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• SQL Server IO handling mechanism can be severely affected by high CPU usage

  - by sqlworkshops

  Are you using SSD or SAN / NAS based storage solution and sporadically observe SQL Server experiencing high IO wait times or from time to time your DAS / HDD becomes very slow according to SQL Server statistics? Read on… I need your help to up vote my connect item – https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/744650/sql-server-io-handling-mechanism-can-be-severely-affected-by-high-cpu-usage. Instead of taking few seconds, queries could take minutes/hours to complete when CPU is busy.In SQL Server when a query / request needs to read data that is not in data cache or when the request has to write to disk, like transaction log records, the request / task will queue up the IO operation and wait for it to complete (task in suspended state, this wait time is the resource wait time). When the IO operation is complete, the task will be queued to run on the CPU. If the CPU is busy executing other tasks, this task will wait (task in runnable state) until other tasks in the queue either complete or get suspended due to waits or exhaust their quantum of 4ms (this is the signal wait time, which along with resource wait time will increase the overall wait time). When the CPU becomes free, the task will finally be run on the CPU (task in running state).The signal wait time can be up to 4ms per runnable task, this is by design. So if a CPU has 5 runnable tasks in the queue, then this query after the resource becomes available might wait up to a maximum of 5 X 4ms = 20ms in the runnable state (normally less as other tasks might not use the full quantum).In case the CPU usage is high, let’s say many CPU intensive queries are running on the instance, there is a possibility that the IO operations that are completed at the Hardware and Operating System level are not yet processed by SQL Server, keeping the task in the resource wait state for longer than necessary. In case of an SSD, the IO operation might even complete in less than a millisecond, but it might take SQL Server 100s of milliseconds, for instance, to process the completed IO operation. For example, let’s say you have a user inserting 500 rows in individual transactions. When the transaction log is on an SSD or battery backed up controller that has write cache enabled, all of these inserts will complete in 100 to 200ms. With a CPU intensive parallel query executing across all CPU cores, the same inserts might take minutes to complete. WRITELOG wait time will be very high in this case (both under sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats and sys.dm_os_wait_stats). In addition you will notice a large number of WAITELOG waits since log records are written by LOG WRITER and hence very high signal_wait_time_ms leading to more query delays. However, Performance Monitor Counter, PhysicalDisk, Avg. Disk sec/Write will report very low latency times.Such delayed IO handling also occurs to read operations with artificially very high PAGEIOLATCH_SH wait time (with number of PAGEIOLATCH_SH waits remaining the same). This problem will manifest more and more as customers start using SSD based storage for SQL Server, since they drive the CPU usage to the limits with faster IOs. We have a few workarounds for specific scenarios, but we think Microsoft should resolve this issue at the product level. We have a connect item open – https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/744650/sql-server-io-handling-mechanism-can-be-severely-affected-by-high-cpu-usage - (with example scripts) to reproduce this behavior, please up vote the item so the issue will be addressed by the SQL Server product team soon.Thanks for your help and best regards,Ramesh MeyyappanHome: www.sqlworkshops.comLinkedIn: http://at.linkedin.com/in/rmeyyappan

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• New Analytic settings for the new code

  - by Steve Tunstall

  If you have upgraded to the new 2011.1.3.0 code, you may find some very useful settings for the Analytics. If you didn't already know, the analytic datasets have the potential to fill up your OS hard drives. The more datasets you use and create, that faster this can happen. Since they take a measurement every second, forever, some of these metrics can get in the multiple GB size in a matter of weeks. The traditional 'fix' was that you had to go into Analytics -> Datasets about once a month and clean up the largest datasets. You did this by deleting them. Ouch. Now you lost all of that historical data that you might have wanted to check out many months from now. Or, you had to export each metric individually to a CSV file first. Not very easy or fun. You could also suspend a dataset, and have it not collect data at all. Well, that fixed the problem, didn't it? of course you now had no data to go look at. Hmmmm.... All of this is no longer a concern. Check out the new Settings tab under Analytics... Now, I can tell the ZFSSA to keep every second of data for, say, 2 weeks, and then average those 60 seconds of each minute into a single 'minute' value. I can go even further and ask it to average those 60 minutes of data into a single 'hour' value.  This allows me to effectively shrink my older datasets by a factor of 1/3600 !!! Very cool. I can now allow my datasets to go forever, and really never have to worry about them filling up my OS drives. That's great going forward, but what about those huge datasets you already have? No problem. Another new feature in 2011.1.3.0 is the ability to shrink the older datasets in the same way. Check this out. I have here a dataset called "Disk: I/O opps per second" that is about 6.32M on disk (You need not worry so much about the "In Core" value, as that is in RAM, and it fluctuates all the time. Once you stop viewing a particular metric, you will see that shrink over time, just relax).  When one clicks on the trash can icon to the right of the dataset, it used to delete the whole thing, and you would have to re-create it from scratch to get the data collecting again. Now, however, it gives you this prompt: As you can see, this allows you to once again shrink the dataset by averaging the second data into minutes or hours. Here is my new dataset size after I do this. So it shrank from 6.32MB down to 2.87MB, but i can still see my metrics going back to the time I began the dataset. Now, you do understand that once you do this, as you look back in time to the minute or hour data metrics, that you are going to see much larger time values, right? You will need to decide what size of granularity you can live with, and for how long. Check this out. Here is my Disk: Percent utilized from 5-21-2012 2:42 pm to 4:22 pm: After I went through the delete process to change everything older than 1 week to "Minutes", the same date and time looks like this: Just understand what this will do and how you want to use it. Right now, I'm thinking of keeping the last 6 weeks of data as "seconds", and then the last 3 months as "Minutes", and then "Hours" forever after that. I'll check back in six months and see how the sizes look. Steve 

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• Good DBAs Do Baselines

  - by Louis Davidson

  One morning, you wake up and feel funny. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but something isn’t quite right. What now? Unless you happen to be a hypochondriac, you likely drag yourself out of bed, get on with the day and gather more “evidence”. You check your symptoms over the next few days; do you feel the same, better, worse? If better, then great, it was some temporal issue, perhaps caused by an allergic reaction to some suspiciously spicy chicken. If the same or worse then you go to the doctor for some health advice, but armed with some data to share, and having ruled out certain possible causes that are fixed with a bit of rest and perhaps an antacid. Whether you realize it or not, in comparing how you feel one day to the next, you have taken baseline measurements. In much the same way, a DBA uses baselines to gauge the gauge health of their database servers. Of course, while SQL Server is very willing to share data regarding its health and activities, it has almost no idea of the difference between good and bad. Over time, experienced DBAs develop “mental” baselines with which they can gauge the health of their servers almost as easily as their own body. They accumulate knowledge of the daily, natural state of each part of their database system, and so know instinctively when one of their databases “feels funny”. Equally, they know when an “issue” is just a passing tremor. They see their SQL Server with all of its four CPU cores running close 100% and don’t panic anymore. Why? It’s 5PM and every day the same thing occurs when the end-of-day reports, which are very CPU intensive, are running. Equally, they know when they need to respond in earnest when it is the first time they have heard about an issue, even if it has been happening every day. Nevertheless, no DBA can retain mental baselines for every characteristic of their systems, so we need to collect physical baselines too. In my experience, surprisingly few DBAs do this very well. Part of the problem is that SQL Server provides a lot of instrumentation. If you look, you will find an almost overwhelming amount of data regarding user activity on your SQL Server instances, and use and abuse of the available CPU, I/O and memory. It seems like a huge task even to work out which data you need to collect, let alone start collecting it on a regular basis, managing its storage over time, and performing detailed comparative analysis. However, without baselines, though, it is very difficult to pinpoint what ails a server, just by looking at a single snapshot of the data, or to spot retrospectively what caused the problem by examining aggregated data for the server, collected over many months. It isn’t as hard as you think to get started. You’ve probably already established some troubleshooting queries of the type SELECT Value FROM SomeSystemTableOrView. Capturing a set of baseline values for such a query can be as easy as changing it as follows: INSERT into BaseLine.SomeSystemTable (value, captureTime) SELECT Value, SYSDATETIME() FROM SomeSystemTableOrView; Of course, there are monitoring tools that will collect and manage this baseline data for you, automatically, and allow you to perform comparison of metrics over different periods. However, to get yourself started and to prove to yourself (or perhaps the person who writes the checks for tools) the value of baselines, stick something similar to the above query into an agent job, running every hour or so, and you are on your way with no excuses! Then, the next time you investigate a slow server, and see x open transactions, y users logged in, and z rows added per hour in the Orders table, compare to your baselines and see immediately what, if anything, has changed!

