site re: state management. But as my first 'serious' game after a couple of false starts I'd like to get this right, and would rather be harassed and modded down than never ask :)

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C++ property system interface for game editors (reflection system)

- by Cristopher Ismael Sosa Abarca

I have designed an reusable game engine for an project, and their functionality is like this: Is a completely scripted game engine instead of the usual scripting languages as Lua or Python, this uses Runtime-Compiled C++, and an modified version of Cistron (an component-based programming framework).to be compatible with Runtime-Compiled C++ and so on. Using the typical GameObject and Component classes of the Component-based design pattern, is serializable via JSON, BSON or Binary useful for selecting which objects will be loaded the next time. The main problem: We want to use our custom GameObjects and their components properties in our level editor, before used hardcoded functions to access GameObject base class virtual functions from the derived ones, if do you want to modify an property specifically from that class you need inside into the code, this situation happens too with the derived classes of Component class, in little projects there's no problem but for larger projects becomes tedious, lengthy and error-prone. I've researched a lot to find a solution without luck, i tried with the Ogitor's property system (since our engine is Ogre-based) but we find it inappropiate for the component-based design and it's limited only for the Ogre classes and can lead to performance overhead, and we tried some code we find in the Internet we tested it and worked a little but we considered the macro and lambda abuse too horrible take a look (some code omitted): IWE_IMPLEMENT_PROP_BEGIN(CBaseEntity) IWE_PROP_LEVEL_BEGIN("Editor"); IWE_PROP_INT_S("Id", "Internal id", m_nEntID, [](int n) {}, true); IWE_PROP_LEVEL_END(); IWE_PROP_LEVEL_BEGIN("Entity"); IWE_PROP_STRING_S("Mesh", "Mesh used for this entity", m_pModelName, [pInst](const std::string& sModelName) { pInst->m_stackMemUndoType.push(ENT_MEM_MESH); pInst->m_stackMemUndoStr.push(pInst->getModelName()); pInst->setModel(sModelName, false); pInst->saveState(); }, false); IWE_PROP_VECTOR3_S("Position", m_vecPosition, [pInst](float fX, float fY, float fZ) { pInst->m_stackMemUndoType.push(ENT_MEM_POSITION); pInst->m_stackMemUndoVec3.push(pInst->getPosition()); pInst->saveState(); pInst->m_vecPosition.Get()[0] = fX; pInst->m_vecPosition.Get()[1] = fY; pInst->m_vecPosition.Get()[2] = fZ; pInst->setPosition(pInst->m_vecPosition); }, false); IWE_PROP_QUATERNION_S("Orientation (Quat)", m_quatOrientation, [pInst](float fW, float fX, float fY, float fZ) { pInst->m_stackMemUndoType.push(ENT_MEM_ROTATE); pInst->m_stackMemUndoQuat.push(pInst->getOrientation()); pInst->saveState(); pInst->m_quatOrientation.Get()[0] = fW; pInst->m_quatOrientation.Get()[1] = fX; pInst->m_quatOrientation.Get()[2] = fY; pInst->m_quatOrientation.Get()[3] = fZ; pInst->setOrientation(pInst->m_quatOrientation); }, false); IWE_PROP_LEVEL_END(); IWE_IMPLEMENT_PROP_END() We are finding an simplified way to this, without leading confusing the programmers, (will be released to the public) i find ways to achieve this but they are only available for the common scripting as Lua or editors using C#. also too portable, we can write "wrappers" for different GUI toolkits as Qt or GTK, also i'm thinking to using Boost.Wave to get additional macro functionality without creating my own compiler. The properties designed to use in the editor they are removed in the game since the save file contains their data and loads it using an simple 'load' function to reduce unnecessary code bloat may will be useful if some GameObject property wants to be hidden instead. In summary, there's a way to implement an reflection(property) system for a level editor based in properties from derived classes? Also we can use C++11 and Boost (restricted only to Wave and PropertyTree)

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Handling "related" work within a single agile work item

- by Tesserex

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

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RewriteRule not working for certain URLs

