Search Results

Search found 7338 results on 294 pages for 'useful'.

Page 137/294 | < Previous Page | 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144  | Next Page >

• 11gr2 DataGuard: Restarting DUPLICATE After a Failure

  - by rene.kundersma

  One of the great new features that comes in very handy when databases get larger and larger these days is RMAN's capability to duplicate from an active database and even restart a duplicate when it fails. Imagine yourself the problem I had lately; I used the duplicate from active database feature and had to wait for an hour or 6 before all datafiles where transferred.At the end of the process some error occurred because of the syntax. While this error was easily to solve I was afraid I had to redo the complete procedure and transfer the 2.5 TB again. Well, 11gr2 RMAN surprised when I re-ran my command with the following output: Using previous duplicated file +DATA/fin2prod/datafile/users.2968.719237649 for datafile 12 with checkpoint SCN of 183289288148 Using previous duplicated file +DATA/fin2prod/datafile/users.2703.719237975 for datafile 13 with checkpoint SCN of 183289295823 Above I only show a small snippet, but what happend is that RMAN smartly skipped all files that where already transferred ! The documentation says this: RMAN automatically optimizes a DUPLICATE command that is a repeat of a previously failed DUPLICATE command. The repeat DUPLICATE command notices which datafiles were successfully copied earlier and does not copy them again. This applies to all forms of duplication, whether they are backup-based (with and without a target connection) or active database duplication. The automatic optimization of the DUPLICATE command can be especially useful when a failure occurs during the duplication of very large databases. If a DUPLICATE operation fails, you need only run the DUPLICATE again, using the same parameters contained in the original DUPLICATE command. Please see chapter 23 of the 11g Release 2 Database Backup and Recovery User's Guide for more details. B.w.t. be very careful with the duplicate command. A small mistake in one of the 'convert' parameters can potentially overwrite your target's controlfile without prompting ! Rene Kundersma Technical Architect Oracle Technology Services

  Read the article

• BDD (Behavior-Driven Development) tools for .Net

  - by tikrimi

  For several years, I use TDD (Test-Driven Development) to produce code. I no longer plans to work without using TDD. The use of TDD significantly increases code quality, but does not guarantee that the code is the code that corresponds to the requirements specifications (write the "right code" with BDD as opposed to the write "code right" with BDD). Dan North has described in an article in published in 2006 the foundations of the BDD (Behavior-Driven Development). In this article, he introduces the formalism "When Given Then". This formalism is used in all tools dedicated to BDD. This is a short list of open source BDD tools that you can use with .Net : SpecFlow: Here you can find an article in MSDN Magazine and 2 webcasts (http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/ASPNET-MVC-With-Community-Tools-Part-2-Spec-Flow-and-WatiN and http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/ASPNET-MVC-With-Community-Tools-Part-3-More-Spec-Flow-and-WatiN) published on Chanel9. NSpec: This is certainly the most used project. There are many examples on the web. StoryQ: This project is hosted on Codeplex. This small project is very simple to implement and very useful.

  Read the article

• Partner Webcast - Is your Application Ready? Prove it with the Oracle Exastack Program

  - by Thanos

  At Oracle we design Engineered Systems that are pre-integrated to reduce the cost and complexity of IT infrastructures while increasing productivity and performance. Oracle innovates and optimizes performance at every IT layer to simplify business operations, drive down costs and accelerate business innovation.As the Engineered System foundation platform, Oracle Exadata and Oracle Exalogic, run all of Oracle Cloud's services across a range of global data centers, delivering extreme performance, massive scalability, and fault tolerance that has no single point of failure.The Oracle Exastack Program enables you as an ISV to leverage Oracle's scalable, integrated infrastructure to test, tune and optimize your applications for high performance. By getting Exastack Ready and Exastack Optimized, your applications get formal recognition from Oracle and additional visibility, while you as an ISV receive additional set of OPN benefits. Don't miss this opportunity to learn more about how you can optimize your applications to run faster and more reliably leveraging Oracle Exastack, but also become more competitive letting everybody know you are ready. Agenda: Oracle Engineered Systems Strategy OPN Exastack Program Benefits & Objectives Value for You Oracle is resourced for your success How to Apply –Demo Next Steps & Useful contacts Delivery FormatThis FREE online LIVE eSeminar will be delivered over the Web. Registrations received less than 24hours prior to start time may not receive confirmation to attend. Thursday 06 December 2012, 10.00 CET (GMT+1) Duration: 1 hour Register Now! " height="6"> For any questions please contact us at [email protected] our ISV Migration Center blog Or Follow us @oracleimc to learn more on Oracle Technologies, upcoming partner webcasts and events. Existing content available YouTube - SlideShare - Oracle Mix

  Read the article

• View Word Definitions in IE 8 with the Define with Bing Accelerator

  - by Asian Angel

  Do you need an easy way to view word definitions while browsing with Internet Explorer? The Define with Bing Accelerator will display definitions in the same (or a new) tab and save you time while browsing. Using Define with Bing The installation consists of two steps. First, click on Add to Internet Explorer to start the process. Next you will be asked to confirm the installation. Once you have clicked Add your new accelerator is ready to use (no browser restart required). Whenever you encounter a word that needs defining highlight it, click on the small blue square, go to All Accelerators, and then Define with Bing. There are two ways to access the definition: Hover your mouse over the Define with Bing text to open a small popup window Click on Define with Bing to open a definition search in a new tab Being able to access a definition or explanation in the same tab will definitely save you time while browsing. In the example shown here you can get an idea of what SCORM means but clicking on the links inside the popup window is not recommended (webpage opens in popup and is not resizable). In the situation shown above it is better to click on Define with Bing and see more information in a new tab. Conclusion The Define with Bing Accelerator can be a very useful time saver while browsing with Internet Explorer. Finding those word definitions will be a much more pleasant experience now. Add the Define with Bing Accelerator to Internet Explorer Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Add Google Dictionary Power to ChromeChoose Custom New Tab Pages in ChromeSearch Alternative Search Engines from within Bing’s Search PageView Word Definitions in Google Chrome with DictionaryTipThe New Bing Bar Provides Easy Access to Searches and Microsoft Live Services 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 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup Sculptris 1.0, 3D Drawing app AceStock, a Tiny Desktop Quote Monitor Gmail Button Addon (Firefox) Hyperwords addon (Firefox) Backup Outlook 2010 Daily Motivator (Firefox)

  Read the article

• Promoting Organizational Visibility for SOA and SOA Governance Initiatives – Part I by Manuel Rosa and André Sampaio

