Search Results

Search found 6682 results on 268 pages for 'edge cases'.

Page 107/268 | < Previous Page | 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114  | Next Page >

  • SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #048

    - by Pinal Dave
    Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 Order of Result Set of SELECT Statement on Clustered Indexed Table When ORDER BY is Not Used Above theory is true in most of the cases. However SQL Server does not use that logic when returning the resultset. SQL Server always returns the resultset which it can return fastest.In most of the cases the resultset which can be returned fastest is the resultset which is returned using clustered index. Effect of TRANSACTION on Local Variable – After ROLLBACK and After COMMIT One of the Jr. Developer asked me this question (What will be the Effect of TRANSACTION on Local Variable – After ROLLBACK and After COMMIT?) while I was rushing to an important meeting. I was getting late so I asked him to talk with his Application Tech Lead. When I came back from meeting both of them were looking for me. They said they are confused. I quickly wrote down following example for them. 2008 SQL SERVER – Guidelines and Coding Standards Complete List Download Coding standards and guidelines are very important for any developer on the path of a successful career. A coding standard is a set of guidelines, rules and regulations on how to write code. Coding standards should be flexible enough or should take care of the situation where they should not prevent best practices for coding. They are basically the guidelines that one should follow for better understanding. Download Guidelines and Coding Standards complete List Download Get Answer in Float When Dividing of Two Integer Many times we have requirements of some calculations amongst different fields in Tables. One of the software developers here was trying to calculate some fields having integer values and divide it which gave incorrect results in integer where accurate results including decimals was expected. Puzzle – Computed Columns Datatype Explanation SQL Server automatically does a cast to the data type having the highest precedence. So the result of INT and INT will be INT, but INT and FLOAT will be FLOAT because FLOAT has a higher precedence. If you want a different data type, you need to do an EXPLICIT cast. Renaming SP is Not Good Idea – Renaming Stored Procedure Does Not Update sys.procedures I have written many articles about renaming a tables, columns and procedures SQL SERVER – How to Rename a Column Name or Table Name, here I found something interesting about renaming the stored procedures and felt like sharing it with you all. The interesting fact is that when we rename a stored procedure using SP_Rename command, the Stored Procedure is successfully renamed. But when we try to test the procedure using sp_helptext, the procedure will be having the old name instead of new names. 2009 Insert Values of Stored Procedure in Table – Use Table Valued Function It is clear from the result set that , where I have converted stored procedure logic into the table valued function, is much better in terms of logic as it saves a large number of operations. However, this option should be used carefully. The performance of the stored procedure is “usually” better than that of functions. Interesting Observation – Index on Index View Used in Similar Query Recently, I was working on an optimization project for one of the largest organizations. While working on one of the queries, we came across a very interesting observation. We found that there was a query on the base table and when the query was run, it used the index, which did not exist in the base table. On careful examination, we found that the query was using the index that was on another view. This was very interesting as I have personally never experienced a scenario like this. In simple words, “Query on the base table can use the index created on the indexed view of the same base table.” Interesting Observation – Execution Plan and Results of Aggregate Concatenation Queries Working with SQL Server has never seemed to be monotonous – no matter how long one has worked with it. Quite often, I come across some excellent comments that I feel like acknowledging them as blog posts. Recently, I wrote an article on SQL SERVER – Execution Plan and Results of Aggregate Concatenation Queries Depend Upon Expression Location, which is well received in the community. 2010 I encourage all of you to go through complete series and write your own on the subject. If you write an article and send it to me, I will publish it on this blog with due credit to you. If you write on your own blog, I will update this blog post pointing to your blog post. SQL SERVER – ORDER BY Does Not Work – Limitation of the View 1 SQL SERVER – Adding Column is Expensive by Joining Table Outside View – Limitation of the View 2 SQL SERVER – Index Created on View not Used Often – Limitation of the View 3 SQL SERVER – SELECT * and Adding Column Issue in View – Limitation of the View 4 SQL SERVER – COUNT(*) Not Allowed but COUNT_BIG(*) Allowed – Limitation of the View 5 SQL SERVER – UNION Not Allowed but OR Allowed in Index View – Limitation of the View 6 SQL SERVER – Cross Database Queries Not Allowed in Indexed View – Limitation of the View 7 SQL SERVER – Outer Join Not Allowed in Indexed Views – Limitation of the View 8 SQL SERVER – SELF JOIN Not Allowed in Indexed View – Limitation of the View 9 SQL SERVER – Keywords View Definition Must Not Contain for Indexed View – Limitation of the View 10 SQL SERVER – View Over the View Not Possible with Index View – Limitations of the View 11 2011 Startup Parameters Easy to Configure If you are a regular reader of this blog, you must be aware that I have written about SQL Server Denali recently. Here is the quickest way to reach into the screen where we can change the startup parameters. Go to SQL Server Configuration Manager >> SQL Server Services >> Right Click on the Server >> Properties >> Startup Parameters 2012 Validating Unique Columnname Across Whole Database I sometimes come across very strange requirements and often I do not receive a proper explanation of the same. Here is the one of those examples. For example “Our business requirement is when we add new column we want it unique across current database.” Read the solution to this strange request in this blog post. Excel Losing Decimal Values When Value Pasted from SSMS ResultSet It is very common when users are coping the resultset to Excel, the floating point or decimals are missed. The solution is very much simple and it requires a small adjustment in the Excel. By default Excel is very smart and when it detects the value which is getting pasted is numeric it changes the column format to accommodate that. Basic Calculation and PEMDAS Order of Operation Read this interesting blog post for fantastic conversation about the subject. Copy Column Headers from Resultset – SQL in Sixty Seconds #027 – Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_-3tLqTRv0 Delete From Multiple Table – Update Multiple Table in Single Statement There are two questions which I get every single day multiple times. In my gmail, I have created standard canned reply for them. Let us see the questions here. I want to delete from multiple table in a single statement how will I do it? I want to update multiple table in a single statement how will I do it? Read the answer in the blog post. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

    Read the article

  • Windows Azure Myths

    - by BuckWoody
    Windows Azure is part of the Microsoft "stack" - the suite of software and services we offer. Because we have so many products in almost every part of technology, it's hard to know everything about all parts of what we do - even for those of us who work here. So it's no surprise that some folks are not as familiar with Windows and SQL Azure as they are, say Windows Server or XBox. As I chat with folks about a solution for a business or organization need, I put Windows Azure into the mix. I always start off with "What do you already know about Windows Azure?" so that I don't bore folks with information they already have. I some cases they've checked out the product ahead of time and have specific questions, in others they aren't as familiar, and in still others there is a fair amount of mis-information. Sometimes that's because of a marketing failure, sometimes it's hearsay, and somtetimes it's active misinformation. I thought I might lay out a few of these misconceptions. As always - do your fact-checking! Never take anyone's word alone (including mine) as gospel. Make sure you educate yourself on your options. Your company or your clients depend on you to have the right information on IT, so make sure you live up to that. Myth 1: Nobody uses Windows Azure It's true that we don't give out numbers on the amount of clients on Windows and SQL Azure. But lots of folks are here - companies you may have heard of like Boeing, NASA, Fujitsu, The City of London, Nuedesic, and many others. I deal with firms small and large that use Windows Azure for mission-critical applications, sometimes totally on Windows and/or SQL Azure, sometimes in conjunction with an on-premises system, sometimes for only a specific component in Windows Azure like storage. The interesting thing is that many sites you visit have a Windows Azure component, or are running on Windows Azure. They just don't announce it. Just like the other cloud providers, the companies have asked to be completely branded themselves - they don't want you to be aware or care that they are on Windows Azure. Sometimes that's for security, other times it's for different reasons. It's just like the web sites you visit. For the most part, they don't advertise which OS or Web Server they use. It really just shouldn't matter. The point is that they just use what works to solve a given problem. Check out a few public case studies here: https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/home/case-studies/ Myth 2: It's only for Microsoft stuff - can't use Open Source This is the one I face the most, and am the most dismayed by. We work just fine with many open source products, including Java, NodeJS, PHP, Ruby, Python, Hadoop, and many other languages and applications. You can quickly deploy a Wordpress, Umbraco and other "kits". We have software development kits (SDK's) for iPhones, iPads, Android, Windows phones and more. We have an SDK to work with FaceBook and other social networks. In short, we play well with others. More on the languages and runtimes we support here: https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/overview/ More on the SDK's here: http://www.wadewegner.com/2011/05/windows-azure-toolkit-for-ios/, http://www.wadewegner.com/2011/08/windows-azure-toolkits-for-devices-now-with-android/, http://azuretoolkit.codeplex.com/ Myth 3: Microsoft expects me to switch everything to "the cloud" No, we don't. That would be disasterous, unless the only things you run in your company uses works perfectly in Azure. Use Windows Azure  - or any cloud for that matter - where it works. Whenever I talk to companies, I focus on two things: Something that is broken and needs to be re-architected Something you want to do that is new If something is broken, and you need new tools to scale, extend, add capacity dynamically and so on, then you can consider using Windows or SQL Azure. It can help solve problems that you have, or it may include a component you don't want to write or architect yourself. Sometimes you want to do something new, like extend your company's offerings to mobile phones, to the web, or to a social network. More info on where it works here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/buckwoody/archive/2011/01/18/windows-azure-and-sql-azure-use-cases.aspx Myth 4: I have to write code to use Windows and SQL Azure If Windows Azure is a PaaS - a Platform as a Service - then don't you have to write code to use it? Nope. Windows and SQL Azure are made up of various components. Some of those components allow you to write and deploy code (like Compute) and others don't. We have lots of customers using Windows Azure storage as a backup, to securely share files instead of using DropBox, to distribute videos or code or firmware, and more. Others use our High Performance Computing (HPC) offering to rent a supercomputer when they need one. You can even throw workloads at that using Excel! In addition there are lots of other components in Windows Azure you can use, from the Windows Azure Media Services to others. More here: https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/home/scenarios/saas/ Myth 5: Windows Azure is just another form of "vendor lock-in" Windows Azure uses .NET, OSS languages and standard interfaces for the code. Sure, you're not going to take the code line-for-line and run it on a mainframe, but it's standard code that you write, and can port to something else. And the data is yours - you can bring it back whever you want. It's either in text or binary form, that you have complete control over. There are no licenses - you can "pay as you go", and when you're done, you can leave the service and take all your code, data and IP with you.   So go out there, read up, try it. Use it where it works. And don't believe everything you hear - sometimes the Internet doesn't get it all correct. :)

    Read the article

  • Social Targeting: Who Do You Think You’re Talking To?

