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• Multitenant Design for SQL Azure: White Paper Available

  - by Herve Roggero

  Cloud computing is about scaling out all your application tiers, from web application to the database layer. In fact, the whole promise of Azure is to pay for just what you need. You need more IIS servers? No problemo... just spin another web server. You expect to double your storage needs for Azure Tables? No problemo; you are covered there too... just pay for your storage needs. But what about the database tier, SQL Azure? How do you add new databases easily, and transparently, so that your application simply uses more of SQL Azure if its needs to? Without changing a single line of code? And what if you need to scale back down? Welcome to the world of database scalability. There are many terms that describe database scalability, including data federation, multitenant designs, and even NoSQL depending on the technical solution you are implementing.  Because SQL Azure is a transactional database system, NoSQL is not really an option. However data federation and multitenant designs offer some very interesting scalability options that are worth considering. Data federation, a feature of SQL Azure that will be offered in the future, offers very interesting capabilities available natively on the SQL Azure platform. More to come in a few weeks... Multitenant designs on the other hand are design practices and technologies designed to help you reach flexible scalability options not available otherwise. The first incarnation of such a method was made available on CodePlex as an open source project (http://enzosqlshard.codeplex.com).  This project was an attempt to provide a sharding library for educational purposes.  All that sounds really cool... and really esoteric... almost a form of database "voodoo"... However after being on multiple Azure projects I am starting to see a real need. Customers want to be able to free themselves from the database tier, so that if they have 10 new customers tomorrow, all they need to do is add 2 more SQL Azure instances. It's that simple. How you achieve this, and suggested application design guidelines, are available in a white paper I just published.  The white paper offers two primary sections. The first section describes the business and technical problem at hand, and how to classify it according to specific design patterns. For example, I discuss compressed shards through schema separation. The second section offers a method for addressing the needs of a multitenant design using a new library, the big bother of the codeplex project mentioned previously (that I created earlier this year), complete with management interface and such. A Beta of this platform will be made available within weeks; as soon as the documentation will be ready.   I would like to ask you to drop me a quick email at [email protected] if you are going to download the white paper. It's not required, but it would help me get in touch with you for feedback.  You can download this white paper here:   http://www.bluesyntax.net/files/EnzoFramework.pdf . Thank you, and I am looking for feedback, thoughts and implementation opportunities.

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• What is Atomicity?

  - by James Jeffery

  I'm really struggling to find a concrete, easy to grasp, explanation of Atomicity. My understanding thus far is that to ensure an operation is atomic you wrap the critical code in a locker. But that's about as much as I actually understand. Definitions such as the one below make no sense to me at all. An operation during which a processor can simultaneously read a location and write it in the same bus operation. This prevents any other processor or I/O device from writing or reading memory until the operation is complete. Atomic implies indivisibility and irreducibility, so an atomic operation must be performed entirely or not performed at all. What does the last sentence mean? Is the term indivisibility relating to mathematics or something else? Sometimes the jargon with these topics confuse more than they teach.

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• Oracle Enterprise Data Quality - Geared Up and Ready for OpenWorld 2012

  - by Mala Narasimharajan

  10 days and counting till Oracle OpenWorld 2012 is upon us.  Enterprise data quality is key to every information integration and consolidation initiative. At this year's OpenWorld, hear how Oracle Enterprise Data Quality provides the critical piece to achieving trusted, reliable master data and increases the value of data integration initiatives. Here are the different ways you can learn and experience Enterprise Data Quality at OpenWorld:  Conference sessions: Oracle Enterprise Data Quality: Product Overview and Roadmap - Monday 10/1/12, 1:45-2:45 PM - Moscone West - 3006 Data Preparation and Ongoing Governance with the Oracle Enterprise Data Quality Platform - Wednesday 10/3/2012, 1:15-2:15 PM - Moscone West - 3000  Data Acquisition, Migration and Integration with the Oracle Enterprise Data Quality Platform - Thursday 10/4/2012, 12:45-1:45 PM - Moscone West - 3005  Hands on Labs: Introduction to Oracle Enterprise Data Quality Platform -  Monday 10/2/2012, 4:45-5:45 PM - Marriot Marquis - Salon 1/2 Demos:  Trusted Data with Oracle Enterprise Data Quality - Moscone South, Right - S-243 (note: proceed to Middleware Demo grounds) For a list of Master Data Management and Data Quality sessions and other events click here. 

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• How important is my job title?

  - by Relayer

  Hi all, I work on two internal, mission critical applications. Let's keep it simple and call them "Foo" and "Bar". Nobody outside of the company has ever heard of them - like I said, they're internal apps. Until now my jobtitle has just been "Software Developer". I've recently discovered that my jobtitle is being changed to "Foo and Bar Developer". I'm a little worried that, should I leave the company, I'll have trouble finding a new job because of my weird job title. My question is this: How important is my job title compared to everything else on my CV (or resume, if you're American)? Am I likely to be rejected by box-ticking HR people who don't realise that "Foo and Bar Developer" is the same as "Software Developer"? Thanks in advance.