- by keiki

There are a few domains pointing towards the same server, and of course I need them all redirect to only one of them. Redirects work, but only for certain URLs. What works: http://www.domain.com, http://domain.com, domain.com/index.html, domain.com/index.php, , domain.com/nonExistentDirectory, and if I click in the menu the following URLs are also redirected correctly: domain.com/foo/bar, domain.com/foo/bar.html or .php or other extension. What doesn't work: domain.com/existentDirectory, domain.com/foo/bar (if I type the URL in the address bar). If anyone will have the time and skill and will to tell me where's the mistake, I'll be deeply grateful. Here's my .htaccess file: AddHandler x-httpd-php .html .htm <ifModule mod_gzip.c> mod_gzip_on Yes mod_gzip_dechunk Yes mod_gzip_item_include file \.(html?|txt|css|js|php|pl)$ mod_gzip_item_include handler ^cgi-script$ mod_gzip_item_include mime ^text/.* mod_gzip_item_include mime ^application/x-javascript.* mod_gzip_item_exclude mime ^image/.* mod_gzip_item_exclude rspheader ^Content-Encoding:.*gzip.* </ifModule> <ifModule mod_expires.c> ExpiresActive On ExpiresDefault "access plus 1 seconds" ExpiresByType text/html "access plus 1 seconds" ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 2592000 seconds" ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 2592000 seconds" ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 2592000 seconds" ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 2592000 seconds" ExpiresByType text/javascript "access plus 216000 seconds" ExpiresByType application/x-javascript "access plus 216000 seconds" </ifModule> <ifModule mod_headers.c> <filesMatch "\\.(ico|pdf|flv|jpg|jpeg|png|gif|swf)$"> Header set Cache-Control "max-age=2592000, public" </filesMatch> <filesMatch "\\.(css)$"> Header set Cache-Control "max-age=2592000, public" </filesMatch> <filesMatch "\\.(js)$"> Header set Cache-Control "max-age=216000, private" </filesMatch> <filesMatch "\\.(xml|txt)$"> Header set Cache-Control "max-age=216000, public, must-revalidate" </filesMatch> <filesMatch "\\.(html|htm|php)$"> Header set Cache-Control "max-age=1, private, must-revalidate" </filesMatch> </ifModule> <ifModule mod_headers.c> Header unset ETag </ifModule> FileETag None <ifModule mod_headers.c> Header unset Last-Modified </ifModule> # BEGIN WordPress <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule . /index.php [L] </IfModule> # END WordPress RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^foo\.com$ [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.foo\.com$ RewriteRule (.*) http://domain.com/$1 [R=301,L,QSA] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^foo1\.com$ [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.foo1\.com$ RewriteRule (.*) http://domain.com/$1 [R=301,L,QSA] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^foo2\.com$ [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.foo2\.com$ RewriteRule (.*) http://domain.com/$1 [R=301,L,QSA] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^foo3\.com$ [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.foo3\.com$ RewriteRule (.*) http://domain.com/$1 [R=301,L,QSA] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^foo8\.com$ [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.foo8\.com$ RewriteRule (.*) http://domain.com/$1 [R=301,L,QSA] Thinking that the above version was overkill, I've also tried to redirect all the requests for domains different than the main on to be redirected to it like this: RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^domain\.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com [L,R=301] Is it also wrong? Because it doesn't work either! P.S. @Sodved I've tried that and it doesn't help (I comment here because I can't seem to be able to comment your answer.) Removing the following piece of code didn't solve the issue either, so the problem must be somewhere else: # BEGIN WordPress <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule . /index.php [L] </IfModule> # END WordPress New details: using this tool for checking the redirects I got the following results for the URLs that are not redirected: Checked link: http://domain.com/aDirectory/ Type of link: direct link (note the trailing slash above) and: Checked link: http://domain.com/aDirectory Type of redirect: 301 Moved Permanently Redirected to: http://domain.com/aDirectory/ (no trailing slash here) I hope/suspect I'm getting closer to the cause of this behavior.

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Communication between state machines with hidden transitions