    - by Mike Stiles
    Are you the kind of person that tries to sell Clay Aiken CD’s outside Warped Tour concert venues? Then you don’t think a lot about targeting your messages to the right audience. For your communication to pack the biggest punch it can, you need to know where to throw it. And a recent study on social demographics might help you see social targeting in a whole new light. Pingdom’s annual survey of social network demographics shows us first of all that there is no gender difference between Facebook and Twitter. Both are 40% male, 60% female. If you’re looking for locales that lean heavily male, that would be Slashdot, Hacker News and Stack Overflow. The women are dominating Pinterest, Goodreads and Blogger. So what about age? 55% of tweeters are 35 and up, compared with 63% at Pinterest, 65% at Facebook and 70% at LinkedIn. As you can tell, LinkedIn supports the oldest user base, with the average member being 44. The average age at Facebook is 51, and it’s 37 at Twitter. If you want to aim younger, have you met Orkut yet? 83% of its users are under 35. The next sites in order as great candidates for the young market are deviantART, Hacker News, Hi5, Github, and Reddit. I know, other than Reddit, many of you might be saying “who?” But the list could offer an opportunity to look at the vast social world beyond Facebook, Twitter and Google+ (which Pingdom did not include in the survey at all due to a lack of accessible data). As for the average age of social users overall: 26% are 25-34 25% are 35-44 19% are 45-54 16% are 18-24  6% are 55-64  5% are 0-17  and 2% are 65 Now you know where you stand on the “cutting edge” scale for a person your age. You’re welcome. Certainly such demographics are a moving target and need to be watched and reassessed on a regular basis to make sure you’re moving in step with the people you want to talk to. For instance, since Pingdom’s survey last year, the age of the average Facebook user has gone up 2 years, while the age of the average Twitter user has gone down 2 years. With the targeting and analytics tools available on today’s social management platforms, there’s little need to market in the dark. Otherwise, good luck with those Clay CD’s.

    Read the article

  • Cooking with Wessty: HTML 5 and Visual Studio

    - by David Wesst
    The hardest part about using a new technology, such as HTML 5, is getting to what features are available and the syntax. One way to learn how to use new technologies is to adapt your current development to help you use the technology in comfort of your own development environment. For .NET Web Developers, that environment is usually Visual Studio 2010. This technique intends on showing you how to get HTML 5 Intellisense working in your current version of Visual Studio 2008 or 2010, making it easier for you to start using HTML 5 features in your current .NET web development projects. Quick Note According to the Visual Web Developer team at Microsoft, the Visual Studio 2010 SP1 beta has support for both HTML 5 and CSS 3. If you are willing to try out the bleeding edge update from Microsoft, then you won’t need this technique. --- Ingredients Visual Studio 2008 or 2010 Your favourite HTML 5 compliant browser (e.g. Internet Explorer 9) Administrator privileges, or the ability to install Visual Studio Extensions in your development environment. Directions Download the HTML 5 Intellisense for Visual Studio 2008 and 2010 extension from the Visual Studio Extension Gallery. Install it. Open Visual Studio. Open up a web file, such as an HTML or ASPX file. he HTML Source Editing toolbar should have appeared. (Optional) If it did not appear, you can activate it through the main menu by selecting View, then Toolbars, and then select HTML Source Editing if it does not have a checkbox beside it. (NOTE: If there is a checkbox, then the toolbar is enabled) In the HTML Source Editing toolbar, open up the validation schema drop box, and select HTML 5. Et voila! You now have HTML 5 intellisense enabled to help you get started in adding HTML 5 awesomeness to your web sites and web applications. Optional – Setting HTML 5 Validation Options At this point, you may want to select how Visual Studio shows validation errors. You can do that in the Options Menu. To get to the Options Menu… In the main menu select Tools, then Options. In the Options window, select and expand Text Editor, then HTML, followed by selecting Validation. Resources HTML 5 Intellisense for Visual Studio 2008 and 2010 extenstion Visual Studio Extension Gallery Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Beta This post also appears at http://david.wes.st

    Read the article

  • Is RTD Stateless or Stateful?

    - by [email protected]
    Yes.   A stateless service is one where each request is an independent transaction that can be processed by any of the servers in a cluster.  A stateful service is one where state is kept in a server's memory from transaction to transaction, thus necessitating the proper routing of requests to the right server. The main advantage of stateless systems is simplicity of design. The main advantage of stateful systems is performance. I'm often asked whether RTD is a stateless or stateful service, so I wanted to clarify this issue in depth so that RTD's architecture will be properly understood. The short answer is: "RTD can be configured as a stateless or stateful service." The performance difference between stateless and stateful systems can be very significant, and while in a call center implementation it may be reasonable to use a pure stateless configuration, a web implementation that produces thousands of requests per second is practically impossible with a stateless configuration. RTD's performance is orders of magnitude better than most competing systems. RTD was architected from the ground up to achieve this performance. Features like automatic and dynamic compression of prediction models, automatic translation of metadata to machine code, lack of interpreted languages, and separation of model building from decisioning contribute to achieving this performance level. Because  of this focus on performance we decided to have RTD's default configuration work in a stateful manner. By being stateful RTD requests are typically handled in a few milliseconds when repeated requests come to the same session. Now, those readers that have participated in implementations of RTD know that RTD's architecture is also focused on reducing Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) with features like automatic model building, automatic time windows, automatic maintenance of database tables, automatic evaluation of data mining models, automatic management of models partitioned by channel, geography, etcetera, and hot swapping of configurations. How do you reconcile the need for a low TCO and the need for performance? How do you get the performance of a stateful system with the simplicity of a stateless system? The answer is that you make the system behave like a stateless system to the exterior, but you let it automatically take advantage of situations where being stateful is better. For example, one of the advantages of stateless systems is that you can route a message to any server in a cluster, without worrying about sending it to the same server that was handling the session in previous messages. With an RTD stateful configuration you can still route the message to any server in the cluster, so from the point of view of the configuration of other systems, it is the same as a stateless service. The difference though comes in performance, because if the message arrives to the right server, RTD can serve it without any external access to the session's state, thus tremendously reducing processing time. In typical implementations it is not rare to have high percentages of messages routed directly to the right server, while those that are not, are easily handled by forwarding the messages to the right server. This architecture usually provides the best of both worlds with performance and simplicity of configuration.   Configuring RTD as a pure stateless service A pure stateless configuration requires session data to be persisted at the end of handling each and every message and reloading that data at the beginning of handling any new message. This is of course, the root of the inefficiency of these configurations. This is also the reason why many "stateless" implementations actually do keep state to take advantage of a request coming back to the same server. Nevertheless, if the implementation requires a pure stateless decision service, this is easy to configure in RTD. The way to do it is: Mark every Integration Point to Close the session at the end of processing the message In the Session entity persist the session data on closing the session In the session entity check if a persisted version exists and load it An excellent solution for persisting the session data is Oracle Coherence, which provides a high performance, distributed cache that minimizes the performance impact of persisting and reloading the session. Alternatively, the session can be persisted to a local database. An interesting feature of the RTD stateless configuration is that it can cope with serializing concurrent requests for the same session. For example, if a web page produces two requests to the decision service, these requests could come concurrently to the decision services and be handled by different servers. Most stateless implementation would have the two requests step onto each other when saving the state, or fail one of the messages. When properly configured, RTD will make one message wait for the other before processing.   A Word on Context Using the context of a customer interaction typically significantly increases lift. For example, offer success in a call center could double if the context of the call is taken into account. For this reason, it is important to utilize the contextual information in decision making. To make the contextual information available throughout a session it needs to be persisted. When there is a well defined owner for the information then there is no problem because in case of a session restart, the information can be easily retrieved. If there is no official owner of the information, then RTD can be configured to persist this information.   Once again, RTD provides flexibility to ensure high performance when it is adequate to allow for some loss of state in the rare cases of server failure. For example, in a heavy use web site that serves 1000 pages per second the navigation history may be stored in the in memory session. In such sites it is typical that there is no OLTP that stores all the navigation events, therefore if an RTD server were to fail, it would be possible for the navigation to that point to be lost (note that a new session would be immediately established in one of the other servers). In most cases the loss of this navigation information would be acceptable as it would happen rarely. If it is desired to save this information, RTD would persist it every time the visitor navigates to a new page. Note that this practice is preferred whether RTD is configured in a stateless or stateful manner.  

    Read the article

  • Texture mapping on gluDisk

    - by Marnix
    I'm trying to map a brick texture on the edge of a fountain and I'm using gluDisk for that. How can I make the right coordinates for the disk? My code looks like this and I have only found a function that takes the texture along with the camera. I want the cubic texture to be alongside of the fountain, but gluDisk does a linear mapping. How do I get a circular mapping? void Fountain::Draw() { glPushMatrix(); // push 1 this->ApplyWorldMatrixGL(); glEnable(GL_TEXTURE_2D); // enable texturing glPushMatrix(); // push 2 glRotatef(90,-1,0,0); // rotate 90 for the quadric // also drawing more here... // stone texture glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, texIDs[0]); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_LINEAR); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_LINEAR); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL_REPEAT); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL_REPEAT); glPushMatrix(); // push 3 glTranslatef(0,0,height); // spherical texture generation // this piece of code doesn't work as I intended glTexGeni(GL_S, GL_TEXTURE_GEN_MODE, GL_SPHERE_MAP); glTexGeni(GL_T, GL_TEXTURE_GEN_MODE, GL_SPHERE_MAP); glEnable(GL_TEXTURE_GEN_S); glEnable(GL_TEXTURE_GEN_T); GLUquadric *tub = gluNewQuadric(); gluQuadricTexture(tub, GL_TRUE); gluDisk(tub, radius, outerR, nrVertices, nrVertices); gluDeleteQuadric(tub); glDisable(GL_TEXTURE_GEN_S); glDisable(GL_TEXTURE_GEN_T); glPopMatrix(); // pop 3 // more drawing here... glPopMatrix(); // pop 2 // more drawing here... glPopMatrix(); // pop 1 } To refine my question a bit. This is an image of what it is at default (left) and of what I want (right). The texture should fit in the border of the disk, a lot of times. If this is possible with the texture matrix, than that's fine with me as well.