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• Facebook: Sending private messages to FB profile from a static website [migrated]

  - by Frondor

  I need to setup a static website for people to: Complete a form. And using anything from Facebook API, GET the form output via message to a Facebook Profile. I've been punching my head against "facebook developers" page all night long and can't find out how to do it. Seems quite easy, but the problem is that I don't know if you'll get my point :) Like the Send Dialog feature, you can set a certain user as recipient which will be displayed on the "To:" field once the dialog appears. FB.ui({ method: 'send', to: 'UserID', link: 'http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/arts/people-argue-just-to-win-scholars-assert.html', }); Ok, All I need is to be able to use the same behavior but instead of setting a "to:" parameter, I'd like to set a "message:" parameter. I don't know how I can solve this becuase there's no parameter like this on the API actually. This is what I need to build (It's a prototype, this code won't work) <form action="mysite.com" id="order"> <input type="radio" name="chocolate" value="white">White <br/> <input type="radio" name="chocolate" value="black">Black <br/> <input type="submit" value="Order" /> </form> jQuery gets the values $(document).ready(function() { $("#order").on("submit", function(e) { e.preventDefault(); var formOutput = $(this).serialize(); var order = "I'd like to eat" + formOutput + "chocolate"; }); }); Facebook sdk sends this output ('order' string) FB.ui({ method: 'send', //or whatever to: 'UserID', message: order, //Its just an example, note the variable coming from the form link: 'http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/arts/people-argue-just-to-win-scholars-assert.html', }); As we all know, what I wrote isn't possible, so I'm asking for any alternative solution if somebody can give me, I'm not very friendly with facebook APIs :) I though in another solution which consist in using the form output directly on the 'link:' parameter of FB.ui and then reading it with jQuery on some landing page. For example, on the message sent, the linked content redirects to this URL: http://mysite.com/dashboard.html?chocolate=white and the dashboard page source code: <script> var choco = getUrlParameter('chocolate'); $("#dashboard").text("This person wants" + choco + "chocolate") </script> <div id="dashboard"></div> And this way, I will be able to see which kind of chocolate the person selected by parsing some parameters on the URL when clicking on the link section of the message: using a code like this: FB.ui({ method: 'send', //or whatever to: 'MyUserID', link: 'http://mysite.com/dashboard.html?chocolate=white', }); But no this try, my biggest problem is that I don't know how to dynamically "customize" that "link:" paramenter with jQuery. I think the best solution is to use a code like this along with the dashboard page in order to "translate" the shared URLs and see what kind of chocolate people are demanding xD FB.ui({ //declaring a variable (example) var string = getFormData().serialize; var orderString = "mysite.com/dashboard.html?" + string; // end the variables // start facebook API code method: 'send', //or whatever to: 'MyUserID', link: orderString, }); I was working here until I gave up and started to post this http://jsfiddle.net/Frondor/sctepn06/2/ Thanks in advance, I'll love you for ever if you help me solving this :D

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• Need WIF Training?

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  I spend numerous hours every month answering questions about WIF and identity in general. This made me realize that this is still quite a complicated topic once you go beyond the standard fedutil stuff. My good friend Brock and I put together a two day training course about WIF that covers everything we think is important. The course includes extensive lab material where you take standard application and apply all kinds of claims and federation techniques and technologies like WS-Federation, WS-Trust, session management, delegation, home realm discovery, multiple identity providers, Access Control Service, REST, SWT and OAuth. The lab also includes the latest version of the thinktecture identityserver and you will learn how to use and customize it. If you are looking for an open enrollment style of training, have a look here. Or contact me directly! The course outline looks as follows: Day 1 Intro to Claims-based Identity & the Windows Identity Foundation WIF introduces important concepts like conversion of security tokens and credentials to claims, claims transformation and claims-based authorization. In this module you will learn the basics of the WIF programming model and how WIF integrates into existing .NET code. Externalizing Authentication for Web Applications WIF includes support for the WS-Federation protocol. This protocol allows separating business and authentication logic into separate (distributed) applications. The authentication part is called identity provider or in more general terms - a security token service. This module looks at this scenario both from an application and identity provider point of view and walks you through the necessary concepts to centralize application login logic both using a standard product like Active Directory Federation Services as well as a custom token service using WIF’s API support. Externalizing Authentication for SOAP Services One big benefit of WIF is that it unifies the security programming model for ASP.NET and WCF. In the spirit of the preceding modules, we will have a look at how WIF integrates into the (SOAP) web service world. You will learn how to separate authentication into a separate service using the WS-Trust protocol and how WIF can simplify the WCF security model and extensibility API. Day 2 Advanced Topics:  Security Token Service Architecture, Delegation and Federation The preceding modules covered the 80/20 cases of WIF in combination with ASP.NET and WCF. In many scenarios this is just the tip of the iceberg. Especially when two business partners decide to federate, you usually have to deal with multiple token services and their implications in application design. Identity delegation is a feature that allows transporting the client identity over a chain of service invocations to make authorization decisions over multiple hops. In addition you will learn about the principal architecture of a STS, how to customize the one that comes with this training course, as well as how to build your own. Outsourcing Authentication:  Windows Azure & the Azure AppFabric Access Control Service Microsoft provides a multi-tenant security token service as part of the Azure platform cloud offering. This is an interesting product because it allows to outsource vital infrastructure services to a managed environment that guarantees uptime and scalability. Another advantage of the Access Control Service is, that it allows easy integration of both the “enterprise” protocols like WS-* as well as “web identities” like LiveID, Google or Facebook into your applications. ACS acts as a protocol bridge in this case where the application developer doesn’t need to implement all these protocols, but simply uses a service to make it happen. Claims & Federation for the Web and Mobile World Also the web & mobile world moves to a token and claims-based model. While the mechanics are almost identical, other protocols and token types are used to achieve better HTTP (REST) and JavaScript integration for in-browser applications and small footprint devices. Also patterns like how to allow third party applications to work with your data without having to disclose your credentials are important concepts in these application types. The nice thing about WIF and its powerful base APIs and abstractions is that it can shield application logic from these details while you can focus on implementing the actual application. HTH

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• How the SPARC T4 Processor Optimizes Throughput Capacity: A Case Study

  - by Ruud

  This white paper demonstrates the architected latency hiding features of Oracle’s UltraSPARC T2+ and SPARC T4 processors That is the first sentence from this technical white paper, but what does it exactly mean? Let's consider a very simple example, the computation of a = b + c. This boils down to the following (pseudo-assembler) instructions that need to be executed: load @b, r1 load @c, r2 add r1,r2,r3 store r3, @a The first two instructions load variables b and c from an address in memory (here symbolized by @b and @c respectively). These values go into registers r1 and r2. The third instruction adds the values in r1 and r2. The result goes into register r3. The fourth instruction stores the contents of r3 into the memory address symbolized by @a. If we're lucky, both b and c are in a nearby cache and the load instructions only take a few processor cycles to execute. That is the good case, but what if b or c, or both, have to come from very far away? Perhaps both of them are in the main memory and then it easily takes hundreds of cycles for the values to arrive in the registers. Meanwhile the processor is doing nothing and simply waits for the data to arrive. Actually, it does something. It burns cycles while waiting. That is a waste of time and energy. Why not use these cycles to execute instructions from another application or thread in case of a parallel program? That is exactly what latency hiding on the SPARC T-Series processors does. It is a hardware feature totally transparent to the user and application. As soon as there is a delay in the execution, the hardware uses these otherwise idle cycles to execute instructions from another process. As a result, the throughput capacity of the system improves because idle cycles are no longer wasted and therefore more jobs can be run per unit of time. This feature has been in the SPARC T-series from the beginning, so why this paper? The difference with previous publications on this topic is in the amount of detail given. How this all works under the hood is fully explained using two example programs. Starting from the assembly language instructions, it is demonstrated in what way these programs execute. To really see what is happening we go down to the processor pipeline level, where the gaps in the execution are, and show in what way these idle cycles are filled by other copies of the same program running simultaneously. Both the SPARC T4 as well as the older UltraSPARC T2+ processor are covered. You may wonder why the UltraSPARC T2+ is included. The focus of this work is on the SPARC T4 processor, but to explain the basic concept of latency hiding at this very low level, we start with the UltraSPARC T2+ processor because it is architecturally a much simpler design. From the single issue, in-order pipelines of this processor we then shift gears and cover how this all works on the much more advanced dual issue, out-of-order architecture of the T4. The analysis and performance experiments have been conducted on both processors. The results depend on the processor, but in all cases the theoretical estimates are confirmed by the experiments. If you're interested to read a lot more about this and find out how things really work under the hood, you can download a copy of the paper here. A paper like this could not have been produced without the help of several other people. I want to thank the co-author of this paper, Jared Smolens, for his very valuable contributions and our highly inspiring discussions. I'm also indebted to Thomas Nau (Ulm University, Germany), Shane Sigler and Mark Woodyard (both at Oracle) for their feedback on earlier versions of this paper. Karen Perkins (Perkins Technical Writing and Editing) and Rick Ramsey at Oracle were very helpful in providing editorial and publishing assistance.