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• 2011 The Year of Awesomesauce

  - by MOSSLover

  So I was talking to one of my friends, Cathy Dew, and I’m wondering how to start out this post.  What kind of title should I put?  Somehow we’re just randomly throwing things out and this title pops into my head the one you see above. I woke up today to the buzz of a text message.  I spent New Years laying around until 3 am watching Warehouse 13 Episodes and drinking champagne.  It was one of the best New Year’s I spent with my boyfriend and my cat.  I figured I would sleep in until Noon, but ended up waking up around 11:15 to that text message buzz.  I guess my DE, Rachel Appel, had texted me “Happy New Years”, because Rachel is that kind of person.  I immediately proceeded to check my email.  I noticed my live account had a hit.  The account I rarely ever use had an email.  I sort of had that sinking suspicion I was going to get Silverlight MVP right?  So I open the email and something out of the blue happens it says “blah blah blah SharePoint Server MVP blah blah…”.  I’m sitting here a little confused what?  Really?  Just about when you give up on something the unexplained happens.  I am grateful for what I have every day. So let me tell you a story.  I was a senior in high school and it was December 31st, 1999.  A couple days prior my grandmother was complaining she had a cold and her assisted living facility was not going to let her see a doctor.  She claimed to be very sick.  New Year’s Eve Day 1999 my grandmother was rushed to the hospital sometime very early in the morning.  My uncle, my little brother, and myself were sitting in the waiting room eagerly awaiting news.  The Sydney Opera House was playing in the background as New Years 2000 for Australia was ringing in.  They come out and they tell us my grandmother has pneumonia.  She is in the ICU in critical condition.  Eventually time passes in the day and my parents take my brother and I home.  So in the car we had a huge fight that ended in the worst new years of my life.  The next 30 days were the worst 30 days of my life.  I went to the hospital every single day to do my homework and watch my grandmother.  Each day was a challenge mentally and physically as my grandmother berated me in her demented state.  On the 30th day my grandmother ended up in critical condition in the ICU maxed out on painkillers.  At approximately 3 am I hear my parents telling me they don’t want to wake me up and that my grandmother had passed away.  I must have cried more collectively that day than any other day in my life.  Every New Years Even since I have cried thinking about who she was and what she represented.  She was human looking back she wasn’t anything great, but she was one of the positive lights in my life.  Her and my dad and my other grandmother constantly tried to make me feel great when my mother was telling me the opposite.  I’d like to think since 2000 the past 11 years have been the best 11 years of my life.  I got out of a bad situation by using the tools that I had in front of me.  Good grades and getting into a college so I could aspire to be the person that I wanted to be.  I had some great people along the way to help me out. So getting to the point I like to help people further there lives somehow in the best way I can possibly help out.  This New Years was one of the great years that helped me forget the past and focus on the present.  It makes me realize how far I’ve come since high school and even since college.  The one thing I’ve been grappling with over the years is how do you feel good about making money while helping others out.  I’d to think I try really hard to give back to my community.  I could not have done what I did without other people’s help.  I sent out an email prior to even announcing I got the award today.  I can’t say I did everything on my own.  It’s not possible.  I had the help of others every step of the way.  I’m not sure if this makes sense but the award can’t just be mine.  This award is really owned by each and everyone who helped me get here.  From my dad to my grandmother to Rachel Appel to Bob Hunt to Jason Gallicchio to Cathy Dew to Mark Rackley to Johnny Ennion to Lee Brandt to Jeff Julian to John Alexander to Lori Gowin and to many others.  Thank you guys for all the help and support. Technorati Tags: SharePoint Community,MVP Award,Microsoft Community

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• The Calmest IT Guy in the World

  - by Markus Weber

  Unplanned outages and downtime still result not only in major productivity losses, but also major financial losses. Along the same lines, if zero planned downtime and zero data loss are key to your IT environment and your business requirements, planning for those becomes very important, all while balancing between performance, high availability, and cost. Oracle Database High Availability technologies will help you achieve these mission-critical goals, and are reflected in Oracle's best practices offerings of the Maximum Availability Architecture, or MAA. We created three neat, short videos showcasing some typical use cases, and highlighting three important components (amongst many more) of MAA: Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) Oracle Active Data Guard Oracle Flashback Technologies Make sure to watch those videos here, and learn about challenges, and solutions, around High Availability database environments from a recent Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG) survey. 

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• gtk glade need help

  - by shiv garg

  I am using glade to make an user interface. i have successfully generated the glade file Now i have to include this file in my C code. I am using following code: #include <stdlib.h> #include<gtk/gtk.h> int main (int argc, char *argv[]) { GtkWidget *builder,*window,*button; gtk_init (&argc, &argv); builder=gtk_builder_new(); gtk_builder_add_from_file(builder,"shiv.glade",NULL); window=GTK_WIDGET (gtk_builder_get_object(builder,"window1")) ; button=GTK_WIDGET (gtk_builder_get_object(builder,"button1")); g_object_unref(G_OBJECT(builder)); gtk_widget_show(button); gtk_widget_show(window); gtk_main (); return 0; } My UI is a simple window having a button without any callback function. I am getting following errors on execution GTK-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_widget_show assertion 'GTK_IS_WIDGET(widget)' failed

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• Changes to File Store Provider in UCM PS3

  - by Kevin Smith

  In the recent PS3 release of UCM (11.1.1.4.0) there are some significant changes to the File Store Provider (FSP) configuration. For new PS3 installs (not upgrades from PS2) the FSP default storage rule includes a dispersion rule that will change the web-layout and vault paths by adding dispersion directories to the paths to limit the number of files in the vault and web-layout directories. What that means is that if you install a new PS3 UCM instance and migrate content in from a previous version of UCM the web URL will change. That is a critical problem for web sites and just general document management. See below for some details on the FSP configuration in PS3 and how you can change the default behavior. use the link below to read the rest of this post where I describe the issue in detaill and provide instructions for how to modify a PS3 instance to use the old format for the web-layout path.

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• Customer Engagement: Are Your Customers Engaged With Your Brands?

