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• Building Enterprise Smartphone App &ndash; Part 3: Key Concerns

  - by Tim Murphy

  This is part 3 in a series of posts based on a talk I gave recently at the Chicago Information Technology Architects Group.  Feel free to leave feedback. Keys Concerns Of Smartphones In The Enterprise These are the factors that you need to be aware of and address in order to build successful enterprise smartphone applications.  Most of them have nothing to do with the application itself as you will see here. Managing Devices Managing devices is a factor that is going to effect how much your company will have to spend outside of developing the applications.  How will you track the devices within the corporation?  How often will you have to replace phones and as a consequence have to upgrade your applications to support new phones?  The devices can represent a significant investment of capital.  If these questions are not addressed you will find a number of hidden costs throughout the life of your solution. Purchase or BYOD We have seen the trend of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) lately within the enterprise.  How many meetings have you been in where someone is on their personal iPad, iPhone, Android phone or Windows Phone?  The issue is if you can afford to support everyone's choice in device? That is a lot to take on even if you only support the current release of each platform. Do you go with the most popular device or do you pick a platform that best matches your current ecosystem and distribute company owned devices?  There is no easy answer here, but you should be able give some dollar value to both hardware and development costs related to platform coverage. Asset Tracking/Insurance Smartphones are devices that are easier to lose or have stolen than laptops and desktops. Not only do you have your normal asset management concerns but also assignment of financial responsibility. You also will need to insure them against damage and theft and add legal documents that spell out the responsibilities of the employees that use these devices. Personal vs. Corporate Data What happens when you terminate an employee?  How do you recover the device?  What happens when they have put personal data on the device?  These are all situation that can cause possible loss of corporate intellectual property or legal repercussions of reclaiming a device with personal data on it.  Policies need to be put in place that protect the company from being exposed to type of loss.  This can mean significant legal and procedural cost that you need to consider. Coming Up In the last installment of this series I will cover application development considerations. del.icio.us Tags: Smartphones,Enterprise Smartphone Apps,Architecture

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• ??????!WebLogic Server????????! WebLogic Server???@Oracle Days 2013

  - by Masa Sasaki

  WebLogic Server?????????????WebLogic Server????????10?23???????Oracle Days Tokyo 2013??D2-JV-2?????????WebLogic Server????????!WebLogic Server???@Oracle Days?????????WebLogic Server?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????LT???WebLogic Server?????Java?????????????????????????????????????????????????WebLogic Server?????????????????????????????(?????? Fusion Middleware?????? ??? ??) ????????????? ?????????????WebLogic Server???????????????????????LT??????????????????????????????????????? Oracle WebLogic Server??????????????? ?WebLogic Server???????????? ?????? ?? ?? ?Oracle JDBC????????????? ??????????????????(OracleACE) ?? ??? ?WebLogic Server???????????TIPS? ?????????????????? ?? ??? ????????????? ??????????????? ? ?? Oracle WebLogic Server???????????????????? ?WebLogic Server????????????????? ?????? ???? ???????????????? ???SSL ?? ??? ?Native Memory Tracking??? ?????????????????? (OracleACE) ?? ??? ?Flight Recorder?????? GlassFish????·????·???? ??? ?? ??? Oracle WebLogic Server????? ??????Oracle Direct?? ?????? ?? ?? ????? WebLogic!? Facebook????WebLogic!??? ?????? ?????? WebLogic Server??? WebLogic Server?????????WebLogic Server???? ?! WebLogic Server??????(???????????) WebLogic Server???????? WebLogic Server??????

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• Silverlight 4 Released

  - by ScottGu

  The final release of Silverlight 4 is now available. What is in the Silverlight 4 Release Silverlight 4 contains a ton of new features and capabilities.  In particular we focused on three scenarios with this release: Further enhancing media support Building great business applications Enabling out of the browser experiences On Tuesday I gave a 60 minute keynote about Silverlight 4 which showed off many of the new features and capabilities now available.  You can watch my keynote to learn more about Silverlight 4 and see a ton of great demos of it in action. Also check out these three great posts by Tim Heuer that talk about the new features and provide a guide to the new Silverlight 4 capabilities: Silverlight 4 Beta – A Guide to the New Features Silverlight 4 RC – What was updated Silverlight 4 Released Also read David Anson’s great Silverlight 4 Toolkit post to learn more about the new controls and functionality also available within the Silverlight Toolkit release we also made available today.  Also visit this page to learn more about the new Pivot functionality in Silverlight 4 – which makes it really easy to visualize and interact with collections of images using Silverlight. Lastly – make sure to visit the www.silverlight.net web-site and visit the “Get Started” section to find free tutorials that you can use. Download and Install Silverlight 4 Tools for VS 2010 To develop Silverlight 4 applications you should first download and install Visual Studio 2010 or download and install the free Visual Web Developer 2010 Express edition. Then install the Silverlight Tools RC2 for Visual Studio 2010.  This setup includes the Silverlight 4 Developer Runtime, Silverlight 4 SDK, RIA Services, and VS 2010 tools support.  Once installed you can do File->New Project and choose Silverlight Application to create your first Silverlight 4 project.  You can then use the new WYSIWYG Silverlight designer in Visual Studio 2010 to design and build rich Silverlight 4 applications. Important: If you previously installed the Silverlight 4 Beta or RC build on your machine, please make sure to go into Add/Remove programs and uninstall the “Update for Visual Studio 2010 (KB976272)” package prior to installing the Silverlight Tools RC2 for Visual Studio 2010 setup.  Note that while Silverlight 4 is released, the “Silverlight 4 Tools for VS 2010” is currently in “RC2” mode (meaning we are going to keep an eye out for any remaining issues before finally calling it done).  We’ll update the tools to be “final” in a few weeks once we verify that no last minute issues/bugs remain. Download and Install Expression Blend 4 Release Candidate You can also download and install the Expression Blend 4 RC to create and design great Silverlight 4 applications.  Blend contains “Sketchflow” support – which makes it really easy to rapidly prototype ideas and applications.  To learn more about Sketchflow watch this 90 second video of it in action. Summary Today’s release is the fourth release of Silverlight that we’ve shipped in the last 2.5 years.  The team has done a great job of advancing it quickly and staying focused.  We think today’s Silverlight 4 release opens up a ton of new opportunities to build great solutions for both consumers and business scenarios.  We are looking forward to seeing what you build with it! Hope this helps, Scott

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• Cocos2d-xna memory management for WP8

