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• Why I don't use SSIS checkpoint files

  - by jamiet

  In a recent discussion in regard to general ETL best practises the subject of checkpoint files as a means for package restartability came up and I stated that I was dead against using them. For anyone that may care, here is why: Configuring them is distinctly unintuitive (that's a matter of opinion but if you follow the link I'll wager that you will agree) they don't make any allowance for loop iterations they cannot store variables of type Object they are limited in ability. There are many scenarios where you may want to execute certain containers regardless of whether the package is started from a checkpoint file but the current usage model does not allow for this. they are ignored by eventhandlers, which wouldn't be so bad if there were a way to toggle this behaviour in certain scenarios they dont work properly I'll expand on the last bullet point. I have encountered situations where the behaviour for tasks executing concurrently is unpredictable. That is, sometimes the completion of a task that executes concurrently with a failed/failing task will make it into the checkpoint file and sometimes it won't. This is near-impossible to reproduce but it does happen as my good friend John Welch will hopefully concur (if he is reading). Is anyone out there making successful use of checkpoint files within SSIS? I would be interested in knowing about that if so. @Jamiet

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• Ask The Readers: How Do You Camouflage Your Tech?

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  We love having a technology-packed house as much as the next geek, but not all our gizmos, gadgets, and peripherals are exactly Home and Garden approved. How do you enjoy all your tech without your living room and office looking like an electronics store? Image courtesy of Weekly Geek’s DIY charging station tutorial. Whether it’s to hide the insanely intense LEDS, minimize the visual clutter, or to boost the wife/husband acceptance factor of your geeky hobbies higher, there’s a variety of reasons for wrangling cables, hiding routers, or otherwise camouflaging your gear. This week we want to hear all about your tips for hiding or otherwise minimizing the appearance of gear around your home, office, and other personal spaces. Sound off in the comments with your best tips, trick, and camouflaging techniques; check back in on Friday for the What You Said roundup. HTG Explains: How Windows 8′s Secure Boot Feature Works & What It Means for Linux Hack Your Kindle for Easy Font Customization HTG Explains: What Is RSS and How Can I Benefit From Using It?

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• Caching WCF javascript proxy on browser

  - by oazabir

  When you use WCF services from Javascript, you have to generate the Javascript proxies by hitting the Service.svc/js. If you have five WCF services, then it means five javascripts to download. As browsers download javascripts synchronously, one after another, it adds latency to page load and slows down page rendering performance. Moreover, the same WCF service proxy is downloaded from every page, because the generated javascript file is not cached on browser. Here is a solution that will ensure the generated Javascript proxies are cached on browser and when there is a hit on the service, it will respond with HTTP 304 if the Service.svc file has not changed. Here’s a Fiddler trace of a page that uses two WCF services. You can see there are two /js hits and they are sequential. Every visit to the same page, even with the same browser session results in making those two hits to /js. Second time when the same page is browsed: You can see everything else is cached, except the WCF javascript proxies. They are never cached because the WCF javascript proxy generator does not produce the necessary caching headers to cache the files on browser. Here’s an HttpModule for IIS and IIS Express which will intercept calls to WCF service proxy. It first checks if the service is changed since the cached version on the browser. If it has not changed then it will return HTTP 304 and not go through the service proxy generation process. Thus it saves some CPU on server. But if the request is for the first time and there’s no cached copy on browser, it will deliver the proxy and also emit the proper cache headers to cache the response on browser. http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/360437/Caching-WCF-javascript-proxy-on-browser Don’t forget to vote.

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• How to slow down a sprite that updates every frame?