  - by Michael Snow

  Engaging Customers is Critical for Business Growth This week we'll be spending some time looking at Customer Engagement. We all have stories about how we try to engage our customers better than ever before.  We all know that successfully engaging customers is critical to an organization’s business success. We also know that engaging our customers is more challenging today than ever before. There is so much noise to compete with for getting anyone's attention. Over the last decade and a half we’ve watched as the online channel became a primary one for conducting our business and even managing our lives. And during this whole process or evolution, the customer journey has grown increasingly complex. Customers themselves have assumed increasing power and influence over the purchase process and for setting the tone and pace of the relationships they have with brands and you see the evidence of this in the really high expectations that customers have today. They expect brand experiences that are personalized and relevant -- In other words they want experiences that demonstrate that the brand understands their interests, preferences and past interactions with them. They also expect their experience with a brand and the community surrounding it to be social and interactive – it’s no longer acceptable to have a static, one-way dialogue with your customer base or to fail to connect your customers with fellow customers, or with your employees and partners. And on top of all this, customers expect us to deliver this rich and engaging, personalized and interactive experience, in a consistent way across a variety of channels including web, mobile and social channels or even offline venues such as in-store or via a call center. And as a result, we see that delivery on these expectations and successfully engaging your customers is a great challenge today. Customers expect a personal, engaging and consistent online customer experience. Today’s consumer expects to engage with your brand and the community surrounding it in an interactive and social way. Customers have come to expect a lot for the online customer experience.  ·        They expect it to be personal: o   Accessible:  - Regardless of my device  Via my existing online identities  o   Relevant:  Content that interests me  o   Customized:  To be able to tailor my online experience  ·        They expect it to be engaging: o   Social:  So I can share content with my social networks  o   Intuitive:  To easily find what I need   o   Interactive:  So I can interact with online communities And they expect it to be consistent across the online experience – so you better have your brand and information ducks in a row. These expectations are not only limited to your customers by any means. Your employees (and partners) are also expecting to be empowered with engagement tools across their internal and external communications and interactions with customers, partners and other employees. We had a great conversation with Ted Schadler from Forrester Research entitled: "Mobile is the New Face of Engagement" that is now available On-Demand. Take a look at all the webcasts available to watch from our Social Business Thought Leader Series. Social capabilities have become so pervasive and changed customers’ expectations for their online experiences. The days of one-direction communication with customers are at an end. Today’s customers expect to engage in a dialogue with your brand and the community surrounding it in an interactive and social way. You have at a very short window of opportunity to engage a customer before they go to another site in their pursuit of information, product, or services. In fact, customers who engage with brands via social media tend to spend more that customers who don’t, between 20% and 40% more.  And your customers are also increasingly influenced by their social networks too – 40% of consumers say they factor in Facebook recommendations when making purchasing decisions.  This means a few different things for today’s businesses. Incorporating forms of social interaction such as commenting or reviews as well as tightly integrating your online experience with your customers’ social networking experiences into the online customer experience are crucial for maintaining the eyeballs on your desired pages. --- Notes/Sources: 93% - Cone Finds that Americans Expect Companies to Have a Presence in Social Media - http://www.coneinc.com/content1182 40% of consumers factor in Facebook recommendations when making decisions about purchasing (Increasing Campaign Effectiveness with Social Media, Syncapse, March 2011) 20%-40% - Customers who engage with a company via social media spend this percentage more with that company than other customers (Source: Bain & Company Report – Putting Social Media to Work)

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• SAP Applications Run Better on Oracle Exadata

  - by jgelhaus

  To yield the results necessary to stay competitive, your business-critical applications must be able to access the most reliable and up-to-date information. That’s why a growing number of SAP application customers are turning to Oracle Exadata Database Machine for better performance, better productivity—and big savings. Watch our latest Webcast to find out why Oracle Exadata is the ideal platform for running your SAP applications. You’ll learn how you can: Increase the performance of SAP applications Enhance reliability with a centralized, scalable platform Ensure quick, safe, and easy deployments Watch it now. Highlights include customer case studies and practical deployment strategies. Watch our latest on-demand Webcast to find out why Oracle Exadata is the ideal platform for running your SAP applications. Learn how to increase the performance of SAP applications, enhance reliability with a centralized, scalable platform and ensure quick, safe and easy deployments.

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• Handling packet impersonating in client-server model online game

  - by TheDespite

  I am designing a server-client model game library/engine. How do I, and should I even bother to handle frequent update packet possible impersonating? In my current design anyone could copy a packet from someone else and modify it to execute any non-critical action for another client. I am currently compressing all datagrams so that adds just a tad of security. Edit: One way I thought about was to send a unique "key" to the verified client every x_time and then the client has to add that to all of it's update packets until a new key is sent. Edit2: I should have mentioned that I am not concerned about whether the actions described in the packet are available to the client at the time, this is all checked by the server which I thought was obvious. I am only concerned about someone sending packets for another client.

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• Computer Networks UNISA - Chap 14 &ndash; Insuring Integrity &amp; Availability