    Read the article

  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, June 01, 2014

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, June 01, 2014Popular ReleasesSandcastle Help File Builder: Help File Builder and Tools v2014.5.31.0: General InformationIMPORTANT: On some systems, the content of the ZIP file is blocked and the installer may fail to run. Before extracting it, right click on the ZIP file, select Properties, and click on the Unblock button if it is present in the lower right corner of the General tab in the properties dialog. This release completes removal of the branding transformations and implements the new VS2013 presentation style that utilizes the new lightweight website format. Several breaking cha...Tooltip Web Preview: ToolTip Web Preview: Version 1.0Database Helper: Release 1.0.0.0: First Release of Database HelperCoMaSy: CoMaSy1.0.2: !Contact Management SystemImage View Slider: Image View Slider: This is a .NET component. We create this using VB.NET. Here you can use an Image Viewer with several properties to your application form. We wish somebody to improve freely. Try this out! Author : Steven Renaldo Antony Yustinus Arjuna Purnama Putra Andre Wijaya P Martin Lidau PBK GENAP 2014 - TI UKDWAspose for Apache POI: Missing Features of Apache POI WP - v 1.1: Release contain the Missing Features in Apache POI WP SDK in Comparison with Aspose.Words for dealing with Microsoft Word. What's New ?Following Examples: Insert Picture in Word Document Insert Comments Set Page Borders Mail Merge from XML Data Source Moving the Cursor Feedback and Suggestions Many more examples are yet to come here. Keep visiting us. Raise your queries and suggest more examples via Aspose Forums or via this social coding site.babelua: V1.5.6.0: V1.5.6.0 - 2014.5.30New feature: support quick-cocos2d-x project now; support text search in scripts folder now, you can use this function in Search Result Window;SEToolbox: 01.032.014 Release 1: Added fix when loading game Textures for icons causing 'Unable to read beyond the end of the stream'. Added new Resource Report, that displays all in game resources in a concise report. Added in temp directory cleaner, to keep excess files from building up. Fixed use of colors on the windows, to work better with desktop schemes. Adding base support for multilingual resources. This will allow loading of the Space Engineers resources to show localized names, and display localized date a...ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.71.2: More memory and performance improvements. Fixed an issue with pivot table field order.Fancontroller: Fancontroller: Initial releaseVi-AIO SearchBar: Vi – AIO Search Bar: Version 1.0Top Verses ( Ayat Emas ): Binary Top Verses: This one is the bin folder of the component. the .dll component is inside.Traditional Calendar Component: Traditional Calender Converter: Duta Wacana Christian University This file containing Traditional Calendar Component and Demo Aplication that using Traditional Calendar Component. This component made with .NET Framework 4 and the programming language is C# .SQLSetupHelper: 1.0.0.0: First Stable Version of SQL SetupComposite Iconote: Composite Iconote: This is a composite has been made by Microsoft Visual Studio 2013. Requirement: To develop this composite or use this component in your application, your computer must have .NET framework 4.5 or newer.Magick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.9.101: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 6.8.9.1. Breaking changes: - Int/short Set methods of WritablePixelCollection are now unsigned. - The Q16 build no longer uses HDRI, switch to the new Q16-HDRI build if you need HDRI.fnr.exe - Find And Replace Tool: 1.7: Bug fixes Refactored logic for encoding text values to command line to handle common edge cases where find/replace operation works in GUI but not in command line Fix for bug where selection in Encoding drop down was different when generating command line in some cases. It was reported in: https://findandreplace.codeplex.com/workitem/34 Fix for "Backslash inserted before dot in replacement text" reported here: https://findandreplace.codeplex.com/discussions/541024 Fix for finding replacing...VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.59: changes NEW: Added Support for 'GokoImage.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'ViperII.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'PixxxView.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'ImgRex.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'PixLiv.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'imgsee.me' links NEW: Added Support for 'ImgS.it' linksToolbox for Dynamics CRM 2011/2013: XrmToolBox (v1.2014.5.28): XrmToolbox improvement XrmToolBox updates (v1.2014.5.28)Fix connecting to a connection with custom authentication without saved password Tools improvement New tool!Solution Components Mover (v1.2014.5.22) Transfer solution components from one solution to another one Import/Export NN relationships (v1.2014.3.7) Allows you to import and export many to many relationships Tools updatesAttribute Bulk Updater (v1.2014.5.28) Audit Center (v1.2014.5.28) View Layout Replicator (v1.2014.5.28) Scrip...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 5.10: Fix for Issue #20875 - echo switch doesn't work for CSS CSS should honor the SASS source-file comments JS should allow multi-line comment directivesNew ProjectsCet MicroWPF: WPF-like library for simple graphic-UI application using Netduino (Plus) 2 and the FTDI FT800 Eve board.Fakemons: Some Fakmons, powered by XML, XSLT, CSS and JavascriptFling OS: Fling OS is a C# operating system project aiming to create a new, managed operating system from the ground up.MudRoom: Experimental tool sets in mud parsing and area definitionOOP-2112110158: My name's NgocDungRoslynResearch: Roslyn ResearchTHD - Control de Usuarios: control de usuarios y permisosWPF Kinect User Controls: WPF Kinect User Control project provide simple Tilt and Skeleton Tracking Parameter Controls.

    Read the article

  • Five Ways Enterprise 2.0 Can Transform Your Business - Q&A from the Webcast

    - by [email protected]
    A few weeks ago, Vince Casarez and I presented with KMWorld on the Five Ways Enterprise 2.0 Can Transform Your Business. It was an enjoyable, interactive webcast in which Vince and I discussed the ways Enterprise 2.0 can transform your business and more importantly, highlighted key customer examples of how to do so. If you missed the webcast, you can catch a replay here. We had a lot of audience participation in some of the polls we conducted and in the Q&A session. We weren't able to address all of the questions during the broadcast, so we attempted to answer them here: Q: Which area within your firm focuses on Web 2.0? Meaning, do you find new departments developing just to manage the web 2.0 (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) user experience or are you structuring current departments? A: There are three distinct efforts within Oracle. The first is around delivery of these Web 2.0 services for enterprise deployments. This is the focus of the WebCenter team. The second effort is injecting these Web 2.0 services into use cases that drive the different enterprise applications. This effort is focused on how to manage these external services and bring them into a cohesive flow for marketing programs, customer care, and purchasing. The third effort is how we consume these services internally to enhance Oracle's business delivery. It leverages the technologies and use cases of the first two but also pushes the envelope with regards to future directions of these other two areas. Q: In a business, Web 2.0 is mostly like action logs. How can we leverage the official process practice versus the logs of a recent action? Example: a system configuration modified last night on a call out versus the official practice that everybody would use in the morning.A: The key thing to remember is that most Web 2.0 actions / activity streams today are based on collaboration and communication type actions. At least with public social sites like Facebook and Twitter. What we're delivering as part of the WebCenter Suite are not just these types of activities but also enterprise application activities. These enterprise application activities come from different application modules: purchasing, HR, order entry, sales opportunity, etc. The actions within these systems are normally tied to a business object or process: purchase order/customer, employee or department, customer and supplier, customer and product, respectively. Therefore, the activities or "logs" as you name them are able to be "typed" so that as a viewer, you can filter or decide to see only certain types of information. In your example, you could have a view that only showed you recent "configuration" changes and this could be right next to a view that showed off the items to be watched every morning. Q: It's great to hear about customers using the software but is there any plan for future webinars to show what the products/installs look like? That would be very helpful.A: We don't have a webinar planned to show off the install process. However, we have a viewlet that's posted on Oracle Technology Network. You can see it here:http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/testcontent/wcs-install-098014.htmlAnd we've got excellent documentation that walks you through the steps here:http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E14571_01/install.1111/e12001/install.htmAnd there's a whole set of demos and examples of what WebCenter can do at this URL:http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/webcenter/release11-demos-097468.html Q: How do you anticipate managing metadata across the enterprise to make content findable?A: We need to first make sure we are all talking about the same thing when we use a word like "metadata". Here's why...  For a developer, metadata means information that describes key elements of the portal or application and what the portal or application can do. For content systems, metadata means key terms that provide a taxonomy or folksonomy about the information that is being indexed, ordered, and managed. For business intelligence systems, metadata means key terms that provide labels to groups of data that most non-mathematicians need to understand. And for SOA, metadata means labels for parts of the processes that business owners should understand that connect development terminology. There are also additional requirements for metadata to be available to the team building these new solutions as well as requirements to make this metadata available to the running system. These requirements are often separated by "design time" and "run time" respectively. So clearly, a general goal of managing metadata across the enterprise is very challenging. We've invested a huge amount of resources around Oracle Metadata Services (MDS) to be able to provide a more generic system for all of these elements. No other vendor has anything like this technology foundation in their products. This provides a huge benefit to our customers as they will now be able to find content, processes, people, and information from a common set of search interfaces with consistent enterprise wide results. Q: Can you give your definition of terms as to document and content, please?A: Content applies to a broad category of information from Word documents, presentations and reports through attachments to invoices and/or purchase orders. Content is essentially any type of digital asset including images, video, and voice. A document is just one type of content. Q: Do you have special integration tools to realize an interaction between UCM and WebCenter Spaces/Services?A: Yes, we've dedicated a whole team of engineers to exploit the key features of Oracle UCM within WebCenter.  While ensuring that WebCenter can connect to other non-Oracle systems, we've made sure that with the combined set of Oracle technology, no other solution can match the combined power and integration.  This is part of the Oracle Fusion Middleware strategy which is to provide best in class capabilities for Content and Portals.  When combined together, the synergy between the two products enables users to quickly add capabilities when they are needed.  For example, simple document sharing is part of the combined product offering, but if legal discovery or archiving is required, Oracle UCM product includes these capabilities that can be quickly added.  There's no need to move content around or add another system to support this, it's just a feature that gets turned on within Oracle UCM. Q: All customers have some interaction with their applications and have many older versions, how do you see some of these new Enterprise 2.0 capabilities adding value to existing enterprise application deployments?A: Just as Service Oriented Architectures allowed for connecting the processes of different applications systems to work together, there's a need for a similar approach with regards to these enterprise 2.0 capabilities. Oracle WebCenter is built on a core architecture that allows for SOA of these Enterprise 2.0 services so that one set of scalable services can be used and integrated directly into any type of application. In this way, users can get immediate value out of the Enterprise 2.0 capabilities without having to wait for the next major release or upgrade. These centrally managed WebCenter services expose a set of standard interfaces that make it extremely easy to add them into existing applications no matter what technology the application has been implemented. Q: We've heard about Oracle Next Generation applications called "Fusion Applications", can you tell me how all this works together?A: Oracle WebCenter powers the core collaboration and social computing services found within Fusion Applications. It is the core user experience technology for how all the application screens have been implemented. And the core concept of task flows allows for all the Fusion Applications modules to be adaptable and composable by business users and IT without needing to be a professional developer. Oracle WebCenter is at the heart of the new Fusion Applications. In addition, the same patterns and technologies are now being added to the existing applications including JD Edwards, Siebel, Peoplesoft, and eBusiness Suite. The core technology enables all these customers to have a much smoother upgrade path to Fusion Applications. They get immediate benefits of injecting new user interactions into their existing applications without having to completely move to Fusion Applications. And then when the time comes, their users will already be well versed in how the new capabilities work. Q: Does any of this work with non Oracle software? Other databases? Other application servers? etc.A: We have made sure that Oracle WebCenter delivers the broadest set of development choices so that no matter what technology you developers are using, WebCenter capabilities can be quickly and easily added to the site or application. In addition, we have certified Oracle WebCenter to run against non-Oracle databases like DB2 and SQLServer. We have stated plans for certification against MySQL as well. Later in CY 2011, Oracle will provide certification on non-Oracle application servers such as WebSphere and JBoss. Q: How do we balance User and IT requirements in regards to Enterprise 2.0 technologies?A: Wrong decisions are often made because employee knowledge is not tapped efficiently and opportunities to innovate are often missed because the right people do not work together. Collaboration amongst workers in the right business context is critical for success. While standalone Enterprise 2.0 technologies can improve collaboration for collaboration's sake, using social collaboration tools in the context of business applications and processes will improve business responsiveness and lead companies to a more competitive position. As these systems become more mission critical it is essential that they maintain the highest level of performance and availability while scaling to support larger communities. Q: What are the ways in which Enterprise 2.0 can improve business responsiveness?A: With a wide range of Enterprise 2.0 tools in the marketplace, CIOs need to deploy solutions that will meet the requirements from users as well as address the requirements from IT. Workers want a next-generation user experience that is personalized and aggregates their daily tools and tasks, while IT needs to ensure the solution is secure, scalable, flexible, reliable and easily integrated with existing systems. An open and integrated approach to deploying portals, content management, and collaboration can enhance your business by addressing both the needs of knowledge workers for better information and the IT mandate to conserve resources by simplifying, consolidating and centralizing infrastructure and administration.  