  - by JuergenKress

  The costs of technology assets can become significant and the need to centralize, monitor and control the contribution of each technology asset becomes a paramount responsibility for many organizations. Through the implementation of various mechanisms, it is possible to obtain a holistic vision and develop synergies between different assets, empowering their re-utilization and analyzing the impact on the organization caused by IT changes. When the SOA domain is considered, the issue of governance should therefore always come into play. Although SOA governance is mandatory to achieve any measure of SOA success, its value still passes incognito in most organizations, mostly due to the lack of visibility and the detached view of the SOA initiatives. There are a number of problems that jeopardize the visibility of these initiatives: Understanding and measuring the value of SOA governance and its contribution – SOA governance tools are too technical and isolated from other systems. They are inadequate for anyone outside of the domain (Business Analyst, Project Managers, or even some Enterprise Architects), and are especially harsh at the CxO level. Lack of information exchange with the business, other operational areas and project management – It is not only a matter of lack of dialog but also the question of using a common vocabulary (textual or graphic) that is adequate for all the stakeholders. We need to generate information that can be useful for a wider scope of stakeholders like Business and enterprise architectures. In this article we describe how an organization can leverage from the existing best practices, and with the help of adequate exploration and communication tools, achieve and maintain the level of quality and visibility that is required for SOA and SOA governance initiatives. Introduction Understanding and implementing effective SOA governance has become a corporate imperative in order to ensure coherence and the attainment of the basic objectives of SOA initiatives: develop the correct services control costs and risks bound to the development process reduce time-to-market Read the full article here. SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Wiki Mix Forum Technorati Tags: SOA Governance,Link Consulting,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

  Read the article

• Setting Up IRM Test Content

  - by martin.abrahams

  A feature of the 11g IRM Server that sometimes gets overlooked is the ability to set up some test content that any IRM user can access to verify that their IRM Desktop can reach the server, authenticate successfully, and render protected content successfully. Such test content is useful for new users, and in troubleshooting scenarios. Here's how to set up some test content... In the management console, go to IRM - Administration - Test Content, as shown. The console will display a list of test content - initially an empty list. Use the Add option to specify the URL of a document or image, and define one or more labels for the test content in whichever languages your users favour. Note that you do not need to seal the image or document in order to use it as test content. Nor do you need to set up any rights for the test content. The IRM Server will handle the sealing and rights assignment automatically such that all authenticated users are authorised to view the test content. Repeat this process for as many different types of content as you would like to offer for test purposes - perhaps a Word document, a PDF document, and an image. To keep things simple the first time I did this, I used the URL of one of the images in the IRM Server's UI - so there was no problem with the IRM Server being able to reach that image. Whatever content you want to use, the IRM Server needs to be able to reach it at the URL you specify. Using Test Content Open a browser and browse to the URL that the IRM Desktop normally uses to access the IRM Server, for example: http://irm11g.oracle.com/irm_desktop If you are not sure, you can find this URL in the Servers tab of the IRM Options dialog. Go to the Test tab, and you will see your test content listed. By opening one of the items, you can verify that your IRM Desktop is healthy and that you can authenticate to the IRM Server.

  Read the article

• Tools for modelling data and workflows using structured text files

  - by Alexey

  Consider a case when I want to try some idea of an application. But I want to avoid investing a lot of effort in coding UI/work flows/database schema etc before I see that it's going to be useful to me (as example of potential user). My idea is stay lightweight and put all the data in text files. So the components could be following: Domain objects are represented by text files or their fragments Domain objects are grouped by their type using directories Structure the files using some both human- and machine-friendly format, e.g. YAML Use some smart text editor (e.g. vim, emacs, rubymine) to edit and navigate those files Use color schemes and macros/custom commands of the text editor to effectively manipulate those files Use scripts (or a lightweight web framework like Sinatra) to try some business logic ideas on top of the data model The question is: Are there tools or toolkits that support or can be adopted to this approach? Also any ideas, links to articles/other knowledge sources are very welcome. And more specific question: What is the simplest way to index and update index of files with YAML files?

  Read the article

• How to convince boss to buy Visual Studio 2012 Professional

  - by Sam Leach

  The main advantage is the use of ReSharper and other add-ons but we need to make a convincing argument for the purchase of Visual Studio 2012 Professional. We are currently using Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows. It is quite good but is hard to switch from using the full Professional version in the past. So far the team has compiled the following list: Extract Interface function missing. Very useful for clean SOLID code. No add-on support. Can’t install StyleCop or productivity tools. AnkhSvn, Spell checker, Productivity PowerTools, GhostDoc, Regex Editor, PowerCommands. The exception assistant is limited in Express edition. This is a big annoyance. See http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2013/01/ive-given-up-on-visual-studio-express-2012-for-windows-desktop-heres-why/ Different tools provided by MS like certificate generation. Possibility of create a Test project based on source code. We do server development in C# so any web add-ons or anything else is useless. The reason I am asking is I am sure that people have been in the same position. What approach did you use and can you think of additions or ammends to the above list? Thanks,

  Read the article

• Fix corrupt NTFS partition without Windows

  - by Capt.Nemo

  MY NTFS Partition has gotten corrupt somehow (it's a relic from the days when I had Windows installed). I'm putting the debug output of fdisk and blkid here. At the same time, any OS is unable to mount my root partition, which is located next to my NTFS partition. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with it, though. I get the following error while trying to mount my root partition (sda5) mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda5, missing codepage or helper program, or other error In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try dmesg | tail or so ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ dmesg | tail [ 1019.726530] Descriptor sense data with sense descriptors (in hex): [ 1019.726533] 72 03 11 04 00 00 00 0c 00 0a 80 00 00 00 00 00 [ 1019.726551] 1a 3e ed 92 [ 1019.726558] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error - auto reallocate failed [ 1019.726568] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] CDB: Read(10): 28 00 1a 3e ed 40 00 01 00 00 [ 1019.726584] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 440331666 [ 1019.726602] JBD: Failed to read block at offset 462 [ 1019.726609] ata1: EH complete [ 1019.726612] JBD: recovery failed [ 1019.726617] EXT4-fs (sda5): error loading journal When I open gparted (using live CD), I get an exclamation next to my NTFS drive which states Is there a way to run chkdsk without using windows ? My attempt to run fsck results in the following : ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fsck /dev/sda fsck from util-linux-ng 2.17.2 e2fsck 1.41.14 (22-Dec-2010) fsck.ext2: Superblock invalid, trying backup blocks... fsck.ext2: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sda The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2 filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock: e2fsck -b 8193 <device> Update : I was able to fix the NTFS partition running chkdsk off HBCD, but it seems that the superblock problem still remains. *Update 2: * Fixed superblock issue using e2fsck -c /dev/sda5