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• Detect Unicode Usage in SQL Column

  One optimization you can make to a SQL table that is overly large is to change from nvarchar (or nchar) to varchar (or char).  Doing so will cut the size used by the data in half, from 2 bytes per character (+ 2 bytes of overhead for varchar) to only 1 byte per character.  However, you will lose the ability to store Unicode characters, such as those used by many non-English alphabets.  If the tables are storing user-input, and your application is or might one day be used internationally, its likely that using Unicode for your characters is a good thing.  However, if instead the data is being generated by your application itself or your development team (such as lookup data), and you can be certain that Unicode character sets are not required, then switching such columns to varchar/char can be an easy improvement to make. Avoid Premature Optimization If you are working with a lookup table that has a small number of rows, and is only ever referenced in the application by its numeric ID column, then you wont see any benefit to using varchar vs. nvarchar.  More generally, for small tables, you wont see any significant benefit.  Thus, if you have a general policy in place to use nvarchar/nchar because it offers more flexibility, do not take this post as a recommendation to go against this policy anywhere you can.  You really only want to act on measurable evidence that suggests that using Unicode is resulting in a problem, and that you wont lose anything by switching to varchar/char. Obviously the main reason to make this change is to reduce the amount of space required by each row.  This in turn affects how many rows SQL Server can page through at a time, and can also impact index size and how much disk I/O is required to respond to queries, etc.  If for example you have a table with 100 million records in it and this table has a column of type nchar(5), this column will use 5 * 2 = 10 bytes per row, and with 100M rows that works out to 10 bytes * 100 million = 1000 MBytes or 1GB.  If it turns out that this column only ever stores ASCII characters, then changing it to char(5) would reduce this to 5*1 = 5 bytes per row, and only 500MB.  Of course, if it turns out that it only ever stores the values true and false then you could go further and replace it with a bit data type which uses only 1 byte per row (100MB  total). Detecting Whether Unicode Is In Use So by now you think that you have a problem and that it might be alleviated by switching some columns from nvarchar/nchar to varchar/char but youre not sure whether youre currently using Unicode in these columns.  By definition, you should only be thinking about this for a column that has a lot of rows in it, since the benefits just arent there for a small table, so you cant just eyeball it and look for any non-ASCII characters.  Instead, you need a query.  Its actually very simple: SELECT DISTINCT(CategoryName)FROM CategoriesWHERE CategoryName <> CONVERT(varchar, CategoryName) Summary Gregg Stark for the tip. Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Learn Many Languages

  - by Phil Factor

  Around twenty-five years ago, I was trying to solve the problem of recruiting suitable developers for a large business. I visited the local University (it was a Technical College then). My mission was to remind them that we were a large, local employer of technical people and to suggest that, as they were in the business of educating young people for a career in IT, we should work together. I anticipated a harmonious chat where we could suggest to them the idea of mentioning our name to some of their graduates. It didn’t go well. The academic staff displayed a degree of revulsion towards the whole topic of IT in the world of commerce that surprised me; tweed met charcoal-grey, trainers met black shoes. However, their antipathy to commerce was something we could have worked around, since few of their graduates were destined for a career as university lecturers. They asked me what sort of language skills we needed. I tried ducking the invidious task of naming computer languages, since I wanted recruits who were quick to adapt and learn, with a broad understanding of IT, including development methodologies, technologies, and data. However, they pressed the point and I ended up saying that we needed good working knowledge of C and BASIC, though FORTRAN and COBOL were, at the time, still useful. There was a ghastly silence. It was as if I’d recommended the beliefs and practices of the Bogomils of Bulgaria to a gathering of Cardinals. They stared at me severely, like owls, until the head of department broke the silence, informing me in clipped tones that they taught only Modula 2. Now, I wouldn’t blame you if at this point you hurriedly had to look up ‘Modula 2′ on Wikipedia. Based largely on Pascal, it was a specialist language for embedded systems, but I’ve never ever come across it in a commercial business application. Nevertheless, it was an excellent teaching language since it taught modules, scope control, multiprogramming and the advantages of encapsulating a set of related subprograms and data structures. As long as the course also taught how to transfer these skills to other, more useful languages, it was not necessarily a problem. I said as much, but they gleefully retorted that the biggest local employer, a defense contractor specializing in Radar and military technology, used nothing but Modula 2. “Why teach any other programming language when they will be using Modula 2 for all their working lives?” said a complacent lecturer. On hearing this, I made my excuses and left. There could be no meeting of minds. They were providing training in a specific computer language, not an education in IT. Twenty years later, I once more worked nearby and regularly passed the long-deserted ‘brownfield’ site of the erstwhile largest local employer; the end of the cold war had led to lean times for defense contractors. A digger was about to clear the rubble of the long demolished factory along with the accompanying growth of buddleia and thistles, in order to lay the infrastructure for ‘affordable housing’. Modula 2 was a distant memory. Either those employees had short working lives or they’d retrained in other languages. The University, by contrast, was thriving, but I wondered if their erstwhile graduates had ever cursed the narrow specialization of their training in IT, as they struggled with the unexpected variety of their subsequent careers.

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• Cloud hosted CI for .NET projects

  - by Scott Dorman

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/sdorman/archive/2014/06/02/cloud-hosted-ci-for-.net-projects.aspxContinuous integration (CI) is important. If you don’t have it set up…you should. There are a lot of different options available for hosting your own CI server, but they all require you to maintain your own infrastructure. If you’re a business, that generally isn’t a problem. However, if you have some open source projects hosted, for example on GitHub, there haven’t really been any options. That has changed with the latest release of AppVeyor, which bills itself as “Continuous integration for busy developers.” What’s different about AppVeyor is that it’s a hosted solution. Why is that important? By being a hosted solution, it means that I don’t have to maintain my own infrastructure for a build server. How does that help if you’re hosting an open source project? AppVeyor has a really competitive pricing plan. For an unlimited amount of public repositories, it’s free. That gives you a cloud hosted CI system for all of your GitHub projects for the cost of some time to set them up, which actually isn’t hard to do at all. I have several open source projects (hosted at https://github.com/scottdorman), so I signed up using my GitHub credentials. AppVeyor fully supported my two-factor authentication with GitHub, so I never once had to enter my password for GitHub into AppVeyor. Once it was done, I authorized GitHub and it instantly found all of the repositories I have (both the ones I created and the ones I cloned from elsewhere). You can even add “build badges” to your markdown files in GitHub, so anyone who visits your project can see the status of the lasted build. Out of the box, you can simply select a repository, add the build project, click New Build and wait for the build to complete. You now have a complete CI server running for your project. The best part of this, besides the fact that it “just worked” with almost zero configuration is that you can configure it through a web-based interface which is very streamlined, clean and easy to use or you can use a appveyor.yml file. This means that you can define your CI build process (including any scripts that might need to be run, etc.) in a standard file format (the YAML format) and store it in your repository. The benefits to that are huge. The file becomes a versioned artifact in your source control system, so it can be branched, merged, and is completely transparent to anyone working on the project. By the way, AppVeyor isn’t limited to just GitHub. It currently supports GitHub, BitBucket, Visual Studio Online, and Kiln. I did have a few issues getting one of my projects to build, but the same day I posted the problem to the support forum a fix was deployed, and I had a functioning CI build about 5 minutes after that. Since then, I’ve provided some additional feature requests and had a few other questions, all of which have seen responses within a 24-hour period. I have to say that it’s easily been one of the best customer support experiences I’ve seen in a long time. AppVeyor is still young, so it doesn’t yet have full feature parity with some of the older (more established) CI systems available,  but it’s getting better all the time and I have no doubt that it will quickly catch up to those other CI systems and then pass them. The bottom line, if you’re looking for a good cloud-hosted CI system for your .NET-based projects, look at AppVeyor.

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• The Raspberry Pi JavaFX In-Car System (Part 3)

  - by speakjava

  Ras Pi car pt3 Having established communication between a laptop and the ELM327 it's now time to bring in the Raspberry Pi. One of the nice things about the Raspberry Pi is the simplicity of it's power supply.  All we need is 5V at about 700mA, which in a car is as simple as using a USB cigarette lighter adapter (which is handily rated at 1A).  My car has two cigarette lighter sockets (despite being specified with the non-smoking package and therefore no actual cigarette lighter): one in the centre console and one in the rear load area.  This was convenient as my idea is to mount the Raspberry Pi in the back to minimise the disruption to the very clean design of the Audi interior. The first task was to get the Raspberry Pi to communicate using Wi-Fi with the ELM 327.  Initially I tried a cheap Wi-Fi dongle from Amazon, but I could not get this working with my home Wi-Fi network since it just would not handle the WPA security no matter what I did.  I upgraded to a Wi Pi from Farnell and this works very well. The ELM327 uses Ad-Hoc networking, which is point to point communication.  Rather than using a wireless router each connecting device has its own assigned IP address (which needs to be on the same subnet) and uses the same ESSID.  The settings of the ELM327 are fixed to an IP address of 192.168.0.10 and useing the ESSID, "Wifi327".  To configure Raspbian Linux to use these settings we need to modify the /etc/network/interfaces file.  After some searching of the web and a few false starts here's the settings I came up with: auto lo eth0 wlan0 iface lo inet loopback iface eth0 inet static     address 10.0.0.13     gateway 10.0.0.254     netmask 255.255.255.0 iface wlan0 inet static     address 192.168.0.1     netmask 255.255.255.0     wireless-essid Wifi327     wireless-mode ad-ho0 After rebooting, iwconfig wlan0 reported that the Wi-Fi settings were correct.  However, ifconfig showed no assigned IP address.  If I configured the IP address manually using ifconfig wlan0 192.168.0.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 then everything was fine and I was able to happily ping the IP address of the ELM327.  I tried numerous variations on the interfaces file, but nothing I did would get me an IP address on wlan0 when the machine booted.  Eventually I decided that this was a pointless thing to spend more time on and so I put a script in /etc/init.d and registered it with update-rc.d.  All the script does (currently) is execute the ifconfig line and now, having installed the telnet package I am able to telnet to the ELM327 via the Raspberry Pi.  Not nice, but it works. Here's a picture of the Raspberry Pi in the car for testing In the next part we'll look at running the Java code on the Raspberry Pi to collect data from the car systems.

