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• SQL SERVER – Identifying Column Data Type of uniqueidentifier without Querying System Tables

  - by pinaldave

  I love interesting conversations with related to SQL Server. One of my friends Madhivanan always comes up with an interesting point of conversation. Here is one of the conversation between us. I am very confident this blog post will for sure enable you with some new knowledge. Madhi: How do I know if any table has a uniqueidentifier column used in it? Pinal:  I am sure you know that you can do it through some DMV or catalogue views. Madhi: I know that but how can we do that without using DMV or catalogue views? Pinal: Hm… what can I use? Madhi: You can use table name. Pinal: Easy, just say SELECT YourUniqueIdentCol FROM Table. Madhi: Hold on, the question seems to be not clear to you – you do know the name of the column. The matter of the fact, you do not know if the table has uniqueidentifier column. Only information you have is table name. Pinal: Madhi, this seems like you are changing the question when I am close to answer. Madhi: Well, are you clear now? Let me say it again – How do I know if any table has a uniqueidentifier column and what is its value without using any DMV or System Catalogues? Only information you know is table name and you are allowed to return any kind of error if table does not have uniqueidentifier column. Pinal: Do you know the answer? Madhi: Yes. I just wanted to test your knowledge about SQL. Pinal: I will have to think. Let me accept I do not know it right away. Can you share the answer please? Madhi: I won! Here it goes! Pinal: When I have friends like you – who needs enemies? Madhi: (laughter which did not stop for a minute). CREATE TABLE t ( GuidCol UNIQUEIDENTIFIER DEFAULT newsequentialid() ROWGUIDCOL, data VARCHAR(60) ) INSERT INTO t (data) SELECT 'test' INSERT INTO t (data) SELECT 'test1' SELECT $rowguid FROM t DROP TABLE t This is indeed very interesting to me. Please note that this is not the optimal way and there will be many other ways to retrieve uniqueidentifier name and value. What I learned from this was if I am in a rush to check if the table has uniqueidentifier and I do not know the name of the same, I can use SELECT TOP (1) $rowguid and quickly know the name of the column. I can later use the same columnname in my query. Madhi did teach me this new trick. Did you know this? What are other ways to get the check uniqueidentifier column existence in a database? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Server Management Studio, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Using the latest (stable release) of Oracle Developer Tools for Visual Studio 11.1.0.7.20.

  - by mbcrump

  +  = Simple and safe Data connections.   This guide is for someone wanting to use the latest ODP.NET quickly without reading the official documentation. This guide will get you up and running in about 15 minutes. I have reviewed my referral link to my simple Setting up ODP.net with Win7 x64 and noticed most people were searching for one of the following terms: “how to use odp.net with vs” “setup connection odp.net” “query db using odp and vs” While my article provided links and a sample tnsnames.ora file, it really didn’t tell you how to use it. I’m hoping that this brief tutorial will help. So before we get started, you will need the following: Download the following: www.oracle.com/technology/software/tech/dotnet/utilsoft.html from oracle and install it. It is the first one on the page. Visual Studio 2008 or 2010. It should be noted that The System.Data.OracleClient namespace is the OLD .NET Framework Data Provider for Oracle. It should not be used anymore as it has been depreciated. The latest version which is what we are using is Oracle.DataAccess.Client. First things first, Add a reference to the Oracle.DataAccess.Client after you install ODP.NET   Copy and paste the following C# code into your project and replace the relevant info including the query string and you should be able to return data. I have commented several lines of code to assist in understanding what it is doing.   Lambda Expression. using System; using System.Data; using Oracle.DataAccess.Client;   namespace ConsoleApplication1 {     class Program     {         static void Main(string[] args)         {           try         {             //Setup DataSource             string oradb = "Data Source=(DESCRIPTION ="                                    + "(ADDRESS_LIST = (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = hostname)(PORT = 1521)))"                                    + "(CONNECT_DATA = (SERVICE_NAME = SERVICENAME))) ;"                                    + "Persist Security Info=True;User ID=USER;Password=PASSWORD;";                        //Open Connection to Oracle - this could be moved outside the try.             OracleConnection conn = new OracleConnection(oradb);             conn.Open();               //Create cmd and use parameters to prevent SQL injection attacks.             OracleCommand cmd = new OracleCommand();             cmd.Connection = conn;               cmd.CommandText = "select username from table where username = :username";               OracleParameter p1 = new OracleParameter("username", OracleDbType.Varchar2);             p1.Value = username;             cmd.Parameters.Add(p1);               cmd.CommandType = CommandType.Text;               OracleDataReader dr = cmd.ExecuteReader();             dr.Read();               //Contains the value of the datarow             Console.WriteLine(dr["username"].ToString());               //Disposes of objects.             dr.Dispose();             cmd.Dispose();             conn.Dispose();         }           catch (OracleException ex) // Catches only Oracle errors         {             switch (ex.Number)             {                 case 1:                     Console.WriteLine("Error attempting to insert duplicate data.");                     break;                 case 12545:                     Console.WriteLine("The database is unavailable.");                     break;                 default:                     Console.WriteLine(ex.Message.ToString());                     break;             }         }           catch (Exception ex) // Catches any error not previously caught         {                   Console.WriteLine("Unidentified Error: " + ex.Message.ToString());              }         }       }           } At this point, you should have a working Program that returns data from an oracle database. If you are still having trouble then drop me a line and I will be happy to assist. As of this writing, oracle has announced the latest beta release of ODP.NET 11.2.0.1.1 Beta.  This release includes .NET Framework 4 and .NET Framework 4 Client Profile support. You may want to hold off on this version for a while as its BETA, and I wouldn’t want any production code using any BETA software.

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• Content Challenge: You Can Only Get it Here

  - by Mike Stiles

  Part of the content conundrum for brands is figuring out what kind of content customers would find cool, desirable, and relevant. The mere fact many brands have no idea what this content might be is, in itself, pretty alarming. You’d have to have a pretty thorough lack of involvement with and understanding of your customers to not know what they might like. But despite what should be a great awakening in which consumers are using every technology and trick in the book to shield themselves from ads and commercials, brand self-obsession continues as marketers concentrate on their message, their campaign, what they want to say, and what they want social users to do. When individuals conduct themselves in that same fashion on Facebook and Twitter, it gets tiresome and starts losing value pretty quickly. Their posts eventually get hidden. Conversely, friends who post things that consistently entertain or inform, with little self-marketing desperation involved, win the coveted “show all updates” setting. Of course brands are going to use social to market. It’s pretty much the point of having social in the marketing mix. And yes, people who follow a brand’s Twitter account or “Like” a brand’s Facebook Page implicitly state they want to know what’s going on with that brand’s products and services. But if you have a Facebook friend that assumes you want every one of her posts to be about what wine she likes (Mitsubishi’s current campaign is even based around weeding out pretentious Facebook friends, then running them over), then you know how it must feel for your fans and followers to get a sales pitch for your crackers or whatever you’re selling every single time. Is there such a thing as content that doesn’t sell but that still advances the brand and makes the consumer more involved and valuable? Of course. And perhaps there are no better companies than enterprise brands to do it. Enterprise organizations are large enough to go beyond a product and engage readers/viewers at higher, broader levels…communicating expertise across entire sectors, subjects and industries. You’re going from pitchman to news source, and getting full credit for it as the presenter. A recent GigaOM article pointed out the success a San Francisco-based startup called Crunchyroll is having. Their niche (and they proudly admit it’s a niche) is providing Japanese anime, Korean drama and Asian live action content to countries that can’t get it any other way via licensing deals. Shows are available in HD and on the same day they air in the host country. Crunchyroll not only gets 8 million viewers a month, they have 100,000 paying subscribers at $7-12/month. Got a point, Mike? I do happen to have one. Crunchyroll illustrates the content opportunity enterprise companies have…which is to determine your “area,” the interest graph of your customers, then provide content that speaks to and satisfies those interests that can’t be found anywhere else. At least not in the same style, or of the same quality, or with the same authority. Do what no one else is doing. Provide what no one else is providing in your sector. If underserved users are willing to pay monthly for access to awkwardly moving cartoon dragons, imagine the audience you could attract with free, useful, non-sales content in your customers’ area of interest. It’s an audience you’ll want in place when the time does come to put out that marketing message. A content challenge is better than a content conundrum any day.