  Read the article

• Emacs: methods for debugging python

  - by Tom Willis

  I use emacs for all my code edit needs. Typically, I will use M-x compile to run my test runner which I would say gets me about 70% of what I need to do to keep the code on track however lately I've been wondering how it might be possible to use M-x pdb on occasions where it would be nice to hit a breakpoint and inspect things. In my googling I've found some things that suggest that this is useful/possible. However I have not managed to get it working in a way that I fully understand. I don't know if it's the combination of buildout + appengine that might be making it more difficult but when I try to do something like M-x pdb Run pdb (like this): /Users/twillis/projects/hydrant/bin/python /Users/twillis/bin/pdb /Users/twillis/projects/hydrant/bin/devappserver /Users/twillis/projects/hydrant/parts/hydrant-app/ Where .../bin/python is the interpreter buildout makes with the path set for all the eggs. ~/bin/pdb is a simple script to call into pdb.main using the current python interpreter HellooKitty:hydrant twillis$ cat ~/bin/pdb #! /usr/bin/env python if __name__ == "__main__": import sys sys.version_info import pdb pdb.main() HellooKitty:hydrant twillis$ .../bin/devappserver is the dev_appserver script that the buildout recipe makes for gae project and .../parts/hydrant-app is the path to the app.yaml I am first presented with a prompt Current directory is /Users/twillis/bin/ C-c C-f Nothing happens but HellooKitty:hydrant twillis$ ps aux | grep pdb twillis 469 100.0 1.6 168488 67188 s002 Rs+ 1:03PM 0:52.19 /usr/local/bin/python2.5 /Users/twillis/projects/hydrant/bin/python /Users/twillis/bin/pdb /Users/twillis/projects/hydrant/bin/devappserver /Users/twillis/projects/hydrant/parts/hydrant-app/ twillis 477 0.0 0.0 2435120 420 s000 R+ 1:05PM 0:00.00 grep pdb HellooKitty:hydrant twillis$ something is happening C-x [space] will report that a breakpoint has been set. But I can't manage to get get things going. It feels like I am missing something obvious here. Am I? So, is interactive debugging in emacs worthwhile? is interactive debugging a google appengine app possible? Any suggestions on how I might get this working?

  Read the article

• An introductory presentation about testing with MSTest, Visual Studio, and Team Foundation Server 2010

  - by Thomas Weller

  While it was very quiet here on my blog during the last months, this was not at all true for the rest of my professional life. The simple story is that I was too busy to find the time for authoring blog posts (and you might see from my previous ones that they’re usually not of the ‘Hey, I’m currently reading X’ or ‘I’m currently thinking about Y’ kind…). Anyway. Among the things I did during the last months were setting up a TFS environment (2010) and introducing a development team to the MSTest framework (aka. Visual Studio Unit Testing), some additional tools (e.g. Moq, Moles, White),  how this is supported in Visual Studio, and how it integrates into the broader context of the then new TFS environment. After wiping out all the stuff which was directly related to my former customer and reviewing/extending the Speaker notes, I thought I share this presentation (via Slideshare) with the rest of the world. Hopefully it can be useful to someone else out there… Introduction to testing with MSTest, Visual Studio, and Team Foundation Server 2010 View more presentations from Thomas Weller. Be sure to also check out the slide notes (either by viewing the presentation directly on Slideshare or - even better - by downloading it). They contain quite some additional information, hints, and (in my opinion) best practices.

  Read the article

• Receiving an MVP Award and Credibility

  - by Joe Mayo

  The post titled, The Problem with MVPs, by Steve Barbour was interesting because it makes you think about the thousands of MVPs around the world and what their value really is. Having been the recipient of multiple MVP awards, it’s an opportunity to reflect and judge my own performance. This is not a dangerous thing to do, but quite the opposite. If a person believes in self improvement, then critical analysis is an important part of that process. A lot of MVPs will tell you that they would be doing the same thing, regardless of whether they were an MVP or not; helping others in the community, which is also where I prefer to hang my hat. I’ve never defined myself as an expert and never will; this determination is left to others. In fact, let me just come out and say it, “I don’t know everything”. Shocked? Sometimes the gap between expectations and reality extends beyond a reasonable measure. Being labeled as a technical expert feels good for one's self esteem and is certainly a useful motivational technique. A problem can emerge though when an individual believes, too much, in what they are told. The problem is not with a pat on the back, but with a person does with the positive reinforcement. Is narcissism too strong a word? How often have you been in a public forum reading a demeaning response to a question that only serves in attempt to raise the stature of the person providing the response? Such behavior compromises one’s credibility, raises questions about validity of the MVP award, and is limited in community value. I’m currently under consideration for another MVP award on April 1st. If it happens, it will be good. Otherwise, I’ll keep writing articles, coding open source software, and whatever else I enjoy doing; with the best reward being that people find value in what I do. Joe

  Read the article

• Oracle ACEs in the House

  - by Justin Kestelyn

  As is customary, the Oracle ACEs have invaded the Oracle Develop Conference agenda.Why? Because Oracle ACE-dom inherently is a stamp of not only expertise, but a unique ability to make that expertise useful to others. Plus, they're a group of "fine blokes" (UK. subjects, educate me: is that really a word?)Perhaps if you're not able to catch one of these sessions, you will be able to see the applicable ACE in action elsewhere, at a conference or user group meeting near you. Session ID Session Title Speaker, Company S313355 Developing Large Oracle Application Development Framework 11g Applications Andrejus Baranovskis, Red Samurai Consulting S316641 Xenogenetics for PL/SQL: Infusing with Java Best Practices and Design Patterns Lucas Jellema, AMIS; Alex Nuijten, AMIS S317171 Building Secure Multimedia Web Applications: Tips and Techniques Marcel Kratochvil, Piction; Melliyal Annamalai, Oracle S315660 Database Applications Lifecycle Management Marcelo Ochoa, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas S315689 Building a High-Performance, Low-Bandwidth Web Architecture Paul Dorsey, Dulcian, Inc. S316003 Managing the Earthquake: Surviving Major Database Architecture Changes Paul Dorsey, Dulcian, Inc.; Michael Rosenblum, Dulcian, Inc. S314869 Introduction to Java: PL/SQL Developers Take Heart Peter Koletzke, Quovera S316184 Deploying Applications to Oracle WebLogic Server Using Oracle JDeveloper Peter Koletzke, Quovera; Duncan Mills, Oracle S316597 Using Collections in Oracle Application Express: The Definitive Intro Raj Mattamal, Niantic Systems, LLC S313382 Using Oracle Database 11g Release 2 in an Oracle Application Express Environment Roel Hartman, Logica S313757 Debugging with Oracle Application Express and Oracle SQL Developer Dimitri Gielis, Sumneva S313759 Using Oracle Application Express in Big Projects with Many Developers Dimitri Gielis, Sumneva S313982 Forms2Future: The Ongoing Journey into the Future for Oracle-Based Organizations Lucas Jellema, AMIS; Peter Ebell, AMIS