- by slartibartfast

The question emerged for me in embedded programming but I think it can be applied to quite a number of general networking situations e.g. when a communication partner fails. Assume we have an application logic (a program) running on a computer and a gadget connected to that computer via e.g. a serial interface like RS232. The gadget has a red/green/blue LED and a button which disables the LED. The LEDs color can be driven by software commands over the serial interface and the state (red/green/blue/off) is read back and causes a reaction in the application logic. Asynchronous behaviour of the application logic with regard to the LED color down to a certain delay (depending on the execution cycle of the application) is tolerated. What we essentially have is a resource (the LED) which can not be reserved and handled atomically by software because the (organic) user can at any time press the button to interfere/break the software attempt to switch the LED color. Stripping this example from its physical outfit I dare to say that we have two communicating state machines A (application logic) and G (gadget) where G executes state changes unbeknownst to A (and also the other way round, but this is not significant in our example) and only A can be modified at a reasonable price. A needs to see the reaction and state of G in one piece of information which may be (slightly) outdated but not inconsistent with respect to the short time window when this information was generated on the side of G. What I am looking for is a concise method to handle such a situation in embedded software (i.e. no layer/framework like CORBA etc. available). A programming technique which is able to map the complete behaviour of both participants on classical interfaces of a classical programming language (C in this case). To complicate matters (or rather, to generalize), a simple high frequency communication cycle of A to G and back (IOW: A is rapidly polling G) is out of focus because of technical restrictions (delay of serial com, A not always active, etc.). What I currently see as a general solution is: the application logic A as one thread of execution an adapter object (proxy) PG (presenting G inside the computer), together with the serial driver as another thread a communication object between the two (A and PG) which is transactionally safe to exchange The two execution contexts (threads) on the computer may be multi-core or just interrupt driven or tasks in an RTOS. The com object contains the following data: suspected state (written by A): effectively a member of the power set of states in G (in our case: red, green, blue, off, red_or_green, red_or_blue, red_or_off...etc.) command data (written by A): test_if_off, switch_to_red, switch_to_green, switch_to_blue operation status (written by PG): operation_pending, success, wrong_state, link_broken new state (written by PG): red, green, blue, off The idea of the com object is that A writes whichever (set of) state it thinks G is in, together with a command. (Example: suspected state="red_or_green", command: "switch_to_blue") Notice that the commands issued by A will not work if the user has switched off the LED and A needs to know this. PG will pick up such a com object and try to send the command to G, receive its answer (or a timeout) and set the operation status and new state accordingly. A will take back the oject once it is no longer at operation_pending and can react to the outcome. The com object could be separated of course (into two objects, one for each direction) but I think it is convenient in nearly all instances to have the command close to the result. I would like to have major flaws pointed out or hear an entirely different view on such a situation.

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Single page not appearing in Google Search

- by Dan

Description I have a static franchise website which has various sub pages each dedicated to an individual franchisee. For each franchisee the page, the only thing slightly similar between all of them are the page titles, they follow this structure: <title> Welcome to THE_COMPANY - PRODUCT_DESCRIPTION Services, THE_LOCATION </title> THE_COMPANY and PRODUCT_DESCRIPTION are the same across all franchisees, however THE_LOCATION changes depeding on where they are located in the UK. Each franchisee page has the following <meta /> tags: <meta name="DC.creator" content="user"/> <meta name="DC.format" content="text/html"/> <meta name="DC.language" content="en"/> <meta name="DC.date.modified" content="2014-01-23T11:22:31+00:00"/> <meta name="DC.date.created" content="2014-01-23T11:22:09+00:00"/> <meta name="DC.type" content="Page"/> <meta name="DC.distribution" content="Global"/> <meta name="robots" content="ALL"/> <meta name="distribution" content="Global"/> The main content on each franchisee page is completely different. The Problem There is one particular franchisee page, located in Area A.. Which will not appear in Google Search results at all. However every single other franchisee (if you Google Search for "THE_COMPANY, THE_LOCATION" is number 1). And if I do the same search on Bing, Yahoo or DuckDuckGo, the Area A franchisee is the first result on all of them. Has Google for some reason black listed one page on the site? What I Have Tried Ensuring the page is referenced in my sitemap.xml file 'Fetching as Google Bot' the link www.the_company.co.uk/areaa When that came back as OK I would submit to index Resubmitting the sitemap.xml file in Webmaster Tools Linking to the Area A page from another pages content For this I also waited about 3 weeks before checking again to give Google time to re-index Making a change to the page content and waiting another 2 / 3 weeks Removing the page completely and recreating it with an alternative URL The closest thing I have found to this issue is this StackOverflow question but this particular franchisee has existed for almost a year, it used to appear on Google searches however no longer does. I'm guessing the Panda update wasn't too happy with something on the page, but it hasn't effected anything else on the site and I am at a loss for things to try. I would greatly appreciate any information or thoughts as to what could have caused this Thanks. Update In line with Daniel Fukudas answer below, I have followed some of his steps but everything seems to check out alright: HTTP Headers HTTP/1.1 200 OK => Date => Tue, 25 Feb 2014 16:31:29 GMT Server => Zope/(2.12.16, python 2.6.6, linux2) ZServer/1.1 Content-Length => 40078 Expires => Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 GMT Content-Type => text/html;charset=utf-8 Content-Language => en Vary => Accept-Encoding Connection => close Robots <meta /> tag: <meta name="robots" content="ALL"/> I have updated this <meta /> tag to read content="INDEX" instead now. robots.txt: User-agent: * Disallow: User-Agent: Googlebot Disallow: /*sendto_form$ Disallow: /*folder_factories$ Using site:THE_COMPANY.co.uk: Searching for 'AREA A site:THE_COMPANY.co.uk' does not return the page, but regardless of that searching just for site:THE_COMPANY.co.uk will not necessarily return every indexed page, or so I understand... Update It appears Google likes to drop pages every now and then from the index, despite my steps above, I left the site alone and the page appeared back in the SERPs by itself.