  - by MarkPearl

  After reading this section you should be able to Identify the characteristics of a network that keep data safe from loss or damage Protect an enterprise-wide network from viruses Explain network and system level fault tolerance techniques Discuss issues related to network backup and recovery strategies Describe the components of a useful disaster recovery plan and the options for disaster contingencies What are integrity and availability? Integrity – the soundness of a networks programs, data, services, devices, and connections Availability – How consistently and reliably a file or system can be accessed by authorized personnel A number of phenomena can compromise both integrity and availability including… security breaches natural disasters malicious intruders power flaws human error users etc Although you cannot predict every type of vulnerability, you can take measures to guard against the most damaging events. The following are some guidelines… Allow only network administrators to create or modify NOS and application system users. Monitor the network for unauthorized access or changes Record authorized system changes in a change management system’ Install redundant components Perform regular health checks on the network Check system performance, error logs, and the system log book regularly Keep backups Implement and enforce security and disaster recovery policies These are just some of the basics… Malware Malware refers to any program or piece of code designed to intrude upon or harm a system or its resources. Types of Malware… Boot sector viruses Macro viruses File infector viruses Worms Trojan Horse Network Viruses Bots Malware characteristics Some common characteristics of Malware include… Encryption Stealth Polymorphism Time dependence Malware Protection There are various tools available to protect you from malware called anti-malware software. These monitor your system for indications that a program is performing potential malware operations. A number of techniques are used to detect malware including… Signature Scanning Integrity Checking Monitoring unexpected file changes or virus like behaviours It is important to decide where anti-malware tools will be installed and find a balance between performance and protection. There are several general purpose malware policies that can be implemented to protect your network including… Every compute in an organization should be equipped with malware detection and cleaning software that regularly runs Users should not be allowed to alter or disable the anti-malware software Users should know what to do in case the anti-malware program detects a malware virus Users should be prohibited from installing any unauthorized software on their systems System wide alerts should be issued to network users notifying them if a serious malware virus has been detected. Fault Tolerance Besides guarding against malware, another key factor in maintaining the availability and integrity of data is fault tolerance. Fault tolerance is the ability for a system to continue performing despite an unexpected hardware or software malfunction. Fault tolerance can be realized in varying degrees, the optimal level of fault tolerance for a system depends on how critical its services and files are to productivity. Generally the more fault tolerant the system, the more expensive it is. The following describe some of the areas that need to be considered for fault tolerance. Environment (Temperature and humidity) Power Topology and Connectivity Servers Storage Power Typical power flaws include Surges – a brief increase in voltage due to lightening strikes, solar flares or some idiot at City Power Noise – Fluctuation in voltage levels caused by other devices on the network or electromagnetic interference Brownout – A sag in voltage for just a moment Blackout – A complete power loss The are various alternate power sources to consider including UPS’s and Generators. UPS’s are found in two categories… Standby UPS – provides continuous power when mains goes down (brief period of switching over) Online UPS – is online all the time and the device receives power from the UPS all the time (the UPS is charged continuously) Servers There are various techniques for fault tolerance with servers. Server mirroring is an option where one device or component duplicates the activities of another. It is generally an expensive process. Clustering is a fault tolerance technique that links multiple servers together to appear as a single server. They share processing and storage responsibilities and if one unit in the cluster goes down, another unit can be brought in to replace it. Storage There are various techniques available including the following… RAID Arrays NAS (Storage (Network Attached Storage) SANs (Storage Area Networks) Data Backup A backup is a copy of data or program files created for archiving or safekeeping. Many different options for backups exist with various media including… These vary in cost and speed. Optical Media Tape Backup External Disk Drives Network Backups Backup Strategy After selecting the appropriate tool for performing your servers backup, devise a backup strategy to guide you through performing reliable backups that provide maximum data protection. Questions that should be answered include… What data must be backed up At what time of day or night will the backups occur How will you verify the accuracy of the backups Where and for how long will backup media be stored Who will take responsibility for ensuring that backups occurred How long will you save backups Where will backup and recovery documentation be stored Different backup methods provide varying levels of certainty and corresponding labour cost. There are also different ways to determine which files should be backed up including… Full backup – all data on all servers is copied to storage media Incremental backup – Only data that has changed since the last full or incremental backup is copied to a storage medium Differential backup – Only data that has changed since the last backup is coped to a storage medium Disaster Recovery Disaster recovery is the process of restoring your critical functionality and data after an enterprise wide outage has occurred. A disaster recovery plan is for extreme scenarios (i.e. fire, line fault, etc). A cold site is a place were the computers, devices, and connectivity necessary to rebuild a network exist but they are not appropriately configured. A warm site is a place where the computers, devices, and connectivity necessary to rebuild a network exists with some appropriately configured devices. A hot site is a place where the computers, devices, and connectivity necessary to rebuild a network exists and all are appropriately configured.

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• Part 1 - Load Testing In The Cloud