  - by xiaohouzi79

  I am going through a Allegro 5 tutorial which has a game loop. There is also a variable "active" which determines if a key is being held down. Thus if the left key is being held down active is on and it begins looping through the row on the sprite sheet that corresponds to moving left. The problem is that this logic is checked everytime the loop is performed thus at approximately 60 fps the three images that are used to do the left walking animation cycle round super fast which means my character looks like it is in a rush. Total beginner question: so what is the correct way to slow down the transition between sprites so that the walking looks like it is done at a moderate pace. Here is the code used to transition across the sprite between the three different phases of the person walking: if (active) { sourceX += al_get_bitmap_width(player) / 3; } else { sourceX = 32; } if (sourceX >= al_get_bitmap_width(player)) { sourceX = 0; } I can kind of guess what it should be in plain English: update sourceX only every certain part of a second but I can't think of how to put this into code.

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• It's The End of Work as We Know It, But I Feel Fine

  - by Naresh Persaud

  If you are attending Open World this year, don't miss Amit Jasuja's session on trends in Identity Management. This session will take place on Monday October 1st in Moscone West at 10:45. You can join the conversation on Twitter as Amit Jasuja discusses the trends that are shaping Identity Management as a market and how Oracle is responding to these secular trends. Use hashtag OracleIDM. In addition, here’s a list of the sessions in the  Identity Management  track. In Amit's session, he will discuss how the workplace is changing. The pace of technology is accelerating and work is no longer a place but rather an activity. We are behaving socially in our professional lives and our professional responsibilities are encroaching on our social lives.  The net result is that we will need to change the way we work and collaborate. Work is anytime and anywhere. This impacts the dynamics of teams and how they access information and applications. Our teams span multiple organizations and "the new work order" means enabling the interaction and securing the experience. It is the end of work as we know it both economically and technologically. Join Amit for this session and you will feel much better about the changing workplace. 

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• Panning with the OpenGL Camera / View Matrix

  - by Pris

  I'm gonna try this again I've been trying to setup a simple camera class with OpenGL but I'm completely lost and I've made zero progress creating anything useful. I'm using modern OpenGL and the glm library for matrix math. To get the most basic thing I can think of down, I'd like to pan an arbitrarily positioned camera around. That means move it along its own Up and Side axes. Here's a picture of a randomly positioned camera looking at an object: It should be clear what the Up (Green) and Side (Red) vectors on the camera are. Even though the picture shows otherwise, assume that the Model matrix is just the identity matrix. Here's what I do to try and get it to work: Step 1: Create my View/Camera matrix (going to refer to it as the View matrix from now on) using glm::lookAt(). Step 2: Capture mouse X and Y positions. Step 3: Create a translation matrix mapping changes in the X mouse position to the camera's Side vector, and mapping changes in the Y mouse position to the camera's Up vector. I get the Side vector from the first column of the View matrix. I get the Up vector from the second column of the View matrix. Step 4: Apply the translation: viewMatrix = glm::translate(viewMatrix,translationVector); But this doesn't work. I see that the mouse movement is mapped to some kind of perpendicular axes, but they're definitely not moving as you'd expect with respect to the camera. Could someone please explain what I'm doing wrong and point me in the right direction with this camera stuff?

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• Alert for Forms customers running Oracle Forms 10g

  - by Grant Ronald

  Doesn’t time fly!  While you might have been happily running your Forms 10g applications for about 5 years or so now, the end of premier support is creeping up and you need to start planning for a move to Oracle Forms 11g. The premier support end date in December 31st 2011 and this is documented in Note: 1290974.1 available from MOS. So how much of an impact is this going to be?  Maybe not as much as you think.  While Forms 11g is based on WebLogic Server (WLS),10g was based  on OC4J.  That in itself doesn’t impact Forms much.  In most case it will simply be a recompile of your Forms source files and redeploy on WLS 11g. The Forms builder is the same in 11g as in 10g although its currently not available as a separate download from the main middleware bundle.  You can also look at a WLS Basic license option which means you shouldn’t have to shell out on upgrading to a WLS Suite license option. So what’s the proof in this being a relatively straightforward upgrade?  Well, we’ve had a big uptake of Forms 11g already (which has itself been out for over 2 years).  Read about BT Expedite’s upgrade where “The upgrade of Forms from Oracle Forms 10g to Oracle Forms 11g was relatively simple and on the whole, was just a recompilation”.  Or AMEC where “This has been one of the easiest Forms conversions we’ve ever done and it was a simple recompile in all cases” So if you are on 10g (or even earlier versions) I’d strongly consider starting your planning for an upgrade to 11g now. As always, if you have any questions about this you can post on the OTN forums.