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How to translate along Z axis in OpenTK

- by JeremyJAlpha

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

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Screen Aspect Ratio

- by Bill Evjen

Jeffrey Dean, Pixar Aspect Ratio is very important to home video. What is aspect ratio – the ratio from the height to the width 2.35:1 The image is 2.35 times wide as it is high Pixar uses this for half of our movies This is called a widescreen image When modified to fit your television screen They cut this to fit the box of your screen When a comparison is made huge chunks of picture is missing It is harder to find what is going on when these pieces are missing The whole is greater than the pieces themselves. If you are missing pieces – you are missing the movie The soul and the mood is in the film shots. Cutting it to fit a screen, you are losing 30% of the movie Why different aspect ratios? Film before the 1950s 1.33:1 Academy Standard There were all aspects of images though. There was no standard. Thomas Edison developed projecting images onto a wall/screen He didn’t patent it as he saw no value in it. Then 1.37:1 came about to add a strip of sound This is the same size as a 35mm film Around 1952 – TV comes along NTSC Television followed the Academy Standard (4x3) Once TV came out, movie theater attendance plummets So Film brought forth color to combat this. Also early 3D Also Widescreen was brought forth. Cinema-Scope Studios at the time made movies bigger and bigger There was a Napoleon movie that was actually 4x1 … really wide. 1.85:1 Academy Flat 2.35:1 Anamorphic Scope (aka Panavision/Cinemascope) Almost all movies are made in these two aspect ratios Pixar has done half in one and half in the other Why choose one over the other? Artist choice It is part of the story the director wants to tell Can we preserve the story outside of the theaters? TVs before 1998 – they were very square Now TVs are very wide Historical options Toy Story released as it was and people cut it in a way that wasn’t liked by the studio Pan and Scan is another option Cut and then scan left or right depending on where the action is Frame Height Pixar can go back and animate more picture to account for the bottom/top bars. You end up with more sky and more ground The characters seem to get lost in the picture You lose what the director original intended Re-staging For animated movies, you can move characters around – restage the scene. It is a new completely different version of the film This is the best possible option that Pixar came up with They have stopped doing this really as the demand as pretty much dropped off Why not 1.33 today? There has been an evolution of taste and demands. VHS is a linear item The focus is about portability and not about quality Most was pan and scan and the quality was so bad – but people didn’t notice DVD was introduced in 1996 You could have more content – two versions of the film You could have the widescreen version and the 1.33 version People realized that they are seeing more of the movie with the widescreen High Def Televisions (16x9 monitors) This was introduced in 2005 Blu-ray Disc was introduced in 2006 This is all widescreen You cannot find a square TV anymore TVs are roughly 1.85:1 aspect ratio There is a change in demand Users are used to black bars and are used to widescreen Users are educated now What’s next for in-flight entertainment? High Def IFE Personal Electronic Devices 3D inflight

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Elo system behaves oddly in program I've created