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• Efficiently separating Read/Compute/Write steps for concurrent processing of entities in Entity/Component systems

  - by TravisG

  Setup I have an entity-component architecture where Entities can have a set of attributes (which are pure data with no behavior) and there exist systems that run the entity logic which act on that data. Essentially, in somewhat pseudo-code: Entity { id; map<id_type, Attribute> attributes; } System { update(); vector<Entity> entities; } A system that just moves along all entities at a constant rate might be MovementSystem extends System { update() { for each entity in entities position = entity.attributes["position"]; position += vec3(1,1,1); } } Essentially, I'm trying to parallelise update() as efficiently as possible. This can be done by running entire systems in parallel, or by giving each update() of one system a couple of components so different threads can execute the update of the same system, but for a different subset of entities registered with that system. Problem In reality, these systems sometimes require that entities interact(/read/write data from/to) each other, sometimes within the same system (e.g. an AI system that reads state from other entities surrounding the current processed entity), but sometimes between different systems that depend on each other (i.e. a movement system that requires data from a system that processes user input). Now, when trying to parallelize the update phases of entity/component systems, the phases in which data (components/attributes) from Entities are read and used to compute something, and the phase where the modified data is written back to entities need to be separated in order to avoid data races. Otherwise the only way (not taking into account just "critical section"ing everything) to avoid them is to serialize parts of the update process that depend on other parts. This seems ugly. To me it would seem more elegant to be able to (ideally) have all processing running in parallel, where a system may read data from all entities as it wishes, but doesn't write modifications to that data back until some later point. The fact that this is even possible is based on the assumption that modification write-backs are usually very small in complexity, and don't require much performance, whereas computations are very expensive (relatively). So the overhead added by a delayed-write phase might be evened out by more efficient updating of entities (by having threads work more % of the time instead of waiting). A concrete example of this might be a system that updates physics. The system needs to both read and write a lot of data to and from entities. Optimally, there would be a system in place where all available threads update a subset of all entities registered with the physics system. In the case of the physics system this isn't trivially possible because of race conditions. So without a workaround, we would have to find other systems to run in parallel (which don't modify the same data as the physics system), other wise the remaining threads are waiting and wasting time. However, that has disadvantages Practically, the L3 cache is pretty much always better utilized when updating a large system with multiple threads, as opposed to multiple systems at once, which all act on different sets of data. Finding and assembling other systems to run in parallel can be extremely time consuming to design well enough to optimize performance. Sometimes, it might even not be possible at all because a system just depends on data that is touched by all other systems. Solution? In my thinking, a possible solution would be a system where reading/updating and writing of data is separated, so that in one expensive phase, systems only read data and compute what they need to compute, and then in a separate, performance-wise cheap, write phase, attributes of entities that needed to be modified are finally written back to the entities. The Question How might such a system be implemented to achieve optimal performance, as well as making programmer life easier? What are the implementation details of such a system and what might have to be changed in the existing EC-architecture to accommodate this solution?

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• What are the disadvantages of self-encapsulation?

  - by Dave Jarvis

  Background Tony Hoare's billion dollar mistake was the invention of null. Subsequently, a lot of code has become riddled with null pointer exceptions (segfaults) when software developers try to use (dereference) uninitialized variables. In 1989, Wirfs-Brock and Wikerson wrote: Direct references to variables severely limit the ability of programmers to re?ne existing classes. The programming conventions described here structure the use of variables to promote reusable designs. We encourage users of all object-oriented languages to follow these conventions. Additionally, we strongly urge designers of object-oriented languages to consider the effects of unrestricted variable references on reusability. Problem A lot of software, especially in Java, but likely in C# and C++, often uses the following pattern: public class SomeClass { private String someAttribute; public SomeClass() { this.someAttribute = "Some Value"; } public void someMethod() { if( this.someAttribute.equals( "Some Value" ) ) { // do something... } } public void setAttribute( String s ) { this.someAttribute = s; } public String getAttribute() { return this.someAttribute; } } Sometimes a band-aid solution is used by checking for null throughout the code base: public void someMethod() { assert this.someAttribute != null; if( this.someAttribute.equals( "Some Value" ) ) { // do something... } } public void anotherMethod() { assert this.someAttribute != null; if( this.someAttribute.equals( "Some Default Value" ) ) { // do something... } } The band-aid does not always avoid the null pointer problem: a race condition exists. The race condition is mitigated using: public void anotherMethod() { String someAttribute = this.someAttribute; assert someAttribute != null; if( someAttribute.equals( "Some Default Value" ) ) { // do something... } } Yet that requires two statements (assignment to local copy and check for null) every time a class-scoped variable is used to ensure it is valid. Self-Encapsulation Ken Auer's Reusability Through Self-Encapsulation (Pattern Languages of Program Design, Addison Wesley, New York, pp. 505-516, 1994) advocated self-encapsulation combined with lazy initialization. The result, in Java, would resemble: public class SomeClass { private String someAttribute; public SomeClass() { setAttribute( "Some Value" ); } public void someMethod() { if( getAttribute().equals( "Some Value" ) ) { // do something... } } public void setAttribute( String s ) { this.someAttribute = s; } public String getAttribute() { String someAttribute = this.someAttribute; if( someAttribute == null ) { setAttribute( createDefaultValue() ); } return someAttribute; } protected String createDefaultValue() { return "Some Default Value"; } } All duplicate checks for null are superfluous: getAttribute() ensures the value is never null at a single location within the containing class. Efficiency arguments should be fairly moot -- modern compilers and virtual machines can inline the code when possible. As long as variables are never referenced directly, this also allows for proper application of the Open-Closed Principle. Question What are the disadvantages of self-encapsulation, if any? (Ideally, I would like to see references to studies that contrast the robustness of similarly complex systems that use and don't use self-encapsulation, as this strikes me as a fairly straightforward testable hypothesis.)

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• PowerShell Script To Find Where SharePoint 2010 Features Are Activated

  - by Brian Jackett

  The script on this post will find where features are activated within your SharePoint 2010 farm.   Problem    Over the past few months I’ve gotten literally dozens of emails, blog comments, or personal requests from people asking “how do I find where a SharePoint feature has been activated?”  I wrote a script to find which features are installed on your farm almost 3 years ago.  There is also the Get-SPFeature PowerShell commandlet in SharePoint 2010.  The problem is that these only tell you if a feature is installed not where they have been activated.  This is especially important to know if you have multiple web applications, site collections, and /or sites.   Solution    The default call (no parameters) for Get-SPFeature will return all features in the farm.  Many of the parameter sets accept filters for specific scopes such as web application, site collection, and site.  If those are supplied then only the enabled / activated features are returned for that filtered scope.  Taking the concept of recursively traversing a SharePoint farm and merging that with calls to Get-SPFeature at all levels of the farm you can find out what features are activated at that level.  Store the results into a variable and you end up with all features that are activated at every level.    Below is the script I came up with (slight edits for posting on blog).  With no parameters the function lists all features activated at all scopes.  If you provide an Identity parameter you will find where a specific feature is activated.  Note that the display name for a feature you see in the SharePoint UI rarely matches the “internal” display name.  I would recommend using the feature id instead.  You can download a full copy of the script by clicking on the link below.    Note: This script is not optimized for medium to large farms.  In my testing it took 1-3 minutes to recurse through my demo environment.  This script is provided as-is with no warranty.  Run this in a smaller dev / test environment first.   001 002 003 004 005 006 007 008 009 010 011 012 013 014 015 016 017 018 019 020 021 022 023 024 025 026 027 028 029 030 031 032 033 034 035 036 037 038 039 040 041 042 043 044 045 046 047 048 049 050 051 052 053 054 055 056 057 058 059 060 061 062 063 064 065 066 067 068 function Get-SPFeatureActivated { # see full script for help info, removed for formatting [CmdletBinding()] param(   [Parameter(position = 1, valueFromPipeline=$true)]   [Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell.SPFeatureDefinitionPipeBind]   $Identity )#end param   Begin   {     # declare empty array to hold results. Will add custom member `     # for Url to show where activated at on objects returned from Get-SPFeature.     $results = @()         $params = @{}   }   Process   {     if([string]::IsNullOrEmpty($Identity) -eq $false)     {       $params = @{Identity = $Identity             ErrorAction = "SilentlyContinue"       }     }       # check farm features     $results += (Get-SPFeature -Farm -Limit All @params |              % {Add-Member -InputObject $_ -MemberType noteproperty `                 -Name Url -Value ([string]::Empty) -PassThru} |              Select-Object -Property Scope, DisplayName, Id, Url)     # check web application features     foreach($webApp in (Get-SPWebApplication))     {       $results += (Get-SPFeature -WebApplication $webApp -Limit All @params |                % {Add-Member -InputObject $_ -MemberType noteproperty `                   -Name Url -Value $webApp.Url -PassThru} |                Select-Object -Property Scope, DisplayName, Id, Url)       # check site collection features in current web app       foreach($site in ($webApp.Sites))       {         $results += (Get-SPFeature -Site $site -Limit All @params |                  % {Add-Member -InputObject $_ -MemberType noteproperty `                     -Name Url -Value $site.Url -PassThru} |                  Select-Object -Property Scope, DisplayName, Id, Url)                          $site.Dispose()         # check site features in current site collection         foreach($web in ($site.AllWebs))         {           $results += (Get-SPFeature -Web $web -Limit All @params |                    % {Add-Member -InputObject $_ -MemberType noteproperty `                       -Name Url -Value $web.Url -PassThru} |                    Select-Object -Property Scope, DisplayName, Id, Url)           $web.Dispose()         }       }     }   }   End   {     $results   } } #end Get-SPFeatureActivated   Snippet of output from Get-SPFeatureActivated   Conclusion    This script has been requested for a long time and I’m glad to finally getting a working “clean” version.  If you find any bugs or issues with the script please let me know.  I’ll be posting this to the TechNet Script Center after some internal review.  Enjoy the script and I hope it helps with your admin / developer needs.         -Frog Out