  - by Arkiliknam

  I recently upgraded to VS2012 and try my in dev game out on the new WP8 emulators but was dismayed to find out the emulator now crashes and throws an out of memory exception during my sprite loading procedure (funnily, it still works in WP7 emulators and on my WP7). Regardless of whether the problem is the emulator or not, I want to get a clear understanding of how I should be managing memory in the game. My game consists of a character whom has 4 or more different animations. Each animation consists of 4 to 7 frames. On top of that, the character has up to 8 stackable visualization modifications (eg eye type, nose type, hair type, clothes type). Pre memory issue, I preloaded all textures for each animation frame and customization and created animate action out of them. The game then plays animations using the customizations applied to that current character. I re-looked at this implementation when I received the out of memory exceptions and have started playing with RenderTexture instead, so instead of pre loading all possible textures, it on loads textures needed for the character, renders them onto a single texture, from which the animation is built. This means the animations use 1/8th of the sprites they were before. I thought this would solve my issue, but it hasn't. Here's a snippet of my code: var characterTexture = CCRenderTexture.Create((int)width, (int)height); characterTexture.BeginWithClear(0, 0, 0, 0); // stamp a body onto my texture var bodySprite = MethodToCreateSpecificSprite(); bodySprite.Position = centerPoint; bodySprite.Visit(); bodySprite.Cleanup(); bodySprite = null; // stamp eyes, nose, mouth, clothes, etc... characterTexture.End(); As you can see, I'm calling CleanUp and setting the sprite to null in the hope of releasing the memory, though I don't believe this is the right way, nor does it seem to work... I also tried using SharedTextureCache to load textures before Stamping my texture out, and then clearing the SharedTextureCache with: CCTextureCache.SharedTextureCache.RemoveAllTextures(); But this didn't have an effect either. Any tips on what I'm not doing? I used VS to do a memory profile of the emulation causing the crash. Both WP7.1 and WP8 emulators peak at about 150mb of usage. WP8 crashes and throws an out of memory exception. Each customisation/frame is 15kb at the most. Lets say there are 8 layers of customisation = 120kb but I render then onto one texture which I would assume is only 15kb again. Each animation is 8 frames at the most. That's 15kb for 1 texture, or 960kb for 8 textures of customisation. There are 4 animation sets. That's 60Kb for 4 sets of 1 texture, or 3.75MB for 4 sets of 8 textures of customisation. So even if its storing every layer, its 3.75MB.... no where near the 150mb breaking point my profiler seems to suggest :( WP 7.1 Memory Profile (max 150MB) WP8 Memory Profile (max 150MB and crashes)

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• WMI permissions: Select CommandLine, ProcessId FROM Win32_Process returns no data for CommandLine

  - by user57935

  Hi all, I am gathering performance data via WMI and would like to avoid having to use an account in the Administrators group for this purpose. The target machine is running Windows Server 2003 with the latest SP/updates. I've done what I believe to be the appropriate configuration to allow our user access to WMI (similar to what is described here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa393266.aspx). Here are the specific steps that were followed: Open Administrative Tools - Computer Management: Under Computer Management (Local) Expand Services and Applications, right click WMI Control and select properties. In the Security tab, expand Root, highlight CIMV2, click Security (near bottom of window); add Performance Monitor Users and enable the options : Enable Account and Remote Enable. ­Open Administrative Tools - Component Services: Under Console Root go to Component Services- Computers - Right click My Computer and select properties, select the COM security tab, in “Access Permissions” click "Edit Default" select(or add then select) “Performance Monitor Users” group and allow local access and remote access and click ok. In “Launch and Activation Permissions” click “Edit Default” select(or add then select) “Performance Monitor Users” group and allow Local and Remote Launch and Activation Permissions. ­Open Administrative Tools - Component Services: Under Console Root go to Component Services- Computers - My Computer - DCOM Config - highlight “Windows Management and Instrumentation” right click and select properties, Select the Security tab, Under “Launch and Activation Permissions” select Customize, then click edit, add the “Performance Users Group” and allow local and remote Remote Launch and Remote Activation privileges. I am able to connect remotely via WMI Explorer but when I perform this query: Select CommandLine, ProcessId FROM Win32_Process I get a valid result but every row has an empty CommandLine. If I add the user to the Administrators group and re-run the query, the CommandLine column contains the expected data. It seems there is a permission I am missing somewhere but I am not having much luck tracking it down. Many thanks in advance.

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• WMI permissions: Select CommandLine, ProcessId FROM Win32_Process returns no data for CommandLine

  - by user57935

  I am gathering performance data via WMI and would like to avoid having to use an account in the Administrators group for this purpose. The target machine is running Windows Server 2003 with the latest SP/updates. I've done what I believe to be the appropriate configuration to allow our user access to WMI (similar to what is described here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa393266.aspx). Here are the specific steps that were followed: Open Administrative Tools - Computer Management: Under Computer Management (Local) Expand Services and Applications, right click WMI Control and select properties. In the Security tab, expand Root, highlight CIMV2, click Security (near bottom of window); add Performance Monitor Users and enable the options : Enable Account and Remote Enable. ­Open Administrative Tools - Component Services: Under Console Root go to Component Services- Computers - Right click My Computer and select properties, select the COM security tab, in “Access Permissions” click "Edit Default" select(or add then select) “Performance Monitor Users” group and allow local access and remote access and click ok. In “Launch and Activation Permissions” click “Edit Default” select(or add then select) “Performance Monitor Users” group and allow Local and Remote Launch and Activation Permissions. ­Open Administrative Tools - Component Services: Under Console Root go to Component Services- Computers - My Computer - DCOM Config - highlight “Windows Management and Instrumentation” right click and select properties, Select the Security tab, Under “Launch and Activation Permissions” select Customize, then click edit, add the “Performance Users Group” and allow local and remote Remote Launch and Remote Activation privileges. I am able to connect remotely via WMI Explorer but when I perform this query: Select CommandLine, ProcessId FROM Win32_Process I get a valid result but every row has an empty CommandLine. If I add the user to the Administrators group and re-run the query, the CommandLine column contains the expected data. It seems there is a permission I am missing somewhere but I am not having much luck tracking it down. Many thanks in advance.

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• Event ID: 861 - The Windows Firewall has detected an application listening for incoming traffic

  - by Chris Marisic

  Firstly, my machines aren't compromised any person suggesting such will be DV'd. The security logs on some of my networks client machines (all Windows Xp Sp3) get filled with these useless error messages. Security Failure Audit Detailed Tracking Event ID: 861 User: NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE The Windows Firewall has detected an application listening for incoming traffic. Name: - Path: C:\WINDOWS\system32\svchost.exe Process identifier: 976 User account: NETWORK SERVICE User domain: NT AUTHORITY Service: Yes RPC server: No IP version: IPv4 IP protocol: UDP Port number: 55035 Allowed: No User notified: No It's always on various random ports of UDP so setting up a port exception isn't really an option. It's always from svchost or lsass both of which are running services from DLLs. One of the most offending processes seems to the be DnsCache. I have in my global policy under AT < Network < Network Connection < Widnows Firewall < Domain Profile (I haven't changed any standard profile options do both need configured? To allow remote administration and desktop exceptions and have a custom program exception list that has %SystemRoot%\system32\svchost.exe:*:enabled:svchost (Windows won't allow you to add this exception on a local machine but it let me have it on here in the global policy it just doesn't seem to do anything) %SystemRoot%\system32\lsass.exe:*enabled:lsass (I think this one ended all of my LSASS messages) %SystemRoot%\system32\dnsrslvr.dll:*:enabled:dnscache (I tried adding the dll itself to the exception list, this didn't seem to do anything) Is there really any other options left other than disabling the Windows Firewall entirely, disabling auditing entirely or just changing the event viewer to just auto overwrite when needed? I'd much rather fix the problem and get rid of these entries ever being created instead of just trying to cover up the problem.