- by adc

Alright, so I'm looking to build a small program (C# and XAML) that, essentially, does this: Generate array of players. Each player has a current rating and a true rating. I set current rating to 1200 as a starting point right now; I've also tried setting it to true rating and the average of the two. True rating is what their skill level actually is. Their true rating is calculated based on percentages from the current League of Legends rating system; generating an array of 970 thousand generates results very similar to the data from here: (removed due to URL limit - but trust me, the results are very similar). This array is of length specified by the user. If need be, sort the array from smallest to largest. Play X number of games, again specified by the user. This is done by taking the array of players (which is sorted by Current Rating after being created) and running through it in groups of 10. The first five are on team one, the second five are on team two. It then takes the True Rating of these players and calculates an expected chance to win using the Elo system. It generates a random double and compares it to the expected chance to win; if the number is lower, team one wins - otherwise team two wins. I then update the rating of the players via, again, the Elo system - giving the winning team a score of 1 and the losing team a score of 0. I use a K value of 36 (but have tried 12, 24, and even higher ones) and an F value of 400. After going through the entire loop of players (which I have conveniently forced to be a multiple of ten), it sorts the array - again via current rating. This, if my understanding of the Elo system is correct, runs properly. However, it doesn't seem to work. I have a running test telling me how many players of the full array are within 100 current rating of their true rating. I would expect some portion of the population to be outside this range (as probability is not always going to go in their favor), but a full 40-45% of the population is outside of this range. I also have it outputting the maximum difference between true and current rating - and I have never seen this drop below 500! It hovers between 550-600, occasionally going over or under. I'm at a loss as to what to change - I've fiddled with the K and F values, where I start all the players, etc. but nothing changes the fact that eventually a good 40% of the population is outside the range. And it isn't that I have it playing too few games - it's now run through over 60 thousand games and the problem never disappears or really fluctuates. The full C# code, including everything except the XAML file and the Player class (pastebin is being very slow and I can only post two links, so I can't link to the XAML file): http://pastebin.com/rFcZRL84 The Player class: http://pastebin.com/4cJTdTRu I guess my question is did I do anything wrong? Is there a problem with the way I implemented the system, or is it just that Riot uses a significantly modified Elo system? I don't think it's the latter, as that still wouldn't explain the massive true and current rating differences to me, however.

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Scenarios for Throwing Exceptions

- by Joe Mayo

I recently came across a situation where someone had an opinion that differed from mine of when an exception should be thrown. This particular case was an issue opened on LINQ to Twitter for an Exception on EndSession. The premise of the issue was that the poster didn’t feel an exception should be raised, regardless of authentication status. As first, this sounded like a valid point. However, I went back to review my code and decided not to make any changes. Here's my rationale: 1. The exception doesn’t occur if the user is authenticated when EndAccountSession is called. 2. The exception does occur if the user is not authenticated when EndAccountSession is called. 3. The exception represents the fact that EndAccountSession is not able to fulfill its intended purpose - to end the session. If a session never existed, then it would not be possible to perform the requested action. Therefore, an exception is appropriate. To help illustrate how to handle this situation, I've modified the following code in Program.cs in the LinqToTwitterDemo project to illustrate the situation: static void EndSession(ITwitterAuthorizer auth) { using (var twitterCtx = new TwitterContext(auth, "https://api.twitter.com/1/", "https://search.twitter.com/")) { try { //Log twitterCtx.Log = Console.Out; var status = twitterCtx.EndAccountSession(); Console.WriteLine("Request: {0}, Error: {1}" , status.Request , status.Error); } catch (TwitterQueryException tqe) { var webEx = tqe.InnerException as WebException; if (webEx != null) { var webResp = webEx.Response as HttpWebResponse; if (webResp != null && webResp.StatusCode == HttpStatusCode.Unauthorized) Console.WriteLine("Twitter didn't recognize you as having been logged in. Therefore, your request to end session is illogical.\n"); } var status = tqe.Response; Console.WriteLine("Request: {0}, Error: {1}" , status.Request , status.Error); } } } As expected, LINQ to Twitter wraps the exception in a TwitterQueryException as the InnerException. The TwitterQueryException serves a very useful purpose through it's Response property. Notice in the example above that the response has Request and Error proprieties. These properties correspond to the information that Twitter returns as part of it's response payload. This is often useful while debugging to help you understand why Twitter was unable to perform the requested action. Other times, it's cryptic, but that's another story. At least you have some way of knowing in your code how to anticipate and handle these situations, along with having extra information to debug with. To sum things up, there are two points to make: when and why an exception should be raised and when to wrap and re-throw an exception in a custom exception type. I felt it was necessary to allow the exception to be raised because the called method was unable to perform the task it was designed for. I also felt that it is inappropriate for a general library to do anything with exceptions because that could potentially hide a problem from the caller. A related point is that it should be the exclusive decision of the application that uses the library on what to do with an exception. Another aspect of this situation is that I wrapped the exception in a custom exception and re-threw. This is a tough call because I don’t want to hide any stack trace information. However, the need to make the exception more meaningful by including vital information returned from Twitter swayed me in the direction to design an interface that was as helpful as possible to library consumers. As shown in the code above, you can dig into the exception and pull out a lot of good information, such as the fact that the underlying HTTP response was a 401 Unauthorized. In all, trade-offs are seldom perfect for all cases, but combining the fact that the method was unable to perform its intended function, this is a library, and the extra information can be more helpful, it seemed to be the better design. @JoeMayo