    Read the article

  • Movement prediction for non-shooters

    - by ShadowChaser
    I'm working on an isometric 2D game with moderate-scale multiplayer, approximately 20-30 players connected at once to a persistent server. I've had some difficulty getting a good movement prediction implementation in place. Physics/Movement The game doesn't have a true physics implementation, but uses the basic principles to implement movement. Rather than continually polling input, state changes (ie/ mouse down/up/move events) are used to change the state of the character entity the player is controlling. The player's direction (ie/ north-east) is combined with a constant speed and turned into a true 3D vector - the entity's velocity. In the main game loop, "Update" is called before "Draw". The update logic triggers a "physics update task" that tracks all entities with a non-zero velocity uses very basic integration to change the entities position. For example: entity.Position += entity.Velocity.Scale(ElapsedTime.Seconds) (where "Seconds" is a floating point value, but the same approach would work for millisecond integer values). The key point is that no interpolation is used for movement - the rudimentary physics engine has no concept of a "previous state" or "current state", only a position and velocity. State Change and Update Packets When the velocity of the character entity the player is controlling changes, a "move avatar" packet is sent to the server containing the entity's action type (stand, walk, run), direction (north-east), and current position. This is different from how 3D first person games work. In a 3D game the velocity (direction) can change frame to frame as the player moves around. Sending every state change would effectively transmit a packet per frame, which would be too expensive. Instead, 3D games seem to ignore state changes and send "state update" packets on a fixed interval - say, every 80-150ms. Since speed and direction updates occur much less frequently in my game, I can get away with sending every state change. Although all of the physics simulations occur at the same speed and are deterministic, latency is still an issue. For that reason, I send out routine position update packets (similar to a 3D game) but much less frequently - right now every 250ms, but I suspect with good prediction I can easily boost it towards 500ms. The biggest problem is that I've now deviated from the norm - all other documentation, guides, and samples online send routine updates and interpolate between the two states. It seems incompatible with my architecture, and I need to come up with a better movement prediction algorithm that is closer to a (very basic) "networked physics" architecture. The server then receives the packet and determines the players speed from it's movement type based on a script (Is the player able to run? Get the player's running speed). Once it has the speed, it combines it with the direction to get a vector - the entity's velocity. Some cheat detection and basic validation occurs, and the entity on the server side is updated with the current velocity, direction, and position. Basic throttling is also performed to prevent players from flooding the server with movement requests. After updating its own entity, the server broadcasts an "avatar position update" packet to all other players within range. The position update packet is used to update the client side physics simulations (world state) of the remote clients and perform prediction and lag compensation. Prediction and Lag Compensation As mentioned above, clients are authoritative for their own position. Except in cases of cheating or anomalies, the client's avatar will never be repositioned by the server. No extrapolation ("move now and correct later") is required for the client's avatar - what the player sees is correct. However, some sort of extrapolation or interpolation is required for all remote entities that are moving. Some sort of prediction and/or lag-compensation is clearly required within the client's local simulation / physics engine. Problems I've been struggling with various algorithms, and have a number of questions and problems: Should I be extrapolating, interpolating, or both? My "gut feeling" is that I should be using pure extrapolation based on velocity. State change is received by the client, client computes a "predicted" velocity that compensates for lag, and the regular physics system does the rest. However, it feels at odds to all other sample code and articles - they all seem to store a number of states and perform interpolation without a physics engine. When a packet arrives, I've tried interpolating the packet's position with the packet's velocity over a fixed time period (say, 200ms). I then take the difference between the interpolated position and the current "error" position to compute a new vector and place that on the entity instead of the velocity that was sent. However, the assumption is that another packet will arrive in that time interval, and it's incredibly difficult to "guess" when the next packet will arrive - especially since they don't all arrive on fixed intervals (ie/ state changes as well). Is the concept fundamentally flawed, or is it correct but needs some fixes / adjustments? What happens when a remote player stops? I can immediately stop the entity, but it will be positioned in the "wrong" spot until it moves again. If I estimate a vector or try to interpolate, I have an issue because I don't store the previous state - the physics engine has no way to say "you need to stop after you reach position X". It simply understands a velocity, nothing more complex. I'm reluctant to add the "packet movement state" information to the entities or physics engine, since it violates basic design principles and bleeds network code across the rest of the game engine. What should happen when entities collide? There are three scenarios - the controlling player collides locally, two entities collide on the server during a position update, or a remote entity update collides on the local client. In all cases I'm uncertain how to handle the collision - aside from cheating, both states are "correct" but at different time periods. In the case of a remote entity it doesn't make sense to draw it walking through a wall, so I perform collision detection on the local client and cause it to "stop". Based on point #2 above, I might compute a "corrected vector" that continually tries to move the entity "through the wall" which will never succeed - the remote avatar is stuck there until the error gets too high and it "snaps" into position. How do games work around this?

    Read the article

  • Real-time Big Data Analytics is a reality for StubHub with Oracle Advanced Analytics

    - by Mark Hornick
    What can you use for a comprehensive platform for real-time analytics? How can you process big data volumes for near-real-time recommendations and dramatically reduce fraud? Learn in this video what Stubhub achieved with Oracle R Enterprise from the Oracle Advanced Analytics option to Oracle Database, and read more on their story here. Advanced analytics solutions that impact the bottom line of a business are challenging due to the range of skills and individuals involved in realizing such solutions. While we hear a lot about the role of the data scientist, that role is but one piece of the puzzle. Advanced analytics solutions also have an operationalization aspect that also requires close proximity to where the transactional activity occurs. The data scientist needs access to the right data with which to model the business problem. This involves IT for data collection, management, and administration, as well as ensuring zero downtime (a website needs to be up 24x7). This also involves working with the data scientist to keep predictive models refreshed with the latest scripts. Integrating advanced analytics solutions into enterprise apps involves not just generating predictions, but supporting the whole life-cycle from data collection, to model building, model assessment, and then outcome assessment and feedback to the model building process again. Application and web interface designers need to take into account how end users will see and use the advanced analytics results, e.g., supporting operations staff that need to handle the potentially fraudulent transactions. As just described, advanced analytics projects can be "complicated" from just a human perspective. The extent to which software can simplify the interactions among users and systems will increase the likelihood of project success. The ability to quickly operationalize advanced analytics projects and demonstrate measurable value, means the difference between a successful project and just a nice research report. By standardizing on Oracle Database and SQL invocation of R, along with in-database modeling as found in Oracle Advanced Analytics, expedient model deployment and zero downtime for refreshing models becomes a reality. Meanwhile, data scientists are also able to explore leading edge techniques available in open source. The Oracle solution propels the entire organization forward to realize the value of advanced analytics.