  - by Tarun Arora

  Azure is fascinating, but even more fascinating is the marriage of Azure and TFS! Introduction Recently a client I worked for had 2 major business critical applications being delivered, with very little time budgeted for Performance testing, we immediately hit a bottleneck when the performance testing phase started, the in house infrastructure team could not support the hardware requirements in the short notice. It was suggested that the performance testing be performed on one of the QA environments which was a fraction of the production environment. This didn’t seem right, the team decided to turn to the cloud. The team took advantage of the elasticity offered by Azure, starting with a single test agent which was provisioned and ready for use with in 30 minutes the team scaled up to 17 test agents to perform a very comprehensive performance testing cycle. Issues were identified and resolved but the highlight was that the cost of running the ‘test rig’ proved to be less than if hosted on premise by the infrastructure team. Thank you for taking the time out to read this blog post, in the series of posts, I’ll try and cover the start to end of everything you need to know to use Azure to build your Test Rig in the cloud. But Why Azure? I have my own Data Centre… If the environment is provisioned in your own datacentre, - No matter what level of service agreement you may have with your infrastructure team there will be down time when the environment is patched - How fast can you scale up or down the environments (keeping the enterprise processes in mind) Administration, Cost, Flexibility and Scalability are the areas you would want to think around when taking the decision between your own Data Centre and Azure! How is Microsoft's Public Cloud Offering different from Amazon’s Public Cloud Offering? Microsoft's offering of the Cloud is a hybrid of Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) which distinguishes Microsoft's offering from other providers such as Amazon (Amazon only offers IaaS). PaaS – Platform as a Service IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service Fills the needs of those who want to build and run custom applications as services. Similar to traditional hosting, where a business will use the hosted environment as a logical extension of the on-premises datacentre. A service provider offers a pre-configured, virtualized application server environment to which applications can be deployed by the development staff. Since the service providers manage the hardware (patching, upgrades and so forth), as well as application server uptime, the involvement of IT pros is minimized. On-demand scalability combined with hardware and application server management relieves developers from infrastructure concerns and allows them to focus on building applications. The servers (physical and virtual) are rented on an as-needed basis, and the IT professionals who manage the infrastructure have full control of the software configuration. This kind of flexibility increases the complexity of the IT environment, as customer IT professionals need to maintain the servers as though they are on-premises. The maintenance activities may include patching and upgrades of the OS and the application server, load balancing, failover clustering of database servers, backup and restoration, and any other activities that mitigate the risks of hardware and software failures.   The biggest advantage with PaaS is that you do not have to worry about maintaining the environment, you can focus all your time in solving the business problems with your solution rather than worrying about maintaining the environment. If you decide to use a VM Role on Azure, you are asking for IaaS, more on this later. A nice blog post here on the difference between Saas, PaaS and IaaS. Now that we are convinced why we should be turning to the cloud and why in specific Azure, let’s discuss about the Test Rig. The Load Test Rig – Topology Now the moment of truth, Of course a big part of getting value from cloud computing is identifying the most adequate workloads to take to the cloud, so I’ve decided to try to make a Load Testing rig where the Agents are running on Windows Azure.   I’ll talk you through the above Topology, - User: User kick starts the load test run from the developer workstation on premise. This passes the request to the Test Controller. - Test Controller: The Test Controller is on premise connected to the same domain as the developer workstation. As soon as the Test Controller receives the request it makes use of the Windows Azure Connect service to orchestrate the test responsibilities to all the Test Agents. The Windows Azure Connect endpoint software must be active on all Azure instances and on the Controller machine as well. This allows IP connectivity between them and, given that the firewall is properly configured, allows the Controller to send work loads to the agents. In parallel, the Controller will collect the performance data from the agents, using the traditional WMI mechanisms. - Test Agents: The Test Agents are on the Windows Azure Public Cloud, as soon as the test controller issues instructions to the test agents, the test agents start executing the load tests. The HTTP requests are issued against the web server on premise, the results are captured by the test agents. And finally the results are passed over to the controller. - Servers: The Web Server and DB Server are hosted on premise in the datacentre, this is usually the case with business critical applications, you probably want to manage them your self. Recap and What’s next? So, in the introduction in the series of blog posts on Load Testing in the cloud I highlighted why creating a test rig in the cloud is a good idea, what advantages does Windows Azure offer and the Test Rig topology that I will be using. I would also like to mention that i stumbled upon this [Video] on Azure in a nutshell, great watch if you are new to Windows Azure. In the next post I intend to start setting up the Load Test Environment and discuss pricing with respect to test agent machine types that will be used in the test rig. Hope you enjoyed this post, If you have any recommendations on things that I should consider or any questions or feedback, feel free to add to this blog post. Remember to subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TarunArora.  See you in Part II.   Share this post : CodeProject

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• .NET Security Part 4

  - by Simon Cooper

  Finally, in this series, I am going to cover some of the security issues that can trip you up when using sandboxed appdomains. DISCLAIMER: I am not a security expert, and this is by no means an exhaustive list. If you actually are writing security-critical code, then get a proper security audit of your code by a professional. The examples below are just illustrations of the sort of things that can go wrong. 1. AppDomainSetup.ApplicationBase The most obvious one is the issue covered in the MSDN documentation on creating a sandbox, in step 3 – the sandboxed appdomain has the same ApplicationBase as the controlling appdomain. So let’s explore what happens when they are the same, and an exception is thrown. In the sandboxed assembly, Sandboxed.dll (IPlugin is an interface in a partially-trusted assembly, with a single MethodToDoThings on it): public class UntrustedPlugin : MarshalByRefObject, IPlugin { // implements IPlugin.MethodToDoThings() public void MethodToDoThings() { throw new EvilException(); } } [Serializable] internal class EvilException : Exception { public override string ToString() { // show we have read access to C:\Windows // read the first 5 directories Console.WriteLine("Pwned! Mwuahahah!"); foreach (var d in Directory.EnumerateDirectories(@"C:\Windows").Take(5)) { Console.WriteLine(d.FullName); } return base.ToString(); } } And in the controlling assembly: // what can possibly go wrong? AppDomainSetup appDomainSetup = new AppDomainSetup { ApplicationBase = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.SetupInformation.ApplicationBase } // only grant permissions to execute // and to read the application base, nothing else PermissionSet restrictedPerms = new PermissionSet(PermissionState.None); restrictedPerms.AddPermission( new SecurityPermission(SecurityPermissionFlag.Execution)); restrictedPerms.AddPermission( new FileIOPermission(FileIOPermissionAccess.Read, appDomainSetup.ApplicationBase); restrictedPerms.AddPermission( new FileIOPermission(FileIOPermissionAccess.pathDiscovery, appDomainSetup.ApplicationBase); // create the sandbox AppDomain sandbox = AppDomain.CreateDomain("Sandbox", null, appDomainSetup, restrictedPerms); // execute UntrustedPlugin in the sandbox // don't crash the application if the sandbox throws an exception IPlugin o = (IPlugin)sandbox.CreateInstanceFromAndUnwrap("Sandboxed.dll", "UntrustedPlugin"); try { o.MethodToDoThings() } catch (Exception e) { Console.WriteLine(e.ToString()); } And the result? Oops. We’ve allowed a class that should be sandboxed to execute code with fully-trusted permissions! How did this happen? Well, the key is the exact meaning of the ApplicationBase property: The application base directory is where the assembly manager begins probing for assemblies. When EvilException is thrown, it propagates from the sandboxed appdomain into the controlling assembly’s appdomain (as it’s marked as Serializable). When the exception is deserialized, the CLR finds and loads the sandboxed dll into the fully-trusted appdomain. Since the controlling appdomain’s ApplicationBase directory contains the sandboxed assembly, the CLR finds and loads the assembly into a full-trust appdomain, and the evil code is executed. So the problem isn’t exactly that the sandboxed appdomain’s ApplicationBase is the same as the controlling appdomain’s, it’s that the sandboxed dll was in such a place that the controlling appdomain could find it as part of the standard assembly resolution mechanism. The sandbox then forced the assembly to load in the controlling appdomain by throwing a serializable exception that propagated outside the sandbox. The easiest fix for this is to keep the sandbox ApplicationBase well away from the ApplicationBase of the controlling appdomain, and don’t allow the sandbox permissions to access the controlling appdomain’s ApplicationBase directory. If you do this, then the sandboxed assembly can’t be accidentally loaded into the fully-trusted appdomain, and the code can’t be executed. If the plugin does try to induce the controlling appdomain to load an assembly it shouldn’t, a SerializationException will be thrown when it tries to load the assembly to deserialize the exception, and no damage will be done. 2. Loading the sandboxed dll into the application appdomain As an extension of the previous point, you shouldn’t directly reference types or methods in the sandboxed dll from your application code. That loads the assembly into the fully-trusted appdomain, and from there code in the assembly could be executed. Instead, pull out methods you want the sandboxed dll to have into an interface or class in a partially-trusted assembly you control, and execute methods via that instead (similar to the example above with the IPlugin interface). If you need to have a look at the assembly before executing it in the sandbox, either examine the assembly using reflection from within the sandbox, or load the assembly into the Reflection-only context in the application’s appdomain. The code in assemblies in the reflection-only context can’t be executed, it can only be reflected upon, thus protecting your appdomain from malicious code. 3. Incorrectly asserting permissions You should only assert permissions when you are absolutely sure they’re safe. For example, this method allows a caller read-access to any file they call this method with, including your documents, any network shares, the C:\Windows directory, etc: [SecuritySafeCritical] public static string GetFileText(string filePath) { new FileIOPermission(FileIOPermissionAccess.Read, filePath).Assert(); return File.ReadAllText(filePath); } Be careful when asserting permissions, and ensure you’re not providing a loophole sandboxed dlls can use to gain access to things they shouldn’t be able to. Conclusion Hopefully, that’s given you an idea of some of the ways it’s possible to get past the .NET security system. As I said before, this post is not exhaustive, and you certainly shouldn’t base any security-critical applications on the contents of this blog post. What this series should help with is understanding the possibilities of the security system, and what all the security attributes and classes mean and what they are used for, if you were to use the security system in the future.