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• Expanding the Partner Ecosystem with Third-Party Plug-ins

  - by Joe Diemer

  Oracle Enterprise Manager’s extensibility capabilities are designed to allow customers and partners to adapt Enterprise Manager for management of heterogeneous environments with Plug-ins and Connectors.  Third-party developers continue to take advantage of Oracle Enterprise Manager’s Extensibility Development Kit (EDK) to build plug-ins to Enterprise Manager 12c, such as F5’s BIG IP Plug-in and Entuity’s Eye of the Storm Network Management Plug-In.  Partners can also validate their plug-ins through the Oracle Validated Integration (OVI) program, which assures customers that the plug-in has been tested and is functionally and technically sound, is designed in a reliable and standardized manner, and operates and performs as documented.   Two very recent examples of partners which have beta versions of their plug-ins are Blue Medora's VMware vSphere plug-in and the NetApp Storage plug-in.  VMware vSphere Plug-in by Blue Medora Blue Medora, an Oracle Partner Network (OPN) “Gold” member, which just announced that it is now signing up customers to try a beta version of their new VMware vSphere plug-in for Enterprise Manager 12c.  According to Blue Medora, the vSphere plug-in monitors critical VMware metrics (CPU, Memory, Disk, Network, etc) at the Host, VM, Cluster and Resource Pool levels.  It has minimal performance impact via an “agentless” approach that requires no installation directly on VMware servers.  It has discovery capabilities for VMware Datacenters, ESX Hosts, Clusters, Virtual Machines, and Datastores.  It offers integration of native VMware Events into Enterprise Manager, and it provides over 300 VMware-related health, availability, performance, and configuration metrics.  It comes with more than 30 out-of-the-box pre-defined thresholds and can manage VMware via a series of jobs split between cluster, host and VM target types.The company reports that the Enterprise Manager 12c plug-in supports vSphere versions 4.0, 4.5 and 5.0.  Platforms supported include Linux 64-bit, Windows, AIX and Solaris SPARC and x86.  Information about the plug-in, including how to sign up for the beta, is available at their web site at http://bluemedora.com after selecting the "Products" tab. NetApp Storage Plug-in NetApp believes the combination of storage system monitoring with comprehensive management of Oracle systems with Enterprise Manager will help customers reduce the cost and complexity of managing applications that rely on NetApp storage and Oracle technologies.  So, NetApp built a plug-in and reports that it has comprehensive availability and performance information for NetApp storage systems.  Using the plug-in, Oracle Enterprise Manager customers with NetApp storage solutions can track the association between databases and storage components and thereby respond to faults and IO performance bottlenecks quickly. With the latest configuration management capabilities, one can also perform drift analysis to make sure all storage systems are configured as per established gold standards. The company is also now signing up beta customers, which can be done at the NetApp Communities site at https://communities.netapp.com/groups/netapp-storage-system-plug-in-for-oem12c-beta. Learn More about Enterprise Manager Extensibility More plug-ins from other partners are soon to come, which I'll be reporting on them here.  To learn more about Enterprise Manager and how customers and partners can build plug-ins using the EDK to manage a multi-vendor data center, go to http://oracle.com/enterprisemanager in the Heterogeneous Management solution area.  The site also lists the plug-ins available with information on how to obtain them.  More info about the Oracle Validated Integration program can be found at the OPN Enterprise Manager Knowledge Zone in the "Develop" tab.

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• Talking JavaOne with Rock Star Kirk Pepperdine

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  Kirk Pepperdine is not only a JavaOne Rock Star but a Java Champion and a highly regarded expert in Java performance tuning who works as a consultant, educator, and author. He is the principal consultant at Kodewerk Ltd. He speaks frequently at conferences and co-authored the Ant Developer's Handbook. In the rapidly shifting world of information technology, Pepperdine, as much as anyone, keeps up with what's happening with Java performance tuning. Pepperdine will participate in the following sessions: CON5405 - Are Your Garbage Collection Logs Speaking to You? BOF6540 - Java Champions and JUG Leaders Meet Oracle Executives (with Jeff Genender, Mattias Karlsson, Henrik Stahl, Georges Saab) HOL6500 - Finding and Solving Java Deadlocks (with Heinz Kabutz, Ellen Kraffmiller Martijn Verburg, Jeff Genender, and Henri Tremblay) I asked him what technological changes need to be taken into account in performance tuning. “The volume of data we're dealing with just seems to be getting bigger and bigger all the time,” observed Pepperdine. “A couple of years ago you'd never think of needing a heap that was 64g, but today there are deployments where the heap has grown to 256g and tomorrow there are plans for heaps that are even larger. Dealing with all that data simply requires more horse power and some very specialized techniques. In some cases, teams are trying to push hardware to the breaking point. Under those conditions, you need to be very clever just to get things to work -- let alone to get them to be fast. We are very quickly moving from a world where everything happens in a transaction to one where if you were to even consider using a transaction, you've lost." When asked about the greatest misconceptions about performance tuning that he currently encounters, he said, “If you have a performance problem, you should start looking at code at the very least and for that extra step, whip out an execution profiler. I'm not going to say that I never use execution profilers or look at code. What I will say is that execution profilers are effective for a small subset of performance problems and code is literally the last thing you should look at.And what is the most exciting thing happening in the world of Java today? “Interesting question because so many people would say that nothing exciting is happening in Java. Some might be disappointed that a few features have slipped in terms of scheduling. But I'd disagree with the first group and I'm not so concerned about the slippage because I still see a lot of exciting things happening. First, lambda will finally be with us and with lambda will come better ways.” For JavaOne, he is proctoring for Heinz Kabutz's lab. “I'm actually looking forward to that more than I am to my own talk,” he remarked. “Heinz will be the third non-Sun/Oracle employee to present a lab and the first since Oracle began hosting JavaOne. He's got a great message. He's spent a ton of time making sure things are going to work, and we've got a great team of proctors to help out. After that, getting my talk done, the Java Champion's panel session and then kicking back and just meeting up and talking to some Java heads."Finally, what should Java developers know that they currently do not know? “’Write Once, Run Everywhere’ is a great slogan and Java has come closer to that dream than any other technology stack that I've used. That said, different hardware bits work differently and as hard as we try, the JVM can't hide all the differences. Plus, if we are to get good performance we need to work with our hardware and not against it. All this implies that Java developers need to know more about the hardware they are deploying to.” Originally published on blogs.oracle.com/javaone.

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• Browser Specific Extensions of HttpClient

  - by imran_ku07

          Introduction:                     REpresentational State Transfer (REST) causing/leaving a great impact on service/API development because it offers a way to access a service without requiring any specific library by embracing HTTP and its features. ASP.NET Web API makes it very easy to quickly build RESTful HTTP services. These HTTP services can be consumed by a variety of clients including browsers, devices, machines, etc. With .NET Framework 4.5, we can use HttpClient class to consume/send/receive RESTful HTTP services(for .NET Framework 4.0, HttpClient class is shipped as part of ASP.NET Web API). The HttpClient class provides a bunch of helper methods(for example, DeleteAsync, PostAsync, GetStringAsync, etc.) to consume a HTTP service very easily. ASP.NET Web API added some more extension methods(for example, PutAsJsonAsync, PutAsXmlAsync, etc) into HttpClient class to further simplify the usage. In addition, HttpClient is also an ideal choice for writing integration test for a RESTful HTTP service. Since a browser is a main client of any RESTful API, it is also important to test the HTTP service on a variety of browsers. RESTful service embraces HTTP headers and different browsers send different HTTP headers. So, I have created a package that will add overloads(with an additional Browser parameter) for almost all the helper methods of HttpClient class. In this article, I will show you how to use this package.           Description:                     Create/open your test project and install ImranB.SystemNetHttp.HttpClientExtensions NuGet package. Then, add this using statement on your class, using ImranB.SystemNetHttp;                     Then, you can start using any HttpClient helper method which include the additional Browser parameter. For example,  var client = new HttpClient(myserver); var task = client.GetAsync("http://domain/myapi", Browser.Chrome); task.Wait(); var response = task.Result; .                     Here is the definition  of Browser, public enum Browser { Firefox = 0, Chrome = 1, IE10 = 2, IE9 = 3, IE8 = 4, IE7 = 5, IE6 = 6, Safari = 7, Opera = 8, Maxthon = 9, }                     These extension methods will make it very easy to write browser specific integration test. It will also help HTTP service consumer to mimic the request sending behavior of a browser. This package source is available on github. So, you can grab the source and add some additional behavior on the top of these extensions.         Summary:                     Testing a REST API is an important aspect of service development and today, testing with a browser is crucial. In this article, I showed how to write integration test that will mimic the browser request sending behavior. I also showed an example. Hopefully you will enjoy this article too.