    Read the article

  • A Quick HLSL Question (How to modify some HLSL code)

    - by electroflame
    Thanks for wanting to help! I'm trying to create a circular, repeating ring (that moves outward) on a texture. I've achieved this, to a degree, with the following code: float distance = length(inTex - in_ShipCenter); float time = in_Time; ///* Simple distance/time combination */ float2 colorIndex = float2(distance - time, .3); float4 shipColor = tex2D(BaseTexture, inTex); float4 ringColor = tex2D(ringTexture, colorIndex); float4 finalColor; finalColor.rgb = (shipColor.rgb) + (ringColor.rgb); finalColor.a = shipColor.a; // Use the base texture's alpha (transparency). return finalColor; This works, and works how I want it to. The ring moves outward from the center of the texture at a steady rate, and is constrained to the edges of the base texture (i.e. it won't continue past an edge). However, there are a few issues with it that I would like some help on, though. They are: By combining the color additively (when I set finalColor.rgb), it makes the resulting ring color much lighter than I want (which, is pretty much the definition of additive blending, but I don't really want additive blending in this case). I would really like to be able to pass in the color that I want the ring to be. Currently, I have to pass in a texture that contains the color of the ring, but I think that doing it that way is kind of wasteful and overly-cumbersome. I know that I'm probably being an idiot over this, so I greatly appreciate the help. Some other (possibly relevant) information: I'm using XNA. I'm applying this by providing it to a SpriteBatch (as an Effect). The SpriteBatch is using BlendState.NonPremultiplied. Thanks in advance! EDIT: Thanks for the answers thus far, as they've helped me get a better grasp of the color issue. However, I'm still unsure of how to pass a color in and not use a texture. i.e. Can I create a tex2D by using a float4 instead of a texture? Or can I make a texture from a float4 and pass the texture in to the tex2D? DOUBLE EDIT: Here's some example pictures: With the effect off: With the effect on: With the effect on, but with the color weighting set to full: As you can see, the color weighting makes the base texture completely black (The background is black, so it looks transparent). You can also see the red it's supposed to be, and then the white-ish it really is when blended additively.

    Read the article

  • Developing a Cost Model for Cloud Applications

    - by BuckWoody
    Note - please pay attention to the date of this post. As much as I attempt to make the information below accurate, the nature of distributed computing means that components, units and pricing will change over time. The definitive costs for Microsoft Windows Azure and SQL Azure are located here, and are more accurate than anything you will see in this post: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/offers/  When writing software that is run on a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering like Windows Azure / SQL Azure, one of the questions you must answer is how much the system will cost. I will not discuss the comparisons between on-premise costs (which are nigh impossible to calculate accurately) versus cloud costs, but instead focus on creating a general model for estimating costs for a given application. You should be aware that there are (at this writing) two billing mechanisms for Windows and SQL Azure: “Pay-as-you-go” or consumption, and “Subscription” or commitment. Conceptually, you can consider the former a pay-as-you-go cell phone plan, where you pay by the unit used (at a slightly higher rate) and the latter as a standard cell phone plan where you commit to a contract and thus pay lower rates. In this post I’ll stick with the pay-as-you-go mechanism for simplicity, which should be the maximum cost you would pay. From there you may be able to get a lower cost if you use the other mechanism. In any case, the model you create should hold. Developing a good cost model is essential. As a developer or architect, you’ll most certainly be asked how much something will cost, and you need to have a reliable way to estimate that. Businesses and Organizations have been used to paying for servers, software licenses, and other infrastructure as an up-front cost, and power, people to the systems and so on as an ongoing (and sometimes not factored) cost. When presented with a new paradigm like distributed computing, they may not understand the true cost/value proposition, and that’s where the architect and developer can guide the conversation to make a choice based on features of the application versus the true costs. The two big buckets of use-types for these applications are customer-based and steady-state. In the customer-based use type, each successful use of the program results in a sale or income for your organization. Perhaps you’ve written an application that provides the spot-price of foo, and your customer pays for the use of that application. In that case, once you’ve estimated your cost for a successful traversal of the application, you can build that into the price you charge the user. It’s a standard restaurant model, where the price of the meal is determined by the cost of making it, plus any profit you can make. In the second use-type, the application will be used by a more-or-less constant number of processes or users and no direct revenue is attached to the system. A typical example is a customer-tracking system used by the employees within your company. In this case, the cost model is often created “in reverse” - meaning that you pilot the application, monitor the use (and costs) and that cost is held steady. This is where the comparison with an on-premise system becomes necessary, even though it is more difficult to estimate those on-premise true costs. For instance, do you know exactly how much cost the air conditioning is because you have a team of system administrators? This may sound trivial, but that, along with the insurance for the building, the wiring, and every other part of the system is in fact a cost to the business. There are three primary methods that I’ve been successful with in estimating the cost. None are perfect, all are demand-driven. The general process is to lay out a matrix of: components units cost per unit and then multiply that times the usage of the system, based on which components you use in the program. That sounds a bit simplistic, but using those metrics in a calculation becomes more detailed. In all of the methods that follow, you need to know your application. The components for a PaaS include computing instances, storage, transactions, bandwidth and in the case of SQL Azure, database size. In most cases, architects start with the first model and progress through the other methods to gain accuracy. Simple Estimation The simplest way to calculate costs is to architect the application (even UML or on-paper, no coding involved) and then estimate which of the components you’ll use, and how much of each will be used. Microsoft provides two tools to do this - one is a simple slider-application located here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/pricing-calculator/  The other is a tool you download to create an “Return on Investment” (ROI) spreadsheet, which has the advantage of leading you through various questions to estimate what you plan to use, located here: https://roianalyst.alinean.com/msft/AutoLogin.do?d=176318219048082115  You can also just create a spreadsheet yourself with a structure like this: Program Element Azure Component Unit of Measure Cost Per Unit Estimated Use of Component Total Cost Per Component Cumulative Cost               Of course, the consideration with this model is that it is difficult to predict a system that is not running or hasn’t even been developed. Which brings us to the next model type. Measure and Project A more accurate model is to actually write the code for the application, using the Software Development Kit (SDK) which can run entirely disconnected from Azure. The code should be instrumented to estimate the use of the application components, logging to a local file on the development system. A series of unit and integration tests should be run, which will create load on the test system. You can use standard development concepts to track this usage, and even use Windows Performance Monitor counters. The best place to start with this method is to use the Windows Azure Diagnostics subsystem in your code, which you can read more about here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sumitm/archive/2009/11/18/introducing-windows-azure-diagnostics.aspx This set of API’s greatly simplifies tracking the application, and in fact you can use this information for more than just a cost model. After you have the tracking logs, you can plug the numbers into ay of the tools above, which should give a representative cost or in some cases a unit cost. The consideration with this model is that the SDK fabric is not a one-to-one comparison with performance on the actual Windows Azure fabric. Those differences are usually smaller, but they do need to be considered. Also, you may not be able to accurately predict the load on the system, which might lead to an architectural change, which changes the model. This leads us to the next, most accurate method for a cost model. Sample and Estimate Using standard statistical and other predictive math, once the application is deployed you will get a bill each month from Microsoft for your Azure usage. The bill is quite detailed, and you can export the data from it to do analysis, and using methods like regression and so on project out into the future what the costs will be. I normally advise that the architect also extrapolate a unit cost from those metrics as well. This is the information that should be reported back to the executives that pay the bills: the past cost, future projected costs, and unit cost “per click” or “per transaction”, as your case warrants. The challenge here is in the model itself - statistical methods are not foolproof, and the larger the sample (in this case I recommend the entire population, not a smaller sample) is key. References and Tools Articles: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/patrick_butler_monterde/archive/2010/02/10/windows-azure-billing-overview.aspx http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/gg213848.aspx http://blog.codingoutloud.com/2011/06/05/azure-faq-how-much-will-it-cost-me-to-run-my-application-on-windows-azure/ http://blogs.msdn.com/b/johnalioto/archive/2010/08/25/10054193.aspx http://geekswithblogs.net/iupdateable/archive/2010/02/08/qampa-how-can-i-calculate-the-tco-and-roi-when.aspx   Other Tools: http://cloud-assessment.com/ http://communities.quest.com/community/cloud_tools

    Read the article

  • Justification for learning/implementing newer Microsoft technologies

    - by Darren
    I work at a large healthcare organization as a mid-level software developer. I have over 10 years experience in the IT industry using Microsoft technologies (ASP.NET & SQL Server). When I go to conferences, code camps, .net user group meetings, I hear of all kinds of new tools and technologies: MVC, LINQ, Entity Framework, WCF Web Services, etc. I guess you could say I'm in my comfort zone using the same old stuff from asp.net 2.0. I use typed datasets for my data access layer. I use web forms and feature rich server controls with master pages. I know how to use plain old SQL and create queries in my typed datasets to get at data my applications need. Throughout my career, I'm always sensitive to not become obsolete with my skill set. What I currently use works fine and my development time is fast. But I'm concerned that if I were to be laid off, I would be asked in interviews how many MVC apps I've written. Or how I am with LINQ or WCF web services. I know that it doesn't matter how many conferences, books, or videos I watch on some new technology...I have to implement/use it or it simply won't sink in. Also, managers who interview don't care how much someone reads up on something, only real use and experience with a technology. I have a new project to write. I've gone to my manager and have asked for additional time for the project for learning/implementing technology I may not be familiar with. Our organization encourages its employees to "learn and grow" and to continue are education. But I always get resistance when I ask for more time to ramp up on something new to implement. My manager is asking for concrete business reasons for implementing these new technologies. I don't have business reasons. My reasons are because I don't want to become obsolete. I could say it would make the project more maintainable in the future by other developers since at some point people could stop using these older technologies, but that' about all I can think of. Does Linq/Entity Framework/MCV apps perform better? So much so that the customers (users in departments I'm creating this app for) need? I doubt it. I'm interested in you guy's thoughts on this. Do many of you have similar plights with trying to use newer upcoming technologies? I doubt I'm on the bleeding edge of technology, either. Are there "business reasons" that you would bring to light for using these technologies? Thanks in advance! Sorry for the long wall of text.

    Read the article

  • Congratulations to the 2012 Oracle Spatial Award Winners!

