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• Queued Loadtest to remove Concurrency issues using Shared Data Service in OpenScript

  - by stefan.thieme(at)oracle.com

  Queued Processing to remove Concurrency issues in Loadtest ScriptsSome scripts act on information returned by the server, e.g. act on first item in the returned list of pending tasks/actions. This may lead to concurrency issues if the virtual users simulated in a load test scenario are not synchronized in some way.As the load test cases should be carried out in a comparable and straight forward manner simply cancel a transaction in case a collision occurs is clearly not an option. In case you increase the number of virtual users this approach would lead to a high number of requests for the early steps in your transaction (e.g. login, retrieve list of action points, assign an action point to the virtual user) but later steps would be rarely visited successfully or at all, depending on the application logic.A way to tackle this problem is to enqueue the virtual users in a Shared Data Service queue. Only the first virtual user in this queue will be allowed to carry out the critical steps (retrieve list of action points, assign an action point to the virtual user) in your transaction at any one time.Once a virtual user has passed the critical path it will dequeue himself from the head of the queue and continue with his actions. This does theoretically allow virtual users to run in parallel all steps of the transaction which are not part of the critical path.In practice it has been seen this is rarely the case, though it does not allow adding more than N users to perform a transaction without causing delays due to virtual users waiting in the queue. N being the time of the total transaction divided by the sum of the time of all critical steps in this transaction.While this problem can be circumvented by allowing multiple queues to act on individual segments of the list of actions, e.g. per country filter, ends with 0..9 filter, etc.This would require additional handling of these additional queues of slots for the virtual users at the head of the queue in order to maintain the mutually exclusive access to the first element in the list returned by the server at any one time of the load test. Such an improved handling of multiple queues and/or multiple slots is above the subject of this paper.Shared Data Services Pre-RequisitesStart WebLogic Server to host Shared Data ServicesYou will have to make sure that your WebLogic server is installed and started. Shared Data Services may not work if you installed only the minimal installation package for OpenScript. If however you installed the default package including OLT and OTM, you may follow the instructions below to start and verify WebLogic installation.To start the WebLogic Server deployed underneath of Oracle Load Testing and/or Oracle Test Manager you can go to your Start menu, Oracle Application Testing Suite and select the Restart Oracle Application Testing Suite Application Service entry from the Tools submenu.To verify the service has been started you can run the Microsoft Management Console for Services by Selecting Run from the Start Menu and entering services.msc. Look for the entry that reads Oracle Application Testing Suite Application Service, once it has changed it status from Starting to Started you can proceed to verify the login. Please note that this may take several minutes, I would say up to 10 minutes depending on the strength of your CPU horse-power.Verify WebLogic Server user credentialsYou will have to make sure that your WebLogic Server is installed and started. Next open the Oracle WebLogic Server Adminstration Console on http://localhost:8088/console.It may take a while until the application is deployed and started. It may display the following until the Administration Console has been deployed on the fly.Afterwards you can login using the username oats and the password that you selected during install time for your Application Testing Suite administrative purposes.This will bring up the Home page of you WebLogic Server. You have actually verified that you are able to login with these credentials already. However if you want to check the details, navigate to Security Realms, myrealm, Users and Groups tab.Here you could add users to your WebLogic Server which could be used in the later steps. Details on the Groups required for such a custom user to work are exceeding this quick overview and have to be selected with the WebLogic Server Adminstration Guide in mind.Shared Data Services pre-requisites for Load testingOpenScript Preferences have to be set to enable Encryption and provide a default Shared Data Service Connection for Playback.These are pre-requisites you want to use for load testing with Shared Data Services.Please note that the usage of the Connection Parameters (individual directive in the script) for Shared Data Services did not playback reliably in the current version 9.20.0370 of Oracle Load Testing (OLT) and encryption of credentials still seemed to be mandatory as well.General Encryption settingsSelect OpenScript Preferences from the View menu and navigate to the General, Encryption entry in the tree on the left. Select the Encrypt script data option from the list and enter the same password that you used for securing your WebLogic Server Administration Console.Enable global shared data access credentialsSelect OpenScript Preferences from the View menu and navigate to the Playback, Shared Data entry in the tree on the left. Enable the global shared data access credentials and enter the Address, User name and Password determined for your WebLogic Server to host Shared Data Services.Please note, that you may want to replace the localhost in Address with the hosts realname in case you plan to run load tests with Loadtest Agents running on remote systems.Queued Processing of TransactionsEnable Shared Data Services Module in Script PropertiesThe Shared Data Services Module has to be enabled for each Script that wants to employ the Shared Data Service Queue functionality in OpenScript. It can be enabled under the Script menu selecting Script Properties. On the Script Properties Dialog select the Modules section and check Shared Data to enable Shared Data Service Module for your script. Checking the Shared Data Services option will effectively add a line to your script code that adds the sharedData ScriptService to your script class of IteratingVUserScript.@ScriptService oracle.oats.scripting.modules.sharedData.api.SharedDataService sharedData;Record your scriptRecord your script as usual and then add the following things for Queue handling in the Initialize code block, before the first step and after the last step of your critical path and in the Finalize code block.The java code to be added at individual locations is explained in the following sections in full detail.Create a Shared Data Queue in InitializeTo create a Shared Data Queue go to the Java view of your script and enter the following statements to the initialize() code block.info("Create queueA with life time of 120 minutes");sharedData.createQueue("queueA", 120);This will create an instantiation of the Shared Data Queue object named queueA which is maintained for upto 120 minutes.If you want to use the code for multiple scripts, make sure to use a different queue name for each one here and in the subsequent steps. You may even consider to use a dynamic queueName based on filters of your result list being concurrently accessed.Prepare a unique id for each IterationIn order to keep track of individual virtual users in our queue we need to create a unique identifier from the virtual user id and the used username right after retrieving the next record from our databank file.getDatabank("Usernames").getNextDatabankRecord();getVariables().set("usernameValue1","VU_{{@vuid}}_{{@iterationnum}}_{{db.Usernames.Username}}_{{@timestamp}}_{{@random(10000)}}");String usernameValue = getVariables().get("usernameValue1");info("Now running virtual user " + usernameValue);As you can see from the above code block, we have set the OpenScript variable usernameValue1 to VU_{{@vuid}}_{{@iterationnum}}_{{db.Usernames.Username}}_{{@timestamp}}_{{@random(10000)}} which is a concatenation of the virtual user id and the iterationnumber for general uniqueness; as well as the username from our databank, the timestamp and a random number for making it further unique and ease spotting of errors.Not all of these fields are actually required to make it really unique, but adding the queue name may also be considered to help troubleshoot multiple queues.The value is then retrieved with the getVariables.get() method call and assigned to the usernameValue String used throughout the script.Please note that moving the getDatabank("Usernames").getNextDatabankRecord(); call to the initialize block was later considered to remove concurrency of multiple virtual users running with the same userid and therefor accessing the same "My Inbox" in step 6. This will effectively give each virtual user a userid from the databank file. Make sure you have enough userids to remove this second hurdle.Enqueue and attend Queue before Critical PathTo maintain the right order of virtual users being allowed into the critical path of the transaction the following pseudo step has to be added in front of the first critical step. In the case of this example this is right in front of the step where we retrieve the list of actions from which we select the first to be assigned to us.beginStep("[0] Waiting in the Queue", 0);{info("Enqueued virtual user " + usernameValue + " at the end of queueA");sharedData.offerLast("queueA", usernameValue);info("Wait until the user is the first in queueA");String queueValue1 = null;do {// we wait for at least 0.7 seconds before we check the head of the// queue. This is the time it takes one user to move through the// critical path, i.e. pass steps [5] Enter country and [6] Assign// to meThread.sleep(700);queueValue1 = (String) sharedData.peekFirst("queueA");info("The first user in queueA is currently: '" + queueValue1 + "' " + queueValue1.getClass() + " length " + queueValue1.length() );info("The current user is '"+ usernameValue + "' " + usernameValue.getClass() + " length " + usernameValue.length() + ": indexOf " + usernameValue.indexOf(queueValue1) + " equals " + usernameValue.equals(queueValue1) );} while ( queueValue1.indexOf(usernameValue) < 0 );info("Now the user is the first in queueA");}endStep();This will enqueue the username to the tail of our Queue. It will will wait for at least 700 milliseconds, the time it takes for one user to exit the critical path and then compare the head of our queue with it's username. This last step will be repeated while the two are not equal (indexOf less than zero). If they are equal the indexOf will yield a value of zero or larger and we will perform the critical steps.Dequeue after Critical PathAfter the virtual user has left the critical path and complete its last step the following code block needs to dequeue the virtual user. In the case of our example this is right after the action has been actually assigned to the virtual user. This will allow the next virtual user to retrieve the list of actions still available and in turn let him make his selection/assignment.info("Get and remove the current user from the head of queueA");String pollValue1 = (String) sharedData.pollFirst("queueA");The current user is removed from the head of the queue. The next one will now be able to match his username against the head of the queue.Clear and Destroy Queue for FinishWhen the script has completed, it should clear and destroy the queue. This code block can be put in the finish block of your script and/or in a separate script in order to clear and remove the queue in case you have spotted an error or want to reset the queue for some reason.info("Clear queueA");sharedData.clearQueue("queueA");info("Destroy queueA");sharedData.destroyQueue("queueA");The users waiting in queueA are cleared and the queue is destroyed. If you have scripts still executing they will be caught in a loop.I found it better to maintain a separate Reset Queue script which contained only the following code in the initialize() block. I use to call this script to make sure the queue is cleared in between multiple Loadtest runs. This script could also even be added as the first in a larger scenario, which would execute it only once at very start of the Loadtest and make sure the queues do not contain any stale entries.info("Create queueA with life time of 120 minutes");sharedData.createQueue("queueA", 120);info("Clear queueA");sharedData.clearQueue("queueA");This will create a Shared Data Queue instance of queueA and clear all entries from this queue.Monitoring QueueWhile creating the scripts it was useful to monitor the contents, i.e. the current first user in the Queue. The following code block will make sure the Shared Data Queue is accessible in the initialize() block.info("Create queueA with life time of 120 minutes");sharedData.createQueue("queueA", 120);In the run() block the following code will continuously monitor the first element of the Queue and write an informational message with the current username Value to the Result window.info("Monitor the first users in queueA");String queueValue1 = null;do {queueValue1 = (String) sharedData.peekFirst("queueA");if (queueValue1 != null)info("The first user in queueA is currently: '" + queueValue1 + "' " + queueValue1.getClass() + " length " + queueValue1.length() );} while ( true );This script can be run from OpenScript parallel to a loadtest performed by the Oracle Load Test.However it is not recommend to run this in a production loadtest as the performance impact is unknown. Accessing the Queue's head with the peekFirst() method has been reported with about 2 seconds response time by both OpenScript and OTL. It is advised to log a Service Request to see if this could be lowered in future releases of Application Testing Suite, as the pollFirst() and even offerLast() writing to the tail of the Queue usually returned after an average 0.1 seconds.Debugging QueueWhile debugging the scripts the following was useful to remove single entries from its head, i.e. the current first user in the Queue. The following code block will make sure the Shared Data Queue is accessible in the initialize() block.info("Create queueA with life time of 120 minutes");sharedData.createQueue("queueA", 120);In the run() block the following code will remove the first element of the Queue and write an informational message with the current username Value to the Result window.info("Get and remove the current user from the head of queueA");String pollValue1 = (String) sharedData.pollFirst("queueA");info("The first user in queueA was currently: '" + pollValue1 + "' " + pollValue1.getClass() + " length " + pollValue1.length() );ReferencesOracle Functional Testing OpenScript User's Guide Version 9.20 [E15488-05]Chapter 17 Using the Shared Data Modulehttp://download.oracle.com/otn/nt/apptesting/oats-docs-9.21.0030.zipOracle Fusion Middleware Oracle WebLogic Server Administration Console Online Help 11g Release 1 (10.3.4) [E13952-04]Administration Console Online Help - Manage users and groupshttp://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E17904_01/apirefs.1111/e13952/taskhelp/security/ManageUsersAndGroups.htm

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• SQL SERVER – Step by Step Guide to Beginning Data Quality Services in SQL Server 2012 – Introduction to DQS

  - by pinaldave

  Data Quality Services is a very important concept of SQL Server. I have recently started to explore the same and I am really learning some good concepts. Here are two very important blog posts which one should go over before continuing this blog post. Installing Data Quality Services (DQS) on SQL Server 2012 Connecting Error to Data Quality Services (DQS) on SQL Server 2012 This article is introduction to Data Quality Services for beginners. We will be using an Excel file Click on the image to enlarge the it. In the first article we learned to install DQS. In this article we will see how we can learn about building Knowledge Base and using it to help us identify the quality of the data as well help correct the bad quality of the data. Here are the two very important steps we will be learning in this tutorial. Building a New Knowledge Base  Creating a New Data Quality Project Let us start the building the Knowledge Base. Click on New Knowledge Base. In our project we will be using the Excel as a knowledge base. Here is the Excel which we will be using. There are two columns. One is Colors and another is Shade. They are independent columns and not related to each other. The point which I am trying to show is that in Column A there are unique data and in Column B there are duplicate records. Clicking on New Knowledge Base will bring up the following screen. Enter the name of the new knowledge base. Clicking NEXT will bring up following screen where it will allow to select the EXCE file and it will also let users select the source column. I have selected Colors and Shade both as a source column. Creating a domain is very important. Here you can create a unique domain or domain which is compositely build from Colors and Shade. As this is the first example, I will create unique domain – for Colors I will create domain Colors and for Shade I will create domain Shade. Here is the screen which will demonstrate how the screen will look after creating domains. Clicking NEXT it will bring you to following screen where you can do the data discovery. Clicking on the START will start the processing of the source data provided. Pre-processed data will show various information related to the source data. In our case it shows that Colors column have unique data whereas Shade have non-unique data and unique data rows are only two. In the next screen you can actually add more rows as well see the frequency of the data as the values are listed unique. Clicking next will publish the knowledge base which is just created. Now the knowledge base is created. We will try to take any random data and attempt to do DQS implementation over it. I am using another excel sheet here for simplicity purpose. In reality you can easily use SQL Server table for the same. Click on New Data Quality Project to see start DQS Project. In the next screen it will ask which knowledge base to use. We will be using our Colors knowledge base which we have recently created. In the Colors knowledge base we had two columns – 1) Colors and 2) Shade. In our case we will be using both of the mappings here. User can select one or multiple column mapping over here. Now the most important phase of the complete project. Click on Start and it will make the cleaning process and shows various results. In our case there were two columns to be processed and it completed the task with necessary information. It demonstrated that in Colors columns it has not corrected any value by itself but in Shade value there is a suggestion it has. We can train the DQS to correct values but let us keep that subject for future blog posts. Now click next and keep the domain Colors selected left side. It will demonstrate that there are two incorrect columns which it needs to be corrected. Here is the place where once corrected value will be auto-corrected in future. I manually corrected the value here and clicked on Approve radio buttons. As soon as I click on Approve buttons the rows will be disappeared from this tab and will move to Corrected Tab. If I had rejected tab it would have moved the rows to Invalid tab as well. In this screen you can see how the corrected 2 rows are demonstrated. You can click on Correct tab and see previously validated 6 rows which passed the DQS process. Now let us click on the Shade domain on the left side of the screen. This domain shows very interesting details as there DQS system guessed the correct answer as Dark with the confidence level of 77%. It is quite a high confidence level and manual observation also demonstrate that Dark is the correct answer. I clicked on Approve and the row moved to corrected tab. On the next screen DQS shows the summary of all the activities. It also demonstrates how the correction of the quality of the data was performed. The user can explore their data to a SQL Server Table, CSV file or Excel. The user also has an option to either explore data and all the associated cleansing info or data only. I will select Data only for demonstration purpose. Clicking explore will generate the files. Let us open the generated file. It will look as following and it looks pretty complete and corrected. Well, we have successfully completed DQS Process. The process is indeed very easy. I suggest you try this out yourself and you will find it very easy to learn. In future we will go over advanced concepts. Are you using this feature on your production server? If yes, would you please leave a comment with your environment and business need. It will be indeed interesting to see where it is implemented. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Data Quality Services, DQS

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• Residual packages Ubuntu 12.04