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• This Week in Geek History: Gmail Goes Public, Deep Blue Wins at Chess, and the Birth of Thomas Edison

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  Every week we bring you a snapshot of the week in Geek History. This week we’re taking a peek at the public release of Gmail, the first time a computer won against a chess champion, and the birth of prolific inventor Thomas Edison. Gmail Goes Public It’s hard to believe that Gmail has only been around for seven years and that for the first three years of its life it was invite only. In 2007 Gmail dropped the invite only requirement (although they would hold onto the “beta” tag for another two years) and opened its doors for anyone to grab a username @gmail. For what seemed like an entire epoch in internet history Gmail had the slickest web-based email around with constant innovations and features rolling out from Gmail Labs. Only in the last year or so have major overhauls at competitors like Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail brought other services up to speed. Can’t stand reading a Week in Geek History entry without a random fact? Here you go: gmail.com was originally owned by the Garfield franchise and ran a service that delivered Garfield comics to your email inbox. No, we’re not kidding. Deep Blue Proves Itself a Chess Master Deep Blue was a super computer constructed by IBM with the sole purpose of winning chess matches. In 2011 with the all seeing eye of Google and the amazing computational abilities of engines like Wolfram Alpha we simply take powerful computers immersed in our daily lives for granted. The 1996 match against reigning world chest champion Garry Kasparov where in Deep Blue held its own, but ultimately lost, in a  4-2 match shook a lot of people up. What did it mean if something that was considered such an elegant and quintessentially human endeavor such as chess was so easy for a machine? A series of upgrades helped Deep Blue outright win a match against Kasparov in 1997 (seen in the photo above). After the win Deep Blue was retired and disassembled. Parts of Deep Blue are housed in the National Museum of History and the Computer History Museum. Birth of Thomas Edison Thomas Alva Edison was one of the most prolific inventors in history and holds an astounding 1,093 US Patents. He is responsible for outright inventing or greatly refining major innovations in the history of world culture including the phonograph, the movie camera, the carbon microphone used in nearly every telephone well into the 1980s, batteries for electric cars (a notion we’d take over a century to take seriously), voting machines, and of course his enormous contribution to electric distribution systems. Despite the role of scientist and inventor being largely unglamorous, Thomas Edison and his tumultuous relationship with fellow inventor Nikola Tesla have been fodder for everything from books, to comics, to movies, and video games. Other Notable Moments from This Week in Geek History Although we only shine the spotlight on three interesting facts a week in our Geek History column, that doesn’t mean we don’t have space to highlight a few more in passing. This week in Geek History: 1971 – Apollo 14 returns to Earth after third Lunar mission. 1974 – Birth of Robot Chicken creator Seth Green. 1986 – Death of Dune creator Frank Herbert. Goodnight Dune. 1997 – Simpsons becomes longest running animated show on television. Have an interesting bit of geek trivia to share? Shoot us an email to [email protected] with “history” in the subject line and we’ll be sure to add it to our list of trivia. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware How to Change the Default Application for Android Tasks Stop Believing TV’s Lies: The Real Truth About "Enhancing" Images The How-To Geek Valentine’s Day Gift Guide Inspire Geek Love with These Hilarious Geek Valentines RGB? CMYK? Alpha? What Are Image Channels and What Do They Mean? Clean Up Google Calendar’s Interface in Chrome and Iron The Rise and Fall of Kramerica? [Seinfeld Video] GNOME Shell 3 Live CDs for OpenSUSE and Fedora Available for Testing Picplz Offers Special FX, Sharing, and Backup of Your Smartphone Pics BUILD! An Epic LEGO Stop Motion Film [VIDEO] The Lingering Glow of Sunset over a Winter Landscape Wallpaper

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• What is Agile Modeling and why do I need it?

  What is Agile Modeling and why do I need it? Agile Modeling is an add-on to existing agile methodologies like Extreme programming (XP) and Rational Unified Process (RUP). Agile Modeling enables developers to develop a customized software development process that actually meets their current development needs and is flexible enough to adjust in the future. According to Scott Ambler, Agile Modeling consists of five core values that enable this methodology to be effective and light weight Agile Modeling Core Values: Communication Simplicity Feedback Courage Humility Communication is a key component to any successful project. Open communication between stakeholder and the development team is essential when developing new applications or maintaining legacy systems. Agile models promote communication amongst software development teams and stakeholders. Furthermore, Agile Models provide a common understanding of an application for members of a software development team allowing them to have a universal common point of reference. The use of simplicity in Agile Models enables the exploration of new ideas and concepts through the use of basic diagrams instead of investing the time in writing tens or hundreds of lines of code. Feedback in regards to application development is essential. Feedback allows a development team to confirm that the development path is on track. Agile Models allow for quick feedback from shareholders because minimal to no technical expertise is required to understand basic models. Courage is important because you need to make important decisions and be able to change direction by either discarding or refactoring your work when some of your decisions prove inadequate, according to Scott Ambler. As a member of a development team, we must admit that we do not know everything even though some of us think we do. This is where humility comes in to play. Everyone is a knowledge expert in their own specific domain. If you need help with your finances then you would consult an accountant. If you have a problem or are in need of help with a topic why would someone not consult with a subject expert? An effective approach is to assume that everyone involved with your project has equal value and therefore should be treated with respect. Agile Model Characteristics: Purposeful Understandable Sufficiently Accurate Sufficiently Consistent Sufficiently Detailed Provide Positive Value Simple as Possible Just Fulfill Basic Requirements According to Scott Ambler, Agile models are the most effective possible because the time that is invested in the model is just enough effort to complete the job. Furthermore, if a model isn’t good enough yet then additional effort can be invested to get more value out of the model. However if a model is good enough, for the current needs, or surpass the current needs, then any additional work done on the model would be a waste. It is important to remember that good enough is in the eye of the beholder, so this can be tough. In order for Agile Models to work effectively Active Stakeholder need to participation in the modeling process. Finally it is also very important to model with others, this allows for additionally input ensuring that all the shareholders needs are reflected in the models. How can Agile Models be incorporated in to our projects? Agile Models can be incorporated in to our project during the requirement gathering and design phases. As requirements are gathered the models should be updated to incorporate the new project details as they are defined and updated. Additionally, the Agile Models created during the requirement phase can be the bases for the models created during the design phase.  It is important to only add to the model when the changes fit within the agile model characteristics and they do not over complicate the design.