    - by Mandy Ho
    I just returned from the 2012 Location Intelligence and Oracle Spatial User conference in Washington, DC, held by Directions Magazine. It was a great conference with presentations from across the country and globe, networking with Oracle Spatial users and meeting new customers and partners. As part of the yearly event, Oracle recognizes special customers and partners for their contributions to advancing mainstream solutions using geospatial technology. This was the 8th year that Oracle has recognized innovative, industry leaders.   The awards were given in three categories: Education/Research, Innovator and Partnership. Here's a little on each of the award winners. Education and Research Award Winner: Technical University of Berlin The Institute for Geodesy and Geoinformation Science of the Technical University of Berlin (TU Berlin) was selected for its leading research work in mapping of urban and regional space onto virtual 3D-city and landscape models, and use of Oracle Spatial, including 3D Vector and Georaster type support, as the data management platform. Innovator Award Winner:  Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Istanbul is the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe. One of their greatest challenges is organizing efficient public transportation for citizens and visitors. There are 15 types of transportations organized by 8 different agencies. To solve this problem, the Directorate of GIS of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality has created a multi-model itinerary system to help citizens in their decision process for using public transport or their private cars. They choose to use Oracle Spatial Network Model as the solution in our system together with Java and SOAP web services.  Partnership Award Winners: CSoft Group and OSCARS. The Partnership award is given to the ISV or integrator who have demonstrated outstanding achievements in partnering with Oracle on the development side, in taking solutions to market.  CSoft Group- the largest Russion integrator and consultancy provider in CAD and GIS. CSoft was selected by the Oracle Spatial product development organization for the key role in delivering geospatial solutions based on Oracle Database and Fusion Middleware to the Russian market. OSCARS - Provides consulting/training in France, Belgium and Luxembourg. With only 3 full time staff, they have achieved significant success with leading edge customer implementations leveraging the latest Oracle Spatial/MapViewer technologies, and delivering training throughout Europe.  Finally, we also awarded two Special Recognition awards for two partners that helped contribute to the Oracle Partner Network Spatial Specialization. These two partners provided insight and technical expertise from a partner perspective to help launch the new certification program for Oracle Spatial Technologies. Award Winners: ThinkHuddle and OSCARS  For more pictures on the conference and the awards, visit our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/OracleDatabase

    Read the article

  • Speaking at Mix11

    - by Dennis Vroegop
    In April Microsoft will hold the next MIX event. MIX was usually targeted at web designers and developers but has grown over the years to be more a general conference focused on the web and devices. In other words: everything the normal consumer might encounter. It’s not your typical developers conference, although you’ll find many developers there as well. But next to the developers you’ll probably run into designers and user experience specialists as well. This year I am proud to say that I will be one of the people presenting there. Together with all the Surface MVP’s in the world (sounds impressive, but there are only 7 of us) we’ll host a panel discussion on all things Surface, NUI and everything else that matches those subjects. Here’s what the abstract says: The Natural User Interface (NUI) is a hot topic that generates a lot of excitement, but there are only a handful of companies doing real innovation with NUIs and most of the practical experience in the NUI style of design and development is limited to a small number of experts. The Microsoft Surface MVPs are a subset of these experts that have extensive real-world experience with Microsoft Surface and other NUI devices. This session is a panel featuring the Microsoft Surface MVPs and an unfiltered discussion with each other and the audience about the state of the art in NUI design and development. We will share our experiences and ideas, discuss what we think NUI will look like in the near future, and back up our statements with cutting-edge demonstrations prepared by the panelists involving combinations of Microsoft Surface 2.0, Kinect, and Windows Phone 7. We, as Surface MVPs think we are more than just Surface oriented. We like to think we are more NUI MVP’s. But since that’s not a technology with Microsoft you can’t actually become a NUI MVP so Surface is the one that comes the closest. We are currently working on the details of our session but believe me: it will blow you away. Several people we talked to have said this could potentially be the best session of Mix. Quite a challenge, but we’re up for it! Of course I won’t be telling you exactly what we’re going to do in Las Vegas but rest assured that when you visit our session you’ll leave with a lot of new ideas and hopefully be inspired to bring into practice what you’ve seen. Even if the technology we’ll show you isn’t readily available yet. So, if you are in Las Vegas between April 12th and 14th, please join Joshua Blake, Neil Roodyn, Rick Barraza, Bart Roozendaal, Josh Santangelo, Nicolas Calvi and myself for some NUI fun! See you in Vegas! Tags van Technorati: mix11,las vegas,surface,nui,kinecct

    Read the article

  • Producing a smooth mesh from density cloud and marching cubes

    - by Wardy
    Based on my results from this question I decided to build myself a 3D noise map containing float values in place of my existing boolean point values. The effect I'm trying to produce is something like this, rather than typical rolling hills; which should explain the "missing cubes" in the image below. If I render my density map in normal "minecraft mode" (1 block per point in the density map) varying the size of the cube based on the value in my density map (floats in the range 0 to 1) I get something like this: I'm now happy that I can produce a density map for the marching cubes algorithm (which will need a little tweaking) but for some reason when I run it through my implementation it's not producing what I expect. My problem is that I'm getting something like the first image in this answer to my previous question, when I want to achieve the effect in the second image. Upon further investigation I can't see how marching cubes does the "move vertex along the edge" type logic (i.e. the difference between the two images on my previous link). I see that it does do some interpolation, but I'm not convinced I have the correct understanding of what I think it should do, because the code in question appears to give the same result regardless of whether I use boolean or float values. I took the code from here which is a C# implementation of marching cubes, but instead of using the MarchingCubesPrimitive I modified it to accept an object of type IDrawable, containing lists for the various collections (vertices, normals, UVs, indices), the logic was otherwise untouched. My understanding is that given a very low isovalue the accuracy level of the surface being rendered should increase, so in short "less 45 degree slows more rolling hills" type mesh output. However this isn't what I'm seeing. Have I missed something or is the implementation flawed and need to be fixed? EDIT: A little more detail on what I am seeing when I "marching cube" the data. Ok so firstly, ignore the fact that the meshes created by the chunks don't "connect" (i'll probably raise another question about this later). Then look at the shaping of the island, it's too ... square, from the voxels rendered as boxes you get the impression there's a clean soft gradual hill and yet from the image there are sharp falling edges even in the most central areas where the gradient in the first image looks the most smooth. The data is "regenerated" each time I run this so no 2 islands come out the same, and it's purely random so not based on noise, but still, how can it look so smooth in 1 image and so not smooth in the other?

    Read the article

  • Oracle Customer Experience Summit @ OpenWorld

    - by Christie Flanagan
    This first-ever Oracle Customer Experience Summit @ OpenWorld kicked off yesterday, bringing together established thought leaders and practitioners in customer experience. The first day saw noted marketing and customer experience thought leader, Seth Godin, take the stage to discuss how rapidly accelerating change and adoption are driving new behaviors and higher expectations in a massively disruptive transformation in which the customer now holds the power. His presentation gave us in-depth insight into this always-connected, always-sharing experience revolution we are witnessing.If you haven’t yet made it over to the Oracle Customer Experience Summit at The Westin St. Francis and the recently made over Oracle Square (aka Union Square), there’s still time today and tomorrow to network with industry peers and hear best practices from those who have steered their ventures through the disruptive trends of customer experience and have proven, successful strategies to share for driving strategic customer-centric initiatives. If you’re interested in learning how Oracle WebCenter helps businesses meet the demands of the customer experience revolution, be sure to check out these sessions at the Oracle Customer Experience Summit later today:Using the Online Customer Experience to Drive Engagement and Marketing Success Thursday, Oct 4, 4:15 PM - 5:15 PM - St. Francis - GeorgianMariam Tariq - Senior Director Product Management, Oracle Stephen Schleifer - Senior Principal Product Manager, Oracle Richard Backx - Business IT Architect/Consultant, KPN NL Netco CE Channels Online The online channel is a critical means of reaching and engaging customers. Online marketing efforts today must be targeted, interactive, and consistent to provide customers with a seamless experience. These efforts must include integrated management of Web, mobile, and social channels—supported by cross-channel customer data and campaigns—and integration with commerce to drive an engaging and differentiated online customer experience. Attend this session to learn how you can use the online channel to increase customer loyalty and drive the success of your marketing initiatives.Empowering Your Frontline Employees: Sales and Service Enterprise Collaboration Thursday, Oct 4, 5:30 PM - 6:30 PM - St. Francis - Elizabethan ABStephen Fioretti - VP, Product Management, Oracle Peter Doolan - Group Vice President, Sales Engineering, Oracle Andrew Kershaw - Sr Director Business Development, Oracle Marty Marcinczyk - VP Customer Experience Engineering, Comcast A focus on the employee experience is critical, because it can make or break your customers’ experiences, directly or indirectly. Engaged and empowered frontline employees become your best advocates and inspire your brand champions. This session explores proven approaches and tools, including social collaboration tools, that can help you empower and enable your frontline teams to improve customer and employee experiences.And before you go, you'll also want to explore the Innovation Tents in Oracle Square which feature leading-edge customer experience demonstrations; attend our customer journey mapping workshop; and learn at sessions focused on innovating differentiated experiences that drive cross-functional alignment.