  - by hydroxide

  I have an Asus Q500A with win8 and Ubuntu 12.04 64 bit; Linux kernel 3.8.0-32-generic. I have been having residual package issues which have been giving me trouble trying to reconfigure xserver-xorg-lts-raring. I tried removing all residual packages from synaptic but the following were not removed. Output of sudo dpkg -l | grep "^rc" rc gstreamer0.10-plugins-good:i386 0.10.31-1ubuntu1.2 GStreamer plugins from the "good" set rc libaa1:i386 1.4p5-39ubuntu1 ASCII art library rc libaio1:i386 0.3.109-2ubuntu1 Linux kernel AIO access library - shared library rc libao4:i386 1.1.0-1ubuntu2 Cross Platform Audio Output Library rc libasn1-8-heimdal:i386 1.6~git20120311.dfsg.1-2ubuntu0.1 Heimdal Kerberos - ASN.1 library rc libasound2:i386 1.0.25-1ubuntu10.2 shared library for ALSA applications rc libasyncns0:i386 0.8-4 Asynchronous name service query library rc libatk1.0-0:i386 2.4.0-0ubuntu1 ATK accessibility toolkit rc libavahi-client3:i386 0.6.30-5ubuntu2 Avahi client library rc libavahi-common3:i386 0.6.30-5ubuntu2 Avahi common library rc libavc1394-0:i386 0.5.3-1ubuntu2 control IEEE 1394 audio/video devices rc libcaca0:i386 0.99.beta17-2.1ubuntu2 colour ASCII art library rc libcairo-gobject2:i386 1.10.2-6.1ubuntu3 The Cairo 2D vector graphics library (GObject library) rc libcairo2:i386 1.10.2-6.1ubuntu3 The Cairo 2D vector graphics library rc libcanberra-gtk0:i386 0.28-3ubuntu3 GTK+ helper for playing widget event sounds with libcanberra rc libcanberra0:i386 0.28-3ubuntu3 simple abstract interface for playing event sounds rc libcap2:i386 1:2.22-1ubuntu3 support for getting/setting POSIX.1e capabilities rc libcdparanoia0:i386 3.10.2+debian-10ubuntu1 audio extraction tool for sampling CDs (library) rc libcroco3:i386 0.6.5-1ubuntu0.1 Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) parsing and manipulation toolkit rc libcups2:i386 1.5.3-0ubuntu8 Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - Core library rc libcupsimage2:i386 1.5.3-0ubuntu8 Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - Raster image library rc libcurl3:i386 7.22.0-3ubuntu4.3 Multi-protocol file transfer library (OpenSSL) rc libdatrie1:i386 0.2.5-3 Double-array trie library rc libdbus-glib-1-2:i386 0.98-1ubuntu1.1 simple interprocess messaging system (GLib-based shared library) rc libdbusmenu-qt2:i386 0.9.2-0ubuntu1 Qt implementation of the DBusMenu protocol rc libdrm-nouveau2:i386 2.4.43-0ubuntu0.0.3 Userspace interface to nouveau-specific kernel DRM services -- runtime rc libdv4:i386 1.0.0-3ubuntu1 software library for DV format digital video (runtime lib) rc libesd0:i386 0.2.41-10build3 Enlightened Sound Daemon - Shared libraries rc libexif12:i386 0.6.20-2ubuntu0.1 library to parse EXIF files rc libexpat1:i386 2.0.1-7.2ubuntu1.1 XML parsing C library - runtime library rc libflac8:i386 1.2.1-6 Free Lossless Audio Codec - runtime C library rc libfontconfig1:i386 2.8.0-3ubuntu9.1 generic font configuration library - runtime rc libfreetype6:i386 2.4.8-1ubuntu2.1 FreeType 2 font engine, shared library files rc libgail18:i386 2.24.10-0ubuntu6 GNOME Accessibility Implementation Library -- shared libraries rc libgconf-2-4:i386 3.2.5-0ubuntu2 GNOME configuration database system (shared libraries) rc libgcrypt11:i386 1.5.0-3ubuntu0.2 LGPL Crypto library - runtime library rc libgd2-xpm:i386 2.0.36~rc1~dfsg-6ubuntu2 GD Graphics Library version 2 rc libgdbm3:i386 1.8.3-10 GNU dbm database routines (runtime version) rc libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0:i386 2.26.1-1 GDK Pixbuf library rc libgif4:i386 4.1.6-9ubuntu1 library for GIF images (library) rc libgl1-mesa-dri-lts-quantal:i386 9.0.3-0ubuntu0.4~precise1 free implementation of the OpenGL API -- DRI modules rc libgl1-mesa-dri-lts-raring:i386 9.1.4-0ubuntu0.1~precise2 free implementation of the OpenGL API -- DRI modules rc libgl1-mesa-glx:i386 8.0.4-0ubuntu0.6 free implementation of the OpenGL API -- GLX runtime rc libgl1-mesa-glx-lts-quantal:i386 9.0.3-0ubuntu0.4~precise1 free implementation of the OpenGL API -- GLX runtime rc libgl1-mesa-glx-lts-raring:i386 9.1.4-0ubuntu0.1~precise2 free implementation of the OpenGL API -- GLX runtime rc libglapi-mesa:i386 8.0.4-0ubuntu0.6 free implementation of the GL API -- shared library rc libglapi-mesa-lts-quantal:i386 9.0.3-0ubuntu0.4~precise1 free implementation of the GL API -- shared library rc libglapi-mesa-lts-raring:i386 9.1.4-0ubuntu0.1~precise2 free implementation of the GL API -- shared library rc libglu1-mesa:i386 8.0.4-0ubuntu0.6 Mesa OpenGL utility library (GLU) rc libgnome-keyring0:i386 3.2.2-2 GNOME keyring services library rc libgnutls26:i386 2.12.14-5ubuntu3.5 GNU TLS library - runtime library rc libgomp1:i386 4.6.3-1ubuntu5 GCC OpenMP (GOMP) support library rc libgpg-error0:i386 1.10-2ubuntu1 library for common error values and messages in GnuPG components rc libgphoto2-2:i386 2.4.13-1ubuntu1.2 gphoto2 digital camera library rc libgphoto2-port0:i386 2.4.13-1ubuntu1.2 gphoto2 digital camera port library rc libgssapi-krb5-2:i386 1.10+dfsg~beta1-2ubuntu0.3 MIT Kerberos runtime libraries - krb5 GSS-API Mechanism rc libgssapi3-heimdal:i386 1.6~git20120311.dfsg.1-2ubuntu0.1 Heimdal Kerberos - GSSAPI support library rc libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-0:i386 0.10.36-1ubuntu0.1 GStreamer libraries from the "base" set rc libgstreamer0.10-0:i386 0.10.36-1ubuntu1 Core GStreamer libraries and elements rc libgtk2.0-0:i386 2.24.10-0ubuntu6 GTK+ graphical user interface library rc libgudev-1.0-0:i386 1:175-0ubuntu9.4 GObject-based wrapper library for libudev rc libhcrypto4-heimdal:i386 1.6~git20120311.dfsg.1-2ubuntu0.1 Heimdal Kerberos - crypto library rc libheimbase1-heimdal:i386 1.6~git20120311.dfsg.1-2ubuntu0.1 Heimdal Kerberos - Base library rc libheimntlm0-heimdal:i386 1.6~git20120311.dfsg.1-2ubuntu0.1 Heimdal Kerberos - NTLM support library rc libhx509-5-heimdal:i386 1.6~git20120311.dfsg.1-2ubuntu0.1 Heimdal Kerberos - X509 support library rc libibus-1.0-0:i386 1.4.1-3ubuntu1 Intelligent Input Bus - shared library rc libice6:i386 2:1.0.7-2build1 X11 Inter-Client Exchange library rc libidn11:i386 1.23-2 GNU Libidn library, implementation of IETF IDN specifications rc libiec61883-0:i386 1.2.0-0.1ubuntu1 an partial implementation of IEC 61883 rc libieee1284-3:i386 0.2.11-10build1 cross-platform library for parallel port access rc libjack-jackd2-0:i386 1.9.8~dfsg.1-1ubuntu2 JACK Audio Connection Kit (libraries) rc libjasper1:i386 1.900.1-13 JasPer JPEG-2000 runtime library rc libjpeg-turbo8:i386 1.1.90+svn733-0ubuntu4.2 IJG JPEG compliant runtime library. rc libjson0:i386 0.9-1ubuntu1 JSON manipulation library - shared library rc libk5crypto3:i386 1.10+dfsg~beta1-2ubuntu0.3 MIT Kerberos runtime libraries - Crypto Library rc libkeyutils1:i386 1.5.2-2 Linux Key Management Utilities (library) rc libkrb5-26-heimdal:i386 1.6~git20120311.dfsg.1-2ubuntu0.1 Heimdal Kerberos - libraries rc libkrb5-3:i386 1.10+dfsg~beta1-2ubuntu0.3 MIT Kerberos runtime libraries rc libkrb5support0:i386 1.10+dfsg~beta1-2ubuntu0.3 MIT Kerberos runtime libraries - Support library rc liblcms1:i386 1.19.dfsg-1ubuntu3 Little CMS color management library rc libldap-2.4-2:i386 2.4.28-1.1ubuntu4.4 OpenLDAP libraries rc libllvm3.0:i386 3.0-4ubuntu1 Low-Level Virtual Machine (LLVM), runtime library rc libllvm3.1:i386 3.1-2ubuntu1~12.04.1 Low-Level Virtual Machine (LLVM), runtime library rc libllvm3.2:i386 3.2-2ubuntu5~precise1 Low-Level Virtual Machine (LLVM), runtime library rc libltdl7:i386 2.4.2-1ubuntu1 A system independent dlopen wrapper for GNU libtool rc libmad0:i386 0.15.1b-7ubuntu1 MPEG audio decoder library rc libmikmod2:i386 3.1.12-2 Portable sound library rc libmng1:i386 1.0.10-3 Multiple-image Network Graphics library rc libmpg123-0:i386 1.12.1-3.2ubuntu1 MPEG layer 1/2/3 audio decoder -- runtime library rc libmysqlclient18:i386 5.5.32-0ubuntu0.12.04.1 MySQL database client library rc libnspr4:i386 4.9.5-0ubuntu0.12.04.1 NetScape Portable Runtime Library rc libnss3:i386 3.14.3-0ubuntu0.12.04.1 Network Security Service libraries rc libodbc1:i386 2.2.14p2-5ubuntu3 ODBC library for Unix rc libogg0:i386 1.2.2~dfsg-1ubuntu1 Ogg bitstream library rc libopenal1:i386 1:1.13-4ubuntu3 Software implementation of the OpenAL API (shared library) rc liborc-0.4-0:i386 1:0.4.16-1ubuntu2 Library of Optimized Inner Loops Runtime Compiler rc libosmesa6:i386 8.0.4-0ubuntu0.6 Mesa Off-screen rendering extension rc libp11-kit0:i386 0.12-2ubuntu1 Library for loading and coordinating access to PKCS#11 modules - runtime rc libpango1.0-0:i386 1.30.0-0ubuntu3.1 Layout and rendering of internationalized text rc libpixman-1-0:i386 0.24.4-1 pixel-manipulation library for X and cairo rc libproxy1:i386 0.4.7-0ubuntu4.1 automatic proxy configuration management library (shared) rc libpulse-mainloop-glib0:i386 1:1.1-0ubuntu15.4 PulseAudio client libraries (glib support) rc libpulse0:i386 1:1.1-0ubuntu15.4 PulseAudio client libraries rc libqt4-dbus:i386 4:4.8.1-0ubuntu4.4 Qt 4 D-Bus module rc libqt4-declarative:i386 4:4.8.1-0ubuntu4.4 Qt 4 Declarative module rc libqt4-designer:i386 4:4.8.1-0ubuntu4.4 Qt 4 designer module rc libqt4-network:i386 4:4.8.1-0ubuntu4.4 Qt 4 network module rc libqt4-opengl:i386 4:4.8.1-0ubuntu4.4 Qt 4 OpenGL module rc libqt4-qt3support:i386 4:4.8.1-0ubuntu4.4 Qt 3 compatibility library for Qt 4 rc libqt4-script:i386 4:4.8.1-0ubuntu4.4 Qt 4 script module rc libqt4-scripttools:i386 4:4.8.1-0ubuntu4.4 Qt 4 script tools module rc libqt4-sql:i386 4:4.8.1-0ubuntu4.4 Qt 4 SQL module rc libqt4-svg:i386 4:4.8.1-0ubuntu4.4 Qt 4 SVG module rc libqt4-test:i386 4:4.8.1-0ubuntu4.4 Qt 4 test module rc libqt4-xml:i386 4:4.8.1-0ubuntu4.4 Qt 4 XML module rc libqt4-xmlpatterns:i386 4:4.8.1-0ubuntu4.4 Qt 4 XML patterns module rc libqtcore4:i386 4:4.8.1-0ubuntu4.4 Qt 4 core module rc libqtgui4:i386 4:4.8.1-0ubuntu4.4 Qt 4 GUI module rc libqtwebkit4:i386 2.2.1-1ubuntu4 Web content engine library for Qt rc libraw1394-11:i386 2.0.7-1ubuntu1 library for direct access to IEEE 1394 bus (aka FireWire) rc libroken18-heimdal:i386 1.6~git20120311.dfsg.1-2ubuntu0.1 Heimdal Kerberos - roken support library rc librsvg2-2:i386 2.36.1-0ubuntu1 SAX-based renderer library for SVG files (runtime) rc librtmp0:i386 2.4~20110711.gitc28f1bab-1 toolkit for RTMP streams (shared library) rc libsamplerate0:i386 0.1.8-4 Audio sample rate conversion library rc libsane:i386 1.0.22-7ubuntu1 API library for scanners rc libsasl2-2:i386 2.1.25.dfsg1-3ubuntu0.1 Cyrus SASL - authentication abstraction library rc libsdl-image1.2:i386 1.2.10-3 image loading library for Simple DirectMedia Layer 1.2 rc libsdl-mixer1.2:i386 1.2.11-7 Mixer library for Simple DirectMedia Layer 1.2, libraries rc libsdl-net1.2:i386 1.2.7-5 Network library for Simple DirectMedia Layer 1.2, libraries rc libsdl-ttf2.0-0:i386 2.0.9-1.1ubuntu1 ttf library for Simple DirectMedia Layer with FreeType 2 support rc libsdl1.2debian:i386 1.2.14-6.4ubuntu3 Simple DirectMedia Layer rc libshout3:i386 2.2.2-7ubuntu1 MP3/Ogg Vorbis broadcast streaming library rc libsm6:i386 2:1.2.0-2build1 X11 Session Management library rc libsndfile1:i386 1.0.25-4 Library for reading/writing audio files rc libsoup-gnome2.4-1:i386 2.38.1-1 HTTP library implementation in C -- GNOME support library rc libsoup2.4-1:i386 2.38.1-1 HTTP library implementation in C -- Shared library rc libspeex1:i386 1.2~rc1-3ubuntu2 The Speex codec runtime library rc libspeexdsp1:i386 1.2~rc1-3ubuntu2 The Speex extended runtime library rc libsqlite3-0:i386 3.7.9-2ubuntu1.1 SQLite 3 shared library rc libssl0.9.8:i386 0.9.8o-7ubuntu3.1 SSL shared libraries rc libstdc++5:i386 1:3.3.6-25ubuntu1 The GNU Standard C++ Library v3 rc libstdc++6:i386 4.6.3-1ubuntu5 GNU Standard C++ Library v3 rc libtag1-vanilla:i386 1.7-1ubuntu5 audio meta-data library - vanilla flavour rc libtasn1-3:i386 2.10-1ubuntu1.1 Manage ASN.1 structures (runtime) rc libtdb1:i386 1.2.9-4 Trivial Database - shared library rc libthai0:i386 0.1.16-3 Thai language support library rc libtheora0:i386 1.1.1+dfsg.1-3ubuntu2 The Theora Video Compression Codec rc libtiff4:i386 3.9.5-2ubuntu1.5 Tag Image File Format (TIFF) library rc libtxc-dxtn-s2tc0:i386 0~git20110809-2.1 Texture compression library for Mesa rc libunistring0:i386 0.9.3-5 Unicode string library for C rc libusb-0.1-4:i386 2:0.1.12-20 userspace USB programming library rc libv4l-0:i386 0.8.6-1ubuntu2 Collection of video4linux support libraries rc libv4lconvert0:i386 0.8.6-1ubuntu2 Video4linux frame format conversion library rc libvisual-0.4-0:i386 0.4.0-4 Audio visualization framework rc libvorbis0a:i386 1.3.2-1ubuntu3 The Vorbis General Audio Compression Codec (Decoder library) rc libvorbisenc2:i386 1.3.2-1ubuntu3 The Vorbis General Audio Compression Codec (Encoder library) rc libvorbisfile3:i386 1.3.2-1ubuntu3 The Vorbis General Audio Compression Codec (High Level API) rc libwavpack1:i386 4.60.1-2 audio codec (lossy and lossless) - library rc libwind0-heimdal:i386 1.6~git20120311.dfsg.1-2ubuntu0.1 Heimdal Kerberos - stringprep implementation rc libwrap0:i386 7.6.q-21 Wietse Venema's TCP wrappers library rc libx11-6:i386 2:1.4.99.1-0ubuntu2.2 X11 client-side library rc libx11-xcb1:i386 2:1.4.99.1-0ubuntu2.2 Xlib/XCB interface library rc libxau6:i386 1:1.0.6-4 X11 authorisation library rc libxaw7:i386 2:1.0.9-3ubuntu1 X11 Athena Widget library rc libxcb-dri2-0:i386 1.8.1-1ubuntu0.2 X C Binding, dri2 extension rc libxcb-glx0:i386 1.8.1-1ubuntu0.2 X C Binding, glx extension rc libxcb-render0:i386 1.8.1-1ubuntu0.2 X C Binding, render extension rc libxcb-shm0:i386 1.8.1-1ubuntu0.2 X C Binding, shm extension rc libxcb1:i386 1.8.1-1ubuntu0.2 X C Binding rc libxcomposite1:i386 1:0.4.3-2build1 X11 Composite extension library rc libxcursor1:i386 1:1.1.12-1ubuntu0.1 X cursor management library rc libxdamage1:i386 1:1.1.3-2build1 X11 damaged region extension library rc libxdmcp6:i386 1:1.1.0-4 X11 Display Manager Control Protocol library rc libxext6:i386 2:1.3.0-3ubuntu0.1 X11 miscellaneous extension library rc libxfixes3:i386 1:5.0-4ubuntu4.1 X11 miscellaneous 'fixes' extension library rc libxft2:i386 2.2.0-3ubuntu2 FreeType-based font drawing library for X rc libxi6:i386 2:1.6.0-0ubuntu2.1 X11 Input extension library rc libxinerama1:i386 2:1.1.1-3ubuntu0.1 X11 Xinerama extension library rc libxml2:i386 2.7.8.dfsg-5.1ubuntu4.6 GNOME XML library rc libxmu6:i386 2:1.1.0-3 X11 miscellaneous utility library rc libxp6:i386 1:1.0.1-2ubuntu0.12.04.1 X Printing Extension (Xprint) client library rc libxpm4:i386 1:3.5.9-4 X11 pixmap library rc libxrandr2:i386 2:1.3.2-2ubuntu0.2 X11 RandR extension library rc libxrender1:i386 1:0.9.6-2ubuntu0.1 X Rendering Extension client library rc libxslt1.1:i386 1.1.26-8ubuntu1.3 XSLT 1.0 processing library - runtime library rc libxss1:i386 1:1.2.1-2 X11 Screen Saver extension library rc libxt6:i386 1:1.1.1-2ubuntu0.1 X11 toolkit intrinsics library rc libxtst6:i386 2:1.2.0-4ubuntu0.1 X11 Testing -- Record extension library rc libxv1:i386 2:1.0.6-2ubuntu0.1 X11 Video extension library rc libxxf86vm1:i386 1:1.1.1-2ubuntu0.1 X11 XFree86 video mode extension library rc odbcinst1debian2:i386 2.2.14p2-5ubuntu3 Support library for accessing odbc ini files rc skype-bin:i386 4.2.0.11-0ubuntu0.12.04.2 client for Skype VOIP and instant messaging service - binary files rc sni-qt:i386 0.2.5-0ubuntu3 indicator support for Qt rc wine-compholio:i386 1.7.4~ubuntu12.04.1 The Compholio Edition is a special build of the popular Wine software rc xaw3dg:i386 1.5+E-18.1ubuntu1 Xaw3d widget set

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• Speaker at the German Visual FoxPro Developer Conference 2004

  The following is an excerpt from the UniversalThread conference coverage of the German Visual FoxPro Developer Conference 2004 written by Hans-Otto Lochmann, Armin Neudert and myself. TRACK Active FoxPro Pages Back in 1996 Peter Herzog invented a FoxPro based solution to provide intranet capabilities for one of his customers. Nearly at the same time Rick Strahl had the same task and created WestWind Web Connection (WWWC). The aspect that developers have to have a full Visual FoxPro development environment to create WWWC solutions was the starting point of a "personal sportive competition" of Peter to write his own solution. But the main aspect has to be that it doesn't rely on a full VFP version in order to run. The VFP runtime should enough and the source code has to be compiled and interpreted on the fly. So, as Microsoft released Active Server Pages a name for Peter's solution was found: Active FoxPro Pages (AFP). During the years many drawbacks, design aspects as well as technological hassles forced ProLib Software to refactor the product. This way many limits like DCOM configuration, file-based information transfer between Web server and AFP, missing features (like upload forms or other Web servers than IIS) and extensibility were eliminated. As a consequence ProLib Software decided to rewrite Active FoxPro Pages in mid of 2002 completely. Christof Wollenhaupt, before his marriage known as Christof Lange, and Jochen Kirstätter had to solve this task. AFP 3.0 was officially released at German Devcon in November 2002. Today AFP has six distributors world-wide and there is a lot more information available online than before version 3.0. Directly after a short welcome speech by Rainer Becker, Jochen Kirstätter - aka JoKi - opened today's AFP track and introduced the basic concepts how Active FoxPro Pages works in general, explained the AFP terminilogy and every single component, and presented a small Walk-Through about how to write an AFP-based Web solution. Actually his presentation slides themselves were an AFP Web application. This way it was easy to integrate accompanying AFP samples on the fly. Additionally it was shown that no Visual FoxPro development environment is needed to create a Web application. A simple text editor like NotePad or any WYSIWYG editor on the market is usable to fullfil customer's requirements.Welcome at least two new speakers - Nina Schwanzer and Bernhard Reiter. Both are working at ProLib Software and this year's conference is their first time as speakers. And they did their job very well. The whole session was kind of a "ping pong" game and those two complemented each other to keep the audience in tension. First, they described typical requirements a modern desktop application should fullfil - online registration and activation, auto-update capabilities, or even frontend to administer a Web application on a remote system via internet, and explained how possible solutions like Web Services (using the SOAP interface), DCOM, and even .NET might solve those requirements. But any of those ways has different drawbacks like complicated installation or configuration, or extraordinary download sizes. Next, they introduced a technology they developed and used in a customer's project: Active FoxPro Pages Remote Procedure Call (AFP RPC). [...]   In the next session JoKi described how to extend Active FoxPro Pages. On the one hand AFP provides a plugin interface, and on the other hand any addon for Visual FoxPro might be usable as well. During the first half he spoke about the plugin interface and wrote live a new AFP extension - the Devcon plugin. Later he questioned any former step and showed that a single AFP document may solve the problem as well. So, developing extensions is only interesting if they are re-usable and generic. At the end he talked about multiple interfaces for the same business logic. For instance plain VFP class, COM server and .NET integration. Currently there are several specialized AFP extensions for sending mail, for using cryptographic routines (ie. based on .NET classes), or enhanced methods to handle HTML/XML strings.Rainer Becker and Peter Herzog introduced a new development for Visual Extend (VFX) - an AFP form builder. With this builder creating an AFP Web form designed with Visual FoxPro's form designer was a matter of seconds. The builder itself is currently in pre-release status and will be part of the VFX framework in the future. It was very impressive to see that the whole design of a form as well as most parts of its functionality were exported to a combination of HTML, JavaScript and Active FoxPro Pages. At half-time Jürgen "wOOdy" Wondzinski and JoKi changed places with Rainer and Peter, and presented some Web solutions in AFP. [...] Visual FoxPro 9.0 und Linux Is Linux still a topic for Visual FoxPro developers based on the activities during this year? In his session Jochen Kirstätter - aka JoKi - went not through the technical steps and requirements on how to setup and run FoxPro on a Linux client. Instead, he explained what Linux actually is, and talked about the high variety of distributions. In fact there are a lot of distributions around but since some several years there are some specialized ones available: Live Distributions (aka LiveCDs).The intension of LiveCDs is to run a full-featured Linux operating system on any personal computer directly from a bootable medium, like CD, DVD, or even USB memory stick, without installation on a hard disk. One of the first Linux LiveCDs was made by Klaus Knopper and is well-known as Knoppix. Today, many other LiveCDs are based on the concepts of Knoppix. During the session Jochen booted Morphix, a very light-weighted LiveCD, on his notebook, and actually showed the attendees that testing and playing around with Linux is absolutely easy. Running a text processing application swept away most of the contrary aspects the audience had. Okay, where is the part about FoxPro? Well, there are several scenarios a customer might require usage of Linux, and actually with all of them FoxPro could deal with. I guess that one of the more common ones is the situation that a customer has a heterogeneous intranet with Windows clients and Linux servers, i.e. Windows XP Professional and any Linux distribution on their servers. Even in this scenario there are two variants hidden! Why? Well, on the one hand there is a software package called Samba, that provides Windows server capabilities to a Linux system, and on the other hand there are several SQL servers for Linux, like PostgreSQL, DB2 and MySQL. Either way, FoxPro is able to deal with these scenarios, but you as developer have to know what you are talking about with your customers. And even if there's no Windows operating system, you are able to provide a FoxPro-based solution. Using the wine library - wine stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator - you are able to run your VFP applications on Linux clients, too; but not without reading VFP's EULA. Licenses were also part the session, and Jochen discussed the meaning of Open Source and its misunderstanding throughout most developers. Open Source does not mean that it's without a fee. Instead, it stands for access to the source code of an application or tool. And, VFP itself is one of the best samples to explain Open Source due to fact that since years, VFP is shipped with the xSource.zip archive. [...]