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• BI and EPM Landscape

  - by frank.buytendijk

  Most of my blog entries are not about Oracle products, and most of the latest entries are about topics such as IT strategy and enterprise architecture. However, given my background at Gartner, and at Hyperion, I still keep a close eye on what's happening in BI and EPM. One important reason is that I believe there is significant competitive value for organizations getting BI and EPM right. Davenport and Harris wrote a great book called "Competing on Analytics", in which they explain this in a very engaging and convincing way. At Oracle we have defined the concept of "management excellence" that outlines what organizations have to do to keep or create a competitive edge. It's not only in the business processes, but also in the management processes. Recently, Gartner published its 2009 market shares report for BI, Analytics, and Performance Management. Gartner identifies the same three segments that Oracle does: (1) CPM Suites (Oracle refers not to Corporate Performance Management, but Enterprise Performance Management), (2) BI Platform, and (3) Analytic Applications & Performance Management. According to Gartner, Oracle's share is increasing with revenue growing by more than 5%. Oracle currently holds the #2 market share position in the overall BI Software space based on total BI software revenue. Source: Gartner Dataquest Market Share: Business Intelligence, Analytics and Performance Management Software, Worldwide, 2009; Dan Sommer and Bhavish Sood; Apr 2010 Gartner has ranked Oracle as #1 in the CPM Suites worldwide sub-segment based on total BI software revenue, and Oracle is gaining share with revenue growing by more than 6% in 2009. Source: Gartner Dataquest Market Share: Business Intelligence, Analytics and Performance Management Software, Worldwide, 2009; Dan Sommer and Bhavish Sood; Apr 2010 The Analytic Applications & Performance Management subsegment is more fragmented. It has for instance a very large "Other Vendors" category. The largest player traditionally is SAS. Analytic Applications are often meant for very specific analytic needs in very specific industry sectors. According to Gartner, from the large vendors, again Oracle is the one who is gaining the most share - with total BI software revenue growth close to 15% in 2009. Source: Gartner Dataquest Market Share: Business Intelligence, Analytics and Performance Management Software, Worldwide, 2009; Dan Sommer and Bhavish Sood; Apr 2010 I believe this shows Oracle's integration strategy is working. In fact, integration actually is the innovation. BI and EPM have been silo technology platforms and application suites way too long. Management and measuring performance should be very closely linked to strategy execution, which is the domain of other business application areas such as CRM, ERP, and Supply Chain. BI and EPM are not about "making better decisions" anymore, but are part of a tangible action framework. Furthermore, organizations are getting more serious about ecosystem thinking. They do not evaluate single tools anymore for different application areas, but buy into a complete ecosystem of hardware, software and services. The best ecosystem is the one that offers the most options, in environments where the uncertainty is high and investments are hard to reverse. The key to successfully managing such an environment is middleware, and BI and EPM become increasingly middleware intensive. In fact, given the horizontal nature of BI and EPM, sitting on top of all business functions and applications, you could call them "upperware". Many are active in the BI and EPM space. Big players can offer a lot, but there are always many areas that are covered by specialty vendors. Oracle openly embraces those technologies within the ecosystem as well. Complete, open and integrated still accurately describes the Oracle product strategy. frank

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• OpenSSL support for Ruby: "Cipher is not a module (TypeError)"

  - by smotchkkiss

  The Problem Our systems admin needed to upgrade the packages on our CentOS 5.4 dev server to match the packages on our production server. The upgrade affected ruby and/or openssl. We run a Ruby on Rails issue tracking system called Redmine that is deployed with Passenger on Apache. Everything worked before the server update, but when trying to access the ticket system now, I get the following error: Error message: Cipher is not a module Exception class: TypeError Application root: /home/dev/rails/redmine-0.8.7 I've been trying so hard to fix this problem but I can't seem to beat it. I have tried following this guide: http://iamclovin.posterous.com/how-to-solve-the-cipher-is-not-a-module-error When I try require 'openssl' in IRB, I do see a true return value. However, I'm still seeing the Cipher.rb is not a module TypeError when accessing the ticket system. Possibly (probably) related: I've tried updating Passenger, but when I try passenger-install-apache2-module I see: Checking for required software... * GNU C++ compiler... found at /usr/bin/g++ * Ruby development headers... found * OpenSSL support for Ruby... /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/openssl/cipher.rb:22: Cipher is not a module (TypeError) Any help?

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• SharePoint OCR image files indexing

  Introduction This article describes how to setup indexing of the image files (including TIFF, PDF, JPEG, BMP...) using OCR technology. The indexing described below utilizes Microsoft IFilter technology and as such is not specific to SharePoint, but can be used with any product that uses Microsoft indexing: Microsoft Search, Desktop search, SQL Server search, and through the plug-ins with Google desktop search. I however use it with Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 2003. For those other products, the registration may need to be slightly different. Background  One of the projects I was working on required a storage of old documents scanned into PDF files. Then there was a separate team of people responsible for providing a tags for a search engine so those image documents could be found. The whole process was clumsy, labor intensive, and error prone. That was what started me on my exploration path. OCR The first search I fired was for the Open Source OCR products. Pretty quickly, I narrowed it down to TESSERACT (http://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/). Tesseract is an orphaned brain child of HP that worked on it from 1985 to 1995. Then it was moved to the Open Source, and now if I understand it correctly, Google is working on it. With credentials like that, it's no wonder that Tesseract scores one of the highest marks on OCR recognition and accuracy. After downloading and struggling just a bit, I got Tesseract to work. The struggling part was that the home page claims that its base input format is a TIFF file. May be my TIFFs were bad, but I was able to get it to work only for BMP files. Image files conversion So now that I have an OCR that can convert BMP files into text, how do I get text out of the image PDF files? One more search, and I settled down on ImageMagic (http://www.imagemagick.org/). This is another wonderful Open Source utility that can convert any file into image. It did work out of the box, converting any TIFF files into bitmaps, but to get PDF files converted, it requires a GhostScript (http://mirror.cs.wisc.edu/pub/mirrors/ghost/GPL/gs864/gs864w32.exe). Dealing with text PDFs With that utility installed, I was cooking - I can convert any file (in particular PDF and TIFF) into bitmap, and then I can extract the text out of the bitmap. The only consideration was to somehow treat PDF files containing text differently - after all, OCR is very computation intensive and somewhat error prone even with perfect image quality and resolution. So another quick search, and I have a PDFTOTEXT (ftp://ftp.foolabs.com/pub/xpdf/xpdf-3.02pl4-win32.zip) - thank God for Open Source! With these guys, I can pull text out of PDF in an eye blink. However, I would get nothing for pure image PDFs, but I already have a solution for that! Batch process It took another 15 minutes to setup a batch script to automate the process: Check the file extension If file is a PDF file try to extract text out of it if there is more than certain amount of text in the file - done! if there is no text, convert first page into bitmap run OCR on the bitmap For any other file type, convert file into bitmap Run OCR on the bitmap Once you unzip the attached project, check out the bin\OCR.BAT file. It will create a temporary file in the directory where your source file is with the same name + the '.txt' extension.Continue span.fullpost {display:none;}