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SQL SERVER – Unable to DELETE Project in Data Quality Projects (DQS)

- by pinaldave

Here is the email which made me write this blog post. When I write a blog post I write keeping in mind that if the developer is not familiar with the concept he will attempt this on the development server. If due to any reason you attempt it on any other server than your personal server, developer should make sure to have complete confidence on his own expertise and understand the risk behind it. Well, let us read the email which I received. I have modified it a bit to remove information related to organizational and individual. “I just read your blog post on Beginning DQS. I went ahead and followed every single screenshot and it worked fine. I was able to execute the DQS project successfully. However, the same blog post got me in trouble – a serious trouble. After first successful deployment I went ahead and created a few of my own knowledge base and projects. I played around a bit and then decided to get back to real work. Now we had deployed DQS on production server only, so experiment on production server. Now, when I got back to my work, I forgot to close all the windows. My manager found the window open and have seen my test projects. He has asked me to delete my experiments immediately and have said words which I cannot write to you. Here is the problem. I am not able to delete the project which I have created earlier. I am able to open it and play with it but the delete option is disabled and grayed out (see attached image). Now I believe there is nothing wrong with this project as it was just a test project. Would you please write to my manager that it is not harmful to leave that project there as it is? It is also not using any resources. I think he will believe you.” As I said this kind of email makes me uncomfortable. I do not want someone to execute anything on production server. I often write notes and disclaimer on my post when something is dangerous to execute on production server. However, if someone is not expert with SQL Server and attempts something new on production server, I think the major issue is here with the person (admin) who gave new developer permission to production server. This has to be carefully avoided. Here was my response to the individual. “I cannot write to your manager anything as he has not asked me anything. Honestly I believe he is correct in his behavior as you should have not executed anything on the production server without prior approval and testing on the development server. Any R&D must be done on local box or development box. I suggest you request your manager to prevent access to users who does not need access. If he is a good manager, he might have already implemented by now recent event. I also see your screenshot. Here is the issue: While you were playing with project, you might have closed the project half the way, without completing it. Due to the same reason it is locked. You can open and continue from the same place where you have left the project. If you do not need the project any more. Right click on it, click on unlock the project. This will enable the DELETE option and now you can delete the project. Next time, be safe out there. It may be dangerous to have admin access to production server when not needed.“ I have yet not heard from him but I believe he will take my words positively. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Data Quality Services, DQS

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Strings in .NET are Enumerable

- by Scott Dorman

It seems like there is always some confusion concerning strings in .NET. This is both from developers who are new to the Framework and those that have been working with it for quite some time. Strings in the .NET Framework are represented by the System.String class, which encapsulates the data manipulation, sorting, and searching methods you most commonly perform on string data. In the .NET Framework, you can use System.String (which is the actual type name or the language alias (for C#, string). They are equivalent so use whichever naming convention you prefer but be consistent. Common usage (and my preference) is to use the language alias (string) when referring to the data type and String (the actual type name) when accessing the static members of the class. Many mainstream programming languages (like C and C++) treat strings as a null terminated array of characters. The .NET Framework, however, treats strings as an immutable sequence of Unicode characters which cannot be modified after it has been created. Because strings are immutable, all operations which modify the string contents are actually creating new string instances and returning those. They never modify the original string data. There is one important word in the preceding paragraph which many people tend to miss: sequence. In .NET, strings are treated as a sequence…in fact, they are treated as an enumerable sequence. This can be verified if you look at the class declaration for System.String, as seen below: // Summary:// Represents text as a series of Unicode characters.public sealed class String : IEnumerable, IComparable, IComparable<string>, IEquatable<string> The first interface that String implements is IEnumerable, which has the following definition: // Summary:// Exposes the enumerator, which supports a simple iteration over a non-generic// collection.public interface IEnumerable{ // Summary: // Returns an enumerator that iterates through a collection. // // Returns: // An System.Collections.IEnumerator object that can be used to iterate through // the collection. IEnumerator GetEnumerator();} As a side note, System.Array also implements IEnumerable. Why is that important to know? Simply put, it means that any operation you can perform on an array can also be performed on a string. This allows you to write code such as the following: string s = "The quick brown fox";foreach (var c in s){ System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(c);}for (int i = 0; i < s.Length; i++){ System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(s[i]);} If you executed those lines of code in a running application, you would see the following output in the Visual Studio Output window: In the case of a string, these enumerable or array operations return a char (System.Char) rather than a string. That might lead you to believe that you can get around the string immutability restriction by simply treating strings as an array and assigning a new character to a specific index location inside the string, like this: string s = "The quick brown fox";s[2] = 'a'; However, if you were to write such code, the compiler will promptly tell you that you can’t do it: This preserves the notion that strings are immutable and cannot be changed once they are created. (Incidentally, there is no built in way to replace a single character like this. It can be done but it would require converting the string to a character array, changing the appropriate indexed location, and then creating a new string.)