    Read the article

  • ray collision with rectangle and floating point accuracy

    - by phq
    I'm trying to solve a problem with a ray bouncing on a box. Actually it is a sphere but for simplicity the box dimensions are expanded by the sphere radius when doing the collision test making the sphere a single ray. It is done by projecting the ray onto all faces of the box and pick the one that is closest. However because I'm using floating point variables I fear that the projected point onto the surface might be interpreted as being below in the next iteration, also I will later allow the sphere to move which might make that scenario more likely. Also the bounce coefficient might be as low as zero, making the sphere continue along the surface. So my naive solution is to project not only forwards but backwards to catch those cases. That is where I got into problems shown in the figure: In the first iteration the first black arrow is calculated and we end up at a point on the surface of the box. In the second iteration the "back projection" hits the other surface making the second black arrow bounce on the wrong surface. If there are several boxes close to each other this has further consequences making the sphere fall through them all. So my main question is how to handle possible floating point accuracy when placing the sphere on the box surface so it does not fall through. In writing this question I got the idea to have a threshold to only accept back projections a certain amount much smaller than the box but larger than the possible accuracy limitation, this would only cause the "false" back projection when the sphere hit the box on an edge which would appear naturally. To clarify my original approach, the arrows shown in the image is not only the path the sphere travels but is also representing a single time step in the simulation. In reality the time step is much smaller about 0.05 of the box size. The path traveled is projected onto possible sides to avoid traveling past a thinner object at higher speeds. In normal situations the floating point accuracy is not an issue but there are two situations where I have the concern. When the new position at the end of the time step is located very close to the surface, very unlikely though. When using a bounce factor of 0, here it happens every time the sphere hit a box. To add some loss of accuracy, the motivation for my concern, is that the sphere and box are in different coordinate systems and thus the sphere location is transformed for every test. This last one is why I'm not willing to stand on luck that one floating point value lying on top of the box always will be interpreted the same. I did not know voronoi regions by name, but looking at it I'm not sure how it would be used in a projection scenario that I'm using here.

    Read the article

  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, June 02, 2014

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, June 02, 2014Popular ReleasesPortable Class Library for SQLite: Portable Class Library for SQLite - 3.8.4.4: This pull request from mattleibow addresses an issue with custom function creation (define functions in C# code and invoke them from SQLite as id they where regular SQL functions). Impact: Xamarin iOSTweetinvi a friendly Twitter C# API: Tweetinvi 0.9.3.x: Timelines- Added all the parameters available from the Timeline Endpoints in Tweetinvi. - This is available for HomeTimeline, UserTimeline, MentionsTimeline // Simple query var tweets = Timeline.GetHomeTimeline(); // Create a parameter for queries with specific parameters var timelineParameter = Timeline.GenerateHomeTimelineRequestParameter(); timelineParameter.ExcludeReplies = true; timelineParameter.TrimUser = true; var tweets = Timeline.GetHomeTimeline(timelineParameter); Tweets- Add mis...Sandcastle Help File Builder: Help File Builder and Tools v2014.5.31.0: General InformationIMPORTANT: On some systems, the content of the ZIP file is blocked and the installer may fail to run. Before extracting it, right click on the ZIP file, select Properties, and click on the Unblock button if it is present in the lower right corner of the General tab in the properties dialog. This release completes removal of the branding transformations and implements the new VS2013 presentation style that utilizes the new lightweight website format. Several breaking cha...Tooltip Web Preview: ToolTip Web Preview: Version 1.0Database Helper: Release 1.0.0.0: First Release of Database HelperCoMaSy: CoMaSy1.0.2: !Contact Management SystemImage View Slider: Image View Slider: This is a .NET component. We create this using VB.NET. Here you can use an Image Viewer with several properties to your application form. We wish somebody to improve freely. Try this out! Author : Steven Renaldo Antony Yustinus Arjuna Purnama Putra Andre Wijaya P Martin Lidau PBK GENAP 2014 - TI UKDWAspose for Apache POI: Missing Features of Apache POI WP - v 1.1: Release contain the Missing Features in Apache POI WP SDK in Comparison with Aspose.Words for dealing with Microsoft Word. What's New ?Following Examples: Insert Picture in Word Document Insert Comments Set Page Borders Mail Merge from XML Data Source Moving the Cursor Feedback and Suggestions Many more examples are yet to come here. Keep visiting us. Raise your queries and suggest more examples via Aspose Forums or via this social coding site.SEToolbox: 01.032.014 Release 1: Added fix when loading game Textures for icons causing 'Unable to read beyond the end of the stream'. Added new Resource Report, that displays all in game resources in a concise report. Added in temp directory cleaner, to keep excess files from building up. Fixed use of colors on the windows, to work better with desktop schemes. Adding base support for multilingual resources. This will allow loading of the Space Engineers resources to show localized names, and display localized date a...ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.71.2: More memory and performance improvements. Fixed an issue with pivot table field order.Vi-AIO SearchBar: Vi – AIO Search Bar: Version 1.0Top Verses ( Ayat Emas ): Binary Top Verses: This one is the bin folder of the component. the .dll component is inside.Traditional Calendar Component: Traditional Calender Converter: Duta Wacana Christian University This file containing Traditional Calendar Component and Demo Aplication that using Traditional Calendar Component. This component made with .NET Framework 4 and the programming language is C# .SQLSetupHelper: 1.0.0.0: First Stable Version of SQL SetupComposite Iconote: Composite Iconote: This is a composite has been made by Microsoft Visual Studio 2013. Requirement: To develop this composite or use this component in your application, your computer must have .NET framework 4.5 or newer.Magick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.9.101: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 6.8.9.1. Breaking changes: - Int/short Set methods of WritablePixelCollection are now unsigned. - The Q16 build no longer uses HDRI, switch to the new Q16-HDRI build if you need HDRI.fnr.exe - Find And Replace Tool: 1.7: Bug fixes Refactored logic for encoding text values to command line to handle common edge cases where find/replace operation works in GUI but not in command line Fix for bug where selection in Encoding drop down was different when generating command line in some cases. It was reported in: https://findandreplace.codeplex.com/workitem/34 Fix for "Backslash inserted before dot in replacement text" reported here: https://findandreplace.codeplex.com/discussions/541024 Fix for finding replacing...VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.59: changes NEW: Added Support for 'GokoImage.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'ViperII.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'PixxxView.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'ImgRex.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'PixLiv.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'imgsee.me' links NEW: Added Support for 'ImgS.it' linksToolbox for Dynamics CRM 2011/2013: XrmToolBox (v1.2014.5.28): XrmToolbox improvement XrmToolBox updates (v1.2014.5.28)Fix connecting to a connection with custom authentication without saved password Tools improvement New tool!Solution Components Mover (v1.2014.5.22) Transfer solution components from one solution to another one Import/Export NN relationships (v1.2014.3.7) Allows you to import and export many to many relationships Tools updatesAttribute Bulk Updater (v1.2014.5.28) Audit Center (v1.2014.5.28) View Layout Replicator (v1.2014.5.28) Scrip...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 5.10: Fix for Issue #20875 - echo switch doesn't work for CSS CSS should honor the SASS source-file comments JS should allow multi-line comment directivesNew Projects[ISEN] Rendu de projet Naughty3Dogs - Pong3D: Pong3D est un jeu qui reprend le principe classique du Pong en le portant dans un environnement 3D à l'aide du langage c# et du moteur Unity3DBootstrap for MVC: Bootstrap for MVC.F. A. Q. - Najczesciej zadawane pytania: FAQForuMvc: Technifutur short projecthomework456: no.iStoody: Studies organize solution, available through app for Windows and Windows Phone.liaoliao: ???????????Price Tracker: Allows a user to track prices based on parsed emailsRoslynEval: RoslynRx Hub: Rx Hub provides server side computation which initiate by subscriber requestSharepoint Online AppCache Reset: We are an IT resource company providing Virtual IT services and custom and opensource programs for everyday needs. UnitConversionLib : Smart Unit Conversion Library in C#: Conversion of units, arithmetic operation and parsing quantities with their units on run time. Smart unit converter and conversion lib for physical quantities,

    Read the article

  • Move Data into the grid for scalable, predictable response times

    - by JuergenKress
    CloudTran is pleased to introduce the availability of the CloudTran Transaction and Persistence Manager for creating scalable, reliable data services on the Oracle Coherence In-Memory Data Grid (IMDG). Use of IMDG architectures has been key to handling today’s web-scale loads because it eliminates database latency by storing important and frequently access data in memory instead of on disk. The CloudTran product lets developers easily use an IMDG for full ACID-compliant transactions without having to be concerned about the location or spread of data. The system has its own implementation of fast, scalable distributed transactions that does NOT depend on XA protocols but still guarantees all ACID properties. Plus, CloudTran asynchronously replicates data going into the IMDG to back-end datastores and back-up data centers, again ensuring ACID properties. CloudTran can be accessed through Java Persistence API (JPA via TopLink Grid) and now, through a new Low-Level API, or LLAPI. This is ideal for use in SOA applications that need data reliability, high availability, performance, and scalability. It is still in its limited beta release, the LLAPI gives developers the ability to use standard put/remove logic available in Coherence and then wrap logic with simple Spring annotations or XML+AspectJ to start transactions. An important feature of LLAPI is the ability to join transactions. This is a common outcome for SOA applications that need to reduce network traffic by aggregating data into single cache entries and then doing SOA service processing in the node holding the data. This results in the need to orchestrate transaction processing across multiple service calls. CloudTran has the capability to handle these “multi-client” transactions at speed with no loss in ACID properties. Developing software around an IMDG like Oracle Coherence is an important choice for today’s web-scale applications and services. But this introduces new architectural considerations to maintain scalability in light of increased network loads and data movement. Without using CloudTran, developers are faced with an incredibly difficult task to ensure data reliability, availability, performance, and scalability when working with an IMDG. Working with highly distributed data that is entirely volatile while stored in memory presents numerous edge cases where failures can result in data loss. The CloudTran product takes care of all of this, leaving developers with the confidence and peace of mind that all data is processed correctly. For those interested in evaluating the CloudTran product and IMDGs, take a look at this link for more information: http://www.CloudTran.com/downloadAPI.ph , or send your questions to [email protected]. SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit  www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Technorati Tags: CloudTran,data grid,M,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,BPM,Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

    Read the article

  • Stop Saying "Multi-Channel!"