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• Extended Support pro E-Business Suite 11.5.10

  - by Jiri Hromadka

  Období Premier Support pro produkty E-Business Suite verze 11.5.10 skoncilo v listopadu 2010. Na základe cetných žádostí zákazníku a analýzy trhu se Oracle rozhodl poskytovat zákazníkum Extended Support v prvním roce bez dodatecných poplatku. To pravdepodobne všichni zákazníci EBS vedí. Toto období koncí 30.11.2011. Zákaznící, kterí budou chtít Extended Support i nadále využívat si jej budou muset od 1.12.2011 tedy zakoupit. V opacném prípade automaticky precházejí na uroven podpory Sustaining Support. Pro plné využití úrovne služby Extended Support je treba splnovat stanovenou minimální úroven opatchování - tzv. "minimum baseline patch requirements" Prímo v E-Business Suite je nástroj, který tuto úroven automaticky zkontroluje. Více informací o této problematice nalezenete v dokumentu Critical E-Business Suite11i (11.5.10) Extended Support Information on Minimum Baseline Patch Requirements (Doc ID 1116887.1) Vice informací o podrobnostech poskytování technické podpory naleznete v sekci Lifetime Support na stránkách oracle.com for further information regarding Oracle's Lifetime Support Policy

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• How can I test different TV display types for my XBLIG game?

  - by Steve Dunn

  The XBLIG submission check-list says to ensure that all important stuff critical to game-play be visible in the 'TitleSafeArea'. I've received a bug report during play-test of my game (Crazy Balloon Lite) that says parts of my scrolling 2D map are only half visible (i.e. chopped at the left of the screen). I've tested my game myself on a 47" TV and also a 19" VGA monitor, both of which look fine. The bug report says the issue occurs on a standard 20" TV. My question is: without buying different sizes of TVs, is there a way to test what my game will look like on different sized displays?

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• In Social Relationship Management, the Spirit is Willing, but Execution is Weak