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• C#/.NET Little Wonders: The Predicate, Comparison, and Converter Generic Delegates

  - by James Michael Hare

  Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders posts can be found here. In the last three weeks, we examined the Action family of delegates (and delegates in general), the Func family of delegates, and the EventHandler family of delegates and how they can be used to support generic, reusable algorithms and classes. This week I will be completing my series on the generic delegates in the .NET Framework with a discussion of three more, somewhat less used, generic delegates: Predicate<T>, Comparison<T>, and Converter<TInput, TOutput>. These are older generic delegates that were introduced in .NET 2.0, mostly for use in the Array and List<T> classes.  Though older, it’s good to have an understanding of them and their intended purpose.  In addition, you can feel free to use them yourself, though obviously you can also use the equivalents from the Func family of delegates instead. Predicate<T> – delegate for determining matches The Predicate<T> delegate was a very early delegate developed in the .NET 2.0 Framework to determine if an item was a match for some condition in a List<T> or T[].  The methods that tend to use the Predicate<T> include: Find(), FindAll(), FindLast() Uses the Predicate<T> delegate to finds items, in a list/array of type T, that matches the given predicate. FindIndex(), FindLastIndex() Uses the Predicate<T> delegate to find the index of an item, of in a list/array of type T, that matches the given predicate. The signature of the Predicate<T> delegate (ignoring variance for the moment) is: 1: public delegate bool Predicate<T>(T obj); So, this is a delegate type that supports any method taking an item of type T and returning bool.  In addition, there is a semantic understanding that this predicate is supposed to be examining the item supplied to see if it matches a given criteria. 1: // finds first even number (2) 2: var firstEven = Array.Find(numbers, n => (n % 2) == 0); 3:  4: // finds all odd numbers (1, 3, 5, 7, 9) 5: var allEvens = Array.FindAll(numbers, n => (n % 2) == 1); 6:  7: // find index of first multiple of 5 (4) 8: var firstFiveMultiplePos = Array.FindIndex(numbers, n => (n % 5) == 0); This delegate has typically been succeeded in LINQ by the more general Func family, so that Predicate<T> and Func<T, bool> are logically identical.  Strictly speaking, though, they are different types, so a delegate reference of type Predicate<T> cannot be directly assigned to a delegate reference of type Func<T, bool>, though the same method can be assigned to both. 1: // SUCCESS: the same lambda can be assigned to either 2: Predicate<DateTime> isSameDayPred = dt => dt.Date == DateTime.Today; 3: Func<DateTime, bool> isSameDayFunc = dt => dt.Date == DateTime.Today; 4:  5: // ERROR: once they are assigned to a delegate type, they are strongly 6: // typed and cannot be directly assigned to other delegate types. 7: isSameDayPred = isSameDayFunc; When you assign a method to a delegate, all that is required is that the signature matches.  This is why the same method can be assigned to either delegate type since their signatures are the same.  However, once the method has been assigned to a delegate type, it is now a strongly-typed reference to that delegate type, and it cannot be assigned to a different delegate type (beyond the bounds of variance depending on Framework version, of course). Comparison<T> – delegate for determining order Just as the Predicate<T> generic delegate was birthed to give Array and List<T> the ability to perform type-safe matching, the Comparison<T> was birthed to give them the ability to perform type-safe ordering. The Comparison<T> is used in Array and List<T> for: Sort() A form of the Sort() method that takes a comparison delegate; this is an alternate way to custom sort a list/array from having to define custom IComparer<T> classes. The signature for the Comparison<T> delegate looks like (without variance): 1: public delegate int Comparison<T>(T lhs, T rhs); The goal of this delegate is to compare the left-hand-side to the right-hand-side and return a negative number if the lhs < rhs, zero if they are equal, and a positive number if the lhs > rhs.  Generally speaking, null is considered to be the smallest value of any reference type, so null should always be less than non-null, and two null values should be considered equal. In most sort/ordering methods, you must specify an IComparer<T> if you want to do custom sorting/ordering.  The Array and List<T> types, however, also allow for an alternative Comparison<T> delegate to be used instead, essentially, this lets you perform the custom sort without having to have the custom IComparer<T> class defined. It should be noted, however, that the LINQ OrderBy(), and ThenBy() family of methods do not support the Comparison<T> delegate (though one could easily add their own extension methods to create one, or create an IComparer() factory class that generates one from a Comparison<T>). So, given this delegate, we could use it to perform easy sorts on an Array or List<T> based on custom fields.  Say for example we have a data class called Employee with some basic employee information: 1: public sealed class Employee 2: { 3: public string Name { get; set; } 4: public int Id { get; set; } 5: public double Salary { get; set; } 6: } And say we had a List<Employee> that contained data, such as: 1: var employees = new List<Employee> 2: { 3: new Employee { Name = "John Smith", Id = 2, Salary = 37000.0 }, 4: new Employee { Name = "Jane Doe", Id = 1, Salary = 57000.0 }, 5: new Employee { Name = "John Doe", Id = 5, Salary = 60000.0 }, 6: new Employee { Name = "Jane Smith", Id = 3, Salary = 59000.0 } 7: }; Now, using the Comparison<T> delegate form of Sort() on the List<Employee>, we can sort our list many ways: 1: // sort based on employee ID 2: employees.Sort((lhs, rhs) => Comparer<int>.Default.Compare(lhs.Id, rhs.Id)); 3:  4: // sort based on employee name 5: employees.Sort((lhs, rhs) => string.Compare(lhs.Name, rhs.Name)); 6:  7: // sort based on salary, descending (note switched lhs/rhs order for descending) 8: employees.Sort((lhs, rhs) => Comparer<double>.Default.Compare(rhs.Salary, lhs.Salary)); So again, you could use this older delegate, which has a lot of logical meaning to it’s name, or use a generic delegate such as Func<T, T, int> to implement the same sort of behavior.  All this said, one of the reasons, in my opinion, that Comparison<T> isn’t used too often is that it tends to need complex lambdas, and the LINQ ability to order based on projections is much easier to use, though the Array and List<T> sorts tend to be more efficient if you want to perform in-place ordering. Converter<TInput, TOutput> – delegate to convert elements The Converter<TInput, TOutput> delegate is used by the Array and List<T> delegate to specify how to convert elements from an array/list of one type (TInput) to another type (TOutput).  It is used in an array/list for: ConvertAll() Converts all elements from a List<TInput> / TInput[] to a new List<TOutput> / TOutput[]. The delegate signature for Converter<TInput, TOutput> is very straightforward (ignoring variance): 1: public delegate TOutput Converter<TInput, TOutput>(TInput input); So, this delegate’s job is to taken an input item (of type TInput) and convert it to a return result (of type TOutput).  Again, this is logically equivalent to a newer Func delegate with a signature of Func<TInput, TOutput>.  In fact, the latter is how the LINQ conversion methods are defined. So, we could use the ConvertAll() syntax to convert a List<T> or T[] to different types, such as: 1: // get a list of just employee IDs 2: var empIds = employees.ConvertAll(emp => emp.Id); 3:  4: // get a list of all emp salaries, as int instead of double: 5: var empSalaries = employees.ConvertAll(emp => (int)emp.Salary); Note that the expressions above are logically equivalent to using LINQ’s Select() method, which gives you a lot more power: 1: // get a list of just employee IDs 2: var empIds = employees.Select(emp => emp.Id).ToList(); 3:  4: // get a list of all emp salaries, as int instead of double: 5: var empSalaries = employees.Select(emp => (int)emp.Salary).ToList(); The only difference with using LINQ is that many of the methods (including Select()) are deferred execution, which means that often times they will not perform the conversion for an item until it is requested.  This has both pros and cons in that you gain the benefit of not performing work until it is actually needed, but on the flip side if you want the results now, there is overhead in the behind-the-scenes work that support deferred execution (it’s supported by the yield return / yield break keywords in C# which define iterators that maintain current state information). In general, the new LINQ syntax is preferred, but the older Array and List<T> ConvertAll() methods are still around, as is the Converter<TInput, TOutput> delegate. Sidebar: Variance support update in .NET 4.0 Just like our descriptions of Func and Action, these three early generic delegates also support more variance in assignment as of .NET 4.0.  Their new signatures are: 1: // comparison is contravariant on type being compared 2: public delegate int Comparison<in T>(T lhs, T rhs); 3:  4: // converter is contravariant on input and covariant on output 5: public delegate TOutput Contravariant<in TInput, out TOutput>(TInput input); 6:  7: // predicate is contravariant on input 8: public delegate bool Predicate<in T>(T obj); Thus these delegates can now be assigned to delegates allowing for contravariance (going to a more derived type) or covariance (going to a less derived type) based on whether the parameters are input or output, respectively. Summary Today, we wrapped up our generic delegates discussion by looking at three lesser-used delegates: Predicate<T>, Comparison<T>, and Converter<TInput, TOutput>.  All three of these tend to be replaced by their more generic Func equivalents in LINQ, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t understand what they do or can’t use them for your own code, as they do contain semantic meanings in their names that sometimes get lost in the more generic Func name.   Tweet Technorati Tags: C#,CSharp,.NET,Little Wonders,delegates,generics,Predicate,Converter,Comparison

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• Avoid the “Social Silo” - Learn Why and How

  - by Brian Dayton

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* 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-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} I’m not going to spend any more real estate than needed on this—social media is big. Facebook hit the Billion user mark in October, that’s 1 out of every 7 humans on the planet. This past Summer (in the Northern hemisphere) Twitter passed the 400 Million Tweet/day mark. The list of social properties and data points goes on and on. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* 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-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} With social your customer, prospect, or constituent has pervasive access—through mobile—to a global audience, the ability to influence friends, friends of friends, and even people they will never meet. They also have the unique opportunity to forge a deeper relationship with your business—telling you what they like, what they don’t like, how you can help, and what they’d like to see more of. Are you listening? Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* 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-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} What’s the Bottom Line for Business? Businesses need to be where their customers are—on social properties. They need to be available and responsive in those channels—24x7x365. They need to engage and communicate in new ways—sometimes in less than 140 characters and with empathy, not a 1-way megaphone. Finally, businesses need to look at social as an extension of their existing business practices. Not as a silo’d communication channel limited to marketing. Social Can’t Be a Silo – Learn Why @ Oracle CloudWorld When a business is on social networks they represent the whole business. That’s how a customer, constituent, partner or potential candidate sees it. Those organizations that have moved on the opportunity to build closer relationships through social marketing have already made the first step. Social Selling, Service, eCommerce, and Recruiting are external-facing opportunities that leading organizations are moving on right now. This strategy, one of weaving social into and across your business processes—and leveraging social concepts and technologies for internal collaboration—is something you can learn about during an Oracle CloudWorld event in a city near you. You’ll hear and see social relationship management concepts, best-practices, and recommendations woven into topics, discussions, and demonstrations throughout the event—from Marketing and Sales to Service and Human Resources. Stay Tuned and Avoid Potholes By all indications social is here to stay but it’s moving fast and social business strategies are evolving rapidly. At Oracle CloudWorld you’ll also get the opportunity to learn how to avoid some of the potholes on the road to #socialbusiness. Stay tuned to this blog. In future posts I’ll cover some of those potholes including the challenges of Social@Scale and Parallel Processes. Jump-start your social business strategy or learn how to refine and expand what you’re doing already at Oracle CloudWorld. Want to learn more about what Oracle is doing in social? Check out www.oracle.com/social or, if you're looking for a quick read my co-worker, Pat Ma, has a great post on this blog summarizing some popular Social Relationship Management use cases.

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• Improving Manageability of Virtual Environments

  - by Jeff Victor

  Boot Environments for Solaris 10 Branded Zones Until recently, Solaris 10 Branded Zones on Solaris 11 suffered one notable regression: Live Upgrade did not work. The individual packaging and patching tools work correctly, but the ability to upgrade Solaris while the production workload continued running did not exist. A recent Solaris 11 SRU (Solaris 11.1 SRU 6.4) restored most of that functionality, although with a slightly different concept, different commands, and without all of the feature details. This new method gives you the ability to create and manage multiple boot environments (BEs) for a Solaris 10 Branded Zone, and modify the active or any inactive BE, and to do so while the production workload continues to run. Background In case you are new to Solaris: Solaris includes a set of features that enables you to create a bootable Solaris image, called a Boot Environment (BE). This newly created image can be modified while the original BE is still running your workload(s). There are many benefits, including improved uptime and the ability to reboot into (or downgrade to) an older BE if a newer one has a problem. In Solaris 10 this set of features was named Live Upgrade. Solaris 11 applies the same basic concepts to the new packaging system (IPS) but there isn't a specific name for the feature set. The features are simply part of IPS. Solaris 11 Boot Environments are not discussed in this blog entry. Although a Solaris 10 system can have multiple BEs, until recently a Solaris 10 Branded Zone (BZ) in a Solaris 11 system did not have this ability. This limitation was addressed recently, and that enhancement is the subject of this blog entry. This new implementation uses two concepts. The first is the use of a ZFS clone for each BE. This makes it very easy to create a BE, or many BEs. This is a distinct advantage over the Live Upgrade feature set in Solaris 10, which had a practical limitation of two BEs on a system, when using UFS. The second new concept is a very simple mechanism to indicate the BE that should be booted: a ZFS property. The new ZFS property is named com.oracle.zones.solaris10:activebe (isn't that creative? ). It's important to note that the property is inherited from the original BE's file system to any BEs you create. In other words, all BEs in one zone have the same value for that property. When the (Solaris 11) global zone boots the Solaris 10 BZ, it boots the BE that has the name that is stored in the activebe property. Here is a quick summary of the actions you can use to manage these BEs: To create a BE: Create a ZFS clone of the zone's root dataset To activate a BE: Set the ZFS property of the root dataset to indicate the BE To add a package or patch to an inactive BE: Mount the inactive BE Add packages or patches to it Unmount the inactive BE To list the available BEs: Use the "zfs list" command. To destroy a BE: Use the "zfs destroy" command. Preparation Before you can use the new features, you will need a Solaris 10 BZ on a Solaris 11 system. You can use these three steps - on a real Solaris 11.1 server or in a VirtualBox guest running Solaris 11.1 - to create a Solaris 10 BZ. The Solaris 11.1 environment must be at SRU 6.4 or newer. Create a flash archive on the Solaris 10 system s10# flarcreate -n s10-system /net/zones/archives/s10-system.flar Configure the Solaris 10 BZ on the Solaris 11 system s11# zonecfg -z s10z Use 'create' to begin configuring a new zone. zonecfg:s10z create -t SYSsolaris10 zonecfg:s10z set zonepath=/zones/s10z zonecfg:s10z exit s11# zoneadm list -cv ID NAME STATUS PATH BRAND IP 0 global running / solaris shared - s10z configured /zones/s10z solaris10 excl Install the zone from the flash archive s11# zoneadm -z s10z install -a /net/zones/archives/s10-system.flar -p You can find more information about the migration of Solaris 10 environments to Solaris 10 Branded Zones in the documentation. The rest of this blog entry demonstrates the commands you can use to accomplish the aforementioned actions related to BEs. New features in action Note that the demonstration of the commands occurs in the Solaris 10 BZ, as indicated by the shell prompt "s10z# ". Many of these commands can be performed in the global zone instead, if you prefer. If you perform them in the global zone, you must change the ZFS file system names. Create The only complicated action is the creation of a BE. In the Solaris 10 BZ, create a new "boot environment" - a ZFS clone. You can assign any name to the final portion of the clone's name, as long as it meets the requirements for a ZFS file system name. s10z# zfs snapshot rpool/ROOT/zbe-0@snap s10z# zfs clone -o mountpoint=/ -o canmount=noauto rpool/ROOT/zbe-0@snap rpool/ROOT/newBE cannot mount 'rpool/ROOT/newBE' on '/': directory is not empty filesystem successfully created, but not mounted You can safely ignore that message: we already know that / is not empty! We have merely told ZFS that the default mountpoint for the clone is the root directory. List the available BEs and active BE Because each BE is represented by a clone of the rpool/ROOT dataset, listing the BEs is as simple as listing the clones. s10z# zfs list -r rpool/ROOT NAME USED AVAIL REFER MOUNTPOINT rpool/ROOT 3.55G 42.9G 31K legacy rpool/ROOT/zbe-0 1K 42.9G 3.55G / rpool/ROOT/newBE 3.55G 42.9G 3.55G / The output shows that two BEs exist. Their names are "zbe-0" and "newBE". You can tell Solaris that one particular BE should be used when the zone next boots by using a ZFS property. Its name is com.oracle.zones.solaris10:activebe. The value of that property is the name of the clone that contains the BE that should be booted. s10z# zfs get com.oracle.zones.solaris10:activebe rpool/ROOT NAME PROPERTY VALUE SOURCE rpool/ROOT com.oracle.zones.solaris10:activebe zbe-0 local Change the active BE When you want to change the BE that will be booted next time, you can just change the activebe property on the rpool/ROOT dataset. s10z# zfs get com.oracle.zones.solaris10:activebe rpool/ROOT NAME PROPERTY VALUE SOURCE rpool/ROOT com.oracle.zones.solaris10:activebe zbe-0 local s10z# zfs set com.oracle.zones.solaris10:activebe=newBE rpool/ROOT s10z# zfs get com.oracle.zones.solaris10:activebe rpool/ROOT NAME PROPERTY VALUE SOURCE rpool/ROOT com.oracle.zones.solaris10:activebe newBE local s10z# shutdown -y -g0 -i6 After the zone has rebooted: s10z# zfs get com.oracle.zones.solaris10:activebe rpool/ROOT rpool/ROOT com.oracle.zones.solaris10:activebe newBE local s10z# zfs mount rpool/ROOT/newBE / rpool/export /export rpool/export/home /export/home rpool /rpool Mount the original BE to see that it's still there. s10z# zfs mount -o mountpoint=/mnt rpool/ROOT/zbe-0 s10z# ls /mnt Desktop export platform Documents export.backup.20130607T214951Z proc S10Flar home rpool TT_DB kernel sbin bin lib system boot lost+found tmp cdrom mnt usr dev net var etc opt Patch an inactive BE At this point, you can modify the original BE. If you would prefer to modify the new BE, you can restore the original value to the activebe property and reboot, and then mount the new BE to /mnt (or another empty directory) and modify it. Let's mount the original BE so we can modify it. (The first command is only needed if you haven't already mounted that BE.) s10z# zfs mount -o mountpoint=/mnt rpool/ROOT/zbe-0 s10z# patchadd -R /mnt -M /var/sadm/spool 104945-02 Note that the typical usage will be: Create a BE Mount the new (inactive) BE Use the package and patch tools to update the new BE Unmount the new BE Reboot Delete an inactive BE ZFS clones are children of their parent file systems. In order to destroy the parent, you must first "promote" the child. This reverses the parent-child relationship. (For more information on this, see the documentation.) The original rpool/ROOT file system is the parent of the clones that you create as BEs. In order to destroy an earlier BE that is that parent of other BEs, you must first promote one of the child BEs to be the ZFS parent. Only then can you destroy the original BE. Fortunately, this is easier to do than to explain: s10z# zfs promote rpool/ROOT/newBE s10z# zfs destroy rpool/ROOT/zbe-0 s10z# zfs list -r rpool/ROOT NAME USED AVAIL REFER MOUNTPOINT rpool/ROOT 3.56G 269G 31K legacy rpool/ROOT/newBE 3.56G 269G 3.55G / Documentation This feature is so new, it is not yet described in the Solaris 11 documentation. However, MOS note 1558773.1 offers some details. Conclusion With this new feature, you can add and patch packages to boot environments of a Solaris 10 Branded Zone. This ability improves the manageability of these zones, and makes their use more practical. It also means that you can use the existing P2V tools with earlier Solaris 10 updates, and modify the environments after they become Solaris 10 Branded Zones.

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• Does Test Driven Development (TDD) improve Quality and Correctness? (Part 1)

  - by David V. Corbin

  Since the dawn of the computer age, various methodologies have been introduced to improve quality and reduce cost. In this posting, I will by sharing my experiences with Test Driven Development; both its benefits and limitations. To start this topic, we need to agree on what TDD is. The first is to define each of the three words as used in this context. Test - An item or action which measures something in some quantifiable form. Driven - The primary motivation or focus of a series of activities (process) Development - All phases of a software project/product from concept through delivery. The above are very simple definitions that result in the following: "TDD is a process where the primary focus is on measuring and quantifying all aspects of the creation of a (software) product." There are many places where TDD is used outside of software development, even though it is not known by this name. Consider the (conventional) education process that most of us grew up on. The focus was to get the best grades as measured by different tests. Many of these tests measured rote memorization and not understanding of the subject matter. The result of this that many people graduated with high scores but without "quality and correctness" in their ability to utilize the subject matter (of course, the flip side is true where certain people DID understand the material but were not very good at taking this type of test). Returning to software development, let us look at some common scenarios. While these items are generally applicable regardless of platform, language and tools; the remainder of this post will utilize Microsoft Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server (TFS) for examples. It should be realized that everyone does at least some aspect of TDD. At the most rudimentary level, getting a program to compile involves a "pass/fail" measurement (is the syntax valid) that drives their ability to proceed further (run the program). Other developers may create "Unit Tests" in the belief that having a test for every method/property of a class and good code coverage is the goal of TDD. These items may be helpful and even important, but really only address a small aspect of the overall effort. To see TDD in a bigger view, lets identify the various activities that are part of the Software Development LifeCycle. These are going to be presented in a Waterfall style for simplicity, but each item also occurs within Iterative methodologies such as Agile/Scrum. the key ones here are: Requirements Gathering Architecture Design Implementation Quality Assurance Can each of these items be subjected to a process which establishes metrics (quantified metrics) that reflect both the quality and correctness of each item? It should be clear that conventional Unit Tests do not apply to all of these items; at best they can verify that a local aspect (e.g. a Class/Method) of implementation matches the (test writers perspective of) the appropriate design document. So what can we do? For each of area, the goal is to create tests that are quantifiable and durable. The ability to quantify the measurements (beyond a simple pass/fail) is critical to tracking progress(eventually measuring the level of success that has been achieved) and for providing clear information on what items need to be addressed (along with the appropriate time to address them - in varying levels of detail) . Durability is important so that the test can be reapplied (ideally in an automated fashion) over the entire cycle. Returning for a moment back to our "education example", one must also be careful of how the tests are organized and how the measurements are taken. If a test is in a multiple choice format, there is a significant statistical probability that a correct answer might be the result of a random guess. Also, in many situations, having the student simply provide a final answer can obscure many important elements. For example, on a math test, having the student simply provide a numeric answer (rather than showing the methodology) may result in a complete mismatch between the process and the result. It is hard to determine which is worse: The student who makes a simple arithmetric error at one step of a long process (resulting in a wrong answer) or The student who (without providing the "workflow") uses a completely invalid approach, yet still comes up with the right number. The "Wrong Process"/"Right Answer" is probably the single biggest problem in software development. Even very simple items can suffer from this. As an example consider the following code for a "straight line" calculation....Is it correct? (for Integral Points)         int Solve(int m, int b, int x) { return m * x + b; }   Most people would respond "Yes". But let's take the question one step further... Is it correct for all possible values of m,b,x??? (no fair if you cheated by being focused on the bolded text!)  Without additional information regarding constrains on "the possible values of m,b,x" the answer must be NO, there is the risk of overflow/wraparound that will produce an incorrect result! To properly answer this question (i.e. Test the Code), one MUST be able to backtrack from the implementation through the design, and architecture all the way back to the requirements. And the requirement itself must be tested against the stakeholder(s). It is only when the bounding conditions are defined that it is possible to determine if the code is "Correct" and has "Quality". Yet, how many of us (myself included) have written such code without even thinking about it. In many canses we (think we) "know" what the bounds are, and that the code will be correct. As we all know, requirements change, "code reuse" causes implementations to be applied to different scenarios, etc. This leads directly to the types of system failures that plague so many projects. This approach to TDD is much more holistic than ones which start by focusing on the details. The fundamental concepts still apply: Each item should be tested. The test should be defined/implemented before (or concurrent with) the definition/implementation of the actual item. We also add concepts that expand the scope and alter the style by recognizing: There are many things beside "lines of code" that benefit from testing (measuring/evaluating in a formal way) Correctness and Quality can not be solely measured by "correct results" In the future parts, we will examine in greater detail some of the techniques that can be applied to each of these areas....