  Read the article

• Message Passing Interface (MPI)

  So you have installed your cluster and you are done with introductory material on Windows HPC. Now you want to develop an application with the most common programming model: Message Passing Interface.The MPI programming model is a standard with implementations from many vendors. For newbies (like myself!), I have aggregated below links for getting started.Non-Microsoft MPI resources (useful even if you are not on the Windows platform)1. Message Passing Interface on wikipedia. 2. The MPI standard.3. MPICH2 - an MPI implementation.4. Tutorial on MPI by William Gropp.5. MPI patterns presented as a tutorial with sample code. 6. THE official MPI Forum (maintains the standard) including the wiki discussing the MPI future.7. Great MPI tutorial including at the end the MPI Exercise.8. C++ MPI Exercises by John Burkardt.9. Book online: MPI The Complete Reference.MS-MPI10. Windows HPC Server 2008 - Using MS-MPI whitepaper (15 page doc).11. Tracing MPI applications (27 page doc).12. Using Microsoft MPI (TechNet section).13. Windows HPC Server MPI forum (for posting questions). MPI.NET14. MPI.NET Home Page (not owned by Microsoft).15. MPI.NET Tutorial.16. HPC Development using F# using MPI.NET (38 page doc).Next time I'll post resources for the Microsoft Cluster SOA programming model - happy coding... Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

  Read the article

• OracleWebLogic YouTube Channel

  - by Jeffrey West

    The WebLogic Product Management Team has been working on content for an Oracle WebLogic YouTube channel to host demos and overview of WebLogic features.  The goal is to provide short educational overviews and demos of new, useful, or 'hidden gem' WLS features that may be underutilized.    We currently have 26 videos including: Coherence Server Lifecycle Management with WebLogic Server (James Bayer) WebLogic Server JRockit Mission Control Experimental Plugin (James Bayer) WebLogic Server Virtual Edition Overview and Deployment Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder (Mark Prichard) Migrating Applications from OC4J 10g to WebLogic Server with Smart Upgrade (Mark Prichard) WebLogic Server Java EE 6 Web Profile Demo (Steve Button) WebLogic Server with Maven and Eclipse (Steve Button) Advanced JMS Features: Store and Forward, Unit of Order and Unit of Work (Jeff West) WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) Recording, editing and Playback (Jeff West) Special thanks to Steve, Mark and James for creating quality content to help educate our community and promote WebLogic Server!  The Product Management Team will be making ongoing updates to the content.  We really do want people to give us feedback on what they want to see with regard to WebLogic.  Whether its how you achieve a certain architectural goal with WLS or a demonstration and sample code for a feature - All requests related to WLS are welcome! You can find the channel here: http://www.YouTube.com/OracleWebLogic.  Please comment on the Channel or our WebLogic Server blog to let us know what you think.  Thanks!

  Read the article

• Upcoming Webinar: Practical Performance Profiling presented by Jean-Philippe Gouigoux

  - by Michaela Murray

  Hot on the heels of releasing his new book, Practical Performance Profiling, I'm delighted that Jean-Philippe Gouigoux will be joining us on April 3rd to present a free webinar on optimizing .NET code performance. He gave me a sneak preview of his talk last week and there's a lot of really useful advice in there. He'll be discussing why he thinks 20% of performance problems account for 80% of lost time, before looking at some real examples of both server-side and client-side profiling, and covering a variety of best practices you can use to improve the performance of your own code. The webinar will be followed by a Q&A session where he'll be joined by Red Gate technical support engineer Chris Allen to answer any of your questions. Jean-Philippe has 10 years' experience in .NET, most recently as system architect at MGDIS, and was recently made a Microsoft MVP for his contributions to the .NET community. I'm really excited that he's found a gap between his day job and university lecturing to share his knowledge, and I hope you'll be able to join us on April 3rd - it's free but you do need to register in advance at https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/829014934. I'll see you there!

  Read the article

• Switching to a career in Machine Learning

  - by Naive Machine Learner

  My day job is plain old software development. I am also doing my Masters in CS (part time, course based). I took a course on AI and found machine learning quite fascinating but like most courses it only offered a basic intro. I intend to learn more about Machine Learning and if possible get a job in that field. When I look at job postings in this field it is clear that a Phd in Machine learning (or prior experience in the field with considerable expertise) is required for most of them. I'm looking for advice on self learning to gain experience that'll useful in industry. At least, enough experience to get my foot in. I will do the obvious ones like reading text books, papers etc. Perhaps any open source efforts that I can participate in or something I could do on my own? Apologies if I'm being vague here but I hope there are at least a few of you who done a similar switch and can advise. Thanks !

  Read the article

• "wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock" error while mounting FAT Drives

  - by cshubhamrao

  I am unable to mount any fat32 or fat16 formatted usb disks under Ubuntu 13.10. The thing here to note is that it is happening only with fat formatted Disks. ntfs, ext formatted external usb disks work well (I tried formatting the same with ext4 and it worked) While mounting via nautilus: Error while mounting from terminal: root@shubham-pc:~# mount -t vfat /dev/sdc1 /media/shubham/n mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdc1, missing codepage or helper program, or other error In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try dmesg | tail or so As suggested by the error: Output from dmesg | tail root@shubham-pc:~# dmesg | tail [ 3545.482598] scsi8 : usb-storage 1-1:1.0 [ 3546.481530] scsi 8:0:0:0: Direct-Access SanDisk Cruzer 1.26 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5 [ 3546.482373] sd 8:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 0 [ 3546.483758] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdc] 15633408 512-byte logical blocks: (8.00 GB/7.45 GiB) [ 3546.485254] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off [ 3546.485262] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 43 00 00 00 [ 3546.488314] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdc] Write cache: disabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA [ 3546.499820] sdc: sdc1 [ 3546.503388] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI removable disk [ 3547.273396] FAT-fs (sdc1): IO charset iso8859-1 not found Output from fsck.vfat: root@shubham-pc:~# fsck.vfat /dev/sdc1 dosfsck 3.0.16, 01 Mar 2013, FAT32, LFN /dev/sdc1: 1 files, 1/1949978 clusters All normal Tried re-creating the whole partition table and then formatting as fat32 but to no avail so the possibility of corrupted drive is ruled out. Tried the same with around 4 Disks or so and all have the same things