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• SQLAuthority News – Android Efficiency Tips and Tricks – Personal Technology Tip #003

  - by pinaldave

  I use my phone for lots of things.  I use it mainly to replace my tablet – I can e-mail, take and edit photos, and do almost everything I can do on a laptop with this phone.  And I am sure that there are many of you out there just like me.  I personally have a Galaxy S3, which uses the Android operating system, and I have decided to feature it as the third installment of my Technology Tips and Tricks series. 1) Shortcut to your favorite contacts on home screen Access your most-called contacts easily from your home screen by holding your finger on any empty spot on the home screen.  A menu will pop up that allows you to choose Shortcuts, and Contact.  You can scroll through your contact list and then just tap on the name of the person you want to be able to dial with a single click. 2) Keep track of your data usage Yes, we all should keep a close eye on our data usage, because it is very easy to go over our limits and then end up with a giant bill at the end of the month.  Never get surprised when you open that mobile phone envelope again.  Go to Settings, then Data Usage, and you can find a quick rundown of your usage, how much data each app uses, and you can even set alarms to let you know when you are nearing the limits.   Better yet, you can set the phone to stop using data when it reaches a certain limit. 3) Bring back Good Grammar We often hear proclamations about the downfall of written language, and how texting abbreviations, misspellings, and lack of punctuation are the root of all evil.  Well, we can show all those doomsdayers that all is not lost by bringing punctuation back to texting.  Usually we leave it off when we text because it takes too long to get to the screen with all the punctuation options.  But now you can hold down the period (or “full stop”) button and a list of all the commonly-used punctuation marks will pop right up. 4) Apps, Apps, Apps and Apps And finally, I cannot end an article about smart phones without including a list of my favorite apps.  Here are a list of my Top 10 Applications on my Android (not counting social media apps). Advanced Task Killer – Keeps my phone snappy by closing un-necessary apps WhatsApp - my favorite alternate to Text SMS Flipboard - my ‘timepass’ moments Skype – keeps me close to friends and family GoogleMaps - I am never lost because of this one thing Amazon Kindle – Books my best friends DropBox - My data always safe Pluralsight Player – Learning never stops for me Samsung Kies Air – Connecting Phone to Computer Chrome – Replacing default browser I have not included any social media applications in the above list, but you can be sure that I am linked to Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)   Filed under: Best Practices, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Android, Personal Technology

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• Observations From The Corner of a Starbucks

  - by Chris Williams

  I’ve spent the last 3 days sitting in a Starbucks for 4-8 hours at a time. As a result, I’ve observed a lot of interesting behavior and people (most of whom were uninteresting themselves.) One of the things I’ve noticed is that most people don’t sit down. They come in, get their drink and go. The ones that do sit down, stay much longer than it takes to consume their drink. The drink is just an incidental purchase. Certainly not the reason they are here. Most of the people who sit also have laptops. Probably around 75%. Only a few have kids (with them) but the ones that do, have very small kids. Toddlers or younger. Of all the “campers” only a small percentage are wearing headphone, presumably because A) external noise doesn’t bother them or B) they aren’t working on anything important. My buddy George falls into category A, but he grew up in a house full of people. Silence freaks him out far more than noise. My brother and I, on the other hand, were both only children and don’t handle noisy distractions well. He needs it quiet (like a tomb) and I need music. Go figure… I can listen to Britney Spears mixed with Apoptygma Berzerk and Anthrax and crank out 30 pages, but if your toddler is banging his spoon on the table, you’re getting a dirty look… unless I have music, then all is right with the world. Anyway, enough about me. Most of the people who come in as a group are smiling when they enter. Half as many are smiling when they leave. People who come in alone typically aren’t smiling at all. The average age, over the last three days seems to be early 30s… with a couple of senior citizens and teenagers at either end of the curve. The teenagers almost never stay. They have better stuff to do on a nice day. The senior citizens are split nearly evenly between campers and in&outs. Most of the non-solo campers have 1 person with a laptop, while the other reads the paper or a book. Some campers bring multiple laptops… but only really look at one of them. This Starbucks has a drive through. The line is almost never more than 2-3 cars long but apparently a lot of the in&out people would rather come in and stand in line behind (up to) 5 people. The music in here sucks. My musical tastes can best be described as eclectic to bad, but I can still get work done (see above.) I find the music in this particular Starbucks to be discordant and jarring. At this Starbucks, the coffee lingo is apparently something that is meant to occur between employees only. The nice lady at the counter can handle orders in plain English and translate them to Baristaspeak (Baristese?) quite efficiently. If you order in Baristaspeak however, she will look confused and repeat your order back to you in plain English to confirm you actually meant what you said. Then she will say it in Baristaspeak to the lady making your drink. Nobody in this Starbucks (other than the Baristas) makes eye-contact… at least not with me. Of course that may be indicative of a separate issue. ;)

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• Tools to (privately) annotate/markup a website for maintenance

  - by rob

  I've been tasked with updating a website. Rather than proofreading and updating each page (one at a time), I want to make a single pass over the entire website, marking graphics/images/videos that need to be rewritten, removed, or updated. I thought about taking screenshots, marking those up, and putting them in our bug-tracking database, but that seems like an extremely tedious solution. Some of the content is similar on various pages across the website, and the entire site itself is localized into several languages (so any changes made to the English version will have corresponding changes for other languages). I also want all of my markup to remain private (that is, if it's stored online somewhere, I should be the only person who can see my comments). I found an article that lists several website annotation services, but it's not clear whether they allow private annotations, or whether these tools are even appropriate for website maintenance (many of them look more geared toward social networking). I've started making a list of some necessary and desired features below, and may add more as necessary. Annotations/markup/comments remain private (only visible to me) Comment history/tagging (so I can reuse the same comment for shared footers, items requiring similar updates, etc.) Ability to print/export a list or report of all comments for the entire website Ability to produce a categorized list of changes (e.g., to produce a list of images that need updating, which I can send to the graphic designer) What processes and tools do you use to keep track of all the changes that need to be made to a website? What features are painfully absent from the tools you use?

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• What’s the use of code reuse?