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• Clean Code Developer & Certification in IT - MSCC 21.09.2013

  It was a very busy weekend this time, and quite some hectic to organise the second meetup on a Saturday for the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community (MSCC) but it was absolutely fun. Following, I'm writing a brief summary about the topics we spoke about and the new impulses I got. "What a meetup... I was positively impressed. At the beginning I thought that noone would actually show up but then by the time the room got filled. Lots of conversation, great dialogues and fantastic networking between fresh students, experienced students, experienced employees, and self-employed attendees. That's what community is all about!" Above quote was my first reaction shortly after the gathering. And despite being busy during the weekend and yesterday, I took my time to reflect a little bit on things happened and statements made before writing it here on my blog. Additionally, I was also very curious about possible reactions and blogs from other attendees. Reactions from other craftsmen Let me quickly give you some links and quotes from others first... "Like Jochen posted on facebook, that was indeed a 5+ hours marathon (maybe 4 hours for me but still) … Wohoo! We’re indeed a bunch of crazy geeks who did not realise how time flew as we dived into the myriad discussions that sprouted. Yet in the end everyone was happy (:" -- Ish on MSCC meetup - The marathon (: "And the 4hours spent @ Talking drums bore its fruit..I was doing something I never did before....reading the borrowed book while walking....and though I was not that familiar with things mentionned in the book...I was skimming,scanning & flipping...reading titles...short paragraphs...and I skipped pages till I reached home." -- Yannick on Mauritius Software Craftsmanship 1st Meet-up "Hi Developers, Just wanted to share with you the meetups i attended last Saturday - [...] - The second meetup is the one hosted by Jochen Kirstätter, the MSCC, where the attendees were Craftsman, no woman, this time - all sharing the same passion of being a developer - even though it is on different platforms(Windows - Windows Phone - Linux - Adobe(yes a designer) - .Net) - but we manage to sit at the same table - sharing developer views and experience in the corporate world - also talking about good practice when coding( where Jochen initiated a discussion on Clean Coding ) i could not stay till the end - but from what i have heard - the longer you stay the more fun you have till 1600. Developers in the Facebook grouping i invite you to stay tuned about the various developer communities popping up - where you can come to share and learn good practices, develop the entrepreneurial spirit, and learn and share your passion about technologies" -- Arnaud on Facebook More feedback has been posted on the event directly. So, should I really write more? Wouldn't that spoil the impressions? Starting the day with a surprise Indeed, I was very pleased to stumble over the existence of Mobile Monday Mauritius on LinkedIn, an association about any kind of mobile app development, mobile gadgets and latest smartphones on the market. Despite the Monday in their name they had scheduled their recent meeting on Saturday between 10:00 and 12:00hrs. Wow, what a coincidence! Let's grap the bull by its horns and pay them an introductory visit. As they chose the Ebene Accelerator at the Orange Tower in Ebene it was a no-brainer to leave home a bit earlier and stop by. It was quite an experience and fun to talk to the geeks over there. Really looking forward to organise something together.... Arriving at the venue As the children got a bit uneasy at the MoMo gathering and I didn't want to disturb them too much, we arrived early at Bagatelle. Well, no problems as we went for a decent breakfast at Food Lover's Market. Shortly afterwards we went to our venue location, Talking Drums, and prepared the room for the meeting. We only had to take off a repro-painting of the wall in order to have a decent area for the projector. All went very smooth and my two little ones were of great help. Just in time, our first craftsman Avinash arrived on the spot. And then the waiting started... Luckily, not too long. Bit by bit more and more IT people came to join our meeting. Meanwhile, I used the time to give a brief introduction about the MSCC in general, what we are (hm, maybe I am) trying to achieve and that the recent phase is completely focused on creating more awareness that a community like the MSCC is active here in Mauritius. As soon as we reached some 'critical mass' of about ten people I asked everyone for a short introduction and bio, just in case... Conversation between participants started to kick in and we were actually more networking than having a focus on our topics of the day. Quick updates on latest news and development around the MSCC Finally, Clean Code Developer No matter how the position is actually called, whether it is Software Engineer, Software Developer, Programmer, Architect, or Craftsman, anyone working in IT is facing almost the same obstacles. As for the process of writing software applications there are re-occurring patterns and principles combined with some common exercise and best practices on how to resolve them. Initiated by the must-read book 'Clean Code' by Robert C. Martin (aka Uncle Bob) the concept of the Clean Code Developer (CCD) was born already some years ago. CCD is much likely to traditional martial arts where you create awareness of certain principles and learn how to apply practices to improve your style. The CCD initiative recommends to indicate your level of knowledge and experience with coloured wrist bands - equivalent to the belt colours - for various reasons. Frankly speaking, I think that the biggest advantage here is provided by the obvious recognition of conceptual understanding. For example, take the situation of a team meeting... A member with a higher grade in CCD, say Green grade, sees that there are mainly Red grades to talk to, and adjusts her way of communication to their level of understanding. The choice of words might change as certain elements of CCD are not yet familiar to all team members. So instead of talking in an abstract way which only Green grades could follow the whole scenario comes down to Red grade level. Different story, better results... Similar to learning martial arts, we only covered two grades during this occasion - black and red. Most interestingly, there was quite some positive feedback and lots of questions about the principles and practices of the red grade. And we gathered real-world examples from various craftsman and discussed them. Following the Clean Code Developer Red Grade and some annotations from our meetup: CCD Red Grade - Principles Don't Repeat Yourself - DRY Keep It Simple, Stupid (and Short) - KISS Beware of Optimisations! Favour Composition over Inheritance - FCoI Interestingly most of the attendees already heard about those key words but couldn't really classify or categorize them. It's very similar to a situation in which you do not the particular for a thing and have to describe it to others... until someone tells you the actual name and suddenly all is very simple. CCD Red Grade - Practices Follow the Boy Scouts Rule Root Cause Analysis - RCA Use a Version Control System Apply Simple Refactoring Pattern Reflect Daily Introduction to the principles and practices of Clean Code Developer - here: Red Grade As for the various ToDo's we commonly agreed that the Boy Scout Rule clearly is not limited to software development or IT administration but applies to daily life in general. Same for the root cause analysis, btw. We really had good stories with surprisingly endings and conclusions. A quick check about who is using a version control system brought more drive into the conversation. Not only that we had people that aren't using any VCS at all, we also had the 'classic' approach of backup folders and naming conventions as well as the VCS 'junkie' that has to use multiple systems at a time. Just for the records: Git and GitHub seem to be in favour of some of the attendees. Regarding the daily reflection at the end of the day we came up with an easy solution: Wrap it up as a blog entry! Certifications in IT This is kind of a controversy in IT in general. Is it interesting to go for certifications or are they completely obsolete? What are the possibilities to get certified? What are the options we have in Mauritius? How would certificates stand compared to other educational tracks like Computer Science or Web Design. The ratio between craftsmen with certifications like MCP, MSTS, CCNA or LPI versus the ones without wasn't in favour for the first group but there was a high interest in the topic itself and some were really surprised to hear that exam preparations are completely free available online including temporarily voucher codes for either discounts or completely free exams. Furthermore, we discussed possible options on forming so-called study groups on a specific certificates and organising more frequent meetups in order to learn together. Taking into consideration that we have sponsored access to the video course material of Pluralsight (and now PeepCode as well as TrainSignal), we might give it a try by the end of the year. Current favourites are LPIC Level 1 and one of the Microsoft exams 40-78x. Feedback and ideas for the MSCC The closing conversations and discussions about how the MSCC is recently doing, what are the possibilities and what's (hopefully) going to happen in the future were really fertile and I made a couple of mental bullet points which I'm looking forward to tackle down together with orher craftsmen. Eventually, it might be a good option to elaborate on some issues during our weekly Code & Coffee sessions one Wednesday morning. Active discussion on various IT topics like certifications (LPI, MCP, CCNA, etc) and sharing experience Finally, we made it till the end of the planned time. Well, actually the talk was still on and we continued even after 16:00hrs. Unfortunately, we (the children and I) had to leave for evening activities. My resume of the day... It was great to have 15 craftsmen in one room. There are hundreds of IT geeks out there in Mauritius, and as Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community we still have a lot of work to do to pass on the message to some more key players and companies. Currently, it seems that we are able to attract a good number of students in Computer Science... but we have a lot more to offer, even or especially for IT people on the job. I'm already looking forward to our next Saturday meetup in the near future. PS: Meetup pictures are courtesy of Nirvan Pagooah. Thanks for sharing...

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• Deterministic/Consistent Unique Masking

  - by Dinesh Rajasekharan-Oracle

  One of the key requirements while masking data in large databases or multi database environment is to consistently mask some columns, i.e. for a given input the output should always be the same. At the same time the masked output should not be predictable. Deterministic masking also eliminates the need to spend enormous amount of time spent in identifying data relationships, i.e. parent and child relationships among columns defined in the application tables. In this blog post I will explain different ways of consistently masking the data across databases using Oracle Data Masking and Subsetting The readers of post should have minimal knowledge on Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c, Application Data Modeling, Data Masking concepts. For more information on these concepts, please refer to Oracle Data Masking and Subsetting document Oracle Data Masking and Subsetting 12c provides four methods using which users can consistently yet irreversibly mask their inputs. 1. Substitute 2. SQL Expression 3. Encrypt 4. User Defined Function SUBSTITUTE The substitute masking format replaces the original value with a value from a pre-created database table. As the method uses a hash based algorithm in the back end the mappings are consistent. For example consider DEPARTMENT_ID in EMPLOYEES table is replaced with FAKE_DEPARTMENT_ID from FAKE_TABLE. The substitute masking transformation that all occurrences of DEPARTMENT_ID say ‘101’ will be replaced with ‘502’ provided same substitution table and column is used , i.e. FAKE_TABLE.FAKE_DEPARTMENT_ID. The following screen shot shows the usage of the Substitute masking format with in a masking definition: Note that the uniqueness of the masked value depends on the number of columns being used in the substitution table i.e. if the original table contains 50000 unique values, then for the masked output to be unique and deterministic the substitution column should also contain 50000 unique values without which only consistency is maintained but not uniqueness. SQL EXPRESSION SQL Expression replaces an existing value with the output of a specified SQL Expression. For example while masking an EMPLOYEES table the EMAIL_ID of an employee has to be in the format EMPLOYEE’s [email protected] while FIRST_NAME and LAST_NAME are the actual column names of the EMPLOYEES table then the corresponding SQL Expression will look like %FIRST_NAME%||’.’||%LAST_NAME%||’@COMPANY.COM’. The advantage of this technique is that if you are masking FIRST_NAME and LAST_NAME of the EMPLOYEES table than the corresponding EMAIL ID will be replaced accordingly by the masking scripts. One of the interesting aspect’s of a SQL Expressions is that you can use sub SQL expressions, which means that you can write a nested SQL and use it as SQL Expression to address a complex masking business use cases. SQL Expression can also be used to consistently replace value with hashed value using Oracle’s PL/SQL function ORA_HASH. The following SQL Expression will help in the previous example for replacing the DEPARTMENT_IDs with a hashed number ORA_HASH (%DEPARTMENT_ID%, 1000) The following screen shot shows the usage of encrypt masking format with in the masking definition: ORA_HASH takes three arguments: 1. Expression which can be of any data type except LONG, LOB, User Defined Type [nested table type is allowed]. In the above example I used the Original value as expression. 2. Number of hash buckets which can be number between 0 and 4294967295. The default value is 4294967295. You can also co-relate the number of hash buckets to a range of numbers. In the above example above the bucket value is specified as 1000, so the end result will be a hashed number in between 0 and 1000. 3. Seed, can be any number which decides the consistency, i.e. for a given seed value the output will always be same. The default seed is 0. In the above SQL Expression a seed in not specified, so it to 0. If you have to use a non default seed then the function will look like. ORA_HASH (%DEPARTMENT_ID%, 1000, 1234 The uniqueness depends on the input and the number of hash buckets used. However as ORA_HASH uses a 32 bit algorithm, considering birthday paradox or pigeonhole principle there is a 0.5 probability of collision after 232-1 unique values. ENCRYPT Encrypt masking format uses a blend of 3DES encryption algorithm, hashing, and regular expression to produce a deterministic and unique masked output. The format of the masked output corresponds to the specified regular expression. As this technique uses a key [string] to encrypt the data, the same string can be used to decrypt the data. The key also acts as seed to maintain consistent outputs for a given input. The following screen shot shows the usage of encrypt masking format with in the masking definition: Regular Expressions may look complex for the first time users but you will soon realize that it’s a simple language. There are many resources in internet, oracle documentation, oracle learning library, my oracle support on writing a Regular Expressions, out of all the following My Oracle Support document helped me to get started with Regular Expressions: Oracle SQL Support for Regular Expressions[Video](Doc ID 1369668.1) USER DEFINED FUNCTION [UDF] User Defined Function or UDF provides flexibility for the users to code their own masking logic in PL/SQL, which can be called from masking Defintion. The standard format of an UDF in Oracle Data Masking and Subsetting is: Function udf_func (rowid varchar2, column_name varchar2, original_value varchar2) returns varchar2; Where • rowid is the row identifier of the column that needs to be masked • column_name is the name of the column that needs to be masked • original_value is the column value that needs to be masked You can achieve deterministic masking by using Oracle’s built in hash functions like, ORA_HASH, DBMS_CRYPTO.MD4, DBMS_CRYPTO.MD5, DBMS_UTILITY. GET_HASH_VALUE.Please refers to the Oracle Database Documentation for more information on the Oracle Hash functions. For example the following masking UDF generate deterministic unique hexadecimal values for a given string input: CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION RD_DUX (rid varchar2, column_name varchar2, orig_val VARCHAR2) RETURN VARCHAR2 DETERMINISTIC PARALLEL_ENABLE IS stext varchar2 (26); no_of_characters number(2); BEGIN no_of_characters:=6; stext:=substr(RAWTOHEX(DBMS_CRYPTO.HASH(UTL_RAW.CAST_TO_RAW(text),1)),0,no_of_characters); RETURN stext; END; The uniqueness depends on the input and length of the string and number of bits used by hash algorithm. In the above function MD4 hash is used [denoted by argument 1 in the DBMS_CRYPTO.HASH function which is a 128 bit algorithm which produces 2^128-1 unique hashed values , however this is limited by the length of the input string which is 6, so only 6^6 unique values will be generated. Also do not forget about the birthday paradox/pigeonhole principle mentioned earlier in this post. An another example is to consistently replace characters or numbers preserving the length and special characters as shown below: CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION RD_DUS(rid varchar2,column_name varchar2,orig_val VARCHAR2) RETURN VARCHAR2 DETERMINISTIC PARALLEL_ENABLE IS stext varchar2(26); BEGIN DBMS_RANDOM.SEED(orig_val); stext:=TRANSLATE(orig_val,'ABCDEFGHILKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ',DBMS_RANDOM.STRING('U',26)); stext:=TRANSLATE(stext,'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz',DBMS_RANDOM.STRING('L',26)); stext:=TRANSLATE(stext,'0123456789',to_char(DBMS_RANDOM.VALUE(1,9))); stext:=REPLACE(stext,'.','0'); RETURN stext; END; The following screen shot shows the usage of an UDF with in a masking definition: To summarize, Oracle Data Masking and Subsetting helps you to consistently mask data across databases using one or all of the methods described in this post. It saves the hassle of identifying the parent-child relationships defined in the application table. Happy Masking

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• Thou shalt not put code on a piedestal - Code is a tool, no more, no less

  - by Ralf Westphal

  “Write great code and everything else becomes easier” is what Paul Pagel believes in. That´s his version of an adage by Brian Marick he cites: “treat code as an end, not just a means.” And he concludes: “My post-Agile world is software craftsmanship.” I wonder, if that´s really the way to go. Will “simply” writing great code lead the software industry into the light? He´s alluding to the philosopher Kant who proposed, a human beings should never be treated as a means, but always as an end. But should we transfer this ethical statement into the world of software? I doubt it.   Reason #1: Human beings are categorially different from code. They are autonomous entities who need to find a way of living happily together. To Kant it seemed this goal could only be reached if nobody (ab)used a human being for his/her purposes. Because using a human being, i.e. treating it as a means, would contradict the fundamental autonomy and freedom of human beings. People should hold up a symmetric view of their relationships: Since nobody wants to be (ab)used, nobody should (ab)use anybody else. If you want to be treated decently, with respect, in accordance with your own free will - which means as an end - then do the same to other people. Code is dead, it´s a product, it´s a tool for people to reach their goals. No company spends any money on code other than to save money or earn money in the long run. Code is not a puppy. Enterprises do not commission software development to just feel good in its company. Code is not a buddy. Code is a slave, if you will. A mechanical slave, a non-tangible robot. Code is a tool, is a tool. And if we start to treat it differently, if we elevate its status unduely… I guess that will contort our relationship in a contraproductive way. Please get me right: Just because something is “just a tool”, “just a product” does not mean we should not be careful while designing, building, using it. Right to the contrary. We should be very careful when writing code – but not for the code´s sake! We should be careful because we respect our customers who are fellow human beings who should be treated as an end. If we are careless, neglectful, ignorant when producing code on their behalf, then we´re using them. Being sloppy means you´re caring more for yourself that for your customer. You´re then treating the customer as a means to fulfill some of your own needs. That´s plain unethical behavior.   Reason #2: The focus should always be on your purpose, not on any tool. But if code is treated as an end, then the focus is on the code. That might sound right, because where else should be your focus as a software developer? But, well, I´d say, your focus should be on delivering value to your customer. Because in the end your customer does not care if you write a single line of code. She just wants her problem to be solved. Solving problems is the purpose of any contractor. Code must be treated just as a means, a tool we know how to handle very well. But if we´re really trying to be craftsmen then we should be conscious about exactly that and act ethically. That means we must never be so focused on our tool as to be unable to suggest better solutions to the problems of our customers than code.   I´m all with Paul when he urges us to “Write great code”. Sure, if you need to write code, then by all means do so. Write the best code you can think of – and then try to improve it. Paul has all the best intentions when he signs Brians “treat code as an end” - but as we all know: “The road to hell is paved with best intentions” ;-) Yes, I can imagine a “hell of code focus”. In fact, I don´t need to imagine it, I´m seeing it quite often. Because code hell is whereever two developers stand together and are so immersed in talking about all sorts of coding tricks, design patterns, code smells, technologies, platforms, tools that they lose sight of the big picture. Talking about TDD or SOLID or refactoring is a sign of consciousness – relative to the “cowboy coders” view of the world. But from yet another point of view TDD, SOLID, and refactoring are just cures for ailments within a system. And I fear, if “Writing great code” is the only focus or the main focus of software development, then we as an industry lose the ability to see that. Focus draws a line around something, it defines a horizon for perceptions and thinking. So if we focus on code our horizon ends where “the land of code” ends. I don´t think that should be our professional attitude.   So what about Software Craftsmanship as the next big thing after Agility? I think Software Craftsmanship has an important message for all software developers and beyond. But to make it the successor of the Agility movement seems to miss a point. Agility never claimed to solve all software development problems, I´d say. So to blame it for having missed out on certain aspects of it is wrong. If I had to summarize Agility in one word I´d say “Value”. Agility put value for the customer back in software development. Focus on delivering value early and often – that´s Agility´s mantra. All else follows from that. And I ask you: Is that obsolete? Is delivering value not hip anymore? No, sure not. That´s our very purpose as software developers. So how can Agility become obsolete and need to be replaced? We need to do away with this “either/or”-thinking. It´s either Agility or Lean or Software Craftsmanship or whatnot. Instead we should start integrating concepts and movements. Think “both/and”. Think Agility plus Software Craftsmanship plus Lean plus whatnot. We don´t neet to tear down anything from a piedestal and replace it with a new idol. Instead we should do away with piedestals and arrange whatever is helpful is a circle. Then we can turn to concepts, movements for whatever they are best. After 10 years of Agility we should be able to identify what it was good at – and keep that. Keep Agility around and add whatever Agility was lacking or never concerned with. Add whatever is at the core of Software Craftsmanship. Add whatever is at the core of Lean etc. But don´t call out the age of Post-Agility. Because it better never will end. Because once we start to lose Agility´s core we´re losing focus of the customer.