  Read the article

• Getting SQL table row counts via sysindexes vs. sys.indexes

  - by Bill Osuch

  Among the many useful SQL snippets I regularly use is this little bit that will return row counts in a table: SELECT so.name as TableName, MAX(si.rows) as [RowCount] FROM sysobjects so JOIN sysindexes si ON si.id = OBJECT_ID(so.name) WHERE so.xtype = 'U' GROUP BY so.name ORDER BY [RowCount] DESC This is handy to find tables that have grown wildly, zero-row tables that could (possibly) be dropped, or other clues into the data. Right off the bat you may spot some "non-ideal" code - I'm using sysobjects rather than sys.objects. What's the difference? In SQL Server 2005 and later, sysobjects is no longer a table, but a "compatibility view", meant for backward compatibility only. SELECT * from each and you'll see the different data that each returns. Microsoft advises that sysindexes could be removed in a future version of SQL Server, but this has never really been an issue for me since my company is still using SQL 2000. However, there are murmurs that we may actually migrate to 2008 some year, so I might as well go ahead and start using an updated version of this snippet on the servers that can handle it: SELECT so.name as TableName, ddps.row_count as [RowCount] FROM sys.objects so JOIN sys.indexes si ON si.OBJECT_ID = so.OBJECT_ID JOIN sys.dm_db_partition_stats AS ddps ON si.OBJECT_ID = ddps.OBJECT_ID  AND si.index_id = ddps.index_id WHERE si.index_id < 2  AND so.is_ms_shipped = 0 ORDER BY ddps.row_count DESC

  Read the article

• The Red Gate and .NET Reflector Debacle

  - by Rick Strahl

  About a month ago Red Gate – the company who owns the NET Reflector tool most .NET devs use at one point or another – decided to change their business model for Reflector and take the product from free to a fully paid for license model. As a bit of history: .NET Reflector was originally created by Lutz Roeder as a free community tool to inspect .NET assemblies. Using Reflector you can examine the types in an assembly, drill into type signatures and quickly disassemble code to see how a particular method works.  In case you’ve been living under a rock and you’ve never looked at Reflector, here’s what it looks like drilled into an assembly from disk with some disassembled source code showing: Note that you get tons of information about each element in the tree, and almost all related types and members are clickable both in the list and source view so it’s extremely easy to navigate and follow the code flow even in this static assembly only view. For many year’s Lutz kept the the tool up to date and added more features gradually improving an already amazing tool and making it better. Then about two and a half years ago Red Gate bought the tool from Lutz. A lot of ruckus and noise ensued in the community back then about what would happen with the tool and… for the most part very little did. Other than the incessant update notices with prominent Red Gate promo on them life with Reflector went on. The product didn’t die and and it didn’t go commercial or to a charge model. When .NET 4.0 came out it still continued to work mostly because the .NET feature set doesn’t drastically change how types behave.  Then a month back Red Gate started making noise about a new Version Version 7 which would be commercial. No more free version - and a shit storm broke out in the community. Now normally I’m not one to be critical of companies trying to make money from a product, much less for a product that’s as incredibly useful as Reflector. There isn’t day in .NET development that goes by for me where I don’t fire up Reflector. Whether it’s for examining the innards of the .NET Framework, checking out third party code, or verifying some of my own code and resources. Even more so recently I’ve been doing a lot of Interop work with a non-.NET application that needs to access .NET components and Reflector has been immensely valuable to me (and my clients) if figuring out exact type signatures required to calling .NET components in assemblies. In short Reflector is an invaluable tool to me. Ok, so what’s the problem? Why all the fuss? Certainly the $39 Red Gate is trying to charge isn’t going to kill any developer. If there’s any tool in .NET that’s worth $39 it’s Reflector, right? Right, but that’s not the problem here. The problem is how Red Gate went about moving the product to commercial which borders on the downright bizarre. It’s almost as if somebody in management wrote a slogan: “How can we piss off the .NET community in the most painful way we can?” And that it seems Red Gate has a utterly succeeded. People are rabid, and for once I think that this outrage isn’t exactly misplaced. Take a look at the message thread that Red Gate dedicated from a link off the download page. Not only is Version 7 going to be a paid commercial tool, but the older versions of Reflector won’t be available any longer. Not only that but older versions that are already in use also will continually try to update themselves to the new paid version – which when installed will then expire unless registered properly. There have also been reports of Version 6 installs shutting themselves down and failing to work if the update is refused (I haven’t seen that myself so not sure if that’s true). In other words Red Gate is trying to make damn sure they’re getting your money if you attempt to use Reflector. There’s a lot of temptation there. Think about the millions of .NET developers out there and all of them possibly upgrading – that’s a nice chunk of change that Red Gate’s sitting on. Even with all the community backlash these guys are probably making some bank right now just because people need to get life to move on. Red Gate also put up a Feedback link on the download page – which not surprisingly is chock full with hate mail condemning the move. Oddly there’s not a single response to any of those messages by the Red Gate folks except when it concerns license questions for the full version. It puzzles me what that link serves for other yet than another complete example of failure to understand how to handle customer relations. There’s no doubt that that all of this has caused some serious outrage in the community. The sad part though is that this could have been handled so much less arrogantly and without pissing off the entire community and causing so much ill-will. People are pissed off and I have no doubt that this negative publicity will show up in the sales numbers for their other products. I certainly hope so. Stupidity ought to be painful! Why do Companies do boneheaded stuff like this? Red Gate’s original decision to buy Reflector was hotly debated but at that the time most of what would happen was mostly speculation. But I thought it was a smart move for any company that is in need of spreading its marketing message and corporate image as a vendor in the .NET space. Where else do you get to flash your corporate logo to hordes of .NET developers on a regular basis?  Exploiting that marketing with some goodwill of providing a free tool breeds positive feedback that hopefully has a good effect on the company’s visibility and the products it sells. Instead Red Gate seems to have taken exactly the opposite tack of corporate bullying to try to make a quick buck – and in the process ruined any community goodwill that might have come from providing a service community for free while still getting valuable marketing. What’s so puzzling about this boneheaded escapade is that the company doesn’t need to resort to underhanded tactics like what they are trying with Reflector 7. The tools the company makes are very good. I personally use SQL Compare, Sql Data Compare and ANTS Profiler on a regular basis and all of these tools are essential in my toolbox. They certainly work much better than the tools that are in the box with Visual Studio. Chances are that if Reflector 7 added useful features I would have been more than happy to shell out my $39 to upgrade when the time is right. It’s Expensive to give away stuff for Free At the same time, this episode shows some of the big problems that come with ‘free’ tools. A lot of organizations are realizing that giving stuff away for free is actually quite expensive and the pay back is often very intangible if any at all. Those that rely on donations or other voluntary compensation find that they amount contributed is absolutely miniscule as to not matter at all. Yet at the same time I bet most of those clamouring the loudest on that Red Gate Reflector feedback page that Reflector won’t be free anymore probably have NEVER made a donation to any open source project or free tool ever. The expectation of Free these days is just too great – which is a shame I think. There’s a lot to be said for paid software and having somebody to hold to responsible to because you gave them some money. There’s an incentive –> payback –> responsibility model that seems to be missing from free software (not all of it, but a lot of it). While there certainly are plenty of bad apples in paid software as well, money tends to be a good motivator for people to continue working and improving products. Reasons for giving away stuff are many but often it’s a naïve desire to share things when things are simple. At first it might be no problem to volunteer time and effort but as products mature the fun goes out of it, and as the reality of product maintenance kicks in developers want to get something back for the time and effort they’re putting in doing non-glamorous work. It’s then when products die or languish and this is painful for all to watch. For Red Gate however, I think there was always a pretty good payback from the Reflector acquisition in terms of marketing: Visibility and possible positioning of their products although they seemed to have mostly ignored that option. On the other hand they started this off pretty badly even 2 and a half years back when they aquired Reflector from Lutz with the same arrogant attitude that is evident in the latest episode. You really gotta wonder what folks are thinking in management – the sad part is from advance emails that were circulating, they were fully aware of the shit storm they were inciting with this and I suspect they are banking on the sheer numbers of .NET developers to still make them a tidy chunk of change from upgrades… Alternatives are coming For me personally the single license isn’t a problem, but I actually have a tool that I sell (an interop Web Service proxy generation tool) to customers and one of the things I recommend to use with has been Reflector to view assembly information and to find which Interop classes to instantiate from the non-.NET environment. It’s been nice to use Reflector for this with its small footprint and zero-configuration installation. But now with V7 becoming a paid tool that option is not going to be available anymore. Luckily it looks like the .NET community is jumping to it and trying to fill the void. Amidst the Red Gate outrage a new library called ILSpy has sprung up and providing at least some of the core functionality of Reflector with an open source library. It looks promising going forward and I suspect there will be a lot more support and interest to support this project now that Reflector has gone over to the ‘dark side’…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011