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• Know Your Service Request Status

  - by Get Proactive Customer Adoption Team

  Untitled Document To monitor a Service Request or not to monitor a Service Request... That should never be the question Monitoring the Service Requests you create is an essential part of the process to resolve your issue when you work with a Support Engineer. If you monitor your Service Request, you know at all times where it is in the process, or to be more specific, you know at all times what action the Support Engineer has taken on your request and what the next step is. When you think about it, it is rather simple... Oracle Support is working the issue, Oracle Development is working the issue, or you are. When you check on the status, you may find that the Support Engineer has a question for you or the engineer is waiting for more information to resolve the issue. If you monitor the Service Request, and respond quickly, the process keeps moving, and you’ll get your answer more quickly. Monitoring a Service Request is easy. All you need to do is check the status codes that the Support Engineer or the system assigns to your Service Request. These status codes are not static. You will see that during the life of your Service request, it will go through a variety of status codes. The best advice I can offer you when you monitor your Service Request is to watch the codes. If the status is not changing, or if you are not getting responses back within the agreed timeframes, you should review the action plan the Support Engineer has outlined or talk about a new action plan. Here are the most common status codes: Work in Progress indicates that your Support Engineer is researching and working the issue. Development Working means that you have a code related issue and Oracle Support has submitted a bug to Development. Please pay a particular attention to the following statuses; they indicate that the Support Engineer is waiting for a response from you: Customer Working usually means that your Support Engineer needs you to collect additional information, needs you to try something or to apply a patch, or has more questions for you. Solution Offered indicates that the Support Engineer has identified the problem and has provided you with a solution. Auto-Close or Close Initiated are statuses you don’t want to see. Monitoring your Service Request helps prevent your issues from reaching these statuses. They usually indicate that the Support Engineer did not receive the requested information or action from you. This is important. If you fail to respond, the Support Engineer will attempt to contact you three times over a two-week period. If these attempts are unsuccessful, he or she will initiate the Auto-Close process. At the end of this additional two-week period, if you have not updated the Service Request, your Service Request is considered abandoned and the Support Engineer will assign a Customer Abandoned status. A Support Engineer doesn’t like to see this status, since he or she has been working to solve your issue, but we know our customers dislike it even more, since it means their issue is not moving forward. You can avoid delays in resolving your issue by monitoring your Service Request and acting quickly when you see the status change. Respond to the request from the engineer to answer questions, collect information, or to try the offered solution. Then the Support Engineer can continue working the issue and the Service Request keeps moving forward towards resolution. Keep in mind that if you take an extended period of time to respond to a request or to provide the information requested, the Support Engineer cannot take the next step. You may inadvertently send an implicit message about the problem’s urgency that may not match the Service Request priority, and your need for an answer. Help us help you. We want to get you the answer as quickly as possible so you can stay focused on your company’s objectives. Now, back to our initial question. To monitor Service Requests or not to monitor Service Requests? I think the answer is clear: yes, monitor your Service Request to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.

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• Give a session on C++ AMP – here is how

  - by Daniel Moth

  Ever since presenting on C++ AMP at the AMD Fusion conference in June, then the Gamefest conference in August, and the BUILD conference in September, I've had numerous requests about my material from folks that want to re-deliver the same session. The C++ AMP session I put together has evolved over the 3 presentations to its final form that I used at BUILD, so that is the one I recommend you base yours on. Please get the slides and the recording from channel9 (I'll refer to slide numbers below). This is how I've been presenting the C++ AMP session: Context (slide 3, 04:18-08:18) Start with a demo, on my dual-GPU machine. I've been using the N-Body sample (for VS 11 Developer Preview). (slide 4) Use an nvidia slide that has additional examples of performance improvements that customers enjoy with heterogeneous computing. (slide 5) Talk a bit about the differences today between CPU and GPU hardware, leading to the fact that these will continue to co-exist and that GPUs are great for data parallel algorithms, but not much else today. One is a jack of all trades and the other is a number cruncher. (slide 6) Use the APU example from amd, as one indication that the hardware space is still in motion, emphasizing that the C++ AMP solution is a data parallel API, not a GPU API. It has a future proof design for hardware we have yet to see. (slide 7) Provide more meta-data, as blogged about when I first introduced C++ AMP. Code (slide 9-11) Introduce C++ AMP coding with a simplistic array-addition algorithm – the slides speak for themselves. (slide 12-13) index<N>, extent<N>, and grid<N>. (Slide 14-16) array<T,N>, array_view<T,N> and comparison between them. (Slide 17) parallel_for_each. (slide 18, 21) restrict. (slide 19-20) actual restrictions of restrict(direct3d) – the slides speak for themselves. (slide 22) bring it altogether with a matrix multiplication example. (slide 23-24) accelerator, and accelerator_view. (slide 26-29) Introduce tiling incl. tiled matrix multiplication [tiling probably deserves a whole session instead of 6 minutes!]. IDE (slide 34,37) Briefly touch on the concurrency visualizer. It supports GPU profiling, but enhancements specific to C++ AMP we hope will come at the Beta timeframe, which is when I'll be spending more time talking about it. (slide 35-36, 51:54-59:16) Demonstrate the GPU debugging experience in VS 11. Summary (slide 39) Re-iterate some of the points of slide 7, and add the point that the C++ AMP spec will be open for other compiler vendors to implement, even on other platforms (in fact, Microsoft is actively working on that). (slide 40) Links to content – see slide – including where all your questions should go: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/parallelcppnative/threads.   "But I don't have time for a full blown session, I only need 2 (or just 1, or 3) C++ AMP slides to use in my session on related topic X" If all you want is a small number of slides, you can take some from the session above and customize them. But because I am so nice, I have created some slides for you, including talking points in the notes section. Download them here. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• Columnstore Case Study #1: MSIT SONAR Aggregations

  - by aspiringgeek

  Preamble This is the first in a series of posts documenting big wins encountered using columnstore indexes in SQL Server 2012 & 2014.  Many of these can be found in this deck along with details such as internals, best practices, caveats, etc.  The purpose of sharing the case studies in this context is to provide an easy-to-consume quick-reference alternative. Why Columnstore? If we’re looking for a subset of columns from one or a few rows, given the right indexes, SQL Server can do a superlative job of providing an answer. If we’re asking a question which by design needs to hit lots of rows—DW, reporting, aggregations, grouping, scans, etc., SQL Server has never had a good mechanism—until columnstore. Columnstore indexes were introduced in SQL Server 2012. However, they're still largely unknown. Some adoption blockers existed; yet columnstore was nonetheless a game changer for many apps.  In SQL Server 2014, potential blockers have been largely removed & they're going to profoundly change the way we interact with our data.  The purpose of this series is to share the performance benefits of columnstore & documenting columnstore is a compelling reason to upgrade to SQL Server 2014. App: MSIT SONAR Aggregations At MSIT, performance & configuration data is captured by SCOM. We archive much of the data in a partitioned data warehouse table in SQL Server 2012 for reporting via an application called SONAR.  By definition, this is a primary use case for columnstore—report queries requiring aggregation over large numbers of rows.  New data is refreshed each night by an automated table partitioning mechanism—a best practices scenario for columnstore. The Win Compared to performance using classic indexing which resulted in the expected query plan selection including partition elimination vs. SQL Server 2012 nonclustered columnstore, query performance increased significantly.  Logical reads were reduced by over a factor of 50; both CPU & duration improved by factors of 20 or more.  Other than creating the columnstore index, no special modifications or tweaks to the app or databases schema were necessary to achieve the performance improvements.  Existing nonclustered indexes were rendered superfluous & were deleted, thus mitigating maintenance challenges such as defragging as well as conserving disk capacity. Details The table provides the raw data & summarizes the performance deltas. Logical Reads (8K pages) CPU (ms) Durn (ms) Columnstore 160,323 20,360 9,786 Conventional Table & Indexes 9,053,423 549,608 193,903 ? x56 x27 x20 The charts provide additional perspective of this data.  "Conventional vs. Columnstore Metrics" document the raw data.  Note on this linear display the magnitude of the conventional index performance vs. columnstore.  The “Metrics (?)” chart expresses these values as a ratio. Summary For DW, reports, & other BI workloads, columnstore often provides significant performance enhancements relative to conventional indexing.  I have documented here, the first in a series of reports on columnstore implementations, results from an initial implementation at MSIT in which logical reads were reduced by over a factor of 50; both CPU & duration improved by factors of 20 or more.  Subsequent features in this series document performance enhancements that are even more significant. 