  - by Tony Davis

  All great developers write reusable code, don’t they? Well, maybe, but as with all statements regarding what “great” developers do or don’t do, it’s probably an over-simplification. A novice programmer, in particular, will encounter in the literature a general assumption of the importance of code reusability. They spend time worrying about DRY (don’t repeat yourself), moving logic into specific “helper” modules that they can then reuse, agonizing about the minutiae of the class structure, inheritance and interface design that will promote easy reuse. Unfortunately, writing code specifically for reuse often leads to complicated object hierarchies and inheritance models that are anything but reusable. If, instead, one strives to write simple code units that are highly maintainable and perform a single function, in a concise, isolated fashion then the potential for reuse simply “drops out” as a natural by-product. Programmers, of course, care about these principles, about encapsulation and clean interfaces that don’t expose inner workings and allow easy pluggability. This is great when it helps with the maintenance and development of code but how often, in practice, do we actually reuse our code? Most DBAs and database developers are familiar with the practical reasons for the limited opportunities to reuse database code and its potential downsides. However, surely elsewhere in our code base, reuse happens often. After all, we can all name examples, such as date/time handling modules, which if we write with enough care we can plug in to many places. I spoke to a developer just yesterday who looked me in the eye and told me that in 30+ years as a developer (a successful one, I’d add), he’d never once reused his own code. As I sat blinking in disbelief, he explained that, of course, he always thought he would reuse it. He’d often agonized over its design, certain that he was creating code of great significance that he and other generations would reuse, with grateful tears misting their eyes. In fact, it never happened. He had in his head, most of the algorithms he needed and would simply write the code from scratch each time, refining the algorithms and tailoring the code to meet the specific requirements. It was, he said, simply quicker to do that than dig out the old code, check it, correct the mistakes, and adapt it. Is this a common experience, or just a strange anomaly? Viewed in a certain light, building code with a focus on reusability seems to hark to a past age where people built cars and music systems with the idea that someone else could and would replace and reuse the parts. Technology advances so rapidly that the next time you need the “same” code, it’s likely a new technique, or a whole new language, has emerged in the meantime, better equipped to tackle the task. Maybe we should be less fearful of the idea that we could write code well suited to the system requirements, but with little regard for reuse potential, and then rewrite a better version from scratch the next time.

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• SQLAuthority News – Top 5 Latest Microsoft Certifications of 2013 – Guest Post

  - by Pinal Dave

  With the IT job market getting more and more competent by the day, certifications are a must for anyone who wishes to get a strong foothold in the industry. Microsoft community comes up with regular updates and enhancements in its existing products to keep up with the rapidly evolving requirements of the ICT industry. We bring you a list of five latest Microsoft certifications that you must consider acquiring this year. MCSE: SharePoint Learn all about Windows Server 2012 and Microsoft SharePoint 2013, which brings an advanced set of features to the fore in this latest version. It introduces new capabilities for business intelligence, social media, branding, search, identity management, mobile device among other features. Enjoy a great user experience with sharing and collaboration in community forum, within a pixel-perfect SharePoint website. Data connectivity and business intelligence tools allow users to process and access data, analyze reports, share and collaborate with each other more conveniently. Microsoft Specialist: Microsoft Project 2013 The only project management system that works seamlessly with other applications and cloud solutions of Microsoft, MS Project 2013 offers more than what meets the eye.  It provides for easier management and monitoring of projects so that users can ensure timely delivery while improving the productivity significantly. So keep all your projects on track and collaborate with your team like never before with this enhanced release! This one’s a must for all project managers. MCSE Messaging Another one of Microsoft gems is its messaging environment which has also launched the latest release Microsoft Exchange Server 2013. Messaging administrators can take up this training and validate their expertise in Unified Messaging, Exchange Online, PowerShell and Virtualization strategies, through MCSE Messaging certification in Exchange Server. If you wish to enhance productivity and data security of your organization while being flexible and extremely efficient, this is the right certification for you. MCSE Communication An enterprise can function optimally on the strength of its information flow and communication systems. With Lync Server 2013, you can introduce a whole new world of unified communications which consists of audio/video conferencing, dial-in, Persistent Chat, instant chat, and EDGE services in your organization. Utilize IT to serve and support business objectives by mastering this UC technology with this latest MCSE Communication course on using Microsoft Lync Server 2013. MCSE: SQL Server 2012 BI Platform The decision making process is largely influenced by underlying enterprise information used by the management for business intelligence. Therefore, a robust business intelligence platform that anchors enterprise IT and transform it to operational efficiencies is the need of the hour. SQL Server 2012 BI Platform certification helps professionals implement, manage and maintain a BI database infrastructure effectively. IT professionals with BI skills are highly sought after these days. MCSD: Windows Store Apps A Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer certification in Windows Store Apps validates your potential in designing interactive apps. Learn The Essentials of Developing Windows Store Apps using HTML5 and JavaScript and establish yourself as an ace developer capable of creating fast and fluid Metro style apps for Windows 8 that are accessible on a variety of devices. You can also go ahead and Learn Essentials of Developing Windows Store Apps using C# mode if you’re already familiar and working with C# programming language. Hence the developers are free to choose their own favorite development stream which opens doors for them to get ready for the latest and exciting application development platform called Windows store apps. Software developers with these skills are in great demand in the industry today. In order to continue being competitive in your respective fields, it is imperative that IT personnel update their knowledge on a regular basis. Certifications are a means to achieve this goal. Not considered to be an optional pre-requisite anymore, major IT certifications such as these are now essential to stay afloat in a cut-throat industry where technologies change on a daily basis. This blog is written by Aruneet Anand of Koenig Solutions. Koenig Solutions does training for all of the above courses. For more information, visit the website. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Microsoft Certifications

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• The Evolution Of C#

  - by Paulo Morgado

  The first release of C# (C# 1.0) was all about building a new language for managed code that appealed, mostly, to C++ and Java programmers. The second release (C# 2.0) was mostly about adding what wasn’t time to built into the 1.0 release. The main feature for this release was Generics. The third release (C# 3.0) was all about reducing the impedance mismatch between general purpose programming languages and databases. To achieve this goal, several functional programming features were added to the language and LINQ was born. Going forward, new trends are showing up in the industry and modern programming languages need to be more: Declarative With imperative languages, although having the eye on the what, programs need to focus on the how. This leads to over specification of the solution to the problem in hand, making next to impossible to the execution engine to be smart about the execution of the program and optimize it to run it more efficiently (given the hardware available, for example). Declarative languages, on the other hand, focus only on the what and leave the how to the execution engine. LINQ made C# more declarative by using higher level constructs like orderby and group by that give the execution engine a much better chance of optimizing the execution (by parallelizing it, for example). Concurrent Concurrency is hard and needs to be thought about and it’s very hard to shoehorn it into a programming language. Parallel.For (from the parallel extensions) looks like a parallel for because enough expressiveness has been built into C# 3.0 to allow this without having to commit to specific language syntax. Dynamic There was been lots of debate on which ones are the better programming languages: static or dynamic. The fact is that both have good qualities and users of both types of languages want to have it all. All these trends require a paradigm switch. C# is, in many ways, already a multi-paradigm language. It’s still very object oriented (class oriented as some might say) but it can be argued that C# 3.0 has become a functional programming language because it has all the cornerstones of what a functional programming language needs. Moving forward, will have even more. Besides the influence of these trends, there was a decision of co-evolution of the C# and Visual Basic programming languages. Since its inception, there was been some effort to position C# and Visual Basic against each other and to try to explain what should be done with each language or what kind of programmers use one or the other. Each language should be chosen based on the past experience and familiarity of the developer/team/project/company and not by particular features. In the past, every time a feature was added to one language, the users of the other wanted that feature too. Going forward, when a feature is added to one language, the other will work hard to add the same feature. This doesn’t mean that XML literals will be added to C# (because almost the same can be achieved with LINQ To XML), but Visual Basic will have auto-implemented properties. Most of these features require or are built on top of features of the .NET Framework and, the focus for C# 4.0 was on dynamic programming. Not just dynamic types but being able to talk with anything that isn’t a .NET class. Also introduced in C# 4.0 is co-variance and contra-variance for generic interfaces and delegates. Stay tuned for more on the new C# 4.0 features.