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• python: os.system does not execute shell comand

  - by capoluca

  I need to execute shell command in python program (I have ubuntu). More specifically I want to create graph using graphviz in python script. My code is os.system("dot -Tpng graph.dot -o graph.png") It does not work, but if I just type dot -Tpng graph.dot -o graph.png in command line then everything is fine. Do you know what the problem? Thank you! Edit: Does not work means that nothing happens, there are no errors. Output from dot -v -Tpng graph.dot -o graph.png: dot - graphviz version 2.26.3 (20100126.1600) Activated plugin library: libgvplugin_pango.so.6 Using textlayout: textlayout:cairo Activated plugin library: libgvplugin_dot_layout.so.6 Using layout: dot:dot_layout Using render: cairo:cairo Using device: png:cairo:cairo The plugin configuration file: /usr/lib/graphviz/config6 was successfully loaded. render : cairo dot fig gd map ps svg tk vml vrml xdot layout : circo dot fdp neato nop nop1 nop2 osage patchwork sfdp twopi textlayout : textlayout device : canon cmap cmapx cmapx_np dot eps fig gd gd2 gif gv imap imap_np ismap jpe jpeg jpg pdf plain plain-ext png ps ps2 svg svgz tk vml vmlz vrml wbmp x11 xdot xlib loadimage : (lib) eps gd gd2 gif jpe jpeg jpg png ps svg

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• Have you registered? Oracle 'In Touch' PartnerCast: Be prepared for a year of growth

  - by Julien Haye

  Hi there Oracle Partners, We hope you’ve seen our recent blog post regarding the next Oracle ‘In Touch’ PartnerCast? Hosted by David Callaghan, Senior Vice President EMEA Alliances and Channels, to be broadcast on Tuesday 1st July 2014 from 10:30am UK/11:30am CET. David and his studio guests will be discussing the latest news from Oracle; including highlights of FY14, Strategic themes for FY15 and SaaS. We will also have an exclusive for ‘In Touch’ whereby David interviews Senior Vice President, Global Alliances & Channels, Rich Geraffo, on what the FY15 Oracle Global Partner Kick Off means for EMEA Oracle Partners. Also, David provides your chance to hear from some of the newly appointed Oracle Worldwide A&C Leadership Team. Got a question for David and his guests? Get in touch on Twitter using the hashtag #OracleInTouch or by emailing [email protected] to get your questions featured in the cast! To find out more information and to watch previous episodes on-demand, please visit our webpage here. We hope you can make it! Oracle EMEA Alliances & Channels

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• Cluster Nodes as RAID Drives

  - by BuckWoody

  I'm unable to sleep tonight so I thought I would push this post out VERY early. When you don't sleep your mind takes interesting turns, which can be a good thing. I was watching a briefing today by a couple of friends as they were talking about various ways to arrange a Windows Server Cluster for SQL Server. I often see an "active" node of a cluster with a "passive" node backing it up. That means one node is working and accepting transactions, and the other is not doing any work but simply "standing by" waiting for the first to fail over. The configuration in the demonstration I saw was a bit different. In this example, there were three nodes that were actively working, and a fourth standing by for all three. I've put configurations like this one into place before, but as I was looking at their architecture diagram, it looked familar - it looked like a RAID drive setup! And that's not a bad way to think about your cluster arrangements. The same concerns you might think about for a particular RAID configuration provides a good way to think about protecting your systems in general. So even if you're not staying awake all night thinking about SQL Server clusters, take this post as an opportunity for "lateral thinking" - a way of combining in your mind the concepts from one piece of knowledge to another. You might find a new way of making your technical environment a little better. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Proper way to let user enter password for a bash script using only the GUI (with the terminal hidden)