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How change LOD in geometry?

- by ChaosDev

Im looking for simple algorithm of LOD, for change geometry vertexes and decrease frame time. Im created octree, but now I want model or terrain vertex modify algorithm,not for increase(looking on tessellation later) but for decrease. I want something like this Questions: Is same algorithm can apply either to model and terrain correctly? Indexes need to be modified ? I must use octree or simple check distance between camera and object for desired effect ? New value of indexcount for DrawIndexed function needed ? Code: //m_LOD == 10 in the beginning //m_RawVerts - array of 3d Vector filled with values from vertex buffer. void DecreaseLOD() { m_LOD--; if(m_LOD<1)m_LOD=1; RebuildGeometry(); } void IncreaseLOD() { m_LOD++; if(m_LOD>10)m_LOD=10; RebuildGeometry(); } void RebuildGeometry() { void* vertexRawData = new byte[m_VertexBufferSize]; void* indexRawData = new DWORD[m_IndexCount]; auto context = mp_D3D->mp_Context; D3D11_MAPPED_SUBRESOURCE data; ZeroMemory(&data,sizeof(D3D11_MAPPED_SUBRESOURCE)); context->Map(mp_VertexBuffer->mp_buffer,0,D3D11_MAP_READ,0,&data); memcpy(vertexRawData,data.pData,m_VertexBufferSize); context->Unmap(mp_VertexBuffer->mp_buffer,0); context->Map(mp_IndexBuffer->mp_buffer,0,D3D11_MAP_READ,0,&data); memcpy(indexRawData,data.pData,m_IndexBufferSize); context->Unmap(mp_IndexBuffer->mp_buffer,0); DWORD* dwI = (DWORD*)indexRawData; int sz = (m_VertexStride/sizeof(float));//size of vertex element //algorithm must be here. std::vector<Vector3d> vertices; int i = 0; for(int j = 0; j < m_VertexCount; j++) { float x1 = (((float*)vertexRawData)[0+i]); float y1 = (((float*)vertexRawData)[1+i]); float z1 = (((float*)vertexRawData)[2+i]); Vector3d lv = Vector3d(x1,y1,z1); //my useless attempts if(j+m_LOD+1<m_RawVerts.size()) { float v1 = VECTORHELPER::Distance(m_RawVerts[dwI[j]],m_RawVerts[dwI[j+m_LOD]]); float v2 = VECTORHELPER::Distance(m_RawVerts[dwI[j]],m_RawVerts[dwI[j+m_LOD+1]]); if(v1>v2) lv = m_RawVerts[dwI[j+1]]; else if(v2<v1) lv = m_RawVerts[dwI[j+2]]; } (((float*)vertexRawData)[0+i]) = lv.x; (((float*)vertexRawData)[1+i]) = lv.y; (((float*)vertexRawData)[2+i]) = lv.z; i+=sz;//pass others vertex format values without change } for(int j = 0; j < m_IndexCount; j++) { //indices ? } //set vertexes to device UpdateVertexes(vertexRawData,mp_VertexBuffer->getSize()); delete[] vertexRawData; delete[] indexRawData; }

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Why do my pyramids fade black and then back to colour again