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• Velocity collision detection (2D)

  - by ultifinitus

  Alright, so I have made a simple game engine (see youtube) And my current implementation of collision resolution has a slight problem, involving the velocity of a platform. Basically I run through all of the objects necessary to detect collisions on and resolve those collisions as I find them. Part of that resolution is setting the player's velocity = the platform's velocity. Which works great! Unless I have a row of platforms moving at different velocities or a platform between a stack of tiles.... (current system) bool player::handle_collisions() { collisions tcol; bool did_handle = false; bool thisObjectHandle = false; for (int temp = 0; temp < collideQueue.size(); temp++) { thisObjectHandle = false; tcol = get_collision(prevPos.x,y,get_img()->get_width(),get_img()->get_height(), collideQueue[temp]->get_position().x,collideQueue[temp]->get_position().y, collideQueue[temp]->get_img()->get_width(),collideQueue[temp]->get_img()->get_height()); if (prevPos.y >= collideQueue[temp]->get_prev_pos().y + collideQueue[temp]->get_img()->get_height()) if (tcol.top > 0) { add_pos(0,tcol.top); set_vel(get_vel().x,collideQueue[temp]->get_vel().y); thisObjectHandle = did_handle = true; } if (prevPos.y + get_img()->get_height() <= collideQueue[temp]->get_prev_pos().y) if (tcol.bottom > 0) { add_pos(collideQueue[temp]->get_vel().x,-tcol.bottom); set_vel(get_vel().x/*collideQueue[temp]->get_vel().x*/,collideQueue[temp]->get_vel().y); ableToJump = true; jumpTimes = maxjumpable; thisObjectHandle = did_handle = true; } /// /// ADD CODE FROM NEXT CODE BLOCK HERE (on forum, not in code) /// } for (int temp = 0; temp < collideQueue.size(); temp++) { thisObjectHandle = false; tcol = get_collision(x,y,get_img()->get_width(),get_img()->get_height(), collideQueue[temp]->get_position().x,collideQueue[temp]->get_position().y, collideQueue[temp]->get_img()->get_width(),collideQueue[temp]->get_img()->get_height()); if (prevPos.x + get_img()->get_width() <= collideQueue[temp]->get_prev_pos().x) if (tcol.left > 0) { add_pos(-tcol.left,0); set_vel(collideQueue[temp]->get_vel().x,get_vel().y); thisObjectHandle = did_handle = true; } if (prevPos.x >= collideQueue[temp]->get_prev_pos().x + collideQueue[temp]->get_img()->get_width()) if (tcol.right > 0) { add_pos(tcol.right,0); set_vel(collideQueue[temp]->get_vel().x,get_vel().y); thisObjectHandle = did_handle = true; } } return did_handle; } (if I add the following code {where the comment to do so is}, which is glitchy, the above problem doesn't happen, though it brings others) if (!thisObjectHandle) { if (tcol.bottom > tcol.top) { add_pos(collideQueue[temp]->get_vel().x,-tcol.bottom); set_vel(get_vel().x,collideQueue[temp]->get_vel().y); } else if (tcol.top > tcol.bottom) { add_pos(0,tcol.top); set_vel(get_vel().x,collideQueue[temp]->get_vel().y); } } How would you change my system to prevent this?

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• NFJS Central Iowa Software Symposium Des Moines Trip Report

  - by reza_rahman

  As some of you may be aware, I recently joined the well-respected US based No Fluff Just Stuff (NFJS) Tour. If you work in the US and still don't know what the No Fluff Just Stuff (NFJS) Tour is, you are doing yourself a very serious disfavor. NFJS is by far the cheapest and most effective way to stay up to date through some world class speakers and talks. Following the US cultural tradition of old-fashioned roadshows, NFJS is basically a set program of speakers and topics offered at major US cities year round. The NFJS Central Iowa Software Symposium was held August 8 - 10 in Des Moines. The attendance at the event and my sessions was moderate by comparison to some of the other shows. It is one of the few events of it's kind that take place this part the country so it is extremely important. I had five talks total over two days, more or less back-to-back. The first one was my JavaScript + Java EE 7 talk titled "Using JavaScript/HTML5 Rich Clients with Java EE 7". This talk is basically about aligning EE 7 with the emerging JavaScript ecosystem (specifically AngularJS). The slide deck for the talk is here: JavaScript/HTML5 Rich Clients Using Java EE 7 from Reza Rahman The demo application code is posted on GitHub. The code should be a helpful resource if this development model is something that interests you. Do let me know if you need help with it but the instructions should be fairly self-explanatory. I am delivering this material at JavaOne 2014 as a two-hour tutorial. This should give me a little more bandwidth to dig a little deeper, especially on the JavaScript end. The second talk (on the second day) was our flagship Java EE 7/8 talk. Currently the talk is basically about Java EE 7 but I'm slowly evolving the talk to transform it into a Java EE 8 talk as we move forward. The following is the slide deck for the talk: JavaEE.Next(): Java EE 7, 8, and Beyond from Reza Rahman The next talk I delivered was my Cargo Tracker/Java EE + DDD talk. This talk basically overviews DDD and describes how DDD maps to Java EE using code examples/demos from the Cargo Tracker Java EE Blue Prints project. Applied Domain-Driven Design Blue Prints for Java EE from Reza Rahman The third was my talk titled "Using NoSQL with ~JPA, EclipseLink and Java EE". The talk covers an interesting gap that there is surprisingly little material on out there. The talk has three parts -- a birds-eye view of the NoSQL landscape, how to use NoSQL via a JPA centric facade using EclipseLink NoSQL, Hibernate OGM, DataNucleus, Kundera, Easy-Cassandra, etc and how to use NoSQL native APIs in Java EE via CDI. The slides for the talk are here: Using NoSQL with ~JPA, EclipseLink and Java EE from Reza Rahman The JPA based demo is available here, while the CDI based demo is available here. Both demos use MongoDB as the data store. Do let me know if you need help getting the demos up and running. I finishd off the event with a talk titled Building Java HTML5/WebSocket Applications with JSR 356. The talk introduces HTML 5 WebSocket, overviews JSR 356, tours the API and ends with a small WebSocket demo on GlassFish 4. The slide deck for the talk is posted below. Building Java HTML5/WebSocket Applications with JSR 356 from Reza Rahman The demo code is posted on GitHub: https://github.com/m-reza-rahman/hello-websocket. My next NFJS show is the Greater Atlanta Software Symposium on September 12 - 14. Here's my tour schedule so far, I'll keep you up-to-date as the tour goes forward: September 12 - 14, Atlanta. September 19 - 21, Boston. October 17 - 19, Seattle. I hope you'll take this opportunity to get some updates on Java EE as well as the other useful content on the tour?

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• No external microphone Acer AO722

  - by Leeghwater

  The ACER AO722 comes with an external mic input, and this input is not recognised by Alsa mixer or Sound (in System Settings). There are various comments on this problem, but no real solutions. For example External Mic not working but Internal Mic works on an Acer Aspiron AO722. Using the internal mic is not an option, as I need to use skype professionally. I have tried everything in alsamixer (accessible through the Terminal Ctrl+Alt+t, command: alsamixer), and in Sound (under System Settings). I have also installed Pulseaudio. But to no avail. The headset is working normally under Skype in Windows. My AO722 came with Windows 7 on it, so I have installed Skype there too. My headset has separate connectors for ears and mic, and these go into the respective output and input on the right side of the laptop. This location: http://bernaerts.dyndns.org/linux/202-ubuntu-acer-ao722 sounds like an effective solution but it is for Ubuntu Natty 11.04. The solution suggested sounds drastic to me: replace the kernel 2.6.38-13 with version 2.6.38-12. I use Ubuntu 12.04, and my kernel is 3.2.0-30-generic-pae. Question: could I try this solution with Ubuntu 12.04? Is this a risky thing to do? I have found harware work around this problem. The audio output seems to be a combi output with also a microphone connection. I have made an adapter for this output. I used a 4 contacts 3,5 mm audio jack plug. To this plug I have soldered 2 female (common stereo) connectors, one for ears and one for the mic of my headset. The 4 contacts jack, which goes into the laptop (in audio OUTput) is wired as follows: tip = hot audio right; first sleeve after tip = hot audio left; second sleeve = common earth (for both ears and microphone); the 3rd sleeve = microphone signal input. In the connector which I could buy, the 3rd sleeve is not so much a sleeve, but part of the metal base of the connector; normally you would expect this one to be connect to earth. But connecting the mic signal to it works. Maybe ready made adapters of this kind and even headsets with a combi jack can simply be purchased; I didn't check. When I plug in the 4 contacts jack, Sound and Alsamixer immediately recognise an external microphone (even if no mic is connected to the adapter). In Sound, under the Input tab, 'Settings for internal microphone' changes into 'Setting for microphone'. The microphone comes through loud and clear, however there is a constant noise in the background. Others have reported this too. If I disconnect the external mic from the adapter, or shortcircuit the external microphone, the noise gets less but does not disappear. Therefore, it is not background noise from the room, but it comes from the computer itself. However, if you talk directly in the microphone of the headset, the noise level is acceptable for VOIP. The headset of my mobile phone Nokia C1 mobile comes wwith a 4 contacts combi 3,5mm jack plug. However, this one works (ear and mic) with the AO722 only if not inserted fully. Possibly the wiring of this headset jack is different. I cannot find detailed specs of the AO722, and don't know whether the audio 'output' was actually designed as a combi input/output. I have seen that at least one other AO model has a combi connector only. In any case, I do not believe that connecting your headset in this way will harm your computer. I would still appreciate a software solution. This must be possible, because the proper microphone input connector works under MS Windows.