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• The Sensemaking Spectrum for Business Analytics: Translating from Data to Business Through Analysis

  - by Joe Lamantia

  One of the most compelling outcomes of our strategic research efforts over the past several years is a growing vocabulary that articulates our cumulative understanding of the deep structure of the domains of discovery and business analytics. Modes are one example of the deep structure we’ve found.  After looking at discovery activities across a very wide range of industries, question types, business needs, and problem solving approaches, we've identified distinct and recurring kinds of sensemaking activity, independent of context.  We label these activities Modes: Explore, compare, and comprehend are three of the nine recognizable modes.  Modes describe *how* people go about realizing insights.  (Read more about the programmatic research and formal academic grounding and discussion of the modes here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235971352_A_Taxonomy_of_Enterprise_Search_and_Discovery) By analogy to languages, modes are the 'verbs' of discovery activity.  When applied to the practical questions of product strategy and development, the modes of discovery allow one to identify what kinds of analytical activity a product, platform, or solution needs to support across a spread of usage scenarios, and then make concrete and well-informed decisions about every aspect of the solution, from high-level capabilities, to which specific types of information visualizations better enable these scenarios for the types of data users will analyze. The modes are a powerful generative tool for product making, but if you've spent time with young children, or had a really bad hangover (or both at the same time...), you understand the difficult of communicating using only verbs.  So I'm happy to share that we've found traction on another facet of the deep structure of discovery and business analytics.  Continuing the language analogy, we've identified some of the ‘nouns’ in the language of discovery: specifically, the consistently recurring aspects of a business that people are looking for insight into.  We call these discovery Subjects, since they identify *what* people focus on during discovery efforts, rather than *how* they go about discovery as with the Modes. Defining the collection of Subjects people repeatedly focus on allows us to understand and articulate sense making needs and activity in more specific, consistent, and complete fashion.  In combination with the Modes, we can use Subjects to concretely identify and define scenarios that describe people’s analytical needs and goals.  For example, a scenario such as ‘Explore [a Mode] the attrition rates [a Measure, one type of Subject] of our largest customers [Entities, another type of Subject] clearly captures the nature of the activity — exploration of trends vs. deep analysis of underlying factors — and the central focus — attrition rates for customers above a certain set of size criteria — from which follow many of the specifics needed to address this scenario in terms of data, analytical tools, and methods. We can also use Subjects to translate effectively between the different perspectives that shape discovery efforts, reducing ambiguity and increasing impact on both sides the perspective divide.  For example, from the language of business, which often motivates analytical work by asking questions in business terms, to the perspective of analysis.  The question posed to a Data Scientist or analyst may be something like “Why are sales of our new kinds of potato chips to our largest customers fluctuating unexpectedly this year?” or “Where can innovate, by expanding our product portfolio to meet unmet needs?”.  Analysts translate questions and beliefs like these into one or more empirical discovery efforts that more formally and granularly indicate the plan, methods, tools, and desired outcomes of analysis.  From the perspective of analysis this second question might become, “Which customer needs of type ‘A', identified and measured in terms of ‘B’, that are not directly or indirectly addressed by any of our current products, offer 'X' potential for ‘Y' positive return on the investment ‘Z' required to launch a new offering, in time frame ‘W’?  And how do these compare to each other?”.  Translation also happens from the perspective of analysis to the perspective of data; in terms of availability, quality, completeness, format, volume, etc. By implication, we are proposing that most working organizations — small and large, for profit and non-profit, domestic and international, and in the majority of industries — can be described for analytical purposes using this collection of Subjects.  This is a bold claim, but simplified articulation of complexity is one of the primary goals of sensemaking frameworks such as this one.  (And, yes, this is in fact a framework for making sense of sensemaking as a category of activity - but we’re not considering the recursive aspects of this exercise at the moment.) Compellingly, we can place the collection of subjects on a single continuum — we call it the Sensemaking Spectrum — that simply and coherently illustrates some of the most important relationships between the different types of Subjects, and also illuminates several of the fundamental dynamics shaping business analytics as a domain.  As a corollary, the Sensemaking Spectrum also suggests innovation opportunities for products and services related to business analytics. The first illustration below shows Subjects arrayed along the Sensemaking Spectrum; the second illustration presents examples of each kind of Subject.  Subjects appear in colors ranging from blue to reddish-orange, reflecting their place along the Spectrum, which indicates whether a Subject addresses more the viewpoint of systems and data (Data centric and blue), or people (User centric and orange).  This axis is shown explicitly above the Spectrum.  Annotations suggest how Subjects align with the three significant perspectives of Data, Analysis, and Business that shape business analytics activity.  This rendering makes explicit the translation and bridging function of Analysts as a role, and analysis as an activity. Subjects are best understood as fuzzy categories [http://georgelakoff.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/hedges-a-study-in-meaning-criteria-and-the-logic-of-fuzzy-concepts-journal-of-philosophical-logic-2-lakoff-19731.pdf], rather than tightly defined buckets.  For each Subject, we suggest some of the most common examples: Entities may be physical things such as named products, or locations (a building, or a city); they could be Concepts, such as satisfaction; or they could be Relationships between entities, such as the variety of possible connections that define linkage in social networks.  Likewise, Events may indicate a time and place in the dictionary sense; or they may be Transactions involving named entities; or take the form of Signals, such as ‘some Measure had some value at some time’ - what many enterprises understand as alerts.   The central story of the Spectrum is that though consumers of analytical insights (represented here by the Business perspective) need to work in terms of Subjects that are directly meaningful to their perspective — such as Themes, Plans, and Goals — the working realities of data (condition, structure, availability, completeness, cost) and the changing nature of most discovery efforts make direct engagement with source data in this fashion impossible.  Accordingly, business analytics as a domain is structured around the fundamental assumption that sense making depends on analytical transformation of data.  Analytical activity incrementally synthesizes more complex and larger scope Subjects from data in its starting condition, accumulating insight (and value) by moving through a progression of stages in which increasingly meaningful Subjects are iteratively synthesized from the data, and recombined with other Subjects.  The end goal of  ‘laddering’ successive transformations is to enable sense making from the business perspective, rather than the analytical perspective.Synthesis through laddering is typically accomplished by specialized Analysts using dedicated tools and methods. Beginning with some motivating question such as seeking opportunities to increase the efficiency (a Theme) of fulfillment processes to reach some level of profitability by the end of the year (Plan), Analysts will iteratively wrangle and transform source data Records, Values and Attributes into recognizable Entities, such as Products, that can be combined with Measures or other data into the Events (shipment of orders) that indicate the workings of the business.  More complex Subjects (to the right of the Spectrum) are composed of or make reference to less complex Subjects: a business Process such as Fulfillment will include Activities such as confirming, packing, and then shipping orders.  These Activities occur within or are conducted by organizational units such as teams of staff or partner firms (Networks), composed of Entities which are structured via Relationships, such as supplier and buyer.  The fulfillment process will involve other types of Entities, such as the products or services the business provides.  The success of the fulfillment process overall may be judged according to a sophisticated operating efficiency Model, which includes tiered Measures of business activity and health for the transactions and activities included.  All of this may be interpreted through an understanding of the operational domain of the businesses supply chain (a Domain).   We'll discuss the Spectrum in more depth in succeeding posts.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, October 19, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, October 19, 2013Popular ReleasesMedia Companion: Media Companion MC3.583b: As before release but fixed for no movie poster sourcesNew* Both - Added 'An' as option to ignore in title * Movie - Renaming - added %Z - Sorttitle to Legend * Movie - Renaming - added %O - Audio Channels to Legend * Movie - Remove a poster source from priority list. Reset List back to defaults. * Made Media Companion truly portable application. Fixed* Movie - browse for Poster Or Fanart, allows for jpg, tbn, png and bmp images * Movie - Alt Fanart Browser - Url or Browse window now fully...MoreTerra (Terraria World Viewer): MoreTerra 1.11.3.1: Release 1.11.3.1 ================ = New Features = ================ Added markers for Copper Cache, Silver Cache and the Enchanted Sword. ============= = Bug Fixes = ============= Use Official Colors now no longer tries to change the Draw Wires option instead. World reading was breaking for people with a stock 1.2 Terraria version. Changed world name reading so it does not crash the program if you load MoreTerra while Terraria is saving the world. =================== = Feature Removal = =...patterns & practices - Windows Azure Guidance: Cloud Design Patterns: 1st drop of Cloud Design Patterns project. It contains 14 patterns with 6 related guidance.Json.NET: Json.NET 5.0 Release 8: Fix - Fixed not writing string quotes when QuoteName is falsePowerShell Community Extensions: 3.1 Production: PowerShell Community Extensions 3.1 Release NotesOct 17, 2013 This version of PSCX supports Windows PowerShell 3.0 and 4.0 See the ReleaseNotes.txt download above for more information.SQL Power Doc: Version 1.0.2.1: Misc. bug fixes Added logic to resolve members of a Windows Group server login Added columns to Excel workbooks to show definitions for server permissions, server roles, database permissions, and database rolesSocial Network Importer for NodeXL: SocialNetImporter(v.1.9): This new version includes: - Download latest status update and use it as vertex tooltip - Limit the timelines to parse to me, my friends or both - Fixed some reported bugs about the fan page and group importer - Fixed the login bug reported latelyDotNetNuke® Wiki: 05.00.00: Changes made to better support upgrades and the removal of deprecated legacy files that were causing formatting issues. Updated the Version number to better indicate the significance of the C# migration and the new DNN 7.0.2 minimum requirement.TerrariViewer: TerrariViewer v7.1 [Terraria Inventory Editor]: You can now backspace in number fields Items added in 1.2.0.3 no longer corrupt player files Buff durations capped at 9999999 Item stacks capped at 9999999 Version info added Prefix IDs corrected Shoe and Eye color box are now properly clickable Moved Bank and Safe into their own tab Users will now be notified of new updatesPython Tools for Visual Studio: 2.0: PTVS 2.0 We’re pleased to announce the release of Python Tools for Visual Studio 2.0 RTM. Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) is an open-source plug-in for Visual Studio which supports programming with the Python language. PTVS supports a broad range of features including CPython/IronPython, Edit/Intellisense/Debug/Profile, Cloud, IPython, and cross platform and cross language debugging support. QUICK VIDEO OVERVIEW For a quick overview of the general IDE experience, please watch this v...C# Intellisense for Notepad++: Release v.1.0.8.2: Solved scrolling problem after DocumentFormatting Implemented "format as you type" --- To avoid the DLLs getting locked by OS use MSI file for the installation.CS-Script for Notepad++ (C# intellisense and code execution): Release v1.0.8.2: Solved scrolling problem after DocumentFormatting Implemented "format as you type" --- To avoid the DLLs getting locked by OS use MSI file for the installation.Collection Commander for Configuration Manager 2012: CMCollCtr 1.0.0: Change log: - MSI Setup - UI Improved - CM12 Console integration - New Powershell code snippets - Client Center IntegrationLINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter v2.1.09: Supports .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, Silverlight 4.0, Windows Phone 7.1, Windows Phone 8, Client Profile, Windows 8, and Windows Azure. 100% Twitter API coverage. Also supports Twitter API v1.1! Also on NuGet.Sandcastle Help File Builder: SHFB v1.9.8.0 with Visual Studio Package: 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 new release contains bug fixes and feature enhancements. There are some potential breaking changes in this release as some features of the Help File Builder have been moved into...C++ REST SDK (codename "Casablanca"): C++ REST SDK 1.3.0: This release fixes multiple customer reported issues as well as the following: Full support for Dev12 binaries and project files Full support for Windows XP New sample highlighting the Client and Server APIs : BlackJack Expose underlying native handle to set custom options on http_client Improvements to Listener Library Note: Dev10 binaries have been dropped as of this release, however the Dev10 project files are still available in the Source CodeAD ACL Scanner: 1.3.2: Minor bug fixed: Powershell 4.0 will report: Select—Object: Parameter cannot be processed because the parameter name p is ambiguous.Fast YouTube Downloader: YouTube Downloader 2.2.0: YouTube Downloader 2.2.0VidCoder: 1.5.8 Beta: Added hardware acceleration options: Bicubic OpenCL scaling algorithm, QSV decoding/encoding and DXVA decoding. Updated HandBrake core to SVN 5834. Updated VidCoder setup icon. Fixed crash when choosing the mp4v2 container on x86 and opening on x64. Warning: the hardware acceleration features require specific hardware or file types to work correctly: QSV: Need an Intel processor that supports Quick Sync Video encoding, with a monitor hooked up to the Intel HD Graphics output and the lat...ASP.net MVC Awesome - jQuery Ajax Helpers: 3.5.2: version 3.5.2 - fix for setting single value to multivalue controls - datepicker min max date offset fix - html encoding for keys fix - enable Column.ClientFormatFunc to be a function call that will return a function version 3.5.1 - fixed html attributes rendering - fixed loading animation rendering - css improvements version 3.5 ========================== - autosize for all popups ( can be turned off by calling in js awe.autoSize = false ) - added Parent, Paremeter extensions ...New Projectsag2: ag2ApplicationMobile: ApplicationMobileBing Maps/Geolocalization Windows Store Template: Template de aplicativo para Windows 8 utilizando APIs do Bing Maps e Geolocalização. C3D.NET: C3D.NET is a free class library for manipulating C3D file. This project supports .NET 2.0 and .NET 4.0, and provides a free Data Viewer based on this library.DrinksMachineCMC: DrinksMachineCMCFerdeenFatalSpeech: Speech recognition for PC control.FuzzyLogic: FuzzyLogic Demohousekeeping: ?????isolutions Techdays 2013: Zeigt die Möglichkeit des Zugriffes auf ein CRM 2013 Online mit einer Windows Store App und aus einem Word Plugin.Learn .NET Gadgeteer: .NET Gadgeteer example projects using the FEZ Cerberus kit from GHILIT.Logger.ServerChecker: Small application for server monitoring, which demonstrates capabilities of LIT.Logger (www.litlogger.com)LuaTools for Visual Studio: luatools lua visual studioMTM Test Plan Viewer: A UI tool that lets you easily view, explore and export MTM test results.NetworkScan: Network scan windowsObservable Linq: Observable Linq and Observable Expressions is about to change the paradigm how to use expressions and Linq, providing update events whenever the results change.PatientManagement: beep beeppescar-shop-El-enchufe-khristo-grecia-giselle: falta la aplicacion de LINQ...ProjetoEscola: Projeto Integrado Senac Proyecto Librería PRISA: Este sistema servirá para controlar las compras, ventas y almacén de librería "PRISA". Se desarrollará en Visual Studio 2012 con patrón MVC y en base a capas.TDataBase: Simple db query libraryzongtest: test

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, October 21, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, October 21, 2013Popular ReleasesVirtual Wifi Hotspot for Windows 7 & 8: Virtual Router Plus 2.6.0: Virtual Router Plus 2.6.0Fast YouTube Downloader: Fast YouTube Downloader 2.3.0: Fast YouTube DownloaderABCat: ABCat v.2.0a: ?????? ????? ??? ????????? ????????????. ???????? ???, ?? ?? ????? ???? :) ?? ??????? ??????????? ???????? ?? Windows 7 - ????? ??????? ????????? ?? ???? ??? ?????? ??????.Magick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.7.101: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 6.8.7.1. Breaking changes: - Renamed Matrix classes: MatrixColor = ColorMatrix and MatrixConvolve = ConvolveMatrix. - Renamed Depth method with Channels parameter to BitDepth and changed the other method into a property.VidCoder: 1.5.9 Beta: Added Rip DVD and Rip Blu-ray AutoPlay actions for Windows: now you can have VidCoder start up and scan a disc when you insert it. Go to Start -> AutoPlay to set it up. Added error message for Windows XP users rather than letting it crash. Removed "quality" preset from list for QSV as it currently doesn't offer much improvement. Changed installer to ignore version number when copying files over. Should reduce the chances of a bug from me forgetting to increment a version number. Fixed ...MSBuild Extension Pack: October 2013: Release Blog Post The MSBuild Extension Pack October 2013 release provides a collection of over 480 MSBuild tasks. A high level summary of what the tasks currently cover includes the following: System Items: Active Directory, Certificates, COM+, Console, Date and Time, Drives, Environment Variables, Event Logs, Files and Folders, FTP, GAC, Network, Performance Counters, Registry, Services, Sound Code: Assemblies, AsyncExec, CAB Files, Code Signing, DynamicExecute, File Detokenisation, GUI...VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.49: changes NEW: Added Support for "ImageTeam.org links NEW: Added Support for "ImgNext.com" links NEW: Added Support for "HostUrImage.com" links NEW: Added Support for "3XVintage.com" linksMedia Companion: Media Companion MC3.583b: As before release but fixed for no movie poster sourcesNew* Both - Added 'An' as option to ignore in title * Movie - Renaming - added %Z - Sorttitle to Legend * Movie - Renaming - added %O - Audio Channels to Legend * Movie - Remove a poster source from priority list. Reset List back to defaults. * Made Media Companion truly portable application. Fixed* Movie - browse for Poster Or Fanart, allows for jpg, tbn, png and bmp images * Movie - Alt Fanart Browser - Url or Browse window now fully...MoreTerra (Terraria World Viewer): MoreTerra 1.11.3.1: Release 1.11.3.1 ================ = New Features = ================ Added markers for Copper Cache, Silver Cache and the Enchanted Sword. ============= = Bug Fixes = ============= Use Official Colors now no longer tries to change the Draw Wires option instead. World reading was breaking for people with a stock 1.2 Terraria version. Changed world name reading so it does not crash the program if you load MoreTerra while Terraria is saving the world. =================== = Feature Removal = =...patterns & practices - Windows Azure Guidance: Cloud Design Patterns: 1st drop of Cloud Design Patterns project. It contains 14 patterns with 6 related guidance.Player Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows and WP (v1.3): Includes all changes in v1.3 beta 1 and v1.3 beta 2 Support for Windows 8.1 RTM and VS2013 RTM Xaml: New property: AutoLoadPluginTypes to help control which stock plugins are loaded by default (requires AutoLoadPlugins = true). Support for SystemMediaTransportControls on Windows 8.1 JS: Support for visual markers in the timeline. JS: Support for markers collection and markerreached event. JS: New ChaptersPlugin to automatically populate timeline with chapter tracks. JS: Audio an...Json.NET: Json.NET 5.0 Release 8: Fix - Fixed not writing string quotes when QuoteName is falsePowerShell Community Extensions: 3.1 Production: PowerShell Community Extensions 3.1 Release NotesOct 17, 2013 This version of PSCX supports Windows PowerShell 3.0 and 4.0 See the ReleaseNotes.txt download above for more information.SQL Power Doc: Version 1.0.2.1: Misc. bug fixes Added logic to resolve members of a Windows Group server login Added columns to Excel workbooks to show definitions for server permissions, server roles, database permissions, and database rolesSocial Network Importer for NodeXL: SocialNetImporter(v.1.9): This new version includes: - Download latest status update and use it as vertex tooltip - Limit the timelines to parse to me, my friends or both - Fixed some reported bugs about the fan page and group importer - Fixed the login bug reported latelyTerrariViewer: TerrariViewer v7.1 [Terraria Inventory Editor]: You can now backspace in number fields Items added in 1.2.0.3 no longer corrupt player files Buff durations capped at 9999999 Item stacks capped at 9999999 Version info added Prefix IDs corrected Shoe and Eye color box are now properly clickable Moved Bank and Safe into their own tab Users will now be notified of new updatesPython Tools for Visual Studio: 2.0: PTVS 2.0 We’re pleased to announce the release of Python Tools for Visual Studio 2.0 RTM. Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) is an open-source plug-in for Visual Studio which supports programming with the Python language. PTVS supports a broad range of features including CPython/IronPython, Edit/Intellisense/Debug/Profile, Cloud, IPython, and cross platform and cross language debugging support. QUICK VIDEO OVERVIEW For a quick overview of the general IDE experience, please watch this v...LINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter v2.1.09: Supports .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, Silverlight 4.0, Windows Phone 7.1, Windows Phone 8, Client Profile, Windows 8, and Windows Azure. 100% Twitter API coverage. Also supports Twitter API v1.1! Also on NuGet.Sandcastle Help File Builder: SHFB v1.9.8.0 with Visual Studio Package: 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 new release contains bug fixes and feature enhancements. There are some potential breaking changes in this release as some features of the Help File Builder have been moved into...C++ REST SDK (codename "Casablanca"): C++ REST SDK 1.3.0: This release fixes multiple customer reported issues as well as the following: Full support for Dev12 binaries and project files Full support for Windows XP New sample highlighting the Client and Server APIs : BlackJack Expose underlying native handle to set custom options on http_client Improvements to Listener Library Note: Dev10 binaries have been dropped as of this release, however the Dev10 project files are still available in the Source CodeNew Projects4Elements game project: Project for a game were players will be able to earn money by just playingBible: This project aims to deliver an awesome Bible application for as many platforms as possible.cIFrex: cIFrexConnecting SharePoint with Exchange Server 2010/2013 using remote sessions: The project focuses on connecting SharePoint 2013 with Exchange Server 2010/2013 via Remote PowerShell with C# API Crzy Cms: Crzy CMS is a content management system created in ASP.NET using MVC/Entity Framework.DownloadsArchiver: Kann automatisch das Downloads-Verzeichnis aufräumen.GatePass: Gatepass SystemGenerate PowerShell scripts for SharePoint 2010 Site Collection Administration: Winform tool to generate PowerShell scripts, to move, create, backup and restore site collections It needs to be run on SharePoint Server 2010Generate PowerShell scripts for SharePoint 2013 Site Collection Administration: Winform tool to generate PowerShell scripts, to move, create, backup and restore site collections It needs to be run on SharePoint Server 2013GTerm: GTerm is alternative Terminal for Windows Vista/XP/7 and 8.Ignitron Chess: A newly created software product for playing chess by Ignitron Development Team.Introduccion a C# con VS2012: El curso de Introducción a C# con Visual Studio 2012, tiene como objetivo principal enseñar al estudiante los conceptos básicos de programación utilizando C#Punch Clock: Punch Clock is a online tool for any employee to sign up and calculate their daily,weekly monthly hours and download the report in PDF/Excel format. PVMonitor: This project will provide a monitoring dashboard for PV systems.qttexteditor: qttexteditorRegister Interest app: Register Interest is an app template where you can use to record interest of attendees, useful in marketing distribution.SharePoint Simple Developer: Project allows to simply SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2013 daily developers tasks. Main goal is to implement validation of built solutions. Silverlight QB Rating Calculator: Silverlight QB Rating Calculator is a Silverlight 5 App that calculates a QB's NFL and NCAA passing efficiency ratings.SimpleAdditionPage: This projects consists of a simple ASP.NET in VB.NET page that allows users to enter 2 numbers, and display their sum.SP SIN Store: SP SIN Store is an extension to SP SIN that allows users to install solutions in SharePoint similar to the WordPress plugins. Project is in Alpha stage.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, October 20, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, October 20, 2013Popular ReleasesKerbalAlarmClock: v2.6.1.0 Release: Version 2.6.1.0 Recompiled it for 0.21 Added Crew Alarms (track Kerbal rather than Vessel) Added Distance Target Alarms - distance from target vessel or altitude above planet Added Launch Rendezvous Alarm (under Ascending/Descending Node for Landed craft) - MechJeb2 code - thanks r4m0n Allow restoration of Nodes that you have passed (useful for interplanetary burns) Added missing Dres Transfer Model data - thanks Voneiden Added view only version of Alarm clock to both Space Center...MSBuild Extension Pack: October 2013: Release Blog Post The MSBuild Extension Pack October 2013 release provides a collection of over 480 MSBuild tasks. A high level summary of what the tasks currently cover includes the following: System Items: Active Directory, Certificates, COM+, Console, Date and Time, Drives, Environment Variables, Event Logs, Files and Folders, FTP, GAC, Network, Performance Counters, Registry, Services, Sound Code: Assemblies, AsyncExec, CAB Files, Code Signing, DynamicExecute, File Detokenisation, GUI...VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.49: changes NEW: Added Support for "ImageTeam.org links NEW: Added Support for "ImgNext.com" links NEW: Added Support for "HostUrImage.com" links NEW: Added Support for "3XVintage.com" linksMedia Companion: Media Companion MC3.583b: As before release but fixed for no movie poster sourcesNew* Both - Added 'An' as option to ignore in title * Movie - Renaming - added %Z - Sorttitle to Legend * Movie - Renaming - added %O - Audio Channels to Legend * Movie - Remove a poster source from priority list. Reset List back to defaults. * Made Media Companion truly portable application. Fixed* Movie - browse for Poster Or Fanart, allows for jpg, tbn, png and bmp images * Movie - Alt Fanart Browser - Url or Browse window now fully...MoreTerra (Terraria World Viewer): MoreTerra 1.11.3.1: Release 1.11.3.1 ================ = New Features = ================ Added markers for Copper Cache, Silver Cache and the Enchanted Sword. ============= = Bug Fixes = ============= Use Official Colors now no longer tries to change the Draw Wires option instead. World reading was breaking for people with a stock 1.2 Terraria version. Changed world name reading so it does not crash the program if you load MoreTerra while Terraria is saving the world. =================== = Feature Removal = =...patterns & practices - Windows Azure Guidance: Cloud Design Patterns: 1st drop of Cloud Design Patterns project. It contains 14 patterns with 6 related guidance.Player Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows and WP (v1.3): Includes all changes in v1.3 beta 1 and v1.3 beta 2 Support for Windows 8.1 RTM and VS2013 RTM Xaml: New property: AutoLoadPluginTypes to help control which stock plugins are loaded by default (requires AutoLoadPlugins = true). Support for SystemMediaTransportControls on Windows 8.1 JS: Support for visual markers in the timeline. JS: Support for markers collection and markerreached event. JS: New ChaptersPlugin to automatically populate timeline with chapter tracks. JS: Audio an...Json.NET: Json.NET 5.0 Release 8: Fix - Fixed not writing string quotes when QuoteName is falsePowerShell Community Extensions: 3.1 Production: PowerShell Community Extensions 3.1 Release NotesOct 17, 2013 This version of PSCX supports Windows PowerShell 3.0 and 4.0 See the ReleaseNotes.txt download above for more information.SQL Power Doc: Version 1.0.2.1: Misc. bug fixes Added logic to resolve members of a Windows Group server login Added columns to Excel workbooks to show definitions for server permissions, server roles, database permissions, and database rolesSocial Network Importer for NodeXL: SocialNetImporter(v.1.9): This new version includes: - Download latest status update and use it as vertex tooltip - Limit the timelines to parse to me, my friends or both - Fixed some reported bugs about the fan page and group importer - Fixed the login bug reported latelyTerrariViewer: TerrariViewer v7.1 [Terraria Inventory Editor]: You can now backspace in number fields Items added in 1.2.0.3 no longer corrupt player files Buff durations capped at 9999999 Item stacks capped at 9999999 Version info added Prefix IDs corrected Shoe and Eye color box are now properly clickable Moved Bank and Safe into their own tab Users will now be notified of new updatesPython Tools for Visual Studio: 2.0: PTVS 2.0 We’re pleased to announce the release of Python Tools for Visual Studio 2.0 RTM. Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) is an open-source plug-in for Visual Studio which supports programming with the Python language. PTVS supports a broad range of features including CPython/IronPython, Edit/Intellisense/Debug/Profile, Cloud, IPython, and cross platform and cross language debugging support. QUICK VIDEO OVERVIEW For a quick overview of the general IDE experience, please watch this v...CS-Script for Notepad++ (C# intellisense and code execution): Release v1.0.8.2: Solved scrolling problem after DocumentFormatting Implemented "format as you type" --- To avoid the DLLs getting locked by OS use MSI file for the installation.LINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter v2.1.09: Supports .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, Silverlight 4.0, Windows Phone 7.1, Windows Phone 8, Client Profile, Windows 8, and Windows Azure. 100% Twitter API coverage. Also supports Twitter API v1.1! Also on NuGet.Sandcastle Help File Builder: SHFB v1.9.8.0 with Visual Studio Package: 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 new release contains bug fixes and feature enhancements. There are some potential breaking changes in this release as some features of the Help File Builder have been moved into...C++ REST SDK (codename "Casablanca"): C++ REST SDK 1.3.0: This release fixes multiple customer reported issues as well as the following: Full support for Dev12 binaries and project files Full support for Windows XP New sample highlighting the Client and Server APIs : BlackJack Expose underlying native handle to set custom options on http_client Improvements to Listener Library Note: Dev10 binaries have been dropped as of this release, however the Dev10 project files are still available in the Source CodeAD ACL Scanner: 1.3.2: Minor bug fixed: Powershell 4.0 will report: Select—Object: Parameter cannot be processed because the parameter name p is ambiguous.Fast YouTube Downloader: YouTube Downloader 2.2.0: YouTube Downloader 2.2.0VidCoder: 1.5.8 Beta: Added hardware acceleration options: Bicubic OpenCL scaling algorithm, QSV decoding/encoding and DXVA decoding. Updated HandBrake core to SVN 5834. Updated VidCoder setup icon. Fixed crash when choosing the mp4v2 container on x86 and opening on x64. Warning: the hardware acceleration features require specific hardware or file types to work correctly: QSV: Need an Intel processor that supports Quick Sync Video encoding, with a monitor hooked up to the Intel HD Graphics output and the lat...New ProjectsAdd2Nums: Add2Nums is a VB.NET project that takes 2 numbers, computes their sum and outputs the result. Developed by Justin Mifsud as part of Assignment 1 (7COM0152)Athir: GPAO El_AthirCS-MIC - C# Math Input Control: CS-MIC is a .NET library written in C# designed to give developers easy access to expression parsing.HLS Video Player: An open source over-the-network video player for HLS (Hinkle Light Show)Project Stark: This is a secret project available only to the project owners for the time being.Run ++: Run Plus Plus is a tool that enables you to custom the commands in the "Run" dialog.SimpleAddition: This is a simple ASP.NET in VB.NET page that allows users to enter 2 numbers, and display their sum. SWE 681 Go Fish: Project