  Read the article

• Solaris 11 Resources for System Administrators

  - by rickramsey

  Have too much to worry about? Let us lighten the load. OTN's job is to filter through all the available resources and take you straight to the content that will help you do your job. For starters ... Oracle Solaris 11 Documentation Library Rock-solid instructions and background from the best tech writers in the business. Includes: Getting Started (including What's New and Release Notes) Installing and Updating (includes info about IPS) Administration Guide Security Guide Working With the Desktop Developing Applications for Solaris 11 Reference Manuals Important Information from Previous Releases Related Information Legal Notes Oracle Solaris 11 Training Oracle University offers training and certification for sysadmins at all levels. If you're familiar with Oracle Solaris 10, these courses are the best way to become familiar with Solaris 11: What's New in Oracle Solaris 11 (self-study) Transition to Solaris 11 - classroom and virtual Solaris 11 Administration - classroom and virtual Solaris 11 Advanced Administration - classroom and virtual These are the education paths for Oracle Certifications on Solaris 11: Oracle Certified Associate Oracle Certified Professional Courses for Solaris System, Network, and Security Administration - scroll to bottom of page for Solaris courses Indexes and Feeds of Our Best How-To Articles We update these indexes and feeds only after we read through the available content and select the best. These are our personal recommendations by topic, product, or audience. We'll be adding content about Oracle Solaris 11 in the coming days and weeks. Keep an eye out. All Systems Indexes Solaris 11 Collection All System Feeds OTN Systems Community Home Page Our Home Page is the same as the front page of a newspaper, but without the advertising. Latest articles, latest useful content from the community, plus links to all the other resources available on OTN. ... And If You Want to Be The First To Know After we select the best content, the first thing we do is hang out at the OTN Garage and talk about it.  Every once in a while we talk about cool cars and motorcycles, too: On Facebook On Twitter On Our Blog - Rick Ramsey Website Newsletter Facebook Twitter

  Read the article

• July, the 31 Days of SQL Server DMO’s – Day 3 (sys.dm_exec_connections)

  - by Tamarick Hill

    The third DMV we will review is the sys.dm_exec_connections DMV. This DMV is Server-Scoped and displays information about each and every current connection on your SQL Server Instance. Lets take a look at some information that this DMV returns. SELECT * FROM sys.dm_exec_connections After reviewing this DMV, in my opinion, its not a whole lot of useful information returned from this DMV from a monitoring or troubleshooting standpoint. The primary use case I have for this DMV is when I need to get a quick count of how many connections I have on one of my SQL Server boxes. For this purpose a quick SELECT COUNT(*) satisfies my need. However, for those who need it, there is other information such as what type of authentication a specific connection is using, network packet size, and client/local TCP ports being used. This information can come in handy for specific scenarios but you probably wont need it very much for your day to day monitoring/troubleshooting needs. However, this is still an important DMV that you should be aware of in the event that you need it. For more information on this DMV, please see the below Books Online link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms181509.aspx

  Read the article

• Where Is SilverLight Toolkit Installed On My PC?

  - by Gopinath

  This is first question that ran though my mind once I finished installation of SilverLight Toolkit today. When we install the toolkit, the installation wizard does not ask us for any installation folder options and after completion of installation there will not be any entries in to the All Programs section of start menu. After going through the documents, I found that installer silently places all the binaries, themes, samples documents under program files folder depending on the version of the toolkit. If you installed version 4.0 of the toolkit then it will be placed in the folder C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v4.0 Here is the list of other useful folder of SilverLight toolkit that we refer to often Bin  C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v4.0\Toolkit\Apr10\Bin   Samples  C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v4.0\Toolkit\Apr10\Samples   Themes  C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v4.0\Toolkit\Apr10\Themes   Source  C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v4.0\Toolkit\Apr10\Source Please note this above listed folder names will not be exactly same on your computer as they vary from one version to another. First open the base folder  C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight and then navigate through the available folders for locating the required ones. Hope this helps you. Join us on Facebook to read all our stories right inside your Facebook news feed.