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• Openmatics Revolutionizes Fleet Management with Standards-Based Vehicle Telematics Platform

  - by Michael Snow

  Openmatics s.r.o. was founded in 2010 as a subsidiary of ZF Friedrichshafen AG, a global player in driveline and chassis technology. Oracle Customer:  Openmatics s.r.o.Location:  Pilsen, Czech RepublicIndustry:  AutomotiveEmployees:  70 Its goal was to develop and operate a flexible, open telematics platform for automotive applications, which is independent from vehicle and component suppliers—recognizing that the fragmented telematics market was not meeting today’s fleet management needs. Openmatics provides a rich product portfolio, and customers can extend the platform, as required, to meet their needs. Partners and third-parties can develop their own applications using the Openmatics’ software development kit and can sell them via the Openmatics app shop.ZF Friedrichshafen AG is a global player in driveline and chassis technology. With 121 production companies and 650 service partners in 26 countries, ZF is among the top 10 largest automotive suppliers worldwide. Founded in 1915 to develop and produce transmissions for airships and vehicles, the group’s product offerings now include transmissions and steering systems as well as chassis components and complete axle systems and modules.  A word from Openmatics s.r.o.  “Oracle WebCenter Portal, together with the underlying Oracle Application Development Framework, provided the fundamental infrastructure for the Openmatics platform. Fleet managers can now reduce fuel consumption and operating costs, and more efficiently manage vehicle usage, maintenance, and safety. The standards-based platform allows third-party suppliers to deploy their own vehicle telematics services as Openmatics apps and creates a de facto standard for the automotive industry, independent from a single manufacturer or service provider.” – Gero Strobel, Head of Development, Openmatics s.r.o. Challenges Create an industry standard for vehicle telematics by establishing a customizable platform that enables access to telematics information, such as current and past fuel consumption, through a web browser to better meet automotive market and customer needs Reduce fleet-management costs by eliminating the need to invest in isolated telematics hardware and software solutions per vehicle brand and vehicle component manufacturer Establish an open platform where third-party providers—such as original equipment manufacturers (OEM), insurers, fleet operators, and individual developers—can deploy their own vehicle telematics services Allow users to purchase targeted telematics services as single apps to reduce costs and ensure rapid growth of telematics services available on the platform Enable users to configure their telematics apps with ease to make sure the platform meets individual fleet management requirements, such as analyzing past and current fuel consumption of a truck fleet Solutions Deployed Oracle WebCenter Portal as a foundation for Openmatics, a standards-based automotive telematics platform that provides next-generation fleet management with unified digital communication from and to vehicles on the move Used Oracle Application Development Framework as the development framework for Oracle WebCenter Portal’s components and services, providing developers with ready-to-use software development kits with application programming interfaces, design templates, and visual tools that accelerated time to market Used Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse to simplify telematics application development in Java Enabled fleet monitoring by recording vehicle data—such as fuel consumption information—through onboard units, delivering the information to Oracle Database, and making it accessible through a customizable app portfolio on any web browser Stored vehicle telematics data—sent as encrypted information—in Oracle Database, ensuring data integrity and immediate availability for the platform’s telematics applications Enabled a wide range of telematics services suppliers, from vehicle component manufacturers to fleet application developers, to offer vehicle telematics services on the Openmatics platform, ensuring platform independence from OEMs Provided Openmatics customers with the means to individually select the automotive telematics services that are relevant to their business requirements, eliminating the need to pay for superfluous information and reducing fleet management costs Oracle Products & Services Oracle Application Development Framework Oracle WebCenter Portal Oracle SOA Suite Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse Oracle Database Oracle Consulting &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;span id=&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;XinhaEditingPostion&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/span&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;amp;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;span id=&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;XinhaEditingPostion&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/span&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

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• Seperation of project responsibilities in new project

  - by dreza

  We have very recently started a new project (MVC 3.0) and some of our early discussion has been around how the work and development will be split amongst the team members to ensure we get the least amount of overlap of work and so help make it a bit easier for each developer to get on and do their work. The project is expected to take about 6 months - 1 year (although not all developers are likely to be on and might filter off towards the end), Our team is going to be small so this will help out a bit I believe. The team will essentially consist of: 3 x developers (1 a slightly more experienced and will be the lead) 1 x project manager / product owner / tester An external company responsbile for doing our design work General project/development decisions so far have included: Develop in an Agile way using SCRUM techniques (We are still very much learning this approach as a company) Use MVVM archectecture Use Ninject and DI where possible Attempt to use as TDD as much as possible to drive development. Keep our controllers as skinny as possible Keep our views as simple as possible During our discussions two approaches have been broached as too how to seperate the workload given our objectives outlined above. OPTION 1: A framework seperation where each person is responsible for conceptual areas with overlap and discussion primarily in the integration areas. The integration areas would the responsibily of both developers as required. View prototypes (**Graphic designer**) | - Mockups | Views (Razor and view helpers etc) & Javascript (**Developer 1**) | - View models (Integration point) | Controllers and Application logic (**Developer 2**) | - Models (Integration point) | Domain model and persistence (**Developer 3**) PROS: Integration points are quite clear and so developers can work without dependencies on others fairly easily Code practices such as naming conventions and style is more easily managed in regards to consistancy as primarily only one developer will be handling an area CONS: Completion of an entire feature becomes a bit grey as no single person is responsible for an entire feature (story?) A person might not have a full appreciation for all areas of the project and so code overlap might be lacking if suddenly that person left. OPTION 2: A more task orientated approach where each person is responsible for the completion of the entire task from view - controller - model. PROS: A person is responsible for one entire feature so it's "complete" state can be clearly defined Code overlap into different areas will occur so each individual has good coverage over the entire application CONS: Overlap of development will occur in all the modules and developers can develop/extend without a true understanding of what the original code owner was intending. This could potentially lead more easily to code bloat? Following a convention might be harder as developers are adding to all areas of the project If a developer sets up a way of doing things would it be harder to enforce the other developers to follow that convention or even build on it (or even discuss it?). Dunno.. Bugs could more easily be introduced into areas not thought about by the developer It's easier to possibly to carry a team member in so far as one member just hacks code together to complete a task whilst another takes time to build a foundation that could be used by others and so help make future tasks easier i.e. starts building a framework? QUESTION: As it might appear I'm more in favor of option 1, however I'm interested to see how others might have approached this or what is the standard or best or preferred way of undertaking a project. Or indeed any different approach to handling this?

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• Observing flow control idle time in TCP

  - by user12820842

  Previously I described how to observe congestion control strategies during transmission, and here I talked about TCP's sliding window approach for handling flow control on the receive side. A neat trick would now be to put the pieces together and ask the following question - how often is TCP transmission blocked by congestion control (send-side flow control) versus a zero-sized send window (which is the receiver saying it cannot process any more data)? So in effect we are asking whether the size of the receive window of the peer or the congestion control strategy may be sub-optimal. The result of such a problem would be that we have TCP data that we could be transmitting but we are not, potentially effecting throughput. So flow control is in effect: when the congestion window is less than or equal to the amount of bytes outstanding on the connection. We can derive this from args[3]-tcps_snxt - args[3]-tcps_suna, i.e. the difference between the next sequence number to send and the lowest unacknowledged sequence number; and when the window in the TCP segment received is advertised as 0 We time from these events until we send new data (i.e. args[4]-tcp_seq = snxt value when window closes. Here's the script: #!/usr/sbin/dtrace -s #pragma D option quiet tcp:::send / (args[3]-tcps_snxt - args[3]-tcps_suna) = args[3]-tcps_cwnd / { cwndclosed[args[1]-cs_cid] = timestamp; cwndsnxt[args[1]-cs_cid] = args[3]-tcps_snxt; @numclosed["cwnd", args[2]-ip_daddr, args[4]-tcp_dport] = count(); } tcp:::send / cwndclosed[args[1]-cs_cid] && args[4]-tcp_seq = cwndsnxt[args[1]-cs_cid] / { @meantimeclosed["cwnd", args[2]-ip_daddr, args[4]-tcp_dport] = avg(timestamp - cwndclosed[args[1]-cs_cid]); @stddevtimeclosed["cwnd", args[2]-ip_daddr, args[4]-tcp_dport] = stddev(timestamp - cwndclosed[args[1]-cs_cid]); @numclosed["cwnd", args[2]-ip_daddr, args[4]-tcp_dport] = count(); cwndclosed[args[1]-cs_cid] = 0; cwndsnxt[args[1]-cs_cid] = 0; } tcp:::receive / args[4]-tcp_window == 0 && (args[4]-tcp_flags & (TH_SYN|TH_RST|TH_FIN)) == 0 / { swndclosed[args[1]-cs_cid] = timestamp; swndsnxt[args[1]-cs_cid] = args[3]-tcps_snxt; @numclosed["swnd", args[2]-ip_saddr, args[4]-tcp_dport] = count(); } tcp:::send / swndclosed[args[1]-cs_cid] && args[4]-tcp_seq = swndsnxt[args[1]-cs_cid] / { @meantimeclosed["swnd", args[2]-ip_daddr, args[4]-tcp_sport] = avg(timestamp - swndclosed[args[1]-cs_cid]); @stddevtimeclosed["swnd", args[2]-ip_daddr, args[4]-tcp_sport] = stddev(timestamp - swndclosed[args[1]-cs_cid]); swndclosed[args[1]-cs_cid] = 0; swndsnxt[args[1]-cs_cid] = 0; } END { printf("%-6s %-20s %-8s %-25s %-8s %-8s\n", "Window", "Remote host", "Port", "TCP Avg WndClosed(ns)", "StdDev", "Num"); printa("%-6s %-20s %-8d %@-25d %@-8d %@-8d\n", @meantimeclosed, @stddevtimeclosed, @numclosed); } So this script will show us whether the peer's receive window size is preventing flow ("swnd" events) or whether congestion control is limiting flow ("cwnd" events). As an example I traced on a server with a large file transfer in progress via a webserver and with an active ssh connection running "find / -depth -print". Here is the output: ^C Window Remote host Port TCP Avg WndClosed(ns) StdDev Num cwnd 10.175.96.92 80 86064329 77311705 125 cwnd 10.175.96.92 22 122068522 151039669 81 So we see in this case, the congestion window closes 125 times for port 80 connections and 81 times for ssh. The average time the window is closed is 0.086sec for port 80 and 0.12sec for port 22. So if you wish to change congestion control algorithm in Oracle Solaris 11, a useful step may be to see if congestion really is an issue on your network. Scripts like the one posted above can help assess this, but it's worth reiterating that if congestion control is occuring, that's not necessarily a problem that needs fixing. Recall that congestion control is about controlling flow to prevent large-scale drops, so looking at congestion events in isolation doesn't tell us the whole story. For example, are we seeing more congestion events with one control algorithm, but more drops/retransmission with another? As always, it's best to start with measures of throughput and latency before arriving at a specific hypothesis such as "my congestion control algorithm is sub-optimal".