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• PASS Summit 2011 &ndash; Part II

  - by Tara Kizer

  I arrived in Seattle last Monday afternoon to attend PASS Summit 2011.  I had really wanted to attend Gail Shaw’s (blog|twitter) and Grant Fritchey’s (blog|twitter) pre-conference seminar “All About Execution Plans” on Monday, but that would have meant flying out on Sunday which I couldn’t do.  On Tuesday, I attended Allan Hirt’s (blog|twitter) pre-conference seminar entitled “A Deep Dive into AlwaysOn: Failover Clustering and Availability Groups”.  Allan is a great speaker, and his seminar was packed with demos and information about AlwaysOn in SQL Server 2012.  Unfortunately, I have lost my notes from this seminar and the presentation materials are only available on the pre-con DVD.  Hmpf! On Wednesday, I attended Gail Shaw’s “Bad Plan! Sit!”, Andrew Kelly’s (blog|twitter) “SQL 2008 Query Statistics”, Dan Jones’ (blog|twitter) “Improving your PowerShell Productivity”, and Brent Ozar’s (blog|twitter) “BLITZ! The SQL – More One Hour SQL Server Takeovers”.  In Gail’s session, she went over how to fix bad plans and bad query patterns.  Update your stale statistics! How to fix bad plans Use local variables – optimizer can’t sniff it, so it’ll optimize for “average” value Use RECOMPILE (at the query or stored procedure level) – CPU hit OPTIMIZE FOR hint – most common value you’ll pass How to fix bad query patterns Don’t use them – ha! Catch-all queries Use dynamic SQL OPTION (RECOMPILE) Multiple execution paths Split into multiple stored procedures OPTION (RECOMPILE) Modifying parameter values Use local variables Split into outer and inner procedure OPTION (RECOMPILE) She also went into “last resort” and “very last resort” options, but those are risky unless you know what you are doing.  For the average Joe, she wouldn’t recommend these.  Examples are query hints and plan guides. While I enjoyed Andrew’s session, I didn’t take any notes as it was familiar material.  Andrew is a great speaker though, and I’d highly recommend attending his sessions in the future. Next up was Dan’s PowerShell session.  I need to look into profiles, manifests, function modules, and function import scripts more as I just didn’t quite grasp these concepts.  I am attending a PowerShell training class at the end of November, so maybe that’ll help clear it up.  I really enjoyed the Excel integration demo.  It was very cool watching PowerShell build the spreadsheet in real-time.  I must look into this more!  On a side note, I am jealous of Dan’s hair.  Fabulous hair! Brent’s session showed us how to quickly gather information about a server that you will be taking over database administration duties for.  He wrote a script to do a fast health check and then later wrapped it into a stored procedure, sp_Blitz.  I can’t wait to use this at my work even on systems where I’ve been the primary DBA for years, maybe there’s something I’ve overlooked.  We are using EPM to help standardize our environment and uncover problems, but sp_Blitz will definitely still help us out.  He even provides a cloud-based update feature, sp_BlitzUpdate, for sp_Blitz so you don’t have to constantly update it when he makes a change.  I think I’ll utilize his update code for some other challenges that we face at my work.

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• Joy! | Important Information About Your iPad 3G

  - by Jeff Julian

  Looks like I was one of the lucky 114,000 who AT&T lost their email to “hackers”.  Why is “hackers” in “double quotes”.  I can just imagine some executive at AT&T in their “Oh No, We Messed Up Meeting” saying, what happened?  Then someone replied, well we have had a breach and “hackers” broke in (using the quote in the air gesture) and stole our iPad 3G customers emails. Oh well, I am sure my email has been sold and sold again by many different vendors, why not AT&T now.  At least Dorothy Attwood could have gave us her email to give to someone else instead of blinking it through a newsletter system. June 13, 2010 Dear Valued AT&T Customer, Recently there was an issue that affected some of our customers with AT&T 3G service for iPad resulting in the release of their customer email addresses. I am writing to let you know that no other information was exposed and the matter has been resolved.  We apologize for the incident and any inconvenience it may have caused. Rest assured, you can continue to use your AT&T 3G service on your iPad with confidence. Here’s some additional detail: On June 7 we learned that unauthorized computer “hackers” maliciously exploited a function designed to make your iPad log-in process faster by pre-populating an AT&T authentication page with the email address you used to register your iPad for 3G service.  The self-described hackers wrote software code to randomly generate numbers that mimicked serial numbers of the AT&T SIM card for iPad – called the integrated circuit card identification (ICC-ID) – and repeatedly queried an AT&T web address.   When a number generated by the hackers matched an actual ICC-ID, the authentication page log-in screen was returned to the hackers with the email address associated with the ICC-ID already populated on the log-in screen. The hackers deliberately went to great efforts with a random program to extract possible ICC-IDs and capture customer email addresses.  They then put together a list of these emails and distributed it for their own publicity. As soon as we became aware of this situation, we took swift action to prevent any further unauthorized exposure of customer email addresses.  Within hours, AT&T disabled the mechanism that automatically populated the email address. Now, the authentication page log-in screen requires the user to enter both their email address and their password. I want to assure you that the email address and ICC-ID were the only information that was accessible. Your password, account information, the contents of your email, and any other personal information were never at risk.  The hackers never had access to AT&T communications or data networks, or your iPad.  AT&T 3G service for other mobile devices was not affected. While the attack was limited to email address and ICC-ID data, we encourage you to be alert to scams that could attempt to use this information to obtain other data or send you unwanted email. You can learn more about phishing by visiting the AT&T website. AT&T takes your privacy seriously and does not tolerate unauthorized access to its customers’ information or company websites.   We will cooperate with law enforcement in any investigation of unauthorized system access and to prosecute violators to the fullest extent of the law. AT&T acted quickly to protect your information – and we promise to keep working around the clock to keep your information safe.  Thank you very much for your understanding, and for being an AT&T customer. Sincerely, Dorothy Attwood Senior Vice President, Public Policy and Chief Privacy Officer for AT&T Technorati Tags: AT&T,iPad 3G,Email

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• Get Pop Up Notifications for Your RSS Feeds with Feed Notifier

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Are you looking for a way to get updates from your favorite websites right to your desktop?  If so, you’ll want to check out Feed Notifier. This free Windows application runs in the system tray and delivers pop-up notifications to your desktop when your subscribed RSS feeds are updated. Download and install Feed Notifier. (Download link below) When you are finished installing, the Feed Notifier Preferences window will open. Click on the Add… button to add an RSS feed. Copy and paste the Feed URL into the text box and click Next. Choose your polling interval. This is how often your feed will be checked for new items. You can set your polling interval for days, hours, minutes, or even seconds. Click FInish. At your configured interval, Feed Notifier will check your feeds for new items. If new items are present, they will pop up above your system tray.  You’ll get an intro portion of the article. Simply Click the headline in the feed pop up… …to open the full article in your default browser. Setting Preferences Open the preferences of Feed Notifier, by going to Start > All Programs > Feed Notifier, or right clicking on the system tray icon and selecting Preferences. On the Pop-ups tab you can configure the duration in seconds that each article stays displayed on your screen. The default is five seconds. You can also change the size of the display, the theme, and the amount of content displayed.   The Options tab offers additional configurations like article caching and using a proxy server. Filter tab allows you to filter in or out certain content. To add a filter click Add…   … then type in the filter rule. You can even choose to apply it to only certain feeds. Click OK. Feed Notifier will display on the filters tab the number of times the filter is applied. Click OK when finished.   You can scroll though the articles by using the forward and back buttons at the lower left, or use the play / pause buttons to move though the articles in a slideshow-type fashion.   Feed Notifier is nice way to get your updated feeds directly to your desktop in a timely fashion. It’s supports all RSS and Atom feeds and features a clean look and feel with plenty of customizable options. Download Feed Notifier Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Make Outlook Stop Using Internet Explorer’s RSS FeedsChange Default Feed Reader in FirefoxView Feedburner Subscriber Numbers Even if FeedCount is Not DisplayedSubscribe to RSS Feeds in Chrome with a Single ClickOrganize your RSS Feeds with FeedDemon TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Heaven & Hell Finder Icon Using TrueCrypt to Secure Your Data Quickly Schedule Meetings With NeedtoMeet Share Flickr Photos On Facebook Automatically Are You Blocked On Gtalk? Find out Discover Latest Android Apps On AppBrain

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• What Counts For a DBA: Replaceable