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• F# WPF Form &ndash; the basics

  - by MarkPearl

  I was listening to Dot Net Rocks show #560 about F# and during the podcast Richard Campbell brought up a good point with regards to F# and a GUI. In essence what I understood his point to be was that until one could write an end to end application in F#, it would be a hard sell to developers to take it on. In part I agree with him, while I am beginning to really enjoy learning F#, I can’t but help feel that I would be a lot further into the language if I could do my Windows Forms like I do in C# or VB.NET for the simple reason that in “playing” applications I spend the majority of the time in the UI layer… So I have been keeping my eye out for some examples of creating a WPF form in a F# project and came across Tim’s F# Twitter Stream Sample, which had exactly this…. of course he actually had a bit more than a basic form… but it was enough for me to scrap the insides and glean what I needed. So today I am going to make just the very basic WPF form with all the goodness of a XAML window. Getting Started First thing we need to do is create a new solution with a blank F# application project – I have made mine called FSharpWPF. Once you have the project created you will need to change the project type from a Console Application to a Windows Application. You do this by right clicking on the project file and going to its properties… Once that is done you will need to add the appropriate references. You do this by right clicking on the References in the Solution Explorer and clicking “Add Reference'”. You should add the appropriate .Net references below for WPF & XAMl to work. Once these references are added you then need to add your XAML file to the project. You can do this by adding a new item to the project of type xml and simply changing the file extension from xml to xaml. Once the xaml file has been added to the project you will need to add valid window XAML. Example of a very basic xaml file is shown below… <Window xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" Title="F# WPF WPF Form" Height="350" Width="525"> <Grid> </Grid> </Window> Once your xaml file is done… you need to set the build action of the xaml file from “None” to “Resource” as depicted in the picture below. If you do not set this you will get an IOException error when running the completed project with a message along the lines of “Cannot locate resource ‘window.xaml’ You then need to tie everything up by putting the correct F# code in the Program.fs to load the xaml window. In the Program.fs put the following code… module Program open System open System.Collections.ObjectModel open System.IO open System.Windows open System.Windows.Controls open System.Windows.Markup [<STAThread>] [<EntryPoint>] let main(_) = let w = Application.LoadComponent(new System.Uri("/FSharpWPF;component/Window.xaml", System.UriKind.Relative)) :?> Window (new Application()).Run(w) Once all this is done you should be able to build and run your project. What you have done is created a WPF based window inside a FSharp project. It should look something like below…   Nothing to exciting, but sufficient to illustrate the very basic WPF form in F#. Hopefully in future posts I will build on this to expose button events etc.

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• Disabling mouse acceleration in Mac OS X

  - by aib

  I've been looking for a solution to the unusable mouse problem in Mac OS X for ages. I've tried a gazillion programs and fiddled with every setting there is or there can be added. So far, I haven't found a way to get linear mouse response in Mac OS X. At this point I'm seriously considering installing another operating system. But before I do that, or go hacking around OS binaries, maybe someone here has a solution? I want linear mouse response. I want high sensitivity. I like my touchpad acceleration and would like to keep it if possible. Any ideas? P.S. I've been at this for a long time, I'll probably have already tried the most popular answers. I'm running Mac OS X 10.6.5 on a MacBook Pro. I don't use a particular brand of mouse. I'm not looking for any commercial solutions. I've tried: Mouse Acceleration Preferences Pane, the Snow Leopard version of which can get me close to a linear response, but at the cost of tracking speed (sensitivity). Answers on this question: Make Mac OS X mouse acceleration more Windows-like About every code snippet I found via Google.

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• How to disable all bounce back email in exim 4.69

  - by liame

  I have set up an email server to send out solicited newsletters. There should be no "regular" users of this server, so it is not desirable to send bounce notifications back to the recipient. Especially so since I am tracking bounces myself by parsing the log files periodically. What I want is to unconditionally prevent exim from ever sending a bounce notification email back to a sender. How can I do this? Thank you! (I accidentally posted this to superuser before posting it here, disregard that if you come across) What I want is an email server that will accept all incoming emails, deliver it accordingly (that is remotely or locally) and not send a bounce notification the sender upon bounce. I log bounces myself, in a database. The only function bounce messages have in my setting is to waste resources and bandwidth. I need to send emails fast, using exiwhat during a run, I see a significant number of deliveries to [email protected]. I could potentially increase my email productivity by 10~20% if all bounce emails are eliminated.

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• itunes iphone sync stuck on "Waiting for items to copy"

  - by lindes

  superuser crowd, I've found a number of threads about this, but have yet to find a satisfactory answer. Perhaps I'll have better luck on this site?? I hope so... I'm having a problem with iTunes where syncing my iPhone ends up seeming to basically finish, but it says "Waiting for items to copy" after everything else, and just stays there for... well, a very long time, if I let it. Oh, and I'm not sure this is always the case, but at the moment, it's doing this while "Syncing Genius Data to [my iPhone] (Step 8 of 8)". If I click the little x in iTunes, it then gets stuck on "Canceling sync", for an equally indefinite sort of period. If I simply unplug the phone, everything seems to be synced and happy, but the next time I sync, it happens again. I presume this is a bug of some sort on Apple's part, but it seems like people have found workarounds... I'm just having trouble tracking one down that (a) is well described enough that I can actually follow it, (b) has enough detail that I can do it without losing data (i.e. tells me pathnames that I might want to copy first, or the like, before telling me to remove something) (note: see also point (a) -- I can't remove it if it's telling me to remove something that I don't know where it is!), and (c) otherwise seems sane. I'm hoping that here perhaps I'll get better luck -- with either a workaround, and/or debugging tips for figuring out how to find myself a workaround. Note: I'm busy with some other things at the moment, but can try to add some additional information later, if necessary.