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• User password rejected on login screen but accepted on text console login

  - by MadsirR

  I had to force shutdown my Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit, after which I restarted and tried to log in as a normal user, which was rejected several times. I then logged in as guest and tty to my regular account with use of my normal password, which succeeded. (So the password is still valid.) How can I gain access again via the normal login procedure (welcome screen)? Update: When I tried to log on with my new password, it again was denied. When I deliberately tried to log on with a faulty password, an error message came back, saying: Access denied - wrong password. I suppose, the first time the password was not rejected, but the procedure was aborted for some reason. Some additional info after trying to find a solution: I am conviced it is a Compiz-issue. Why? before this happened, all sessions came to a grinding halt, regardless of being logged on in a 2D or 3d environment. I found a link saying that I should remove Compiz and proceed in a 2D environment, which initiall worked without a glitch, until my system went into a state of total obivium. Only after that, the above mentioned troubles appeared. In the meantime I have happened to find a thread with reference 17381, describing exactly what I have experienced. For now, I will try to cure this situation (later this week) and revert with the results, hopefully to close this post. In the meantime I cordially thank you all, even if you didn't kill the problem; you gave me the inspiration to look further and find a possible cure. Update2: After 15 hrs of trial-and-error I callled it quits (When I decided to tackle this problem, I've given myself 12 hrs, to avoid massive loss of time.) I decided to re-install Precise, since the "point 1" version has become availabe. Log-in is back to normal, as is the graphic environment. Response to mouse input is stil appalling, especially when I have a series of screens open as "children"of a "parent" screen. It still completely locks up. I have installed Enlightenment, Gnome classic, Gnome 3, Cinnamon and they all behave in a similar fashion. FOR THOSE WHO NEED A WAY-OUT IN SITUATIONS OF THE LIKE: Open a terminal with [Ctrl+Alt+F2]. Type [sudo killall Firefox] (or whatever application you wish to terminate). Key in your password. Return to your graphical screen with [Ctrl+Alt+F7], and Bob's your uncle. Just re-open Firefox like nothing happened. Next time you are stuck: [Ctrl+Alt+F2], upward arrow till you meet the command of your desire, [Ctrl+Alt+F7], etcetera. Hope this is of help. My next move will be to upgrade the kernel to 3.4 from the repositories for 12.10. However, since this entails a totally new situation, I will start a new thread on this site to avoid topic pollution I will keep you posted. Still.

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• Consumer Oriented Search In Oracle Endeca Information Discovery – Part 1

  - by Bob Zurek

  Information Discovery, a core capability of Oracle Endeca Information Discovery, enables business users to rapidly search, discover and navigate through a wide variety of big data including structured, unstructured and semi-structured data. One of the key capabilities, among many, that differentiate our solution from others in the Information Discovery market is our deep support for search across this growing amount of varied big data. Our method and approach is very different than classic simple keyword search that is found in may information discovery solutions. In this first part of a series on the topic of search, I will walk you through many of the key capabilities that go beyond the simple search box that you might experience in products where search was clearly an afterthought or attempt to catch up to our core capabilities in this area. Lets explore. The core data management solution of Oracle Endeca Information Discovery is the Endeca Server, a hybrid search-analytical database that his highly scalable and column-oriented in nature. We will talk in more technical detail about the capabilities of the Endeca Server in future blog posts as this post is intended to give you a feel for the deep search capabilities that are an integral part of the Endeca Server. The Endeca Server provides best-of-breed search features aw well as a new class of features that are the first to be designed around the requirement to bridge structured, semi-structured and unstructured big data. Some of the key features of search include type a heads, automatic alphanumeric spell corrections, positional search, Booleans, wildcarding, natural language, and category search and query classification dialogs. This is just a subset of the advanced search capabilities found in Oracle Endeca Information Discovery. Search is an important feature that makes it possible for business users to explore on the diverse data sets the Endeca Server can hold at any one time. The search capabilities in the Endeca server differ from other Information Discovery products with simple “search boxes” in the following ways: The Endeca Server Supports Exploratory Search.  Enterprise data frequently requires the user to explore content through an ad hoc dialog, with guidance that helps them succeed. This has implications for how to design search features. Traditional search doesn’t assume a dialog, and so it uses relevance ranking to get its best guess to the top of the results list. It calculates many relevance factors for each query, like word frequency, distance, and meaning, and then reduces those many factors to a single score based on a proprietary “black box” formula. But how can a business users, searching, act on the information that the document is say only 38.1% relevant? In contrast, exploratory search gives users the opportunity to clarify what is relevant to them through refinements and summaries. This approach has received consumer endorsement through popular ecommerce sites where guided navigation across a broad range of products has helped consumers better discover choices that meet their, sometimes undetermined requirements. This same model exists in Oracle Endeca Information Discovery. In fact, the Endeca Server powers many of the most popular e-commerce sites in the world. The Endeca Server Supports Cascading Relevance. Traditional approaches of search reduce many relevance weights to a single score. This means that if a result with a good title match gets a similar score to one with an exact phrase match, they’ll appear next to each other in a list. But a user can’t deduce from their score why each got it’s ranking, even though that information could be valuable. Oracle Endeca Information Discovery takes a different approach. The Endeca Server stratifies results by a primary relevance strategy, and then breaks ties within a strata by ordering them with a secondary strategy, and so on. Application managers get the explicit means to compose these strategies based on their knowledge of their own domain. This approach gives both business users and managers a deterministic way to set and understand relevance. Now that you have an understanding of two of the core search capabilities in Oracle Endeca Information Discovery, our next blog post on this topic will discuss more advanced features including set search, second-order relevance as well as an understanding of faceted search mechanisms that include queries and filters.  

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• Documentation and Test Assertions in Databases

  - by Phil Factor

  When I first worked with Sybase/SQL Server, we thought our databases were impressively large but they were, by today’s standards, pathetically small. We had one script to build the whole database. Every script I ever read was richly annotated; it was more like reading a document. Every table had a comment block, and every line would be commented too. At the end of each routine (e.g. procedure) was a quick integration test, or series of test assertions, to check that nothing in the build was broken. We simply ran the build script, stored in the Version Control System, and it pulled everything together in a logical sequence that not only created the database objects but pulled in the static data. This worked fine at the scale we had. The advantage was that one could, by reading the source code, reach a rapid understanding of how the database worked and how one could interface with it. The problem was that it was a system that meant that only one developer at the time could work on the database. It was very easy for a developer to execute accidentally the entire build script rather than the selected section on which he or she was working, thereby cleansing the database of everyone else’s work-in-progress and data. It soon became the fashion to work at the object level, so that programmers could check out individual views, tables, functions, constraints and rules and work on them independently. It was then that I noticed the trend to generate the source for the VCS retrospectively from the development server. Tables were worst affected. You can, of course, add or delete a table’s columns and constraints retrospectively, which means that the existing source no longer represents the current object. If, after your development work, you generate the source from the live table, then you get no block or line comments, and the source script is sprinkled with silly square-brackets and other confetti, thereby rendering it visually indigestible. Routines, too, were affected. In our system, every routine had a directly attached string of unit-tests. A retro-generated routine has no unit-tests or test assertions. Yes, one can still commit our test code to the VCS but it’s a separate module and teams end up running the whole suite of tests for every individual change, rather than just the tests for that routine, which doesn’t scale for database testing. With Extended properties, one can get the best of both worlds, and even use them to put blame, praise or annotations into your VCS. It requires a lot of work, though, particularly the script to generate the table. The problem is that there are no conventional names beyond ‘MS_Description’ for the special use of extended properties. This makes it difficult to do splendid things such ensuring the integrity of the build by running a suite of tests that are actually stored in extended properties within the database and therefore the VCS. We have lost the readability of database source code over the years, and largely jettisoned the use of test assertions as part of the database build. This is not unexpected in view of the increasing complexity of the structure of databases and number of programmers working on them. There must, surely, be a way of getting them back, but I sometimes wonder if I’m one of very few who miss them.

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