  - by Mike Stiles

  In our final talk in this series with Aberdeen’s Trip Kucera, we wanted to find out if enterprise organizations are actually doing anything about what they’re learning around the importance of communicating via social and using social listening for a deeper understanding of customers and prospects. We found out that if your brand is lagging behind, you’re not alone. Spotlight: How was Aberdeen able to find out if companies are putting their money where their mouth is when it comes to implementing social across the enterprise? Trip: One way to think about the relative challenges a business has in a given area is to look at the gap between “say” and “do.” The first of those words reveals the brand’s priorities, while the second reveals their ability to execute on those priorities. In Aberdeen’s research, we capture this by asking firms to rank the value of a set of activities from one on the low end to five on the high end. We then ask them to rank their ability to execute those same activities, again on a one to five, not effective to highly effective scale. Spotlight: And once you get their self-assessments, what is it you’re looking for? Trip: There are two things we’re looking for in this analysis. The first is we want to be able to identify the widest gaps between perception of value and execution. This suggests impediments to adoption or simply a high level of challenge, be it technical or otherwise. It may also suggest areas where we can expect future investment and innovation. Spotlight: So the biggest potential pain points surface, places where they know something is critical but also know they aren’t doing much about it. What’s the second thing you look for? Trip: The second thing we want to do is look at specific areas in which high-performing companies, the Leaders, are out-executing the Followers. This points to the business impact of these activities since Leaders are defined by a set of business performance metrics. Put another way, we’re correlating adoption of specific business competencies with performance, looking for what high-performers do differently. Spotlight: Ah ha, that tells us what steps the winners are taking that are making them winners. So what did you find out? Trip: Generally speaking, we see something of a glass curtain when it comes to the social relationship management execution gap. There isn’t a single social media activity in which more than 50% of respondents indicated effectiveness, which would be a 4 or 5 on that 1-5 scale. This despite the fact that 70% of firms indicate that generating positive social media mentions is valuable or very valuable, a 4 or 5 on our 1-5 scale. Spotlight: Well at least they get points for being honest. The verdict they’re giving themselves is that they just aren’t cutting it in these highly critical social development areas. Trip: And the widest gap is around directly engaging with customers and/or prospects on social networks, which 69% of firms rated as valuable but only 34% of companies say they are executing well. Perhaps even more interesting is that these two are interdependent since you’re most likely to generate goodwill on social through happy, engaged customers. This data also suggests that social is largely being used as a broadcast channel rather than for one-to-one engagement. As we’ve discussed previously, social is an inherently personal media. Spotlight: And if they’re still using it as a broadcast channel, that shows they still fail to understand the root of social and see it as just another outlet for their ads and push-messaging. That’s depressing. Trip: A second way to evaluate this data is by using Aberdeen’s performance benchmarking. The story is both a bit different, but consistent in its own way. The first thing we notice is that Leaders are more effective in their execution of several key social relationship management capabilities, namely generating positive mentions and engaging with “influencers” and customers. Based on the fact that Aberdeen uses a broad set of performance metrics to rank the respondents as either “Leaders” (top 35% in weighted performance) or “Followers” (bottom 65% in weighted performance), from website conversion to annual revenue growth, we can then correlated high social effectiveness with company performance. We can also connect the specific social capabilities used by Leaders with effectiveness. We spoke about a few of those key capabilities last time and also discuss them in a new report: Social Powers Activate: Engineering Social Engagement to Win the Hidden Sales Cycle. Spotlight: What all that tells me is there are rewards for making the effort and getting it right. That’s how you become a Leader. Trip: But there’s another part of the story, which is that overall effectiveness, even among Leaders, is muted. There’s just one activity in which more than a majority of Leaders cite high effectiveness, effectiveness being the generation of positive buzz. While 80% of Leaders indicate “directly engaging with customers” through social media channels is valuable, the highest rated activity among Leaders, only 42% say they’re effective. This gap even among Leaders shows the challenges still involved in effective social relationship management. @mikestilesPhoto: stock.xchng

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• XNA RenderTarget2D Sample

  - by Michael B. McLaughlin

  I remember being scared of render targets when I first started with XNA. They seemed like weird magic and I didn’t understand them at all. There’s nothing to be frightened of, though, and they are pretty easy to learn how to use. The first thing you need to know is that when you’re drawing in XNA, you aren’t actually drawing to the screen. Instead you’re drawing to this thing called the “back buffer”. Internally, XNA maintains two sections of graphics memory. Each one is exactly the same size as the other and has all the same properties (such as surface format, whether there’s a depth buffer and/or a stencil buffer, and so on). XNA flips between these two sections of memory every update-draw cycle. So while you are drawing to one, it’s busy drawing the other one on the screen. Then the current update-draw cycle ends, it flips, and the section you were just drawing to gets drawn to the screen while the one that was being drawn to the screen before is now the one you’ll be drawing on. This is what’s meant by “double buffering”. If you drew directly to the screen, the player would see all of those draws taking place as they happened and that would look odd and not very good at all. Those two sections of graphics memory are render targets. All a render target is, is a section of graphics memory to which things can be drawn. In addition to the two that XNA maintains automatically, you can also create and set your own using RenderTarget2D and GraphicsDevice.SetRenderTarget. Using render targets lets you do all sorts of neat post-processing effects (like bloom) to make your game look cooler. It also just lets you do things like motion blur and lets you create mirrors in 3D games. There are quite a lot of things that render targets let you do. To go along with this post, I wrote up a simple sample for how to create and use a RenderTarget2D. It’s available under the terms of the Microsoft Public License and is available for download on my website here: http://www.bobtacoindustries.com/developers/utils/RenderTarget2DSample.zip . Other than the ‘using’ statements, every line is commented in detail so that it should (hopefully) be easy to follow along with and understand. If you have any questions, leave a comment here or drop me a line on Twitter. One last note. While creating the sample I came across an interesting quirk. If you start by creating a Windows Game, and then make a copy for Windows Phone 7, the drop-down that lets you choose between drawing to a WP7 device and the WP7 emulator stays grayed-out. To resolve this, you need to right click on the Windows Phone 7 version in the Solution Explorer, and choose “Set as StartUp Project”. The bar will then become active, letting you change the target you which to deploy to. If you want another version to be the one that starts up when you press F5 to start debugging, just go and right-click on that version and choose “Set as StartUp Project” for it once you’ve set the WP7 target (device or emulator) that you want.

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• OTN Virtual Developer Day: WebLogic and Coherence

  - by Tori Wieldt

  Who: Java Developers What: This OTN Virtual Developer Day will guide you through tooling and best practices around developing applications with WebLogic and Coherence. You'll also explore ways to improve your your build, deploy, and ongoing management processes in your application's life cycle. When: Tuesday, November 5, 9am to 1pm PDT / 12pm to 4pm EDT / 1pm to 5pm BRT Where: Your Desk Why: Many Java developers utilize open source and/or free tooling to develop their projects, but ultimately deploy production applications to commercial, mission-critical application servers. There are sessions utilizing common developer tools such as Eclipse, Maven, Chef, and Puppet to create, deploy and manage applications with WebLogic Server and Coherence as target platforms. Don't miss the session Exploring ADF 12C and Java EE Development in Eclipse. Register now, it's free!  