  - by Louis Davidson

  Replaceable is what every employee in every company instinctively strives not to be. Yet, if you’re an irreplaceable DBA, meaning that the company couldn’t find someone else who could do what you do, then you’re not doing a great job. A good DBA is replaceable. I imagine some of you are already reaching for the lighter fluid, about to set the comments section ablaze, but before you destroy a perfectly good Commodore 64, read on… Everyone is replaceable, ultimately. Anyone, anywhere, in any job, could be sitting at their desk reading this, blissfully unaware that this is to be their last day at work. Morbidly, you could be about to take your terminal breath. Ideally, it will be because another company suddenly offered you a truck full of money to take a new job, forcing you to bid a regretful farewell to your current employer (with barely a “so long suckers!” left wafting in the air as you zip out of the office like the Wile E Coyote wearing two pairs of rocket skates). I’ve often wondered what it would be like to be present at the meeting where your former work colleagues discuss your potential replacement. It is perhaps only at this point, as they struggle with the question “What kind of person do we need to replace old Wile?” that you would know your true worth in their eyes. Of course, this presupposes you need replacing. I’ve known one or two people whose absence we adequately compensated with a small rock, to keep their old chair from rolling down a slight incline in the floor. On another occasion, we bought a noise-making machine that frequently attracted attention its way, with unpleasant sounds, but never contributed anything worthwhile. These things never actually happened, of course, but you take my point: don’t confuse replaceable with expendable. Likewise, if the term “trained seal” comes up, someone they can teach to follow basic instructions and push buttons in the right order, then the replacement discussion is going to be over quickly. What, however, if your colleagues decide they’ll need a super-specialist to replace you. That’s a good thing, right? Well, usually, in my experience, no it is not. It often indicates that no one really knows what you do, or how. A typical example is the “senior” DBA who built a system just before 16-bit computing became all the rage and then settled into a long career managing it. Such systems are often central to the company’s operations and the DBA very skilled at what they do, but almost impossible to replace, because the system hasn’t evolved, and runs on processes and routines that others no longer understand or recognize. The only thing you really want to hear, at your replacement discussion, is that they need someone skilled at the fundamentals and adaptable. This means that the person they need understands that their goal is to be an excellent DBA, not a specialist in whatever the-heck the company does. Someone who understands the new versions of SQL Server and can adapt the company’s systems to the way things work today, who uses industry standard methods that any other qualified DBA/programmer can understand. More importantly, this person rarely wants to get “pigeon-holed” and so documents and shares the specialized knowledge and responsibilities with their teammates. Being replaceable doesn’t mean being “dime a dozen”. The company might need four people to take your place due to the depth of your skills, but still, they could find those replacements and those replacements could step right in using techniques that any decent DBA should know. It is a tough question to contemplate, but take some time to think about the sort of person that your colleagues would seek to replace you. If you think they would go looking for a “super-specialist” then consider urgently how you can diversify and share your knowledge, and start documenting all the processes you know as if today were your last day, because who knows, it just might be.

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• Sign up Today for User Feedback Sessions at Oracle OpenWorld and JavaOne 2012

  - by Lionel Dubreuil

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 You’re Invited to Sign Up for Oracle Usability Feedback Sessions SIGN UP TODAY to get the most from your conference experience by participating in a usability feedback session where your expertise will help Oracle develop outstanding products and solutions. The Oracle User Experience team is conducting a Usability Evaluation on publishing and accessing Oracle Enterprise Repository content when building SOA projects in JDeveloper. We are asking Developers and Architects who build or integrate applications using SOA Suite to take a look at the interaction between JDeveloper with the Enterprise Repository.  We are looking for feedback on the interaction between JDeveloper and Oracle Enterprise Repository so that we may improve the User Interface in a future release. The feedback sessions will be conducted during the Oracle OpenWorld and JavaOne Conferences, at the Intercontinental Hotel in San Francisco, CA. Sessions will last 1 hour and will be held on Monday, October 1 through Wednesday, October 3, 2012. This event fills up quickly, and space is limited. If you are interested in participating, please send an email to [email protected] with the following information: Identification Name: _________________________________ Company Name:  _________________________ Job Title: Email: Phone Number (work, mobile, include country code): Which conference are you attending? _____Oracle OpenWorld _____JavaOne Have you ever participated in usability activities with Oracle or any of its subsidiaries? ____Yes; specify __________________________________________________ ____No Are you currently using JDeveloper? ____Yes ; specify version(s): _______________________________ ____No How long have you used JDeveloper? ____ Less than 1 year ____ 1 - 2 years ____ 3 - 4 years ____ 4 + years Are you currently using SOA features in JDeveloper? ____Yes ____No How long have you used SOA features in JDeveloper? ____ Less than 1 year ____ 1 - 2 years ____ 3 - 4 years ____ 4 + years How often do you use SOA features in JDeveloper? ____ Daily ____ 2 - 3 times a week ____ Once a week  ____ Once a month or less Briefly describe the types of SOA tasks you use JDeveloper to perform: _____________________________________ _____________________________________ Please list your availability If you know your availability; please let me know which day you would prefer to participate, Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. Limited sessions are available on each day, and each session lasts 1 hour. Thank you for taking the time to complete this questionnaire.  It will help us match you to the best suited feedback session. Once we receive your email, we will contact you to set up a time and day for participation. You'll find more information about our on-site lab on the VoX (Voice of User Experience) blog, and on our Events page at Usable Apps. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";}

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• Create a Remote Git Repository from an Existing XCode Repository

  - by codeWithoutFear

  Introduction Distributed version control systems (VCS’s), like Git, provide a rich set of features for managing source code.  Many development tools, including XCode, provide built-in support for various VCS’s.  These tools provide simple configuration with limited customization to get you up and running quickly while still providing the safety net of basic version control. I hate losing (and re-doing) work.  I have OCD when it comes to saving and versioning source code.  Save early, save often, and commit to the VCS often.  I also hate merging code.  Smaller and more frequent commits enable me to minimize merge time and effort as well. The work flow I prefer even for personal exploratory projects is: Make small local changes to the codebase to create an incrementally improved (and working) system. Commit these changes to the local repository.  Local repositories are quick to access, function even while offline, and provides the confidence to continue making bold changes to the system.  After all, I can easily recover to a recent working state. Repeat 1 & 2 until the codebase contains “significant” functionality and I have connectivity to the remote repository. Push the accumulated changes to the remote repository.  The smaller the change set, the less likely extensive merging will be required.  Smaller is better, IMHO. The remote repository typically has a greater degree of fault tolerance and active management dedicated to it.  This can be as simple as a network share that is backed up nightly or as complex as dedicated hardware with specialized server-side processing and significant administrative monitoring. XCode’s out-of-the-box Git integration enables steps 1 and 2 above.  Time Machine backups of the local repository add an additional degree of fault tolerance, but do not support collaboration or take advantage of managed infrastructure such as on-premises or cloud-based storage. Creating a Remote Repository These are the steps I use to enable the full workflow identified above.  For simplicity the “remote” repository is created on the local file system.  This location could easily be on a mounted network volume. Create a Test Project My project is called HelloGit and is located at /Users/Don/Dev/HelloGit.  Be sure to commit all outstanding changes.  XCode always leaves a single changed file for me after the project is created and the initial commit is submitted. Clone the Local Repository We want to clone the XCode-created Git repository to the location where the remote repository will reside.  In this case it will be /Users/Don/Dev/RemoteHelloGit. Open the Terminal application. Clone the local repository to the remote repository location: git clone /Users/Don/Dev/HelloGit /Users/Don/Dev/RemoteHelloGit Convert the Remote Repository to a Bare Repository The remote repository only needs to contain the Git database.  It does not need a checked out branch or local files. Go to the remote repository folder: cd /Users/Don/Dev/RemoteHelloGit Indicate the repository is “bare”: git config --bool core.bare true Remove files, leaving the .git folder: rm -R * Remove the “origin” remote: git remote rm origin Configure the Local Repository The local repository should reference the remote repository.  The remote name “origin” is used by convention to indicate the originating repository.  This is set automatically when a repository is cloned.  We will use the “origin” name here to reflect that relationship. Go to the local repository folder: cd /Users/Don/Dev/HelloGit Add the remote: git remote add origin /Users/Don/Dev/RemoteHelloGit Test Connectivity Any changes made to the local Git repository can be pushed to the remote repository subject to the merging rules Git enforces. Create a new local file: date > date.txt /li> Add the new file to the local index: git add date.txt Commit the change to the local repository: git commit -m "New file: date.txt" Push the change to the remote repository: git push origin master Now you can save, commit, and push/pull to your OCD hearts’ content! Code without fear! --Don

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• DISA Cross Domain Enterprise Solutions on the NetBeans Platform