    - by David Dorf
    I keep hearing the term "multi-channel" in our industry, but its time to move on. It kinda reminds me of the term "ECR" or electronic cash register. Long ago ECR was a leading-edge term, but nowadays its rarely used because its table-stakes. After all, what cash register today isn't electronic? The same logic applies to multi-channel, at least when we're talking about tier-1 and tier-2 retailers. If you're still talking about multi-channel retailing, you're in big trouble. Some have switched over to the term "cross-channel," and that's a step in the right direction but still falls short. Its kinda like saying, "I upgraded my ECR to accept debit cards!" Yawn. Who hasn't? Today's retailers need to focus on omni-channel, which I first heard from my friends over at RSR but was originally coined at IDC. First retailers added e-commerce to their store and catalog channels yielding multi-channel retailing. Consumers could use the channel that worked best for them. Then some consumers wanted to combine channels with features like buy-on-the-Web, pickup-in-the-store. Thus began the cross-channel initiatives to breakdown the silos and enable the channels to communicate with each other. But the multi-channel architecture is full of duplication that thwarts efforts of providing a consistent experience. Each has its own cart, its own pricing, and often its own CRM. This was an outcrop of trying to bring the independent channels to market quickly. Rather than reusing and rebuilding existing components to meet the new demands, silos were created that continue to exist today. Today's consumers want omni-channel retailing. They want to interact with brands in a consistent manner that is channel transparent, yet optimized for that particular interaction. The diagram below, from the soon-to-be-released NRF Mobile Blueprint v2, shows this progression. For retailers to provide an omni-channel experience, there needs to be one logical representation of products, prices, promotions, and customers across all channels. The only thing that varies is the presentation of the content based on the delivery mechanism (e.g. shelf labels, mobile phone, web site, print, etc.) and often these mechanisms can be combined in various ways. I'm looking forward to the day in which I can use my phone to scan QR-codes in a catalog to create a shopping cart of items. Then do some further research on the retailer's Web site and be told about related items that might interest me. Be able to easily solicit opinions and reviews from social sites, and finally enter the store to pickup my items, knowing that any applicable coupons have been applied. In this scenario, I the consumer are dealing with a single brand that is aware of me and my needs throughout the entire transaction. Nirvana.

    Read the article

  • HTG Explains: Why Does Rebooting a Computer Fix So Many Problems?

    - by Chris Hoffman
    Ask a geek how to fix a problem you’ve having with your Windows computer and they’ll likely ask “Have you tried rebooting it?” This seems like a flippant response, but rebooting a computer can actually solve many problems. So what’s going on here? Why does resetting a device or restarting a program fix so many problems? And why don’t geeks try to identify and fix problems rather than use the blunt hammer of “reset it”? This Isn’t Just About Windows Bear in mind that this soltion isn’t just limited to Windows computers, but applies to all types of computing devices. You’ll find the advice “try resetting it” applied to wireless routers, iPads, Android phones, and more. This same advice even applies to software — is Firefox acting slow and consuming a lot of memory? Try closing it and reopening it! Some Problems Require a Restart To illustrate why rebooting can fix so many problems, let’s take a look at the ultimate software problem a Windows computer can face: Windows halts, showing a blue screen of death. The blue screen was caused by a low-level error, likely a problem with a hardware driver or a hardware malfunction. Windows reaches a state where it doesn’t know how to recover, so it halts, shows a blue-screen of death, gathers information about the problem, and automatically restarts the computer for you . This restart fixes the blue screen of death. Windows has gotten better at dealing with errors — for example, if your graphics driver crashes, Windows XP would have frozen. In Windows Vista and newer versions of Windows, the Windows desktop will lose its fancy graphical effects for a few moments before regaining them. Behind the scenes, Windows is restarting the malfunctioning graphics driver. But why doesn’t Windows simply fix the problem rather than restarting the driver or the computer itself?  Well, because it can’t — the code has encountered a problem and stopped working completely, so there’s no way for it to continue. By restarting, the code can start from square one and hopefully it won’t encounter the same problem again. Examples of Restarting Fixing Problems While certain problems require a complete restart because the operating system or a hardware driver has stopped working, not every problem does. Some problems may be fixable without a restart, though a restart may be the easiest option. Windows is Slow: Let’s say Windows is running very slowly. It’s possible that a misbehaving program is using 99% CPU and draining the computer’s resources. A geek could head to the task manager and look around, hoping to locate the misbehaving process an end it. If an average user encountered this same problem, they could simply reboot their computer to fix it rather than dig through their running processes. Firefox or Another Program is Using Too Much Memory: In the past, Firefox has been the poster child for memory leaks on average PCs. Over time, Firefox would often consume more and more memory, getting larger and larger and slowing down. Closing Firefox will cause it to relinquish all of its memory. When it starts again, it will start from a clean state without any leaked memory. This doesn’t just apply to Firefox, but applies to any software with memory leaks. Internet or Wi-Fi Network Problems: If you have a problem with your Wi-Fi or Internet connection, the software on your router or modem may have encountered a problem. Resetting the router — just by unplugging it from its power socket and then plugging it back in — is a common solution for connection problems. In all cases, a restart wipes away the current state of the software . Any code that’s stuck in a misbehaving state will be swept away, too. When you restart, the computer or device will bring the system up from scratch, restarting all the software from square one so it will work just as well as it was working before. “Soft Resets” vs. “Hard Resets” In the mobile device world, there are two types of “resets” you can perform. A “soft reset” is simply restarting a device normally — turning it off and then on again. A “hard reset” is resetting its software state back to its factory default state. When you think about it, both types of resets fix problems for a similar reason. For example, let’s say your Windows computer refuses to boot or becomes completely infected with malware. Simply restarting the computer won’t fix the problem, as the problem is with the files on the computer’s hard drive — it has corrupted files or malware that loads at startup on its hard drive. However, reinstalling Windows (performing a “Refresh or Reset your PC” operation in Windows 8 terms) will wipe away everything on the computer’s hard drive, restoring it to its formerly clean state. This is simpler than looking through the computer’s hard drive, trying to identify the exact reason for the problems or trying to ensure you’ve obliterated every last trace of malware. It’s much faster to simply start over from a known-good, clean state instead of trying to locate every possible problem and fix it. Ultimately, the answer is that “resetting a computer wipes away the current state of the software, including any problems that have developed, and allows it to start over from square one.” It’s easier and faster to start from a clean state than identify and fix any problems that may be occurring — in fact, in some cases, it may be impossible to fix problems without beginning from that clean state. Image Credit: Arria Belli on Flickr, DeclanTM on Flickr     

    Read the article

  • The Social Business Thought Leaders

    - by kellsey.ruppel
    Enterprise Gamification, Big Data, Social Support, Total Customer Experience, Pull Organizations, Social Business. Are these purely the latest buzzwords to enter the market or significant trends that companies should keep an eye on? Oracle recently sponsored and presented at the 5th Social Business Forum, one of the largest European events on the use of social media as a business tool and accelerator. Through the participation of dozens of practitioners, experts and customer success stories, the conference demonstrated how a perfect storm of technology, management and cultural change is pushing peer-to-peer conversations deep into business processes. It is clear that Social Business is serving as a new propellant of agility, efficiency and reactivity. According to Deloitte and MIT what we have learned to call Social Business is considered important in the next 3 years by 86% of managers (see Social Business: What Are Companies Really Doing?, MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte). McKinsey further estimates the value that can be unlocked in terms of knowledge-worker productivity, consumer insights, product co-creation, improved sales, marketing and customer service up to $1300B (See The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies, McKinsey Global Institute). This impacts any industry, with the strongest effects seen in Media & Entertainment, Technology, Telcos and Education. For those not able to attend the Social Business Forum and also for the many friends that joined us in Milan, we decided to keep the conversation going by extracting some golden nuggets from the perspective of five of the most well-known thought-leaders in this space. Starting this week you will have the chance to view: John Hagel (Author of the Power of Pull and Co-Chairman Center for the Edge at Deloitte & Touche) Christian Finn (Senior Director, WebCenter Evangelist at Oracle) Steve Denning (Author of The Radical Management and Independent Management Consulting Professional) Esteban Kolsky (Principal & Founder at ThinkJar) Ray Wang (Principal Analyst & CEO at Constellation Research) Stay tuned to hear: How pull organizations are addressing some of the deepest challenges impacting the market. How to integrate social into existing infrastructure and processes. How to apply radical management to become more agile and profitable. About the importance of gamification as an engagement lever. The first interview with John Hagel will be published tomorrow. Don't miss it and the entire series!

    Read the article

  • Sabre Manages Fast Data Growth with Oracle Data Integration Products

    - by Irem Radzik
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Last year at OpenWorld we announced Sabre Holding as a winner of the Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards. The Sabre team did an excellent job at leveraging cutting edge technologies for managing rapid data growth and exponential scalability demands they have experienced in the travel industry. Today we announced the details and specific benefits of Sabre’s new real-time data integration solution in a press release. Please take a look if you haven’t seen it yet. Sabre Holdings Deploys Oracle Data Integrator and Oracle GoldenGate to Support Rapid Customer Growth There are 3 different areas of benefits Sabre achieved by using Oracle Data Integration products: Manages 7X increase in data sources for the enterprise data warehouse Reduced infrastructure complexity Decreased time to market for new products and services by 30 percent. This simply shows that using latest technologies helps the companies to innovate robust solutions against today’s key data management challenges. And the benefit of using a next generation data integration technology is not only seen in the IT operations, but also in the business side. A better data integration solution for the enterprise data warehouse delivered the platform they need to accelerate how they service their customers, improving their competitive advantage. Tomorrow I will give another great example of innovation with next generation data integration from Oracle. We will be discussing the Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards 2012 winners and their results with using Oracle’s data integration products.

    Read the article

  • Content from Oracle Business Analytics Partner Forum 2013

    - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM
    Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 This year’s EMEA Partner Forum (11th June - 14th June, 2013 in Milan, Italy) was well attended with 120 partners from countries around Europe and the Middle East. The presentation content for the main Plenary day and for the OBI, and Hyperion 11.1.2.3 breakout sessions is available to partners who attended. If you could not make it, and would like access to this material, please email to [email protected]. You can also get additional Hyperion content from the EPM Solution Factory page: for logon details please contact [email protected]. The keynote by Oracle VP Rich Clayton set the agenda, plus many partners presented their experiences, including Accenture, Deloitte, Tech Edge, iConsulting, RealDecoy, Rittman-Mead, and Aorta, covering a variety of topics such as: · 21st Century Business Analytics · The 21st Century CFO · Driving Profitability through Customer Experience · Exalytics Case Studies For details on the agenda and multi-day breakout sessions download here the Agenda.pdf. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;}

    Read the article

< Previous Page | 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114  | Next Page >