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• Oracle Virtualization at Oracle OpenWorld 2012

  - by Chris Kawalek

  Mini-Series Entry 1 of 3: Hands-On Virtualization This is the first entry of a 3 part mini-series aimed at highlighting server and desktop virtualization at this year’s Oracle OpenWorld.  Oracle OpenWorld 2012 is fast approaching! If you are as excited as we are about the fascinating new Oracle virtualization content featured at Oracle OpenWorld 2012, you won’t want to miss this blog mini-series. We will be highlighting sessions that cover advances and innovations in our products, our product strategy and roadmap, and hands on labs for step-by-step instructions from our field and product experts. In the blog mini-series you will learn about: The Oracle Virtualization general keynote session Hands-on labs  Key Oracle server and desktop virtualization sessions In this entry, we will cover the Oracle Virtualization keynote session and the hands-on labs you won't want to miss. General Session: Oracle Virtualization Strategy and Roadmap Session ID: GEN8725 Oracle offers the industry’s most complete and integrated virtualization portfolio enabling organizations to realize benefits beyond simple consolidation as they transform their data centers into flexible cloud-based infrastructures. Join Oracle executives and experts to learn about Oracle’s desktop-to-data-center virtualization solutions, such as the OS, with built-in management integration at all layers that can help you virtualize and manage the complete computing environment, from physical servers to virtual servers and applications. This “don’t-miss” session offers details of the latest product updates and strategy; product roadmaps; integration with enterprise applications; and real-world examples of how Oracle server, desktop, and storage virtualization is benefiting customers. Here are our top picks for Hands-On Labs for Oracle OpenWorld 2012: Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Performance and Tablet Mobility Session ID: HOL9907 This hands-on lab demonstrates the performance (using an industry-standard load tester) and roaming capabilities of Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure with Oracle’s Sun Ray Clients, Apple iPad and other clients. Deploying an IaaS Environment with Oracle VM: Hands-On Lab  Session ID: HOL9558 This hands-on lab takes you through the planning and deployment of an infrastructure as a service (IaaS) environment with Oracle VM as the foundation. It covers a range of topics, from planning storage capacity, LUN creation, network bandwidth planning, and best practices to designing and streamlining the environment for ease of management. Learn from deeply experienced field engineers and product experts. Virtualize and Deploy Oracle Applications in Minutes with Oracle VM: Hands-On Lab Session ID: HOL9559 This hands-on lab is for application architects or system administrators who will need to deploy and manage Oracle Applications. You’ll learn how Oracle VM Templates can turn you into a power user who can virtualize and deploy complex Oracle Applications in minutes. Longtime field-experienced engineers and product experts will show you, step by step, how to download and import templates and deploy the applications. x86 Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure with Oracle VM 3.x and Sun ZFS Storage Appliance Session ID: HOL9870 The purpose of this hands-on lab is to demonstrate the functionality and usage of Oracle’s enterprise cloud infrastructure for x86 with Oracle VM 3.x. It covers:  Creation of VMs Migration of VMs  Quick and easy deployment of Oracle applications with Oracle VM Templates  Usage of the Storage Connect plug-in for the Sun ZFS Storage Appliance You can find these and other great sessions on the Oracle OpenWorld 2012 Content Catalogue. Start checking now to better plan and organize your week at the conference. Then you’ll be ready to sign up for all of your sessions in mid-July when the scheduling tool goes live. While the hands-on labs allow you to directly interact with Oracle virtualization products, the conference sessions allow you to hear from a wide variety of industry experts on how they're using they technology in real world deployments, solving specific challenges, and more. In tomorrow's entry, we'll start talking about the many conference sessions related to Oracle server and desktop virtualization you can attend during the show. See you then! - The Oracle Virtualization marketing team

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• Windows CE Chat Transcript (March 30, 2010)