  - by Geertjan

  Bray 2.0 is a tool based on the NetBeans Platform that assists in creating valid Data Flow Configuration (DFC) files. The DFC Specification was developed to provide a standardized way for defining, validating, and approving data flows for use on cross-domain guarding solutions. A DFC document specifies key entities such as security domains, guards that facilitate data between security domains, data flows that describe how data travels between security domains, filters that transform and validate the data and more. Related info: http://www.disa.mil/Services/Information-Assurance/Cross-Domain-Solutions The Bray product is in development at Fulcrum IT (http://www.fulcrumco.com). The DFC Specification and Bray were developed in support of the US Department of Defense. Bray 2.0 marks the first release of Bray on the NetBeans Platform and utilizes a number of features that are core to the NetBeans Platform: Modular plugability. Bray consumers can integrate their own tools, file types, and more into the product with relative ease. Robust UI. The NetBeans Platform intuitive UI makes it easy to access and manipulate multiple aspects of a DFC. Explorer. The Explorer is a key component that makes the DFC XML easy to traverse, edit, and find errors. Context-sensitive help. JavaHelp can be readily integrated for the product as well as all the UI within. Editors. Any external file can be added to a DFC. Users can register their own editors or use the provided NetBeans editors to edit files. Printing. The NetBeans Platform Print API makes it easy to determine what should be printed and how.   A screenshot: Bray 2.0 provides a lot of key features in developing valid, robust DFC files:  XML validation. A DFC can be validated against the DFC schema specification. DFC Check List. An interactive, minimal guide for creating a complete DFC. Summary Window. The Summary Window functions like the Navigator in NetBeans IDE. The current "item of interest" is checked against various business rules and provides the ability to quickly find and fix errors. Change Log. Bray audits every change to a DFC and places them in a change log for users to peruse. Comments. Users can optionally add comments for other users to see. Digital signatures. DFC files can be digitally signed. A signature history and signature validation is provided in Bray. Pluggable security schemes. Bray ships with plain text and IC-ISM security schemes. If needed, users can integrate additional ones.  ...and more to come! New features for Bray are constantly in development including use of the NetBeans Visual Library, language support, and more. More screenshots:

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• Sweet and Sour Source Control

  - by Tony Davis

  Most database developers don't use Source Control. A recent anonymous poll on SQL Server Central asked its readers "Which Version Control system do you currently use to store you database scripts?" The winner, with almost 30% of the vote was...none: "We don't use source control for database scripts". In second place with almost 28% of the vote was Microsoft's VSS. VSS? Given its reputation for being buggy, unstable and lacking most of the basic features required of a proper source control system, answering VSS is really just another way of saying "I don't use Source Control". At first glance, it's a surprising thought. You wonder how database developers can work in a team and find out what changed, when the system worked before but is now broken; to work out what happened to their changes that now seem to have vanished; to roll-back a mistake quickly so that the rest of the team have a functioning build; to find instantly whether a suspect change has been deployed to production. Unfortunately, the survey didn't ask about the scale of the database development, and correlate the two questions. If there is only one database developer within a schema, who has an automated approach to regular generation of build scripts, then the need for a formal source control system is questionable. After all, a database stores far more about its metadata than a traditional compiled application. However, what is meat for a small development is poison for a team-based development. Here, we need a form of Source Control that can reconcile simultaneous changes, store the history of changes, derive versions and builds and that can cope with forks and merges. The problem comes when one borrows a solution that was designed for conventional programming. A database is not thought of as a "file", but a vast, interdependent and intricate matrix of tables, indexes, constraints, triggers, enumerations, static data and so on, all subtly interconnected. It is an awkward fit. Subversion with its support for merges and forks, and the tolerance of different work practices, can be made to work well, if used carefully. It has a standards-based architecture that allows it to be used on all platforms such as Windows Mac, and Linux. In the words of Erland Sommerskog, developers should "just do it". What's in a database is akin to a "binary file", and the developer must work only from the file. You check out the file, edit it, and save it to disk to compile it. Dependencies are validated at this point and if you've broken anything (e.g. you renamed a column and broke all the objects that reference the column), you'll find out about it right away, and you'll be forced to fix it. Nevertheless, for many this is an alien way of working with SQL Server. Subversion is the powerhouse, not the GUI. It doesn't work seamlessly with your existing IDE, and that usually means SSMS. So the question then becomes more subtle. Would developers be less reluctant to use a fully-featured source (revision) control system for a team database development if they had a turn-key, reliable system that fitted in with their existing work-practices? I'd love to hear what you think. Cheers, Tony.

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• SSAS: Utility to export SQL code from your cube's Data Source View (DSV)

  - by DrJohn

  When you are working on a cube, particularly in a multi-person team, it is sometimes necessary to review what changes that have been done to the SQL queries in the cube's data source view (DSV). This can be a problem as the SQL editor in the DSV is not the best interface to review code. Now of course you can cut and paste the SQL into SSMS, but you have to do each query one-by-one. What is worse your DBA is unlikely to have BIDS installed, so you will have to manually export all the SQL yourself and send him the files. To make it easy to get hold of the SQL in a Data Source View, I developed a C# utility which connects to an OLAP database and uses Analysis Services Management Objects (AMO) to obtain and export all the SQL to a series of files. The added benefit of this approach is that these SQL files can be placed under source code control which means the DBA can easily compare one version with another. The Trick When I came to implement this utility, I quickly found that the AMO API does not give direct access to anything useful about the tables in the data source view. Iterating through the DSVs and tables is easy, but getting to the SQL proved to be much harder. My Google searches returned little of value, so I took a look at the idea of using the XmlDom to open the DSV’s XML and obtaining the SQL from that. This is when the breakthrough happened. Inspecting the DSV’s XML I saw the things I was interested in were called TableType DbTableName FriendlyName QueryDefinition Searching Google for FriendlyName returned this page: Programming AMO Fundamental Objects which hinted at the fact that I could use something called ExtendedProperties to obtain these XML attributes. This simplified my code tremendously to make the implementation almost trivial. So here is my code with appropriate comments. The full solution can be downloaded from here: ExportCubeDsvSQL.zip   using System;using System.Data;using System.IO;using Microsoft.AnalysisServices; ... class code removed for clarity// connect to the OLAP server Server olapServer = new Server();olapServer.Connect(config.olapServerName);if (olapServer != null){ // connected to server ok, so obtain reference to the OLAP databaseDatabase olapDatabase = olapServer.Databases.FindByName(config.olapDatabaseName);if (olapDatabase != null){ Console.WriteLine(string.Format("Succesfully connected to '{0}' on '{1}'",   config.olapDatabaseName,   config.olapServerName));// export SQL from each data source view (usually only one, but can be many!)foreach (DataSourceView dsv in olapDatabase.DataSourceViews){ Console.WriteLine(string.Format("Exporting SQL from DSV '{0}'", dsv.Name));// for each table in the DSV, export the SQL in a fileforeach (DataTable dt in dsv.Schema.Tables){ Console.WriteLine(string.Format("Exporting SQL from table '{0}'", dt.TableName)); // get name of the table in the DSV// use the FriendlyName as the user inputs this and therefore has control of itstring queryName = dt.ExtendedProperties["FriendlyName"].ToString().Replace(" ", "_");string sqlFilePath = Path.Combine(targetDir.FullName, queryName + ".sql"); // delete the sql file if it exists... file deletion code removed for clarity// write out the SQL to a fileif (dt.ExtendedProperties["TableType"].ToString() == "View"){ File.WriteAllText(sqlFilePath, dt.ExtendedProperties["QueryDefinition"].ToString());}if (dt.ExtendedProperties["TableType"].ToString() == "Table"){ File.WriteAllText(sqlFilePath, dt.ExtendedProperties["DbTableName"].ToString()); } } } Console.WriteLine(string.Format("Successfully written out SQL scripts to '{0}'", targetDir.FullName)); } }   Of course, if you are following industry best practice, you should be basing your cube on a series of views. This will mean that this utility will be of limited practical value unless of course you are inheriting a project and want to check if someone did the implementation correctly.

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• Tweeting about Oracle Applications Usability: Points to Consider