  - by MountainX

  I have made a bash script that uses kdialog exclusively for interacting with the user. It is launched from a ".desktop" file so the user never sees the terminal. It looks 100% like a GUI app (even though it is just a bash script). It runs in KDE only (Kubuntu 12.04). My only problem is handling password input securely and conveniently. I can't find a satisfactory solution. The script was designed to be run as a normal user and to prompt for the password when a sudo command is first needed. In this way, most commands, those not requiring sudo rights, are run as the normal user. What happens (when the script is run from the terminal) is that the user is prompted for their password once and the default sudo timeout allows the script to finish, including any additional sudo commands, without prompting the user again. This is how I want it to work when run behind the GUI too. The main problem is that using kdesudo to launch my script, which is the standard GUI way, means that the entire script is executed by the root user. So file ownerships get assigned to the root user, I can't rely upon ~/ in paths, and many other things are less than ideal. Running the entire script as the root user is just a very unsatisfactory solution and I think it is a bad practice. I appreciate any ideas for letting a user enter the sudo password just once via GUI while not running the whole script as root. Thanks.

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• Does Google submit HTML forms?

  - by Saeed Neamati

  I have a web page, say http://domain/purchase and in this page, I have a web form. User, on submitting this form (which has validation, both client-side and server side and won't be validated until fields are filled appropriately), would be redirected to another page, where (s)he can choose other things, and specify other settings and then purchase our product. Say the second page is http://domain/options. So, user comes to our site and visits http://domain/purchase, fills the form, submits it, and then would be redirected to the second page, http://doamin/options?parameter1=value1&parameter2=value2, which contains parameters from the first page. This is very common in passing parameters between web pages (or technically, between URLs). Now I was reviewing my website, and saw that Google had indexed some of my redirected web pages and URLs, like: http://domain/options?parameter1=value1&parameter2=value2 http://domain/options?parameter1=value3&parameter2=value4 http://domain/options?parameter1=value5&parameter2=value6 http://domain/options?parameter1=value7&parameter2=value8 http://domain/options?parameter1=value9&parameter2=value10 This means that Google Bot has visited our http://domain/purchase page, and has filled our form, and has submitted it, and was being redirected to the other URL, with corresponding parameters. This is the only way that makes sense to me. Does Google really fills forms? PS: All parameters are meaningful, meaning that they are not filled arbitrarily. For example, the phone parameter in indexed pages has correct phone numbers. How is it possible?

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• Code Measuring and Metrics Tools?

  - by David

  I'm in the process of setting up a build server for personal projects. This server will handle all the normal CI stuff, including running large suites of tests (unit, integration, automated UI). While I'm working out the kinks for including code coverage output with MSTest, it occurs to me that there may be lots of tools out there which give me additional metrics other than just code coverage. FxCop comes to mind as an example. Though I'm sure there are others. Anything that can generate useful reportable data and metrics would be good. Whether it's class dependency charts (looking for Law of Demeter violations, for example), analyses of the uses of classes/functions (looking for a function that isn't used in the system other than just the tests, for example), and so on. I'm not sure the right way to formulate the question, since polling questions or "What's your favorite code analysis tool" aren't very good. But I'm essentially just looking for recommendations on what metrics to gather and the tools that can gather them. The eventual vision for something like this is to have the CI server run a bunch of automated tests and analysis tools and track performance metrics over time. Imagine a dashboard full of graphs plotting these metrics over time. The lines should all relatively be at an equilibrium, and if one starts to stray toward the negative then it's an early indication of problems with the code. In the age old struggle to quantify code quality with management, this sounds like a potentially helpful means of doing just that.