  - by Bruce Eitman

  For those of you who missed the chat today, here is the raw transcript.   By raw, I mean that I copied and pasted the discussion without any edits. This is divided into two parts, the top part is the answers from the Microsoft Experts and the bottom part is the questions from the audience. Answers from Microsoft:   Karel Danihelka [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:2]: Hi everyone, my name is Karel Danihelka and I am developer in partner response team. Sing Wee [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:2]: Hi, I'm Sing Wee, part of the CoreOS/BSP Test Team. GLanger_MS (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:2]: Hi, I'm Glen Langer, program manager on the Core Team. Karel Danihelka [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:3]: Q: I need to implement hardware timers on my windows CE 6.0 device to trigger events at microsecond intervals. Where should i start? A: Until you are using CPU with GHz frequency your only chance is use interrupt handler and implement all funcionality there. But it will be really tricky and may reduce system performance. If period will be near to millisecond timeframe you can use normal thread wait for event pattern. Karel Danihelka [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:5]: Q: I want to partition my NAND Flash device. One partition to use for hive ragistry and the other for the apps and data. The only way to do it is programmatically or setting some registry values ? A: It need to be set in registry - generally you need mark this partition as boot partition. Karel Danihelka [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:7]: Q: My CPU is Intel celeron M processor 1Ghz. A: In this case you can try use normal approach - in interrupt handler return SYSINTR and start thread in device driver which will spin thread waiting on event attached to this SYSINTR. Karel Danihelka [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:7]: Q: If i need to implement it using interrupt handlers, What are all the files that I should look at? A: Good quesiton - I would recommend documentation and there was BSP development book to download for free. mikehall_ms (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:8]: Q: Hi guys, what's the formal way to report bugs back to the core team / product team? The mechanism of calling the support phone number every time is really onerous and time-consuming. Is there another mechanism? A: Using product support is the formal way to report bugs/issues - Product support can then create an issue that can be tracked. Karel Danihelka [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:9]: Q: But the operation for creating the partitions ? A: This is tricky - if you will make it autopartition & autoformat it will be created by filesystem. But generally it depends on your boot loader. mikehall_ms (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:10]: Q: Is Windows Phone 7 related to Windows CE? If so, can you tell me what version of Windows CE is the basis? Is it in fact the new version of Windows Mobile? A: At MIX 2010 Charlie Kindel presented a session that described some of the core technologies that make up Windows Phone 7 Series, including the underlying operating system (Windows CE) and the new ISV programming model based on Silverlight and .NET - check out the Mix Online Videos to get more information. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:10]: Q: Is Windows Phone 7 related to Windows CE? If so, can you tell me what version of Windows CE is the basis? Is it in fact the new version of Windows Mobile? A: This forum is to discussed released products in the industry. Windows Mobile & Windows CE are based on the same Windows CE Kernel/system. Windows CE is focused on deliverying the OS for embedded customers in the market where Windows Mobile is focused on deliverying compelling Windows Phone platform. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:11]: Q: Is Windows Phone 7 related to Windows CE? If so, can you tell me what version of Windows CE is the basis? Is it in fact the new version of Windows Mobile? A: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_CE Wikipedia gives a good breakdown of the version history. Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:13]: Q: I created a OS design with KITL and kernel debugger enabled. But I am unable to connect to the target for debugging. I am getting the following error when i try to connect with the device. PB Debugger Cannot initialize the Kernel Debugger. PB Debugger Debugger could not initialize connection. PB Debugger The Kernel Debugger is waiting to connect with target. PB Debugger The Kernel Debugger has been disconnected successfully. A: One possibility is that a rogue cesvchost.exe has co-opted the debugger. I am assuming this is CE 6.0? Can you try exiting visual studio and manually killing the cesvchost.exe process from the Task Manager? davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:14]: Q: Hi guys, what's the formal way to report bugs back to the core team / product team? The mechanism of calling the support phone number every time is really onerous and time-consuming. Is there another mechanism? A: For info on contacting Microsoft support refer to the support page on the Embedded website: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsembedded/dd897633.aspx Sing Wee [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:16]: Q: Do u mean ISR/IST implementation? How can i register an interrupt? What kind of interrupt should i register? A: A good introduction to interrupts in WinCE 6.0 can be found here (aside from the documentation on MSDN): http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/c/f/9cffaa58-4000-48d6-a4b2-5fed9e4e6410/Chapter%206%20-%20Developing%20Device%20Drivers.pdf mikehall_ms (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:16]: Q: What will be different in Windows Compact 7 from CE 6.0? A: Unfortunately we cannot discuss unreleased products on this chat - keep an eye on the Windows Embedded web site and blogs to keep up to date with product announcements. Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:16]: Q: I am using CE 6.0. There is no cesvchost process running in my system. A: What operating system are you using? Karel Danihelka [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:16]: Q: So...I have to modify file system code to create 2 partition at system startup ?!! I haven't understood.... A: You don't need to modify code, there are registry settings to achive this (look to documentation). But you may need to create partition table in boot loader. Unfortunatelly there isn't simple way how to do it. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:18]: Q: I would like to get a handle to a Silverlight screen section, is that possiable? A: Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3 includes Sliverlight for Windows Embedded. Refer to New Features overview on the embedded web site. http://www.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/en-us/products/windowsce/default.mspx. Silverlight - The power of Silverlight brought to Windows Embedded CE to create rich applications and user interfaces is new part of Windows CE Embedded. mikehall_ms (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:20]: Q: The link for developing device drivers is not working. can u please check that? A: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms923714.aspx davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:20]: Q: I would like to get a handle to a Silverlight screen section, is that possiable? A: Sorry misunderstood the question I thought you were asking if embedded CE could handle Silverlight. Please repost so that the question goes back into the active queue because once answered no way to put the status back to open. Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:21]: Q: sorry! Windows XP SP3 A: Can you try exiting VS2005 and confirming cesvchost.exe is not running, then renaming C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\CoreCon\1.0 to 1.0_backup, then restarting VS2005? Sing Wee [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:24]: Q: Can I have the book's name please? A: I believe the downloadable version is related to the last link I sent. If you go to the following website, I believe you can download the whole thing: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsembedded/ce/cc294468.aspx davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:24]: Q: If one has an image on a Silverlight page, it seems to be cached. How would one refresh that cache after changing the underlying image? A: change the URI of the image or use a writeable bitmap if they want to manually toggle the pixels Sing Wee [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:25]: A: Whoops, hit [ENTER] too early. On the right side, you'll see there an "Exam Preparation Kit" link that can be downloaded in several different languages. Sing Wee [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:25]: Q: Can I have the book's name please? A: Whoops, hit [ENTER] too early. On the right side, you'll see there an "Exam Preparation Kit" link that can be downloaded in several different languages. Karel Danihelka [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:26]: Q: I have a NAND Flash on my target device. On this flash I have the hive registry and an application.I have observed that when the NAND flash is fully, the system startup time is longer....is there a degradation of NAND use that influences the startup time ? Why ? A: Yes - on boot flash abstraction library (old one) read metadata from all sectors to rebuild physical - logical mapping table. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:27]: Q: I would like to get a handle to a Silverlight screen section, is that possiable? A: Need addition info on this question. Can you provide more details on what you are trying to do in Silverlight? davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:27]: Q: If one has an image on a Silverlight page, it seems to be cached. How would one refresh that cache after changing the underlying image? A: Additonal Info: if you want to manually touch the pixels use WriteableBitmap if you want to use the underlying HWND then use IXRVisualHost::GetHWND() davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:28]: Q: Writable bitmap, is there an example of the syntax? A: if you want to manually touch the pixels use WriteableBitmap if you want to use the underlying HWND then use IXRVisualHost::GetHWND() davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:29]: Q: I would like to get a handle to a Silverlight screen section, is that possiable? A: Can I get more information about this question about what you are trying to accomplish in Silverlight? davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:31]: Q: IXRVisualHost::GetHWND() exactly what I needed Thanks, A: Your welcome Sing Wee [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:31]: Q: ok. thanks for the book's link A: No problem. Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:32]: Q: Typically for SoC devices you name your hardware specific libraries in the form "SOCDIRNAME_LIBNAME". In our platform "OMAP35XX_TPS659XX_TI_V1" if you do this we cause the catalog parser to die... For example if we have a library "Musbfn_OMAP35XX_TPS659XX_TI_V1.dll" entering this in the catalogs pbcxml file in a <module> section causes the XML parser to fail with : Error 3 The 'urn:Microsoft.PlatformBuilder/Catalog:Module' element is        invalid - The value '012345678901234567890123456789.dll' is invalid         according to its datatype         'urn:Microsoft.PlatformBuilder/Catalog:CatalogFileName' - The actual         length is greater than the MaxLength value. A: There are a couple workarounds I can think of. I believe the Module element is only used when doing SYSGEN parsing to make sure dependent SYSGENs are present when the item is selected, so I believe it is optional to the catalog. The other obvious workaround is to shorten the soc name. I realize neither of these solutions is ideal. This is not something we anticipated when we tested CE6.0, sorry. Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:33]: Q: I am getting this error only when I select the KdStub as the debugger in Target device connectivity. A: Right, but KdStub is the debugger that you should use. Have you tried the steps I suggested? Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:36]: Q: If I select Active KTIL, My OS doesn't boots. It says "loading NK.EXE at 0x<xxxxx> location" after that nothing comes in the debug log. A: Can you look at the serial debug output and see what is happening there? Often it can give you a clue to the KITL driver malfunctioning. Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:38]: Q: I have tried that and I am getting the same error. A: I am assuming you have a device created in Target -> Connectivity Options in Platform Builder. What are the Kernel download / Kernel transport for your device? Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:40]: Q: KITL: *** Device Name CEPC56059 *** WARN: KITL will run in polling mode VBridge:: built on [Jul 10 2009] time [10:20:14] VBridgeInit()...TX = [16384] bytes -- Rx = [16384] bytes Tx buffer [0xA1B84860] to [0xA1B88860]. Rx buffer [0xA1B88880] to [0xA1B8C880]. VBridge:: NK add MAC: [0-60-65-2-DA-FB] Connecting to Desktop KITL: Connected host IP: 1 Port: 1086 .. this is the output of the serial debug A: This looks reasonable and does not give clues as to why boot would halt at that point. If you capture a network trace or turn on KITL debug zones via dpCurSettings in kitl.dll, do you see KITL active after this? Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:41]: Q: Both is happening via Ethernet. A: Only thing I have left to suggest is a Platform Builder installation Repair, then. Karel Danihelka [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:42]: Q: Hi, I saw that the ATADISK is quite generic and des not have any optimizations. Do you have any advice to consider while tryin to improve the performance of it? A: If I remember correctly sample code has support for some specific hardware controllers (little obsolete now). This should be good start point (if you will not decide take existing driver as sample and write you own). Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:44]: Q: I didn't do that. I have to try. A: I think that's the next valid step. You need to figure out whether KITL is hanging or the device - use instrumented serial debug messages and network trace to determine this. Sing Wee [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:46]: Q: KITL: *** Device Name CEPC56059 *** WARN: KITL will run in polling mode VBridge:: built on [Jul 10 2009] time [10:20:14] VBridgeInit()...TX = [16384] bytes -- Rx = [16384] bytes Tx buffer [0xA1B84860] to [0xA1B88860]. Rx buffer [0xA1B88880] to [0xA1B8C880]. VBridge:: NK add MAC: [0-60-65-2-DA-FB] Connecting to Desktop KITL: Connected host IP: 1 Port: 1086 .. this is the output of the serial debug A: Neo, have you by any chance tried looking into your firewall to see if it might be blocking traffic on any particular ports? Wireshark/netmon might be able to help you here if that's the issue. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:48]: Q: I lost spell check, how can i get it back A: Hello - can you give additional details about your question? Is this related to a Windows CE Embedded application? masatos_MSFT (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:51]: Q: When attempting to run the CETK cellcore tests the documentation states the pre-requisites include "stinger.ini", "ltk.ini" but windows CE doesn't provide these or document what they fully need to contain. Implicitly you also need "datatrans.xml" which isn't supplied. If you get around this error and steal these from Windows Mobile instead, when you try and run the CETK tests you get a data abort in radiometricsdll.dll. How should we invoke the cellcore parts of CETK? A: Hi Pev, what version of Windows CE and CETK are you using? I do not have the expertise to answer this question, but can find somebody who can. Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:52]: Q: I don't see a kitlcore.dll in my OS. is my debug image fails to load because of that? A: kitl.dll should be all that's needed, kitlcore.lib is linked into that. Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:55]: Q: I've got a platform (not developed by myself) where I2C bus support has to be provided through the OAL as the kernel needs to talk to devices such as the power management IC and gas gauge so a 'proper' I2C driver hanging off device manager isn't possible. This happens to be a polled driver, so obviously it hits the system hard when either under lots of traffic or an error condition occurs and the driver constantly polls. I originally thought that there was no straightforward way to make such code interrupt driven in the kernel (as it's a cludge) but I realised that that's exactly what ETHDBG drivers do. Is there any reason why I shouldn't have a go at implementing a similar mechanism for our kernel resident I2C driver? If not, are there any obvious pitfalls - I've not seen any other BSP's do this in the past... A: You can make a 'proper' driver that calls down into the OAL to do the actual I2C transactions. Alternatively you can build an interrupt-based version in the OAL where you handle everything in the ISR. There is nothing wrong with that so long as the rest of your drivers and app threads can handle longer times with interrupts off while you are servicing I2C interrupts. Sing Wee [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:55]: Q: I am having trouble with my mouse, I have the microsoft wireless mobile mouse 3000, when I push the scroll button I am suppose to have autoscroll instead it shows other web pages,Can you help me out tell me what to do!!! A: Sorry, this current chat is about Windows Embedded Compact. Hope you're able to find an answer to your question elsewhere. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:56]: Q: Is the Silverlight Animation "Spline" a BezierSpline? A: Spline - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee501495.aspx<BR< a>>   masatos_MSFT (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:57]: Thanks for the info Pev. I will follow up with the CETK experts here and get back to you. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:59]: Q: Spline- bad link A: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee501495.aspx davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 13:0]: Q: Sorry, got to tirm the ">" A: No Worries http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee501495.aspx davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 13:0]: Hello everyone, we are just about out of time. Thank you for joining us for our Windows Embedded CE 6.0 chat today! <http://www.Microsoft.com/Embedded>; A special thank you to the product group members for coming out. The transcript of today’s chat will be posted online as soon as possible, to <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/chats>;. We’ll see you again for another chat next month. Please check <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/chats>; for the list of upcoming chats. If you still have unanswered questions, let me suggest that you post them on one of our newsgroups on <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsembedded/ce/default.aspx> -Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3 Now Available! <http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/ce/dd630616.aspx>; davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 13:1]: Q: hi everybody. I would like to know if there is something know about a bug in RTC API (VOIP), especially when using SIP. According the to the analysis with application verifyier there is a heap link in rtcdllmedia.dll. All of the unreleased chunks seem to have a size of 6560 bytes. A: I will follow up with the Networking Team for a response. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 13:1]: Q: Hi, we've problems with debugging of applications (= breakpoints in Platform Builder will be ignored) over KITL on Windows CE 5.0, if the PDB files are large (over 60MB). Are there any limitations to size of the PDB files? A: I will follow up with the tools team for a response and post with the transcript. Sing Wee [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 13:1]: Q: I am unable to use the target control in my development environment. any ideas? A: Make sure you have SYSGEN_SHELL=1 set in your build environment. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 13:3]: Q: what are the main differences between Object Store and RAM disk ? They are both in RAM...are there performance differences ? access differences ? A: I will follow up with the Core Team and get a response posted with the transcript to MSDN  The Questions   [2010-3-30 12:57]: Thanks for the info Pev. I will follow up with the CETK experts here and get back to you. [2010-3-30 12:59]:   [2010-3-30 13:0]:   [2010-3-30 13:0]: Hello everyone, we are just about out of time. Thank you for joining us for our Windows Embedded CE 6.0 chat today! <http://www.Microsoft.com/Embedded>; A special thank you to the product group members for coming out. The transcript of today’s chat will be posted online as soon as possible, to <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/chats>;. We’ll see you again for another chat next month. Please check <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/chats>; for the list of upcoming chats. If you still have unanswered questions, let me suggest that you post them on one of our newsgroups on <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsembedded/ce/default.aspx> -Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3 Now Available! <http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/ce/dd630616.aspx>; [2010-3-30 13:1]: [2010-3-30 13:1]: [2010-3-30 13:1]: [2010-3-30 13:3]: neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:37]: Hi all KellyG (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:37]: Hi KellyG (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:37]: I have a question unrelated to windows Ce embedded, can you please help me?? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:38]: I need to implement hardware timers on my windows CE 6.0 device to trigger events at microsecond intervals! c neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:38]: yes. post it. May be i cud give a try KellyG (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:38]: My Product key listed on my tower is not the product key I need for microsoft office, but that is the only product key listed. neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:39]: I hope this is a chat for windows embedded. please post ur queries in office forums KellyG (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:39]: it is but i could not find a forum for office neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:40]: I think moderators will help u out. @ davbo-msft: can u help this guy? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:41]: Q: I need to implement hardware timers on my windows CE 6.0 device to trigger events at microsecond intervals. Where should i start? davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 11:50]: Our chat today covers the topic of Windows Embedded CE! 1. This chat will last for one hour. During this hour, our Experts will respond to as many questions as they can. Please understand that there may be some questions we cannot respond to due to lack of information or because the information is not yet public. 2. We encourage you to submit questions for our Experts. To do so, type your questions in the send box, select the “ask the Experts” box and click SEND. Questions sent directly to the Guest Chat room will not be answered by the Experts, but we encourage other community members to assist. 3. We ask that you stay on topic for the duration of the chat. This helps the Guests and Experts follow the conversation more easily. We invite you to ask off topic questions after this chat is over, but not during. 4. Please abide by the Chat Code of Conduct. Chat code of conduct: <http://msdn.microsoft.com/chats/chatroom.aspx?ctl=hlp#Conduct>; Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:54]: Evening! davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 11:54]: Hello everyone this is Dave Boyce - I worked in the Multimedia area for Windows CE. neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:55]: hello dave neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:55]: The chat code of conduct link is not working! Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:56]: Best be polite just in case then ;-) neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:56]: davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 11:57]: I'll check out the issue w/ the link paolopat (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:0]: Hello davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:0]: We are pleased to welcome our Experts for today’s chat. I will have them introduce themselves now. Chat will begin in a couple of minutes. <http://www.Microsoft.com/Embedded>; paolopat (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:3]: Hello Experts ! neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:3]: Welcome all! paolopat (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:3]: Q: I want to partition my NAND Flash device. One partition to use for hive ragistry and the other for the apps and data. The only way to do it is programmatically or setting some registry values ? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:3]: Q: I need to implement hardware timers on my windows CE 6.0 device to trigger events at microsecond intervals. Where should i start? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:5]: Q: My CPU is Intel celeron M processor 1Ghz. Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:5]: neo: if your silicon has multiple general purpose timers, pick one that's not in use for the system timer / profiler and set it up to trigger irqs for your purpose. You can't guarantee hard realtime type responses though... GarySwalling (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:5]: Q: Is Windows Phone 7 related to Windows CE? If so, can you tell me what version of Windows CE is the basis? Is it in fact the new version of Windows Mobile? Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:6]: Q: Hi guys, what's the formal way to report bugs back to the core team / product team? The mechanism of calling the support phone number every time is really onerous and time-consuming. Is there another mechanism? paolopat (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:6]: Q: But the operation for creating the partitions ? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:6]: Q: If i need to implement it using interrupt handlers, What are all the files that I should look at? GPM (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:6]: Q: I would like to get a handle to a Silverlight screen section, is that possiable? Jhony (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:7]: Q: I created a OS design with KITL and kernel debugger enabled. But I am unable to connect to the target for debugging. I am getting the following error when i try to connect with the device. PB Debugger Cannot initialize the Kernel Debugger. PB Debugger Debugger could not initialize connection. PB Debugger The Kernel Debugger is waiting to connect with target. PB Debugger The Kernel Debugger has been disconnected successfully. Charles (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:7]: What will be different in Windows Compact 7 from CE 6.0? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:8]: Can I have the book's name please? kiefs_dev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:8]: Q: hi everybody. I would like to know if there is something know about a bug in RTC API (VOIP), especially when using SIP. According the to the analysis with application verifyier there is a heap link in rtcdllmedia.dll. All of the unreleased chunks seem to have a size of 6560 bytes. paolopat (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:10]: Q: So...I have to modify file system code to create 2 partition at system startup ?!! I haven't understood.... neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:10]: Q: Do u mean ISR/IST implementation? How can i register an interrupt? What kind of interrupt should i register? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:11]: Q: Can I have the book's name please? Charles (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:11]: Q: What will be different in Windows Compact 7 from CE 6.0? PaulT (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:11]: neo: I'd say that you really need the docs for YOUR BSP, not generic documents for BSPs in general. Each BSP may be architected differently. If you're using the CEPC BSP, then the documentation that comes with Platform Builder is a reasonable place to look. GPM (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:11]: Q: If one has an image on a Silverlight page, it seems to be cached. How would one refresh that cache after changing the underlying image? Elektrobit (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:12]: Q: Hi, we've problems with debugging of applications (= breakpoints in Platform Builder will be ignored) over KITL on Windows CE 5.0, if the PDB files are large (over 60MB). Are there any limitations to size of the PDB files? Jhony (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:15]: Q: I am using CE 6.0. There is no cesvchost process running in my system. alexquisi (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:15]: Q: Hi, I saw that the ATADISK is quite generic and des not have any optimizations. Do you have any advice to consider while tryin to improve the performance of it? Jhony (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:17]: Windows XP service pack 1 Jhony (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:17]: Q: sorry! Windows XP SP3 neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:19]: Q: The link for developing device drivers is not working. can u please check that? paolopat (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:20]: Q: I have a NAND Flash on my target device. On this flash I have the hive registry and an application.I have observed that when the NAND flash is fully, the system startup time is longer....is there a degradation of NAND use that influences the startup time ? Why ? Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:20]: Q: When attempting to run the CETK cellcore tests the documentation states the pre-requisites include "stinger.ini", "ltk.ini" but windows CE doesn't provide these or document what they fully need to contain. Implicitly you also need "datatrans.xml" which isn't supplied. If you get around this error and steal these from Windows Mobile instead, when you try and run the CETK tests you get a data abort in radiometricsdll.dll. How should we invoke the cellcore parts of CETK? Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:21]: Hi all, Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:21]: oops Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:21]: :-D Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:24]: Typically for SoC devices you name your hardware specific libraries in the form "SOCDIRNAME_LIBNAME". In our platform "OMAP35XX_TPS659XX_TI_V1" if you do this we cause the catalog parser to die... For example if we have a library "Musbfn_OMAP35XX_TPS659XX_TI_V1.dll" entering this in the catalogs pbcxml file in a <module> section causes the XML parser to fail with : Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:25]: Q: Error 3 The 'urn:Microsoft.PlatformBuilder/Catalog:Module' element is        invalid - The value '012345678901234567890123456789.dll' is invalid         according to its datatype         'urn:Microsoft.PlatformBuilder/Catalog:CatalogFileName' - The actual         length is greater than the MaxLength value. GPM (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:25]: Q: Writable bitmap, is there an example of the syntax? Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:25]: Q: Typically for SoC devices you name your hardware specific libraries in the form "SOCDIRNAME_LIBNAME". In our platform "OMAP35XX_TPS659XX_TI_V1" if you do this we cause the catalog parser to die... For example if we have a library "Musbfn_OMAP35XX_TPS659XX_TI_V1.dll" entering this in the catalogs pbcxml file in a <module> section causes the XML parser to fail with : Error 3 The 'urn:Microsoft.PlatformBuilder/Catalog:Module' element is        invalid - The value '012345678901234567890123456789.dll' is invalid         according to its datatype         'urn:Microsoft.PlatformBuilder/Catalog:CatalogFileName' - The actual         length is greater than the MaxLength value. Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:25]: sorry, messed up submission there! GPM (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:26]: Q: I would like to get a handle to a Silverlight screen section, is that possiable? GPM (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:28]: Q: IXRVisualHost::GetHWND() exactly what I needed Thanks, PaulT (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:29]: GPM: You don't have to keep submitting the questions. The chat experts have an application that they're using to follow the chat and all Ask the Experts questions are logged. Jhony (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:29]: Q: I am getting this error only when I select the KdStub as the debugger in Target device connectivity. neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:30]: Q: ok. thanks for the book's link Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:31]: Hm, did those two I submitted get picked up by anyone? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:33]: Q: If I select Active KTIL, My OS doesn't boots. It says "loading NK.EXE at 0x<xxxxx> location" after that nothing comes in the debug log. PaulT (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:34]: Pev: PaulT (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:35]: Pev: I'm sure they did. The guys who are actually on the chat may not be experts in that part of things. That's usually the explanation when you don't get an answer in 10 minutes or so. Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:36]: Ah, fair enough Susie (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:36]: My Outlook Express incoming mail is corrput. No ONE has been able to fix the problem, Dell or Norton. I have dial up I'm in a rural area Jhony (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:37]: Q: I have tried that and I am getting the same error. Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:37]: Susie : Use Thunderbird instead :-D PaulT (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:37]: Susie: Sorry, but this chat is not about Windows, but Embedded (like what runs on a phone). Your best chance is to find a local expert or talk to your ISP. paolopat (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:37]: Q: what are the main differences between Object Store and RAM disk ? They are both in RAM...are there performance differences ? access differences ? Susie (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:38]: My computer knowlege is very limited, what is Thunderbird? Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:38]: A different email client :-D neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:39]: Q: KITL: *** Device Name CEPC56059 *** WARN: KITL will run in polling mode VBridge:: built on [Jul 10 2009] time [10:20:14] VBridgeInit()...TX = [16384] bytes -- Rx = [16384] bytes Tx buffer [0xA1B84860] to [0xA1B88860]. Rx buffer [0xA1B88880] to [0xA1B8C880]. VBridge:: NK add MAC: [0-60-65-2-DA-FB] Connecting to Desktop KITL: Connected host IP: 1 Port: 1086 .. this is the output of the serial debug Susie (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:39]: Do I need to uninstall Outlook Express youngboyzie (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:39]: I need to start battery calibration for my new battery for my dell inspiron 1525 laptop and should be able to reach the BIOS screen by hitting f2 but this isnt working... help? Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:39]: Nah, you can run it instead - you'll still need help from your ISP to configure it I expect Jhony (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:39]: Q: Both is happening via Ethernet. PaulT (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:40]: youngboyzie: You're off-topic. This is not a general chat for Windows and certainly not for Dell. You'll have to ask Dell how to get to setup; it's their machine. bill (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:41]: I lost spell check, how can i get et back neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:42]: Q: I didn't do that. I have to try. Jhony (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:43]: Q: Ok. I will do it then. bill (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:43]: Q: I lost spell check, how can i get it back PaulT (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:44]: bill: This isn't a general Windows chat. There are some Web forums that you might try. GarySwalling (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:45]: Q: Thanks, I found the Phone 7 presentation at http://live.visitmix.com/MIX10/Sessions/CL13 GPM (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:45]: Q: Is the Silverlight Animation "Spline" a BezierSpline? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:46]: Q: ok. I'll do it. thanks Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:46]: Whowever was asking about KITL connection : I've had this loads in the past. I think I started debugging last time by using wireshark to see what was happening on the network then setting up the OAL_ETHER and OAL_FUNC and OAL_VERBOSE as well as OAL_KITL flags to see what was actually happening in the driver.... Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:47]: I'd generally make sure that you're testing though a 10baseT hub (instead of anything faster) and forcing Active KITL in polled mode too... neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:48]: Q: I disabled the firewall in my PC. Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:50]: Q: I've got a platform (not developed by myself) where I2C bus support has to be provided through the OAL as the kernel needs to talk to devices such as the power management IC and gas gauge so a 'proper' I2C driver hanging off device manager isn't possible. This happens to be a polled driver, so obviously it hits the system hard when either under lots of traffic or an error condition occurs and the driver constantly polls. I originally thought that there was no straightforward way to make such code interrupt driven in the kernel (as it's a cludge) but I realised that that's exactly what ETHDBG drivers do. Is there any reason why I shouldn't have a go at implementing a similar mechanism for our kernel resident I2C driver? If not, are there any obvious pitfalls - I've not seen any other BSP's do this in the past... neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:51]: Q: I don't see a kitlcore.dll in my OS. is my debug image fails to load because of that? Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:52]: Q: Hi masatos, I'm using Windows Embedded CE 6.0 with R3 and patched to feb 2010's QFE's (with it's associated CETK version) this is a machine with only CE 6.0 on (no conflicts with earlier CE or WM...) neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:54]: ok. Got it neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:54]: Q: ok. Got it Roundman (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:55]: Q: I am having trouble with my mouse, I have the microsoft wireless mobile mouse 3000, when I push the scroll button I am suppose to have autoscroll instead it shows other web pages,Can you help me out tell me what to do!!! Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:55]: Hey neo, debugging kitl issues is really frustrating but dont lose heart :-) neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:55]: @ pev : u fixed the problem of KITL after that? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:56]: I am getting the same error again and again. I even cleaned my environment and tried in a fresh PC. But didn't succeed yet Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:56]: Well, eventually - my experiences probably won't help you as different platforms have different reasons for doing that neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:56]: I think so PaulT (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:58]: neo: Have you searched the old messages in microsoft.public.windowsce.platbuilder? It seems to me that there was a packet size situation where it was possible to have problems with KITL connections based on a setting on the PC. Google Groups, groups.google.com, Advanced Groups Search will allow you to search a single newsgroup or a set of newsgroups easily. GPM (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:58]: Q: Spline- bad link PaulT (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:58]: GPM: without the > at the end does it work? It seems to for me... neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:58]: But some times if i try to connect to the device again. The Image information is seen in the serial debug. what does that mean?Download BIN file information: ----------------------------------------------------- [0]: Base Address=0x220000 Length=0x18DAADC Received a broadcast message !CheckUDP: Not UDP (proto = 0x00000001) after this i am getting the old errors. PB debugger cannot initialize ... GPM (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:59]: Q: Sorry, got to tirm the ">" neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:59]: ok paul. I ll look into that. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 13:0]: Hello everyone, we are just about out of time. Thank you for joining us for our Windows Embedded CE 6.0 chat today! <http://www.Microsoft.com/Embedded>; A special thank you to the product group members for coming out. The transcript of today’s chat will be posted online as soon as possible, to <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/chats>;. We’ll see you again for another chat next month. Please check <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/chats>; for the list of upcoming chats. If you still have unanswered questions, let me suggest that you post them on one of our newsgroups on <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsembedded/ce/default.aspx> -Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3 Now Available! <http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/ce/dd630616.aspx>; neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 13:1]: Q: I am unable to use the target control in my development environment. any ideas? Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 13:1]: Sure, if KITL isn't connected target control won't work as it runs over kitl... neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 13:1]: ok .thanks pev neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 13:2]: yes. sysgen_shell is set to 1 neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 13:2]: Q: yes. sysgen_shell is set to 1 Marcelovk (Guest)[2010-3-30 13:2]: Q: Is there any way to extract the default command lines of the tests in CETK? I want to have it running unconnected from the desktop.   Copyright © 2010 – Bruce Eitman All Rights Reserved

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• USB software protection dongle for Java with an SDK which is cross-platform “for real”. Does it exist?

  - by Unai Vivi

  What I'd like to ask is if anybody knows about an hardware USB-dongle for software protection which offers a very complete out-of-the-box API support for cross-platform Java deployments. Its SDK should provide a jar (only one, not one different library per OS & bitness) ready to be added to one's project as a library. The jar should contain all the native stuff for the various OSes and bitnesses From the application's point of view, one should continue to write (api calls) once and run everywhere, without having to care where the end-user will run the software The provided jar should itself deal with loading the appropriate native library Does such a thing exist? With what I've tried so far, you have different APIs and compiled libraries for win32, linux32, win64, linux64, etc (or you even have to compile stuff yourself on the target machine), but hey, we're doing Java here, we don't know (and don't care) where the program will run! And we can't expect the end-user to be a software engineer, tweak (and break!) its linux server, link libraries, mess with gcc, litter the filesystem, etc... In general, Java support (in a transparent cross-platform fashion) is quite bad with the dongle SDKs I've evaluated so far (e.g. KeyLok and SecuTech's UniKey). I even purchased (no free evaluation kit available) SecureMetric SDKs&dongles (they should've been "soooo" straighforward to integrate -- according to marketing material :\ ) and they were the worst ever: SecureDongle X has no 64bit support and SecureDongle SD is not cross-platform at all. So, has anyone out there been through this and found the ultimate Java security usb dongle for cross-platform deployments? Note: software is low-volume, high-value; application is off-line (intranet with no internet access), so no online-activation alternatives and the like. -- EDIT Tried out HASP dongles (used to be called "Aladdin"), and added them to the no-no list: here, too, there is no out-of-the-box (out-of-the-jar) support: e.g. end-linux-user has to manually put the .so library (the specific file for the appropriate bitness) in the right place on his filesystem, and export an env. variable accordingly. -- EDIT 2 I really don't understand all the negativity and all the downvoting: is this a taboo topic? Is it so hard to understand that a freelance developer has to put food on the table everyday to feed its family and pay the bills at the end of the month? Please don't talk about "adding value" as a supplier, because that'd be off-topic. Furthermore I'm not in direct contact with end-customers, but there's an intermediate reselling entity: it's this entity I want to prevent selling copies of the software without sharing the revenue. -- EDIT 3 I'd like to emphasize the fact that the question is looking for a technical answer, not one about opinions concerning business models, philosophical lucubrations on the concept of value, resellers' reliability, etc. I cannot change resellers, because this isn't a "general purpose" kind of sw, but a very vertical one and (for some reasons it's not worth explaining here) I must go through them. I just need to prevent the "we sold 2 copies, here's your share [bwahaha we sold 10]" scenario.

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• Do NOT Change "Copy Local” project references to false, unless understand subsequences.