  - by ultan o'broin

  Here are a few pointers to anyone interested in tweeting about Oracle Applications usability or user experience (UX). These are based on my own experiences and practice, and may not necessarily reflect the views of Oracle, of course (touché, see the footer). If you are an Oracle employee and tweet about our offerings, then read up and follow the corporate social media policy. For the record, I tweet under the following account names: @ultan, @localization, @gamifyOracle, and @usableapps. The last two are supposedly Oracle subject-dedicated, but I mix it up on occassion. Fill out your Twitter account profile, and add a profile picture too. Disclose your interest. Don’t leave either the profile or image blank if you want to be taken seriously (or followed by me). Don’t tweet from a locked down Twitter account, as the message cannot be circulated to anyone who doesn't follow you. Open up the account if you really want to get that UX message out. Stay on message. The usable apps website, Misha Vaughan's VoX blog, and the Oracle Applications blog are good sources of UX messages and information, but you can find many other product team, individual, and corporate-wide sources with a little bit of searching. Set up a Google Alert with pertinent related keywords to get a daily digest of new information right in your inbox. Be original about it. Add your own insight and wit to the message, were relevant. Just circulating and RTing stock headlines adds no value to your effort or to the reader, and is somewhat lazy, in my opinion. Leave room for RTing of your tweet. So, don’t max out those 140 characters. Keep it under 130 if you want to be RTed without modification (or at all-I am not a fan of modifying tweets [MT], way too much effort for the medium). Remove articles and punctuation marks and use fragments, abbreviations, and so on at will to keep the tweet short enough, but leave keywords intact, as people search on those. Follow any Fusion UX Advocates who are on Twitter too (you can search for these names), and not just Oracle employees. Don't just follow people you like or think like you, or those who you think like you or are like-minded. Take a look at who is following or being followed by other tweeters and er, follow up. Create and socialize others to use an easily remembered or typed hashtag, or use what’s already popularized (for an event or conference, for example). We used #gamifyOracle for the applications UX gamification design jam, and other popular applications UX ones are #fusionapps and #usableapps (or at least I’m trying to popularize it). But, before you start the messaging, if you want to keep a record of the hashtag traffic, then set it up with an archiving service. Twitter’s own tweet lifespan is short. Don't mix up hashtags (#) with Twitter handles (@) that have the same name. Sending a tweet to @gamifyOracle will just be seen by @gamifyOracle (me) and any followers we have in common. Sending it to #gamifyOracle is seen by anyone following or searching for that hashtag. No dissing the competition. But there is no rule about not following them on Twitter to see the market reactions to Oracle announcements and this can even let you can tailor your own message accordingly. Don’t be boring. Mix it up a bit. Every 10th or so tweet, divert into other areas of interest, personal ones, even. No constant “I just received K+ in this and that” or “I just checked into wherever” on foursquare pouring into the Twittersteam, please. I just don’t care and will probably unfollow such people pretty quickly. And now, your Twitter tips and experiences with this subject? Them go in the comments...

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• JFall 2012

  - by Geertjan

  JFall 2012 was over far too soon! Seven tracks going on simultaneously in a great location, with many artifacts reminding me of JavaOne, and nice snacks and drinks afterwards. The day started, as such things always do, with a keynote. Thanks to @royvanrijn for the photo below, I didn't take any myself and without a picture this report might have been too dry: What you see above is Steve Chin riding into the keynote hall on his NightHacking bike. The keynote was interesting, I can't be too complimentary about it, since I was part of it myself. Bert Ertman introduced the day and then Steve Chin took over, together with Sharat Chander, Tom Eugelink, Timon Veenstra, and myself. We had a strict choreography for the keynote, one that would ensure a lot of variation and some unexpected surprises, such as Steve being thrown off the stage a few times by Bert because of mentioning JavaOne too many times, rather than the clearly much cooler JFall. Steve talked about JavaOne and the direction Java is headed in, Sharat talked about JavaME and embedded devices, Steve and Tom did a demo involving JavaFX, I did a Project Easel demo, and Timon from Ordina talked about his Duke's Choice Award winning AgroSense project. I think the Project Easel demo (which I repeated later in a screencast for Parleys arranged by Eugene Boogaart) came across well and several people I spoke to especially like the roundtrip/bi-directional work that can be done, from browser to IDE and back again, very simply and intuitively. (In a long conversation on the drive back home afterwards, the scenario of a designer laying out the UI in HTML and then handing the HTML to a developer for back-end work, a developer who would then find it convenient to open the HTML in a browser and quickly navigate from the browser to the resources within the IDE, was discussed and considered to be extremely interesting and worth considering adopting NetBeans for, for no other reason than that.) Later I attended a session by David Delabassee on Java EE 7, Hans Dockter on Gradle, and Sander Mak on cross-build injection attacks. I was sorry to have missed Martijn Verburg's session, which sounded like it was really fantastic, among others, such as Gerrit Grunwald. I did a session too, entitled "Unlocking the Java EE 6 Platform", which was very well attended, pretty much a full room, and the demo went very smoothly. I talked to many people, e.g., a long time with Hans Dockter about how cool Gradle is and how great the Gradle/NetBeans plugin is turning out to be. I also had a long conversation (and did a demo) with Chris Chedgey, from Structure101, after his session, which was incredibly well attended; very interesting how popular modularity is. I met several people for the first time, as well as some colleagues from past places I've worked at. All in all, it was a great conference, unfortunately too short, which was very well attended (clearly over 1000) people, with several international speakers, as well as international attendees such as Mattias Karlsson, Sweden JUG leader. And, unsurprisingly, I came across NetBeans Platform applications again, none of which I had ever heard of before. In each case, "our fat client application" was mentioned in passing, never as a main application, and never in a context where there are plans for the application to be migrated to the web or mobile, simply because doing so makes no business sense at all. Great times at JFall, looking forward to meeting with some of the people I met again soon.

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• DataContractSerializer: type is not serializable because it is not public?

  - by Michael B. McLaughlin

  I recently ran into an odd and annoying error when working with the DataContractSerializer class for a WP7 project. I thought I’d share it to save others who might encounter it the same annoyance I had. So I had an instance of  ObservableCollection<T> that I was trying to serialize (with T being a class I wrote for the project) and whenever it would hit the code to save it, it would give me: The data contract type 'ProjectName.MyMagicItemsClass' is not serializable because it is not public. Making the type public will fix this error. Alternatively, you can make it internal, and use the InternalsVisibleToAttribute attribute on your assembly in order to enable serialization of internal members - see documentation for more details. Be aware that doing so has certain security implications. This, of course, was malarkey. I was trying to write an instance of MyAwesomeClass that looked like this: [DataContract] public class MyAwesomeClass { [DataMember] public ObservableCollection<MyMagicItemsClass> GreatItems { get; set; }   [DataMember] public ObservableCollection<MyMagicItemsClass> SuperbItems { get; set; }     public MyAwesomeClass { GreatItems = new ObservableCollection<MyMagicItemsClass>(); SuperbItems = new ObservableCollection<MyMagicItemsClass>(); } }   That’s all well and fine. And MyMagicItemsClass was also public with a parameterless public constructor. It too had DataContractAttribute applied to it and it had DataMemberAttribute applied to all the properties and fields I wanted to serialize. Everything should be cool, but it’s not because I keep getting that “not public” exception. I could tell you about all the things I tried (generating a List<T> on the fly to make sure it wasn’t ObservableCollection<T>, trying to serialize the the Collections directly, moving it all to a separate library project, etc.), but I want to keep this short. In the end, I remembered my the “Debug->Exceptions…” VS menu option that brings up the list of exception-related circumstances under which the Visual Studio debugger will break. I checked the “Thrown” checkbox for “Common Language Runtime Exceptions”, started the project under the debugger, and voilà: the true problem revealed itself. Some of my properties had fairly elaborate setters whose logic I wanted to ignore. So for some of them, I applied an IgnoreDataMember attribute to them and applied the DataMember attribute to the underlying fields instead. All of which, in line with good programming practices, were private. Well, it just so happens that WP7 apps run in a “partial trust” environment and outside of “full trust”-land, DataContractSerializer refuses to serialize or deserialize non-public members. Of course that exception was swallowed up internally by .NET so all I ever saw was that bizarre message about things that I knew for certain were public being “not public”. I changed all the private fields I was serializing to public and everything worked just fine. In hindsight it all makes perfect sense. The serializer uses reflection to build up its graph of the object in order to write it out. In partial trust, you don’t want people using reflection to get at non-public members of an object since there are potential security problems with allowing that (you could break out of the sandbox pretty quickly by reflecting and calling the appropriate methods and cause some havoc by reflecting and setting the appropriate fields in certain circumstances. The fact that you cannot reflect your own assembly seems a bit heavy-handed, but then again I’m not a compiler writer or a framework designer and I have no idea what sorts of difficulties would go into allowing that from a compilation standpoint or what sorts of security problems allowing that could present (if any). So, lesson learned. If you get an incomprehensible exception message, turn on break on all thrown exceptions and try running it again (it might take a couple of tries, depending) and see what pops out. Chances are you’ll find the buried exception that actually explains what was going on. And if you’re getting a weird exception when trying to use DataContractSerializer complaining about public types not being public, chances are you’re trying to serialize a private or protected field/property.