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• C# XNA: Effecient mesh building algorithm for voxel based terrain ("top" outside layer only, non-destructible)

  - by Tim Hatch

  To put this bluntly, for non-destructible/non-constructible voxel style terrain, are generated meshes handled much better than instancing? Is there another method to achieve millions of visible quad faces per scene with ease? If generated meshes per chunk is the way to go, what kind of algorithm might I want to use based on only EVER needing the outer layer rendered? I'm using 3D Perlin Noise for terrain generation (for overhangs/caves/etc). The layout is fantastic, but even for around 20k visible faces, it's quite slow using instancing (whether it's one big draw call or multiple smaller chunks). I've simplified it to the point of removing non-visible cubes and only having the top faces of my cube-like terrain be rendered, but with 20k quad instances, it's still pretty sluggish (30fps on my machine). My goal is for the world to be made using quite small cubes. Where multiple games (IE: Minecraft) have the player 1x1 cube in width/length and 2 high, I'm shooting for 6x6 width/length and 9 high. With a lot of advantages as far as gameplay goes, it also means I could quite easily have a single scene with millions of truly visible quads. So, I have been trying to look into changing my method from instancing to mesh generation on a chunk by chunk basis. Do video cards handle this type of processing better than separate quads/cubes through instancing? What kind of existing algorithms should I be looking into? I've seen references to marching cubes a few times now, but I haven't spent much time investigating it since I don't know if it's the better route for my situation or not. I'm also starting to doubt my need of using 3D Perlin noise for terrain generation since I won't want the kind of depth it would seem best at. I just like the idea of overhangs and occasional cave-like structures, but could find no better 'surface only' algorithms to cover that. If anyone has any better suggestions there, feel free to throw them at me too. Thanks, Mythics

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• Proper Data Structure for Commentable Comments

  - by Wesley

  Been struggling with this on an architectural level. I have an object which can be commented on, let's call it a Post. Every post has a unique ID. Now I want to comment on that Post, and I can use ID as a foreign key, and each PostComment has an ItemID field which correlates to the Post. Since each Post has a unique ID, it is very easy to assign "Top Level" comments. When I comment on a comment however, I feel like I now need a PostCommentComment, which attaches to the ID of the PostComment. Since ID's are assigned sequentially, I can no longer simply use ItemID to differentiate where in the tree the comment is assigned. I.E. both a Post and a Post Comment might have an ID of '5', so my foreign key relationship is invalid. This seems like it could go on infinitely, with PostCommentCommentComment's etc... What's the best way to solve this? Should I have a field in the comment called "IsPostComment" or something of the like to know which collection to attach the ID to? This strikes me as the best solution I've seen so far, but now I feel like I need to make recursive DataBase calls which start to get expensive. Meaning, I get a Post and get all PostComments where ItemID == Post.ID && where IsPostComment == true Then I take that as a collection, gather all the ID's of the PostComments, and do another search where ItemID == PostComment[all].ID && where IsPostComment == false, then repeat infinitely. This means I make a call for every layer, and if I'm calling 100 Posts, I might make 1000 DB calls to get 10 layers of comments each. What is the right way to do this?

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• Why a static main method in Java and C#, rather than a constructor?

  - by Konrad Rudolph

  Why did (notably) Java and C# decide to have a static method as their entry point – rather than representing an application instance by an instance of an Application class, with the entry point being an appropriate constructor which, at least to me, seems more natural? I’m interested in a definitive answer from a primary or secondary source, not mere speculations. This has been asked before. Unfortunately, the existing answers are merely begging the question. In particular, the following answers don’t satisfy me, as I deem them incorrect: There would be ambiguity if the constructor were overloaded. – In fact, C# (as well as C and C++) allows different signatures for Main so the same potential ambiguity exists, and is dealt with. A static method means no objects can be instantiated before so order of initialisation is clear. – This is just factually wrong, some objects are instantiated before (e.g. in a static constructor). So they can be invoked by the runtime without having to instantiate a parent object. – This is no answer at all. Just to justify further why I think this is a valid and interesting question: Many frameworks do use classes to represent applications, and constructors as entry points. For instance, the VB.NET application framework uses a dedicated main dialog (and its constructor) as the entry point1. Neither Java nor C# technically need a main method. Well, C# needs one to compile, but Java not even that. And in neither case is it needed for execution. So this doesn’t appear to be a technical restriction. And, as I mentioned in the first paragraph, for a mere convention it seems oddly unfitting with the general design principle of Java and C#. To be clear, there isn’t a specific disadvantage to having a static main method, it’s just distinctly odd, which made me wonder if there was some technical rationale behind it. I’m interested in a definitive answer from a primary or secondary source, not mere speculations. 1 Although there is a callback (Startup) which may intercept this.