- by geminiCoder

I have the following vertecies and norms GLfloat verts[36] = { -0.5, 0, 0.5, 0, 0, -0.5, 0.5, 0, 0.5, 0, 0, -0.5, 0.5, 0, 0.5, 0, 1, 0, -0.5, 0, 0.5, 0, 0, -0.5, 0, 1, 0, 0.5, 0, 0.5, -0.5, 0, 0.5, 0, 1, 0 }; GLfloat norms[36] = { 0, -1, 0, 0, -1, 0, 0, -1, 0, -1, 0.25, 0.5, -1, 0.25, 0.5, -1, 0.25, 0.5, 1, 0.25, -0.5, 1, 0.25, -0.5, 1, 0.25, -0.5, 0, -0.5, -1, 0, -0.5, -1, 0, -0.5, -1 }; I am writing my fists Open GL game, But I need to know for sure if my Normals are correct as the colours aren't rendering correctly. my Pyramids are coloured then fade to black every half rotation then back again. My app so far is based on the boiler plate code provided by apple. heres my modified setUp Method [EAGLContext setCurrentContext:self.context]; [self loadShaders]; self.effect = [[GLKBaseEffect alloc] init]; self.effect.light0.enabled = GL_TRUE; self.effect.light0.diffuseColor = GLKVector4Make(1.0f, 0.4f, 0.4f, 1.0f); glEnable(GL_DEPTH_TEST); glGenVertexArraysOES(1, &_vertexArray); //create vertex array glBindVertexArrayOES(_vertexArray); glGenBuffers(1, &_vertexBuffer); glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, _vertexBuffer); glBufferData(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, sizeof(verts) + sizeof(norms), NULL, GL_STATIC_DRAW); //create vertex buffer big enough for both verts and norms and pass NULL as data.. uint8_t *ptr = (uint8_t *)glMapBufferOES(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, GL_WRITE_ONLY_OES); //map buffer to pass data to it memcpy(ptr, verts, sizeof(verts)); //copy verts memcpy(ptr+sizeof(verts), norms, sizeof(norms)); //copy norms to position after verts glUnmapBufferOES(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER); glEnableVertexAttribArray(GLKVertexAttribPosition); glVertexAttribPointer(GLKVertexAttribPosition, 3, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 0, BUFFER_OFFSET(0)); //tell GL where verts are in buffer glEnableVertexAttribArray(GLKVertexAttribNormal); glVertexAttribPointer(GLKVertexAttribNormal, 3, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 0, BUFFER_OFFSET(sizeof(verts))); //tell GL where norms are in buffer glBindVertexArrayOES(0); And the update method. - (void)update { float aspect = fabsf(self.view.bounds.size.width / self.view.bounds.size.height); GLKMatrix4 projectionMatrix = GLKMatrix4MakePerspective(GLKMathDegreesToRadians(65.0f), aspect, 0.1f, 100.0f); self.effect.transform.projectionMatrix = projectionMatrix; GLKMatrix4 baseModelViewMatrix = GLKMatrix4MakeTranslation(0.0f, 0.0f, -4.0f); baseModelViewMatrix = GLKMatrix4Rotate(baseModelViewMatrix, _rotation, 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f); // Compute the model view matrix for the object rendered with GLKit GLKMatrix4 modelViewMatrix = GLKMatrix4MakeTranslation(0.0f, 0.0f, -1.5f); modelViewMatrix = GLKMatrix4Rotate(modelViewMatrix, _rotation, 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f); modelViewMatrix = GLKMatrix4Multiply(baseModelViewMatrix, modelViewMatrix); self.effect.transform.modelviewMatrix = modelViewMatrix; // Compute the model view matrix for the object rendered with ES2 modelViewMatrix = GLKMatrix4MakeTranslation(0.0f, 0.0f, 1.5f); modelViewMatrix = GLKMatrix4Rotate(modelViewMatrix, _rotation, 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f); modelViewMatrix = GLKMatrix4Multiply(baseModelViewMatrix, modelViewMatrix); _normalMatrix = GLKMatrix3InvertAndTranspose(GLKMatrix4GetMatrix3(modelViewMatrix), NULL); _modelViewProjectionMatrix = GLKMatrix4Multiply(projectionMatrix, modelViewMatrix); _rotation += self.timeSinceLastUpdate * 0.5f; } But providing I understand this correct one pyramid is using the GLKit base effect shaders and the other the shaders which are included in the project. So for both of them to have the same error, I thought it would be the Norms?

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