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• Eliminating Downtime During Database Upgrades: A Customer Case Study

  - by irem.radzik(at)oracle.com

  Planned outages, such as database, OS, hardware upgrades and migrations, are a fact of life. Even though they are "planned" and many of them are performed during "off business hours", they can still interrupt operations-- especially for global operations and online businesses. For this reason many IT organizations postpone these critical infrastructure improvement projects, which in turn result in delays in advancing business operations. This week, on Thursday January 13th, we will host a free webcast on this topic, and will feature Oracle GoldenGate's customer Atmos Energy. Atmos Energy implemented Oracle GoldenGate for eliminating downtime during their database upgrade from Oracle Database 8.1.7 to Oracle Database 11.1.0.7. Jos Francis, Lead DBA for Atmos, and Ronald Nedd, Sr. DBA for Atmos, will be presenting their database upgrade project and their solution architecture. Join us at this live webcast and hear from our customer and product management how to eliminate planned outages with Oracle GoldenGate's real-time, heterogeneous data replication capabilities.

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• Multiple vulnerabilities in Thunderbird

  - by RitwikGhoshal

  CVE DescriptionCVSSv2 Base ScoreComponentProduct and Resolution CVE-2012-1948 Denial of service (DoS) vulnerability 9.3 Thunderbird Solaris 10 SPARC: 145200-12 X86: 145201-12 CVE-2012-1950 Address spoofing vulnerability 6.4 CVE-2012-1951 Resource Management Errors vulnerability 10.0 CVE-2012-1952 Resource Management Errors vulnerability 9.3 CVE-2012-1953 Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer vulnerability 9.3 CVE-2012-1954 Resource Management Errors vulnerability 10.0 CVE-2012-1955 Address spoofing vulnerability 6.8 CVE-2012-1957 Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability 4.3 CVE-2012-1958 Resource Management Errors vulnerability 9.3 CVE-2012-1959 Permissions, Privileges, and Access Controls vulnerability 5.0 CVE-2012-1961 Improper Input Validation vulnerability 4.3 CVE-2012-1962 Resource Management Errors vulnerability 10.0 CVE-2012-1963 Permissions, Privileges, and Access Controls vulnerability 4.3 CVE-2012-1964 Clickjacking vulnerability 4.0 CVE-2012-1965 Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation ('Cross-site Scripting') vulnerability 4.3 CVE-2012-1966 Permissions, Privileges, and Access Controls vulnerability 4.3 CVE-2012-1967 Arbitrary code execution vulnerability 10.0 CVE-2012-1970 Denial of service (DoS) vulnerability 10.0 CVE-2012-1973 Resource Management Errors vulnerability 10.0 CVE-2012-3966 Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer vulnerability 10.0 This notification describes vulnerabilities fixed in third-party components that are included in Oracle's product distributions.Information about vulnerabilities affecting Oracle products can be found on Oracle Critical Patch Updates and Security Alerts page.

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• Origins of code indentation

  - by Daniel Mahler

  I am interested in finding out who introduced code indentation, as well as when and where it was introduced. It seems so critical to code comprehension, but it was not universal. Most Fortran and Basic code was (is?) unindented, and the same goes for Cobol. I am pretty sure I have even seen old Lisp code written as continuous, line-wrapped text. You had to count brackets in your head just to parse it, never mind understanding it. So where did such a huge improvement come from? I have never seen any mention of its origin. Apart from original examples of its use, I am also looking for original discussions of indentation.

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• ACER ASPIRE ONE, WIFI Atheros Communications Inc. AR9462 problem with 12.10

  - by antoine

  I have an ACER ASPIRE ONE AO756-Series, equipped with A wifi controller Atheros Communications Inc. AR9462 Everything worked fine on 12.04, but when I upgraded to 12.10 I experimented some issues : * wifi does work ! * still, the wifi icon/menu does not react normally : 1) it is always grey, hence not indicating if connected or not, 2) It does not react to me clicking on it (disconnect, change the network, desactive wifi, etc) So it's not a critical issue because I can change the active wifi connection through control pannel, but it is very annoying. Do you know of an solution around this issue ? thanks a lot antoine

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• Don&rsquo;t Miss &ldquo;Transform Field Service Delivery with Oracle Real-Time Scheduler&rdquo;

  - by ruth.donohue

  Field resources are an expensive element in the service equation. Maximizing the scheduling and routing of these resources is critical in reducing costs, increasing profitability, and improving the customer experience. Oracle Real-Time Scheduler creates cost-optimized plans and schedules for service technicians that increase operational efficiencies and improve margins. It enhances Oracle’s Siebel Field Service with real-time scheduling and dispatch capabilities that ensure service requests are allocated efficiently and service levels are honored. Join our live Webcast to learn how your organization can leverage Oracle Real-Time Scheduler to: Increase operational efficiency with real-time scheduling that enables field service technicians to handle more calls per day and reduce travel mileage Resolve issues faster with dynamic work flows that ensure you have the right technician with the right skill set for the right job Improve the customer experience with real-time planning that optimizes field technician routing, reduces customer wait times, and minimizes missed SLAs Date: Thursday, March 10, 2011 Time: 8:30 am PT / 11:30 am ET / 4:30 pm UK / 5:30 pm CET Click here to register now.   Technorati Tags: Siebel Field Service,Oracle Real-Time Scheduler

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• For what types of applications is Python a bad choice?

  - by Casey Patton

  I just started learning Python, and I'd like to get some more context on the language. I realize that Python is a slow language relative to C or C++, etc. Thus, Python is probably not the best choice for applications that need to run quickly. Outside of this, it seems like Python is a great general purpose language that is easy to read and write. The available libraries give it a huge amount of functionality. Outside of performance critical applications, where is it a bad choice to use Python (and why)?

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