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• Stir Trek 2: Iron Man Edition

  Next month (7 May 2010) Ill be presenting at the second annual Stir Trek event in Columbus, Ohio. Stir Trek (so named because last year its themes mixed MIX and the opening of the Star Trek movie) is a very cool local event.  Its a lot of fun to present at and to attend, because of its unique venue: a movie theater.  And whats more, the cost of admission includes a private showing of a new movie (this year: Iron Man 2).  The sessions cover a variety of topics (not just Microsoft), similar to CodeMash.  The event recently sold out, so Im not telling you all of this so that you can go and sign up (though I believe you can get on the waitlist still).  Rather, this is pretty much just an excuse for me to talk about my session as a way to organize my thoughts. Im actually speaking on the same topic as I did last year, but the key difference is that last year the subject of my session was nowhere close to being released, and this year, its RTM (as of last week).  Thats right, the topic is Whats New in ASP.NET 4 how did you guess? Whats New in ASP.NET 4 So, just what *is* new in ASP.NET 4?  Hasnt Microsoft been spending all of their time on Silverlight and MVC the last few years?  Well, actually, no.  There are some pretty cool things that are now available out of the box in ASP.NET 4.  Theres a nice summary of the new features on MSDN.  Here is my super-brief summary: Extensible Output Caching use providers like distributed cache or file system cache Preload Web Applications IIS 7.5 only; avoid the startup tax for your site by preloading it. Permanent (301) Redirects are finally supported by the framework in one line of code, not two. Session State Compression Can speed up session access in a web farm environment.  Test it to see. Web Forms Features several of which mirror ASP.NET MVC advantages (viewstate, control ids) Set Meta Keywords and Description easily Granular and inheritable control over ViewState Support for more recent browsers and devices Routing (introduced in 3.5 SP1) some new features and zero web.config changes required Client ID control makes client manipulation of DOM elements much simpler. Row Selection in Data Controls fixed (id based, not row index based) FormView and ListView enhancements (less markup, more CSS compliant) New QueryExtender control makes filtering data from other Data Source Controls easy More CSS and Accessibility support Reduction of Tables and more control over output for other template controls Dynamic Data enhancements More control templates Support for inheritance in the Data Model New Attributes ASP.NET Chart Control (learn more) Lots of IDE enhancements Web Deploy tool My session will cover many but not all of these features.  Theres only an hour (3pm-4pm), and its right before the prize giveaway and movie showing, so Ill be moving quickly and most likely answering questions off-line via email after the talk. Hope to see you there! 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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• October 2013 Oracle University Round-Up: New Training & Certifications

  - by Breanne Cooley

  Here are the highlights of what is happening this month at Oracle University.  New Technology Overview Courses: Cloud, Big Data and Security Learn about the latest technology solutions that can transform your business. These three Training On Demand courses are taught by industry experts. These courses help you develop an understanding of how Oracle technologies can make a positive impact on your organization.  Oracle Cloud Overview  Oracle Big Data Overview Oracle Security Overview  New Cloud Application Foundation Courses Check out our brand new 12c courses for WebLogic Server administrators and Coherence developers:  Oracle WebLogic Server 12c: Administration I Oracle WebLogic Server 12c: Administration II Oracle Coherence 12c: New Features  Oracle Database 12c Courses Our Oracle Database 12c training is becoming very popular. Here are this month's featured courses:  Oracle Database 12c: New Features for Administrators Oracle Database 12c: Administration Workshop  Oracle Database 12c: Install and Upgrade Workshop Oracle Database 12c: Admin, Install and Upgrade Accelerated  Validate your expertise and add value by earning an Oracle Database 12c Certification.  New Certifications for MySQL Watch our two new videos to find out what's new with Oracle MySQL Certifications. 1) Oracle MySQL 5.6 Certification: What's New for Database Administrators  Recommended training:  MySQL for Beginners MySQL for Database Administrators  2) Oracle MySQL 5.6 Certification: What's New for Developers Recommended training:  MySQL for Beginners MySQL for Developers New Training & Certification for Oracle Applications JD Edwards 9.1 Training Additional JD Edwards Enterprise One 9.1 training is now available for administrators, developers and implementation team members. Cross Application Training  JD Edwards Enterprise One Common Foundation Rel 9.x  Human Capital Management Training  JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Payroll for Canada Rel 9.x JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Payroll for US Rel 9.x JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Payroll Accelerated for Canada Rel 9.x JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Payroll Accelerated for US Rel 9.x  Financial  Management Training  JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Accounts Receivable Rel 9.x JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Financial Report Writing Rel 9.x  Knowledge Management 8.5 Training Oracle Knowledge 8.5 training is now available for analysts interested in learning how to quickly spot trends in content processing and system usage with analytics dashboards. Knowledge Analytics Rel 8.5  Taleo Training Updated Taleo training is now available. Taleo Business Edition (TEE) business users can learn how to create more efficient reports. Recruiters will learn how to efficiently and effectively use Taleo Business Edition (TBE) Recruit.  Taleo (TEE): Advanced Reporting Taleo (TBE): Recruit - End User Fundamentals  New Training for Oracle Retail 13.4.1 Updated training for Retail Predictive Application Server and Retail Demand Forecasting is now available.  RPAS Administration and Configuration Fundamentals RPAS Technical Essentials: Fusion Client 13.4.1 Retail Demand Forecasting (RDF) Business Essentials 13.4.1  View all available training courses, learning paths and certifications at education.oracle.com, or contact your local education representative to learn more about Oracle University's education solutions. See you in class!  -Oracle University Marketing Team 

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• Keeping an Eye on Your Storage

  - by Fatherjack

  There are plenty of resources that advise you about looking for signs that your storage hardware is having problems. SQL Server Alerts for 823, 824 and 825 are covered here by Paul Randall of SQL Skills: http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/paul/a-little-known-sign-of-impending-doom-error-825/ and here by me: https://www.simple-talk.com/blogs/2011/06/27/alerts-are-good-arent-they/. Now until very recently I wasn’t aware that there was a different way to track the 823 + 824 errors. It was by complete chance that I happened to be searching about in the msdb database when I found the suspect_pages table. Running a query against it I got zero rows. This, as it turns out is a good thing. Highlighting the table name and pressing F1 got me nowhere – Is it just me or does Books Online fail to load properly for no obvious reason sometimes? So I typed the table name into the search bar and got my local version of http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms174425.aspx. From that we get the following description: Contains one row per page that failed with a minor 823 error or an 824 error. Pages are listed in this table because they are suspected of being bad, but they might actually be fine. When a suspect page is repaired, its status is updated in the event_type column. So, in the table we would, on healthy hardware, expect to see zero rows but on disks that are having problems the event_type column would show us what is going on. Where there are suspect pages on the disk the rows would have an event_type value of 1, 2 or 3, where those suspect pages have been restored, repaired or deallocated by DBCC then the value would be 4, 5 or 7. Having this table means that we can set up SQL Monitor to check the status of our hardware as we can create a custom metric based on the query below: USE [msdb] go SELECT COUNT(*) FROM [dbo].[suspect_pages] AS sp All we need to do is set the metric to collect this value and set an alert to email when the value is not 1 and we are then able to let SQL Monitor take care of our storage. Note that the suspect_pages table does not have any updates concerning Error 825 which the links at the top of the page cover in more detail. I would suggest that you set SQL Monitor to alert on the suspect_pages table in addition to other taking other measures to look after your storage hardware and not have it as your only precaution. Microsoft actually pass ownership and administration of the suspect_pages table over to the database administrator (Manage the suspect_pages Table (SQL Server)) and in a surprising move (to me at least) advise DBAs to actively update and archive data in it. The table will only ever contain a maximum of 1000 rows and once full, new rows will not be added. Keeping an eye on this table is pretty important, although In my opinion, if you get to 1000 rows in this table and are not already waiting for new disks to be added to your server you are doing something wrong but if you have 1000 rows in there then you need to move data out quickly because you may be missing some important events on your server.