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• Happy Chinese New Year!

  - by Shaun

  Today is Dec the 29th in Chinese Traditional Calendar, that means on Thursday (3rd of Feb) we will have the Chinese New Year! For those who doesn’t know about the Chinese New Year please visit the wikipedia site. This is the most important holiday not only for the Chinese in China, but the Chinese all around the world. Here I would like to say: ????. (Chun Jie Kuai Le, Happy Chinese New Year). OK I have 3 news with my celebration: The new windows azure developer portal had been published for a while and the windows azure team wants to get to know how do we think about it. Here is a survey avaiable you can send your feedback. PS, please refer to my previous blog for the features of this new site. The latest Window Azure Platform Training Kit Jan Update had been released that you can download here. There is a demo and a hands-on lab about the Windows Phone 7 application with Windows Azure avaiable which should be interesting. If you have heard about the new feature for SQL Azure named SQL Azure Federation, you might know that it’s a cool feature and solution about database sharding. But for now there seems no similar solution for normal SQL Server and local database. I had created a library named PODA, which stands for Partition Oriented Data Access which partially implemented the features of SQL Azure Federation. I’m going to explain more about this project after the Chinese New Year but you can download the source code here.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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• w00t! First post!

  - by blaird

  So, I busted my old blog and hadn't been keeping up with it. Decided it would be easier on me to use software that I didn't maintain, so several months ago I signed up for a GWB account. You are a witness to procrastination at its finest!  I was remarking to my friend Abby that I hadn't written anything in ages, that I've typed a bunch in the last 5 years or so, but that the typing belonged to someone else as work product, was boring technical mumbo jumbo, or was only good before it spoiled, that project/job/technology/tweet based freshness window that us geeks have to deal with. In short, I just didn't feel like it. So forgive the rambling sentences and my grammatical failures, you have Abby to thank ;) On the technology front I've been working with WPF, WCF and a whole lot of other alphabet soup in terms of patterns. I'm starting to get spoiled on Visual Studio 2010, and may have made a mistake by evaluating the ultimate version. Because I'm a .NET geek and an outdoor geek, expect a hodgepodge. It's nearly Easter, which for the garden means a whole lot of things. I've already started getting seed out, and started working soil. It feels good to get real dirt on your hands.

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• Organizing Connections with Folders in Oracle SQL Developer

  - by thatjeffsmith

  How many Oracle databases do you work with on a regular basis? I’m guessing the answer for most of you lies between 1 and 500. This post is really geared for those of you who deal with more than just a handful (5) of database connections. Filters are nice when you need to work with a subset of table data, or even a list of tables. So why wouldn’t they be just as useful for organizing your connections? Here’s my complete list of databases: The folders aren’t there by default, you add them as you need them. Now this isn’t an overly large connection list. But when I need to fire up an impromptu demo for a customer, it’s very nice to be able to drill down into JUST those ‘safe’ environments. This actually saves me a few seconds every time I need to connect to one of my databases. So while it’s a very simple feature, it’s one of those things that I recommend EVERYONE take advantage of as it will save them hours of time over the long haul. Easier to find means I get to work a few seconds faster. This also helps me from making mistakes in ‘production’ environments! How to Add a Connection Folder Select a connection you want to organize. Mouse-right-click, and choose ‘Add to folder.’ You can throw it into a new container or an existing one. Lather, rinse, and repeat as necessary. The only trick is remembering to right-click! Special thanks to @dresendi for today’s topic! He asked how to do this and I realized I hadn’t blogged the topic yet

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• Why does TDD work?