  - by Michael Freidgeim

  To optimize performance of visual studio build I've found multiple recommendations to change CopyLocal property for dependent dlls to false,e.g. From http://stackoverflow.com/questions/690033/best-practices-for-large-solutions-in-visual-studio-2008 CopyLocal? For sure turn this offhttp://stackoverflow.com/questions/280751/what-is-the-best-practice-for-copy-local-and-with-project-referencesAlways set the Copy Local property to false and enforce this via a custom msbuild stephttp://codebetter.com/patricksmacchia/2007/06/20/benefit-from-the-c-and-vb-net-compilers-perf/BenefitBenefitMy advice is to always set ‘Copy Local’ to falseSome time ago we've tried to change the setting to false, and found that it causes problem for deployment of top-level projects.Recently I've followed the suggestion and changed the settings for middle-level projects. It didn't cause immediate issues, but I was warned by Readify Consultant Colin Savage about possible errors during deploymentsI haven't undone the changes immediately and we found a few issues during testing.There are many scenarios, when you need to have Copy Local’ left to True.The concerns are highlighted in some stack overflow answers, but they have small number of votes.Top-level projects:  set copy local = true.First of all, it doesn't work correctly for top-level projects, i.e. executables or web sites.As pointed in the answer http://stackoverflow.com/a/6529461/52277for all the references in the one at the top set copy local = true.Alternatively you have to change output directory as it's described in http://www.simple-talk.com/dotnet/.net-framework/partitioning-your-code-base-through-.net-assemblies-and-visual-studio-projects/If you set ‘ Copy Local = false’, VS will, unless you tell it otherwise, place each assembly alone in its own .\bin\Debugdirectory. Because of this, you will need to configure VS to place assemblies together in the same directory. To do so, for each VS project, go to VS > Project Properties > Build tab > Output path, and set the Ouput path to ..\bin\Debugfor debug configuration, and ..\bin\Release for release configuration.Second-level  dependencies:  set copy local = true.Another example when copylocal =false fails on run-time, is when top level assembly doesn't directly referenced one of indirect dependencies.E..g. Top-level assembly A has reference to assembly B with copylocal =true, but assembly B has reference to assembly C with copylocal =false. Most likely assembly C will be missing on runtime and will cause errors E.g. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/602765/when-should-copy-local-be-set-to-true-and-when-should-it-not?lq=1Copy local is important for deployment scenarios and tools. As a general rule you should use CopyLocal=True and http://stackoverflow.com/questions/602765/when-should-copy-local-be-set-to-true-and-when-should-it-not?lq=1 Unfortunately there are some quirks and CopyLocal won't necessary work as expected for assembly references in secondary assemblies structured as shown below.MainApp.exe MyLibrary.dll ThirdPartyLibrary.dll (if in the GAC CopyLocal won't copy to MainApp bin folder)This makes xcopy deployments difficult . .Reflection called DLLs  dependencies:  set copy local = true.E.g user can see error "ISystem.Reflection.ReflectionTypeLoadException: Unable to load one or more of the requested types. Retrieve the LoaderExceptions property for more information."The fix for the issue is recommended in http://stackoverflow.com/a/6200173/52277"I solved this issue by setting the Copy Local attribute of my project's references to true."In general, the problems with investigation of deployment issues may overweight the benefits of reduced build time. Setting the Copy Local to false without considering deployment issues is not a good idea.

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• Beyond Chatting: What ‘Social’ Means for CRM

  - by Divya Malik

  A guest post by Steve Diamond, Senior Director, Outbound Product Management, Oracle In a recent post on the Oracle Applications blog, my colleague Steve Boese asked three questions related to the widespread popularity and incredibly rapid growth of Facebook, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. Steve then addressed the many applications for collaborative solutions in the area of Human Capital Management. So, in turning to a conversation about Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Sales Force Automation (SFA), let me ask you one simple question. How many sales people, particularly at business-to-business companies, consistently meet or beat their quotas in their roles by working alone, with no collaboration among fellow sales people, sales executives, employees in product groups, in service, in Legal, third-party partners, etc.? Hello? Is anybody out there? What’s that cricket noise I hear? That’s correct. Nobody! When it comes to Sales, introverts arguably have a distinct disadvantage. While it’s certainly a truism that “success” in most professional endeavors requires working with people, it’s a mandatory success factor in Sales. This fact became abundantly clear to me one early morning in the late 1990s when I joined the former Hyperion Solutions (now part of Oracle) and attended a Sales Award Ceremony. The Head of Sales at that time gave out dozens of awards – none of them to individuals and all of them to TEAMS of individuals. That’s how it works in Sales. Your colleagues help provide you with product intelligence and competitive intelligence. They help you build the best presentations, pitches, and proposals. They help you develop the most killer RFPs. They align you with the best product people to ensure you’re matching the best products for the opportunity and join you in critical meetings. They help knock the socks of your prospects in “bake off” demo’s. They bring in the best partners to either add complementary products to your opportunity or help you implement a solution. They work with you as a collective team. And so how is all this collaboration STILL typically done today? Through email. And yet we all silently or not so silently grimace about email. It’s relatively siloed. It’s painful to search. It’s difficult to align by topic. And it’s nearly impossible to re-trace meaningful and helpful conversations that occurred among a group or a team at some point in history. This is where social networking for Sales comes into play. It’s about PURPOSEFUL social networking versus chattering. What is purposeful social networking? It’s collaboration that’s built around opportunities, accounts, and contacts. It’s collaboration that delivers valuable context – on the target company, and on key competitors – just to name two examples. It’s collaboration that can scale to provide coaching for larger numbers of sales representatives, both for general purposes, and as we’ve largely discussed here, for specific ‘deals.’ And it’s collaboration that allows a team of people to collectively edit and iterate on a document like an RFP or a soon-to-be killer presentation that is maintained in a central repository, with no time wasted searching for it or worrying about version control. But lest we get carried away, let’s remember that collaboration “happens” among sales people whether there is specialized software to support it or not. The human practice of sales has not changed much in the last 80 to 90 years. Collaboration has been a mainstay during this entire time. But what social networking in general, and Oracle Social Networking in particular delivers, is the opportunity for sales teams to dramatically increase their effectiveness and efficiency – to identify and close more high quality and lucrative opportunities more quickly. For most sales organizations, this is how the game is won. To learn more please visit Oracle Social Network and Oracle Fusion Customer Relationship Management on oracle.com

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• Hello World Pagelet

  - by astemkov

  Introduction The goal of this exercise is to give you a basic feel of how you can use Pagelet Producer to proxy a web page We will proxy a simple static Hello World web page, cut one section out of that page and present it as a pagelet that you can later insert on your own application page or to your portal page such as WebCenter Portal space or WebCenter Interaction community page. Hello World sample app This is the static web page we will work with: Let's assume the following: The Hello World web page is running on server http://appserver.company.com:1234/ The Hello World web page path is: http://appserver.company.com:1234/helloworld/ Initial Pagelet Producer setup Let's assume that the Pagelet Producer server is running on http://pageletserver.company.com:8889/pagelets/ First let's check that Pagelet Producer is up and running. In order to do that we just need to access the following URL: http://pageletserver.company.com:8889/pagelets/ And this is what should be returned: Now you can access Pagelet Producer administration screens using this URL: http://pageletserver.company.com:8889/pagelets/admin This is how the UI looks: Now if you connect to the internet via proxy server, you need to configure proxy in Pagelet Producer settings. In the Navigator pane: Jump To - Settings Click on "Proxy" Enter your proxy server configuration: Creating a resource First thing that you need to do is to create a resource for your web page. This will tell Pagelet Producer that all sub-paths of the web page should be proxied. It also will allow you to setup common rules of how your web page should be proxied and will serve as a container for your pagelets. In the Navigator pane: Jump To - Resources Click on any existing resource (ex. welcome_resource) Click on "Create selected type" toolbar button at the top of the Navigator pane Select "Web" in the "Select Producer Type" dialog box and click "OK" Now after the resource is created let's click on "General" sub-item a specify the following values Name = AppServer Source URL = http://appserver.company.com:1234/ Destination URL = /appserver/ Click on "Save" toolbar button at the top of the Navigator pane After the resource is created our web page becomes accessible by the URL: http://pageletserver.company.com:8889/pagelets/appserver/helloworld/ So in original web page address Source URL is replaced with Pagelet Producer URL (http://pageletserver.company.com:8889/pagelets) + Destination URL Creating a pagelet Now let's create "Hello World" pagelet. Under the resource node activate Pagelets subnode Click on "Create selected type" toolbar button at the top of the Navigator pane Click on "General" sub-node of newly created pagelet and specify the following values Name = Hello_World Library = MyLib Library is used for logical grouping. The portals use the "Library" value to group pagelets in their respective UI's. For example, when adding pagelets to a WebCenter Portal space you would see the individual pagelets listed under the "Library" name. URL Suffix = helloworld/index.html this is where the Hello World page html is served from Click on "Save" toolbar button at the top of the Navigator pane The Library name can be anything you want, it doesn't have to match the resource name at all. It is used as a logical grouping of pagelets, and you can include pagelets from multiple resources into the same library or create a new library for each pagelet. After you save the pagelet you can access it here: http://pageletserver.company.com:8889/pagelets/inject/v2/pagelet/MyLib/Hello_World which is : http://pageletserver.company.com:8889/pagelets/inject/v2/pagelet/ + [Library] + [Name] Or to test the injection of a pagelet into iframe you can click on the pagelets "Documentation" sub-node and use "Access Pagelet using REST" URL: This is what we will see: Clipping The pagelet that we just created covers the whole web page, but we want just the "Hello World" segment of it. So let's clip it. Under the Hello_World pagelet node activate Clipper sub-node Click on "Create selected type" toolbar button at the top of the Navigator pane Specify a Name for newly created clipper. For example: "c1" Click on "Content" sub-node of the clipper Click on "Launch Clipper" button New browser window will open By moving a mouse pointer over the web page select the area you want to clip: Click left mouse button - the browser window will disappear and you will see that Clipping Path was automatically generated Now let's save and access the link from the "Documentation" page again Here's our pagelet nicely clipped and ready for being used on your Web Center Space

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• Beyond Chatting: What ‘Social’ Means for CRM

  - by Divya Malik

  A guest post by Steve Diamond, Senior Director, Outbound Product Management, Oracle In a recent post on the Oracle Applications blog, my colleague Steve Boese asked three questions related to the widespread popularity and incredibly rapid growth of Facebook, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. Steve then addressed the many applications for collaborative solutions in the area of Human Capital Management. So, in turning to a conversation about Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Sales Force Automation (SFA), let me ask you one simple question. How many sales people, particularly at business-to-business companies, consistently meet or beat their quotas in their roles by working alone, with no collaboration among fellow sales people, sales executives, employees in product groups, in service, in Legal, third-party partners, etc.? Hello? Is anybody out there? What’s that cricket noise I hear? That’s correct. Nobody! When it comes to Sales, introverts arguably have a distinct disadvantage. While it’s certainly a truism that “success” in most professional endeavors requires working with people, it’s a mandatory success factor in Sales. This fact became abundantly clear to me one early morning in the late 1990s when I joined the former Hyperion Solutions (now part of Oracle) and attended a Sales Award Ceremony. The Head of Sales at that time gave out dozens of awards – none of them to individuals and all of them to TEAMS of individuals. That’s how it works in Sales. Your colleagues help provide you with product intelligence and competitive intelligence. They help you build the best presentations, pitches, and proposals. They help you develop the most killer RFPs. They align you with the best product people to ensure you’re matching the best products for the opportunity and join you in critical meetings. They help knock the socks of your prospects in “bake off” demo’s. They bring in the best partners to either add complementary products to your opportunity or help you implement a solution. They work with you as a collective team. And so how is all this collaboration STILL typically done today? Through email. And yet we all silently or not so silently grimace about email. It’s relatively siloed. It’s painful to search. It’s difficult to align by topic. And it’s nearly impossible to re-trace meaningful and helpful conversations that occurred among a group or a team at some point in history. This is where social networking for Sales comes into play. It’s about PURPOSEFUL social networking versus chattering. What is purposeful social networking? It’s collaboration that’s built around opportunities, accounts, and contacts. It’s collaboration that delivers valuable context – on the target company, and on key competitors – just to name two examples. It’s collaboration that can scale to provide coaching for larger numbers of sales representatives, both for general purposes, and as we’ve largely discussed here, for specific ‘deals.’ And it’s collaboration that allows a team of people to collectively edit and iterate on a document like an RFP or a soon-to-be killer presentation that is maintained in a central repository, with no time wasted searching for it or worrying about version control. But lest we get carried away, let’s remember that collaboration “happens” among sales people whether there is specialized software to support it or not. The human practice of sales has not changed much in the last 80 to 90 years. Collaboration has been a mainstay during this entire time. But what social networking in general, and Oracle Social Networking in particular delivers, is the opportunity for sales teams to dramatically increase their effectiveness and efficiency – to identify and close more high quality and lucrative opportunities more quickly. For most sales organizations, this is how the game is won. To learn more please visit Oracle Social Network and Oracle Fusion Customer Relationship Management on oracle.com

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• Tuesday at OpenWorld: Identity Management

  - by Tanu Sood

  At Oracle OpenWorld? From keynotes, general sessions to product deep dives and executive events, this Tuesday is full of informational, educational and networking opportunities for you. Here’s a quick run-down of what’s happening today: Tuesday, October 2, 2012 KEYNOTE: The Oracle Cloud: Oracle’s Cloud Platform and Applications Strategy 8:00 a.m. – 9:45 a.m., Moscone North, Hall D Leading customers will join Oracle Executive Vice President Thomas Kurian to discuss how Oracle’s innovative cloud solutions are transforming how they manage their business, excite and retain their employees, and deliver great customer experiences through Oracle Cloud. GENERAL SESSION: Oracle Fusion Middleware Strategies Driving Business Innovation 10:15 a.m. – 11:15 a.m., Moscone North - Hall D Join Hasan Rizvi, Executive Vice President of Product in this strategy and roadmap session to hear how developers leverage new innovations in their applications and customers achieve their business innovation goals with Oracle Fusion Middleware. CON9437: Mobile Access Management 10:15 a.m. – 11:15 a.m., Moscone West 3022 The session will feature Identity Management evangelists from companies like Intuit, NetApp and Toyota to discuss how to extend your existing identity management infrastructure and policies to securely and seamlessly enable mobile user access. CON9162: Oracle Fusion Middleware: Meet This Year's Most Impressive Customer Projects 11:45 a.m. – 12:45 a.m., Moscone West, 3001 Hear from the winners of the 2012 Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards and see which customers are taking home a trophy for the 2012 Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Award.  Read more about the Innovation Awards here. CON9491: Enhancing the End-User Experience with Oracle Identity Governance applications 11:45 a.m. – 12:45 p.m., Moscone West 3008 Join experts from Visa and Oracle as they explore how Oracle Identity Governance solutions deliver complete identity administration and governance solutions with support for emerging requirements like cloud identities and mobile devices. CON9447: Enabling Access for Hundreds of Millions of Users 1:15 p.m. – 2:15 p.m., Moscone West 3008 Dealing with scale problems? Looking to address identity management requirements with million or so users in mind? Then take note of Cisco’s implementation. Join this session to hear first-hand how Cisco tackled identity management and scaled their implementation to bolster security and enforce compliance. CON9465: Next Generation Directory – Oracle Unified Directory 5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m., Moscone West 3008 Get the 360 degrees perspective from a solution provider, implementation services partner and the customer in this session to learn how the latest Oracle Unified Directory solutions can help you build a directory infrastructure that is optimized to support cloud, mobile and social networking and yet deliver on scale and performance. EVENTS: Executive Edge @ OpenWorld: Chief Security Officer (CSO) Summit 10:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. If you are attending the Executive Edge at Open World, be sure to check out the sessions at the Chief Security Officer Summit. Former Sr. Counsel for the National Security Agency, Joel Brenner, will be speaking about his new book "America the Vulnerable". In addition, PWC will present a panel discussion on "Crisis Management to Business Advantage: Security Leadership". See below for the complete agenda. PRODUCT DEMOS: And don’t forget to see Oracle identity Management solutions in action at Oracle OpenWorld DEMOgrounds. DEMOS LOCATION EXHIBITION HALL HOURS Access Management: Complete and Scalable Access Management Moscone South, Right - S-218 Monday, October 1 9:30 a.m.–6:00 p.m. 9:30 a.m.–10:45 a.m. (Dedicated Hours) Tuesday, October 2 9:45 a.m.–6:00 p.m. 2:15 p.m.–2:45 p.m. (Dedicated Hours) Wednesday, October 3 9:45 a.m.–4:00 p.m. 2:15 p.m.–3:30 p.m. (Dedicated Hours) Access Management: Federating and Leveraging Social Identities Moscone South, Right - S-220 Access Management: Mobile Access Management Moscone South, Right - S-219 Access Management: Real-Time Authorizations Moscone South, Right - S-217 Access Management: Secure SOA and Web Services Security Moscone South, Right - S-223 Identity Governance: Modern Administration and Tooling Moscone South, Right - S-210 Identity Management Monitoring with Oracle Enterprise Manager Moscone South, Right - S-212 Oracle Directory Services Plus: Performant, Cloud-Ready Moscone South, Right - S-222 Oracle Identity Management: Closed-Loop Access Certification Moscone South, Right - S-221 For a complete listing, keep the Focus on Identity Management document handy. And don’t forget to converse with us while at OpenWorld @oracleidm. We look forward to hearing from you.

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• SQLAuthority News – Amazon Gift Card Raffle for Beta Tester Feedback for NuoDB

  - by pinaldave

  As regular readers know I’ve been spending some time working with the NuoDB beta software. They contacted me last week and asked if I would give you a chance to try their new web-based console for their scalable, SQL-compliant database. They have just put out their final beta release, Beta 9.  It contains a preview of a new web-based “NuoConsole” that will replace and extend the functionality of their current desktop version.  I haven’t spent any time with the new console yet but a really quick look tells me it should make it easier to do deeper monitoring than the older one. It also looks like they have added query-level reporting through the console. I will try to play with it soon. NuoDB is doing a last, big push to get some more feedback from developers before they release their 1.0 product sometime in the next several weeks. Since the console is new, they are especially interested in some quick feedback on it before general availability. For SQLAuthority readers only, NuoDB will raffle off three $50 Amazon gift cards in exchange for your feedback on the NuoConsole preview. Here’s how to Enter Download NuoDBeta 9 here You must build a domain before you can start the console. Launch the Web Console. Windows Code: start java -jar jarnuodbwebconsole.jar Mac, Linux, Solaris, Unix Code: java -jar jar/nuodbwebconsole.jar Access the Web Console: Code: http://localhost:8080 When you have tried it out, go to a short (8 question) survey to enter the raffle Click here for the survey You must complete the survey before midnight EDT on October 17, 2012. Here’s what else they are saying about this last beta before general availability: Beta 9 now supports the Zend PHP framework so that PHP developers can directly integrate web applications with NuoDB. Multi-threaded HDFS support – NuoDB Storage Managers can now be configured to persist data to the high performance Hadoop distributed file system (HDFS). Beta 9 optimizes for multi-thread I/O streams at maximum performance. This enhancement allows users to make Hadoop their core storage with no extra effort which is a pretty cool idea. Improved Performance –On a single transaction node, Beta 9 offers performance comparable with MySQL and MariaDB. As additional nodes are added, NuoDB performance improves significantly at near linear scale. Query & Explain Plan Logging – Beta 9 introduces SQL explain plans for your queries. Qualify queries with the word “EXPLAIN” and NuoDB will respond with the details of the execution plan allowing performance optimization to SQL. Through the NuoConsole, you can now kill hung or long running queries. Java App Server Support – Beta 9 now supports leading Web JEE app servers including JBoss, Tomcat, and ColdFusion. They’ve also reported: Improved PHP/PDO drivers Support for Drupal Faster Ruby on Rails driver The Hibernate Dialect supports version 4.1 And good news for my readers: numerous SQL enhancements They will share the results of the web console feedback with me.  I’ll let you know how it goes. Also the winner of their last contest was Jaime Martínez Lafargue!  Do leave a comment here once you complete the survey.  Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: SQL Authority Tagged: NuoDB

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• Knowledge Pathways Designer - Recommended Settings

  - by ted.henson

  The General page of the Options dialog box contains the application preferences for Knowledge Pathways Designer. It is recommended that you leave certain settings as they are, unless you have a specific reason for changing them. The following are a few of the settings on the General page with an explanation of the recommended setting. They are in the order they appear on the page: Allow version 2.0 style links: This option should remain disabled unless you were using content that was created using version 2.0 of Knowledge Pathways and you want the same linking functionality that existed in that version 2.0. This feature enables you to reuse parts of titles that contain no AUs. However, keep in mind that this type of link is not a true link, but a cross between a copy and a link. To create a 2.0 style link, you drag and drop sections between titles. You can only create 2.0 style links to sections that belong to the Title AU. When creating a version 2.0 style link, your mouse pointer will change to indicate a 2.0 link is being created. Confirm deletion of outline items and Confirm deletion of titles: It is recommended that these options remain enabled to avoid deleting something by accident. Display tracking data loss warning when opening a published title: It recommended that this option be enabled so you will receive the warning message when you open the development copy of a title, reminding you of the implications of your changes. ulCopy files when converting a Section to an Assignable Unit: This option should remain enabled unless you have a specific reason for not copying the files. If this is disabled, you will (in effect) lose your content files upon converting because they will not be copied to the new AU directory on the content root. In this case, you would need to use Windows Explorer to copy your files manually. Working with Spelling Options All of the spelling options are enabled by default. Your design team can review these options to determine if you want to make changes, depending upon your specific needs. Understanding Dictionary Options You should leave the dictionary options as they are, unless you have a specific reason for changing them. While you can delete the user (customizable) dictionary, doing so is not recommended. Setting Check In/Check Out Options The ability to check in and check out titles and AUs will impact the efficiency of your design team. Decide what your check in and check out processes are before you start developing titles. The Check In/Check Out page of the Options dialog box contains two options that affect what happens when you open a title using the Open Title dialog box. Both of these options are enabled by default and are described below: Check Out for editing enabled: This option ensures that the Check Out for editing option will be selected when you open the development copy of a title from the Open Title dialog box. If this option is disabled, you must select the Check Out for editing option every time you want to check out a title for editing. Attempt to Check Out for entire branch: When this option is enabled, Designer checks out the selected title and all AUs and sections that are part of that title, provided they are available for check out. If this option is disabled, you will only check out the Title AU and anything that belongs to that Title AU (e.g., sections, questions, etc.), but not other AUs. The Check In/Check Out page of the Options dialog box also contains options that control what happens when you close a title. You can choose one option in the Check In when Closing a Title area. The option selected is a matter of preference and you should determine which option is most appropriate for your design team.

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