  Read the article

• 10 Windows Tweaking Myths Debunked

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Windows is big, complicated, and misunderstood. You’ll still stumble across bad advice from time to time when browsing the web. These Windows tweaking, performance, and system maintenance tips are mostly just useless, but some are actively harmful. Luckily, most of these myths have been stomped out on mainstream sites and forums. However, if you start searching the web, you’ll still find websites that recommend you do these things. Erase Cache Files Regularly to Speed Things Up You can free up disk space by running an application like CCleaner, another temporary-file-cleaning utility, or even the Windows Disk Cleanup tool. In some cases, you may even see an old computer speed up when you erase a large amount of useless files. However, running CCleaner or similar utilities every day to erase your browser’s cache won’t actually speed things up. It will slow down your web browsing as your web browser is forced to redownload the files all over again, and reconstruct the cache you regularly delete. If you’ve installed CCleaner or a similar program and run it every day with the default settings, you’re actually slowing down your web browsing. Consider at least preventing the program from wiping out your web browser cache. Enable ReadyBoost to Speed Up Modern PCs Windows still prompts you to enable ReadyBoost when you insert a USB stick or memory card. On modern computers, this is completely pointless — ReadyBoost won’t actually speed up your computer if you have at least 1 GB of RAM. If you have a very old computer with a tiny amount of RAM — think 512 MB — ReadyBoost may help a bit. Otherwise, don’t bother. Open the Disk Defragmenter and Manually Defragment On Windows 98, users had to manually open the defragmentation tool and run it, ensuring no other applications were using the hard drive while it did its work. Modern versions of Windows are capable of defragmenting your file system while other programs are using it, and they automatically defragment your disks for you. If you’re still opening the Disk Defragmenter every week and clicking the Defragment button, you don’t need to do this — Windows is doing it for you unless you’ve told it not to run on a schedule. Modern computers with solid-state drives don’t have to be defragmented at all. Disable Your Pagefile to Increase Performance When Windows runs out of empty space in RAM, it swaps out data from memory to a pagefile on your hard disk. If a computer doesn’t have much memory and it’s running slow, it’s probably moving data to the pagefile or reading data from it. Some Windows geeks seem to think that the pagefile is bad for system performance and disable it completely. The argument seems to be that Windows can’t be trusted to manage a pagefile and won’t use it intelligently, so the pagefile needs to be removed. As long as you have enough RAM, it’s true that you can get by without a pagefile. However, if you do have enough RAM, Windows will only use the pagefile rarely anyway. Tests have found that disabling the pagefile offers no performance benefit. Enable CPU Cores in MSConfig Some websites claim that Windows may not be using all of your CPU cores or that you can speed up your boot time by increasing the amount of cores used during boot. They direct you to the MSConfig application, where you can indeed select an option that appears to increase the amount of cores used. In reality, Windows always uses the maximum amount of processor cores your CPU has. (Technically, only one core is used at the beginning of the boot process, but the additional cores are quickly activated.) Leave this option unchecked. It’s just a debugging option that allows you to set a maximum number of cores, so it would be useful if you wanted to force Windows to only use a single core on a multi-core system — but all it can do is restrict the amount of cores used. Clean Your Prefetch To Increase Startup Speed Windows watches the programs you run and creates .pf files in its Prefetch folder for them. The Prefetch feature works as a sort of cache — when you open an application, Windows checks the Prefetch folder, looks at the application’s .pf file (if it exists), and uses that as a guide to start preloading data that the application will use. This helps your applications start faster. Some Windows geeks have misunderstood this feature. They believe that Windows loads these files at boot, so your boot time will slow down due to Windows preloading the data specified in the .pf files. They also argue you’ll build up useless files as you uninstall programs and .pf files will be left over. In reality, Windows only loads the data in these .pf files when you launch the associated application and only stores .pf files for the 128 most recently launched programs. If you were to regularly clean out the Prefetch folder, not only would programs take longer to open because they won’t be preloaded, Windows will have to waste time recreating all the .pf files. You could also modify the PrefetchParameters setting to disable Prefetch, but there’s no reason to do that. Let Windows manage Prefetch on its own. Disable QoS To Increase Network Bandwidth Quality of Service (QoS) is a feature that allows your computer to prioritize its traffic. For example, a time-critical application like Skype could choose to use QoS and prioritize its traffic over a file-downloading program so your voice conversation would work smoothly, even while you were downloading files. Some people incorrectly believe that QoS always reserves a certain amount of bandwidth and this bandwidth is unused until you disable it. This is untrue. In reality, 100% of bandwidth is normally available to all applications unless a program chooses to use QoS. Even if a program does choose to use QoS, the reserved space will be available to other programs unless the program is actively using it. No bandwidth is ever set aside and left empty. Set DisablePagingExecutive to Make Windows Faster The DisablePagingExecutive registry setting is set to 0 by default, which allows drivers and system code to be paged to the disk. When set to 1, drivers and system code will be forced to stay resident in memory. Once again, some people believe that Windows isn’t smart enough to manage the pagefile on its own and believe that changing this option will force Windows to keep important files in memory rather than stupidly paging them out. If you have more than enough memory, changing this won’t really do anything. If you have little memory, changing this setting may force Windows to push programs you’re using to the page file rather than push unused system files there — this would slow things down. This is an option that may be helpful for debugging in some situations, not a setting to change for more performance. Process Idle Tasks to Free Memory Windows does things, such as creating scheduled system restore points, when you step away from your computer. It waits until your computer is “idle” so it won’t slow your computer and waste your time while you’re using it. Running the “Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks” command forces Windows to perform all of these tasks while you’re using the computer. This is completely pointless and won’t help free memory or anything like that — all you’re doing is forcing Windows to slow your computer down while you’re using it. This command only exists so benchmarking programs can force idle tasks to run before performing benchmarks, ensuring idle tasks don’t start running and interfere with the benchmark. Delay or Disable Windows Services There’s no real reason to disable Windows services anymore. There was a time when Windows was particularly heavy and computers had little memory — think Windows Vista and those “Vista Capable” PCs Microsoft was sued over. Modern versions of Windows like Windows 7 and 8 are lighter than Windows Vista and computers have more than enough memory, so you won’t see any improvements from disabling system services included with Windows. Some people argue for not disabling services, however — they recommend setting services from “Automatic” to “Automatic (Delayed Start)”. By default, the Delayed Start option just starts services two minutes after the last “Automatic” service starts. Setting services to Delayed Start won’t really speed up your boot time, as the services will still need to start — in fact, it may lengthen the time it takes to get a usable desktop as services will still be loading two minutes after booting. Most services can load in parallel, and loading the services as early as possible will result in a better experience. The “Delayed Start” feature is primarily useful for system administrators who need to ensure a specific service starts later than another service. If you ever find a guide that recommends you set a little-known registry setting to improve performance, take a closer look — the change is probably useless. Want to actually speed up your PC? Try disabling useless startup programs that run on boot, increasing your boot time and consuming memory in the background. This is a much better tip than doing any of the above, especially considering most Windows PCs come packed to the brim with bloatware.     