  - by CesarGon

  Test-driven development (TDD) is big these days. I often see it recommended as a solution for a wide range of problems here in Programmers SE and other venues. I wonder why it works. From an engineering point of view, it puzzles me for two reasons: The "write test + refactor till pass" approach looks incredibly anti-engineering. If civil engineers used that approach for bridge construction, or car designers for their cars, for example, they would be reshaping their bridges or cars at very high cost, and the result would be a patched-up mess with no well thought-out architecture. The "refactor till pass" guideline is often taken as a mandate to forget architectural design and do whatever is necessary to comply with the test; in other words, the test, rather than the user, sets the requirement. In this situation, how can we guarantee good "ilities" in the outcomes, i.e. a final result that is not only correct but also extensible, robust, easy to use, reliable, safe, secure, etc.? This is what architecture usually does. Testing cannot guarantee that a system works; it can only show that it doesn't. In other words, testing may show you that a system contains defects if it fails a test, but a system that passes all tests is not safer than a system that fails them. Test coverage, test quality and other factors are crucial here. The false safe feelings that an "all green" outcomes produces to many people has been reported in civil and aerospace industries as extremely dangerous, because it may be interepreted as "the system is fine", when it really means "the system is as good as our testing strategy". Often, the testing strategy is not checked. Or, who tests the tests? I would like to see answers containing reasons why TDD in software engineering is a good practice, and why the issues that I have explained above are not relevant (or not relevant enough) in the case of software. Thank you.

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• The Hot-Add Memory Hogs

  - by Andrew Clarke

  One of the more difficult tasks, when virtualizing a server, is to determine the amount of memory that Hypervisor should assign to the virtual machine. This requires accurate monitoring and, because of the consequences of setting the value too low, there is a great temptation to err on the side of over-provisioning. This results in fewer guest VMs and, in fact, with more accurate memory provisioning, many virtual environments could support 30% more VMs. In order to achieve a better consolidation (aka VM density) ratio, Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 has introduced what Microsoft calls ‘Dynamic Memory’. This means that the start-up RAM VM memory assigned to guest virtual machines can be allowed to vary according to demand, changing dynamically while the VM is running, based on the workload of applications running inside. If demand outstrips supply, then memory can be rationed according to the ‘memory weight’ assigned to the guest VM. By this mechanism, memory becomes a shared resource that can be reallocated automatically as demand patterns vary. Unlike VMWare’s Memory Overcommit technology, the sum of all the memory allocations to each virtual machine will not exceed the total memory of the host computer. This is fine for applications that are self-regulating in their demands for memory, releasing memory back into the 'pool' when not under peak load. Other applications however, such as SQL Server Standard and Enterprise, are by nature, memory hogs under high workload; they can grab hot-add memory whilst running under load and then never release it. This requires more careful setting-up and the SQLOS team have provided some guidelines from for configuring SQL Server in virtual environments. Whereas VMWare’s Memory Overcommit is well-proven in a number of different configurations, Hyper-V’s ‘Dynamic Memory’ is new. So far, the indications are that it will improve the business case for virtualizing and it is probably a far more intuitive technology for the average IT professional to grasp. It is certainly worth testing to see whether it works for you.

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• The Social Business Thought Leaders - Esteban Kolsky