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• Cloud Apps News @#OOW12

  - by Natalia Rachelson

  All eyes were on Oracle this past week and the news cycle was in full swing. What better time to make some key announcements that were guaranteed to create buzz ... and so we did. The name of the game was Cloud! Here are the key Cloud announcements for Apps, which included Fusion Tap that enables mobility across all Cloud Apps, HCM customer momentum in the Cloud, and our very first ERP Cloud Services customer. Oracle Unveils Oracle Fusion Tap for the iPadOracle Fusion Tap - Productivity Amplified Anywhere, Anytime "Both the enterprise and technology providers must recognize the need to innovate and adapt for the increasing mobility of the workforce - not just for sales teams, but across the organization," said Carter Lusher, Research Fellow and Chief Analyst of Enterprise Applications Ecosystem, Ovum. "A mobile application that quickly and powerfully allows employees to make connections, analyze data, and complete activities at any time and wherever they may be located drives new levels of business value and enhances efficiency. Frankly, mobile access is no longer a 'nice to have' but a 'must have.'"  "The mobile workforce is a business reality, and Oracle Fusion Tap is an example of how Oracle delivers mobile and cloud innovations that fundamentally improve productivity and how we work," said Chris Leone, Senior Vice President of Application Development, Oracle. "With Oracle Fusion Tap users will have an all-in-one, easily extensible app that puts mission-critical data and colleague connection at their fingertips." The entire release is available here http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/1855392 Customers Live on Oracle Fusion Human Capital ManagementOracle HCM Cloud Service Helps Power HR's Contribution to the Business "More than 25 of the 100-plus customers who have selected Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management (HCM) are already live. Ardent Leisure, Peach Aviation, Toshiba Medical Systems and Zillow have deployed Oracle HCM Cloud Service and are using it to transform their HR operations. They join companies such as Principal Financial Group and Elizabeth Arden, who are already using Oracle HCM Cloud Service to help manage international growth and deliver pervasive, role-based, configurable solutions to their employees. With these recent go-lives, Oracle takes a leading position in successfully bringing live HCM customers in the cloud."  "As a technology company, Zillow looked to a partner who could scale with us. Zillow has gone live on Oracle HCM Cloud Service, which will give us the ability automate and streamline HR operations for our employees in the near future," said Sarah Bilton, Senior Director HR, Zillow. Read the entire release here http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/1859573 Lending Club Selects Oracle ERP Cloud Service to Help Increase Insight and EfficienciesOracle ERP Cloud Service Provides an Open Architecture, Best-of-Breed Decision-Making, and Scalability in the Cloud "Lending Club, the leading platform for investing in and obtaining personal loans, has selected Oracle ERP Cloud Service to help improve decision-making and workflow, implement robust reporting, and take advantage of the inherent scalability and cost savings provided by the cloud. With more than 76,000 borrowers and 90,000 investors Lending Club utilizes technology and innovation to reduce the cost of traditional banking and offer borrowers better rates and investors better returns.  After an extensive search, Lending Club selected Oracle ERP Cloud Service due to the breadth and depth of capabilities and ongoing innovation of Oracle ERP Cloud Service, as well as Oracle's open architecture, industry leadership and commitment to partners." "Lending Club is an innovative, data-intensive, high-growth company and we needed a solution and partner that could match us," said Carrie Dolan, CFO, Lending Club. "We conducted a thorough review of our options, and Oracle ERP Cloud Service was the clear winner in terms of capabilities and business value as well as commitment to us as a customer." Read the entire release here http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/1859020

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• Antenna Aligner Part 7: Connecting the dots

  - by Chris George

  The app is basically ready, so I eagerly started to sort out creating the application entry in iTunes Connect. It's mostly intuitive actually, although I did have to create yet another icon for iTunes sized 512x512 pixels, damn lucky I did the original graphics as vector! It took me longer to write the application description than anything else, I'm so not a tech author! I didn't like the way you have to 'make up' an SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) number. I have to do some googling to find out that it really doesn't matter what it is! It should be more obvious what to do from the actual website itself. That aside, the rest of it was actually fairly straightforward. As well as the details of the application, iPhone and iPad screenshots were also required. This posed somewhat of a problem. The iPhone ones were easy (as I have one!), but I do not (yet) own an iPad . So I thought I'd leave the iPad screenshots out for now. Once the application details were sorted, I moved onto the rights and pricing. At the start of the project I had made the decision that I wouldn't charge any more than the lowest amount £0.59. I believe there is a market for this, but as my first foray into app development I didn't want to take the mick. I did realise, however, that I had built my app with a developer certificate and provisioning profile. This was fairly quickly corrected, and again Nomad made this very easy to switch over to the distribution certificate and provisioning profile. With a sense of excitement I cracked open iTunes connect and clicked the upload button ... ...slight snag... . when the Nomad project was started, Apple allowed uploads of these binaries via iTunes Connect. But this is no longer possible, the only upload path is via the Application Loader available from the Apple Developer program. This itself has one limitation, it only runs on a mac! D'OH!!!  Actually my language was somewhat more colourful when this fact came to light. After picking my laptop up off the floor and putting it back together... ok only joking, but I did nearly throw it out of frustration!... I started to consider the options; I briefly entertained the idea of buying a cheap mac from ebay... no, that defeats the whole object of what I'm doing, plus my wife wouldn't be impressed there are some guys out there in the interweb who will upload your app for a small fee...but I don't really like the idea of giving some faceless email address my apple developer login details, as well as my app binary! find some willing friend with a mac who would kindly let me use it... obviously this is the only sensible option. In the meantime, I informed the Nomad team about this slight 'issue' and they are currently investigating possible solutions...

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• Oracle Announces Release of PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 Feature Pack 2

  - by Jay Zuckert

  Big things sometimes come in small packages.  Today Oracle announced the availability of PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 Feature Pack 2 which delivers a new HR self service user experience that fundamentally changes the way managers and employees interact with the HCM system.  Earlier this year we reviewed a number of new concept designs with our Customer Advisory Boards.  With the accelerated feature pack development cycle we have adopted, these innovations are  now available to all 9.1 customers without the need for an upgrade.   There are no new products that need to be licensed for the capabilities below. For more details on Feature Pack 2, please see the Oracle press release. Included in Feature Pack 2 is a new search-based menu-free navigation that allows managers to search for employees by name and take actions directly from the secure search results.  For example, a manager can now simply type in part of an employee’s first or last name and receive meaningful results from documents related to performance, compensation, learning, recruiting, career planning and more.   Delivered actions can be initiated directly from these search results and the actions are securely tied to HCM security and user role.  The feature pack also includes new pages that will enable managers to be more productive by aggregating key employee data into a single page.  The new Manager Dashboard and Talent Summary provide a consolidated view of data related to a manager’s team and individual team members, respectively.   The Manager Dashboard displays information relevant to their direct reports including team learning, objective alignment, alerts, and pending approvals requiring their attention.  The Talent Summary provides managers with an aggregated view of talent management-related data for an individual employee including performance history, salary history, succession options, total rewards, and competencies.   The information displayed in both the Manager Dashboard and Talent Summary is configurable by system administrators and can be personalized by each of your managers. Other Feature Pack 2 enhancements allow organizations to administer Matrix or Dotted-Line Relationship Management, which addresses the challenge of tracking and maintaining project-based organizations that cut across the enterprise and geographic regions.  From within the Company Directory and Org Viewer organization charts, managers now have access to manager self-service transactions from related actions.  More than 70 manager and employee self-service transactions have been tied into the related action framework accessible from Org Viewer, Manager Dashboard, Talent Summary and Secure Enterprise Search (SES) results.  In addition to making it easier to access manager self-service transactions, the feature pack delivers streamlined transaction pages making everyday tasks such as promoting an employee faster and more efficient. With the delivery of PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 Feature Pack 2, Oracle continues to deliver on its commitment to our PeopleSoft customers.  With this feature pack, HCM 9.1 customers will be able to deploy the newest functionality quickly, without a major release upgrade, and realize added value from their existing PeopleSoft investment.    For customers newly deploying 9.1, a new download with all of Feature Pack 2  will be available early next year.   This will aslo include recertified upgrade paths from 8.8, 8.9 and 9.0, for customers in the upgrade process.

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• Open source adventures with... wait for it... Microsoft

  - by Jeff

  Last week, Microsoft announced that it was going to open source the rest of the ASP.NET MVC Web stack. The core MVC framework has been open source for a long time now, but the other pieces around it are also now out in the wild. Not only that, but it's not what I call "big bang" open source, where you release the source with each version. No, they're actually committing in real time to a public repository. They're also taking contributions where it makes sense. If that weren't exciting enough, CodePlex, which used to be a part of the team I was on, has been re-org'd to a different part of the company where it is getting the love and attention (and apparently money) that it deserves. For a period of several months, I lobbied to get a PM gig with that product, but got nowhere. A year and a half later, I'm happy to see it finally treated right. In any case, I found a bug in Razor, the rendering engine, before the beta came out. I informally sent the bug info to some people, but it wasn't fixed for the beta. Now, with the project being developed in the open, I was able to submit the issue, and went back and forth with the developer who wrote the code (I met him once at a meet up in Bellevue, I think), and he committed a fix. I tried it a day later, and the bug was gone. There's a lot to learn from all of this. That open source software is surprisingly efficient and often of high quality is one part of it. For me the win is that it demonstrates how open and collaborative processes, as light as possible, lead to better software. In other words, even if this were a project being developed internally, at a bank or something, getting stakeholders involved early and giving people the ability to respond leads to awesomeness. While there is always a place for big thinking, experience has shown time and time again that trying to figure everything out up front takes too long, and rarely meets expectations. This is a lesson that probably half of Microsoft has yet to learn, including the team I was on before I split. It's the reason that team still hasn't shipped anything to general availability. But I've seen what an open and iterative development style can do for teams, at Microsoft and other places that I've worked. When you can have a conversation with people, and take ideas and turn them into code quickly, you're winning. So why don't people like winning? I think there are a lot of reasons, and they can generally be categorized into fear, skepticism and bad experiences. I can't give the Web stack teams enough credit. Not only did they dream big, but they changed a culture that often seems immovable and hopelessly stuck. This is a very public example of this culture change, but it's starting to happen at every scale in Microsoft. It's really interesting to see in a company that has been written off as dead the last decade.

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