  Read the article

• SQL Cruise Alaska 2011

  - by Grant Fritchey

  I had the extreme good fortune to get sent on the last SQL Cruise to Alaska. I love my job. In case you don't what this is, SQL Cruise is a trip on a cruise ship during which you get to attend classes while on the boat, learning all about SQL Server and related topics as well as network with the instructors and the other Cruisers. Frankly, it's amazing. Classes ran from Monday, 5/30, to Saturday, 6/4. The networking was constant, between classes, at night on cruise ship, out on excursions in Alaskan rainforests and while snorkeling in ocean waters. Here's a run down of the experience from my point of view. Because I couldn't travel out 2 days early, I missed the BBQ that occurred the day before the cruise when many of the Cruisers received their swag bags. Some of that swag came from Red Gate. I researched what was useful on a cruise like this and purchased small flashlights and binoculars for all the Cruisers. The flashlights were because, depending on your cabin, ships can be very dark. The binoculars were so that the cruisers could watch all the beautiful landscape as it flowed by. I would have liked to have been there when the bags were opened, but I heard from several people that they appreciated the gifts. Cruisers "In" the hot tub. Pictured: Marjory Woody, Michele Grondin, Kyle Brandt, Grant Fritchey, John Halunen Sunday I went to board the ship with my wife. We had a bit of an adventure because I messed up our documents. It all worked out and we got on board to meet up at the back of the boat at one of the outdoor bars with the other Cruisers, thanks to tweets letting everyone know where to go. That was the end of electronic coordination on the trip (connectivity in Alaska was horrible for everyone except AT&T). The Cruisers were a great bunch of people and it was a real honor to meet them and get to spend time with them. After everyone settled into their cabins, our very first activity was a contest, sponsored by Red Gate. The Cruisers, in an effort to get to know each other and the ship, were required to go all over taking various photographs, some of them hilarious. The winning team of three would all win prizes. Some of the significant others helped out and I tagged along with a team that tied for first but lost the coin toss. The winning team consisted of Christina Leo (blog|twitter), Ryan Malcom (twitter), Neil Hambly (blog|twitter). They then had to do math and identify the cabin with the lowest prime number, oh, and get a picture of it and be the first to get back up to the bar where we were waiting. Christina came in first and very happily carried home an Ipad2. Ryan won a 1TB portable hard drive and Neil won a wireless mouse (picture below, note my special SQL Server Central Friday Shirt. Thanks Steve (blog|twitter)). Winners: Christina Leo, Neil Hambly, Ryan Malcolm. Just Lucky: Grant Fritchey Monday morning classes started. Buck Woody (blog|twitter) was a special guest speaker on this cruise. His theme was "Three C's on the High Seas: Career, Communication and Cloud." The first session was all on Career. I'm not going to type out all my notes from the session, but let's just say, if you get the chance to hear Buck talk about how to manage your career, I suggest you attend. I have a ton of blog posts that I'll be putting together over the next several months (yes, months) both here and over on ScaryDBA. I also have a bunch of work I'm going to be doing to get my career performance bumped up a notch or two (and let's face it, that won't be easy). Later on Monday, Tim Ford (blog|twitter) did a session on DMOs. Specifically the session was on Tim's Period Table of DMOs that he has put together, and how to use some of the more interesting DMOs in your day to day job. It was a great session, packed with good information. Next, Brent Ozar (blog|twitter) did a session on how to monitor and guide SAN configuration for the DBA that doesn't have access to the SAN. That was some seriously useful information. Tuesday morning we only had a single class. Kendra Little (blog|twitter) taught us all about "No Lock for Yes Fun".  It was all about the different transaction isolation levels and how they work. There is so often confusion in this area and Kendra does a great job in clarifying the information. Also, she tosses in her excellent drawings to liven up the presentation. Then it was excursion time in Juneau. My wife and I, along with several other Cruisers, took a hike up around the Mendenhall Glacier. It was absolutely beautiful weather and walking through the Alaskan rain forest was a treat. Our guide, Jason, was a great guy and it was a good day of hiking. Wednesday was an all day excursion in Skagway. My wife and I took the "Ghost and Good Time Girls" walking tour that ended up at a bar that used to be a brothel, the Red Onion. It was a great history of the town. We went back out and hit a few museums and exhibits. We also hiked up the side of the mountain to see the Dewey Lake and some great views of the town. Finally we hiked out to the far side of town to see the Gold Rush cemetery. Hiking done we went back to the boat and had a quiet dinner on our own. Thursday we cruised through Glacier Bay and saw at least four different glaciers including sitting next to the Marjory Glacier for  about an hour. It was amazing. Then it got better. We went into class with Buck again, this time to talk about Communication. Again, I've got pages of notes that I'm going to be referring back to for some time to come. This was an excellent opportunity to learn. Snorkelers: Nicole Bertrand, Aaron Bertrand, Grant Fritchey, Neil Hambly, Christina Leo, John Robel, Yanni Robel, Tim Ford Friday we pulled into Ketchikan. A bunch of us went snorkeling. Yes, snorkeling. Yes, in Alaska. Yes, snorkeling in the ocean in Alaska. It was fantastic. They had us put on 7mm thick wet suits (an adventure all by itself) so it was basically warm the entire time we were in the water (except for the occasional squirt of cold water down my back). Before we got in the water a bald eagle flew up and landed about 15 feet in front of us, which was just an incredible event. Then our guide pointed out about 14 other eagles in the area, hanging out in the trees. Wow! The water was pretty clear and there was a ton of things to see. That was absolutely a blast. Back on the boat I presented a session called Execution Plans: The Deep Dive (note the nautical theme). It seemed to go over well and I had several good questions come out of the session that will lead to new blog posts. After I presented, it was Aaron Bertrand's (blog|twitter) turn. He did a session on "What's New in Denali" that provided a lot of great information. He was able to incorporate new things straight out of Tech-Ed, so this was expanded beyond his usual presentation. The man really knows what he's talking about and communicates it well. Saturday we were travelling so there was time for a bunch of classes. Jeremiah Peschka (blog|twitter) did a great overview of some of the NoSQL databases and what they should be used for. The session was called "The Database is Dead" but it was really about how there are specific uses for these databases that SQL Server doesn't fill, but also that these databases can't replace SQL Server in other areas. Again, good material. Brent Ozar presented again with a session on Defensive Indexing. It was an overview of how indexes work and a deep dive into how to apply them appropriately in your databases to better support access. A good session, as you would expect. Then we pulled into Victoria, BC, in Canada and had a nice dinner with several of the Cruisers, including Denny Cherry (blog|twitter). After that it was back to Seattle on Sunday. By the way, the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle isn't a Science Fiction Museum any more. I was very disappointed to discover this. Overall, it was a great experience. I'm extremely appreciative of Red Gate for sending me and for Tim, Brent, Kendra and Jeremiah for having me. The other Cruisers were all amazing people and it was an honor & privilege to meet them and spend time with them. While this was a seriously fun time, it was also a very serious training opportunity with solid information coming from seasoned industry pros.

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144  | Next Page >