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  Esteban Kolsky's presentation at the Social Business Forum 2012 was meaningfully titled “Everything you wanted to know about Customer Service using Social but had no one to ask”.  A recent survey by ThinkJar, Kolsky’s independent analyst firm, reported how more than 90% of the interviewed companies consider embracing social channels in customer service the right thing to do for the business and its customers. These numbers shouldn't be too surprising given the popularity of services such as Twitter and Facebook (59% and 60% respectively in the survey) among organizations, the power consumers are gaining online and the 40% preference they have to escalate issues on social services. Moreover, both large enterprises and small businesses are realizing how customer retention is cheaper and easier than customer acquisition. Many companies are looking at communities and social networks as an opportunity to drive loyalty, satisfaction and word of mouth. However, in this early phase the way they are preparing to launch social support appears to be lacking at best: 66% have no defined processes for customer service over social channels 68% were not able to estimate ROI before deploying social in customer service Only 8% found the expected ROI Most of the projects are stuck in the pilot or testing phase In his interview for the Social Business Thought-Leaders, Esteban discusses how to turn social media hype in business gains by touching upon some of the hottest topics organizations face when approaching social support: How to go from social media monitoring to actionable insights How Social CRM should be best positioned in regard to traditional CRM The importance of integrating social data to transactional data  Conversations with customer service organizations points to 2012 as the year of "understanding what social means for supporting customers". Will 2013 be the year it all becomes reality? We invite you to listen to Esteban Kolsky's interview to understand how to most effectively develop cross-channel strategies that include social channels and improve both customer satisfaction and the overall customer experience.

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• Programmer friendly non-voxel art styles?

  - by Overv

  Like many other programmers I've always wanted to make a game, but simply lack the skills to do any production quality graphics. I am however sure that I want to do the models and textures myself, because I need a lot of different objects and I am sure I wouldn't be able to find good matching models on 3D sites. That means I'll have to pick an art style that is "simple", programmer friendly. An extreme example of this is of course Minecraft, but I don't want to go that basic. I'm absolutely against creating a voxel game. What kind of art styles are out there that are relatively simple, i.e. things made out of basic shapes and textures, but are still good enough to form a believable and detailed world? An example of what I mean is wind waker. The objects are formed of relatively simples shapes, but still provide enough detail to create a nice, living world. The environment my game is set in is a city environment. What I'm really asking for here are good examples of "simple" art styles applied in practice, so I can choose one that fits my skills.

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• Is C and Python enough?

  - by gruszczy

  I am very proficient in Python (including Django), which I use for most tasks. I am also quite confident with C; I am maintaining small file system in userspace written in C. Yet when I am browsing job offers I see everywhere Java/C# and sometimes C++. I have coded profesionally in C++ for half a year in a gaming company, but I don't consider myself a pro. Also I simply despise Java and C#, which I would prefer not to touch ever. But it seems to me, that I am at very unfavorable position, when it comes to career. I am browsing careers.stackoverflow.com and I don't see and pure python or C offers. I would like to find a new job abroad in about 6 months. If I find some python offer, it means doing web development (not my favorite job). Does it mean, that I have to quickly start improving my C++ skills, if I wish to find a satisfying job? What would you suggest me? EDIT Learning new technologies is not an issue. Company I am working in is an integrator. Basically every new project requires learning new technologies, sometimes custom made. During last two years I was writing SQLs by hand, using LDAP, writing GUI in Qt, working on large scale DBMS prototype, making our internal help desk system use gsm modem or writing own report system. In previous job I had to learn from basics everything what I could about games development, because I knew nothing and chose this job only because of the challene it posed. I am all about embracing new technologies. I have used Java in the past and simply didn't like it. It's dull and boring. Doesn't let me do anything cool. I have recently seen some C# in action and seems similar. I don't like it. It's like German. I don't like speaking German.

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• PHP 5.4 Support: Traits

  - by Ondrej Brejla

  Hi all! Today we would like to intorduce you another new PHP 5.4 feature for NetBeans 7.2 which is called Traits. Note: All PHP 5.4 features are available in your projects after setting Project Properties -> Sources -> PHP Version to PHP 5.4 value, or after choosing the same value during a PHP Project creation (in New Project Wizard). If you don't know, what Traits are, just look at the official documentation, or RFC. So what is that exact Trait support in NetBeans? Syntax is recognized correctly and code completion offers declared, inherited stuff from used traits. Note: Just one thing is not supported yet - resolving name conflicts and aliasing of method names (it means that you will not have these "virtual" names in your code completion). We would like to implement it in some next NetBeans release. Sorry for any inconvenience. That's all for today and as usual, please test it and if you find something strange, don't hesitate to file a new issue (component php, subcomponent Editor). Thanks.

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