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• SQLAuthority News – Android Efficiency Tips and Tricks – Personal Technology Tip

  - by pinaldave

  I use my phone for lots of things.  I use it mainly to replace my tablet – I can e-mail, take and edit photos, and do almost everything I can do on a laptop with this phone.  And I am sure that there are many of you out there just like me.  I personally have a Galaxy S3, which uses the Android operating system, and I have decided to feature it as the third installment of my Technology Tips and Tricks series. 1) Shortcut to your favorite contacts on home screen Access your most-called contacts easily from your home screen by holding your finger on any empty spot on the home screen.  A menu will pop up that allows you to choose Shortcuts, and Contact.  You can scroll through your contact list and then just tap on the name of the person you want to be able to dial with a single click. 2) Keep track of your data usage Yes, we all should keep a close eye on our data usage, because it is very easy to go over our limits and then end up with a giant bill at the end of the month.  Never get surprised when you open that mobile phone envelope again.  Go to Settings, then Data Usage, and you can find a quick rundown of your usage, how much data each app uses, and you can even set alarms to let you know when you are nearing the limits.   Better yet, you can set the phone to stop using data when it reaches a certain limit. 3) Bring back Good Grammar We often hear proclamations about the downfall of written language, and how texting abbreviations, misspellings, and lack of punctuation are the root of all evil.  Well, we can show all those doomsdayers that all is not lost by bringing punctuation back to texting.  Usually we leave it off when we text because it takes too long to get to the screen with all the punctuation options.  But now you can hold down the period (or “full stop”) button and a list of all the commonly-used punctuation marks will pop right up. 4) Apps, Apps, Apps and Apps And finally, I cannot end an article about smart phones without including a list of my favorite apps.  Here are a list of my Top 10 Applications on my Android (not counting social media apps). Advanced Task Killer – Keeps my phone snappy by closing un-necessary apps WhatsApp - my favorite alternate to Text SMS Flipboard - my ‘timepass’ moments Skype – keeps me close to friends and family GoogleMaps - I am never lost because of this one thing Amazon Kindle – Books my best friends DropBox - My data always safe Pluralsight Player – Learning never stops for me Samsung Kies Air – Connecting Phone to Computer Chrome – Replacing default browser I have not included any social media applications in the above list, but you can be sure that I am linked to Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)   Filed under: Best Practices, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Android, Personal Technology

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• Monitoring the Application alongside SQL Server

  - by Tony Davis

  Sometimes, on Simple-Talk, it takes a while to spot strange and unexpected patterns of user activity, or small bugs. For example, one morning we spotted that an article’s comment count had leapt to 1485, but that only four were displayed. With some rooting around in Google Analytics, and the endlessly annoying Community Server admin-interface, we were able to work out that a few days previously the article had been subject to a spam attack and that the comment count was for some reason including both accepted and unaccepted comments (which in turn uncovered a bug in the SQL). This sort of incident made us a lot keener on monitoring Simple-talk website usage more effectively. However, the metrics we wanted are troublesome, because they are far too specific for Google Analytics to measure, and the SQL Server backend doesn’t keep sufficient information to enable us to plot trends. The latter could provide, for example, the total number of comments made on, or votes cast for, articles, over all time, but not the number that occur by hour over a set time. We lacked a baseline, in other words. We couldn’t alter the database, as it is a bought-in package. We had neither the resources nor inclination to build-in dedicated application monitoring. Possibly, we could investigate a third-party tool to do the job; but then it occurred to us that we were already using a monitoring tool (SQL Monitor) to keep an eye on the database. It stored data, made graphs and sent alerts. Could we get it to monitor some aspects of the application as well? Of course, SQL Monitor’s single purpose is to check and monitor SQL Server, over time, rather than to monitor applications that use SQL Server. However, how different is the business of gathering and plotting SQL Server Wait Stats, from gathering and plotting various aspects of user activity on the site? Not a lot, it turns out. The latest version allows us to write our own custom monitoring scripts, meaning that we could now monitor any metric in the application that returns an integer. It took little time to write a simple SQL Query that collects basic metrics of the total number of subscribers, votes cast, comments made, or views of articles, over time. The SQL Monitor database polls Simple-Talk every second or so in order to get the latest totals, and can then store and plot this information, or even correlate SQL Server usage to application usage. You can see the live data by visiting monitor.red-gate.com. Click the "Analysis" tab, and select one of the "Simple-talk:" entries in the "Show" box and an appropriate data range (e.g. last 30 days). It’s nascent, and we’re still working on it, but it’s already given us more confidence that we’ll spot quickly trends, bugs, or bursts of ‘abnormal’ activity. If there is a sudden rise in comments, we get an alert, and if it’s due to a spam attack, we can moderate or ban the perpetrator very quickly. We’ve often argued that a tool should perform a single job well rather than turn into a Swiss-army knife, but ironically we’ve rather appreciated being able to make best use of what’s there anyway for a slightly different purpose. Is this a good or common practice? What do you think? Cheers, Tony.

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• Exception Handling Frequency/Log Detail

  - by Cyborgx37

  I am working on a fairly complex .NET application that interacts with another application. Many single-line statements are possible culprits for throwing an Exception and there is often nothing I can do to check the state before executing them to prevent these Exceptions. The question is, based on best practices and seasoned experience, how frequently should I lace my code with try/catch blocks? I've listed three examples below, but I'm open to any advice. I'm really hoping to get some pros/cons of various approaches. I can certainly come up with some of my own (greater log granularity for the O-C approach, better performance for the Monolithic approach), so I'm looking for experience over opinion. EDIT: I should add that this application is a batch program. The only "recovery" necessary in most cases is to log the error, clean up gracefully, and quit. So this could be seen to be as much a question of log granularity as exception handling. In my mind's eye I can imagine good reasons for both, so I'm looking for some general advice to help me find an appropriate balance. Monolitich Approach class Program{ public static void Main(){ try{ Step1(); Step2(); Step3(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); } finally { CleanUp(); } } public static void Step1(){ ExternalApp.Dangerous1(); ExternalApp.Dangerous2(); } public static void Step2(){ ExternalApp.Dangerous3(); ExternalApp.Dangerous4(); } public static void Step3(){ ExternalApp.Dangerous5(); ExternalApp.Dangerous6(); } } Delegated Approach class Program{ public static void Main(){ try{ Step1(); Step2(); Step3(); } finally { CleanUp(); } } public static void Step1(){ try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous1(); ExternalApp.Dangerous2(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } } public static void Step2(){ try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous3(); ExternalApp.Dangerous4(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } } public static void Step3(){ try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous5(); ExternalApp.Dangerous6(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } } } Obsessive-Compulsive Approach class Program{ public static void Main(){ try{ Step1(); Step2(); Step3(); } finally { CleanUp(); } } public static void Step1(){ try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous1(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous2(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } } public static void Step2(){ try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous3(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous4(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } } public static void Step3(){ try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous5(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } try{ ExternalApp.Dangerous6(); } catch (Exception e) { Log(e); throw; } } } Other approaches welcomed and encouraged. Above are examples only.

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